Hermitage

Friday, June 22, 2012

Bibi and Polidi calling quit after 115 years union

TROUBLE IN PARADISE FOR MR. & MRS. TORTOISE

Nothing last forever. Bibi and Polidi divorced after 115 years of marriage. (photo: coolclipz.com)

Last week, news went around the world about a pair of giant tortoises who are divorcing after living together in an Austrian zoo since 1897. The Austrian Times reported that after some nasty bickering, things degenerated between the two big turtles to the point that the lady turtle, Bibi, had bitten off a big piece of her husband Poldi’s shell. Was Poldi not able to satisfy her anymore? Apparently efforts by marriage counselors and even aphrodisiacs slipped into their food didn’t help.

Tortoises like Bibi and Poldi usually live to be at least 200, which means that at the age of 115 Bibi is very likely in a hormone-induced midlife crisis. And that means that nothing Poldi can do or say will be the right thing, whatever he does will be wrong, and even the way he chews his food will be enough to make her want to bite his head off. So it’s probably a good thing that Poldi has moved out. The zookeepers told the newspapers that Bibi and Poldi just couldn't stand each other anymore. I am just curious how many offsprings they might have produced if any, since the reports have not mentioned about this information.They both weighs about 220 pounds (100 kilos). Let’s hope for the best for both of them.

-Indra Tamang

06/22/2012

Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Hermitage: Damphu Saanjh, 2010

Monday, June 11, 2012

From the chaos of the city to the tranquility of Montana and back to the chaos, in one weeklong cross-country road trip.

From the chaos of New York City to the tranquility of Montana and back to the chaos, in one weeklong cross-country road trip.

East Rosebud Lake of Montana

Back on April 6th, 2012, I set out with some of my family and friends to drive from New York to Montana. The purpose of the trip was to retrieve my mother, who has been visiting from Nepal. She had flown in March with my eldest daughter, Sunita, to visit the huge ranch where Sunita and her husband, Gyurme Sherpa, are caretakers. The ranch is called 'Switchback', and their job is to take care of it and its substantial greenhouse, where they raise organic vegetables. They have a nice house of their own, provided by their employer, where they live with their two children who are becoming real wild western cowboy kids. My mother spent a month there in Montana with them, and she had a wonderful time. I decided it might be fun to drive there rather than go and fetch her by airplane.

There were four of us starting out on the drive from New York; myself, my youngest daughter Zina, my wife’s uncle Keshar Rumba, and my cousin Shanta Babu Thokar. We left at night and drove to Maryland, where we slept at the house of Bishnu Lama, who is a cousin of my first wife who passed away in 1986. The following morning we got back on the road with Bishnu and her father, Sanu Kancha Lama and her mother, along with us. Sanu Kancha is somebody I have known forever. He was a very well respected elder in the village where I grew up. He was everything to everybody who lived there, and he was a great help to me long ago in 1973 or ’74, helping me get my documents in order for making my first trip to the United States with Charles Henri Ford. He’s someone who knows every politician from every corner of Nepal. He received a medal for social work from the late King Birendra. At the time of this trip to Montana, Sanu Kancha was in Maryland with his wife to visit their daughter and her family, and I invited them to come along with us. I was happy when he agreed. We were seven in all heading west from Maryland in my Honda Pilot.

Sanu Kancha Lama

We took the Northern route, through Ohio, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, on to North Dakota along the seemingly endless road to Montana. We saw countless abandoned houses along the way; we passed through little towns that were completely abandoned and others that looked to have been destroyed by tornadoes, although I can’t be sure that is actually what happened. Minnesota was full of lakes.

The first night we spent was in Illinois in "Motel 6". They kept the light on for us, just like the ad promises. The next day we drove almost 1500 miles thinking we’d make our destination by about midnight. We were already in Montana but still a ways from the ranch when I saw that we were almost on empty. I found a gas station but it was only open for self-service, with no open restrooms. While those of us who needed to answer the call of nature took refuge in the bushes and behind various trees, my cousin and I filled up the gas tank, using my credit card. Everyone got back into the Honda, we were all tired but feeling good thinking about the destination, which would be coming in just two short hours. About half a block from the service station, the Honda suddenly died. We were in the middle of nowhere in Montana, with nothing but the sound of crickets all around. The new car was dead. I had no choice to call for a tow truck in Billings, 45 minutes away. Once our car was safe in a garage parking lot, my son-in-law, Gyurme, drove the two hours from the Switchback Ranch to fetch us. We finally arrived at 4 AM, and we had what was meant to be dinner. We ate and slept and then morning came.

