148 Years Ago This Week: The First National League Ballgame

 

April 22, 1876 … think about how long ago that was.

Well, 148 years ago, for starters. That’s about 6 generations of people. The American population at the time was about 39 million people, about 11% of today’s.

The telegraph was the only way to communicate quickly over a long distance. Yet to be invented: the electric lightbulb and telephone. Civil War Reconstruction, still ongoing. The Transcontinental Railroad had been completed just a few years before.

President Lincoln’s assassination was a recent memory. Henry Ford was 12 years old. Etc. It was a long, long time ago.

A man named William Hulbert, owner of the Chicago White Stockings (later the Cubs), is widely credited as the founder of the National League.

Spalding

Another major name of the time was Albert Spalding, who joined Hulbert in 1876 as manager and main pitcher, winning 47 games that year. He is still the all-time leader in winning percentage at .796. He was one of the first players to wear a baseball glove and others adopted it soon after. 

Spalding of course is even more well-known for founding the A.G. Spalding sporting goods company — also in 1876, he had a good year — which supplied the official National League baseball for nearly 100 years until 1976, developed the baseball bat from a cricket bat, and so much more across many sports. The history of the company itself is a good read too.

Only One Hit But It’s a Timeless Classic

 

A rare live version of “Dancing in the Moonlight” via the indispensable Midnight Special channel… 

The tune was written several years earlier by a guy named Sherman Kelly — and the story behind it is more than a little bit strange:

On a trip to St. Croix in 1969, I was the first victim of a vicious St. Croix gang who eventually murdered 8 American tourists. At that time, I suffered multiple facial fractures and wounds and was left for dead. While I was recovering, I wrote "Dancin in the Moonlight" in which I envisioned an alternate reality, the dream of a peaceful and joyful celebration of life. The song became a huge hit and was recorded by many musicians worldwide. "Dancin In The Moonlight" continues to be popular to this day.

Well, now I’m going to have *that* picture in my head every time I hear it for the rest of my life.

It topped out at #13 in America during February-March of 1973, just before I turned 14.

As it turns out this big hit led indirectly to the formation of the band Orleans — more on that soon.

A Recipe for Improved Mental Health

 

Steven Kotler says that we are all capable of so much more than we know, by adopting simple habits that rewire our mindset and tame anxiety and depression by leveraging our natural ability to produce “feel good” chemicals like endorphins and serotonin.

Between social media and “the news” we are bombarded every day with social anxiety and fear, which can be difficult to overcome and is bad for all of us. 

Of course you can reduce the role of those things in your life, which is always a good idea, but completely independent from that you have the ability to counteract those negatives by focusing on what you *can* control.

Gratitude. Mindfulness. Walk, bike, or run, outside.

In Memory of Dickey Betts

 

He passed away this week at 80 years old… he had a distinct and original sound, that’s for sure.

“Blue Sky”

“Revival”

“Little Martha”

 

Seurat, Van Gogh, Pointillism and Neo-Impressionism

 

Georges Seurat, A Sunday on La Grande Jatte

This famous painting from 1886 uses “pointillism” which started the Neo-Impressionism movement, known for revolutionary expressions of color and light to create greater apparent luminosity:

Seurat and his followers tried to give their painting a scientific basis, by painting tiny dabs of primary colors close to each other to intensify the viewer's perception of colors by a process of optical mixing. This created greater apparent luminosity because the optical mixing of colors tends towards white, unlike mixing of paints on the palette which tends towards black and reduces intensity. Neo-impressionists also used more precise and geometric shapes to simplify and reveal the relationships between forms.

Diving deeper into Pointillism:

The practice of Pointillism is in sharp contrast to the traditional methods of blending pigments on a palette. Pointillism is analogous to the four-color CMYK printing process used by some color printers and large presses that place dots of cyan, magenta, yellow, and key (black). Televisions and computer monitors use a similar technique to represent image colors using Red, Green, and Blue (RGB) colors.

If red, blue, and green light (the additive primaries) are mixed, the result is something close to white light. Painting is inherently subtractive, but Pointillist colors often seem brighter than typical mixed subtractive colors. This may be partly because subtractive mixing of the pigments is avoided, and because some of the white canvas may be showing between the applied dots.

Another example of both, the famous self-portrait by Van Gogh, my favorite painter.

Amazing Rhythm Aces

 

Just about everyone has heard “Third Rate Romance” which was a solid Top 40 hit in 1975, but I like this one even better.

The End is Not in Sight (The Cowboy Tune) — Live

The studio version

The lead singer is Russell Smith who went on to become a successful songwriter for Randy Travis and others. He passed away at age 70 in 2019.

Here’s Third Rate Romance, an instant and timeless classic.

History of Major Trade Routes

 

A useful addition to my recent Silk Road post… 

History of major trade routes, mapped out

Seeing all this on a giant map, and learning the scale of trade between far-away peoples, and how early it all started, was a real learning experience for me.

The !!!! Beat

In 1966 an amazing TV show called “The !!!! Beat” debuted featuring a wide array of live R&B music by black artists like Freddie King, Lou Rawls, Esther Phillips, Etta James, Otis Redding and so many more.

Hosted by legendary Nashville DJ “Hoss” Allen, who was immersed in black culture and music as a kid and played blues, R&B and gospel on his WLAC Nashville radio show in the 50s, “The !!!! Beat” featured an amazing list of guests:

Guests included: Otis Redding, who hosted the final episode, Little Milton, Esther Phillips, Joe Tex, Etta James, Lattimore Brown, Roscoe Shelton, Carla Thomas, Freddie King, Barbara Lynn, Johnny Taylor, The Radiants, Louis Jordan, The Mighty Hannibal, Clarence 'Frogman' Henry, Robert Parker, Joe Simon, Mitty Collier, Jamo Thomas, Z. Z. Hill, Lou Rawls, Bobby Hebb, Willie Mitchell, Don Bryant, The Ovations, The Bar-Kays, Percy Sledge, Garnet Mimms, and Sam & Dave all appeared.

