American Doll and Toy Museum: Coffee with Dr. Roald Tweet

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American Doll and Toy Museum: Musings on Museum Movings

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American Doll and Toy Museum: Musings on Museum Movings

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American Doll and Toy Museum: Mechanical Musings; Early Automatons and Mechanica...

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American Doll and Toy Museum: The Dolls are Moving soon to their Forever Home!

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

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We are all Essential

All Business are Essential

Let me remind us all that the First Amendment and The Constitution are still vital and in effect.  While we’re at it, let’s all review The Supremacy Clause, as well.   Having written all that, I’m writing on a blog that not many read.  I don’t and won’t read an self righteous crap spewed out by self righteous lemmings.

We survive in this insanity, my family and I, but for how long?  I began a small business November 30^th, and our income is very, very modest.  I have really no other income of my own, just savings, and they are modest.  We have been shut down; non profit educational museums are not essential, declaims our governor, a billionaire who runs a hotel chain with dozens of houses of his own.  Of course, at one point he deemed his toilets were not essential, so there you are.

My husband has been deemed “essential”, so he can work.  My son can do curbside deliveries at his work place, but he works in a different state. We also are caregivers for an elderly relative who lives with us.  I’ve been a caregiver of some kind for over 14 years.  For two years, I was my dad’s caregiver, during his last illness.  I did it while I also dealt with my uncle in California.  We had simultaneous nightmares.  Please, as someone who did a lot of malpractice cases in her former life, and who watched her family suffered horridly because of medical incompetence, don’t ask me to praise health care.   My family is military on both sides; everyone one knew in each war what he was getting into.  Same for those in health care, the new CYA, damned with the patient, especially the elderly.  We knew in law, teaching, and small business what we were getting into.  Yet, all of what we do builds our economy; we all contribute.  We are all essential.  I’ve read everything, talked to scientists, listened to doctors, you name it.

The fact remains is, we may all well lose everything, and not to a virus.  The fact also remains that we in service professions, medical, firefighting, criminal justice, law, counseling, teaching, need to get over ourselves and realize that while we provide a service, while we may risk our lives, safety, and livelihood, we also profit over other people’s misery.  Sometimes, with all good intentions, we make that misery worse.  I saw that with Bad Sam, where my uncle died because of a blotched procedure, one of many.  The last one I was against, and it was a surgical procedure performed by an osteopath, not an MD.   When I protested, one, a two bit, two day resident, threatened me, and got in bed with a bogus social worker.  Hippa was violated, and my uncle died.  We were all kept in the dark.  It was close to two years ago, and I should let it go, but I’ve almost no one left in my family, now.

The fact also remains that no one is perfect, but some of us are arrogant enough to think we are.  I don’t’ want to say money is the root of all good, like Ayn Rand, but I am deadline driven, and I need dates and structure.  When will this self imposed misery end? 

I keep busy; I write everyday, handle the household financial affairs, take care of my aunt, manage her caregivers, watchover my museum and maintain its collections, read, cook, really what I did before, except now, I’m told where I can and can’t go.  I don’t’ like that.  We are being treated like dictatorship, like the one’s my family survived in Europe during World War II, the Fascists, Nazis, and Communists.  

I respect authority, but group punishment never works.  Do the numbers, straighten out the stimulus packages and grants no one seems to be getting.  Populations descending into tyranny and poverty only breed more illness and secrecy.  Use the drugs we have; SARS was worse, we made it through.  Reform the health care system and try to follow HIPPAA.

Above all, try to keep your sanity.  These are my opinions; please don’t virtually rant because I’ll just block and delete.  No comments needed, be safe, but please let’s go back to common sense caution and not lionize certain people for doing their jobs.

