View Full Version : Let's see where this thread goes: amazing things you've seen
I think it's funny and interesting the way one thread produces posts that weave in and around the topic and sometimes the topic itself is debated. I really don't mind that, but I understand that others DO mind it. So be it.
So this thread is about amazing things you've seen. Today I could not get out of my head an amazing/silly thing I saw many years ago in a Chelsea antique shop in London: a bowl full of faux eyeballs. They were Victorian prosthetics. I loved them and to this day regret not buying one. I could not afford the entire bowl.
Over to you. Where will this thread go? If someone wants to debate the fact that my bowl full of Victorian eyeballs was not amazing, I will fight you! haha.
Well, this isn't amazing thing, but it's an amazing coincidence (see, I bet you didn't count on the thread taking a twist so suddenly!)
We were on vacation in Virginia Beach, playing miniature golf. I called out to my daughter, and the woman in front of me turned around and mentioned that that was her daughter's name, too! So not a big deal. However, we came to find out that the mom's name was the same as mine as well!
OK, that was a double coincidence.
But then a couple of holes later i happened to say to my daughter, "Go stand over by Grandma B____." The woman turned around with her eyes wide open and said, "Don't tell me your last name is B____! That's OUR name!! So we were playing miniature golf behind a woman and her daughter who had the exact same first and last name of me and my daughter.
I thought that was amazing.
Coincidences are more interesting than amazing "things" I think. Yours is very interesting!
Miss Cellane
4-3-14, 6:44am
Catherine, that *is* pretty amazing.
Yesterday, I took an elderly friend to the mall. There was a couple with a little boy who was about a year and a half old. He was just the happiest little thing, laughing and running around a little bit, but always obeying his parents when he was called back. He spotted a flower and laughed. He fell down and laughed. He jumped up and down just to be jumping up and down. Just the sheer joy he was having on an ordinary day running errands with his parents was heartening.
great topic... I JUST 2 seconds ago, copy & pasted this little 'interwebs' tid-bit that I am putting up in my office before coming over here & seeing this thread
https://scontent-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-frc3/t1.0-9/1609947_721378607884679_1984996289_n.jpg
Sometimes the simplest things like a child's laugh mentioned above is the most exquisite.
Some truly amazing things have come my way over my life that made me stop dead, cry in joy and I could not move:
* the song of a bird that flowed like a brook from a high note and down. I heard it a few times one morning while walking the dog and never since.
* seeing Monet's lilies at MOMA in NY
* a peony and magnolia in all their perfection
* cross-country skiing with DH just after an overnight snowfall that made the tall shrubs form a long sparkling bower in the bright sunlight.
* Metopera production of Iphigénie en Tauride a few years ago
Hiking to the tip top height of a mountain and looking out at all the beauty, taking a breath and looking down at my feet and seeing a tiny yellow flower. It seemed as if it was put there only for God and me.
I guess the strangest coincidence I ever saw was many years ago our son was surfing on the net, after we had gone to bed, and I guess he searched his name. He found a picture of a tombstone from the 1800's of a couple. Not only was the man's name my son's full name, the wife's name was my daughter's name! Exceedingly creepy. He printed the picture out and left it on the counter for us to find in the morning. Gave me the willies all day!
ToomuchStuff
4-3-14, 10:34am
If someone wants to debate the fact that my bowl full of Victorian eyeballs was not amazing, I will fight you! haha.
Only amazing if you like having all eyes on you; others would call that creepy.:laff:
Miss Cellane
4-3-14, 11:09am
And right now, the mud patch that is the front yard is pretty amazing. The 8 foot pile of snow that has been masquerading as the front yard for the past 5 months is gone. Just a little bit of ice around the edges.
Daffodils? Who needs 'em? I can see dirt!
By the way, I do think porcelain Victorian prosthetic eyeballs are really amazing... and what's more amazing is that they are now a decorative item.
The House on the Rock (https://www.google.com/search?q=The+House+on+the+Rock&rlz=1C1AVSX_enUS413US413&espv=210&es_sm=93&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=DZc9U_LzNq6GyQHRuoDgCA&ved=0CEEQsAQ&biw=1461&bih=917)
On Thanksgiving night 2011, I was in my upstairs hallway when I noticed a strawberry-colored fireball in the sky. As first I was concerned that it would crash into the house, but it seemed to be stationary. So I just stood there, gaping at it. It was a bit beyond the trees, maybe over the lake--it looked about the size of a beach ball. Then i scrambled to find binoculars or a camera, and found neither. While I was scrambling, it disappeared. A while later, it reappeared at the same spot, then it began to slowly move north, and out of sight. Later, I looked up Chinese lanterns, flares, and other likely candidates, but it didn't look or act like any of those. In my Googling, I came across a post on a local forum by another person who saw it from an area north of the lake:
"So it shrunk very small, then disappeared - thought it must have been a light on a plane.
Then, it reappeared -- and it was just again, hovering there, then it descended straight down, slowly. I could see the glow behind the trees."
I still have no idea what it is, but apparently it's a pretty common sight.
