Americas

Dakota Die-Off

by

A Facebook friend posted a link to a blogpost regarding this story – which has apparently just barely made a dent in public awareness outside the local area.

Last weekend western South Dakota and parts of the surrounding states got their butts handed to them by Mother Nature. A blizzard isn’t unusual in South Dakota, the cattle are tough they can handle some snow. They have for hundreds of years.
 
Unlike on our dairy farm, beef cattle don’t live in climate controlled barns. Beef cows and calves spend the majority of their lives out on pasture. They graze the grass in the spring, summer and fall and eat baled hay in the winter.
 
In winter these cows and calves grow fuzzy jackets that keep them warm and protect them from the snow and cold.
 
The cows and calves live in special pastures in the winter. These pastures are smaller and closer to the ranch, they have windbreaks for the cows to hide behind. They have worked for cows for hundred of years.
 
So what’s the big deal about this blizzard?
 
It’s not really winter yet.

The rest is here.

(Crossposted at www.ncobrief.com, and at www.celiahayes.com)

Possible South Florida Meetup, Saturday 28 September

by

La Vallée-de-Jacmel, Haïti

If all goes well, I will be arriving at MIA on American 1665 from Port-au-Prince at 3:35 PM local time this Saturday. The plan, such as it is, is that I call Jonathan once I am through customs. I somewhat inappropriately made reservations for lodging much closer to FLL, just because I like the place (Villa Europa in Hollywood) and haven’t had the chance to stay there in a while. So anyway, southern Floridians interested in a probable wide-ranging and somewhat ethanol-assisted discussion (#civilsociety #crisisof2020 #statefailure #younameit) are encouraged to contact Jonathan and … figure something out. Hey, I have people for that.

History Friday – The Tireless Mr. Colt

by

Born in Hartford, Connecticut in 1814, Samuel “Sam” Colt was an innovator and inventor, single-minded, energetic to the point of hyperactivity, and the very epitome of a self-made man of which there were a great many in 19th century America. At the age of seven years, his mother died. She was the daughter of a fairly well-to-do family; his father was a farmer turned minor industrialist, having gone into the business of manufacturing textiles with the aid of his in-laws. When Sam was eleven, his father went bankrupt. While the senior Colt attempted to regain his economic footing, Sam and his five brothers and sisters were farmed out to relatives and neighbors. Sam was apprenticed to a farmer, with the understanding that he attended school regularly. Which Sam Colt did, but likely did not learn anything beyond what he was really interested in his handwriting was lamentable and his spelling a matter best left unmentioned. But he read widely and voraciously; his favorite was a then-popular scientific encyclopedia called the Compendium of Knowledge, and sometime in his early teens he resolved to be an inventor. At fifteen, he left school and went to work in his father’s mill, a splendid venue for tinkering and indulging in a taste for showing off. On July 4th, 1829, he gained a degree of local notoriety by blowing up a raft in a local shallow pond, detonating a large quantity of gunpowder with a galvanic cell which he had built himself. He had advertised the event beforehand, by having handbills printed and distributed so there was a substantial crowd gathered for the show. But the raft with the battery and gunpowder on it had drifted from position and the resulting mighty blast showered the crowd with mud.

Read more

History Friday: Some Curious Facts You Might Not Have Known . . .

by

. . . . About the trans-Mississippi West, and the emigrant trails generally.

In the interests of writing what now turns out to be seven books and counting, I spent the last couple of years immersed in a tidal-wave of books about the American West; the California and Oregon emigrant trails, the settlement of Texas, studies of various Indian tribes, the post-Civil War Army, cattle drives and all that.

I have encountered all sorts of amusing things that either I didn’t know, or knew vaguely of, or that are not generally known, except by local historians and enthusiasts. Some of these may come as a great surprise to those who know only of the 19th Century American West through TV shows and movies. Such as:

A flock of sheep was taken along the Oregon Trail in the early 1840ies. And in 1847 a large wagon of nursery stock: approximately 700 live young plants, of various types of fruit and nut trees, and vines. This at a time when it still generally took at least five months to cross two thirds of the North American continent.

Read more

Archive Post: The Shape of Things to Come … And Go

by

(Just for fun, from out of my NCOBrief archives, an essay from July, 2010.)
You know, out of all of the things that I was afraid might happen, after the presidential coronation of Obama, the Fresh Prince of Chicago . . . I never considered that race relations might be one of those things which would worsen. Hey lots of fairly thoughtful and well-intentioned people of pallor voted for him, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, or at least in some expectation of him being a fairly well adjusted and centrist politician, or at least a fast learner. Wasn’t that what all the top pundits, and the mainstream media were insisting, all during the 2008 campaign . . . well, once they got up from their knees and wiped the drool off their chins.

Read more