W

House Arrest

Well, still under house arrest/siege.  It’s hard to be optimistic, though it could be much, much worse.  How do all of you, dear readers, keep busy in all this madness?   Here’s a link from Healthline, for whoever cares.  SARS and other things seem to have higher death rates, though I don’t get what the article means by SARS killed more people, but Corona Virus has a higher death rate.  What? https://www.healthline.com/health-news/how-deadly-is-the-coronavirus-compared-to-past-outbreaks

As for me, I’m always busy, but it was nice having places to go.  Even the option of having places to go when I couldn’t get somewhere. I’m dragging out the shattered dolls and putting them back together.  I’m becoming an expert on super glues.  I’m planning elaborate doll costumes, and making doll hats, rearranging the museum, and cleaning.  We’re still working on getting our larger building, and that will require monumental moving and packing. 

Library of our favorite restaurant.  I was able to buy one of their books before it was all demolished.

Money worries all of us.  No stimulus this way, and I’m a small, brand new nonprofit business.  Oh well. 

 

Collecting stamps with Dad

It has snowed twice this week, then the weather soars to above 60.  It was 80 degrees last week.  It’s good writing weather, and I’m trying.  Mainly short stories and one novel I’d like to finish in all this.

The doll houses re getting overhauls, too.  Fairy gardens are under way.  If the grocery stores have flowers, then I can get some.  The TP and cleaners shortage is slowly going away, too.  Finally.  I got stuck at the grocery store and had to back my way out of the parking lot; the usual outlet was closed because the green house was going up.  Driving is an adventure.  People act as if they flunked drivers ed these days.  Someone with a “BabyAnn” license place forced me out of my lane, no signal, of course.  She then honked about half a mile, and was trying to get my attention in the rearview mirror, gesturing madly for me to look at her.  Shouldn’t she be looking at the road?  Obviously she has trouble with turn lanes and street signs.

Where my Memories are Now

I should start a journal of my plague year.  Read DeFoe; he was also right about everything. 

So, keep being brave.  This has to end.  And if you have been branded nonessential, as I have, take heart.  Every business is essential, safety issues notwithstanding.  This will end, and we’ll get through it.  And, we will prosper once more.  Be safe, be well.  Try to keep your sanity.  I also love puzzles, needlework, any craft, drawing, word search, and reading, any reading.  Of course, I have you my readers, and my blogging.

Places seen and gone

Pansies

Mom, Dad, Killer, 1985 

Our Beautiful California Home

i

Santa Barbara

I also do something I learned from my friend Violet, who was also a doll artist.  In her 90s, with a clear mind, still ambulatory, she was forced into a home, after being pressured in her 80s to go to assisted leaving. She said each day she focused on a happy memory from earlier years.  I do that a lot.  Trips with my folks, holidays,  Disneyland, Williamsburg.  School breaks when my mom and I would clean the house top to bottom, then have plans for birthday parties.  We picked fresh flowers, made decorations.  Took off for lunch at favorite places like McCabes Dept. Store.  Riding my bike, taking walks with my dogs, and my folks, swimming outdoors, so much we used to do.  Those memories sustain me, those and more.  Find yours and draw strength.

God bless. 

Miss Charlotte Bronte meets Miss Barbara Pym: The Class that Began this Blog

Miss Charlotte Bronte meets Miss Barbara Pym: The Class that Began this Blog: These are my lesson plans that started this blog: B.     The Brontës, Rebel Angels of the House Ellen M. Tsagaris, J.D., Ph.D. Wee...

Miss Charlotte Bronte meets Miss Barbara Pym: Pym and Covid-19

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American Doll and Toy Museum: What's the Buzz? Beekeeping and Dolls!

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When Memories Serve Us

Good morning; warmer, sunny weather is coming! For today, think of ten good memories from this time of year, then write them down. If you have photos or souvenirs, create a Facebook page. We are alive, and survived another day. Rejoice and be glad.

My memories for this time of year include:

1. The trip I took to Edmonton to meet my parents for Easter. My dad was on a business trip, my mom and I toured the Mall of the Americas. The three of us had dinners at great places, prowled antique shops, and saw cultural centers for Native American and Czech heritages.

2. Again, with my folks, we took off for New Salem, IL, and toured the Lincoln sites once again. Always a favorite destination for us.

