A few days ago, we began to rewatch the series The Blacklist and I was once again reminded of the similarities of things happening now and movies/series of years past. The Blacklist premiered in 2013 and details the collaboration between the FBI and a known criminal to bring even worse criminals—those not even on the FBI’s radar – to justice.
The first season lays a lot of groundwork for the future, but 2 episodes are particularly notable. One is about a beloved woman receiving accolades for rescuing trafficked young girls and guys. Truth will out as they say and she turns out to be an immense trafficker herself. She hides in plain sight and mocks those around her for rewarding her.
The second episode that stood out was called The Kingmaker. It details how a man, called the kingmaker, ruined another man’s life. The man was running for political office in some overseas country. He was picked up at the airport, drugged and placed in a room with a known male prostitute who was, of course, dead on the floor. The set-up man had to abandon all efforts to become elected and focus on his defense. But it didn’t stop overseas. The Kingmaker came to America to fulfill an obligation made years ago. A young congress person yearned for a higher office and was being groomed by the Kingmaker (for a price, of course) for perhaps being president one day. In a series of manipulated events, which involve a senior member of congress murdered by an “intruder”, the younger man is suddenly thrust into the spotlight he seeks.
The scary part about both of these is how “out there” they might have seemed in 2013, they are entirely plausible today…almost prescient.
Which brings me to season 2, and the warrior gene. This episode is about a research scientist who thinks he has discovered a warrior gene which can be used to identify probable mass murderers. He uses his position in hospitals to determine at-risk patients and tests them to determine their usefulness. Once he determined they “have” the gene, he then manipulates them into committing mass murders—thereby “proving” his theory.
The people in the episode are manipulated using devious methods—not chemically induced—not any sort of triggered responses. It’s totally and subtly done with “anonymous” online chicanery. For example, one woman who works in a customer service job (iirc) gets fired…not because she is bad at her job—all her coworkers like her. No, it’s anonymous Yelp type messages left on her company’s website that prompted her dismissal. Then anonymous tips to child protective services that whenever she was at her boyfriend’s house with his children, the children were screaming and crying. (This lead to the boyfriend dumping her.) So, she lost a job she loved and a boyfriend she loved and then, without an income, the bank was going to foreclose on her home. This one doctor manipulated her situation so much with this anonymous crap that she snapped. She went into the bank and opened fire.
The episode also discusses the government’s “black budget”—money at the disposal of governmental agencies that is not revealed or accountable. We fund the very research to facilitate our demise.
LIFE Magazine called the story of Snowman, “The greatest “˜nags-to-riches’ story since Black Beauty.” But what makes Snowman’s story even more extraordinary is that it is true. It is one of the rare true stories of horses that has been able to captivate the imagination of millions of people. Only a few are able to successfully travel the road from “rags to riches.” It takes exceptional capability and luck. But the one who beats the odds “ the longest of long shots – the “unlikely” champion “ becomes a symbol of hope.
Harry and Snowman
Snowman was a plow horse in Pennsylvania’s Amish country. In 1920, most of the 25 million horses and mules in America were used for farm work. By 1945, tractor power overtook horse power on American farms. By the 1950s, farm equipment manufacturers stopped building horse-drawn equipment, leaving horse farmers no choice but to eventually replace their equipment.
Snowman
It was a cold snowy day in February 1956 when Snowman headed for the slaughterhouse at only eight years of age. On that same day, luck came into play when the 28-year old Harry de Leyer headed off from his riding stable in Long Island, New York, to the same horse auction in New Holland, Pennsylvania, looking for inexpensive lesson horses.
Arriving late, the auction had ended, and the only horses left were the ones that nobody wanted. Already loaded on a trailer en route to the “meat dealer,” De Leyer spotted the dirty, gray horse that he would later name Snowman and called out to bring the horse back down. On instinct alone, he bought him for $80.
Snowman was a lesson horse for a short time when Harry sold him to a neighbor for double the money. But, an unhappy Snowman kept coming home to Harry “ jumping the neighbor’s five-foot fences” time and time again. As luck would have it again for Snowman, the neighbor was only too happy to let Harry take him back, and Harry, now recognizing Snowman’s extraordinary talent, set Snowman on his path to become one of the most beloved show jumpers of all time.
Just two years later in 1958, Snowman was named the United States Equestrian Federation Horse of the Year (formerly called AHSA Horse of the Year), Professional Horseman’s Association champion and the champion of Madison Square Garden’s Diamond Jubilee. The following year, Snowman achieved the unimaginable returning to Madison Square Garden to be the first horse to win the Open Jumper Championship two years in a row.
The pair became media favorites ““ even appearing on “The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson,” where Johnny climbed on Snowman’s back. Snowman retired from the show ring in 1962 and in 1974, passed away at home with Harry sitting close by his side. Snowman was inducted into the Show Jumping Hall of Fame in 1992.
