Something magical

[Vermilion]

I was sitting here thinking about something I saw 11 years ago that still makes me think - wow, cool. So I'm going to tell you about it and then I hope that you will tell me about magical things you've seen.

I was in Italy when I was 14, staying with an Italian family and they took me to go and see a local 'sight'. When we got there I just looked, trying to figure out how it had happened, the explanation was remarkably simple, but the effect was astounding.

The rock in that area is very soft and dark red. The bit I was looking at was about 100 square feet people with massively tall stalagmites of the same rock, each with a small rock perched right on the top of it.

Apparently these stalagmites were formed because the rain had worn away the rock, pounding down on it until it eroded away - all except for these isolated columns formed under the protection of the stone on the top, a stone made of tougher stuff than the columns themselves were.

It was one of the coolest things I've seen, probably only beaten, in no particular order, by aeroplane flights, the alps and the Grand Canyon. If I can find a photo I'll scan it in

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nb - this post also served as an interesting exercise in descriptive writing.

 

[Corylea]

My husband and I both adore dogs, and one day we decided to go to our first-ever dog show. We weren't especially interested in the conformation contests, we just knew there would be LOTS OF DOGS there!

Well, we'd seen most of the major dog breeds before -- everybody knows what a Labrador Retriever looks like or a Beagle or a German Shepherd. What we hadn't seen before was twenty or thirty of the same breed of dog crammed into a smallish ring. It made perfectly ordinary dogs look surreal, as if they'd been popped out of some science fictional replicator or or painted by Dali or something. One Great Dane is a nice dog; twenty Great Danes in a small space is hilarious and seems not quite real. The seasoned dog show people had no idea why we were falling all over each other laughing.

You know how if you say a word once, it sounds normal, but if you say that word twenty times in a row, it seems like maybe you aren't pronouncing it right? Well, twenty of the same breed of dog in a small space has a somewhat similar effect.

In spite of the humor value, the place was wall-to-wall dogs, and they were all happy, healthy well cared-for dogs. Heaven!