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.

A Horn by Any Other Name

So the other day one of my wild turkeys got close enough for me to kiss and being a woman of proper breeding (we had not been formally introduced), I of course did not. But even so, at such proximity I couldn't help but notice the amazing (and only mildly suggestive) protuberance rising pretty much straight off her forehead.
Oh I'd seen this feature before, but there was something about being so close to it that gave me pause. And whilst pausing, I remembered that only last year, I myself was host to a startlingly similar protuberance which I took to our local doctor who sent me to an eye surgeon who told me that what I had was a cutaneous horn.
"Of all things" I said to myself whereupon he draped a sterile cloth over my face with a hole cut out just big enough to accommodate the horn, and then set out to remove it all the while chatting with his lovely assistant as though I were not there, under the cloth, awash in a swirl of relief that I would no longer have to explain to people why I was knitting such a tiny toque.

I think wild turkeys have a plethora of admirable traits but I must say, I hope this is the end of my attempt to emulate them too literally.

flaunting it

So with (Canadian) Thanksgiving weekend bearing down on us, you would think that any turkeys running free would want to remain thus, and toward this end, would assume a discrete profile.

Not so the wild turkeys who frequent my yard. These birds appear to be flaunting their lifestyle, parading their free-range capabilities for any and all to see.

Perhaps these turkeys have been reading my blog through my patio glass door, and they know they've taken up residence with a freshly minted vegetarian.

Nothing safer than a new, lentil thumping convert.

And speaking of Thanksgiving, here on my island (Gabriola) we celebrate the long weekend by throwing open the doors to over 50 artist studios and inviting the public to come and see what we have been up to. For more info, check here.