#Thomas Penn(Presenter)

[malestarssockedfeet]

[sarkos]

Lilly was a sort of Midwestern ideal type of the Lovecraftian protagonist: born in St. Paul to wealthy parents, he studied chemistry and philosophy from an early age. His undergraduate career at Caltech (1933-1938) almost exactly overlaps the period of the alchemist-Crowleyite John Whiteside Parsons’ GALCIT rocketry program there, and both were chemistry students. (Lilly and Parsons almost certainly met, Caltech not being that big a world in the Thirties, but what happened — or Happened — during that Trail of Cthulhu time slot has managed to go un-recorded in their various biographies.) He entered Dartmouth medical school in 1938, then transferred to Penn where he continued his Lovecraftian development by conducting various medical experiments on himself and writing a forbidden text: a book (this was 1942) called How To Build an Atomic Bomb. He conducted postgraduate work under pioneering biophysicist (and putative Majestic-12 member) Detlev Bronk and at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), doing research for the Air Force — among other things developing early electro-encephalograms and, in 1954, the first sensory deprivation tank. According to his memoirs, he was approached by the CIA to work on such things as animal-activated surveillance and explosives, and (perhaps) on the MK-ULTRA mind-control project. According to Lilly, he refused, nobly insisting that his work remain open for all. He loudly resigned from NIMH in 1958. Having boldly proclaimed his independence from government control, Lilly founded the Communication Research Institute Inc. (CRII) on the island of St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands. CRII was, of course, funded by NASA, the U.S. military, and possibly other shadowy figures. Lilly had become interested in the question of dolphin brains: much like those of humans, cetacean brains are very large in ratio to their bodies and have an even higher density of neurons. Lilly set up dolphin tanks and pools, and began to experiment on dolphins, most notoriously when his dolphin Peter fell for researcher Margaret Lowe Howitt while she tried to teach Peter to speak English. It wasn’t all dolphin grabass in the islands, though: Lilly also dissected and probed the brains of the cetaceans, in between drug experiments (on them and himself) and attempts to decipher dolphin communication by floating next to them in sensory deprivation tanks. James Wade’s terrific 1969 short story “The Deep Ones” provides a fictionalized Lilly in the form of Miskatonic hippie guru Alonzo Waite, and in the form of his opposite number, dolphin researcher Dr. Frederick Wilhelm. Most impressively, it casts the dolphins as one more intermediary between man and Cthulhu, cousin or evolutionary stage of the Deep Ones. Wade mentions the ancient Greek myth that dolphins were pirates turned into beasts by Dionysos, tying it wonderfully into the deeper Mythos truths of Dagon and human-oceanic interbreeding of the Innsmouth sort. Any Fall of Delta Green Handler has a whole mini-campaign just lying there between Wade’s fictions and the CRII’s madness. But it doesn’t end there. Wade doesn’t even bring in Lilly’s involvement in SETI, which (likely again via NASA back channels) wound up connecting Lilly and the CRII with astrophysicist Frank Drake, who considered dolphins a template for alien life on Earth. Lilly presented his dolphin theories at the Green Bank astrophysics conference in 1961 where Drake coined his famous equation for the probability of alien life. He was such a hit that Drake, Lilly, a pre-turtleneck Carl Sagan, and biologist J.B.S. Haldane all made up the “Order of the Dolphin” and wore dolphin lapel pins when they were wearing lapels, which wasn’t often in St. Thomas.

Call of Chicago: John C. Lilly, One-Man Mythos – Pelgrane Press Ltd

[professionalowl]

Actually, while we're shaming people for their 452 unread books, here's a list of unread books of mine of which I own physical copies, attached to the year I obtained them, so that you can all shame me into reading more:

2024: Ways of Being: Animals, Plants, Machines: The Search for a Planetary Intelligence (James Bridle; just started)

2021: Islands of Abandonment: Life in the Post-Human Landscape (Cal Flyn)

2024: Extreme Fabulations: Science Fictions of Life (Steven Shaviro)

2021: The Unreal & The Real Vol. 1: Where on Earth (Ursula K. Le Guin)

2023: A Study in Scarlet (Arthur Conan Doyle)

2023: Ritual: How Seemingly Senseless Acts Make Life Worth Living (Dmitri Xygalatas)

2023: Vibrant Matter: A political ecology of things (Jane Bennett)

2023: The History of Magic: From Alchemy to Witchcraft, from the Ice Age to the Present (Chris Gosden)

2018: Ways of Seeing (John Berger)

2022: An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us (Ed Yong)

2020: Owls of the Eastern Ice: The Quest to Find and Save the World's Largest Owl (Jonathan C. Slaught)

2023: My Life in Sea Creatures (Sabrina Imbler)

2020: The Bird Way: A New Look at How Birds Talk, Work, Play, Parent, and Think (Jennifer Ackerman)

2023: Birds and Us: A 12,000-Year History, from Cave Art to Conservation (Tim Birkhead)

2020: Rebirding: Restoring Britain's Wildlife (Benedict Macdonald)

2022: The Song of the Cell: An Exploration of Medicine and the New Human (Siddhartha Mukherjee)

2022: An Anthropologist on Mars (Oliver Sacks)

2021: Sex, Botany & Empire: The Story of Carl Linnaeus and Joseph Banks (Patricia Fara)

2023: At The Mountains of Madness (H.P. Lovecraft)

2019: Invisible Cities (Italo Calvino; I have been trying to finish this forever and am so, so close)

2023: Brian Boru and the Battle of Clontarf (Sean Duffy)

2021: What is History, Now? How the past and present speak to each other (Helen Carr and Suzannah Lipscomb; essay collection, half-read)

2020: Winter King: The Dawn of Tudor England (Thomas Penn)

2022: Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body, and Primitive Accumulation (Silvia Federici)

2020: Black Spartacus: The Epic Life of Touissant Louverture (Sudhir Hazareesingh; half-read)

2019: The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper (Hallie Rubenhold; 3/4 read)

2022: Lenin on the Train (Catherine Merridale)

2020: October: The Story of the Russian Revolution (China Miéville)

2019: The Villa, the Lake, the Meeting: Wannsee and the Final Solution (Mark Roseman)

2019: Heimat: A German Family Album (Nora Krug)

2018: Maus I: My Father Bleeds History (Art Spiegelman)

2020: Running in the Family (Michael Ondaatje)

2022: Wide Sargasso Sea (Jean Rhys; also never technically "finished" Jane Eyre, but I did my time, damn you)

2023: Time Shelter (Georgi Gospodinov)

2019: Our Man in Havana (Graham Greene; started, left unfinished)

2019: The Spy Who Came In From The Cold (John le Carré)

2021: Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race (Reni Eddo-Lodge; half-read)

2017: Rebel Without Applause (Lemn Sissay)

2022: The Metamorphosis, and Other Stories (Franz Kafka)

2011?: The Complete Cosmicomics (Italo Calvino; vaguely remember reading these when I was maybe 7 and liking them, but I have forgotten their content)

2022: Free: Coming of Age at the End of History (Lea Ypi)

2021: Fairy and Folk Tales of Ireland (W.B. Yates)

Some of these are degree-related, some not; some harken back to bygone areas of interest and some persist yet; some were obtained willingly and some thrust upon me without fanfare. I think there are also some I've left at college, but I'm not sure I was actually intending to read any of them - I know one is an old copy of Structural Anthropology by Claude Levi-Strauss that Dad picked up for me secondhand, which I...don't intend to torment myself with. Reading about Tom Huffman's cognitive-structural theory of Great Zimbabwe almost finished me off and remains to date the only overdue essay I intend to never finish, mostly because the professor let me get away with abandoning it.

There are also library books, mostly dissertation-oriented, from which you can tell that the cognitive archaeologists who live in my walls finally fucking Got me:

The Rise of Homo sapiens: The Evolution of Modern Thinking (Thomas Wynn & Fred Coolidge)

The Material Origin of Numbers: Insights from the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East (Karenleigh A. Overmann)

Archaeological Situations: Archaeological Theory from the Inside-Out (Gavin Lucas)

And, finally, some I've actually finished recently ("recently" being "within the past year"):

The Body Fantastic (Frank Gonzalo-Crussi, solid 6/10 essay collection about a selection of body parts, just finished earlier)

An Entertainment for Angels: Electricity in the Enlightenment (Patricia Fara, also a solid 6/10, fun read but nothing special)

Babel: An Arcane History (R.F. Kuang, 8/10, didactic (sometimes necessary) but effective; magic system was cool and a clever metaphor)

The Sign of Four (A.C. Doyle, 2/10 really racist and for what)

Dr. Space Junk vs. the Universe: Archaeology and the Future (Alice Gorman, 8/10, I love you Dr. Space Junk)

In Search of Us: Adventures in Anthropology (Lucy Moore, 8/10, I respect some of these people slightly more now)

The Dispossessed (Ursula K. Le Guin, 9/10 got my ass)

The Hound of the Baskervilles (A.C. Doyle, 7/10 themez 👍)

[blackswaneuroparedux]

History is a set of skills rather than a narrative.

