Elizabeth's Trinket Boxes

My last post featured three lapel pins that I found inside of an antique trinket box belonging to my Great - great - grandmother Elizabeth Birkinbine Miller (February 28, 1838 - March 28 1925).

This post is about the box itself, which you can see above, made of cardboard, wrapped in heavy blue floral decorative paper, and lined with a piece of newspaper dated 1846. Specifically, the article describes some "buildings that are to be erected by the 1st of September 1846."

Explaining the provenance of the oval box, my Grandmother Rovilla wrote the note above; and on another small scrap of paper:

"This little blue box was from my Grandma Miller.
It was a birthday present to her."
The newspaper clue reveals that the box was lined before September 1846, so perhaps it was a gift for Elizabeth's 8th birthday in February of that year.

Here is the "tiny box inside" (2 1/2" x 1 1/2") that Rovilla refers to. It is bound like a tiny book, with the dancer on the front, a mirror on the inside cover, and "Forget Me Not" on the back. Rovilla's note says that the writing is "too faint to read," but I think I figured it out:

It says "Celestial M." (as in the book below).
Celestial (born 1858) was the eldest daughther
of Henry and Elizabeth

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My Great - great grandfather's German hymn book
Rovilla's note, "My Grandpa Miller's Hymn Book"
and a view of the front cover.
The size of the book is 4" x 2 1/2"

If you look closely beneath Henry's name and address,
you can see in faint pencil: "Celestial Miller"
(as in the box above)

I'm wondering if maybe a young Celestial,
having just learned cursive, had a spree of
writing her name on items around the house.

Endeavor

May All Your Endeavors Be Fruitful
And Your Heart Be Filled With Joy

Kaleidoscopic illustration by Danielle Barlow
so perfect for the perpetually changing seasons,
from summer to fall . . .

The colorful graphic also made me think of this lapel pin that I discovered when sorting through my Grandmother Rovilla's things, enclosed in her Grandmother Elizabeth's little trinket box. I wonder who once wore this intriguing little pin, preserved among my grandmother's treasures? My guess is that it belonged to Elizabeth's daughter / Rovilla's mother -- my Great - grandmother Anna Mary.

Now that it is in my possession, I wanted to learn more about what it means:

"When I see a woman wearing a little bangle, pin or badge enameled in yellow, blue, violet, green and white, and bearing the letters U. F. E. C. M., I know that I have met a woman that has pledged herself to keep as sacred the duties of a Royal Neighbor of America Lodge as those of her own household. To show that she . . . has taken such an obligation . . ."

~ from the Christian Cynosure, August, 1901

The initials:
• U – Unselfishness
• F – Faith
• E – Endurance
• C – Courage
• M – Modesty
"The Royal Neighbors of America was originally founded in 1892 as a fraternal benefit insurance society for men and women aged 16 - 60. There were 159,982 members in 1994. The organization publishes Field News, Office News, and Royal Neighbor, all monthly. The Royal Neighbors began as an auxiliary of the Modern Woodmen of the World and were then reorganized in 1895 as a separate benefit society. The rituals are rooted in deism with heavy Christian overtones, and the overall head of the organization is a Supreme Oracle. In practice, this is a typical successful insurance society, in which the fraternal ritual is increasingly irrelevant. Its good works are directed toward orphans and the deaf."

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Also found in
Great - great - grandmother Elizabeth's trinket box,
two more pins dating from the late 1890s:

My Grandmother Rovilla's note
says that "The Eastern Star Pin
is from Aunt Dora" (her father's sister)

I'm guessing that this one, representing the
United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America
belonged to her father, who was a carpenter.

****************
With all these relatives and good deeds and the word endeavor swirling around in my ahead, I was was visited in a dream by my Aunt Anne (my dad's sister-in-law). She was was sitting on my bed, making tea, and reading aloud from a plaque that was hanging on the wall above the headboard:

"In any endeavor
invest in being whole all the time.
Worth repeating."

I awoke with that mantra ringing through my ears,
and year after year, it remains embedded in my brain.

Summer Ends, Autumn Begins

Look at this leaf ~ changing from
middle to edge rather than edge to middle!

End of Summer

An agitation of the air,
A perturbation of the light
Admonished me the unloved year
Would turn on its hinge that night.
I stood in the disenchanted field
Amid the stubble and the stones,
Amazed, while a small worm lisped to me
The song of my marrow-bones.
Blue poured into summer blue,
A hawk broke from his cloudless tower,
The roof of the silo blazed, and I knew
That part of my life was over.
Already the iron door of the north
Clangs open: birds, leaves, snows
Order their populations forth,
And a cruel wind blows.

