Ralph Senensky's insights on the history of directing TV shows

Ashar and I have been leisurely, over a few years, making our way through the three seasons of the early 1970s supernatural anthology TV show "Night Gallery" — Rod Serling's followup to "The Twilight Zone." Last night we watched the episode "The Miracle at Camafeo / The Ghost of Sorworth Place," with the latter tale starring Richard Kiley and Jill Ireland, who are pictured above in some beautiful Bava-esque lighting. (The screen grab doesn't do it justice; seek out the blu-ray.)

Typically after watching something, I go down internet rabbit holes to learn more. Both of the segments in this episode were directed by Ralph Senensky. He had a long and remarkable career as a television director — and he's spent the years of his retirement blogging about his memories and insights from that time. Oh, and he's 101 now.¹

Senensky is perhaps best known for directing a dozen episodes of "The Waltons"² and six episodes of the original series of "Star Trek." But his resume of directing credits is a grand tour through the history of television from the early 1960s through the mid 1980s. His credits include episodes of "Dr. Kildare," "Route 66," "The Twilight Zone," "The Fugitive," "The Big Valley," "The Wild Wild West," "The F.B.I.," "Mission Impossible," "Mannix," "The Partridge Family," "James at 16," "Eight Is Enough," "Lou Grant," "Dynasty" and much more.

And he's documented almost all of it. As history, its value is immense.

He wrote a Blogspot blog (same platform as Papergreat) called Ralph's Trek that can be found at ralph-senensky.blogspot.com. And there's Senensky.com, aka Ralph's Cinema Trek, which organizes his past posts and has provided a home for his more recent writing. He's also still active on Facebook. Amazing.

Unsurprisingly, it's Senensky's memories of and association with "Star Trek" that garner him the most attention — he even attended a convention this year. But having just read a handful of his blog posts thus far, I find they're all filled with fascinating detail, wisdom and anecdotes about how television productions were brought to life decades ago. I look forward to reading many more of them.

I'm writing this because I hope that more people discover Senensky's blog posts, and because I hope they will be preserved in book form (or at least through printouts). To paraphrase something I read recently on X, the internet is not forever, and we must aggressively support the archiving of online material we're passionate about.³ Some experts, not alarmists, believe that as much as 80% of global digital content could disappear within the next decade or so.⁴

 I'll close with an excerpt from one of Senensky's posts. It's an amusing anecdote about an episode of "The Waltons" titled "The Gift":

"They let me have a big crane for the Franklyn Canyon shoot. I loved crane shots that boomed down, but cranes were also a time saver when filming on rolling terrain like in the canyon. It was easier to move the crane from setup to setup than rolling the crab dolly over the rough ground. There was a lesson concerning the crane that had been drilled into me from the first time I used one on MGM’s backlot when filming the opening sequence of JOHNNY TEMPLE on DR. KILDARE. When I was checking a setup, seated on the crane in the assistant cameraman’s seat alongside the camera operator, I was warned when it came time to dismount not to do so until the assistant cameraman was ready to take my place. Because of the counterweights if I were to jump off too soon, the camera end of the crane would fly up into the air and act as a catapult that would hurl the camera operator off into space. In my twenty-six years I never lost a camera operator that way."

That's just one of the many, many gems within Senensky's reminiscences. May they live on for future readers and scholars.

Footnotes

1. Fun connection: Another "Night Gallery" we watched in the past week featured Norman Lloyd, who I've mentioned often on Papergreat and lived to age 106.

2. Syndicated columnist Tom Purcell recently wrote a piece about his fond memories of watching "The Waltons" with his family in the 1970s. An excerpt:

"Every Thursday, after dinner, my father and I boarded our Plymouth Fury station wagon and headed to the Del Farm grocery store located in a small suburban plaza one mile from our home. ... He’d buy a box of Del Farm’s freshly baked oatmeal and chocolate chip cookies and a bag of Snyder of Berlin potato chips, onion dip (my mother’s favorite) and a wooden case of Regent soda pop. When we finally pulled the loaded-down station wagon into the garage, everyone in the house was alerted and the massive unloading process began. We usually got everything packed away by 8 p.m., just in time to turn on 'The Waltons.' I’d bring a bowl of ice to the family room, open some bottles of Regent soda pop, pour the Snyder of Berlin chips into a couple of bowls and soon my sisters, parents and I would be enjoying the newest episode of one of our family’s must-see shows."

3. By the way, I'm no longer on X. You can guess why. You can find me, as Papergreat, over on Blue Sky now (@papergreat.bsky.social).

4. I have a hard copy of every Papergreat post through mid-July 2023 and will be catching up with the more recent posts soon.

1970s folklore rarity: "ghost, ghouls and golems."

Author Nina Antonia was the first to put this staplebound booklet on my radar, when she tweeted about it on July 27.¹ It's titled ghost, ghouls and golems. — I'm keeping the lowercase and the period intact — with the subtitle "THIRTEEN DEVONIAN GHOST STORIES."

It was published circa 1975/1976 by the Beaford Centre Community Arts Project. 

The 60-page booklet is, as of this writing, listed on eBay for £50. It seems to be quite the rarity from nearly a half-century ago and I think it's worth documenting what we can about it here, for posterity. There will be no second printing. What we know comes mostly from the pictures attached to the eBay listing.

Beaford is a small village in Devon, England. The Beaford Centre, now known as Beaford Arts, was established in 1966 to promote and support artists in that rural region of Devon. A short paragraph in this booklet of ghost stories explains how it came about: "These thirteen stories were chosen from among the entries to a Ghost Story Writing Contest organised by the Beaford Centre Community Arts Project in the autumn of 1975. We would like to thank the authors of the stories for allowing us to print them. We would also like to thank Barbara Woodland for typing them out, and Graeme Rigby for designing and printing the booklet."

Thanks to the photos with the eBay listing, here's the table of contents, along with the 13 authors.

UNEASY SPIRITS

• Rose of Marsland, by E.W.F. Tomlin
• The Powers That Be, by Jane Reed
• The Warning, by Veronica Warner

SPIRITS OF THE SEA

• The Grey Lady, by S. Gorrell
• The Captain's Cabin, by John F. McKno

DEVILS, DOGS & DEMONS

• The Devil: A Bit Of Hot Stuff, by G.H. Hackett
• Black Dog, by Geoffrey Skinner
• The Old Evil, by M.A. Russell
• The Power Of The Megalith, by E. Clay

TRUE STORIES

• "My Grandfather was Walking," by M. Incledon-Webber
• Mahala, by M.J. Wreford
• First You Dee It, Then You Don't, by W.J. Nott
• Owing To The Depression, by Ruby Ewings

I'll leave it to someone else to try researching all of those Devonians. 

