Author: pat frederick

Desert Dust

FROM: COWBOYSTATEDAILY:

R.J. “Gill” Gillilan would often sit in the corner of the room, sporting a leather coat and gold chains or, at other times, bib overalls when he didn’t want to be bothered by anyone. He was in Las Vegas, Nevada as an undercover “john” on what his wife, Carmalen, called “smut patrol.”

Gillilan had planned his personal vacations meticulously and always looked forward to leaving behind the glitz of Sin City for the sage and dirt of Wyoming.  He had been drawn back to his boyhood home by a portrait of a horse. 

Eighty years ago, Frank “Wild Horse” Robbins was rounding up mustangs with an airplane in the Red Desert near Rawlins, Wyoming, when he spotted a rare palomino stallion running with the herd. He sent for his photographer, Verne Wood, to take a photo, unaware of the sequence of events that he was about to unleash. 

This photo caught the imagination of the world. The horse, now known as Desert Dust, had posed in sage and rock the day of his capture, still untamed and wild.  More than a million copies were sold worldwide appearing at such prestigious places as the House of Commons in London.

Wood hired a team to colorize the copies he sold, and life was good. However, his good fortune was about to change. Realizing the stunning popularity of his horse, Robbins sued for the rights of the famous photo, especially since now he planned to shoot a movie about Desert Dust with Universal Studios.  It was this first photo of Desert Dust that sparked an investigation by the Las Vegas detective into just who this horse was. What began as mere curiosity of a wild horse ballooned into a lifelong passion to tell the true tragic story of Desert Dust.

The Spark of an Investigation

Desert Dust was once the most famous Wyoming horse in the world, but by the time Gillilan was in high school in the 1960s, the memory of the wild stallion was beginning to fade and only tall tales seemed to remain. Desert Dust’s photo hung in nearly every important building in Rawlins, including Gillilan’s high school, and everyone knew his name but not much else.  

“I was always interested in the story of Desert Dust,” Gillilan said. “My granddad was really mad about the dog food thing.” Many of the wild horses in the early days were slaughtered after their capture for dog food. His grandfather hated to see these symbols of America destroyed like that and it colored Gillilan’s own story of all the horses, including Desert Dust.

Gillilan’s earliest memories of Desert Dust’s owner, Frank Robbins, was his grandpa glaring at the horse wrangler in unconcealed contempt at a wild horse sale. Robbins had used airplanes to catch Desert Dust and the horse had died in his care. It also didn’t help that his grandpa’s neighbor and friend was a horse wrangler in competition with Frank Robbins.

“Typical small town,” Carmalen, Gillilan’s wife, said. “You have to take one side or the other. You can’t both be true.” These memories of his childhood prompted Gillilan to eventually buy his own tinted portrait of Desert Dust and hang it in his house. It became more than a photo and a story began to emerge after his daughter, Kyla, asked an innocent question.

She wanted to know who the horse was and Gillilan had given her the basic answer he knew. Desert Dust had been the first wild stallion ever captured by an airplane and this horse was the inspiration of his Rawlins high school mascot, the Outlaws. However, he was about to prove himself wrong. The longer he pondered the question of just who Desert Dust really was, the more doubt crept in and the investigator in him took over. Gillilan may not have had any formal training as a historian, but he knew how to find the clues that would tell the story. 

For the next 20 years, his vacations involved chasing down the facts about Desert Dust and knocking on the doors of strangers. He dragged his family into remote canyons, learned how to surf the web and went wherever the trail led him. This hard-boiled detective was determined to learn the truth about Desert Dust, no matter how long it took. Slowly, the story began to emerge.

The Famous Photo

On the morning of July 12, 1945, after getting the call from horse wrangler Robbins, Wood had snapped a black-and-white photo of Desert Dust. Even as he took the photo, his family said he knew that he had just captured the photo of a lifetime. “It was about a week before the atomic bomb was tested in New Mexico,” Gillilan said, noting the timeline. “The war wasn’t over yet when they developed this picture.”

