There’s something sad about an estate sale. I can’t go to one of these things without feeling a little bit vulturous, jostling with the other vultures and swooping down to retrieve the scraps of a life from a folding table of knick knacks. In fact, it might be impossible to go to an estate sale–or…
I’ve been looking for a dresser for what’s known affectionately as my Totally ’80s Guest Room–for months. Dear Lady Bricabrac is known to quip that there’s no real rush to buy, that most of the pieces I’m interested in aren’t going anywhere—because, after all, who else wants them? This is often true. My friends these…
Now look at that old church. And them old houses. Did George Washington ever sleep here? Of course he did. This whole neighborhood just stinks with atmosphere. –Arsenic and Old Lace (1944) Brooklyn–of all places–“stinks with atmosphere” in Capra’s Arsenic and Old Lace. The main commercial streets off the central square once held a full…
Yet the heterogeneous forces did cooperate to a reality which [we] could not deny… and the first number was representative of all their nebulous intentions in a tangible form. –William Dean Howells, A Hazard of New Fortunes (1890) The Old Curiosity Blog is now OPEN.
The Old Curiosity Blog 