+++ DISCLAIMER +++

Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based on historical facts. BEWARE!

  

Some background:

The outbreak of the war in Europe in September 1939 did not immediately affect the status of the Armée de l'Air in French Indochina because it had the task of defending a wide area of Southeast Asia, including the future Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. And yet its array of airplanes seemed inadequate to perform any kind of real defense against any incursion by an enemy, because there were less than 100 airplanes available to it, all obsolescent or obsolete. In September 1931, Japan invaded and occupied Manchuria. This was an area of northeast China, which encompassed the provinces of Jilin, Liaoning and Heilongjiang. Nearly six whole years later, in July 1937, the Second Sino-Japanese War had begun. As yet, the French colonial authorities were hoping that the Japanese would not be brazen enough to take on the might of a European power. However, it became increasingly likely after the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, since Japan was part of the Axis alliance and thus Germany's ally.

 

On September 26, 1940, Japanese troops landed in Haiphong, violating a cease-fire which had been signed only the previous day. From the middle of the following month, the French became heavily involved in repelling Japanese army assaults. Following the Fall of France in 1940, Thais perceived a chance to regain the territories they had lost years earlier. The collapse of Metropolitan France made the French hold on Indochina tenuous. After the Japanese invasion of French Indochina in September 1940, the French were forced to allow the Japanese to set up military bases. This seemingly subservient behavior convinced the Thai regime that Vichy France would not seriously resist a confrontation with Thailand.

 

During the French-Thai War, the Thai Air Force achieved several air-to-air-victories in dogfights against the Vichy Armée de l'Air. During World War II, the Thai Air Force supported the Royal Thai Army in its occupation of the Shan States of Burma as somewhat reluctant allies of the Japanese and took part in the defense of Bangkok against allied air raids in the latter part of the war, achieving some successes against state-of-the-art aircraft like the P-51 Mustang and the B-29 Superfortress. During these times, the RTAF was actively supplied by the Japanese with Imperial Japanese Army Air Force aircraft such as the Ki-43 "Oscar," and the Ki-27 "Nate." Other RTAF personnel took an active part the anti-Japanese resistance movement.

 

French forces in Indochina consisted of an army of approximately fifty thousand men, The most obvious deficiency of the French army lay in its shortage of armor; however, the Armée de l'Air had in its inventory approximately a hundred aircraft, of which around sixty could be considered first line. These consisted of thirty Potez 25 TOEs, four Farman 221s, eight Loire 130 flying boats, six Potez 542s, nine Morane M.S.406s.

 

The M.S.406 was a French fighter aircraft developed and manufactured by Morane-Saulnier starting in 1938. In response to a requirement for a fighter issued by the French Air Force in 1934, Morane-Saulnier built a prototype, designated MS.405, of mixed materials. This had the distinction of being the company's first low-wing monoplane, as well as the first to feature an enclosed cockpit, and the first design with a retracting undercarriage. The entry to service of the M.S.406 to the French Air Force in early 1939 represented the first modern fighter aircraft to be adopted by the service, and the type was also used in the French overseas colonies. The M.S.406 was France's most numerous fighter during the Second World War and one of only two French designs to exceed 1,000 in number. At the beginning of the war, it was one of only two French-built aircraft capable of 400 km/h (250 mph) – the other being the Potez 630.

 

Although a sturdy and highly manoeuvrable fighter aircraft, the M.S.406 was considered underpowered and weakly armed when compared to its contemporaries, esp. over continental Europe. Most critically, the M.S.406 was outperformed by the Messerschmitt Bf 109E during the Battle of France and no serious threat to the German fighter. In less advanced theatres like Indochina, though, the M.S. 406 was a respectable contender, but its numbers were low.

 

When the French-Thai War broke out in Indochina, the Thai Army was a relatively well-equipped force, consisting of some sixty thousand men, with artillery and tanks. The Royal Thai Navy — consisting of several vessels, including two coastal defence ships, twelve torpedo boats and four submarines — was inferior to the French naval forces, though, but the Royal Thai Air Force held both a quantitative and qualitative edge over l'Armee de l'Air. Among the 140 aircraft that composed the air force's initial first-line strength were twenty-four Mitsubishi Ki-30 light bombers, nine Mitsubishi Ki-21 and six Martin B-10 twin-engine bombers, seventy Vought Corsair dive bombers, and twenty-five Curtiss Hawk 75 fighters.

 

While nationalistic demonstrations and anti-French rallies were held in Bangkok, border skirmishes erupted along the Mekong frontier. The superior Royal Thai Air Force conducted daytime bombing runs over Vientiane, Sisophon, and Battambang with impunity. The French retaliated with their own planes, but the damage caused was less than equal. The activities of the Thai air force, particularly in the field of dive-bombing, was such that Admiral Jean Decoux, the governor of French Indochina, grudgingly remarked that the Thai planes seemed to have been flown by men with plenty of war experience.

 

In early January 1941, the Thai Burapha and Isan Armies launched their offensive on Laos and Cambodia. French resistance was instantaneous, but many units were simply swept along by the better-equipped Thai forces, with some French equipment – including some aircraft – being captured and immediately pressed into Thai army service. The Thais swiftly took Laos, but Cambodia proved a much harder nut to crack.

 

On January 16, 1941 the French launched a large counterattack on the Thai-held villages of Yang Dang Khum and Phum Preav, initiating the fiercest battle of the war. Because of over-complicated orders and nonexistent intelligence, the French counterattacks were cut to pieces and fighting ended with a French withdrawal from the area. The Thais were unable to pursue the retreating French, as their forward tanks were kept in check by the gunnery of French Foreign Legion artillerists.

 

On January 24, the final air battle took place when Thai bombers raided the French airfield at Angkor near Siem Reap, which quickly fell. The last Thai mission commenced at 0710 hours on January 28, when the Martins of the 50th Bomber Squadron set out on a raid on Sisophon, escorted by three Hawk 75Ns of the 60th Fighter Squadron.

 

Although the French won an important naval victory over the Thais, Japan forced the French to accept Japanese mediation of a peace treaty that returned the disputed territory to Thai control. A general armistice was arranged by Japan to go into effect on January 28. On May 9 a peace treaty was signed in Tokyo, with the French being coerced by the Japanese into relinquishing their hold on the disputed territories. However, the French (now part of the Axis Forces’ Vichy regime) were left in place to administer the rump colony of Indochina until 9 March 1945, when the Japanese staged a coup d'état in French Indochina and took control, establishing their own colony, the Empire of Vietnam, as a puppet state controlled by Tokyo.

 

Until then, Japanese authorities heavily influenced the diminishing Vichy French presence in the region and handed over a lot of leftover military hardware to its own allies, primarily the Thai forces. However, there was not much left to be distributed: about 30% of the French aircraft were rendered unserviceable by the end of the French-Thai War in early 1941, some as a result of minor damage sustained in air raids that remained unrepaired. The Armée de l'Air admitted the loss of only one Farman F221 and two Morane M.S.406s destroyed on the ground, but, in reality, its losses were greater and the influence of Japan on the leftover stock was fogged in order to save face. However, even in 1944, single former Vichy French aircraft and tanks were still active in the region, primarily under Thai flag.

  

General characteristics:

Crew: 1

Length: 8.17 m (26 ft 10 in)

Wingspan: 10.61 m (34 ft 10 in)

Height: 3.25 m (10 ft 8 in)

Wing area: 16 m2 (170 sq ft)

Empty weight: 1,895 kg (4,178 lb)

Gross weight: 2,540 kg (5,600 lb)

 

Powerplant:

1 × Hispano-Suiza 12Y-31 V-12 liquid-cooled piston engine with

619 kW (830 hp) for take-off at 2,520 rpm at sea level,

driving a 3-bladed variable-pitch propeller, 3 m (9 ft 10 in) diameter

 

Performance:

Maximum speed: 490 km/h (304 mph; 265 kn) at 4,500 m (14,764 ft)

Stall speed: 160 km/h (99 mph, 86 kn) without flaps

135 km/h (84 mph; 73 kn) with flaps

Range: 1,100 km (680 mi, 590 nmi) at 66% power

Combat range: 720 km (450 mi, 390 nmi)

Endurance: 2 hours 20 minutes 30 seconds (average combat mission)

Service ceiling: 9,400 m (30,800 ft)

Time to altitude: 2,000 m (6,562 ft) in 2 minutes 32 seconds

9,000 m (29,528 ft) in 21 minutes 37 seconds

Wing loading: 154 kg/m2 (32 lb/sq ft)

Power/mass: 2.95 kg/kW (4.85 lb/hp)

Take-off run to 8 m (26 ft): 270 m (886 ft)

Landing run from 8 m (26 ft): 340 m (1,115 ft)

 

Armament:

1× 20 mm (0.787 in) Hispano-Suiza HS.404 cannon, firing through the propeller hub

2× 7.5 mm (0.295 in) MAC 1934 machine guns in the outer wings

  

The kit and its assembly:

This quick build was created in the wake of the “Captured” group build at whatifmodellers.com and actually is a personal interpretation of someone else’s idea, namely of fellow modeler NARSES who came up with the idea of a captured French M.S. 406 in Indochina under a new Thai flag. I found the idea so weird, yet realistic, that I decided to build one, too.

 

The model is the very simple but quite acceptable M.S. 406 from Hobby Boss. Externally the model is nice, with recessed panel lines and a basic landing gear. Internally, it is rather bleak, even though it has a full cockpit with a floor, integrally molded seat and even some details behind the pilot’s armor bulkhead. The canopy is a single piece and very clear, but it comes with massive locator bars, so that I decided to keep the canopy closed and added a pilot figure to cover the minimal interior. I was lucky to find a Japanese (though pretty “flat”) WWII pilot in the donor bank, left over from a Hasegawa model. I also gave the figure some seat belts (made from adhesive tape), but the rest remained unchanged – even the original metal axis for the propeller was used. I just replaced the machine gun barrels with hollow steel needles and added a pitot on the wing, which is probably part of the kit but not indicated in the instructions. The same is true for the foldable ventral antenna.

 

The build was finished quickly, in the course of just a single evening, including the pilot and some overall PSR.

  

Painting and markings:

My interpretation of a French aircraft in Thai service after the French-Thai War stuck closely to the real world Vichy livery, which was the standard French camouflage in grey/green/brown with light blue-grey undersides (all from ModelMaster’s Authentic Color range), together with a yellow-and-red-striped cowling (a base with Humbrol 69 and red decal stripes added later) and a white cheatline long the fuselage. The tail of French aircraft in Indochina was painted all-red from early 1941 onwards upon Japanese command, because of friendly fire incidents. This was adopted for the model (with a mix of Humbrol 19 and some 73), which is supposed to belong into the 1942 time frame.

 

As a captured aircraft, the original French roundels were replaced/overpainted with red disks/hinomaru, and then Thai elephant markings added on top. That’s a personal idea, ordnance directly supplied to the Thai forces from Japan had the simple, square “elephant flag” emblem directly applied to the wings and the fin (but no fuselage roundel). The all-red tail was taken over, but I painted the rudder in a dark IJA green, since it would formerly carry a French fin flash. The same green was used to overpaint a serial number on the fin and a former squadron emblem under the cockpit.

The hinomaru come from a PrintScale Ki-46 sheet, and these markings are intentionally a bit oversized, so that they cover well the former French markings and are highly visible. The elephant markings some from a PrintScale Ki-27 sheet, so that the red tone on both sources are very close to each other. The Ki-27 sheet also provided the Thai ciphers “3” and “4”, combined into a “34”.

 

The interior was painted in medium grey, and the model externally received some signs of wear and tear in the form of dry-brushed leading edges and around the cockpit as well as some soot stains behind the exhaust stubs and the machine guns. Finally, the model was sealed with a coat of matt acrylic varnish (Italeri).

  

A quick build, and the easy-build Hobby Boss M.S. 406 is certainly not as crisp as a “real” model, but in this case the story behind the weird livery was more in the focus than the canvas underneath. However, an interesting result, and the hybrid paint scheme with heritage from three different operators make the aircraft an unusual, if not exotic sight.

There were donuts in here...just two of them and they were not in the picture. Still, I'd prefer donuts from a Super Kmart. :P

 

The second stop on the way home from my college visit was in Richmond!

 

The Richmond Kmart appears to be a former Grants (and thus reminded me of the Erie Kmart that I visited last summer). It is very noticeably bigger than Anderson; it is also very nice; it has a Kmart Express gas station and it has a former Kmart Cafe (that still has the counter/displays, the full menu board and even the register! Looks like a more recent KCafe closure from what I've seen; if anybody else here has any more information I would like to know more about it!). This store appears to be doing fairly well for one of the last remaining stores in/near the Miami Valley.

 

Of course, I had to check out the Kmart Express after my main store rounds were complete, so I headed over there and looked around. This is the second Kmart Express I've seen, but the first one I have actually visited, as the other one (at the now nonexistent Brooklyn Super Kmart) had already closed. I didn't buy anything at this KExpress though, as I had spent my money in the main store. Hopefully next time I can buy some coffee or donuts from Kmart Express while going to/from Anderson (if I plan another college visit to Anderson U, which is likely)!

 

Hopefully the Richmond Kmart will still be able to remain "normal" for a good time longer...I like this store! :D

 

Kmart #7246 - 3150 National Road West - Richmond, Indiana

Theme: "Illustrate a Song"

 

"Free", by KARASU

 

The wind told me the future lies in my hands

Just ready go, you're ever free

 

Taking on the nonexistent, hateful, dark, incomprehensible boundary line

The difference between the confusing past and today isn't pleasant?

Nothing can be seen in the abyss, goodnight, the glorious future is coming

Let's cross that imposing wall

When you're on despair, smile and fly

Flying over everything

 

The wind told me the future lies in my hands

The answer I found while I was lost transformed into wings

Just ready go, you're ever free

 

Do you feel the dismay and hate it? Destroy it before it destroys you

Ride a lion, the world isn't invincible

 

Slowly, the future changes, waves good-bye and a new world comes by

Let's fly toward this wonderful sky

 

Lightning speed, higher than anyone

With lightning speed, run past everything

 

The days in which we follow our endless dreams create our tomorrow

Transform even the sadness into shiny wings

Just ready go, you're ever free

 

One day, your future will turn the page

Your story will continue shining forever

But the last page lies in your hands

 

------------------------------------------------

 

I really love this song. Its lyrics are so inspiring and encouraging. And it pictures perfectly the phase I'm going through now! I do feel free, lightweight! Everything is going very well and I'm very optimistic. The confusing past is now behind me and a new glorious future is now here.

 

Loved doing this shot, although I'm not very good at physical movements, as you can see in my clumsy and awkward jumping pose. But well, I still liked it!

 

52weeks project in partnership with my friends Jenny, Grazi and Mari. Check them out!

The silhouette is a shadow, a shadow is nonexistent, shadow is the absence of light. The shadow is our part most primitive, that can walk to the light or to the darkness.

 

Alzira Maia da Costa(www.facebook.com/AlziraMaiaCosta?group_id=0):

"The shadow is the witness of the light over ..."

 

A silhueta é uma sombra, uma sombra é algo inexistente, sombra é ausência de luz. A sombra é a nossa parte mais primitiva, que pode caminhar para a luz ou para a escuridão.

 

Alzira Maia da Costa(www.facebook.com/AlziraMaiaCosta?group_id=0): " A sombra é a testemunha do excesso da luz..."

The second stop on the way home from my college visit was in Richmond!

 

The Richmond Kmart appears to be a former Grants (and thus reminded me of the Erie Kmart that I visited last summer). It is very noticeably bigger than Anderson; it is also very nice; it has a Kmart Express gas station and it has a former Kmart Cafe (that still has the counter/displays, the full menu board and even the register! Looks like a more recent KCafe closure from what I've seen; if anybody else here has any more information I would like to know more about it!). This store appears to be doing fairly well for one of the last remaining stores in/near the Miami Valley.

 

Of course, I had to check out the Kmart Express after my main store rounds were complete, so I headed over there and looked around. This is the second Kmart Express I've seen, but the first one I have actually visited, as the other one (at the now nonexistent Brooklyn Super Kmart) had already closed. I didn't buy anything at this KExpress though, as I had spent my money in the main store. Hopefully next time I can buy some coffee or donuts from Kmart Express while going to/from Anderson (if I plan another college visit to Anderson U, which is likely)!

 

Hopefully the Richmond Kmart will still be able to remain "normal" for a good time longer...I like this store! :D

 

Kmart #7246 - 3150 National Road West - Richmond, Indiana

Many of the tropical butterflies have distinctive seasonal forms. This phenomenon is termed seasonal polyphenism and the seasonal forms of the butterflies are called the dry-season and wet-season forms. How the season affects the genetic expression of patterns is still a subject of research. The dry-season forms are usually more cryptic and it has been suggested that the protection offered may be an adaptation. Some also show greater dark colours in the wet-season form which may have thermoregulatory advantages by increasing ability to absorb solar radiation.

 

The wet-season forms have large, very apparent multiple eyespots whereas the dry-season forms have very reduced, oftentimes nonexistent, eyespots. Larvae that develop in hot, wet conditions develop into wet-season adults whereas those growing in the transition from the wet to the dry season, when the temperature is declining, develop into dry-season adults. This polyphenism probably has an adaptive role. In the dry-season it is disadvantageous to have conspicuous eyespots because they blend in with the brown vegetation better without eyespots. By not developing eyespots in the dry-season they can more easily camouflage themselves in the brown brush. This minimizes the risk of visually mediated predation. In the wet-season, these brown butterflies cannot as easily rely on cryptic coloration for protection because the background vegetation is green. Thus, eyespots, which may function to decrease predation, are beneficial for Satyrine butterflies like the Bushbrown to express.

 

Pu'er, Yunnan, China

 

see comments for image of wet season form....

The second stop on the way home from my college visit was in Richmond!

 

The Richmond Kmart appears to be a former Grants (and thus reminded me of the Erie Kmart that I visited last summer). It is very noticeably bigger than Anderson; it is also very nice; it has a Kmart Express gas station and it has a former Kmart Cafe (that still has the counter/displays, the full menu board and even the register! Looks like a more recent KCafe closure from what I've seen; if anybody else here has any more information I would like to know more about it!). This store appears to be doing fairly well for one of the last remaining stores in/near the Miami Valley.

 

Of course, I had to check out the Kmart Express after my main store rounds were complete, so I headed over there and looked around. This is the second Kmart Express I've seen, but the first one I have actually visited, as the other one (at the now nonexistent Brooklyn Super Kmart) had already closed. I didn't buy anything at this KExpress though, as I had spent my money in the main store. Hopefully next time I can buy some coffee or donuts from Kmart Express while going to/from Anderson (if I plan another college visit to Anderson U, which is likely)!

 

Hopefully the Richmond Kmart will still be able to remain "normal" for a good time longer...I like this store! :D

 

Kmart #7246 - 3150 National Road West - Richmond, Indiana

Capitol Reef National Park is an American national park in south-central Utah. The park is approximately 60 miles (97 km) long on its north–south axis and just 6 miles (9.7 km) wide on average. The park was established in 1971 to preserve 241,904 acres (377.98 sq mi; 97,895.08 ha; 978.95 km2) of desert landscape and is open all year, with May through September being the highest visitation months.

 

Partially in Wayne County, Utah, the area was originally named "Wayne Wonderland" in the 1920s by local boosters Ephraim P. Pectol and Joseph S. Hickman. Capitol Reef National Park was designated a national monument on August 2, 1937, by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to protect the area's colorful canyons, ridges, buttes, and monoliths; however, it was not until 1950 that the area officially opened to the public. Road access was improved in 1962 with the construction of State Route 24 through the Fremont River Canyon.

 

The majority of the nearly 100 mi (160 km) long up-thrust formation called the Waterpocket Fold—a rocky spine extending from Thousand Lake Mountain to Lake Powell—is preserved within the park. Capitol Reef is an especially rugged and spectacular segment of the Waterpocket Fold by the Fremont River. The park was named for its whitish Navajo Sandstone cliffs with dome formations—similar to the white domes often placed on capitol buildings—that run from the Fremont River to Pleasant Creek on the Waterpocket Fold. Locally, reef refers to any rocky barrier to land travel, just as ocean reefs are barriers to sea travel.

 

Capitol Reef encompasses the Waterpocket Fold, a warp in the earth's crust that is 65 million years old. It is the largest exposed monocline in North America. In this fold, newer and older layers of earth folded over each other in an S-shape. This warp, probably caused by the same colliding continental plates that created the Rocky Mountains, has weathered and eroded over millennia to expose layers of rock and fossils. The park is filled with brilliantly colored sandstone cliffs, gleaming white domes, and contrasting layers of stone and earth.

 

The area was named for a line of white domes and cliffs of Navajo Sandstone, each of which looks somewhat like the United States Capitol building, that run from the Fremont River to Pleasant Creek on the Waterpocket Fold.

 

The fold forms a north-to-south barrier that has barely been breached by roads. Early settlers referred to parallel impassable ridges as "reefs", from which the park gets the second half of its name. The first paved road was constructed through the area in 1962. State Route 24 cuts through the park traveling east and west between Canyonlands National Park and Bryce Canyon National Park, but few other paved roads invade the rugged landscape.

 

The park is filled with canyons, cliffs, towers, domes, and arches. The Fremont River has cut canyons through parts of the Waterpocket Fold, but most of the park is arid desert. A scenic drive shows park visitors some highlights, but it runs only a few miles from the main highway. Hundreds of miles of trails and unpaved roads lead into the equally scenic backcountry.

 

Fremont-culture Native Americans lived near the perennial Fremont River in the northern part of the Capitol Reef Waterpocket Fold around the year 1000. They irrigated crops of maize and squash and stored their grain in stone granaries (in part made from the numerous black basalt boulders that litter the area). In the 13th century, all of the Native American cultures in this area underwent sudden change, likely due to a long drought. The Fremont settlements and fields were abandoned.

 

Many years after the Fremont left, Paiutes moved into the area. These Numic-speaking people named the Fremont granaries moki huts and thought they were the homes of a race of tiny people or moki.

 

In 1872 Almon H. Thompson, a geographer attached to United States Army Major John Wesley Powell's expedition, crossed the Waterpocket Fold while exploring the area. Geologist Clarence Dutton later spent several summers studying the area's geology. None of these expeditions explored the Waterpocket Fold to any great extent.

 

Following the American Civil War, officials of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City sought to establish missions in the remotest niches of the Intermountain West. In 1866, a quasi-military expedition of Mormons in pursuit of natives penetrated the high valleys to the west. In the 1870s, settlers moved into these valleys, eventually establishing Loa, Fremont, Lyman, Bicknell, and Torrey.

