Perhaps my love of Art Deco is hereditary. For their wedding venue, my parents chose an Art Deco masterpiece, The Ambassador Hotel, in the heart of Milwaukee. The year was 1933 and the elegant hotel was five years old.

The Art Deco style was born in Europe, primarily Paris, around 1900. Its design predecessor, Art Nouveau, consisted of nature inspired designs; tendrils, curves and arabesques. Art Deco, named from the Exposition Internationale Des Arts Decoratifs in Paris in 1925, was based on speed, luxury, new materials and geometry…..circles, squares and zig zags. It was thoroughly modern.

I recently had the opportunity to visit America’s Mecca of Art Deco, Miami Beach, Florida. South Beach is the largest National Register District in America having over 800 registered Art Deco sites. Although the area had fallen on extremely hard times by the 1980’s, it was brought back to its full glory by two amazing preservationists, Barbara Baer Capitman and Leonard L. Horowitz.

A long stroll up Ocean Drive and Collins Avenue is like being transported to a land of architectural confections. Pastel shades of mint green, lavender, pale orange, yellow, baby blue and pink make the geometric hotels resemble giant cakes with tasteful floral decorations. Every aspect of these buildings is a visual treat including the elegant Art Deco typefaces that proclaim their names.

A taste of America’s Riviera in pictures…

Click here for a lovely and poignant story about the man behind the colors. The color palette he chose is sublime.

And below is a movie of the pictures…

Today marks the start of  the eleventh year of The Suitcase Lady Blog. It began as my personal antidote to the Iraq War frenzy. All my favorite people and I were consumed with grief over that foolhardy venture. I turned to writing about positive things as a brief weekly escape into happier worlds.

Now, eleven years later, our country is in a far more dangerous place than those horrific war years. Many of us are struggling to find effective ways to resist the injustices and Constitutional carnage being spewed out daily by our new leaders. And we are also struggling to keep our personal lives balanced in this surreal environment.

I intend to keep writing about some of the things that bring joy to our lives: nature, art, travel, books, friends, food and humor. I do believe all is lost if there are no moments of laughter.

In that spirit, I wish to share four short passages from the book I just finished, Clownfish Blues by Tim Dorsey. I laughed through the entire 334 pages, a most welcome respite from the present American disaster.

In the first passage, Serge A. Storms, Tim Dorsey’s Florida history-loving character, has taken a temporary job as a grocery clerk and has been assigned to sell Florida Lottery tickets.

• Another customer stepped up to the counter. “Six quick picks, please.”
  “Jesus, don’t buy lottery tickets,” said Serge. “The store won’t tell you this because they’re in on it, but the whole thing is a fool’s bet. It’s a tax on people who are bad at arithmetic.
  “What the hell is going on here? Just give me the tickets!”
  “Buy food instead,” said Serge. “That’s a sure thing”.
  “I am buying food.” The man set an item on the counter.
  “I’m buying chips”.
  “But you’re buying the twelve-pack of small individual bags! It’s the worst possible cost-per-ounce scenario! Work the numbers, man!

 

• Traffic stacked up on a lazy, hot stretch of Old Dixie Highway running south from Miami to Homestead. A carpet-remnant outlet just held its eighth going-out-of-business sale, but the turnout was so anemic that they had to go out of business.

 

• The number one rule in life is when people point out that you lied, just flatly deny it. Of course The Daily Show will run clips of you saying it, but nobody’s paying attention. Don’t you follow elections in this country?

 

• These new babies are now called smartphones. I don’t know how I managed to get along without one! Tap, tap, tap. “I’ve never possessed a cooler gadget in my life, and I’ve only begun to scratch the surface of its potential. But from what I’ve seen so far, these phones are the pinnacle of human achievement. Forget nuclear fission and stem-cell research. Every culture on every continent now has instant, around-the-clock, multiple media platforms to share with the rest of the globe that cats like to sit in boxes.

I love old fashioned movies where the romantic couple finds one another and lives happily ever after…….with each other.

Unfortunately, most modern romantic films don’t work that way any more. Two people do find each other, they do fall in love and they do find happiness in being together. But in the end they go their separate ways because each needs to become a super celebrity or another Steve Jobs. End of movie. Stardom wins. It’s all about the “me”.

The fatal flaw, the big lie in this type of movie is obvious: only one in a jillion of us is going to be a superstar. Most everyone is an average, ordinary person muddling through life. If we hitch our wagons to a celebrity star, we most likely will end up in an emotional black hole.

