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30 articles

Jones Point Virginia: where two states diverge in a wood. Take the retrocession less traveled.

February 9, 2023 No Comments

Many years ago, I met up with a friend in Belgium who took me to the nearby Dreiländerpunkt, where Belgium, Netherlands, and Germany converge, with boundaries lines vaguely resembling the logo for Mercedes-Benz. How appropriately German. The glories of the Schengen Agreement have, since 1995, eliminated the fortified boundaries that straitjacketed these small countries for

Newspaper vending machines repurposed: a Fourth Estate sale that goes to charity.

December 10, 2022 6 Comments

Walking along a sidewalk I’ve trod upon many times before, in front of a cemetery I even featured not so long ago, I came upon a little painted landmark that I had not previously noticed. From a distance I thought it was a power box indicative of buried cables in the area, since it’s increasingly

Clandestine kitchens: restaurants that showcase their greatness by being obscure.

November 16, 2022 2 Comments

“Don’t be so humble. You’re not that great.” ~Golda Meir Ever come across a business that seemed to go out of its way to hide its presence? One that didn’t announce itself prominently from its front entrance, but instead seemed to downplay its own name, its logo, its fundamental identity? It’s hard to understand why

Whitestone apartments: when low-lying land is for the dogs…and that’s a good thing.

August 13, 2022 No Comments

As evidence mounts that the prime child-raising generations at the moment seem to prefer raising pets over children, it should come as no surprise that a growing number of residential developments host dog parks as a predictable amenity. I’ve covered the topic numerous times before: from a forest clearing in a tucked away corner of

Sequestration in medicine: the newest strategy for splitting people up is three centuries old.

June 30, 2022 8 Comments

Two and a half years into the COVID-19 pandemic, and we have at long last reached a point where, even if the public health concerns have not yet dissipated, the public will for restrictions is all but completely absent. The CDC, WHO, and FDA may still issue occasional alerts and updates, but the thunk of

“STUDENT DRIVER” strikes again…or do we expect hired drivers to be amateurs?

May 13, 2022 2 Comments

As I fine-tune and finish up a much longer blog post, I wanted to fill this dry spell with some amusing content that serves as a follow-up to an unexpectedly popular blog post from about a year ago. I noted last spring the strange, recent proliferation of bumper stickers (magnets in actuality) alerting passers-by of

The Yates connection: an Alexandria family unifies its holdings through Ukrainian yellow and blue.

March 24, 2022 2 Comments

Amidst the broader cultural polarization and the ensuing moral panics (or perhaps the moral panics that have prompted the cultural polarization?), we’ve witnessed far more people announcing their political loyalties than in the past, often through overt displays in their front yards. While one can find these sort of signs just about anywhere in the

Yes, we still have no bananas: worm’s-eye assessments of corona after two years.

March 12, 2022 No Comments

We have now reached, almost to the day, the point when the majority of US states, taking the lead from a national disaster declaration, began issuing safety precautions in an attempt to prevent the spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), better known as COVID-19, the number attributing the year in which epidemiologists

Analog Memes, Part II: a memorable trip down Christmas Card Lane.

March 5, 2022 2 Comments

As a successor to my post on a bumper sticker bedecked guardrail in Wilmington, I offer a second example of what I must at least partly attribute to meme culture, for which the World Wide Web exerted little to no influence. This second example of memetic behavior that is anti-digital is probably a bit more

Are balconies an intrinsic value?

December 6, 2021 8 Comments

Even as a child, I can recall the family trips down to Florida or South Carolina, witnessing all those high-rise apartment and condo buildings, each one of which had its own balcony. Sometimes two. And I remember noticing how there never seemed to be anyone out using them. Needless to say, I didn’t understand real

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