 

Mormons settled the Fremont River valley in the 1880s and established Junction (later renamed Fruita), Caineville, and Aldridge. Fruita prospered, Caineville barely survived, and Aldridge died. In addition to farming, lime was extracted from local limestone, and uranium was extracted early in the 20th century. In 1904 the first claim to a uranium mine in the area was staked. The resulting Oyler Mine in Grand Wash produced uranium ore.

 

By 1920 no more than ten families at one time were sustained by the fertile flood plain of the Fremont River and the land changed ownership over the years. The area remained isolated. The community was later abandoned and later still some buildings were restored by the National Park Service. Kilns once used to produce lime are still in Sulphur Creek and near the campgrounds on Scenic Drive.

 

Local Ephraim Portman Pectol organized a "booster club" in Torrey in 1921. Pectol pressed a promotional campaign, furnishing stories to be sent to periodicals and newspapers. In his efforts, he was increasingly aided by his brother-in-law, Joseph S. Hickman, who was the Wayne County High School principal. In 1924, Hickman extended community involvement in the promotional effort by organizing a Wayne County-wide Wayne Wonderland Club. That same year, Hickman was elected to the Utah State Legislature.

 

In 1933, Pectol was elected to the presidency of the Associated Civics Club of Southern Utah, successor to the Wayne Wonderland Club. The club raised U.S. $150 (equivalent to $3,391 in 2022) to interest a Salt Lake City photographer in taking a series of promotional photographs. For several years, the photographer, J. E. Broaddus, traveled and lectured on "Wayne Wonderland".

 

In 1933, Pectol was elected to the legislature and almost immediately contacted President Franklin D. Roosevelt and asked for the creation of "Wayne Wonderland National Monument" out of the federal lands comprising the bulk of the Capitol Reef area. Federal agencies began a feasibility study and boundary assessment. Meanwhile, Pectol guided the government investigators on numerous trips and escorted an increasing number of visitors. The lectures of Broaddus were having an effect.

 

Roosevelt signed a proclamation creating Capitol Reef National Monument on August 2, 1937. In Proclamation 2246, President Roosevelt set aside 37,711 acres (15,261 ha) of the Capitol Reef area. This comprised an area extending about two miles (3 km) north of present State Route 24 and about 10 mi (16 km) south, just past Capitol Gorge. The Great Depression years were lean ones for the National Park Service (NPS), the new administering agency. Funds for the administration of Capitol Reef were nonexistent; it would be a long time before the first rangers would arrive.

 

Administration of the new monument was placed under the control of Zion National Park. A stone ranger cabin and the Sulphur Creek bridge were built and some road work was performed by the Civilian Conservation Corps and the Works Progress Administration. Historian and printer Charles Kelly came to know NPS officials at Zion well and volunteered to watchdog the park for the NPS. Kelly was officially appointed custodian-without-pay in 1943. He worked as a volunteer until 1950, when the NPS offered him a civil-service appointment as the first superintendent.

 

During the 1950s Kelly was deeply troubled by NPS management acceding to demands of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission that Capitol Reef National Monument be opened to uranium prospecting. He felt that the decision had been a mistake and destructive of the long-term national interest. It turned out that there was not enough ore in the monument to be worth mining.

 

In 1958 Kelly got additional permanent help in protecting the monument and enforcing regulations; Park Ranger Grant Clark transferred from Zion. The year Clark arrived, fifty-six thousand visitors came to the park, and Charlie Kelly retired for the last time.

 

During the 1960s (under the program name Mission 66), NPS areas nationwide received new facilities to meet the demand of mushrooming park visitation. At Capitol Reef, a 53-site campground at Fruita, staff rental housing, and a new visitor center were built, the latter opening in 1966.

 

Visitation climbed dramatically after the paved, all-weather State Route 24 was built in 1962 through the Fremont River canyon near Fruita. State Route 24 replaced the narrow Capitol Gorge wagon road about 10 mi (16 km) to the south that frequently washed out. The old road has since been open only to foot traffic. In 1967, 146,598 persons visited the park. The staff was also growing.

 

During the 1960s, the NPS purchased private land parcels at Fruita and Pleasant Creek. Almost all private property passed into public ownership on a "willing buyer-willing seller" basis.

 

Preservationists convinced President Lyndon B. Johnson to set aside an enormous area of public lands in 1968, just before he left office. In Presidential Proclamation 3888 an additional 215,056 acres (87,030 ha) were placed under NPS control. By 1970, Capitol Reef National Monument comprised 254,251 acres (102,892 ha) and sprawled southeast from Thousand Lake Mountain almost to the Colorado River. The action was controversial locally, and NPS staffing at the monument was inadequate to properly manage the additional land.

 

The vast enlargement of the monument and diversification of the scenic resources soon raised another issue: whether Capitol Reef should be a national park, rather than a monument. Two bills were introduced into the United States Congress.

 

A House bill (H.R. 17152) introduced by Utah Congressman Laurence J. Burton called for a 180,000-acre (72,800 ha) national park and an adjunct 48,000-acre (19,400 ha) national recreation area where multiple use (including grazing) could continue indefinitely. In the United States Senate, meanwhile, Senate bill S. 531 had already passed on July 1, 1970, and provided for a 230,000-acre (93,100 ha) national park alone. The bill called for a 25-year phase-out of grazing.

 

In September 1970, United States Department of Interior officials told a house subcommittee session that they preferred about 254,000 acres (103,000 ha) be set aside as a national park. They also recommended that the grazing phase-out period be 10 years, rather than 25. They did not favor the adjunct recreation area.

 

It was not until late 1971 that Congressional action was completed. By then, the 92nd United States Congress was in session and S. 531 had languished. A new bill, S. 29, was introduced in the Senate by Senator Frank E. Moss of Utah and was essentially the same as the defunct S. 531 except that it called for an additional 10,834 acres (4,384 ha) of public lands for a Capitol Reef National Park. In the House, Utah Representative K. Gunn McKay (with Representative Lloyd) had introduced H.R. 9053 to replace the dead H.R. 17152. This time, the House bill dropped the concept of an adjunct Capitol Reef National Recreation Area and adopted the Senate concept of a 25-year limit on continued grazing. The Department of Interior was still recommending a national park of 254,368 acres (102,939 ha) and a 10-year limit for grazing phase-out.

 

S. 29 passed the Senate in June and was sent to the House, which dropped its own bill and passed the Senate version with an amendment. Because the Senate was not in agreement with the House amendment, differences were worked out in Conference Committee. The Conference Committee issued its report on November 30, 1971, and the bill passed both houses of Congress. The legislation—'An Act to Establish The Capitol Reef National Park in the State of Utah'—became Public Law 92-207 when it was signed by President Richard Nixon on December 18, 1971.

 

The area including the park was once the edge of a shallow sea that invaded the land in the Permian, creating the Cutler Formation. Only the sandstone of the youngest member of the Cutler Formation, the White Rim, is exposed in the park. The deepening sea left carbonate deposits, forming the limestone of the Kaibab Limestone, the same formation that rims the Grand Canyon to the southwest.

 

During the Triassic, streams deposited reddish-brown silt that later became the siltstone of the Moenkopi Formation. Uplift and erosion followed. Conglomerate, followed by logs, sand, mud, and wind-transported volcanic ash, then formed the uranium-containing Chinle Formation.

 

The members of the Glen Canyon Group were all laid down in the middle- to late-Triassic during a time of increasing aridity. They include:

 

Wingate Sandstone: sand dunes on the shore of an ancient sea

Kayenta Formation: thin-bedded layers of sand deposited by slow-moving streams in channels and across low plains

Navajo Sandstone: huge fossilized sand dunes from a massive Sahara-like desert.

 

The Golden Throne. Though Capitol Reef is famous for white domes of Navajo Sandstone, this dome's color is a result of a lingering section of yellow Carmel Formation carbonate, which has stained the underlying rock.

The San Rafael Group consists of four Jurassic-period formations, from oldest to youngest:

 

Carmel Formation: gypsum, sand, and limey silt laid down in what may have been a graben that was periodically flooded by sea water

Entrada Sandstone: sandstone from barrier islands/sand bars in a near-shore environment

Curtis Formation: made from conglomerate, sandstone, and shale

Summerville Formation: reddish-brown mud and white sand deposited in tidal flats.

Streams once again laid down mud and sand in their channels, on lakebeds, and in swampy plains, creating the Morrison Formation. Early in the Cretaceous, similar nonmarine sediments were laid down and became the Dakota Sandstone. Eventually, the Cretaceous Seaway covered the Dakota, depositing the Mancos Shale.

 

Only small remnants of the Mesaverde Group are found, capping a few mesas in the park's eastern section.

 

Near the end of the Cretaceous period, a mountain-building event called the Laramide orogeny started to compact and uplift the region, forming the Rocky Mountains and creating monoclines such as the Waterpocket Fold in the park. Ten to fifteen million years ago, the entire region was uplifted much further by the creation of the Colorado Plateau. This uplift was very even. Igneous activity in the form of volcanism and dike and sill intrusion also occurred during this time.

 

The drainage system in the area was rearranged and steepened, causing streams to downcut faster and sometimes change course. Wetter times during the ice ages of the Pleistocene increased the rate of erosion.

 

There are more than 840 species of plants that are found in the park and over 40 of those species are classified as rare and endemic.

 

The closest town to Capitol Reef is Torrey, about 11 mi (18 km) west of the visitor center on Highway 24, slightly west of its intersection with Highway 12. Its 2020 population is less than 300. Torrey has a few motels and restaurants and functions as a gateway town to Capitol Reef National Park. Highway 12, as well as a partially unpaved scenic backway named the Burr Trail, provide access from the west through the Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monument and the town of Boulder.

 

A variety of activities are available to tourists, both ranger-led and self-guided, including auto touring, hiking, backpacking, camping, bicycling (on paved and unpaved roads only; no trails), horseback riding, canyoneering, and rock climbing. The orchards planted by Mormon pioneers are maintained by the National Park Service. From early March to mid-October, various fruit—cherries, apricots, peaches, pears, or apples—can be harvested by visitors for a fee.

 

A hiking trail guide is available at the visitor center for both day hikes and backcountry hiking. Backcountry access requires a free permit.

 

Numerous trails are available for hiking and backpacking in the park, with fifteen in the Fruita District alone. The following trails are some of the most popular in the park:

 

Cassidy Arch Trail: a very steep, strenuous 3.5 mi (5.6 km) round trip that leads into the Grand Wash to an overlook of the Cassidy Arch.

Hickman Bridge Trail: a 2 mi (3.2 km) round trip leading to the natural bridge.

Frying Pan Trail: an 8.8 mi (14.2 km) round trip that passes the Cassidy Arch, Grand Wash, and Cohab Canyon.

Brimhall Natural Bridge: a popular, though strenuous, 4.5 mi (7.2 km) round trip with views of Brimhall Canyon, the Waterpocket Fold, and Brimhall Natural Bridge.

Halls Creek Narrows: 22 mi (35 km) long and considered strenuous, with many side canyons and creeks; typically hiked as a 2-3 day camping trip.

 

Visitors may explore several of the main areas of the park by private vehicle:

 

Scenic Drive: winds through the middle of the park, passing the major points of interest; the road is accessible from the visitor center to approximately 2 mi (3.2 km) into the Capitol Gorge.

Notom-Bullfrog Road: traverses the eastern side of the Waterpocket Fold, along 10 mi (16 km) of paved road, with the remainder unpaved.

Cathedral Road: an unpaved road through the northern areas of the park, that traverses Cathedral Valley, passing the Temples of the Sun and Moon.

 

The primary camping location is the Fruita campground, with 71 campsites (no water, electrical, or sewer hookups), and restrooms without bathing facilities. The campground also has group sites with picnic areas and restrooms. Two primitive free camping areas are also available.

 

Canyoneering is growing in popularity in the park. It is a recreational sport that takes one through slot canyons. It involves rappelling and may require swimming and other technical rope work. Day-pass permits are required for canyoneering in the park, and can be obtained for free from the visitor's center or through email. It's key to know that each route requires its own permit. If one is planning on canyoneering for multiple days, passes are required for each day. Overnight camping as part of the canyoneering trip is permitted, but one must request a free backcountry pass from the visitor center.

 

It is imperative to plan canyoneering trips around the weather. The Colorado Plateau is susceptible to flash flooding during prime rainy months. Because canyoneering takes place through slot canyons, getting caught in a flash flood could be lethal. Take care to consult reliable weather sources. The Weather Atlas shows charts with the monthly average rainfall in inches.

 

Another risk to be aware of during the summer months is extreme heat. Visitors can find weather warnings on the National Weather Service website. The heat levels are detailed by a color and numerical scale (0-4).

 

One of the most popular canyoneering routes in Capitol Reef National Park is Cassidy Arch Canyon. A paper by George Huddart, details the park's commitment to working with citizens to maintain the route as well as the vegetation and rocks. The canyon route is approximately 2.3 miles long (0.4 miles of technical work), consisting of 8 different rappels, and takes between 2.5 and 4.5 hours to complete. The first rappel is 140 ft and descends below the famous Cassidy Arch.

 

Utah is a landlocked state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It borders Colorado to its east, Wyoming to its northeast, Idaho to its north, Arizona to its south, and Nevada to its west. Utah also touches a corner of New Mexico in the southeast. Of the fifty U.S. states, Utah is the 13th-largest by area; with a population over three million, it is the 30th-most-populous and 11th-least-densely populated. Urban development is mostly concentrated in two areas: the Wasatch Front in the north-central part of the state, which is home to roughly two-thirds of the population and includes the capital city, Salt Lake City; and Washington County in the southwest, with more than 180,000 residents. Most of the western half of Utah lies in the Great Basin.

 

Utah has been inhabited for thousands of years by various indigenous groups such as the ancient Puebloans, Navajo, and Ute. The Spanish were the first Europeans to arrive in the mid-16th century, though the region's difficult geography and harsh climate made it a peripheral part of New Spain and later Mexico. Even while it was Mexican territory, many of Utah's earliest settlers were American, particularly Mormons fleeing marginalization and persecution from the United States via the Mormon Trail. Following the Mexican–American War in 1848, the region was annexed by the U.S., becoming part of the Utah Territory, which included what is now Colorado and Nevada. Disputes between the dominant Mormon community and the federal government delayed Utah's admission as a state; only after the outlawing of polygamy was it admitted in 1896 as the 45th.

 

People from Utah are known as Utahns. Slightly over half of all Utahns are Mormons, the vast majority of whom are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), which has its world headquarters in Salt Lake City; Utah is the only state where a majority of the population belongs to a single church. A 2023 paper challenged this perception (claiming only 42% of Utahns are Mormons) however most statistics still show a majority of Utah residents belong to the LDS church; estimates from the LDS church suggests 60.68% of Utah's population belongs to the church whilst some sources put the number as high as 68%. The paper replied that membership count done by the LDS Church is too high for several reasons. The LDS Church greatly influences Utahn culture, politics, and daily life, though since the 1990s the state has become more religiously diverse as well as secular.

 

Utah has a highly diversified economy, with major sectors including transportation, education, information technology and research, government services, mining, multi-level marketing, and tourism. Utah has been one of the fastest growing states since 2000, with the 2020 U.S. census confirming the fastest population growth in the nation since 2010. St. George was the fastest-growing metropolitan area in the United States from 2000 to 2005. Utah ranks among the overall best states in metrics such as healthcare, governance, education, and infrastructure. It has the 12th-highest median average income and the least income inequality of any U.S. state. Over time and influenced by climate change, droughts in Utah have been increasing in frequency and severity, putting a further strain on Utah's water security and impacting the state's economy.

 

The History of Utah is an examination of the human history and social activity within the state of Utah located in the western United States.

 

Archaeological evidence dates the earliest habitation of humans in Utah to about 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. Paleolithic people lived near the Great Basin's swamps and marshes, which had an abundance of fish, birds, and small game animals. Big game, including bison, mammoths and ground sloths, also were attracted to these water sources. Over the centuries, the mega-fauna died, this population was replaced by the Desert Archaic people, who sheltered in caves near the Great Salt Lake. Relying more on gathering than the previous Utah residents, their diet was mainly composed of cattails and other salt tolerant plants such as pickleweed, burro weed and sedge. Red meat appears to have been more of a luxury, although these people used nets and the atlatl to hunt water fowl, ducks, small animals and antelope. Artifacts include nets woven with plant fibers and rabbit skin, woven sandals, gaming sticks, and animal figures made from split-twigs. About 3,500 years ago, lake levels rose and the population of Desert Archaic people appears to have dramatically decreased. The Great Basin may have been almost unoccupied for 1,000 years.

 

The Fremont culture, named from sites near the Fremont River in Utah, lived in what is now north and western Utah and parts of Nevada, Idaho and Colorado from approximately 600 to 1300 AD. These people lived in areas close to water sources that had been previously occupied by the Desert Archaic people, and may have had some relationship with them. However, their use of new technologies define them as a distinct people. Fremont technologies include:

 

use of the bow and arrow while hunting,

building pithouse shelters,

growing maize and probably beans and squash,

building above ground granaries of adobe or stone,

creating and decorating low-fired pottery ware,

producing art, including jewelry and rock art such as petroglyphs and pictographs.

 

The ancient Puebloan culture, also known as the Anasazi, occupied territory adjacent to the Fremont. The ancestral Puebloan culture centered on the present-day Four Corners area of the Southwest United States, including the San Juan River region of Utah. Archaeologists debate when this distinct culture emerged, but cultural development seems to date from about the common era, about 500 years before the Fremont appeared. It is generally accepted that the cultural peak of these people was around the 1200 CE. Ancient Puebloan culture is known for well constructed pithouses and more elaborate adobe and masonry dwellings. They were excellent craftsmen, producing turquoise jewelry and fine pottery. The Puebloan culture was based on agriculture, and the people created and cultivated fields of maize, beans, and squash and domesticated turkeys. They designed and produced elaborate field terracing and irrigation systems. They also built structures, some known as kivas, apparently designed solely for cultural and religious rituals.

 

These two later cultures were roughly contemporaneous, and appear to have established trading relationships. They also shared enough cultural traits that archaeologists believe the cultures may have common roots in the early American Southwest. However, each remained culturally distinct throughout most of their existence. These two well established cultures appear to have been severely impacted by climatic change and perhaps by the incursion of new people in about 1200 CE. Over the next two centuries, the Fremont and ancient Pueblo people may have moved into the American southwest, finding new homes and farmlands in the river drainages of Arizona, New Mexico and northern Mexico.

 

In about 1200, Shoshonean speaking peoples entered Utah territory from the west. They may have originated in southern California and moved into the desert environment due to population pressure along the coast. They were an upland people with a hunting and gathering lifestyle utilizing roots and seeds, including the pinyon nut. They were also skillful fishermen, created pottery and raised some crops. When they first arrived in Utah, they lived as small family groups with little tribal organization. Four main Shoshonean peoples inhabited Utah country. The Shoshone in the north and northeast, the Gosiutes in the northwest, the Utes in the central and eastern parts of the region and the Southern Paiutes in the southwest. Initially, there seems to have been very little conflict between these groups.

 

In the early 16th century, the San Juan River basin in Utah's southeast also saw a new people, the Díne or Navajo, part of a greater group of plains Athabaskan speakers moved into the Southwest from the Great Plains. In addition to the Navajo, this language group contained people that were later known as Apaches, including the Lipan, Jicarilla, and Mescalero Apaches.

 

Athabaskans were a hunting people who initially followed the bison, and were identified in 16th-century Spanish accounts as "dog nomads". The Athabaskans expanded their range throughout the 17th century, occupying areas the Pueblo peoples had abandoned during prior centuries. The Spanish first specifically mention the "Apachu de Nabajo" (Navaho) in the 1620s, referring to the people in the Chama valley region east of the San Juan River, and north west of Santa Fe. By the 1640s, the term Navaho was applied to these same people. Although the Navajo newcomers established a generally peaceful trading and cultural exchange with the some modern Pueblo peoples to the south, they experienced intermittent warfare with the Shoshonean peoples, particularly the Utes in eastern Utah and western Colorado.

 

At the time of European expansion, beginning with Spanish explorers traveling from Mexico, five distinct native peoples occupied territory within the Utah area: the Northern Shoshone, the Goshute, the Ute, the Paiute and the Navajo.

 

The Spanish explorer Francisco Vázquez de Coronado may have crossed into what is now southern Utah in 1540, when he was seeking the legendary Cíbola.

 

A group led by two Spanish Catholic priests—sometimes called the Domínguez–Escalante expedition—left Santa Fe in 1776, hoping to find a route to the California coast. The expedition traveled as far north as Utah Lake and encountered the native residents. All of what is now Utah was claimed by the Spanish Empire from the 1500s to 1821 as part of New Spain (later as the province Alta California); and subsequently claimed by Mexico from 1821 to 1848. However, Spain and Mexico had little permanent presence in, or control of, the region.

 

Fur trappers (also known as mountain men) including Jim Bridger, explored some regions of Utah in the early 19th century. The city of Provo was named for one such man, Étienne Provost, who visited the area in 1825. The city of Ogden, Utah is named for a brigade leader of the Hudson's Bay Company, Peter Skene Ogden who trapped in the Weber Valley. In 1846, a year before the arrival of members from the Church of Jesus Christ of latter-day Saints, the ill-fated Donner Party crossed through the Salt Lake valley late in the season, deciding not to stay the winter there but to continue forward to California, and beyond.

 

Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commonly known as Mormon pioneers, first came to the Salt Lake Valley on July 24, 1847. At the time, the U.S. had already captured the Mexican territories of Alta California and New Mexico in the Mexican–American War and planned to keep them, but those territories, including the future state of Utah, officially became United States territory upon the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, February 2, 1848. The treaty was ratified by the United States Senate on March 10, 1848.

 

Upon arrival in the Salt Lake Valley, the Mormon pioneers found no permanent settlement of Indians. Other areas along the Wasatch Range were occupied at the time of settlement by the Northwestern Shoshone and adjacent areas by other bands of Shoshone such as the Gosiute. The Northwestern Shoshone lived in the valleys on the eastern shore of Great Salt Lake and in adjacent mountain valleys. Some years after arriving in the Salt Lake Valley Mormons, who went on to colonize many other areas of what is now Utah, were petitioned by Indians for recompense for land taken. The response of Heber C. Kimball, first counselor to Brigham Young, was that the land belonged to "our Father in Heaven and we expect to plow and plant it." A 1945 Supreme Court decision found that the land had been treated by the United States as public domain; no aboriginal title by the Northwestern Shoshone had been recognized by the United States or extinguished by treaty with the United States.

