All Books Contain Mistakes..

..but some mistakes are better than others.  We were talking about this last week, so I decided to scan the title page of the Library of America volume 24  that misspelled "Melville."

The publisher offered to replace the volume, but Jon Lanham decided to keep it.

Nostalgia Fest

It is a scientifically-proven fact that all the most awesome people came of age in the seventies.  So let's look back at those halcyon days.

This is what was know as a record or LP.  It records a concert given by my high school choir and orchestra.  I do not appear in the photo, because the trumpets sat way in the back.

The band had pins made.  Someday this will be a valuable antique!

In 1973 my friends gave me this going-away-to-collage gift: a toy gumball machine.  It really worked, but I only chewed up a couple of the gumballs.  Those you see here are original--forty years old!

Bright College Days

I saw this a few times at film festivals in the 1970s.  Memories!

Lunar Consolation

You will remember how piqued I was to learn that I missed being in the First Moon Flights Club.  In a moon-envy-induced frenzy I began collecting moony articles circa 1969 in all the newspapers we had available online.  A Los Angeles Times article* tipped me off to another moon souvenir worth having!  It seems that Trans International Airlines also capitalized on the moon-madness with a travel guide: Charters to the Moon.
"This booklet was prepared especially for the travel agent as a guide to use in planning, for his clients, future-out-of-this-world charter travel.  As the leading air charter carrier, TIA is proud to help travel agents to prepare for the future, just as we work together in the present."

A Google search located one of these brochures for sale.  For $30 I purchased my own moon souvenir!

More elaborate and goofier than the First Moon Flights Club card, this brochure lays out in detail the delights of lunar vacations."Enjoy your stay on the Moon, one of the most relaxing resorts in the Universe.  Its unique attributes include: smog-free atmosphere, no rain or snow, no breath of wind, and profound silence.  Your hotel, the Luna, is located in the Sea of Showers--which is, of course, not a sea (nor does the moon have showers)..."  "After your restful 63 1/2-hour trip by TIA '949' Super Spacecraft (you travel at speeds up to 36,000 miles per hour--six times the speed of the fastest bullet!), and after relaxation in your Luna luxery resort hotel, remember--Budget Rent-A-Mooncar serves all the Moon, with the latest model surface vehicles.  Offices: Copernicus Crater."   "For a unique experience, try a 'Moonhike.' The supporting strength of the lunar surface is much greater than previously suspected."  It goes on like that.  See large scans of the pages here for more excitement!

Now I need to find some way of preserving and displaying both sides of this brochure.




*Hulse, Jerry You May Be Man on the Moon, LA Times, June 15, 1969, pgH6.
Also mentioned in Moon Trip, Schenectady Gazette, June 16, 1969, p. 13. Found in the Google News Archive.

Lunar Regrets

In the 1960s Pan Am started taking reservations for its first moon flight.  Now that there is a TV show about the airlines, people are pulling out their Pan Am souvenirs, including their "First Moon Flights" Club cards.

(Courtesy Wikimedia Commons)

OK, I was a moon enthusiast.  I did a report on the moon in school at some point.  Why did I not pick up on this?  I saw 2001: A Space Odyssey, which featured a Pan Am Moon shuttle, yet somehow I missed out.  I would have cherished that "First Moon Flights" Club card now that Pan Am is kaput and Youtube is filled with videos demonstrating how the moon landing was faked!

Olde Tyme Science Fiction

Harvard Magazine has a section in which readers may ask if anybody can identify a certain quotation, poem, story, etc.  A recent supplicant asked for help identifying a 1950s science fiction story vaguely remembered.  I immediately recognized the plot as an Isaac Asimov story.  Though I could not remember the title, Wikipedia's detailed bibliography of Asimov's short stories allowed me to track it down.  I then e-mailed the information in, hoping to have the glory of being the first responder.  Damn!  I was not fast enough.  The guy who won hadn't even read the story; he'd only heard a description of it.

