I spent a few days with my parents last week and of course we went thrift shopping. I was in the store less than two minutes when this sweet book by Tomie dePaola jumped into my hands. It may be the best ten cents I’ve ever spent!
Tomie dePaola wrote Strega Nona and Nana Upstairs and Nana Downstairs, two of my favorite books from my days working with children. His illustrations are charming and his stories are sweet and timeless. Things to Make and Do for Valentine’s Day is a how-to book with crafts, jokes, tongue twisters, games and recipes to share for the holiday.
The book is designed for kids, but I think some of the projects are fun for adults, too. I’m going to try one out this weekend and I will report back next week. If it works out, I may use the idea for my Valentine envelopes this year.
Have you planned your Valentine’s Day cards yet? I have my prototype ready…now the real work begins.
Last Tuesday, Naoto and I went to see Cat Stevens at the Chicago Theater.
You’re probably thinking one of a few things:
A) I thought his name was Yusef now and he gave up on touring in the US over thirty years ago.
B) Who is Cat Stevens?
C) Ohmygoodness! Did he play Peace Train?!
Well, to answer your questions, this is his first US tour since 1976. This explains all you need to know about Cat Stevens. And, yes, he did play Peace Train. I cried.
When I found out he was coming to Chicago (one of six cities on his tour of the US and Canada) I couldn’t wait to buy a ticket. I know it’s not the same as growing up with his music, as most of the audience did but Cat Stevens was a big part of the early days of my relationship with Naoto. We used to listen to his Greatest Hits albums all the time on lazy Sunday mornings. In the days leading up to the concert, I was getting really excited, then it occurred to me that maybe he would only play his new stuff and refuse to play all of the songs that Naoto and I loved. Thankfully, I was able to read about his earlier concerts in Boston and Philadelphia and I was reassured…all of the old, familiar songs with some new ones sprinkled in. Whew!
The concert started a bit late because of the large amounts of security, but when Cat Stevens stepped on the stage, I knew it was going to be worth the wait. He came out to thundering cheers and a standing ovation and quietly started playing. His first song, “The Wind”, brought tears to my eyes. (Actually, I found myself tearing up for a large part of the concert while I sang along quietly with Naoto next to me.) Once the first song was over, people cheered “Where have you been?” and Cat Stevens seemed to take it all in stride. He was definitely a working man during the concert. He didn’t reminisce very much about his early days, only giving brief introductions to his songs, old and new. He reminded us that “The First Cut is the Deepest” was his song before it was covered by Rod Stewart and Sheryl Crow. And while women were screaming “I love you, Cat/Yusef!” he mostly ignored them and got back to the song at hand.
During the concert, Cat Stevens alternated between playing the guitar and the piano and his band was incredible. He played all of the old hits that I could remember at the time, except “Hard-Headed Woman” which was requested via screams from the audience a few times. He said he cleaned up “Another Saturday Night” a bit, though we couldn’t remember the lyrics well enough to figure out where. (I think maybe the part about having two women?) Oh and he switched out the lyrics in “Here Comes My Baby” to say “You’re forever texting on the phone” which got a good laugh from the audience. And his new stuff was really solid…I wish we had listened to his latest albums before the concert, but we didn’t and we still enjoyed the unfamiliar songs. But as usual with someone who has a long career, the audience really connected with him most on his old stuff.
I’m including the set list, borrowed from this Greg Kot review in the Chicago Tribune.
Set 1:
1. The Wind
2. Here Comes My Baby
3. The First Cut Is the Deepest
4. Thinking ‘Bout You
5. Sitting
6. Maybe You’re Right
7. Where Do the Children Play?
8. I Love My Dog
9. I Was Raised in Babylon
10. (Remember the Days of the) Old Schoolyard
11. People Get Ready (Impressions cover)
12. If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out
Set 2:
13. Big Boss Man (Jimmy Reed cover)
14. Trouble
15. Oh Very Young
16. Dying to Live (Edgar Winter cover)
17. Moonshadow
18. You Are My Sunshine (Jimmie Davis cover)
19. Foreigner Suite excerpt
20. Wild World
21. The Devil Came From Kansas (Procol Harum cover)
22. Take This Hammer (Leadbelly cover)
23. Another Saturday Night (Sam Cooke cover)
24. Peace Train
25. Father and Son
Encore
26. Editing Floor Blues
27. Miles From Nowhere
28. Morning Has Broken
29. All Kinds of Roses
And about our seats…we were in the very last row of the very top balcony at the Chicago Theater (Row U!!) At first, we laughed and cried that they were the worst seats in the house. We were so far up, we were practically dripping off the ceiling and we didn’t even have theater seats! They were banquet chairs! But then we realized that we could stand up and dance around as we pleased because there wasn’t a row of chairs crammed behind us. And we never had to get up to let anyone pass through because the others in our row could walk behind our chairs. And we had all the leg room in the world. Not to mention we had a direct view of the stage and no one standing up in front of us could obscure it. So, while it would have been nice to be in the front row, we were pretty happy with the situation by the end.
I feel so lucky that we got to see Cat Stevens…I want to make live music a priority in 2015–it makes my heart sing! P.S. Cat Stevens did a Tiny Desk Concert for NPR recently. I love the Tiny Desk and this one is so good!
On Saturday night we went to see Chris & Heather’s Everything BUT Country Calendar Show at FitzGeralds. Apparently the event is held every year and I’m mad I haven’t gone sooner–it was so much fun! The concert was built around Heather McAdams’s hand drawn calendar of twelve different musical acts, in this case, all kinds of music except country. Different local musicians covered songs for each act in the calendar and then they showed an old 16mm film of the original musicians. Hosts Chris and Heather (shown above) were funny and smart. Their enthusiasm for the artists and songs was contagious. We went specifically to see our coworker Sharon Rutledge and her husband Scott Ligon play John Sebastian. (They are pictured at the top.) They were amazing! They sang “Didn’t Want to Have to Do It” and it was beautiful and melancholy and -sigh- just lovely. And then they followed the sadness up with “You Didn’t Have To Be So Nice” and they cheered us all up. Seeing the old films was part of the fun, too..crackling, old 16mm concert classics. (Pictured top to bottom: Rolling Stones, Peggy Lee and Slim Gaillard.) One hilarious moment was when Robbie and Donna Fulks covered The Carpenters Top of the World and “Grover” sang the chorus.
One of my favorite songs from the night was The Modern Sounds singing Slim Gaillard’s “Potato Chips.” I had to include a clip above because the song is just plain fun. (And I swear it caused our post-concert french fry run to Sub-T.) I’m so glad we went and I’m already hopeful that we can attend next year. Yay for live music and for friends with talent!
P.S. If you find yourself craving a classic cocktail, head to the SideBar where the bartenders know how to make a well-crafted cocktail with all of the right ingredients. I had a Martinez and a 20th Century that knocked my socks off!
On my drive down to my parents’ house a few weeks ago, I stopped in our favorite thrift store. I had fifteen minutes before they closed, so I hit the office section, the greeting cards and the dishes–my three favorites. The greeting cards were a bust. Although they had several boxes of Christmas cards to offer, nothing was vintage enough or sweet enough to buy. (I still have no idea what I’m doing for holiday cards this year.) And the dishes were equally disappointing, unless you like those country patterns of the nineties. (Think hearts and ducks and other country patterns.)
But the office section never disappoints! Within five minutes I snagged up all the best stuff: some Care Bear stickers, some jumbo gold stars, and most exciting of all, two vintage accountant work sheet pads. The largest is 11×16 and I love all the little grids and warm colors and the yellowed paper. The best part about the ledgers is that yellow tagged items were 50% off that day, so one was 75¢ and the other was 50¢. My bill at the register for all four items was $2.12.
I’ve already written one letter on the smaller ledger paper and I look forward to using up all four in mail upcoming mail projects!
When you go thrift shopping, which department do you head for?
I love a good consumable souvenir. Whenever I’m traveling, I like to stop into grocery stores to see if there are any locally-made snacks or sweets to take home. (This is how I discovered the deliciousness of Canada’s potato chips!) Finding treats in the grocery store is a lot more budget-friendly than buying them at the airport or souvenir shops, plus there are sometimes hidden gems that aren’t in those souvenir shops.
While we were in Missouri, we stopped at WalMart to pick up something. (Full disclosure: We went to pick up a bottle of whiskey–whiskey that was made in Missouri, but not delicious enough to make the cut as a souvenir. Actually it was terrible.) At the check-out I spotted this fantastic vintage candy, Chase’s Cherry Mash. Cherry Mash has been made in St. Joseph, Missouri since 1918. (St. Joseph is about an hour away from Hamilton.) I bought one to try and then went back the next night to buy a few more. The Cherry Mash is made with crushed maraschino cherries, blended into a creamy center and coated with chocolate and chopped peanuts. There are a few videos of the process here.I love maraschino cherries (even the bright red ones that are swimming in red dye) so I think the Cherry Mash is delicious. Because it is so sweet, it’s a shareable portion, but I promise not to judge if you eat the whole thing! I love a good, vintage candy and this one fits the bill perfectly!
Visiting the Missouri Star Quilt Company made me want to rush home and cut up the fabric I bought for a quilt a few years ago. It also made me want to buy more fabric…which I did. We only visited the main shop and the seasonal fabric shop but Missouri Star has eight stores in Hamilton devoted to quilting. As usual, I regret not taking more pictures. There were aisles and aisles of fabric to choose from in the main store. I had a hard time not going overboard…I figured since I haven’t actually started making a quilt, I should resist buying every single fabric that caught my eye! (Besides, Missouri Star has an online store, so really, I can shop anytime!)I chose a two patterns to add to my future quilt (the grey and yellow ones) and the forest animals one to make a pillow cover. At Sew Seasonal, the holiday fabric store, I found a Scandanavian-style fabric and some coordinating red dots. Missouri Star has opened the doors for more business opportunity in Hamilton. There is a new fancy restaurant in town, Blue Sage, which I didn’t have a chance to try but there is a burger place and a bakery that were both quite tasty. It would be easy to make a day of fabric shopping in Hamilton!
One of our first stops while we were exploring Hamilton was the J.C. Penney Museum. The museum is part of the local library and is filled with items used by J.C. Penney personally as well as in his first stores. There is a wax figure of Penney himself anchoring the exhibit…it was a little alarming at first, but he felt like an old friend by the end. Some of my favorite items in the museum were the office supplies–so many fantastic rubber stamps and little notebooks and handbooks. And there was a tricky looking calculator and a gorgeous Underwood typewriter. Swoon! I love this picture from the JC Penney Golden Jubilee Convention in 1952. It was held at the Edgewater Beach Hotel in Chicago and it looks like it was a fabulous event! Brannock devices and other shoe-selling tools make me miss good customer service in the shoe departments of today. This is a plate that was made for J.C. Penney’s eightieth birthday. Isn’t James Cash a terrific name?Ah, catalogs…so good for browsing, so bad for the environment.
I didn’t do any research before we went to the museum, but J.C. Penney’s desk is in the museum and unlike most museums, you are invited to sit in his chair. I’m bummed that I learned this after we left and the museum closed. We did thumb through the catalogs though. There was no one working in the museum, so when it came time to buy postcards (which were only 10¢ each!) I took them into the library side to pay for them. I love how quaint and laid-back it was!A few blocks down the main road is the J.C. Penney childhood home. It isn’t open for touring and it’s not in its original location (Penney grew up just outside of town in the countryside.) In the 80s it was saved from being torn down and moved into town and renovated. It sits among the businesses downtown Hamilton, a charming reminder of the man himself.
Over the weekend, I took a road trip with my parents. We drove to visit my grandfather in Hamilton, Missouri, a town of 1800 people about an hour away from Kansas City. In between visits to the nursing home, my dad and I adventured about the town, which has a surprising amount to do for its size. Hamilton is the home of JC Penney, the man who founded the department store by the same name in 1902. There’s a quaint little museum devoted to JC Penney in the local library and Penney’s childhood home sits in the center of town. Until the 1980s, there was a Penney’s store in Hamilton. Quilting is a huge business here, too. The Missouri Star Quilt Company (seen in the top photo) opened in 2008 and now it is widely known around the country as a great place to go for fabric and quilting supplies. I first heard about Missouri Star in this NBC Nightly News broadcast, so I was interested to go and check it out. Hamilton is only a few blocks long and there are seven quilt shops in town. It’s pretty amazing. (I’ll talk about both the museum and the quilt shops this week!) Of course I made time for mail! I wrote out postcards at a little bakery (Poppy’s) and at the nursing home.The trip was bittersweet but I’m glad we went. It was good to see my grandpa and to experience the town he’s lived in almost his whole life.
