Show & Tell Participants for May 8, 2013

When Jonny G. was about 14 or 15 years old, he was poking around the house and found this "Ident-A-Kid" card made that his parents had made for him when he was three. (You can get a closer look at it here.) He had a friend who kept a baby photo of his girlfriend in his wallet, and who decided he wanted childhood photos of his other friends as well, so the friend took Jonny's card and kept it until Jonny "couldn't deal with him having it anymore," at which point Jonny took it back. But then the friend wanted it again and took it, and then Jonny took it back, and now the card has passed back and forth between them about five times. "I kind of enjoy the tradition of it," Jonny says. (Photo by Ari Friedman)

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Nechama Levy's dog, Spotless, died about a year ago at the age of 14. She had found him as a stray when he was about three months old and had tricked him into following her home by leaving a trail of dog food that let do her home, "Hansel and Gretel-style." Spotless shed a lot, so she gathered up a bunch of his fur from her apartment and put it in this jar, which she keeps on a shelf, along with his ashes and a doggie sweater. "He was a very special dog," she says. "He made a lot of trouble in his life, but none of his shenanigans ever did him in." (Photo by Ari Friedman)

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"I like scarves," says Allie C. She especially likes this one, a Hermès model that her husband and kids gave her as a birthday present. She likes the parrots on the scarf because she's obsessed with the parrots in Green-Wood Cemetery; she likes the tigers on the scarf because she thinks of her husband as "my tiger"; she likes the leopard cubs because they remind her of her children; and she likes the squirrel in the lower-right corner because the squirrel is "my absolute all-time favorite animal." After telling the scarf's story, Allie showed the many ways she can wear it: as a headband, as a turban, as a tube top, as a sash, even as a skirt. "My Mom always taught me that an elegant woman wears silk scarves," she says. (Photo by Ari Friedman)

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Ari Friedman had always wanted a pinhole camera. He got this one from a friend who'd decided that he had "too many cameras" and was giving a few of them away. It uses 4"-by-5" film — "the biggest I've ever shot," says Ari. There's no viewfiender, and the exposures have to be quite long (sometimes several minutes), so every shot is a bit of a crapshoot. This, combined with the film being fairl expensive — about $2 per shot — has led Ari to use the camera only sparingly. Still, he's intrigued by it and loves the photos he's taken with it. "It produces a very distinctive look," he says. "The first time I used it and developed the negatives — wow." Footnote: Ari took all the other photos for this installment of Show & Tell, but he used a digital Nikon for those, not the pinhole. (Photo by Nechama Levy)

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Andie B. went to Russia about a year and a half ago to celebrate her birthday. She found that the Russian equivalents of bodegas routinely sell small glass containers of vodka for about 75 cents. (You can get a closer look at them here.) The vodka isn't particularly good, but she brought back a bunch of it anyway, in part because the empty containers serve nicely as beverage glasses. "So you finish the crummy vodka, and then you have a glass forever," she says. (Photo by Ari Friedman)

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Heather McCabe's friend Russell recently gave her this little "last rites" packet that had belonged to his now-deceased mother. The card inside the packet reads, "I am a Catholic. In case of accident, call a priest." (You can get a closer look at it here.) Russell gave it to Heather as sort of a private joke, because they've both strayed from their strict Catholic upbringings. Then again, there's some question as to how strictly Catholic Russell's mother was, since she never filled out the information on the card. Such packets are not uncommon — you can even buy one on Amazon — but Heather nonetheless finds it highly amusing. "It's just so bizarre and generic," she says. "I almost want to get in an accident, just so someone will find it." (Photo by Ari Friedman)

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We conclude, as usual, with Show & Tell host Paul Lukas — me. This installment of Show & Tell took place just a few days before Mother's Day, so I was thinking a lot about my Mom, who had been an artist before she settled down with my father. When I was about 11 years old, she brought home this wooden thingie from a junk shop and hung it on the wall of our living room. She explained that it had been part of a chicken coop (the little "doors" are where the feed would be inserted), but I just thought it was stupid. Why couldn't we have pictures on the wall like normal families? As time went on, though, my Mom's aesthetic strongly influenced my own, and I came to view the chicken coop piece as one of the more beautiful things in our home. When my parents sold their house and moved to a small apartment in 2004, they had to get rid of a lot of stuff, at which point I claimed the chicken coop piece. It now hangs on the wall of my apartment — a nice piece of home décor, and an even nicer reminder of how my Mom taught me to appreciate unconventional things. (Photo by Ari Friedman)

