This weird Wednesday offering is a residential home in New Mexico and the only detailed descriptions and photos I could find were in an architectural magazine: The Guide to New Mexico Architecture.
This architect’s unusual residence and separate studio gallery are quite special for Albuquerque. The visual complexity of the residence’s unique series of volumes disguises an architectural diagram that is best described from the top down. The top floor is a long, flattened tube placed parallel to the long dimension of this very narrow site. Four cylindrical, hollow pillars (aligned along this long dimension) support this tube and all the major enclosures. A large circular volume engages the western two pillars, and a smaller circular volume engages the eastern two pillars. The visual complexity is accomplished by exposing all the supporting beams and columns and the addition of surface art to walls, balcony railings, window and door treatments, beam ends, and other opportunities that present themselves.
Windows on the south-facing facades of the house take advantage of the long southern exposure of the site. Three light scoops on the northern portion of the third-floor roof capture southern sun in the winter and bring it into the northern part of that volume. The cylindrical library tower was appended to the residence’s southern face in 1990; the dramatically linear studio gallery, built in the 2000s, stands alone—albeit sitting atop a smaller stuccoed structure—just to the north of the residence.
Inside the United States, there is a micronation of 38 citizens residing in what they call The Republic of Molossia. I found this article at SFGATE that explains the concept and gives a brief overview of this quirky little (unrecognized) nation inside Nevada.
The Republic of Molossia is the city of your adolescent, Candy Land dreams, where the currency is cookie dough and the nation’s leader officially outlawed spinach.
How does a place like Molossia, located about 45 minutes from Reno, exist within the confines of the United States? The self-described independent nation, ruled by President Kevin Baugh and first lady Adrianne Baugh, is actually a micronation within the United States.
At last count, there were 67 micronations across the globe, although that number is more of an estimate considering there aren’t a lot of hard and fast rules for declaring sovereignty. Micronations are not recognized as sovereign states, no matter their claims, but they often share a dedication to pageantry and humor.
Molossia is enclosed within a small Nevada town called Dayton, on an 11-acre property with a total population of 38 souls. Three of the citizens are dogs.
Molossia is an artistic expression with shades of outlaw libertarianism, and it owes its entire existence to a San Francisco icon who was a pioneer in “fake it till you make it” social entrepreneurialism.
The micronation accepts tourists but on specific terms. I rode over the desert brush to find it on a recent August afternoon. Before embarking on the journey, I somewhat expected an unhinged social vigilante with a political agenda, but what I discovered instead was a seemingly well-meaning couple with a solid sense of humor and a love of entertaining the masses with their clever takes on what it means to run a micronation.
I left knowing it was a place I would need to bring friends, if only to experience the hilarity and downright weirdness firsthand. Without seeing it, it’s hard to say who will believe a place like Molossia exists.
Tours are held one day a month between April and October, usually, but not always, on a Saturday. During this time, anyone can visit Molossia. A passport isn’t strictly required, but if you bring one, you can get it stamped at the customs office.
Molossia is smaller than 10 football fields but can draw worldwide attention. During my visit in August, I met people from Canada, Washington and Texas, as well as many from other parts of Nevada. In total, there were about 20 attendees. It’s customary to bring cookie dough to exchange for the local currency, called Valora, which is Latin for “brave or courageous.”
It’s important to abide by the laws when moving about Molossia. That means no contraband like tobacco, incandescent lightbulbs, plastic bags, catfish, onions, walruses and, of course, spinach.
Other laws prohibit citizens from causing catastrophe; torpedoes may not be set off inside of the country, and percussion instruments are barred from every bathroom. It’s also illegal to detonate a nuclear device within the nation and offenders incur a 500 Valora fine.
President Baugh is also considering outlawing hurricanes, but the weather in these parts of Nevada tends to be sunny.
“Molossia weather is always perfect,” he boasts. He says the problem is that “we’re so close to the U.S. border that their crappy weather blows in all the time.”
A tour guarantees access to all of Molossia’s main buildings, including a post office, Tiki bar, the president’s office, a trading post and a jail cell. You’re subject to arrest if you bring in unpermitted items, but the president doesn’t make a habit of keeping anyone past the end of their tour (or for more than a few minutes).
Although Molossia is still at war with East Germany — there’s a long-winded explanation to this involving an argument suggesting East Germany still exists as a small island off the coast of Cuba — the micronation resists the need for a military to defend itself (in part because that East Germany island is uninhabited).
Nevertheless, Molossia does have a naval program composed entirely of inflatable kayaks that explore nearby lakes, including Lake Tahoe on flexible biannual excursions. There are also annual and public events including a dry land boat race.
