WAS MY ARRIVAL A BURDEN OR A JOY?

• “To love is to enter into the inevitability of one day not being able to protect what is most valuable to you.” — Mohsin Hamid, Exit West, 2017, Riverhead Books
• Enter Mrs. Gibson — Hopkin’s Surgery: This picture was taken from the observation gallery overlooking the Halsted Clinic operating room theater at Johns Hopkins as doctors watched the four-and-a-half hour first ​“blue baby” operation. (source)
• “One cannot and must not try to erase the past merely because it does not fit the present.” Golda Meir (source)

I WAS BORN WORRIED

• Epigenetic pop-up (source, source)

THE GREAT SILENT

• Julius David Ratchick and Beatrice Levy Ratchick: History of Poland, Ukraine and Russian Empire. (source, source, source)
• Aqueduct Raceway (source)

A REGULAR ROBIN HOOD

• Potato Bread (source)
• “Once you know some things, you can’t unknow them. It’s a burden that can never be given away.” Alice Hoffman, Incantation, 2007, Little Brown Books for Young Readers

MY YIDDISHE MOMME

• My Yiddishe Momme (source)
• “The more you know of your history, the more liberated you are.” Maya Angelou. (source)

UNIFORM DRESSERS

• Rashomon, Aka My Mother, Beatrice Ratchick (Née Levy), Speaks. Synopsis of the film: (source)

BRICKS

• Baking is…Paula Figoni, How Baking Works, 2004, Wiley Inc. and Wikipedia. (source)

POOR RENEE

• Working Girls (source)

THERE’S ONE IN EVERY FAMILY DUTCH SCHULTZ

• Dutch Schultz (source)

JUST IN CASE

• The World According To Garp, by John Irving, published by E.P. Dutton, 1978.
• Spit Three Times (source)
• Nature Vs. Nurture: (source)
• “Scientific minds…” (source)

FAMOUS IN DEATH

• “Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.” James Baldwin. (source)

MY LIFE IN FIVE BOXES

• “What ifs are never idle fantasy. These are our hopes, dreams and desires.” Rashmi Bansal, Stay Hungry Stay Foolish, 2008, Westland.

TROPHY SKIRT

• Lucky Thirteen (source)

THE GREAT AMERICAN SANDWICH

• “Being an introvert is wanting to be invited but not wanting to go anywhere. Being lonely at home but not wanting anyone in your space unless you really like them. And even if you really like them, you want them to go home soon.” Daniel Radcliffe. (source)

THE LONGEST CANOE

• Ivan Cury: The Ivan Cury who changed my life went on to bigger things than Camp Woodcrest. He was a child actor, makeup artist, producer and director at CBS-TV, did a stint in advertising, taught at Hunter College and California State University. Since 1996, he has been on the faculty of The New School For Social Research and is a New York Board Member for The Academy of Television Arts & Sciences and Directors Guild of America. (source)

• “Sing out, Louise.” Stephen Sondheim, Lyrics for ​“May We Entertain You,” Gypsy, 1959

TAKING MY SEAT

• “I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.” Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854, Ticknor and Fields.
• “I believe that what we become depends on what our fathers teach us at odd moments, when they aren’t trying to teach us. We are formed by little scraps of wisdom.” Umberto Eco, Foucault’s Pendulum, 1989, Secker & Warburg, English Translation.

THANK YOU, NEW YORK

• “The person who invented the elastic waistband has a lot to answer for.” Unknown

