Egyptian statue (copy), Turin, Italy

Yes, that’s an Egyptian statue on the right-hand side of this street.  Why? Well, you might think that it’s outside the Egyptian museum — but it’s not. It’s several blocks away from the museum, and there’s no sign on the statue to tell you that or to even indicate that there is a big Egyptian museum in town. Odd.

There’s also little bit of a mystery to share about the following photo from Turin as well:

Mole Antonelliana Tower with “UFO”, Turin

I say it’s a UFO, Chris claims it was just an unusual lens flare. You can decide. Here’s another photo, without the “UFO”:

Mole Antonelliana Tower, Turin

There’s nothing mysterious about that building, though. Built in the 1800s, that building was originally intended to be a synagogue. However, the architect/developer kept running up the costs, and after the estimate had more than doubled, the Jewish congregation said enough. They built a different synagogue in a different part of town instead:

Synagogue, Turin, Italy

The city of Turin took over the construction of the Mole, and today it houses a film museum, as well as an elevator to the top. The elevator has windows on all sides, so you can see that you’re approaching the dome as you go up in the elevator, which is a little bit odd, even though you know that there is an opening that the elevator can go through.  It’s kind of like the scene at the end of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate factory where the elevator goes up and out through the roof of the factory. At least that’s what I thought of as our elevator approached the inside of the Mole’s dome; I’m happy to report that although we didn’t fly over the town, we also didn’t actually crash through the glass like in the movie.

But I digress.  When you get to the top on a sunny day like last Monday, you are afforded with a view of the surrounding mountains:

Mountains near Turin Italy

No mystery, just truly spectacular.

—-

P.S. Also not really a mystery, but the scene in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory where the kids step into the chocolate garden — where everything is edible! — is magical. Here’ s the clip, with the wonderful Gene Wilder singing Pure Imagination.

Trivia point: I have tagged this post as one containing a Broadway song. However, technically, the clip is from the version of the film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory made in the 1970s which was not on Broadway prior to the movie being made.  However, it is coming to Broadway in 2017. So, technically, this is now about to be a Broadway song).

Chris and I were in Turin, Italy, last week, and we spent a day at the Egyptian Archeology museum there.  Very interesting – I highly recommend it, even if you have only a passing interest in Ancient Egypt.

For all that I was a Classics major, my area was Ancient Rome and Greece, so I’m not really that conversant with Ancient Egypt.  There were many interesting things we ran across at the museum, but, one small symbol was particularly intriguing. It  kept popping up in all shapes and sizes in various paintings, sculptures, tablets, drawings, across centuries of Egyptian artifacts.  The symbol that caught our eye is the Wadjet, aka the Eye of Horus.  We had fun making this our little museum mission, trying to spot the Eye of Horus in all its different forms:

1. By itself

Single Eye of Horus – right

2. As a pair

Two Eyes of Horus

3. By itself pointed the other way

Single Eye of Horus – left

4. Not just painted, but also carved:

Eye of Horus – tablet

We spotted it all over, in many different eras of art. After many hours of looking for it, we even saw it when we took at break at the cafeteria in the museum shared an order of tiramisu. The cocoa patterns after we were done were oddly like the Eye:

Eye of Horus on a Tiramisu Plate

Anyway, I found it unusual that this symbol looks like it has “legs”, but is taken to be an eye. So, when we got back I looked it up online. Doing that revealed quite a lot of legends associated with this symbol. To summarize one of the basic stories, the god Horus, god of the moon, got into a fight and had one of his eyes torn out. It was miraculously restored later, though, and it now is taken to have been used (by the Ancient Egyptians)  to  symbolize health, or power, or the waxing/waning of the moon. One version of the legend says that only his left eye was ripped out, so when you see the right eye, that signifies the other phase of the moon.   Or something.

But then, in another story, the Wadjet part of the legend is that Wadjet means “green one”, and it is taken to refer is a goddess. Here’s my artistic homage to that myth, using our tiramisu “eye” as a starting point:

Artistic homage to Wadjet

Anyway, I was trying to sort it all out for this post, but ran out of time. But you can check out the information at this link or at this other link or at yet another link. And then you can decide for yourself what the real solution is to today’s Monday Mystery…

One side note:  The museum’s labels on a lot of these artifacts explained that one tends see a face whenever the Eye of Horus appears.  Ironically,  though, I — who can see faces in just about anything — mostly did NOT see a face when the Eye of Horus appeared, primarily because I didn’t really see it as an eye.

