EclectEcon

One of my favourite places that we visited during our trip to the Maritimes was Cheticamp, on the western coast of Cape Breton Island. The landscapes and seascapes seemed as if they had been painted.

When we were planning our trip to The Maritimes this spring, The Interpreter said she wanted to visit PEI, so we looked into various places to stay there. It turned out that all the places we contacted along the north shore of the island were not going to be open until June. And then we discovered that all the hotels in Charlottetown were booked up for a hockey tournament.

Ex post, all we can say is, "Thank goodness!"


We ended up booking rooms at the Georgetown Historic Inn in Georgetown, which is on the eastern end of the island. We stayed in two spectacular suites that shared a deck off the back of the establishment. I call them suites because they had wonderful large beds and spacious sitting areas, along with en-suite bathrooms. They were clean and well-appointed with spacious closets as well.

Joel, the proprietor, has only recently taken over the Inn. He is a certified chef who sold everything in Alberta and moved to PEI for a calmer way of life. He was gracious and very hospitable, providing us with off-menu dinners both evenings we were there, in addition to wonderful breakfasts both mornings.


During one of our walks around the town, we met the Mayor, an affable and intriguing person who gave up a senior corporate job to retire to Georgetown and do rock and shell sculptures. He's talented, interesting, and a lot of fun. Later that evening, the first day of the legit lobster season there, we had fresh lobster at the Inn, and the Mayor, who happened to be dining there as well, gave us lessons in how to eat lobster. We had a ball.


Joel was concerned when we booked the rooms that we might not have anything to do while we were there, but we drove around a bit in the morning and then hiked along a beautiful boardwalk in the afternoon. There are no fast food places in the town, but the general store is reputed to make excellent burgers. We ate all our evening and morning meals at the Inn.

Also, Buddy Wasisname And The Other Fellers (see this and this) stayed there just a few weeks before we were there -- what better recommendation can there be than that?

The Georgetown Inn was Ms. Eclectic's favourite of all the places we visited during our trip, but it might not be for everyone. The rooms are splendid, with nice Victorian or quasi-Victorian decor, and the food is delicious; but the floors slant a bit in places (as one might expect in buildings that are over a century and a half old) and Joel still has some organizing to do as he points his business in a slightly different direction; also, Joel's tastes in cooking might not appeal to everyone (though we certainly liked what he did for us — e.g. a shrimp and brie omelet our second morning).

If you think you might want to visit the Inn, we recommend it highly, especially if you like older but spacious rooms with excellent service. And if you go, be sure to visit the Mayor (Peter) and his craft shop.

We happened to end up in Caribou, Nova Scotia, the first day the lobster fishers were allowed to go out to drop their traps for the season. They would load their boats with traps, take them out to the choice areas, drop them, and then return to the harbour to load up more traps.






The big grey tub in the foreground of the photo on the right has little orange bags of bait for the lobsters. They put a bag in each trap as the trap was being loaded.

As you can see, the lobster industry is undergoing some technological changes. Slowly, the operators are replacing the old semi-cylindrical wooden traps with metal rectangular traps.

This next boats below are preparing to carry all metal traps. The one in the left looks as if they have a separate buoy for each trap. Sometimes they string several traps together all attached to one buoy. The buoys are different for each fisher so they can readily identify their traps.




The harbour was busy. The boats cannot hold all the traps to which the licences entitle the fishers, so they rush out with about half their traps, set them, and then come back for the rest. After that, they are not allowed to retrieve any traps until the next day, but they can bring back a few lobsters “for personal use”.

These last two photos were taken from the Wood Island Ferry (which you can see coming into dock in the background of the above photo on the right), as we were crossing to Prince Edward Island. I might have had a chance to go out on a lobster boat while we were in PEI, but given that they leave at 5am (no problem for this early riser) and work hard (still not much of a problem) and stay out from 5am until about 3pm (way too long for me when I’m on holidays) and I don’t know how I’d cope if suddenly afflicted with mal de mer, I opted out.

During our recent trip to The Maritimes, Ms. Eclectic, The Interpreter, and I visited The Hopewell Rocks, an amazing geological site along the western edge and near the top of the Bay of Fundy.

The rocks are red sandstone aggregates, but the tides in this part of the Bay of Fundy are among the highest tides in the world (sometimes greater than 40 feet!), and the movement of the tides has eroded portions of the rocks to leave wonderful, awe-inspiring rocks along the coast and shore.

