A Contract with God / How to Survive in the North

Books That Belong On Paper Issue No. 13

Books That Belong On Paper first appeared on the web as Wink Books and was edited by Carla Sinclair. Sign up here to get the issues a week early in your inbox.

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A CONTRACT WITH GOD — THE REVOLUTIONARY WORK OF GRAPHIC STORYTELLING THAT INSPIRED A NEW ART FORM

A Contract with God: And Other Tenement Stories
by Will Eisner, Scott McCloud
W.W. Norton & Company
2017, 224 pages, 7.3 x 0.9 x 10.3 inches, Hardcover

Buy on Amazon

Originally published in 1978, Will Eisner’s A Contract With God “existed in its own continuum, patiently waiting for the rest of its kind to quietly arrive…” says Scott McCloud in his introduction to the hardcover edition, released in celebration of what would have been Eisner’s centennial year. McCloud’s intro, the publisher’s following “Brief History,” and Eisner’s own preface firmly contextualize the work and its creator within its time and the larger comics scene to which Eisner was so integral. With or without the history, it is nearly impossible to imagine a reader not being blown away by this collection.

A Contract With God explores the everyday extremes of human experience through the tenement building at 55 Dropsie Avenue. Residents strive, struggle, and schlep through the graphic short stories. Eisner explores the themes therein on multiple levels, with text and illustration that are cuttingly resonant. His characters fall in and out of faith in God, man, and love. Some are blindly optimistic and others rawly matter-of-fact in their realism. Some are both.

The stories are a fictional fleshing-out of Eisner’s life. The title story stems from his own experience of losing a child, The Street Singer and The Super from imagined realities of the characters in and around his own tenement, and my favorite, Cookalein, in some ways the most complex story in its interconnected and contrasting experiences of class, romance, and sex across its cast of characters, is what Eisner calls “a combination of invention and recall.” All the stories, in all the ways they are told, are violent, sad, intense, and beautiful.

– Mk Smith Despres

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HOW TO SURVIVE IN THE NORTH — AN UNFORGETTABLE JOURNEY OF LOVE AND LOSS

How to Survive in the North
by Luke Healy
Nobrow Press
2016, 192 pages, 6.6 x 1.1 x 9.0 inches, Hardcover

Buy on Amazon

Ever read one of those books that has you running to Google immediately after finishing it, to find out as much as possible about the subject matter? This is one of those books. The two real-life stories it tells are so compelling that I had to learn more about these people.

“These people” are Robert Bartlett, who captained an Arctic expedition in 1913; and Ada Blackjack, an Inuit seamstress who joined an ill-equipped journey to Siberia in 1921. These journeys were dramatic, with deception, danger, isolation, and illness. The survival stories Healy retells are astonishing. Readers will witness the slow encroachment of scurvy, the desolation of Arctic landscapes, and the different forms that heroism can take.

By comparison, the third storyline — a fictional account of a disgraced professor in the modern day, who becomes fixated with Bartlett’s and Blackjack’s stories — just can’t hold as much interest.

The artwork is deceptively simple, with unfussy lines and a restricted, distinctive color palette of pale yellows, pinks, and greens. These colors create, with surprising subtlety, a mood of mounting desperation.

Fascinating history, check. Unusual characters, check. Natural settings and a color scheme ripe for cinematography, check and check. Someone turn this book into a movie already!

– Christine Ro

05/7/24

Backyard Chickens

Tools for Possibilities: issue no. 85

Once a week we’ll send out a page from Cool Tools: A Catalog of Possibilities. The tools might be outdated or obsolete, and the links to them may or may not work. We present these vintage recommendations as is because the possibilities they inspire are new. Sign up here to get Tools for Possibilities a week early in your inbox.

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Best for backyard beginners

Raising Chickens for Dummies

A few years ago we decided to join the growing backyard chicken movement. We knew zero about chicken raising. We were interested in keeping a handful of hens for eggs, so we didn’t want info on raising flocks of them (how many eggs can you eat a day?). I read every book for backyard beginners I could find, and after studying ten of them, the one that was most helpful to us was Raising Chickens for Dummies. It did the best job of anticipating our questions for a low-rent minimal approach. For instance, we had no desire to be cleaning chicken-shit every week, and we opted for deep bedding in the coop, a tip suggested by the book.