- Hilary Mantel

Growing up I was not a huge fan of the Tudor Age as I was of other historical ages such as the as Ancient Classical world or modern history. I don’t know why that was exactly. Perhaps it was the way history was taught at school. With the Tudor Age it was: divorced, beheaded, died; divorced, beheaded, survived. Those six words, resonanted with almost anyone who went to school in Britain, to become shorthand for the extraordinary story of Henry VIII and his six wives. But I credit Hilary Mantel for pulling me back into that crucial period in Britain’s history to what it is today. As much as the curmudgeonly Cambridge historian, David Starkey, was annoyed by historicital value of Hilary Mantel’s writings (claims made by her fans not her), it was she who led me to his historical works. And I love David Starkey. 

The story of Henry VIII and his six wives is one of the most potent historical brands in our collective consciousness, but its combination of outrageous drama with intense familiarity means it can morph all too easily into soap opera.

It almost felt there was nothing new to say about the period. And, for a long time, there wasn’t. Then, in 2009, Hilary Mantel published Wolf Hall, the first volume of a trilogy set in the 1500s. But instead of treading well-worn ground – Henry VIII’s shenanigans and the sad yet ultimately one-dimensional stories of his six spouses – Mantel offered something new: an intricate look at the extraordinary rise of Thomas Cromwell, from boy soldier to one of Henry’s most trusted advisors. 

Hilary Mantel had this ability to get deep within the minds of her subjects, capturing the essence of a voice in a way that somehow profoundly intertwined a character with you as you read. And really, she wasn’t writing about royalty in the way that other historical fiction authors had in the past: she was writing about the people behind the figureheads, the power struggles, the calculations of history, grief, love, anger, revenge – all themes that resonate throughout the ages. She wrote with feeling, but also with a precision, clarity, and wit that was unparalleled.

It’s worth recalling that, before Mantel, Thomas Cromwell barely inhabited the public imagination: if recognised at all, he was often conflated with his distant descendant Oliver Cromwell. Today, he has supplanted in our imagination that “man for all seasons” Thomas More, in whose conviction and execution for treason Cromwell himself played a key role.

Mantel said that, before she wrote Wolf Hall, Thomas Cromwell was “under-imagined”. She’s entirely right but, strangely, I think the same has also been true of the period’s marquee names. Because we know in advance exactly how the plot will unfold, we tend to overlook its strangeness, its horror, its unpredictability, its astonishing complexity. Hilary Mantel changed all that.

Readers and critics alike found Mantel’s approach an original and welcome addition to Tudor fiction, as it offered something genuinely different and unfamiliar. Historian Thomas Penn, author of Winter King: The Dawn of Tudor England, says that while ‘the Tudors have always been box-office… Hilary Mantel’s novels have allowed people to imagine them in a new light’. 

Mantel had a lyrical sense of the irreducible strangeness of the world, with its vivid moments of beauty and threat, but this was never removed from her understanding of the moral imperatives of our shared responsibilities. She was never a neutral observer of the ebb and flow of history.

It is striking that in the many well deserved obituaries of Hilary Mantel they all pay tribute to her ability to transport the reader to another time, but they often fail to appreciate that Mantel never treated history as a set. Rather, the past in her novels is alive, a place with real implications for the present. What I mean to say is that Mantel approached her subjects not only as a novelist, but also as a historian - demanding of the past not merely scenery but also meaning, an argument, something that might help us explain who we are today.

The trilogy composed of Wolf Hall (2009), Bring Up the Bodies (2012), and The Mirror and the Light (2020) concerns Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII’s chief advisor from the early 1530s until his execution in 1540. He was also the great-great-granduncle of Oliver Cromwell. For a long time, historians thought of Cromwell as a goon, Henry’s henchman who battered down the doors of English monasteries and engineered executions of the king’s enemies (until he himself fell beneath the axe).

But in later works of history, especially those by the doyenne of Tudor period history, the historian Sir Geoffrey Elton, Thomas Cromwell came to be seen as a more sophisticated operator, someone who fundamentally rethought the English monarchy and, in a certain sense, invented the modern state with all its peculiarities. When Henry wanted a divorce from his first wife, the Spanish princess Catherine of Aragon, his chief minister Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, at the time Cromwell’s patron, could not provide it. Cromwell could. Working through parliament, he severed England’s ties to the Vatican and, a firm proponent of the Reformation, set about creating a Protestant Church of England under the monarch. In so doing he affirmed royal supremacy in government while building new bureaucracies to oversee the Church and the revenues it brought to state coffers. Here, goes the argument, are the origins of our modern state, in Henry’s need for an heir and Cromwell’s desire to reform the Church.

This is the argument of Mantel’s trilogy, too. Following the course of Cromwell’s life, she gives us a shoulder perch to his rise from blacksmith’s son to European mercenary to lawyer to member of the privy council to, briefly, Earl of Essex. He’s a commoner, though, which the lords and ladies of court never once let him forget. His use to the king must be distinctive, then: his command of numbers, his talent for getting people to do what Henry wants. And, yes, his willingness to plunder the riches of the Church - its fattened abbeys and monasteries - to keep the state solvent.

Sinister is one word for Cromwell. Mantel doesn’t deny it. While he needs the Boleyns to force the break with Rome, he is happy to later take revenge against them for their role in Wolsey’s downfall. Of Anne, he thinks to himself, “If need be, I can separate you from history.” With an equal coolness, he soon separates her from her head. There’s something positively Hegelian about Cromwell’s perspective. Indeed, the philosopher once wrote of how great men of history “fall off like empty hulls from the kernel” after “their objective is attained.”

But Mantel is not Hegel. It doesn’t do justice to her empathy. It’s not only that she is arguing that the modern state emerged from the Tudor court, it is also that it emerged from the very particular constellation of individuals and their peculiar desires. It’s one thing to say Cromwell invented the modern state by codifying England’s territorial sovereignty, rationalising government through bureaucracy, and elevating parliament’s legislative role. It’s another to understand his grief at Wolsey’s demise, to comprehend his rage against the Boleyns, to feel his anxiety that if he cannot satisfy Henry’s whims, he may be next on the scaffold. Mantel has a deep sense of the past, the ability “to feel history through your skin,” as she once put it.

Thus, we care about Thomas Cromwell and what happens to him not only because Mantel portrays him in such vivid detail, but also because we sense the world-historical purpose he drags behind him. We sense that there is a reason to his actions that continue to shape the world we inhabit today. And after decades of neoliberal reforms that have lopped off the wings of the state, we have need today for figures like Thomas Cromwell who perceived in the state its vast human potential.

This is what the best historians do. It’s a way of thinking about the past that Walter Benjamin described, while on the run from the Nazis, in ‘Theses on the Philosophy of History’ (1940). Today, some still consider history to be nothing more than the dry recitation of facts - “telling the sequence of events like the beads of a rosary,” in his withering formulation. Benjamin instead advocated for a kind of historical writing that would “blast open the continuum of history,” one that would put the present in “constellation” with earlier eras in the knowledge that “even the dead will not be safe.” It’s writing history with fire. I can agree with the spirit if not quite the practice. But so often those who try it do it with clumsily and with ideological baggage. Mantel painted her prose with a light brush.

Hilary Mantel’s genius was that she knew instinctively where a historian couldn’t go, and consequently where she, as a novelist, could. This is just one of the reasons why she was able to summon up a fully realised world, and why the Wolf Hall trilogy is one of the great fictional achievements of our modern age.

[yatescountyhistorycenter]

Written in stoneware: The potteries of Summersite

By Jonathan Monfiletto

A Yates County native who has collected pieces of pottery from various local stoneware manufacturers and researched the history of many of these companies recently reached out to me with a question about the succession of these producers in the Penn Yan area. She had found a stoneware batter pail marked “Conklin & Heimburger, Penn Yan” and wondered how this company might have related to the Mantell stoneware business.

This woman had previously sparked my interest in learning about Byron Ansley and Ansley’s Dairy after she asked me about the company behind an Ansley’s Dairy milk bottle she had come across. Naturally, she now sparked my interest in learning about stoneware manufacturers in Yates County; we have traded messages to share the information we have uncovered in our research, and now I present that research here.

