Planets cross the sky from west to east, in a prograde motion. Sometimes, one will slow down and begin moving west to east, a retrograde motion – to revisit aspects and sanction possibilities. In the schemes of this and this, Ceres ended up playing host to Mercury for three weeks during one of his 2021 retrogrades. And that was when the mother to Persephone learned from the complex one that Jupiter and Saturn will have a long overdue hug in Aquarius. Mars will not retrograde and Neptune spends half the year in water. Uranus is still ankle deep in bullshit, and there’s a ranging discussion on Diana and what to do w/ the moons and moonmoons.
Uranus Rx
The graeco-roman sky god airs inner convictions and uses his outside voice doing so (tau aug-dec). Uranus is siblings w/ love, hell, and mother Earth. Uranus is also spherical, blue-green, attacked by solar winds because the avatar to the zodiacal wheel is flat on his back, wrapped in iced waters stained w/ dark organics all the while exhaling stupendous fumes.
Saturn Rx
Awareness of proximity to the god of duty stepping backwards can put a stop to all mind games (aqu jun-oct). Wallflowers can bloom for a season. Thugs and enigmas can expect a comeuppance. Early sky watchers saw an unusual planet surrounded by a sickle, so named it after Saturn, ursurper of heaven 1.0. The king of the titans is never warmer than minus 240 degrees, and his many moons and rings continually send down organic building blocks in frozen packaging.
Vesta Rx
Leaving 2020 fast as her feet could run, Vesta stops just nineteen days into 2021, and will spend 90 days unspooling a bit of 2020 back to perform a proper kindling rite and re-settle ‘first flame’, her sacred charge, in safer surroundings (vir jan-apr). The resultant glow reveals the venerable roman fire goddess to be bean-shaped and wearing a smooth basalt cloak studded w/ achondrites spears tipped w/ meteorites: diogenite, eucrite and howardite.
Pluto Rx
The roman infernal god is silently ferrying the dead back to the other side (cap may-sep). Pluto was deemed a primary planets when he was discovered. Now the ‘unseeen’ is better known as the shadow harbinger of a vast celestial court of pantheons paying heed to the Sun.
Ceres Rx
The daughter to Jupiter chooses her words carefully because she is cognizant of sharp implements (gem oct-dec). Ceres is the premier asteroid deity, stepping into view at the Observatory of Palermo on the first day of 1801. The aggrieved roman goddess of agriculture was spherical, wearing a pockmarked swimsuit, studded w/ salted pearls and slathered w/ organic building blocks, and doing laps in an ocean world of sea water.
Neptune Rx
Altered states are best practised alone as a veil descends on everything (pis jul-nov). The roman marine god gets to crest virgin waves, under unflattering light, knowing when geniality is at stake then indulgence + social outings tend touchy feely spiritualized really. The liquid liege had chosen the date of his resurfacing into history by sending a dream, in 1846, to a sleeping mathematician. The woke mortal returned to the New Berlin Observatory, entered new coordinates, and found Neptune sitting on his trident throne.
Juno Rx
Confidences can come undone, and events play out at cross-purposes (sag apr-jul). Nursed by the four seasons, Juno grew up prone to distractions. Especially now that the roman sky goddess found out that her greek-half lives just 64 asteroids away.
Jupiter Rx
Social obligations can come w/ a steady drip of dystopia (aqu jul-oct). Babylonian sky watchers paid close attention to the planet Jupiter and its annual return, and used this 12-year span of the reigning roman sky god as a 7th-c. BC structure to describe the zodiac of heaven, pin the constellations, begin a map of a hypothetical heaven.
Chiron Rx
This hybrid-spawn to Saturn and an oceanid-mare (long story) knows to wear sensible shoes (ari jul-dec). Already on a chaotic orbit, prone to head injuries, Chiron is the first of his kind: a collective of asteroids w/ comet tails.
Pallas Rx
The graeco-roman goddess of wisdom shapeshifts – becoming even harder to emulate – yet presents spartan (pis jul-nov). Afterwards, Pallas turns her grey eyes back on the two fishes whose waters she is currently swimming in. One headstrong the other lost, in ‘an ocean of energies in which two vast complementary ties can be distinguished’.
Venus Rx
The heart risks sabotage when attraction to the unattractive becomes fashionable (cap mid-dec). Beast and the beauty: escrow walk and pillow talks.
Mercury Rx
The roman messenger god flies fleet as thought over a year warped by avarice and thrice met by pushback. A friendship can be lost (aqu feb). Ego won’t stand down (gem jun). Tempests in teacups can cause a bout of chitchat opinions (lib oct).
Diana Rx
Some semi-public pedestal toppling might occur (cap may-jul). In 1863 Diana dashed into reality, darkly carbonaceous and primitive, as befits the roman goddess of the hunt.
Eris Rx Innocence can suffer, and some growing up might happen; when haste finds balance w/ waste (ari jan-dec). While the 21st-c. was young the greek priestess to Khaos stepped out of the Kuiper belt, fully formed. The goddess of discord is sheathed in white-white methane ice shedding miasmas.
Hygiea Rx
Secrets can die and Hygiea might be leaking toxin(leo jan-mar). The greek medicine goddess had emerged in 1849, spherical and intact.
Pholus Rx
Any bodily injury incurred while retrograde (cap apr-aug) can take a longer time to mend. Accidentally poisoned by Medusa’s blood, the greek centaur of Mt Pholoë expired and came back as a 110-mile wide asteroid w/ a comet tail.
When a nearly intact tomb belonging to egyptian royalty was discovered in 1922, foreign correspondent John L. Balderston was there covering it for the New York World. The world then became somewhat familiar w/ the ancients’ belief in immortality as well as the science of embalming, an operation taking 70 days to achieve and presided over by Anubis.
Balderston was later hired to produce the screenplay for a fantasia based on a fiction, fashioned from a backstory by Nina Wilco Putnam, on the life of 18th-c. french hypnotist Caliostro. The result dipped romance into ungodly goo that only Hollywood could concoct.
1. The Mummy (1932)
As the 1921 field expedition season opens in Egypt, members of the British Museum discover a coffin and a body inside. “The gods of Egypt still live in these hills, in their ruined temples.” Boris Karloff is the mummy Imhotep, awakened by tomb-hunters and pursuing the reincarnation of his princess Anck-es-en-Amon – in flapper-era London.
2. The Mummy’s Hand (1940)
Following a map, archaeologists find the tomb of the princess Ananka, and by breaking the seal of the seven jackals unleash a terror that has waited 3,000 years to be reborn. “We search for the tomb of a princess, and all we find is the mummy of a man.” Tom Tyler is the mummy Kharis – imparting to the role his famous lurch and one dead arm. Eduardo Cianelli plays the high priest.
3. The Mummy’s Tomb (1942)
Opening his eyes for the first time as the mummy Kharis, Lon Chaney Jr will seek vengeance for the tomb desecration of his princess Ananka. “The curse on that tomb extends to the blood relations of all who entered it.” Turhan Bey is Mehemet Bey.
4. The Mummy’s Ghost (1944)
Ramsay Ames is the american reincarnation of the princess Ananka, and Lon Chaney Jr again plays the mummy Kharis, crossing the Atlantic Ocean to court her. “First it’s the Mummy. Now it’s a reincarnated woman!” John Carradine plays Yousef Bey, and George Zucco is Andoheb.
5. The Mummy’s Curse (1944)
Lon Chaney Jr is revived a third time as the mummy Kharis, and finds reason to wade into the Louisiana bayou where a crypt holds dead princess Ananka, his beloved Virginia Christine. “I can never get too much sun.” Peter Coe is Dr Ilzor Zandaabm, and Dennis Moore is Dr Halsey.
|¶|
Hot rods still drive on N Virginia Street, where the original casinos roamed.
▶ 1850s
Reno came into its own in the 1850s when a few pioneers arrived and the beginnings of a settlement evolved. Perhaps they were prescient. In 1859, when silver was discovered in nearby Virginia City, a log-toll bridge was built across the Truckee River to give easier access to the California Trail. This crossing then became Lake‘s Crossing, and the surrounding area became a town, and changed its name to
Reno.
|¶|
The First Transcontinental Railroad made it a stopover, and the Lincoln Highway used it as a layover.
|¶|
There is color footage of Reno 1953 (00:06:08).
✈¦ Monterey Bay
• ASILOMAR
|¶|
Stone wall inside Merrill Hall.
|¶|
Painting of the Engineer’s Cottage, where architect Julia Morgan stayed while building Asilomar.
|¶|
Back door to the Engineer’s Cottage.
▶ Julia Morgan
Conceived of as a summer conference center for the Young Women’s Christian Association in Pacific Grove, then into the Asilomar State Marine Reserve, and becoming part of an ocean-health program from Pigeon Point to Point Conception on the California coast, and where an undersea kelp forest thrives.
✈¦ Northern California
• SEA RANCH
|¶|
Standing in front of Condominium One in 1991 is the team that made this habitat in Northern California overlooking the Pacific Ocean a reality: Richard Whitaker, Donlyn Lyndon, Charles Moore, William Turnbull.
✈¦ California
• SACRAMENTO RIVER
|¶|
Guiding gold miners since 1848. The discovery of gold in the 19th century brought prospectors by the hundreds to follow the river and its tributaries to the California Trail and the Siskiyou Trail, and where gold fields awaited. Communities came into being along this river, and the City of Sacramento became its most important home.
▶ Into the blue again
Rising in the Klamath Mountains in the north, then travelling 257 miles to reach a delta where it is joined by the San Joaquin River and begins this final leg of its journey to the San Francisco Bay and becoming the largest river in California,
✈¦ San Francisco
• OCEAN BEACH
|¶|
Treacherous due to strong and cold rip currents, lashed by waves coming from the Pacific Ocean, this parcel on the west coast of San Francisco forms part of the rugged ribbon the National Park Service has made of the California coastline.
✈¦ California
• SANTA CRUZ
|¶|
Sixteen square miles of beach front property makes Santa Cruz the northern-most beachtown guaranteeing a proper California summer. This coastal community has a plan to adapt to climate change, incl. relocating infrastructure and buildings to higher ground due to expected degradation beginning at the shoreline.
✈¦ Four Corners
• MONUMENT VALLEY
|¶| Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park is in Monument Valley, near Four Corners and along the Arizona and Utah borders.
|¶|
It forms a quadrant of the Navajo Nation Reservation, whose name for this land is Tsé Bii’ Ndzisgaii, valley of the rocks.
a n a l y s t █
On April 15, 1726, while taking tea in the garden w/ his friend, Issac Newton b.1642 pondered on an apple which had just fallen to the ground. William Stuckeley records how Newton mused:
█“Why should that apple always descend perpendicularly to the ground? Why should it not go sideways, or upwards? but constantly to the earth”s centre? Assuredly, the reason is, that the earth draws it. There must be a drawing power in , and the sum of the drawing power in the matter of the earth must be in the earth’s centre, not in any side of the earth. Therefore does this apple fall perpendicularly, or toward the center. If matter thus draws , it must be in proportion of its quantity. Therefore the apple draws the earth, as well as the earth draws the apple.” a e r i a l i s t█
The ancients, even if concerned of this “drawing power” that Newton was to articulate, mocked the gravity throne by continuing to send prayers up to heaven. Entreaties in temple script on paper were folded into a lantern, a candle is attached so that heat and smoke from the flame collects inside the lantern -- causing its ascent to gods and goddesses.
█
Mankind eventually followed that lantern, yet the earliest airmen didn’t know to carry oxygen, and returned spouting the wildest tales of beings living in the upper air, and among them were four brothers, who were curious and would approached w/ whistles and roars and yells, about many subjects, including that confounded new contrivance, a wind tunnel.
█
Sensing fear in the visitors’ eyes, their thunder abated. Then Zephros drew even closer and whispered: “We are wind gods of the four cardinal points, heralds of seasons, sons to Typhöeus, fifth and final monster born to mother Earth. We too seek a reason for existence, and whether or not it becomes us to be suited up in turbines, pumps, and such.”
█
Notos spread icicles when parting his lips: “Can these regulation systems really help w/ my restlessness? and what’s up w/ welded insulation?” Euros brought up the sorest point: “Can gravity weigh me down and curb my mood.” Boreas’ grumble rumbled: “Magnetosphere constrains our empire but why? and who are these rocketmen and their aerial adventures in guidance and control?”
a v a t a r█
Then the wind gods would invariably take their guests on a grand tour. Earth’s atmosphere is spherical and contains a precise mixture of gases such that oxygen becomes its miraculous chemical product. The atmosphere has the same shape as Gaia due to her gravitational grit, which she bestows to water and all things living. And just as the sea and mountains are deemed sentient so too should Aether be considered a being, having undergone “biochemical modifications by living organisms” ever since his aboriginal form coalesced into a paleo-atmosphere. Material enough for mother Earth to lassoo the invisible entity w/ a girdle tight enough to separate him into distinct layers and is the main cause of clouds.
█
Ancients can discern this sky god only when he digs into his bag of optical tricks and throws mirages or scatters light. Aether is designated the patron deity to life on Gaia, whose existence depends on a narrow band of the bottom layer, beginning at sea level.
a n g e l█
Imaginative proto-aviators studied birds, how they populate the air and go where they will. Wings got built, men got strapped, jumps happened -- all to naught or worse. Leonardo da Vinci b.1452 had sketched out such dreams of levitation but his idea, wings that can flap, never left the sketchbook.
⁝ Bird wings are folding fans, able to expand and collapse. Each wing is a web of arm bones, having joints which, by evolutionary decree, have quills on the knuckles; each quill grasps one feather.
a i r m a n█
The wind gods liked to play w/ mankind’s kites and were completely entranced by paper prayers heaven-bound using only heated air. They then found out that hydrogen, discovered c.1780, has levitational abilities also -- but only in unadulterated form; otherwise, being a gas, it would simply dissipate.
Rare and difficult to distill, hydrogen requires a chamber, white-hot iron, running water; and had to wait until a non-porous material to contain the new gas had not yet been developed. In the interim, heated air would have to make do for heady inventors.
█
A ginormous pillow, w/ a small opening and tied to a large basket, was deemed capacious enough that, by taking in a healthy gulp of hot air, the entire contraption will rise into the air (1783). Then, as the trapped air cools, the hot-air balloon will descend. The first volunteers chosen to carry out this maiden flight were a french sheep, duck and rooster.
a c r o b a t█
Kites were originally devised to bring the way wind into better play. Kites (and smoke) could and were used for military reasons: as a signal, a measurment of distance, to “test the wind”. Dog-earred generals carried mint editions of The Myth of Icarus into battle and tasked military engineers to make accessories to kites so that, adding a passenger, the gimmick can be carried upwards.
█
Starting in the late 1850s, the idea of a man in the air, tethered to a kite, got serious attention. Could it be that sending up an entire lab was so 1847 already? That was when the first use of a kite to forecast the weather occurred at Kew Observatory, when a “very stable” one was able to support “meteorological instruments at height”. Benjamin Franklin b.1706 had got there first w/ a simpler laboratory: kite, key, lightning storm.
█
Then the golden age of kiting came to an end around 1910, when the military began to pay visits to the sky, giving notice that the empire of the winds was coming to an end.
a l c h e m i s t█
Gunpowder is the earliest known chemical explosive. Adding heat to a mixture of carbon, sulfur and saltpeter (an efflorescence mineral found on stones) will cause a flash accompanied by fire that burns off. China’s alchemists had learned how to extract saltpeter, during a medicinal quest to find the elixir of life -- what they got instead “smoke and flames”.
█
Although the earliest pyrotechnics in the sky were to send signals they were also used, in profusion, on any occasion for pomp that needed a pop.
█
Paper tubes filled w/ confetti and a spoon of gunpowder were then sealed w/ a fuse sticking out. The tube is secured to a long stick that acts as a tail, is aimed towards the sky -- fire is introduced to the fuse gets ignited. The detonation produces a propulsive force, the firework ascends and the contents spill out.
█
Ingenuity on how the firesmith fills the tube is what will happen next.
█
Fireworks are propelled missiles guided during a brief initial phase of powered flight. Each firework has a subsequent trajectory that obeys the laws of gravity, codified as classical mechanics.
a r c h e t y p e█
When the Second World War ended in 1947, pilots from many nations returned to the civilian ranks.
█
Some, however, together w/ their ground mechanics and radio operators, were eager to go further into the sky, and by the late 1950s heaven was beginning to get crowded.
█
Governments were wont to fund space explorations, but only after the remainder of Earth not yet bound by passports -- the north and south poles -- were divvied up. Longitude and latitude determinations then led to precision mapping of the world, and in the co-mingling of new disciplines, rocket science took off to map all the others.
South African National Space Agency
Formed in 2010 to manage satellites that monitor the continent for flooding and fires, provide an earth watch record, play host to the only regional space weather warning center for Africa, and the inheritor to a recording station, the Hermanus Magnetic Observatory, set up to be a geomagnetic research center and part of a network taking measurements of the global magnetic field.
❚
❚
❚
Now the station is a part of the site that administers South Africa’s space program.
European Space Agency
A compact for western Europe after intergovernmental discussions for a cohesive approach to space.
Designed for uncrewed missions in 1975, ESA soon enough changed its approach to space science. Today, ESA does so much more than exploration. There is development going on for a spaceplane and a project to turn earth-watch data into apps. A survey of one percent of the known universe (2019), which will result in a map. What happens when regular and dark matter meet, and how both act, together and separately, when mingled w/ dark energy (2019). A study the Sun up close. Search for life on Mars. Planned mission to Mercury (2025). Several exo-planetary hunting missions. Origins of phosphorus. Then a deep dive into an asteroid defense shield.
The agency’s major spaceport is in French Guiana, where it conducts human spaceflight, launches Earth observation satellites, and sends spaceprobes to explore. Founded by ten nations, the European Space Agency now has 22 members, and a waiting list of ± eleven applicants.
国 家 航 天 局
China launched into outer space in 1970 w/ a song. The satellite contained a perpetual loop of Dong Fang Hong, a sung eulogy to Mao Zedong, bringing the revolution to the subhurbs of the solar system.
❚
★
❚
Formed in 1993 from input by four bodies: systems engineering, space science, general planning, foreign affairs. China’s space program was made possible because of Hsue-Shen Tsien b.1911, expelled from JPL for political uncertainties.
Aerospace scientists in Chengdu have shown interest in launching an artificial moon as a fixed satellite no more than 50 miles wide and 22,000 mi (35,400 km) away. When the reporter asked, the developers of this secondary source of illumination at night promised a “dusk-like glow” that won’t disturb nocturnal animal rites.
Today, the CHINA NATIONAL SPACE AGENCY has landed on the moon twice -- the first since the Apollo missions.
Recently named an asteroid it discovered for Wu Weiren (2020), a pioneer of deep space exploration.
Yesterday, China thanked its stars that an out-of-control spacecraft, spinning and tumbling going on two years, finally crashed into the south Pacific (2018).
Ελληνικός Διαστημικός Οργανισμός
Experiencing a malleable moment w/ yearnings for a return to Olympus, Greece put away the telescope and announced the creation of a
≡
≡
≡
HELLENIC SPACE CENTER in 2019, inviting divine messengers Hermes and Iris to issue a directive that greek culture plans to again be a participant in “space events”.
Bộ Khoa học và Công nghệ
Vietnam’s interest in space, if any, falls under the purview of the ministry of science and technology, which has thrown a bucolic blanket over its astro-plans.
❙
★
❙
Back in 1980, the country was proud to have had a vietnaut join a cosmonaut to pilot Soyuz 37 onto the Salyut-6 space station, the first of three such pairing of viet- and cosmo- nauts, under a program from the soviet union for socialist countries allied to the warsaw pact.
