29 January - Shall We Catwalk by the River?



Rain most of the day - winter and rough weather and all; but it cleared up and the sun came out late in the afternoon, so a brisk catwalk seemed in order. Leroy and Natasha enjoy playing on

29 January - Two Comrades in a Voisin



A couple of nights ago we watched a thrilling adventure set during the Russian Civil War,

In the picture above, we observe a yoke of oxen taxiing a mock-up of a sort of generic Voisin bomber - or possibly a Lebed, the Russian manufactured version - for the lads' reconnaissance mission - would have been an excellent addition to Animals Aloft. The motto on the fuselage is "Na Vrangelya", a reference to Pyotr Nikolayevich Wrangel, commander of the White forces in the Crimea - the sense is probably something along the lines of "Here's for you, Wrangel!".



A thrilling scene of aerial combat - Ivan pots away at a White aviator, probably with a Model 1895 Nagant pistol, as Andrei holds his hand in the snug cockpit. Oh, what a coincidence! The less-than-noble facial features of our maintenance man Gus once appeared on a mannequin of the gunner in an actual Voisin VIII bomber, over at our sister institution, The National Air and Space Museum:



That's "Gus", standing up in the cockpit. The exhibition staff made a life mask of him and all and even refused a bribe to remove his breathing straws during the process. I confess that it gave me a serious start, the first time I walked into the gallery and spotted "Gus", magnificent in helmet and fur coat, pointing a machine gun at me from the Voisin cockpit. It was thought by the curator of the exhibit that Gus had rather Gallic-looking features and an air of éclat and devil-may-care insouciance:



I'll refrain from comment, except to state that that particular curator no longer works at the Air and Space Museum - has given up the curatorial game completely, I hear. Tragically, Gus became moth-eaten some years ago and had to be hauled out of the cockpit. His head now rests on a shelf at the Museum's Paul E. Garber Facility in Suitland, Maryland. There's a lesson there, I think; something about pride coming before the moths before a fall.

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27 January - Another Exquisite Image from the Collection



Well, it was the Jazz Age, and we all did the craziest things. All of the other flappers had neat little roadsters -

25 January - Mountain's Majesty


Sugarloaf Mountain from Old Hundred Road
From One Hundred Famous Views of Sugarloaf

Here's another delightful landscape of

24 January - Cat Prince of Orange



Our Museum Cats, Max and Maxine, are going to look so totally bad in their new Cat Fruit Helmets, as soon as I can make them, as per the excellent illustrated instructions on

22 January - Snarleyyow


Captain Vanslyperken and Snarleyyow confront Smallbones.
Engraving by J. Ayton Symington from Snarleyyow

I put it to you that a man would have to have a heart of stone to encounter a book entitled

22 January - The Golden Coach and a Travelling Tune


The Commedia dell'arte troupe from The Golden Coach (1953)

We watched Jean Renoir's

Renoir said that he was inspired by the music of Vivaldi while writing the film, and he used Vivaldi music in the soundtrack - I noticed a lot from The Four Seasons and from the mandolin concerto. But here's a sprightly little fanfare (streaming mp3 format) that serves as the players' overture - I can't recognize it as being by Vivaldi; does anyone know it? One can overhear La Magnani as Camilla coaching Harlequin in his capers during the repeat.

Not all of the film's music is by the Red Priest. For example, Camilla sings this little ditty (streaming mp3 format) during a performance - we recognized it instantly as the tune used by John Gay for Captain Macheath's song If the Heart of a Man is Deprest with Cares (Air XXI) from The Beggar's Opera. Gay used a variety of music as the sources for his songs - popular tunes of the day, music by Handel, and old ballads and folksongs. The source for Heart is said to be a lecherous little song from Thomas D'Urfey's song collection, Pills to Purge Melancholy (1719) - Would you Have a Young Virgin (by the way, here's a fine CD collection of songs from Pills). But according to the notes in the superb CD by the Broadside Band, The Beggar's Opera: Original Songs & Airs, the tune has a number of variants and also seems to have traveled quite a bit - there's Poor Robin's Magot from Playford's Dancing Master of 1713, a song, Käre Bröder, by the Swedish poet Carl Michael Bellman and another 18th century version, a Scottish take on the tune by James Oswald (c.1711-1769), Saw ye a Lassie of Fifteen Years from his Caledonian Pocket Companion. Here's the entire medley from the CD (streaming Real Audio format) - I recommend the album highly. Finally, in William Eban Schultz's Gay's Beggar's Opera: Its Content, History & Influence (1923), Schultz suggests that Gregor Sarrazin claims (in John Gay's Singspiele [1898]) that the tune was still a popular dance in North Germany, at least in 1898.