In fact, my research into stoneware manufacturing overlapped with another topic I had begun researching at the time. You see, as it turns out, stoneware production in Yates County appears to have been concentrated around the foot of Keuka Lake – on the east branch, where the outlet flows out of the lake and heads toward Seneca Lake – because of “a choice bed of clay” in that area, according to a May 30, 1958 article in The Chronicle-Express. This area, now incorporated into the village of Penn Yan, was once its own separate settlement outside of the village proper. It was known as Summersite.

In 1832, George Campbell founded the first pottery at Summersite – in modern-day terms, think of the intersection of Lake Street and South Avenue and the location of Red Jacket Park – after possibly working at potteries in Manhattan before arriving in Penn Yan. Another source states John Campbell established a redware pottery in the area before 1830, while his son George took over the business by 1850. This source indicates John and George came from New York City. However, a newspaper advertisement dated February 20, 1832 announces George Campbell producing earthen water pipes, candle molds, and other earthenware at his factory at the foot of Crooked Lake.

The 1958 article, written by former Yates County Historian Frank Swann, mentions the firm of Savage & Knapp operating around the same time in the same area. That appears to have been a partnership of Joseph L. Savage and Samuel Knapp, who advertised in 1846 the sale of flint ware, bricks, and earthenware pieces. According to a chapter titled “The Dundee Connection” in a book titled Stoneware of Havana, NY, Savage also enjoyed a partnership in making stoneware in Dundee with James Holmes, of Barrington, who had discovered a bed of clay on Washington Street in Dundee. The Holmes & Savage partnership lasted just a short time – as did, presumably, the firm of Savage & Knapp – as Savage formed another partnership in the village of Havana (the former name of Montour Falls) by August 1850. In 1848, Holmes had already acquired another partner by the name of Purdee, and they continued making stoneware in Dundee.

Meanwhile, George Campbell sold his pottery in 1855 to James Mantell, who had come to Penn Yan from Lyons the year before. Mantell had been a potter in Lyons from 1840 to 1853 and thus was well prepared to keep Campbell’s business going. For a brief time, Mantell had a partner in Shem Thomas, who had arrived in Penn Yan in 1853 but moved on to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania in 1856. Mantell continued his business on his own until around 1876, apparently concluding his work with his death. By this point, Swann states, the original clay deposit had been exhausted and “suitable supplies for pottery were brought from New Jersey as ballast in canal boats.”

Nevertheless, the pottery industry in Summersite remained strong, with Oscar Conklin, Mantel’s son-in-law, taking over the business. He worked with at least three partners during this time in business – his firms were known as Conklin & Patterson, Conklin & Mingay, and Conklin & Heimburger. F.J. Elliott & Co. purchased the business sometime in the 1880s – a handwritten note in our subject file dates this purchase as May 1883 – though I have not uncovered an end date for this firm or a successor to this business. At some point, this may have represented the end of the stoneware pottery industry in the Summersite area of Penn Yan.

Much like this major industry in the area, the end of Summersite is also not clear to me. I assume the settlement melded into the village of Penn Yan over time as the village grew up, but I have not yet found concrete evidence for this. What I have found, though, is concrete evidence for the start of this lakeside settlement.

According to Stafford Cleveland in his History and Directory of Yates County, the first settler at the foot of Keuka Lake was John McDowell in 1803 on land belonging to Abraham Wagener, building a double log house on the bank of the lake on the east side of the outlet. A year later, William Wall purchased a tract of land on the west side of the outlet – the present-day Indian Pines area – and took steps to form a village, including surveying the ground into lots. However, Wall died soon after, Wagener took possession of the property, and the proposed village never came to fruition.

However, on the east side of the outlet, a village did come into being with the name of Elizabethtown. By 1817, Meredith Mallory had built a flour or gristmill in the area at the head of the outlet, depending on the low fall of water near that location. However, during the construction of Mallory’s mill, Wagener raised the level of the dam at his mill at the foot of Main Street so there was insufficient water to turn the wheels at Mallory’s mill. By September 1818, Gilman Lovering was operating the Bath, Painted Post, and Geneva stagecoach line. The construction of the highway led to the establishment of several taverns in this area. Zara L. Walton purchased the line on January 1, 1819 and kept it going. Exactly one month after Walton’s purchase of the highway, on February 1, 1819, a group of citizens met at Peter Heltibidal’s tavern and approved a resolution naming the community Summersite.

No matter the name of the settlement, it did seem to hold promise for a major village. In addition to the taverns – Wallace Finch started the first one and was succeeded in its ownership by Heltibidal, George and Robert Shearman, and William Kimble – there were mechanics and a grocery, both presumably serving the stagecoach passengers and workers. In addition to the potteries, other industries sprang up in the area. Isaiah Kimble manufactured augurs and bits; later on, Azor Kimble established a carriage shop. When the Crooked Lake Steamboat Company was incorporated in April 1826, there were hopes for a boom in the village. However, the company never got off the ground – or out on the water.

The Crooked Lake Canal opened a few years later, and the age of the steamboats on Keuka Lake soon dawned. However, by that point, the sun seems to have set on Summersite. “The prospective city of Summersite has faded away,” Cleveland wrote in 1873, while Swann noted the community has been encompassed into the village of Penn Yan.

[nerdularnerdence]

I've never been happy with how little info Wikipedia has on Charles Brandon.

Here are bits from Winter King, a book about Henry VII by Thomas Penn. I don't really recommend reading unless you are a severe Tudor nerd. It's pretty dry. I hope this will help anyone who daydreams / writes fics about Charlie (maybe @rmtndew ?)

(As this is a book about Henry VII, the "prince" mentioned below is baby Henry VIII.)

~~~

“Another familiar face in Essex’s household was Charles Brandon. Brandon had an impeccable pedigree as far as Henry VII was concerned. Back in 1484 his father William and his uncle Thomas had fled to join Henry in France after an abortive uprising against Richard III in their native east Anglia, and later that year they had spearheaded the special-forces style raid on Hams that had liberated the Earl of Oxford. Henry’s standard-bearer at Bosworth, William Brandon had become one of the regime’s first martyrs. Thomas had become one of the king’s intimates: royal counselor, Master of Horse, and trusted diplomat. His nephew Charles, meanwhile, had grown up in the royal household, working as a sewer, or waiter. A job in which you needed to have your whits about you, full cunning, and diligence, it involved descending into the ‘veritable hell’ of the royal kitchens to liaise with cooks, taste the innumerable dishes, and supervise their presentation. It was also a role that needed an awareness of the minutia of precedence, as well as courtesy, impeccable manners, charm, and good looks, attributes that Charles Brandon had in spades. In his spare time he had ready access to the royal stables through his uncle, and had evidently become an exceptional horseman. By the age of 17, when he jousted at Arthur and Katherine’s wedding, Brandon was already the consummate courtier. In 1505, around the time he became one of the king’s Spears, he landed the prestigious post of Essex’s Master of Horse. Seven years older than the prince, Brandon was frequently around him at court, in the tilt yard, and probably his own small household, where Brandon’s uncle was the prince’s treasurer.

Brandon, though, had inherited a distinctly unchivalrous approach to women. His father’s own behavior made contemporaries wince. One one occasion, William Brandon had raped an “old gentlewoman,” and “not there with eased,” moved on to her older daughter, and was only narrowly prevented from doing the same to the younger. Charles, it seemed, was a chip off the old block, though his behavior was altogether more calculating. Sometime around 1503, he confided to a friend and fellow servant that he was in love with one of Queen Elizabeth’s gentlewomen, Anne Brown, the daughter of Sir Antony Brown of Calais castle and the troublesome lady Lucy, to whose company he “much resorted.” His resorting was so enthusiastic that she was soon pregnant. In the ensuing scandal, Brandon was hauled in front of the Earl of Essex’s council, where he pledged to marry her. Shortly after, though, he broke off the engagement, instead marrying Anne’s aunt, Dame Margaret Mortimer, twenty years older than him, a shock which apparently induced Anne to miscarry their child.

Charles, however, only wanted to get his hands on Dame Margaret’s assets., Selling off his wife’s portfolio of property, he pocketed the proceeds to fund his extravagant life at court: clothes, horses, and, undoubtedly, the organization for the spring 1507 jousts, into which the participants plowed their own funds.”

“…Henry Guildford was a fully paid up member of the jousting set. Both Compton and Guildford, in their different ways, were vital conduits to the world from which the prince was by in large insulated, bringing the news and gossip he craved. The talk of the town, more often than not, was Charles Brandon. Brandon’s behavior had gone from bad to worse, having jettisoned the pregnant Anne Brown to marry her aunt Dame Margaret Mortimer, Brandon, flush with the proceeds of the sale of Dame Margaret’s lands, had annulled his marriage on ground of consanguinity, and transferred his attentions back to the more fragrant Anne. As the inevitable court case ensued, late in 1507 he rode into Essex, where Anne was living in traumatized seclusion, and whisked her away. The witnesses to their shotgun marriage in Stepney Church early the following year included Brandon’s partners in crime Sir Edward Guildford, and the Earl of Surrey’s belligerent second son, Sir Edward Howard. With his limited freedom, the prince probably viewed the dashing Brandon’s liaisons with something like a scandalized, envious admiration, but there was, and always would be a strong romantic idealism in him. Brandon’s grubby, exploitative behavior may well have acquired a chivalric luster in the retelling, an adventure story in which he swooped to carry off his damsel in distress, heedless of the consequences. This, after all, was the way the prince’s own parents’ love story had been portrayed in verse, with the dashing Henry Tudor “banished fullbear” in Brittany behind the scenes coming to rescue his golden-haired bride from her lecherous uncle Richard III…”

~~~

My goddamn two cents:

These pieces of writing pretty much call out Charlie for being a total creep, and I think I love it. He was too hot and charming to give a fuck, and it sounds like he sure didn't. It's interesting that Henry VIII was so obsessed with the idea of being Chivalrous and Kind and Good, but was BFF's with someone who clearly didn't value those things. Well, not when it counted, anyway.

