Category Archives: History

Buying a tv

Posted on May 25, 2020 | 2 comments

A smart one, no less, after nine months without one of any kind. Smallish, to cover the fireplace which Bar and I agree is unlikely to be used for fires from worrying about Checkers the cat getting into the dying embers.

Should have access to YouTube and etc. Already paying for Spectrum cable (packaged with Internet which we do use), but found we were satisfied with watching stuff on our phones. Until…

Came down to Bar’s missing the History channel and Animal Planet. Besides, it’s time to do our part for revival of the consumer economy since we can afford it and many can’t. Stay tuned.

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Posted in Barbara Ellen, History, Mini-Rancho, Senor Gato

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The Belt of Venus

Posted on May 21, 2020 | Comments Off on The Belt of Venus

Back in the late 19th century Austin was known as the “City of the Violet Crown,” a double reference to 1) a vision of Athens, Greece, whose crown was the violet marble of the Acropolis on a hill above the city and 2) the violet band of light just over the Hill Country at sunrise and sunset which astronomers call the Belt of Venus, which appears in many places besides here.

Sounds like a fashion accessory for toothsome women. Apropos of nothing except I got curious about Austin’s old claim and Googled it.

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Historic Neely’s Canyon

Posted on April 12, 2020 | Comments Off on Historic Neely’s Canyon

(Updated below.)

A longtime resident, who was an archaeologist in a previous incarnation, ventured into the canyon years ago on an old trail and returned to describe some interesting things.

Among them, apparent Native American campsites (hearths & middens) and the remains of an old house that could have belonged to one of the area’s famous “cedar choppers,” folks who in the 1930s and on into the 1950s cut up mountain cedar (really juniper) to make charcoal which they sold in burlap bags.

I won’t identify the resident because the condo board of directors doesn’t want us owners/residents venturing into the canyon.

UPDATE: Oops. Turns out the archeo found this stuff in Caprock Canyon, about a mile south of Neely’s. Alas and alack. He says they probably also exist in Neely’s Canyon but he’s seen no evidence of it. “I believe,” he wrote me, “indigenous peoples occupied the (Neely’s) area in short seasonal intervals for perhaps thousands of years…very short in duration & maintained by small groups… In short the human fingerprint on the area would have been faint.”

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Posted in History, Neely's Canyon

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Anne Boleyn

Posted on January 21, 2020 | Comments Off on Anne Boleyn

Bar has me watching The Tudors by Showtime. Mostly fiction but on a base of history. In which I have become interested in Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII’s second wife and queen, until he had her and four presumed lovers beheaded for adultery. Reading through some book samples off Amazon to try and find something credible to read.

UPDATE:  Finally settled on Brit historian Eric Ives’ The Life and Death of Ann Boleyn

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The walking wounded

Posted on January 1, 2020 | 2 comments

Steve Hamblin, a classmate in Infantry OCS, writes to the group after I posted the Second of the third:

“Still thinking about Wheat losing most of his platoon. My God that must have haunted him. There are no words. Vietnam is long over but there remain walking wounded among us and sometimes we learn too late who they are.”

Via OC-504-68 FtBenning at yahoo!.com

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Posted in History, Infantry OCS, Obituaries

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Pumpkinflowers

Posted on December 22, 2019 | Comments Off on Pumpkinflowers

A good book, whether novel or memoir, or a bit of both, by Matti Friedman, an Israeli soldier turned journalist writing about their forgotten war. The pumpkin being an outpost in Lebanon and flowers being IDF radio speak for casualties.

Friedman was an RTO, in our army’s parlance for radio-telephone operator, who sometimes carried the radio on his back. His unit were combat engineers but they often operated as infantry.

Via Amazon

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Posted in History, Israel

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More on Fort Magruder

Posted on November 8, 2019 | Comments Off on More on Fort Magruder

More from the Austin Chronicle of July 4, 2003: “Homes were built over the location in the mid-20th century in the area called Fortview, and Fort McGruder [sic] Lane runs nearby. An undated brochure attested to historical markers at the site. Today, even they have long since vanished.

“Interestingly, the mid-1990s are when most of the fort’s history was written. Archeologists began research on the area in the spring of 1992 near Wadford and Dunlap streets. Homes covered the area, and the frontage road of Ben White was soon to cover the east-west trench. The team of researchers found where the [L-shaped] trenches were and how they were filled. The north-south trench was 260 feet long and met the 470-foot east-west trench. But no Civil War-era artifacts were unearthed. Not a cannon, not a rifle, not so much as a minié ball.”

By then, of course, the place had been picked over for generations. So how did Bar get her presumed Fort Magruder cannonball? From her mother, who lived in the area and collected odd things, like 1870 French bayonets, and 8-pounder cannonballs. My knowledge of the fort comes from maps and mentions at the Austin History Center.

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Posted in Barbara Ellen, Civil War, History

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