Immigrant

http://teacher.scholastic.com/activities/immigration/tour/

Each new generation thinks they have the roughest immigrant story ever. Mass murder? Pshaw! That's nothing! My Chinese Mom caught AIDS and died from your hospitals' bad blood transfusions! That's an actual true story by the way: a Asian bookkeeper I worked with years ago didn't want to believe that my family had any difficulties at all, because I'm "white". She kept repeating how I had a "rent controlled" apartment as an example of my so-called "white privilege", which wasn't actually true at all. I found the listing on Craigslist out of sheer economic need, and it was rent-stabilized when I lived there, which is entirely different than inheriting some fixed rate kind of deal. 

My people don't get those kinds of breaks handed to them, ever. But, true to her ignorance, she shut down when I tried to talk her through a tiny (and easily accessible) fraction of my actual family roots. I gave her a brief bit about my maternal New York story; a simple-to-follow story about Italian and Irish immigrants that's easily looked up online or at Ellis Island's interactive computer. Just type in "M-E-R-C-A-D-A-N-T-E" liked I did in five seconds, for my great-grandmother's passage to America. She sputtered and stumbled over that, but's typical for a generic office environment filled with strangers. I may be Ivy, but she sure as fuck isn't, except she doesn't know how many levels my people passed on the way up to get there, because she thinks she's had it tough, and she has. We all have. That's how you become an American. 

If she couldn't handle poor Italian farmers and the Irish potato famine, she sure as fuck can't handle the Acadian genocide, or the innate racism behind the hunting and mass destruction of Metis folk, which is anyone of European and Native American ancestry (GASP! "Mixed" races getting along peacefully!!), which pretty much covers my father's early American Dutch, English, and French Canadian ancestry. I felt bad for her, but not so bad that I didn't remember that my grandmother told me she cried every day for years walking home from school, because people shouted "Guinea!" in her face as a little girl, or that people spit at my grandfather for being a lowly "Mick", as every door in the city slammed itself shut in their faces, when they had to quit school as children of "The Depression" to work in factories to support their entire family.

http://cahiersdufootball.net/blogs/teenage-kicks/tag/no-irish-no-blacks-no-dogs/

It was so bad for my grandmother, that she changed her name from "Angelina" to "Ann", pretended to forget all of her native Bari tongue (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bari_dialect), and removed her kiddie earrings that marked her a "dago"; my mother never got over the stigma behind baby Italian girls with earrings. And so, she has never pierced her ears. I had to go with my friend's British step-mom to the mall at 15, and get it done myself. Or the fact that my great-grandfather never found work again, after refrigeration closed down his job as an Iceman in the city (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_trade), forcing my brilliant grandmother to quit elementary school, which she also cried over for many years, because all she ever wanted was to be a teacher or nurse. That's how much she loved to learn. She also helped him to collect his route's fares by riding up and the dumbwaiters for their fares, as a little girl. But it worked out. She became the MANAGER at her factory job by 20, or something extraordinary like that. I know, because I've seen the old black and white photo of her all dressed up and standing over one of her employees, who sat in a chair beneath her for their work portrait. I'm not even getting to my grandfather's long ConEd experience, or his tours on Vaudeville to earn a buck or for his Brooklyn family, or my Dad's small-time hustles as a shoe shine boy and pool hall player.

I hope you fucking choke on one more true life story from me this weekend, Cindy, as you read these real words about my researched and verified American Immigrant background. It's not some fucking  joke I made up to make you feel bad about yourself, you fucking idiot. You worked against me every single day in that bullshit office, while I worked my ass off overtime (and without pay) to cover all of your fucking asses, because I was the only Designer/Production Artist/Art Director in that fucking company with any real skills to earn us money, so that your fucking family, and your teenage kid's illegitimate kid, could fucking eat, because you're a fucking tourist to me, shithead. Choke on it, and if you don't like our hard times here, or our real life coming-up tales of woe, go the fuck back to Communist China. I'm sure they'll work you hard to kill you off in some forced labor camp, because you're one in a billion to them, and as such, easily expendable. Go fucking choke on it, bitch. That's my fucking Lady Liberty in the harbor.

And a "Happy Mother's Day" to you, as well. Bitch.

http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2011/06/the-distance-to-the-past.html

for Ann

https://www.libertyellisfoundation.org/passenger

Maya Angelou, 1928-2014

At the library, in April.

At the library: May 29, 2014.

Old Cars: Thunderbird

Wow! Some car.

I've written prior about my love of old cars, for their great lines and cool designs, (http://mariedoucette.blogspot.com/2013/10/old-cars.html), and I'm not someone who's typically into retro for retro's sake. It's just that the designs were simply better in the past. Anyway, since I see so few cars that reflect my taste, I become a big fan when I finally spot one I like. It's like discovering while channel surfing one day that you've always liked NASCAR but you never knew it. 

The perfect robin eggshell blue.

I don't, but that's the rare feeling I get when I discover an automobile that flashes "cool": I didn't even know I liked those kind of cars until I saw one in person. Great design, like great designers, achieve a kind of commonplace, every day immortality that's also shockingly stand-out different, too. 

