BLOGAHOMA

Desk Top Gizmos Circa 1935

Can someone be born a techie? I believe it’s a genetic predisposition. My father loved tinkering, he took pride in fixing appliances in our house. He marveled at the old inventions as well as the new inventions. My husband’s father having never taken a class in engineering, taught wiring, welding and architectural rendering. My husband who is an artist by profession, also thinks like an engineer.

Gadgets have fascinated me from my earliest memories. many of these that captured my attention were classified office tools like my dad’s stapler, Dictaphone or his humble ticket punch. His AutoPoint mechanical pencil which had a red lead end as well as a blue lead that I took apart and examined and his ticket punch that we used to play conductor. My mother had an egg beater, the manual type, and a meat grinder that once secured to the table, I volunteered to make ham. I prefer using scissors or a paper cutter over and X-Acto knife. I had my share of dolls but I also like my brothers toy gas station with its working car lift. By the time the Etch-a-Sketch made its debut I was too old (or so my parents thought) to have one. I had to wait until have children of my own to get to play with one. Get earned my “great gizmo” seal of approval.

My own son, at the age of 18 months, disassembled the old-style ballpoint pen (the kind you must unscrew to open which revealed an internal spring which enabled it to click) and reassembled it. This clearly indicated excellent small motor ability and a pension for gizmos. As he began to toddle his dexterity was made even more apparent as we found cabinet knobs  unscrewed. By the time he was in primary grades he was asking for things to take apart.  For fear of what he might consider taking apart, my husband, Michael, got a hold of an old motor and let him have at it. Today he is a website manager with expansive skills in website programming. In hands-on mode he has a bike which he is constantly tinkering. He has definitely graduated from taking part to being able to reassemble with aplomb.

In 1985 I have decided that we needed a computer for the home. Not just any computer but one that allowed us to create in color. The Amiga fit the bill and It fulfilled my hunger for all things techie for while. My husband, my son and I taught ourselves computer. One of us would make a discovery and share with the others. We still do this today. The 2 Amigas were followed by a series of Macs. Our children like the children of our generation grew up with computers and are very comfortable with them.

As a family we have a complexity of interests including art, technology, history, music, books, film and so much more. I would say that we mash them together. For instance I collect vintage staplers (I am an inveterate collector) and create art with them is the subject. My son adds music and art on his creative websites. My husband’s websites often include historic and vintage books references.

Among my friends and family, our people adverse to anything that is computerized. I do not try to convert them over to the tech world. I believe,   like many other interests, you either have a propensity for technology or you don’t.

The priciest thing I owned as a child was my glasses. True they were clinic glasses those semi transparent orange-ish/ pinkish generic frame but most everything else in my little life was second hand. I didn’t hate them as when I finally put them on at age four because I was no longer walking into walls or tripping down stairs, however, once I hit school age I realize quickly that the kids that wore the same frame were marked as “clinic kids” or needy.  By high school I was going to a local ophthalmologist and able to choose my own frames keeping price in mind.

Contact lenses were never an option for my monocular, amblyopic, astigmatic, farsighted vision I then need to really like my frames. Before the Internet you had to trust that your eye doctor had interesting frames. That didn’t happen until I went to Dr. Robert Sunkle in 1978 that got in trendy eyewear for artists such as my husband and myself. And it didn’t hurt that Doc was friend and neighbor and would deliver the new frames to your home. One of my favorite frames of that era is the Silhouette steam-punk style frame I selected in 1980.  I wore them off and on for 8 years. I keep them for the time that I will put a new prescription in it. Then the wonderful world of eBay and e-market opened up a whole world of selection. The last four frames I purchased through eBay. One of my all time favorites was a rectangular matte silver pair by Prada and I would still be wearing them if it wasn’t for an unfortunate tumble I took that blackened my eye and broke the frame arm rendering them unwearable.

Three weeks ago I went completely madcap and purchased “new old stock” modified cat-eye shaped ORANGE frames on a “buy it now” on eBay. Aptly named “Vivacious” and made by the American Optical Co they are stand outs. No sense being timid at 66. Orange is my favorite color after all. They are bound to clash with some of my clothes but that’s the way it goes. I’d have a second neutral pair if I could but my lenses alone are over $250. A second pair is not an option for me. Going vintage has an advantage if you want to stand out in a crowd because you won’t see yourself coming and going. Today I surfed the net I found the oversized, modified cat-eye frame is back. These retro frames sell at 3 times what I paid from mine. Do I wish I had “good” eyes? YES, a thousand times, YES, but by being very choosy about my frames I have made the best of a less than perfect situation.

Stapler Attachment
I started collecting staplers in earnest about July 28th 2009. At first it was ohlala look at this cool EM 230 Paris agrafeuse on Ebay and it’s so French! There was an identical one up but in red and they were asking $99 so I went for the one that was $8! Really! (Note the red one is still sitting there a year later.) And that is how it all started. I had bought staplers in the past then resold on Ebay wanting the whole time to keep them but then who needs more than one stapler? So how do I justify collecting them? Who wants to know? There are so many layers to collecting staplers. I love layers. Here are the dozen layers I have discovered: Maker, Type, Country, Year, Style, Inventor, Patent, Size, Material, Rarity, Color, Variation. So of course I have a database because I can. I use Bento for its visual appeal. But when all my best rationalizations for collecting stapling machines fail I pull out the art card. That’s right art doesn’t need a reason. I create Photoshop images and 3D animations and am currently working on stapler coveralls and a “This is Not Stapler” t shirt. Happy tangents to you!

I like the surprises doing a new thing brings. I now have invented ways to clean these little buggers. I have passed on this knowledge to other fledgling collectors when asked. Stapler collectors, I have discovered, tend to be detail and design fanatics which is ropes me in. Another enlightenment to me is their mechanical workings which, unlike newer gadgets like ipods and cellphones that leave me in the dark, the stapler can be understood one spring, one plunger, one anvil at a time. I now have stable of staplers numbering over 50 almost enough for a Stapler a Week (a great non-threatening stapler website BTW). I might just stay at 52. I have sold off ones I didn’t particularly like for various reasons. Not just dupes mind you. I like some staplers more than others like the Jakyneuf Agrafeuse which I just have to say “aucun merci” the next time it comes up for auction.  I’ve learned stapler in German (Hefter) and French which is pretty useless but fun nonetheless. And have come to realize that a package shipped from France can take 2 months but it will arrive. I’ve taken my staplers of interest to the Park Tavern for show and tell and on Facebook for the socialization. Because it’s NOT true “If you seen one stapler you’ve seen them all”.