My bumper stickers

I was never much of a bumper sticker guy until the past few years. I'm not sure what my aversion to decorating the car's rump was. Perhaps I didn't want strangers knowing anything about me. Perhaps I found the endless stickers featuring sports teams, stick figures, colleges, presidential candidates and that kid from "Calvin and Hobbes" peeing to be clichéd. (Of course, Scatological Calvin is incredibly mild compared to the today's tsunami of bumper stickers featuring vulgar and/or hateful phrases you wouldn't want to repeat in front of your kid, your grandmother or you cat.)

But I think the combination of the pandemic, turning 50 and seeing how important public visibility is for vulnerable and marginalized groups unlocked a higher level of What Do You Care What Other People Think? within me. So I began adding stickers to the bumper of my blue Honda Civic.

Unsurprisingly, most of these are directly tied to things I've written about on Papergreat. My passions here are my passions in the physical world.

Pictured above are most of my current bumper stickers. I think this is good for posterity, too, because these are pieces of ephemera that will not last. They can't be put into an envelope for safekeeping. In the unlikely event that they survive many years of Arizona sun and weathering, I'll have to part with them when I eventually get another car. 

Featured bumper sticker themes, as you can see, include the long-gone Brigantine Castle in New Jersey; WNEP-TV's Hatchy Milatchy; the outstanding podcast Fairy Tale Fix; the artist SpaceMonsterKid; Star Trek and now-defunct WKBS-48; and an illustration by Philadelphia artist Hannah Carnes, who goes by iamfartist on Instagram.

I discovered SpaceMonsterKid in August 2020 when Ashar and I took a side trip to Sutton, West Virginia, and the Flatwoods Monster Museum. I was surprised to discover that I've never mentioned that on the blog. I'll rectify that this weekend, because I got some interesting photos during our short time there.

Hans Holzer & hot pink: "The Psychic World of Bishop Pike"

I've been on another Hans Holzer kick lately, mostly due to childhood nostalgia and the urgent necessity for some escapism, but also partly to uncover some of his really obscure 1970s stuff, including some books that aren't about spooks and spirits. (Stuff like The Vegetarian Way of Life, which I wrote about in 2020.) Here's a paranormal one by Holzer that doesn't get as much mention as his ghost books, perhaps for good reason.

• Title: The Psychic World of Bishop Pike
• Cover subtitle: His startling new message from the Other Side
• Author: Hans Holzer (1920-2009)
• Publication date: December 1971
• Publisher: Pyramid Communications, under the Pyramid Books brand. (The book was first published in 1970 by Crown Publishers.)
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 223
• Cover price: $1.25 
• Back cover excerpt: "The name of Bishop James Pike also needs no introduction. Bishop Pike's communication with his dead son, his famous séance on television, his conversion from a psychic skeptic to a believer, his expanding revelations, and his strange and mysterious death in the desert, all made world headlines. ... Here told for the first time is the whole amazing, authentic, and vitally important story.
• About Pike: Wikipedia describes James Albert Pike (1913-1969) as "an American Episcopal bishop, accused heretic, iconoclast, prolific writer, and one of the first mainline, charismatic religious figures to appear regularly on television. ... He was an early proponent of ordination of women and racial desegregation within mainline churches. The chain smoking Pike was the fifth Bishop of California and, a few years before he began to explore spiritualism and psychic phenomena in an effort to contact his deceased son, became a recovering alcoholic."
• Was his death "strange and mysterious"? Strange, yes. Mysterious, not really. Wikipedia does a good job of detailing the sad story. Pike got lost in the Israeli desert, dehydrated, disoriented and died in a fall while trying to climb a steep cliff.
• Dedication: "In memory of a friend who lives on."
• Curated excerpt #1: "The purpose of the visit to Christ Church, Poughkeepsie, had been not so much to contact and free the restless spirit of the late rector as to follow up and, if possible, verify Bishop Pike's experiences. In the process we also succeeded in freeing the late rector from his earthbound status, by allowing him to express himself through Mrs. Meyers and thus relieving himself of the pent-up anxieties and remorsefulness from his incarnate period."
• Curated excerpt #2: "I thanked the Canon and set out for Ena Twigg's rose-entwined cottage. Ena and I had talked on the telephone before, and I had found her a vivacious, slightly opinionated but overall extremely likable person, a far cry from the traditional misconcept of what a medium is and sounds like."
• Curated excerpt #3: "Bishop Pike made friends easily, perhaps too easily, and he took into his confidence people whom he scarcely knew."
• Online reviews: There's really nothing of substance in the Amazon or Goodreads reviews. One Amazon review states, "Well worth reading."
• Criticism: In fact, the only review of The Psychic World of Bishop Pike I could find was within the 1976 book The Death and Life of Bishop Pike: An Utterly Candid Biography of America's Most Controversial Clergyman, by William Stringfellow. He pulls no punches (the bold is mine):

