This is The New York Times headquarters at Beekman and Nassau Street, New York City, c. 1855.
The Times dropped “Daily” from its masthead in 1857 and also moved to Park Row in order to be closer to City Hall.
Should I dump the Miami Herald?
I’m quite conflicted these days about dropping home delivery of my daily newspaper. It will be the first time in my life that a daily newspaper will not be delivered to my door. I am including my infant and childhood years, as my parents always had a newspaper or two delivered. In later years it was the Miami Herald, the Miami News and the South Dade News-Leader.
The Miami News is no more and the South Dade News-Leader is not a daily publication and not delivered anymore and the Miami Herald is the only hold out, that and the Sun-Sentinel, which is available daily and is the Ft. Lauderdale newspaper. There was a time when Ft. Lauderdale also had the Ft. Lauderdale News and Hollywood, FL had the Hollywood Sun-Tattler. I used to love that name.
I never liked when the Sun-Sentinel and Ft. Lauderdale News shared exact comic pages when they had a joint operating agreement. With the Herald and the Miami News, they always had their own comics pages and so did the News-Leader and Sun-Tattler.
Anyway, as of late, the Miami Herald delivery person has been screwing up. The paper has been arriving late on a daily basis and the last few days it has not arrived at all. I don’t mean just mine, but the whole neighborhood has not received it’s daily newspaper delivery. Now this is very shocking to me because the Herald has appeared on our doorsteps even when the door step was the only thing left after hurricanes and such. No, really, after Hurricane Andrew blew threw, the only thing left was the Miami Herald there, right on time, on the doorstep the next morning!
So now, I am considering ending home delivery. But then I feel that I am giving in to the way things are in the newspapers business and I don’t want to hurt the newspaper by doing this, but if it’s not being delivered and it’s basically 12 pages now, do I really need it? The comics suck, the Herald had not had decent comics since the 1980s and I read the comics now online and also most of the news I read online.
I have to think this one out.
Happy New Year!
I’m looking forward to 2018. I don’t know why, I just feel good about it. For one thing, the numbers add up to 11, which is very good and 18 is very good in Jewish/Hebrew. It’s “Chai,” which means “life.”
I feel and see good things coming for me, us and the country. I get premonitions and I feel strong about this.
I will finally get my new comic strip going and that’s probably the best thing for me right now. Stay tooned.
I love my new Superman bookend
Is this the coolest thing? It’s my latest acquisition, made by a guy in Israel named Ovi Niv. You can get it here, it’s only $25. It was a gift actually. Love it.
I love this Cork Bow Tie, too. You can get it here. It’s made of natural sustainable cork.
It’s quite thin made of sustainable material, the bark of the cork oak regenerates within 7-9 years after harvest, and the process extends the life of the trees to over 200 years. It’s hand-made in Portugal.
UPS ruined my cooking experience
I ordered one of those Instant Pots. I have been wanting to make bone soup and other things in a crock pot and I read about this newfangled pot in the NY Times and I ordered it from Amazon.
It came in two days. I haven’t tried it yet, I may try to figure it out this weekend.
I do have a complaint though, it’s about the delivery. The UPS driver just threw the box over the gate, you know, like you see on the tv news? I’m assuming this is a delicate piece of equipment and throwing it over the gate isn’t a good thing.
I complained to UPS about the driver and asked why he didn’t ring the bell, which he never does. Their response was that the driver cannot call me and that I should choose another delivery address for deliveries in the future!
I didn’t ask the driver to call me, I asked that they ring the bell and I was home, why would I ask for another delivery address?
So if the food in my Instant Pot comes out bad now, I don’t know if the pot was damaged in delivery or if it’s operator error.
UPS and their stupid response is unacceptable and is a total example of what is wrong with society today.
Is it live or is it Memorex?
This old Memorex ad reminded me of high school. We had an English class called Rock Poetry and we discussed the lyrics and poetry of current rock music. It was a nice class.
The teacher didn’t know much about current music I think because one day she started pulling out cassette tapes that we had brought in (yes, cassettes) and asked, “What should we listen to next? The Beatles? Carol King? The Bee Gees? Memorex?
And we all laughed, and said, No! Memorex is the name of the cassette tape company!” It was so many years ago, but I remember that as if it was yesterday.
There was also this Maxell ad. Remember? It ran all over the place for years. 
I did a comic using my character Tombo the Rabbit doing the bit a few years ago.
=======
Check out our line of comics t-shirts and coffee mugs here.
=======
Merry Christmas!
I love this photo. I took it at my parents’ house a couple of years ago. Merry Christmas!
A moment in time
Look at this photo. It’s Broadway in NYC, in 1902. I can stare at this photo for a long time and just sort of fall right into it.
I have to find another template for this blog so that the photos appear larger (if you click on the right mouse button and hit “open image in a new tag” it will open much larger), but anyway, look at the one guy closest to Santa. He looks to be about 25 or 30 years old, perhaps born in 1872 or 1875 and at the prime of life – dapper, cool, looks like he has money. I like how his pants cuff falls onto the shoe. And now he is gone. Dead.
This period in time captured here and “alive” forever, yet everyone in the photo is gone.
This looks to be near Macy’s. Isn’t that the New York Herald in the back left?
Deli worker with a special voice
I’m sure you saw this all over the news. A 23-year-old deli clerk named Guilherme Assuncao who works at Russo’s supermarket in Watertown, Massachusetts was doing a sound check at the store and this happened. He was a singer in Brazil. I don’t think he’ll be serving deli for much longer. Do you?
These are two of my favorite songs. He is amazing. And so humble.
========
Receive Tomversation via email each time we publish Click here.
=======
Chock full of memories
I saw this ad on Facebook on some site that shows old ads. It brought back so many memories. My mother used to give us Chocks when we were kids. After all these years, this one ad made the memories come rushing back.
A while back, I saw an ad for a Fred Flintstone and Dino toy, and that brought back a floods of memories from playing with this at my grandmother’s house. I had seen the ad on Ebay and then a year or so later (just last month), I saw it at the Museum of the Moving Image in New York, along with all those long forgotten toys and items. That’s it below, Fred riding Dino. I can see it in my mind’s eye, on the floor, walking along, in front of the refrigerator at my grandmother’s house in Brooklyn.
Something that I collected a few years ago are those old Flintstone glasses. We used to have those when I was a kid. Welch’s Grape Jelly came in them and then when the jelly was gone, you had the glass.
I saw a bunch on Ebay and bought them from different people over a period of time I must have a couple of dozen now. I didn’t realize they were so small, about 4 inches tall, but my mother tells me that she liked them because they were small. She says they were perfect for small children.
I have one jar that still has the jelly in it! I bought it on Ebay, too. Originally it was 29 cents, the label is still on the jar. What happened was a lady in New England closed her small grocery store in 1965 and just left everything as is. Years later when someone bought the store and went in for the first time, it was a time capsule of 1965. And this jelly jar came from that.
========
Receive Tomversation via email each time we publish Click here.
=======
tomversation.com 