☞Today in History -- On today’s date 179 years ago, Monday, May 13, 1844, noted American school teacher, traveler, inventor, & photographer, Professor James Ricalton (1844-1929), who famously travelled extensively & circumnavigated the world seven times, was born at the Half Way community near the village of Waddington in St. Lawrence County, New York.
☞The following paragraph is an excerpt from a 2022 article entitled “More about the Half Way” that was published by the Waddington Museum & Historical Association of Waddington, New York.
“...across the creek was the Ricalton family of ten or twelve children. In this family was the world-famous James Ricalton, one of the sons, who visited nearly every country in the world. When he was 74 years old, he walked from Cape Town to Cairo a distance of over 2,100 miles alone. He shipped back the skins of 12 lions & a black buffalo which he shot with an express rifle by the way. He traveled around the world five times & was a photographer in five different wars.”
☞Note: A more accurate description of Ricalton’s trek from Cape Town to Cairo is this: In 1909, at age 65, he walked from Cape Town to Cairo, a distance of 4,500 miles averaging 30 miles a day.
☞Ricalton’s photographs earned him numerous honors, & many were used to illustrate textbooks. He sold his images to the American Museum of Natural History & the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Many of his photographs were used by Underwood & Underwood to illustrate geography books.
☞In 1912, Ricalton was sent on an assignment by Thomas Edison to test a motion picture camera in Africa, filming among other things a whaling expedition off Cape Town. Ricalton’s son Lomond accompanied him on this trip but died from typhoid fever there, & this was Ricalton's last trip.
☞Ricalton retired to his home town of Waddington, New York, where he died October 28, 1929, at the age of 85.
☞The 1903 photograph, which is entitled “Two Kashmir Giants & their Exhibitor -- Professor Ricalton -- on the occasion of Delhi Darbar,” depicts James Ricalton with the famous Kashmir Giants.
☞The occasion of this photograph was the “Durbar” at Delhi, India, which was a celebration of the British monarch Edward VII’s succession. The king at that time was also titled the Emperor of India & was the great-grandfather of the present British Monarch, King Charles III. The Kashmir Giants depicted in the photograph were twin brothers who stood Seven-foot, nine-inches & seven-foot, four-inches tall, & who arrived at the Durbar with spears, maces, matchlock firearms, & hand grenades, prepared for any situation to protect the King of Kashmir at all costs.
@MissAdventurous
"I am becoming more and more alarmed by the utter meaninglessness of words today, even as the words grow softer and sweeter by the minute. People 'care' a lot, then do nothing with anything but their facile tongues to show that they do. People are 'outraged' or 'concerned,' then sit in the same place and metaphorically cluck over some indignity they will soon forget."
I couldn't agree more. This is the nature of virtue signaling.
From bondage to spiritual faith, From spiritual faith to great courage, From courage to liberty, From liberty to abundance, From abundance to selfishness, From selfishness to complacency, From complacency to apathy, < From apathy to dependence, < From dependence back to bondage.
--Written in 1802 by Alexander Fraser Tyler Regarding the decline and fall of the Athenian Republic
Note: the two arrows (<) above represent my estimation of our approximate (and unfortunate) position in the cycle, in our post-Constitutional, late-stage American Republic.
~ Sunset Snuggles
My uncle says the architects got rid of the front porches because they didn't look well. But my uncle says that was merely rationalizing it; the real reason, hidden underneath, might be they didn't want people sitting like that, doing nothing, rocking, talking; that was the wrong kind of social life. People talked too much. And they had time to think. So they ran off with the porches. And the gardens, too. Not many gardens any more to sit around in. And look at the furniture. No rocking chairs any more. They're too comfortable. Get people up and running around. ~Ray Bradbury
(Art: Photograph by H. Armstrong Roberts)
This is called the Oniscidae. You may find them under a brick or a damp object. You may have felt disgusted and wondered why they exist in nature.
Well, let me tell you, the oniscidae , better known as cochineal, is a subgroup of isopod crustaceans whose function is to remove harmful heavy metals from the earth such as mercury, cadmium and lead.
They contribute to the cleansing of soil and groundwater to reaffirm the wisdom of nature.
Do not damage them or spray pesticides!
One of the horticultural specimens that Meriwether Lewis found very interesting was in one of the easiest places to find it – in Pierre Chouteau’s garden in St. Louis.
Osage orange (Maclura pomifera), a tree species native to the southern Mississippi valley, was first viewed by Lewis on March 26, 1804, when he visited the fur trader and merchant’s large home. Before Lewis made a trip back east in 1807, he collected seeds from one of Chouteau’s more mature trees and personally brought them back to Washington and Philadelphia. These were successfully grown and distributed by Philadelphia nurseryman Bernard McMahon and wealthy plantsman William Hamilton.
According to Thomas Jefferson’s Montincello, 17th-century French explorers described the tree as “bois d'arc” or bow wood, a term later altered by the Americans to "bodark." Native peoples realized the exceptional strength and elasticity of the Osage orange’s wood for tomahawks and especially bows. One Osage bow was worth a horse and blanket in trade. This same characteristic allowed for branches covered with thick, sharp thorns to be manipulated into dense fences.
