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Aww man! from the San Francisco Chronicle L. M. Boyd died, one of many fond readings from the S.F. Chron while growing up, one of the first columns I'd turn to. It was so much fun, interesting facts, the paper today just isn't the same as with L.M. Boyd, Herb Caen and the lot, Thanks for so many wonderful mornings, R.I.P. Mr. Boyd 
L.M. Boyd, the master gatherer of random facts whose Grab Bag column entertained generations of Sunday Chronicle readers, died on Monday at his Seattle home. He was 79.
Louis Malcolm Boyd was known as "Mal" to his friends in Seattle, where he wrote a daily column that was syndicated in 400 papers until he retired in December 2000.
The column was called Grab Bag only to readers of The Chronicle, which began carrying it in its Sunday Punch section in 1968.
In other towns, it went by other names: Checking Up, Draw Up a Chair, or Fact or Fancy. For millions of newspaper readers, it went with a cup of coffee like cream and sugar.
Throughout the country, he was known as L.M. Boyd, but at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, where he started the column in 1963, he used the pen name "Mike Mailway."
Grab Bag was a celebration of the offbeat, the unexpected and the gloriously mundane, packaged with deliberate randomness.
From his parting column in the Dec. 31, 2000, Chronicle:
" 'Fathom what's fathomable, and revere the rest.' That's not exactly what Goethe said. But pretty close. ... Larvae of all true wasps are flesh eaters. ... Giraffes, too, get kidney stones ...
"Nose length of the female flight attendant averages 2.18 inches. The Federal Aviation Administration has determined that, but I don't know why.
"A 'spork,' don't forget, is a plastic picnic spoon tipped with pointy prongs ...
"The walrus, too, loses hair with age ... "
His writing imparted a distinctive voice of the World War II generation, the parents of the Baby Boomers, wisecracking and confident and prone to viewing the relationships of men and women as a battle of the sexes.
"Q. What's the largest cell in the human body? A. The female egg cell. Smallest, the male sperm cell."
Grab Bag often featured the occasional asides of "Our Love and War Man," a character that presented items developed by him with his wife, Patricia.
Mr. Boyd was "Love" and his wife "War" -- although Patricia maintained it was the other way around -- he told Chronicle writer Sam Whiting in 2000. The couple met in 1960, when Mr. Boyd was writing a column for the Houston Chronicle called Dial Watchem, which fielded reader complaints about broken signs and potholes. He had hired Patricia as an assistant. They were married 45 years and had six children.
"If you've been married continuously to the same partner for more than 9.4 years, congratulations -- your marriage has lasted longer than the U.S. average." -- Grab Bag, June 19, 1986.
Patricia also became his business partner when he left the Post-Intelligencer in 1967 to syndicate the column. Their company, Crown Syndicate, distributed not only the L.M. Boyd column but almost 20 other columns and puzzle features.
Mr. Boyd attracted a huge following. "The column was interesting, and it was accurate," said Berkeley physics Professor Richard Muller. "I consider one of the greatest joys in life is continuing to learn. If I can do that while being amused, all the better."
Peter Sussman, who edited Grab Bag when it ran in the Sunday Punch section of The Chronicle until 1993, said Mr. Boyd wasn't always accurate, but he strove to be. "I enjoyed working with him," Sussman recalled. "If I saw something I thought might be wrong, he really did care about it, like any good journalist."
Sussman said the Grab Bag "was like an early version of the Web. There was information from all over the place. You could never tell what you'd find there, which was part of the pleasure of reading it."
"If you were born earlier than 1952, you got here before the word 'automation' ever appeared in the dictionary." -- Grab Bag, Feb. 3, 1985.
Mr. Boyd was born June 19, 1927, in Spokane and grew up on the Olympic Peninsula. At the age of 15, he wrote classified ads for the Spokane Review. At 16, he lied about his age and joined the Army, writing for Stars and Stripes during World War II.
His postwar career took him to newswriting gigs at ABC Radio in Europe and at newspapers in New York, San Francisco and Houston.
After his retirement, he was besieged with letters from fans who wanted him to continue. He and Patricia relented after seven months, producing From the Files of Mike Mailway until he was felled in August 2004 by the first of several strokes.
Chronicle subscriber Hugh Byrne said, "It was always a mind-expanding experience to read this little column of factoids. They were 10-second truths that were typically outside most people's everyday sphere of knowledge." He added, "It was very folksy, very gentle, but underneath it, a twist of humor, just the subtlest bite."
"Renoir was nearsighted. Rembrandt was farsighted. Van Gogh had glaucoma. Monet had cataracts." -- Grab Bag, Jan. 29, 1989.
In his last Grab Bag column, Mr. Boyd informed his readers that the term "so long" came "from British soldiers. Who got it from the Malays, who say 'salong.' Who borrowed it from the Middle Easterners, who say 'salaam.' "
His last item in that column was as random as his first, nearly four decades earlier. "Q. How much salt is in a gallon of seaweed? A. Four ounces, typically."