The space program is predictably limited, but you can launch a small rocket when visiting, which earns yourself a designation as an honorary Molossia space cadet.
There is a house in Rockport, Massachusetts built of paper and it has survived since the 20’s! The following interview appeared in the Cape Ann Sun, 1996.
Mr. Elis F. Stenman, a mechanical engineer who designed the machines that make paper clips, began building his Rockport summer home out of paper as a hobby. That was in 1922. The paper was meant to be good insulation.
Now Stenman’s grandniece, Edna Beaudoin runs the Paper House as her mother did for many years. The following interview is from a conversation with Beaudoin.
How do you make a paper house?
Well, let me see. (Elis Stemnan) started out making a house for the summer. The framework to the house is wood-just like any other house-it has a regular wooden floor and wooden roof. The wall material, which was supposed to be insulation really, is pressed paper about an inch thick. It’s just layers and layers of newspaper, glue, and varnish on the outside That keeps it pretty water-proof actually. This was done in 1924 and he lived here in the summertime up until 1930. Actually, I guess he was supposed to cover the outside with clapboards, but he just didn’t. You know, he was curious. He wanted to see what would happen to the paper, and, well, here it is, some 70 years later.
Have you re varnished it?
Oh yes, lots of extra varnish on the Paper House walls. When the house was built, of course, the porch wasn’t here. That was built sometime in the early ’30s. So the porch roof really protects the bottom part of the Paper House walls. The top section up there on the peaks of the roof that has shingles on it. Roofing shingles, so there really isn’t any paper exposed to the weather. Rain blows in, sometimes snow, but it’s held up pretty well considering how old it is. We really don’t varnish the inside of the house because the more you put on, the darker it gets and we really just like to leave it so you can still read the papers.
After the wall material was made, and he was living in it, he made the furniture. The furniture is made out of little paper logs. The little rolls of paper are maybe a half inch thick and they’re all cut to different sizes-cut with a knife. Then they’re glued together or nailed together.
Who was Elis Stenman?
He’s my- I guess you could say he’s a grand uncle. He’s my mother’s uncle. He and Mrs. Stenman lived in Cambridge when they started this and he was an engineer. He designed machinery and we just really don’t know where he got the idea to build a house out of paper. He was just that sort of a guy. He was curious – an amateur inventor. He started dabbling with trying to make a steam iron and that was back in the ’20s. I don’t believe that he ever patented it, but he was always doing little experimental things. When he was making the house here, he just mixed up his own glue to put the paper together. It was basically flour and water, you know, but he would add little sticky substances like apple peels. But it real1y has lasted. The furniture is usable-it’s quite heavy. Basically the furniture is all paper except for the piano which he covered.
He covered the piano with paper?
Yes, it’s a real piano and he just put the paper outside. And then there’s the mantle on the fireplace. The fireplace actually is usable because it’s really a brick fireplace.
There’s a clock in there. It’s actually very interesting. It’s a grandfather clock and there’s a paper from each one of the 48 states in it, so there are all the state capitols and you can read them all the way down the front of the clock. It was made in the ’30s, so there’s no Alaska and no Hawaii.
Do you know when the electricity was put in?
The house was built with electricity. Yup, electricity, and they even had running water in it when they lived here. It was summer water; the pipe came right up over the ground, but there was water in there. But there were no bathrooms. They were over there in the woods-over yonder. And, no, the outhouse wasn’t paper.
What’s the lineage? How did the house get passed down to you?
Well it was the Stenman’s who actually raised my mother. Her parents dies when she was very young and they were her parents basically. I never knew him- he dies when I was just a baby, but Mrs. Stenman -and it was she who made all the little drapery things in there, which are also made of paper-was really like my grandmother. So, it’s really like the family heirloom.
When did the house get opened up as a museum?
Probably in the ’30s. When they were living in here in the summertime, people used to come up to the house. You know, word got around. This is a small town. Word got around that there was this man making a house of paper. People were curious as early as the late ’20s. But I don’t think they started to charge admission until after Mrs. Stenman died in 1942. I suppose that’s when it really became a museum. It used to be 10 cents to get in.
How much is it now?
A dollar and a half. Inflation. lt is $1.50 for adults and a dollar for children six to 14.
Do you feel a great responsibility to keep it intact?
Yeah, I do. I feel responsible for it, but I don’t worry about it. It’s been here since 1924, so I guess that if a storm was going to blow it over, then so be it. Here it sits and you can’t spend your life worrying that something is going to happen to it. You just take care of it and that’s it.
What’s the most commonly asked question about the Paper House?
I think probably the most common question is just, “why?”
Do you know the answer?
No. I don’t really know the answer. I don’t really know why unless he was just really thrifty or something. Newspapers were pretty inexpensive; everybody gave him their papers.
