Just when I thought there was absolutely no reason to watch television anymore, along comes the best thing since, well, the other best reason to watch television--the Sopranos. And the new best thing? BOARDWALK EMPIRE. If you haven't heard already, this new series on HBO, is set in Atlantic City in 1920--at the beginning of Prohibition and what would become the roaring twenties. Leading the show is the charcter of Nucky Thompson (based on real-life boss Nucky Johnson, see below), City Treasurer and the boss of everything that goes on in and around life on the Boardwalk.
I have to admit I was already pretty eager to watch this show after catching the preliminary hype. What's not to anticipate with glee when you see names like Martin Scorcese and Steve Buscemi and Terrence Winter? Still, I wondered, will it really be so good? Nothing will ever come close to the Sopranos....
Well, I have just found appointment TV again. Last night I caught the first episode, directed by Scorcese, and it was everything I had hoped for, plus much, much more: the dialogue was rich in the way that classic Sopranos dialogue used to be (touched with the hand of authenticity and believability of character, gilded with surprising black humor in the perfect places); the attention to visual details was near perfect; the scenes were shot with the sense of true cinema, complete with near brain-scan close-ups and vivid costumes and makeup; the period music sent you back in time; and the actors were absolutely perfectly cast. If I have to make one complaint, I would say that I caught a touch of mis-matched dialogue/film synching, that distracted me somewhat early on, but I got over it.
Prior to seeing the first, I had read that it would take seeing a number of episodes to buy into Steve Bsucemi as the infamous Nucky Thompson. Not so. Within minutes I was sold on his portrayal, and even though the name of James Gandolfini as the lead was bantered around in the pre-show hype, I cannot imagine anyone better in this part than Buscemi.
Michael Pitt practically has steam escaping from his pores, as he plays the part of Jimmy Darmody, Princeton drop-out who comes home from his service as a dough boy in WWI to embrace his darker side (discovered, or, perhaps, uncovered "over there") as Nucky's right hand man. Let's just say he simmers with the need to satisfy those urges.
If you read this blog, you already know that I obsess about the passing of time. You know that I wish I could time travel. You know that I love antiques and Ken Burns and the Oxford Project and anything that allows me a glimpse into the past.
Now that I have discovered Google Street View, I even take trips to old neighborhoods of my past so I can "walk around" a see what those places now look like compared to years ago. Let me tell you that can be fun, but also depressing. Sometimes places look very much like they did when I was living there, like my old street and house in Stony Point, New York (but the town itself is totally different) or the house my husband and I lived in in Buffalo, NY, as newlyweds. Most of the time, however, things have changed so much, I don't recognize the neighborhood at all, or, in the worst case scenario, they don't even exist, which is the case with both of the apartment buildings I lived in as a child with my grandparents in Newark, New Jersey. Gone. Empty lots. Rubble.
The discovery of Google Street View is just one of the wonderful things I came upon when I discovered my absolute favorite, MUST VISIT EVERYDAY blog: SHORPY.
To quote from the site:
THE 100-YEAR-OLD PHOTO BLOG
Shorpy.com | History in HD is a vintage photography blog featuring thousands of high-definition images from the 1850s to 1950s. The site is named after
Shorpy Higginbotham, a teenage coal miner who lived 100 years ago.
The blog is run by Dave, who posts the most magnificent high resolution pictures of years gone by. I do not know any personal information about Dave, except that he has some facinating looking family members whose mid century pictures he occasionally puts up on the site.
Each day, he shares several pictures, most scanned from glass negatives. Because of this, when you click the link to view the images at their full sizes, the clarity is astounding. Often, I feel as though I am right there, standing in place, a hundred years ago, or more, in real time. I look for small details of every day life, like clothing, furniture, signs, etc. I look for things that give me an idea of what even the most mundane aspects of living were like so very long ago. The size and sharpness of the posted photos allows the viewer to linger over the images like a detective looking for clues to a crime. I do that, only I am looking for clues to the past. Is the shirt soft looking? Is that a package of gum? What did they buy in the drugstore? I am less interested in the specifics of who the people were or where the shot is taken. I want small details. I am looking for that feeling of being transported over time into the spot where the picture was shot, imagining that I am there, and the time is now. I want to capture that very moment.
My favorite shots are those that are street scenes or store interiors or average neighborhoods with average people milling around. It is those scenes that really transport me back and allow me to pretend I was truly there. Perhaps it has something to do with actually having lived a childhood in the 1950s where much evidence of the early 20th century was still very much around and a part of my everyday experience. A lot of the places I frequented as a kid in 1958 still looked as they did 50 years before, so much of this imagery takes me back to my own childhood. Like now. Think about it: many things around us now also look the same now as they did 50 years ago. And now, what was common or familiar to me in the 50s, is officially one hundred years old. Time flies, doesn't it?
