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PA Home Page:

A possible alligator is captured near Altoona.

Blair County crews were busy trying to capture the elusive reptile. Crews tried to snag the scaly creature for about an hour before finally wrangling it.

They’re not sure yet if the three-foot reptile is an alligator or caiman. It was taken to a Wildlife Care Facility while they work to determine who let it go in the wild.

Officials suspect the animal was dropped near the river by an owner.

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Centre Daily Times:

Adding to the recent string of alligator sightings throughout Pennsylvania, Blair County law enforcement captured a 3-foot-long baby alligator in a creek near Tipton Township Monday night. The reptile was transported to Centre Wildlife Care in Port Matilda, where it will stay until it can be transferred elsewhere.

Centre Wildlife founder and Executive Director Robyn Graboski said law enforcement called late Monday night and asked if they could bring the gator to the wildlife rehab center.

“We will work with law enforcement to find an appropriate placement for it,” Graboski said. “We don’t know yet whether or not there will be charges filed.” …

Graboski said the alligator cannot remain at Centre Wildlife because its facility is not equipped with the housing needed in order to sustain a proper habitat during the winter. She added that just because it is legal to keep an alligator as a pet in Pennsylvania does not mean everyone should.

Reflecting on the series of sightings — including three in the Pittsburgh area in a month — Graboski said alligators are not just showing up on their own.

“They’d never survive our winters,” she said.

Instead, people are buying them as pets and releasing them when they become too big to care for.

Richard J. Evans, in The Guardian, really unloaded on the conservative historian Norman Stone in an obituary.

was character assassination. As a judge of the Fraenkel prize in contemporary history some years ago, he told the astonished members of the jury that they should not award the prize to a historian of Germany whose politics he disliked because she was an East German agent – an allegation that was enough to rule her out of contention even though it was absolutely baseless and undoubtedly defamatory.

Shortly after the death in 1982 of his patron and mentor in Cambridge, EH Carr, the author of a multivolume History of Soviet Russia and influential works on historiography and international relations, Stone published a lengthy assault on his reputation, which included lurid details of his three marriages. When a colleague criticised this “outrageous” diatribe to his face, telling him that Carr “always said you were amoral”, Stone responded: “And he always said you were a bore” (probably an invention, though one cannot know for sure).

At a time when malice and rudeness were highly prized by some rightwing Cambridge dons, Stone outdid them all in the abuse he hurled at anyone he disapproved of, including feminists (“rancid”), Oxford dons (“a dreadful collection of deadbeats, dead wood and has-beens”), students (“smelly and inattentive”), David Cameron and John Major (“transitional nobodies”), Edward Heath (“a flabby-faced coward”) and many more.

Stone was undoubtedly clever. He could write entertainingly and could summarise complex historical circumstances in a few pregnant sentences, gifts which brought him a flourishing career as a journalist and commentator. He was a talented linguist who read and spoke more than half a dozen languages, including Hungarian. Yet his career was also dogged by character flaws that prevented him from fulfilling his early promise as a historian. …
Read the rest of this entry »

USA Today:

Brave grandma kills 4.5-foot-long cobra with shovel to protect neighborhood kids.

Animal control said the snake that grandma Kathy Kehoe killed was an Asian cobra, and was about 4.5 feet long.

Animal control said the snake that grandma Kathy Kehoe killed was an Asian cobra, and was about 4.5 feet long. (Photo: Getty Images)

First she snapped photos.

Then the 73-year-old Pennsylvania grandma smashed the snake dead with a shovel. Animal control says she slayed a 4.5 foot Asian cobra.

Kathy Kehoe said she knew instantly it was a cobra when she first spotted it on her patio. Birds were screeching outside at about 2 p.m. Monday when she stepped outside see why. “Oh, it’s a snake,” Kehoe told ABC 6.

“When I opened the screen door to see what kind of snake it was, the birds flew away and I saw the spot on its back, and I kind of nudged its tail and it came up and spread its hood and I said ‘that’s a cobra,'” she said.

The snake slithered away, but Kehoe chased after it.

“He went this way. I stalked him and when he got over to here, I tapped his tail. He went up and that’s when I did the deed and held him there,” she said.

The grandma said she wasn’t about to let the cobra get away because of children in the neighborhood of Falls Township, Bucks County, 25 miles from Philadelphia.

“I was like ‘this animal can’t be here, it’s a poisonous reptile,'” she said.

In March, officials removed 20 venomous snakes from a neighboring apartment, including 12 cobras.

RTWT

Nancy Mohr, of Sevynmor Press, is generously sharing her publication company’s first book, Nancy Nicholas’s Tales of an Inn, memories of Fox Hunting and Equestrian Life in post-WWII Chester County, Pennsylvania, on-line.

Sevynmor Press popped up in 1989, by happenstance, with its first book Tales of An Inn. Twenty-six years later, it’s time to share the little book again – without any cost to the reader. Some of the characters emerge in The Lady Blows A Horn and Delicious Memories. Look at the end of this page, click the link. Start reading!

Several generations were blessed by Nancy Nicholas’s enthusiasm for Unionville, and her love of horses and foxhunting. Weekends found her deserting her New York office and hopping on the train with brother, Harry. In the mid-1980s, Nancy developed rheumatoid arthritis, no longer able to ride. Eventually she had to leave her beloved “fox-hunting lodge” on the Upland corner. She moved with Timmy, her little white dog, to Waverly on the Main Line. This wasn’t quite the life she loved, but the book helped.