Imagine driving down the highway and seeing what looks like a baby’s butt on a pedestal? LOL. This article from NPR details The Peachoid, a water tower in South Carolina.
You can’t miss it as you drive down I-85. The Peachoid, as it’s called, is a massive peach-shape water tower near the North Carolina border.
When maintenance crews sandblasted the paint off the water tower recently, people were furious.
Just ask Claire Huminski, with the city of Gaffney.
“We have actually had a lot of people call and via social media complain to us that we are taking down the Peachoid and that we do not need to do that because it is a landmark,” Huminski says, “and they were really upset, tweeting angry tweets at me, I’m like, ‘We’re not taking it down, I promise!’ “
In Gaffney, the Peachoid is more than a water tower.
The city’s tourism director says she’s talked to people from Canada, Germany and Japan, who stopped through this city of almost 13,000 people just to see it.
Some of them first saw it on the Netflix hit House of Cards.
In real life, the tower has never had a thorough repainting since the original job was finished in 1981. So, Eric Henn climbs into a construction lift with a heavy steel door.
Henn rises more than 100 feet with paint rollers and a few shades of orange and yellow.
The longtime publisher of the local paper, Cody Sossamon, says the idea was to create a landmark for an area with a large peach farming community.
“I loved it and still do even though it’s, to use the term loosely, the butt of a lot of jokes,” he says.
For one, the tower has the colors — and curves — of an actual peach. Looking up at it, Gaffney native Leonard Wyatt says the crease is hard to miss.
“When you see the crack right here,” Wyatt says, “going down the interstate, you’ll see that’s one of the first things you’ll see, and people say it’s a baby’s butt with a rash.”
House of Cards played up that idea. Kevin Spacey’s character, Frank Underwood, is the subject of an attack ad about the Peachoid: “It’s vulgar. It’s an embarrassment to the county. But time and time again Frank Underwood has fought to keep it standing.”
That episode is the reason James Burroughs pulled over on his way from Atlanta to Raleigh.
“I decided to take a picture today so I can show some of my friends that yeah, see, the big peach does exist,” he says.
Burroughs says his friends in Georgia — the Peach State — wonder why it’s here. South Carolina actually produces almost twice as many peaches as Georgia, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Some have asked if the renovation will make the Peachoid look less like a human backside.
The answer is no, says Kim Fortner of the Gaffney Board of Public Works.
“You know it’s kind of like, I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase, ‘I don’t care what you call me as long as you call me?’ ” Fortner says. A lot of people know where Gaffney is by this tank.”
If you’re thinking this post is an article about the former…cough, cough, First Lady, you’re wrong!
Years ago, when hubby and I first moved to this area, one of our favorite things to do was explore the region on our Harley. On one particular trip, after an extremely wet spring, we came upon a state park with an enormous waterfall. It was breathtaking and sooo close to the road. We took a bunch of pictures, but much to our chagrin, once home we realized we failed to take notice of the park’s name.
The following summer we tried to replicate the trip to find that waterfall and state park again, but to no avail. We had a general idea, but none of the parks we went to were quite right and none in the area had any waterfalls. Finally, we spotted a group of bikers on the road ahead and decided to follow them for a bit. They turned up ahead onto a road with a covered bridge and we followed.
As soon as we crossed the bridge, we saw they turned into this little hole in wall place called Big Mike’s. It looked like someone bought a nice house next to the river and turned it into a general store and restaurant.
The walls in the restaurant were filled with Philadelphia sports memorabilia highlighting the Eagles football team. There were pictures and jerseys in frames everywhere. As we walked through, a large, bearded man approached us and introduced himself as Big Mike. We told him we were big Eagles fans and how we never missed them when they practiced at Lehigh University. He told us he and his family moved from Philadelphia because it was just too dangerous anymore. But once they moved to this area, he discovered what we had also discovered—a shortage of decent places serving good steak sandwiches. He decided to bring a bit of Philly north and opened his own steak sandwich and hoagie place.
After we ordered and enjoyed the best steak sandwiches out of the Lehigh Valley, Big Mike came over to our table. He asked how our food was, and after accepting our genuine praise, he said the secret is the rolls! He contracted with a Philly bakery to deliver the delicious rolls twice a week. He pays a little more, but the restaurant reviews revealed it to be a genius move!
Before we left, we asked Big Mike about the waterfall and the state park. He said the only one close to the restaurant was World’s End State Park and the waterfall was actually the little creek after the flooding from a rainy spring. We’ve been back many times, but the “waterfall” was never there again.
