The Crow's Voice

New Beta Blog!

2011-10-20T14:10:00.002-05:00

I've just started a new Crow's Voice Blog, same content as here, slightly different format, for when there are "technical difficulties" posting to this site. Just click on the first link under "links" in the column on the right.

Halloween Windows 2011 Bloomsburg

2011-10-20T14:03:00.000-05:00

It's time for Halloween windows on Bloomsburg's Main Street again. They just went up yesterday, but there's rain in the forecast, so I thought I'd better get out there and pick my favorites before flood or fire or some other disaster did them in. This FrankenGreen Man on the window of Phillips Emporium/The Cloak & Dragon Bookstore seems like a good start...

This robust wolf howls on the window of the newly resurrected Towne Camera, next door to the site where fire claimed three historic storefronts in 2009, shortly after the Halloween windows went up.

Below, some wolves occupy the Window of Bloom's only chi-chi boutique, Krickett Square. They'd make a good Vera Bradley pattern, doncha think? Anyway, take a closer look at the bottom wolf (detail on right), which has a wonderful wolf-like energy and grace.

Some young artists were influenced by Anime and other cartoon images. This large riotous scene on the Costume Shop Window is particularly animesque. Note the Japanese paper lantern on the prow of the boat. The original paper sketch was still taped to the window when I took the picture, so let me see what tranferred from idea to execution.

Halloween is also for the cute, like this Witch at Russel's & Kristy's Pub, and the Elf (below) at Berrigan's Subs who seems to be pushing the season into Christmas a bit, but that's ok. It's all about candy, right?

Back to scary. The skeleton below on the left goes well with the venetian blinds behind it, lots of neat lines going on. That's an awfully cheerful skull, though, so it's not nearly as scary as the demon-rabbit, below.

A couple of years ago there was a demon chipmunk, looking very devious, all the more sinister for being what we normally think of as a cute littel critter. This rabbit is even creepier since it's in the mirror on the window of Hess's tavern, the oldest bar in town. Can't help but wonder if the artist is tapping into some ghostly presence with a terrible hangover...

The two window paintings on Van Dyke's Goldsmith are among my favortites: an imaginative pair of aliens with an undulating background pattern (I like the colors, too) and a spider and web that works well with the web-like pattern of trees across the street reflected in the glass.

Finally, this intense vampire mouth is just wonderfully surreal. All teeth and bright red lips. It's on a restaurant window, of course, Balzano's (how brave of them!) on the corner of East and Main.

January Snow Sculptures

2011-01-19T13:29:00.013-05:00

In the bleak slush and freeze, slush and freeze, of January, I take my miracles where I can find them. Today I found them in Bloomsburg, in the form of snow sculpture, like this snow stupa (?) (or castle? or 2-story igloo?) at 432 Main Street. Almost big enough to be dangerous! Note the snow barricades...

And at the library, I found this dragon curled around the base of a tree.

The librarian at the front desk tells me it's the work work of a Bloomsburg Public Library patron named Badger, but I think that's probably a pseudonym. (Who, I wonder, is the masked mammal who can make creatures out of snow? )

It's a friendly dragon, sans teeth, but with claws and a wonderful sinuous tail (see details below. )

Latest Passion: Stieg Larsson's Millenium series

2010-03-25T14:08:00.005-05:00

It's been months since I've written anything but one-liners on Facebook, but I'm breaking the pattern to recommend my latest passion, murder mysteries by the late Swedish writer, Stieg Larsson.

I discovered The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo a few weeks ago and immediately got hooked on the characters, particularly protagonista Salander, a punk hacker with a photographic memory and a troubled past. She hooks up with investigative journalist Mikeal Blomqvist when he hires her to do research on a missing person case from 1966, and they uncover a series of unsolved brutal sex crimes in the process. But it's not that simple. The book is meaty, with complex subplots involving high finance, fraud, and revenge, too, both public and personal.

Next in the series is The Girl Who Played with Fire. It was checked out at my local library so I actually went out and bought the hardbound. Waiting for it to be returned, or even Amazon to ship, would be too long. (Yes. They are that good.) The book was a bit slower getting started, despite the 1st chapter "hook" that's become an industry standard. But when a double murder of two investigative journalists working with Blomqvist implicated Salander, I was hooked again. And Larsson kept surprising me. Mysteries are plot driven by nature, but it was the characters again that grabbed me. We learn more about Salander's past and her intriguing present, with the introduction of two new minor characters, Salander's lesbian lover and her former boxing partner.

