A Ship Lost in the Desert

In 1610, King Philip of Spain ordered the construction of three ships to be built in Acapulco. They were to be used for the harvesting of pearls along the Pacific coast of Mexico. These vessels, of a type named caravels, would be smaller and more maneuverable than the 200-ton galleons that had transported the first conquistadors from Cuba to Veracruz. The caravels would have a shallow draft, square sails, and 13 rows of oars on each side, which would allow them to navigate easily in shallow water, regardless of wind direction.

The ships were completed in 1612 and they immediately set sail under the command of captains Alvarez de Cordone, Pedro de Rosales, and Juan de Iturbe. Between them they had 40 experienced pearl divers who were slaves brought over from the Portuguese colony of Sierra Leone in West Africa.

It was no accident that the ships were heading north. Nearly 80 years earlier, Hernán Cortés had sailed up to the tip of Baja and found that Bahia de La Paz was loaded with oysters that produced perfectly shaped pearls. At the time, pearls were in great demand and were even more valuable than gold. But the Spanish were unable to establish a permanent settlement in La Paz because of the large numbers of hostile natives and a lack of fresh food and water.

So, the ships led by Captain Cordone passed La Paz but traded for pearls at other coastal villages along the coast of Baja. However, at one village things went awry. When Cordone promised to trade a basket of clothing for a basket of pearls, the native chief was surprised to find his basket filled with worm-eaten cloth. The chief had expected clothing like that worn by the officers. The angered chief shot Cordone in the chest with an arrow. While he wasn’t killed, the captain was forced to return to Acapulco for medical treatment. He ordered his two fellow captains to sail their ships further up the Sea of Cortez.

At present-day Mulege, the men hit the jackpot. A big storm had washed thousands of oysters up onto the beach and men quickly filled their baskets. But upon their departure, Captain Rosales’s caravel struck a reef and began to take on water. Captain Iturbe brought his ship alongside the sinking vessel and moved its cargo and crew into his own.

Now Iturbe had a decision to make: return to Acapulco early or continue north and load up with even more pearls? He chose the latter. For a week he sailed farther north until his ship entered a large estuary. Gradually the route narrowed and then opened up into what he described as a great “inland sea.” This would have been the ancient Lake Cahuilla, today’s much smaller Salton Sea. The captain sailed along the eastern edge of the inland sea and continued up the Colorado River nearly 100 miles to the site of modern day Blythe (where Interstate 10 crosses the Colorado).

It was here that Iturbe decided to turn around. He sailed back down the river and across the great inland sea. But in the weeks since their arrival the water level had fallen tremendously. A miles-long continuous ring of sand bars blocked their exit. They were trapped and Iturbe and his men circled around the inland sea for three days until their ship ran aground. The crew gathered as much of their cargo as they could carry and then they abandoned the ship.

Most of them survived the long and miserable walk back to the Spanish settlement of Guaymas, and a few months later they were transported back to Acapulco on a Spanish galleon. However, their ship and the majority of its cargo of pearls were to remain forever stuck on the edge of the great inland sea, covered by sand dunes.

Throughout the years, particularly during the Gold Rush years, numerous sightings were made of the rotting remains of a ship out in the barren Colorado Desert region, but no one has recovered any of the buried cargo.

In June of 2009, the San Diego Reader published a story entitled “Stay Away from Pinto Canyon.” The story was about a trek 2 friends made to a remote canyon in order to photograph petroglyphs — prehistoric rock paintings. The petroglyphs were not what they expected. There were no wooly mammoths or saber-toothed cats. Instead they found a crude collection of stick figures, next to what looked like a large sailing vessel with square sails and oars protruding from it.

petroglyph supposedly showing Spanish ship

The article and the pictures intrigued an exhibit designer from The Maritime Museum who then secured permission from the federal government to view the petroglyphs personally. He concluded that there was no definitive proof, but they could be representing the failed Spanish expedition–and any one of the three doomed ships.

So it’s just as likely that the petroglyph represents Juan de Iturbe’s doomed pearl ship, which ran aground just six miles from Pinto Canyon. Most of the people who’ve seen the remains of Iturbe’s ship were riding in off-road vehicles, and one of them, Imperial Valley resident Ed Barff, provided a precise location. He says the caravel lies three hundred feet southeast of the eastern-most edge of the Superstition Mountains. Much of that area is designated for off-road vehicle use. But the ship’s remains are located in a section reserved as a bombing range under the jurisdiction of Naval Air Facility El Centro.

Does anyone else wonder why the federal government always seems to be in the picture whenever lost treasure is being hunted?

Get Your Redneck On!!

Summer is the perfect time for a redneck party and I have all sorts of ideas for attire, food, games and prizes!

ATTIRE:

Redneck parties don’t require any formal attire. Men, you can’t go wrong with jeans or overalls, plaid shirts or patriotic shirts, and boots or even bare feet.

