Several people commented on the piece about the demolition of Mortimer Hall, the Highlands building at Eighth and National that was cleared to make room for a new student center. In that building, as mentioned in a previous column, was “The Door.” On it I kept humorous headlines from various newspapers.

In one move around Mortimer Hall, it was easier to move the entire door to a new location than to apply an Exacto knife to remove the clippings. But let’s be clear: The door was of the standard institutional variety, and it held up pounds of profundity.

One headline that I overlooked last time read simply, “Babies are what mothers eat.”

One reader, Cathy Stauber, mentioned rolling on the floor after reading some of the strange headlines in that column. Stauber, a naturopathic physician, ought to know more than anyone the benefits of a good belly laugh, one in which the laugher rolls on the floor.

Susan Tsyitee, who took classes in Mortimer, is familiar with the pasted-on headlines on my office door and opined that Highlands ought to have presented me with the door when I retired, instead of just showing me the door.

My son Stan remembers that as a pre-teen he and his brother Diego spent hours in that building while I was in class. He wrote in part:

“Sniff. One of my fondest memories is spending what seemed like ages at and around your office at Mortimer Hall. We’d entertain ourselves with the paper clips, rubber bands and fountain pens in your desk. We knew the secretary downstairs (Jean Greer?) and had the run of the building. We also spent time there in the summer, when we had the building to ourselves. I’d run down to the far stairs, up the middle stairs, then down them at the end near 8th, making a big figure eight.”

Our youngest son, Ben, wrote, “I had completely forgotten about the door. I now remember that was the quickest way to find the office. Just look for a door covered in newspaper clippings. I was too young to understand any of them. I wish you still had them. Did you not try and remove them when you retired?

“The thing I remember most was the smell of the building. I remember it being a mix between fresh paper and maybe some copier chemical. It was a nice smell.”

That “nice smell” probably was a combination of odors from the copying machine downstairs and my photo darkroom upstairs. Putrid when sniffed individually, but ambrosial with the scents combined.

• • •

I blew it! A few weeks ago, I exaggerated the definition of “trivia” and mentioned it’s the plural of “trivium.” Not so, says former Highlands colleague Kim Kirkpatrick, who wrote, “Your etymology of trivia isn’t far off, but I fear the connection with trivial is. The via aren’t roads; they are ways, or courses, as we use the word now in college courses. Astronomy, music, arithmetic and geometry were the four courses of the medieval university’s quadrivium.

“Before students could do this hard stuff, though, they had to do preparatory work in logic, grammar, and rhetoric — the three courses of the trivium, the easy, or trivial, stuff.”

•••

Richard Lindeborg takes research seriously. In an earlier column I noted that many people — Madison, Hunter, Taylor, Morgan, Jordan, Scott and others — have acquired first names that used to be last names. Lindeborg uncovered hosts of names whose histories go back several centuries.

Some highlights:

• Jordan is an ancient first name. Crusaders started bringing back water from the Jordan River and using it to baptize boy children, who they named Jordan.
• Philanthropist Brooke Astor (b. 1902 and recently deceased) started the “modern” craze for that name.
• Scott was a popular name for children of that heritage in this country going way back. But the name spread, for example to composer Scott Joplin (b. 1868).
• Taylor may have been popularized by author Taylor Caldwell (b. 1900).

• • •

And finally, I received an anonymous collection of weird signs that appeared in an issue of “English Can Be Fun.”

Spotted in a toilet of a London office: Toilet out of order. Please use the floor below.

In a London laundromat: Automatic washing machines: Please remove all your clothes when the light goes out.

Notice in a field: The farmer allows walkers to cross the field for free, but the bull charges.

In a hotel in Acapulco: The manager has personally passed all the water served here.

In a Nairobi restaurant: Customers who find our waitresses rude should wait and see the manager.

And one we observed at a sidewalk café in Copenhagen: “Go away.” That’s their term for take-out food.

Are you rolling on the floor yet?