Wood was the first one to announce the name of the wild palomino and started selling black and white copies to others besides Robbins. As the picture’s popularity started to grow, Wood started colorizing his photos and then he hit it big. “Verne really started selling a lot of them after he submitted the picture to the Denver Post and won the contest,” Carmalen said. 

In the late 1940s, everybody that was in agriculture that could went to Denver for the stock show and the national western show. The newspaper contest announced their winner when this crowd was in town and people from all over the country saw the picture as a result. Sales rocketed.  “He started hiring gals to come in and do the hand painting, and he’s getting orders all over the country and things have never been better,” Gillilan said. “He has six people working for him.” “He actually built an enlarger,” Carmalen added. “He was really cutting edge.”

When Robbins realized just how successful Wood was with this photograph of his horse, he filed a lawsuit. “It wouldn’t have been a problem at all if they had signed a contract,” Gillilan said. “But when Desert Dust’s picture got to be a really big deal, that’s when Frank sued.” Wood had already copyrighted the photo and so the judge decided that the two of them would both share the copyright and be able to make colorized photos to sell. As a result, Robbin’s wife started painting her own version of Desert Dust so there are now two different styles of the same photo with two different bylines. 

An Investigator Turns Historian 

Gillilan always had a fascination with history and making sure all perspectives were told, especially after spending a career keeping people honest in the sin city of Las Vegas. He recalled that as a youngster in 1962, before life led to detective work, he had gone to the Custer Battlefield and heard two completely different stories told by two rangers. Both were right but their stories were wildly different.  “That really got to me,” he said. “I learned that there’s more than one story to everything and everybody has their own version of the story.”

As an investigator, Gillilan knew that he would need to know as many versions as possible of a case and look at it from everyone’s point of view. “I also learned along the way that con artists are sharper than a tack in their own little element, although, there’s some really dumb criminals too,” he said.

He used this knowledge to pursue the story of Desert Dust and unravel years of hidden stories to get to the truth of just who this beautiful palomino was. “I think that the families (of Wood and Robbins) respected that,” Carmalen said. “The people directly responsible for Desert Dust and the picture could no longer speak for themselves and the good thing about Gil, he didn’t draw any conclusions. He said, here’s the facts.”

Gillilan ended up with a few unsolved mysteries surrounding Desert Dust and so his investigation continues to this day. One mystery was just who ultimately killed Desert Dust and why. The stallion had been found shot and following the facts he had uncovered, Gillilan concluded it was about fences. “Frank was an opportunist at best,” Gillilan said. “Desert Dust basically got killed because (a rancher named) Franklin let his horses go on somebody else’s land all the time.” 

Pursuing A Phantom Horse 

During the years of spending his vacations researching Desert Dust, Gillilan met remaining families of Wood and the horse wrangler Frank Robbins. Both families had their own pain, family lore and legends about Desert Dust that slowly Gillilan started to unravel. In the end, he also unintentionally brought about some healing as the families began to see the bigger picture of the legacy left behind by Desert Dust’s capture and brief life.

Gillilan also rekindled old friendships himself and made new, meaningful friends during his investigation into Desert Dust. “It just happened that when I was in high school, there was a young lady a year ahead of me that was editor of the school paper,” he said. “The next year I was the editor of the school paper and we became really close friends. Now she worked at the clerk of the courts office in Rawlins and I called her up.”

His high school friend put together all the information she had about the lawsuit with Desert Dust, helping to put more puzzle pieces together and deepening the mystery surrounding the horse and his picture.  He also found out that the real reason Frank sued was not to make more photos himself, although that became a nice benefit. He sued because he wanted to make a movie about his horse with Universal Pictures. 

“They said, ‘We don’t want anything to do with something that’s in a legal mess, even if it’s kind of settled,’” Gillian said. “So, they ended up making the movie with Desert Dust, but calling him Pal, short for palomino.”  “Fight of the Wild Stallion” was shot as a documentary, recreating the capture of Desert Dust, two years after he had been captured. When Gillilan uncovered a copy of the movie at the American Heritage Center, he felt like he had found gold. Here was Desert Dust, alive and running with the herd.

