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Celebrating Hess’s and Hollywood at the Allentown Art Museum

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I love beautiful custom dresses. So I knew I wanted to see the costumes from the Golden Age of Cinema currently winding down at the Allentown Art Museum.

It includes a costume worn by Marilyn Monroe in Bus Stop.

And a Judy Garland dress if I recall…

I initially didn’t want to go because I really didn’t understand how ornate these costumes were. And some of them were almost 100 years old!

But what finally made me go was an odd pairing with the costume exhibit, a special day of programming celebrating now defunct local department store Hess’s.

My Hess’s Memory

My family never visited Allentown. We lived in the Slate Belt and my parents were born in New Jersey so I don’t think they considered Allentown part of our territory.

And Hess’s was fancy. The Patio Restaurant. Chandeliers. Imported French Fashions.

The flagship downtown department store was as swanky as Sak’s but right here in the Lehigh Valley. The opened in 1897 and closed in 1996.

They were purchased by the Bon Ton, which just closed this year. Bon Ton didn’t need the fancy downtown store.

My high school journalism teacher, and a mentor to me in everything writing and in many other ways, took me and maybe a couple others to a workshop at the Morning Call office in Allentown.

Afterwords, we visited the Patio. I remember being shocked and I think I had a piece of the famous strawberry pie.

They say those pies weighed 10 pounds a piece.

Hess’s reminiscing at the museum

The connection to me is obvious: Golden Age of Cinema; Golden Age of Retail.

The museum even displayed some hats and dresses from Hess’s.

My friend Gayle and I were first in line for the museum on Hess’s day and eventually the line snaked down the block.

We watched a documentary, listened to some stories and toured the costumes. Then we had strawberry tarts. I was disappointed because they had said they were serving Hess’s Strawberry Pie.

But in all seriousness, the Art Museum did an amazing job.

If you’re interested in the PBS 39 Documentary about Hess’s, it’s on YouTube.

Hess’s Documentary (1 hour)

The living room updated

Angel Ackerman

The living room was once our dining room. Our old couch is now on the sun porch.

The new couch came from Target.com, thanks to a Black Friday online sale, and the teenager assembled it.

I got home from work as the teenager walked home from school and we both found a giant, 100-lb box on the lawn as it started to rain.

Unboxing the Couch

It’s an emerald green Chesterfield love seat. My daughter finds it obnoxious but I like bold touches.

The painting continued and still isn’t quite done. The couch, as the reviews suggested is very low and rather deep, but some pillows made it very cozy.

And finally we got the room done enough to serve as a backdrop for our holiday tree trimming party.

Although I still don’t seem to have a good photo of the chalkboard accent wall.

The teen has done a great job with the painting and helping me tone down my bold leanings.

Wines from the Tree Trimming Party

Angel Ackerman 1 Comment

Wine number one:

Apothic Sparkling Red. Very light. Not too sweet or rich. Very celebratory and delightful with fresh raspberries in the glass.

Wine number two:

Ribshack. A wine from Western Cape, South Africa. Reminiscent of a hearty French red. Described as a wine to accompany meat, whether venison or other red meat as you braai. As the bottle says, this is a good wine for a dinner party though I see it as a winter wine to complement a thick beef stew.

Wine number three:

Franklin Hills Cake. Is it wrong to buy a wine because the bottle and graphic design is intriguing? This wine was very sweet, certainly smelled like cake, even made the room fragrant. It was like burning scented candles. I enjoyed it, but it didn’t taste like white wine. More like liquid candy with the tang of wine.

Trimming the tree (and soft debut of our living room)

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I think I’ve stunned my friend Gayle, whose known me for more than 20 years.

My new burst of holiday spirit is of concern to her.

The teenager and I worked really hard this week to prepare the house for our tree-trimming party last night, an informal tradition meant to counterbalance my anti-Christmas energy.

We really needed a few more days to finish the painting and what not. But life doesn’t always accommodate. When you plan a gathering, especially at the holidays, you can’t shift the date because you only got one coat of paint on the walls.

The featured photo in this post is my neurotic habit of dissembling the taps and soaking them in hydrogen peroxide before a party and scrubbing the caulk with an old toothbrush before a party.

