"And So this is Christmas . . "

Every year the holidays seem to come and go much more quickly.  They are as ephemeral as the snowflakes that often accompany them, often dissolving on glass even as they accumulate on dead grass and concrete.

Tonight I went to a brief, but wonderful, Christmas concert of classic carols and music, sung in harmony by amateur musicians with professional heart.

With each note, I heard the ghosts of everyone I've loved, those same phantoms of Christmas past blinking in the lights of the Christmas tree.

For the first time this season in all of the frantic behavior, it felt like Christmas. Our holiday is low key this year, wrapped more in memory than giftwrap.  How I miss my mother and dad, my grandparents, uncles, good friends now long gone.

As I age, I measure my life in Christmases past, and wonder now many will be in my future.  Memories of the smoked chicken and pheasants we used to have are almost better than whatever it is we have for dinner this year.  At least we aren't coming off of or planning funerals. 

What memories do you cherish of The Holidays?  I remember and treasure the memory of nearly every gift I've ever received, and I've treasured the giver more.  I treasure memories of handmade Christmas gifts and cards, of cooking my mother's recipes one after the other to try to resurrect her.

To those who lament the alleged commercialism and  excess of Christmas, I say Christmas is more than that, those aspects have been lamented since at least the 6th century.  Christmas is good will, and good feelings, it is fellowship, and music, and spirituality.  There is nothing like it, and no one like Santa and its key players, including the Holy Family and the three wise men.

Angels we have indeed heard on high, and sometimes, we even listen to them.

God bless us, everyone!

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My friends have stepped up in unimaginable ways, from Michele, who made the building available, to Diane, her business partner who has helped with supplies, and costumes, and doll accessories, to Dick and Nancy who have offered their help in so many ways. 

Gloria, Caroline, Clara, Jill, Marie, Kathy, and Nancy S., and everyone else who has donated dolls to us, to the Friedken family for the little trike, and to everyone at Good Will, Salvation Army, Erin at Rescued, Dennis of The Treasure Chest, and our many friends in the antique and thrift community who have helped me, and given me encouragement and advice.  I wish my Mom and Dad were here, and my doll friends now gone, Mary Hillier, Stephanie Hammonds, Mikki Brantley, and so many more wonderful writers and doll artists, my friend and pen pal, R. Lane Herron who currently writes for Doll Castle News, and so many others.

Believe in your passion, follow it, and you will be happy.  Success is measured not by monetary gain, but by true happiness.  It has taken me my entire life to get here; I started collecting when I was three, and I never met a doll, or toy, I didn’t like.  I studied, my folks helped me travel, my Dad carried home dolls from all over the world, even one given to me from executives of Mitsubishi.    My mother made them, repaired them, dressed them, and put up with old things, which she really didn’t like.  At least, not at first; she changed her mind later.  My husband, Dino, has been a huge help, my editor, my best friend, my navigator in this journey. Our friend Greg, gone too soon, believed in me, and Mark, our other friend, contributed a lot.

I’ve had antique adventures with my friends Rosie, Lori, Nancy T, Danyelle, and more.  My Aunt Rosie and Uncle Tony looked everywhere for old dolls for me, and Rosie made them in her ceramics studio for me.  My Uncle Tom brought one home each week for me, and my Uncle George cruised Berkley and Lost Gatos looking for stores that sold dolls. My grandma’s collection of international dolls inspired my collection; two of them began it.  She also dressed dolls, sometimes over night.  Doll nudity offended her.

We hope to open November 30, 2019, Small Business Saturday; for the first time in a long time, I’m looking forward to something, and the sun is shining again.  Thank you to all who read me blogs and postings, and to those who have bought and read my books.

Thinking outside the Doll House, A Memoir, will be out soon.  You can read my entire doll story there.  Thank you, and I love you all!

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Doll Museum to Open Dec. 1!!

After a lifetime of planning, it has finally happened!  more details will follow as the doll drama unfolds, but The American Doll & Toy Museum will open the first week of December!  This will be a smaller version of our collection because of space limitations, but there will be representative dolls from prehistory to the present, and a nice selection of doll houses, miniatures, toys and related objects.

Many of you also follow our main doll museum blog, Dr. E's Doll Museum, and you know that I am Dr. E and this is our unofficial name.  I started a new Facebook Page called American Doll

In and Toy Museum, and will follow up with a Twitter, Pinterest, and other social media accounts to spread the word.

We'll have a small book shop selling doll related objects, vintage paper airplanes, licensed merchandise books, and perhaps some small antiques from the shop behind us. We also have a GoFundMe Page for donations.  https://www.gofundme.com/manage/ellen039s-campaign-for-american-doll-and-toy-museum

There will be special events and give a ways.  We'll celebrate each season and holiday, too. There will be rotating displays of all kinds.

I plan on have a doll trinket to give to each visitor as a memento.

Many of you have seen  the displays of my dolls at various museums. I've collected since age 3, and have been planning this museum since grade school.  We will join a small neighbor hood near one of my alma maters called College Hill, which hosts other events and houses several antique stores, a cafe, a hometown bar and grill, a hometown barber shop, sports apparel shop and more.  We will be contributing to small business and to our community.

We welcome everyone; we aren't just for doll collectors and dealers, and we hope by embracing the general public, that we will also encourage young collectors.

Below are some of our citizens, and there is a YouTube video with more.

Doll Museum Video; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_TLGmyLKIw&t=158s

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High Chaparral

Every day, now, I watch this sixties sitcom on H&I TV. It inspired my romance novel, would horse Runs Free.

Educated?

Educated by Tara Westover

There has been real trouble on Walton’s Mountain, oops, sorry, Buck’s Peak. Or maybe Sam Walton's Mountain. Their valley was never green, and this little house styled on the principles of prairie living is really a house of horrors.  Christy by Catherine Marshall is another book that might be at home with this one.

We must remember that memoir is not biography or autobiography; memoir can be a collage of selective memories whose subject is but a slice of the author's life.  As the author points out, different members of the family have different memories of the same event.  Yet, I have a lot of problems believing this is an isolated, survivalist family.  For one thing, though they are allegedly isolated, and living off the grid, they have a computer and are hooked up to The Internet. I wasn’t hooked up to The Internet at home till after I got my own PhD in graduate school. We had quite a presence in my neighborhood, by the way, and we traveled, went to church, ate out, and were well known at T.J. MAXX and Marshall’s.

For another, Ma Westover couldn’t have grown her home remedies into Butterfly Essential Oils, Inc., without contact with the Feds, the FDA, basic concepts of local, state and federal business law, lawyers, contracts, etc.  They family even has its own lawyers and has been involved in at least one law suit dealing with an easement on their property. You can’t just concoct happy juices and lotions and peddle them on the street without running amok of the FDA and other agencies.  Just ask the folks growing marijuana in states where it is legal; they have to pay taxes, get organized, and get regulated.

By the way, Ma Westover had lots of close calls while practicing midwifery; let me note Idaho has a very extensive law on its books regarding midwives.  Here is its citation; 

TITLE 54

PROFESSIONS, VOCATIONS, AND BUSINESSES

CHAPTER 55

MIDWIFERY

     54-5505.

 It’s online.  Look it up.  She couldn’t have flown under the radar that easily on this one, either.  The mountain, after all, was Buck’s Peak, not Olympus, and it was the 1980s, and she wasn’t the goddess Hera.  Mrs. Westover also took classes to improve her skills as an herbalist,; again, this is not something someone living in isolation preparing for End of Days is likely to do.  Or, maybe I just don’t understand my friendly, neighborhood survivalists.

The Westovers drives, albeit not well, take trips; visit their daughter in grad school.  Apparently, they did home school.  I have trouble believing their daughter got into all of these schools with no diploma or GED. Having worked in higher education over thirty years, I can tell you my schools admitted no one without at least a GED.  The last person to educate himself the way she claims she did was Abraham Lincoln.

If you don’t believe me, quoted below are admission requirements for home schooled students for Brigham Young University:

As part of the application, homeschooled applicants will be required to submit any high school or university work completed through an institution accredited by a regional accrediting agency.

Any college work completed before your peers graduated from high school will be considered concurrent enrollment work. You will apply as a freshman and an ACT/SAT score will be required.

If you will not graduate from high school or complete secondary school through home schooling as required by your state, you may be required to submit a GED or state recognized high school equivalency exam. If this is a requirement for you, it will be shown on your status page.  (https://enrollment.byu.edu/admissions/homeschooled-applicants)

Whatever.  Maybe there are universities today that make exceptions, but Ma has her own Facebook page, at least one brother is on Twitter, and two other siblings have doctorates in various fields.  Primitive mountain folk eking out a living to sustain themselves in a fit of paranoia and suspicion do not have a presence on social media.  They also don’t encourage their children to sing in musicals like Annie,  and then come watch them. Really they don’t.  Not to be flip, but I don’t remember seeing Broadway Tunes by Operation Move,  The Ruby Ridge Review, or Christmas with the Branch Dravidians.

Just my opinion; don’t swallow me alive.  This author has a gift for beautiful, poetic prose, but this is a lovely novel.  Perhaps it is based on her family, and I’ve no doubt something happened to her, perhaps by an abusive brother, but this story is to Shakespearian, and to American Gothic, to be taken as gospel truth.

Perhaps I state the obvious.  Read the book and come to your own conclusions; visit the author’s Facebook page and view her various and numerous YouTube appearances.  Come to your own conclusions.   The book is written in beautiful, poetic prose, with a couple incongruities.  E.g., the author states at one point she was feeling “poorly” which is colloquial vocabulary out of place with the rest of her discourse.  

This book is autobiographical or biographical fiction, e.g., The Little House Books, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, and A Million Little Pieces.  I am putting my copy on my bookshelf next to The Amityville Horror.  

July Skyward; a Nightwatchman's Journey: The Road not Taken, by Dr. David Levy, Guest Blogger

Photo provided by Dr. David H. Levy

Skyward                     

By

David H. Levy

A Nightwatchman’s Journey: The Road not Taken

On Friday, June 14, my latest book, my autobiography entitled A Nightwatchman’s Journey: The Road not Taken was launched at the Royal Astronomical Society’s General Assembly in Toronto.    It is a book I have been working on for almost a decade, and it is the story of my life.    The book begins in medias res, in the midst of a suicide attempt that happened shortly after I graduated from Acadia.  I have suffered from depression throughout my life, but this book describes my efforts to conquer it.  It tells of how I made many poor decisions in my life, but how two of them were good.  The best decision was marrying Wendee, which I did in 1997 and with whom I have had 22 happy years.   The other one was to begin, on December 17, 1965, a search for comets. 

It took me nineteen years, searching with telescopes for 917 hours 28 minutes, before I finally found my first comet in 1984.  Since then I have found 22 more.  One was an electronic find shared with Tom Glinos in 2010.  Thirteen were photographic film discoveries shared with Gene and Carolyn Shoemaker (including Shoemaker-Levy 9 which collided with Jupiter in 1994) and there were nine visual comet finds.  If the first seventy-one years of my life had been just staring through the eyepiece of a telescope, however, there would not have been much to write about.  What happened on the road less travelled by, like Robert Frost, has made all the difference. 

Comets, I learned, are not just for viewing.  They are for reading and for studying. At first, I did some high school reading about the discovery of Comet Ikeya-Seki, the brightest comet of the twentieth century.  Years later in graduate school at Canada’s Queen’s University, I prepared a master’s thesis based on the 19^th century English poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, who observed Comet Tempel in 1864 and subsequently wrote a beautiful poem about it.  But the writer who seemed to be most into astronomy, and whose love of the sky I turned into my Ph.D., was none other than the great William Shakespeare, whose collected works contain more than two hundred references to the sky, including the opening lines to I Henry VI, one of his earliest plays:

Hung be the heavens with black, yield day to night!