[prairie-tales]

'William Penn’s Treaty With The Indians'.

Benjamin West, 1771-2.

The following notes & quotes were taken and transcribed from Andrew Graham Dixon’s ‘Art of America’, episode 1.

The official history of colonised America [in the 18th & 19th century] would be a selectively edited account that glorified the building of gleaming new buildings in cities like Philadelphia, but it conveniently ignored the grim reality of how it was actually done. One of the functions of art in America then was to be a part of a cover-up, and a chief cover-up artist was a painter called Benjamin West.

West was a Quaker, born in Pennsylvania and America’s first internationally famous artist. ‘William Penn’s Treaty With The Indians’ was one of his most celebrated works, yet it also “pulses with the energy of a dark secret”. The painting was created to frame the history of Pennsylvania and the settlement of its capital city Philadelphia, “to frame it as orderly, dignified, just, compassionate and tolerant…"

West said that the painting depicts "the civilisation of the savage". On the left hand side of the group is William Penn, founder of Philadelphia presenting the Indians with a treaty. However, taking centre stage is a bolt of white cloth held by a generic figure of a trader, “an image that exactly recalls the adoration of the shepherds at the birth of Christ” and representing the notion that “the god of free trade transformed noble savages into civilised men, effortlessly absorbing them into the republic, a sanitised version of American history". The painting soon became the classic image of ‘the bloodless colonisation of America’ …. but it is propaganda, a blatant lie.

William Penn may indeed have looked kindly on the local tribes, but this painting was commissioned* some 50 years after his death, by which time the colonists and native Indians were locked in a bitter war. This was a war marked, on the British side, by all kinds of appalling skulduggery. On one occasion in 1763 during supposed negotiations for peace, the British representatives handed to the Indians a pile of blankets that they’d taken from their own small pox hospital. This was an early example of germ warfare and proved horribly effective. It certainly gives a really unpleasant twist, an ironic twist, to that bolt of white cloth in the centre of West’s painting.

The painting’s Wikipedia page says it was commissioned by Thomas Penn - William Penn’s son - in 1770 or 1771. Also mentioned is the speculation by some historians that Penn Jr. may have fraudulently created an agreement with a Native American tribe regarding territory and then forced them to vacate.

ADD INFO RE THE TREATY & WILLIAM PENN.

[sutrala]

(NaturalNews) A local law enforcement officer with "direct knowledge" of the situation told CBS News anchor Anna Schecter this week that not one, not two, but...

[pennstateuniversitypress]

How Pennsylvania's Political System Dealt with the COVID Pandemic and the 2020 Presidential Election

Thomas J. Baldino and Paula A. Duda Holoviak, the authors of Pennsylvania Government and Politics, discuss the divided Pennsylvania government, counting votes, and more.

As we were completing our book, Pennsylvania’s and the nation’s political systems experienced two events that individually would have presented a significant challenge to their governments’ stability but occurring simultaneously shook the very foundations of both. We refer to the COVID pandemic and 2020 presidential election. It seemed only fitting that we ask what effects, if any, these events had on the Keystone State’s government.

Under normal conditions, Pennsylvania’s government has conducted presidential elections and responded to major health emergencies without incident. But the intense partisanship that divided the electorate and the two major parties influenced not just the 2020 presidential contest but the state’s management of COVID.

In February 2020, President Trump officially announced that the US was in the throes of a pandemic. Pennsylvania was one of only a few states with a divided government—that is, the governor was a Democrat while both chambers of the General Assembly were dominated by Republicans. Initially, steps taken by Governor Wolf to protect the public from COVID were met with little to no resistance from the legislature. But as months passed, the Assembly’s GOP leaders attempted to block new executive actions, overturn existing ones, and even amend the state’s constitution to strip the governor of powers to manage emergencies. They also went to state and federal courts to challenge his actions. Why? As we explain, hyperpartisanship had infected what should have been a straightforward, bipartisan administrative response.

Likewise, during and after Election Day, what should have been routine processes for counting votes, especially mail-in ballots, and certifying the results became a tortured experience for state and county election workers as both parties, but most often the Republicans, sought to reverse election administrators’ decisions in state and federal courts. We again asked why, and our answer again was extreme partisanship.

One of the book’s overarching themes is the importance of governmental institutions, the constitutionally created ones—the three branches of government—as well as the extraconstitutional ones—namely, political parties, news media, and interest groups, which provide the lubrication that helps the system function smoothly. What we found is that while the institutions survived, all suffered damage. What remains to be seen is whether the institutions can recover.

Pennsylvania Government and Politics: Understanding Public Policy in the Keystone State is now available from Penn State University Press. Save 30% with discount code NR24: https://www.psupress.org/books/titles/978-0-271-09679-7.html.

[awesomechrisharry]

Stainless Steel Cable Ties Market Set to Soar, Expected to Reach US$ 1.1 Billion by 2031, Reveals Transparency Market Research

The global Stainless Steel Cable Ties market is estimated to attain a valuation of US$ 1.1 Bn by the end of 2031, states a study by Transparency Market Research (TMR). Besides, the report notes that the market is prognosticated to expand at a CAGR of 5.4% during the forecast period, 2023-2031.

The key objective of the TMR report is to offer a complete assessment of the global market including major leading stakeholders of the Stainless Steel Cable Ties industry. The current and historical status of the market together with forecasted market size and trends are demonstrated in the assessment in simple manner. In addition, the report delivers data on the volume, share, revenue, production, and sales in the market.

Request for a sample of this research report at (Use Corporate Mail Id for Quick Response) - https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=S&rep_id=60381

The report by TMR is the end-product of a study performed using different methodologies including the PESTEL, PORTER, and SWOT analysis. The study with the help of these models shed light on the key financial considerations that players in the Stainless Steel Cable Ties market need to focus on identifying competition and formulate their marketing strategies for both consumer and industrial markets. The report leverages a wide spectrum of research methods including surveys, interviews, and social media listening to analyze consumer behaviors in its entirety.

Stainless Steel Cable Ties Market: Industry Trends and Value Chain

The study on the Stainless Steel Cable Ties market presents a granular assessment of the macroeconomic and microeconomic factors that have shaped the industry dynamics. An in-depth focus on industry value chain help companies find out effective and pertinent trends that define customer value creation in the market. The analysis presents a data-driven and industry-validated frameworks for understanding the role of government regulations and financial and monetary policies. The analysts offer a deep-dive into the how these factors will shape the value delivery network for companies and firms operating in the market.

Buy this Premium Research Report | Immediate Delivery Available at - https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/checkout.php?rep_id=60381&ltype=S

Stainless Steel Cable Ties Market: Branding Strategies and Competitive Strategies

Some of the key questions scrutinized in the study are:

What are some of the recent brand building activities of key players undertaken to create customer value in the Stainless Steel Cable Ties market?

Which companies are expanding litany of products with the aim to diversify product portfolio?

Which companies have drifted away from their core competencies and how have those impacted the strategic landscape of the Stainless Steel Cable Ties market?

Which companies have expanded their horizons by engaging in long-term societal considerations?

Which firms have bucked the pandemic trend and what frameworks they adopted to stay resilient?

What are the marketing programs for some of the recent product launches?

The list of key players operating in the Stainless Steel Cable Ties market includes following names:

ABB Installation Products Inc. (Thomas & Betts Corporation), Advanced Cable Ties, Inc., BAND-IT, Essentra plc, HellermannTyton, Heyco (Penn Engineering), Norma Group, NSI Industries, LLC, Panduit, and Tridon Australia are the prominent entities profiled in the stainless steel cable ties market.

