VCS God Cares

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Text on Button VCS BECAUSE GOD CARES
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Purple heart in the center of a purple outline flower with blue and purple text over blue background. 

Curl Text HORN CO. GLENSIDE PA. 19038
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This may be a button from Valley Christian School, a school created by the Huntingdon Valley Presbyterian Church of Huntingdon, Pennsylvania in 1974. They work with parents and the Christian community to teach students to be "Christ-centered thinkers."

Sources

About Valley Christian School (2014). VCS: Valley Christian School. http://www.vcskids.com/#!about/cjg9

Catalog ID CL0411

Valentine Boyfriend Wanted

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Text on Button VALENTINE BOYFRIEND WANTED no experience necessary
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Anthropomorphized red heart with a mustache between red and black text over yellow background. 

Curl Text SWIB, LISLE, IL 60532
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Saint Valentine's Day, also known as Valentine's Day or the Feast of Saint Valentine, is a holiday observed on February 14 each year. It is celebrated in many countries around the world, although it is not an official holiday in most of them. The day was first associated with romantic love in the circle of Geoffrey Chaucer in the High Middle Ages, when the tradition of courtly love flourished. In eighteenth-century England, it evolved into an occasion in which lovers expressed their love for each other by presenting flowers, offering confectionery, and sending hand-written cards.

Sources

Seipel, A. (2011, February 13). The dark origins of Valentine's Day. NPR. https://www.npr.org/2011/02/14/133693152/the-dark-origins-of-valentines…

Catalog ID EV0286

Valentine Available

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Text on Button VALENTINE AVAILABLE
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Red heart centered between two white arches with red text over pink background. 

Curl Text SWIB, LISLE, IL 60532
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Saint Valentine's Day, also known as Valentine's Day or the Feast of Saint Valentine, is a holiday observed on February 14 each year. It is celebrated in many countries around the world, although it is not an official holiday in most of them. The day was first associated with romantic love in the circle of Geoffrey Chaucer in the High Middle Ages, when the tradition of courtly love flourished. In eighteenth-century England, it evolved into an occasion in which lovers expressed their love for each other by presenting flowers, offering confectionery, and sending hand-written cards.

Sources

Seipel, A. (2011, February 13). The dark origins of Valentine's Day. NPR. https://www.npr.org/2011/02/14/133693152/the-dark-origins-of-valentines…

Catalog ID EV0285

Museum of Contemporary Art Sweet Art

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Text on Button SWEET ART MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART CHICAGO © DALLEGRET
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A red heart with black text all around it.Everything is set on a white background. 

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This button was desgined by artist Dallegret Francois on the occasion of the exhibition Art by Telephone at the Museum Of Contemporary Art (MCA), Chicago. The exhibit was on view from November 1 through December 14, 1969.

Art by Telephone was a very conceptual exhibition and was considered controversial at the time. All of the works were intended to be temporary and were destroyed after the exhibition. Participating artists on the exhibition included Richard Artschwager, John Baldessari, Sol LeWitt, Robert Morris, Bruce Nauman, Claes Oldenburg, Richard Serra, and Robert Smithson.

Dallegret’s work from the exhibition was titled Hot Line/Soft Laser. It included a 30 foot long wire hung horizontally at eye level and plugged into a timer. The wire would be heated and turn red, expand, and sag at each interval, but as it resumed to room temperature, the wire would straighten and return to black. 

Sources

Wade, Sarah. (2014, October 23). Back to the ’70s: Art by Telephone on WTTW.  Museum of Contemproray Ats Chicago. Retreived from: http://www2.mcachicago.org/2014/back-to-the-70s-art-by-telephone-on-wtt….

Dallegret Francois, personal communication, August 17, 2015.

Mary Richardson, personal communication, August 17, 2015.

Catalog ID AR0140

Slurpee Kiss Me

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Text on Button SLURP A KISS ME YOU FOOL!
Image Description

Red heart below blue text, under white text encircled by blue border over white background. 