Antonia's tweet this summer led to a little discussion about the booklet and local folklore in general. I think parts of that are worth saving, too, before they become a lost corner of the internet.

• @HooklandGuide: Persactly this. I still have my childhood booklet on Essex’s Black Dog Paths.
• @NinaAntonia13: Have you dared to venture down any of them?
• @HooklandGuide: I think you can guess that I spent a lot of my very early teens cycling down then and exploring them thoroughly.
• @NinaAntonia13: I would have expected nothing less! :)
• @MelanieWoods65: That looks like a little gem. I love these kinds of publications & it being about ghosts is a double bonus.

Footnote

1. Antonia has long been one of my favorite people to follow on Twitter, with past tweets inspiring the pre-pandemic posts Regarding Estella Canziani and Who wants to join me in buying a crumbling, haunted British estate?

Lost Corners food humor and a recipe from a Vincent Price book

As regular reader(s) of this blog know, Papergreat has a strong interest in preserving tiny corners of the internet — personal blogs and websites, message boards, social media — that are especially susceptible to disappearing and/or being forgotten. The Lost Corners label features those posts from over the years.

I recently came across a Twitter thread from four years ago that was started by comedy writer Cullen Crawford¹, and I knew I wanted to "tuck it away in an envelope" for preservation. It's a laugh-out-loud look at food horrors that left at least two of us in this household ROTFL.

Here's the original post, plus my curation of the best (most horrifying?) responses, where things really get rollicking.

 

Nothing worse than sleeping at a friend's house and their family has some weird ass thing like calling spaghetti "Billy Dinner" or some shit

— Cullen Crawford (@HelloCullen) May 14, 2019

• @karakabangpow: "Sleepover at my friend's house, 8 years old, she served us an appetizer of saltine crackers with some weird spread on top. I asked her what it was she said 'its more crackers but I chewed them up!' like it was a normal thing."
• Cullen Crawford: "Jesus lord!"
• @karakabangpow: "I forgot she called them Kelly Crackers!!"
• @RecreantA: "That’s enough internet for one...lifetime."
• @MaraWilson: "My aunts made macaroni from a box of macaroni and cheese but without any cheese or butter or salt. It might have also been cold?"
• @Arithered: "Other People's Families are like the first experiences we ever have with the warning signs of cult indoctrination."
• @snartdeco: "I knew someone whose entire family called spaghetti 'daddy noodles' and I cannot"
• @alexvtunzelmann: "I’ve never forgotten some absolute lunatics who claimed that in their household they put orange juice on their breakfast cereal instead of milk. I assumed they were joking. Then they did it and lapped it up"
• @SocksUnterShoes: "Reminds me of my cousin. Always went to this friends house after school. They had something called 'sweet milk' and he loved it. Then he slept over. Sweet Milk is when you finish your cereal and pour your leftover milk into the Sweet Milk container."
• @mimva: "SCREAMING INSIDE MY SOUL FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE. I CAN NEVER UNREAD THIS."
• @mtobey: "It was always something normal that was ruined by an extra ingredient like spaghetti with raisins"
• @Blarrknulp: "This tweet has opened up a secret door in humanity's unconsciousness."
• @EricDSnider: "I don't think we ever inflicted it on guests, but my mom made something with macaroni, cream of mushroom soup, and ground beef that she called 'Hamburger Whoop-Dee-Dee.'"²
• @LynnAAR: "I had a college roommate who made soup with chicken broth, a ton of pepper and a can of spray cheese.  Sometimes she'd throw in chopped celery."
• @HELLA_GIRTH: "my idea of spaghetti as a kid was plain noodles covered in a mixture of melted velveeta block cheese and milk, with chopped-up hot dogs"
• @AdamPateman: "My family would eat cereal 3 hours after dinner and call it Bed Lunch."
• @Gadgetgirlkylie: "My dad would make something he liked to call 'Daddy’s Gunge' it was a mixture of crushed up spam and tomatoe ketchup. It was gross. Yet he seemed proud of it like it was the best food ever made."
• @emikaj2: "my dad made 'Dad Ramen' which was ramen, black beans, and feta cheese. 2nd grade was a nightmare."
• @pixelkitties: "Went to have dinner with a new boyfriend's family for the first time.  Sat down and there was nothing to drink at the table.  No glasses, no water, nothing. Partway into the meal I asked for a glass of water and they looked annoyed, like I farted at the table."³
• @emzeewoolzee: "This cursed thread made me recall a repressed memory. Must have been 8-10 yrs old...first and only sleepover at strange friend’s house. They gave me honeydew melon with kraft singles melted on top in the microwave. oh god."
• @HoustonBig3: "First time I ate a meal with girlfriend and her parents, they crack out an appetizer and I thought it was a joke. A banana sliced lengthwise...with mayo slathered on it...and the mayo topped with crushed peanuts. They were not pranking me. I respectfully declined to partake."
• Cullen Crawford: "I didn’t ask for any of this"

* * *

OK, we need a palate cleanser, after all that. So, obviously, we'll turn to Vincent Price. It's my 10-year anniversary this month of switching to a pescetarian diet, so here's a summer recipe for ice-cold gazpacho from Sobrino de Botín in Madrid, Spain. The recipe was included in Price's 1965 book A Treasury of Great Recipes. (I'm going to take a much deeper dive into that incredible volume one of these days.)

Vincent Price at Dodger Stadium

Footnotes

1. Papergreat is in full solidarity with the Writers Guild of America in its ongoing strike. Writers deserve fair payment and fair residuals payments for all uses of their work.

2. We had "Mommy's Favorite Hamburger Hash," which, to the best of my recollection, was ground beef, cream of mushroom soup and chopped-up hard-boiled eggs poured over toast.

3. That same thing happened to me once, and it's probably my only uncomfortable experience while eating at someone else's house. I guess I was pretty lucky. But now I'm wondering if I really examined all the crackers and spread I've had over the years.

From the readers: Hatchy Milatchy, library tales, Maude Adams and more

A lot of great comments have arrived within just the past month. Thank you all so much!

