A child's fascination with paper weights has turned into a Wisconsin museum filled with beautiful examples of the office desk accessory.

Google / John Zabinski
Google / John Zabinski
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I never collected anything as a child. Baseball cards didn't do anything for me. I think there was an attempt to collect stamps for about 2 weeks before I realized that was stupid. Maybe it was because I never found anything I was truly passionate about as a kid or maybe I'm missing a gene that other's have to make them want to collect things.

Evangeline Bergstrom either had that gene or was lucky enough to find her passion at an early age: paperweights.

BMMGlass.com - Evangeline Bergstrom began her love of paperweights as a child. She was born in Ithaca, NY on May 23, 1872 and was the only child of Dr. and Mrs. George W. Hoysradt. During frequent summer visits to her grandmother’s home, she became captivated by a paperweight kept on a table in the parlor. Being able to look at the weight served as young Evangeline’s reward for practicing her piano or reciting a poem.

 

Google / Nancy K
Google / Nancy K
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She would eventually lose this cherished paperweight of her grandmother's and began a collection of her own that grew throughout her life.

When she and her husband moved from New York to Wisconsin, the collection came with her and eventually became the Bergstrom-Mahler Museum in Neenah, Wisconsin.

Google / Ryan Bowersox
Google / Ryan Bowersox
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The Bergstroms had no children and were very generous to their community while they were alive. When they passed, they arranged for their mansion to be turned into a museum for paperweights and other glassworks.

Google / Tara Domer
Google / Tara Domer
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The museum attracts thousands of visitors a year, from people just curious about a paperweight museum to respected glass workers visiting a center that celebrates their art.

Google / Keri Thibeau
Google / Keri Thibeau
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This would be a great little cold weather road trip north of the border this winter. When else will you be able to check "Visit a paperweight museum" off your bucket list?

Google / Kari Van Lanen
Google / Kari Van Lanen
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LOOK: See how much gasoline cost the year you started driving

To find out more about how has the price of gas changed throughout the years, Stacker ran the numbers on the cost of a gallon of gasoline for each of the last 84 years. Using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (released in April 2020), we analyzed the average price for a gallon of unleaded regular gasoline from 1976 to 2020 along with the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for unleaded regular gasoline from 1937 to 1976, including the absolute and inflation-adjusted prices for each year.

Read on to explore the cost of gas over time and rediscover just how much a gallon was when you first started driving.

 

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