Tiny Pineapple

My niece, Emily, expressed surprise that we’re still able to find new and compelling examples of female health care worker fiction. But, the fact is, we’ve only scratched the surface. While the Tiny Pineapple Nurse Book Collection has received quite a bit of exposure lately, our collection pales in comparison to a few others.

For instance, the Special Collections library at The University of Wisconsin-Madison features a Nurse Romance Cover of the Week with examples from its collection of 425 nurse books.

The collection of nurse romance novels was donated to Special Collections in 2005 by artist, photographer, and former UWM Art Professor Leslie Bellavance (currently director of the School of Art and Art History at James Madison University). Professor Bellavance started collecting these publications as part of her own research on popular-culture presentations of nurses for her visual work. The Nurse Romance collection augments the UWM American Nursing History Collection in Special Collections, which was established in 1995 through a donation from the UWM Center for Nursing History.

Ms. Bellavance was actually in Utah last year when she exhibited at Weber State University. If I’d known, I would have invited her to lunch so we could swap exciting stories of nurse book acquisition. Oh, the tales we could tell!

Even more impressive, however, is Gregory Tulonen’s collection of nurse books, which stands at 453 volumes. (Interestingly enough, Mr. Tulonen’s reasons for starting his nurse book collection were about as arbitrary as our own.)

So, as you can see, Emily, we’ve only just begun. In fact, at the rate we’re going, I’m pretty confident that we can reach the 500 volume mark by the end of 2008…at which point I will have officially made that difficult transition from merely having “misguided energies” to being truly “pathetic.”

This should probably be over in the Tidbits section, but…a real-time clock featuring Japanese girls doing synchronized dance movements to a jazz riff on Lerner & Loewe? Come on! How insanely cool is that?

I think they’re selling polo shirts, but, as I always say, do you really need an excuse for Japanese girls doing synchronized dance movements to a jazz riff on Lerner & Loewe?

Is there a 24-hour cable channel in Japan with this sort of thing? You know: All Japanese Girls Doing Synchronized Dance Movements To A Jazz Riff On Lerner & Loewe…All The Time?

If not, there should be.

[Note: I’ve turned the sound off by default so you aren’t driven insane by the constant ticking, so be sure to click on the small speaker icon in the lower right for the full effect. Also, you can click on the movie or visit the UNIQLOCK site for a full-screen version.]