#U.S. 70

[qsda]

Globe, Arizona, on U.S. 70 by E. V. Armstrong for Arizona Highways, October 1958 by Tom Simpson

[lonestarflight]

A North American XB-70 Valkyrie taking off in the early morning.

source

[stone-cold-groove]

50th Anniversary of Talking Pictures USPS 13¢ stamp - 1977.

[lonestarbattleship]

USS Canberra (CAG-2) underway on January 9, 1961.

Note: "her radar arrangement: CXRX was moved forward from the mainmast, SPS-29 was fitted on the mainmast and SPS-13 was fitted aft. Canberra was the only ship ever equipped with SPS-13."

NHHC: KN-1526

Information from Wikipedia: link

[savage-kult-of-gorthaur]

HAPPY B-DAY, "TRICKY DICK" -- WHO SENT 21,000+ U.S. SOLDIERS TO THEIR DEATHS IN HIS FIRST TERM.

PIC INFO: Spotlight on an original 1972 President Richard Nixon "Peace with Honor" parody poster.

"I pledge to you that we shall have an honorable end to the war in Vietnam."

-- RICHARD M. "Tricky Dick" NIXON (January 9, 1913 -- April 22, 1994)

NIXON'S DEATH TOLL: "Nixon’s decision to time military withdrawal from Vietnam to his reelection campaign cost thousands of lives. More than 20,000 American soldiers died during Nixon’s first term. The Vietnamese, Laotian and Cambodian death toll was many times higher. This is by far Nixon’s worst abuse of presidential power."

NIXON/VIETNAM OVERVIEW: "In the 1968 election, Republican Richard Nixon claimed to have a plan to end the war in Vietnam, but, in fact, it took him five years to disengage the United States from Vietnam. Indeed, Richard Nixon presided over as many years of war in Indochina as did Johnson. About a third of the Americans who died in combat were killed during the Nixon presidency. More than 21,200 Americans died in Vietnam and elsewhere in Southeast Asia in Nixon's first term alone.

-- DIGITAL HISTORY, "Nixon and Vietnam"

Sources: www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=2&psid=3464 & eBay.

[traitorsinsalem]

i know it’s not the point of the post but the full “fags love dykes” post does irk me because most of those people are NOT dead. the toll was heavy, sure, but every single gay person in the us was not completely and utterly wiped out during the reagan era.

gay elders are alive and everywhere and i haven’t met a single one who hasn’t been both willing to talk about their own experiences and listen to those of others. they ARE here to talk about their history they ARE here to speak up for themselves. the problem isn’t that they don’t speak, but that many young lgbt people refuse to listen.

[k-i-l-l-e-r-b-e-e-6-9]

[cerisely]

“ ... the commercial era for local news media is over, giving us the opportunity to reinvent journalism so that it may finally serve people over profit.”

[paulkiser1]

Road Less Traveled: How Craig, CO Was Orphaned

Road Less Traveled: How Craig, CO Was Orphaned

Craig, Colorado is a small town in Moffat County in the sagebrush of the high desert of northwestern Colorado. It is on U.S. 40, almost exactly halfway between Denver and Salt Lake. Up until the 1970s, its location made it a favored stopping point for travelers crossing the sometimes challenging roads over the Rocky Mountain passes. However, like many developing towns across the country,…

[tiorx]

it's homophobic that diablo iv is so goddamn expensive. i could never ask someone to buy it to play it with me

[amphobet]

[heritageposts]

i saw the trailer for the new feel-good “anti-racist” US war movie about the carpet bombing of North Korea and started writing up something for this blog, partially inspired by the absolute shit storm i got for sharing that post i made with pictures of everyday life outside pyongyang

and then i gave up, because what’s the point? westerners can’t even handle a single picture of a north korean not looking miserable without screaming propaganda

meanwhile, there are no stories about the horrors of life in the ‘hermit kingdom’ that are deemed too outlandish to be believable. i can’t remember who said it, but it’s like the entire country has taken up permanent residence in the western imaginary as some silly little cartoon villain, where the leaders of the country does evil things for no discernible reason. they’re just silly and evil like that, and the citizens, of course, are silly, too. silly and brainwashed.