We went to the rocks one morning at low tide so we could walk along the shore among the rocks. Here is a famous one, the Lovers' Arch (as usual, click on a photo to see it larger and in better resolution):


And here are some others. The one on the left made me think of those tubes of Pillsbury biscuits that you can (could? I haven't had them for years) buy from the refrigerator case at the grocery store; each "biscuit" is about twice the height of a normal adult. The one of the right reminded me, depending on the angle from which I viewed it, of an old iron or (more majestically) of a Phoenix rising from the earth.











Here is a close-up of the rock type that is in these formations:


It looks as if the bits of granite should be easily dislodged from the red sandstone, but that material is very hard and erodes only slowly, over a long time. The rocks stretch for about two kilometres along the shore, but these are among the better known formations.

That afternoon, we returned to Hopewell Rocks to view the rocks at high tide. Here is the Lovers' Arch (from up on a cliff) at high tide:



The tidal swing was only about 35 feet that day, but look at the contrast between the first photo and this one. Simply amazing!

[h/t to Gail and to The Interpreter for suggesting we visit this place. More acknowledgements to follow.]

It was cold, snowy, icy, damp, yet beautiful when we visited the Bay of Fundy National Park last week. Here's a photo that will be in my next exhibition, this coming November:

On a recent trip through the Bay of Fundy National Park in New Brunswick, we were struck by fields of various burgundy colours (not to mention the frigg'n snow that was falling during the last week of April!). It turns out these are blueberry bushes.

Much of south Texas avoided the housing bubble experienced in other major markets. I suspect that one reason is land is plentiful and the expressway system is well-developed, so people think nothing of living 20-30 miles outside the beltway, where land is quite inexpensive.

But in missing the bubble, one might have expected that Houston would also miss the downturn in the housing market being experienced elsewhere. But, then again, maybe not. This photo was taken earlier this week while I was visiting my son in Houston:

The final bonspiel of the season, the Spring Thaw:



Update: The top two photos were from Friday night's draw. The next two are from the Saturday morning draw. Note the morning coat and burgundy (vs. black) cummerbund and tie; the shirt is pink, but was washed out by the flash.



Update #2: And from the evening draw, my Hawaiian dinner jacket.

I didn't take it. I don't know who did, or I would be happy to give credit. Jack sent it to me, and I thought it was fascinating.

There are cheerleaders for flag football?

Well, I guess I can imagine there might be, given that this sign was along the highway in Texas, the high school football and cheerleading centre of the universe.

At Pavilion 6 in Tom Bass Park, south of Houston, TX. An unusual shape for a "stainless steel" urinal.

Soon we will be visiting my son, Adam Smith Palmer, who lives in the US. In anticipation of that visit, we have ordered a number of things that are less expensive there.

To prepare us, he wrote that we should bring at least one empty suitcase, and he sent this photo of himself, standing next to the pile of boxes.

The incremental shipping costs, added onto our trip costs, are essentially zero, so stocking up while we're there provides a net benefit for us.

Last week we had a combination of very cold weather and a fair amount of snow. Then the sun came out while it was windy. From my office on the 7th floor of the building where the economics department is housed at The University of Guelph, I looked out and saw hundreds of snowflakes, dancing in the sunlight. They looked like diamonds floating in the sky.

Here is a photograph of some of the diamonds on the ground, but it is not the same thing.



Some things I just cannot capture in a photograph...

My older son, David Ricardo Palmer, used his cell phone to take this photo at a local grocery store last weekend. He is warning people not to shop there...

The same two scenes (see previous posting), in the gray-blue of an overcast dawn:





The University of Guelph has many interesting sculptures in this general vicinity on its campus. Here is one of what I take to be a groundhog (though I could easily be mistaken) standing near a bus stop on the main street going past the university. Someone kindly gave it a glove to wear and left an apple for it. The Stonehenge-like work can be seen in the background, across a small parking lot.

Two photos from the University of Guelph campus.

First frost. Then snow. And then more snow yesterday:



When he first saw the photo, BenS asked what that praying mantis was eating.

Answer: snowcones.

Do you remember the sunflowers that were covered with frost last week? [here's a link to those photos]. About midnight on New Year's Eve, the snow started here. The weather report said we received about 10cms of snow. Looks like more than that to me!

