Posts in category: Elephant in the Room

Joe Peery was pushing his way through a particularly dense area in the South River Forest one day in 2014 when he stumbled upon what he first thought was a graveyard.

The east Atlanta resident discovered the wooded haven just outside of the city when searching for mountain bike trails and a place to hike with his dog. He’d often find weird things out there — sometimes cars riddled with bullet holes or in another case an abandoned Wurlitzer organ.

But the 8-foot-long structures, with the names ‘Poe,’ ‘Homer’ and ‘Virgil’ carved meticulously into their faces, looked to him like the remnants of another time.

“There were all these huge marble stones that were just sticking up out of the ground that were really elaborate and beautiful,” he recalled.

Known as the Carnegie stones, the marble blocks were actually the remains of Atlanta’s first library that was built at the corner of Church Street (now Carnegie Way) and Forsyth Streets in 1902.

After being demolished in 1977, stones with the names of famous authors that once were displayed proudly on the facade of the building were dumped in the South River Forest.

Peery joined an effort to rescue the stones, but he said the historical slabs were caught in limbo between DeKalb County, where the land resides, and the city of Atlanta, which owns the land.

Today, the land in the South River Forest is at the center of a heated debate over Atlanta’s plans to build an 85-acre public safety training facility, which the city argues is imperative to properly train and recruit police officers and firefighters.

Tensions have been heightened by the recent indictment of more than 60 training center opponents under the state’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. On Thursday, police arrested five people who chained themselves to construction equipment.

Many of the opponents cite environmental concerns or fear of increased policing as an argument against the project. The growing opposition has sparked an effort to put the training center on the ballot through a referendum vote.

A small group of people is worried about something much different: the potential loss of history.

“We know the area that’s been cleared (for the project) includes the area where the Carnegie stones were, so I have no idea what’s happened to them,” Peery said.

The uncertain fate of the Carnegie stones isn’t the only concern for local history buffs and residents who had been exploring the land long before the city of Atlanta OK’d plans to build the facility.

The massive property has lived many lives and played host to some of the most brutal chapters of Atlanta’s history. First inhabited by Muscogee people, the area was also several plantations, saw troop movement during the Civil War and was eventually operated by the city as a prison farm.

Apart from trash dumped there over the years, residents who explored the area may have come across things like the remains of the prison buildings or traversed over the graves of multiple zoo animals — both Coca and Maude the elephants and gorilla Willie B.

But up until the controversial project made headlines, much about the land was a mystery. Only small handfuls of local enthusiasts and hikers spent time exploring under the canopy of one of the region’s biggest urban forests.

A team of historians from the Atlanta History Center recently spent time compiling all they could about the history of the 85 acres which seems destined to hold Atlanta’s massive public safety facility. The organization was asked by the mayor’s office to find out what they could about the site for as far back as history would allow. This story relies heavily on those findings.

The task wasn’t easy for a number of reasons. Previous historians and newspaper reports over the years had mistakenly conflated the prison farm site with a federal prison farm — known as the honor farm — that operated nearby. The DeKalb County Courthouse, which housed decades of property records, also mysteriously burned down in 1842.

The city-run prison farm morphed quickly from its early uses — originally purchased to be a crematorium, it turned into a dairy farm and then to the prison — so it was referred to by many different names.

“We knew that we not only were starting from scratch, we were starting from misinformation,” said Claire Haley, vice president of special projects at the center. “So correcting that was a challenge.

We’re glad that people are interested in that history because I think whatever resolution you come to about all these issues, it will only be made more complete by understanding that history.”

Historians who have tracked the history of land parcels 82 and 83 — the site of the training center in unincorporated DeKalb — go much further back than the prison farm era and the Civil War.

Less than two miles away from the site of the training facility, archeologists found the earliest signs of an Atlanta-area civilization that existed during the late Archaic and early Woodland periods, from 3,000 BCE to 0 CE, known today as Soapstone Ridge, a historic district in DeKalb County.

Historians believe that there could be a link between the historic site and the training center property.

Hundreds of years later, the Muscogee people lived on the land. The Native American tribe was once called by historian Alan Gallay “the most powerful Indian nation on the southern frontier.”

Some descendants of the Muscogee people have joined opponents of the training center to save what they call the Weelaunee Forest, known today as the South River Forest.

In the early 1800s the U.S. government pressured the Muscogee people into millions of acres of land cessions. In 1821, during the Treaty of Indian Springs, present-day Atlanta was sold off to white settlers in a land lottery.

