Last fall I posted a couple of times on the body of a WWII era airman that was found preserved in a glacier in the central Sierra Nevadas. Today the LA Times reports that the Department of Defense’s forensics lab in Hawaii has identified it as Leo Mustonen of Brainerd, Minnesota. Mustonen was 22 when …
Month: February 2006
Rebecca Webb Carranza, RIP
Ms. Webb died in a hospice in Phoenix on January 19 at age 98. We are all in her debt, as her El Zarape Tortilla Factory pioneered the commercial manufacture and sale of tortilla chips.
New Orleans Musicians
One easy way to know if you’ve found a place with culture—an un-manufactured place, breathing on its own—is to listen for its music. There has been a lot of music played in New Orleans, some of it entirely the product of the place and found in its true form nowhere else. The rauccus neighborhood brass …
More on the Donner Party
Some of you will remember a post I put up last month on the Donner Party and Alferd Packer, that was occasioned by a report that excavations at one of the Donner Party camps had provided no evidence of cannibalism. Well, yesterday the LA Times had an op-ed by Ethan Rarick entitled “Cannibals with Courage” …
African Slaves in Colonial Mexico
Last week the NY Times had this article on colonial era burials excavated in Campeche, Mexico. Researchers were able to identify some of the individuals as African slaves brought to Mexico by the Spanish as their teeth had been filed, showing evidence of an African cultural pattern. Also high levels of the trace element strontium …
Dr. John B. on Coursing
Occasional contributor John Burchard sent me an ominous note on new threats to coursing, which I will report on as they develop. Meanwhile, he has a few other typically wise thoughts on the subject to share. “Here’s a para from something I wrote earlier today, in answer to an obnoxious troll on one of the …
Hunting Song
I stole this lovely thing from my friend Rebecca’s blog; I think it is in this anthology. Frontier sons are lifelong illiterateswho know only how to hunt big game and brag about being tough guys.They feed their Mongolian ponies white grassto make them plump and strong in the autumn.They race proudly on their horses chasing …
Poor Oetzi
Poor Oetzi the Iceman – the more we find out about him the sadder his story becomes. Oetzi is of course the 5300 year-old body found preserved in a glacier in the Alps on the Austrian/Italian border. He was discovered in 1991 and represents one of those “moments frozen in time” we archaeologists love. His …
I confess..
.. that I virtually NEVER watch the State of the Union Address. Howard Veit rather snarkily sums up why: “…are you kidding? Not only does it not make any difference what was said, it doesn’t make any difference period. I fell asleep watching an old movie. The Iraq War is still going; Iran is still …
Another reason to write
From gun writer and pistolero emeritus Colonel Jeff Cooper come these eloquent words: “Did you write it down? If you did not, you should have. This is because only what you have committed to paper has significance. Man’s experience is only that which he has recorded. The more you consider that, the more significant it …