We’ve had chickens for two years now, and the book is still answering questions. The author runs a website, Back Yard Chickens, that has very active forums where you can ask other backyarders questions not found in his book. The site’s albums of photos of homemade coops proudly posted by members is very helpful and inspirational.

If you decide to graduate to larger flocks I would point you to the previously recommended book Storey’s Guide to Raising Chickens, which is extremely comprehensive, but often more than a beginner needs.

BTW, I was initially skeptical I would be able to tell a difference with backyard eggs, but it’s true. Backyard eggs do taste better; they are more…well…eggy. However, they won’t be cheaper, even if you don’t count your time. We kept our initial costs down by constructing a coop from scraps from a building site in the neighborhood (after asking permission). We had to buy the screening, which is double layered at the bottom (another book tip) because we have pretty serious predators around. We installed the previously reviewed automatic watering dish from the mail-order hatchery McMurray, which means that overall, the five chickens are very low maintenance. — KK

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Classic how-to

Storey’s Guide to Raising Chickens

I’m not convinced you need a how-to book to raise chickens; they’re pretty resilient and will eat damned near anything and still lay eggs. But the best reference guide we have is the Storey’s Guide to Raising Chickens by Gail Demerow. Easy to read, full of information, and covers the whole range from hatching to keeping layers to raising meat birds to dealing with problems. — Mike Gunderloy

• The standard catching hook consists of a 30-inch (75cm) length of 8-gauge (4mm) wire bent at one end into a hook and firmly attached at the other end to a wooden rake or broom handle.
• Scratch can be used to trick chickens into stirring up their coop’s bedding to keep it loose and dry.
  Toss a handful over the litter once a day (traditionally late in the afternoon when birds are thinking of going to roost) and your chickens will scramble for it.
• Depending on the weather and on the bird’s size, each chicken drinks between 1 and 2 cups (237-474 ml) of water each day. Layers drink twice as much as nonlayers. In warm weather, a chicken may drink two to four times more than usual.

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Chicks by mail

Murray McMurray Hatchery

We’ve been buying baby chicks by U.S. mail from Murray McMurray Hatchery for 30-plus years. We’ll get a call from the postmaster, sometimes a bit flustered, because there’s a box there with peeping chicks awaiting pick-up. We’ll go get them and set them up with a light and feed and water, and lo and behold in three months we’ll have laying hens.

Minimum order is 25, so the chicks can warm each other in transit. We raise all of them and when they are teenaged, give or sell to neighbors. Raising 25 is no sweat.

Why get chickens by mail and not from your local feed store? McMurray has been in business for 90 years and their birds are of excellent stock. Lots of varieties to choose from. We’ve had not only Rhode Island Reds, Partridge Rocks and Auracanas for steady egg production, but exotics such as Cochins and Polish, as well as meat birds. They’ve all been top quality.

Get Murray’s hard copy catalog if you want to start a flock. Wonderful to look through. A few tips:
1. A dozen hens will give you plenty of eggs for you and your neighbors.
2. If you want fertile eggs, plan on ending up with one rooster for every dozen hens.
3. In more urban areas, get 4 or 5 hens, no rooster.

Once you have your own fresh eggs, you’ll never want store eggs again. — Lloyd Kahn

• Red Cap
  This Old English Breed with reddish brown feathers tipped with black spangles has a large rose comb covered with prominent points. They are white skinned and lay tinted eggs. Chicks (picture above) are a light reddish tan with black speckles and some stripes.

• Egyptian Fayoumis
  These small, active, lovely chickens have been raised along the Nile River in Egypt for centuries, and even though quite common there, are practically unknown in this country. We got our start of this very rare breed from one of the state universities whose poultry department was using them for special studies in genetics. No other breed matures quite so quickly as these do and the young pullets are apt to start laying their small tinted white eggs at 4 to 4-1/2 months while the cockerels will start to crow at an unbelievable 5 to 6 weeks. They are attractively marked with silvery white hackle and white bars on black background throughout the body plumage. Leg color can be either willow green or slate blue. Baby chicks are highly colored in brown, black, and white markings on the back and a brownish purple head color.

