Meme Scholar with Madness (PhD)

[EndtheMadnessNow]

May 28, 1864: Charles Henry Webb (1834-1905) started The Californian newspaper in San Francisco, CA, the day before Mark Twain left Nevada Territory for San Francisco. Webb would soon pay Mark Twain for regular submissions to his paper.

Charles Henry Webb (January 24, 1834 – May 24, 1905) known in the literary world as "Inigo" and "John Paul" was an American poet, author and journalist. He was particularly known for his parodies and humorous writings. He worked as a journalist for the New York Times before moving to California where he covered the front lines of the Civil War. He was also a holder of several patents for calculating devices - adding machines. In 1874 Webb invented, patented, and manufactured a cartridge-loading machine, the utility of which was recognized by the manufacturers of firearms and others.

A relatively short-lived San Francisco based news and literary paper published from 1864-1868.

The first issue was dated May 28, 1864. Fitz Hugh Ludlow was one of the first known contributors, but many of the early pieces were published anonymously. Bret Harte came on as an editor in 1865 and a young Mark Twain was hired, also in 1865, at a salary of $50 per month. Twain note, "The Californian circulates among the highest class of the community and is the best weekly literary paper in the United States--and I suppose I ought to know."

Californian Newspaper Vol. 1 No. 1--Vol. 1 No. 10 May 28, 1864-July 30, 1864

Ambrose Bierce's first contribution to The Californian was in September 1867, a poem entitled "The Basilica". He followed with his first non-fiction essay, "Female Suffrage", in December 1867.

Ambrose Bierce CHRONOLOGY Life & Disappearance 1842-1914? compiled by Don Swaim

Dec 26, 1913 — Writes a letter from Chihuahua, Mexico, to his secretary/companion, Carrie Christiansen, saying he expects to move out the next day, partly by rail, to Ojinaga, where Pancho Villa's revolutionaries are poised to attack federal troops. This is the last communication from Bierce.

Jan 1, 1914 — Pancho Villa captures Ojinaga.

1914 — Franklin K. Lane, Secretary of the Interior, forms an investigative team to look into Bierce's disappearance but comes up with nothing. Bierce's daughter, Helen, launches an investigation under the direction of Colonel C. J. Velardi. Again, with no results.

Mar 1920 — The San Francisco Bulletin sends reporter James H. Wilkins to Mexico to find out what happened to Bierce, and publishes a sensational story claiming that Bierce was shot by a Villa firing squad near Icamoli in 1915.

1929 — Biographer Carey McWilliams quotes Edward S. O'Reilly, a soldier of fortune, as saying Ambrose Bierce was buried near Sierra Mojada after having been shot by local soldiers. NOTE: See Aug 2004 (below) for a credible theory by James Lienert giving credence to McWilliams' 1929 account.

.....

Aug 2004 — Retired priest James Lienert erects a gravestone to Bierce in Sierra Mojada, Coahuila, Mexico, where Lienert draws upon local lore to theorize Bierce is buried in the local cemetery.

Bierce left home at 15 to become a printer's devil at a small abolitionist newspaper, the Northern Indianan. Served in the Union Army as an officer from 1861–1866 and fought in 20 bloody battles during the Civil War.

One of Bierce's most famous works is his much-quoted The Devil's Dictionary (1911), originally an occasional newspaper item, first published in book form in 1906 as The Cynic's Word Book. Described as "howlingly funny", it consists of satirical definitions of English words which lampoon cant and political double-talk. Bierce edited the twelve volumes of The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, which were published from 1909 to 1912. The seventh volume consists solely of The Devil's Dictionary. The Devil's Dictionary was named as one of "The 100 Greatest Masterpieces of American Literature" by the American Revolution Bicentennial Administration.

In his essay "Supernatural Horror in Literature", H. P. Lovecraft characterized Bierce's fictional work as "grim and savage." Lovecraft goes on to say that nearly all of Bierce's stories are of the horror genre and some shine as great examples of weird fiction.

In October 1913 Bierce, then age 71, departed from Washington, D.C. for a tour of his old Civil War battlefields. According to some reports, by December he had passed through Louisiana and Texas, crossing by way of El Paso into Mexico, which was in the throes of revolution. In Ciudad Juárez he joined Pancho Villa's army as an observer, and in that role he witnessed the Battle of Tierra Blanca.

It was reported that Bierce accompanied Villa's army as far as the city of Chihuahua. His last known communication with the world was a letter he wrote there to Blanche Partington, a close friend, dated December 26, 1913. After closing this letter by saying, "As to me, I leave here tomorrow for an unknown destination," he vanished without a trace, one of the most famous disappearances in American literary history. Lots of theories over the past 100 years on what happened to him.