If humans were an animal of prey, we would rather run than discuss the matter as well…however, there have been some Horse Heroes recorded lately…here are a few stories.
COW MANIA:
I read about a lady from England who went out to see what was bothering a wailing calf.
She realized her mistake after she had already gone into the pen when the Momma cow rushed to the calf’s aid thinking the woman was the issue…
The cow sat on the woman. Not good. The woman realized her predicament and thought she was a goner. But, suddenly, her horse who shared the pasture, came over and started kicking the beejueezus out of the cow. The cow moved and the lady crawled to safety. I’m guessing the horse had had experience with kicking this particular cow… since they shared a pasture. However, this horse came to the rescue of her owner! A remarkable story.
COYOTE STAND OFF:
I just read about this older rancher who went out to feed in the morning and came face to face with a pack of nasty looking coyotes. Well, his trusty three horses who were also in the field, came to his rescue. They circled the wagons and defended their owner against the coyotes. The rancher reported seeinga few direct hits from his mares to the largest coyote. Once safe, the rancher exclaimed that he was absolutely sure that these three mares saved his life. Nice, ladies! Here he is pictured with his horsey heroes!
Another story which doesn’t really fit my model here, but is a good story nonetheless. In this article, a father swears that his horse helped his autistic child. He says that the child uttered his first constructed conversation when riding the horse. And, he feels that the horse was extra special gentle with the little boy.
Much more gentle than with anyone else. I’m sure this is true because I have a pretty rank lead mare at my ranch and she will test any grown-up I put on her back but will be an angel with a kid. Go figure.
I once interviewed Rocky from the famed Cowboy College. He said that he got lost in the Arizona mountains during really bad weather. He swears that he was so overwhelmed with exhaustion and cold, he passed out while riding. The next thing he knew, he was being brought into the ranch house. His mare had gingerly carried him the extra miles back home. He feels he owes his life to this horse.
CLOSE TO HOME STORIES
I know that my horses are your normal horses…really no heroes among them. They will, however, step up and settle a score for me or make things right, if you know what I mean. I have accidentally been bitten by my lead mare but once she realized her offense, she looked aghast and just stood there bracing herself for what she felt was a fair retaliation blow. I didn’t. I just started to sob gently and she nuzzled me. Good enough. She made it right. (Horse bites HURT.)
My most literal score settling incident happened when I positioned myself badly and received a grazing kick from a colt. His Mama, the same horse who accidentally bit me, ran after him and kicked his hiney across the field and up onto the hill. Atta girl!
And, as I’m sure you have all seen, when you are out in the field with the herd and one particular horse is being a butt-head, the rest of the group will snap at some point and say, ENOUGH! Usually the offending horse will run off and hide behind a tree until he can sneak back unnoticed.
Indirectly, horses have saved my life in an emotional way. During my divorce many years ago, I was not healthy minded. Yet, through all of the drama, I still had to take care of my animals. I dragged my pitiful self out to the barn to help them with their lives. Hmmmm, I seemed to forget myself when I was out there. They got me out of my funk and inspired me to find some money and save the ranch for us. They got me back into the game.
Another indirect save was just last year when I lost Fanny. I stumbled upon her body in the barn. I had never seen a lifeless pet before and I was quite startled and shocked. I started crying. After a few minutes of this, I noticed that the whole barn was quiet and watching me. Now, I had no horses IN the barn. But, they had all come up TO the barn. Every one of them was peering inside through a window or an open board, trying to figure out why Mom was so upset. They weren’t demanding treats or hay or anything from me. They were being honorable. I remember looking up at all the faces and realizing how lucky I was.
Fanny
That is why, for me, the human — the predator on the evolution scale — I find it fascinating when the prey animal (the horse) helps us.
This story describes a very brief interval which, TBH, I have a hard time recalling. I was hot, sweaty and dirty after hauling sawdust and decided to stop and get a cold beer at the local hangout in Haymarket, VA. In my ragged cut-off overalls, with a tube top underneath, and slip-on Duck boots, I slid onto a stool next to a friend, who had a young friend of his sitting next to him. Hmmmm…..well, one beer became two and…….at some point, the Cougar came to life and I began eying the young, 20-something WV boy named Billy (I was easily twice his age). Well, THIS looked interesting!!!!
One thing led to another, we hit it off and got together a few times for drinking, dancing and bedroom games. The final time I was with Billy was highly illuminating, to say the least. It was a cool night, with light rain – almost a mist – and he came to my house with a bottle of Rum and a 2 liter bottle of Coke. We chatted while we fixed some drinks and moved to the living room, seating outselves on the couch.
