Come as you are

I love, with a great passion, vintage advertisements. Half the fun of watching Boardwalk Empire is looking at the old ads in the background on the boardwalk. I just think you can learn a lot about a culture by the ads.
What I love most about looking at vintage ads are the ones that you know would be a huge "no no" now. Like the one I posted above. At least I think an ad that depicted domestic violence and spousal abuse would be a no-no today.  Google "sexist or racist ads" and you'll see a whole bunch of ads that will surprise you.

Check out this Huffington Post thing about Outrageous Vintage Ads...

In the beginning of the month,  I posted a couple of racist ads that I found on other blogs, but I found another blog that had a few ridiculously racist  ads, like  "Darkey in a Watermelon."   It makes you feel ashamed.

But there are still racist commercials today. Did any see the commercial for the only black dating service? *cough* double standard *cough* There are a lot of double standards in advertising though. Just look how men are portrayed today. Half of them look like bumbling idiots. They used to make women look like dumb bimbos in old ads too; so I guess this is just retribution.

But I have hope that one day everyone will be considered equal, and that it will show in the ads. The French are a head of us, Americans. They have the gay McDonald's commercial, which I think is fantastic. But I can't help but feel a bit bad at the end of the commercial; the father doesn't know that his son is gay, and the son looks scared to tell him. I wonder what the people 100 years from now will think of our commercials.

Only in New York

So last Saturday I had to go into the city to shoot some scenes with my project group for film class. They told me to meet up with them  at one person's apartment on 51st Street at 8:00 am. So I got up about 5:00 am to get a train into the city to be on time. When I get there, after waking up before the sun, almost missing my train, and avoiding bums in the subway, no one is there. So I called someone, and they said that they decided last night to meet up at the Apple Store on Fifth Ave, because we need to film a scene at a toy store and FAO Schwarz is right next door. No one told me anything about this the night before! But what can I do? So, I walk all they way to the Apple Store. At this time I'm still half asleep and now throughly pissed that no one told me about this change of plan. So I'm walking and taking in the calmness of Manhattan this early in the morning,which really is peaceful. If I wasn't already so pissed, I'd have enjoyed it. So I'm on my way to 59th and 5th, and I look to my right and see this:

Just someone taking their camels for a walk, like you would a golden retriever....... Only in New York..... I wonder why they were there. I don't think I was by some studio or anything, but then again who knows; could be someone's pet. Like that idiot in the Bronx that had a pet tiger in his apartment a few years back.

So after snapping this wonderful pic with my phone (gotta love camera phones), I continue my journey to the Apple store. Everyone is already getting ready for the Christmas season. All the stores on Fifth Ave are decorated. I passed Bergdorf Goodman, and they had their windows beautifully decorated. As a history lover, I love the early 1900s feel to the displays. So if by chance someone actually reads this post and before the end of 2010, check them out.

So I get there, then get a text from the group saying that they think they want to go to the Toys R Us in Times Square instead! So I (begrudgingly) walk all they way back to Times Sq. And it was not until 10:00 that everyone got there!!!! From 8:00 in the a.m!

We friggin wound up buying a FOA  brand teddy bear for the kid actor anyway!...... I love my project group though. They're awesome, so I really shouldn't complain.

But yeah, the camels were the main part of this post anyway. I love this city.

He kindly stopped for me.

This post can be viewed as a bit morbid. So ye is forewarned.

Ever since I was little, I've had a fascination with the macabre. I guess most people do. It is probably human nature to be curious of death. In a world that is filled with such uncertainty, insecurity; our mortality is truly the only thing that is guaranteed in this life. It is true; uncertainty surrounds death. We have no idea  when we will die; how we will die; where we will die; what is after this life. The only thing we know for sure is that, one day we will have to leave the world--- this  plane of existence. It is a fact we all share. Death the great equalizer.

Death is the human race's least common denominator, but it is fascinating to see how each culture has their own rituals regarding death. In India, it is normal to cremate the body, while here in America, cremation is still considered a bit of a taboo (Well at least for my Roman-Catholic family it is). Indians wear white to mourn, we wear black.  In America, we are used to open-casket viewings, but (according to the National Geographic Channel) that is considered strange in the UK.