A word of warning: these books are not for the squeamish. there's graphic violence, often of a sexual nature, and sexual subtexts that are... disturbing, to say the least. But Larsson handles these matters with sensitivity and dexterity. The perp is never more interesting than the victim. Larsson's women are fearless, adventurous and strong. And Blomqvist is brave enough to acccept them as they are.

So the third book, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest won't be out in the US until May 25. Thank God I'll be in London on May 18th. (And maybe I know someone who'll be coming in from Europe before then???)

Especially for Halloween

2009-10-30T10:19:00.003-05:00

The is absolutely the scariest movie scene ever. (The Haunting, 1963) Part of a team investigating pyschic phenomenon, Nel and Theo are sharing a room in a notriously haunted house. I don't usually link to video clips, but I just learned to do this so I'm delighted with myself. Enjoy!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYoP6dKxAjU

Halloween Windows Bloomsburg 2009

2009-10-26T15:34:00.041-05:00

Every year Bloomsburg area students paint the windows of businesses along Main Street for Halloween. This weekend a fire destroyed three historic storefront buildings on Main Street, a terrible tragedy for those who operated businesses there or who lost everything in the apartments above. By comparison, the three painted Halloween windows that no longer exist are minor. They were designed to be emphemeral, and would have been washed off in a few weeks anyway. But they were some of my favorites, so it feels nice to know they live on here.

The demon baby, at top, made a strange and apt pairing with demon chipmunk. above, on the same storefront at Main and Jefferson. If the chipmunk didn't look so demented, it would probably be my selection for Cutest Window: as it is, it's in a category by iteself.

Halloween ala Sendak, below, was on the former Town Camera storefront.

Some of the images worked especially well in their settings. This coy little French Maid of a Witchlette (below left) hovered behind the bench in front of VanDyke Goldsmith and incorporated the store's logo and architectural elements behind the glass. It could've all been too much, but it works. And the embracing mummy and skeleton in the window of the Cloak and Dragon bookstore worked with the exisiting colors of the window frame in a challenging tall narrow space... a reminder to us all that no one loves you like your mummy.

For sheer mayhem, I like the splashy colors and Day-of-the-Dead energy of this graveyard scene, above.

And this geeky scene on the window of The Vision Center (I'm not making this up) has wild color and a 3-d effect on that dangling eyeball that just doesn't come across in the photo.

The pair below just seem made for each other: on the left, a skeletal figure stands beneath a tree with leaves like detached hands, and at right, a scruffy soothsayer with a crystal ball swirling with ghosts.

Ghouls in formal attire was a recurring theme this year. Here's one of my favorites on a Tim Burton theme. The imagie nicely incorporates the merchandise in The Costume Shop window behind it, too. (Note the butterfly shape paired with the bat-tie, and the red plastic pitchfork on the left...a perfect accessory for the corpse-groom out for a night on the town...)

Finally, I think this one (along with the demon baby that begins this page) is tied for my favorite. The seketal figure puttin' on the Ritz below is on the papered window of a vacant storefront on Main Street. Too many of those these days, but this makes the most of a bad situation...(It would be just about perfect if those were the Society pages behind him.)

FREE RICE AGAIN!

2009-02-12T17:12:00.004-05:00

Those of you who frequent the Crow's Voice more than the Crow does may remember that about this time last year I was promoting Free Rice, a website vocabulary game that donated rice to the UN World Food Program. If you haven't been there in a while, now's a good time to visit again. The vocabulary game is still there, but there's now a grammar component, a geography option, and games for chemistry, math, French, German, Italian and Spanish AND (my personal favorite) Art History.

You only donate 10 grains of rice per correct answer now, due to global economic pressures, so it's important to play even more and promote the game to your freinds and family. Just click on the picture above to link to Free Rice.

While you're on the site take a look at the totals Free Rice has generated so far and see how your country ranks in its commitment to end world hunger. (The US is pretty pathetic so far. You can click on a link to print off a letter urging Obama to make it a goal.)

Unscrew America

2008-03-20T09:19:00.003-05:00

This website for Unscrew America is one of the most animated sites I've seen since Aardman's homepage. It's full of wacky interactive creatures and drawings that guide you from the dark recesses of regular incandesant bulbs into the true light of LEDs and compact florescents. If only we could unscrew the rest of America as easily as we unscrew a lightbulb. Visit the link. http://unscrewamerica.org/It feels good. No kidding!

