Dr. E's Doll Museum Blog: American Doll and Toy Museum: September is for Co...

Dr. E's Doll Museum Blog: American Doll and Toy Museum: September is for Co...: American Doll and Toy Museum: September is for Collectors; Why Collect Dolls? :   Today, the first of September, used to be the kick off of...

Pym admired writer Denton Welch, who created doll houses.

An Apologia for Countess Erzebet Bathory: RIP Your Late Majesty Elizabeth II

An Apologia for Countess Erzebet Bathory: RIP Your Late Majesty Elizabeth II:  She did the day after her own coronation and the birthday of Elizabeth I.  She also died one day after the birthday of my late beloved best...

An Apologia for Countess Erzebet Bathory: Boleyns a scandalous family and Erzebet in Harold ...

An Apologia for Countess Erzebet Bathory: Boleyns a scandalous family and Erzebet in Harold ...:  The documentary or whatever about.  the Boleyns is on PBS tonight, 7pm cst.  We'll see how it is.   These  films are usually more enter...

An Apologia for Countess Erzebet Bathory: Elizabeth I

An Apologia for Countess Erzebet Bathory: Elizabeth I:  We wish HRH Elisabeth I a Happy Birthday in Heaven, as I do my dear friend  Rosemary, born on the same day as Queen Elizabeth II's coro...

Flowers and Fall

Flowers and

For Pym and her friends, forever flower arranging, for Kate Greenaway and her language of flowers.

Frances Glessner Lee; A Pioneer in a Male Dominated Field

 I shared a blog post called Our Wildest Dreams about Ms. Lee, who created the Forensic Pathology Department at Harvard.  During the forties and fifties, she used her skills as a miniaturist to create doll house rooms  representing unsolved murders.  The FBI still uses these rooms, and books and films have been done about them.  The post was taken down as "inappropriate."

Boys and girls, I'd like to remind us all that The First Amendment is still in effect.  It was an act of sexism and ignorance to remove the post I shared.  It told the historic biographical tale of a woman who is still considered an institution in criminology and legal studies, who continues to inspire those of us who work in this field today.  

Spring flings - shopping fun Pym would have loved

American Doll and Toy Museum: Our History - American Doll and Toy Museum

American Doll and Toy Museum: Our History - American Doll and Toy Museum:   American Doll and Toy Museum was established in 2019.   We moved to our permanent location in 2020.   We opened to the public in 2021. ...

Skyward for March 2022 by guest blogger David Levy

 

Once again, here is our guest blogger, Dr. David Levy.  This post is dedicated to the memory of our friend, Terry Dufek, avid astronomer and aficionado of action figures.

Skyward for March 2022

 

Picture Caption:  Eureka, one of my telescopes, is probably s bit
better than the one referred to in Wordsworth's 1806 poem Star Gazers.

Star Gazers

What crowd is this?  What have we here?  We must not pass it by;

A telescope upon its frame, and pointed to the sky…

n      William Wordsworth, 1806

 

While I was working on my master’s degree at Queen’s University in Canada some 42 years ago, I came across this poem, loved it, and decided to include it in my thesis.  Norman MacKenzie, my thesis advisor, a scholar and a genius, pencilled one comment at the bottom of this poem:  “Wordsworth wrote some wretched verse.”    Norman did not have much of a sense of humour, but I am still laughing at his written comment.   

In his poem, Wordsworth complains about how many people who look through a telescope are disappointed in what they see.  At no point in time is that idea more cogent than now.  If a telescope we look through cannot offer us a view as good as a space telescope, then that telescope is a failure. 

By the end of the poem, the crowd abandons the telescope:

 

“One after one they take their turns, nor have I one espied

That doth not slackly go away, as if dissatisfied.”

For me, the night sky is far more than our imagined perceptions of what we can see through a telescope.  Some of us can look at an internet photograph all day long, but not I.  The beauty of the sky lies in its reality. The planets I see are real worlds.  The constellations I point out to young observers contain real stars.  One evening I asked a group if they had seen the recent eclipse of the Moon.  “Yes,” answered one, “I saw it online.”  No, he didn’t.  Eclipses are real only if you see them in the sky, while they are happening.

It is a given that a back yard telescope will never show us Jupiter as detailed or as colorful as a telescope out in space will.  What that telescope does show us is the genuine sky, a sky without artificial color enhancement, a sky as it really exists on top of our heads on every clear night.   It shows us a sky untarnished by the trivial events of the day, and unspoiled by petty concerns that are bothering us.  Our own telescope truly shows us the Moon as it was a third of a second  ago,  a star as it appeared thirty-four years ago, or a galaxy as it appeared  twelve million years in the past.  Our back yard telescope shows us what is there, and unlike the crowd from 1806 that left dissatisfied, the people of today can understand that the sky they see is real.

Local doll museum previews open house

Local doll museum previews open house: Did you have a favorite doll as a kid? Executive Director Ellen Tsagaris joined us today to talk about how the American Doll and Toy Museum celebrates all kinds of toys. For more information visit …