Certainly throughout history, our [humans'] views on death have changed. It wasn't until recently that our modern funerary rituals started to take shape. As modern people, we have become very disconnected to death. It was once tradition for a family to wash, dress, and prepare their deceased loved ones' bodies. They would even have them displayed in their own homes. This actually gives way to one theory on why we call our parlors "living rooms" now. Bodies were displayed in the parlor (think funeral parlor), but to dissociate this room with the stigma of death, they starting calling it "living room".  But I don't know how true this theory is.  Today we have morticians to prepare bodies, and funeral homes to display our dearly departed.  This detachment from death only started maybe 100 years ago.

One cannot mention the history of funeral rites without involving the Victorians. It seems like this generation had a connection deeper to death than any other. Perhaps it was the multitude of deadly disease pandemics, high infant mortality rates, or their tough lives, that gave the Victorians their close connection to death. This cultural pessimism gave us the likes of Edgar Allan Poe (was he Victorian, or is he too early?), and Emily Dickinson.

The Victorians had many death rituals that we would consider just plain bizarre. They made jewelery out of the dead's hair. Or made wreaths out of their own hair for mourning. Hair jewelry and art actually became very popular. It is really quite beautiful, but a bit disturbing. Human hair is very strong and durable. I think it is one of the few organic materials that can survive stomach acid.

The most disturbing Victorian death ritual had to be post-mortem photography. They would take photographs of the deceased. They tried to pose their loved ones like they were alive, even propping open their eyes in some. It is heart-wrenching to see the photos of mother's holding their babies. I understand that they want something that they can look at and remember their family by, but I don't see how these pictures helped the grief of the surviving members.

Most people know that embalming started during the Civil War, in order to send the bodies of fallen soldiers back to their families without decomposing. Abraham Lincoln was the first President to be embalmed. His body survived a two week train tour throughout the country.

Embalming allowed families to display the dead for longer periods of time. Some people chose not to have their family member embalmed. As we get closer to the Twentieth-Century, people are handing over the care of the dead's body to morticians. These morticians would go to the home and work there. For those that chose not to embalm, morticians would using a cooling table. A body was placed on a table with holes, then ice blocks would be placed underneath. Cold air would circulate around the body through the holes, and slow down the decomposition . On the Discovery Channel's new show called Oddities they showed a cooling table from the late 1800s. That episode was actually the inspiration for this post.

For more on Victorian death rituals check out this link: http://www.ancestry.com/learn/library/article.aspx?article=151 .

Postscript: During my 11th grade class trip to Gettysburg, PA. We took a ghost tour. I think with the Farnsworth House Inn. It was pretty cool. I didn't see any ghosts (Gettysburg is supposed to me the most haunted place in the US), but in the beginning of the tour we went to the basement of the inn, where they told us ghost stories about the inn. My favorite part of the ghost tour (and probably of the whole trip) was when they went into the history of the funerary rituals of the Civil War. They had artifacts like a coffin and even a wreath made out of hair. It was awesome!

The picture for this post is Danse Macabre by Michael Wolgemut (1493). Not Victorian, but still cool.

Ten points to anyone who can tell me where my title is from.

Manor House

Am I the only person in the world that researches Edwardian etiquette? Quite possibly. In my musings, I found this fantastic show from PBS (I love PBS) called Manor House. It's a reality show that takes 21st Century British people and makes them live as if they were living in a 1905 English estate. One [real life] family are the masters of the manor, while others act as their servants. The show reinforces my beliefs that I am damn lucky to be born when I was.

I love Edgar. All he wanted to do was be the best butler he could be and do his grandparents proud. Kenny comes in a close second. Mrs. Davies too. I love everyone below stairs to be honest. I wasn't too fond of the family though, except the sister-in-law. I felt bad for her . Sir Oliff-Cooper was a douche-bag though. He got a little too comfortable being the master. But I don't know them. They might be the best people in the world.

Check out it on Youtube and for more interesting Edwardian facts go to http://www.pbs.org/manorhouse/

Between the Tigris and Euphrates

I'm back to my original mission of uploading old family photos. But I have no idea who this family is :)  I know that the old woman in the photo is my great-great-grandmother Josephine. Look how tiny she is!Little Sicilian woman. You know she was probably as tough as nails though. 

 She is the mother of my great-grandpa Charlie .  The other people, I don't know. I love the old baby carriage though. If I become rich and live in Manhattan, I'm going to get an old-fashioned stroller like this. I can just imagine pushing one of them through Central Park. Très adorable! I wouldn't want a nanny though. I'll take care of my own kids. I always see them in the subways --- au pairs taking their employers' kids everywhere. The mother probably doesn't even work. Damn rich people. Sorry, I tend to digress often.

