Author: Stacy

Designed by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux and completed in the 1860s, Central Park was constructed to feel like a natural landscape. The area features waterfalls, tree, ponds, and rocks arranged to look like they had always been there.

One of the most woodland-like areas is the Ramble, more than 30 acres of trees, paths, and gardens, designed to take visitors completely out of the hustle and bustle of the city and into a nature wonderland. Olmsted deemed the Ramble “a wild garden,” though it was a carefully made one—nearly all of the area, minus the bedrock foundation, was fabricated by the famous landscape architect.

When they were excavating the area, however, workmen discovered at least one naturally occurring element that Olmsted and Vaux decided to work into their plans: a narrow little cave, apparently carved out in part by humans. Some speculated that Native Americans had once used the cranny for shelter, though no evidence was found to back the theory.

To help it blend into the landscape they had meticulously planned, large rocks were arranged around the cave to make it look as if they had naturally settled there. They also arranged flat stones into a staircase leading down into the hidden room. The man-made lake was altered to allow adventurous boaters to row right into the cave.

As you might imagine, the Tom Sawyer-esque hideout was a big hit with children. It was also a hit with adults—particularly couples who liked to steal away for some private time in the secluded cave.

But the cave also seemed to attract more nefarious activity. In 1904, a man attempted suicide (not the first to take place in the Ramble) on the stone steps—though some believed it was actually attempted murder. Whatever happened, it wasn’t the only negative press for the cave.

In 1922, artist Alexander MacArthur was sentenced to three months in a workhouse for “behaving improperly” inside the cave, and in 1929, about 335 men were arrested in Central Park for “annoying women”—and the Ramble Cave was one of the preferred spots to do so.

Apparently fed up with the complaints, park authorities had the cave sealed off sometime in the 1920s. Though it can no longer be entered, intrepid explorers can still discover the old stone steps that lead down to the cave—they’re located on the east side of the Ramble Stone Arch (pictured above).

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What would the Internet be without :), :P, and the ever-popular ¯\_(ツ)_/¯? If you’ve ever used a few keystrokes to express your mood, you have Carnegie Mellon University Computer Science Research Professor Scott E. Fahlman to thank.

As you’ve likely experienced, it can be hard to tell when someone is being sarcastic in print, which was as true in 1982 as it was now. On September 19, 1982, Fahlman was part of a message board discussion about the working status of a set of elevators, which quickly turned silly. The jokes were flying so fast and furious that some participants couldn’t tell if the elevators were actually working or not, and so the discussion turned to how to denote jokes. One person suggested placing an asterisk after remarks meant to be funny. Someone else preferred using the percent sign, which is when another user tried to combine the two:

“How about using * for good jokes and % for bad jokes? We could even use *% for jokes that are so bad, they’re funny.”

That was a no-go. The response:

“No, no, no! Surely everyone will agree that ‘&’ is the funniest character on the keyboard. It looks funny (like a jolly fat man in convulsions of laughter).”

Finally, Fahlman stepped in with the invention that would change the way we communicated online:

I propose that the following character sequence for joke markers:

🙂

Read it sideways. Actually, it is probably more economical to mark
things that are NOT jokes, given current trends. For this, use

🙁

Using textual devices to convey emotion had been suggested throughout history, possibly as early as 1865. But none of them took off the way Fahlman’s suggestion did.

Of course, it’s easier to express yourself these days—emojis have taken the place of the text-based emoticons for most people. Fahlman is not a fan.

“It’s interesting to note that Microsoft and AOL now intercept these character strings and turn them into little pictures,” he told Business Insider in 2015. “Personally, I think this destroys the whimsical element of the original.”

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As one of the founding fathers of science fiction, Herbert George Wells certainly had a lot to say about the human race. From mankind’s fondness for war to our place in the universe, Wells certainly didn’t shy away from sharing his opinions. In honor of what would have been his 150th birthday, here are a few of H.G. Wells’s greatest hits.

1. ON WAR

“If we don’t end war, war will end us.”

—From Things to Come (1936)

John F. Kennedy’s speechwriters later adapted the phrase for his 1961 address to the United Nations: “The weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us.”

