Posted on 05/27/2009 11:25:34 AM PDT by Cinnamon Girl
Do you have girls? Girls pick dolls on how pretty they are or different. I had several black babies growing up because they looked different than me (white hair and blue eyes).
I'm just afraid that poor little Rebecca will wind up falling in with the wrong crowd. She'll meet a barb-bearded Trotskyite community organizer passing out pamphlets on Delancey Street and the next thing you know, she'll be marching with the Wobblies and taking up collections for the People's Army.
By the eve of World War II, she'll be writing for a left-wing city newspaper and raising her Red Diaper baby by herself after her activist lover wordlessly abandons her to go fight with the rebels in Spain, never to be heard from again. Her son will grow up troubled and rebellious, becoming an anarchist hippie war protester before developing a drug habit and falling out of life for a while. Eventually, he is rescued, in no small part by his mother, who loves him and needs him now more than ever. He cleans himself up, meets a nice girl, moves to the suburbs and eventually settles in as adjunct Professor of Sociology at NYU.
Rebecca will spend her declining years in a rent-controlled apartment on Riverside Drive in a neighborhood filled with nice, polite people; people who grew up in the same places and believing the same things as she does. They even speak a few words of Yiddish now and then, which always takes her back to a time and a place and a man whose face has grown as soft and indistinct as the one in the crumbling sepia photograph by her bedside.
This is a very comfortable place for her, and she has also softened with time, no longer angry at the world's manifest injustices, just weary at the prospect of them outliving her and yet she is happy, loves her life, her grandchildren.
On certain evenings she sits in her favorite chair balancing a fragile floral china coffee cup between calloused fingers. She looks out the bay window there on the 8th floor, out over the Hudson River, conjuring old pictorials behind her eyes and wondering what her life might have been like had she'd ever dared to travel outside New York and meet people from so many other walks of life. Funny how they were always there but rarely considered, those whose horizons extended to ideas and seas she knows she will likely never see.
So there's my biography for Rebecca, 1914; based on a few lives I know and have known.
"Darling," says one, "That is a beautiful ring! Look, it's huge!"
"Oy," says the other, "This is the fabulious Goldberg Diamond! But you know, it comes with a curse!"
"Really!" says the first, and she leans in close, "What's the curse?"
"Mr. Goldman!" says the first!
...I really don’t care actually.
The fiscal collapse or theft by taxes is destroying the culture. Americans taxed to death to pay for illegals and welfare cases. Obama’s goal is to bankrupt the middle and upper middle class for total control.
That’s part of it, but there’s a deep cultural regression in my opinion.
I see from googling that info that there is that claim, but couldn’t find a primary source to confirm it. Their website mentions the united way and Special Olympics. Do you have a source showing that they are currently giving to Planned avoidance of Parenthood?
To make sure none of this happens, get a WWII-era GI Joe doll for Rebecca to date (okay, now we need a GI Yossi).
Hi Suzi. Fascinating doll here. My wife, whom you, is a third generation descendant of Russian Jews, exactly the ethnic group being presented here. Her grandparents came over in the early 20th century from Minsk, which was more than half Jewish at the time. After being conquered by the Nazis, most of the Jewish population were executed, nearly 40,000 I think.
How’s the family?
You are quite the writer!
Better plot and character development in those few paragraphs than I have seen in entire novels! ;)
Both of my (Jewish) grandfathers were in the Army, during WWI, though. But there were certainly plenty of tough Jewish kids from the streets of Brooklyn circa 1939 that might have offered her a different kind of life.
I have no idea. I was never in the market for one.
I loved these dolls when my girls had them and am sorry they are out of the doll phase [aged nearly 15 and nearly 21 now!] because I would love to get the new one. I always liked that they were from an historical period and were a way to interest them in the history of that time period through the book series and dolls. Never much saw the point to the generic DOLLS OF TODAY.
Was that the case even before Pleasant Company sold out to Mattel? I didn’t know of the connection when we were buying the dolls. I would not buy had I known, but there is no denying that it is a wonderful concept. We went to Williamsburg one year and they had a Tea with Miss Manderly based on the Felicity series, which was from the colonial era and took place in Williamsburg. It was a very fun thing to do with my daughter and her doll.
I didn't realize that Jeanne's family was originally from Russia! The American Girl dolls always have very interesting stories included with them.
I sincerely hope you know this only because you have a daughter. Otherwise, I’m a little creeped out right now :)
Three daughters.
I have two of my own (3 mo old and 3 yr old), and I sincerely hope that they do not each want a $100 doll :)
http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/americangirl/index
Here are old threads on it,
also wiki covers/links in “controversy” section...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Girl_%28company%29
Guess I’m thinking “once a lefty, always a lefty”.
I’m sure they find a way to get money to their causes.
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