—Stanley Kunitz

Late September Strawberry Plant
England, 2025

Autumn Song

Know'st thou not at the fall of the leaf
How the heart feels a languid grief
Laid on it for a covering,
And how sleep seems a goodly thing
In Autumn at the fall of the leaf?
And how the swift beat of the brain
Falters because it is in vain,
In Autumn at the fall of the leaf
Knowest thou not? and how the chief
Of joys seems—not to suffer pain?
Know'st thou not at the fall of the leaf
How the soul feels like a dried sheaf
Bound up at length for harvesting,
And how death seems a comely thing
In Autumn at the fall of the leaf?

—Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Poems found on
Southern Living Website

One Tube of Antitoxin

Samuel Gordon Lindsey:
"We have all been examined and passed every one.
We all got vaccinated this morning and got a shot
in the arm also with some kind of contagious germs
I don't know what, maybe typhoid."

Enlisted in January 1918, in Oklahoma.
Writing from Camp Travis, San Antonia, Texas.

As you can see from his letter, when my Great - Uncle Sam entered the United States Army, one of his first official acts in service to his country was to get vaccinated!

It's the least I can do.
~ Flu / Covid ~
You don't have to do them both on the same day
-- I was just showing off.

Posted previously, but timely here:

"It is all right to do fool things if someone is standing by able to protect us from the fruits of our folly. But, let it be emphasized, if the cultists [anti-vaxxers] inherited the earth the epidemic diseases would be upon us with their original pristine terribleness. After more than sixty years [written in 1938, thinking back to 1878] I can still hear the eloquent prayers that filled the countryside when epidemics of diphtheria appeared. One tube of antitoxin will do more good than all of these prayers. I have seen all of these things. A doctor, an M.D., must think the truth. Perhaps it would be better if he sometimes proclaimed it."

~ by Arthur E. Hertzler, M.D. (1870 - 1946)
~ from his autobiography
The Horse and Buggy Doctor: A Memoir

P.S. This memoir was recommended to me during COVID by the Chief of Staff (and endocrinologist) at UMKC Medical Center, Dr. Lee Graves. He said: "How incredible and discouraging that this quote in 1938 could have been written today."

Additionally, in January 2022, he wrote, "We are so busy again with 110 covid patients in our hospital and 500 employees out ill so things are maybe worse than they have been. Of the 110 covid patients we have hospitalized, only 5 were previously vaccinated and of the 20 in the ICU and 14 on ventilators none had been previously vaccinated. The vaccine works, and that is hope and good news."

Funny -- but no joke!

Her Mind Against Her Mind

Conversation at the Wall (1950)
by Wolfgang Hutter (1928 - 2014)

Thanks to my friend Joni
for recommending this book!
And HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

An argument against . . .
The Myth of Female Inferiority

The best slave
does not need to be beaten
She beats herself.

Not with a leather whip,
or with sticks or twigs,
not with a blackjack
or a billy club,
but with the fine whip
of her own tongue
& the subtle beating
of her mind against her mind.

For who can hate her half so well
as she hates herself?
and who can match the finesse
of her self-abuse?

Years of training
are required for this.

by Erica Jong
from the long poem
"Alcestis On The Poetry Circuit"

Murdock includes Jong's poem
in The Heroine's Journey (1990)
and writes in response:
"Because society denigrates feminie qualities a woman is not likely to value herself as a woman. She is seen and sees herself as lacking and operates out of the myth of inferiority. . . . [she observes] cultural attitudes: "Male is better" . . . [and] buys into that myth and evaluates her skills and knowledge through the lens of deficit thinking." (54)

Other names for the gender disparity
identified by Maureen Murdock and Erica Jong:
Simone de Beauvoir calls it The Second Sex (1949):

"If woman discovers herself as the inessential and never turns into the essential, it is because she does not bring about this transformation herself. . . . they have won only what men have been willing to concede to them; they have taken nothing; they have received. . . . The tie that binds her to her oppressors is unlike any other. The division of the sexes is a biological given, not a moment in human history. This is the fundamental characteristic of woman: she is the Other at the heart of a whole whose two components are necessary to each other. One might think that this reciprocity would have facilitated her liberation." (28 - 29; in my copy 10 - 12)

Betty Friedan calls it The Feminine Mystique (1963):

"The problem of identity was new for women then, truly new. The feminists were pioneering on the front edge of woman’s evolution. They had to prove that women were human. They had to shatter, violently if necessary, the decorative Dresden figurine that represented the ideal woman of the last century. They had to prove that woman was not a passive, empty mirror, not a frilly, useless decoration, not a mindless animal, not a thing to be disposed of by others, incapable of a voice in her own existence, before they could even begin to fight for the rights women needed to become the human equals of men." (from Chapter 4; in my book 138)

Germaine Greer calls it The Female Eunuch (1970):

"Maybe I don’t know how to handle men and increase my market value, so that the rewards due to the feminine will accrue to me. Then again, maybe I’m sick of the masquerade. I’m sick of pretending eternal youth. I’m sick of belying my own intelligence, my own will, my own sex. . . . I refuse to be a female impersonator. I am a woman, not a castrate” -- not a female eunuch."

