American Doll and Toy Museum: In Memoriam Anne Rice and bell hooks

American Doll and Toy Museum: In Memoriam Anne Rice and bell hooks:   Those of us who are writers have lost two giants this past week, Anne Rice and bell hooks. I studied and taught both in my college litera...

American Doll and Toy Museum: Christmas Dolls

American Doll and Toy Museum: Christmas Dolls:  Christmas and dolls go hand in hand, and dolls are one of the great icons of Christmas.   I like to display my dolls by theme and category ...

American Doll and Toy Museum: Car Show Small Business Saturday American Doll and...

American Doll and Toy Museum: Car Show Small Business Saturday American Doll and...:   Come Shop with Us Small Business Saturday November 27, 2021, 11 AM TO 3 PM!   Support a local non profit business by choosing stocking stu...

Halloween 2021

 

It is finally Halloween; I literally wait all year. All of October intoxicates me; I love the turning leaves, the pumpkins and gourds, the aisles of candy, the colors, the decorations which now include Dia de Muerto figures that I couldn’t find until recently.

 

I love the chill in the air, the way the changing leaves glow on a cloudy day.  I love the feel of being cold and quelling the chill with hot chocolate or good, strong coffee.

 

We would go to Terror at Skellington Manor and I would see the dolls displayed, and the animatronics and mannikins that made up the vignettes like a giant doll house.  We would visit the statue of Krampus, or Ruprecht, saved from rejection by the Festival of Trees because he had horns. 

 

Most of all I loved the memories of my Dad rounding us kids up and taking us trick or treating.  I missed the packages from San Jose, when my grandma and grandpa, then aunts and uncles, would send Halloween care packages full of candy and plush for the holiday.  I miss my mother, who made costumes for me and for dolls that would accompany me on Halloween night, the cutouts she and I made to decorate our windows, and the lights Dad put up.  We did the annual Spoon River Drive to buy pumpkins and caramel apples, and my mom and I hit the after Halloween sales for more treasures.

 

Later, we took our son trick or treating, going one year as the Darth Vader family, and another dressed in Halloween sweaters.

 

Now, it’s me and my neighbor, and old and best friend who keep the faith.  I lost my Dad, Uncle, and mentor in three successive years in a row in November.  My Dad, grandma, and one good friend all died on the same day, and I lost three friends on that horrible November day last year.   Two years ago, it snowed on Halloween.  No trick or treat.  Last year, Aunt Connie, who also loved the holiday and candy, was also gone.

 

This year, Lori and I are getting ready to set up tonight, we missed Skellington Manor because we did trunk or treat at our Doll and Toy Museum,  American Doll and Toy Museum to be specific.  I dread November, but as my mom would say, I have to go forward, not backwards.

 

Happy Halloween, Happy Day of the Dead, thanks to all who came yesterday and helped with Trunk or Treat!  May the Great Pumpkin be good to us all this year.

Here are images of Halloween dolls and decor!

eBay is Destroying the doll collectors market! Say it ain't so! Thanks, Rachel Hoffman for Speaking Out!

 Here is the link to Rachel Hoffman's YouTube channel where she speaks out about eBay's latest move which is hurting doll collecting.  They got rid of the categories like Barbie, American Girl, Vintage, German Bisque, etc, and lumped all dolls together.  It's hard enough to search for rare dolls as it is, but they've made the search for particular dolls more time consuming.  

Rachel Hoffman of Turn of the Century Antiques

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZbdFcsstQw

  Rachel is a good friend, and a great doll person.  I've bought from her, but also cataloged items for her 

on eBay.  I have been a buyer on eBay of many things for over 20 years.  Many blamed eBay for 

hurting the vintage doll market, e.g., too many listings, but that could just be the fact that more and 

more dolls became available, and according to Adam Smith's predictions and laissez-faire economics, 

more dolls led to lower prices.

There are as many categories of dolls as there are people, more probably. Dolls are portraits and artistic statements of the people who made them and designed them. It goes against principles of multiculturalism and diversity to lump all dolls together, and it is an insult to their creators, as well as to collector, museum owners like me who are trying to preserve them, to antique shops, doll shops, dealers, and more. eBay, please talk to us who know dolls; you are creating a huge disorganized mess!!

eBay, please leave well enough alone!  Something similar happened to me on about.com; their owner, 
the NYT decided to change without asking.  They publish a column each Sunday on collectors, but 
decimated the doll collecting site, and minimized other collectibles sites.  It was awful.  They now take 
my photos and put them on other's articles.  My articles are impossible to find, and only a few by 
others float around under their new name.  My boss and editor disappeared with no warning.

eBay, listen to "the collector's voice", also a series of excellent books on collecting by Susan Pearce.  
Collectors curate the past, and preserve things for posterity.  We are organized and knowledgeable; 
please don't screw us up with a huge mish mash.  
Put it back the way it was!!

