Paintings of mountain men

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Mountain men were fur trappers who worked in the Rocky Mountains from 1820 to 1880 with the peak in 1840. After the Lewis and Clark Expedition the mountain men moved west into the newly revealed wilderness. Their main occupation was the then lucrative beaver fur trade. Fur trapping was a difficult occupation. They worked, frequently alone although there were trapping companies, in the wilderness. 

They hunted for their food, and if injured had to provide their own medical self-care. The weather, particularly in the winters, could be severe. The wildlife, from the bears down to biting insects with their diseases, were dangerous. They also had to deal with the Indians, who weren't always happy to see the mountain men in their hunting grounds.  

They performed an important part in opening up the American west. Along with exploring the Rocky Mountains, they created trails for their mule trains to haul out furs. These trails were to become the routes for the migration from the east to the west.

Once the fur trade dried up a lot of mountain men settled down (they generally only lasted 2 or 3 years in the trade anyway), became guides for the wagon trains, or served as army scouts. To say they were manly men is to put it mildly, to this day they capture our imagination because of their toughness and self-sufficiency.

Shine On, Harvest Moon

Get ready for a coruscating weekend with Whitaker and Me.

 

The engineering of retention ponds

The above video discusses the engineering needed for retention ponds. Basically, the ponds don't just capture and store excessive rainfall, rather they exist to regulate water runoff during storms. Regulating the flow of water to prevent, or at least minimize, flooding. 

I live in Florida which has enormous amounts of water areas coexisting with the land. There are retention ponds everywhere, in fact there is one a couple of hundred yards away from my humble abode. I've never given much thought to them and how they function -- they were just ponds plopped down in new developments. It is interesting to see what purpose they actually serve and how they function.    

  

Lucy Willis paintings

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Lucy Willis (1954 - today) is a contemporary English artist who works as a painter and printmaker. She is best known for her watercolors. She uses somewhat subdued colors and captures the play of light and shadow. She has travelled through southern Europe, the Middle East, and India and frequently portrays scenes from them.

Lucy Willis self-portrait

Good Vibrations

Get ready for a juddering weekend with the REO Brothers.

 

Cooking in the Amazon

This video takes place in a small settlement somewhere in the Amazon basin. The houses are  rather ramshackle looking, but there is power brought into it so it may be less remote than one would first expect. In one scene you see a TV playing in a back room, and there are satellite dishes on some of the houses. 

It starts with a man and his son going out to gather fruits and greens. They return to their home via a boat. It looks like it is setup as tour boat, so perhaps this settlement is somewhere around Manaus? 

When they return the women cook a meal -- fish covered with onions and greens wrapped in a leaf cooked over a fire, as well as some sort of a flour, perhaps casava, as a side dish. They also have fruit drinks.

The video ends with several shots of the settlement.

     

Columbus Day

Columbus's fleet departs for its historic trip

This is a reposting of a previous Columbus Day post. Again, the significance of his voyage is not that he steps foot on a Caribbean island, rather it is that his voyage led to the connecting of the Americas to Europe and the trade and the expansion of our world view that followed.

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It is Columbus Day. Some of the common talking points around it strike me as being rather puerile. For example, we have the 'stolen land' bit, and the strange 'Columbus didn't really discover it because other people were already there' point. 

As for the first, while the Indians undoubtably got ravaged in their encounter with Europeans, throughout history populations have sloshed back and forth taking and losing land. In fact, prior to the arrival of the Europeans the Indian tribes had been long engaged in chronic warfare with each other, with their areas of control shifting as their fortunes ebbed and flowed. If you had the misfortune of being a captive atop an Aztec pyramid you were already being ravaged.

As for the 'Columbus didn't really discover it' snark, Columbus isn't only, or even principally, known for being the first European to step foot on the soils of the Americas. We know other Europeans had travelled that far already. Rather, his voyage led to something theirs did not, the meaningful connection of the two hemispheres. As I've said in an earlier Columbus Day post, "The world changed from an academic's sphere to a physical globe on which the oceans were routes to all its lands." That is the importance of his achievement. 

