From the readers: Late summer edition

Time for another roundup of your feedback and insights! 

Great links: "A Wrinkle in Time" mystery is solved: Commenting on Facebook, Sarah Elizabeth writes: "Hi! I am the Sarah Elizabeth that blog post mentions! AND you may be interested in knowing that I have a new art book out, and because we finally got to the bottom of the cover artist mystery for this book, I was able to include it in the book! ... If you are interested, look up The Art of the Unknown: A Visual Treasury of the Esoteric, Uncanny and Unexplained!"

Thanks for commenting. And I always love hearing news about new books!

The Perry Pictures: Robert E. Lee: Leigh Perry shares this great story: "Funny story about Perry Pictures. My grandparents, long gone, had a print on their wall in Virginia, but we'd never looked at it closely until years after their death. (We thought it was a photograph of a family member.) It ended up in my father's house in Charlotte, NC, and we finally examined it in 2014. We were confused by the Perry Pictures caption because our last name is Perry. Further research showed it was a different branch of Perrys. Then we found out the company was in Malden, Mass., which made us all laugh. Though I'm from NC, I'd been living in Malden for years at that point. With my father's permission, I brought it back home to Malden."

Postcard mailed from Addison, Pennsylvania, in 1912: Beverly writes: "I just got postcard of Swallow Falls in Garrett County, Maryland, addressed to this same Almeda. It came from her brother, Charles. He mentioned then about the food there, too. He was a well-known lawyer."

"Steal not this book my honest lad": John Duel shares this: "From a 1938 Technical Mathematics book inside front cover: 'Steal not this book my honest friend. For fear the gallows will be your end. On that day the Devil will say, where is that book you carried away. And if you say you do not know, the Devil will say just step below.'"

I love that we can help to preserve more of these inscriptions!

Take a ride with Edwards Motor Transit Co.: Bob Taylor left a series of comments showing his amazing memory and providing some great historical detail:

"Bob Taylor here. I worked in the Dubois garage on Hoover Avenue from approximately 1970 till garage closing in mid 70s. Since I was only 19 at the time, I believe I am only one of 2 guys still standing. I will try to name each one starting in the shop: Lloyd Burkett Sr., Lloyd Burkett Jr., Joe Atkinson, Everett McFall, 'Linc' Lingenfelter, Bernard Harriger, William Carlson, Earl Kalgren, Earl Snedden, Allen Bell. ... I forgot one shop employee, Lloyd Getch, and 2 part-time, Ed Swanson and Adam Tschopps.

"As far as the terminal crew, it consisted of Bill Schindley, Floyd Brown, Irene Malaskey, Chuck Smith, Linda McNutt and Gary Patton.

"As far as the drivers as I remember them, some were still wearing the tan uniform including a hat: Albert 'Swede' Carlson, Lamont 'Monte' Marshall, George Lindberg, Dale Hynds, Bob Wilson, John McNutt, Bob Peck, Tom Fairman and Bill McMahon. These were the Buffalo and Pittsburgh drivers. The Cleveland/NewYork City drivers were based out of the Williamsport shop. I only remember a few: 'Woody' Yeich, Walt Muzzy, Bill Taylor ... I hope that I didn't forget someone. It's been 56 years."

Alan Ormsby's 1970s: Summoning zombies and a Scholastic book: John Michlig writes: "Excellent article about a pretty life-changing book! I was lucky enough to correspond with Mr. Ormsby and assure him that my 4th grade Frankenstein mask (based on his paper bag recipe) worked like a charm!"

And Wampa Girl shouts: "I MADE MY MONSTER CAFE SALTILLO FROM HAVING THIS BOOK AS A KID."

Book cover & school days memory: "Arthur's Christmas Cookies": Anonymous writes: "I remember my pediatrician had a copy of this in one of his rooms, I was thinking about it today but I couldn't remember the title."

Obscure nostalgia: 1970s plastic mugs from Whirley Industries: Jose Alb writes: "I had the My Mug version since before I could walk, growing up in the Dominican Republic. We moved around, I kept it through my teens, all the way until right before I left for the US with my wife around 2012, where my mom admitted she might have thrown it away by accident. Fast forward to July 2026. Returned to the Dominican Republic on a sad note (father passed away suddently, cancer). After they got divorced, my mom came to the U.S. and Dad stayed in the old apartment. Picking up and organizing what felt like hundreds of science books and curiosities left behind, there in a cabinet with family heirlooms was my mug! I brought it to the States and gave it to my son, with a story. Thanks for keeping The Mug alive. Forgot to add: I'm 45. Had it since early 80s."

