Cheap Thrills Thursday: Discarded Stockings Go To War & End Up At The Hingham Shipyard

Awhile ago, folks working on The Launch at the historic Hingham Shipyard, contacted me about one of my pieces of ephemera, a page from Modern Woman Magazine (Volume 12, Number 2, 1943) with the article “How Your Discarded Stockings Go To War.”
They wondered about using the image in the series of panels which would [...]

Cheap Thrills Thursday: 1907 Englishwoman’s Snark On Fashionistas

The piece, a little beauty titled “Woman’s Dress and Women’s Homes,” in which an Englishwoman ever-so-politely snarks about the mode of American dress, was written by Anna A. Rogers (originally in the Atlantic and then published in the November 4, 1907 edition of The Fargo Forum and Daily Republican). In the article, Ms. Rogers quotes [...]

Cheap Thrills Thursday: Of Storks In My Collection & Contraception

A few months ago, a gentleman contacted me about one of the items in my “vintage stork” collection. The antique postcard, postmarked 1908, depicts a couple shoo-ing away a baby-delivering stork; the gentleman was James M. Edmonson, Ph.D., Chief Curator of the Dittrick Medical History Center and Museum at the Case Western Reserve University; [...]

Hip-Hip Hooray — Museums Not “Low Priority!”

From the Mountain-Plains Museums Association, this update on museum funding:
Brief from American Association of Museums
Amendment Targeting Museums Defeated; Field-wide advocacy efforts credited with victory over Sen. Coburn’s latest effort!
Sept. 16, 2009- Congratulations, museum advocates! Thanks to your efforts, the Coburn/McCain amendment (S. Amdt. 2372) – which would have prohibited ANY funding from the Transportation Appropriations [...]

Culture Is Conversation; Illiteracy Silences Voices

Each year since November 17, 1965, UNESCO reminds us of the status of literacy and adult learning globally with International Literacy Day. Currently the state of illiteracy is alarming:
* one in five adults is still not literate
* two-thirds of those are women
* 75 million children are out of school
* many more children attend [...]

Just Who Destroys Books & Libraries?

After reading So Many Books: Reading & Publishing in an Age of Abundance, I was delighted to serendipitously discover a copy of A Universal History of the Destruction of Books: From Ancient Sumer to Modern-day Iraq, by Fernando Baez (translated by Alfred MacAdam), staring me in the face from the “new arrivals” display at the [...]

Museums Need Your Help!

Did you know that the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) provided $210.5 million to libraries in 2006, while museums received only $36.5 million? Why the difference? Federal formula grants given from IMLS directly to the states accounted for $163.7 million of IMLS’ library authorization.
As a member of the Mountain-Plains Museums Association (MPMA), I [...]

Have You Been… To The Smithsonian?

The Smithsonian Institution was founded on this date (August 10th) in 1846. Named for British scientist James Smithson, who willed his fortune to the U.S. to establish the institution, today the Smithsonian is made up of 19 museums (including the National Air and Space Museum — the most visited museum in the U.S.), the National [...]