“Our children won’t have to ride in the Jim Crow car,” Nassau Knapp promised his new bride.
“They won’t have to bring shoe boxes full of cold, greasy chicken on the train or eat behind a screen in the dining car."
"Our children will ride the freedom train. "
“That’s why I signed up to train as a fighter pilot down in Tuskegee."
"My people have been free and settled in Massachusetts since the Revolutionary War."
"I had never been south of the Mason-Dixon line before,"
"and some of the cracker officers we had didn’t want to see Negroes flying airplanes."
"We sure showed them!"
“Pampelleria,"
"Lampedusa,"
"Limosa..."
"…every time I flew into battle I thought I would die,"
"but I swore that if I made it back alive I would keep fighting until liberty and justice for all was a reality on the home front as well as abroad."
“I know you’re young, Beulah."
"I should have asked your father’s blessing before I carried you off like this."
"I should have given you the time to plan the big, beautiful wedding every girl dreams of."
"I should have waited for you to finish your education, but you seemed pretty fond of that clown you were dating when I met you and I couldn’t take the chance the he or some other fellow would snap you up."
“I love you so much, Beulah -- I need you so much."
"Thank you for doing me the honor of becoming my wife.”
To be continued...
***
Here is a sneak preview of meals i'll be making in upcoming tutorials:
Most will feature healthier foods, but sixty years ago people didn't know that the traditonal "country breakfast" was full of artery-clogging cholesterol and carcinogenic nitrites so Nassau ordered an omelet, sausage patties, and a hot biscuit with butter and jam while Beulah ordered a sunny-side up egg, two strips of bacon, and toast with jam. This story has at least two more installments so stay tuned to find out how Beulah and Nassau met and to see the tutorial on making the updo twists wig Beulah is wearing.
Ms. Leo of I Luv Dolls has called us all to account about the number of dolls we have re-bodied in the past year but the price of greater articulation may include a more limited selection of footgear. Bianca, the fit model for today’s tutorial, loves her lace espadrilles and testifies that your “Franken-Liv” dolls will also appreciate having some stylish shoes that fit their feet:
I should have made a shoe store using the excellent ideas My Froggy Stuff presents in her “Our Doll Shop” tour to celebrate the final tutorial in the shoe series. Today, however, was the last day of classes at the school where I teach. I don’t have to study for finals and I’m not swamped with grading but like my students, I have a big paper to finish by the end of next week. Consequently I haven’t had time to do a photo story.
Nevertheless as the year and the semester draw to a close I am very pleased to see that I have uploaded 95 minutes of video in the last four months. I am within striking distance of completing two hours of tutorials by the end of the year. I’ll post one more wig tutorial, two more lingerie pieces, and then start with some new projects in 2012.
“The charges against your son are very serious, Mrs. Dédé. The Gérémie family in particular is pushing to have him tried as an adult sex offender and unfortunately, they have some pull with the District Attorney.”
“Yes. Clarice Gérémie is Augustine’s first cousin but I’ve known Clarice since our cotillion days and she always was a spiteful witch. My son is an honor student and a gifted violinist who just happens to be bi-racial. Clarice is trying to lynch him because that alley cat daughter of hers sent him a few suggestive pictures and now everyone in our set is saying that the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree.”
Throughout her twenty-year career as a public defender in the juvenile court system, Cynthia Knapp’s greatest satisfaction had come from making sure that young people, especially young black men, got a fair hearing. She worked hard to keep young brothers charged with petty crimes like constructed possession of narcotics out of jail and she pushed for sentencing provisions that would help even the violent offenders rehabilitate themselves. She regularly referred clients to psycho-therapists, GED classes, and job training programs no matter how their cases turned out and she kept a closet full of Goodwill suits and dress shoes in her office so that her clients could look their best in court regardless of their financial circumstances. Money would not be a problem for the Dédé family, she surmised but the case was one of the thorniest she had encountered.
“The laws governing new social media technologies are not well defined, Mrs. Dédé. Edmond has been charged with felony distribution of pornographic materials involving minors. If you all could clarify for me how those pictures ended up on his Facebook page, it would help me develop a strategy for his defense.”
“It’s all very simple but no one will listen to my baby. They kicked him out of Saint Andrews even though he’s never caused a moment’s trouble before. I’m going to sue them all from here to kingdom come as soon as this farce of a criminal trial is over.”
“Yes, but how did the pictures like this one end up on his page?” Cynthia asked, pointing to the evidence on her computer screen.
“A bunch of sleazy girls got a notion to take naked pictures of themselves with their fancy cell phones and send them to my son after he starred in the school musical.”
“They started an Edmond Dédé fan club site. It was a joke,” said Edmond.