Phạm Tuân, born in Quoc Tuan village (1947), flew a jet fighter in the people’s air force (1965) and died age 32 in a Mig-21 crash.
International Space Station
The era of comfort in space took place silently when the first component to a future space station complex was launched (1988), carrying container connections for contingency transfer of water, container bags, wipes, “filters”. The space module also carried six nickel-cadium batteries, two solar arrays, three docking ports. A pressurized valve unit w/ air ducts, funnel containment filters and dust collectors. Smoke detector, gas analyzer, gas masks, portable fans. The cabin has a pole, handrails, hooks, instrument containers. Zarya was the first component to ISS, designed to be autonomous for eight months. More modules then arrived to interlock and create an exponential habitat.
Fifteen nations and five space agencies coordinate this mission -- Canada, Japan, Russia, United States, the European Space Agency -- signing agreements covering legal, financial and political implications in how the station is utilized; day to day; traffic; crew time.
Serviced by a team of three robots capable of independent or conjoined activities. Legacy loos are being replaced w/ new comfort stations (2020); a waste management system common for all vehicle platforms is on the drawing table.
Indian Space Research Organisation
A moon mission, led by female scientists in 2017, detected “magmatic water” -- first evidence of h-two-oh. Chandrayaan-1 then had a mishap and crashed, adding a new crater.
A second moon mission, having released a lander which was within a mile from touchdown, suddenly became disabled from a cyberattack and ceased functioning (2019). Reporting to the department of space, the space program also develops and delivers satellite apps for smart phones, including in cartography and dedicated distance education.
❚
❚
❚
India’s space program (1969) had humble beginnings, when ionosphere soundings were being conducted in Calcutta (1920s). Today’s sky watchers prefer to do so in a theater, watching the latest bolly-fi release.
Zambian Space Programme
Edward Nkoloso was an african grade school teacher tinkering with a catapult capable of sending a spaceship carrying ten or so to Mars.
❚
❚
❚
When Zambia gained independence in 1964, he was then appointed liaison w/ regional freedom fighters; all the while his space program going. There is footage of his training camp for afronauts from 1960. Born a prince of the Bemba tribe, Edward Makuka Nkoloso had a missionary education in latin, french and theology; he died in 1989, age 70.
Canadian Space Agency
Continuing to maintain its air fleet after World War Two, Canada paid attention to the upper atmosphere and in 1962 launched a satellite.
❚
•
❚
Formed in 1990, the Canadian Space Agency now shares its space knowledge for the “benefit of canadians and humanity”, and has challenged its youth to submit ideas for “making space easier and more fun”, w/ the promise to prototype the best entry. There is a trove of footage from a canadian astronaut training camp.
NASA
As the outcome to World War II turned in their favor, the United States set in motion “operation paperclip” to retrieve nazi rocket technology, and came back w/ 100 V-2 rockets, production site drawings, and Wernher von Braun b.1912, amenable to continue where he had left off. Homegrown rocket science was already happening at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, so America made plans for a future in space and in 1958 created the NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION.
❚
❚
❚
Seven years later there was an orbiting lab. Then a duo-man program left footprints on the Moon (1969). The first untethered spacewalk was in 1984, when astronaut Bruce McCandless performed free flying 320 feet away from his craft: “... overused lines ‘slipped the surly bonds of Earth’, but when I was free from the shuttle, they felt accurate”. From its inception, NASA hired talent, and some of these stories are dramatized in 2017’s Hidden Figures, about three african american female mathematicians.
Soon attention will be paid to samples brought back from apollo asteroid Bennu by the Origins Spectral Interpretation Resource Identification Security Regolith Explorer (2020).
These days NASA has plans for an interstellar mission to the Alpha Centauri system (2017). Elated about the scholarship named for Dr Katherine Coleman Goble Johnson (2018). Perturbed that “poor record keeping” contributed to the loss of an Apollo 11 lunar collection bag that contained lunar dust particles (2018). Released a 60-year anniversary video (2018).
Established as a civilian space program, America’s space program was militarized sixty years later.
UK Space Agency
Britain caught the space flu earlier than most, and by 1933 already had an interplanetary society. Post World War Two, recovered german rocket science underwent forensics and soon enough test launches were conducted, in 1957 reaching an altitude of 125 mi (200 km). Eventually a national space agency was set up in 2010, absorbing an earlier iteration from 1985.
❚
❚
❚
UKSA offers an apprenticeship program, is noted for sustainable development, and now focused on space debris -- an emerging reality. A folder on UFOs, “comprising entirely of correspondence w/ members of the public” going back 50 years, is to be released through the royal air force website.
New Zealand Space Agency
❚
❚
❚
When it became apparent their location was becoming an ideal spot for space launches, New Zealand donned ministerial gloves in 2016 to fetch back a suitable space scarf to add to the country’s wardrobe.
宇 宙 航 空 研 究 開 発 機 構
On a hunch, three research labs decided to merge, bringing together experience in radio astronomy, the magnetosphere, and x-ray (1955) (1964) (1969). The team went on to found the JAPAN AEROSPACE EXPLORATORY AGENCY in 2003. Whereas it used to send satellites to watch the earth and report on the tropical rainfall seasons and atmospheric dynamics (1997), JAXA now conducts innovative research -- based on their encounter w/ Ryugu in 2019. As Hayabusa-1 was approaching the half-mile wide asteroid the spacecraft took a potshot (creating a new crater) before its lander boarded this flying rock. Then it flung samples back to Earth. Projected to hit the ocean off Australia, the envelope, containing samples betwen 10 million and 20 million years old, was retrieved in the outback (2020).
❚
•
❚
Japan’s dream of space came from Hideo Itokawa, who test-launched a small missile in 1955. Graduate of the imperial university w/ a major in aeronautics (1935), Itokawa was a visionary and is grandpa to Japan’s space program.
Centre National
d'Études Spatiales
When France went over the rubble of World War 2, any ballistic missile, exploded or not, were gingerly handled. Victorious though shell-shocked, the nation had once set records for hot-air balloon feats when the 18th-century was still young, now she sat about to tinker w/ these weapons in order to glean aerodynamic achievements from the german school of “rocket propulsion and guidance”.
❚
❙
❚
Enough interest that the NATIONAL CENTRE FOR SPACE RESEARCH was created in 1961, and gave space medicine a face when astronaut Jean-Loup Chrétien was monitored medically in 1982. Then military wings sprouted in 2019, when NCSR joined the air force, and is planning to release a trove of UFO files going back to 1954. With a heady mission to transpose civilization to space, France’s space program is the largest budgetary contributor to the European Space Agency.
Agentur für Luft-und Raumfahrt
In 1961, a manuscript by Conrad Haas b.1509 appeared, waxing poetic of his experiments in crossing weaponry w/ fireworks, what China knew as a “fire lance” he called his “flying javelin”. Lab work in ionospheric physics, wave propagation (U of Graz) and plasma physics (U of Innsbruck) would have intrigued Haas, an austrian military engineer from Transylvania.
❚
❚
❚
Seeking a foundational starting point, the academy of sciences convened, in 1972, the AUSTRIAN SPACE AGENCY.
Державне космічне агентство України
By the time H.F. Proskura b.1876 began to specialize in helicopters (1914), a Ukraine space program was already in situ. He was a hydraulic engineer who built systems for regulating hydrodynamism, and together w/ like-minds launched a missile to the stratosphere in 1937. This feat prompted the retooling of an automobile plant into manufacturing rockets (c.1960s).
❚
❚
Today’s NATIONAL SPACE AGENCY OF UKRAINE (1992) is child to the soviet space program.
Agenzia Spaziale Italiana
19th-century Italy looked at the sky w/ scientific eyes, keeping up a study begun 300 years or more ago. Luigi Gussali b.1885 would go on to propose solar power as a propellant in 1946. Nuclear power would work, Gioulio Gostanzi b.1875 had said earlier, in 1914 -- postulating on the plights of weightlessness, heat death as well as poisonous rays from the Sun.
❚
❙
❚
Today their research are a part of the ITALIAN SPACE AGENCY, which opened next door to the Vatican in 1988, now studies “habitable space infrastructure” and all things gamma-ray related.
Magyar Űrkutatási Iroda
The ministry of national development oversees a civilian space program , w/ aerospace researchers and advisory board (1992).
❚
❚
❚
Then money for the nation’s science sector dried up and has jeopardized the HUNGARIAN SPACE OFFICE.
Роскосмос
The Russian space program has claim to many fathers, some already delving into reactive propulsion tests when the 20th-century was yet a babe. Konstantin Tsiolkovsky b.1857 theorized about aeronautics and rocketry in 1929. Friedrich Zander b.1887 finetuned liquid-fuel research for practical applications. Then a space academy blossomed before being folded into a classified military program in 1992 -- and ROSCOSMOS its public face.
❚
❚
❚
Left behind are iconic moments from the soviet space program. First woman in space Valentina Tereshkova (1963); the cosmonaut who preceded her Yuri Gagarin (1961). Standing on their shoulders Alexei Leonov, who made the first spacewalk (lasting 12 minutes and nine seconds): “I stepped into that void and I didn‘t fall in. I was mesmerised by the stars. They were everywhere – up above, down below, to the left, to the right” (1965). The best looking satellite is still the first, Sputnik-1 (1957), a globe w/ four antennae.
Agenţia Spaţialǎ Românǎ
Early 20th-century Romania had enough enthusiasts building and testing aeroplanes that the nation developed five aircraft companies into a national industry.
❚
❚
❚
Combining in 1990 to become the ROMANIAN SPACE AGENCY, and tasked w/ space research activities and “security applications”. Member of ESA since 2012.
Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt e.V.
By 1907 Germany had already set up an experimental aerodynamic station (1907). Soon eough attracting interest from an institute, association, consortium and a society.
