Found In the Archives: Claud Thornton’s Traveling Crime Museum
Jack Delano/Library of Congress
In March 1941, Jack Delano was working for the federal government’s Farm Security Administration (FSA), photographing the relocation of area farmers during the construction of Ft. Bragg, North Carolina.
In addition to the farmers and the housing conditions of the construction workers, Delano found interest in the roadside culture of camp followers that catered to the construction workers: “gas stations, barbecue stands, and amusement centers.”
Among these was a traveling sideshow “crime museum” that Delano, according to the Library of Congress, described as, “consisting of dilapidated effigies of famous criminals run by an old shell-shocked World War veteran.”
(via Found in the Archives, NPR’s Picture Show miniseries featuring archival films and found images selected by Rich Remsberg)
Hang Son Doong, Mountain River Cave
A really big cave has been discovered in Vietnam:
An enormous shaft of sunlight plunges into the cave like a waterfall. The hole in the ceiling through which the light cascades is unbelievably large, at least 300 feet across. The light, penetrating deep into the cave, reveals for the first time the mind-blowing proportions of Hang Son Doong. The passage is perhaps 300 feet wide, the ceiling nearly 800 feet tall: room enough for an entire New York City block of 40-story buildings. There are actually wispy clouds up near the ceiling.
photo out of context
Equal Protection Men’s Club
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia doesn’t think equal protection applies to women. Best comment so far:
If Scalia applies this logic to the 14th amendment, then he’d have to do the same for the 2nd.
I’m sure when they debated the 2nd amendment, it didn’t apply to much more than muskets. I doubt they had automatic weapons on their minds.
When we write laws now for automatic weapons, do we write in for the potential for laser pistols?
We need a constitutional amendment outlawing the potentiality of a Death Star. It could happen….
quote out of context
Ms. Prial also said many honest investment professionals have behaviors that point to narcissism, a trait that often goes hand-in-hand with deception. She has had to learn that an inflated sense of self isn’t a suspicious anomaly on Wall Street.
Picture 197
Gravel and Ink, Sumi Ink and Media on Paper, 2011
Buttermilk Breakfast (for Cece and Rick — and all y’all)
A Yankee learns to love buttermilk.
The first time I ever tried buttermilk, I spat it all over the dock. (I was in Norfolk, Virginia, just off the boat.) It wasn’t that I didn’t like it—I thought it was spoiled. The acrid taste, the little floating lumps set all the alarm bells off. I was just congratulating myself for my self-preservation instincts, when the person who had bought me the carton began upbraiding me for being just another stupid Yankee.
Well, of course, he was right.
Smile Though Your Heart Is Aching
Women laughing alone with salad (via @anarchivist): Photos that set me to thinking.
They are the stuff of tragicomedy. The Unbearable Tragicomedic Lightness of Salad, or, When It’s Just Not Enough and It Ain’t What You Want.
And they set me to pondering a Unified Field Theory of Dinner and Dessert.
Read more
from the spam
you can’t turn a whore into a housewife.
headline of the day
NYC jumper saved by trash uncollected since storm
We Watched: 12.23.2010 – 01.03.2011
The last season of Battlestar Galactica
Lots of fun. Lots of ideas. Lots of drama.
Encounters at the End of the World
I spend a lot of time watching a Herzog documentary thinking about which parts are real and which parts he made up.
Arrested Development, Season One
I already knew it was good, but catching an episode here or there doesn’t do it justice. Also, I might have a Buster Bluth impersonation in me somewhere.
Made me tear-up for no reason other than appreciation.
It’s been thirteen years since I saw it twice in the theater. Calmer than you, Dude.
Started watching Dexter
A TV show about a likable serial killer with a code of ethics.
What did you watch?
Mark Your Calendar
Other notable highlights:
Mr. T’s birthday, Montenegro’s independence or the Red Sox-White Sox game.
See you assholes on the 22nd.
tweet of the day
Belousov-Zhabotinsky Reaction
I find this colourful time-lapse video of the Belusov-Zhabotinksy reaction very beautiful. Petri dish drink coaster?
