The 16-to-1 mine was discovered in 1896, now on the south side of Alleghany, California (Nevada County - about 30 miles NE of Nevada City). If it weren't California, I'd be living up in those hills.
A hard rock mine, the 16-to-1 has produced over 1 million oz of high grade gold ore. Much of the ore is worth more as specimens than as gold. It is still in production but on a minor scale, producing specimens rather than bullion. One of its most productive days occurred in 1993 when 2600 oz were removed from a single pocket. The average density exceeds 1oz/ton.
Marshall Tucker Band - Fire On The Mountain
When I was in that business, I had a chance to work in this mine. The quartz veins were shot with gold; I've never before or since seen such rich ore, including a stint with Newmont Gold; including museum samples. I was once privileged enough to be invited into the vault ...
The average density at 16-to-1 is 1oz/ton; the good rock may be 10oz/pound. Newmont - at the time I was there - considered 0.1oz/ton to be a very rich property.
I don't have the gold bug ... but sometimes I come close to the edge.
I have no idea why I passed by other than I've been known to take back roads. I didn't stop other than to take this photo; seeing as it's not far off I-64, and I used to travel that stretch of interstate quite a bit, I suspect I may have been driving on IN-62 just to be off the main road.
I forget when I took the photo but it was long enough ago that there's a payphone here.
I'm guessing but I suspect this is in ghostsniper's neck of the woods.
There's an article on American Thinker - "Just what is the ‘magic number’?" - by Stu Tarlowe in which the sentence of Bryan Kohberger was discussed. Tarlowe wondered just how many murders was enough to justify execution. Being in Idaho, this has been a story longer than it has been at the national level.
The point of the article questioned why Kohberger wasn't sentenced to death rather than 4 consecutive life sentences.
From a only-casually interested point of view, I'll suggest that by pulling the death penalty off the table, the Kohberger was willing to confess to the murders. This deal included Kohberger not appealing the sentence. This saved the expense of trials, appeals, more appeals, and allowed Kohbeger to be placed in general population rather than Death Row. Kohberger will die in prison - likely far sooner than expected and by a means slower and likely more painful than either the firing squad or lethal injection.
Some people are born evil and Kohberger appears to be one of those.
Idaho switched to execution by firing squad just this year when an execution (that had had appeal after appeal for decades) was to be carried out by lethal injection but there was a problem with obtaining the "proper" drugs (why an overdose of morphine or fentanyl or some such isn't used is beyond me). Bullets are readily available but lethal injection remains an alternative method of execution. Hanging was the primary method until 1978 when lethal injection was selected as the primary execution method.
To be sentenced to death requires a unanimous vote by jury; a single objection will change the sentence to life and there is no retrial. Rape of children under 12 is also a capital offense as is 1st degree kidnap (with circumstances) and perjury leading to the execution of an innocent person.
There are currently 8 men and one woman on death row here; two of them having been sentenced in the 1980s ...
The Walter J McCarthy Jr was built in 1977. 1000ft long and 105 ft high, powered by 14,000 hp worth of diesel engines, it carries 80,900 tons of coal from Superior, WI to Detroit Edison's power plants at St Clair and Monroe. It is named for a former chairman (d. 2013/age 88) of the Detroit Edison electric company (founded 1886).
Seen here southbound, approaching the Blue Water Bridge at Port Huron/Sarnia, leaving Lake Huron and entering the St Clair River. The St Clair power plant is about 17 miles downriver from here.
This ship is significantly larger - half again as large - than the Edmund Fitzgerald ... whose Chief Mate was Walter McCarthy (no known relation)
On the bridge:
There are 13 1000 footers on the Lakes; the Paul R Tregurtha being the last built (1981) and largest at 1013 ft, running with 17,000 hp.
Once upon a time when I was a young sprout - 7th or 8th grade I believe, I had to take an aptitude test. Navigator on a Great Lakes freighter was at the top of the list. I had a great-uncle Bill who was a captain of one of the freighters ... but the life didn't appeal to me, and as it turned out, my job in my later years would have been baby-sitting a GPS unit.
Golden Earring co-founder George Kooymans died earlier today at age 77 of complications from ALS.
1973's "Radar Love" was by far the Golden Earring's most well-known composition but I first heard of them with a 19-minute cover of "8 Miles High" in 1969.
Less well known is "The Devil Made Me Do It" (1982).
"The 1967 Detroit Riots were among the most violent and destructive riots in U.S. history. By the time the bloodshed, burning and looting ended after five days, 43 people were dead, 342 injured, nearly 1,400 buildings had been burned and some 7,000 National Guard and U.S. Army troops had been called into service."
Musical interpretations
Gordon Lightfoot - Black Day In JulyJohn Lee Hooker - The Motor City's Burning (blues)MC5 - The Motor City's Burning (John Lee Hooker cover) (angry rock)
I was but a mere sprout; too old to be a child, way too young to be a man. It was a Sunday morning on the family farm in Ontario. The family was heading back to Detroit that day and I was listening to CKLW while breakfast was being prepared ... when I heard the border had been closed.