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That's it for this round of Show & Tell. Big thanks to all who attended, even bigger thanks to the participants, and bonus thanks to Ari Friedman for handling the photography. The next installment of Show & Tell will be Wednesday, June 12, 8pm, in the back room at Freddy's. Hope to see you then.

Show & Tell Participants from April 10, 2013

When Ron U. was 12 or 13 years old in suburban Buffalo, he and a friend began tramping through the woods and through garbage dumps in search of beer cans. This was a start of his beer can collection, which at one point numbered about 700 cans. He later sold most of them but has kept about 75 cans, including this Krueger can from the mid-1930s (here's a closer look). "Krueger was the first brewery to sell beer in cans," he explains. "So if you collect beer cans, right away you learn about Krueger. That's why I've kept this one -- it's sort of touchstone." (Photo by Saskia Kahn)

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Roman Prystajko has an unusual job: He travels around the country installing bus-washing machinery ("Just like a car wash, but really big," he says). He's currently in New York, working on a project at LaGuardia Airport. While stuck in a traffic jam near the airport, he glanced out the window and saw Mt. Calvary Cemetery. He was intrigued by the juxtaposition of the gravestones in the foreground and the Manhattan skyline in the background, so he pointed his phone out the passenger window and took a photo (here's a closer look). "They say New York is the city that never sleeps, but I call this photo 'The City That Sleeps Forever,'" he says. "I think it's maybe the best photo I've ever taken." (Photo by Saskia Kahn)

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Kirsten Hively visited Istanbul in 2007. She wanted to explore the city via its wide variety of public transit methods -- ferries, trams, buses, funiculars -- so she purchased this little yellow gizmo with a small metal disc thingie on the end, which is the Istanbul equivalent of a MetroCard: The gizmo comes pre-loaded with a set amount of value, and then you press the metal surface onto an electronic receptor when boarding a public conveyance, which deducts the appropriate fare. Kirsten had meant to purchase about $15 worth of fares, but she end up with $50 due to a language misinterpretation, so there's probably some value left on the device. That's one reason she's kept it for so many years -- after all, she might go back to Istanbul one day. But there's another reason: "Whenever there's something I'm keeping track of and making sure not to lose -- a wallet, a cell phone -- I have a hard time letting go of it, even when I don't need it anymore." (Photo by Saskia Kahn)

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Andi Bee does a lot of animal rescue work. She recently rescued a kitten and gave it to one of her neighbors, but the kitten somehow disappeared. She helped the neighbor look all over his apartment for the kitten, to no avail. Before giving up, she took her dog, Melly, down into the neighbor's basement, thinking the kitten might be hiding down there. Sure enough, Melly soon sniffed out the kitten and all was well. Andi was so proud of Melly that she brought her to Show & Tell -- an unusual object to talk about, but Melly didn't seem to mind. (Photo by Saskia Kahn)

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We conclude, as usual, with Show & Tell host Paul Lukas -- me. The recent Jewish holiday of Passover prompted me to tell this story: When I was growing up, our family wasn't religious, but we always had matzos in the house during Passover. I loved to take a big sheet of matzo, slather it with butter, sprinkle on some salt, and devour it. That's precisely what I was doing one afternoon when I was about nine years old, when I heard a car door closing shut in our driveway. It was my Mom — home from work more than an hour earlier than usual. And there I was, about to be caught with contraband matzo (I wasn't supposed to be eating between-meal snacks, "It'll ruin your appetite," blah-blah-blah). There was no time to run to the garbage can or the toilet, so I reached over on a nearby shelf, lifted the cover off of our family game of Scrabble, slipped the matzo inside, and then went and greeted my Mom. The next morning, before I left for school, I retrieved the incriminating mazto and disposed of it. But the inner box cover and board had been sullied with a few butter stains. Decades later, those stains are still there -- timeless documents of my transgression. And here's a little epilogue: In 2007, I wrote an article about the Streitz matzo factory in Manhattan. While interviewing the company’s vice president, I told him the Scrabble story. He listened, thought for a moment, and then said, “That’s a shame to waste a good matzo like that.” (Photo by Saskia Kahn)