BEFORE, AFTER, BEFORE

• The Cabbage Soup Diet: WebMD says, ​“The bulk of The Cabbage Soup Diet is fat-free cabbage soup, eaten two to three times a day with other allowed foods assigned each day. Fans claim you can drop 10 pounds or more in a week. Some people use it to kick-start their weight loss plan, or to trim a few pounds for a special event.” (source)
• The Complete Scarsdale Medical Diet This high-protein low-carbohydrate diet was designed by Dr. Herman Tarnower in the late 1970s and named for the upper-middle class town in New York where he practiced cardiology. The diet book was first published in 1978 and saw a sudden jump in sales in 1980 when the author was murdered by Jean Harris, his jilted lover. (source)
• Canyon Ranch resorts are located in Tucson, Arizona and Lenox, Massachusetts. There are also day spas/fitness locations and retreats. (source)
• Meal replacement shakes have and can help dieters to drop a few pounds fast. The jury is still out on whether or not diet shakes are actually safe and healthy. (source) Introduced in 1959, Metrecal was the first meal replacement diet shake. The brands legendary advertising was pretty toxic by today’s standards. (source)

SEX EDUCATION

• “Generally, by the time you are REAL, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are real, you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.” Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit (or How Toys Become Real), 1922, George H. Doran Company/Doubleday.
• The Velveteen Rabbit (or How Toys Become Real) is a British children’s book written by Margery Williams (also known as Margery Williams Bianco) and illustrated by William Nicholson. It chronicles the story of a stuffed rabbit’s desire to become real through the love of his owner. (source)

NOT SO BASHERT

• “A get is a document in Jewish religious law which effectuates a divorce between a Jewish couple. The requirements for a get include that the document be presented by a husband to his wife. The essential part of the get is a very short declaration: ​‘You are hereby permitted to all men.’ The effect of the get is to free the woman from the marriage, and consequently she is free to marry another and that the laws of adultery no longer apply. The get also returns to the wife the legal rights that a husband held in regard to her.” (source)

TATTOO

• “TATTOO. 1730s-1970s. Published by Taschen showcases Henk Schiffmacher’s Private Collection and takes the reader on a personal journey through over two hundred years of worldwide tattoo history, the book brings together the best of Schiffmacher’s renowned private collection with lively personal commentary by the art’s most beloved raconteur and philosopher.” (source)

WHY DO YOU WORK?

• Maynard Gwalter Krebs is the ​“beatnik” sidekick of the title character in the U.S. television sitcom The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, which aired on CBS from 1959 to 1963. Krebs was portrayed by the actor Bob Denver. Whenever the word ​“work” is mentioned, even in passing, he yelps ​“Work?!” and jumps with fear or even faints. (source)
• “Work is love made visible.” Kahlil Gibran, ​“On Work,” The Prophet, 1923, Knopf.

A METAPHOR FOR MY LIFE: FERNANDO FLORES

• Fernando was finance minister in the government of Chilean president Salvador Allende. After the military coup of General Augusto Pinochet, Fernando spent three years as a political prisoner under the harshest of circumstances, facing firing squads three times. He used his time in prison to think, and one of the things he thought about was how to communicate— across and within cultures and even the people closest to us. (source)

THE INTERVIEWS

• “There is no room on the shelf for something you just like a little.” Laurel Cutler, Advertising and marketing executive. Source: “…The shrinking share of market owned by leading brands in various categories, combined with the invasion of one country’s stores by other countries’ products will mean there’s no room on the shelves for products everyone likes a little” Sources: , ​“THE MEDIA BUSINESS: Advertising; Marketers Get a Guide For the 1990’s,” by Randall Rothenberg, The New York Times, October 2, 1989. 

MY TEN COMMANDMENTS FOR CREATING ADVERTISING, MAGAZINES AND PRODUCTS

• USP: ​“In marketing, the unique selling proposition (USP), also called the unique selling point, or the unique value proposition (UVP) in the business model canvas, is the marketing strategy of informing customers about how one’s own brand or product is superior to its competitors (in addition to its other values)….The term was coined by television advertising pioneer Rosser Reeves of Ted Bates & Company.” (source)

CAPTURING AMERICAN SEXY

• “I have often said that I wish I had invented blue jeans.” Yves Saint Laurent. (source)
• “Chance favors only the prepared mind.” Louis Pasteur, 1854 lecture at the University of Lille, France.

BEAUTY IN THE EYES OF THE WEARER: REVLON

• “Look for the woman in the dress. If there is no woman, there is no dress.” Coco Chanel. (source)
• A First for the Cosmetics Industry: If you looked at the ads of that time period, makeup was used more for the benefit of the man than the woman buying it. [Source: Marlen Komar, October 9, 2018 (Bustle)] Hazel Bishop’s Long-Lasting Lipstick had the motto ​“Stays on you…not on him;” Max Factor’s pink Color Fast Lipstick touted ​“Nothing draws a man to a woman like…Crushed Rose;” and Seventeen Cosmetics ads promised they give ​“That ​‘natural’ look men look for.” Which is what Revlon tapped into with its revolutionary Fire & Ice beauty ad in 1952. A two-page spread, on one side it featured engineer-turned-It-Girl model Dorian Leigh in a silver-sequined dress and wrapped in a red cape, and the other side featured a questionnaire with a series of questions that tried to figure out if you were either naughty or nice; fire or ice. It asked questions like, ​“Do you blush when you find yourself flirting,” or ​“Would you streak your hair with platinum without consulting your husband,” and if you answered yes to eight out of the 15 questions, then you were ready for the lipstick. The aim was to show there was a little bit of bad in every woman, even if she was a church-going suburbanite wife. And women loved it, because it put their feelings front and center — and no one else’s. ​“The questions were calculated to make every woman who read them want to answer yes, because doing so would make her feel sexy, adventurous, and just a wee bit dangerous. The ads were hailed as brilliant, and the color became Revlon’s top shade,” The reason why was simple. ​“There was no man in sight, and no romance was alluded to. Instead, the ad suggested that applying lipstick was something a woman did for her own pleasure and gratification,” according to author of The Little Black Dress, MacDonell Smith. The ad was written by Kay Daly, who at the time was the highest-paid woman executive in the United States, and she made the ad’s intended audience women from the outset. (Sources: The Little Black Dress by MacDonnell Smith as mentioned by Marlen Komar, October 9, 2018 Bustle)

A MOMENT IN TIME: NEW YORK AND MS.

• In American usage, a publication’s masthead is a printed list, published in a fixed position in each edition, of its owners, departments, officers, contributors and address details, which in British English usage is known as imprint. In the UK and many other Commonwealth nations, ​“the masthead” is a publication’s designed title as it appears on the front page: what, in American English, is known as the nameplate or ​“flag.” (source)

DEFYING STEREOTYPES: CHICO’S

• Chico’s started as a Mexican folk craft store in 1983 on Sanibel Island, Florida by Marvin and Helene Gralnick. Their biggest seller was sweaters. That’s how they got into women’s fashion retailing. They were given a gift of a talking parrot named Chico, and that’s how they named their store. (source)
• “Lee Eisenberg (born July 22, 1946) is an American editor and author. He was the editor-in-chief of Esquire magazine throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Eisenberg is the author of several books. (source)

MONDAY AFTERNOONS AT THE NEW YORKER

• “Find a group of people who challenge and inspire you; spend a lot of time with them, and it will change your life.” Amy Poehler. (source)

TALENT AND TOOLS

• “None of us is as smart as all of us” is the concept behind what I consider to be one of the most important business books of our times: Organizing Genius: The Secrets of Creative Collaboration by Warren Bennis and Patricia Ward Biederman, 1997, Perseus Publishing.

EVERY PICTURE HAS A BACKSTORY/A Few Snapshots

• Richard Avedon: Irving Penn once said, ​“Avedon’s greatest creation has been a kind of woman… a very real woman and not to be mixed up with any other age.” Vanity Fair, October 2020, ​“Avedon Ascendant“ by Philip Gefter, page 86. It’s an excerpt from What Becomes a Legend Most: The Biography of Richard Avedon.

UNCHARTED TERRITORY: JAPAN

• “The will to win means nothing without the will to prepare.” Juma Ikangaa. (source)

ALWAYS ON MY MIND

• “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.” L. P. Hartley, The Go-Between, 1953, Hamish Hamilton.