This is going to be a mini-blog entry. An introduction. Because I’m behind on blogging.

Last week I attended the Hess’s nostalgia day and toured the Hollywood costume exhibit at Allentown Art Museum. I would love to tell you about that.

And then show you how the living room is shaping up.

And then tree trimming.

So stay tuned. My goal for today is to do several loads of laundry, update my budget book after getting my nails done yesterday, buying wine, and purchasing a tree. That reminds me! Add wine review to that list.

    Allentown Art Museum
    Living Room
    Tree Trimming
    Wine review from party: Apothic Sparkling Red, Rib Back (from Western Cape South Africa) and Franklin Hills Cake

To stop and view the moon

Angel Ackerman Leave a comment

Life is seldom perfect.

But tonight, stuck in traffic, eating too much of a bag of salt and vinegar potato chips, I had a near perfect moment.

The clouded over full moon turned the wintery night sky gold. For a moment, amid my sea of break lights, I basked in peace.

And then I got home and a cat had puked on the new couch.

But let me start at the beginning…

Two more weeks before the holidays. By January first, I have two grants due, one report due, a third grant and a second report that I would prefer done. I got the annual appeal to the printer yesterday, two or three weeks late depending on your perspective (but WOW did I learn so much about our FundEZ donor and accounting database. Now I have to review the volunteer graphic designer’s sketches for the annual report.

I have more than 20 years experience in communications, and a whole lot of confidence and creativity, but this nonprofit development stuff is a roller coaster! I love it, especially since I adore the agency’s mission and my coworkers but it’s been a few months of trail by fire.

So that was work.

I laugh a lot at work, or at least I try. Sometimes we all get a little too tense and afraid of making mistakes.

As the type of person who has no issue asking forgiveness instead of permission, I don’t have trouble admitting I did something wrong.

I tell my colleagues, don’t worry I don’t throw people under the bus.

I step right out in front of it.

After work I came home and took my daughter for sandwiches before I drove her to her interior design class at the local community college.

Park Avenue Market

The marching band, the local library, and probably every other fundraising entity around sell hoagie coupons for Park Avenue Market. They have _the best_ sandwiches.

Tonight I got Santa Fe turkey and bacon ranch cheddar. The teen got Lebanon bologna.

But then she saw the A-Treat display.

Everything from pumpkin to sasparilla to cranberry ginger ale. She got “Big Blue.” I got diet orange creamsicle.

We started to eat them in the car, which is why the photos are so dark. And I unwrapped my sandwich upside down and spilled it all over my lap. And a tomato shot right out of my sandwich into the crack between my seat and my console.

“This is why we don’t eat in the car,” I said.

“No,” she said.

“This is why you don’t eat in the car.”

Holiday cards

Angel Ackerman 4 Comments

I’m not a fan of obligatory cards.

I recently hand-wrote a note card to a friend who’s also my employee whose dog had died the night before. I’m a writer, so I feel like cards can’t express what I can.

My mother, on the other hand, lives for cards. Whatever the occasion, it’s never complete for my mother unless a card is in the mail.

Which brings me to holiday cards. And be warned: I am probably expressing a very unpopular opinion.

I don’t like Christmas cards.

I feel the same way about Christmas cards as I do about Facebook birthday greetings. They aren’t genuine.

People who drop a note on your Facebook wall or send a holiday card often make no effort to stay in touch the rest of the year. Why bother now?

It’s okay to fall out of touch with people. Lives change. Circumstances change. I respect that some people feel the need to remind other people that we are all connected.

But how many cards will I get this year addressed to my soon-to-be ex-husband and I? So far, one. And it’s my first Christmas card of the season.

I have a lot of friends who call once a year or even every other year, but I just can’t feel good about exchanging cards with everyone in my address book just because it’s December.

Magical minor steps toward Christmas

Angel Ackerman Leave a comment

Yesterday the teenager and I got the paint for the next phase of our living room remodel: the chalkboard paint accent wall. We were surprised to learn the paint store could make any paint chalkboard paint.