 

Upon arriving in the Salt Lake Valley, the Mormons had to make a place to live. They created irrigation systems, laid out farms, built houses, churches, and schools. Access to water was crucially important. Almost immediately, Brigham Young set out to identify and claim additional community sites. While it was difficult to find large areas in the Great Basin where water sources were dependable and growing seasons long enough to raise vitally important subsistence crops, satellite communities began to be formed.

 

Shortly after the first company arrived in the Salt Lake Valley in 1847, the community of Bountiful was settled to the north. In 1848, settlers moved into lands purchased from trapper Miles Goodyear in present-day Ogden. In 1849, Tooele and Provo were founded. Also that year, at the invitation of Ute chief Wakara, settlers moved into the Sanpete Valley in central Utah to establish the community of Manti. Fillmore, Utah, intended to be the capital of the new territory, was established in 1851. In 1855, missionary efforts aimed at western native cultures led to outposts in Fort Lemhi, Idaho, Las Vegas, Nevada and Elk Mountain in east-central Utah.

 

The experiences of returning members of the Mormon Battalion were also important in establishing new communities. On their journey west, the Mormon soldiers had identified dependable rivers and fertile river valleys in Colorado, Arizona and southern California. In addition, as the men traveled to rejoin their families in the Salt Lake Valley, they moved through southern Nevada and the eastern segments of southern Utah. Jefferson Hunt, a senior Mormon officer of the Battalion, actively searched for settlement sites, minerals, and other resources. His report encouraged 1851 settlement efforts in Iron County, near present-day Cedar City. These southern explorations eventually led to Mormon settlements in St. George, Utah, Las Vegas and San Bernardino, California, as well as communities in southern Arizona.

 

Prior to establishment of the Oregon and California trails and Mormon settlement, Indians native to the Salt Lake Valley and adjacent areas lived by hunting buffalo and other game, but also gathered grass seed from the bountiful grass of the area as well as roots such as those of the Indian Camas. By the time of settlement, indeed before 1840, the buffalo were gone from the valley, but hunting by settlers and grazing of cattle severely impacted the Indians in the area, and as settlement expanded into nearby river valleys and oases, indigenous tribes experienced increasing difficulty in gathering sufficient food. Brigham Young's counsel was to feed the hungry tribes, and that was done, but it was often not enough. These tensions formed the background to the Bear River massacre committed by California Militia stationed in Salt Lake City during the Civil War. The site of the massacre is just inside Preston, Idaho, but was generally thought to be within Utah at the time.

 

Statehood was petitioned for in 1849-50 using the name Deseret. The proposed State of Deseret would have been quite large, encompassing all of what is now Utah, and portions of Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, Wyoming, Arizona, Oregon, New Mexico and California. The name of Deseret was favored by the LDS leader Brigham Young as a symbol of industry and was derived from a reference in the Book of Mormon. The petition was rejected by Congress and Utah did not become a state until 1896, following the Utah Constitutional Convention of 1895.

 

In 1850, the Utah Territory was created with the Compromise of 1850, and Fillmore (named after President Fillmore) was designated the capital. In 1856, Salt Lake City replaced Fillmore as the territorial capital.

 

The first group of pioneers brought African slaves with them, making Utah the only place in the western United States to have African slavery. Three slaves, Green Flake, Hark Lay, and Oscar Crosby, came west with this first group in 1847. The settlers also began to purchase Indian slaves in the well-established Indian slave trade, as well as enslaving Indian prisoners of war. In 1850, 26 slaves were counted in Salt Lake County. Slavery didn't become officially recognized until 1852, when the Act in Relation to Service and the Act for the relief of Indian Slaves and Prisoners were passed. Slavery was repealed on June 19, 1862, when Congress prohibited slavery in all US territories.

 

Disputes between the Mormon inhabitants and the federal government intensified after the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' practice of polygamy became known. The polygamous practices of the Mormons, which were made public in 1854, would be one of the major reasons Utah was denied statehood until almost 50 years after the Mormons had entered the area.

 

After news of their polygamous practices spread, the members of the LDS Church were quickly viewed by some as un-American and rebellious. In 1857, after news of a possible rebellion spread, President James Buchanan sent troops on the Utah expedition to quell the growing unrest and to replace Brigham Young as territorial governor with Alfred Cumming. The expedition was also known as the Utah War.

 

As fear of invasion grew, Mormon settlers had convinced some Paiute Indians to aid in a Mormon-led attack on 120 immigrants from Arkansas under the guise of Indian aggression. The murder of these settlers became known as the Mountain Meadows massacre. The Mormon leadership had adopted a defensive posture that led to a ban on the selling of grain to outsiders in preparation for an impending war. This chafed pioneers traveling through the region, who were unable to purchase badly needed supplies. A disagreement between some of the Arkansas pioneers and the Mormons in Cedar City led to the secret planning of the massacre by a few Mormon leaders in the area. Some scholars debate the involvement of Brigham Young. Only one man, John D. Lee, was ever convicted of the murders, and he was executed at the massacre site.

 

Express riders had brought the news 1,000 miles from the Missouri River settlements to Salt Lake City within about two weeks of the army's beginning to march west. Fearing the worst as 2,500 troops (roughly 1/3rd of the army then) led by General Albert Sidney Johnston started west, Brigham Young ordered all residents of Salt Lake City and neighboring communities to prepare their homes for burning and evacuate southward to Utah Valley and southern Utah. Young also sent out a few units of the Nauvoo Legion (numbering roughly 8,000–10,000), to delay the army's advance. The majority he sent into the mountains to prepare defenses or south to prepare for a scorched earth retreat. Although some army wagon supply trains were captured and burned and herds of army horses and cattle run off no serious fighting occurred. Starting late and short on supplies, the United States Army camped during the bitter winter of 1857–58 near a burned out Fort Bridger in Wyoming. Through the negotiations between emissary Thomas L. Kane, Young, Cumming and Johnston, control of Utah territory was peacefully transferred to Cumming, who entered an eerily vacant Salt Lake City in the spring of 1858. By agreement with Young, Johnston established the army at Fort Floyd 40 miles away from Salt Lake City, to the southwest.

 

Salt Lake City was the last link of the First Transcontinental Telegraph, between Carson City, Nevada and Omaha, Nebraska completed in October 1861. Brigham Young, who had helped expedite construction, was among the first to send a message, along with Abraham Lincoln and other officials. Soon after the telegraph line was completed, the Deseret Telegraph Company built the Deseret line connecting the settlements in the territory with Salt Lake City and, by extension, the rest of the United States.

 

Because of the American Civil War, federal troops were pulled out of Utah Territory (and their fort auctioned off), leaving the territorial government in federal hands without army backing until General Patrick E. Connor arrived with the 3rd Regiment of California Volunteers in 1862. While in Utah, Connor and his troops soon became discontent with this assignment wanting to head to Virginia where the "real" fighting and glory was occurring. Connor established Fort Douglas just three miles (5 km) east of Salt Lake City and encouraged his bored and often idle soldiers to go out and explore for mineral deposits to bring more non-Mormons into the state. Minerals were discovered in Tooele County, and some miners began to come to the territory. Conner also solved the Shoshone Indian problem in Cache Valley Utah by luring the Shoshone into a midwinter confrontation on January 29, 1863. The armed conflict quickly turned into a rout, discipline among the soldiers broke down, and the Battle of Bear River is today usually referred to by historians as the Bear River Massacre. Between 200 and 400 Shoshone men, women and children were killed, as were 27 soldiers, with over 50 more soldiers wounded or suffering from frostbite.

 

Beginning in 1865, Utah's Black Hawk War developed into the deadliest conflict in the territory's history. Chief Antonga Black Hawk died in 1870, but fights continued to break out until additional federal troops were sent in to suppress the Ghost Dance of 1872. The war is unique among Indian Wars because it was a three-way conflict, with mounted Timpanogos Utes led by Antonga Black Hawk fighting federal and Utah local militia.

 

On May 10, 1869, the First transcontinental railroad was completed at Promontory Summit, north of the Great Salt Lake. The railroad brought increasing numbers of people into the state, and several influential businessmen made fortunes in the territory.

 

Main article: Latter Day Saint polygamy in the late-19th century

During the 1870s and 1880s, federal laws were passed and federal marshals assigned to enforce the laws against polygamy. In the 1890 Manifesto, the LDS Church leadership dropped its approval of polygamy citing divine revelation. When Utah applied for statehood again in 1895, it was accepted. Statehood was officially granted on January 4, 1896.

 

The Mormon issue made the situation for women the topic of nationwide controversy. In 1870 the Utah Territory, controlled by Mormons, gave women the right to vote. However, in 1887, Congress disenfranchised Utah women with the Edmunds–Tucker Act. In 1867–96, eastern activists promoted women's suffrage in Utah as an experiment, and as a way to eliminate polygamy. They were Presbyterians and other Protestants convinced that Mormonism was a non-Christian cult that grossly mistreated women. The Mormons promoted woman suffrage to counter the negative image of downtrodden Mormon women. With the 1890 Manifesto clearing the way for statehood, in 1895 Utah adopted a constitution restoring the right of women's suffrage. Congress admitted Utah as a state with that constitution in 1896.

 

Though less numerous than other intermountain states at the time, several lynching murders for alleged misdeeds occurred in Utah territory at the hand of vigilantes. Those documented include the following, with their ethnicity or national origin noted in parentheses if it was provided in the source:

 

William Torrington in Carson City (then a part of Utah territory), 1859

Thomas Coleman (Black man) in Salt Lake City, 1866

3 unidentified men at Wahsatch, winter of 1868

A Black man in Uintah, 1869

Charles A. Benson in Logan, 1873

Ah Sing (Chinese man) in Corinne, 1874

Thomas Forrest in St. George, 1880

William Harvey (Black man) in Salt Lake City, 1883

John Murphy in Park City, 1883

George Segal (Japanese man) in Ogden, 1884

Joseph Fisher in Eureka, 1886

Robert Marshall (Black man) in Castle Gate, 1925

Other lynchings in Utah territory include multiple instances of mass murder of Native American children, women, and men by White settlers including the Battle Creek massacre (1849), Provo River Massacre (1850), Nephi massacre (1853), and Circleville Massacre (1866).

 

Beginning in the early 20th century, with the establishment of such national parks as Bryce Canyon National Park and Zion National Park, Utah began to become known for its natural beauty. Southern Utah became a popular filming spot for arid, rugged scenes, and such natural landmarks as Delicate Arch and "the Mittens" of Monument Valley are instantly recognizable to most national residents. During the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, with the construction of the Interstate highway system, accessibility to the southern scenic areas was made easier.

 

Beginning in 1939, with the establishment of Alta Ski Area, Utah has become world-renowned for its skiing. The dry, powdery snow of the Wasatch Range is considered some of the best skiing in the world. Salt Lake City won the bid for the 2002 Winter Olympics in 1995, and this has served as a great boost to the economy. The ski resorts have increased in popularity, and many of the Olympic venues scattered across the Wasatch Front continue to be used for sporting events. This also spurred the development of the light-rail system in the Salt Lake Valley, known as TRAX, and the re-construction of the freeway system around the city.

 

During the late 20th century, the state grew quickly. In the 1970s, growth was phenomenal in the suburbs. Sandy was one of the fastest-growing cities in the country at that time, and West Valley City is the state's 2nd most populous city. Today, many areas of Utah are seeing phenomenal growth. Northern Davis, southern and western Salt Lake, Summit, eastern Tooele, Utah, Wasatch, and Washington counties are all growing very quickly. Transportation and urbanization are major issues in politics as development consumes agricultural land and wilderness areas.

 

In 2012, the State of Utah passed the Utah Transfer of Public Lands Act in an attempt to gain control over a substantial portion of federal land in the state from the federal government, based on language in the Utah Enabling Act of 1894. The State does not intend to use force or assert control by limiting access in an attempt to control the disputed lands, but does intend to use a multi-step process of education, negotiation, legislation, and if necessary, litigation as part of its multi-year effort to gain state or private control over the lands after 2014.

 

Utah families, like most Americans everywhere, did their utmost to assist in the war effort. Tires, meat, butter, sugar, fats, oils, coffee, shoes, boots, gasoline, canned fruits, vegetables, and soups were rationed on a national basis. The school day was shortened and bus routes were reduced to limit the number of resources used stateside and increase what could be sent to soldiers.

 

Geneva Steel was built to increase the steel production for America during World War II. President Franklin D. Roosevelt had proposed opening a steel mill in Utah in 1936, but the idea was shelved after a couple of months. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States entered the war and the steel plant was put into progress. In April 1944, Geneva shipped its first order, which consisted of over 600 tons of steel plate. Geneva Steel also brought thousands of job opportunities to Utah. The positions were hard to fill as many of Utah's men were overseas fighting. Women began working, filling 25 percent of the jobs.

 

As a result of Utah's and Geneva Steels contribution during the war, several Liberty Ships were named in honor of Utah including the USS Joseph Smith, USS Brigham Young, USS Provo, and the USS Peter Skene Ogden.

 

One of the sectors of the beachhead of Normandy Landings was codenamed Utah Beach, and the amphibious landings at the beach were undertaken by United States Army troops.

 

It is estimated that 1,450 soldiers from Utah were killed in the war.

orginal pattern is 9"h x 10 1/2"w. Transfer is from unknown company. It's on tissue paper with dark blue dots. I fixed some of the lines because they were almost nonexistent.

A slightly early Independence Day (Fourth of July) fireworks show over Lake Monona in the heart of the Wisconsin capital.

 

* Fireworks pictures in a sense are double exposures, at least multiple exposures.

* My ISO was set at 100. Nothing higher is needed or even desirable.

* White balance set to auto because in raw capture it does not matter.

* The technique used (and it's an old one) was to hold the shutter open for 10, 20, or 30 seconds at a time.

* The aperture is adjusted in the opposite direction to keep the exposure uniform. In this case I found that 10 seconds at f/8 worked well. 30 seconds at f/16 captured more bursts, but if the action was very heavy then too many bursts made for a busy, messy picture. I had to keep changing the settings.

* The camera was in full manual mode (otherwise it would change the exposure and focus).

* Because the display was 2 miles away the camera only needed to be focused at infinity.

* Solidly mounted on a sturdy tripod and tripped with an electronic cable release to insure there is no camera movement.

* Vibration reduction turned off (otherwise the VR would "hunt" for nonexistent movement and smear the shot). I nearly forgot this but I made a couple of test exposures early on and realized immediately that they were smeared due to the VR.

* I also turned off the Long Exposure Noise Reduction when I realized that it was doubling the time for the picture to load, and I knew I could minimize any noise in Lightroom. As it turned out little noise reduction was necessary beyond the standard.

* I worked in live view and kept the auto review on for two seconds for each shot to insure that I was getting what I thought I was getting. It’s enormously reassuring!

* With the shutter open for longer periods, more individual bursts are recorded on each frame. You have to shoot a lot of frames and hope to luck out. There is no way to plan it. You open the shutter, the stuff goes up, at the end of the time the shutter closes and you've got what you've got. I think I made about 75 exposures to get 19 that were good. The rest were trashed.

* Despite some 75 extended exposures, live view, and constant instant reviews, the battery at the end of 45 minutes of fireworks still had 60% charge. Turning off the noise reduction undoubtedly helped, plus made the shoot more efficient; no waiting.

 

Thinking it best not to make every photo a transferee, I headed on back to Sutton to recreate a photo that never worked out. When the first 73-plate batch started being rolled out, I stopped over at this spot to get a photo of one rounding the corner, however the shot was spoiled by it both arriving quicker than I expected, as well as poor placement meaning I had to battle reflections from the sun. A good six or so months later, I'm back here again, and it turns out rather nicely. As far as I'm aware, this is the last of the second 'OZ' batch of new MMCs that I needed to photograph! In fact, with the destination fully capturing and the glare being almost nonexistent, this might just make the Wikipedia pages!

 

The final photo from today, satisfying my fleetlist as well as spots I wanted to photograph from, Stagecoach in Hull's 11765, a 2023 ADL Enviro400 MMC, rounds the corner onto College Street in Sutton-on-Hull while working a 12 to Hull Interchange.

[this will probably be a long description, I can feel it. No need to read the whole thing unless you care about my life lolz. Feel free to skip to the end if you're curious about the photo.]

 

So, it's been a while. My attempts to keep my photostream updated have mostly been devoted to attempting to catch up on uploading senior sessions...ha. I've definitely taken six more sessions, oops. As much as I love taking my senior pictures, my efforts to document my own life this year have...been relatively nonexistent.

 

Which is kind of a sad thing, considering I've finished my first year of college, no?

 

It's been quite the year. I go to school at the University of Texas at Austin, and I can't say I don't love it. Austin's quite possibly the greatest city in the world, and I still don't think I've experienced it to its fullest--we'll see where next year takes me.

 

I've met some pretty awesome people--I'm lucky enough to be in this honors program that connects me to a great group of intellectuals. Good grief, that sounds pretentious. It kind of is, I won't lie--but I've truly met some amazing people, and can't wait to spend more time with them next year.

 

Typical freshmanness aside, let's see. I take pictures for the Daily Texan as of January of this year, which kind of fills the hole in my heart that came from leaving The Roar. I'm seriously so honored to work alongside these photographers, everyone's so incredibly talented. You can check out the work I've done this semester here, if you so wish.

 

I did some design work for my honors program's literary journal as well, which was quite liberating. I think the production of it went on some kind of hiatus at some point, but I'm hoping it'll get published at some point, it was pretty awesome stuff.

 

Did some work with Lions Club, remembering how good community service felt was a nice feeling. I'm definitely planning to be more active next year, those people are pretty great as well.

 

It'd be weird if I didn't mention that I've found myself with this wonderful boy, I suppose, who was/is quite the companion to take on college with. Words can't really do him justice, but who would've thought senior prom would take us so far? Hahah.

 

Not to avoid academics, but...maybe later. Because it's currently summer, and I'm currently across the world in China, and being serious is not something I want to be right now.

 

Point of all this: I feel like I've had a lot to say this year that needed to be captured through photography, but thanks to incredible stints of laziness/a major lack of inspiration, I've kind of let photography drift into the purely business realm...which is a scary place. I love shooting senior photos and shooting for the Texan, but both have definitely reminded me of how much I love photography for how it can tell a story, all that jazz. So, this summer, I'm definitely going to pick up photoing for myself again--China's quite the place to do so, after all. Hopefully, I'll have some time to get my portfolio/website up and running, we'll see what happens.

 

This is my cousin's son, who was quite the model for me in Kunshan, my dad's hometown. Lighting was awful, ISO was cranked up pretty high...but I kind of liked how this one came out. The place is incredible, more photos hopefully to come. But have a peek for now, because fingers crossed, I'm back, whooo. <3

Lake Ronkonkoma Long Island New York 11779 USA August 2020

 

Lake Ronkonkoma, Long Island's largest freshwater lake, is in Suffolk County, New York, United States, and has a circumference of about 2 miles (3.2 km), and is 0.65 miles (1.05 km) across on average. A kettle lake formed by retreating glaciers, it is owned by the Town of Islip under the terms of the Nichols Patent. The land around it is controlled by three town governments - Smithtown, Islip and Brookhaven. The name Ronkonkoma comes from an Algonquian expression meaning "boundary fishing-lake", also earlier written as Raconkumake and Raconkamuck

  

Lake Ronkonkoma served as a boundary between lands occupied by four Native American communities: Nissequogues Setaukets Secatogues and Unkechaugs

 

The lake was created by a retreating glacier.

 

The primary gamefish is bass

 

The most prevalent legend is about Princess Ronkonkoma, an Indian princess who died at the lake in the mid-1600s. One version of the story is that she was walking across the ice one winter when she met and fell in love with an English woodcutter named Hugh Birdsall, who lived across the lake. However, her father—chief of the Setauket tribe—forbade their relationship. So every day for 7 years, she would write letters on pieces of bark, row to the middle of the lake, and float the letters across the lake to Hugh. Then, after all those years of being kept apart from her love, she rowed to the middle of the lake and stabbed herself to death.

 

There are variations on this particular story, such as that the princess drowned herself after learning about her lover's death, and that her body washed up in Connecticut (which ties into the idea that the lake is bottomless, and that there are underground channels to other lakes). While there's no proof the princess ever existed, Hugh Birdsall was a real person who eventually moved back to England and got married there.

 

In any case, the story goes that she claims a boy's life every year either to avenge her lover's death, or to try to find herself a soulmate in death. And the statistics back up this "curse": of all the recorded drownings on this lake, the vast majority have been young males.

 

Subscribe

Dr. David S. Igneri was the head lifeguard at Lake Ronkonkoma for 32 summers, and says there were at least 30 deaths during that time, all males. On the program Weird U.S., which aired on the History Channel in 2005, Igneri explains that one of the biggest challenges was that visibility in the lake is nonexistent after about the first 10 feet; if anyone submerges lower than that, no one will be able to rescue the person because the lake becomes enveloped in total blackness.

 

In 1965, Igneri had a recurring nightmare about trying to complete a rescue. He dove deep into the lake and panicked because he lost his orientation. When he got to the surface, he heard fireworks. Although Igneri was not previously interested in the paranormal, he believed this dream was a warning that someone was going to drown on the Fourth of July. He warned his staff of 11 lifeguards—and sure enough, late that afternoon, an epileptic 15-year-old boy had a seizure and went down in the water. The lifeguards dove for 45 minutes and did everything they could, but could not find the boy. As Igneri swam back to the surface after his last dive, fireworks went off.

  

Author Michael R. Ebert, who must be the foremost authority on the legends of Lake Ronkonkoma. He published the spiral-bound book "The Curse of Lake Ronkonkoma" in 2002, and it is available at the Sachem, Connetquot and Smithtown libraries.

 

The first time he remembers hearing about the lake's "curse" was when he attended Ronkonkoma Junior High School in the early 1990s and one of his classmates drowned in the lake.

 

"If I remember correctly, he and some friends were supposedly drinking beer on a rowboat and were horsing around when he fell in and was unable to swim to shore due to his bulky winter clothes."

 

After Ebert's college graduation, he searched for more information about the lake's legends in local history books, but found little—which convinced him to write his own book. He spent about six months visiting libraries and the Lake Ronkonkoma Historical Society to research articles, maps and geographical studies dating back to the early 1900s.

 

In addition to the stories about Princess Ronkonkoma and the bottomless lake, Ebert also found several other mysteries, such as the way the lake rises and falls with no relation to local rainfall. "The Indians believed it to be the work of Manitos, the great spirit of the lake," he says. "One study showed that over 7 years in the early 1900s, the rainfall on Long Island was below the usual average by about 52 inches, yet the lake rose 7 feet."