And thank you for sharing this story, which is also helping to keep My Mug memories alive!

Memory from the Gettysburg Times: Kate Shoemaker Mayer writes: "I stumbled upon this post while visiting Gettysburg College with my son. Don was my father. This anecdote warmed my heart and accurately represents my dad. I wonder what he would think about technology today? Thank you for sharing!"

I'm so glad you found this post and journalism anecdote about your dad! He was such a terrific person and colleague, and, yes, this accurately reflects how he felt about unreliable technology. Glad I could help in a small way for the memory to live on. 

Snapshot & memories: Huggles in a box of books

This is my oldest photo stored on Shutterfly. It was taken on April 22, 2009, with a Lumix camera.¹ Eventually, it made it from the camera's memory card to a computer, and was then uploaded to Shutterfly. Digital cameras have come a long way since then. Or maybe the photo is just out of focus. The only paperback book titles I can easily make out are The Tower, Mr. Adam and Grand Hotel. These would have been some books Joan and I were assessing for possible sale online. And Huggles the three-legged black cat was "helping" with the process. 

Huggles was a very good kitty and later was a brother to Mr. Angelino (Banjo) and Monkey, who are still with us as the elder statesmen of this Arizona cat household. Huggles would have liked newer cats (especially if he could use them as pillows) and would have had good black-cat mates in Mercury and Stubby (pictured below in another out-of-focus shot taken this morning).

Footnote

1. The Phillies' starting lineup that day in a loss to the Brewers was: Jimmy Rollins (SS), Shane Victorino (CF), Chase Utley (2B), Ryan Howard (1B), Jayson Werth (RF), Raul Ibanez (LF), Pedro Feliz (3B), Lou Marson (C), Joe Blanton (SP). 

Poe-fect summer snapshot

This is probably the best photo I'll take in 2026. 

Cats Spice, left, and Smoky, right, are looking out the kitchen window at Poe the fledgling raven, who is sitting on the outside table to stay cool in the blazing heat and/or get my attention so I'll bring him/her some Temptations cat treats. Sitting in the sink and looking directly at me, annoyed, is Monkey, who wants me to turn the faucet on to a drip, so that he can get some water. (Photo taken on July 14.)

Poe may be moving on and has only been a seen a couple times in the past week. Perhaps he/she has found some other ravens to live with.

Snapshot & memories: Down the shore

I'm estimating that this photo is from 1978 or 1979. My sister Adriane and I are at the Stone Harbor, New Jersey, beach house of our friends from Delaware County, the Mancills. We look very spiffy in our matching sweaters, which tell us that this wasn't taken in the middle of the summer. I don't know if I can say anything nice about either of our pants, though.

I have three specific down-the-shore memories that involve crabs:

1. When I was very young and at the beach, I would dig holes all afternoon and be fascinated by the sand crabs (aka mole crabs) that I uncovered. They were about the size of marbles and quite harmless; I remember they'd tickle your hands if you let them squiggle through.

2. The Mancills' house was along a large inlet and you could lower crab traps off the backyard retaining wall during high tide. We'd catch all sorts of things, not just crabs. Definitely a few flounder. And I think a starfish or two, though my memory is hazier on that. One time we caught a small "regular" crab and it escaped the trap when we brought it up and started to scamper along the ground. I got too close and its claw grabbed my finger, which caused a mini meltdown on my part. Mom loved telling that story.

3. But the major meltdown on my part came the first time we pulled up the trap and there was a horseshoe crab inside. I was not prepared. I had never heard of horseshoe crabs. I had never seen a horseshoe crab. And then suddenly this thing with no face and a spike protruding from the back was in the cage. I screamed and cried, leading to me getting teased about the incident for decades thereafter, even long after I learned what amazing and harmless creatures they truly are. 

