The Chapman

Perhaps they died of scurvy.

^ Vincent Price in THE LAST MAN ON EARTH. Frightening, stark film that disorients me whenever I see it. The grandaddy of all zombie movies. > A portrait of societal fragility that I can relate to all too well. V Passing along.

^ Bagheera the panther. > Humorless, task-oriented and excessively focussed, and needs to generally loosen up (Balloo: "Get with the beat, Baggy, baby!"). Although my favorite cartoons are the 'Wolf and Sheepdog' Chuck Jones set-pieces. Brilliant. Don't get me started about animation... V Passing along.

In some of the suburbs along Chicago's North Shore, which even fifteen years ago were becoming ultra-wealthy bedroom communities, some of the old inhabitants had grandfathered in livestock dead in the middle of downtowns. In Highland Park IL, for instance, two old ladies had a horse in their yard right into the '80s, and they lived across the street from the train station. When we were working there we'd see chickens and roosters wandering the sidewalks in residential neighborhoods. Some folks still had goats in their garages. Right now I'm doing preliminary layout on a graphic novel set during the Boxer Uprising. I'm thinking of throwing in a character near the end that had been in Ward's Ever Victorious Army forty years previous, and wears his worn uniform, complete with turban. I think I may do some costume sketches of that over the weekend. It's interesting as it's purely speculative as to design details and colors; there are no extant visual examples of the uniform that anyone knows about. Sounds like fun.

Thomasse was furious and feeling more than a little desperate. The Behars, first, without going where he wanted to go… But no… He glanced behind him. His crew member Billy followed along, his eyes moving on the people and places in the crowd, checking and rechecking as the river-street of folk spread, dissipated, congealed and emptied only to fill again. Thomasse saw him, and knew he was watching for threats, for pocket-pickers, for all he knew, someone to kill for no reason at all. Murthering… Billy spoke: “Beh’ar”, and pointed to a small sign with letters in gleaming metal on a door. And they were there.

^ A little of both. I hate clutter, therefore have very little 'stuff' or even furniture, but I don't really mind dirt on the floor, and dust doesn't bother me, or dirty windows, or dirty dishes... OK, I'm a slob. >I hate vacuuming and would prefer to sweep almost anything. V Passing along the question.

The cooling fan in my computer tower and nothing else. I am listening for noises outside, I always do, but the windows are closed and I can't hear anything right now. I sleep with a fan on for white noise ( have for years ), and I find the sound from my computer comforting and restful.

I had not considered FERRETS as rat control on ships. Evidently they were used for that purpose for quite some time. That would be considered a working animal.

Billy regarded this woman in the street. She had good teeth and a decent-enough face, although marred slightly by the remnants of a blackened left eye; and she was big and quite muscular. She looked well-fed, wealthy, as a woman, or wife, should… and he realized he was thinking ahead, to the time when his share would be disbursed, the crew would be done, and his dream of a farm, or small plantation, would be reaching its reality. The woman spoke: “Whadd ye LOOK AT?” at turned and stomped away, up the hill, and suddenly burst out into a shrill whistling tune, for no reason Billy could tell, but to his shock, he recognized it as a song he knew from his old and departed homeland. He stood, caught and stopped, for a brief titch; and then a hand was yanking on his sleeve again. It was Thomasse, God damn him, dragging him off down the street, in the direction of the Behar Merchants

steroids

^ Almost none; > I do love jelly beans; I can easily eat a whole big bag of jelly beans in a sitting, anytime. V Do you or anyone you know like 'Peeps'?