Curl Text Union Bug
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"Kiss Me You Fool" was the name of a Slurpee flavor in the late 1960s. Slurpee is exclusively a 7-Eleven product that was introduced in the stores in 1965 after 7-Eleven made a deal with the ICEE company to sell the drink under a different name. The Slurpee was an instant success thanks to clever marketing strategies like psychedelic swirled cups and even a 45 RPM promotional record called, "Dance the Slurp."

The 7-Eleven franchise started in 1928, when Joe C. Thompson Jr. bought an ice plant and opened several storefronts selling items that were kept cold by the ice. Through the Great Depression, the stores fell on hard times, but rebounded in 1946 with the new operating hours, 7 am to 11 pm, and grew to 100 franchised locations by the 1950s. 

Catalog ID AD0138

Shaheen

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Text on Button I'VE BEEN TO SHAHEEN I LOVED IT!
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Black and red text on white background.

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Sam Shaheen immigrated from Lebanon to Louisville, KY, and bought a dry goods business that by 1922 had grown into Shaheen’s Department Store. By the late 1950s, the store was specializing in school uniforms. Today, it services more than 300 schools in Kentucky, Indiana, Oklahoma, Missouri, and Tennessee.  There are three stores in the Louisville, KY area, all family owned and operated. The stores carry schoolwear, workwear and chefwear.

Sources

Shaheen’s Department Store. (2014)  Retrieved from https://www.shaheens.com/.

Catalog ID IL0001

Public Employees Need Love

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Text on Button Public employees need love too.
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White heart under red text over red background. 

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The Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) was established in 1963 after the merger of the National Union of Public Employees and the National Union of Public Service Employees. Today, it is Canada’s largest union and comprised of over 700,000 members from the healthcare, education, social services, transportation, and airline industries. More than half of its members are women and a third are part-time workers.

Since its inception, CUPE has always had a progressive, forward-looking platform. It was instrumental in securing basic rights for public employees including the ability to strike and bargain collectively. It was also a fervent supporter of equal pay and same-sex marriage and outspoken critic of the Iraq invasion. CUPE made history when it elected feminist Grace Hartman as its president in 1975. Hartman represented the first woman to lead a national union in North America. Currently, CUPE is a powerful lobbying force and has seen some success in getting the Canadian government to adopt pro-union policies.

Sources

Canadian Union of Public Employees. (n.d.). Who we are. https://cupe.ca/who-we-are

Ross, S., & Savage, L. (2020, September 4). The face of Canada's unions are changing. Let it be a woman. The Tyee. https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2020/09/04/Canada-Unions-Changing-Women/

Catalog ID CA0540

Nu-Leth-R Cares

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Text on Button NU-LETH-R Cares about you!
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A red heart with white text inside it on a white background. 

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Nu-Leth-R is a brand of customized desk calendars frequently sold by promotional product vendors such as Halo and Warwick Publishing. In addition to customizable imprints, Nu-Leth-R once offered additional features for their calendars, such as custom photograph prints and miniature thermometers.

Catalog ID AD0217

Muni Loves You

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Text on Button MUNI Loves you!
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a white heart with red text inside it and white text underneath it. Everything is set on a red background. 

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This button was handed out by cable car drivers in 1975 to promote a friendlier image and to attract more ridership of the San Francisco's Municipal Railway, known as Muni. 

Muni has been in service for over a century, starting after the San Francisco earthquake in 1906. It is responsible for the municipal railway, the division of parking and traffic, taxis, buses, trolleys, the historic streetcars and SF's iconic cable cars. Curtis E Green, the deputy general manager from 1973 to 1982, who was the first African American to head a major U.S. transit system, ran the Muni in difficult times when the agency was transitioning from a rundown bus-oriented operation into a system centered around the subway Muni Metro; it was him who engineered the button publicity stunt.  

Catalog ID IL0069