Family Picture with mountain views of Montana

My daughter and son-in-law took us sightseeing, and it was beautiful. We looked at beautiful mountains, rivers and snow. There were many deers of different kinds. My son-in-law told me that some deers are not hunted because their meat isn’t considered tasty enough, which is lucky for them. We took a lot of photographs and my mother wanted to be in every picture. She seemed to enjoy everything she did and saw, and at her age, which is 80, she is enamored of all new gadgets; the digital camera, the cell phone and the TV. She liked Montana. Considering what my mother’s young life was like in the village in Nepal, all of these things—traveling in airplanes, mobile telephones, GPS in the car—are nothing short of miraculous.

This was Sanu Kancha’s first trip outside Nepal, and he and his wife experienced just how huge this country is on our trip. Driving makes possible what flying hides: the true experience of distance. Everywhere we looked there seemed to be endless land stretching to infinity, and we all enjoyed it completely.

Farewell

We had arrived at Switchback Ranch in the middle of the night on Sunday, or very early Monday morning. On Tuesday, my daughter Zina, my son-in-law and I drove back to Billings to retrieve my repaired car. I drove it back to the ranch and the next day, Wednesday April 11th, we all said goodbye to my daughter Sunita’s family. With eight people now in my car, including my mother, we set off on the long drive back to New York after two whirlwind days in Big Sky Country.

Family Picture with Mount Rushmore on background

We drove through Wyoming and South Dakota, making a point of visiting Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills. Rushmore looked smaller than it does in pictures. Zina read all the plaques, about the man who created it, and how it took something like 14 years for him to finish the four faces, and then he died. We all liked it. I thought about how whether it was intended or not, because of that one man’s inspiration to create those presidential faces in the rock of the mountain, the state of South Dakota has a lucrative tourist attraction in the middle of nowhere, forever. People make pilgrimages there, and a lot of money is made on that tourism. We had a whole house to stay in that night, called "Lincoln", which was part of a hotel. We had a beautiful view of Mount Rushmore from that house.

Mount Rushmore on South Dakota

Thursday, we made it all the way to Illinois or Minnesota. I played Tamang music the whole way, and we all like it, so that was our soundtrack. We stopped to eat at gas stations and truck stops for sandwiches and whatever we could grab. We stayed in a motel that night. By Friday night we were back in Maryland at my friend Sumitra’s house for dinner and then her birthday cake. Her husband, Keshab, served us drinks and we were all exhausted.

The next day, after spending the night, Sumitra’s mother, Patali maya, Zina and Pancha maya my wife Radhika’s Mitini, or best friend, drove with my cousin Shanta and me back to the chaos of New York City and home.

Our chariot, Honda Pilot, which made our trip possible

The best thing about our trip was the weather. It was perfect. It cooperated completely, except for the wind in Northern Minnesota, where you have to keep both hands on the steering wheel or you’ll blow right off the road. My cousin and I each got one speeding ticket. He got one while making the trip and I got one while returning. Mine was written out by a sheriff in a Stetson hat. I told everyone in the back to be quiet as he came up alongside the window. It was out west somewhere, and he added a little bit of a Clint Eastwood moment to our trip. I liked the trip, but I was glad to be home.

-Indra Tamang

June 11, 2012

Wednesday, February 29, 2012

THE WONDERFUL PAINTINGS OF GERTRUDE CATO

THE WONDERFUL PAINTINGS OF GERTRUDE CATO

02/29/2012

Gertrude Cato

In her apartment in the Dakota, Ruth Ford had many paintings hanging on the walls; so many visitors often commented to me that they felt as if they were visiting a fine art gallery. Ruth and her husband Zachary Scott had enjoyed collecting art for many years, and they enjoyed the friendship of many artists as well.