We were fogged in on Christmas night, but the temperatures were so cold that the fog settled as frost in the early morning. And then the sun shone. Boxing Day in Clinton was absolutely gorgeous. The frost was so strong that it attached to MADD ribbons and even stayed adhered to radio antennas of vehicles driven to Tim Horton's

When I was in Edmonton earlier this month, the temperatures were often down below minus 20° C. (remember, C stands for Canadian, F stands for Foreign). Here is a photo of the thermometer in our rental car at 9 o'clock one morning:



It occurred to me as I walked to our car and passed a Coca-Cola delivery truck, that they must have to heat those trucks in the cold winter weather to keep the Coke from freezing. I asked the driver about it, and he pointed out that the heater on his truck had not been adequate for such cold temperatures:



It was so cold that our hosts put their dogs in thermal jackets with hoods:

One danger of ending with a preposition: it might be mistaken for a noun.



Taken during a recent visit to Edmonton

... the cats will sleep. How's that for an amended cliche?

Actually, what happened is that while I was away, Maxwell and Mystery took over my spot on the loveseat.



[photo courtesy of Ms. Eclectic]

Ms. Eclectic asked me to trim this tree because it was blocking the sunlight to her other plants. So I decided to cut it into the shape of a cube:



It looks like hell from the side and back, though:



Sort of a 3D Edgeworth Box? Not really.

As I mentioned a couple of months ago, Ms. Eclectic and I have been married 25 years. We recently picked up some matching rings we had designed and produced for us to celebrate.

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The rings were designed and made by Brenda Roy in Alliston, Ontario.

I've noticed that this site gets numerous visits from people looking for pictures of kidney stones. I posted one such picture back in July, but here is perhaps a better photo of two more stones that I got rid of a couple of weeks later:



Several people suggested that we have them set into matching rings for Ms. Eclectic and me... You know, sharing a bit of myself as a symbol of our togetherness. For reasons that escape me, both she and the jeweler refused.

Last weekend we visited my younger son, Adam Smith Palmer, and his wife. They live near Houston, Texas, where both are studying/working. On Labour Day, they took us to Brazos Bend State Park.

While there, we saw smallish alligator (we were told it was maybe 4-5 years old)



and tonnes of Golden Silk Spiders.



It's a nice park with a great hands-on programme for touching snakes and baby alligators, and for learning more about golden silk spiders.

It is my shoulder bag, in which I carry my computer, books, and other supplies when I commute to work. It is usually standing up in that place, but she pulled it over to investigate it, at which time she decided to make it one of her many beds.

I am about 6-feet tall. I have heard of sunflowers as tall as these (and much taller), but until this year I had never seen them "up close and personal". Now we have them in our yard. We have staked them in two places, but I fear the next really strong windstorm will take them down.

Stuart insists that when I return to the Yorkshire Dales, he will accompany me on a walk up and down Ingleborough Peak (live webcam shot here)and Whernside Peak. These peaks make up two of the famous Three Peaks Walk. The goal is to make the 24.5-mile walk up and down all three peaks in under 12 hours. Well, I walked up and down Pen-y-Ghent (the third of the three peaks) last June, so I figure if I do the other two before this coming June I'll have met some kind of criterion for having completed the three peaks in under 12 months ....

Stuart has no idea how slow I am. He may regret having made the offer and having insisted that he meant it.

Oh well. Over a year ago, Jay said that if I returned to England, he would drive me up to Scotland on his motorcycle. He was pretty chagrined when I actually showed up last April and reminded him of the offer — and he was greatly relieved when I told him I didn't really believe it was an offer (as in "offer and acceptance" in contract law). Similarly, I won't hold Stuart to his offer.

But I will try very hard to return to the Yorkshire Dales. They were absolutely spectacular.

Way off in the distance in this photo, you can just make out Pen-y-Ghent, which I walked up and down (and back to Settle) the following day.

The above photo was taken while I was walking to the small town Settle from the small town of Malham via Malham Cove (shown below):



Along the way, I passed the aptly named Rye Loaf Hill. This is another place to which I feel inexorably drawn, another must-visit when I return to the area. The photo below on the left is from the NE, and the photo on the right is from the west:



Note: because my cameras were out of commission, these photos were taken with my cell phone; not bad, eh?

In Alliston, Ontario, as you go into town from the west:



I wonder if they learned to do this from the folks in Herstmonceux.

Last winter, I wrote about a black rabbit that had been marauding Ms. Eclectic's garden (see here, or here, or here). After soliciting suggestions from readers here, I decided his name should be "Zeke". I figured he was an escaped domestic pet, and I did not really expect to see him again after a few weeks.

But he was back several times last week, bigger and fatter than ever:

I still think it is an eyesore, despite the fascinating lighting of this photograph. Maybe, some year, I'll actually go around in it, but don't hold your breath.

One of the interesting field trips I went on while teaching at the International Study Centre was to the town of Rye and then about a two-mile walk to the remains of Camber Castle out in the levels, some distance from the town.

In good weather, this would be a fantastic trip. The town of Rye is chock full of history, and Camber Castle is a good example of 16th century castles that became next-to-useless when the sea level receded.

In bad weather, though, ....

First, the walk to Camber Castle is across a number of sheep pastures. The sheep and lambs looks so cute... until you realize you have to trudge through miles of sheep manure (see photo on right, taken expressly for Anita). And the poor students had to form "rain scrums", huddling under umbrellas to avoid the massive downpours while we waited a half hour for someone to show up with a key to let us into the castle grounds.



It was still an interesting field trip, but we'd have enjoyed it much more in better weather!

View from the track on the way back:

If you live in the London (Ontario) area or expect to be passing through London sometime during the rest of this month, you might try to stop at the Starbucks in Masonville, attached to the Chapters bookstore there. For the month of July, an exhibition of my photography, "Lines, Not Queues", will be on display. From the introduction to the exhibit,

The unifying theme of this exhibit is the dominance of lines in each of the photographs. From the way the sunlight strikes a building to the convolution of lines in a theatre structure, lines emerge as a prevailing force.
Lines are nice; queues less so.

Previews of some of the photos can be seen here. Here is another:


Inside the Sydney Opera House

The price of gasoline in England is roughly twice what it is in North America. As a result, people drive smaller cars and drive less. Many people have chosen to take the train and ride bicycles, as is obvious in this photograph taken at the bicycle parking area of the Oxford train station:

While in Ayr, Scotland, I took this photo at high tide as Ms. Eclectic, The Chauffeur, and I were strolling along the river. We were staying in an apartment in one of those taller buildings off in the distance.

Later, we visited the cottage in which famous Scot poet, Robbie Burns was born, at the southern edge of Ayr.



At the museum next door to the Burns Cottage is a painting of the bridges of Ayr, sited not far from where I had taken my photo earlier that day.

The kidney stone that sent me to hospital a few weeks ago was originally reported to be 6mm x 8mm, but after lithotripsy (a non-invasive sonic process to smash up kidney stones), I was told,

"It is very hard, but it is beginning to break up."

That procedure lasted about 15 - 20 minutes, whereas some sources say the procedure should take as long as an hour. No wonder a hunk this size (5mm x 4mm) was left inside me.

It finally made its appearance yesterday afternoon. We're thinking of having either a christening or a coming-out party.

It would have been nice had they broken this up a bit more, along with the biggie that's still in there somewhere, but it is good to have this piece gone.

For the background, should you be interested, see this, this, and this.

A bar door in Brighton says "Pull", but has push plates on it. I thought it was a pretty amusing joke.



But then I saw the knob down low, under the window.

At a restaurant in Prenton on the Wirral.

Several people in Bath told me that there had never been any love lost between Queen Victoria and the people of Bath. Supporting evidence of this view is that while I was in Bath, I so no mailboxes with "VR" on them, despite having seen several of them in other towns. I did, however, come across several mailboxes with E-VII-R on them, placed during the reign of Victoria's son, Edward VII, in the early 20th century.



By the time I left England, I still had not seen any mailboxes with ER VIII on them, even though I guess at least one exists.

And from a distance, I continued to mistake these things for mailboxes:



Fortunately, I never tried to mail a letter in one of them.

In a shop window in the Mayfair District of London:



At the Carnegie Library in Ayr, Scotland:



Notice the padded backrest in the lower model. I confess to having looked for a pistol behind the tank [cf Godfather I].

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And while we're on the subject of toilets, here is an amusing sign on the public facilities in Newhaven, UK.

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Addendum: At the Cliffs of Moher in western Ireland:

One Tuesday in late May while I was in England, I decided to go for a walk on The South Downs, just west of Eastbourne. The Downs stretch a long ways, and there are many trails to take that are gorgeous, with nice views and pleasant breezes. Here is a view of The Downs (those hills in the distance) from my apartment window in Bader Hall at Herstmonceux Castle.

As I was walking up one of the paths to The Downs, I turned around and could see the old Newton Observatory, along with several smaller observatory domes at the Science Centre, all of which are located on the Castle grounds at Herstmonceux. Bader Hall is barely visible as a low brownish brick building to the left in this photo. [You will probably have to click on this photo to see the domes, etc.]