Local archeologist Casey Sharp said he’s spent time researching all the previously recorded archeological finds within one mile of the proposed training center site.

“I can guarantee you that Native American sites are being run over there as we speak,” Sharp said.

While construction crews might not come across mass burials or mounds, they’ll likely come across things like pottery and arrowheads, he said.

“Disturbing a little bit of stuff like that during construction is not the biggest deal,” Sharp said. “But you’re supposed to take steps to mitigate that from happening as much as possible.”

As part of the project process, the Atlanta Police Foundation commissioned an archeological survey of the proposed area, conducted by a company called Terracon.

The first version of their report was presented to the project’s Community Stakeholder Advisory Committee and raised eyebrows when much of the historical background on the site was inaccurate. The company also did not fulfill the requirement to conduct interviews with area experts. The committee requested Terracon correct factual errors and issue an amended report.

Sharp, who conducts the same surveys for his job, said that a revised report that followed, to him, looks like the company simply made a cursory check of the area to sign off on the project.

Just a mile or so away from the training center site on a Friday afternoon, a ragtag group of local history buffs including Sharp and Peery waded through a shins-deep area of the South River.

“You don’t need a hugely trained eye to find stuff,” Sharp said. On that day, the group easily stumbled across pieces of worked quartz — with markings indicating they were fashioned into tools — and pieces of chert that was commonly traded between Native American tribes.

Terracon didn’t list a single archeological find. If it had, it wouldn’t have stopped construction but would have triggered a higher level of archaeological monitoring.

“Testing resulted in no cultural materials identified from the subsurface or surface,” Terracon concluded, although surveyors recommended mitigation efforts to protect prison farm buildings that fall under criteria for historic classification.

A faction of training center opponents is worried about potential unmarked graves from the plantation era through years of inhumane conditions at the prison farm — although no evidence has been found to support the theory.

“Considering the history of that land,” Sharp said, “the possibility of there being unmarked graves in that area is unbelievably high.”

Nearly six decades ago, Atlanta Constitution reporter Dick Herbert hatched a plan to get himself arrested.

In 1965, almost all of the inmates at the Atlanta prison farm on Key Road in the southeast side of the city were there for drunken behavior in public or traffic violations for an average stay of around 15 days.

While they were there, they were assigned activities like harvesting vegetables from okra to collard greens, tending to the city’s livestock or plowing tractors across the grounds.

Herbert, by this own choice, was one of them.

The undercover journalist sought to expose the brutal reality of life inside the stone walls. His reporting spotlighted the prison’s hostile ecosystem including a rampant prescription pill trade, a rigid class structure created by inmates and long days spent chopping away at kudzu vines with a scythe that left blisters on their hands.

Historians hail his series of seven articles as one of the only first-person accounts of how inmates led their lives on the roughly 300-acre property.

Newspaper reports throughout the years since Atlanta began operating the prison farm in 1925 detail severe overcrowding, lack of access to medical care, limited air-conditioning and mass disease — most notably an influenza outbreak in 1957. One news article on the prison farm mentioned a rampant infestation of lice.

One Atlanta Constitution article from May 1976 references the graves of 280 inmates on the prison farm site but doesn’t go into further detail.

At the prison farm, if an inmate was caught breaking the rules in 1976, they’d be sent to what correctional officers referred to as “motivational therapy rooms,” according to Atlanta Constitution articles, more commonly known as solitary confinement.

Until the site was recently closed to the public by Atlanta and the surrounding parks by DeKalb County officials, visitors could go stand inside what remained of the solitary confinement cells.

“There’s something about standing in a place,” said Haley with the history center. “We love history, we love reading about history, but there’s something about seeing it too that can really help people understand what we’re talking about.”

Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens’ hand-picked training center task force recommended ways to memorialize the cruel history of the prison farm and suggested renovating current buildings for exhibits — but the dilapidated nature of the structures may create challenges.

Despite historians’ best efforts to nail down the site’s history decade after decade, there are still many unknowns.

The fire that engulfed the DeKalb County Courthouse one January night in 1842 took with it tax digests and deeds that were crucial to the puzzle of who owned and lived on the land after it was taken from Native peoples.

The blaze was attributed in news coverage at the time to the “carelessness of some card players at a late hour in the night, in one of the vacant rooms.”

What we do know is that two plantations operated on the property. From 1848 to 1850, William Morris owned the land and 12 enslaved people. Then it was sold to George P. Key — of Key Road — who farmed the land and owned up to 19 enslaved people which made it one of the largest slave plantations in DeKalb County.

