| 4 January, 2000: | ||
| All of my fears of disaster in NYC on NYE proved to be unfounded. I could have stayed here to celebrate after all! How cool was that coverage, though? I was pretty amazed. I've long believed that the world changed forever after that first image of the earth from outer space came into our collective consciousness 30 years ago -- evidence that we are, in fact, all one world. And with the Millennial celebrations beamed into our homes last weekend from Egypt, Bethlehem, Paris, London, New York... the world got very small in just one night. We literally saw the world in a day. | ||
| 5 January, 2000: | ||
| Ghost towns of the American West have held my imagination for a while now, but I've just begun to learn about the ghost towns of the San Juan mountains. An Empire of Silver, by Robert L. Brown, is a book I found in a used book store over the holidays, and I'm pretty excited to get back out to Colorado and start exploring. It details dozens of mining towns that were abandoned after only a year (or less) of operation, and because roads leading to them were minimal to begin with, some of them are all but impossible to locate today. I'm looking for web sites that share this interest, and am coming up a little short. One, The San Juan Mountains: Ghosts of Towns, Mining Camps, Mines, Mills and Railroads, covers a few of the mountain ghost towns near Ouray, Colorado. I'll have to wait for a summer trip to set out in search of my own, though. It's avalanche season. Through this book I was also introduced to Otto Mears and his railroads... what a fascinating man he was! The Narrow Gauge Circle, One Thousand Miles Through the Rocky Mountains by Rail has a ton of links to other railroad and exploration sites, including Mark Evans' collection of photos, postcards and artifacts. He's even got one of the lifetime railroad passes issued by Otto Mears himself. Ah, yes. A revisit to the Ghost Towns and History of the American West netted me exactly what I was looking for: a map of Colorado (or any number of other Western states), searchable by county, with information on roads and accessibility, remains, and (frequently) photographs of a great number of abandoned mining towns. |
||
| 6 January, 2000: | ||
| Great piece from Laura Fraser in today's Salon: Why I stopped being a vegetarian. I began eating meat and fish again just last year -- after 15 years as a militant lacto-ovo -- and I've never felt better. This article pretty much tells my own story. I'm loving the "street necrology" on Kevin Walsh's fantastic Forgotten NY site, especially the section on my neck of the woods. |
||
| 10 January, 2000: | ||
| That flu that's going around -- don't get it. Get a flu shot, wash your hands a hundred times a day, don't leave your house until March. Do whatever it takes to avoid this beast, because it really, really sucks. | ||
| 11 January, 2000: | ||
| Happy birthday, Dad! Shane Hamilton's A Victor without Peace: Victor Berger and Socialist Opposition to World War One is an astonishingly comprehensive undergraduate research paper written at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Berger had won a seat in the House of Representatives, but was denied the seat after a "special committee" came to the conclusion that "after his treasonable conduct, to occupy a seat in the American House of Representatives is inconceivable."
On November 10, 1919, the House declared Berger's seat to be vacant by a vote of 311 to 1. Wisconsin Governor Emanuel Philipp quickly called a special election to fill the vacant seat. The Milwaukee Socialists immediately renominated Berger, and on December 19, 1919, Berger won a higher percentage of the popular vote (55 percent) than he ever had or ever would again. However, when Berger returned to Congress to regain his seat in January of 1920, the House again refused to seat him. Berger cabled his wife on January 10, "CRUCIFIED ONCE MORE. THEY DID NOT EVEN HAVE THE DECENCY TO GRANT ME TEN MINUTES FOR MY DEFENSE." The Socialist Party nominated Berger one more time, but Governor Philipp realized the futility of calling another special election, and the seat remained empty until 1921. A visitor to my Mojave Phone Booth page ('cause everyone's got one), Kent Duryee, sent me a heads-up about Abbey's Web, "dedicated to the life and work of author Edward Abbey". I followed another link in Kent's .sig to find that he's the creator and maintainer of a wonderful site dedicated to the Anzo-Borrego Desert State Park |
||
| 17 January, 2000: | ||
| Will the magic never end? I'm on jury duty this week, for the first time in my life. Ugh. | ||
| 25 January, 2000: | ||
| ...and there goes the month, I guess. I'm on hiatus until February 4 or so, for a little trip to Colorado and New Mexico. | ||
|