That is quite the list. This is just one season of the show!

Sadly it lasted just that one season, which is unsurprising considering the race climate at the time — but due to the magic of Youtube, DVDs, and devoted fans, nearly all the episodes are available to watch today. For now.

Recently I featured a Freddie King video from the show — here’s one more.

“I'm Torn Down”

Esther Phillips, “I Could Have Told You”

There’s so much more, and I encourage all to investigate this YouTube channel.

Watching DJs Spinning World Music

 

Really like this just-discovered channel My Analog Journal which features various DJs spinning a wide variety of music from around the world, one theme per video, which are about an hour or so.

Fantastic variety, from salsa to relaxing jazz to reggae to Japanese R&B from the 70s and 80s, and all kinds of other varieties, like this one, “Hawaiian Grooves”.

One of the most popular videos features a Brazilian Samba theme.

I’ve listened to parts of about 7-8 of these videos — the music is all new to me, but very high quality and I like it.

And while I actually like watching DJs doing their thing, these videos are ideally suited for background music while working, at a party, doing chores, relaxing with coffee in the morning, or whenever you want to hear good, fun, “new to you” music. 

Britain Hands Over Oregon for Free, In Essence

 

The early and mid-1800s were such a wild time in North America… 

Astrud Gilberto, “So Nice (Summer Samba)”

 

No Man’s Land in Louisiana

 

This territory in today’s Louisiana was part of border disputes between France and Spain during the 1700s, and later informally recognized as a lawless “no man’s land” from 1806 until Louisiana became a state in 1821. 

It was the Wild West before the Wild West became a thing, basically.

Obviously, the people who lived there had to be extrememly tough and fiercely independent, providing all of their own food and security against pirates, outlaws, predators, and the like. 

Louisiana has a very interesting cultural history and this is easy to understand when you consider that the major influences were a “gumbo” of Spanish, French, and Native American going back hundreds of years. 

Here’s a good short primer on the area and its history.

Apparently “Natchitoches” is pronounced NACK-i-tesh. The more you know… 

A longer but still very interesting PBS video.

Today in 1614, Pocahontas Marries Brit

When she was 11 in 1607 she is said to have saved the life of Jamestown settler John Smith:

He traded for corn (maize) with the local Indians and began a series of river voyages that later enabled him to draw a remarkably accurate map of Virginia. While exploring the Chickahominy River in December 1607, he and his party were ambushed by members of the Powhatan empire, which dominated the region. He was ultimately taken to their emperor, Chief Powhatan, also known as Wahunsenacah. According to Smith’s account, he was about to be put to death when he was saved by the chief’s young daughter of age 10 or 11, Pocahontas, who placed herself between him and his executioners.

A painting of said event.

For larger image, click here.

A few years later she learned English and converted to Christianity — while held in “friendly” captivity by the British — and took the name Rebecca. 

John Rolfe, a prominent tobacco farmer in the Jamestown area, asked for and received permission to marry her from both her father Chief Powhatan and the Virginia governor. 

This was a pretty radical move in 1614, a white Brit marrying an Indian princess — but it bought a few years of peace in the region, which is probably one of the primary reasons everyone was good with it.

She bore him a son the following year and in 1616 they traveled back to his home in England. Things went well until they didn’t:

In the spring of 1616 Pocahontas, her husband, their one-year-old son, Thomas, and a group of other Native Americans, men and women, sailed with Governor Dale to England. There she was entertained at royal festivities. The Virginia Company apparently saw her visit as a device to publicize the colony and to win support from King James I and investors. While preparing to return to America, Pocahontas fell ill, probably with an upper respiratory ailment (though some historians believe that she may have contracted smallpox or dysentery). Her illness took a turn for the worse and interrupted her return voyage before her ship left the River Thames. She died in the town of Gravesend at about age 21 and was buried there on March 21, 1617. Afterward her husband immediately returned to Virginia; her son remained in England until 1635, when he went to Virginia and became a successful tobacco planter.

She was just 21 when she died — but in all honesty, that sounds like one adventure-filled life.

By 1622 nearly everyone at Jamestown was dead, murdered in a surprise raid by the Powhatan tribe — her father had passed in 1618, this was not on him — in what came to be known as the Jamestown Massacre. 

Hmm, I wonder if they showed that in the Disney movie… 

Ella Fitzgerald, “Misty”, Plus the Original by Erroll Garner

 

One of the most beautiful songs ever recorded

My own preference by a very slight margin is the Sarah Vaughn version, but both are unbelievably great.

Written by pianist Erroll Garner in the early 50s, and originally recorded by him without vocals. Here he is on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1961. 

Pure beauty. 

Imagine, if you can, being so good at singing, and voice control, that you can sing that melody.

 

Porsche Air-Cooled Engine: How it Works

 

The basics of how air-cooled engines work as oppposed to water-cooled are pretty simple: air-cooled must keep cool air flowing over the motor to keep it at normal operating temperature, since it has no radiator or coolant as water-cooled motors do.

But how, exactly, do they do that? And where does heat for the passenger compartment come from?

Here’s how.

Slavery Refresher, Barbary Pirates Edition

We’ve all heard about Barbary Pirates, but other than the U.S. Marines defeating them in the early 1800s, what do we really know about that era?

