As Kodachrome fades into fuzzy, unfocused memory, I present here just about the only thing left to develop. MIRACLE FOTO! The "Fingers" Game with photographs you develop at home. Presented by Pic-Tease, one of the finest providers of Hollywood Lovelies. But it isn't enough for you to create actual photographs at home, there is a game involved too! As you see on the reverse, one must "guess the fingers" As you can see in the only "developed" card in the set, our lovely here has a full set of ten digits AND two "bonus" nubs I had to black out. But you get the point, and the have indicated a "10" on the card. That is for her fingers, not a sexist scale rating her beauty. The instructions ask one to wet the crepe paper which comes with each card, and press it against the reverse until the miracle foto appears!
Being a collector, I am saving them all in the original box, as I hope the Kinsey Institute will bid high for the set on day. I find nothing on the web about these miracle fotos, the manufacturer did also produce "Miracle Derby Cards" so they clearly did intend the placing of bets. As such, and given the risque images, I suspect these were, at the time they were made, Illegal and that is why they are scarce.Set of Miracle Fotos Pic Tease cards. Collection Jim Linderman Date Unknown (1935?)See DULL TOOL DIM BULB / VINTAGE SLEAZE BOOK CATALOG HERE
This is my Digital Card. My "Business" card. I made it dance. The reverse has my personals, and though it might not seem like it, I value my privacy. But here they are.Manufacturers are now making hand held phones and devices which will allow you to "BUMP" them to share information. That's right...just like you can wave a card at the gas pump or to pay for your $6.00 cup of coffee, you can now exchange messages, emails, private information and more by simply rubbing it against another's phone. The bump. An information bump. To that purpose, I can only presume we will all need a Digital business card. Mine was created using gif technology widely available anywhere online."Bump ME"
I really do not know why early photographers thought it chic to use this web protective overlay, but several did. Short post today...I've been working on a piece about Bob Dylan and the designer Reid Miles who did the Basement Tapes album jacket (as well as most of those beautiful and classic Blue Note Jazz covers)...if interested, see HERE.
I am really pleased that it was picked up by Expecting Rain, the primary source for all things Bob Dylan and more...one of the best music sites on the web, and a daily stop for me without fail.
Less than exceptional victorian photograph with web overlay no date collection Jim Linderman
Dull Tool Dim Bulb Books HERE
Evidence
Stenography is not Shorthand, but they are closely related, I guess. Children can learn anything...just imagine the complexity of human text and how it is acquired by the young. We are able to recognize wrinkled little characters on a page (or screen) and translate them in our brain to understanding, knowledge and emotion. It is beyond me. Squibbles which can make one cry, aroused...it is amazing.
I could increase my dexterity on a handheld (or a courtroom device using the layout of one of these goofy looking things) if I took the time, but I'm already too comfy with a keyboard where each key is as large as my fingerprints and each one creates what I am typing here. But if my parents had given me a typewriter as large as a postage stamp and a stylus the size of a needle when I was four years old, I bet I could poke it like a woodpecker and write poetry.There is no reason at all that the stenography keyboard didn't become the standard for our devices today. If you put the card above in a baby's hand, it would make just as much sense as a typical keyboard...probably even more so, as it was developed to be even faster than regular typing. To the child the gibberish which results could eventually be read just like anything else. Steno even has it's own shortened language which appears tailor-make for tiny text. Check out the abbreviations here. OMG! WTF!!!
Remember back during the big right wing hub-bub over eubonics? Why, they're teaching BAD ENGLISH to our KIDS. Idiots. They've been teaching Shorthand to exploited women stenographers for a hundred years. In the deaf world, it was once controversial to teach sign language...as it supposedly would encourage deaf folks not to practice their lip-reading. Pffft. I think it was just jealousy from those who were too old to learn it and felt they were missing something.
The biggest use of stenography today is not stenography at all, it is SteGAnography, which is technique of hiding data in undecipherable wiggles. Just like shorthand. It is related to cryptography, which remarkably is ILLEGAL in some countries! (It makes it hard to read your mail.)DULL TOOL DIM BULB BOOKS
Bob Dylan once sang/wrote "Inside the museum, infinity goes up on trial" which is a good line. I have always thought it is collectors who do the work...and decades later the museums catch up. Case in point is folk art collector Herbert Hemphill, a major influence on my life. The things he collected even came to be known as "A Hemphill thing" for lack of a better description...now the Smithsonian owns them and they help define the American experience.My point is not to detract from the work of curators, historians and scientists who work in lauded museums at all...just that they sometimes take forever to get things done. With history counting on them, they don't have the luxury of being flippant or smarmy, as I do...and accuracy really isn't my forte either, I will confess. They have to be. But it is truly the individual collector, the independent researcher, the hobbyist and the local historian who do the serious ground work. They have the drive, the obsession and the gumption to break ground, put disparate objects together for the first time and in many cases even create a genre. A case in point is Mr. Jay Moynahan of Spokane, Washington. I happened upon one of his books while doing some research for my Vintage Sleaze blog. "Oh..so you were RESEARCHING prostitution?" Yes, actually, I was!Mr. Moynahan appears to be quite a story. By my count, which stopped when I reached double-digits, Moynahan has researched, written and published some TWENTY FIVE BOOKS on prostitutes. Mostly prostitutes of the the American West, which he calls "soiled doves." I truly am afraid to read one...not because I am in the least bit prudish...because I am afraid I will like it and be hooked. No pun intended. With spring gardening coming up, can I really afford to go on a 25 long book jag of Moynahan's ladies of the night?
I am truly in awe. Now I must confess most of my own personal knowledge of the role played by working women in the West comes from the Larry McMurtry books...Lonesome Dove and the like. He often has a female character, superbly defined and described, by the way....who turns tricks for the men and acts as a sounding board. Honest, hard-working, trustworthy women who happen to work in the sex industry. So although I dabbled in Native American Art for a time, I really have no first hand knowledge of Western lore. For all I know, Jay Moynahan is well known in that community and his books sell like the soiled doves themselves after the round-up was over and the pockets were jingling. But he was certainly new to me.
Mr. Moynahan is retired Professor Emeritus at Eastern Washington University in Criminal Justice. He happened to learn of a distant relative who ran a bordello in a mining town in the 1870s. Some folks doing their genealogy might be tempted to overlook such a find...Moynahan only dug deeper.
What an accomplishment! Not only for the accuracy of history and for the appreciation of the role women played in settling the west, but an accomplishment for all interested hobbyists, amateur researchers, writers and future museum curators. This is a man who has documented and created a previously ignored and shunned part of history, and I for one intend not only to read one, but I suspect many. Some of his books consist of reprinted material he has located and assembled, some are collections of photographs...Just browse the inventory and you will be as impressed as I.Mr. Moynahan HERE.
A complete list of Moynahan books and ordering information is HERE.
If I were involved in any way with an institution of higher learning, a museum or an archive, I would be fetting Jay big time. This appears to be one serious chunk of history compiled and written by one man with a mission, and I suspect historians will recognize it for decades and decades to come.Photographs collection of Jay Moynahan.
Dull Tool Dim Bulb Books HERE
I am pleased to add a new phrase to the teen vernacular..."SUCKING UP THE CHECK" inspired by this splendid illustration from JIVE magazine in 1962. No artist identified.
The Circle of Shoes Circa 1950 Hand-drawn and pasted copy for Department Store Newspaper Ad Collection Jim Linderman