WNEP-TV staff from 1975, including Miss Judy: Anonymous writes: "Hatchy Milatchy was magic. When the gates would open at the beginning of the show, my brother and I would be on the floor as up close to the TV as my Mom would let us and for that hour every morning life was magic! Was it an hour or less, I can't recall. The kid has become an old lady."

Thank you for sharing this memory! We need more Hatchy Milatchy memories for posterity. There are not nearly enough of them on the internet. Maybe I'll curate a post of YouTube comments. Please send in any memories you have of this and other regional children's shows.

"Prinzess Victoria" and a tiny old package of sewing needles: Anonymous writes: "I have just found one in a sewing case and I wondered if it had any value, it has a leather case, add an embroidery top with a zipper. And it has the stamp in your number 3 the silver eye Blunts."

I am rarely an expert in the valuation of anything that I feature on the blog, but I wish you well with learning more about this.

Some of the books that helped to inspire Ruth Manning-Sanders: Cat, who pens the Cat's Wire blog, writes: "I don't know Ruth Manning-Sanders — I'm from Southwest Germany — but the picture of the German fairy tale books gave me a huge flashback to my childhood! When I was a child and teenager, our local library had a whole shelf full of these books and I loved the look of all the beautiful spines together. As I obviously had neither the space nor money to own them myself, I at least wanted to read each one of them and also read them to my little brother, but I don't think I ever made it all the way through. So many books to read, so little time. That was 45 to 50 years ago, and the library doesn't have the books anymore, but the happy memory remains."

Thank you for sharing this great memory. Libraries provide some of our most cherished memories, which is one reason, of many, why we should be defending them strongly against critics in the United States who want to remove certain books from shelves and/or reduce library funding. In another related note, I'll have some posts in the near future about those Manning-Sanders books that were auctioned off. Some of them, happily, are now at my house.

Moving along, this might be the only blog that jumps from Ruth Manning-Sanders' fairy tale books to the history surrounding the Manson family...

The Lost Corners of Paul Crockett: Wings Hauser — probably the Wings Hauser — responded to an ongoing conversation in the comments section of this 2018 post. The following contains some small edits for clarity and, for full disclosure, I don't understand everything being referenced here by Hauser: "I grew up with the Watkins family at Lake Sherwood. Paul’s older brother was my age, David was his name — an intense painter of large canvas. The Watkins fam hated us. They were very dedicated Catholics. ... Paul was I believe prez of the TOHS [Thousand Oaks High School] student body. A year later he was procuring women for Manson ... after the Manson trials. Paul, Brooks and Paul Crockett show up at my house in Thousand Oaks. My wife fell under his spell and within a month we were living on SHOSHONE WITH THE PAULS AND BROOKS. I spent 6 months out there with this bunch when finally I took my daughter of 13 months and left the idiots behind. ... I’ll save what happen in those six months for a later day." 

Enjoy these vintage recipes for the Everhot Electric Roasterette: There have been some other comments over the years about the family histories of those mentioned in this post. The latest is from Julie F. Jackson: "Interesting info. My grandmother, Nettie Underwood, married Charles E. Swartzbaugh Jr. It was the second marriage for both of them; they both were widows/widowers. Charles died suddenly after a few months of their marriage."

Postcard: Maude Adams as Peter Pan: Tom from Garage Sale Finds writes: "I was obsessed with Maude Adams back in the 1980s due to the movie Somewhere in Time, in which the main female lead, played by Jane Seymour, is based upon her. I have some sheet music with her photo on the front and did have her autograph for a while, though I ended up selling that."

I was also a fan of that Christopher Reeve time-travel film, though I think it was mostly because I loved its use of Rachmaninoff's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini. (Of course, I didn't know who wrote that theme or what it was called when I was a kid. I also didn't realize at the time that the screenwriter of Somewhere in Time, Richard Matheson, was also the screenwriter of Vincent Price's The Last Man on Earth. And that both were based upon his novels.)

Answering questions about my reading history and habits: Tom from Garage Sale Finds writes: 

"I started reading Martin Short's autobiography on vacation this past summer, but didn't quite make it to the end (a couple chapters left). It was good and I need to finish it. I find it hard to sit and read at home. I suffer like you do from the inability to stay awake more than 15 minutes when I read.

"Beverly Cleary's books were some of my favorites as a child as well, especially Runaway Ralph.

"My mother read Dr. Seuss and The Berenstain Bears to me and I have fond memories of that.

"I had a run during college where I read a lot of Stephen King (and Richard Bachmann). I went through them pretty quickly, reading for hours at a time.

"I belonged to a Science Fiction book club during college as well, so I ended up with quite a few books I wouldn't have normally read simply because I didn't return the refusal slips in time.

"I've been thinning my book collection recently and came upon the paperback version of The Three Investigators in The Mystery of Monster Mountain and thought of you. You've probably already read it and/or have it, but if you want it, drop me a line."

Thanks, Tom! And congratulations on spelling The Berenstain Bears correctly, even if that spelling is from an alternate universe than the one in which we grew up. Regarding your kind offer, about a year-and-a-half ago I came across someone who was reading the Three Investigators books to her grandchildren (or maybe it was her nieces and nephews), but she lamented that they were impossible and/or too expensive to find. So I sent most of my mine to her; that's where those books needed to be.

And, while we're on the topic, one final Three Investigators note...

The Three Investigators #1: The Secret of Terror Castle: Tom from Garage Sale Finds writes: "I found this page because I was looking for those graveyard endpapers. I still am a fan of the series that I started reading about 1970-71. The end of book #2, The Mystery of the Stuttering Parrot, has a great, spooky scene in an old cemetery. That chapter and the conclusion that follows are some of the best writing I ever have read in a children's book!"

1970 calendar tucked away inside 1936 book about Blacky the Wasp: Anonymous writes: "Black Sabbath's debut LP was released on February 13, 1970. I am so glad this handy source clarified the date."

Ha, ha, ha! Let's make jokes about cooking and eating elephants. Anonymous writes: "I love elephants too but I think this joke can only be taken with tongue in cheek in order to use the homophone for hare/ hair. Wouldn't you agree?" 

Yes, I agree. And it's definitely possible that my level of outrage was unnecessarily over the top in this 2016 post. I must have been cranky about something else. 

Elaborately designed envelope for Bennett Printing Company: Anonymous writes: "My father retired from Bennett's. He worked in the shop."