Request for customization of this research report at - https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=CR&rep_id=60381

Stainless Steel Cable Ties Market: Assessment of Avenues and Revenue Potential in Key Geographies

Some of the key aspects that the study analyzes and sheds light are:

Which regions are witnessing rise in investments in the supply chain networks?

Which countries seems to have benefitted from recent import and export policies?

Which regions have witnessed decline in consumer demand due to economic and political upheavals?

Which are some the key geographies that are likely to emerge as lucrative markets?

Which regions are expected to lose shares due to pricing pressures?

Which regions leading players are expected to expand their footprints in the near future?

What are some the sustainability trends impacting the logistics and supply chain dynamics in the Stainless Steel Cable Ties market?

What are some of the demographic and economic environments that create new demand in developing economies?

How are changing government regulations shaping business strategies and practices?

About Us Transparency Market Research

Transparency Market Research, a global market research company registered at Wilmington, Delaware, United States, provides custom research and consulting services. The firm scrutinizes factors shaping the dynamics of demand in various markets. The insights and perspectives on the markets evaluate opportunities in various segments. The opportunities in the segments based on source, application, demographics, sales channel, and end-use are analysed, which will determine growth in the markets over the next decade.

Our exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trends analysis provides forward-looking insights for thousands of decision-makers, made possible by experienced teams of Analysts, Researchers, and Consultants. The proprietary data sources and various tools & techniques we use always reflect the latest trends and information. With a broad research and analysis capability, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques in all of its business reports.

Contact Us

Nikhil Sawlani Transparency Market Research Inc. CORPORATE HEADQUARTER DOWNTOWN, 1000 N. West Street, Suite 1200, Wilmington, Delaware 19801 USA Tel: +1-518-618-1030 USA – Canada Toll Free: 866-552-3453

[fictionz]

New Fiction 2023 - October

Another October in the can! And now I wish I could snooze through the real horror that is the holiday season. Maybe I'll stay in October forever... forever... forever...

Here's the long version (since Tumblr blocks too many links in one post).

The TL;DR:

Short Stories

"Snatched from the Brink" by Mary E. Penn (1878)

"The Canal" by Everil Worrell (1927)

"The Lost Performance of the High Priestess of the Temple of Horror" by Carmen Maria Machado (2020)

"The Time Remaining" by Attila Veres & trans. Luca Karafiáth (2019)

"CUE: Change" by Chesya Burke (2011)

"Last Call for the Sons of Shock" by David J. Schow (1994)

"The Real Right Thing" by Henry James (1899)

"The Haunted House" by M.A. Bird (1865)

"The Island of Regrets" by Elizabeth Walter (1965)

"The Stolen Body" by H.G. Wells (1903)

"The White Priest" by Hélène Gingold (1893)

"The Man Who Went Too Far" by E.F. Benson (1912)

"Mater Tenebrarum" by Pilar Pedraza & trans. James D. Jenkins (2000)

"Menopause" by Flore Hazoumé & trans. James D. Jenkins (1994)

"Señor Ligotti" by Bernardo Esquinca & trans. James D. Jenkins (2020)

"Shambleau" by C.L. Moore (1933)

"The Pit and the Pendulum" by Edgar Allan Poe (1850)

"The Village Spectre" by Gianna G. Maniego (2002)

"The Fog Horn" by Ray Bradbury (1951)

"The Lady of the House of Love" by Angela Carter (1979)

"The Woman's Ghost Story" by Algernon Blackwood (1907)

"Black Bargain" by Robert Bloch (1942)

"Vastarien" by Thomas Ligotti (1987)

"The Doll" by Daphne du Maurier (1937)

"The Transferred Ghost" by Frank Stockton (1882)

"The Shadowy Third" by Ellen Glasgow (1923)

"The Daemon Lover" by Shirley Jackson (1949)

"The Interval" by Vincent O'Sullivan (1918)

"The Phantom Cyclist" by Ruth Ainsworth (1971)

"Couching at the Door" by D.K. Broster (1942)

"Bloodchild" by Octavia Butler (1984)

Audio

Tales from the Crypt Presents: Dead Easy by A.L. Katz & Gil Adler, performed by Sean Astin, Jake Busey, Tia Carrere, Brett Cullen, John Kassir (1995, 2022)

Comics

"Birds of a Feather" by Stephanie Phillips, Maan House, Giorgio Spalleta, Justin Birch, Chris Sanchez (2021)

"The Origin of Vampirella" by Budd Lewis & Jose Gonzalez (1981)

"Do You Know... the Beast-Man?" by Richard Howell, Colleen Doran, Kevin Cunningham (1992)

"Good Ol' Fashioned Vanilla" by W. Maxwell Prince, Chris O’Halloran, Martín Morazzo, Good Old Neon (2018)

"For Better or Worse?" by Richard Corben (2016)

"Werewolf!" by Frank Frazetta (1964)

"Chickadee!" by Aya Rothwell (2016)

"The Evil Dead" (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3) by Richard Floyd-Walker (1986-1987)

"Famine's Shadow" by Rachel Deering & Christine Larsen (2014)

"A Pretty Place" by Emily Carroll (2023)

"The Thing from the Sea" by Wally Wood & Joe Orlando (1951)

"The Living Ghost" by Frank Belknap Long & Fred Guardineer (1948)

"Essence of Life" by Gail Simone, Tula Lotay, Jared K. Fletcher (2013)

"Hag of the Blood Basket!" by Al Hewetson & Sean Todd (1971)

"The Fisherman" by Franco, Tressina Bowling, Wes Abbott, Sara Richard (2022)

"Dental Plan" by Joy San (2019)

"Frankenstein y el Hombre Lobo" by Unknown (1946)

"Man's World" by Keith Giffen, Mary Sangiovanni, Bilquis Evely, Mat Lopes, Taylor Esposito (2017)

"Shadow of Death" by William M. Gaines, Al Feldstein, Graham Ingels (1953)

"Smoke and Cedar" by Abby Howard & Alina Pete (2016)

"I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream" by Harlan Ellison & John Byrne (1994-1995)

"A Dog and His Boy" by Evan Dorkin, Sarah Dyer, Jill Thompson, Jason Arthur (2006)

"The Horror Beneath" by Leah Moore, John Reppion, Timothy Green II, Michelle Madsen, Nate Piekos (2006)

"Shadows on the Tomb" by Joe Certa (1952)

"The Muck Monster" by Bernie Wrightson (1975)

"The Duel of the Monsters" by Archie Goodwin & Angelo Torres (1966)

"The Willowdale Handcar or The Return of the Black Doll" by Edward Gorey (1962)

"Inside You" by Valerie D'Orazio & David James Cole (2014)

"Soylent Teen" by Jordan Morris, Liana Kangas, Ellie Wright, Jack Morelli (2023)

"The Gris-Gris" by Jim Keegan & Ruth Keegan (2004)

"Fair Ground" by Jo Duffy, Mike Manley, Jackson Guice, James Fry, Kevin Cunningham (1992)

Video Games

Haunted House dev. Atari (1982)

Castlevania dev. Konami (1987)

Clock Tower dev. Human Entertainment (1995)

D dev. Warp (1995)

Friday the 13th dev. Atlus (1989)

Silent Hill 3 dev. Konami (2003)

Five Nights at Freddy’s dev. Scott Cawthon (2014)

Movies

It Lives Inside dir. Bishal Dutta (2023)

The Company of Wolves dir. Neil Jordan (1984)

Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare dir. Rachel Talalay (1991)

Honeymoon dir. Leigh Janiak (2014)

Organ dir. Kei Fujiwara (1996)

The Bride of Frankenstein dir. James Whale (1935)

The Royal Hotel dir. Kitty Green (2023)

House of 1000 Corpses dir. Rob Zombie (2003)

The Nun II dir. Michael Chaves (2023)

The Godsend dir. Gabrielle Beaumont (1980)

Hatching dir. Hanna Bergholm (2022)

The Velvet Vampire dir. Stephanie Rothman (1971)

Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter dir. Joseph Zito (1984)

A Haunting in Venice dir. Kenneth Branagh (2023)

Piggy dir. Carlota Pereda (2022)

A Night to Dismember (The Lost Version) dir. Doris Wishman (1979)

The Blob dir. Irvin Yeaworth (1958)

Embrace of the Vampire dir. Anne Goursaud (1995)

Onyx the Fortuitous and the Talisman of Souls dir. Andrew Bowser (2023)

Exposed to Danger dir. Yang Chia-yun (Karen Yang) (1982)

Saw X dir. Kevin Greutert (2023)

The Birds dir. Alfred Hitchcock (1963)

Slumber Party Massacre II dir. Deborah Brock (1987)

Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island dir. Jim Stenstrum (1998)

The Being dir. Jackie Kong (1983)

Kuso dir. Steve (2017)

Visible Secret dir. Ann Hui (2001)

The Exorcist: Believer dir. David Gordon Green (2023)

The Love Witch dir. Anna Biller (2016)

Bones dir. Ernest R. Dickerson (2001)

Bedevil dir. Tracey Moffatt (1993)

Television

Regular Show - "Terror Tales of the Park" I-VI (2011-2016)

The Simpsons - "Treehouse of Horror Presents: Not It" (2022)

Tales from the Cryptkeeper - Seasons 2 & 3 (1994 & 1999)

[webionaire]

A World of Its Own: Photographic Practices in the Studio examines the ways in which photographers and other artists using photography have worked and experimented within their studios, from photography’s inception to the present. Featuring both new acquisitions and works from the Museum’s collection that have not been on view in recent years, A World of Its Own brings together photographs, films, and videos by artists such as Berenice Abbott, Uta Barth, Zeke Berman, Karl Blossfeldt, Constantin Brancusi, Geta Brătescu, Harry Callahan, Robert Frank, Jan Groover, Barbara Kasten, Man Ray, Bruce Nauman, Paul Outerbridge, Irving Penn, Adrian Piper, Edward Steichen, William Wegman, and Edward Weston.