The Devil's Dictionary (1911) by Ambrose Bierce


Some interesting research on the mystery writer...


The Walter Bosley Channel

The True Literary Legacy of Bierce


UK-based historian, writer and reviewer, specialising in medieval history, Katherine Harvey investigates the story of Old Tom Parr (died 1635), who claimed to have lived to 152, and the fraudulent longevity business that became his namesake in the 19th century.


The Old, Old, Very Old Man


Bernard Sleigh’s Anciente Mappe of Fairyland, originally published in 1917, is a stunning six-foot-long map that depicts the worlds of various myths, fairytales, and folklore on one single landscape.

Measuring nearly six feet long, the Anciente Mappe presents a kind of “extended universe” of mythology and fairytales. Narcissus fixates on his reflection in the woods outside of Little Red Riding Hood’s house; Ulysses sails into a cove where Peter Piper and Puss in Boots romp; Lancelot climbs a mountain that also houses the Hydra and Cerberus. The map is framed by tanning mermaids, tricksy fairies, and highly ornamented borders. At its center, on the distant horizon, we find the Moone’s Sphere, circled by enchanted rainbows. Taken as a whole, Sleigh’s vision gives the impression that all human stories, all tales of magic and mystery, are piecemeal fragments from a singular, cohesive landscape.

One almost wants to live inside this map, where the disparate roots of a certain tradition of mythic imagination seems to emerge and remix. And indeed, when it was first published, it came to offer a kind of escape from the devastating closure of World War I. Yet Sleigh had first drafted his Anciente Mappe nearly a decade earlier. Like all good works of literary fandom, it emerged from a love of reading and sharing stories. “Every day after lunch, before he set off on his bicycle for the afternoon session at the Art School, he would read to the two of us”, recalled Sleigh’s daughter Barbara, a celebrated children’s author. “One wet holiday my father drew a Map of Faeryland for us. On it were marked the sites of all our best-loved fairy-stories. There is Peter Pan’s House, and the palace of La Belle Dormante and the Bridge of Roc’s Eggs, and such succinct entries as ‘Here be bogles’ and ‘Warlocks live here’. It has fascinated several generations of children.”

More info & larger images: Bernard Sleigh’s Anciente Mappe of Fairyland (ca. 1920 edition)


A quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882), which according to some sources means that time, as it passes, softens and dissolves the sharp, concrete aspects of reality, much like how sunlight can fade the edges of a solid object. The "shining ether" represents a more ethereal, intangible state.

The instinct of the mind, the purpose of nature, betrays itself in the use we make of the signal narrations of history. Time dissipates to shining ether the solid angularity of facts. No anchor, no cable, no fences, avail to keep a fact a fact. Babylon, Troy, Tyre, Palestine, and even early Rome, are passing already into fiction. The Garden of Eden, the sun standing still in Gibeon, is poetry thenceforward to all nations. Who cares what the fact was, when we have made a constellation of it to hang in heaven an immortal sign? London and Paris and New York must go the same way. “What is History,” said Napoleon, “but a fable agreed upon?” This life of ours is stuck round with Egypt, Greece, Gaul, England, War, Colonization, Church, Court, and Commerce, as with so many flowers and wild ornaments grave and gay. I will not make more account of them. I believe in Eternity. I can find Greece, Asia, Italy, Spain, and the Islands,—the genius and creative principle of each and of all eras in my own mind.

Essay excerpt from:History by Ralph Waldo Emerson (1841) (Read or listen)

Friedrich Nietzsche thought he was "the most gifted of the Americans," and Walt Whitman called Emerson his "master", and Donald Trump's favorite poet.


Arthur Godfrey not included... SICK Magazine imagines network news coverage of World War III. Feb. 1962 issue.




May 27, 1987: The Virgin Valley Black Fire Opal was designated the Official Precious Gemstone for the State of Nevada. While the Nevada Turquoise was designated as the Official Semi-Precious Gemstone.

1987 Statutes of Nevada

The precious rare gem was discovered in Nevada’s remote Virgin Valley in 1918 by Col. W.A. Roebling, a civil engineer who helped design and construct New York’s famed Brooklyn Bridge.

Black fire opal is especially rare and only found in two areas on earth: Nevada’s Virgin Valley and New South Wales, Australia. Other types and colorations of the gemstone can be found in Nevada’s Nye and Lincoln Counties.

Opal is one of the few minerals the public can actively mine in Nevada, with a number of mines throughout the state open to visitors. While most opals found throughout the world are used for jewelry, Nevada’s are prone to cracking if handled too often, making them unpopular with jewelry makers.