Another treasure was meeting others who had also been interested in Desert Dust’s story and had interviewed key people before they passed away, including the pilot who had captured Desert Dust with his plane.  “They ran them along fences they built into a canyon with the airplane, and the horseback riders would come along on the sides and force them into the box canyon,” Carmalen said. “That plane would scare them and then they closed the canyon behind them.”  On one of their family trips to Wyoming, the vacation was to the very canyon Desert Dust was captured in and the family discovered the fences were still there. 

Still Searching for New Clues 

Gillilan had donated his extensive research to the American Heritage Center and then discovered a Laramie author, Paul W. Papa, who just happened to also be living in Las Vegas. This was the author he knew would be able to tell Desert Dust’s story since, as Gillilan said, he was an investigator but not a good writer. Papa agreed to write Desert Dust’s story but with one stipulation. He said that the real story was how a Las Vegas investigator uncovered the story of this nearly forgotten stallion that at one time represented all of Wyoming’s wild horses. 

Gillilan thought that the book, ”Desert Dust”, would be the end of his journey with the palomino. However, he is still drawn to Desert Dust’s story and continues to discover more secrets that were lost to time.  “It’s a piece of history that would have been lost,” Carmalen said. “It’s really a fascinating story with a lot of characters that Gill brought to life.”

SOURCE: COWBOYSTATEDAILY.COM

DIY: Bungee & Wine Cork Cord Ties

From: thekimsixfix.com website:

Today I have a super quick little tutorial for you.  The end product isn’t the biggest, most exciting thing you have ever seen, but sometimes these little hacks are the best tricks!

If you are anything like me, you probably have a bunch of extension cords lying around your house or garage.  Maybe they are neatly wrapped up neatly hanging on a hook, or maybe they are thrown in a box, or maybe you are even organized enough to keep them neat by tying them up with zip ties (which is actually what I have always done when I am planning to store them long term.) But what I didn’t like about the Zip Tie method is that you need to cut off the tie to remove it, they aren’t reusable.

Then one day I was reading my subscription to Family Handyman (hey, some girls like Vogue, I like FH!) and I saw a reader had submitted this cork cord tie in the ‘hacks and tricks’ column.  I was immediately intrigued.  So I ran out and bought all the supplies to make my own.

The actual ‘device’ couldn’t be simpler.  A bungee cord through a wine cork.

I probably don’t have to tell you where to get wine corks. (This project is a good excuse for that glass of Merlot.)  Keep in mind YOU NEED TO USE THE SYNTHETIC RUBBER CORKS.  Real corks will crack and break when you put tension on them. So if you are your palate is too snobby too sophisticated to drink fake-o wine cork wine.. call me.  I can definitely hook you up.

When I made my version I used mini-bungee cords since they were cheaper than buying a roll of the cording itself.  If you were going to make a lot of these, or if you wanted the ties to be longer, you could always buy the actual cording.

Because I bought the cords, I needed to remove the hooks so I cut the knot off one end,

and slid the hooks off (I left the knot on the other end, since I could reuse it.) Next I drilled holes in the wine corks.  

You want the holes pretty close to the center, since you need to ends free to wrap the cord around. Next I pushed the cording through the holes forming a loop on one side. 

I tied the end of the cord that I had cut. And to prevent fraying I singed the end. Burning the tip of the cord melts the plastic and keeps the outer wrapping from unraveling.

The end product:

SOURCE: THEKIMSIXFIX.COM

Starfish

Starfish (or sea stars) are beautiful marine animals found in a variety of colors, shapes, and sizes. All starfish resemble stars, and though the most common have only five arms, some of these animals can grow up to 40 arms. The amazing sea creatures—part of a group of animals known as echinoderms—travel using their tube feet. They can regenerate lost limbs and swallow large prey using their unusual stomachs.