i watched a video recently of a tourists visiting an auto dealership in pyongyang, and the entire time he was just gawking at the employees and costumers, shoving his phone in their face, and confidently explaining to his youtube audience that everyone he’s interacting with are actually actors.

what level of dehumanization do you have to reach for that thought to even cross your mind? to think that the people you see before you are actors? that entire cities and shops are erected with to sole purpose that you, a western, will see them and be impressed?

what frustrates me the most is the casual cruelty that seeps into any mention of north korea, no matter how small. if north koreans are not being evil, they’re being silly.

a north korean newspaper reports that a group of archeologists in pyongyang have discovered an old rock carving with the words ‘unicorn lair’ (mistranslated), and the western press reports that north koreans now believe in unicorns.

a tourist at a hotel in hamhung is told by the receptionist to be careful at the beach: the waves can get high. that day the tourists goes to the beach, and there are no waves. she retells the story to her instagram followers, explaining that the poor woman at the hotel could never have seen real waves before because north koreans are probably never allowed to travel.

she adds a little teary-eyed emoji.

one of the cities i included in the post was sariwon, a densely populated city to the south of pyongyang. below are some pictures from its “folk customs street”, which was built to showcase old korean traditions and customs

here’s all wikipedia has to say about it

Built to display an ideal picture of ancient Korea, it includes buildings in the "historical style" and a collection of ancient Korean cannons. Although it is considered an inaccurate romanticized recreation of an ancient Korean street, it is frequently used as a destination for foreigners on official government tours. Many older style Korean buildings exist in the city.

it’s just north koreans being silly again. there’s no mention of what might motivate them to build a street like that — why the preservation of old customs, culture and architecture might somehow be important for the city

could it perhaps have something to do with how the U.S. air force dropped 635,000 tons of bombs, including 32,557 tons of napalm, over the korean peninsula during the war? the carpet bombings, which are now the topic of an upcoming hollywood movie about overcoming racism through warcrimes, destroyed an estimate of 85% of all buildings in north korea. some cities were entirely wiped off the map.

in sariwon they missed a few buildings, but not many — after an intense firebombing campaign the U.S. military estimated the destruction of sariwon to be at 95%.

none of this is mentioned on the wikipedia page for sariwon.

we destroyed entire cities. memory-holed the entire thing, called it the forgotten war. and now, 70 years later, we’re convincing ourselves that the people living in the ruins are actors.

and somehow the north koreans are the brainwashed ones

[lonestarflight]

A Lockheed U-2 flying over Edwards Air Force Base.

Note: a North American XB-70 Valkyrie on the airport apron.

Posted on the Phoenix Aviation Research Facebook page: link

[inkskinned]

for a while i lived in an old house; the kind u.s americans don't often get to live in - living in a really old house here is super expensive. i found out right before i moved out that the house was actually so old that it features in a poem by emily dickinson.

i liked that there were footprints in front of the sink, worn into the hardwood. there were handprints on some of the handrails. we'd find secret marks from other tenants, little hints someone else had lived and died there. and yeah, there was a lot wrong with the house. there are a lot of DIY skills you learn when you are a grad student that cannot afford to pay someone else to do-it-for-ya. i shared the house with 8 others. the house always had this noise to it. sometimes that noise was really fucking awful.

in the mornings though, the sun would slant in thick amber skiens through the windows, and i'd be the first one up. i'd shuffle around, get showered in this tub that was trying to exit through the floor, get my clothes on. i would usually creep around in the kitchen until it was time to start waking everyone else up - some of them required multiple rounds of polite hey man we gotta go knocks. and it felt... outside of time. a loud kind of quiet.

the ghosts of the house always felt like they were humming in a melody just out of reach. i know people say that the witching hour happens in the dark, but i always felt like it occurred somewhere around 6:45 in the morning. like - for literal centuries, somebody stood here and did the dishes. for literal centuries, somebody else has been looking out the window to this tree in our garden. for literal centuries, people have been stubbing their toes and cracking their backs and complaining about the weather. something about that was so... strangely lovely.

