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Did you know that Helium is non-toxic, non-flammable, and has no harmful effects on the earth's environment? Great for Helium Balloons!

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Large White Jackie O Style Sunglasses

Commencement Speakers for Graduation Day

Steve Jobs is a college dropout. But he did go to college for a few weeks. After leaving Reed College as a full-time student, Jobs used his "off time" to take courses he wanted and not the mandated curriculum.

One of these was a course in calligraphy and it had a profound effect on him. The simple course in calligraphy influenced his eye for everything he has done since. So if you have an ipod or are considering purchasing an ipod for someone as a graduation gift, then you might like to know a little bit more about the days in which Steve Jobs' sense of design was greatly influenced by a simple calligraphy course.

As a dropped out college student, Jobs hung around the campus area of Reed and slept on the floors of friends. At the time, Reed College was well known for its calligraphy program. This was an elective class and consistently the hottest ticket on campus. The class routinely overflowed with 80 students per class.

The reason for this was the calligraphy teacher, a charismatic man named Lloyd Reynolds. Reynolds taught himself the art of calligraphy and began teaching it casually to students at Reed before the school turned it into an official elective course in 1949. The class was offered at Reed with undying popularity for 35 years. One one-credit elective was terminated in 1984.

Steve Jobs, Stanford University Graduation, 2005
Steve Jobs started Apple in a garage. Is that American or what?

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By all accounts, it was Reynolds who was mesmerizing in his teaching style, blending lessons in history, culture and civilization as metaphors for the styling of calligraphic ascenders and descenders.

Reynolds developed a devoted student following on campus and many former students even thirty years later reflect on his influence.

A 1968 graduate explained it this way in the Reed Magazine article, "Dance with a Pen":

It was a life-changing, mind-altering, psychedelic experience. Why was calligraphy such a popular class? Because Lloyd Reynolds was just a guy who could make you see, make you understand. He had a prophet-with-a-wink persona, and a way of making connections, just riffing in a seamless, playful way. He’d jump from Michelangelo to William Blake to Zen Buddhism effortlessly, and it all made sense.

Evidence of the influence of calligraphy at Reed was all over the campus during the Reynolds era: Restroom labels were rendered in calligraphic style: Men, Women in lovely script. Evidence of the influence of the calligraphy class were all over the campus. A student who was looking for a ride share asked a calligraphy student to create the flyer and the calligraphy student was only all too happy to practice the art and enter it as college currency for all to see and admire. So for many many years, calligraphy was omnipresent on the Reed campus.

One of those students who was influenced by Lloyd Reynolds' calligraphy course and his personae was Steve Jobs.

The Apple Computer company co-founder opened his heart to Reynolds' influence on him and let the world in on it in his June 2005 Commencement Address at Stanford University in California.

To see the 14 minute speech scroll down to the next panel in this page to review the video. Jobs gives you the reference to this influence and on our next page, we give you some new ideas to explore the influences of that time and that man.

Halloween Costume Ideas

Great Graduation Speakers and the Stories Behind Them:

BYU - Dick Cheney

Drury University- Bob Barker

Harvard - Bill Gates

Kenyon College - David Gregory

Georgetown - Ken Burns

Yale - Thomas Friedman I

Yale - Thomas Friedman II

Graduation Speaker - Bill Cosby

William & Mary - Jon Stewart

Stanford - Steve Jobs

At 8 minutes and 33 seconds (8:33) you see a student graduate in the audience with these big pink jumbo clown glasses at the Stanford Graduation. Do you want them? We got 'em! See 'em here - click the picture!

Dance of the Pen, the rise and fall of calligraphy at Reed

The Lloyd J Reynolds Collection at the Reed library, Portland, Oregon

The Calligraphy Society of Portland (founded by Lloyd Reynolds)

Lloyd Reynolds car, a mercedes benz italic license plate

A 1968 graduate remembers:

“It was a life-changing, mind-altering, psychedelic experience. Why was calligraphy such a popular class? Because Lloyd Reynolds was just a guy who could make you see, make you understand. He had a prophet-with-a-wink persona, and a way of making connections, just riffing in a seamless, playful way. He’d jump from Michelangelo to William Blake to Zen Buddhism effortlessly, and it all made sense.”