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That's it for this round of Show & Tell. Big thanks to all who attended, even bigger thanks to the participants, and bonus thanks to Heather McCabe for running the audio and to Saskia Kahn for once again serving as the Show & Tell shutterbug (check out more of her photography on her web site, and then hire her!). The next installment of Show & Tell will be Wednesday, May 8, 8pm, in the back room at Freddy's. Hope to see you then.

Show & Tell Participants from March 13, 2013

Ari Friedman was visiting the Cloisters nine months ago when he noticed a book, called The Paris Edition, that someone had left behind on a bench. He picked it up and saw that a note was taped to the cover. It said, "Traveling Book: I am not lost -- I'm on a journey." The book had been registered as part of BookCrossing, a project that lets people share books and track their progress as they're passed from person to person (here's the BookCrossing page for the book Ari found). Interestingly, Ari says he wasn't much of a reader before that day at the Cloisters, "but this book got me back into reading." At the end of his Show & Tell presentation, he gave the book to someone in the S&T audience, so now the book is off on the next phase of its journey. (Photo by Saskia Kahn)

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"I'm not a successful person in athletic competition," says Nachema Levy. But in 2007 she entered an alleycat race -- basically an informal, unauthorized bike race, usually set up by bike messengers -- and was the top female finisher, for which she won this Manhattan Portage messenger bag. It's the only race she's ever won, and she credits her victory to "being ballsy, not fast," because she took the most direct route, even though that meant she was biking on a highway alongside speeding cars. Seven days later she was run over on her bike by a garbage truck and, as she puts it, "kind of lost my taste for competition." (Photo by Saskia Kahn)

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2004 was an eventful year for Matt Kimmett: He got divorced, quit two jobs, and booked himself a ’round-the-world tour. He soon found himself in Las Vegas, where he was annoyed to discover that his hotel room at the Tropicana Casino did not have an ashtray, even though he'd specifically booked a smoking room. So he wandered down to the lobby and grabbed this ashtray. Instead of leaving it behind when he moved on, he decided to take it with him because, as he puts it, "you might need an ashtray when you're traveling." The ashtray eventually accompanied him to Australia, Asia, and Europe, as he continued on his worldwide tour, and got plenty of use along the way. He now wants to bring things full-circle and return to Las Vegas, where he plans to leave the ashtray where he found it at the Trop. (Photo by Saskia Kahn)

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David Rondinelli has been a big fan of the actress Rose McGowan -- like, a really big fan -- ever since he saw her performance in the 1995 movie The Doom Generation. "She holds a special place in my heart," he says. "I felt like we shared a lot of similarities." So he was excited when he got to see McGowan making an appearance at the 2011 New York Comic Con. She was taking questions from the crowd, so he asked her a question ("If we took all the bad-ass characters you've played and brought them all together for a fight, which one would end up standing on the corpses of all the others?"), which was apparently such a good question that it brought a round of applause from the other fans in attendance. He also told McGowan he'd loved her ever since he'd seen her curse someone out in a movie, so she obligingly cursed him out in response. When it came time for him to have McGowan autograph a photo of herself, David asked her to use a line she used in the film Jawbreaker: "Fate has decided, my dear, that you will be cool." (Photo by Saskia Kahn)

