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Driving Miss Ely
Come on, granddad, we have to take the pink Remington with us.As the Tour de France bikes whished through her paternal grandmother's home from home in Beaumes de Venise, in Vaucluse at the foot of the...
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Half-Typewriter, Half-Journalist: Myles na gCopaleen's 'Mollycule Theory' -...
As authentic print newspaper journalists ride off into the sunset - and there's now a posse of them on the distant horizon of every Western town - they inevitably do so pining for the "good old days":...
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The Silver Boxy: A Charming Remington Model 5 Portable. Is it a Rebuild?
This metallic silver-grey Remington Model 5 (Boxy) portable typewriter is temporarily in my care. The owner is keen to sell it and I am giving it a home for few weeks, just to have some more time to...
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Ruminations on Death, the Ultimate Fake Orgasm
An ominous 13 years ago, an old friend of mine called Mike Agostini published a book called Death: The Ultimate Orgasm? A reviewer said Mike was “a persuasive interviewer and born raconteur”, "a...
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Return of the Mugwump: How Shift Inventor Brooks’ Half-Breed Was Trumped by...
Silently and unconsciously, some of us still pay what is by now long undue tribute to the visionary author, “mechanician and mathematician” Byron Alden Brooks(1845-1911), often many hundreds of times a...
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Frankly, My Dear, I DO Give a Damn
Like Leer, Blenheim, New Zealand-born journalist Francis Derek Devine had three daughters. Unlike the seriously demented Leer, Frank died with the claim that he’d become “Older and Wiser” (the title of...
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Sydney, Where the Typewriter Wizards of Oz Are
Many moons ago, I was covering a rugby match at the Sydney Sports Ground when a young New Zealander was knocked out cold. I left my Olivetti Lettera 32 in the Press Box and went down to the changing...
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United States Female Presidential Candidates
Margaret Madeline Chase Smith, seen above using her Royal portable typewriter, in mid-July 1964 became the first woman to be placed in nomination for the United States presidency at a major party's...
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Shame Games: The St Louis Olympics and the Human Zoo
Exhibited for the benefit of fairgoers: 34-year-old Da´naxda´xw (New Vancouver Tribe) carver Bob Harris (Xi´xa´niyus), an initiated Hamaťsa Dancer, in the Human Zoo at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase...
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So Long, Marianne (1935-2016)
Marianne Ihlen, muse for Leonard Cohen's haunting classic So Long, Marianne, died in Norway on July 29, aged 81, and was buried in Oslo yesterday. Cohen met Marianne on the island of Hydra off Greece...
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Rugby's Road to Rio
Rugby union returned to the Olympic Games this week after an absence of 92 years, when the women’s seven-a-side tournament was staged in Rio de Janiero. Australia’s Pearls won the gold medal, beating...
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Here's Johnny's Olivetti Lettera 22 Portable Typewriter
Johnny Carson’s Olivetti Lettera 22 portable typewriter is on display in Chicago as part of the “Here’s Johnny! The Making of the Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson” exhibition. The portable has been...
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I Give Up
While I watched a documentary on the debate about the rights and wrongs of restoring the late Keith Haring's mural at the old Collingwood Technical School in Melbourne, this blog last night reached 2.5...
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RIP Gene Wilder (1933-2016)
Gene Wilder was born in the birthplace of the typewriter, Milwaukee, and died in the birthplace of the greatest typewriter (the Blickensderfer), Stamford, Connecticut. Wilder died at his home...
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The Durrells
I was drawn to the ITV miniseries The Durrells by the promo, in which actor Josh O’Connor, playing a young Lawrence Durrell on Corfu in Greece in the mid-1930s, bangs away at a Corona 3 portable...
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RIP Richard Neville (1941-2016): The Original Wizard of OZ
Richard Neville, a larrikin leader among the forward-thinking army of typewriter-wielding Australians who took Britain by storm in the late 1950s and 1960s, has died in Sydney from Alzheimer's, aged...
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Typewriter Breaks Ribs
No joke, I cracked a couple of ribs when I tripped and fell on to a typewriter (it was a Smith-Corona Galaxie II) on Thursday night. The typewriter was unharmed.So I'm feeling very sore and sorry for...
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Scoop: Clare Hollingworth Turns 105
Clare Hollingworth, the British journalist who scooped the world with news of the outbreak of World War II, celebrated her 105th birthday in Hong Kong yesterday.On August 31, 1939, the then 27-year-old...
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1964 Montana Portable Typewriter Instructions: Use No Gas!
The completely redesigned 1964 model is shown on the right
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AUSTRALIA’S DAY OF NATIONAL SHAME: THE 15TH ANNIVERSARY OF SIEV X
Often on fine days like this her father and I take my one-year-old granddaughter for a stroll from the swings and playthings at Weston Park down past where the mobs of kangaroos graze on the shores of...
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