Rags and Trees

Arthur Waley's "Translations from the Chinese," 1941

"Love Books of Ovid," 1930

Recently, I went back to writing these posts on an old, wrinkled legal pad (a light greenish blue one, not the flashy yellow kind),  We can't do without pixels now, but scratching on paper is really more satisfying.  As there's a lot of paper around us, we take it for granted.  But there was a time fairly recently when that was not the case at all.

When Brooklyn College scholar Alice Kober did some research at Cambridge University after World War II, she found there was still a serious paper shortage (along with everything else, like heating fuel:  the office was in the 40s F inside during the late winter).  It was not only scarce, what there was was of the poorest quality; it would not even take ink sometimes.  Back home in New York during the war, dealing with domestic shortages, she cut up scraps of paper into 2" x 3" rectangles to serve as index cards and filed them in cigarette cartons.

Bad paper quality is three things: it's  made of short rather than long fibers, is all wood pulp (cellulose) with no fabric ("rag") content, and has been mechanically rather than chemically mashed up  (the mechanical process releases lignin which promotes acid damage).

The Trouble with Acid

Acids in paper age it more quickly and make it brownish and brittle.  There is more than one way for acid to end up in paper, and it did a lot of that from the mid-nineteenth century to about 1980.  Before about 1850, paper was made from linen and cotton clothing rags and it remained stronger and more durable than paper made of wood pulp.  Paper is coated with sizing, which is necessary to reduce moisture and ink absorption, and when alum-rosin sizing was the kind used, it produced sulfuric acid when exposed to humidity.  Browning at the edges of a book's pages ("foxing") is from pollutants in the air.  Poor paper just doesn't get a break:  high-acid books, magazines and newspaper will all be gone eventually, while quality products from the rag age can survive quite a while.

Alkaline sizing, which goes a long way to preserve paper, was developed in the 1950s, but did not become widely used until the early 1980s.

Alas, if you're in need of high quality paper, you'll have to go online since the big box office supply stores have driven the local stationary shops away.  Your last resort these days is a craft/fabric store  It is comforting to look back into "art" books made during the 1930s like the two pictured at the beginning.  The pages are heavy, colored like light cream, and well suited to reproducing the excellent commissioned illustrations.  Like Ezra Pound's "old men with beautiful manners," they are, unfortunately, of the past and "will come no more.".
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Sanctuary City

When my grandfather retired in 1960, the very first thing he did was enclose the back porch with a roof, short wall and storm/screen windows all around.  It stayed pretty much the same for the next 28 years as he enjoyed it, watching the birds play and the trees grow.  In that time, seedling Chinese elm trees brought by my grandmother’s sister from Illinois grew into a row of giants, and the Montmorency cherry trees likewise until you could only pick the bottom third.  Pansies, iris and a big hydrangea bush ringed the porch’s perimeter.  Since then, I haven’t been able to imagine a home without a quiet, green outdoor space.

When we moved here, the deck out back was bare as a baby’s butt and too small.  So over time it has been expanded and planted all around.  It’s taken 28 years (there’s that time span again) to become the cool green retreat we now enjoy from Spring to early Winter.  Or, from lilac bloom to the final chorus of the chrysanthemums (and they’re about 25 years old!).  Family and good old friends have been here and feel relaxed, too.

Three volunteer black raspberry bushes have popped up and they feed the birds well (having dropped the seeds that became the plants). We put out birdseed in a small heap every morning on the corner table for the chipmunks, a chubby squirrel and, of course, the birds.  A special visitor, a ruby-throated hummingbird, visits the Bee Balm plant several times a day.  That‘s a delight that never gets old.  “I know a place, where green mansions are…”

Black is the New Orange

I would NOT look good in an orange jumpsuit!

When the basement door was opened this morning and Blackberry slowly emerged from downstairs, his usually proud, upright tail was lowered.  His first night in cat jail was finally over.  A big bowlful of breakfast might be just what was needed to help this ex-con reintegrate into society.

He knows the words breakfast, dinner, snack and treat very well  and the times he can expect these big moments in the day to occur.  Breakfast is as soon as we -- that's the "society" referred to -- get up, and 4 p.m., 9 p.m. and when he gets his teeth brushed, respectively.  But the not quite defined time for breakfast is what got him into trouble.  He's been pushing that back, gradually but relentlessly, until the night before he decided that would be at 3:15 a.m.  Then, our soon to be jailbird worked on me again for hours wanting a second breakfast, employing meows, a paw to the face, hair licking and rattling the window blinds loudly.  So after two cups of coffee later on that were steaming less than I was, sentence was passed:  a night by himself in the basement (where his bowl, water and pan are) to think long and hard about his behavior and how he might improve on it.

We have observed over the years how fast and well this cat learns -- and how he only chooses to learn things of direct benefit (or amusement) to himself.  Tonight we will see if the lesson has been understood.  If not, it will be the Keystone Kops chasing a recidivist feline at 3:00 in the morning!