Pretending to be a docent or perhaps just dressing up as a rehearsal for the masquerade ball. Tableaux vivant for grown ups. Old pictures from 1892-1915 ish. Fun whatever their reason was.
EL PHOENIX STORY (TO START)
April 2, 1919.
Picking up her eraser, Kathy Leonard goes back to her arithmetic homework. More interesting than English class and the new paper having to be written, true, but needing to erase bits ten times more often and that not seeming to be a good thing.
One good part, each problem being like its own little house with that good feeling when one was finished. Not like most of the classes where you could read and read and it still seemed to take forever to finish. If only “Silas Marner” was as interesting as the books in the library, she thought. If it was you could read if in a jiffy not a month when the teacher said two weeks.
These are the first paragraphs of Scene I in my upcoming coming of age 5,000 word piece which will be over on my Substack with a link here. I’ve written more than the first two paragraphs here so you can read them at the link of you like
https://sarahbguestperry.substack.com/p/el-phoenix
Some pretty black and white versions of fireworks from the 1939-1940 World’s Fair held in New York City. I don’t know whether they all became real fireworks or are in a forever dreamland of their own. Collections of the New York Public Library.
Plates in gorgeous colors that haven’t faded from “The Old Schloss.” Published in Philadelphia in 1906, it was written by Margaret Longstreble Corlies.
Heading back into time and wanting to live the life of a 1960s bride with all new Drexel furniture to fill up my honeymoon cottage. From their Esperanto line and sort of Mediterranean looking. Not sure which country or anything but who cares. Not me
Some of the pages fell out and got lost. Still these are great. The Drexel Furniture Company was founded in Drexel, North Carolina in 1903. In 1956 they merged with another furniture manufacturer and became Drexel Heritage and then changed ownership multiple times before ceasing new production during a corporate bankrupty in 2018.
Out for the evening at Los Angeles’ Cocoanut Grove nightclub. The Cocoanut Grove was a nightclub in the Ambassador Hotel located at 3400 Wilshire Boulevard. It had nothing to do with the Boston nightclub.
Cocoanut Grove. Ambassador Hotel. View 1: Interior view of the Cocoanut Grove in the Ambassador Hotel located in Los Angeles, showing the elegant decor of the room, where palm trees are set amongst the table. American. Undated image, 1930s-1950s ish perhaps. Photographer not given. Security Pacific National Bank Collection, TESSA, the Digital Collections of the Los Angeles Public Library. https://tessa2.lapl.org/digital/collection/photos/id/99950/rec/170
The logo for the Cocoanut Grove nightclub at the Ambassador Hotel, Los Angeles, California. At least in 1945, the date on this one. American. Shades of Los Angeles Photo Collection. TESSA, the Digital Collections of the Los Angeles Public Library. https://tessa2.lapl.org/digital/collection/photos/id/80121/rec/288
Update. I thank my Instagram content creator friend Scott Stirewalt who works with these sorts of pictures more than I do who let me know that those are arrows over the men’s heads in the first picture pointing to who is who. Now I know!
An envisioning. 1985, Seattle on an October Friday and sitting on the bench at the end of the pier waiting on the ferry out to Vashon.
https://sarahbguestperry.substack.com/p/an-envisioning-1985-seattle-on-an
Oh to be here.
Only for the long weekend, and that being for Christopher Columbus, so not bathing-suit-and-sunscreen time. The children playing pine cone toss in a front yard filled with something more garden-store-pretty than sea pebbles that got put down after the roses died. No, out where they have farms instead of grocery stores. Grass that semi-seeds itself and doesn’t care if you can only grow plants indoors.
my new short fiction piece published to my Substack at the link if you’d like to read the rest . The image is from 1967 and is in a Massachusetts archive-
Desserts delicious enough to snack on for days. Imagery from “Katharine Mellish’s Cookery and domestic management, including economic & middle class practical cookery.” Written by Ms. Mellish, it was published in 1901 in London. There are two volumes; these are from Volume II.
Make that wildfire smoke go away or at least think you are. Hand fans that make their own breeze from Fan d’Eventails Paris.
Two Pierrot Astronomer hand-fans with similar designs, both ca. 1910. One with a painted black silk leaf and blue-stained mother-of-pearl sticks and guards and signed Van Garden. The other with horn sticks and guards and a painted black gauze leaf, embroidered with sequins and signed N. Fontte. Image © Fan d’Eventails, Paris. Fair use license. https://www.fandeventails.fr/en/art-nouveau-fans/4731-the-pierrots-astronomers-fans-by-van-garden-and-fontte-circa-1910.html
An envisioning. 1958, high summer, and a spot to rest the rucksack under the smile of the sort of Man in the Mountain that grins at the waves up in Maine.
https://sarahbguestperry.substack.com/p/an-envisioning-1958-high-summer-and
Oh to be here.
A traveling man investment pitching banker for a husband living life as an eternally circulating something, always having to be crisp with every collar and cuff perfect what with the clients all being Rockefellers or wanting to be Rockefellers and in need of advice on where to park their money long enough for a skiff and a little Herreshof sailing something to impress the ladies and gentlemen at the yacht club between regattas.
My new short fiction piece published over on my Substack at the link of you’d like to read the rest. The image is from Buildings of New England, another WordPress blog that I follow-
