In 2005 and as my first eBay purchase, I bought a first edition Return to Life on eBay and inside the book there were collateral materials from Joe & Clara’s original studio.
Over the coming months, you and I are going to take a tour through the materials that were inside the book, examining them visually and intellectually. We’ll place in proper timeframe context Joe & Clara’s words and we’ll also bring into modern times the application of their intent.
But let's start at the beginning.
In July of 2005, I received a phone call from a studio owner in St. Petersburg, Florida, I’d taught some workshops at her studio and done some business consulting for her and she called me in Seattle to tell me that there was a first edition Return to Life for sale on eBay, she said the description of the book indicated that there were “collateral materials” inside the book, she said the auction would be closing at 9 pm EST and she asked my opinion as to its worth. I told her I’d check with one of our clients who is a used book wholesaler and get back to her before well before the close of the auction.
I called our wholesale book seller client and put him on the task of determining a reasonable purchase price, he said he’d need to do some research and that he’d get back to me which he did a few hours later to say that there was nothing like it that had been sold previously and that he could not advise a reasonable purchase price – he said it was worth whatever the successful bidder was willing to pay. He said for people who feel about Joe & Clara the way he knows I do, the book was priceless.
In this case, priceless was about $350 but I’m getting ahead of myself.
The very instant I heard back from my bookselling client and with a couple hours to go before the auction ended, I called the St. Pete studio owner on her mobile phone number and went into voice mail and left a message saying all the pertinent information that my client had relayed. I then called her studio number and went into voice mail and left the same message. I then called the last remaining phone number I had for her, her home land line, and her husband answered. I told him I was trying to get a message to his wife about an eBay auction for a rare copy of Return to Life that she was interested in bidding on and he said that she was out for the evening with her girlfriends and wouldn’t be bidding on any eBay auctions that evening. I told him that she’d called, that my client had researched it, blah blah blah, and he insisted she was out for the evening with friends and would not be bidding on the book.
Then I called Kevin Bowen who at that time was the Executive Director of the Pilates Method Alliance and went into voice mail. I left Kevin a message telling him about the book and that the auction was closing in a few hours and that I thought someone at the PMA should bid on the book, that it sounded like a significant piece of our history that the PMA should have in its archives.
Fast forward to 5:50 pm PST. Not knowing anything about eBay and never having been on the site, I was sitting at the front desk of my studio getting ready to teach a 6 pm mat class when a client, friend and wonderful teacher named Lisa came in for class. On a whim, I asked her if she had an eBay account. She didn’t but she said her husband did. I told her the story about the book and asked her if we could use her husband’s account to try and buy the book. She called her husband, Scott, to get his user name and password and with that and with less than 5 minutes remaining in the auction, we were in Scott’s eBay account, we searched for the auction, found it and began bidding.
The idea of an auction is something I find exhilarating. At antique auctions, I’ve gotten so excited I’ve actually bid against myself and at a charity auctions one time, one of the bid callers actually took away my bidder number because I kept messing everything up. I’m way too excitable and seriously not good at auctions. My experience on eBay was no different.
With precious few minutes to go, I was screaming at the monitor, slamming the enter key on the keyboard, soaring when we saw the green button that appears when you’re the successful bidder and swearing like a sailor when someone else outbid us. I kept putting in higher and higher dollar amounts, I even tried putting in $500 just to quell the competition, but the increments of increase it would accept were really small and we were not able to stuff the ballot box, if you will.
As time wore on, my consciousness expanded and I began noticing the screen names of competing bidders and there was one who kept tailing me and I was surprised at how much I hated them, without even knowing them. I wanted this book and every shred of my competitive drive came immediately and easily to the surface for all to see – remember, mat class was about to start and our mat clients were beginning to show up and instead of my usual hugkisshowwasyourday greeting, I completely ignored them and kept either screaming obscenities at the monitor or squealing with delight for the few seconds that I was the successful bidder until that dreadful other bidder took the top spot.