I got some Opalhouse accents from my room and bought a white fluffy “husband” pillow from Marshall’s and now the little green loveseat couch is super cozy.

So in my featured photo, I am wearing my new sassy Santa skirt also from Marshall’s and taking my turn on our new couch.

I am getting my Christmas tree next weekend and hosting a trim-the-tree party.

We have a week to clean house and get the living room done.

Stamina and challenges

Angel Ackerman Leave a comment

My daughter has rediscovered her love of the treadmill.

She has rekindled a dream of running in the spring with her very own dog by her side.

“Hey, Mom,” she calls to me after an afternoon with her grandparents, “I want to go to the gym.”

I don’t. But I’m stubborn and a lazy bodybuilding princess so I go. Because if she wants to go that’s a challenge to me.

I like challenges.

I even do the treadmill with her. I hate the treadmill. I hate the treadmill because with my cerebral palsy, the treadmill requires all my concentration.

But today, as she did walk/run intervals on her treadmill, I had a realization.

I’m not sure I know how to run.

I set my treadmill to intervals, too. My intervals were 3.5 miles per hour and 4 miles per hour. But that difference was enough that I had to run on the higher setting. It was hard to stand upright, run, and not use my arms against the handles to keep my balance as I ran.

That was interesting to learn.

I’ve always wanted to run a 5k, and the last time I tried I did all my training and the actual race with a broken toe.

So who knows.

Christmas Traditions

Angel Ackerman

My daughter and I are rapidly approaching the six-month-mark of being our own household. The strangeness of being the only parent in the house and the absence of another adult is starting to feel normal.

My feelings about Christmas

(Cultural Appropriation)

I can’t remember a time that I’ve been a fan of Christmas. It’s a holiday that emphasizes Christian hypocrisy in my mind, especially since most Christians don’t understand the manufactured nature of the holiday as stolen from pagan traditions to convert the masses into Christianity when the religion was new.

Most Christians I’ve been exposed to don’t understand the symbolic nature of Christmas and truly believe Jesus was born on December 25. They also don’t see the mixed message of celebrating a man they revere as an example of how to treat others and to behave in a ethically and morally decent way by saying a different mythically being breaks into your house to give you presents in an ostentatious display of hedonistic greed.

Christmas was always, to me, a blatant display of society’s preference toward the socio-economically privileged.

But I digress…

Making new Christmas traditions

This is my first Christmas in ten years not working retail. This is my first Christmas in my life where I have decided to build my own traditions and consider what I want instead of meeting family expectations.

So I’m working on it.

And after all these years of being a Christmas curmudgeon, it feels good.

I’ve always loved Christmas music. I already enjoyed Tuba Christmas and Small Business Saturday in downtown Easton.

(See more about that day and my visit with my friend Grinch here: The Christmas Season has launched.)

I also dug my Christmas socks and sweaters from storage. They were a mainstay of my Target career.

Three Christmas sweaters.

I wore the first of my Christmas sweaters yesterday. Meowy Christmas: worn with my colleague in mind. She has three cats.

As I hoped, she loved it.

On Wednesday I wore my Grinch shirt with my blazer to a holiday mixer of the Greater Lehigh Valley Chamber of Commerce (at Stoke in Downtown Easton). I ended up posing with Chamber officers in front of the Christmas tree.

I love my Christmas socks.

But I still digress…

This was supposed to talk about Christmas and my daughter…

Advent Calendar

Neither my daughter nor I ever had an advent calendar so we bought one at Lidl today.

But hey, I’ve babbled enough… I’ll just share the video:

Advent Excitement

Health And Wellness: Realistic Update

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So the teen and I were going to the gym 3 times a week when I first joined Planet Fitness. Summer came. My husband moved out. I got a promotion. Teen started marching band.

Now we’re lucky if we go 4 times a month.

I was ready to cancel and work out at home.

The teen stopped me.

We both did killer workouts last night.

But will it last?

It’s like when I promise the dentist I will floss daily. Sometimes I make it three whole months of flossing daily and then something happens and I break the habit.

Last night I worked out hard and now my arms are sore but tonight, I had Wawa macaroni and cheese for dinner.

Why can’t I stay more disciplined?