incipit vita nova

Love Hurts

I just noticed that the author of this Salon post has the same birthday as I do . . . It's all about "racist" vintage Valentines. It seems to me that this lady (who I'm not going to credit by name - fair's fair) got most, if not all, of her examples of bad old racist Valentines from the Vintage Valentine Museum but failed to credit the site, which buys and displays old Valentines. The Vintage Valentine Museum isn't praising these disturbing (yes, ma'am - they are racist and obnoxious) missives. Since the original post author is Native American, she featured the offensive Valentines with "Honest Injuns" and this type of thing. 

I do remember that - I also remember the conflict of "whom to be" when playing "Cowboys and Indians". And then there was F-Troop.

When I found this site, I thought - why single out racist cards as the bad ones? There are a whole host of other strange, disturbing Valentines and every single one of them looks like the type of Valentine we used to hand out at school. Remember how stressful that was? What meaning the Valentine was fraught with, or not? What if everybody else got a Valentine from a certain boy, EXCEPT you? Oh, Valentine's Day - it's a wonder we did not all die of broken hearts, because we got the joke conversation heart that said "Me no like u."

What's to say about this one? Yes, I bet there are a lot of former kids out there who looked like this kid. I think this one also has a subtle message of "foot fetish," too. It's in the "dominant/submissive" category at the Vintage Valentine Museum.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Look at her face!!  How is this supposed to be "cute"? Was this card made expressly for Charlie Starkweather to give to Caril Ann Fugate?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nearly all of these old Valentines are "special" - and the space ones are like small Valentine versions of bad sci-fi covers! They have the rocket ship phallic thing down . . . Funny, I don't remember getting any like this. My favorites were the ones with puppies or kittens on them.

Kittens have always been popular.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nothing phallic about this one. Nothing at all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I bet you do! These really are terrible! Did people not see this when they gave them out? I seriously can't believe that parents and teachers wouldn't have objected to "I want to be the first!" Come on.

 

If You Died, Who Would Miss You?

After reading a cheesy Huffington Post article about a man from Milwaukee who was discovered dead in his home after four years, I was led to the website for what seems like an exceptional film about Joyce Vincent, who was found dead in a small flat in North London in 2006. She had been dead for about three years. 

 

Joyce's body was surrounded by Christmas gifts that she had been wrapping, and her television was still on! The filmmakers caught up with many people who knew her over the years. The film is so powerful that it impressed the Guardian's critic Peter Bradshaw, who actually raised questions about people having trust in the "welfare state" and personal loneliness and lack of connection with others - yeah, the Guardian asking questions about the "welfare state."

This article by the filmmaker Carol Morley answers a few more questions, and has a picture of the real Joyce Vincent. Carol describes her fascination with Joyce's situation, and how she could have died alone, and been forgotten for three years - no one thought to check even after three years of unpaid bills - and rent. Joyce lived in a housing "estate," so that seems to indicate how seriously they take rent nonpayment. The same could happen here in the U.S. for subsidized housing, but perhaps not for three years.

As someone who lost someone who died alone almost exactly a year ago (but not forgotten and left in a "bedsit," which I think is the London way to say "studio apartment"), this touches me in so many ways. If you died, who would miss you? If Meredith were not here, I believe that the two cats would quickly eat me.