Time Travel For Friday...!

Today we are going to travel back to San Antonio for the flash flood of 1921!

Texas isn't normally known for having a lot of flash floods, especially floods of this magnitude! However, this was a bad one by any standard. I suppose that some important lessons were learned from this disaster, and the proper precautions were taken to prevent a repeat event.

Sep 7, 1921:

Flash flood hits San Antonio

The San Antonio River floods on this day in 1921, killing 51 people and causing millions of dollars in damages. The flood was caused by some of the heaviest rainfall ever recorded in Texas.

The San Antonio River winds through southwest Texas, an area that is generally dry. However, on September 7, a storm stalled over the town of Taylor and dumped an astounding 23.11 inches of rain on the area in less than a day. It was the heaviest single day of rainfall in the state to that time.

The immense amount of rain quickly overwhelmed the river. Taylor is located 30 miles upstream from San Antonio, so the resulting flash flood went barreling toward the city. Most of the victims were trapped in their cars by the surprise flood and drowned. Five to 10 feet of water submerged the city's streets, delaying an evacuation.

The city was under water for nearly a week following the flood. The flood was responsible for at least $5 million in damages in the then-small city. In the aftermath, San Antonio embarked on a 10-year overhaul of its levee system.

In this year of extreme weather, maybe we can look back at some disasters like this one and double check on the preparations against them. At least, that would be my suggestion, ya know?

How about coffee on the patio this morning? I have some brownies left that I'll share!

Good History For A Change...!

Once in a great while, you find that the government actually did something right.

Some folks might not agree, but I think this is pretty cool myself. Certainly when this many folks are employed, especially handicapped folks, things can only be good! That's just my opinion, for what it's worth.

The pens read "SKILCRAFT-U.S. GOVERNMENT." And if you have worked for an American government institution, you know that they are everywhere. At roughly 50 cents each (if you qualify for government pricing), the pens are the only ones you will see, officially speaking, at most government institutions.

Which makes you different than the people manufacturing the pens themselves. Skilcraft pens are manufactured by blind workers.

In 1938, the United States was still in the midst of the Great Depression. Given that the economy was still incredibly soft, and that blind workers were already at a competitive disadvantage, the government stepped in. Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed into law the Wagner-O'Day Act, which aimed at providing upward economic mobility for the blind by requiring that when the federal government purchased specific goods, those goods were manufactured by blind Americans. The law, codified at 41 U.S.C. 46, soon included pens.

The Skilcraft brand came to be a decade or so later, in 1952. Today, the company employs over 5,000 blind workers in 44 states, producing a full arsenal of office supplies, janitorial equipment, etc., with the pens being produced in factories in Wisconsin or North Carolina. As reported by the Washington Post, the pens must be made to the specifications outlined by a sixteen page document which was first promulgated over fifty years ago. Among the requirements? The pens "must be able to write continuously for a mile and in temperatures up to 160 degrees and down to 40 degrees below zero."

In all, the U.S. government orders $5 million worth of these pens a year (with 60% going to the military) -- a small part of the spending under the Wagner-O'Day (now Javitz-Wagner-O'Day) Act. The Act, which was revised in 1971 to include people with "significant disabilities" as eligible for the program, is administered through an organization called AbilityOne, and helps to employ over 40,000 such people. In total, the government spends over $650 million (as recently as 2009) annually on AbilityOne goods and services.

Actually, this is one government program I can stand behind. You might know it was started a long time ago, long before the government backed so many black ops type programs. This was designed to actually help folks and apparently, it does!

Coffee on the patio this morning. Got some "pigs in a blanket" on the side!

Some More Western Wednesday...!

Behind every great story of the old west, there is a back story!

Often we think we know the complete story, but true history has a way of getting twisted and turned around. The more a story is told, the more a legend can be made to fit popular demand!

Sep 5, 1847:

Outlaw Jesse James is born in Missouri

Seen by some as a vicious murderer and by others as a gallant Robin Hood, the famous outlaw Jesse Woodson James is born on this day in 1847, in Clay County, Missouri.

