Shalimar Light

I had time to appreciate the shadows and light during the many sunny days I was in the mountains. And I completed my course in Napping at Chedwick University (We were upgraded from Chedwick College to University in September.)


I was able to field test Shalimar Light this summer, too.




Shalimar Light seems to have less leather and incense, and more jasmine in it. It is a youthful version of Shalimar.

Watch Your Tongue

I would not recommend tasting a perfume just because it smells like vanilla and toasted marshmallows. It will burn your tongue and taste bad.


Jury Duty went very well. I got there 45 minutes early, and when I walked into the "orientation" about 300 people were already there! That is a little weird.

Some people arrived an hour or an hour and seventeen minutes late and no authority figure seemed to mind. I sat with two women who completely cracked me up all morning. We went around the corner to my favorite Vietnamese restaurant at lunchtime. People were doing Tai Chi in the park. The weather was nice.

The worst part of the morning was a film we had to watch that was for people who had no idea what a courtroom was, or what the words "lawyer", "judge", "evidence", "witness", "defense", and "prosecution" mean. There was a vocabulary lesson and a song about how much fun jury duty really is. One verse started with..."Is the witness lying?" --"Some people might think so!" But they sang it in such high pitched perky voices, I couldn't catch many lyrics.

We were told to line up, and were warned not to cut the line, run, kick, or scream --and I swear, this old lady was sitting quietly for awhile, then suddenly took off out of her seat and ran parallel to the line for half the length of the huge room and cut in line! Everyone laughed, and some of us thought she must have done it on purpose to try and get out of serving, but she was ignored by the authority figures and not reprimanded at all.

I am not allowed to talk about what happened in the afternoon. Perhaps I have already said too much.

Tomorrow's Blues

A pretty blue envelope arrived in the mail. Guess where I will be all day tomorrow? I don't mind at all, really. The last time I actually had to show up for Jury Duty I was assigned to a group of interesting people.


I was the first cat in history to serve on a jury (I was also the first cat to denounce disco, first cat to serve on a library board, first cat to drive a motor vehicle.)

Bobcat Mountains

Early morning mist on the mountains.


Mercurie's cat Max was curious about the Catskill Mountains, so I thought I'd write a post about them.

It was the Story "Rip Van Winkle" by Washington Irving that seemed to officially make the Blue Mountains the Catskills.
The most logical reason for the name is an early sighting of a number of Bobcats frolicking near a river or creek (which would be a kill in Dutch) At first just a small town near the kill was named Catskill, and later the entire range.



I have only seen one wildcat in the area-- from a distance I thought it was a beige dog. I brought a can of cat food outside for it. Once I got close to the boulder it was sitting on, it turned to face me and it had a cat head! That freaked me out as I realized it was wild. ("NICE kitty... I am putting some food down...I am backing away...) It looked exactly like the Lynx pictured here. dog body, cat head.

The earliest settlers called the Catskills the Blue Mountains. They blend into Pennsylvania's Pocono Mountains, which are really just an extension of the range with a different name.

And they are lovingly known as the Jewish Alps.

A lot of famous funny men got their start in showbiz in the Catskills including a young Jerry Levitch (later the famous clown Jerry Lewis) --who used to lip-sync to records while making funny faces and weird body movements, and Krusty the Clown (Herschel Krustofski) who had a blue act before becoming a childrens entertainer.

Rock Out

It wasn't boring up in the mountains for a skywatching cat like myself.

I also had plenty of tasks for portable hair dryer girl to carry out, so I was busy making lists for her.

For the past seven years I walked past or over a bit of rock sticking up out of the grass. It was maybe 5 inches by 7 inches. This little bit of rock constantly cried out somehow to be noticed. I finally instructed portable hair dryer girl to dig it up. It took her many days, as the little rock was actually a big boulder, and she had to quit before she got it completely dug up (because we had to return to suburbia) It is bigger than it looks in these not so great photos.

(the building in the background is a little empty bungalow on our property.)



Once it is completely dug out and the surface is free of dirt, it will make an excellent sunbathing and meditation rock. I'm looking forward to next spring, me and my little meditation mat out there, under the big sky. A dozen little cats on a dozen little mats could easily fit on this rock. Or 3 or 4 humans could stretch out on it. This once subterranean boulder will be in the sunshine for quite awhile!

(Just a dash of Bob for this post.)

