In the Labyrinth

In Memory of My Mother: Tibetan A Ice Lhamo: The World Beneath the Tents by Jeanette Snyder

In 1964 my mother, Jeanette Snyder, then a graduate student in Tibetan Studies at the University of Washington, received a Fulbright Grant to study Tibetan theater in India, Nepal, and Sikkim, countries that had welcomed the flow of Tibetan exiles after the 1959 uprising. As a child, awaiting her return in the States, I loved her letters so full of fabulous descriptions of India and heroic, non–motherly sorts of adventures. During one of her  visits, I asked her if she would recount for the blog her early experiences seeing Lha mo, the Tibetan opera she had come to study. What a pleasure it was to venture together into the basement, unpack the boxes of notes, field drawings, and photographs and listen to her recall her exhilaration at that first performance. While she took quite a few photographs, all I have of her at that event is this undeveloped image of at the far left, her turned away face, chin resting in her hand, and the sweep of her braid. I can tell she is smiling. So here is the article she wrote for Journal of Mythic Arts in 2005. — Midori Snyder

I sat in Glenary's Tea Room, dawn just breaking, wolfing down my substantial English breakfast in preparation for the day long event to come. Outside the window the trickle of Tibetans dressed in their best, carrying aluminum teapots filled with chang(beer), packets of snacks and lunch, cushions, umbrellas, babies on their back, toddlers in hand, and the occasional little dog tucked into the chest fold of a robe, had increased to a steady flow moving up along the high street beneath my window. I gulped down the last of my tea and grabbed my camera and tape recorder, eager to join the excited throng headed in the direction of the Darjeeling Tibetan School grounds.

The Himalayan Range was bright in the distance and the day promised to be fair. It was spring 1964 in Darjeeling, India, and I was on my way to experience my first live performance of A lce Lha mo or lha mo. The name lha mo is most commonly explained by Tibetans to have originated from the portrayal by actors of the many female roles of goddesses or "lhamo" that are found in the plays. A lce means "elder sister." Read More > > 

 

**And here are two  more posts with Jeanette's field drawings and notes.: Bittersweet Afternoon Under the Tent and More Field Drawings

"From A Friend," the Art of the Calling Card

I have been going through a cigar box of collected calling cards from my great grandmother and I am astonished by the variety of pretty designs combined with the elegant scripts. It just seems such a lovely convention and I am rather sorry we don't do it anymore. Now we hand out "business cards" which have every conceivable method of contacting us crammed on the card -- and while it's true the designs can be quiet striking -- their function is so different than these beauties, which was simply to announce or memorialize one's visit. That my great grandmother gathered them together and stored them says something too about her visual delight in keeping them, not just as mementos but small slips of domestic art. I love too that they were used equally by both men and women.

So I thought I would share them with you and have created a little gallery of all the cards which you can find here -- or in the right hand column for future reference. Seeing them all together really makes me want to design a few for myself -- and to hell with the clever, efficient business card!

Here are some of my favorites (though I confess to being besotted by all of them):

 

 

The last calling card is especially unique as it is made from a small rectangle of birch bark inscribed with the visitor's name -- A. G. Robinson.

You can view other terrific collections online, such as the accumulated calling cards of the Washburn Family of Camps Mills, Town of Hounsfield, Jefferson County, New York, or read about the etiquette of using the cards on the Jane Austen website, or rather wistfully have a look at this gorgeous antique silver calling card case.

In the comments below, Mark wondered about the cards also using the language of flowers to send a more subtle message. Yes, of course as it turns out! There are quite few posters which help to reveal some of the more subtle meanings on the card. 

And this one from a paying site --so excuse the watermark -- but the bunches of different flowers seemed to more closely resemble the calling cards. 

 

Was I Ever This Young?

More from the archives...these two photos buried amid others. I had almost despaired of finding them again, and when I was looking for something else completely, there they were. My father's wife Eva took them one morning at coffee -- I think I was 18 or 19 years old. I like them very much, even though I look at them now with a mixture of affection and nostalgia for that girl so long ago. A lot has happened in between then and now. 

When Joan Baez Wrote Me A Letter

Part of the joy in sifting through archived papers of my family and my own, is coming upon treasures not seen for many years. I was delighted when I uncovered this letter written in calligraphy from Joan Baez. When I was about 11 or 12, my neighbor friend -- an older teenage girl named Eddie, had been studying calligraphy and was quite good at it. I asked her to help me write a short letter to Joan Baez who I admired so very much. Eddie penned a beautiful and short letter in calligraphy, we sent it off, and forgot about it. Then two month's later, this letter arrived with a simple "Thank You" penned in a beautiful hand and signed by Joan Baez. Awesome, right. I was thrilled then, and still am when I see it now. 

