LH Selman visits Oklahoma PCA chapter

 
Apr 12, 2011 - May 12, 2011
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We made our first trip to Tulsa to visit the Oklahoma chapter for a meeting on the second of April, and were utterly charmed by the experience. Most importantly for this new L.H. Selman team, and after nearly two years of telephone conversations and correspondence, we are always very happy to finally match up faces with names. This trip was particularly filled with people we had longed to meet and we were even able to reacquaint with some who already seem like old friends from past events in Texas, our Chicago Paperweight Weekend and Wheaton.
We arrived Friday afternoon in plenty of time to do some hotel lobby socializing and then join all the crowd for a delicious dinner at a restaurant chosen, I believe, by the chapter president, Nelson Myers, who is, I now know, always impeccably dressed. After dinner he was kind enough to host a little wine party in his room. Saturday was chock-a-block with activity - Mitch and I working fast in the morning to lay out the hundred or so weights we had brought along. We learned a very important lesson about the value of static-free packing materials, and it was only my life as an opera singer that prevented me from hyper-ventilating in the process of blowing all of our treasures clean. Art Elder gave a very helpful presentation of his new book "The Art of Collecting", a book so full of sound advice that it would be a truly silly oversight to do twenty years of bungled collecting before giving it your attention! A bit of important time was spent discussing the importance of recruiting new collectors, a subject on which Marilyn Groves has some interesting ideas. Without new generations of paperweight enthusiasts, the stunning collections we have all spent so much time and care accumulating are going to finish up in shoe boxes!
After the meeting we had another scrumptious dinner in a wonderful big banquet room. Though I tried biscuits with gravy for breakfast, I didn't eat anything particularly southern for dinner. However, I did find myself humming "Oklahoma" all the while we were there. (Turns out I only know the first lyric.) I managed a quick drive into town on Saturday night and am very grateful to now have at least a fleeting impression of a very handsome metropolis. I loved the skyscrapers and even in the dark was able to glean the splendor of southern mansions and neighborhood remnants of oil boom comfort.
I loved it and can't wait for my next opportunity to visit Oklahoma. In the meantime I'm going to work on the song.
- Alexis Magaro