Butterflies count not months but moments, and has time enough.

From Ross: 

I live in Los Angeles. I drive in Los Angeles. I think about traffic a lot in Los Angeles. A few months ago, I discovered Matt Logue’s Empty LA photographs. I didn’t think much about it at the time, but every time I was stuck in rush hour all-hour traffic, I found myself thinking, “What if tomorrow everyone’s car disappeared?”

What would that scene look like? How would people react? How quickly would the atmosphere rebound from centuries of fossil fuel emissions?

So I took Matt Logue’s still photography concept and applied it to something that I do best — time lapse. I built a story around the idea of us being shackled to this ball and chain; this love-hate relationship with whom we spend so much time with here in LA.

Time to take a quick peek back at Kentucky Derby hats 2012.  This year, as always, offered a bit of something for everyone.  From classy to trashy, you have to love the biggest hat day of the year.

Derby Fashion History
The spectacular female fashion often seen at the Kentucky Derby is not solely a product of modern times; rather, opulent feminized dress has played a large role in the history of the Kentucky Derby. What Colonel M. Lewis Clark Jr., (the founding father of the Kentucky Derby), envisioned was a racing environment that would feel comfortable and luxurious, an event that would remind people of European horse racing. For a well-to-do late 19th and early 20th century woman, a day at Churchill Downs, especially on Derby Day was an opportunity to be seen in the latest of fashions. A journalist from a 1901 Louisville Courier-Journal stated, “The seats in the grandstand were filled with gaily dressed women and men. The mass of green, pink, red, yellow, blue, all the colors of the rainbow, blending into one harmonious whole was as beautiful a sight as His Eminence in the lead.”

What would these women have worn? Perhaps surprising to some, local Louisville women would have had the opportunity to purchase dresses and accessories from a talented group of seamstresses. The dresses in the late 19th through the early 20th century would have emphasized a slimmer bustled silhouette than those of years past. The length of these dresses would have assuredly been long, covering the ankles. Due to the fact that the Kentucky Derby is in the spring, silks would have been a good, warm weather choice. Gloves, hat, and perhaps a parasol were also appropriate choices as well.

As societal rules softened in the 20th century, what was deemed appropriate dress transformed. In the 1920s, women at the Derby could be seen wearing a dress or perhaps a more modern suit, complete with a jacket. Some of the1920s jackets were roomy and accommodating, others were fitted. The hat and gloves were still very much in fashion. The 1930s and 1940s followed in the same vein, with option of a dress or suit; in fact, in the 1930s and 1940s the formal suit seemed to be more popular than the dress.

The 1950s ushered in a renewed prosperity to postwar America and clothing styles reflected that. At the Kentucky Derby, one would have most likely viewed well-dressed women in chic suits, with skirts that were either fitted to the body or billowed outward with the assistance of a petticoat. Again, gloves and hats were still quite popular and still a part of a well-dressed woman’s wardrobe. The rules that guided so much of 20th century culture seemed to be thrown out the window in the mid-to late 1960s. Though the Derby was still viewed as a most respectable event and women continued to dress as such, a change had occurred. Now that Millionaires Row had opened, society women wore increasingly louder hats and took pride and enjoyment in selecting one. This trend of bigger, more spectacular hats might have developed due to the fact that while society was loosening its grip on the hat and glove formality, the Kentucky Derby offered women a place to continue the old traditions. Patterns and prints were also brighter, and hemlines defiantly were raised, yielding a much different look than years before.

In the 1970s and 1980s was a return to the longer skirt, while the same casual attitude of the 1960s was still in place. From the 1990s to today, the dress at the Derby is slowing replacing the suit, especially with younger women. While gloves are out of fashion, a hat never is, and they tend to get wilder and more expensive every year. The style of the infield today is defiantly relaxed, with women wearing cool sundresses, cotton skirts, or more frequently shorts. Still, the Kentucky Derby has earned its reputation as a fashion playground and here at the Kentucky Derby Museum we would like to capture its dynamic spirit.

Credit:
Katherine Veitschegger
Curator of Collections
Kentucky Derby Museum

Theodor Seuss Geisel was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, to Theodor Robert and Henrietta (Seuss) Geisel. His father managed the family brewery and later supervised Springfield’s public park system after the brewery closed due to Prohibition. Suess incorporate his childhood neighborhoood into Mulberry Street in Springfield, made famous in Dr. Seuss’ first children’s book And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street! The street is less than a mile southwest of his boyhood home on Fairfield Street.