 

Then there were the rumors of "healing properties" of the lake, supposedly started by a Brooklyn businessman who wanted to capitalize on the lake's appeal as a local tourist attraction in the 1900s. "The guy even reportedly sold 'lake juice' in small vials, and I found an old ad promoting the lake as a health resort that cured diseases," says Ebert.

 

So whether you believe the lake will heal what ails you, or that a vengeful princess spirit is out there waiting to drown you, there's no denying that Lake Ronkonkoma is one of Long Island's most whispered-about points of interest.

 

Hashtags

#LakeRonkonkoma

#LakeRonkonkoma

#Lake

#Ronkonkoma

#TheCurseOfLakeRonkonkoma

#CurseOfLakeRonkonkoma

#MichaelEbert

#DavidIgneri

#PrincessRonkonkoma

#LadyOfTheLake

#TheLadyOfTheLake

#IndianPrincess

#PrincessTuskawanta

#Princess

#Tuskawanta

#SetauketIndian

#Sachem

#ChiefOfTheSetauketTribe

#ChiefSetauket

#SetalcottTribe

#Setalcott

#AlgonquinNation

#Algonquin

#EnglishSettlers

#HughBirdsall

#Whirlpool

Curse

Cursed

CursedLake

NewYorkFolkloreSociety

NewYorkFolklore

Folklore

FolkloreSociety

Superstition

Paranormal

ParanormalActivity

FourthOfJuly

#TheWitchesOfLakeRonkonkoma

#WitchesOfLakeRonkonkoma

#APicnicWithoutSnacks

#PicnicWithoutSnacks

#LongIslandNY

 

Model: Martina Pinto

Make up: Nonexistent

Location: My house

 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1L3pM_dNRc&feature=player_em...

Exploring Venice at night is a magical experience.

 

As the last of the day-trippers board the final out-going train, the city falls elegantly to sleep. With practiced rhythm the quaint boutiques close their doors while street hawkers disperse and pigeons roost. The dimly lit streets seem to grow tighter, allowing only for hushed voices and soft footsteps.

 

It is the absence of sound that is perhaps most alluring. The anticipated moan of the automobile is strangely nonexistent here, replaced only by the occasional murmur of a passing water taxi. Shadowy palaces whisper majestic stories of times past while the subtle lap of water reminds instead of forthcoming peril.

.

.

A fortunate error in navigation led us down a vacant side alley where a sudden flood of light was capturing the visage of a forgotten facade.

 

One of the main sites visited by almost every tour to Egypt is what is billed as Philae, but Philae is actually a nonexistent island now buried beneath Lake Nasser. The island was sometimes visible and sometimes not after the Old Aswan Dam was built, but was permanently submerged by the High Dam.

 

Philae is an approximate Greek rendering of the local name "Pilak" known from hieroglyphic texts and which may be Nubian in origin. The ancient Egyptians saw in their name for Philae an etymology with the meaning "island of the time [of Ra]", i.e. creation, but the islands history is later than that.

 

What we refer to today as Philae is the main temple complex relocated from that island, after the High Dam was built, to the island of Agilika. It was the center of the cult of the goddess Isis and her connection with Osiris, Horus, and the Kingship, during the Ptolemaic period of Egyptian History.

 

  

(Previous KOM League Flash Reports are available on request)

 

Comment regarding SPAM. The vocabulary gets changed with each generation. You all know what I talking about without my having to illustrate how the meaning of words change. One of the greatest stories for which I don't recall all the details occurred during the opening of a large supermarket in Columbia, Mo. in the 1970's. One of the items they featured on sale was SPAM. A young reporter for either one of the two newspapers or television station covered the opening and was impressed with the large display of SPAM.

 

Being a good and inquisitive reporter he inquired as to the composition of the product. The store had a young assistant manager with a quick and inventive mind so he explained to the reporter that SPAM was the product of a very small animal found only in Nebraska. He went on to explain that like any other product it had years when it was abundant and other years when the little animal was scarce and the product was hard to buy. Since the product was obviously abundant that year he told the reporter that people should stock up on it.

 

Understand this was long before the internet and the reporter bought the story hook, line and sinker. The story was published or aired in Columbia and it was so popular with the mass audience that the reporter asked the assistant store manager for a follow-up interview. The next time around he even asked for a picture of a SPAM. The assistant manager went into great detail about the animal being nocturnal and that no one had ever photographed one.

 

In the foregoing paragraphs I just made a huge blunder. I've told a story about which all the details aren't known. However, like most of everything else I write someone out there will probably recall it or can find the story on an old newspaper site. If no one can embellish on this story it still remains my favorite on the subject of SPAM.

 

A question: Does any reader recall a song from the heyday of Harry Caray, in St. Louis, entitled "The Harry Caray Polka?" If you know of a recording of it or know where the complete lyrics might be found I'd appreciate knowing about it. I will share it with one other person, the one who inquired about it.

  

The

KOM Flash Report

for

August 23, 2013

 

Store this URL somewhere to stay informed of KOM updates and photos. www.flickr.com/photos/60428361@N07/‎

________________________________________________________________________________________

This is the first attempt since the Google Internet Gestapo (GIG) arrested me, a few weeks ago, for sending Flash Reports that they determined to be SPAM. Everyone from my era knows what that product was/is. It used to be eaten because we were poor and now people eat it to be chic.

 

Moving right ahead. For the last 18 days an attempt has been made to keep those with any interest in the KOM league news updated through this site. Flicker: KOM League Photostream

www.flickr.com/photos/60428361@N07/‎ Some readers, like Bill Clark, right here in Columbia, Missouri, can’t get that feature. So, Bill, this report is for you and I’m including the updates that appear on that site to kick off this report.

 

August 23, 2013

I'm not sure how many people even bother to check this site for updates. If you do and would like to see a brand new Flash Report with all the excitement those stories generate let me know. In fact, it will take about 25 people asking to see a new report for me to shake myself from the summer doldrums in order to do it. I've heard from a few folks with some pretty interesting tales and I'd put forth a little, not much, energy to do something that a few of you enjoy. Let me know. Otherwise, I'll keep picking tomatoes and placing them at the free tomato stand in my front yard. Just dial me up at j03.john@gmail.com if you want another thrill packed edition of the Flash Report.

August 22, 2013

Yesterday I was going through a list of former KOM leaguers with whom contact had been established over the years. For a number of years communication with Russ and Dody Oxford was conducted by e-mail.. Russ was the third baseman on the same team as the four fellows shown in the photo above. (That is the Flickr site photo)

Russ was born Russell Charles Oxford on October 20, 1931 in Sioux City, Iowa and I learned through some searching of obituaries recently that he passed away April 24, 2013 in Redmond, Washington.

Russ and Dorothy McInnes were married on June 21, 1951 at the Grace Episcopal Church in Carthage, MO. After the wedding many of his teammates formed an archway using baseball bats under which the newlyweds exited the church. The bridesmaid and best man at that wedding were Mr. and Mrs. Walter Koehler. Just one month later Walter was drafted and just over a year later he died while serving his country as a medical corpsman in Korea.

One thing Oxford accomplished that very few former Carthage players pulled off was getting away with a team uniform at the end of the season. He wore #7 which was a hand me down from the 1949 Chicago Cubs. Another thing Russ had was a birthday that was the same as a former KOM league shortstop. That former KOM league shortstop didn't wear #7 until he made it to the major leagues and it was later retired when the fellow retired from the New York Yankees.

One of the great trivia questions in the early days of the KOM league was to ask "Who played on the left side of a KOM league infield, wore #7 and was born October 20, 1931. Never once did anyone ever say the name "Russ Oxford." The only name that anyone knew who fit that description was "Mickey Mantle."

From whence did they come to play in the KOM league?

Many people assume, who weren't around 60 years ago, that Class D teams were heavily populated with players from the area in which the team was located. That was true if the team wasn't affiliated with a major league organization or a higher classification team. In a quick perusal of the database of KOM rosters there were 19 players each from Springfield, MO and Topeka, Kansas. Most of the Topeka lads wound up in the league by virtue of being signed by the Topeka, Kansas Owls. The Springfield boys were primarily signed by Tom Greenwade and shipped off to Independence, Kansas to "sink or swim."

Players from all over the country wound up in the KOM with 105 coming from the State of California and 27 of them from the City of Los Angeles. The Windy City, Chicago, sent 85 of their young men to the league basically because of the Cubs sponsoring teams at Iola in 1946-47, Carthage 1949-51 and Blackwell, OK in 1952. The City of St. Louis contributed 87 players to the league and that doesn't include the other cities in the metro area. Even the "Big Apple" had 16 of their youngsters go west to receive their version of culture shock. Omaha, Nebraska had 40 of their young men in KOM league uniforms and most of those played at Ponca City, OK in the Dodger organization. Bert Wells, of Larned, Kansas, the Dodger scout, was primarily responsible for that.

Should you have an interest in a certain city or town and wonder how many of their residents played in the KOM league send in that inquiry. Small towns such as Alba, MO sent a half dozen players to the KOM league and not all of them were named Boyer. And, as I've stated numerous times neither Cloyd Boyer nor his little brother, Cletis, were born in Alba. But, the "baseball chronicles" will always claim they did. Cloyd told me he long ago gave up on trying getting the record books changed on that matter. It's too late for Cletis who was born at Cossville and every baseball publication on earth will show his birth place as Cassville. One of those towns is in Barry County and the other in Jasper County, MO. It’s not too late to get Cloyd’s birthplace corrected while he is still around to know it. He was born in Duval Township located just north of Alba near what is Baseline Road. Look it up on any good Internet site or bad one for that matter.

August 19, 2013

No Flash Report updates have transpired in the last four days. I'm not planning any Flash Reports for the foreseeable future. No one is corresponding with me about what is on their mind and fortunately I don't have any deaths to report. I do know a couple of guys have had a rough time lately do to surgery and other age related problems but they don't come under the heading of "Urgent Messages." When those arrive I'll report on them. The two people I'm tracking right now, due to health problems, are; Don Keeter and Leonard Van de Hey. Keeter is in a Kansas City rehabilitation facility and Van de Hey is in a Wisconsin hospital following surgery. Word received today was that there will be more of the same for the former Carthage Cub from 1950-51.

August 12, 2013.

There won't be another Flash Report for a few days. If you have anything to submit for the next report feel free to do so by contacting me at j03.john@gmail.com Thanks for checking out this site. The traffic on this site has picked up significantly since the Flash Reports have become a feature.

For the latest interview with former KOM Leaguer, Bill Virdon, go to this site: Celebrate West Plains: Bill Virdon reflects on his career - KY3 News

m.ky3.com/display/6497/story/458e4da0908d50238e442ec6fee3...

 

The next report will have an update on what happened with regard to the guy offering to give me a Mickey Mantle baseball card and also more information on the late Roger Vander Weide's baseball career. His older brother Robert was "top dog" in the operation of the Orlando Magic when they entered the National Basketball Association.

 

August 15, 2013. The photos are viewed by a number of former KOM league ballplayers and their families. I learned, by posting these photos that Leonard Van de Hey, a member of the 1950-51 Carthage Cubs had surgery yesterday in Wisconsin. Also, a nice note was received from the daughter of the late Johnny LaPorta, Carthage Cubs 1949-50 that she enjoys the photos. Her mother, Angie, the greatest scorekeeper in the history of Carthage baseball, is residing in a nursing home in the Chicago area and still retains the memories of many of the KOM era.

 

In the next Flash Report an article will address the subject of radio stations that broadcast KOM League games. If you heard a game or games over KGLC in Miami, OK, KSEK Pittsburg, KS, KDMO Carthage, MO, KIND Independence, KS, KWON Bartlesville, OK or WBBZ in Ponca City and wish to share a memory I'd love to include it in the article. There were no games aired of Iola, Blackwell or Chanute home games since those towns didn't have a radio station until nearly a decade after the KOM League folded.

The voice of Miami baseball was Russ Martin. He was the pastor of the First Christian Church in Miami and was well known for the dramatic phrases and embellishment of games when they became a bit drab. For a while, Joe Pollock, former KOM speedster, with three different clubs, was his play by play color man.

 

Pittsburg Browns games were carried on KSEK radio. That station was on the Liberty network and carried a game of the day with Gordon McClendon and Lindsey Nelson doing most of the games. If you got bored you went to the top of the radio dial and got the Mutual Broadcasting Company game with Al Helfer doing the announcing on radio station WMBH in Joplin. In the evening that station carried the Joplin Miner games with Bill Grigsby doing the play by play. As a point of trivia the last KOM game broadcast was in 1998 with Grigsby doing most of the play by play and not so ably assisted by Yours truly. That was about as much fun as I ever had. By the way one of the announcers for Pittsburg was Thad Sandstrom who later headed up the WIBW radio and TV empire. If you want to know the fate of Mr. Sandstrom check that out on the Internet. The story is too long and gory to place here.

 

Bill Platt, James DeStefano (aka Jim King), Fred Pralle and Keith Upson broadcast for Ponca City, Carthage, Bartlesville and Independence, respectively. The story of Upson is contained under the last photo on this Flickr site. He is shown with the 1948 Independence Yankees. There are some great tales about the last four guys mentioned but I'll hold off writing anything about them to see if anyone has read the material to this point.

I'm under pressure to keep this site moving along since g-mail loves me at about the same level socialism admires free enterprise and vice versa.

Okay, the foregoing is all that you missed if you don’t have access to Flickr or can access it and don’t.

_________________________________________________________________________________________

Here are a few other things that have transpired recently: And a few reasons why I still attempt to piece these reports into some type of order.

 

From a lady in Topeka, Kansas: “I enjoy reading these reports whether I know the person or not...............it’s in my blood, I guess and I appreciate all the work you do in writing these reports

 

From a lady in St. Louis, Missouri. “Dad was reading over my shoulder again! He has been gone so long but baseball was everything to him and (I) know he would really enjoy the reports.”

 

From a lady in Indianapolis, Indiana:

 

JOHN, THANKS AGAIN FOR ALL THE BEAUTIFUL PHOTOGRAPHY~~ESPECIALLY THE BIRDS, FLOWERS, AND CHARLIE.

 

CAN"T BELIEVE IT'S BEEN FIVE MONTHS SINCE KENNY PASSED ON. A VERY KIND AND CARING HUSBAND, EXCEPT WHEN ONE OF HIS PLAYERS MISSES AN EASY CATCH FOR THE WIN!”

 

Ed note: Kenny’s last name was Cox and played for the 1948 Carthage Cardinals and other teams in the Brooklyn Dodger organization later on.

 

From a gentleman in Shreveport, Louisiana:

 

You think you have troubles with Google. I've been out of internet for several days. My battle with A. T. & T. started 3 years ago and continues. Won't bore you with details. Dave wants you to know that Thursday he finished the batch of Flash Reports you sent. Said to tell you he read every word. And he'll be going back to them often over the years! Without the net, have accumulated a # of your photos. We'll set aside a time and

both go over together.

 

Ed note:

 

The reports the gentleman mentioned were actually every issue of the KOM League Remembered newsletter that was published between 1994 and 2010. Those arrived in Louisiana thanks to the kindness of Bob Mallon who had kept every copy sent him over the years.

_________________________________________________________________________________________

Baseball trivia--The youngest pitcher to win a Major League game in the 20th Century

 

Hi John--Here is a little interesting baseball trivia I know you'll enjoy reading. This is an old teammate of mine from 58 years ago. I just met him again for the first time at the Legion World Series last Friday in his hometown of Shelby, NC. This was the game my great-nephew Joe O'Donnell pitched. (Photo to follow in my next e-mail).

 

When we were teammates, I never knew about his accomplishments. He was just a class-act career minor-leaguer, and good teammate. We had a great time talking and remembering those good old days when the grass was real and batting helmets nonexistent! -Bill--Durham, NC

philadelphia.phillies.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=201211...

  

Ed note:

 

Not many baseball fans would know the name of the youngest pitcher to have won a game in the big leagues. The one previous to that was in 1890. Without looking how many of you can name the youngest pitcher to post a win? Here’s a hint if you immediately think of Joe Nuxhall you aren’t even in the running.

 

Note from a friend since my youth:

 

Upon finding the information on the death of Russell Oxford I sent a note to my long time friend, in Arizona, Corky Simpson. Cork is an award winning and Arizona Hall of Fame sportswriter. So, when I get a note from him I listen.

 

Johnny: I remember him well and I always thought he had a great baseball name: Russ Oxford. -- Didn't we shag balls in the outfield during batting practice one time? Or am I dreaming? I think we did. Boy, today the liability insurance on something like that would be more catastrophic than getting beaned on the head. Come to think of it, I believe a Carthage Cub, perhaps Rogers Hornsby's son, did get beaned on the head one time in lieu of catching the !#@%!! ball during an actual game. -- Corky

 

Ed reply:

 

They never let me shag balls during batting practice. Hornsby was in CF in the second game of a DH against Independence on or near August 20 of 1949. The Carthage pitcher was working on a 21 straight scoreless inning streak. With one out and a runner on first the Independence shortstop hit a fly ball to medium left center. The ball got above the light standards and Hornsby couldn't locate it and it landed on the side of his head. The hitter, Mickey Mantle, got an inside the park homer and Dr. Tom McNew came on the field to check out Hornsby. That same Carthage pitcher, George Erath, who had his scoreless hit streak snapped by the freak homer later ran a minor league club in North Carolina and gave Curt Flood his first chance in baseball. True story.

 

By the way Carthage teams have come up a lot in recent days. Len Van de Hey is having some health issues and his family has been in touch. I have even talked to one member of the family about his girlfriend when he was with Carthage. He went with Shirley S. She had four sisters. They were B., S., B., and another B. You probably remember some of those girls. There were three other Carthage girls who dated John Mudd, Walt Babcock and Don Biebel and followed them up to Sioux Falls, SD, the next year, and discovered the ball players had already found other girlfriends by the time they got there. (Only one player from the 1951 Carthage team married a girl from the area and she was from Avilla.)

________________________________________________________________________________________

A new book about Carthage, MO

 

There is a new book in the Arcadia series coming out late this month and there will be a special event to honor that on August 30. The kick-off for that book will be August 30 at the Powers Museum which is located directly across the street from the old ballpark where the Carthage Pirates, Browns, Cardinals and Cubs played their games on and off from 1938-1951.

 

All of those who contributed to the book that chronicles the history of Carthage from 1950-1990 have been invited to attend a special evening together and since I did identify some old photos of former Carthage players an invitation was extended. The following was my reply. “Congratulations on the new book. Those 50 years of Carthage history was special to me, especially the first 20 years of it.

 

Only yesterday I was exchanging notes with a member of the 1951 Carthage Cub baseball team and I was doing some research on the young lady he dated that year. That young lady is now 81, if she's still living. She had four sisters and I'm about 99.999% sure I could find her or her descendants if I put any effort into the matter. The young lady who dated the ballplayer in 1951 married a young man in 1953 who had just come back from the Korean War. He had attained the rank of Sergeant in the Marine Corps. I noticed in checking the ancestry files yesterday that he died in 1972 at the young age of 40. That was the same age my dad was when he died in 1947 at McCune Brooks Hospital in Carthage.

My mind often wanders back to the days of my youth, in Carthage, and I relish the memories. Since the 1940 Federal Census has come out I sometimes go through the difference sections of the city and look for names I recognize from the past. It’s interesting to see where the parents of my classmates worked and even how old they were when their children were born. The people I looked upon as old were relatively young as I peruse the census data.

I would love to be in Carthage on the 30th but it is impossible these days to leave home. I still put out my baseball reports to a few hundred people and many of the recipients are former Carthaginians or former players loved the town. I'll mention the new book and hopefully some of the readers will order one.

 

Note from Powers Museum’s director:

 

Thanks for responding back. I will send you a list of the baseball photos we used. I will also see if another book by another author using some of our baseball photos got published as he thought. Those would be pre-KOM

 

Ed reply:

 

What you have are Carthage Pirate and Browns photos. However, there were a couple of 1946 Carthage Cardinals that somehow were in that lot. I imagine the other guy you are talking about is Jerry Hogan of Fayetteville, Ark. who has been trying to get his book about the Arkansas State and Arkansas-Missouri league published for some time. I hear from him nearly every day of my life. (Jerry get in touch with the museum if I have misrepresented anything.)

 

Reply from Powers Museum’s director:

 

Yes, so the book is NOT out yet I take it. I won't go looking for it then!

 

Here is who is in the book:

Pirates Joe Narieka

Browns trio of Roy Meyer, Joe Szuch & Frank Mancuso

Browns bat boy Raymond Baird

Cardinals William Buck

Cardinals LaVerne Etting

 

...and of course an image of the stadium.

 

The whole idea of the book was to feature selections from the many archival/artifact donations made to the museum since opening of the museum.

 

MICHELE HANSFORD

Director

Powers Museum, Carthage MO

 

Ed note:

 

Since many of the recipients of this report have Carthage connections you might wish to check out the book about Carthage. It is in the same format as all Arcadia publications. It will be around 128 pages with a lot of great photos and minimal verbiage. If any of you purchased “The KOM League Remembered” by that non-award winning author you’ll know what to expect regarding the 40 year history of Carthage from its glory years.

 

And, while I’m on the subject, if you wish to have the best pictorial book ever published about the KOM League I’m sure Arcadia would sell you one or more if you begged them. You can purchase them off the Internet and if you purchase them from Amazon.com I suspect that some where down the line it would result in eighty cents in royalties to Yours truly. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a royalty check.

__________________________________________________________________________________________

Okay, I’m done:

 

I’ve dropped so many names and places in this report I’m bound to hear from someone for whom those references will spark some type of memory. If I don’t then this report has NO reason for existing.

 

A sculpture of a swan that I made from LEGO bricks. This is actually a combination of two different species of swans. I grabbed various characteristics from the two of them, making a probably nonexistent species. It took maybe 40 hours to design and build.

 

The head and feet are recycled parts from my old bird old bird, made a 1.5 years before this one. The old one fell off of a shelf, and I didn't want to repair it, so I made a better version.

 

The wings of this sculpture ended up being too heavy to sustain their own weight (although they are pretty durable), but the cross support holds them firmly in place.

Sometimes the electorate is a bleedin' embarrassment.

My C1's modified windshield frame.I hope it's help a little bit to imagine the nonexistent windshield.:)

The second stop on the way home from my college visit was in Richmond!