Well, it lasted over 300 years, from 1500-1815 more or less, and during that time the Barbary Pirates captured lots of loot but also lots of people and either enslaved them or sold them into slavery.

One historian estimates that 1.5 million Europeans were enslaved in this way. The slave trade was a thriving business.

Did you know that Barbary Pirates raided towns as far away as Ireland to capture slaves? Neither did I.

And if you’ve ever heard the term “galley slave” but were unsure exactly what that means, well … you won’t be unsure any more. Think about living that life next time you’re having a bad day. The phrase “hell on earth” seems pretty close.

Slavery was not just common throughout the world for thousands of years, it was a major source of revenue for many of the richest people.

It was not invented in America in 1619.

Caro Emerald, Recent Discovery

 

A week ago Saturday while driving and listening to my excellent local jazz station KCCK 88.3 the jock played this great Latin Jazz tune, “A Night Like This” … 

Caroline Esmerelda van der Leeuw is from the Netherlands and sings Latin Jazz with a touch of R&B as part of Caro Emerald. 

Their debut album Deleted Scenes from the Cutting Room Floor, featuring this as one of the singles, went to #1 for 30 consecutive weeks on the Dutch charts in 2010, the longest run ever.

Here’s a full performance by them from 2010 at the North Sea Jazz Festival.

They released another album or two but sadly are no more.

Freddie King, “Hideaway”

This one song from 1960 launched him to legendary status over the next several years among white blues players like Eric Clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Johnny Winter, and countless others.

I nearly always prefer these gritty, raw performances by the original artists, especially with this style of blues made famous by Freddie plus several others like Magic Sam (one of my favorites) and B.B. King.

They invented and perfected a variation on 1940s and 50s R&B dubbed West Side Blues, or Uptown Blues, with an uptempo, energetic, danceable groove, often featuring horns — and they are the best at it.

More about him, and the TV show he appeared on here, coming up over the next few weeks.

Say Hi to Simba

 

He’s friendly and chill. He likes people and will let anyone pet him. Like a dog, in many ways.

Of course he likes sitting in boxes, and bags. Every cat seems to like this, and for us it’s endlessly entertaining. Put a box on the floor, wait a couple minutes, and he’s sitting in it. Just looking at you like “ha, look what I did!”

William Zinsser on Writing

 

Anyone who has ever had to write anything for anyone can gain something from these videos and the books they are drawn from.

Personally I have been through both of these journeys — to write well, and writing to learn — separately from these books.

Writing to learn, I discovered quite by accident, is the best reason to write, at least for me. Now I write to amuse and inform myself, I write to learn by researching and tying threads together, and I write to organize thoughts and test my own assumptions about a topic. It’s quite energizing and I feel like I understand a little bit more around the world around me every day.

You have to understand a topic to write clearly about it. If you find you have trouble writing about it, you probably don’t understand it well enough quite yet. That means go back and learn more, and then come back to the writing.

Of course a secondary goal is to entertain readers enough that they want to come back next time. But I find that, for me, if I flip the goals around and make that the primary goal, the magic goes out of it.

Writing to Learn

Top notch advice, all of that.

Then there’s the one thing every single human wishes they could do better: write well.

Believe it or not, everyone can become a much better writer by following some rules and being disciplined about cutting out unnecessary words. Use active voice and present tense. Eliminate long words when short ones will do. Etc.

Clarity is king.

It’s more of a craft than an art, and that means everyone can learn enough to be better.

Only prodigies can sit down and just write once and be done with it. Jack Kerouac famously did that with “On the Road”, writing the whole thing on a single sheet of rolled up paper. Put that out of your mind; it does not work like that.

Here’s how it does work. On Writing Well.

I have not read either of these books, but know the concepts within them very well. 

Elton John Turns 77 Today

 

Born on this day, March 25, in 1947

It’s easy to take an amazing artist like Elton John for granted, but he’s been a legend for 50+ years now and his music was a big part of my musical education as a teenager.

To pick just one year from his peak in the 1970s, these three songs are all from 1973, when he released two albums, “Don’t Shoot Me, I’m Only the Piano Player” and “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road”. Both reached #1 in the US, UK, Canada, and Australia. Three singles reached either #1 or #2 in the US, and a fourth reached #12. 

It was a pretty solid year for him.

Always one of my favorite Elton John songs, “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road”, live at Dodger Stadium, 1975.

Just Elton and piano, bringing the beauty of the melody of “Daniel” to the forefront.

I love the way he says “sure” without hesitation and just sits down to play this masterpiece that means so much to the guy in the audience as a tribute to his long gone dear friend.

For me the real difference maker was the quality of the album cuts, like “Blues for Baby and Me”. All of his albums in the early- and mid-70s had several such quality songs.

I could go on and on and on — we’ve only covered songs from 1973 here! 

A description of Elton John’s musical legacy from Wikipedia.

John has more than fifty top-40 hits on the UK Singles Chart and US Billboard Hot 100, including nine number ones in both countries, as well as seven consecutive number-one albums in the US. He has sold over 300 million records worldwide, making him one of the best-selling music artists of all time. He is the most successful solo artist in the history of the US Billboard charts. His tribute single to Princess Diana, "Candle in the Wind 1997", a rewritten version of his 1974 single, sold over 33 million copies worldwide and is the best-selling chart single of all time. In 2021, he became the first solo artist with UK Top 10 singles across six decades. Among John's numerous awards, he is one of 19 entertainers to win the EGOT, which includes an Emmy Award, five Grammy Awards, two Academy Awards, and a Tony Award. He also won two Golden Globes, a Laurence Olivier Award, and the Kennedy Center Honor. He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1992 and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994, and is a fellow of The Ivors Academy. He was knighted by Elizabeth II for services to music and charity in 1998 and was appointed a member of the Order of the Companions of Honour in 2020, being invested at Windsor Castle in 2021 by the Prince of Wales.

Seven consecutive number one albums.

His YouTube channel is chock full of great videos, and well worth digging into.

The Silk Road

In 130 BC the Han Dynasty opened trade with the West, so this is considered the start date for the Silk Road and for truly global trade, but it had ancient origins even before that.

The Silk Road (a.k.a  “Silk Routes” because it was actually many trails, not just one road) was a major trade route for over 1500 years until it was blocked by the Ottoman Empire in 1453 due to a blockade against China.

When I was in school they talked about Marco Polo and the Silk Road together, quickly and superficially, but the Silk Road was open for 1400 years before Marco Polo, a mercantilist from Venice, explored the entire Asian world visiting many countries as the foreign emissary of Kublai Khan for over 20 years, from 1269-1291, and wrote a book about it, “The Travels of Marco Polo”. 

That book opened European eyes and culture to China and the “Far East”. 

During that same time frame, the 13th Century, the Mongol Empire expanded dramatically, extending from the Sea of Japan to the Mediterranean Sea, the largest contiguous land empire in history. The Silk Road, therefore, was completely controlled by one empire during the travels of Marco Polo.

The key driver of this explansion was Genghis Khan, grandfather of Kublai Khan.

Quotes by and about Willie Mays

Lots of good quotes by Willie, but I want to highlight this one:

I always enjoyed playing ball, and it didn't matter to me whether I played with white kids or black. I never understood why an issue was made of who I played with, and I never felt comfortable, when I grew up, telling other people how to act. Over the years, a lot of organizations have asked me to be their spokesman, or have wanted me to make speeches about my experiences as a black athlete, or to talk to Congressmen about racial issues in sports. But see, I never recall trouble. I believe I had a happy childhood. Besides playing school sports, we'd play football against the white kids. And we thought nothing of it, neither the blacks nor the whites. It was the grownups who got upset ... I never got into a fight that was caused by racism." In Say Hey : The Autobiography of Willie Mays (1988)

Exactly right. 

I am not a fan of “activists” and other troublemakers demanding that athletes and others in the public eye enlist their pet social causes. That’s using people, and it’s presumptuous and rude and arrogant as hell. 

More from the Say Hey Kid:

• Baseball is a game, yes. It is also a business. But what it most truly is, is disguised combat. For all its gentility, its almost leisurely pace, baseball is violence under wraps.
• I didn't think like that, about best seasons. What if you thought '97 was your best year — what would you do now? I never looked back. I couldn't dwell on last year's season. I always looked forward. I never worried about what other people were doing — except the guy I was playing against.
• I can't tell you about moments because I wasn't into that. I just played every day and enjoyed what I was doing. When I made a great catch it was just routine. I didn't worry about it. Winning was important. Winning.

These quotes show that he was 100% dialed in. 

He had conquered the mental part of sports, which is always the hardest part to conquer. That’s a big part of being able to play for a long, long time, as he did.

Gil Hodges:

I can't very well tell my batters don't hit it to him. Wherever they hit it, he's there anyway.

And finally, Leo Durocher:

I never saw a f*cking ball get out of a f*cking ball park so f*cking fast in my f*cking life

LOL, well, it does get the point across!

Baseball Almanac has many, many baseball quotes here. 

I’ve written about Willie before, just use the search box at the right side of this page.

Today in 1871: The Search for Dr. David Livingstone Begins

 

Livingstone was a Scottish doctor, missionary, and explorer with extensive travels in Africa starting in 1840 who left the U.K. in 1865 to discover the source of the Nile. He was quite the leader and a true hero of the Victorian Age:

Livingstone was married to Mary Moffat Livingstone, from the prominent 18th-century Moffatt missionary family. Livingstone came to have a mythic status that operated on a number of interconnected levels: Protestant missionary martyr, working-class "rags-to-riches" inspirational story, scientific investigator and explorer, imperial reformer, anti-slavery crusader, and advocate of British commercial and colonial expansion. As a result, Livingstone became one of the most popular British heroes of the late 19th-century Victorian era.

Why was he so focused on finding the source of the Nile? He wanted to gain enough power to combat the evils of slavery, specifically the Arab slave trade: 

"The Nile sources", he told a friend, "are valuable only as a means of opening my mouth with power among men. It is this power [with] which I hope to remedy an immense evil."

More details on the Arab slave trade. Like most people, I was unaware until reading about this today that Livingstone’s primary motivation was ending slavery as part of his Christian missionary goals and lifestyle.

By 1871 he’d been gone 6 years with no word, and people were curious. So the publisher of the New York Herald sent a journalist named Henry Stanley to find him. 

Stanley himself had led an interesting life too:

At age 28, Stanley had his own fascinating past. As a young orphan in Wales, he crossed the Atlantic on the crew of a merchant ship. He jumped ship in New Orleans and later served in the Civil War as both a Confederate and a Union soldier before beginning a career in journalism. […] After setting out from Zanzibar in March 1871, Stanley led his caravan of nearly 2,000 men into the interior of Africa. Nearly eight months passed—during which Stanley contracted dysentery, cerebral malaria and smallpox—before the expedition approached the village of Ujiji, on the shore of Lake Tanganyika. Sick and poverty-stricken, Livingstone had come to Ujiji that July after living for some time at the mercy of Arab slave traders. When Stanley’s caravan entered the village on October 27, flying the American flag, villagers crowded toward the new arrivals. Spotting a white man with a gray beard in the crowd, Stanley stepped toward him and stretched out his hand: “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?”

