FLAPPER FANNY SAYS, By Anericn Cartoonist, Ethel Hays (1892-1989).

Do you like poems?

yes! my favorites are The Tiger and the unnamed werewolf fridge poem

Charlotte Eriksson

My best friend and I had a call recently—she’s back with her family for a bit helping out with some hometown stuff. As part of the stuff, she’s been going through a (deceased) relative’s scrapbook, compiled in the American Midwest circa 1870-1900 and featuring mostly cut-out figures from the ads of the day.

She talked about how painstaking this relative’s work was. (Apparently the relative was careful to cut out every finger, every cowlick; this was by no means carelessly or hastily assembled.) But she also she talked about how—the baby on the baking soda ad is ugly, it is so ugly, why anyone would clip this heinously ugly illustrated baby and paste it into a scrapbook? Why would you save the (terribly told, boring) ghost story that came with your box of soap?

(Why include these things in the first place? we asked each other. ”There’s a kind of anti-capitalism to it,” she mused.)

And we discussed that for a bit—how most of the images, stories, artists, and ads were local, not national; they’re pulled from [Midwestern state] companies’ advertisements in [Midwestern state] papers, magazines, and products. As a consequence, you’re not looking at Leyendecker or Norman Rockwell illustrations, but Johann Spatz-Smith from down the road, who took a drawing class at college.

(College is the state college, and he came home on weekends and in the summer to help with the farm or earn some money at the plant.)

But it also inspired a really interesting conversation about how—we have access to so much more art, better and more professional art, than any time in history. As my bff said, all you have to do to find a great, technically proficient and lovely representational image of a baby, is to google the right keywords. But for a girl living in rural [Midwestern state] of the late 1800s, it was the baking soda ad, or literal actual babies. There was no in-between, no heading out to the nearby art museum to study oil paintings of mother and child, no studying photographs and film—such new technologies hadn’t diffused to local newspapers and circulars yet, and were far beyond the average person’s means. But cheap, semi-amateur artists? Those were definitely around, scattered between towns and nearby smallish cities.

It was a good conversation, and made me think about a couple things—the weird entitlement that “professional” and expensive art instills in viewers, how it artificially depresses the appetite for messy unprofessional art, including your own; the way that this makes your tastes narrower, less interesting, less open.

By that I mean—maybe the baby isn’t ugly! Maybe you’ve just seen too many photorealistic babies. Maybe you haven’t really stopped to contemplate that your drawing of a baby (however crude, ugly, or limited) is the best drawing of a baby you can make, and the act of drawing that lumpen, ugly baby is more sacred and profoundly human than even looking at a Mary Cassatt painting.

And even if that isn’t the case….there was this girl in [American Midwestern state] for whom it was very, very important that she capture every finger, curl, and bit of shading for that ugly soap ad baby. And some one hundred years later, her great-something-or-other took pains to preserve her work—because how terribly human it is, to seek out all the art we can find that resonates with us, preserve it, adore it.

It might be the most human impulse we have.

Perigord, France - by Robert Anderson, American

Introduction of Pollution (Good Omens deleted scene)

when kafka said “all the love in the world is useless when there is total lack of understanding” and when richard siken said “if you love me, you don’t love me in a way I understand.”

being an older sibling is like. you've never known a life without me. mom yelled at me and it taught her she never wanted to yell at you. I painted my room purple and grey and then you did too. we live in the same house but I haven't spoken to you in months. I don't know your favorite color. I saw it was going to rain so I picked you up from school on my way home so your books wouldn't get wet. i was so worried when you woke up sick when you were three. you don't remember being sick. mom and dad made their worst mistakes with me and I'm glad they didn't make them with you. I'm doing everything for the first time so you won't be in the dark. I don't know any of your friend's names anymore. I used to know them all. if something happens to mom and dad you won't have to worry because everything will fall to me. you don't like to be home alone but even if you don't see me just knowing I'm there makes you feel better. at least that's what mom told me. you still give me jars to open for you because you can't quite get them. I only see you during dinner. i'd never even think about missing one of your concerts. I stand at the counter when I eat and now you do, too. when offered a selection of books you picked the same one I did when i was your age. I'm terrified you compare yourself to me. I love you. I don't know if you like me. I want you to. mom says dinner's ready

Happy Good Omens renewal eheheheheheehhhhhhh