Christmas Comes Early and Oddly

Sometimes the complexities of sharing your kids and grandkids with other tribes means that the Trad Christmas schedule won't work.  This was one of those years, so we got everyone together a bit early.  The grands are either old enough to know that Santa does not get 'er done in one night, and/or have grown up in a world where Amazon can supply anything at anytime.  So it was for most of the world still a regular kinda day.

We watched a grandkid play hockey.

We got together for presents.  The theme this year was "Hand Made or Hand Me Down".  This of course is us being environmentally conscious, NOT us trying to get the kids junk out of the attic and given back to them.  Among the hand made stuff was this clever game called "Smoorsh".  Not sure of the spelling, this was just invented last week.  It involved taking squiggly aspen trees cleared off our hunting land, cutting them up into various highly irregular sizes and angles, then stacking them as drawn randomly from a bag.  The youngest person in attendance - over on the left - had a particularly aggressive style.  Grab, Slam Down, Admire.

Not only a remarkably tall and serpentine tower, but he was actively eating Christmas cookies with the other hand.

I got some nice hand made stuff from the grands too.  Knit garments for Bill the Taxidermy Squirrel, and a wall mount for the silly little antlers from the spike buck I got this year.  Hey, it was a nice sized deer despite the.....teeny antlers.  

Of course there were also dogs.  This one is rather a bad influence on Hank.

She's brazen about Occupying human spaces.

And this is one ferocious rabbit chaser.  So after a bit, when things had settled down, I let the dogs out.  I did take the precaution of peering out into the yard first, making sure the gates were closed.  Oh, how well we remember the Great Dog Escape of 2022

(Only my wife and I remember the Great Dog Downfall of 1993 where our then elderly mutt walked right into the Christmas tree and knocked it over).

But I did not see the rabbit.

Out the dogs went, in hot pursuit.  The great huntress dog pursued it back and forth before the bunny zipped under the thankfully locked gate.  Hank on the other hand yipped and ran to the door, clearly shaken.  I figured, well he's a big creampuff, guess that bunny told him off.  Only then did a guest notice that The Hankster had a big laceration on his side.  Guess he ran into a projecting bit of metal on the fence, although a comedic Monty Python rabbit is an outside possibility.

So its off to the after hours vet for sedation, sutures and a very drunk and confused dog returning after the grands were in bed.  Not ideal, but would have been worse on actual Christmas....

A Feasibility Study

Looking ahead to 2026 I have to consider what is feasible.  Oh, not in terms of actually getting things done, but in the etymology of the word.  It has some interesting and relevant connections.

Feasible derives from the Latin "facere" meaning to Make, Do, or Perform.  The same very utilitarian source gives us Factory and Manufacturing, the latter being to make something by hand "manum".  Nowadays of course the hand is mostly used to click a mouse and push some buttons on the cnc equipment.

Doing things could also be considered a Feat, deriving again, from the same source.

I actually went down this etymological rabbit hole wondering if Fealty and Feasible were related.  I mean, my dog Hank is stupefyingly loyal and would probably jump off a cliff if there was encouragement reinforced by an appropriate Dog Treat.

But no.  Fealty derives from "fidelitatus" which means Faithful and as its most appropriate side branch gives us Fido as the archetypal dog name.

Feat and Feet are unrelated.  Like most terms relating to very basic concepts the latter is a very old word and comes to us via shaggy Germanic barbarians rather than Romans with sandals on their "pedes".

Weighty Matters

Just a few more pre season meetings before FIRST build season kicks off and things get crazy.  It's a smaller but talented team this year, so they should do well.  Doing well, among other things, means not repeating past mistakes.

During the design and build stage there are three major things happening at once.  Drive base needs to be built.  Whatever game piece handling mechanisms - generally called manipulators - are called for need to be built.  And software is waiting anxiously to program both.  Everyone wants access to the robot.

One solution is to build the drive base on one side of the room, while putting prototypes of the manipulators on an identical but unpowered base on the other side.  We did this last year, but imperfectly.  The base for the manipulators was not quite the same specs as the final drive base.....and they forgot to weigh it before adding stuff.  So, when the drive base and manipulator mechanisms were finally united, the scale told an unhappy tale.....

This year, a new unpowered base to build on.  Behold, Protobot.

This is a steel plate with holes laser cut every half inch.  It's easy to bolt anything onto it.  On the front is a regulation thickness bumper.  It can be raised or lowered as needed.  Sometimes you have a system where you are grabbing game elements and pulling them over the bumper.

A bit of detail from underneath.  This time considerable care was taken to ensure that the casters are set to exactly the height of what we anticipate the drive motors will be at.

With a non powered base you can still push it around and power the manipulators.  Last year the elevator controls were worked out this way.  The back corners are sharp and not protected by the bumpers so had to be covered. 

Oh, and the most important feature of Protobot is.........

