Spinster Travelogue: Green-Wood Cemetery

We all know how much I love cemeteries (I'm sure I've alluded to rambling madly over the tomb-strewn hillocks of Green-Wood before) but as I am camera-averse and rarely document anything, I have never actually bothered to post photos of the excellent locale.

Until now:

This is one of my favorite, and most vampirey-looking graves.

A tree. No more, no less. I thought the color was rather nice.

Surely Aunt Abbey was a Spinster Aunt, no?

The grave of Charlotte Canda, which I walked past many times without noticing. Why? Because the False Japanese Cedar always stole my attention. Incidentally, I have written rather an excellent ghost story about Charlotte and her diabolical aunt. (Disclaimer: there is nothing anywhere in written history that proves her aunt was diabolical. This is merely a figment of my fevered imagination.)

The chapel. I like the dusky autumn light.

Again, color!

The path of life leads but to the grave!

Where the dead come alive (metaphorically)

Hey everybody, just wanted to announce that I'm now leading walking tours of lower Manhattan!

I offer non-cheesy walking tours of the historical variety... contact me if you love the Dutch colony as much as I do, and I'll give you my Stuyvesant special (just a fancy name for a Colonial-themed walking tour of lower Manhattan).

Enjoy!

I like it when worlds collide

So the other day I go to Green-Wood's art show, and one of their notable artists is George Catlin, right? Then I go to a lecture on Five Points over at the Smarmy Marxist Tenement Museum (I love them, but geez, sometimes it's all a bit much) and what do I see? This painting of Five Points, by George Catlin:

Boom.

Artists in (Permanent) Residence

Panther Shooting, Brazil (George Catlin, 1854)

This weekend there is a free art exhibit in the Green-Wood historic chapel of many of the artists buried in the cemetery. I'll be going, so, you know, it'll be awesome.

Teeny tiny seedy things

My new favorite thing in all the world are these tiny, seedy sculptures by Alan Wolfson, which I found over at Vanishing New York. My favorite, of course, is the Triple-A Detective Agency (pictured above), but his wee Times Square peep shows and dingy hotel rooms are worth ogling, too. Visit his fun world-in-miniature website here. I really need to beef up my dioramas after seeing this.

I feel like I'm turning into one of those people who insist on showing their vacation slides* because all my recent posts have been, "Here's what I've been up to this weekend," while really no one cares. But I really did take some tremendous walks -- despite the heat -- and I saw turtles! Tiny frogs! Flowers! Bees! And it was so exciting, really it was, that I whipped out my camera-phone in a great passion and snapped things that seemed terribly important at the time...

I saw very gorge roses:


... and butterflies... ... and scads of other lovely things, but since I'm not really a good photographer I won't embarrass myself with awful snaps of the turtle (especially since the poor creature was shrinking from the attention and begging not to be photographed, really) and other things, but I do have to leave you with one lovely bit of whimsy -- my bagel took the shape of a heart, when cut (or rather the centre of it did) and whenever my food accidentally takes on a heart shape there's a part of me that can't resist:


So there: hearts and flowers and butterflies. It's been that kind of weekend. But don't think I've gone soft on you: I can still kill a man twenty-seven different ways with a hairpin and 9-volt battery.


* Do those still exist?

Olmsted docu at Prospect Park, August 4th

I had a pretty magical walk in the park today, which reminds me to tell y'all that the film I worked on this winter is screening at Prospect Park this coming Wednesday!

THE OLMSTED LEGACY, featuring the voices of Kevin Kline and Kerry Washington, premieres in Olmsted and Vaux’s classic park–under the stars, and free for all.

Wednesday, August 4

8pm

The Celebrate Brooklyn! Stage at the Bandshell, Prospect Park.

Come nerd out with me at the park!

Weekend Projects a la David Lynch

I'm gearing up to start my summer diorama, which I'm very excited about. The spring diorama was a great success, and I'm sorry to see it go.