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Adel Souto recently got in the habit of sitting on his couch and meditatively combing his beard with this pocket comb. It was part of a larger, long-term project of self-transformation through a program of humble living and self-denial of things like sweets and tobacco. Eventually, he says, the program was so successful that his "third eye" opened and a stream of creative productivity poured out of him: He wrote an entire philosophy book in one day (although it has not yet been published); he wrote two entire articles in his head while on the subway (he shopped them around but found no takers, apparently because he used racially charged language); and he experienced "a purple light emitting from my chest, a state of bliss, and eight full-body orgasms -- without ejaculation" (a claim that prompted several very curious inquiries from members of the Show & Tell audience). He doesn't attribute all of this to the pocket comb, but the comb was a step in the process. "All the things the mystics say are true," he says. (Photo by Saskia Kahn)

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About six years ago, Saskia Kahn (who took all the other photos for this round of Show & Tell) decided she needed a winter coat, so she purchased this coat made by the North Face. "It seemed very cool, very Brooklyn," says Saskia, who grew up and went to college in Brooklyn. But now she finds the jacket problematic: "It's so embarrassing. I wear it when I work on these photo shoots in Manhattan, and I look like a Brooklyn girl, not a Manhattan girl, with my hoop earrings and my North Face jacket. It even has stains on it that look like cum stains!" (They're actually just wax.) So why doesn't she just get another jacket? "I hate shopping," she says. (Photo by Heather McCabe)

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We conclude, as usual, with Show & Tell host Paul Lukas -- me. On May 18, 1999, my car got a flat tire. I took it to one of those flat-fix places, where a worker inspected the tire and pulled out this screw (you can get a better look at it here). As I looked at the screw, an art project formed in my mind: I would save this screw, along with all subsequent objects that gave me flat tires, and mount them in some sort of framed display, with little labels noting the date and location of each flat tire. I envisioned the screw being accompanied by a nail, a piece of glass, a random scrap of metal, and so on, and the end result would be a document of my history of flat tires. I was pretty pleased with this idea (probably too pleased) because, as a writer, I'd never been good at creating visual art, and I thought this project would be just the thing to get me started down an artistic path. Just one problem: In the nearly 14 years since the screw was extracted from my tire, I haven't gotten another flat. In most respects, this is a good thing. But on some level I find it mildly frustrating. (Photo by Saskia Kahn)

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That's it for this round of Show & Tell. Big thanks to all who attended, even bigger thanks to the participants, and über-special thanks to Heather McCabe for running the audio and to Saskia Kahn for serving as this month's Show & Tell shutterbug (check out more of her photography on her web site, and then hire her!). The next installment of Show & Tell will be Wednesday, April 10, 8pm, in the back room at Freddy's. Hope to see you then.

Show & Tell Participants from February 13, 2013

Courtney Coumo loves Halloween, even more than Christmas. This past Halloween, she bought a pair of giant, pointy ears and decided to be the Elf That Steals Things That People Lose. But then Hurricane Sandy hit on Oct. 28, "and my plan kind of went to shit," she says. She had come to terms with the idea that there would be no Halloween this time around, but then on Oct. 31, amidst all the hurricane damage, she saw a kid dressed up like Superman, which renewed her Halloween spirit. She put on the ears, walked around her neighborhood, and even went to the Brooklyn Museum, all the while garnering a range of very positive responses. "It was one of the most memorable experiences of my life," she says. "So the lesson is, no matter what the hell happens, just wear the freakin' ears." (Photo by Kirsten Hively)

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Coree Spencer began wearing this black hair band on Oct. 3, 2012, which is the day she moved to New York from California. Since then, she's gotten a job, been fired, and suffered from severe depression, but she has always worn the band, either in her hair or on her wrist. She has a box of other hair bands, but she's stayed with this one. "There have been times," she says, "when it felt like this was the only thing holding me together." (Photo by Kirsten Hively)

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Sam Baumel acquired this stick in North Carolina in December of 2011. It has spent most of its time since then in his car, where it's occasionally come in handy. One time he used it to fish his keys out from under the seat; another time he used it to poke a hole in the ground "to bury something before crossing the Canadian border." Asked what this something was, he says, "Illegal drugs, which were retrieved 48 hours later." (Photo by Kirsten Hively)

