Category: random

As settlers continued to arrive along the North Coast of California and move in on what had been traditionally Indian lands, trouble when from being jus’ violent confrontations on the local front, to the creation of legal proceedings. This of course left the Native population at a serious disadvantage.

In April 1849, the Alta California, a San Francisco newspaper, wrote that the miners realized “it will be absolutely necessary to exterminate the savages before they can labor much longer in the mines with security.” Less than three years later, the newspaper declared the native peoples “must fade before the Saxon race as the cloud in the west before the light and heat of a greater power.” 

The Alta California was owned and edited by Edward Kemble and Edward Gilbert, and began as a weekly in January 1849, becoming the city’s first daily paper in January 1850. In 1867, Mark Twain sent his letters from his tour of the Holy Land to the paper, letters which were later republished as “The Innocents Abroad.”  The paper ceased publication in 1891.

By 1851, the federal government appointed three commissioners to negotiate treaties with the California Indians. By the end of the year, 18 treaties had been negotiated with 139 tribes. 

These treaties set aside 7,488 acres of land strictly for Indian use and amounted to a third of California. During the first two months of 1852, the California Legislature discussed the treaties and concluded the agreements “committed an error in assigning large portions of the richest mineral and agricultural lands to the Indians, who did not appreciate the land’s value.” 

The Legislature instructed the U.S. senators from California to oppose ratification of the treaties and called for the federal government to remove Indians from the state as they had done in other states. President Millard Fillmore submitted the 18 California treaties to the U.S. Senate for ratification. 

The California senators were recognized, and the Senate went into secret session to discuss the treaties. The Senate failed to ratify the treaties during the session, and ordered them placed in secret files, where they remained until 1905. 

Hard to imagine the Senate keeping such secrets.

Reno  2011 — A Reno soldier was found dead in his barracks room at Fort Carson, Colorado.  Army officials say they discovered Sgt. Jacob Sitko’s body on August 13th.

Post officials launched a full investigation into the soldier’s death. So far they have not released any information discovered during their investigation.

Sitko was returned to the Reno Tahoe International Airport, August 22, where he was met and escorted by the Nevada Patriot Guard. His funeral services were handled by Walton’s Funeral Home, 875 West Second Street, Reno.

As a kid I loved to watch the TV program, “Kids Say the Darndest Things,” with Art Linkletter. This was back when it came on in the afternoon.

One afternoon, I told Mom, “I’m going to be on that show one day!”

“Really,” she said in a factual tone of voice.

“And I plan to say something really stupid, too,” I responded.

“That,” she shot back, “I can believe, Tommy.”

I wonder what she meant by that?

Reno 2011 — A sociology researcher says Tea Party voters are more likely than other voters to fear change and harbor negative attitudes toward immigrants. The study, called “Cultures of the Tea Party,” is being presented in Las Vegas at the American Sociological Association’s annual meeting.

Of course the key word, “illegal,” is left out of those supposed “negative attitudes.”  I don’t even have to wonder why, either.   

Sociology Professor Andrew Perrin of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill is the lead author of the study. He says researchers noted voters who felt favorably toward the Tea Party movement also valued deference to authority and libertarianism saying they told  researchers they felt “things are changing too fast.”   

Perrin fails to mention the fact these “changes,” are the side stepping of the U.S. Constitution by creating mandatory national health care, appointing Executive Branch Czars and bailing out privately held companies. And as for “deference to authority,” it’s the Tea Party movement which refuses to compromise — and that is anything but deference.

The findings are based on a telephone poll of registered voters in North Carolina and Tennessee conducted last year. The researchers also conducted interviews at a Tea Party rally in North Carolina.

It’s obvious that anyone can draw any sort of conclusion from a few telephone conversations and attending a single rally somewhere — especially when editing the data to make it fit one’s premise. I jus’ hope Perrin printed his study on toilet paper, so it’s easy to use.

It was Mrs. Valeria Damm who first introduced me to Laura Ingalls-Wilder and “Little House on the Praire.” When I say “me,” I actually mean the entire third grade class she was reading the book too.

Later on, my sister Deirdre received the book and as soon as I saw that she had finished it, I grabbed it up and spent the next couple of days reading it. I liked the book so much that I finally got the entire set and I read most of the series to my son, Kyle.