Snapshot & memories: Our little bookstore: Tom from Garage Sale Finds, who has been super-generous with comments this month and has a blog you really should check out, writes: "I just recently winnowed my own Amazon bookstore collection for similar reasons [to the reasons that Joan and I left Amazon circa 2015]. Too many listed that would actually result in a loss after Amazon's take. The books I have listed now easily fit on half of a small bookcase. Organizing by color is actually genius, I wish I'd thought of it when I had my full volume going. It was always a pain searching through my tubs to find that one book that sold. It was always the last one in the tub."

Finally, while it doesn't relate to a specific blog post, Christelle in Belgium shared some kind thoughts in early February after receiving a postcard from me through Postcrossing: "Hello Chris! Thank you for the nice postcard you sent me. I had a look at your blog and your cats' pictures on Instagram. ... About your blog, as you, I love old pictures and postcards! I like the story they can tell or the one we can imagine!"

Mama Orange next to some books that are sorted by genre, not color.

Kipple 'n bytes: Thoughts on what we do and don't preserve

In recent days, I've coincidentally read two things about adult children cleaning out a house full of their late parents' belongings. The first is the short story "Cleanout" in Naomi Kritzer's stellar 2017 collection, "Cat Pictures Please and Other Stories." It's ultimately a sci-fi story, but buying into the fantastical part isn't necessary to appreciate the truth of a passage like this:

"Because there was a lot to go through. Our parents were immigrants from some former Soviet republic with a lot of mountains, and after coming to the U.S. with just the clothes they were wearing, they apparently never threw anything away ever again. We all started in random spots. Magda with the kitchen, packing up bags of warped cookie sheets and chipped frying pans with the nonstick coating peeling off to donate to whichever local charity took housewares. Nora in the basement, because so much down there was water-damaged and mold-saturated she could just haul it straight out to the Dumpster we'd rented."

The other piece I read, which was part of my editing work for LNP | LancasterOnline but didn't feel like work at all, was "What is kipple, and how did it take over my life?" by Los Angeles Times columnist Robin Abcarian. In the August 3 piece, she writes about the long, slow process of cleaning out her late father's house, including the seemingly endless drawers she has come to dread going through.

And what is kipple? Well, here comes the sci-fi element again. It's an invented word from Philip K. Dick's 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? — the book that served as the basis for the 1982 movie Blade Runner. 

As Abcarian explains:

"The word is used by the book’s protagonist, Rick Deckard, a bounty hunter assigned to kill some uncannily human-like robots who have escaped involuntary servitude on Mars and returned to Earth, where they try to pass as people.

"So what, exactly, is kipple?

"'Kipple,' Deckard explains in the book, 'is useless objects, like junk mail or match folders after you use the last match or gum wrappers or yesterday’s homeopape. [Dick’s incredibly prescient vision of a digital newspaper.] When nobody’s around, kipple reproduces itself. For instance, if you go to bed leaving any kipple around your apartment, when you wake up the next morning there’s twice as much of it.'"

For Abcarian, the kipple she must deal with involves exhausting numbers of tiny decisions. Should she keep various roles of tape that might come in handy? A magnifying glass? Rubber bands? The "electric cords for ancient tech" or "all those stick-on felt circles that protect the wood floors from scratches"? 

I think many of us can relate to this. I was fortunate, in way. I was able to tackle about 95% of Mom's possessions while she was still alive. My sister Adriane and other family members helped, too. Over the course of many weekends over many years, we cleaned out the house on Oak Crest Lane in Wallingford that was filled with four generations' worth of stuff. Floor by floor, room by room, closet by closet, shelf by shelf and drawer by drawer. And we got to do it with Mom there. So it wasn't a funereal atmosphere, and we were able to ask her about the things we were sorting through to determine whether it was trash, something to donate or something to keep. We got to hear the stories and the context. So that made it almost fun, even it it meant a labor-intensive weekend of moving trunks and filing cabinets in the damp basement, going through three dozen half-used spice bottles, battling cobwebs in the garage and shed, and half-crouching to avoid banging one's head on the beams in the super-humid attic, which had the highest percentage of stuff that went straight to the trash.

And, yes, so many drawers. But with Mom there, they were fun to sort through. Each one a tiny adventure into the past. A chance to laugh, wonder or shake our heads. Perhaps all three at once. 

I can fully understand how the joy would be mostly absent if you had to go through all those drawers alone, though I'm probably an outlier in that I still find such excavation fascinating. (Hence this blog.)

So, I have a Catch-22 of sorts. I'd love to be around as a participant/observer, like Mom was, when my accumulation of stuff is sorted through and sent off to wherever it best belongs. I want to share in the rediscoveries and explain the meanings and provenance behind certain things. I can consult on what's junk and what might have some shreds of value. 

On the other hand — and this is the part that's never fully in our control — I fear leaving others with the job of having to sort through everything without me. The thought of leaving them all that stressful work that's my fault for being a ... well, packrat isn't quite the word. How about I call myself a "history hoarder"? So much of what I've accumulated is paper. There are the books, yes. But also the ephemera. So much ephemera. So many printouts, too. Printouts of articles, blog entries, emails, Facebook posts and tweets. My envelopes full of this stuff are semi-jokingly referred to as the printernet. As in, "Chris prints out the internet."

But am I wrong to do so?

I've written often about the preservation of online content. It's the thrust of the whole Lost Corners subsection of posts. I'm far from the only one with these concerns. I mean, it appears that we can't even preserve crucial digital information at the highest levels of government and national security these days; what hope is there for all those bytes of data that are culturally relevant but far less critical to democracy?

To that end, I recently read (and will be printing out!) a Twitter thread by The Cultural Tutor (@culturaltutor) about the Digital Dark Age. Some key points made there:

"99.9% of the world's information is stored digitally, and one day it might either be lost or inaccessible. ... It's tempting to imagine that people in the future will know more about the 21st century than any previous era in human history. After all, the internet and digital technology has allowed us to document literally everything. But that's not necessarily true... 

"So what is the Digital Dark Age? It's the idea that the 21st century will one day become an 'informational black hole,' that there'll be a scarcity of records from our era. How? This has two elements: the longevity and the accessibility of our current forms of data storage.

"Hard drives last for three to five years before they begin to degrade and eventually fail, while solid-state drives rarely last longer than a decade. So unless you transfer the data on your laptop or phone - it'll be gone in a dozen years.

"What about the cloud? Information on the cloud is stored on servers, which is also where most digital information is now stored. But servers last for ten years at most before they need to be replaced.