Sea Stars Are Not Fish

Although sea stars live underwater and are commonly called “starfish,” they are not true fish. They do not have gills, scales, or fins like fish do. Sea stars also move quite differently from fish. While fish propel themselves with their tails, sea stars have tiny tube feet to help them move along. Because they are not classified as fish, scientists prefer to call starfish “sea stars.”

Sea Stars Are Echinoderms

Sea stars belong to the phylum Echinodermata. That means they are related to sand dollars, sea urchins, sea cucumbers, and sea lilies. Overall, this phylum contains approximately 7,000 species. Many echinoderms exhibit radial symmetry, meaning their body parts are arranged around a central axis. Many sea stars have five-point radial symmetry because their body has five sections. This means that they do not have an obvious left and right half, only a top side and a bottom side. Echinoderms also usually have spines, which are less pronounced in sea stars than they are in other organisms such as sea urchins.

There Are Thousands of Sea Star Species

There are about 2,000 species of sea stars. Some live in the intertidal zone, while others live in the deep water of the ocean. While many species live in tropical areas, sea stars can also be found in cold areas—even the polar regions.

Not All Sea Stars Have Five Arms

While many people are most familiar with the five-armed species of sea stars, not all sea stars have just five arms. Some species have many more, such as the sun star, which can have up to 40 arms. 

Sea Stars Can Regenerate Arms

Amazingly, sea stars can regenerate lost arms, which is useful if a sea star is injured by a predator. It can lose an arm, escape, and grow a new arm later. Sea stars house most of their vital organs in their arms. This means that some species can even regenerate an entirely new sea star from just one arm and a portion of the star’s central disc. This won’t happen too quickly, though; it takes about a year for an arm to grow back.

Sea Stars Are Protected by Armor

Depending on the species, a sea star’s skin may feel leathery or slightly prickly. Sea stars have a tough covering on their upper side, which is made up of plates of calcium carbonate with tiny spines on their surface. A sea star’s spines are used for protection from predators, which include birds, fish, and sea otters. One very spiny sea star is the aptly named crown-of-thorns starfish.
Sea Stars Do Not Have Blood
Instead of blood, sea stars have a circulatory system made up primarily of seawater. Seawater is pumped into the animal’s water vascular system through its sieve plate. This is a sort of trap door called a madreporite, often visible as a light-colored spot on the top of the starfish. From the madreporite, seawater moves into the sea star’s tube feet, causing the arm to extend. Muscles within the tube feet are used to retract the limb.
Sea Stars Move Using Their Tube Feet
Sea stars move using hundreds of tube feet located on their underside. The tube feet are filled with seawater, which the sea star brings in through the madreporite on its top side. Sea stars can move quicker than you might expect. If you get a chance, visit a tide pool or aquarium and take a moment to watch a sea star moving around. It is one of the most amazing sights in the ocean. Tube feet also help the sea star hold its prey, including clams and mussels.
Sea Stars Eat with Their Stomachs Inside-Out

Sea stars prey on bivalves like mussels and clams as well as small fish, snails, and barnacles. If you’ve ever tried to pry the shell of a clam or mussel open, you know how difficult it is. However, sea stars have a unique way of eating these creatures. A sea star’s mouth is on its underside. When it catches its food, the sea star will wrap its arms around the animal’s shell and pull it open just slightly. Then it does something amazing: the sea star pushes its stomach through its mouth and into the bivalve’s shell. It then digests the animal and slides its stomach back into its own body. This unique feeding mechanism allows the sea star to eat larger prey than it would otherwise be able to fit into its tiny mouth.
Sea Stars Have Eyes

Many people are surprised to learn that starfish have eyes. It’s true. The eyes are there—just not in the place you would expect. Sea stars have an eye spot at the end of each arm. This means that a five-armed sea star has five eyes, while the 40-armed sun star has 40 eyes. Each sea star eye is very simple and looks like a red spot. It doesn’t see much detail but it can sense light and dark, which is just enough for the environments the animals live in.

