Girlfriend can you spare a dime?

I was in Victoria last week for my Blank Canvas presentation at Vancouver Island School of Art. I know it's not ladylike to blow one's horn, but the show did sell out.

But that's not the subject of this blog entry.

The VISA carries on its business in an old elementary school which has been left pretty much untouched from the days when it served the young boys and girls of the area.

I have a real fondness for old institutional buildings. Perhaps in a past life I was a caretaker in a castle.
Anyways, I found the girls bathroom to have a particularly charming patina about it. For one, the stall doors are so short, you could carry on a complete conversation over them. I suppose it's not so much that the doors are short, but that everyone I know is tall.

But it was the Kotex dispenser that really caught my eye and warmed the coggles of my heart and other regions too intimate to mention here.

It brought back a rush of sentiment for the days when we would strap on these huge and unruly pads, and then go about our business trying to ignore the fact that something the size of a compact car was wedged between our legs. And to think it only cost 10 cents. You can hardly break wind for that price anymore.

But that was before pads had wings.

Maybe it's the wings that pushed the cost up.

Turning of the Table

I have been busy working my way through my plethora of vintage tomes aimed at women as I continue research for a new book Dangerous Curves and I came across this description of a practice that used to be known as the "Turning of the Table". It is from page 197 of Emily Post's Etiquette (1960 Funk and Wagnall's, New York) and it goes like this:

"The hostess would turn from the man on her right to the one on her left, and each woman at the table was supposed to notice this and switch at the same time."


Well, clearly something has gone awry in the photo above. Our hostess in the forefront has turned to her right but apparently the signal was missed by the other two female guests who are continuing on in a blatant disregard for the protocol established by the lead woman.

We can be thankful in today's modern world, where women have come such a long way baby, that the demands on a hostess have been scaled back so that she is no longer responsible for the conversationally directional tendencies of her dinner guests.

cover girl

I am very thrilled to say that I am now, finally, officially, a cover girl. The rag in question is FOCUS magazine (Victoria BC), and I am Miss November, which I suppose is better than misbehaving, although I might rather be misbehaving.
The occasion that sparked my appearance in/on the magazine is my participation in a group art show at the Vancouver Island School of Art called "Rare Birds" which opens in Victoria tomorrow night (friday Nov 12) and runs (or flies) until Dec 6th. The other avian-obsessed artists are Roy Green, Dianne Kremmer, and the dynamic duo of sculptors Kimm Nightingale and Joke Mensink.

But wait. There's more! I am presenting my slide show "I Never Met a Blank Canvas I Didn't Like" in Victoria on thursday November 18th. Details about both events can be found here.

Victoria's poet laureate Linda Rogers, a regular contributor to FOCUS magazine, and brilliant Canadian scribe, has written a fabulously insightful article about me and my artistic/performative antics. You can download the PDF and read all about it here.

I am on page 12. Not too far in, but in decent enough.

Check your face at the door

This is from p. 231 of Family Circle's Complete Book of Beauty and Charm (1951):
"Check your facial expression as many times a day as you can. Then make the effort not to return to a frown, a worried look, a displeased expression, or whatever you have been wearing instead of the pleasant, expectant look that is the mark of a charming woman".

All I can say is, our girl pictured here is in trouble. Clearly she has not been checking her facial expression as much as she ought to.

tooth fairy refuses pickup

I was at my dentist a while back and she reported to me that one of my upper rear molars was in need of crowning. As it is, I have more crowns than the entire British Royal family combined (not counting the corgis). Further, the tooth in question had been operating more or less in a decorative capacity for some time now since its corresponding lower berth companion was removed a few years back.
My dentist reluctantly agreed to extract the molar, and thus it appears above, alongside a regular strength tylenol tablet for purposes of illustrating scale.
I tried to put it under my pillow last night, but it was so bulky I had trouble sleeping. The tooth fairy left a note...something about excess weight/height and union regulations.

The Homemaker and Nervous Strain

In Family Circle's Complete Book of Beauty and Charm from 1951, there is a chapter called "Special Beauty Problems of the Homemaker":

"The beauty problems of the woman in the home fall into four general categories: hands, complexion, diet, and nervous strain. Surely the homemaker has a variety of tasks to perform. If you let them get the better of you, you are inclined to be tense; sooner or later the marks of this tension will show on your face. A great deal of the beauty of the homemaker depends on her attitude toward the important job that she does."

Speaking for myself, I make it a habit never to let my household tasks get the better of me. It's an integral part of my beauty regimen.