Award Time!

My humblest thanks to all the folks who read this blog. It’s really neat when I get a blog award. This one is the I Love Your Blog Award and it’s coming from From a Yellow House in England and Life and Love. Both of these blogs I’ve found through Entrecards- they are wonderful blogs!

Ladies, thank you so much for this incredible honor! You made my day!

Autumn is my favorite season. I think a lot of New Yorkers love it best, too. Fall weather is so crispy and clean, and this is when New York literally glows with autumn colors. It’s a great time to be in New York State.

Like the critters that populate our state, autumn is also the time when we prepare our homes for a long winter’s rest. Autumn is the time to harvest the vegetables, clear out the garden beds, and scrub the house one last time in preparation for our indoor life to come. It’s also the only time of the year that I decorate. I just love fall decor. I am in constant need of fresh fall home decorating ideas, how about you? Check out MyLifetime.com for terrific ideas for everything from decor to crafts to entertainment to health- and more. I love this site. They have the most fabulous dessert recipes known to mankind, oh!

So now you see why I love autumn– cozy blankets, spicy desserts, colorful trees, and everything is more relaxed and homey.

I was dropping Entrecards when I came across the Life of Justin blog the other day. He had a great post about climbing the highest point in Arizona, Humphrey’s Peak near Flagstaff. It’s 12, 633 feet high. The photos are great and I enjoyed his post.

The highest peak in New York State is Mount Marcy, at 5,344 feet, so Arizona has got us beat. But, wow, that’s a lot of feet to climb up, either way! Mount Marcy is in the Adirondack Mountains, the largest national park in the world. I found this tidbit from Wikipedia:

The mountain is named after former governor William L. Marcy, who authorized the environmental survey that explored the area. Mt. Marcy is sometimes called Tahawus — an Indian name that means “the cloud splitter,” however, the local Indians, who were few in number, had no name for the mountain. “Cloud Splitter” was an Indian name that Caucasians invented for the mountain. The name “Tahawus” has also been used for other Adirondack features.

The first recorded ascent of Mount Marcy was in 1837 by a large party led by Ebenezer Emmons. Today the ascent is easier due to existing trails that require no technical skills, allowing ascent and descent to be made in a day.

I looked for a few videos of Mount Marcy online, and found a few. Most of them have breathless people taking panoramic shots, with wicked winds.

Someday we hope to climb Mt. Marcy. I think it’s an 8 mile hike, all the way up!

I cannot believe how quickly teenage boys grow! My young son is only 14, and I think he grew 7 inches. THIS year. And he’s NOT DONE yet! Having a tall boy in the house is great, but, come on! I can barely keep the boy clothed. His tastes are changing, too. He’s not interested in the “kid” stuff; he wants to look more mature. He’s a really good son, and I am proud of him, so I’m happy to look for things he likes.

His peers are “into” black leather jackets, the gorgeous Roca wear coat seen in those photos. Wowee, classy! I think these coats may be a little too classy for him, but they are really noce coats. Roca wear is having an incredible sale, $50 off a $150 purchase, $15 off a $60 purchase. Ever hear of Roca wear? They have quality clothing for everyone and all styles. They also have a terrific “Big & Tall” section, which is becoming my new haunt. If you’re looking for some nice clothing for you or anyone in the family, give them a look. (P.S. they offer gift cards, too, if you’re shopping for gifts).

See what’s up with today’s FFQF at Meet the Founders blog

It’s Friday! So it’s Favorite Founder’s Quote Friday! It seems I’ve been posting a lot of Benjamin Franklin this month… not really intentional; I have just found so many good things he had to say for our topic this month (liberty).

I think this quote is very appropriate, in light of the government bailout of the gamblers on Wall Street. What a disgrace to our great nation to coddle the bankers and investors on the backs of the working people of America.

“The ordaining of laws in favor of one part of the nation, to the prejudice and oppression of another, is certainly the most erroneous and mistaken policy. An equal dispensation of protection, rights, privileges, and advantages, is what every part is entitled to, and ought to enjoy.” Benjamin Franklin (Emblematical Representations, Circa 1774)

I think Franklin’s quote speaks for itself about this matter. As for the United States, it is apparent that our government is quickly abandoning the free-market ideology and embracing a more fascist, socialist system run by an oligarchy. God help us.

Tired of the same old boring postcards at the souvenier shops? Take better photographs than those that are on most postcards? Send your own customized postcard with your own photo and message! I just discovered this site: Postful.com. It’s really great! I tried it out and here’s a quick preliminary postcard I crafted. It’s the kids on the ancient Oneida Stone that we found while exploring ancient Indian grounds in Smithfield, NY. Wouldn’t the grandparents love to get that? I love it!

