The Wednesday Quiz III:5 -- Physics, Baby!

The Wednesday Quiz -- Season III -- Quiz 5

Physics, Baby!

The Wednesday Quiz is a "closed-book" test of knowledge and intuition; please do not look up answers, ask others for help, or answer as a team.

Questions about the rules and the ~Fabulous Prizes~ are answered here.

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Having dragged you through the Math, the Wednesday Quiz now thrusts you into the Physics. Ten questions worth ten points apiece, just like the Wednesday Quizzes of yore. Enjoy!

1. What is the Sun made out of?

2. At what temperature would all molecular motion essentially cease?

3. What is located one Astronomical Unit from the center of the Sun?

4. What happens at 9.8m/s²?

5. What is the everyday term for the phase change of liquid to gas? (HINT: it's not "evaporation," although I can see why you'd think so.)

6. What do you call that apparent shift in the frequency of sound or light due to relative motion between the source of the sound or light and the observer?

7. What do you call the phase of matter in which molecules that are relatively far apart are in a constant, random motion and have weak cohesive forces acting between them, thus resulting in an indefinite shape and volume?

8. You know how you can't measure the exact momentum and the exact position of a subatomic particle at the same time? What's that idea called?

9. What do you call an atom or a particle that has a net charge because it has gained or lost electrons?

10. What three things would you need to know to figure out the force of gravity acting between any two objects in the universe? Aside from the formula, that is.


Submit your answers in the comments!

The Great Movies: Greed

Greed
Erich von Stroheim, 1924

In my review of Vivre sa vie, I mentioned that it is one of two movies on Ebert's list that are not available from the collection of the Multnomah County Public Library, and that I had turned for my copy to our neighborhood obscure-movie rental store, Movie Madness. Greed was even more difficult to get my hands on. Movie Madness had a copy, of course -- Movie Madness has a copy of everything -- but Greed has apparently never been released to DVD. So not only did I have to rent a VHS tape in order to watch this last of Roger Ebert's 100 Great Movies, but I had to recruit among friends to find someone who still owned a VCR. Occasional L&TM5K commenter Vida stepped up and averted a crisis.

So, Greed. Let's start with the cinema lore. Erich von Stroheim -- who would later play Max the butler in Sunset Boulevard -- decides to film McTeague, a then-famous 1899 novel by Frank Norris. This peppy little volume, as it is described on the Wiki, "tells the story of a couple's... descent into poverty, violence and finally murder as the result of jealousy and avarice." Von Stroheim, apparently having not realized that in story-telling a word is worth a thousand pictures, attempted to make a direct adaptation -- including every scene from the book and even, depending on who you read, expanding on it a little bit for good measure. The result, as you would expect, was a movie more than nine hours long.

Studio executives were, reasonably enough, touchy about how von Stroheim had burned through the period equivalent of zillions of dollars to produce a movie of unwatchable length, and there was a long series of cuts to get it down to a manageable 140 minutes. Von Stroheim was not particularly cooperative in this process, which seems to have involved colorful fistfights and whatnot, and refused to even watch, let alone give his blessing to, the final commercial version. And yet, that 140 minute cut -- even missing seven hours of what was doubtless unrelenting dramatic excellence -- has come to be regularly listed as one of the greatest movies of all time.

The fuss, I guess, is over von Stroheim's naturalism. He filmed on location -- on the streets of San Francisco, in actual building interiors, and in the hostile landscapes of Death Valley -- and was apparently one of the first directors to do so. And the film is certainly competent. The acting is, although as stagey as any of the 1920s, quite good. The increasingly pessimistic mood of the film is well crafted, and the bleak final scenes are especially effective. The dialog cards are frequent enough to let us know what's going on, but don't get in the way of the action. But as to ~greatness~? I didn't actually notice any, myself. But then, it's hard to be a fair judge of silent movies.

It's interesting that the 1920s are far enough in the past that it is hard to read some of the cultural cues. A man announces that the attractive young woman on his arm is his cousin -- and his sweetheart! Are we supposed to recoil, or was that level of family intermarriage still kosher in the 1920s? A husband and wife keep separate stashes of their own money; it's common enough now, but might it have seemed peculiar back in the day? A dentist kisses his female patient while she is etherized, and later a man aggressively kisses a protesting woman while a train thunders by. Are these kisses just kisses, or are we supposed to understand them as a sort of, shall we say, synecdoche for sexual intercourse? Then too, with the second kiss it's kind of hard to tell whether the protest is genuine or just a formality. To tell the truth, I found the whole early relationship of the leading couple a little difficult to parse.