NIU Memorial

2008-02-18T10:06:00.002-05:00

Anyone who attended NIU in the last thirty-some years knows the room where last week's shootings occurred. I took my GREs in that room. My husband took his advance placement tests there. The film club screened free foreign and classic movies there on a weekly basis throughout the 1980s.

I had several classes in Cole Hall, and for six years the hallway that ran through Cole was a convenient daily short cut to buildings where I had classes and offices in DuSable and Reavis.

I have dozens of friends who still work and teach there, some of whom now have children who attend NIU. The events of 2/14 did not touch them directly. They were not in Jamison auditorium when the gunman opened fire. But true community has no boundaries in time or distance. I remember the places where I thought and laughed, studied and daydreamed, and feel desperately sad.

The Art of Edward F. Scott

2008-02-01T16:16:00.000-05:00

New at the Crow's Nest: Three pages featuring the glass and wire
sculptures of long-time Evanston resident, Edward F. Scott.

Here's just a sample of what you'll find...

Art in Airports: Chicago's Millennium Chandeliers

2008-01-30T10:26:00.000-05:00

When you’re travelling with the Tao even long layovers at one of the nation’s busiest airports can yield sublime discoveries, thanks to After School Matters, a non-profit partnership with Chicago area schools, parks, libraries and organizations that gives Chicago area teens a chance to gain valuable hands-on experience that can lead to career opportunities. To see more pictures and read more about ASM's Gallery37 collaboration with Chihuly Studio, visit The Crow's Nest (link at right) the companion website for this blog.

Small Acts: Free Rice

2007-12-20T09:24:00.000-05:00

I don't usually post this sort of thing, but an email from my friend Trish with the subject heading "Free Rice" came into my inbox the other day. I checked it out pretty carefully and it is not a hoax, but a Real Thing, so I wanted to pass it on. Here's the Email:

Here is a site I hope you will check out. http://www.freerice.com/index.php
It is a fun vocab game and a great cause. For each word you get right
while playing 20 grains of rice is donated to the United Nations
World Food Program. 20 may not seem like a lot, but it adds up
quick. I just played for about 5 minutes and accumulated 500
grains of rice. Have fun and pass it on. --Trish

Now 20 grains isn't much...it takes about 700 grains to make one Tablespoon, based on long grain organic brown rice (go ahead, ask me how I know...) and 5600 to make 1/2 cup. BUT 1/2 cup of rice cooks up to about 1 1/2 cup, about a meal for a child, and points add up quickly. The game is FREE, lots of fun, and kind of addictive. And you get something out of it too. (A painless way to study for SAT and GRE tests and improve your reading ability.) When you think about how much time you probably spend playing solitaire or mahjong on computer, this seems like a useful alternative.

New Orleans Voodoo Altars

2007-11-27T13:32:00.000-05:00

I'm just back from a trip to New Orleans, and of course I had to bring some Magic back...These are pictures of altars in Voodoo Authentica Cultural Center and Collection on Dumaine Street, a shop that also sells Voodoo and Santeria paraphenalia and imported gift items from Africa, Haiti and Mexico. The owner was very welcoming and allowed these consecrated altars to be photographed, which many practitioners are hesitant to do. Her idea was that if the spirits didn't want to be photographed, the pictures simply wouldn't come out. And it seems she was right.

Several altars, like the Yemaya and Oshun altar in three levels shown here came out beautifully. (Top level, above; second and third level below.)

Others pictures came out blurred, as if the saints were only allowing me to see part of who they were. (Or maybe it's becuase I didn't use a flash.)

But the weird thing is, I took one picture (I don't recall which altar) that didn't come out at all, and I can't account for it. I got an "Incompatible Image Error" something I'd never had on this camera except when I used the wrong camera card. That certainly wasn't the case, as all the other pictures came out. Hmmm....

To visit Voodoo Authentica for yourself, you can look in on their website http://www.voodooshop.com/

And to see lots more pictures (including pictures of St. Louis Cemetery #1) and read about my experiences in New Orleans, visit the companion webpage for this blog, The Crow's Nest

The Crow's Nest

Halloween Windows Bloomsburg 2007

2007-11-06T13:29:00.000-05:00

It's that time of year again...when Bloomsburg area schools let their art students paint store windows of participating Main Street businesses. The paintings went up quickly this year, and came down even faster, probably so merchants could start pitching Chirstmas goodies just as soona s possible. (Berwick's Halloween Window paintings were still up days later....) But never fear, some of them at least, live on at The Crow's Voice. Last year The Crow chose four windows (see blog archive for last year's selections) Here are my five favorites this year:

It seems like this refelctive surface on the front of Patrick O'Connell's office, just lends itself to zig-zaggedy compositions like this Tim Burtonesque haunted house. (Last year the office hosted a gargoyle with a similarly twisted look. Could it be the same artists?) The signatures on this one are Steven Warner, Jesse Hedrick and Marilyn Clocker.

This demented clown on the window of Remit Corporation is one of my favorites this year. You can hear the explosion of color from across the street, and the pattern of hair and teeth and ruffled cloth make the image leap out at you. The work of Allysa Lown and Emily Prisuta.

This wicked old crone on the window of Bloom Floral signed NC and NR has some great color relationships going on, and its flat Japanese-Manga-like composition was something I just couldn't pass up.

For sheer creativity, I had to post this ghostly Changeling in the Sky with Diamonds. I don't know who drew it. Could the signature be hidden in the wolfen hair?

Finally, my choice for Best of Show this year goes to this compelling Vampyrella on the window of Van Dyke Goldsmith, the work of Jess, Sasha and Tino. My photo can't do justice to the layered compositon that echoes both the architectural elements inside the store and the buildings across the street that are reflected in the glass. Very cool.

There were lots of other nice window paintings, too. A cute unsigned cat-in-the-moon on the Costune Shop, a wicked fanged cat on Bella Donna Boutique by Cowbell V, and an unsigned feisty Cat with Crystal Ball on the window of Larsen Design Group. I wanted to go back to get another shot of Kayla Holdren and Molly Kocher's Blue Tree in front of A Revolution in Bloom (was that Molly Kindorf's signature faded above it?) My original shot was poor, and when I went back to reshoot, it was already gone. Let's keep them up a bit longer next year so everyone has a chance to enjoy them!

Book Artist: Judy Ham

2007-10-12T13:18:00.000-05:00

I've recently reconnected with a friend from grad school who is now a book artist in Maine. To see more of her remarkable work, visit her website at

Judy Ham website at Damp Cove

The New Crow's Nest

2007-10-11T09:43:00.000-05:00

The Crow's Nest, companion webite for this blog, has moved. You can visit the Crow's Nest at its new location by using the link at the right, or below. And please be sure to add it to your favorites!

The Crow's Nest

Big Changes Coming to The Crow's Nest

2007-09-26T09:38:00.000-05:00

The Crow has been silent for the last several months, and the Crow's Nest has been static. But big changes are afoot.

The Nest is under construction and will be moving to a new address with new material and some old favorties. Maybe even a slightly new look...hopefully it will be easier to read and have more pictures and links, maybe even some sound files. Watch this space for details.

In the meantime, you can still access the old Crow's Nest by using the link to the left.

Pictures from the Cornell show have been taken down, as I had them from the Press Kit, and since that show is over I could no longer justify pilfering them. BUT pictures from last year's Dale Chihuly show at NY Botanical Gardens are still up, in connection to the Chihuly show at Pittsburgh's Phipps Conservatory. And you can still see my shots of Japanaese Graffiti. Enjoy.

What I Did on My Summer Vacation

2007-09-25T15:19:00.000-05:00

Full Moon at the Crossroads

Crossroads Guitar Festival Chicago July 2007

Main Stage

John McLaughlin

Crossroads at Night Onscreen

Magic in the Neighborhood

2007-01-30T09:44:00.000-05:00

After weeks of grey and brown winter doldrums and nothing to say or to show you at all, I pulled back my bedroom curtains yesterday morning to find one inch of new snow on the ground and Buffo's truck parked across the street in my neighbor's driveway. What are the chances?

Later I learned that Buffo, "The World's Stongest Clown" is a Pittsburgh-based clown hired on for the Early Bird Expo, an outdoors show, at the Fairgrounds.

But what was he doing in the neighborhood? Sometimes you really can see whole worlds from your window...

