Another casualty of life without air-conditioning

The latex in rubber bands goes fast in the heat, sometimes leaving behind a gooey residue. The stickum on self-adhesive items such as foil stars lasts a bit longer, but not forever, and it's difficult, if not impossible, to find the old-fashioned ones that require moistening with water or saliva. Even though we do not prefer the Postal Service self-adhesive stamps, the other sort is being phased out. The USPS adhesive, though, is a quality item that has not failed yet, no matter how how the summer. It must now be conceded, however, that trusty old Elmer's Glue-All will not last forever, or at least it won't stand up to summer temperatures in perpetuity. It was pink and watery and the plastic bottle was sucked inward. What's more, it didn't smell all that great, either. So those foil stamps with the failed adhesive must now wait to be used until the supply of Elmer's has been replenished. Here's a laboratory material-safety data-sheet; it reports that it should be kept in a cool, dry place and that the decomposition temperature is unknown. So ours was dry, but not cool. The advent of Elmer's displaced common uses of LePage's Mucilage. Here's a shrine to LePage's, sacred to the memory of the builder's ancestors, as it turns out. Many were the scissor wounds caused by attempting to re-open that slit in the rubber cap; of course, it was all but impossible to get the top off the bottle. This stuff was brittle when dry and was not at all friendly to those who were untidy in their stickings-together. Figure 4 (scroll down) shows the top very clearly.