The things I find in my mother’s extra bedroom! This latest find is an anniversary card I made for my folks on their 24th anniversary. That would have made me 22 years old. Let’s agree that the artistic genes in the family skipped a generation and not mention it again. My artwork at 22 is worse than my mother’s at a much younger age. Also I was a poor speller.
Note, if you click on one of the photos it will take you to a slideshow which may be easier to navigate.
Back, a very long time ago, I enjoyed shopping at K-mart. Our family would drive to the K-mart either on the East side of Elgin, or another local K-mart — perhaps one in Meadowdale, if there was one there. Anyway, my memories of shopping with my parents at K-mart are all pleasant. We’d usually stop at the deli and pick up a sub-sandwich. I liked the ham they put in their sandwiches, and remember the bread being tasty. I even liked the raw onions and processed orange cheese they put in the sandwiches.
I didn’t often buy anything with my own money on these shopping trips, but remember one purchase when I was in my late teens. I remember walking along one of the main aisles — the area where they kept their seasonal specials — and stopping, mouth in an “o” shape, eyes wide, possibly making an ahhhhhhhh! sound of pure joy. I saw a display full of 16 or so inch bronze-colored ceramic fauns at the low, low price of $20. It may not have been a blue-light special, but it was something I could not live without. I picked one up, hugged it and placed it gently in our shopping cart.
“It’s Mr. Tumnus!” I announced to my family. “From Narnia. And I am buying him!”
Because my parents knew about my obsession with The Chronicles of Narnia, they did not try to talk me out of buying the statue. And I don’t know if it was then and there that my dad came up with his nickname for the statue, but I can just imagine him telling the check-out clerk that his daughter just had to have Mr. Numbnuts. (I do remember Dad calling the statue “Mr. Numbnuts” when he was helping us pack up my Elgin apartment for the move to Pittsburgh.)
Mr. Tumnus traveled with me from my parents house to my first apartment, to Pittsburgh, to two houses in Alexandria, then finally to his last home, Bethesda. He stood in the gardens of several of those homes, but because he was not made out of weatherproof material, he eventually disintegrated into a white powder. He was too far gone by the time we moved to Bethesda to stand next to the gas lamppost in our front yard.
For years I looked for a similar, more weatherproof, version of Mr. Tumnus, but never found one I could afford or one that looked like my Mr. Tumnus. I no longer plan to replace Mr. Tumnus — that obsession has gone, but I cannot help looking for Mr. Tumnus when we visit garden stores or pass places that carry statues.
I thought I’d never see him again until I opened an old book I found at my mom’s a few years ago and found a photo booth set of photos of me and Mr. Tumnus. (Likely taken at K-mart the day I found him.) He’s over there, to your left — with a long-haired pig-tailed youngster that used to be me.
Back during the Reagan administration I clipped this political cartoon out of the paper. I don’t know if it was the Elgin Daily Courier News or the Chicago Tribune (or even the Chicago Sun-Times). I taped it to the front of my desk at the school where I worked. While the message was probably lost on the moderately functioning developmentally disabled students I taught, at least the teachers who popped into my room would know I was for gun-control.
I’ve not changed. I despise guns. I truly believe that if we had better gun control (I cannot see the United States ever banning guns) we would not have the same murder rate in this country.
Unfortunately the gun control issue has become very contentious in recent years. Gun proponents call on the Second Amendment and claim that guns are not responsible for the gun deaths in the country. Those in favor of gun control point out that if the guns were not available to most of the folks who pulled the triggers the people they shot would still be alive. To me it is obvious who is right. It is clear as day to me that if we had better gun control those 20 children killed in Newtown, MA would have celebrated another birthday. The 32 college students killed at Virginia Tech would have graduated by now and the 12 people murdered during the Batman movie in Aurora, CO would still be alive and able to watch more movies.
The number of gun deaths in 2013 is reported to be 12,000 according to http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/31/president-obama-gun-control-push, however there is really no data on gun violence anymore because the Republicans blocked the CDC from researching gun violence saying they didn’t want to fund propaganda. (http://www.propublica.org/article/republicans-say-no-to-cdc-gun-violence-research)
Yes, the saccharin comparison is a bit misleading. It turns out that saccharin was never banned in the United States, although, according to http://enhs.umn.edu/current/saccharin/reghistory.html, in 1981, probably the year this cartoon ran in the paper, “The National Toxicology Program (NTP) and the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) listed saccharin and its salts as “anticipated human carcinogen” based on Canadian rat studies.”
Anyway, I wanted to make sure this clipping was saved and I was able to tell the story of how I came to have it in my collection of everything.
Clutch Cargo Lips 