Hoboken, 1904

“When the steamship Rotterdam arrived at her pier in Hoboken yesterday there was a great scurrying about the ship by all of the stewards and the crew to find the sixty-four midgets that were aboard. They were bound for Coney Island, where they will take part in one of the shows to be presented this Summer. All during the trip the agent of the seaside resort had kept his eyes on them and prevented the little men and women, who do not stand higher than a good sized ten-pin, from getting lost. In the excitement of docking his watchfulness had been relaxed. When landing time came but half of the group were to be seen.

“As the search went on the little fellows were pulled out of the strangest places into which they had retreated, frightened by the sights of the great city. They hid under chairs and tables in the dining room, inside of rope coils, and some had even crawled into wardrobes in the staterooms, and could not be dislodged until they were assured that the big buildings would not harm them.

“Their household furniture, which was taken ashore, looked like dolls’ ware. They had with them their own fire department, the apparatus of which was carried down the gangway by one of the stevedores.

“Among the group was the Countess Magri, widow of Tom Thumb. She was becomingly dressed in black silk, and carried a sunshade of red. Many of her old friends were at the pier to meet her, and some of the women in order to kiss her picked her up in their arms.

“The company comes from Budapest, where there is a midgets’ colony. These were the selected because they are the smallest that could be found.”

– The New York Times, May 12, 1904

You cannot make this stuff up.

Always

“Is life always this hard? Or just when you’re a kid?”

“Always.”

– Leon, played by Jean Reno, answers 12-year-old Mathilda, played by Natalie Portman, in Luc Besson’s Leon: The Professional (1994)

Home

“Home is where the people you love are. You can live anywhere, so don’t be afraid of change. This is just the place that we live. It’s a really nice place. We’re very privileged, we don’t take it for granted. But if we lived in the apartment I grew up in — which was like half a bedroom, above my aunt’s house — that felt like home too. It’s not the space you’re in, it’s who you are in that space and who you’re with.”

– Michelle Obama, speaking to her daughters Malia and Sasha about living in the White House, from “Mrs. Obama’s Washington” by David Michaelis in Conde Nast Traveler, May 2010

Thank You

Poetry

A poignant find from the Swap Shop at the Transfer Station

How to Make a Stone Chessboard

I am not the handiest person, but do like to putter around, and recently, while thinking about slate roofs, I got an idea for a chessboard made with slate squares. I couldn’t find any stone squares of the right size on the Web, but while wandering around Lowe’s, I stumbled into the tile department and there were small slate squares, glued to mesh for use in making backsplashes above tile counters. The squares come in sheets of 36; I bought two sheets of the slate squares so I’d have enough squares to choose from, and one sheet of ivory-colored marble squares for contrast. They’re about $10 a sheet. I also found eight “pencils,” rounded stone borders to use around the edge; they were $2.50 each. I bought some birch plywood in another aisle, and some wood trim, for the base.

At home, I took the squares off the mesh/glue backing (with my fingers and a needle-nose pliers) and sanded all the edges and bottoms with heavy grit sandpaper to get the small stuff. I picked the best looking 32 slate and marble squares, 64 total, and laid the board out with the trim, so I could measure exactly for the base.

Fortunately, I have friends who can cut the base and trim to the right lengths, after I’ve done the measuring. (The cuts are even and I still have all my fingers.) If you have a miter saw, you can do nice angled corners for the trim, as with a picture frame. If not, you can lay it out as I did, keeping it simple, with each piece of trim cut square. I cut them all to the same length: each one the length of the edge less the width of the trim. You could cut two short and two long, and do it that way as well.

Next, I wood-glued and nailed the trim to the board, stained the trim and the edges, and hit the trim, the edges and the back of the board with clear polyurethane. You can use any color stain, oil- or water-based. I prefer the water-based since it cleans up so easily. Lowe’s has all that stuff, too. I apply the stain to the edges with an old t-shirt; for the poly, I use a brush, although you can find a wipe-on poly as well.

I ended up using a premium wood glue for the squares; Gorilla Glue, the epoxy options, etc., all seemed so toxic and unforgiving, and since no one is going to be walking on this, or holding it upside down, I figured the wood glue would be good enough. So far, it has been. The squares are nice and snug. The glue did bubble up after about 10 minutes, and afterwards I had to do a lot of cleaning, going after the dried glue with a dental pick and fine sandpaper.

You could use a stone sealer, if you want a gloss finish, but I’m leaving the stone natural. I’m still thinking of ways to buff it smooth, but I’m happy with the way it turned out. When you wipe it with a damp cloth, it smells like a blackboard, which is kind of a nice memory. I spent less than $100, and I had a lot of fun.

One caution: The finished board is heavy; it’s not for travel. And put some little glue-on feet or felt pads on the bottom to spare your tabletops.

It’s Not Polite

“The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person who is doing it.”

– Variously said to be an old Chinese proverb, a saying inside a fortune cookie, found in a box of ginger snaps, or done in needlepoint on a pillow.

All the Other Ages

“The great thing about getting older is that you don’t lose all the other ages you’ve been.”

– Madeleine L’Engle, quoted in The New York Times in 1985

On Waiting

“I can be reduced to tears by bureaucracy. Time-wasting is my greatest phobia and being in a queue to speak to someone about a mobile phone or something is my idea of hell. There is too much else I could be doing. Very often in those situations I will burst into tears. What makes it even worse is when the person on the other end of the line says, ‘It’s no good getting upset, Madam.’ “

– Harriet Walter, actress, quoted in The Telegraph, March 2007

Miss Robinson (1965)

The room is gray.
The day is gray.
She sits that way.
The Bible, you say?

– Written during an upstate New York winter, in the old Hall of Languages at Syracuse University, during Bob Hastings’ English class and a lecture on the Old Testament, as my mind wandered to a classmate.