The Foundation has now "raised about $525,000" from various sources, including the Dutch government, and there are some 30 groups that "have started Repair Cafes across the Netherlands, where neighbors pool their skills and labor for a few hours a month to mend holey clothing and revivify old coffee makers, broken lamps, vacuum cleaners and toasters," among other items. Martine thinks it’s the practical nature of fixing things that makes the idea go. Compared to "ideals about what could be," says Martine, this is "about doing something together in the here and now." The "togetherness" part of actually is another key element.

"What’s interesting for us is that it creates new places for people to meet, not just live next to each other like strangers," says Nina Tellegen of DOEN Foundation, which granted $260,000 to the Repair Cafe. Nina says it has been a boon to older folks, in particular, who still remember how to work with their hands. William McDonough, an architect, notes another important relationship: "The value of the Repair Cafe is that people are going back into a relationship with the material things around them," he observes. Martine, meanwhile, sees a global movement in the making, having fielded inquires about the Repair Cafe from France, Belgium, Germany, Poland, Ukraine, South America and Australia."

"Novels are about preserving the ways we feel, detailing the ways we hold objects, the way in which we smell something," says Orhan, a Nobel Prize-winning author. "Even in a novel of 600 pages, the details of objects fade away, but we never forget the sentiments those objects generate … This museum is more about those sentiments than the story." The novel’s storyline was driven, in part, by things Orhan found in local curio shops, which he would buy after describing them in the novel. "When I finished the book," says Orhan, "the house was full of these objects. I had to do the museum."

This was much easier said than done. Orhan bought the building in which The Museum of Innocence is housed back in 1998, and the museum took so long to complete that his "die-hard fans had wondered whether it would open" (the book, first published in 2008, includes "a map to and ticket for entry to the museum; that ticket is now honored for admission"). Items are "grouped in 83 numbered panels, one for each chapter" of the book. Some see the project as self-indulgent, however Ron Gluckman suggests it is "an inventive bricks and mortar expansion of the story at a time when the internet often seems to simplify literature."

“When I looked at the architecture, the structure of buildings that were going up worldwide, you saw a whole different look, and shape,” he once said. “My sense was that hairdressing definitely needed to be changing … To me, hair meant geometry, angles. Cutting uneven shapes, as long as it suited that face and that bone structure.” His “breakthrough came in 1963 when he cut the long hair of Hong Kong-born actress Nancy Kwan into a bob with sharp face-framing points.” Later, he created “a sensation” when Roman Polanski paid him $5,000 to cut Mia Farrow‘s hair incredibly short, as featured in Rosemary’s Baby. In the film she exclaims, “It’s Vidal Sassoon! It’s very in!”

Vidal went on to create a line of hair-care products that reached $100 million in sales annually, and his ad campaign made famous his tagline, “If you don’t look good, we don’t look good.” He later sold the company to Richardson Vicks and it is now owned by Procter & Gamble. “This was somebody who changed our industry entirely, not just from the point of view of cutting hair but actually turning it into a business,” says John Barrett, who keeps his own salon at Bergdorf Goodman. “He was one of the first who had a product line bought out by a major corporation.” Vidal Sassoon died earlier this week at age 84, in Los Angeles.

Either way, the show became a hit when it aired in 1956 and “is still on the air for an hour each weekday on CBS,” notes Dennis. Contestants try to “guess the price of an item — a boat, a refrigerator, the cost of house cleaning for a year. The contestant who comes closest without exceeding the actual price won.” Bob got the idea for another hit game show, “To Tell The Truth,” after walking into a crowded elevator and wondering about the occupations of his fellow travelers. The resulting game involved “three people, all claiming to be the same person, trying to befuddle a panel of four celebrities.”

Bob’s other big hits included “Password” and “The $10,000 Pyramid,” originally starring Dick Clark. Bob explained that all his shows were essentially about communication. “Once you cause somebody at home to talk to the set aloud, even by himself or herself, then you’ve got a good game show, he once said. “You want them to say, ‘It’s number 2! It’s number 2! It’s number 2!’ before the moment of truth comes out.” Or, as he confided to the Washington Post in 1978: “By the time they find out that what they are watching is crap, they’ve already watched it.” Bob Stewart was 91 when he died last week in Los Angeles.