This fellow’s post is actually about faux finishes, but his description at the end of the way things used to be made me laugh: “I have almost no pictures of my work from back then. I tell my children that you used to have to buy a reel of plastic film covered with metallic goo …
Author: Reid Farmer
Rocky Mountain Airshow
Last Saturday Connie and I drove up to Broomfield to see the Rocky Mountain Airshow at the Rocky Mountain Regional Airport. It was our first time to attend one of these. There were a fair number of aircraft on static display including this mobbed A-26. The orange markings on this C-130 show that it is …
USAF MiGs
Here’s a short but interesting piece from Aviation Week on the 1980s US Air Force program that flew a variety of Soviet MiG fighter aircraft (that had been obtained through a variety of means) both for performance evaluation and in an aggressor role against our aircraft. The money quote serves as the title: “We didn’t know …
Humpbacks
The UK Daily Mail has a set of rather spectacular photographs of a pod of humpback whales feeding close inshore among a group of boaters, kayakers, and paddle boarders off the California Central Coast. Whatever they were feeding on, it’s obvious the pelicans wanted to get in on the action, too. The Daily Mail says …
Real Swordfighting Wasn’t Like What We See in the Movies
Hardly surprising, as I believe most of the modern public has its ideas on the subject conditioned by the conventions of fencing, which has conditioned the minds of movie stuntmen. The author of this article has made the study of Medieval and Renaissance manuals on swordfighting and a re-creation of their techniques his life’s work. …
Hot Links
I had seen this mentioned in the Denver Post a little while back – a crack is endangering part of the Cliff Palace ruin at Mesa Verde National Park. Visitors have been kept away from one of the kivas at the cliff dwelling. Our friend Kathy Fiero was in charge of ruins stabilization at the …
Black Drink
This NY Times article took me back to my salad days in Southeastern archaeology. We know from accounts of the earliest European explorers that the Mississippian Indians drank a tea brewed from holly leaves that was referred to as “black drink.” Other than the fact that it was caffienated and played a role in some …
Malheur Butte
I took this picture of Malheur Butte in Oregon while in the field last summer. Malheur Butte was a landmark along the Oregon Trail. I really liked this picture because I caught the clouds building up behind it.
Aspen Pole Wickiups
After reading the comments on my Monday post about the collapsed structure we found at Kenosha Pass, it was clear to me that I had totally whiffed on trying to describe ” Native American wickiups, lean-tos, or tipi-like lodges built of aspen poles like these” and needed to use some photographs. These two aspen pole wickiups are …
Quote
Truth would quickly cease to become stranger than fiction, once we got as used to it. – H.L.Mencken