From the gitgo, something just seemed off. He sat down in the corner at one end, leaning away from me on the arm of the couch – like he was turned away from me intentionally. We discussed this and that until the conversation turned to dog training. Early on, he informed me that he knew more than I about the subject because he had raised Rottweilers. He insisted that he understood, with his dogs, that once the food was given to them, they were well within their rights to bite even him if he tried to remove it. Uh, no………..that was the beginning of an evening of Billy arguing with EVERYTHING I said!!!!
Fairly early on, I recognized that this was not going to be a long-term relationship and I determined to get what I could out of the evening (some entertaining escapades in the bedroom) and mark it off as the end of that experiment. So I suggested we take a romantic stroll outside, in the rain.
I also decided he needed to meet my wolf-shepherd cross – the one to whom I could give a raw steak bone and easily remove it from her mouth 2 minutes later, with nary a growl. Spirit understood quite clearly that I was the Alpha – not her – she answered to me. The arguing continued…..seriously, it was beyond tiresome!
I finally decided enough chit-chat – let’s do the deed and get this nightmare over with – I was still determined to at least get a good POA out of the deal. We moved into the house and into my bedroom to my California King size waterbed. Ever had sex on a waterbed? Most people don’t have them full enough – mine was filled to the brim and was like a firm regular mattress with minimal sloshing and waves. It had a book-case headboard with a mirror in the center – an added accoutrement that did, indeed, enhance the experience, I must say!
GoTee on my waterbed
Billy stayed on the side by the door and began disrobing, as I walked to my side and did the same. Naked, I turned towards him and saw him getting into bed still wearing his t-shirt. Nope! That was NOT going to work!!!! So I scooted over next to him and helped him take off his t-shirt, then lay full up against him and began…..um….playing. Touching, kissing…..you know the drill! Expecting a reaction…….nada – none – he might have been dead for all the movement I got out of him!!! Hmmmm…..WTH is going on here????
So I laid on top of him and began moving down his body……..kissing…….caressing…… licking…….still….no reaction whatsoever. Well, dang – did he go to sleep or what??!!?? So….I nipped him on his belly……HOLY CRAP!!! He jumped 2 feet as if I had plugged him in!!! “DON’T YOU EVER DO THAT AGAIN!!!!! I don’t EVER want to feel your teeth on me again!!!!” OK, now I’m really confused!!!!
What in the hell did he want???? I laid back down on my side of the bed, trying to figure out whether this was even worth it!!!! He said to me, “What the hell are you doing?” and I replied, “Trying to figure out what the hell you want!!!!” “I want you to finish what you started!!!!!” Yeah, ok, that is NOT going to work with ME!!!! Me being me, I proceeded to berate him for his attitude, explaining explicitly that I was NOT his slave and he had to actively participate on an equal basis. Oh, my! That was way too much for poor Billy! He jumped out of bed, grabbed his clothes and spouted, “I’m getting out of here!!! You’re too manly for me!!!!”
Well, of course, I erupted in raucous laughter, rolling out of bed onto the floor! He forgot his undies, literally ran out of the bedroom, grabbed his bottle of rum, leaving his jacket, and hit the door, never pausing stride! He flew up the driveway, spitting gravel every step of the way!!!!
Gee, did I have fun recounting THAT at the local hang out, where poor Billy never showed his face again!!!!! Ok, everyone – come on – let’s hear about some of YOUR romantic encounters!!!! Show and tell time – fair is fair, after all!!!!
The real Tom Sawyer has been revealed, with new research detailing his life as a hard-drinking and heroic firefighter who once saved 90 people from a steamship fire.
Samuel L. Clemens, better known as Mark Twain
Known to generations as one of the most beloved characters in American literature, an extensive feature in Smithsonian Magazine details the life of the man who inspired the fictional child and title character of Mark Twain’s “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.”
Twain and Sawyer first met in San Francisco in 1863, quickly becoming firm friends who seemingly drank in every saloon the city had to offer, according to the article.
Firefighter Tom Sawyer
On a rainy afternoon in June 1863, Mark Twain was nursing a bad hangover inside Ed Stahle’s fashionable Montgomery Street steam rooms, halfway through a two-month visit to San Francisco that would ultimately stretch to three years. At the baths he played penny ante with Stahle, the proprietor, and Tom Sawyer, the recently appointed customs inspector, volunteer fireman, special policeman and bona fide local hero.
Montgomery Street in the 1860’s
In contrast to the lanky Twain, Sawyer, three years older, was stocky and round-faced. Just returned from firefighting duties, he was covered in soot. Twain slumped as he played poker, studying his cards, hefting a bottle of dark beer and chain-smoking cigars, to which he had become addicted during his stint as a pilot for steamboats on the Mississippi River from 1859 until the Civil War disrupted river traffic in April 1861. It was his career on the Mississippi, of course, that led Samuel Clemens to his pen name, “mark twain” being the minimum river depth of two fathoms, or roughly 12 feet, that a steamboat needed under its keel.
