Quiz- Heavy Metal or Super-Hero?

Since Google hasn't yet decided to retire all the blogs on their platform to free up server space, I might as well make use of this forum. I had a fun idea recently that I thought could amuse the perverts and identity thieves of the Internet. It came to me as I was staring at the Marvel Comics trading cards I have posted on my walls. (That's right, baby, I'm living the dream!) I realized that something connects heavy metal and comic books, aside from obsessive fans with questionable social skills. Both bands that play variations on metal and characters from the comic books of my childhood tended to share similar naming conventions. They often incorporated weird portmanteaus, dark or violent imagery, references to mythology, and let's say "creative" spelling. They are so similar I think it might be hard to tell which is which.

With apologies to McSweeney's Internet Tendency I challenge the readers of this blog to take my quiz. From the following list, can you tell which names are of European black metal bands and which are characters immortalized in the 1993 Marvel Universe collection from SkyBox?

Quiz: European Black Metal Band or Marvel Comic Book Character?

(Answers below)

1- Grimfist
2- Black Axe
3- Arcturus
4- Moonblood
5- Motormouth
6- Bloodseed
7- Morg
8- Black Flame
9- Satyricon
10- Stryfe
11- Ragnarok
12- Die-Cut
13- Pantheon I
14- Infernum
15- Morbius
16- Tormentor
17- Venom
18- The Kovenant
19- Behemoth
20- Rage
21- Marduk
22- Slayback
23- Celestia
24- Night Thrasher
25- Drastique
26- Blackheart
27- Hellstorm
28- Demogoblin
29- Graveworm
30- Death's Head II
31- Hellhammer
32- Terror, Inc.
33- Forefather
34- Bloodaxe
35- Deathwatch
36- Nightfall
37- Heart Attack
38- Witchmaster
39- Darkhold Redeemers
40- Basilisk

*******************************************************************





ANSWERS:

Black Metal-1, 3, 4, 8, 9, 11, 13, 14, 16, 18, 19, 21, 23, 25, 29, 31, 33, 36, 38

Marvel- 2, 5, 6, 7, 10, 12, 15, 20, 22, 24, 26, 27, 28, 30, 32, 34, 35, 37, 39, 40

Both- 17  

The College Football Trophy Room: Week 5

Enjoy this week's installment of my series on the trophies found in college football. If you need an explanation of the series you can read the introduction. Previous editions in the series are archived under the "trophy room" tag.

This week's edition will focus on one trophy which is of special interest to morally upright college football fans. 

Above: An image of a 1917 "sawhorse" dollar bill taken from AntiqueHelper.com which CANNOT be copied, printed and used as legal tender.

 Sawhorse Dollar- Dartmouth Big Green vs. Princeton Tigers- 11/17/2012
(The following is an open letter)

To Mark Emmert, NCAA President
700 W. Washington Street
Indianapolis, Indiana 46206

Dear Mr. President,

I wish to inform you of my extreme disappointment in the lack of responsibility shown by the NCAA as an institution and you as an administrator. For decades our nation has relied on your organization to protect our scholar-athletes from the pernicious grasp of gambling. The NCAA was once a fierce opponent of the sinfulness of wagering. You had strict rules prohibiting anyone affiliated with any athletic program from getting involved with any bets made on NCAA sanctioned activities. In fact I'm pretty sure if a football player buys a lotto ticket you have wisely required them to submit forms seeking clemency from your office.You have even threatened to ban certain states from hosting NCAA championship events if they allow gambling on single games of NCAA sports. I, for one, thought it was about time those dens of inequity, such as Delaware and Montana, were put on notice. Why then, I must ask, have you allowed two football teams to compete each year in a game with a cash prize?

While the sum awarded to the winner may seem like small potatoes, a single dollar bill, but the principals your organization stands for could be stained by even the smallest wager. Additionally if some year the victorious team decides to cash in this rare note on the collectors market they could be looking at a pay day of hundreds of dollars. Divided between a football roster that could be as much a $4 a player -more than enough to corrupt otherwise innocent college students. Of even greater concern is the schools involved in these avaricious proceedings. Dartmouth and Princeton have long served as academic bastions in this country. As members of the Ivy League these schools have led the way in keeping student-athletes pure, forgoing national notoriety because they refuse to recruit elite athletes on the principal of academic purity. If these institutions are allowed to become corrupt, well, I'm sure I don't need to tell you that a fish rots from the head down.

As in any case the immorality comes from outside interlopers. A businessman from each of the respective schools decided to juice their enjoyment of a simple display of athletic ability by placing a wager on it. I do not hold you responsible for allowing private citizens to wager on college sports as you do not have the power to stop them . . . yet. Where I feel you should have acted is when these lowlifes (Or is it lowlives?) drew the coaches and athletic directors into their seedy dealings. Perhaps you thought exchanging a collectible piece of currency with a cute design as a traveling trophy was harmless. These teams played eighty-three times without the taint of money. Now that cash is on the line that means the Tigers and Big Green players are knowingly involved in a bet. As the last defender of amateurism in sport you cannot allow this to happen.

Unless, of course, the idea of amateur athletics is a preposterous, outdated myth. In that case I guess this sort of thing is really no big deal.

Hugs and kisses,
Joel A. L. Thomas 

Please return to this space each week during this college football season for more information and lore about college football's many trophies. 

The College Football Trophy Room: Week 4

Enjoy this week's installment of my series on the trophies found in college football. If you need an explanation of the series you can read the introduction. Previous editions in the series are archived under the "trophy room" tag.

This week none of the games played in the NCAA's Footbal Bowl Subdivision involve a trophy. The only rivalry game of note, New Mexico Lobos vs. New Mexico St. Aggies, retired their trophy in 2000. Apparently the Lobos just decided the Maloof Trophy wasn't even exciting enough to merit opening their trophy case. So I will skip over any of those games and focus on something much more interesting.

The edition will take an extended journey into the many trophies that receive little attention in the popular press. Plenty of football games take place every week that won't make ESPN's highlight reel, and lots of those have stories and spoils just as fun as anything in the prestige conferences. I have prepared a special expanded version of  my regular feature "For Those Who Do Not Bowl". So please take this opportunity to learn about some of the most colorful and fascinating piece of hardware exchanged on a gridiron. You should note the dates of these games coming up on your calendar, because if you have any chance to check out these games in person, I think you will find them worthwhile. 

The Blue Ribbon Trophy of the Week
 

Above: A photo of the beleaguered looking Goat Trophy by Tom Dahlin from Carleton.edu

"GOATROPHY" - Carleton College Knights vs. Saint Olaf Oles- 10/20/2012
You may think that the glamor programs in college football have a monopoly on colorful traditions and entertaining history. If those small schools had anything interesting going on, you surely think you would here about it. Well allow me to demonstrate the falsehood in that axiom with the rivalry between Division III colleges, St. Olaf and Carleton, which has as rich a lore as any trophy game I've covered in this series.

You certainly can name plenty of instate rivalries in college football. Perhaps you can even think of some crosstown foes. Well, Carleton and St. Olaf don't just share the city of Northfield, MN, they are the only annual opponents to come from the same ZIP code. On top of that their rivalry has an amusing moniker, "The Cereal Bowl". Northfield contains a major plant for producing Malt-O-Meal cereals which fills ten percent of the cereal bowls in the U.S. For years the Malt-O-Meal brand has provided sponsorship support for the game, including samples of the sugary processed breakfast foods athletes need. The actual trophy dates back to 1931 when a local clothing store funded the creation of a goat themed prize to award to the game winner. That's what counted as major business support for a Division III school in the great depression. Now there's also a trophy called the Cereal Bowl that's awarded to the winner, but I don't find it interesting so I shan't mention it again. The schools already had a goat based trophy in basketball and the winner would say, "We got your goat" to the loser. Even if none of that tickled your fancy, I still haven't told you the best stuff.