Being Good At Problem Solving is a Problem

Mostly because its not my problems that I am solving. I seem to have spent the last five days putting out fires, rebuilding lost websites, reputations, getting other people's work done, and completely ignoring my own. How does that happen? I am too much of a competent fixer of problems not my own. And as happy as I am to help, it has become a burden of my own making -- an excuse not to solve my problems or face my own hard things.  

I need to be more like woman below, the problems of others muted into a much smaller elephant, nudging at my side.  But she is calm and won't be moved, focused (not unkindly) on enjoying her coffee and her own thoughts.

 Top photo: Haying in Cogne, 1959 by Pepi Merisio. Bottom photo: A photo of Dame Daphne Sheldrick, one of Africa's best known conservationists, who with her husband worked at Tsavo, Kenya's biggest National Park. She wrote an autobiography, Love, Life, and Elephants: An African Love Story, published in 2012.  (Thanks to Sarah for the heads up on this photo!)

More Field Drawings: Darjeeling, India 1964. Tibetan Lhamo Performances.

I posted a few field drawings of my mother Jeanette Snyder yesterday, and wanted to add some more of them because I think they are charming -- and remind me of the days when field researchers lugged heavy tape recorders, cameras, and note books, just in case all that heavy technology failed, leaving only the sketches and notes. You can see many more of her photos and her article about this day at the Journal of Mythic Arts.

 

Fiction and Family Meet At the Bon Marche

Quite a while ago I wrote about attending a conference in which one of the novels we were discussing was Emil Zola's terrific novel, Au Bonheur Des Dames (The Ladies Delight.) The novel, set in the late 1860's, centers on the invention of the department store (based on the historical store Bon Marché in Paris). The owner Mouret -- a scoundrel and womanizer -- is also a creative genius, gathering together all the different trades under one roof, creating "departments" and then using price incentives, advertising, and spectacular displays (worthy of Alexander McQueen) to draw women from all the classes ("democratizing luxury") into the store to shop in a sensual frenzy. The novel lingers on some of the most sensual and textural imagery -- with sumptuous passages -- which can be read here in my previous post. 

I love the novel -- and so you can imagine my utter astonishment when I discovered this bit of family connection to Bon Marché -- which could have easily, easily been one of the narrative threads of Zola's novel! This was written in a memoir by my great-great uncle, the Rev. Francois Marie Menager, S. J. in the summer of 1964 about his grandfather Alcindor Parfait Le Provost, the father of his mother Henriette Provost. 

"Grandpere Provost came from a wealthy family of Normandy. Most of his male relative were lawyers or teachers. His parents had eleven children and Mme Le Provost was provided for as his father was a successful lawyer and notary. His father was very generous to his friends and always ready to help them. He lent them quite a deal of money without being too careful about promissory notes. When he was about 50, he died suddenly. His widow and children found themselves practically ruined. All the debts were paid by the valiant widow, but the little money that was left was hardly enough to support the family. Then, the oldest of the children, my grandfather (Alcindor) Le Provost who was then about twenty years old, decided to go to Paris to make  his fortune. He was bent on pulling his mother, brothers, and sisters out of their misery.

"When he got to Paris, he took a humble job as a clerk at the famous and original Bon Marché, a very successful store of general merchandise and of clothing. Grandpere Le Provost got interested in different sorts of cloth fabric. He studied and experimented a great deal for two to three years until one day he brought out a special cloth of his own invention calling it "English Broad Cloth." I believe that through the help of some of the kind officials of the Bon Marche, his cloth was brought to the attention of the public and it became a great success. Within a few years, he became a millionaire. He generously provided for his mother and his brothers and sisters. Through clever speculation he managed not only to keep his money but also increased his fortune substantially. He was a keen business man, making excellent deals and became one of the most successful Capitalists in Paris. When about 27 years of age, he married Mlle Menard -- one of the loveliest women in Paris. Their marriage was blessed with four children: two boys, Edouard and Ernest and two girls, Marie and Henriette." 

How perfectly wonderful, and what serendipity it is to learn, that after spending three days steeped in discussing Zola's novel -- everything from the style of writing, to its ideas on commerce, money, business, luxury, the cloth industry, the rise and fall of fortunes, speculation, and the opportunity in a world that had not previously seen such -- to acquire wealth through hard work and entrepreneurial verve. Cool.