Aqua Sculptured Pile, 1966

1964, New York: In the store, her fingers danced over the pile, the rich sculptured pile. And the color was that of the sea on the atoll near Fiji.  Did she dare spend the money?  Would Billy Baldwin strike her from his little black book?  Would Lars see the beauty, or return to Oslo and forget her.  She looked at the salesman.  "Send your measures to this address tomorrow. Helga will be making lutefisk for five-hundred.  She's let you in.  And make sure it's this color.  I want it to be this shade. If it isn't this shade, the installer will have to eat the lutefisk."

2010, New York: The Realtor walks through the empty Manhattan Duplex, barking orders to the Daughter and Son as to how Realtor will sell the apartment.  "Every room painted gray.  Go to McGill's and tell them to paint the rooms and woodwork Light Ennui Gray. It is neither too bright nor too dark -mirthless - buyers aren't put off by the color.  I want everything to blend together.  And this carpet. It is a shame it is like new. Burn it. Destroy it as it did her to the very marrow of her soul." 

1980, Oslo, Norway: The Father explains to his son and daughter why he left: "Your mother could only love one thing, and that was the carpet."

Nitpickers Weekly, 1929

"Because you care..."

Nitpickers Weekly existed for that very reason.  And it's readership would say "and we care too much, at that."

In this issue, Mrs. Caroline Heenan, of Philipsburg, New York writes "I told my daughter, Peaches Browning not to marry that "Daddy" man because he kept a goose in his sleeping chamber.  Did she listen to me? No!"

Monthly columns included "Do Something with Your Hair", "Just Look At Your Nails", "You Call That A Meal", "If You Only Worked Harder", and "Pay Attention to Your Children".

There was a break in the opinion of the editorial board, causing two malcontent editors who were tired of having their advice ignored.  The founded, Needling Magazine in the summer of 1929.  It survived the Wall Street Crash by converting to a craft periodical.

Nitpickers Weekly ceased publication by the end of 1929, a victim of the Wall Street Panic. Evidently not enough husband's heeded their wives constant, unending advice not to invest in Atwater Kent Radios, the Moon Automobile Company, and Amalgamated Rubber and Tire. And it was either the magazine in her hands or an apple for dinner.

The apple won.

Gideon's Strumpet

Detective Gideon Strong is a man who attracts the wrong kinds of women when he isn't looking for trouble.  In Gideon's Strumpet, he finds Mayo Montez, a hardscrabble woman with a soft boiled heart, trying to sleep her way out of the gutter up to a middle-class house in a better end of town.  And maybe into a Colonial or even a Dutch Colonial with a cabana and an in-ground pool.  "What's a girl like you driving an Oldsmobile sedan?" Gideon wonders. When he find a copy of the latest issue of Town and Country Magazine in the maid's room, he knows that every dog has its day, and every dame has a bone to pick with her master.  All this and more will be revealed when things come to a head at midnight, New Year's Eve.