We plan on strict weight control this season.  I'm considering approaching Ozempic for sponsorship.

Looking Ahead to '26

Another year winding down.  Another year ahead.  So what will 2026 look like?

Some familiar things.  FIRST robotics build season commences shortly.  That tends to keep me busy and out of trouble until early April.  I'll do what I can to be of help to the local team, and will be volunteering at a couple of events.

I'll be back at Vindolanda in May.  

And there will be plenty of "up north" time.  Continuous grand kid sporting events.  And much to do on the Hunting Land.  Clearing brush, improving the garage, planting more feed plots.  Pulling off lots of ticks!

And what about writing?

I've been scribbling away at Detritus of Empire since 2011.  As of  late 2025 I'm approaching 3,000 posts.  The world of the internet has greatly changed since I started.  I caught the tail end of "blogging", where one's individual musings would be out there for people to follow regularly or to find accidentally.  This has become an outmoded concept.  I grudgingly added links to Facebook for most of my posts.  Probably that's how most non-bot entities find me.  But Facebook has been sinking into the swamp of AI slop and crude content for years now.

So where do people go for "content"?  Honestly I'm not sure.  Platforms arrive, attain success, get bogged down and commercialized, then fade away.  The "arc" from clever start up to pop up ads for toenail fungus cures is very short.

Maybe Substack, if that has not gone south by the time I get around to it.

The Cosmology of Canines

After looking at the petty crimes of dogs I've come around to the notion that they do have the concept of Good and Evil.  I mean, how else could you explain their reactions to the benevolent praise of "Good Dog", and the rarely used but powerful "BAD DOG"?  But do dogs have a more complex belief system.  Do they have a sort of religion?

Of course such questions are impossible to answer definitively, at least in this life.  But I have opinions.  Robots are all Hindu, or maybe Buddhist.  Cats are amoral Nihilists.

Dogs certainly have the concept of Beings - some good some evil - of greater power.  For Hank at least, here's the Good side:  Me.  My wife, who by virtue of being the main grocery shopper is regarded as The Food Bringer.  My son, Hank's original owner.  I think he outranks me, as Hank's memories in that regard were established early.  I guess collectively we are a sort of Trinity.

On the neutral side is Bear, the gigantic neighbor dog who is  shaman of the local dog congregation.  When Bear barks, all must bark.  It's rather liturgical.  

And the Evil side the Demonology includes: Squirrels, Delivery People, and anyone operating a rake, lawn mower or any powered or unpowered snow removal equipment.

Welcome to pantheism.

The most powerful of the Demons can't be seen, but their Presence is fearfully evident in other ways.  When we are up north during hunting season a single gunshot miles away sets him to quivering.  A second one turns him around and sends him pulling me back to the safety of Home. 

Not even the protective vestments of orange can banish the terror of the Great Loud Ones from Beyond.....

See also thunder, fireworks and the civil defense siren that gets tested at noon on the first Wednesday of every month.

I must admit the possibility that dogs actually have a more advanced religion.  Hey, never forget that "Fido" actually derives from Fides, or Faith.  Eugene ONeill thought that some dogs were Muslim.  He could be right, although Islam generally looks on dogs with disfavor.*  And regards Hank, well, this brief video speaks for itself.  He only needs to hear a few stirring notes before dashing for his place of worship and rapture, the food bowl.

-----------------------------

* The Islamic disapproval of dogs as unclean seems to relate to their saliva!  And, knowing what they eat, lick and barf back up, I can see solid logic in this.

The Minor Crimes of Canines

Dogs make lousy crooks.  This is one of their great virtues.  Other species....well, cats are just plain sneaky.  It's no accident that we associate them with misdeeds (Cat Burglars) and dogs with the opposite (Watch Dogs).

But dogs are not perfect.  That's actually another virtue.  If they were just a bit more faithful, loyal and selfless we'd be uncomfortable having them around our imperfect selves.

But dogs, despite not being Driven from the Garden, are still capable of minor sins.

You put something on the counter that is just a little too tasty, just a little too close to the edge, and you stay away just long enough that they can persuade themselves that you've forgotten about that morsel, and, well...

Hank the Dog has another misdemeanor that he can't resist.  He likes to hop up on beds.  It's a combination of nice and cushy, plus it smells like his owners.  One of his owners disapproves mildly, the other, seriously.

But he can get up and down so quietly.  So its not always easy to tell he's been up there.  Enter modern technology.

Guest bedroom.  Recently slept in by visiting family members that the dog adores.  Looks fine, no?

But lets just take a peek with the thermal imaging scope you see laying on the bed.  A suspiciously dog temperature spot right in the middle!

Busted!  But how could a dog this cute, this innocent be trying to scam me?

Hint:  This is the same dog.....

The Deer....they Mock Me Still........