Women, you’re gonna be styling in any beer related apparel, kudos if you can add a pregnancy feature and an all important ankle monitor! Fake tattoos, cowboy boots and hats are always crowd pleasers!

FOOD:

Any good picnic starts with a good quality grill…

Now that the grill’s set, let’s talk food…

If you can’t find actual possum stew, any chunky stew will suffice. Or, you can work with whatever you have on hand…

But the spam fries are a got-to-have!

Add lots of beer, hot dogs for your more finicky crowd and some pork rinds and you’re good to go!

But don’t forget dessert…

GAMES & PRIZES:

If you made the possum stew from scratch…save the TAIL! You can play pin the tail on the possum!

And while you’re saving things…save those empty beer or soda boxes! You can stuff them with twinkies or ho-hos, add a few streamers–no reason it can’t be festive–and make a pinata!

And there’s practically no limit to the games you can create using a toilet seat, like horseshoes!

And don’t forget to reward your picnic guests with some great prizes for participating–bird feeders, wind chimes, flashlights or even back scratchers!!

So get your redneck on with confidence this summer!!

The Spear of Destiny

Although ‘serious historians’ don’t like to discuss it, ‘alternative historians’ have presented evidence that the Nazis had more than a passing interest in the occult and pseudosciences that overlap with it. Beginning with Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier’s Le Matin des Magiciens, a number of writers have explored these themes in some detail, although they often lay stress on different aspects of mystical claims. In many cases, the writer’s own specific religious, mystical or occult beliefs colour their accounts.

One classic of the genre is Trevor Ravenscroft’s (1921-1989) The Spear of Destiny: the occult power behind the spear which pierced the side of Christ (Neville Spearman, 1972). This focuses on the alleged occult power of a spear, known as the Holy Lance of Vienna (or the Hofburg Spear), which forms part of the regalia of the Hapsburg monarchs and with which, according to Ravenscroft, Hitler was obsessed.

Trevor Ravenscroft begins his book by introducing us to Dr. Walter Johannes Stein (1891-1957), whom he portrays as his spiritual mentor. He tells how Stein had intended to begin work on a book on the theme of The Spear of Destiny in 1957, but collapsed only three days after making the decision to do so and died in hospital soon after. Ravenscroft is claiming to act almost as a posthumous amanuensis for the book. As we will see, this is highly significant.

The early part of the book is effectively a biography of the years Adolf Hitler spent in Vienna as a down-and-out, an understandably poorly documented period of the future Führer’s life. Ravenscroft’s religious beliefs shine through the writing, which is peppered with exclamation marks, and it soon becomes clear that he wishes to explain Hitler’s peculiar evil as a result of Satanic possession or, at least, influence.

Water color view of the Vienna Opera House by Adolf Hitler during his destitute years in Vienna.

Nevertheless, in this section of the book, Ravenscroft has much to say about Hitler’s alleged interest in the Grail, although it is a very different sort of Grail from that of the Arthurian legends: this one is more related to medieval alchemy. It was this interest that is said to have brought Hitler into contact with Walter Stein in 1911, when Ravenscroft claims that Stein purchased a copy of a nineteenth-century edition of Wolfram von Eschenbach’s (c 1170 – c 1220) Parzival, with learned but troubling annotations in Hitler’s handwriting, from a dingy second-hand bookshop.

We are told about Hilter’s special hatred for Rudolf Steiner and of Steiner’s own interest in the Spear before returning to Nazi history and the rise of Heinrich Himmler (1900-1945). Himmler’s antiquarian obsessions are well known and included an interest in the Hapsburg regalia, of which the Spear is a part. We are told how Hitler took the Spear from its case in the Schatzkammer (Treasury) of the Hofburg Museum on the day of his entry to Vienna following the Anschluss that incorporated Austria into Greater Germany. Then we lose sight of it again until the end of the Second World War, when it was allegedly discovered by Lieutenant Walter William Horn (1908-1995) at the very moment of Hitler’s suicide on 30 April 1945.

The first issue to address is that, as with so many religious relics, the Vienna Lance is not the only one. There are at least three others, including one in St Peter’s (Vatican City) and another in Vagharshapat (Վաղարշապատ, Armenia). The question of identity does not seem to have occurred to Trevor Ravenscroft, yet, if the idea that the very spear that pierced the side of Jesus has an occult power, the identity of the specific object is crucial to its possession of any such power (assuming, against all probability, that this sort of occult power has any reality). So, what is the claim of the Vienna Lance to be that very spear?

The Vienna Lance is first attested in the reign of Otto I (912-973, “The Great”) as Holy Roman Emperor (961-973). It became part of the Reichskleinodien (official regalia) of the Empire in 1424, when Sigismund of Luxembourg (1368-1437, Emperor 1433-1437) assembled a group of artefacts to be kept in Nürnberg (Nuremberg, Germany) as the official coronation and ceremonial accoutrements of the Emperor. During the Revolutionary Wars of 1796, when the French army was close to Nürnberg, the Reichkleinodien were given to Aloys Freiherr von Hügel (1754-1825) for transport to Vienna, where they remained until 1938.

