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It was recently brought to my attention that I hadn't been allowing anonymous comments on this blog. For what it's worth, I've changed that.

Crazy Ads of the World, Part II

Following up on the success of my "Nuts 5 Nuts" post, I have another blurry picture to show to you. As mentioned in the post below, I've been in Washington, DC. I was staying with friends (thanks S&S!) at a condo in Georgetown. Behind the condo building there is an empty parking lot, and a small delivery-only pizza place that opens (on the other side, not shown here) to a major street. So this place, shown here with the small red awning, has one or two delivery cars that come around here to the back to pick up the pizzas that they deliver. Other than that, the parking lot is always empty. There used to a video rental store that brought some cars, apparently, but it's out of business. About a week into my trip, I noticed that orange sign go up behind the tree, on the fence next to the dumpster. It's an advertisement for a new kind of pizza, selling for $10.99. But here's the thing: no one can see this ad. It can be seen from a) this balcony, b) the balcony just below it, and that's it. Below there, other trees block the view. There are no houses that could see this sign. There may be an adjacent condo or two that could also see it. Maybe four people, who already live next to the pizza place.

After I saw this, I kept my eye open for further occurrances. On the bus one day, I noticed that another franchise storefront from the same pizza chain had the very same sign displayed in the front. So my best guess is that the pizza company sent out the ads, requiring all the franchises to post them. However, since the front of this store was just too small, being delivery-only, it had to hang it on the fence. In the back. Where 4 people can see it.

Huzzah!

National archives

I'm on a research trip to Washington, DC, working at Archives II building in Silver Spring, Maryland.

If this is the most impressive archival building I've ever worked, it's not quite the prettiest. At the ECLA/CEPAL building in Santiago, Chile, there were live peacocks running around in a cactus garden outside my windows. Here, the windows open onto pleasantly dense forest, and I've seen a few raptors circling around.

What's the strangest thing I've learned at the archives that I'll never be able to use in a real research project, you ask? Well, thanks for asking. It's the following: once upon a time (1930s and 40s, mostly), there was an ultra-right wing, quasi-fascist political movement in Mexico known as Sinarquismo. In some US intelligence records, I learned that the Mexican president, roundabouts 1940, tried to get them all to settle in Baja California, presumably to get rid of them. (Much like we in the US use Wyoming.) Of course the previous residents of Baja weren't so keen on this, but the real problem was the bombing of Pearl Harbor. After that, the US considered Baja California strategically important and asked the Mexican president not to let it be overtaken with folks who were, at the time, hostile to the US. There's more: I also learned that the US apparently floated the idea of buying Baja California from Mexico during World War II, a request that Mexico was kind enough to find amusing rather than insulting.

More Indianapolis

From another plaza in Indianapolis, the strange sight of a fountain that created a wall of ice for itself.

Indianapolis

Most. Patriotic. Picture. Ever.

That I've taken, anyway.

From the Indiana War Memorial at the center of the city, with the view of the state house in the background.

Out of the cave

From the forest outside of the cave. Nicole's blog has more about the trip.

From the cave

From old mining operations (19th century) near the main entrance to the cave.

Mammoth Cave

In Kentucky, we made our way to Mammoth Cave National Park. Mammoth Cave is by far the largest cave system in the world, but letting people in to explore on their own would be both dangerous to the people and destructive to the cave. So, in spite of its hundreds of miles of cave systems, you can only tour very limited areas with lighting systems and the like. It's hard to get good pictures in that sort of light, but this one came out OK - you get a sense of the scale if you look at Nicole in the corner. There were much larger sections as well, and areas with underwater lakes, rivers, stalactites, etc. I found the human history of the cave fascinating: it's been a tourist attraction since the early 19th century, and it has been used for mining for thousands of years and a small section briefly housed a tuberculosis sanitarium. (It didn't help the patients.) Another interesting bit: in different words, the park service brochure mentioned that national parks were important in the creation of American nationalism. It is well known that nationalism rests on an imagined antiquity; but the United States couldn't call on civilizational antiquity in the way that Europe could. Its natural history filled part of the gap, so to speak, claiming places like Mammoth Cave and the Grand Canyon as part of "American heritage." One could say more about this, of course. I wonder if there are any serious studies of this aspect of the history of the NPS.

New Harmony

While in Southern Indiana, where my Grandma lives, we went to a small town called New Harmony. It started, I learned, as a utopian community founded by the Welsh socialist Robert Owen in 1825. (Did you have any idea that he made any communities in the United States? I sure didn't.) The experiment was short-lived, but for whatever reason another group tried a similar thing in the same place in the 1830s. Today, the town has preserved some of the old cottages and houses that formed parts of these communities, while the rest of the town has attracted a few oddballs and some good artists. Looking through the window of one of the earliest cottages, I took this picture.

Spring?

To celebrate completing my orals exams, Nicole and I claimed a few days for a belated spring break. We drove south, to southern Indiana and Kentucky. We were right that it would be greener in the south, but that bizarre distortion of the jet stream was sucking Canadian air down as far as Arkansas and Georgia, so it absolutely failed to be warm. In fact, most days struggled to get out of the thirties, and while we were in Kentucky it snowed. (In April! How often does it snow in Kentucky, period? Much less in April?) Still, a good time, and a nice break from work. Here's a picture from Audubon State Park in Kentucky, near the town where John J. Audubon spent a lot of time collecting many of the bird samples that he used in his famous books and prints.

Point Six

The air was very clear today; here's a view of downtown from the Point.

One Half

The sun was out today, and temperature was in the 20s, so we went to the beach to relax. Here I am lying down in a six foot high pile of ice and snow which would be over water in warmer weather.

Point Four

The ice had formed into several circular islands like this...not sure why.

Point III

Now that the temperatures have climbed back into the 20s, it's gotten much more comfortable and we went back out to the point to see some of the ice that has formed on the rocks. Here there were rows and rows of icicles that can't quite be captured in a still photograph.

More from the point

The wind chill, by the way, was between -20 and -30.

Europa? Lake Michigan?

It's been frigid recently--so much so that when it hit ten degrees today, it felt comfortable. Full of documentary courage, though, Nicole and I spent a few minutes outside to take pictures of "The Point" on the shore of Lake Michigan, where the ice frozen on the rocks has taken on an extraterrestrial quality.

Jackson Park III

Some autumn leaves under water and ice.

Jackson Park II

A second picture from Jackson Park today; a path over a stream. It's ice on the right and water on the left.

Jackson Park in January

We had a pleasant light snow this morning, and so Nicole and I walk to Jackson Park for the first time in a while. Quite frankly, without that park I'm not sure I'd be able to live in this city (a good city though it is). Here's what it looked like in the Japanese Garden today.

Snow

It finally snowed this weekend, so while driving back from visiting Mom in Eastern Iowa, we stopped at Starved Rock State Park in central Illinois. It's a surprising place with limestone bowls several stories high that have been carved out by waterfalls over the millennia. The park lies on the banks of the Illinois River (and near the I & M canal that effectively connected Lake Michigan to the Mississippi River, allowing Chicago to grow into a major transportation center). Anyway, a picture, courtesy of Nicole.

Bonus: a house after mine own heart.