Telenovela

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telenovela#

My grandfather practiced his Spanish by watching Univision (our Spanish-language channel here in New York) telenovelas, with his drugstore black-rimmed glasses and a small Spanish-to-English dictionary in hand for quick translations, sitting way too close to the t.v. with the sound blasting. It was great fun for us to see him watching his daily shows, too, because he could be such a tough Mick from the city at times, tempered as it was by his consideration for others and his innate sweetness. He wasn't just learning for the heck of it, either, though with his cool old-time vaudeville impersonations and great accents, his flair for language and communication was proof enough that he'd kissed "The Blarney Stone" probably more than once.

No, he did it because his older brother, my Uncle Jack, married a Colombian woman after his divorce, my Aunt Yolanda; a tall woman with a naturally majestic presence indicative of a native high-born to a good family from the mountains outside of Bogota. And it didn't stop there. My grandparents took a few trips to see them after they relocated to Colombia, once my uncle retired from his successful business that found him financially independent. They had two beautiful little boys I remember holding and changing at our house, as a little girl: Juan y Francis, with their classic mestizo coloring of olive skin, light eyes, and lush brown curls. Irish paired well with Colombian!

It was important to my grandfather that his brother's family feel comfortable in his home, and it was important to me, too. As guests, they could curse telling stories and smoke in my mother's house (my dad had to go outside or in the garage to smoke), while I refilled their glasses and emptied out the big glass ashtray we used for parties and holidays. Francis had fallen asleep, so me and my aunt took him into my parent's bedroom for a nap, using their pillows to make a barrier on either side of him so he wouldn't roll off the bed. I was so nervous about the baby that I kept going in to check on him, with their laughter following me down the hallway. "Is he still there?"

He was, and they were charmed by my youthful inexperience with newborns. "Oh, he'll sleep for hours not moving, Marie. He's fine!" Uh, you don't know that! My own parents weren't exactly careful with kids, and my uncle drank a lot more than I was used to with my more even-keeled grandfather. Still, they were raucous and fun, and we loved having a South American branch to our family tree that we'd describe as one big carnival tent for times when were we feeling less generous. Before they arrived at my parent's house, we went over simple phrases and basic sayings so we could greet them from the top of the stairs as they came through the front door. 

"I want to be able to greet my brother's family properly when I see them", my grandfather nervously explained to me again while we practiced. My grandparents always felt insecure about their lack of a formal education, because they had to leave school to earn money for their families as children. I could relate. I wanted to make a good impression, too, because in our households, family always came first. You did great, grandpa. You really did. It was just perfect.

para mi tía Yolanda

Hieroglyphics

"Gifting", with strings attached.

For years, I've doodled little shapes and swirly glyphs until they covered a page. It was something I typically did during a boring class, or in attendance at yet another dopey meeting for people at much slower speeds, so there was no point in me paying attention with the full force of my consciousness. Of course, I'd learn later on that's exactly what you're supposed to do with massive amounts of mostly useless data: use other parts of your brain to take in information, which has the unfortunate effect of giving my a memory recall so profound, it's like a party trick for me now: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/12/doodling-benefits_n_7572182.html.

But they sometimes took on a deeper meaning to the people around me. One year, my former RISD classmate turned housemate used them to make fun Christmas cards."They're like wrapping paper", she said dismissively to me, and then took them to her day job to work on and show her co-workers, which was weird, since she was so paranoid about people ripping her off without getting paid. I didn't care, because she photocopied them onto colored paper and colored in the Christmas tree, so I used them for cards that year, too.

The pens bled through, creating a constellation of dots on the other side.

Sometimes people noticed me drawing in meetings, like they had in school, but given my chosen profession(s), it hardly seemed worth mentioning to an artist/designer like me, so no one did. Until the year I began working for a small Jewish family that had great book packaging deals with the retail conglomerate Barnes & Noble. It put a whole new focus on me, as their star designer for a major American retailer. People jumped out of their skin around me, with their claws fully out, just like in art school.

They had a dysfunctional receptionist ("No, I'm an 'Office Manager'", and then she'd tell everyone around her that she didn't do office work), who clung to me voraciously, with the desperation of the drowning. She left me alone for awhile, until she got her "best friend" from high school fired, and then she turned her obsessive focus elsewhere, which naturally fell on me, the shiniest object in the room. I knew she was mentally ill because of her twitchy mannerisms and oddly disjointed way of speaking, plus she interrupted my work in the middle of a major deadline, which is the largest taboo we have in my industry. 

Magical dancing snowflakes, forever etched into my mind.