Jane Gallop, in Thinking Through the Body (1988),
calls it "the burden of sexual difference":

" . . . pink: that color which is one of our markers of sexual difference and which, unlike its diacritical partner blue, remains -- way past the nursery -- marked as feminine. If blue, outside the infantile realm, is no longer a particularly masculine color, might not that relate to the phallocentrism which in our culture (as well as in most if not all others) raises the masculine to the univeral human, beyond gender, so that the feminine alone must bear the burden of sexual difference?" (163)

E.g., as with the term "coed"

Old Photos vs Old Letters

Photos or letters? Or both --
like this this picture postcard, mailed 113 years ago
to my Grandmother Rovilla from her Cousin Nina.
[Rovilla wrote "Eugene" but she meant "Ernest"]

For more about Nina,
see my recent Family History posts:

#9: The Reider Cousins

&

#10: The Miller Sisters

The continuation of my
Family History Project

@The Fortnightly Kitti Carriker
A literary blog of connection & coincidence;
custom & ceremony

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Photos or letters?
The Correspondent by Virginia Evans
features this comparison:

"Imagine all that you have said to another, all the commentary you have exchanged with friends over drinks, over the phone with colleagues and distant relatives, all the prattle sent quickly, mindlessly over e-mail, messages typed into your cellular phone, and really, the sum of this interpersonal communication is the substance of your life, relationships being, as we know by now in our old ages, the meat of our lives; but all of that is gone. Vanished! And one day, Mr. Watts, you yourself will be gone.

"Perhaps if you have children, they will remember you; if you have grandchildren, they, God allowing, may also retain a few fragments of memory including you, but their children will not. They may keep some old photos in a book on a shelf, and perhaps two or three times in a lifetime may turn the page and find your face and think, Ah, yes, doesn’t Jimmy resemble this great-great-grandfather Mick, and continue to turn the page, and so that will be what is left of you, nearly erased, in fewer than three generations, and your life, the life you see from the inside, right now, as monumental, will be reduced to the blood in their veins and perhaps, if you are lucky, a distant namesake, a name plucked from the family tree that has come back in vogue after seventy-odd years as fashionable things tend to do and slapped on a newborn baby who will know nothing of YOU.

"And yet, if one has committed oneself to the page, the tragedy I’ve just laid out will not apply. Imagine, the letters one has sent out into the world, the letters received back in turn, are like the pieces of a magnificent puzzle, or, a better metaphor, if dated, the links of a long chain, and even if those links are never put back together, which they will certainly never be, even if they remain for the rest of time dispersed across the earth like the fragile blown seeds of a dying dandelion, isn’t there something wonderful in that, to think that a story of one’s life is preserved in some way, that this very letter may one day mean something, even if it is a very small thing, to someone?

"If all of this amounts to you as nothing more than drivel, then you might also consider a simpler value of the written letter, which is, namely, that reaching out in correspondence is really one of the original forms of civility in the world, the preservation of which has to be of some value we cannot yet see. The WRITTEN WORD, Mr. Watts. The written word in black and white. It is letters. It is books. It is law. It's all the same. I had some notion of this from as far back in life as I can remember, and I've been writing letters out into the world since I could form a sentence with the pen (age nine)."
(pp 46 - 47)

Granny Paper Doll

I was a fan of the "Granny" paper doll
for the same reason that I liked
"Shirley Temple" --
because she was 18" tall!
None of my other paper dolls
approached this height!

Also just like Shirley Temple,
Granny had such vividly colored outfits!

Shirley Temple Paper Doll

All that is left of my 1950s,
18" tall Shirley Temple Paper Doll Set.
Somehow or other, these remnants escaped the trash can
and were found in a box of old papers at my mom's house.
Not sure what happened to the doll, and cannot explain
why all these dresses are torn in the same spot. Hmmm???

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On Etsy and Ebay
I found these vintage paper dresses
that reveal some of the details missing on mine.

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In 1986, 1988 & 1991,
Dover issued these reprint booklets of
paper dolls and outfits from the 1930s.

