Archive for September, 2008

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Liquid Fate Reveals The Peril Of Chilled Attractions

Monday, September 29th, 2008

Life-size sculptures made of butter have become status symbols during State Fair season. They’ve grown increasingly sophisticated since the days when only one or two Midwestern states would hire someone to carve a half-ton cow. Now states ranging from Massachusetts to Texas vie to display the most elaborate dairy-derived art, whose subjects can range from [...]

Ed Gein, Liberace, Teddy R. Star In “Odd Wisconsin”

Sunday, September 28th, 2008

Relics related to a cannibal, an ex-President, and Mr. Showmanship are highlights of “Odd Wisconsin,” a long-term, rotating exhibit that opens on October 3 at the Wisconsin Historical Museum in Madison. This unleashing of marvels is part of a trend that we first noticed back in 2004, in which otherwise mainstream venues dig into their [...]

Hemingway, USDA, Sheathe Claws In Key West Cat Fight

Saturday, September 27th, 2008

Ernest Hemingway once kept a six-toed cat at his home in Key West, Florida. The descendants of that cat — currently numbering in the dozens, many of them with six toes — still live on the one-acre property, which is now a tourist attraction. As are the cats. For the past few years the attraction [...]

Giant Telephone To Honor Town’s Tenacity

Friday, September 26th, 2008

Civic-minded municipalities love to call attention to their role in technological innovation. Wabash, Indiana, is the First Electrically Lighted City. Bellefontaine, Ohio, has America’s oldest concrete street. Chillicothe, Missouri, is the birthplace of mechanically-sliced bread. The people of Bryant Pond, Maine, feel proud, too — but for an entirely different reason. They were the last [...]

New Hampshire’s Big Bug Is For Sale

Thursday, September 25th, 2008

Despite its frosty winters, New England is no stranger to gargantuan insects. There’s a big bee in Vermont. A titanic termite in Rhode Island. And this past spring, artist Nathan Walker built a seven-foot-tall, 600 pound ant out of scrap iron and steel and placed it in downtown Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Although the citizens of [...]

Brutal Nature Can’t Harm Bears In A Pit

Wednesday, September 24th, 2008

Nature’s savagery was on full display in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, in the early morning hours of September 23. A raging fire tore through the Three Bears Gift Shop on the tourist mecca’s main drag, destroying it. But the gift shop’s five bears (not three) survived without injury, sheltered out back within a thick concrete bear [...]

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