The Changing Role of Fathers Through the Decades

In 1911, when my mother was born, the father was a god-like figure who occasionally came down from Mount Olympus to offer criticism, praise and advice.

(My mother is on the far right in the back row. In addition to the seven girls in the family, there were two older boys.   My grandmother, Anna Truan Dobson is holding her ninth and last baby, who was born when Anna was 49 and her hair had turned completely white.  The father, Frederick Fee Dobson, was a Presbyterian minister in Oswego, Kansas.)

In the 1940's, when I was born, the father would come home from work and sit in his favorite chair with his scotch on the rocks and read his newspapers, and he was not to be disturbed until dinner time when he presided over the dinner table.

In the 1970's, when my kids were born, the father was more hands on, but not to the point where he ever changed diapers, took a kid to the park, or knew the names of his children's friends or teachers.

But our granddaughter Amalia, born in 2011, has the benefit of the current breed of father, who is hands-on from the moment of birth.  He changes diapers and makes breakfast and gives baths and Amalia knows a father is also for :

Going down the slide together and

Dancing on the patio together and

Looking for fish and dolphins together and

Feeding giraffes together and

Holding you up in the water and

Playing horsey and

Admiring your artwork and

Walking to the park together and

Singing in the park together.

And grandfathers, whether or not they changed diapers in their younger days, are for telling you a story every day, even if they have to do it by phone or by Skype.

Happy Father's Day, Emilio and Nick!

Antique Friendship Albums—Beautiful & Heartbreaking & Funny

 I collect way too many things, and one of my favorite categories is 19^th century friendship albums, which were created by and for teen-aged girls and young women—although some of the albums belonged to young men. 

A drawing from a friendship album with the date: Jan. 10, 1881-- hidden in it

They were often beautifully bound and decorated books with blank pages to be filled in by friends and relatives, back in the days before radio and television shortened everyone’s attention span.  A friend or relative who was asked to inscribe a page would  fill it with  in poetry or prose—demonstrating his/her skill at calligraphy-- or draw or paint an illustration, or sometimes paste in a dried flower or a frilly piece of Victorian scrap—all dedicated to the album’s owner.

 Examples of fancy calligraphic signatures

In the 19^th century there were books published to educate the populace both on sample sentiments to write in albums,  and on how to make their handwriting a source of admiration.

From the album of Tryphosa Lakin, circa 1834

The earlier the friendship album, the more elaborate its inscriptions. They reveal what subjects fascinated teenagers in the days before teenagers existed—and it wasn’t boy bands or vampires.   It was religion and love and death.

"Conscious Rectitude"  to Tryphosa

In albums from the 1830’s, there is a strange obsession with death—all those young people warning each other that they may die at any moment and they’d better be prepared to gain entry into Heaven.  This morbid obsession is satirized by Mark Twain, if I remember correctly, in “Huckleberry Finn” when Huck stays with a family whose daughter cannot stop talking about death.  (Of course an obsession with dying is not so unnatural at a time when typhoid and yellow fever epidemics raged,  and something like one in three pregnant women died in childbirth.)

My favorite friendship album is the first one I bought-- in 1969 at Shepherd’s Market in London for exactly one pound. It belonged to Marie Sandoz Vissaula,  a young girl living in Switzerland and covers the years 1865-1867. 

All the entries are in French in the exquisite calligraphy expected of well-educated young ladies.  The best (and first) page is a watercolor done for Marie by her grandfather, which must have taken him the better part of a day. 

And here is the painting of a morning glory done by one of Marie’s friends, Louise Rousser.

The most heartbreaking album I own belonged to a young woman named ”Miss Addie A. Allen”, as she wrote on the first page.  Addie lived in Connecticut and her friends, male and female, wrote in her album “The Token”, beginning in Feb. 1858.

