so the caves are the stars?
Posted: February 19, 2022 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a comment
Christopher Reynolds writing about Pinnacles in the LAT, “Why are so many people heading to California’s newest national park?”
Hello on the Steps of Friendly Greetings
Posted: February 19, 2022 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a commentFrancis Ford Coppola profiled in GQ by Zach Baron:
But he has made a lot of money: first in the film business and then, spectacularly, in the wine business. His second fortune has allowed him to spend most of his time here now, he said, reading things like the 18th-century Chinese novel Dream of the Red Chamber, one of the longest books ever written. “They spend their time inventing poetic names for things,” Coppola told me about the characters in the novel. “For example, if I were to say hello to you, I should have met you on the Steps of Friendly Greetings and greeted you there. And when I say goodbye to you, I should take you into the Pavilion of Parting. And it’s the sort of attitude of making everything in life beautiful and a ritual of a kind. And you can do it! I’ll say goodbye to you in the Pavilion of Parting—you’ll never forget it.”
The Nineties
Posted: February 19, 2022 Filed under: America Since 1945 Leave a comment
This was a decade of full-on metacognition, when people spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about why they were thinking whatever it was they were thinking.
This book was absolutely fantastic, I was riveted. The Nineties ran, for me, from age 11 to age 21. It’s kind of neat to have your life decades synced up to the actual decades, although as Klosterman describes in this book and related interviews, the Nineties might be the last time we think culturally in terms of decades: there’s no reason why we have to.
Chuck Klosterman is seven years older than me (if we believe Wikipedia). Some of his obsessions (Motley Crüe, Guns n Roses), even the idea of manically chasing to their endpoint the meaning of obsessions with a rock band, are just a click or two beyond of my own experience with pop culture, so some of his earlier books, although intriguing, I just never got the activation energy to read. Then I got this text from my buddy Sgro, who I met around 1993 or 94, with whom I spent many summers in the Nineties:
Flattery will get you everywhere bud. Here is Klosterman warming up to baseball in the 90s:
A football game in 1995 bore no resemblance to a football game from 1945. The greatest pro basketball player from the fifties, George Mikan, could not have made an NBA roster in the eighties. The physical and technical evolution of football and basketball had been so dramatic that the past wasn’t comparable with the present. That wasn’t true with baseball. Baseball had evolved less. The aesthetics and physiology were more similar than different, and it was not remotely unreasonable to suggest that the greatest player of all time was still an overweight alcoholic who’d retired in 1935. Part of what made baseball historically compelling was its ability to transcend time. The skills of hitting and pitching were static, frozen in amber. It was the rare game where statistics from the past were comparable with statistics from the present.
And then Brady Anderson hit 50 home runs on one season.
Klosterman points to a pivotal moment in Seinfeld. George, who’s been working with Jerry on a pilot for a show about nothing, is confronted by NBC executive Russell Dalrympe:
“Well, why am I watching it?” asks Dalrymple.
“Because it’s on TV,” replies George.
That was how it was then. You watched what was on TV. A related fact:
The Kirstie Alley vehicle Veronica’s Closet, when packaged in NBC’s Thursday night lineup, could sustain a weekly audience of 24 million viewers. When it was moved to Monday, its viewership dropped to 8 million.
(last week, by comparison, the most popular non-Olympics broadcast show, FBI, got seven and a half million viewers. I don’t think any comedy came close to even 5 million viewers).
On the OJ trial:
It is a hinge moment in U. S. media history, ostensibly for its effect on race and celebrity but mostly for the way it combined tragedy and stupidity on a scope and scale that would foretell America’s deterioration into a superpower that was also a failed state. It was a TV show that proved everything that had always been feared and suspected about the medium of TV.
Within a brilliant riff/exploration on Bill Clinton and the much-imitated (though only once actually said) “I feel your pain”:
Without even trying, [90s Americans] could dissect a broadcast like Clinton’s Oklahoma City address with the acuteness of self-taught media analysts. And within those conditions – within the context of grading a speech’s sincerity as much as feeling that sincerity – Clinton was unstoppable.
This is an error:
Proof:
But, I forgive! I thought Klosterman’s analysis of Garth Brooks/Chris Gaines alone was worth the price of admission.
It’s interesting how we talk about a writer having a voice: Klosterman literally has a distinctive speaking voice (as do Sarah Vowell, David Sedaris, who else?)
