The Fascinating History of Halloween And How the Fall Holiday Originated

Good Housekeeping – Americans love Halloween: the candy, the costumes, and the creepy decor. But as beloved as the holiday is in the states, it didn’t originate here. In fact, the history of Halloween dates back thousands of years to the Celtic celebration of Samhain, a festival that marked the end of the harvest and the start of a new year. The day was also said to be a time when the veil between the living and the dead was the thinnest, and when humans could communicate with those beyond the grave.

This year, before you go trick-or-treating or put on your trusty witch costume, take some time to learn more about the dark history of Halloween. It turns out, the holiday is much more interesting (and eerier!) than you thought.  (read the full article)

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Pixabay image by davidfoxx • English • Member since March 7, 2017

The County Election by George Caleb Bingham

Elections in the mid-19th century were far different than they are today.

In George Caleb Bingham’s painting, The County Election, the artist presents a busy scene in a rural community bringing together a variety of people making decisions for the common good.  While this painting was completed in 1852, election practices would have changed little by the election of 1860, where Abraham Lincoln was elected president. Bingham reveals features of the elections of the times that are far different from today:

• all ages and classes of eligible voters are shown
  • African Americans and women had not yet gained the right to vote
• no system of voter registration – the man in red at the top of the courthouse steps is swearing that he hasn’t already cast a vote.
• no secret or paper ballots – voters call out their choice(s) to election clerks who record it (them) in a leger.
• no restrictions on electioneering – a well-dressed gentleman, probably a candidate or candidate’s representative, hands his card to one of the voters in line.

Picturing America¹

The lack of a single dramatic focus in The County Election is an expression of the democratic ideal: all men appear as equals, with no one vote worth more than another. Several members of the electorate engage in serious discussion, perhaps debating the candidates’ qualifications. Another group clusters around a newspaper, a potent tool of democracy. Nevertheless, Bingham seems to question the integrity of an election conducted so casually. In the left foreground, a portly man already sprawled in his chair accepts more hard cider from an African American precinct worker, presumably in exchange for a vote. Behind him, a well-to-do gentleman literally drags a slumping body to the polls as he casts a meaningful glance toward the candidate in blue…, and in the foreground, the actions of two boys, absorbed in a childhood pastime in which a knife thrown into the ground determines the winner, suggest that the political process is little more than a game of chance. More ominously, a tattered figure in the front right corner hangs his bandaged head, perhaps to imply that for all the apparent good will of the crowd, violence lies just beneath the surface.

Besides commenting on American electioneering in general, The County Election records a particular political event. As many of Bingham’s contemporaries would have known, the painting depicts Election Day 1850 in Saline County, Missouri, when the artist himself was running for a place in the StateLegislature. Bingham lost that election to E. D. Sappington, whom he represents as the unprincipled candidate in the shinytop hat. Sappington, with his workers, did try to buy votes with liquor, and because he was related to the judge and one of the clerks, the election’s outcome naturally aroused suspicion. Bingham did not contest the results, but The County Election makes an obvious indictment of his political opponent.The artist himself makes an appearance in the picture as the figure in the stovepipe hat seated on the courthouse steps, attended by a friendly dog and two men in white hats who pause to look over his shoulder. Bingham’s quiet concentration sets him apart from the crowd, and we can only wonder whether he is keeping track of the votes in order to tally them for himself, or sketching the unruly practices of a young democracy.

Elected to the Missouri House of Representatives in 1848, Bingham was one of the few artists to serve in elected political office. Living in Europe from 1856 to 1859, he returned to America and again became involved in Missouri politics. After Missouri Governor Claiborne Jackson sided with the Confederacy, Bingham, a dedicated Union man raised troops to oppose Jackson and was commissioned as a Captain.  After the Missouri Constitution Convention reconvened, declared all of the state’s elective office’s vacant, and appointed new officers, including the governor, Governor Hamilton Gamble, Bingham was appointed by Gamble to the position of State Treasurer of Missouri in which position he served through the duration of the war.  In 1874 he was appointed president of the Kansas City Board of Police Commissioners and, in 1875, Adjutant-General of Missouri, the senior officer of the state militia.

