One of the great things about volunteering at a vote center is the parents who bring their kids with them, so the kids will learn the importance of voting.
California sends mail-in ballots to all registered voters. So, unlike in my childhood when essentially all voting was in-person, and you had to do it at your exact neighborhood polling place, you can just mail your ballot in, or put it in a drop box. Most people do. I have no doubt that it's possible to make a family ritual of filling out the ballot at the kitchen table.
But it's fun to see the local kids, trailing along with their parents the way I did when I was their age.
In-person voting centers can both accept your completed mail-in ballot AND solve problems like losing your mail-in ballot, spoiling your mail-in ballot, never receiving your mail-in ballot, and other complications!
I am once again in awe of LMM's ability to keep me absolutely riveted by the absolutely dullest family dinner (though of course that is partly because Valancy is ready to cause some chaos and merely biding her time.)
"The greatest happiness is to sneeze when you want to."
I don't believe we've had the Stirlings' opinions on sneezing specifically yet, though I think we can hazard a guess; and perhaps it is related to all of them fretting over Valancy potentially getting a cold. Still, I'm mostly reminded of Diana Wynne Jones's Hexwood, when Mordion says that the worst part of being a brainwashed murderslave is not being able to laugh at the people who controlled him.
Where did the dog bite you? "Just a little bit below the Catholic church." "Is that a vital part?"
Valancy you are ten times funnier than Uncle Benjamin and your relatives don't deserve you.
"Oh but you know we are all dead, the whole Stirling clan. Some of us are buried, and some aren't - yet. That is the only difference"
The chapter started by relaying all the relatives going through all their usual motions, telling all their same anecdotes and jokes over and over. Like the Stirlings are all just ghosts haunting themselves.
"The very idea of a man named Snaith!" said Second Cousin Sarah. "Why, the name itself is enough to condemn him!"
I mean, she has a point. "Snaith" might be the least sexy name I've ever heard.
"People who don't like cats," said Valancy, attacking her dessert with a relish, "always seem to think that there is some peculiar virtue in not liking them."
Well, we can check "strong feelings about cats" off our bingo card, along with this gem:
"She pictured an island in Muskoka haunted by pussies."
(what are they having for dessert, anyway? Salad is salad and lamb is lamb, but what is "dessert" here?)
And what is the origin of the name "Wansbarra"? I'm assuming Anglo, but it looks odd.
Anyway I want Valancy to be my plus one at all my family functions now.
(what are they having for dessert, anyway? Salad is salad and lamb is lamb, but what is "dessert" here?)
Going with the concept that the Stirlings are stuck in the fading, golden pre-WWI past, I looked at Titanic menus, where "dessert" is often custards and stewed fruits. The Stirlings' version would have seen simplication over the years (plus Valancy doesn't remark on the elaborateness of dessert, nor its stodginess), so I think it's...
blancmange.
Blancmange is mild, unexceptionable, and vaguely fancy. It will not upset delicate digestions.
And what is the origin of the name "Wansbarra"? I'm assuming Anglo, but it looks odd.
Oh that surname is driving me nuts. It seems to have no origin other than TBC. After playing around with etymology and disliking all the possibilities, I think Wansbarra is a social indicator like the Tolliver/Taliaferro gap. In the U.S. south, Taliaferro is traditionally pronounced Tolliver. But if you find a family that spells it Tolliver, you know at least one generation was illiterate. I think Wansbarra was something like Wainsborough or Waynesboro or similar; but someone couldn't read, so when the next generation could, they spelled it like they said it. Grandfather Wansbarra therefore came from a family that had at some point been below the snobby Stirlings.
Uncle Herbert gave Valancy a second look that day. Being a man, he didn’t know what she had done to her hair, but he thought surprisedly that Doss was not such a bad-looking girl, after all; and he put an extra piece of white meat on her plate.
Another instance of "to her that hath, shall be given"
Second Cousin Sarah Taylor, with her great, pale, expressionless eyes, who was noted for the variety of her pickle recipes and for nothing else. So afraid of saying something indiscreet that she never said anything worth listening to. So proper that she blushed when she saw the advertisement picture of a corset and had put a dress on her Venus de Milo statuette which made it look “real tasty.”