Mid-1800’s Steamboat
After Twain’s first usage of the “character” in a book three years later, Sawyer is said to have told a reporter at the time, “He (Twain) walks up to me and puts both hands on my shoulders. ‘Tom,’ he says, ‘I’m going to write a book about a boy and the kind I have in mind was just about the toughest boy in the world. Tom, he was just such a boy as you must have been.'”
Smithsonian magazine details how Sawyer was born in Brooklyn, N.Y. where he was a torch boy for Columbia Hook and Ladder Company Number 14. In San Francisco, he worked for Broderick 1, the city’s first volunteer fire company.
1850’s Hook & Ladder Company
Sawyer had proved his heroism February 16, 1853, while serving as the fire engineer aboard the steamer Independence. Heading to San Francisco via San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua and Acapulco, with 359 passengers aboard, the ship struck a reef off Baja, shuddered like a leaf and caught against jagged rocks.
Sawyer raced below deck and dropped into two feet of water. Through a huge rent, the sea was filling up overheated boilers below the waterline, cooling them rapidly. Chief Engineer Jason Collins and his men were fighting to keep steam up to reach shore. After the coal bunkers flooded, the men began tossing slats from stateroom berths into the furnaces. Sawyer heard Collins cry, “The blowers are useless!”
From Smithsonian Magazine
Loss of the blowers drove the flames out the furnace doors and ignited woodwork in the fire room and around the smokestack. Steam and flames blasted up from the hatch and ventilators. “The scene was perfectly horrible,” Sampson recalled later. “Men, women and children, screeching, crying and drowning.”
Collins and James L. Freeborn, the purser, jumped overboard, lost consciousness and sank. Sawyer, a powerful swimmer, dove into the water, caught both men by their hair and pulled them to the surface. As they clung to his back, he swam for the shore a hundred yards away, a feat of amazing strength and stamina.
Depositing Collins and Freeborn on the beach, Sawyer swam back to the burning steamer. He made a number of round trips, swimming to shore with a passenger or two on his back each time. Finally, a lifeboat was lowered, and women, children and many men, including the ship’s surgeon, who would be needed on land, packed in and were rowed to shore. Two broken lifeboats were repaired and launched. Sawyer returned to the flaming vessel in a long boat, rowing hard despite burned forearms to reach more passengers. He got a group into life preservers, then towed them ashore and went back for more. An hour later, the ship was a perfect sheet of flame.
The Smithsonian article quotes a 1898 newspaper article in which Sawyer told a reporter about the influence he had had on Twain’s most famous novel. “You want to know how I came to figure in his books, do you?” Sawyer asked in the interview, cited by the article. “Well, as I said, we both was fond of telling stories and spinning yarns.”
“Sam (Clemens, Twain’s real name), he was mighty fond of children’s doings and whenever he’d see any little fellers a-fighting on the street, he’d always stop and watch ’em and then he’d come up to the Blue Wing [saloon] and describe the whole doings and then I’d try and beat his yarn by telling him of the antics I used to play when I was a kid and say, ‘I don’t believe there ever was such another little devil ever lived as I was.’
“Sam, he would listen to these pranks of mine with great interest and he’d occasionally take ’em down in his notebook. One day he says to me: ‘I am going to put you between the covers of a book some of these days, Tom.’
‘Go ahead, Sam,’ I said, ‘but don’t disgrace my name.'”
“But [Twain’s] coming out here some day,” Sawyer added, “and I am saving up for him. When he does come there’ll be some fun, for if he gives a lecture I intend coming right in on the platform and have a few old time sallies with him.”
The nonfictional character died in the autumn of 1906, three and a half years before Twain. “Tom Sawyer, Whose Name Inspired Twain, Dies at Great Age,” the newspaper headline announced. The obituary said, “A man whose name is to be found in every worthy library in America died in this city on Friday….So highly did the author appreciate Sawyer that he gave the man’s name to his famous boy character. In that way the man who died Friday is godfather, so to speak, of one of the most enjoyable books ever written.”
Let’s talk about being inspired. Young Jim Bishop in 1959, at the ripe old age of 15, paid four hundred and fifty dollars for a two and a half acre parcel of land enclosed on three sides by the majestic San Isabel National Forest in southern Colorado. It was money saved from mowing lawns, throwing newspapers, and working with his father Willard in the family ornamental iron works. Jim had dropped out of high school that year over an argument from his English teacher who yelled at him “You’ll never amount to anything Jim Bishop!” Ever since he was a boy, Jim was powerfully drawn up towards the mountains visible to the west from Pueblo, and having found a small 2-1/2 acre parcel one weekend on a bicycle journey with some friends, convinced his parents to buy it for him with his money.
