Thinking Outside the Doll House

Dolls are everywhere. Turn on any TV show or play a movie in your DVD player and you will find dolls as props. Articles about dolls pop up everywhere. The internet is bulging with studies of Barbie, articles on Cabbage Patch Kids, advertisements on dolls, sites that sell dolls, doll blogs, doll videos, etc. There are even phobias connected with dolls and their cousins, automatons and robots. Mystery writers weave novel stories about dolls; poets pay them attention in verse.

There is no house without a doll! Even those who claim they have no dolls or don’t like them have had a doll or a doll-related object in their lives. Doll-related objects that fit the doll theme or what Lea Baten calls “The Doll Motif” are basically anything figural, portrait-related, loved as a doll or toy, a paper doll, or a stuffed animal.

Dolls rock! Read on!

Y2Y: Yellowstone to Yosemite

The team of three friends has, over the years and across thousands and thousands of miles, proven to be excellent travel companions. After testing their mettle bouncing across the wilds of Southern Africa in two off-road vehicles, and having published books about it, it was time to test the wilds of Western USA. This is an account of their momentous 4,000-mile, two-month adventure across seven states: from Denver, Colorado, to Mammoth Lakes, California. They have been from 11,000 ft to minus 200 ft, from 25°F to 109°F. An unforgettable journey where each park impossibly managed to outshine the next.