Walking the Berkshires

Cabinet of Curiosities #8 "Mathom Edition"

"It was a tendency of hobbit-holes to get cluttered up; for which the custom of giving so many birthday-presents was largely responsible. Not, of course, that the birthday-presents were always new; there were one or two old mathoms of forgotten uses that had circulated all around the district; but Bilbo had usually given new presents and kept those that he received." 

- The Fellowship of the Ring pg 65; Art at left: "A Tolkien Mathomium" by James Dunning.

Apparently J.R.R. Tolkien is to blame for those regifted presents among coworkers come Secret Santa Season.  A mathom to a hobbit is something for which one really has no use, or for which the use has been forgotton, but is passed along (if parted with at all) rather than tossed out.  A mathom-house like the one the hobbits maintain at Michel Delving is really just a cabinet of curiosities by another name. It is a fine line between a meaningful heirloom and a mathom, and the difference between the two is the story that goes with the item.  Here, then, is the 8th "Mathom Edition" of Cabinet of Curiosities, the blog carnival that dares you gift us with the stories behind your own mathoms.

Mr. Lord of Lord and Lady starts us off with the remarkable story of how he unravelled the genealogy of a family heirloom: a flintlock. 

"It is a beautiful piece in very bad condition, a Connecticut weapon made probably in the late 1700's It was given a special place in my collection. On the top of barrel there is a German silver inlay and this is inscribed with J.LORD, this is why the dealer in Tribes Hill new I would want it."

Over in the forums at Straight Razor Place, the smooth skinned devotees of wet shaving are geeking over their ancestral shaving gear.  Though one commenter notes "Hehe, I can't help thinking that most of my family would consider such an item no different than an old toothbrush rather than an heirloom."  Good thing other folks do.  I have a couple of my grandfather's, but they are definitely just for looking at.

Zay MoMo has what may be the quintessential mathom: a family heirloom that curses your root!

"My Halmoni (Grandmother) gave this bottle of ginseng liquor as a gift long ago when my parents were newlyweds. My dad always had plans to open this bottle and have a drink when he retired from the Army. My dad didn't have the heart, I guess, to open the bottle since it had been with us from the start. Dad gave the ginseng liquor to K when we were newlyweds. K had the intention of opening the bottle when he graduated from college. The big day came and went and the bottle still remained intact without a drop missing. K, too, didn't have the heart to open the bottle. Unintentionally, this gift had been turned into a heirloom."

Vintage Lane Stitches shows off some heirloom needlework and observes; "Imagine making and sewing lots of these, by hand, with feather stitch onto a big piece of material to make a bed spread, this big.Lots of patience required I think. My husbands Nan made this quite a few years ago using some of the material out of his mum's and aunties old dresses."  Gorgeous stuff and wonderful memories.

"In a hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit."  At the Art Institute of Chicago, reports Hyperexperience there are holes in the wall that offer windows into miniature rooms of exquisite detail.

"The lilliputian rooms stand out in the city of big shoulder, not only for their size but because they only depict domestic, traditionally feminine spaces, namely kitchens, living rooms and bedrooms, and are filled with cues of the woman’s place in these societies. Most rooms feature a pace for sewing, writing letter, or cooking; almost all contain furniture for receiving groups of people, as well as children’s toys scattered about, but none contains any tools which may have been associated with manual labor, industry and the male place. The Thorne rooms stand as a micro-monuments to domesticity, a striking counterpoint to Chicago’s contribution to our modern monumental vocabulary: the skyscraper, towering emblem of commerce and industry and anything but domestic or feminine in form or function."

Then there is the "house as mathom", such as the semi-detached in Headington, England that Out The Blog leads us to with the 25' shark impailed in its roof...

"No one living in Headington notices it much any more, but it caused a tremendous stir both locally and nationally on the day it appeared. It had been winched up by a crane overnight, and although the police were aware of what was going on they were powerless to do anything, as there is no law to prevent a man from putting a shark on his own roof."

Praises be.  I'm going to remember that when I decide to do some home improvements. Go here to see how the shark has eluded the best efforts of the municipal planning board to have it removed since 1986.

Damn Data / Cabinet of Wonders rolled out another installment in its marvelous Compendium of Curiosities series on May 20th.  Doctor Doolittle would be proud of this edition, and it even has the classic YouTube drama in which a pride of lions, some crocodiles, and a herd of Cape buffalo mix it up at a Kruger waterhole.  Not to be missed, especially the surprise ending.

So you wanna be a souvenier smashed penny collector?  Andy Fletcher's Custom Trains Blog may give you the bug.