i have to be honest. i'm not a history aficionado. i know, i know; it's tragic of me. i usually respond to "this thing is super old" by being like, wow! cool! and moving on. but this house was the first time i felt like the past was standing there. like it was breathing. like someone else was drying their hands with me. playing chess on the sofa. adding honey to their tea.

i grew up in an old town. like, literally, a few miles off of walden pond (as in of the walden). (also, relatedly, don't swim in walden, it's so unbelievably dirty). but my family didn't have "old house" kind of money. we had a barely-standing house from the 70's. history existed kind of... parallel to me. you had to go somewhere to be in history. your school would pack you up on a bus and take you to some "ye olden times" place and you'd see how they used to make glass or whatever, and then you'd go home to your LEDs. most museums were small and closed before 5. you knew history was, like, somewhere, but the only thing that was open was the mcdonalds and the mall.

i remember one of my seventh grade history teachers telling us - some day you'll see how long we've been human for and that thing has been puzzling me. i know the scientific number, technically.

the house had these little scars of use. my floors didn't actually touch the walls; i had to fill them with a stopgap to stop the wind. other people had shoved rags and pieces of newspaper. i know i've lost rings and earring backs down some of the floorboards. i think the raccoons that lived in our basement probably have collected a small fortune over the years. i complain out loud to myself about how awful the stairs are (uneven, steep, evil, turning, hard to get down while holding anything) and know - someone else has said this exact same thing.

when i was packing up to leave and doing a final deep cleaning, i found a note carved in the furthest corner in the narrow cave of my closet. a child's scrawled name, a faded paint handprint, the scrangly numbers: 1857.

we've been human for a long time. way back before we can remember.

[lonestarbattleship]

"USS CLAXTON (DD-571), at left, USS CANBERRA (CA-70), center, and USS KILLEN (DD-593), right Undergoing battle damage repairs in the floating drydock USS ABSD-2 at Manus, Admiralty Islands."

Date: December 2, 1944

Naval History and Heritage Command: 80-G-304088

[savage-kult-of-gorthaur]

WHO REMEMBERS WHEN NAZI GERMANY BOMBED FOR PEACE? -- NEITHER DID RICHARD NIXON.

NOTE: Once again, happy posthumous 111th birthday, "Tricky Dick," who sent 21,000+ American soldiers to their deaths in his first term alone. What a wonderful President.

PIC(S) INFO: Spotlight on an anti-Vietnam War poster titled "Nixon's Peace," c. 1972, artwork by Cuban artist Lazaro Abreu for OSPAAAL (The Organziation of Solidarity with the People of Asia, Africa, and Latin America).

POSTER OVERVIEW: Depiction of President Nixon waving a small Swastika/Nazi flag while riding a B-52 bomber above the wartorn country of Vietnam and a visible Cambodia. This graphic design piece was made near the end of the Vietnam War era, and it tells the audience that Nixon's peace is obtained by war.

NIXON/VIETNAM DEBACLE: "In the 1968 election, Republican Richard Nixon claimed to have a plan to end the war in Vietnam, but, in fact, it took him five years to disengage the United States from Vietnam.

Nixon provided the South Vietnamese army with new training and improved weapons and tried to frighten the North Vietnamese to the peace table by demonstrating his willingness to bomb urban areas and mine harbors. He also hoped to orchestrate Soviet and Chinese pressure on North Vietnam.

The most controversial aspect of his strategy was an effort to cut the Ho Chi Minh supply trail by secretly bombing North Vietnamese sanctuaries in Cambodia and invading that country and Laos. The U.S. and South Vietnamese incursion into Cambodia in April 1970 helped destabilize the country, provoking a bloody civil war and bringing to power the murderous Khmer Rouge."

-- VIETNAM PROPAGANDA (Poster gallery/collection)

Sources: www.vietnampropaganda.com/product/nixons-peace-2