#pulaski

[unteriors]

State Route 208, Pulaski, Pennsylvania.

[deadmotelsusa]

What year do you think the pink curtains came down? When did management decide the matching bedspreads and walls needed to change? When did the custom lamps get tossed in the dumpster? Why did these unique features get replaced with the most bland alternatives?

At what point did we as a society decide we hated color?

Opened in 1968 as a Red Carpet Inn, closed in 2010 as the Pulaski Motel. It sat vacant and boarded up for 15 years before finally being demolished in 2025. The property included an on-site restaurant (now also demolished) and a former Philips 66 gas station (still abandoned). Due to the motel’s windows and doors being boarded up, there was very little vandalism to the interior of the building.

Located in Pulaski, Virginia.

[hirsutespacemen]

Clothing optional.

[awkward-pause]

Darren Harper, 2006

[000zeroheroes000]

[onespacedown]

Honestly, I don't think that Dr. Pulaski's character failed to win over fans because of misogyny. I think she failed because the writers were trying to stick a square peg in a round hole. Like, yes, she has the same basic personality as Bones. But she's missing a lot of the important context that makes Bones work so well as a character. Bones is a grouchy asshole, yes, but he has a longstanding established position on the ship. Pulaski was, by necessity, a newcomer. Where Bones' attitude fit neatly into an established dynamic, Pulaski's felt like a disruption. For Bones, it felt like good-natured banter between old friends. It helps that he literally was best friends with Jim. Meanwhile, Pulaski just came across as outright hostile. It might have helped if Pulaski had had a strong preexisting relationship to someone on the crew. It didn't have to be Picard; Riker or Geordi would also have worked. There's also the fact that the biggest target of her ire, the Spock equivalent, if you will, is Data, who lacks Spock's dry sense of humor, at least in the same form (I would argue that he doesn't lack a sense of humor entirely, but that's a whole other can of worms). Whereas the dynamic between Spock and Bones goes both ways, the dynamic between Pulaski and Data just feels like bullying. I don't think she was ultimately a terrible character, but she definitely wasn't as well-implemented as she could have been.

[dinkythings]

warming up for the day with some characters I haven't drawn in aeons

[clove-pinks]

The Explosion of the Steamboat Moselle, at Cincinnati, on the Ohio River, by artist Charles Ellms, 1841 (Public Domain Image Archive).

Moselle exploded in 1838, one of several steamboat tragedies that year in the United States. The steam packet Pulaski was another violent end, also depicted by Ellms:

These disasters help create early federal safety regulations, and the twenty-fifth US Congress passed on July 7, 1838, "An Act to provide for the better security of the lives of passengers on board of vessels propelled... by steam."