We did check out perfumes in the Catskills, mostly at drugstores. (There is a new perfume shop in one of the little villages, but we wanted to see all of the old timey country drugstores) At one old Rexall drugstore there was just a dusty display of Molinard and Guerlain perfumes deep behind one counter, almost sitting on the floor. They had Habanita and MM by Molinard and many of the old Guerlains. The boxes were literally falling apart, as these were the old testers back when the store HAD a fancy perfume counter. Now they were selling tacky gifts at that counter. It was really sad to know that this old Rexall had once had a full lunch counter soda fountain, a counter that sold stationery, pens, and notions, and a perfume counter with quality stuff. Now the store is jam packed with " dollar store " type junk. Jewelry, christmas ornaments, cheap T shirts, and general crap everywhere. (The actual 'drugstore'was crammed into one corner in the back next to the pharmacist.)

On Bob Dylan's Lap

Another pic of me with Bob back in the sixties.

This photo really brings back memories. We went to a bookstore that day, and to the House of Guerlain. It was rainy and windy though, so mostly we just hung out at our hotel, ordering room service. I napped on a velvet chaise lounge and my dreams were lightly scented with wonderful perfume.

Bob was always writing in his notebook or reading, but sometimes he'd just stop, and pick me up. He never treated me as a mere "pet" as some lesser evolved humans did back in those days. He knew cats have souls and are highly intelligent. This photo was taken when a journalist came to interview him. I had my eye on the suspicious looking lighting guy in the photography crew. Something not right about that dude. --Must be on guard when a constant flow of strangers push into your life.

A girl who looked through my photo album said to me "Wow! You got to sit on Bob Dylan's Lap!"
--Hey, it was no big deal, I'm a cat, laps are to me what a comfy bed is to a sleepy human.




*I know September was men's cologne month, and I completely messed it up (I'm not sure Kurt will ever forgive me.)

I took this pic at a Sephora store. This Cartier scent was clean, fresh and yet long lasting and warm. Perfect for a guy who is into minimalism and doesn't like heavy leather or spice scents.

Chedwick & Tintin

Due to unforeseen excellent adventures, Chedwick has decided to extend his summer vacation in the Catskill Mountains by another week or so. He looks forward to getting back to civilization, reading all of the September entries on your blogs, and getting back into his furry little groove. Incidentally, Chedwick is terrified of the catskill giraffes.

The Bad Spokesmodel

Dennis decided he wanted to muscle in on the lucrative Hermes spokesmodel gig that Chedwick was enjoying.




While Chedwick is a creative spokesmodel, a consummate professional, always punctual, enjoys the fragrances, listens to instructions, and is well-liked in the industry, he has been replaced by his "friend" who is real jerk.

How could this happen??? Dennis has a way of charming the clients, and then once the contracts are signed, he is lazy and difficult, late for the photo shoots, refuses to pose properly, argues with the photographer, hogs all of the food, makes rude jokes, hits people, tells people to shut up, and storms out of the shoot. He comes back, all sweet and charming, but the damage is done.

Hermes is very sorry they signed him to a three million dollar, three year contract, but they are hoping that Dennis will act more professionally in the future. We will see...

This new Bel Ami Ad will only be seen in English Footballer magazines, with a caption like "Bel Ami Kicks Arse!"

Bel Ami was originally introduced sometime in the 1980s by Hermes.

head notes: Lemon, Vetiver
heart notes: Iris Butter, Ylang, Ylang
bottom notes : Amber, Vanilla, Sandalwood

(Being posted for Chedwick. Ched is still out of town trying to recuperate from Dennis. He should be back in a few days. He misses you all.)

Tuckered Out In Bleue

I took this picture last Saturday, and didn't need to tint it blue, or mess around with it in any way. It feels like the quintessential summer photo, and tells me that now is the time to get the most out of what is left of summertime.


The air came laden with the fragrance it caught upon its way, and the bees, upborne upon its scented breath, hummed forth their drowsy satisfaction as they floated by. (Charles Dickens: The Old Curiosity Shop)


From sunlight to candlelight. Chedwick is ready to relax and take a little break.

Planet Waves , Astral Weeks

I always liked the names of these two albums. I don't know what Planet Waves is supposed to mean, maybe something to do with energy or sound waves?

I would guess that Van Morrison was saying something like "Dude, I was astral projecting for weeks..." It was 1968 after all. The Planet Waves cover looks like some artwork done by Bob himself, while the Astral Weeks cover is yet another "introspective Van" photo. (Van was aways introspective after one of his many flip-outs.)

Morrison's birthday is coming up. (He was born George I. Morrison, August 31st, 1945, in Belfast, Northern Ireland.)

The Luck of The Iris

About 20 minutes after the dreaded UPS man has left, Chedwick comes out of hiding and goes to the window to stare out and mumble things like "Yeah, you'd better be gone!"