Check out the lines...

Someone once wrote that a being famous designer is like being a famous dentist, and the same can be said about automotive designers: gifted, but not heralded in the same way as their work, like a clothing designer who sees you wearing their shirt as (s)he passes you on the street but says nothing. And that's the particular beauty about an anonymous kind of fame; it's quiet, gentle, but still very powerful.

The classic American Thunderbird.

Here's a pic of me, taken on Memorial Day.

Welcome back, readers. 

Memorial Day, Spring 2014.

Happy Memorial Day

Raised flag, in the Hudson Valley.

Streetscapes

Building in afternoon light.

I've always enjoyed photographing industrial elements like piping and building ducts, so much so that one fellow art student remarked to me on a road trip, "Look, Marie! Trucks! Quick! Take a picture!", pointing derisively out the car window when I raised my lens to photograph a carrier loaded with cars the next lane over. But I love craftsmanship wherever I see it, in any form, and that point of view forms the basis of my design intellectualism to this day. I come from a working class background as many New Yorkers do, and I can't imagine our lives today without the massive industrial projects and undertakings of our forefathers. It's everywhere we look. After all, my great grandfather not only made metal work for bridges and buildings, he was skilled enough to render The Last Supper entirely out of copper, in a framed piece of art that still hangs in my mother's house. 

Fuse box.

You can't manufacture that kind of history and continuity on demand without passion and heart, not even at the best art school in the world; a place where craft still counts, even back when I attended it as a tower made almost entirely out of ivory. Snobbery is always out of date, no matter the era, because the future will always belong to those of us still willing to get our hands dirty, which includes the mistaken idea that using our hands is somehow a base affair. I hope my former classmate, where ever he wound up, somehow managed to rise above his class-based leanings. It couldn't have been easy to be a Van Zandt, no matter how old and privileged his family name is (was).

Stay classy, people 
 

At Home: A Bit O' Green

A cheerfully full-bodied plant.

I've been busily putting on the final touches to the studio apartment I moved into. This morning's delivery by the local florist (thank you!) filled the space with lovely (and necessary) greenery. I've written before about the principals of Feng Shui (the ancient Chinese philosophical system of harmonizing the human existence with the surrounding environment), but in the end, despite whatever philosophy or system you use, you have to go with your gut, and what feels right. We now know hard science backs up the health-giving properties of indoor plants, and that's just good, solid common sense. Plants clean the air of toxic chemicals to give off oxygen, the stuff of life for us.

It's not easy designing a space. Along the way, I've discovered quirks with this old house: slanted, deeply warped original hardwood floors, with burn marks from flying embers of long-dead fires that roared on the brutally cold nights of an upstate New York winter, and the occasional dropped cigarette butt from former tenants. It's been lived in a long, long time. The man who delivered my rugs, freshly laundered by their family-run carpet cleaning service, (who I recognized from high school back in the day), told me one of his buddies lived in this studio years ago, and so it is in small towns: we're all connected.

Hello, sunshine! A new plant greets the day.

You can tell that the wealthy farm family who originally built the house knew exactly what they were doing, down to the last detail. The back of the house faces the East, letting in the first light of the day, which woke up the animals in the yard, and also the farm hands, way before alarm clocks and daily commuting existed. Almost every night I see a glorious sunset that dips below the rolling hills of the Hudson Valley, where the big porch has held a chair with a gazing person on it for hundreds of years. And that's what great design is really about. No detail, no matter how small, is left out.

Soon to appear here will be the the final layout of the place, with lots of pretty pics showing "before" and "after". I know the design will change with time from the way I have it now (a new chair or two, moving stuff around), but it'll do for now, and it's finally ready for receiving guests and visitors, while life just keeps rolling on.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Hudson Valley: Old Stone Walls

Cornerstone.

I've always loved the old stone walls scattered around Rockland. 
Some are stranded in the middle of the woods like something out of a 
fairy tale, to be happened upon in the middle of a hike as remnants of an old homestead, and others are still part of the landscape, serving their original purpose by demarcating property lines. 

Stone remnants.

They tie us back to our old farm roots, those of the Dutch, Irish, English, and Huguenot woodsmen settlers, frontiersmen, and farmers who created the first US nation. Plus, I just think they look better than other types of fences. They fit this landscape in a way that's right for this rocky land, a seamless blend of nature and design.

Stone wall and picket fence.

Cottage life: http://www.pinterest.com/mariedoucette/cottages/.

Farming Since 1712

Revolutionary times, and the seasonal harvest.

I missed the seasons out west, where the semi-arid lands jump from summer to winter, briskly stepping over the seasons of spring and fall. There's a verdant, fertile lushness to our river valley, and it's no surprise that early settlers took here well, after a few very dramatic fits and starts. Imagine Ireland and England with some of its' original woods and forests still intact. Our forefathers knew this well, and stayed on. Family farming is one of the roughest, hardest types of work on the planet, and yet, like our scrappy, hard fighting ancestors, some of them have endured the test of time. Go see for yourself.

http://www.orchardsofconcklin.com/ 

http://www.orchardsofconcklin.com/2010/04/orchards-of-concklin.html?m=1