In that year, the Nazi hierarchy took the collection to Nürnberg, where they were hidden on the Allies’ advance toward the city in 1945. They were recovered thanks to the efforts of Walter Horn, a medievalist working in the US Army, whose knowledge of both the history of the Holy Roman Empire and the German language, was able to ascertain their hiding place in 1946. They were returned to Vienna and remain in the Schatzenkammer in the Hofburg Museum.

That much is the recent history of the Vienna Lance. However, if it is the spear that was thrust into the dying body of Jesus on the cross, its history must be traced back farther than Otto I in the later tenth century CE. According to Trevor Ravenscroft, Walter Stein believed it to be among the relics brought to France by the shadowy Hugo of Tours. This much is possible; the Hofburg Museum has long believed it to be of Carolingian date (eighth or ninth century). However, it was examined by Robert Feather in 2003 as part of a television documentary and shown to be of a seventh-century type.

Some have suggested that Ravenscroft was writing fiction. There is even a suggestion that Ravenscroft’s publisher persuaded him to market what was written as a novel as non-fiction, but this does not seem to be borne out by the evidence.

Source: https://badarchaeology.wordpress.com/2012/12/30/the-spear-of-destiny-hitler-the-hapsburgs-and-the-holy-grail/

If you’re interested….rare recorded interview with Trevor Ravenscroft:

Trevor Ravenscroft was born in England in 1921, went to a British public school, and subsequently went to Sandhurst Military College before serving as a Commando officer in World War II. He was captured on a raid which attempted to assassinate Field Marshal Rommel in North Africa and was a POW in Germany from 1941 to 1945, escaping three times but each time being recaptured before ending up in a German concentration camp.

After the war he studied medicine at St Thomas’ Hospital, later becoming a journalist on the Beaverbrook press. It was during this period that he met his teacher Dr. Walter Johannes Stein – a Viennese scientist and historian and expert on medieval and ancient art. Stein was in fact a student and associate of the great teacher Rudolf Steiner.

It was through Stein’s deep and earnest pursuit of occultism that he first met Hitler in Vienna when he was a student. He came to know Hitler personally, at a point where Hitler had come to learn of the legend of the spear and its power.

Ravenscroft for a time was spiritual advisor to the Shah of Iran.

https://www.quietearth.org/personal-development/spirituality-metaphysics/interview-with-trevor-ravenscroft-mp3/

Pots of Gold

During the autumn of 1864 it was clear the Confederacy was losing the Civil War. Some of the Southern leaders hoping to save what was left of the Confederate Treasury decided to move some of it from Richmond, Virginia to North Carolina. They summoned Captain JW Duchase to Richmond and gave him specific orders–orders he was only to open upon arrival in Greensboro, North Carolina. When Duchase left Richmond, the train on which he traveled carried several boxcars with soldiers and arms, a cannon and 2 flatcars filled with thousands of iron cooking pots–each filled to the brim with gold coins, their lids tightly fastened with wire.

Upon arrival in Greensboro, Duchase read his orders. He was instructed to bury the pots along the train track, 100 paces out, and to plot the burial places as nearly as possible. Following his orders, Duchase’s men buried the pots in groups of three, over 16 miles from McLeansville to a town called Company Shops (now known as Burlington).

His mission completed, Duchase and his men were to take the train back to Richmond, not only to report on the locations of the buried iron pots, but also to help defend Richmond from the advancing Union forces. But the returning train was derailed by Union saboteurs. Most of Duchase’s company was captured–only he and a Lieutenant escaped– but in the escape, he lost the only written plot map. Weeks later he was captured and sent to prison, where he remained until after the war.

Duchase then traveled to Mexico, where he built a successful life, and never returned to the U.S. His personal journals, which contained specific details of buried pots where given to P.H. Black. Black was from Greensboro, NC, and met with Duchase in Mexico, returning to the United States with his journals. When Black died in the 1930s, Duchase’s journals were missing from his possessions.

In the late 1880’s, the town of Burlington was growing rapidly. Farmers responded to the growing demand for food by turning thousands of acres of land along the railroad tracks to farmland. In the spring of 1910, a farmer was plowing next to the railroad tracks and broke his plow on something buried in the soil. He hit an old rusted pot, with the lid wired shut and filled with gold coins. Two more were found later, totaling three pots of $20 gold pieces, for this very lucky man.

The legend never says if he found more pots on his property. However, in the mid 1990’s a treasure hunter claims to have found 12 pots in four different locations. Still, if there were thousands of pots, and the number claimed to have been found is less than 20, that means there could be hundreds of pots of gold, just waiting to be found…in the 16 mile stretch from McLeansville to Burlington…100 paces from the railroad tracks.

