This weekend we were invited to dinner at a friend’s house. Still dreaming of the pasta carbonara…. the second attraction was a guided tour to the host’s collection of buttons given out by political campaigns.

It never ceases to amaze me what people collect. Can’t help but roll my eyes at many collections given my hesitancy to amass objects, but not this one – this one scored. I think it has to do with the continuity between what these buttons represent and the rest of the owner’s life, a life in large parts devoted to political activism.

It also links to lived history – my Beloved got unusually animated when discovering buttons that were part of his own youth, worn during presidential campaigns, and largely forgotten for decades.

It is educational – your’s truly got a lecture in two voices about her ignorance of the difference between Eugene McCarthy and McCarthyism… and certainly a crash course in Presidential campaigns before my arrival on US shores.

And last but not least the collection was displayed in ways that were artistically designed and often gripping.

Collector Carl Wolfson was the host of “Carl in the Morning” on AM 620 KPOJ and FM 107.1 KXRY, Portland, Oregon’s progressive talk stations, for almost a decade until 2016. The show and his many other radio appearances were devoted to the issues he cared about: healthcare, social and economic justice, foreign policy. These topics were also a large part of his routines as a comedian, a fixture on national television, appearing on Showtime’s Comedy Club Network, VH-1 Stand-Up Spotlight, An Evening at the Improv, and The Joan Rivers Show.

He is certainly a funny man, something we cherish. Passion takes over, however, when the subject comes to American Political Items, the category these button belong to. The study of campaign memorabilia is serious business as any historian can tell you. The collection by now contains some 20.000 buttons, displayed on over 200 canvas boards, put together in pop-art-like grids. Most of them, alas, in storage, since there is not enough space to hang them all. The prognosis calls for about 600 boards when all is pinned and done – time to explore public venues!

https://carlwolfson.com/collector

The progression through time of these buttons is in itself fascinating – what began as a simple identifier soon morphed to slogans, was elaborated, became strategic tool and followed the roots of all other persuasive mechanisms, advertisement included. Some of it barbed, but none of it in the slime pits of contemporary discourse of the Trumpian universe. They also provide glimpses in the kinds of civic organizations actively involved in the political process, and windows into the role of women as flattering by-products of electoral choices (or not….)

A museum is called for, if there was only a funding angel to be found…. in the meantime I wonder what large space in our area would be feasible for hosting a temporary exhibition. It would be a blockbuster, I am sure. Hive mind, get to work!

Music today can be chosen by yourself from this play list: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/playlist-election-day

My pick was this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSwzjD0L4co

(The album it comes from, “My Name is Buddy,” recounts the early-twentieth-century history of big labor and leftist politics using a cat, Buddy, as a protagonist.)