Author: carin

thirty truths: 16

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Truth #16: Something about lunch boxes gets to me.

I’m pretty sure it started with Gene Stratton-Porter’s A Girl of the Limberlost (which I’ve written about before and probably will again) and the primitive bucket Elnora Comstock carried to school through the woods. She was poor and her father was dead and her mother was mean and the other kids teased her about everything, including the bucket, but I never felt sorry for her, on the contrary I envied her the contents, which always seemed so delicious (all I remember now is a spice cake… but I’ve been remembering it for decades). It was the first book I read where food played any kind of important role.

My version was a square, tinny box with a red handle and the Flintstones painted on both sides. It smelled of milk and mustard and when I opened it, even though I lived in an ordinary bungalow in a GM town, I was—for the duration of lunch—wild and beautiful, auburn haired Elnora in her handmade dresses, clever and resourceful in her tiny cabin in the Limberlost swamp… rising above the unkindness of the ‘town’ kids, succeeding just when everyone thought she would fail.

Lunch is still my favourite meal.

leisured young women take note

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“…For the rest of 1912 and the first half of 1913, I went to more dances, paid calls, skated and tobogganed, played a good deal of bridge and a great deal of tennis and golf, had music lessons and acted in amateur theatricals; in fact I passed my days in all these conventional pursuits with which the leisured young woman of every generation has endeavoured to fill the time she is not qualified to use.”
—from Testament of Youth, by Vera Brittain

thirty truths: 14

~ carin ~ 1 Comment

Truth #14:  I love postcards. Love buying them in souvenir shops and cheesy motel lobbies, love making them, collecting them, sending them when I travel, or when I don’t—to someone on the other side of the planet, or just a few blocks away. I love initiating a rousing pocalog a few times a year. And best of all… I love love love receiving them.

thirty truths: 12

~ carin ~ 1 Comment

Truth #12: I don’t understand the desire to look younger. I’ve always looked older than I am and it’s always been a positive. When I was seventeen it got me into bars. Very soon it’ll get me a jump on seniors’ discounts. 

“Winning…”