Another Women’s History Lesson: Tupperware

Last night hubby and I watched an American Experience documentary about the Tupperware company and their selling technique of home parties.

Now, when hubby first said he wanted to watch a show on Tupperware, I was frankly uninterested. Tupperware has been an constant and uninteresting part of my life since I was born, actually. My mother was a Tupperware sales lady and so every home I’ve ever lived in has had plenty of Tupperware in the cupboards. When hubby and I got together and I realized he’d left his previous relationships WITH THE JOINT PROPERTY TUPPERWARE I went around for a year saying, “Always hook up with the one who got the Tupperware.” Because, well, Tupperware IS sweet. The product does deliver and as a woman using a 30+ year old set of Tupperware cannisters, I can testify to it personally.

But back to the history lesson. Tupperware was invented by this guy named Tupper who at first tried to sell it at Hudson’s in Detroit (Tupperware was invented in Detroit). Brownie Wise, a divorced mother trying to care for her son, saw the potential for sales networking by women to women. She contacted Tupper and convinced him to sell only through a method she called home parties. Women used their existing network of friends and family to sell in each other’s homes and bring in cash. The show pointed out that many of these women had little education or work experience and Tupperware sales gave them the opportunity to become financially successful.

Now Brownie was the Queen of Sales. A woman from dirt poor Georgia, she had both poise, charisma, and sales genius. Every year she brought the Tupperware sales ladies to Florida for lavish, themed parties. PBS interviewed numerous women who had attended these parties on specially designed grounds in Florida with wishing wells and gardens and pagodas and won things like double-boilers and furs and clothes in between heavy-duty sales talk. The parties were a hit.

A fight between Tupper and Brownie left Brownie on the high road with a severence check for $35,000 while he sold the company later that year for $16 mil. She died in obscurity in 1992 and today has been written out of official corporate history despite her instrumentality in their early success.

Thank you, Brownie, for inventing and fighting for a means by which average women could make an income through effort alone in the 1950’s and far beyond.

Oh, and my mom asks me to remind you that despite all my pretty talk and sudden fascination with Brownie Wise, selling still sucks.

Classics Reading cont.

Just finished The Bell Jar. What surprised me: Plath managed to write an entire book about having a nervous breakdown and yet she almost never talked about her FEELINGS. Also, she sounded like a spoiled teenager. It was well written but I was disappointed. Discuss, anyone?

Waiting in line at the bank drive-through

Me: Can you grab me a pen out of the glove compartment?

Hubby: There’s no pen in here. One day we have a pen, then we don’t. Then I put another one in here, and then it’s gone.  I am utterly baffled at how you can lose so many pens.  And don’t even talk about buying another bulk package. We are going to locate those missing pens, they have to be around here somewhere. Where could they possibly go?

Me: I eat them.

Tasty, tasty pens.

What I Did Tonight

Oreos dipped in white chocolate. Mmmm. Mmmmm.

 

100 Things About Me in Less Than 20 Minutes

1. I can’t decide what my hometown is. For 34 years I knew, now I am unsure.
2. The only place I am truly cool is Ann Arbor: 1. I was actually born there, unlike so many residents and 2. I graduated from Community High School and 3. my first job was at Zingermans
3. I really hope you’ve lived in Ann Arbor so you can appreciate my coolness.
4. Now I work for the state
5. (totally, monstrously uncool but the benefits are as good as rumored)
6. I only have 26 friends in MySpace. I feel like a total loser but not so low that I would try to friend people I don’t actually know because
7. I have standards.
8. I lived for 10 years in a valley near the ocean and but I don’t care much for large bodies of water.
9. That’s why I moved to Michigan.
11. I’m learning to like my digital camera more as time passes but I’m not cool enough to carry it with me everywhere I go
12. I’m really, really obsessed with this coolness thing.
13. I remember these ankle-length wool skirts I used to wear to work….
14. I’m a librarian by trade and a Web master by trade. So far I’ve been able to keep the two together.
15. I am awesome at the game Two Truths and a Lie with but I don’t play with many people.
16. Crap, I’m 11 minutes in and only on #16.
17. I love books on polygamy and convents. I’ve had trouble finding a book that covers both.
18. I’ve lived in three co-ops and helped to found one – the Audre Lorde House Cooperative
19. For years it was my goal to live on a commune even though I can’t grow anything.
20. I used to be a radically feminist separatist. Now I’m run of the mill feminist. My 20-year-old self winces. My 20-year-old self was cool.
21. I make really good brown rice
22. I can’t barbeque chicken
23. I have to wear a bite splint because I grind my teeth
24. In the past two years I lost 55 lbs and then gained half of that back. You don’twant to know what I’ve spent on clothes
25. I named my cat after a first century roman concubine. She’s cool.
26. I watch Battlestar Galactica
27. I love Star Trek
28. When I was 18 my favorite color was purple. Then after college it was plum. Now I’m drifting into something in the gold family. I think.
29. I’ve been to 7 countries in Europe and to Mexico. I really like countries where I can find people who speak English better than countries where I can’t. I wasn’t real fond of France.
30. My husband is blind.
31. He dresses better than me.

My First Transplants – Updated!

Hubby and I had dinner with a pair of librarian gardeners, J and B, last night and I was  delivered of my first transplants: Iris’s (with purple flowers) , Shasta daisies and a Baylily.

Grandmaster Gardener J has come through in fine style with the following descriptions:

The grass-like plant that is all green is a daylily. It is called a Baja
Daylily, which just identifies its color variation, as daylilies come in a
wide variety of colors. The Baja is a lovely deep red with a bright
yellow center. I bought it because rumor has it that hummingbirds love
it, although I’ve never been able to attract any hummingbirds in the city.
It does draw butterflies sometimes. They like the bright color and
trumpet shape.

The iris came with the house, so I have no idea what variety it is.  I’ve
never seen one in that shade of lavender with variegated leaves.  Hybrid
flowers come and go like fashion trends, so it may just be an older
variety that isn’t commonly sold right now.

 

 

 

The last, for which I don’t have pictures, are Shasta Daisies.

It helps make up for the fact that the 80 sunflower seeds I planted all failed to take. All 80. All right, all right, it was too early to plant. But it felt so nice out to me!!

Rural Libraries Conference 2007

I am funny in crowds.

I didn’t know this about myself until last week when I presented at Michigan’s Rural Libraries Conference. I presented thrice, once on Technology Planning and a two-parter on “Library 2.0″ : RSS, blogging, podcasting, wikis, Flikr, YouTube and MySpace.

This was the first time I’ve presented to a group larger than 100 and it was so much fun! I didn’t know going in that I would actually enjoy it.

When I showed my blog and someone asked why Snake Lady Librarian? I surveyed the audience slowly and then told the truth.

“Because I’m dangerous” I said.