For five years beginning in 1999, I owned and operated an online retail store that sold fine plush animals. I had the idea for the business years before, but searching high and low, I had never been able to find any kind of suitable (or affordable) commercial space locally in which to house an inventory ( Read more... )

8-10 August 1969

Besides the Ring of Kerry, Mother's other sightseeing destination this trip was to visit The Cotswolds in the south of England. Other than what she had told me, I knew little about the region, and probably thought it would be boring. Some of it was, but several of the places we visited were very enjoyable and memorable, indeed ( Read more... )

30 July 1969

Today, we had a picnic at Mow Cop, drove by the radio telescopes at Jodrell Bank Observatory that had helped track Apollo 11, then took a time trip back 500 years to Little Moreton Hall- a 16th century half-timbered country manor house located in the southeast of Cheshire.


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29 July 1969

Today the Carringtons took us on a 200+ mile drive around North Wales, cruising around the countryside in the quiet comfort of Jack's swank Humber Sceptre. (Learned what 'overdrive' meant, among other things ( Read more... )

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What might the Union Jack look like if Scotland were to vote to become its own nation later this month?

Yanks may not know this, but the present flag of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (the nation's official name) combines the standards of the patron saints of the constituent countries of...

England (St. George's Cross):

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I got this ephemera on eBay recently. It's a receipt from the hospital I was born in (3 years later), and a statement from the medical clinic at which I was a patient essentially all my young life. (I actually remember the huge cash register-like machine in the clinic office that printed these very bills ( Read more... )

Seems I've uncovered a bit of a mystery. Here, previously, I've told the story of " General Longstreet's palms." In it, I related information I found on the USC Digital Library site which stated that the palm trees and the house pictured in these two photos were on property owned by Confederate General James Longstreet, most notably of the Battle of ( Read more... )

I've just returned from my first visit to Los Angeles in 10 years, and by far, the greatest thrill of my trip was seeing that at least some of General Longstreet's ancient palm trees in West Adams are still alive. After reading this, I was genuinely afraid that all of the old palms might have been removed by now. What a relief it was to see that my ( Read more... )