One of my favourite activities when walking is to take a break and fly a small parafoil kite that I carry with me. It has no frame, is sturdy, and it rolls up into a very small package that is easy to carry around. Here it is, in the air over The South Downs.



This type of kite needs a fairly strong and steady wind, but there is something idyllic about sending it up, lying on the grass, and dreaming....

I had been just over this hill when I was flying the kite.
And, of course, there are the usual sheep everywhere.

It all started less than a year ago. I had nice, handy Minolta digital camera that I carried everywhere in my shirt pocket. While wading, I leaned over and dropped it into the Irish Sea.

Then I dropped my first Canon 750 into our hot tub.

Next, a little over a week ago, I was carrying my second Canon 750 in my pocket when, as happened several times before, something bumped the on-off switch, turning the camera on (and, unfortunately, opening and extending the lens away from the camera body). It seems that the heavy bag I was carrying on my shoulder then smashed into the camera in my pocket, destroying the mechanism. Another camera bit the dust.

Results:

1. all my photos from Yorkshire and from the Eastbourne hospital were taken on my cell phone (low resolution).
2. I think I will wait awhile before purchasing yet another piñata digital camera. I really want quality photographs, portability, and convenience, but I guess I have to alter my lifestyle even more in my use of a small digital camera. I had already stopped carrying it in my shirt pocket, having lost two of them into the water from my shirt pocket. But carrying the camera in my pants pocket is how I destroyed the last one.

Maybe I just need to take a bit more time to think about different options at different times. I'm not too good at that, it seems.

The name seems so apt when you take the pedestrian walkway between the Embankment station and the Charing Cross station:

What better gift can I send to my daughter for her birthday than a t-shirt from the French Connection, United Kingdom, on which the initials of the firm are emblazoned, in-your-face-style, across the front?



I guess this clothing is more than passe, but she'll be getting stuff actually from the UK, unlike all the items in Trono that get students sent home from their schools.

One of Ms. Eclectic's favourite brands of single-malt Scotch is Auchentoshan, so we absolutely had to go visit that distillery while we were staying in Ayr, only about 50 miles away. The tour there was good, though I didn't enjoy it quite as much as I enjoyed the tour I had at Glen Moray in Elgin last year, where the guide made sure I sampled a LOT of different scotches at the end.

These barrels were here just for display and for photo ops; the real warehousing is in an area cordoned off from visitors.

Triple-distilled butt? I think that's a reference to the barrel, not me.

Two photos from our drive around Loch Lomond (how could I not take the one on the right?):


As in, "Would you kindly get to the Firkin' Point?"

and later, we saw this sign, which I took altogether too personally.

Several weeks ago, Ms. Eclectic, The Chauffeur, and I enjoyed a visit to Ayr, southwest of Glasgow, Scotland. We stayed in an apartment in one of the taller buildings at the mouth of the river.

You have to hand it to the folks there. They have a bit of a sense of humour, especially in the naming of their casino:



This was the view from our apartment building, looking back at the bridges from which I took that first photo:



It was beautiful, and we had a very relaxing stay.

The Village of Wartling is about a 20-minute walk from the castle across some fields. It has a superb, upscale pub, called "The Lamb". It also has, hidden by some hedges, an archaeological dig going on. The dig is part of a graduate project by a student at Sussex University, but my colleague, Professor Scott McLean, is involved in the project as well, and he solicits volunteers to help with the dig whenever possible on weekends, and so I went along to see what was what last Saturday. [as usual, please click on the photographs if you wish to see them larger and in fuller resolution.]



The site is located in a very small field just behind the home of someone who initially was interested in why their land had such unusual contours and has been very generous, not doing anything with the land while the dig is underway.



Most of us had little or no experience at archaeological digs, and Philippa, the archaeologist in charge of the dig, had a couple of the strapping young undergrads clearing off the grass and topsoil. Others she put to work washing and scrubbing (with a soft toothbrush) the carefully identified bags of artifacts (mostly pottery, some metal bits, including nails).

Me? I was so inexperienced that she put me to work washing and scrubbing artifacts from something called "spoils", which is the collected stuff that has not been identified as to location in the dig and is probably not of much value historically or archaeologically. If I screwed up, I probably wouldn't ruin anything.




As with any dig, things have to be put into a grid and accurate records must be kept. I had seen these sorts of things before: boxes with string that mark off a temporary grid and that make it easier to sketch the locations of stones and bricks that might have been part of suspected walls, hearths, etc.



