Category Archives: History

Can’t go back to Constantanople

Posted on June 20, 2013 by | 5 comments

Good morning readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.

Last night Rich called and during the conversation he mentioned the Turks are trying to resolve differences of opinion he doesn’t know what are.  Evidently their methods of persuading one another have drawn some attention.

I swan.  Those Turks are always full of surprises.  One day they’re running around everyone wearing a fez, next day wearing a fez is a criminal offense.  They sit off there during WWI looking as though they’re just some little country getting in the way of progress, end up whipping the socks off the entire British Empire. 

Everything went so bad the history writers for WWI barely allowed Turkey into the history books because of them not getting the socks whipped off them the way they were supposed to.

So, what then?  City goes along being Constantanople 15 centuries or so, centerpoint for crusaders, Byzantine Empire, home of Janisaries [some of the more dedicated empire builders in human history] and the Cold War comes along, suddenly they’re Istanbul and more-or-less European. 

Best just leave the whole matter alone.  As the Four Lads observed in 1953, it’s nobody’s business but the Turks.

5 Comments

Posted in 1950's, 2013, History

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Important distinctions between Democrats and Communists

Posted on June 11, 2013 by | 18 comments

adults and kiddies

During the early 1950s it became important to distinguish the difference between Communists and Democrats.  This was no easy thing to do.  Something was needed to establish a clear delineation, easy to recognize.  After pondering the matter several years, in 1954 Congress finally found the key:

http://voices.yahoo.com/when-was-under-god-added-pledge-allegiance-3187545.html

“The decision of Congress to add “under God” to the Pledge was, at least in part, a reaction to the Cold War with Soviet Russia. One of the differentiating factors between Soviet Communism and American Democracy was that the Soviets officially advocated atheism. The phrase “under God” was seen, therefore, to reaffirm an important distinction between the two competing worldviews. [Source: Religion and the Law in America, p. 110-12].

“On June 14, 1954, President Eisenhower signed the bill officially adding “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance. The President remarked that, “millions of our schoolchildren will daily proclaim in every city and town … the dedication of our nation and our people to the Almighty.” [Source: Slate.com]”

Seemed simple enough until someone wondered aloud, “But how can a person distinguish a Christian from a non-Christian?”  After a lot of pondering and head scratching they were forced to resort to The Apostles’ Creed, 312 CE.

http://www.reformed.org/documents/apostles_creed.html

“The Apostles’ Creed
(as usually recited today)
“The basic creed of Reformed churches, as most familiarly known, is called the Apostles’ Creed. It has received this title because of its great antiquity; it dates from very early times in the Church, a half century or so from the last writings of the New Testament.
“I believe in God, the Father Almighty,
    the Maker of heaven and earth,
    and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord:

“Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost,
    born of the virgin Mary,
    suffered under Pontius Pilate,
    was crucified, dead, and buried;

“He descended into hell. [See Calvin]

“The third day He arose again from the dead;

“He ascended into heaven,
    and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty;
    from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.

“I believe in the Holy Ghost;
    the holy catholic church;
    the communion of saints;
    the forgiveness of sins;
    the resurrection of the body;
    and the life everlasting.

“Amen.”

Extremely helpful during the Vietnam War.  A person of Asian ethnicity who could recite the Pledge of Allegiance and the Apostle Creed could be said with confidence not to be a Communist.  Anyone who couldn’t, was.

Same as today.

Sometime I’ll tell you about the trauma those of us who’d already learned the Pledge went through trying to figure out and remember where to say the phrase, “under God” and where to pause when including it.

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Posted in 1950's, 2013, America, History, Politics

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Forgotten Lost Victories – The Modocs – 1852

Posted on June 11, 2013 by | 5 comments

shelf indian

Bringing civilization to Native Americans was never easy.  Almost every step of the way the tribes selfishly hoarded the lands they depended upon, frequently resorting to violence when whites who needed the land for farming, ranching and mining tried to run them off.

