Scissors-And-Paste

I have a calendar by Jeffery Kacirk called "Forgotten English."   I really enjoy it because there is a new "forgotten" word everyday.  For instance, today's word is "assishness."  Actually I think I have used this word in the 21st century, in fact just last night.

My example:  The report on Oklahoma City's Channel 9 last night stating that the recent mass shooting in Tucson could increase gun sales reflects the fact that a large segment of our society has reached a new level of assishness.   Assishness was originally found in a 1611 book by John Florio and also sir James Murray's New English Dictionary published in 1888.  It means stupidity or blockishness.

But, once again, I've gone off topic.  Yesterday's word is the one I wish to focus on.  The word(s) is(are) "scissors-and-paste."  In 1769 the Reverend James Granger published the Biographical History of England.  The book had blank areas which readers could add pictures and text of their own, making this book to be one of the first interactive examples of media.  Apparently the practice became so widespread that by 1889, the New York Tribune began printing pictures of celebrities separately with blank pages on the back so that the "Grangerites" could use them without cutting up readable print.

Of course, I  had to Google the Reverend James Granger and found a whole web site devoted to him.  He was an avid print collector and an Anglican vicar of Shiplake, near Oxford, England.  He is considered to be the spiritual father of present day historical picture libraries.

We carry on Grangerism in our own ways today by scrapbooking.  Another more advanced application and perhaps truer to Grangerism is the crafting of altered books.  This video below is one I found on YouTube and it is an excellent example of an altered book and what an altered book is.

Perhaps the most interesting thing is that "scissors-and-paste" has carried over into our computer age with "cut-and-paste."  The more things change the more things stay the same.