Richard McGlauchlin's Oh, the Places You'll Go explains The Grandfather Paradox, and hence why timetravel is bound to create more mathoms than heirlooms.  I'm my own grandpaw, indeed.

But if you do have a hankering to go somewhere curious and exotic, AdmirableIndia recommends Chennakesava temple at Belur, Hoysaleswara temple at Halebid and Castle Rock Homestay, Chikmagalur.

So, if you've got, say, a shiny gold ring you can't bear to part with, it may be a mathom.  Or it may be The One.  Either way, we want to know about it. 

Cabinet of Curiosities will be on summer holiday until September.  If you would like to host a future edition, by all means be our guest.  And if your eye falls on a bargain, pick it up.  of such things are mathoms made.

Call For Posts: Cabinet of Curiosities #8 "Mathom Edition"

The 8th Cabinet of Curiosities Blog Carnival will be here at Walking the Berkshires on Monday, June 16st.  The deadline for you to send your nominations & submissions is 12:00 p.m. ET Sunday the 15th.  We are going to call this one the Mathom edition, which fans of Tolkien know refers to something for which Hobbits have no immediate use but are unwilling to throw away. 

"Bilbo had a corslet of mithril-rings that Thorin gave him.  I wonder what became of it?"

Any mathoms, heirlooms, keepsakes and ephemera you might have stashed away with a good story to go with them would be most welcome.   But we'll also take your story about your marriage to the Eiffel Tower.  Just spare us the wedding night photos...

Cabinet of Curiosities #7: Ernst Haeckel Edition

This 7th edition of Cabinet of Curiosities draws its inspiration from the artistic vision of zoologist Ernst Haeckel. A staunch Darwinist, Haeckel established The Phyletical Museum for the theory of evolution in Jena, Germany.   His 1899-1904 Kunstformen von der Natur (Art Forms in Nature) is a masterpiece of blended art and science.  Haeckel was fascinated by natural forms and structures.  Stephen Worth of ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive describes his evolutionary aesthetic:

"Haeckel saw no contradiction in his role as scientist/artist. In fact, he considered his work to be an expression of his own natural place in the world he was attempting to represent. Instead of approaching the subject from an objective viewpoint, he subjectively and selectively edited what he saw to reduce it to a form that appealed to him on a basic level as an artist. Thus, the scales of a fish become arabesques, and microscopic diatoms become beautiful sculptural forms. Haeckel was using nature's imagery to express his own inner nature."

A love of reinvented natural form is something Ernst Haeckel has in common with the creator of Wing's Castle.  Millbrook, NY, the town where I grew up, actually has two castles: Daheim Castle, the gatehouse to the Hitchcock estate where Timothy Leary was long a guest in residence in the 1960s, and Wing's.  Peter and Toni Wing have been building their castle for more than 25 years, often from found or salvaged materials, and it continues to grow organically as time and whimsy takes them.  One visitor reports:

"Where another castle might have a plain wall, Mr. Wing has crafted a face out of stone fragments. Where another castle might have a bathroom in the shape of a square or a rectangle, Wing's castle has one shaped something like a 3 leaf clover. Seeing the bathroom alone was worth the price of the tour, you will never see another one like it. Anyone who is a castle lover and is passing through the area where Wing's Castle is located (not too far from Poughkeepsie), should make an effort to stop and see this one." 

Visitors may visit the castle for a small fee.  Other examples of Wing's public art include a variety of figureheads, cigar store Indians, and such that he carved for Millbrook merchants, some of which are still still on display, and a bronze Civil War memorial statue in nearby Stanfordville.

J.L. Bell of Boston 1775 reveals that members of the Massachusetts delegation to the 2nd Continental Congress visited Edward Arnold's Museum in Norwalk, Connecticut.  It made such an impression on John Adams that two years later, he considered sending such "American Curiosities" as rattlesnakes "Upon a Hint, from one of our Commissioners abroad... across the Atlantic as presents to the Ladies."   I'm sure Marie Antoinette would have been enchanted with her very own pit viper, but maybe it was intended for the Dutch.

Antiquarian's Attic reports the discovery of the oldest parrot fossil ever, a rare bird indeed as it made its home in what is now Denmark.  Nicknamed "the Danish Blue", there is no word as yet as to whether this ex-parrot died while pining for the fjords.

I've become enchanted by the pioneers of color photography from the early 20th century.  Decades before Kodachrome there was Autochrome, and there still exist some truly spectacular collections of these extraordinary images.  One of the finest was created by French millionaire philanthropist Albert Kahn, who set out in 1909 to record the peoples of the world in true color and promote cross-cultural understanding.  London Kills Me shares a few of Kahn's photographs: a window to a vanished time when many of the people and places he recorded were about to be forever altered by modernity and global war.