I posted this back when it happened, but I still think back on it with amazement. We have a mound of dirt near the house, covered with ivy. It's a huge ant hill. We usually never see them though.
One day I went out and noticed tons of ants everywhere on the sidewalk. Then I realized it was a battle. There were big ants and small ants, and they were having a fight to the death. I saw little ants dragging away the big ants. It went on for probably 1-2 hours. Then all that was left were dead bodies. The small ants appeared to be the victors. Then......the next day.........the big ants were back in bigger numbers and they were slaughtering the smaller ants. I was witnessing another world. It was sooooo amazing.
I've also seen the northern lights right here at home (or close by) about 5 times. Just amazing.
Also.....on our way home from my DD's basketball practice a number of years ago, we saw 3 lights close together in the sky. They just hovered for a while, then, they just totally disappeared. DD and I hadn't said anything to each other........but after it was gone, this little, scared voice from the back seat said "mom........" We have no idea what it was. Thought maybe a UFO and we took the back way home, hoping to find E.T.
The most amazing thing I've seen very recently was an incredible Coast Guard rescue crew "land" a helicopter on a postage-stamp-sized beach. By "land" I mean "touched down a wheel for a reference point, and then hovered in place, on the ground". While we loaded patient and paramedic and gear. The pilot had only a couple feet of clearance to some tree-like obstacles, and the site was on a slope, the ground surface loose grapefruit/basketball-sized rocks. The beach itself was at the base of a several hundred foot tall 60->90 degree cliff face, with the cliff made up of loose shale, with pieces falling off, with downdrafts sweeping down the cliff face.
It was a stunning display of skill.
Early in March there was a very, very old woman who would stop and stare at our house each time she walked by. People often stare as we are the foreigners in the neighborhood but this was unusual.
I decided the next time she went by that I would go out as if to water my plants and say, 'hi.' Instead, the next time she stopped by she rang the door bell!
It turns out she wanted a cutting of plum blossoms from the trees we have out front :) It took her itty, bitty, 90+yo self DAYS to work up the guts to ring my doorbell, hoping she would be understood even though she knew no English.
Most memorable would be my dd just born...looking at me. A crytallized moment. Mountain thunderstorms are pretty neat too.
Just thought of another. For a while my grandson (who lives with autism) was really into birdwatching. I bought him his own copy of the Willamette Valley bird identification book. It must have, oh, 300 pages or so. At the time he was maybe 7 or 8 years old.
The next weekend he had the book memorized. You could cover the name of the bird on each page and he could tell you what it was.
Amazing thing I read about in the book 1776. I can't get over this. I hope I retell it correctly.
At the start of the Revolution, the citizens of Boston knew they were in for battle with the British, but they had no ammunition. They didn't know what to do. So Henry Knox, a common bookseller in Boston, said, "Hey, what about all that ammo just sitting there at Fort Ticonderoga? Let's go and get the cannons and cannonballs that are up there."
It was winter, and cold and snowy, and he and a bunch of regular people (just imagine any bunch of city people like you/your DH and your friends) WALKED to Fort Ticonderoga and grabbed the cannons and cannonballs. On the way back, they figured they'd cross Lake Champlain (or was it Lake George?) to save time/miles (it was frozen over), and one of the cannonballs fell through the ice.
If that were me, I'd say, "whoops! Oh, well, one less cannonball." But no, they worked and worked to get that cannonball out of the lake!! And then walked back to Boston with all that heavy crap!!! Think about it... there was no I-90. There were no two-lane highways with diners and Marriotts along the way. There was wilderness, and mountains. And they managed to get tons and tons of stuff (literally) all the way from Ft. Ticonderoga to Boston. Wow.
I think that's totally amazing. When you think of people who resist walking to the store from the other end of the parking lot and where we actually came from, we are pathetic. Those early colonialists really, really were amazing.
Amazing thing I read about in the book 1776. I can't get over this. I hope I retell it correctly.
At the start of the Revolution, the citizens of Boston knew they were in for battle with the British, but they had no ammunition. They didn't know what to do. So Henry Knox, a common bookseller in Boston, said, "Hey, what about all that ammo just sitting there at Fort Ticonderoga? Let's go and get the cannons and cannonballs that are up there."
It was winter, and cold and snowy, and he and a bunch of regular people (just imagine any bunch of city people like you/your DH and your friends) WALKED to Fort Ticonderoga and grabbed the cannons and cannonballs. On the way back, they figured they'd cross Lake Champlain (or was it Lake George?) to save time/miles (it was frozen over), and one of the cannonballs fell through the ice.
If that were me, I'd say, "whoops! Oh, well, one less cannonball." But no, they worked and worked to get that cannonball out of the lake!! And then walked back to Boston with all that heavy crap!!! Think about it... there was no I-90. There were no two-lane highways with diners and Marriotts along the way. There was wilderness, and mountains. And they managed to get tons and tons of stuff (literally) all the way from Ft. Ticonderoga to Boston. Wow.