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Valerie Bronte and her best friend love the movie Beastmaster, in which Rip Torn wears a ring with an eyeball. The best friend happens to be a jeweler, so she made Valerie this eyeball-ish ring. The unusual thing is that the dark part of the ring is coprolite, which is a fancy term for fossilized dinosaur scat, and the white line running through the center of it is a trilobite, making for a double-fossilized piece of jewelry. (Photo by Kirsten Hively)

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In 2008, Nell Constantinople was working on a documentary film in Peru. While there, a shaman convinced her to try the Peruvian ahahuasca process, which is essentially a psychoactive drug trip that supposedly purges demons and leads to spiritual enlightenment -- or, in Nell's case, leads to intense vomiting and extended illness, which she had not expected. As someone said to her at the time, "You clearly had a lot of demons to get rid of." While she was recuperating, the shaman's helper -- an eight-year-old boy -- gave her this lizard toy that his mother had made for him. "He meant it as a comforting tool," she says, "but to me it represents fragility and mortality." (Photo by Kirsten Hively)

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These old fraternity calendars belonged to Mary Kathryn Bedlock's father, and date back to the time when he and Mary Kathryn's mother both attended Arkansas State University in the 1960s and ’70s. The women in the photos include friends of her mother and aunt from that period, and Mary Kathryn loves the outfits they were wearing. "The fashions are so relevant, even today," she says. She had considered turning the photos into collages, as part of an art project about family heirlooms, but now she's decided to keep them intact. (Photo by Kirsten Hively)

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David Rondinelli came to New York in 2006 and wanted to make new friends. At the suggestion of his brother, he joined a local rugby team -- an unusual choice for David, who was never all that athletic. As it turned out, he not only made new friends but also lost 30 pounds and won this "Most Improved" award in 2008, which he particularly proud of. "I was always a bookworm-ish type," he says, "so it was pretty inspiring to be part of this athletic culture." (Photo by Kirsten Hively)

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Nechama Levy is wearing a khata, which is a traditional Buddhist scarf. It was given to her in 2005, after she went for a hike outside a town in northern India and ended up getting lost in the jungle for three days. She eventually found her way back to the town, by which time she'd become something of a local celebrity -- half the town had been out looking for her. When she left the town to move on with her travels, many of the local residents came out to see her off, and they presented her with the scarf. She explains all this goodwill like so: "They didn't want to be known as the place where the American died." (Photo by Kirsten Hively)

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Nicole Reber is holding her copy of Lunch Poems by Frank O'Hara. "It's one of my favorite books of poetry, and the book that made me want to be a poet," she says. After talking about the O'Hara for a minute or so, she launched into a reading of one of his poems from the book, "Ave Maria," which is an exhortation for the mothers of America to let their kids go to the movies. (Photo by Kirsten Hively)

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Emma Williford loves this "sand swirly thing," which keeps reconfiguring into new sand patterns as it's rotated. "You can stare at it for hours," she says. "It even glows in the dark!" It was in her parents' house throughout her childhood, and then she annexed it at some point during college. These days she uses it as an oversized coaster. It's now showing its age -- there are some worn spots. "One day it'll crack," she says. "I'll cry." (Photo by Kirsten Hively)

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We conclude, as usual, with Show & Tell host Paul Lukas -- me. I acquired this copy of the Rolling Stones' 1972 LP, Exile on Main Street, about 30 years ago. In that time, the back cover has developed a bunch of scratches centering around a small indent. This is because I also own a copy of the Stones' 1971 LP, Sticky Fingers, whose cover design featured a real zipper (it was later changed to just a photo of a zipper). Since I shelve my LPs alphabetically by artist and chronologically within artist -- which is really the only way -- these two LPs have always been next to each other, and the Sticky Fingers zipper has gouged a little divot into the Exile cover over the years. Whenever I'm in a used record store, I look at old copies of Exile to see if they have the same scratches, and they often do, which makes me feel connected to the larger subculture of record geeks who file their LPs the same way I do. (Photo by Kirsten Hively)

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That's all for this time. Big thanks to all participants, and bonus thanks to Kirsten Hively for the photos and to Heather McCabe for handling the interstitial music. The next installment of Show & Tell will be Wednesday, March 13, 8pm, in the back room at Freddy's. Hope to see you then.