Most of the young men who wrote in Addie’s album soon enlisted in the Union Army, and when they died, Addie carefully noted on their page the place and day of their death and their age.   There was even a lock of hair on the page of “Joe R. Toy”, who  “died in the hospital at New Orleans, 1861” as she wrote. “Your cousin, Eugene” “died April 1864, aged 24.”  “Your friend Henry”, “died in the hospital at Alexandria, Sep. 1863. 23 years of age”.   

 Freddie Brilkley, ended his page “Oh! May it in the Book of Life/ God’s glorious Album, glittering stand/ With bright and shining names to be/ Eternally….Eternally.” He “died in the hospital at Port Royal on Thanksgiving Day, 1863, aged 21”.

One of the young men who survived evidently brought Addie back a war souvenir –a small  swatch of red fabric which she sewed into her album and labeled, “a piece of the Battle Flag of the 2^nd Conn. Artillery.”

As the albums evolved in time from the 1830’s toward 1900, the inscriptions became less gloomy and religious and more likely to be funny or satirical.  A young lady named Elsie Dupuy Graham of Olney, PA, had talented friends who, starting in 1879, left clever drawings and sometimes made up a poem as well.

 Here’s one written during a visit to Cape May, with tiny illustrations, by someone who did not sign the work:

Oh! One day At Cape May, on the shore of the Sea/ A girl, with a curl/ Sat there talking to me.

`Oh! the wave then did lave/ And coquet with the beach/ The barque and the shark/ Kept off shore out of reach.

Oh! The porpoise, on purpose/Revolved on his nose/ /The crab made a grab/ At this little girl’s toes.

“Oh! A fish! How I wish/ I could catch one” she said./” Flounder, ten pounder/ Or a lovely sheepshead”

…to be continued  

By about the 1920’s the tradition of creating a beautiful album to remember and immortalize the friends of one’s youth had deteriorated into what we now know as the autograph book, for recording the signatures of celebrities and friends, who write short rhymes like “roses are red, violet are blue…” and “2 good 2 be 4gotten.”,

Today friendship albums have been replaced by the scrawls of friends in a yearbook.  It’s too bad we’ve lost the habit of recording our friendships with poetry and art and predictions for our future as we leave youth behind, but I guess Facebook takes care of that now.

Free Father's Day Cards

Posted this last year--now I'm posting it again.  Love those Victorian photos!

Some time ago I designed a few Father's Day cards using antique photos from my collection.
Here are three of them.

Just in case you haven't gotten around to buying Dad a card  -- Father's Day is Sunday, June 16 this year--feel free to assemble your own card by printing one of these, pasting it on a blank piece of folded paper, and writing a sentiment and your name inside, with lots of "X"s and "O"'s.

Free Father's Day Card.

Take that Hallmark!

 (Inside: "You rock!  Happy Father's Day!")

(Inside:  "That's my excuse.  What's yours?  Happy Father's Day.)

(Inside: "Happy Father's Day from your dog.")

The Voice of the Turtle is Heard in Our Land

Song of Solomon 2:11-12 (KJV)
¹¹ For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone;
¹² The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land;

She came today, just as she does every year, crossing the road from the lake, digging a nest in our front yard and laying her eggs--the biggest,  meanest old snapping turtle you ever saw, but we always watch from a distance and make sure she makes it back across the road without becoming road kill.

And today the clematis started to pop open and so did the best of the irises.

Last week I was back in New York City. We dined at Swifty's and I walked through Central Park every day at the height of its blossoming and I tried to figure out how I could sell our country house in the Massachusetts village of Grafton and buy a tiny apartment in New York to spend our declining years, but then I got back home for last weekend and realized that Manhattan can't hold a candle to our New England village.

At the Common they were celebrating Grafton History Day--the 150th anniversary of a time when both the Town House and the Unitarian Church were burned down on Sept 11, 1862 as the Civil War was raging, and rebuilt in 1863.

Linda Casey, president of the Grafton Historical Society, greeted me in her daytime dress.  She had another gown for the ball that night.

