Category: Uncategorized

  • Fourth of July: Ground Bloom Flowers

    This was the core of our annual firework arsenal. We’d often have a brick of these things, leading to a steady course of them over the evening, punctuated by fountain cones or other more exotic (expensive) devices. As the night wore on and we got bored with lighting them one at a time, we tried…

  • Fourth of July: Suburban Antiaircraft

    Some years would see a block party with neighbors combining firework arsenals. The Dagnalls never kicked in the large boxed assortments. In part because I was particular about the fireworks I liked and the ones I didn’t at the local Red Devil/Freedom/Wildcat stands. I preferred to handpick my fireworks. I swore by Piccolo Petes and Ground…

  • Free and freestanding street library

    Great design for “headspace”: inside are books, sheltered from the elements, for you to browse and borrow.   http://www.stereotank.com/Little-Free-Library http://boingboing.net/2013/05/30/freestanding-street-library.html

  • Bradbury Season

    …that country where it is always turning late in the year. That country where the hills are fog and the rivers are mist; where noons go quickly, dusks and twilights linger, and mid-nights stay. That country composed in the main of cellars, sub-cellars, coal-bins, closets, attics, and pantries faced away from the sun. That country…

  • Will Write for Harleys

    Dad never understood what I did for a living. Something to do with writing. Then he tried to buy a Harley-Davidson, since I was grown and he was having a midlife crisis. He could ride a bike and kill himself and everything would be fine. He got turned down with poor credit. Asked for my…

  • Agent 001.9

    A love letter to libraries and aliens, for National Library Week.

  • Soundtrack for the Season

    What a find! I popped into my local public library branch just before closing and saw this album cover as the centerpiece of their Halloween display–a blast from my past, and for sale at $1! The album is a collection of sound effects from Disney–stock footage of wind, howling wolves, screaming cats, insane cackling, and…

  • 50 years of the Twilight Zone…

    Submitted for your approval, some examples of Rod Serling’s parting thoughts: “The Monsters are Due on Maple Street”: “ The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices. To be found only in the minds of men. For the record, prejudices can…