Potrait of Charles Henri Ford by Gertrude Cato

The walls of Ruth’s apartment were especially full of paintings by Pavel Tchelitchew, the longtime companion of her brother, Charles Henri Ford. But there were also many paintings on the walls done by Gertrude Cato, Charles and Ruth’s mother. Ruth had her mother’s paintings hanging in most of the rooms in her apartment, very special paintings that never got much attention. Gertrude Cato did have one show in New York, at the Blanche Bonestall Gallery in 1946, but other than that, the paintings remained part of the Fords’ private collection at home, and over the last fifty years they have not been seen outside the Dakota.

The paintings are all signed “Gertrude Cato.” She never used her married name of Ford when signing any of her work. Some of her paintings are of cats, particularly interesting-looking, surreal cats, whose faces became very familiar to me with over the many years of seeing them in Ruth’s apartment. In addition to the paintings on the walls, Ruth had many more of her mother’s paintings and drawings stored away, some unopened since the days when they were wrapped in the 1940s and ‘50s.

Painting by Gertrude Cato

Gertrude Cato was born Minnie Gertrude Cato in Copiah County, Mississippi, on September 27^th, 1886, to Henry and Ruth Higdon Cato. She married Charles Lloyd Ford in 1907, and their two children were named after her parents. The Fords owned several hotels in various towns in the South, so while they might not have been fabulously wealthy, they were certainly not poor and Charles and Ruth both went to good private schools as children.

Gertrude always enjoyed the pleasure of traveling and she had a taste for adventure that she shared with Charles and Ruth. She first took them to visit New York City some time in the early 1920s, and it has been written that there were arguments between Gertrude and her husband, Charles Lloyd Ford, over her spending money on frivolous trips that would have been better spent somewhere else, or saved. She was not a typical mother of her time, and her bohemian spirit was inherited by her children. When they were grown, She loved spending time with them, in interesting places. Pavel Tchelitchew gave her painting lessons and encouraged her work, which flourished, although it doesn’t appear that she was particularly ambitious about “success” but painted more for the pleasure of doing it. As an artist Gertrude Cato lived in the shadow of her much more successful children, but there is no evidence to suggest that she minded.

Not long ago Jonathan Rabinowitz, publisher of Turtle Point Press came to visit along with Rose Burlingham, who is presenting an exhibit of Gertrude Cato’s paintings in the gallery of the Harlem Jazz and Gospel Getaway on West 123^rd Street. We opened some of the wrapped drawings that had been stored for so long the wrapping paper had turned brittle and crumbled as we opened them. Thankfully the bright, lively drawings inside were just as pristine as the day they were wrapped. Gertrude Cato’s style is full of color and the pictures are like dreams. One can look into the face of one of the cats and see Charles Henri Ford’s eyes. Jonathan Rabinowitz looked at a painting of three faces together and guessed that they were meant to be Gertrude, Charles and Ruth.

Gertrude, Charles and Ruth

When I forwarded to my email list the press release from Rose Burlingham announcing the show, including a photograph of Gertrude taken by Pavel Tchelitchew, I got an interesting response from a close friend of Ruth’s in Mississippi, named Maude Schuyler Clay. She is an established artist herself, with some of her beautiful photographs of the Mississippi Delta published in a recent book called Delta Land. In her email she wrote:

“Thank you so much for sending the notice about Gertrude Cato. Do you know I have never even seen a picture of Mrs. Ford? And the one you sent is fabulous. This was the lady that my grandmother (Minnie Maude McMullen May) was so frightened of; that her daughter, Ann May (later Eggleston, the mother of William Eggleston the photographer) would be "corrupted" by Mrs. Ford in NYC. She said Mrs. Ford "lived like a gypsy." Of course Ann was fascinated when she lived with Ruth and C.H. and Mrs. Ford in NYC and went to Columbia. She said it was possibly the most interesting bunch of people she ever met in her life. Of course it sounds like it would have been!”

From the stories about Gertrude Cato Ford that remain, it seems that nothing she did was ordinary. She once told Charles about the night that she gave birth to Ruth. She was having a dinner party, and in the middle of it, she got up, told the cook to keep things going, and went to her room to have the baby. She said her guests could hardly believe it.

In 1967, a woman named Barbara Izard (co-author of a book called Requiem for a Nun, Onstage and Off about the play that was written for Ruth Ford by William Faulkner) visited Hazelhurst, Mississippi, where Charles and Ruth were children. There she met a relative of Gertrude Cato’s named Mrs. Gillis Cato who was then in her eighties. Mrs. Gillis Cato told Barbara Izard that she remembered Gertrude as an actress. And she said that in her opinion, Gertrude was more talented as an actress than her daughter Ruth.