 

The Richmond Kmart appears to be a former Grants (and thus reminded me of the Erie Kmart that I visited last summer). It is very noticeably bigger than Anderson; it is also very nice; it has a Kmart Express gas station and it has a former Kmart Cafe (that still has the counter/displays, the full menu board and even the register! Looks like a more recent KCafe closure from what I've seen; if anybody else here has any more information I would like to know more about it!). This store appears to be doing fairly well for one of the last remaining stores in/near the Miami Valley.

 

Of course, I had to check out the Kmart Express after my main store rounds were complete, so I headed over there and looked around. This is the second Kmart Express I've seen, but the first one I have actually visited, as the other one (at the now nonexistent Brooklyn Super Kmart) had already closed. I didn't buy anything at this KExpress though, as I had spent my money in the main store. Hopefully next time I can buy some coffee or donuts from Kmart Express while going to/from Anderson (if I plan another college visit to Anderson U, which is likely)!

 

Hopefully the Richmond Kmart will still be able to remain "normal" for a good time longer...I like this store! :D

 

Kmart #7246 - 3150 National Road West - Richmond, Indiana

The second stop on the way home from my college visit was in Richmond!

 

The Richmond Kmart appears to be a former Grants (and thus reminded me of the Erie Kmart that I visited last summer). It is very noticeably bigger than Anderson; it is also very nice; it has a Kmart Express gas station and it has a former Kmart Cafe (that still has the counter/displays, the full menu board and even the register! Looks like a more recent KCafe closure from what I've seen; if anybody else here has any more information I would like to know more about it!). This store appears to be doing fairly well for one of the last remaining stores in/near the Miami Valley.

 

Of course, I had to check out the Kmart Express after my main store rounds were complete, so I headed over there and looked around. This is the second Kmart Express I've seen, but the first one I have actually visited, as the other one (at the now nonexistent Brooklyn Super Kmart) had already closed. I didn't buy anything at this KExpress though, as I had spent my money in the main store. Hopefully next time I can buy some coffee or donuts from Kmart Express while going to/from Anderson (if I plan another college visit to Anderson U, which is likely)!

 

Hopefully the Richmond Kmart will still be able to remain "normal" for a good time longer...I like this store! :D

 

Kmart #7246 - 3150 National Road West - Richmond, Indiana

Sorry I haven't been online last few days, but I had no access on the internet & also everything has been a bit busy lately. But now we got our half-year results so school is a bit more relaxed at the moment, and- even better- the trouble with my exboyfriend's parents has become almost nonexistent. (: We (him, his father, my parents & me) met two weeks ago to talk about the situation but didn't get any result. So the two of us decided to go on the way it was before that conversation, being just friends and all... Very disappointing because I had actually thought that this talk would eventually get us a result, but oh well.

I was like, well, I'll wait for him if I have to; and so I didn't really expect us to get back together soon. But then, there was this Big Band concert at our school, and after that all of the Big Band members went to a restaurant and so did the two of us (even though we're not really members of the Big Band but he did the technic stuff at the concert and I... well, I just was there :D) We sat next to each other and well... suddenly he leaned over and kissed me. We just can't handle being only friends, so we didn't even try anymore. And suddenly his parents started accepting or at least tolerating our relationship. Don't ask me what made them change their minds- i don't know. But I'm happy about it, so I don't really care why their opinions changed so drastically- wether it was the conversation we had, or the fact that both of us were really depressed after the break-up, or whatever. The important thing is that they changed their mind, not why they did.

 

Oh, and I have been tagged by *sweet. dreamers. (thanks for the tag ♥), so here we go :D

Name: Mirjam

Gender: Female

Age: 14

Where You're From: Germany (:

Eye Color: A very green-ish brown (or a very brown-ish green, depends on how you want to call it), nothing spectacular really.

Hair Color: Actually a dark ash blonde, but I've been tinting it brown since August. I started with a middle brown, but since last week I'm wearing a really really dark brown and i love it (:

Favorite Sport: Jogging :D I also like handball and volleyball.

Favorite Color: Depends. Everything that's light and colourful. Pink, violet, spring green, sky blue, light red...

Favorite Band: Mhm... Linkin Park ♥

Siblings: One older sister & one older brother.

Tattoos: None.

Piercings: None yet because my parents won't allow me to get one, but I want a lip piercing one day. Maybe even snake bites *-*

Hobbies: Painting. Drawing. Taking pictures. Writing stories. Anything creative. Reading. Surfing the internet (I've got to admit, I'm obsessed with facebook.). Being with friends. All that kinda stuff.

 

Third thing is, I'm thinking about doing a 365. What do you think, should I?

 

♥

Hand drawn map of a nameless imaginary city, with elements of a typical Austrian place: lakesides, multiple important railway stations, tramways, compact city center and not very large - most 'inhabitants' live directly outside town.

 

2012.

The second stop on the way home from my college visit was in Richmond!

 

The Richmond Kmart appears to be a former Grants (and thus reminded me of the Erie Kmart that I visited last summer). It is very noticeably bigger than Anderson; it is also very nice; it has a Kmart Express gas station and it has a former Kmart Cafe (that still has the counter/displays, the full menu board and even the register! Looks like a more recent KCafe closure from what I've seen; if anybody else here has any more information I would like to know more about it!). This store appears to be doing fairly well for one of the last remaining stores in/near the Miami Valley.

 

Of course, I had to check out the Kmart Express after my main store rounds were complete, so I headed over there and looked around. This is the second Kmart Express I've seen, but the first one I have actually visited, as the other one (at the now nonexistent Brooklyn Super Kmart) had already closed. I didn't buy anything at this KExpress though, as I had spent my money in the main store. Hopefully next time I can buy some coffee or donuts from Kmart Express while going to/from Anderson (if I plan another college visit to Anderson U, which is likely)!

 

Hopefully the Richmond Kmart will still be able to remain "normal" for a good time longer...I like this store! :D

 

Kmart #7246 - 3150 National Road West - Richmond, Indiana

While browsing sleepwear, I heard a crash...and this was the source. Hopefully someone was on their way to clean it up!

 

The second stop on the way home from my college visit was in Richmond!

 

The Richmond Kmart appears to be a former Grants (and thus reminded me of the Erie Kmart that I visited last summer). It is very noticeably bigger than Anderson; it is also very nice; it has a Kmart Express gas station and it has a former Kmart Cafe (that still has the counter/displays, the full menu board and even the register! Looks like a more recent KCafe closure from what I've seen; if anybody else here has any more information I would like to know more about it!). This store appears to be doing fairly well for one of the last remaining stores in/near the Miami Valley.

 

Of course, I had to check out the Kmart Express after my main store rounds were complete, so I headed over there and looked around. This is the second Kmart Express I've seen, but the first one I have actually visited, as the other one (at the now nonexistent Brooklyn Super Kmart) had already closed. I didn't buy anything at this KExpress though, as I had spent my money in the main store. Hopefully next time I can buy some coffee or donuts from Kmart Express while going to/from Anderson (if I plan another college visit to Anderson U, which is likely)!

 

Hopefully the Richmond Kmart will still be able to remain "normal" for a good time longer...I like this store! :D

 

Kmart #7246 - 3150 National Road West - Richmond, Indiana

Very good idea having the Seasonal merchandise in the Garden Shop. I believe the Olean, NY Kmart has also done the same.

 

The second stop on the way home from my college visit was in Richmond!

 

The Richmond Kmart appears to be a former Grants (and thus reminded me of the Erie Kmart that I visited last summer). It is very noticeably bigger than Anderson; it is also very nice; it has a Kmart Express gas station and it has a former Kmart Cafe (that still has the counter/displays, the full menu board and even the register! Looks like a more recent KCafe closure from what I've seen; if anybody else here has any more information I would like to know more about it!). This store appears to be doing fairly well for one of the last remaining stores in/near the Miami Valley.

 

Of course, I had to check out the Kmart Express after my main store rounds were complete, so I headed over there and looked around. This is the second Kmart Express I've seen, but the first one I have actually visited, as the other one (at the now nonexistent Brooklyn Super Kmart) had already closed. I didn't buy anything at this KExpress though, as I had spent my money in the main store. Hopefully next time I can buy some coffee or donuts from Kmart Express while going to/from Anderson (if I plan another college visit to Anderson U, which is likely)!

 

Hopefully the Richmond Kmart will still be able to remain "normal" for a good time longer...I like this store! :D

 

Kmart #7246 - 3150 National Road West - Richmond, Indiana

Once upon a time, when cable network was nonexistent in this parts, this antenna was used to catch clear signal for the Television . Now it is out of service. Yet it is there, tolerating the battering of sun,rain,dew.

 

A part of the following series. If you find this photo interesting, please do pay a visit.

 

sheikhshahriarahmed.wordpress.com/2014/09/18/my-universit...

Oolick is a rambunctious little guy that never shuts up! He is the worst gossip in Hollywood. Racing around on those little wheels of his, he can spread news like a wildfire. The only trouble is that his memory is shot and his attention span is nonexistent. So, he gets all his stories mixed up. How did you think Tabloids get all their crazy stories?

 

Robot sculpture assembled from found objects by Brian Marshall - Wilmington, DE. Items included in my sculptures vary from vintage household kitchen items to recycled industrial scrap. Some of my favorite items to use are old oil cans, aluminum measuring spoons, electrical meters, retro blenders, anodized cups, and pencil sharpeners.

 

Re-edit from archive. Wading pool of nowadays already nonexistent town swimming pools.

The second stop on the way home from my college visit was in Richmond!

 

The Richmond Kmart appears to be a former Grants (and thus reminded me of the Erie Kmart that I visited last summer). It is very noticeably bigger than Anderson; it is also very nice; it has a Kmart Express gas station and it has a former Kmart Cafe (that still has the counter/displays, the full menu board and even the register! Looks like a more recent KCafe closure from what I've seen; if anybody else here has any more information I would like to know more about it!). This store appears to be doing fairly well for one of the last remaining stores in/near the Miami Valley.

 

Of course, I had to check out the Kmart Express after my main store rounds were complete, so I headed over there and looked around. This is the second Kmart Express I've seen, but the first one I have actually visited, as the other one (at the now nonexistent Brooklyn Super Kmart) had already closed. I didn't buy anything at this KExpress though, as I had spent my money in the main store. Hopefully next time I can buy some coffee or donuts from Kmart Express while going to/from Anderson (if I plan another college visit to Anderson U, which is likely)!

 

Hopefully the Richmond Kmart will still be able to remain "normal" for a good time longer...I like this store! :D

 

Kmart #7246 - 3150 National Road West - Richmond, Indiana

The second stop on the way home from my college visit was in Richmond!

 

The Richmond Kmart appears to be a former Grants (and thus reminded me of the Erie Kmart that I visited last summer). It is very noticeably bigger than Anderson; it is also very nice; it has a Kmart Express gas station and it has a former Kmart Cafe (that still has the counter/displays, the full menu board and even the register! Looks like a more recent KCafe closure from what I've seen; if anybody else here has any more information I would like to know more about it!). This store appears to be doing fairly well for one of the last remaining stores in/near the Miami Valley.

 

Of course, I had to check out the Kmart Express after my main store rounds were complete, so I headed over there and looked around. This is the second Kmart Express I've seen, but the first one I have actually visited, as the other one (at the now nonexistent Brooklyn Super Kmart) had already closed. I didn't buy anything at this KExpress though, as I had spent my money in the main store. Hopefully next time I can buy some coffee or donuts from Kmart Express while going to/from Anderson (if I plan another college visit to Anderson U, which is likely)!

 

Hopefully the Richmond Kmart will still be able to remain "normal" for a good time longer...I like this store! :D

 

Kmart #7246 - 3150 National Road West - Richmond, Indiana

Twice as many checkouts as the Anderson store are here in Richmond! Hopefully that means the store is still quite healthy...as it can get, anyways...

 

The second stop on the way home from my college visit was in Richmond!

 

The Richmond Kmart appears to be a former Grants (and thus reminded me of the Erie Kmart that I visited last summer). It is very noticeably bigger than Anderson; it is also very nice; it has a Kmart Express gas station and it has a former Kmart Cafe (that still has the counter/displays, the full menu board and even the register! Looks like a more recent KCafe closure from what I've seen; if anybody else here has any more information I would like to know more about it!). This store appears to be doing fairly well for one of the last remaining stores in/near the Miami Valley.

 

Of course, I had to check out the Kmart Express after my main store rounds were complete, so I headed over there and looked around. This is the second Kmart Express I've seen, but the first one I have actually visited, as the other one (at the now nonexistent Brooklyn Super Kmart) had already closed. I didn't buy anything at this KExpress though, as I had spent my money in the main store. Hopefully next time I can buy some coffee or donuts from Kmart Express while going to/from Anderson (if I plan another college visit to Anderson U, which is likely)!

 

Hopefully the Richmond Kmart will still be able to remain "normal" for a good time longer...I like this store! :D

 

Kmart #7246 - 3150 National Road West - Richmond, Indiana

It rained yesterday evening, but the wind was calm to nonexistent. This morning, all of the trees were sparkling with little droplets.

 

Looks nice decluttr-ed.

 

Sony DSLR-A200

0.013 sec (1/80); f/1.8; 50 mm; ISO 250

SOOC

The second stop on the way home from my college visit was in Richmond!

 

The Richmond Kmart appears to be a former Grants (and thus reminded me of the Erie Kmart that I visited last summer). It is very noticeably bigger than Anderson; it is also very nice; it has a Kmart Express gas station and it has a former Kmart Cafe (that still has the counter/displays, the full menu board and even the register! Looks like a more recent KCafe closure from what I've seen; if anybody else here has any more information I would like to know more about it!). This store appears to be doing fairly well for one of the last remaining stores in/near the Miami Valley.

 

Of course, I had to check out the Kmart Express after my main store rounds were complete, so I headed over there and looked around. This is the second Kmart Express I've seen, but the first one I have actually visited, as the other one (at the now nonexistent Brooklyn Super Kmart) had already closed. I didn't buy anything at this KExpress though, as I had spent my money in the main store. Hopefully next time I can buy some coffee or donuts from Kmart Express while going to/from Anderson (if I plan another college visit to Anderson U, which is likely)!

 

Hopefully the Richmond Kmart will still be able to remain "normal" for a good time longer...I like this store! :D

 

Kmart #7246 - 3150 National Road West - Richmond, Indiana

Ghost spider (Wulfila sp.), its underside visible within its silken retreat on the underside of a leaf. The silk retreats of these spiders are often so shear that they appear to be virtually nonexistent.

Size: ~0.25 inch (6 mm)

October 02, 2024

Brownsville, Fayette County, Pennsylvania

The second stop on the way home from my college visit was in Richmond!

 

The Richmond Kmart appears to be a former Grants (and thus reminded me of the Erie Kmart that I visited last summer). It is very noticeably bigger than Anderson; it is also very nice; it has a Kmart Express gas station and it has a former Kmart Cafe (that still has the counter/displays, the full menu board and even the register! Looks like a more recent KCafe closure from what I've seen; if anybody else here has any more information I would like to know more about it!). This store appears to be doing fairly well for one of the last remaining stores in/near the Miami Valley.

 

Of course, I had to check out the Kmart Express after my main store rounds were complete, so I headed over there and looked around. This is the second Kmart Express I've seen, but the first one I have actually visited, as the other one (at the now nonexistent Brooklyn Super Kmart) had already closed. I didn't buy anything at this KExpress though, as I had spent my money in the main store. Hopefully next time I can buy some coffee or donuts from Kmart Express while going to/from Anderson (if I plan another college visit to Anderson U, which is likely)!

 

Hopefully the Richmond Kmart will still be able to remain "normal" for a good time longer...I like this store! :D

 

Kmart #7246 - 3150 National Road West - Richmond, Indiana

Leamington is a municipality in Essex County, Ontario, Canada. With a population of 28,403, it is the second largest municipality in the Windsor-Essex County area (after the separated municipality of Windsor, Ontario). It includes Point Pelee, the southernmost point of mainland Canada.

 

Known as the "Tomato Capital of Canada", it is the location of a tomato processing factory owned by Highbury-Canco, previously owned until 2014 by the Heinz Company. Due to its location in the southernmost part of Canada, Leamington uses the motto "Sun Parlour of Canada". In 2006, MoneySense Magazine ranked Leamington as the No. 1 best place to live in Canada.

 

Leamington enjoys the second warmest climate in Canada, after the Lower Mainland of British Columbia.

 

Leamington has been known for its tourism and attractions and is known as the tomato capital of Canada. Leamington's attractions include cycle paths and nearby Point Pelee National Park. Leamington also has a large and modern marina. The town's water tower, visible for miles in the flat southern Ontario landscape, is also in the shape and colour of a giant tomato. Celebrating its position as an agricultural powerhouse and its heritage as the H. J. Heinz Company's centre for processing "red goods," the city hosts a "Tomato Festival" each August, as a kickoff of the tomato-harvesting season. Car shows, beauty pageants, parades, and a fair are featured at the festival.

 

Leamington's position on the north shore of Lake Erie makes it an important recreational centre. The tourist information booth in the centre of town is a large fiberglass tomato.

 

Leamington is also home to Point Pelee National Park, which contains the southernmost point on mainland Canada and draws thousands of visitors annually and is also home to one of the largest migrations of Monarch butterflies annually.

 

Known as the tomato capital of Canada, Leamington became the home of the H. J. Heinz factory in 1908. The Heinz products are shipped from Leamington, with English and French labels, mostly to the United States. Ketchup and baby food are the main products. In November 2013 Heinz announced that it would close the Leamington plant in 2014, meaning job losses for 740 employees at the plant and hundreds more support workers.

 

Due to a 54-year-old law in Canada, which bans the use of tomato paste in tomato juice, Highbury Canco still produces tomato juice and other products for Heinzs. Around 250 workers still process canned products at the over 100 year old factory.

 

Leamington has also been known for its greenhouses, and now has the largest concentration of commercial greenhouses in all of North America, with 1,969 acres (797 ha) of greenhouse vegetable production in the general area. Major products of the greenhouse industry, in addition to tomatoes, are peppers, cucumbers, roses, and other flowers. Hydroponic farming has been very successfully adopted by many greenhouse operators in Leamington. Historically, tobacco was an important crop in the area, but tobacco production declined in the 1960s and today is virtually nonexistent.

 

Migrant workers, mostly Mexican and Caribbean seasonal labourers, annually arrive in the region to work in Leamington's greenhouses and farms. Several Mexican and Jamaican shops and a Mexican consulate have opened to service the migrants.

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leamington,_Ontario

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Text_of_Creative_Commons_...

AMONG DEVELOPING COUNTRIES,THE INDIAN FOREIGN SERVICE IS ONE Of THE OLDER AND BETTER-ORGANIZED DIPLOMATIC SERVICES. AN INSIDER DISCUSSES THE IFS’S ORIGINS AND CURRENT CONTOURS. (2002)

 

BY KISHAN S. RANA

 

Among the countries of the developing world, India has one of the older and better-organized diplomatic services. Part heir to the ‘Political Service’ of the renowned colonial Indian Civil Service, the Indian Foreign Service was established in 1948, a year after independence. From the outset the IFS was imbued with a sense of uniqueness and relative isolation from the rest of the central government, due primarily to the circumstances of its cre- ation as virtually a personal project of India’s first prime minister, the urbane and worldly national movement leader Jawaharlal Nehru.

 

In 1946, on the eve of independence, Jawaharlal Nehru articulated India’s commitment to approach the world with “clear and friendly eyes” and spoke of the newly liberated country’s right to choose an external pol- icy that reflected its independence and was not a pawn in the hands of others — the basic policy of nonalignment. Nehru functioned as his own foreign minister for his entire prime ministership, from 1947 until his death in 1964. It was Nehru who set up the Indian Foreign Service and, with his towering personality and penchant for micro-management, stamped it indelibly with his style as well as his worldview. For nearly two decades, both the IFS and the Ministry of External Affairs basked in Nehru’s reflected glory.

 

It is not our purpose to discuss the Nehruvian foreign policy legacy, but some instances of his passion for detail help shed light on facets of the Indian Foreign Service. It was not unusual, for example, for Nehru to write replies to incoming cipher telegrams from ambassadors, which were then sent out in the name of heads of territorial divi- sions, or even their deputies. In the very readable mem- oirs written by Badr-ud-din Tyabji, former ambassador and secretary in the MEA, Memoirs of an Egoist (Roli Books, 1988), this has been described as the syndrome of the time: “leave it to Panditji” — pushing up all decisions to Nehru, however minor.

Working on the staff of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1981-82, I came upon a set of long notes exchanged in the mid-1950s between Nehru and the Civil Service head of MEA, called the Foreign Secretary in Indian termi- nology. Nehru sent him a four-page note describing the criteria that should be applied to the selection of ambas- sadors. The Foreign Secretary sent a two-page rejoinder the same day, gently pointing to the practical difficulties in finding ideal choices, to which Nehru sent a further long response the next day. No decision was taken, the more so as selection of envoys was principally the prime minister’s prerogative, with the Foreign Secretary acting as his adviser. The exchange reflected Nehru’s passion for philosophical debate and his speed of thought, but also a certain disinclination for hard decisions.

 

The fact that for the first 30 years new entrants had to rank among the top 20 to 40 individuals in the Union Public Service Commission annual combined Civil Services examination merit list, out of the 20,000 to 40,000 who sat for the exam (which was the only entry route into the high civil services, including the sister ser- vice, the Indian Administrative Service), reinforced the sense of elitism.

 

In recent years career opportunities in India have greatly expanded. Yet the civil service, and the IFS in particular, continue to attract top talent. What are the contours of this diplomatic service today? What are its strengths and weaknesses?

 

The IFS Today

 

Structure.

 

The first thing to note about the Indian Foreign Service is that it is exceptionally small in size, by comparison with not just India’s needs but also the func- tions performed. To operate some 115 embassies and permanent missions and 40-odd consulates abroad, plus man the MEA, there are only some 750 officials of the rank of desk-officers and above (i.e., third secretaries and higher). By comparison the “tail” is much longer, consist- ing of about 2,800 non-diplomatic support personnel, according to the MEA Annual Report published each March.

 

MEA simply does not have the personnel it needs for vital tasks, and the number of missions abroad is too large. Ideally, looking to the experience of other major services, the ratio of officers at headquarters to missions should be around 1-to-1.5 or -2: in India it is 1-to-4. The IFS cadre needs urgent expansion to at least 1,000, and with it a pruning of support staff, via upgrading many to function as junior desk officials. With this must come also a reduction in the number of missions and posts. But as long as assignments abroad are seen as an essential “right,” vested interests block these cutbacks.

 

The results are plain to see. Public diplomacy, for example, is in its infancy in India, not because its meth- ods are not understood, but because the structure for handling this work does not exist. Today, the official head- ing the external publicity division is the MEA spokesper- son; this same person heads the entire publicity and information apparatus, and handles some aspects of public diplomacy as well, as there is no dedicated unit for this purpose.

