When we visited Boyce Thompson Arboretum last November, I spotted lots of patches of fall color – and not just in the trees!
Here are some shades of an Arizona autumn for you!
Desert Autumn Colors
Vintage Travel Posters
I stumbled across all these 1930s Swiss and Italian travel posters online that are up for sale at an auction house in Dresden, Germany.
I had intended to quickly share some of my favorites, but then I got curious about some of the places pictured and ended up doing some research/getting sidetracked. So I have a little extra backstory for some of them.
Pilatus Bahn, Luzern – Pilatus Railway, Railway Chemin de Fer, Lucerne, Switzerland poster by Otto Ernst, c. 1930.
At first glance, I thought this was the same mountain railway (funicular) I’d posted about previously, Gelmerbahn, but it’s actually Pilatusbahn, which is on a different Swiss peak about 40 minutes away. Different sources claim each one to be the steepest cogwheel railway in Europe, so that may be where my confusion came from.
Anyway, I found a 2009 photo of Mt. Pilatus that was taken from almost the same angle as the poster – you can even see the little red funicular making its way down the hill (on possibly-the-steepest-grade track in Europe).
Genua und die Italienische Riviera – “Genoa and the Italian Riviera,” lithograph, 1931.
Are there palm trees in Genoa? I wouldn’t have guessed that, but I’m not going to verify that right now. This post has sent me down enough rabbit trails already! (Yeah, more are on the way, I just rearranged the post to spread them out a bit.) For now, I’m going to refrain from even doing an image search.
Leuchtender Sommer – Beschwingte Fahrt. Die schöne Schweiz – Zürich poster “Bright summer – Lively ride. The beautiful Switzerland.” by Augusto Giacometti, c. 1930.
This design is such a departure from your typical travel poster. Instead of focusing on a scene from a city or landscape, it’s just a close-up of a slightly abstracted, watercolor-y butterfly.
Continue reading “Vintage Travel Posters”
September 2018: Cloud Coverage
It was just cool enough to sit on the porch awhile the morning I took September’s photo, and Quijote seemed to want a little extra sun.
The sky was mottled with little white clouds, like the edges of the approaching cloud bank had crumbled off ahead of it.
They reminded me of the bits of cream cheese you get when it’s too cold to spread properly. Or the pattern of paint after a timid first pass on a textured wall.
Later, the wind and air pressure and afternoon heat would work together to spread the storm clouds across the sky and cover it completely.
Wonder
“Travel and magic both have the ability to deliver this cataclysmic death blow to any sense of certainty that you have.”
-Nate Staniforth
One of the best kept secrets about adulthood is that adults don’t have all the answers.
We’re just better at faking it, as if imagination and curiosity were beneath us. As if childlike wonder was only for children.
But it’s good for all of us to remember our actual place on this vast and baffling planet, to sit back to appreciate the beauty of everyday magic, to marvel at what we can’t explain.
I loved how the thread of wonder ran through a recent episode of the podcast You Made It Weird.
In their 2-hour-plus conversation, comedian/host Pete Holmes and his guest, magician Nate Staniforth, talked about the things that challenge your assumptions about reality – like traveling or having children or seeing a really good magic trick.
You can close yourself off, or you can open your arms to the mystery and be amazed at what unfolds.
A final thought from Nate Staniforth:
“Wonder is such a slippery, ephemeral experience. You can’t bottle it up and keep it. And if you could, it wouldn’t be wonder. So the idea is not to find it once and then say ‘I’ve got it,’ but it’s to keep looking for it.”
PodRec!
A podcast episode recommendation for you – hopefully, the first of many!
You Made It Weird
August 15, 2018
guest: Nate Staniforth
Car Games
Both Phillip and I grew up in road-trip-taking families before the time of iPads or backseat DVD players.
Back in that age of analog entertainment, there were books and snacks and fighting with your sibling(s) and staring out the window.
We counted Volkswagen “slug” bugs, spotted the letters of the alphabet on road signs, looked for license plates from other states, and tried to get truckers to honk.
I didn’t think about this type of games not being universal until Phillip and I were driving our friends from China to go on their first camping trip and realized this was another new thing for them.
Of course, it makes sense that not everyone went on road trips as a kid, and, therefore didn’t play road trip games. I just hadn’t thought about it before.
What did you do on long trips growing up (whether you took a car, train, bus, etc.)? Did you play any games like these?