Not forgetting "Granny"

Two People, Never Younger

Riding the Tour Bus in Montreal ~ September 2023
~ then 2023 / now 2026 ~
~ Happy Anniversary! ~

"Sit by my side, and let the world slip:
we shall ne'er be younger."
Shakespeare
from The Taming of the Shrew
(Induction, 2, 146-47)

“Two people pulling each other into Salvation
is the only theme I find worthwhile."
E. M. Forster
from his Commonplace Book

A Circle of Bronze

". . . the summer moved slowly
in a quarter circle of bronze." (84)

~ July 15 ~

"The sky was turning red and the blue hills pulled up in front of us when we stopped to have supper. I hated to go inside and miss the beautiful changes. . . . it looks like someone spilled paint on the mountains and set the rim of the sun on fire." (159)

~ August 30 ~
A few months back ~ December 2024

both passages from the novel
I Will Go Barefoot All Summer For You, Toby Bright
by Katie Letcher Lyle (1938 - 2016)

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More favorite lines from
I Will Go Barefoot All Summer For You, Toby Bright:

Going Barefoot
Summer Books
Sparkle Plenty
Dried Roses
Circle of Bronze

Dried Roses

Summer Sequence
from
I Will Go Barefoot All Summer For You, Toby Bright
by
Katie Letcher Lyle (1938 - 2016)

For me, the nostalgia of this coming - of - age novel goes back to the summer of 1976, when I enrolled in a week - long meet - the - author seminar at Lindenwood College with guest speaker Katie Letcher Lyle. I could not believe my good fortune!

I Will Go Barefoot, featuring 13 - year - old Jessie, takes place in a small Virginia town during the early 1950s. I grew up a decade later in Missouri, and was already nineteen when I first read this novel. Still, our experiences were not so different.

In a touching and excellent review on goodreads, Anna Bowling decribes the novel as "a poignant slice of life look at the transition from child to young woman. . . . Set during the postwar years of the Truman presidency, this story has the feel of a medieval ballad, the lazy sprawl of late summer, and the lacy veil between innocence and lessons learned."

In a story filled with gorgeous natural description, Jessie marks the passing summer with repeated references to lilacs, honeysuckle, and roses.

32: The smells of honeysuckle and wild roses and tar, the cool wind sound and the droning of bees, the waterfall sunshine in cascades, lay heavy upon this day, upon all the world, it seemed . . .

97: I closed my eyes and tried to keep everything just as it was, to remember for always church, its smell, this most beautiful summer. . . .

102 - 03: I tried to suck in as many good smells as I could. The summer had all been like that . . . roses so lovely my throat ached knowing they had already begun to die at the moment they were most beautiful, honeysuckle so sweet-smelling it made my stomach churn, grass green enough to hurt my eyes, and leaves so tenderly delicate they could not possibly last.

"I wish it could be summer all the time, don't you?"
I began to agree, found that I didn't. . . .
I only wished it would smell like summer all the time. But that would probably be boring. What made lilacs so marvelous was that they were only here for about a week, and you waited for them and got ready for them, and maybe even the getting ready was better than the lilacs themselves. Lilacs were even better than honeysuckle, which lasted nearly all summer. Maybe that was why.

106, 158: Summer hurt too much, starting with its lilacs that were dead so soon, its roses that were gone in a day, its moment of Toby Bright. It occurred to me at that instant that I was very tired of it, tired even of the honeysuckle and the roses. It was time for a change. I did not wish it could be summer all the time all, was anxious for burning leaves and red-gold color to replace the endless greens; longed for even the dull blue-whiteness of November . . . some distant lavender winter day.

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I realize this kind of seems like a book post,
but it's also a nature post & and an end - of summer post.
Here are a few more posts following my re-read of
I Will Go Barefoot All Summer For You, Toby Bright:

Going Barefoot
Summer Books
Sparkle Plenty
Dried Roses
Circle of Bronze

Sparkle Plenty

A Flawless Sparkle Plenty

Continuing the topic of mid - century modern
rubber faced toys like Blue Eyed Bear:
there was also Sparkle Plenty.
I have no recollection of this doll from my childhood but learned about it from a reference in the beloved coming of age novel I Will Go Barefoot All Summer For You, Toby Bright by Katie Letcher Lyle. The main character, thirteen - year - old Jessie Preston wins a Sparkle Plenty doll as a prize on the "Kiddi Karnival Quiz Show" and her cousin Frances obtains one by shoplifting (14).