There are two prominent and surprising gaps in knowledge: the time between the Civil War and the city’s purchase; and the very recent history of what was happening on the land after the prison farm closed.

“After that it is a bit murky,” Haley said. “There is some police training activity happening around there. Then it just seems like it kind of sat there for a long time and a lot of it was vacant.”

News coverage in the early 2000s started to identify the property as a potential park site. A lengthy report released in 2017 by the Department of City Planning called utilizing more than 1,200 acres of land in the South River Forest a “last chance for a massive urban park.”

That included the 300 or so acres of Atlanta-owned property home to the old prison farm.

MGP meeting debates how five promises made by Congress to grab power is denting State finances

Mysore/Mysuru: With several thousands of crores of rupees being spent on the implementation of five pre-poll guarantees announced by the State Government, namely Shakti, Gruha Jyothi, Anna Bhagya, Gruha Lakshmi and Yuva Nidhi (which is yet to be implemented), along with several other schemes, the tax-payers will face an increasing financial burden in the days ahead.

This consensus emerged during the monthly meeting organised by Mysore Grahakara Parishat (MGP) at Yadavagiri in the city recently. The meeting was attended by former employees of Karnataka Power Transmission Corporation Limited (KPTCL), contractors and MGP members.

Many of the participants opined that all the five guarantees will be scrapped after the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. “The Government will stall all development works to fund the guarantees till the Lok Sabha elections and after the polls, these populist schemes will be shelved as it is unrealistic to continue them. But enough damage would have been done to the State finances till the guarantees are withdrawn” they reasoned.

Despite the present State Government completing 100 days in office, there is no mention of any development projects commencing, not even in the media, during this period. Attendees of the meeting expressed concerns that the State may encounter challenging times in the coming days.

MGP Member Bhamy V. Shenoy stated, “The free schemes promised during the pre-election period will severely impact the State exchequer. While it is known that 200 units of power are being supplied to consumers for free, there are concerns about the quality of power supply to those whose electricity consumption exceeds 200 units.”

An MGP member elaborated on how the revenue and expenditures of Chamundeshwari Electricity Supply Corporation (CESC) and four other Electricity Supply Companies (Escoms) will be adversely affected due to the implementation of free 200 units of power.

The presentation included a detailed breakdown of expenses, including purchasing power from other States, maintaining coal stock for electricity generation, acquiring raw materials, and covering employee salaries, pensions and other expenses.

The Government’s guarantees are already becoming a part-reality, with the cost of each guarantee running into several thousands of crores of rupees per month. In July, hundreds of crores of rupees were allocated to the Transport Corporations under the Shakti Scheme. The MGP members discussed how these five guarantees could be considered ‘White Elephants’ if continued, as they would significantly impact the State’s fiscal condition and burden tax-payers.

The next step for protest or action should be decided only after evaluating the pros and cons of implementing schemes that involve the public. A suggestion was made during the meeting to submit a report to the Government after studying the impact of these guarantees on tax-payers.

MGP members, including retired KPTCL Engineer Sudheendra, Ashwathnarayan, Ravi Palya, Sridhar, industrialist Sreeshaila Ramannavar and others were present at  the meeting.

Investing in the real estate market in Italy in 2023-24
Mountains of Italy
Cities on a Human Scale
The help of an Italian attorney to invest in real estate

FLORENCE, TUSCANY, ITALY, September 8, 2023/EINPresswire.com/ — Italy Real Estate Market Trends: Mountains and Cities Designed for People​​ are Rising up

Investing in the real estate market in Italy during 2023 and 2024

The Italian real estate market continued to show positive trends in the second half of 2022. The analysis was conducted by Tecnocasa, one of the most popular real estate websites in Italy. Its Research Office reveals that cities designed for people (città a misura d’uomo) registered increases and faster sales times during this period.

Despite changing market conditions, housing continues to attract savers looking to preserve their capital from inflation. The latter half of 2022 saw a return to investment, driven in part by the significant resurgence of tourists, which revitalized short-term rentals. Real estate is still considered an excellent use of capital, both in attractive cities and small-town destinations.

The report from the Tecnocasa Research Office highlighted that 18.2% of real estate transactions in the second half of 2022 were made for investment, slightly higher than the 2021 percentage of around 16.5%. Genoa is the Italian city where renting a property yields the highest returns. The study found that in the capital of Liguria, the yield is 6.4%, followed by Palermo (6.3%) and Verona (6.2%).

