This is my latest bouquet: charm peonies and wisteria. They are both made from frosted paper. While I did make the wisteria leaves, I was not ambitious enough to make the rest of the greenery. I find that making leaves is just not as fulfilling as making flowers!
Brindy hopes that whatever country you’re in, you can give thanks for the good things in your life. Here she is displaying her four “Big Blue” toys that she is thankful for!
Some visitors on the way to lunch:
While thinking about my last post, I wondered if I wasn’t being a bit hypocritical about being a celebrity. After all, here I am posting about myself on a blog that, currently at least, is open to the public and that I hope to reach at least a few people with. Who am I to point a finger at people playing to their “adoring public”? It made me focus in on what bothers me about the issue and it’s much more the fan issue I don’t understand, not the wanting to be a celebrity issue.
Most of us want to be “known” in some way. We want to feel that our existence matters to a least a few people. I originally started this blog so that friends and family could see what was going on in my mom’s and my life and decided to make it a catch-all for whatever ideas and thoughts came my way. Would I like it if more people read and enjoyed it? Sure, but I’m not planning on doing anything to try to make myself an internet sensation.
It’s the “fan” side of the equation that I don’t understand. Why does a person’s talent in one area lead to them being idolized? Why would the fact I enjoy someone’s singing mean I want to know what they have for breakfast?
This was really brought home to me yesterday while reading my local paper. It announced that an auction was going to be held to sell a gold crown taken from the mouth of Elvis Presley when he was having some dental work done. I believe the bidding was expected to start at $2500.
What, for goodness sake, would anyone do with a thing like this? Mount it on a pedestal in the living room for all to see? It would certainly have to come with a plaque to explain why such an object was being displayed. Keep it lovingly wrapped in silk in a drawer to be taken out and admired every once in a while?
When my dad was cremated the funeral director asked mom if she wanted the steel rods from his forearm or his plastic knee replacement. “No thank you”, she said and I can’t imagine any other answer. It’s not like having the finger bones of some saint around that have supposedly magic powers. Or maybe that is what some fans feel having the gold crown would be like.
Years ago I read a number of interesting studies and experiments about “contagion bias”. Here’s a quick intro to the idea from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1057740816300791:
One explanation is that consumers believe that some part of the celebrity, such as their soul or essence, has been imbued into the objects they have used (Newman, Diesendruck, & Bloom, 2011). Much of this has to do with the law of contagion.
The law of contagion explains why people tend to value objects that admired celebrities have come into physical contact with more so than objects that they have owned but never touched (Newman & Bloom, 2014). In particular, it has been theorized that people behave as though the essence of an object’s previous owner is inherent in the object itself (Gelman, 2003, Newman et al., 2011). This is consistent with the finding that people are willing to pay more for George Clooney’s sweater as long as it has not since been dry-cleaned (Newman et al., 2011). It is as if the “Clooney Cooties,” as Bloom (2011) put it, could be sterilized away. Critically, this was not the only finding of note from Newman et al. (2011). A lesser discussed observation was that people were also willing to pay less for George Clooney’s sweater if they were forbidden from telling anyone that Clooney had previously worn it (Bloom, 2011). This highlights how the law of contagion may play a role in conspicuous consumption.
I guess you can’t get an object that has much more “physical contact” than a dental crown!
BTW, the most famous example of contagion bias that I know of is the experiment called “Hitler’s sweater”; you can find an explanation here: https://thinksucceedbehappy.wordpress.com/2020/08/23/would-you-wear-hitlers-sweater/
At any rate, if you enjoy my blog, I’m happy, but please don’t plan on bidding for the titanium screws from my foot when I’m gone!
I watched the Adele special on TV Sunday night. I have been a “fan” of her voice since I first heard her sing and have bought all of her albums as they came out. I very much enjoyed watching and listening to her, but could have done without most of the interview portions with Oprah. I just don’t have much interest in a celebrity’s personal life and have never understood the imperative that leads people to join fan clubs, for instance.
There are a lot of people whose body of work I admire, but why would I want to meet them? What is there to say other than “I enjoy your work, hope you keep on”? I know, for example, that any movie with Meryl Streep in it is probably going to be worth watching, if only for her performance. But why would I ever want to meet her? I don’t know her; she doesn’t know me. It would be like walking up to some total stranger and expecting there to be some kind of connection between us.
I know for adolescent fans there is often a fantasy sexual component to the adoration of some celebrity or group, but why does this interest in every detail of the celebrity’s life go on into adulthood? I assume that celebrities and their actions provide society with some kind of morality plays, but, again, how does this translate into wanting to meet the star in person?
I can only think of one “notable” person that I could meet and actually envision having a conversation with: John Scalzi, a well-regraded science-fiction writer. But we wouldn’t be having a conversation because of his books. He has had a blog (https://whatever.scalzi.com/) up for years and I have been reading it for almost as long as he’s been writing it. This means that I “know” the public John Scalzi and would be able to talk to him about his favorite tortilla brand and what his dog has been up to lately.