American Doll and Toy Museum: Museum Update; Three weeks into the Fray!

American Doll and Toy Museum: Museum Update; Three weeks into the Fray!:   Happy Fall, finally, though it has been unseasonably warm.   Rain today is more de rigueur, and the temps will begin to fall midweek.   It...

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

American Doll and Toy Museum: American Doll and Toy Museum is Open!!:  Yes, it's true!  Our preview was a smash, and our regular hours for a while will be Saturdays 11-3 or by appointment. We welcome groups...

October Skyward by guest blogger, Dr. David Levy

 

Skyward for October 2021

 

 

David H. Levy

 

Fond memories of Carolyn Shoemaker

 

       One clear evening during the summer of 2019, I was using Pegasus, one of my childhood friend Carl’s telescopes, at our annual Adirondack Astronomy Retreat.  When my cellphone began to ring, I picked it up with some surprise.  At the other end of the line was Carolyn Shoemaker.  I was thrilled to hear from her, as it had been some time since our last contact. Carolyn was doing well, except for a mild loss of hearing.  She had called to say that since her daughter and son-in-law had moved to New Mexico, she would be living at the Peaks, a comfortable assisted living facility in Flagstaff.  My colleague Brent Archinal gave me her cell phone number.  I was able to speak with her again a few months later. I wanted to find a way to increase the frequency of our conversations.  “You speak with your brother Richard every Monday,” Wendee commented, and suggested,   “Why not call Carolyn every Monday as well?

 For the next 18 months that’s what I did.  Carolyn would pick up the phone and announce, “It is David. It must be Monday!”  Wendee would often join the discussion as well.  But when I called on Monday, August 9, no one answered.  After repeated tries, her daughter Linda called to say that Carolyn had had a minor fall and was in the hospital.  On Thursday evening, August 12, she went into respiratory arrest.  Carolyn died the next morning at 10:40 A.M. Arizona time.

With her husband Gene and the five-year comet and asteroid program we shared, Carolyn was responsible for a very rich period in my life. In fact, virtually every article one reads about the Shoemakers will agree that the discovery and impacts of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 were the most significant part of our professional lives.

Carolyn began her observing project a few years after her husband Gene was disqualified as a potential astronaut because of Addison’s disease.  He decided to go at the problem of impacts, not from studying craters as he walked about on the Moon, but from the opposite direction of the comets and asteroids that collide with the Moon, and with the Earth.  Carolyn quickly learned to become proficient at using the stereomicroscope. She would place two films into the microscope; they were identical except that the second plate would be about 45 minutes later than the first.  The films were almost always identical, except that when an asteroid was moving slowly, it would appear to float above the starry background.  Carolyn discovered 377 asteroids this way, each one charted until its orbit round the Sun could be determined accurately.   When one included the asteroids for which orbits have not yet been determined, that number rose significantly, according to Carolyn, to about 800.

In 1983 Carolyn discovered the first of her 32 comets.  When their colleague Henry Holt joined the following year, the number of new comets rose rapidly. It was only a year or two after that when she surpassed the number of comets another famous astronomer, Caroline Herschel, discovered, and Sky & Telescope published a news note about “Carolyn passing Caroline.” I joined the team in 1989.  In a sense, passing Herschel’s record might have been Carolyn’s golden moment, but it wasn’t.  That came later on a cloudy and dull day on March 25, 1993.  Two nights earlier I had taken two exposures that she was scanning. Suddenly looking up, she announced “I don’t know what I have, but it looks like a squashed comet.”  That was the discovery moment of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9.  Sixteen months later, when the 21 pieces of this fragmented collided with Jupiter, we got to meet President Clinton and chat amiably with Vice President Gore and share the world’s excitement over the first collision of a comet and a planet ever witnessed by humans.  It was a satisfying peak to all our careers.

After Gene died in a car accident in Australia, Carolyn continued observing with Wendee and me for several years. One evening she confided that sometimes she wished she had died with Gene.   But she did not and the world was able to enjoy her company for more than 24 more years.  The weekly telephone calls began much later.  I shall miss the deep friendship I enjoyed with Carolyn Shoemaker, the woman whose energy, intelligence, and terrific sense of humor brightened our lives and made the night sky a happier place.

 

 

American Doll and Toy Museum: Preview Opening American Doll and Toy Museum

American Doll and Toy Museum: Preview Opening American Doll and Toy Museum:   Preview Opening American Doll and Toy Museum   3059 30 th Street Rock Island , IL 61201   September 17, 2021 4 pm to 7 pm ...

Dolls really are Everywhere!

 No kidding, watch the Lemon Aid ads for male ED; in the background is an Ashanti fertility doll.  The same doll appears on the set of Will and Grace.

Dear Readers, have you seen dolls where you least expect them?  I'd love to hear about it, please comment!  Meanwhile, here are some photos of the toy exhibit at the Putnam Museum. Enjoy.