“Most people didn’t get past the characters to notice the house,” says Sandra McKee, a lifelong Texan, former lingerie store owner, great-grandmother, and Waxahachie resident. McKee is talking about the home at 1313 Mockingbird Lane in the fictional city of Mockingbird Heights in the sixties TV show The Munsters. “But I loved the house,” she continues. “You could flow from any room without turning around and going back. The flow was wonderful.”
She loved it so much that she decided to recreate it. Twenty years ago, McKee and her husband, Charles, built a Victorian-style home in Waxahachie and designed it to look just like the Munsters’ house. The McKees lived there until a few years ago. Now they live next door and open the mansion for private tours as well as for monthly murder mystery dinner parties catered by the Olive Garden. It’s not just a tribute to the original but a nearly exact duplicate. The electric chair is there. The rotating suit of arms is there. The dishes laid out on the dining table are the real dishes the cast ate from on the show. Spot, the Munsters’ pet fire-breathing dragon, lives under the stairs: “We did a cardboard mock-up,” McKee recalls. “Shipped it off to a guy up north. He did the fiberglass and the mechanism to make the mouth open. We can’t do fire out the nose, of course, because you’d burn down the house, but we used to have fog coming out.” She adds, “On tours, a lot of people have breathing problems, so we don’t do fog anymore.” Even the candelabras and beaded-fringe lampshades and cheesecloth cobwebs look just like the originals.
“I watched all seventy episodes,” McKee says, reminiscing about the origins of her project. “We’d freeze-frame a wall. Figure out what goes on that wall. Lily Munster was five feet four. I’m five two. I could see how many steps it took her to get to the staircase or the stove. And that’s how we determined where things were. I don’t mind researching things. I spent a lot of time researching. A lot of time watching the show. Eventually I could say the words before they said the words.”
Waxahachie, a city of more than 35,000 residents about thirty miles south of Dallas, might be the best spot in Texas for a Munster Mansion. A town with an Old West feel—some scenes of Bonnie and Clyde were shot there—it also has a spooky side. Not only is it home to Screams Halloween Theme Park, it’s rumored to be haunted. Local Cajun restaurant Catfish Plantation advertises its cast of ghosts (ask the owner about the levitating fry basket). Unexplained turning door handles and tales of an elevator-riding girl ghost draw tourists to the Rogers Hotel. There’s also a popular historical ghost tour.
But the Munster Mansion is less spooky than simply extraordinary. There’s something so impressive, almost subversive, about giving one’s life to something that no one else has likely even conceived of, something that many people wouldn’t understand. For years, the Munster Mansion was simply the McKees’ house. They opened it for tours and charity events a couple times a year. They’d dress up like Lily and Herman and have the show’s cast members over for visits, but they didn’t build the house with the intention of making money. Sandra McKee just … loved The Munsters. And Charles went along for the ride. “If it were up to him, we’d be living in the Starship Enterprise,” she says. “But it was up to me, so here we are in the Munster House.”
Once she’s given me the grand tour, McKee shows me the memorabilia room, crammed with photos and figurines. “My favorite piece in here is this tuxedo,” she says, touching the formal suit with red bowtie. “When Grandpa Munster [the late actor Al Lewis] came to our charity event, the town next to us donated this tuxedo for him to wear for the weekend. Well, Grandpa burned it right here with his cigar—yeah, I’ve got his cigar, too—so I bought the tuxedo from him, didn’t have it dry-cleaned or anything. It’s got his DNA all over it.”
The Munsters, which aired for only two seasons, was produced by the creators of Leave It to Beaver, and like Beaver, it depicted suburban life, albeit satirically. The Munsters were monsters, but they were otherwise a traditional, loving sixties family. The McKees, too, are typical, if you don’t count the coffin phone built into their wall. Charles is a plumber. Sandra adores her family so much that she doesn’t give tours on Halloween because she likes to take the kids trick-or-treating. “I had six grandchildren grow up here,” she tells me. “I told them, don’t run your toys in the cobwebs.” She smiles. “We had a lot of love in this house.”
This month’s offering for Weird Wednesday is the Oklahoma Prairie House. This article was an interview in The Guardian of the home’s designer Herb Greene by Rowan Moore. The piece appeared February 2020.
It starts – for me, and for others intrigued by the work of Herb Greene – with a house shaped like a chicken. On the windblown plains of Oklahoma, as framed in a small number of photographs, this strange creature stands, feathered with wood, huddled but proud, both of its place and alien, the repeating slanted lines of its planks echoing those of the tall grasses around it. Odd wattles hang from its head. A jaunty steel and aluminum car port, like something from a 1950s motel, takes a running jump at its flank, then morphs into an angular peak that surmounts the whole composition.