1. The County Election, 1852 — Picturing America was a project of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) that brought masterpieces of American art into classrooms and libraries nationwide. The project concluded in 2009. However, many of the educational materials created for the program are still available for use by students, teachers, and lifelong learners.

Back in 2016, while in Houston, Texas, for a few days, I noticed that the front of my iPhone 5 was pushed out from the body.

The phone still  worked, but I couldn’t imagine that it would for long.  The problem was that the battery had started to swell in place and push the case apart.

I took the phone to an Apple Store to see what they could do for me, expecting the answer to be something less than, “not much.” I sure was surprised when the service guy told me they could replace the phone because it was a battery issue, but that they would have to order one in and it would take a couple of days because they didn’t have that older model in stock.  Unfortunately, we were heading home the next day, so that option wasn’t a good one.  He gave me a number to call after we got home.  When I did, though, I was told that the service tech in Houston was wrong and that they couldn’t provide a replacement phone.

After watching a video or two online, I ordered a new battery for the phone since it looked pretty easy to change it out.

It wasn’t.

The battery was so swollen in place, there wasn’t anything I could do to get it out without further damaging the phone.  I could have sent the battery back, but it was only about $15 and I never got around to it.

So… that brings up to this week.

Friday, I was sorting through some drawers and shelves, tossing stuff away and rearranging stuff when I came across a small, thin, plain white box.  Amazingly, four years later, I knew what it was.

Taking it out out the box, this is what I found:

The battery is on the left and the box it came in is on the right.  I really don’t know what caused this. The burn mark on the outside of the box is right where the brown corroded looking spot is on the outside of the battery.  The battery was in a junk drawer.  There is a hole in the middle of the burn mark and  I suppose something could have poked through the box and into the battery.  But, I just don’t know.

Curiouser and curiouser!

No, it’s not that kind of chest pain – and it’s on the right side of my chest, not the left.

At the end of September, I was walking across our back yard carrying some short sections of cut up 4×4 lumber in my left arm when I stepped into a depression in the yard and lost my balance.  As I fell, I guess I pushed/flung the lumber away from me to keep from falling on them.  That didn’t give me any time to limit my impact with my arms and I hit the ground pretty hard on my right side.

Every other time I’ve fallen since I was a kid, I’ve been able to get up and – after a little bit of cussing and walking around – get back to whatever I was doing before I fell.  I had been pulling branches and other yard trash from piles in the yard to a spot where we were burning the debris…, and I started back at it and continued the next couple of days.

Big mistake – and the pain wasn’t going away like I thought it should.

I didn’t realize how long an injury like that to the rib area could take to heal.  I was probably exacerbating the problem.

After a week, I called the clinic to see if I could get in to see a doctor.  I was pretty sure I knew what it was, but decided I should get a diagnosis from a professional.

As they were fitting me into the schedule, it didn’t surprise me that it took over an hour.  Everyone, staff and patients, was wearing their masks.  The chairs in the waiting room were a little closer together than I would have liked, but they probably satisfied the social distancing requirements.  Quite a few people cycled through while I was waiting, most of them to get a flu shot.

After an initial consult with the doctor, he sent me to another part of the clinic for x-rays and then saw me again after they had been taken.

His diagnosis matched what I thought was the problem: bruised ribs – also called chest wall contusion.  None of the ribs were cracked or broken.  He prescribed some pain medication – I only used that at bedtime a few days before I disposed of the remaining tablets.

One of the online medical sources says, “Don’t do any activity that causes pain.”  Hah!  The pain is the worst after getting out of bed in the morning.  I’m not about to stop sleeping.  I think the pain there is from laying in the same position for a long period and stiffening up.