Say what???
We didn't have TV on the farm - this was in the days of only 3 networks (Detroit had 4: ABC, CBS, CBC (Windsor), NBC) and we were out of range of all. Hey, we had just stopped using the old style wooden crank phones on a party line this year. (It now hangs on my wall)
A hot, muggy, stagnant July night in the city. Police decide to raid an after-hours speak-easy. A crowd of bored hot willing to check out any unusual goings-on gathered as the police were loading up near-on 100 saloon customers for an all-expenses paid night courtesy of the city. After discussing the situation among themselves and the police along with a combination of alcohol, weed, and boredom in the middle of the night, things quickly got out of hand by early Sunday morning. Ontario was worried about spill-over into Windsor and closed the crossings between Windsor and Sarnia: both bridges, the tunnel, and the ferry.
Better to be stuck on the Canadian side of the border - at least in my eyes.
Detroit was the 5th largest city in the US at the time. The entire city, including the giant auto industry, was shut down for two days. The riots continued for almost a week. What puzzled most was that Detroit was considered "negro-friendly": plentiful jobs, good pay, well-kept neighborhoods; "a city with a reputation for being almost a model in race relations."
"an all-white police force raided a blind pig that was frequented by Blacks on Clairmount Street. Eighty-two people were on their way to jail when a crowd gathered and the riot broke out. After six days of fire and rage, 43 people had died. Arson and looting took their toll on the city."
"When the border was restricted, Canadians lined the waterfront on the Canadian side. With the safety of the river between them, they sat in lawn chairs or on the hoods of their cars in a silent vigil. They listened to the sound of gunfire and sirens, and watched the fires and tracer bullets streak across the night sky. They pointed to each new outbreak, as if they were watching a sporting event, or as if they had front-row seats at the theatre."
"In the rioting that broke out shortly before dawn on Sunday, 2,000 Detroit police were overwhelmed quickly. So were 350 State police. The Michigan National Guard, moving in with 7,100 men on Sunday afternoon, also proved unable to control the violence. Finally, in the early hours of Tuesday, came the U.S. Army, with 4,700 paratroopers skilled in guerrilla warfare. Even after the Army moved in it took two more days to bring the situation under control."
"In one respect, what happened here was not a "race riot." There was almost no conflict between whites and Negroes.The violence was directed mainly against property—except for the sniping, which was aimed at police, troops and firemen. The main interest: looting. It appeared to be a revolt against law and order. Rioters seemed to have more interest in looting than in killing. As one news reporter wrote: "Violence was aimed not so much at skin color as at color-television sets."
"It was as though the Viet Cong had infiltrated the riot-blackened streets." About 140 square blocks of this West Side area was a battlefield. In all, some 200 or more blocks of the city were riot areas. Entire blocks of buildings were gutted or damaged by fires that often were set with home-made fire bombs.
The peak of the rioting occurred on Monday; the entire city was shut down, most businesses and all government offices were closed. Liquor sales were suspended and a curfew was enforced with live fire. The rioting began to subside by Wednesday but continued for a few more days,
"These mobsters, arsonists and looters were not fighting a civil-rights battle. The neighborhoods torn apart do not teem with unemployment, Times are not desperate in Detroit for people who want and can work, and the rioters . . . were not confined to the unemployed. "Detroit's police . . . have for some time functioned as a disciplined professional police force should conduct itself; they continued to so function . . . even in the face of grave disorder and assault upon themselves. There was no 'police brutality.' No one has confronted the city with any set of demands for remedy of specific conditions. . ."
Some of those blocks are still empty almost 60 years later. The population of Detroit proper now is just over 600,000 where in 1967 it was about 1.6 million - from 5th largest city to 26th.
The border soon re-opened and we made it back to home ... and TV. With scenes of "Rat Patrol" jeeps and tanks on Woodward Ave; black bus drivers from Pontiac driving white National Guardsmen to the black riots in the city, the scenes were as searing as those of JFK's funeral not all that many years before - especially when view live in living colour.
Politicians were being politicians.
John Conyers was already in politics (another good reason for term limits) but got his leg-up during the riots ... and found success in promoting racism.
Mittney's father was governor of Michigan at that time; he called upon LBJ for Federal help in quelling the "whats-going-on?" situation.
The riots cost the Detroit baseball team the pennant in 1967 - placed 2nd - but baseball held the city together in 1968 when they won the World Series and the rest of the country was trying out their own style of riots. The year of Denny McLain but it was the Mickey Lolich Series that beat Bob Gibson. The whole city came together in 1968 - perhaps because of the hindsight realization of what happened in 1967.
I guess you can tell the riots made an impression on me ...
When did the guys in all the bands I liked get so old?
Update: Lyrics added by ghostsniper via Comments
We sail through endless skies Stars shine like eyes The black night sighs The moon in silver trees Falls down in tears Light of the night The Earth, a purple blaze Of sapphire haze In orbit always
While down below the trees Bathed in cool breeze Silver starlight breaks Down from night And so, we pass on by The crimson eye Of great god Mars As we travel the universe