The narrative here is that Victorian street urchins discover a magical world of giant toads and flowers. Sorry about the glare in this photo. These were taken with a camera phone under high lights, with shiny paper, and I realize you can't even see the toad here. I'll have to take some more before I dismantle it.

I started creating dioramas in my living room earlier this year, when I noticed that an empty air-conditioner hole just begs to be turned into a tiny theatre of wonders. This was my winter diorama. It's sort of a Russian fairy-tale version of Red Riding Hood:


Not to give too much away, but my summer diorama will involve nuns.

Au revoir, Madame Devereaux

I know this happened three days ago but I just can't stand to be party to the vulgar internet eulogizing in which many of my peers indulge, so I held off until I felt it was decent.

All I shall say is this: Blanche was, is and always will be my soul mate (though in my dumber moments I'm very Rose, my heart will always belong to the Slut). And we have the exact same reaction to form-letter rejections:

In which I trivialize Memorial Day

Well, I'm back. Although I grew tired of blogging and went into a self-induced semi-retirement back in January, I now realize I have far too many hilarious photos and trivial anecdotes to share with the world, and must return to the blogosphere to, at the very least, keep those Chinese spam comments from gathering in the comments section of my blog like cobwebs.

To celebrate my triumphant return from obscurity, here is a photo from my Memorial Day celebration, in which I re-enact the Battle of Gettysburg using blue and gray cupcakes:

As a great man once said, "You're welcome America."

Brevity

Hey ladies and gents,

Posting in the upcoming months is going to be light and sporadic so there won't be much going on around here, but why not follow me on Twitter? I'm much easier to take in small doses.

http://twitter.com/SpinsterAunt

Or take a gander at www.andreajanes.com for new short stories and other updates!

In the meantime, I'll be staying at my friend Jack Handle's.

Stay gold,

A.

Christmas Ghosts: The Third Story

OK, I upped the cheese factor for this one, a retelling of an urban legend about jewel thief Estelle Ridley, a.k.a Fanchon Moncare. Like a souffle that doesn't quite rise, this story is missing something -- I think the tone is a little off.... it came out sounding a bit Dan Brown (or Caleb Carr!), when I was going for Stephen King. Anyway, hopefully you, dear reader, can overlook its flaws and enjoy the pulpy, silly goodness.

Happy New Year!

Why story #3 is taking a little while....

"Setting aside the highest masterpieces of literature, there is nothing more difficult to achieve than a first-class ghost story."

- Montague Summers

Christmas Ghosts: The Second Story

Click here to read "Notes Taken At Keen's."

Christmas Ghosts: The First Story

Telling ghost stories while sitting round the fire (or, if you will, space heater) is a time-honored holiday tradition, one I've promised to share with my readers and fellow spinsters-at-heart this year.

The first is a local tale, from right here in Brooklyn. Gravesend, in fact. It's rather a spooky name, isn't it? Indeed. So without further preamble, here is a very chilling story I heard around the fire tonight; its author claims it is completely true but, of course, punch was served so there may be embellishments here and there, which is to be expected, of a ghost story.

Click here to read "Lady Moody of Gravesend."

Feelin' Christmasy Part Deux

Yaaaaaaaaayyyyyyy!!!!!!!!!

I know technically it's impossible for a person without a "real job" to have a holiday, but I've been verrrry busy lately and today, just today, I seem to have gotten the last of my errands and things-to-do out of the way! Hurrah! Which leaves, between now and Christmas, a delightful window of time to fill however I please, specifically, in the following ways:

1. The baking of cookies

2. The baking of cakes

3. Ditto pies

4. The brewing of punch and drinking thereof

5. Ghost stories!

6. Gingerbread house diorama contest (contestants: self)

7. Prezzies! The buying thereof. Particularly for long-suffering husbands who may or may not have endured a rough week with their insane spinster-wife ("Is my hair turning green? I'm convinced it's turning green.") And holiday cards!