My look registered such shock at her brute assertion into my face for attention (over a banal relationship thing or another email about her poor socialization skills), that she immediately blurted "Oh, I'm bipolar" because it was that out of place for someone to do that to me at that point in my career. She promptly tried to retract it later on, when she turned on me (which I knew she would), after embodying every single facet of her original medical diagnosis many times over, for 10+ years on the job. After many a run-in with the psycho co-worker, I laid some serious ground rules with her in that first intimate conversation about personal matters, which she promised to abide by, but of course, couldn't fulfill.

Anyway, the owner was pushing me hard to befriend her, with a twinkle in his eye, because he used her gossip like a seeing eye dog would, which was fine by me. I got coveted face-out shelf space to promote my imprint (which is actually part of the job), and he could pick her straw head about whatever weirdo thing he wanted to. I knew the game of "Telephone" like a pro. And so we hung out a few times after work, but she couldn't get the necessary dirt she wanted to have as leverage over me with my genuine after-hours bonhomie.

Windmill toys, like the ones we played with as children.

Besides that, she had briefly attended F.I.T. for painting, and it's also part of my job to mentor junior design staff. She could never be a designer because of her learning impairments, but she could do basic illustration work, and so I allowed her to grow closer to me, while I was the one with the authority to careful demarcate appropriate adult boundaries. I still needed good press at the time, and her dull PR about me would help me buoy up a imprint that had lay fallow, so I could have time to turn it into a major moneymaker for the company.

It worked like a charm. She sung like a canary to anyone who would listen to her, and I got to pull a very lucrative project out of the fire, to infamous success. And, I did really like any person with creative aspirations (as I've been taught to do) who want to learn and do better, which she did seem to have, in spurts that came and went with the ups-and-downs of her serious brain disorder. It was really therapy for her, but that was fine, too: RISD masters in degree programs like Art Therapy and Art Education. The better I could break through to the rough spots on her mind, the better I got at my job.

You're a major star, baby!

I used her as a training tool, to better my conversations with a staff that was sub par for big city publishing in the tri-state area, and that was also part of my job, because the owner of the company told me that on my very first review. And so I signed concepts like "books" and "design" and "art" over and over into their hands, realizing that his employees dysfunctions mirrored those of his family, and not me or mine, because I met a lot of his family during my employ.

Their admin used me to gain artistic insight into creative genius, and I used her as a mouthpiece to telegraph whatever aspect of me that I felt the rest of the staff needed to know. She gained inspiration from me and my labors, which is also very typical for someone like me, too. I didn't mind. As I lectured to her at the reception desk, I could feel the entire company leaning in to listen to me, which was the gold in the bank that helped me to gain confidence and break through. I had an entire audience in the palm of my hand, every single day of my life, which has naturally led me here to you all.

A screw loose or two, or is it three, or...how many more?!

She was genuine in her admiration of me, as I was skillful in schooling her with the rest of the Special Needs adults who worked in the fringes of media. The first year of our acquaintance, she gave me a notebook, with the requisite hidden agenda attached: why don't you draw something we can sell to make money off of? I did no such fucking thing, because I was already making major bank that they could coattail off of, but I always enjoyed doodling. She once asked me what my scribblings meant, and I hesitated....who cares? But, as she eagerly awaited my answer, I gave her the most honest reply I could think of at the time: "I don't know....it doesn't really matter to me what they are. I call them 'hieroglyphics'".

A Keith Haring-inspired paramecium dancing in primordial fluid.

And now here we are years later, on a spiritual journey that has brought me back to very essence of my family's historical and cultural roots, buried deep in my DNA, but still very, very real: that time from our most sacred human area in a fertile river valley, tied forever to the lands of Ancient Mesopotamia, then Egypt, then the Greco-Roman era, onto modern Normans (be they Italian, Irish, or French-Swiss), and then my tribe that turned right and went east to India, walking (or sledding) over the Bering Land Bridge with our ancient dogs, to finally meet a boat of French men from Western Europe on the Americas most eastern shores, men who married the M'ikMak squaws from Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia, people who drew the cuneiform shapes that resembled the ancient language for those of us who have always loyally worshipped The Great Spirit. 

A "commercial artist", indeed.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0e/Mikmaq_sample_%28ave_Maria%29.jpg

 

RISD’s Ongoing Mission

The mission of Rhode Island School of Design, through its college and museum, is to educate its students and the public in the creation and appreciation of works of art and design, to discover and transmit knowledge and to make lasting contributions to a global society through critical thinking, scholarship and innovation.

Original Mission Statement
On March 22, 1877, the Rhode Island General Assembly ratified “An Act to Incorporate the Rhode Island School of Design.” The corporation, comprised of a forward-thinking group of men and women, artists and business leaders, educators and politicians, was formed “for the purpose of aiding in the cultivation of the arts of design.” The original bylaws set forth the following key objectives for RISD:

First. The instruction of artisans in drawing, painting, modeling, and designing, that they may successfully apply the principles of Art to the requirements of trade and manufacture.