Comets, importing change of times and states,

Brandish your crystal tresses in the sky.

Even now, when I spend an evening or all night under the stars, I am amazed to be able to share my experiences with so many people, in all walks of life, who have come before me.    Taking a road “that was grassy and wanted wear” might have been risky, but it did point me toward many adventures I’ll never forget.

The Death of the Book?

One of my favorite shows, MeTV's  Collector's Call, recently featured a former Playboy centerfold who collected stellar examples of first editions and children's books, including fine examples of Harry Potter and Alice in Wonderland.  It's fitting, in a way, that this amazing woman was a centerfold; after all, Hugh Hefner was the man who gave Ray Bradbury his start, publishing one version of Fahrenheit 451, a prophetic book about loving books, in Playboy.  I think it was in the first edition.

Photo by author, courtesy Vintage Rose Antiques.

We seem to be fascinated with books, even as we no longer buy, read, keep them.   Secrets of the Dead tonight dealt with a magnificent forgery of a book by Galileo.  It stumped experts allover the world.  Someone must care enough for books, rare ones at least, to want to forge them.  It must be a successful trade somewhere. Even as more people recycle their books to buy an e-reader of some kind, more books seem to crop up at yard sales.  Free little libraries are popping up all over our neighborhoods.  The concept is simple; borrow a book, and leave a book in its place.

Truly, I admit to being a bibliophile.  My mother taught me never to throw away a book [and never to split an infinitive; you'll notice I did not ].I've rescued books that were burned and water damaged, made covers, built shelves, and moved libraries.  I moved two libraries from my old school; a 4000 volume law library, and another 1200 or so volumes from the general library.  They were there for the taking; no one wanted them.  Everything was digital, online, whatever.

It pains me to see old law books torn part for scrapbooking projects; I supposed I should be grateful they are used for something.  They are not out of date; you can check on Shepard's and other citation services whether the cases within their pages are up to date or have been overruled on some point. I hate it when books are torn apart for their illustrations, which are later sold individually.  I love collage and scrapbooking, but I wont' cut up my books.  The landmark cases amid the pages of old law books are still good law, cases like Furman v. Georgia, Brown v. Board of Education, and Marbury v. Madison.  This isn't a law review article, or I would show off my knowledge of legal citation and tell you where to find them.

I've talked to surveyors and cartographers who search out old atlases and stats books; much of the knowledge they hold is not on The Net; it can't really be put there.  They serve as a comparison and stepping stone for other research.

Actually, I'm never happier than in a library.   I sent many books overseas, and arranged for others to have good homes, but I admit I kept a lot of them.   I use them.  Serious scholarly research still requires books, not websites.

I'm with Corey Doctorow and others who avidly load their Kindles, read online, thrive on their Google Library, but I have my books, too.  Many are beautiful, works of art in themselves.  Antique children's books, miniatures, 260 year old Bibles  Like The Book Thief's heroine, I suppose I never get enough.

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Write on!!!

In my musings, I realized today how many time’s I’ve heard that signs of dementia include writing notes and keeping notebooks.  It’s said smugly and matter of factly, often by people who should know better, including but not limited to family, psychologists, other elderly afraid of getting dementia, care causers, and health care providers, witch doctors, know it alls, nay sayers of all types, and chronic cranks. 

Well, I’m not a senior, but I guess I’m there, along with Barbara Pym, Anne Rice, Leonardo da Vinci, and many, many others. Bill Gates must be barmy, too; he paid over $30 million for one of Leonardo’s notebooks several years ago. If I could have afforded it, I would have bought it, too.  I learned to take notes from my mother; she was around thirty at the time of the first tutorial.  I even made notes for this blog posts.

