1 October, 1999:
Of the countless treasures on Andrew Lam's site, Grandma's Tales is my favorite so far. (It quickly twists into something right out of I Love Lucy.)

Andrew Hamilton has beaten the record for climbing all of Colorado's 14ers -- by one hour and 28 minutes. (See 2 September.) His site, The Colorado Fourteener Speed Record, has been updated!

"Pizza Hut wanted a billboard on the moon. It settled for a Russian rocket bound for space." I find this really disturbing.

From the lightning rod to the Hubble Telescope, PBS's Technology Timeline.
2 October, 1999:
The Historical Museum of Southern Florida presents a site dedicated to the story of the oldest slave shipwreck identified by name, the Henrietta Marie, in A Slave Ship Speaks: The Wreck of the Henrietta Marie. And from that page, a link to a collection of excerpts from slave narratives, edited by Steven Mintz. Margaret Garner's is among the truly horrifying stories -- she killed her daughter rather than see her taken back into slavery.

And from the June, 1857 edition of Putnam's Monthly, A Slave's Story, written anonyously by the author shortly before his death.

Frederick Douglass' MY ESCAPE FROM SLAVERY.

Sketches and biographies of the captives on the Amistad.

Finally, Life at Sea (from The Treasure Fleets) shows that even if you weren't a captive, it wasn't easy going.
4 October, 1999:
In some photographs, Archbishop Desmond Tutu looks an awful lot like Redd Foxx.

Vaguely via saturn.org, the NYC Taxi Drivers' Test and a Test of Street Names in New York City on Sam Sloan's anusha.com. It still doesn't seem nearly as comprehensive as "The Knowledge" required to be a cab driver in London. But it's impressive.

I so dig Griel Marcus's bi-weekly Top Ten column on Salon. Lines like this, about Tori Amos (who I still adore as well) and her latest CD, "To Venus and Back": "Or rather the Twilight Zone. She walks through a deserted mansion, and there are mirrors everywhere: Everywhere, she sees her own reflection. And then she sees it even when there aren't any mirrors."
5 October, 1999:
Vernacular architecture is "buildings that are constructed using traditional materials and to traditional forms by builders not schooled in the formal architectural tradition of their society". Architecture in the folk tradition. Grottos of the American Midwest, from the Anthropology and Sociology Department at LaFayette College, showcases the vernacular architecture of the Dickeyville Grotto in Dickeysville, Wisconsin.

Wisconsin: The Roadside Genius State? Maybe. Paul and Matilda Wegner visited the Dickeyville Grotto and were inspired to build the Paul and Matilda Wegner Grotto.

America's Dairyland has got nothing like W.C. Rice's cross garden, though. I'm comforted, somewhat, to know that it's all the way down in Alabama.
6 October, 1999:
Invisible Light is Andy Finney's site, showcasing his sometimes amazing infrared photography, as well as information on the process. Start at his photographs, or just load and reload his Invisible Light Random Picture page.

The latest little tidbit on my great wait for the Wisconsin Death Trip movie (it takes little to make me happy at this point, I'm so anxious to see it!) is one user comment on IMBD. It's strange, I'd assume that early interest in this film would be from those who've seen and love the book. (Everyone I've ever encountered who's familiar with it is nothing short of a fanatic about it.)
7 October, 1999:
Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner is an absolutely fascinating book about the political and economic issue of water in the American Southwest. I just found that PBS produced a four-part series based on Reisner's book, and while I don't know when (or if) the series aired, the accompanying web site is just great.

Also from PBS, New York Underground, a history of the NYC subway system. Death Beneath the Streets details the 1918 crash that killed almost 100 people.
8 October, 1999:
A 1933 performance by Antonin Artaud as told by Anais Nin.
12 October, 1999:
I've just returned from an amazing weekend in the Smoky Mountains, where I saw Bela Fleck's Bluegrass Sessions (with Sam Bush!); my beloved String Cheese Incident; an awesome group from L.A. called Ozomotli (can't find a site for them, but if you have the chance to see them play live, GO!!!); and for the first time in my life, Santana! I can't say that I was ever a huge fan before Sunday, but lordy... standing a few feet away from Carlos as he tore it up -- my molecules have been rearranged.

The Five Points Slum was, in the middle of the last century, located in lower Manhattan at the intersection of Park, Worth, and Baxter Streets -- the present location of the Foley Square Courthouse. In 1991, archaeolgists recovered 850,000 artifacts, may of which are featured on The Five Points Site, a virtual tour through the dig site. The combination of old maps and drawings of the neighborhood, combined with many photographs of the artifacts uncovered, is pretty wonderful.

I love etymology. Etymologic is a word game, "the toughest word game on the web", where you have to know the origin of various words and phrases. I'm digging it. (Via the always-wonderful Rebecca's Pocket)
13 October, 1999:
Another collection of found photograhs (and other stuff) on renewal.org.au: Object Not Found. Some of the found "letters" (really more like notes and shopping lists) are pretty wondeful.

"Employ psychic cloaking devices." advises the reformatter in its Manifesto for Personal Change.

"When Windows Attack, Part II", from absurd.org
14 October, 1999:
René Descartes and the Legacy of Mind/Body Dualism is a six-part site, beginning with The 17th Century: Reaction to the Dualism of Mind and Body and ending with my personal favorite, Trance and Trauma: Functional Nervous Disorders and the Subconscious Mind.
15 October, 1999:
I'm by no means a big drinker, but I can't help but be in love with just about everything that comes out of the wonderful Bonny Doon Vineyards of Santa Cruz. Owner Randall Grahm's newsletter and bottle labels -- all available on their site -- are just too wonderful for words. Manymany cases of their Le Cigare Volant were quaffed at our wedding.

From the Library of Congress, America from the Great Depression to World War II, Black and White Photographs from the FSA-OWI (Farm Security Administration-Office of War Information Collection) 1935-1945. Gordon Parks' Ella Watson, U.S. Government Charwoman is perhaps my favorite in the collection, which also includes Ben Shahn and of course, Dorothea Lange. The images from Walker Evans in his New York City Block were all shot on the afternoon of Tuesday, August 23rd, 1938.
18 October, 1999:
Reading over hot chocolate on this absoutely beautiful NYC early-autumn morning: Guy Debord's The Society of the Spectacle on nothingness.org.

And only listed so I can go back and visit at a later date (perhaps when I'm bedridden with the flu sometime this winter), Pythagorean Tuning and Medieval Polyphony. It looks fascinating, I just can't deal with it right now.

A Last Salute covers the forensic anthropological investigation into the Civil War graves of six Union soldiers, as well as a nearby Confederate battlefield grave.

Via memepool, the Blackout History Project. The blackout of the Summer of 1977 occurred the week before my first trip to NYC, and I remember my parents worrying that we wouldn't be able to make the scheduled vacation. I'm glad we did, because I fell in love with this place the moment I laid eyes on it. Of course, I was just a little kid and had to wait over ten years before I could finally move here, but what an impression NYC made on me! (To hear some people talk about that summer's blackout, the Staten Island Ferry would have to hold thousands and thousands of commuters. People I know for a fact have never set foot on the ferry claim to have been on board that night, watching from its decks as the Manhattan skyline went dark. Riiiiiiight.)
19 October, 1999:
Atomic tests in 3-D
20 October, 1999:
Almitra Von Willcox is an Australian woman who is on week 88 of her walk around the world. Currently in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, she expects her journey to last to 2008. Her site, Almitra the Photogypsy, begins with the current week and location; archives go back to the beginning of her journey -- which began on the western coast of Austalia -- to cover the two years it's taken her to reach that continent's western shore.

Anatomy of a Murder: A Trip Through Our Nation's Legal Justice System is exactly what it says.
21 October, 1999
Last night's Burning Spear show at Irving Plaza was opened by Boston reggae band John Brown's Body. Lee Hamilton, JBB's smokin' saxophonist, happens to be from the very same small Wisconsin town* as I. We hung out to chat at the bar after their set, and realized that we were quite probably the only people from Walworth County in Manhattan last night.

  * population 4,319
22 October, 1999:
Home & the Sitcom Ideal is a project begun in 1993, "The Year of the Sitcom": "Situated within a highly accelerated medium, this ongoing research project resists becoming obsolete by grounding itself not within the technical aspects of television, but rather on the societal relevancy of television narratives. It is also not reducible to set-design architecture nor is that its intent. As the title implies, the thesis acknowledges the dilemma of living in the middle -- residing in the middle class of society and occupying the precarious middle stratum between low and high culture."

And wouldn't Giuliani love this: 3D FA[E]CES. "The 3-d object to be viewed is simply a three dimensional scan of the faeces of the designer. He kept a careful record of all he ate for 2 weeks, scanned the resulting shit and later forced it into functioning architecturally."
23 October, 1999:
From the Nordic rune for abscess to the notation for zoom on a camera, symbols.com allows you to search their graphic index or word index of over 2,500 signs and symbols.

Mark Turner's Death is the Mother of Beauty: mind, metaphor, criticism explores kinship metaphors: "Necessity is the mother of invention".

And thanks to the cardhouse.com weblog for their pointer to the SF Weekly article about last month's Mojave Desert motorcycle endurance race.
24 October, 1999:
I just saw Fight Club and now my head's all messed up. It was absoutely amazing -- though I'm going to have to see it a second time, and soon. I've never before been this shocked by a movie.
25 October, 1999
Thank you, memepool, for the pointer to the Doonesbury flashbacks (archives)! Their search feature, allowing both character and topic criteria, is pretty cool -- I had one specific strip in mind, and it was the first one to turn up.

I can't believe that no one else is bidding on this. Come oooooooooooon!
26 October, 1999
If you're in NYC, you probably know all about Kozmo.com, the folks who deliver books, music and rented movies to your door in less than an hour (along with Ben & Jerry's ice cream, Krispy Kreme donuts, and all kinds of other goodies). Seems the new competition in town is Urbanfetch -- and apparently, the reason UF works so similarly to Kozmo is that UF acquired Kozmo's business plan under the pretext of being investors. Crain's NY has the whole ugly story. (Methinks Urbanfetch's site looks a little too much like a certain online bookseller's, too.)

Spy Letters of the American Revolution, from the collection of the Clements Library at the University of Michigan. The routes taken by some of the letters is interesting, as are some of the methods (last two links removed from frames).

And Dr. One Spy's The History of Espionage contains a veritable Who's Who of Espionage, past and present.

"Harlot, yes! But traitoress, never!" Mata Hari on hersalon.com
27 October, 1999:
Mumia has received another stay of execution. While I know they're all but completely unrelated, there's something about Mumia's continued imprisonment on death row, juxtaposed to (or is that "with"?), say, the complete inaction in the JonBenet Ramsey murder case, that makes me want to spit.

Unfuckingbelievable: Someone's stolen the Mojave Desert Phone Booth.
September 1999 November 1999