Other snapshots and memories          

• Adorable little me on Mulberry Street
• Kitchen at Willow Street house in Montoursville
• Me and Pop-Pop in the kitchen
• Commodore 64 corner
• (Missing) snapshot & memories: Thanksgiving
• Me & Cyrano
• Me in a Star Trek shirt
• All kids do these days is play video games
• Posing with a Saturn V in 1982
• The Phillies are hot, and so was I
• Relocated fire engine in Montoursville
• Family outfits of 1972
• Our little bookstore
• Well-dressed for first day of nursery school
• At the Penn State computer lab

April 2026 morning sun shelfie

Feral cats, March 2026

Put it in the Louvre. That's Mamacita on the right. In the center is her older son Creamsicle 

and on the left is her younger son Splash. 

Cats are a primary reason I don't write 10 blog posts a week. In addition to taking care of the indoor cats, we have "regulars" in the neighborhood feral community who get from us the food and water they need to subsist in the harsh desert climate. (I realize that I repeat myself when it comes to these cat posts, but c'est la vie.)

Here's the current March 2026 rundown on the feral/community kitties:

1. The matriarch is Mamacita and we've known her for more than four years, since she was a kitten. There a great picture of her at the bottom of this May 2025 post. 

2. She's often seen with her older son Creamsicle, who is the cat we see most often. He hangs around in the mornings, sits in the firepit when he's trying to be sneaky and catch a bird and looks for shade on hot afternoons. 

3. Splash is a black-and-white tuxedo cat and is Creamsicle's younger brother. The two brothers often come for breakfast together in the mornings. Splash, as I'm sure I've noted before, got his name because, when he was a kitten, he fell into the pool and did tiny paddles all the way to safety before I could even get into the water to save him, which I would have.

4. Blue-eyed Gumball has been coming around for almost two years. I think he was an abandoned or lost pet. He often spends the entire day sleeping in a chair underneath the patio roof. Temptations are his favorite food, and I usually have to distract him with Temptations and a stern look when I'm feeding other cats, because he likes to chase them.

5. Meowmix starting visiting around the same time as Gumball, and the two of them get along relatively well together, especially given that they're both tomcats, so I wonder sometimes if they were essentially abandoned together. Meowmix is much more mellow and always runs off after he's finished eating. He's a sweetheart and is the only feral cat, currently, that lets me pet them.

6. Marmalade first started visiting in December, as I noted in the Christmas post, and he's yet another tomcat. And yet another cat that I suspect may have been abandoned or lost. He's extremely not neutered and loves to spray, spray, spray. He has designs on Mamacita, because he's incapable of understanding that she's spayed. I have great hopes that we can TNR at least two of Marmalade, Gumball and Meowmix this month, before the summer weather really kicks. Of course we want to get all three of them neutered, eventually, but these things take time, patience and energy. Marmalade has lost weight since December, which further reinforces the notion that he may not have always been an outdoor cat and is now fending for himself. And so I worry about him, especially, with his first summer coming. Here are two photos of Marmalade in our front window well.

7. And our newest and final semi-regular is Yinzer (named by Joan). I'm fairly sure it's a male. He may be the youngest of the cats, and once again, grrrr, I think there's a decent chance that he was abandoned/lost. He started coming by tentatively and then running off as soon as I went outside. Then he would meow at the back door a couple times before scooting off. Now he stays and eats some food some mornings, which makes me happy. Here he is...

* * *

We had some special cat visitors at the beginning of the year. A new-to-us pregnant female began coming nightly shortly after dark for food and especially for cheese. It got to the point where she would scoot under the table and wait while I put food down for her, but otherwise she was extremely skittish, as a pregnant kitty should be. We watched her get really big as she came for a few weeks and then, unsurprisingly, she stopped coming. I suspect we were her secondary/supplementary food source during pregnancy, so I'm honestly not sure if/when we'll see her again if she lives a fair distance away. We'll worry for her and her kittens and be here to help if they ever return. We named her Daisy and, yes, she has a heck of a R.B.F. Life in the desert is tough for the mama cats.