Plot: A man falls for his buddy's girlfriend, and the buddy decides he's cool with it. But just before the marriage, the woman wins the lottery. All three of the characters subsequently become obsessed with the money, and it makes them do weird and unproductive things.

Visuals: The location shots are worth watching. There is often cool stuff happening in the background -- trains going by, people going about their business. A funeral procession going by in the background during the wedding scene -- a bad omen, do you think? -- is certainly not played for subtlety, but it's pretty cool all the same.

Dialog: None.

Prognosis: If you for some reason enjoy watching silent movies, this is certainly a strong one. Otherwise, you can give this one a miss.

Technically, She's NOT More Than a Doll

This document arrived at the Castle5000 mailbox a few months ago, addressed to Mrs.5000.

It is a small catalog of high-end Barbie Doll related merchandise. It is aimed, apparently, at those with a fixation on the iconic mass-marketed plaything, but with too much money to be able to effectively spend it in the pink aisle of their local big-box.

Along with odd Barbie-related merchandise...

...Barbie Doll themed experience is also available at a price. "Be a globetrotting goddess and star in your own luxury adventure," suggests the brochure; "Journey to the exciting world of Barbie Shanghai." This involves two days of travel, a day of spa treatment, a store tour, and a one-day tour of the great Chinese city, all for thirty large.


It's really quite something.

I guess the biggest question for me is: How on earth did Mrs.5000 get on this mailing list?

Well, everybody needs a hobby, and if people are excited about Barbie brand licensed merchandise, that's no worse than anything else I suppose. What seems particularly unwholesome in this document is not so much the lurid pink merchandise itself, but the more-than-usually blatant attempt to harvest a maximum of money for a minimum of product.

I enjoy a good consumer purchase as much as the next person, but any healthy adult realizes that there's only so much happiness you can buy, and that even then it's a short-term buzz. With apologies to John Greenleaf Whittier, for all sad words of tongue and pen, the saddest might really be these:

Your Sunday Boring Postcard from Michael5000

ABOVE THE CLOUDS, MOUNT WILSON, CALIFORNIA

Provenance: Unsure.

Want a boring postcard from Michael5000? Request up to one weekly in the comments!

The Reading List: The Odyssey

So! The Odyssey is a book about [[spoilers from here on out]] this Greek kid, Telemakhos, whose dad never came home from the Trojan War. It's been a decade now, and his house is infested with ne'er-do-well suitors who are ostensibly vying for his mother's hand, but mostly just partying their way through the estate. So, Telemakhos goes on a long sea journey to... what? that's not how you remember the Odyssey?

Well, me neither. Like the Iliad, the Odyssey turns out to be a book that is a little different in the actual text than it is in the popular imagination. By "the popular imagination" I of course mean my imagination, but I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that I am fairly typical in this regard. I thought that the Odyssey was going to be about Odysseus, the smartest of the warriors in the Iliad, having all sorts of zany adventures on different islands as he wandered around the Mediterranean trying to get home from the war. Didn't you? I mean, I kept getting complimented for picking the perfect book to take on a cruise, so I don't think I'm wildly off-base here.

To be sure, the famous stories about Odysseus are actually in the text, eventually. We do read about his visit to the Island of the Lotus Eaters and his fray with the Cyclops, albeit spelled "Kyklopes" in Robert Fitzgerald's translation -- Fitzgerald writes in a very compelling style, but seems to have been on a daft and fervent one-man mission to shake up Greek-English transliteration. We read about Odysseus' encounter with Circes ("Kirke"), his being tied to the mast to avoid the call of the "Seirenes," his sailing between the "Skylla" and "Kharybdis," and his terrible terrible years of captivity as the pampered love-slave of the sexy sea goddess "Kalypso." I expected these events to make up the bulk of the story, though, and in fact they are covered rather briefly, almost in passing, as Odysseus tells stories of his wanderings to people he has met further down the road.

The Trojan Horse, if you were wondering, is mentioned from time to time, but always with the clear assumption that you already know about it.

