Bully!

Magnet #160 - Teddy Roosevelt and family

Picked today's magnet because Theodore Roosevelt is my sister's favorite president, and today's a milestone birthday for her. Yay, happy birthday!

It's kinda funny that Teddy's her fave president, because she's not a huge fan of the outdoors, and yet Teddy was responsible for establishing almost 60 Wildlife Reserves and 150 National Forests and created at least five National Parks. Apparently, the total amount that TR placed under public protection is about 230,000,000 acres!

They're both kinda short - most people think TR was like superbig, but I think it's just cuz he had a sort of larger than life, blustery personality. In reality, he was only like 5'8", which I guess still makes him taller than Tom Cruise.

The best thing they share, though, is the way they say Bully. She does a spot-on imitation of TR's booming Bully! Seriously. Next time you see her, make her say it.

Oh! And then! Make her say:

1) Oh. My. Gouda.

2) We are in a car. (/Doctor Who's K-9)

Hours of entertainment, I swear.

It's a bird! It's a plane!

Magnet #159 - SR-71 Blackbird

So I remember when I first heard of Stealth bombers. There was some news report back in the late 80s. And I remember thinking, Hey, cool. We have invisible planes.

Ummm, yeah. Somehow I convinced myself that we had Romulan cloaking technology, or Wonder Woman's invisible jet.

Shut. Up. I know.

I've since learned that we don't. They're not really invisible. Imagine that.

Now imagine me a few years ago, walking around the little shop at the National Air and Space Museum out at Dulles, and picking out this SR-71 Blackbird magnet, as a pokey little reminder that Stealths are not really invisible.

Now imagine me starting to write this post and saying, Huh. Apparently, SR-71 Blackbirds (unveiled in 1964) are NOT the same as the F-117 Stealth Nighthawks that they unveiled in 1989.

Sigh. Yep. You learn something new every day, I guess.

Still. It's a pretty sweet magnet.


eta:
Ok, ok. My only consolation is that the SR-71 is actually a precursor to the F-117. Which makes me feel a tiny bit better. Heh.

Tin-can architecture in a tinhorn culture

Magnet #158 - McKim, Mead and White's Pennsylvania Station - 1910-1964

Yeah, I still haven't figured out how New York actually stood by and let "progress" raze McKim, Mead and White's original Penn Station.

Oh, I know there was a huge fight over it, and that the one good thing that came of it was the Landmarks Preservation Commission. But after looking at these images and these images, I still can't quite believe that this grand old building no longer exists. And, to know that it was replaced with such architectural gems as Penn Plaza and the current (and fourth) iteration of Madison Square Garden? I mean, c'mon!

Anyway, I digress.

I picked today's magnet because, a little late to the game, I just found out that the AIA celebrated its 150th anniversary by showcasing America's favorite architecture - the top 150 buildings, with Penn Station figuring in at #143.

Quite an amazing collection of structures that we have here in the States. At least...when we allow them to stay up.*

"Any city gets what it admires, will pay for, and, ultimately, deserves. Even when we had Penn Station, we couldn’t afford to keep it clean. We want and deserve tin-can architecture in a tinhorn culture. And we will probably be judged not by the monuments we build but by those we have destroyed."

- "Farewell to Penn Station," New York Times editorial, October 30, 1963

*stinkeye to the idiots who killed Penn Station.

Fried eggs and SPAM

Magnet #157 - SPAM

SPAM's become somewhat of a pop culture icon nowadays - most people know what it is, most people know what it tastes like, but most people refuse to admit that they've ever bought it.

I'll go out on a limb by wagering that most Filipinos have had it for breakfast at some point in their life or another. Usually on a visit to some relatively unknown "auntie" or "uncle" - of course, you're not really related, they're generally some sort of a distant, distant cousin of your grandma's uncle, or some classmate your parents had in second grade, or knew med school.

Of course, you've never met before, but you generally end up spending the evening hanging out with the kids of the family, playing with their toys, or running around outside, or watching every movie they own. After you've spent the night on blankets on the floor or on the sofa in the basement or in the guest room, you usually wake up to the sounds of all the mothers yakking it up in the kitchen, while the fathers are at the kitchen table with their coffee and bread. Somehow they're still gossiping about days and people gone by.

But, it's the sounds and the smells you remember: always the sound of frying eggs - always. And every once in a while - the smell of frying SPAM. "Good morning, good morning!"s greet you, as you groggily drag your feet into the kitchen, and suddenly a plate full of fried eggs, SPAM and of course, rice, magically appears on the table in front of you.

And, even though you may not have had it since, I'm telling you, the smell of SPAM in a frying pan can still make you feel like you're eight years old again, in some random house in some random state with some random aunties and uncles, randomly wondering how you got there in the first place.

I'm Henery the Eighth I am!

Magnet #156 - King Henry VIII (r. 1509-1547)

For some reason, King Henry is one of the most recognized of all the English monarchs. It seems he's almost everywhere - in books and plays, in the movies and music, on English Toby jugs and even on The Simpsons.

I've been debating on whether or not I should be blogging my collection of the Kings and Queens of England (from 1066 through the present) as individual magnetposts, or as a set. I'm still up in the air about it - but they're all individual magnets, and there's round about 40 total.

For now, we'll go individual, but I reserve the right to gang them up if I can't find anything interesting to say about Anne...or any of the Edwards. And, I'm not gonna give vastly scholarly info, as peeps across the pond can do a better job of that. But, I did find this supercool interactive game and timeline about the monarchs.

I will say that the best thing about Henry VIII is how he got my father very interested in English history. I'm hoping it's that we dragged my dad to Hampton Court Palace and to the Tower of London that opened up this new window of history for him. More likely, it was that Henry seriously questioned the Catholic faith, and my father respected that. Hopefully, it's not that he has designs on me mum.

Of course, my dad did make us repeat "divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived" a couple of times. Hmmmmm.

Olana day in the valley

Magnet #155 - Olana stenciled panel

Frederic Church was one of the most important landscape artists in America in the 19th century, and he made his home in New York's Hudson Valley. That home is the beautiful Olana, designed by Robert Morris Hunt, the same guy who did a few of the houses up in Newport, RI.

Mind you, the above paragraph was a heck of a lot more than we knew before we visited, because during a trip upstate, my roadtripper friends and I saw the signs for Olana, and decided to drop by on a whim. And what a find!

It's a Persian style house, built high on a hill, overlooking about 250 acres of his property. There's a long drive to get to the actual house, and suddenly you look and there's this superamazing house, and you can easily see why Church dubbed it the Center of the World.

If I remember correctly, we weren't able to make the last house tour of the day, so we were only allowed to roam the grounds outside, which you can see in this random slideshow that I found.

And, of course, we were able to visit the little shop. Which is where I picked up this stenciled panel, designed by Church for his vestibule door. If it's any indication, it seems that the interior of the house well matches the gorgeous exterior.

Hopefully, I'll find out for myself, eventually. (And, at least then, I'll know just a little bit more about what I'm lookin' at.)

Rock of Joy

Magnet #154 - Joy's Rock Garden

A friend of mine gave me this magnet, which could either be a pet rock named Joy, or a my own little piece of the rock, or my own little Rock of Ages. (A song that honestly, I don't ever remember singing in any Mass I've ever attended, which always makes people wonder what kind of heathens Catholics are.)

Joy's actually my middle name, because when you're five, no one could pronounce my first name, Linille. Well, no one down South could, so we went with Joy because it was easier, even if they did end up making it into two, sometimes three, syllables.

Annnnnd, that's all I have on this lovely Friday - other than TXF opens today, wuhooo!