However, I do see a face in the following image — but only because of the accidental gash in the side of the box that now appears near the bottom  looks (to me) like a mouth;  combined with the two Eyes of Horus above, the whole thing does look like a face. To me, at least.

“Face” of Horus

But then again, I usually do see a face in just about anything.

It’s not the oddity of there being one there – we remembered a temporary one being set up during this time of year several years ago in the same spot in Piazza Bra.

Ice rink (foreground), L’Arena, the Stella Cometa, and City hall beyond

We happened to be walking by that morning as a crowd was starting to gather, awaiting the official opening of the rink:

Kids waiting for the rink to open

Now, this rink is not very big. Here’s a panorama view, which is distorted, so that it looks like it is curved. It’s not – it’s just a rectangle:

View from the other side of the rink (panorama effect; in reality, the rink is not curved)

I get why the kids are excited to skate – I liked skating on the river when I was a kid. But what I didn’t get was why all the fuss with the big opening. Take another look to the far right in that photo with the little girl above. Do you see the yellow and blue ribbon? Yes, it was a ribbon stretched across  the entrance — there was an official ribbon-cutting ceremony to “open” the open-air ice rink.

Ribbon cutting scissors on a velvet pillow

This is the mystery for today’s post: why does this tiny little temporary rink in Verona rate such a big to-do about it’s opening? I mean, there were a half-dozen dignitaries on hand to address the crowd:

Dignitaries gathered waiting for the mayor to arrive

Actually, those men had to wait for the mayor to arrive before they could get the ceremony underway. Now, look back up at the first photo. City hall is the big building in the background.  As you can see, to get from there to the rink the mayor had to go such a long way across that plaza.

I’m kidding, of course. You can walk across it in under a minute if you just go from point A to point B.  But it took the mayor 10xs that long. Or more. He stopped to shake hands and chat with people he knew all along the way. Then he was stopped by reporters who wanted sound bites for their TV or radio shows. Then he posed for additional photos with parents and children.

Not, though, with the little boy standing near me who had 10 minutes earlier asked his father why they had to wait for the mayor, couldn’t they just get on with it already?

Anyway, the mayor finally got to the rink, only about 15 minutes behind schedule.

Speechifying – the mayor is the one with the microphone

Note that yes, that is Santa Claus who is photo bombing the dignitaries in this photo. He’s standing in the background with the skaters who are behind the wall.  Santa Claus is called Babbo Natale here in Italy; one little girl was just sooo excited to see him while we were waiting for the mayor, she excitedly called out “Babbo Natale!, Babbo Natale!” over and over. Very cute.  Even though we’ve always been told that Santa Lucia is really the bigger deal here in Verona over the holidays, clearly some kids here are still excited at the sight of Babbo Natale.

There were bunch of speeches; most of the men had a turn. I believe I heard the mayor say that this rink was back this year after not being there last year, and maybe that’s why it’s such a big deal? I think he said something about budget cuts, etc. — but it was in Italian, and I was busy taking photos, so I only sort of caught the gist. Like the little boy next to me, I was getting cold and also ready for them to get on with it already.

But finally, there was a scrum around the mayor as he took those fancy scissors and cut the ribbon to open the rink officially. At least, I assume that’s what happened; from my angle I couldn’t actually see it, but the mayor did make people move back to allow the guy on the ice to get a good shot of the ribbon cutting, so it seems likely that it went OK.

Anyway, finally, it was time to skate:

Let the skating begin!

Babbo Natale got in on the action, too.

Babbo Natale on skates

But how he had time to skate on Christmas Eve is another mystery … even if it’s not the main Monday mystery for today.

Well, the short answer is that the project — and the idea for the podcast — continues on track, even though actually getting the actual podcast up and running got slightly derailed by all the travelling Chris and I have been doing this past year. On the up side, though, much of the travel has been directly related to gathering material for the project, and Chris and I have been uncovering lots of interesting stories to be included on the podcast.

That includes material gathered during 8 weeks we stayed in Arcata, CA this past summer.

I bring this up today because over the weekend, due to our Arcata landlady’s network of contacts (thanks, Bella!), my project and I were featured in an article in the Times-Standard newspaper in Eureka, the next town over from Arcata.  Click here to read the article. Fun!