Jesse and his older brother Franklin lost their father in 1849, when the Reverend Robert James abandoned his young family and disappeared forever into the California gold fields. Their mother, Zerelda, quickly remarried, but rumor had it that their new stepfather treated Jesse and Frank poorly, and a third husband soon followed. Perhaps it was a violent and unstable family life that led the young Jesse and Frank into lives of crime. Regardless, it is certain that the brothers first learned to kill during the Civil War. As Confederate sympathizers, both Jesse and Frank joined William Quantrill's vicious Missouri guerilla force, and Jesse participated in the cold-blooded murder of 25 unarmed Union soldiers in August 1863.

When the war ended, neither man felt any enthusiasm for the drab life of a Missouri farmer-earning a living with their guns seemed easier and more exciting. Joining a motley band of ex-soldiers and common thieves, Jesse and Frank staged the first daylight bank robbery in U.S. history on Valentine's Day in 1866, making off with $57,000 of the hard-earned cash of the citizens of Liberty, Missouri. For the next decade the James Gang would steal many thousands more from banks, stores, stagecoaches, and trains.

The boldness of their crimes and the growing resentment among westerners of big railroads and robber barons led some to romanticize Jesse and Frank, a process that was encouraged by the authors of popular dime novels who created largely fictional versions of the James brothers as modern-day Robin Hoods who stole from the rich to give to the poor. In reality, the James brothers' crimes preyed as much on the common folks as on the very rich, and they did little to spare the lives of innocents caught in the crossfire. The Robin Hood myth conveniently ignores the little girl shot in the leg during a botched robbery at the Kansas City Fair, the train engineer killed when the James Gang derailed his locomotive, or the dozens of other innocent bystanders murdered or maimed by Jesse, Frank, or their gang. Nonetheless, the myth that Jesse James was a good-hearted hero of the common folk remains popular to this day. Robert Ford shot James in the back of the head-- killing him on April 3, 1882.

Makes it a lot more interesting when you know the rest of the story, doesn't it?

Coffee in the kitchen this morning. Chocolate brownies on the side, if that's alright!

A Very Serious Warning...!

Most of us have been aware for a while of the problems with the bee die-off!

This sad event is world wide and will eventually affect us all, in one way or another. This article explains a couple of main studies that have been done to try and understand what the cause is. It's a bit long, but interesting.

Colony Collapse Disorder

Since 1972, there has been a dramatic reduction in the number of feral honey bees in the United States, which are now almost extinct. It has become clear that an unknown factor is threatening the existence of bees around the world. The phenomenon has become known as colony collapse disorder. By February 2007, large commercial migratory beekeepers in several U.S. states had reported heavy losses associated with CCD. Colony losses were also reported in five Canadian provinces, several European countries, and in South America, Central America and Asia. The mechanisms of CCD are unknown, but many causative agents have been proposed, including malnutrition, pathogens, immunodeficiencies, mites, fungus, pesticides, and electromagnetic radiation (EMR).

In October 2011, a review study was published by the Indian government’s Ministry of Environment and Forests that looked at 919 peer-reviewed scientific studies that investigated the impact of electromotive force (EMF) on birds, bees, humans, animals/wildlife and plants. Six articles on bees claimed to find evidence for negative side effects related to the exposure of EMF radiation. One experiment noted that when a mobile phone was kept in a beehive, worker bees stopped coming to the hive after ten days. The same study found a drastic decrease in the egg production of queen bees when a mobile phone was present. The authors concluded that “Existing literature shows that EMRs are interfering with the biological systems in more ways than one.” They recommended recognizing EMF as a pollutant.

In early October 2011, millions of honey bees died in the area of Brevard County, Florida. The case has baffled experts because the bees appear to have been poisoned. The bodies do not resemble any recorded examples of colony collapse disorder. It cannot be determined exactly what killed the colonies, but as many as 12 million bees from 800 hives in Brevard County, on central Florida’s Atlantic coast died during a seven day span. The bee carcasses show signs of pesticide poising and the case is being investigated as a possible crime. In an interesting coincidence, county officials sprayed mosquito-killing pesticide from the air in the week prior to the deaths. They said the poison dissipates quickly and should not have harmed the bees. The colonies are being tested to determine the exact cause of death, but no official information has been released.