The Goat Trophy has done something  no other trophy in NCAA football history has done, honored the victor of a game played on a 100 meter field. Back in 1977 the two schools in a fit of liberal arts enthusiasm backed a movement to convert the United States to the metric system. So they decided to use a field that measured 100 meters by 50 meters, and dub the game the "Liter Bowl" (for all you non-Canadians that's pronounced "leeter"). Surprisingly enough the fans got behind this idea -they had metric themed sign, t-shirts, and everything- and it drew national media attention. With a field that was 110% the size of a normal gridiron, the Oles and Knights had the opportunity to record some inflated stats, or at least be the American football players most prepared for the Canadian Football League.  However the NCAA didn't get behind the idea. As one official said, "none of us on the rules committee understands the metric system." So the only metric game in college football history resulted in St. Olaf winning 43-0 (or in metric, they won by 7.3 kilogoals over -17.8 points Celsius).

The greatest honor related to winning the Goat Trophy comes just after the game, but before the boozing. The victorious team walks to the center of Northfield where the Civil War Monument stands (Yes, both schools' football stadiums are with walking distance of this park. I tried to tell you this is a very intimate rivalry between almost literal neighbors.)  Hoisting the wooden caprine as proof of their triumph, the players turn the eagle statue at the top of the monument to face the campus of the winning team. We don't know the origins of this tradition, but it carries great meaning to anyone involved -that's actually pretty normal for traditions. Then the fans and players, still in their pads and jerseys, head to the bars. I did mention there was boozing.

The next time someone from a school with a famous football team tries to tell you about how special the tradition of football is for their fellow fans, try to remember how much tradition Carleton and St. Olaf squeezed into their trophy game. All you need for a great football tradition is people who care.

 Spoils of the Game-Obscure School Edition
This time we'll take a look at some of the prizes at stake in games played outside the FBS.

Above: The Massachusetts Maritime team celebrates winning The Scoop, pic from MMABucs.com.

The Scoop- Bridgewater State Bears vs. Massachusetts Maritime Buccaneers- 11/3/2012
Whenever a trophy captures a unique aspect of regional pride, my heart just melt. For the annual match-up between two teams from Massachusetts, someone "wicked smaht" decided to hand out a prize that represents New England provincialism so well it should come with maple syrup. The Bears and the Bucs had played a few times early in the history, but in 1979 they began meeting every year in an event dubbed the Cranberry Bowl. (You receive no bonus points for correctly guessing who sponsors that event.) Since cranberries hold the enviable post as Massachusetts official State Berry, it makes all the sense in the world that the game and trophy should both have a cranberry theme. Cranberries come from bogs, and for a long time they were a pain in the tuchus to harvest. To this end cranberries farmers have used variations on a scoop to collect the berries since as far back as the 1850's. Mechanical harvesters replaced hand scoops back in 1947, but they still make great decorative items. That may explain why a cranberry scoop makes such a great trophy ; it's local and it looks good.

Above: In a photo from CalVulcans.com, representative of California and Indiana hold the Coal Miner's Pail and wonder why they're in Pennsylvania.

Coal Miner's Pail- California (PA) Vulcans vs. Indiana (PA) Crimson Hawks- 9/22/2012
Usually, I have to write about the less famous trophies well before the actual games, to spread the coverage out across the season. When I saw I had a chance to post about a game actually happening this weekend, I knew I had to do my best to be topical. (Though if I wind up posting this late, then I will sure be embarrassed.) The most interesting thing about this game is that it seems to turn all U.S. geography on its head. An innocent observer may find it puzzling that California and Indiana would have an annual rivalry to begin with, and she would be totally flabbergasted to learn that it was played in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The two schools warrant their names, because one is in the city/county of Indiana, PA, and the other is in the borough of California, PA -though why those locations have those names is a harder question to answer.

The annual game's status as the Coal Bowl, and Coal Miner's Pail trophy originated with a pair of brothers with ties to the two schools. Barry and Bob Lippencott graduated from IUP and CUP respectively and endowed each school with money for a football scholarship. Along with the cash came the gift of a shiny coal miner's pail and certain expectations (that's sort of how my dates describe a night out with me). The pail would serves as a prize for the winner of the year grudge match between the Vulcans and the Crimson Hawks to pay tribute to the Lippencott's many coal mining ancestors. Barry and Bob thought coal miners represented the sort of tough, hard working, and fearless attitude that all college graduates should have, or maybe just the football players. They weren't very clear. Still for the last four years the schools have traded the trophy as part of a budding Division II football tradition.

(As a disappointing postscript for any Star Trek fans out there, I should add that CUP's nickname refers to Vulcan like the god, not Vulcan like the alien.)

Please return to this space each week during this college football season for more information and lore about college football's many trophies.

The College Football Trophy Room: Week 3

Enjoy this week's installment of my series on the trophies found in college football. If you need an explanation of the series you can read the introduction. Previous editions in the series are archived under the "trophy room" tag.
 
For your edification, I decided to use the trophies in the spotlight to answer some of the biggest question the common fan may have about the nature of these odd little relics of gridiron glory. So I will relate each subject of this post to a WIITBAFAQ (What I Imagine To Be A Frequently Asked Question).

The Blue Ribbon Trophy of the Week

Above: Todd Rosenberg took this picture of an ornamental megaphone for the AP and SI.

 Megaphone Trophy- Michigan State Spartans vs. Notre Dame Fighting Irish- 9/15/2012
WIITBAFAQ: Do the players and coaches actually care about these trophies?
Generally, yes the participants in the game do care about the goodies they get if they win. There's an inset in the picture above that nicely displays the jubilation football players express when they get to hoist a hard-won prize. Having said that, I would be remiss not to note that every team and every set of fans can have widely differing levels of excitement for any given trophy for which the team competes.

The Megaphone Trophy on the line this Saturday nicely demonstrates the disparity that can arise between to parties that share a common trophy. Notre Dame plays for more trophies than any other college football team, so you can't expect them to be highly passionate about all of them. It is somewhat plausible that veteran players would be surprised to see a gaudy conical item carried into the locker room.Witness the reaction by the players at the 15m 55s point in this video. This surfeit of spoils seems to have created a kind of  "trophy-fatigue" amongst the Irish faithful. A typical comment from a popular Notre Dame fan blog calls for a major rollback of hardware in the ND football season, including the Megaphone. In 1997 the Irish forgot to bring the trophy to the game, so after the Spartans one the MSU athletic director had to drive to South Bend to pick up their rightful prize.

Contrast this with Michigan State which shares in a few trophies and seems to enjoy having them on hand for celebrations if nothing else. (I refer you again to the picture above.) I asked Chris Vannini, from The Only Colors, to assess the feelings among Spartans about the Megaphone. He confirmed that for the players and coaches any win against Notre Dame is a big deal. The fans may not get as much out of seeing the Megaphone paraded around the stadium after a victory as they do when other trophies make the trip, but Vannini thinks "it's a fun trophy to see in the case at the football building". So the Megaphone may not mean a whole lot to your average Spartan. Still, based on Vannini's insights, the folks at MSU seem to care about winning the Megaphone at least as much as Jabba the Hutt cared about capturing Han Solo frozen in carbonite. That certainly would rank several rungs above the level of concern seen from ND. Though the definitive flashpoint where Megaphone-mania peaked actually came in 2005.

