Just in time for the weekend, a little passive entertainment while you are waiting for your bread dough to rise.

For an easy thrill, page through the glorious Page Chromatic Type Specimen, always the big hit when type design classes visit. Better in person (it’s so BIG — some 18 inches tall), but still pretty amazing digitally. Rizzoli published a facsimile in 2017, that was based on our copies.  Type designer Nick Sherman once said that turning the pages is “like getting punched in the face over and over,” “but in a good way” he added.

 

And if you want to be more active, try playing solitaire with one of the decks of cards from the recent exhibition of the Field collection. You can read about it at the software makers’ site, and play solitaire with this historic deck, published by Anheuser  Busch in 1900. It’s a deck I find really interesting, if problematic, conflating the growth of American military power ( battleships on the 4s, and military men as the Kings and Jacks), political power (“Our Colonies” as the Queen of Spades), and economic power (the huge brewing plant is pictured on the pip cards).

 

If that’s too much, follow the Page specimen’s directions, and just “BE.”