 

Further, although all but one of the foreign ministries of the 19 countries of the E.U. and the G-8 have carried out structural changes since 1990 to cope with changes in the post-Cold War world (according to a comparative study by the Italian

Foreign Ministry), MEA has so far limited itself to adding a new territorial division to handle relations with the strategically important Central Asian countries. Deeper structural change has yet to materialize, though some reforms are under consideration.

 

There has always been an abundance of ideas — the problem is with action! The initiative of External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh to re-examine the Service’s struc- tures, set into motion at the end of 2000, was moving slowly toward concrete action until he and Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha swapped jobs in July, and it is now unclear if the planned actions will be implemented. These included creation of a Foreign Service inspec- torate (vital to undertake periodic inspection of all mis- sions, ensure uniformity of standards, and help to enhance their performance) and placement of IFS offi- cials within the administration of some states to help in their international contacts. There are also plans to expand the strength of the cadre, though not to the level needed; that would require a major decision of the gov- ernment, especially to link the expansion with cuts in the support staff.

 

Still, there is some expectation that the Jaswant Singh initiative may yet lead to some real improvements; the new minister has not revealed his thinking as yet. The recent reform proposals echo suggestions contained in the Pillai Committee Report of 1966, the only public doc- ument on the IFS and its reform. But the exercise that Jaswant Singh launched was different in one important respect — it was the first effort that originated at the min- isterial level, and from within MEA.

 

Training. Training for new entrants has improved dramatically in the past 15 years, with the establishment of the Foreign Service Institute in 1986 in New Delhi (set to move to its new campus in a year or so), and with a continuous improvement in training content. New entrants spend three months attending a common foundation course with all other entrants to the civil services for that year at the National Academy of Adminis- tration, located in the Himalayan hill-resort town of Mussourie, and then come to the Institute for a year. Their program encompasses lec- tures, workshops and visits to many partner agencies, including forma-tions of the army, navy and air force. It also calls for about five months of travel to different locations in the country to see the challenges of economic and social develop- ment, as well as two separate tours to neighboring coun- tries. Concerning languages, new recruits undergo train- ing in the assigned foreign language at the first station of assignment, and are confirmed in service after passing the language test.

 

What the IFS misses, however, is mid-career training — the Institute does nothing at all at this level, nor for senior officials. MEA is simply not able to spare anyone.

 

Recruitment and personnel management. The examination system for selection of civil servants, admin- istered by the Union Public Service Commission, now has some 300,000 applicants annually competing for about 300 to 400 jobs in all the “central services” — the other services are the Administrative Service, the Customs, Audit and Accounts, and the Police Service. The written exam is at two levels, with only about 20,000 who qualify at the first stage (the serious candidates) appearing for the second exam. Within a couple of months after the results announcement, all Civil Service entrants join the “foundation course” at Mussourie men- tioned earlier, and thereafter separate to attend training at their own services.

 

The IFS takes an average of around 10 new entrants each year, though in 2001 the number was stepped up to 18. A notable feature of recent years is the progressive widening of the intake — in terms of the regions and groups represented, the educational background and the presence of rural candidates. Around 20 percent of new recruits are women.

 

British colonial administrators borrowed the con- cept of a single open examination for the Civil Services from China. It has provided India with a stable, unified administrative structure, which has its faults — princi-pally that it has become a vehicle for corruption, and a victim of political pressures, and the two are inter- twined — but no one has come up with a remotely comparable or viable method of selection for new entrants into the Service.

 

Human resource management is the key issue for all organizations, the more so for diplomatic services that mainly deal in intangibles. Throughout the Indian admin- istration promotion by seniority is the norm; the only obstacle to promotion is outstanding incompetence. Since 1950 the constitutionally-mandated affirmative action pol- icy of reserving 22.5 percent of government service jobs for individuals from Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes has been in effect. Now some even demand that this policy ought to apply also to promotions.

Against this background, maintaining the traditional systems of rotation among “hard” and “soft” posts and motivating individuals to perform their best are chal- lenges. Many of us lament that the system does not work optimally, but we should be thankful that it works at all.

 

A Learning Curve

 

Like many other diplomatic services, the MEA is still on a learning curve when it comes to coping with the new domestic players in diplomacy. Today as it shifts from the classic gatekeeper role in external affairs to that of the privileged coordinator, every foreign ministry has to han- dle three broad clusters of players — the official agencies beyond the foreign ministry, the non-state agents (cham- bers of commerce, academic institutions, think tanks, NGOs and the like), and the ordinary citizens who too are involved players in virtually every country. (The best definition of these new roles is provided in the opening essay by Brian Hocking in the book he has edited,

 

All government agencies are autonomous actors in the foreign arena. They will accept the foreign ministry as a coordinator only if they perceive this brings value to their interests and concerns. It is entirely possible for the Indian foreign ministry to do this, but to win credibility it needs to cultivate an inclusive attitude, and modify the past mindset of exclusivity and the corresponding turf- warfare reflex. There are exceptional senior MEA offi- cials who are able to get other ministries on board on spe- cific issues, but this is not the general practice as yet. Cooperation with non-state players is good in some areas, such as with the apex bodies of business and some branches of non-official international organizations, but almost nonexistent with high-profile NGOs and human rights activists.

 

Though performance enhancement methods, many of them borrowed from business management, have crept into the diplomatic work arena, the infrastructure to max- imize productivity is not uniformly in place. Methods to improve performance encompass annual action plans, benchmarking and service optimization (for example, in consular work, public affairs, and commercial promo- tion). MEA uses annual plans, but has not got around to tying resources into these, or carrying out a real delega- tion of financial powers. (This is a general weakness of the Indian system: even the budgeted funds of ministries, duly approved by parliament, can be spent only with the approval of the Finance Ministry, either directly for big- ticket items, or through the “financial advisers” it appoints and supervises in each ministry.) A ministry- wide computer network does not exist, though most ter- ritorial divisions have their own local area networks; they do not talk to one another, or to the higher officials. An intranet or virtual private network linking MEA and the missions remains on the drawing board.

 

Strengths and Weaknesses

 

What are the accomplishments of the IFS, and its points of strength? What might one expect from this set of professionals? My comments are necessarily subjec- tive, because within a “brotherhood” one may not find the distance for dispassionate scrutiny, and also because there exist no real tools for comparing foreign ministries and diplomats. With these caveats I offer the following.

Indians are individualists for the most part, and this

 

The IFS is exceptionally small in size, by comparison with India’s needs and the functions performed. shows in a huge variation between the best and the worst among diplomats. Major missions are natural concentra- tion points for talent, not just at the level of the head of mission. Anyone who has dealt with Indian counterparts in Washington, D.C., New York or Paris will bear witness that the best can hold their own against anyone. But if the true measure of a good system is that it evens out the peaks and troughs by ele- vating the performance of the lower half, then the IFS has a way to go.

In multilateral diplomacy during the 1970s and 1980s, in what we might call the heyday of declaratory diploma- cy, Indians seized the high ground at conferences, U.N. assemblies and committees — alas, not all of it very pro- ductively. In bilateral diplomacy, which is necessarily practiced on a much broader canvas, there are the bright stars, and the rest. And it is often noted that the discrep- ancy between the peaks and troughs of ability and perfor- mance among different persons is glaring. Management and business culture specialists observe the same trait of individualism, and a relative weakness at teamwork, when they look at the Indian corporate world.

One of the strong features of the IFS was an early shift to economic diplomacy. The first oil shock of 1973 deliv- ered a body blow to the Indian economy at a time when it had barely recovered from the disastrous droughts of the late 1960s (when P.L. 480 provided succor, before the Green Revolution became a reality), and from the Bangladesh War of 1971. Economic diplomacy became a matter of survival for India, and the IFS adapted rapidly, quickly learning to blend political and economic objec- tives, and practice integrated diplomacy.

 

The service produced role models like Bimal Sanyal and Vishnu Ahuja, both senior heads of MEA’s Economics Division, who demonstrated that being proactive involved a vast amount of internal diplomacy with the other min- istries and agencies, but reliably produced results. The two mobilized public-private partnerships at home, at a time when even this concept was in its infancy, to push for project and consultancy contracts in the Gulf region, and to win placement for Indian technicians. Simultaneously, they motivated Indian missions to blend political and eco- nomic diplomacy, a craft I, too, learnt in my first ambas- sadorship in Algeria (1975-79). Today there is hardly a diplomat or a mission that fails to treat economics as virtually the first priority at the majority of posts, on the premise that good political relations are a given condition in most countries but it is economics that explores the full enve- lope of action, and valorizes the politi- cal relationship as well. Is there an Indian negotiating style? Stephen Cohen, one of the gurus of South Asia scholarship in the U.S., has a brilliant chapter in his book,

 

India: Emerging Power (Brookings Institution, 2001), titled “The India That Can’t Say Yes.” Cohen’s thesis is, first, that Indians are intent on establishing the moral and political equality of the two sides and are especially touchy over “status”; second, they are patient and will wait till the terms improve; third, they negotiate for information; and fourth, they tend to have a good institutional memory, better than that of the Americans. Cohen also speaks of “a defensive arrogance and acute sensitivity to real and perceived slights,” and concludes that India seems to relish “getting to no.” He adds that MEA has tight control over foreign negotiations and is difficult to bypass.

 

Behind the “Indian Negotiating Style”

 

Some of the above criticism comes from experience with India-U.S. relations of the pre-1991 era, when India’s South-centered diplomacy (including leadership of the Nonaligned Movement, G-77 and the like) produced inevitable confrontation with much of the West. However, Strobe Talbott, whose 10-odd rounds of discussion with Jaswant Singh between 1998 and 2000 are the most inten- sive dialogue carried out by India with the U.S. or any other partner, may not agree with all of Cohen’s character- ization.

 

Indian negotiators are often hemmed in by an impos- sible brief, which is relatively rigid, to the point that no fallback positions are provided or flexibility given to the negotiators. The result is “positional bargaining” and an impression of negativism. For example, this was the case in the past with WTO meetings and other multilateral economic fora. By contrast, at Doha in November 2001, a strong Cabinet minister leading the Indian delegation, with the personal clout to obtain flexible instructions, managed to produce a good result, overcoming the rigidi-ties of the brief and past policy. Many individual negotiators are bril-liant, adept at winning trust and work- ing to achieve results. And generally, in multilateral settings Indians are often a popular consensus choice as rappor- teurs and committee chairmen. But in regional diplomacy, being adept at tac-tics is not enough when policy has been unimaginative or defensive. This has been the case, for example, in India’s past stance vis-à-vis ASEAN, when opportunities for close association were passed up in the 1980s. Defensiveness has crippled India’s approach to the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, where a fear of all the smaller neighbors ganging up blocked innovative ideas to overcome the impasse created by Pakistan’s obduracy.

India’s economic reforms, launched in 1991, coincided with the end of the Cold War. Both have affected the way India looks at the world, and the goals it pursues external- ly, in bilateral, regional and multilateral settings. India

remains nonaligned in the original sense of the term, but real Indian involvement with NAM and G-77 has waned. Instead, there is a clearer per- ception of self-interest, and a willing- ness to say so. This translates into hard-headed pragmatism, where ideo- logical rhetoric of the past is absent, and does not cloud actions. This is especially visible in pursuit of eco-political objectives. In the Sept. 11 attacks, India finds vindication of the battle it has long waged against terrorism, plus the opportunity to pursue new relationships in Central Asia and elsewhere that move beyond a fixation with Pakistan.

 

As a service, the IFS has no political bias and it is well harnessed in the pursuit of national goals. Yet it has the latent capacity to perform far better, provided that real reform can be implemented in the MEA and its process- es incrementally — for that is the only “Indian way” that produces results. ■

 

(Kishan S. Rana joined the Indian Foreign Service in 1960 and served in Hong Kong, Beijing (twice) and Geneva. He specialized in Chinese affairs and, later, economic diplomacy. He was ambassador to Algeria, Czechoslovakia, Kenya, Mauritius and Germany, retir- ing in 1995. He is Professor Emeritus at the Foreign Service Institute in New Delhi, and the author of Inside Diplomacy (Manas Publications, 2000) and Bilateral Diplomacy ( F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / O C T O B E R 2 0 0 2)

  

Yesterday morning I was out in the park early to see what animals might want to pose for me. Notice that almost all the recent snow has melted; once again the brown look is back. This whitetail buck gave me about two seconds to frame a shot, then took off running. Whitetails are a little rarer in these parts than mule deer, and nonexistent on the West Coast where I've done much of my photography in years past, so I'm always happy with a close encounter... Grasslands National Park, Saskatchewan.

 

Don't use this image on websites, blogs or other media without explicit permission.

© James R. Page - all rights reserved.

 

Capitol Reef National Park is an American national park in south-central Utah. The park is approximately 60 miles (97 km) long on its north–south axis and just 6 miles (9.7 km) wide on average. The park was established in 1971 to preserve 241,904 acres (377.98 sq mi; 97,895.08 ha; 978.95 km2) of desert landscape and is open all year, with May through September being the highest visitation months.

 

Partially in Wayne County, Utah, the area was originally named "Wayne Wonderland" in the 1920s by local boosters Ephraim P. Pectol and Joseph S. Hickman. Capitol Reef National Park was designated a national monument on August 2, 1937, by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to protect the area's colorful canyons, ridges, buttes, and monoliths; however, it was not until 1950 that the area officially opened to the public. Road access was improved in 1962 with the construction of State Route 24 through the Fremont River Canyon.

 

The majority of the nearly 100 mi (160 km) long up-thrust formation called the Waterpocket Fold—a rocky spine extending from Thousand Lake Mountain to Lake Powell—is preserved within the park. Capitol Reef is an especially rugged and spectacular segment of the Waterpocket Fold by the Fremont River. The park was named for its whitish Navajo Sandstone cliffs with dome formations—similar to the white domes often placed on capitol buildings—that run from the Fremont River to Pleasant Creek on the Waterpocket Fold. Locally, reef refers to any rocky barrier to land travel, just as ocean reefs are barriers to sea travel.

 

Capitol Reef encompasses the Waterpocket Fold, a warp in the earth's crust that is 65 million years old. It is the largest exposed monocline in North America. In this fold, newer and older layers of earth folded over each other in an S-shape. This warp, probably caused by the same colliding continental plates that created the Rocky Mountains, has weathered and eroded over millennia to expose layers of rock and fossils. The park is filled with brilliantly colored sandstone cliffs, gleaming white domes, and contrasting layers of stone and earth.

 

The area was named for a line of white domes and cliffs of Navajo Sandstone, each of which looks somewhat like the United States Capitol building, that run from the Fremont River to Pleasant Creek on the Waterpocket Fold.

 

The fold forms a north-to-south barrier that has barely been breached by roads. Early settlers referred to parallel impassable ridges as "reefs", from which the park gets the second half of its name. The first paved road was constructed through the area in 1962. State Route 24 cuts through the park traveling east and west between Canyonlands National Park and Bryce Canyon National Park, but few other paved roads invade the rugged landscape.

 

The park is filled with canyons, cliffs, towers, domes, and arches. The Fremont River has cut canyons through parts of the Waterpocket Fold, but most of the park is arid desert. A scenic drive shows park visitors some highlights, but it runs only a few miles from the main highway. Hundreds of miles of trails and unpaved roads lead into the equally scenic backcountry.

 

Fremont-culture Native Americans lived near the perennial Fremont River in the northern part of the Capitol Reef Waterpocket Fold around the year 1000. They irrigated crops of maize and squash and stored their grain in stone granaries (in part made from the numerous black basalt boulders that litter the area). In the 13th century, all of the Native American cultures in this area underwent sudden change, likely due to a long drought. The Fremont settlements and fields were abandoned.

 

Many years after the Fremont left, Paiutes moved into the area. These Numic-speaking people named the Fremont granaries moki huts and thought they were the homes of a race of tiny people or moki.

 

In 1872 Almon H. Thompson, a geographer attached to United States Army Major John Wesley Powell's expedition, crossed the Waterpocket Fold while exploring the area. Geologist Clarence Dutton later spent several summers studying the area's geology. None of these expeditions explored the Waterpocket Fold to any great extent.

 

Following the American Civil War, officials of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City sought to establish missions in the remotest niches of the Intermountain West. In 1866, a quasi-military expedition of Mormons in pursuit of natives penetrated the high valleys to the west. In the 1870s, settlers moved into these valleys, eventually establishing Loa, Fremont, Lyman, Bicknell, and Torrey.

 

Mormons settled the Fremont River valley in the 1880s and established Junction (later renamed Fruita), Caineville, and Aldridge. Fruita prospered, Caineville barely survived, and Aldridge died. In addition to farming, lime was extracted from local limestone, and uranium was extracted early in the 20th century. In 1904 the first claim to a uranium mine in the area was staked. The resulting Oyler Mine in Grand Wash produced uranium ore.

 

By 1920 no more than ten families at one time were sustained by the fertile flood plain of the Fremont River and the land changed ownership over the years. The area remained isolated. The community was later abandoned and later still some buildings were restored by the National Park Service. Kilns once used to produce lime are still in Sulphur Creek and near the campgrounds on Scenic Drive.

 

Local Ephraim Portman Pectol organized a "booster club" in Torrey in 1921. Pectol pressed a promotional campaign, furnishing stories to be sent to periodicals and newspapers. In his efforts, he was increasingly aided by his brother-in-law, Joseph S. Hickman, who was the Wayne County High School principal. In 1924, Hickman extended community involvement in the promotional effort by organizing a Wayne County-wide Wayne Wonderland Club. That same year, Hickman was elected to the Utah State Legislature.

 

In 1933, Pectol was elected to the presidency of the Associated Civics Club of Southern Utah, successor to the Wayne Wonderland Club. The club raised U.S. $150 (equivalent to $3,391 in 2022) to interest a Salt Lake City photographer in taking a series of promotional photographs. For several years, the photographer, J. E. Broaddus, traveled and lectured on "Wayne Wonderland".

 

In 1933, Pectol was elected to the legislature and almost immediately contacted President Franklin D. Roosevelt and asked for the creation of "Wayne Wonderland National Monument" out of the federal lands comprising the bulk of the Capitol Reef area. Federal agencies began a feasibility study and boundary assessment. Meanwhile, Pectol guided the government investigators on numerous trips and escorted an increasing number of visitors. The lectures of Broaddus were having an effect.

 

Roosevelt signed a proclamation creating Capitol Reef National Monument on August 2, 1937. In Proclamation 2246, President Roosevelt set aside 37,711 acres (15,261 ha) of the Capitol Reef area. This comprised an area extending about two miles (3 km) north of present State Route 24 and about 10 mi (16 km) south, just past Capitol Gorge. The Great Depression years were lean ones for the National Park Service (NPS), the new administering agency. Funds for the administration of Capitol Reef were nonexistent; it would be a long time before the first rangers would arrive.

 

Administration of the new monument was placed under the control of Zion National Park. A stone ranger cabin and the Sulphur Creek bridge were built and some road work was performed by the Civilian Conservation Corps and the Works Progress Administration. Historian and printer Charles Kelly came to know NPS officials at Zion well and volunteered to watchdog the park for the NPS. Kelly was officially appointed custodian-without-pay in 1943. He worked as a volunteer until 1950, when the NPS offered him a civil-service appointment as the first superintendent.

 

During the 1950s Kelly was deeply troubled by NPS management acceding to demands of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission that Capitol Reef National Monument be opened to uranium prospecting. He felt that the decision had been a mistake and destructive of the long-term national interest. It turned out that there was not enough ore in the monument to be worth mining.

 

In 1958 Kelly got additional permanent help in protecting the monument and enforcing regulations; Park Ranger Grant Clark transferred from Zion. The year Clark arrived, fifty-six thousand visitors came to the park, and Charlie Kelly retired for the last time.

 

During the 1960s (under the program name Mission 66), NPS areas nationwide received new facilities to meet the demand of mushrooming park visitation. At Capitol Reef, a 53-site campground at Fruita, staff rental housing, and a new visitor center were built, the latter opening in 1966.

 

Visitation climbed dramatically after the paved, all-weather State Route 24 was built in 1962 through the Fremont River canyon near Fruita. State Route 24 replaced the narrow Capitol Gorge wagon road about 10 mi (16 km) to the south that frequently washed out. The old road has since been open only to foot traffic. In 1967, 146,598 persons visited the park. The staff was also growing.

 

During the 1960s, the NPS purchased private land parcels at Fruita and Pleasant Creek. Almost all private property passed into public ownership on a "willing buyer-willing seller" basis.

 

Preservationists convinced President Lyndon B. Johnson to set aside an enormous area of public lands in 1968, just before he left office. In Presidential Proclamation 3888 an additional 215,056 acres (87,030 ha) were placed under NPS control. By 1970, Capitol Reef National Monument comprised 254,251 acres (102,892 ha) and sprawled southeast from Thousand Lake Mountain almost to the Colorado River. The action was controversial locally, and NPS staffing at the monument was inadequate to properly manage the additional land.

 

The vast enlargement of the monument and diversification of the scenic resources soon raised another issue: whether Capitol Reef should be a national park, rather than a monument. Two bills were introduced into the United States Congress.

 

A House bill (H.R. 17152) introduced by Utah Congressman Laurence J. Burton called for a 180,000-acre (72,800 ha) national park and an adjunct 48,000-acre (19,400 ha) national recreation area where multiple use (including grazing) could continue indefinitely. In the United States Senate, meanwhile, Senate bill S. 531 had already passed on July 1, 1970, and provided for a 230,000-acre (93,100 ha) national park alone. The bill called for a 25-year phase-out of grazing.

 

In September 1970, United States Department of Interior officials told a house subcommittee session that they preferred about 254,000 acres (103,000 ha) be set aside as a national park. They also recommended that the grazing phase-out period be 10 years, rather than 25. They did not favor the adjunct recreation area.

 

It was not until late 1971 that Congressional action was completed. By then, the 92nd United States Congress was in session and S. 531 had languished. A new bill, S. 29, was introduced in the Senate by Senator Frank E. Moss of Utah and was essentially the same as the defunct S. 531 except that it called for an additional 10,834 acres (4,384 ha) of public lands for a Capitol Reef National Park. In the House, Utah Representative K. Gunn McKay (with Representative Lloyd) had introduced H.R. 9053 to replace the dead H.R. 17152. This time, the House bill dropped the concept of an adjunct Capitol Reef National Recreation Area and adopted the Senate concept of a 25-year limit on continued grazing. The Department of Interior was still recommending a national park of 254,368 acres (102,939 ha) and a 10-year limit for grazing phase-out.

