Goodbye to L.M. Boyd. Here’s the PI’s obit.

In Seattle, you knew him as Mike Mailway but I grew up reading his work in the SF Chronicle. L.M. Boyd’s Grab Bag was perfect for my attention span — brief bits of trivia chipping away at conventional wisdom. How much of it was BS? I didn’t care then. And I buy most of it now. Nuggets like these — I’ve selected some of his rainy notes below:

• Many 17th-century Londoners objected mightily to umbrellas. Wanted them outlawed. The historical footnotes say they were serious in their stated belief that “the purpose of rain is to make people wet.”
• Rain storms in ancient Germany washed over old ruins. They exposed curious gold coins. These, from before Roman times. The coins were called “rainbow plates.” They were what led to the “pot of gold at the end of the rainbow” fancy.
• “Flowing in of the tide” was the first meaning of our word “flood.”
• Moisture can swell mushrooms 100 times their dry size. On cloudless days, they remain unseen just under the ground’s surface. Then comes an overnight rain, and in the morning they’re all over the place.

Sad to admit that I’d forgotten about Boyd and the Grab Bag. Didn’t even know he had “followed” me to Seattle. But he was a blogger before there was blogging.

–j