❚
❚
❚
Interest in space never waned, and in 1989 this productive R&D all came together to form the GERMAN AEROSPACE CENTER, w/ a current emphasis on hydrogen as an energy carrier, and research into traffic congestions.
Illustrated w/ collages, drawings, maps, paintings, photographs, prints and quotes
|⁋|
Out west, when 1848 was only twenty-four days old, mechanic James Marshall was making a routine inspection on the grounds of a sawmill he ran for his employer. That was when the New Jersey native noticed some odd-looking ore in a water channel of the South Fork of the American River. It was “... bright, yet malleable. I then tried it between two rocks, and found that it could be beaten into a different shape, but not broken.”
|⁋|
Nine days after Marshall emerged from the waters w/ his find, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed, transferring a large tract of Mexico to the United States.
|⁋|
These concurrent events together precipitated the California Gold Rush of 1849, when folks came from all over, bringing dreams while praying to the god and goddess of wealth for a show of “colour”
|⁋|
The first came from Monterey, San Francisco, San Jose and Sonoma: when clerks, doctors, laborers, lawyers, mechanics, rancheros left their jobs. Sailors deserted their ships. Soldiers deserted the Mexican War. As word spread more came from Hawai‘i, Mexico and Oregon.
|⁋|
Gold seekers showing up near the sawmill of John August Sutter, where gold was first discovered, had no need for milled lumber, and his business went into decline. All the while, a new settlement grew across the Ameircan River to become Coloma, the first gold rush town. Nearby stands a monument, by the Native Sons of the Golden West, to mark the grave of James Wilson Marshall, the “discoverer of gold.”
One can cross Panama to get to California rather than sail around Cape Horn. Up Chagres river to the town of Culebra; then donkeys to Gulf of Panama, eleven miles away.
|⁋|
Maps were consulted and what became the California Trial began w/ existing routes. Emigrants showed up along the Missouri river and towns in Illinois or Iowa. Wagon trains hitched, they headed out, crossing landscapes of grasslands, prairies, steppes, valleys and rivers to Wyoming and Fort Laramie.
|⁋|
The only way to cross the Rockies was a corridor beyond Fort Laramie, level and broad. South Pass afforded several routes passage to California. At a fork in the road soon after, the Oregon Trail veers right while the Mormon Trail turns south toward Fort Bridger.
|⁋| Overland travelers chose routes dependent on starting point and final destination. Other factors were the condition of their wagons, livestock, and the availability of water.
|⁋|
From California, one can get to Oregon on the Applegate Trail (1846), an alternative to the hazardous last leg of the Oregon Trail.
|⁋| The Oregon Trail begins in Missouri and leaves either Fort Leavenworth, Independence or Saint Joseph for a two thousand mile trek to the Oregon Territory. Past the Great Plains, then the Rockies, heading west northwest to the Snake river, Fort Boise, Witman Mission, The Dales, Fort Vancouver, the Columbia river, and the coast.
The Santa Fe Trail starts off in Missouri, rolls through Kansas and a corner of Colorado. Crossing the Arkansas river before dropping to New Mexico, the trail loses its identity somewhat in Santa Fe, where it is braided to the Gila Trail, a local 16th-c. commerce and travel high road, bringing trade from inland to the coast.
|⁋|
The Mormon Trail, gathers in Illinois and wends by Iowa and Nebraska before joining established trails in Wyoming. Together they cross the Rockies, then the Mormon Trail continues south southwest to Utah Territory to end up in Los Angeles. Besides the overlanders there were also seafarers.
|⁋| An eight-month sea route from New York to San Francisco would involve a harzardous rounding of Cape Horn.
A 49er carries pickaxe, shovel and pan. Can add a rocker and a hopper; some also conduct hydraulic experiments. A water wheel would be jim-dandy, to pick up individual quantities of gold-bearing gravel and sand.
|⁋| Personal gear: pair of blankets, frying-pan, flour, salt pork, brandy (or other sanctifying spirit). Field gear must-haves: pickaxe, shovel and pan. Some procure a mule.
|⁋| Gold miners w/ no financial backing learn to congregate along mountain roads and wait for supply wagons passing through, bringing food and tools and carrying out gold dust. Saturday nights were for salooning and carousing. Sunday is a holiday – laundry, tool repair, swapping stories, writing letters, napping.
|⁋| A twelve inch shallow sheet-iron pan to rinse soil w/ water and locate the gold.
|⁋| A rocker is a rectangular wooden box mounted on two rockers and set at a downward angle.
|⁋|
The hopper is a box sitting on top of the rocker, lined w/ a sheet of perforated iron. Beneath is an area called the “riddle-box.”
|⁋| The long tom is an improved rocker plus hopper, reaching to twenty feet in length. A long sheet of perforated iron lines the bottom and beneath that iw the riddle-box.
|⁋| Women too had gold fever, coming from Mexico, Chile, Peru, England, France, New York and New Orleans.
|⁋| Depicted in history as adventuress, courtesan, harlot, pickpocket, prostitute and the demimonde, these women were also bookkeepers, cooks, laundresses, shop-keepers, maids, wives. When mountain roads improved sufficiently to make travel btw. towns feasible, they set forth as performers.
|⁋|
Mrs Clappe came west in 1851 w/ her husband. In her letters home she gives an account of the era, about geology and a visit to a rural doctor’s rude office of pine shingles and cotton cloth.
|⁋|Yerba Buena was a hamlet on the San Francisco peninsula w/ an excellent harbor. The Spaniards established a maritime trading post and built the Mission of San Francisco de Asis. Ships docking in its cove discharged sailors to a Spanish-style plaza known as Portsmouth Square.
|⁋| On arrival gold seekers rented lodgings in shanties and tent towns, and stayed long enough to buy tools and provisions before heading out.
|⁋|
Brought over from Australia to perform labor, English convicts deserted en masse and instead formed a gang. Soon a frontier patch of lawlessness, Sydney Town, sprouted at the base of Telegraph Hill. The Sydney Ducks preyed on people and property, augmented by a gang of lady pickpockets, and willingly committed murder to survive.
|⁋| The embers of Sydney Town rekindled and gave birth to the Barbary Coast, chock-a-block w/ bars, saloons, brothels, concert halls, dance halls; where “getting shanghaied” was first rehearsed. Survived the 1906 Earthquake and Fire, by 1917 the red-light district was no more.
Sutter’s Mill on the South Fork of the American River.
|⁋|Coloma, next to Sutter’s Mill, was the first gold mining town. A post office and jail were added in 1852 – both proved popular. Gold mining also took place north at Bidwell’s Bar, Cut Eye Foster’s Bar, Downieville, Dutch Flat, Goodyear’s Bar, Grass Valley, Helltown, Illinoistown, Iowa Hill, Kanaka Flat, Lousy Level, Marysville, Murderers Bar, Nevada City, Plumas City, Poker Flat, Rough and Ready, Washington, Whiskey Flat, Wisconsin Hill, and You Bet.
|⁋|
South at Angels Camp, Chinese Camp, Dogtown, Fair Play, Hornitos, Jackson, Mokelumme Hill, Mormon Bar, Rawhide, Rich Gulch, Shaw’s Flat, Sonora, Volcano.
|⁋|
Gold was found along tributaries to the San Joaquin and Sacramento rivers. At Auburn, Diamond Springs, Grizzly Flats, Missouri Flat, Placerville.
|⁋|
Home to Native Americans incl. the Miwok, the Sierra Nevada was rudely affected by the Gold Rush. In 1849 an incident occurred along the Middle Fork of the American River when some 49ers died and some indigenes killed. An uneasy truce obtained when Native Americans were hired on as laborers and paid in tin, but by 1900 their population had declined to only ±16,000.
|⁋| Before James Cagney was the Frisco Kid and Edward G.
Robinson dramatized life in the Barbary Coast era, there was a 1913 feature, The Last Night of the Barbary Coast, now a lost film.
The 1849 state census counted 42,000 overlanders and 35,000 seafarers caught up by gold fever; together w/ 3,000 sailors who had deserted ships. |⁋|
Coloma is now a ghost town inside Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park.
Like all who seek a better tomorrow, the Chinese too came to the California Gold Rush, formed a fraternity in Coloma, squatted spent claims and worked as a team over the “tailings” left behind. In 1880 this gold-mining Chinatown was lost to fire.
Johnny Strike Voices, guitars (words)
Hank Rank Drums, percussion
Roger Strobel Bass
Michael Campbell Processed sounds, bowed strings, soundscapes
Joey D’Kaye Guitar, synthesizers, theremin
♦ | Prepress
CMYK quarter-page ad on newsprint, featuring a b-&-w photo.
♦ | Pencil
A hand-drawn map of the staircases of Forest Hill. There are eleven:
Alton, Alton Backstairs, Magellan, Merced, Montalvo, Oriole, San Carlos, Sola, and the Grand Staircase, which drops down to Dewey Avenue.
▶ Forest Hill
San Francisco’s Forest Hill is a “small town” located near the center of San Francisco. Boundaries are roughly 7th Avenue and Laguna Honda Boulevard to the north and east, Taraval Street to the south, 14th Avenue to the west. It has its own light-rail station, bringing the K, L and M lines to its doorstep. Built in 1912 on land originally owned by Adolph Sutro, roadways took on a sinuous route to allow for horse-and-carriage to make it to the top, are wide and generous, albeit steep.
♥ | DVD cover
Sabrina Alonso’s feature documentary Grizzly Road: The Last Days of the California Grizzly. Cover features a b-&-w photo of a grizzly captured and held in captivity by William Randolph Hearst for 22 years: Monarch.
Whatever hour you woke there was a door shutting. From room to room they went, hand in hand, lifting here, opening there, making sure — a ghostly couple.
“Here we left it,” she said. And he added, “Oh, but here too!”
“It’s upstairs,”
she murmured. “And in the garden,”
he whispered. “Quietly,”
they said, “or we shall wake them.”