The Prairie House, built for Greene and his young family in 1961, pops up from time to time in architecture books, usually presented as a diverting proposition, an image of a future not chosen. Clearly something is going on, but what, exactly? With a book, Renegades, about the school of which Greene was part, coming out this month, it seemed like a good occasion to ask him.
“I was trying to make it poignant,” says Greene, now 90 and living in California, via Skype. “I was reading Alfred North Whitehead, a genius philosopher, who showed how some ‘event’ like your shoelace could relate to another, like the moon. I wanted to refer to diverse feelings.” And so the house is intensely personal and individual while also connecting to the extra-human. “I wanted it to look like it really came from Oklahoma,” he says. “I wanted to make it like a creature that hung over the prairie.” It’s not supposed to look like poultry, exactly, more some non-specific beast: “I don’t much like it being called a chicken, but I’ll take it.”
You can’t talk to Greene, or about him, without also talking about the dazzlingly original Bruce Goff, an omnivore of crosscultural inspirations – he loved Gaudí, Debussy, Japanese prints, Balinese music – a man who could collage boulders and oil rig parts into architecture that felt both archaic and futuristic. From 1943 to 55, Goff ran the School of Architecture at the University of Oklahoma, in accordance with his belief that “education should be a matter of bringing something creative and individual out of the student”. He also wanted to draw on American sources – the landscape, Native American art, the pioneer spirit – more than imitate European models.
Greene, on first learning about Goff in an architectural journal, immediately upped and left his architectural studies in Syracuse, New York, and headed off to Oklahoma. “I met my very first genius,” he says. “When he moved his eyes, it was special.” Greene hated the way that, on the east coast, architecture schools had to follow one or another modernist master. “Harvard followed Gropius,” he says. The Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago “followed Mies. But Goff said everyone was different.” Greene would go on to work and teach with Goff.
Greene, like Goff, cross-fertilizes architecture with other art forms. Paintings – in which he likes to riff on a detail from (for example) Vermeer or Cartier-Bresson – have long been central to his work. He also learned from Goff the idea of taking individual clients’ “existential qualities” and making them “into a meaningful composition of architecture”. It might be, as it was in Greene’s Joyce Residence of 1959, his client’s collection of antique furniture and stained glass. It might be some quirk of their character, or something as simple as their favorite color. Whatever the clue or cue, the design would in some way incorporate it, reflect it and be spun from it.
Since human emotions are complicated, so too would be the architectural expression. The Prairie House seeks to communicate vulnerability and even pain, as well as shelter and wonder. It is timber inside as well as out, with shingles roughly installed by Greene’s students, which, as he later wrote, “speak of human scale, warmth, softness and vibratory activity”. It is a wooden nest or cave traversed by vertiginous metal stairs. The house both wards off and embraces the weather, turning its narrower end westward to deflect the prevailing wind, but also offering a generous semicircular window towards the sunset.
Once, says Greene, someone got off a tour bus and asked in all seriousness if a tornado had hit the house. Some female visitors, by contrast, “came out with tears in their eyes”. Goff gave what might have been, for Greene, the ultimate accolade: standing on one of the internal galleries, he looked down and said: “It looks like pure feeling.”
Greene, as it turned out, only lived for a year and a half in his most famous creation. He has done much else in his long career, designing other remarkable buildings, teaching, painting and writing. His 1981 book Building to Last: Architecture As Ongoing Art proposes a public architecture of “armatures”, which would be decorated by the carvings, glasswork, tiles or other artefacts of non-professional members of the public, “citizen artists” and “citizen craftspeople”. He now thinks this is his most important idea.
With the benefit of some decades of hindsight, Greene’s work looks pioneering. His lo-tech responses to the climate have been seen as an early version of sustainable design, and its freeform shapes have become fashionable in the hands of Frank Gehry and others. Greene demurs. “I just did things because they were obvious,” he says. “Gehry,” he adds, “is a genius, but I don’t like the work. He has all the curves but they don’t serve the structure of the building.”
Whatever his place in the unfolding history of architecture, Greene is a singular soul, a rare combination of creative courage and intellectual reflection. Younger architects have yet to find all the answers to questions about environmental design and the relation of buildings to the people who use them. Despite Greene’s modesty, his projects still have plenty to teach.
SOURCE: The Guardian
Sat 29 Feb 2020 12.00 ESTLast modified on Wed 23 Sep 2020 10.26 EDT
MontanaBest: Raising cats — Cat lovers should probably move to Montana right “meow.” In the Treasure State, cats live longer than they do anywhere else in the country, with an average lifespan of 14.3 which is over two years higher than the national average.NebraskaBest: Graduating high school — The nation’s high school graduation rate is at an all-time high, and it’s being led by Nebraska, with an incredible 93.7 percent of students graduating.NevadaBest: Rock climbing — With more mountains than any other state (there are 300 named ranges), Nevada is a premier destination for rock climbers from the sandstone of Red Rock Canyon to the summit of Boundary Peak.