One advantage of staying put here in Verona for a little while is that it gives me some time to put a new website together, as well as work on the podcast. The name of the podcast, and its tagline, are now

Photographs, Pistols, and Parasols
Early Artisan Women Photographers

That’s all a bit long to translate directly into theaURL for a new website, of course, and also a bit cumbersome for a social media hashtag.  So, those things will instead use a shorter form, p3artisans.

BTW, in case you don’t feel like reading the article, or the old blog post, here’s a quick recap of what I mean by “photographic artisans,” in order to explain what this podcast is going to be all about:

Women began photography careers as early as the 1840s, but the accomplishments of these early women photographers rarely rate a mention in the history books. Even the few woman who are occasionally included — e.g., Gertrude Käsebier, Berenice Abbott, Frances Benjamin Johnston, Dorothea Lange, and several others — are generally not well-known beyond a few specialists in the history of photography. 

Further, there is an implicit bias for photography that is seen as either artistically or socially relevant, and this bias extends to work by this canon of women photographers.  Although these women also had careers as studio and/or commercial photographers, that aspect of their work is rarely discussed.

It is not surprising, then, that the remarkable careers of other early women photographers also get left out of standard history of photography books. These photographic artisans were entrepreneurs who ran thriving photography businesses. They mastered cutting-edge technology to produce photos with ever-changing equipment. They spent their careers recording everyday life, photographing babies, families, weddings, businesses, buildings, events, etc. While a few examples occasionally survive of additional experimental or artistic work by some of these women, it is the everyday photography done by professional women photographers that takes center stage in Coming into Focus: Female Photographic Entrepreneurs 1840-1930.

 Neither the new website nor the podcast is finished … but soon, very soon.

Stay tuned.

Greetings from Sydney, Australia!

That’s the Sydney Opera house on the left and the Sydney Harbour Bridge on the right, as seen from a ferry in the harbour we rode late in the afternoon just before sunset.

Here’s a day-time shot of the same scene:

Sydney Harbour by Day

Here’s a cropped version of just the bridge:

Sydney Harbour Bridge

This photo has a few interesting things to note.  One, note all the birds, particularly the white one in the middle of the arch. It’s an illusion that it’s as big as the girder on the bridge.  These birds are all real, BTW, and not added to the photo later.

Also, the birds seem bigger that the people standing on the outside on the top of the bridge. They are real, too –  it’s possible to pay to climb up the outside of the bridge along the arched top, and that’s what these people have done. Zoom in you can just make out the people climbing there.

Now, while I’m sure Chris and will do lots of things while we’re here in Sydney, we will not be doing that. No mystery about that, I’m sure.  

I.e., we’re now in Australia.  Brisbane, Australia, to be exact. Chris was invited to give the opening plenary address at the AVML 2016 conference here – whoohoo! He also was invited to give a talk today as part of the workshop, something that got arranged just last week, so he’s actually giving two invited talks this week. Congratulations, Chris!

Anyway, we’ll be here in Brisbane until the end of this week, then we head to Sydney for a few days and then to Melbourne — the one in Australia, not Florida ;-). Then it’s on to Auckland, New Zealand (we flew through there on the way to Brisbane, but didn’t leave the airport then). We head back to the States in mid-October.

For today here are a couple of quick pics taken in scenic places we’ve stopped in during the past week:

Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco

The Friendly Tourist and our friend Will walking along San Francisco Bay in Emeryville

Auckland Airport, New Zealand

Brisbane, Australia

BTW, the timing of our trip was dictated by conference schedule, of course. We arrived this past Friday and the conference started today. However, unbeknownst to us, it turned out that Saturday was the last day of the 2016 Brisbane Festival, an annual celebration in the South Bank area, which is where we’re staying. On the evening of the last day of this festival they always have the biggest fireworks display in all of Australia. The crowds that turn out to see the display from the river bank are formidable. But, it turned out that from the pool area on the second floor of our hotel we had very good (albeit partially obstructed) view of the fireworks.  It was an impressively large and extremely well-synchronized display:

2016 Brisbane Festival Fireworks spectacular (partially obstructed, but still impressive!)

What fun coincidence of timing and location to get something like that welcome us here in Brisbane – we’re off to a good start.

McKinleyville is a town a few miles north of Arcata, CA, where we’re currently staying. For a town that’s not very big, it has a very tall totem pole at one edge of a Safeway parking lot.

