Author: mrobscurity

Okehampton, U.K. | Weird Weather Phenomena

Barometer World is the world’s foremost seller and repairer of antique and modern mechanisms for determining atmospheric air pressure.

A showroom-cum-museum attached to the store features examples of such arcane and wonderful instruments as the “Tempest Prognosticator.” Also known as the “Leech Barometer” or the “Atmospheric Electromagnetic Telegraph,” the prognosticator was a 19th-century weather forecasting device that was first exhibited at the Great Exhibition in London in 1851.

A contemporary account of the invention described it as an “elaborate and highly ornate apparatus… evolved by a certain Dr. Merryweather (no epigram intended) who had observed that during the period before the onset of a severe storm, fresh water leaches tended to become particularly agitated. The learned Doctor decided to harness the physical energy of these surprisingly hysterical aquatic bloodsuckers to operate an early warning system. On the circular base of his apparatus he installed glass jars, in each of which a leech was imprisoned and attached to a fine chain that led up to a miniature belfry–from whence the tinkling tocsin would be sounded on the approach of a tempest.”

The more bells that rang, the greater the likelihood of an impending
storm. A full-scale working model resides in the Barometer World
Museum. Another can be found in the Whitby Museum in North Yorkshire.

Bozhou, China | Pharmacy Museums

Located at the juncture of two important railway lines in the northwestern corner of Anhui province, the dusty and rusty city of Bozhou is the capital of the Chinese medicinal herb industry.

The backwater city of approximately 3 million people (which was also home to Hua Mulan, the Disney heroine) is centered around a massive 85-acre market, where some 6,000 traders come from every corner of southeast Asia to ply the ingredients of traditional Chinese medicine. At the heart of the market is a multi-level structure holding seemingly endless aisles of vendors hawking curious, and aromatic, and sometimes downright stomach-churning remedies.

Here you can find barrels of dried human placentas (for fainting sickness), dried three-inch stag beetles (for increased metabolism), dried flying lizards (also for metabolism), cockroaches (a topical anesthetic), pearls (for influenza), pencil-sized millipedes bundled up and bound together in clumps (for a host of sicknesses), snakes (for arthritis), and a dozen different kinds of ants (for pretty much whatever ails you). Around every corner, there are hemp sacks overflowing with scorpions, seahorses, turtle shells, antlers, and every kind of root and flower imaginable.

Though the Bozhou herb market feels timeless—and there has indeed been an herbal market on the site for centuries—the market has recently undergone a boom as westerners have increasingly adopted elements of traditional Chinese medicine. Today, the downtown is ringed with pharmaceutical factories, and hotels for visiting traders.

Staten Island, New York | Outsider Art

In 1996, the Staten Island Advocate ran a front-page photograph of an odd assortment of stone cairns that had recently appeared on a beach in Mount Loretto State Park. The newspaper asked in its headline if the piles of rocks were a “Sophomoric Prank or Cult Activity?”

In fact, they were neither. Spanning nearly a half mile of beachfront, the stone sculptures were the creation of Doug Schwartz, a zookeeper at the Staten Island Zoo, for whom this unusual outside–and outsider–art has been both a hobby and a passion for more than a decade.

Schwartz can be found working on the beach at least one day a week, making him something of a local celebrity. However, it is for another eccentric Staten Island tradition that he is best known. Schwartz is the keeper of Staten Island Chuck, a groundhog who serves as the fifth borough’s answer to Punxsutawney Phil. For most of the year Chuck lives in a a cage in Schwartz’s office at the Staten Island Zoo. He emerges every February 2nd on Groundhog Day to try to find his shadow.

There are now close to 200 rock towers overlooking Raritan Bay on the southern shore of Staten Island. Some are precariously poised, others are propped up with sticks, or buttressed with old beer cans. For Schwartz, the stone formations are simply a form of self-expression, and a relaxing way to spend a morning at the beach. He has built several benches out of stones and washed up lumber so that visitors can take a load off while they contemplate his slate and ochre garden.