New Hampshire
Best: Low unemployment rate — Fortunately, they should be able to pay off those hefty loans fairly quickly after graduation. That’s because the state also has one of the lowest unemployment rates at a mere 2.7 percent so jobs are aplenty. Find out the best-kept secret in every state.
New Jersey
Best: Diners — Known as the “Diner Capital of the World,” New Jersey has over 500 nostalgic joints serving up our favorite comfort food like old-fashioned root beer floats and massive portions of chicken-fried steak and mashed potatoes.
New Mexico
Best: Most doctorate degrees — What a bunch of smarty pants! While New Mexico may have the most PhDs per capita than any other state, they still can’t quite seem to figure out how to stop auto theft.
New York
Best: Bagels — There’s nothing quite like a New York bagel, all fluffy dough inside and crusty outside. The first bagel shop in the United States opened its doors in the Big Apple in the early 1900s, and the city has been blessing us with the best breakfast ever since.
North Carolina
Best: Millennial living — Duke basketball isn’t the only thing Durham is known for—it’s now also the best city for millennials. The No. 1 ranking factored in Durham’s increased job opportunities and low affordability, making it an ideal spot for young people.
North Dakota
Best: Saving money — Save it for a rainy day: That’s the motto of North Dakota, which boasts the highest number of adults who have savings accounts, according to a survey by WalletHub.
Ohio
Best: Deciding elections — Want to know who the next president of the United States will be? As Ohio goes, so goes the nation, per the popular saying of political pundits. The Buckeye State has voted for the winning candidate in every election since 1896 except 1944 and 1960.
Oklahoma
Best: Barbecue — Satisfy your cravings for a rack of sauce-slathered pork ribs in Oklahoma, the state with the most barbecue restaurants per capita.
Oregon
Best: Brewing beer — Pour a pint in Portland (say that five times fast!), the city with the most breweries in the whole world. And Oregonians aren’t just producing a lot of beer, they’re also enjoying it, if the fact that they spend more money on craft beer than any other state is any indication.
Pennsylvania
Best: Hunting — Hope you like camo if you live in Pennsylvania where you can find the most licensed hunters per capita. In fact, there are over 20 hunters per square mile!
Rhode Island
Best: Donuts — The state that has the most donut shops per capita—25 bakeries per 100,000 people, to be exact!
South Carolina
Best: Sweet tea — It doesn’t get much more Southern than a tall glass of iced sweet tea. Not only is South Carolina the birthplace of the sugary sip, it also boasts the country’s only commercial tea plantation, owned by Bigelow on Wadmalaw Island.
South Dakota
Best: Retirement — Everyone’s golden years are more, well, golden in South Dakota, where a combination of low taxes and happy residents makes it the best state for retirement according to Bankrate.
Tennessee
Best: Fast Wi-Fi — Good news: You can binge watch your favorite Netflix show much faster in Tennessee, where the Internet speed is 50 times quicker than the national average.
Texas
Best: Starting businesses — Explosive job growth, a lot of venture capital, and a business-friendly community are just a few of the things that make the Lonestar State the best place for entrepreneurs to chase their dreams.
Utah
Best: Low student debt — Graduate from college in Utah and you’ll likely leave with less of a student debt burden than most new grads. Last year, the state was the only one to have an average student debt of less than $20,000.
Vermont
Best: Being happy — The phrase “you are what you eat” definitely doesn’t apply to Vermont. Because the happiest state in the country isn’t consuming too many Happy Meals.
Virginia
Best: Patriotism — It’s no secret that Virginians are proud of the red, white, and blue. Close to the nation’s capital and home to eight of America’s 45 presidents, it has been lauded as the most patriotic state.
Washington
Best: Biking — Power to the pedal! You might want to trade your car for a bike the next time you’re in Washington, the most bike-friendly state in the nation thanks to Seattle’s bike-share program and an increased number of traffic laws protecting cyclists.
West Virginia
Best: Pizza — Forget New York or Chicago—West Virginia is the spot to be when you’re craving a cheesy slice of pie. According to a study, it has the most pizza shops per capita.
Wisconsin
Best: Raising a family — “Safety first” is clearly the motto of the Badger State, which is home to 32 percent of the nation’s safest cities for raising kids, based on factors like walkability and violent crime rates.
Wyoming
Best: Avoiding crowds — With just over 560,000 residents, Wyoming is the least populated state. There are more people in just the city of Nashville than there are in the entire Cowboy State.
