Something that's a bit more amusing

Management apologizes for the academic stuffiness of the previous post. Here's a clipping that's a bit more fun. It's about the Loch Ness monster, from the October 12, 1941, edition of The Charlotte Observer.

Another peek at the past predicting tomorrow

Here's another captivating postcard from the 1976 "World of Tomorrow" postcard set that was published in the Soviet Union. Floating head and giant eyebrows aside, what did the young adults of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics really think the future would be like in 1976? That year, in the middle of the Leonid Brezhnev era, they were watching their CSKA Moscow ice hockey team lose a tension-filled "goodwill" game against the Philadelphia Flyers. Some were reading the Chronicle of Current Events samizdat publications on the sly. They were listening to Sir Cliff Richard play a dozen concerts "behind the Iron Curtain" across the Soviet Union. The standard of living in the Soviet Union that year was generally thought to be about one-third of the American level and slightly less than half of the level in France and West Germany. So huge floating heads would certainly have seemed farfetched.

Those young adults of 1976 are in their mid to late 60s now. Did some ever believe they'd see a day when they'd live in a nation called Russia, instead of the Soviet Union? (And yet find themselves under the oppressive rule of Vladimir Putin.) Other former citizens of the USSR found themselves in Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Georgia, Armenia and other "new" republics — not that I'm any kind of expert on the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Today, wherever they are, they find themselves in a world of big-screen televisions (perhaps as large as the sci-fi screen on this postcard), worldwide internet, VKontakte and Instagram, ongoing military interventions, Pussy Riot, figure skaters Anna Shcherbakova and Evgeni Semenenko, and much more.

And, like the rest of us, they have seen life derailed by COVID-19 for the past year. The pandemic has affected them in different ways, though. The Russian people are among the most hesistant in the world to take or trust COVID-19 vaccines. (Not that the United States doesn't have its own challenges in that regard.) That distrust is seemingly rooted in years of being fed lies by the government and frustration with an oft-ineffective state health care system. It doesn't put them in a good spot, at this moment, to successfully navigate this health crisis. The same goes for many of the former Soviet republics.

All in all, if you had told the 22-year-olds of Moscow or Minsk in 1976 what 2020 and 2021 would look like, I'm not sure how cheery they would have been about the whole deal. They might have preferred the big scary eyebrows.

How I got to Fuzzy Wuzzy

Another week, and not enough ephemera blogging. With this nifty illustration from a mid-20th century label for Maine-based Fuzzy Wuzzy brand Cat Food (packed by Sherman Denbow Fisheries), I'll be finishing February with just five posts. I blame Google.

Seriously, I blame Google. In the time I've had online this weekend, I've had an epic run of web-surfing. I've followed the bouncing links through Amtrak itineraries; troubled Highway 1 at Big Sur; the Xixax film forums; Joel Coen's upcoming The Tragedy of Macbeth with Denzel Washington (plus other upcoming films); latest news from Indian Country Today; the War of the Roses; the Enchanted Booklet Instagram page; protective cases for iPhones; the Unspooled podcast Facebook community; the films and documentaries of Werner Herzog;  Mário de Andrade's Macunaíma; Philadelphia Phillies spring training updates; curve-billed thrashers; Arkham House books; Sound of Metal and especially Paul Raci's role in the film; Cave of Forgotten Dreams; The Ninth Configuration; gila monsters and the likelihood of me being killed by one in Arizona; The Green Fog; back to Werner Herzog; Eszter Balint; Sylvain Chomet (partially in connection with Jacques Tati); Philippe Petit; Ross McElwee; documentaries about Indigenous peoples of the Americas; the latest news about the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine; kaiju face masks; a Twitter thread about Cop Rock recommended by a former Daily Collegian colleague; the artwork of Timothy Ide; Glastonbury; psychogeography; today's weather here in Florence (a "chilly" high of just 60); the Cairngorm Mountains of Scotland; author Lauret Savoy; the history of role-playing games; the pandemic and American sports; the uninhabitability of Mars; the person on my neighborhood community Facebook page who's unhappy about barking dogs; and ... Fuzzy Wuzzy brand cat food.

Phew.

Now I'm winded. I think I'll go for a walk.

Here's that full Fuzzy Wuzzy label, for posterity:

Famed Americus Hotel smorgasbord in Allentown, Pennsylvania

These two old postcards feature the "award-winning" Pennsylvania Dutch style smorgasbord at the Americus Hotel, located at Sixth and Hamilton streets in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Looking at the images more closely, you can see a gelatin mold, fruits and vegetables, what appears to be a dessert table, pies and pastries, and a whole lot of lobster tails. 