One example was the Modocs in northern California, 1852.  The US suddenly owned the land, having disproved the false claims by Mexico of ownership by invading them and killing as many as they could catch.  But the Modocs were spoiled by being owned by Mexico, being mostly left alone.  When whites came into the Tule Lake area the Modoc slaughtered 38 innocent people.

Ben Wright and a group of miners from Yreka, California attempted to peacefully resolve the situation by having a feast for the tribe, but almost to a person the Modoc unreasonably refused to eat the poisoned food. 

Wright and the miners were forced to fire into the mass  of tribal members, which allowed a third of them to escape.  That failure led to decades more of Modoc attempts to halt the march of civilization and disputing rightful white claims to the land.

hands_off_please[ KC Library

Not until 1873, after seven months of hard fighting and the loss of many innocent white lives were the Modoc finally subdued permanently and the leaders hanged.

A microcosm of the history of the western US where flawed and improper leadership and planning resulted in the needless loss of innocent white lives.

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Posted in America, History, Human Behavior, Military, Native American, Native Americans, US Army

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Forgotten Lost Victories – Glorietta Pass

Posted on June 8, 2013 by | 2 comments

glorietta from the ridge pidgeons2

That roof you see down there covers the remains of Pidgeon’s ranch house.  Center point for most of the fighting during the battle of Glorietta Pass.  At the beginning of the battle Regular Union troops held the ridge where I was standing to take the picture and everything you can see beyond.  The rock face below me and to the right is dimpled by fire coming from below because the Union snipers were operating there.

The Texas artillery positions were outside camera range to the upper right.  The hottest fighting was along this ridge and below focused on the low wall between here and Pidgeon’s.

Texans flanked the Union position beyond the ranch house and overran the wall forcing the Federals into a hasty retreat beyond the far left of the picture, where they attempted to establish a new defense line, but the valley widened and doomed it to failure.

At that point the Texans had a straight shot all the way to Fort Union, their goal, with nothing to stop them besides a straggling of Federal troops in disorganized retreat.

But during the night the Colorado Volunteers trekked through the mountains to Coyote Canyon and attacked the Confederate supply train, burned and captured it.  Which completely reversed the fortunes of the Texas Mounted Volunteers. 

Suddenly they found themselves without supplies and a long road back down the Rio Grande occupied by New Mexico Volunteers and Federal troops from Fort Craig which they’d bypassed during the hurry northward.

They buried a lot of their dead just below and to the right of the ridge above Pidgeon’s.  They were found during the 1980s by someone digging a foundation to a house down there, and taken to Santa Fe, beginning a decade-long fight over them between Texas and New Mexico.  But under New Mexico law those bodies belonged to the person who owned the property and found them.

Around 1992 they were buried with a lot of ceremony at the National Cemetery in Santa Fe.

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Posted in America, History, Texas

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How’d we get here from there? Was it Chopstickson?

Posted on June 6, 2013 by | 3 comments

Chopstixon2

If you are like me you probably sometimes wonder how we got where we are today.  All of us so petty, venal, unimaginative, lazy, shallow, wasteful, ethnocentric, egocentric, polarized, gullible, compromised.  How did we get here, I asks myself and the cats.

Who was responsible?  Was it Chopstickson?

No, I sagely answers myself.  It wasn’t.  Chopstickson was just one of our elected leaders.  The reason he was elected was that he was a mirror-image of the majority of US citizens.  He was what we were and we were him.  And Chopstickson was a lowlife scum.

Same as LBJ when he went for re-election when his term ended after having JFK shot.  Same as JFK and his brothers were.  Ad infinitum with all of them except Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, since then.

The reason elected chief executives and other elected politicians are scum is that the electorate elects itself into office to run this country, and the electorate is all the things we’ve come to be.  All we have ever been.

As with all peasants, serfs, slaves, we love aristocrats and elect them, their families, their progeny to office to do what we’d like to do if we were aristocrats.  Namely get richer.  With representative democracy the main difference is we elect the ones most like ourselves.

