Unremarkable Paper

Unremarkable Paper About 2,000 years ago, inventors in China took communication to the next level, crafting cloth sheets to record their drawings and writings. And paper, as we know it today, was born! Paper was first made in Lei-Yang, China by Ts'ai Lun, a Chinese court official. In all likelihood, Ts'ai mixed mulberry bark, hemp and rags with water, mashed it into pulp, pressed out the liquid and hung the thin mat to dry in the sun. During the 8th century, about 300 years after Ts’ai’s discovery, the secret traveled to the region that is now the Middle East. Yet, it took another 500 years for papermaking to enter Europe. One of the first paper mills was built in Spain, and soon, paper was being made at mills all across Europe. England began making large supplies of paper in the late 15th century and supplied the colonies with paper for many years. In 1690, the first U.S. paper mill was built in Pennsylvania. At first, the American paper mills used the Chinese method of shredding old rags and clothes into individual fibers to make paper. But, as the demand for paper grew, the mills changed to using fiber from trees because wood was less expensive and more abundant than cloth.

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The Unremarkable Pink Flamingo Lawn Ornament

First designed in 1957, the fake birds are natives not of Florida but of Leominster, Massachusetts, which bills itself as the Plastics Capital of the World. At a nearby art school, sculptor Don Featherstone was hired by the plastics company Union Products, where his second assignment was to sculpt a pink flamingo. Don was unable to acquire live flamingos to serve as his models, so his original sculptures were created based on an image from National Geographic. The inherent kitsch of the pink flamingo sculpture won it an instant place in pop culture as it began to decorate lawns across the country. As a result of his creation, imitators sprung up across American lawns, forcing Don to add his signature to each bird's body beneath the wing tips to the genuine article to distinguish it from off-brand flamingos. Featherstone lawn flamingos are sold in pairs, one with its head up and the other bent as if searching for food. The initial offering of lawn flamingos in the 1957 Sears catalogue included the following instructions: "Place in garden, lawn, to beautify landscape". They sold for $2.76 a pair. Unfortunately by the late 1960s, the lawn flamingo had been degraded to a tacky kitschy lawn ornament and were banished from lawns across America. It was a dark time for the iconic lawn flamingo. The original design continued to be produced in increasingly smaller numbers by Union Products until they closed in late 2006. Some few lawn flamingo habitats remained until the rights to the molds and copyright were purchased by Cado Products. Pairs of pink lawn flamingos once again began production in 2007, and have once again begun to migrate across American lawns.