I spent Labor Day weekend participating in two of the more sublime and less evil American pastimes: the yard sale and the barbecue. The former was nice — I certainly met a lot of the neighborhood and even a few readers, which is always a nice encounter out in the wild. After having spent the […]
Bronze,
Posted inLife + Outdoors
Survey Markers and Olympic Medals
Observant walkers strolling down Ninth Street in Eureka between A and L streets may have wondered about the occasional incongruent circular metal discs anchored into the south sidewalk bearing the words “CALIFORNIA DIVISION OF HIGHWAYS,” “HUM-101” and the date 1971. Incongruent because Ninth is outside Caltrans jurisdiction. In fact, the discs are centerline markers of […]
Posted inNews
McKinley Statue Vandalized
The statue of President William McKinley was doused overnight or early this morning with some sort of liquid that left a greenish patina discoloration down the front and back of the figure. The Mad River Union reports the vandalism was discovered by a city worker and has been reported to the Arcata Police Department. The […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
The Sound of Bells
“Never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee,” cautioned poet John Donne 400 years ago. That was then. Weddings and funerals used to be prime bell-ringing events, when virtually every parish church in the western world had one or more bells hung in their tower or steeple. You won’t hear […]
Posted inLife + Outdoors
The Bronze Age
We love dividing the world up into threes: animal, vegetable and mineral; mind, body and spirit; past, present and future; starter, entree and dessert. And so it was 200 years ago, when the curator of what was to become the National Museum of Denmark, Christian Thomsen, gave us the Stone Age, the Bronze Age and […]