Nothing too academic here — just plain fun as a couple dances through time:

Some days, it’s kind of hard to hide my past as a costume shop stitcher and wardrobe assistant.

I can’t help it. I’m a sucker for old typewriters. I’ve been meaning to make some swell typewriter key jewelry, something I had forgotten about until I opened a rarely-used desk drawer today and found a batch of key caps I had been saving up.

I love the vintage typography that labels each key and the quirky vocabulary of time gone by: shift, shift key, shift lock, floating shift, back space, back spacer, margin release, ribbon key, single tab, tabular key, tab set, single tab key, tab. An up arrow. A down arrow.

And, as I should be tidying up my grades, but instead am wiling away the hours on Etsy, it got me thinking. What if people in our profession wore typewriter keys? Surely, there are a few back space folks, those who wish the clock could be turned back to the days of print. And there are the ribbon keys, who make decor their top priority. And the shift lock folks who are just sitting it out until they retire, who are not to be confused by the shift folks, who are happy to change their practice. Oh, those floating shift folks, wafting by in their chiffon and reciting poetry on demand — where did they go? The single tab key librarians, who hold onto print periodicals because some day, some day soon, a kid is gonna need Newsweek circa 1985.

What does the up key do? And down? Probably they’re literally the super- and sub-script functions, but surely you can cook up something more clever than that.

What key are you? And why?

Let us know below …

Image: Underwood No. 5 keys by avhell, on Flickr
Used thanks to a CC BY-SA 2.0 license

The Boxcar Children Beginning: The Aldens of Fair Meadow Farm : Albert Whitman & Company via kwout

Have you ever wondered how the four Boxcar Children ended up suddenly without parents, staring in the baker’s window at the start of Gertrude Chandler Warner’s classic The Boxcar Children?

You aren’t the only one. In honor of the 70th anniversary of the series, author Patricia MacLachan (author of, among other titles, the Newbery Medal-winning Sarah, Plain and Tall and the fantastic poetry collection Once I Ate a Pie) has created a prequel. From the Whitman site:

Before they were the Boxcar Children, Henry, Jessie, Violet, and Benny Alden lived with their parents at Fair Meadow Farm.

Although times are hard, the Aldens are happy–”the best family of all,” Mama likes to say. One day, a blizzard hits the countryside, and a car is stranded on the road near their farm. The family in the car needs shelter, and when the Aldens take them in, the strangers soon become friends. But things never stay the same at Fair Meadow Farm, and the spring and summer bring events that will forever change the lives of the Alden Children.

Newbery Award-winning author Patricia MacLaclan pays loving tribute to the classic novel by Gertrude Chandler Warner in this story of the Alden children’s origins and the challenges they faced before their boxcar adventures.

Check out the two sample chapters or the contest for kids!