Some areas remain off limits (for example two small pieces of land close to Ypres and Woëvre) where 99% of all plants still die, as arsenic can constitute up to 17% of some soil samples
“Where were we going to in France?”
“A little place call Ypres.”
And then the murders began.
According to the Sécurité Civile agency in charge, at the current rate no fewer than 700 more years will be needed to clean the area completely
Daaaaaaaaaamn.
I’ve seen a few things about the red zone before, it’s pretty fascinating.
The families that originate from the abandoned villages still elect mayors.
This New York Times piece about the US in France during WW1 is about the area right outside of Verdun, though it doesn’t look like they use the words Red Zone/Zone Rouge.
France lost more than simply a generation of men; in some areas, every
last village was destroyed. Many were never rebuilt, though they’re
still listed on French maps and still appoint mayors.
It me.
Oh, and read the replies. Other interesting things.
I have so many books I need to get rid of.
I’m accumulating new books faster than I can re-read the old ones, so maybe it’s time to pass along the old ones.
Huh, Jason Alexander wrote a children’s book some years ago:
It’s ok, but would have probably been better if he’d written it in character as George Costanza. Or Colonel Sanders.
By coincidence, I was about to post the following.
Backstory: About a month ago some family members and I were at a resort hotel in the Cypress Hills, Saskatchewan. As in many hotels, there was a shelf of books in the lobby that guests had left for others to read. My sister handed me a book and said it looked interesting.
As it happened, my wife had read it, but what caught my eye was the “Take Me Home” sticker on the cover.
On the first page there was another sticker directing the reader to www.bookcrossing.com.
This turns out to be a site for people who want to leave books in random places, and track the journeys of those books. To start, you register the book on the website, and are given a BCID (Bookcrossing ID) number that you write on the sticker (available to download). You start a thread saying where you left the book, why you chose it, etc. Finders can comment on where they found it, how they liked the book itself, and where they left it to be discovered. (You can also hand the book directly to anyone interested in reading it and passing it on.)
Everyone I’ve described this to has been captivated by the message-in-a-bottle idea.
(The book, by the way, is pretty good if you like swashbuckling tales of Yiddish-speaking 15th century pirates, full of puns, wordplay, and cornball jokes. Which I do.)
Now to find a place to release it back into the wild.
Very cool.
I wish I had known of that before my trip, I’d have released a few books.
Especially since 3-4 blocks from where I was staying, there was a place along the sidewalk and for 20 feet there were bookshelves bolted to the building just filled with books.
Reminds me up a more educated version of https://www.wheresgeorge.com/
Oh wow, book crossings is still going? Very very cool. I heard about them years ago – like years and years. From a book at a laundromat, which is a very good place to swap books.
I used to drop at airports, back when unaccompanied paperback books weren’t cause for alarm.
Nice to hear they’re well established. The whole idea was new to me. I like the laundromat suggestion.
I’ve read hilarious stories of people trying to discreetly release books, only to have people run after them and try to return the book they “forgot”. Then they get suspicious when it’s explained the book is free to the next reader.
Sometimes book releasers discover their books were thrown in the trash, which is less fun. And as @Wisconsin_Platt pointed out, airports and train stations are pretty much out now, whereas before they were great places for leaving books.
I assumed that a certain percentage would just vanish, like messages in bottles thrown on the tide. If releasers discovered the fate of their books, does that mean someone else found them in the trash and passed them on?
Airports and train stations may be out, but airplanes and trains might still work, although the likeliest finders would be cleaning staff who might not have the time or patience to set the book aside for later.
I will definitely give this idea a try.
A few years ago I went to Vermont and they had what I think were Little Free Library hutches along the sidewalk. They also had random flowerpots and dog food/water dishes just sitting out on the sidewalk. One place there even has an unattended pie shed full of pies with an honor-system money box.
The Little Free Libraries are all over New England. I’ve seen a few in Georgia, but not many anywhere else.
I need to drop a steamer crate full of my old books somewhere and stick a sign on it saying “FREE – TAKE WHAT YOU WANT”. A Little Free Library won’t cut it for the kind of quantity I have.