All True Starfish Are in the Class Asteroidea

Starfish belong to the animal class Asteroidea. These echinoderms all have several arms arranged around a central disk. Asteroidea is the classification for “true stars.” These animals are in a separate class from brittle stars and basket stars, which have a more defined separation between their arms and their central disk.

Sea Stars Have Two Ways to Reproduce

Male and female sea stars are hard to tell apart because they look identical. While many animal species reproduce using only one method, sea stars are a little different. Sea stars can reproduce sexually. They do this by releasing sperm and eggs (called gametes) into the water. The sperm fertilizes the gametes and produces swimming larvae, which eventually settle on the ocean floor, growing into adult sea stars. Sea stars can also reproduce asexually through regeneration, which is what happens when the animals lose an arm.

SOURCE: THOUGHTCO.COM

National Eat Your Jello Day!

In honor of the day, I am bringing the recipe for Knox Blox—or the Jello you can cut into shapes and eat with your fingers!

ingredients

3 (3 1/4 ounce) packages Jello gelatin (any flavor)

4 (1 ounce) envelopes unflavored gelatin

4 cups boiling water

directions

Heat the 4 cups of water until boiling.

Combine the Jello and gelatin together in a bowl.

Pour in the water.

Stir until completely dissolved.

Pour into a glass dish or pan.

Put in refrigerator about 2 hours to cool and set.

When set cut into squares.

How many you get depends on how large you cut them. You can also use cookie cutters for shapes.

ENJOY!

Pennsylvania State Flower: Mountain Laurel

Mountain laurel (Kalmia latifolia) is a familiar shrub. While common, it is also extraordinary. A part of Pennsylvania’s folklore as the state flower and also studied by scientists for its biomechanics, this broadleaf evergreen abounds in mystique.

Since the early 18th century, mountain laurel has been cultivated as a flowering ornamental, an exotic addition to English gardens. English breeders later shipped it back across the Atlantic to be sold to Americans as a potted plant. At least 75 cultivars, mostly propagated through tissue culture, are available today. Its native range, however, is the eastern United States, extending from southern Maine to Louisiana and northern Florida. A total of seven species are known throughout North America, including sheep laurel (Kalmia angustfolia) and bog laurel (Kalmia polifolia). Along with rhododendrons, azaleas, huckleberries, and Indian pipe, Kalmias are ranked among the Ericacea (heath) family. 

Mountain laurel is the most prolific of the Kalmia species. In the woods, it can grow in dense, gnarly thickets known colloquially in southern states as “laurel hells.” Foresters and lumbermen in Pennsylvania have been heard to curse it with off-color expressions and not-so-nice epithets, the least offensive being “ankle breaker” or “ankle twister.” Mature plants average heights from seven to ten feet, but some specimens have been recorded as tall as 40 feet. Ascending and horizontal branches are often contorted and considered picturesque, and although a shrub, the healthiest of mountain laurels can take on the stature of a small tree. Its growth rate, however, is slow, four to eight feet over the course of a decade. Laurel wood and its burls have been used for various tools and utensils, explaining one of its many monikers, “spoonwood.”

The corymb is the marquee attraction. The fused petals of mountain laurel’s florets are shaped like inverted parasols. They range from near white to a blush of pink, while their corollas include subtle markings that can reveal either cinnamon, scarlet, rose, or burgundy. Like the symmetrical shapes of dancers in a 1930s Busby Berkeley musical, each floret is perfectly formed. From late May to late June, scores of these corymbs appear in one of two stages, bud or bloom.

Governor Gifford Pinchot dubbed mountain laurel the state flower of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in 1933. One factor in its designation concerned the shrub being located in nearly all of the state’s sixty-seven counties, but the public’s concern for conservation might have also played a role.

Generations of Pennsylvanians have been admonished by their parents, scout leaders, and camp counselors that it was against the law to pick the state flower. This is not true, according to the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources. There are also no legal restrictions on cultivating Kalmia latifolia, although special permits and inspections from the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture are required to sell any collected native specimens.  