I know, that doesn’t make sense. But that’s what it is: a very tall totem pole in a Safeway parking lot.

Totem Pole, Safeway Lot, McKinleyville, CA

The sign on the base doesn’t tell you much more than that, except to claim it is the world’s largest totem pole:

Sign on Totem Pole, McKinleyville, CA

Note it does not claim to be the world’s tallest totem pole, however.

Oddly, the totem pole has its own Facebook page, as it turns out, but I didn’t find it that useful in figuring out what the heck this totem pole is doing in an urban parking lot.

However, if you click here you can read an article that explains that it was originally erected to garner publicity for the small strip-mall connected to the Safeway – the idea was that if they put the world’s largest totem pole there, people would come to shop at the stores there.

Or something.

That article has more information about the carvers, and a video of them re-carving a “new” one when the old one started to fall apart. However, there’s no explanation of how they came to carve a totem pole for something in this part of the country.  I mean, I don’t believe there is any tradition of totem poles among the Native American groups in this area; the main totem pole building people are in Northern Washington, British Columbia, and Alaska. But since I haven’t looked that up, I might not be right about that.

But if there is a tradition of Native American totem poles in this area, you’d think a mention of that would have made it on to the sign.  Of course, the sign is busy giving you the size information about the pole: note that it’s the largest in the world. Not the tallest, just the largest.

Ah well. Today’s Monday Mystery has some loose ends that need to be solved, but I’ll leave our tall totem tale here, with the knowledge that there is really big totem pole in a Safeway parking lot in McKinleyville, CA.

—————

BTW, the people interviewed in the article make a big deal about how “biggest” is — well,  if not “better”, at least as good as “tallest”.  But size doesn’t matter — at least not to this 5′ tall-when-I-round-up blog poster.

Nor does it matter in the following related-to-Broadway songs…

First, from the musical Barnum, we have Tom Thumb singing Bigger isn’t Better:

Next, watch as the 4’11” Kristen Chenoweth celebrates how size doesn’t matter to the Drama Desk awards:

Enjoy.

As typical with our travels, the main mystery you might have, though, is “Why did they go there?”  Arcata is on the northern coast of California, and it seemed like a nice town when we passed through it a couple of months ago (we stopped here for lunch in May).

Moreover,  my project on early women photographers (1840-1930) has been greatly inspired by the work of a photo historian named Peter Palmquist. He was a photographer and photo historian from  …. Arcata. Yup, Arcata. And his research on all the early women photographers started with women who came from Humboldt County, which is this part of California.  Unfortunately, Mr. Palmquist died over a decade ago, and his archive and notes are all on the other side of the country at this point, inaccessible to researchers while the archives at Yale are remodelled. Ah well. But he published books (I have many) about women who were in this area,  and I’m still hoping to track down some more information while we’re here.

Plus, as I said, we thought that Arcata seemed like a nice place to check out for a while. So, we decided to stay here for 7-8 weeks when we found a cute little vacation apartment to rent.

The first Arcata augury happened yesterday when we “checked in” to our latest vacation apartment here (which is technically in Bayside, the small area that is next to or part of  Arcata – I’m not sure which. But I’ll call it Arcata to keep it simple. And alliterative.) Anyway, the husband of the couple that owns this place turned out to have known Peter Palmquist. Nice, eh?  I took that to be a positive sign.

Then, there were two more auspicious things this morning.  First, we beat the odds — weather-wise at least — when we awoke to a large rainstorm, even though there was only a 10% chance of that happening according to the online forecasts.  One of the weather sites actually said there was a chance of fog, but not rain.  Chris read that as we looked out at the rain outside the window. Only 10% chance? We got it!

No puddles near our door as a result of the rain, unfortunately, but there were a few nice raindrops:

After the rain, Arcata, CA

Then, the second thing his morning were the large spider webs that appeared overnight outside our door.  The one below was the most photogenic, since it was covered in raindrops, but there were at least two others nearby (not pictured) :

Raindrops on a Spider Web, Arcata, CA

BTW, that’s an illusion that the web as big as the tree tops. I mean, it was big, but not that big.  The illusion is created since the web was closer to me that the trees and I took the photo lining up the web with the trees beyond.

Anyway, I take spider webs to be a good sign since when we moved to Tübingen a few years ago, we were memorably greeted several mornings there by a series of enormous spider webs outside the door to our first apartment, and I like to think they brought us good luck there. For reference, you can read this old blog post about them.