It is difficult to find much written about Gertrude Cato, but looking at her many paintings and drawings shows a person of imagination and cleverness. She seems to have been a true free spirit, perhaps something of an eccentric. In a diary entry from December 1950, published in Water From a Bucket A Diary 1948-1957 (Turtle Point Press), Charles Henri Ford writes, “Mother says she’ll buy a cattle-ranch or angora goat farm in Arizona if I want to help run it,” adding a few entries later, in February, that Tchelitchew called Gertrude “a great dreamer.” It is easy to imagine that when Charles decided to start his little magazine, Blues, at age 16, he must have had lots of encouragement from his mother.

A Painting by Gertrude Cato

In 1957, some months after her death, Charles described a colorful dream he had in his diary: “Mother and I were sightseeing (dreamed last night). Was it an open car we were in? She turned her head to look at something and lifted her tight-fitting hat, which came off with her hair (false hair): underneath hat and hair was her close-cropped head. Further down the road along came a man on an enormous pig; he was wearing an Indian Chief’s headdress. I wondered why Mother had had her air clipped: I asked her but she wouldn’t tell me.”

If she could have seen that dream, perhaps Charles’s mother might have turned it into a painting. Charles and Ruth were very close to her until her untimely death in an accident while traveling in Mexico, on January 28^th, 1956. And her presence was always around them as long as they both lived. I hope you will join me in celebrating the extraordinary talent of Gertrude Cato at the opening of her exhibition on Wednesday the 29^th of February 2012. You can schedule a viewing appointment by calling (646) 229-0998.

-Indra Tamang

GERTRUDE CATO

WORKS ON PAPER 1945-50

FEBRUARY 29-MARCH 18

THE PINK ROOM@HARLEM JAZZ AND GOSPEL GETAWAY

2 WEST 123^RD STREET

NEW YORK CITY

OPENING RECEPTION:

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 29^TH 6-8

Friday, February 17, 2012

RIP Whitney Houston

WHITNEY HOUSTON

In memory of Whitney Houston : 9 August 1963 - 11 February 2012

I felt very sad to hear about the death of Whitney Houston last week. She was not someone I knew personally, and I never went to her live performance, but her voice was so present for such a long time that she felt very familiar to me.

I haven’t been in a movie house for years, but I remember going to see “The Bodyguard” when it came out, where she sang the song “I will Always Love You.” I liked her voice very much. It was an extraordinary voice with such a reach. I would hear her on the radio in the car, or in the waiting room of a doctor’s office, in the grocery store, almost everywhere. Her voice was unmistakable.

In the 1980s in Nepal, Charles and I used to listen to "Voice of America" on the radio and they’d play a lot of music from the United States. They’d play Blondie, Patti Smith, Donna Summer, Michael Jackson, and the whole break dancing craze at the time made it all the way to Nepal. I remember going to see a Nepalese break dance performance in Kathmandu. There was a huge crowd and I saw Nepalese men break dancing to Michael Jackson music. In New York there was Studio 54, and while the party was going on, there was always Donna Summer singing “Hot Stuff.” And I remember being in Greece, where there was a station that played American Country Western music, which is where I first heard Dolly Parton sing “9 to 5” and I liked her too. I listened to an interview with Dolly Parton and I liked the way she spoke in her southern accent. Something about the way she talked reminded me a little of Mae West; “Come up and see me sometime.” Another singer I liked was Celine Dion.

Thinking about Whitney Houston has made me think of all these other singers, but that’s what happens. They are all cultural icons. Losing one calls to mind the others. I think Whitney was my favorite. She’s the one I’d always hear in the car; her soothing voice, and it makes me sad to think of her dying so young.

When I heard the news of her death, I realized that I had assumed she was much older than what she was: just 48. Somehow I thought that she must have been at least 60, perhaps because she seems to have existed on this earth for a very long time. I understand that she struggled with alcohol and maybe drugs, and that probably played a part in her demise. When I read that she was found in her bath, it made me think of stories I’ve heard on occasion about people falling asleep in a hot bath and just not waking up. That happens, where a person relaxes in hot water and their heart stops. If you have a sedative in your system it’s probably more likely to happen. But life and death is mystery. Charles used to say, “Die young and leave a beautiful corpse.” Whitney had her troubles, but I imagine that she probably did leave a beautiful corpse.

