… when you’re traveling abroad.

I saw this at Male Pattern Boldness, on a post about men’s pants length… … and it started me thinking. What if the songwriter and the singer and the people who listened to this song back in the day, could have seen into the future to our day, when truly anything goes? But then I [...]

(This post is a week overdue.) Last week I finished reading the second book in the Hellhole trilogy and discovered that, apparently, the third book isn’t out yet. Darn. So I started something I have been wanting to read for at least three-quarters of my life, the quintessential Really Long Book, War and Peace. I [...]

Peter of Male Pattern Boldness talks about something dear to my heart, treadle sewing machines, and the tragic things that happen to them when their owners don’t appreciate them for what they are. People, PLEASE, don’t destroy your treadle sewing machines to make desks and plant stands and other purely decorative things! Even if you [...]

The classical radio station here (not the one we have now but the different one we had in the 90′s) used to play this a lot. At first I didn’t care for it, as I generally prefer more gentle piano pieces, but I got used to hearing it and slowly warmed up to it and [...]

I disagree with pretty much everything in this article: Why do we wear shoes? First, the author claims that people did not wear shoes earlier than 9,000 years ago and dismisses

I finished reading book one of The Mongoliad. It’s okay but not great and as I was reading it I was thinking that I probably wouldn’t bother to continue with books two and three but then I get to the end and there’s no kind of conclusion nor even a logical break. It just ends [...]

I recently discovered The Public Domain Review. I can’t tell you how much I love this website! What an incredible treasure! It has lots of really long articles about old books and a number of old books, complete with original illustrations. Most are from the 1800′s and early 1900′s but a few are much older.

The lyrics you heard as a child will always be the right lyrics. Everything else will always sound wrong. My mother had a two record set of Christmas music by the Longines Symphonette. (I don’t know what happened to it.) One of the songs on it was Oh Holy Night. One line of the lyrics [...]

This may seem a bit strange for a girly, feminine type person such as myself but I have a bit of a thing for old cars, especially from the 40′s and 50′s. If I was a millionaire I would probably have a twenty car garage full of classic American beauties. And right now I’m really [...]

These strange looking 1600-year-old socks seem to be evidence that people (ancient aliens perhaps [joking]) have been wearing socks with sandals for a very long time.

Well, there in front of my TV, that is, but some events give you such a feeling of thereness even if you are not really there. You know what I mean? The last time I was “there” for a historic scientific event was many years ago. I was lucky to have caught this latest one. [...]

Metaphysical Graffiti (via) is a fascinating Flickr set of vintage illustrations. A few are weird; most are merely quaint. The set owner’s captions mostly don’t do much for me. I think the images speak for themselves very well, although I must say I do really like, “You’re only given a little spark of madness. You [...]

It’s September 11th and it’s a beautiful Tuesday morning. Just like that other September 11th. The one we will never forget. Honestly, to me, it seems so long ago now – just another date in history. As it should, I suppose. We were in New York for a while in 1982 and ’83. That’s when [...]

Imagine that you are 11 years old and seeing this as it is happening. Imagine what visions of the future you might have. Of colonies on the moon and spaceships visiting more distant worlds. Neil Armstrong could have been the greatest celebrity ever, bigger than the biggest superstars. But he chose to simply fade back [...]

When I was a small child in the 60′s grown-up women’s dress length was below the knee and little girls’ dress length was just above the knee. At least that’s the way it was in my mother’s world. I thought the longer skirts were beautiful and wanted dresses like that for myself. Usually my mother [...]

Here’s an excellent article about the history of the modern Olympic games. Very interesting. The Games have always been imperfect but the idea (and the ideal) has always been noble. That might be the best we humans can do – to have noble ideas and to strive for them. So let’s not be cynical about [...]

My mother had a stack of 45 rpm records that were several years older than me. Of course, when I was a kid that was really old old, antique, ancient, not like we, as adults think of songs from the previous decade. I was fascinated with these records. I liked the idea of listening to [...]

Scientific research suggests that horizontal stripes do not make us look fat. I find that conclusion questionable. First of all, very few of us are shaped anything like the lovely little figure used in this research. Then there’s the psychological factor. Maybe stripes really don’t make a difference but if we look at a, shall [...]

Ray Bradbury has died. I can think of no better memorial than his own words, my favorite essay ever – Coda.

Today’s Google doodle honors Gideon Sundback, developer of the modern zipper. I suppose I like zippers well enough but I really like when Google has a doodle you can play with. I don’t like sewing zippers into clothes. I can never make them look nice and neat. I actually avoid anything that requires a zipper [...]

Last night we watched Finding Forrester, a 2000 movie starring Sean Connery and Rob Brown. I think it might be my new favorite Sean Connery movie. (Of course my favorite Sean Connery movie usually is the last one I watched.) The movie begins with a group of black teenage boys playing basketball and talking about [...]

I’ve probably told this story before. When I was six years old my mother forgot about St. Patrick’s Day and I went to school wearing a red plaid dress. I had a lovely green dress with tiny pink rosebuds that I could have worn if I had known. Almost right away a boy in my [...]

Yesterday was the 50th anniversary of John Glenn’s historic space flight. Kelly remembers a film that he first saw when he was in elementary school: A documentary like this would be dismissed today as slavish propaganda, and I suppose, in a way, that it is…but you know what, I just don’t care. Our space program [...]

At our house we don’t make a big deal of the greeting card holidays. Valentines Day is a sweet little holiday, or at least it used to be before the jewelry and lingerie stores took it over. It’s really supposed to be all about greeting cards, you know – cute, funny ones when you’re a [...]