Dust Jackets

I had the week of Thanksgiving off from work so as a little project I thought I’d give one of my old hardcover’s a dust jacket. I have this old first edition (eighth printing) of The Postman Always Rings Twice I bought for a few bucks a number of years back that is coverless. So that became my project.

I googled around to see if I could just find a high-resolution scan to print, but no luck. I did find a facsimile dust jacket for sale for 25 bucks, but that is 5 times what I paid for the book. So that didn’t make much sense to me. The image on that site didn’t really serve to make the cover I needed, the details were too hard to see. So next I found a listing for the book on Abe Book, a great online bookselling site— like Discogs for books, that contained a couple photos of the dust jacket.

Using that I was able to re-create a pretty close, but not exact, duplicate of the dust jacket. I printed it out, cut it out, and wrapped it in mylar and now I have a passable dust jacket for my copy of The Postman Always Rings Twice. Which is pretty fun.

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Long April Weekend.

I'm almost done with producing The Career Center, the program I'm working on for The Michigan Learning Channel/Detroit Public Television. I decided to take a day off last Friday after working through the entire weekend.

On Friday, Audrey and I went to the Woodward Breakfast Club for breakfast, stopped at a garden center to buy a small tree, and then headed to John King Books in Detroit to rummage around. I left with a stack of eight books, including two ace doubles, a couple of John Ross MacDonald paperbacks, and some random crime novels that caught my eye. Audrey didn't find anything that interested her. That night, I read most of the way through the Patricia Highsmith novel I've been working on and watched the rest of the Harry O TV movie turned series pilot.

On Saturday, Audrey decided to focus on weeding the entire yard while I hung out at home and finished the Highsmith novel. I've been listening to a new Merzbow record and Mike Watt's Three Layer Cake over and over on the turntable, so I continued doing that as well. At night, we watched Emily the Criminal, which I heard was supposed to be a modern take on 1970s crime movies, but it didn't really have that feeling. It was an indie crime movie, maybe a little too simple and a little to blunt but I thought it was fine. Audrey didn't like it at all.

On Sunday, we went to Livonia's Laurel Park Place mall to attend Bookstock, a charity book sale with over 200,000 used books and media for sale. We didn't buy a lot, but I did get a Philip Roth book that I've been wanting to read. I've been meaning to read more of his work, as all I've read was The Plot Against America. I also picked up couple of Edward Aarons’ Assignment novels, and a Flannery O'Connor compilation that includes Wise Blood. Audrey found a gardening book she liked and a Joni Mitchell album she wanted. It turned out we already had the album, but this copy is an upgrade condition-wise.

In the afternoon, we drove to Highland to attend my sister-in-law's birthday gathering. I haven’t seen my in-law since Christmas, so it was nice to catch up. On the way home, we drove through Highland and Milford and commented on what had and hadn't changed since we grew up there.

Overall, it was a pretty nice long weekend. I'm thinking of keeping this up and writing about my weekends weekly, but that seems unlikely. I haven't really decided what the blog part of this website is for. I've been reading Mr. Jalopy's newsletters about his adventures buying and selling old things and just living his life, and I've found them to be very inspiring. Maybe this will be the only post like this on the blog, but hopefully not.

“Meanwhile, to be an animal that thinks persistently in terms way beyond its lifespan sets us a frightful problem. Every day you amass knowledge in a frantic race against death that death must win. You want to find out everything in the time you have; yet in the end you wonder why you bothered, it’ll all be lost. I keep trying to explain this to anyone who will listen.”
— He Died With His Eyes Open by Derek Raymond
“It is a source of both terror and comfort to me then that I often seemed invisible—incompletely and minimally existent, in fact. It seemed to me that I made no impact on the world, and that in exchange I was privileged to watch it unawares. ”
— Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson

Taking my 2011 Truck back to 2004

I own a blue 2011 Chevy Colorado WT, which I affectionately call Grumphry. The WT stands for Work Truck, which is the base level model. Grumphry doesn't have power windows or locks, and comes with the smallest engine available and a two seat split bench cab. The car has an AM/FM/CD player, but the Bluetooth is only available for hands-free calling through the OnStar system, not for music or podcasts. There is no Aux port, and no way to connect a phone to the car for music or podcasts.

I've tried different solutions to play music in my car, including putting my phone in my front shirt pocket and using a Bluetooth speaker stuck to the top of the dash with Velcro, but they didn't work well. I have been using a Bluetooth FM transmitter for the last couple of years, but it is not very effective due to constant interference.

In November 2021, when I upgraded my iPhone, the connection issues got worse, making it difficult to use my phone in the car. I have been listening to classical radio, NPR, or podcasts from my shirt pocket most of the time.

.

Recently, I have been listening to my cassette tape collection on an old Panasonic Technics tape deck that I keep on my desk while working from home. I wanted to play these cassettes in my car, and a Bluetooth cassette adapter seemed like a good solution.

I searched for used and NOS aftermarket AM/FM/Cassette car radios on eBay, but they were more expensive and unattractive than expected. However, older cassette radios looked similar to my radio, and their wire harness connections were the same. Despite everything online telling me that an older radio model wouldn't work, I bought an unlocked AM/FM/Cassette radio from a 2004 Impala for $30, and it works great. I quickly replaced Grumphry's old, broken radio with this new, old cassette radio, and the Bluetooth cassette adapter is the perfect solution to my problem.

Now, I can listen to cassettes at my desk and in my car, which is a win-win situation