So - is Camilla's little song a nearly forgotten ancestor of a Beggar's Opera tune, or did Gay's song travel to Italy and there become part of the Commedia's repertory, or did Renoir adapt an obscure North German dance, or a Scottish tune, or a lecherous folksong - for the soundtrack? Beats me - but thank you for your kind attention.

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20 January - For Fire Buffs



I was downtown again this morning - happened to look out the window and saw the excellent machine that is now pictured above. It's a rare 1976 open cab Peterbilt pumper belonging to the Clinton (Maryland) Volunteer Fire Department. It was in town to take part in a funeral procession for a Marine, a former fireman, killed in Iraq, who was buried today at Arlington. Nice truck; sorry that I got to see it for that particular reason.

I think the local fire truck

19 January - Herding Cats

Several Friends of the Museum have been kind enough to send us photos of their cats - all but one of whom have made appearances here before. Allow me to introduce them:



Ruby, a very elegant creature, lives near Boston with

19 January - Isn't it Romantic?



Upload a photo, dream up a title and a blurb, and you've got a steamy romance novel book cover, courtesy of

15 January - Guns, Guts and Gus


Gus, armed.

Our maintenance man Gus showed up this morning with a brand new

15 January - Culinary Notes



I've just about given up on frozen pizza, having been disappointed too many times by the latest promising newcomer to the field just not coming up to scratch. But I'm a big fan of the Trader Joe's grocery stores, and when I came across his Roasted Vegetable Pizza, I decided to try once more. I trust Trader Joe - he carries extremely good stuff; excellent value for money. And I appreciate his easy generosity with free samples, too. And the picture on the box was... well, ravishing - a golden crust - glistening hunks of red pepper and artichoke. So I gave it a shot, since Trader Joe wouldn't let me down, would he? I'm sure you see where this is heading - got it home, heated up the oven, took the frozen pie out of the beautiful box, felt a bit puzzled by the look of the pathetic item within... But it'll plump up, or out in the oven, I said to myself, without much hope. Of course, the pie was, if anything, even more pathetic out of the oven - a totally different species and genus than the ravishing object pictured on the box. Normally, I would just chalk it up to experience and chuckle cynically that I had been had once again, but... but - it was Trader Joe who had perpetrated this thing - how could he do it? Say it ain't so, Joe! But it tasted pretty good, actually. Full disclosure - I added the green onions that appear in the picture above.




On a happier culinary note, I was at the local Russian grocery the other day and noticed the blocks of kolozsvári, Hungarian smoked bacon. Although I am of Hungarian descent, I had never tried it. I asked the shopnik if one fried it like American bacon, or what - he told me to eat it as is, and that it was very very delicious. So I added it to my haul of piroshki and pickled red peppers and took it home. I carved out a strip of it this morning, and tried it as is - very very chewy. So I did fry up a couple of strips, and it was very very delicious. It comes from

14 January - Straw Man



I occasionally run into this gent, always wearing a rather nice straw boater, near Union Station in DC when I have to go downtown - I snapped him the other day, before

PROXMIRE WAS MURDERED

... S A THREAT TO THE SENATE

... WHILE THEY WERE CONSIDERING

... EXTENDING THE PATRIOT ACT

... BUSH SHOULD BE IMPEACHED

14 January - French Cancan


The big cancan scene from Renoir's French Cancan

We recently had a viewing of Jean Renoir's

María Félix as Lola, with dancing zouaves

One also gets to enjoy a polite sort of striptease, with zouaves, by María Félix as Lola, "La Belle Abbess".

13 January - Squid News


Hotaru-ika, the firefly squid (Watasenia scintillans)

Our thanks to Friend of the Museum Grahame of St. Paul for submitting

Watasenia scintillans is a small (mantle length,~6 cm; wet weight,~9 g), luminescent deep-sea squid, indigenous to northern Japan. Females carrying fertilized eggs come inshore each spring by the hundreds of millions, even a billion, to lay eggs in Toyama Bay (max. depth, 1200 m) and die, thereupon completing a 1-year life cycle.

Watasenia possesses numerous (~800), minute dermal light organs (photophores) on its ventral side. Other organs are scattered over the head, funnel, mantle, and arms, but none is found on its dorsal side. There are five prominent organs beneath the lower margin of each eye. They all emit a bluish light. A cluster of three tiny black-colored organs (<l mm diam) is located at the tip of each of the fourth pair of arms. They emit brilliant flashes of light which are clearly visible to the unaided eye even in a lighted room. Some of the flashes have a cadence resembling that of a terrestrial firefly flashing at night, and thus the squid is known in Japan as the "firefly squid" or "hotaru-ika."

