Bench Grass is a blog about the history of technology by the former student of a student of Lynn White. The main focus is a month-by-month retrospective series, covering the technology news, broadly construed, of seventy years ago, framed by fictional narrators. The author is Erik Lund, an "independent scholar" in Vancouver, British Columbia. Last post will be 24 July 2039.
(Per Newsweek of 1955, the theme of Porgy and Bess is that American racism isn't as bad as they say.)
R_. C_., Shaughnessy, Vancouver, Canada
Dear Father:
The last Renata cherries are off the market here, the peaches are ruined, it's raining, the roof is leaking again, and James is off to his squadron. Summertime is not easy! And the worst part is that we only have a week to go, because I have to go down to San Francisco to look at our new digs and meet the partners, who seem very pleased to have someone with a track record of staring at patent applications all day, albeit admittedly in the service of selling turboliners, rather than making vast sums of money defending and prosecuting patent violation cases. At least I got to wear a nice flannel plaid to market in Nelson, which you would ordinarily not do in August.
But we did get Canadian polio vaccinations, and I guess no-one ever offered to cancel September. And, even if they did, I voted for the other guy.
