Ant and Bee: Bryan Ward Filling in the Picture

 When I started my search for Angela Banner a number of years ago, I was thwarted in my attempts to find out any information about the illustrator of the Ant and Bee books. This became even more frustrating when they started republishing the Ant and Bee books with truncated text and absurdly simplistic new illustrations. I would periodically wonder and wander again with no luck. However, I was urged on again when someone commented on my first post about having a Bryan Ward illustration and wanting to know more about him .... so the quest resumed, with great success this time!

Theo von Brockhusen

 The beginning of a collection of links to paintings and information available on the Internet about Theo von Brockhusen.

Döberitz Gazette: Life at the Döberitz Prisoner of War Camp (WWI)

I used to have a website that I was planning to use to capture information about the Döberitz prison camp, since I had a copy of the second issued of the Döberitz Gazette, but I let it lapse. Thus, I am going to use this just to hold what I find.

Ant and Bee Lovers: Sighting and Citings on the Web

Given my interests in discovering more about Angela Banner and in wondering why new editions of her books are so bowdlerized, I thought it would be fun just to search and see what other scraps of food there are on the Internet for Ant and Bee lovers.

So, just browsing and finding:

The Tale of a Cloth: Fortresses Facing Germany during World War I

Today's (this week's? turned out to be this year's!) wondering stems from trying to figure out what the map to the right is. Unlike what one may expect on a quick glance, it is not a map of Europe, but mostly north central Europe: eastern Germany, western Russia, and northern Austria-Hungary. In addition, the big bold-faced names are not those (with some exceptions) of major European cities. So what is it?

It is part of of what had been a fairly sizable collection of World War I materials saved by my great aunt. So, although undated, I have always known that it as some World War I German thing. In deciding to unburden ourselves of more stuff, I needed to figure out finally what the map is all about, so this is where I wandered.

The facts: the map is made of some sort of line, and it measures 16 1/2" x 16 1/2" (42 cm square). In looking at closely, I see that there is both a key (for distance) at the top and (perhaps) a title: the word "Festungen". So first things first, is the Google translate which gives me "Forts"; in parallel, Wikipedia takes me to Fortification. 

This lists fortresses (Festungen) in existence in eastern Germany, western Russia, and northern Austria-Hungary, presumably at the beginning of the war. Undated, published by Verlag Sander & Gronau, Hamburg.

So now that I can see that each of the symbols denotes a fortress, my wandering takes me to each of them (roughly going from North to South) on the map. The big question, however, will still be why this map and who was it for!

My First Driving Lessons

Another clipping from a scrapbook kept by mother brings back much fonder memories--learning street signs and how to navigate. I cannot remember if there are photographs of us, but I believe there may be, but will have to add them later (if and when I find them). 

This is a story from the U.S. Armed Forces newspaper, The Stars and Stripes, from September 5, 1958. My first Googling was to see if these were available online, and it turns out that they are, but for a fee. However, without buying in, I was able to capture a slightly buggy OCR transcription, so I didn't have to type it all:

NIghtmares Revisited... or a Trip to Bad Canstatt

Over a year from my last wandering! Today's was started by finding this clipping in a scrapbook of my mother's that I am disassembling to preserve what matters most. But, what was this clipping? One of the "failures" of my education has been not learning German, so I have to resort to Google Translate to start this search. While I didn't type it all in, I did get enough from the beginning:

For the carnival parade on Sunday

Traffic orders from the police headquarters

During the carnival procession in Bad Canstatt on Sunday, February 1, like the police headquarters, around 1:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. The Brunnenstrasse between Wilhelmstrasse and Schmiddener Strasse, Hofener Strasse ...

OK, more street closings and a map. I have no idea what my mother intended by saving this, but yikes it brought me back in time ... to a time when I had a recurrent nightmare brought on my attending a parade. Well, this was obviously the parade.