“Clock watchers”

[Nancy, April 11, 1950. Click for a larger view.]

Note to the school: If you don’t want kids to watch the clock, don’t put the clock on the side wall. Talk about poor design. And it’s still only 2:00.

Merriam-Webster has it as clock-watcher : “a person (such as a worker or student) who keeps close watch on the passage of time.” My third-grade teacher called me a clock-watcher, and I cop to the charge. If you had been a person (such as a worker or student) in her classroom, you’d have been watching the clock too.

By fourth grade I was wearing a watch (over a shirt cuff) and had no need to watch a clock. And anyway, I was paying attention to the wonderful person at the front of the room, Miss D’Elia.

Related reading
All OCA Nancy posts (Pinboard)

[Nancy past is Nancy present. All time is eternally Nancy.]

Various Sardines

MY Sardines, if it’s even real, is a cryptocurrency backed by sardines. Here is the MY Sardines homepage. Go fish.

I’ll stay here, with some other sardines, the Hot Sardines, performing a song made popular by Louis Prima and Phil Harris. Hot stuff. Thanks, Martha.

Donkey Hodie rides again

Coming to PBS, a new show inspired by Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood: Donkey Hodie, with Purple Panda, Duck Duck, Bob Dog, and Donkey Hodie, the granddaughter of the original Donkey Hodie, now known as Grampy Hodie. The show will arrive in the winter of 2021.

If only PBS would bring back the Neighborhood itself, Monday through Friday, an episode a day.

Thanks, Ben.

[Duck Duck? A descendant of Audrey Duck?]

Rails to Sales

A Cooper Hewitt Object of the Day: Rails to Sales, a poster promoting subway advertising posters, by Otis Shepard and Dorothy Van Gorder. Don’t miss the links to other samples of their work: Santa Catalina, Chesterfield, Cubs, gum.

Keyboard Cleaner

Jan Lehnardt’s Keyboard Cleaner is a tiny free app for macOS that does one thing only: it locks the keyboard for easy cleaning. Open the app to lock; quit (⌘-Q) to get going again. I’m intent on keeping my MacBook Air’s keyboard from developing a greasy shine, so I wipe the keys on occasion with a spritz of distilled water on a microfiber cloth. (Don’t laugh.) Keyboard Cleaner makes this slightly obsessive task easier to manage.

The strangest synchronicity I’ve ever encountered online: yesterday I posted a photograph of a decades-old box of typewriter correction film. The random letters typed on the film visible in the photograph: ploks. I thought that would make a nicely cryptic blog description line. I typed it in. When I went to the page for Keyboard Cleaner this morning, I was startled by the URL. Look closely:

jan.prima.de/~jan/plok/archives/48-Keyboard-Cleaner.html

Jan’s explanation, on the same page: “plok — It reads like a blog, but it sounds harder!”

NYPL top ten

The New York Public Library’s top ten checkouts of all time — in other words, since 1895, when the library opened. King of the hill, top of the heap: Ezra Jack Keats’s The Snowy Day (1962). Oh how I’d like a Snowy Day library card.

Ko-Rec-Type, Part No. 3

[The secret word is ploks. 2 1/16″ × 1 3/8″ × 3/8″. Click for a larger view.]

This sort of stuff was once ubiquitous. Make a typing error, take out a little piece of correction film, hold between paper and ribbon, hit the offending key, and the mistake is gone. The result: a neater and more discreet fix than what could be had with correction fluid, aka Liquid Paper, aka Wite-Out.

I’ve had this little box of Executive Ko-Rec-Type Typewriter Correction Film for many years — probably from the early 1980s, when I was a graduate student banging out papers on an Olympia manual typewriter. I like the matchbox-like design (“one strike is all it takes”) and the strange contrasts: fancy script over stencilled letters, secretarial pink clashing with the word Executive. (Is this film reserved for executive secretaries?) I like the (unnecessary, to my mind) “Part No. 3,” which names a product that isn’t part of anything larger than itself. I like the spelling of Ko-Rec-Type, perhaps a joke on the mistakes the film was meant to hide, or perhaps just a space-age spelling. I really, really like the arcana on the side of the box: “To correct colored originals ask your dealer for Part No. 1-ES.” A more complicated part!

The box bottom has a bonus in the form of an adhesive strip:

Peel off protective covering
Attach to typewriter or any surface

I guess then you would really be in the executive lane.

I have a second, less interesting container about half full of Ko-Rec-Type Opaquing Film, which appears to be Typewriter Correction Film with a newer name. This container, from which films slide out like sticks of gum, has an address for the Ko-Rec-Type Corp.: 67 Kent Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11211. Here’s a post from Forgotten New York with some photographs of the building. As of 2018, the company, founded in 1955, was still in business but looking to sell its Brooklyn properties. As of this morning, Ko-Rec-Type was still selling newer-fangled correction tape and other items on Amazon.

I would now like to imagine a scene in an office-supplies store:

“Good day, sir. Please, a box of Ko-Rec-Type’s Part No. 1-ES, with a vignette effect, if you would.”

This post is the twenty-second in a very occasional series, “From the Museum of Supplies.” Supplies is my word, and has become my family’s word, for all manner of stationery items. The museum is imaginary. The supplies are real. The vignette effect in the photograph is by the Mac app Acorn.

Other Museum of Supplies exhibits
Ace Gummed Reinforcments : C. & E.I. pencil : Dennison’s Gummed Labels No. 27 : Dr. Scat : Eagle Turquoise display case : Eagle Verithin display case : Esterbrook erasers : Faber-Castell Type Cleaner : Fineline erasers : Harvest Refill Leads : Illinois Central Railroad Pencil : A Mad Men sort of man, sort of : Mongol No. 2 3/8 : Moore Metalhed Tacks : A mystery supply : National’s “Fuse-Tex” Skytint : Pedigree Pencil : Pentel Quicker Clicker : Real Thin Leads : Rite-Rite Long Leads : Stanley carpenter’s rule

TV academics

From the Murder, She Wrote episode “School for Scandal” (October 25, 1985): “Professor Laird, the cucumber sandwiches are running out. Would you like me to get some more?”

And then there’s Roddy McDowall as Professor Alger Kenyon. He professes to write seven articles a year on Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

I love it when television does academia.

Strapped for time

In an effort to BMA (Be More Analog), Elaine has started wearing a watch again. Me, susceptible me, I’ve started wearing a watch again too, a Timex Expedition, purchased in the first decade of this century.

I thought it might be fun to get a new strap. One way to really know what time it is: try finding a watch strap at a friendly neighborhood multinational retailer.

Petrie opines

Ruth Martin is making barbecued spare ribs for the Grange dinner. There’ll be more than thirty people. It’s “the biggest Grange dinner of the year,” Paul Martin says. There will also be salad and baked beans. Uncle Petrie opines: “And there’s nothing better than barbecued ribs and beans on a cold winter’s day.”

I love this nonsense. It’s from the Lassie episode “The Big Cat” (January 11, 1959), the famous/infamous episode in which Lassie fetches the C-clamp. The C-clamp, Lassie, the C-clamp!

Related reading
All OCA Lassie posts (Pinboard)