Who needs a carbonated beverage when hot and hunky Randy is only a meter away, and his Chanel Pour Monsieur is wafting toward you on the wings of love, mingled with the musky scent of teen athlete? Focus, Joyce, or you’ll drop your pom.
Hormones are high all around. Looks like she’s got designs on this guy.
The sight of Bill literally made Sally’s jaw fall open.
Too much nuzzling!
A’courting we shall go.
Whoa, boy…
He shall be mine by nightfall. I will yet ensnare him.
I love vintage National Geographics. They didn’t mince words in describing these “shanty-boat folk” in May of 1932, which, though in the Depression, was STILL probably a better May than ours, as they weren’t consumed by thoughts of invisible germs killing them. Shanty-boat folk don’t care about no germs. SBF don’t care about paying property taxes, since their “crude craft of clapboards and tin” drifted along the Ohio River and down the Mississippi as they saw fit, stealing food from cornfields and berry patches, or snatching an unfortunate stray chicken. These water gypsies had been “the bane of steamboat skippers,” who tried to maneuver around them in days of yore, and continued to incite derision as the decades passed.
For more information on shanty boat people and cool images like this even-more-mobile mobile home, check out: https://peoplesriverhistory.us/project/history/.
Oft is the time I’ve enjoyed a Whitman’s Sampler; Walgreen’s always has them in supply. But what of this metal box of Loveliness? Isn’t that a fruit of the spirit? No, I forget myself. Loveliness is full of surprise centers. Forrest Gump’s mother was well-acquainted with these. I received neither last Sunday. But at least I’m not stuck on a frontier with my frock stuck in a cactus.
Four incredibly color-coordinated pale faces chat about patterns with Chippewa Chief Big Bear in Itasca Park, Minnesota back in 1935. His tribesman sold many items to visitors, including beaded bags, baskets, toy birch-bark canoes, and other handicrafts. They also held husking parties, such as these, with the intent to supply rice for sportsmen’s game banquets.
While other tribes chose corn as their main crop, the Chippewa lived in a “place where there is food upon the water” surrounding the Great Lakes region. Wild rice, or “manoomin” in the Ojibwe language, was integral to their diets as well as their entire way of life. Wisconsin Chippewans have harvested manoomin for centuries.
In 2018, Chippewa Indians from Turtle Lake, Wisconsin continued to gather in the name of rice, hosting their 45th annual Wild Rice Festival. The pow-wow was the showstopper.
While rice beds have been diminishing, threatened by climate issues, pipelines, and mines, Chippewans struggle to protect the crop by reseeding lakes and waterways, hoping to meet the needs of their communities as well as pass on the culture to younger generations.
Who knew wild rice was such a big deal? To most of us, it’s just a side option at restaurants.
Or a delectable holiday dish, such as this cranberry squash wild rice pilaf.
Seriously, I could eat that right now.
Check and see if your state celebrates wild rice as well. Why, we even have a Texas Wild Rice Festival in San Marcos! There’s the mayor floating the river in the middle of the festival.
Prices seem fair in most places, even if you don’t get a pow-wow or float down a river.
And don’t forget to dress up!
Today is Tuesday Travel day (but not for you or anyone else on this planet right now), and today’s mode of travel is TRAINS. My granddad loved trains, often joining the engineer up front, donning the requisite engineer cap. While most of his train schedules and pamphlets are normal map-sized (the kind we once bought at gas stations), none of today’s images are larger than your hand. Most measure only five inches tall.
The majority are from 1934-1935, but this one is about to hit the century mark.
Folks back then would have needed a good pair of glasses to read the small font to find a route and a fare to their destination.
Advertising air conditioning was very important.
Even if was glaringly racist.
It certainly sounds necessary, after reading about the “torrid, sooty blasts from open windows.”
The font and artwork are still eye-catching after all these years.
The luncheon options, however, would not fare so well today. Ox tongue? Prune whip? Prune cornbread? What on earth?
Perhaps you’d be better served by keeping your appetite until you hit the Fred Harvey counter at Union Station (where Harvey Girls served up lunch). Fred Harvey advertisements were ubiquitous on time cards.
Why, even Judy Garland was a Harvey Girl in the movies!
And she sang about the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe, which were all train routes.
What about you all? Have you ever ridden a train? Did you get a cool time card? Where were you going?
Yep, it’s grandpa’s map time again. This time, it’s Germany! The last referenced date on it is ’33. Hitler has just become chancellor, he’s begun his purge of the civil service, professing national socialism. The Gestapo is born, and Germany is ripe for visitors!
It’s so hard to appreciate a large map online, especially one that has been folded since the 30s, with stiff, sharp creases. 
But you can get a taste of the fanciful and intricate illustrations. Here we see it referred to as the German Reich, though this is the first year of the rise of the Third Reich.
None of its citizens can know what the next few years will bring, or how their children will become indoctrinated.
Can you appreciate the colors, the birds, the animals, and churches? What a happy place of frolic.
By the way, friends and family who have lived in and visited Germany say it is a beautiful country today! Add it to your bucket list.
I know what you’re thinking.
#extra
In fairness, these Aborigines were all gussied up for the corroborree (lively social gathering), where they had plans to perform a “wild duck dance” wearing said grass and feather head ornaments.
They don’t look too thrilled about the pending festivities. Personally, I wouldn’t chance the neck pain or misalignment of the spine that such weight could cause. And that’s why I don’t get invited to corroborrees.
I Don't Get It 