And then there were four

"There are only four outdoor phone booths left in Manhattan — and they're all on West End Avenue. That's it: four."

(via Daring Fireball)

Charles Dickens on print and printers

A note in Edgar Rosenberg's Norton Critical Edition of Great Expectations led me to look up Charles Dickens's address to an anniversary meeting of the Printers' Pension Society, April 6, 1864. Dickens begins:

I do not know whether my feelings are exceptional, but I have a distinct recollection (in my early days at school, when under the dominion of an old lady, who to my mind ruled the world with the birch) of feeling an intense disgust with printers and printing. I thought the letters were printed and sent there to plague me, and I looked upon the printer as my enemy. When I was taught to say my prayers I was told to pray for my enemies, and I distinctly remember praying especially for the printer as my greatest enemy. I never now see a row of large, black, fat, staring Roman capitals, but this reminiscence rises up before me. . . .

But this feeling of dislike to the printer altogether disappeared from the time I saw my own name in print. I now feel gratified at looking at the jolly letter O, the crooked S, with its full benevolent turns, the curious G, and the Q with its comical tail, that first awoke in me a sense of the humourous. The printer and myself are, and have been for some time, inseparable companions.

Dickens closes by paying tribute to the printer's role in "press[ing] the tyrants and humbugs off the face of the earth":

The printer is the friend of intelligence, of thought; he is the friend of liberty, of freedom, of law; indeed, the printer is the friend of every man who is the friend of order; the friend of every man who can read. Of all inventions, of all the discoveries in science or art, of all the great results in the wonderful progress of mechanical energy and skill, the printer is the only product of civilization necessary to the existence of free man.

The Speeches of Charles Dickens, ed. K.J. Fielding (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1960), 323–324, 325, 325.

Founded in 1827, the Printers' Pension Society was supporting seventy-six pensioners in 1864. Dickens earlier addressed the Society in 1843.

Awful Library Books

Because "'Books-that-should-be-reconsidered-under-interpretation-of-current-collection-development-policies-and-retired' is not a fun name": Awful Library Books.

(Thanks, Rachel!)

Proust model reader

In today's New York Times, a photograph of a lovely model reading Proust.

Early Beach Boys Hit Song Topics

Early Beach Boys Hit Song Topics, #5 In A Series Of Pop-Cultural Charts (via Submitted for Your Perusal)

Robert McNamara's lessons

The Wikipedia article on Errol Morris' documentary The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara (2003) has capable summaries:

Eleven life lessons from The Fog of War
Eleven lessons from the Vietnam War
Ten additional lessons

The Fog of War is perhaps the most compelling documentary I've seen. And yes, history repeated itself, with Donald Rumsfeld starring as Robert S. McNamara.

Ex-Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara Dies at 93 (New York Times)

Fineline erasers

[If you’re visiting from the Carnival of Pen, Pencil, and Paper, welcome! Please feel free to look around. You can find all stationery-related posts via Pinboard.]



[1 11/16" x 7/16".]

This tiny metal vessel for Sheaffer erasers is a delight to the eye. Or my eye (or eyes). The design — from the 1940s? 1950s? — seems to prefigure the bold and cheery goofiness of the best Pop Art. I like the tipsy cursive and the bumpy ride that one must take to take in the main idea: "3 Fineline ERASERS." I like the idea of three erasers selling for nineteen cents. I like the inscrutable "T," which sits like a mystery planet at the edge of the Fineline solar system. And I like thinking of the "3" as residing on a dark distant planet whose form is indistinguishable from deep blue space.

I found this item (holding two not three erasers) some years ago in a now-defunct stationery store. I made up the rest.

[This post is the fifth in an occasional series, "From the Museum of Supplies." The museum is imaginary. The supplies are real. Supplies is my word, and has become my family's word, for all manner of stationery items.]

Also from the Museum of Supplies
Dennison's Gummed Labels No. 27
A Mad Men sort of man, sort of
Mongol No. 2 3/8
Real Thin Leads
Rite-Rite Long Leads

Webster's Third New International

"Permissive," "subversive," "a very great calamity": the 1961 publication of Webster's Third New International (Unabridged) caused a stir. Read all about it:

David Skinner, Ain't That the Truth: Webster's Third: The Most Controversial Dictionary in the English Language (Humanities)

I've had a Webster's Third since 1986 (thank you, Elaine). A fourth edition is now underway.

"No idea what to do"

A 1993 high-school graduate:

"I was told, growing up, that I could do whatever I wanted, and I fully believed I could. And therefore I had no idea what to do."

Chris Colin, What Really Happened to the Class of '93: Start-ups, Dropouts, and Other Navigations Through an Untidy Decade (New York: Broadway Books, 2004), 56, quoted in Jean M. Twenge, Generation Me: Why Today's Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled — and More Miserable Than Ever Before (New York: Free Press, 2006), 226.

Amazon is down

I checked with Down for everyone or just me?