13 January - Foggy Conditions Prevailing



Very foggy hereabouts yesterday and today - hiked into the woods this morning, without cats, and took a few snaps. Here's the Olde Footbridge,

10 January - Highland Cattle


Highland Cattle, Albumen print, c.1970
Janus Museum Collections

Hoots, another fine image from the Museum's collections - a smallish herd of

9 January - Ye Olde Footbridge Revisited



Oh, all right. One more picture from today's catwalk. She's a little hard to spot, but Natasha is lounging on the Old Footbridge, admiring her reflection. Contrast this spare but beautiful landscape with

9 January - Intrepid Hunters


Tintype, c.1880
Janus Museum Collections

Here's another tintype from the collection - this time, an odd sort of wabbit hunt.

9 January - Walks with Cats


Leroy (left) and Natasha, Janus Museum Forest Preserve

It being a very balmy day, and things being a bit slow in the Museum, we took a quick catwalk this afternoon, regardless of the insidious tick threat.

8 January - A Boy and His Dog


Tintype, c.1865.
Janus Museum Collections

Here's another treasure from our files, a sad-looking lad and his little doggy. There's no identification on it, but if anyone would like to submit a moving little story about it, I'd be happy to post it.

7 January - Zig-Zag-and-Swirl


Alfred Lawson (3rd from the right) and his Airliner, 1919.

Blog buddy Ed McDevitt has been all over the Alfred Lawson story on

7 January - Comfort Me with Macaroni & Cheese


Classic Old Carriage House Macaroni and Cheese

The Abramoff scandal continues to unfold, Ariel Sharon is near death, and a lot of other stuff happened last week, but I'll confess that the current story that held my attention most was

Myself, I usually rely on the off-brand boxed stuff one finds at dollar stores, but occasionally, when I find loose change under the cushions in the Fellows Common Room, I splurge and make a batch of the real stuff. Next time I'm flushed, I think I'll give the NYT crusty recipe a try. Here's another M&C variant I ran across once, but which I can't really recommend:



I tried 'em - ate the whole bag, eventually - but it just felt wrong - so very wrong.

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3 January - More Cat Rescue News



Friend of the Museum Susan Uhlendorf reports that her friend Karen Russel has adopted the likely looking chap shown above. And his name is Toby, which is an excellent name for a cat.

2 January - Purveyor of Fine Fezzes

... Then he heard a knock on the door. He hollered twice to come in.

In walked Columbus Police Officer Patrick Daugherty, who had followed Rosheisen's voice to his bedroom.

"How did you know to come here?" Rosheisen asked.

Daugherty told him a 911 call had come in from Rosheisen's Beechcroft Road apartment, but there was no one on the phone. Police tried to call back to make sure everything was OK, and when no one answered, they decided to check things out.

"Well, it must have been Tommy," Rosheisen said.

Daugherty didn't believe it.

Then he walked into the living room, and there was the rust-orange-and-tan striped cat, laying by the telephone on the floor.

"I know it sounds kind of weird," Daugherty said, but he isn’t sure how else to explain it.

Rosheisen got Tommy three years ago to help lower his blood pressure, and tried to train him to call 911.

He wasn't sure how well it worked, though, and treats were involved.

The story reminds me of my own heroic Cat Zagnut. One night about ten years ago, I was taken poorly in bed. The bathroom in the primitive cottage I was living in then was downstairs, at the other end of the house. Somehow, I made it there, hugged the porcelain wishing well for a time, and recovered somewhat. I began to make the long trip back to bed, but halfway there, I felt weak - light-headed - a bit faint - and I collapsed in the hallway. I just lay there, feeling sorry for myself. Suddenly, Zagnut pads up to me and peers curiously into my face. "Zaggy, I'm down!" I cried "Run - get help!" And the intrepid kitty turns around and dashes off at speed. It made me feel good - Zag was going to get help! And then it occured to me - where the hell is he going? He can't go out the door. Unlike Tommy, he couldn't use the phone - what exactly, was he doing to actually assist me? I was still mulling it over when I passed out.

I woke up a couple of minutes later, and feeling a bit better, crawled up to bed. The mystery of Zagnut's journey was solved - he had dashed off to claim the warm spot on the bed. He looked up at me, as if to say "Oh. You're still alive. I suppose you want your place back?"

But it was still very encouraging, at the time, to see him scamper off - gave me hope, and stuff. Here's a picture of Zagnut - still miss him, the fellow:



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2 January - Dog Love


Carte-de-visite, c.1860
Janus Museum Collections

Here's another treasure from the collections. The notation on this image says "A Dog to love", and on the reverse - "For Miss Nellie". A nice token of affection that's survived about 140 years. Photographer unknown.

1 January - Canada, Look Out Behind You


Illustration by Patterson Clark, Washington Post

Friday's Washington Post had

The United States government does have a plan to invade Canada. It's a 94-page document called "Joint Army and Navy Basic War Plan -- Red," with the word SECRET stamped on the cover. It's a bold plan, a bodacious plan, a step-by-step plan to invade, seize and annex our neighbor to the north. It goes like this:

First, we send a joint Army-Navy overseas force to capture the port city of Halifax, cutting the Canadians off from their British allies.