I started reading science fiction pretty young; I remember reading the Space Cat series and Miss Pickerell Goes to Mars.

In later years I had a subscription to The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.  There are some stories that stick with me but, like the questioner above, I cannot recall the title or author.  In one such story, the Earth passed through some kind of field that stripped animals of the ability to kill other animals.  I think the plot stuck with me because war disappeared without pain or effort.  Along comes this field; violence is banned.  A bullfighter could not bring himself to do his bullfighting job.  A lion starved to death, because he was an obligate carnivore.  I felt sorry for the lion, though the author said it was necessary for the New World to flourish.

Now I realize that such a New World is unworkable.  Rabbits, deer, small fish, and other former prey would eat all the plants in no time.  Soon the whole animal kingdom would starve to death, cursing that allegedly utopian field!  Good thing it was just a story!

This and That

I've been watching all sorts of stuff made before I was born.  Destination Moon was based on a novel by Robert Heinlein, my first favorite sci-fi writer.  Heinlein's stories aimed to educate.  He was always finding ways to slip in science facts.  DM used its comic relief, an ignorant engineer who had to replace a sick crew memeber at the last moment, as an excuse to explain things.  Joe Sweeney is always wailing variations on "What's happening?" in his heavy Bronx accent, so his crewmates can explain about weightlessness, outer space, and Newton's Laws of Motion.  Also, the guy who builds the rocket is a private businessman who has to raise funds for the project, so he shows the following cartoon to his rich prospects:





Very Educational.  (Though it implies that gravity is made by giant magnets.)

The other interesting thing I've been viewing is Tales of Tomorrow, a TV show that ran from 1951-1953. The DVDs include the advertisements, which were made in the same studio.  Live TV!  A couple of times I heard coughs or loud things drop while the end credits were rolling.  Perhaps they got sloppier as the night wore on.  Some good actors were in that series.  Burgess Meredith played the lead in the best one I saw: The Great Silence.  Most of the episodes were sponsored by Kreisler.

Composing and Comprising

In high school, I learned that there were some French people who wanted to keep English words out of their language.  In response, I vowed to eliminate all French borrowings from my speech.  I can't remember what this involved; maybe I avoided rendez-vous or bouquet.  I hadn't heard of croissants back then.

Nowadays, I have a much less ambitious linguistic project:  using comprise correctly.  By occasionally sneaking a comprise into casual conversation--"You, know, my household comprises just me and two cats!"--I hope to put off the day when compose and comprise become synonymous.  Someday every words will mean everything.  I'm doing my small part to hold off linguistic chaos.

The Oxford Dictionary of American Usage and Style

comprise.   A. 

And compose.
Correct use of these words is simple, but increasingly rare. The parts compose the whole; the whole comprises the parts. The whole is composed of the parts; the parts are comprised in the whole. Comprise, the more troublesome word in this pair, means “to contain; to consist of”—e.g.: “Summit Hall Farm comprises several hundred acres on the exterior portion of the original settlement of the Gaither family” (Wash. Times).

B. 

Erroneous Use of is comprised of.
The phrase is comprised of is always wrong and should be replaced by some other, more accurate phrase—e.g.: “The Rhode Island Wind Ensemble is comprised of [read has] 50 professional and amateur musicians, ranging in age from 15 to 82” (Providence J.-Bull.).

C. 

Comprise for are comprised in or constitute.
If the whole comprises the parts, the reverse can't be true—e.g.: “Of the 50 stocks that comprise [read make up] the index, 40 had gains, 8 had losses and 2 were unchanged” (Fla. Today).

D. 

Comprise for are.
This is an odd error based on a misunderstanding of the meaning of comprise. E.g.: “They comprise [read are] three of the top four names in the batting order of the 30 most influential sports people in B.C. for 1997” (Vancouver Sun).

