Author: Ms. R.

In the booming days of America’s Old West, the Washoe Club was Virginia City’s most elite private social institution. A membership-only organization born out of Nevada’s fabled Comstock Lode, this “Millionaire’s Club” attracted a mix of mining magnates, artists, and intellectuals who sought to rub elbows with other ‘men of importance,’ and relish in the luxuries brought with the territory’s silver bonanza.  The club opened its doors on B Street on June 1, 1875, in an opulent space with……

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Entering Tom Devlin’s Monster Museum is like walking into a who’s who of horror films. Life-sized recreations of It’s Pennywise, and Halloween’s Michael Myers share space with the Creature from the Black Lagoon, while a series of creepy anthropomorphic puppets from the Puppet Master film series co-exist beside a smorgasbord of other screen-used characters.  Devlin is a professional special effects artist who has contributed to more than 100 scary movies and TV shows, from Leprechaun to The X-Files, in……

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One rainy day in January 2017, a small but determined group gathered outside the parliament building of Pontianak city, Indonesia for a protest. Printed across a large banner was the group’s name: GEMA TOPAN, which (translated from Indonesian) stands for “Community Movement to Reject Ghost Statue.” Along the bottom was the hashtag #tolakpatongantu, meaning “Reject Ghost Statue.” It was an unusual cause for a demonstration, but these were unusual circumstances. Not long before, word had circulated around social media……

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This small park on the Flint River is home to a musical dedication to the “King of Soul” Ray Charles. A fountain sits in the middle with a statue of Charles and his piano. Visitors can hear his music play along with the sound of the water from the fountain. The entire park has a musical theme, the walkway is a piano keyboard, and musical notes along with piano keys are places to sit….

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Broken Column is an artwork by the British sculptor Antony Gormley. The artwork is designed to act as an “art hike” consisting of 23 rusting, mannequin-like sculptures set up in public, semi-public, and private locations across the city of Stavanger. Some statues are outside public places and are accessible 24 hours a day, others are in less accessible areas such as the public swimming baths, a store, and a school. One statue is even located in a private home. The……

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In 1961, in the midst of widespread panic over possible nuclear war with the Soviet Union, food editor Marie Adams published a timely recipe column in the Charlotte News. The column—originally titled “Can You Make an Appetizing Meal in Your Cellar?”—focused on meals you could make in a fallout shelter, using the emergency supply of nonperishable goods that families were expected to stockpile for an anticipated two weeks underground. Adams’s column was far from unique. Women’s magazines and government-sponsored……

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Until humanity makes contact with some genuine extra-terrestrials, the aliens we invent will say more about us than about them. By extension, the same goes for where we first encounter these imaginary off-worlders. These maps show the locations of alien first contacts on Earth in almost a century of popular films, from Algol (1920), a Faust-from-outer-space parable made in Weimar Germany; to Annihilation (2018), a reflection on America’s loss of faith in the future of humankind. The rules: Each……

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Casa de los Lagartos, located at number 1 on Calle Mejía Lequerica is one of the historic structures in the center of Madrid. On the outside of the building, you can spot a number of carved creatures—they’re technically salamanders, not lizards, but it’s too late to change the name of such an old building now.  Spanish architect Benito González del Valle created the structure, which includes five floors of apartments, with three art studios at the top. Commercial spaces……

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