“I should charge them with corrupting an innocent. My baby never asked anyone to send him nasty pictures. Did you, Edmond?”
Edmond shook his head.
“But you did post those pictures to your Facebook page?” Cynthia pressed.
Edmond nodded.
“And you invited your friends to see them?”
“Not my friends,” Edmond protested.
“If they had access to your Facebook page, they must have been your friends. Or friends of your friends. Don’t you have any privacy controls on your account?”
“I don’t understand this whole Facebook thing anyway,” broke in Mrs. Dédé. He has hundreds of ‘friends’ on there but he says he didn’t want his real friends to see those pictures.”
“So you posted naked pictures of these girls on Facebook to show to people whom you don’t consider ‘friends?’”
“They’re just a bunch of guys,” Edmond shrugged.
“But you wanted them to see the pictures even though you wouldn’t show them to your ‘friends?’”
“I wanted them to stop calling me names.”
“Did you anticipate that they would post comments and call the girls names instead?”
“They think I’m a punk because my mom’s white and I play music instead of sports. They kept posting nasty comments on the fan club site.”
“Oh sweetie, you can’t let other people label you. It’s who you are inside that counts.”
“I just wanted them to stop saying I’m gay.”
“Well are you?” Cynthia asked, cutting to the crux of the case.
“I don’t know,” Edmond murmured after a long pause.
***
What do you think about “sexting” cases? Should juveniles who circulate suggestive pictures of themselves or their peers through social networking media be prosecuted for distributing child pornography? If convicted should they be required to register as sex offenders? Can a minor be held criminally accountable for receiving pornographic images even if they were not solicited? How should parents, school officials, and the courts handle the kind of cyber bullying that drove Edmond to make a very poor decision?
***
The real Edmond Dédé was a free man of color born in New Orleans in 1827. He moved to Europe in 1857 to further his musical studies and earned some renown as a violinist and composer. He married a Frenchwoman and settled in France, returning to New Orleans only once in 1893.
Here is a link to a performance of Dédé’s “Rêverie champêtre:”
And if your dolls would like a sleek shag cut like Cynthia Knapp’s, here is a tutorial on making the wig:
“Just think, seventeen customers ordered Cajun deep fried turkeys for Thanksgiving. I bet if we take out an ad in the Picayune, we can get even more orders next year.”
“But you will wear yourself out,” Naveen protested.
Catering for a Knights of Columbus fundraiser over the weekend had almost run Tianna and Naveen off their feet. The restaurant was closed on Mondays so the balmy November evening found them cooling their heels on a bench in the park.
“I know your feet must still ache from standing over that gumbo pot all those hours. “Let me attend to the suffering dears” said Naveen, drawing her slender calves into his lap and slipping off one sandal.
“How do you like that?” he said as he removed the other sandal and began to gently massage her arches.
Tianna stopped balancing the accounts in her head and surrendered to Naveen’s tender ministrations.
He couldn’t cook. He was all thumbs with a hammer, and he was likely to be off jitterbugging in some dive with his low life friend, Louis, just at the moment when there was serious work to be done but …
Naveen’s fingers played lightly over Tiana’s body with the finesse of a master chef mincing celery and onions. He improvised a medley of sensations, tossing a pinch of this and that into the gumbo pot and then he banked the heat so that instead of scorching, the sauce thickened in a rich blend of flavors. “I think we have a fine roux,” he murmured as he savored the scent of her desire.
Suddenly he pulled Tiana onto his lap
and deftly stirred the pot, running his hands up and down her legs.
Then he brushed her hair back from her face and gazed into her eyes:
I’ll be loving you always With a love that's true always. When the things you’ve planned Need a helping hand, I will understand always
he crooned, tempering the red pepper with a little brown sugar. He was about to sample the mixture when the pot came to a boil. Tiana pushed her jitterbug prince down and kissed him, pressing in for a taste of his smoked andouille sausage. He cupped her hips and pulled her closer.
Their legs intertwined as the gumbo steamed and bubbled…
“I think you folks better take the party indoors,” said Officer Waguespack.
Tiana and Naveen sat up sheepishly
but after they got home they dished up loving spoonfuls for the rest of the night.
***
I can’t promise a foot massage from Prince Naveen but you can make these sandals for your dolls by following the instructions in this tutorial:
Irving Berlin composed “Always” in 1925 for Ellin Mackay whose wealthy father opposed her marriage to a Jewish immigrant. Berlin assigned the royalties from this song to Ellin so that she would have an income, always, but they remained married and deeply in love for sixty-three years until her death in 1988.
Here is the Ink Spots 1947 recording of this famous tune:
