Postcards

Two highways in Washington state are leaking. According to the San Jose Mercury News, the highways were repaired with used rubber from recycled tires and began leaking toxic fumes that threatened nearby waterways, including the Columbia River. The roads were closed and the rubber removed at a cost of about $1 million.

A Portland, Maine, artist’s latest work has been declared fit for the Hartford, Conn., sewers. Bradley McCallum’s recently closed exhibit, “The Manhole Cover Project: A Gun Legacy,” is going to be reopened — cover by cover — on the streets of one of Hartford’s most violent areas, appropriate since the covers are made from 11,194 melted-down guns that were confiscated by or surrendered to city authorities since 1992. Each of the 228 manhole covers is inscribed with the words, “Made from 172 lbs. of your confiscated guns.” Hartford is the city where Sam Colt introduced firearms more than a century ago.

Mrs. O’Leary’s cow is off the hook. A new research paper, “Did the Cow Do It? A New Look at the Cause of the Great Chicago Fire,” points the finger at Mrs. O’Leary’s neighbor, Daniel “Peg Leg” Sullivan, as the real culprit. According to the paper’s author, Dick Bales, Sullivan might have been in the barn attempting to steal hay for his own cow when he accidentally set the blaze, which killed 300 people and leveled more than three square miles in the city in 1871. At the time the fire began, Bales opines, Mrs. O’Leary was snug in bed and not milking the cow.