2. ON GLOBALIZATION

“Our true nationality is mankind.”

—From The Outline of History (1920)

3. ON WRITING

“I write as straight as I can, just as I walk as straight as I can, because that is the best way to get there.”

—From Experiment in Autobiography (1934)

4. ON GOLF

“The uglier a man’s legs are, the better he plays at golf. It’s almost a law.”

—From Bealby: A Holiday (1915)

5. ON THE FUTURE

“We were making the future, and hardly any of us troubled to think what future we were making.”

—From When The Sleeper Wakes (1899)

6. ON EDUCATION

“Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.”

—From The Outline of History (1920)

7. ON REALITY

“The past is but the beginning of a beginning, and all that is and has been is but the twilight of the dawn.”

—From The Discovery of the Future (1902)

8. ON JEALOUSY

“Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo.”

—From The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman (1914)

9. ON HUMAN CHARACTER

“Man is an imperfect animal and never quite trustworthy in the dark.”

—From The Open Conspiracy: What Are We to Do With Our Lives? (1928)

10. ON CYNICISM

“Cynicism is humor in ill health.”

—From Boon, The Mind of the Race, The Wild Asses of the Devil, and The Last Trump (1915)

11. ON ART

“An artist who theorizes about his work is no longer artist but critic.”

—From The Temptation of Harringay (1895)

12. ON BICYCLES

“To ride a bicycle properly is very like a love affair; chiefly it is a matter of faith. Believe you do it, and the thing is done; doubt, and for the life of you, you cannot.”

—From The Wheels of Chance: A Bicycling Idyll (1896)

A more whimsical quote about bicycles is often attributed to Wells, but has never been proven: “Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race.”

Last summer, 90-year-old Norma Bauerschmidt was preparing to say goodbye to Leo, her husband of 67 years. The day after he was admitted to hospice, Norma was dealt another blow: Doctors had discovered a large, cancerous mass on her uterus. She barely had time to process the news when Leo passed away. Just two days after his death, Norma found herself at the doctor’s office, discussing how to treat her cancer. Her doctor recommended surgery to remove the mass, but was concerned that she may not survive the operation.

Norma decided the typical late-in-life path—surgeries, nursing homes, assisted living—wasn’t in the cards for her. Her son and daughter-in-law, Tim and Ramie, had made her an offer she couldn’t refuse: to join them on the road. The retired couple spent much of their time roaming the country in an Airstream trailer, but if Norma would join them in their nomadic lifestyle, they promised to upgrade to a 36-footer and see whatever sights she wanted to.

Norma didn’t have to think twice, and said no to the cancer treatment. “I’m 90-years-old,” she told her doctor. “I’m hitting the road.”

Less than two months later, she did. Their first trip was a little over a year ago, when they left Norma’s home in Presque Isle, Michigan, and headed west toward Mount Rushmore and Yellowstone. Tim wasn’t sure if she would make it to South Dakota. Twelve months later, Norma is not only surviving—she’s positively thriving.

“If you could have seen her when we left,” Tim told the Washington Times, explaining that her transformation has been utterly amazing. Not only is she doing better physically, going from 94 pounds to 110, but she’s also been transformed emotionally. “I’m open more now than I used to be,” Norma said.

Since last August, Norma has been to several National Parks, Roswell, the Kennedy Space Center, Walt Disney World, Niagara Falls, the French Quarter, and the Grand Canyon—and that’s just to name a few of the sights she’s seen.

She has served as an honorary Atlanta Hawks cheerleader, dipped her toes in the ocean, experienced her first pedicure, eaten her first oyster, and she shook a lot of hands at the National World War II Museum—Norma is a veteran herself, having served with the Women Accepting Volunteer Emergency Service unit in 1945.

But out of all of the amazing things Norma has experienced in the last year, one of the most memorable may have been the hot air balloon ride she took in January. She and her husband had always wanted to experience a ride together, and while he was in the hospital, Leo said he still hoped to be able to take her someday. After his death, as his family was cleaning out his papers, they found multiple newspaper clippings about balloon rides among his things.