Two of the oldest mines in the region, both open to the public, are the Rainbow Ridge Opal Mine (where the Roebling opal was discovered) and the Royal Peacock Opal Mine. The Rainbow Ridge Opal mine is open daily from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. from May to the end of September. Cost is $100 per person per day for tailings and $700 for virgin ground loads. Best to go in May (not Memorial weekend) or early Sept unless you enjoy the intense  heat; there is no shade. Mine is near the Oregon border just west of the bordertown of Denio. I spent a day here in July and came out empty handed and looking like a Mexican. Fun for the kids/grandkids who don't mind getting dirty. Good luck!

BONUS: after a hot day playin in the dirt you can drive 56 miles north to Fields, Oregon and cool down with the best milkshakes west of the Mississippi!  Also the only gas station for a very long ways.






The Royal Peacock Mine, also open from May to September, is a similar mine-your-own opals operation. The Royal Peacock, where some of the largest opals ever uncovered in Nevada have been unearthed, has been featured on the Travel Channel.

BONUS: it also offers an RV park and gift shop.

The town of Coober Pedy, 693 km (430 mi) south of Alice Springs in South Australia is a major source of opal. The world's largest and most valuable gem opal "Olympic Australis" was found in August 1956 at the "Eight Mile" opal field at a depth of 30 feet in Coober Pedy. It weighs 17,000 carats (3.4 kg; 7.5 lb) and is 11 inches (280 mm) long, with a height of 4+3⁄4 in (120 mm) and a width of 4+1⁄2 in (110 mm) and was valued at A$2,500,000 in 1997.


Olympic Australis – The World’s Most Famous Opal

BlackOpal Australia

A Little History of Nevada Turquoise

Native American peoples first mined the beautiful Turquoise of Nevada long before the first European explorers entered the area. Some of the mines such as the Fox and Crescent Peak deposits were worked extensively. For centuries going back to the times of the Anasazi, the native peoples of Nevada produced beautiful necklaces and other decorative and sacred items using turquoise. However, unlike some of the tribes in Arizona that also cherish turquoise, silver work and the art of making Native American style silver jewelry never became fully established in Nevada. As a result, even though Nevada still produces considerable quantities of turquoise, the traditional use of this gem in the crafts of the Paiute and Shoeshone tribes of Nevada is rare by comparison to the prolific use of these gems by the Arizona tribes. This also explains why, although there are well-known styles for the turquoise jewelry work of the Navajo, Zuni and other Arizona tribes, no similar well-established style exists for the Paiute or Shoeshone peoples of Nevada.

The first Nevada turquoise discovery made by prospectors of European decent was made near Columbus in the early 1870s. At that time, it was only the second turquoise deposit in the US known to European miners. When Turquoise became fashionable during the period 1908 – 1910, the high prices attracted the attention of local prospectors and a number of new Nevada turquoise discoveries were made. Most of the turquoise discoveries made at that time were located in the Esmerelda/Mineral/Nye counties area which is the part of Nevada located nearest to that first 1870s discovery. By the late 1920’s and 1930’s turquoise once more came back into vogue, and increased prices again led to a number of new discoveries, and this time most of the new finds were located in Lander County, farther to the north. In the 1960s and 1970s, increased turquoise prices again led to new discoveries and production at mines all across Nevada, most notably the deposits at Carico Lake. Nevada has been a major producer of turquoise since the 1920s, and until the early 1980's, the State was the largest producer in the US.

In this era of small turquoise operations, it may again be the largest producer. It is estimated that over the years, more than 100 different mines and prospects located in Nevada have produced significant quantities of turquoise, much of it of very good to excellent quality. That number far exceeds the total number of turquoise deposits all in the rest of the US combined. Production from these mines varied from a few thousand dollars worth of material at some of the smaller properties to many millions of dollars at the more productive ones. To date, the total value of the rough turquoise from the state of Nevada is estimated to comfortably exceed $250 million dollars.

In recent years, the small central Nevada town of Austin has sort of become the unofficial turquoise capital of Nevada. This is because of its location close to several turquoise mining districts that are still producing some material. These include the Damale/Godber, Carico Lake, McGuinness, and Blue Diamond/Papoose areas. Even though the town has less than a thousand residents, it has three nice shops that specialize in fine Nevada turquoise jewelry. Both rough and cut stones are available as well.

May 28, 1999: After 22 years of restoration work, Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece, The Last Supper, was put back on display in Milan, Italy. The classic painting shows the expressions on the faces of the disciples at the moment Jesus says the words: “One of you will betray me.”