Friday, January 4, 2013

Two pieces of cat ephemera and some #FridayReads


Those dressed-up cats are back! The above photo from 1939's "More about the Four Little Kittens" by Harry Whittier Frees could be titled "Gratuitous Photo of Two Cats Performing 'Romeo and Juliet.'"

The actual passage for this page reads:
Fuzz scampered to the porch. It was
their friend Purrsimmon.
"I want you all to come to my picnic
in Caterwaul Park today," said Purrsimmon,
his whiskers jiggling happily. "Ten A.M. is
the time."

If you have a hankering for more of these kitties, check out these previous posts:

Meanwhile, here's a vintage postcard my wife got me for Christmas:


"Keep A Little Cosy Corner In Your Heart For Me" is a song that was published in 1905. It was written by Jack Drislane (lyricist) and Theodore Morse (composer).

The back of the postcard doesn't have any information about the company that published it. The postcard was never mailed, but there is a name and a town written in cursive:

Mrs. Lena Fessenden
Birchardville

Birchardville is a small unincorporated community in northeastern Pennsylvania, along Pennsylvania Route 267. It boasts The Olde Birchardville Store, which has its own Facebook page.

The only online reference I found for Mrs. Lena Fessenden was in the Susquehanna County Historical Society's archives of old newspapers. For April 5, 1912, there is the following mention:
"Birchardville - Birchardville can boast of two millinery shops, one at Mrs. Lena Fessenden’s and the other at Slauson & Robinson’s."
(And I learned today that a millinery is a hatmaking shop.)

Today's #FridayReads links

Finally, here are some interesting articles I've come across this week. Share your favorite reads (short or long) in the comments section.

  • The New York Times: "Handled With Care" by Andrew D. Scrimgeour. (Summary: "One of the little-known roles of the academic librarian is bereavement counseling: assisting families with the disposition of books when the deceased have not specified a plan for them.")
  • The Atlantic: "Where the Streets Have No Name: West Virginia aims to put its residents on the map" by Deirdre Mask.
  • The Atlantic: "The Beatles of Comedy: Monty Python's genius was to respect nothing" by David Free.
  • The Associated Press: "Icelandic girl fights for right to her own name" by Anna Andersen. (Iceland has a Personal Names Register. It's a list of 1,712 male names and 1,853 female names that fit Icelandic grammar and pronunciation rules. Citizens must chose their baby's name from those lists.)
  • Mental Floss: "Did Blowing into Nintendo Cartridges Really Help?" by Chris Higgins. (This was not greeted kindly by my wife.)
  • Rough Type (blog): "Will Gutenberg laugh last?" by Nicholas Carr. (An excerpt: "We may be discovering that e-books are well suited to some types of books (like genre fiction) but not well suited to other types (like nonfiction and literary fiction) and are well suited to certain reading situations (plane trips) but less well suited to others (lying on the couch at home). The e-book may turn out to be more a complement to the printed book, as audiobooks have long been, rather than an outright substitute.")
  • The Chronicle of Higher Education: "Secret Lives of Readers" by Jennifer Howard. ("Lately, scholars have stepped up the hunt for evidence of how people over time have interacted with books, newspapers, and other printed material.")

No comments:

Post a Comment