Little Cousin Georgiana. Not such a bad little soul. But dreary—very. Always looking as if she had just been starched and ironed. Always afraid to let herself go. The only thing she really enjoyed was a funeral. You knew where you were with a corpse. Nothing more could happen to it. But while there was life there was fear.
Valancy is not the only woman in the Stirling clan who's been living in fear! I'm struck by the description of Cousin Sarah and her statue - she doesn't have to display it if she doesn't like the nudity, but she's choosing to display it anyhow and even goes out of her way to make a tiny dress for it. What is going on in her head. I want to know.
(Also it's a bit funny that Valancy is criticizing her for being known for pickle recipes and nothing else, when Valancy herself is known for basically nothing within her clan. Valancy should get to know Cousin Sarah! I'll bet she has hidden depths too)
Uncle Wellington. Long, pallid face, thin, pale-yellow hair—“one of the fair Stirlings”
Oh I'm just now realizing that Wellington is his first name, not his last name. That makes more sense. That means Aunt Wellington just fully gave up her name then when she entered the clan? Like not only did she change her last name, but she's not even able to use her first name anymore either. All because there's already another Mary Stirling (who never even shows up anywhere else in the text except this one mention I believe) :(
My brand new headcanon is that Cousin Sarah is a closeted lesbian who fears that her reaction to corset ads will out her. It won’t, because nobody in the family has ever had the thought of a lesbian peek into their minds.
My local Daiso not only got in more of the flower shop and ice cream shop sets (which I still decided not to buy), but claims to have a little bedroom in the same scale (roughly 1:20, compatible with Playmobil and some 3/4-scale dollhouse people). There were no boxes of it, and I prefer my MCM resin furniture in that scale... but it makes me wonder how far they intend to go with rooms. Are they going to fill the void left by Michaels dumping that size of DIY Modern Mini?
if theres one thing that really pissed me off from my 3 years of architecture i took in high school it's learning about how we used to have all these little techniques to maximize or minimize heat or warmth and now we just merrily abandoned all those to have the same copypaste style buildings everywhere that are often INCREDIBLY unoptimized to the local weather and climate so we can just throw more money at our heating and cooling bills
where i live it is hot as balls approximately 80% of the year. i do not want a massive butt-ugly grey mcmansion with a huge echoey open-concept kitchen-livingroom-foyer-diningroom-staircase that has huge windows so i can have an hvac unit the size of a barge heaving and straining to keep it at a constant 72 the grees. i want a north indian traditional style home with small windows to force the airflow to cool, decorative grates to limit the amount of sunlight, and a COURTYARD with a POND *smashes unspecified large object*
I have a book from the early 1980s about passive solar homes that talks a lot about how using computers to analyze a building site can lead to houses custom-made to work with not only the climate of the general area, but also the microclimates of the site, and I genuinely like the looks of most of the houses featured in the book
And when I looked up why that approach was abandoned, no longer considered the Way of the Future/High Tech way to build even modest homes, I found out it was because insulation technology also experienced advances during that time, meaning it also became possible to build a home that completely ignored the local climate yet offered reasonable comfort year round
And then I learned about vernacular architecture, which is the academic term for "stuff built without being designed by architects"--it's largely building practices that have been figured out by people in a region, using materials from that region, to deal with the climate of that region
And then, yeah, I got even angrier at McMansions and suburbs full of identical houses all over everywhere
Yes to all of the above. For a few years in Phoenix, I lived in a genuinely vernacular home from the 1950s. It was built in the sweet spot between "we'll copy East Coast Victorian architecture to show we're sophisticated" (1880s), "we'll adopt the California bungalow because we're possessed of a moiety of common sense" (1910s-20s), and "generic buildings with blocks of south-facing glass YEE HAW" (1990s+).
What did this house have?
Concrete block walls.
Deep eaves.
Roll-down solid window screens.
