Thursday

Good morning,

Quote of the day:

“Not now, my good man. This is no time for making enemies.”

                                             Voltaire

Voltaire was on his death bed and was asked to rebuke Satan.

I am once again reading a Pulitzer Prize winning book about why we are what we are. Right now the part I am reading is why and where did we divert from being hunter/gatherers to more sedentary farmers. Research shows that the first attempt at cultivating wild plants into crops was done in what is known as “The Fertile Crescent” which is that area between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in what is today Syria and Iraq. It is the first place that wild grasses were cultivated into what became emmer wheat. This was about 8,500 BC. Emmer wheat was also grown along the Nile river in Egypt but the earliest found were just 6,500 years old meaning emmer wheat migrated from the Fertile Crescent. Another curiosity to me was the aborigines of Australia who were hunter/gatherers for thousands of years but they would find wild yams, dig them up cut off a piece and then put a stem back in the ground so another yam would grow. This made them basically a farmer in addition to hunter/gatherers. The only problem was that it never occurred to them to bring the stem back to their village and plant it close by, they always put the stem back where they found it. They also traded heavily with other peoples on nearby islands that were farmers only but it had no effect on their lives. The native Carib Indians relied heavily on the papaya tree for a food source but there is no evidence that they ever tried to establish groves. They would go to a native tree and clear out brush and competing trees but it never occurred to them to try to plant seeds and raise them. The author said that all of this goes back to the old saying “Necessity is the mother of invention.” If the people are relatively happy and decently fed then why change what they are doing.

The author did much research in New Guinea which is basically an island divided by the Owen Stanley mountain range. On one side the natives until very recently used stone tipped spears and lances to kill their game because there was plenty available and they could afford to let some escape while only wounded. On the other side of the mountain range the natives would trade for anything made of metal, especially steel, that they could form into a spear point...and when they discovered firearms that was paramount in their thinking and trading. The reason...game was not as plentiful and they had to be sure of a kill. We are strange critters, y'all. By the way, on the side where the game was not as plentiful cannibalism was not unknown and was allowed as part of their religion.

Back in 2011 in a small Florida town a boy 17 years old killed his mother and father, cleaned up the blood for a few hours and then went to a bank and withdrew a sizable chunk of change and threw a party at his house with his parent's corpses in their bedroom. The kid had been treated for a depression and was on medication. He was tried, convicted and sentenced to life without parole. When asked why he did not get the death penalty the judge said that in Florida the death penalty cannot be given to anyone under 18 and the kid was 17 when he committed the crime.

This Date in History March 26

1776 The Provincial Government of South Carolina declared their independence from Great Britain, adopted a new constitution and renamed itself the General Assembly of South Carolina. They elected John Rutledge as president, Henry Laurens as Vice-President and William Drayton as Chief Justice. This was four months before the Continental Congress declared independence for the entire Colonies on July 4. During the next two years John Rutledge had near dictatorial powers in South Carolina and the others decided a change was needed. In 1778 changes were proposed to the State constitution that Rutledge was opposed to and he resigned. Rawlins Lowndes took over a Governor and instituted the changes Rutledge found objectionable. The changes took veto powers from the President and made it a law that state senators were to be elected in a general election. It also changed the office of the state President to a governorship. In spite of all of this, in 1779 Rutledge was re-elected only this time he would not be President but a Governor with a lot less power than before. It was Drayton that drafted the state constitution that gave Rutledge such heartburn. Drayton went on to serve in the Continental Congress and died in Philadelphia at the age of 37 in 1779. Rutledge lost most of his wealth when the British captured Charleston earlier but lived to see a new century and died in 1800. Henry Laurens was elected to the Continental Congress and in 1780 was sent on a diplomatic mission to Holland but was captured by the British and was imprisoned in the Tower of London where he served 15 months and was released. He came back to America and spent the rest of his years on his plantation where he died in 1792.

1987 On this date the Philadelphia police are called to a rundown house owned by one Gary Heidnik. In the basement they find a den of horrors. There were two women chained to the wall, one woman at the bottom of a deep pit. There was a fourth but she was the one that had escaped and called the cops. Hiednik had been a mental patient in the past but had made his self wealthy on the stock market. He did not pay any income tax because he had declared himself a Bishop of his own church, The Church of God’s Ministries. It was in 1986 that Heidnik had decided to have a harem and began gathering women off the streets of Philadelphia. He killed one woman by throwing her into the pit, filling it with water and then throwing in an operating electric fan. He killed another by chaining her to the wall and letting her starve to death. The grisliest of all was when he killed another woman, dismembered her and cooked and fed her to the others. Needless to say, Heidnik was tried and convicted and sentenced to death. He was executed in July of 1999. This jackass was able to live 12 years after committing these abominations. It ain’t right, y'all, it just ain’t right.

1832 On this date the American Fur Company owned by John Jacob Astor launched its newest device to capture even more of the North American fur trade. It is the riverboat Yellowstone. Astor had the boat built in New Orleans to have a shallow draft but yet be maneuverable. The boat departed Saint Louis on this date and headed up the Missouri River to the American Fur Company trading post at the intersection of the Missouri and the Yellowstone rivers. The trading post was name Fort Union and was nearly the only successful fur trading fort in the American west. Astor’s fur company was so huge that they could undercut or absorb any and all of their competition. Normally, the furs were brought down river to Saint Louis by small 12 man skiffs with them fighting off the Mandan and Blackfoot Indians most of the way. The Indians would not attack a vessel the size of the Yellowstone so the American Fur Company could transport their furs carrying many times over what the competition could carry and did not have to fool with the pesky Blackfoot. After the Astor family became enormously rich, the need for furs faded and the Yellowstone faded from memory.

Born today:

1911 US writer Tennessee Williams. He said of Truman Capote. “I have always said that Truman’s voice is so high it could only be heard by a bat.” Truman wrote the Pulitzer Prize winning book In Cold Blood which was made into a movie starring Robert Blake. It is little known that he was helped writing this book by another Pulitzer Prize winning author in Harper Lee who gave us the immortal To Kill a Mockingbird. Truman wrote Breakfast at Tiffany's which was made into a movie also.

           Thanks for listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow