Dr. E's Doll Museum Blog: eBay is Destroying the doll collectors market! Sa...

Dr. E's Doll Museum Blog: eBay is Destroying the doll collectors market! Sa...:  Here is the link to Rachel Hoffman's YouTube channel where she speaks out about eBay's latest move which is hurting doll collecting...

American Doll and Toy Museum: American Doll and Toy Museum is Open!!

American Doll and Toy Museum: American Doll and Toy Museum is Open!!

Pym was not a stranger to toys and recreation.  A father Christmas figure, soap animals, "bits and pieces" antiques, Cycladic idols stuffed animals, and more appear in her novels.  Our museum is open, and some of her books are there, too.  We even have a Pym doll and a Virginia Woolf nutcracker. Don't forget her fellow writer Denton Welch loved doll houses!

Pymian Material Culture

 

Material Culture

 

Happy Mother’s Day, a day I can no longer celebrate since I lost my mom and my aunt, but all the same.

 

I was pondering human individuality, and what our things and what we do with them say about us.  One famous art teacher and collector likes to pick up discarded grocery lists.  The contents of shopping lists, and the tasks we write on our daily planners says a lot about us.  Like snowflakes, no two are alike. We all write mini autobiographies when we pen a list, especially for the super market.  How we do it is also telling.  I used to write mine in my daily planner; now I text it to myself.  No time to write it down.  I’ve also used neat little pads like my aunt, or scraps of paper.  My mom write lists for dad, or cruised the aisles working from memory.

 

It’s telling what things we put over and over; coffee, oatmeal, cat food, Clamato juice, coke.

 

The books on our shelves, or lack thereof, also say a lot about us.  Some artists do portraits of people by painting the books on their book shelves.  If we collect, or not, also says a lot.  What we collect says even more.  No two collections are every alike.

 

People who save nothing make a statement, too, as do those who painstakingly arrange their shoes and wardrobe.

 

Stuff matters.  It defines us.  It lives after us to describe who we are.  Think King Tut, the Emperor’s Tomb, the Snettingham Horde.

 

People in Barbara Pym books all have their bits and pieces.  Marcia her bags, milk bottles, and string.  All have their books.  Leonora Eyre has her perfect antiques.  Older women their flea market finds, or bits and pieces.  Clergyman have soap animals and Faberge eggs.  Norman his stuffed animals at the Brit Museum.

 

Some characters mentally collect license plates.  They would love Pinterest.  Jewelry is important to some, others have hobbies like caring for cats and hedge hogs.  Jumble sales and Bring and Buys are routine. All have their books and magazines.

 

Even in simple things, what we chose to keep and discard from the material world defines us.

 

Thoughts to ponder.

American Doll and Toy Museum: Thinking outside the Doll House, A Memoir, is now ...

American Doll and Toy Museum: Thinking outside the Doll House, A Memoir, is now ...: Here is the link: Thinking outside the Doll House:  https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Outside-Doll-House-Memoir-ebook/dp/B08W9QFPB9/ref=sr_1_1...

Here it is after 17 years of research and constant editing and rewriting; Thank you Dr. Roald Tweet.  This is the story of us, our museum, me, my friends and family, and of course, the dolls.

What I learned from Dr. Tweet

 

What I learned from Dr. Tweet

 

Around this time of year, late fall or early winter, during the late 70s, we were studying Moby Dick in Dr. Tweet’s American Renaissance class.  The theme of “heart’s honeymoon” was prevalent.  Here were all these sailors, from all over the world, some barely “civilized” according to 19^th century American mores, all depending on each other certainly for survival, but also for companionship and fellowship.  Some couldn’t speak English, but that didn’t matter.  They were still tied together in a common endeavor, “brothers in Christ”, if you will.

 

I saw the same theme in Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad, my favorite writer.  The thrill of it all, that despite our differences, we are human, and we need each other for love and for survival.

 

That’s a powerful message to remember at the end of this terrible year, where I fear we still are not out of the woods.  This past week, I learned of the deaths of two more friends, not Covid 19 related, but devastating all the same.  In the last six weeks, that’s, five people for me in the last six weeks alone.  I don’t know how many altogether this year, but my Aunt Connie’s death stands out above all.  Swift, terrible, sudden.  In the last 2.5 years, I’ve had three funerals for family, several deaths on the same day, lost three of my closest friends, people I depended on.  I lost my mother, too, and that seemed to start all of it.

 

While it’s true many of my friends were older, it is also true that I know people of extreme old age who are hale and healthy and who, yes, work.

 

It’s almost over, and many of us are still alive.  My cousin, disabled, but still young, endures in a nursing home, with her devoted brother visiting on the other side of plexi glass every two days. Parents of other good friends and family languish in their assisted and even independent living establishments, trapped indefinitely till this nightmare is over.

 

It bothers me we forget who we are as Americans; that no one, on either side of the aisle, reads The Constitution. It bothers me that something as trivial as politics can cause an intellectual and philosophical civil war.  

