Turkey buzzards

On this day, apparently according to time-honored turkey-buzzard tradition, the Turkey Buzzards return to Hinckley, Ohio.

And in music history, Lightnin' Hopkins was born on this day, in 1912.

In 1783, George Washington asked his officers to not support the Newburgh Conspiracy, a potential officers’ insurrection due to long-overdue wages. Washington subtly revealed that he had sacrificed much as well, and the officers relented.

If we make it back

My latest. An original design, based on 1) images of shoes from Carolingian and early Christian art, 2) extant late Roman-era shoes, 3) period design motifs and 4) period construction techniques. I think they would have looked exotic but not eye-poppingly out-of-place in Charlemagne's court.


How we deal with this will be very telling. I suspect we'll ignore it, or call it an 'internal issue for China,' or something, at least until BushCheney's out of office, but it's a growing problem (and if XinHua acknowledges it, then it's probably getting hard to suppress). Predictably, India is staying out of it as much as possible (that's their policy, I presume it secures something like peace along their long border). It will affect the Olympics, though, perhaps even lead to some privately-organized boycotts, and therefore will affect trade, and that is the only thing that matters these days. Disrupt Chinese-American trade, and you've disrupted the global economy.

This is amazing, though, amazingly cool.


Georg Philip Telemann, Casey Jones, and Albert Einstein were all born on this day, in 1681, 1864, and 1879, respectively.

And in 1840, the Times reported that, for the second winter running, foal-like tracks, but 'of considerable size' were discovered, running for 12 miles through the glens of Orchy, Lyon and Lochay, south of the fairy-haunted Rannoch Moor in Scotland.

In the balance

My shop was broken in to the other night. F-ing thieves cleaned me out: merchandise, materials, tools, Phil's bike, gone. At least $5k lost. Hi ho. Life (and business) goes on. I'm rebuilding.

In 1921, Mongolia (then Outer Mongolia) declared its independence from China under the leadership of the Black Baron (aka the Mad Baron and the Bloody Baron, ahem) Roman Ungern von Sternberg, a Russian-East European aristocrat disenfranchised by the October Revolution.

old brown shoe

Probably obvious, but this is not my work. Not my photograph, not my shoe. It's a Roman-era shoe, which I used as part of the inspiration for the pair of shoes I just delivered, which you'll see here, tomorrow.

Some very interesting reading about the Spitzer hoohah.

In 1930, Mahatma Gandhi started a 240 mile march to the sea, in protest of the British monopoly on salt in India.

My sentiments, only better

Larisa Alexandrovna sums up my sentiments on the Spitzer hoohah. She concludes:

Spitzer's sexual activities really only affect his relationship with his wife and family. They only affect us if those relationships are illegal, which in this case it appears to be so. But to target and investigate someone in hopes of finding something illegal is also illegal. I am not comfortable right now that Spitzer was legally investigated, despite the allegations of what he was actually caught doing and the fact that it was a criminal activity.

And I am certainly not comfortable with the hysteria over two consenting adults having sex, while no one cares that the Bush administration lied us into an illegal war in which nearly a million Iraqis have been killed and tens of thousands of Americans have either been destroyed or killed. I am also not happy that the illegal domestic spying this administration has engaged in appears to have nothing to do with terrorism. I am not surprised by this, of course. What I am surprised by is that no one else seems to care that the White House is more interested in sex between consenting adults than in catching a terrorist.

Siegelman, Spitzer... who's next?

I'd like to share this with you. I think it begins to approach a difficult issue. That's a big step, considering the issue (more on that later).

The fact that Governor Spitzer's activity with a hooker is being reported as hot news is puzzling, so I thought about it: Why is some straight guy being persecuted for hiring a hooker? A female hooker? I think we all assume that everybody in Washington does that, don't we? So, why him? Why not the many guys guilty of much dirtier stuff?

I personally think this story is two things: 1, a "Look at that interesting thing over there!" story, a distraction from another, more threatening-to-whoever story; and 2, a case of a Bush-appointed D.A. acting on orders from above, a la Alabama. I just think the timing is interesting, following his scathing criticism of the Bush administration, not too long ago (criticism was published in October '07, the recordings of the governor were made in February '08). The schadenfreude coming from Wall Street may also be telling.

To say the details of this investigation are murky and dubious (as Sam Seder just said on the radio) is to give them great credit. Something is rotten here. My advice to the Governor: Don't resign, but for god's sake stay out of convertibles and small aircraft.

Send in the Clowns

In 1702, the first regular English-language newspaper, the Daily Courant, began publishing in London.

Since then, March 11 has apparently been a quiet news day (if you're not Lithuania [declared independence in 1990] or Paul McCartney [knighted in 1997]).

Thanks for all the fish

Douglas Adams was born on this day in 1952. Maybe the funniest man I never knew.

Pomiculture

They're singing "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy," and it was hot. They really brought it to life. It's still ringing in my head.

I am learning about pruning, the hard way. I found a book about caring for fruit trees, and it had a chapter on pruning older trees, so I read that (it has proven to be useful), but mostly I'm learning just by looking and carefully cutting. You have no idea how much wood is in a tree, until you try to prune it. You feel like you've removed a whole trees-worth of wood, then you look up and can't even see where you were cutting. Amazing. One of three trees is almost done now, two weeks after I started (we're working on the two apple trees at the same time, but one more so than the other).

In 49 bce, Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon, and in 1957, Osama bin Laden was born.
Is this irony?