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It's Christopher Lowell

By Times Staff Writer
Published November 6, 2004

	Christopher Lowell
	Mickey Mouse shower head
	Martha Stewart

Entertaining tip from author/product designer/TV personality Christopher Lowell, who appears at 2:15 today at the Times Festival of Reading in Fox Hall at Eckerd College: It's okay to invite people into a cramped space "where there's barely a place to sit down in folding chairs. You're not holding a town meeting." It's more fun and congenial that way. It's okay to be nervous about "how do I buy a sofa that will last for the next 12 years. Who knows what life will be life in 12 years?" The host's goal: "to get a party to erupt out of nowhere at which you have as good a time as the guests."

Good, clean fun

Firefighter Mickey Mouse perches on one shower head, Pooh atop another. You can attach these at kid height or use them on adult hand-held shower heads. Either way, it's fun to shower with your cartoon friends. The shower heads are $29.95 at Wal-Mart, Ace and True Value stores.

Martha Stewart, serving her five-month sentence at Federal Prison Camp Alderson in West Virginia, welcomes letters from fans, but please, no handcrafted items, no glitter, ribbons, or stickers, and no gifts or money. In a letter posted on www.marthatalks.com Stewart said prison officials will return mail with enclosures to the senders. If you want to give a gift, support the American Cancer Society instead, she suggests. If you want to send a card or letter to Stewart, the address is: Martha Stewart, No. 55170-054; FPC Alderson; Glen Ray Road, Box B; Alderson, WV 24910.

You wander through a hardware store or down the aisles of a home center wondering, "What's that? What do you do with it?" Now you can look it up in the Field Guide to Tools: How to Identify and Use Virtually Every Tool at the Hardware Store, by John Kelsey (Quirk Books, 312 pages, 100 photographs, $14.95). This fat little volume identifies 136 tools, from such ordinary items as funnels and hoses to secateurs (curve-bladed branch loppers) and faucet pullers. The text outlines the tool's history, use, operating principles, variations and "toolbox minimum," i.e., how many of this thing you need. Informative and fun reading even if you never pick up anything but the TV remote.

[Last modified November 5, 2004, 13:12:46]