His discovery was world altering. We have a term for its consequence -- the Columbian Exchange. Columbus's discovery led to the opening of transatlantic trade, and with that plants, animals, diseases, and people passed from one hemisphere to the other. Wheat, corn, potatoes, rice, barley, cattle, pigs, and horses all crossed the Atlantic to the benefit of all. Unfortunately, diseases did as well, much to the detriment of the Amerindians. That transfer greatly impacted both sides of the Atlantic. It shaped the world we live in today, and that is the legacy of Columbus's voyages and the true reason he is to be remembered. 

Carl Blechen paintings

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Carl Blechen (1798 – 1840) was a German Romantic painter. He was one of the later Romanticists and his work, while still overly dramatic, is more grounded than the earlier Romanticists. He is best known for his landscapes. His mental health gradually deteriorated and he died of a total mental breakdown.

Carl Blechen self-portrait

Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye

Get ready for a leave taking weekend with Sophia Ammann.

 

Making bamboo chopsticks

This video shows the Yamachiku factory in Japan. It is the only company in Japan that still makes bamboo chopsticks. The video covers the entire process, from harvesting the bamboo to the finished product. They certainly take their chopsticks seriously. Turn on the captions and they explain the steps.

If you want to buy some of their chopsticks they have an online store. I quite liked their chopsticks for eating potato chips -- who wouldn't need a pair of those? There is a video of them in operation below.

For those interested I have an earlier post, The ins and outs of chopsticks, that points out that there are actually differences between Chinese, Korean, and Japanese chopsticks that can make them awkward to use by the different nationalities.

 

Paintings of trucks

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These are paintings of trucks. New trucks, old trucks, abandoned trucks. Some are working trucks, some are personal vehicles. 

I'm, always amused by Europeans who think large American pickup trucks are frivolous and ostentatious. They tow things, like the family boat, haul things, and can operate in bad weather and on suboptimal roads. They are much more utilitarian than they seem when spotted just sitting in a parking lot.

Pourquoi t'as fait ça?

Get ready for an admonishing weekend with Ladaniva.

 

The children of your brain

Retro Smokebot
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The Secret of the Machines - Rudyard Kipling

We were taken from the ore-bed and the mine,
We were melted in the furnace and the pit—
We were cast and wrought and hammered to design,
We were cut and filed and tooled and gauged to fit.
Some water, coal, and oil is all we ask,
And a thousandth of an inch to give us play:
And now, if you will set us to our task,
We will serve you four and twenty hours a day!

We can pull and haul and push and lift and drive,
We can print and plough and weave and heat and light,
We can run and race and swim and fly and dive,
We can see and hear and count and read and write!

Would you call a friend from half across the world?
If you’ll let us have his name and town and state,
You shall see and hear your crackling question hurled
Across the arch of heaven while you wait.   
Has he answered? Does he need you at his side?
You can start this very evening if you choose,
And take the Western Ocean in the stride
Of seventy thousand horses and some screws!

The boat-express is waiting your command!
You will find the Mauretania at the quay,
Till her captain turns the lever ’neath his hand,
And the monstrous nine-decked city goes to sea.

Do you wish to make the mountains bare their head
And lay their new-cut forests at your feet?
Do you want to turn a river in its bed,
Or plant a barren wilderness with wheat?
Shall we pipe aloft and bring you water down
From the never-failing cisterns of the snows,
To work the mills and tramways in your town,
And irrigate your orchards as it flows?

It is easy! Give us dynamite and drills!
Watch the iron-shouldered rocks lie down and quake
As the thirsty desert-level floods and fills,
And the valley we have dammed becomes a lake.

But remember, please, the Law by which we live,
We are not built to comprehend a lie,
We can neither love nor pity nor forgive.
If you make a slip in handling us you die!
We are greater than the Peoples or the Kings—
Be humble, as you crawl beneath our rods!
Our touch can alter all created things,
We are everything on earth—except The Gods!

Though our smoke may hide the Heavens from your eyes,
It will vanish and the stars will shine again,
Because, for all our power and weight and size,
We are nothing more than children of your brain!

 

August Macke (1887-1914)

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August Macke (1887-1914) was a German artist who travelled extensively in his brief life. He died young. You can tell he was interested in form and color, with his work becoming increasingly abstract as his art evolved. While classified as an Expressionist, he almost certainly would have drifted further into the Abstract movement had he lived. 