The Forest Park 3rd Annual Casket Races were held on Saturday and they were wickedly fun! It was the perfect day–cool and crisp and sunny. And look at those leaves! We found a good seat on the curb kind of in the middle of the “track” and had a great time seeing the funny costumes and caskets. My favorites were the guys above, who all dressed like The Count from Sesame Street. (Although, I do believe those giant heads cost them the race…not very aerodynamic.) I also loved this Weekend At Bernie’s themed casket. (The second picture shows them carrying Bernie during the post-race casket parade.)The Forest Park Library got into the action with zombie librarians. And the Kiwanis raced a peanut casket.
On Sunday night Peggy and I went to see Why Be Good? a recently rediscovered silent film from the 1920s starring Colleen Moore*. Why Be Good? was considered lost for many years, but it was rediscovered in an old Italian movie archive in 2012. This was its 21st century North American debut and it was shown as part of Chicago International Film Festival, which Colleen Moore helped start fifty years ago.
In the movie, Colleen Moore plays Pert, a poor flapper girl who is a wildly good dancer, stays out late, wears risqué dresses and makeup and has the appearance of a “bad girl.” But she’s really a good girl underneath it all. She meets a rich man who falls in love with her, but is hesitant to marry Pert because he fears she is too wild (a.k.a. not chaste.) The movie follows the two of them to different night clubs, giving us a glimpse into the “flapper” lifestyle and 1920s night life. (I couldn’t stop looking at the glassware during all of the drinking scenes!)
Because the movie was made Pre-Code, there were racy (for the time) shots of Pert in her bra and slip and suggestive (for the time) dialogue. (Of course, it’s nothing like movies today.) The wardrobe was just fabulous. Every shoe, every slip, every dress, every coat, every handbag was breathtaking. At one point Pert pulls out a slip that had her name embroidered on it. They don’t make slips like that anymore. (Do they even make slips?) And the music, especially the jazz in the nightclubs, was fantastic. I think there needs to be a soundtrack release. And I know a lot of people don’t like silent films (or haven’t given them a chance) but with Colleen Moore’s expressive facial expressions and the music, I didn’t even realize I was reading the title cards.
The movie was introduced by CIFF founder Michael Kutza (pictured, underneath Colleen Moore on the big screen). He was in his twenties when he had the idea to start an International Film Festival in Chicago. Since he was so young and not socially connected, he was introduced to Colleen Moore. She was living in Chicago at the time and still had many Hollywood connections. In the early years, she helped get a lot of movie stars involved with the festival and gave it a strong start in the community. He told a hilarious story about wanting to invite Joan Crawford to lunch. She was in Chicago for business during her time on the Board of Directors for Pepsi-Co. Colleen Moore told him no, that Joan’s “wings” (facelift tape around the eyes, something like this.) would never make it through lunch!
I’ve never gone to any of the film festivals in Chicago, but this experience made me want to pay more attention to these local opportunities. I’m not a huge movie person but I do love old gems and I enjoy learning about the history of Hollywood. Peggy is a movie encyclopedia so it’s always fun to go with her and learn a little bit more than I would as a movie novice. For instance, Peggy knew Neil Hamilton, the actor who played Pert’s love interest, also played Commissioner Gordon on Batman (the TV show.)
Now that Why Be Good? has been found and re-released, it will hopefully show up at more movie festivals and indie theaters. I highly recommend keeping an eye out for it, even if you only go to see the stunning Colleen Moore and her stylish flapper wardrobe!
I spent a few days with my parents last week and of course we went thrift shopping. I was in the store less than two minutes when this sweet book by Tomie dePaola jumped into my hands. It may be the best ten cents I’ve ever spent!
kimberly ah 