Show & Tell Participants from January 9, 2013

"When I'm depressed, I drink, and when I drink, I buy things I don't need," says Julie Threlkeld. One such episode took place in December of 2010, when she purchased an autographed eight-by-ten-inch glossy photograph of the actress Morgan Fairchild. The Post-it attached to the photo is from Fairchild's personal assistant and reads, "So sorry -- as Morgan hasn't had your possum stew, she doesn't feel comfortable endorsing it." Julie has no recollection of what this is referring to but was so mortified by the experience that she changed her PayPal password, so now she can't make impulsive online purchases. (Photo by Willow O'Feral)

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Willow O'Feral -- who took all the other photos at this installment of Show & Tell -- moved to New York City last spring and quickly joined an all-female afro-samba band, in which she plays the bass drum. Through a series of unlikely connections, her band got to warm up the crowd for the Rolling Stones during their recent shows in Brooklyn and Newark. Everyone in the band had to wear one of these gorilla masks -- a nod to the cover design of the Stones' latest compilation album. Interestingly, Willow and her bandmates weren't paid. "It was less glamourous than you might think," she says. "We only played for about five minutes at each show. Those were the fastest five minutes of my life. It was an insane, bizarre experience, which is perfect, because I mostly moved to New York to have insane, bizarre experiences." (Photo by Brad Heck)

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Anita Flores hates to waste food. Her office held a pizza party a few hours before she was heading to Show & Tell, and there was some pizza left over, so she took one of the pizzas with the intention of giving it away, perhaps to a homeless person, on her way to Show & Tell. But this turned out to be more difficult than she had expected. At one point she put the pizza down next to a sleeping woman on a subway platform, but a transit worker scolded her ("You're just gonna encourage them"), so she took the pizza and went in search of another recipient. After several other abortive attempts, she eventually threw away the pizza, leaving her with nothing to show for her efforts except the empty box and a Show & Tell story. (Photo by Willow O'Feral)

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When Sam Davison was growing up, he was obsessed with the Beatles and the Supremes. His love of music took a quantum leap at age 10, when he received his first Discman. "I look back fondly on this, much like someone would look back on their first album, because I could bring my music with me. This was my best friend!" He especially liked the little window on the cover, which allowed him to see the CDs spinning inside the machine, and soon realized that some CDs may actually have been designed with this in mind ("Certain CDs looked cooler as they spun than others"). The Discman broke when Sam was 13, but that turned out to be a case of fortunate timing: "My bar mitzvah happened and I got an iPod." (Photo by Willow O'Feral)

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Sabine Bernard and her mother and sister always engage in some sort of Christmas craft project together. When she went home to Portland, Oregon, for the holidays last month, they decided to make terrariums. Unfortunately, Sabine's terrarium was ruined by TSA workers during her trip home. She's tried to make up for it by making this tiny terrarium in a little glass vial, which she wears as a necklace pendant. (Photo by Willow O'Feral)

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Here's another Christmas-related story: Emily Thenhaus's father is a bit of an eccentric when it comes to stocking stuffers. "He always gives gifts appropriate for a five-year-old," she says. One year, for example, he filled everyone's stockings with salted nuts. Another time, he hid his own car keys in his own stockings and then got very excited, pretending that they were the keys to a new car. (He actually did this on more than one occasion.) This past Christmas he got Emily this box of neon-colored clay. "I think he mainly just likes having an excuse to shop at the St. Louis Museum of Art gift shop," she says. (Photo by Willow O'Feral)

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Tony Limuaco grew up in Guam, where his mother used the coconut cutter that he's sitting on. (That's the proper way to use it, but you can get a clearer view of it here.) Tony's uncle made it decades ago out of an old swing set and some rebar. When Tony made a recent trip home to visit his mother, she slipped the coconut cutter into his luggage, where it made for an interesting X-ray image at the security gate in Honolulu. Fortunately, the TSA official on duty happened to be a Pacific Islander and recognized the object as a coconut cutter right away. Once Tony finally got it home, he took it to one of those grinder trucks to have it sharpened, "but the guy didn't know what to do with it." (Photo by Willow O'Feral)