There was a  Civil War muster and the Mass. 13th Volunteer Infantry Regiment was recreating an authentic Civil War encampment.

Ladies were buying plants on the common, no matter what the shape and size of their petticoats.

Next I went to the Plantapalooza at the Community Barn and Harvest Project where kids and adults were planting about a gazillion tomato plants as part of the community's volunteer farming for hunger relief (they give away everything they've grown) .  And everyone who came got free tomato plants. 

You could meet alpacas and go on the cookie walk & buy handmade crafts and local honey and jams.

And of course there were the yards sales on the weekend--I bought somebody's grandmother's collectible dolls for $2.00 each.  And the all the doll clothes for another $2.00.

Manhattan may be my favorite big city, but as Dorothy said, there's no place like home.

Do You Want to End Your Days talking to a Robot?

An article in today’s (May 20) New York Times business section drew my attention with the pull quote: “Should we entrust the care of people in their 70s and older to artificial assistants?”

Since I’m over 70 and one of my parents died with dementia, I read the article avidly and learned that the future is here for us seniors, and it’s scarier than any science fiction movie.

The article, by Nick Bilton, begins by citing a film called  “Robot & Frank” about an overly busy son who presents his elderly, live-alone father with a humanoid robot called  VGC-601.  The dad, Frank, protests, “I’m not this pathetic!”

The reporter then cites facts showing that, as the baby boomer generation ages, the number of elderly people needing care is skyrocketing (72.1 million Americans by  2030—double today’s number)  while the number of  potential poorly paid caregivers is dwindling.  Hence, a variety of robots are already available to take care of  elderly patients.

There’s Cody, a robotic nurse who is allegedly “gentle enough to bathe elderly patients” .

There is HERB (for Home Exploring Robot Butler) who can fetch household objects like cups and  can even clean the kitchen.

Hector is a robot that can remind patients to take their medicines, keep track of eyeglasses and even help in the case of a fall.

There’s Paro, a therapeutic robot that looks like a baby seal and has a calming effect on patients with dementia and Alzheimer’s.

PR2, A robot designed at Carnegie Mellon works with people who have autism—it can blink and giggle as people interact with it.  The man who designed it said, “Those we tested it with, love it and hugged it.”

Wendy A Rogers, a professor at Georgia Tech and director of its Human Factors and Aging Lab said, “We are social beings, and we do develop social types of relationships with lots of things.”  She noted that patients with Roomba, the vacuum robot,  tend to give their machines names and even buy costumes for them.

Some people, like me, react to all this news about helpful robots with serious reservations. Sherry Turkle, a professor at MIT and author of the book “Alone Together” said she was troubled when she saw a 76-year-old woman sharing stories about her life with her baby-seal Paro robot.  “This is sad,” Professor Turkle said.  “We have been reduced to spectators of a conversation that has no meaning.  Giving old people robots to talk to is a dystopian view that is being classified as utopian.”

The Times reporter does point out the ethical questions raised by tricking patients into thinking their robots are human and can understand them and adds:  “That’s the catch. Leaving the questions of ethics aside for the moment, building robots is not simply about creating smart machines; it is about making something that is not human still appear, somehow, trustworthy.”

I realized after reading the article that health care robots appear to be the inevitable result of a society that isolates its old people instead of incorporating them as venerated members of the tribe, cared for by all the younger members together.  It takes a village….

Meanwhile, I’ll be desperately trying to hold on to my physical and mental health, in order to stave off the moment when, on Mother’s Day, my kids present me with my own personal robot.

Yard Sale Heaven – I’m Obsessed

It's official!  Yard sale season is here and I've already marked up the classified section of the paper with the promising-sounding nearby  sales I'm going to hit this weekend.  It's May, the lilacs are in full bloom and the weather's beautiful, so to celebrate the season opening, I'm re-posting this essay, which I first published three years ago on Memorial Day weekend.

