Article Notes I

NY Times: The Map of My Life - Roger Cohen

"Life, among other things, is accumulation - of objects, papers, photographs, paintings, tax returns, love letters and assorted things in the backs of drawers, the bottoms of closets and the recesses of cellars"

"Possessions can be uplifting if they are beautiful or merely comforting, signposts to a life, recalling the places they were acquired and with whom"

"On the other hand, they can feel imprisoning"


NY Times: What You Collect: The Ordinary and the Odd - Michelle L. Dozois

"The New Museum's summer show 'The Keeper' explores the complex relationships we have with the things we collect.

Why do we amass certain objects? How do these collections affect us and those around us? When does a pleasant hobby cross the line into obsession, even madness?"

NY Times readers asked to submit stories and photos of their own collections. A sampling:

Absolut Vodka ads. Apple stems. Avocado seeds. Beach plastic. Branded barware. Broken objects. Chopstick wrappers. Discarded snapshots. Doll heads (“The head must be found as a separate item,” wrote Brenda Segel of New York.) Donald Duck memorabilia. Egg cups. Goddess statues. Greeting cards. “Harry Potter” books in different languages. Hotel room keys. Lucite grape clusters. Mah-jongg sets. Marijuana tax stamps. Men’s polyester disco shirts. Museum toilet paper from Europe. Nirvana posters. Oyster shells. Pockets. Potty-training books. Rubber ducks. Sand. Skull mugs. Soviet watches. Troll dolls. Typewriters. Vintage: Barbie structures, electric clothes irons, figures of the Virgin Mary, handkerchiefs, metal measuring tapes, photos of a baby and a dog in a playpen, photos of people and places named Dick, Thermoses, Western Electric telephones

Constance Thalken "For once year, at the end of every month, I collected and saved the contents of my vacuum cleaner. I simply dumped the contents into a plastic grocery bag, labeled the bag with the month, and placed it in a dark corner of my attic to incubate.

After the year passed, I opened each month's bag and was mezmerised by what I saw. I was moved by the hair shed by my dog Tyner, now entangled in its own dark, dusty beauty.

I saw how the ladybugs that gathered on the sun-drenched living room windows in the summer had transformed in death into enamelled shells of spotted amber. My usual fright of the wasps and the bees gave way to tenderness; their frozen poses now elegiac and wistful. The dense clumps of pollen from April made my throat tighten"


Skip Richards "About 29 years ago my 7-year-old daughter decided to collect different paper clips. I started to bring her any I found, and soon she lost interest and I was hooked. I now have over 10,700 different paper clips displayed on the walls of three rooms"