Deer hunting 2025 has been a complicated affair.  Compound and cross bow hunting.  Youth hunt for my grand son.  Between myself, my three sons and one involved grand we've likely been hunting on 20 different spots.

Lots of work, but it has paid off.

So on the last day of Wisconsin gun hunting season my son and grandson were going off to help a friend get a deer.  They left at 6am, when the world was dark.   Ten minutes after they departed Hank the Dog went insane.  There was a deer, or more than one, in the front yard!  

When the sun came up the tale was told.  I'd only glimpsed one, but....

Those spots where the snow is melted were bed downs for two deer.  In town.  One of them about six feet from my front door.  The sheer audacity is both awe and ire inspiring.

Evidently they'd been mooching around, eating out of the bird feeder, checking out the garden area.  When the hunters were present they just stepped around the corner...directly under the window where I was making coffee.

What is the appropriate response to this degree of Insolence?

The Taverns of Old Chippewa Falls - Part Three. The Earliest? And some other Guys.

For those who live elsewhere, Wisconsin has a long established "tavern culture".  Not quite as integral as pub culture in England, but still very important.  So it's natural for a local historian to want to explore its origins.  And also, its much harder than you'd think.

Regards Chippewa Falls the two complicating factors are where exactly you draw the community lines, and the reality that every hotel, store, boarding house and for all I know, church, would offer you a taste of something on request.  So what constitutes a tavern?

My criteria are that an establishment must be called a "tavern" or "house", it must be in the current city limits, and it must be 1860 or earlier.  The Civil War and its aftermath completely transformed the community.  A big chunk of the population departed to join the Union Army, and when they returned its hard to call it the Pioneer era.

I've already covered some early taverns and their owners:

Moses Hebert, or "Old Moses".  He shows up in the 1870 census as Moses Aber.  But he is mentioned as being in the liquor business in the 1850's.

Peter Rosseau, who seems to have been the sort of unofficial Mayor of Frenchtown.  He was probably operating the Rosseau House in the 1840s.  And although the history of Frenchtown is fragmentary there would have been other establishments operating early.

Oh, and then there's the whole crazy Mother Fossler story.

Let's add a few more from the 1860 Census.  It gives a few names.  Not much more than names, but still something.

Ferdinand Tish.  Saloon.  Age 32, born Germany.  Value of property $200.

Peter Lamare.  Saloon. Age 27, born Germany.  Value of property $500.

Peter Lazo.  Saloon Keeper.  Age 60 and born in Canada, so evidently not the same guy listed above.

And then there's Tim Hurley, who was pouring drinks in 1849.

Hurley was one of a crew of guys who came up from Galena Illinois in 1848, shortly after Wisconsin became a state.  The lead mines were playing out a bit, and a wealthy merchant named Bloomer decided to round up a crew of river men and perhaps under employed miners, come upriver and try a new venture.  Going past Chippewa Falls they started to build a mill upstream at a location called Eagle Rapids.  How the nearby community of Bloomer got its name is a little...complicated.

Mr. Bloomer decided this was not for him, so after a short time he sold his interests to some locals and went home.  Hurley and some other guys lingered on, getting involved in the unpleasant lynching I've mentioned earlier.

Hurley's establishment was variously described as a tavern and a place where gambling went on.  It was not spoken of favorably.  That's just about all I can tell you regards Mr. Hurley.  He was said to have married, almost certainly a local Ojibway woman, and was still here for the 1850 census albeit being listed as a laborer.

Beyond that point he is lost to history, what with a common name and an era where very little of what was going on was written down at all.  I wonder if he, like others in that footloose time he decided to try his luck out in California when the Gold Rush got well and truly started....

Trying to pin down a location for Hurley's tavern is no easy task.  But I think I can put you close.  In a time before significant road travel everything faced onto the river.  The banks are altered somewhat since then, but that narrows it down.  It is also fair to assume that he would not be set up in the "company town" area right near the Falls.  So in this photo I'm standing approximately where the first tavern on this side of the river would have been.

On the left is the building where our robotics team got its start.  It is now an upscale "Market Place" where you can purchase interesting food and such.  The small building on the other side of the parking lot is The Ritz, a sort of benign descendent of the first drinking and gambling joint.  I have it on good authority that you can get a glass of refreshment and some quasi-legal "pull tabs" there.  And back behind, on the part of the block across the alley, you can see a single large tree.  This is not the sinister white pine on which the Native man was hung in 1849, but is in roughly the same location.  Also quite near the 1850's first cemetery of Chippewa Falls.  Happier vibes as seen on a sunny, early fall day.

AI in 2025 - What is it really Bad At?

Last time I went on a bit on the subject of what AI was reasonably good at.  Images.  Some body parts being done so very much better than others.  It won't, at least in the free version I was using, pass for real art, but its skill exceeds mine.  Yours too I should think.

