A Visit to Mount Rushmore

I continue on my "what I did on my vacation" series.  Be happy you are not a captive for dinner and forced to watch slides.  Last month my wife and I visited Mount Rushmore in South Dakota.  I took the picture herein.  Here's what Wikeleaks says about it:

Mount Rushmore National Memorial is a sculpture carved into the granite face of Mount Rushmore, a batholith in the Black Hills in Keystone, South Dakota, United States. Sculptor Gutzon Borglum created the sculpture's design and oversaw the project's execution from 1927 to 1941 with the help of his son, Lincoln Borglum. Mount Rushmore features 60-foot sculptures of the heads of four United States presidents: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln. The memorial park covers 1,278.45 acres and is 5,725 feet above sea level.

Some interesting facts about Mt. Rushmore:  It was never completely finished.  Congress stopped funding construction in 1941, leaving Abe Lincoln's hair and ear unfinished.

Originally, Thomas Jefferson was to be to our left of Washington, but Borglum decided he didn't have enough rock to work with, so "erased"  the sculpture and redid it to our right of Washington.

Teddy Roosevelt did not have enough accomplishment to justify his inclusion in the sculpture, but he had been a personal friend of Borglum, and so was included.

Only George Washington has his chest and lapels sculpted.  The other three presidents are heads only. 

Yee-HA! California Makes Guns Legal

Hooray!  Somehow the Ninth Circuit of the Court of Appeals got something right.  They ruled that it is Constitutional for citizens to open carry guns for safety in California.

I live in California.  I have a gun.  Where can I get a good holster?

Note:  My commenting system isn't working for some reason.  I'll see if I can find out why.

A Visit to Devil's Tower

On our bus tour last month, we stopped at Devil's Tower in Wyoming.  Devil's Tower is probably most famous today for being featured in the movie "Close Encounters of the Third Kind."  Devil's Tower is where the space aliens meet the US military and a bunch of scientists in a great intergalactic powwow.

In the movie, the chief character, played by Richard Dreyfus, and a lady companion, scale the sides of Devil's Tower to get to the top, where they witness the historic meeting with beings from another planet.  The scaling part was pretty bogus, because the sides of the Tower are very steep, and are only rarely scaled by experienced mountain climbers.

Devil's Tower was formed by volcanic activity millions of years ago.  This type of lava formation looks like giant strings of magma, and that's what it is.  It is known as columnar basalt.

I took the photo at the left.

Note:  Devil's Tower was the first declared National Monument of the United States, dedicated by Theodore Roosevelt in 1906.

My Visit to Custer's Last Stand -- the Little Big Horn

Where Custer Fell 
(Custer's stone is the one in the middle
with a black face)

My wife and I took a vacation last month, a bus tour of South Dakota, Wyoming and Montana.  One of our more memorable stops was at the sight of Custer's Last Stand in Southeastern Montana.  General Custer and his 7th Cavalry were there to force the Lakota Sioux back onto their reservation, and get off the Crow reservation that the Lakota had invaded.  The battle took place on June 25-26, 1876, 142 years to the month that we were there.

The Sioux had some legitimate grievances (getting kicked out of the Black Hills of South Dakota, that had been previously granted to them as a homeland  -- the reason:  gold was discovered therein).

Scattered Tombstones
Where Dead Fell & Were Originally Buried

The Crow had some legitimate grievances against the Sioux, who had taken over one-third of the Crow reservation.  The Crow, among other tribes, had supplied Indian Scouts to assist Custer, as they wanted their land back.

Custer had received bad intelligence from the army, indicating the number of Sioux warriors was much smaller than the 2,000 that were there.  So he ordered Major Marcus Reno to attack the village where women and children were present, and Reno killed a number of wives and children.  Understandably annoyed, the braves counterattacked and killed 40+ of Reno's troopers, and his remaining force was barely able to escape. Then they attacked Custer's force, cutting off his path of escape, forcing it into a less than defensible hilltop, where all soldiers and Custer were quickly killed.

