The Queen is Mad!

Prior to her May 2007 visit to the United States, Queen Elizabeth II sat for a series of official photographs by famous celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz. Ms. Leibovitz is well known for her sometimes controversial celebrity photographs including one of a naked John Lennon hugging a fully clothed Yoko Ono. Leibovitz has said the original [...]

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Frida Kahlo: A Few Small Nips

Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) went into her marriage (1929) with her eyes wide open. She knew that her husband, famed Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, spread his affections around. Diego engaged in numerous short-lived and casual relationships with the fawning women – actresses, models, artists, photographers – who flocked around him. He was Mexico‘s most celebrated artist of [...]

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Frida Kahlo’s Other Accident

Click here to read “Frida Kahlo’s First Bad Accident” before reading this post. Frida Kahlo once said to a friend, “I have suffered two serious accidents in my life, one in which a streetcar ran over me….The other accident is Diego.” She was referring to her husband, Diego Rivera (1886-1957), the world famous painter and active [...]

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Frida Kahlo’s First Bad Accident

Mexican artist Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) once said that she suffered two bad accidents in her life. The first one occurred on September 17, 1925. It would transform her life forever. Frida was only 18. It was a gray day. A light rain had just fallen. After spending the afternoon wandering among the street stalls of downtown [...]

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The Queen’s Piper

Here is a typical weekday morning for Queen Elizabeth II while in residence at  Buckingham Palace  in London: 7:30  The maid enters her bedroom with a tray of  morning tea: 2 silver pots of Earl Grey, milk, and a few biscuits. The cup and saucer are bone china. The linen napkin bears the royal cypher “EIIR” (Elizabeth II Regent). [...]

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Teddy Roosevelt’s Badger

In the spring of 1903, President Teddy Roosevelt embarked on his much-delayed and much-anticipated rail tour of the American West. He was to travel 14,000 miles over 8 weeks, visiting 25 states and an estimated 150 towns and cities, where he would make over 200 speeches. His “Western trek,” as he called it, included stops at [...]

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Wild Scramble: The White House of Teddy Roosevelt

Ike Hoover served in the White House for over forty-two years, ultimately becoming Chief Usher in charge of the day-to-day operations of the presidential mansion. His memoirs, published in 1934, provide insight into the White House of Theodore Roosevelt: “After the McKinley funeral [September 1901], Mr. Roosevelt himself did not appear for several days, but [...]

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Frida and the Fire Dogs

In the lower left of Frida Kahlo‘s painting, “The Love Embrace of the Universe” (above), a little dog is sound asleep in a huge hand. The dog is Frida Kahlo’s favorite pet dog, Mr. Xolotl. Mr. Xolotl (show-low -tul) was a xoloitxcuintli (show-low-eats-queen-tlee) dog. Frida had several of these unusual-looking dogs, a hairless breed with an ancestry [...]

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The Restless Corpse of Julia Pastrana

Julia Pastrana (1834-1860) was one of the most famous human curiosities of her time, touring Europe, Canada, and the United States in the 1850s as “the Bearded Lady” or the “Ape-Woman.” Born poor in Mexico, she suffered from a rare inherited disorder (hypertrichosis), not understood during the Victorian Age, that caused her entire body to [...]

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Talk Like Shakespeare Today: O, Romeo, Romeo!

Juliet: O, Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo? is probably the most well-known Shakespeare line of all time – and the most misunderstood. The line is from “Romeo and Juliet,” Act II. Scene II. To give Juliet’s words some context, let’s start at the beginning. Our play takes place in 16th Century Verona in Northern [...]

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Yoko Ono: Want a Piece of Me?

In 2003, when Yoko Ono turned 70, she celebrated her birthday in much the same way the rest of us do. She put on her best outfit (a little black dress, of course), ordered a cake (chocolate), and invited a few friends to come to her party. And, to make it more fun, she hauled out some family photos to remember the [...]

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