Water heater outside on the south-facing wall (so it didn't need gas to keep hot for much of the year).
This house was outright cold in the winter, and it stayed cool until Monsoon Season in July -- the swamp cooler could handle 108 degrees dry, but not wet.
When I lived in newer construction, I had to run the AC from early May to late October, just to be comfortable... and that's after seeking out apartments with north-facing windows.
"She’s like a dewless morning": I want to talk about Olive
Confession: I keep envisioning Olive as Miss Piggy.
Olive is highlighted and given big red arrows pointing to her as Valancy's foil: the beneficiary of pretty privilege, the cousin who was offered everything. And she does remarkably little with it. Let's talk about Olive.
Olive graduated from Havergal College, which is a real prep school in Toronto for the daughters of wealthy families. Havergal offered three tracks: preparation for university, focus on arts and music, and a simple diploma. Given that Valancy doesn't mention Olive being praised for earning a B.A., nor for prowess at music or art, I think she must have drifted through and emerged with only a diploma. She was there for the social connections and fun.
What does she do with her twenties? She gets engaged, but he dies. She has an unsuitable fling. She gets engaged again, to a suitable young man who somehow is only finishing university at 27 or 28. (I don't believe he's notably younger than Olive: the family would talk about that.)
Either Mr. Cecil Price had to earn his way to university and took a while, or he interrupted his education in 1914 to fight in WWI, then came back to finish around 1919. If so, Olive met him when he returned (3 years ago) and snapped up one of the few available young men. This would strongly imply that Olive's first fiancé was killed in the war.
That's a mighty invisible war, otherwise. Valancy dreads quilting, not knitting socks and balaclavas to send to soldiers. I feel like LM Montgomery wanted a fairytale "a few years ago" setting but was so used to certain assumptions about the world that they trickled in, regardless of their implications.
If Olive's first fiancé was killed in the war, then Olive's trajectory is largely that the world she prepared to enter has been evaporating. She passed up her opportunity to prepare for anything other than being a social ornament, and she's missed almost a decade of being a fashionable young wife. If it is in fact post-WWI... diamond engagement rings when steeply out of style, so Olive's having one is distinctly off-trend.
Her planned wedding dress, though, seems to be based on what Princess Mary wore at her 1922 wedding to Viscount Henry Lascelles.
I'm entirely baffled by why Olive's train would be lined with green georgette, though. Georgette is a translucent, slightly nubby fabric (then silk, now available in polyester) that is valued for its draping properties. It's a weird choice for lining anything, especially something that drags on the floor. (Georgette is named for Georgette de la Plante, a designer who popularized the fabric from the mid-1910s into the 1920s.) Either LM Montgomery and her editors don't obsess about fabric accuracy, or it's a signal that Olive is flailing to glom onto trends without understanding them.
Anyway, I feel like Olive, who was put on a pedestal as a child, has emerged into adulthood in a "better" spot than Valancy solely because she started on third base. In terms of doing anything with her potential, her own choices (possibly compounded by bad luck, if WWI happened in this universe) have still left her undeveloped as a person.
Y'know that part of the hobby stash that is, technically, trash?
The items you've been squirreling away for ages, because you know they still have so much potential?
The stuff you'll never find again, because it was technically meant to be ephemera that no-one was supposed to give a second thought to before throwing it away?
The bulky packages they've been in ever since you bought them so long ago?
And, most importantly, the things that you have so much of that the storage situation is overwhelming? Hard to look at? Even harder to physically add more overlooked-by-everyone-else treasures to (which you very often do)?
This post is giving you permission to throw at least some of them away.
You can throw them all away if you want, but I know how hard that is.
Start with a little: the most broken pieces; the things already nearly used up but surely that last odd little bit will work for something, someday; 80% of each of the identical things; the parts you've tried to use for years, but it never worked out; the well-meaning gifts of generosity from people who know You Are Creative So You Will Do Something Amazing With This.
It's OK. It's not wasteful--the cumulative waste of individuals will never compare to the waste of industry. And paying attention to what you let go can help you figure out what you don't want to let back in.
