Walking the Berkshires

Cabinet of Curiosities "Bone Shaker" Update

The upcoming edition of CofC will be postponed indefinitely due to a bout of pneumonia that has laid your humble blogger low.  This carnival has been great fun to compile, but also requires extra effort by the host because submissions tend to be, shall we say, either light or merely spam.  For this reason, I believe we shall give it, and me, a rest for the time being.

If the picture at left whets your whistle, then by all means head on over to the source at Morbid Anatomy.

Cabinet of Curiosities #15

"The time has come," the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things:
Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax--
Of cabbages--and kings--
And why the sea is boiling hot--
And whether pigs have wings."

- Lewis Carroll: "The Walrus and the Carpenter" (from Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, 1872)

A bit late off the blocks but none the worse for wear, welcome to the 15th Cabinet of Curiosities Blog Carnival, a place where pigs have been known to fly above many a scalding sea. 

My tender hearted daughter weeps bitter tears at the fate of Carroll's little oysters, even though you never actually see the moment of their demise in either the original artwork or the Disney version.  Sometimes, as Alfred Hitchcock knew full well, what you do not see can make a greater impression on the mind than what you do. 

With that in mind, what are we to make of this post and video offered up by Steven Germain at Rough Fractals, which concerns people's reactions to a work of installation art that we never get to see unless we go there ourselves?  The Earth Room is 280,000 pounds of earth in a loft in Soho funded in perpetuity, and more than just dirt.

Disney had a penchant for animated furniture, so no doubt would have appreciated The Origins and History of Singing Bowls posted by Gary Mullen at  HandcraftedUK.   

Earline Bradt at Ancestral Notes doesn't know what to make of the hand-wrought and rusty iron artifact that emerged from a backyard excavation.  Who puts grooves on a Tomahawk?  

Sarge describes the many guises of Kokopelli at American Indian Culture.  The goat-footed balloonman whistles far and wee, indeed. 

M. Diane Rogers of CanadaGenealogy  introduces us to Hannah Maynard : British Columbia Photographer 1862-1912.  This remarkable artist "experimented with many photographic techniques and effects – sometimes with almost bizarre or, as some will have it, surreal, results."

Also at Rough Fractals, a preview of upcoming works based on a lifelong fascination with snow globes. 

Currently in the pipeline is a new Snow Globe to be called "Cognitive Rocket Ship". Inside the Globe is a rocket ship that is about to take off and in the cockpit of the rocket ship sits the pilot (the pilot is a woman - for more about the pilot see the relevant parenthetical below) who is gazing into a Snow Globe of a rocket ship in which sits the pilot looking into a Snow Globe of a rocket ship. There are some technical problems in the manufacturing because the third Snow Globe in a Snow Globe is really, really tiny... 

Having recently taken a crash course in delousing - one of the fringe benefits of universal primary school education - I was quite taken by this Bicentennial Cootie Cartoon by Bill Mauldin of Willie and Joe fame. 

If "Schaefer is the one beer to have when you're having more than one", then how much Sherwood Premium Cider did Robin's Merry Men have to quaff to produce these sterling results?

Curiositycabi.net is a self-described trove of "bones, skeletons, dust, shadows, misremembering" and a gorgeous assemblage of images to boot.

I am certain I had a flying pig around here somewhere, but that will have to wait for a future edition.

We Interrupt This Broadcast

Those of you eagerly awaiting the 15th Edition of Cabinet of Curiosities scheduled for this time slot will have to bear with us while we attend to technical difficulties at the station, including a double dose of pneumonia and head lice that has put our household topsy turvy and precludes any serious attempt at blogging. Rest assured we will endeavor to return you to your regularly scheduled programming as soon as possible 

Call for Posts: Cabinet of Curiosities #15

   The 15th Cabinet of Curiosities blog carnival will be out in a week.  What treasures will you unearth?  What stories will unfold?  Whatever are we to make of these wierd and wondrous goings on?  Drop in next Monday and find out (or send us your finest work for inclusion via the handy submission form.  

Cabinet of Curiosities #14 (Faerie edition) at Damn Data / Cabinet of Wonders

The much anticipated 14th edition of Cabinet of Curiosities is splendidly hosted at Damn Data, and under their excellent stewardship offers a veritable goblin market of goodies this month with a decidedly fey allure.  Step into the faerie ring, and never mind the coffins in Arthur's Seat!   

Call for Posts: Cabinet of Curiosities #14 at Damn Data

Cabinet of Curiosities #14 will be hosted this month by the good folks at Damn Data / Cabinet of Wonders on February 16th.  They have a brilliant Compendium of Curiosities of their own that has often provided choice bits for CofC and I am delighted by their offer to host this carnival.  Let's make sure they have plenty of blog fodder! 

Submit your best stuff by Sunday Feb 15th via the handy submission form.

(Acceptable losses
mixed media, 2008
Thomas Doyle, courtesy of Bioephemera)

Cabinet of Curiosities #13 (Baker's Dozen Edition)

The Cabinet of Curiosities Blog Carnival is back in town, bringing assorted marvels to light from forgotten museum cases and the murky recesses of fading family lore.  Where else do you find yeti crabs and the World's weirdest and most bizarre perfumes presented side by side for your reading convenience? Think of us as the sort of Whitman's sampler P.T. Barnum might have concocted if he hadn't gotten sucked into the animal cracker racket.