Later, I outlined my notes in graduate school.  I’ve kept journals and notebooks my whole life, and always keep them in my purse.  My piano teachers always wrote notes and lessons in notebooks, and then encouraged, even insisted, that I keep the notebooks.  I did.  

Frida Kahlo, and so many artists keep sketchbooks and notes.  They help with ideas.  My dissertation director, one of the greatest writers and teachers ever, wrote notes on everything, even the backs of envelopes and scraps of paper that she organized in other envelopes.  She never wastes paper, and has all her notes in order.

Composers are always taking notes; a visiting composer I worked with at our own symphony accepted a gift of musical stickers I gave him; he was going to put them on a score.  He was also a dedicated teacher as well as musician.

Anne Rice used to write helpful words on her walls, and I have friends who still write on their hands to remind them to do things.

Hmph.  Dementia must be rampant, not that anyone I’ve met really understands what it is. 

Keep writing, I say.  I’m happy to send a notebook to anyone who needs one, of any age, at any point in their life.

Like the paper mate ad used to say, “Write on, brother, write on!!”

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April 2019 Skyward by Dr. David Levy-Astronomy

Skyward

April 2019

During our monthly star nights at our neighborhood Corona Foothills Middle School, I sit down on a chair near the telescope to assist with the observing. The students attending are well behaved no matter their level of interest.  Some of the kids are there just for the evening’s assignment.  But occasionally one student or two will sit down next to me and ask me a few questions.  They don’t have to do this.  They may ask how I got started in astronomy, in a time without computers, or even what my favorite planet or comet is.  I love these conversations.  They signify to me that the girl or boy is developing an interest in the sky, and an inquiring mind is at work that is so rare and precious these days.  That interest and curiosity may go nowhere; it may persist for a few months, or it may go everywhere.

          Why are relatively few young people getting into astronomy? Is it because almost no astronomy is taught in schools these days?  Too much TV?  The internet?  Or are astronomy clubs failing to reach the young people of tomorrow? 

          I would say all of these.  Or more to the point, none of these.  When I became interested in the night sky at the age of 12, there were even fewer astronomy lectures in school than now.  I went into astronomy partly because it offered me a reprieve from the lack of friends I had as a child—I was very shy.  And I embraced it because of an increasing innate love of the night sky.  I knew nothing, but that’s all that was needed.

Now, Wendee and I are offering youngsters a chance to inquire about the night sky.  Even if that interest is sparked among only a few, it doesn’t really matter.  Our attempt might have succeeded with one child.  Or five.  But it did succeed.  The way I see it, we cannot force a child to develop an interest in anything.  The spark that sets off a curiosity, even a lifelong curiosity, must come from the child.

          I might have developed an acquaintance with astronomy partly because I was searching for an interest that did not involve having to make friends. But my passion for the sky came from the sky itself and its complement of worlds, suns, and galaxies. After many years, I have made lots of friends, most of whom also love astronomy, but in a way it doesn’t matter.    What began as something to avoid friendship has evolved into one of the friendliest and happiest things I’ve ever done, a lifelong friendship with the starry host that brightens our nights.

"This picture shows me demonstrating Voyager, our Meade 14-inch
diameter reflector telescope, to one of the students."

NIADA, S. Gibson, and The Virtual Doll Convention June 2019

Many artists turn to creating dolls because they are a fresh medium, something to take their art in another direction.  Artists who recognized the importance of the relationship between dolls and art founded the National Institute of American Doll Artists, NIADA, in 1963. Originally, four artists founded NIADA, Helen Bullard, Gertrude Florian, Magge Head, and Fawn Zeller. Today, there are over 60 members elected by their peers and member-patrons.  The purpose behind founding NIADA was to recognize the art behind original, hand made dolls.  Members hold annual get-togethers that include visiting doll makers and doll fans to share work and ideas with each other.  There is also a NIADA school for those who wish to learn doll making techniques from the artists of NIADA. The artists’ group also offers publications on artist dolls.  For more information about the annual conference and school, visit the NIADA website, www.niada.org.

