gardenhistorygirl: Bellwood Plantation and the Southern Swept Yard

"The swept yard is a unique vernacular landscape tradition once common in the deep South: a bare dirt area denuded of any grass, kept 'clean' by sweeping with a broom made of twigs."

Is That Legal?: How Times Have Changed!

"Which very prominent lawyer penned this endorsement of Michael Dukakis for the Democratic nomination in 1988, praising him for, among many other things, his repudiation of Al Gore's "militaristic foreign policy"? (answer below the fold)"

Architecture and fashion | Life and style | guardian.co.uk

"Yet even a glance at your garden-variety modern architect proves this is a group who are just as style-conscious as fashion designers."

Our Local Correspondents: Up and Then Down: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker

"The elevator, underrated and overlooked, is to the city what paper is to reading and gunpowder is to war."

BLDGBLOG: Cairo Sound City

"This is not like London or New York, or even Tehran, another car-clogged Middle Eastern capital. It is literally like living day in and day out with a lawn mower running next to your head, according to scientists with the National Research Center."

Gasoline and Diesel Fuel Update

"What we pay for in a gallon of gasoline"

Mennonites and Mammonites...

"But now they're at the center of one of the strangest phenomena in South American politics, a saga of corruption and faith that has left these world-renouncing Anabaptists in control, for a time, of the highest worldly offices in Paraguay"

Annotation - Boston Globe

how to read the coat of arms of Pope Benedict XVI (PDF)