August Macke

Please Don't Talk About Me When I'm Gone

Get ready for a duplicating weekend with Fariz Susetyo.

 

1941 blitzkrieg in the Americas

In 941, during WWII, Ecuador and Peru went to war with each other. It had nothing to do with the conflict between the Axis and the Allies, rather it was born of a long-standing border dispute between the two countries.

The dispute stemmed from the wars of independence period of South America, with Peru and Greater Columbia (which is what Ecuador was to branch off from) as well as Portuguese Brazil being in the mix to the east. Several wars were fought in the 19th century, and by the 1920s an uneasy truce prevailed between Ecuador and Peru.

In the early 20th century Peru's army greatly enlarged and improved, with modern equipment including artillery, tanks, and aircraft. Ecuador relied on diplomacy to fend them off, but with the U.S. being increasingly focused on the wars in Europe and Asia, South American affairs became lower priority and the crisis deepened.

Still the Ecuadorians thought they had a surplus of fighting spirit in their troops over the Peruvians. From Ecuador and Peru, 1941:

With all this [Peru’s significant numerical superiority], I should affirm that Ecuador is superior to Peru in terms of race; the Ecuadorians have a warring nature, while the Peruvians are pacifists. Peruvian officers are good because regular contingents of young men study in military schools abroad. Consequently, the Peruvian General Staff is efficient and well-trained, but the troops are inferior to those of Ecuador.  

That turned out not to be the case and based on that misjudgment Ecuador began reinforcing troops in the disputed territories. This led to heavy skirmishing during July 1941 which led to a full Peruvian invasion of Ecuador. In a South American version of a blitzkrieg, which even included parachuters, it was over quickly. By August the Ecuadorian resistance collapsed.

They signed a truce of sorts, although Peru massively violated it at least twice, and then they settled down with the border dispute still simmering. Two more small wars broke out in 1981 and 1995, but the final peace treaty was signed in 1998.      

   

Ohara Koson prints

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Ohara Koson (1877 – 1945) Was a Japanese artist, mainly doing prints. He subjects were primarily birds and flowers. He was influenced by Western art, but he didn't adopt its use of perspective. Rather, he used Western color palettes and also folded in some impressionistic use of lighting effects. Regardless, his compositions were in the traditional Japanese style.  

Ohara Koson

Timonia

Get ready for a carefree weekend with Otava Yo.

 

21 years

Bored and Drunk by Oliver Perry Rauch
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Today is my blogiversary. Flares into Darkness turns 21 years old. It occurs to me the blog is now old enough to drink, so I assume it will be off on a bender tonight. Hopefully it will have a designated driver, so it doesn't end up on the side of the road making a fool out of itself doing a field sobriety test. And, if that should happen, we can only hope the body cam footage doesn't end up on the internet.

As for Flares, it started out as a group blog, but gradually, one by one, the other posters drifted away. At one time it was largely dormant with me posting very erratically, only once every couple of months. Eventually, for reasons even I can't fathom, I started posting more regularly. It also used to be more focused on politics and current events, but I think other sites do a much better job than I of covering such matters, so I just focus on whatever amuses me: art on Sunday, music on Friday, and whatever catches my eye on Wednesday. 

That's the state of this blog today. I thank my small cadre of regulars that drop by, and I hope that the visitors who wander in are at least momentarily entertained by my nonsense. Have a good one all.

 

Paintings of tea drinking

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I'm a coffee drinker although occasionally I will drink tea. These are paintings of teacups, tea pots, and people drinking tea. Americans associate tea with daintily upraised pinky fingers, but tea culture varies widely in the places where it is pervasive: England, the Middle East, India, and East Asia. There is a mix of paintings from different times and places. Enjoy, especially the last one if you're American.

Battle Hymn of the Republic

Get ready for a steadfast weekend with The Petersens.

 

Never forget

First responders on 9-11

From Queen Elizabeth II's message after 9-11: 

"My thoughts and prayers are with you all now, and in the difficult days ahead. But nothing that can be said can begin to take away the anguish and the pain of these moments. Grief is the price we pay for love."