 One of the Vinyl Kalico Kids, Tsagaris collection.

For many years, I was a pen pal of the late Suzanne Gibson, a NIADA artist known for her Kalico Kids and porcelain little girl series.   She was trained as a ballet dancer and was from Capitola, CA, not far from my family.  When I was nine my dad bought me one of the little girl dolls of porcelain from Knott’s Berry Farm.  The legend was that Gibson only made three dolls from each mold then broke it, though the dolls were clearly sisters.  They resembled each other closely.  My Dad used to say that his hand hurt from writing the check.  She is a lovely little girl with long lashes, long, strawberry blonde curls with pink ribbons, and a white eyelet dress and bloomers. Her shoes and stockings are also white.  There were other little girls, and Suzanne sent me a picture of one with dark curls and a pink dress.  She made vinyl dolls for several years with Reeves International, including a Mother Goose set in collaboration with Steiff.  The Kalico Kids were a departure, and based on her own childhood.  She sent me an autographed copy of her book about them at one point.

S. Gibson Holly by Reeves International via Public domain

When I went to a doll show, I would check on her dolls, if any.  I only found vinyl versions of the Kalico Kids and other dolls.   Currently, the Reeves dolls are a bargain on ebay.

Spinning Wheel's Complete Book of dolls features Gibson in an article; there is a great scion on doll artists in the book.  The NIADA sight is full of information, of course.  Many artists are past members of NIADA, and there are other groups, but notable artists include Debbie Ritter, Uneek Doll designs, R. John Wright, elinor peace bailey, Greg Ortiz and many BJD artists and designers. Glenda Rolle, featured in photos on this blog, does great sand babies and jewelry.

Teracotta doll bust by the author, c. 1988.

Spinning Wheel’s Complete Book of Dolls has a good article about her, and a good section on Doll artists.  Other books include Max von Boehn’s Dolls, Carl Fox’s The Doll,  Clara Hallard Fawcett’s books, Janet Pagter Johl’s and Eleanor St. George’s books that talk about Emma Clear, Helen Young’s The Complete Book of Doll Collecting, Edwina Ruggles’, The One Rose, Spinning Wheel’s Complete Book of Dolls, vol. I, Doll Reader Magazine, Doll Castle News, Kimport’s Doll Talk, Manfred Bachman’s Dolls, the Wide World Over, and Bernice’s Bambini.  Wonderful books by NIADA include   Krystyna Poray Goddu, ed., The Art of the Doll: Contemporary Work of the National Institute of American Doll Artists. NIADA, 1992, and other books by Goddu on the artists. NIADA serves many wonderful purposes in the world of dolls, but the artists remind us above all of the historical and artistic value of dolls for collectors and doll lovers of all ages.

R:  Dealer Laverne Koddy with a Jan McClean doll.

The author's Baby Dear, originally designed by Eloise Wilkin.
This version c. 1964,  and she wears a dress from her varied
wardrobe.  She is the author's favorite doll. 

Fairy with butterfly wings, artist made

Art doll by Joniak.

COD character doll, coinciding with movements in the Bauhaus Art
Movement and German Realism.

Older artists and designers include Joseph Kallus, Cameo Doll company and innovator of the modern vinyl Kewpie, Rose O' Neill, Grace Story Putnam, Grace Drayton, Grace Corey Rockwell, Johnny Gruelle, A. Marque, Picasso, Degas, Tony Sarg, and Bil Baird.

Other doll artists, some former NIADA members are Magge Head Kane, R. John Wright, Glenda Rolle [see her sand babies on this blog], R. Lane Herron, and Teri Long-Long Gone Dolls.  A. Marque and is an artist of the past that created dolls, as did DeWees Cochran, Madame Alexander, Dorothy Heizer and Emma Clear .  Peggy Jo Rosamund is an amazing paper doll artist.  Robin Woods did amazing work, and so did Anna Avigail Brahms.  The list goes on.

