August 19, 2026

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Liverlips McCracken
Liverlips McCracken
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Reply to  nighthawks
30 days ago

He looks as if he is disappointed in you.

happyhappyhappy
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Reply to  nighthawks
30 days ago

Dang it! Gone too soon.

Voxx
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Reply to  nighthawks
30 days ago

I was lucky enough to see her in concert …Montreal Forum late 60’s.
During the show , she jumped down from the stage and did a little stroll in the crowd. Everybody was quite surprised but respected her space. She chatted up a young man she found to her liking.

SusanSunshine
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Reply to  nighthawks
29 days ago

I saw her several times in the late sixties… the first, and maybe the second, at free concerts at the Student Union on the Cal campus, when she wasn’t yet famous.

A lot of mostly not-yet-famous groups used to do occasional free concerts there, usually with handmade posters, sometimes even unannounced… just show up and play.

Some with different personnel, or in a different group, from their later fame. It was like a place to practice having a concert, with a young, appreciative audience, and maybe even mingle afterwards.

I should have appreciated it more… I was a bit more involved in classes and my books, silly me. But I did go to quite a few.

I also saw Janis at least once, when she was with Big Brother, at the Fillmore in San Francisco, about 1969.

Last edited 27 days ago by SusanSunshine
SusanSunshine
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Reply to  nighthawks
29 days ago

My eyes wouldn’t focus on the wording when I was tired… and there’s still some a bit indistinct… but guessing those words from context…

Mme or Mlle (can’t tell which it says) C… might be an actress or a socialite, because she is shown here, “and her tame (I think) deer” “who had so much success at Trouvelle.”

So she might have been successful on stage…. but Trouvelle, I believe, was also one of those summer places, in those days, where one might be said, even in print, to have had a successful social season. Especially if she was either a well known hostess, or a well-off debutante

Liverlips McCracken
Liverlips McCracken
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Reply to  nighthawks
30 days ago

An itinerant blade-sharpener?

Arfside
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Reply to  Liverlips McCracken
30 days ago

And very necessary. My grandfather was a butcher, and he had a large whetstone in his garage, powered by an electric motor. When he retired, I would have loved to have kept it, but at 15 or so, I had no place to put it. I still keep things that I “might” use some day. It’s paid off often enough that I can (almost) justify the mess. 🙂

SusanSunshine
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Reply to  nighthawks
30 days ago

Yes … a knife grinder in New York City, in 1896.

I don’t know that I’d call him itinerant… but yes, if you mean he worked on the street, and not in a shop.

But vendors and people offering a service tended to frequent a certain location, as much as they could, in order to develop a reputation, and to be easily found, for instance, by repeat customers, or people to whom they’d been recommended.

Another photograph by Alice Austen, who, as I mentioned the other day, took over 7,000 pictures of the immigrants and street vendors of New York City…

Talk about itinerant, she traveled the city on her bicycle, alone, carrying about 50 pounds of equipment. Unheard of for a woman in her day…. when even being a photographer was unusual.

BTW… this just made me recall that we actually had a somewhat itinerant knife grinder who came through our neighborhood when I was a child… except I think “itinerant” usually means going from town to town, maybe living in different places.

I don’t know whether this fellow had a regular route, or how far afield he traveled.

I know he returned now and then. His knife sharpening business was in his little red van, and my mother flagged him down more than once to sharpen her carving knife… I don’t know about other kitchen knives, but she never had good ones, so maybe not.

All I remember is that he let me watch, and I was fascinated.

SusanSunshine
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Reply to  nighthawks
30 days ago

A Menominee woman holding her baby in a beaded cradleboard, taken in 1905.

The Menominee are a tribe with a long history in northern Wisconsin, and are still located there.

This image is actually on a postcard, and I’m pretty sure it was colorized back then, not more recently.

Liverlips McCracken
Liverlips McCracken
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Reply to  nighthawks
30 days ago

In addition to the funnel-head, which is grade A, I believe she is holding a pistol in her right hand. Neal & Welsh seems to have sold a highly diversified inventory.

Arfside
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Reply to  Liverlips McCracken
30 days ago

It kind of looks like that, but if so, she has her finger on the trigger. Not advised if you intend to follow the 4 rules of gun safety (plus maybe shooting yourself in the foot).

SusanSunshine
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Reply to  nighthawks
30 days ago

Hmmm. . I see it as a spoon… the handle projecting between her thumb and forefinger, with a couple of other fingers wrapped around the bowl end, and her forefinger just coincidentally lying on top of something else pinned to her dress.

I don’t know what it is… But there are beaded bags, and silver chains, so it could be a pointed chatelaine bag.

If it’s a pistol, instead, it has the skinniest barrel I’ve ever seen… And a very long space between the handle and the trigger.

She seems to be representing a silversmith’s shop…. but if so, why the lovely funnel hat?

In any case, I’m pretty sure Neal and Walsh would be the photographers, not the silver shop. That bottom wording would have appeared on all their portraits and cabinet cards.

