Brown Motion

 The Palmetto state.  One of the confederate kinds. History dating couple centuries back.  We visited the capital yet again this time to take in the SC State Museum. Occupying the former digs (literally remodeled) of an erstwhile cotton mill this structure is an amazing piece of reimagination.  Four floors of excitement for kids and young at heart alike. Located on the shores of the Congaree River formed when the Broad meets up with the Saluda River, this edifice is approx. 60 years old.  The front of the building has a more modern planetarium that was added about a decade ago.  The museum itself has different areas of interest segregated on each of its four floors. The first floor has gift shop and a diorama of some of the local geography including the swamps and the state beaches with audio guides to help understand what fauna thrives locally. The second floor is all about natural history and showcases animal kingdom that may have survived on this latitud...

 Not since the poem about the mouse and a clock have I heard of Hickory.  I did not see any Dickory either but plenty of docks in this part of the Carolinas that we call home. So what is this Hickory you say?  Well its a type of wood that can be used to make furniture. Not sure how many of this variety grow anymore in NC but at one time it was a forest. Fast forward and this part of the foothill of the Blue Ridge mounts that rise to the east, became the city of Hickory, that also was an erstwhile hub of wooden furniture making. While that industry is not as vast today it serves as a periphery town north of the fast growing Charlotte metro area. About 60 miles due north it is fairly quiet yet historic and blessed with abundant nature and trails and docks along the Catawba river flowing through town. We went hiking along this river and take in the scenery.  Below some vistas. $5M project that the city awarded to design a walking path on the river While finishing that m...

 An impromptu long weekend trip to witness America's country music roots and explore what has been one of the nation's fastest growth cities. We drove out from Charlotte for a six plus hour road trip after what had been some epic rain.  Result - the crowds were thin and the route through the Asheville area and the western flank of the Blue Ridge mountains was bursting with major impromptu waterfalls. En route we also decided to explore Knoxville - a major urban center on the eastern edge of TN. The city for 1982 world expo (a fair that showcases global industrial might and held once in five years at different locations around the globe) built a 260 foot metal tower with golden glass windows to form a sphere on the top.  This serves as a viewing gallery for customers that take an elevator to the top. Rooftop dining offers visitors a view Colorful arches dominate the world's fair complex in downtown Other than that the city has some nice parks and trails and also offered a ...

 This weekend was jam packed activities with my better half traipsing through a 100 mile radius from home and visiting a multitude of food and recreation spots outside Charlotte. Saturday started with visiting now revitalized digs of former tobacco and rail barons like RJ Reynolds and Duke and JP Morgan in the form of Winston Salem.  Having visited before we knew where some taste bud enticing menu was located and we immediately stopped there.  Food came in the form of pork buns and steamed shrimp dumplings along with some amazing beef noodle soup in a spicy broth.  The place, May Way, is a little shack in the Reynolda garden complex (part of the Wake Forest University close by).  The spring season was in full bloom and so a walk later on in the rose and flowering gardens was enjoyable along with stopping to chat with visitors from far and near also seeking joy in nature. After this heart beat racing stroll in the gardens we stopped for a little bit to admire art...

 Human ingenuity has always surpassed what the prior generation achieved and continued its upward march to the present. 2024. Or has it?  Do you feel like I do that the capacity for true human innovation petered out somewhere around 1970? What has followed is perhaps a slow incremental progress in certain domains with the global availability to information in the form of world wide web being the only major breakthrough of the past three decades? Think about this. Man designed, deployed and successfully landed on our only natural satellite - the moon in 1969 and since then made 12 successful attempts. Then it stopped.  This was when the rockets used to send men to the moon had computing power that looks puny by comparison to what an average schmoe carries in their smartphone. What did we do with all that leap in computing? Created disasters like Facebook and Instagram. Mental depression as a direct result of use or overuse of these software has led to massive productivity ...

Antibes, France.  Long believed to be a haven for some globally known brands like Pablo (Picasso for those who did not know his first name), Claude (Monet) to name a few, it is a spot on the Cote d'Azur or French Riviera that we happened to visit the first day of 2024. As part of our end of year pilgrimage (to seek culture, food et al not a spiritual kind although it can be uplifting just smelling new things) to places unknown (to us anyway) we decide to spend it on the south coast of France.  Along the Mediterranean sea during December is perhaps not the most ideal but it offered us a bit less crowds and not terrible weather. It rained a couple days out of 14 which is about 15% of the time so not bad at all.  Hotels were also not exorbitant except for new year's. The one day it rained we were touring a fragrance factory and came out smelling better than when we went in - so all was well. So like I was saying, the first of Jan 2024 we were in Antibes, having come in on a ...