"All of which means that, without constant maintenance and management, most digital information will degrade and be lost in less than two decades. So all that content online which documents life in the 21st century is far from permanent. Quite the opposite..."

The full thread goes into much great detail on just how worried we should be about the preservation of digital information. So, yes, I'll keep printing things and putting them into envelopes. The questions then become: Will the envelopes ever be opened? And who will open them?

* * *

Note: The photo at the top of this post is my little plastic chest of drawers. It started, years ago, as the home of my office supplies at my work desk at the York Daily Record. Over the years, I've filled it with all sorts of little treasures, baubles and bits of ephemera. And I've forgotten half of what I've put in there. At 9 inches wide by 7 inches tall, with 15 drawers, it doesn't take up much space. And there's still a little bit of room inside, amazingly, for some small things to be tucked inside in future years.

1916 Thanksgiving postcard and "All good things..."

Happy Thanksgiving!

I like the message on the front of this vintage postcard: "May happiness with you abide and never leave your fireside."

It was postmarked and mailed to New York state in late-November 1916. The cursive note states:

"How is every one? We are all well but father. Had doctor for him Sat. Why don't you write? Where do you spend Thanksgiving?"

Today's an anniversary. I began Papergreat with this post 11 Thanksgivings ago. Thanksgiving also fell on November 25 in 2010. 

So there's symmetry if this is the final Papergreat post. Eleven years on the dot, 3,498 posts. Now, 3,500 would be a rounder figure, you might say. But 3,498 divided by 11 works out to exactly 318 posts per year, on average, so there's your round number. And, wow, that's a lot of posts, if I do say so myself.

Do I still have a Papergreat to-blog list? Of course. It includes Fisher-Price advertisements¹; sci-fi author Jesse Miller; the Winchester Mystery House; the 1971 board game Drug Attack; the haunting Miss Christine; poster artist Bonnie MacLean; the Essex House book Lovely by David Meltzer; my Pappy's World War II reminiscences; the Steve Jeltz Fan Club, the postcard tales of Loren E. Trueblood; and essays I still want to write about a half-lifetime of working in the newspaper business and watching movies.

But there's always going to be a list, right? There won't come a day when I reach into a box and pull out the very last slip of paper that I could possibly write about. That's not how ephemera — or ideas — work. 

So regrets about unfinished business can't be the driving reason to keep writing Papergreat.

Is this the last Papergreat post? I don't know. I've wrestled enough with that question recently to know I don't have a definitive answer. At the very least, this is the last post for a while. Beyond that, I'm not sure. I know I don't want to continue with the short daily items I've sometimes posted merely to satisfy my self-mandated, OCD goal of a certain number of entries per week. 

Maybe I'll transition to only writing super-sized holiday or seasonal posts. And/or continue to put longer ephemera-themed writing projects here when they're ready. I am compelled to continue writing, and I want to try some longer pieces moving forward.

I suppose there's a chance that some writing might show up on resimplify.me, an intriguing domain name I've been squatting on for awhile. No guarantee of that, but I thought I'd mention it for posterity. And I still plan to maintain a Twitter presence. 

I'm still fascinated by history and ephemera. The stories that can be told and the questions that can be raised by mere pieces of paper. As the year-end holiday season approaches, I am reminded of one of my personal favorite Papergreat posts: A merry Christmastide to you, Marguerite E. DeWitt.

Finally, as I was mulling this post, I think it's kismet that I came across an amazing Twitter thread about the power and importance of ephemera. It's by @PajamaStew, and I'm going to share it here in its entirely. Again, for posterity. These stories do matter. And I'm grateful on this Thanksgiving for PajamaStew's amazing piece of writing and that it was released into the world:

I may regret sharing this, but I have a very personal story I would like to tell. I hope it doesn't get too long... Anyway...

I was 20 years old when I was sent to erase a man from existence and became haunted by him.

I was going to college in Texas at the time and a group of us were contacted about a service project. The State needed a handful of young volunteers over the course of a Sunday afternoon and I was one of about ten that agreed to help. We were asked to go to the home of an elderly gentleman that had recently died and help sort his belongings. He didn’t have any close relatives and his estate was going up for auction.

So, we were tasked with tearing everything out of his home and identifying items that had value to place inside “Auction” boxes, while the rest would be tossed in “Trash” boxes. I was excited about spending an afternoon doing service work with a group of friends.

I was not prepared for what I was about to face in this dusty little house somewhere in west Texas. It was immediately unsettling to step into a stranger’s bedroom and try to assign value to his possessions. Should we really be digging through his drawers trying to decide if any of the tiny bits remaining of his life were of any value now that he was gone? The truth hurt, as I was forced to admit that almost none of it had any value.

No one would want to buy an old deck of cards or a worn sweater. There’s no value in VHS tapes or water-damaged paperbacks. The “Trash” boxes grew heavy. The “Auction” boxes sat mostly empty.

I was already rattled by the experience when halfway through I opened a closet in a guest bedroom and found a stack of banker boxes. Inside I uncovered something that made my heart freeze.

I’m shuddering as I write this. The boxes were filled with several old photo albums.

I was tempted right then to just throw the entire cursed things in the trash without ever opening them. But I couldn’t do it. I was drawn by the mystery of those albums. They were covered in dusty fingerprints as if a ghost had prepared them and then led me to find them. And they were now pulling me gently down, begging me to open the covers and to be a witness of what was inside.

Inside I found a man’s life, compartmentalized into a stack of images, bound together in leather books. Photos.

At first of a young boy. Black and white. Faded. Surrounded by strange people. Happy. Brothers together in a field. A sister with long black hair. A dog on a porch somewhere. As I turned the pages, I watched as the boy grew. His hair became longer. He became a young man. He grew a mustache. It went away. Sometimes he was in the pictures. Sometimes the pictures were a vision seen through his eyes.

I saw what he saw. I saw what he valued and found beautiful. Stones. Light. Shadows. And then, suddenly, as if conjured from those stones and shadows, he was joined by a young woman. She was also beautiful. Flowing brown hair and brown eyes. Always seeming caught mid laughter. I could hear her. I still hear her. It was haunting. I fell in love with her, or rather, I fell in love with the way he had fallen in love with her. It was a love that caught in my throat.

They grew. Held hands. Were married. I smiled, seeing their joy as they stood together at the altar. My heart nearly stopped seeing her in her simple white dress, as if this man had possessed my body and was looking at these photos with me, through my eyes, one last time.

Time passed as I sat cross-legged on the floor meditating over the albums.

