Tag: books

My Garden, Photography

Yellow

Shelly

Daylily

There are only two more days left of my staycation, and I feel like I haven’t gotten anything done. I mean, I did get a lot accomplished, but it was all boring stuff. Probably the most exciting thing was getting the mountain of Freecycle crap listed and moved out of the studio, which is now clean and ready to work in.

I also got rid of four large bags of books, so there’s room on the shelves for the eleventy million other books I’ve bought over the last few weeks. (Yes, I am now the owner of an entire set of first edition Hardy Boys books. They aren’t worth much, but they’re very entertaining. Someday I’ll re-re-read them and keep a tally of how many times Frank, Joe, and Chet are knocked unconscious. I figure they should have been in a persistent vegetative state by the 5th or 6th book.)

Photography

Old Books

Shelly

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The first real book I ever read, from cover to cover, all by myself, was a Hardy Boys mystery. It was my mom’s, and it was one of the old, original tweed volumes. I was hooked. On reading, and on mysteries, and on the Hardy Boys. I read them all. A few I bought new, in the 70s, and others I picked up at thrift stores, flea markets, and yard sales. When I could get my hands on an old version, it made me happy, because I realized early on that the newer editions had been heavily edited. Some, in fact, had morphed into entirely different stories.

I lost all those books when I was in high school, in one of our many moves. They were put into storage and never retrieved. I figured I’d outgrown them anyway, so it wasn’t a big deal to me until years later, when I started to miss my old childhood books. I’ve picked up a bunch of them at yard sales and thrift stores over time, and even a few of the old Hardy Boys books. I recently got serious about hunting them down and have been ordering a couple at a time online.

And, of course, I’ve been reading them. Some of the stories I only recall from the mangled 1970s re-issues, so meeting them in their original form has been a revelation. Frank and Joe are only 15 and 16 years old, not 17 and 18. Just babies! And they carry guns! Aunt Gertrude is a vile old woman, not the cranky curmudgeon that everyone secretly adores (or at least that’s my recollection from the re-issues). The police are thoroughly incompetent and unlikeable. The racism is shocking in its overtness, and it’s easy to tell the bad guys because they’re unkempt or have shifty eyes. There’s a lot to criticize, but there are also a lot of happy memories connected with reading them when I was little.

I’ve got about 1/3 of the original 58 books and will be adding to the stack. When I’m finished, I’ll move on to Nancy Drew, Trixie Belden, and Ginny Gordon.

Ladybusiness

Fig. 266

Shelly

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Fig. 266.–Breast, Abdominal and Vulvar Bandage in use at the New York Maternity Hospital.

The woman’s stay in bed should be prolonged as long as possible–it should be absolute for the first six days. It is only at the end of this time that we allow the bed to be re-made. The woman should be carried to another bed […] Thereafter the bed should be changed every two to three days. She should remain in bed at least three weeks, often longer, than less […] At the end of this time, she may be allowed to change to a sofa or a reclining chair. Only at the end of the thirtieth day will we allow her to walk, and only at the end of the fifth week should she resume her household duties. She should not venture out before the sixth week. […] When the woman leaves her bed, we allow her to wear corsets, but we insist on an abdominal supporter being also worn for at least six weeks. This is particularly important in women who are very stout, and in those who have borne many children, since the abdominal walls have lost more of their elasticity.

Charpentier, Dr. A., Cyclopaedia of obstetrics and gynecology: anatomy of the internal and external genitals, menstruation and fecundation, normal pregnancy and labor, being volume one of A practical treatise on obstetrics. New York: William Wood & Company, 1887.

And no wonder! She has been wrapped in swaddling clothes and confined to her bed for weeks on end. I’ll spare you the details of the bandages, what they’re comprised of, their changing, and the antiseptic douches. I wouldn’t want to give anyone nightmares.