05/6/24

Retro Recomendo: Music

Recomendo - issue #408

Our subscriber base has grown so much since we first started seven years ago, that most of you have missed all our earliest recommendations. The best of these are still valid and useful, so we’re trying out something new — Retro Recomendo. Once every 6 weeks, we’ll send out a throwback issue of evergreen recommendations focused on one theme from the past 7 years.

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World Radio

Radio Garden is a website that presents you with a spinnable globe of the Earth. The green dots represent radio stations. Rotate the globe, click a dot and you are suddenly listening to live radio in that part of the world. Right now I’m listening to Radio Seaside Wave in Nakhodka, Russia. — MF

Exploratory music stream

For the past decade David Byrne, the legendary rock musician, has operated his own “radio station,” which is really the curated playlist of his own musical explorations. Every month on his website David Byrne Radio, Byrne streams another 100-minute loop of new, old, classic, weird, wonderful, surprising, themed music he’s discovered and loves. He writes a short introduction, and supplies the full playlist. I’ve discovered (and bought) a lot of great music I first heard here. (In Nov 2018 he streamed a notable playlist of eternal protest songs.) — KK

Time machine for music

If you pick a year from your past (1951-2015), The Nostalgia Machine will warp you back musically and link you to videos of the top Billboard Hits of that time. 1996 takes me back to sixth grade and TLC and Alanis Morissette and a lot of weekend nights spent at the rollerskating rink. — CD

Best meditation music

There’s rarely a day that goes by that I don’t listen to my Meditative Mind: Music & Sleep app. There are hundreds and hundreds of soothing and immersive soundscapes, chants, mantras, nature sounds and world music to choose from. I use it when I need to focus, meditate or sleep. The app is free to download and try out, but I happily pay the annual subscription for access to their full library, unlimited downloads and an ad-free experience. There is also a YouTube channel with lots of long-format music tracks added almost daily. — CD

X-ray into music

You know about Song Exploder, yes? It’s this amazing podcast that takes one well-known song each week and explodes it into its separate components. The musicians who wrote and perform the song take it apart track by track, sometimes beat by beat, explaining what they were thinking as they created the pieces: what challenges and dead-ends they met along the way, how the song changed as they worked on it, and why they like the final version. It’s the x-ray into music I always wanted. — KK

Enjoy the boss radio sound of KHJ 93 Los Angeles

One of my favorite things about Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood was listening to clips of 93 KHJ, a radio station that pioneered the “boss radio” sound in the 1960s. The DJs were all vocal virtuosos, and the most talented of the bunch was a guy by the name of “The Real Don Steele.” Almost all of these broadcasts have been lost to time, but fortunately, some people recorded KHJ on their tape recorders in the 1960s, and the recordings found their way to the Internet. The Internet Archive has a couple of recordings from the 1960s of Steele’s show on KHJ. Here’s another, and another (with other KHJ DJs, too). If this kind of thing interests you, you can dig up more by searching “khj airchecks.” — MF

05/5/24

Gar’s Tips & Tools – Issue #177

Weekly-ish access to tools, techniques, and shop tales from the worlds of DIY

Gar’s Tips, Tools, and Shop Tales is published by Cool Tools Lab. To receive the newsletter a week early, sign up here.

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An Arty Intro to Screws

Van Neistat’s videos are the kind of content that likely gives some makers hives, especially pros. He is obviously following in the aesthetic footsteps of artist-maker Tom Sachs. As such, his videos take a funky, whimsical, and humorous approach. They are as much art as they are instructional. Some may argue the balance. I, for one, say the more ways of inspiring people to make things, the better. And I have to say that some of his ideas (don’t put things on top of other (unrelated) things, shelves everywhere, and one-handed access to as much as possible) have become very influential to my own approach to the shop. This video is his ode to screws, especially self-tapping sheet metal screws, which he prefers for many applications.

Sharpening Nail Clippers

I have a pair of fingernail clippers that my aunt gave me for a high school graduation present (in a men’s manicure set). So strange to think that I’ve had this set my entire adult life. I’ve kept using the clippers even though they’d become desperately dull. After searching YouTube, I discovered a video on how to take nail clippers apart, clean and sharpen them, and put them back together. Sure, you can get new ones for next-to-nothing, but it’s super easy, it only takes a few minutes, and it’s less crap for the landfill. And this means I will have dearly-departed Aunt Dolores’s gift with me for the rest of my life. BTW: The video recommends a ceramic sharpening rod. I just used one of my very narrow foam sanding sticks.