"The exploitation of Bishop Pike by smallness and meanness did not terminate with his death. He had no more than stretched out in his grave hard by the Mediterranean Sea than Crown Publishers of New York saw fit to publish (1970) The Psychic World of Bishop Pike by Hans Holzer, who was identified on the jacket as the 'the country's most notable parapsychologist.' The book is truly without redeeming social value. Unfortunately, Bishop Pike was partially responsible for this posthumous insult. Holzer, who seems to have made a career out of flitting from poltergeist to poltergeist, turned up on the bishop's doorstep one day with the proposal that he make a documentary film about him. Was he told to go fly a kite? No. He was warmly received and in no time the bishop was a captive of Holzer's tape recorder. ... Holzer's talent for invention is considerable but he did not invent his conversation with Bishop Pike. That conversation is reproduced in the book verbatim."

So there you have it. Holzer seems to have crossed a line with this book, especially with his irresponsible speculations (aided by "mediums") about mysteries and even foul play surrounding Pike's tragic and entirely accidental death. Holzer was better off when he was writing about ghosts, bumps in the night and haunted houses — harmless storytelling and modern folklore — than when he was trying to mix parapsychology and bad journalism to write about real people.

But wait, there's more

Many 1970s paperbacks had advertisements on thicker paper stock in the middle. Sometimes they were for book clubs or encyclopedia sets. Many of the advertisements were for cigarettes. The Psychic World of Bishop Pike has a page in the middle featuring advertising for Smirnoff vodka on one side and Eastern Air Lines on the other side.

 

Hail to the king, baby?Or maybe to the Green Man.

The coronation of King Charles III was held today at Westminster Abbey. The Associated Press summed it up nicely: The event was "steeped in ancient ritual and brimming with bling at a time when the monarchy is striving to remain relevant in a fractured modern Britain." The ceremony featured an orb, a sword, a scepter, a crown and some Crown Jewels that are long-ago loot that should be returned to the countries they were plundered from. The was also an appearance by the Stone of Destiny, which sent me down a fun rabbit hole on the internet earlier this week.

One thing that piqued my interest is the extent to which folklore is being used to undergird the continuance of the constitutional monarchy for the United Kingdom and its Commonwealth realms. The British Royal Family reinforced its ancient roots with the official coronation invitation (designed by Andrew Jamieson and shown above). On its official website, it notes:

"Central to the design is the motif of the Green Man, an ancient figure from British folklore, symbolic of spring and rebirth, to celebrate the new reign. The shape of the Green Man, crowned in natural foliage, is formed of leaves of oak, ivy and hawthorn, and the emblematic flowers of the United Kingdom."

But while the general idea of the Green Man goes far back into history, there are complex mythologies about the figure that don't always interwine neatly. And some say the current representation of the Green Man doesn't go back very far at all. An article by William Fischer on Grunge states:

"That the Green Man is widely believed to be a figure from antiquity isn't disputed, but whether or not he actually is an ancient symbol is another matter. The modern perception of the Green Man comes from an article written by Julia Somerset, the Lady Raglan, in 1939. She was interested in the ubiquitous presence of faces made out of leaves in church architecture throughout Europe (per The New Yorker). Her interpretation of those carvings, as an ancient pagan deity of spring that coexisted with Christianity throughout the medieval period, became very popular, but it's been widely challenged by scholars in the years since."

"Most folklorists hold that there was no tradition of a springtime spirit made of leaves, in Britain or anywhere else, and that the church heads were only decorative. On the other hand, some historians have found evidence for the Green Man as a genuinely ancient figure. Whether he's that old or not, the perception of him as such is well-supported by the British press, and so the perception remains."

