A printed and bound dictionary has its charms. On my way to looking up the plural of mosquito (it turns out you can give them toes or not, it’s optional) I found moneygrubber to monkey puzzle family. Now there’s the starter for a short story if ever I saw one, but it’s not the sort of thing you’d stumble across while looking things up online. Dictionaries are the repositories for antiques, too. Where else will you find a record changer these days?
I come from a long line of sentimental people. This is why my dad couldn’t part with that sliderule . . . until I asked to have it. I don’t even know how to use it, but he did, and his father before him, and for some reason I like having it around. It turns out my son knows how to use it, too. I figure it’s one thing he’ll keep out of all the stuff around here.
Today’s prompt: If you were marooned without electricity what would you do to make your art? (I know, I know—after you figured out how to make your food.) Imagine, improvise, experiment. Don’t be scared. We’re all in this together, one big monkey puzzle family.
Write. Paint, compose, draw, dance, sing . . . Create.
Today's Prompt 
… and his father before him. His father, my Grandfather William Drumm Sell was City Engineer for Charleston, WV. My dad left town to see the big wide world so his brother Jim became City Engineer to keep up the family tradition. I guess slide rules are in the genes.
Or at least in the boxes of mementos!
Hmnn…being sentimental about ones fathers sliderule seems to be global. I have too my fathers sliderule, and this white thing with little numbers on is not what it probably looks like for others, this thing is almost father himself. A tool that helped all the clever thoughts and ideas on their way out into the open land, and perhaps further on to something usefull.
As I write this, it hits me, that sliderules lived peacefully alone without competition from computers in many many years, and were the best tool one could get to count and calculate, unless one had an ancient Greek as acquaintance, of course. Sliderules should be honored more. I will go and polish mine now.
You always make me smile. I will go and send a piece of Real Mail to an ancient Greek acquaintance now. (He would not care to be thought ancient, but he is, in fact, of a vintage even finer than my own.)