How to cite this entry:
"comprise"  The Oxford Dictionary of American Usage and Style. Bryan A. Garner. Oxford University Press, 2000. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press.  Harvard University Library.  14 January 2011

The Ghost of Halloweens Past

The costume I remember best from my little-kid days was not one of my own but that of a classmate.  He dressed up as a hippie and carried a sign that said "Send Batman to Vietnam!"  It was the sign that made the outfit.  Perhaps he got the idea from this comic.

Of course, in my little-kid days, Halloween was about the candy.  My brother and I were instructed to eat our Halloween hauls slowly over a couple of weeks.  But our parents shouldn't have allowed us to store the bags under our beds.  It was too easy to sneak sweets.
In junior high and high school Halloween was more about fashion and horror creation.  One year I helped scare kids who came to the door of my friend Louise's house.  Another year I played a corpse in a cardboard coffin.  Some of my friends and I had been granted the use of a classroom at the local grade school to make a scary house.  We constructed a giant papier-machete spider with glow-in-the-dark-eyes and a portrait painting that spurted blood.   Vampires Karen and Don guided groups of kid through the various exhibits.  After they had described my terrible death, I would suddenly sit up and yowl.  This worked well until my movements nudged the coffin off the radiator and onto the floor.  Wow, that hurt.  But I stayed still, and Don said, "Well, she's dead now."
Then there was the year I went to a Halloween party dressed as a Star Trek style alien.  I put green eyeshadow all over my face.  I won best costume at that party.
Nowadays all sorts of elaborate Halloween paraphernalia is available, and Halloween parties can be lavishly staged events.  Steve described one such party he attended where horror-themed stuff covered every inch of house and grounds.  There was a corpse floating in the pool.  Inside, a selection of meats had been laid out in the shape of a corpse. I suppose this Halloween intensification could mean something or other about our society, and if I think of any relevant sweeping statements, I'll post them.

OK, That's Enough

In the name of nostalgia, I watched some old episodes of The Prisoner.  How could I have forgotten so much of this show?  I love it in the opening when number 6's disembodied head comes barreling out at you, as though it were going to smash into your face, but the jail doors slam closed, and you're safe.  Then there were the groovy interiors (number 6 has an orange lava lamp next to his bed) contrasted with the olde-time charm of the exteriors. 

I had forgotten that The Village was patrolled by a gigantic balloon and that the ladies had smashing striped capes.

However, pretty soon I tired of seeing number 6 triumph over number 2 again and again, so I dropped it.  Here's the only bit that had stuck with me before I renewed my acquaintence with The Prisoner:

A Nostalgia Fix

During my freshman week (1973) there was an outdoor screening of The President's Analyst at my dorm (Hanszen College).  I remember it being slow in the first half.  In the name of nostalgia, I decided to re-view it.  This time I enjoyed it all the way through.  Silly but fun. Perhaps my powers concentration have sharpened with age.  I did remember this part, presented below, that spoofed those Bell Lab films we used to see in school.  Enjoy!

40 Years Later We Still Look Like Ourselves

Here I am today and 40 years ago.

Living in Los Alamos Circa 1963

Harvard's Loeb Design Library has a pamphlet aimed at potential Lab employees.  It is not dated; but the catalog record says"1963?"  I would have been 8.  I didn't recognize anybody pictured in said pamphlet, but I offer scans of the cover and first 3 pages for your pleasure.

My New Blurb Book

I finished a new Blurb book filled with old photos I scanned then prettied up in Photoshop. You can preview it at the left.

Old Photos

Primarily From my E...

By Colleen Bryant

Book Preview

Down-Memory-Lane Monday: Young Love

Around the time I took this picture, Karen, Louise, and I were fans of Paul Revere and the Raiders. We watched them on TV; it must have been the show Where the Action is. Though they appeared in a later show called It's Happening. In either case, we did watch them regularly and were particularly enamored of Paul Revere. We decided to send him a gift of chewing gum. I can't remember whether it was bubble or grown-up style. Some time later, we received a thank you note: a form thanking Kare, Louise, and Colleen for our "groovy gift." I don't know who kept the letter. Perhaps Karen will remember.