The less famous but more bulky chunks of the Odyssey are the long first act described above, where Telemakhos goes wandering around talking to famous survivors of the Iliad, and a very long stretch after Odysseus has made it back to the island, when he plots with Telemakhos and the more loyal servants to lay some serious vengeance on the odious suitors and the less faithful members of his family's entourage. He also spends quite a bit of time in a descent to the Underworld, where he has conversations with dead people. They tell him how they died and give him good advice about how to get home and what he can do to placate the god Poseidon, who is ticked off at him for blinding the Cyclops, who was his son or something.

Odysseus: the Missing Years

So, here's an interesting thing: often, in the direct-action sections of the poem, Odysseus is shown to be an inventive and capable liar. Sometimes he's lying tactically to defeat an enemy, like the Cyclops, but he lies pretty regularly to friends and allies too. Even when he is reunited with his elderly father, he lies for a while about who he is for no apparent reason. So, all of those famous stories about sailing between the monster and the whirlpool, about being captured by the one-eyed giant, and so on -- we only hear these stories being told by a guy whom we know to lie when it serves his purpose, or even just for the hell of it.

Now, it's really tough to even think about authorial intent when you are looking at a poem out of the oral tradition. But I wonder if Homer, or some of the many guys with excellent memories who embodied the Homeric tradition, intended or at least left open the possibility that the wanderings described by Odysseus were all just so much hooey. Hooey spun up, perhaps, to distract from the years of quality time that our hero had spent shacked up with the unbelievably beautiful, insatiable Kalypso? It is, I think, a plausible alternative reading of the poem.

But then, you're getting this theory from a guy who was startled to realize at some point that "Odyssey" must mean "Poem About Odysseus," and not just be the name of the name of the book because it's about a guy who went on a long, um, odyssey.

Iliad and Odyssey

As in the Iliad, the Greek tellers of the Odyssey didn't shy away from a little gore. The scenes in the Cyclops' cave are certainly attention-getting, but the real bloodbath is reserved for the story's climax, when Odysseus, Telemakhos, and a few helpers, after several chapters of buildup, make mincemeat out of the suitors. Even worse is the fate of members of the household who have one way or another collaborated with the suitors; I'll spare you the memorable passages.

We see again, too, that the Greeks were unabashedly preoccupied with things and with wealth. Well, this makes sense; things in general were considerably rarer and more crucial at their level of civilizational development. But it is interesting in a heroic epic that the insult of the suitors is not so much that their presence dishonors Odysseus' wife and household, although it does. What's really important, though, is that THEY'RE EATING ALL HIS FOOD. Food is scarce! You, or the people you supervise, have to work REALLY HARD to produce it. Mooching off another man's larder isn't just annoying in this context, it justifies him coming back and putting you away in the grisly fashion of his choice.

The Odyssey is more like a novel than the Iliad. It has more apparent literary sophistication, with a complex and non-linear flow of time and characters with somewhat more rounded personalities. It has more of a beginning and an ending. The action is equally episodic but more varied -- the Iliad is, to an extent, just the same episode (battle) over and over again. But they share much in common too, of course. Most notably, each poem features exceptional humans striving mightily toward their goals and being admired for doing so, yet in both cases their fate is really at the whim of the capricious gods. Unfortunately, I have once again mostly ignored the gods in my synopsis here. Hopefully, I will not be struck down for this hubris.

Did I mention, it's a lot of fun? It's aged well.

Your Thursday Boring Postcard from Michael5000

Grand Junction

Panorama of Grand Junction, Colorado

Provenance: Purchased in Grand Junction, Colorado, 2009.

WQ III:4 -- Story Problems

The Wednesday Quiz -- Season III -- Quiz 4

Story Problems

The Wednesday Quiz is a "closed-book" test of knowledge and intuition; please do not look up answers, ask others for help, or answer as a team.

Questions about the rules and the ~Fabulous Prizes~ are answered here.

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It's time to revisit the horrors of the math classroom with this cunning series of eight story problems!

Here's the twist: for each problem, give both:

--> The Answer, and
--> Whether you used paper and pencil, used some sort of calculating device, or solved it in your head.

Problems correctly solved in your head are worth 13 points (to a maximum of 100); problems correctly solved on paper are worth 9 points; problems solved with a calculating device are worth 7 points. Lying on this point would of course make you an extremely bad person.

In recognition that this Quiz will potentially require more concentration than most, I'll leave it up until Friday evening.

Please note that this particular Quiz is awesome. Enjoy!

1. An octet and a quintet are travelling together by rail through a rainstorm. The train hits a stretch of railbed weakened by a rising stream, and derails. Half of the party, plus half a person, each lose a leg in the accident, although happily their arms are all fine and they do not lose their livelihoods. When they all meet on the anniversary of the disaster a year later, how many legs are present?