Depending on the period, the cultural or political context, and the commercial, artistic, or scientific motivations of the artist, the studio might be a haven, a stage, a laboratory, or a playground. For more than a century, photographers have dealt with the spaces of their studios in strikingly diverse and inventive ways: from using composed theatrical tableaux (in photographs by Julia Margaret Cameron or Cindy Sherman) to putting their subjects against neutral backdrops (Richard Avedon, Robert Mapplethorpe); from the construction of architectural sets within the studio (Francis Bruguière, Thomas Demand) to chemical procedures conducted within the darkroom (Walead Beshty, Christian Marclay); and from precise recordings of motion (Eadweard Muybridge, Harold Edgerton) to playful, amateurish experimentation (Roman Signer, Peter Fischli and David Weiss). A World of Its Own offers another history of photography—a photography created within the walls of the studio, and yet as innovative as its more extroverted counterpart, street photography.

[pastedpast]

Henry VII: The Winter King.

2013 BBC documentary written and presented by historian Thomas Penn, author of the biography Winter King: The Dawn of Tudor England (2011).

[bongaboi]

Penn State: 2023 Rose Bowl Champions

PASADENA, Calif. – The No. 11/9/7 Penn State football team (11-2, 7-2 Big Ten) defeated No. 8/7/10 Utah (10-4, 7-2 PAC-12) 35-21 in the Rose Bowl Game on Jan. 2, 2023. The Nittany Lions put up 448 yards of total offense and recorded two takeaways in the program's second Rose Bowl win.

Sean Clifford led the way for the Nittany Lion offense, going 16-for-22 with 279 yards and two touchdowns. Clifford became Penn State's program leader in total offense, eclipsing Trace McSorley's mark of 11,596 yards. Clifford's 88-yard touchdown pass to KeAndre Lambert-Smith in the fourth quarter became the longest passing play in the history of the Rose Bowl.

Nicholas Singleton capped off his historic true freshman season with 120 rushing yards and two touchdowns in the Rose Bowl. Singleton's 87-yard touchdown run in the third quarter is the third-longest run in Rose Bowl history and the second-longest in Penn State bowl history. With the run, the Nittany Lions now own two of the five longest rushes in the history of the Rose Bowl, including Ki-Jana Carter's 83-yard run in the 1995 Rose Bowl.

With the 88-yard pass and the 87-yard run, the Nittany Lions became the first team in Rose Bowl history with 80-plus yard receiving and rushing touchdowns in a game.

Kaytron Allen and Mitchell Tinsley recorded the additional Nittany Lion scores in the game, and Lambert-Smith finished with a career-high 124 receiving yards.

Two takeaways set the tone on defense for the Nittany Lions. Kalen King and Ji'Ayir Brown recorded interceptions as Penn State turned in a solid defensive outing. Curtis Jacobs picked up a career-high two sacks in the game while Brown and Chop Robinson collected 1.5 sacks each. Penn State totaled six sacks and nine tackles for loss in the contest.

The 2022 Penn State football season is presented by PSECU.

HOW IT HAPPENED

Penn State made the first splash play of the day. With the Utes inside Nittany Lion territory on their second drive of the game, Kalen King intercepted Cameron Rising at the 18-yard line to bring the Penn State offense back on the field.

The Nittany Lions found the end zone on the very next drive on a touchdown run by Nicholas Singleton. Penn State entered the red zone on a 28-yard strike by Sean Clifford to Theo Johnson at the 13-yard line. On a third-and-two play, Singleton took a handoff and exploded into the end zone for the five-yard score that resulted in the only points in the first quarter for either team.

Utah tied the game with a 13-play, 75-yard touchdown drive on its subsequent possession. The Utes took 7:12 off the clock as Rising found Thomas Yassmin for the score. The score put Utah on the board and tied the game 7-7 with 7:55 remaining in the second quarter.

A Mitchell Tinsley touchdown catch capped off Penn State's next drive, as the teams traded touchdowns in the second quarter. The Nittany Lions constructed a six-play 70-yard drive, including a 32-yard reception by KeAndre Lambert-Smith and a 20-yard grab by Harrison Wallace, that resulted in Clifford's 85th career touchdown pass.

The Utes answered right back, making it 14-14 with the game's fourth consecutive scoring drive. Utah used a six-play, 75-yard drive to tie the game with 2:09 left to play in the opening half.

As the Utes were driving with under a minute left in the half, Curtis Jacobs sacked Rising on third down, sending the game to halftime tied 14-14.

In the third quarter, Singleton scored his second touchdown of the game on an 87-yard scamper that broke the 14-14 deadlock with 10:17 remaining in the frame. The Nittany Lions began the drive at their own five-yard line and ran just two plays before Singleton found a hole and dashed downfield for the score.

The Nittany Lion defense showed out once again as it intercepted Utah for the second time. Ji'Ayir Brown picked off Bryson Barnes with 6:07 left in the third quarter to record his 16th career takeaway.

With the score sitting at 21-14 entering the fourth quarter, the Nittany Lions completed the longest passing play in Rose Bowl history to extend the lead to 28-14. In an almost identical beginning of the drive to the Singleton touchdown, Penn State ran just two plays before Clifford aired out a pass to Lambert-Smith for an 88-yard score.

Penn State tacked on another fourth-quarter touchdown to make it 35-14 at the 10:36 mark as Kaytron Allen scored on a one-yard run. The Nittany Lions took 2:44 to record a five-play 47-yard scoring drive.

The Utes scored the game's final touchdown with 0:25 remaining in regulation but the result was unchanged as the Nittany Lions won 35-21.

[todaysdocument]

Happy Fourth of July! 

The Engrossed Declaration of Independence: 

Series: Miscellaneous Papers of the Continental Congress, 1774 - 1789

Record Group 360: Records of the Continental and Confederation Congresses and the Constitutional Convention, 1765 - 1821

Transcription: 

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776.

                                                                                               The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

                                 When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.____________ We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.__ That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to affect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly, all experience hath shown that mankind is more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new guards for their future security. __Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies, and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world. _________ He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good._______ He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.________ He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only._______ He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures. _______He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.______ He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within. _____He has endeavored to prevent the Population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands. ______He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.________ He has made judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the Amount and Payment of their salaries. ________ He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our People, and eat out their substance. ____He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the consent of our legislature._____ He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power. _______He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:__For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:__For protecting them, by mock Trial, from Punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:__For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:__For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:__For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:__ For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offenses:___ For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighboring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in these Colonies:___ For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our Governments:____For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with Power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.__ He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us._____He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the Lives of our People.____He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty and Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.____He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.____He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions.       In every stage of these Oppressions, We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury.  A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free People.     Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity.  We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends._____

        We, therefore, the Representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by the Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly Publish and declare, that these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent Sates; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which the Independent States may of right do. ___ And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.    