Down-Memory-Lane Monday: My Room

This was taken in the 111 Beryl St. house, in what used to be Conrad's room. After I left for college, he asked if we could switch rooms. As you can see, the wallpaper features ships, railroads, and other such stuff. My room's wallpaper had a golden, curvey pattern.
It had not occured to me that I had got the better room. Conrad had never complained to me. But my room had all the advantages: it was on a corner, giving it views in two directions, and was right next to the bathroom, and was farther away from our parents' room.
Now I wonder if he was resenting my superior quarters all those years. Perhaps that's why, when I was away at college, he buried my fossil collection in the compost heap.

Down-Memory-Lane Monday: Hair Continued

When I was a little girl, I wanted long hair swinging wildly down my back. My mother said that if I was going to have long hair, it would have to be styled. She thought long hair just hanging around was sloppy. So I spent many nights sleeping on spoolies, a 60s innovation. Finally, I gave up and consented to a pixie cut, which appears in almost all my young photos.
I can now sympathize with her. Long hair catches on things, gets easily tangled, and is generally a lot of work for a mother trying to keep her daughter neat. Can I find some low-upkeep substitute for long hair? I haven't so far.I wanted hair like that sported by Vinnie Ream, sculptor of the Lincoln statue in the Capitol Rotunda.

My mother insisted on some arrangement like this lady's.

I ended up going the short, practical route.

Down-Memory-Lane Monday

This is my Kindergarten picture. I look pretty grim. My mother wasn't pleased with the shot, but ordered copies anyway, so as not to hurt my feelings...which leads me to think that school photos were a racket! Whom did you have to know, bribe, or sleep with to get the school-photo contract?

At the time, I hated being photographed, since it seemed to require wearing clothes I didn't like and showing happiness I didn't feel. Since then, I've realized that these were not necessary conditions. I had a similar epiphany about haircuts, which in my early days were always done with a razor. So haircuts always hurt. I didn't realize that razor cuts were a fad. One day a hairdresser used scissors to cut my hair, and I was shocked. Scissors were OK? I had assumed that razors were mandatory for some, perhaps hygienic, reason.

Down-Memory-Lane Monday

Mardi Gras Party my Freshman Year

The other day I was remembering Sally Cruikshank's short cartoon Quasi at the Quackadero, which I saw some 30 plus years ago and thought, "Gosh, everything's available on the web these days. " So I found SC's blog and ordered a DVD of her films. She likes pulsating things that change into other, not necessarily related, things, over and over again. It's like when you're nearly asleep, and you see all these shifting images underneath your eyelids. I often wish I had movie cameras on the underside of my eyelids to record them.

50s Sci-Fi Interpretation

A former co-worker told me, when she noticed I had checked out the video I Married a Monster From Outer Space, "You know, that was about Communism." I had heard that interpretation before. Hostile 50s movie aliens, especially those who assumed human form, were supposed to be a veiled reference to Communists. (They look just like your neighbor, but they are evil and aim to take over.) Of course, there were also wise, nice aliens that the ignorant earthlings, especially belligerent small-town sheriffs, wanted to destroy. I suppose those films could represent the viewpoint of Communist sympathizers, the sheriff character being a veiled portrait of Joseph McCarthy. I've never heard it suggested, but it might appeal to proponents of the first theory.
But the whole theoretical edifice topples when we consider Red Planet Mars (1952). The Martians in this flick are born-again Christians! An American scientist (Peter Graves) gets Bible quotes in messages from Mars. There is an evil Nazi who claims to be sending all the messages--which inspire the Russians to abandon Communism--but it actually turns out that the Martians really are Christians. (Don't worry that I've spoiled the movie for you; it is so bad that it's beyond spoiling.) The Martians destroy Communism. Everybody wants to be Christians, just like the Martians.