So Willard and ma Polly signed for the land deal which Jim wasn’t even old enough to do himself, and the family now had a heavily forested two and a half acres at 9000 feet. Jim and his dad spent the next ten summers camping out on the land and doing the groundwork for a family cabin on the site. Setting the stage for what was to come, Jim soon learned that he really enjoyed swinging an axe and wielding a shovel or pick in building their clearing with a drive up to it, which is now the court-yard between the family cabin and the castle itself with it’s driveway.
It was in 1967 that Jim and Phoebe got married, a union they still enjoy to this day, and in 1969 at the age of twenty-five, Jim decided it was time to start building a cabin in the mountains they so loved. Since rocks were plentiful, everywhere, and free, he chose to start building a one room stone cottage…
NOTE: Stock photo – The Bishop cabin had windows on all sides and big double doors in front. When they left the door open, the hummers would sometimes fly in – the hummers got so familiar with them that when they wanted to leave and the door was closed, the would hover in front of the door until they opened it for them. They also had chairs that were tree stumps, with the seat hollowed out.
Snow doesn’t melt completely at 9000 feet usually until the middle of May, sometimes even into June, so the summer building season is a short one. Jim started building his cabin, and after a while Jim and Willard started trading off two week stints, one at the shop running the business and one up the mountain working on the family cabin. This lasted until the late spring of 1971, when the problem of getting running water into the cabin arose. Willard suggesting putting in a large metal tank that he had salvaged from a welding job to be a gravity fed cistern. Jim thought it’d be functional, and construction began on the water tank. It is a 40 foot metal cylinder which Willard surrounded with stonework.
Jim continued to build his cottage, and the walls grew. Throughout the summer, family friends, a couple local ranchers, and even some family members commented that it looked like they were building a castle! “Hey Jim! That looks like a turret or something!” “What are you building, a castle?!”
Jim heard that enough times that by the time late spring 1972 rolled around, his imagination had been stirred something fierce, and Mr. Jim Bishop started telling friends and family that he was in fact going to be building a castle! When Willard first heard this, he stated as a matter of fact that castles tended to be pretty huge and that he wasn’t going to have anything to do with it! “That’s just too much work!” Jim kept right on building, and the construction that began as a one room stone cottage with an Eiffel Tower shaped fireplace gave birth to this country’s, and maybe even the world’s, largest one man project – The Bishop Castle.
It Just Keeps On Growing! As the castle grew, so did word of the guy up in the mountains who was pursuing the American Dream – to be King of your own Castle! People came to visit more and more often, and Jim would often be asked if he wanted help building his castle. For the first eight years, the answer was always Sure! And in those eight years, not a single person ever kept their word and showed up to help. In a fit of cynical frustration, Jim vowed that “By God, I’ve gotten this far by myself. If you’re going to do something right, do it yourself!” So like the castle itself, the idea of the castle being a one man project was born in the process of the doing and was not an original intention or a childhood dream like many people think. And he kept building. And building. And the Bishop Castle grew…
Other Discoveries Along the Way
Many of the features of the Bishop Castle were discovered intuitively or stumbled upon as the building unfolded. In the process of the castle building, Jim discovered that he also really enjoyed building his body too. He even set up an old army wall tent in the clearing, where he would workout with weights for a couple of hours in the evenings after having built with stone and mortar all day! As he became increasingly involved in the weight lifting regime physically, he also discovered that realm of mind where his principles in building could also be applied to his life – balance in everything! This became an ideal he strove for in this proving of himself, through his stonework, his body, and in his mind. It was through this approach that Jim soon realized that he would find himself completely visualizing what he could build next and how it would all fit together on such a large scale.
There are no plans, blueprints or drawings other than the one Jim did to illustrate his book “Castle Building from my point of view”. The more Jim experienced how certain features lined up or fell into place is when he started suspecting that maybe something “more” was going on, that maybe it was the Creator of All Things working through him in this magnificent endeavor that seemed to have a spirit of it’s own. Jim started describing the Bishop Castle as “Built by One Man with the Help of God.” There’s really no other way to explain it!. And it kept growing…
Feats of Strength
In order to pursue the totality of what he could visualize, Jim employed anything and everything that was available to him. He had apprenticed and then mastered with his father in the family’s Bishop Ornamental Iron shop welding and scroll bending and learning how things fit together for most of his life. Jim did everything – hauling rock from the state highway ditches, felling timber and then milling it into lumber, building railroad ties into forms for his arches, (he’s used the same form over and over), building scaffolding as he went. He hand dug holes up to 12 feet deep for the foundations, mixed all his own mortar, carried it, usually up, to wherever he was working, created and rigged complex systems of pulleys and come-alongs to hoist such things as tree trunks for the floor supports, and, stone by stone, his dreams were being made manifest. Jim handles each and every stone in the castle on average of SIX TIMES before it rests in it’s final configuration in this massive re-organizing of the scattered granite in the Rocky Mountains into the form of the Bishop Castle.