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Posted in Government, History, Politics

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The Lost Adams Diggings Revisited

Posted on June 5, 2013 by | 4 comments

Lost Adams Diggings Number 2297

I probably shouldn’t be telling you this because some of you might still think I have good sense.  But I’m going to anyway because I’m the kind of guy who doesn’t care whether you do or not.

What you are seeing in that Google map is the Lost Adams Diggings.  The line wandering along the lower right corner is the continental divide.  The areas with snow on the surface are shaded part of the day so’s not to have melted yet, the dark areas are lower, now in shadow.  The tiny short lines all over the place are deadfall left by a forest fire that swept the area in the 1990s.

Elevation’s around 9000 feet, the trails are all blocked with deadfall from the fire, but even back in the day the area never saw much human traffic.  It’s one of the more remote, tougher places to get to in the continental US.

Which is the reason those three dark lines you see running diagonally in the upper center have no business whatever being there.  Those are artifacts of human activity.  Those, and the lower left-of-center dark spot resembling an arrow.  The dark lines at the top, unless I miss my guess as I’ve done frequently before, are what is known in legend as ‘The Zig Zag Trail”.

A person wanting a closer look would have to go in on foot, crawling over deadfall.  Or a person 70 years old would probably have to have a donkey or pack goat or three.

I decided over the years this is the place after I’d already published the Lost Adams Diggings book because of various pieces of information acquired after the book was published. 

Soooooo.

I just happened to notice on Coleen’s Workers on Wheels Newsletter:

NM: Seasonal Camp Hosting and Mini Storage
by Mountain Spirits RV Park – Mimbres, New Mexico 88049
(Work Camping with Stipend in the Historic Mimbres Valley)

Mountain Spirits RV Park in Mimbres, New Mexico, needs camp host couples for the 2013/14 season. Our campground consists of 20 RV sites and 52 self storage units.

The park is located 25 miles east of Silver City, New Mexico, at an elevation of 5800 feet. We are in the historic Mimbres Valley, which is the gateway to the Gila Wilderness.

Couples share duties for this position. They include cleaning and maintaining a neat appearance of the office and two modern restrooms, waiting on customers and residents during 8-5 business hours, and checking in guests. Yard work includes weeding and watering of landscaping and yard areas.

Couples will work the same three days and same shift.

We offer a 30amp space, free WiFi, and $100.00 a month credit towards electric and propane use. We also offer a $100.00 cash stipend per month to help with expenses.

We would appreciate at least a three month commitment, if possible.

The nearest shopping is in Silver City.

Cell phone coverage is either Verizon or TracPhone.

If interested in camp hosting with us, please call 575-574-7000 or email coveroadnm@yahoo.com. Be sure to let us know that you saw our Help Wanted ad on Coleen’s Workers On Wheels website when you contact us about this campground job. Bill and Wanda, Managers. Mountain Spirits RV Park – Mimbres, New Mexico 88049. Posted June 2013.

Any of you who think you might be interested in being the other half of a couple to apply for that, I’d be obliged if you contact me.  josephusminimus@hotmail.com and we can discuss it.  I’d hope if you’re the other half of a couple with me you’ll look after my cats on my days off while I go trekking up into the high canyons.

4 Comments

Posted in Adventure, History, New Mexico, Prospecting

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Learning handy skills while defending the US

Posted on June 4, 2013 by | 11 comments

1stcav2

When I joined the US Army in 1961 it had a lot of attractions for a young man of 17.  First off, it didn’t involve going to work in a moly mine in Questa, New Mexico.  Secondly, it was the Berlin Crisis of 1961 and I naturally hoped I’d get an opportunity to kill me some young Russians to defend this country.  Thirdly, the recruiter promised they’d teach me some skills I’d find useful in civilian life.

