Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Mad Hatters Tea Party II

I’m mad about hats.  Love ‘em.  I have a LOT of them.  I wear them to book signings, to church, and on special occasions.  A friend said I should share my interest, so I did, by planning, with her help, a tea.  June 2 she and I threw the Mad Hatters Tea Party at Aquilla Commons, the co-op we live in.  I had put out a sign-up sheet, thinking maybe twenty people would want to come – and had to cut it off at forty!  I brought all my hats to the Party Room and several other women went into their storage room and brought out hats they’d put away.  We covered six tables with hats, and allowed everyone to try them on and pick one they liked.  Some of the women wore gloves to really show they knew how to dress up properly for a tea.  Looking down the rows of tables at these ladies in their hats was like stepping back into the fifties.  Halfway through, I asked everyone to change hats, to try a new look, and they did, to smiles and laughter.  Judy and I served cucumber sandwiches, lemon, raspberry, and almond bars, tea and lemonade.  We had a super time.  Lots of photos were taken.  The photo accompanying today’s blog is of Marge Frier.  It’s my favorite photo; she looks so elegant and sophisticated, and the hat suits her so well I’m tempted to make a gift of it to her.  Problem is, it’s one of my favorites – though now I think about it, that could be said of all my hats.  I knew hats are making a big-time comeback in England; I think it would be fun if the new-old custom spreads to here.

My web mistress has set up a hat show on my web site.  To see more of the fun, go here: http://monica-ferris.com/mad-hatters-tea-party-june-2-2012.

Now for a far more distressing story.  You may not wish to read further, seriously.

At water aerobics yesterday, a friend told me she was up at her cabin over the weekend and took a last kayak ride before starting home.  As she came back to her little dock, a fawn was standing on it, as if waiting for her, and it was crying.  It was very thin and wobbly.  As she landed her craft, it walked away, still crying.  It looked sick and she was afraid to touch it.  She brought it a pan of milk, but it didn’t drink.  It would walk around a bit, then lie down, then get up and walk a little more.  She says she approached it, and saw what she describes as a single big tear rolled down its face.  We speculated that the fawn’s mother might have been killed by a car, or that the fawn was ill and the mother abandoned it.  She didn’t know who to call, and she had to start for home, so at last she just left it.  Her story so disturbed me, I cried during my shower.  I wanted to tell her she should have called the sheriff.  I wanted to tell her a trick farmers use to wean calves is to put their fingers into the bucket of milk, let the calf suck them, then lower their fingers into the milk again until the calf gets the idea.  But what good would telling her that on Monday have done, except to make her feel worse?  I felt sad and angry about the fawn and it must have shown, because she said she was sorry to tell me but she just had to unburden herself.  (And now I’m unburdening myself on you!)  I told her it was all right, that I understood – and it was and I do, but what a distressing thing to happen!  Not all of nature is sweet and pretty.

7 comments:

Linda O. Johnston said...

Love the hats part of your post, Monica--but of course I was deeply disturbed and sad to hear about the fawn, too. I'm not sure what kind of help would have been available, but it's so hard to hear that nothing apparently useful was done for the poor fawn. How awful!

Monica Ferris said...

I know, Linda, it was so distressing to hear that the fawn was not helped.

Anonymous said...

Move over British Royals. Your Mad Hatters ladies would give the British ladies a run for the money. Thanks for sharing.

Betty Hechtman said...

I also loved the hat portion of your post. It sounds like a fun event.

The fawn part was very sad.

wilddog-1978 said...

I enjoyed looking at the Mad Hatters party pictures. I think we have lost the art of dressing up here in the US. I remember as a girl wearing hat and gloves to church. Now I think cell phones are the only accessory that we have. Also very sorry about the poor fawn. That is a hard one.

wilddog-1978 said...

Enjoyed the Mad Hatters party pictures. I think here in the US we have lost the art of dressing up. I remember as a girl wearing a hat and gloves to church. Now people would look at you like you were crazy. I am very sad to hear about the fawn.

Monica Ferris said...

I've had several requests to do another Mad Hatter Tea next year, so the impulse to wear fancy hats hasn't died out completely - or maybe that's just among us seniors. Very amusingly, at our last Social Hour on Friday, all the men wore hats, mostly cowboy hats and baseball caps, but still . . . I wonder, since there's been so much publicity surrounding the Royal Wedding and the Queen's Diamond Jubilee with everyone in beautiful hats, perhaps it will resurrect an interest in them. I, too, remember wearing hats and gloves to church on Sunday. I've given up on the gloves, but I do wear a hat to church nowadays, and I'm no longer the only one.