I know I join many in being thankful to her for all the music she’s left for us. I will pray for her departed soul and for her eternal life, and also for her mother, her daughter and her family.

- Indra Tamang

Friday, February 10, 2012

In Memory of Charles Henri Ford

Charles in Paris.
Photographed by Henri Cartier-Bresson, 1935

Today, February 10^th, 2012, is 104^th years from the day Charles Henri Ford was born. Not a day passes by that I do not think of him and appreciate him. I live surrounded by all the many things he made and wrote. Happy birthday Charles. The vitality of life continues, and you’ll never be forgotten.

- Indra Tamang

February 10^th, 2012.

Sunday, January 8, 2012

Remembering George Whitman, and Paris

01/08/2012

George Whitman in front of "Shakespeare and Company" which he owned

Remembering George Whitman, and Paris

Like many other people must have done, when I read about the passing of George Whitman in the New York Times, I thought of Paris. As the proprietor of the Shakespeare and Company bookshop, George Whitman was there for so long I don’t think anyone would have expected him to not be there forever.

I read the article and thought of my first visit to Paris, five weeks in 1974, with Charles Henri Ford. Charles introduced me to some very interesting people, and George Whitman was one of the first people he took me to meet. We visited him in the bookshop often after that first time. He was very unassuming, and I didn’t have any idea then of the icon that he was. I remember a cat sitting there, and a little upstairs gathering space where people would stay for a few days or longer. There was a coffee pot and a little sofa where people could sleep.

I liked going to the bookshop, and since Charles had his apartment on the Ile St Louis, It was very close by for us, just over the bridge, past Notre Dame. For years to come, whenever we were in Paris, Charles was always very happy to see George. Usually they’d speak in French, so I couldn’t understand much of it. French was Charles’s second language and he always spoke French in Paris, but despite the classes I took at the Alliance Francais, I was never able to really follow a conversation in French. I liked everything in Paris except the language.

George Whitman in his bookshop

One of the people I met in Paris during that first visit was Man Ray. I didn’t know anything about him at that time, of course, and I don’t remember many of the details of the visit because my English was still so limited, but it was very obvious to me that Man Ray had something special about him. Everyone I met through Charles was in someway influential, that I understood, but I had no idea who any of them were. There was Edouard Roditi, who Charles had known since the 1930s when they both published work in the French Surrealist magazine, transition, there was Mary McCarthy, who always invited us to her elaborate parties, we had lots of visits with Brion Gysin at his place, and many times we visited Leonor Fini, who would sit like a grande lady on the sofa in her living room, surrounded by cats. She was somebody who Charles had known since his View magazine days in the forties.

Sometimes Charles and I would make a rendezvous with Ted Joans if he was in Paris when we were, and we’d always arrange to meet him at Shakespeare and Company. We’d say hello to George Whitman, and then we’d go for a big long walk together, always with a destination in mind, an art opening or a movie, and we’d walk for hours. We took many, many long walks in Paris, for miles and miles. I remember the wonderful old-style book and postcard sellers along the river, and the way that they would just lock up their wooden book boxes at night like trunks and go home. Ted Joans spent lots of time in Paris, too. He always had a little tiny apartment somewhere, different ones, that he would call his nest. Ted’s nest was always packed with books, there was always a wife or a girlfriend, and sometimes when he’d be leaving Paris for a while he’d have to find a place to store all his boxes full of books, and I remember more than once going to help him haul all his stuff to Charles’s basement.

For me, that early period of my life with Charles, going around to different cities and visiting different people, was a time of listening more than talking. I just went along and listened. That was a big part of my education. I also went to the first museums of my life in Paris, many of them, and I saw a lot of movies.

I think the last time I saw George Whitman in Paris was in 1986. He was there in his bookshop, just like he always was, and we were glad to see him the way we always were. He was one of the more quiet presences out of all those people I met, and I don’t remember any particular conversations with him, but I liked him, and thinking of Paris will always remind me of him. He was two years and two days short of living to be exactly 100, a long life of quiet influence on many people who will no doubt remember him for a long time to come.

George Whitman December 12, 1913 – December 14, 2011

You can read the New York Times article here:

http://www.nytimes.com/