Joseph Cornell: Navigating the Imagination

2006-12-01T14:49:00.000-05:00

"Joseph Cornell: Navigating the Imagination," opened last week in Washington DC. I put up a few pages about the art exhibit on The Crow’s Nest, but thought I’d zero in on some particular works that might be of special interest to the readers of the Crow’s Voice.

Cornell (1903-1972) collected bits and pieces from junk shops and antique stores and recombined them in collages and box constructions that resemble 3-d collages. The finished pieces can look romantic or funny or very modern, so he’s kind of hard to pin down. He’s often grouped with the Surrealists or Dadaists, such as his friend Marcel Duchamp. And you can see a lot of elements in his work that turn up later in artists like Jasper Johns (repetition and variation) and Andy Warhol (homages to celebrity.)

Cornell also experimented with book forms (the Smithsonian show featured a small accordion-fold book of Cornell’s) and altered books, cutting niches in medical texts or foreign language books to hold objects such as marbles or spools.

In the early 1930s he produced a series of newsletters/almanacs called "Goop Joe’s Poultry Pages," kind of a personal zine to entertain his sister who owned a poultry farm on Long Island. The pages combine newspaper and magazine clippings and photographs with typed text in some of Cornell’s earliest attempts at text collage. There are some great pictures of poultry (and monkeys and moose) but the real charm of Goop Joe’s Poultry Pages is when it verges on the absurd.

Visit the Crow's Nest to read more about the exhibit
http://home.earthlink.net/~sestemont

Vincent Hron Show

2006-11-29T10:41:00.000-05:00

Vincent Hron's show "Everyday Beautiful" is at the Haas Gallery on the campus of Bloomsburg University in Bloomsburg, PA until December 4th. To see a few more of Hron's paintings, go to the Crow's Nest at http://home.earthlink.net/~sestemont

Halloween Windows, Bloomsburg PA

2006-11-02T10:11:00.000-05:00

Every year Bloomsburg area schools allow their art students to paint the store windows of participating Main Street businesses. Some paintings are signed, others aren't. These are my selections for some of the best this year...

One of the most creative wasn't on a window at all, but on a reflective brushed stainless steel surface in the entryway for the offices of Atty Patrick O'Connell (above.) Using a flash allows me to show you the brushwork and plays up the reflection of the surface, which I can't help but think was part of the attraction of the surface for the artist. I really like the jagged background here, too. Kind of a Dr. Caligari/graphic novel feeling. There was a signature on this peice, but I couldn't make it out.

This whimsical devil was painted within a small old wooden frame window on Hess's Tavern. He has a lot of character, and it's an appropriate style for a pub, I'd say

Below is one of the award-winners this year, and it's also one of my favorites. (And not just because I'm a Johnny Depp fan.) I did a double take from across the street, wondering if the image on the window of An Evolution in Bloom was a commercial poster. My shot couldn't avoid a band of sunlight across the image, but I think the random compliments the image rather nicely, and the reflections of the trees across the street (background, top) work pretty well here, too. This is one of the signed works; the artist is Alexandra Buckley.

The graceful Jack Frost/autumnal spite figure (below) on the window of the Remit Corporation recalls Egyptian hieroglyphics...or evokes an alien Audrey Hepburn. It's the work of two artists, Molly Kocher and Keyla Holdren. Subtle colors. Some nice texture, going on, too, which is unfortunately not conveyed in this reproduction.

Dale Chihuly at the New York Botanical Garden

2006-10-31T12:47:00.000-05:00

The Dale Chihuly show at the New York Botanical Garden has just closed, but the gardens are still beautiful and full of color. See more pictures from the Chihuly show and read musings at The Crow's Nest, companion site for this blog:http://home.earthlink.net/~sestemont

Curiouser and Curiouser: The Bloomsburg Fair 2006

2006-10-02T15:28:00.000-05:00

Sometimes you can travel by staying home. For one week every autumn, the wide world comes to the Susquehanna river valley town of Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania.

Bloomsburg, the only town in PA (there are townships aplenty, the distinction is an administrative one) hosts the Bloomsburg Fair at the end of September. Begun as a one-day agricultural fair in 1855, the fair today encompasses several acres of animals, tractor exhibits, fiddle contests, rides, carnival games, and hot sausage stands. Thousands of people attend the fair each day (for a weekly total this year of 413,203.)