Structural Ornaments
The beginning of the square tower on the south side of the main keep saw the first massive use of ironwork in the construction. Up until then Jim had incorporated his ironwork as window frames, stairs, and the purely ornamental. Now his use of iron and steel became structural, with a core frame for the tower starting from it’s foundations. The rock work formed around this base and created such strength that Jim had no fear contemplating the heights that the tower might one day climb to. Wooden forms soon gave way to ornamental iron forms in the arches of the second floor, some of the most incredible examples of precision geometry found in the castle. And the most magnificent feature of all, the inner roof support trusses and the main central arch which are so detailed, yet so massively functional that they boggle the mind. Everywhere one looks something will boggle the mind, such as the fact that the hand railing going up the S.W. corner, named Roy’s Tower, with all of it’s bizarre twists and turns, was hammered cold into it’s highly custom shape!
Perhaps the water cistern is contained inside of this tower.
The Dream Defined
Over the years as the castle grew, more and more people heard about this phenomenon up in the mountains and began showing up in increasing numbers. Friends told Jim that he should be making some money off what was becoming an attraction! Jim felt differently though – he hated it when he was a kid and couldn’t go to the zoo or the ballpark because admission for the whole family was too high for a bunch of working class folks. Since the original idea for a castle came from people visiting the property, Jim figured that if people were welcomed onto the property FOR FREE then he could put out a donation box and people could put in there what they felt comfortable putting in there. The honor system would be the financier! This increased Jim’s feeling of the castle truly being a place of American Freedom. He felt like he worked hard enough down in Pueblo to support the family that he would build as much as the visitors provided for. This has frustrated him at times over the years, wanting to build larger items such as an elevator and not having the funds to do so, but he feels so strongly about the dream being kept intact that he’s even written into legal documents that the Bishop Castle will always remain free as long as it stands. This belief in America being a Free Country made up of Free Persons has fueled his passions in building the castle to represent the American Dream in an undeniably tangible and awe inspiring form!
Enter The Dragon
In the mid 1980’s, a friend of Jim’s was driving a truck full of discarded stainless steel warming plates from the Pueblo County Hospital to the landfill. He decided that Jim could probably put this motherload of expensive stainless steel to better use than the dump could, so dropped it off at the Bishop Ornamental Iron Shop instead. Jim spent the winter building a chimney out of the steel, riveting thousands of hammered “scales” that he had cut out of the plates together around a steel frame. The dragon was completed in the spring and Jim hauled it up the mountain to tackle the daunting task of raising and installing this incredible sculpture to where it rests today, perched off of the front of the Grand Ballroom eighty feet in the air! Later came the addition of a burner from a hot air balloon (that was donated!) which Jim put in the back of the dragons throat, making it a true Fire Breathing Dragon!
Unimaginable Heights Reached
Jim is often told that he must not be afraid of heights! The way he figures it, he began at the bedrock base of the earth and has been gradually building up, so gradual that as the height grew, he was as comfortable with it as with being on the ground. Jim’s experience with the castle has been so intimate, (he’s held EVERY SINGLE STONE IN THERE ON AN AVERAGE OF SIX TIMES), that he’s grown stone by stone as well and doesn’t mind the heights at all. In 1994 Jim reached a point with the square Andreatta tower, named after the family that donated the old school bells that hang in it, where he felt satisfied that it was high enough. That didn’t last long, as in 1995 he built and installed a thirty foot tall steel steeple on top of the masonry, taking the total height to roughly 160 feet! That’s about the size of a 16 story building! Jim has remained satisfied with the overall height of his castle to the present, though he’s recently been threatening to build one of the corner outer wall towers to 250 feet because a local zoning official told him he couldn’t build over 25 and he just added a zero.
Ballroom inside Castle
As It Stands
Today’s visitors to the Bishop Castle will find an impressively monumental statue in stone and iron that cries loud testament to the beauty and glory of not only having a dream, but sticking with your dream no matter what. Most importantly, that if you do believe in yourself and strive to maintain that belief, anything can happen! Three full stories of interior rooms complete with a Grand Ballroom, soaring towers and bridges with vistas of a hundred miles, and a Fire-Breathing Dragon make the Bishop Castle quite the unforgettable experience! Visitors are always welcome FREE of charge, and the castle itself is always OPEN. Please respect this trust and honor while visiting!
When playing cards first arrived in Europe toward the end of the 14th century AD, they caused quite a furor. In 1377, the town council of Florence complained that the playing of “a certain game called naibbe has recently been introduced into these parts,” and by a vote of 98 to 25 decided to prohibit it. In the same year cards reached Paris, where new city regulations cracked down on working-class cardplayers but apparently left nobel devotees alone.
