treasures!

I unearthed some treasures this morning: boxes of buttons. Most were collected by my grandmother, but a few belonged to my great-grandfather who I mentioned in a previous post and who has been turning up lately in a way that seems heavily conspicuous.  Perhaps he's sending me a message.  Perhaps, once I decipher it, although it may not be as impenetrable and cuneiform as I imagine, I'll learn something I've sensed all along.  His frequent appearance lately has inspired me to name our upcoming Christmas Eve dinner in his honor.  I'll write more about him later in the week, as it seems he is clearly asking me to.  For now, pictures.

This is a fragment of my great-grandfather's military button collection. He was from Vaasa, Finland where he married and raised my grandmother and her brother and sister until he was threatened with conscription into the Russian army. He packed his family off to New York, then skied into Sweden to escape service.