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Facebook Follies

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On Saturday morning our email account got hacked.  Val alerted me to this fact.  By the time I became aware of the problem some twenty to thirty spam emails had been sent out under our name.  They were sent to all of our friends and family members.  I don’t know if it was just a coincidence or not, but when I logged off of our email account the spamming emails stopped.

Another coincidence or possibly a clue, was that just two days earlier, I had set up a Facebook account.  As part of the setup process I allowed the sharing of my Yahoo/AT&T email contacts list.  In retrospect I think that this was a mistake.  Interestingly and possibly another clue, my Facebook account’s password had been changed.  I’ve changed all my passwords, but I don’t know if that will stop it or not.  Anyway the damage has been done.  I can only hope that whoever or whatever hacked our email account has moved on. 

Picture above our a pair of Eurasian Tree Sparrows or ETS that were at our bird feeders on Saturday morning.  As it name implies the ETS is indigenous to eastern Europe and parts of Asia.  In North America, it is quite rare.  The only sizable  population is established around Saint Louis and neighbouring parts of Illinois.

Pictured above and in today’s header are different parts of Dale Chihuly’s Blue Chandelier sculpture.  It is a two-story tall piece that hangs in the entrance way of the Ridgeway Center at the Missouri Botanical Gardens.  I have always tried to photograph the whole piece, but without much success.  I think that doing closeup photos of the sculpture works a lot better. 

The orchid show is ongoing now at the Garden and will continue long enough for Jane to see it too.  I visited it on Saturday afternoon and took lots of pictures.  So you all can expect to see lots of orchid pictures, beautifying this blog, in the coming week.

I biked in the Park on Saturday afternoon.  The weather was sunny and near sixty degrees, so the Park was mobbed.  I decided to bail from the Park and go over to the Gardens and view the orchid show.  On the way back home, again in the Park, I was assailed.  I was riding along and an occupant of a  passing car through something at me.  It hit me in the elbow.  It didn’t hurt, I think that it was a plastic wrapped food item.  I think the laughter from the passing car stung the most.  Anyway, I got sixteen miles.

Osage Orange Redux

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I got a nice email the other day from Sam about the archaeological significance of the Osage Orange, so without her permission, but hopefully with her forgiveness, I’ll quote from that email:

North American archaeologists are quite interested in Osage
Oranges.  The trees really had a limited range in late prehistory, yet
the wood makes the best bows around–positively legendary in the
chronicles of early exploration and settlement.  Frank Schambach was
thinking about all the nifty goodies buried at Spiro, Oklahoma, and the
fact that archaeologists really didn’t have an explanation for how all
the high-value material derived from a wide-ranging long-distance
trading network had ended up there–more than anywhere else across the
contemporary Southeast.  He figured they had to have something
of high value that they were trading for all the fancy goods they were
putting in the graves.  He postulated that to be Osage Orange bows/bow
wood.

On another, but related subject, I’ve started reading Mayflower by Nathaniel Philbrick.  I’m about halfway through it now.  It certainly talks about the Pilgrims, but also about their Indian neighbors.  Sick and somewhat lost, the Pilgrims landed on Cape Cod, when they had originally set off for what is now New York.  Low on supplies, their first interaction with their new neighbors was to steal some of their corn.

They eventually settled at what is now Plymouth, MA.  Plymouth was founded on the site of a deserted Indian village.  It was deserted because in the years immediately preceding the Pilgrims arrival, European fisherman had brought European diseases to what is now known as New England.  These diseases decimated some of the Indian nations.  The effects of disease were not uniform, some nations were badly hurt while others were not.  The Indians knew that the Europeans were the source of the disease.  They thought of it as a European weapon.  Some even confused the Pilgrim’s gunpowder barrels as the source of the disease.  Probably because the Pilgrim’s matchlock guns were so ineffective that they couldn’t be the Pilgrim’s real weapons.  An Indian with a bow could fire five times as fast as a Pilgrim with a matchlock and their respective weapon’s ranges were about the same.

The uneven ravages of disease precipitated an imbalance of power among the New England Indian Nations.  As it turns out the Indian Nation most affect by disease made the first approaches to the Pilgrims.  By this time the Pilgrims were also decimated by disease.  After the Pilgrim’s first winter a peace treaty was made.  Months later the Pilgrims decided that they should reciprocate and visit their Indian neighbors.  They sent two men southeast and eventually found their Indian allies, near Fall River, MA, mine and my mother’s birth place.  I’ve read up through the first Thanksgiving, in the fall of the Pilgrim’s first year and the arrival of the second wave of Pilgrims.  We all know where this story is going, but it is interesting to see how it gets there.

Who Ate Here? We Did.

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This is a shout out to Sam!  This Majestic Restaurant & Bar is in the Central West End.  Anne and I had breakfast there on Saturday morning.  This Majestic is well, think the My Big Fat Greek Wedding restaurant, only tone it down a bit since this is Saint Louis, not Hollywood.  Anne ordered Bill’s Omelet with gyro meat, feta cheese, tomatoes and onions.  I ordered the just eggs over easy, bacon, fried potatoes and toast.  The waitress let us both know that Anne had made the correct choice and I had not.  She even came back at the end of the meal to make sure I really understood.

American Patriot II

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My website went a little viral today.  Normally I get less then a hundred hits per day, but today I got over 400.  It is all because of the picture of this guy on a scooter, that I called American Patriot after the logo name on his scooter.  I’m assuming that the serendipity of the post’s picture title and this week’s Veterans Day had something to do with it.  This second post is sort of an experiment to prove or disprove this hypothesis.

You know he is sort of an American Patriot.  He is unsung.  He is standing tall.  He is braving the cold.  He is doing his part to reduce the amount of petro dollars we send to foreign countries.  I’m sure he is an American Patriot.

But in Hartford, Hereford and Hampshire, hurricanes hardly ever happens

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Actually I prefer, but in ‘artford, ‘ereford and ‘ampshire, ‘urricanes ‘ardly ever ‘appen, or something like that.  The flight was bumpy, but the weather here tonight is nice.  The hurricane hits tomorrow.  Coming in on final I got a great view of the country side and it looks like the leaves are just starting to change.  Also it appears that outside of the cities, towns and villages there are not many dwellings, not the urban sprawl that you see in Missouri.  Steve and Barbara sent me the picture.  Dinner with the boys tonight and then to bed, tomorrow will be a long day.