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Monday, December 28, 2020

Something About the Stoddard's Lectures

Now's the time, the time is now, to travel on.

It's fun to see how technology has changed in the last 70-plus-years, since 1948 and the days when Lewis Barnavelt first arrived in New Zebedee. Case in point: I used to own three slide rules. Better case in point: we all remember Lewis discovering the buckram-bound editions of James L. Stoddard's lectures in his uncle's house:
Lewis opened the book and flipped through the slick glossy pages. He held the book up to his nose. It smelled like Old Spice talcum powder. Books that smelled that way were usually fun to read.
Stoddard's lectures filled out 10 volumes and include another book of photographs and five supplementary volumes. That's a lot to read and would take days to search through them all for a specific reference. Hence why I ordered a CD-ROM version years ago. It felt strange cycling through pages faster, cross-referencing topics faster, and having the entire series on one digital optical data disc.

About then I remembered "John L. Stoddard tells you all about Hands of Glory" (so says Lewis) but a search yielded nothing. I couldn't find the phrase in any of the lectures. Has anyone else found it? Or was it included in something else Stoddard wrote?

(Note: disc did not smell like talcum powder.)

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