2. At 10 a.m., an airplane leaves Detroit for Dallas flying at 320 miles per hour. It reaches a cruising altitude of 36,000 feet shortly after take-off, but a half hour later the pilot notes a strange vibration in the right engine. Fortunately, he is able to solve the problem simply by adjusting the fuel flow. If there are 120 passengers on board, 60 percent of whom want cola, how many 12-can cases will the flight attendants need to have on hand?

3. Karl, a handsome, brooding young aristocrat, finds that he is irresistable to 25% of young women. If he himself is only attracted to 10% of young women, and there are only 200 women in all of Bavaria of a background and breeding sufficient to qualify as an eligible match, then statistics suggest he will most likely need to choose from among how many potential partners?

4. On the reading of old Mr. Pemberton's will, it is found that he has divided his estate, worth $30 million after taxes, rather capriciously. Angry Sarah, who ran away at fifteen, is to get one share of his estate; Thomas, the feckless diletante, 2 shares; perpetual student Maria, who married below her station, 3 shares; Brian, head of Marketing at PembertonCorp, 4 shares; and his favorite, Alice, the Executive Director of a leading orphanage, five shares. If Thomas burns through $200,000 a year, how long will he be able to live on his inheritance?

5. Jennifer needs to get out of town to let things cool down after a run-in with the cops, and is renting a car to drive 600 miles. The clerk at the rental agency suggests she "upgrade" from a car that gets 30 miles per gallon to one that gets 20 miles per gallon, for only $100 more. If gas costs $3.00 per gallon, how much more will Jennifer's trip cost if she accepts the upgrade?

6. A brave young hobbit encounters a enormous dog with three heads. He heroically attacks the hideous beast, but discovers to his horror that every time he slices off one of its heads, two heads immediately grow back to replace it! By the time he succumbs to the monster's savage jaws, it has ten heads. How many severed dog heads are strewn around the floor of the cave?

7. A young professor learns through the grapevine that he will only get tenure if he gets three articles published in major journals this year. As it happens, he has three articles ready for submission, but knows that for each article there is a 1/5 chance that it will be rejected in the peer review process, a 1/20 chance that it will be accepted by a journal that abruptly ceases publication before his article appears, and a 1/4 chance that it will be published but that a rival within the department will find an opportunity to sneeringly remark to the dean at a cocktail party that the journal in which it appears "could hardly be described as 'major.'" What are his odds of getting tenure?

8. You are one of two scofflaws in a conflict with Dirty Harry, who, in all the excitement, can't recall whether he has shot four or five of the six bullets that were originally in his gun. Assuming that he will choose randomly between the two of you to shoot at first if you elect to defy his will, knowing that Dirty Harry never misses, and considering that he is wielding a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, which would blow your head clean off, how lucky do you feel? Express your answer as a fraction, punk.

Submit your answers in the comments!

Acquisition & Divestiture

Acquisition: Mrs.5000 and I like to hit the neighborhood estate sales. It makes a good excuse for a little bike ride, it's fun to see the insides of other peoples' houses (and therefore their lives), and sometimes we find cheap loot that either amuses us or can be used in crafts projects.

I always like to check the kitchen. It is always the grimmest section of a proper estate sale, of course, but everybody knows this and therefore any consumables are priced at rock bottom. And hey -- I go through LOTS of tea at work, tea doesn't really go bad, and you are going to pour boiling water on it before you use it. It helps that, although I like good tea, I'm also perfectly comfortable with bad tea.


Mrs.5000 frowns on this practice, perhaps because of my habit of referring to the stash in question as "dead man's tea." Therefore, this particular acquisition is for office use only.

Divestiture: Khaki work pants. Entered service: c. 1999. Designated for casual use only: c. 2004. Designated for painting and gardening only: c. 2006.


Decommissioned and salvaged for household rags: 2010.

Your Sunday Boring Postcard from Michael5000

WAKEFIELD

George Washington was born at Wakefield on February 22nd, 1732. Three generations of the Washington family lived at Wakefield, the first to arrive was John Washington, his great-grandfather in 1657. From the house is a beautiful view of the Potomac River.

Provenance: Unsure.

Want a boring postcard from Michael5000? Request up to one weekly in the comments!