Supreme
Posted: February 18, 2022 Filed under: the California Condition Leave a comment
James Jebbia, founder of Supreme, has said that the red box logo with “Supreme” in white Futura Heavy Oblique was taken from the work of Barbara Kruger. Kruger herself commented on this issue on the occasion of a recent lawsuit between Supreme and a women’s street clothing brand that used the Supreme logo to make a “Supreme Bitch” logo that was printed on T-shirts and hats. In response, Kruger said, “What a ridiculous clusterfuck of totally uncool jokers. I make my work about this kind of sadly foolish farce. I’m waiting for all of them to sue me for copyright infringement.
Emphasis mine. Reading up on the streetwear brand whose store is a center of gravity in the Melrose/Fairfax region of LA.
How to skate a 10k
Posted: February 18, 2022 Filed under: sports Leave a commentWe were intrigued by this WSJ story:
He Broke Every Record. Then He Told His Rivals How to Beat Him.
After Swedish speedskater Nils van der Poel took Olympic gold in the 5,000 and 10,000 meters, he published his entire training plans so others could copy it
Nils van der Poel could have easily kept his training program a secret.
No one needed to know about the months of aerobic work, the endless laps of a speedskating oval, or the allowances for beer, ice cream, and the odd skydive. The eccentric 25-year old from Sweden could have collected his two Olympic gold medals and quietly left Beijing.
Instead, van der Poel did something unthinkable in a sport where every marginal gain is guarded like a state secret: the double Olympic champion posted his entire training program online, all 62 pages of it. It was the speedskating equivalent of Bill Belichick publishing his playbook the day after the Super Bowl.
Sure enough, you can follow the link to Nils van der Poel’s thoughts on training and detailed training plan.
On the mental aspects:
The media:
This round of Olympics seemed bleak to us, the women’s figure skating finals in particular were like a horrible accident we couldn’t look away from. But this kinda thing is what it’s all about.
He knows that the training manual can’t be for everyone. For the van der Poel method to really work, you not only need the freakish van der Poel lungs and commitment. You might also need the van der Poel touch of crazy.
“I often wished that I would’ve had company,” he writes, “but no one else wanted to join my lifestyle.”
Peabody
Posted: February 17, 2022 Filed under: business Leave a comment
Came across a story about coal company Peabody Energy, and went looking into the founder of the company, Francis S. Peabody. (Is he the Mr. Peabody mentioned in John Prine’s song Paradise? Think so).
There are prominent Peabodys in the history of Massachusetts but this Mr. Peabody was from Chicago.
And how does a coal baron die? He died of a heart attack during a fox hunt on his own estate.
Only a year after Mayslake Hall was completed, Francis Peabody died of a heart attack during a fox hunt on his property. He was 63.
(source for that photo: MichaelBNA on Wikipedia)
Andes
Posted: February 16, 2022 Filed under: food Leave a comment
When I was a kid I loved Andes candies, which I feel like I sometimes got at like Italian or steakhouse type restaurants, and maybe sometimes on holidays. I dreamed they would make something like this, a full-sized candy bar Andes, and didn’t understand why they didn’t. Now, they do. And I have access to them whenever I want at Ralph’s. And I think I’ve bought them like once a year tops. That’s adulthood for you!
Coaches, Super Bowl 56
Posted: February 13, 2022 Filed under: gambling 1 Comment
Vlad in Chico, CA writes:
Heels will you be doing a writeup on the Super Bowl coaches in advance of this year’s Big Game, as you did in the past?
We failed to make the time for a deep dive on Sean McVay of the Rams and Zac Taylor of the Bengals. We note that both coaches are younger than us: McVay is 35 and Taylor is 38. Younger coaches are becoming a phenomenon in the NFL. Taylor used to work for McVay, which is interesting. We can’t find an easy stat for how often former colleagues have coached against each other in the Super Bowl. Mina Kimes would probably know.
In Seth Wickersham’s It’s Better to Be Feared about the Belichick/Brady era Pats, we learn that Belichick gained from his frequent experience in Super Bowls:
With its overwrought introductions and halftime show, the Super Bowl was at least an hour longer than most games. The drawn-out nature of the game his the defensive line hardest, draining the pass rush in the fourth quarter. Belichick had robbed himself of the ability to rotate in fresh legs. He never repeated that mistake again, and he exploited it when opposing coaches committed the same error against him in future Super Bowls.