The 2005 match-up between MSU and ND combined a number of highly colorful elements that briefly brought a surprising amount of national attention to an upturned bullhorn covered in paint. The game itself  certainly caused a good deal of excitement on its own merits. The Irish were undefeated and highly ranked coming into the game, but the Spartans defeated them in an overtime thriller. Then the trophy became a factor. Notre Dame did not have the Megaphone on hand to pass over to the triumphant Spartans in accordance with Notre Dame's policy, or lack thereof, on handling trophies. Inflamed by this perceived insult John L. Smith the MSU coach -not exactly a stable fellow to begin with- made a series of gruff remarks. The Spartan players decided in lieu of using the absent trophy as an awkwardly designed free weight, they would plant their flag in ND's stadium. In turn the Notre Dame coach, Charlie Weis -not exactly an ingratiating fellow to begin with, basically declared war on Michigan State. As a result the passions on both sides reached all time highs for a few years.

Things have quieted down since both schools have replaced their respective coaches. Weis went from leading the most prestigious college football program in the world (Yeah, you heard me Calcutta Tech!) to coaching the Kansas University football team that depends on the Kansas University basketball team for funding. Well at least expectations are low -though so are the results. Mr. L. Smith's career path has taken some odd turns -much like his thinking seems to- and he's become the head coach of the Arkansas Razorbacks.  Though he likely won't keep that job for long. You can be sure that whoever is involved at ND or MSU there will people who will care about the Megaphone everywhere from South Bend to East Lansing.

 Spoils of the Game- Week 3
This is where we take a look at all the prizes at stake in this week's games.

 Top Picture: A photo of victorious Miners lifting the Brass Spittoon by Bob Corral for The Prospector

Bottom Picture: A photo of a triumphant Aggie holding the Silver Spade by Brax for VPC

The Brass Spittoon and the Silver Spade- New Mexico State Aggies vs. UTEP Miners- 9/15/2012
WIITBAFAQ: Where do these trophies come from? 
Every trophy has its own back story. Though there are some recurring patterns. I can assure you that pretty much anything can become a treasured relic of football regardless of providence. One game this week features two trophies that nicely illustrate this axiom. The Brass Spittoon is a fairly conventional trophy by college football standards (even if it does inspire an unsavory mental image). Actually I should call it the Mayor's Cup because it originated with the mayors of Las Cruces, NM and El Paso, TX deciding to offer up a new prize in 1982. This is a common story. Some big-wigs decide to juice the excitement surrounding a given game by offering up a tchotchke to be exchanged between the schools depending on the outcome. The Silver Spade has a far more interesting -albeit incomplete- story. In 1947 someone went exploring an abandoned mine in the Organ Mountains which border El Paso and Las Cruces. (Some research on my part shows that this was apparently a not uncommon pastime in the region at that time.) In that mine they found a disused shovel left by an unknown prospector. Somehow -I cannot determine how- this shovel became a traveling trophy between NMSU and UTEP. At some point the shovel was lost. The Aggies' Media Guide makes the tantalizing declaration that "the whereabouts of the original spade are a mystery." Then in 1955 the student government of UTEP decided to replace the spade with the current model. This Silver Spade has the game scores etched into it, and is presumably prettier than something found in an abandoned mine. I had so many questions about the Silver Spade. Who found the original? Why was it used as a football trophy? What happened to it? Unfortunately after e-mailing with Jeff Darby, a senior associate athletic director at UTEP, I had to concede that the answers to those questions are likely lost to history. But that just because we don't know much about it doesn't mean the Silver Spade can't be a fun trophy.  

Above: Tom Tontala took this handsome pic of The Bell for SportsPageMagazine.com

The Bell- Marshall Thundering Herd vs. Ohio Bobcats- 9/15/2012
WIITBAFAQ:  What determines if any given game involves a trophy?
You just need two things: a trophy and a game. No really that's all it takes. You don't need to consult some NCAA Committee on Trophy Oversight. No one has to apply for a special permit. It doesn't even require any additional money beyond the price of a trophy, so you can cancel the bake sale. If someone with some connection to at least one of the schools involved wants to put a prize on the line, then you are halfway to the start of a new tradition. In the case of the 'Cats and the Herd, the two schools had played many times dating back to 1905 before there was a keepsake involved. When both teams wound up in the Mid-American Conference in 1997, the schools decided to add some spice to the game in the form of a traveling trophy. A couple of representatives of Marshall and Ohio met in an Athens, OH restaurant to brainstorm. When they realized that the two schools sit on or near opposite sides of the Ohio River, they decided to use a replica of the kind of bells riverboats used to send signals. The trickier part of the equation for the Thunderin' and the Bob's has always been scheduling the game. Thought the schools are only 80 miles apart, they have typically faced each other in intermittent stretches. After Marshall left the MAC in 2004, the two teams didn't face-off until 2009, and that was only because they coincidentally played in a bowl game. The old Bell trophy must have been an after thought, because as best as I can tell Marshall didn't even bring it to the game. (Who do they think they are, Notre Dame?) That renewed the rivalry though, so we now are in the midst of a six season stretch of Battles for the Bell. I am sure there will be more games to come after that. Eventually.

For Those Who Do Not Bowl
Each week I will use this space to highlight one trophy contested between teams from the less covered divisions and subdivisions of college football.

Above: A photo Darrell Rebouche had taken of him and his wife taken next to Chief Caddo. I thank him for its use.

Chief Caddo- Northwestern State Demons vs. Stephen F. Austin State Lumberjacks- 11/17/2012
WIITBAFAQ: Which trophy is the most outrageous?
Over the course of this series you will certainly see a wide range of bizarre trophies. Really the question of which one stands out as the weirdest comes down to a matter of personal taste. So I will answer this question by presenting you with the item that is the most trophy -by which I mean largest- that definitely has caused some outrage.

The largest prize in all of college football stands at 7 feet 6 inches, weighs about 330 pounds and looks like a gigantic cigar store Indian. The statue travels between Nacogdoches, TX -home of Stephen F. Austin State (no relation to Steve Austin)- and Natchitoches, LA- home of Northwestern State (no relation to Northwestern University). It originated in 1960 when the schools agreed to create a highly un-PC statue to mark their rivalry. Like most controversial representations of Native Americans, it began with good intentions. The schools wanted to pay tribute to the legend of  a leader of the Caddo Nation who split control of his people between his sons. According to the legend one of the sons founded Natchitoches and the other Nacogdoches. That is why the two cities can trace their names to the Caddo language. SFASU lost the game the year the statue was planned so they supplied the wood, a 2,000 pound log from a black gum tree. The log was carved down to its current shape over 230 workhours by a man named Harold Green. Ever since then the massive racial stereotype has been a revered symbol of gridiron victory.

In recent years many universities have stopped using nicknames, mascots and other items that made offensive use of Native American imagery. Even beloved football trophies are not immune to this purge. While Texas and Louisiana may not have a reputation for very progressive attitudes, eventually even they had to address the 300 pound injun in the room. The Texas Board of Regents -which has authority over public universities SFASU- called the continued use of Chief Caddo into question. This fired up passions on all sides among Lumberjacks and Demons alike. Eventually the Board quietly put the effort to abandon the trophy to rest. Still, I would suggest you take any opportunity you can to see Chief Caddo now. I doubt he'll be around forever.

