Today in Civilization I Saw

How about a companion thread to the “Today in Nature I Saw” thread?

I’ll start:

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A bit of archeology.

I didn’t spontaneously encounter this sticker in the wild; I’m the one who stuck it there. But I hope some other folks encountered it and it made them smile (or pissed them off). Probably it’s been removed by now.
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Apropos of that, I saw this when walking the Little Dog yesterday:
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The sign reads:
This is not a construction site! This is art!

I agree.

I don’t have pix, but here are two recent sightings I enjoyed and posted elsewhere:


This latter car belongs to a clerk at a nearby store. So I can get a pic if we need it.

I do not have a picture, sadly, but heading south in Michigan on I-94 I saw a billboard of a giant cat.

And the quote:

“You can’t just keep putting up pictures of cats, Harold. People will think it’s weird.”

With the completely unrelated business name at the bottom. I think it was a car dealership.

I saw this unusual “Steampunk” water fountain:

What sort of establishment is that? Those look like apartment mailboxes on the right, but why would an apartment complex have a video return slot? Or maybe it’s a (presumably long-dead) video rental place in a strip mall, and the mailboxes are for the various businesses in the strip mall?

It’s a small shopping center. There’s a restaurant, bakery, 2nd-hand store, and a coffee shop. The video rental return slot is probably part of the restaurant. We are new up here, so I don’t know the history of this corner, but I’d bet it hasn’t been a video store in several decades.

Today we were being civilized at Petworth House, deep in rural Sussex which, surprisingly, holds a marvelous art collection. For example, if you happen to be a fan of JMW Turner

Turner was a frequent guest of George Wyndham, 3rd Earl of Egremont, at Petworth House in West Sussex, and painted scenes that Egremont funded taken from the grounds of the house and of the Sussex countryside, including a view of the Chichester Canal. Petworth House still displays 20 paintings, the largest collection of his work outside the Tate.

So: the two most pleasing paintings I saw at Petworth today were not by Turner. In truth, I’ve seen them both many times, but they always make me happy. The first describes itself as The Wise Men’s Offering, but you would probably know it better as The Adoration Of The Magi by Hieronymus Bosch. Yeah, I know, it’s in the Prado in Madrid as well (the one in the Met is very different). It’s not the only time an artist banged out another copy (see: Picasso). But always a pleasure. My favorite painting at Petworth? Well, I dunno…

This is The Card Players by Jan Massys. It always stops me in my tracks. Eh, I’m a sucker for Flemish painters.

(Apologies, BTW, I couldn’t figure out how to post the images themselves. But follow the links, it’s worth it.)

j

Nice, thanks for sharing!

Walking the dog tonight, I saw this sticker. Any idea what it means?

Then, I noticed the blue-stake paint for the gas line goes right through the tree (!!)

Umm…blue?

I lived in an apt complex that had a small rotating selection of DVDs residents could check out. They only rarely had something I was interested in watching.

Definition of the term Blue Stake - Total House Inspection.

Thanks, ignorance fought.

I went to the 2nd-hand store today, and looked for the video return slot. I couldn’t find it, until I realized that it was inside a tiny room, with its own door:

They did a good job with the interior decor, there.

I wasn’t able to get a picture, but today I saw a poster alongside the road. It was a drawing of an ape with a swoosh of yellow hair, captioned, “Trump is Putin’s monkey”. It cheers me up no end to see there are still some right-minded folks among us.

I had to drop my car off for service, so I decided to walk home along the Animas trail.

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