Betsey Clark

Moving furniture and shuffling paper are either hereditary or contagious. It is a known fact that Mother does both (and at the oddest hours of the day, too).

Slash M once emailed Mother, as if speaking on behalf of the furniture in the house, something to the effect, "It is 3 am. Don't move me, I'm happy where I am." Yet in spite those (in)famous lines, Slash M has found himself moving furniture as well. And I, myself, am guilty of perpetually shuffling papers. The objective, of course, is to clean and clear. However, being the pack rat that I am, I think I just end up shuffling papers.

The other weekend, I found my old math notebook. Yes, it was a grade school notebook with the instructions of how one is to get the square root of a number. What can I say? I knew that one day I would have kids of my own. If they needed to know how to get the square root without a calculator I doubt if I would have known how to do it without my old notes! (Well, I've typed it out in this blog so I can toss the notebook now.)

Anyway, among the shuffled papers, I found a small strip of wrapping paper. It was Hallmark wrapper with Betsey Clark design. There is only one person I think about when I see Betsey Clark. That person is London Eye.

London Eye absolutely LOVED Betsey Clark.

In my mind, Betsey Clark is this old-fashioned country girl with wispy blond hair tied by a ribbon on the top of her egg-shaped head. She wears a duster and an apron, and has oversized shoes (clogs, actually).

I guess I should have know that all of those look-alikes could NOT have been named Betsey Clark. Also, the signature at the base of the illustration clearly indicated that Betsey Clark is the artist.

I honestly don't know why, but as far as I was concerned that little girl WAS Betsey Clark. I simply didn't really consider the fact that Betsey Clark was actually the Hallmark Greeting Cards artist.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This is what I found -- "Betsey Clark, lived in Amarillo, Texas. In the early 1960s she began work at Hallmark cards, producing greetings card designs which depicted her so-called Whimsical Waifs. These soon caught the public's imagination. Later, various dolls featuring her characters appeared, to the delight of both children and adults. Additionally, the German company of Goebel were commissioned by Hallmark to produce a series of Betsey Clark figurines for collectors. She died in 1987, but her enchanting characters live on. "