Compulsively Aimless

Like many 18 year old college freshmen, I discovered the Beat Generation and their culture of coffee houses and writing. Historically, cafes were places where conversations happened and ideas were exchanged. I was in the early 1980s but I envied the 1950s culture of coffee houses as a place to bring people together for impromptu exchanges of ideas and discussion. I imagined sitting in Greenwich Village cafés, holding poetry and book readings, drinking coffee and delving into eastern religion. This past Saturday, as part of my book promotion I was lucky enough to appear in a college town coffee house, named after a famous beat writer. When I walked in the door, I thought I was about to time travel back to the 50s and steal a moment of beat culture. The place had the look and feel of comfy old furniture, dark lighting, used records, and books with Lenard Cohen playing over the sound system. I'd made the arrangements by email with the owner who told me to hold my reading in the room...

11/ American Crayon Company’s water colors were often packaged in metal tins illustrated by well-known children’s artists of the day and taken from scenes from classic stories such as The Pied Piper and Old King Cole. My favorite is impressionist sea scape lower right. The high quality packaging was meant to inspire young artists with their covers. This and other stories from my book Color Capital of the World available here https://blogs.uakron.edu/.../color-capital-of-the-world/ or from your local independent book store and of course Amazon and B&N.  

 10/ Crayons That Stay Put. American Crayon introduced the Kindograph and Kantroll brands especially for children and the patience of parents and teachers. The crayons were thick enough for little hands to grasp with large easy to read labels but the critical element was they wouldn't roll away--instead of being round, they had a flat end to keep them in place. This and other stories in my book Color Capital of the World: https://blogs.uakron.edu/uapress/product/color-capital-of-the-world

Seems there's no shortage of booklists at the end of every year. I like to wait till the end of December as I get some of my best reading done in the last days of the last month of the year. I use Goodreads to track my reads for the year-- here's my list for 2022 .             I continue to read mostly in the category of memoir followed closely by travel. I suppose the memoir reads were influenced by the fact I published a memoir of my own this year, The Color Capital of the World: Growing Up with the Legacy of a Crayon Company and looked at how others had told their stories. I enjoy memoir for all the times and places it can take the reader. I'm slowly working my way through the five volume memoir of Osbert Sitwell, which allows me a glimpse into an English artistocratic family of eccentrics in the Edwardian period--a life I'd never have a clue about in my here and now.   Other memoirs I've sampled: Rock and Roll legends, television celebrities,...

9/ Boxing Day. American Crayon made its own packaging building durable wooden dovetail boxes suitable for shipping chalk and crayons. By 1921 the company made over 1 million maple boxes a year. The boxes were so sturdy that they came to the attention of the giants of the automobile industry. Henry Ford ordered them by the thousands to hold electrical coils sat in the engine compartment of the model Ts rolling off his Detroit assembly lines. This and more stories in my book Color Capital of the World. https://blogs.uakron.edu/.../color-capital-of-the-world/

                        8/ Merry Christmas from American Crayon Company. ACC was more than crayons. They made a significant portion of the sales in tempera paints. For a couple of decades they made festive holiday linoleum blocks so their customers could make their own Christmas cards rolling the paint on the blocks and pressing them onto paper. This and other stories in The Color Capital of the World: Growing Up with the Legacy of a Crayon company. https://blogs.uakron.edu/uapress/product/color-capital-of-the-world/

                    With the end of 2022, I'm cleaning out the nonsense from journal (usually from the left side of the page) and set it out for one last chance that someone will come and get it.   Cold Portal Fridge light is both tractor beam and time machine last night's dinner - made my plate clean JAVA AT THE PALINDROME CAFE Coffee maid made coffee. WHY I WAS A WEIRD KID (from my unauthorized unwritten autobiography - "Stories of No Consequence") Listened to records of Gregorian Chant or Henry Mancini and ordered transcripts from Firing Line Band Names and some of their possible songs  (these could also be reversed) Failed Lineage - Unclaimed Days Walk Ons - Glories in Decline Back Channel - Frozen Star Dunce Master - Turrets and Jesters Bolt Hold - Live Round Ragglesedge- 20 Hags Replacement Memory - Love it Sometime My Legal Poem The Frolic and Detour was arbitrary and capricious but the trespass to chattels lead to a rig...