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/01/28/BOYD.TMP
L.M. Boyd, the master gatherer of random facts whose Grab Bag column entertained generations of Sunday Chronicle readers, died on Monday at his Seattle home. He was 79.
Louis Malcolm Boyd was known as "Mal" to his friends in Seattle, where he wrote a daily column that was syndicated in 400 papers until he retired in December 2000.
The column was called Grab Bag only to readers of The Chronicle, which began carrying it in its Sunday Punch section in 1968.
In other towns, it went by other names: Checking Up, Draw Up a Chair, or Fact or Fancy. For millions of newspaper readers, it went with a cup of coffee like cream and sugar.
Throughout the country, he was known as L.M. Boyd, but at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, where he started the column in 1963, he used the pen name "Mike Mailway."
Grab Bag was a celebration of the offbeat, the unexpected and the gloriously mundane, packaged with deliberate randomness.
From his parting column in the Dec. 31, 2000, Chronicle:
" 'Fathom what's fathomable, and revere the rest.' That's not exactly what Goethe said. But pretty close. ... Larvae of all true wasps are flesh eaters. ... Giraffes, too, get kidney stones ...
"Nose length of the female flight attendant averages 2.18 inches. The Federal Aviation Administration has determined that, but I don't know why.
"A 'spork,' don't forget, is a plastic picnic spoon tipped with pointy prongs ...
"The walrus, too, loses hair with age ... "
His writing imparted a distinctive voice of the World War II generation, the parents of the Baby Boomers, wisecracking and confident and prone to viewing the relationships of men and women as a battle of the sexes.
"Q. What's the largest cell in the human body? A. The female egg cell. Smallest, the male sperm cell."
Grab Bag often featured the occasional asides of "Our Love and War Man," a character that presented items developed by him with his wife, Patricia.
Mr. Boyd was "Love" and his wife "War" -- although Patricia maintained it was the other way around -- he told Chronicle writer Sam Whiting in 2000. The couple met in 1960, when Mr. Boyd was writing a column for the Houston Chronicle called Dial Watchem, which fielded reader complaints about broken signs and potholes. He had hired Patricia as an assistant. They were married 45 years and had six children.
"If you've been married continuously to the same partner for more than 9.4 years, congratulations -- your marriage has lasted longer than the U.S. average." -- Grab Bag, June 19, 1986.
Patricia also became his business partner when he left the Post-Intelligencer in 1967 to syndicate the column. Their company, Crown Syndicate, distributed not only the L.M. Boyd column but almost 20 other columns and puzzle features.
Mr. Boyd attracted a huge following. "The column was interesting, and it was accurate," said Berkeley physics Professor Richard Muller. "I consider one of the greatest joys in life is continuing to learn. If I can do that while being amused, all the better."
Peter Sussman, who edited Grab Bag when it ran in the Sunday Punch section of The Chronicle until 1993, said Mr. Boyd wasn't always accurate, but he strove to be. "I enjoyed working with him," Sussman recalled. "If I saw something I thought might be wrong, he really did care about it, like any good journalist."
Sussman said the Grab Bag "was like an early version of the Web. There was information from all over the place. You could never tell what you'd find there, which was part of the pleasure of reading it."
"If you were born earlier than 1952, you got here before the word 'automation' ever appeared in the dictionary." -- Grab Bag, Feb. 3, 1985.
Mr. Boyd was born June 19, 1927, in Spokane and grew up on the Olympic Peninsula. At the age of 15, he wrote classified ads for the Spokane Review. At 16, he lied about his age and joined the Army, writing for Stars and Stripes during World War II.
His postwar career took him to newswriting gigs at ABC Radio in Europe and at newspapers in New York, San Francisco and Houston.
After his retirement, he was besieged with letters from fans who wanted him to continue. He and Patricia relented after seven months, producing From the Files of Mike Mailway until he was felled in August 2004 by the first of several strokes.
Chronicle subscriber Hugh Byrne said, "It was always a mind-expanding experience to read this little column of factoids. They were 10-second truths that were typically outside most people's everyday sphere of knowledge." He added, "It was very folksy, very gentle, but underneath it, a twist of humor, just the subtlest bite."
"Renoir was nearsighted. Rembrandt was farsighted. Van Gogh had glaucoma. Monet had cataracts." -- Grab Bag, Jan. 29, 1989.
In his last Grab Bag column, Mr. Boyd informed his readers that the term "so long" came "from British soldiers. Who got it from the Malays, who say 'salong.' Who borrowed it from the Middle Easterners, who say 'salaam.' "
His last item in that column was as random as his first, nearly four decades earlier. "Q. How much salt is in a gallon of seaweed? A. Four ounces, typically."
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/01/28/BOYD.TMP