And, yes, of course, giving it as a gift or having an exchange with like-minded hobby friends is an option, but make sure the recipient actually wants the stuff, and that you're not just offloading your guilt about being wasteful onto someone else.
This message brought to you by me trying to deal with the parts of the hobby stash I've denied ignored for too long.
I moved my studio out of my house for the first time ever. I left some things at home, for hobbies, and moved the rest to a space in an old mill building. The packing process was rushed. The unpacking process has been eye-opening - the things I brought that have not been touched for more than 15 years, the things I have so much of and kind of hate. The weird fabrics and strange colors and things I got for one particular project and did not make that project and also did not incorporate that material into the general stash... Let It GOOOO.
If you have a re-use store near by, you can send it there, but if you don't, you have my permission to Throw It Out. To quote my brother, quoting his mentor, the oldest lobsterman in Marblehead "Trow it rit the fuck overboard, that's jist trash"
Oh, that, too (I have made posts about that XD), but here I do mean literal trash!
I do not need to keep all of those cardboard tubes from the centers of rolls of things just because they're really nice, heavy cardboard. I do not need to keep the pieces of packaging that are made with metallic print just because they're pretty colors. I do not need to keep the bottles of glue with about a quarter inch of possibly dried out glue in the bottom. I do not need to keep small plastic lids because they look like they should be useful for something, surely. I do not need to keep things--which were broken to begin with--that I have already cut off all the otherwise useful parts. I do not need all the cute empty food jars. I do not need to keep every cardboard package/box in odd sizes or of surprisingly nice quality. I have so much fabric that I absolutely do not need those scraps of cloth that I might be able to get one 1" square out of to use for doll-size patchwork.
The problem is that I am just so sure that they're useful! So I put them away in a box and either forget about them, or use exactly one of the many I ended up saving over time. This is giving myself--and anyone else who keeps every little disposable thing because they see its hidden potential, while never actually doing anything to achieve that potential--absolution from the guilt of throwing away things that seem so useful, but were never meant to be used like that. And maybe a bonus lesson in learning what you don't need to keep to begin with.
There will always be more trash.
and of course this does not apply to people who do actively use trash items to make new things--it's for people like me whose natural state is to plan far more than to do.
Michael and Melinda have been to the carpet mill-end discount store and bought some sturdy industrial carpet. While the color is mid-1980s, it goes with the art. And it's upholstery fabric that cost me a whopping $1 at an estate sale this morning, so if I find something better, no tragedy.
Sharp eyes will note that they've upgraded their coffee table to wicker that's more in scale (50 cents at an estate sale last weekend) and swapped sofas. dd's Discounts had another of the sofa jewelry box designs: a camelback sofa that coordinates better with a bajillion shades of pink. So the Young Sweethearts get that sofa, and the yellow chaise longue moved into the main doll cabinet, where it holds three dolls and can be pulled out for posing.
Objectively, I don't love Valancy realizing how ugly everyone in her family is--but there is one very important thing I must remember. And that is that these are the people who have been telling her she was ugly for her entire life. So really what she's realizing is that they are no better than her.
"While there was life there was fear." Similar to Valancy's own meditations. We've all been saying that if not for her diagnosis, Valancy would have ended up being Cousin Stickles--but I think maybe she actually would have ended up being Cousin Georgiana. That may be why Cousin Georgiana gave her the rosebush--because she sees in Valancy a kindred spirit.
Canonically, Valancy is brunette and Olive blonde. Yet, in my mind's eye, Valancy is always blonde and Olive brunette--the same as I imagine Christine Stuart. I wonder what to make of that. Have beauty standards changed significantly enough in the last century to make that impression on my mind? Or is it a me thing?
Olive went to college. Lover of academia that I am, I am far more interested in that than in her romantic history. What did she study? Why doesn't Valancy resent her that as well as everything else?
The issue of Valancy's education has been bugging me for days now! OP finally motivated me to dig harder.
Olive went to Havergal College, which was a fancy prep school for girls rather than a university. This is a fascinating choice for several reasons and doesn't at all remove the question of why Valancy didn't envy this.