Acts of God are a wonderful thing and it was truly such that resulted in the auction closing with my bid on top.
We got the book and my joy was, well, overwhelming not only to me but to everyone else in the studio including a guy who’d walked in to try and get some information, he said “I’m from Egypt” and that’s all I heard, the next thing I knew we’d closed the auction as the highest bidder and I jumped up from the desk, grabbed him, hugged and kissed him all the while screaming “we got it, we got it.” He wrested himself from my grasp and ran out the door, never to be seen again. Our clients are used to my joyous outbursts but this was of a magnitude never before, or since, seen.
In an instant the auction was over, I suffered a massive emotional crash and I had no idea what to do next other than teach my 6pm mat class. On our way from the front desk to the mat, Lisa told me the book would be shipped to the address attached to Scott’s account, that I should write them a check for the bid amount and they’d let me know when the book arrived.
The next day I made follow up calls to all 3 numbers of the St. Pete studio owner and to Kevin Bowen so they’d know that I got the book and I waited patiently for it to arrive. The St. Pete studio owner called back a couple of days later to say that she in fact had bid on the book from her friend’s home and it turns out that the pesky screen name that I kept recognizing - and hating - was in fact hers.
Friends, her error – and it was her error, not mine - was one of communication. I performed considerably beyond my due diligence in this regard and have never even for an instant felt badly that I got the book and she didn’t. And neither should you because there is very little possibility that she would be sharing the materials with the wider community. In fact, I asked her what she planned to do with it and she said she would have framed the items and hung them on her studio wall.
And about a year ago, somebody else emailed to let me know they had also bid in the eBay auction: Siri Galliano. I have no doubt that the collection would have been in excellent hands with Siri, she gets around way more than I do.
But back to the story.
About a week later, Lisa called to say the book was in, it had been delivered to their business and we set a time for me to swing by to pick it up. Lisa and Scott are both microbiologists and they own a laboratory where people send things and Lisa and Scott find germs in them and then tell the people who own the germs all about what they have. Note the evidence bag of chicken (salmonella!) on the counter by the box; the Aquafina was not, repeat, was not contaminated and belonged to Lisa. One of Lisa’s lab assistants manned the camera and boy, am I glad he did. The pictures say it all.
Inside the book were the following materials:
This 8 page brochure titled ““Pilates” Universal Method Balance of Body and Mind” but I call it Joe’s Manifesto. It’s not copyrighted and I’ve had high rez downloads of it in the photo gallery on my www.ppnwseattle.com website since I got the book. Once you open the picture, right click and save and it’s yours.
Also inside the book were two copies of a copyrighted exercise instruction brochure, it’s got the great deco looking Around Clock graphic the PMA used for those wonderful clocks they sold a few years ago, Joe titled it “A Commando Exercise, Around the Clock and Back in One Minute.” I’ve had 2 lawyers including one who specializes in copyright law tell me that I have very little risk in sharing it in spite of its copyright because nobody is on record as owning the copyright for Joe’s materials so here you go. And just so you know, I’m especially hopeful those lawyers are right because I do not look good in jumpsuits or in the color orange!
Did you notice anything interesting about the model for the clock graphic? Did you notice that her right leg appears longer than her left leg? And did you notice a difference in the slope of her hips? Her right waistline appears to have a less exaggerated slope than her left waistline. Do you realize the biomechanical implications of that and do you know how to teach to balance that? If not, you need my Pilates Excel program or at the very least, my Balancing the Body from Side to Side workshop!!!!
I digress.
And finally, there were 3 Holiday cards.
Do a couple of them look familiar? If so, it’s probably because Elizabeth Anderson, who replaced Kevin as the ED of the PMA, called me in the fall of 2008 and asked if I would send the cards to the PMA’s graphics guy who cleaned them all up (he photo shopped out the old yellow cellophane tape which is part of what I absolutely love about it – oh well) and prepared them as a collection of cards that the PMA sold last year at the conference. They did a beautiful job and I hope you bought some so you can do your part to maintain the tradition set by Clara of sending cards through the mail keep in contact with clients and friends of the studio.