People can be divided into those who like to sleep late on Saturday morning and maybe go to church or golf on Sunday, and those who are on the road at 8 a.m. both days, clutching the newspaper classified section, searching for flea markets and yard sales, determined to be the first one through the gate. Guess which category I’m in.

Those of us with “I brake for yard sales” bumper stickers are motivated by tales of life-changing finds—an original copy of the Declaration of Independence or a Paul Revere tea pot from grandma’s attic, or those Jackson Pollack paintings someone found in the trash. Every yard saler has a tale of the Big Find.



Here’s mine. Maybe 25 years ago, when I was just starting to collect antique photos, I saw a cardboard box labeled “Instant Ancestors” on a front lawn not far from the village green in my own village. In the box I found a battered small, thick leather-bound album filled with CDVs. “CDV” means Carte de Visite, and the photos, wildly popular around the time after the Civil War, are the size of a business card.

I noticed that maybe a dozen of the photos in the album were of Native Americans. The portraits were identified in type as taken by Joel Emmons Whitney at Fort Snelling, Minnesota, of Dakota warriors imprisoned after the Sioux uprising of 1862. Each one, including Chief Little Crow, was identified along with how many white men he had killed.

I was happy to pay the five-dollar price of the album. When I eventually put it up for auction at Skinner’s Galleries and got $500 return on my investment, I felt very smug. Not so much today, because I know that the value of those Whitney Indian photos has climbed so that each one of them would now bring around $500.

All yard salers are looking for that Big Find and my village of Grafton is a happy hunting grounds. (So is Brimfield MA, about 20 minutes away, where in May, July and September they roll out maybe the biggest flea market in the country.) (News update--this year, 2013, the spring Brimfield sale is going on RIGHT NOW until Sunday, May 19.)

I think Grafton is one of the prettiest New England villages, thanks to its carefully preserved historic district around the Common. That’s why they filmed “Ah Wilderness” here back in the 1930’s. And around that historic common, with its 300-year-old Inn, I just KNOW there are treasures that will someday appear in a yard sale on someone’s front lawn.



Today, Saturday of Memorial Day weekend, was a very good day, although I don’t think any of the treasures I bought will make me rich. The first place I hit was the home of Carol and Richard, who for many years owned the Grafton Country Store—one of the longest continuously operating. They have a great collection of primitives and early prints, tools, cookware, etc. not to mention hot coffee and free donut holes to welcome the early birds. I bought 21 things, the most expensive of which was an ironstone butter crock at $20.



The next yard sale, also near the Common, greeted me with a wicker antique doll carriage --the twin of one I had as a little girl. But I wasn’t about to spend over a hundred dollars on a duplicate doll carriage, with no granddaughter to give it to. But I then I saw a stunning set of Madeira Lace work – ten place mats and a table runner—with their own blue brocade carrying case plus a handwritten note that it was “Made on the Island of Madeira for the Beede Family, makers of Madeira Wines”.



I have never been able to resist fine textiles and embroideries, so I bought the set of Madeira work, telling myself it was for a daughter’s trousseau, but at the moment, both daughters have a strict embargo against my bringing another thing into their apartment “if I can’t eat it, drink it or date it” as one put it.



The third yard sale, in a red barn in nearby Shrewsbury, was mostly furniture and there’s no more room in my house for furniture, so I came away with only a child’s rocker, which I cleaned up to put in my booth at a nearby group antique shop.



That’s how I justify my obsessive collecting— I say that it’s merchandise for the store.

So after I got back from the yard sales, I cleaned up my treasures and put price tags on them and took them to North Main Street Antiques—at least the ones I couldn’t fit into my own décor (such as my apple-themed bathroom with its red lion-footed cast iron tub or the wall in my kitchen that’s filled with heart-shaped cookie cutters and other objects featuring hearts.)



At least I got to play with my treasures before carting them off to the store. And tomorrow, Sunday, I’ll hit the road early, trolling for that One Big Find.