The Telegram Passes Into History STOP

I didn't hear much about this before it happened, and it made me sad to read that telegrams are no longer being sent. I never received one. Did you?

Read some interesting information about telegrams here.

You, too, can enjoy Toothpaste for Dinner!

My friend Sam introduced me to his book and then I stumbled across his website and I have been enjoying it ever since.

Simple, stick-figure drawings with hilarious meanings and messages. Feel free to check it out here.

In case you're interested, this is one of my favorite drawings.

Gimme that old timey music!

I just discovered one of the coolest collections of old recordings, accessible to anyone and everyone for free. Be sure to scoot over to this web page, where they have created "a digital collection of over 5,000 cylinder recordings held by the Department of Special Collections. In an effort to bring these recordings to a wider audience, they can be freely downloaded or streamed online. On this site you will have the opportunity to find out more about the cylinder format, listen to thousands of musical and spoken selections from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and discover a little-known era of recorded sound."

How cool is that? I spent about two hours Sunday afternoon listening to various recordings and felt I could have continued working through this collection for many more hours, but we had to go grocery shopping. Dang!

My friend Mike

My friend Mike has a website where he posts articles about things he's interested in. Quite a few of them make me laugh out loud, and they're all worth a read.

I am on his email list and just received his Thanksgiving piece. It brought back a flood of memories of childhood Thanksgivings. Although his experience is not the same as mine, I felt that I knew someone like nearly every person he described in the piece. I think it will ring true for anyone who had a traditional American Thanksgiving each year growing up.

During this Thanksgiving season, check out Mike's article, enjoy time with your family and friends, and pass me another piece of pie!

Herbert at Work

Thought this was a pretty cool photo of Herbert recording sounds for his new album. In case you can't tell from the photo, he's mic'ing a little chick. Wonder what the chick's thinking...

Driven to Distraction

My wife read In Praise of Slowness last year during some stressful work times and found the book sensible and enlightening. I noticed this article and forwarded it to her at work (thereby interrupting any 8 minutes of concentration she had going). I thought others might enjoy it as well.

The typical office worker is interrupted every three minutes by a phone call, e-mail, instant message or other distraction. The problem is that it takes about eight uninterrupted minutes for our brains to get into a really creative state.

The result, says Carl Honore, journalist and author of In Praise of Slowness, is a situation where the digital communications that were supposed to make working lives run more smoothly are actually preventing people from getting critical tasks accomplished.

Read more here.

StoryCorps

My friend Sam just sent me a link and information about a pretty cool project that’s currently running called StoryCorps. I highly recommend visiting their site, reading up on the project, listening to some of the recordings, and participating if possible. Here’s some of the stories I listened to and enjoyed:

“One day some guy showed up to him and said, 'We're going to make some movie. Can you write a script?'"
Chin-Ju Li tells his daughter Julia about his father, the filmmaker Pingqian Li. (MP3, 1:23 min.)


"All I know is I was given the bag complete, which they had filled with about fifteen pigeons."
Mitchell Agoos remembers protesting the 1955 Carnegie Hall debut of conductor Herbert von Karajan, a former member of the Nazi party. (MP3, 1:24 min.)


"We used to go to the Savoy Ballroom every Saturday and stay there until Monday morning."
Harold Slappy tells his friend Monica about visiting Harlem's Savoy Ballroom as a youth. (MP3, 1:18 min.)


"He looked up at me and said, 'Hamzah,' and then grabbed hold of me and gave me this tight hug and wouldn't let me go."
Homeless New Yorker Larry Chamberlain tells his friend Tobias about his many names. (MP3, 0:30 min.)


"My mother, well, she didn't know how to say 'colander' in English..."
Philomena Luciani interviewed by her granddaughter Alison. (MP3, 0:27 min.)


"I think I might want to be straight, with a nice husband, but of course, I don't have any idea what it's like to have kids cause I am a kid myself."
Kaitlyn Sever interviewed by her mom, Lynne Lande, who is a lesbian. (MP3, 1:57 min.)


"If we're going anywhere, we're going down the aisle, because I'm too tired, too sick, and too sore to do any other damn thing."
Danny and Annie Perasa, married for 26 years, interview each other. (MP3, 1:38 min.)


"Money, money, money, money. Everyone spends money for oneself."
Shirley Sun to her English teacher, Ruthe Karlin. (MP3, 0:34 min.)


"My dad was subversively funny. He had a whole kind of Rolodex of one-liners for every occasion."
Billy Collins interviewed by his friend Nancy Cobb. (MP3, 3:14 min.)



"I said, 'What are you saying? Are you proposing to me tonight, now?'"
Barbara Paer to her daughter Shelley Rubin. (MP3, 1:18 min.)


"Don't ever let anybody tell you they can do something to you. You're free, man. You don't have to take that."
Ralph Tremonte and Donald Weiss, who spent their childhood together in a psychiatric hospital, are reunited after 40 years. (MP3, 1:50 min.)