Unfortunately, chest bruises can take weeks or months to heal.  It’s been nearly 4 weeks, I guess.  In the first couple of weeks, it really hurt whenever I would cough, sneeze, or even have hiccup.  That kind of pain is pretty much gone.  The remaining pain isn’t noticeable… most of time.

The older one gets, the more concerning falls become.

I’ve been having problems accessing some of the editing features for this blog.  On many posts, I’ve been unable to shift to text view, where I can see the html level coding for the post.  The “Add Media” button hasn’t worked.  There have been a couple of other features that weren’t responsive.

It’s been more than a little bit frustrating.  I did a search on the problem and the top suggestion was to disable all plugins to see if that would fix the problem.

It did.

The recommendation was to enable each plugin one at a time and check after each to see if that was the one that was causing the problem.

It was CommentLuv Premium.

CommentLuv was originally created over a decade ago by Andy Bailey in the UK.  It automatically shared a link to a commenter’s recent post and offered a number of different options associated with comments, spam filtering of comments, ensuring that commenters weren’t “robots,” and more.  It was a pretty decent plugin and I upgraded to the premium version to take advantage of some of its features.

Unfortunately Andy was diagnosed with MS several years ago and, while he tried for a while, he was unable to keep up with his coding, including maintaining CommentLuv.  At some point after he stopped working with it, another party purchased the plugin and all rights to it.  Unfortunately, it seems, they did not choose to honor the “lifetime” CommentLuv Premium purchases, which I see as totally understandable.  They were buying the app and the code, not the obligations to existing customers.

The old premium plugin still works but it is no longer available from WordPress, is no longer updated and the link to the plug-in site goes to a garbage link site. A new CommentLuv plugin is available from the new app owners.  It doesn’t yet have a premium option which  I doubt I would pay the extra cost for as I am not blogging as frequently as I was when I first bought the old premium version.

The new CommentLuv has not been updated in 9 months.  It’s been tested through WordPress 5.3.4, but the current revision is 5.5.1.

At least the blog editing features are now working.

Got up this morning and found the Dell black startup screen on both of my monitors.

Uh-oh, that’s not good.

….Turned my Dell desktop computer off and then back on.

Uh-oh, no change.

….Turned off, back on, and toggled F2 repeatedly to try to boot to BIOS.

Nope, didn’t work.

I mainly try to keep all of my photos backed up.  The only things I don’t have backed up are a very few photos, newer items in the documents folder and all of the graphics I’ve created the last year for posting and all of the images I’ve downloaded associated with that.  So, there is a lot that I don’t have backed up.  I guess I’ll have to rectify that.

….Unplugged the external hard drives that I use mainly for photo storage and backup photo storage.

Shazam!

The PC is back!

It turned out that my computer will not reboot if a new 5 terabyte external hard drive is connected.

Fortunately, the packaging was still in a trash bag next to my computer desk.  The drive is now repackaged and will be returned for a refund.

 I’ve just started using a new iPad and decided to try writing a blog post using it.  I tried a couple of times with my old iPad, but it just didn’t seem to work out.

I use the iPad to watch shows when I am walking on the treadmill.  Currently, I am on season 2 of Game of Thrones.  I tried reading the kindle while walking, but that was disorienting.  I also tried watching the big-screen TV in the living room, which is where we have the treadmill, but it is off to the right too far for it to be comfortable to watch while I am walking.  The iPad with Bluetooth earbuds works out great, though.

This iPad is the newest generation iPad with plenty of storage space for downloading shows to watch if we are away from cellular signals and internet access.

I am using a Bluetooth keyboard for composing this post.  I certainly would not want to try to use the onscreen keyboard for that, though I am sure it is doable.  If I were to use the iPad for frequent writing, I would probably want to get a Bluetooth mouse for iPad.

I will have to pronounce this blog post “test” a success.  It will certainly be something to consider if we are far off-grid in our travels and we go somewhere to publish the post away from the camper where there is connectivity.  The iPad is certainly smaller and lighter than our laptops.  That would certainly be worth considering if we fly anywhere.

