The Blind Spot

I’m sure there are quite a few of you in the crowd that reads this blog that are familiar with the webcomic xkcd, and particularly number 1053, “The Lucky Ten Thousand.”

Basically, it’s about common knowledge: even when things are allegedly “common knowledge”, there’s a large group of people who – every day – learn about it for the very first time. 

I was a member of “The Lucky 10,000” today, but I am not feeling particularly lucky. In fact, I’m feeling sad, mad, bitter and a little overwhelmed right now.

Today is the day I found out Linda Walter passed away. Back in January.

Yeah, I am NOT okay right now. 

The worst of this experience is not the cruel irony of me being unaware of this news for five full months. Or the fact that I had a blind spot in my vision so large that an entire person, someone very important to me and my personal history, fell into it. 

Or that nobody even mentioned it to me even casually or wondered why I didn’t say anything about it before. 

When I don’t talk about a popular or trending topic it’s because (a) I don’t have anything worthwhile to say about it, (b) I’m legally obligated not to talk about it, or (c) I know/knew nothing about it. 

It may seem like I am all-knowing sometimes. But I am not, and it does not hurt to drop me a line and let me know. 

I haven’t been able to get around the Internet much this year for reasons I’d rather not discuss now, aside from my Paramount Plus subscription. (Because seeing an optimistic vision of the future is something critical to my mental health.) And I do not do Facebook because I already have too much drama in my life and that much social interaction sucks the life out of me. 

(A couple of you were kind enough to let me know about the APH situation as it unfolded on Facebook, and I’m grateful for that. You guys, specifically, do rock.)

No, what hurts the most is the fact that I only learned of this now: I simply have no time to grieve. My boss was kind enough to give me a day to process my rawest emotions, but now I have to put them back in a box and take care of all the other things I need to take care of over the next three weeks.

It’s only when I’m in some of those big empty spaces in between the places I’ll be visiting in Wyoming that I think I can unwrap that box and set them free.

“You attend the funeral, you bid the dead farewell. You grieve. Then you continue with your life. And at times the fact of her absence will hit you like a blow to the chest, and you will weep. But this will happen less and less as time goes on. She is dead. You are alive. So live.” 

― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 6: Fables & Reflections

Archives, with Issues

This is something of what I hope to accomplish with my archive, someday:

http://www.theverge.com/2015/9/4/9257455/university-iowa-fanzine-fan-culture-preservation-project

The Model Horse Hobby has similar conservation issues, especially with early mimeographed items. The mimeographed items I have I keep in my office, completely out of the reach of direct sunlight.

One point in our favor is that model horse zines didn’t start appearing until the 1960s; the materials are still in the hands of the original recipients, for the most part. Many of our earliest participants are still with us, and still active.

On the negative, we were – collectively – much younger when we started publishing, too, and it also shows in the formatting. I have at least one early newsletter that was done as a carbon copy, on onionskin paper. Round robins – where one person started a “book” and each subsequent recipient added to the book before mailing it on – were also a popular early format, and not likely to survive.

(I came in at the very, very tail end of that. I might have the one I received, somewhere: I remember getting it and thinking “What is this?”)

One of the other reasons for my end-of-year sales push is – I hope – to generate enough money to buy more archival store materials, to accommodate some of the latest arrivals.

Everything is safe as it is right now, but I would like to upgrade some of the storage (a) for my own peace of mind, and (b) to make a show of its significance and importance, in case arrangements for its aftercare are not already in place in event of something dire happening to me. (In short: This is important – take care of it!)

I also wanted to make a point of linking to this article because I’ve always considered the Model Horse Hobby to be, in some ways, another facet of Fandom itself, and that can be seen in the sheer amount of ephemera we both generated, and how similar they both look and feel.

(Another point in common: content. A few older hobby zines from the 1970s have first-person Worldcon reports!)

As the article – and some of its links – allude to, another issue with conservation is that the authors of some of the materials don’t want them preserved. I’ve definitely run across some materials that would probably fit in that category, too, mostly disputes and feuds long since forgotten. (But not all!)

Lucky for us, most of the “naughtiest” stuff is associated with breeding/pedigree assignment, and even that is pretty tame.

Ephemeral

I’m afraid I’m not going to be terribly talkative today. The "texture" issue I had over the weekend turned into an allergic reaction so severe that I ended up at the local urgent care clinic early Monday morning. I’m feeling (and looking!) somewhat better today, but the Benadryl is definitely messing with my head.

I used the unexpected day off to sort through some very old hobby ephemera I received during BreyerFest, from the archive of a long-time hobbyist. There’s not a lot of Breyer-specific information in it, but some of the materials contained within are absolutely mindblowing from a Hobby History standpoint. Including this seemingly crude newsletter:

It’s the first page/front page of the January 1969 issue of The Model Horse Shower’s Journal.

Think about that a minute: January 1969. That’s over 45 years ago! I’m astounded that something this ephemeral lasted this long. It’s continuing existence a testimony to the staying power of the hobby, and the profound impact it had on its participants.

The level of sophistication that existed in the hobby then came as something of a revelation to me. Live shows were exceedingly rare then, but the photo show scene was thriving, pedigree assignment/breeding was huge, and dozens of clubs abounded to cater to every whim and interest.

And most astounding of all, on the second page of the January 1969 issue, someone was already trying to collect photographs to write a history book. (Oh, how much simpler it would have been, back then…)

There was even a NAMSA: The North American Model Showers’ Association! I have an undated 8-page flier that defines all the positions within the Board of Directors, Voting Rights, the Point System, Approved Shows, and a Championship Show. (There’s mention of 6-cent stamps? That would date it to ca. 1968-1971.)

I have even earlier evidence of hobby activity, but nothing that suggested this level of complexity.

I didn’t become an active participant in the hobby until 1978, though I was aware of it before then through the ads for Just About Horses in the Breyer Collector’s Manuals. And through the enthusiastic recruiting efforts of a couple of hobbyists a grade ahead of me who rode the same school bus.

When I received my first issue of The Model Horse Shower’s Journal in September 1978, it was like I had opened the door into another world, full of people like me. Hundreds, if not thousands, of them.

Whenever I speak to younger hobbyists - and even some older hobbyists who discovered the hobby later in life - many of them get the impression that it’s a relatively new phenomenon, wholly created by Breyer itself.

Although it is true that Breyer started to have a more visible and active presence in the hobby by the late 1960s, they were only adding bricks to the foundation that we had started years before.