And Daisy came with a surprise! On three nights and three nights only, she was accompanied by a male tomcat that we realized was the long-lost Fjord Nubbins. Fjord is a son of Mamacita and is Creamsicle's brother from the same litter. He disappeared a couple years ago, before we could TNR him, and we had just assumed the worst. But it appears that he's thriving. In my head canon, he's Daisy's mate and, when she was pregnant and needed food, he remembered this place and led her here, accompanying her a few times to say hello. I could be completely wrong, but I like that story and I'm sticking with it. I could only get snapshots of Fjord, and his very recognizable face, through the window. Here they are: 

Meanwhile, we still have occasional skunks but I can't tell who's who anymore after naming most of them last year. Given the time of year, I suspect that we might not be far from the time when we start seeing some tiny, adorable baby skunks. 

We also seem to have overnight raccoon(s), given the levels of mayhem I find sometimes in the morning. I'm glad we're helping them, but they're hitting the cat food budget pretty hard. (I could just stop leaving out food overnight, but I always imagine that the most skittish and vulnerable cats, ones I never see, depend upon it, so I'll keep doing it.) 

If you're interested in helping in a small way to feed the feral kitties and skunks, my Redbubble page offers a lot of postcards of these cats (both the indoor pets and the ferals) posing in adorable fashion.

The week in images

I thought about doing some short explanatory text, but I'll just let future Papergreat Scholars™ weigh in.

Snapshot & memories: At the Penn State computer lab

Here's a picture that someone (probably Jessica Hartshorn) took of me at a Penn State University computer lab in either 1992 or 1993. Wearing my lucky, lumpy USFL hat, I am surely working on a class paper or project for which I had been procrastinating. I was a bad student in college who didn't put much effort into most classes. Let's just say that my grade-point average would have made me a strong contender for the Cy Young Award if it were my ERA. I was a bad student because I spent most of my time at The Daily Collegian, writing, editing and/or paginating stories for the five-day-a-week student newspaper. I wanted to work in newspapers after college, so I figured that was my hands-on education. And here I am in 2026 still working for one of the dwindling number of newspapers in the United States. It didn't hurt, either, that the folks at The Daily Collegian were awesome and well worth spending endless hours newspapering with.

I have felt bad for years, though, about how little effort I put into my classes. Penn State's liberal arts curriculum offered classes on many fascinating topics that Older Chris would love to spend time on, especially in the realms of history, literature, social sciences, health and the arts. If only some of us could have had our later-in-life passion for continuing education when we were 19, 20 and 21...

I also regret that I haven't yet written much about my college days on Papergreat. When I began this blog in 2010, I was only 17 years removed from graduating from Penn State and it felt far too recent to qualify as "history." But now I wake up and it's nearly 33 years since I left Happy Valley with my diploma. I'm older than the majority of my professors were at the time they graded my low-effort papers, probably while shaking their heads (unless their graduate TAs did the grading).

And now I fear I've waited too long. My memories of Penn State are no longer crisp and detailed. They feel more like dreams I can recall if I close my eyes. I don't have a ton of ephemera from Penn State anymore to spur recollections. And I have very, very few pictures from my four years on campus, which seems bizarre but that was life before these times in which I take two dozen cat photos per day with my phone. There's this photo from my junior and senior year dormitory room (where you can also see the USFL hat in the background), and some photos from THON, but very little beyond that, until Graduation Day. I should have packed a camera for college in 1989! I can think of a hundred things I should have documented with snapshots. Sigh.

I'm going to try to do a better job in the coming months (and years?) of using ephemera as the jumping off point for telling stories about my days at Penn State. They're as worthy of preserving for posterity as postcards from 1915 or vernacular photography from 1935 or travel brochures from 1955. And those stories involve dear friends who represented the very best part of the college experience. 

Other snapshots and memories          

• Adorable little me on Mulberry Street
• Kitchen at Willow Street house in Montoursville
• Me and Pop-Pop in the kitchen
• Commodore 64 corner
• (Missing) snapshot & memories: Thanksgiving
• Me & Cyrano
• Me in a Star Trek shirt
• All kids do these days is play video games
• Posing with a Saturn V in 1982
• The Phillies are hot, and so was I
• Relocated fire engine in Montoursville
• Family outfits of 1972
• Our little bookstore
• Well-dressed for first day of nursery school

Cat photo memories from 2020

In the COVID-19 summer of 2020, I tweeted this out with the caption "a Bergman film, but with cats." Someone wittily replied that it could be Purrsona. I have long since deleted my Twitter/X account, for obvious reasons. But I still have a record of this tweet because I printed it out and tucked it away inside a Roger Ebert film review book.