Button Gwinnett                            Wm Hooper                                    John Hancock                          Rob Morris                        Wm Floyd             Josiah Bartlett

                        Lyman Hall                                      Joseph Hewes                                 Samuel  Chase                         Benjamin Rush          Philip Livingston     Wm Whipple

                        Geo Walton                                     John Penn                                         Wm Paca                                    Benj Franklin                  Fran Lewis              Sam Adams

                                                                                                                                                    Tho Stone                                  John Morton                  Lewis Morris           John Adams

                                                                                      Edward Rutledge                        Charles Carrol of Carrollton  Geo Clymer                                                          Rob Treat Paine

                                                                                                                                                                                                                    Ja. Smith                                                    Elbridge Gerry

                                                                                                                                                                                                                  Geo Taylor                                                   Step. Hopkins

                                                                                     Tho Heyward Jnr                                                                                     James Wilson          Rich Stockton             William Ellery

                                                                                      Thomas Lynch Jnr                    George Wythe                                    Gro. Ross               Jn Witherspoon          Roger Sherman

                                                                                                                                             Richard Henry Lee

                                                                                      Arthur Middleton                    Th Jefferson                              Ceasar Rodney                Fra. Hopkinson           Sam Huntington

                                                                                                                                             Benj Harrison                            Geo Read                        John Hart                      Wm Williams

                                                                                                                                             Th Nelson jr.                              Tho M Kean                     Abra Clark                     Oliver Wolcott

                                                                                                                                              Francis Lightfoot Lee                                                                                                   Matthew  Thornton

                                                                                                                                              Carter Braxton

[yatescountyhistorycenter]

Do you know Penn Yan?: Penn Yan Oddity, No. 31 through No. 60

By Jonathan Monfiletto

Anyone who has conducted research either through Yates County’s digitized newspapers or the Yates County History Center’s subject files has likely come across items titled either “Penn Yan Oddity” or “Yates County Oddity.” These items – snippets might be a good word – provide information about various aspects of local history, seeming to answer some sort of question or mystery.

Seeing so many of these snippets – and finding the answers but seeming not to find the question – I decided to scour our digitized newspaper database to see if I could find all of them, the questions with the answers. It turns out the oddities – 90 Penn Yan Oddity items, 52 Yates County Oddity items – were part of an advertising campaign in the 1940s for Baldwin’s Bank, then located at 127 Main St. in Penn Yan, the present-day home of the Arts Center of Yates County.

The Penn Yan Oddities ran in The Chronicle-Express in consecutive weeks from February 20, 1947 to November 11, 1948, and then the Yates County Oddities picked up right away in the newspaper from November 18, 1948 to November 24, 1949. So, for more than 2 and a half years, readers of The Chronicle-Express could learn something about local history each week in the newspaper.

Each item started out as an advertisement for Baldwin’s Bank with the phrase “Do You Know Penn Yan?” at the top of the graphic followed by the question for the week. In the middle, the bulk of the ad, would appear information about the bank’s various services and offerings. The bottom would direct the reader to look for the answer elsewhere on the same page and then look for another Oddity the following week.

In this article, I present Penn Yan Oddity No. 31 through No. 60. Each question and answer has been transcribed exactly as it appeared in the newspaper, which changes made only for typographical errors and not for grammatical style. The only time words have been removed from the items is in the case of references to photographs or other information that appeared elsewhere in the newspaper.

31) Where were the Lake Keuka steamer docks before the railroad connected Penn Yan and Dresden?

… the steamers on Lake Keuka at one time docked at the foot of Keuka street, then called Pine street, across the channel from where the docks were later constructed when the railroad replaced the canal and the unloading of freight on the same side as the railroad was an obvious advantage.

32) Where is the residence of a former U.S. Consul to Honolulu?

Philip Ogden, residing at the corner of Hamilton and Clinton streets, lives in the house once owned by his grandfather, Darius A. Ogden, editor of the Penn Yan Democrat, village postmaster, county assemblyman and consul to Honolulu, Hawaii. President Franklin Pierce appointed him Aug. 4, 1854. The residence is a century old

33) Where is there a tree grown around a two by four?

At the corner of North avenue and Main street by the home occupied by Frank Wheeler, a maple has grown around a piece of two by four which years ago was placed in the crotch.

34) Where is there still in use the home of a former German baron?

The residence at 324 North avenue, set far back on the north side of the street and used by the Newark State school for one of its colonies, was the home of Baron Oscar Theobold von Lingke, wealthy and eccentric music teacher, who went to Germany and brought back his bride to live in this village, later moving to Pennsylvania. Baron von Lingke dabbled in chemistry. Once, during the some five years he lived here, he set fire to the old house while mixing a chemical concoction.

35) Where is the fountain that once stood near Birkett Mills?

Rev. Thomas C. Kane of St. Michael’s Catholic church is viewing the heavy metal fountain that once held water for thirsty horses. For years it stood at the corner of Main and Seneca streets now occupied by the Birkett Mills filling station.

Can anyone tell us when the watering “trough” was removed to St. Michael’s cemetery and transformed into its present task of adding a lovely touch to the landscape?

36) What residence once served Penn Yan as a hospital?

The apartment house at the end of East Main street, No. 248, was once the Hatmaker hospital.

Laurence E. Carey purchased it in early 1946 from Ed Smith. There are four apartments in the former hospital building. … As the Soldiers and Sailors Memorial hospital was being constructed on North Main street, the Hoyt residence, now the nurses’ home was used temporarily for a hospital.

37) Where is there an old school with an iron picket fence in front?

In front of the Wagner, Penn Yan hotel, still stands the iron picket fence. This building was erected by Ebenezer B. Jones. Mrs. Hebe O. Ellsworth, wife of General Samuel Stewart Ellsworth, the next occupant, erected in the front yard a fountain and the fence. The property was once used as the site of a tavern and a school. In 1824 an English sea captain, Elijah Holcomb, built the tavern, “Washington House.” Business was poor and it soon became a school – “The Yates Academy and Female Seminary,” opening its doors the first Monday in January 1829. In 1834 there were over 340 boys and girls attending, but the school closed after 10 years. The frame of the old building was moved across Main street and is now the jail barn, at the rear of the courthouse.

38) What street in Penn Yan bears the family name of the late U.S. president?

Delano place, running from Liberty street to the old boat docks, now the Keuka Lumber company, was named after a cabinet maker. His daughter, Miss Anna Delano, was an accomplished artist and gave painting lessons to many in this community until her death 35 years ago. The Delano residence is now occupied as an office and salesroom by Rapalee Auto Parts company. In shape the dwelling still appears much as it did in the old days when the Delano family owned most of the land in that part of town.

39) Where are the biggest and heaviest shears in Penn Yan?

Walter J. Calhoun, junk dealer, 226 Keuka street, has motor-driven shears which weigh, six and a half tons. They are used for cutting salvage metal, preparatory to shipment and sale. These shears snip pieces of steel off from an auto frame as if it were but a match and yet can also cut a piece of silk ribbon.

40) What Penn Yan residence was once used as a school?

Some 90 years ago N.W. Ayer conducted a private seminary in Penn Yan for what were designated at that time as “young ladies and gentleman.” He was assisted by Mrs. Ayer, and they not only taught the rudiments of education but were painstaking in teaching their pupils proper deportment for all occasions. In classes they always addressed those who attended their school as “Miss” and “Mister,” never becoming familiar enough to call them by their first names. The pupils were supposed to address each other with the same formality.

The “Young Ladies Seminary,” as it was called, was conducted for many years in the Shoniker house which is now 105 East Main street. From there the school was moved to the present home of Oliver Sheppard at 169 Main street. It was quite successful for a time, but after the founding of Penn Yan Academy in 1859, its patronage was materially lessened.

Mr. Ayer went to Philadelphia in 1868, where he established the famous N.W. Ayer & Son advertising agency which ahs become one of the largest and most prominent in this country.

41) What two streets bear the names of apples?

Stark Avenue

Wagener Street

Abraham Wagener, “founder” of Penn Yan developed the Wagener apple in an orchard at the rear of his Mansion house, now the Knapp hotel.

42) How many streets bear the names of former presidents?

Lincoln Avenue

Garfield Avenue

McKinley Avenue

43) Do you know that Penn Yan’s “natural bridge” has just been cut down?

The maple tree in front of the Methodist parsonage, 219 Main street, Penn Yan, has just been cut down. Limbs growing together bridged across a fork in the tree to make the oddity.           

44) What streets are named after some of the Finger Lakes?

Two Penn Yan streets are named after some of the Finger lakes – Keuka and Seneca.

45) What Penn Yan streets are named after kinds of trees?

Five Penn Yan streets carry the names of kinds of trees:

            Elm and East Elm street

            Walnut street

            Cherry street

            Chestnut street

            Maple avenue

46) What business block was erected on old canal locks?

… it marks a big step in the development of Penn Yan – the abandonment of the village as a port on the inland water system carrying commerce via the Erie canal and its further development as a center served by railroads. A branch of the Fallbrook railroad, now the New York Central system, was constructed between Penn Yan and Dresden to replace the six-mile canal. A total of 27 locks to lift and drop boats 267 feet during the short winding course paralleling Lake Keuka outlet made the canal inefficient, and it was abandoned after serving from 1833 to about 1877.

