Robert Frank continued

The couple on the motorcycle they mentioned.

The segregated trolley car.

Yet another street candid.

Three queers with a sign behind them that reads "Don't Miss...?"

Art-e-fact Friday: Robert Frank +Sharon Goldstein

Heard on All Things Considered
August 30, 2009 - GUY RAZ, host:
Let's flash back now to the 1950s. Jack Kerouac had just rambled across the country, trying to capture a gritty side of the American spirit. The result: his landmark book "On the Road." And a young man from Switzerland set out to do the same thing only with a camera.



Robert Frank delivered a collection of photos in his book called "The Americans." The photos were far from the well-lit, tidy compositions Americans were used to. They were dark, grainy and candid images of ordinary people: a couple sharing a motorcycle in Indianapolis, whites and blacks riding a segregated trolley car in New Orleans and a girl working an elevator in a Miami Beach hotel.



Jack Kerouac wrote an introduction to the book that included this line: That little ole lonely elevator girl looking up, sighing in an elevator full of blurred demons. What's her name and address? And for half a century, we didn't have an answer until now.



Ms. SHARON COLLINS: My name is Sharon Collins, and I'm the elevator girl in Robert Frank's "The Americans."



RAZ: That photograph that Jack Kerouac writes about, the girl in the elevator, became one of Robert Frank's most recognizable. And for decades, you had no idea that you were the subject, right?



Ms. COLLINS: Yeah. No.



RAZ: Tell me about when you first saw it.



Ms. COLLINS: When San Francisco's Museum of Modern Art first opened, I think it was more than 10 years ago, I went through floor by floor. And I stood in front of this particular photograph for probably a full five minutes, not knowing why I was staring at it, and then it really dawned on me that the girl in the picture was me.



RAZ: It's now the 50th anniversary of Robert Frank's book, "The Americans," and there's an exhibit in San Francisco. What made you decide to come forward now, especially when you've known about this for several years?



Ms. COLLINS: Well, it came back this past summer. And there was a review of the exhibit in the San Francisco Chronicle, and pictured on the front of the entertainment section was the photo of me. I told my two sons about it, my husband, and they said, you've got to call them. So I called.



RAZ: Sharon Collins, you were known as Sharon Goldstein back then in 1955.



Ms. COLLINS: Yes.



RAZ: So you got this job at the Sherry Frontenac Hotel.



Ms. COLLINS: Sherry Frontenac, yeah.



RAZ: And that was in Miami Beach. And…



Ms. COLLINS: I grew up in Miami Beach. And when I was 15 years old, all the other kids were going off to summer camp. My mother was the sole support of our family. And I couldn't go to summer camp, so I made - I guess I made my own.



RAZ: So you got this job as an elevator girl.



Ms. COLLINS: Yeah, all the skill for that.
(Soundbite of laughter)



RAZ: Do you remember Robert Frank taking that photograph of you, this iconic photograph?



Ms. COLLINS: I wish I did. I don't remember it. There were lots of tourists that came through, and lots of people had cameras. And guys used to like to take pictures of me, and I'd bat my eyes at them and flirt.



RAZ: In this shot, your expression is almost unreadable. Kerouac guessed that you were lonely. Do you think Jack Kerouac captured you accurately?



Ms. COLLINS: I think he saw in me something that most people didn't see. You know, I have a big smile and a big laugh. So people see, you know, one thing in me. And I suspect that somehow Robert Frank and Jack Kerouac saw something that was deeper that only people who were really close to me can see, and it's not necessarily loneliness, it's, I don't know, dreaminess.



RAZ: Sharon Collins recognized herself as the elevator girl from Robert Frank's famous 1955 photograph. She joined us from KQED in San Francisco. Mrs. Collins, thank you so much for joining us.



Ms. COLLINS: And thank you. It's a pleasure.



RAZ: The 50th anniversary exhibit of Robert Frank's photos is en route to New York, where it opens next month at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. And you can see Frank's photo of the elevator girl then and an updated photo now at the new npr.org.

Small Packages

Normally I'm not a huge fan of surprises, so Young Blood went ahead and told me to look for something fun in the mail. He also said what to expect, sorta. "If I bought you a scarf from my trip to P-town, would you wear it?" "Sure." "What if it were a wig?" "Yeah, ok." "Cool." Hmm, I guess I'm not getting another necklace.

YB is, in many ways, different from me. He writes thank you cards. And he remembers to send them in a timely fashion. He also wakes up at 5am, 5 days/week to go to The Native Plant Center near his school where he does work-study in inevitably 100 degree weather (80 degree humidity in the Fall). Whereas I doubt that I'll ever call myself a "Morning Person" and I keep one small fern at the office. Still, last year's gift of a single strand of red seeds and beach-colored stones was artfully sprung. He hadn't bothered to ask what type of accessories I'm into (earrings) and I figured he chose red because it's popular (at least around the Xmas holiday). Wait, Mom used to say it was her favorite color--and maybe it's mine too?

This time around, I won't ask Young Blood for a reason ("You know, you don't have to snail mail me anything. I know you're looking for a job-job."). I'll just have to thank him for thinking I have such good taste.

Methinks there should be longer 3-day weekends

There's nothing like going to bed at 1:00am on Sunday night after a weekend out-of-town, KNOWING that you need to get up at 6:00am, and proceeding to wake up EVERY HOUR ON THE HOUR until the alarm goes off at zero.five.hundred.thirty.hours.

Your ever-patient Squeeze, rubbing a shoulder blade.
"Hey, it's going to be okay."
"No, it's not," you snarl back...

More to come soonish.