I am not against ambition, determination and achievement. But finding time for each other, those who make our lives rich and happy, those who love us, is equally important.

Since I’m a hopeless romantic and it is Valentines Day, I will end with this statement from President Jimmy Carter. “The best thing I ever did was marrying Rosalynn.”

After 70 years of marriage, this couple proves it’s possible to be partners and succeed in both love and work. And it is also worth noting that they both have retained a terrific sense of humor.

My paternal grandmother knew how to multipurpose her kitchen chairs. She hung her pasta to dry over the chair backs. Being thoroughly German, grandmother made noodles. The noodles were used mainly for her wonderful homemade chicken soup. Leftover noodles were fried in butter for a quick, easy supper.

I never learned how to make pasta from her, and my mother was strictly a Creamettes woman. My lack of ability in the homemade pasta department, however, does not disqualify me as a member in good standing in the pasta fan club. A week without pasta is a sad week and a two pasta week is not excessive.

Pasta in its multiple shapes and sizes is the ultimate comfort food. Even the names of pastas are delightful….

Conchiglioni- large shells
Farfalle- butterflies
Orecchiette- little ears
Radiatore- radiators
Rotelle- little wheels
Mostaccioli- mustaches
Vermicelli- little worms

Turning pasta into a delicious, anticipated meal can take fifteen minutes or be a major production. Cooks of all ability levels can get satisfaction from creating a homemade pasta dinner. Boxed or frozen pasta entrees seem superfluous.

Pasta also gets stars for being an economical entree. Pasta, baby peas, a dollop of butter, fresh basil, lemon rind and a sprinkle of grated Italian cheese is a feast which costs little to concoct. The leftover money can be spent on wine.

One of my favorite children’s books is “More Spaghetti, I Say”, by Rita Golden Gelman. The main character, a monkey named Minnie, has a spaghetti fixation:

“I need more. More spaghetti, I say. I love it. I love it so much!
I love it on pancakes with ice cream and ham. With pickles and cookies, bananas and jam. I love it with mustard and marshmallow stuff. I eat it all day. I just can’t get enough.”

My sentiments exactly.

Christo and his late wife, Jeanne-Claude, are internationally famous installation artists who wrap things up. Whereas we ordinary people wrap packages and presents, this couple thinks more monumentally. They have wrapped the German Reichstag, an ancient Roman wall, a Spoleto fountain, a medieval tower, the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art, a coast in Australia, a park of trees and the Pont Neuf Bridge in Paris.

When not wrapping, the pair has surrounded eleven Florida islands in shocking pink fabric, erected 1,340 blue umbrellas in Japan and 1,760 yellow umbrellas in California. Millions of visitors viewed their 7,503 orange fabric gates in Central Park.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude were born on the same day, June 13, 1935, he in Gabrovo, Bulgaria and she in Casablanca, Morocco of French parents. The two met in Paris in 1958 when Christo painted a portrait of Jeanne-Claude’s mother. They began collaborating on art projects in Europe, moved to America in 1964 and made New York their home base. Both became American citizens. Years of teamwork ended in 2009 when Jeanne-Claude died from a brain aneurysm.

According to the couple, the purpose of their gigantic constructions is to create works of art for joy and beauty. They financed their works entirely through selling the preparatory drawings and collages for the projects. No licensing deals were ever entered into, and all workers on their installations were paid. The locales where their artworks were constructed reaped huge windfalls of tourist dollars.

Although all of their works took years or decades to come to fruition, none exist at the moment. They were all created to be temporal; some existed only a fortnight.

Until last week, Christo was working on the final stages of his largest project, a silvery, 42 mile canopy floating over the Arkansas River in Colorado. He has invested over 20 years and 15 million of his own dollars into “Over the River”. The artist now has cancelled the project.

An excerpt from an interview of Christo by a New York Times reporter follows:

“Christo said the Job-like patience required in seeking approval for his projects has always been an element of the spirit of the projects themselves. He needs to feel passion about them, in the same way a more traditional painter and sculptor does, he added. But in this case, ‘that pleasure is gone because of the nature of the new administration. I am not excited about the project anymore’, he said. ‘Why should I spend more money on something I don’t want to do?’ “

Perhaps Christo could become interested in wrapping The Statue of Liberty. That would be apropos of the moment.