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This is a conversation about love and objects. It’s from a late night conversation with my friend Clare Dolan. In the week leading up to Valentine’s Day, we sat on my couch and talked about a special kind of love that exists between people and objects. The conversation starts with Clare’s first friend in childhood…a small stuffed creature called Binny.
Clare is the curator at The Museum of Everyday Life in Glover, Vermont. It is a self-service museum located in her barn, and it ‘dedicates itself to deteriorating objects of no monetary value, but of immense ordinary-life consequence.’ The current exhibit is called Toothbrush from Twig to Bristle In All Its Expedient Beauty. Clare recently got so mad at her broken snowblower that she was moved to create a small, impromptu exhibit called Broken and Useless Snow Removal Devices of the Northeast Kingdom. I am including a couple pictures of the exhibit here, and some other pictures I like. If you have not been to the museum, do not dally. Do not wait. Put it on your bucket list. It will make you happy. Directions and more exhibit pictures are on her website.
Clare and her donkey, Nikolai
Raggedy Ann and Binny
One of my favorite exhibits in the toothbrush show.
A large, stabbed bear in the museum
EPISODE MUSIC
| TRACK NAME | ARTIST |
| The Art of the Toy Piano | Margaret Leng Tan |
This struck a special chord with me. Apart from the fact that Erica is my daughter, I had a sister named Binny- surely not a very common name for a doll or a sister.
Even better, my grandfather (Erica’s great grandfather) stuffed a Barnegat Bay (NJ) Blow fish that I had caught while fishing with him in the early 1940’s. The fish, delivered home with lots of others in a pail, was eaten by both my grandparents (Now long dead) and me after which he stuffed it for / with me using fishing line for suture material and shoe buttons from his childhood -circa 1870’s for the eyes.
Talk about auras (aurae ? ).
It looks out at from a bedside book shelf.
For those who wonder how you can eat and later stuff a blow fish, felt by people who know way too little about such things to be poisonous, a small incision is made and the fish is turned inside out, saving the tough, scale free skin to be filled with cotton. The edible part of the fish, delivered from the incision is the meal.
Wondrous, delightful and a great hit of warmth in winter. Big wow!
I love the intimacy of this audio. It’s such a great, vicarious listen. And she put to words a feeling about a kind of love I wouldn’t have been able to describe. Thank you….keep going!
I still have my favorite childhood stuff friend! I let the kids have it for a little bit, then realized I had to take it back. It didn’t have the same meaning for them. I needed to make sure he was safe and loved and most important, not lost. I had not thought of him in this ‘particular’ stuffed friend way. I will have to send you a picture. Happy friendship day to you!
I gave all of my stuffed friends to a judge. He gave them to the kids who came to his court because they were abused or neglected. I cried when I left them at the courthouse. I think it was then that the judge and I became each other’s biggest fans, but I’m still sad.
I am a Guardian ad Litem with the Caledonia Court. It was probably not the same judge but one day I was with my GAL Ward, an 8 year old girl who was given a small teddy bear in the courtroom. She then had to leave for the hearing. When I came out of the courtroom she was in the hall clutching her friend. Have you named him yet ? I asked. Yes she replied. His name is ‘Hello Bear’ I thought this was the perfect name when she woke in the morning he was there. When she came home from school, he was there and her greeting was perfect for the occasion.
That is a marvelous comment Ed.Thank you for taking the time to write it.
Hello Bear….