European Playing Cards
The following year, in the Bavarian city of Regensburg, the council tried to limit card games to small stakes. By 1387, cards had arrived in the Spanish kingdom of Castile, where the government tried to ban them.
The killjoys were fighting a losting battle, however, for even at this early stage, cards began to acquire royal patrons. In 1379, the prince of Brabant, in Belgium, bought a highly decorated pack of cards, while in 1392 the mad French king Charles VI received three packs of cards painted by artist Jacquemin Gringonneur “for his amusement during the intervals in his sad illness.”
Charles VI/Gringonneur Cards
Playing cards soon led to the emergence of cardsharps, and the mother of all card swindles is recorded in the Parisian court annals for 1408. Two dubious characters lured a traveling merchant into an inn with talk of a good currency deal. One of them then produced a pack of cards from his pocket and demonstrated an amusing game of guessing the identity of a card while seeing only its back. The astute merchant soon noticed that one of the cards had a slight but distinctive mark on the reverse, so he happily joined in when the betting started. When the marked card turned up, the trader put his shirt on it, only to find that the front of the card was not the same, as it had been switched for another.
The French also made one great contribution to the development of playing cards by inventing, around 1480 AD, the names and shapes of the four suits (spades, hearts, diamonds, and clubs) we still use today. These simple geometric shapes did much to encourage card playing. By the end of the 15th century, playing card manufacture was a major industry, and even Johannes Gutenberg, often claimed to be the inventor of movable type, became involved.
Johannes Gutenberg Card
He developed some of the mechanical methods of production and, at a time when his finances were in desperate straits, he used drawings that his artists had prepared for his famous Bible to decorate the back of a deck of playing cards.
From this point the history of Western playing cards is clear. But who brought them to Europe in the first place? The subject is swathed in mystery, and it has at different times been claimed that they were introduced by Marco Polo (1254-1324), the Crusaders, or the Gypsies. The most exotic theories credit the Gypsies with the invention of cards (as a means of divination), and it has therefore been argued that their origins lie in India or even Egypt. The truth is that playing cards are a Chinese invention, but the problem has been that little is known of their transmission from China to the West.
Ancient Chinese Playing Cards
Playing cards had been invented in China by at least the 9th century AD when, according to tradition, a princess and her relatives played the “leaf game,” or cards. Women were certainly important in the development of card games, for one apparently wrote the world’s first book on the subject (now lost), later in that century.
By the 11th century, cards were printed with woodcut blocks, and in the early Ming dynasty (1369-1644 AD) famous artists were employed to design card backs with portraits of characters from favorite novels, such as The Water Margin. Chinese cards were much smaller than ours (about 2 inches long and 1 inch wide) and were printed on fairly thick paper, which made them hard-wearing but difficult to shuffle. Chinese “money cards” had four suits: cash, strings (of cash), myriads (of strings) and tens (of myriads), with the numbers 2 thru 9 in the first three and 1 thru 9 in the fourth.
Ancient Woodcut Playing Cards
The Chinese of yesteryear were enthusiastic cardplayers and gamblers, as they are today. Ming Dynasty books on cards praised them as superior to all other amusements, for they “were convenient to carry, could stimulate thinking and could be played by a group of four without annoying conversation, and without the difficulties which accompanied playing chess or meditation.” Also, “cards could be played in almost any circumstances without restrictions of time, place, weather, or qualification of partners.”
But this still leaves us without a link to Europe, for early Western cards don’t resemble Chinese ones and have different suits. The missing link appears to be the Islamic world, despite the fact that card playing was frowned on by Muslim clerics.
In 1938, Professor L.A. Mayer came across a pack of 52 cards while searching through the collections of the famous Topkapi Museum, in Istanbul, Turkey. They had been made in Egypt about 1400 AD, using designs that closely resemble those of early Italian cards.
Second card from left: The Seven of Swords (equivalent to Seven of Clubs)
Third card from left: the Malik of Cups (equivalent to the King of Hearts)
The Arabic inscriptions on the court cards make clear the origin of the word naibbe for cards (used by the Florence council); they are called the Malik (King), Na’ib Malik (Governor), and Na’ib Thani (Deputy Governor). They are in 4 suits – swords, polo sticks, cups, and coins (equivalent to modern clubs, spades, hearts and diamonds).
The only significant difference between these and early Italian cards is that the Egyptian ones are, like the Chinese, long and thin. Even this difficulty seems to have been overcome by the find of a single card with an Arabic inscription made around 1200 AD; its dimensions are like those of Italian cards, which are still slightly narrower than those made today in the rest of Europe.
There can now be little doubt that the Arabs were the intermediaries for the widespread transmission of one of ancient China’s most popular inventions.
The magic lantern, or zoetrope, is little known today but it amazed and delighted audiences in Victorian drawing rooms. It also led, in the 20th century, to the invention of the slide projector and the cinema. In its final form, the zoetrope was a cylinder-shaped canopy of thin material suspended over a lamp. Vanes placed at the top caught the hot air rising from the lamp and made the cylinder rotate slowly.
