What a heartbreaker of a race.

MP3: The Replacements – Alex Chilton (RIP)

Posted: March 18th, 2010 under History, Long Hairs.
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In 1966, Pete Seeger, his wife, Toshi Seeger, and a handful of Hudson Valley residents came together believing “by learning to care for one boat on one river, the public could come to care for all our threatened waterways.” Three years later, in 1969, the Clearwater made her maiden voyage down the Atlantic Coast from the Harvey Gamage Shipyard in Maine to the South Street Seaport in New York City.

To see a list of Clearwater events this coming spring, click here.

MP3: Pete Seeger – River Of My People

Posted: February 17th, 2010 under History.
Comments: 1

Harney Peak, located within Black Hills National Forest, is the highest mountain in South Dakota, and at 7,244 feet, the highest point in the United States east of the Rocky Mountains. The peak was named after Williams S. Harney, commander of the military in the Black Hills area in the late 1850s. An abandoned fire lookout tower is situated on the summit with a plaque that reads “Valentine McGillycuddy, Wasicu Wacan.” The plaque marks the final resting place of Dr. Valentine McGillycuddy (pictured above). Harney Peak is also the place where Black Elk had his “great vision” when he was nine years old.

Dr. Valentine (good timing, eh? get it now?) McGillycuddy is famous for being the doctor who treated Crazy Horse at the time of his death. While he is known to the Lakota of the modern-day Pine Ridge Indian Reservation as “Friend of Crazy Horse”, he was not so much loved by some other Lakotas, including Red Cloud, a major Sioux chief. Red Cloud’s accusations of mismanagement led to several investigations of Dr. McGillycuddy’s administration. In the days leading up to the Wounded Knee Massacre, Red Cloud conceded that McGillycuddy had been a “young man with an old man’s head on his shoulders.” Whatever that means.

Posted: February 12th, 2010 under History, Public Lands.
Comments: 1

Until last week, paleontologists could offer no clear-cut evidence for the color of dinosaurs. Thanks to melanosomes, researchers have provided evidence that a dinosaur called Sinosauropteryx had a white-and-ginger striped tail. Melanosomes are pigment -loaded sacs that survive for millions of years in fossil bird feathers. The shape and arrangement of melanosomes help produce the color of feathers, so scientists are now able to get clues about the color of fossil feathers from their melanosomes alone. The discovery, which the researchers reported last week in Nature, supports research showing that birds are dinosaurs, having descended from a group of bipedal dinosaurs called theropods. More at the NYT.

Posted: February 5th, 2010 under Flora/Fauna, History.
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Folkstreams:

Men and women who worked for the Machias Lumber Company before 1930 share their recollections of the logging industry in Maine when they cut trees by hand, hauled logs to the river with horses, and floated them down to the mill. Remarkable documentary footage from the 1930’s illustrates this dangerous and exhausting work. The memoires include stories about death on the job and the ballad “The Jam on Gerry’s Rock”.

“Nobody ever seen a bulldozer or any of the equipment they have today in those times. All the power they had in the wood was huses and those big old huses were something in their time. And the men that drove them were something. They cussed a little on occasions.”

Trailer

Full Movie

Posted: December 18th, 2008 under History.
Comments: 1

Some historians believe that the Old West died when the barbed wire came in.

From The Wire That Fenced The West:

Across half a continent the American settler of the nineteenth century made his way westward with tools of the forest. Leaving the rocky coast line of the Atlantic, he passed the great inland waterways and advanced through the virgin forests with the aid of equipment such as his forefathers had used to found a new world. But when he came out of the forest, suddenly removed from familiar environment and faced with conditions for which no previous experience had prepared him, he found he was – in his own idiom – “not rightly outfitted” to go on. It was not a question of the quality of the axes and knives and spades and plows which had brought him through the wilderness of wooded lands onto the threshold of promise; it was a question of their suitability. The fact was, tools of the Eastern forests were not usable on Western plains and prairies. Change in scenery called for change and adaptation in provisions, and with the farm-minded pioneer, one of the features most radically in need of adaptation to the changing scene was fencing.

MP3: Bob Dylan – Sitting On A Barbed Wire Fence

Posted: December 12th, 2008 under History.
Comments: 1

MP3: George Harrison – Love Scene

MP3: George Harrison – Dream Scene

Posted: December 12th, 2008 under Art/Photography, History.
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If you’ve ever been down to the Durango, CO area, you know about this coal-fired, steam powered locomotive that passes through the San Juan National Forest. Although the views from the window are unreal, it’s nicer to be on the outside and see the train twist and turn while rafting down the Animas River. Hell, the train’ll even pick you up if you wave it down when you’re done. (Or at least it used to.) But seeing that it’s November and the train still runs during the winter, you don’t have the option of being cocky.

Durango and Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad

MP3: Guy Clark – Desperados Waiting For The Train

Wrong Durango, but still..

Posted: November 12th, 2008 under History.
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According to Edison film historian C. Musser, this film and others shot on the same day featured Native American Indian dancers from Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show, and constitutes the American Indian’s first appearance before a motion picture camera.

Posted: October 17th, 2008 under History.
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A friend of ours once came across a letter from Paul Newman that ended with a line that has stuck with us for a long time.

Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be.

Here’s to a natural born world shaker.

Video: Paul Newman – Plastic Jesus (from Cool Hand Luke)

Posted: September 27th, 2008 under History.
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