Prycer Consulting

The last six months or so have been crazier than usual, of which this poor neglected blog is certainly a testament.  To briefly recap: in June, I was named Interim Executive Director at the museum where I’ve worked as educator for the past nine years.  I spent four weeks this fall at a professional development seminar in Indiana.  And the weeks surrounding that departure were crammed with work things, a friends wedding (I was maid of honor), my parents’ 65th birthday party, and of course, the holidays.  Now that it’s January, I feel like I’m starting to get a sense of what the new normal is.  At the very least, I’ve found time to read and watch tv again!

Several of my friends had equally crazy (though for different reasons) falls.  They also happen to share my love for Anne Shirley.  In talking with one friend back in October about that lovely blank spot between Christmas and New Year’s, we decided that an Anne party would be the perfect way to celebrate making it to the end of 2013.  Tea, raspberry cordial (with optional hooch), tea-time food and the movie.  Because I am somewhat nuts, I decided that I would also haul out my entire Anne collection for party decorations.

Now, I knew I had a lot.  After all, I’ve been collecting since I was nine or ten years old.  If you’d been keeping an eye out for things for 25 years, you would have a lot too.  But seeing it scattered throughout the house was kinda amazing.  I believe guests were both amazed and frightened.  In my defense, the only things that are ever out all the time are a few pictures in the guest bedroom.  Though I will confess that I left out a few of the Anne dolls and added my Little Women porcelain figures and my Laura Ingalls Wilder (the author, not the little girl!) doll for this month.

One friend brought scones and another egg salad sandwiches.  I made cucumber sandwiches, pimento cheese (yes, I know that’s not in Anne, but I live in the South where if you have tiny tea sandwiches, pimento is required!), raspberry cordial, and plum puffs.

Here’s the thing about Anne: we all adore Anne, but we can also make fun of her.  After all, what child, even in the 19th century, ever talked like that?  We started being snarky from the very beginning, which made watching so much more fun.  We laughed in places where as a kid, I would never have laughed.  I would have just nodded my head because I understood perfectly.  We talked back to the movie often.  The champagne might have had something to do with that.

About halfway through the movie, we started imagining backstories for some of the secondary characters.  If Aunt Josephine is so rich, why isn’t Mr. Barry?  Was there some sort of family argument?  And how did she become so wealthy?  Was she a madam?  It went downhill from there.  By the end of it, Mr. Barry was a serial killer, Mrs. Stacey had some sort of secret double life, and I can’t remember what all else.  It was hysterical.  If we were really clever and not so busy, we could write one heck of an alternate history of Avonlea.

It’s not often that I get to celebrate my love of kidlit history with others in person and not just online.  That moment of discovery can be so delightful.  After all, there has to be a moment of discovery because it’s not like I talk about such things all the time.  (Contrary to the belief of one friend who teases me often about this interest and refused to come to the party because she “might be converted.”)  I discovered one kindred spirit when she noticed a very discreet watercolor of Green Gables at a housewarming.  Another was discovered during a workplace conversation about Little Women (a theme for one of our events.  Gee, I wonder whose idea that was. . .).  Bringing everyone together was such fun.

Kindred spirits are not so scarce as I used to think.