It's the Lost and Found Fashion Show!

Ours is a community of plenty in a land of the same name. So it's inevitable that some of the largesse of our town will wash up on the banks of NPL.

Our lost and found basket overfloweth.

I am old enough to have had a mother who grew up in the Great Depression. Whenever I misplaced a jacket she hounded me until I tracked it down. To her consternation, there was one car coat that eluded recapture. (I am old enough to have had a car coat, too.)

Recently we decided to hold a Lost and Found Fashion Show of Wayward Apparel for this blog in order to post images of the treasures that overpopulate the basket behind the circulation desk. We recruited Micheline Lyons, because every fashion show, however humble, should feature a glamorous French woman. At the top she, Sue Bridge, and Lisa Milchman are modeling some of the exquisite chapeaux we offer for reunion with their owners.

Hats are especially abundant in this year's L&F collection. Here Lisa Milchman, fearless leader Lucinda Walker, Micheline and Sue model additional options. I tried to stack bicycle helmets on top of one another To Make a Point (subtlety has never been a virtue of mine), but they tumbled off, so here are Lucinda and Lisa, with Sue Bridge lurking in the background, playing the parts of Lands End-type tourists to highlight the bicycle helmets, hats and gloves available to today's trendy outdoor enthusiasts. (The pink camera is part of the collection, too. Is it yours?)

Not only are hats, gloves, jackets, and a single pair of children's snow pants awaiting you, but books and toys grace the basket as well. It's no accident that several images from our photo shoot feature Lisa thoroughly absorbed in a book left behind by what must have been a particularly philosophical child.

Lisa has never been one to shrink from life's Big Questions, so it was no surprise that she should immerse herself in Who Lives in the Pond? a book as padded in presentation as profound in inquiry. Who, indeed, lives in the pond? And under what auspices, hmmm?

I don't suppose that this is the season for noticing that winter hats are missing, but we do reach out and hope that some parents who are reincarnations of my own waste-not, want-not mama will drop by and relieve us of a few of our treasures.