Waste Management, Sacrilege, and Your Editor moves across the country on the longest Dumb-Ass Trip® yet!

F E A T U R E S

Hey, Prince of Peace! Are those Bauers you're wearing? Travesties, sacrilege and biting the heads off candy deities... We bring you the worst of our search.

Gail Preset recycles in the most unlikely place.

Overcoat, Metro pass, five choice nouns for the task at hand... Ethan Gilsdorf arms himself with words.

Mike McCrea brings us a nice canoe trip, and then he brings us his Waste Management homework assignment and something we're not quite sure is a parody, Paddling Baltimore.

Hey, kids! Dad's got a salt mine! Let's put on a show! With German efficiency, they recycle hard labor into a Roadside Attraction. Hal Streckert visits a salt werk.

R E V I E W S

We throw the new book Britain's Best 500 Pubs at Ben Daube and he goes on location to give it a really good go.

D U M B - A S S  T R I P S

Your Editor goes to her 30th high school reunion. Everyone scrubs up pretty, and discovers you CAN recapture your youth without the slightest inclination to relive it.

T H E  C A S U A L  C O O K

So you shopped like an tinhorn at Costco? Here's how to eat a two-quart jar of olives. without drinking 158 martinis. Look, ma! Nothing wasted except your guests!

E D I T O R I A L

Blasphemy and Treason, now in minty-fresh bite-sized mega-packs.

Our friend Marcia Tapp came back from Japan bearing gifts from our friend Hiroe, including a little bag of ginger jelly candies in the shape of Buddhas and train cars. I took them to a staff meeting at the museum where I spend my days, and put them on the table. "Whenever I think of trains," I said, "I always think of Buddhas. Don't you?"

We unwrapped a few Buddha candies and were stumped. Can we bite the heads off? Will we go to hell? Do the Buddhists have such a thing as hell and if not, NOW can we bite the heads off the Buddhas? Would this be like biting the head off, say, a chocolate Jesus? Is there such a thing as a chocolate Jesus? Would Jesus approve of a tastier sacrament than bread? It all got very silly.

A few months ago, I found myself at an Army Navy store staring a stars and stripes sling chair. (I swear I'm getting to a point here...) "Oh, look. How patriotic. I can put my ass on the flag any time I want." This led to a discussion of the Flag Code, all the various misuses of the flag, and how very ignorant we are as a nation in the ways we unknowingly diss our national banner. I sent Marcia off in search of blasphemy, and she found an awful lot of it. I then picked up the baton for the treason leg of the race, and we got more of a photo-essay than an article, mostly because we were either uncharacteristically speechless or because someone else had already done a crackerjack job of coverage.

Another season, another move

Speaking of moving along (which we weren't, but now I guess we are since I changed the subject), the magazine is moving temporarily to Washington DC, a place we in Seattle refer to as "The OTHER Washington." Washington state's unemployment rate vascillates between being the worst in the nation to being second behind Oregon or Alaska, and so the resident magazine production staff (that would be me) has pulled up stakes and will report from the other coast next issue. Mailing and email addresses remain the same, so stay in touch. It's a small, weird world, after all.

- Your striped Editor-in-Chief

 

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Cheryl Conlon, professional travel photographer: check out her latest portfolio at conlonphoto.com

(photo by Lori Pester from Wilmington, DE - Ponies at Assateague)

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