Today I felt compelled to ferret through a large-format cache* of ephemera that has been protruding from under the day bed in the study too long. I continue to preen myself on not listening to all of you telling me just to throw everything away, because inside this time capsule was my college diploma.
But mostly I found visual-type stuff, especially large wall calendars from the 1980s and 1990s: Japanese woodblock prints, Victoriana, one, um, male photographer of the mid-1980s; and my beloved signs of the zodiac from Paper Moon Graphics, with which I decorated my second college apartment. It’s always something, rediscovering the tastes of one’s youth . . .
Among the other treasures that still bring me joy:
Prints I got at Colonial Williamsburg in the summer of 1980.
A selection of 8x10 prints I bought at the National Gallery on that same trip, which decorated almost every dorm room and college apartment.
The original birthday card from 1987 or 1988 drawn by the in-house cartoonist at The Tab and signed by almost everyone on the staff for me.
In a folder, the fabulous narrow posters for LCLT’s Twelfth Night in 1982, in which I appeared as Sir Andrew Aguecheek.
A styrofoam head of Mae West that had come off a figure of her that I think Arthur gave me sometime in the early 1990s. I think I nicknamed her Frankenmae. Yes . . . yes, I did nickname her Frankenmae.
My college graduation mortarboard, complete with tassel.
An envelope full of letters I’d written to my gramma in high school and college.
Finally, there were two copies of an issue of Stuff magazine from 1991, that time just before the Internet came along to change how we communicate about local arts culture forever. That there were two copies tipped me off that I’d saved them because I must have been in there for some reason or another, and I was correct. Turns out that was the year a group of us won third prize at the Artist’s Ball (which used to be held by United South End Artists) going as the Hollywood sign, and there we were, the line of us, on page 69 in the Party Pics section. The theme was “Stars and Creatures of Hollywood’s Double Features.” I remember the woman who won first prize that year, dressed as an alarmingly lifelike gargoyle with flashing red eyes . . . but whether she was supposed to have been from The Wizard of Oz or The Hunchback of Notre Dame no one thought to ask.
This is the enjoyable part of the process.
*Read: big, disintegrating paper delivery bag from a caterer I did business with in the early 1990s.