The Half Century Mark Hotel at Sixty North

An Imaginary Space about Becoming Real

recent posts

about

  • Permission Slips

    Permission Slips

    Although slips may have fallen out of fashion in some circles, at the Half Century Mark they are celebrated. Prized as the thinking woman’s magic cloak, slips grant their owners permission to be layered, powerful, storied, elusive, beautiful or whatever state of grace you require. We suggest you acquire one or twelve.

    Please note that permission slips do not grant invisibility. At the Half Century Mark we encourage guests to proclaim their unique earthly presence no matter how gossamer-edged it may be at times.

    Meet some of my magic makers: picmonkey-collage

    top row (left – right): Nellie Black, Zuzu ‘Petals’ Bailey, Dawn Smith, middle: Demi-Blu Moiety, Nellie Black, Dorothy Drapers, bottom: Dawn Smith, Pearl Moiety, Blanche Marvels

    We are having such fun learning and recording the stories of the slips. We recently discovered that Nellie was named for a famous journalist and Zuzu for a famous film daughter. Demi-Blu and Pearl are two of the famous Moiety sisters. Dorothy always wanted to be a designer, and Blanche Marvels is one complicated lass. Dawn Smith still refuses to give her real name.

    The Hotel will continue to share the stories and adventures of the slips as they become available. We believe that the sharing of stories is an essential permission-granting vehicle at the Half Century Mark. Even a mere slip can contain multitudes of amusement. (see pchristakos studio for more amusements.)

  • Feast on This

    Feast on This

    books-4622-2

    Today’s curious times demand creative feasting and lengthy flights of fancy. It is in this spirit that the Half Century Mark Hotel announces the opening of Booked, an imaginary restaurant located in the Hotel’s expansive lobby, somewhere on the left, straight on ’til morning.

    Booked will feature an ever-changing menu featuring fresh, hand-picked stories, lush language and cage-free pictures and poems chosen to delight and sustain today’s most discerning travelers. Booked is owned and operated by HCMH. Its menu, designed by Your Concierge with the assistance of a cadre of creative mentors, will change with the season and whim of the management.

    This November we suggest you begin with Charles Simic’s poetic apéritif  on the artist Joseph Cornell. Follow with a delectable layered pâté on travel by philosopher Alain de Botton. Next allow poet Maggie Nelson  provide a palate cleanser to knock your socks off. Your newly awakened mind will delight in a fantastical dish featuring Marco Polo and Kublai Khan by Italo Calvino. Muriel Barbery will preside as your main entree. (All things Hedgehog are stimulant and inspiration here at the HCMH.) For dessert, treat yourself to an imaginative concoction by photographer Jason Fulford whose phantom Hotel appeared, however briefly, in real places around the world.

    We hope you’ve enjoyed this month’s menu. Leave us recommendations for future feasting. And always remember to attend to and feed your imagination. We promise it will help get you through the day, maybe even the next four years.

  • Her Shoes, Pedestrian

    Her Shoes, Pedestrian

    Last week I took a walk in another’s shoes. It wasn’t easy.

    Prompted by a workshop at Maine Media Workshops and College called Creativity and the Photographer, your concierge tried her hand at fiction. Real fiction, not Imaginary Hotel kind. The instructor was gifted photographer Sean Kernan; his assignment: find a person of interest and observe them. No photographs, no conversation. Just study a person’s movements and behaviors. Take notes. Part 2: Your person of interest is now a character in a short story. Write the beginning of their story. Go beyond the physical. Probe. Imagine. Here is an illustrated and tinkered version of my findings:

     2016_08_14-4163Her Shoes, Pedestrian, 2016. Patricia Christakos

    How Harold Saved Susan 

    Uninvited, Jane’s words accompanied them on their morning walk along the harbor. Susan, you really need to get a life. You’re not getting any younger.   

    Susan knew all too well what “not getting any younger” meant. But “to get a life”…what did that even mean? A life.  A life getter…A life saver… A life…

    “Harold, are you listening to me?”

    Not really, thought Harold. I am currently enthralled by that vixen of a wire-haired terrier over by the rose bushes.

    Of course, I’m listening, said Harold using his black pseudo-plume of tail as evidence. Your sister’s a bitch,  he said with brown soulful eyes, moving closer to sit beside his charge. I’ve been trying to tell you that for years.

    Harold met Susan three years ago at Wanderers Rest on Maine’s Route One near Camden. Wanderers was an unfortunate name for a common situation–lost, wayward humans seeking meaning and connection opt for seemingly abandoned bundles of furriness over roommates,  children, drugs or other more unsavory tonics.

    Susan was a classic customer. Brunette-ish, somewhere between fifty and seventy.  Harold struggled deciphering human years; they seemed so arbitrary and limiting. Susan was a smiler. Lots of teeth. Tea drinker, thought Harold. Her faded florals smelled of mothballs and Murphy’s Oil Soap. Her socks were thick and her shoes pedestrian.

    Poor dear, thought Harold, the first morning they met. I’ll have to eat the socks.

    For Susan, their bond was immediate. Although not the size (small) or look (golden) Susan imagined for her first pet, Harold’s coon-doggish/Great Dane physique was compelling. Wise. Stately in a Harris tweedy professor sort-of-way. His whitish spots were in all the wrong places, as if someone had spilled house paint while trying to decide what he should look like. The eyes they got right,  thought Susan.  Human eyes.  As if he could see through her. Understand her. Protect her. Take away her hurt.

    This one’s gonna need lots of loving, said Roxie, the pitbullish poodle. It’s a job for our best. For Harold. She needs you, Harold.  

    She’s mine, said Harold softly from his cage near the door.  All mine.  

    2016_08_14-3984

     

     

  • How Things Work

    How Things Work

    chair-7

    Typical hotel particulars–King or Queen, side chair or sofa bed, garden view or cityscape–are of little consequence here. The Hotel exists purely as figments of the imagination, mine and yours. That is why when we are asked to provide accommodation photos, we gently remind inquirers that at the Half Century Mark everyone needs to be the creator and fluff-ers of their own down-cushioned domains.

    However if you examine the words and pictures presented here, you’ll discover that clues to your concierge’s reality do present themselves on occasion. These are my rooms, my chairs, my particular truths revealed slightly through slants of light.

    sunlight

    My chairs but not my teeth. Our guests leave the most curious items behind. The hotel loves curious items. Like Shakers and Rust.

    teethrails-2tea

    Which brings us to Helen. “If you rest, you rust,” is the frequent refrain of hotel patron Helen Hayes. Helen, aka First Lady of American Theater, worked as an actress for more than 80 years. She published her memoirs: “My Life in Three Acts” at age 90. Although she died on March 17, 1993 at age 92, she can still be seen performing in her salon on the ninth floor. For more lovely words of inspiration, may we suggest the film Wisdom, by noted filmmaker and photographer Andrew Zuckerman.   

    Listen for Helen’s friend journalist Michael Parkinson’s wise words early in the trailer: “It’s a play, isn’t it? You know you’ve got to get through the third act. And you’ve got to finish as strong as you began. And if that’s the proposition then… get to work.” solo-3Personal Share alert: This I consider Work–I pretend inanimate objects are people. Slipper chairs are saucy. Shakers, not so much. “You can’t get to wonderful without passing through alright.” –Bill Withers, Wisdom by Andrew Zuckerman. Thank you Jamie Ridler for the Wisdom share.