I am also partial to clothing from other eras.  The very first post from the Jungle Trader, which celebrated its 1 year blogiversary this month, recommends pith helmets from Lock & Co Hatters of St. James St., London, while everything from frock coats to Victorian ladies accessories abound at River Junction Trade Company. Lady Lavona's Cabinet of Curiosities has a curiosity shop to meet your magic charm needs, which calls to mind a few choice lines from Richard Thompson I've been saving up for just such an occasion:

"I've got war paints, the skulls of saints, don't you want to see 'em
The blood of popes, and Tyburn ropes from the Black Museum
I've got Frederick Delius' finger, Wordsworth's tattoo
And I'm going to love you with everything, and I think you're going to love me too

I've got all the magic I need, all the magic I need."

The blog chrisblassternardone has a marvelous bucket list of amazing geological oddities on showcase.  This way for the Moving Rocks of Death Valley, the Eye of the Sahara, and China's Stone Forest!

Damn Data: Cabinet of Wonders offers the All Things Small Edition of its recurring Compendium of Curiosities.  See the cast of the Wizard of Oz dancing on the eye of a needle and lavish doll house created for Queen Mary, royal consort of Britain's George V.

Lenzbreakr's Weblog features one of San Franciso's architectural oddities: The Roman Columbarium houses cremated remains and personal items in small boxes representing the lives of the departed.  "This is a truly unique place, as the San Francisco Columbarium is the only remaining Roman-style Columbarium in the world. It’s a place in which people can think outside the box, while at the same time being dead, and inside a box."

In an aftershock from CofC #5, Brass Goggles clues us in to a rather Gothic steampunk alphabet done in decorative ceramic tiles.  $600 buys the lot.  Z is for Zeppelin, naturally, but N is for No Man's Land and X is for Xenophobe.

L. H. Crawley's The Virtual Dime Museum has two submissions this month.  With Hasegawa's Untearable Crepe, a post that just missed the deadline for CofC #6 and has been patiently waiting for this edition, she shares images from a marvelous children's book from around 1900 made of crepe paper, a Japanese form called Chirimen-bon.  This month she shifts from the sublime to the ridiculous with a feature on sheet music about rat poison, an early advertising jingle pushing nearly pure arsenic that is "Rough on Rats!"  All together now!  "R-r-r-rats, rats, Rough on Rats! /Hang your dogs and drown your cats!"

Almost as fine a bit of brand marketing, according to Bioephemera is a dead lion, bees and syrup! 

Bill West of West in New England is collecting funny place names and invites you to join in.  See if you can top his Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg.  One of my personal favorites from Central Massachusetts.

Small & Big considers the noble spoon and muses why Shakespeare didn't say “He hath need of a long chopstick that eateth with the devil.”

eArtfair collects a grand assortment of portraits of the artist's mother from the likes of Rembrandt, Haring, Picasso...

Thomas MacEntee discovers a portrait of a different sort.  The subject was his Great Uncle and the artist was Bil Baird, who was also the puppeteer who designed and performed the Lonely Goatherd sequence of The Sound of Music!  A fabulous discovery and a great tale besides.

And so we come full circle with art inseparable from life.  Haeckel may not have crafted marionettes, but he would have recognized their forms in the filaments of jellyfish.  But who, or what, is the the puppet master: a deity or strands of DNA?   Divine what you will.

The 8th edition of Cabinet of Curiosities will be on June 16th.  Anyone who wishes to host a future edition is most welcome to do so.  Submissions for June are due by noon EST on the 15th and can be made directly at greensleevesenviro AT sbcglobal DOT net or with the handy submission form.

Join the Circus

"Just join the circus like you meant to do, when you were so high.
Pitch your troubles under a tent and you’re bound to lose ‘em by and by.
Say so long to fair Schenectady greet sweet Santa Fe.
Toss your hat and cane in a sack again,
Shoulder your pack and then hitch up the shay.
Kiss the cat and never look back again,
When the circus comes your way."

The "Greatest Show on Earth" is in Albany, and four tickets came my way for my birthday, so today we packed the clowns in the car and headed for the circus.  Old Uncle Ira would have been proud. Thanks Mom and Dad!

Call for Posts: Cabinet of Curiosities #7 at Walking the Berkshires

Supposing you had this photograph in your attic, in among the other family accumulations, and nothing was written on the back to tell you anything about it.

Don't let this happen to you!