Sudoku

Sudoku is played on a grid of 9 x 9 spaces. Within the rows and columns are 9 “squares” (made up of 3 x 3 spaces). Each row, column and square (9 spaces each) needs to be filled out with the numbers 1-9, without repeating any numbers within the row, column or square. Does it sound complicated? As you can see from the image above of an actual Sudoku grid, each Sudoku grid comes with a few spaces already filled in; the more spaces filled in, the easier the game – the more difficult Sudoku puzzles have very few spaces that are already filled in.

In the above puzzle, the upper left square (circled in blue), already has 7 out of the 9 spaces filled in. The only numbers missing from the square are 5 and 6. By seeing which numbers are missing from each square, row, or column, we can use process of elimination and deductive reasoning to decide which numbers need to go in each blank space.

We know we need to add a 5 and a 6 to be able to complete the square, but based on the neighboring rows and squares we cannot clearly deduce which number to add in which space. This means that we should ignore the upper left square for now, and try to fill in spaces in some other areas of the grid instead.

One way to figure out which numbers can go in each space is to use “process of elimination” by checking to see which other numbers are already included within each square – since there can be no duplication of numbers 1-9 within each square (or row or column). Looking at the same puzzle below, we can use the process of elimination to determine where another number should go. In the far left-hand vertical column (circled in Blue) the 1, 5 and 6 missing.

In this case, we can quickly notice that there are already number 1s in the top left and center left squares of the grid (with number 1s circled in red). This means that there is only one space remaining in the far left column where a 1 could possibly go – circled in green. This is how the process of elimination works in Sudoku – you find out which spaces are available, which numbers are missing – and then deduce, based on the position of those numbers within the grid, which numbers fit into each space.

Sudoku rules are relatively uncomplicated – but the game is infinitely varied, with millions of possible number combinations and a wide range of levels of difficulty. But it’s all based on the simple principles of using numbers 1-9, filling in the blank spaces based on deductive reasoning, and never repeating any numbers within each square, row or column.

There is no guessing in sudoku…reasoning and logic are key…and there’s NO MATH required…LOL.

Pat’s Apology: the above sample puzzle requires a little more than basic skills to complete but most puzzles i found on line were like this. (I liked the circles and details in the explanations to help you see exactly what they were talking about.) I have included a puzzle below which requires ONLY the most basic process of elimination skills to solve and I will post the answer if anyone requests it.

Reconstruction of the Peoples’ House

The 45th President of the United States, Donald Trump, was unlikely to find the White House in anything other than tip-top condition. [NF: Which we now know was untrue!] However, things weren’t quite the same when the 33rd President of the United States, Harry S. Truman, moved into the residence in 1945. To his surprise and dismay, it had serious problems. Not only was it drafty and creaky – it was downright unsafe. Chandeliers in the house were observed swaying for no apparent reason, and floors moved underneath people’s feet when stepped on.

All of the above resulted in a structural investigation being conducted on the building, revealing haphazard retrofitting, fire hazards and a second floor that was on the verge of collapsing. What’s more, the White House’s foundations were sinking, walls were peeling away, and disused water and gas pipes were weighing down the building and making it unsustainable. The situation was so bad that, in June 1948, one of the legs of First Daughter Margaret Truman’s piano fell right through a floorboard of her second-floor sitting room. This event, along with others, made the Presidential family and its aides realize that serious measures were required to save the historic building.

In 1949, Congress approved a $5.4 million project to gut the building in its entirety, replacing its interior while retaining its historic facade. Architects, engineers, and workers toiled for the next 22 months, trying to figure out how to remove unstable structural elements while somehow ensuring the exterior of the building remained intact. All of the construction equipment used on the site had to be carried inside in pieces, then re-assembled before being used in order to prevent exterior damage. The first and second floors were replaced, while several expansions and basement levels were added, including a bomb shelter that was capable of withstanding a nuclear attack. President Truman and his family returned to reside in the White House in 1952, with a small ceremony marking the occasion. The First Family received a gold key to its newly-refurbished residence.

January 3, 1950: A second floor corridor.

November 6, 1950: Workers lay concrete ceilings for basement rooms below the northeast corner of the White House.

February 6, 1950: View from the servants’ dining room.

February 10, 1950: Workers dismantle a bathtub.

February 14, 1950: Workers gut a lower corridor.

February 23, 1950: Workers remove the main staircase.

February 27, 1950: A crane lifts a 40-foot beam towards a second-floor window while workers load debris onto a truck.

March 1, 1950: The east wall of the state dining room.

March 9, 1950: Men stand in the second floor Oval Study above the Blue Room.

May 17, 1950: Bulldozers move earth around inside the gutted shell of the White House.

November 21, 1951: The state dining room.

December 4, 1951: A third floor corridor.

January 4, 1952: Workers install new steps on the South Portico.