But it wasn’t that you woke us. Oh, no. “They’re looking for it; they’re drawing the curtain,” one might say, and so read on a page or two. “Now they’ve found it,” one would be certain, stopping the pencil on the margin. And then, tired of reading, one might rise and see for oneself, the hosue all empty, the doors standing open, only the wood pigeons bubbling with content and the hum of the threshing machine sounding from the farm. “What did I come in here for? What did I want to find?” My hands were empty. “Perhaps it’s upstairs then?” The apples were in the loft. And so down again, the garden still as ever, only the book had slipped into the grass.
But they had found it in the drawing-room. Not that one could ever see them. The window panes reflected apples, reflected roses; all the leaves were green in the glass. If they moved in the drawing-room, the apple only turned its yellow side. Yet, the moment after, if the door was opened, spread about the floor, hung upon the walls, pendant from the ceiling — what? My hands were empty. The shadow of a thrush crossed the carpet; from the deepest wells of silence the wood pigeon drew its bubble of sound. “Safe, safe, safe,” the pulse of the house beat softly. “The treasure buried; the room …” the pulse stopped short. Oh, was that the buried treasure?
A moment later the light had faded. Out in the garden then? But the trees spun darkness for a wandering beam of sun. So fine, so rare, cooly sunk beneath the surface the beam I sought always burnt behind the glass. Death was the glass; death was between us; coming to the woman first, hundreds of years ago, leaving the house, sealing all the windows; the rooms were darkened. He left it, left her, went North, went East, saw the stars turned in the Southern sky; sought the house, found it dropped beneath the Downs. “Safe, safe, safe,” the pulse of the house beat gladly. “The treasure yours.”
The wind roars up the avenue. Trees stoop and bend this way and that. Moonbeams splash and spill wildly in the rain. But the beam of the lamp falls straight from the window. The candle burns stiff and still. Wandering though the house, opening the windows, whispering not to wake us, the ghostly couple seek their joy.
“Here we slept,”
she says. And he adds, “Kisses without number.” “Waking in the morning—”
“Silver between the trees—”
“Upstairs—”
“In the garden—”
“When summer came—”
“In the winter snowtime—”
The doors go shutting far in the distance, gently knocking like the pulse of a heart.
Nearer they come; cease at the doorway. The wind falls, the rain slides silver down the glass. Our eyes darken; we hear no steps beside us; we see no lady spread her ghostly cloak. His hands shield the lantern. “Look,”
he breathes. “Sound asleep. Love upon their lips.”
Stooping, holding their silver lamp above us, long they look and deeply. Long they pause. The wind drives straightly; the flame stoops slightly. Wild beams of moonlight cross both floor and wall, and, meeting, stain the faces bent; the faces pondering; the faces that search the sleepers and seek their hidden joy.
“Safe, safe, safe,” the heart of the house beats proudly. “Long years—” he sighs. “Again you found me.” “Here,” she murmurs, “sleeping; in the garden reading; laughing, rolling apples in the loft. Here we left our treasure—” Stooping, their light lifts the lids upon my eyes. “Safe! safe! safe!” the pulse of the house beats widly. Waking, I cry “Oh, is this your buried treasure? The light in the heart.”
In 1872, Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906), the daughter of Quaker abolitionists, walked into a polling station in Albany New York and voted. She was fined $100 on the charge of illegal voting, and she refused to pay. Four years earlier, together w/ Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815-1902), she had founded the National Woman Suffrage Association. Her examples made possible the eventual adoption of the Nineteenth Amenement, fourteen years after her death.
FIRST DAY
THE PROSECUTION
D.A. Richard Crowley:
May it please the Court and Gentlemen of the Jury: ... The defendant, Miss Susan B. Anthony ... voted for a representative in the Congrees of the United States, to represent the 29th Congressional District of this State, and also for a representative at large for the State of New York to represent the State in the Congresss of the United States. At that time she was a woman. I suppose there will be no question about that ... whatever Miss Anthony’s intentions may have been - whether they were good or otherwise - she did not have a right to vote upon that question, and if she did vote without having a lawful right to vote, then there is no question but what she is guilty of violating a law of the United States ...
• • •
Conceded, that on the 5th day of November 1872, Miss Susan B. Anthony was a woman.
THE INSPECTORS’ TESTIMONY
Q: Did you see her vote?
A: [Beverly W. Jones]: Yes, sir ...
Q: She was not challenged on the day she voted?
A: No, sir.
Cross-examination by Defense Attorney, Judge Henry Selden.
Q: Prior to the election, was there a registry of voters in that district made?
A: Yes, sir.
Q: Were you one of the officers engaged in making that registry?
A: Yes, sir.
Q: When the registry was being made did Miss Anthony appear before the Board of Registry and claim to be registered as a voter?
A: She did.
Q: Was there any objection made, or any doubt raised as to her right to vote?
A: There was.
Q: On what ground?
A: On the ground that the Constitution of the State of New York did not allow women to vote.
Q: What was the defect in her right to vote as a citizen?
A: She was not a male citizen.
Q: That she was a woman?
A: Yes, sir ...
Q: Did the Board consider the question of her right to registry, and decide that she was entitled to registry as a voter?
A: Yes, sir.
Q: And she was registered accordingly?
A: Yes, sir ...
Q: Won’t you state what Miss Anthony said, if she said anything, when she came there and offered her name for registration?
A: She stated that she did not claim any rights under the Constitution of the State of New York; she claimed her right under the Constitution of the United States.
Q: Did she name any particular Amendment?
A: Yes, sir; she cited the 14th amendment.
Q: Under that she claimed her right to vote?
A: Yes, sir...
SECOND DAY
THE DEFENSE ATTORNEY
Judge Henry R. Selden:
The only alleged ground of illegality of the defendant's vote is that she is a woman.
“If the same act had been done by her brother under the same circumstances, the act would have been not only innocent, but honorable and laudable; but having been done by a woman it is said to be a crime. ... I believe this is the first instance in which a woman has been arraigned in a criminal court merely on account of her sex. ... Another objection is, that the right to hold office must attend the right to vote, and that women are not qualified to discharge the duties of responsible offices. I beg leave to answer this objection by asking one or more questions. How many of the male bipeds who do our voting are qualified to hold high offices? ... Another objection is that engaging in political controversies is not consistent w/ the feminine character. Upon that subject, women themselves are the best judges, and if political duties should be found inconsistent w/ female delicacy, we may rest assured that women will either effect a change in the character of political contests, or decline to engage in them. ...”
THE JUDGE
The Court: The question, gentlemen of the jury ... is wholly a question or questions of law, and I have decided as a question of law, in the first place, that under the 14th Amendment, which Miss Anthony claims protects her, she was not protected in a right to vote. And I have decided also that her belief and the advice which she took do not protect her in the act which she committed. If I am right in this, the result must be a verdict on your part of guilty, and I therefore direct that you find a verdict of guilty.
Mr. Selden: That is a direction no Court has power to make in a criminal case.
The Court: Take the verdict, Mr. Clerk. ...
Susan B. Anthony after casting her first vote, she was a 26 year-old school teacher in upstate New York, the year was 1848.
THE NEXT DAY
The Court: The prisoner will stand up. Has the prisoner anything to say why sentence shall not be pronounced?
MISS Anthony: Yes, your honor, I have many things to say; for in your ordered verdict of guilty, you have trampled underfoot every vital principle of our government. My natural rights, my civil rights, my political rights, are all alike ignored. Robbed of the fundamental privilege of citizenship, I am degraded from the status of a citizen to that of a subject; and not only myself individually, but all of my sex, are, by your honor’s verdict, doomed to political subjection under this so-called Republican government.
JUDGE Hunt: The Court can not listen to a rehearsal of arguments the prisoner's counsel has already consumed three hours in presenting.
MISS Anthony: May it please your honor, I am not arguing the question, but simply stating the reasons why sentence can not, in justice, be pronounced against me. Your denial of my citizen's right to vote is the denial of my right of consent as one of the governed, the denial of my right of representation as one of the taxed, the denial of my right to a trial by a jury of my peers as an offender against the law, therefore, the denial of my sacred rights to life, liberty, property, and-
JUDGE Hunt: The court can not allow the prisoner to go on.
MISS Anthony: But your honor will not deny me this one and only poor privilege of protest against this high-handed outrage upon my citizen's rights. May it please the Court to remember that since the day of my arrest last November, this is the first time that either myself or any person of my disfranchised class has been allowed a word of defense before judge or jury–
JUDGE Hunt: the prisoner must sit down; the Court can not allow it.
MISS Anthony: All my prosecutors, from the 8th Ward corner grocery politician, who entered the complaint, to the United States Marshal, Commissioner, District Attorney, District Judge, your honor on the bench, not one is my peer, but each and all are my political sovereigns; and had your honor submitted my case to the jury, as was clearly your duty, even that I should have had just cause of protest, for not one of those men was my peer; but, native or foreign, white or black, rich or poor, educated or ignorant, awake or asleep, sober or drunk, each and every man of them was my political superior; hence, in no sense, my peer. ...
JUDGE Hunt: The Court must insist - the prisoner has been tried according to the established forms of law.
MISS Anthony: Yes, your honor, but by forms of law all made by men, interpreted by men, administered by men, in favor of men, and against women; and hence, your honor’s ordered verdict of guilty, against a United States citizen for the exercise of “that citizen’ s right to vote,” simply because that citizen was a woman and not a man. But, yesterday, the same manmade forms of law declared it a crime punishable w/ $1,000 fine and six months’ imprisonment, for you, or me, or any of us, to give a cup of cold water, a crust of bread, or a night’s shelter to a panting fugitive as he is tracking his way to Canada. And every man or woman in whose veins coursed a drop of human sympathy violated that wicked law, reckless of consequences, and was justified in so doing. As then the slaves who got ther freedom must take it over, or under, or through the unjust forms of law, precisely so now must women, to get their right to a voice in this Government, take it; and I have taken mine, and mean to take it at every possible opportunity.
