The first hour of the first day of the year found us over in the neighbor's alley:

Natalie had returned from her NYE party, and since I could still hear revelry going off in the alley, I said we should go over. The party was mostly over. But there was still Peppermint Bark and lots of Swedish Meatballs. Lots. Around 1:15 another neighbor showed up, and since he's in advertising, he and Natalie started slinging the lingo. The fire was hot and smoky, and I can still smell the woodsmoke on my sweater and coat, a memory of the way the year began.

I left with a big plate of Swedish meatballs, and didn't drop one on the way home. Walking across the slippery street at 1:30 with the steam rising from the gratis orbs.

Oh, hello, here's something I should've expected: the crushing deflation of the second day of the year! All the holidays are over, the tree looks like it knows it's outstayed its welcome, and Daughter's gone. I took her to the airport after dinner (I made an excellent curry, one of the Three Favorite Meals I made) and we had the usual chipper banter. Of course she's in a good mood! She's going back to free life.

Not that we were jailers, or anything. I used to feel such quiet pained sadness when I went home and went out with my friends. I will not do that. Just keep me in the loop re: ETAs and such. Dinner with your friends? Go! As long we have some late-night convos - and we did, three, long and varied and only occasionally contentious. Nothing I enjoy more these days than staying up late with her and discussing Issues and Art and Things. We went to a movie, to dinner, to the Walker, I drove her around and we had car chats, and just as in olden times, she was down the hall. It's just good when she's down the hall again.

But that's done for a while. How long, who knows. So! It's back to normal life, but it has to be better. It's not hard to make it better.

I have some new ideas for the year. Not resolutions, but enhancements. Last year I vowed to shoot a short video every day, and for the most part, I did. They’ve been assembled into 12 short films. And by “films” I mean plotless reels that tread the same ground from day to day, with little variation except for the color of the exterior scenery. Depressing, perhaps, except whose life is different? Who has a new locale in every week, a new cast of characters, new purposes, new objectives? Unless you’re an in-demand international assassin, the story of your daily life will have a consistency.

So I'll do that again. Enhancement #2: Every day I will listen to a song by an artist I don't know.

Enhancement #3: I will use fountain pens for writing. I bought some disposable ones. “Varsity” brand. The name has pleasant academic connotations, although it really shouldn’t; it applies to sports teams. In an academic setting, yes, but still. I’ve mentioned before my college love of the People’s Pen, the Shaffer fountain pen with the plastic cartridges. These are like that, but not as stylish, and not refillable. Which is fine. I started using a fountain pen at home years ago, and the cartridges dried up between uses. I’d get ten, fifteen words out of it, set it aside, forget about it for a fortnight, then grab it to jot a note and find the fresh cartridge had dried up completely. How? Why? Then I’d plug in a new one, and attempt to get the ink to flow, which scratched the page. Push down hard, squeeze the cartridge, ruin the nib, ach, forget it.

Easy to understand why people gave up on them as soon as ball-points were cheap and reliable.

Well, you expected a redesign, right? We always have a redesign.

I’ve made it a bit thinner. All the art is new. And there’s “art.” Banners have been handed over - for a while - to the dreaming brain of AI, to set the mood. I mean, there’s only so many pictures of my world I can take without repeating myself for the 394th time.

If you absolutely hate AI art, don’t worry. I’ll change it up a lot, so there will be something new to judge sternly.

Sometimes I wonder if my TV watching has dropped off because I have lost interest, or ability. I have no patience for a show that does not engage me entirely. When I do find such a show, I tend to defer it until I’m in the mood to give it my full attention, but then there’s that “full attention” problem.

I also know that if I started a rewatch of a few favorites, I would plow through them every night until they were done. But don’t do that! Watch something new.

Compromise: something never rewatched!

I saw a pane on one of the streamings services for Cracker, the excellent 90s show about a large, troubled headshrinker who solves crimes by yelling a lot at suspects who turn out not to be guilty. In the 90s I watched it on . . . what? VCR? Cable? Can’t recall. I just remember Coltrane was great, much better than the character deserved, I think.

