childhood — 2016 — The 21st Century Matriarch

2016 12 ebook1.jpg — ***Scrapbook of Victorian Greeting Cards***. Handwritten date of 1874. Available from Internet Archive here. I focused on the Christmas cards because – after all – it is December. Styles have changed considerably! This one of a child blowing soap bubbles – with a pipe held upside down…and, evidently, indoors – was one of my favorites.

Scrapbook of Victorian Greeting Cards. Handwritten date of 1874. Available from Internet Archive here. I focused on the Christmas cards because – after all – it is December. Styles have changed considerably! This one of a child blowing soap bubbles – with a pipe held upside down…and, evidently, indoors – was one of my favorites.

Gordan, Elizabeth; Ray, John. Buddy Jim. New York: P.F. Volland Company. 1922. Available from Hathi Trust here. I looked at everything the Internet Archive and Hathi Trust had with John Rae illustrations. I liked this one because of its depiction of outdoor experiences of a child in the 1920s. How many children today spend this much time outdoors?

2016 12 ebook3.jpg — Wolle, Francis. ***Diatomacae of North America***. Bethlehem, PA: The Comenius Press. 1894. Available from Hathi Trust here. The drawings in this volume – over 2300 of them – from over 100 years ago prompted me to think about a photography project this spring (diatoms) and some Zentangle patterns. It was quite a visual feast!

In the summer of 1994, my daughter was almost 5 years old. She was not big enough for most of our yard work chores but she enjoyed being outdoors. I was reminded of her at that age by a picture I came across in my scanning project. My husband had finished mowing and she and I had gone around picking dandelion flowers that had missed being cut. She had a small basket that she put the flowers in. I started trimming some bushes while she arranged grass clippings and dandelion flowers (and a few other things she found) into an arrangement on the garage floor. After she finished – I went inside to get the Polaroid camera and her father took a picture with his camera too. She was thrilled with the near immediate result of the Polaroid; I’m not sure she ever saw this one that came back weeks later.