primitivepeople

The history of the Grandview (Alias) is much broader than just a tale of a single resort.
This plot of land represents the times of an entire region...
Within these walls you witness the rise, and fall, of the Borscht Belt.



The Borscht Belt is (was) a band of hotels, resorts, spas, and places of that nature,
that spread across the Catskills Mountain area of New York state.
At one time vacationing in the Catskills was a very popular thing to do.
It was at it's most popular from the late 1940's, up until the 70's.
A number of factors contributed to the eventual demise of the Borscht Belt,
not the least of which was affordable air-travel.
A family could now go to Florida for little more than the trip to up-state NY...
The entire Borscht Belt region now lays in ruin.
Hundreds of miles of mountain land, dotted with abandoned resorts.

Though the Grandview may stand for an era of American popular culture,
this is not to say that it was just a number in the list of Catskill resorts.
Of all the resorts that stretched the Borscht belt, the Grandview was the crown-jewel.
It was so popular during it's time that an airstrip was constructed on the grounds
so that vacationers could fly directly to the resort.
An airstrip that now has 20+ years of growth covering it...
Interestingly, the "Kellerman's Mountain Resort" from the 1980's film "Dirty Dancing"
was modeled after the Grandview.

The resort had very humble beginnings,
as a single house in the rural mountains of New York state.
A family of three decided to rent out the extra rooms of their home to vacationers from New York City.
The husband ran the facility, the wife cooked and cleaned, and the daughter was hostess.
In 1919 they sold the original house to purchase a larger one on 100 acres.
From that point on the resort steadily grew in size and popularity.
In 1952 it made history as the first ski slope in the world to use artificial snow.
By 1972 the resort had grown to 35 building on some 1,200 acres of land,
and was serving 150,000 guests annually.



Nothing lasts forever though...
By the late 1970's the younger market was no longer interested in vacationing in the Catskills.
Especially when they could take a jet anywhere in the country for nearly the same cost.
To regain Catskill popularity, a bill was put into motion to legalize gambling in the region.
In preparation for this influx of vacationers looking for an alternative to Atlantic City,
the Grandview went under a massive re-construction.
(I have included some of the re-design illustrations at the end of this entry,
along with more historical images of the place)
However, the bill was never passed and gambling remains illegal in the Catskills.
That was the last hit the resort could take.
Construction halted, and in 1986 the resort shut it's doors for good.

Present day is a strange way to perceive the Grandview.
It lies trapped, between what it once was, and what it was on it's way to becoming.





( Once upon a time there was a tavern... )

http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20091209

The Girl Genius comic for Wednesday, December 09, 2009 has been posted.

-Another paper done! Dante, and I think it's a good one. It was a blast to write, even though I stayed up WAY too late doing so. Still, done, and doesn't suck. Won't find out a grade for a while, as he said he won't enter a final grade for the papers until he sees the exams, too. *shrug* I do want to se his comments and feedback though, so I hope I can get it from him eventually.... Now I just have a monster exam to prep for - he really takes that two and a half hour exam period seriously! Shiznit! The 'prompts' on the study guide are all HUGE! Good thing I have several days to prep for it.

-Another paper yet to do, and I'm a little lost on it. I've never written an 18-page personal essay before.... not sure how in hell I'll pull that off, but I guess I will, tomorrow. It's due Thursday, but tonight I have...

-Black Death final to prep! I am working on my essay now; he gives us two big essay questions, but we get them ahead of time, so we can pick the one we want to write on, and essentially prepare the essay ahead. Then it's just going in and writing it all down from memory... that's 70% of the grade, the other 30% is short answer (paragraph or so) on three terms, one each from three lists. They are never anything too oddball, so by the time I've written the essay and read over my notes a time or two, I'm as prepared as I will get. I wonder if he'll do a bonus like he did in Heresy? That would be nifty - the few extra points never hurt, and the bonus last time was fun.

And then - done? Can it be? Miles to go yet, but there might just be an end in sight!

Oh, and I got all three of my letters of recommendation in, I will upload my statement of purpose and writing sample tomorrow, and then the PhD program app is done, too, with nothing else to do but wait.

