Attention fracking

Story

Ugly duckling

No, not the typewriter—me!

These words were typed by my father on an aerogram that he mailed from Spain to his parents. Hey, I was a newborn, and he was honest! There is no doubt that this machine typed this message—the deformed "r" is a perfect match.

On a recent visit to my mother she showed me the aerogram and a photo in which my father is in the background, using this same Clipper, some time in the ’50s. 

The typewriter was a gift to him from his parents upon his high-school graduation in 1945. At some point he had the typewriter modified so it could type Spanish and brackets [ ]. (He became a professor of Spanish.) Eventually he got an electric Smith-Corona, which is what I remember him using when I was growing up.

About 70 years after he first got the Clipper, he gave it to me. It was so moldy that I had to remove the shell and dip everything in bleachy hot water. But now it's non-offensive and, of course, holds a special place in my collection.

Captive audience

While attending a conference in this brutalist fortress in San Francisco, I found no escape from screens even in the elevator. God forbid that any human should spend a minute without digital information and entertainment! When I looked closer, I found that the elevator screen system has the perfect name.