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Welcome to Wiser Now’s weekly email blast which reflects my eclectic interests and, I hope, yours. Halloween has just passed, and artificial Christmas trees have already been displayed in stores for weeks. We have entered the frenzied festival season. Time to slow down, breathe, and refill the stapler. November 7 really is Fill Our Staplers Day promoted by the Dull Men’s Club, which boasts thousands of members in the U.S. and UK, including more than a few who might be described as more obsessive than dull, and at least some who are quirkily delightful.
I hope you find these offerings fun, and perhaps even useful, and welcome your feedback. (Kathy@WiserNow.com) And if you haven’t yet pressed the subscribe button so this newsletter doesn’t go to spam, please do so now.
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The Quirky Quote
So English, so perfect for the Dull Men’s Club: Following Queen Elizabeth’s funeral “Netflix announces a 16-part series: The Queue” (tongue-in-cheek, of course, from the Dull Men’s Club website)
The Quirky Facts
Grover Click (in real life accountant Leland Carlson) is the Assistant Vice President – which is the highest office – of the Dull Men’s Club that he co-founded in the U.S. in 1996 and brought to the UK when he moved there. He describes members (which include both men and women) like this: “We avoid glitz and glam. We don’t need to keep up with the latest fads. We enjoy safe excitement. Our motto is ‘Celebrating the Ordinary.’”
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Asked to describe “safe excitement,” Mr. Carlson rattles off the cliches: Watching paint dry, grass grow, ice melt, and wood warp, but as the stories below illustrate, the members’ interests are much more varied. And dull does not mean without enthusiasm. He also describes members as “passionate about the everyday, unglamorous things in life,” such as public transportation, vacuum cleaners, gardening, and the correct use of apostrophes.
Although membership continues to grow, Mr. Carlson denies that the Dull Men’s Club is a movement, because “We prefer to stay put.” But he rejects their description as dullards and prefers “dullsters” as the opposite of hipsters. He describes a dull man’s favorite color as grey and favorite flavor as vanilla. Dull men like watching the weather channel and then phoning friends around the country to check on whether the weather is really happening. A few other signs that you have the potential to be a dull man or woman:
- You like watching airport luggage carousels
- You arrange food in your fridge by use-by dates
- At a railway crossing waiting for a train to pass by, you count the train cars
- You get a thrill riding through car washes
The Quirky Observations
The Dull Men’s Club produces a yearly calendar and since 2018 chooses someone to receive an annual Anorak of the Year Award. (An anorak is the English equivalent of a parka, an ordinary – i.e., dull – weatherproof jacket with hood, but the award is just a certificate) Among the award winners and calendar stars are these (some of whom also appear in this video):
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Steve Wheeler – A milk bottle collector, who over 40 years has acquired 23,000 bottles from all over the world, but doesn’t like milk, and as far as I can tell, does not necessarily travel to acquire them. (Photo credit: Roland Leon / The Sun)
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Gianni Bellini owns the largest football sticker collection in the world. (“Football” referring to the English version that in the U.S. we call soccer.) A 2018 article noted that he had 2 million stickers in 4000 albums with about 400,000 still not placed. He spends thousands of pounds every year and hours every day with this obsession. His wife says it keeps him out of the pubs, but she might want to worry a bit, because he admits that in an emergency he would save his sticker collection before his own family.
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Kevin Beresford – President of the UK Roundabout Appreciation Society whose official title is Lord of the Rings. He calls each roundabout “an oasis on a sea of asphalt,” and has published two books on them: Roundabouts of Great Britain and Roundabouts from the Air, along with a yearly “Best of” calendar.
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You’ve heard of trainspotters. Well, the Dull Men’s Club membership boasts two variations. A train station spotter named Andrew Dowd has visited and photographed all 2548 railway stations in England, Scotland, and Wales by car (which was cheaper than traveling by train), although even he admitted, “Most of them are not all that interesting.” And there is drainspotter Archie Workman who photographs drain covers in South Cumbria, UK for a charitable outcome. Proceeds from his calendar were used to buy tools to clean the drains, as well as wild seeds to encourage attractive vegetation nearby. The Dull Men’s website notes that he “finds, restores, and replaces neglected drains on verges,” making him a conscientious dull man.
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David Morgan according to Guinness World Records, owns the world’s largest collection of traffic cones. At the time this article was written, (Photo credit: Jonathan Sears-Corfield) he was working for a plastics company that manufactures the cones, and he said his collecting began during a legal dispute in which he was trying to find examples to prove his firm had not copied a rival. While I can’t assure you that all his cones have been legally acquired, he claims to collect them everywhere he goes partly because (you may not have noticed) “the models are always changing.” He says the best ones come from undertakers. “Undertakers look after their cones.”