Monument to the Dead
(Buried Around this Stone)

Two days after the battle, other army soldiers arrived on site and buried the dead, roughly in the same spot where they died.  The spot where each man was found was marked with a wooden stake, later to be replaced by marble headstones.

Today the marble tombstones are still there, marking the places of burial, but the soldier's remains are not.  The remains of the soldiers were removed (in July 1877)  from their shallow graves and reburied atop the hill behind the death site, where they are better protected from weather and predators.  The site is today marked with a large granite monument listing the names of the soldiers and Indian Scouts who died there.

The remains of the officers, however, were placed in coffins and shipped back to their families.  Custer's remains were reburied at West Point.

It was sobering for me to stand behind the place where the Last Stand took place, only 20 feet behind the spot where Custer died.  His tombstone there has a black painted face to make it stand out.

To see actual size of images, click on each.

Note:  The monument picture only shows one side listing names.  The actual monument has names listed on all four sides.

My Take:  I used to think the Indians were the good guys, the troopers the victims and Custer the prize ass who got them all killed.  I don't think that any more.  Maybe it's because blood is thicker than water and the troopers were "my tribe," and the Sioux were not.  Sitting Bull had called Indians to come off their reservation and join him in a great, last fight against the white man, knowing full well it was a fight he could not win.  A lot of lives were lost for nothing.  Also, I resent the wholesale slaughter of wounded troopers and the mutiliation of their bodies:  limbs were cut off, scalps were taken, Tom Custer's head was beaten into jelly, and others were disemboweled.  The US Army took care of the Sioux in later battles in 1876 and 1877, and good riddance.

Twitter vs Blogger

I haven't been blogging much lately.  I have been using Twitter for my daily dose of liberal head banging.  On Twitter the debates over current events are more timely and immediate.  I like that.

Liberal Reaction to Trump's Summit With Putin

Stockton High School, Class of 1918 (Carpe Diem, Photo)

Last Saturday my wife and I went to Ripon, CA, a small town near Stockton, California, to visit our nephew and his family.  We explored an antique shop in the small downtown, and I found the photo below, of the graduating class of Stockton High School, 1918 -- a hundred years ago to the month!

I often look at and buy old photos in antique shops.  People in other epochs interest me.  They are so much like us, minus the technology.  The young people in the 1918 photo below were all white save one hispanic or Filipina girl with a Minnie Mouse bow in her hair (just to the left in back of the chalkboard), and one black girl on the far right.  World War I was still raging in Europe, and wouldn't end until November 1918.  Looking through the crowd one sees fashions and hair styles of the early 20th century:  detachable collars on the boys, hair parted down the middle, sailor tops on the girls.

If you want to gaze into the faces of these students, download the picture and view it in actual size.

These young people had turbulent times in front of them:  the Great Depression, World War II, the Korean War.  However, most of them would live to see television, commercial air flights, the moon landing, and the first heart transplants. If they died at age 75, they would live to see 1975 (age 18 + 57 years = 75).

Markings on the back of the picture:  John Fisher, written in fine-quilled ink pen.  In pencil:  "Don't forget the robe."

All these students are dead now.  They lived their lives and disappeared, just as we will do also.  Carpe Diem!

The magnificent old building was built in 1904 and torn down in 1966 - a waste of a historic structure.  The school also served junior high school students, and my brother and I want to 7th (me) and 8th (Bro) grades there in 1956-1957.  We were the Stockton High Tarzans, colors blue & white.

To see the complete picture, click on the image.

The Left's War on America: Three Key Battlefronts

The far left (aka Democrats) are assaulting American culture on many fronts.  Here is a list of some of those points of attack:

1.  Importing a new electorate:  Larry Elder said that the Democrats haven't won the white vote since 1965.  White people tend to believe in our Constitution, our Judaeo-Christian culture, our Democratic Republic, our economic system of capitalism.  They also tend to vote Republican.  Since the Democrats cannot win by depending on the white vote, they are very big on "the browning of America," importing new voters through illegal immigration.  These new voters tend to vote for Democrats by overwhelming numbers.  The Democrats latest insistence on DACA amnesty is merely another Dem attempt to import new Democrat voters.  Leftist memes that were created to suppress resistance to this importation is to laud "Diversity is our Strength."  Even RINOs like Lindsay Graham give voice to this fraud, with the absurd notion that the less we have in common with new immigrants, the stronger we are.

