Artisanal pencil sharpening

Cartoonist David Rees offers artisanal pencil sharpening: $15 per pencil, $60 with a signed print. Pencils are shipped with shavings and a “certificate of sharpening.”

Liquid graphite pencils

The Sharpie Liquid Pencil, due to arrive this fall, looks like an interesting toy. If it performs like the Sharpies I’ve used, it will be the first pencil to bleed through the page. [Cue rimshot.]

Despite the claim to innovation (here, for instance), there is nothing new about liquid graphite pencils, which Scripto and Parker first offered in 1955. That the Sharpie Liquid Pencil’s line becomes permanent after three days — that is something new.


[Popular Mechanics, June 1955.]

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The Sharpie Liquid Pencil (It’s a dud)

The story of QWERTY

On BBC Radio 4, Stephen Fry considers the QWERTY keyboard. There are seven days left to listen. The program’s written description should be around longer, like QWERTY itself.

(Thanks, Timothy!)

Harvey’s Hardware

[Photograph by Elaine Fine.]

Welcome to Harvey Katz’s hardware store, in Needham, Massachusetts:

Every square inch of shelf and wall space and the vast majority of floor space — even the ceiling — is crammed with a riotous mélange of wares, all of it jammed together, some of it so old the packaging is discolored. The aisles are narrow and asymmetrical and indistinguishably lined with tall, dense, unbroken shelving. What little space there is to walk through is made into an obstacle course by various wares stacked in unlabeled piles. . . .

According to Harvey, the jammed-up feeling communicates the scope of the inventory and creates an ambience compatible with a hardware-buying frenzy. It must: Harvey’s packs in $113 worth of inventory per square foot, more than three times the average for hardware stores. Sales per square foot are $503, close to four times the average.

Eric Abrahamson and David H. Freedman, A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder (New York: Back Bay Books, 2007).

Frenzy indeed: how else did we end up buying WD-40 and floor wax — among other things — while on vacation?

A related post
Things I learned on my summer vacation (2010)

At work in the Intermezzo

[Photograph by Michael Leddy. Click for a larger view.]

Mark Frauenfelder has asked Boing Boing readers to post photographs of their workspaces and “tips for keeping things organized.” Thus the above photograph, which I took with a cellphone in January 2010 to let my children know what I was up to. I was working in the Intermezzo, a café in the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts at the University of Illinois in Urbana. While my wife Elaine rehearsed with an orchestra, I sat at a little table and got things done.

In addition to a napkin, a spoon, an empty sugar packet, and a cup of Tazo tea, this table holds George Chapman’s and Stanley Lombardo’s translations of the Iliad, George Steiner’s anthology Homer in English, Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park, pages of notes, and a handout with the first lines of the Iliad in Greek. And three writing instruments (because there can never be too many writing instruments): a Staedtler mechanical pencil, a Uni-ball Signo gel pen, and a Lamy Safari fountain pen.

As for keeping things organized: my desk at home is in perpetual disorganization: a MacBook surrounded by slopes and planes of paper.¹ That’s one reason why I like working at a tiny table in the Intermezzo: it’s empty when I arrive. There is no there there, as Gertrude Stein said of Oakland, California, not until I open my backpack.

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Five desks
Five pens
Messy desk

¹ To clarify: I am organized; it’s my desk that’s not.

Joe Negri on All Things Considered

Guitarist Joe Negri, Handyman Negri from Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, admitted today on NPR’s All Things Considered that he is not very handy:

“I’ll never forget, we had a big joke about that. Cause I said to him, ‘Handyman? You’ve gotta be kidding.’ He said, ‘Don’t worry about it, it’s pretend.’ So I pretended my way to being a handyman.”

Joe Negri is eighty-four and has a new recording, Dream Dancing. YouTube has him playing the title tune (by Cole Porter) and much more.

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Things I learned on my summer vacation (2010)

The lower level of the George Washington Bridge was once informally known as the Martha Washington. Martha was on the bottom; George was on top. Really.

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Spartan Tool (“Since 1943”) has a beautiful logo.

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“The people living behind fence have seen 4 recently.” Four what? Rattlesnakes, at a rest stop in Pennsylvania.

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It is possible to drive two-thousand miles and avoid all highway-food if a thoughtful partner packs picnic lunches and dinners in an insulated bag. A tablecloth is a nice touch too. Civilization! Thank you, Elaine.

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Gobo is a terrific restaurant in Manhattan’s West Village.

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Manhattan’s S. Feldman Housewares has been doing business at the same location (1304 Madison Avenue) since 1929. S. Feldman’s store offers far greater browsing pleasure than S.R. Guggenheim’s museum.