The fact that they stole the doll from the store, and that they only took things "small enough to be hidden," makes me wonder if it was one of these miniature versions, barely the size of a thimble:

A trademark of the standard size Sparkle Plenty's was “magic, lifelike skin” (apparently for the body but not the face). Many of these specimens survive today as collector's items but the manufacturers had to discontinue use and revert back to regular doll rubber because the new material darkened and deteriorated. In the novel, Jessie and Frances are growing up in the early 1950s, so perhaps the Sparkle Plenty fad had passed by the time my sisters and I came along. I asked them if they remembered:

Di: I've never heard of Sparkle Plenty, but I found this picture of her wearing gloves, like a scientist or something. Haha! Oh, I see: it's to cover the discolored hands!

Peg: No, I haven't heard of her either, but I looked up her sad backstory, with her odd, homely parents. I do remember some dolls having more lifelike textures, softer than the hard plastic, so this must have been an early attempt.

Kit: Odd coincidence—I’d pretty much say that I NEVER think of the Dick Tracy cartoon, but last on Pawn Stars a woman brought in her grandfather’s tin toy trucks and cars, painted with Dick Tracy’s face at the wheel and other Dick Tracy characters in the passenger seats and looking out the windows.

Then this morning I follow Peg's lead on Sparkle Plenty's backstory, only to find out that Sparkle Plenty and her parents originated as Dick Tracy cartoon characters!

Di: Wow! The universe aligned!

Kit: Yeah! I guess it’s a message to start paying more attention to Dick Tracy!

Peg: Do you remember the old guy next door the summer when we lived in that cabin in St. Charles, on the backside of Blanchett Park? He said his girlfriend was the Moonmaid from Dick Tracy and when the moon came out, her skin turned blue.

Di: Yes, I remember him. Did not remember the Dick Tracy connection!

Kit: I had forgotten that! But we did meet some oddballs on that street! They probably said the same about us! Ha!

Peg: True Kit. "Those crazy people who crammed 2 adults and 5 kids in a one room cabin with no air conditioning, sleeping on janky cots that kept ripping."

Kit: One night when I was at Aaron’s back in June, he and Pam drove me all around St. Charles, looking at all the new Lindenwood construction, old favorite restaurants, etc. — and trying to find “the shack.” One small house seemed a likely possibility, but we couldn’t be sure. [Or could we? More to follow . . . ]

Blue Eyed Bear

One of many rubber faced teddy bear designs
created by Rushton Toys,
with expressions ranging from manic to depressive.

None of these look exactly like mine, but you get the idea.

For some reason these sad - faced, blue eyeshadowed bears were a thing in the early 1960s, and we picked the one you see above to give to our baby brother Aaron for his 1st or 2nd birthday.

Why would we choose such a gloomy guy? Maybe we felt sorry for his pathetic little pout or fell for his chubby little cheeks. Whatever the appeal, we adored the sorrowful little stuffie, and he remains in the family to this day -- over 60 years later -- in my care. Somewhere along the way, Aaron outgrew Blue Eyed Bear -- as we always called him -- so I took over the responsibility.

He will never be a happy teddy, but that's okay. He will always have a home in the toy chest, and it's fun to bring him out on Aaron's birthday and say, "Hey, rememember me?!"

Look!
My Cousin Cindy has one too -- named "Happy"

Coming next time: another vintage toy:
Sparkle Plenty

Throwback Super Ellie

Looking over Ellie's birthday pics,
we came across all these sweet
throwbacks from summers past:

Superbaby! ~ Eleanor Rose McCartney

The last Spring we lived in Indiana (2022), I took Ellie for a lot of walks around the neighborhood and decorated our famous fence post for Memorial Day with a red, white, and blue sash that I had made as a present for my mother many years before, when I was in highschool. She wore it faithfully as a multipurpose accessory for at least 25 years, from the mid 1970s until the late 1990s. Look closely, and you'll see that she has it tied around her waist as a belt:

*****************

Here's Ellie a year later (Spring 2023)
sharing the same expression as her Hoppa . . .

. . . and her Amma . . .

One of my pool friends asked if Ellie and I
always wear the same expression:

We just said, yes, of course!

And the same hairstyle!

We've been practicing from way back!

The Good Ship Eleanor

Happy ~ Birthday
Eleanor ~ Rose ~ McCartney!

I was so excited to find out that one of
the Boston Tea Party ships was called The Eleanor!
(Along with The Beaver & The Dartmouth)

Here she is fore to aft.
See the blue figurehead down on the bow?
Here's a close - up:

The Eleanor by night, in Boston Harbor

Good Ship Eleanor Gift Ideas

And yet another inspiring
Eleanor - themed gift idea!

Happy 6th Birthday Ellie!