Showing posts with label Painted Bricks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Painted Bricks. Show all posts
Saturday, November 23, 2024
Monday, November 18, 2024
Sunday, September 22, 2024
Wednesday, September 18, 2024
Tuesday, September 17, 2024
Saturday, August 24, 2024
Monday, August 19, 2024
Thursday, August 15, 2024
Wednesday, August 14, 2024
Saturday, November 4, 2023
Sunday, October 29, 2023
Sunday, September 3, 2023
Best Posts of the Week of August 27, 2023.
A wee, in which there were far too many posts here, quite frankly.
Subsidiarity Economics. The times more or less locally, Part XV. The 2% solution?
Suzuki Samurai, second generation.
Not a truck at all.
Don Juan's Mexican Restaurant, Casper Wyoming
Prairie mural, downtown Denver
Saturday, September 2, 2023
Painted Bricks: Prairie mural, downtown Denver
Painted Bricks: Prairie mural, downtown Denver: .JPG)
Prairie mural, downtown Denver
.JPG)
What's it mean to paint a mural of the prairie in the middle of a city?
Perhaps that we're not so happy with what we created there.
Sunday, July 2, 2023
Painted Bricks: Painted Bricks: Tumble Inn, Powder River, Wyoming.
Painted Bricks: Painted Bricks: Tumble Inn, Powder River, Wyoming.:
Painted Bricks: Tumble Inn, Powder River, Wyoming.
We recently ran this story.
Painted Bricks: Tumble Inn, Powder River, Wyoming.: As this institution is in the news, and as I knew I'd taken these photographs, I looked to see if I had posted them. Of course, I had ...
News now comes that the new owner will have the sign restored, but will not place it back up in Powder River, the reason being that in the process he discovered many broken bottles near the sign.
Well, that's no surprise.
Here's the thing, however. Out of context, it's just a big weird old sign.
Saturday, April 2, 2022
Wednesday, December 16, 2020
Painted Bricks: Wyoming Territorial Seal, Big Hollow Food Coop, Laramie Wyoming
Painted Bricks: Wyoming Territorial Seal, Big Hollow Food Coop, La...: 
This is a nice rendition of the Territorial Seal of Wyoming on the Big Hollow Food Coop building in Laramie. We've featured this building before, but we missed the seal in our prior photographs. Indeed, one of our remote roving contributors to this blog just picked this one up.
Wyoming Territorial Seal, Big Hollow Food Coop, Laramie Wyoming.
This is a nice rendition of the Territorial Seal of Wyoming on the Big Hollow Food Coop building in Laramie. We've featured this building before, but we missed the seal in our prior photographs. Indeed, one of our remote roving contributors to this blog just picked this one up.
Wyoming has a complicated history in regard to seals, and this one was actually the state's third. This is additionally slightly complicated by the fact that some versions have the year 1868 at the top, rather than 1869. 1869 is, I believe, correct.
The seal depicts a mountain scene with a railroad running in the foreground in the top field. In the bottom left it depicts a plow, shovel and shepherd's crook, symbolic of the state's industries. The bottom right field depicts a raised arm with a drawn sabre. The Latin inscription reads Cedant Arma Togae, which means "let arms yield to civil authority", which was the territorial motto.
This seal was an attractive one and in some ways it was a better looking seal than the one the state ultimately adopted. The state actually went through an absurd process early in its history in attempting to adopt an official state seal that lead, at one time, the Federal mint simply assigning one for the purpose of large currency printing, which featured state seals at the time. Part of the absurdity involved the design, which was describe in the original state statute rather than depicted, which lead to the sitting Governor hiring his own artist as he didn't like the one art of the one that had been in front of the legislature. That caused a scandal as the one that he picked featured a topless woman, which had not been a feature of the legislative design, and ultimately it was corrected to the current design.
All in all, looking at the original one, I think they could have stuck with it.
Thursday, August 27, 2020
Blog Mirror. Painted Bricks: Art or vandalism?
Painted Bricks: Art or vandalism?:
Art or vandalism?
We don't like to put up photos of graffiti here as it's not in the same category as what this blog is dedicated to depict. Here, we make a bit of an exception.
The scenes depicted above are of the backs of two local office buildings. Both are actively occupied. I.e., there's going businesses in them. They aren't abandoned buildings.
So what, you may ask.
Well, graffiti has been a feature on the back of these buildings for a long time, but it's grown markedly worse in recent years. The amount of graffiti has increased as the building on the right has been oddly popularized in the local press. And when I say the building, I mean the alley. For reasons that aren't apparent to me, the fire escape has become locally celebrated as some sort of a wonder. That's drawn people to trespass on it and as that's occurred, graffiti has likewise increased as well. So have high school graduation pictures with the staircase as a backdrop and even wedding photos.
And now a local theater company.
