My Tales of Hoffman

According to a number of tweets (where I saw the image atop this entry), The Graduate, premiered fifty years ago today on December 22, 1967, which happened to be a Friday, as it is now.

Index Cards

According to Wiki,"An index card (or system card in Australian English) consists of heavy paper stock cut to standard size, used for recording and storing small amounts of discrete data. It was invented by Carl Linnaeus." Linnaeus,  being famous for his contributions to taxonomy, is rarely associated with his invention of the index card, a "revolutionary" invention for managing data.

I often get side-tracked when web-surfing and discover many facts I might not have known (or even care to know) when looking for information on the Internet. Regarding index cards, I knew about the"heavy paper stock being cut to standard size" and that index cards are "used for recording small amounts of discrete data," but I did not know they were invented by Carl Linnaeus — nor, I must confess, had I thought much about their origin.

Thoughts on Arthur Miller

On this sixth anniversary of Arthur Miller's death, I came across this disturbing article about his son, Daniel, whom, apparently Mr. Miller refused to acknowledge, because the son had Down's Syndrome. Having associated Arthur Miller with a reconciliation of sorts that I had with my father (referred to in a previous post), as a result of an audition (where I met Mr. Miller) that I had for a 1980s Broadway production of his play, Death of a Salesman, I was now sorry to hear of Miller's inability to enjoy his son, Daniel, because of his having Down's Syndrome. There was a time when a "well-meaning" aunt would tell me that my father did not want to be around me (he moved out of our family's house when I was a child) because I was a reminder of his failings. She was referring to (among other things) my having very poor eyesight — which he had too — and she "reassured" me that she was telling me this "to make me feel better," to which a friend said "tell your aunt if that is supposed to make you feel better, perhaps she should tell you something to make you feel worse."

A Lesson Learned from C. Michael Curtis

Once upon a time, I wrote an article about a reconciliation of sorts that had happened with my father (he even sent me a card years later which I wrote about in a previous post). 

Our reconciliation was the result of what I'd learned when preparing for an audition that I had been selected to do by Dustin Hoffman, after I had met him in a chance encounter.