Postful.com will generate postcards and letters with your own photos and messages. They can send them out via email, snail mail, or even as API calls. And the documents can go out as PDF files, office documents, as digital photos, and more. I’m really impressed! This is such a fun site. The postcards are extremely affordable, much less expensive than stuff at the gift shops. It’s 59¢ for the first postcard, and the more you order, the lower the postcard. Letters are 99¢ for the 1st page and then 25¢ each additional page. You can read more about how Postful works here. This is a totally cool site! And I am glad to be through with fumbling over postcards and stamps and having to find a mailbox or post office to send out our postcards.

It’s free to create stuff with Postful, you only pay to send things out. There’s a signup page to store your address and/or email information for frequent mailing. This looks like a really geat idea. I’ve always liked the customized cards idea– the customized postcards idea is even better. Perfect for the traveler! Thumbs up from Mrs. Mecomber!

Have you been watching ABC’s “Good Morning, America” show? I don’t watch television, so I am a little out of the loop. Apparently the media morning show has been having a “Whistle-Stop Tour” across the country, and they came to New York State. They took some time in Rome (only 30 minutes from where I live) to be greeted by posh politicians; but then they dug a little deeper into Rome’s population and saw deplorable conditions. Welcome to Upstate New York, ABC. Home of the over-taxed, over-regulated, Appalachian hillbillies. All we have left is our land, and even that is going to be taken from us soon.

ABC’s story started out as a flag-flying, anthem-singing train stop, but quickly developed into a down-and-out Kleenex-wringer when they started talking to Rome residents. There are two Romes here– one the politicians want you all to see, and the other that the people live in.

You can watch the “Good Morning, America” segment here. You can also read the news story about this at our local news outlet online here. Read the comments– read what the people are saying, they are amazing. One guy took the words right out of my mouth:

Sad part of all of this is, it’s not just Rome it is the whole area. Open your eyes and drive around the area it is depressed runned down and basically every third house is for sale. Utica has literally become a dumping ground for refugees since 1990’s. Herkimer County lost all their manufacturing as well as Oneida County over regulative state government with all the overburdening laws and taxes has chased many away. There isn’t too much that is positive. You can’t blame Good Morning America for the troubles we face. If it is any consolation we can slightly point our finger of blame at NAFTA and Government regulations, and high taxes.

What is amazing now is the whole country is starting feel just like we all have been through for the past 25 years.

The mayor of Rome was upset when he saw the ABC segment, and Douglas Bartell, the president of Rome’s Chamber of Commerce, wrote an open letter to ABC here. The funny thing is that I think ABC got it right. I’m no lover of the major media, and ABC sure does milk events, but Rome IS in deplorable conditions. All of Upstate New York is. Sorry, but that’s the truth! We are the most taxed people in the country and we have some of the lowest wages in the country. All our manufacturing jobs have left the state, and property taxes rise more and more every year. All you have to do is go to Yahoo’s Real Cities and look up an Upstate New York town. You’ll see that the average yearly income for central New Yorkers is right around $35,000, and the average cost of living per year here is around $45,000, and growing. That means that in order to live in New York State, New Yorkers, on the average, incure a yearly debt of $10,000. That’s ridiculous!

I’m sorry Rome got bad press. I love Rome, it’s one of our favorite cities to visit because it has such great historic sites. But New York State leaders really need to get out of their cushy offices and pretty mansions and see how the rest of the people are living. It’s not a pretty site.

I know I posted this video at my other blog, but it’s sooo good and I didn’t want anyone to miss it. ROFL, this is a terrific video! The guys at the NYS tourism department did a stupendous job, and this is hilarious! It’s EXACTLY what my kids do when they break out of the van after a long road trip, lol!

I’m so gratfiied NYS tourim is addressing the beauty and explorative wonders of Upstate New York. Yeehaw!

It probably comes as no surprise that the New York Traveler is a map FREAK. I have loads and loads of maps (and one globe). I just love them. I have old ones dating back to the 80s that I just can’t bear to get rid of. Hey, I might need them someday!

Well, anyway, here’s a map offer in case you need a map, or just want another one to add to your already burgeoning map collection. It’s from the National Guard. You can check it out here. Keep in mind that if you sign up to get the free map, you are being asked for your name and address and email. I always use my hotmail email address for stuff like this. Also note that sometimes there are little checkboxes near the “submit” button that you may want to uncheck if you don’t want soliciations. I always watch for those. So, buyer beware.