There is one additional benefit I wouldn’t think to mention except for an experience from last year’s trip.  When I went to use my laptop in Laramie, Wyoming, I discovered that I had left the power adapter at home.  I couldn’t find one locally so we ended up driving 65 miles to Ft. Collins, Colorado.  The lightning power cords are interchangeable and available everywhere.

I also didn’t have a lightning to SD card reader to allow use of photos from my Pentax camera.  That would be another purchase to make before our next trip.

Given all this, the iPad is certainly a feasible option for blog posts.  However, at home, I prefer my desktop computer and, for most instances, when traveling, I will probably use my laptop for blog posting.

Surreal.

At least it would be in any normal times.

Now, the whole world is surreal, so donning a mask for health care facility visits is just part of today’s normal as is the required COVID screening for gaining access.

Shortly after officials announced that clinical service in Arkansas were going to be allowed to resume with restriction last May, my dentist’s office called and asked me if I wanted to schedule an an appointment for cleaning on what turned out to be the first day they were going to reopen for routine patient services.

“Ummm…, no, I don’t think so.  I think I’d rather wait.”

That was a good call.  My dental hygienist later told me that things didn’t go well.  Apparently, after that first day, they decided to retreat on the resumption of services and do some more planning.

Since then, I have visited health care “facilities” 13 times.  That’s more than I’ve been in all retail establishments combined in the same time period.  The visits were for:

1. dentist’s office for cleaning
2. local clinic for blood test
3. cardiologist for routine visit
4. optometrist for eye exam
5. primary care physician for routine visit
6. ophthalmologist for cataract surgery evaluation
7. cataract surgery right eye
8. right eye post-operation exam
9. cataract surgery left eye
10. left eye post-operation exam
11. flu shot
12. cataract surgery final post-operation exam
13. local clinic for pain resulting from a fall

The cataract surgeries made a tremendous improvement in my vision.  Everything is clearer and brighter.  I can see at distances without needing glasses, though I now need glasses for reading, a reversal of my previous optical needs.

The fall was around 10 days or so ago.  I was carrying several short lengths of 4 by 4 lumber across the backyard when I stepped in to a depression.  Starting to fall, I instinctively thrust the lumber away from me to the left so that I wouldn’t land on any of the pieces, but that hindered my ability to arrest my fall with my arms.  I landed pretty hard on my front right side.

Even though my rib cage hurt, I continued to working in the yard over the next several days.  With the pain continuing, I finally decided to see a doctor on the 6th.  X-rays showed that there were no cracked or broken ribs, so what I have is bruised ribs on my right side front. It’s going to take a while to fully heal and I need to watch it so that I don’t exacerbate it.  It does make really difficult to get the exercise I want in order to maintain or even improve my fitness level.

Oh, and I did go one other place during the last few moths.

I got a haircut.

Glacier National Park

August 30, 2014¹—Last evening, we were walking the trail in this photo² to Apgar Village. A couple with two small dogs was coming from the opposite direction and I sarcastically said, referring to the dogs, “Bear bait” and “Mountain lion bait.”

The couple pulled off the side of the trail to restrain their very friendly dogs. We got into a conversation and they told us about an encounter they had just had on a trail that paralleled the one we were on—one that we had walked last Monday evening. For some reason, they looked behind them and there on the trail was a mountain lion!

The man was able to chase it off by throwing a couple of large sticks at it.

I told them about my sarcastic “mountain lion bait” comment and they agreed, saying the big cat was probably after the dogs. They had already reported the encounter to a ranger.

This cat is getting too habituated to humans and something will probably have to be done. I hope it can be relocated and won’t have to be put down. There has been reports of a mountain lion with 4 cubs. If they belong to this cat, something will need to be done with them, too.

1. This was originally published on Facebook with a post titled, “Couple and Their Dogs Stalked by Mountain Lion.”
2. Photo was rendered into a drawing using an application named Akvis Sketch.