I have been feeling at sea, as I start to look for
another job (I just heard from the public schools that my application has "has been forwarded to the hiring manager for further review").
And then I remembered
(how did I forget?) that I'd committed to MAKING TOYS when I was in New Mexico a year ago.
The girlettes say they have been waiting patiently for me to remember. This morning, Spike put together The Brownie Look
... It's all about outsized underwear!
(I wrote "lingerie" at first, and was corrected:
"We're eight, we wear underwear.")
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Spike is also wearing a dancing-pixie Brownie pin. It came in a shoe box of old doll clothes Puzzle volunteer gave me at Christmas. She's 73, so this would be from the 1950s.
Why did the Girl Scouts choose the anarchic pixie for the Brownies? Generally benign and even helpful (cleaning up at night), but they can be disruptive too. And they're definitely not Christian.
I guess like little girls?
I found the origin story online:
Brownie Origins
Once, the level of Girl Scouting we know as Brownies was called Rosebuds. But the girls didn’t like their name, so they asked Lord Baden-Powell (the founder of Boy Scouting, which inspired Juliette Gordon Low to create Girl Scouting) for a new name.
Most people believe Baden-Powell named the Brownies after Juliana Horatia Ewing’s 1870’s story, The Brownies, about a couple of helpful Brownie children.
There are lots of Victorian illustrations, but I like this one by Katherine Milhous from 1946:
That Brownie book illustration is creepy! It makes it look like a story about a haunted pond. But I love the pixie connection to Brownies. When I was in Brownies the name never made any sense, except that we wore brown uniforms. The only Brownies I ever heard of were the kind you eat.
ReplyDeletebink: I was also surprised when I got older and realized the scouts were from England. So it makes sense— pixies are from the British Isles. I guess if it was American we would call them… Naughty little children? Sprite?
DeleteThat last comment was mine.
ReplyDeleteI didn't stick in the Brownies for long! And hated the uniform!!
ReplyDeleteSpike looks nice though🙂
i have my gs sash and badges and pins but was never in the brownies. we also had a book that we had to buy from an authorized gs seller locally. for me i loved being in the gs (never in the brownies) and was a member until high school -- socializing and learning to work as a group. i learned a lot as a gs -- how to make emergency burners for cooking (wax, cardboard, tuna fish cans- those babies can get hot!), cooking over a fire. horse back riding, canoeing, camping out for 2 weeks. i just realized i have basic survival skills. i wonder if they even do that anymore????
ReplyDeleteone of our campouts we made caramel apples - try doing that on a campfire and then clean up the pan!
kirsten
KIRSTEN: I think I would have loved GS too--my parents wouldn't let me join--said it was fascist. I see their larger point, but I think it was mostly camps and crafting...
ReplyDeleteI never learned basic survival skills, like how to make caramel apples on a campfire! LOL
After the apocalypse, we won't have to clean pans though.