McVay has Super Bowl experience and is playing at home. Our prediction is the Rams will win decisively, beating the current line of -4, but we’re not betting on it. This is based on vibe speculation, not technical analysis, and here in LA it’s possible my viberead is tainted. We don’t have any information or indications that wouldn’t be priced in. There’s some evidence that homefield advantage can be underestimated systematically in sports betting, but it’s not strong enough to be significant.
Sports betting is not legal in California, although we’ll have an opportunity to change that on the 2022 ballot, if we pass the California Solutions to Homelessness and Mental Health Support Act, which is sponsored by DraftKings. There may even be multiple sports betting propositions on the ballot. We believe the gains here for legalizing the incredibly popular activity of sports gambling and extracting revenue for the state would exceed the social cost in ruined lives from gambling addiction and coarsening of the pure spirit of sport, but we’ll see how the ballots shake out. This feels like a “don’t put law on people if it’s not in their hearts” situation.
Here’s hoping for a great game!
Truckin’
Posted: February 7, 2022 Filed under: America Since 1945 Leave a comment
Until 1980, long-haul truckers were generally employed by regulated companies whose routes and rates had to pass muster with the Interstate Commerce Commission. Under the terms of the 1935 Motor Carrier Act, the ICC kept potential lowball, low-wage competitors out of the market. Drivers were also highly unionized, under a Master Freight Agreement between the Teamsters and close to 1,000 trucking firms. For which reasons, truck driving was a pretty damn good blue-collar job, with decent pay, livable hours, and ample benefits.
The Motor Carrier Act of 1980 changed all that, scrapping the rules of the 1935 act so that startups, charging far less than the pre-1980 rates and paying their drivers far less as well, flooded the market. Facing that competition, established companies dropped their rates and pay scales, too. By 1998, drivers were making between 30 percent and 40 percent less than their pre-1980 predecessors had made. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, following the steep decline in wages in the decades after the 1980 deregulation, trucker income has flatlined for the past 20 years.
Why Trucking Can’t Deliver The Goods by Harold Meyerson in Prospect. If I recall right from The Box, the regulation of trucking kept Malcolm Mclean from expanding his routes, which led him to the idea of putting containers on barges and sending them by sea to Houston, thus inventing containerization, which changed the world. Wal-Mart, Apple, the decline of American manufacturing, all of this emerged from how containerization accelerated the ability to ship stuff fast and cheap all over the world.
In an editorial shortly after his death, Baltimore Sun stated that “he ranks next to Robert Fulton as the greatest revolutionary in the history of maritime trade.” Forbes Magazine called McLean “one of the few men who changed the world.”
On the morning of McLean’s funeral, container ships around the world blew their whistles in his honor.
Because this change happened in 1980, and it’s a deregulation, I assumed it was a Reagan thing, but no. Jimmy Carter signed it (and Ted Kennedy was involved). President Carter at the time:
This is historic legislation. It will remove 45 years of excessive and inflationary Government restrictions and redtape. It will have a powerful anti-inflationary effect, reducing consumer costs by as much as $8 billion each year. And by ending wasteful practices, it will conserve annually hundreds of millions of gallons of precious fuel.
It was Carter and Harley Staggers, D-WV, who brought on railway deregulation around the same time. Staggers was ahead of his time on civil rights, and behind the time on other issues:
In 1973, Staggers heard on the radio the John Lennon song “Working Class Hero” — which includes the lines “‘Til you’re so fucking crazy you can’t follow their rules” and “But you’re still fucking peasants as far as I can see” — on WGTB and lodged a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The manager of the station, Ken Sleeman, faced a year in prison and a $10,000 fine, but defended his decision to play the song saying, “The People of Washington, DC are sophisticated enough to accept the occasional four-letter word in context, and not become sexually aroused, offended, or upset.” The charges were dropped
Danielle Steel
Posted: February 7, 2022 Filed under: writing Leave a commentSteel typically writes for 20–22 hours a day when working on a book, she says. Sometimes, she goes past the 24-hour mark. Someone who works for her will often put a plate of food on her desk that she’ll realize she’s eaten only when she looks over and notices the plate is empty, she says.
Amazing. “Danielle Steel on Starting Her Day Off with a Virgin Mojito” by Lane Florsheim in WSJ.
Scrapbasket
Posted: February 6, 2022 Filed under: America Since 1945 Leave a comment
Not a type you see too much anymore>
from James L. Haley’s Passionate Nation: The Epic History of Texas.
