Titles, Inc.

Better and Better

Here’s how you know your broken arm is getting better:

1. You can hold up your hand mirror to see the back of your head. You need two hands to check out your hair. It does no good to see the cowlick has bounced open if you can’t get a hand up to push the hair around to cover it up.

2. You can put on your earrings that have the wire backing.  One hand pushes the wire into the hole in your ear while the other slides on the teeny clasp.  No more clip earrings (left over from long bygone days.)

3. You can raise your arms enough to put the bra on backwards.  Men, stop reading now – this is a lady secret.  A friend told me she can’t get her hands up to the small of her back, and didn’t you know you put it on backwards?  The hooks and eyes at the front where you can clip them and then you swing it around until now the cups are in the front.  I didn’t know that!  But still, one needs flexibility to hook the damn thing and then slide the arms through the shoulder straps.  OK men, you can start reading again.

4. You can put on a heavy jacket with no help.  Remember, the bum arm goes in first so the good arm can swing it around into place for the rest of the putting on.  Shirts?  Tee shirts are best for easy removal. Don’t try to cross your arms and pull up.  You are frozen with your arms across your body.  No, grab the back neck of the shirt and tug it over your head, then slide it down the arms.  Or if removing a blouse or jacket, the good arm comes out first.  Hey, this is almost like Show & Tell.  With the right music, a strip-tease.

5. No more sling.  I’m scheduled for Physical Therapy next week, so I’m preparing by pushing a little further than the arm is comfortable with.  They tell me that’s what PT is all about – Pain.  Yikes, I can hardly wait.

6. I CAN DRIVE!  Beep beep, here I come!  Well, backing out from a slot in the parking lot and turning the car 45* to face forward, means Pull Pull Pull.  Don’t rush me.  I can do it.  Driving again.  Aaaaahhh.  I spent Sunday going from store to store to pick up single items long needed, but hard to assign especially since I am so brand conscious.  I went into TJ Maxx just for the hell-of-it, and expected that everyone would stop in their tracks and holler, Welcome back!  Well, I missed the great Christmas sales all over town (75% off!) so I had to do a little catching up.

7. Finally, you feel normal again.  Back on the job. Even though there are limits to the movements, there is enough flexibility to get through the day.  After all, it was just a broken arm.

-- Florence

In Brilliant Color

It drew a huge crowd.  The gallery owner said this was the largest attendance he's had for a show.  It was Opening Night for an exhibit of Art Shay photos.  This was new and different, the first time for his color photos.  He is represented in two galleries with his black and whites but he always felt the color pictures deserved an audience too, and The Thomas Masters Gallery here in Chicago agreed absolutely.  I mean, a photo of JFK talking to a Native American in full regalia needs every nuance of color that is flaunted here. (It had the red dot – Sold.)

I had seen all these pictures way back when they were merely little color slides so I let the attendees get close up to view all 90 of them, and to read the sometimes lengthy caption that described the history of the event pictured on the wall, while I mingled.  I recognized many of the visitors, but sometimes it took about seven minutes into a conversation until I could place them.  It seemed more discreet than to say blankly, “And who are you?”  Or to put it another way, we were all a bit older and sometimes the resemblance faded.   I am awful at remembering names, and now I find I can’t put that elusive name to this elusive face.  Friends assure me they are all suffering from the same overload amnesia.  Some tell me that in social situations, they stick out their hand and announce, “I am (John Brown),” and the other person automatically recites his own name.  It doesn’t work when someone greets me enthusiastically, “Hi, Florence!”  Pleasantly, their opening line this night was, invariabley, "Wonderful show!"

Alas, traffic into the city was even worse than anticipated.  Art, as The Man of the Moment, had left ahead of us to assure he would be on hand even earlier than the scheduled 6PM opening.  A good thing, too.  People were arriving at 5PM!  So when we hurried in at a rather late 7PM some of the Big Names had been there and gone.  I can drop one name because Art was having his picture taken with her as we walked through the door – Christie Hefner.  And another name, her husband Bill Marovitz, prominent Chicago lawyer, who is movie-star-gorgeous.

An interesting moment of the show was the appearance of a frail little lady who was represented in one of the photos on the wall.  The picture had been taken in Africa 54 years ago. Art had been photographing Marlon Perkins doing his animal series for TV, and this woman had been Perkins' writer.  The hanging photo shows a very young lady in a makeshift outdoor bathtub.  A very sexy picture.  Ah youth.  Oh time.

The show will run for a month.  I will return.  I should mention, if I have provoked your interest, that the galleries selling the Art Shay Black and White images are The Stephen Daiter Gallery in Chicago, and the Albert Loeb Gallery in Paris.  My pride runneth over.