JUDGE Hunt: The Court orders the prisoner to sit down. It will not allow another word
MISS Anthony: When I was brought before your honor for trial, I hoped for a broad and liberal interpretation of the Constitution and its recent amendments, that should declare all United States citizens under its protecting aegis - that should declare equality of rights the national guarantee to all persons born or naturalized in the United States. But failing to get this justice - failing, even, to get a trial by a jury not of my peers - I ask not leniency at your hands - but rather the full rigors of the law.
JUDGE Hunt: The Court must insist - [Here the prisoner sat down.] The prisoner will stand up. [Here Miss Anthony arose again.] The sentence of the Court is that you pay a fine of $100 and the costs of the prosecution.
MISS Anthony: May it please your honor, I shall never pay a dollar of your unjust penalty. All the stock in trade I possess is a $10,000 debt, incurred by publishing my paper - The Revolution - four years ago, the sole object of which was to educate all women to do precisely as I have done, rebel against your man-made, unjust, unconstitutional forms of law, that tax, fine, imprison, and hang women, while they deny them the right of representation in the Government; and I shall work on with might and main to pay every dollar of that honest debt, but not a penny shall go to this unjust claim. And I shall earnestly and persistently continue to urge all women to the practical recognition of the old revolutionary maxim that “Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God.”
JUDGE Hunt: Madam, the Court will not order you committed until the fine is paid.
SUSAN B. ANTHONY NOTES:
[1.]
From A Patroit’s Handbook (2003): songs, poems, stories, and speeches celebrating the land we love, selected and introduced by Caroline Kennedy.
[2.]
On November 26 2017, the trial of Miss Susan B. Anthony was reenacted at the James T. Foley U.S. Courthouse in Albany New York. Starting time was 6pm, and it was hosted by the Federal Court Bar Association of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York.
2017 San Francisco Women’s March
a n a l y s t █
On April 15, 1726, while taking tea in the garden w/ his friend, Issac Newton b.1642 pondered on an apple which had just fallen to the ground. William Stuckeley records how Newton mused:
█“Why should that apple always descend perpendicularly to the ground? Why should it not go sideways, or upwards? but constantly to the earth”s centre? Assuredly, the reason is, that the earth draws it. There must be a drawing power in , and the sum of the drawing power in the matter of the earth must be in the earth’s centre, not in any side of the earth. Therefore does this apple fall perpendicularly, or toward the center. If matter thus draws , it must be in proportion of its quantity. Therefore the apple draws the earth, as well as the earth draws the apple.” a e r i a l i s t█
The ancients, even if concerned of this “drawing power” that Newton was to articulate, mocked the gravity throne by continuing to send prayers up to heaven. Entreaties in temple script on paper were folded into a lantern, a candle is attached so that heat and smoke from the flame collects inside the lantern -- causing its ascent to gods and goddesses.
█
Mankind eventually followed that lantern, yet the earliest airmen didn’t know to carry oxygen, and returned spouting the wildest tales of beings living in the upper air, and among them were four brothers, who were curious and would approached w/ whistles and roars and yells, about many subjects, including that confounded new contrivance, a wind tunnel.
█
Sensing fear in the visitors’ eyes, their thunder abated. Then Zephros drew even closer and whispered: “We are wind gods of the four cardinal points, heralds of seasons, sons to Typhöeus, fifth and final monster born to mother Earth. We too seek a reason for existence, and whether or not it becomes us to be suited up in turbines, pumps, and such.”
█
Notos spread icicles when parting his lips: “Can these regulation systems really help w/ my restlessness? and what’s up w/ welded insulation?” Euros brought up the sorest point: “Can gravity weigh me down and curb my mood.” Boreas’ grumble rumbled: “Magnetosphere constrains our empire but why? and who are these rocketmen and their aerial adventures in guidance and control?”
a v a t a r█
Then the wind gods would invariably take their guests on a grand tour. Earth’s atmosphere is spherical and contains a precise mixture of gases such that oxygen becomes its miraculous chemical product. The atmosphere has the same shape as Gaia due to her gravitational grit, which she bestows to water and all things living. And just as the sea and mountains are deemed sentient so too should Aether be considered a being, having undergone “biochemical modifications by living organisms” ever since his aboriginal form coalesced into a paleo-atmosphere. Material enough for mother Earth to lassoo the invisible entity w/ a girdle tight enough to separate him into distinct layers and is the main cause of clouds.
█
Ancients can discern this sky god only when he digs into his bag of optical tricks and throws mirages or scatters light. Aether is designated the patron deity to life on Gaia, whose existence depends on a narrow band of the bottom layer, beginning at sea level.
a n g e l█
Imaginative proto-aviators studied birds, how they populate the air and go where they will. Wings got built, men got strapped, jumps happened -- all to naught or worse. Leonardo da Vinci b.1452 had sketched out such dreams of levitation but his idea, wings that can flap, never left the sketchbook.
⁝ Bird wings are folding fans, able to expand and collapse. Each wing is a web of arm bones, having joints which, by evolutionary decree, have quills on the knuckles; each quill grasps one feather.
a i r m a n█
The wind gods liked to play w/ mankind’s kites and were completely entranced by paper prayers heaven-bound using only heated air. They then found out that hydrogen, discovered c.1780, has levitational abilities also -- but only in unadulterated form; otherwise, being a gas, it would simply dissipate.
Rare and difficult to distill, hydrogen requires a chamber, white-hot iron, running water; and had to wait until a non-porous material to contain the new gas had not yet been developed. In the interim, heated air would have to make do for heady inventors.
█
A ginormous pillow, w/ a small opening and tied to a large basket, was deemed capacious enough that, by taking in a healthy gulp of hot air, the entire contraption will rise into the air (1783). Then, as the trapped air cools, the hot-air balloon will descend. The first volunteers chosen to carry out this maiden flight were a french sheep, duck and rooster.
a c r o b a t█
Kites were originally devised to bring the way wind into better play. Kites (and smoke) could and were used for military reasons: as a signal, a measurment of distance, to “test the wind”. Dog-earred generals carried mint editions of The Myth of Icarus into battle and tasked military engineers to make accessories to kites so that, adding a passenger, the gimmick can be carried upwards.
█
Starting in the late 1850s, the idea of a man in the air, tethered to a kite, got serious attention. Could it be that sending up an entire lab was so 1847 already? That was when the first use of a kite to forecast the weather occurred at Kew Observatory, when a “very stable” one was able to support “meteorological instruments at height”. Benjamin Franklin b.1706 had got there first w/ a simpler laboratory: kite, key, lightning storm.
█
Then the golden age of kiting came to an end around 1910, when the military began to pay visits to the sky, giving notice that the empire of the winds was coming to an end.
a l c h e m i s t█
Gunpowder is the earliest known chemical explosive. Adding heat to a mixture of carbon, sulfur and saltpeter (an efflorescence mineral found on stones) will cause a flash accompanied by fire that burns off. China’s alchemists had learned how to extract saltpeter, during a medicinal quest to find the elixir of life -- what they got instead “smoke and flames”.
█
Although the earliest pyrotechnics in the sky were to send signals they were also used, in profusion, on any occasion for pomp that needed a pop.
█
Paper tubes filled w/ confetti and a spoon of gunpowder were then sealed w/ a fuse sticking out. The tube is secured to a long stick that acts as a tail, is aimed towards the sky -- fire is introduced to the fuse gets ignited. The detonation produces a propulsive force, the firework ascends and the contents spill out.
█
Ingenuity on how the firesmith fills the tube is what will happen next.
█
Fireworks are propelled missiles guided during a brief initial phase of powered flight. Each firework has a subsequent trajectory that obeys the laws of gravity, codified as classical mechanics.
a r c h e t y p e█
When the Second World War ended in 1947, pilots from many nations returned to the civilian ranks.
█
Some, however, together w/ their ground mechanics and radio operators, were eager to go further into the sky, and by the late 1950s heaven was beginning to get crowded.
█
Governments were wont to fund space explorations, but only after the remainder of Earth not yet bound by passports -- the north and south poles -- were divvied up. Longitude and latitude determinations then led to precision mapping of the world, and in the co-mingling of new disciplines, rocket science took off to map all the others.
South African National Space Agency
Formed in 2010 to manage satellites that monitor the continent for flooding and fires, provide an earth watch record, play host to the only regional space weather warning center for Africa, and the inheritor to a recording station, the Hermanus Magnetic Observatory, set up to be a geomagnetic research center and part of a network taking measurements of the global magnetic field.
❚
❚
❚
Now the station is a part of the site that administers South Africa’s space program.
European Space Agency
A compact for western Europe after intergovernmental discussions for a cohesive approach to space.
Designed for uncrewed missions in 1975, ESA soon enough changed its approach to space science. Today, ESA does so much more than exploration. There is development going on for a spaceplane and a project to turn earth-watch data into apps. A survey of one percent of the known universe (2019), which will result in a map. What happens when regular and dark matter meet, and how both act, together and separately, when mingled w/ dark energy (2019). A study the Sun up close. Search for life on Mars. Planned mission to Mercury (2025). Several exo-planetary hunting missions. Origins of phosphorus. Then a deep dive into an asteroid defense shield.
The agency’s major spaceport is in French Guiana, where it conducts human spaceflight, launches Earth observation satellites, and sends spaceprobes to explore. Founded by ten nations, the European Space Agency now has 22 members, and a waiting list of ± eleven applicants.
国 家 航 天 局
China launched into outer space in 1970 w/ a song. The satellite contained a perpetual loop of Dong Fang Hong, a sung eulogy to Mao Zedong, bringing the revolution to the subhurbs of the solar system.
❚
★
❚
Formed in 1993 from input by four bodies: systems engineering, space science, general planning, foreign affairs. China’s space program was made possible because of Hsue-Shen Tsien b.1911, expelled from JPL for political uncertainties.