So, although divining the meanings of the auguries is always a mystery — especially on a Monday — all the initial signs seem auspicious for our visit in Arcata.

Stay tuned…

This was not a wild fire like the ones that have been in the news around here recently, though. Before I tell you about the fire, though, let me set the stage.

The year is 1862. 45-year old William Welles Hollister, a rancher with a huge spread in a valley near Santa Barbara marries the Annie, the 21-year old daughter of one of his business associates in San Francisco. The couple then take up residence in Hollister’s ranch in San Benito County

But there’s catch. The mistress of the house for the past 15 years has been William’s widowed sister — and business partner — Lucy Brown.

There’s a local historian, Michael Redmon, who writes a column for a Santa Barbara weekly paper. I’ll let his column pick it up from here:

…The Hollisters moved to [another] ranch in Tecolote Canyon in 1869. Over the years, Hollister created at the ranch a horticultural and agricultural showplace. He also became one of Santa Barbara’s leading entrepreneurs and philanthropists. …

Tension between Lucy and Annie worsened until Annie delivered an ultimatum: Either Lucy had to go, or she would leave. Caught between two strong-willed women, Hollister hatched an unusual plan. He built a second, larger house for his wife further up the canyon. The “Upper Ranch” became the Hollisters’ social center, while Lucy looked after ranch business at the lower house. …
from “Glen Annie Road” by Michael Redmon, Santa Barbara Independent, 5/14/2014

Annie and William had 6 children, only a few of whom survived to adulthood. William was quite the womanizer, and apparently it was well-known that Annie was pretty unhappy in her marriage. Saddled with a bad marriage and a sister-in-law who hated her, it must have seemed like the last straw when things took a legal turn for the worse. Back to Redmon:

… Additionally, a legal cloud hung over Glen Annie. There was the possibility that Hollister’s purchase of the ranch was illegal by violating the terms of Nicholas Den’s will; Den had been the previous owner. The Den heirs decided to sue.

Hollister determined to fight. The case dragged through the courts for 14 years. It was not settled until 1890, four years after Hollister’s death, when the state Supreme Court found for the Den heirs. …
from “Glen Annie Road” by Michael Redmon, Santa Barbara Independent,5/14/2014

Yes, that’s right. Ultimately the court decided that the Den heirs had a right to the house that Annie lived in. No fault of her own, but she was suddenly being forced from the house her husband had built for her. After the state Supreme Court ruling, all avenues of appeal were exhausted. Annie was therefore served an eviction notice. She resisted for quite a while, but finally packed up and left.

Hours later, the house — which was deserted in all senses — suddenly burst into flames, burning completely to the ground. Arson was suspected, of course, with Annie as the prime suspect. However, nothing was ever proven.  She lived for almost 20 more years in a small house elsewhere in Santa Barbara, never prosecuted for the crime, although the fortunate coincidence of timing is always noted in any description of her and her husband.

What isn’t in any of the writeups I’ve seen, though,  is what happened to William’s sister, Lucy. I mean, where was she when the flames started and the “Upper Ranch” burned down?  In my (fictionalized) solution to the story, Lucy would have burned it down to frame Annie, so that Lucy could get Annie’s share of the business when Annie went to jail. After all,  Annie would have inherited William’s share of the business when he died, 4 years before the fire, so Lucy would have had motive.

I know, I know, I probably have been watching too many Columbo episodes recently.

In any case, while I made up that last part about Lucy being involved with the fire, the rest of the story is true. So we have a real life mystery for our final Monday in Santa Barbara.

—–

And yes, as that last line suggests, Chris and I will be moving on from Santa Barbara soon.  So where’s the next stop on the Plan G Road Trip?  Stay tuned.

I bring this up because today’s the 4th of July, and every year in Coney Island, New York, they hold the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest. It’s been a tradition since 1972  to see who can eat the most hot dogs in 10 minutes. The guy who had held the title for 8 years was a guy named Joey Chestnut, but he was dethroned last year by an upstart named Matt Stonie. So the rematch was on this year.  And when the hot dogs had settled,  Joey had reclaimed his title with a record-breaking 70 hot dogs and buns consumed in 10 minutes, to Matt’s total of a measly 53.

