{"id":20787,"date":"2025-06-03T20:42:31","date_gmt":"2025-06-04T00:42:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=20787"},"modified":"2025-06-03T20:42:31","modified_gmt":"2025-06-04T00:42:31","slug":"roses-fade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=20787","title":{"rendered":"Roses fade"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Alice Faye - Rose Of Washington Square (1939)\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/xpMZyqZB1dI?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>A random post tonight,<\/strong> drawing on my long and tedious life story. My reading is slowed right now by the fact that I\u2019ve acquired a kind of a job, online. It\u2019s a temporary one, but demands my time while I\u2019ve got it. I may tell you about it, if I discover it\u2019s okay with my employers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Anyway, my memory wandered back, the other day, to a trip I took around 1978, when I was spending a year in Missouri (how and why is beside the point here). My parents came down from Minnesota to visit me, and we took a trip to the Ozarks. It was one of my first experiences relating to my parents as an adult, and weird for all kinds of reasons. My big interests were in visiting the Wilson\u2019s Creek battlefield (an early Civil War battle at which both Wild Bill Hickok and Jesse James were present), and the Saunders Museum of Berryville, AK, which has a splendid collection of historical weapons. My parents dutifully accompanied me, but were more interested in the sights of Branson, which was just getting going as a tourist spot at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We stopped at a couple places related to artists \u2013 we saw the open-air play based on Harold Bell Wright\u2019s novel, <em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Shepherd-Hills-Harold-Wright-Illustrated\/dp\/1975737261\/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1PRD5K5XTLSI9&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.6YtrbuMGau0LCOLiV25JOfYj6lp5Vo8oKUbpDBTF1zN8LEuoGQ4P6tcYYmjFHKgWwLNdjaxcHW5IEKBeO3HE4qcp7O7P70YFp3gMtn1X9uuYDkKMothRuS3rOMQyL3Hr1-yfyRNeJF93x7izVAsp9ov1XB69hVg_Pn3bMUpe_p9oRHGKAr9biLKY9TeYN14NpCLIzdSmuj9BDHnPhKa--dABoAhjE_S-IoMr70FpHyM.ICdJRxEC4epxzs5n6CWAbLICxC3JELPL2gcg9EItJbY&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=the+shepherd+of+the+hills+book&amp;qid=1748997048&amp;sprefix=the+shepherd+of+the+%2Caps%2C173&amp;sr=8-1&amp;tag=brandbooks-20\">The Shepherd of the Hills<\/a><\/em>, which was once a world bestselling book \u2013 now almost forgotten. I ought to write something about Wright and his novel one of these days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We also visited (I\u2019m pretty sure this was Mom\u2019s idea) Bonniebrook, the home of the artist <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Rose_O%27Neill\">Rose O\u2019Neill<\/a> (1874-1944), who was also a world-class celebrity in her time. (The song \u201cRose of Washington Square\u201d from the movie of the same name, embedded above, is supposed to have been a tribute to her, although the movie&#8217;s based on the life of Fannie Brice). She is best remembered as a cartoonist and illustrator. She created the \u201cKewpie,\u201d on which the kewpie doll is based. \u201cKewpie\u201d is a diminutive for \u201cCupid.\u201d The kewpies were cute, playful babies, inspired by the Cupids and cherubs of Renaissance art, only their wings were so vestigial you could hardly see them (which didn\u2019t stop them flying, apparently). The kewpie doll was the first mass-produced doll, and it was bigger in its day than Cabbage Patch Kids or Tickle Me Elmo could ever hope to be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Rose herself was a Nebraska native who moved to New York to pursue art. She became the first woman to ever have a comic strip published, and got to be rich and famous. She bought the Bonniebrook property in Missouri, where her father already lived, and spent the bulk of her earnings on her family there \u2013 plus her profligate first husband. But she herself did not live exactly modestly, and in time the kewpie doll fad receded, and her fortune (which had been huge) ran out. She retired to Missouri, where she died.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">You can visit Bonniebrook today, as we did. I remember it as a large house full of art. I seem to recall they had a genuine Andrew Wyeth there, though my memory is not reliable. My mom bought a small ceramic kewpie of her own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I guess the memory of that place got me thinking about fame. Even if you succeed as an artist in your own time (something I seem to have avoided), it doesn\u2019t guarantee immortality in the eyes of man. When you think of famous artists or writers, there seems to be a lot of them, but there were multitudes you never heard of. Some were highly regarded by their contemporaries, but their work has been lost, or they fell out of favor with later generations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Yet we all long not to be forgotten. I recall an old man somebody once brought along to a family gathering, when I was just a kid. I remember him sitting on my grandfather\u2019s couch, tentative, melancholy, quiet. When the time came for him to leave, he came over to us kids and said, \u201cDon\u2019t forget me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We looked at him dully and said we wouldn\u2019t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And I haven\u2019t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But I have no idea who he was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cFor here we have no continuing city, but we seek the one to come.\u201d (Hebrews 13:14)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A random post tonight, drawing on my long and tedious life story. My reading is slowed right now by the fact that I\u2019ve acquired a kind of a job, online. It\u2019s a temporary one, but demands my time while I\u2019ve got it. I may tell you about it, if I discover it\u2019s okay with my &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=20787\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Roses fade<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[5573,5574,5575,5571],"class_list":["post-20787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-rose-of-washington-square","tag-branson","tag-branson-mo","tag-rose-oneill"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20787"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20787\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20789,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20787\/revisions\/20789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}