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The bathrooms in the Guggenheim Museum are almost laughable in their near-unusability. Almost: because it’s not funny. The guy before me came out with his camera in hand. This photograph though is someone else’s. What was Frank Lloyd Wright thinking? Did he not understand nos. one and two?

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Our friend Jim can recite Dylan Thomas’s “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night.” And he did so at the White Horse Tavern, for our table.

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And — Jim made 400 chocolate truffles for a White House dinner last fall. He made 400 chocolate truffles in the White House. I’m leaving the rest for him to tell at some point, if he so chooses.

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It is possible to walk into The Hat Shop just to say hello to proprietor Linda Pagan (a college friend of our friend Luanne) and leave having ordered a great-looking hat. A men’s hat. “It’s a really good hat”: that’s what I kept saying, slightly dazed.

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Harvey’s Hardware in Needham, Massachusetts, may be the greatest hardware store in the world. Density! More density! Like S. Feldman Housewares, Harvey’s offers far greater browsing pleasure than the Guggenheim Museum.

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The Tibet Almond Stick makes a great gift. It removes furniture scratches, and your eagerness to use it will help you find scratches that you didn’t know were there.

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AfterBite stops mosquito bites from itching.

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The New England Mobile Book Fair in Newton Highlands, Massachusetts, may not be the greatest bookstore in the world, but its inventory makes it a very strong contender. (The greatest, for me: Chicago’s Seminary Co-op Bookstore.) Like S. Feldman Housewares and Harvey’s Hardware, the Book Fair offers far greater browsing pleasure than the you-know-what.

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The slang use of pad for an apartment or flat may be related to the term pied-à-terre. Then again it may not. Both possibilities were in play from early on in the vacation.

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It is possible to spend two days in Manhattan — on buses, trains, and feet — without seeing an iPad (aside from those in the Apple Store) or a Kindle. Many books though, and a few magazines. Newspapers, almost none.

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It is possible to go as long as eight days without watching even a minute of television.

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It is difficult to exaggerate the fellow-feeling of New Yorkers, evident in many small moments of care and tact. A woman on the subway lets go of her stroller for just a moment so that she can adjust her bag. Two people reach out to the stroller to steady it when the train begins to move. A man on the street asks a hot-dog vendor if it’s okay to put an empty soda can in his trash. Sure, go ahead.

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“Wisdom and knowledge shall be the stability of thy times”: Isaiah 33:6, as stated above the entrance to 30 Rockefeller Plaza.

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As recited by our friend Rob:

The old dog barks backwards without getting up.
I can remember when he was a pup.

Robert Frost, “The Span of Life”

[Photograph by Michael Leddy.]

More things I learned on my summer vacation
2009 : 2008 : 2007 : 2006

The Thomas’ code

The secret of Thomas’ English Muffins’ nooks and crannies is at risk.

[“Thomas’”: that’s how they spell it, no final s.]

Telephone exchange names on screen

[From The Little Giant, dir. Roy Del Ruth, 1933.]

I hit Pause to try to see the inedible item Bugs Ahean (Edward G. Robinson) has placed in the ashtray: it’s a bacon-wrapped olive. (He kept the toothpick.) And then I noticed the matchbook, with an authentic Los Angeles exchange name: GLadstone. Lorne Greene’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame sits near 1559 Vine (“just Vine”) today.

Note the six-digit telephone number. Says Wikipedia,

Before World War II, a few localities used three letters and four numbers; in most cities with customer dialing, phone numbers had only six digits — two letters followed by four numbers.

As I was about to say, The Little Giant is a fine comedy. It even has a pocket notebook.

More exchange names on screen
The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse : Baby Face : Born Yesterday : The Dark Corner : Deception : Dream House : The Man Who Cheated Himself : Nightmare Alley : The Public Enemy

Pocket notebook sighting: The Little Giant

[Ruth Wayburn (Mary Astor), Bugs Ahearn (Edward G. Robinson), and a notebook.]

The Little Giant (dir. Roy Del Ruth, 1933) is a comedy about a Chicago gangster’s climb into California society circles. The best lines come as Ahearn and a Chicago crony contemplate an abstract painting:

“You ever seen anything like that before?”

“Not since I been off cocaine.”

Yep, pre-Code. The Little Giant also features a telephone exchange name.

Other notebook sightings
Angels with Dirty Faces : Cat People : Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne : Extras : Journal d’un curé de campagne : The House on 92nd Street : The Palm Beach Story : Pickpocket : Pickup on South Street : Red-Headed Woman : Rififi : The Sopranos : Spellbound