The next Cabinet of Curiosities blog carnival will be right here at Walking the Berkshires on May 19th.  Now is the time to post about that the tea your ancestor shook out of his breeches after the Boston Tea Party and passed down through the generations, or the oddest roadside attraction you visited on your last vacation.  Now is the time to tell us about your collection of coprolites (or the one your "friend" has if you don't want to own up to it).

Bring me your stories behind the historical or religious relics, artifacts, mementos, talismans, specimens and ephemera in your steamer trunks, sock drawers and dusty fireplace mantles. Dazzle us with the oddities you have found in the World Wide Wunderkammer.

Submission deadline is May 18th at 12:00 p.m. EST.  You may e-mail them to me at greensleevesenviro AT sbcglobal DOT net or use the submission form.

I'm Sticking With My Fuzzy Dice

I thought long and hard, so to speak, before deciding to go forward with this post.  I imagine this is the sort of dilemma that Rupert Murdoch faces every day; "Is it newsworthy?  Is it in the public interest?  Does it have a shred of redeeming social value? Bollocks!" (He'd say it that way, as an Aussie).  But how many opportunities does one have to provide a civics lesson, defend the first amendment, and combine the phrases "Confederate Flag" and "Truck Nutz" in reference to each other?   Exactly.

Like many in my social set, for whom the acme of the weekly calender is listening to NPR's News Quiz Wait Wait Don't Tell Me on Saturday morning, I learned last week of the bill under debate in the Florida Senate banning artificial testicles from the trailer hitches of pick up trucks. 

TALLAHASSEE, Florida (Reuters) - Senate lawmakers in Florida have voted to ban the fake bull testicles that dangle from the trailer hitches of many trucks and cars throughout the state.

Republican Sen. Cary Baker, a gun shop owner from Eustis, Florida, called the adornments offensive and proposed the ban. Motorists would be fined $60 for displaying the novelty items, which are known by brand names like "Truck Nutz" and resemble the south end of a bull moving north.

According to Florida's WCTV; "The prohibition of the attachment was an addition to a much larger transportation bill."  I should certainly hope so.

These are popular items in Florida, we are told, although since they just don't look right on the rear bumper of a Subaru Legacy you don't see them much in the Berkshires. Over at Tigerhawk, the Charlottesvillain is quick to pick up on the contitutional issues involved, saying; "First of all, does the gun shop owner really advocate government intrusion in such trivial matters? Has he no sense of irony? (A rhetorical question, obviously.)"  Having no first hand experience with the item in question, I turned to Google to see whether these are an improvement on the fake propellors one sometimes sees mounted on trailer hitches, or the greatest threat to the sensibilities of decent folk since Justin Timberlake.  Since most of you are viewing this at work, I will spare you the more graphic images, but this one, arranged in an attractive cloverleaf pattern and emblazoned with the Confederate battle flag, was too good to pass up.  After all, it is Confederate Heritage Month, and apparently this isn't considered desecration.

However, the main problem I have with Truck Nutz is that they are designed to hang facing the wrong way.  More like a trophy than an extension. 

Like I said, I'm sticking with my fuzzy dice.

Newsflash - Cabinet of Curiosities #6 Now Up at Bioephemera

We interrupt our series on Tryon's Danbury Raid during the War of American Independence to announce news of more immediate interest. Cabinet of Curiosities #6 is now up at Bioephemera!  Jessica is a consummate host and C'ofC #6 is a feast for the eyes and senses.  Lucky number 7 will be back at Walking the Berkshires on the 19th of May.  Early birds may submit nominations to me directly at greenleevesenviro AT sbcglobal DOT net or via the carnival submission form.

Hammacher Schlemmer, Take Note

Sundials leave a lot to be desired.  Enter the bulbdial clock. 

If you can't wait 18 years for your scotch to mature, try electrocuting it.

Golf would be a much more interesting game to watch if they used 12 gauge clubs.

The Computor Ate My Carnival

Cabinet of Curiosities #6 is experiencing technical delays but will be posted at Bioephemera later this week.  For those who can't wait to get their monthly dose of the unusual, the exotic, the incredible stuff we have hoarded away in our attics or on our hard drives, you could do far worse than to pay a visit Cryptozoology.com for the latest Bigfoot news, and see how your 10 ten list of favorite monsters compares with the one posted at LiveScience.  Personally, I've always been partial to Dryads, Naiads and Oreads, such as the lovely Echo, above, being ignored by Narcissus.  Very Pre-Raphaelite of me, I know.

Full of Beans

If people are willing to pay $100 for a cup of coffee made from beans passed through the digestive tract of an Asian civet, then I am absolutely in the wrong line of work.  Do I hear $250 for a cup of dark roasted rhino dung?