Like its namesake curiosity cabinets of old, CofC makes little effort to categorize its offerings, separating sheep from goats and ensuring that nary the twain shall meet.  Whatever meaning there may be in this mélange comes from its constituent parts and the relationships that you or I are inclined to draw among them.  If you are as fascinated as they are at Urlesque.com by the Top Eleven Weirdest Burgers (including this fetching hamburger dress, modeled at right), perhaps you might see a connection between this item and the image of the yeti crab, above, instead of, say, a more logical link to this marvelous collection of some of the weirdest boots that they've ever seen over at StyleTips101.    Who am I to prescribe?  The author, as those terminally nihilist French deconstructions have been muttering for decades in themusty corners of academe, is decidedly dead.   Long live the text (and context)!  Hopefully this disclaimer will assuage the wrath of my indignant spouse, who declares that comparing a woman dressed as meat with a crab is utterly beyond the pale.  Right, and someday pigs will fly.

Brian at Ancestors At Rest was astounded to find this family photograph which could be a missing link in the the evolution of the Afro.  There are some pictures of me in college when I foolishly teased out my long ringlets into something that would have looked fetching on a Borneo head hunter.  Hopefully this turn of the 20th century photograph was taken along those same lines.  Gena's Genealogy discovered a photograph of Francesco Lentini: "The Human Tripod" in a family archive, and suspects that a Nebraska relative who once housed traveling circus performers my have encountered the three-legged Lentini while he was part of Buffalo Bill's outfit.

CanadaGenealogy, or 'Jane's Your Aunt', which hosted the 11th CofC back in November, delves into her grandmother's button box and finds it a 'marvelous mélange.' 

Miles Meyer of Miles' Genealogy Tips shares the story of a remarkable family artifact: the original steamer trunk that his 3rd-great grandfather carried to America from Germany in 1854.  This tangible piece of the past becomes a touchstone of discovery, as Meyer's traces the path of his ancestors' immigration.  "Starting with just one artifact, an old steamer trunk , I have now gained a much more in depth understanding of the trials that the early immigrants had to endureto come to our great country."

Terry Thornton of Hill Country of Monroe County, Mississippi, has a fish story about the welcoming fish   that graces his doorway.  

"Some references suggest that my articulated fish may be composed of "Turkish silver" and that it be of fairly recent origin dating to not earlier than the 1920s. As more and more families used a spice box shaped like a tower for the spice ritual, some suggest that the popular fish ritualware piece became more of a decorative piece than as a ritual spice container. The date and place of origin of my fish are unknown. One reference was found to a three-piece set of almost identical fish from the early 1930s but in three sizes (one much larger and one much smaller than the 9.5 inch one I have) used as decorative objects in the style of earlier articulated fish spice boxes."

Liz at the curiously named My Big Fat Cajun/Irish/Scottish/English/German/French/Southern Family Blog discusses the difficult questions raised by her Grandma Elia's French New Testament, and asks;  

"Was she swept off her feet when she left her family for a non-Cajun Protestant? Did he attend church? Was it important to him, or was it important only that Elia not be Catholic? Was she ever accepted by her parents again?"  

Thomas MacEntee, erstwhile blogger at Destination: Austin Family and past host of Cabinet of Curiosities #10, gives us the story of the mahogany bar and what lurks inside.  Thomas unveils each marvel it contains with seductive glee:

"Next, we unlock the doors.  Yes there is a lock which allows entry into the lower portion of The Bar - a bit of a chastity belt, as it were - where the serious business takes place.  If you know my family you know that a lock is required on most all liquor cabinets and bars."

 

A Christmas Compendium of Curiosities at Damn Data  describes a15th century Feast of Fools when

 

"mask-wearing, cross-dressing priests and clerks ran amok through their church, burnt old shoes as mock incense and ate black pudding at the altar! "

 

What relation, if any, this medieval festival has to baby jumping, which grown men dressed as the devil have been doing in Spain since the 1600's, I will leave to others to determine, but at least they have the decency to leave the bull running out of it.  

 

Among the curious modes of transportation you might wish to consider include riding the moon bats to Saturn.

 

Or you might try one of the world's weirdest and largest bikes, which World of Technology tells us includes the Guitar Bicycle, near 40 feet long. 

 

Just in time for Presidents Day, Offbeat Earth rolls out the newest models of the world's weirdest cars.  The Mini Cooper pick-up looks like it has just enough payload capacity for a pony keg.

 

Finally, one of CofC's favorite sites, the glorious blog Curious Expeditions, maintains a Flickr site as well, featuring oddities and Curiosities of Nature.  If you think a box of taxidermy eyes is just the thing to add to M. Diane Roger's grandmother's button box or Thomas MacEntee's bar, then clearly this carnival was made for you.  Why not consider hosting next month's edition?

