breakfast first

Shame on the Waterfront

I'm ashamed to admit that, until yesterday, I was unaware that Yo La Tengo was from Hoboken. A lot of interesting things come from that tiny city. (I've been obsessively listening to "Autumn Sweater".)

Washington Place Names

While I was getting my hair cut a couple of weeks ago, I glanced at the stylist's license from the State of Washington and suddenly started wondering how Washington state got its name. I found a great history of the name in this article. It turns out that the original proposal was to name the state Columbia (after the river that separates Oregon and Washington), but a representative from Kentucky stuck his nose in the statehood proceedings and wanted to honor George Washington by naming a state after him. Despite objections, the House of Representatives substituted "Washington" for "Columbia" in the bill and passed it.

While searching for this info, I also ran across the very interesting Washington Place Name database, put together by the former managing librarian of the Tacoma public library. It contains short summaries about the origin and history of local place names. The database setup is nasty (why do people still insist on exposing "DB sessions" to end users?) so you can't link to entries directly, but it's worth checking out.

Puzzles

Venture capitalist Steve Jurveston is posting puzzling photos on Flickr and having people figure out what's being photographed (or how it was done). Very cool.

Fun fact

Did you know that the writer Anthony Trollope was the inventor of the mailbox? He came up with the idea when he worked for the British Post Office. (Surprisingly, he also worked as a mailman in Mallow, Ireland, the town where my mother was born and raised.)