As of Labor Day, the traveling trio was in the Pacific Northwest, where they have visited a lavender farm (one of Norma’s favorite flowers), watched Orca whales, and celebrated the one-year anniversary of the beginning of their journey. Wherever Miss Norma heads now, she’s likely to be one of the main attractions—since starting her journey last year, her Facebook page has gained more than 400,000 followers, and she’s been featured on the CBS Evening News, the ABC News, the Today Show, and the Huffington Post. What’s next for Norma, Tim, and Ramie? Possibly California for a peek at some redwoods. Follow along with her adventures on Facebook—you’ll be glad you did.

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Though the animated series and cult hit Gravity Falls wrapped in February after just two seasons, the show’s devoted following is more dedicated than ever. Thousands of people joined in creator Alex Hirsch’s Cipher Hunt over the summer, completing an international scavenger hunt that culminated in the discovery of a statue of the show’s supervillain. And those same fans made Journal 3, a real-life manifestation of a key book in the series, a New York Times bestseller in a matter of days.

We talked to Hirsch and Rob Renzetti, co-authors of Journal 3, about the book, the show, the scavenger hunt—and where they get all of their fabulously weird ideas.

Journal 3 is packed with hidden info and ciphers to unravel—so much, in fact, that there’s no way fans have found it all yet. Can you give a hint to something no one appears to have discovered?

Alex Hirsch: The internet never ceases to impress me. For all the talk about how the upcoming generation has a short attention span, the moment you give these kids a riddle they drop everything and suddenly work together in perfect harmony like a military-level SWAT team to crack the code. It’s incredible. That being said, sometimes fans are often so focused on code-cracking they miss what’s in plain sight—the actual text of the journal! There are connections in there that even the savviest fans still have yet to notice.

Journal 3 reveals new details about most of the major characters, like Ford’s Smash Mouth tattoo and the fact that Soos glues on his chin hair. How much of that existed as character development during the series, and how much backstory did you create just for the Journal?

Rob Renzetti: Alex could probably give you a more encyclopedic answer to this question. I think a lot of Stan’s backstory was something that he had in his back pocket during the whole run of the series. Other smaller things were definitely invented for the book. The chin hair bit was something I came up with as a throwaway joke that I thought said a lot about Soos. 

AH: I’ve had the backstories for many of these characters in my head for a long time. Especially Ford and Bill, and how Bill played to Ford’s ego and almost destroyed the world in the process. Of course we still improvise and invent new things along the way. That’s the fun of writing—finding chances to surprise yourself. Ford’s tattoo was a surprise to me, too—courtesy of our awesome illustrator Andy Gonsalves.

One of the fun things about the Journal is that we get to dive deeper into some of the episodes. For example, Ford chronicles a few of the other dimensions he experienced while he was in the portal. What inspired those? In particular, the “M” dimension stood out to me as something that must have a story behind it.

AH: While writing season two, we wanted to send our characters through the portal into the multiverse but never found a way to quite make it work with our storyline. There were tons of drawings and jokes we came up with during our brainstorms—including the annoyingly pointless M dimension. We loved the idea of someone as scientific and rational as Ford having to fight his way out of what was essentially a Sesame Street segment teaching you about the letter M. It would drive him insane.

RR: The M Dimension came out of an unused story where Mabel went through the Portal and the Pines needed to go search for her. We were brainstorming ideas for alternate dimensions and the M Dimension was the most delightfully silly thing we could imagine.

Much has been made over how much creative control you were able to retain even though Disney’s Standards and Practices is presumably pickier than most. Was there anything you really had to fight for? Did you lose any of those battles?

AH: One day I’d love to release a coffee table book of all the crazy notes I got from Disney Channel’s S&P and legal department. To give you a sense of what I was up against, one time I was told, “Make sure the target that Wendy throws a dart at doesn’t resemble the target from the store Target.” To which I had to reply: “The target isn’t the target from Target. The target is a target.”

Welcome to my hell.

Was anything vetoed from the Journal?

RR: I don’t remember any idea that we came up with being vetoed or changed. Disney Publishing is particularly awesome that way.

