{"id":300,"date":"2008-08-21T13:54:00","date_gmt":"2008-08-21T17:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=300"},"modified":"2009-01-14T17:41:41","modified_gmt":"2009-01-14T21:41:41","slug":"odd-lots-22","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=300","title":{"rendered":"Odd Lots"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>I lived in Scotts Valley, California for three years, and I                 never once heard of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.arborsmith.com\/treecircus.html\">Axel                 Erlandson<\/a>, an arborsculptor (that is, a person who coerces                 trees to grow in odd or artistic ways) who had a roadside attraction                 of sculpted trees in Scotts Valley from 1955 to about 1970. Not                 as weird as the Mystery Spot and clearly not weird enough for                 the Santa Cruz vicinity, the Tree Zoo was not a success, but some                 of those trees are <i>mighty<\/i> odd.<\/li>\n<li>There&apos;s a PDF document detailing name changes to Chicago streets                 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chsmedia.org\/househistory\/nameChanges\/start.pdf\">here<\/a>,                 and it explains who or what some of Chicago&apos;s streets were named                 after. The street where I grew up, Clarence Avenue, was named                 after a river in Australia. Kedvale, the street on which my grandparents                 lived, was an Anglicization of an Indian term for the print of                 a moccasin in damp ground. (Hence those shoes named &#8220;Keds.&#8221;)                 Thanks to Pete Albrecht (another old Chicago boy) for the link.<\/li>\n<li>From the Some People Have All The Fun Dept.: Walter Jon Williams                 got himself and several other SF writers <a href=\"http:\/\/walterjonwilliams.blogspot.com\/2008\/08\/as-seen-on-tv.html\">a                 tour of the NORAD facility inside Cheyenne Mountain<\/a>, during                 this recent Worldcon. How they pulled it off isn&apos;t clear; I was                 told by people who have reason to know that they&apos;re just not doing                 tours anymore. (And sheesh, I only live about 3\/4 of a mile from                 the Big Iron Door!) Thanks to Jim Strickland for letting me know.<\/li>\n<li>Bill Higgins sent a link to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.computerworld.com\/action\/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&amp;articleId=9111800&amp;pageNumber=1\">an                 interview with Wayne Green in <i>ComputerWorld<\/i><\/a>. Ol&apos; Wayne                 is now 86 and still out there, supporting weird causes and making                 a ruckus&#8211;just not in the magazine business anymore. I&apos;m fond                 of the guy because he bought my very first published article in                 the fall of 1974, and quite a few others in subsequent years.                 His legend counfounds historians; I&apos;ve gotten many different opinions                 on just how much he had to do with <i>Byte<\/i>. I still have a                 very funny but weird little book called <i>See Wayne Run<\/i> by                 Gordon Williamson that suggests that he had little or nothing                 to do with <i>Byte<\/i>, but other people with reason to know claim                 otherwise. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.eham.net\/articles\/19947\">Here&apos;s                 some useful reminiscence\/discussion<\/a>; see especially the comment                 by Harry Helms W5HLH.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I lived in Scotts Valley, California for three years, and I never once heard of Axel Erlandson, an arborsculptor (that is, a person who coerces trees to grow in odd or artistic ways) who had a roadside attraction of sculpted trees in Scotts Valley from 1955 to about 1970. Not as weird as the Mystery [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-300","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oddlots"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=300"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":308,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300\/revisions\/308"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}