Bil Baird Puppet, photo the author

Dolls and art have gone hand in hand for centuries.  Even in prehistory, humans were creating small statues of women and an occasional man according to their standards of aesthetic beauty.  Artists used small articulated models or lay figures to create masterpieces of art.  A few artists like Marque, Picasso, and Degas,  either created dolls, or were inspired by dolls to create other works of art.  Many great artists, including Rembrandt, were collectors themselves. Leonardo da Vinci dabbled in creating automatons, along with other gadgets and machines.  Artists like Joseph Cornell and Jarvis Rockwell created works of art using dolls.  Norman Rockwell, father to Jarvis, painted them, as in his Doctor and Doll. The artistry of antique dolls influenced Pleasant Rowland’s American Girls.  Of course, sculptors and artists have always been involved in creating dolls for play and to collect. There are many non-NIADA books and magazines  about doll making including The Art Doll Quarterly.   Behind every Barbie, Kewpie, or Betsy Wetsy, there is an artist or sculptor working his or her particular doll magic.

Artist doll after the work of Ted de Grazia.  Author's collection.

Other great books abound on dolls and art, as well as videos of the Santa Fe Doll Art conventions. Just remember, behind every great doll, there is a great artist!  We will be featuring Helen Kish, George Stuart, Shelley Thornton and more at the June Virtual Doll Convention.

Pat Thompson, Vlasta Dolls. Author's Collection

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Dr. E's Doll Museum Blog: March Skyward by Dr. David Levy; On Comets: ������Once again, it is with great pleasure that we look away from our doll cases and doll houses towards the heaven, to share the passion o...

Let's Split! [Infinitves] Not!

✍I guess when you teach, and you teach English, you develop some pet peeves.  I inherited this one from my mom, also a teacher, but she was right.  [Or write!] Infinitives should not be split; they are compound words in English. In other words, the infinitive is one word.  For example," the Spanish "leer" means "to read."  It is one word.  "Ir" means to go and is an irregular verb.  I love Star Trek as much as the next Trekkie, but "To boldly go where no man has gone before" is wrong.  Sorry, GR and friends.  It should read, "boldly to go", or "to go boldly."  Also, please add where "no person" has gone before.




It gripes me; I worked for one school where the so called Chair had two fewer degrees than I did.  He was sexist, dishonest, and nasty, but also didn't know grammar.  He produced canned curricula that were full of split infinitives, mistakes in APA citation, misspellings, and more.  We all make mistakes and typos, but we don't all claim to be the Kings of the English Language sans credentials.


So, I had to rant. Sorry.  I was grading essays and hit a few split infinitives; I had to say something for Mom.

Dr. E's Doll Museum Blog: Skyward February 2019

Dr. E's Doll Museum Blog: Skyward February 2019: Skyward February 2019   March 23   In 1963, while living as a patient at the Jewish National Home for Asthmatic Children ...

The Murder Room

An interesting point of where literature and criminology intersect:  From The Murder Room:  “But it was Vidocq’s remarkable story of redemption and his belief in the redemption of others that touched Fleischer most deeply. The chief cop of Paris was a great friend of the poor and said he would never arrest a man for stealing bread to feed his family.   Vidocq was Hugo’s model for Javert, the relentless detective in Les Miserables, as well as for Valjean, the excon who reforms and seeks redemption for  his deeds” (Capuzzo 135).  Vidocq was a criminal who became a detective, and who formed an agency even before Pinkerton.  He is considered a father of modern criminology.  This well researched book by Michael Capuzzo tells the story of The Vidocq Society, named in his honor, and of three remarkable criminologists who lead the pack of those who would solve the most unsolvable of crimes.

Dr. E's Doll Museum Blog: Syward 2019; A Very Special Post by David Levy

Dr. E's Doll Museum Blog: Syward 2019; A Very Special Post by David Levy: Skyward January 2019           For those of us who were alive back then, where were you on Christmas Eve, in the year 1968?    I rem...