Cabinet of Curiosities #13: Call for Posts

We have reached a Baker's Dozen of these things since I launched C of C back in the Fall of 2006.  There is no dearth of wierdly wonderful material out there to agregate and add to each month, so why not consider whether you have a post, or a lead to a link, or just the taste for adventure required to add to the mix?  Recall that while our Curiosity Cabinet is a marvelous melange - and manages to engage everyone from family historians to scientists to artists in fields both sacred and profane - we still have a few standards.  We value dstyle as well as substance.  We are not shills for subjects that manage to miss even this very broadsided barn.  We are not a one person operation.  Aside from that, we have few limitations.  So bring it on.  Send us your best by this Sunday the 18th of January for Monday's edition.  feel free to use the handy submission form, and if you have a hankering to host one of these things, you have only to ask. 

(Image courtesy of Asterix NZ)

Cabinet of Curiosities #12: Greatest Story Ever Told Edition

Welcome to the 12th edition of Cabinet of Curiosities, where today we're tossing out the milk and cookies and leaving Santa some legs and lox instead. This is how curious holiday traditions begin, you see, so that nowadays we think nothing at all of dragging trees indoors and festooning them with chintz and tinsel to celebrate the birth of the son of God and the arrival of his secular avatar in the red suit.  'Tis the season when even the most irreligious among us are steeped in ritual, be it our evergreen curiosity cabinets or that handed down recipe for coffeecake without which whatever Holiday you adhere to just wouldn't be right.

M. Diane Rogers of CanadaGenealogy decks the halls with some of her Christmas Curios, including "any number of chipped, cracked, broken, or otherwise unwanted items that I've saved for Christmas over the years."  My grandfather had a name for the moth-eaten angels, armless porcelain cupies and bedraggled feathers from Easter bonnets that my grandmother gave second lives as ornaments.  "Shmelts!", he would snort, and banish them to the dark side of the Tannenbaum.  There are Shmelts on every tree, and even when they do not make it out of the box we cannot bear to part with them.

Janet the Researcher favors a holiday tableau from her childhood featuring a plastic church and evergreens.    

Midge Frazel of Granite in my Blood tells the wonderful story of the Norwegian paper cut-out of girls dancing with trollsthat has a treasured, if incongruous place in her holiday display.  Our Skandi friends are open minded sorts, and would not begrudge a Tomtin a little merriment with the merry maids.  They also are open to museums that take on such uninhibited subjects as homosexuality among non humans, or so we learn from Dr. Martin Rundkvist of Aardvarchaeology who notes that the Stockholm Museum of Natural History has an ongoing exhibition that includes a model depicting nasal intercourse among two presumably consenting male dolphins.  Really.  I wonder if you can get it as an ornament from the museum gift shop? 

Gay dolphin statues are not yet part of any known Christmas tradition, but there are even more curious sculptures that apparently are.   Daylife asserts - and offers photographic evidence for the claim - that "Statuettes of well-known people defecating are a strong Christmas tradition in Catalonia, dating back to the 18th century as Catalonians hide [them] in Christmas Nativity scenes and invite friends to find them."   Rather makes the case for Catalan nationalism.

When Lorine McGinnis Schultze thinks about holiday fare, it features Christmas Toast in a Victorian toast rack which belonged to her English great-grandmother.  

Brian at Ancestors at Rest turns to a very special bowl full of goodies that was a wedding gift to his great-grandparents in 1904.  "The poor old thing may not look like much, the flowers are faded and worn, the rim has a large chunk that was broken and then glued back (with not too much success) by my Great-Grandfather. It has no monetary value whatsoever. But to me it is priceless."

Over at Caroline's Miscellany, there is magic in a cup, for she has a a treasured collectionof lithophanes!  "In the bottom of each cup is a picture. In fact, the bottom of each cup is a picture. When you first look inside, it just appears to be a bumpy surface, but the moment you hold the cup to the light, an image appears. The different thicknesses of porcelain provide the light and shade."

Melody Lasalle of The Research Journal has the story of a Christmas curiosity of an entirely different sort: her grandmother's lost pajamas!  The December holiday season spawns countless family legends that we delight in dusting off through the years as if they were ornaments of blown glass and finest crystal.  In our family, we have the tale of the Christmas Eve when my cousins drove all the way to Boston from Chicago, and ten minutes after they arrived their station wagon and all it contained had been stolen.  Boston was then - and may still be - a contender for the car theft capital of the country, but nevertheless my father immediately went from block to block with the notion that he could find it and save Christmas.  And he did.  Except for the hot wired ignition, nothing had been taken.

For those of a pagan persuasion, Gil of Gilocafe offers up a tale from Aztec Mythology and the star-crossed lovers Iztaccíhuatl and Popocatépetl  who the gods covered in snow and changed into mountains.

Here's wishing you and yours all the joys of this curious season, and if you happen to find meat-flavored cologne in your stocking this year, it probably has no bearing on whether you've been naughty or nice.  Just that bags featuring Carla Bruni in the buff were unavailable at Burger King.

C of C Update

 The next edition of Cabinet of Curiosities needs a bit more time in the oven and will appear on the platter later this week.