In 1869, in the tiny town of Cardiff, New York, two men were digging a new water well on some farmland owned by a Mr. William Newell. As is not unusual in Upstate New York, large stones impeded their progress as they dug deeper. But one exceptionally large rock had these men stumped. Panting and sweating heavily despite the cool autumn weather, they could not make this stone budge. They decided to expand their digging efforts and enlarge the hole. This was some stone! Before long, the two men had dug an area over five feet wide and still the stone had not moved. Peering closer at what appeared to be a human figure under the dirt, they stood back and exclaimed, “I declare, some old Indian has been buried here!”

A team of men were called to Newell’s farm to unearth what was proclaimed as a giant man. His size was shocking: he was over 10 feet tall; he weighed over 2,990 pounds; his foot was measured as almost two feet long. He was proclaimed to be an ancient ancestor who had sunk in the mud long ago, and was now petrified. News exploded across the state, across the nation, and across the world of a petrified man unearthed in Upstate NY! Crowds of farmers, businessmen, mothers, scientists, scholars, and merchants flocked to see this amazingly preserved giant of old. It was “The Cardiff Giant.”

It was also to become known as the greatest hoax in America (although I think the Piltdown Man has surpassed it, now).

A year before this “discovery,” a young man named George Hull had purchased a solid block of gypsum in Iowa, and then hired a German stonecutter– under the strictest secrecy– to carve out a human figure from the stone. Chemicals and acids were poured on the stone to create a weathered look, and the stone was stabbed with sharp implements to simulate skin pores. In November 1868, Hull quietly transported his giant to be buried at his cousin’s farm in Upstate New York. His cousin was William Newell.

Newell (and Hull, in the sidelines) immediately saw the financial benefits of this discovery. He spread the news, set up a tent on his farm, and invited visitors to see the giant– for a fee of 25 cents, of course. Seeing the crowds that swelled as news spread, he upped his fee the next day, to 50 cents.

Andrew Dickson White, president of Cornell University, wrote in his autobiography about seeing the giant:

In about two hours we arrived at the Newell farm and found a gathering which at first sight seemed like a county fair. In the midst was a tent, and a crowd was pressing for admission. Entering, we saw a large pit or grave, and, at the bottom of it, perhaps five feet below the surface, an enormous figure, apparently of Onondaga gray limestone. It was a stone giant, with massive features, the whole body nude, the limbs contracted as if in agony. It had a color as if it had lain long in the earth, and over its surface were minute punctures, like pores. An especial appearance of great age was given it by deep grooves and channels in its under side, apparently worn by the water which flowed in streams through the earth and along the rock on which the figure rested. Lying in its grave, with the subdued light from the roof of the tent falling upon it, and with the limbs contorted as if in a death struggle, it produced a most weird effect. An air of great solemnity pervaded the place. Visitors hardly spoke above a whisper.

Upon closer inspection, White wondered if the giant was a hoax. Looking closely, one could see the crude anatomical errors, the mechanical punctures in the stone, and the acid washes. White also questioned why a farmer would be digging a well in the middle of his farmland, especially when the farm already had a suitable well closer to the house and a stream near the property. His doubts were drowned out by the farmer’s familiy’s willingness to say, under oath, that they had not placed the giant there nor known of its presence. White’s doubts were also challenged by the stone itself– this man was not carved from the native Onondaga stone typical of this area of New York State. This was a foreign stone, much too large to have been transported without notice. Believers in the giant said that the only reasonable explanation for it was that this was truly a petrified man.

Within a week after the discovery, full-blown statements appeared to the effect that the neighboring Indians had abundant traditions of giants who formerly roamed over the hills of Onondaga; and, finally, the circumstantial story was evolved that an Onondaga squaw had declared, “in an impressive manner,” that the statue “is undoubtedly the petrified body of a gigantic Indian prophet who flourished many centuries ago and foretold the coming of the palefaces, [and] who, just before his own death, said to those about him that their descendants would see him again.”

…The current of belief ran more and more strongly, and soon embraced a large number of really thoughtful people… including especially Dr. Woolworth, the secretary, a man of large educational experience, and no less a personage in the scientific world than Dr. James Hall, the State geologist, perhaps the most eminent American paleontologist of that period.