I heard my friends as they banged around in the kitchen and elsewhere struggled to move a dusty red couch from the living room, but I sat solemnly in the closet desperately looking at every picture in the dead man’s album. I felt torn. I could not look away.

So, I hid, and I forced myself to look at each and every picture.

I turned the pages, and the young man and the young woman grew old.

Here was a happy couple standing together at a white fence in front of a small house somewhere in west Texas, him in a tan fedora and matching suit coat, her in a dark green dress. Here was a woman on the porch drinking tea watching the sunset. There was a speckled dog sitting on the porch beside her.

Time passed so quickly as I turned the pages. It felt unfair as if I were hurrying their life on to its conclusion. The couple stood together and smiled at me apologetically from an old polaroid. I kept going.

There were no children. Only various friends. Side characters appeared for a time and then disappeared at random as new ones arrived. But always it was the two of them, the man and the woman. Adam and Eve standing in their dusty garden around a flowering Creeping Thyme.

The sun flickered in spirals across the pages. And then suddenly it happened. The woman, the beautiful woman, she started to change quicker than the man.

Her eyes became sad. Her laughing smile became less frequent. She looked tired. There were no more trips to the Grand Canyon. No more summer drives and picnics in the forest.

She was dying.

And then I turned a page and she was gone. There were still several more albums of this man’s life, but from that point on he was alone.

Instead of this beautiful laughing woman, he took pictures of stray cats. Instead of posing with her in front of motels on some blazing yellow-tinted adventure, he took photos of the moon over a dark house shrowded in purple twilight.

The man was less visible in the images now. As if he were already fading out of existence.

Sometimes he showed up in mirrors or reflections in dirty shop windows. An old man in a tan fedora, alone, in a house, somewhere in west Texas.

I closed the last album and sat for a long time on the closet floor, resting my head back against the wall.

My fingers burned with the realization of what they had to do next. It was time to make the choice about where the photo albums should go. Where was this man’s life going to be placed? Did it have value or was it “trash”? The answer to the question hung over my head like a sword.

I closed my eyes, replaced the lid of the box, and put it back in the dark corner where I had found it. I couldn’t do it. I quietly closed the closet door and walked away.

Later I returned to help some friends move a dresser from the same room and out the corner of my eye I saw where a shaft of light now fell onto a blank patch of carpet in the corner. The photos were gone. Maybe they had never actually even been there.

I thought about this as I helped maneuver the heavy dresser through the now empty ribcage of the home.

As we were preparing to leave, we were met in the yard by the person from the state that had called us to help. They thanked us for our efficient work.

I just stared at the ground in shame watching a cloud of ants as they carried away bits of something hidden in a tuft of nearby grass. We were ants. I shook my head. No. We were vultures.

As payment for our work, we were told that we could take one item from any of the “Auction” boxes to keep for ourselves. My coworkers leaned their heads into the cardboard tombs and somberly held treasures up to the sun.

They playfully fought over who could take the old jewelry that looked as though it hadn’t been worn in years (Only I knew how many). One boy took a heavy flashlight, another took a pocket knife.

I waited, uneasy with the whole ghoulish activity, and as I waited I wander through the ocean of “Trash” boxes. I ran my hands over the items with a reverence that I did not fully understand.

I felt like I knew this man, and it humbled me that I may be the only living person on Earth that did.

Was it possible that I was the only person to contain the knowledge of him, the only one to watch him grow from a young boy into a man, the only person to watch from a distance as he fell in love, the only person that saw him as he watched his love die?

I was a stranger, but I had, by strange chance, followed him through his life watching as his life boiled and dissolved down to a small collection of silent images, preserved and rifled through in the course of 30 minutes time by some young boy hired to erase him. That alone would be the gift, I decided. Just carrying the memory of this man secretly inside my soul. That is all I would take with me.

But then I passed a box full of black garbage bags and something caught my eye. I froze in place. I was suddenly unable to even breathe. With a trembling hand, I reached deep into the pile of discarded debris and touched it. It was real.

A tan canvas fedora. The same exact tan canvas fedora that I had seen this man wear so often in photos that it had almost become a part of him. It was in the pictures with his wife, and it was in the years that follow. This hat had gone with him.

I held it gently by the brim and lowered it onto my head. It wasn’t a perfect fit, but it somehow felt right. It felt, providential. I felt like something quiet and sad had led me to find it and now that it was on my head there was a change in the air. There was contentment.

I slowly walked back to meet up with my group as they waited to climb into the van. As I stood in line with them I stopped for a moment and turned around.

I was standing just inside the gate of a white picket fence on a paved walkway leading to a small house somewhere in west Texas. I turned to look at the house one last time, I adjusted my hat, then I closed the gate and left.

I wore that hat for the next ten years of my life.

It traveled with me around the world. I was yelled at once by a Ukrainian woman for placing it on the ground in a park. And I nearly caught it on fire by foolishly hanging it on a lamp in Mexico City. It was on my head as I climbed to Machu Pichu and it ducked through a stone doorway with me as I explored the Coliseum of Rome. And I was wearing it at the airport in Kiev as I waited for the plane carrying the woman that would later become my wife, and I held it behind her back in the rain a few days later as we kissed under the watchful eye of Lenin.

I have albums of pictures hidden away and I’m proud to say that this old canvas hat shows up in it often. I stopped wearing it around the time that my first daughter was born.

It was starting to get dingy and show its seams and there was something that felt disrespectful about that. So, one day I took it down off its hook and I walked to the shed and placed it in the box where I save my most loved possessions.

Someday, perhaps a long time from now, a young boy might open the lid of that box and find an old canvas hat and then ... who knows? 

— @PajamaStew

Footnote

1. If this is going to be the last post, there has to be a silly footnote, right? So, I ask, what fresh hell is this, Fisher-Price?