2.  Demonizing White People:  On Twitter and other social media, leftists are becoming increasingly flagrant in their open hatred of white people.  College professors encourage white suicide, blacks state that all white people are "racist," and even call for their murder.  Some universities offer courses on "dealing with whiteness."  All white progress is described as being the result of "white privilege" rather than of industry and hard work.  A New York College has offered a course entitled "The Abolition of Whiteness," and the University of Wisconsin-Madison has a course entitled "The Problem of Whiteness."  Many, if not most white college graduates come out of their Marxist learning center with a pronounced feeling of guilt and self-hatred for being white, and ready to self-flagellate by voting left.  Clearly, there is a leftwing race war being fomented against white people.

3.  Gender-Bending, or the Effeminization of the American Male:  The left is now attacking "toxic masculinity" and pushing feminism onto American males.  The Fashion Industry is pushing dresses and high heels for men, and male models display these abominations online.  Men who wish to dress up like women are applauded and encouraged, their faces plastered on the covers of fashion and movie magazines.  "Caitlin" Jenner is a man who had his penis chopped off so he can become a "woman," and the left would love for all other white men to do the same, psychologically at least. Men who don't want to date other men (who are dressed as women), are castigated as 'bigots."  Turning men into effeminate wimps is just another front in the left's psychological warfare against the right.  "Transgenders" are the left's latest pet group, and girly-men are allowed to compete in women's sports where their natural testosterone makes them champions in women's track, wrestling and other sports events.

Maxine Waters, As She Appears to Me (#Photoshop)

Remembering Those Who Die, New years Eve, December 31, 2017

As the year draws to a close, I think about the friends I lost this year.  That's another negative about growing old (I was 73 in November), your friends and relatives begin to die and you wonder when your turn will come.  Not that I'm afraid of death, I really don't fear it at all.

The first friend passed away at age 85 in January, one Lou Woods.  Lou was a far-left Green Party member, and it's amazing that we ever became friends.  I did his taxes for years, and he took a shine to me, always inviting me out to lunch.  He finally got sick and so old that he couldn't afford treating me to lunch, so I began paying for our lunches myself.  Our favorite place was a Japanese restaurant in Cupertino called Kikisushi.

Lou had a pacemaker and his kidneys were failing, and I took him to the doctor at Stanford Medical Center a couple of times.  When his doctor told him he had only a few months to live, he began cleaning out his government provided apartment in Saratoga.  I helped him.  In November 2015 I finally had to leave him alone there, dumping things into the trash receptacle outside his door.  I walked across the green lawns of the development, littered with the brown leaves of fall, wondering if I would ever see him again.  I did, as he lived through 2016,  In November 2016, I drove him to the polls to cast his ballot for Bernie.  Soon after he collapsed and was put into a hospice near Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Gatos.  I went to see him, but he was asleep and I didn't disturb him.  His daughters soon had him transferred to another hospice near Sacramento.  I learned in early January 2017 that he had passed away.  Kikisushi will never be the same to me now.

The second friend to die about a month later was Kenny Chavez, a musician and flute player with whom I practiced and gigged for around five years.   Kenny was only 68, blind in one eye, and loved beer.  When we weren't playing music in our rock band, he could be found just sitting quietly in a corner sipping a beer. He apparently suffered a massive stroke, and died in the hospital that very night. 

The third close friend who died was Gary Elmo Potts, a fellow San Jose State finance graduate from the Class of 1972.  We worked our first finance jobs together, as internal auditors for Fireman's Fund Insurance Company in San Francisco. Two young guys who liked to hang out at Henry Afrika's famous bar (now gone), and who once explored the Palace of Fine Arts in the middle of the night, dressed in suits.  I hadn't heard from Gary in quite some time, so googled him in an attempt to find his whereabouts.  The first thing that popped up on my computer screen was his obituary.  He had died suddenly about three weeks before, in May of 2017.

Death is a part of life, and I find myself thinking about it often these days.