To get deeper into Italian geography, here you can have a look at the Italian regions where buying a house is more convenient.

Investing in the Mountains of Italy

Although Italy has 8300 km of coastline touched by the Mediterranean sea, for many lovers of the Belpaese the mountains are the real attraction. Tecnocasa Research Office also provided those insights. In Aosta Valley, there is an increase in demand from foreign buyers residing in Belgium and the Netherlands. They are interested in properties located in less touristy areas, surrounded by greenery, often purchasing typical houses that require significant renovation work. The opportunity to find more affordable prices in Italy compared to other European countries is a driving force behind their purchases.

In Veneto, in Asiago, the Tecnocasa network has observed the preferred areas including Laghetto Lumera, Zocchi, and Aeroporto, located near the city center. Prices in these areas range around €2,900 per square meter. The market in Gallio and Roana is also performing well, as the lower prices of properties from the 1970s to 1990s allow those with lower budgets to make purchases. The average prices for renovating houses are around €1,300 per square meter, while newer properties cost around €2,000 per square meter.

In Trentino-Alto Adige, many properties have been renovated using the Superbonus incentive. Prices for these new properties are around €3,500 per square meter. In the outskirts of Folgaria, there are smaller residential areas where housing prices average around €1,500 per square meter, making them affordable for those with lower budgets.

Cities on a Human Scale Experience Growth and Faster Sales Times, According to Analysis by Tecnocasa Research Office

In the second semester of 2022, major cities recorded an increase of 1.8% in housing prices, while the outskirts of these cities saw a growth of 1.1%. Several provincial capitals stood out with particularly positive trends. These cities continue to be appreciated as human-scale urban environments with a good quality of life, including green areas, family services, and proximity to metropolitan areas. Notably, some of the noteworthy provincial capitals showing price appreciation include Teramo (Molise), which also boasts a university and attracts investments for rental purposes or purchases by parents of university students.

Among the top five cities with the highest price variations, are two provincial capitals in Emilia-Romagna, Parma, and Reggio Emilia, often cited for their high quality of life. These cities also have significant university presence, attracting investment opportunities. Reggio Emilia is also undergoing redevelopment and improvement initiatives. Foreigners residing in the province of Reggio Emilia as of 1 January 2021 number 66,623 and represent 12.6% of the resident population. Foreigners resident in Parma on 1 January 2022 number 34,196 and represent 17.5% of the resident population.

When compared to a year ago, certain cities have maintained a positive growth trend, with Monza being one of them. Located near Milan, Monza benefits from its proximity to the Lombard capital and is expected to further benefit from ongoing metro projects and numerous redevelopment initiatives.

The important help of an Italian attorney to invest in real estate

In short, according to the data, 2024 will be the year to buy a house in the small provincial towns of central-northern Italy. They have it all: beautiful and affordable real estate, excellent food, art, culture, theatres, and, lately, even a decent public transport network.

When it comes to investing in real estate, particularly in a foreign country, the process can be complex and fraught with potential pitfalls. This is especially true in Italy, a country with a rich tapestry of historical, legal, and cultural nuances.

When considering an Italian real estate attorney, ILF – Law Firm, based in Florence, stands out as a prime example of the services needed as an investor. Comprising a team of Italian English-speaking lawyers, their expertise combines deep knowledge of Italian law with a clear understanding of the international investor’s perspective.

As we head into 2024-2025, the role of a dedicated Italian attorney becomes even more critical. They offer crucial aid in areas like due diligence, legal representation, contract drafting and review, negotiations, and property registration.

ILF – Law Firms provides expert legal services, understanding the importance of personalized attention. You’ll be partnering with a team that’s not only proficient in Italian law but also committed to making the investment journey a successful one.

Michele Ambrogio
ILF – Law Firm
+39 055 098 1586
info@italylawfirms.com

Some arrive with the love nearly squeezed out of them. Some have had run-ins with family pets. Some have survived natural disasters. Some have been mangled in the washing machine or burned in the dryer. Some arrive in pieces. Some are literally on their last thread.

But no matter how they arrive, Beth Karper makes those beloved stuffed animals and dolls feel like new again at Realms of Gold, the toy hospital she runs out of her home studio in Los Altos. It’s where the torn, falling apart, and heavily-hugged go for love and care.

You can run into all sorts of patients here — lions, tigers, bears, bunnies, lambs, elephants, cows and other plush pals. More high-profile toy celebrities passing through have included Raggedy Ann, Raggedy Andy, Care Bears, Paddington Bear, Scooby-Doo, Barney, Mickey Mouse, Winnie the Pooh and sometimes Tigger too.

