First a big welcome to the 50 or so new subscribers this week. I don’t know where y’all came from, but I’m sure happy you’re here. Please say hello and stay a while.
Sometimes I do random searches for archival photos on the Library of Congress site. If you’re bored, start with the Farm Security Administration photos or search for your hometown or the word “bicycle” and see what comes up. What a treasure trove it is. Today’s search was for “libraries” and I came across this: “Photograph shows a reading room filled with children and young adults in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Carnegie library. Creating the first fully developed children's department in 1899 is one of the historic milestones claimed by the Pittsburgh Carnegie Library.” [Carnegie Library in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania Pittsburgh, Photographer Not known. [Between 1900 and 1905] Photograph]. Pretty cool.
Here are 5 things I was looking at and loving this week:
I love this interview with NYC’s coolest stealth design ninja. That guy is Max Kolomatsky, a 25-year-old designer who’s been secretly redesigning NYC street flyers for free. And I appreciate what he had to say about doing something for fun, for free, or just for yourself…
I’m currently reading two books that seem to be in conversation with each other: Let Us Descend by Jesmyn Ward and The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff.
I’m not sure how I stumbled across the Fake Is The New Real site, but the tab has been open in my browser for weeks now. It was created by artist and urban planner Neil Freeman, and I dig the data visualization, bots, and maps (esp this one of straight lines drawn between public schools in numerical order in the NYC boroughs). — and after a quick Google search to learn more, I really dig how his brain works.
Damn you, Sol Neelman, for sending me William Shatner performing a spoken word rendition of the song “Rocket Man” at the 1978 Science Fiction Film Awards aka the Saturn Awards. It’s so bad it’s almost good.
Library of Congress.... what a rabbit hole!