Transvestia

excuse to visit dressmakers and dream up beautiful costumes with vivid colors and oodles of spangles. I am even spending more time with needle and thread and learning new and fascinating tricks that can be done to improve one's wardrobe. Do I need more excuses for dressing? There's is another one. For the past two weeks (and probably for the next 2 or 3), our apartment has been invaded by an army of plumbers and electricians. The entire building is being re- piped and re-wired. Inasmuch as I can't go into the kitchen for my morning coffee just wearing my nightie, I am forced to make-up and dress completely every morning so that I can have my coffee in peace without having to worry about the plumbers and the electric- ians popping in and out. This also gives me a chance to exchange a few words with them in my best lady- like approach. Here's a perfect case of one being "forced" to dress! just for a couple of hours! horrible, isn't it?

As TRANSVESTIA begins its seventh year---the thought alone somehow throws my mind back to the days when there weren't any TV publications. I remem- ber the days when the only material we felt lucky to get once in a very great while were those little blue books of Haldeman-Julius .or that oldie entitled: "Why I, a man, must wear skirts. I must admit that it was thrilling to see anything ANYTHING actually written about the subject that was so dear to our hearts...I imagine that many of us who did get our hands on such tidbits actually wore out those pages from so much reading and re-reading them. And then there was that first feeble attempt to put out TRANS- VESTIA in a bunch of mimeographed pages, remember? I still think I have, buried somewhere, those only two issues that were ever put together. Wonder whatever happened to Joanne Thornton? And then of course there was the famous course: "how to be a TV by mail", some 100-odd lessons advertised years ago in one of the big showbiz publications by Edyth Ferguson. I still remember one of her bits of advice to those who wished to excell in female inpersonation...she'd say: "feel woman, act woman, be woman. Somehow I regret never