Lost Corners: "SPACE WANTS TO KILL YOU"

Author Sim Kern is far more notable than I or this blog will ever be, and doesn't need my amplification, but I still wish to save a recent brilliant Twitter thread (rated PG-13) they wrote for posterity.¹ The author of 2020's Depart, Depart! wrote about the billionaires jostling to get themselves into space, and why that aspect of the "space race," particularly in this precarious moment for Earth, is so very wrong:

"If any of you are under the impression that our billionaires might succeed in 'escaping' to space, while the world burns, let me put those fears to rest with what I know from being the spouse of a NASA flight controller. For a half-dozen people to exist up on the ISS, it takes a ground team of thousands of people, constantly problem-solving how to keep them alive. Their quality of life is bouncing around in a narrow tube with the same 5 people who can't really bathe for months. Every minute of their day is micromanaged so they can survive. They follow strict exercise regimens to keep their bones from turning to goo. They spend a ton of time studying systems and conducting repairs on equipment that's continually breaking because SPACE WANTS TO KILL YOU

"Their sleeping situation is akin to a floating coffin. Their pooping situation is a 20-something-step process in a port-o-potty where everything FLOATS and the door is a plastic curtain. The wifi cuts out at regular intervals. The food is NOT michelin starred, to say the least. The only reason they're alive up there at all is because multiple countries have thousands of brilliant, highly-trained engineers and doctors and astrophysicists and computer experts whose full-time job is keeping the astronauts alive and the ISS functioning. When something breaks, as it continually does, these teams SCRAMBLE to devise fixes and solutions. And these fixes, lemme tell ya, they are tedious. This year, working from home, I have seen the schematics and overheard bits of meetings, and oh my GOD is it tedious. And the spacewalks where they go out to repair these broken things? It takes dozens of hours of study to do each one. And then it's maybe four, six hours in a suit, with stiff, bulky gloves, all 'Drive bolt 7A into dock 31X' until their fingers are shaking with exhaustion. 

"So there's no future where Bezos and Branson are sipping champagne next to their space-pool on Low-Earth Maralago, ok? There's no way life in space could be remotely comfortable or preferable to life on earth in their lifetimes, or for many generations to come, or probably ever. The longest anyone's lived in space was Scott Kelly, who spent a year in space, got home, and immediately retired.² He'd spent all his life preparing and training to be in space, and found it extremely physically and psychologically grueling to up there for just one year. So this billionaire 'space race' is nothing more than a dick-measuring contest between Musk, Bezos, and Branson. They are not investing billions to forward science or the bounds of human possibility. They are doing it to be the first rich guy to bounce around uselessly up there.

"And it's utterly despicable when you understand that they're funding it with the hoarded wealth of workers who are struggling just to exist. With ill-gotten money made from supply chains that enslave people and are destroying the future possibility of life on earth. But if it troubles you that they might SUCCEED, that those three assholes might ever spend more than a week in space and ENJOY it, let me put your mind at ease. Not in this lifetime. With all their billions, they have no power to make space a better place to be than earth. I don't know if they realize the futility, if they're AWARE that this whole space race is just a pissing contest to see who can get to zero-G fastest? Or if being a billionaire makes you so delusional that they really think they can buy a Mars colony in their lifetimes. IDK

"Join me in enjoying the fact that they won't find anything up there but a lot of time to sit with the gaping void inside them, which space certainly won't fill, while forcibly holding their asscheeks to a suctioning toilet seat, bc they're constipated as hell from astronaut food. The world is burning³, and our billionaires are the people MOST responsible, but at least there's no escape for them. They will live and die (alone, like all of us) on this beautiful, precious, one-in-a-gazillion planet. We should take our wealth back from them and use it better."

Footnotes

1. Kern's Twitter profile (on 7/6/2021): "Climate fiction writer, enviro journalist w/ @onebreathHOU lefty, Jewish, #FreePalestine, trans, they/them. Rep’d @litagentmariah Links: http://linktr.ee/SimKern"

2. For clarity, it should be noted that Scott Kelly has only lived in space the longest of any American on a single spaceflight (340.4 days). That ties him with Russia's Mikhail Kornienko for fourth on the list of the longest human spaceflights, as of this year. Three Russian or Soviet Union astronauts are ahead of Kelly and Kornienko on the list. Furthermore, Kelly is only 22nd on the list of the most cumulative time spent in space; Americans Peggy Whitson and Jeffrey Williams are ahead of him on that list.

3. I can confirm this. I live within sight of the smoke from the Telegraph Fire. And yesterday we drove past the harrowing Tiger Fire.

Lost corners: Rosanna Yeh's "Mystery Messages"

Surfing through Newspapers.com, I came across this wonderful poem in the June 3, 1993, edition of The Atlanta Journal / The Atlanta Constitution (North Fulton Extra). It's by seventh-grader Rosanna Yeh, and I absolutely love the creativity with language and ideas that are on display here. I would read a whole story about this mystery! 

Keeping up with "From the readers"

The last one of these was a behemoth entry that took me half a day to assemble, so here's a more modest post to stay on track with sharing all the groovy and insightful comments from Papergreat readers. (Also, ICYMI, we had a bonus "From the readers" post discussing Genesis (the band), jukeboxes and the Philadelphia Flyers.)

Book cover: "Snow Above Town" (Armed Services Edition): Wendyvee writes: "Comfort/entertainment with a side of propaganda. I wonder how far (and with how many different people) these traveled. Also, I can just about *smell* this picture."

Parasol thief: Wendyvee tweets: "This blog post initiates more questions than it answers; but I'm inspired to change my name to Miss Bickel and start a Live Poultry & Junk Emporium. Also, Mrs. Steinhelfer has a new phone Who Dis?"

Cheerful Card Company can help you earn extra money for the holidays: Virginia H. writes: "I worked there as a data entry operator. Fine memories of fellow employees. Nice to read people have good memories of our company."

As the holiday gift-buying season ramps up, consider opulent owls: Christina DeAngelo writes: "That owl came in a kit that was sent out monthly to kids to complete their own art project. I cannot believe I found this picture. It was made of Styrofoam and it was one of my favorite projects. Thank you for posting this picture. It is a great memory."

The Lost Corners of Paul Crockett: starviego writes: "Squeaky Fromme said in her book that the rumor was that Crockett was a military 'deprogrammer.' He was certainly in the right place at the right time if that was his true reason for being there."

(Note: What other blog that you read jumps from opulent owls to Squeaky Fromme?)

Skylab and scary space junk: Brian Busby of the dandy website The Dusty Bookcase writes: "Thank you for this, Chris. It brought back memories of Bill Lee and the Montreal Expos (RIP). Seems appropriate that his nickname was "Spaceman." After reading your post, I gave Warren Zevon's 'Bill Lee' a listen. It was every bit as moving as I remembered.

Three vintage "We Missed You at Church" postcards: Catherine Dumont writes: "Hi Chris, fellow postcard collector here, hailing from Montréal, Québec. Found your blog researching 'Sunday school' cards. Love the first one, groovy!"

The One Where I Get Sucked into the Mecki Universe: J F Jacob writes: "After many years of wondering about a strange postcard that my parents had, I have finally learned what it is!" 

The strangest piece of ephemera ever to appear on Papergreat? Wendyvee sings: "It don't mean a thing

If it ain't got that Zing!

Doo wah, doo wah, doo wah, doo wah, doo wah, doo wah, doo wah, doo wah."

WNEP-TV staff from 1975, including Miss Judy: Alex Hayes writes: "Geisinger Children’s Miracle Network would hold a carnival at Queen of Peace Catholic School in Shamokin every year. I guess it was a satellite carnival of the larger one held at the hospital in Danville. I went to Transfiguration, which was across the street, and we got to get out of school for a few hours to enjoy the festivities. Miss Judy came one year to sign autographs. I believe I still have it in a box. She was the first celebrity I ever met."

(Great memory! Thank you for sharing this, Alex!)

Postcard: Very twisted tree in Michigan's Thumb: David Shedlock writes: "Great blog, I bookmarked it for future fun reading. One thought on the photograph. When I first found this postcard, I wondered why the photographer/publisher called it 'The Tree That Grows' since all trees grow (Assuming they are alive!). But, when I followed the link to the other angle of the tree by the same publisher the title was 'A Tree That Grows AT Harbor Beach, Mich.' (emphasis mine). I am guessing that the first picture above was actually the second one published and someone misread or mistyped the first title."

(Excellent detective work, David! And thank you for the Papergreat compliment!)

Mystery Polaroid of two dogs: Anonymous writes: "My guess would be Basenji dogs. Look it up."

Book cover: "Investigating UFO's": David Shedlock writes: "According to Collins dictionary, UFOs or UFO's is acceptable. Four questions for President Obama pertaining to his comment 'would solidify people’s sense that what we have in common is a little more important' 1. What people have that sense, that only needs solidified? 2. What do they think people have in common that is more important? 3. More important than what? 4. Why is whatever 'they' think is more important, really more important?"

Postcard: Billy Goat Gruff at Children's Fairyland: Wendyvee writes: "Awww, this reminds me of the old Fantasyland in Gettysburg. Also, you just added another destination on my big 'to-do' map."

(Note: Speaking of 'to-do,' I have some Fantasyland postcards around here somewhere for a future Papergreat post.)

Lost Corners: Amy and her dad

Singer-songwriter Amy Helm did a short Twitter thread yesterday about her late father (The Band; The Right Stuff; legendary John-Taupin song named after him). It's poignant and it involves ephemera & memories, so I'm going to help to preserve it for posterity. Here's a JPG of the first tweet, which includes the photo.

And here's the text of Amy Helm's story about her dad:

"I found a bunch of old disposable cameras, brought them to CVS, and just picked them up yesterday. A lot of the pictures were from 2000/2001, when my Dad and I were constantly driving across the country, touring in his blues band. He was 2 years sober, had just filed bankruptcy, and was 1 year past his radiation treatments for throat cancer. His voice, ravaged from the radiation, was always hovering just above a whisper. He couldn’t sing a note, but told me he was determined to be the best blues drummer there was. He wanted to master the shuffle, and he did just that. He changed his set up, and went from traditional to match grip. He loaded his own drums in and out of the trunk of his half broken down car. We played small clubs, dives, a couple biker festivals. He walked out every night, facing small audiences that wanted to hear him sing [Up on Cripple Creek]. He would whisper a few words to greet his fans, and then he would sit down and get to work. He wasn’t phased, he wasn’t ashamed he wasn’t afraid - he was just fiercely determined. It was like watching a force of nature. I want to celebrate his birthday today by sharing this picture with you, and telling a small part of his story, when he rose up from despair and changed the course of his life through music. The lesson he gave by example was to stay connected to what you love, and be ready to follow the call."

Lost Corners: I'm not so sure about the cayenne pepper

These tweets are too wonderful to miss an opportunity to save them for posterity. Ashar was rolling when I read them to him last night. Merve Emre is an author and associate professor of English at the University of Oxford. She is currently a fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin.

Emre adds in an additional comment that she had "been reading a lot of Grimm's Fairytales & I made the mistake of teaching them the witches' incantation from Macbeth a couple of weeks ago." 

And I loved this reply, too:

There will be no lack of documentation or keepsakes

There's little need to document this week in American history. There will be endless books, magazine articles, saved newspapers, documentaries ... you name it. At this point, I'm sure, people are curating and keepsaking posts from Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. Perhaps even family text messages sent back and forth. So I'm just going to add one artifact to the mix. The blending of pop culture, history and memes. It's a Friday scene from Philadelphia and it comes from @adambonin's Twitter account:

Dad's thoughts about Memorial Day 2020

Phoenix Cemetery, Gaines Township, Tioga County, Pennsylvania, May 25, 2010

Thought this would be an appropriate post for this morning.
And I also want to help keep it from becoming a Lost Corner of the Internet.

John Otto
May 21 at 9:18 PM
(Facebook)
Memorial Day is an American holiday, observed on the last Monday of May, honoring the men and women who died while serving in the U.S. military. Memorial Day 2020 occurs on Monday, May 25.

Thousands in WWI and WWII

Many more in Korea

58,000 in Vietnam

Iran, Afghanistan and many other places.

And yet, their generations are still
here to fight the war against the virus
and the stupidity of our elected officials.

When was that last time you drank
with the Governor at a bar or
ran into a Senator at a grocery store.

They are not everyday people.
They think they are Shepherds leading
the sheep.

We are not the sheep.

It’s time for the flock to run on its own.

Be thankful when you see someone
you knew before the lock down.
They are a survivor just like you.

Together we will endure!

The joy of "Bookcase Credibility"

One of the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic and the urgent need for us to remain home to help stop the virus's spread is that many of us now "exist" primarily through our Zoom and Zoom-like video chats. Hunched in front of our computers, we speak into the tiny camera that often captures us in unflattering light and environs. Cinematography, it ain't. But some have been quicker to catch on to production values and backgrounds, and that includes those who love books and also those who want us to think they love books. They hope to say something about themselves by where the camera is expertly aimed.

Bookcase Credibility (@BCredibility), a Twitter account launched last month, has the motto "what you say is not as important as the bookcase behind you" and provides witty commentary about the experts and celebrities who appear in news coverage alongside their home libraries. When your shelves are there for the world to see, there are no holds barred on the opinions.

Here are some of my favorite posts, preserved for posterity as screenshots.