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In the early 2000s, Adel Souto held a series of short-term jobs -- at a bookstore, at a head shop, at a plant nursery. During this period, Adel, who is right-handed, decided to keep a left-handed journal, just as an exercise. The entry for Dec. 17, 2002, reads: "Today is a good day to die. Ask anyone. They will let you know by tomorrow." Fortunately, Adel did not take this self-advice. (Photo by Willow O'Feral)

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Francisco is a fairly serious jiu jitsu competitor. "It's my form of therapy and meditation," he says. During a recent tournament, he took on an opponent who was larger and more skilled than himself. He performed well but lost when the opponent executed a move that hyper-extended Francisco's elbow. He feels no shame in having lost to a superior competitor -- on the contrary, he now wears this elbow brace "like a badge of honor." (Photo by Willow O'Feral)

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When Kevin Fong was 11 years old, his grandfather suffered a heart attack. During a hospital visit, the grandfather gave Kevin his Walkman. "It was the last gift he ever gave me," says Kevin. "That's when I knew he was going to die." Sure enough, the grandfather died about a week later. (Photo by Willow O'Feral)

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We conclude, as usual, with Show & Tell host Paul Lukas -- me. Shortly after moving to New York City, I attended the 1987 Halloween Parade in Greenwich Village. Someone in the parade was handing out tiny zip-lock baggies, each of which contained a quarter and a little slip of paper that read, "In Case of Emergency, Call This Number." The number turned out to be for a runaway crisis hotline. My quarter, for whatever reason, had a hole drilled through it, so I put it on my keychain. I liked the idea that it would be my "emergency quarter," just in case I was ever down to my last 25 cents. The quarter, which was minted in 1981, has been on my keychain ever since and has gone literally around the world with me. Due to the hole, it weighs slightly less than a conventional quarter, so I often wonder if it would even work in a pay phone or soda machine. I could find out easily enough -- I happen to own a few coin-operated gadgets and could test the quarter in one of them -- but I don't really want to know. Sometimes the question is more interesting than the answer. (Photo by Willow O'Feral)

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That's it for this round of Show & Tell. Big thanks to all participants, and extra-special thanks to Willow O'Feral for serving as this month's Show & Tell shutterbug. The next installment of Show & Tell will be Wednesday, Feb. 13, 8pm, in the back room at Freddy's. Hope to see you then.

Show & Tell Participants from November 14, 2012

Billy Ganun's parents live in Breezy Point, one of the New York City neighborhoods that was hardest hit by Hurricane Sandy. While helping with the relief and clean-up efforts, he found these Mardi Gras beads under his parents' house. They're apparently left over from the neighborhood's annual Mardi Gras party, and they're a powerful reminder of Breezy Point's newfound hurricane-related connection to the city of New Orleans. Billy started wearing them while continuing his clean-up work and got some positive feedback. "An old lady said she liked that I was wearing ’em, so I'm gonna keep doing it," he says. "It's a reminder of where we want to get to, as opposed to where we are now." (Photo by Kirsten Hively)

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Willow O'Feral was walking on a California beach one day when she found an abstract piece of something or other, which she turned into the pendant for a necklace. She originally thought it might be "some kind of weird mask," but an engineer friend later told her that was part of an electrical insulator. "It's always felt talismanic to me, because it represents trash being transformed and the ocean spitting it back," she says. "I don't wear it every day, but on days when I need strength, like when I'm applying for a job." (Photo by Kirsten Hively)

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Adel Souto fell in love with someone over the internet. When they met in person, they sealed their bond and indulged their shared passion for transgressive adventure by trespassing into an abandoned steel mill in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where Adel took this circular sheet from a gauge that measured, well, something. (You can get a closer look at it here.) The two of them eventually lived together for three years. And although it didn't end well, Adel still has fond memories of that day at the steel mill, which he describes as "an amicable break-in." (Photo by Kirsten Hively)

