photographed in Mesa Verde National Park, Colorado on July 22, 2007

Township 35 N., R. 16 W.—This township has a large amount of fine agricultural lands to be irrigated. The grass is most luxuriant. The creeks flow only a short time each year. There is a range of sandstone cliffs about 1,000 feet above the creek, extending from section 32 to sections 24 and 25; this portion being included in the Mesa Verde national park. Aztec ruins are numerous. Valley lands, valued from $20 to $30; side hill lands from $5 to $6 per acre. Distance from railroad, ten miles. Annual rainfall, 10 to 15 inches. Elevation, 6,000 feet.

Township 38 N., R. 17 W.—The northwestern and southern portions of this township are mountainous, cut up by deep, rough sandstone canyons, the bluffs of which are covered with a dense growth of cedar and pinon. The rest is good grazing land with heavy sagebrush and good grass. In Section 35 there is a fine spring, near which there are extensive Aztec ruins. Value, $5 per acre. Annual rainfall, 10 to 15 inches. Elevation, 6,500 feet. Distance from railroad, ten miles.

photographed in Brooklyn, New York on July 2, 2010

Riding a bike is, of course, not always bound up with the tensions of police cruisers and undercover surveillance choppers. Millions of people in the United States love to ride bicycles and they do so for exercise and leisure, to visit friends and run the occasional errand, to attend college classes and compete in sporting events, to go camping in the country, and to explore city alleyways in the middle of the night. Bicycling is one of the most popular recreational activities in the United States and becoming a more attractive mode of urban transportation due in part to longer traffic delays, wildly fluctuating oil and gas prices, and the increasing costs of owning and operating a car. Indeed the number of utilitarian, or utility, cyclists who use bicycles for some form of daily transportation or commuting is increasing sharply. New York City and Chicago saw 77 percent and 80 percent increases in bicycle use between 2000 and 2006, while Portland, Oregon, a city boasting one of the highest rates of cyclists in the country as well as a vast cycling infrastructure and a vivid culture of bike devotees, witnessed a 144 percent increase in bicycle use between 2000 and 2008. Amid surging gas prices and warm weather, cyclists came out in droves during the spring and summer of 2008, hitting the streets from Philadelphia to Los Angeles and in most cities in between. New York City bike shops at one point had difficulty keeping new bikes in stock, while San Francisco bicyclists occasionally outnumbered automobile drivers on a few busy corridors.

Despite these positive trends, the stark reality is that only 1 percent of the total U.S. Population rides a bicycle for transportation and barely half as many use bikes to commute to work. If these figures seem extraordinarily low, its is because they are.

Excerpted from One Less Car: Bicycling and the Politics of Automobility by Zack Furness. Published by Temple University Press, Philadelphia, 2010.

photographed at Ground Zero, New York on July 3, 2010

Cain and Abel came upon each other after Abel’s death. They were walking through the desert, and they recognized each other from afar, since both men were very tall. The two brothers sat on the ground, made a fire, and ate. They sat silently, as weary people do when dusk begins to fall. In the sky, a star glimmered, though it had not yet been given a name. In the light of the fire, Cain saw that Abel’s forehead bore the mark of the stone, and he dropped the bread he was about to carry to his mouth and asked his brother to forgive him.

“Was it you that killed me, or did I kill you?” Abel answered. “I don’t remember anymore; here we are, together, like before.”

“Now I know that you have truly forgiven me,” Cain said, “because forgetting is forgiving. I too, will try to forget.

“Yes,” said Abel slowly. “So long as remorse lasts, guilt lasts.”

From ‘Legend’ by Jorge Luis Borges, appearing in Brodie’s Report, as translated by Andrew Hurley. Published by Penguin Putnam Inc., New York, 1998.

photographed near Morgantown, West Virginia on October 12, 2006

The pioneer salt manufacturers of West Virginia were the Ruffner brothers, who were enjoined by their German father, Joseph Ruffner, to carry out his plans for building extensive saltworks. The latter had bought nine hundred acres from a point on the Elk River to the Kanawha, embracing the present site of Charleston. After a long struggle, David and Tobias Ruffner bored the first salt-well, in 1808, and erected a large furnace for the manufacture of salt in the Kanawha region. David Ruffner was also the pioneer in the use of coal for fuel, as he has been in boring the well.

When considering Germany activity in the production of food products in the United States, the small producer should not be forgotten. The Germans have furnished the butchers and bakers in almost every large city of the United States, and that not alone within the German Belt. We need not single out large cities, for the same phenomenon can be observed in innumerable smaller towns. Germans have been uniformly successful as small tradres, whether butchers, bakers, grocers, or truck-farmers. in some places where the German element is large, such as Milwaukee or New York, the art of sausage-making has advanced to a degree comparable to that of Germany, both as to variety and quality. The demand for the product aries not only from the German, but also from the native population. The sausage-stalls at the open markets of large cities are as crowded as bargain-counters. But not alone those much-abused dishes, frankfurters and sauerkraut, have made their way into the menus of American homes and hotels, since also the rarer, spicy articles of the “Delikatessenhandlugen” have found ready entrance.

Excerpted from The German Element in the United States, with Special Reference to its Political, Moral, Social and Educational Influence, volume II, by Albert Bernhardt Faust. Published by Houghton Mifflin, New York, 1909.

photographed around Wall Street, Manhattan, New York on July 3, 2010

“What do my eyeballs see? Ah—the blue sky. Long-fellow!” He swayed and blinked. He rubbed his eyes. “Together with windows—have you ever dug windows? Now let’s talk about windows. I have seen some really crazy windows that made faces at me, and some of them had shades drawn and so they winked.” Out of his seabag he fished a copy of Eugene Sue’s Mysteries of Paris and, adjusting the front of his T-shirt, began reading on the street corner with a pedantic air. “Now really, Sal, let’s dig everything as we go along …” He forgot about that in an instant and looked around blankly. I was glad I had come, he needed me now.

“Why did Camille throw you out? What are you going to do?”

“Eh?” he said. “Eh? Eh?” We racked our brains for where to go and what to do. I realized it was up to me. Poor, poor Dean—the devil himself had never fallen further; in idiocy, with infected thumb, surrounded by battered suitcases of his motherless feverish life across America and back numberless times, an undone bird. “Let’s walk to New York,” he said, “and as we do so let’s take stock of everything along the way—yass.” I took out my money and counted it; I showed it to him.

“I have here,” I said, “the sum of eighty-three dollars and change, and if you come with me let’s go to New York—and after that let’s go to Italy.”

Excerpted from On the Road by Jack Kerouac. Published by Penguin Books, New York, 2003.

photographed in Chicago, Illinois on June 18, 2010

Another surprise to Chicago was a flood. That the Chicago River, or either of its branches, should get up a current sufficient to cause any alarm to the citizens was a surprise to the people then as it would be to-day. It was never expected, but it came one morning in March, 1849. There had been two or three days’ heavy rain following the heavy snowstorms, and one morning the citizens were aroused from their slumbers by reports that the ice in the Desplaines River had broken up and dammed up the waters so as to turn them into Mud Lake, and from this thence into the South Branch. This pressure of water broke up the ice in the South Branch, and floating down it became gorged in the main channel. Shipping in the river was in great peril. Then came the flood. The breaking up of the ice was like the booming of artillery, the waters came sweeping down with the power of a mountain torrent, vessels broke from their moorings and went with the flood, and a number were precipitated against Randolph street bridge with such force as to carry it away and send it down the river. On went the great mass of ice and vessels against the iron bridge at Clark street, and that too was carried down stream. All Chicago attended this wild scene, and such excitement had not been since the city began its eventful career.

Excerpted from Chicago’s First Half Century, 1833-1883. Published by The Inter-Ocean Publishing Company, Chicago, 1883.

photographed in Brooklyn, New York on June 5, 2010

New York is threaded with waterways. Most are dirty, but they are still full of crab, lobster and sturgeon, goldfish and striped bass, bluefish and white perch and even pompano. Ignoring the unprepossessing look (and smell) of the city’s rivers and ponds, New Yorkers are fishing all over the place: They cast from the bulkheads into the East River; they dot the jetties at the Rockaways; they trap blue crabs in the Hackensack Meadowlands (just ten minutes from Times Square). Correctly dressed flycasters quietly pursue huge brown trout in Kensico Reservoir. Warm-water anglers fish the New York and Croton reservoirs. Water and fish everywhere. And the season is starting afresh.

This month, as the waters warm, fish begin to stir, either out of the harbor muds to feed, or inshore to spawn. Winter flounder fishing traditionally begins on St. Patrick’s Day. Jamaica Bay is a good spot, from the Carnasie Pier or from the bridges that cross the bay, or from rented rowboats. Winter flounder are crowd pleasers—easy to catch and not terribly choosy about how they are approached.

Excerpted from ‘The Fish Around Us’ by D.W. Bennett. Appearing in New York magazine, April 10, 1978.

photographed in Weirs Beach, New Hampshire on May 30, 2010

After nearly 20 years and millions of quarters, someone has attained the unthinkable: a perfect score on Pac-Man.

The world record was set by 33-year-old Billy Mitchell of Hollywood, Florida, during a US-Canada clash over the Fourth of July weekend. Mitchell took more than six hours to complete the game at the Funspot Family Fun Center in Weirs Beach, New Hampshire.

To achieve the game’s maximum score of 3,333,360 points, Mitchell navigated 256 boards (or screens), eating every single dot, blinking energizer blob, flashing blue ghost, and point-loaded fruit, without losing a single life.

“It was tremendously monotonous,” said Mitchell, a father of three and president of Rickey’s World Famous Sauces, a manufacturer of Louisiana hot sauces.

Excerpted from ‘Gobbling Up a Pac-Man Record‘ by Leander Kahney. Published in Wired on July 8, 1999.