Thomasse rushed through the streets, Billy half-trotting after him, few paces behind. The walking-stick tapped on the occasional brick-cobbles, thrusting from the roadbed in wheel-jarring disarray. Thomasse found himself sudden sweating, and cursed Billy under his breath. He heard no hue and crye, and hoped the ale puller would keep his trap closed and consider himself lucky to be alive. He’d seen Billy do too many crazed things in unthinking, placid savagery… He looked up and about, and knew that he’d somehow lost himself in the crowd. The place was so much larger and busyer than it had been, those years ago; but the streets had to be the same, hadn’t they? Hadn’t they? Damn it! He was misplaced. Billy sidled up against him. “Whe’ too nowe, Thomasse?” Thomasse looked, up towards the main island peak, and figuring height would help him find his way, headed uphill. He was in his midstride when a large Mulatto woman, a vicious expression on her face, pushed him roughly aside and kicked his shin, shouting, “Ste’ aside, Boob!” Thomasse expressed an epithet and the woman turned squarely to confront him, and saw Billy step up next to the captain. Billy considered her, and she him, gaze roving on him, cracking knuckles. Billy met her gaze in challenge, and the woman turned heel and pounded up the hill. She had reached a pebble’s throw and Billy shouted, “Yo the’, d’yo knowe th’ whay to B’hare Me’chaent?” She turned and said roughly, “Where?” Thomasse looked sour, but recast the question for Billy: “Behar Merchants”. It was not in his plan to go to Alberto Behar first; but since he was lost, and this visit was not going well… The blocky female pointed coarsely, and addressed her answer not to Thomasse, but Billy: “There, thataway”, and again ran her eyes up and down Billy’s frame, assessing him.

A Marine? Reading a BOOK?! It's the Apocalypse! Seriously, Semper Fidelis from all my friends and acquaintances who have been in the Marines (although I have not). Welcome. Tell you what, I'll pick up the 'Defoe' Pyrates book and read it (which I haven't yet). Get me off my high horse and read something stirring (besides, what with Red Wake over there making everyone look stupid, making plots about reading Arthur in French...)

MY MONTSERRAT STORY This goes back awhile. I was partnered up with my friend Chuck in off-season residential remodeling, and we got this woman customer somehow, I don’t remember how she got ahold of us. Anyway, her parents, who were both university professors, had retired, and put their house on the market, and she was caretaking the thing while waiting for it to sell. Now, this place was your classic old-farmhouse-dump. The property was great, but the house was a disaster, and for the whole winter we were getting calls from her to go fix various stuff at this pile: burst pipes; kids’ vandalism; foundation cave-in; just all kinds of stupid things. We advised her to dump the place before something REALLY serious happened. Well, it usually took her a few days to pay us. She explained, “My parents are far away, and I have to wait for them to wire money into their account here before I can pay you guys”. This didn’t seem illogical, until the last two times, when we had to wait a little longer than we were comfortable with, and she ended up cutting us partials out of her own checking account while waiting for the P’s to reimburse HER. The last time we went to fix stuff it was several thousand dollars, I mean major water damage and such. She openly confessed when we were done she couldn’t pay us, as she didn’t have the money to, and she couldn’t get ahold of her parents. So finally we asked just where exactly were these parents. She says, “Montserrat”. We says, “Hah?” She says, “Montserrat. It’s an island in the Caribbean. In the Antilles”. We says, “It’s in the… What? In the … Where? In the….WHO??!!” She explains the whole thing. The parents live on this place. They have no phone. They transfer money sometimes to pay her back for expenses. They’re hard to get ahold of, etc. We’re like, “Yeah, that’s great, where’s our MONEY?!!” Well, cutting a long story short, she gets upset, invites us in for a couple beers (we were on good terms), and shows us some of the mechanic’s lien paperwork she can’t figure out. It turns out that: this dump of a crib is on the market for at least four times what it’s worth. AT LEAST. It’s been mortgaged a minimum four times. All their bank accounts are emptied. Everything they could cash out is cashed out. Their credit cards are maxed. Essentially, they’ve screwed everybody and bailed, leaving their own daughter holding their bag. The account they reimburse her with is in the Caymans. The whole thing screams FRAUD. So we drank all her beer, told her, “Lady, you’re screwed, pay us when you can”, and left. She did eventually pay us most of our money. A few months later we drove past the house; it had been bulldozed. Now, this is where this would have remained, except for THE REST OF IT: Some time later, I was lounging around in the evening at the house, and Chuck called up. He says, “TURN ON THE TV! PBS! TURN IT ON TURN IT ON TURN IT ON!!” I’m like, “Okay, already”, and turned on Channel 11 in time to hear the tail end of a BBC report, with a reporter announcing: “A VOLCANO erupted on the Caribbean island of Montserrat earlier today; the British Government is declaring the island uninhabitable, and is evacuating all residents”. I sat on the phone for a while until Chuck asked, “You still there?” I said, “uh….. Yeah”. He yells, “Ain’t that some S—T!?” and started laughing hysterically. I’ve always been in love with the karmic symmetry of that. I mean, these two people rob literally everyone and everything in sight, and bail out leaving their OWN DAUGHTER to deal with the heat. So what happens? They run off to their island paradise to Jimmy Buffet it up on their ill-gotten gains…. just in time to get blasted off the planet by a volcano nobody knew was active. …And if that’s not cosmic justice, I’d like to know what is.

Thomasses’ eyes went wide and he sprang upright, kicking the lonely chair back and lunging between the tavern-keeper and Billy, whose hand was flicking the sash up and out. He just bare made it, blocking the proprietor’s view of a smallish screw-barrel in Billy’s hand, sash tied around the handle to tuck inside a shirt, with Billy thumbing back the cock and laughing like a fool. The erstwhile captain of the Samuel reeled and shoved the German back, pushing him into a table. It overturned and he sprawled awkwardly onto the floor with a hollow thumping. The man screamed and clutched at straw, hurling a ragged fistful at Thomasse. The coarse scraps contained offal of some sort, which lighted on Thomasse’s already none too clean shirt and splattered, leaving a veinish spread of tobacco-colored smut. Billy entered into conniptions of hilarity, waving the pistol and bent over gasping for breath. Heinrich Skau shouted, “I’kh KILLe se, se rotten HUNDz!” Billy stopped laughing and pointed the flintlock at the thrashing man on the floor, who went instantly pale and, in an act of reflex, grabbed an array of stinking straw in his forearms and covered his head with it. Billy, shocked at this bizarre gesture, goggled for a moment, and began laughing again. This gave Thomasse time to extend an arm across Billy and shout, “NO NO NO! NOT HERE!” Billy ceased his expression of amusement briefly, turned his head, and stared at the brown streakish captain. “Wot?” he asked. “I sayed, NO, NOT HERE!” Billy pondered, genuinely confused. “Whoy no’ shoot ‘ym?” “Because he’s- he’s- COME!” Thomasse grasped the pirate’s shirt-arm and pulled him back. He sorted the wrong sleeve and Billy jerked, the pistol discharging accidentally in a peacock-sized shower of flame and smoke. They both jumped mitely at this unexpected and unintended turn of events, and peered through the right billowing smoke, down at the floor, at the writhing figure...

The Beagle Boys

For an example of some of the stuff that was going on, check here: http://innanen.com/montserrat/history/1690-1700.shtml Montserrat is the only country other than Ireland in which St. Patrick's day is an official holiday...I have a funny story about Montserrat, which I'll write up some time... Basically, the war in the Caribbean area during this period seems to have involved a lot of raids on relatively unprotected island colonies. The numbers of people and troops were small by warfare standards, and the whole thing was kind of a sideshow to the bigger stuff going on up North, but you know, I'm sure it was a big deal to the residents of the islands. Most of the goings-on were, and are, obscure enough to warrant a trip to a good library for a decent book on the general history of the various islands.

4:30 PM So I've gotten no scanning done, but I did screw around on Pyracy Pub for most of the morning while working on image files. I've been eating all day, which is important for me, because my metabolism is so wired wrong from years of heavy physical labor, and then transferring into sedentary work; my weight will fluctuate by as much as 10 pounds a day (absolutely true; I've checked numerous times). I left to walk to the coffee shop downtown around 2:30, and now I'm back. In the interim: -Made it a block and lit a guy's cigarette for him. He was drunkenly hanging out on his porch (as is everyone else). -Patted the head of a chihauhua that came out yipping at me. -Gave an Hispanic man in a Ford Contour directions in broken Spanish (luckily he was asking for a numbered street, which involved my gesturing and pointing with my hands and saying, "Ocho.. Calle.. Aqui!). -Got into a photograph with some people taking pictures of their kids in the park by accidentally walking in front of the camera due to my not paying attention. -Relaxed on a park bench for a while and watched the world go by. Lots and lots of motorcycles, including an older Triumph Bonneville which was extremely clean (although not as cool as the WWII Royal Enfield I saw a middle-aged woman riding the other day). -Went to the coffee shop and got a cup for there, with the intent of reading through either AGAINST THE GODS or PHANTOM ISLANDS OF THE ATLANTIC. The doors were open and it was pretty quiet, until... -Some sort of female dance group from the nearby liberal arts college started straggling in, resulting in my not getting a whole lot reading done, as... -I was distracted by the young athletic bodies in various states of (un)dress and the relative lack of underwear, combined with casual stretching and yoga posing while wearing not a whole lot of anything... although the best was the two extremely attractive girls piling on each other into an overstuffed chair, sharing a latte, and fondling and kissing each other. -Struggled through some of PHANTOM ISLANDS OF THE ATLANTIC while trying not to appear to be the 39-year-old pervert I know I am... -Marveled at the ignorance of the parents of the students. There were a couple of kids there with their parent(s) (it is a weekend), and the discussions were painful to overhear. Not because the kids aren't really knowledgeable (they're what? 19?), but the PARENTS, who are older than me, don't know jack! About anything! How can you get to be, like, 50, and be so empty? A lot of these kids are going on foreign work-study programs, and listening to the total ignorance of the (wealthy; believe me) parents was crucifying. The conversation about Chavez was almost more than I could take. -Finally wrapped it up and walked back, along the route: -Acknowledging every single person I passed or crossed with either an uptick of the head (acceptable greeting in street environments), a 'hey wassup' or some such. That's the thing about low-income street environments; you gotta be friendly and acknowledge literally every single person you meet or whatever. It's really a variation on the empty-hands gesture; you are establishing yourself as a friendly entity, and you are not going to, say, steal something or pull out a gun. Which reminds me; it's a beautiful day, and tonight's going to be just as nice. There will be gunfire. -Patted a pitbull walking off the leash, when the owner informed that he was okay, having been 'raised around kids'. -Walked past any number of groupings of Hispanic men lounging around in the front yards drinking, all of whom sized me up as I walked past. Street rules: Make eye contact, nod, don't smile. If the women are present, it's a family grouping and therefore safe. Smile and nod. Only men, be careful of macho posturing combined with animosity towards white people (which, by the way, is in my opinion mostly deserved). -Helped a kid push-start his rusty old manual-tranny Camaro. He gave me a cigarette as payment. It was a menthol. Since I don't smoke pot, I don't smoke menthols. -Patted yet another dog, a brownish mutt, this time on a leash, walking with an elderly lady, who also assured me her dog was friendly. -Missed getting run over by a drunk woman backing out from between two houses at high speed, because I'm aware that narrow driveways between houses are deathtraps for the unwary. ....And now I'm home, and let the scanning commence! And now I'm taking a break at page 55, and a break from playing solitaire while waiting for the scanner to punch in each image. God, scanning is boring...

I recently ran across an engraving from the Elizabethean era featuring a civil 'cat' which clearly featured five cords, and was more or less identical to the one in Hogarth's print. So there are two pieces of visual evidence in bracketing time frames of this type of tool. The stipulation of visual or written evidence specific to the time period is proving more or less impossible. And even if a picture or description is found specific to the period, the wild variations in other times leads me to believe there really wasn't much standardization. A relevant question would be: How 'seafaring' were merchant masters and captains of the time? Were they all master mariners? Were they all inculcated with some nebulous "code of the sea'? I doubt it. Is there any reason that punishments wouldn't be similar or identical (with situational variations, of course) on ship to those on land? And if (there's that IF again) so, why wouldn't the tool used be pretty much the same? Just a couple of thoughts. Nothing major.

Mason jars

Next up: AGAINST THE GODS, The Remarkable Story of Risk; Peter L. Bernstein. A history of the development of the very concepts of probability, odds, and risk management. Risk management is a subject dear to my heart, and why I study history at all. How are you going to predict what people might do (to you) if you know nothing about them? and how can you know them without knowing where they come from, their history? Sample quote: 'Hacking asserts that Pascal's line of analysis to answer this question is the beginning of the theory of decision-making. "Decision theory," as Hacking describes it, "is the theory of deciding what to do when it is uncertain what will happen". Making that decision is the essential first step in any effort to manage risk.' This book has information on the development of the insurance industry in world shipping, which is its relevance here.

