M.J. Rose

As the sun begins to tease us, so does the dream of a long road trip. Sun visors and sun glasses, strange isolated rest stops dotting the endless hot asphalt, and the promise of a destination…

From Hyperallergic,

Ryann Ford, Lajitas, Texas

Documenting the Disappearing Rest Stops of the American West
by Carey Dunn

…“It’s strange the details you transparently absorb/When you think you’ll never see them again/things like curio shops/that i once despised/now i look on as curious beauty,” wrote singer-songwriter Joe Ely in his 1987 ode to the American road trip, Lord of the Highway. The sentiment applies to the kitschy Americana rest stops along Route 66, small structures with parking, picnic tables, and toilets, many of which are being replaced by fast food joints or demolished as states cut budgets.

While on a solo road trip from California to Texas in 2007, Austin-based photographer Ryann Ford became enamored with the quirky designs of these famous rest stops: faux covered-wagons in New Mexico, metal teepees along the Rio Grande. After learning that these rest stops were endangered, she spent years on the road photographing as many of them as possible, creating an archive of mid-century American design. The Last Stop: Vanishing Rest Stops of the American Roadside, forthcoming from PowerHouse Books, compiles hundreds of Ford’s images shot in New Mexico, Texas, California, Arizona, Utah, Nevada, Oklahoma, Missouri, Illinois, Minnesota, Iowa, Kansas, South Dakota, and Louisiana…”

For the rest, click here. These photos are spectacularly eerie and wonderful!

It’s finally spring. What better topic than chastity belts? 😉

Here’s another nice piece from our clever friends at Atlas Obscura…

A chastity belt caricature from 1590 (Image: Heinrich Wirrich/Wikimedia)

Everything You’ve Heard About Chastity Belts Is a Lie

by Sarah Laskow

“What was the chastity belt? You can picture it; you’ve seen it in many movies and heard references to it across countless cultural forms. There’s even a Seattle band called Chastity Belt. In his 1969 book Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask), David R. Reuben described it as an “armored bikini” with a “screen in front to allow urination and an inch of iron between the vagina and temptation.” “The whole business was fastened with a large padlock,” he wrote. With this device, medieval men going off to medieval wars could be assured that their wives would not have sex with anyone else where they were far, far away, for years at a time.

Yes, it sounds simultaneously ridiculous, barbarous and extremely unhygienic, but…medieval men, you know? It was a different time.

This, at least, has been the story that’s been told for hundreds of years. It’s simple, shocking, and, on some level, fun, in that it portrays past people as exceeding backwards and us, by extension, as enlightened and just better. It’s also, mostly likely, very wrong….”

For the rest, and some very interesting pictures, click here.

Take THAT, money! (Plus, a very cool new vocabulary word for us: “ragpickers”) — enjoy the story…

From Atlas Obscura,

Think Kanye’s Bad With Money? This Family Literally Burned $1 Million

by Sarah Laskow

“In 1937, one of the wealthiest families in America delivered a suitcase filled with cash to the Treasury Department of the United States, who paid $198,176 to one of the richest families in America, for a pile of money worth as much as $1 million. They didn’t go on a shopping spree, though.

In fact, after the Treasury took possession, the Associated Press reported, that cash was “hacked to pieces and burned.”

The Treasury did keep one bill—a $500 note that the Treasury had issued in the mid-19th century. It was in better condition than the one in the official Treasury collection.

Far from an example of government overreach, this strange incident of money-burning was a canny strategy to make the estate of one Colonel E.H.R. Green even more valuable. It was also a preamble to the demise of one of the greatest currency collections ever assembled.

This collection was begun by Hetty Green, the only female tycoon of the Gilded Age. Green was famously tight-fisted with her money—she lived in Brooklyn and Hoboken to avoid paying Manhattan taxes—but found physical bills fascinating (and valuable) enough that she started amassing rare currency, along with regular old money.

Although coin collecting had been in vogue for centuries, until the 1940s, collecting paper money was rare. Even then, coin collecting was more prestigious. “Until recently, the derisive term used by coin collectors to characterize those of paper money was ‘ragpickers,’” says Art Friedberg, co-author of Paper Money of the U.S….”

For the rest, click here.