Making a Tape Measure Strap

Laura Kampf was perennially unhappy with the belt clips on her tape measures (with good reason — they stink!). She decided to think through what she didn’t like about the clip and design something that better fit her needs. The result is a clip-on strap that hangs below your shirt line and allows you to easily use the tape without even having to remove it. She decided to produce 50 of them for sale. They sold out immediately. But she shows you how to make your own in this video.

Know How a Tool Wants to Hurt You

In my book, Tips & Tales from the Workshop, Vol. 2, I quoted talented hobby machinist Quinn Dunki saying “Your tools are trying to murder you!” That may be melodrama for effect and comedy, but the point is well taken. There are so many different ways that the tool you are using can leave its orbit, lose a part, cut you, grab you, stab you, blow up in your face… You get the idea. Being mindful of exactly how the tool works and its potential failure modes can make a real difference in your safety. In my youth, when I had waist-length hair and ran a print shop, one day I was at the Davidson Dualith 500 printing a newsletter (gawd, what a temperamental beast of a machine!). I whipped around to grab a tool off of a nearby service cart. Next thing I knew, I was cheek by jowl against the ink rollers, being pulled into the machine. Luckily the power switch was within frantic swatting distance. Turns out, my ponytail had flipped into the rollers when I’d turned my head quickly toward the cart. That was not on my Print Shop Accident Bingo Card! But it sure was after that. A somewhat terrifying reminder to always secure loose clothing and hair, and never underestimate the importance of situational awareness in the shop. Trust me, removing thick, sticky printer’s ink from foot-length hair was not an enjoyable experience!

Cheap First Aid Kit

I saw this super-cheap first aid kit in my Amazon travels the other day. It was under $20 with a 5% coupon, so I thought, “Why not?” I’ve been needing a small kit for my garage workbench. I’m kind of amazed with all that’s in this. It has a bunch of different bandages, burn gel, cold compress, eye pads, antiseptic wipes, etc. It even has an emergency space blanket. Going to get one for the car, too.

Disney’s 1945 Industrial Cartoon “The ABCs of Hand Tools”

I don’t know about you, but I love industrial films from the 40s, 50s, 60s. I stumbled across this amazing Disney cartoon on YouTube about hand tools. Being from 1945 and extolling the virtues of skilled artisans, hand tools, and American manufacturing might, you can’t help but think back to that time, hot on the heels of WWII — all of those GIs coming home, looking for skilled work, and setting up workshops in their garages and basements. And, truth be told, I actually learned a few things here. Embarrassingly enough, I never knew that the flat part (behind the joint) of traditional side cutting pliers is a tool for crushing the insulation to make it easier to strip it from the wire.

Shop Talk

Readers offer their feedback, tips, tales, and tool recommendations.

Reader Tim Durkin writes:

For years, I fumbled with organizing my orbital sanding discs (5”). One day in Home Goods store, I was looking at refrigerator beverage can holders and had a moment of clarity/insight/brainstorm. I looked at these can holders and saw them, in my mind, filled (or nearly so) with sanding discs. I bought one and it’s perfectly sized. I then got all fancy and cut out tabs for labeling and separating the different grits. I use the back of the holder for sanding blocks/pads. After putting the discs in their new home, I just had to lay down… overwhelmed by my cleverness.

Here’s a pic. They save tremendous space and are super-easy to make and use. And they’re cheap! There are similar versions made for other food storage that will work. Some even have handles.

05/3/24

Hotels for Sale/Airline Points Devaluations/Attractive Cities for Living

Nomadico issue #102

A weekly newsletter with four quick bites, edited by Tim Leffel, author of A Better Life for Half the Price and The World’s Cheapest Destinations. See past editions here, where your like-minded friends can subscribe and join you.

Want to Buy a Hotel in Portugal?

A lot of travelers and remote workers dream of owning their own B&B or boutique hotel. Just finding the listings can be daunting though, so it’s nice to see this site for Portugal simply called Buythathotel.com. It finds, curates and summarizes listings, in English, with prices listed from 625,000 euros to a few million.