I instantly recalled the supporting cast - stern officious cop, young female cop, (Penhaligan, whom Cracker calls “Panhandle,” something they’d not allow today, as it's wang-slang, perhaps lifted from Clockwork Orange), a sloppy cop teleported in from 1975, the annoying family, and so on. There was something new about it at the time, and I wonder if that’s just because it was English and somewhat Gritty.

The blurry VHS-level quality pitches you right back to the era of 27” TVs and enormous remotes and whirring VCRs. Disaffected 90s Punks! Bowling punks!

Both went on to long careers, and both ended up in Happy Valley, a misanthropic British police show I did not enjoy.

Oh, the joys of 90s TV talk show set design:

I’ve no doubt I will watch every single episode now. I’ve forgotten the mysteries. I seem to remember that the marital reconciliation doesn’t take and the storyline is tiresome, and that it ends with a letdown, at least in the quality of the mystery. You don’t care about any of this, because Robbie Coltrane is just that good.

What I've realized, though, is something I didn't expect: 90s TV has an unexpected appeal, and I think I'm going to spend more time with the square shows than the wide ones.

All of January will be devoted to the ads of 1899, for no reason other than I have a lot of them.

The tiny little camera for taking pictures of damsels’ ankles without anyone knowing about it:

THIS IS NOT A TOY, BUT A THOROUGHLY SERVICEABLE CAMERA.

Every artist or lecturer should have one to catch the many piquant views from life which they would otherwise lose with a more cumbersome or showy instrument.

Beautiful lantern-slides can be made from these negatives, and also enlargements many times the size of the original plate.

The Anthony Brothers were successful camera makers. There were a lot of these fellows. Mid-century entrepreneurs, high-tech men of the 1850s.

It didn’t start with Kodak.

Always sort your pulverized sugar, ladies:

You could get a toy model sifter!

A battered and ancient item, here.

Suck it in and lace ‘er up:

The Royal Worcester Corset Company, was founded as The Worcester Skirt Company by David Hale Fanning in 1861 in Worcester, MA, and first specialized in making hoop skirts.[1] In 1872 the company changed its name to the Worcester Corset Co., to reflect its change of direction from hoop skirts to torso shaping.

At its height the company employed 2000 women in its big factory - which, I’m happy to note, still exists.

Apartments now.

Hmmm

Rochester

Brownies.

Hmmmmm.

That wasn’t Eastman Kodak. And the Brownie wouldn’t come out until 1900. Wikipedia:

It was invented by Frank A. Brownell for the Eastman Kodak Company. The name comes from the brownies (spirits in folklore) in Palmer Cox cartoons.

Did Kodak take the name from a competitor’s ad?

Good news for Cripples!

These guys knew how to market.

W. L. Fay established the Fay Manufacturing Company in 1885 and began manufacturing the Fairy Tricycle, designed for women. Fay also became successful as a manufacturer of carts, similar to modern wheelchairs, for Civil War amputees and polio victims. In 1891 Fay sold the company to Arthur L. Garford of Elyria, Ohio. Garford changed the name to Worthington Manufacturing Company in 1897.

Lots of brownies and fairies in those days.

Also, lots of turtle and turtle-adjacent options:

Can’t find much. But there's this:

On May 2, 1865, James W. Huckins, of Boston, Massachusetts claimed Patent Number 47, 545 for his “Improved Tomato Soup.” The mid-nineteenth century was a time of increasing use of the tomato, and great advances in the canning industry.

But now we know his name.

For the most exquisite homes:

The Seely Society, dedicated to all the people in the Seely family, has a picture of the bottles.

Finally, another indicator of the magazine’s rarified clientele:

Good soups, good perfumes, useful machinery, and of course the box of paints for those days when you hear out to the country, far from the craze and mad pace of modern life, and daub some color on a canvas.