A Dartmouth College graduate of the Class of 1925, he began his literary career joining the humor magazine Dartmouth Jack-O-Lantern, eventually rising to the rank of editor-in-chief. His “official” stint there was short lived after he was caught drinking gin in his dorm room with nine friends. In order to continue writing for the Jack-O-Lantern, Geisel cleverly began signing his work with the pen name “Seuss” and continued to write for the magazine until his graduation. After graduation he attended Oxford hoping to earn additional degrees. His plan was cut short when meeting, Marion Helen Palmer, a Wellesley graduate and six years older than he. They married in 1927and soon returned to the United States. 

Back in the States he began submitting humorous articles and illustrations to Judge, Life, Vanity Fair, and Liberty. The July 16, 1927 issue of the The Saturday Evening Post published his first cartoon under the name Seuss. Geisel supported himself and his wife through the Great Depression by drawing advertising for General Electric, NBC, Standard Oil, Narragansett Brewing Company and many other companies. In 1935, he wrote and drew a short-lived comic strip called Hejji. Geisel gained a significant public profile through a program for motor boat lubricants produced by Standard Oil under the brand name Essomarine.

As World War II began, Geisel turned to political cartoons, drawing over 400 in two years as editorial cartoonist for the left-leaning New York City daily newspaper, PM. Geisel’s political cartoons, later published in Dr. Seuss Goes to War, denounced Hitler and Mussolini/

In 1942, Geisel turned his energies to direct support of the U.S. war effort. First, he worked drawing posters for the Treasury Department and the War Production Board. Then, in 1943, he joined the Army as a Captain (OF-2) and was commander of the Animation Dept of the First Motion Picture Unit of the United States Army Air Forces, where he wrote films that included Your Job in Germany, a 1945 propaganda film about peace in Europe after World War II, Our Job in Japan, and the Private Snafu series of adult army training films. Our Job in Japan became the basis for the commercially released film, Design for Death (1947), a study of Japanese culture that won the Academy Award for Documentary Feature.  Gerald McBoing-Boing (1950), which was based on an original story by Seuss, won the Academy Award for Animated Short Film.

After the war, Geisel and his wife moved to La Jolla, California. Returning to children’s books, he wrote many works, including such favorites as If I Ran the Zoo, (1950), Horton Hears a Who! (1955), If I Ran the Circus (1956), The Cat in the Hat (1957), How the Grinch Stole Christmas (1957) and Green Eggs and Ham (1960). Although he received numerous awards throughout his career, Geisel won neither the Caldecott Medal nor the Newbery Medal. Three of his titles from this period were, however, chosen as Caldecott runners-up (now referred to as Caldecott Honor books): McElligot’s Pool (1937), Bartholomew and the Oobleck (1939), and If I Ran the Zoo (1950). Dr Seuss also wrote the musical and fantasy film The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T, which was released in 1953. The movie was a critical and financial failure, and Geisel never attempted another feature film. During the 1950s he also published a number of illustrated short stories, mostly in Redbook Magazine.

In May 1954, Life magazine published a report on illiteracy among school children, which concluded that children were not learning to read because their books were boring. Accordingly, William Ellsworth Spaulding, the director of the education division at Houghton Mifflin who later became its Chairman, compiled a list of 348 words he felt were important for first-graders to recognize and asked Geisel to cut the list to 250 words and write a book using only those words. Spaulding challenged Geisel to “bring back a book children can’t put down.” Nine months later, Geisel, using 236 of the words given to him, completed The Cat in the Hat. It was described as a tour de force by some reviewers[who?]—it retained the drawing style, verse rhythms, and all the imaginative power of Geisel’s earlier works, but because of its simplified vocabulary could be read by beginning readers. The Cat in the Hat and subsequent books written for young children achieved significant international success and they remain very popular today. In 2009 Green Eggs and Ham sold 540,366 copies, The Cat in the Hat sold 452,258 copies, and One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish (1960) sold 409,068 copies—outselling the majority of newly published children’s books. Geisel went on to write many other children’s books, both in his new simplified-vocabulary manner (sold as Beginner Books) and in his older, more elaborate style. The Beginner Books were not easy for Geisel and reportedly took him months to complete.

Geisel’s earlier artwork often employed the shaded texture of pencil drawings or watercolors, but in children’s books of the postwar period he generally employed the starker medium of pen and ink, normally using just black, white, and one or two colors. Later books such as The Lorax used more colors.

Geisel’s figures are often rounded and somewhat droopy. This is true, for instance, of the faces of the Grinch and of the Cat in the Hat. It is also true of virtually all buildings and machinery that Geisel drew: although these objects abound in straight lines in real life, for buildings, this could be accomplished in part through choice of architecture. For machines, for example, If I Ran the Circus includes a droopy hoisting crane and a droopy steam calliope.