January 23, 1952: The state dining room.

February 16, 1952: The South Portico with scaffolding removed.

March 24, 1952: Library of Congress employees place books on the shelves of the West Sitting Room.

March 27, 1952: President Harry S. Truman and First Lady Bess Truman return to the White House after the renovation.

Source: https://www.ba-bamail.com/design-and-photography/the-white-house-renovation-of-the-1950s/

Andrew Jackson’s 1400-pound block of cheese

Despite a humble beginning, Andrew Jackson grew to become a legend. Born in the backwoods of South Carolina, he attended school only sporadically as a boy. By the age of 14, he had been predeceased by both of his parents and his brothers and fought in the American Revolutionary War (during which time he contracted, and survived, smallpox). He was known for his fiery temper and propensity for fighting.

Still, he managed to pull himself up by the bootstraps to become a wealthy lawyer, celebrated general, influential politician and, eventually, President of the United States of America. And, at some point, he was gifted a really, really big wheel of cheese.

Andrew Jackson’s early life

Andrew Jackson was born on March 15, 1767, in the Waxhaws region of the Carolinas. The exact location of his birth is unknown, and both states have claimed him as a native son, though he always said he was from South Carolina. The son of Irish immigrants, his father died before he was born, and his mother and both of his brothers died during the American Revolution. As a result, Jackson would hold a life-long grudge against the British.

Career and political achievements

Despite very little formal education as a child, Jackson started reading law books as a teenager and, in 1787, earned admission to the North Carolina bar. He soon moved to the region that would become Tennessee and began working as a prosecuting attorney. Later, he opened a private practice.

Jackson did quite well in his business and earned enough to build a mansion, the Hermitage (still standing in Nashville today), and to buy slaves. In 1796, he became the first man elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Tennessee and was later elected to Senate in 1797. Only a year later, he was elected judge of Tennessee’s superior county and later chosen to head the state’s militia.

*The Hermitage. The plantation was owned by Andrew Jackson, the seventh President of the United States, from 1804 until his death at the Hermitage in 1845. It also serves as his final resting place.*

During the War of 1812, he held the role of general and twice led the Americans to victory. Later, he ordered an invasion of Florida and, defeating the Spanish, claimed the land for the United States. Though his actions were controversial, they ultimately sped up the U.S. acquisition of the land.

Due to his popularity, many suggested that he run for president. Though he initially protested, supporters managed to get him a nomination. In a five-way race, Jackson neatly won the popular vote, but no candidate received the majority of electoral votes. The House of Representatives was charged with deciding between the three leading candidates: Jackson, John Quincy Adams and Secretary of the Treasury William H. Crawford. Adams won.

President Andrew Jackson

Four years later, Andrew Jackson won the election, despite an unusually large number of personal attacks. He was the first president not from Massachusetts or Virginia, and people either loved him or hated him–there was no middle ground.

The newly minted president made it clear that he was in charge, and almost immediately he made a decision that would mar his reputation for centuries to come: he suggested moving Native American tribes in the United States to the west of the Mississippi. The forced removal wasn’t completed until two years after he left office, but the great loss of life is largely attributed to his ignoring the corrupt actions of government officials.

On the upside, Jackson’s penny-pinching ways, along with increased revenue, enabled him to pay off the national debt in 1835 and keep the nation debt free for the remainder of his term. This is the only time in the history of the United States that the federal government was debt free.

In October 1840, the city of New Orleans held a silver jubilee celebrating the twenty-fifth anniversary of the American victory over the British in the Battle of New Orleans. This portrait of Andrew Jackson, the aging hero of that battle, was based on a larger oil painting created during the jubilee. Later, to the chagrin of many, Jackson vetoed the re-charter of the Bank of the United States (who was aligned with the opposing party). Despite the unpopularity of this move, he easily won reelection with more than 56 percent of the popular vote.

The big block of cheese

On New Year’s Day 1836, Andrew Jackson received a giant block of cheese. It wasn’t as much a gift as it was a testament to the great state of New York.

Dairy farmer Colonel Thomas S. Meacham of Sandy Creek, NY, came up with the idea in 1835. He believed that creating a gargantuan wheel of cheese from all the local cows, and then shipping it to the president, would help prove New York’s success as a center of farming and industry. Though his efforts were perhaps misguided, he certainly did garner a lot of attention.

According to legend, the finished product was a wheel of cheddar four feet in diameter, two feet thick, and nearly 1400 pounds. It was wrapped in a giant belt that, according to a story in the New Hampshire Sentinel, presented a “fine bust of the President, surrounded by a chain of twenty-four States united and linked together.”

After touring the northeast, the cheese was loaded onto a schooner and set sail for Washington D.C. It was accompanied by five other giant cheeses (though only about half the size) intended for Vice President Martin Van Buren, William Marcy, Daniel Webster, the U.S. Congress, and the legislature of the State of New York.

