Day: September 27, 2020

History Of The Dog Collar

That spikey thing that punkers wear to look “cool”…..but that is a post for another day…..

This post is for my readers that have a canine companion and a little history behind the association of the two, man and canine.

MoMo uses a harness…but I guess we can put that in the category of a collar.

The dog collar, so often taken for granted, has a long and illustrious history. Anyone fortunate enough to share their life with a dog in the present day is participating in an ancient tradition every time they place a collar around their dog’s neck and take it out for a walk. The dog collar is a global link between people in the present, no matter their nationality, religion, or political affiliation, which also connects them firmly with the past and each other.

According to the AVMA (American Veterinary Medical Association), 43,346,000 households in the United States own dogs, and the Insurance Information Institute, in their 2017 CE survey, concluded Americans spent $69.4 billion on their dogs in that year alone. It is no surprise that dogs are among the most popular and best-loved pets in the present day, but the designation of “man’s best friend” is no recent development. Dogs and humans have been walking together since ancient times and the dog collar has been the common denominator in every era.

The basic design of the collar has not changed since the time of ancient Mesopotamia but variations on the collar, specifically ornamentation and style, reflect the values of the various world cultures that kept dogs. These subtle, and sometimes not so subtle, alterations to the central design can be quite telling in the role dogs played and how they were regarded in different time periods and cultures.

The oldest depiction of what seems to be dogs on leashes –

https://www.ancient.eu/article/1605/a-brief-history-of-the-dog-collar/

And since most people are familiar with Rome…..their thoughts on dogs as well…..

Dogs were highly valued in ancient Rome, as they were in other cultures, and the Roman dog served many of the same purposes as it did in, say, Egypt and Persia, but with a significant difference in focus. Like the Egyptians, the Romans created their own artistic dog collars – some of gold – and, although dogs did not feature in the Roman afterlife (as they did with the Persians), they were considered the best protection against ghosts or evil spirits. The central difference between the Roman view of dogs and that of other cultures is that the Romans viewed dogs far more pragmatically

https://www.ancient.eu/article/1603/dogs–their-collars-in-ancient-rome/

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Jefferson Davis, My Distant Cousin

Another Sunday and I have little of worth for this FYI session…..unless I can go on and on about the terrible pick for SCOTUS….but I prefer a different way today……so I fall back to a forte….HISTORY.

What do most people know about Jefferson Davis?

Jefferson Davis

Basically they know he was the first and only president of the Confederate States of America…..once they say that they are at a loss for words……and that is why I am here to help fill in the gaps in people’s education and knowledge.

As always I want to be up front….according to the family story my maternal grandmother was related to Jefferson Davis….he maiden name was Bessie Mae Davis…..I believe they were cousins twice removed or something like that…..

There is so much more about Davis than his stint as president of the CSA…..

Did you know he was put under house arrest for involvement of cadets at West Point in the Eggnog Riot?

Or that he was in the Army on the frontier dealing with the Comanche and Pawnee….or that he came up with the idea of the Camel Corps.

Or that his father and uncles fought in the Revolutionary War……or that Davis married the daughter of an American president Zachary Taylor…..

Like I stated so much more about the man…..let’s look at the man…..

Jefferson Davis (1808-1889) was a Mexican War hero, U.S. senator from Mississippi, U.S. secretary of war and president of the Confederate States of America for the duration of the American Civil War (1861-1865). Prior to the start of the war, Davis had argued against secession, but when Mississippi seceded he resigned from the U.S. Senate. In February 1861 he was elected president of the Confederacy. Davis faced difficulties throughout the war as he struggled to manage the Southern war effort, maintain control the Confederate economy and keep a new nation united. Davis’ often contentious personality led to conflicts with other politicians as well as his own military officers. In May 1865, several weeks after the Confederate surrender, Davis was captured, imprisoned and charged with treason, but never tried.

https://www.history.com/topics/american-civil-war/jefferson-davis

Like I stated there was more to the man than his presidency…..like he was NOT a secessionist leader…..

Davis was not a secessionist leader.
Less than two months before his inauguration as Confederate president, U.S. Senator Jefferson Davis opposed secession for his home state of Mississippi. While Mississippi Governor John J. Pettus and other state leaders advocated immediate secession in the weeks following the 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln, the slaveholding Davis urged caution. While he firmly believed states had the constitutional right to secede from the Union, he was among a committee of 13 U.S. senators who attempted to find a suitable compromise after South Carolina left the Union in December 1860. After Mississippi seceded in January 1861, Davis declared that his allegiance to his state required him to abide by its decision and leave the U.S. Senate.

(there is more)

https://www.history.com/news/10-things-you-may-not-know-about-jefferson-davis

After the war Davis lived on the Mississippi Gulf Coast where he worked on his memoir, “Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government”……his last home is called Beauvoir…..