AH: Disney Publishing has been incredible. They didn’t give me a single note on this journal. They understood the tone of the show, believed in my vision, and more importantly, trusted the intelligence of our audience. Working with them has been a dream come true. I wish the gatekeepers in kids TV were as savvy and in tune with the audience as those in Publishing.

The Cipher Hunt was such a fun, interactive way to keep fans involved. Where did you get the idea?

AH: I spent 90 percent of my childhood playing SNES and N64, and my favorite games were the ones packed with secrets. I remember spending one summer being utterly obsessed with trying to get the legendary unreachable “Ice Key” from Banjo-Kazooie. What was so brilliant about that item was that it was literally impossible to get and just was there to torture players. Or so people thought. Until years later, someone discovered a code that let you find it. I remember thinking that if I ever had a chance, I wanted to create something that gave fans the same feeling. A last mystery after the game is over. Something so hard to find it reaches legendary status. Launching the hunt and watching the fans team up all over the world to find the clues was one of the most fun things I’ve ever done.

Do Mabel and Dipper’s names have any special significance?

AH: I imagine that [their] parents see themselves as slightly counter-culture and chose purposefully archaic names just so their kids would stand out among the 12 Chrises and 14 Jessicas in Dipper and Mabel’s preschool.

You’ve talked a lot about the real-life inspirations for many of the main characters, but I haven’t seen much about where McGucket came from. I thought it was interesting that Journal 3 showed that not only was he once a genius, he was actually the voice of reason before he got fed up with Ford.

RR: McGucket started as a throwaway joke character in “Gobblewonker” and just grew and grew in importance as the series went on. It just made sense to us that a character with such scientific and technological skill would be tied to the creation and the creator of the Portal.

AH: McGucket originally started out as just a wacky stereotypical hillbilly and a chance for me to scream into the microphone. (He was originally called Old Man McGuffin, which is a literary trope meaning something unimportant that sets a plot in motion.) But when our writers got deeper into the story we discovered that there was an exciting opportunity to connect him to our characters’ pasts and destinies. I’m very glad we did—giving Ford a friend humanizes him, as well as deepening the tragedy when they part ways.

What’s next for you both?

AH: Right now I’m developing a few different projects for a few different places, but it’s too early to comment on any of them. Like Grunkle Stan, I like to stay a man of mystery until the right moment to fleece rubes emerges once more.

RR: I’m serving as executive producer on a new show for Disney TV called Country Club created by the very talented Houghton brothers. It’s about a country family’s oversized adventures in the Big City.

Finally, a question from Lydia, my superfan 6-year-old: “Where do you come up with all of the weirdness?”

AH: I didn’t come up with the weirdness. I was born in it. Molded by it.

RR: There is an unlimited supply of weirdness in the weird world around you and inside your weird self. Lots of people try to ignore it and lots of people try to stamp it out. But the best people allow themselves the freedom to be weird. Be the best, weird person you can be.

If you grew up on The Never-Want-to-Go-to-Bedders Cure, The Thought-You-Saiders Cure, and The Slow-Eaters-Tiny-Bite-Takers Cure, then you’re going to need a Don’t-Speed-on-the-Way-to-the-Bookstore Cure, because the wonderful world of Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle is back. 

Ann M. Martin (The Baby-Sitters Club, Rain Reign) and Annie Parnell, great-granddaughter of Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle author Betty MacDonald, have joined forces for Missy Piggle-Wiggle and the Whatever Cure, a modern-day take on the series that has young Missy Piggle-Wiggle stepping into her great-aunt’s enchanted shoes to take charge of the Upside-Down House and its magical menagerie. 

We talked to Martin and Parnell about how they retooled the series for today’s kids, their collaboration process—and the Piggle-Wiggle spell they’d like to make a reality.

How did the idea to reboot Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle come about?
Ann M. Martin: I was an avid fan. I had the first four Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle books, which I can envision on the shelf in my bedroom. The stories made me laugh out loud. My favorite was “The Radish Cure,” in which a little girl who doesn’t like taking baths is allowed not to bathe for so long that her body becomes encased with soil, at which point her parents are instructed to plant radish seeds in the dirt one night. Several days later she finds herself covered with green sprouts, and begs for a bath. Problem solved. Brilliant. So when my editors told me that Annie Parnell was interested in bringing back the world of Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle and asked if I’d be interested in writing the books, of course I said yes.