Livingstone led an amazing and adventurous life, and was one of the main early explorers of the entire African continent. He is buried at Westminster Abbey.

From Wikipedia, his travels from 1851 until his death in 1873, part of the Scramble for Africa.

99 Years Ago and Still the Deadliest Tornado in U.S. History

 

March 18, 1925:  The Tri-State Tornado killed nearly 700 people

Estimated later to be an EF5 with winds topping 300MPH at times, it ripped through southeastern Missouri, southern Illinois, and southwestern Indiana following this track.

More:

A small tornado that touched down near Ellington, Missouri gained momentum over the course of the afternoon. In the three-and-a-half hours that followed, it ballooned to record widths and speed. At one point, observers calculated that it was a full mile wide, and it maintained an average speed of 62 miles per hour and a top speed of 73 miles per hour.

The devastation in Illinois in particular is on a scale that is difficult to comprehend. 

• Murphysboro:  243 dead, 623 injured (total of 866) and much of the town destroyed 
• 541 dead and 1423 seriously injured in one 40 minute stretch in Murphysboro, De Soto, Hurst-Bush, and West Frankfort 
• Multiple communities wiped completely off the map 

695 total dead, still the deadliest tornado, with the longest track (over 200 miles on the ground), 99 years later.

A collection of sobering photographs can be found at the NWS site for the 1925 Tri-State Tornado, like these:

Chris Rea, Still Making Good Music 46 Years Later

 

Chris Rea popped up out of nowhere it seemed with “Fool (If You Think It’s Over)” in 1978.

He wrote it for his little sister, who had just suffered her first heartbreak. 

Produced by Gus Dudgeon — Elton John’s legendary producer — it was “slicked up” and that helped it hit #1 for 3 straight weeks on the Adult Contemporary chart in America, but it was not really his style:

I've still got a piece of paper and on the original lyrics it says: ''Fool (If You Think It's Over).' Song for Al Green. 96 beats per minute. Al Jackson, drums.' And that's what 'Fool' was always meant to be. So, I don't know where that rhythm box came from. But we survived that."

Al Green!? I would love to hear what that could have turned into!

But he is a slide guitar player at heart, and that is the only song he’s ever recorded that he didn’t play guitar on. It got airplay on lots of different formats, but did squat in the UK, his home turf.

He fought against this dichotomy for several years, drifting a bit musically and getting away from the bluesy, soulful, guitar-based sound he was more comfortable with. This interesting interview explains that and more.

Chris eventually rediscovered his roots with songs like this from 1986.

He says the song is about where he and his (future) wife consummated. Good to know!

“The Road to Hell” has 33M views on Youtube right now, his most popular video.

“Chisel Hill” is one of his favorites, from the 1985 “Shamrock Diaries”, his comeback album, of sorts.

So the bottom line is, his only big American hit is really not who he is, even though it's a pretty good song, and if you like him at all, his other output is worth checking out on YouTube or a streaming service.

Why So Many Conifers Up North?

 

I’ve always wondered about this… obviously the short answer is “because they adapt to the northern habitat better than deciduous trees”, but why is that, exactly?

A good short intro on the differences between the two types.

More nerdy details in this one.

Conifers are cone-bearing seed plants …

The great majority are trees, though a few are shrubs. Examples include cedars, Douglas-firs, cypresses, firs, junipers, kauri, larches, pines, hemlocks, redwoods, spruces, and yews. [...]

Although the total number of species is relatively small, conifers are ecologically important. They are the dominant plants over large areas of land, most notably the taiga of the Northern Hemisphere, but also in similar cool climates in mountains further south. Boreal conifers have many wintertime adaptations. The narrow conical shape of northern conifers, and their downward-drooping limbs, help them shed snow. Many of them seasonally alter their biochemistry to make them more resistant to freezing. While tropical rainforests have more biodiversity and turnover, the immense conifer forests of the world represent the largest terrestrial carbon sink. Conifers are of great economic value for softwood lumber and paper production.

Deciduous meanwhile…

In the fields of horticulture and botany, the term deciduous means "falling off at maturity"and "tending to fall off", in reference to trees and shrubs that seasonally shed leaves, usually in the autumn; to the shedding of petals, after flowering; and to the shedding of ripe fruit. The antonym of deciduous in the botanical sense is evergreen.

Generally, the term "deciduous" means "the dropping of a part that is no longer needed or useful" and the "falling away after its purpose is finished". In plants, it is the result of natural processes. "Deciduous" has a similar meaning when referring to animal parts, such as deciduous antlers in deer, deciduous teeth (baby teeth) in some mammals (including humans); or decidua, the uterine lining that sheds off after birth.

18th Century Wooden Warships and How Were They Built

 

Always been fascinated by sailing ships in general and especially warships… 

Meanwhile if you ever use expressions like “carried away”, “mainstay”, or “bitter end”, you’re using old sailing expressions without realizing it.

Ethanol and the Renewable Fuel Standard

 

God Save Us From Regulators

I’ve always questioned the overall wisdom of adding ethanol to fuel, for several reasons, but Engineering Explained really dives into numbers and studies and other details. It’s not a pretty picture.

“Regulators” promised it would cut CO2 emissions, but it’s not at all clear that is the case, and use of ethanol might even generate more CO2.

He takes the idea of regulators seriously in order to dissect the particulars of how it’s working out, and I’m glad he does, because those questions definitely need answers. Somebody needs to nail their foot to the floor on these prognostications and prescriptions. God knows nobody else will do it.

But I often like to back up even further and wonder about the very idea of “regulators”, because over many decades we have been conditioned to bestow unearned respect on regulators, the same respect we give Science. 

