Stickers...you need Shedhead stickers to compete with The Rabbit Hole's shameless marketing approach. It would receive a place of honor on my laptop lid...
Hey Tommy, sorry to weigh in so late in the game. I agree that Shedhead is the best choice and a damn good brand. Problem is that I now have a serous identity crisis on my hands. See, I've been a Shedhead for decades. I was born in Santa Fe and still count it as my home, even from my current address here in the People's Republic of Portland, (I always hesitate to say "Santa Fe native" for obvious reasons.)
We Northern New Mexicans - my grandfather homesteaded in the NM Territory, so we go back aways - are mighty picky about our chile, mostly preferring Hatch, the real stuff grown in Hatch, NM not the counterfeit stuff snuck across the border from Texas and relabeled. And for my dineros, the best restaurant in Santa Fe for authentic Northern New Mexico cuisine is El Shed, on East Palace ave. We aficionados of the joint are, as you will have guessed by now, Shed Heads. I have a mighty fine T-shirt too. And I order my chile, Shed Red, by FedEx whenever I'm out.
Interesting historical fact: Today's Shed Restaurant in located inside a quiet courtyard, at 113 1/2 East Palace Ave, just a few steps from another quiet, sunny courtyard that contains the door to 109 East Palace Avenue. It was to this door that every scientist recruited to the Manhattan Project was instructed to report, in great secrecy, and knowing little or nothing about what they would be asked to do, or where, or for how long. Los Alamos had long been the location of a private boys school, situated high above San Ildefonso Pueblo, on an almost inaccessible mesa north of Santa Fe. Oppenheimer had gone there often to ride horses and camp in the high mesa country and thought it would be an ideal location to build the bomb. The physicists, mathematicians, and chemists, and their wives, and the soldiers who would guard them all were taken from 109 E. Palace Ave up the arduous switchbacked dirt track to Los Alamos, there to unleash the power of the atom.
I don't imagine that many tourists dining out at The Shed today know how close they are to that consequential piece of American history, to the literal doorway to the Atomic Age, to the beginning of the Age of Nuclear Anxiety.
I was born just after the war. My dad was a returned POW, a "survivor" of the Bataan Death march and almost four years in a succession of brutal Japanese prison camps. There was still much mystery surrounding Los Alamos in those days, a byproduct no doubt of the postwar Red Scare. The joke about the place in those days was that it was a top secret Navy base.
There's another story set at Los Alamos, aching to be told, and I hope to tell it some day soon, while I still can. It's the story of a couple of dozen Mexican land grant farmers working their land on the mesa who were driven from their homes by the army to make way for the Manhattan Project. Forced off their land utterly without compensation, their livestock slaughtered in place, their houses bulldozed. As a New Mexico boy, for me it's a story that ranks right up there with Wounded Knee as one of the most shameful episodes among so many shameful episodes in American History.
Which of course means that you can't talk about it in a Florida classroom.
Anyway, I've got my Shed Red, and I've got my t-shirt, and now I'm a Shedhead squared. When do I get my new t-shirt?
Jack--I was not expecting my goofy Shedhead post to spawn a story on the Manhattan Project. Thank you so much for this. And thanks for the heads-up on El Shed! I'll be figuring out T-shirts and such soon.
Stickers...you need Shedhead stickers to compete with The Rabbit Hole's shameless marketing approach. It would receive a place of honor on my laptop lid...
This is definitely going to happen.
Now I want a writing shed, and I could even build one. Problem is, I have a fenced-in backyard, so when we move, I would have to leave it behind.
If you want a real writing shed, let me know and I'll help you build yours. We could knock it out in a week.
This is extremely tempting! We have a fenced-in backyard, too. We're trying to figure out what to do next. I'll let you know.
I would definitely buy a Shedhead T-shirt.
I'm endeavoring to figure that out as we speak.
Charlotte Readers Podcast has an interview with Craig Johnson this week. Check it out - he’s as delightful as you can imagine.
I am absolutely blowing through those books. They're great.
With all this talk of Shedheads and Deadheads, we're going to need a few more Subheads to keep it all straight.
Spoken like a true copy editor.
Hey Tommy, sorry to weigh in so late in the game. I agree that Shedhead is the best choice and a damn good brand. Problem is that I now have a serous identity crisis on my hands. See, I've been a Shedhead for decades. I was born in Santa Fe and still count it as my home, even from my current address here in the People's Republic of Portland, (I always hesitate to say "Santa Fe native" for obvious reasons.)
We Northern New Mexicans - my grandfather homesteaded in the NM Territory, so we go back aways - are mighty picky about our chile, mostly preferring Hatch, the real stuff grown in Hatch, NM not the counterfeit stuff snuck across the border from Texas and relabeled. And for my dineros, the best restaurant in Santa Fe for authentic Northern New Mexico cuisine is El Shed, on East Palace ave. We aficionados of the joint are, as you will have guessed by now, Shed Heads. I have a mighty fine T-shirt too. And I order my chile, Shed Red, by FedEx whenever I'm out.
Interesting historical fact: Today's Shed Restaurant in located inside a quiet courtyard, at 113 1/2 East Palace Ave, just a few steps from another quiet, sunny courtyard that contains the door to 109 East Palace Avenue. It was to this door that every scientist recruited to the Manhattan Project was instructed to report, in great secrecy, and knowing little or nothing about what they would be asked to do, or where, or for how long. Los Alamos had long been the location of a private boys school, situated high above San Ildefonso Pueblo, on an almost inaccessible mesa north of Santa Fe. Oppenheimer had gone there often to ride horses and camp in the high mesa country and thought it would be an ideal location to build the bomb. The physicists, mathematicians, and chemists, and their wives, and the soldiers who would guard them all were taken from 109 E. Palace Ave up the arduous switchbacked dirt track to Los Alamos, there to unleash the power of the atom.
I don't imagine that many tourists dining out at The Shed today know how close they are to that consequential piece of American history, to the literal doorway to the Atomic Age, to the beginning of the Age of Nuclear Anxiety.
I was born just after the war. My dad was a returned POW, a "survivor" of the Bataan Death march and almost four years in a succession of brutal Japanese prison camps. There was still much mystery surrounding Los Alamos in those days, a byproduct no doubt of the postwar Red Scare. The joke about the place in those days was that it was a top secret Navy base.
There's another story set at Los Alamos, aching to be told, and I hope to tell it some day soon, while I still can. It's the story of a couple of dozen Mexican land grant farmers working their land on the mesa who were driven from their homes by the army to make way for the Manhattan Project. Forced off their land utterly without compensation, their livestock slaughtered in place, their houses bulldozed. As a New Mexico boy, for me it's a story that ranks right up there with Wounded Knee as one of the most shameful episodes among so many shameful episodes in American History.
Which of course means that you can't talk about it in a Florida classroom.
Anyway, I've got my Shed Red, and I've got my t-shirt, and now I'm a Shedhead squared. When do I get my new t-shirt?
Jack--I was not expecting my goofy Shedhead post to spawn a story on the Manhattan Project. Thank you so much for this. And thanks for the heads-up on El Shed! I'll be figuring out T-shirts and such soon.