Musings
and History
Quote
of the day:
Heard
on “Hollywood Squares”:
The
emcee said “According to a recent survey who has the most trouble
staying asleep, men or women?” An answer was “Trying to figure
out which I am is what keeps me up at night.”
Don
Knotts
More
about the Comanches:
The
settlers in Texas, especially in the “Hill Country” area west of
Austin complained bitterly about the apparent blasé attitude of the
local Comanche. They had a habit of walking into houses unannounced
and uninvited and taking whatever they fancied. The Texas government
contacted the local Comanche tribe and asked for a conference to try
and settle this problem. Seven sub-chiefs showed up in Austin. The
whites were expecting them to show up in full regalia astride
prancing Spanish mustangs. They showed up naked from the waist up
(it was summer), hair in tangles and stained breech clouts. They
were astride several different examples of horseflesh including
mules. The Comanches were responsive to a peace treaty but the
whites demanded that all the white hostages must be released. The
next day the Comanches brought in a 16 year old girl that had been a
captive for 7 years. The girl was not in good shape. She had many
visible burn scars including her nose that had been burned off to the
bone which infuriated the whites. The whites also knew that the
Comanches had a lot more white captives that this one girl. The
seven sub-chiefs were puzzled over the anger of the whites because
they believed that it was common practice to keep whatever captives
they wanted and treat them anyway they wanted. The whites reacted by
hanging four of the sub-chiefs and imprisoning the others in spite of
them being there under a flag of truce. The whites ought not to have
done that because the enraged Comanches stopped walking in and
stealing things and began a campaign of systematic torture and
massacre of the white settlers especially those on the banks of the
Brazos River. The carnage continued until a large contingent of US
Cavalry arrived and then the Comanches melted away into the
countryside. More later.
This
Date in History July 7
1863
On this date frontiersman Christopher “Kit” Carson departed
Santa Fe on a mission to gather up all the Navajos in the four
corners area and take them 300 miles to a reservation for the
duration of the Civil War. Before the outset of the war Carson was a
friend and confidant to the Navajo, Apache, Kiowa and several other
tribes in the southwestern United States. After the Civil war
started Carson offered his services to the US and was given the rank
of Lieutenant Colonel of the 1st
New Mexico Volunteers. He was present at the battle of Val Verde
where the Confederates beat the crap out of a US Cavalry unit.
Something happened to old Kit as soon as he put on that uniform.
Suddenly he became a hater of all Indians and began a campaign of
terror against them. When the Navajo resisted going to the
reservation, Kit ordered their villages burned, poison their water
supply, burned their crops and slaughtered their livestock, mostly
sheep and horses. Then the Navajo began a 300 mile walk across the
desert to the reservation. There is no use for me to go into what
happened to the old and very young. I don’t know what happens to
some people when they gain a little power; some of them just go crazy
as hell. History is full of examples. Like Hitler, Napoleon and the
queen of mean, Leona Helmsley.
1863
On this date, for the first time in the history of the United States
issued a sentence of death to a woman and she is hanged. There were
other women hanged and burned at the stake as being witches in our
early years in and around Salem, Massachusetts but we were not the
United States at that time. By the way, it took the Governor of
Massachusetts stepping in to put a stop to that carnage. Anyway, the
woman’s name was Mary Surratt and she was convicted of treason in
spite of overwhelming evidence that she was innocent. Mary ran a
boarding house about 2 blocks from the Ford Theater in Washington
where Lincoln was assassinated. What made her “guilty” was that
the real conspirators in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln used
her parlor to plan it. There was no evidence that she knew anything
at all about what they were planning. Another travesty of justice
was the imprisonment of Dr. Mudd that treated and set the broken leg
of John Wilkes Booth after he had broken it jumping to the stage
after shooting Lincoln. Mudd had taken the Hippocratic Oath that he
would treat anyone that needed it. All of that not withstanding, he
was jailed for keeping his oath. The powers that be in Washington
were in a frenzy of revenge, no matter how unjust.
2006
Kenneth Lay the former president of Enron died suddenly of a heart
attack in his summer home in Aspen, Colorado. Isn’t it ironic that
he still had a summer home in the Colorado Rockies and had already
been convicted of several crimes and could possibly be sentenced to
life in prison? His sentencing was due in October along with CFO
Jeffrey Skilling, also previously convicted. A member of the jury
that convicted Lay said that she had doubts about his guilt until he
testified and seemed irritable and arrogant. When he was asked about
giving his wife a $200,000 yacht for her birthday even after the
company had gone bankrupt costing thousand of employees their
pensions and savings, he said “You can’t give up this lifestyle
like turning off a spigot.” It was then that the jurors knew that
he had no remorse for what he had done to his employees and voted
guilty. I would have too.
Births
and deaths:
1940
Professional dumb-ass and musician Ringo Starr is born. He said “I
like Beethoven, especially his poems.” Ringo, shut up.
1816
English parliamentarian Richard Sheridan dies. When hitting on a
potential new mistress he said “Will you come into my garden, my
roses would like to see you”. Listen up guys; I don’t know if I
have ever heard a better pick-up line than that.
Quotable
quotes:
“Character
is much easier kept than recovered.”
Thomas Paine
“It
is the fight alone that pleases us, not the victory”
Blaise Pascal
“Success
is how high you bounce when you hit bottom.”
Gen. George S. Patton
“To
give anything less than your best is to sacrifice your gift.”
Steve
Prefontaine
“The
hardest thing to learn in life is which bridges to cross and which to
burn.”
Laurence
Peter
“Most
people run a race to see who is the fastest. I run a race to see who
has the most guts”
Steve
Prefontaine
Thanks
for listening I can hardly wait until tomorrow
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