On the sides of the canopy were thin panes of paper on which were painted pictures. As the cylinder revolved around the lamp, the light shone through the succession of pictures to give the illusion that the painted figures were moving — exactly the same principle as that behind modern motion pictures.
From Athanasius Kirchner’s “An Magna Lucis et Umbrae” of 1671
In 1868 Mr. W.B. Carpenter, the vice president of the Royal Society of London, stated with some confidence that the magic lantern had been invented by Michael Faraday, the famous pioneer of electricity as recently as 1836. He was certainly wrong, as one John Bate had already written about the zoetrope early in the 17th century. However, even Bate was merely describing a device long known elsewhere.
The principal of using heat to make small figures rotate is extremely ancient. In the Near East it goes back to Heron of Alexandria, who invented a toy with moving dancers in the 1st century AD. The Chinese version is even older, and far more advanced, as it involved the projection of images.
In 121 BC, a magician named Shao Ong staged a sort of seance for the Emperor Han Wu-ti, using moving images projected onto a screen. An earlier emperor, Han Gaozu, had a lamp in his possession in 207 BC that, when lit, showed the sparkling scales of turning dragons.
Around 180 AD the inventor Ting Huan created a “nine-storied hill censer,” which was apparently an extremely complicated multiple magic lantern. On it were strange birds and unusual animals, which turned around as the lamp burned.
By the 12th century AD, the most common form of zoetrope was the “horse-riding” or the “horse-pacing” lamp. After the lamp was lit a succession of prancing horses was projected onto the walls, moving as if they were alive. More sophisticated examples probably used lenses to produce stronger images. This was the type of magic lantern seen by early European visitors, and is undoubtedly provided the inspiration for the Jesuit priest of the China Mission Martin Martini (1614-1661). Martini presented the first lantern slides in Europe at Louvain, Belgium, in 1654, soon followed by other European scientists fascinated by the properties of light.
One of the fun activities in which I used to participate when I lived in No. Virginia was the Bull Run Country Jamboree. It began in 1982 at Bull Run Park in Manassas, VA and was held for 2 days the first year – in the following years, it became a 1 day show. It was much like an old fashioned carnival, craft show and concert – hairiest legs contests, smoothest legs contests, greased pig contests, with all of the attendant food and beverage trucks – yes, beer was included Yummmm…..funnel cake!!!! This was HB giving my Mom a talking to that first year.
1982
What was so wonderful about Bull Run was the attitude of the people who attended. The gates to the park usually opened at 6 am – people would line up in their vehicles the night before, and party while they waited. It was open-air lawn seating, except for the campground area, and it was important to get there early to get a good spot. What was so unusual was that you could stake out your spot, spread out your blankets and chairs, and then simply walk away to peruse all the other entertainment. Come back an hour later and NOTHING would be touched!!! Everyone looked out for everyone else!
1982 Crowd
We attended Bull Run every year until 1988, when we moved to NE for 2 years. Of course, it was during that period that Garth Brooks played there and I missed it!!! If you listen to his song, “The Old Stuff,” you will hear him talk about Bull Run……there was a thunderstorm that knocked out the power!
In 1986, I gathered up a bunch of family – brother, sister, Mom, ex-hubby – and friends and off we all went to Bull Run, setting up our lawn chairs next to our vehicles to sleep until the gates opened – or partied – depending on one’s choice.
Carol and Mom
Towards the end of the concert, park staff would bring around trash bags and everyone cleaned up their own trash, with not a speck left once everyone was gone.
Most years, we had young children with us and those using intoxicants besides beer or wine generally congregated at the campsites. One of the few times I attended without HB, I went with a group of the young project officers from DHR, most of whom consumed MJ. 3 women, 2 guys. Since we weren’t camping, we would team up to visit the Port-O-Johns. One would go in first, do their thing, hit the bowl and set it on the side of the seat. The next person came in and repeated it, then everyone headed back to our spot.
It was my turn in the John…..I was unaware that outside, the police were trying to evict a drunk who insisted he just HAD to pee first! They bumped my friend from the line and placed the drunk there instead.
Debbie and Me
I did my thing, put the bowl on the side, against the wall, and opened the door! There stood 2 policemen on either side of the line, thankfully about 10 feet away…..I said, “Oh, excuse me, I left my wallet!” Grabbed that sucker and stuffed it in my pocket, and we walked away. That ended THAT activity for the day!!!!
The festival was moved to a new concert venue outside Haymarket, VA around 2007 or 2008. I attended one time and, frankly, it sucked!!!! No more open seating, no more food and beverage trucks, no more crafts. Never went again!!!! But, ah, the memories!!
Sew Colorful 