You know, serious, smart, sober guys with white lab coats who are only interested in uncovering Truth. 

Peru’s Geography is Amazing

 

Deserts, Rainforest, Mountains, Volcanos … The List Goes On and On

Ancient Incan cities too. And terraces for farming on mountainsides. Nazca lines in the desert.

Something for everyone!

The Three Degrees

 

Seems Hotter Than That

Most everyone knows their biggest hit “When Will I See You Again” from 1974.

It hit the Top 10 in the U.S. and #1 for two consecutive weeks in the U.K., making them the first female group to do that since The Supremes ten years earlier in 1964.

From the same album, “Year of Decision”.

Here’s one from the following year, “Take Good Care of Yourself” from 1975. How this song was not a hit in the U.S., I do not understand. It was a Top 10 hit in the U.K. however.

This song is instantly recognizable to anyone who was alive in 1973, TSOP (The Sound of Philadelphia) by MFSB — legendary house band for Philadelphia International Records — and featuring The Three Degrees on vocals. 

They did another version that became the theme song for Soul Train, also called TSOP. I love this song. 

107 Years Ago, Czarist Russia Era Ended by Revolution

 

Things Did Not Go Well After That for the Romanovs

Czar Nicholas II had a tumultuous reign from his coronation in 1896.

A few days after his coronation in 1896, nearly 1,400 of his subjects died during a huge stampede. They had gathered on a large field in Moscow to receive coronation gifts and souvenirs, but the day ended in tragedy. It was a disturbing beginning to Nicholas’ reign, and his bungled response earned him the nickname “Nicholas the Bloody.” 

The devastation from The Great War is hard to wrap one’s brain around.

Then, in 1914, Russia was drawn into World War I but was unprepared for the scale and magnitude of the fighting. Nicholas’ subjects were horrified by the number of casualties the country sustained. Russia had the largest number of deaths in the war—over 1.8 million military deaths, and about 1.5 million civilian deaths.

The war eroded whatever semblance of control Nicholas still had over the country. Without men at home to farm, the food system collapsed, the transportation system fell apart, and the people began to riot.

3,300,000 casualties … the highest number ever suffered by any nation in any war in human history at the time. Russia surpassed it’s own record in WWII with over 20,000,000 casualties. These numbers seem largely incomprehensible today.

The revolution began on March 8, 1917 with rioting and demonstrations escalating into violent armed conflict and within days the government collapsed.

The imperial government was forced to resign, and the Duma formed a provisional government that peacefully vied with the Petrograd Soviet for control of the revolution. On March 14, the Petrograd Soviet issued “Order No. 1,” which instructed Russian soldiers and sailors to obey only those orders that did not conflict with the directives of the Soviet. The next day, March 15, Czar Nicholas II abdicated the throne in favor of his brother Michael, whose refusal of the crown brought an end to the czarist autocracy.

The new provincial government, tolerated by the Petrograd Soviet, hoped to salvage the Russian war effort while ending the food shortage and many other domestic crises. It would prove a daunting task. Meanwhile, Vladimir Lenin, leader of the Bolshevik revolutionary party, left his exile in Switzerland and crossed German enemy lines to return home and take control of the Russian Revolution.

Lenin takes control, and the Romanovs are murdered a few months later.

Finally, late at night on July 17, 1918, the Romanov family was awoken and told to get ready for another move. Still hoping to escape, the women packed up their things and put on clothing into which they had sewn precious jewelry, religious icons and a large amount of money. Then, unexpectedly, their captors turned on them, attacking them first with bullets, then with the butts of guns, bayonets and even their own heels and fists. All seven of the Romanovs—and the last gasp of the Russian monarchy—were dead.

What may have looked like an impromptu murder was in fact a carefully planned act of violence. For days, the Romanovs’ Bolshevik captors had been preparing the house for the murder, including stocking up on benzene with which to burn the corpses and sulfuric acid with which to maim them beyond recognition.

More on the executions. 

Break-Up of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the 1800s

 

Chaotic European History

How chaotic? This chaotic.

It’s important to understand that much of the instability in the modern world is due to the mess that Europe was, and created around the world over centuries, and owns still to this day.  

LOL with Ozzy Man

 

This guy always makes me laugh

Supertramp’s First Breakout Album

 

Crime of the Century from 1974

Most bands, even top bands with excellent musicians, only have one or two really, really good albums in them — and for Supertramp, formed in 1970, this is definitely one of them.

The singles “Dreamer” and “Bloody Well Right” had some success but several other songs either received airplay on AOR stations or should have, such as “School” and my favorite, “Hide in Your Shell”. 

The album itself sold very well in Canada, the UK, Australia, and Germany, and hit #38 in the US.

“Hide in Your Shell”

The band had struggled to hit their stride in years prior, due to shifting lineups and trying to create a defining sound, both of which changed dramatically in 1973 when they found the lineup that worked and when one of the co-leaders and main songwriters Roger Hodgson started using electric piano to fuel his creativity. This album is the result.

Seemed to work pretty well.

Hide in Your Shell, School, and Dreamer were all written by Roger Hodgson. Turns out he had written a lot of great material a few years earlier, when he was 19, including Dreamer and two of the best-known songs that the band would not record until several years later for Breakfast in America (the title track and “The Logical Song”). 

This interview with him is well worth reading. It shows that he already had formed a lot of pretty mature views for a 19 year old. 

His lyrics work especially well for teens and young adults who are starting to question their place in the world. That’s exactly where I was when this band was popular in the late 70s, and this album in particular bings to mind a very specific time and place in my life, and pleasant memories with one particular friend, who loved this band and this album in particular.