Then we seize Canadian power plants near Niagara Falls, so they freeze in the dark.

Then the U.S. Army invades on three fronts -- marching from Vermont to take Montreal and Quebec, charging out of North Dakota to grab the railroad center at Winnipeg, and storming out of the Midwest to capture the strategic nickel mines of Ontario.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Navy seizes the Great Lakes and blockades Canada's Atlantic and Pacific ports...

... It sounds like a joke but it's not. War Plan Red is real. It was drawn up and approved by the War Department in 1930, then updated in 1934 and 1935. It was declassified in 1974 and the word "SECRET" crossed out with a heavy pencil. Now it sits in a little gray box in the National Archives in College Park, available to anybody, even Canadian spies. They can photocopy it for 15 cents a page.

War Plan Red was actually designed for a war with England. In the late 1920s, American military strategists developed plans for a war with Japan (code name Orange), Germany (Black), Mexico (Green) and England (Red). The Americans imagined a conflict between the United States (Blue) and England over international trade: "The war aim of RED in a war with BLUE is conceived to be the definite elimination of BLUE as an important economic and commercial rival."

In the event of war, the American planners figured that England would use Canada (Crimson) -- then a quasi-pseudo-semi-independent British dominion -- as a launching pad for "a direct invasion of BLUE territory." That invasion might come overland, with British and Canadian troops attacking Buffalo, Detroit and Albany. Or it might come by sea, with amphibious landings on various American beaches -- including Rehoboth and Ocean City, both of which were identified by the planners as "excellent" sites for a Brit beachhead.

... Canadian military strategists developed a plan to invade the United States in 1921 -- nine years before their American counterparts created War Plan Red.

The Canadian plan was developed by the country's director of military operations and intelligence, a World War I hero named James Sutherland "Buster" Brown. Apparently Buster believed that the best defense was a good offense: His "Defence Scheme No. 1" called for Canadian soldiers to invade the United States, charging toward Albany, Minneapolis, Seattle and Great Falls, Mont., at the first signs of a possible U.S. invasion.

"His plan was to start sending people south quickly because surprise would be more important than preparation," said Floyd Rudmin, a Canadian psychology professor and author of "Bordering on Aggression: Evidence of U.S. Military Preparations Against Canada," a 1993 book about both nations' war plans. "At a certain point, he figured they'd be stopped and then retreat, blowing up bridges and tearing up railroad tracks to slow the Americans down."

Brown's idea was to buy time for the British to come to Canada's rescue. Buster even entered the United States in civilian clothing to do some reconnaissance.

"He had a total annual budget of $1,200," said Rudmin, "so he himself would drive to the areas where they were going to invade and take pictures and pick up free maps at gas stations."

In 2003, the Canadian army set up an Internet chat room where soldiers and civilians could discuss defense issues. "One of the hottest topics on the site discusses whether the U.S. will invade Canada to seize its natural resources," the Ottawa Citizen reported. "If the attack did come, Canada could rely on a scorched-earth policy similar to what Russia did when invaded by Nazi Germany, one participant recommends. 'With such emmense [sic] land, and with our cold climates, we may be able to hold them off, even though we have the much weaker military,' the individual concludes."

The article about the invasion of Canada is basically wrong in a few areas. First of all it was Plan SCARLET, not Plan Red; Plan Red covers completely different circumstances. The predecessors to Plan Scarlet were first developed at the direction of President Lincoln after the desperate urgings of US Secretary of State Seward, Thomas Haines Dudley, US Consul in Liverpool and Charles Francis Adams, US Minister to the Court of St James. They were frantic after their extensive espionage operation discovered that the British were drawing up war plans, mobilizing the Royal Navy and sending 15000 troops to Canada. The British war plans involved destroying the fleet currently blockading Southern ports and isolating and capturing Manhattan, so that it might be traded for Canada at the resulting peace conference.

The United States came very, very close to war with the United Kingdom during the Trent Affair and as a result of heavy British armaments sales and financial support to the Confederacy. It was probably only the personal intervention of Prince Albert and the release of the captured Confederate ambassadors to France and Great Britain that averted war.

There may have been previous contingency plans but before that time we had no real German-style General Staff to plan out these things. More modern military exercises tend to involve scenarios in which France attempts to base forces in an independent Quebec.

1 January 2006 - Anniversary Greetings


Sugarloaf Mountain from Comus Road
From One Hundred Famous Views of Sugarloaf

Happy New Year to our few but dear readers, on this, the third anniversary of the journal; we'll try to soldier on for another year, keeping the spanking and flogging references to the bare minimum.

Our wild New Year's Eve - we had a quiet evening in the carriage house, watching Masaki Kobayashi's splendid Harakiri over sushi, pizza, and lentil soup.

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