SOURCE:PSU.EDU

14th Amendment Ratification

Passed by Congress June 13, 1866, and ratified July 9, 1868, the 14th Amendment extended liberties and rights granted by the Bill of Rights to formerly enslaved people.

Following the Civil War, Congress submitted to the states three amendments as part of its Reconstruction program to guarantee equal civil and legal rights to Black citizens. A major provision of the 14th Amendment was to grant citizenship to “All persons born or naturalized in the United States,” thereby granting citizenship to formerly enslaved people.

Another equally important provision was the statement that “nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” The right to due process of law and equal protection of the law now applied to both the federal and state governments.

On June 16, 1866, the House Joint Resolution proposing the 14th Amendment to the Constitution was submitted to the states. On July 28, 1868, the 14th amendment was declared, in a certificate of the Secretary of State, ratified by the necessary 28 of the 37 States, and became part of the supreme law of the land.

Congressman John A. Bingham of Ohio, the primary author of the first section of the 14th Amendment, intended that the amendment also nationalize the Bill of Rights by making it binding upon the states. When introducing the amendment, Senator Jacob Howard of Michigan specifically stated that the privileges and immunities clause would extend to the states “the personal rights guaranteed and secured by the first eight amendments.” Historians disagree on how widely Bingham’s and Howard’s views were shared at the time in the Congress, or across the country in general. No one in Congress explicitly contradicted their view of the amendment, but only a few members said anything at all about its meaning on this issue. For many years, the Supreme Court ruled that the amendment did not extend the Bill of Rights to the states.

Not only did the 14th Amendment fail to extend the Bill of Rights to the states; it also failed to protect the rights of Black citizens. A legacy of Reconstruction was the determined struggle of Black and White citizens to make the promise of the 14th Amendment a reality. Citizens petitioned and initiated court cases, Congress enacted legislation, and the executive branch attempted to enforce measures that would guard all citizens’ rights. While these citizens did not succeed in empowering the 14th Amendment during Reconstruction, they effectively articulated arguments and offered dissenting opinions that would be the basis for change in the 20th century.

AMENDMENT XIV

Section 1.
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Section 2.
Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

Section 3.
No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

Section 4.
The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.

Section 5.
The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

SOURCE: NATIONAL ARCHIVES

Made in America

Today would have been Toby Keith’s birthday. He was born in 1951 and passed away in 2024.  His song Made in America is one of my favorites.

My old man’s that old man, spent his life livin’ off the land
Dirty hands and a clean soul
It breaks his heart seein’ foreign cars filled with fuel that isn’t ours
And wearin’ cotton we didn’t grow

[Chorus]
He’s got the red, white, blue flyin’ high on the farm
Semper Fi tattooed on his left arm
Spend a little more at the store for a tag
In the back that says U-S-A
He won’t buy nothin’ that he can’t fix
With WD-40 and a Craftsman wrench
He ain’t prejudiced, he’s just
Made in America

[Verse 2]
He loves his wife, but she’s that wife that decorates on the 4th of July
But says, “Every day’s Independence Day”
She’s golden rule, teaches school, some folks say it isn’t cool
But she says the Pledge of Allegiance anyway


[Chorus]
He’s got the red, white, blue flyin’ high on the farm
Semper Fi tattooed on his left arm
Spend a little more in the store for a tag
In the back that says U-S-A
He won’t buy nothin’ that he can’t fix
With WD-40 and a Craftsman wrench
He ain’t prejudiced, he’s just
Made in America


Born in the heartland, raised up a family
Of King James and Uncle Sam

[Chorus]
He’s got the red, white, blue flyin’ high on the farm
Semper Fi tattooed on his left arm
Spend a little more in the store for a tag
In the back that says U-S-A
Won’t buy nothin’ that he can’t fix
With WD-40 and a Craftsman wrench
He ain’t prejudiced, he’s just
Made in America

[Outro]
Made in America
Made in America
Yeah, my old man’s that old man
Made in America

Freedom Fries

From Mental Floss:

Taylor writes: I’m a high school student and my history teacher just told us about how the United States once called French fries “freedom fries” to spite France. Please tell me he’s joking.