If you live in north central PA, you are either a fair aficionado, or a perennial fair curmudgeon. I’m something in between. It’s easy to mock the deep-fried sugar-slathered food, the demolition derby, and the livestock fun night, which involves dressing cows up for a yuk. But I was hooked several years ago when I visited the fair one foggy morning just after the gates opened at 7:30. While I ate my buckwheat pancakes and a priceless cup of coffee to ward off the river chill, one of the carnies let his monkeys out for a walk in a large open field nearby. Seven beautiful large brown monkeys in red velvet Sgt. Pepper jackets grazed calmly though the tall grass in the fog, stopping occasionally to yawn or scratch. The image will stay in my mind forever. I’ve been coming back to the Fair with a camera every year since, hoping for a chance to catch something as sublime again. It hasn’t happened yet, but I keep trying.

This year I was looking for carnie art.

The décor on the façade of Crystal
Lil’s, a fun house with a wild-west
theme, owes a lot to R. Crum and
also to Gilbert Shelton, the creator
of The Fabulous Furry Freak
Brothers.

In another part of the fairgrounds, a trailer complex of animal oddities has an older kind of carnie atmosphere, reminiscent of revival meetings and roadside stands. Here you may see both the Smallest Horse and the Giant Rat. There was a rumor going around this year (Mike started it) that they were the same animal, but you entered from different doors.

Nestled between the Orient Express roller coaster and the Wild Claw, the "Smallest Woman in the World" is billed as an educational exhibit, promoting West Indian culture. She’s located apart from the regular midway with its bright banners advertising features like the mermaid "Aqualina…Tropical Temptress!" Here there is no pretense to education, just good clean fun. (And no, the irony is not lost on me.) The art of the midway is beautiful and strange, but I can’t justify buying a ticket to see the "exhibits" the art depicts. Does that make me principled, or just a hypocrite?

The Peruvian musicians were here again this year, but I couldn’t find the booth selling bright commercial lithographs of Gonesha and Krishna with the Milkmaids. Perhaps the frail old gentleman selling them has moved on or gone back home to Calcutta, replaced by booths with Spongebob Square Pants knock-offs and iridescent whirly-gigs.

The Fair is everything all at once. If you can look past the kitsch, there’s a lot here that’s creative and authentic. The local Polish churches serving up hot lunches of haluski, pierogies, and stuffed cabbage rolls--advertised as "pigeons"--aren’t bad either.

A Ghost Story

2006-09-26T12:14:00.000-05:00

Just in time for Halloween.

A little girl left alone in an Chicago tenement building while her parents are at work begins to see and hear things she can't explain. Are there intruders? Ghosts?

Use the Link at the right to go to The Crow's Nest to read The Haunted House, a short-short exerpt from my ongoing memoir project that spans 3 generations in Bridgeport, a working class neighborhood on Chicago's south side.

Graphic Novel Review: The Rabbi's Cat

2006-09-13T08:06:00.001-05:00

The Rabbi’s Cat. Joann Sfar. Pantheon Books. New York, 2005.

A miracle! The rabbi’s cat has eaten the parrot and acquired the power of speech! It’s a blessing, but also a curse. The cat is a liar and a gossip, and the rabbi fears he’ll corrupt Zlabya, his beautiful young daughter. The solution, as the cat sees it anyway, is for the rabbi to instruct him in the Law so he may make his Bar Mitzvah. So they go to consult the rabbi’s rabbi, and…well…Talmudic debate and hilarity ensue.

Set in pre-WWII Algeria, where Arab, Jewish and French cultures coexist, Joann Sfar’s graphic novel, The Rabbi’s Cat, is a collection of three books originally published in French. The protagonist is a lean feline with a strong narrative voice and surprising emotional complexity. Speech is a mixed blessing for the cat, too. His dreams used to be simple, full of chasing small animals. But speech has brought with it an awareness of death and the fear of losing those he loves: he now dreams that Zlabya dies, and the rabbi rejects religion. The cat, an atheist, must pretend to believe just to keep the rabbi going.

In Part 2, "Malka of the Lions," the rabbi’s cat loses the power of speech, but he doesn’t lose his narrative voice. And he retains his ability to speak to other animals, like the lion companion of the rabbi’s dashing cousin Malka. Malka is a lion tamer from the desert, with flowing hair and piercing blue eyes. He’s a marvelous character, but his story is only a subplot. Malka’s visit just happens to coincide with the appearance of a young upstart rabbi from Paris who, the rabbi fears, has come to replace him. To complicate matters, Zlabya falls in love with the new rabbi. Neither her father nor the cat approve.