 

S. 29 passed the Senate in June and was sent to the House, which dropped its own bill and passed the Senate version with an amendment. Because the Senate was not in agreement with the House amendment, differences were worked out in Conference Committee. The Conference Committee issued its report on November 30, 1971, and the bill passed both houses of Congress. The legislation—'An Act to Establish The Capitol Reef National Park in the State of Utah'—became Public Law 92-207 when it was signed by President Richard Nixon on December 18, 1971.

 

The area including the park was once the edge of a shallow sea that invaded the land in the Permian, creating the Cutler Formation. Only the sandstone of the youngest member of the Cutler Formation, the White Rim, is exposed in the park. The deepening sea left carbonate deposits, forming the limestone of the Kaibab Limestone, the same formation that rims the Grand Canyon to the southwest.

 

During the Triassic, streams deposited reddish-brown silt that later became the siltstone of the Moenkopi Formation. Uplift and erosion followed. Conglomerate, followed by logs, sand, mud, and wind-transported volcanic ash, then formed the uranium-containing Chinle Formation.

 

The members of the Glen Canyon Group were all laid down in the middle- to late-Triassic during a time of increasing aridity. They include:

 

Wingate Sandstone: sand dunes on the shore of an ancient sea

Kayenta Formation: thin-bedded layers of sand deposited by slow-moving streams in channels and across low plains

Navajo Sandstone: huge fossilized sand dunes from a massive Sahara-like desert.

 

The Golden Throne. Though Capitol Reef is famous for white domes of Navajo Sandstone, this dome's color is a result of a lingering section of yellow Carmel Formation carbonate, which has stained the underlying rock.

The San Rafael Group consists of four Jurassic-period formations, from oldest to youngest:

 

Carmel Formation: gypsum, sand, and limey silt laid down in what may have been a graben that was periodically flooded by sea water

Entrada Sandstone: sandstone from barrier islands/sand bars in a near-shore environment

Curtis Formation: made from conglomerate, sandstone, and shale

Summerville Formation: reddish-brown mud and white sand deposited in tidal flats.

Streams once again laid down mud and sand in their channels, on lakebeds, and in swampy plains, creating the Morrison Formation. Early in the Cretaceous, similar nonmarine sediments were laid down and became the Dakota Sandstone. Eventually, the Cretaceous Seaway covered the Dakota, depositing the Mancos Shale.

 

Only small remnants of the Mesaverde Group are found, capping a few mesas in the park's eastern section.

 

Near the end of the Cretaceous period, a mountain-building event called the Laramide orogeny started to compact and uplift the region, forming the Rocky Mountains and creating monoclines such as the Waterpocket Fold in the park. Ten to fifteen million years ago, the entire region was uplifted much further by the creation of the Colorado Plateau. This uplift was very even. Igneous activity in the form of volcanism and dike and sill intrusion also occurred during this time.

 

The drainage system in the area was rearranged and steepened, causing streams to downcut faster and sometimes change course. Wetter times during the ice ages of the Pleistocene increased the rate of erosion.

 

There are more than 840 species of plants that are found in the park and over 40 of those species are classified as rare and endemic.

 

The closest town to Capitol Reef is Torrey, about 11 mi (18 km) west of the visitor center on Highway 24, slightly west of its intersection with Highway 12. Its 2020 population is less than 300. Torrey has a few motels and restaurants and functions as a gateway town to Capitol Reef National Park. Highway 12, as well as a partially unpaved scenic backway named the Burr Trail, provide access from the west through the Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monument and the town of Boulder.

 

A variety of activities are available to tourists, both ranger-led and self-guided, including auto touring, hiking, backpacking, camping, bicycling (on paved and unpaved roads only; no trails), horseback riding, canyoneering, and rock climbing. The orchards planted by Mormon pioneers are maintained by the National Park Service. From early March to mid-October, various fruit—cherries, apricots, peaches, pears, or apples—can be harvested by visitors for a fee.

 

A hiking trail guide is available at the visitor center for both day hikes and backcountry hiking. Backcountry access requires a free permit.

 

Numerous trails are available for hiking and backpacking in the park, with fifteen in the Fruita District alone. The following trails are some of the most popular in the park:

 

Cassidy Arch Trail: a very steep, strenuous 3.5 mi (5.6 km) round trip that leads into the Grand Wash to an overlook of the Cassidy Arch.

Hickman Bridge Trail: a 2 mi (3.2 km) round trip leading to the natural bridge.

Frying Pan Trail: an 8.8 mi (14.2 km) round trip that passes the Cassidy Arch, Grand Wash, and Cohab Canyon.

Brimhall Natural Bridge: a popular, though strenuous, 4.5 mi (7.2 km) round trip with views of Brimhall Canyon, the Waterpocket Fold, and Brimhall Natural Bridge.

Halls Creek Narrows: 22 mi (35 km) long and considered strenuous, with many side canyons and creeks; typically hiked as a 2-3 day camping trip.

 

Visitors may explore several of the main areas of the park by private vehicle:

 

Scenic Drive: winds through the middle of the park, passing the major points of interest; the road is accessible from the visitor center to approximately 2 mi (3.2 km) into the Capitol Gorge.

Notom-Bullfrog Road: traverses the eastern side of the Waterpocket Fold, along 10 mi (16 km) of paved road, with the remainder unpaved.

Cathedral Road: an unpaved road through the northern areas of the park, that traverses Cathedral Valley, passing the Temples of the Sun and Moon.

 

The primary camping location is the Fruita campground, with 71 campsites (no water, electrical, or sewer hookups), and restrooms without bathing facilities. The campground also has group sites with picnic areas and restrooms. Two primitive free camping areas are also available.

 

Canyoneering is growing in popularity in the park. It is a recreational sport that takes one through slot canyons. It involves rappelling and may require swimming and other technical rope work. Day-pass permits are required for canyoneering in the park, and can be obtained for free from the visitor's center or through email. It's key to know that each route requires its own permit. If one is planning on canyoneering for multiple days, passes are required for each day. Overnight camping as part of the canyoneering trip is permitted, but one must request a free backcountry pass from the visitor center.

 

It is imperative to plan canyoneering trips around the weather. The Colorado Plateau is susceptible to flash flooding during prime rainy months. Because canyoneering takes place through slot canyons, getting caught in a flash flood could be lethal. Take care to consult reliable weather sources. The Weather Atlas shows charts with the monthly average rainfall in inches.

 

Another risk to be aware of during the summer months is extreme heat. Visitors can find weather warnings on the National Weather Service website. The heat levels are detailed by a color and numerical scale (0-4).

 

One of the most popular canyoneering routes in Capitol Reef National Park is Cassidy Arch Canyon. A paper by George Huddart, details the park's commitment to working with citizens to maintain the route as well as the vegetation and rocks. The canyon route is approximately 2.3 miles long (0.4 miles of technical work), consisting of 8 different rappels, and takes between 2.5 and 4.5 hours to complete. The first rappel is 140 ft and descends below the famous Cassidy Arch.

 

Utah is a landlocked state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It borders Colorado to its east, Wyoming to its northeast, Idaho to its north, Arizona to its south, and Nevada to its west. Utah also touches a corner of New Mexico in the southeast. Of the fifty U.S. states, Utah is the 13th-largest by area; with a population over three million, it is the 30th-most-populous and 11th-least-densely populated. Urban development is mostly concentrated in two areas: the Wasatch Front in the north-central part of the state, which is home to roughly two-thirds of the population and includes the capital city, Salt Lake City; and Washington County in the southwest, with more than 180,000 residents. Most of the western half of Utah lies in the Great Basin.

 

Utah has been inhabited for thousands of years by various indigenous groups such as the ancient Puebloans, Navajo, and Ute. The Spanish were the first Europeans to arrive in the mid-16th century, though the region's difficult geography and harsh climate made it a peripheral part of New Spain and later Mexico. Even while it was Mexican territory, many of Utah's earliest settlers were American, particularly Mormons fleeing marginalization and persecution from the United States via the Mormon Trail. Following the Mexican–American War in 1848, the region was annexed by the U.S., becoming part of the Utah Territory, which included what is now Colorado and Nevada. Disputes between the dominant Mormon community and the federal government delayed Utah's admission as a state; only after the outlawing of polygamy was it admitted in 1896 as the 45th.

 

People from Utah are known as Utahns. Slightly over half of all Utahns are Mormons, the vast majority of whom are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), which has its world headquarters in Salt Lake City; Utah is the only state where a majority of the population belongs to a single church. A 2023 paper challenged this perception (claiming only 42% of Utahns are Mormons) however most statistics still show a majority of Utah residents belong to the LDS church; estimates from the LDS church suggests 60.68% of Utah's population belongs to the church whilst some sources put the number as high as 68%. The paper replied that membership count done by the LDS Church is too high for several reasons. The LDS Church greatly influences Utahn culture, politics, and daily life, though since the 1990s the state has become more religiously diverse as well as secular.

 

Utah has a highly diversified economy, with major sectors including transportation, education, information technology and research, government services, mining, multi-level marketing, and tourism. Utah has been one of the fastest growing states since 2000, with the 2020 U.S. census confirming the fastest population growth in the nation since 2010. St. George was the fastest-growing metropolitan area in the United States from 2000 to 2005. Utah ranks among the overall best states in metrics such as healthcare, governance, education, and infrastructure. It has the 12th-highest median average income and the least income inequality of any U.S. state. Over time and influenced by climate change, droughts in Utah have been increasing in frequency and severity, putting a further strain on Utah's water security and impacting the state's economy.

 

The History of Utah is an examination of the human history and social activity within the state of Utah located in the western United States.

 

Archaeological evidence dates the earliest habitation of humans in Utah to about 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. Paleolithic people lived near the Great Basin's swamps and marshes, which had an abundance of fish, birds, and small game animals. Big game, including bison, mammoths and ground sloths, also were attracted to these water sources. Over the centuries, the mega-fauna died, this population was replaced by the Desert Archaic people, who sheltered in caves near the Great Salt Lake. Relying more on gathering than the previous Utah residents, their diet was mainly composed of cattails and other salt tolerant plants such as pickleweed, burro weed and sedge. Red meat appears to have been more of a luxury, although these people used nets and the atlatl to hunt water fowl, ducks, small animals and antelope. Artifacts include nets woven with plant fibers and rabbit skin, woven sandals, gaming sticks, and animal figures made from split-twigs. About 3,500 years ago, lake levels rose and the population of Desert Archaic people appears to have dramatically decreased. The Great Basin may have been almost unoccupied for 1,000 years.

 

The Fremont culture, named from sites near the Fremont River in Utah, lived in what is now north and western Utah and parts of Nevada, Idaho and Colorado from approximately 600 to 1300 AD. These people lived in areas close to water sources that had been previously occupied by the Desert Archaic people, and may have had some relationship with them. However, their use of new technologies define them as a distinct people. Fremont technologies include:

 

use of the bow and arrow while hunting,

building pithouse shelters,

growing maize and probably beans and squash,

building above ground granaries of adobe or stone,

creating and decorating low-fired pottery ware,

producing art, including jewelry and rock art such as petroglyphs and pictographs.

 

The ancient Puebloan culture, also known as the Anasazi, occupied territory adjacent to the Fremont. The ancestral Puebloan culture centered on the present-day Four Corners area of the Southwest United States, including the San Juan River region of Utah. Archaeologists debate when this distinct culture emerged, but cultural development seems to date from about the common era, about 500 years before the Fremont appeared. It is generally accepted that the cultural peak of these people was around the 1200 CE. Ancient Puebloan culture is known for well constructed pithouses and more elaborate adobe and masonry dwellings. They were excellent craftsmen, producing turquoise jewelry and fine pottery. The Puebloan culture was based on agriculture, and the people created and cultivated fields of maize, beans, and squash and domesticated turkeys. They designed and produced elaborate field terracing and irrigation systems. They also built structures, some known as kivas, apparently designed solely for cultural and religious rituals.

 

These two later cultures were roughly contemporaneous, and appear to have established trading relationships. They also shared enough cultural traits that archaeologists believe the cultures may have common roots in the early American Southwest. However, each remained culturally distinct throughout most of their existence. These two well established cultures appear to have been severely impacted by climatic change and perhaps by the incursion of new people in about 1200 CE. Over the next two centuries, the Fremont and ancient Pueblo people may have moved into the American southwest, finding new homes and farmlands in the river drainages of Arizona, New Mexico and northern Mexico.

 

In about 1200, Shoshonean speaking peoples entered Utah territory from the west. They may have originated in southern California and moved into the desert environment due to population pressure along the coast. They were an upland people with a hunting and gathering lifestyle utilizing roots and seeds, including the pinyon nut. They were also skillful fishermen, created pottery and raised some crops. When they first arrived in Utah, they lived as small family groups with little tribal organization. Four main Shoshonean peoples inhabited Utah country. The Shoshone in the north and northeast, the Gosiutes in the northwest, the Utes in the central and eastern parts of the region and the Southern Paiutes in the southwest. Initially, there seems to have been very little conflict between these groups.

 

In the early 16th century, the San Juan River basin in Utah's southeast also saw a new people, the Díne or Navajo, part of a greater group of plains Athabaskan speakers moved into the Southwest from the Great Plains. In addition to the Navajo, this language group contained people that were later known as Apaches, including the Lipan, Jicarilla, and Mescalero Apaches.

 

Athabaskans were a hunting people who initially followed the bison, and were identified in 16th-century Spanish accounts as "dog nomads". The Athabaskans expanded their range throughout the 17th century, occupying areas the Pueblo peoples had abandoned during prior centuries. The Spanish first specifically mention the "Apachu de Nabajo" (Navaho) in the 1620s, referring to the people in the Chama valley region east of the San Juan River, and north west of Santa Fe. By the 1640s, the term Navaho was applied to these same people. Although the Navajo newcomers established a generally peaceful trading and cultural exchange with the some modern Pueblo peoples to the south, they experienced intermittent warfare with the Shoshonean peoples, particularly the Utes in eastern Utah and western Colorado.

 

At the time of European expansion, beginning with Spanish explorers traveling from Mexico, five distinct native peoples occupied territory within the Utah area: the Northern Shoshone, the Goshute, the Ute, the Paiute and the Navajo.

 

The Spanish explorer Francisco Vázquez de Coronado may have crossed into what is now southern Utah in 1540, when he was seeking the legendary Cíbola.

 

A group led by two Spanish Catholic priests—sometimes called the Domínguez–Escalante expedition—left Santa Fe in 1776, hoping to find a route to the California coast. The expedition traveled as far north as Utah Lake and encountered the native residents. All of what is now Utah was claimed by the Spanish Empire from the 1500s to 1821 as part of New Spain (later as the province Alta California); and subsequently claimed by Mexico from 1821 to 1848. However, Spain and Mexico had little permanent presence in, or control of, the region.

 

Fur trappers (also known as mountain men) including Jim Bridger, explored some regions of Utah in the early 19th century. The city of Provo was named for one such man, Étienne Provost, who visited the area in 1825. The city of Ogden, Utah is named for a brigade leader of the Hudson's Bay Company, Peter Skene Ogden who trapped in the Weber Valley. In 1846, a year before the arrival of members from the Church of Jesus Christ of latter-day Saints, the ill-fated Donner Party crossed through the Salt Lake valley late in the season, deciding not to stay the winter there but to continue forward to California, and beyond.

 

Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commonly known as Mormon pioneers, first came to the Salt Lake Valley on July 24, 1847. At the time, the U.S. had already captured the Mexican territories of Alta California and New Mexico in the Mexican–American War and planned to keep them, but those territories, including the future state of Utah, officially became United States territory upon the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, February 2, 1848. The treaty was ratified by the United States Senate on March 10, 1848.

 

Upon arrival in the Salt Lake Valley, the Mormon pioneers found no permanent settlement of Indians. Other areas along the Wasatch Range were occupied at the time of settlement by the Northwestern Shoshone and adjacent areas by other bands of Shoshone such as the Gosiute. The Northwestern Shoshone lived in the valleys on the eastern shore of Great Salt Lake and in adjacent mountain valleys. Some years after arriving in the Salt Lake Valley Mormons, who went on to colonize many other areas of what is now Utah, were petitioned by Indians for recompense for land taken. The response of Heber C. Kimball, first counselor to Brigham Young, was that the land belonged to "our Father in Heaven and we expect to plow and plant it." A 1945 Supreme Court decision found that the land had been treated by the United States as public domain; no aboriginal title by the Northwestern Shoshone had been recognized by the United States or extinguished by treaty with the United States.

 

Upon arriving in the Salt Lake Valley, the Mormons had to make a place to live. They created irrigation systems, laid out farms, built houses, churches, and schools. Access to water was crucially important. Almost immediately, Brigham Young set out to identify and claim additional community sites. While it was difficult to find large areas in the Great Basin where water sources were dependable and growing seasons long enough to raise vitally important subsistence crops, satellite communities began to be formed.

 

Shortly after the first company arrived in the Salt Lake Valley in 1847, the community of Bountiful was settled to the north. In 1848, settlers moved into lands purchased from trapper Miles Goodyear in present-day Ogden. In 1849, Tooele and Provo were founded. Also that year, at the invitation of Ute chief Wakara, settlers moved into the Sanpete Valley in central Utah to establish the community of Manti. Fillmore, Utah, intended to be the capital of the new territory, was established in 1851. In 1855, missionary efforts aimed at western native cultures led to outposts in Fort Lemhi, Idaho, Las Vegas, Nevada and Elk Mountain in east-central Utah.

 

The experiences of returning members of the Mormon Battalion were also important in establishing new communities. On their journey west, the Mormon soldiers had identified dependable rivers and fertile river valleys in Colorado, Arizona and southern California. In addition, as the men traveled to rejoin their families in the Salt Lake Valley, they moved through southern Nevada and the eastern segments of southern Utah. Jefferson Hunt, a senior Mormon officer of the Battalion, actively searched for settlement sites, minerals, and other resources. His report encouraged 1851 settlement efforts in Iron County, near present-day Cedar City. These southern explorations eventually led to Mormon settlements in St. George, Utah, Las Vegas and San Bernardino, California, as well as communities in southern Arizona.

 

Prior to establishment of the Oregon and California trails and Mormon settlement, Indians native to the Salt Lake Valley and adjacent areas lived by hunting buffalo and other game, but also gathered grass seed from the bountiful grass of the area as well as roots such as those of the Indian Camas. By the time of settlement, indeed before 1840, the buffalo were gone from the valley, but hunting by settlers and grazing of cattle severely impacted the Indians in the area, and as settlement expanded into nearby river valleys and oases, indigenous tribes experienced increasing difficulty in gathering sufficient food. Brigham Young's counsel was to feed the hungry tribes, and that was done, but it was often not enough. These tensions formed the background to the Bear River massacre committed by California Militia stationed in Salt Lake City during the Civil War. The site of the massacre is just inside Preston, Idaho, but was generally thought to be within Utah at the time.

 

Statehood was petitioned for in 1849-50 using the name Deseret. The proposed State of Deseret would have been quite large, encompassing all of what is now Utah, and portions of Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, Wyoming, Arizona, Oregon, New Mexico and California. The name of Deseret was favored by the LDS leader Brigham Young as a symbol of industry and was derived from a reference in the Book of Mormon. The petition was rejected by Congress and Utah did not become a state until 1896, following the Utah Constitutional Convention of 1895.

 

In 1850, the Utah Territory was created with the Compromise of 1850, and Fillmore (named after President Fillmore) was designated the capital. In 1856, Salt Lake City replaced Fillmore as the territorial capital.

 

The first group of pioneers brought African slaves with them, making Utah the only place in the western United States to have African slavery. Three slaves, Green Flake, Hark Lay, and Oscar Crosby, came west with this first group in 1847. The settlers also began to purchase Indian slaves in the well-established Indian slave trade, as well as enslaving Indian prisoners of war. In 1850, 26 slaves were counted in Salt Lake County. Slavery didn't become officially recognized until 1852, when the Act in Relation to Service and the Act for the relief of Indian Slaves and Prisoners were passed. Slavery was repealed on June 19, 1862, when Congress prohibited slavery in all US territories.

 

Disputes between the Mormon inhabitants and the federal government intensified after the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' practice of polygamy became known. The polygamous practices of the Mormons, which were made public in 1854, would be one of the major reasons Utah was denied statehood until almost 50 years after the Mormons had entered the area.

 

After news of their polygamous practices spread, the members of the LDS Church were quickly viewed by some as un-American and rebellious. In 1857, after news of a possible rebellion spread, President James Buchanan sent troops on the Utah expedition to quell the growing unrest and to replace Brigham Young as territorial governor with Alfred Cumming. The expedition was also known as the Utah War.

 

As fear of invasion grew, Mormon settlers had convinced some Paiute Indians to aid in a Mormon-led attack on 120 immigrants from Arkansas under the guise of Indian aggression. The murder of these settlers became known as the Mountain Meadows massacre. The Mormon leadership had adopted a defensive posture that led to a ban on the selling of grain to outsiders in preparation for an impending war. This chafed pioneers traveling through the region, who were unable to purchase badly needed supplies. A disagreement between some of the Arkansas pioneers and the Mormons in Cedar City led to the secret planning of the massacre by a few Mormon leaders in the area. Some scholars debate the involvement of Brigham Young. Only one man, John D. Lee, was ever convicted of the murders, and he was executed at the massacre site.

 

Express riders had brought the news 1,000 miles from the Missouri River settlements to Salt Lake City within about two weeks of the army's beginning to march west. Fearing the worst as 2,500 troops (roughly 1/3rd of the army then) led by General Albert Sidney Johnston started west, Brigham Young ordered all residents of Salt Lake City and neighboring communities to prepare their homes for burning and evacuate southward to Utah Valley and southern Utah. Young also sent out a few units of the Nauvoo Legion (numbering roughly 8,000–10,000), to delay the army's advance. The majority he sent into the mountains to prepare defenses or south to prepare for a scorched earth retreat. Although some army wagon supply trains were captured and burned and herds of army horses and cattle run off no serious fighting occurred. Starting late and short on supplies, the United States Army camped during the bitter winter of 1857–58 near a burned out Fort Bridger in Wyoming. Through the negotiations between emissary Thomas L. Kane, Young, Cumming and Johnston, control of Utah territory was peacefully transferred to Cumming, who entered an eerily vacant Salt Lake City in the spring of 1858. By agreement with Young, Johnston established the army at Fort Floyd 40 miles away from Salt Lake City, to the southwest.

