these have little to do with anything, other than wanting them to be here so I can get to them later (becuase I know how useless my private filing system is….).

John Allen, Father of Newspaper Design:

Excerpt:

“The new typographical dress is termed streamlined because it

has simplicity and grace; because it eliminates all obstacles

to legibility both in heads and body type, and because it

represents the last word from the type founodries of the

land.”<28>

The change did not go unnoticed as Frank Rospaw, then

publisher of the _Placentia_ (Calif.) _Courier_ and president

of the California Newspaper Publishers’ Association, wrote:

“There is a lesson for all California publishers in the

action of the _Times_…If it can entirely redesign its

format, make a more readable product, and sell it, surely

smaller newspapers can clean up their products. Throw away

the old condensed head letters, buy or use some of the open

faces now in the shop, get larger body type, whiten up all

the pages. Give readers a new readable product.”<29>

Recognition of the improved appearance of the _Times_ wasn’t

limited to California for “the year after the change, 1937,

the _Times_ achieved the supreme accolade of first prize in

the annual Ayer Award.”<30> That award was significant not

only for the _Times,_ but also for Allen and his efforts.

“From that moment the Allen revolution never looked

back.”<31>

On the creation of Orange Coast College:

These things were reported to Congressman Phillips in his office, where Mrs. Phillips and Mr. Frank Rospaw, the Placentia publisher and 32nd Agricultural District supporter, were interested listeners. Mr. Phillips said that Willis Warner was working for a water district at the Base, and that Messers Clay Kellogg and Glenn Woolley were seeking to acquire a site for the Fair Grounds including the warehouses at the Base.

Stanford Axe Stolen:

(Following is an eye-witness account of the Axe theft last night. Cecil Rospaw, Daily Reporter, who saw the burglars take the Axe, was the only witness beside Bill Steif, Cellar counterman and Daily night editor, who was on duty alone at the time) “I was walking down to the Cellar to buy a pack of cigarettes,” said Cecil Rospaw, an ex-G.I., “when I saw two men coming out of the Cellar and struggling with a large, bulky object.

An Axe to Grind (original deleted):

The leader was wearing a Stanford jacket, said Cecil Rospaw, an eye witness. “As he jumped into the pickup truck he said, `We just want to borrow this for a gag,’ ” Rospaw said.

(and for those wondering what the hell this has to do with anything, Frank Rospaw is my paternal grandfather, and Cecil, his son, is my dad. and yes, my last name is not the same as my parents. sort of)

downtown placentia:

historic picture of downtown placentia, showing the location of my dad’s (and grandad’s) newspaper office. By the time I was old enough to care, the paper had moved into the spot marked 35 (Albers Feeds), where it stayed until dad sold out in the late 70′s. At some point, the front was remodelled to two front doors, and the right side became a barber, then later, it was made office space for the paper. After the paper was sold, te building was various things, and my family eventually sold it in the 80′s.

Sorry for the long silence. Regular blogging should, I hope, resume soon.

Somewhat late, I hope all of you had a merry christmas (or a happy holiday, whatever holiday you choose to celebrate), and a happy new year (unless your new year is some other date, and then just hold the wishes for an appropriate date…)

Life has been good, but busy — the Christmas shopping season is the busy sales time (we’ve sold one or two iPods….), and the systems I manage have been running full tilt for the last few weeks helping people sell iPods and other stuff. We have been, as I kept telling people, not just running the hamsters three shifts, but with the left legs on one wheel and the right legs on another, and praying nobody trips.

Good news is, nobody tripped, and now we’re starting the wind-down to more normal operations again, and catching up on all of the stuff we deferred out to spare resources for crunch time. I’ve been spending my time switching between acting as a processing traffic cop trying to schedule out how to share the system resources to get things done and being a paranoid baby sitter convinced that if I stop watching the systems, they’ll fall over and die (murphy’s law of situational probabilities: computers never break when you’re ready and waiting).

As a really rough idea of just how busy we were, the beast I manage was originally built (a bit over two years ago) to handle a transaction volume of, oh, 10K quatloos a quarter. We long since left that behind and in October, we were transacting something around 30K quatloos, a new transaction record we were really proud of (and which beat our previous monthyl record by some 40%). So we turned around and as the holiday season geared up, we ramped even further, doing over 40K quatloos in November. Then, just because we’re insane idiots who don’t know any better, we threw out all reason, and matched that volume in the first 3 weeks of December.

It’s kept us (and me) busy. And when I took a break, I just didn’t feel like whacking at computers even more hours, so I’ve been spending free time offline (Terry Goodkindis an awesome writer, and I’m currently on book 4).

Christmas was good — a quick trip down to LA to celebrate with the parents and then back up here, were Laurie and I have been relaxing and trying to recharge the batteries. We spent New Years Eve with a good friend, dinner at Il Fornaio, after dinner treats from Santana Row’s Cocola, and lots of good, meaty discussion. And a good time was had by all…..

And now, it’s back to work, and maybe, back to normalcy. or whatever comes close to it these days….

And soon, a look back at 2004, and looking forward to 2005. I’m definitely looking forward to it, also, I see good things ahead, and good people to share them with.