Stealing from the Rich, in the Age of Google

The joke’s on them. At least I think.

I visited the Edmonton Journal’s online website, to read an editorial trashing Harper. Imagine! Over the F-35 scandal. Edmonton is STILL in Alberta, am I right?

And what do you know. The EJ masthead contained an advertisement for Sotheby’s Quebec.

I’m being followed. On Google. (This Blogger site is a Google site.) It’s not like they didn’t warn me. And I’m using Google’s ALL SEEING EYE to my advantage (I think) by having my digital books Threshold Girl and Looking For Mrs. Peel and Milk and Water available to all in Google Documents.

But the joke REALLY is on them.

Just because I’ve been scoping Sotheby’s International, it doesn’t mean I am in the market for a 10,000, 000 dollar home. Surprise!!

In fact, if I didn’t own a home already, I probably couldn’t afford any home anywhere.

A ‘tapestry’ I bought  from a ‘little old lady’ artisan. I was going to buy one online, but then went local. So old-fashioned on me. The panels contain pretty birds, medieval style.

The store is Tissus Something in Hudson, Quebec. Decors et Tissus Serenity. (Now, in Hudson we have funny names like that. Ye Olde Curiosité Shoppe for another. It’s to evade the language police.)

 Walmarts and Targets are taking over here, too, just like everywhere else. But some little shops still survive. 

Ok. So, I’ve been visiting Sotheby’s for the same reason, ahem, many men visit porn sites. (I imagine.) To get my thrills. Oh, and to steal…Ah, to steal beauty, that is.  To steal beautiful world-class views, especially. And to steal decorating ideas.

(Not that all multi-millionaire homes are beautifully  appointed. Just some of them, as I’ve recounted on this blog. So I can condescend too, sometimes. “Get a decorator, for Heaven’s Sake. You have the money. Ah, rich people these days. No taste!”)

I do it to gaze upon brilliant New York apartments. Soothing California sea-side villas. And it has worked. I’ve totally redone my humble split-level abode, without spending a red cent. (Well, maybe I spent a couple of them, for fake flowers at Walmart for my amourettes pattern Verre Francais heirloom nouveau/deco vase.)

The Vase

Apparently, even if I did have 10,000,000 dollars to put down on a penthouse apartment in Manhattan, I couldn’t get in anyway. The other tenants, apparently, are very particular about who they allow to take up residence in their co-ops. If you buy a 10,000,000 apartment, you must have at least ten times that in liquid assets, or you won’t be allowed ‘into the club.’ (Let me check my last bank statement……No!)

It isn’t about blood anymore. Family background. It’s about cold cash. There isn’t any old money, anymore. Just new money. (I heard this on the BBC, so it must be true.)

So the joke’s on them, those evil omniscient marketing gods.

So, OK. YOU  EYE IN THE CLOUD. Here’s some advice. You have to read BETWEEN THE LINES to find out how I am willing to spend my minuscule amount of disposable income. Can algorithms do that? Read between the lines.

Dead Lemons

A giant cut out of Colin Firth might do for instance. Or, maybe, some very realistic looking plastic fruit. Those fresh lemons I placed in the bright red bowl look great, but they dry out. And then I have nothing to put on our Greek salad.

Just a suggestion, from a plain ordinary modern day serf-level consumer – and self-styled Sotheby’s fantasist.

Introducing Consumer Girl – Part 1

Women’s suits, Eaton’s Catalogue 1900.

A picture is worth a thousand words; or, more aptly put, a LACK of pictures is worth a scholarly treatise.

There are only 3 pages of women’s dress goods in the 1900 Eaton’s Catalogue, two of which are this page of suits and another offering a dressmaking service.

By 1913 the entire front section of the catalogue is an homage to women’s love of costume and clothes and her new desire to buy them rather than make them.

Last blog I wrote about a young girl in 1770 Boston (born in Nova Scotia) whose primary preoccuption, it seemed, was her clothing. (Maybe it’s an instinctive thing.) But it wasn’t until the industrial changes of the early 1900′s, that a woman was given full leave to pursue this obsession.

The first chapter of Marion Talbot’s 1910 treatise, the Education of Women, explains how the home went from being a center of production to a center of consumption around 1900 and that created a new breed of female, who I call “Consumer Girl.”

“The change of the interests in women which is most striking is that due to the industrial revolution or the introduction of the factory system. The removal of household industries from the home to the factory has gone on rapidly,until the process has been completed in the areas of spinning, weaving, shoemaking, tailoring, candle dipping, preparing drugs, and the numerous other activities. Sewing, baking, preserving different foods,cooking in different forms are disappearing. It is only a few years that all women’s and children’s clothing had to be sewn in one’s own home, and nearly every stage of preparation of one’s own food had to be carried on in one’s own kitchen. The process of the removal would be more rapid, were not women and the men of the families, held in bondage to the idea that the permanence and sanctity of the home depended upon the retention of sewing and cooking within its walls. In such families, these activities still take precedence, even over child-rearing.”

In find this last phrase really interesting in the context of Flo in the City, my novel about a girl coming of age in the pivotal 1910 era, based on the letters of http://www.tighsolas.ca/ . Mother Margaret Nicholson, born 1854, was a gifted seamstress and cook, but her daughters certainly were not. Indeed, I find it interesting in the context of the entire century.

The less there is to do for a woman in the house THE BIGGER the activities remaining become, in mind if not in actual effort.

This woman, Marion Talbot, was kind of prescient, but it did take about 100 years for cooking to become a passe activity. Or is it?? Certainly each generation becomes more and more deskilled with respect to cooking ability. Cooking itself, these days, is a kind of specialized art. There are many people who are brilliant at it, alot of these people being men. (My youngest son is going to have a philosophy degree in a year, but luckily, he is working at a high end restaurant as a sous chef, so he’ll likely also have a good job. His partner, who is getting a Masters, does no cooking at all. But when the children come, if they come, I wonder what will happen then?)

Women in 1910 have a new responsibility, claims Talbot, to be savvy consumers. “Because of this great change, women now have the new function of directing how the the products of other people’s labour shall be consumed. It is estimated that the consumption of 95 percent of the world’s goods is directly controlled by women. This is a new a serious responsibility, requiring different training from pre-industrial times. To meet this responsibility, a reading of the daily papers to see what bargains may be had, blind credence in labels, a skill in keeping up with fashions, is not nearly enough. Training should include a knowledge of materials, a knowledge of production and laws governing each industrial process,standards of quality of the article and efficiency of the workman. It should also include such an appreciation of human needs as will help determine the conditions under which goods are produced. (She lists working conditions.) As of now, women are receiving no such training.”

Wow! What can I saw. We never received such training. We don’t want to know where our things come from, and at what cost. (We put our blind trust in government agencies to protect us from harm.) And no one wanted us to develop a consumer conscience. This is especially interesting in view of today’s Green Consumer Initiatives. Has the tide actually turned or are we being Royally duped?