Letter to Moynihan Train Hall, New York, New York

Aboard the Lake Shore Limited

Albany, New York

November 6, 2023

My Dear Mr. Moynihan,

I spent about 20 minutes today searching for the post office on Level C when as far as I can tell there is no post office on Level C. 

The legend below the wayfinding map I was looking at says the post office is on Level C while the legend to the right of the wayfinding map I was looking at said the post office is on Level 1. The latter is apparently correct. 

So anyway I eventually went to Level 1 and found the deserted room with mailboxes and automated postage machines first, so I used that. I would have preferred to go to a full-service window so that I could buy stamps that were small enough to fit comfortably on the postcards I was about to send, but I didn’t find the full-service windows until I happened to keep going down the hall and then turned right. By then it was too late, I had already used the giant postage labels to stamp and mail my postcards. I had to re-do some of the addresses because those labels are pretty big.

Not a huge deal, all things considered, NYC is supposed to be a little challenging after all, and I may well have missed a wayfinding sign promising full service windows just a little further along the, well, way.

But, just in case you have a punch list you are still working through, maybe check and see if “post office wayfinding” is on there somewhere?

Otherwise, the M.T.H. is a huge improvement! 

So bravo, mostly,

Chris Hartman

Grainfield, Kansas

P.S. Also, the soap, water, and hot air dispensers in the men’s washrooms are currently something of a crap-shoot, as it were. Between the lack of labels on the fixtures, no obvious way to tell how they work, or even which ones are currently operative, the simple task of washing my hands after using the toilet proved vaguely… is Kafkaesque too strong a word? Probably; I did eventually pick the correct combination of soap dispenser, water faucet, and hand dryer so I that I could continue to do my part in the fight against communicable disease. 

P.P.S. I have photos of the wayfinding map issue if you need them.  

Vintage Wallet Inserts

An unused but apparently vintage wallet I recently picked up included two wallet-sized pieces of extremely cheap paper printed extremely cheaply with various features, warranties, seals, and an ID “card.” I scanned in the four images:



The American Designer Award for Finest in Leather. Impressive! Something tells me that perhaps there was no such thing, nor was there an entity called the “Leather Industries of America,” but perhaps I am being too cynical.

I guess the warranty is as to the materials, not the workmanship or construction. If the wallet falls apart in a couple weeks, that's on you, buster.

(Two months in, the wallet seems to be holding together fine.)

Now, where to find these “additional windows”...




Good to know that this is an “Approved” identification card. Or is it the bearer of the card who has been approved? And “card” is a stretch. These inserts are printed on some of the flimsiest paper I've ever encountered, several notches below newsprint.

In the vital stats section: Blood type. Good thinking, I guess.

Notice how the “Zip” is in a slightly different typeface? Looks like Helvetica regular as opposed to the condensed sans-serif used for the address blanks. (Typographers: In the condensed font, I notice that the a, y, and r have distinctively curved elements. Is this maybe the special font that Bell developed for phone books, designed to be legible at extremely small sizes? ) The addition of the “Zip” later on indicates that the original design of the insert dates from the pre-zip-code era, that is, before the early 1960s, but that the wallet itself is newer than that.

Basic standards of tomfoolery would of course require one to write in “Federal Bureau of Investigation” in the “Employed by” blank.

Maybe not the best idea nowadays to just give out your SSN to the random stranger who finds your wallet.

Another Albers Rug: Play of Squares

Another knitted & felted rug I made based on a design by Bauhaus fiber artist Anni Albers. This one is based on Play of Squares.

Pattern available here.

Black-White-Yellow Bauhaus Rug

Another book-review-vacation post: check out this pattern for a knitted & felted rug based on a design by Bauhaus fiber artist Anni Albers.

Black-White-Yellow Rug Pattern

Now That's a Calendar

A while back I issued a bleg for a good old-style insurance-company calendar, the kind that used to hang in barber shops and gas stations. Sometimes they featured a painting of wildlife or maybe the American flag. I rarely see them anymore.

Well last month, a Peabody, Massachusetts high-school teacher came through with exactly what I had in mind:

A nice, big two-color calendar from an insurance company well into its second century. It features man-in-the-moon phases, red letter days, and at the bottom, a Farmer's-Almanac-style weather forecast for the month. At home in any 1947 office or place of business.