 

Forgive me for rambling, but for 13 years, I’ve watched my family suffer and die, often because of mistakes of incompetent hospitals and so called health care professionals.  Yes, I’ve spoken up, reported, watched, done my due diligence.  It didn’t help.  My comfort is what goes around comes around; what happened to my family will happen to them, or even better/worse, to someone they love.  I wish I could be there to laugh in their faces when that happens.

 

Despite the fact that my Mediterranean personality demands the vendetta, I try to live in memory to take comfort, especially during the holidays.  I honor my family with cemetery flowers, but I try paying it forward to people with small gifts and contributions, by remembering our charities and church, by saying prayers, like “Thank you, Lord, for this day”, each morning.

 

I try to move forward, and have forgiven much of the past.  I try to be kind to someone, even a stranger, to remember how fleeting life is, to try to enjoy what I can. Yet, I know that now, when I set our holiday table, I also prepare a place for the Angel of Death, who walks with me everywhere.

 

This holiday season, may your loved ones’ memories be eternal.  Take comfort in Him who died for our sins, and whom we celebrate this time of year.  As you take your ornaments out, treasure your memories, and remember that no one who is remembered really dies.

 

In the Autumn of our Years; Women of a Certain Age

 

Women of a Certain Age; Autumn

 

“You’re ageless, timeless, lace and fineness/ you’re beauty and elegance.”

                                    Rod Stewart, “You’re in my Heart”

I’ve always loved fall best out of all the seasons, but it isn’t lost on me that it’s full of contradictions.  One day it’s boiling hot, the next, frost covers everything.  Sometimes there are roses and violets everywhere, yet pumpkins are sparse and few.

 

As beautiful as the leaves are, it’s hard to remember that they are dying, that Persephone left for Hades in autumn, and that winter was close behind. 

 

So, too women in their autumn years are full of contradictions.  We didn’t create them, we just have them.  We are old enough to be grandparents, yet young enough to raise our grandchildren if we have to. 

 

We can no longer have our own children, but our husbands can procreate seemingly forever. 

 

As women, we still need our mothers and fathers, yet we end up in a parental role for them, or worse, we lose them.  At a certain age, a woman first experiences true loneliness; she watches her family die around her, even some of her friends, till no one is left.

 

We remember real rock and its legends, but many of them, if alive, are even older than we are, and they walk with canes if at all.  Sometimes their voices are strong, and when we hear them sing, we can close are eyes and be fourteen again.

 

The same things hurt us, but we aren’t supposed to let them bother us.  Often the same things please us, or we wouldn’t be married to the same person for so long.  We think as we always think, some of us get sharper, not duller.  We still work, and we still have the time to learn.  Yet, no matter how good we look, the world makes certain assumptions.  People speak to us more slowly and more loudly.  Bank clerks and nurses feel the need to “guide” us and remind us of bleak financial futures, Medicare, and brittle bones. 

 

We wonder if more time is gone then left; some of us used to escape on long trips and cruises, often on group tours.  There is safety in numbers.   Some of us find solace in our pets, in our cats and dogs especially.  We indulge in our hobbies, we join clubs. 

 

We’d like to work, but employers do the math; experience plus maturity equals to them old age, a definite no-no in a corporate world made of mutton, but dressed as lamb.

 

No one dresses as her grandmother did; it’s hard to tell how old we are.  Our hands betray us sometimes; crippled with arthritis, fingers twisted, no longer pointing straight.  Here and there, age spots erupt, but concealer covers them up. If we wear nice gloves or have elaborate manicures, we can explain away our old hands.

Barbara Pym celebrated us, and made our lives worthwhile to study, yet she's almost out of print, again.

So, here we are, deemed too young for some things, yet still to old to die.  What’s a girl to do?

Pym, Paternity, and Plastic Bags

  

This cold, blustery November day is the third anniversary of my Dad’s death.  I remember everything about him, including how neat and precise he was in organizing his things.  His desk was perfection, and we called it Miss Pym’s desk, since he was the one who edited my book and dissertation about Pym, The Subversion of Romance in the Novels of Barbara Pym.

 

He folded papers and plastic bags neatly, and even sorted and arranged our garbage.  He was way ahead of the recycling movement.  He could have been Marcia’s sibling from Pym’s Quartet in Autumn.  As Susan Pearce noted in The Collector’s Voice, Modern Voices,  Marcia was a discerning and organized collector.  She sorted milk bottles, leaving behind those that did not “fit”, and carefully folded and recycled her plastic bags. I have a friend who does this, too, particularly with the plastic bags that encase rolls of paper towels.  Both Marcia and my friend creased them perfectly, and kept them in special places.  I have tried to be that neat, and tried to crease carefully the bags I repurpose and recycle, but I just can’t do it.

 

Here’s to Dad, and to Pym and Marcia.  We could take a lesson from them about recycling, organization, and life.