More than 1,000 dead birds fall from sky in Arkansas
BEEBE, Ark. — Wildlife officials are trying to determine what caused more than 1,000 blackbirds to die and fall from the sky over an Arkansas town.
The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission said Saturday that it began receiving reports about the dead birds about 11:30 p.m. the previous night. The birds fell over a 1-mile area of Beebe, and an aerial survey indicated that no other dead birds were found outside of that area.
Commission ornithologist Karen Rowe said the birds showed physical trauma, and she speculated that “the flock could have been hit by lightning or high-altitude hail.”
The state fish and game people speculated that New Year’s Eve revelers shooting off fireworks in the area could have startled the blackbirds from their roost and that the birds might have died from the stress and terror of it all.
former friend
Not quite a headline of the day, not quite a quote out of context:
A woman reported to police Saturday that a former friend broke into her house and took a pair of shoes.
At 7:30 a.m., the woman reported, she heard the doorbell ring while she was in bed.
A few minutes later, the former friend barged into her room and pushed her into a wall.
The woman said she told the former friend to leave, at which point the former friend went into the woman’s closet and took what the woman later discovered was a pair of shoes she was borrowing.
The woman reported that she has had several problems with the former friend. She said she was afraid of the former friend and thinks she is mentally unstable.
Police had tried earlier to make contact with the suspect at her house but she had told them to go away.
The former friend and her boyfriend were inside the house but would not answer the door.
After several minutes, the former friend and her boyfriend came out the front door and were put in handcuffs.
The suspect denied any altercation, according to the report.
Edited for my amusement.
Chuck Berry’s collapse
reminds us how much he matters.
Speaking of corny, old-timey stars like Elvis –
Chuck Berry, a founding father of rock ‘n’ roll, collapsed at a concert in Chicago Saturday night. Berry, 84, left the theater on his own and refused an ambulance.
The Chicago Tribune quotes concert promoter Michael Petryshyn as saying, “Obviously, something was off. Fifteen minutes into the set, it went from fine to something wasn’t right. He was starting songs mid-song, playing 15 seconds of a song.”
(Thanks to Pamela for the word.)
Two Words
Aggressive hospitality.
Dinah Washington | Send Me to the Electric Chair
I’ve been on a Dinah Washington tear lately, and I found this, her rendition of a song recorded by Bessie Smith.
I’m not sure when this performance was recorded or on what program it was broadcast, but it had to have been before the end of 1963 — because in the wee wee hours of December 14, 1963, Dinah’s husband (her eighth), NFL player Dick “Night Train” Lane, awoke to find his wife dead. The autopsy showed she had swllowed a lethal combination of secobarbital and amobarbital. She was thirty-nine.
Night Train Lane figures in George Plimpton’s great book Paper Lion in a major way. It’s been a long time since I read Paper Lion, and I don’t have a copy to hand, but I remember a scene early on in the book, early on in 1963, when Plimpton arrives at the Detroit Lions’ training camp. Night Train Lane is lying on a dormitory bed, listening to a Dinah Washington record on a funky little record player.
photo out of context
Love
This is a vintage photo of the Iowan. He doesn’t remember when or where it was taken. I didn’t know him then, but have the strange feeling I was there. I am in love with the picture — with this man’s beauty, his strong hands, the quiet, the flannel shirt, the VW, and that big blue Iowa sky.
on eating well in Mexico
2. Often the best meals are served in places which have no names. In San Miguel the “brothers Bautista” run the best carnitas stands, but there is no sign and no marking. The stands are simply there on the side of the road, with some plastic tables and chairs, at a few places around town. Everyone in town knows about them.
You know a lot of famous people
headline of the day
FW Man Dead After Being Mistaken For A Deer
Lake Superior State University 2011 List of Banished Words
“A stupid phrase when directed at men. Even more stupid when directed at a woman, as in ‘Alexis, you need to man up and join that Pilates class!’” Sherry Edwards, Clarkston, Mich.