“School” 

This Week in 1872: Yellowstone Named First National Park

 

March 1, 1872

First explored by John Colter starting in 1807, on his return trip from the Lewis and Clark Expedition. 

He is considered the first “mountain man” and so by definition he led quite the adventurous life, establishing trade with several Indian tribes and escaping an attack by the Blackfeet tribe by running naked and bloodied through the wilderness until his lone pursuer nearly caught him, only to be killed by Colter (later known as “Colter’s Run” in a retelling by Washington Irving and others).

When he finally returned to St. Louis in 1810 he told tales of steam rising from the Earth — describing geysers — which many people of course did not believe, coining the derisive term “Colter’s Hell” to describe it.

The area would remain largely untouched and un-explored until 1871:

The key to Yellowstone’s future as a national park, though, was the 1871 exploration under the direction of the government geologist Ferdinand Hayden. Hayden brought along William Jackson, a pioneering photographer, and Thomas Moran, a brilliant landscape artist, to make a visual record of the expedition. Their images provided the first visual proof of Yellowstone’s wonders and caught the attention of the U.S. Congress.

Within months it was declared the first national park.

A 45 minute National Geographic video:

New Music Friday: Mild Orange

Mild Orange, “Freak in Me”

I love the groove in this tune, and the way it slowly adds layer upon layer of guitars. Just a cool sound, that is relaxing yet energetic at the same time. That’s kind of their thing, apparently.

Mild Orange is four guys from New Zealand who met in college and formed the band in 2016. From Wikipedia: 

Mild Orange originates from Dunedin, New Zealand. The band was originally formed by early childhood friends Josh Mehrtens and Josh Reid who met in kindergarten and by chance met again in university, and later joined by Tom Kelk and Jack Ferguson. All four members hold degrees from the University of Otago. [...] According to the band, the name Mild Orange was chosen because 'The colour orange can cause one to experience a heightened sense of optimism, a boost in aspiration, and a stimulation of warmth and happiness

Here they are live and acoustic. I like how they let the music “breathe” by leaving a little space between the notes.

Found via YouTube which can be a great way to discover quality bands and musicians that are worth hearing. Here is the Mild Orange channel.

60 Years Ago This Week, Sonny Liston vs. Muhammad Ali

February 25, 1964 

Interesting commentary at the beginning, about Clay determining the “geography of the fight” with his trademark tactic of leaning back to lessen the impact of the opponent’s jab.

This fight shook the boxing world, as Liston was a huge bad-ass who consistently beat opponents to a pulp, easily and quickly. For him to quit by refusing to leave his corner to start the 7th round was … inconceivable. 

But at the same time Liston’s track record and connections are enough to make one wonder about his integrity in such a situation. His story makes for very interesting reading. Guys who get their start funded by mobsters and who then spend years being mob enforcers, and who go to prison a couple times for beating the shit out of guys (including a cop), are not the most upstanding, generally.

He took a “rematch” in 1965 and got “knocked out” in the first round.

Nice Work Guys

Technology Not Always Reliable, As It Turns Out

Maybe the FBI was just getting in some practice at targeting innocent people…

Bob Seger Might be the Most Normal and Likeable Giant Star in Rock and Roll History

In the Top Ten At Least

He just exudes big smiles and good vibes, all the time.

According to Wikipedia he has sold 75 million records worldwide. Not bad, Bob, not bad!

My personal favorites are “Main Street” and “Night Moves” and “Beautiful Loser” with a bunch of others tied for second. The only complaint I had about his music in the 70s and 80s was being overplayed on the radio — being so popular with so many people will do that sometimes.

He’s not getting any younger and with so many of my musical idols dying off these last few years, I need to make sure I recognize guys like him while they’re still here.

“Main Street”

Still sounds fresh 50 years later. And for me it instantly brings up a mental picture of driving around town, listening to this tune on the car stereo, not a care in the world, age 17 or so, with my whole life in front of me. 

Later as I reached my 40s, I grew to appreciate the melancholy looking back in “Night Moves”. So his music bookends my adult years, in a very subtle way.

Fun facts about Bob you may not know — I didn’t until just now. 

• Ran track in high school (Ann Arbor) 
• Co-wrote “Heartache Tonight” for the Eagles 
• Took ten years away from music to spend time with his wife and two small children from 1996-2006 
• Won the Port Huron to Mackinac race in 2001 and 2002 on his 52-foot sailboat 

He’s not getting any younger and is clearly a legend in popular music and an American institution. Now I feel a sense of regret never having seen him live, and he just retired last year at 78 years old. Best we can do now is enjoy listening to him while he’s still here. 

Today in 1919: Grand Canyon Becomes U.S. National Park

First named a National Monument in 1908 by Theodore Roosevelt

Coronado and his explorers were apparently the first “white men” to discover it in 1540 — but I’m pretty sure some Native Americans had spotted it at some prior point in history.

In 1540, members of an expedition sent by the Spanish explorer Coronado became the first Europeans to discover the canyon—though because of its remoteness, the area was not further explored until 300 years later. American geologist John Wesley Powell, who popularized the term “Grand Canyon” in the 1870s, became the first person to lead a journey across the entire length of the gorge in 1869. The harrowing voyage was made in four rowboats.

A look at the geography of the area today. 

Obviously there was no Lake Powell or  Lake Mead back then (created in the 20th century by the Glen Canyon and Hoover Dams, respectively). There was no Colorado River Aqueduct, or Central Arizona Aqueduct, or any other manmade diversions of the river water.

So imagine the amount of snow melt that river carried in spring and early summer. And then imagine riding all that in a rowboat like John Wesley Powell did in 1869. 

No thanks.