Which is fine, as long as I can do it in bed. Without writing anything. I mean anything. Not a grocery list, not a letter to Santa, nothing. *thud*

About 5 miles north of Kramer Junction on the 395 outside of Boron, CA is an abandoned prison. FPC Boron ("Federal Prison Camp") shut down in around 2001 judging by the dates on most of the forms found around the facility. The facility itself does not appear to be a typical prison.. driving up to it, it looks mostly like an industrial complex. There are about 28 houses in a circle slightly south of the main facility--housing for the correctional staff. The inmate's quarters are two-story dorms with central air and heating and carpeted floors, huge windows. Each inmate gets a locker and there are bathrooms at the end of each hall. Not a bad place at all to serve out a sentence. The facility was minimum security and housed "white-collar" criminals.. sort of a slap-on-the-wrist detention center for tax fraud, stuff like that.

I've been to this site several times but decided to take a couple friends who'd never been. I took tons of pictures so I'll just post in parts.



( Read more... )

It's not enough that they have to report on the Massive Fail that occured with the TSA/Transportation Security Administration - (their full security procedure manual was posted online today), but the freaking news outlets have to TELL you in detail what kind of goodies you could easily find there!

ARGH!!!?!?!?!#$#$#!!

I think we need to reinstitute a "loose lips sink ships" mentality again. Who is more irresponisible tho???





ps. A real post coming soon, I've been insanely busy these days.

off to Basildon again tomorrow, this time just for the day. I reckon a 6am (ish) start should do the trick - I'm booked in to demo our system at 11:30.

Hopefully it shouldn't take more than an hour, at which point I'll grab a bite to eat and head back up the A1, aiming to get back for EB's school christmas concert at 7pm.

Long day.

But! I discovered that the Mondeo that work have hired for me (the same one I had for last week's trip) has a 3.5mm auxiliary jack input cunningly hidden in the glove compartment. Which means I can ditch the iPod FM transmitter thing* and plug my ipod in. Woot!



* generally ok, but once you get down to about Luton there is very little space in the FM frequency band and you get a ton of interference

'I don't know, ask that guy over there'.

Today's entry is brought to you in association with the number seven and the letter 'huh?'. For not only was I customered today but I was customered SEVEN times.

I've never been asked so many questions! And so few (one) about the company I work for! The rest were about completely different train companies and by the way, where *is* Brentwood exactly? I even checked the map for that one and was obliged to point out that LONDON Underground doesn't go to Essex so he might like to try an actual rail service. That guy just muttered that he'd imagined we had all the information in our heads. Um yeah, sure mate.

Oddly, I got the most questions while I was waiting for C2C trains. And I also was used as a weapon of war in a battle of sibling rivalry with Older Bruv soundly scolding younger bruv for his platform malarkey. Dire threats about my impending retaliatory actions were issued while I tried to look suitably fierce and grumpy. It must of worked because Li'l Bruv did tie his shoelaces when I asked him to. :-D

If you're looking for a gift for me for Christmas (and I know you are. Oh yea. I'm sure you are.)... May I point you in the direction of this beautiful piece of art?







Here it is, in its full-size glory.

Love, love, so much love.

Dearest Darling girlghoul, the package arrived yesterday. Thank you so much! It will go perfectly with the outfit I have planned for tomorrow.

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I, much like just about everyone else on LJ, am not receiving comment notifications. This is somewhat annoying.

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Hmmm. Today's second pot of tea is the Double Dark Chocolate Maté from the Republic of Tea. It smells divine and tastes ... I think I needed to let it steep a bit longer. I also think I need a cupcake, but alas! I do not have one.

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Last night I went to the Wayward Coffeehouse and saw nice people! And was given a pre-release copy of the new Toy-Box Trio CD, muah-ha-ha! And then went home and ... stared at the next GCS column that I'm writing and listened to my brain go ::whiiiiiiirrrrr::. Let me put it this way: I was so fuzzy and brain-dead that my bathtime reading selection was Eclipse. Yes, from the Twilight series. I guess I felt like giggling and rolling my eyes a lot. But tonight will be a Writing Night. It really will. It HAS to be.

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My outfit today includes a pink and white striped men's Oxford shirt. Yes, really. Worn with a black fluffy skirt with pink and white striped trim, and a black blazer with pink and white striped buttons and a pink and black cupcake patch on the arm. I'll try to post a photo later.

