Affected

My old high school classmate Kim is a wonderful illustrator whose work you can find by hitting the I'm with Sully link on my blog roll. Her entry for today really affected me. Here's what I wrote to her:

Your musings about clutter struck a chord with me, Kim. My dad was a linotype machinist and his dad retired out of the composing room at the Star. I actually remember when printing was a trade, rather than hacks like me being just proficient enough with Photoshop and Quark to do the work of five people. I spent a lot of Saturdays at work with my dad watching the old timers dig through hundreds of yards of big stand-up cases looking for fonts, as well as stripping negatives and hand manipulating the exposures on the big cameras to get just the right look on the plate. I love my MacBook, but it does hurt to know that its forebears killed such a neat (and good-paying) trade.