This stuff smells like someplace nice, though. Someplace not far from the Bluestack Mountains, where violets, moss, wild strawberries, and ferns grow alongside little streams.

Professor Chedwick explains:
"It is the root (rhizome) of the iris that are used in perfumery, and it smells very much like violets. The rhizomes are distilled into a thick oily paste called iris butter."

Ysatis Iris:
Head Notes: Iris, Clove, Citrus
Heart Notes: Iris, Rose, Jasmine,
Base Notes: Amber, Patchouli, Sandalwood, Iris, Rum

Bridge of Sighs

I took this picture of our supposedly crumbling bridge from the train station. This is a 4.8 mile long cantilever and truss style bridge which took over 3 years to build and opened just before Christmas of 1955. I suppose that eventually they will get around to building a new bridge.

Bob predicted that the levees would break, which makes me wonder what he'd say about this bridge.

The Candy Man

I saw my first Halloween candy display earlier this week. (On Tuesday to be precise.) I walked into the supermarket and there were plastic jack-o-lanterns and piles of those giant sized bags of Halloween candies--the mini Mounds bars and tiny boxes of Good n' Plenty, Candy Corn and so forth. The bags had cartoon images of witches and ghosts on them and a couple of women were slowly circling this display with what looked like intent to buy. Outside it was 89 degrees and, um, mid-August. I don't care anymore. Last September I stopped caring about this anti-calendar weirdness when I watched a man decorate a Christmas Tree in Lord & Taylor. A Whole Christmas Village was going up, and it was September. I gave up caring right then and there. I don't care what time it is, what month it is, what holidays are coming up. I'm going to ignore those and make up my own holidays from now on!

Just let me grab a caramel and I'll be on my way.







"Outside of the gates the trucks were unloadin',
The weather was hot, a-nearly 90 degrees.
The man standin' next to me, his head was exploding,
Well, I was prayin' the pieces wouldn't fall on me."
~Bob Dylan

How To Weave a Parasol

You really want me to tell you how to weave a parasol? I ate the last three parasols that I wove.


I wanted to award a prize to Visitor Number 4,000 to my blog, but it was someone from Fort Wayne, Indiana looking for instructions on how to weave a parasol. They stayed for less than half a minute! Had they left a comment, they could have won a prize!

The best parasols are woven out of black licorice. Everybody knows that!

Bob Dylan Samples 'Whisper'

And says: "It's an amusing little 'fume, with a quiet but complex personality."

Lucien Lelong produced many, many perfumes, and was perhaps the first master of gimmicky packaging. Lucien also named some perfumes after letters of the alphabet for awhile (trying to compete with Chanel's numbering system which had worked so well for them.) He abandoned the simple elegant bottles, and began naming scents after dessert items, musical instruments, or whatever would suit a packaging idea. His perfumes sold well, becoming collectibles for some, and if you make enough perfumes, eventually one or two will stand out and become wildly popular. Possibly the only truly big seller Lelong had in his lifetime was a perfume called Indiscret (said by some who wore it to be vaguely reminiscent of Shalimar.) While Lucien was not a clothing designer himself, he ran a good design house and had great personal flair when it came to fashion. He worked through his designers, and had a definite trademark "look." His father had been in the textile trade and his mother had a real eye for fashion, but his true love it seemed was perfumery.
Here is a partial list of Lelong perfumes.
Flippant
Tailspin (still available)
Sextet
Abra Ca Dabra
Havoc
Turbulent
Tempest
Round Trip
Hearsay
Big Moment
Double Life
High Time
Robin Hood (for Men)

and there was Ting-a-Ling, which was packaged with bells. Everything old is new again, too many scents, too much cutesy packaging, quantity wins over quality when a trend is going full-force. Back in the 1920's, 30's and 40's people were pushing the fad of the moment and collecting collectibles just as they do today.

By the 1950's Lucien was in poor health, and when he passed on to that great perfumery in the sky, his third wife married the ex- husband of the wonderful French writer, Colette.

"There are no ordinary cats."
~Colette


"The endless road and the wailing of chimes,
The empty rooms where her memory is protected,
Where the angels' voices whisper to the souls of previous times."
~Bob Dylan

More Family History

Here is another photo from my family album. My older brother Furrwick with his human companion, O'Shea. They were devoted friends--practically joined at the hip, so to speak.

Although it looks very old-timey, this picture was taken in the early 1960's. O'Shea had worked very hard to restore this antique car and took Furrwick for lovely drives around Brooklyn, NY. People would rush down the street to look at the cool old car and chat with the somewhat shy cats inside. It was a good way for them to get out and meet people.