In the group of 3 Holiday cards, one is so special, it’s almost too good to be true.
After Lisa and I were done with our box opening extravaganza, I packed everything up and left her lab but as soon as I got in my car in the parking lot, I wanted to see everything again so I opened the box up and began going through everything again. I called Kevin to try and share the moment with him but, as is almost always the case when one busy teacher is trying to reach another, I went into voice mail and it was then when I was looking closely at one of the Holiday cards – it’s my favorite one, of Clara “stretching” Joe on Rowing - that I noticed tiniest handwritten word “over” in blue ink at the bottom and my heart skipped a beat. When I turned it over and saw Clara’s inscription and signature, I burst into tears.
Here you go!
So, are you wondering who was Phyllis? I sure was.
In the inside front cover of the book, the name Phyllis Nord is written in peacock blue ink, the kind of ink that looks like it was from a fountain pen. There is also a library stamp.
And now, with Clara’s inscription to “Phyllis,” I decided to investigate so I wrote to the eBay seller of the book and asked him to tell me everything he knew about the how the book came into his possession. Here’s his email to me a couple of months after my initial inquiry – the waiting practically killed me!
So Phyllis died in 1983 and this book with all its treasures inside, sat on the shelves of a public library for decades and but for the sharp eye of library volunteer Bill, would have been shoved into “a buck a bag” book sale.
Fascinating!
Well, then what?
In November of 2005 at the PMA conference, I gave the book and all its contents to the Board of the PMA. I told them I thought the book and contents were significant to our industry and since the PMA is the intersection of virtually all vibrant and inclusive aspects of the industry, I thought the PMA would be the best possible keeper of the book. I asked that the book and contents be available for all to see at every PMA conference.
Two years went by and during that time the PMA was working on all manner of more pressing concerns and they were unable to do what I asked in the handling of the book so I ask them to return the book to me, which they did. And ever since, wherever I go, it goes – and you guys, I go a lot of places so the collection has really gotten around. And I’ve shared it, in person, with more of you than the PMA ever did.
The greatest exposure I can give it is at the PMA conference in my booth at the trade show where we have rubber gloves for you to use in handling the materials. When passersby see us in our gloves without a clue why, we smile and say that we’re the only booth performing rectal exams!
I don’t really know if the gloves help but at least it makes me feel like I’m doing everything possible to properly care for the collection. I got an estimate a couple of years ago and it will cost a couple thousand dollars to have the materials properly preserved and encased so that we can see them without having to touch them. What Bill Gates did with DaVinci’s Codex is what I have in mind, although on a smaller scale, of course.
Some of us - you know this already, right? - are careless and unaware and the really bad part of that is that the people who are careless and unaware are virtually indistinguishable from those who aren't so as caretakers and sharers of the collection, Heidi and I never know which one we’re in the presence of until the person pleats the page corners between thumb and index finger to flip the page or pulls so hard on the aged and fragile pages that the staples tear out, the page rips or the crease tears. The percentages of the careless and unaware are really low but boy, in their hands, the book and the materials have been damaged more than what it experienced the decades of life in a public library. Such is the dilemma of being out there with it but it’s better to share and damage than not share at all, or at least that’s what I think.
So that’s the story of how I got the book.
In moving forward, I think our analysis should begin with the items that can be most quickly put through the process so we’ll start with the holiday cards, then the Around the Clock flyer and then we’ll move, bullet point by bullet point through the 8-page Manifesto. And to foreshadow ever so slightly, that Manifesto is easily able to be used as a guide not only for your business development but for the teaching of every session and through performing your own Pilates workout. With a full harvesting of the wisdom therein, it will be as if Joe is teaching you himself. I’m all tingly just thinking about it!
Are you in? I sure hope so.