3. Dad and I entered the annual kite flying contest; we won every year. The year my Uncle Jim came, we won everything, including the trophy and sweepstakes. My choral teacher was judging, and I was really proud. We used to make our own Hexagon kites, like dad had when he was a kid.

There are others involving early spring, and me working on container gardens. Many others being on spring break, having a great drive home, hitting the antique stores and spring sales with my mom, my shopping, collecting buddy.

In this time of distress for all of us, I do what my friend Violet did in her 90s after her family confined her unnecessarily to a nursing home. I pick a happy memory, and think about it for the day.

American Doll and Toy Museum: Keep Smiling!

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American Doll and Toy Museum: On Souvenirs

American Doll and Toy Museum: On Souvenirs: I'm writing in praise of all kinds of souvenirs in this post, all kinds.  Not just dolls, but spoons, thimbles, snapshots, pennants, pat...

What makes a book a success?

Briefly, in fiction, poetry, drama, for a book to be a success the reader has to care about the characters.  Some beautifully written books leave us cold because we don't like or care about the people in them.  I've read, and enjoyed, badly written books, some romances, some sci fi, some mystery, because I cared about the character, even if they were two dimensionally drawn and shallow.  Something made me care.



I like reading when I was young, Jackie and Joan Collins books; I didn't think they were going into the literary canon, but there characters in them I worried over.  Same with Judith Krantz.   Barbara Pym has made a career of birthing memorable characters, and Jane Eyre, Ann Karenina, and Jo March have transcended the pages of their own novel homes.  So has Nora from A Dolls House, so have any number of Shakespeare heroes and heroines.  Comic heroes do the same to us, hence passionate discussions over who is better, Superman or Batman.  Ahab, Ishmael, Lord Jim, Billly Budd, Tess, we lvoe and care for them. Even our animal protagonists get to us, Bambi, Dumbo, Beautiful Joe, Black Beauty, Lassie, Stellaluna, on and on.



Plots are nice, nonfiction passions make those books go round, but in the world of fiction, we have to care, and the character needn't be the most moral, law abiding  creature in the book. Like the real people in our lives, fictional folk have to spark an emotion; we don't care how they've been created via pen and paper, but we care about them and what happens to them. That is what drives the story.

On Loss

" I remembered that after my father died I would wake up in the morning and I would not remember for a minute that we had lost him, and then when I did, it was not so much amguian that I felt as a simple child's desire to be back in the time before he died."

Anne Rivers Siddons, The House Next Door

The House Next Door

Review of The House Next Door by Anne Rivers Siddons

There is an old Greek saying that if you don’t praise your own house, it will fall on you.  Indeed, good old Elphaba could tell us a lot about houses that fall and kill one’s siblings.  There are books about them, too, those nasty, vicious, sort of haunted houses, but the ghosts and malicious presence are the house itself.  Rose Red, Amityville Horror, The Haunting of Hill House, and so many more nasty abodes seem to have their own brand of deadly in hospitality.

Siddons has written a masterful suspense about a malicious house and its grounds worthy of real estate like The Castle of Otranto.  This brilliant, modern house, and its lush grounds and rhododendrons, prove deadly to all its owners.  Spoiler alert; the architect does not leave unscathed.  Also, if you like pets and animals, maybe you want not to read this book.

The praise heaped on the house next door soon turns into a curse.  Strange maladies, violence, and personal tragedies creep up on you.  The prologue skillfully foreshadows  events to come.

Colquitt and Walter Kennedy are the couple who witness and define the neighborhood, full of old money, but not ostentatious.   Their names conjure Camelot, which we all know wasn’t. Comfortable, New Englandy, a classier version of Peyton Place.  A talented architect creates a gorgeous modern house in  neighborhood of classic traditional homes.  Each part of the book introduces a new family that meets with all kinds of catastrophes once they move into their dream home. An interesting aside is the name “Colquitt” which is an old Anglo Saxon name meaning “from the coal pits.”

Be careful what y wish for; you might get it.  This house is pure, shining, daytime evil, where no one is safe.