Not sure of the year. So, I'm saying late 1930's or early 1940's. Probably taken at my great-great-grandparents house in Babylon, NY. 

Soldier's Heart

Today is Veterans' Day, and on this day, 92 years ago, the armistice was signed that ended the Great War. Unfortunately, many soldiers know that the war doesn't end with the fighting. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD, afflicts many war veterans.

Today HBO premiered their documentary, about PTSD from the Civil War to the Iraq War, called Wartorn: 1861-2010.  It is a heartbreaking look into the lives of soldiers who suffer psychologically from war. The studying of war's psychological effects started with the Civil War. These soldiers were said to have suffered from soldier's heart, hysteria, melancholy, insanity, and with each war this "affliction" was named differently. In WWI it was Shell Shock; WWII it was battle fatigue; Vietnam War it was Post-Vietnam Syndrome.

I had put up a post a few weeks ago called Shell Shocked, about PTSD in WWI survivors. But much of what I posted was from the British Army. In Wartorn, they read an anecdote of a shell-shocked American WWI vet. It describes how little the government did to help these soldiers after the war ended. They actually touch upon this in HBO's new drama Boardwalk Empire . One of the characters, James Darmody, has just returned from fighting in France during WWI, and you can see how the war affected him both physically and mentally. He calls himself a murder.

Watch Wartorn. It will make you extremely gratefully to the soldiers who are fighting for this country right this minute.

The photo above is from www.Old-Picture.com . Great site with great photos. Click on the picture for more info about it.  I always did love old Civil War photos. The quality for the time is amazing. I use my $100 digital camera, and sometimes you can barely tell who is in the picture. Then again, the men in this photo probably had to pose like that for 15 minutes.

Crossing the Brooklyn Fer...ummm...Bridge....Okay maybe going half way.

Fall is the season of accomplishments. I can yet again cross off another item from my bucket list: visiting the Brooklyn Bridge. It is hard to believe, that in the 21 years of my existence, and having lived so close to this world-famous New York icon, I've never been there until yesterday. I think tourists see more of New York than most natives. I've still never been to the Empire State building. (Note to self: add Empire State Building to B-list)

I've always been in love with the image of the Brooklyn Bridge. It's graced the backgrounds of many a electronic for me. I just think that it's a beautiful structure. It was completed in 1883, so the inner history lover in me just had to walk the same bridge that people have been walking for the last 130 years.

So no interesting fact post today. Just wanted to urge my fellow New Yorkers (and everyone else) to go see the bridge. At least go half way up like I did. The view is worth it. I love seeing all the tourists there, especially the international ones. The Brooklyn Bridge should also be called "Babel Bridge." I think you can hear every language spoken just walking up to the midway point. I just love seeing others enjoy this city---my city. It's like the author Thomas Wolfe said "One belongs to New York instantly, one belongs to it as much in five minutes as in five years." It truly is the best city in the world. 

It's been more than 50 years thence, even more than 100 thence, Mr. Whitman, but I still get it. Yes I do.....





BTW the photo doesn't belong to me. Click on the picture to get more info on the photographer. 

For the Insane

Last Saturday, I got to do something that I always wanted to do---visit an insane asylum. Okay, so they are not called insane asylums anymore, but at least I can cross that one off my bucket list.

My psych class had a trip to Pilgrim Psychiatric Center in Brentwood, NY. I'm not a psychology major (I'm a communication arts major), and my psych class is actually Consumer Behavior in Marketing, but my professor had extra room, and I couldn't pass up the opportunity! How else am I going to see the inside of a mental hospital? (Without being committed?)

To be honest, I've wanted to visit Pilgrim for some time now to see the small history museum they have there. I grew up in Central Islip, NY, and C.I. is famous for being home of the Central Islip Psychiatric Center, which at one time was reportedly the biggest asylum in the world (...I think....don't quote me), until Pilgrim was opened in the 1930's, then it [Pilgrim] became the largest asylum in the world (I'm 100% sure on that one). Central Islip and Kings Park, another big and old asylum on Long Island, are now closed, and the patients were moved to Pilgrim. Now there is a small history museum with artifacts from all three hospitals. They actually have a tranquilizing chair like in the picture above.