John and I suggested that all those hunting stories needed preservation, and volunteered as editors. Nancy Nicholas moved her energy to the desk, notes and letters, memories … kept Unionville a little closer. A full year saw a completed manuscript, with designer Virginia Sloss and Ann Armstrong’s beguiling sketches — and the birth of Sevynmor Press and Tales of An Inn, published in 1989 with 700 copies. Nancy had a marvelous time signing books. She died in 1995 at 80.

The author.

Gros-Delettrez, Ethnographic & Indigenous Artifacts, June 28, 2019, 2:00 PM CET, Paris, France

Lot 57: Une exceptionnelle collection de 47 ceintures Berbères, Afrique du Nord — An unique collection of 47 antique Berber belts, North Africa, Moroccan Sahara

S’il est rare de rencontrer une de ces ceintures, en voir 47 réunies en une collection, cela nous semble unique. Certaines possèdent des fils métalliques dorés, d’autres, des fils métalliques argentés, d’autres sont toutes en laine, enfin d’autres possèdent des parties en coton. Usures mineures.
Milieu du XXe siècle
3 x 92 cm ou 3.5 x 97 cm de moyenne
It is unusual to find even one of these belts, but to see 47 united in one collection, seems unique. Some have gold wire, some silver wire, some are all wool, others have cotton parts. Minor wear.
Mid 20th century
1.2 x 36 inches or 1.4 x 38 inches on the average.

Starting bid €8,000 ($9115.60)

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Interesting visually, but just a bit expensive.

HT: Vanderleun.

Phillipines

In preparation for the 2020 Olympics, Japanese anime artists are busily competing to provide each country with its own representative anime warrior. So far, the Philippines have gotten the character voted the best.

Bored Panda

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This kind of thing has been done before, in Hetalia, a comic book manga that became a television anime series featuring the Allied and Axis Powers of WWII as teen-age characters.

The George Bird Evans Collection at the West Virginia Regional History Center at West Virginia University has digitized 65 years of the great George Bird Evans Hunting Journals. There is a treasure trove of great reading here, folks.

The George Bird Evans Digital Collection, part of West Virginia & Regional History Center’s extensive Evans collection, contains sixty-five years of detailed hand written hunting journals, which document George and Kay’s pursuit of both woodcock and grouse behind their personally created line of Old Hemlock setters, in varied coverts mostly in West Virginia and Pennsylvania.

The journals are rich in the experiences and natural observations of a keen intellect and perceptive observer. They are further enhanced by his lively and expressive pen sketches which illustrate many of the entries. These unique journals were the original source material for many of his books and numerous magazine articles, and remain an important resource for understanding his and Kay’s chosen lifestyle and principled sporting ethic.

Covering the years 1932 to 1997, the hunting journals can be downloaded in PDF format. The West Virginia & Regional History Center also holds significant additional Evans material which is not available online. Please refer to the collection finding aid to learn more about the contents of the George Bird Evans Collection.

George Bird and Kay Harris Evans generously endowed the Old Hemlock Foundation in order to preserve and support their passionate lifelong interests. Today the Foundation preserves and shares with visitors Old Hemlock, their eighteenth century home and surrounding forest near Bruceton Mills, Preston County, WV.

HT: Gregg Barrow.

Missoula, Montana:

WOW!!! WHAT A DAY! Today at approximately 5:45am deputies responded to a call up Butler Creek for a bear stuck inside a home. When deputies arrived, they discovered this black bear had opened the door to the mudroom of this residence and somehow managed to deadbolt the door from inside. After being unable to leave, the bear began ripping the room apart but then decided he was tired and climbed up into the closet for a nap.

When deputies knocked on the window, the bear was not the least bit impressed. He slowly stretched, yawned and unamused looked toward the door. Eventually, deputies were able to unlock the door in hopes he would hop down and leave. However, their attempts were only met with more big bear yawns.

Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks showed up to assist and tranquilized the bear so he could be relocated. The homeowners were glad he was removed in good health, but won’t soon forget when this intruder came looking for the bear necessities!

HT: Karen L. Myers.

Not a bloody chance in Hell.

But here, in the Age of the Millennial, there are scrimshankers out there marketing a line of “Hemingway Accoutrements,” including, no less, a 1.7 oz (tiny!) bottle of “Ernest Hemingway Signature Eau de Parfum Cologne” for $65!

There’s clearly too much money in Brooklyn and in Portland.

Catch the ad copy:

The one-of-a-kind fragrance of the Hemingway Accoutrements Signature Eau de Parfum Cologne is a transcendent fragrance that will keep you returning time and time again.

Each satisfying inhale calms the soul with its rich, deep and sophisticated blend that opens with a surprising yet satisfying aroma of grapefruit. Very much like the citrus notes of the Daiquiri named after Ernest Hemingway himself.

While the grapefruit note lightly persists throughout it generously gives way to a complex fusion of deep bourbon, classic cedarwood, and rich full grain leather.

Underlying that richness, you’ll enjoy the warmth of honey-like amber, smooth sandalwood, fine tobacco, and Madagascar vanilla.

As you savor each whiff, you can’t help to think that this must have been the aroma that permeated the atmosphere of Papa’s Havana home.

What! no Hoppe’s Number 9?