John's Beachcombing Museum
One Man’s Junk
For 40 years, John has been collecting our garbage off the beach. Here’s where you can visit it.
Drive along Highway 101 on Washington State’s Olympic Peninsula, just outside of Forks—home of Twilight vampires—and you’ll see a roadside monument, of sorts. The curious slow down and waver: take the road toward the improbable tower or keep to the planned schedule?
I stopped and met John Anderson, a retired plumber and 40-plus-year veteran of beachcombing. Last year, he opened the first North American beachcombing museum. Housed in what was once Anderson’s plumbing workshop, the collection typifies humanity’s peculiar relationship with stuff—from the age of organic pollution to the age of plastic pollution.
There is beauty to be found in the handwritten letters stuffed into glass bottles, in the Japanese glass fishing floats, and in the wavy lines of the ancient fossilized mollusks. There is a ghoulishness too: a candy-colored collection of plastic doll heads; hard hats that once sat on the heads of unknown laborers; the encrusted bristles of the most personal of items—toothbrushes. John’s Beachcombing Museum has it all.
More than anything, Anderson’s museum has an unambiguous record of how humans treat the ocean.
Sounding the Sumburgh Foghorn
The annual Foghorn sounding at Sumburgh Lighthouse, Shetland, Scotland.
Brian Johnson starts up the 1951Kelvin K-Series Diesel 44hp Engines. The engines power the Alley and MacLellan compressors, which in turn, power the foghorn.
Just so's you know, the horn was originally much louder at the end, but YouTube's audio algorithm turned the volume down. I tried several versions but it wasn't having it.
This foghorn was also used as part of the foghorn sound for Robert Eggers The Lighthouse. Read more here -
Richmond, Virginia | Wikipedia audio article
This is an audio version of the Wikipedia Article:
00:03:14 1 History
00:03:23 1.1 Colonial era
00:04:19 1.2 Revolution
00:05:17 1.3 Early United States
00:08:04 1.4 Civil War
00:12:57 1.5 Postbellum
00:14:23 1.6 20th century
00:17:56 2 Geography and climate
00:19:37 2.1 Cityscape
00:23:23 2.2 Climate
00:27:59 3 Demographics
00:31:44 3.1 Crime
00:33:59 3.2 Religion
00:40:42 4 Economy
00:45:40 4.1 Fortune 500 companies and other large corporations
00:48:28 4.2 Poverty
00:49:22 5 Arts and culture
00:49:31 5.1 Museums and monuments
00:53:19 5.2 Visual and performing arts
00:54:05 5.2.1 Murals
00:54:23 5.2.2 Professional performing companies
00:57:50 5.2.3 Other venues and companies
01:02:07 5.3 Literary arts
01:03:33 5.4 Architecture
01:09:12 5.5 Historic districts
01:10:05 5.6 Food
01:10:39 6 Parks and outdoor recreation
01:14:38 7 Sports
01:18:11 8 Media
01:20:06 9 Government and politics
01:23:55 10 Education
01:25:15 10.1 Colleges and universities
01:26:32 11 Infrastructure
01:26:42 11.1 Transportation
01:30:22 11.2 Major highways
01:30:30 11.3 Utilities
01:32:53 12 International relations
01:33:03 12.1 Sister cities
01:33:33 13 See also
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Speaking Rate: 0.90601071634439
Voice name: en-US-Wavenet-D
I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think.
- Socrates
SUMMARY
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Richmond () is the capital of the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. It is the center of the Richmond Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) and the Greater Richmond Region. Richmond was incorporated in 1742 and has been an independent city since 1871.
As of the 2010 census, the city's population was 204,214; in 2016, the population was estimated to be 223,170, making Richmond the fourth-most populous city in Virginia. The Richmond Metropolitan Area has a population of 1,260,029, the third-most populous metro in the state.
Richmond is located at the fall line of the James River, 44 miles (71 km) west of Williamsburg, 66 miles (106 km) east of Charlottesville, 100 miles (160 km) east of Lynchburg and 98 miles (158 km) south of Washington, D.C. Surrounded by Henrico and Chesterfield counties, the city is located at the intersections of Interstate 95 and Interstate 64, and encircled by Interstate 295 and Virginia State Route 288. Major suburbs include Midlothian to the southwest, Chesterfield to the south, Varina to the southeast, Sandston to the east, Glen Allen to the north and west, Short Pump to the west and Mechanicsville to the northeast.
The site of Richmond had been an important village of the Powhatan Confederacy, and was briefly settled by English colonists from Jamestown in 1609, and in 1610–1611. The present city of Richmond was founded in 1737. It became the capital of the Colony and Dominion of Virginia in 1780, replacing Williamsburg. During the Revolutionary War period, several notable events occurred in the city, including Patrick Henry's Give me liberty or give me death speech in 1775 at St. John's Church, and the passage of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom written by Thomas Jefferson. During the American Civil War, Richmond served as the second and permanent capital of the Confederate States of America. The city entered the 20th century with one of the world's first successful electric streetcar systems. The Jackson Ward neighborhood is a national hub of African-American commerce and culture.
Richmond's economy is primarily driven by law, finance, and government, with federal, state, and local governmental agencies, as well as notable legal and banking firms, located in the downtown area. The city is home to both the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, one of 13 United States courts of appeals, and the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, one of 12 Federal Reserve Banks. Dominion Energy and WestRock, Fortune 500 companies, are headquartered in the city, with others in the metropolitan area.