Pamela Travers was the highly unconventional and slightly subversive author of the beloved Mary Poppins books first published in 1934. Unlike the saccharine version from Walt Disney, Traver's fictional Poppins is "as peculiar as she is kind, as threatening as she is comforting, as stern as she is sensual, as elusive as she is matter of fact."
P, thanks again for your generous hospitality lasterday. Lovely dinner, fun cards, great night with the Unread -- one of our best nights ever I would say.
Hi Drunk Tank to Go Man!
I agree, it was quite a spirited, so to speak, discussion! I think Wordsworth would have appreciated your "nameless, unremembered act of kindness" even if the Stumblebum didn't! I'm heading out shortly, to Horsehair Bayleaf and environs so perhaps I'll see you, en route, before or after you pour Belfry Buffoon onto ferry!
Hello and Goodbye to the Walking, Heebie Jeebie, Unread Bat Boy! Cheers, Patrizzio, with a cross in hand and a Sisterhood cross to bear!
Fun night last night – 'spirited discussion' -- as Pat put it. Grateful to Jon for introducing us to a slice of Basque literature. Thanks again to Pat for graciously hosting yet again. Welcome to Dermot.
Dear Fine(d) Folk, et al!
Just a quick note to second the (e)motion expressed by Giorgio regarding the grand evening. As well, particularly wanted to say thank you to Moe for the fabulously tasty cookies, Guy for the very, very quaffable beer, (along with Whirlygig's growlers, of course!), and to Vittorino for showing up, in spite of his wild weekend in Portland. Save your vital bodily fluids, Vittorio, for your SLAIS assignments and your NRBC homework and you'll be richer by far, certainly without dark circles under your eyes.
Re ‘Next Episode’, there are two translations I have found. Sheila Fischman (2001) and Penny Williams (1972). Kurt – are you recommending one over the other? *Assuming we are reading it in translation, parce que mon francais est seulment un petit peu meilleur que mon Basque...
Please do not open yet another can of worms for the Great Unread of the NRBC. Plenty of difficulty just not reading one version of a book without suggesting variants. If you insist on an answer, please refer all such questions to our de facto Privacy and Information Officer, one Sieur de Guy de l'Eminence Gris and he will most certainly be able to arbitrate a solution most agreeable to all. Below, please find appropriate translations of this message, Fischman, (2014), Williams, (2014), Arrigorriagakoa, (2014), Kovács, (2014), Pentikäinen, (2014), and Shalikashvili, (2014).
Cher Kermit hargneux, et al! S'il vous plaît ne pas ouvrir une autre boîte de Pandore pour le Grand non lu de la NRBC. Beaucoup de difficulté tout simplement pas lire une version d'un livre sans proposer des variantes. Si vous insistez sur une réponse, s'il vous plaît se référer toutes ces questions à notre vie privée de facto et de l'information, un sieur de Guy de l'Eminence Gris et il sera très certainement en mesure d'arbitrer une solution plus agréable pour tous. Ci-dessous, s'il vous plaît trouver des traductions de ce message appropriées,
Por favor, no abra otra lata de gusanos para el Gran leídos del NRBQ. Un montón de dificultades para no leer una versión de un libro sin sugerir variantes. Si usted insiste en una respuesta, por favor, consulte todas las preguntas a nuestro Privacidad de facto y Oficial de Información, uno señor de Guy de l'Eminencia Gris y él será sin duda capaz de arbitrar una solución más aceptable para todos. A continuación encontrará traducciones apropiadas de este mensaje, Maitea Kermit Surly, et al?
Mesedez, ez irekitzeko oraindik zizare-can beste Itzela Unread NRBC du egiteko. Zailtasun ugari besterik ez liburu baten bertsio bat irakurtzen aldaerak proposatuz gabe. Azpimarratzen duzu erantzun bat on bazara, begiratu besteak beste, galdera guztiak gure izatezko Pribatutasuna eta Informazio Officer, Sieur de Guy de l'Eminence Gris bat eta izango da, zalantzarik izan zuen irtenbide bat gehien guztiei atsegina arbitro gai. Behean, mesedez aurkitu Mezu honen itzulpenak egokiak,
Kérjük, ne nyissa ki még egy is elég bajunk a Nagy Olvasatlan a NRBC. Rengeteg nehézség csak nem olvasta az egyik változata a könyvet anélkül utal változatok. Ha ragaszkodik a választ, olvassa el az összes olyan kérdést, hogy a de facto adatvédelem és informatikai igazgató, egy Sieur de Guy de l'Eminence Gris és ő minden bizonnyal tudja, hogy döntsön a megoldást a legkellemesebb az összes. Az alábbiakban találja a megfelelő fordítás ezt az üzenetet, Dear Kermit äreä, et ai!