"Exodus" takes the family on a trip to Paris to visit Zlabya’s new in-laws and places the rabbi in a completely different world: the synagogue they visit keeps the prayer books locked up, and Jews there pray differently. And Zlabya’s father-in-law doesn’t attend synagogue at all. He’s a secular Jew. It’s all too much for the rabbi, who has a falling out with his daughter and wanders off in the rain with his cat. In the pages that follow, the rabbi questions God, the cat befriends a little Parisian dog, and they all end up spending the night with Rebibo, the rabbi’s nephew who has fallen in love with a Catholic girl and become a street singer in Paris, performing comic Arab songs.

Sfar’s characters are full of contradictions. In other words, they’re real people. And this is especially true of the cat. While never losing his essential "catness" he develops an empathy for emotional vulnerability that says a lot about what it takes to be fully human.

The drawings in these volumes, despite being somewhat restricted by the unrelenting serial block format, compliment the stories beautifully. The backgrounds are full of colorful patterns, and figures in movement are often fluid and whimsical. A little Matisse, a little Chagall. But the real treat is the writing, which is always witty and imaginative.

Early on I was disturbed by the ambiguity of the setting in time, but as I read on it led me to a deeper reading. Soon it won’t matter how assimilated these Jews are, whether they keep kosher or marry their Catholic girlfriends. They’ll all be in it together. The shadow of history that we bring to the text flutters at the corner of these happy panels and makes them bitter-sweet.

(Thanks to Joann Sfar for permission to use images from The Rabbi's Cat.)

Graphic Novel Review: Vampire Loves

2006-09-06T07:59:00.000-05:00

Review: Vampire Loves by Joann Sfar. First Second. First American Edition, June 2006.

Ferdinand the vampire is a sensitive soul from the realm of the undead who is preoccupied with the same tangled relationship issues as the living. He can’t quite make up his mind to get back together with his cheating girlfriend, the mandragora Liana, but his romantic encounters with a lithe Goth vampire and her zaftig witchy sister don’t seem to be going too well, either.

Vampire Loves is the recent paperback release from Joann Sfar, creator of The Rabbi’s Cat and the Little Vampire Series. A collection of four books originally published in France, Vampire Loves packs a lot of plot, imaginative details and a whole array of engaging characters into a small package.

In "Mortal Maidens on My Mind," Ferdinand has a fling with a Japanese tourist during a trip to Paris. They meet when she hides out in the Louvre overnight, where Ferdinand goes to experience paintings of the sun: they make him feel "as if he can feel the warmth on his skin." Back in Vilna, he tries to make the scene at the Copacadaver nightclub, but that doesn’t turn out much better. Even a cruise (in "Lonely Hearts Crossing") where the wolfman tries to give him advice on how to score, doesn’t help. But a great sub-plot develops when Ferdinand and a phantom girlfriend form two creatures out of "Monster Putty" that evolve different theological philosophies based on their disparate views of the Creator.

OK, I admit it, I’m kind of in love with Ferdinand, who one of his girlfriends describes as "kind of square and Nosferatu." He reads Proust (but is fed up with him) keeps a cheese-loving cat, and bites his victims with one fang so it seems like a mosquito bite. He knows the difference between romance and sex and is a gentle enough lover that he can make out with a phantom without slipping through. I can even forgive him for being a bit fickle. After all, he hasn’t found his soulmate yet. And that’s a quest that seems to transcend the barrier between life and death.

If there’s anything negative to say, it’s that the format of the text is a bit small, so you can’t enjoy the subtleties of Sfar’s drawings as well as you can in The Rabbi’s Cat. But that’s the fault of the edition, not the author. I wish we could read more of his work in English sooner. In the meantime, his website is a painless refresher’s course in French. Enjoy!

(Thanks to Joann Sfar for permission to post images from his book and website.)

Joann Sfar's website: http://www.pastis.org/joann/

Graffiti, Sapporo Japan

2006-08-28T10:19:00.000-05:00

I photographed these graffiti images along the Toyohira-gawa River in Sapporo, Hokkaido Japan in 2000. For more images and some travel writing check out my website http://home.earthlink.net/~sestemont

2006-08-21T20:13:00.000-05:00