Off-gassing from my lead acid batteries has gotten real bad. Losing the war on corrosion.
Ad in the LRB.
Drawing impression from the Pro Bull Riding finals back in November.
Wild book cover. Easy to fall into the delusion that the present is the craziest period in American history. Far from it.
Just an LA scene I liked.
from Mark Twain’s Roughing It.
Are these songs in conversation? Internet offers no answer. I keep seeing Caroline Polachek’s name (ex. Jia Tolentino’s Instagram, on the marquee in Lawrence, KS, on concert festival posters).
from Gemma Sieff’s review of Literary Alchemist: The Writing Life of Evan S. Connell, by Steve Paul, in Harper’s.
Stewart Brand talking to Tyler Cowen.
To me the best style is no style.
Got a lot from Chuck Klosterman on Longform podcast.
Desert scene in winter.
Economist Digest
Posted: February 5, 2022 Filed under: news Leave a commentMr DeSantis is using Florida as a peninsular podium to advertise his policies. In his proposed $100bn budget, he is pushing a special police force to oversee state elections, which he calls “an election integrity unit”, and wants to make it easier to penalise companies that “facilitate illegal immigration” to Florida. He envisages bonuses for police officers who move to Florida, and wants to create a state militia of volunteers that could work with the National Guard in emergencies.
A report from the Mojave:
Since the 1980s the population [of desert tortoises] has declined by about 90%. Michael Vamstad, a wildlife ecologist at the park, describes what is happening as “thirty to three”: where once researchers would count 30 or more tortoises per square kilometre, now they count three.
A tortoise can store a quart of water for about a year.
And: a failed coup attempt in Guinea-Bissau.
People linked to the trade have tried to [overthrow the gov’t] several times in the past in order to control or protect a cocaine route linking South America to Europe.
method
Posted: February 5, 2022 Filed under: actors, Hemingway, writing, writing advice from other people Leave a commentIn one famous Brando origin story, Adler asked her students to pretend to be chickens as an atomic bomb drops. While everyone else was flapping in a panic, Brando peaceably squatted down. “I’m laying an egg,” he told Adler. “What does a chicken know of bombs?”
reading Alexandra Schwartz on Isaac Butler’s book about method acting in The New Yorker. A shifting concept, perhaps we can agree?
“the Method” is describes a set of techniques, practices, and concepts for helping actors achieve emotional life and truth in their performances. The Method is based on the teachings of Stanislavski, developed at the Moscow Art Theater, interpreted in the United States by teachers like Lee Strasburg, Stella Adler, and Sanford Meisner and by actors like Marlon Brando and Marilyn Monroe.
Defining things is hard, I’m already quibbling with myself!
Maybe Wikipedia’s is better, Wikipedia really is a miracle, isn’t it folks? Sainthood for Jimmy Wales.
Some of what the Method seems to get at, like chunks of reality, precision of memory, the blend of emotional and physical experience, reminded me of Hemingway on focusing as specifically as possible on the connection of sensation to specific detail. What did you feel, what exactly made you feel it in the moment?
MICE: How can a writer train himself?
Y.C.: Watch what happens today. If we get into a fish see exact it is that everyone does. If you get a kick out of it while he is jumping remember back until you see exactly what the action was that gave you that emotion. Whether it was the rising of the line from the water and the way it tightened like a fiddle string until drops started from it, or the way he smashed and threw water when he jumped. Remember what the noises were and what was said. Find what gave you the emotion, what the action was that gave you the excitement. Then write it down making it clear so the reader will see it too and have the same feeling you had. Thatʼs a five finger exercise.
…
Y.C.: Listen now. When people talk listen completely. Donʼt be thinking what youʼre going to say. Most people never listen. Nor do they observe. You should be able to go into a room and when you come out know everything that you saw there and not only that. If that room gave you any feeling you should know exactly what it was that gave you that feeling. Try that for practice. When youʼre in town stand outside the theatre and see how people differ in the way they get out of taxis or motor cars. There are a thousand ways to practice. And always think of other people.
more on that.
amazing thing to put in your news article
Posted: February 1, 2022 Filed under: America Since 1945 Leave a comment
That’s from Bloomberg, article headlined: Anxiety Over Beef Shortages Reaches Fever Pitch in Golden Corral Fistfight, and subheadlined When a fistfight broke out at the chain, initial reports attributed it to steak shortages
The gist seems to be that: there was a widely shared on social media video showing a fight at a buffet restaurant in Bensalem, PA (Bloomberg says “Bansalem”). In the video someone can be heard saying something about steaks. Tt was then incorrectly inferred by people who didn’t give enough study to the facts of the incident that the fight was about a shortage of steaks at the buffet. But if I read between the lines of the article, there may have been plenty of steaks, the fight was unrelated?