Yes, there was a time when some Americans decided to call French fries “freedom fries”—embarrassingly, a number of those people happened to be elected officials in the U.S. House of Representatives.

In early 2003, the United States was in the midst of a (rather unsuccessful) attempt to drum up worldwide support for a potential war with Iraq. While cobbling together a “coalition of the willing,” many historical allies of the U.S. said, “Nope.” One notable dissenter was France, whose officials had been vocally opposed to the imminent conflict. “As we’ve said from the outset,” French Foreign affairs Minister Dominique de Villepin said in January 2003, “we will not join in military intervention that did not have international support… We believe that military intervention would be the worst solution.”

By March, the course had been set. The UN couldn’t find evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but the United States made it clear that invasion was inevitable. War fever grew, and “with us or against us” found its way to the U.S. House of Representatives cafeteria. Rep. Bob Ney, an Ohio Republican who was chairman of the House Administration Committee and therefore in charge of operations for the Capitol complex, ordered that the word “French” be removed from all affiliated menus. French fries would become “freedom fries,” French toast “freedom toast.” According to the New York Times, “The action was unilateral.”

Barely a week before U.S. forces (along with troops from the U.K., Australia, and Poland) officially invaded Iraq, a sign was placed in the Longworth House Office Building food court that read, ”Update: Now serving in all House office buildings. Freedom fries.”

“This action today is a small, but symbolic effort to show the strong displeasure of many on Capitol Hill with the actions of our so-called ally, France,” Rep. Ney said at the time.

The idea for the change came from North Carolina Representative Walter B. Jones, who was inspired by Cubbie’s, a restaurant in his home state that had earned a little bit of press after deciding to rename their fries. Jones passed the suggestion on to Rep. Ney, who instituted the change.

When reached for a statement by the Times, a French Embassy spokeswoman said, ”I wonder if it’s worth a comment. Honestly. We are working these days on very, very serious issues of war and peace, life or death. We are not working on potatoes.” She also noted that French fries are, in fact, Belgian.

This wasn’t the first wartime name-switch in U.S. history. In the late ’50s, the Cincinnati Reds became the “Redlegs” in light of the McCarthy era and the Red Scare. During WWI, German measles were dubbed “Liberty Measles.”

Neal Rowland, the owner of Cubbie’s, said his decision to update the menu was inspired after learning about some of these decades-old name-switches. He is pictured above, outside of Cubbie’s. According to Yelp, his Beaufort, N.C. eatery no longer exists.

Rep. Bob Ney resigned from Congress in 2006 for his role in the Jack Abramoff corruption scandal. (Ney was eventually sentenced to 30 months in jail.) Upon leaving his post as chairman of the House Administration Committee, all the menus in the Capitol and connected buildings were changed, and French fries were finally served again.

SOURCE: MENTAL FLOSS

Bald Eagles

As we salute our country this month, let’s explore 17 interesting facts about our national bird! 

From Fact Animal:

1. Bald eagles are not actually bald

Despite their name, bald eagles have white, well feathered heads. The word bald once meant ‘white-haired’ and this was the name given to the eagle. Young bald eagles often don’t have white feathers on their head either, they are mostly brown. They develop these from around 5-6 years old.

2. They form a species pair with the white-tailed eagle 

A ‘species pair’ means two species are so similar in appearance and other features that the boundaries between them are often unclear. While roughly the same size and appearance, the white-tailed eagle is thought to have a somewhat paler brown body plumage and inhabits Eurasia, rather than North America. The pair are thought to have diverged from other sea eagles.

3. They have high pitch, rather underwhelming calls

They have a high pitch giggle-scream, rather than an impressive powerful scream that might be the expectation of a bird of the size and power of the bald eagle. Their rather underwhelming call has historically been dubbed over in some TV shows to make it sound more impressive!

When in groups, they emit these surprisingly high-pitched calls to one another and it is believed these vocalizations are a form of transferal of knowledge regarding the area and abundance of prey.

