Early reports put this year’s September U.S. issue of Vogue at 584 ad pages, up from last year’s 532 pages. As an indicator of the economy, it’s a good recovery sign looking back to 2009’s 429 pages which was a huge drop from 2008’s 674. Since I’ve been tracking this data for several years now, I decided to do a very amateur analysis and made a simple chart comparing the ad pages in September to the Dow Jones Industrial Average in July of the same year. I picked July so that I would have a data point for 2011 (although the month isn’t over so it’s even sketchier!). A fancier graph would include more Dow data points in a year, but this is good enough for my little amusement. And I actually have 20 years of September Vogue issues, but I’m not up for counting all ad pages of the issues I don’t have data for! Anyway, there’s a good correlation when you put the DOW and page count numbers onto the same scale.

A while ago I realized that if I wanted to see a space shuttle take off in person I had better do some planning. I kept an eye on the mission dates which never seemed to be convenient and thought about the NASA Tweetups which didn’t work because of the age restriction (I wanted to share the entire experience with my son). All of a sudden NASA was down to only two more shuttle missions and we had a school break coming up. I pushed through my pessimistic thinking that we’d never get flights or a place to stay, and my friend Clare and I managed to drag our sons, rather last minute, onto airplanes and into a lovely condo we found on Cocoa Beach. It seemed that everyone else was also there for the launch. We watched the preparations on NASA-TV and then ran onto the beach and saw the amazingly bright plume of STS-133 head up into the clouds, followed much later by the rumbling roar. It was lovely. The next day we went over to Kennedy Space Center, took the bus tour, and rode in the shuttle take-off simulator. We got up close to the crawler that transports the shuttles to the launchpad. It was crunching along the gravel road on its way back to the pad and the bus driver stopped so we could get a good look. I couldn’t believe the size of the Vehicle Assembly Building. Our tour guide pointed out an alligator and a bald eagle’s nest. Everything seemed bigger than life. Years from now I don’t know if my son will remember that he saw the space shuttle take off when he was six, but he can tell his friends he was there. And if all he remembers is that his obsessed mom dragged him all the way from one corner of the United States to another, that he got to shop at all the Harry Potter stores in the airport (I did deliberately neglect to point one out, sorry kiddo!), and that he and I got deplaned so I could get a full pat-down because someone in the TSA screwed up, well, that’s OK because we got to experience it all together. I’m pretty sure he’s going to remember the beach though. This is the best photo from the trip:

As Atlantis lands safely (please) today, I’ll be thinking of the lost Challenger and Columbia crews, especially David M. Brown who, to my knowledge, is the only astronaut who has come to see me play in a pit orchestra (he was dating a close friend of mine). And I’ll be wondering if our son will get to see the next manned U.S. spaceship take off.

For a different look at Alcatraz Island and its notorious federal prison, the official tour company for “The Rock” offers a nighttime experience. The night tour differs in several ways from the daytime tours, the most obvious being the potential for creepiness factor in the dusk to dark atmosphere. The amount of people on the island is limited to 400 so it is less crowded than the couple of thousand during the day. The hospital and psych ward are opened to visitors at night. And there’s the lovely, though sometimes foggy, view back to San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge. I’ve only been on the day tour and remember the wonderful birds and flowers that balanced out the stark tales of prison life. Some form of gardens have been on the island since the 1860s when it was a military prison. The plants that could survive on the dry, rocky land lasted past the closure of the prison in 1963. In 2003 a restoration effort began and there are now five garden areas that reflect the history of Alcatraz’s inhabitants.

SR 520 by WSDOT

The landscape around Highway 520 near our home has dramatically transformed as the Washington State Department of Transportation proceeds with several projects leading to the replacement of the bridge over Lake Washington. As trees come down and culverts are placed, a lot of dirt has been displaced and archeologists are actually on the scene here and over at Seattle’s Alaskan Viaduct project looking for artifacts. They don’t expect to find valuable relics, but the garbage of earlier generations serves as an informative record of history. The WSDOT has given $342,000 to the Burke Museum for space to store the collected objects which could shed light on the lives of workers in the logging and fishing industries which ruled the area before airplanes and then computers came along.

Is it possible to preserve a dress made out of 35 pounds of meat? Yes it is. When the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame decided to display Lady Gaga’s flank steak dress from the MTV Video Music Awards they contacted Burbank taxidermist Sergio Vigilato. He cleaned the dress, which had been kept frozen after the award show, and cured it, glued it to a mannequin to keep the shape, then dyed it to resemble its original color. The beef had come from Palermo Deli in Granada Hills, priced at $3.99 a pound. Vigilato’s preservation bill came to $6,000, including the meat shoes tied with butcher twine.

Nordstrom’s big Anniversary Sale is underway and the retailer has rolled out iPod Touch checkout devices to speed up (and encourage) purchases. Their system, spotted in the company’s hometown Seattle and Bellevue stores in April, appears to be similar to the one used in Apple Stores. The iPod Touch is backed by a Linea-Pro bar code reader and magnetic stripe swiper. Salespeople can also look up inventory without leaving the customer’s side. The Linea-Pro can print receipts via Bluetooth, but retailers may prefer to use the electronic receipt as an opportunity to get an email address into their customer database. I wonder if more theft will occur without that paper proof of purchase.

The picturesque scenery surrounding the Tour de France must help promote countryside tourism. The riders cycle past castles and quaint towns. What I love most are the old windmills. These elegant workhorses of the grain farms are each unique. Looking through the extremely comprehensive lists of windmills in Wikipedia, you realize that although Holland is the country most associated with windmills, they were an important fixture in most European countries. Even if you exclude the modern windpumps and turbines, the different rotation devices, sails, machinery, and construction materials make for a wide variety of windmill designs.

On Monterey Peninsula and in Big Sur, California, two historic lighthouses stand 25 miles apart. Both are open to visitors. The more accessible of the two, Point Pinos Lighthouse near Monterey, first shone in 1855 and claims the title “Oldest Continuously-Operating Lighthouse on the West Coast.” Its original whale oil lantern has been upgraded over the years and now a 1000 watt lightbulb is fronted by the prisms of a third order Fresnel lens.  Volunteers serve as lighthouse keepers and give tours. Point Sur Lighthouse sits on a large volcanic rock where it has guided ships since 1889. A spot on the 3 hour tour is required to gain access. As with many lighthouses operating nowadays, an aero-beacon (similar to the automatic lights used to warn aircraft away from towers) has taken the place of its first-order Fresnel lens (which is in the collection of the Museum of Monterey).

E.B. White “felt for animals a kinship he never felt for people,” which can easily be seen from his children’s books. “The Story of Charlotte’s Web” by Michael Sims looks at both how the book was a reflection of its author and what the tale means to readers. White was inspired by the spiders in his barn and also Archy the cockroach to create the heroic title character. And the overarching theme of the morality of killing pets for food clearly comes from his love of animals. Almost 60 years later, “Charlotte’s Web” still ranks as one of the most popular children’s books.