But what is it still really bad at?

Creative writing.  Even with, or especially with, detailed prompts.

For example, here's what I wrote last time on what AI is good at:

At my advanced age I am allowed some element of curmudgeonism with regard to modern technology.  I've seen a lot of it come and go in nearly 70 years.  Much of it is simply reinventing the wheel.  And the real breakthroughs are often pulled into the For Profit realm rather quickly.  Still, I'm not such a tortoise that I am still using a rotary dial phone and a slide rule.

So, what is the much vaunted AI "good" at in 2025.

My initial answer is: Images.  Lacking any artistic talent to speak of I am able to come up with amusing pictures but I can't create them.   Here's an example.  I prompted Gemini - this is the maligned but free Google product - to create an image of a deer sitting at a computer studying trail cam images of hunters.  This is a remote possibility for my slow hunting season (up to gun opener), but you never know.  Here's the first draft:

I posed that same question for AI to answer.  In the style of Detritus of Empire!  You be the judge:

"Ah, 2025. The year when the digital dust motes have finally settled enough for us to squint at the landscape and ask: "So, what's this bloody AI actually for now?" Forget the utopian pipedreams or the Skynet anxieties, comrades. The truth, as ever, is far more pedestrian and far more insidious."

"AI in 2025 is a glorified clerk, a relentless, unblinking auditor. It's magnificent at sifting through the dross of human existence – the endless data, the digital flotsam and jetsam we produce with every click, purchase, and mumbled voice command. It finds patterns in our spending habits, predicts our next impulse buy with unsettling accuracy, and flags the 'anomalies' in our medical records before we even feel a twinge."

"It's superb at generating content, a veritable factory farm of text and images, flooding the internet with bespoke banality, finely tuned to whatever niche market can be carved out. Need a thousand variations of a product description? AI's your man. A news article indistinguishable from human-written pap? Done. It’s not about brilliance; it's about boundless, tireless mediocrity, optimized for engagement metrics."

"And let’s not forget surveillance. Oh, the glorious, all-seeing eye. AI excels at monitoring, categorizing, and cross-referencing. From traffic flow to social sentiment, it’s the ultimate panopticon, meticulously cataloging the minute details of our lives, all under the guise of 'efficiency' or 'security'. So, in 2025, AI is good at making money, controlling narratives, and watching us. The empire, in its digital guise, has found its most efficient bureaucratic tool yet."

It's crap.  Nothing about it resembles my writing style, and with almost 3,000 posts of Detritus of Empire to sift though it had plenty of grist to grind.  Either its being lazy, and I am mooching off a free version, or it pays no attention to the actual request parameters and just pours slop from the bucket.  So which is it?

I think it must have done a quick surface scan of my writings.  The descriptive term "bloody" would not be there without some hint that I travel in and write about England rather often.  And to pick up on medical matters....some note of my career as a family and later ER physician.  But it does not mimic my writing style in any way other than an excess of commas!  So I wonder how it "sees" me? Just for fun I asked it to generate an image of my alter ego Badger Trowelsworthy.  After it made a cute critter image I pointed out that BT was actually a human.  So.....

Much better than its writing!  I can in fact flag a half dozen or so photos that probably were used to generate it. And it even got the hand right.  At least the one you can see.....

AI in 2025 - What it is actually (somewhat) Good At.

At my advanced age I am allowed some element of curmudgeonism with regard to modern technology.  I've seen a lot of it come and go in nearly 70 years.  Much of it is simply reinventing the wheel.  And the real breakthroughs are often pulled into the For Profit realm rather quickly.  But hey, I'm not such a tortoise that I am still using a rotary dial phone and a slide rule.

So, what is the much vaunted AI "good" at in 2025.

My initial answer is: Images.  Lacking any artistic talent to speak of I am able to come up with ideas for amusing pictures but I can't create them.   Here's an example.  I prompted Gemini - this is the maligned but free Google product - to create an image of a deer sitting at a computer studying trail cam images of hunters.  This is a remote possibility for my slow hunting season (up to gun opener), but you never know.  Here's the first draft:

Now that's not too bad.  But a closer inspection shows a problem.  The hunters are all wearing camo.  And they are all holding fire arms.

Some of the weapons they are hefting look like big sticks, others like generic sub machine guns.  One guy - and admittedly these are blurry images - appears to be holding a stuffed animal!

But for gun hunting season they should be wearing blaze orange.  When I pointed this out and asked AI for an update it said: 

Okay, let's get those hunters in proper safety orange! Here's the updated image:

And here's what it came up with:

Better.  It just changed the one detail and did so competently.  It's a fun image....if you don't look too closely at it.  Behold:

Our friend Mr. Buck has two full cups of coffee.  He's never going to manage the one on the right, not with that clumsy hoof.  But the other side.......  Yikes!  A hideous freak of nature "hand" with a thumb and dark, Goth fingernails.   