Havergal was founded in 1894. It's unlikely Olive would have been sent to an untested new school, so she probably attended after 1898 (when the bigger facility on Jarvis Street in Toronto opened). The Blue Castle could definitely be taking place as early as the beginning of the 1910s.
There is a terrific exhibit on life at Havergal from 1894 to 1912 here. Several tidbits:
Havergal's initial board of directors was mostly "low church," not Anglican.
Of the Jarvis Street campus: "Prospective parents could be lured with the appeal of proximity to well-known families such as the Masseys, the Cawthras and the Nairns."
Havergal's curriculum was progressive for its time. Physical education was a huge deal. There were science labs. Girls were encouraged to go out and experience culture.
There were three tracks for graduation: matriculation (university prep), special ("focus on music, literature, art and languages"), and diploma.
Silence on Olive's interests implies she simply earned a diploma, and that going to Havergal was mostly about social connections. But still! Why does Valancy not envy access to music and theater?
When did Valancy's education sputter out? She grew up in a place that had relatively few year-round residents, so it's possible that schooling beyond about age 14 wasn't available without going away to a boarding school. It's also possible that she was taken out of school early for being "sickly."
I do think it's important that while Valancy has imagination and vocabulary, she's set up as resonating to the natural world, not to intellectual pursuits.
(Aaaaaaand I'm out of steam and need to go do my paid intellectual pursuits now...)
I walked to the nearest supermarket this morning because (a) we needed tortillas and (b) I'd read a post on how if you want your brain to generate ideas, walking is the key. (I then spent much of the walk considering the implications of a brain hack that requires being fairly able-bodied.)
As I was checking out, I wanted a treat, so I visited the 50-cent capsule machines. One promised "shoe charms" that look like fast food. I wanted pizza, so of course I didn't get pizza.
Shoe charms were apparently the hot micro-trend of fall 2025, a phenom that zipped right past me. These little cheapies are the unholy union of Crocs Jibbitz and Shopkins, only one of which I knew about before writing this.
While the smiling fries of upper right (content at being consumed to fulfill its role in a late capitalist economy) are the correct orientation, I like this image better reversed (lower left) into a sort of "Shopkins manananggal." Somewhere, this creature has legs, but it is swooping around with its dangling fries, looking for cholesterol to suck out of its victims.
The only place I could think to put cross-cultural pop art was Sally's bathroom, so there it is. It gives a person something to think about while on the john.
Dolls I Didn't Buy: 1986 Brinn's Musical Calendar Doll (November)
Miss November here was one of the few dolls sighted at estate sales this past weekend. She was part of a 12-doll series sold on QVC. She's 13 inches tall, with porcelain head and hands, and with no legs -- her nether region is a plastic cone to house the music box mechanism. Word is that Miss November plays "What the World Needs Now" (for context, here's the famous Dionne Warwick version). I guess it's themed with the sweet mythos of the First Thanksgiving in 1621, ignoring how English colonists treated Native Americans in subsequent years. (The National Archives provides succinct context and thereby heads me off from ranting about the Great Swamp Massacre of 1675.)
That $5 price tag is ambitious. Like many a 1980s porcelain collectible doll, Brinn's music box dolls have very little market. They only command real money when it's a full set in pristine condition.
Parsley is cuddling! (Those are my legs under the blanket.) Cuddling is a new and fragile Cat Skill for this one. (Her pillow says “We’re Cat People.”)
See, this is the Lego world I grew up with. Legos came in mostly red and white bricks, with a smattering of yellow, blue, black, and/or clear. The blocks were bricks for unspecified uses, not sets designed to build a specific thing.
Here's my first Lego set. It was originally issued in the mid-1960s, though I was not old enough for Legos until the 1970s.
When you build with this style of brick, everything is 3D pixel art with less than a 4-bit palette; but you get used to it. I mostly built houses because I like houses, and because houses are fine with holding still. While I also liked (and still like) toy trains, these are meant to move, so I played with other toys for that.
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