I want my children to learn how to learn one thing after another, to accept that there is a before and an after in life. I think reading books is still one of the best ways we have of reminding us of this fact. As Goethe once remarked, “It would be a lowly art that allowed itself to be understood all at once.”A related post
Andrew Piper, Book Was There: Reading in Electronic Times (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012).
George Bodmer has posted the five-hundredth installment of Oscar’s Day today. Oscar’s Day began on August 21, 2012: that’s five hundred days, five hundred cartoons. In a 2012 post, I described George’s art as funny, pithy, poignant, silly, and smart. It’s still all that. Draw on, George.
[Hundredth: a great name for an Anglo-Saxon comic-strip character, no?]
Once again I have put off real work by creating a yearly wall calendar. With three months to a page, it’s perfect for keeping track of time past, present, and near future. Printed four pages to one (the year on a sheet of paper), it’s helpful for keeping track of trash and recycling days. The calendar is dowdy as heck in black and red — or according to my Mac, licorice and cayenne. What a pleasant surprise that those flavors work so well together.
I have placed this calendar in a Dropbox folder for downloading. The file is a mere 35 KB. Your ISP will cheerfully cover the cost of shipping.
For heightened dowdiness, staple in the upper corners and punch a hole for hanging.
[“Watch Night Jollity Sane: Restaurant Managers Say That Dancing Prevented Disorder,” The New York Times, January 2, 1914.]
Rachel Leddy and Ben Leddy play and sing Jesca Hoop’s “Enemy.”
More familial music
“Half-Acre” : “I Hear Them All” : “I Want You Back” : “No Sugar Tonight / New Mother Nature” : “Old Enough” : “Someone Like You” / “Somebody That I Used to Know”
[For a better look at the orange crate art on the wall, see here.]
It came to me in a dream: the Gulden’s app. Press the spicy brown dot, and a runner comes to your door with a blob of Gulden’s Mustard for your sandwich. The app would save its user the inconvenience of using Gulden’s plastic squeeze bottle. Location Services required.
This dream app was no doubt the result of a conversation last night about the feasibility of online grocery shopping. And did I mention the inconvenience of Gulden’s plastic squeeze bottle? The knife has not been made than can extract all that bottle’s mustard. The jar was a friendlier container.
This app idea is free to any interested iOS developer.
[Spicy brown icon. Yes, that’s mustard, beveled with an online icon maker.]
Related reading
Other dream posts (Pinboard)
[And in the near far future, drones!]
[Cigarette card, “How to draw a duck without pencil leaving the paper,” c. 1908–1919. From the George Arents Collection, via the New York Public Library Digital Gallery.]
I want to say that it was a simpler time, but I think it was in truth a more complicated time. That’s one elaborate duck.
Also from the NYPL Gallery
A 1914 telephone call : The Automat : Benny Goodman : A cigarette card of mystery : Inspector Bucket : Invisible ink : The NYPL Stereograminator : Whelan’s Drug Store