This sort of thing has been a problem for AI generation since the get go.  It does some body parts very well indeed.  Others....frightening mutations.  Here's another example.  The basic prompt was to show me a waitress at a German Beer Garden bringing me a stein of beer.

At first glance all is well.  AI does faces nicely.  The back drop is passable.  And, well, as this is a serious study of the matter, AI does breasts with great accuracy.  One minor quibble, that stein looks a bit outsized, unless the waitress is elfin, and it would never do to bring a customer something that is 35% foam!  But do we still have mutant fingers???

Subtle, but yes.  Count the fingertips.  Slightly crooked thumb, 1,2,3....

There seems to be a little parasitic finger grafted onto the back of the ring finger.  

This is a common feature of AI images.  Indeed, weird extremities - hands in particular - are one way photo sleuths debunk controversial AI "fakes".  So how and why is this so?

Here's my theory.

Picture a conference room.  Full of computer nerds.  It's an AI startup and the manager has this to say:

"OK, its crunch time.  Eric, Cheng, Bill, Rashid, Cooper,  get your entire departments working on Boobs.  Divide yourselves up into Left and Right working groups.  Feel free to hire up to 500 freelancers.  Try not to spend more than your usual amount of company time looking at naughty stuff on the internet."

"Oh...I suppose we need to do hands as well.  Where's the new intern?  Melvin?"

"Um, right here.  And its Milton, sir."

"Melvin, our AI informs me that (reads from his phone) the human hand is incredibly complex, and is a main reason why we invented tools and as a species took over the world.  See if you can knock something together this afternoon.  But you still have to sweep up, and don't forget the usual donut runs!"

"Yes sir, I'll do my best."

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So how would AI depict that scene?

About as expected.  I'll make this a big as possible so you can see the Horrible Hands on several figures including Milton!  Maybe he trained the AI to model reality on himself!

Giving Thanks - 2025

Still on this side of the now snow covered landscape.  Everyone growing.  The young generation upward, the older generations perhaps a bit outward.  We also generally grow wiser, each generation starting to see things as their parents did.

A good day.

Not so good to be a turkey of course, or in the case of our celebration, quail.

Rifle Season Review - Deer vs Modern-ish Tech

Crossbows go back to ancient times.  Normal bows, to the stone age.  So deer have had time to adapt.  Humans, those shaggy bad smelling critters, were just one more predator.  At a time when there were all manner of other toothy, hungry things out there we probably did not rank high on their list.

Of course things have changed.  Oh, I still see the occasional bear, wolf or coyote "up north".  But the main things deer need to worry about are cars - just in the last century or so - and the handiwork of Paul Mauser.

People have been hunting Wisconsin deer with firearms for a while now.  The Ojibway were very motivated to trade beaver pelts for muskets going back to the 1600's.  But the availability was low, and the range not much more than a skilled archer.  

Paul Mauser was one of many talented guys who put their effort into making dangerous things in the 1800s.  His innovations were built into the standard rifles and ammunition for the Kaiser's army, and are still the basis for most non fancy deer hunting guns today.  Here's what I use.  Sorry if Google/Facebook etc get unhappy with any sort of fire arm photo! *

This is actually a rather long prolog to a rather short story.

 

Sunrise on opening day of rifle season found me in a box stand on our hunting land.  Basically tree houses built on 15 foot stilts they were constructed by the previous owner.  Who, from the geometry of the window arrangement, must have been about six foot 8 and preferred to stand up the entire time!  Even with a yard sale bar stool to sit on there are areas you just can't see.  There was a beautiful sunrise.

The orange flag is for the edification of the next door neighbor who was hunting some distance off in that direction.  Anyway, after sitting there craning my neck in various ways for 90 minutes I needed a bit of a stretch.  Standing up I saw a buck had approached to within ten paces of the stand right on the trail shown.  A most incurious chap he was still there after I quietly stepped back, took off the safety, lined up a shot......

Expired deer pictures all look the same.  Suffice to say it was a serious task dragging him from the dense underbrush he ran off into.  I had to actually get one of my sons who was hunting elsewhere on the property to come help me.  Even with two of us it was necessary to take breaks getting Bucky back to home base.

And so that's hunting 2025, unless other branches of the family need logistical help or my unfilled doe tag.

Addendum.  A friend hunting on the same spots I've spent so much time on got a nice buck the second day of rifle season.  As a herd management strategy this is ideal, if accidental.  With the mild weather there are  a lot more bucks up and wandering than in most gun seasons.  But they've presumably already taken care of "next year's crop of fawns" business.  So they are less important than the now pregnant does.  And if a year from now there is a mis match?  More does than bucks?  Well, they are not big on either monogamy or faithfulness that lasts more than a half hour or so!

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* Weirdly the United States had to pay the Mauser company a substantial amount of money post WWI for the patent on the "spitzer" ammunition Paul Mauser had invented.  True, it was a complicated legal case and settled out of court, but rather remarkable...paying your defeated enemy for the ammo used to defeat him!

 

Crossbow Hunting - In Review....

How smart are deer?

Exactly as smart as they think they need to be in a given situation.  They have eyes, ears and noses so much more sensitive to ours that if they stayed on full sensory alert all the time we'd never see one.  Of course that's not realistic.  But they can and do dial the filters up and down.

Bow hunting requires you to be fairly close to your target.  I actually will only take a shot that I'm sure will be a good one, as the idea of a wounded deer limping off to die somewhere far away distresses me.  Even though coyotes gotta eat too....

With a cross bow that range is.....  Well at the start of the season I would have said 30 yards.  But one consequence of spending a lot of time out trying to fool a deer is that in the "in between" times that divide up morning and evening "sits" I've been practicing.  I am pretty confident now at 40 yards.  I'd do 45 if the deer was standing still and a big enough target.

North American deer have had a long time to get used to bow hunting.  People have been launching arrows at them for something like 16,000 years, although its likely the Wisconsin deer were left alone until about 10,000 years ago.  

There are plenty of deer in the woods in the fall of 2025.  I see some most days.  That's good.  Also, that's bad.  Often I've been carefully watching one deer while another sneaks up from an unexpected direction, does that curious head bobbing up and down to get a better view, then calls for the general retreat with white tails flipping me off as they disappear into the woods.

I've tried various things.  Being quiet for instance.  Now I am admittedly older, creakier and wheezier than I used to be, but I still do my best.  Deer also have a phenomenal sense of smell.  So I wash all my hunting garb with scent blocker, store it all in a Rubber Maid tub partly full of leaves, spritz on a product that supposedly takes care of any lingering human odors.  Why, I even skip my morning coffee, as I've heard that is a red flag for them.  Nothing.  Incidentally, there is a wide array of scent stealth concoctions.  I hope in a coffee deficient state I never accidently spray on the cinnamon stuff that attracts Wild Hogs! 

I've decided that the two biggest factors in my to date non success are: 1) The deer are not where I can conveniently hide.  And 2) They are really good at seeing anything that was not there yesterday!

Regards the first point, the land we got as a deer hunting preserve is work in progress.  We saw lots of critters there in the spring and summer.  But in the fall they seem to have wandered over to the next door property where everything was logged off a few years ago.  Mmmmm, nice tender buds and shoots.  So the very stealthy box stands that came with the place are mostly looking out over quiet woods and paths.

Of course it is possible to set up elsewhere.  My son uses a climber stand that can shuffle you right up any tree trunk.  This is especially handy in an area we like that is National Park Service and does not allow any overnight stands.  My son seems skeptical that his near 70 year old father should be using such a thing, and I suppose he's got a point.

Other than that it is various forms of ground blinds.  And I think the deer are onto that trick.

Well, its been an enjoyable fall out in the woods, and I have learned quite a bit about deer generally, and about our new hunting land specifically.  In the off season we'll be doing things to improve the deer habitat.  And isn't that why people have cabins, land and so forth?  To go out there and do lots of jobs?

Next up is rifle season.  If the local herbivores have had 10,000 years to figure out humans with bows they've only had about 200 to start figuring out fire arms.  Lets see how they fare with an effective range of 100 yards plus!

Regimental Steins Part Three - Corporal Dolland of the 167th

Another regimental stein that my father acquired in post WW II Germany and brought home.  They are among the many things we found when cleaning up my parent's junk filled house.....

As you can see, this one does not have the cannon on its top, but it is also from an artillery unit.  That unfortunate absence aside, there is a lot going on with this specimen.

It has a name across the bottom.  Or rather a rank and a last name.  

Gef. Dolland.  At least I think that's a D.

Gef. stands for Gefreiter, or Corporal.  Near as I can tell this is a more esteemed rank in the German army than in other armies of the time period.

The dates of initial service are 1905 to 1907.  Given his higher rank and the fact that the Great War broke out only seven years after he did his mandatory two years of service, its likely this fellow ended up back in uniform in 1914.  When the initial rush of August stalled every man with any experience or leadership potential was called up.....

You can see the larger print motto that runs across the top of the stein.  It translates to:  "He who has served faithfully deserves a full glass dedicated to him".

This one has lots details.  Across the lower part of the pewter lid run three mottos in capital letters.

SIEG ODER TODT - VICTORY OR DEATH 

GOTT MIT UNS - GOD IS WITH US

DONNER HEGEL MORD & BLITZ - THUNDER HAIL DEATH AND LIGHTNING.

There are a series of scenes on this stein.  The paint is raised, so I think they are hand painted.  I won't show them all, but here's an example:

A guy with his sweetie sitting on a sofa.  The legend reads, approximately: 

"And so was the (military) service most beautiful."

You can just see the next scene below, or rather I suppose the one that preceded this.  It's a soldier returning to his home after his two years are up.  This one says:

"Open up mother, your son is home and wants a drink"

I feel like I should add an exclamation mark there, but one does not appear on the original.

The unit designation is a little easier to figure out on this one.  Helpfully it has the Regimental number - 167 - displayed.  The scribbly lines near the bottom of the stein give more detail.  

"As a reminder of your service with the (?) company Oberle Regt 167 Kassel.  The word Oberle is cryptic, it probably alludes to where the regiment was recruited, which was in the upper (ober in German) region of Alsace.  Students of history will no doubt recall that this part of the world got traded back and forth between Germany and France.  If we assume this soldier was 18 years old in 1905, then he'd have been born circa 1888.  Alsace had only been a part of Germany for 17 years at that point.  As far as I can tell his regiment served with distinction, but troops from this area were somewhat suspect with respect to desertion over to the French side of the trenches!

As a time capsule this item is impressive.  You get a sense of what life as a recruit was like.  Or at least you get an idealized version of it.  Here, take a look at one final image....

Remarkably these steins had a list of names, the guys you served with.  The list varies in length, anywhere from a handful or as many as a hundred.  This panel feels smooth, so perhaps a stencil was used.  I would not envy anyone who had to hand paint this!

It was apparently a list of the guys from your area that you served with.  Everyone went in as a conscript at the same time.  They came out at the same time.  They went back to their homes and got on with their lives.

Seven years later most of these men would have been called back into service.  How many survived?  I have seen stats that say roughly 15% of German servicemen were killed during the war.  I'd assume that being a somewhat older guy called up near the start of things would make your odds a bit worse.  And of course you had the very many who whose lives were changed by wounds or just the trauma of combat. 

A bit less fun than the jokey stuff shown on this stein, where mom is ready to pour you a drink, where a sobbing young lady is told "Girl stop crying, the recruits are coming", and where a group of nattily clad soldiers clink their beverages and say:

"The Reservists are living High"

The 167th Regiment was part of the 22nd Division.  They actually spent most of the war on the Eastern front.

After 1918 Alsace reverted to French rule...other than the years 1940 - 1944. 

Corporal Dolland, if he survived the First World War, was in for some changes.  I wonder if mementos of German service were something you had to keep on the back shelf....

Regimental Steins Part Two - Reservist Christman

Photographing a one liter beer stein is not easy!  I've rather shortchanged the cool top on this.

Of the two regimental steins my father brought back from Germany circa 1951, this is the one with all the "stuff".  There's a lot to look at, but as we'll see it is a bit more pedestrian than the next one we'll visit.

Presumably that's Reservist Christman depicted in the central image.  It is almost certainly not "him" in an artistic sense, just a generic young artillery man.  These were created with a combination of stencils and paint.  One way to sort it out is by touch.  The base image of the soldier is smooth, so probably stencil.  But the buttons on his uniform and the gilded stuff on his hat is raised, so added by hand!

There is never a first name on these things but the markings indicate he did his active service time as a recruit/conscript between 1898 and 1900.  The spidery, hand applied script indicates he was in the 3rd Company of "foot artillery"* of an artillery regiment based in Mainz.  Unhelpfully I can't be sure of the regiment, but it is probably the 117th, aka The 3rd Grand Ducal Hessian, aka the Grand Duchess regiment.  I am at least sure of Mainz, which narrows it down to three options, and there is a 3 among all the scribbles and abbreviations.

On one side we have this serious image and saying.  It translates to, more or less:

"It is the Artilleryman's job to make a powerful argument"

Around the top is another serious saying:

"Canonen donner ist unser Grufs"**

Cannon thunder is our Greeting.

But this stein is not all cannon thunder and bluster.  It does not photograph well but when you hold the empty stein up to a bright enough light you can see that there is the image of a man and a woman sitting in a tavern stamped into the base in what is known as a Lithophane.  One of the many ways to tell a real from a repro regimental stein is the content of the lithophane.  This one is typical.  Nudes are all fakes.

On the other side is something along the lines of: "Today the last shot was fired because I must go home".  Certainly the kind of sentiment that one would expect at the end of military service.  Being launched homeward by the cannon and waved off by your kamerades seems to fit.

So, what ever happened to Reservist Christman?  Absent a first name we shall never know.  But if he did his main military service on the dates listed here 1898-1900 he would have gone out of the most active reserve status by 1905.  He would have then spent 10 or 11 years in a second line sort of organization called the Landwehr.  So by 1914 he'd have been getting a bit old for soldiering.  Maybe mid 30s.  He'd still be a member of the lowest level of reserve, called the Landsturm, but by the time they got down to calling up those fellows he'd be pushing 40.  Let's hope he was not marched off to the last years of The Great War at that age.  Of course specialized skills were always in higher demand, and he was after all, an artilleryman....