I'll get better at his multi-tasking thing

A "Raise My Science IQ" goal is occupying major head space lately - at noticeable expense to The Blog. I'm hoping my creative writing juices return after the initial shock* of dissections wears off.

*and awe

Sorry! Only a few days late, I wouldn't forget our anniversary!!!

"A Birthday" by Christina Rossetti

My heart is like a singing bird
Whose nest is in a water'd shoot;
My heart is like an apple-tree
Whose boughs are bent with thick-set fruit;
My heart is like a rainbow shell
That paddles in a halcyon sea;
My heart is gladder than all these,
Because my love is come to me.

Raise me a daïs of silk and down;
Hang it with vair and purple dyes;
Carve it in doves and pomegranates,
And peacocks with a hundred eyes;
Work it in gold and silver grapes,
In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys;
Because the birthday of my life
Is come, my love is come to me.

Part of the reason I left TX State, and then started thinking about another profession

9 patients made nearly 2,700 ER visits in Texas
Wed Apr 1, 9:19 pm ET, Associated Press

AUSTIN, Texas – Just nine people accounted for nearly 2,700 of the emergency room visits in the Austin area during the past six years at a cost of $3 million to taxpayers and others, according to a report. The patients went to hospital emergency rooms 2,678 times from 2003 through 2008, said the report from the nonprofit Integrated Care Collaboration, a group of health care providers who care for low-income and uninsured patients.

"What we're really trying to do is find out who's using our emergency rooms ... and find solutions," said Ann Kitchen, executive director of the group, which presented the report last week to the Travis County Healthcare District board.

Eight of the nine patients have drug abuse problems, seven were diagnosed with mental health issues and three were homeless. Five are women whose average age is 40, and four are men whose average age is 50, the report said, the Austin American-Statesman reported Wednesday.

"It's a pretty significant issue," said Dr. Christopher Ziebell, chief of the emergency department at University Medical Center at Brackenridge, which has the busiest ERs in the area.

Solutions include referring some frequent users to mental health programs or primary care doctors for future care, Ziebell said.

"They have a variety of complaints," he said. With mental illness, "a lot of anxiety manifests as chest pain."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090402/ap_on_re_us/frequent_er_patients

25 Writers Who Influence(d) Me

Shar tagged me with this. Given the MeMe's rules -- "These are not necessarily your favorite writers or those you most admire, but writers who have influenced you" -- and a slight OCD tendency towards constant revision, shall do my best to keep the list as-is (i.e. alphabetized but otherwise unabridged):

1. Hans Christian Anderson
2. Gloria Anzaldua
3. Aphra Behn
4. Enid Blyton
5. Mikhail Bulgakov
6. Philip Caputo
7. Samuel Taylor Coleridge
8. Joseph Conrad
9. Roald Dahl
10. Angela Davis
11. Frantz Fanon
12. Nadine Gordimer
13. Nathaniel Hawthorne
14. Henrik Ibsen
15. June Jordan
16. R Zamora Linmark
17. Carson McCullers
18. Terry Pratchett
19. Ninotchka Rosca
2o. Christina Rossetti
21. Arundhati Roy
22. Zitkala Sa
23. Mary Shelley
24. John Steinbeck
25. Virginia Woolf

Like the sorcerer in Disney's Fantasia - except sexy and with dykier fanfare

I'm really fucking annoyed. As an alternative to musings on the time, energy and money required to accomplish a myriad tasks, I spent the evening ogling local celebrities. If I were just (a lot) more theatrically inclined, I might have crushed on the white-hot talented Carolyn Kuan eons ago. Ah well, as the old saying goes, "better late than never".

Associate Conductor Carolyn Kuan traveled to Geneva in late October [of 2008] to inaugurate the Large Hadron Collider, the largest particle accelerator in the world, built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) to study the origins of the universe. Kuan led the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande in a performance of ORIGINS, a multimedia presentation featuring the music of contemporary composer Philip Glass and both earthly and outer-space images projected on a cinema-sized screen.

short 'n sweet 'n graphic love

Honey, you coming to get me?

After overcoming a few obstacles at the airport,
me and Dee found ourselves a cozy nook,
in a downstairs bedroom at Chez DJ Pink's.

Whoa, DJ Pink

Half-day treks followed by home-cooked meals and, last but not least, a bonafide Black Light office party. Wow to our Winter Carnival hosts for spoiling you, me, and everyone at the lodge rotten.

Ooh la la


Too bad you didn't capture the "Snowchick Wearing Just Snowshoes " picture you hinted at. But hey Babe, I promise to break out the furry embroidered boots if/when you get us invited to hula hoop at Burning Man...

Click here http://www.pbase.com/gshotfoto to view burning_man_2004 and '06 galleries

Dear Diary, what a sad soppy hot mess

My dear little friend Tiffany was rubbing it in the other night that there's a 9 year age gap between us. I managed to express my indifference to the "you were born waaay before Facebook technology" routine by turning my surprisingly firm and supple bustier away from her to discuss the new relationship with her older--by a year, excuse moi--sister. Amy's happy that coupling seems to suit me. Yes. Me too.

All the same, I feel as if I'm neglecting the folks who knew me before I began using baby talk at the grown-ups' table. (Will spare you the details since my list of nicknames for Dee is ongoing, with banana slug becoming a quick favorite.) While I've enjoyed getting togehter for happy hour, dinner, etc. with Dee's sibs and friends during the Christmas break...I'm beginning to miss my old school chums. And I feel especially bad about not calling my half-brother enough.

I recognize that a certain level of angst is Survivor's Guilt rearing its ugly, nagging head. But I also fervently wish it was February already.