Älä avaa vielä toinen voi matoja Suurten Lukematon of CBRN. Runsaasti vaikeuksissa vain ei lue yksi versio kirjan ilman viittaa variantteja. Jos vaadit vastauksen löydät kaikki tällaiset kysymykset meidän de facto Tietosuoja ja tiedottaja, yksi Sieur de Guy de l'Eminence Gris ja hän varmasti pystyy sovittelemaan sopivimman ratkaisun kaikki suostuvat. Alta löydät asianmukaiset käännökset tämän viestin,
გთხოვთ არ გახსნათ კიდევ რა ჭიები დიდი წაუკითხავი საქართველოს NRBC. უამრავი სირთულის უბრალოდ არ კითხულობს ერთი მობილური წიგნის გარეშე მიგვითითებს ვარიანტი. თუ თქვენ დაჟინებით პასუხი, მიმართეთ ყველა ასეთ კითხვებს ჩვენი დე ფაქტო კონფიდენციალურობის და ინფორმაციის სამსახური, ერთი Sieur de Guy de l'მეუფე Gris და ის ყველაზე რა თქმა უნდა შეძლებს arbitrate გადაწყვეტა ყველაზე ხელსაყრელი ყველა. ქვემოთ იხილეთ შესაბამისი მეხსიერება ამ გაგზავნა
Yowsa! that’s some talent ..and fairly stanchion worthy too I might add! Hope you’re well, had a nice bit of R and R at the the cabin on the weekend and back at it now working on the yard. I see the weather is supposed to get nice for most of the week! Take care, Al
Stats for today's ride:
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/475710542#.U0MmNhAukis.email
Hi Flash! I just read the FUSEVISUAL interview and enjoyed it immensely. Congrats indeed! Hard to believe but I had just returned from seeing Finding Vivian Maier.
When we made arrangements to see film this is what I said: "Film starts at 4:30 pm so probably 4:15 pm is a good time to meet, either outside theatre or in the lobby. I don't imagine it will be all that busy, given day of the week and time."
Hi Giggenheimer! Trust you discharged Captain Curtains Kirk into the care and feeding of BC Ferry staff without any further vehicle ingress/egress problems! Looked for you on the road but not sure when you were about or even if you took Marine.
Not overly much traffic on road either so ride was quite pleasant from that point of view. Had never seen a freighter anchored as close to the shore as at the spot where you get the spectacular views of city, mainly coming from HB, but even though I was travelling in the opposite direction I managed a few glimpses and it truly felt as if I could reach out and touch the deck. Another reward, once I'd descended into Horsehair Land was the simply stunning view of Bowen. Mountain sides to the right, out of HB, were wreathed with whisps of cloud and vista was nothing but magical.
My mood was so elevated
that I didn't even inhale deeply, on my last dispy-doodle around the
parking lot near the Second Beach Concession, when I passed the bench
where the hop heads, children of the Breakfast Clubbers, were toking up!
Home by 2:45 pm in time to have a bite to eat, shower and change and
then have Cora Lee drop me off at VanCity. Stats for today's ride: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/475710542#.U0MmNhAukis.email
I had arranged to meet Kjell there and when I arrived there was an incredible line-up. Fortunately he had been there for about ten minutes and so were not at the end of the line. Had it not been for John Maloof her entire ouevre would most likeley been lost or destroyed and certainly not seen the light of day, let alone the red light of the dark room!
Maloof’s new mission was to learn more about the photographer. He tracked down other people who also bought boxes of negatives at the auction. He purchased the negatives from them until he collected about 100,000. Finally in 2009, serendipity — in one box, he found an envelope from a photo lab with her name, Vivian Maier. Since then he’s been able to put together a rough history of her life and now is working on a book and a documentary film to bring her work to the world."
PS: I gather you came by to claim your growlers. Running on empty?
Pics: Just a few of her images to give you some sense of her eye!
On an unremarkable day in late 2007, John Maloof, a young real-estate agent, spent some time at a local auction house, RPN Sales in Portage Park, combing through assortments of stuff—some of it junk—that had been abandoned or repossessed.
Something nagged, however—perhaps a reflex picked up from working the flea market circuit as a poor kid growing up on the West Side of Chicago. Though he knew almost nothing about photography, he eventually returned to the box and started looking through the negatives, scanning some into his computer.
