{"id":1878,"date":"2013-02-18T19:33:17","date_gmt":"2013-02-18T23:33:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/?p=1878"},"modified":"2013-02-18T19:33:17","modified_gmt":"2013-02-18T23:33:17","slug":"ideal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/2013\/02\/18\/ideal.html","title":{"rendered":"IDEAL"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t\t\tIt&#8217;s amazing how much ephemeral history jumps off of pages from old New York City Directories. My attentions gravitated toward the <a href=\"http:\/\/sorabji.com\/pictures\/Telephone_Exchange_Names\/\">abundance of telephone exchange name-formatted phone numbers<\/a>, but I also remember how lists and phone books in particular used to interest me so. I looked forward to the arrival of the phone book. I would sit at the kitchen counter and read the Yellow Pages, and the White Pages.<\/p>\n<p>An arbitrary word assembles disparate entities almost completely at random, these individuals and businesses joined by nothing other than alphabetical proximity on the page of a telephone book.<\/p>\n<p>This column from the 1953 New York City Directory illustrates how IDEAL as a business name cuts across everything from fur to photographic to nursing home.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/sorabji.com\/pictures\/Telephone_Exchange_Names\/\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"609\" height=\"2749\" border=\"0\" alt=\"NYC Directory\" title=\"NYC Directory\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/sorabji.com\/pictures\/56304-2\/nyc_city_directory_1953_col_2.jpg?resize=609%2C2749\"><\/a>\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It&#8217;s amazing how much ephemeral history jumps off of pages from old New York City Directories. My attentions gravitated toward the abundance of telephone exchange name-formatted phone numbers, but I also remember how lists and phone books in particular used to interest me so. I looked forward to the arrival of the phone book. I [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-181-2","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/saumAn-ideal","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1878"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1878\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wsbj.com\/sorabji\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}