Sharyn Dorfman

 Does that name ring a bell, but you just can’t place it? 

Google it. If you were an Oprah fan, you will recognize the circumstances immediately.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/hoarder-oprah-show_n_4005719/amp

I have no idea what’s happened over the last decade, but I think about Mrs Dorfman on a fairly regular basis. 

Bag Lady

Remember the Halloween costumes post?

It took several days for me to think of a spot, in the house, to take those pictures. 

There are really no blank walls. And I needed a hook for hanging.

Our back door is rarely closed. So, I only see the garage side of the door and the screen door to the garage.

I realized the house side of the back door, rarely seen, would be a blank spot for taking pictures.

There was even a hook in place. (I used to have a wreath hanging on the door.)

Evidently, at some point in the past, I removed the wreath, turned the hook around to the house side of the door, and hung .   .   .

Yes, I hung bags from that hook.

At the point, getting ready to take Halloween costume pictures that day, I closed the door and saw the bags, I had absolutely no idea what was in them.

The brown paper bag had sewing supplies to be donated to a local high school that still has sewing classes. I delivered that bag.

The rest, the plastic bags, were (mostly) odds and ends that not even GoodWill would want.

Old mismatched socks, old headbands, a child's coin purse, a couple (now old) bottles of scented lotion, etc. 

There were 4-5 bags with just a few things each in them. 

From what I saw, dust, children's sizes, I think those bags had been hanging there for many years. 

I am sure my original intention was to pass on those items. 

Where I do not know, but I am sure that was the idea. 

I try very hard to donate or rehome rather than pitch. 

And if I had put the bags in the passenger seat of my car, I would have taken care of following through on whatever my plan was. 

If I had set the bags on the rug by the back door where I had to walk over them to get out the door, they would have gotten out to the car.

But because they were set in a slightly obscure place, the wrong side of the door, they went into never get done land.

Quite honestly I pitched everything but the socks which went into the puppet making bag.  One never knows when we might feel the need to make sock puppets.

But finding that hidden cache of junk, made me wonder what else I have sitting around, walk by daily, and just don't SEE.

And yes, I thought of Mrs. Dorfman.

My books - Pudd'nhead Wilson

On Puddn'head Wilson, Wikipedia notes:

"Pudd'nhead Wilson is a novel by Mark Twain. It was serialized in The Century Magazine (1893–4), before being published as a novel in 1894."

First, I would like to say Pudd'nhead Wilson was NOT a slave. I was surprised when I started the book. There are slaves in the story, but Wilson is not one of them.

Second, I would like to say that Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn do not make any appearances. Nor does Jim. Totally different stories.

Third, the concept of being "sold down the river" presented itself in Huckleberry Finn and Uncle Tom's Cabin and appeared in Pudd'nhead also. Slaves in the northern part of the southern states (in general) had much easier lives than the plantation slaves of the deep south. The fear of having oneself or family members sold to the deep south  is easily understood and a reoccurring theme. Puddn'head Wilson is a much lighter story than Uncle Tom's Cabin (absolutely no worries for me), but is considered to be one of Twain's darker stories.

Fourth, the first thing I looked up when I finished Pudd'nhead Wilson was fingerprints.



Fingerprints are part of the Pudd'nhead Wilson story. They are introduced very early in the story, I am giving nothing away. Understanding of fingerprints, shows Pudd'nhead Wilson to be scientifically based. We don't normally think of Twain's work as being scientifically leading.

There was a note at the end of the audible version of Pudd'nhead Wilson talking about fingerprints and Galton and Twain.

Galton's book came out just a year before Puddin'head was published.

On Galton and fingerprints, Wikipedia notes:

"In a Royal Institution paper in 1888 and three books (Finger Prints, 1892; Decipherment of Blurred Finger Prints, 1893; and Fingerprint Directories, 1895)[30] Galton estimated the probability of two persons having the same fingerprint and studied the heritability and racial differences in fingerprints. He wrote about the technique (inadvertently sparking a controversy between Herschel and Faulds that was to last until 1917), identifying common pattern in fingerprints and devising a classification system that survives to this day.

"The method of identifying criminals by their fingerprints had been introduced in the 1860s by Sir William James Herschel in India, and their potential use in forensic work was first proposed by Dr Henry Faulds in 1880, but Galton was the first to place the study on a scientific footing, which assisted its acceptance by the courts (Bulmer 2003, p. 35). Galton pointed out that there were specific types of fingerprint patterns. He described and classified them into eight broad categories. 1: plain arch, 2: tented arch, 3: simple loop, 4: central pocket loop, 5: double loop, 6: lateral pocket loop, 7: plain whorl, and 8: accidental.[31]"

And while the fingerprint part of the story is in Twain's contemporary life (1893), Twain sets his stories in the time before the civil war (1861-1865).

A paragraph in SparkNotes Context section talks about Twain's story timelines:
"Curiously, his works are all set before the Civil War, in the years when Twain himself was a boy. Perhaps this is because he wanted to write about what he knew from his own childhood; or perhaps he set his works in the past because he sought not a description of the present but a look at its causes or alternatives--what could have been, had things been a little bit different."

The full SparkNotes Context Section is here and does not give away anything about the story.


I do not think of myself as a Twain girl, but I have to tell you I LOVED this story. I knew nothing about it before I started and no one at my house had read it. As I read, I was never sure where the story was going. I enjoyed the story-ness of it.

It was a very quick read at 7 CD's and just under 7 hours.

I started Pudd'nhead simply because it was on my to read list and was the right length. I try to time my book review group listens so I finish them just before the group meets (so it is fresh in my mind). I needed something short to fill in a space after one title and before I started an assigned reading.



As I read this book, I tried to remember a passage I read or heard quoted long ago. I have a feeling it might have been Oprah related. I think it was a letter written by a white northern woman commenting on seeing slave children who looked exactly like the children of the master. In other words, the slave children and the master's children were half brothers and sisters. I think the letter specifically talked about seeing the master's children sitting at the dinner table and the slave children waiting at table, and their faces looking exactly alike, and no one thinking anything of it. Ring any bells for anyone?



Oldest, youngest and I are Trekkies at heart. We do not dress up and go to conventions, but we love all the Star Trek movies and shows. All three of us have seen all of it, several times each. We have a special place in our heart for Twain, because his persona appears in a couple episodes of The Next Generation and it was very well done.