Steinian Touchdown!

Okay, I didn't think I'd be selecting two postcards from the same person this early, but I can't help it.

I love this photo.

It's from Benjamin Baxter and he's in St. Helen's, Oregon at this point.

Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) with Alice B. Toklas.

The photograph is by their good friend Carl Van Vechten and is in the possession of the Beinecke Library at Yale.

This was put out by Crossing Cards out of Freedom, CA.

I'm not sure if that is the same company that did all those other fine photographs of Modernist giants like Pound and Marianne Moore.

I don't think they are. Because I think that company was out of New York City. I remember novelist James Chapman mentioning that the company was hard by him.

Hehe. I said "hard by."

What is this? The nineteenth century?!

Okay, I pulled my Marianne Moore postcard to check this. That one's the Richard Avedon photo of her where she seems to be conducting an unseen orchestra with an imaginary baton. With her eyes closed. She's ancient there, hair like angel's hair on a Christmas tree. And beautiful. Of course, she's wearing the huge tricorne hat!

It's not the same company. That company is the Rapoport Printing Company and I was right about New York. Canal Street.

Poetry Trivia: Who wrote the poetry collection Crossing Canal Street? That's right. John Yau.

Okay, this is creepy.

I was going through a pile of postcards that are inside a child's pencil box (hologram turtle all dazzly is the design) and when I got to the bottom of the box guess what I found?

A bunch of my ex's hair.

It was like I was suddenly in a Japanese ghost movie. Or a native American ritual.

I remember now that when he cut his pony tail off (and he is part Native American) I had kept it (a rubber band holding it together) in this box.

I still have it, but I don't remember where it is now. Surely in my Mom's house. Wow. It's a good thing I don't practice voodoo, huh? I'm joking. I have no ill feelings towards him anyway so it wouldn't matter if I did practice voodoo lol.

Anyway, back to the postcard.

The reverse mentions Ben's payday shopping for books with his then love.

The date is the 11th of November, 1995.

Ben finds 3 records he likes and buys Enid Starkie's bio of Charles Baudelaire. I'm still pissed at myself for not buying Starkie's Rimbaud book in a signed hardcover when I saw it for a song online. Who gets excited about autographs of scholars like Starkie instead of rock stars or celebrities? I do! I loved those books. I'm remembering the book as robin's egg blue with silver (not gilt) lettering (the Starkie Rimbaud not the Baudelaire). Maybe I got that right. I don't know.

Also he picks up Baudelaire's The Poem of Hashish.

And now his band's name is a Baudelaire tribute. See how things work?

A postcard required a twenty-cent stamp in 1995.

I'm afraid to even ask what it is now.

It seems they raise it twice a season now, when it used to be like once every three or four years.

Oh, the most interesting thing about this photo is what Stein and Toklas are holding.

Talk about voodoo!

It's not voodoo but I'm fairly certain I remember reading somewhere (though it's not on this postcard) that those are their lucky talismans to keep the plane from crashing.

Note they're flying United Air.

That plane looks like a bucket of bolts.

Maybe I imagined that about the talismans but I think that's what they are.