Regardless of a toy’s popularity level, each receives a patient number and is set up in its own space during its stay. Since starting the hospital nearly 20 years ago, Karper has helped more than 6,000 toy patients from around the world.

People who’ve sent in their stuffed friends have told Karper that they’ve had them since childhood; others have come from parents who’ve had to dig through rain and mud to find them again; others were left behind on vacation but were shipped home by hotels.

“It’s been everywhere, and it’s part of me, and yet, getting rid of it would almost be like losing part of yourself,” Karper said people tell her of their dolls and stuffed animals. “There’s also people who are like, literally, this is the only thing they have from their childhood. And sometimes that’s because they’ve just had a busy life and they’re now 80 years old and this is what was left.”

Beth Karper repairs a toy snowman at her home in Los Altos.

(Michaela Vatcheva / For The Times)

Karper has been making dolls since she was a child in Maryland. She was a children’s librarian in Ohio making dolls for story time and later on was a librarian for the Braille Institute in Los Angeles before moving to the Bay Area with her husband in 2000. When she left her librarian job, she decided to make dolls full-time, selling them at art shows and online and soon had people asking whether she could repair their stuffed animals and dolls too.

But her desire to help renew the life of dolls and stuffed animals was sealed after the teddy bear she had had since she was a baby was rejected by a repair and restoration store in New York City. The bear had been stitched up “hundreds of times” over the years by her father or grandmother, Karper said. But she was not comfortable fixing her bear on her own. The rejection was devastating.

“They told me that he wasn’t a fancy enough teddy bear, that they only worked with antique teddy bears, like the old classic jointed ones that you see from the turn of the century,” Karper said. “They wouldn’t touch him; his fur was too messed up, they couldn’t sell it and they wouldn’t do anything.”

The rejection drove her to become more comfortable with fixing her bear and helping others.

Every patient has a story. Karper said the toys are sent for a variety of reasons, including somebody going to college or graduating from college, going to boot camp or coming home from a deployment, or the person is getting married and they want their favorite stuffed friend to be there celebrating with them. Other patients are being prepped to be passed along to a new child or grandchild.

“A lot of people anthropomorphize them — this is who has been with them their entire lives,” Karper said. “Even when an animal’s coming in, it’s going to the next generation so they can love it and have it be part of their life.”

Karper also runs a Tumblr site that documents her patients, with pictures and posts detailing her process for helping them get well and how she works with owners. The reposting of her work has led to patients coming from not only the U.S. but also around the world, including Australia, Hong Kong, the Netherlands and Singapore.

“It’s cool to know that people are reading about them and feel comfortable enough to entrust their stuffed animals to travel, not just across the country but [also] around the world to get here for [me] to take care of them,” Karper said. “One of the ones from Italy was almost 100 years old, and it was his mom’s, but he was willing to risk the mail service to get it to me. That’s a lot of trust.”

Beth Karper captures the moment a customer’s toy gets a “spa” treatment at Karper’s home in Los Altos.

(Michaela Vatcheva / For The Times)

Sales for plush toys between 2021 and 2022 rose by 31%, according to the NPD Group’s U.S. retail tracking services, which covers part of the U.S. toys market.

Susan Adamo Baumbach, acting chair of the toy design department at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City, said people connect with plush toys in a variety of ways, be it the design, an animal they’ve always loved or something that was gifted to them. She said plush toys “age in a different way” than building blocks, games or sports equipment because they change slowly over time “and then it’s like, wow, this piece of plush has been loved and loved and it shows it.”

Adamo Baumbach added that the biggest misconception people often have about stuffed animals and other plush toys is that they’re only for kids and not adults. She pointed out that some households may be eager for their child to grow out of a toy but chances are, that will not happen, or there will be resentment if they’re forced to give up a toy they love.

“Maybe it’s an animal that we’ve had no interaction with or no love of but there’s something in that face, there’s something in that styling, there’s certainly something in the eyes, that is almost like falling in love at first sight,” Adamo Baumbach said.

At Realms of Gold, each patient is special to Karper, but there have been some standouts over the years. There’s the blue bunny she pieced back together based on a picture of its owner’s tattoo; the stuffed rhinoceros that had 30 years of adventures at the front of a big rig truck and needed to be cleaned so it could go with the retired trucker; the favorite stuffed toy a firefighter’s family wanted cleaned up so they could present to him when he came home; the favorite teddy bear a woman found in boxes she was going through after her mother died that needed to be stitched up.