Barges loaded with grain and produce on Lake Keuka entered the canal’s first lock under what is now known as the Chronicle annex, formerly the Hasson block, 108-10 Water street – occupied by the Modern Beauty shop and Penn Yan Business services. Twenty years ago this spring workmen dug up the sill of the first lock under this building to help establish legal questions as to water levels in Lake Keuka.

The tow path crossed the outlet about where the railroad trestle now spans the stream above the state damn. At one time, however, the dam was some 100 feet further upstream than the present structure. In 1834, a year after the canal was opened, the dam was raised six inches to better serve the canal, but since then it has not been raised or lowered.

The rear of a portion of the Birkett’s Mill warehouse on Water street, viewed today from Main Street bridge, clearly shows the second story overhanging, so as to easily permit gravity feed of grain into canal boats which would be tied up in the basin beneath the building.

After negotiating the first lock, canal boats would proceed to Dresden passing directly under what is now the Chronicle-Express office, under the Main Street bridge span and along the outlet side of Seneca street on their tedious way down towards Seneca Lake and Dresden. A short spur of the canal carried barges to the rear of the buildings on the east side of Main street, which gave Basin street its present name.

47) What hotel was replaced by a movie theatre?

Yes, it’s true, folks, in case you don’t happen to remember – the Shearman house, one of Penn Yan’s hotels, was transformed into what is now the one and only movie theatre – the Elmwood on Elm street. See any resemblance?

In March of 1921 the late Harry C. Morse, famed Lake Keuka steamboat pilot and captain, purchased from the Odd Fellows Building association the Shearman house and the adjoining business block … and converted them into a movie theatre, which he named the Elmwood. Five years before Mr. Morse purchased the Sampson theatre, on East Elm street, now Jewett’s garage. Dr. Franklin S. Sampson erected this large structure in 1910 and it was widely used for stage shows, movies, and basketball games, also as a miniature golf course. Mr. Morse for a time operated both theatres. The old Cornwell Opera house, now the Grange hall, was showing a bill of movies at the same time – making three in all competing for business. Following the death of Mr. Morse in 1936 the Elmwood was sold to the Schine chain and the Sampson theatre ceased to be used for entertainment.

48) How many Penn Yan streets were named after U.S. generals?

Three Penn Yan streets bear the names of famous United States Generals – Jackson, Sherman, and Grant.

49) What streets bear the names commonly used for boys’ first names?

Four Penn Yan streets bear names commonly used as first names by boys – Clinton, Henry, Lawrence, and Franklin.

50) Where is there a house built at an angle to the street?

The residence of Mrs. Delos Sprague, 231 East Main street, is built at a marked angle to the sidewalk and street which it faces.

51) How many streets bear the names commonly used for girls?

Two Penn Yan streets bear names commonly used as the first names of girls – Violet and Myrtle.

52) Where is there a meteor?

In front of the Fred Carroll homestead, corner of Ogden street and South avenue, now owned by Mrs. Lena M. Snyder, is a meteorite about the size of a bushel basket and weighing 976 pounds. Mrs. Alfred Carroll saw it fall on the farm in Potter in the year 1887. It was been exhibited for many years on the Penn Yan place, the property, 151 South avenue.

53) Where does the sidewalk make a detour to avoid a tree?

In front of the former Christie Briggs residence at 214 East Main street, the entire sidewalk swerves wide to avoid a large oak tree; also in front of the Gilbert Smith residence, 223 East Main, the walk detours around a big elm. In numerous other places the sidewalk is indented to permit room for a tree and its roots but this is one place where the walk makes a detour.

54) How many stone houses are there in the village?

There are, we believe, but two stone houses within the village limits – the field stone Wagener house, owned by Paul Ritchey on Highland drive, and the Paul R. Taylor residence on Main street. The latter was built of stone quarried practically within the village.

Do you know where that quarry is? …

Dr. Waddell, years ago, erected four masonry houses on Hicks street and Waddell avenue, but these are really cement houses in which stone was merely used for filling.

55) How many former street names can you identify?

Following are two lists of Penn Yan street names. The first list contains names used today. The column to the right contains the names of the same nine streets used years ago …

            East Elm                   Jacob

            South Ave.                Boundary

            Chapel                       Church

            Garfield                     Sheridan Place

            East Main                 Jillett

            Keuka                        Pine

            North Ave.                Head

            Seneca                       Canal

            North Liberty          Quarry

56) Where is there a house not built “on a square”?

While there are several street intersections in Penn Yan which are not made at right angles, the buildings on the corners are usually “on the square” with the line of one wall at a 90-degree angle with the intersecting line of the next wall.

The north and west sides of the Bush house at the corner of North avenue and Jackson street, are an exception, however, and form an angle of less than 90 degrees. The same is true of the Guile apartment building containing the Market Basket store at the corner of Main street and North avenue.

57) Where was the Gas House?

Penn Yan’s first gas house was on Jackson street, completed by the Penn Yan Gas Light company Sept. 25, 1860, when gas was first turned on in the Yates county seat. In June of 1888 William T. Morris bought controlling interest in the company and rebuilt the works on Jackson street.

Nine years later the corporation purchased the Tuttle malt house on Water street … and in 1899 built the stone gas house now used by the Penn Yan winery, along Lake Keuka outlet, and the large steel gas tank familiar to many adults. This storage tank was razed by the New York State Electric and Gas corporation seven years ago since pipelines had earlier replaced the huge container. Gas was first piped to Penn Yan from Geneva Jan. 16, 1929.

The original gas company, organized May 11, 1860, was incorporated by Darius A. Ogden, L.O. Dunning, George McAllister, Samuel H. Wells, and Charles Stark, with a capital of $10,000. The company, serving the public from the Water street plant, was headed by Mr. Morris with Morris Tracey as secretary and Michael F. Buckley as superintendent. The plant was moved downtown since by the first of this century most of Penn Yan’s business had been firmly established in its present location rather than at the location of Head and Main streets.

One of the first Penn Yan Oddities in this series revealed one of the original gas street lamp posts still standing in front of the Elias Wallace residence on East Main street. Others were found transplanted to support clothes lines at the rear of the Frank E. Monnin residence and the Gilbert Smith home on East Main.

Mrs. Ernest Pierce of Keuka Park recalls that her uncle, Harrison (Phinney) Brown, once chief of police in this village, for years was the official lamplighter, starting first with kerosene lamps and then progressing to the newer gas lights over 80 years ago. Mr. Brown lived at 122 Clinton street, reaching his house by a series of steps leading from the sidewalk up the bank on the north side of the street. The late Carl F. Brunt built the present dwelling on the site of the Brown home. Mr. Brown met a tragic death when struck by a train some 60 years ago between Clinton street and the Pennsylvania depot.

58) Where was the Stevens steam engine built?

Pearl Simmons used one of the popular Stevens steam farm engines for powering his farm jobs years ago. These were made in extensive shops which spread out on both sides of Head street, just west of the Main street intersection. The Harry O. Bennett and Dr. Glenn Hatch residences occupy land entirely used by the once thriving engine making plant. Later the industry moved to Auburn.

59) The village corporate limits lie in how many townships?

The Incorporated Village of Penn Yan is in three townships – Milo, Benton, and Jerusalem.

Most of the village lies in Milo, but from the center of North Avenue to the north is Benton township, and a very small portion of the village lies within Jerusalem township at the west end. As a matter of fact, the main drive in the Lake View cemetery roughly marks the Milo-Jerusalem boundary line.

60) What structure is being built on site of early movie house?

George Miller is creating a new building at 118 Elm street to accommodate the Gordon Allen lunch and pool room, replacing the old frame structure which stood on the site since Civil War days. When it was torn down recently workmen found wooden pins holding the front frame work and a sign dated 1871.

For over 60 years it was operated as a blacksmith shop, Charles Wren being the last smithy to hold forth in that location. About 1908 it became one of Penn Yan’s first movie theatres. William Wickham of Salamanca first brought movies to Penn Yan, recalls Nathaniel P. Sackett of Elm street, operator for the Elmwood theatre. Mr. Wickham’s first theatre was located where the New York State Electric and Gas corporation office is now. Business was good so he rented the old blacksmith shop on Elm street and started a Nickelodeon there. The row of electric lights which illuminated the front could be seen until the structure was razed a few days ago.

In this building Mr. Sackett having purchased from Mr. Wickham, first introduced novelty or vaudeville acts between films, while the operator was rewinding and changing reels. John Roche, local boy who gained recognition and wealth in Hollywood, got his start here with a song and dance routine.

A later occupant of the building was John Hoban’s meat market, which moved there from the White building, replaced by the Jolley Chevrolet structure. Hoban’s market remained there until April 1, 1925, when it exchanged locations with Mike Roche’s restaurant, moving to its present location, which George Miller had owned previously.