For a period of time which ended somewhere during the 1970s, Reed College was well known for its Calligraphy program. The classes were taught by two men (this information is broad and as accurate as we can find, please do not use the information on this website to document any research.

Jobs came up with the name of their new company Apple in memory of a happy summer he spent as an orchard worker in Oregon.

Bigelow & Holmes, California Kris Holmes is the president of Bigelow & Holmes Inc., a studio specializing in typeface design. Kris began her study of letters with Lloyd Reynolds and Robert Palladino at Reed College, and continued with Hermann Zapf at Rochester Institute of Technology and Ed Benguiat at The School of Visual Arts in New York. With her partner, Charles Bigelow, Kris has designed over 100 typefaces, including the Lucida Grande fonts for Apple Computer's OS X user interface, Lucida Console and Lucida Sans Unicode in Microsoft Windows, and the Lucida core fonts of Sun Microsystems' Java development environment. Kris authored Apple Chancery, Apple Textile, Microsoft Wingdings, and ITC Isadora and contributed fonts to the free software movement.

In 1972, after dropping out of Reed College in Oregon, Steve Jobs becomes Atari employee #40 as a $5 an hour technician at their Los Gatos facility. As games came down from the company's Grass Valley development labs, it was Jobs' task to refine their design.

To the left is the first Apple logo. It shows a dramatically different graphic start for this company. It depicts the mathmetician Sir Isaac Newton sitting below an apple tree. The text reads Apple Computer Company. The apple is highlighted in this dark and gothic graphic image and is supposed to represent the tree of knowledge.

The artistic Jobs came to his senses quickly; this logo was only used for the Apple I.

Breaking Sunglasses News:

Did you know there are now Bluetooth Sunglasses? Yes! Released by a company named Inter Brands, they have 100 minutes of standby time, talk time up to 5 hours. The receiver would combine with the sunglasses and if you don't want to wear the sunglasses then you could take it out as the decoration. The Bluetooth receiver could be used for MP3, laptop, desktop computer, cell phone and the skype.

One Hit Wonder or Mogul in Training? Soulja Boy may have rapped about getting F's in school, but since he's become a celeb, the young'un has obviously acquired knowledge in economics. He has a full blitz tied into his new album. In addition to the CD he is about to release, comes "Soulja Boy Sunglasses", his own signature shoes called Yums, as well as a cartoon titled "Bad Little Homies" about him and his friends. "Crank That" started this young man's wheels crankin!

Did you know that rapper/hip hop artist Kanye West is performing in April 2008 and May throughout the USA? Here are some of the current concert locations: Las Vegas at the Red Rock Casino Resort Spa, Albuquerque, New Mexico at the Journal Pavilion, Denver, Colorado at the Pepsi Center, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma at the Ford Center, Austin, Texas at the Frank Irwin Center, Dallas, Texas at the Superpages.com Center [that's a weird name] and in Houston, Texas at the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion. We offer the white slotted glasses that he made famous in this Stronger video. We call them Kanye West Shutter Shades.

albuquerque balloon fiesta festival special shapes

Balloons

There is a striking difference between a birthday balloon, you know the kind you see at birthday parties, and the inflatable balloons that ride high in the sky. Yet, still, they are both in the category of "Balloons".

A balloon is a bag made of thin rubber or alternate material. It is often brightly colored as balloons are associated with celebratory events. Balloons are inflated with air or with some lighter-than-air gas. As the technoogy of manufacturing materials has produced lightweight non-porous materials, silks, nylons and other plastic materials have been found suitable for creating inflation balloons.

"Hot Air Balloons" such as those pictured to the right at the Albuquerque Balloon Festival in New Mexico (October each year), can be shaped to resemble almost anything. They are often whimsical and delightful.