Aerospace scientists in Chengdu have shown interest in launching an artificial moon as a fixed satellite no more than 50 miles wide and 22,000 mi (35,400 km) away. When the reporter asked, the developers of this secondary source of illumination at night promised a “dusk-like glow” that won’t disturb nocturnal animal rites.
Today, the CHINA NATIONAL SPACE AGENCY has landed on the moon twice -- the first since the Apollo missions.
Recently named an asteroid it discovered for Wu Weiren (2020), a pioneer of deep space exploration.
Yesterday, China thanked its stars that an out-of-control spacecraft, spinning and tumbling going on two years, finally crashed into the south Pacific (2018).
Ελληνικός Διαστημικός Οργανισμός
Experiencing a malleable moment w/ yearnings for a return to Olympus, Greece put away the telescope and announced the creation of a
≡
≡
≡
HELLENIC SPACE CENTER in 2019, inviting divine messengers Hermes and Iris to issue a directive that greek culture plans to again be a participant in “space events”.
Bộ Khoa học và Công nghệ
Vietnam’s interest in space, if any, falls under the purview of the ministry of science and technology, which has thrown a bucolic blanket over its astro-plans.
❙
★
❙
Back in 1980, the country was proud to have had a vietnaut join a cosmonaut to pilot Soyuz 37 onto the Salyut-6 space station, the first of three such pairing of viet- and cosmo- nauts, under a program from the soviet union for socialist countries allied to the warsaw pact.
Phạm Tuân, born in Quoc Tuan village (1947), flew a jet fighter in the people’s air force (1965) and died age 32 in a Mig-21 crash.
International Space Station
The era of comfort in space took place silently when the first component to a future space station complex was launched (1988), carrying container connections for contingency transfer of water, container bags, wipes, “filters”. The space module also carried six nickel-cadium batteries, two solar arrays, three docking ports. A pressurized valve unit w/ air ducts, funnel containment filters and dust collectors. Smoke detector, gas analyzer, gas masks, portable fans. The cabin has a pole, handrails, hooks, instrument containers. Zarya was the first component to ISS, designed to be autonomous for eight months. More modules then arrived to interlock and create an exponential habitat.
Fifteen nations and five space agencies coordinate this mission -- Canada, Japan, Russia, United States, the European Space Agency -- signing agreements covering legal, financial and political implications in how the station is utilized; day to day; traffic; crew time.
Serviced by a team of three robots capable of independent or conjoined activities. Legacy loos are being replaced w/ new comfort stations (2020); a waste management system common for all vehicle platforms is on the drawing table.
Indian Space Research Organisation
A moon mission, led by female scientists in 2017, detected “magmatic water” -- first evidence of h-two-oh. Chandrayaan-1 then had a mishap and crashed, adding a new crater.
A second moon mission, having released a lander which was within a mile from touchdown, suddenly became disabled from a cyberattack and ceased functioning (2019). Reporting to the department of space, the space program also develops and delivers satellite apps for smart phones, including in cartography and dedicated distance education.
❚
❚
❚
India’s space program (1969) had humble beginnings, when ionosphere soundings were being conducted in Calcutta (1920s). Today’s sky watchers prefer to do so in a theater, watching the latest bolly-fi release.
Zambian Space Programme
Edward Nkoloso was an african grade school teacher tinkering with a catapult capable of sending a spaceship carrying ten or so to Mars.
❚
❚
❚
When Zambia gained independence in 1964, he was then appointed liaison w/ regional freedom fighters; all the while his space program going. There is footage of his training camp for afronauts from 1960. Born a prince of the Bemba tribe, Edward Makuka Nkoloso had a missionary education in latin, french and theology; he died in 1989, age 70.
Canadian Space Agency
Continuing to maintain its air fleet after World War Two, Canada paid attention to the upper atmosphere and in 1962 launched a satellite.
❚
•
❚
Formed in 1990, the Canadian Space Agency now shares its space knowledge for the “benefit of canadians and humanity”, and has challenged its youth to submit ideas for “making space easier and more fun”, w/ the promise to prototype the best entry. There is a trove of footage from a canadian astronaut training camp.
NASA
As the outcome to World War II turned in their favor, the United States set in motion “operation paperclip” to retrieve nazi rocket technology, and came back w/ 100 V-2 rockets, production site drawings, and Wernher von Braun b.1912, amenable to continue where he had left off. Homegrown rocket science was already happening at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, so America made plans for a future in space and in 1958 created the NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION.
❚
❚
❚
Seven years later there was an orbiting lab. Then a duo-man program left footprints on the Moon (1969). The first untethered spacewalk was in 1984, when astronaut Bruce McCandless performed free flying 320 feet away from his craft: “... overused lines ‘slipped the surly bonds of Earth’, but when I was free from the shuttle, they felt accurate”. From its inception, NASA hired talent, and some of these stories are dramatized in 2017’s Hidden Figures, about three african american female mathematicians.
Soon attention will be paid to samples brought back from apollo asteroid Bennu by the Origins Spectral Interpretation Resource Identification Security Regolith Explorer (2020).
These days NASA has plans for an interstellar mission to the Alpha Centauri system (2017). Elated about the scholarship named for Dr Katherine Coleman Goble Johnson (2018). Perturbed that “poor record keeping” contributed to the loss of an Apollo 11 lunar collection bag that contained lunar dust particles (2018). Released a 60-year anniversary video (2018).
Established as a civilian space program, America’s space program was militarized sixty years later.
UK Space Agency
Britain caught the space flu earlier than most, and by 1933 already had an interplanetary society. Post World War Two, recovered german rocket science underwent forensics and soon enough test launches were conducted, in 1957 reaching an altitude of 125 mi (200 km). Eventually a national space agency was set up in 2010, absorbing an earlier iteration from 1985.
❚
❚
❚
UKSA offers an apprenticeship program, is noted for sustainable development, and now focused on space debris -- an emerging reality. A folder on UFOs, “comprising entirely of correspondence w/ members of the public” going back 50 years, is to be released through the royal air force website.
New Zealand Space Agency
❚
❚
❚
When it became apparent their location was becoming an ideal spot for space launches, New Zealand donned ministerial gloves in 2016 to fetch back a suitable space scarf to add to the country’s wardrobe.
宇 宙 航 空 研 究 開 発 機 構
On a hunch, three research labs decided to merge, bringing together experience in radio astronomy, the magnetosphere, and x-ray (1955) (1964) (1969). The team went on to found the JAPAN AEROSPACE EXPLORATORY AGENCY in 2003. Whereas it used to send satellites to watch the earth and report on the tropical rainfall seasons and atmospheric dynamics (1997), JAXA now conducts innovative research -- based on their encounter w/ Ryugu in 2019. As Hayabusa-1 was approaching the half-mile wide asteroid the spacecraft took a potshot (creating a new crater) before its lander boarded this flying rock. Then it flung samples back to Earth. Projected to hit the ocean off Australia, the envelope, containing samples betwen 10 million and 20 million years old, was retrieved in the outback (2020).
❚
•
❚
Japan’s dream of space came from Hideo Itokawa, who test-launched a small missile in 1955. Graduate of the imperial university w/ a major in aeronautics (1935), Itokawa was a visionary and is grandpa to Japan’s space program.
Centre National
d'Études Spatiales
When France went over the rubble of World War 2, any ballistic missile, exploded or not, were gingerly handled. Victorious though shell-shocked, the nation had once set records for hot-air balloon feats when the 18th-century was still young, now she sat about to tinker w/ these weapons in order to glean aerodynamic achievements from the german school of “rocket propulsion and guidance”.
❚
❙
❚
Enough interest that the NATIONAL CENTRE FOR SPACE RESEARCH was created in 1961, and gave space medicine a face when astronaut Jean-Loup Chrétien was monitored medically in 1982. Then military wings sprouted in 2019, when NCSR joined the air force, and is planning to release a trove of UFO files going back to 1954. With a heady mission to transpose civilization to space, France’s space program is the largest budgetary contributor to the European Space Agency.
Agentur für Luft-und Raumfahrt
In 1961, a manuscript by Conrad Haas b.1509 appeared, waxing poetic of his experiments in crossing weaponry w/ fireworks, what China knew as a “fire lance” he called his “flying javelin”. Lab work in ionospheric physics, wave propagation (U of Graz) and plasma physics (U of Innsbruck) would have intrigued Haas, an austrian military engineer from Transylvania.
❚
❚
❚
Seeking a foundational starting point, the academy of sciences convened, in 1972, the AUSTRIAN SPACE AGENCY.
Державне космічне агентство України
By the time H.F. Proskura b.1876 began to specialize in helicopters (1914), a Ukraine space program was already in situ. He was a hydraulic engineer who built systems for regulating hydrodynamism, and together w/ like-minds launched a missile to the stratosphere in 1937. This feat prompted the retooling of an automobile plant into manufacturing rockets (c.1960s).
❚
❚
Today’s NATIONAL SPACE AGENCY OF UKRAINE (1992) is child to the soviet space program.
Agenzia Spaziale Italiana
19th-century Italy looked at the sky w/ scientific eyes, keeping up a study begun 300 years or more ago. Luigi Gussali b.1885 would go on to propose solar power as a propellant in 1946. Nuclear power would work, Gioulio Gostanzi b.1875 had said earlier, in 1914 -- postulating on the plights of weightlessness, heat death as well as poisonous rays from the Sun.
❚
❙
❚
Today their research are a part of the ITALIAN SPACE AGENCY, which opened next door to the Vatican in 1988, now studies “habitable space infrastructure” and all things gamma-ray related.
Magyar Űrkutatási Iroda
The ministry of national development oversees a civilian space program , w/ aerospace researchers and advisory board (1992).
❚
❚
❚
Then money for the nation’s science sector dried up and has jeopardized the HUNGARIAN SPACE OFFICE.