Scientific researches in Antarctica linked to enormous difficulties not only because of the harsh climatic conditions on the mainland of the continent, but also because of the high cost of preparations for the expeditions. In turn, the high expedition’s costs depend on the inaccessibility of the Antarctic for the marine vessels and aircrafts. As a rule, only icebreakers can go to the Antarctic latitudes. The air traffic is even more difficult because of the extreme hardship building of landing strips on the ice-covered continent.


In this small article we would like to suggest some non-trivial approaches to solve traffic problems in Antarctica.

Somebody bought it just after I took this picture.

So, Nikki - amazing person that she is, gave me a Reva G-Wiz for my mum, well, gave my mum it. It requires some work being a first generation G-Wiz, and a complete new set of batteries. The set in there at the moment are dying and while they do short distances okay, longer drives (over a few miles) are going to push your luck.

So today after it'd sat all week I went out to look at what's required to get it back on the road. It also needs a corner of the battery tray welding, which I knew...

So I whipped out my ramps and planned to shonk it up onto the ramps. When parked up a week ago it had a full state of charge, after a week it'd dropped to 3/4 - a factor of the sickly batteries. And it turned out it wouldn't move. Charging it has made it happier - it needed about 2 minutes of charging before it suddenly went - oh! I can move!

So I'm trying to set up a laptop with the Reva software on it, so I can poke it and see state it's in before we whip out the batteries. This is more complex than it sounds. I dug out the old Dell to see if I could set it up with Win 98SE. I found the windows disk. I then spent an hour trying to (and eventually succeeding in) find(ing) the cable.

Now it's set up I recall than I need a specific device driver disk for it. Which means getting the ancient and terrifyingly virus-able object onto the internet :(

What is good is that this morning I've laid half the tile for the hallway. 'Ray!

Well, what a hideously messy few hours I had last night.

First off, while still recovering from Louis' weekend pukathon, one which would rival that "who wants chowder?" scene in Family Guy, Twinkle and I were sat on the settee last night when Blue came in through the catflap with a rat he'd killed for us.  I went to clear it up - its guts were coming out of its filthy torso and one of its legs fell off as I scooped it up with the coal shovel.  Blue miaowed around, seeking approval while I binned the rat corpse and scrubbed clean the bit of the rug where the rat had lain.

Then, a few hours later, Vincent came into the front bedroom to tell us that he'd been sick.  So, at 4.30am today, I was wiping cheesy, rancid smelling boy-puke off his toys, his desk chair, his Spongebob annuals and so on.  I almost puked myself with the smell and the hideous cold stickiness of the bits of barf I was wiping up.  I managed to get the rug up off his bedroom floor, then Twinkle bagged it up and put it outside with the rubbish.  Apparently there's a nasty vomiting bug going round V's school - maybe the same one Louis had at the weekend.

Louis slept soundly through all this, and as the boys' room smelled so pukey, we moved him downstairs into a makeshift bed in the front room alongside the settee, where I slept for the rest of the night.  Vincent curled in the front bedroom alongside Twinkle, who was worried in case he puked again.

Then I woke up at 7.00 and almost gagged with the pungent stench....Louis was still asleep but he'd filled his nappy with the most horrendous runny diarrhoea.  So, I cleaned him up and gave him some milk.

I think I've encountered enough gross things in the past few hours.

Inspired by a bit on Dave Gorman's radio show at the weekend, when you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up? Is it different from what you are doing now? If you've still not grown up (like me), what do you want to do when/if you do grow up?

Post from mobile portal m.livejournal.com

...but it's pretty cool!

I posted here a long time ago for #1 Fact or Fiction and here's #2! Basically it contains 30 stories that are either Fact or Fiction and is up to you to guess. Would be fun with a group of people. I wrote 15 stories while my friend wrote another 15. Done in zine-style cut-and-paste, with collage pages and type-written quotes on truth. 1/4-sized, 48pp. Currently not accepting trades (sorry!) You can get them here: http://janell.tk

Thanks for viewing!

::sob::

Hey Sailor! is running a sale. The mini b&w striped tricorn with the pink details and the tiny pirate ship is on sale. (clicky-link!)

::looks at pictures, whimpers some more::

Dear Sandy Claws, I have been ... mostly good this year. And have learned from my mistakes when I wasn't good. I am very deserving of a tiny tricorn decorated with a pirate ship, I really really am.

Love,

Cupcake Goth