Tom McMahon

A Moose On Your Doorstep

In Anchorage, Alaska, you never know when a moose will show up on your doorstep. From Smithsonian Magazine

Coping with moose is a major theme of life in the booming metropolis of Anchorage. The city has about 300 moose that stay within city limits year-round, and after the first snowfalls they're joined by hundreds more that stream down from the nearby Chugach Mountains. The moose have traditionally sought shelter in Anchorage's bowl-like configuration, but this important moose wintering habitat has been disappearing as the city's sprawl has increased. During a hard winter, many moose can starve. Looking for vegetation to browse on, the animals hang around residential neighborhoods and head downtown.

See also What To Do About Aggressive Moose and Living In Harmony With Moose.

A Rolling Ball Clock

A Rolling Ball Clock

Very intricate, built by Marcel Betrisey. 1600 parts. 300 kilos (660 pounds). 95 ball bearings. Completed in 18 months.

Talk Radio And The Internet

From William Bennett

People now get their news and opinion on the Internet and relay it to talk radio. They then think about it, research it further, and discuss it on the Internet, in email, and in the national conversations that take place on shows like mine all the time—shows that cannot simply be marginalized as “right wing radio,” because they are not “right wing.” Some are, in part, national dialogues. Yes there is right wing radio, and yes there is left wing radio but there is radio of another sort too, and too few elites have the first clue about what it is or what is happening there.

Empowered, the people are changing talk radio. Speaking as a host of a three-hour talk show, it is evident that the public, which is checking assertions of fact as they are being made, is not sitting back and merely absorbing pontification. On talk radio, the lecture is fading, and it is being replaced by the interactive national seminar, where callers inform the host and audience as much as the host is informing listeners.

(via Powerline)

The Churches of Clinton Welcome You

The Churches of Clinton Welcome You

24 churches in Clinton, Oklahoma, for a town of 9,000 people. One of the Images Of America collection by the late John Daly.

Gus Grissom, America's Hard Luck Astronaut Hero

An excerpt from another field review by the editors of Roadside America

Anyone who's read Tom Wolfe's The Right Stuff or seen the 1983 movie knows the story of Virgil I. "Gus" Grissom, America's hard luck astronaut hero. He was always in the wrong place at the wrong time: as one of the original Mercury 7, his mission was after Alan "First American in Space" Shepard Jr. but before John "First American in Orbit" Glenn; Grissom was the only astronaut whose capsule sank; he was the man who commanded the forgettable first Gemini mission, and who was going to command the first Apollo mission -- until a horrible fire broke out in the capsule during prelaunch tests in 1967, killing him and his crew.

Gus Grissom's home town of Mitchell, Indiana, honors its most famous son in ways suited to a guy who seemed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. In Spring Mill State Park stands the Virgil I. Grissom Memorial Museum. It costs four bucks to get into the park, but the gatekeepers will let you pass for free if all you want to see is the museum.

The Museum Of Bad Art

The Museum Of Bad Art

That's a portrait of Mary Todd Lincoln, by the way.

Eddie Rickenbacker Lost at Sea

In the early days of World War II an amazing story of survival unfolded when American icon WWI ace Eddie Rickenbacker and six others were plucked out of the Pacific some three weeks after their B-17 crashed into the sea.

13 Rue Madeleine

13 Rue Madeleine

Crack wartime espionage story stars James Cagney as an O.S.S. agent sent into occupied France to uncover the site of a German missile silo before the Allied landing at Normandy. One of my Dad's favorite movies.

Help Put Ronald Reagan On The $10 Bill!

The time is right to put Reagan on our currency.  FDR, Eisenhower and JFK were all on currency less than a year from their deaths.  President Reagan deserves no less.

Reba's Victorian Post Cards

Reba's Victorian Post Cards

(via neurastenia)