How to Dial a Telephone

A lost art - but here's all you need to know, courtesy of Ma Bell, 1954:




Well, that was pretty clear. But wait - how would you convey all that in a silent film? This earlier version from 1927 gets the message across with some swell animation:




Just for fun, here's some modern kids confronted with a dial phone for the first time:

Mapping It

So I came across this wonderful quote from a piece by Mary McCarthy written for the New Yorker back in the 1950's.  McCarthy was one of those great intellectual writers back in the day, fiercely political, who got involved in feuds with other intellectuals that led to no end of sniping and quarrelling amongst other New York types that I really have very little interest in.  However, I can recommend her book, Memories of a Catholic Girlhood, which sounds like it ought to be a sweet, sentimental little memoir - and is anything but.  If you like fine writing and vivid storytelling, give it a try; she wields a pen the way a surgeon wields a scalpel.

Well, having been reminded of McCarthy, I went to refresh my memory of her life and times, and one website led to another - you know how that goes.  But somewhere along the way, I made a pretty cool discovery:  how to create and embed a personalized Google map in your blog, so I thought I'd share that with my truckbuddies. 


View Some Long Automobile Trips in a larger map

This map is pretty lame, I only spent five minutes on it, but it was the first thing I could think of to try.  I can see a lot more possibilities of things to do with this though.  So if you guys want to give it a try sometime, here's two sets of easy directions to get you started:

Embeddable map samples

How-to video.