After I did a bit of washing and scrubbing of bits of pottery, I went to help one of the students skim the topsoil from where they had removed the grass. We used smallish trowels and skimmed the dirt down about a quarter inch or so with each pass, removing and saving bits of things that might be part of something else or might be of interest (i.e., we saved absolutely everything, including pebbles!). Man, that troweling was back-breaking work AND it was hard on the knees.



At noon, Scott drove the students back to the castle for lunch, but I opted for going across the road to The Lamb for a pint of cider and some steak and ale pie. The service was unbelievably slow, in part because the pub is a favourite for yuppies on weekends, but I was happy to sit and rest my weary joints, so I didn't mind all that much.
The food at The Lamb is very good, and it doesn't stink in that pub (like rotten lamb innards or something, which is how some country pubs seem to smell).

Also, The Lamb at Wartling (as distinguished from The Lamb at Hooe, which is also very good and only a few miles away) has a very classy tiled trough urinal for men in the Gents, unlike the stainless steel or even grubbier ones often seen in lesser establishments.

After lunch, I was put to work on troweling a small section with Jacquie, a volunteer with quite a lot of experience and who has become very knowledgeable as a result. As we scraped and troweled, she explained to me about hammer ponds — ponds in the area that were formed from dammed up creeks so that the built-up water pressure could be used to power hammers to crush the iron stone for smelting (probably somewhat analogous to the way taconite ore is used today in the northern midwest of the US); there are tonnes of these hammer ponds in this area. Jacquie said that during the Tudor period this region was undergoing a sizeable industrial revolution, producing iron for much of England. The iron industry didn't move north to any great extent until coal and coke were used for smelting. Until then, charcoal was the fuel, and there were lots of trees to make charcoal in this region. Scott added that many homes from the Tudor era had their own small hearths and made their own iron.

[digression: this all brought to mind my very first publication as an economist, 76 years ago, on ancient metal technology where I showed that it was typically most efficient for iron producers to locate near the fuel sources, not near the ore sources and not near their markets.]

Whoa! What's this? My first artifact as an amateur archaeologist! a shard of glass sticking up through the clay I had been scraping and troweling.

It was fun to come across something other than bits of ironstone and pebbles. Even though it was near quitting time, I announced that I did not care if the shard was a foot long down into the clay, I was staying until midnight, if I had to, to unearth this shard, my very first archaeological artifact. Scott, Philippa, and Jacquie were amused.

But as I kept scraping and troweling around the glass bit, it became clear it was not going to loosen up and be removed easily. And even though diggers are not supposed to dig down around an artifact, but are supposed to maintain an even layer of troweling, I was allowed to sort of dig and trowel around this shard until it was revealed to be a bit of a bottle.

Philippa immediately identified it as an "onion bottle", so called because of its shape (bulbous on the bottom and narrow at the top). These types of bottles were common around 1700 or so, often used on ships because of their low centre of gravity, which makes sense since the sea probably came up to within several hundred yards of this site at one time.

Once we found that this was more than a mere shard of glass, the humour stopped, and we became VERY careful, brushing and troweling with an even smaller tool. We hoped that the whole bottle would be there, and maybe the rest of it is under some more clay, but with more troweling and brushing, this is what we saw:



The neck and top of the bottle are intact on the right, and there appear to be bits that have been crushed by the weight of time (and dirt). Here, in the end, is what we recovered:

And here is what a real onion bottle looks like. This one is on display in Knole, a palatial summer home built back in the 15th century and which has on display many portraits, tapestries, and upholstered chairs that are over 300 years old or older.






One of the more fascinating discoveries at the site last year was this well, still intact but under a couple of huge stones, and very well built.











All-in-all, what a wonderful experience for a complete noviate novice! Step aside, Indiana Jones. Make way for The East-Sussex EclectEcon!

Honestly, it took me several seconds to figure out what these signs on the Madrid Metro meant.

This first one looked to me as if it was saying "no hitch-hiking", which seemed an odd thing to say on a subway car.


After I looked at the sign for a few seconds, I realized it was saying something like, "Don't hold or force the doors open."

And I knew, really knew, that this sign was not saying, "No farting", though that might not be a bad sign for a subway car. And I also knew that it was not saying, "Don't stick your butt (or bum) out in the way of the train where it might get hit."



I had to look at the sign a couple of times before I could tell it was saying the same thing as this luggage tag from London about the London Underground: