The Brown Quick Fox…
I was listening to a July 2024 episode of Mignon Fogarty’s Grammar Girl podcast in which she talked about a rule-of-thumb concerning the order of adjectives. That’s something that most of us don’t think much about. We instinctively order adjectives in a way that “sounds right.” (I think of what Joan Didion once said about […]
The Yankee Index Typewriter
For any of us familiar with label makers (I still have mine from the ’80s), this typewriter will also look familiar. In the late 1800s, when typewriters were an emerging technology, an inventor named Robert Hawley Ingersoll developed this index model. The Yankee Typewriter (aka The Dollar) couldn’t compete with more conventional keyboard-style typewriters, but […]
Exploring a Grandmother’s Secret Life
As we reach the end of 2024, I’d say my favourite book of the past year is Sadiya Ansari‘s In Exile: Rupture, Reunion, and my Grandmother’s Secret Life. Ansari is a Parkistani-Canadian journalist living in London, UK. She set out to investigate a family mystery, one that her parents and other family members had been […]
Classics Illustrated
Some of my favorite early reading as a kid were Classics Illustrated. They were perfect because I’d outgrown Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse comics and the superhero universe (as its now called) never appealed to me. I loved reading books but wasn’t quite ready for the serious classics, until I discovered them in comic […]
Swissa Piccola
The Swissa Piccola was a popular post-war typewriter, a continuation of one of the earliest truly portable machines. (At the time, people understood the need for a small, lightweight typewriter that was, in a sense, like a netbook or tablet of the era.) Its predecessor was the Patria, invented by engineer Otto Haas and produced […]
The Literary Legacy of Joseph Mitchell
“It is equipped with electricity, but the bar is stubbornly illuminated with a pair of gas lamps, which flicker fitfully and throw shadows on the low, cobwebby ceiling each time someone opens the street door. There is no cash register. Coins are dropped in soup bowls—one for nickels, one for dimes, one for quarters, and […]
John McPhee on Wordle
In “Tabula Rasa” (No.4) published in The New Yorker last May, the legendary nonfiction writer John McPhee shared his tactics around Wordle. I wasn’t surprised he’d made a study out of something many of us do by the seat of our pants every day. For example, he has used the following words: “…vague, suave, juice, […]
Writer as Cabinetmaker
“I’m definitely more a cabinetmaker than a tormented artist. Not that writing comes easy. I don’t know about cabinetmakers, but I often get stuck. Then I get sleepy and have to lie down. Or I make myself leave the house—walking sometimes produces a solution. The problem is usually one of logic or point of view.” […]
History of Nagra
I love history like this. Anyone of a certain age who is into audio — from TV/doc filmmakers to musicians to journalists — has heard of Nagra tape machines. But I’d never read the story behind it until today. It was originally designed by Polish inventor Stefan Kudelski (Nagra means “[it] will record” in Polish). […]
Catch Me If You Can
Catch Me If You Can A Gentleman and a Thief: The Daring Jewel Heists of a Jazz Age Rogue By Dean Jobb He was an accomplished con artist, a prince of thieves, a folk hero of Jazz Age New York. Audacious, charming, a gentleman with gentle manners who stood apart from the criminal riffraff. Impeccably […]