Eventually I learned that moly mine mightn’t have been a bad idea.  Never got to kill me any Russians, neither.  Never defended this country worth nuthun.  And thirdly, the only skill I learned that might have helped me as a civilian was how to kill a man by hitting him in the face with an entrenching tool.  A lot of years have passed since then, but I’m still hoping to put that entrenching tool thing to use.

Fact is, that like the US troops who served in WWI, the Spanish American War, the Mexican War, and all the US Army who fought the Apache, the Comanche, the Cheyenne along with dozens of other tribes, we were not ‘defending’ this country.  Until WWII a person would have to go back to the Civil War and include the soldiers fighting for the Confederacy to locate someone defending his country.

Well, I suppose you could say the Mexican soldiers who fought against the US in the Mexican War were defending their country.  And the Apache was defending his, and so on.

But those serving in the US Army were doing something else, entirely.

Care to guess what it was?

11 Comments

Posted in 1940's, 1950's, 1960's, America, History, Human Behavior, Military, Native American, Native Americans

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Humpty Dumptytime

Posted on December 31, 2012 by | 21 comments

Hi readers.  Thanks for coming around.  I’m hoping you’re all getting your ducks in a row to put whatever lousy issues you’ve got to rest, come midnight.  Beginning one minute afterward we’ve all got to start the serious business of trying to live with all that behind us.  The Coincidence Coordinators have a lot in store for each of us and they don’t want any of it getting bogged down in tanglefootedness left over from yesteryear.

Some of you probably remember that bottle of Jack Daniels Black Label,

Juggling the Possibilities.

 I wrote about it November 17, 2011,

“I finished off most of this bottle of Jack Daniels on December 31, 1999, while I was sitting around listening on the short wave radio to Y2K not happening, first in New Zealand, then Australia, then places further west until it got to me, where it happened well enough to make up for those other places it didn’t.

“But as you can see, there was some left in the bottle when Y2K got to me.  I resolved to hold it back until something else happened.  I’ve had it sitting over there on the microwave collecting dust for several years, threatening to celebrate various New Year and Thanksgivings and I-don’t-know-whatalls.  I’d had it in the back of my mind lately I’d do my 70th birthday with it, then slid the clock backward and thought maybe my 69th here in a few days.”

Fact is, that bottle qualifies as an open container.  I can’t travel with it in the RV.  So this evening I’m going to put on some good music and sip that Jack Daniels to death celebrating all the Humpty Dumpties in my 2012.

The Great Speckled Bird: Respecting our Betters

The Great Speckled Bird went off maybe in July to wherever chickens go when they die, and later in the year I Humpty Dumptied my contracts with the hens and other roosters.  [Sip anticipated] 

I terminated my contract with Shiva The Cow Cat.  [Sip anticipated]

There’s this:

Roof and Chimney Leaks — White Trash Repairs

But we didn’t reach a consensus, the felines etc. on the matter of roof repairs and leaks.  Shiva the cow-cat argues, “What the hell!  Here’s a perfect spot for both those indoor cats in a thunderstorm.  What’s the big deal?  If they don’t like it throw them outdoors with Tabby and me.

“I’m sick and tired of all the age discrimination around here in favor of geriatric cats.” [Sip anticipated]

And of course, the Humpty Dumpty trees. [Sip anticipated]

Men's ThermoPlus Extreme Boot Liner

http://www.sorel.com/Men%27s-ThermoPlus-Extreme-Boot-Liner/NU1490,default,pd.html

I’ve used my Sorel boot liners several years as thermal house shoes when it’s cold, and they’ve begun to fray.  Looked up the price of replacing them and discovered it’s $45, so I went to work on the seams and edges with super glue.

No Humpty Dumpty for them.  But I’ll sip to them anyway if there’s any left.

As for Shiva, she’s doing well up there, happy.  Jeanne and I have a ritual of talking on the phone, speaker phone on on her end.  Shiva sits on her shoulder, purrs, slobbers, and rubs her face against the phone.

I’ll sip to a happy ending, a new adventure, and the three remaining felines with active contracts.