Song of the American Road, pt. 6

BUNKER HILL MONUMENT, CHARLESTOWN, MASS

Having a fine time here. Haven't had a rainy day since we left last Wednesday. Leaving for New York Tonight. - Elizabeth & Arthur

THE LEAMINGTON

3rd Avenue, 10th & 11th Streets

Minneapolis, MINN 55404

The upper Mid-West's largest, finest, most complete, 100% central air-conditioned luxury hotel.



Arrived in Mples at 5 p.m. the flight was smooth and good food stayed here overnite and a day. Am at my brothers now. don't work too hard. Hi to all. Love Edie.

SPIRAL STAIRCASE

Statue of Liberty

Liberty Island, New York

Hi -- Had a couple hours to kill so I came over to the Statue and climbed to the crown, 22 storeys. Beautiful weather this labor day Sunday. Crowds. Tired. This is my new "Deltograph" pen $3.50. Riding to Balto. Tuesday with Walt Ahrens who will help clean up house. Earned $85 helping Lange's. no school money yet. They went to Md. yesterday in their new '63 Corvette (red). Yours, Gary.

First Floor Lounge

WESLEY TERRACE

A modern Retirement Home of the Wesley Gardens Group.

Des Moines, Washington

(If you are in or going thru Chehelis, sure stop at Florence's) Fri A.M. -- Florence is having the Rogus's and Lunds "get together picnic" at Borst Park, Centralia, Sun July 15th. She phoned me last night. Just a line telling you I want to be here that day -- but we will be back that night -- Tom & family are here; came Wed -- will stay a wk -- Laura

Michael5000 Goes to Sea

Last week was the most nautical week of my life.

From the port of Seattle, one of the northernmost suburbs of the City of Roses, Mrs.5000 and I set sail on the Holland America cruise ship Oosterdam for a trip to Alaska.


This involved plenty of quality time with the in-laws5000, who were so generous as to bring us along to help celebrate their 50th Anniversary. Brother-in-law5000 can be seen second from left, being a bit of a card.


We got to experience the stark wonder of Glacier Bay National Park.


Of course, the actual experience of Glacier Bay National Park was a little more like this, but it's traditional to take vacation pictures as if no one else was around.


Seriously, it was pretty awesome.


Our little vessel let us unobtrusively sample the lifestyle of Alaska's state capital!


While in Juneau, we payed a surprise visit to occasional L&TM5K commenter Kadonkadonk, who was incredibly gracious about having strangers from blogland suddenly descend on her out of the blue, and gave us a fun tour of her workplace. And t-shirts!



Of course the contradictions inherent in cruise-ship life could sometimes, like the unlimited rich food, be a lot to digest.


But one could always retreat to the solace of one's private veranda.


And of course, wherever one goes there is always time for the needle arts.

Oosterdam, yo. It's the size of a large office block. And it's my new favorite boat.

[Geohashing aficionados will want to check out this report from a passive expedition during a storm at sea! It was a failed expedition, but that hardly matters.]

Running in Places

This last Saturday I had the opportunity to "go running" -- for so I like to call it, although an objective observer might well describe me as "shambling" -- in Victoria, B.C., a lovely and charming town with, as it turns out, all sorts of good paths to lope down. This was particularly exciting because it was, I realized, the first time I had ever gone running outside of the United States of America.

This thought activated the automatic spreadsheet generator in my mind, and before you know it I was mentally compiling a list of states I've gone running in. And in the spirit of my-blog-is-kind-of-a-scrapbook-and-thus-doesn't-always-have-content-you-could-possibly-be-interested-in, here's that list to the best of my memory!

• Oregon (roughly 1982-87; 2001-present)
  
• California (The Brookings (Oregon) High School cross-country course required six crossings of the state line.)
  
• Kansas (1991-1992)
  
• Alaska (1992)
  
• Colorado (having learned to take running gear on vacation, Summer 2008. At 9000 feet, this was quite the experience. Subsequent running at Casa del In-Laws, at 5000 feet, has been difficult but a little less like drowning.)
  
• Pennsylvania (September 2009)
  
• West Virginia (Clarksville "Mayor's Path," September 2009)
  
• Washington (coupled with geohashing expedition, November 2009)
  
• British Columbia (June, 2010)
  

It's possible that I've run in Montana, Wisconsin, and New Mexico too, but in none of these cases am I confident enough in my memory to add it to the list.

Now, just to head off the wiseacres: no, I do not intend to try to go running in every U.S. county. (...although, every Oregon county... hmmm....)