There was a playfulness to the moments the anonymous artist had captured: a dapper preschool boy peeking from the corner of a grimy store window; an ample rump squeezing through the wooden planks of a park bench; a man in a three-piece suit napping, supine, in the front seat of his car, his right arm masking his face from the daylight. Whoa, Maloof mused. These are really cool. Who took them? A contact at the auction house didn’t know the photographer’s name but told Maloof that the contents of the repossessed storage locker had belonged to an elderly woman who was ill. As time passed, Maloof tracked down a handful of people who had acquired similar caches of negatives once owned by the same woman, and he bought the boxes off them. With the collection becoming expensive to maintain, this lifelong reseller did what came naturally: He cut up some of the negatives and hawked them on eBay. They proved startlingly popular—some sold for as much as $80 a pop. Maloof realized that he’d come across something special, and he determined to crack the case of the anonymous photographer.
The discussion went viral. Suggestions poured in, and websites from around the world sent traffic to his blog. (If you Google “Vivian Maier” today, you’ll get more than 18,000 results.) Maloof recognized that this was bigger than he’d thought.
Filing away negatives one day, Maloof, who today is 29, found a promising lead: Stuck to the bottom of a shoebox was a Highland Park address for someone named Avron Gensburg. Another quick Google search pulled up a related address with the names John and Lane—the same names as two of the people mentioned in Maier’s death notice. A little more sleuthing revealed that from 1956 to 1972, Maier had lived with Avron and Nancy Gensburg in Highland Park as a nanny for their three boys: John, Lane, and Matthew.
Today, Lane Gensburg, a 54-year-old tax attorney, is the citadel of Maier’s memory, and he is adamant that nothing unflattering be said about the woman who raised him from birth. When he starts talking about Maier, his eyes soften. “She was like Mary Poppins,” he tells me. “She had an amazing ability to relate to children.” Maier had answered the Gensburgs’ ad seeking a nanny in 1956, and when she arrived, she almost looked the part of Mary Poppins. Under a heavy coat, she wore sturdy shoes and a long skirt with a lace slip, and she carried an enormous carpetbag. “She was dressed so differently,” recalls Nancy Gensburg. Maier was tall—five feet eight—but she appeared taller. “A very classy lady,” Nancy says. Maier’s trademark was the camera dangling around her neck. She was also very French. “She looked French, quite frankly,” Lane says. “She had a prominent nose.”
The Gensburg boys adored Maier’s knack for creating quirky adventures. She wanted them to explore life beyond the confined suburbia of Highland Park—“the sticks,” as she put it. Maier and the boys might see the latest screening of an art film, visit the famous monuments of Graceland Cemetery, bundle up for the Chinese New Year parade, or forage for wild strawberries in a forest preserve—one of Maier’s favorite activities.
“She wanted them to be very aware of what was going on in the world,” Nancy Gensburg says.
On her days off, Maier would take a spin on her moped or go to the movies. If someone famous was in town—President Kennedy or Eleanor Roosevelt, for example—she’d pack up her cameras, work her way through the crowd, and snap a souvenir.
Maier collected things—or perhaps it’s equally true to say she had trouble throwing things away. Negatives, cameras, clothes, shoes, tape recordings, documents—Maloof’s attic is now a cluttered repository. She had an especially weak spot for newspapers. In her little bathroom at the Gensburgs’, the stack of papers on the back of her toilet reached the ceiling. However, “she didn’t keep papers just to keep papers,” Nancy Gensburg points out. “There was always an article that she’d want to get back to and couldn’t.”
Maier would share some of her photographs of the children with the Gensburgs, but she wouldn’t gift them. “If you wanted a picture,” Nancy says, “you had to buy it.” But Maier wasn’t selling her photography for profit. “Someone had to want it more than she wanted it. It’s like an artist who would paint something and then hate to get rid of it. She loved everything she did.”
One belonged to Phil Donahue. After he moved his TV talk show to Chicago in 1974, he separated from his wife, and a divorce followed. He and his four boys ended up in Winnetka. “There was no Aunt Bee,” Donahue recalls, referring to the iconic caregiver from The Andy Griffith Show. “The women who came into my life as nannies didn’t last too long. No matter who they were, the kids hated them. They were rent-a-mothers.”
Maier lived with Donahue for less than a year, and his children, as well as a couple of his nieces, don’t share the Gensburgs’ memories of her as Mary Poppins incarnate. She was the eccentric Frenchwoman who dragged them to obscure monuments, served them yucky peanut butter sandwiches with apricots, and made the girls a present of a paper bag full of green army men. Donahue’s youngest son, James, who was around 12 at the time, remembers that Maier would roam the neighborhood taking odd photographs in a getup that reminded him of Maria von Trapp, the only other European woman he had met at the time. (Von Trapp had made an appearance on Donahue.) Maier would startle easily and exclaim, “Oh! Bah la-la bah!”—an expression that can be heard on audiotapes she made of interviews she conducted with the children or elderly people under her care. On those recordings, she dodges questions about herself.