Please return to this space each week during this college football season for more information and lore about college football's many trophies. 

The College Football Trophy Room: Week 2

Enjoy this week's installment of my series on the trophies found in college football. If you need an explanation of the series you can read the introduction. Previous editions in the series are archived under the "trophy room" tag.

The Blue Ribbon Trophy of the Week

Cy-Hawk Trophy- Iowa State Cyclones vs. University of Iowa Hawkeyes- 9/8/2012
The theme of this week's edition is that not every trophy up from grabs on the gridiron is a treasured piece of Americana. Despite what that woman with the stairway to heaven thinks, not everything that glitters is gold. In some way or another the prizes at stake this week seem a cut below the rest, with the possible exception of this week's spotlight piece, the Cy-Hawk Trophy!

Above: A picture of Cy-Hawk Trophy Classic from TheGazette.com

No, not that one.

Above: A photo from Schwinn Gunnamiss of . . . words just can't describe it.

 No, that's not it anymore either (thank heavens).

Above: The proposal for Cy-Hawk Trophy III designed by Rickabaugh Graphics

That's the one, or at least the design for it. The actual trophy hasn't been made available for photographs at the time of this writing.

The Cyclones and Hawkeyes will be playing for the third variation on the Cy-Hawk trophy in as many years for reasons that no one in the state of Iowa (let alone this blogger) can seem to fully understand. The original Cy-Hawk Trophy, seen at the top, dates back to 1977. Bob Uetz a school teacher from Ames, IA, helped create a sturdy and respectable trophy that served as corporeal bragging rights for decades. Then the sponsors got involved, and as usual, nothing good came of that. The classic hardware was retired to the Iowa Hall of Pride. The well-intentioned folks from the Iowa Corn Growers Association offered to design a new trophy. That seemed like a natural fit given the list of things outsiders associate with Iowa:
1. Corn
2. The Iowa Caucus (in Presidential Election years)
3. Wheat
4. Corn
5. Grant Wood
6-11. Corn
12. College Football
Except, it seems as though no one vetted the ICGA on their history designing things.

Above: A photo by Edmund Jenks of the Iowa Corn version of a super-hero

The hardware that the Iowa Corn Growers thought best represented a fierce football rivalry that pits neighbors against each other was a metalic shrine showing a family kneeling around the alter of freshly harvested corn. The ensuing blowback of public criticism made the responsible parties quickly withdraw the 4-H inspired monstrosity and promise to allow the public a vote in the next trophy.  The new Cy-Hawk Trophy became the old trophy fast that last year, the game's organizers had to use a substitute to award to the winning team. That knickknack didn't even last until the end of the post-game celebration. Now we have a new chance for trophy redemption. Hopefully the item revealed on Saturday will inspire pride in Iowans of all persuasions and have a nice long shelf-life (at least until the sponsor changes).

Spoils of the Game- Week 2
This is where we take a look at all the prizes at stake in this week's games.

Above: A pic, via trophyawards.com, of the less than sacred Paddlewheel Trophy

Paddlewheel Trophy- Cincinnati Bearcats vs. Pittsburgh Panthers- 9/6/2012
I tried to warn you at the offset that the keepsakes featured this week weren't exactly keepers. In the case of the Paddlewheel Trophy it seems as though nobody from Cincinnati or Pitt will be sad to see it go. When Cincy joined the Big East conference in 2005, they colluded with Pitt to juice up a rivalry between them. They called in "The River City Rivalry" which is good, because, as Matt Opper of Down the Drive put it Pittsburgh and Cincinnati are "two cities that share a river a little else". Unfortunately the prize offered to the victors failed to inspire much devotion. Now with Pitt leaving the Big East at the end of this season, the trophy may be mothballed for a long time after Thursday night. That's kind of shame because after seven straight Panther victories the two schools have played four very competitive games in the last 4 years and were just starting to build a real hatred for each other. In the end fans of UC and Pitt both dismiss the Paddlewheel. Matt Opper described it as "kind of an abomination". Anson Whaley, from Cardiac Hill, adds that it is "ridiculously large", because at about 4 feet tall and 95 pounds it's the size of most punters. So if the Paddlewheel Trophy goes into storage after Thursday, I guess you'll want a large and opaque box.

Above:A picture from PurdueSports.com of the mounted wooden club called the Shillelagh Trophy

Shillelagh Trophy- Notre Dame Fighting Irish vs. Purdue Boilermakers- 9/8/2012
For other football programs the Shillelagh Trophy might be a big deal, but among Notre Dame's many trophy games and all the high-profile prizes at stake in the B1G Ten it sort of gets lost. The trophy originated in 1957 because a merchant seaman who was a big Irish football fan (Is there any other kind of merchant seaman?) donated an authentic historic shillelagh from Ireland. That's the sort of folksy lore about a trophy I really enjoy. On the other hand, if I were a Boilermaker, I would be insulted that this prize didn't even represent Notre Dame's most prestigious shillelagh themed trophy. That position is filled by the Jeweled Shillelagh Notre Dame shares with the University of Southern California. At least it's the best trophy Notre Dame shares with another team from Indiana, so that's not nothing.

For Those Who Do Not Bowl
Each week I will use this space to highlight one trophy contested between teams from the less covered divisions and subdivisions of college football.

Above: The Traveling Trainer's Kit from Minnesota's greatest Division II rivalry as pictured on MSUMavericks.com

The Trainer's Kit- Minnesota State- Mankato Mavericks vs. St. Cloud State Huskies- 9/15/2012
In the hearts and minds of college football fans any item can become a treasure. That's the only way you could transform an empty tackle box into a coveted prize, by baptizing it with school pride. Back in 1978 Minnesota State- Mankato (School slogan- "It's not that cold") and St. Cloud State (Effectively named for the patron saint of -I kid you not- nail makers) had not played a football game in 5 years. To celebrate the renewal of the rivalry, the athletic trainers from each school used a symbolic "trainer's kit" as the spoils of the game. Since then the Trainer's Kit has grown capital letters and become a cherished item. In a 2004 piece from ESPN.com, Jeff Merron quotes a Husky player, "We plan on bringing the Trainer's Kit home with us," he said. "We may have to put a new coat of varnish on her. She's looking a little rough." That's more care and attention than some football players show their mothers.

As an added bonus, I love that this is a trophy that has a practical application. Based on what I've read the Trainer's Kit has no contents, but I think it would be awesome if it carried a functional set of equipment for an athletic trainer. What's more, I think the fully stocked Trainer's Kit should be the only equipment allowed on the sidelines at the game. It would be even better if the previous year's winner was the only team allowed to access the kit for their trainer's supplies during the game. Actually, come to think of it, the NCAA may take issue with that last idea. Besides, even if the players' health depended on winning that kit, I don't think they could care about it anymore than they do now.

Please return to this space each week during this college football season for more information and lore about college football's many trophies. 

The College Football Trophy Room: Week 1

Enjoy this week's installment of my series on the trophies found in college football. If you need an explanation of the series you can read the introduction. Previous editions in the series are archived under the "trophy room" tag.

The Blue Ribbon Trophy of the Week

Above: A  photo of the most West Virginian trophy ever. Taken from GoHerd.com

Friends of Coal Bowl Trophy- Marshall Thundering Herd vs. West Virginia Mountaineers- 9/1/2012 
To start the season, I want to focus on a trophy that may enjoy it's final Saturday in the sun for quite some time this week. West Virginia has two teams that compete in FBS-level football, so it would seem natural for the two to play every year. Yet this Saturday marks only the twelfth time the two have met. It will also be the last time the two teams play for the foreseeable future. So to commemorate the occasion I would like to share a little information about the Friends of Coal Bowl Trophy. 

The trophy was conceived as part of package to fire up a rivalry between the Marshall and WVU. The arrangements for the series had to be negotiated by West Virginia's governor at the time (college football being one of the most pressing issues facing the chief executive of any state). A series of games was scheduled to begin in 2006, and a suitable prize had to be made. For a game between West Virginia schools, the trophy had to cram as much West Virginia stuff into one physical object as the laws of physics would allow. You start with a carbon base from Clarksburg, WV. Then you add a face plate made in Charleston, WV which has been engraved at Alum Creek, WV. After that go to Williamstown, WV, so a glass blower can shape you an ornamental trophy shaped like a football. Next dig up some coal from the state's largest coal seam in Scarbro, WV. Take that to Amsted, WV to liquefy it. Finally you pour the coal inside the glass football to create a trophy that's so Appalachian it should be the subject of a Loretta Lynn song,

All of that seems like the sort of thing that should inspire a wave of provincial pride that draws all West Virginians together. However, the Friends of Coal Bowl has drawn controversy from multiple quarters. Some want to see this trophy retired because it has never changed hands. In fact Marshall has never defeated West Virginia on the gridiron. In 1997 the Thundering Herd even had Randy Moss and still couldn't win -actually after Super Bowl XLII that's not so surprising. So it can hardly seem like a rivalry if the WVU janitor never has to unlock the trophy chest. Even if Mountaineers were forced to surrender the hardware, some still feel the whole thing is too contrived to last. A rivalry has to evolve as the natural product of repeated contests and steadily increasing animosity between the two organizations. 

Setting aside questions about a competitive mismatch, political controversy has tainted the Friends of Coal Bowl. (You have no idea how many times I've tried to type either "cowl" or "boal" while writing up this blog post.) Critics have found it distasteful that an openly political organization like Friends of Coal was awarded naming rights to the game, without so much as a competitive bidding process. Though I cannot come up with any institution that would want to be associated with a sporting event in West Virginia more than the coal industry, with the possible exception of John Denver's estate. This has led others to use the game and its associated trophy as examples of some sort of corrupt political process. It gives the impression that this trophy game exists solely to allow various power brokers to curry favor with each other. In response, I say that there are lots of unsavory things power brokers do to curry favor. At least this time the rest of us got a football game and a unique trophy out of it.

Spoils of the Game- Week 1
This is where we take a look at all the prizes at stake in this week's games.

Above: The winning team in the Rocky Mountain Showdown gets to hoist the Centennial Cup, from ColoState.edu

Centennial Cup- Colorado University Buffaloes vs. Colorado State Rams- 9/1/2012
No collegiate sporting event in the state of Colorado draws more fans than the battle between the Rams and the Buffaloes for the Centennial Cup. The trophy owes its name to the nickname for the state of Colorado, The Centennial State. That nickname arose because President Ulysses Grant thought a good way to mark the USA's 100th birthday was to admit Colorado to the Union. (Perhaps I should note that Grant was a notorious drunk, remembered not for being president, but for an uncomfortable Palm Sunday he spent with Robert E. Lee.) I cannot determine when the trophy was introduced to the rivalry. Some sources insist that every game between the team has been for the cup going back to 1893. If you believe that, then you probably think this is an authentic portrait of Benjamin Disraeli.

Above: The ornate Governor's Cup that Kentucky and Louisville play for, pic from CardinalSportsZone.com

Governor's Cup- Kentucky Wildcats vs. Louisville Cardinals- 9/2/2012
Since 1994, these two schools have exchanged their version of  Governor's Cup (for there are others) to signify football dominance in the Commonwealth of Kentucky. The trophy itself looks pretty and it seems to have the desired effect of incentivising a strong performance from both teams. In the last 12 years Kentucky has only one 4 times in their first game at an opponent's stadium, all of them were at Louisville. Similarly those were the only 4 home openers the Cardinals have lost in the last 14 years, but they have won two of the last three games played at Louisville. (All of this is starting to sound like I'm promoting a gambling tout's hotline, so I'll move on.) My main issue is that the Governor's Cup doesn't seem especially prized by other school. Both of these universities make basketball their number one athletic priority. When the Wildcats and the Cardinals met in the 2012 Final Four, it was said to "transcend imagination". I would guess that that sort of hyperbole will never be deployed to describe a game for the Governor's Cup. 

For Those Who Do Not Bowl
Each week I will use this space to highlight one trophy contested between teams from the less covered divisions and subdivisions of college football.

Above: The bronzed cleats of Myron Claxton, photo from OxyAthletics.com

 Myron Claxton's Shoes - Occidental Tigers vs. Whittier Poets- 11/3/2012
The hardware that appear farther up in this post have prestige and fame, but they cannot match the pure whimsy of a keepsake like Myron Claxton's Shoes. The story of this pair of bronzed sneakers dates back to 1939. Even then these two Southern California schools had a pretty good rivalry. After six straight Poet victories, the animosity had reached a level that members of the Occidental football team attempted to sabotage Whittier's All-American tackle by stealing his football cleats on the night before the game. Undeterred, Claxton took the field wearing his work boots. The Poets thumped the Tigers 36-0 and after the game Myron Claxton reclaimed his shoes from the Occidental sideline. Claxton would be selected in the next NFL draft, last overall pick a.k.a. Mr. Irrelevant, but still he was drafted. When the two schools met in 1946, a Whittier fraternity had bronzed the booties and placed them up to be claimed as booty by the winning team. The Tigers won that game and the boots have been handed back and forth ever since.

There is one more aspect of this game that interests me. In 1939, the man who would become the most famous Whittier alumnus, President Richard Milhous Nixon, was living in the area practicing law professionally. It is very possible that he attended the game to cheer on his Poets. However I somehow doubt this. If he had seen Claxton triumph over the Tigers' prank, surely he would have learned the dirty tricks do not pay.

Please return to this space each week during this college football season for more information and lore about college football's many trophies.  

The College Football Trophy Room: Introduction

Above:The Crystal Football awarded to the champion of the coaches' poll may be the most famous prize in college football, but it is far from the only trophy in the game.

So many things make college football special that, if I tried to write a list, carpal tunnel would set in before I could get half-way through. Yet somewhere near the top of my list -written well before pain crippled my pudgy, little hands- would be the unique wonder of trophy games. In no other sport I can name are teams awarded an hallowed artifact based on the outcome of an individual regular season game.

Trophies could be awarded for any number of reasons, to mark long standing rivalries, to signify respect between two schools, to reflect the pagentry surrounding a game, to boost the enthusiasm among the fans, or just because a bunch of drunken college kids thought it would be fun back in 1933. As varied as the reasons to have a trophy can be, the forms these trophies come in are even more diverse. On top of the many cups, bowls, and standard trophies, college football teams compete for buckets, skillets, rags, axes, jugs, shoes, golden hats and wooden turtles.

The raw number of prizes won and lost in a season will likely surprise/horrify the casual fan. So far my research has discovered more than 150 trophies still actively awarded to various game-winners.  Included in that number are six different Governor's Cups, five different Victory Bells, and one Governor's Victory Bell. If someone were so inclined, we could assemble a very impressive trophy case with all the baubles and tchotchkes at stake over the course of a season. In a sense that is what I intend to do over the coming weeks.

This entry launches my new blog series focusing on the wide array of trophy games to be played over this college football season. Each week I will explore different aspects of the games that decided who receive these prizes, the teams that will compete for them and the physical objects of reverence themselves. The goal will be to highlight a key trophy up for grabs during the coming weekend and take note of all the games being played for spoils in the FBS. (Completely tangential aside: FBS stands for "Football Bowl Subdivision"  to differentiate the high-profile portion of NCAA Division I schools that play in bowls from those that play in a championship playoff or FCS. Well now that the playoff proponents have won their much desired 4-team playoff for FBS starting in 2014, won't that make the current monikers obsolete. Maybe we'll go back to I-A and I-AA. Though I would like to hear some alternative suggestions.) In addition to the top-level rivalry games many of you already have heard of, I will feature some of the trophies that the less famous schools play for. Trust me there are some really interesting items up for grabs in Divisions II and III. So please check this space regularly during the college football season. I hope to get you all so excited for these trophy games that you start clearing some space on your mantle.

History with the Cap'n- Doctor Assisted Assassination

History has more rich and interesting stories than any one class can do justice. In your typical high school level U.S. History class, you have so many facts to digest in only a year of study that you have no hope of learning anything that might actually interest you. History class fails to engage most students because their teachers don't have the time to explore any thing of meaning or relevance to the students in any degree of depth. Just to demonstrate how intriguing and informative history can become when studied in detail, I like breaking down particular items down to the most obscure and surprising facets. Almost always I find we can learn something from nearly anything recorded in the annals of history.

For today's entry we will take a deeper look at the assassination of a U.S. President. Before I start bulleting out my points, I'd like you to reflect on how much you can actually recall about presidential assassinations in American history. If you find yourself drawing mostly a blank, don't feel bad because you are far from alone. With many surveys revealing how little Americans know about their history, I wouldn't be surprised if a majority of Americans couldn't name all four presidents who were assassinated. Yet when you consider that we are talking about the leader of the nation being violently murdered, it seems odd that we don't discuss them more beyond all those crazed JFK conspiracy theories. So let's leave behind the well remembered and often mourned Presidents Lincoln and Kennedy, and instead turn our attention to President James A. Garfield and his untimely death.

• I'll get the basic facts out of the way first. James A. Garfield had won a close election on a platform of reforming government. In his first 119 days in office he took bold steps to strengthen the national government and end corrupt practices, such as filling high government offices with unqualified political supporters. Unfortunately on his 120th day as POTUS a mentally unstable man named Charles Guiteau shot Garfield at a railway station in Washington D.C, as the president was about to leave town on vacation. Guiteau had repeatedly requested, but never received, a diplomatic position from Garfield -possibly because Guiteau had no diplomatic or political experience to speak of- and he felt wronged by the president. After the shooting doctors rushed to aid the president, and that's where the story starts to get really interesting . . .

• The first doctor to tend to the president tried to give him some on the spot medication, a combination of brandy and liquid ammonia. Garfield, as you might expect, vomited. I can't say for sure whether the doctor took that as a good sign or a bad sign. I only knew that it did nothing to discourage the rest of the president's caretakers from continuing to perform some very bad medicine.

• Doctors focused their efforts on trying to locate and remove the bullet lodged into the president's body. Surgeon D. Willard Bliss offered the services of his "Nelaton Probe" to trace the path of the missile through Garfield's flesh. When jabbing the probe into the president's innards and wriggling it around for a few minutes failed to produce the slug, Dr. Bliss resorted to sticking his finger into the wound. Another doctor would later try inserting his hand into the wound up to his wrist, apparently working under the belief that Bliss just hadn't done enough damage. Eventually the area where the doctors had probed and fingered and fisted would become infected. Naturally they took this as evidence that the bullet must still be in that area.

• Eventually scientific expert Alexander Graham Bell offered the services of his new invention, a rudimentary metal detector (The Cap'n told you he'd come back to this). The device used Bell's telephone technology in combination with a simple electrical system that caused a hum when pointed near metal. When Bell scanned Garfield with the metal detector they heard a hum where the doctors thought the bullet lie. So the medical men launched into a new series of surgeries by the end transforming a three-inch bullet wound into a twenty-inch tunnel of infected tissue.

• In the end Garfield succumbed 80 days after being shot. Medical historians believe infections caused his death (and caused him a lot of pain along the way). Ultimately the bullet Guiteau had fired into the president failed in its intended purpose to kill the leader of the nation. An autopsy would find the bullet lodged ten inches away from the doctors' invasive tinkering, sealed by Garfield's body in a protective cyst. Fittingly the doctors became the subject of public scorn and ridicule for their apparent malpractice. Dr. Bliss would later apologize, but the damage had been done.

• When the assassin faced trial, Guiteau tried to defend himself by claiming that he was not responsible for killing the president. "The doctors did that," he said "I simply shot at him." Not surprisingly the jury saw things otherwise, and he was hanged for his crimes. He may have been better off letting his attorney use the insanity defense (still a new concept at the time), instead of trying to defend himself by saying he had "divine authority" to shoot the country's leader.
  

• Dr. Bliss holds the unenviable distinction of being the only doctor involved with two presidential assassinations (he was also on hand, as the head of a Washington D.C. area, hospital after Booth shot Lincoln). However one person has been involved with three of the four presidential assassination: Robert Todd Lincoln. Robert Lincoln was the son of Abraham Lincoln and the president's wife Mary Todd. He was invited to join Abe and Mary at Ford's Theater but declined as he was too tired. He went on to serve as Garfield's Secretary of War, and accepted Garfield's invitation to meet at the train station when Guiteau attacked. Year later President William McKinley would invite Robert Lincoln to the Pan-American Exposition of 1901. Lincoln came, and yet again a president was shot and killed. Though Robert Lincoln would live another 25 years after McKinley's assassination he apparently was never invited to another presidential event (perhaps wisely so).

• The untimely death of Garfield did have some unexpectedly pleasant consequences. His vice-president, Chester A. Arthur, had to take on the presidency. Political bosses had put Arthur on the ticket to sooth concerns among corrupt party members that Garfield would reform them all out of a job. They thought Arthur, as an old-line party member in good standing, would make sure the political toadies still got their piece of the pie. When he took office, many feared Arthur would undo Garfield's reforms and go about politics as usual. However Arthur would defy those pessimistic expectations, and take great steps to change long standing political processes. He pushed legislation that would ensure government positions wouldn't go to political lackeys unless they could prove they at least met the minimum qualifications- a standard America still proudly holds its appointed officials to today.

If we look over the details of just this one incident from American history we can find plenty of important lessons. From the failings of the doctors we can see that even well-meaning experts can make grave mistakes when not armed with the right information. From the examples of Alexander Graham Bell and Chester A. Arthur we can support the old adage that past performance is no indicator of future success. From the story of Guiteau we can learn that no matter what heinous acts people do they can almost always defend their actions, if only to themselves. Overall we can tell that there are plenty of dangerous things out there besides the bullets of an assassin, a thought-provoking lesson as many worry about assassination today. Even Garfield himself said that "Assassination can no more be guarded against than death by lightning; and it is best not to worry about either." These may not necessarily be lessons unique to this moment in history, but the evidence they present toward any lesson has value. Certainly at least enough value to warrant more than just a passing mention in an over-stuffed history class.

History with the Cap'n- Ring my Bell

Historians love studying the unique individual. The unusual and complex person who stands out from the crowd and lives an exceptional life certainly helps keep the history books interesting. In fact some have argued that unique individuals are the only thing worth studying in history. Unfortunately the more outstanding the individual the more likely he or she is to be a little to complex to easily categorize. One person who nicely exemplifies this was born 162 years ago tomorrow on March 3rd, 1847 CE, Alexander Graham Bell. Undoubtedly Bell had an incredible mind and he certainly did some amazing work in his life. Unfortunately, most people know Bell as the inventor of the telephone, an accomplishment for which he almost certainly received too much credit. Like his friend Thomas Edison, history should probably celebrate Alexander Graham Bell as a multifaceted genius who significantly helped advance the fields of technology in several ways. Yet, again like Edison, the popular imagination remembers him only as an inventor of a modern convenience. So, once again, the Cap'n will help out all you history buffs, by debunking some myths and revealing some truths about Alexander Graham Bell.

• First, let's address the whole issue of who invented the telephone and when. According to a resolution of the U.S. Congress, the U.S. House of Representatives acknowledges Antonio Meucci for his work in the invention of the telephone. Meucci has a strong claim to fathering the telephone. He was a poor, struggling Italian immigrant who could have legally prevented Bell from patenting his telephone if he only had enough money to cover the proper fees. Meucci sued Bell over who had the proper legal claim to the invention. Attempting to prove his complaint Meucci sent his working models to the labs at Western Union. In what can only be described as the opposite of serendipity for Meucci, he sent his models to the very same lab where Bell worked. The models would later mysteriously disappear, sort of in the same way that the grass would mysteriously stay green. Critics of Meucci have derided his claims. They argue his design would not function if tested and appeared to defy the basic physics involved with telecommunications. Even if you dismiss Meucci, Elisha Gray can challenge Bell as father of the telephone. Gray had designed an apparatus which appears to have been technologically superior to Bell's. He went to the patent office to legally stake his claim the field of telephone technology, but would actually miss out because Bell had patented his telephone mere hours before. Gray sued Bell, who probably spent as much time litigating as he did inventing. The courts would name Bell the inventor of the telephone, but who wants to win like that.
  

• Truthfully, the question of who invented the telephone is at best a nebulous issue with only debatable answers. Many people had worked on devices similar to Bell's invention. Bell simply had the luck to land the legal rights, the dedication to make the phone a practical tool, and the business sense to envision the telephone as a commercially viable item. In fact Bell was so confident in the telephone's chances of success, he boldly predicted that in the future there would be at least one telephone in every city in the U.S.

• Bell had a life long interest in communication, which probably led him to experiment with telephone technology in the first place. He devised a very rudimentary telecommunications system as a child. He trained his dog to say the words (or at least a close approximation) "How are you, grandmama?" so he could greet his grandmother from a different room in the house. I haven't found any record of how his grandmother reacted to having a dog bound up and talk to her, but I just hope both she and the dog survived the first incident.
  

• As I mentioned above, Bell was what you could call a polymath. He had a brilliant mind and he took an interest in a great variety of intellectual and scientific pursuits. He had an interest in aeronautics, so he designed a kite that could carry a person. He wanted to tinker with mechanical propulsion and he helped invent a hydrofoil that would set the world-water speed record at the time. He valued geography education and as president of the National Geographic Society, he encouraged the creation of the National Geographic Magazine. His constant improvements to the telephone established the basis for the phonograph and communicating with light rays. As an amateur geneticist, he tried to breed an especially prolific line of sheep and succeeding in producing sheep with superfluous nipples (okay, so that one didn't work out so well). He even created an early metal detector that completely failed to save the life of . . . actually, I'll save that item for a later entry.
  

• Of all the things Bell did with his life beyond the phone, he took the most pride in the work he did for the deaf. Both his wife and mother were deaf. Even before he patented his telephone he opened a school for the deaf. Eventually he founded a society for the deaf that still exists today and now bears his name. He worked closely with Helen Keller and she even dedicated her autobiography to him. Bell dedicated a large part of his life to an segment of his population that at the time had no use for his most famous creation. Now almost no one hears about this side of him. Maybe that sad irony is just the karmic scales balancing out the good fortune he had in his work on the telephone.
  

• The fame and accolades lauded onto Bell for supposedly inventing the telephone put him in a special class of hero. Though few people would ever learn of his other work he stands alone as the only person to be named one of the 100 greatest Britons, Americans, and Canadians of all time. Few other people rose to such a level of success that multiple nations would compete for the right to claim them as natives.

History with the Cap'n- An Eruption of Trivia

For some people if they hear one catchy tune on the radio, they spend the rest of the day annoying people with their repetitious humming. Others find themselves at work getting all the itches and twitches of a rehab patient when they know they have a new gadget to tinker with at home. We all have our tiny obsessions that can dominate our thoughts when the right stimulus triggers them. For the Cap'n, I often find my mind picking up a stray reference to an unusual topic, and suddenly my brain starts craving arcane or trivial knowledge about that subject like a 5 year old craves the taste of paste.

The other day I listened to President Obama address Congress about some silly thing, then tuned in for the response from the Republican representative on behalf of the opposition party. Much to my later vexation, my ears picked up Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana mention something in his best "Kenneth the Page"-voice about "something called volcano monitoring". While others went on to bicker about the comparisons between the two speeches and the two yokels, I started to ponder whether history could provide any interesting stories of when volcanic activity was either monitored too little or too much. Well the historical record did not disappoint in the area of volcano related anecdotes. I share the results of my search below, along with some other intriguing factoids related to volcanoes.

• If the general populace already knows about any volcanic eruption in history, they know that Mount Vesuvius unexpectedly blanketed Pompeii with volcanic ash and debris on August 24th in the year 79 CE (or as the Pompeians would have said LXXIX). Every school child gets to look at pictures of the bodies sealed in place by the volcano's spew and enjoy a macabre thrill. No wonder we all grow up so desensitized to violence and fascinated with the morbid. A few things the general populace may not now include the fact that Vesuvius wiped out two cities, famously Pompeii, which has petrified corpses, and the less well-known Herculaneum, which got slowly buried under fifty feet of mud. Actually, considering that, I can understand why Pompeii gets better publicity.
  

• Pompeii actually stands out as a very strong example of people not paying enough attention to the local neighborhood volcano. Even before Vesuvius gradually built up to its main explosion over the course of a few days -shooting steam, causing tremors, and the like- the city of Pompeii had been evacuated just a few year earlier because of massive earthquake. In fact archaeologists found evidence that many people where still in the process of repairing and redecorating their homes when the volcano finally burst. That just proves that truisms of home ownership were as true during the Ancient Roman empire as they are today. As any homeowner knows, once you finally bring a contractor in to start fixing one problem, some new and completely unrelated thing goes wrong.
  

• Excavation of Pompeii revealed more secrets than just buckets of plaster and stacks of tile. Apparently archaeologist uncovered so much erotic art in the remains of the city that they were able to open a special museum focusing on the pornography of Pompeii. If we included that in the history books half the high schoolers would graduate wanting to become archaeologists. I would take this as fairly convincing evidence that the Pompeians did not expect the eruption to strike so quickly. If I thought I was about to be buried in place by a cloud of super-heated pumice, I would not want to be caught holding a dirty magazine.
  

• Pompeii also provided an excellent opportunity for someone to try investigating an eruption far too closely. Legendary Roman scholar Pliny the Elder heard about the eruption and felt overcome by his own curiosity and compassion. As the first natural historian, Pliny decided to inspect the volcano more closely and lead a rescue mission to go right into the middle of the outburst. Apparently feeling no reason to fear the ongoing flare up, Pliny spent the night with a friend who lived near Vesuvius. He ate, bathed and slept as fire rained from the sky, and the mountain spewed ash, rocks, and lava all around. Pliny seems to have developed a sense for the danger he faced, as history records that he had the members of his rescue crew strap pillows to their heads to protect them from falling rock. Unsurprisingly, Pliny died during his ill-planned mission, seemingly from a combination of the volcano's deadly fumes and his own underlying asthma. History would remember Pliny as one of the great minds of his age, all available evidence to the contrary notwithstanding. (I can safely mock Pliny the Elder without having to worry about appearing insensitive or offending anyone, right? It's not too soon is it?)
  

• Now before you go thinking volcanoes are all bad. I should let you know that we get all our diamonds from volcanoes. I know you think of diamonds coming from mines dug into the Earth's crust. In truth, diamonds form several hundred miles beneath the surface of the Earth. It takes volcanic eruptions to drag them to where we can reach them. This is why most rich diamond mines are usually near sites of volcanic activity. Before you start filling your head with get-rich-quick schemes, go reread the section on Pliny the Elder, then reconsider messing around with anything volcanic.

• You might look down on the case of Pompeii as an example of the ignorant people of the ancient world suffering because they lacked sophisticated scientific knowledge. You should know that humans have shown the same propensity to ignore the warning signs of an imminent eruption in modern times. In 1902, the island of Martinique began experiencing some early symptoms of an impending eruption of the island's Mount Pelee. Unfortunately for the residents of Martinique the local governor was more concerned about politics than safety. With his party facing a major election soon, he didn't want the voters getting all anxious and hung up on some minor thing like an impending eruption. If they overreacted to hearing the news that their lives were in grave danger, they might take it out on their elected officials. So instead of evacuating the island the governor suppressed any warnings of the danger, prevented people from leaving and assured people that the city at the foot of Mt. Pelee, Saint-Pierre, was the safest place to be. This led to thousands of people crowding into St. Pierre in the hopes of protecting themselves. When the eruption came in killed more than 28,000 people, including the governor, in about two minutes. One of the few survivors was a prisoner who lived because he had been sealed in the underground holding cell awaiting execution. The prisoner would be pardoned and later travel with the Barnum & Bailey Circus, because any rube would gladly part with two-bits just to see irony of that magnitude.
  

• The nation of Iceland has actually found a way to turn volcanoes to their benefit in an unusual way. Since this nigh-Arctic island rests on a volcanic hotbed as overactive as Philip the Hyper-Hypo, it has found all sorts of uses for geothermic energy. In surely the most unexpected example of this, Iceland uses the geothermal heat to grow bananas. Botanists build greenhouses around hot springs which when controlled can provide ideal conditions for cultivating the tropical fruit. For a time Iceland produced more bananas than any other European nation and even grew enough to begin exporting them. Iceland made so much money from the banana trade, that even Greenland has tried to get into the act. If proper volcano monitoring can allow two nations known for their frigid conditions to become major producers of tropical fruit, then maybe it does merit more attention.

• In all of this I should note that at times people have gotten carried away when watching volcanoes. Once in 1976 some scientists became very concerned about the signals they observed from the volcano on the island of Guadalupe, La Grande Soufrière. (That's French for "big sulfur outlet". Wait, really? C'mon France I thought you were supposed to be more poetic than that.) While some scientists thought any volcanic eruption would do little damage and didn't warrant alarm others suggested evacuating Guadalupe for fear of a Martinique level disaster. Caution won out and thousands of people had to relocate, except for those few individuals who resigned themselves to whatever fate the volcano dispensed. Famed German filmmaker Werner Herzog became fascinated with the idea of an impending catastrophe and took a crew to document the desolated island and the terrible detonation whenever it occurred. In the end La Grande Soufrière barely erupted at all, the geothermal equivalent of a burp. After all that trouble and worry, the ultimate result was a host of inconvenienced people from Guadalope and a very weird documentary. So it just may be the case that some people do take their volcano monitoring too seriously. Then again, maybe we should all read that passage about Pliny the Elder again.
  

History with the Cap'n- Buffalo!

Happy Buffalo Bill Day everybody!

I'm not entirely clear on when or how William F. Cody a.k.a "Buffalo Bill" climbed high enough up the pantheon of American heroes to merit his own day. Seemingly indifferent to my questions, someone somewhere has declared that Americans should spend February 26th remembering and celebrating the life and works of Buffalo Bill. Since the man headed a traveling frontier themed show -dubbed Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, in a fit of humility- that popularized the romantic idea of the Wild West, and permanently etched a place of Cowboys and Indians into our popular culture, I cannot begrudge the man a little memorialization. So I will use today's blog post as an opportunity to regale you with historical trivia related to Buffalo the man and Buffalo the animal (though not Buffalo the city in New York, because I feel they have enough problems without some snarky blog taking cheap shots at them).

• Buffalo Bill got his start riding for the Pony Express. He answered an ad that read "WANTED young skinny wiry fellows . . .Must be expert riders willing to risk death daily. Orphans preferred."
  

• Since the Pony Express didn't even last two years as a long distance communication enterprise (and I bet you thought it was a long running institution of the Old West), Cody had to land a new job. He found work hunting food for railroad construction crews. Thus he began hunting American buffaloes, since they were the most plentiful source of good food (re: meat) around. Thus the moniker.

• Actually, I must note for accuracy that Buffalo Bill never had any real contact with buffalo, because there are no wild buffaloes native to North America. Cody hunted and killed bison. You can find buffalo in Africa and Asia, just not the American west. Some might explain this mislabeling of bison as an honest mistake of identification on the part of some early settler. After all they sort of have a similar appearance and some similar attributes. I don't really agree with that -do you even know what a proper buffalo looks like?- and I would equate that kind of error to mistaking an opossum for a koala.
  

• In fairness to Buffalo Bill, he was very successful at hunting and killing bison. Historians estimate that he killed about 4,280 bison in about a year and a half. Hunters had a variety of methods they employed in hunting bison. In fact the hunters has so much success rate that the bison population in North America has fallen from an estimated 60 million when Europeans began settling her to now only 50,000 bison roaming free today. That's actually improvement from the nineteenth century when the bison were down to a few hundred.

• My younger brother once told me that you can make a complete gramatically correct sentence using only the word "buffalo". As in "Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo." Some have claimed this is the longest English language sentence you can create with just one word. I cannot be certain this is true, but I would love to watch people try to top it. (NOTE: The link does not lead to anything my younger brother wrote, just an article on the same topic.)

• Buffalo Bill would later go into acting alongside another famous Bill of the Old West, Wild Bill Hickok.
  

• The only natural predator of an adult bison, or buffalo if you prefer, is a wolf pack. Just to clarify, I am not talking about a pack of wolves taking on a herd of bison. I mean to say that it takes several wolfs at once to have any shot of killing an adult bison.

• When Buffalo Bill died he was honored by heads of state and then not buried where he had specified in his will. His wife claimed that he had changed his wishes on his death bed. A dispute arose between his proposed burial site (a town he founded) and his actual burial site (a place with a nice view), over who had the more legitimate claim to serve as Cody's eternal resting place. The feud would go on to involve a bounty for grave robbing and it would be settled when the two towns exchanged smoke signals. To give you the proper context for that I should mention that they were proposing grave robbery in 1948, and exchanging smoke signals in 1968.
  

So in case you have any social events planned for today and want to demonstrate your affinity for all things buffalo, I have hopefully left you well prepared to perpetuate the legends of Buffalo Bill and the Wild West.