Pneumatic Tubes or Phrenology, take your pick.

Remember when we were little and mom would take us to a department store?  When she would pay for her item, the money would go into a little sealed tube,

and that would go into a mysterious brass pipe contraption,
you'd hear a mighty WHoooshhhh, and be able to watch the tube making it's way to the store office.  A moment later it would return loaded with a sales slip and change.  Up until quite recently there was a tube system in a store in Wellesley MA, but it's probably been pulled out by now-  are there any still functioning near you?  Let me know.  So, because pneumatic tubes are somewhat fascinating, I found this---Todays subject, kids, is Parisian Pneumatic Tubes:

Actually, there is a company that supplies these today called Airtubes. And this:

the ZAPATO Personal Pneumatic Tube Pod Mark IV. This site contains a good historic overview of pneumatic tubes as well as this latest innovation. Order yours now.

Here is the amazing future of Pneumatic Tubes...It will happen in April, says so right there at the top.

Next subject-  I've been up to my ankles in Phrenology lately, and have been amassing images for my latest book.  Phrenology, developed by German physician Franz Joseph Gall around 1800, and very popular in the 19th century, is a discipline which claims to be able to determine character, personality traits and criminality on the basis of the shape of the head (i.e., by reading "bumps" and "fissures"). All weekend I sat at the printer doing and redoing pages to incorporate.  Finally I ended up with forty pages, a record for my little books.  Having the uninterrupted time to do this made it my best Mother's Day since the lost pancake years!

Are you beginning to see my fascination with these images?  Wait till you see them printed out.  I was going to make them into signatures and bind them into an actual book form but decided I liked being able to flip through them more like a deck of cards so that's how they remain this morning.  I hope to get a case made for them to rest in or 'present' in and finish the project in the next few days.  Yeah, I'll take pictures, but it's not light out yet and I simply hate the flash.  Besides, you do want to wait for the case, don't you?