Month: June 2021

1. Ever heard of Flamborough Head? Me neither. Flamborough Head is in Yorkshire, England and one of those cliffs with pure white cliffs. Flamborough Head is also famous for a battle in September of 1779 where John Paul Jones, fighting for the Continental Navy, and a few British escort vessels. Jones is the father of the U.S. Navy.

Photo by 43 Clicks North on Unsplash

2. Colossal is a really fun website. It’s got a ton of photos of interesting things. You could scroll for hours I think. So there’s this building in Reno, a brewery of all things, that has an enclave and so an artist drew a stack of records and it’s a great use of space that would have probably otherwise been wasted. If you’re one of those people that doesn’t get “art” checking out Colossal is a good way to take something in that’s not really far out there.

3. Via Narratively, the story of Sandy Gray, a bus driver who was fishing in Scotland in August of 1930, and is the person for reporting the Loch Ness monster.

4. A group of French national team fans arrived in Bucharest and were supposed to be in Budapest. Of course Bucharest is in Romania and Budapest is in Hungary and it’s about a 9 hour drive from the other. The French fans stayed in Bucharest and hung out.

5. The best thing I’ve read all week. From the New York Times, a New Jersey Catholic school brought back a mandatory hike across the Appalachian Trail, the hike is for freshmen who finished their first year and they hike 50 miles over 5 days (this year they only did 40 miles over 4 days). Most of the students are people of color, but that’s not what this is about, this is about a rite of passage. Great photos and great story-telling.

1. Ever heard of Passy National Nature Reserve? Me neither, but it is a 4,240 acre park in eastern France. Actually, if you travel to Samoens, which is a commune in the French alps, an has a large number of limestone quarries and this area of the world is known for their stonemasons, and is only 70 kilometers from Geneva and is somewhat sandwiched in-between Switzerland and Italy.

Photo by Baptiste Gousset on Unsplash

2. From the New York Times, Marty Bluewater has been the only person who has been allowed to live on Protection Island, consisting of approximately 370 acres and 2 miles long, for the past 50 years. The pictures alone are worth click.

3. Via Narratively’s Brent Crane, Lamar Marshall is single-handedly re-mapping the Cherokee trails that had previously been wiped off maps.

4. These are three stories from Good Beer Hunting and all three stories are from different places in the world. All are about brewing something and what I love is that despite the distances, we all pretty well do the same thing: Copenhagen, Denmark; Kesennuma, Japan; and Kittery, Maine. I also love the photos, they’re all terrific and so even if you don’t read the article, the photos are worth the click over as well.

5. The Ringer’s Brian Phillips and Den of Geek’s David Crow with two terrific deep dives on Indiana Jones, Raiders of the Lost Ark. This is a movie we’ve watched with the boys and it definitely holds up. Both links are terrific essays that deep-dive into the movie. What was great to me about this movie is that the Ark of the Covenant was real and that is something that had never once occurred to me as a kid watching this movie in the theaters. I had never conceptualized the Ark that’s what struck me and what I love about that movie.

1. Ever heard of Val Gardena? Me neither. Val Gardena is a valley in the Dolomites of the Tyrol region in Italy. This scene is fairly iconic I think, it’s one that I’ve seen a handful of times, the sheer of that mountain that just drops off is quite the scene. There’s a heavy German influence despite the valley being in Italy.

Photo by Warre Vyncke on Unsplash

There’s a great Rick Steves episode on that region.

2. From GQ’s David Alm on a group of elite Ethiopian runners who can’t go home, largely because of the conflict (really ethnic cleansing as the article states) of the Tigray Region. I have read a ton about this, largely because my son is from Ethiopia, but to say that I understand this would not be true. Maybe that’s the thing, you’re not supposed to understand the “why” of an ethnic cleansing. While they are here, they live together and make the best of a situation as they seek asylum.

In addition to supporting his roommates, Fikadu sends money each month to his wife and five brothers back in Ethiopia. With whatever he has left, he treats himself: He likes designer clothes and wears a new Apple watch. An energetic 28-year-old with a steadfast gaze and the charisma of an actor, Fikadu is committed to living with his roommates, despite his healthy income. “In Ethiopia,” he says, “we have a saying: ‘A house is not yours. A house is God’s house.’ You can live in it, but when you die the house will stay there. The house is not going to die with you. So in my culture we say a house is God’s house. Everybody can come and you can live together.”

3. Outside Online’s David Kushner on a young diver who finds a prosthetic leg at the bottom of the ocean in the Gulf of Mexico and the boy’s journey to find the owner.

4. Longread’s Paul Brown on how four Americans robbed the Bank of england in Victorian London.

On April 18, 1872, Austin Bidwell walked into Green & Son tailors on London’s renowned Savile Row and ordered eight bespoke suits, two topcoats, and a luxurious dressing gown. Bidwell was 26 years old, 6ft tall, and handsomely groomed with a waxed mustache and bushy side-whiskers. If the accent didn’t give it away, his eye-catching western hat marked him out as an American — a rich American. London tradesmen called Americans with bulges of money in their pockets “Silver Kings,” and they were most welcome in upmarket establishments like Green & Son, which charged as much for the strength of their reputations as for the quality of their goods.

5. I am here for this. Capture Atlas with the best Milky Way photographs of the year. One of my favorite things to look at, especially because I follow NASA on Insta, is the Milky Way and stars and galaxies and find the prospect of “that” entirely amazing.