They didn't get to enjoy their car for very long, because one night, another human, known as 'drunken brother-in-law' fell alseep in the antique while chain smoking cigarettes. Drunken Brother-in-law leapt out of the burning vehicle and rolled on the ground to de-flame himself, but the car was a complete loss. Furrwick and his human companion never drank or smoked, so they felt somewhat bitter that their car was destroyed due to these vices.

Like too many human family stories, this one ends with drunken brother-in-law continuing to sponge off of his family, wrecking every holiday gathering (by being violent or by just showing up and passing out face down in the mashed potatoes) while everyone acted normal and pretended everything was fine and dandy.

Rain

Rain kept us indoors for the better part of today, where we read stories, and Portable Hair Dryer Girl hosted a little tea party. We also watched the old scary-funny Vincent Price film, "The Tingler". Which was superb.

We read selections from "The Outermost House" by Henry Beston. If you like nature writing, this is a true classic. We read a lot of nature writing, so if you have any titles to share, please do.

Beston spends a year alone in a tiny cottage on a remote beach in 1926. Close to the end of the book he writes:

"Had I room in this book, I would like to write a whole chapter on the sense of smell, for all my life long I have had of that sense an individual enjoyment. To my mind, we live too completely by the eye. I like a good smell - the smell of a freshly ploughed field on a warm morning after a night of April rain, the clovelike aroma of our wild Cape Cod pinks, the morning perfume of lilacs showery with dew, the good reek of hot salt grass and low tide blowing from these meadows on summer afternoons."

The book is filled with a wonder and respect for sea, sky, wind and sand. There are migrating birds, various animals, and a dramatic shipwreck. I love his winter descriptions of the beach.

Monsieur Guerlain et Moi

Those of you who know me, know that in my younger days I left NYC for awhile and worked with some very famous perfumers in France. It was my pleasure to sniff out various single notes and let the perfumer blend them however he wished to. Here I am with my best pal, Jean-Paul Guerlain. This picture was taken early on in the process, and Jean-Paul used to tease me a bit by waving test strips around and hiding one behind the scent bottles. Then we'd work for a short while, maybe get an "idea" about some future fragrance, then we'd go have a leisurely three hour lunch followed by a catnap. I learned so much from this wonderful man. He always calls me "Monsieur Dee Shedweek" and I call him "JP-Baby." Which just cracks him up. We joke around a lot, and keep in touch, even though we're both semi-retired. He still has an office on the Champs Elysees, and I have my part-time spokesmodel gig.

A sad note:
In the summer of 1998 Jean-Paul was shot by burglars who entered his home and terrorized his family, and I was not suprised to hear he had put himself in harm's way to protect others. He had surgery, and recovered very quickly, but I don't recall if they ever caught any of the ten or so robbers.

Among his creations: Parure in 1975 ( in homage to his mother.) Nahema in 1979, Jardins de Bagatelle in 1983, Derby in 1985, Samsara in 1989, Champs Elysees in 1996. (My first experience with Samsara was when a stunning blonde girl who resembled Grace Kelly wore it on her wedding day. It suited her perfectly.)

Bob Dylan's Favorite Cat

I used to spend a lot more time with Bob when we were both younger, just before I started working in the perfume biz. Here we are rolling a tire around on the street back when we had the time to just act silly and have fun. Now he's on the road, which is a real grind, and I've got the perfume gig, and we don't cross each other's paths as often as we did in the old days. A few days after this photo was taken, I took Bob's advice and moved to Paris to pursue my perfumed dreams.



"Ah get born, keep warm
Short pants, romance, learn to dance
Get dressed, get blessed
Try to be a success..."
~Bob Dylan

Sugar Baby

Chedwick was happy to find a bottle of Demeter's "Sugar Cane."
We just happened to have a can of sugar cane in the cupboard, so we opened it up to compare it to the perfume. Demeter's scent is wonderfully sugary, without any of the slightly canned feeling we got from the canned stuff. Being all scientific and reasearchy, Chedwick chewed on the cane, sniffed it, swallowed enough sugar cane juice to get that sugar-high headache, spritzed the perfume, and it was a match. The closest comparison he can offer is the cane and perfume both have a sort of cream soda-ish character. Effervescent and good, but light. Still, an hour later Demeter's Sugar Cane scent was still 100% on the fur and smelled warm and sugary-good. This one is a keeper.

Chedwick, who has avoided sugar for years, says: "Better to wear Sugar Cane than eat it, most definitely!"

"Sugar Baby, get on down the line
You ain't got no sense, no how
You went years without me
Might as well keep going now."

~Bob Dylan