On October 23, 1967, suffering from a long struggle with illnesses including cancer, as well as emotional pain over her husband’s affair with Audrey Stone Dimond, Geisel’s wife, Helen Palmer Geisel, committed suicide.[33] Geisel married Dimond on June 21, 1968. Though he devoted most of his life to writing children’s books, Geisel had no children of his own. He would say, when asked about this, “You have ‘em; I’ll entertain ‘em.”

Geisel died of throat cancer on September 24, 1991, after several years of poor health, in La Jolla, California.

Over the course of his career, Geisel wrote over 60 books. Though most were published under his well-known pseudonym, Dr. Seuss, he also authored over a dozen books as Theo LeSieg and one as Rosetta Stone. His books have topped many bestseller lists, sold over 222 million copies, and been translated into more than 15 languages. In 2000, Publishers Weekly compiled a list of the best-selling children’s books of all time; of the top 100 hardcover books, 16 were written by Geisel, including Green Eggs and Ham, at number 4, The Cat in the Hat, at number 9, and One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish, at number 13. In the years after his death in 1991, two additional books were published based on his sketches and notes: Hooray for Diffendoofer Day! and Daisy-Head Mayzie. My Many Colored Days, originally written in 1973, was posthumously published in 1996. Most recently, seven stories originally published in magazines during 1950 and 1951 were released in a collection entitled The Bippolo Seed and Other Lost Stories in September 2011.

At various times, Geisel also wrote books for adults that used the same style of verse and pictures: The Seven Lady Godivas (1939; reprinted 1987), which included nude depictions; You’re Only Old Once! (written in 1986 when Geisel was 82) which chronicles an old man’s journey through a clinic, a satire of the inefficiency of clinics. His last book, written a year before his death, was Oh, the Places You’ll Go!, a popular gift for graduating students.

From 26 to 29 January 2012, the Light Festival Ghent took place in the city of Ghent, Belgium. The spectacular four day event took place in the the historic center of Ghent, following 4 km trail winding through historical sites and past  historical monuments. The 2012 theme was Music & Happiness.

More than half-a-million people were drawn to the spectacular Luminaire De Cagna LED-light display which quickly became the main attraction of the Festival that included more than 30 other displays and exhibitions. Constructed of wood, covered with 55,000 LED lights and reaching 28 meters (92 ft.) into the sky above Belfortstraat, the Romanesque cathedral-like Luminaire De Cagna used only 20 kWh of energy.

The history of Iglu-Dorf began with Adrian Günter and one extreme snowboarder’s crazy idea to spend the night in an igloo so he could be the first on the slopes the next day. Apparently being first is a matter of great pride for snowboarders, so he decided to build himself an igloo to make sure no one beat him to that first ride down the mountain. The next day he looked like the happiest person alive, and when someone asked him why he had a big smile on his face, he just pointed at the mountain and said “You see that line over there? That was me.” More and more people followed his example and asked to sleep in his igloo. The next season he built two igloos, then three, and that’s how the Iglu-Dorf igloo villages were born. Now the company builds 12 of them every year, in different locations around Europe. This is no small task as each of these igloos has to be rebuilt every year, using 3,000 tons of snow.

At first, the igloos were built block by block, the traditional way, but that took a team of five people, two weeks to build just one 8-foot-wide and 8-foot-tall igloo, They were only able to open resort at the end of January. They had to come up with a faster way, and found balloons were the best option. They filled up these big balloons, covered them up with snow and waited until it hardened, then simply deflate the balloons and voila, perfect igloos. But that’s where the serious work starts – artists are brought in to carve the lounges, the snow furniture, beds, decorations, etc.  An entire Iglu-Dorf village now takes just two weeks to build working 3 shifts, 24 hours a day.The biggest igloo they build is 32 feet high and 32 metres wide. The little ones are 13 by 13 feet.

They have the romantic igloos, some of which even have a private toilet and a private Jacuzzi. And they have the standard igloos which are for up to 6 people. Although Iglu-Dorf does offer heated rooms with a stove, most of the snow igloos are only equipped with sleeping bags to keep you warm, so you better pack some winter clothes. Temperatures during the night don’t fall too far below 32 degrees, but if you feel chilly, you can try the nice cheese fondue fountain, or jump into the incredible hot-tub built right in the snow, and count the stars.

If you have an event, you have the possibility to rent the entire village so that it’s all yours.  Open from Dec. 25th  until April, prices at Iglu-Dorf range from $99 per person, but can run up to $780 per person on New Years Eve.   Dinner of cheese fondue, snowshoe walk, supervision by Iglu-guides and breakfast in the mountain restaurant included.