I'm not a big fan of local theater, which speaks poorly of me. When I was very young my parents introduced me to the theater at the local community college which was a real treat for all of us grade school kids. I can dimly recall seeing You're A Good Man Charlie Brown and The Man From Lamancha at the college theater. While in high school I was never in theater but about that time I was introduced to the text of plays as literature, and I really like some of those. I've seen more college production in latter days, including when I was in college, including, by my recollection, The Dark Of the Moon, which I don't particularly care for, and A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum, which I do. When our kids were little, we took them to a college play about the Wright Brothers.
Local theater, however, is another deal entirely and you have to admire the people who are willing to do it. It doesn't get hte same viewership as college theater, for one thing. And the quality fo the volunteers is bound to be uneven.
Anyhow, there's a couple local theater companies around here and one of them decided to put on a version of a famous Greek play. I've read the text of the play as a college student, which is a long time ago, but I can dimly recall the outline of it. In this production of the play, apparently, there's an element that emphasizes the need to put on a play in spite of hte presence of an Athenian plague, which apparently might be a real background story to the original play. I.e., it was staged during a plague, perhaps, during which the author felt it critical to reopen the Athenian theaters in spite of hte risks.
There's a lot of things that are interesting about that, including that if that's correct, ancient Greeks, while they may not have had the germ theory of disease, grasped that hanging around in groups spread it. Athens apparently closed up shop to try to combat it, something that might seem familiar to the readers here. If my understanding of the views at the time are correct, there were also those who dissented from that view. . . which is also interesting in context.
In the current context, it's generally those who are on the left to the center left, politically, who have been for keeping things shut down and a tight quarantine, while on the right to the center right the view is the opposite. In the middle, where most folks are, the views are nuanced. On the edges, they aren't.
Anyhow, most theater people are on the hard left. It's the hard left that generally would really have a really tight quarantine. Probably most people in local theater on are the left somewhere.
Which makes a play all about protesting quarantines oddly ironic.
Anyhow, that's not why we have posted this here. Apparently determining to stage this out in the open for a certain sort of street cred feel to it, the producers have added to the graffitti.
This may make the town about hte only town around which graffitti making reference to ancient Greece, but it's still graffitti. Of course, there was a lot of it before.
I'm not quite sure what to think.
So what, you may ask.
Well, graffiti has been a feature on the back of these buildings for a long time, but it's grown markedly worse in recent years. The amount of graffiti has increased as the building on the right has been oddly popularized in the local press. And when I say the building, I mean the alley. For reasons that aren't apparent to me, the fire escape has become locally celebrated as some sort of a wonder. That's drawn people to trespass on it and as that's occurred, graffiti has likewise increased as well. So have high school graduation pictures with the staircase as a backdrop and even wedding photos.
And now a local theater company.
I'm not a big fan of local theater, which speaks poorly of me. When I was very young my parents introduced me to the theater at the local community college which was a real treat for all of us grade school kids. I can dimly recall seeing You're A Good Man Charlie Brown and The Man From Lamancha at the college theater. While in high school I was never in theater but about that time I was introduced to the text of plays as literature, and I really like some of those. I've seen more college production in latter days, including when I was in college, including, by my recollection, The Dark Of the Moon, which I don't particularly care for, and A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum, which I do. When our kids were little, we took them to a college play about the Wright Brothers.
Local theater, however, is another deal entirely and you have to admire the people who are willing to do it. It doesn't get hte same viewership as college theater, for one thing. And the quality fo the volunteers is bound to be uneven.
Anyhow, there's a couple local theater companies around here and one of them decided to put on a version of a famous Greek play. I've read the text of the play as a college student, which is a long time ago, but I can dimly recall the outline of it. In this production of the play, apparently, there's an element that emphasizes the need to put on a play in spite of hte presence of an Athenian plague, which apparently might be a real background story to the original play. I.e., it was staged during a plague, perhaps, during which the author felt it critical to reopen the Athenian theaters in spite of hte risks.
There's a lot of things that are interesting about that, including that if that's correct, ancient Greeks, while they may not have had the germ theory of disease, grasped that hanging around in groups spread it. Athens apparently closed up shop to try to combat it, something that might seem familiar to the readers here. If my understanding of the views at the time are correct, there were also those who dissented from that view. . . which is also interesting in context.
In the current context, it's generally those who are on the left to the center left, politically, who have been for keeping things shut down and a tight quarantine, while on the right to the center right the view is the opposite. In the middle, where most folks are, the views are nuanced. On the edges, they aren't.
Anyhow, most theater people are on the hard left. It's the hard left that generally would really have a really tight quarantine. Probably most people in local theater on are the left somewhere.
Which makes a play all about protesting quarantines oddly ironic.
