PicoBlog

A brunette pops onto the screen as I scroll through my “For You” page on TikTok. Her face is scrunched up as she looks judgingly down her nose through too-low set glasses. She is gesticulating wildly, yelling “are you kidding me, Rebecca?!”. I hit the heart button instantly. A few more screens and a tall, slender woman in a black turtleneck appears. She has one arm crossed over her midsection while the other balances a full glass of red wine.

Past Lane Plus is an extension of Past Lane Travels, a history/travel blog. This week’s post highlights a historic site in the deep South that is located in one of my favorite states…Louisiana. I had the opportunity to visit Lafayette earlier this year, and was taken by a local to Vermilionville, which sits right in the heart of this beautiful Louisiana city. This historic village sits on a beautiful tree-covered 23-acre site on the banks of the Bayou Vermilion.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Canal Stories, a series brought to you by the Canal Corridor Association to celebrate the 175th anniversary of the Illinois & Michigan Canal and the communities that were shaped by its legacy. McKinley Woods, in Channahon, Illinois, is a popular forest preserve, protecting a diverse collection of habitats, including forest, prairie, wetland, and a portion of the Des Plaines River. While it’s a must-see spot for avid hikers, cyclists, and nature enthusiasts, this tranquil piece of Illinois landscape has had quite the exciting history.

NAPA VALLEY, Calif. — Beneath the serene surface of Napa County’s Lake Berryessa rests a history rich with stories of ancient tribes and submerged villages. Today this scenic location serves as a hub for outdoor enthusiasts, yet it also carries the echoes of the past, from the Wappo tribe’s milling-stone culture to the submerged remains of Monticello’s homes. The land upon which modern-day Lake Berryessa sits in Napa Valley's Vaca Mountains was once home to the Indigenous people who were called the Wappo tribe for thousands of years.

The piano didn't come into existence overnight; it has a lineage that can be traced back to ancient times. To understand the origins of the piano, we must explore the historical background of keyboard instruments and the gradual evolution that led to its invention. The story begins with early keyboard instruments such as the clavichord and the harpsichord, which laid the foundation for the development of the piano. These instruments utilized strings and a keyboard mechanism to produce sound, but they lacked the expressive capabilities and dynamic range that would later define the piano.

When I briefly became obsessed with Yellow Cars In Comedy (see previous Substack post), I was also introduced to the Yellow Car Game, well-known worldwide as a way of whiling away a car journey by adding a small amount of violence. Briefly the rules seem to be: every time you see a yellow car, you punch someone in the arm. Yeah. It’s a bit like chess, or Go. Endlessly rewarding, but we haven’t yet built a computer that can do it.

Share Leave a comment Not because my parents were afraid I would get sunburned — we lived in the San Fernando Valley (a suburb north of Los Angeles) where the average high temperature between May and November was in the mid-90s. (That’s low 30s in Celsius for you metrical folks.) Getting sunburned was a given. No, I was covered neck to toe in fabric because I was allergic to nearly all forms of flora.

To be a successful creator you don’t need millions. You don’t need millions of dollars or millions of customers, millions of clients or millions of fans. To make a living as a craftsperson, photographer, musician, designer, author, animator, app maker, entrepreneur, or inventor you need only thousands of true fans. This is the opening passage from Kevin Kelly’s 2008 essay, “Thousand True Fans.” Kelly is one of the defining techno-optimist voices in the history of the internet.

If there’s a Holy Grail in the annals of food history, it’s the plant that the ancient Greeks called silphion, and which Romans knew as laser or silphium. According to Pliny the Elder, the last stalk of silphion was shipped from North Africa to Rome, where it was said to have ended up in the ample belly of the Emperor Nero. It was prized for its intoxicating aroma, and a flavor that transformed everything from a plate of scalded sow’s womb to a pot of lentils into a dish fit for the gods.