Now, I have to admit I was aware of this contest, but never really thought much about it. But if I’d thought about it at all, I would have thought it was an unusual event. But in fact,  I read an article in a British newspaper today (click here to read it) that explains that this Coney Island hot dog contest is but one of many on a competitive eating world-wide circuit. Yes, there’s are a whole world of  contests designed to see how much food people can consume in a small specified amount of time.

There are even rankings, like in tennis, for those who are “pros” (I guess). The article talks to the guy who’s ranked 8th world-wide for something – hot dogs, pizzas, maybe both, I don’t recall what.  I don’t know why, but the idea of world rankings for competitive eaters just strikes me as funny.

But I’ve saved the best part for last.

You’ve heard about  the Tour de France bike race each year? Well, it turns out there’s another bike race, held in Illinois, one that is more like an event that combines two sports, though, i.e. a race where the athletes periodically stop doing one thing and do the other. For example, the biathlon, which combines cross-country skiing and rifle shooting. This bike race that I discovered  today is kind of like that.  The cyclists race for a while and then stop and … eat a specific type of thing …  and then race … and then eat … you get the idea.  You get time credit for each item consumed, so I wonder if you ate enough if you could wind up winning the race with negative time.

Anyway, I’m not sure how many things you could really eat and then still race, though. The name of the race is Tour de Donut.

‘Nuff said.

—–

P.S. The Tour de Donut takes place on July 9th in Illinois. This year, for the first time, there will also be a Tour de Donut Hole as well. I guess that’s for all the munchkins — or at least the Munchkins® ….

And yes, I do realize today isn’t Monday, but I didn’t get the photos taken until yesterday, and you’ll see at the end why it’s nice to have photos in this post.

Anyway, you might assume that I’m posing this question because it is one that people are asking right now about  Chris and me. After all, it’s reasonable to wonder what the heck Chris and I are doing here in Santa Barbara.

So, why [did we decide to take our Plan G tour to] Santa Barbara? Well, the short answer is … there was no particular reason. Last December, when we spent just a single night here on our way to Northern California, it looked like a place we thought it would be fun to spend some time in.  Plus, there’s a good University library around here for Chris to use while he prepares some materials that are due in the fall (for an invited keynote speech and also an invited book chapter). Plus, there’s the ocean. Plus we found a great deal on a little 2 bedroom (!) cottage where we can stay until July 15th. Plus we know a few people that we will try to meet with in this area.  Plus, we get a chance to try life in the “American Riviera”, as Santa Barbara is sometimes called.

For all those rather random reasons, we’re here in Santa Barbara until July 15th.

And before you ask … no, we don’t know what’s coming after July 15th. As usual, we have no plan.

But I’ve actually just digressed away from the real topic of this post, since my question “Why Santa Barbara” was not about Chris and me;  it was originally something  I asked Chris about one of his ancestors who lived in Santa Barbara.

You see, Chris’ paternal grandmother’s relatives trace back to a guy named Peter Brinkerhoff. He was born and raised on the East Coast and started a family there.  But then at one point, he left the east and moved west to Santa Barbara, CA. Chris has been doing some research into the Brinkerhoffs, and so one of my questions for him has been “Why Santa Barbara? – i.e., Why did Peter Brinkerhoff decide to move to Santa Barbara in the 1800s? Gold fever? Or something else (since his move is in the late 1850s, which seems a bit late for gold fever).

Now to understand the following information, you’ll need to know that Chris has uncovered the fact that Peter Brinkerhoff (Chris’ direct ancestor) had a cousin named Samuel Brinkerhoff.

I’ll let Chris take over the story from here, from a write-up he did recently:

Why do we care about Samuel?

Well Samuel moved to Santa Barbara in 1852. There are a couple stories about how he came to be in Santa Barbara. In one, Samuel headed out to California from New York sometime after the discovery of gold in 1849. According to this account, he had “Gold Fever” and spent some time in Marysville (I think I remember visiting some other relative there when I was little). Samuel then headed south to Santa Barbara in 1852.

Another more exciting story has Dr. Brinkerhoff (Samuel was an M.D.) heading towards San Francisco for his health in 1852 when the steamship he was on made a stop in Santa Barbara. Not great timing, since there was a big gunfight going on at the time. Because he was a doctor, he tended to the wounded, but that caused him to miss the departure of the steamship. However, he liked the town and decided to stay.

