It’s Labor Day weekend in my country — unofficially serving also as the end of summer — and we are supposed to be celebrating ordinary working people (OWP). Eventually, I’ll grind into the tangled mass of sociocultural attitudes and practices clustered around the concept of OWP in America, but today I’m starting with the small and personal.
Today (9/5) is the Saturday of Labor Day. Tomorrow (9/6) is my (86th) birthday. I’d prefer to celebrate the day as the birthday of the Marquis de Lafayette (born in 1757), who was a genuine hero of two separate countries, and then incidentally as coffee ice cream (my favorite flavor) day. But I recognize that lots of fine people want to celebrate my life so far and wish for me to have at least another year of it; but I’m not very good at thanking them all.
The larger point is that my birthday and Labor Day come close together, every year, and occasionally coincide.
And now we reach the entertainment portion of the program, with two birthday greeting cards from Elizabeth Daingerfield Zwicky, delivered today because Saturday is her day for setting up my medications. One card is fabulously gay, the other is playful penguiniana.
Leyendecker’s golden robes. Lightning background on the artist:
Not only were [the ilustrator and magazine cover artist J.C. Leyendecker’s] depictions of men often homoerotic, JCL was himself homosexual. See the discussion in my 7/10/20 posting “Hiding homosexuality: JCL”, with [an] inventory of my earlier postings about the artist.
And now an oil on canvas painting from 1915 (EDZ’s gift), showing the model who became JCL’s partner in life, in an ad for underwear, while shimmering — oh, Mary! — in a voluptuous golden robe:
(#1) JCL, Man in Long Underwear
From the Haggin Museum (of Stockton CA) site on 8/5/23:
J.C. Leyendecker’s 1915 illustration for Cooper Underwear Company. In recognition of NATIONAL UNDERWEAR DAY.
This illustration of a gentleman in long underwear was painted by J.C. Leyendecker in 1915 for Cooper Underwear Company, Kenosha, Wisconsin.
Leyendecker was arguably the nation’s most popular and successful commercial artist of the first four decades of the 20th century. The Haggin Museum’s collection of 60 original works by Leyendecker represents the largest held by any museum.
Penguin with a Z. From the Snowtap studio, a meditative portmanteau for a penguin-fancying Z-person:
(#2) Om mani padme hum
(This Zenguin card is from 2021, apparently now out of stock and not available on-line, so I had to scan it in)
From the Snowtap site:
Established in 2016 …, Snowtap is a collaborative design studio that creates playful and humorous illustrations for cards, prints, stationery, gifts and homeware.
Based in Cambridge UK and established by best friends Susy Snow and Grace Tapner in 2016, Snowtap creates illustrative designs inspired by the extraordinary natural world. Their work is full of character, colour and humour. Between the two of them working in partnership, Gracie – the watercolour wizard and Susy — the pun queen, their illustrations are the best of both worlds. [AZ: well, there they go over the top, but they are enthusiasts]
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