Personally, I have a soft spot for some of the women who are members.
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Blogger Amanda Hone follows brown signs – all those brown arrows that point to something of interest to tourists in that direction. She says she has followed thousands – it would appear that you can’t claim legitimacy in the Dull Men’s Club unless you have done thousands of something – but in my view, that means she is endlessly curious, and not dull at all. What early on was a visit to an owl and otter sanctuary has since taken her around the world.
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Rachel Williamson is an both an Anorak award winner and one of the club members featured on their 2022 calendar. A retired police detective who took up crocheting during the Covid lockdown, Ms. Williamson settled on postbox toppers when she saw people looking sad as they socially distanced themselves while lining up outside pharmacies and post offices. To cheer them up, she crocheted colorful and amusing toppers for the postboxes next to them. At first she placed her yarnbombing toppers anonymously, but when the local newspaper asked the crocheter to come forward, she was delighted by the positive response, the award from the mayor, and donations of yarn. She says, “A postbox without a topper looks naked to me now.” (Photo credit here.)
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Changes are coming!
Wiser Now Wednesday is soon going to have a new name and other changes, and our website is getting a makeover. Watch for more news in the weeks ahead, and in the meantime, please keep spreading its joys to all the activity professionals, teachers, aging adults and their grandkids, and people in between that you know.
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The Questions
- Do you think of yourself as dull or ordinary in a good way? Talk about it.
- Do you have an unusual hobby or obsession? What is it?
- In some ways being dull is described here as finding joy in the ordinary pleasures of life. What are the ordinary pleasures you appreciate?
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The Quiz – Odd Museums
More than a few of the people featured in the publicity for the Dull Men’s Club have a collection large enough to start a museum, although, of course, not everyone will stop to see a milk bottle collection even if a brown sign points to it. Still, there are a lot of odd museums in the world, and in some cases, duplicates. Wikipedia lists 64 chocolate museums, for example. In each of the groupings below, I added one museum that I made up, at least as far as I could research. It wasn’t easy, because truth is once again stranger than fiction.
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Which museum isn’t real?
Group 1
a. Dog Collar Museum, Kent, England
b. Parasite Museum, Tokyo, Japan
c. Suspenders and Garters Museum, Toronto, Canada
d. International Museum of Toilets, New Delhi, India
Group 2
a. International Walrus Museum, Fairbanks, Alaska, USA
b. Tap Water Museum, Beijing, China
c. British Lawnmower Museum, Merseyside, England
d. Gopher Hole Museum, Torrington, Canada
Group 3
a. Celebrity Lingerie Hall of Fame, Los Angeles, USA
b. Museum of Bad Art, Dedham, MA, USA
c. Underwater Museum of Art, Cancun, Mexico
d. International Museum of Decorative Iron Gates, Montreal, Canada
Group 4
a. Ventriloquist Museum, Fort Mitchell, KY, USA
b. Brussel Sprout Museum, Bruges, Belgium
c. The National Museum of Funeral History, Houston, Texas, USA
d. Museum of Pez Memorabilia, Burlingame (San Francisco), USA
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The Resources
Photo credits not noted above were purchased from iStock.
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Answers to the quiz
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Group 1: There is no Suspenders and Garters Museum, but there is a shoe museum in Toronto, Canada. (And the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has had a suspender exhibit.)
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Group 2: There is no walrus museum (about a real animal), but there is an International Cryptozoology Museum, in Portland, Maine, USA. (Cryptozoology is the study of unverified animals, mystical creatures only rumored to exist by legend or belief, such as the Yeti or Loch Ness Monster.)
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Group 3: There is no International Museum of Decorative Iron Gates, but there is a barbed wire museum in LaCrosse, Kansas, USA (Dull museum with sharp objects?)
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Group 4: There is no Brussel Sprouts Museum, but there is a book called Pinky the Rat at the Brussels Sprout Museum. I had a hard time coming up with a food that didn’t have its own museum because there are museums for Ramen noodles, potatoes, mustard, Jell-O, disgusting foods, gingerbread, ice cream, Spam, watermelon, asparagus, sardines, and oh, so many more.
Links to the other museums:
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My multiple goals are to amuse and inspire you, to share what I and people whom I admire are doing, to stimulate your curiosity, and spur you to action. I hope you enjoyed this offering. You can access previous issues here. I welcome your feedback. (Kathy@WiserNow.com) | | | | | |
