3000 Miles From Home
Girl Finds Art and Friendship Without Rejecting Her Family
New York City Has a Museum of Ice Cream.
She was late. I knew where I was going for once. It was the classic indie theater on the corner of Houston and Mercer Streets. Off the F train for me. The D train for her. A 4-minute walk from the Museum of Ice Cream.
My friend Anna had been taking a 12-week-long ceramics class, during which she had been making beautiful pots of various sizes and dotted glazes and photographing them for the internet. I figured this was why she suggested we see this particular film. I entered the theater alone and started munching on my popcorn. I consider it bad form to munch once the movie begins.
Showing Up begins with opening credits. A xylophone-like score enters the theater from all directions as the camera scans watercolor sketches and a row of arm-sized clay figurines kicking up their heels and bending their fingers like claws. The sculptor seems to be in flow, furrowing her brow and cocking her head …
The Miracle of America
Bittersweet Nostalgia Meets Post-Apocalyptic Dread in Polson, Montana
Yards and yards of battered old junk
The Miracle of America Museum in Polson, Montana is a maze of hallways, niches, nooks, barns, garages, sheds, and open yards packed with an array of objects, from lunch boxes to fighter jets. Hallucinatory in its variety but simple in its mission, it is less a museum than a sermon in junk, the result of decades of collecting by a local fellow named Gil Mangels who prayed to God in 1983 about what to do with his mountains of old stuff. One night at 3 AM his answer came, spoken by a disembodied voice: “Use your antiques to teach.” He established the museum two years later and since then, such is Mangels’ zeal and stamina, it has been open every day, seven days a week.
MOAM contains, by some accounts (which seem accurate once you step inside it), 38,000 items. Just ten paces into the main hall on a recent visit, I was already overwhelmed, having beheld a horse collar, several scales and balances, numerous …
Bobcat Mystery Deepens
Unusual fearlessness displayed in the vicinity of Martensdale
Victimizes Bippy, a Shih Tzu
County Fair should not be affected
For tourists and residents alike, fair week in Warren County is always thrilling, a chance to celebrate the bounty of the central Iowa countryside, but this year an unexpected air of drama hangs over the annual festivities. The mystery of the bold, aggressive bobcat which has been haunting our area since spring, spreading concern among parents of young children and owners of small pets, remains unsolved.
Visitors unfamiliar with the story should know the facts about the bobcat, lest they fall prey to exaggerated rumors which could spoil their enjoyment of the fair. It is also important that Warren County locals, who may find themselves being asked about the bobcat, possess a clear understanding of the matter. Idle gossip on any topic is unhelpful, but particularly when it risks alarming our guests at this very special time of year.
The bobcat first appeared last March or April in and around …