Dad remembers going to this buffet as a kid. He writes:

"In the late 50s and early 60s, Bambi and Pappy would take us to the Americus Hotel on Sundays for their smorgasbord. That's where I got introduced to lobster. We would spend 2 hours plus making a five-course meal from the smorgasbord. Lobster then all sorts of fancy desserts. Mom and Dad weren't rich, but back then that may be have $30 total. I think that hotel is still there today."

Indeed, the historic Americus Hotel is set to reopen this spring after a multimillion-dollar makeover, according to The Morning Call (subscription required, as journalism is not free); the reopening was supposed to be sooner but, like many things, it has been delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Discovering Robert Dale Owen

Just for fun — I'm a barrel of laughs at social gatherings — I went to Newspapers.com to find its oldest clipping that references my new town of Florence, Arizona. It came at the bottom of Page 1 of the August 21, 1869, edition of The Weekly Arizona Miner of Prescott, Arizona, and you can see it in its entirety above.

And who is this progressive-sounding Robert Dale Owen that L. Anthony of Florence writes of? Owen is a political figure about whom I was not aware, and a fascinating one at that.

Per Wikipedia, Robert Dale Owen (1801-1877) "was a Scottish-born Welsh social reformer who immigrated to the United States in 1825." After becoming a U.S. citzen, he became involved in Indiana state politics and later represented Indiana in the U.S. House of Representatives for four years. His legacy includes:

• He helped oversee the peaceful commune of New Harmony, Indiana, which was first settled in 1814 by members of the Harmony Society who had come west from Harmony, Pennsylvania. 
• He was a strong advocate for women's rights, laying the groundwork for provisions in the Indiana state constitution related to women's property rights, voting rights and freedom in divorce. (Some of this was done in conjunction with Sarah T. Bolton.)
• In 1862, he wrote a series of letters "that favored the abolition of slavery and supported general emancipation, as well as a suggestion that the federal government should provide assistance to freedmen."
• As an Indiana state legislator, he helped build the framework for a taxpayer-supported system of free public schools.
• In Congress, he introduced the bill to establish the Smithsonian Institution.
• He wrote a book titled The Debatable Land Between this World and the Next. He was a Spiritualist who raised questions about the authenticity of the Bible.

Owen is one of the peripheral figures in Garrett Epps' book Democracy Reborn: The Fourteenth Amendment and the Fight for Equal Rights in Post-Civil War America. When I looked this book up, I discovered I had already marked it on Goodreads as something to check out. The Washington Post's 2006 review mentions Owen and his involvement with the 14th Amendment.

Sunday night stream of consciousness from Saguaro-vania

Superior, Arizona. About 30 minutes northeast of our new home. (Photo by me) 

We arrived at our new home in Florence, Arizona, last week after a 3½-day drive that took us through Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico and then into Arizona. That dash across the country in the Honda Civic has already become somewhat of a blur in my mind. I have no recollection of anything in Ohio, possibly because we were enjoying a Jim Steinman playlist. We had dinner and spent a night in Indiana. We had a sunny morning and nice drive in Illinois. In Missouri, the roads around St. Louis were the worst of the trip. As we continued through Missouri, we had hundreds of miles of billboards touting either caverns or raunchy roadside attractions. Oklahoma was flat and lovely and we could drive very fast on the toll roads. But after a night in Oklahoma, we found ourselves delayed the next morning by freezing rain in Oklahoma and Texas — part of a multiday Deep South winter weather system that has now led to a Federal Emergency Declaration for Texas. 

After we made it through that, the weather warmed up greatly in western Texas. We made a short pit stop in Vega, Texas, for Munzees and to snap some pictures that I'll feature in a future post. In the flat, hot nothingness of New Mexico, we made stops in Route 66 favorite Tucumcari, which I'd like to visit again someday, and Clines Corners, which has a Rest Stop Extraordinaire but little else of note. As darkness fell in New Mexico on the third day of driving, we had a slow, winding driving through the El Malpais National Conservation Area before crossing into Arizona. Our final night on the road was spent in Show Low, Arizona, where there was snow on the ground! We passed many "Elk Crossing" signs, but saw no elk. 

On our final morning of driving, between Show Low and Globe, we traversed the Salt River Canyon, which was simultaneously one of the most breathtaking and white-knuckle drives of my life. Once was enough. At least it was in broad daylight and the roads were excellent.

