Silhouette: a two-legged marine platform. Open any book or Web page on micronations, and you’re likely to see its unmistakable The Principality of Sealand is a textbook example. The knack for surreal statecraft resurfaces much later, as artistic expression, or a snub to impersonal authorities, In others, micronationalism is a latent urge that lies dormant for many years. As their teenage kings get on in life, they devise increasingly elaborate backstories, bizarre by-lawsĪnd resplendent uniforms. The accidental birth of a nation becomes a permanent experiment. Some micronations, though, persist into adulthood. Vanuatu (mine, not the Pacific-island state), succumbing to factionalism, disappeared off the map. Just as most micronations are re-absorbed by their unsuspecting host nations. ![]() But puberty soon provides plenty of other distractions, The ease with which the Vanuatan virus spread convinces me that micronationalism is a relatively common phenomenon, especially among boys in their early teens. It appropriates the regalia of independent statehood - a flag, borders, a potentate, the power to legislate - as an affirmation of pre-adolescent individuality. Your typical micronation starts like this. ![]() One after another, Vanuatu’s far-flung provinces rejected the authority of the Imperial Bedroom, in turn declaring their own independence as republics, grand-duchies and empires (I even seem to As the central government dithered between monarchy and republicanism, it became clear the center could I can tell you: It’s good to be the king.Īlas, like any revolutionary wave, the Prepubescent Spring soon crested, then started collapsing in on itself. For a brief while, I basked in the glory of kingship, the radiance ofĮmpire. All over the school district, kids were drawing borders and devising flags. Schoolmates and cousins liberated their own living quarters, adding a faux-diplomatic layer to the fervently held belief that their parents Word got out among my peers, and soon enough the revolution was spreading. ![]() It came from a real place in my school atlas, one that sounded exotic, and looked sufficiently distant never to be bothered by my appropriation of its name: Vanuatu. I remember the name of my imaginary country. The threshold of my room now marked the entrance to my own separate kingdom (or republic I hadn’t quite figured that out yet).īecause countries need capitals, I drew a star in a circle at a location on the map that seemed appropriate - near the headboard of the bed, where my pillow usually lay. From National Geographic’s maps, Iīorrowed the colored edge and dotted line that mark international borders. On a blank page ripped from my school notebook, I meticulously traced the room’s floor plan. I was about 10 years old when I declared the independence of my bedroom. While some are pristinely restored and major tourist sites, others are more forgotten, at the end of miles-long desert tracks where you’ll never spot another person.Borderlines explores the global map, one line at a time. These ghost towns are now among the American West’s most beguiling tourist destinations, capturing the imagination of visitors with their clapboard, weather-beaten houses and rusty old mining machinery. ![]() Still today, they’re often shot in these states’ so-called ghost towns: abandoned mining towns where prospectors once set up to seek their fortune, during the gold rush era of the 1800s. Although The Great Train Robbery was shot in New York and New Jersey, the Western genre soon migrated out west, with filmmakers shooting Westerns in the desertscapes of Nevada, Colorado and California. The film became iconic for creating the illusion of a moving train, and for its final frame – a gunman pointing his smoking pistol at the audience. It tells the story of a holdup, taking place aboard a moving train in America’s Wild West. Next year marks the 120-year anniversary of the first-ever Western feature film, The Great Train Robbery, which is just 11 minutes long, set an entire movie-making tradition in motion. The American Western tradition was one of the first movie genres and remains among the most legendary – instantly recognisable for its wild, desert landscapes, windswept skies, horses and leather-clad leads.
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