bookofjoe

Fall Foliage Prediction Map

It's that time of the year once again....

Wrote Kottke: 

Well, it is that time of year again when the leaves in the northern hemisphere change colors.

As usual, SmokyMountains.com has published their best guess as to when the leaves will be changing in various parts of the country.

At the end of September and beginning of October here in Vermont, it'll start looking like this.

19th-Century Autograph Quilt

Wrote Kottke:

In 1856, a 17-year-old girl named Adeline Harris started making a unique quilt. Over the next two decades, she sent pieces of silk to famous people from around the world and they signed them and sent them back to her. She assembled them into a quilt with a tumbling blocks pattern (aka the Q*bert pattern).

The signatures that Harris was able to acquire are astounding: Harriet Beecher Stowe, Charles Dickens, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Samuel Morse, Alexandre Dumas, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Alexander von Humboldt, Washington Irving, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. Oh, and eight US Presidents: Martin Van Buren, John Tyler, Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, and Ulysses S. Grant.

The aesthetics of this thing are just marvelous, with all the different colors and patterns arranged into a strict grid.

Oh, and I couldn't resist checking The Great Span of the quilt. The earliest-born signatory I could find is Alexander von Humboldt, who was born in 1769, and the last one to die was Mary Virginia Hawes Terhune, who died in 1922. That's a span of 154 years, all in one incredible quilt.

I found this via the Public Domain Review, which is offering prints of the quilt.

Miniature Pac-Man Arcade Game

Features and Details:

$39.99.