This is a statue memorializing the U.S. Army’s Green Berets and other Special Forces soldiers who gallantly brought the fight to the Taliban in Afghanistan in the early days after September 11th. During their action they spent time riding into combat on horseback along side their Afghan allies.   The statue, by artist Douwe Blumberg, is 1 1/2 times life size and is a detailed version of a combat ready soldier on horseback. Incorporated in the base of the statue is a piece of steel from the World Trade Center. Liberty Park is elevated above the street level just to the south of the September 11th Memorial and Museum.

“A Christmas Carol” starring George C Scott as Scrooge was filmed on location in Shrewsbury and broadcast on CBS in the United States and released in theaters in the UK in December 1984.  An original gravestone, the details long weathered away, was used for the fictional memorial to Ebenezer Scrooge. It still lies just beyond the towering Yew Tree,  in the graveyard beside St Chad’s Church. 

In a town known for basketball and as the birthplace of James Dean, perhaps the best-kept secret is the Quilters Hall of Fame. The inspiration for the Hall of Fame was the woman who owned the house, Marie Webster. Marie was born in nearby Wabash, Indiana, in 1859 and died in Princeton, New Jersey, in 1956. During her most productive quilting years, from 1911 to 1921, her quilt patterns were published in Ladies’ Home Journal, which was the leading women’s magazine at the time. She ran a successful mail-order pattern business, designed new patterns, wrote Quilts: Their Story and How to Make Them, lectured, and judged quilting competitions. She was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1991. Quilts made by hand can take dozens or even hundreds of hours to complete, depending on their size. A basic guideline for designing a quilt is to follow the “Rule of 7.” This calls for using seven different fabrics when designing a quilt. These can range from larger-scale theme prints and coordinating fabrics down to smaller-scale accents and anchors. The house holding the quilters’ collection is known as the Marie Webster House. It was built in 1902, and when completed, Marie and her husband, George, hosted a grand party to show off the house to Marion’s finest folks. The house furnishings featured a mix of two styles, Victorian and Arts and Crafts. The Arts and Crafts style is a simpler design style featuring natural materials, functional art, and handmade items. Marie lived in the house until 1942, after George had passed away in 1938. She moved to New Jersey, and the house was sold and converted into apartments. After years of abandonment and neglect, the house was refurbished and, in 1992, was listed on the Indiana Register of Historic Sites and Structures and the National Register of Historic Places. It is a beautifully furnished and well-appointed home that has clearly been treated with love and care. The Quilters Hall of Fame features four different collections each year. They are open Tuesday through Saturday from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. and are closed during the winter. Admission is $7 for general admission and $6 for seniors, while children under 12 accompanied by an adult are admitted free. There is ample parking behind the building in a marked parking lot.

Poste Thiers is the most famous red brick building in Nice.  This iconic Post Office is located at 21 Avenue Thiers. Poste Thiers was built in 1931 by government architect Guillaume Tronchet.  The construction used about 300,000 red bricks which were imported from Sarzana, Italy. The distinctive red brick masonry stands out in Nice because it is a sharp contrast to all the surrounding white Mediterranean stucco and stone facades. The building is designed in the Art Deco style with cubist stained-glass accents by glassmaker Jacques Gruber. The majestic clock tower is an example of Nice’s exceptional Art Deco heritage.  

If one should find themselves in the district of Finnieston, an up and coming, (if not trendy) area of Glasgow, they may come upon a rather unique and solitary street feature. Situated along Argyle Street, in front of a row of tenement flats, stands a rather impressive European Ash tree, ( Fraxinus exsilsior ). It’s not just its size that is outstanding, measuring just over 82 feet, (25 meters) , but it is the fact that this arbor specimen is the only tree in the vicinity. It is perhaps this particular piece of information that has warranted it being selected as an entry for the Woodland’s Trust “UK ’s Tree of the Year” for 2025. The Woodland Trust was founded in early part of the 1970’s and operates as a conservation charity. Each year a select few members are selected to form a list of trees located throughout the British Isles that illicit worthiness and esteem. This list is submitted to the general public to vote on as the UK’s “Tree of the Year”. This campaign is one of the way this organization engages with the public, a fun way to get individuals interested in flora and fauna. The Argyle Ash won this prestiges honor in 2025 and now has been chosen to represent Britain as a contender for Europe’s “Tree of the Year” 2026.  Unfortunately, the Ash did not win, it came in 12th place. The origin story of this particular Ash tree reads like something from a Brothers Grimm faerie tale. Sometime in the mid-1800’s , a young family returned from a trip abroad. They brought back with them what they thought were primrose roots. Unbeknownst to them, a stowaway was hidden among the cuttings. Due to the height of the adjacent tenement building and its positioning, this allowed for ideal conditions for this “hitchhiker” to grow and prosper. This row of flats provided not only warmth but shelter from high winds. It is for this reasin that this magnificent sapling survived adverse weather conditions, it has also managed to escape an infestation of the dreaded ash dieback fungus. In addition, it survived German bombings from World War II, not to mention redevelopments. In 1980, the city government provided the Ash with a protective order, the first tree to be given such a distinction. On a side note, there is a related matter involving a cat and the locale fire brigade. It would take two full days before this unfortunate feline could finally be rescued.

Hidden beneath the Sierra Nevada foothills of California, Moaning Caverns is an enormous limestone cave with a history as unusual as its name. The cavern’s main chamber is so vast that the Statue of Liberty could reportedly fit inside it. One of its most striking features is a 165-foot steel spiral staircase that winds dramatically down into the cavern. Built in 1922 using steel salvaged from a World War I battleship, the staircase provides access to depths that early visitors could only reach by rope. The cave’s name comes from a mysterious moaning sound once heard inside, created by air moving through the cavern’s passages. Today, visitors can descend the staircase or, for a much more adventurous experience, rappel deep into the cave. Moaning Caverns combines geology, history, and a distinctly eerie atmosphere that makes it one of California’s more unusual underground destinations.