Роскосмос
The Russian space program has claim to many fathers, some already delving into reactive propulsion tests when the 20th-century was yet a babe. Konstantin Tsiolkovsky b.1857 theorized about aeronautics and rocketry in 1929. Friedrich Zander b.1887 finetuned liquid-fuel research for practical applications. Then a space academy blossomed before being folded into a classified military program in 1992 -- and ROSCOSMOS its public face.
❚
❚
❚
Left behind are iconic moments from the soviet space program. First woman in space Valentina Tereshkova (1963); the cosmonaut who preceded her Yuri Gagarin (1961). Standing on their shoulders Alexei Leonov, who made the first spacewalk (lasting 12 minutes and nine seconds): “I stepped into that void and I didn‘t fall in. I was mesmerised by the stars. They were everywhere – up above, down below, to the left, to the right” (1965). The best looking satellite is still the first, Sputnik-1 (1957), a globe w/ four antennae.
Agenţia Spaţialǎ Românǎ
Early 20th-century Romania had enough enthusiasts building and testing aeroplanes that the nation developed five aircraft companies into a national industry.
❚
❚
❚
Combining in 1990 to become the ROMANIAN SPACE AGENCY, and tasked w/ space research activities and “security applications”. Member of ESA since 2012.
Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt e.V.
By 1907 Germany had already set up an experimental aerodynamic station (1907). Soon eough attracting interest from an institute, association, consortium and a society.
❚
❚
❚
Interest in space never waned, and in 1989 this productive R&D all came together to form the GERMAN AEROSPACE CENTER, w/ a current emphasis on hydrogen as an energy carrier, and research into traffic congestions.
Illustrated w/ collages, drawings, maps, paintings, photographs, prints and quotes
|⁋|
Out west, when 1848 was only twenty-four days old, mechanic James Marshall was making a routine inspection on the grounds of a sawmill he ran for his employer. That was when the New Jersey native noticed some odd-looking ore in a water channel of the South Fork of the American River. It was “... bright, yet malleable. I then tried it between two rocks, and found that it could be beaten into a different shape, but not broken.”
|⁋|
Nine days after Marshall emerged from the waters w/ his find, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed, transferring a large tract of Mexico to the United States.
|⁋|
These concurrent events together precipitated the California Gold Rush of 1849, when folks came from all over, bringing dreams while praying to the god and goddess of wealth for a show of “colour”
|⁋|
The first came from Monterey, San Francisco, San Jose and Sonoma: when clerks, doctors, laborers, lawyers, mechanics, rancheros left their jobs. Sailors deserted their ships. Soldiers deserted the Mexican War. As word spread more came from Hawai‘i, Mexico and Oregon.
|⁋|
Gold seekers showing up near the sawmill of John August Sutter, where gold was first discovered, had no need for milled lumber, and his business went into decline. All the while, a new settlement grew across the Ameircan River to become Coloma, the first gold rush town. Nearby stands a monument, by the Native Sons of the Golden West, to mark the grave of James Wilson Marshall, the “discoverer of gold.”
One can cross Panama to get to California rather than sail around Cape Horn. Up Chagres river to the town of Culebra; then donkeys to Gulf of Panama, eleven miles away.
|⁋|
Maps were consulted and what became the California Trial began w/ existing routes. Emigrants showed up along the Missouri river and towns in Illinois or Iowa. Wagon trains hitched, they headed out, crossing landscapes of grasslands, prairies, steppes, valleys and rivers to Wyoming and Fort Laramie.
|⁋|
The only way to cross the Rockies was a corridor beyond Fort Laramie, level and broad. South Pass afforded several routes passage to California. At a fork in the road soon after, the Oregon Trail veers right while the Mormon Trail turns south toward Fort Bridger.
|⁋| Overland travelers chose routes dependent on starting point and final destination. Other factors were the condition of their wagons, livestock, and the availability of water.
|⁋|
From California, one can get to Oregon on the Applegate Trail (1846), an alternative to the hazardous last leg of the Oregon Trail.
|⁋| The Oregon Trail begins in Missouri and leaves either Fort Leavenworth, Independence or Saint Joseph for a two thousand mile trek to the Oregon Territory. Past the Great Plains, then the Rockies, heading west northwest to the Snake river, Fort Boise, Witman Mission, The Dales, Fort Vancouver, the Columbia river, and the coast.
The Santa Fe Trail starts off in Missouri, rolls through Kansas and a corner of Colorado. Crossing the Arkansas river before dropping to New Mexico, the trail loses its identity somewhat in Santa Fe, where it is braided to the Gila Trail, a local 16th-c. commerce and travel high road, bringing trade from inland to the coast.
|⁋|
The Mormon Trail, gathers in Illinois and wends by Iowa and Nebraska before joining established trails in Wyoming. Together they cross the Rockies, then the Mormon Trail continues south southwest to Utah Territory to end up in Los Angeles. Besides the overlanders there were also seafarers.
|⁋| An eight-month sea route from New York to San Francisco would involve a harzardous rounding of Cape Horn.
A 49er carries pickaxe, shovel and pan. Can add a rocker and a hopper; some also conduct hydraulic experiments. A water wheel would be jim-dandy, to pick up individual quantities of gold-bearing gravel and sand.
|⁋| Personal gear: pair of blankets, frying-pan, flour, salt pork, brandy (or other sanctifying spirit). Field gear must-haves: pickaxe, shovel and pan. Some procure a mule.
|⁋| Gold miners w/ no financial backing learn to congregate along mountain roads and wait for supply wagons passing through, bringing food and tools and carrying out gold dust. Saturday nights were for salooning and carousing. Sunday is a holiday – laundry, tool repair, swapping stories, writing letters, napping.
|⁋| A twelve inch shallow sheet-iron pan to rinse soil w/ water and locate the gold.
|⁋| A rocker is a rectangular wooden box mounted on two rockers and set at a downward angle.
|⁋|
The hopper is a box sitting on top of the rocker, lined w/ a sheet of perforated iron. Beneath is an area called the “riddle-box.”
|⁋| The long tom is an improved rocker plus hopper, reaching to twenty feet in length. A long sheet of perforated iron lines the bottom and beneath that iw the riddle-box.
|⁋| Women too had gold fever, coming from Mexico, Chile, Peru, England, France, New York and New Orleans.
|⁋| Depicted in history as adventuress, courtesan, harlot, pickpocket, prostitute and the demimonde, these women were also bookkeepers, cooks, laundresses, shop-keepers, maids, wives. When mountain roads improved sufficiently to make travel btw. towns feasible, they set forth as performers.
|⁋|
Mrs Clappe came west in 1851 w/ her husband. In her letters home she gives an account of the era, about geology and a visitto a rural doctor’s rude office of pine shingles and cotton cloth.
|⁋|Yerba Buena was a hamlet on the San Francisco peninsula w/ an excellent harbor. The Spaniards established a maritime trading post and built the Mission of San Francisco de Asis. Ships docking in its cove discharged sailors to a Spanish-style plaza known as Portsmouth Square.
|⁋| On arrival gold seekers rented lodgings in shanties and tent towns, and stayed long enough to buy tools and provisions before heading out.
|⁋|
Brought over from Australia to perform labor, English convicts deserted en masse and instead formed a gang. Soon a frontier patch of lawlessness, Sydney Town, sprouted at the base of Telegraph Hill. The Sydney Ducks preyed on people and property, augmented by a gang of lady pickpockets, and willingly committed murder to survive.
|⁋| The embers of Sydney Town rekindled and gave birth to the Barbary Coast, chock-a-block w/ bars, saloons, brothels, concert halls, dance halls; where “getting shanghaied” was first rehearsed. Survived the 1906 Earthquake and Fire, by 1917 the red-light district was no more.
Sutter’s Mill on the South Fork of the American River.
|⁋|Coloma, next to Sutter’s Mill, was the first gold mining town. A post office and jail were added in 1852 – both proved popular. Gold mining also took place north at Bidwell’s Bar, Cut Eye Foster’s Bar, Downieville, Dutch Flat, Goodyear’s Bar, Grass Valley, Helltown, Illinoistown, Iowa Hill, Kanaka Flat, Lousy Level, Marysville, Murderers Bar, Nevada City, Plumas City, Poker Flat, Rough and Ready, Washington, Whiskey Flat, Wisconsin Hill, and You Bet.
|⁋|
South at Angels Camp, Chinese Camp, Dogtown, Fair Play, Hornitos, Jackson, Mokelumme Hill, Mormon Bar, Rawhide, Rich Gulch, Shaw’s Flat, Sonora, Volcano.
|⁋|
Gold was found along tributaries to the San Joaquin and Sacramento rivers. At Auburn, Diamond Springs, Grizzly Flats, Missouri Flat, Placerville.
|⁋|
Home to Native Americans incl. the Miwok, the Sierra Nevada was rudely affected by the Gold Rush. In 1849 an incident occurred along the Middle Fork of the American River when some 49ers died and some indigenes killed. An uneasy truce obtained when Native Americans were hired on as laborers and paid in tin, but by 1900 their population had declined to only ±16,000.
|⁋| Before James Cagney was the Frisco Kid and Edward G.
Robinson dramatized life in the Barbary Coast era, there was a 1913 feature, The Last Night of the Barbary Coast, now a lost film.
The 1849 state census counted 42,000 overlanders and 35,000 seafarers caught up by gold fever; together w/ 3,000 sailors who had deserted ships. |⁋|
Coloma is now a ghost town inside Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park.
Like all who seek a better tomorrow, the Chinese too came to the California Gold Rush, formed a fraternity in Coloma, squatted spent claims and worked as a team over the “tailings” left behind. In 1880 this gold-mining Chinatown was lost to fire.
The 1849 state census counted 42,000 overlanders and 35,000 seafarers caught up by gold fever; together w/ 3,000 sailors who had deserted ships.
Like all who seek a better tomorrow, the Chinese too came to the California Gold Rush, formed a fraternity in Coloma, squatted spent claims and worked as a team over the “tailings” left behind. In 1880 this gold-mining 
