Questions and Answers

Across the skies of Paris with holiday wishes to all and only the best in the new year…

Theatrical productions about GertrudeandAlice, whether play, musical or opera, just keep coming! The newest is The Marriage of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein by New York writer, Edward Einhorn presented at the HERE multi-arts center in New York City through May 28^th. Einhorn also directs the show.

The play is a farcical frolic with members of GertrudeandAlice’s charmed circle – you name them, they’re there: Ernest Hemingway, Pablo Picasso, James Joyce, Ezra Pound, Sylvia Beach, T.S. Eliot, Virgil Thomson, Sherwood Anderson, Carl Van Vechten, Alfred Lord Whitehead, Francis Picabia, Henri Matisse, Thornton Wilder and the Steins, Leo, Michael and Sarah. Then there are nods to the Virgin Mary, Jesus, Moses and Solomon and assorted wives and mistresses – it is a farce after all, with some serious moments.

The happy couple: Alyssa Simon as Alice, Mia Katigbak as Gertrude (Photo Richard Termine)

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It’s Alice birthday time again and the years certainly do flit by!

It was fifteen years ago that I organized an exhibition at the San Francisco Public Library to commemorate Alice’s 125th and then packed it up to be shown at the American Library in Paris. In the spirit of time marching along at a steady pace and looking back – let’s make “Throw Back Thursday,” “Throw Back Birthday” – here is my Alice birthday post from seven, short years ago. Happy Birthday once again, Alice B.!

And Alice gets her birthday due, too…

Today is the 50^th anniversary of the death of Alice B. Toklas in Paris, one event in a memorable 1967.

In a post several years ago, I used the title “That Was The Year That Was,” a variation of the mid- 1960s television show called “That Was The Week That Was.” The program, a predecessor of “Saturday Night Live,” and John Oliver’s “Last Week Tonight,” took a humorous, satiric look at the news of the previous week.

To commemorate Alice, I’m looking at  “…The Year That Was,” 1967. (She lived without Gertrude for twenty-one years.)

GertrudeandAlice together, June 1934

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One of my goals when I began this blog was to bring as much recognition to Alice as to Gertrude. Though my use of the term “GertrudeandAlice” implies a symbiotic relationship, which it was, Alice still often plays second fiddle to Gertrude’s first chair violin for some people.

I think I have been able to rectify this disparity of wellknownness over the years and I must think that even Gertrude would not be upset to know that Alice has gotten her due as so much more than chief cook and bottle washer!

In the next few months I propose giving Alice even more due !

March 7, 2017 marks the 50^th anniversary of Alice’s death, so I’m declaring the six month period from now until Alice’s 140^th birthday on April 30^th ALICE B. TIME! And by chance, there are a lot of Alice related things happening during ABT. » Read the rest of this entry «

This year is the 5th anniversary of my book GERTRUDE AND ALICE AND FRITZ AND TOM. I know it’s a cliche, but I must say it anyway – “Where has the time gone?” 

The book has found its way to readers around the world and just last week I shipped another five copies to Shakespeare & Company in Paris, which has sold more copies of it than any other bookstore or online retailer, which I find so appropriate and gratifying.

Would I do it again? Yes! Do I have more tales to tell, yes! But for now, here is my post from five years ago, as I awaited the first shipment of books from Singapore:

Wasn’t it Lady Macbeth who said “What’s done is done,” at some point either before or after that bloody dagger scene? (Just checked, it’s after the dagger scene – that would be logical !)

…the deed is done!

Well, I’ve done it too and feel a bit like a parent dropping off his first child at kindergarten hoping for the best as tears well-up and Miss Crabtree leads the young one away to join the other rascals.

Miss Crabtree in charge

So what is it that’s been done – the children’s picture book which I’ve been working on for…let’s just say many,many years is on its way to a printer in Singapore!

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Happy birthday, Alice Babette! This is not just a wish today on Alice’s 139^th birthday, but also a new children’s book by Canadian author Monica Kulling published a few weeks ago by Groundwood Books.

GertrudeandAlice join a long line of famous people that Ms. Kulling has featured in her books including Eleanor Roosevelt, Harriet Tubman, and Henry Ford. Other books have been about lesser known trailblazers such as Margaret Knight, the inventor of the paper bag making machine, and Lillian Gilbreth, the first female engineer with a PhD, who was immortalized by her children in the book Cheaper by the Dozen. » Read the rest of this entry «

Forty-nine years ago today, Alice B. Toklas died a few weeks before her 90th birthday. In remembrance, here is a portion of a story I wrote sixteen years ago about Alice’s life alone following Gertrude’s death.

“What’s the answer?” Gertrude queried. Alice didn’t reply.

“Then what is the question?” Gertrude asked with a sigh.

The day ended in sadness, the room filled with a chill.

Soon Gertrude was gone, she had been too, too ill.

A long friendship was over, years of love, years of care,

Alice sat in the darkness, “Now what, when or where?”

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