When it comes to most celebrities, I have no such connections. Meeting Adele would be like meeting my gardener or the owner of my favorite local diner outside of their jobs. One provides great service for my car; one serves terrific sandwiches and waffles, and one sings great songs. What would we have to say to each other?
The main difference that I see is that one provider reaches millions of people, while the others reach only a few thousand, at most. But I can’t see how that makes any difference to me as far as my interest in their personal life goes. Is part of the draw being in a club with others with the same preoccupation? Is it because their celebrity puts their personal life in the public realm and therefore readily available?
I was musing about this because the other day I saw a headline about “What your favorite star’s children are doing now!” This struck me as very, very odd. I don’t care what the “star” is up to; why in the world would I care what their children are doing? And what a rotten thing to do to the kids who probably aren’t looking for that kind of attention.
All in all, I just want publicly talented people to offer me whatever their public talent is and then we both go off and enjoy our separate private lives. Of course some people these days are only known because they make their private lives public, but those people don’t seem very interesting to me.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, I only saw my dad’s father once in my life. I believe my brother saw him twice. We did get a few stories about him, though.
My mom’s parents weren’t too sure about having their daughter marry that “Greek boy”. My mom says Grandma didn’t learn to spell the last name until they had been married five years and it appeared the marriage would last. Grandma’s idea was that Grandfather pushed a fruit cart down the street for his living. In actuality, he was chancellor of the Greek embassy in Washington, DC.
Although our last name is unusual in the US it is fairly well known in Greece, although it is not common there either. Back around the beginning of the 20th century one of my greats was President of Greece during a brief democratic period. The family also had a famous admiral who fought against the Turks. There is even a family museum on the island of Hydra. The family was very influential in the shipping business.
The family story is that after WWII, Grandfather used that influence and also a tidy sum of money to help Aristotle Onassis get started in his shipping business. Years later when my Grandfather reminded him of this “handshake” loan, Aristotle professed to have no memory of such a transaction.
My Grandfather retired to the Greek community of Tarpon Springs, Florida. He was born in 1887 and died in 1967, so he was the first of all my grandparents to pass; one of the reasons I only saw him that once.
Here he is in Tarpon Springs with his second wife:
And here are Grandfather, my dad and my aunts, and my brother and I during his only visit to California in 1961:
Nana was my dad’s mother. Nana was the “spoiler” of the bunch. By which I mean she loved to spoil us by indulging us in such things as taking us out to eat and to places such as Knott’s Berry Farm. Her main difficulty in her ability to “spoil us rotten” was that she didn’t have much money. She was constantly offering us sweets and the like: Nana was, of course, the one who introduced us to Pop-Tarts, with butter, naturally (see my earlier post on Pop-Tarts).
Nana worked as a nurse’s aide, so we often saw her in a crisp, white uniform. I know she worked at one of the local hospitals as well as working privately for individuals. Additionally, she and Daisy were often caring for one relative or another: first Nana’s mother, Lulu, and later Daisy’s sister, Myrna.
Nana just back from work, at our house in 1959:
Nana had a toy poodle named Nicki that she just adored; here they are in 1960:
Nana’s mother, the only great grandparent I ever met:
Nana in 1966; she would have been 75:
A few pictures from earlier times:
Nana lived to be 79, she died in 1970, the same year I graduated from high school. All my memories of her are only ones of my interactions with her; I know nothing of the woman she was when she wasn’t being my “Nana”. I’d give a lot to be able to go back and talk with her!
My parents actually got the dog first, then had kids. Here she is as a pup:
My Grandma was my best friend when I was young. I remember more times with her than anyone else. During the summers, up until when we all moved when I was 11, it seems like I must have spent half my time at her house. Even after we all moved away from each other, I spent some vacations at my grandparents house in Loma Linda.
We played “Hide the Thimble”, Parcheesi, and Chinese Checkers.
She taught me to do a bit of crocheting and to make rag rugs.
We did embroidery and liquid embroidery on pillowcases, tablecloths, and napkins.
With her help, I did many paint-by-number kits and mosaic kits. In fact, it’s one of my projects in the background of this picture of her taken in 1964 for their golden wedding anniversary (she made her dress, of course):
And most fun of all, she and I picked the boysenberries she grew in the garden and made boysenberry jelly. Every summer we would slather it on saltines; it was wonderful!
Strangely enough, the one thing I did not learn was sewing. I was warned early on about not letting the needle go through my thumb and was scared of the sewing machine from then on.
Here we are together when I’m 1 and 2:
Here she is at about 80 years old:
She lived to be 87; she died the year after I finished college. I wish I had had a lot more moments with her, but I love reflecting on the times we did have.
Tuples and Attributes 