Upon its arrival at Pennsylvania Avenue, the president simply did not know what to do with it. He gave away as much as he could, and undoubtedly ate his own fair share, but by all accounts, it was left to age sitting on a floor in the middle of the White House.

A giant cheese party

What do you do when you have more cheese than you can possibly eat on your own? You throw a party. And that’s exactly what Andrew Jackson did. Nearing the end of his second term, the president decided that he didn’t really want to pack up a giant cheese and take it with him. Instead, he would make the two-year-old pile of cheese the center point of his last public reception.

*Jackson’s cheese in the East Room of the White house*

10,000 visitors showed up and devoured the stinky wheel in under two hours. According to Benjamin Perley Poore in his 1886 book Perley’s Reminiscences of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis, “For hours did a crowd of men, women and boys hack at the cheese, many taking large hunks of it away with them. When they commenced, the cheese weighed one thousand four hundred pounds, and only a small piece was saved for the President’s use. The air was redolent with cheese, the carpet was slippery with cheese, and nothing else was talked about at Washington that day.”

Unfortunately, even though the cheese was gone, its odor was not. Jackson’s successor, Martin Van Buren, reportedly had to air out the carpet, remove the curtains, and paint and white-wash the walls in the room where the cheese had resided.

Source: https://lulz.com/andrew-jackson-1400-pound-block-of-cheese/

Pennsylvania Black Bears

This is the time of the year we normally see the first black bears of the season. The forest is reviving itself after the long, snowy winter and everything is finally green again. The air is filled with the sweet, sweet smell of blossoming honeysuckle bushes…and the woods surrounding the house are filled with them. And that sweet smell will be tempting the bears to leave the higher ground and come visit our house.

From the PA Game Commission’s website:

Ursus americanus is the black bear’s scientific name; it means “American bear.” Although three species of bears inhabit North America, only the black bear is found in Pennsylvania. A population estimate in 2015 showed approximately 20,000 bears living in the commonwealth. Black bears appear heavy, but are surprisingly agile; they can run up to 35 miles per hour, climb trees and swim well. They may live up to 25 years in the wild.

Black bears are intelligent and curious. Studies show that bears can see colors, recognize human forms, and notice even the slightest movement. Bears usually rely on their acute sense of smell and, to a lesser degree, hearing, to locate food and danger. Despite their common name, black bears are not always black. They may be cinnamon or, even rarer, blond. Many bears have a white blaze or “V” on their chest.

Adults usually weigh around 200 pounds, with males being heavier than females, often more than twice as much. Some weigh up to 600 or more pounds and rare individuals up to 900. Males are called boars; females, sows. Black bears measure about three feet high when on all fours or about five to seven feet tall when standing upright.

In Pennsylvania, bears mate primarily from early June to mid-July. Males are very aggressive towards each other at this time. Sows give birth in January to litters of one to five. The newborn cubs are blind, toothless, and covered with short, fine hair that seems to inadequately cover their pink skin. Cubs begin nursing immediately after birth, and are groomed and cared for daily by the sow. Nurtured with the sow’s rich milk, they grow from as light as 10 ounces at birth to as much as 10 pounds by the time they leave the den in early April. Males do not help rear young.

Most cubs stay with the sow for a little more than a year. They watch her every move and learn by imitating her. Cubs are playful, regularly romping and wrestling with their littermates. The sows are very protective of cubs, sending them up trees if danger threatens. Adult males occasionally kill cubs. The family group disbands when the cubs are about a year and a half old and the sow is again ready to breed.

We saw a lot more bears when we were first building our home. I believe the new smells and sounds piqued their curiosity. They’ve balanced precariously on the rim of our burn barrel–butt in the air–reaching down inside the barrel to nab any edible bit left there. They’ve ruined our hummingbird feeders (lesson learned there–we take them in nightly now) and even left muddy prints on the logs on the side of our home.

But they are such fun to watch, safely inside the house. Hopefully we won’t have to wait too much longer this year!

Genghis Khan’s Bizarre Burial: Hidden Graves

There’s an ancient legend that Mongolian Ruler Genghis Khan desired that no one ever know the location of his grave, so he sent an army of men to murder anyone who came in contact with the funeral procession.

The Mausoleum of Genghis Khan is an ornate blue and white octagonal hall. It’s a top-rated tourist attraction outside of Ordos City in Inner Mongolia, which is an autonomous region landlocked inside of China. As many as 8,000 tourists visit each day to pay tribute to Genghis Khan. The main hall of the mausoleum contains a cenotaph – that’s a fancy word for a burial monument that contains no body. That’s because for 794 years, no one has ever figured out where Genghis Khan was buried.

The Mongolian ruler Genghis Khan was born sometime around 1162 near the Burkhan Khaldun mountain in Mongolia. He was the founder and the first Khan – which is a title meaning emperor of the Mongol Empire. His legacy is being an absolutely brutal conquerer.