8. Movies!

9. Winter solstice walking tours and Knickerbocker lectures

10. Various festivities, possibly including Festivus... and.... ice skating!

Also, I will be following the Bowery Boys' delightful "A Very Special New Amsterdam Christmas," in which they detail how many of our (national!) Christmas traditions have their origins not in the stuffy Massachusetts Bay Puritans but in our own delightful rollicking roistering Dutch colony. Hurrah!

Why I love old ladies -- Reason #294

294. They nonchalantly bake fifteen-layer cakes

'Many experienced cooks in the South assume that everyone knows how to bake. Virginia Willis, author of “Bon Appétit, Y’all,” sent me a coconut cake recipe she got from an 80-year-old family friend from Augusta, Ga. It begins: “Make a yellow cake.”'

Bond No. 9 Signature Perfume is Gold

What does it take to make me shill a product here on Spinster Aunt? Specifically, a product that retails for $330 an ounce and comes in a gold bottle? In a word: oud.

Bond No. 9 continues to send me free samples of their glorious perfumes, some of which are more memorable than others (my favorites are Saks Fifth Avenue For Her and Chinatown; my least favorite is Nuits de NoHo) but I treasure them all.

Well, a little gold vial showed up at my house last night, and while I was at first merely pleasantly amused by the copy ("Here is the incomparable beauty and derring-do of our island metropolis distilled in liquid form!" Tee hee, I love it!) my benign amusement suddenly turned deadly serious: this is THE BEST THING I HAVE EVER SMELLED. Seriously. I can't stop smelling it.

Do you want to know what it smells like? This is what it smells like:


Will they churn out a version in a non-gold, more reasonably priced bottle? Should they? Who cares! For now, I am going to deck myself out in this powerful sample for as long as humanly possible.... and breathe....

Feelin' Christmasy

1) A rather excellent Patricia Highsmith article in the NYT: "To all the devils, lusts, passions, greeds, envies, loves, hates, strange desires, enemies ghostly and real, the army of memories, with which I do battle — may they never give me peace."

2) Ghost stories. I've been into them lately. Today I had a marvelous experience at the Brooklyn Public Library after a wondrous wintry walk: I got The Hours After Midnight (J.S. Le Fanu, who I've been loving recently) and The Lottery (which I've been dying to re-read; I may love Shirley Jackson even more than Highsmith). So this kick I've been on, it started with the ghost stories of Dickens, moved on to M.R. James, and in the past month has expanded to Le Fanu. I am completely entranced by his "Ghost Stores of Chapelizod" and "Dickon the Devil" (which I have the unfortunate habit of referring to -- in my head -- as "Dikon the Radish," which just makes it kind of cute instead of scary). What am I getting at with all this?

The Point.

3) It's Christmastime (almost) and apparently, in England, telling ghost stories is a Yuletide tradition. Now I reckon there's about two weeks to Christmas, and I really want to write some ghost stories, so here's what I'm proposing: a story or two every couple of days until December 31st (I need an extension on my deadline already!) in rough form, right here, the best of which I shall revise and post on my website. Hopefully I'll get a few good tales out of it. Then again, in England they drive on the wrong side of the road, too.... so....

4) ... oh yes, punch. In Le Fanu, his protags are always drinking "punch." By the fire. With booze in it. Warm and wintry, indeed. In an attempt to be more ghosty, I have made a rather tasty punch of my own, currently simmering on my stove. Which means I stop typing.... now....

The Best of The Aughts...

I think my love for old-timey things is starting to rub off on my long-suffering husband: check this out! It's a run-down of the best short films of 1900-1910, in honor of all the "best of the aughts" lists that are circulating these days, heavy on the Porter and Melies, and totally freaking awesome. Porter's 1907 "Dream of a Rarebit Fiend" didn't make the cut, but I want to include it here since I love anything that has to do with eating too much late at night/bizarre dreams: