Doll Baby's Night Out

My grand daughter is still interested in dolls, although she is now old enough and sophisticated enough to know they are not real.  Except for one.  Her earliest doll is one she started calling "Doll Baby" as soon as she started talking.  The grand daughter that is....Doll Baby, or DB as I call her....only talks when I'm around.  And a sassy, ill behaved little imp she is!

The other day it was decided that Doll Baby could stay up at the cabin with grandpa when the kids went home.  So what sort of mischief will DB get into when poorly supervised????

Swiping the last brownie.

Insisting that I walk her instead of the dog.  Note how the dog's eyes are bugging out over this.

Swiping the dog's treats.

Now this will not end well...

Driving Grandpa's car.  She and the dog have it all worked out.  She turns the wheel and he works the pedals.  Also not gonna end well....

New Boots in the New Economy

Don't consider this a review so much as a commentary on the times.  But I will give a few suggestions towards the end.

I depend on my boots.  I spend a fair amount of time outdoors and in all weathers.  I don't care about looking stylish.  So roughly 80% of the time I'll be wearing hiking boots.  Over the years I've narrowed it down.  I like 6 inch boots, all leather, Vibram soles and of a quality sufficient to keep out water.  I wear them hiking deer trails, archaeological sites, hunting up geocaches and just up and down the hill on my daily walks.

A good pair should last four years.  Then I unceremoniously ditch them at the end of a trip.  My last pair ended up in the bin at a cheap hotel near the Newcastle airport back in May.

Good brands over the years have included QUAD, Danner and Lacrosse.  Interestingly they have all combined now into one company!

My shopping this time around began at the shoe outlet store on our main street.  Our town once made lots of shoes and boots.  But while the main company is still around everything they have now comes from factories overseas.  The combination of labor costs, perhaps the environmental issues with tanning lots of leather and the general American desire to have things cheap just made domestic manufacture impractical.

Several trips to the marked down "Back Room" and even to their main section were fruitless.  Since my last shopping experience there have been changes.  Honest leather boots are less common, with synthetics taking over.  And hard toe work boots comprise about 90% of the six inch boots.  We used to call them steel toes but you can also find aluminum and composites.  This is of no use to me as I already own a pair and don't need that extra weight/expense for daily use.

I visited several of the Big Box Guy Stores and found a similar picture.  Eventually I just went to the one with the biggest selection and tried on everything they had.  It was discouraging.

They did have a smattering of the more reputable brands.  Columbia and Thorogood make decent stuff.  But not in the styles or sizes that would be useful.  Instead there were shelves full of various "off brands".  Some are blatantly cheap looking....often the box looked sturdier than the boot.  One called AdTec was the worst.

One box I opened had a surprise.  The boots were covered with spots and droppings and a mouse had chewed a hole in one corner.  The helpful and apologetic store employee said mice like the paper stuffing that goes inside the boots.  To be a good sport I tried on another pair, one free of murine excreta.  The metal eyelet pulled clean off when I tightened the lace.

Eventually I had to compromise.  

This boot is partially synthetic.  Still mostly leather, it felt good on my feet.  I've worn them for a couple of weeks now and they seem to be breaking in well.  The "Brand Name" is Field and Forest,  but it is an import brand owned by Thorogood.  I hope I get three years out of them.

So what's going on in the boot marketplace?  

I suppose the consolidation of many of the surviving US boot makers has a tendency to reduce competition.  Most every such company now has a Chinese affiliate that makes their low end stuff, the stuff they'd not be willing to put their own name on.  Sometimes that low end is low indeed.  You read about various things going awry in the supply chain and/or in the Chinese economy, but here's some concrete evidence.

I guess the synthetics overtaking straight up leather construction makes some sense.  Sometimes technology can be both new and not total crapola.  But the weird swing to mostly safety toe work boots is hard to fathom.  It's not as if the US is suddenly rediscovering rust belt style manufacturing.

If it were we'd probably be making decent work boots on our shores again. *                                   ---------------------------------------------

* Fair is fair, some companies still are making work boots in America.  Thorogood which I've already mentioned, Redwing boots over in Minnesota, and to some extent the Lacrosse boot conglomerate all make domestic products.  So does Wolverine.  Keens are made in Portland Oregon which may or may not be part of the United States depending on your point of view.

FIRST Robotics Report 5.1 - A Game of Inches

On a whim I looked back at my progress report for the last robot Team 5826 built.  January and February of 2020 as rumors of Covid started to radiate outward from Wuhan China.  Interestingly one of our coaches actually had to take a business trip to Taiwan at this point in time.

My posts have a similar sort of Quiet Desperation to them.  Major mechanisms did not work properly.  We were overweight and yet needed to add additional structural supports.  We were building something peculiar that would be unlike anything else in the competitive field.  In various fashion the problems we face in Build Season are always the same.  Oh, some years we also have most of the software kids disappear on a Band Trip for a week.  

But a few things are different.  We compete one week earlier.  That's not good.  But at least the challenges all teams face are equal.  The Duluth tournament features lots of small town teams.  Everyone is operating on the same calendar, has been hit by Covid, and by the failure of the usual system of passing off expertise from graduating seniors to wide eyed newbies.  Our policy of calling up talented 8th graders when we find them has had few glitches.....and has given us a core group of now sophomore leaders.

Saturday.

You start out by checking the numbers that would be really bad if they were wrong.  Max allowable height is under by a half inch.  We are allowed a perimeter of 120 inches.  And we have:

At least on weight we are looking good.  A max allowed of 125 and we are just under 90 with all the stuff on board.  That number will become important in a bit....

One of our last needed components is in hand.  A spring loaded bar catching hook.  Nice design by our CAD team.

We have started to clear out junk we now know we won't need.  There's a lot of it.  Some things are in the uncertain category and only going as far as my car.  There is a lot of rattling going on in the back when I drive down the highway.

Here's a nice housekeeping touch.  

Ah yes you wonder.  But does the robot work?  Well that's complicated.  The center of gravity is not exactly where we thought it would be so the angle of the various hooks and gizmos needs to be changed.  Right now we are a half inch off on the more difficult hook grab. We might actually have to add ballast to the back of the robot.  This is not without precedent, we had to do this in Year One.  That's one area where being underweight helps a lot.

One of the kids has been lobbying for a hefty 2000 cc air tank.  This plus a couple of smaller ones will give us plenty of lift.  I told him sure, if we can make weight.  Now it appears I have to let him go for it.  I really hope we don't have to bring back the monster 5000 cc tank from 2020, that was ridiculous.  But heavy, so there's that....

I won't lie this season has been tough on me.  I showed up early to get things organized.  The area we work in is used by an architecture/building class during the school day.  There are all these neat little house models done in CAD and laser cut.  I looked at them and had visions of Mecha-Robo-Godzilla stomping them all flat.

CCC Camp Cable Revisted

I've been revisiting some older posts and the locations associated with them.  Sometimes it is just a desire to do a better job with a write up.  Sometimes it is that and the placement of a history oriented geocache on the site.  As in today's tale.

I first discussed CCC Camp Cable way back in 2015.  At the time the remains of the camp were quite visible, although in part this is a matter of visiting on a nice spring/fall day when the underbrush is not too thick.   Going back in 2020, and looking for the perfect "hide" for a geocache, it seems as if there is less definition to the remains.  Every year frost and thaw nudges those stones just a little further away from where they were placed in the 1930's.....

But mostly I want to take a closer look at the men of the CCC.  In the five years that have passed I suspect the last of the guys in these photos have left us.  So....who were they?  As I mentioned in the initial post Camp Cable was built by a special company, V-1676.  The V designation indicates that they were all First War Veterans.  Older, smarter, tougher than the young recruits who would follow them. 

When you see those guys, the one with tattoos in particular, you realize that they looked at what we now think of as The Greatest Generation and thought: "What a bunch a punks!"

Company 3653 is the best documented of the CCC groups that lived and worked at Camp Cable.  Here's a few pictures of them at work and play.  These probably are from an earlier camp near Ashland,  but are quite representative of activities at all such places.

The 3653 baseball team was good enough to win a sub-district pennant in 1935, the year before they moved to Camp Cable.

Most CCC companies posed for group shots.  These two were probably taken at Camp Cable.

The men, but sadly not the cute dog mascot wearing sunglasses, are identified by name.  Curious as to whether the stereotype of these guys all going on to Greatest Generation greatness were correct, I spent a little time searching for traces of them.  Obviously those with generic names were usually lost.  Even the oddball names often come up blank.  But consider:

The commander of Company 3653 was the oddly named Lauris Martin Eek.  He was a Great War pilot and flight instructor with the 470th Attack Squadron.  This photo is from later in life when he went into politics.  He had two sons who served in the Second World War.  I suspect that both Lauris Jr. and Nathanial Eek spent part of their youth happily roaming the woods around Camp Cable.  Lauris Jr. passed away earlier this year, and with him perhaps passed the last direct memories of life at Camp Cable...

The camp's second in command, 1st Lt. Hermann Bieritz rose to the rank of Major, serving in the Pacific with the Signal Corps.

And the rank and file?  In no particular order:

Clarence Vanderschaegen moved to Hurley after service in the Navy in WWII.  

Peter Karabas seems to have moved to the Madison area and run a restaurant.  Because versions of this name appear with and without an s on the end I can't say if it is an odd coincidence or a hidden mystery, but a Peter Karaba was slain by a robber in June of 1931...at Moquah Wisconsin, not far from Cable.  Was the young man in the CCC photo a local lad left orphaned?

Jude Wray has a tragic story.  Originally of Ocanto Wisconsin he was a private on leave in March of 1941 when he was involved in an automobile accident.  He was said to be "critically injured" when he was caught under the wheels of a "slow moving train".  I wonder if he was left disabled.  The next mention I find of him is from 1950.  He was living with his mother and went fishing on the Wisconsin river.  When his tackle was found abandoned on the bank the worst was feared.  After 30 hours lost in the woods he made it out just as the search was about to be called off.

It would be possible to trace more but I think in general we can assume that most of the "CCC Boys" took the skills and discipline they learned in camp and put them to good use in military and civilian life.  They were the kind of people who just went out and got necessary things taken care of.  And did not make any fuss about it.   Perhaps that was the true Greatness of their Generation.

A Quiet House for the Holiday

This is a puzzling picture to look at, and it was none too easy to photograph either.  It is the sticky hand print of a one year old on a mirror.  

It's the sort of small thing you notice when you are going to be on your own for a holiday.   Which is by the way, a good thing.   If I might explain.

Wife and I will be without small people on Thanksgiving this year for, we think, the first time since 1986.  33 years if you are keeping score.

The reasons?  All good.  Gainful employment in The Big City in one case.  But more generally it's because we are now sharing the kids and grand kids with other people, other families that also love them.  I can think of few things more worthy of giving thanks.

On the actual Day of Turkey eating we'll improvise.  Maybe curry.  Maybe a brunch at one of the local taverns that is open for food.  

And over the weekend we'll have them all together again for at least an abbreviated family gathering.   I bet there will be mashed potatoes and gravy at a minimum.

The Yorkshire Hills - Victoria Cave

Welcome to the archaeology of a place that is really, really old.  Victoria Cave in the hills above Settle, Yorkshire.

The modern history of the place goes back to 1837, when a couple of local lads out for a stroll had their dog go missing.  It seems the hound had crawled down a small hole, probably in pursuit of small game.  He found a lot more.

Prying away rocks that were blocking the entrance a cave was entered, one in which Romano-British artifacts were lying about on the surface.  Excavations went on at a leisurely pace for a few years, with the cave being named Victoria after the coronation of same in 1838.  But it turns out there was a lot more waiting deeper down.

Ongoing excavations soon turned up deeper layers where implements of neolithic man and the skeletons of now extinct animals were found.  The bones of giant deer,  hippopotamuses, and straight tusked elephants turned up, many of them seemingly hauled in by giant hyenas in the period between Ice Ages some 130,000 years ago.

These discoveries attracted the attention of such notables as Charles Darwin, one of the members of a Committee established to study the cave.  (Sadly I can't find evidence that Darwin ever visited the site).

The 1870's excavation site

Eventually the members of the Committee had a falling out over interpretation of the finds and Victoria cave was abandoned.  

But after The Great War, a local with the fabulous name of Tot Lord resumed excavation of Victoria and nearby caves with a band of amateurs who went by the moniker The Pig Yard Club.  Through their efforts and with the benefit of more modern archaeological techniques, the long history of Victoria Cave has been more accurately defined.  For instance carbon dating of the earliest artifacts suggests that humans were here circa 12,000 BC, the earliest such evidence in Yorkshire.

Another bit of modern flourish to old archaeology can be seen in these digital 3D images of the initial Roman era finds:

3D Romano-British artifacts from Victoria Cave

As one with an abiding interest in the Roman aspects of this excavation I was able to locate an on line account of the excavations dated 1872.  It adds some helpful details, such as the fact that the coins from the site are a couple of early ones from Trajan and a larger number of late Imperial issues and Barbarous Radiates from the declining days of Roman power.  In true British Imperial fashion this report goes way out on a limb regarding its conclusions that the people who left these artifacts were refugees from barbarian assaults.

Here's the inside of the cave.  The notion that there are still important archaeological layers here after so many years of excavation by farmers, antiquarians and Pig Yard Club members is a bit dubious, but good manners alone was enough to keep me on the proper side of the barrier.

In Darkest Footsteps

I had to delay this post a while.  Because there are some bad people in the world.

I think I met one of the lesser ones during my dig at Hill 80.  It was lunch break and I strolled over to the fence.  A shifty looking guy with long grey hair stood there.  He had lots of questions.  Where were the German trenches?  Were we finding casualties?  German or British?

I assumed he was a "night hawk" one of those horrid people who sneak into archeological sites in search of things they can add to their collections or to sell on the black market.  They literally rob the dead, thinking nothing of disturbing graves for trinkets.  (Note: there was both video and human on site security)  

I gestured vaguely towards a section of the site that was under three feet of water and told him nothing specific.

The Hill 80 dig is complete now, so the tempting, vulnerable target of mass graves being excavated is now secured.  That makes it safe to discuss a sensitive matter.  Because at one time true evil walked here.

In the confused fighting of 1914 the Bavarian 6th Reserve Division featured prominently.  Many of the dead we could identify as their uniforms had buttons with the Bavarian Lion.  

One of those Bavarians was Adolf Hitler.

Did Hitler walk across the field I worked on?  Plausibly.  Details of the confused 1914 fighting are incomplete but it appears he was at a location called "Bayernwald" about a mile north, then was treated for wounds in the cellar of the church at Mesen, about a mile south of the site.  Hill 80 is on a straight line between them and along what at that point would have been still intact roads.

Perhaps the ultimate Alternate History scenario is that of a Time Traveler killing Hitler.  Looking at his fallen Bavarian comrades you realize that a time machine would not even have been necessary.  

Skeletons laid out in rows.  No longer in militant straight lines, time has caused them to lean and shift into ragged formations that would make their sergeants livid were they not likely lying with them in the same shallow grave.  Buttons once polished bright for uncompromising inspection are now green with tarnish and lie scattered up and down stark spinal columns.  Sightless eyes stare at a blue sky for the first time in a century.

Did any of them know this peculiar Austrian who ranted so much?  Perhaps.  The more corpses you uncover the more likely you are to find the remains of a man who shared a fox hole or a cigarette or a joke with Adolf Hitler.  

If only, if only.  Would the world be a less dark place if just a few less British shells were the inert duds we walked over daily?  Did any of the fallen Bavarians dislike Hitler enough to aim a rifle at his back during an intense bombardment, only to be thwarted when death came to them instead?

You don't know and you can't know.  The path Hitler walked, the dark path that ends in Auschwitz and in the ruins of Berlin, had many twists and turns, many troubled places other than Hill 80.  

And what of all those others whose paths did end here?  Especially in the 1914 fighting you had Europe's best and brightest, the most passionate, those most ardent to change the world.  Could one of those stark corpses staring at the sky have become a German Churchill?  A French Mussolini?  Or even a British Lenin?

Idle, idle questions, asked by the living who will never know; asked of the dead who will never answer....

Ancient Feet - Coming and Going

Today a story about setting out and turning back.  Or about setting off and hoping to come back.  It takes place on The Appian Way.

"The Queen of Roads".  This was a main route for travelers to set out from Ancient Rome.  A couple of miles out you had a place where you could turn back and see the great city for the last time.   At this spot a place of worship was established.  

Rediculus was one of the lares, the protector gods of Rome.  When Hannibal's army approached in 211 BC Rediculus appeared in an apparition, or perhaps in a storm of hail, admonishing the Carthaginian to turn back.  The word redire in Latin means to turn back and is likely the origin of the god's name.  Later interpretations that Hannibal was made to look ridiculous don't sound likely.

The Temple of Rediculus was built at this spot, and a larger campus, or field of Rediculus was nearby.  There do not seem to be visible remains.

The notion of this being the spot where you either went forward or back was established, and it was here that travelers would stop to give an offering to their safe return from far journeys.  One wonders how many - with real or perceived omens - aborted their journey and turned around?

Fast forward a few centuries.  According to the apocryphal Acts of Peter this is the spot where the Apostle, and first Pope, encountered a vision of Christ.  Peter was fleeing the city ahead of persecution but came to a halt when he met Christ.  Asking Him:  "Master, where are you going?" Peter was told "I am going to Rome to be crucified again."

Taking the hint that it was his, Peter's, job to return he did so.  And met his martyrdom.

Peter's words in Latin "Domine Quo Vadis?" are linked to the church that was later built on the site.  Miracles being what they were back then, a stone slab depicting the actual footprints of Jesus were long kept there.  What you see now in situ is a replica.

So, what do modern travelers find at the Field of Rediculus and at the Church of Dominie Quo Vadis?

A nice little church.  That is the Appian Way running right in front of it.

Jesus looks to be about a size 10.

And here is a nice bust recognizing Henryk Sienkiewicz.  He wrote the novel "Quo Vadis" which is the only reason people have heard of this place.  If my Italian is holding up it looks as if he won the Nobel Prize for it.

We were actually having a rather tough day when I took these photos.  It was hot. There were large crowds on the Road as it was a local festival.  In places the original Roman paving stones were quite jarring as we rode our bikes over them.  But we did not turn back at Quo Vadis, we soldiered on for as long as the time on our bike hire allowed.  More pictures of the day, of course, in due course.

Tourism in the Bandit Infested Hills

I both admire and envy my more adventuresome friends.  They travel, seemingly without fear, to Laos and Tunisia and Antarctica.  They trek across the Sinai on camels.  They join the Peace Corps and live in Central American hamlets.

I am speaking generally of people ten to twenty years younger than I, those who came of age in an era of cheap airline tickets and social tolerance of delayed adulthood.  The folks I am envying here did most of their globetrotting either before or in place of raising children.

I now have the available time and resources to travel where I will, but there are more risks than there used to be.  It once was that you were safe so long as you did not venture out on an ill advised jaunt into bandit infested hill country.  Now the bandits have come down from the hills and live among us.

I have walked through too many places where terrorists attacks have occurred.  The Olympic complex in Munich, the London Underground, the Valley of the Kings in Egypt.  I regularly pass through the Amsterdam airport where the infamous "underwear bomber" was helped onto a US bound plane on some sort of humanitarian ticket.  I have driven past the Pentagon and have walked under the dome of the US capitol that escaped its intended targeting on 9/11.

No center of culture and urbanity is safe.  Paris the City of Lights.  New York, the self styled "Greatest City on Earth", Moscow with its atrocious subway bombings and Tokyo its sarin gas attack. For all the negative publicity that rural America gets, it is still a very, very safe place to live.

In a matter of weeks we will be heading for Italy.  It seems like a safe enough place to go, certainly Italy has done little to offend anyone of consequence in recent times.

But just a few hundred miles away, on the shores of Libya we now see the barbarians of Islamic State lining up Coptic Christians for mass slaughter.  And at the end of their latest atrocity one of the jihadists points a bloody knife north across the sea and proclaims that they will march on Rome.

You don't hear about that part of the message much in American news media.  Oh, in part it is wise to give these monsters as little attention as possible.  But a bigger part of it is the sheer embarrassment of our Current Administration.  Having started an optional war against Mohamar Khadaffi they "led from behind", dropping equal numbers of bombs and press releases.  Now we have another festering, chaotic pool of terrorism, and one with convenient access to Italy via a well intended policy in which refugee boats are actually helped ashore by the Italian Navy.

I usually avoid politics in my writings.  But part of the reticence to discuss the catastrophic implosion of Libya is that to do so would be an embarrassment to our Current President - who was gifted a Nobel Peace Prize for his anticipated diplomatic brilliance - and to our hopeful "President in Waiting", who was Secretary of State when the Libyan incursion was somehow, implausibly, deemed to be a safe and prudent action.

But these are the conditions that exist.  This is the world we live in.  The bandits are probably now in the Seven Hills of Rome.

You do what you can.  I get in and out of airports as quickly as possible.  I like to think I have good situational awareness.  Several times in Egypt I got a vague sense of danger.  Usually a close look around would show up a few of the Mubareck era Secret Police on the periphery of things.

I think we will steer clear of obvious danger zones, St. Peter's square for instance.

I always try when traveling to avoid an easy identification of my nationality, although when dealing with a threat like Islamic State their hatreds are so eclectic that passing myself off as being from Luxembourg may not suffice.

I don't think it is morbid to have one's "affairs in order" before going on a journey.  It is one less worry in life and when I travel I prefer to live for the moment.  Another glass of "vino della casa", another bit of ancient building peeking out from under modern trappings, another day of having no obligations other than enjoying ourselves.

I am sure I will climb up on the Aurelian Walls that surround the ancient parts of Rome.  They were built at a time when the Empire was crumbling at the edges and savages were expected to reach to the very heart of Western Civilization.  The Walls held then, and in fact for another century and a half the external enemies were kept out.

Like all enduring things of a past age they are thought provoking.  And could give you justifiable reasons for either optimism or pessimism.

At one point in their history they were an inconsequential barrier when an army, flush with victory and carrying the banner of a radical new religion just marched on through.  Constantine the Great with his newly professed Christianity prevailed against greater numbers and carried the day.

But at a later date and against even more lopsided odds the Byzantine general Belisarius strode these battlements.  He had prevailed against armies of Goths that should have matched him ten times over. But he had sturdy walls and strong resolve and the barbarians raged against them and broke.

York - If Walls could talk

"During a happy period (AD 98-180) of more than fourscore years, the public administration was conducted by the virtue and abilities of Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian and the two Antonines."

So says Edward Gibbon on the first page of his classic Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.  He idealizes the time of the so-called Adoptive Emperors, and spends most of the massive tome describing how things went wrong in a Fall that was "still felt by the nations of the earth."

The Adoptive Emperors were known for three things.  They had long reigns.  They died peacefully. And with the tragic exception of Marcus Aurelius, they chose their successor by merit instead of by family line.

After Marcus came his son Commodus, a nasty piece of work.  He was assassinated, triggering a civil war from which Septimus Severus emerged victorious.

Septimus was a harsh master of the Empire.  Individuals and cities who resisted him paid dearly.  But he had something of a soft spot for his two dissolute sons, Caracalla and Geta.  According to the contemporary historian Cassius Dio, they:

"..outraged women and abused boys, they embezzled money, and made gladiators and charioteers their boon companions..."

They were also jockeying for power, and Septimus could see that upon his death there would be war.

So hobbled with gout and age he took his army and his sons to the northern frontiers of Britannia.  He thought that a vigorous campaign against the vile Caledonians would distract his sons from their destructive life styles and their plotting.

But the campaign was inconclusive and Severus fell ill.  He spent his final days in York (then called Eburacum), probably here, in the headquarters building of the legionary fort.

If stone walls could repeat what they had long ago heard, this is what they would say:

(to his sons):  "Be harmonious, enrich the soldiers, and scorn all other men." - from Cassius Dio

An in site column in the Roman headquarters building, deep beneath the York Minster

If walls could talk....

Septimus knew the character of his sons, especially the more violent Caracalla.  Cassius Dio reports that he would often muse upon how much better off the Empire would have been had Marcus Aurelius quietly dispatched his disastrous offspring Commodus. As he lay ill here, he supposedly wondered if he should not have had Caracalla assassinated.

But in the end Septimus died, commending both his sons to each other and to the assembled troops. These walls echoed with the shouted accolades to the heirs of Empire.

But of course it ended badly, very badly indeed.  Caracalla had Geta and his adherents killed.  And the Roman Empire entered a dark and destructive era.  After Septimus Severus died in 211 AD it was exactly 100 years before another Emperor (Diocletian) would pass away of natural causes after a long reign.  The woeful tally:

23 Emperors died violently, either by assassination or in battle.
2 Emperors died of plague after brief reigns.
1 was struck by lightning while on campaign.

The closest any of them would come to living long and prospering was a fellow named Valerian.  He was captured in battle by the Persians.  Permitted to live as a captive in the court it is said that the Persian king sometimes used him as a footstool.

Here at York the long descent from "virtue and ability" began.

A bit of painted plaster from the walls.   Looking dimly to the future.

St. Mawes - A Device Fort

Henry VIII never did anything on a small scale.  Even his domestic problems had large consequences.

In our times, if a man and wife are fighting we expect there will be a few concerned phone calls; maybe the police will show up at the door.  But for Henry, his divorce from Catherine of Aragon and the subsequent feud with Rome prompted his Catholic neighbors to actively threaten invasion.

In response Henry built a series of "Device Forts" along England's southern coastline.  Although designated as such, these were not castles in the classical sense, they were masonry forts mounting artillery designed to sink approaching ships.  Most of them remained in service clear into the 20th Century having stood guard against the Spanish Armada, Napoleon, Kaiser Wilhelm and Hitler.

On our walking tour one of our stops is at St. Mawes near Falmouth.  A stroll down the road is one of Henry's forts, built in the 1540s.  A few photos:

I searched high and low looking for graffiti.  I was hoping to somewhere see a subtle T.E.Lawrence.   It seems that he ran away from home in 1905 and served a few weeks as a 17 year old soldier in the Royal Garrison Artillery stationed at St. Mawes Castle.

Alas, arriving just after closing time I could not tour the interior.  And atypically for such sites English Heritage had the place effectively fortified against casual strollers looking to wander about outside the walls.  So if "Lawrence of Arabia" left his signature here somewhere I never came close to it.

For more on Device Forts wikipedia always comes in handy:  St. Mawes and others