Womb with a View

Stunning. Be sure to click on the gallery for more amazing pictures.

Trashball 112206: Some Fucked-Up Cents

Gathered from my pockets.

Trashball 112206: Passbook Savings, A Fine Example

Some of us are old enough to remember savings passbooks, where every deposit, withdrawal, or interest payment was duly and carefully typed into small passbooks the customer kept. The passbooks were a bit smaller than passports but had the same important feel to them. I come across old passbooks every so often and am frequently impressed by the diligence with which people put money into their savings accounts. Apparently the U.S. now has a negative savings rate (heaven knows I do), but this wasn't always so. Here's one from 1977-78.

Trashball 112206: Dignity, or, Alcohol Porn

Recovered from 80s-era photo album found among abandoned items in a storage unit.
And by the way, no, "recovered" does not mean "stolen".

Trashball 112206: What to See This Weekend, if This Weekend Were in 1973

Recovered from house on North Carolina Ave., SE, in DC.

Trashball 112206: Delicious Earrings

Recovered from 2334 Massachusetts Ave., NW, in DC. There's something about these old clip-on earrings—I can't quite put my finger on it—that makes me want to put them in my mouth and roll them around on my tongue.

Trashball 111906: Notgeld

Notgeld was emergency money locally issued by towns, businesses, and municipalities primarily in Germany between the two world wars. The graphics and lettering are often quite beautiful (if difficult to read). These, and about a hundred other examples, were part of a fascinating collection of odds and ends I recovered from a house in Arlington, VA. Presumably the previous owner was one of the gentlemen shown in the old photo-booth snapshot I found among the lot. Most of the collection, which included coins, music boxes, South American carvings, and vintage keychains, seems to have been built in the 1950s.

Trashball 111906: Hotel Raleigh

Recovered from a crackhouse on Morton St., NW, in Washington, DC. Image of the original hotel interior posted also.

Still a Chump

The company where I work part-time recently had an IPO. A $15.00 dividend was given for each share an employee owned prior to the IPO. Checks arrived last week.

I'm dimly aware as I track through the drab officeplace that many of the people I dully interact with are now fantastically flush with cash. The prematurely gray AA who's been here for decades, the hyper-focused project coordinator with her ridiculous shawls, the avuncular suburban dad whose work is a mystery to me, the homely Focus-on-the-Family member who writes copy (it's your lucky day, Mr. Dobson)—all these people just got many, many thousands of dollars in the mail, many into the six figures.

Me? I had squirrelled away 12 shares, thank you. $180.

Serenity or Serendipity

Dear old Nicola, my brilliant friend in Cardiff, has started an utterly charming new blog. Please visit it often.

Christopher+Phung+Italy+Wedding=Why Did We Have to Return?

Pictures here.

Trashball 101906: The Teacher's Edition

1. Where does a fella find a bottle like that. Note the old slot machines.
2. This drawing kinda makes me uncomfortable.
3. Those Quaker oatmeal packets are to me what madeleines were to Proust.
4. Did Freddie lose his eye?
5. What did Victor do? (dated 1/26/1972)

All the preceding items were recovered from a large old file cabinet that once belonged to a Washington, DC, schoolteacher who taught in the 1960s and 70s. Among all the teaching guides (most having to do with Negro history, from back when "negro" was the preferred term) were treasure troves of ephemera that the teacher, Mrs. Turner, had saved, presumably to use in teaching. There were old food labels, newspaper clippings, notes from students and faculty, and drawings.