Monthly Archives: February 2014

My grandfather on my mom’s side, Harold Milne Alexander, reputed distant relative of AA, inventor of Pooh, was himself an inventor. One of his most important innovations was figuring out how glass curved and could be safely used in automobiles. He was employed by Libbey-Owens-Ford, so he didn’t detain the patent, but he never seemed despondent about that. A different era, I suppose. By the time I knew him and hung out with him a lot, he was retired, but still making things: miniature boats, tankers and galleons and the like, remarkably lifelike, resplendent with gold flourishes, in his basement.

Here are some of his patents:

 

Harold Alexander’s father, Edwin, made mosaics for the IRT lines in Manhattan at the turn of the century. None have survived, as far as I’ve been able to discover.

This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body. . .

Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass