Wild West Land Blog

Just watched this hilarious BBC video about an Irish bovine ‘invader’ - a runaway bull who escaped and decided to pay a quick visit to the Cummins’ SuperValu store in Ballinrobe, County Mayo:

Two things to note:

1. The CCTV footage shows a brave meat counter man (with food hygiene hat) who plays matador with a supermarket trolley. Get that man a medal now!
2. Good on John Cummins, owner of the store, to see the funny side and make a joke about ‘fresh meat’. He should get the bull stuffed and mounted outside the front of the shop for posterity.

Rearing cattle produces more greenhouse gases than driving cars - that’s a fact (Livestock’s long shadow, UN report 29 November 2006).

A love of cheesburgers therefore not only killed Elvis in his prime, but is highly likely to cause climate chaos in the years ahead. Or maybe not.

Today, scientists have published the cow genome. After 6 years of work by more than 300 researchers, and $53 million in funding, the genetic map of the cow species is now known.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle this means that:

The researchers believe the findings will help improve the quality and safety of beef and dairy products and can be used to develop better ways of treating and preventing diseases that affect cattle.

Surely though as well as being able to breed cows that produce more milk and meat those clever genetic experts will be able to engineer a cow that well, to be blunt, farts less? And less methane is good for the planet given it’s 23 times as warming as CO2.

So given time will supercow be a reality? Or do we all need to start eating a lot less meat? I’m more than happy to sacrifice a few cheeseburgers if it means we don’t all end up eating Soylent Green.

Useless fact of the day - “Cattle and humans have about 80 percent of their genes in common”

I’ve been looking for more vintage pin-up style western playing cards lately and have come across a whole host of great sites about this style of artwork that was so popular during the 30’s, 40’s and 1950’s.

There’s even a dedicated gallery for collectors, ‘Great American Pinup’ at the Louis K. Meisel Gallery in Prince Street, New York City.

The picture below I found on a recent eBay hunt and is at the tamer end of the pinup art spectrum:

I’ve no idea who took the picture but it’s in the style of the more risque art created by Joyce Ballantyne, Art Frahm and Gil Elvgren for Brown & Bigelow. It also features on the Home Brew Records website for rock-a-billy / hillbilly group The Ranch Girls - in fact they have a good selection of wholesome western pinup girls from the fifties.

Brown & Bigelow of course is the keeper of some iconic American art produced mainly for calendars for over 100 years by some seriously seminal illustrators:

The Brown & Bigelow Archive… includes the exciting westerns of Charles Russell and Frederick Remington; the sporting scenes of Philip Goodwin and Frank Hoffman; the humorous “poker dogs” of C.M. Coolidge; the wildlife of Sweeney; the landscapes of Maxfield Parrish and the work of America’s best known artist, Norman Rockwell. We also feature hundreds of pin-ups by Gil Elvgren, Rolf Armstrong, Earl Moran, Zoe Mozert and others.

As the Meisel gallery website states, this pinup style of illustration was everywhere in the first half of the 20th century:

Every business, restaurant, theatre, club, and locker room was decorated with these beauties. Feminism, multi-culturalism, and political correctness, and all other hindrances to the pleasures provided by the pin-up artists were nonexistent.

So has modern political correctness killed off pinup art? In World War II when fighter plane and bomber nose art was common was it only brave airmen who got away with this public display of glamour? I doubt it.

In fact I’m sure far worse can be found on the 21st century internet and probably in many modern day advertising campaigns too where sex sells is still the motto of the day.

More finds to follow…

For now buy a copy of Taschen’s ‘1000 Pin-Up Girls’ and celebrate the innocence of the American pin-up .

Yesterday I posted a link to data showing the rapid westward expansion of people settling the United States as demonstrated by the rise of farming. Pretty dull stuff if you’re not into statistics you might think!

Well 24 hours later and I stumble across the UNESCO World Digital Library which has a fantastic collection of documents and maps. Some very pretty ancient maps too:

I’ve loved looking at maps since childhood and would highly recommend Katherine Harmon’s book You Are Here: Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination if you share this interest.

So browsing this online treasure trove I come across some superb examples showing how long people have been fascinated with exploring and colonising the American continent way before the days of the Wild West.

I’ve listed just a few in chonological order below that are all connected by this spirit of adventure and probably also a fear of the unknown:

1. A Modern and Quite Precise Depiction of America (or the Fourth Part of the World) Dated 1562 and annotated in Latin it shows the first mention of California and also indicates just how much land there is to explore - anything above the southern seaboard states is marked “ulterivs hec terra incognita permansit” which according to an online translation site is ‘farther this earth unknown to stay to the end’. Very Lost!
2. Map of California Shown as an Island 100 years later and Spanish explorers have still not determined if California is connected to the North American mainland. Perhaps if the ever-expected superquake does occur the state may well end up disconnected from the rest of the west coast.
3. History of the expedition under the command of Captains Lewis and Clark, to the sources of the Missouri, thence across the Rocky Mountains and down the river Columbia to the Pacific Ocean An American classic - over 2 years of exploration to discover land and people previously unknown. Now you can read the original online.
4. Emigrant’s Map and Guide for Routes to North America 50 years later and it doesn’t take a Corps of Discovery to adventure across the US. All you need is a handy map showing how and where to start your journey. But 300 years on from the first map and the inner reaches of the American continent are now marked as ‘Indian Territorium’ - Indian Territory.

I look forward to future additions to the collection.

Thanks to Gapminder data you can now watch the real-time settlement of the US from the era of the founding fathers in Virginia through to the western states in the 18th century and beyond.

Visit the link for the data on ‘US farm land (acreage per person)’ and then hit the play button bottom left of the Flash style interface.

The chart will then whiz you from 1610 through to the present day with colourful dots appearing as and when records of farms began to be stored I’m guessing.

A great way to visualize the settlement of the US as westward expansion took hold:

Is that a hovercraft I see in this short clip on the BBC website demonstrating the skills of the Burnham-On-Sea area rescue boat?

Not sure farmers in Texas would have this kind of equipment on hand for rescuing cattle stuck in mud.