My Wunderkammer

...or Cabinet of Curiosities. Which isn't really a cabinet, but an assortment of random objects on shelves and window ledges and stuffed in the closet and under the bed.

I just finished Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Curiosities: Pronged Ants, Horned Humans, and Other Marvels of Jurassic Technology by Lawrence Weschler--read at Molly Kalkstein's suggestion, not shockingly, since it is thoroughly related to our shared interest in ephemera, being a sort of history of/tribute to such things, and being a celebration of David Wilson's Museum of Jurassic Technology (whose website is the most Victorian website I could ever imagine--though I hadn't realized I could imagine such a thing).

This got me started thinking about my own Wunderkammer, my cabinet of wonder, and my assorted ephemera. Hereby briefly catalogued and categorized. I'd thought at one point that I would update and edit, but since this is extremely incomplete in the first place, I doubt that will happen. I have more than what is listed here in every one of these categories. And here we go again, deciding what gets moved.

Books. (The primary category--may not seem to be ephemera, but read on. Note that this is a sampling; not all titles are listed.)
Countless volumes by Horatio Alger, Junior
Fruit Scones
Chansons de Frances, 1950, with built in xylophone and small wooden mallet
Where Are the Mothers? by Dorothy Marino, 1959 (Shocking how many mothers are working while their little ones are at school!)
The Delivery Men, by Charlotte Kuh, pictures by Kurt Wiese, 1929 (beautifully lithographed and featuring a milkman and his horse, an iceman, a push-cart man with fish, and many others)
Tierra Nativa, Libro Unico Para 3er Grado, Guyaquil, Ecuador, 1940
Here is New York City, 1962, stamped Property of Board of Education
Little Man's Family, a Navaho primer, Publication of the Education Division--U.S. Office of Indian Affairs, 1940
Standardized Textbook of Barbering, Third Edition, published by Associated Master Barbers of America, 1931 (signed Property of Hank Jangula, with his notes folded up and stuffed inside)
So many more. Also zines. Also magazines and random paper, including three issues of Partisan Review from the fifties featuring work by James Baldwin, Elizabeth Bishop, H.L. Mencken, Delmore Schwartz, and their luminous peers; "A Question of Taste" pamphlet on the wonders of Miracle Whip, illustrated, from what looks like the thirties judging from the housewife's carefully marcelled hair; the similarly charming "Thrifty JELL-O Recipes to Brighten Your Menus: Desserts, Salads"; "Outdoor Edition GIRLS Lighting and Technical Data No. 4," 1952, less about technical data and more about GIRLS; and a program from an October 1897 performance of "Madame Sans Gene" at the Irving Place Theater, Deutiches Theater, Irving Place and 15th Street, New York. Oh, I miss that bookstore in Syracuse, and I will miss the Strand--but there is that fabulous thrift store on 82nd in Portland, with the best-organized book section of any thrift store anywhere, plus the Bins, plus of course Powell's. (Looking over what's listed here, I realize that this is not even hardly a thorough sampling; I didn't even mention the multiple Home Ec and Stenography textbooks, for example, nor the random 19th century self-published guides to everything...)


Ephemera That Cannot Be Categorized. (which seems to be redundant, but in the face of evidence, but I don't think it is)
Pale Blue Rotary Princess Phone*
A large E, found by Rana in the dump between Bard and Tivoli, presumably from a ChEvrolet
Another E, found on the street
Ten random medals and coins including Sears National Baby Contest 1934 Honorable Mention and COIN OF ANCIENT ITHACA ODYSSEUS commemorating the opening of the new building of the First National Bank of Ithaca, NY, May 1932
"take it or leave it!" board game, Series "B." Tag lines: "TRY FOR THE $64. QUESTION!" and "PLAY YOUR FAVORITE RADIO QUIZ AT HOME!" Categories: Football Teams, National Radio Programs of 1943 (you guess the sponsor; "Fibber McGee & Molly" is sponsored by Johnson's Wax, of course, and "Aldrich Family" is sponsored by Jello Puddings), Famous Pairs (Pelleas and Melisande, Aladdin and the Lamp, David Windsor and Wally Simpson, Salome and John the Baptist, Gilbert and Sullivan), Games or Sports (clue: spread, answer: pinochle), Capitals of Foreign Countries [footnote included in game: As of January, 1943], Famous Resorts (resort: Garden of the Gods, answer: Colorado), Synonyms (clue: beatitude, answer[s]: bliss, felicity, blessedness), Movie Stars (clue: Footlight Serenade, answer: Victor Mature, Betty Grable, John Payne), Jack Pot Questions (Q. What is white coal? A. A figurative expression for water power.)
Full set of Dewey Decimal Posters featuring the PEANUTS characters, copyright 1968, rescued from the library renovation at my last school


Catholicisms.
A genuine bottle of water from the grotto at Lourdes
Assorted other Lourdes memorabilia: t-shirt, mug, etc.
A lovely pale green wallet thrifted in Syracuse, empty except for a prayer card featuring a boy Jesus, a scapular medal of Saint Ann, and two medals of Mary, including one wrapped in a typewritten note from the Servite Fathers in Chicago explaining that the medal enclosed has been blessed and touched to a relic of the true Cross
A medal of St. Anthony, Patron Saint of Lost Things, found in a pair of thrift store pants, rubbed almost flat (I didn't buy the pants, but I did take the medal)
A black clay Virgin Mary from Mexico
The miraculous keyhole I found at a flea market, with blue and white paint on it forming an outline of the Virgin Mary (the lady gave it to me when I pointed out the clear apparition and asked how much she wanted for it)

Art.
Various maps
Two of Amy's paintings, stark, bizarre, and lovely
Donna's fabulous forest scene with blue dots
My great-grandfather Julius Thomley's painting of the family homestead in Minnesota, as it looked in the 1920's (painted from memory in the 1970's, when he was in his nineties)
SPACE POPS sign from Keight
Obama poster from Texas
The issue of Dance Index magazine with Joseph Cornell's Isadora Duncan collage on the cover
Three of Molly's prints


Photographs.
My grandmother as a young woman, sitting in a tree with her sister
The Nelson family seed and feed store in Eau Claire after it was hit by the train sometime in the...early 1960's? Late 1950's?
My father in college, shaking hands with Nixon in his official capacity as Young Republican
My father the hippie, standing on a Wisconsin hillside holding me as a baby
Countless old photos of people I never knew, some with names or places or a date scrawled on the back



*Mine is clearly a 20th century Wunderkind, with digressions into the 19th and 21st centuries, not counting a couple fossils and some rocks, undated but older than the rest of it.



[I started this post a couple months ago and finally gave up on ever completing it.]