I only call attention to the weirdness of “the media” and “news” in 2022. As to the true origins of this incident, I’ll defer to Evan S. Connell’s epigraph for his Son of the Morning Star:
Ginevra de’ Benci
Posted: January 30, 2022 Filed under: art history Leave a comment
She spent her later life in self imposed exile, trying to recover from illness and an ill fated love affair. She died in 1521 aged 63 or 64, likely from this unknown illness.
Must have a look at that next time in Washington. How did it end up in Washington? Purchased in the 17th century by a prince of Lichtenstein, then bought from Prince Franz Josef II after World War II.
Have been reading about Leonardo, Machiavelli, and Cesar Borgia in The Artist, the Philosopher, and the Warrior, by Paul Strathern, on the recommendation of Chris Blattman. This book is great, really clarifying the lives and circumstances of these characters.
(source).
Cat care practices of the late 1950s-early 1960s, derived from evidence in songs
Posted: January 27, 2022 Filed under: cats 1 CommentSome day maybe Fred will win the fight
Then the cat will stay out for the night.
And when you finish doin’ that
Bring in the dog and put out the cat
Yakety yak (Don’t talk back)
from these clues I glean that in the late 1950s/early 1960s, it was common to make your cat sleep outside.
I don’t think that’s generally the accepted practice today. Moreover, in the Flintstones theme in particular, it seems like it was already a challenge to keep a cat outside.
Now, I can anticipate the criticism: couldn’t it be that the Flintstones theme is reflecting the rules of prehistory, and not the 1960s? I’d argue that if you review the Flintstones, and consider some details like co-habitation with dinosaurs, strict accuracy to prehistory was not a priority, in fact the show reflects the values of the time of its creation more than an imagined prehistory.
All of us humans, it seems to me, are like Fred, and we “lost the fight” to keep cats outside.
We’re told by scholars that dogs have been domesticated anywhere from 5,000 to 20,000 years longer than cats have been. Our co-evolution with cats is ongoing.
I wonder how cats convinced us they could stay inside. My cat is def not staying outside for the night (except for mysterious expeditions on cat business).
Did sugar ruin us?
Posted: January 26, 2022 Filed under: food, politics Leave a commentHere’s an excerpt from On The House, the memoir by former Speaker of the House of Representatives, John Boehner:
Cheers to this tweet for calling my attention to this, via Marginal Revolution. I got Boehner’s book and read it, and found it very illuminating in many ways (his harshest words are for Ted Cruz).
This is from The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism, by Edward E. Baptist:
The creation of the first slavery complex, with its “drug foods” – sugar, tobacco, tea, coffee, and chocolate – stimulated Western Europe’s desire to seek out and consume still more resources. The massive Atlantic slave trade required ships, trade commodities, and new structures of credit, and growth spilled over into sectors less directly linked to sugar. Many in Western Europe began to work longer hours in order to get new commodities, in what is sometimes called an eighteenth-century “Industrious Revolution.”
(boldface mine). Other scholars have written about the connection of sugar to capitalism, power, etc.
What if sugar has all of our balls in a vice, to use Boehner’s phrase?
“The brain is dependent on sugar as its main fuel,” says Vera Novak, MD, PhD, an HMS associate professor of medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. “It cannot be without it.” Although the brain needs glucose, too much of this energy source can be a bad thing.
so we learn over here from Harvard Medical School. My wise dentist called my attention to this as we were discussing why TV writers’ rooms are stocked with candy.
What if we’re trapped in a loop of feeding our brains sugar, and our brains getting bigger and trapping us in a sugar addiction loop? What if that’s what’s really driving capitalism, the whole mess we’re in?
Consider the Biblical tale of the garden of Eden. Adam and Eve are chilling happily there, and God asks them but one thing: don’t eat the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. What if, instead of being a metaphor, this was meant literally? God was telling the first people don’t eat too much sugar, or your brains will get too big and you’ll ruin everything?
When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.
