I've posted it here, but quite a while back. This is my mother, Helen Polley at the time, around 1943 when she was 18. My sister and I never saw this picture until a couple of years after she died and her sister sent it to us. She'd mentioned that as a teen she had done a few modeling shots but said that all shots from the shoot were lost. "No great loss," she would say. "They were pretty silly since I looked so dowdy in those shots."
Like many of us, I have tried to start the year off by being better organized on many fronts. Though the process has been going on for years now, I have set goals in the endless task of transferring favorite LPs from my library to MP3s and CDs. It's like having old friends you've not talked to in years right there on your iPod as you fly above the Rockies or down to the Andes.
Since it can be so daunting, I've set the goal of transferring the works of one artist over the course of a week or so depending on the size of their work that I have. This week, for no apparent reason other than the fact that I have only her first LPs, I took on the works of Phoebe Snow. I'm not sure why I stopped buying her work after her fourth album, but it certainly wasn't because I stopped liking her. I guess I just got distracted, and I must admit I've probably not listened to her work in at least 20 to 25 ears besides hearing it come onto the radio or over the sound system somewhere. Back in the 1980s it would break my heart to hear her distinctive voice in commercials, even though she could make the most banal little jingle sound lovely.
I remember knowing about her daughter Valerie and the devotion she poured onto her but never knew the full story until seeing the lovely clip below. The above image from her third album from 1976, "It Looks Like Phoebe Snow", touched and haunted me from the moment I first saw it. The image is even more moving today now that I know more about her story and her steadfast refusal to cave in to the "logic" of those who insisted that she institutionalize Valerie. It's good to know that Phoebe is still going at it and still has that remarkable voice. I suspect I'll be listening to her more again and hope she has more work to share with us in the years ahead.
Location: San Francisco, California, United States
JunkThief is your typical Gallic Jew boy born on the Great Plains, went to Gotham and Ouagadougou and Kathmandu before settling in San Francisco's Mission District. Now he searches the dark alleys of that city to find good conversation, Weimar culture and (but of course) the perfect door knob.
I've posted it here, but quite a while back. This is my mother, Helen Polley at the time, around 1943 when she was 18. My sister and I never saw this picture until a couple of years after she died and her sister sent it to us. She'd mentioned that as a teen she had done a few modeling shots but said that all shots from the shoot were lost. "No great loss," she would say. "They were pretty silly since I looked so dowdy in those shots."