Robert Carr, proprietor of Bartram's Garden in Philadelphia, was one of the tree's first commercial sources in 1828, but by the mid 19th century it became the most commonly planted tree in America. Osage orange can be sheared effectively into impenetrable hedges, and 60,000 miles of bodark hedging were reportedly planted in 1868 alone. However, the invention of barbed wire in 1873 quickly made Osage orange fences less desirable.
Since Osage orange trees can grow to nearly 40 feet in height, they needed to be continually trimmed, or “coppiced”– the intentional trimming down to a specific height, which forces the tree to propagate through the growth of new shoots from the stump or roots, thus thickening the natural fencing.
Image: Public Domain
Love this Wayne Gretzky quote "You miss 100% of the shots you don't take. "
"Don't get high on your own supply."
Dan Davis Blocker (December 10, 1928 – May 13, 1972) died 51 years ago today at the age of 43.
He is best remembered for his role as Hoss Cartwright in the NBC western television series Bonanza.
In 1957, Blocker appeared in a Three Stooges short, Outer Space Jitters, having portrayed the part of "The Goon," billed as "Don Blocker". Dan Blocker made two appearances on the long-running Gunsmoke series: the first on August 25, 1956, in "Alarm at Pleasant Valley" and the second on October 18, 1958, in "Thoroughbreds". He also appeared in 1957 as Will in the episode, "A Time to Die" of the ABC/Warner Brothers western series, Colt .45, starring Wayde Preston. Blocker was cast in 1957 in episodes of the David Dortort-produced NBC series, The Restless Gun as a blacksmith and as a cattleman planning to take his hard-earned profit to return to his family land in his native Minnesota.
That same year, he had at least two roles as a bartender in an episode of the syndicated western-themed crime drama Sheriff of Cochise, starring John Bromfield and in the film, Gunsight Ridge. Also in 1957, he appeared in an episode, "Land Beyond the Law", of Cheyenne, playing one of the outlaw minions (Pete). He also appeared in The Rifleman. In 1958, he played a prison guard and later had a recurring role as Tiny Budinger in the NBC western series Cimarron City, starring George Montgomery, John Smith, and Audrey Totter. He also was seen in "The Señorita Makes a Choice," a 1958 episode of Walt Disney's Zorro series.
In 1958, Blocker had a supporting role as Sergeant Broderick in "The Dora Gray Story" on NBC's Wagon Train, with Linda Darnell in the title role and Mike Connors as Miles Borden, a corrupt United States Army lieutenant at an isolated western fort. That same year, he appeared in "Stagecoach Episode" of the NBC western, Jefferson Drum, starring Jeff Richards. Blocker was cast as bearded poker-playing rodeo performer, Cloudy Sims, in the 1958 episode "Rodeo" on the David Janssen crime drama, Richard Diamond, Private Detective. In the storyline, a rodeo performer named Ed Murdock, portrayed by Lee Van Cleef, is murdered before he can make his final performance at the annual event in Madison Square Garden.
In 1959, as Bonanza began its long network run, Blocker guest-starred in an episode of the Keenan Wynn and Bob Mathias NBC series, The Troubleshooters, an adventure program about unusual events surrounding an international construction company. Another 1959 role was as Del Pierce in "Johnny Yuma", the first episode of the ABC western series, The Rebel, starring Nick Adams.
Blocker's big break also came in 1959, when he was cast as Eric "Hoss" Cartwright[6] on the long-running NBC television series Bonanza, and played the role until his death. Blocker said he portrayed the Hoss character with a Stephen Grellet excerpt in mind: "We shall pass this way on Earth but once, if there is any kindness we can show, or good act we can do, let us do it now, for we will never pass this way again."
In 1968, Blocker starred with Frank Sinatra in the "Tony Rome" film sequel Lady In Cement. Stanley Kubrick attempted to cast Blocker in his film Dr. Strangelove, after Peter Sellers elected not to add the role of Major T.J. "King" Kong to his multiple other roles, but according to the film's co-writer, Terry Southern, Blocker's agent rejected the script. The role subsequently went to Slim Pickens, who played the iconic scene of riding an atomic bomb down while waving his cowboy hat.
In 1970, Blocker portrayed a love-shy galoot in Cockeyed Cowboys of Calico County, with Nanette Fabray as a love prospect and a supporting cast featuring Jim Backus, Jack Elam, Noah Beery, Jr., and Mickey Rooney. Blocker also appeared on NBC's The Flip Wilson Show comedy hour.
Director Robert Altman befriended Blocker while directing episodes of Bonanza. Years later, he cast Blocker as Roger Wade in The Long Goodbye, but Blocker died before filming began. The role went to Sterling Hayden, and the film was dedicated to Blocker.
Blocker started and received partial ownership in a successful chain of Ponderosa/Bonanza Steakhouse restaurants in exchange for serving (in character as Hoss) as their commercial spokesman and making personal appearances at franchises.
On May 13, 1972, Blocker died in Los Angeles at age 43 of a pulmonary embolism following gall bladder surgery. The writers of Bonanza took the unusual step of referencing a major character's death in the show's storyline that autumn.
Bonanza lasted another season without Hoss, as the 14th and final season ended on January 16, 1973. Blocker's remains are interred in a family plot in Woodsmen Cemetery, in DeKalb, Texas, although he had lived there only briefly. The common grave site is marked by a plain stone with the name "BLOCKER" engraved; three family members are buried beside him.