Category: Cities/Towns
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The Dreadful Road Trip
I’m told that one could see the smoke rising from the Pentagon from my home on September 11, 2001, barely two miles away. My coworkers in Crystal City, immediately to the south, felt our office building shake (explaining their added nervousness during the recent earthquake). I wouldn’t know. I was stranded more than 800 miles…
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Jackson Volcano
I’ve been inundated with search engine queries for the last several days about a city with a volcano and lots of brewpubs. They’ve been landing on the guest article that Marc Alifanz wrote about Portland, Oregon, which I think is probably the correct answer to the readers’ question. I’ve tried to find the source. Often…
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Monumental Ride
Monumental indeed. The kids started school this morning, including our younger son who attended his first day of kindergarten. Summer is over according to the students although the calendar may not agree. Actually it ended a couple of weeks ago when my strangely popular Ferry pages began their cyclical readership drop as I’ve observed in…
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Odds and Ends 3
I use “Odds and Ends” articles to gather several unrelated topics under a single roof. None of them standing alone would provide enough material to merit its own article. Nonetheless, collectively they might provide a few moments of amusement. These include updates, observations, user suggestions and various failed efforts on my part. If you like…
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Confederate Yankees
The Confederate’s Army of Northern Virginia surrendered at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865. That was essentially the end of the Civil War although others continued to fight briefly afterwards. The former Confederate states all regained representation in the United States Congress within the next few years. Eventually they all formally terminated their succession…
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Perfect Weather
I spent a long weekend in Wisconsin a couple of weeks ago. The family had already been on holiday there for about ten days when I arrived, staying with the in-laws. We visited with my wife’s aunt and uncle one beautiful Sunday afternoon at their home along the banks of Lake Wisconsin (map). The weather…
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Earthquake in DC!
Holy crap! We just had an earthquake. I’m on the top floor — 11th floor — of an office building in Crystal City, just across the river from Washington, DC. The building actually ROCKED for awhile. Lots of people have evacuated the office buildings. I can see them out on the streets. Me? I’m still…
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Rotten Boroughs
Changing population patterns created a particularly rotten political situation in the United Kingdom over a period of several hundred years. It remained uncorrected until the middle of the Nineteenth Century. The House of Commons, the lower house, has its roots all the way back in the Thirteenth Century in England. Each borough — roughly analogous…
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Mmm… Doughnut
My mind gravitates back to doughnuts (or is it donuts?) following up on a long-ago article, the Gaithersburg Doughnut Hole. The concept fascinates me. It occurs when a town completely surrounds a separately-governed entity, generally another town. That leaves a doughnut town — one with the hole in it — and a doughnut-hole town, the…
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Sports Facilities I Never Imagined
My mind fixates on patterns and I’ve noticed a number of unusual sport coincidences in recent days. It started with an acquaintance who mentioned her disinterest in Reno, Nevada. She simply didn’t want to go back there again this year. Of course I knew she didn’t gamble. So I wondered why she would go to…