Who knows, maybe both stories are true. In any case, Dr. Samuel B. Brinkerhoff became the first resident doctor in Santa Barbara, and soon became a Very Important Person. He, with others, funded a crucial road, built the first wharf, and founded a gas (light) company. Given his quick rise, and the fact that he was a doctor, I’m guessing that Samuel already had some money to start with, probably from his family.

So, when his cousin Peter has a rough patch (his first wife dies in 1855), maybe he decides to pull up stakes in Ohio (where there were also a lot of relatives) to get a new start by moving to join his better-off cousin, Samuel, in Santa Barbara. By 1858 Peter’s been in Santa Barbara long enough to fall in love with Elizabeth Jane Nidever, who he marries in 1858.

As I said, Samuel was a mover and a shaker, and there is a small street named after him, on land that he once owned. I saw that street today, and it’s pretty, with tall palm trees (not from Samuel’s time) and Victorian houses. All that was done after he died, though. His house is still standing, though, at the end of Brinkerhoff Ave.

— from Chris Culy’s email summary explaining the connection between Samuel and Peter Brinkerhoff

So, that’s Chris’ answer to the mystery about Peter and “Why Santa Barbara?”

BTW, as Chris mentions, Samuel’s house is still standing at one end of Brinkerhoff Avenue, or at least there is a nice house standing at the address given as Samuel’s in the records books that Chris used (it’s a private house and there’s no way to tell for sure without knocking on the door if the house was built in Samuel’s time):

Location of Samuel Brinkerhoff house, Santa Barbara

Sam’s place? (photo showing just the house)

The redwood tree in front definitely isn’t from Samuel’s time, though, as a plaque at the base of the tree says that it was planted in 1929.

Nowadays, that house isn’t actually on Brinkerhoff Avenue.  Rather Brinkerhoff avenue leads up to the house.  Hopefully the following photos will help orient you:

1. A panorama that shows the house and the street running in front of the old Brinkerhoff homestead; this street is NOT Brinkerhoff avenue.

Sam’s Place in context on street

In this photo, Brinkerhoff Avenue is out of camera range off to the right, as it comes in perpendicular to the house.

2. In the following photo, the street going off into the distance is the same street as in the first photo; the Brinkerhoff house is out of camera range off to the left. You can see the start of Brinkerhoff Avenue (marked by the street sign) in the middle of the photo.  Brinkerhoff Avenue itself runs off to the right, following the direction of the one way sign.

The start of Brinkerhoff Avenue

3. In the next image, you can see the palm trees that currently line Brinkerhoff Avenue. Again, to orient you, the house is behind me from where I’m standing as I’m looking down Brinkerhoff Avenue.

Brinkerhoff Avenue, Santa Barbara, CA

There you have it – in less than a week Chris has tracked down several ancestors, traced a bit of their stories, located an old ancestral homestead along with  a whole street named for one of them.

So when anyone asks, “Why is Santa Barbara a stop on your Plan G Tour?,” I guess I’ll just reply, “Well, why not?

Here’s the photo from Thursday of the “mystery machine”:

Mystery Machine

So what is it? Here’s the label that was displayed on it:

Label for Chicken Egg Cleaner machine

We saw this on display outside the Bainbridge Island Historical Museum a couple of weeks ago. The machine is like an elongated ping-pong table size machine, with rows of theses rollers/brushes to clean the eggs as they pass through on a conveyor belt. I couldn’t find any more information about anything like it (that was older and looked like this one) online.  However, I liked the shaped of the rollers, and saw it in my mind as the toned photo I took.

Which is why I don’t have a regular photo of the whole machine. Ah well. The problem with “the photographer’s eye” view of things, sometimes…

Anyway, kind of fun to find something whose function was so mysterious.

The question is simple: what kind of machine is shown in the following photo?

Mystery Machine

I can tell you that my photo of it is artistically “toned”: the real machine is brown in color.

I’m sure that helps.

The answer will be posted on Monday, May 30. Good luck! And to those in the U.S., an early Happy Memorial Day holiday weekend!

We’ll have help for all this from some wonderful visualizations Chris did today. He made a couple of different ones. To play with one of them yourself, click here. It’s interactive; for example,  click on the country names to see the lines for those countries highlighted in the chart).

He also did another one and exported some key things as static graphics for me to include in this post.  When Chris talks about his visualizations in general,  his stock phrase is “visualizations put ideas in your head.” What’s striking is that after seeing his visualizations, it will definitely put ideas in your head about the consequences of what can  happen with ranked voting systems, which can lead losers to come out OK, and winners to pop up unexpectedly.

