Month: July 2008

I forget what I was even looking for, cute animal videos probably, and I got side tracked by videos of soldiers dancing in Iraq. Of course it all makes me want to cry on one level, because people as sweet and charming and adaptive as this should be home, safe and sound.

Don’t be fooled by the one that starts with the sun. And the guy in the third one down clearly has had some real training, he executes a few pirouettes. The last one is from British soldiers in Afghanistan, (if I’m remembering correctly).

I love these guys.

[Videos removed because the link no longer works.]

Yesterday I was posting on Echo, “what to do, what to do,” and my friend Marisa said “come to Ikea and Costco with me!” I’d never been to either store before and I was curious. We had so much fun. I didn’t buy anything, but I took pictures of the sea of carts for the people who were there for other than sight-seeing.

More pictures below …

Afterwards we went out to brunch with her boyfriend Sinclair and saw his garden. This is the part that I refer to in the title of this post. I wish this was my garden. It was so beautiful it made me ache, and for some reason, his garden shed was the lightening rod for that feeling. I should have taken a picture of the inside too, because all the implements of gardening contributed to the feeling.

One more picture below.

At a certain point my camera started acting up, but I love the weird picture that it took of his garden. It’s like a painting. I mean, will you look at those colors. You can still make out the garden shapes. I believe that’s his fig tree on the right. I’m not sure. I’ll bet he could tell by the leaves though. Oh wait, it’s not the fig tree. That’s the fig tree to the right of the shed. Okay, I have no idea what it is.

It was a great morning. Marisa and Sinclair crack me up. Plus, they love cats. Insanely. Sinclair built a cat door for his.

My friend Jenn took this shot of her cat Max (RIP) when they were moving a few years ago.

You know how cats love boxes? You leave a box out and a cat jumps in it? Well, to a cat, drumbags count as boxes.

Yesterday, while I was researching the building on 5th Avenue I came across a October 9, 1851 story that went: An Infant Found Drowned. At an early hour Tuesday morning while Patrolman Houston of the Sixteenth Ward [the Chelsea area] was patrolling his beat, he discovered the dead body of an infant floating upon the surface of the water, off the foot of Twenty-Third street, North River [the Hudson] which he brought to shore and fastened to the dock to await a Coroner’s inquest. The little creature was wrapped in a woolen blanket, and had a large stone tied around its neck, which was evidently done by the inhuman mother.

Hello?? America? Innocent until proven guilty!! Although it probably was the mother OR THE father (the writer was sexist on top of it). Ah, life can be so sad. We’re all living the Wisconsin Death Trip.

Anyway, I hope to see the movie Hancock today. I also started a lovely little book called “The Secret Life of Bees.”

Walking down Fifth Avenue I couldn’t help noticing building after building that just looked kind of sad. You know they were once someone’s fabulous residence. I took a quick snap of one group and focused on 603, (this is between 48th and 49th streets). Then I did a search through the Times. There’s a rundown after the photograph.

Photo lost! I don’t know where it went, alas.

What I found doesn’t really get interesting until March 5, 1925, when there’s an article about a woman named Mary Desti who fights with a thief who was trying to steal shawls from her. They both fall down a flight of stairs, and he takes off and gets away. Tough lady (she was 54).

Then on April 14, 1930, there’s an article about Eleanor Hutton, granddaughter of C. W. Post, who “Elopes With Playwright; Weds Preston Sturges Over Parents’ Protest.” Preston Sturges is Mary Desti’s son! (I didn’t know he started out a playwright.)

Not one year later, on April 13, 1931 there’s an article, “MARY DESTI IS DEAD; DUNCAN BIOGRAPHER; Succumbs at 59 to Illness Which Began Soon After Death of Dancer in Nice. FATAL SHAWL WAS HER GIFT Was Visiting Isadora at Time of Last Auto Ride–Son Is Preston Sturges, Playwright.”

Turns out Mary Desti was good friends with Isadora Duncan, the famous dancer who died when her scarf got tangled in the car she was in and she was strangled to death. From Wikipedia:

“Before getting into the car, she said to a friend, Mary Desti (mother of 1940’s Hollywood writer-director Preston Sturges), and some companions, “Adieu, mes amis. Je vais — la gloire!” (“Goodbye, my friends, I am off to glory!”); however, according to the diaries of the American novelist Glenway Wescott, who was in Nice at the time and visited Duncan’s body in the morgue (his diaries are in the collection of the Beineke Library at Yale University), Desti admitted that she had lied about Duncan’s last words. Instead, she told Wescott, the dancer actually said, “Je vais — l’amour” (“I am off to love”), which Desti considered too embarrassing to go down in history as the legend’s final utterance, especially since it suggested that Duncan hoped that she and Falchetto were going to her hotel for a sexual assignation. Whatever her actual last words, when Falchetto drove off, Duncan’s immense handpainted silk scarf, which was a gift from Desti and was large enough to be wrapped around her body and neck and flutter out of the car, became entangled around one of the vehicle’s open-spoked wheels and rear axle. Duncan died at the scene.”

A year after Mary died, Preston and Eleanor were separated. She was his second wife, he would have four before he died.

After that all the articles are real estate articles, and soon the building, like most around it, turns commercial, a shoe store mostly, it seems.