And wish things equally good for you.  [Final sip]

Old Jules

21 Comments

Posted in 2012, Adventure, Animals, Chickens, Free-ranging-chickens, History, Human Behavior, Music, Senior Citizens

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Kings, Stings, Forgotten Stinks, Sungs and Stungs

Posted on September 1, 2012 by | 12 comments

Thanks, Mr. President
For all the things you’ve done
The battles that you’ve won
The way you deal with U.S. Steel
And our problems by the ton
We thank you so much

Before they decompose in the grader ditch.

Honest! It just fell!

The ugly?

A touch of class

That gall bladder used to be right THERE.

Mexican Standoff in Chinese

Tanked in China

A sobering night for Ted Kennedy, but Mary Jo couldn’t swim. He bounced back, though not so high as previously expected. She didn’t.

Tanked in Martha’s Vineyard

The song has ended but the malady lingers on

Tanked elsewhere.

When Cuba still seemed nearby

The Last Roundup

Who ARE these guys?

Party animals

Hi! I’m king.

El Guapo meets Godzilla

Last one on’s a rotten egg

The Presidential War’s over!  This helicopter’s destination is Panama, Grenada, El Salvadore, Kuwait, Iraq, last stop in Afghanistan!  Show your tickets.

Old Jules

12 Comments

Posted in 1950's, 1960's, 1970's, 1980's, 1990's, 2012, Adventure, History, Politics

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The TimeWarpVille Enigma

Posted on August 23, 2012 by | 8 comments

Good morning readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.

1919 American Legion Post – Now Kimble County Historical Society Museum

I’ve poked a little fun at Junction, Texas.  Partly because they were there, I was there, and it’s an easy target, standing still gazing into the headlights.  But the stark reality is the people of Junction aren’t significantly different from you, me, and all the people living around us.  They’re trying to scratch out a living in a country that’s caving in around them, trying to hang on to what hasn’t caved in yet.

Trying to find something that works by throwing grappling hooks into things that worked in the past.  And when they see it’s not working, blaming the failures on people who are trying to reconstruct different things from somewhere else in the past.

That $3.50 per gallon gasoline sign is a disaster in rural Texas where the nearest somewhat large town’s a $20-$30 round trip.  Same as everywhere else in the western US.  It means the price of having groceries delivered to stores in town will skyrocket over time, and driving to the larger stores in larger towns will skyrocket alongside what’s happening locally.

Aside from some agriculture, nobody in Junction, Texas, is manufacturing anything anyone wants to buy locally, anyone would want to buy elsewhere in the US, or overseas.  Same as where you are, only in Junction it’s more obvious. 

But their toasters, microwave ovens, automobile parts, refrigerators and computers are manufactured in Asia, same as yours.  There’s nobody in town can repair most of them when they fail without obtaining parts manufactured in Asia.

So they fantasize about seceding.  Pretending they could go back to the independence of the past.  Pretending that would bring back ways to make an honest living.  Celebrating their tough, Comanche fighting, Confederate ancestors, pretending they have something in common with them.

While on the other hand, they try to imagine they have something in common with people a decade ago who died when an airplane crashed into a building a quarter-mile high.  Grasping for some abstraction of solidarity with the people there, some anchor that pretending they remember those people might provide to help them deal with a world collapsing around them.

In a real sense, they do have something in common with those 9/11 dead, beyond them all being human beings.  The people who jumped out of those towers weren’t manufacturing anything anyone would want, either.  If they were living today they’d be paying big bucks for gasoline, groceries, toasters, manufactured somewhere else, too.

But there’s nothing else meaningful those unfortunate people in New York could have to say to people in Junction, Texas.  If asked, I suppose they might suggest, “Build higher buildings.”

The road from Main Street to the graveyard is easier to follow in Junction, but nothing else is less complicated than anywhere else.

Old Jules

8 Comments

Posted in 2012, America, Current Issues, Government, History, Politics, Texas

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