* Foot artillery would be attached to an infantry division.  The guns would in general still be moved by horses.  Horse artillery was much less common, but cavalry divisions did have a few light field pieces they'd haul around with them.

** Among the oddities here is that the "f" depicted is a double s.  So, Gruss, or Greeting.

Regimental Steins - Part One

My dad picked up some antique beer steins when he served in Germany right after the war.  They even appear in the detailed inventory of things he shipped back home.  I find them fascinating.  There's really not an equivalent in our culture.

In Germany during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, almost all men did a period of required military service, then went into the Reserves.  After that they still got together for drills on a regular basis.  It would be other guys from your community, and there were definite social aspects to the experience.  Evidently, near every major training base, there were special military shops where you could order a custom beer stein to commemorate all this.  Specific to branch of service, regiment, even the names of the guys in your company.  They vary a bit in level of seriousness.  As we'll see, they will have the dates of the man's active service as a roughly 18 year old Recruit.  So these were a sort of keep sake of your "Army Days" and something you'd get out when the other guys from your company got together for drinks.  Presumably Old Stories were told over these.

I have two examples.  Each is worth close study and will get its own post.  Here's a couple of teaser pics.....

Although fascinating artifacts these things do not have particularly high value on the antiques market.  They made a lot of these.  And there are many more repros attempting to fool buyers.  For these two the provenance is rock solid, some staff sergeant did a complete inventory of all Lt. Wolter's stuff that was being shipped home in 1948.  These are listed.

Robot School Wraps it Up.

Open house for the fall 2025 version of Robot School.  

Ten minutes before guests arrive, the robot broke.  Robots hate mankind.

Of course the combined efforts of students and instructors got it all happy again, just in time.

Nice turn out of family and other guests.  Big robots driven.  Mini robot obstacle course navigated.  A table full of swell robot parts given away.  All the students had to do was tell one of the adults manning this station what they'd done in Robot School!  Of course I was way too busy to get pictures of any of that stuff.  But the project robot - Mayo - came through in the end....

I wish I had video of the high school robot extending its elevator to block a shot!

I get to rest now.  Robot School is a lot of work.  But all 14 of the students are expected on the high school team in the future.  Some soon, others in a bit.

An Indifferent Student

I seem to recall myself as being a rather clever student.  I learned to read early and was a voracious consumer of, well, anything.  Big stacks of books from the branch library at Jordan Junior High.  But....was I as smart as I remember myself being?  A case study, based on artifacts dredged from the basement of my parent's house.

Looks promising.  It contains among other things my report card from 3rd grade.

Now, back in that era you got either an S for satisfactory or an N for needs work.  That's it.  No Excellent or anything like that.  Opening it up I find that I got Needs Work for:

First half of the year, Works Well with other Children, Follows Directions, Works Well Independently, Begins and Finishes Work on Time, Uses Time Wisely, Listens Attentively, and Reads Independently for information and Pleasure.  OUCH.

The only thing I got an "N" for both halves of the year was for Writes Legibly.  Hey, I was destined to write prescriptions, gimme a break!

A bit of a come down.  I did get recommended to move up to Grade 4, and to my credit only was absent 1/2 a day, while turning up to be a mediocre student a full 176.5 days.

The Report Card was signed by my teacher, Mrs. Schwaub, and by both my parents.  My M.D. father's signature was very poor penmanship indeed.  The card was also marked with a stamp from Arthur T. Nelson, the Principal.  I remember him being chased down the hallway by a kid with a knife, who actually lived on our block.  Ah, the idylic 1960's.

I'm not sure what to make of this one.  In faint red ink up at the top it says "Please use your pencil".  Was this an instruction from the get go that I impudently ignored?  

I gotta say, in black Crayola crayon my penmanship, or shall we say penchildship, was pretty darn good.  You can see through the paper to some black crayon math that young "Timmy" as I then styled myself, absolutely crushed.

More stuff from "Timmy" age 6 1/2.  Now that I have a grand daughter about that age I can say, hey, that's outfit's a bit much, don't ya think?

 

Geeze, I hope this was from high school.  Geometry was the only math I every actually liked.  I got 18/20 on this page.  The preceding page was more word problems.  For example: Consider two simple closed curves which intersect at points A and B.  Consider a point C which is in the interior of one of the curves.  Various options were given, to each of which I had to respond True or False.  

21/30.  Guess I never really got to the Truth of Mathematics.  And for what it's worth I got out my pen and paper and tried to puzzle this thing out.  I think the teacher marked me off a couple of points incorrectly.

Subsequent finds of report cards from other years of grade school and Junior High did not, alas, show any sudden flourishing of academic genius.  And high school?  Lets not talk about high school.