However, the Very Best Part of a special event is that family flies in to share the party with us.  So for too brief a weekend we had the joy of their presence.  Happy time!

---Florence

Oh That Ghost!

Do you believe in spooky?  Do you believe in weird?

We got an order for a book we had listed on the Internet.  It is a beautiful book published privately at a neighboring suburb, and signed by both the author and artist. Here is the listing:

Blanco-Gonzalez, Manuel, Illustrated by Leon Bellin. Venice Sinking. Eleuthera Press, Winnetka IL, 1982. Limited to 125 copies. Signed by author and artist. $95.

We shipped the book after getting the order for it through ABE who processes the credit card and notifies the buyer that the book was available and has been sent out.

We immediately get an email from the customer who writes: “I did not order this book!!!”

Following this is the nuisance of contacting ABE to reverse the order, have them reimburse his credit card, and my assurance to the customer that he has permission to return the book. But I write:  I am looking at your order on the computer right now.  Find out who ordered it in your name!!!

He replies that he is completely puzzled by this order, “My credit card has not been in anyone else’s possession at any time.  I guess this will have to remain a complete mystery!”

After waiting a reasonable time, I wrote to remind Edgar that the book was not returned.  He apologized.  The book had been mailed to his city address; he was now at the house he is building in the Bahamas.

He writes, “Well, perhaps there’s a ghost out there who ordered the book for me and wanted me to have it,” and suggests he will keep it, and how does he pay for it now?

I say, “I don’t want you to pay for a book you don’t know about.  We can wait until you see it.”  And I send him the catalogued description of the book.

Edgar writes, “I just read the description of Venice Sinking.  I noticed that it’s published by Eleuthera Press.  Well, as it happens, Eleuthera is my favourite island in the Bahamian archipelago which is made up of approximately 700 islands.  I’m currently building a house in Eleuthera…”

WHAT!!!!!!!!!  Has anybody ever heard of Eleuthera except for the local publishers and this wholly unknown customer who is building on one of 700 islands which happens to be Eleuthera?

Eventually the email: “I received Venice Sinking today.  It’s exquisite.  Naturally I want to keep it.  I have no idea why our friendly ghost wanted me to have this book…..”   He continues that he checked his “computer history” again and “there was no reference to our ghost’s purchase using my credit card!”  Musing about this mystery, he tell me there is a rock band from Athens, Georgia called Venice Sinking and they have a song called, To Your Ghost.  He is as caught up in the spookiness as I am.

Was there ever a book designed and destined for the exactly right customer no matter how devious the route to reach him?

Gads, I love this crazy business.

--Florence

In the Paint Department

With an arm in a sling, and still limited in movement, I am reminded of a conversation in semantics I had with Celeste at Home Depot.  We were in the paint department where the two sisters were examining about 78 color chips of green.  Since the risers on the long staircase were scuffed it seemed a good decorating idea to paint them pale green.  While they were discussing the merits of pale against paler, Celeste and I discussed the changing language to describe one’s infirmity.  This was a week before my accident.

>One, of course, never refers to an unfortunate as a cripple.  Shades of Dickens – how obsolete.  But wasn’t poor Tiny Tim a cripple?  No, no, the description grew kinder.  I forgot the progression, "disabled, handicapped,"and now Celeste tell me that even "physically challenged" has been challenged by her friend who insists that although she cannot climb the stairs, she is not physically challenged in any other way and rejects that description. 

A woman, leaning on her shopping cart, examining yellow paint chips, apparently was listening to our discussion of the politically correct way to address a physical flaw.  “Yes,” she said, “I know.”  Her left eye twitched to its own private rhythm, her cheek played an accompaniment.  Her smile held a steady beat, modulating the cacophony of her face.She said, “I can’t walk.  This cart?  It’s my walker.  I can’t stand up without it. Which one of you has a problem?”  I said, “Neither, we were just talking in general.”  Celeste said, “My girlfriend. She doesn’t like the words that are used.”

The lady said, “I don’t care what words they use.  I am all of those words.  I have no problem with any of those words. That’s what I am.”  Pause.  “What’s the matter with your girlfriend?”  Celeste said, “She has no legs.”  I think Celeste made that up to make the lady feel better.    

At that moment our party wheeled up a cart full of paint cans and accessories.  We bid goodbye to the lady, and I looked at the yellows in her hand and said, “Can’t make a mistake with any of those, yellow is so cheerful.” She said, “Every room in my house is a different color.  No yellow yet.”

Many hours later, the newly painted green risers looked charming, I thought.  What do I know.  They both hated it and decided to go back to the original white. 

As for my poor crippled arm which is slowly healing – extended I can now raise it waist high – after reviewing the descriptive words, I would say the politically correct word for my injury is: Inconvenient..

----Florence