The C.I. hospital was opened in 1889 as a New York City farm colony for the overcrowded Manhattan asylums. This was the time before medication, so the doctors believed that the fresh air of the country side would help the patients with their disorders. At that time, Long Island was mostly undeveloped land. The only efficient ways to get into Long Island was by boat or railroad. The Long Island Railroad ran right through Central Islip. C.I. was already an established town before the hospital, but once it opened, the hospital had major influence on how the town grew.

Since many Americans didn't want to work in a lunatic asylum, they ---like the Americans of today--- left the dirty work to the immigrants. [Some things never change. People today are always complaining on how things are getting worse, but after studying a bit of history, I'm a firm believer that the problems don't change, just the faces. Today's immigration problems are with Hispanics, but before that was with the Irish (remember NINA from high school social studies?) and Chinese, and before that it was with the Germans, and everyone else before, after, and in between. I hate people who say that this generation is the worst. The truth is that the world was hell of a lot worse even a generation back than it is right now....... Sorry I digressed.] So....yeah.... The Irish were sent to work in the asylums. There were even advertisements in Ireland to come work in Central Islip. C.I. was even called "Little Ireland" at one point. Even today some of the older Families in C.I. are Irish. These NYC farm colonies started off as self-sufficient little towns with their own post-offices, bakeries, stores, fire departments; the workers lived on the campuses with the patients; but by the 1950's they started building houses outside of the hospital grounds for the workers. That is how my family came to live in Central Islip. My grandfather and grandmother both worked for a short time for the hospital. My grandmother's stint there was extremely short. She quit very shortly after being hired for the cafeteria staff after a patient threw food at her. But that's why all the houses by Lowell Ave look the same. They were all built at the same time for the hospital workers.

In the C.I. exhibit in the museum, there is an old plaque from when the hospital first opened that read "New York City Farm for the Insane." My favorite part of that sign is "for the insane." That just wouldn't fly today. I noticed that when I was in Pilgrim the workers called the people being treated there "clients" instead of "patients." I guess calling these people "patients" is not considered PC (politically correct) nowadays. Calling them "insane" is completely out of the question. But it was common back at the turn of the [last] century to call those with mental disorders "insane" or "lunatics." An old asylum in NYC was actually called Bloomingdale Lunatic Asylum. There are some interesting articles in the New York Times archives that have titles such as Insane Men as Farmers or A Lunatic at Large from this time period.

Back then it didn't take much to get you put away in a place like Pilgrim or C.I. They took in the people that were not wanted by society, even if there was nothing "wrong" with them. If a parent didn't want to take care of his/her child anymore, they could give up custody to the State, and the children would wind up in asylums alongside mental patients, alcoholics, and drug addicts. During its heyday, Pilgrim housed about 14,000 patients, but thanks to higher standards in the medical field and modern medicine, that number was lowered to the 400 that they have today.

I could go on and on about this, but I'll be kind and end it here. Before I finish up this post, I want to mention this great documentary they recently had on PBS about Dr. Walter Freeman, the man who made the lobotomy famous in America. It was part of their American Experience series: The Lobotomist . You can watch it free online through the link! But I have to warn you that it is very graphic and at times disturbing. They show an actual lobotomy being performed.

Oooohhhhhh.... and if anybody wants to visit the Museum at Pilgrim, the website for the hospital is no help. The museum is open to the public, but I think you have to make sure that a museum worker will be there first. So I would call before you go. The museum is in building 45 on the second floor. When you get there, there is only one map at the entrance that is no help at all, and the signs are so small they might as well be invisible. If you arrive at the entrance from the Pilgrim exit of the Sagtikos Parkway, go left. Building 45 should be on the right side. I think building 102 is on the left. If you hit the 80s buildings, you've gone too far. (That's what happened to me :)

Mo' Wheh Dis Comed Fum. Yas Sah!

1927

Ingredients: chocolate, eggs, milk, sugar, and racism.

I love (to the Nth degree) vintage ads. You can tell a lot about a society through its ads. And going by that logic, America was a racist bastard. I guess I'm so used to an American culture that is very PC (politically correct), that it is shocking to see ads like the one above. It makes me so glad I was born in this generation.

So these were the good ol'days grandma and grandpa?

1907

I got all these ads from a blog called Vintage Ads