Wow, it’s hard for me to believe it has been so long since my last posting here. I have been all consumed in chores, trips, events and other miscellaneous time consuming activities that have kept me away from the keyboard.. and from this blog. Sorry!
One of the trips we took was to Toronto, and while there we had the pleasure of visiting a very interesting museum… The Bata Shoe Museum. While I had hoped to perhaps see some Ephemera related to shoes, there was none to be found. But the Museum still proved to be quite interesting.. perhaps bordering on fascinating.  The museum was founded in 1995 by Ms. Sonja Bata, the wife of the late Thomas Bata (who died during the time of our visit to Canada). Mr. Bata was a well-known Czechoslovakian shoe manufacturer who had emigrated to Canada at the beginning of World War II. His family enterprise in Czechoslovakia had been nationalized under the Communist occupation. From the beginning, Sonja Bata shared her husband’s determination to rebuild the organization and took an active interest in what was to become a global footwear business.
The Museum celebrates the style and function of footwear in four impressive galleries. Footwear on display ranges from Chinese bound foot shoes and ancient Egyptian sandals to chestnut-crushing clogs and glamourous platforms. Over 4,500 years of history and a collection of 20th-century celebrity shoes are reflected in the semi-permanent exhibition, “All About Shoes”.
If you happen to be in the Toronto area, I highly recommend a visit to the The Bata Show Museum.
We’ll be back on the Ephemera beat very shortly.. so thanks for your patience.One of the first things we will be reviewing in a bit of detail is what appears to be a new blog entitled “Ephemeral New York – Chronicling an ever-changing city through faded and forgotten artifacts“
The site is the creation of a magazine editor from the West Village who recalls stepping over winos to enter the Grand Union on Bleecker Street, a happily chaotic class packed with 35 other first graders at PS 41, and that Mays, not Whole Foods, was once the flagship shopping destination of Union Square. Sometimes wry and often wistful, she feels the presence of the city’s ghosts everywhere.
If you have any roots in New York City (as I do) then you’ll certainly want to check out this blog with me. I’ll review it a bit more in a future article… but it you have time, stop by and let me know what YOU think of it… Ephemeral New York
I’m Tom Murphy and thanks for helping me give Ephemera the encore it deserves.
Tom
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