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Faith Rowald was spending some time in Bethlehem (the one in Palestine, not in Pennsylvania) in 2008 when two Swedish friends gave her this mug, which features lots of Dalahäst horses — a Swedish icon. "The horses look magical and happy, which is what Sweden basically is," she says. "It's my favorite mug, even though it got chipped when the shelf it was sitting on fell down. I use it for mint tea and hot chocolate." (Photo by Kirsten Hively)

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Brad Heck's uncle was an engineer who helped build space shuttles for Honeywell. Among his inventions was this differential for the shuttle's autopilot system. (You can get a better view of it here.) His uncle's engineering career came to an end when he found religion and decided to become a minister, which led to the break-up of his marriage. The differential has several moving parts and is very satisfying to handle. Fiddling with it, Brad says, "is a very good way to get your mind in order. I don't find God in this; I find man in this." (Photo by Kirsten Hively)

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Michael George's younger brother, Johnny, is something of an information and culture sponge and likes to share what he knows with Michael — or impose it upon him. For example, Johnny has given Michael six binders (so far) of home-burned CDs containing year-by-year breakdowns of what Johnny considers to be important or notable music, including several CDs' worth of music from 1975. Michael has hinted to Johnny that he has neither the time nor the inclination to listen to all of this, especially since his tastes don't always line up with his brother's. Johnny's response: "Well, how else are you going to learn?" At the end of his Show & Tell presentation, Michael passed the CD around and invited any interested party to keep it. "Johnny's never gonna know." (Photo by Kirsten Hively)

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Diane George — no relation to Michael George, above — took a trip to China some years ago and fell in love with a little dog figurine at a local market. (Here's a better view of it.) She was happy to pay the seller's asking price — $5 — but her Chinese friend was embarrassed by her lack of haggling and insisted on dickering the price down to 50¢. Interestingly, the figurine is stamped on the bottom with "Made in Japan," which is very unusual for something sold in China. It also got Diane thinking about how much ground the figurine has covered: "It's brass, and Japan doesn’t have a lot of mineral wealth, so the materials must have come to Japan from somewhere else, and then it went to China, and now it's in New York." (Portrait by Kirsten Hively; dog photos by Diane George)

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Six months ago, Andrew Lederer had triple-bypass surgery. The doctors sent him home with medicine that was supposed to help his heart get back to normal, but he found that he wasn't feeling much better. After several weeks, it was discovered that they had prescribed the wrong medicine, and that he was essentially taking roughly one-fifth the dose he should have been taking. Fortunately, the error was corrected and he's now feeling much better. He brought the correct and incorrect medicines with him. (Photo by Kirsten Hively)

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Haisi Hu loves the story of Akira Yoshizawa, the man who helped popularize origami in Japan. He lived much of his life in poverty and made, by his own estimation, over 50,000 origami pieces, none of which he ever sold. Inspired by his example, Haisi has learned how to make origami pieces, including this black stallion, which took her about four hours. (Photo by Kirsten Hively)

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We conclude, as usual, with Show & Tell host Paul Lukas — me. About two weeks prior to this installment of Show & Tell, I fractured my wrist and forearm in a bicycle accident. I'm on the mend, but along the way I'm learning to deal with all sorts of new limitations. One thing I immediately realized was that I could no longer use dental floss. I vaguely remembered hearing about some little gizmo that has a piece of floss stretched between two prongs, so I went to the drug store and sure enough, there was a whole section devoted to this product category. I was amazed by all the varieties — different shapes, different colors. I eventually chose a 90-pack of Rite Aid Flossups, in part because the curvy handle reminds me of a sperm cell. (When your arm is broken in two places, you have to take amusement where you find it.) Frankly, I have no idea why anyone with two fully functional arms would use this type of product — it's much less satisfying than getting in there and going to work with a real piece of floss — but I sure am glad it exists. (Photo by Kirsten Hively)

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Big thanks to all participants, and extra-special thanks to Kirsten Hively for stepping in on short notice as this month's Show & Tell shutterbug.

Show & Tell will go on hiatus for December, but we'll be back with a new installment on Wednesday, Jan. 9, 2013, in the back room at Freddy's. Hope to see you then.