Merrill Wisconsin - an odd gun in the Park

 Seen in a Veteran's Memorial park, Merrill Wisconsin.

It is of course an artillery piece, but what an odd one.  Huge springs!  Let's look for additional clues.  Here's a view that shows more, although with light that is less good.

And some helpful markings around the business end of things:

These read: 7 inch No. 48 Wt. 1689 lbs.  JPF Insp. Watervliet Arsenal 1900.  Elsewhere on the gun it says Model 1892 Bethlehem Steel.  Although that might be the gun carriage, not the gun proper.  Finally, there is a bronze bit that has stamped on it: No. 48 Model of 1895 Watertown Arsenal.  I'm a bit confused now.  So what is this critter?

To start things off, Watertown Arsenal and Watervliet Arsenal are not the same outfit.  The former mostly made gun carriages.  The latter made the guns, and as in this case, the howitzers.  Howitzers are short, stubby, larger caliber weapons designed to fire shorter distances and at very high angles.

So far so good.  But this is a very odd bit of artillery.  Most of what you see in assorted war memorials are either WWII surplus stuff or captured items from I or II.  This is neither.

It appears to be an item of obsolete coastal artillery.  That's a much less common variety of monument, but you can see how they'd get surplused.  I've run into one or two in my travels.  But nothing like this critter.

Even without the dated plaques it has to be 1890's tech.  Earlier artillery pieces would usually have wheels and/or some means to solidly dig into the ground or be welded to the deck of a ship.  Every time you fired it the recoil would move the gun and you'd have to reposition it.  In 1897 that all changed, when the French unveiled their 75mm cannon with hydraulic recoil dampening.  This was the model for all artillery for the next hundred years.

Before that there must have been assorted experiments with springs and similar gadgetry.  I've nosed about here and there in sources and can find nothing specific on this "thing", perhaps the internet will toss me an answer.

Was this some low production run experiment?  Some boondoggle project right around the Spanish American War when somebody in the War Office bought the fantasy that the Spanish fleet might sail into Boston harbor some day?  Who knows.  

Can the Dog actually Read????

I am not particularly impressed with the intellectual prowess of my dog Hank.  But sometimes you have to wonder.  Two images from a recent spring time walk.

OK, not the most flattering image of Hank, but it is what you see from the human end of the leash...

But an example of canine literacy?  I'll spare you the action photo....

Mascots and Me

Because of course there were mascots at the recent robotics tournament.  And I show no signs of growing up...

An Illiterate Dog.

Walks with Hank have frequent interruptions.  Things need to be sniffed.  Things need to be moistened.  The other day we were doing a lap near the high school and came across this Post It note laying on the ground next to, well, to a post.....

It reads "Diuresis" and maybe was from a health class or some such.  Oddly this was one of the few times Hank did not opt to lift a leg.  Even his impressive capacity has limits.  Or maybe he just can't read.

Robotics Again

Off we went to an early April robotics tournament.  It was a nice short drive down to Lacrosse.  Heading south actually, so what's the odds weather would bite us this time?  Pretty good as it happens.

One of those late season storms that barges through and makes a mess happened to arrive at just the wrong time.  As school was cancelled - I'm sure an upcoming four day weekend had nothing to do with this - students were not allowed to travel.  Even though by the early afternoon departure time conditions were just fine.  Bureaucracy at its finest.

So our team had to get up darned early the next day and show up for the event with no practice time, no time to tune up the robot or really to do much else.  And it showed.

Well, sometimes you just get snake bit.  In one match BOTH of our alliance partners tipped over, leaving us in an unenviable 1 v 3 match.  Another time a robot crashed into the protective panel hard enough to knock our control laptop clear off the ledge and disconnect us.  Flukes.  At one point we were down to number 30 out of 34.

But we came back.  Eventually we clawed our way back to 9th place and were in the late event playoff rounds.  Sometimes called Elimination rounds.  And we were.

Oh well.  We did well enough to qualify for the upcoming State Tournament.  We won a Gracious Professionalism Award for an unprecedented third year in a row.  And late in the event we were tapped to put together an event highlights video.  

We ended up having to compress about 8 hours of work into half that time, with the main video editor student yawning and shaking his head.  Hey, he had been up since 4am to get there (see above).

The video turned out well, and a pretty good time was generally had by all.

Keeping an Eye on the Robots

I've been going through the world of FIRST robotics trying out every job.  Judge, Field Reset, Referee, at the lower levels I've done a bit of MC work.  At this event I'm a Robot Inspector.  You have to ensure that the teams comply with all sorts of rules.  I try to be supportive, yet steely eyed...

Mostly fun, I've not had to admonish anyone to any degree.  But after hours of digging around inside robots....

Not sure how my team will do.  There was an unfortunate storm system that came through and closed school for the day.  As a result the team was not allowed to travel even though by noon it was quite decent outside.  This puts us at a competitive disadvantage.   No practice rounds for us on Thursday night, no field calibration either.  We'll see how things go.....

Tree Shaped Tombstones - some Jewish examples from St. Paul. And from Vulcan.

 Tree Shaped Tombstones are not evenly distributed among different faiths.  From my extensive - if unscientific - study, I'd say they are more common in Catholic cemeteries and leas common in Protestant ones.  Jewish cemeteries are scarce in the Midwest, so I don't have a big sample, but today we'll visit three of them in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Due to a mix up in directions I started out at Mount Zion cemetery, it is the burial ground for the oldest Jewish community in the state.  The Temple goes back to Territorial days, but the cemetery has only been in this location since 1888, but had only a single "tree" and not a very interesting one at that.  But a few blocks away at the adjacent Sons of Jacob and Sons of Moses cemeteries it was a different story.  Despite having examples that were mostly from the latter days of Tree Shaped Tombstones, there was a lot to see.

Some features of the tombstones I saw here were unusual.  Many have details beyond the name of the deceased.  Beloved Daughter, even in abbreviated form, is poignant.  This low "book style" with Hebrew on the left side was pretty common.

Here's another one.  Note the interesting hands on the otherwise drab tombstone behind and to the right.  That will become important shortly.

The odd little niche down below also caught my eye.  What used to be there?

The cemeteries are in part on a hillside.  Scenic, but not ideal for tall, heavy tombstones!

This last picture was obviously taken on another day.  Even in the Midwest weather does not change that fast.

Notice the hands?  Those are Cohen Hands.  They indicate that the person, it has to be male btw, buried here is a descendent of Aaron, brother of Moses.  This illustrates the hand gestures made by Jewish priests (Cohens, or Kohanim).  While this indicates a priestly lineage it does not mean the person buried here was a priest.  Or even had the surname Cohen or its variants.

In a bit of trivia that I just learned writing this, the gesture - separation between ring and middle finger - inspired Mr. Spok's classic Vulcan salute.  Leonard Nimoy was of course Jewish, and made up this bit of Vulcan culture based on what he'd seen in Temple as a young child.