Your Thursday Boring Postcard from Michael5000

New Edgewood Parkway Bridge

The Gateway to EDGEWOOD, New Haven's Beautiful Suburb.

Copyrighted July 1910, THE ELM CITY NURSERY Co.

Provenance: Unsure.

The Wednesday Quiz III:3 -- Country Name Changes

The Wednesday Quiz -- Season III -- Quiz 3

Country Name Changes

The Wednesday Quiz is a "closed-book" test of knowledge and intuition; please do not look up answers, ask others for help, or answer as a team.

Questions about the rules and the ~Fabulous Prizes~ are answered here.

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In the course of human events, it occasionally happens that control of a country or territory will transfer from one political entity to another. When this happens, sometimes the new rulers will change the name of the country, often to reflect deeply-felt national aspirations or to dispense of offensive names imposed by outside imperialist rulers. I find that most people act as if this were an obnoxious practical joke played on them personally by ornery people far-away whose sole purpose is to undermine the geography lessons they endured in their school days and make them look foolish.

Let's see how foolish they've made ~you~ look! Give the new names -- or, in a few cases, the old names -- of the following countries! 8 1/3 points apiece, again.

1. It was called Siam until 1949.
2. It was called South-West Africa until 1968, officially, and practically until well into the 1980s
3. It was called Ceylon until 1972.
4. It was called British Honduras until 1973.
5. It was called Dahomey until 1975.
6. It was called French Somaliland and then Afars and Issas before taking its current name in 1977.
7. It was known as the Gilbert Islands before independence in 1979; the new name starts with a "K."
8. It was called the New Hebrides in 1980, when it gained independence and a new name starting with a "V."
9. It was part of Rhodesia, and then it was Southern Rhodesia until 1980.
10. In 1984, it became Burkina Faso.
11. It was called Moldavia until 1991.
12. In 1997, it became the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Submit your answers in the comments!

Wrap Your Family in Corduroy

Hey, I finished another one!

Made of scrap corduroy, this is the twelfth of the "QuiltStorm" project, the quilts I make out of scrap and salvage materials. It is imaginatively named "StormQuilt #12."

A few additional details are on the State of the Craft post.

A&D: The Michael5000 Vintage Map Collection

Have I ever mentioned that I have a collection of vintage* maps of the City of Roses? Because I totally do.


Also, of the Beaver State.


...as well as, to a much lesser extent, pretty much anyplace else.


Mrs.5000, who is awesome, even made me a special map box a few years back.


It has all sorts of little map-appropriate pockets and compartments inside. Because Mrs.5000 is awesome!


*"Vintage," at least when I'm using it, means "too old to be useful and not old enough to be valuable." I'm not really a fan of collecting things for the sake of their cash value, or that I need to worry about, and indeed if I suspected that anything in my map box was worth fifteen bucks I'd have it on Ebay in a heartbeat. I don't care about what condition they're in, either. I just like lookin' at them.

Acquisition: The newest addition to the collection is the 1956 Tidewater Oil Company OREGON-IDAHO MONTANA Road Map which I bought for a cool U.S. dollar while tagging along with a recent expedition to an antique shop.

This is awesome because, one, I've never even heard of the Tidewater Oil Company, and two, Oregon, Idaho, and Montana? What a weird group of states to lump on a single map! (Whereas Oregon and Washington, which both fill the same size rectangle at the same scale, are a common pairing.)

BeaverStaters of today can see lots of changes in a 54 year old map, on which Gresham, Tigard, and Beaverton are distinct towns a ways outside of Portland's built-up area. Hillsboro and Forest Grove don't even look like satellite towns. And although I suspect there are many Portlanders today who have never gone to Salem by any route except I-5, here is evidence of a world where the freeway was only a plan on the drawing board.


Idaho and Montana get relatively short shrift from Tidewater Oil, wedged in at a coarse scale along with maps of the Mt. Hood Scenic Highway and Crater Lake. Indeed, Crater Lake National Park -- which features, as you may know, a lake in a crater -- gets almost as much space on the page as the Gem State.

Awesomeness.

Your Sunday Boring Postcard from Michael5000

JOHN F. KENNEDY INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT

A Pan American Jet Clipper arriving at International Airport from the magic world of travel.

Provenance: Sent 7/11/68, 2:15 p.m. Gift of the Morgan F. Shirley Collection, 2009.

Want a boring postcard from Michael5000? Request up to one weekly in the comments!