As you can tell, I survived the get-together. It actually wasn't as bad as I expected and was overall a good party! Who would have guessed?

Coffee on the patio this morning. Fresh baked peanut butter chocolate cookies to go along with it, OK?

Monday Mystery Time...!

Today is not only Labor Day, but it is also our annual family get-together.

If it were left up to me, we wouldn't be having this reunion, but Mom really likes to have it. I have to figure that given her age, what she wants I need to make happen.
After all, I figure I can put up with this group for one day a year!

Now, on to today's mystery! This is another one from here in the U.S., which is good for us!

Berkeley Mystery Walls

There is a bizarre set of ancient walls that exist in the hills along the East Bay of San Francisco. Little has been written about the walls and their origin. The walls are constructed from closely fit basalt boulders, which serve as the foundation of the structures. The rocks are deeply embedded in the soil and weigh up to 1 ton. The walls extend for many miles along the hill crests from Berkeley to Milpitas and beyond, even all the way to San Jose, which is located 50 miles south. Some of the walls have been destroyed over the years, but large stretches still exist. In some places, the walls twist and turn abruptly and climb large hills. However, they don’t appear to enclose anything or serve a practical purpose.

The walls surround mountains and extend to Mt. Diablo, where people have discovered a strange stone circle that is 30 feet (9.1 meters) in diameter. The best preserved sections of the walls can be found on Monument Peak, which is east of Milpitas, California. In some places the walls have been known to reach the height of 6 feet (1.8 meters) and the width of 3 feet (0.9 meters). In one location the walls form a spiral that is 200 feet (60.9 meters) wide and circles into a boulder. The construction looks old, but no research has been done to determine their precise age. Before Europeans arrived in San Francisco Bay, the Ohlone Indians populated the region, but they didn’t use stone construction.

To the west of San Francisco Bay, there is another rock wall anomaly in Point Reyes that has drawn some attention. It consists of over 400 carefully laid stones that bisect the Tomales Point peninsula. It is currently unclear who created the Berkeley mystery walls, but some feel the structures were used as a defensive stronghold or line between Indian tribes. In 1904, UC-Berkeley professor John Fryer suggested that the walls were made by migrant Chinese, who traveled to California before the Europeans. Some specialists have noted that the walls look similar to other ancient structures found in rural Massachusetts, Vermont, and Maine. Some sections of the Berkeley mystery walls have been torn apart by acorns that fell within cracks, sprouted and became mature trees, and then died and decayed, which indicates the structures have been around for a long time.

Well, that's all I have for today! Guess I better go get ready for the "company!" Wonder why the majority of these folks only show up when there is free food or presents? Now there is a modern mystery for ya!

At least my Baby Sis will be here, so I'll have someone I can carry on a grown-up conversation with!

Coffee on the patio this morning. If you want some cookies, better grab them now before the hoard gets here!

Another Fun Sunday...!

I know how we all look forward to the Sunday Funnies.

Believe it or not, Buddy likes to watch the screen and chase the figures as they move! If I could keep him off the keyboard, I wouldn't mind! I get some crazy garbage on the screen when he walks back and forth across the keys, believe me!

It's been raining pretty good here and has cooled down all the way to the low 80's. Pretty nice for a change!



I think we have time for just one more, don't you agree?



I hope you all have a very good day today and that you enjoyed the 'toons!

Coffee in the kitchen this morning. I'm in the mood for some lemon pie, ya know?

I Must Apologize...!

I decided that I owe a serious "I'm sorry" to all the new followers in our group!

I should have taken the time long before now to welcome each and every person that is a follower here at the Hermit's house...especially the most recent ones! Never in my wildest imagination did I think I would have added so many new friends when I started this blog! My first post was back on November 7, 2007. Can you believe it? This blog has lasted longer than any of my marriages, but that's another story for another day!

By the way, I have a couple of new pictures of the "roomie" to share! Sorry he was asleep, but he only has two speeds...running flat out and sound asleep!

Just one more!

Again, thanks in a very big way for all of you that make my day so much better just by being a follower and for coming by each and every day! I truly appreciate it!

Coffee on the patio this morning, if that's OK. Since it's pretty warm out on the patio, I have iced tea, if you'd rather have it!