[net_life] It's Sam Klein's World, You Just Live There

I'm very fond of my given name. Being a type geek helps. To people who love type, type holds more than mere letterforms they have interesting or uniniteresting looks and form words with nice or not nice shapes. I've always been partial to names in which the forename (first name) is longer than the byname (lastname) and the middle name. My name, "Samuel John Klein", works on that level most certainly.

The name Samuel, whilst having Biblical proportions, has a nice majuscule S up at the front, ends with a strong minuscule l at the back, and the low area between are all nice, orderly x-height type, mostly vowels. I've always liked vowels just a little better than consonants, with a few exceptions. And the byname Klein, with it's strong-backed starting letter and the x-height minuscule n at the end, has a profile something like a wedge. Together just the first and last name work very well, visually, and when you add the middle name John, you get a pivotal center for the other two wordforms to work on.

I really can't say it otherwise: my name rocks. I'm happy and proud to have it.

The name itself comes from a man long dead. I am the second Samuel John Klein, my father's father was the first. Mom adored Grandpa Klein, always said he was a happy fellow and he loved her as his daughter-in-law. Regrettably, in the mid 1960s before I was too very old, Grandpa Klein died, in his 80's, I understand, happy Silverton-area dairy farmer. I've only ever seen a picture of him, with a little hat on and dressed up with an Oregon Centennial pin on his lapel. His son and myself are both chips off the old block, and the older I get, the more I will resemble them, although I do think they would have looked askance at the long hair.

Anywho. I told you all that, to tell you this.

This will sound somewhat deranged, but I like looking at my name so much I'm compelled to get it into print. I load up the articles I've written at Quark VS InDesign just to see my name at the top. It's on those websurfs that I cast my Googlegillnet far and wide to gather other Sam Klein's that are out there.

Occasionally I find some interesting results.

This Link will take you to a Wikipedia profile page for someone calling themselves Sj, and who says thier name is Samuel Klein. Though he doesn't say what the "J" stands for, he does say that he goes by "SJ", which is coincidental, because that's what Mom called me when I was a neat thing.

I must abashedly say that the rest of the Wikipedia profile page makes little or no sense to me. But he does take the time to say who he is not, and one thing at the end of that string really caught my eye: "Winnipeg-based dectective Sam Klein".

Sa' wha"?

So, I followed this link to the Thrilling Detective site, which is apparently a detective fan's ominbus on the web. Seems our fictional Sam Klein is a street tough who lived in the rough North End of Winnipeg in the first and second decade of the 20th century, and becomes a detective as most interesting characters in these stories do...accidentally.

The Canadian author Allan Levine has written two Sam Klein novels, The Blood Libel(1997) and Sins Of The Suffragette(2000). I'm going to check them out, even though I'm not a fan of historical detective fiction, I am, as has been overly documented already, a fan of Sam Kleins.

Up to now my Googlegillnet sweeps have turned up a Dr Samuel Klein, a specialist in obesity (I ought to talk with him as I do need to lose a few pounds) and a handful of other Samuel Kleins as well as a Samuel J. Klein or two. But so far, Google has coughed up only one Samuel John Klein, and that is YT. So, to paraphase Fafnir, I am the whole worlds only source for Samuel John Klein.

Being Samuel John Klein is sometimes great and sometimes shabby, and rarely is it ever ideal. But if you look at it the right way, it's always interesting.