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Points of InterestExplore more photos from the story |
Not So Dead
Death Valley, California—In a land deemed dead, there's no greater adventure than searching for life. Bumping along in a four-wheel-drive and covering about 400 miles of the 5,300-square-mile desert, I found surprising biodiversity in this brittle landscape punctuated by mountains and canyons. Wildflowers carpeting the hillsides watered by snowmelt from Telescope Peak, the park's highest point at 11,049 feet, are expected to continue into June. I spotted bighorn sheep and red-tailed hawks on the craggy rock walls and wild burros in the shade of mesquite trees.
Even though it's one of the driest places on earth—averaging less than two inches of rain annually—Death Valley has more than 600 springs and ponds. Salt Creek, which meanders a mile through the center of the park, is home to the hardy pupfish. From a boardwalk constructed to protect the fragile creekbed and nearby vegetation, visitors can watch the iridescent minnow-size fish cavorting in warm, briny water only an inch deep.
Darwin Falls, a sort of oasis on the park's western edge, cascades about a hundred feet into a large pond of cool water surrounded by willows and cottonwoods. Though swimming is prohibited to protect wildlife, the spot offers a respite from the oppressive heat—which averages 100 degrees in May—and attracts some 80 species of birds. Badwater Basin, the lowest point in North America at 282 feet below sea level, has a moonlike bleakness. The vast crusted salt pan is scored with symmetrical polygonal cracks. There's no shade, and summer temperatures can reach a scorching 120 degrees. See it when the wildflowers are still in bloom.
Sub Hunter
Albany, New York—The United States built 563 destroyer escorts, small maneuverable ships that sank nearly 100 enemy submarines while protecting Allied supply convoys in World War II. Only one, the USS Slater, remains afloat in the United States, moored on the Hudson River. It was transferred to the Greek Navy in 1951 and used in training—and movies, including 1961's The Guns of Navarone. Greece returned the ship to a group of U.S. Navy veterans, who towed it to Albany in 1997 and formed the Destroyer Escort Historical Museum.
The enlisted men's sleeping quarters are equipped with fold-up canvas bunks, hung hammock-style with chains. Heavy china graces the officer's mess. Morse code and sonar pings emanate from the radar room. Keg-size depth charges on the main deck look ready for deployment.
Playing for Keepsies
Bonner Springs, Kansas—Time was, kids would squat on the ground and attempt to shoot each other's agates outside a circle drawn in dirt or chalked on pavement. Although video-game shootouts seem to have replaced marble games, Bruce Breslow still handcrafts about a thousand marbles a year in a cinder-block warehouse in a suburb 20 miles west of Kansas City.
The Moon Marble Company is Breslow's museum-like novelty shop, brimming with plastic bins of assorted candy-colored, streaked and tie-dyed marbles as well as other retro toys: tea sets, Chinese checkers, tiddlywinks, Radio Flyers, Sno-Cone machines.
In the back of the store is a classroom where employees demonstrate how to knuckle down and play for keepsies. Three days a week, Breslow turns colored glass into little works of art. As kids and adults observe from gymnasium-style bleachers, he melts two or three different colored glass rods over a torch flame, then pushes a pinch of the mixed molten glass into a graphite mold to create a sphere. Manipulating the ball of glass with a metal pick, he creates the radiant color swirls favored by collectors. The marble is reheated, spun and flame-polished. His handmade beauties sell for $20 to $250, but most of the store's million-plus marbles are machine-made and some cost as little as ten cents.
Comments
Thank You for the "Points of Interest' online however I was hoping to find the name of the wildflower shown in the small inset photo under "Not So Dead" on page 30 of the magazine. Am I just some howmissing the name and description in the article or can someone tell me what it is called? Thanks Nick
Posted by Nick DeTini on April 24,2008 | 04:49PM
Nick, The information we have on that particular photo is that it is the detail of a Phacelia plant. There are dozens of types of Phacelia however we could not identify which one it was. We do not have the common name. Editor
Posted by Editor on April 29,2008 | 11:43AM
Looks like a Phacelia Californica to me. Actually, my brother is a Master Gardner in Craighead County Arkansas and he found it for me.
Posted by Jimmy Thomas on April 29,2008 | 03:39PM
I served aboard the USS Sutton DE-771 from May 1946 to Dec 1947 when it was decomissioned. I was present at the South Boston Nany Yard in 1956 when she was handed over to the Korean Navy I was working for the New England Telephone Co. at that time. I am interested in hearing more about the Destroyer Escort Historical Museum. I was 17 years old when we departed from Norfolk VA to Panama Canal Zone to operate with the fleet submarines out of Balboa Panama so my childhood days are memorable as a young sailor on the DE, we were with the USS Muir DE-770 during that deployment and the submarines USS Sea Owl, USS sea Poacher and the USS Sea Fox among others in the Pacific Ocean. Greates time of my young life and most memorable.
Posted by Thomas J. Bilbo on July 27,2008 | 10:14AM