Jim Croce’s Last TV Appearance

September 14,1973 … six days later both he and his bandmate Maury Muehlheisen would perish in a horrific fiery plane crash… 

“Moving ahead so life won’t pass me by”

I found it kind of melancholy to watch, knowing all that and listening to the lyrics about leaving a legacy… 

From Wikipedia:

Croce composed most of his own material; however, he did not write "I Got A Name." In an interview with Billboard writer Norman Gimbel, it was revealed that Croce chose to record the song "because his father had a dream for him but had died before his son's first success."

Well. That’s some irony.

This was also the last song he ever performed, as it was the encore at his last concert in Natchitoches, Louisiana. 

The plane taking them to their next gig clipped a tree on takeoff and crashed, killing all 6 on board.

 

Two of My All-Time Favorite People Born on This Day: George Washington and …

… My Wife! Happy Birthday my love!

As for the George Washington part…

• History.com with the details
• Also, 11 Little-known Facts about ol’ George
• More: How George Washington Used Spies to Win the Revolutionary War

Fun Fact: he kinda sorta started the French-Indian War in 1754, which morphed into the Seven Years War in 1756, a global conflict, that led indirectly to the same oppressive taxation by the Brits on the American colonies, which subsequently led directly to the American Revolution. 

January 1975: Buckingham and Nicks Join Fleetwood Mac

Worked out pretty well … 

They offered the gig to Lindsey Buckingham alone, but he said it’s both of us or neither.

These two radically transformed the band and the first two albums by the new group sold many tens of millions of copies.

The first song on the “Fleetwood Mac” album from 1975 … an unmistakable Lindsey Buckingham tune.

A completely different and more commercial sound for them, although the prior versions of the band were quite good too.

They brought “Monday Morning” plus “Landslide” and “Rhiannon” (both written by Stevie Nicks) with them to the new Fleetwood Mac (originally planned for a second Buckingham-Nicks album).

“Rumours” of course would go on to make them mega-stars, and spawn many Top 10 singles, even though making the album caused several breakups and affairs within the band, leading to great songs like “Go Your Own Way” and “You Make Loving Fun” and “I Don’t Want to Know”.

Misty Blue, Three Different Versions

Dorothy Moore, “Misty Blue”

Originally written for Brenda Lee who turned it down, it became a big country hit in the mid-60s for both Wilma Burgess …

… and Eddy Arnold

It works in both styles — and Eddy Arnold has the most soothing voice in history — but Doroth Moore made it her own, I would say.

FDR Issues Executive Order 9066 on Feb 19, 1942

Later known as “Japanese Internment Camps” 

However, strangely enough, there is no language in the order itself specifying the Japanese or any other ethnic group. From archives.org:

The West Coast was divided into military zones, and on February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 that authorized military commanders to exclude civilians from military areas. Although the language of the order did not specify any ethnic group, Lieutenant General John L. DeWitt of the Western Defense Command proceeded to announce curfews that included only Japanese Americans.

Reading further reveals it was not Roosevelt but DeWitt who turned what was a generic “exclude civilians from military areas” order into an “imprison 122,000 people, 70,000 of them citizens” order. 

General DeWitt first encouraged voluntary evacuation by Japanese Americans from a limited number of areas. About seven percent of the total Japanese American population in these areas complied. Then on March 29, 1942, under the authority of Roosevelt's executive order, DeWitt issued Public Proclamation No. 4, which began the forced evacuation and detention of Japanese-American West Coast residents on a 48-hour notice. Only a few days prior to the proclamation, on March 21, Congress had passed Public Law 503, which made violation of Executive Order 9066 a misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in prison and a $5,000 fine.

In the next six months, approximately 122,000 men, women, and children were forcibly moved to "assembly centers." They were then evacuated to and confined in isolated, fenced, and guarded "relocation centers," also known as "internment camps." The 10 sites were in remote areas in six western states and Arkansas: Heart Mountain in Wyoming, Tule Lake and Manzanar in California, Topaz in Utah, Poston and Gila River in Arizona, Granada in Colorado, Minidoka in Idaho, and Jerome and Rowher in Arkansas.

Nearly 70,000 of the evacuees were American citizens. The government made no charges against them, nor could they appeal their incarceration. All lost personal liberties; most lost homes and property as well. Although several Japanese Americans challenged the government’s actions in court cases, the Supreme Court upheld their legality.

Well, that’s pretty much how that’s going to work when, 3 months after Pearl Harbor, you designate the Secretary of War to decide how to enforce such broad new powers. His goal is to run the war, and now you gave him carte blanche to strip rights from citizens. And then he delegates that power to a Lieutenant General in the Western Defense Command.

Was it legal? Not exactly. But Lincoln suspended habeus corpus during the Civil War. That wasn’t “legal”, exactly. 

Wartime tends to muddy the waters on what is strictly legal and what is not. 

And it’s not like this attack on Japanese ethnics came out of nowhere. California led the way (as a result of the Gold Rush of 1848 and completion of the Trans-Continental railroad in 1869 both of which brought many Chinese into the area) with anti-Chinese sentiment leading to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, a federal law prohibiting any further such immigration for ten years — and was subsequently renewed several times. 

Later, California passed the California Alien Land Law of 1913 which prohibited “aliens ineligible for citizenship from owning agricultural land or possessing long term leases of it”, targeting primarily Japanese farmers after an influx of indentured servants from Hawaii in 1900. It was overturned in 1952 by the U.S. Supreme Court as a violation of the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.

There was plenty of public support for anti-Asian discrimination, in other words. These examples are just scratching the surface. 

A map from the National Park Service site showing the locations and max populations of the camps.