The moving van is supposed to arrive here in Florence tomorrow. Inside, there will be many boxes of books, old photos, postcards and ephemera. In a way, it will be like starting the Papergreat exploration/excavation all over again, with fresh eyes. That seems both exciting and daunting. I want to this blog to be fun, not stressful or something that feels like an obligation. So I hope the time and inspiration strike me in sufficient measure in the coming weeks and months, as I also take time to adjust to life in the Western U.S. 

My great-grandparents, Greta Miriam Chandler Adams (1894-1988) and Howard Horsey Adams (1892-1985) were in their mid to late 50s when they moved into their oft-mentioned house on Oak Crest Lane in Wallingford, Pennsylvania, circa 1951. (Mental note: Get that exact date and put it in a post.) That ended up being a house crammed with decades of family history. To me, it just seemed like they always lived there; and I got to be the one to clean it out in the 2010s. 

Being age 50, it kind of feels late to be starting over in a blank slate of a house and a blank slate of a community, but I'm years younger than Greta and Howard were when they moved to Oak Crest Lane. There's plenty of time for seeding this desert dwelling with memories and ephemera.

Soon, the books in this room will outnumber the cats. We hope.

Temporary interruption of service

(Curteichcolor mid-century postcard)

Hello readers! And apologies! There's going to continue to be a bit of a lull with the Papergreat posts as we complete the final stages of our packing and long-distance move to Arizona.

All of the ephemera is now in boxes, and 99.8% of the books are now in boxes. I have been told not to blog while driving. 

If all goes well, I should return to posting around the weekend of Feb. 13-14. New posts will emanate from S-auppag in Pinal County, about 410 miles southwest of the Kingdom of Nye. S-auppag, known to the moderns as Florence, is the land of Levi Ruggles, the Adamstown ghost town, the Gila River, a whole honkin' boatload of prisons, a World War II POW camp and "relocation center," Poston Butte, javelinas, coyotes, haboobs, the Mogollon Monster, domineering homeowners' associations, Ak-Chin Village, Campo Bonito, Silly Mountain Park and many other things that I've much to learn about. It's a long way from Pennsylvania. A new chapter begins...

The evolution of an extinct bird

This slightly capybaraesque creature looks about how I feel most days this month: Tired, shaggy, stressed and just plain done with all the nonsense. If its birdlike feet could take it somewhere quiet, serene and featuring an abundance of chocolate cake, I'm sure it would go. 

Alas, its feet are affixed firmly to that ground, forever, and ever, and ever.

It's one of the shockingly unrealistic "dinosaurs" at Dinosaur Land in White Post, Virginia, a roadside tourist attraction that's been delighting travelers since 1963. Of course, you can't blame the park's creators for any historical inaccuracies. Our understanding of what dinosaurs and birds of yore looked and acted like has changed greatly, thanks to the ongoing scientific research of the past six decades. 

In fact, our understanding has changed so much that diatryma, the creature pictured on this postcard, is no longer considered to be part of a distinct genus. 

But it still was as of this postcard, which states that diatryma is "an ancient member of the bird family. It has underdeveloped wings so it could not fly. Its legs were very powerful for running and had a very strong beak. It was a meat eater much as our hawks and eagles of today."

The "meat eater" part has changed, too. This bird is actually in the extinct genus Gastornis, and here's what Wikipedia has to say about it:

"Gastornis is an extinct genus of large flightless birds that lived during the late Paleocene and Eocene epochs of the Cenozoic era. The genus is currently thought to contain three or four distinct species, known from incomplete fossil remains, found in western-central Europe (England, Belgium, France and Germany). More complete specimens are known from a fourth, North American species, which had previously been classified in the distinct genus Diatryma. Many scientists now consider Diatryma to be so similar to the other species of Gastornis that it should also be included in that genus. A fifth species, also previously classified in its own genus, is known from China.

'"Gastornis species were very large birds, and have traditionally been considered to be predators of small mammals. However, several lines of evidence, including the lack of hooked claws in known Gastornis footprints and studies of their beak structure have caused scientists to reinterpret these birds as herbivores that probably fed on tough plant material and seeds."

And here's a better estimation now of what Gastornis looked like, which is a far cry from the Dinosaur Land bird on this postcard:

Tim Bertelink, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons 

Some other information about this old postcard:

• The photo was taken by Larry Witt
• The postcard was made by Dexter Press of West Nyack, New York
• The stamp box indicates that it's a Dexter Supreme 
• It was published by A.J. Simonpietri Jr. of Front Royal, Virginia
• It is copyright 1969