Perhaps this modern rebranding of the Green Man into a benign figure, like Santa Claus, made it safe and noncontroversial for the Royal Family to use as a theme for the coronation. And it certainly fits well alongside Charles III's stated passion for environmentalism. But watering down this folklore figure and using it as a "mascot" for a royal ceremony does somewhat of a disservice to the mysteries and multiple incarnations of the Green Man throughout world history, which it not just British.

Past posts about the royal family

• Happy birthday, Elizabeth II (2011)
• Celebrating the Diamond Jubilee of Elizabeth II (2012)
• Update: This royal dog was a Welsh corgi named Sugar (2012)
• The Queen and her children (2013)
• Past and present: Queen Elizabeth II (2021)
• Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor (1926-2022)

From the readers: Whirley mugs, cat plates and Uncle Ted's Ghoul School

Hope everyone has a dandy and safe weekend ahead. Here are the comments you've submitted since the last roundup.

Obscure nostalgia: 1970s plastic mugs from Whirley Industries: Commenting on this 2012 post, Anonymous writes: "I have the cow creamer! Purchased at a local restaurant, early 70s. Also have a 'Hands off!' yellow cup my son found recently while demolishing an old building. Always interesting to see what can be found in long-deserted buildings."

What a great find! I still can't believe the happenstance that led to us finding a shed full of Whirley Industries plastic mugs selling for a penny apiece in York County in 2012. I still have a couple of them — my replacement "HANDS OFF!" mug and a Mister Donut mug that's currently holding Q-Tips in my bathroom. (Don't judge.) 

Also, look at this absolutely wild variation on the "HANDS OFF!" Whirley theme that I stumbled across on the internet. The 1970s, man...

Christmas greetings from author Edna Albert: Geraldine Beattie writes: "I can verify her writing. She was my mother's cousin. I have letter and card written by Edna."

Thanks, Geraldine! Read more about Edna Albert in this post.

Old receipt for Landis Stone Meal Company in Lancaster County: Jim Bennett writes: "On Jan 28, 2012, you posted a blank invoice of the Landis Stone Meal Co. in Rheems, PA. Today, I was surfing and decided to pursue the family name of 'Landis.' I am Howard Landis' great-great-grandson. I remember him very well and, as a child, have been to the quarry. He, his wife and a daughter actually raised my mother because her father (Howard's son) was very irresponsible and the mother's family, who were Plain, wanted nothing to do with the baby. I have a few pieces of advertising from the quarry and memories. Harold and wife, and my grandfather, are buried in a small cemetery on land that was part of the quarry outside of Rheems."

Thank for your sharing that family history research, Jim! It adds a great deal to the story.

The elementary school in the City Behind the Fence: Frank Blackistone writes, "We lived in Oak Ridge from February 1944 to April 1954. I went to Cedar Hill School from 1944 to 1947. We had a great time in Oak Ridge. Looking back on our 10 years, I cannot think of a better place to grow up in."

WNEP-TV staff from 1975, including Miss Judy: Anthony Mascaro writes, "The Land of Hatchy Milatchy, Dialing for Dollars, Bowling for Dollars, Uncle Ted's Ghoul School, etc., were a priceless pastime that made WNEP-TV the local leader in community connected relationships. Growing up in the 1970s and watching these and other WNEP shows was as common on a local basis as watching The Waltons was on a national basis."

Now I want to learn more about Uncle Ted's Ghoul School! I was too young to stay up for that. I am fascinated by all of those regional horror hosts who were popular from the 1960s through 1980s and am already planning some posts on that topic for later this year. Looks like there's a Facebook group for Uncle Ted memories.

Cheerful Card Company can help you earn extra money for the holidays: Anonymous writes: "I enjoy selling and buying things. Cards and gadgets were available. Still remember my ID # ... LOL, that was late 1960s."

Big Boi's special dinner plate: HaeroMaero writes: "I love your plate with your cat's photo in it!! I should do one for my cat, too. Nice blog, Chris! Cheers." 

And Joan very nicely added: "You are THE BEST cat dad."

Aww, thanks. And these are just the outdoor cats. This morning I was downstairs at 5:45 a.m. because there are two stray females who are nursing kittens and always arrive promptly at dawn for their meal (Mamacita & Cirque de Soleil).