Anyhow, that's not why we have posted this here. Apparently determining to stage this out in the open for a certain sort of street cred feel to it, the producers have added to the graffitti.
This may make the town about hte only town around which graffitti making reference to ancient Greece, but it's still graffitti. Of course, there was a lot of it before.
I'm not quite sure what to think.
The play on opening day. I happened to be in the building at the time and so I snapped this photo. There wasn't a large crowd, but then it was opening day during a time of pandemic too.
One thing maybe the theater company and the audience might think is how gracious the building occupants are. It's impossible not to notice a thing like this and in a lot of places the reaction would have been hugely negative. No reaction at all isn't permission, but it is pretty gracious.Friday, March 1, 2019
Painted Bricks: The Bars of Baker Montana
Painted Bricks: The Bars of Baker Montana:
This is a little off topic for here, as these aren't really examples of painted signs on buildings, but they are interesting in context. These are bars on the main street of Baker Montana.
Baker is a town in far eastern Montana, nearly in North Dakota. It's a long ways to Baker from everywhere and as a result its managed to retain the classic bar/grill/restaurant in strength that so many places have lost. It's likely too far away for chains to locate in and therefore the old establishments keep on keeping on.
The Bars of Baker Montana
The Corner Bar in Baker Montana.
Heiser's Bar in Baker Montana.
Monday, January 1, 2018
The State Of The Blogs
Ladies and Gentlemen. . . the Blogger!
Indeed, the pace of posting has already declined this past week as we move towards this new phase, or perhaps somewhat return a bit to the older original one (okay, we've said that before). Indeed, the tally of posts over the years tells its own story in these regards:
Courthouses of the West tells a similar tale this year. It usually gets about 500 views a month (which is surprisingly high given the low activity rate), but freakishly jumped to an all time high of 1600 last month (hmmmm. . . . ). There was nearly no posting on it at all in 2017:
Our other transportation blog, Railhead, remained about as active, which isn't much, as always:
This is frankly surprising as this is also a travel based blog. I'm amazed that there were fifteen posts on it last year. I"m also amazed that it has had a grand total of 32,000 views.
It has 47,550 total views, which is really surprising.
So, the state of the blogs is good, and we've received a lot of viewership this year. We'd guess that it'll never be anywhere near as high in any one year as it has been for 2017, and that's okay. We'd also guess that the posting rate will be down, and indeed if you tally all the blogs up together, it already is. But that's okay too.
Thanks for stopping in and reading our entries from time to time. We appreciate it.
(Riotous Cheering)
Thank you, thank you. . .
I'd like to report to you that, today on the Dawn of 2018, the State of the Blogs is good.
(Applause).
We saw all time viewing records this year, peaking out at 55,954 views in the month of March alone. That was a peak however, and it matched the end of the posts on the Punitive Expedition. After a steady rise in March, 2016, that coincided with our commencement of posts about the Punitive Expedition, which saw readership jump up to nearly 5,000 views in a month, readership really took off and steady climbed until that month. As a result, this blog has now had over 560,000 total views.
Of course, it's dropped off like a stone, somewhat, since then, which was expected. After March, readership was down to 10,000 views per month by June, still pretty respectable by the historic standards of this blog, but way, way down. However, for some odd reason, it had doubled to 20,000 views per month by October, fell to 12,000 the next month, before going to the second highest readership of all time last month, 38,000. Weird. It's expected to drop way off in 2018. My guess is that we'll be luck to get 200 views a day, and a lot of days right now it's down that low or lower.
Part of the reason is that we're past most of the daily entries about the Punitive Expedition, which have been followed by frequent ones about World War One. These will not be coming nearly as fast, we think, as the slice of life aspect of these depart a bit . But we suspect they will. And that will likely result in fewer posts.
Indeed, the pace of posting has already declined this past week as we move towards this new phase, or perhaps somewhat return a bit to the older original one (okay, we've said that before). Indeed, the tally of posts over the years tells its own story in these regards:
As we've noted here before, this blog had an earlier version, so the tallies are more than a bit off (including the tally of readership hits), but this tells its own tale. Posting here really began to pick up when we killed off that earlier blog, took a hiatus from posting, and then picked up posting here. But we've simply been writing more. This year nearly matched last year, but it was higher. The year before that saw an increase in posts that was quite significant, although 2015 was actually down from 2014. Chances are pretty high that 2018 will drop down from 2017 and 2017 is likely to cap out as the all time high in terms of posts here. Having said that, 2018 is another election year, like 2016 was, that contributed to a lot of posts being made here.
The Somme viewed from the air, January 19, 1917
For reasons that aren't clear to us, this is the most viewed thread on the site, having received 5,293 views.