This is where it all went wrong. Recall that as punishment for this, Adam is cursed to work:
Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat food from it
all the days of your life.
18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.
19 By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
And as for Eve:
I will make your pains in childbearing very severe;
with painful labor you will give birth to children.
Human labor is indeed very painful, and why? Because our heads/ brains are so big! Compare with a horse or goat, who can drop a baby and then scamper off, nbd.
Maybe humans never should’ve fucked with sugar, and Genesis actually contains a pretty straightforward origin story for the mistake that led to our predicament. Is it possible to observe the very mistake happening in chimps?
from Tao Lin’s blog:
Maybe our whole deal stems from being trapped in a species-wide sugar addiction.
Now that we’re stuck, we should at least get the good stuff!
Dublin Dr. Pepper
Posted: January 25, 2022 Filed under: beverages, Texas Leave a commentThe town is the former home of the world’s oldest Dr Pepper bottling plant (see Dublin Dr Pepper). The plant was for many years the only U.S. source for Dr Pepper made with real cane sugar (from Texas-based Imperial Sugar), instead of less expensive high fructose corn syrup. Contractual requirements limited the plant’s distribution range to a 40-mile (64 km) radius of Dublin, an area encompassing Stephenville, Tolar, Comanche and Hico.
Was looking up some of the towns where various pro bull riding stars are from: Jesse Petri hails from Dublin, TX. My goodness I’d like to try that Dublin Dr. Pepper.
from the Dallas Morning News, March 31, 2017:
Ask for a Dr Pepper, and the response was routine and coy: “We don’t have a knock-off Dr Pepper, but you ought to try our Dublin Original. It’s really good, and I know you’ll love it.”
Kloster said it was a conscious marketing decision to offer customers who loved Dr Pepper a nostalgic product that looked and tasted similar. Even the bottle was packaged with stripes from a retro Dr Pepper color scheme and a “DDP” on the label.
“It got out of hand. We got out there and we pushed the envelope,” Kloster said. “The Dublin Original black cherry was pushing the envelope and was in violation of the agreement.”
boldface mine.
Dr. Pepper Snapple Group has since been consumed by Keurig Dr Pepper. I don’t expect any sense could be talked into the people who think shooting hot water through plastic is a good method of making coffee, but if I can find the time perhaps I’ll reach out to the JAB Group.
What if it turned out life expectancy in Stephenville, Tolar, Comanche and Hico had been 135 years + back in the sugar age?
Endorheic
Posted: January 22, 2022 Filed under: America, water Leave a comment
Reading up on endorheic basins, places where water does not drain out to the ocean, where what rain falls will be retained or evaporated.
An endorheic basin is a drainage basin that normally retains water and allows no outflow to other external bodies of water, such as rivers or oceans, but drainage converges instead into lakes or swamps, permanent or seasonal, that equilibrate through evaporation.
The Valley of Mexico was endorheic, but now drains through artificial canals.
For the real endorheic enthusiast, Australia is the place.
If you find endorheic basins somewhat eerie, as I do, I suggest you don’t even read up on cryptorheic basins, where the water flows out through subterranean karst.
(source for that map)
Landscape with an Episode from the Conquest of America.
Posted: January 21, 2022 Filed under: America Leave a comment
by Jan Mostaert, 1535 or so. (Dutch for “John Most Art”?)
Found that while reading up on Coronado’s expedition.
Upon reaching the top they beheld a landscape unlike anything they had seen before, a vast treeless prairie, as flat as a table, and so became the first Europeans to traverse what later became the Texas Panhandle. Virtually swallowed by the trackless soft grassland, they found it an unnerving experience.
So says James L. Haley in his (excellent, readable) Passionate Nation: The Epic History of Texas, about which I hope to say more when I finish.
This is how the Coronado business got started:
On this thin evidence they set off. Native peoples they came across took the wise strategy of telling them “oh yeah, absolutely, there’s tons of gold and silver, wayyyyyy over that way, super far from here, keep going.”
The expedition was guided by a Native man they called the Turk, who finally admitted he’d deliberately led them into the plains in the hopes they’d all starve and die far away from his people.
At least one member of the expedition, Cervantes, was suspicious of this Turk, and with good reason:
I’d love to read firsthand accounts of the Coronado expedition all day, but unfortunately I’m very busy. You could spend a lifetime working on where, exactly, Quivara was. Some have!
Helytimes 