Later in the month, I will post what each state is WORST at…lol
This article is from the Reader’s Digest. I’ve turned it into a four-part open listing what they consider what each state is best at, and worst at.
Amanda Tarlton
Reader’s Digest
Updated: Jun. 07, 2022
Alabama
Best: College football — “Roll Tide!” That’s what you’ll hear all across the state as they cheer on the University of Alabama’s football team, which has won the most national football championships of any college team since 1936.
Alaska
Best:The great outdoors— Hiking, biking, canoeing… oh my! Between the breathtaking views of Denali National Park and the icy caps of Glacier Bay, Alaska is the state with the highest percentage of land set aside as national parks (it’s tied with Arizona).
Arizona
Best:Sunshine — Florida may be the official Sunshine State, but Arizona is the sunniest state. In fact, Yuma, located in the southwest corner of Arizona, is the sunniest place in the whole world, with a 90 percent chance of sun every day.
Arkansas
Best:Duck hunting — Arkansas is the real-life Duck Dynasty. Hunters come from all over the country to the state where the most ducks are harvested each season and where the World Championship Duck Calling Contest is held in Stuttgart.
California
Best: Diversity — Considered a “minority majority” state (meaning there is no single ethnic group or race that makes up the majority of the population), California has earned the title of the most diverse state in the United States.
Colorado
Best: Being active — Year after year, Colorado tops the list of the most physically active states with low obesity rates and some of the fittest residents.
Connecticut
Best: Making money — Hey, must be the money… that’s giving Connecticut such a good reputation. Because it’s not the roads, that’s for sure. Connecticut has the highest per-person average income of $50,392.
Delaware
Best: Small-town atmosphere — But what it lacks in trendy nightclubs, it makes up for in that “everybody knows everybody” vibe you can only get in the state with the least number of counties (only 3!) and no cities with more than 100,000 people.
Florida
Best: Vacationing — It should come as no surprise to anyone that the Sunshine State was voted the country’s top vacation destination. After all, it’s home to Disney World, beautiful beaches, the Everglades, and more.
Georgia
Best: Growing onions — Georgia may be nicknamed the Peach State, but its real claim to food fame is its Vidalia onions, which are some of the world’s sweetest onions—and they’re only grown in 20 counties in the Southern state.
Hawaii
Best: Beaches — Among the 33 miles of swimming beaches surrounding the islands of Hawaii, you’ll find Maui’s Kapalua Bay Beach, voted the best beach in America (with Hapuna Beach making it into the top ten, as well!).
Idaho
Best: Home ownership — Home is where the heart is. And your heart will definitely want to be in Idaho when you realize it was recently ranked the number one state for home ownership thanks to its affordability and low foreclosure rates.
Illinois
Best: Pumpkins — All those pumpkin-flavored treats you love in the fall wouldn’t be possible if it weren’t for Illinois, where 95 percent of everyone favorite gourds in the United States are grown.
Indiana
Best: Renting — Why buy when you can rent? In Indianapolis, that question makes perfect sense. The city was deemed the best for renters last year, with high affordability and one of the lowest average monthly rents of just $806.
Iowa
Best: Buying a house —Home buyers may want to add Iowa to their list of possible locations—the state offers the most affordable housing in the country, with a median home price of $181,900.
Kansas
Best: Roads — Drivers, this state is for you. Kansas has the least amount of poor roadways in the nation. According to USA TODAY, less than 1 percent of roads in the Sunflower State are considered unserviceable.
Kentucky
Best: Fried chicken — It’s called Kentucky Fried Chicken for a reason. Ever since Colonel Sanders (yes, he was a real person) started selling his fried chicken at a roadside restaurant more than 75 years ago, Kentucky has been the go-to spot for crispy golden chicken.
Louisiana
Best: Dating — The people of Louisiana are (mostly) single and ready to mingle—the state has the highest number of unmarried adults.
Maine
Best: Owning dogs —Fido will feel right at home in Maine, whether he’s an energetic pit bull or a lovable golden retriever. That’s because Maine welcomes all dog breeds (there are no restrictions) and has 76 dog-friendly beaches, making it the best place for pups in the United States.
Maryland
Best: Making millionaires — Want to be a millionaire? Your best chance at making that happen might be in Maryland, the state with the highest rate of seven-figure salaries. One study found that as many as 1 in 12 households have $1 million.
Massachusetts
Best: Being healthy — For the first time in five years, Hawaii was not the country’s healthiest state—it was replaced by Massachusetts. The state not only has a low obesity rate but it also the most mental health providers per population, according to the United Health Foundation’s annual ranking.
Michigan
Best: Golfing — Head to Michigan to play a few rounds, where they have the most golf courses and country clubs per capita.