Make sure to read the story about the kid, Shorpy, the namesake of the blog, who was a child laborer from Alabama in 1910, and whose picture I have put above. Check out the pictures of Shorpy taken by Lewis Wickes Hine (a photographer who took a great many wonderful pictures in the early 20th century and who sadly died in poverty, unappreciated in his last years for his great photographs) and read what little is know about this little worker.
Aside from the pleasure of the time travel experience I have when I linger over the wonderful pictures, I enjoy the comments left by people who visit the blog and who have plenty to say about the photos. The comments are almost as much fun as the pictures. And a lot of these people are doing the same as I: looking for clues to the past hidden in the details.
You can become a member of the site ( which I have been meaning to do, and will make myself do today!), which makes leaving comments easier, and also allows you to post your own pictures.
The real danger of visiting Shorpy? You can lose yourself for hours and hours, going over all the wonderful pictures archived on the site. I did that several times this past summer. I lost myself in the pictures and in time. It really is the closest thing to a time machine I have found for a long time. Hey, I think I'll go grocery shopping, circa 1964. What what wonderful junk food I'll find...
I have a recurring dream that goes like this:
In my dream, I am in
1) a newly discovered Goodwill or Salvation Army Thrift store that has just been stocked with items and that nobody else knows about
2) an old department store, drug store, Five and Ten, etc., that has allowed me to go back in the old rooms to find "new old stock" from years gone by
3) a fully loaded antique store with great items, great prices, and I am the only one who shows up to shop
4) a yard sale at a very old house and I am the first person who shows up to buy the virgin contents of countless treasures
In my dream, I
1) start gathering armloads of of wonderful old items
2) start gathering piles of wonderful old items
3) start bringing armloads and armloads of wonderful old items to a counter
4) start putting armloads and armloads of wonderful old items into the back of my car
In my dream, I always say to myself
1) "Well the other times have only been dreams, but THIS time this is real."
2) "I am so glad I am not dreaming this time."
3) "Finally--my dream comes true."
My dreams usually ends where
1) I can't find the cashier and I wake up.
2) Other people start coming in to shop and I wake up
3) The goods aren't as old as I thought they were and I wake up
4) A truck full of dealers beats me to the stuff and I wake up
Get the gist? I never actually GET the stuff. Reality always comes in the morning.
So imagine my vicarious thrill, not to mention envy, when I read in this article in this morning's New York Times that two women from Indiana came upon an old Zebra striped suitcase at a yard sale, filled with actual photos and papers from one Arthur Felig, AKA Weegee the famous photographer of New York’s darker side. Whoa! Isn’t that kind of discovery the things that dreams are made of? More than antiques, more than great old funk, I dream of finding that lost piece of art or ephemera.
So, this is what I have learned: treasure hunting dreams CAN come true, even if they come true for someone else.
Think I’ll step up my yard sale attendance this weekend.....
Three highlights of my February vacation week!
I signed books and met some fantastic readers at Barnes and Noble in South Burlington, Vermont yesterday afternoon. Thanks to everyone who came out to pick up copies of Spitfire and say hello. I was especially happy to meet Marje VanOlsen from the South Burlington Community Library in person. We've been emailing for a few weeks, and I'll be presenting a summer program at her library in July.
Earlier in the vacation week, my family enjoyed the last weekend of Winterlude in Ottawa. It's a fantastic winter festival with outdoor entertainment, ice sculptures, and best of all -- skating!
As soon as Ottawa's Rideau Canal freezes, it turns into the world's longest skating rink -- literally. Those world record folks at Guinness made it official this year.
We had a beautiful day and enjoyed the full 7.8 km. Of course, we did make a few stops along the way -- most notably to indulge in a Beaver Tail or two.
If you're ever in Ottawa, this decadent delicacy is a must-have. A beaver tail pastry is a very thin strip of fried dough shaped like, well, the flat tail of a beaver. It's dusted with cinnamon and sugar or drizzled with maple syrup (my favorite).
I even managed to get some work done in between skating and scarfing down pastries. I've been asked to do a couple presentations this spring, talking about my upcoming book Champlain & the Silent One, which comes out next fall. That means going back to the places where I did some of my research to gather photographs and other resources for my school visits.
Ottawa's Canadian Museum of Civilization is featuring Samuel de Champlain in an exhibit about people who shaped Canada's history.
This was especially fun to see...
It's a navigational tool called an astrolabe, and historians believe it might have belonged to Champlain himself. According to documents, Champlain lost his astrolabe near a place called Green Lake when he was traveling up the Ottawa River in 1613. In 1867, a boy named Edward Lee was helping his father clear trees in that area and came upon the instrument pictured above, right where Champlain supposedly dropped it 254 years earlier.
And here's a quiz for particularly astute blog readers. Look at this statue of Champlain with his astrolabe at Ottawa's Nepean point.
There's something wrong. Do you know what it is?