Higher Costs for Airline Reward Travel

If you feel like you need a lot more points these days to book that flight on Delta or United, it’s not your imagination. This Travel Weekly article highlights a new study showing that costs in points have gone up 28% since 2019. I just booked a one-way ticket from the USA to Mexico on American Airlines for 8,000 points though and it turns out their points are the most valuable. Southwest’s are next and the value is higher if you are checking a bag. Get a huge bank of points with the credit cards from Southwest (50K) or American (70K).

New Jersey Gets a Boost From NYC Airbnb Ban

New York City banned most short-term apartment rentals six months ago, hoping it would lead to more housing and lower rents. Neither of those results has happened yet. Instead, the city just handed lots of business to New Jersey towns across the river. “Jersey City has seen demand rise 77 percent year-over-year as of mid-February, according to AirDNA, while in Weehawken and Hoboken demand has increased 45 and 32 percent, respectively.”

Winning and Losing Cities in the War for Talent

Now that so many remote workers can live anywhere they want—and pick up and leave if a place disappoints them—how well are international big cities competing? This fascinating Fast Company article breaks down stats to reveal which cities are luring knowledge workers, which are losing them, and which are stagnant. (Good retention in Toronto and Melbourne, quick goodbyes in Dublin and Dubai.) It also looks at factors these residents value the most. Cleanliness, safety, and housing beat out medical care and quality of government services.

05/2/24

What’s in my NOW? — Spanner Spencer

issue #177

Sign up here to get What’s in my NOW? a week early in your inbox.

I am the Head of Community at Boltplus.tv, where I also host my very own free, online Star Trek quiz show. — Spanner Spencer

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PHYSICAL

• Mini Portable Keychain Light: A very minor purchase to take an order over the threshold for free delivery, this mini keyring light turned out to be the best item of the lot. The LED is incredibly bright, it charges from a USB-C (and we have those cables all over the house), lasts for ages, and the magnet on the back means we can keep it on the fridge for easy access.
• XD Design Bobby Hero Regular, Anti-theft backpack, cherry red: I loved the style but felt this was a bit pricey. I bought it anyway, and it’s been outstanding. The shape is excellent and sits quite high on your back, making it distribute the weight really well. It fits more than you’d think, and I love the built-in USB port that lets you put a power bank inside it even when it’s zipped up. Pockets everywhere, streamlined (fits under an airplane seat), very rugged, and beautiful styling.
• Gerber MP600 Multi-Plier Bladeless: I’ve had this for over 25 years, and it’s still like new. With a bit of practice, you can use it one handed, including opening, closing and using all tools. One of the reasons it’s lasted so well is the saw can be replaced with standard jigsaw blades, which is an invaluable feature.

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DIGITAL

• Joplin Multimedia Notes: Fantastic, free notes app that’s fully encrypted and can be synced across all your devices. Works across computer, tablets and mobile. I have thousands of notes now, and sync them through a free Nextcloud account to keep it completely secure and private. A gigabyte gives you more notes storage than you could ever use.
• Tab Digital Free Nextcloud: Nextcloud is a bit like Google Drive, but you can host it yourself. Or you can go to somewhere like Tab Digital which lets you have 8GB of storage in a Nextcloud account for free. Then you can also use it to sync your encrypted Joplin notes.

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INVISIBLE

“Where is the universe?”

In the classic John Carpenter film Big Trouble in Little China, there’s an invaluable quote from character Egg Shen that’s the perfect way to stop stupid or obstructive questions and comments in their tracks!

“Where am I supposed to put this?” Channel your Egg Shen, and respond: “Where is the universe?”

“Where’s that work you were supposed to be doing?” “Where is the universe?”

“Where’s my coffee?” “Where is the universe?”

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What’s in your NOW?

We want to know what’s in your now — a list of 6 things that are significant to you now — 3 physical, 2 digital and 1 invisible. 

If you’re interested in contributing an issue, use this form to submit: https://forms.gle/Pf9BMuombeg1gCid9

If we run your submission in our newsletter and blog, we’ll paypal you $25.

05/1/24

What’s in my NOW? — Spanner Spencer