Minnesota
Best: Credit scores — In St. Paul, the average credit score is 709 out of 850, making Minnesota the state with the highest overall credit scores.
Mississippi
Best: Cheap living — Perhaps for all the wrong reasons (one of the worst school systems and a failing economy, to name a few), Mississippi is the cheapest state to live in. In fact, after taxes and living expenses, residents of the Magnolia State keep 49 percent of their income.
Missouri
Best: Giving to charity — When it comes to giving back, Missouri is topping the charts, with St. Louis consistently ranking among the most charitable cities in the United States.
Today is National UFO Day, and as I was researching the usual suspects, I came across a UFO Festival being held in McMinnville, Oregon. And they are very serious about their ufo’s there, with good reason. In 1950 a farmer in McMinnville captured photos of a flying disc that were never disproven to this day. I bring the story from the HOW&WHY’S website for your perusal.
1950 McMinnville UFO Photos Shot By Oregon Farmer were 100% Real, Not A Hoax
Last updated: 2022/08/20 at 10:49 PM
By Vicky Verma 2 years ago
Soon after World War II ended, Americans began seeing strange metallic objects in the sky that were sometimes hovering over their premises. Three years after the famous Kenneth Arnold sighting, a farming couple took the best shots of a 100-feet flying disc, hovering at a close distance from their farm about 10 miles from McMinnville, Oregon, the United States. Skeptics tried hard to prove the photograph a hoax but it was 100% authentic.
On May 11, 1950, Evelyn Trent went to her farm to finish her evening chores, she fed her chickens and rabbits. While walking back to her house, she saw a disc-shaped flying saucer, silently hovering over her farm. At around 7:45 p.m., she shouted to call her husband. Evelyn ran to the house and told her husband Paul to come out.
He also saw the strange craft that made no noise and there was no sign of propulsion. He quickly grabbed his Universal Roamer camera that came with 60mm roll film and took two shots of the object from different angles. There were only 30 seconds of time interval between the two photos.
Evelyn recalled: “It was like a good-sized parachute canopy without the strings, only silver-bright mixed with bronze. It was as pretty as anything I ever saw.” As shown below in the first image, the object appeared to be in the middle of the Trents’ garage and an electric pole. While in the second image, the object faded as it moved several yards away.
Paul could have made a fortune by selling these photos to the news agencies but he did nothing. It sounds crazy because during that time, newspapers would have bought them at a good price. The Trents were not looking for fame or publicity. Besides, they had heard stories about the secret government experimental aircraft and if it would be the one, they might get into trouble.
Subsequently, when film rolls were processed and photographs came out, Paul showed them to his friends. Later, they were sent to the weekly newspaper in McMinnville and were published on the front page on June 8, 1950.
Interestingly, the photo contained no irregular lights, clouds nor weather balloons. It was the clear shot of the unidentified craft only if the Trents had not set it up. The farming couple seemed to be decent with honest behavior. It should be noted that the photos reached the newspaper only one month after they had been taken.
McMinnville Telephone-Register, June 8, 1950
The photos became a great sensation in just a few weeks of publication. The story was picked up by International News Service and the Associated Press. On June 26, 1950, Life magazine, the most popular newspaper of that time, put the two iconic UFO images on its front page, making this case historical.
Frontpage of Life magazine, June 26, 1950
The Trents’ photo grabbed the attention of the FBI and the US Air Force. They had a visit from their investigators who took their photos, questioned them, and searched their field. Although the Trents were getting some attention and seemed to enjoy it, they wished it had never happened.
The story behind the film negatives is rather confusing as it splits into two versions. According to one version, the Trents gave the negatives to producers of the American talk show “‘We the People” from where they remained lost for 17 years. Another version comes from UFO historian Richard Dolan where he stated that the Air Force took the negatives and never returned them.
In the 1960s, when the US Air Force began its investigation into UFOs, the negatives of McMinnville UFO photographs were found in the file of United Press International. Later, the Condon Committee took charge of it.
Planetary scientist William K. Hartmann studied the negatives and found out that the craft was only a kilometer away from the field when being shot by Paul. Additionally, it was around 100 feet in diameter.
Hartmann wrote: “This is one of the few UFO cases in which all factors investigated, geometric, psychological, and physical appear to be consistent with the assertion that an extraordinary flying object, silvery, metallic, disc-shaped, tens of meters in diameter, and evidently artificial, flew within sight of two witnesses.”
Another credible source to prove the authenticity of the photos is an American optical physicist Dr. Bruce Maccabee who believed the Trents’ photos were real.
Paul Trent died in 1998, a year after his wife. He eventually just wanted to put the whole UFO thing behind them.
Sew Colorful 