By Hunter Oatman-Stanford — As the world has slowed to a crawl because of global orders to shelter-in-place, billions of humans are living in a much-reduced footprint, often confined within the walls of their own homes. For those of us used to busy lives full of social activities, it’s a bit like being sealed inside a bell jar, or perhaps a large glass bottle—our lives go on, but their framing has drastically changed. A century ago, during times like this, self-taught craftspeople might have spent this required time at...

Bill Lindsey on How To Read a Bottle

By Maribeth Keane — My maternal grandfather and uncle got into bottles in about 1965 or ‘66 when I was in high school, and we started digging. My uncle was in Arizona, near some of the old mining camps there. Those were the glory days of bottle digging. People had access with four-wheel drive vehicles and gas was cheap and time-off was more abundant. Then years passed and people started really hitting the ghost towns and mining camps and logging camps of the West. Anyway, we started by digging some of the...