{"id":16120,"date":"2017-10-19T20:37:56","date_gmt":"2017-10-20T00:37:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/?p=16120"},"modified":"2022-08-01T07:42:56","modified_gmt":"2022-08-01T11:42:56","slug":"out-with-the-old","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/2017\/10\/out-with-the-old\/","title":{"rendered":"Out with the Old…"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Blocks_7632\"<\/a>I am in the process of cleaning up and clearing out our workshop-slash-storage room so that I can have a place to prep and finish my canvasses.\u00a0 (Our garage is too open-air and dirty for this purpose.)\u00a0 So, while decluttering, I came across my blocks (or my sister’s) which my mother saved and then my sister saved until she mailed them to me.\u00a0 Which means I get to throw them away.<\/p>\n

The blocks have been sitting in a shoebox in our storage room for several years.\u00a0 The lid of the shoebox bears my mother’s label (in crayon): CRAIG’S BLOCKS<\/em>.\u00a0 I guess this made it official — though the blocks were originally given to my sister, the fact that I defaced every single one of them with pencil and\/or crayon and\/or model paint was apparently enough in the eyes of the law to make them mine.<\/p>\n

I must say, playing with these blocks gave me an early appreciation for font design.\u00a0 The blocks shown here (which comprise the full contents of the\u00a0CRAIG’S BLOCKS<\/em> shoebox) came from four different sets.\u00a0 Set No. 1 had big bold letters like a Clarendon<\/a> slab-serif, while Set No. 2 offered a more formal look, similar to a condensed modified Roman font<\/a>.\u00a0 The blocks in Set No. 3 were not letters but parts of an illustration of a girl’s face.\u00a0 (Take a closer look at those earrings — their expressions are disturbing.)\u00a0 Finally, there was the orphaned hollow plastic block from Set No. 4 (shown as the mouth of the block-face girl).\u00a0 One of its faces was a capital B, the next face a lower-case p, its third face the word eight<\/em> in lower-case italics.\u00a0 This was not one of my favorites.\u00a0 It was the only block I did not deface.<\/p>\n

Before one gets overly sentimental about one’s blocks, a grandparent must ask, what is the lead content of the paint on the letters?\u00a0 Would I let my grandson play with these?<\/p>\n

The answer is no.\u00a0 They have already caused enough brain damage.\u00a0 These blocks must go.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am in the process of cleaning up and clearing out our workshop-slash-storage room so that I can have a place to prep and finish my canvasses.\u00a0 (Our garage is too open-air and dirty for this purpose.)\u00a0 So, while decluttering, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-interests"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16120"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16120\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28247,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16120\/revisions\/28247"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chcollins.com\/100Billion\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}