south end of the Argillite, KY train tunnel, photo from Wikipedia

So, not much to share this Thursday. I’ll spend most of the day on airplanes today until I land in Columbus, OH, jump in my mom’s van, and head south toward Kentucky.

I’ll be in the Ohio River Valley for the extended weekend with my family. The same “neck of the woods” that’s home to Mothman, the Serpent Mound,  the Tremper Mound effigy pipes, Moonville Tunnel, and, since we’re on trains anyway for Moonville, this recent incident mentioned on Loren Coleman’s “other blog”.

I generally try and avoid anything train related. I lost a favorite uncle to a train accident at a young age, and my father and grandfather are both retired railroaders (from the N&W/NS railway), dad maintenance of way and papa an engineer working those same coalfield runs mentioned in the article,  who told me ten times more train related horror stories than a kid ever needs to hear.

Usually I try to avoid trains; but between Loren’s article, talking with my old friend and bandmate Todd Martin, who penned the tune “Moonville Tunnel” for his band Mothman while I was percussionist for the group, and seeing a series of photos of iron blast furnaces and remnants of the associated Eastern Kentucky Railway on a friend’s Facebook, it seemed like the trains wanted to be talked about. Or at least they wanted links posted. And I promise to be back next week with some neat hillbilly ghost stories and photos.

I’m going to try and start a new tradition around here. Every Thursday we’re going to post random links to strange tid-bits in the news that you may have missed, may have seen elsewhere, or may know more about than any of us could begin to.

I’ll need your help to keep on task.

Sometimes there will be a theme. If I can’t come up with a cohesive theme, it’ll just be random. The point is, here are some weird things that I don’t have the time or inclination to write a full article about, but they’re interesting.

Hope you enjoy:

We’ll start with a little news of feng-shui impeding international relations in Hong Kong. These sorts of beliefs, straddling a line between sciences and superstitions, have always fascinated me. Asian traditional medicine is full of this. The Doctrine of Signatures, for instance, that says because a food is kidney shaped it is good for the kidneys, colon shaped it is good for the colon, etc. These ideas were abandoned in the west long ago, and while we may at times scoff at macrobiotic classification of foods as yin and yang, the healing aspects of such diets are well-documented, as are the effects of ayurvedic remedies, acupuncture, etc.  It’s also interesting to note that “pseudo-sciences”, such as dowsing, are considered legitimate means of scientific investigation in eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union (see Jacques Vallée’s Ufo Chronicles of the Soviet Union : A Cosmic Samidzat for examples).

In the same vein of superstition, but on the more primitive end of the spectrum, we have this report of a witch/goat accused of armed robbery in Nigeria. Naturally, culture dictating norms, the goat is being held in custody until the story can be confirmed.

Jumping back to the former Soviet Union, we have this story, one some western scientist are sure to raise an eyebrow at, of a man with a tree found growing inside his lung.

And finally, just because I thought it was adorably hillarious (and because I have a weak spot for facial hair) we have this story of a finely mustachioed horse from Gloucestershire in the UK.

Enjoy!