Over the years, her subject matter changed. She stopped shooting in black and white, and her work became more abstract—artfully placed garbage, for example. There were no more pictures of the pyramids; she no longer made exotic trips. And she seemed to grow even more elusive—she would go long periods, sometimes years, without checking in with the Gensburgs.
By the time she arrived at the busy Glenview home of Zalman and Karen Usiskin in 1987, Maier was hauling around 30 years’ worth of photography. When she interviewed with Zalman, a mathematics professor at the University of Chicago, and Karen, a textbook editor, she made one thing clear: “I have to tell you that I come with my life, and my life is in boxes,” she said. No problem, they told her. They have a large garage. “We had no idea,” Zalman says. “She came with 200 boxes.” The family placed them in storage, and they sat untouched until Maier left a year later. The Usiskins say Maier was good with their two children, but they heard she was less than kind to the taxi drivers on her trips to do the family’s grocery shopping. (She never learned to drive.)
From 1989 to 1993, Maier cared for the disabled daughter of Federico Bayleander in his Wilmette home, and the stories about her start repeating: She was good with his daughter. She stored hundreds of boxes in his basement.
After Bayleander, there was an employer in Oak Park and eventually a move to a cheap apartment in Cicero. When Lane Gensburg and his younger brother, Matthew, reconnected with her in the late nineties, they insisted on putting her up in a nice apartment in Rogers Park. “We were comfortable as long as we knew where she was,” Lane says.
He believes Maier was living off Social Security before his family stepped in to help, but she apparently had other sources of income. Today, Maloof can reach into almost any of her boxes and pull out a dozen stock certificates or uncashed refund checks from the Department of the Treasury, some of them for more than a thousand dollars.
Around Christmas in 2008, Maier slipped on some ice while walking downtown, hit her head, and ended up in the emergency room. “We thought she was going to make a full recovery,” Lane says.
The Gensburg sons called in the best doctors and later moved her to a nursing home in Oak Park, where they would visit her after work. On the way to one of their visits, Lane and Matthew picked up their mother and grilled her: “Did you bring The New York Times for Vivian? Should we get her some coffee ice cream? She loves coffee ice cream.” Nancy muses, “They knew everything about her. She was just a unique person. But she didn’t think anything of herself.”
When I first visit his two-flat, I’m blown away by the sheer amount of stuff Maloof has acquired. Upstairs is Vivian Central. By Maloof’s rough estimate, he now owns more than half a dozen of her cameras, more than a hundred 8 mm movies, 3,000 prints, 2,000 rolls of film, and 100,000 negatives. Steamer trunks and boxes line an attic wall. He pops open a trunk bursting with Maier’s clothes—felt hats, baggy coats in muted tones, black shoes so heavy they could double as dumbbells. Many of the boxes contain newspaper clippings encased in plastic frames or vinyl binders stuffed with everything from movie reviews to obituaries. One headline catches my eye: “Fellow Veterans Honor Victim of 1995 Heat Wave,” on a story about Rodney Holmquist, who had served in the navy and died alone. Twenty veterans rescued his body from a pauper’s grave and reburied him with military honors.
PHOTO GALLERY »
Maier’s street photography
The immense volume of the photos makes for a daunting archiving effort. Maloof estimates that he’s scanned only one-tenth of the negatives in his collection—and he’s barely glanced at the remaining 90,000. When he finds a particularly strong photograph, he posts it on his blog.
Colin Westerbeck, the former curator of photography at the Art Institute of Chicago and one of the country’s leading experts on street photography, thinks Maier is an interesting case. He inspected her work after Maloof e-mailed him. “She worked the streets in a savvy way,” he says. “But when you consider the level of street photography happening in Chicago in the fifties and sixties, she doesn’t stand out.”
Yet Westerbeck admits that he understands the allure of Maier’s work. “She was a kind of mysterious figure,” he says. “What’s compelling about her pictures is the way that they capture the local character of Chicago in the past decades.”
In any case, John Maloof has made it his mission to spread the word on his remarkable discovery. “I owe Vivian an honest effort to get her recognized as one of the great photographers of her time,” he says. “I’m only spending time on her story because the world is demanding it from me.
But Maier was an intensely private person. What would she think of Maloof’s mission? Wouldn’t she hate it? Maloof believes she wouldn’t mind because the world has moved on, and he lets her speak for herself. After a long search, he plays a recording from an interview she conducted with an elderly woman: “I suppose nothing is meant to last forever,” Maier says in her accented English. “We have to make room for other people. It’s a wheel—you get on, you go to the end, and someone else has the same opportunity to go to the end, and so on, and somebody else takes their place. There’s nothing new under the sun.”
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