Annie Parnell: The reboot of the series was a long time coming. Back, before I had kids, when I worked in the television industry, I spent a fair amount of my free time trying to crack a way into bringing Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle to the screen. It might seem easy, but when you really dig in and look at the books, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle simply isn’t in them that much. Which begs the question: How do you make a TV series or movie when the title character just isn’t there? It wasn’t until after I had kids of my own that I saw Betty’s stories from an entirely new perspective. It was then that I realized if I were to ever reimagine this world on the page or the screen, I wanted to spend a lot more time in the wonderful, sometimes magical, upside-down world of the Piggle-Wiggles.

You’ve succeeded in maintaining the tone and overall Piggle-Wiggle magic while still updating the series for today’s kids. Were you concerned about walking that line?
AM: I was more concerned about doing justice to the world that Betty MacDonald had created. Hers are big shoes to fill. But I had so much fun with that world and its magic that my stage fright faded as I worked on the first book. Annie Parnell had lots of ideas about updating the series and about the introduction of Missy Piggle-Wiggle, and she, [Feiwel & Friends publisher] Jean Feiwel, [Feiwel & Friends editor-in-chief] Liz Szabla, and I met and talked often about the direction the new series should take, so I felt well supported when I began writing.

How closely did you two work together?
AM: It was Annie’s idea to introduce Missy, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle’s great-niece, a younger and more contemporary character. Annie, Jean, Liz, and I met early on to talk about Missy and how she would fit into the world of Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle. The four of us spoke several more times by phone, and Annie read and commented on the outline for the book as well as each stage of the manuscript. She had fun ideas for cures and, as a mom, she also had valuable insight into the problems kids encounter today.

AP: Working with Ann was great. Creating the world and setting up the rules was a wholly collaborative process, with lots of back and forth, pitching ideas for cures and characters and storylines. But when it comes down to it, Ann did the heavy lifting here. She’s the one who sat down in front of the blank page day after day and wrote a book, and somehow managed to step into Betty’s shoes and run in them. She really did a spectacular job. This is not to say that I didn’t have some very strong opinions about how some of the stories played out, I absolutely did, but fortunately everyone involved in the project wanted the same thing: a book that is fun and funny, that holds true to the world that Betty created without feeling too old-fashioned, and I feel really confident that we did that.

Ann, you’ve talked before about how your characters are often inspired by people you know. Kristy and Mary Anne from The Baby-Sitters Club, for example, included characteristics from you and your best friend. Is Missy inspired by anyone?
AM: Being able to build on the world created by Betty MacDonald is great fun. Missy wasn’t inspired by anyone in particular, but the Piggle-Wiggle world is in my mind when I write. In fact, I keep copies of the books on my desk for inspiration.

Did Betty MacDonald leave anything for you to work with—storylines or characters cut from previous books?
AM: No, I didn’t have any unpublished work, but I did have that fabulous world—the upside-down house, Lester the polite pig, Penelope the parrot, and the other animals. And of course Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle’s particular way of dealing with children, which manages to be both practical and magical, not to mention hilarious.

Inventing the various Piggle-Wiggle cures and potions seems like it would be a blast. If you could invent your own Piggle-Wiggle style cure to use in real life, what would it be?
AM: If there were a way to magically vacuum the word “like” out of people’s mouths before they, like, use it, like, unnecessarily, that would be, like, great.

Are you able to say what’s next for Missy and her menagerie?
AM: In the second book, Missy cures whiney-whiners and smarty-pantsiness, as well as other habits, while continuing to make a life for herself in Little Spring Valley.

Ann, I have to ask—with all of the recent book revivals lately, is there any chance we’ll see the return of The Baby-Sitters Club? I’m sure many fans would love to check in with the BSC members as grownups.
AM: At the moment there are no plans for grownup versions of Kristy, Claudia, and the others. However, the original books will continue to be published in graphic novel form, thanks to Raina Telgemeier’s inspired imagining of the characters and world of Stoneybrook.

Missy Piggle-Wiggle and the Whatever Cure is available in bookstores, and online, now.