Sunday, November 25, 2018

Eighth anniversary of Papergreat's first post


Papergreat's first post was eight years ago today, on November 25, 2018. If this blog was a person, it would be in second grade right now. This is post No. 2,766, so, at the current pace, I'll get to post No. 3,000 sometime in early July. I'll soon be sending an order off to Blog2Print for Volume 10 of The Collected Papergreat (partly because I don't trust this whole Cloud contraption).

So what's ahead for Year 9? More of the same, I suspect. The blog has been heavily trending toward postcards, book covers and family history (including more form Dad's side, which I've neglected), and that will continue. I'd like to get back to mixing in more obscure and oddball stuff and random ephemera. And I'm itching to return to the fanzine series, so look for that in 2019. I have posts about Estella Canziani, Phyllis Stalnaker, Florence Darlington, Loren E. Trueblood and Margaret Lynch Capone that I'd like to get cleared off the decks, so stay tuned for those. And of course I'll have some themed posts for "The Christmas," as Buck would say, at the appropriate time next month. (November 25 is not the appropriate time, says my grumpy self.) At some point, I'll probably have an existential crisis about whether I want to continue devoting time to Papergreat that could be spent reading or writing other things, all whilst continuing to rack up the Papergreat posts.


I recently came across this groovy 15¢ stamp, which also happens to neatly summarize my approach to life and this blog. Indeed, "Learning never ends." This stamp was issued on September 12, 1980, partially to commemorate the establishment of the United States Department of Education by President Jimmy Carter. (Carter signed a law spinning Education off from the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare in October 1979 and DoED began operations in May 1980.) The launch city for this stamp was Franklin, Massachusetts, the home of Horace Mann and America's first public library. Here are some quotes attributed to Mann:

  • Education then, beyond all other devices of human origin, is the great equalizer of the conditions of men, the balance-wheel of the social machinery.
  • Every addition to true knowledge is an addition to human power.
  • A house without books is like a room without windows. No man has a right to bring up his children without surrounding them with books, if he has the means to buy them.
  • Education is our only political safety. Outside of this ark all is deluge.
  • Resolve to edge in a little reading every day, if it is but a single sentence. If you gain fifteen minutes a day, it will make itself felt at the end of the year.

The image on the "Learning never ends" stamp is "Glow" by abstract painter Josef Albers (1888-1976). I believe that "Glow" is still part of the collection at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

On We Love DC, Samantha Sirzyk wrote this in 2010:
"My favorite of Albers’s pieces in the 'Squares Series' was easily Homage to the Square: Glow (1966), which examined the affect of orange hues on red hues, or vice versa. I selected this piece over the rest, not because I saw the squares move, grow, or transform after staring at it for a very long time – or convinced myself that they would because they were 'supposed to', but simply because the bright colors were visually pleasing and kind-of made me smile."
And I'll finish up with quote about learning from Albers himself:
“We must teach each other ... education is not first giving answers but giving questions.”

3 comments:

  1. Sorry that I missed this .... Happy Blogiversary!

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  2. Wendyvee and I are the only readers to comment on your first post.

    Wendyvee and I are the only readers to comment on the eighth anniversary of your first post.

    Perhaps Wendyvee and I should join a club. Where's Margaret Lynch Capone when you need her?

    -- M.F.

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  3. I am VERY glad there is another year of Papergreat to come.

    ReplyDelete