We had a crowd of five at the back door this morning, and that included Big Boi. He is now used to eating from his special plate, and he is usually a good boy about waiting his turn. (It helps that he's often very sleepy in the morning and naps until it's food time.) He's doing OK, but it would be really great if he stopped getting into fights with other tomcats. I've been mixing some Fish Mox (amoxicillin) into his food, because it's the only way to get him some medicine for his wounds/infections. He gobbles it right up, so I hope that's helping a little bit. He is getting quite ragged in his old age, and I'm sure he's not going to enjoy it when the thermometer reaches 100 tomorrow, as forecast.

Lamenting what we'll never know about Phyllis J. Stalnaker Harris: CherylP, responding to a suggestion by another commenter that Phyllis' meme was meant to make people laugh, wrote: "I did not laugh. I felt sorrow thinking about how terribly she was treated." 

I agree 100%.

Take a ride with Edwards Motor Transit Co.: Finally, responding to one of the oldest posts on Papergreat, Anonymous writes: "Drove this 4107 [bus] for Edwards back then. Edwards had only two of them, one dedicated to the Greyhound Washington D.C.-Buffalo route, the other dedicated to daily service from Williamsport to Pittsburgh. Good driving and handling coach."

Book cover: "Warriors of Noomas"

• Title: Warriors of Noomas
• Series: #1 of 4 in the Noomas series
• Author: Charles Nuetzel (born 1934). "In retirement he has become involved in swing dancing, a long time lover of Big Band jazz," his Audible.com biography notes. "But more interestingly world travels have taken him (and his wife Brigitte) across the world, to Hawaii, Caribbean, Mexico, Kenya, Egypt, Peru, having a lifelong interest in ancient civilizations."
• Cover artist who drew that toothy creature: Albert Nuetzel (1901-1969), who is Charles' father and was typically credited as Albert Nuetzell, according to the Internet Science Fiction Database.
• Interior artist: Louis DeWitt
• Publication date: 1969
• Publisher: Powell Publications (Powell Sci-Fi) of Reseda, California. The company published about two dozen books in 1969 and 1970, including five by Charles Nuetzel, and then went kaput. Perhaps its most notable publication was 1969's Memos from Purgatory, an updated edition of the nonfiction book by Harlan Ellison that was first published in 1961.
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 211 (followed by several unnumbered pages of advertisements)
• Cover price: 95 cents in 1969, the equivalent of $7.80 today
• Provenance: There's a stamp on the inside front cover for Greg's Book Mart (see below), and it's a different Greg's Book Mart stamp than the one I wrote about in 2018. This one notes locations at the Wheatland Shopping Center in Lancaster and the Meadowbrook Antique Market in Leola, both in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Also, the name "Josie" has been written on the first page.
• Back cover excerpt: "In his first thrilling adventure, Torlo Hannis wakes up on the planet of Noomas without memory of any past life, yet aware that he comes from a vast inter-galactic civilization." (Too bad he wasn't wearing a handy Galactitag.)
• Dedication: "To: JUAN SEBASTIAN WEIR. Without whose father's indirect help this book would not have been possible."
• First sentence: "I, Torlo Hannis, was born at the age of twenty-eight, without memory of my past life, without knowledge of the world in which I found myself."
• Last sentence: "The silence is deafening for it leaves many questions unanswered."
• Random excerpt from the middle #1: "The scene which we saw in the distance was beautiful in its primitive savagery. Colorful pennants flew from hundreds of spears around and in the city. Flying grav-disks were engaging in battle in the air along the perimeter of the wall."
• Random excerpt from the middle #2: "Youi began singing a light, delicate ballad, but as if touched with too much liquor, slightly offkey."
• Goodreads review: In 2009, Charles wrote: "I read this when I was hungry for a continuation of [Edgar Rice Burroughs'] sword and planet stuff and it was satisfying. Good swashbuckling adventure."
• Amazon review: In 2013, Keith T. Gibson wrote: "This is basically a cheap knockoff of the Barsoom novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs. ... The planet and landscapes aren't described very well, which removes one of the biggest reasons for reading these types of stories, and the story shows no originality, but on the plus-side, the hero isn't mindless, and actually thinks some of the time."

Posing with the back cover of Warriors of Noomas is LP. Technically, her name is Lost Pengin, but the rule is that you're allowed to call her anything that has the initials LP, so I call her Licorice Pizza, natch.

Varmint-enhanced eBay listing of the day

It takes some true chutzpah to list this copy of The Haunted House Handbook on eBay for $11.98 plus $4.50 shipping. At least there's full honesty in the description: "Front cover shows considerable varmint damage to top, side & lower edges -- otherwise this copy would have been graded as Good Minus, with wear & chipping to edges & corners, plus creases, scratches,folds, indentations, small tears, rub-wear, browning pages, soiling, etc -- OVERALL CONDITION = Fair"

"Fair" might be pushing it.

The Haunted House Handbook, by D. Scott Rogo (1950-1990) was published in 1978, and it's moderately sought-after by folks who collect that genre. Good copies aren't cheap, but a quick search found some nice ones on Amazon, eBay and AbeBooks in the $25 range. And there were also a few paperbacks in the $10 range that could definitely be considered ragged — but far less ragged than this mouse-eaten one.

But who knows? Maybe collecting chewed-up or weirdly battered paperbacks is a hobby for some collectors. They can have their unique charm, I reckon, though I don't think I'd pay the $16.48 (plus tax) in this instance to be able to hold this one and call it my own.

I've certainly stumbled upon some books at the end of their usable lives over the years, including Mystery of the Third Mine and a volume from an 1882 encyclopedia set. Crucially, I paid a combined 25 cents for the two of them. And I no longer have them — I'm not one of the Collyer brothers! I do, however, still have the "Best. Book. Ever." that I detailed in 2015.

Related posts

• How much is that haunted doll in the eBay window I have open?
• Worst eBay copy of "The Shining"?
• You'll never be able to unsee this creepy life mask
• Creepiest eBay listing of the year

Cat postcard & cat tale from a war-weary Ukrainian

I recently received this Postcrossing postcard from Andriy in Dnipro, Ukraine, whose interests include archaeology, antiques, pirates and outdoor activities.

He penned his note to me in early March and wrote:

Hello, this is incredible, I have had this original card from the 70s for a year, and as if waiting for you. ... A little about myself. My name is Andriy. I also love cats very much. I have several of them, and they are very hard going through the war and bombing that we have almost every day.

That's it. There isn't much room to write on postcards. But this one succinctly notes the bond we share through a love a cats and the daily heartbreak of Putin's criminal war upon the innocent people, and animals, of Ukraine. 

It's over now, the music of the night

ajay_suresh, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons 

Today marks the final performance of the Andrew Lloyd Webber/Charles Hart/Richard Stilgoe musical The Phantom of the Opera on Broadway, at the Majestic Theatre. It ran for nearly 14,000 performances, having begun at the Majestic in January 1988 — more than 35 years ago. I was still in high school when it debuted!

It's been around so long that I've had nine different residences since I saw the show's touring company in Philadelphia in the early 1990s. And I'm no longer sure where that playbill is, so I couldn't rustle it up for today's bit of ephemera.

It's very possible that I first heard about Phantom from my 11th grade history teacher at Strath Haven High School, Robert Larzelere. He was an enthusiastic, smart-as-a-whip and hilarious teacher who always kept our attention as he filled our heads with knowledge. When he died in 2011, his Legacy.com page was filled with messages from former students he had inspired.

During the minutes at the beginning or end of some classes, he would often try to broaden our horizons with elements of popular culture that represented a reprieve from the class struggles or economic theories we were learning about. I distinctly remember one day in the spring of 1988 when Mr. Larzelere put on a record and let us listen to the opening minutes of Phantom's synthesizer-charged score. (It must have been the London cast recording, right?) 

My mom and grandmother were fans of the show, too. They traveled to New York City to see the show on Broadway, and raved about it for months afterward. They played the vinyl cast recording on the mid-century record player cabinet in our Wallingford living room. 

As I mentioned, Mom took my sister and I to see Phantom in Philadelphia in the early 1990s. I saw it one other time, with Joan in Baltimore circa 2005. 

The "Highlights From The Phantom Of The Opera" CD spent many years in the regular rotation of music that I listened to while working.¹ And, to this day, I sing songs from the musical in the shower.² 

There's been lots of great journalism in recent weeks about the end of the show on Broadway. Two that I really enjoyed were a New York Times piece about the members of the orchestra who have been with the show for years (or decades), and this Playbill article about the monkey musical box (Lot 665) that makes its final Broadway appearance today, too.

Footnotes

1. The rotation also included albums by Genesis and Counting Crows, plus the Magnolia and Punch-Drunk Love scores.

2. Too much information?