BTW, I should point out that “jury” in the graphics below refers to the professional jury that each country sends to Eurovision. The jury judges a separate performance done only for them on the day before the live Final is telecast. The “televoting” public uses their cell phone to vote immediately following the live Final performance.  Each set of rankings (the jury and the televote) is then combined to come up with the final rankings and the overall winner.  The new wrinkle this year is that the jury stuff was all announced separately from the televote, in part to avoid any country winding up with the dreaded “null” score.  And indeed, no country ended up with 0 points.

So — to the results. At Saturday’s Eurovision Final (telecast live, even in the USA this year!), Ukraine was crowned the surprising winner. The odds on favorite (literally, with the odds makers) was Russia, followed by Australia, who respectively came in 3rd and 2nd.

Yes, I know. Australia? In a European contest? It’s a long story related to them competing last year as part of some special anniversary thing that I don’t recall right now. Let’s just say they have now stretched the definition of “European country” by quite a bit.

But I digress.

A couple of striking things that emerge from the visualizations that Chris did on how the voting shook out:

1.  Ukraine won neither the jury vote, nor the public televote. But, when the two sets where combined, Ukraine won it all.

Ukraine – Eurovision 2016 results

2. The Top 10 Jury picks vs the Top 10 Televote picks are remarkably different.

Here’s the Top 10 from the Jury:

Jury Top 10 = Eurovision 2016

And here’s the Top 10 from the Televote:

Televote Top 10 = Eurovision 2016

3. When the results are combined, there are some unexpected (to me) adjustments in the overall results.  Note how Poland came in almost last in the Jury ranking, but their Televote rank was so much higher that they wound up in the top 10 overall:

Poland – Eurovision 2016 results

4. Croatia, on the other hand, finished lower in the final rankings than in either of the Jury or Televote lists:

Croatia – Eurovision 2016 results

5. The final results are not a simple calculation of the rank order, but rather a points-based voting with points assigned based on rank. Chris did a version of the results that have horizontal bars underneath the country names. These bars show the percentage of the points that each country got, and it’s interesting to note that the winning percentage was 15% or less.

Eurovision 2016 full results

Anyway, I thought it was quite interesting to see these.  Thanks, Chris, for letting me share these and the interaction one on the blog today! :-0

BTW, there was an odd semi-scandal of a sort connected to the results. Apparently the Danish jury member who filled out Denmark’s score card accidentally filled out their choices backwards, giving 12 points (top score) to Ukraine, when they’d really wanted to give Ukraine 0 points. Oy. According to the article I saw, though, that wouldn’t have made any difference to the overall winner.  But still – there always has to be something wacky at Eurovision;  glad to see that even though they changed the scoring system, some things never change.

On Friday, I was over at the Mt. Rainer Vista walkway, which is a path that cuts across one of the quads at the University of Washington. I’ve walked along  this several times now, as it’s on the way to the library where I’ve been doing some research for my early women photographers project.

BTW, the first woman to successfully reach the summit of Mt. Rainer back in the 1890s was an Oregon schoolteacher. She later became a highly regarded professional photographer in Seattle — picking up photography at the age of 61 She remained a photographer until the age of 91, when she retired.

But I digress. We’re here to talk about the mountain she climbed.

Now, normally, what I see from that  path at UW is a big long stretch of campus, and a big fountain, with nothing in the distance. I mean, prior to Friday, there’s never been a Mt. Rainer “vista” visible from that vista viewpoint.

But on Friday, Mt. Rainer decided to come out in the open and pose for a photo op:

Mt. Rainer, seen from the Rainier Vista path at the University of Washington

Mt. Rainer off in the distance

A “closer” view of the mountain

Look how big that mountain is in the distance! It’s amazing when you see it it. But how can something that big not be visible more often?

Those photos were taken just before 2pm on Friday. Later that afternoon, as I was leaving the library around 5pm, I looked down the path and saw this:

“Believe in the Mountain”

Is there a mountain there? If you believe in the mountain … and are one with the mountain … you will see the mountain.

Skeptical? Here’s a version of that photo that has been adjusted to heighten the contrast between the mountain and the clouds around it.

Believe in the Mountain – (contrast enhanced))

The fact that something as big as Mr. Rainer is so hard to spot much of the time, even when you know it must be there, is an ongoing mystery for me. And not just on a Monday.