That’s Pat Walshe inside the costume. Stood 3’8”. He’s 38 here. Died age 91 in 1991.

Edit: He was the last surviving credited actor from Wizard of Oz.

And destroy the patina? Haven’t you watched Antiques Roadshow?

Mountain lions. Yes, they roam their traditional range, which sometimes includes suburban sprawl.

I’ve been slowly accumulating enamel cast iron—Le Creuset and Staub. Pricy, but you can find good sales, and it’s definitely BIFL. Stuff is amazing.

I used to work for a company that made consumer products. At the beginning of the product cycle, the marketing people would tell us they needed, say, a $4.99 item, a $7.99 item, 2 $14.99 items and a big $49.99 item. That comes from the retailers. From there, everything is developed to meet that price point and the required margins for us and the retailer. I’ve literally sat in meetings where they cut out the one thing that made the product special just to save a nickel on the ex-factory cost. Then they wonder why it didn’t sell.

I have a big slipcased three-volume set of Julius Shulman mid-century architectural photography I picked up really cheap at a Taschen sale that’s pretty sweet.

I can’t figure out why it’s so tough to find heavy wool pants. Closest I’ve ever found is European military surplus, but they’re always for people with 30-inch waists.

Love that book. “It is altogether curious, your first contact with poverty. You have thought so much about poverty—it is the thing you have feared all your life, the thing you knew would happen to you sooner or later; and it, is all so utterly and prosaically different. You thought it would be quite simple; it is extraordinarily complicated. You thought it would be terrible; it is merely squalid and boring.”