Home and Shopping
Elaine Soloway's Rookie Widow Series: Carless in Chicago, Un-couching The Potato & The Sign
With Tommy gone, without my head wrapped around his caregiving, my nights on the couch are starting to fray. I'm getting lonely. I admit that evenings out to theatre, to dinner, to the event I just ordered tickets for, are becoming more appealing. I'm managing my dislike for nighttime driving by using taxicabs. I'm adjusting to getting gussied up as the sky darkens. To prevent head- and eye-droops as the evening wears on, I take catnaps. Slowly, I’m peeling this small and stubborn body off the couch. more »
House and Home, a Traveling Exhibition: There’s No Place Like ...
Quotations, toys, and other graphic advertising materials prompt visitors to think about the different ideas embodied in the words "house" and "home." The exhibition showcases domestic objects from cooking utensils to telephones and traces how household goods tell the stories of our family traditions, heritage, and the activity of daily living. more »
Teacups and Friendship, Witnessing Friendship and Life Across the Table From My Elders
Roberta McReynolds writes: A book about how to read tea leaves was brought to the table. When our cups were empty, my mother and I were instructed to flip them upside down and spin them around three times before turning them upright again. My mother tried to discern shapes in the dregs which were looked up in the book for interpretation. This fortune-telling seemed a tad wicked to me at the time, but still tempting as the forbidden fruit. more »
Clothes Encounters: Where were the modest plaid skirts, bow-tied blouses, and shiny loafers my girl friends and I wore to high school?
Rose Madeline Mula writes: Something was definitely wrong with this picture. Earrings, nose rings, eyebrow rings, bizarre hair-dos, purple nail polish ... on the boys. Even weirder, one of them was actually wearing a bathrobe and slippers. I swear. The others sported second-skin-tight bicycle shorts or kaleidoscopic, ridiculously baggy pants obviously stolen from Barnum & Bailey. more »