Didn't make it through the abominably written UNDER THE BLACK FLAG. BATTLE CRIES AND LULLABIES, Linda Grant De Pauww. Very interesting compendium of women's roles in warfare and in greater male society; for instance, the treatment of Chevalier d'Eon is succinct, unusually accessible, and empathetic. There is a revealing quote in here from an historian of cross-dressing, Marjorie Garber, who states, "the very concept of sexual orientation as a self-definition is itself of relatively recent, and local, vintage". Interesting point, and worth pondering in the larger context of human functioning roles. There is a good section on camp followers and the human chain of baggage and people the armies carted with them during the Thirty Years' War, and the cultural behavior of same. Good pieces about soldiers' wives, who hired out for washing-work, cooking, gathering food, and foraging; prostitutes, some of whom were more official than others, and the militaries' attitude about what you might call 'comfort women'; and, of course, women sutlers, sellers of tobacco and sundries. Interesting bits on human behavior in these endless trains of quasi-military force. Johann Jacob Wallhausen, on German infantry: "A regiment of 3,000 had not less than three hundred vehicles and each wagon was filled to overflowing with women, boys, children, prostitutes and plunder. The vehicle is frequently so heavily overburdened that the horses or oxen cannot budge it". On an occasion where a German captain attempted to ditch the women in the van at a river crossing, the soldiers broke ranks and refused to leave their women. His solution? Only lawful wives were allowed, with the result that 800 prostitutes became wives in less than two days, the entire outfit fanning out all over the place looking for churches. Women would also fight over relative status over their place in the wagons, and involve their men with predictable results: "This is no rarity, " says Wallhausen, "for when in transit, hardly a day passes in which three, four, or even ten soldiers do not lose life or limb for the sake of their women". The bibliography is impressive, and I'm going to try to hunt up some of the titles. For the purposes of the GAoP this book is limited, but as an overview of the concept of female soldiers, and of women dressing as men to BE soldiers or sailors, it's quite good, and I recommend it highly. Oh, and a good reference to Dianne Dugaw's collection (1650-1850) of Anglo-American folk ballads featuring 'female warriors', as she terms them, samples of which can be found here: http://cdbaby.com/cd/dugaw

^ My drawing table. It's assembled from dumpster finds, and is the best one I've ever had. I like it very much. > I have over a hundred pages of artwork to scan in today, and I slept on my neck wrong and can barely hold up my head! To add insult to injury, I was in the middle of a dream in which I had almost persuaded a naked Carmen Electra to have sex with me, and my cat woke me up by jumping on my (injured) neck. So here I am, kids! Gold Rush pirates? Here: http://www.library.ca.gov/goldrush/images/sec04.html V Do you fly a flag, and if so, is it your national flag, or something else?

I read through the old thread, thanks very much, Patrick and Foxe. That's the problem with forums: once they've been up a while, they try the patience of long time users by repeating the same questions and discussions over and over again. Howsomever, I'm still kind of interested in the relationship of possibly present animals to the crew of ships. Pets? Workers? Combination of the two? Just sort of... there, because that's what people did? I didn't really think too much about dogs, but it's obvious after reading the old thread that dogs were considered just as efficient at ratting as cats, and in the case of the terriers every bit as efficient. Since I don't give up on things, I'll keep poking around, but for the meantime, here's this: "Newfoundland was discovered by John Cabot in 1497," Jeff Griffen reminds us in The Hunting Dogs of America (NY: Doubleday, 1964), "and St. John's, because of its splendid horseshoe harbour that could accommodate the largest of ships, was settled as a British colony in 1583. Within seventy-five years (to 1658), fishermen from France, Spain and Portugal were regular visitors.... In time...the St. John's Newfoundland [arose], a ... water dog about the size of a Pointer with a heavy, oily coat that shed water like a greased balloon .... a most practical dog. During the fall and spring when great masses of migrating ducks and geese clogged the island, he worked tirelessly with gunners as a retriever. By and large, though, he was a fisherman's dog, working around the nets, on the boats, recovering anything that fell overboard, fetching a cod that slid back into the water as the fish were being transferred to the pier, swimming from ship to shore with a hawser line. In those days a ship dog was a handy asset, not only for companionship but for practical use. From 1750 on, these Newfoundlands from St. John's rode the ships to England and the Continent. They were a captain's pride and joy, friend of the crew and general handyman." (Griffen, p. 119.)

Sunshine