Category: Cities/Towns
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Reconciliation
I mentioned Brian Brown’s wonderful Vanishing South Georgia website previously as I explored leaf-vein patterns left behind by swamp drainage. Brian uses an interesting minimalist approach. It allows imagery to portray a wistful almost melancholy longing for a heritage slowly slipping away. He’s attempting to preserve it all visually before it decomposes back into the…
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The Largest Smallest US County (a.k.a. it sucks getting old)
Did yesterday’s dispatch seem a little shorter than usual? That’s because it was half the length I’d intended. To summarize briefly, each of the fifty United States has a smallest and a largest county. Yesterday I featured the largest of those smallest counties. Today I’ll take the opposite tack and present the smallest of the…
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Vale to Pensacola
We’re in that wonderful time of the year when people are still getting used to Daylight Saving Time (that’s Saving without an “s” and no I don’t know why that bothers me). On Twelve Mile Circle that also means I’m getting an odd little bump in traffic that only happens when the time changes either…
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Wallace Redux
I’ve never been to Wallace, Idaho but I simply couldn’t get that place out of my head in spite of the controversy[1] surrounding its Center of the Universe claim. Seemingly, there is an odd story for each of its 960 residents. This one involves a stoplight. It all comes down to geography and in this…
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Charlottesville Beer Trail
EDITOR’S UPDATE: THIS ARTICLE WAS WRITTEN IN 2009. THE LOCAL BEER SCENE HAS GROWN AND CHANGED CONSIDERABLY SINCE THAT TIME. Email traffic began to pick up late last summer on the DC-Beer Listserv. Another brewpub was about to open in the rolling hills west of Charlottesville. Of course, Breweries and brewpubs had been sprouting up…
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Center of the Universe
Colonel William R. Wallace built a pioneering homestead within a narrow valley in the northern Idaho panhandle. However, he probably didn’t realize he’d settled at the Center of the Universe. We can forgive that. In 1884 he couldn’t possibly have know he was sitting atop a billion ounces of silver either, or next to what…
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Virginia’s Bermuda
Bermuda was once part of Virginia. It would be natural to wonder how that might happen. There is a striking difference between the two. Most visibly, Virginia occupies a solid placement on the North American mainland. Meanwhile, Bermuda is an island archipelago 650 miles (1046 kilometers) out to sea. If Bermuda was directly off the…
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Quantico: the Ultimate Gated Community
Imagine a community ringed by an impenetrable perimeter, a compact neighborhood patrolled vigorously around the clock by highly-trained armed guards, motivated by mission and granted the full authority to challenge intruders with lethal force if necessary. The privacy afforded by this level of security could only be the exclusive domain of the ultra-rich and privileged,…
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Glasgow or Madrid?
Think quickly: Which city is further west, Glasgow, Scotland or Madrid, Spain? If you’re a cynic like me you’d guess Madrid. Of course, you’d figure it was a trick question whether you “knew” the answer or not. You’d also be wrong. Glasgow is indeed further west than Madrid. However, if I substituted Edinburgh, Scotland for…
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Nasty Commutes
The Washington Post published a recent article on bad commutes, “A Dubious Distinction: The Longest Ride in U.S.” This was considered so significantly newsworthy that it appeared on the front page of their print edition on February 3, 2009. They determined that the sufferers of the worst average commute in the United States live in…