I think that's totally amazing. When you think of people who resist walking to the store from the other end of the parking lot and where we actually came from, we are pathetic. Those early colonialists really, really were amazing. Wow! Those tenacious soon-to-be-Americans :-)! Kind of reminds me of a scene fro Dr. Zivago (I think that was the movie) where the starving refugees where trudging across a frozen lake with nothing but bare reminents of their former lives.
This also brings me to an amazing sight I saw. I was in the Coast Guard on a patrol boat working the Muriel (Cuban) boat lift. While on patrol some 100 plus miles from Key West, we came upon a smallish motorboat (about 45 ft long) that was crammed with over 150 Haitians on board. It had broken down and been adrift for over 5 weeks with almost no food or water in the hot Caribbean sun. As we approached the boat this mass of starving, emaciated and near death people started to strip off their clothes en mass. We were like "WTF?" Then they all opened up little plastic bags that had their "Sunday Best" and began to put those on. These people, who had nothing, who had left their homeland in dire straights, only to find themselves in an even worse life and death situation (and many had died and were laying inside the boat which was actually being circled and followed by sharks) wanted so much to be presentable and respectful of us. I was very moved and touched by that small gesture in the face of the hardship they had suffered. Of course, after we brought them onboard, we took them to a larger CG ship and their fate was probably deportation.
Bae you're right about those CG helo pilots. Pretty amazing stuff they do. I was on a larger cutter that had a helo attached to it and watching the pilot try to land on deck in rough seas with waves crashing over everything was pretty amazing. Of course we salty sailors had an ongoing friendly rivalry with the "Airdales" (aviation) about who had it rougher - being on a ship or at a cushy land air station. The winner was always the helo crew stationed on a ship :-)!
Another amazing thing I saw was the northern lights while on a ship out on the middle of the Bearing Sea in winter while on watch at night. I have never experienced anything as haunting and beautiful as that in my life.
Spartana, I love your story about the Haitians. Thanks for sharing it. I'm getting teary-eyed thinking about it.
Teacher Terry
4-4-14, 7:35pm
I really am loving all the great stories! It brought back one for me. When my youngest son was 2 my Mom & I took my 3 boys on vacation and I bought everyone some new outfits. He also had bright red hair. So one day we are sightseeing & are hot & tired so sit on a bench to rest. My youngest is on my right side where my Mom can't see him. She starts to tell me that he is getting too far away but I am ignoring her because I know where he is. Finally she gets pretty excited & raises her voice & I look and all the hair on my arm stands up. There is another little boy-looks like his twin wearing the same outfit. She thinks it is my son & then gets shaken up when realizes it is not. When the parents came along they also were shocked-neither of these kids were adopted & they had the same birthdate. Years later we wished that we would have exchanged addresses so we could have kept in touch to see if they looked alike as they grew up.
I couple of years ago I visited Death Valley for my first time. My first evening there I drove out far from my campsite to what I think is called "badwater basin" to take photos of the sunset. It's a very large flat expanse that is covered with salt crystals with snow capped peaks in the far distance. The salt crystals are white and form polygons of different shapes and are a couple or few feet across. As the sunset, the white salt shapes reflected the changing colors of the sky as it went from a light blue to pastel pinks to crimson, so that both the sky and land took on the same color. At that time I felt very small and like I was standing on an alien landscape.
Blackdog Lin
4-4-14, 10:47pm
So two things came to mind right away as I'm enjoying all the stories.
(1) Circa 1972, in my small-town-Kansas upbringing I'm probably one of only 5 people in town to visit Disneyland (pre-Disneyworld, Disneyland was all there was). And I got to go there every summer spending summers with my Daddy in Los Angeles. And one trip/summer I'm waiting in line for the monorail (remember A,B and E!!! tickets?) and hear someone hollering my name, and I'll be darned, it's a classmate/casual friend from my hometown calling down to me from the monorail. I waited, he got off the ride, and we spend a few minutes marveling over the odds of running into someone we knew at Disneyland!
And (2) night before last, I went out on the front porch to have a cig, and it'd been warm - very warm and even muggy, and then there was a cool breeze, and then it got cooler, it felt wonderful, and I could see the storm front out to the west, and the lightning was flashing and it turned into an awesome light show and the breezes felt awesomely cool on my face and I thought well, it just doesn't get any better than this. I got rushes (remember rushes, you druggies? :) This was rushes from real life.) Remember this particular moment, Lin, I told myself, because life just won't always reward you like it's doing just right now.....
A couple of friends and I were on a road trip to go lake camping in Nebraska many years ago. The weather was unsettled, and we had stopped at a gas station in eastern CO and were looking out at the thunderstorms to the west. As we stood there, a tornado just dropped out of the cloud right then and there. I had been through a few tornado warnings and even gone into the basement a few times but never actually seen a real tornado in person. This one was far enough away that I wasn't too worried, but it was definitely amazing to see.
Just about every day that the high mountains aren't shrouded in clouds, I see Long's Peak and it's still amazing, every time. Supposed to be clear tomorrow! :D
My (adult) baby girl giving birth to her own baby girl. What an amazing thing that was to see, and that I was able to share such a beautiful experience with my daughter and new granddaughter. :)
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