While some did not believe that the giant was an actual petrified man, they did believe that perhaps the giant was an archaelogical artifact from ancient times, or a work of art by the French Jesuit missionaries two hundred years before. “Just so” stories of vivid imagination popped up:

“Was [the giant] not… some one from that French colony,… someone with a righteous soul sighing over the lost civilization of Europe, weary of swamp and forest and fort, who, finding this block by the side of the stream, solaced the weary days of exile with pouring out his thought upon the stone?”

People –laymen and scholars alike– were perplexed and greatly divided. Most believed the giant was real. White lamented:

Although the most eminent sculptor in the State has utterly refused to pronounce the figure anything beyond a poor piece of carving, these strains of admiration and adoration continued. There was evidently a “joy in believing” in the marvel, and this was increased by the peculiarly American superstition that the correctness of a belief is decided by the number of people who can be induced to adopt it–that truth is a matter of majorities. The current of credulity seemed irresistible.

The giant was becoming too popular to remain on a little Upstate New York farm. The “petrified man” was “exhumed” and carted across the state for everyone to see. It was shipped to Syracuse, then New York City, and Albany. PT Barnum, that greatest showman on earth, wanted to buy the Cardiff Giant, but was refused. He crafted his own giant instead, putting it on display in New York City as the real Cardiff Giant, and the other one (the real fake one, lol) was a fake. Barnum was sued for claiming the Cardiff giant was a fake and his fake reproduction as real. (uh, got that?)

Photo courtesy of John and Keturah at Flickr

In the meantime, someone had managed to chop off a chunk of the Cardiff Giant (the real fake one), and discovered the material to be gypsum, from Iowa. And reports came in that William Newell had transmitted several thousand dollars to his cousin, George Hull. Stonecutters in Iowa admitted that they had cut out a large block of gypsum for George Hull in 1868. Admissions about the German stonecutter, the transport to New York State, and even Hull’s own boasting were aired. The hoax came crashing down. Finally Hull himself, seeing the end was near, confessed on December 10th of that year that the giant was a big joke; its fabrication a way to get revenge on a cleryman who had argued with him about giants of old in the Scripture. The financial gain was a pleasant by-product.

White was neither amused nor entertained by Hull and his “joke.” He wrote:

Up to this time, Hull’s remarkable cunning had never availed him much. He had made various petty inventions, but had realized very little from them; he had then made some combinations as regarded the internal-revenue laws referring to the manufacture and sale of tobacco, and these had only brought him into trouble with the courts; but now, when the boundless resources of human credulity were suddenly revealed to him by the revivalist, he determined to exploit them. This evolution of his ideas strikingly resembles that through which the mind of a worthless, shiftless, tricky creature in western New York–Joseph Smith–must have passed forty years before, when he dug up “the golden plates” of the “Book of Mormon,” and found plenty of excellent people who rejoiced in believing that the Rev. Mr. Spalding’s biblical novel was a new revelation from the Almighty.

On February 2, 1870 both giants were revealed as fakes in court. The judge ruled that Barnum could not be sued for calling a fake giant a fake.

And believe it or not, Hull didn’t end there. White concludes:

One man emerged from this chapter in the history of human folly supremely happy: this was Hull, the inventor of the “giant.” He had at last made some money, had gained a reputation for “smartness,” and, what probably pleased him best of all, had revenged himself upon the Rev. Mr. Turk of Ackley, Iowa, who by lungpower had worsted him in the argument as to the giants mentioned in Scripture.

So elate was he that he shortly set about devising another “petrified man” which would defy the world. It was of clay baked in a furnace, contained human bones, and was provided with “a tail and legs of the ape type”; and this he caused to be buried and discovered in Colorado. This time he claimed to have the aid of one of his former foes–the great Barnum; and all went well until his old enemy, Professor Marsh of Yale, appeared and blasted the whole enterprise by a few minutes of scientific observation and common-sense discourse.

And what happened to the Cardiff Giant? More than just a blip on computer memory in the annals of history, it still exists! It appeared at the Pan-American Expostition in 1901, but attendance was weak. It was purchased by an Iowa man to be used as a coffee table until 1947, when the Farmer’s Museum of Cooperstown, NY, bought it. It remains on display there. I’ve have seen the Cardiff Giant a few times myself, and I remain absolutely baffled how people ever convinced themselves that this was a real petrified man.

Photo courtesy of John and Keturah at Flickr

P.S. According to Roadside America, you have to pay a fee and enter a tent to see the giant on display. I don’t remember having to do that, but perhaps it has changed. “George Hull would be proud,” they said, LOL!

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Huh? I think they are trying to butter me up. Will all this flattery inspire me to post all these spammy comments? Are these people THAT stupid?

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NOT!