Now, I know about the stories that claim Wilder’s daughter, Rose, actually penned the series. I don’t care about the rumors or to even speculate on this.

What I do care about are the simple sentences and the small words used in the stories, which endear these books to generation after generation of readers. It’s these two qualities that I decided to emulate as I searched to creat my own personal style of writing.

While stationed at Brooks Air Force Base for technical school, I decided to go buy some postcards to send to family and friends. I also needed to buy some stamps since I forgot to get some at the base post office before they closed.

After finding about a dozen postcards, I headed to the downtown post office, where I stood in line. What makes this story different is the fact that when around folks with “southern accents,” I tend to pick up their “twang.”

As I stepped up to the window and asked for a book of stamps, I couldn’t help but lilt a little Texan. The woman didn’t seem to notice until I took the book of stamps and stuck them in my back pocket.

“You ain’t from ’round here?” she asked.

A little surprised, I answered, “No, I’m not. Why?”

“No one put stamps in their back pocket,” she stated, “‘cuz they’d stick together.”

“Oh, thank you,” I responded as I pulled them from my pants and placed them in my shirt pocket.

As I headed for the door, I overheard her say to one of her co-workers, “Bless his heart.”

I later learned that was a short southern prayer for: “Dear Lord, Please look out for the person as he’s either stupid, lacks common sense or both. Amen”

“And we have splash down!” some news reporter would exclaim as the capsule dropped into the sea and bobbed about, waiting for the signal from the swimmer that it was okay to open the capsules hatch. If it was opened to soon the craft would sink.

About that swimmer: Not once has the Navy sent a man out to greet the awaiting astronauts. It has always been an Air Force Pararescueman.

During the first splash down of a U.S space capsule some reporter said the swimmer was Navy. It’s was an easy mistake to make after seeing the swimmer jump from a Navy Helicopter.

But the Air Force’s top brass was so offended by the slight they ordered the letters, “PJ,” stenciled on the back of the swimmers headgear to identify him. Too bad the top brass never got around to telling the media that “PJ,” stands for Pararescue Jumper.

As for Apollo 9, its crew consisted of Commander Jim McDivitt, Command Module Pilot David Scott, and Lunar Module Pilot Rusty Schweickart. After launching March 3, 1969, they spent ten days in orbit.

There was always that point in the re-entry process of a space capsule where the news reporter would say, “The capsule has entered the radio blackout zone.” It was spoken with some amount of dread in their voice.

These silences are also known as ionization blackouts, or reentry blackouts. These are caused by an envelope of ionized air around the capsule, created by the heat from the friction of the craft against the atmosphere.

It’s true that for about three minutes, the Apollo capsule would be completely out of contact with ground communication. It had to be the longest three minutes in the lives of both those on the ground and those in the capsule.

Imagine the relief — seeing all three parachutes opened, above the capsule.

One of my favorite news reporters was a guy by the name of Jules Bergman. He worked for ABC News and covered NASA’s Apollo space program for as long as I can remember.

What I liked about his reporting of the rocket launches and such were the various ways he would explain what was happening and what would happen in the near future with the rocket, capsule and the astronauts. He used various ways of demonstrating stuff – either by drawings or by models.

I tried to duplicate what I saw on TV.

Bergman made the complexity of every mission easy to understand. That’s because he often took part in the same training and simulations the astronauts did.

He later covered the missions of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s unmanned space probes, notably the Viking  and Voyager programs. He also covered the Space Shuttle program from its first flight through the 1986 Challenger disaster.

Jules Bergman passed away in 1987.

A group of animal activists presented Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval’s office with a petition of 15,000 signatures asking him to delay Nevada’s first ever bear hunt. However NoBearHuntNV.org was met by the Governor’s staff as they claimed he was in Homewood, California for the 15th Annual Lake Tahoe Summit.

The problem with this is the summit wasn’t scheduled to begin until the following day. So either Sandoval’s staff was misinformed or they used the occasion to dodge the organization and the possible media fiasco it could have caused the Governor.

As for the summit, Sandoval and California’s Governor Jerry Brown signed an agreement allowing the state’s to work together creating water clarity for Lake Tahoe down to 94-feet by the year 2076. Unfortunately, I will not be around to check on their progress by that time – then again neither will Governor’s “Sandocrat,” or “Moonbeam.”

Meanwhile, Nevada’s inaugural bear hunt remains on target.