Marlene Wagman-Geller

One sits uncomfortably on a too comfortable cushion.”

         In 1968, country singer Jeannie C. Riley sang of the hypocrisy of her hometown who pointed fingers at the widowed Mrs. Johnson although they were guilty of worse transgressions. Sixteen years before, a playwright had socked it to a more powerful body than the Harper Valley P. T. A.

“I didn’t want to spend my life at home with a baby under my apron every year.”

The British film, Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines, set in 1910, revolved around the early days of aviation. When Lord Rawnsley forbid his suffragette daughter to pilot a plane, her fiancé conceived the idea of an air race from London to Paris. In a similar vein, American Annie Cohen Kopchovsky-a magnificent woman in her variation of a flying machine- set out to become the first woman to traverse the globe on a bicycle. As Annie Londonderry and astounded the world with her derring-do.

No episode of Downton Abbey rivaled the caustic cauldron of intrigue that riddled the Abbey’s nonfictional counterpart, Highclere Castle, home of the elite of Edwardian England. Even Lady Cora Crawley, the tempest-tossed titled main character, did not have a life as dramatic as its ancestral heroine whose life was a boubaillaise of adultery, abortion, and illegitimacy with the added twist of a mummy’s curse.

“I was a no one, nobody from Nowheresville, until I became a drag queen.” ~Marsha P. Johnson (sister who fought for transgender rights)  

Kermit the Frog rued, “It ain’t easy being green.” Marsha P. Johnson would have related to the quote: It was not easy being black, transgender, and destitute. However, rather than throw herself a pity party, Marsha, the “Saint of Christopher Street” became a battering ram who dedicated her life to the transgender community.

“I believe in the idea of the rainbow. And I’ve spent my entire life trying to get over it.”

 –Judy Garland

Judy Garland Museum (opened 1994)

Grand Rapids, Minnesota

In Frank L. Baum’s novel, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Dorothy tells the Scarecrow, “There is no place like home.” For Judy Garland, the star of the movie adaptation home was in the picturesquely named city of Grand Rapids. To pay tribute to the actress and to the childhood classic, one can follow the yellow brick road to the Judy Garland Museum.

Matilda Joslyn Gage

“The government of the people, by the people, and for the people should be changed to a government of rich men, by rich men, for rich men.”—Matilda Joslyn Gage

After her realization that the Wizard of Oz was a humbug, Dorothy informed him that he was a very bad man. His response, “Oh, no, my dear. I’m a very good man. I’m just a very bad wizard.” In contrast, Matilda Electa Joslyn Gage, the woman behind the curtain of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, was both a good woman and a good wizard.

 Forrest Gump, sitting on a park-bench, has a one-sided conversation with a disinterested

nurse when he told her, “Momma always says there's an awful lot you could tell about a person

by their shoes. Where they're going. Where they've been. I've worn lots of shoes.”

“We are the breakers of our own hearts.”

–Eudora Welty  

Eudora Welty House & Garden (opened 2006)

Jackson, Mississippi

Although her home was where Eudora Alice Welty did her writing, it never went by a literary name, as did Virginia Woolf’s Monk’s House, Louisa May Alcott’s Orchard House, or Jane Austen’s Chawton House. Eudora referred to her residence as, “Tudor style with some timbering, you know, à la Shakespeare.” To learn about the literary landmark, set your compass to the Eudora Welty House & Garden.

Jacques Marchais

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“It stands as a great monument to our love!”—Jacques Marchais (letter to Harry Klauber)

The Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art (opened 1947)

338 Lighthouse Avenue, Staten Island, New York 10306

In 1933 James Hilton published Lost Horizons whose backdrop, the Himalayas, is known as “the rooftop of the world.” For those unable to travel to the fabled kingdom, take the ferry to Staten Island’s The Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art.

Johnny Cash’s 1969 song “A Boy Named Sue” revolves around a man who has spent his life with upraised fists, infuriated that his father had saddled him with a female name. In a similar vein, John Coblentz christened his daughter Jacques Marchais. In the Cash song, the adult Sue reconciles with his father when the old man explained his rationale: his effeminate moniker would teach him to be tough. Jacques never had the opportunity to inquire why her father had bequeathed her a French boy’s name as John passed away when she was a toddler.

Jacques Marchais Coblentz was born in 1887 in Cincinnati, Ohio. Her mother, Margaret, a widow without means of support, entrusted Jacques to an orphanage run by nuns, although she was not Catholic. When Jacques was three, Margaret reclaimed her daughter and put her on the vaudeville circuit. As a male name would cause confusion, she billed Jacques as Edna Coblentz or Edna Norman (her maiden name). Wealthy Chicago families requested private performances—one of whom was Mike Cassius McDonald, who introduced organized crime to Chicago.

When she was five years old, Margaret opened a chest that had gathered decades of dust in their attic. The Pandora’s Box held thirteen bronze deities her great-grandfather, John Joseph Norman, a Philadelphia sea merchant, had received from an Indian lama in Darjeeling.

At age sixteen, Jacques travelled to Boston to star in the comedy Peggy from Paris, where she met Brookings Montgomery, a student at MIT. When Brookings married the destitute teen, his prominent St. Louis family disowned him. The couple had children Edna May, Jane, and Brookings Jr.; they divorced in 1910. Six years later, Jacques married hotel manager Percy S. Deponai, a union that came with a one-year expiration date.

The Grande Dame of mystery, Agatha Christie wrote, “It is ridiculous to set a detective story in New York City. New York City is itself a detective story.” Although the writer’s words ring true, the following unveils secrets hidden in the core of the Big Apple.