Frenetic, exuberant, infectiously joyful dancing, unbridled yet charmingly humorous sexuality and charisma to burn, took Josephine from the streets of St. Louis to performing in the swankiest nightclubs of Paris. Seeing her dance in the few early black and white movies that she made it’s easy to still see the lanky, irreverent kid that danced on street corners. She became the first black superstar.

Family money enabled Gertrude, and her brother Michael, to move to bohemian Paris in the early 20th century. Both became friends and early patrons of Picasso and Matisse, among many other artists and writers. Paintings were hung three high on every wall. Eventually, she sacrificed her collection of paintings to support her literary endeavors. Original art, as enriching as live music, is not just for the rich. The paintings from my mother’s and aunts’ teen years hung in my grandmother’s living room–I loved them. Anyone can be a patron to children’s charming masterpieces!

Her name and title are a delight to pronounce. Amina has been rescued by Women’s History studies from the stuff of legend and given historical credentials, mostly accepted. Perhaps the brandishing of a dagger as a small child and the black-widow-spider sexual predation can be retired now as unnecessary embellishments. Some of the walls she is said to have constructed around her cities are still extant in modern Nigeria.

For excellent women with less than brilliant looks, shrewd observation is the best weapon against the tyranny of those who are frighteningly secure, flawless and bullying. The humor of British novelist Barbara Pym is dry and wry, her prose is pared. Pathos arises from lives of settled habits–rather than unsettling exploits. Her endearing characters charm and beguile for multiple re-readings.

During the lifetime of Nefertiti, there was a special workshop dedicated solely to fabricating her image. Her features were idealized, culminating in the extraordinary bust of her that is now located in the Berlin Neues Museum. That image has become equated with ancient Egypt in a zillion cheap reproductions. There is a small bass-relief, badly damaged, but charmingly unofficial and fresh, in the Brooklyn Museum of Art. It shows Nefertiti kissing one of her infant daughters. Both depictions are hauntingly beautiful.

Hannah Arendt was a very influential German writer and political theorist. Her book “Eichmann on Trial”, introduced her phrase, “the banality of evil” changing the discourse on good and evil. That phrase exploded in my head the first time I heard it. Every action, or inaction, has a consequence. You can’t take it back as it spreads out in widening circles, like a stone cast in a pond. Goodness is never passive.

With her husband, Ferdinand, she was perhaps the most successful venture capitalist of all times. She paid for the ships and supplies in order for Columbus to make his voyage of discovery. Her return was vast, unbelievable wealth. She then bankrolled the Spanish Inquisition, in order to root out heretics. Ill-gotten wealth is still, unfortunately, used to obtain the power to propagate such hate terms as “infidel” and “heretic”.

Stepping out onto the still blazing hot sidewalk of Prospect Ave., I would squint in the afternoon sunlight after the afternoon double-matinee in the tiny “Bijou” revival movie house. The celluloid visions of vamps and sirens were soon replaced by anxiety–I had further darkened any future employability or earnings potential. Recalling those films, shaded from charcoal to pearl, is like recapturing dreams, some retain complete clarity, while others have to be coaxed back into consciousness.

Childhood’s ephemeral playthings have been memorably composed and captured in the alphabet and numbers books, “Arc in the Attic” and “World of Wonder”, respectively, by photographer Starr Ockenga. Her photos in the 1980’s magazine “Victoria” were captivating. They gave me a wistful sense of intangible loss. When Ms. Ockenga photographed painstakingly-created small personal Edens (created by women), she gave me glimpses of paradise found.

Of the bible stories of my catholic upbringing the episode of the “Visitation” was indelible. It’s quite a tame story, by biblical standards: Mary, a mysteriously pregnant unwed girl of perhaps 12 or 13, goes to visit her much much older cousin Elizabeth. Surprise! Elizabeth’s pregnant as well. Unbelievable! Elizabeth was “past her time”, and labeled an “old withered vine that bore no fruit”. Mary had received the news of her own impending motherhood by way of an angel with 7-foot wings. What are they feeling?

Mary and Elizabeth meet, they embrace with heady joy. Are they also feeling apprehension, or even terror– Elizabeth, old for a first child, Mary, unwed and just a girl, bewildered by the divine angel, or, filled with self-importance(?). Both their children will have strange ideas–and horrendous deaths. Elizabeth’s son became John the Baptist–the victim after Salome’s infamous dance. I had that knowledge as I envisioned their blissful visit.

The last empress of China, Cixi began her court life as a concubine. With the birth of a male child for the emperor, her ascendancy began. She would eventually rule the country for half a century. In her later years she appointed someone named Yu, as her personal Court Photographer, as she enjoyed dressing and posing herself in the costume of various deities, especially fancying herself in the garments of the Goddess of Mercy. The Dowager Empress had became a reluctant reformer by the end of her reign.

Beyond being a consummate artist–with a warm, rich contralto voice with an expressive range of color–Marian Anderson’s ambition was to make things easier for those who would follow. Unfailingly gracious, her presence was regal. “The voice of the century”, she sang in front of the Lincoln Memorial to a crowd of 75,000 when the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) refused her Constitution Hall because of her skin color.