Her Mind Against Her Mind

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

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"

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.

For more about Nina,
see my recent post:

Family History #9:
The Reider Cousins

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