Karper’s days include running soak baths for patients, stuffing patients, sewing, sending cost estimates for prospective patients, and packing patients for their journeys home. She also emails people with suggestions about fixing their plush friends and what kind of customizations can be made.

Being responsible for someone’s cherished toy comes with its own pressure.

“I try very hard to be very explicit about what I can and can’t do, and I also try very hard to be very explicit about what’s reversible and what’s not,” Karper said. “I don’t want to do something that’s not reversible and have the person be unhappy, because you want it to still be their stuffed animal.”

Beth Karper towel-dries a toy at her home. After the toys dry in Karper’s bathroom for the first 24 hours, she then dries them outdoors in her yard.

(Michaela Vatcheva / For The Times)

The rejuvenation process depends on the patient but Karper sticks with her usual regimen. Most patients get a spa soaking to help with cleaning, refluffing their stuffing and getting the dirt off so their original color can be restored. The photos of patients sitting in bubble baths — nothing but their eyes and noses visible — are a popular part of Karper’s Tumblr site, and clients often like getting reassurance that their stuffed friends are doing well.

“That’s something that’s cute, and most people aren’t freaked out by,” Karper said. “I don’t send pictures of patients drying, because they look like fabric is cut out… All but one of their seams is closed, but they look flat, and that’s not the animal you remember, so most people don’t want to see that.”

The filling and more colorful parts are removed to help with air drying. After that, the toy is restuffed, with extra filling added in. Before being sewn shut, Karper will add a heart-shaped pouch with the patient’s previous stuffing, a suggestion made by a client that has stuck with her.

“Most of the time, people want their stuffed animal a little chubbier than it was, because stuffing compresses over time, and that’s part of how they get flat,” Karper said. “They’ll be like ‘They lost all their stuffing,’ and I’m like, ‘No, you’ve just hugged them a lot and the stuffing is all compressed.’”

A patient might need new eyes or a new nose. Karper said this is an important step for clients because these parts are held in place by safety washers and designed to not come out easily. Karper added that getting an exact match for an old nose or eye depends on availability or when they were manufactured.

“There are some people who will say, ‘Well, that’s really your soul, and let’s just keep them like that’ or sometimes people will say, ‘No, they really need to be able to see; the cataracts are bad,’” Karper said. “You could just replace the eyes, and most people would never notice, but I can’t do that because these are their memories, and I don’t want to change them without them.”

Years of helping patients has also taught her best practices for how to tackle specific issues.

If Karper can’t remove a patient’s stuffing, it can’t get a spa soak. The legs on Raggedy Ann dolls are made of red and white-striped fabric, which will bleed when it gets wet from tears or attempted washings — better to replace them with new fabric.

She bulk buys 10- and 20-pound boxes of hypoallergenic stuffing. There are bulk orders of stuffed animal eyes, but now with clear ones available, she can mix colors to match old eyes or make new ones. Shorter ply fur for stuffed toys missing patches or torn up will eventually blend into the rest of the fur with time and hugs. Commercial toys often have flat eyes that may need to be remade with felt. Helping a Barney patient often means buying a new Barney to be a donor to fix missing patches since the dinosaur’s color is proprietary. She’s bulk ordered sound boxes for teddy bears from Germany just in case an animal patient lost its voice.

“For a while, I had to source [koala] noses from Australia because nobody here had koala shaped plastic noses,” Karper said. “You didn’t want a regular triangular teddy bear nose or a puppy dog nose or a cat nose, you need a koala nose… I ordered a whole bunch of noses, so I have koala noses for any kind of koala that comes in.”

Beth Karper adds fresh stuffing to a vintage Mickey Mouse toy after its cleaning.

(Michaela Vatcheva / For The Times)

When patients leave, Karper sends it home with a copy of its chart and discharge instructions. Those include keeping patients at a comfortable temperature and humidity, out of direct sunlight and out of hot attics, cold basements, washing machines and dryers. For patients that were on an increased stuffing diet during their hospital stay, Karper notes that “lots of hugs will aid in [their] continued healing and help them lose any weight gained.”

Karper said she’ll continue to run the hospital until she’s tired of the work. Knowing she has helped thousands of toy patients return to their owners in better condition has made her proud.

“I was doing a really good job of increasing the total amount of happiness in the world,” Karper said. “That’s the goal of the hospital, and if there’s over 6,000 patients out there, and there are people that are happier and together still because of me, that was a really good thing. I made a difference in the world.”