Lex Anteinternet, our most diverse blog, is only one of our several blogs, of course, and looking at them tells a different tale. Our older blog, Holscher's Hub, was way down in posts over historic highs:
Indeed, it was at its lowest ever, if we discount the inaugural year of 2011. We hope to see more posts there this year. It hit its historic highly monthly viewing, however, last month, at 3,000 views . . which suggest it was something on the net, rather than our brilliant content,t hat contributed to that. Once the most viewed of our blogs, it stands today at a respectable 64,533 total views, which increase at the rate of about 1,000 or so a month, surprisingly, given the low posting rate there.
Today In Wyoming's History should be way down, but oddly it isn't. This may be because when we started updating this post nearly daily due to the Punitive Expedition we linked those posts to Wyoming newspapers to try to give a Wyoming flavor and Wyoming view to those posts. More particularly, we wanted to try to explore, as part of the original purpose of this blog, what it was like for Wyomingite's in 1916 when things tarted hearing up on the Mexican border in a major way. As we did that, we linked those items into Today In Wyoming's History and updated a lot of entries, indeed sometimes on a daily basis. Beyond that we posted some new items as well. We kept that up to an extent in 2017 as we posted newspaper items and daily events concerning 1917.
Perhaps in part because of that, the readership steadily claimed all year and peaked at over 6,000 views last month, although as we've been noting here it seems that a lot of that was due to net activity. Today In Wyoming's History now has over 114,000 views, making it the second most viewed of our blogs.
New Mexicans In Wyoming
Most recent original entry on Today In Wyoming's History.
Churches of the West, which has historically stood next in line, also saw a big decline in postings this past year:
Quite the drop off, but then this one drops around a lot. As its based on my travel for work, it doesn't get much new if I keep traveling to the same places. And frankly, I've run out of subjects in Wyoming to post to it, almost. At over 71,000 views, it stands in second place to this blog for readership and jumps around wildly from month to month, getting between 1,500 views and 2,500 views per month.Immaculate Conception Church, Rapid City South Dakota
A portion of the most popular thread on Churches of the West at 3,696 views.
Again, as t his is a travel based blog, this reflects the fact that last year I rarely went to a location that I hadn't photographed before or, if I was in an unfamiliar place, I just didn't' have time to take photos (an increasingly common work phenomenon). So, not much going on there. I'm amazed that the blog has 26,000 total views.
Lawrence County Courthouse. Speerfish South Dakota.
Last post of the year for Courthouses of the West.
Painted Bricks is the first of our specialty blogs here about structures. It originally was focused on a single location, but rather obviously branched out pretty quickly. It's readership has always been low, but it saw a surprising hike last month as well, and also in August (probably due to the eclipse). It usually is the least active of the specialty blogs, but last year it was not, which doesn't mean it was very active:
Somehow its managed to receive nearly 28,000 views.Hotel Virginia (Natrona County Annex), Casper Wyoming
Most popular, and now out of date, post on Painted Bricks with 1,029 views.
A revived blog, The Aerodrome, focusing on aircraft, is in at over 7,000 total views and its just a few months old. Half of that came in December, suggesting that net activity had more to do with its total readership so far than any other single cause. We like airplanes, so we hope to see more activity here.
Maybe Berlin Airlift Rates were achieved.
Part of the Eclipse post at The Aerodrome, our most recent blog, or not.
Our other transportation blog, Railhead, remained about as active, which isn't much, as always:
Sunrise Train, Torrington Wyoming
Last post of the year for Railhead
This is frankly surprising as this is also a travel based blog. I'm amazed that there were fifteen posts on it last year. I"m also amazed that it has had a grand total of 32,000 views.
Finally, there's our low activity blog on war memorials. Well, that blog, Some Gave All, is now on memorials of all types, showing how everything here expands all the time. It's also travel based and highly opportunistic, meaning that I pick things up for that blog as I pass them, and I pass by things I could photograph constantly, and I do mean constantly. Given that, the fact that its totals every year remain about the same is not too surprising:
It has 47,550 total views, which is really surprising.
Veterans Memorial, Ft. Laramie Wyoming
Snippet of the last post of the year from Some Gave All.
Well, we can't really say "finally", as we took a run at expanding out the number of blogs a bit to reflect the somewhat bogus expansion of some of the existing one. Along those lines, we planned oan Churches of the South and Churches of the East. We have the URLs for both, but only the East has been posted.
Churches of the West: Anglican Church of the Holy Trinity, Toronto Ontario
Not much is going on there yet, and for good reason. Every photo posted there is already posted elsewhere. Whether this activity will be worth doing is yet to be seen.
So, the state of the blogs is good, and we've received a lot of viewership this year. We'd guess that it'll never be anywhere near as high in any one year as it has been for 2017, and that's okay. We'd also guess that the posting rate will be down, and indeed if you tally all the blogs up together, it already is. But that's okay too.
Thanks for stopping in and reading our entries from time to time. We appreciate it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)