Dr. E's Doll Museum Blog: World Doll Day!

Dr. E's Doll Museum Blog: World Doll Day!: Once again we celebrate this notable day in doll collecting.  How did you spend your day?  I checked on American Doll & Toy Museum; we a...

How we Survived Covid19 Shortages

Though it's happened before, especially in 1973, I never thought I'd be worried about toilet paper and paper products in general.  Same is true of things like cleaners and hand sanitizers.  The stores seem to be restocking, slowly, and on Amazon, many things were still available, they many cost more and required shipping.

It wasn't so bad at our house because when I shop, I'm used to buying supplies a week or two ahead.  I do it with cat food, TP, paper towels, Kleenex, etc.  With two men in the family, I have fears of running out of these things anyway, and with everyone having allergies in a four person household, Kleenex is a routine necessity.

Over the years, I've known folks who were almost revivalists.  One had turned her basement into her little store, as she called it.  She had bulk paper products on metal shelves that reached the ceiling, and unreal caches of canned food and boxed dinners.  It was her hobby.  Her husband had an outdoor metal building full of plane and car memorabilia beautifully arranged. I bought a lovely doll house she had made, fully furnished and electrified.   She had a few other childhood dolls and toys not for sale, but her living room was completely empty but for two large recliners and a very big flat screened TV. Minimizes cleaning, that's for sure.

To each his own.  In the immortal words of Sly Stone, "different strokes for different folks."

WWI Navy Poster, public domain

My family suffered through WWII in Europe.  They tended to store lots of canned goods, and to buy everything in multiple quantities.  They were ready for three or four successive Christmases.  They were also a large family, with lots of nephews, god children, and other relatives. They didn't hoard and were organized with a place for everything. 

Toilet Paper Roll Dolls, public domain

Scouts' motto was "be prepared", and I've tried to do that.  My dad took me to the grocery store from the time I was very small.  I always won the class version of "Price is Right" because I was aware.

We don't have a humongous freezer, but I do buy a few things for dinner ahead of time and freeze them.  I tend to prefer fish and vegetarian pasta, but my family needs and eats meat and protein.  We all eat eggs.  So, because I also dread going to stores these days, I try to buy dinners for a week or so ahead.

It's great if we can grow our own fruits or vegetables, or know how to forage.  My grandma and her friends could boil dandelion leaves and make rose hip jelly.  It does't hurt.  Canning, if you have time and know how, is also a great option and fun hobby. We used to make our own strawberry jam in manageable quantities, and I watched my babysitter make tomato sauce from fresh tomatoes.  I've tried it and it works well.

We don't need to panic, but the Apocalypse is not coming.  The Hong Kong flu was worse, and we got through it. 

If you have a surplus, share with someone.  Be nice.  When I make a big meal, I freeze the leftovers and share them with friends.  They do the same for me.

My one missed luxury is Clorox wipes.  I love them; I'm finding a canister here or there, but I also learn to use paper towels and cleaning vinegar.  Also, my family used cleaning rags from worn out clothes.  We even washed them.  Not a bad idea, either.

1973 TP crisis.  Public Domain image.

From a collector's point of view, I have to say my novelty dolls made from paper towel/TP cardboard rolls and my Kleenex dolls, are going to increase in value.  Meet me on eBay!!

The Illustrated Garden

What do I do when I can't get out to go anywhere?  I fiddle in the garden.  Master gardener, I'm not, but it's fun to plant flowers, seeds, plants.  I'm wild about container gardens and fairy gardens.  Here are some of my favorite gardening things.

My back yard patio, and one of my mighty oaks.  Great place to read or write.

One of our welcome wreathes, vintage papier mache fruit and silk flowers.

A tiny fairy garden inot

A fox track in our yard.  We have a family of three.

Newly planted butterfly plants.

Calendula, purple

Another view of our in ground fairy garden

One of our antique German bisque dolls. 

Fragrant hydrangea related bush

Dr. E's Doll Museum Blog: The Magic Lyrids, by our guest blogger, Dr. David ...

Dr. E's Doll Museum Blog: The Magic Lyrids, by our guest blogger, Dr. David ...: Skyward for May 2020. The magic Lyrids Plenty of telescopes grace my observatory, but I still enjoy watching shooting stars, or mete...

The International Doll Museum blog: This week in quarantine, featured language, French...

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Dr. E's Doll Museum Blog: Guest Blogger; Dr. David Levy on Comets

Dr. E's Doll Museum Blog: Guest Blogger; Dr. David Levy on Comets: We an still look to the heavens for hope and inspiration: Skyward for April 2020. The Great Comet of 1844, and the Great Comet of 20...

Fossils

Fossils by Daguerre

Fossils

I have always loved old things, preferring them to the new and the shiny. I take it to heart that more and more of our old buildings are being imploded for the sake of progress, The Armory, Lincoln School, Audubon School, The Huber Home, have all been victims.   Eyesores, some have called them, dangerous buildings, accidents waiting to happen.  History, I say, that will never be repeated or enjoyed again, like the cafeteria on the mezzanine of McCabe’s Department store or the ice cream counter at Pitcher’s on 30^th in Rock Island.

There are some landmarks, though, that can’t be bulldozed.  They will find their way into our consciousness, even in a disaster.  Cases in point; the fossils found along the shores of our own Mississippi.  Paleontologists will tell you that these fossils, by definition, evidence of prehistoric life, become exposed when the River’s water levels drop, or after the waters of a great flood have receded.  See, they will find us, come “hell or high-water.”

They also show up where you least expect them; trilobites and fossil ferns showed up in the limestone rock borders of my parent’s garden in Rock Island.  Huge rocks encrusted with fossils with exotic names like Cladopora, Cephalpods, Anthozoa, Platyrachella, Productella-they made a home for a water snake that slithered out when I lifted up his rock roof to see the fossils close up. Twenty five years ago or so, they showed up at the gift shop of the Putnam, pre-IMAX, and in the sands near the Cordoba Nuclear plant, where we fieldtripped for Summer Biology in 1975.

Our fossil landmarks are far older than the demolished school buildings amid whose walls our teachers first introduced them to us.  They hail from the Devonian Period of prehistory, between 410 and 360 million years ago.  Appropriately, many of these were marine animals, and fish

Later ,the  new kids on the block appeared during the Ice Age, the wooly mammoth, giant ground sloth, the land animals, ancient at 10,000 to 2 million  years old, but familiar.  They coincided with us, with the humans, who learned later to destroy so well.  Fossils humble us, these often tiny pieces of prehistory.  They have already outlasted us; they lived in some form or another for hundreds of millions years.  We have only lived in this Valley for some 10-fifteen thousand years.   If by chance my fossilized remains should survive a million years, and some archaeologist in the far distant future finds me, I hope I have that little fossil fern and the trilobite clutched in my bony hand.  And I hope I’m part of prehistory lesson that’s taught in a school that isn’t in danger of being demolished.