Happy Anniversary

As my dad said on the phone yesterday, “Fifty-six years of close combat.”

Happy Anniversary, Mom and Dad.

(Yes, he was joking.)

Baby alert

Walking home from “school” the other day (a perk of being a college prof, still getting to walk home from “school”), I saw the pre-schoolers from a daycare walking two by two to a grassy spot. One boy cried out: “The babies are here!” As indeed they were. A young woman from the baby daycare unit was waiting on the grass with a fully stocked quad-stroller. A mannerly miniature petting zoo then began to take shape.

Government-pen success

If you too wish to write with government ink, I can recommend buying from One Source Office Products, which sells government-issue ballpoints for 44¢ (medium) and 48¢ (fine). Shipping, via UPS, is free. Three cheers for One Source Office Products.

As for the pen, it’s one dowdy-looking ballpoint. It’s like something from 1965. I am happy.

As seen on TV

“[T]he parts where they show us what we’re doing wrong and why we need the product”: As seen on TV.

(Thanks, Ben!)

Chock full o’Nuts lunch hour

“Lunchtime shoppers and department-store workers jam the Herald Square Chock Full O’ Nuts [sic]. The rush-hour eater waits five minutes, often eats in 10.”

A rough count suggests at least 120 people in this photograph.

[Photograph by Alfred Eisenstaedt, from “The U.S. Goes Out to Lunch,” Life, January 3, 1955. Via the Life photo archive. Don’t miss the large version.]

Related posts
Angela Lansbury and Basil Rathbone (Out to lunch)
Chock full o’Nuts
New York, 1964: Chock full o’Nuts

Angela Lansbury and Basil Rathbone

“In the studio commissary on Paramount lot Film Star Angela Lansbury, wearing prop coronet and ermine from her morning stint as the princess in Danny Kaye’s new movie Court Jester, munches plebian hamburger next to Basil Rathbone.”

[Photograph by Alfred Eisenstaedt, from “The U.S. Goes Out to Lunch,” Life, January 3, 1955. Via the Life photo archive.]

A related post
Chock full o’Nuts lunch hour (Another Eisenstaedt photograph)

An iPad per semester

The Washington Post reports that Seton Hill University — the Pennsylvania school that’s giving an iPad to every full-time student — will be adding a $500 per semester fee to cover the cost of increased bandwidth and wireless access. In effect, an iPad per semester. The large print giveth, and the &c.

A related post
“iPads for EVERYONE!”

The government-issue pen

“It’s the Coca-Cola of ink pens,” said Richard Oliver, operations manager at Industries of the Blind in North Carolina. “Everybody recognizes this pen.”

From a Washington Post article on the lowly, mighty government-issue pen. Bonus: specifications.

Update: There’s a great source online.

Home sweet Homer

Bornova mayor Kamil Okyay Sındır: “All findings indicate Homer lived in Bornova.”

Gaziemir mayor Halil İbrahim Şenol: “It is not true that Homer lived in Bornova, and our research will support and reveal the truth.”

Turkish mayors battle to claim Homer:

This is Homer's real home, says mayor (Hurriyet Daily News and Economic Review)

[Post title with apologies to the Odyssey episode of Wishbone.]

Eddie Feibusch

Says Eddie Feibusch, eighty-six-year-old zipper maven, “A button is unpleasant.”

For Eddie Feibusch, a Life in Zippers (New York Times)
ZipperStop (“Unzipping America since 1941”)