I think this was just east of Amarillo.

I wonder if construction were beginning now if this architectural form would be used for local grain storage depots across the Great Plains.

Of all things! I just checked The Great WikiPee, and apparently the English word silo derives from the Greek word for a grain storage pit. Apparently, also, groups of silos and associated buildings, etc., are termed by their function: grain elevators. The architecture signals the shift from shipping grain in bags to in bulk, which changed dramatically in 1843, when the first mechanical complex was opened in Buffalo. Yes. Not on the Plains.

This storage area, just below the ceiling at Cliff Palace, could only be reached through houses in half of the architectural complex. Thus, the contents were controlled/secret. Why? Because it mattered so very much….

At Mesa Verde, the Ancestral/Ancient Puebloan* peoples abandoned their mesa-top and cliff dwellings in the late 1200s long before the Spanish arrived. They were small-statured people, in the 5-2 to 5-4 range. I’m figuring a big part of that was restricted calories. Sure, a pound of piñon nuts is something like 5K calories, but the rest of the dietary assortment is pretty low fat and the carb loads had to be, um, light, everything considered (like the calories it would take to navigate up and down cliff-faces…).

Speaking of food management, we enjoyed a lovely organic Nero d’Avila from Sicily that we found at the Log Cabin liquor store in Mancos—a pleasant surprise.

* More PC to use Ancestral/Ancient Puebloan rather than Anasazi….

We explored history in assorted ways when we did the walking tour at El Morro, which is a sandstone formation known for its carved inscriptions that began with ancient native peoples and hosts additions well into the twentieth century. Coolest stop: the kiva in the small excavated area of the Atsinna pueblo ruin atop the landform. Maybe a dozen rooms are on view, but reports say there are something like 875 rooms. That’s a lot of construction! It’s dated to something like AD 1300….

I was too tied up and boring today to even walk, let alone create a fresh/fun foto for this space.

Instead, I give you an interior view of the Sears, Roebuck building we toured the other Tuesday.

This is a view to the west, and the windows look north onto Ponce. The floor is original. Workers had to remove six layers* of carpeting, we were told, to reveal similar maple strip flooring on a lower “shopping” level.

The pillars are original and the floor above is poured concrete. Boards were used to hold the wet concrete, then removed, leaving the stripes you see in the ceiling.

To ensure that the dust created by construction doesn’t wreck the now-exposed wood floors, the developer bought a wood-floor zamboni, and the floors are cleaned frequently.

* Can you imagine the amount of trapped yuck in that much carpeting? Ick.

View WSW from Beltline bridge over North Avenue (33.77110,-84.36391).

No reason WikiPee doesn’t have this right, so this nightclub used to be an excelsior mill. I had only a nebulous idea what excelsior is, and finally looked it up. Wood wool. Little fine curls of timber. So, it was a factory for reducing trees to fluff.

Strange what repurposing can make (historical) bedfellows….

Note how the strange weather “cut off” the tops of the downtown buildings—this was soon after the rain stopped….

The Fates intervened in our neighbors’ lives, and they offered us the opportunity to tour, in their stead, Ponce City Market, the former City Hall East, the former Sears, Roebuck, and I don’t know what else. The building is something like 2 million square feet, with 56K panes of glass. This is an interior wall, I think dating to the 1920s, the original building phase. Interestingly, this building, adjacent to the railroad bed that’s now the BeltLine, which hosted a spur that went into the building, is built atop springs. That are still producing. Some goes into storm sewers; some is used as grey water. Anyway, fascinating tour….

BTW, the developer, Jamestown, did Chelsea Market and bunches of others; they seemed to know what they were doing at all scales, mega to user to neighborhood to environmental….

Can you see the two goslings between Mama and Papa?

I’m guessing this is the goose family I saw in the making the other day…. I found the next empty except for some fluff being dispersed by the wind.

Sorry to send more goose-poopers out into the world; on the other hand, it’s a victory for Mother Nature to produce something from what had been for decades a yucky industrial site.

Eastside trail of the BeltLine under development—rails long gone, but new surface not yet installed…. View to north from Park Drive bridge.

Despite predictions of freezing rain, I walked the park, and even saw maybe 30 seconds total of sunshine, in two reveals—enough sun to make shadows. Heartening.

Saratoga Springs. Yes. New York. (Can’t find web domain; like I note, soooo last century.)

Ah, so last century. In a good way.

Here at lunch time. Ate not here at the yuppie place, but down the street at a diner, serving breakfast all day.

The Indian name for this place, I swear, must have been something like “Rapids with herons and turtles downstream.”

Indeed, the post-Colonials who dammed this stretch must have been channeling (ahem) ancient times, when they named their flow-stopper Eagle & Phenix Dam (two majestic birds of reality and myth).

Of course, when they blew the dam, archaeologists…monitored…what was revealed….

And now, six months after the dynamite (or whatever they used), we saw many turtles, including one with a shell more than a foot long, and herons, including one that nabbed and swallowed a feesh right in front of us, just downstream of the old dam site (or dam old site).