Second. The systematic training of students in the practice of Art, in order that they may understand its principles, give instruction to others, or become artists.

Third. The general advancement of public Art Education, by the exhibition of works of Art and of Art school studies, and by lectures on Art.

http://www.risd.edu/About/History_Mission_Governance/Mission/

Travel: Poetry in Motion

Wait. What the heck does that say?

It's about ripping off tourists. Neat!

On a recent trip to and from the city, I found myself sitting behind a gentlemen with a language book. I couldn't help but read over his shoulder because it was printed in very large print, a book designed for the elderly, which he clearly is. 

The funniest parts were the language lessons themselves, translations of certain key phrases from English to Spanish, like "Does the tourist need a map?", or "I just sold a watch to that tourist." and "Does the tourist need a watch?" Definitely not a native New Yorker. Now I know the next time I visit Old Mexico, just what phrases I need to brush up on....and not to wear a watch. You know, just a case a tourist needs one, too.

South of the Border, yo.

http://www.pinterest.com/mariedoucette/travel/

What's your favorite cover?

So the very next question I get after "What do you do for a living?" is: "What's your favorite book cover?" The answer is blessedly, and somewhat surprisingly simple, given my expert and professional familiarity with all things book-related:

It's the first story we know of in Old English (along with The Canterbury Tales), and it remains the defining, classically mythic tale of a warrior, a monster, and a quest. Along the way, Beowulf encounters every pitfall an epic hero must face: the trials, the tribulations, the doubts, the tests of character, the feats of strengths, and then the one flaw in his character leading to failure that, while momentary, results in an enormous fall from grace, and finally his battle and ultimate triumph of good over evil, which is the life every great person leads. It's the story of humanity, the stuff of legends, and it is the very nature of life itself. You don't get better than that.

Incidentally, while I'm here at home in the country, amongst the places I was raised, it seems fitting for me to thank my senior year H.S. English Lit teacher Mr. Bennett, for making us read aloud in class the original fable in Old English before we read the translation. It was hard, it was painful, and it was a lot of work, but in the end, I wouldn't be the publisher I am without that rock solid foundation. It formed the basis for my deep love and appreciation of the English language that has never abated, much maligned as it is worldwide as the blunt, simplistic business language of Capitalism, commerce, and money. To those of us who know this tongue well on a very deep and intimate level, it is every bit as mysterious, seductive, romantic, powerful, poetic, strong, lyrical and beautiful as the Indo-European, Norman, and Anglo-Saxon roots it sprung from, remaining an anomaly amongst the Romance and Latin-based languages of Western Europe. Rock on to Kublai Khan, Mr. Bennett. You are one cool dude. 

PS-Me and Karen totally spotted you riding your old car with the windows down on Main Street in Nyack back in the day (1987), shirtless and smiling. We waved to you and you waved back. What a great model you are for a purpose driven life. Kudos!

Consuela, Part II

I had a delightful chat today in an online group about Franco-Normande language roots. Yeah, etymology is pretty nerdy, but I am a bibliophile. Anyway, someone mentioned the informality with American names, and how we address one another. To this European, our former President "Jimmy" Carter seemed impossibly impolite and immature for using a boyish name, given that he's such an impressive public figure. Of course we respect our authority figures! We also use formal addresses with teachers, religious figures, political leaders, and other authority figures, as the situation dictates.

It brought me back to the brief time I had to live in a small German town for business, working in the company's atelier with the other artists and designers. Employees there used last names only, on the phone and in meetings. The head of the company is called "Herr" quite loudly, every time he is seen or greeted. It was still jarring to me a month after working there, because I had only heard it in documentaries about Nazism and Herr Hitler. My European co-workers thought it quite funny the first time they heard me greet the company president by first name. Given his rep as a ladies man, who knows what they thought of this informality between us.

Back home on U.S. soil, we hosted a German co-worker for a couple of weeks. At the time we were a mini United Nations: two gay men and a lesbian (all vocally out of the closest), a Jamaican accountant, a Puerto Rican receptionist, a book keeper from India, a Eurasian editor, and whatever nationality people think I am, which is usually French. She was charmed by our meeting round table, and the freedom with which we spoke. Since it was a very small branch of an overseas company, anyone in the office could pitch new ideas. And we called each other by first names, because it would be sheer lunacy for an open society like ours that is comprised of immigrants to keep track of every country on the planet's sometimes elaborate greeting rituals.

So, how does Consuela feature? Well, she IS our go-to symbol for cross-cultural snafus. If you're ever in doubt while travelling around our beautiful land, please know that it's more than acceptable to address an American you meet informally by their first name. 

That's democracy.