His armies conquered hundreds of cities and murdered millions of people. In doing so, he created the largest contiguous land Empire in the history of the world – a mass of land equal to around the size of the continent of Africa. Genghis Khan’s Mongol Empire stretched as far West as modern day Poland and as far South as what is now Egypt. While he is remembered for ruthlessness and violence, he was once remembered for spreading culture, science and technology to many parts of the world. His empire was ethnically and racially diverse. He is considered the most successful military conquerer of all time.

The last conquest of Genghis Khan was Yinchuan, the capital of the Western Xia province of China. The Mongols conquered the city and slaughtered it’s entire population in 1227. It’s believed that it was during that battle that Genghis Khan died. No one is certain how he died. Theories range from being killed in battle to falling off his horse to dying from wounds he sustained while hunting – which is a theory that was spread by explorer Marco Polo. A legend that was circulated later was that he was killed by a Western Xia Princess that he had abducted.

The army that the Khan had amassed when he died was more than 129,000 men. So why is it that one of the most famous humans to have walked the Earth has an unknown burial site? The simple answer is he wanted it that way.

Quite a few famous people from history have lost, unmarked or unknown graves. Take Mozart. When Mozart was buried, he was buried in a common grave. He wasn’t ultra wealthy and he wasn’t aristocracy, and as such, his grave was subject to excavation after a period of ten years after his death. This was the practice in Vienna at the time as there wasn’t enough room in the cemeteries. After a period of 10 years, the remains were gathered and added together with other interments to consolidate space. Because of this, over the years, the actual remains of Mozart were lost.

Alexander the Great’s current tomb is unknown. After he was entombed, his grave was repeatedly raided and looted. It was moved, but since then sea levels have changed, earthquakes have changed the land, and entire cities have been built over what was once ancient Alexandria.

Alexander the Great Sarcophagus

Atilla the Hun, Cleopatra – many rulers from history have graves that are now lost. But looking at the burials of people closer to our time might help us to understand why some would want their gravesites to be hidden.

The grave of John Belushi became a place for people to party. The family didn’t like this, nor did the cemetery, so he was moved to a quiet hillside cemetery. The family says that his grave marker there doesn’t actually mark the site of his grave, which has been kept a secret. [Who knows if he is actually buried at either of these sites!]

Nobody knows the location of the gravesite of Steve Jobs. He was a very private person and his family made sure that the location of his gravesite at Alta Mesa Cemetery in Palo Alto has been kept a secret. People wishing to pay respects can sign the guest book at the front lobby of the cemetery.

Going back in time to the 13th century, Genghis Khan had been explicit in the years previous to his death about how he wanted to be buried. He left very detailed instructions about what was to be done to ensure his wish was granted – that no one would ever know where he was buried. This was a tradition in his tribe.

Much of this is legend and very difficult to prove. The sources that are commonly pointed to are that of Marco Polo who journeyed across Asia at the time of the Mongolian Empire, and the Altan Tobchi, which is a 17th century chronicle of Mongolian customs.

The funeral procession was carried out by an army of 800 soldiers. Those soldiers murdered anyone who they encountered on the procession, as well as everyone who attended Genghis Khan’s funeral. They reached the likely site of his burial near the Burkhan Khaldun mountain and Onon River, buried him, and were then killed by a separate group of soldiers who came in at that point. A thousand horses were led to trample the ground of the entire region to obscure any trace of the burial. Additional legends even go so far as to suggest the Mongols redirected the flow of the Onon River to cover the region where Khan was buried.

This is how important it was to Genghis Khan for his burial place to remain a secret. I mean, after you’ve killed as many as 40 million people establish your empire, what are a few thousand more? There have been countless expeditions through the years to locate the body of Genghis Khan. None have been successful. Partly, this is due to the fact that Mongolians don’t want him to be found – they tend to respect the tradition and wishes of the ruler. Some superstitions claim that if the burial is ever discovered, the world will end.

This is probably linked to the fact that in 1941, the tomb of 14th Century Mongolian ruler Tamarlane was opened by Soviet Archaeologists and soon after, Nazis invaded The Soviet Union.

It’s been made even more difficult for researchers to find the site because the region around Burkhan Khaldun mountain has been made into a UNESCO World Heritage Site and as such is off limits for any sort of excavation or research.

Mongolia Badaam Festival

For Mongolians, they’re happy he’s never going to be found. In Mongolia, Genghis Khan is their most celebrated figure. He’s immortalized with statues and monuments throughout the nation and his face appears on their money. The rest of the world may see him as a vicious murderer and conquerer, but for Mongolians, he’s the ruler that united the East and West. He established what would become the Silk Road to enable trade and commerce for future generations. And for that, they want to continue to respect his final wishes.