SusanSunshine
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Reply to  SusanSunshine
30 days ago

Wow… It still amazes me what the Internet knows.

After posting the above (and yes, I should have done it first, but I wasn’t planning to give it so much time…) I decided to Google it…

And I found all this:

“Neal & Walsh was a photography partnership operating a portrait studio on Harris Street in Cadillac, Michigan, during the 1890s.
Photographs from this studio typically appear as cabinet cards—a style of portraiture highly popular in the late 19th century. These featured an albumen or gelatin silver print mounted onto a heavy cardstock frame, typically measuring roughly 4.25 by 6.5 inches.

The studio’s branding, “Neal & Walsh, Harris Street, Cadillac, Mich.”, is usually stamped or embossed in elegant, stylized typography along the bottom edge or across the back of the cardstock.”

More_Cats_Than_Sense
Reply to  SusanSunshine
30 days ago

Looks like a gun to me.

Gun
SusanSunshine
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Reply to  More_Cats_Than_Sense
30 days ago

oh…. Maybe you’re right and the spoon is what’s attached to her dress.

It could even be a silver “ladies'” pistol.

But that barrel still looks so teeny.

Do you think maybe it’s snub-nosed, and the skinny bit is something behind it, not part of it?

More_Cats_Than_Sense
Reply to  SusanSunshine
29 days ago

It’s got a short-ish barrel, but it’s not a snub-nosed by the look of it. I’m thinking it is a 0.22 caliber, could be smaller.

Voxx
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Reply to  nighthawks
28 days ago

Tom Terrific’s lesser known but uncommonly attractive sister, Magnetia.

Arfside
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Reply to  nighthawks
30 days ago

Annie Oakley.

SusanSunshine
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Reply to  Arfside
30 days ago

Yes, as a child.

She was born in 1860.

Voxx
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Reply to  nighthawks
30 days ago

Looking at the clouds, I almost expect a big foot coming down and squashing something.
(cue the Python Theme)

Liverlips McCracken
Liverlips McCracken
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Reply to  Voxx
30 days ago

I can see it. It isn’t the first thing that comes to my mind, but still. Incidentally, the march the Pythons used as their theme is the Liberty Bell, by John Philip Sousa.

Liverlips McCracken
Liverlips McCracken
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Reply to  nighthawks
30 days ago

I think she means business.

Arfside
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Reply to  nighthawks
30 days ago

Passing that bullet train like it’s standing still!

SusanSunshine
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Reply to  nighthawks
30 days ago

What’s the white thing on the… um… do you call it a windowsill on a train?

happyhappyhappy
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Reply to  SusanSunshine
29 days ago

Cup of tea or coffee?

JP Steve
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Reply to  happyhappyhappy
29 days ago

More like a coffee pot.

SusanSunshine
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Reply to  JP Steve
29 days ago

That’s what I thought it was, at first, but I wondered how you’d make coffee on the train. It also looks halfway wrapped up in something.

Then looking at it closer, I realized, Happy³ is right.

I thought it was too big… but I was looking for a ceramic mug.

It’s a tall, disposable paper cup, with a translucent plastic lid, like you’d probably get at the train snack bar, sitting in a small, open plastic bag, I think one with handles.

Arfside
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Reply to  nighthawks
30 days ago

Maybe the cat has different ideas about how well it went, just saying….

SusanSunshine
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Reply to  Arfside
30 days ago

That’s what I was thinking.

Though… if it was the EWC, he’s probably a bit disappointed as well, but only because he let the dog off easy.

happyhappyhappy
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Reply to  nighthawks
30 days ago

I’ll bet that she has diaphanous wings.

Arfside
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Reply to  happyhappyhappy
30 days ago

She does look a bit nymph-like. Could it be that they’re only diaphanous when they get wet?

Diaphanous
happyhappyhappy
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30 days ago

Arfside
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30 days ago

Hey, it’s $39 per person! And there’s more, much more!

Top-Pick-Cleveland-Tour
happyhappyhappy
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30 days ago

mr_sherman
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Reply to  happyhappyhappy
30 days ago

There’s a song about this I heard years ago.

More_Cats_Than_Sense
Reply to  mr_sherman
30 days ago

‘Murphy and the Bricks’

More_Cats_Than_Sense
Member
30 days ago

Hybrid Pacific Albus Poplar trees, Boardman Tree Farm in Boardman, Oregon.

Hybrid-Pacific-Albus-Poplar-trees-Boardman-Tree-Farm-in-Boardman-Oregon
More_Cats_Than_Sense
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30 days ago

Royal Flycatcher (female).

Royal-Flycatcher-female
Tigressy
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Reply to  More_Cats_Than_Sense
30 days ago

Fancy!

Liverlips McCracken
Liverlips McCracken
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Reply to  More_Cats_Than_Sense
29 days ago

Beautiful plumage, eh?

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