Splinters in the Mix

This is really more of a Twitter sort of thing than an actual post, but it relates to yesterday's first blog entry, "The Reminder". The New Yorker's Leo Carey and Ken Auletta have weighed in on what the proliferation of e-books may mean for the future not just of publishing, but for writing, and the nonfiction variety in particular. Yikes. There's a long preamble, so I suggest skipping ahead to about the 6:40 mark and starting from there. 

Souvenirs from MARs

The Pacific Science Center Mold-A-Rama.

I had a great time researching and writing a story about one of my favourite topics, Mold-A-Rama, for Seattle Metropolitan. "Souvenirs from MARs" is in their July issue, on newsstands now, but they've posted the full text online, along with some nifty animated GIFs. Mold-A-Rama made its public debut at the Century 21 Exposition during the 1962 World's Fair in Seattle. I'd latched onto this topic after getting to know a man named Bill Bollman, who collects and restores coin-operated vending machines. Since discovering these machines for himself, they've more or less eclipsed the rest of his collection. 

The Reminder

I had a coffee meeting the other morning with a close writer/editor friend. It was time to catch up, and also kick around some ideas for a couple of articles we'd be writing over the next week. We also commiserated about the business of writing, and how challenging it can be to match our enthusiasm for it to the publications that demonstrate some interest in what words can describe. So many pictures these days, so little content. And let me tell you, it's particularly bad with design mags.

But anytime you plead the case for good writing, eyes glaze over. People seem to feel that they should care about it, but they can't muster much passion for the cause.  And when you find yourself proselytising to folks who neither know, nor care about, the difference between "your" and "you're," exhaustion and annoyance take hold quickly.

Sometimes it gets depressing to the point where I start questioning if I'm just overestimating my importance and abilities, or if anyone cares about them. I don't mean to suck my thumb; I just pride myself on possessing reasonably good skill at description, and on at least trying to write as much for the reader's entertainment as for my own.

But is anyone reading?

Here is Australia, Fairfax Media, publisher of both The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, our two largest broadsheet newspapers, has announced the impending layoff of 1900 employees, and an anticipated shift to a tabloid format. 20% of those dismissed will come from editorial staff. Not enough customers.

Having finished our coffees, we walked back to my friend's office where I picked up a recently-published issue of a design magazine that I will leave unnamed. Later, I took my seat on the tram and flicked randomly through the pages, stopping halfway through an article about the design of a new corporate headquarters in Sydney. The author had written:

"Clear imageability assists us to orientate ourselves, and find our way about. Psychologically we feel more comfortable in a city with legibility."

I couldn't have written a less legible sentence. And I felt glad I could recognise that.

The Long, Hot Simmer

In the design world, talk is particularly cheap and selling excitement is never easy. The task is made harder still when the commotion comes from a place called Adelaide-- a grandmotherly name for a city of churches. Read my recent report on the highs and lows of design in the state of South Australia, in "The Long, Hot Simmer", in issue 70 of Inside magazine.

The Queen's Birthday

Roo crossing.

While Alison and her friends spent the long holiday weekend in Bendigo inspecting Grace Kelly's wardrobe, on Sunday morning Beau and I sped out beyond the western suburbs to do some geocaching. Beau had identified a tidy string of caches in close proximity to one another in and around the town of Eynesbury, Victoria. According to a sign we passed, it's home to one of the largest remaining grey box forests in the state. Eastern grey kangaroos live here, too, but the weather was too foul for them to be out.

Roadside at Five Ways, VIC

After knocking over a few simple but muddy caches, we stopped to tour Eynesbury itself, a historic town which has been almost completely redeveloped around a golf course. What remains of the original town looks nice; there's an elevated reservoir, and several sturdy blue stone dwellings, a number of which appear to have been adapted for utilitarian use. But the new houses are predictably ugly and flimsy-looking. There was a large site model on display at the sales office that I lingered over, and Beau bought a bag of potato chips at the open but idle convenience store next door. The shop was essentially just a large room that had been set up to sell the bare essentials to desperate townsfolk, and people like us who were driving through and had no other reason to be there. There were perhaps only 80 or so different products for sale, in quantities of only one or two each-- a sleeve of cookies, can of tuna, toothpaste, instant noodles, a tiny jar of mayonnaise, Coke, AA batteries and blister packs of sliced ham. I noted with some amusement that Aeroplane port wine jelly was also among them. Then we walked to the edge of a small lake where Beau rummaged in the bushes and discovered another cache that I had been ready to give up looking for.

The horse from Little River Ripley Reserve

In the rain and chill, that bag of chips had only whetted our appetites, so we crossed to the other side and ate lunch at the golf club, which had been established inside one of larger surviving blue stone buildings-- perhaps a former farm estate-- and expanded with sun rooms and other structural additions. What must have been the entire population of Eynesbury had just come in from the golf course, dripping, and was now placing orders at the counter. Our timing was almost perfect. Beau had a meat pie with chips and salad, and I had a bowl of vegetable soup.

After lunch, we left Eynesbury to find the cache that Beau really cared about-- one in a diabolically lengthy, complicated and far-flung series he'd been following for many weeks. Eventually we pulled into a small parking area off the highway at a place called Little River Ripley Reserve, which consisted of a metal pergola and a decaying picnic table amid a grove of enormous eucalypts that followed the banks of a stream. While I peed on an old grey box, he found the treasure, which included a small plastic horse I decided to keep.

We both had a nice time. I think Beau was disappointed by the rainy weather, but I thought it made for a good adventure. Thanks, Beau!

Sign Language

I'd blogged earlier about my interview with Stephen Banham in The Typographer. The finished article, about the design of signs, has since been published in Design Quarterly.

Click here to read "Sign Language," appearing in issue 45.

The Maid

The Maid. (P. Sackett)