The Beauvoir estate is notable as the historic post-war home (1876-1889) of the former President of the Confederate States of America, Jefferson Davis, (1807/08-1889). Its construction was begun in 1848 facing the Gulf Coastline (Gulf of Mexico) at Biloxi, Mississippi. It was purchased earlier in 1873 by the planter Samuel Dorsey and his wife Sarah Dorsey. After her husband’s death in 1875, the widow, Sarah Ellis Dorsey learned of former Confederate President Jefferson Davis’ difficulties. She invited him to visit at the plantation and offered him a cottage near the main house, where he could live and work at his memoirs (“Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government”). He ended up living there the rest of his life. The house and plantation have since been designated as a National Historic Landmark, recognized and listed by the U.S. Department of the Interior and its National Park Service

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beauvoir_(Biloxi,_Mississippi)

If you are in the region and fancy some history then I suggest a visit to Beauvoir it is well worth your time.

There is more to Jefferson Davis legacy than his time as president of the ill fated Confederacy…..

My thoughts on my ancestor…..

Do I think he was a traitor?

Yes I do…..the rest of that side of the family does not agree.

Should we preserve his memory?

Yes we should….it is history and history should not be censured.

Any statues of Davis should be removed and placed on the grounds of his home at Beauvoir….after all it is a museum as well……

Anything you would like to ask or add to this?

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Trump’s SCOTUS Lotto Is Done

I try to avoid the silliness of the nation on weekends….but sometimes there is news that truly needs to be reported…….

Looks like Donald the Orange has made his much awaited decision on who he would nominate to replace Ginsburg on SCOTUS…….and the winner is…..Amy Coney Barrett.

It appears that President Trump has his new Supreme Court nominee. The Washington Post, Politico, the New York Times, and Axios all report that sources are pointing to federal appeals court judge Amy Coney Barrett as Trump’s pick to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a move that would significantly push the Supreme Court even further to the right, with a 6-3 conservative majority. The 48-year-old Barrett, who has served on the US Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit since 2017, would be the third relatively young conservative justice appointed by Trump to the high court, joining Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, both in their 50s, on the bench.

Barrett, whom the Times calls a “polar opposite” to Ginsburg, was in the running to replace Justice Anthony M. Kennedy when he retired in 2018. Trump, however, was said to be “saving” the devout Catholic, known for her deeply conservative views on such topics as abortion and LGBT issues, for when Ginsburg’s slot opened up. A caveat from the Times, though, on Trump’s supposed nominee: “As they often do, aides cautioned that Mr. Trump sometimes upends his own plans.” On Friday night, in response to questions from reporters on his pick, Trump would only say he’s made his pick “in my own mind, yes,” and that “I haven’t said it was [Barrett], but she is outstanding,” per Politico.

There is so much more……this pick is polar opposite to Ginsburg…..but what can we expect when we allow ideologues make the picks for the president.

The 48-year-old Barrett was appointed by Trump to the appeals court in 2017, and was also reportedly a finalist for Justice Anthony Kennedy’s seat in 2018. She has been portrayed as a favorite of social conservatives seeking to push against the Supreme Court’s abortion jurisprudence. She is unusual, compared especially to famously (and perhaps strategically) tight-lipped recent nominees like Brett Kavanaugh and Elena Kagan, for her extensive paper trail on questions of constitutional law. As a legal academic, she’s written extensively on what obedience to the original meaning of the Constitution requires of judges and members of Congress; how to reconcile the importance of precedent with allegiance to the Constitution’s original meaning; and how precedent can be used to mediate deep disagreements about the law.

As a result, we know more about her jurisprudential beliefs than we’ll know about those of any SCOTUS nominee since, perhaps, Ginsburg. We know she identifies as an originalist who believes that the original public meaning of the Constitution is binding law. But we also know that she is skeptical of the radical libertarian originalist idea that economic regulation is presumptively unconstitutional, and that she believes some Supreme Court decisions that originalists may conclude are incorrectly decided nonetheless stand as “superprecedents” that the Court can abide by.

Her legal writing has also prompted heated reactions from detractors. One piece (with fellow law professor John Garvey) on when Catholic judges might be obligated to recuse themselves from death penalty cases, prompted criticism from Senate Democrats during her appeals court confirmation hearings, who suggested Barrett was unable to separate her faith from her jurisprudence (a charge she strongly rejected).

(Read More)

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/21453067/amy-coney-barrett-potential-nominee-supreme-court

Read and weep……this is what our “impartial referee” of the Constitution has become a plaything of ideologues.

30+ days until the election and now the Dems have something else to bitch about…..which they need to focus on the vote and let this minor irritant go for the more they bitch and whine the more they turn people off.

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