 

Salt Lake City was the last link of the First Transcontinental Telegraph, between Carson City, Nevada and Omaha, Nebraska completed in October 1861. Brigham Young, who had helped expedite construction, was among the first to send a message, along with Abraham Lincoln and other officials. Soon after the telegraph line was completed, the Deseret Telegraph Company built the Deseret line connecting the settlements in the territory with Salt Lake City and, by extension, the rest of the United States.

 

Because of the American Civil War, federal troops were pulled out of Utah Territory (and their fort auctioned off), leaving the territorial government in federal hands without army backing until General Patrick E. Connor arrived with the 3rd Regiment of California Volunteers in 1862. While in Utah, Connor and his troops soon became discontent with this assignment wanting to head to Virginia where the "real" fighting and glory was occurring. Connor established Fort Douglas just three miles (5 km) east of Salt Lake City and encouraged his bored and often idle soldiers to go out and explore for mineral deposits to bring more non-Mormons into the state. Minerals were discovered in Tooele County, and some miners began to come to the territory. Conner also solved the Shoshone Indian problem in Cache Valley Utah by luring the Shoshone into a midwinter confrontation on January 29, 1863. The armed conflict quickly turned into a rout, discipline among the soldiers broke down, and the Battle of Bear River is today usually referred to by historians as the Bear River Massacre. Between 200 and 400 Shoshone men, women and children were killed, as were 27 soldiers, with over 50 more soldiers wounded or suffering from frostbite.

 

Beginning in 1865, Utah's Black Hawk War developed into the deadliest conflict in the territory's history. Chief Antonga Black Hawk died in 1870, but fights continued to break out until additional federal troops were sent in to suppress the Ghost Dance of 1872. The war is unique among Indian Wars because it was a three-way conflict, with mounted Timpanogos Utes led by Antonga Black Hawk fighting federal and Utah local militia.

 

On May 10, 1869, the First transcontinental railroad was completed at Promontory Summit, north of the Great Salt Lake. The railroad brought increasing numbers of people into the state, and several influential businessmen made fortunes in the territory.

 

Main article: Latter Day Saint polygamy in the late-19th century

During the 1870s and 1880s, federal laws were passed and federal marshals assigned to enforce the laws against polygamy. In the 1890 Manifesto, the LDS Church leadership dropped its approval of polygamy citing divine revelation. When Utah applied for statehood again in 1895, it was accepted. Statehood was officially granted on January 4, 1896.

 

The Mormon issue made the situation for women the topic of nationwide controversy. In 1870 the Utah Territory, controlled by Mormons, gave women the right to vote. However, in 1887, Congress disenfranchised Utah women with the Edmunds–Tucker Act. In 1867–96, eastern activists promoted women's suffrage in Utah as an experiment, and as a way to eliminate polygamy. They were Presbyterians and other Protestants convinced that Mormonism was a non-Christian cult that grossly mistreated women. The Mormons promoted woman suffrage to counter the negative image of downtrodden Mormon women. With the 1890 Manifesto clearing the way for statehood, in 1895 Utah adopted a constitution restoring the right of women's suffrage. Congress admitted Utah as a state with that constitution in 1896.

 

Though less numerous than other intermountain states at the time, several lynching murders for alleged misdeeds occurred in Utah territory at the hand of vigilantes. Those documented include the following, with their ethnicity or national origin noted in parentheses if it was provided in the source:

 

William Torrington in Carson City (then a part of Utah territory), 1859

Thomas Coleman (Black man) in Salt Lake City, 1866

3 unidentified men at Wahsatch, winter of 1868

A Black man in Uintah, 1869

Charles A. Benson in Logan, 1873

Ah Sing (Chinese man) in Corinne, 1874

Thomas Forrest in St. George, 1880

William Harvey (Black man) in Salt Lake City, 1883

John Murphy in Park City, 1883

George Segal (Japanese man) in Ogden, 1884

Joseph Fisher in Eureka, 1886

Robert Marshall (Black man) in Castle Gate, 1925

Other lynchings in Utah territory include multiple instances of mass murder of Native American children, women, and men by White settlers including the Battle Creek massacre (1849), Provo River Massacre (1850), Nephi massacre (1853), and Circleville Massacre (1866).

 

Beginning in the early 20th century, with the establishment of such national parks as Bryce Canyon National Park and Zion National Park, Utah began to become known for its natural beauty. Southern Utah became a popular filming spot for arid, rugged scenes, and such natural landmarks as Delicate Arch and "the Mittens" of Monument Valley are instantly recognizable to most national residents. During the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, with the construction of the Interstate highway system, accessibility to the southern scenic areas was made easier.

 

Beginning in 1939, with the establishment of Alta Ski Area, Utah has become world-renowned for its skiing. The dry, powdery snow of the Wasatch Range is considered some of the best skiing in the world. Salt Lake City won the bid for the 2002 Winter Olympics in 1995, and this has served as a great boost to the economy. The ski resorts have increased in popularity, and many of the Olympic venues scattered across the Wasatch Front continue to be used for sporting events. This also spurred the development of the light-rail system in the Salt Lake Valley, known as TRAX, and the re-construction of the freeway system around the city.

 

During the late 20th century, the state grew quickly. In the 1970s, growth was phenomenal in the suburbs. Sandy was one of the fastest-growing cities in the country at that time, and West Valley City is the state's 2nd most populous city. Today, many areas of Utah are seeing phenomenal growth. Northern Davis, southern and western Salt Lake, Summit, eastern Tooele, Utah, Wasatch, and Washington counties are all growing very quickly. Transportation and urbanization are major issues in politics as development consumes agricultural land and wilderness areas.

 

In 2012, the State of Utah passed the Utah Transfer of Public Lands Act in an attempt to gain control over a substantial portion of federal land in the state from the federal government, based on language in the Utah Enabling Act of 1894. The State does not intend to use force or assert control by limiting access in an attempt to control the disputed lands, but does intend to use a multi-step process of education, negotiation, legislation, and if necessary, litigation as part of its multi-year effort to gain state or private control over the lands after 2014.

 

Utah families, like most Americans everywhere, did their utmost to assist in the war effort. Tires, meat, butter, sugar, fats, oils, coffee, shoes, boots, gasoline, canned fruits, vegetables, and soups were rationed on a national basis. The school day was shortened and bus routes were reduced to limit the number of resources used stateside and increase what could be sent to soldiers.

 

Geneva Steel was built to increase the steel production for America during World War II. President Franklin D. Roosevelt had proposed opening a steel mill in Utah in 1936, but the idea was shelved after a couple of months. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States entered the war and the steel plant was put into progress. In April 1944, Geneva shipped its first order, which consisted of over 600 tons of steel plate. Geneva Steel also brought thousands of job opportunities to Utah. The positions were hard to fill as many of Utah's men were overseas fighting. Women began working, filling 25 percent of the jobs.

 

As a result of Utah's and Geneva Steels contribution during the war, several Liberty Ships were named in honor of Utah including the USS Joseph Smith, USS Brigham Young, USS Provo, and the USS Peter Skene Ogden.

 

One of the sectors of the beachhead of Normandy Landings was codenamed Utah Beach, and the amphibious landings at the beach were undertaken by United States Army troops.

 

It is estimated that 1,450 soldiers from Utah were killed in the war.

1/400

ƒ/5.6

ISO 100

300 mm

I took this photo while snapping some pictures in my backyard. I really loved this one because how the leaf appeared to be floating/sailing in air/water. I was very happy that the tiles in the background became almost nonexistent. With such emphasis on the leaf it is hard to tell whether it is in the water or in the air. A problem I had with it, however, was that the leaf was somewhat difficult to get to look green. Luckily I managed to boost the green tones leaving it slightly more vibrant. I really enjoy the simplicity of this photo and the effect created by the pool.

The second stop on the way home from my college visit was in Richmond!

 

The Richmond Kmart appears to be a former Grants (and thus reminded me of the Erie Kmart that I visited last summer). It is very noticeably bigger than Anderson; it is also very nice; it has a Kmart Express gas station and it has a former Kmart Cafe (that still has the counter/displays, the full menu board and even the register! Looks like a more recent KCafe closure from what I've seen; if anybody else here has any more information I would like to know more about it!). This store appears to be doing fairly well for one of the last remaining stores in/near the Miami Valley.

 

Of course, I had to check out the Kmart Express after my main store rounds were complete, so I headed over there and looked around. This is the second Kmart Express I've seen, but the first one I have actually visited, as the other one (at the now nonexistent Brooklyn Super Kmart) had already closed. I didn't buy anything at this KExpress though, as I had spent my money in the main store. Hopefully next time I can buy some coffee or donuts from Kmart Express while going to/from Anderson (if I plan another college visit to Anderson U, which is likely)!

 

Hopefully the Richmond Kmart will still be able to remain "normal" for a good time longer...I like this store! :D

 

Kmart #7246 - 3150 National Road West - Richmond, Indiana

A cast of the memorial by Hubertus von Pilgrim to remember the evacuation marches the Dachau concentration camp prisoners were forced to embark on. The sculpture is complemented by a map showing the routes of the death marches and the locations of memorials along the way.

 

Most of the men spent the last months of the war in forced labor camps on the outskirts of Dachau. They lived in primitive semicircular arching shelters resembling Quonset huts. Food and other necessities of life were almost nonexistent. They suffered terribly throughout their imprisonment, but some of their strongest memories center on the final hours before liberation.

During the last days of the war these men were among the 8,000 prisoners forced from Dachau and its outer camps and marched toward the Bavarian Alps. Some believed they were to be part of a prisoner exchange arranged by the Red Cross. Other prisoners thought the plan was to kill them out of sight of the rapidly advancing U.S. military. It is possible the Nazis planned to use the prisoners to build fortifications in the mountains of Tyrol for a last-ditch defence. Whatever the reasons, German guards forced a brutal pace, and thousands of marchers died in just a few short days. Fortunately, the march never reached its final destination.

In the last days of April 1945, the American army swept through southern Germany. General Patton's troops were credited with liberating the main camp of Dachau, but there were other forces in the area. Elements of the Japanese American 522nd Field Artillery Battalion were heading toward Hitler's headquarters in Berchtesgarden. In the early morning, forward observers came upon strangely shaped mounds in the snow near the resort town of Bad Toelz. When the soldiers looked closer, they discovered thinly dressed creatures under the thin layer of snow. Some had been shot, some had frozen to death. Those who were alive looked like starved and beaten skeletons. The men of the Association of Survivors remember this scene vividly even after 50 years. They were among those found in the snow.

The Death March passed directly through many towns near Dachau, including Allach, Pasing, Graefelfing, Planegg, Krailling, Gauting, Berg, Icking, Wolfratshausen, Geretsried, Bad Toelz, Waakirchen, Fuerstenfeldbruck, and Gruenwald. Many marchers literally died at the front doors of townspeople. There might have been a temptation to forget this awful part of local history, but after numerous discussions and a good deal of soul searching, citizens chose another course.

The towns, lead by the mayor and citizens of Gauting, decided to mark the march route so that people passing by will know what once happened there. A competition was held, and Professor Hubertus von Pilgrim was selected to create the monuments to the victims of Nazism. The bronze statues were in place by the spring of 1995, in time for the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Dachau. Although the final chapter on Germany's Nazi past hasn't been written, it appears we are moving nearer to closure. and Solly Ganor joined in their pledge to the future: Never Again. Genocide is still very much with us today, for example the recent slaughters in Africa and the Balkans. But hopefully in Germany, lessons have been learned.

I took the rare opportunity to go ice skating in the Yosemite high country right before Christmas last year. Essentially nonexistent snowfall and cold temperatures allowed the lakes to freeze solid while also keeping the Tioga Road open.

The second stop on the way home from my college visit was in Richmond!

 

The Richmond Kmart appears to be a former Grants (and thus reminded me of the Erie Kmart that I visited last summer). It is very noticeably bigger than Anderson; it is also very nice; it has a Kmart Express gas station and it has a former Kmart Cafe (that still has the counter/displays, the full menu board and even the register! Looks like a more recent KCafe closure from what I've seen; if anybody else here has any more information I would like to know more about it!). This store appears to be doing fairly well for one of the last remaining stores in/near the Miami Valley.

 

Of course, I had to check out the Kmart Express after my main store rounds were complete, so I headed over there and looked around. This is the second Kmart Express I've seen, but the first one I have actually visited, as the other one (at the now nonexistent Brooklyn Super Kmart) had already closed. I didn't buy anything at this KExpress though, as I had spent my money in the main store. Hopefully next time I can buy some coffee or donuts from Kmart Express while going to/from Anderson (if I plan another college visit to Anderson U, which is likely)!

 

Hopefully the Richmond Kmart will still be able to remain "normal" for a good time longer...I like this store! :D

 

Kmart #7246 - 3150 National Road West - Richmond, Indiana

024

Fortune Global Forum 2018

October 16th, 2018

Toronto, Canada

 

3:30 PM

THE NEW GLOBAL CONSUMER: DOING BUSINESS IN A DIGITAL ECONOMY

The digital economy is no longer part of the economy. It is the economy. How can traditional brick-and-mortar firms reinvent themselves, their supply chains, and their marketplaces to avoid the fate of brands once thought of as everlasting but which are now nonexistent? And how are new platforms – from e-commerce to shared services – rewriting the rules of the game? A conversation on how businesses can manage expectations for digitally empowered customers, and how technology is being used to enhance the customer experience.

Alain Bejjani, Chief Executive Officer, Majid al Futtaim

Andrea Stairs, General Manager, Canada and Latin America, eBay

Ning Tang, Founder and CEO, CreditEase

Moderator: Phil Wahba, Senior Writer, Fortune

 

Photograph by Stuart Isett/Fortune

LT. Michael P. Murphy Memorial Park Lake Ronkonkoma Long Island New York 11779 USA August 2020

 

Lake Ronkonkoma, Long Island's largest freshwater lake, is in Suffolk County, New York, United States, and has a circumference of about 2 miles (3.2 km), and is 0.65 miles (1.05 km) across on average. A kettle lake formed by retreating glaciers, it is owned by the Town of Islip under the terms of the Nichols Patent. The land around it is controlled by three town governments - Smithtown, Islip and Brookhaven. The name Ronkonkoma comes from an Algonquian expression meaning "boundary fishing-lake", also earlier written as Raconkumake and Raconkamuck

  

Lake Ronkonkoma served as a boundary between lands occupied by four Native American communities: Nissequogues Setaukets Secatogues and Unkechaugs

 

The lake was created by a retreating glacier.

 

The primary gamefish is bass

 

The most prevalent legend is about Princess Ronkonkoma, an Indian princess who died at the lake in the mid-1600s. One version of the story is that she was walking across the ice one winter when she met and fell in love with an English woodcutter named Hugh Birdsall, who lived across the lake. However, her father—chief of the Setauket tribe—forbade their relationship. So every day for 7 years, she would write letters on pieces of bark, row to the middle of the lake, and float the letters across the lake to Hugh. Then, after all those years of being kept apart from her love, she rowed to the middle of the lake and stabbed herself to death.

 

There are variations on this particular story, such as that the princess drowned herself after learning about her lover's death, and that her body washed up in Connecticut (which ties into the idea that the lake is bottomless, and that there are underground channels to other lakes). While there's no proof the princess ever existed, Hugh Birdsall was a real person who eventually moved back to England and got married there.

 

In any case, the story goes that she claims a boy's life every year either to avenge her lover's death, or to try to find herself a soulmate in death. And the statistics back up this "curse": of all the recorded drownings on this lake, the vast majority have been young males.

 

Subscribe

Dr. David S. Igneri was the head lifeguard at Lake Ronkonkoma for 32 summers, and says there were at least 30 deaths during that time, all males. On the program Weird U.S., which aired on the History Channel in 2005, Igneri explains that one of the biggest challenges was that visibility in the lake is nonexistent after about the first 10 feet; if anyone submerges lower than that, no one will be able to rescue the person because the lake becomes enveloped in total blackness.

 

In 1965, Igneri had a recurring nightmare about trying to complete a rescue. He dove deep into the lake and panicked because he lost his orientation. When he got to the surface, he heard fireworks. Although Igneri was not previously interested in the paranormal, he believed this dream was a warning that someone was going to drown on the Fourth of July. He warned his staff of 11 lifeguards—and sure enough, late that afternoon, an epileptic 15-year-old boy had a seizure and went down in the water. The lifeguards dove for 45 minutes and did everything they could, but could not find the boy. As Igneri swam back to the surface after his last dive, fireworks went off.

  

Author Michael R. Ebert, who must be the foremost authority on the legends of Lake Ronkonkoma. He published the spiral-bound book "The Curse of Lake Ronkonkoma" in 2002, and it is available at the Sachem, Connetquot and Smithtown libraries.

 

The first time he remembers hearing about the lake's "curse" was when he attended Ronkonkoma Junior High School in the early 1990s and one of his classmates drowned in the lake.

 

"If I remember correctly, he and some friends were supposedly drinking beer on a rowboat and were horsing around when he fell in and was unable to swim to shore due to his bulky winter clothes."

 

After Ebert's college graduation, he searched for more information about the lake's legends in local history books, but found little—which convinced him to write his own book. He spent about six months visiting libraries and the Lake Ronkonkoma Historical Society to research articles, maps and geographical studies dating back to the early 1900s.

 

In addition to the stories about Princess Ronkonkoma and the bottomless lake, Ebert also found several other mysteries, such as the way the lake rises and falls with no relation to local rainfall. "The Indians believed it to be the work of Manitos, the great spirit of the lake," he says. "One study showed that over 7 years in the early 1900s, the rainfall on Long Island was below the usual average by about 52 inches, yet the lake rose 7 feet."

 

Then there were the rumors of "healing properties" of the lake, supposedly started by a Brooklyn businessman who wanted to capitalize on the lake's appeal as a local tourist attraction in the 1900s. "The guy even reportedly sold 'lake juice' in small vials, and I found an old ad promoting the lake as a health resort that cured diseases," says Ebert.

 

So whether you believe the lake will heal what ails you, or that a vengeful princess spirit is out there waiting to drown you, there's no denying that Lake Ronkonkoma is one of Long Island's most whispered-about points of interest.

 

Hashtags

#LakeRonkonkoma

#LakeRonkonkoma

#Lake

#Ronkonkoma

#TheCurseOfLakeRonkonkoma

#CurseOfLakeRonkonkoma

#MichaelEbert

#DavidIgneri

#PrincessRonkonkoma

#LadyOfTheLake

#TheLadyOfTheLake

#IndianPrincess

#PrincessTuskawanta

#Princess

#Tuskawanta

#SetauketIndian

#Sachem

#ChiefOfTheSetauketTribe

#ChiefSetauket

#SetalcottTribe

#Setalcott

#AlgonquinNation

#Algonquin

#EnglishSettlers

#HughBirdsall

#Whirlpool

Curse

Cursed

CursedLake

NewYorkFolkloreSociety

NewYorkFolklore

Folklore

FolkloreSociety

Superstition

Paranormal

ParanormalActivity

FourthOfJuly

#TheWitchesOfLakeRonkonkoma

#WitchesOfLakeRonkonkoma

#APicnicWithoutSnacks

#PicnicWithoutSnacks

#LongIslandNY

 

Many conventional diabetes diets rely on meat or grains as the major source of calories. This strategy has serious drawbacks. This type of diet is rich in macro nutrients, but lacking in micro nutrients, especially those derived from green vegetables. Micro nutrients are necessary for the body’s cells to function properly. Even modest micro nutrient insufficiency can lead to DNA damage, mitochondrial decay and telomere deterioration, promoting premature cellular aging.

A high-nutrient, low glycemic diet is the most effective method of preventing and reversing type 2 diabetes. In a recent study of type 2 diabetics following this type of diet, 90 percent of the participants were able to come off all diabetic medications and their mean HbA1c after one year was 5.8 percent, which is within the non-diabetic (normal) range. A diet rich in vegetables, nuts, seeds, beans, and fresh fruits can prevent and reverse disease, while fostering long-term health. These five types of foods are optimal for diabetics, and can even help prevent the disease from occurring in the first place.

Green Vegetables

These nutrient-dense vegetables are the most important foods to focus on for diabetes prevention and reversal. Higher green vegetable consumption is associated with a lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes, and among those who have the disease, a higher intake is associated with lower HbA1c levels, which measures average blood glucose over a three-month period. A recent meta-analysis found that greater leafy green vegetable consumption was associated with a 14 percent decrease in the risk of type 2 diabetes. One study reported that each serving of leafy greens produces a 9 percent decrease in risk. This category of vegetable includes lettuces, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, kale, spinach, broccoli and cauliflower. I always advise eating at least one large salad each day to be sure of getting a good supply of these important vegetables.

Non-starchy Vegetables

Non-green, non-starchy veggies like mushrooms, onions, garlic, eggplant, and peppers are essential. These foods have almost nonexistent effects on blood sugar and are packed with fiber and phytochemicals.

Beans

Eating beans daily will help to stabilize your blood sugar, reduce your appetite, and protect against colon cancer. An ideal carbohydrate source, beans are low in glycemic load due to their abundant soluble fiber and resistant starch, making them an ideal weight-loss food because they are digested slowly. The fiber in beans promotes satiety and helps prevent food cravings and the resistant starch is fermented by bacteria in the colon, forming products that protect against colon cancer.

Nuts and Seeds

The Nurses’ Health Study found a 27 percent reduced risk of diabetes in nurses who ate five or more servings of nuts per week. Among nurses who had diabetes, this same quantity reduced the risk of heart disease by 47 percent. Nuts are low in glycemic load, promote weight loss, and have anti-inflammatory effects that may prevent insulin resistance.

Fresh Fruit

To satisfy sweet cravings, fresh fruit is an excellent choice. Rich in fiber, antioxidants, and nutrient-dense, eating three servings of fresh fruit a day is associated with an 18 percent decrease in the risk of developing diabetes. If you are already diabetic, I recommend selecting only the low-sugar fruits like berries, kiwi, oranges, and melon to minimize glycemic effects.

If you are committed to improving your health and reducing your risk of disease or reversing your disease so that your medications can be reduced or eliminated, a nutritional approach works. Source BY JOEL FUHRMAN. To know more visit www.yogagurusuneelsingh.com

This month’s challenge called I Smell A (Modern) Rat asks us what would rat rodding be like if we applied the same principles to modern cars. For this I chose a Dodge Magnum with a V-8 Hemi. Instead of a more predictable post-apoc Mad Max look, I went with a beach combing car with rugged tires, wood paneling, and a nonexistent roof and tailgate. Just enough rust and patina adds a bit of well loved character while a wooden deck and benches gives this “Magnum Opus” a boat-like appearance that’s suitable for fishing, surfing, or just soaking up some rays. Its the perfect modern rat rod for a hot summer day!