Titan, in the front, passed away in 2024. But Mr. Angelino (middle) and Monkey (back) are still with us as our two oldest kitty-cats. They are good boys.

Here's another photo of Monkey from that same year, when I documented all of my bookshelves in Shelfie 2020. My bookshelves have changed a good bit since then.

My grandmother's 1981 trip to China

In 1981, the year before she took a safari trip to Africa, my grandmother Helen traveled from Wallingford, Pennsylvania, to China. My non-expert understanding is that tourism to China only began to be easily accessible to Westerners around 1978, as part of the "Reform and opening up" following the 1976 death of Mao Zedong, whose Great Leap Forward was arguably the deadliest and most disastrous policy implementation by any leader in world history.

This is a letter from Tours A La Carte that my grandmother received prior to the trip. It contains some "helpful tips" from another tourist who had recently returned from China. You can read the whole thing for yourself, but some of the highlights include encouraging anti-pollution masks, a reminder to take lots of Kleenex and a fork and knife (because some places offer only chopsticks), and a suggestion to pack granola bars to serve as snacks. 

It also has some tips on what to wear to the Great Wall of China, which my grandmother did visit, as you can see from some of these snapshots she took:

My grandmother's 1982 trip to Africa

Continuing with last week's theme of posting about some items I came across during the sorting and decluttering of family ephemera this month, here's the itinerary for my grandmother Helen Ingham's February 1982 trip to Africa, through Holbrook Travel of Gainesville, Florida. 

As you can see, the nearly-three-week trip involved parts of Kenya and Tanzania, including Serengeti National Park, Maasai Mara National Reserve and Ngorongoro Conservation Area. 

Here are some of my grandmother's better snapshots from that trip:

And here's a neat picture that someone else took of my grandmother...

Finally, here's a picture of my grandmother (left) and her good friend and companion on the trip to Africa, Betty Livingston. My grandmother died in 2003. Betty is still alive as of this writing and will hopefully be celebrating her 106th birthday this upcoming May!

Painted rock in parking lot of Fry's grocery store in San Tan Valley

Christmas cats 2025

Merry Christmas! I didn't get around to all the Yuletide posts I wanted to do this month, because every day is endlessly busy and I fell out of my writing routine. But for Christmas Day I wanted to share photos of some of the indoor and outdoor cats here at the desert abode. (If you want to browse multitudes of past Christmas posts, start here.)

Above: These feral/community cat brothers are Creamsicle, left, and Splash. They're both a little under 3½ years old, with Creamsicle being the older one. Both sons of Mamacita. Both trapped and neutered quite a while ago. They spent part of Christmas Eve lounging and napping in our front window well.

Here's another of Creamsicle. He likes to playfully swat my hand when I'm feeding him and his mother cheese. We connected through the window last night. I've never really pet him but it's easy to imagine him being a decent indoor cat, in the vein of Bandit.

Brave Sir Oliver, son of Mamacita via her last litter, peeks out from underneath our Christmas tree.

There's nothing Christmasy in this recent photo of Lady Samantha Penguin, but I wanted to include her because she's such a pretty girl.

Big Boi, father and/or grandfather of nearly all things, stands near the Christmas tree. He's either waiting for treats or waiting for me to go sit on the sofa and watch a movie so that he can get many pets and then doze off. 

Venus — son of Cirque, grandson of Mamacita and nephew of Creamsicle — is our only indoor cat that won't let me pet him. But he sure loves me when it's time for food and treats. 

Mommy Orange (left), mother or aunt of many of our indoor kitties, sits in a cat bed with her daughter Nebula. They are often inseparable nap partners.

Pete loves hanging out underneath the Christmas tree. She spends most of her day with her sister IceBear.

Marmalade is our newest outdoor feral/community cat. He's not neutered and his presence appears to have upset the outdoor cat ecosystem and pecking order, which is a bummer. Looking at him, it's hard not to think he's got some of Big Boi's DNA somewhere in his ancestral line.

Finally, the skunks haven't been coming as frequently, or in as great of a volume, as they did during the summer. But this fellow made a Christmas Eve visit last night. It might be Double Dot or Em Dash, but I don't see them often enough to know for sure anymore. I gave him a couple pieces of homemade Christmas cookie and he gobbled them up.