4. A bald eagle’s wingspan can reach 8ft!

Eagles are generally larger in colder environments, which corresponds with Bergmann’s rule – which is that species are generally smaller closer to the equator. This means the largest bald eagles are generally found in Alaska, and can weigh as much as 7kg with wingspans of 2.4m in length.

5. Bald eagles are notorious thieves

The osprey, a much smaller fish-eating raptor, often shares the same habitat as bald eagles. There are many records of bald eagles following osprey and stealing fish they have caught, either straight from the unfortunate bird or when it lands on a nest or perch.

6. They can reach speeds of 99mph when diving

It’s not often that they dive vertically, but they are capable of reaching extremely high speeds when diving for prey!

7. Bald eagles have vision 4-5 times better than humans

Like most birds of prey, the bald eagle has excellent vision, with sharper vision, a wider field of vision and they can even see UV light. It’s thought they are able to see a tadpole move at over 100m distance. It uses this exceptional sense to locate prey while flying at speed. Bald eagles also have a see-through eyelid called a nictitating membrane, which they can close to protect and clean their eyes, but still see!

8. They can catch animals as large as Canada geese

Though they prefer fish, bald eagles will also hunt animals as large as geese which can grow up to 1m in size, and even foxes!

9. Bald eagles can swim!

Bald eagles will sometimes try to catch fish that are too large to pull out of the water. They will rarely let go of prey once they have gripped onto it. Occasionally they will not be able to pull the fish out of water and will subsequently swim to shore with their catch. They use their wings to perform a breaststroke of sorts! It’s a myth that their talons get ‘locked’, they just refuse to let go!

10. Their nests can measure over 2.5m in diameter!

Bald eagles have some of the largest nests of any North American bird, occasionally measuring over 8ft in diameter and 13ft deep. According to the Guiness World Records, the bald eagle also has the largest nest ever discovered near St Petersburg, Florida in the US in 1963. The nest measured 9 ft 6 in wide and 20 ft deep and weighed more than 4,409 lb.  The size of this eagle and nest size requirements mean that they are very particular when it comes to choosing a nest site.

By far the majority of bald eagle nests are found in large, living tall trees which have strong, thick branches to support the mass of the nest as well as the birds themselves. The nests comprise of hundreds of smaller branches and twigs, often with larger branches around the edge. They usually lay between 1 to 3 eggs with two hatchlings most often surviving up to fledgling stage. Fledged chicks leave the nest at around 10 weeks but will still be cared for by their parents for just over a month.

11. They will sometimes nest on large electricity towers or pylons

Where few nesting sites are available, bald eagles will sometimes use manmade structures as nesting sites.

12. The oldest nest on record was used for over 30 years

If well-built in an ideal tree, bald eagle nests can last for many years. One such nest lasted for 34 years before the tree in which it was built was blown down.

13. Bald eagle chicks will cling onto and move sticks within their nests

Chicks develop the muscles in their feet and legs by playing with the twigs and sticks in their nests and even playing tug of war with their siblings.

14. Immature eagles live a nomadic existence until they find a mate

Once young bald eagles have left their parents, they spend much of their time flying across large ranges, seemingly learning about the different habitats that occur in that range.

15. The bald eagle closely resembles the African fish eagle

Though they are found on different continents, both eagles bare remarkable similarities. Both occupy a similar ecological niche and have similar coloration. However the African fish eagle is somewhat smaller, is a lighter brown color and has a black tip to its beak.

16. One of the founding fathers of the USA, Benjamin Franklin, would have preferred the wild turkey as the national bird

People often wrongly believed that bald eagles were cowardly animals as well as prolific thieves of other birds. Even Benjamin Franklin thought the bald eagle was a poor choice as the national bird.

17. They are an endangered species success story!

In 1963 researchers estimated there were just 400 pairs of bald eagles in the US. Thanks to years of protection and a complete ban on the insecticide ‘DDT’, there are now more than 300,000 bald eagles in the lower 48 states, and the species is no longer endangered. 

SOURCE: FACT ANIMAL