The Cecil (Suicide) Hotel (Part 2)

Considering all of the deaths and suicides that have taken place at the Cecil Hotel, might there be a horrific history from the 1700’s giving rise to phantoms and ghosts or auras, if you will? People seem to be attracted to certain “spots” around the world, saying things such as “I don’t like the energy coming off of that place” or “there is something dark that draws me here.” Most people use that metaphorically but might there actually be something to it? Hmmm….there is blood in that soil!

The Tongva are an indigenous people of California from the Los Angeles Basin and the Southern Channel Islands, an area covering approximately 4,000 square miles. In the pre-colonial era, the people lived in as many as 100 villages and primarily identified by their village name. The name Tongva is the most widely circulated name and gained popularity in the late 20th century. Others choose to identify as Kizh and disagree over use of the term Tongva.

On October 7, 1542, an exploratory expedition led by Spanish explorer Juan Cabrillo reached Santa Catalina in the Channel Islands, where his ships were greeted by Tongva in a canoe. The following day, Cabrillo and his men, the first Europeans known to have interacted with the Gabrieleño people, entered a large bay on the mainland, which they named “Baya de los Fumos” (“Bay of Smokes”) on account of the many smoke fires they saw there. This is commonly believed to be San Pedro Bay, near present-day San Pedro.

The Gaspar de Portola expedition in 1769 was the first contact by land to reach Tongva territory, marking the beginning of Spanish colonization. Franciscan padre Junipero Serra accompanied Portola. Within two years of the expedition, Serra had founded four missions, including Mission San Gabriel, founded in 1771 and rebuilt in 1774, and Mission San Fernando, founded in 1797. The people enslaved at San Gabriel were referred to as Gabrieleños, while those enslaved at San Fernando were referred to as Fernandeños.

Painting of Mission San Gabriel by Ferdinand Deppe (1832) showing a Gavrieleno kiiy thatched with tule, a giant species of sedge grass.

There is much evidence of Tongva resistance to the mission system. Many individuals returned to their village at time of death. Many converts retained their traditional practices in both domestic and spiritual contexts, despite the attempts by the padres and missionaries to control them. Traditional foods were incorporated into the mission diet and lithic and shell bead production and use persisted. More overt strategies of resistance such as refusal to enter the system, work slowdowns, abortion and infanticide of children resulting from rape, and fugitivism were also prevalent. Five major uprisings were recorded at Mission San Gabriel alone.

It is estimated that nearly 6,000 Tongva lie buried on the grounds of Mission San Gabriel from the mission period.

Two late-eighteenth century rebellions against the mission system were led by Nicolás José, who was an early convert who had two social identities: “publicly participating in Catholic sacraments at the mission but privately committed to traditional dances, celebrations, and rituals.” He participated in a failed attempt to kill the mission’s priests in 1779 and organized eight foothill villages in a revolt in October 1785 with Toypurina, who further organized the villages, which “demonstrated a previously undocumented level of regional political unification both within and well beyond the mission.” However, divided loyalties among the natives contributed to the failure of the 1785 attempt as well as mission soldiers being alerted of the attempt by converts or neophytes.

Toypurina, José and two other leaders of the rebellion, Chief Tomasajaquichi of Juvit village and a man named Alijivit, from nearby village of Jajamovit, were put on trial for the 1785 rebellion. At his trial, José stated that he participated because the ban at the mission on dances and ceremony instituted by the missionaries, and enforced by the governor of California in 1782, was intolerable as they prevented their mourning ceremonies.

Felipe de Neve y Padilla (1724–1784) was a Spanish soldier who served as the 4th Governor of the Californias, from 1777 to 1782. Neve is considered one of the founders of Los Angeles and was instrumental in the foundation of San Jose and Santa Barbara.

Statue of Felipe de Neve, Spanish colonial Governor of Las Californias, in the Los Angeles Plaza. The inscription reads: “Felipe de Neve (1728-84). Governor of California 1775-82. In 1781, on orders from King Carlos III of Spain, Felipe de Neve selected a site near the River Porciuncula and laid out the town of El Pueblo de La Reina de Los Angeles, one of two pueblos he founded in Alta California.

In June 1788, nearly three years later, their sentences arrived from Mexico City, Nicolás José was banned from San Gabriel and sentenced to six years of hard labor in irons at the most distant penitentiary in the region. Toypurina was banished from Mission San Gabriel and sent to the most distant Spanish mission.

Resistance to Spanish rule demonstrated how the Spanish Crown’s claims to California were both insecure and contested. By the 1800s, San Gabriel was the richest in the entire colonial mission system, supplying cattle, sheep, goats, hogs, horses, mules, and other supplies for settlers and settlements throughout Alta California. The mission functioned as a slave plantation.

Some might wonder…..could there be a Tongva burial ground on the site of the Cecil Hotel? Could it be the ghosts of the earliest settlers of that land returning? A sense of despair that somehow seeps in while people are sleeping? Who can say? Do YOU believe in ghosts?