#alabama expedition

[morbidology]

Tina Watson, born Christina Mae Thomas, was a 26-year-old woman from Alabama who had recently married Gabe Watson, her college sweetheart. The couple had a shared interest in scuba diving, and they chose the Great Barrier Reef in Queensland, Australia, as the perfect destination to kick off their new life together. Gabe, an experienced diver, had over 50 dives under his belt, while Tina was relatively new to the sport.

On October 22, 2003, the couple joined a group of divers for an expedition at a site called the SS Yongala, a shipwreck popular among divers. According to Gabe Watson, shortly after the dive began, Tina began to experience difficulties. Gabe later claimed that Tina panicked and knocked his mask off, causing him to swim to the surface to get help. When he returned, he said, Tina was already unconscious on the ocean floor.

Tina was rescued by another diver and brought to the surface, where attempts to resuscitate her were unsuccessful. She was pronounced dead on the scene, and what had begun as a dream honeymoon had turned into an unimaginable nightmare.

Tina’s death was initially ruled an accident, attributed to drowning and possible inexperience with diving. However, as the investigation progressed, authorities began to suspect foul play. Witnesses reported seeing Gabe Watson act unusually during the dive, and questions were raised about the couple’s relationship and the circumstances leading up to Tina’s death.

The most damning evidence against Gabe Watson came from Tina’s autopsy, which suggested that her death might not have been accidental. It was determined that Tina’s air supply had been turned off during the dive, and her body was found in an area where the current was not strong enough to have caused the kind of panic that Gabe described. Additionally, investigators discovered that Gabe had increased Tina’s life insurance policy shortly before the wedding, with himself as the primary beneficiary.

Furthermore, fellow diver, Dr Stanley Stutz told authorities that he had witnessed David giving Christina a “bear hug” as she was flailing in the water, clearly distressed, before he saw David reappear at the surface as Christina sunk to the bottom. Another diver, Gary Stempler, snapped the disturbing above photograph which shows Christina lying on the bottom of the ocean. The photos were developed a few weeks after her death.

In 2008, five years after Tina's death, Gabe Watson was charged with her murder by Australian authorities. Watson agreed to return to Australia to face the charges, and in 2009, he pleaded guilty to manslaughter, claiming that he had failed to fulfill his duty as her dive buddy. He was sentenced to 12 months in prison, a sentence that many, including Tina’s family, felt was shockingly lenient.

Following his release from prison in Australia, Gabe Watson returned to the United States, where he faced additional charges of murder in Alabama. U.S. prosecutors argued that Watson had plotted to kill Tina in order to collect on her life insurance, and they sought to try him for capital murder.

The case drew significant media attention, with debates over whether Watson should be tried again for the same crime he had already been convicted of in Australia. In 2012, the Alabama judge overseeing the case dismissed the charges due to insufficient evidence, concluding that there was no proof that Watson had intentionally killed his wife.

[winebrightruby]

I'm not Catholic and never have been. What I am, in practice, is New Orleanian, and New Orleans is deeply culturally Catholic (far beyond what the numbers would show. like I didn't realize how pervasive certain things were in Louisiana as a whole until I moved to Alabama and started getting blank stares back).

Tomorrow is the feast of Our Lady of Prompt Succor, so I've just been thinking about her. The two patrons of the City - OLPS and St. Expedite - are both associated not only with providing aid but doing so immediately, without delay or hesitation. The beyond-generous, open-armed approach to helping, giving succor and sanctuary.

And New Orleans has always been that for me. I discovered through years of trial and error that if I talk too much about the minor nice things that happen, they'll stop happening, so I have to be a bit vague here. But New Orleans gifted me a thousand conveniences a day and asked nothing in return but my love, which I was giving freely anyway. It's beyond a joyous experience to live somewhere that you love, and that you can feel loving you back in equal or greater measure, in quantifiable ways, all the time.

She does so much. The incredible sweetness of that city and how much I adore her in return, how everything I ever needed or even wanted in a passing moment, I could just voice and it would essentially fall into my lap. I don't know what to say to people who ask "how did you do [x piece of magic]" because it's like, I asked nicely? Or equally often, I complained out loud because it inconvenienced me? I don't know how to replicate that without the years of devotion, piety, bribery, and adoration.

But anyway, Our Lady of Prompt Succor. Over 30 years I lived in Louisiana. For 12 years I lived in New Orleans or the swampy depths of further-south Louisiana. And she's been there for me with every request, prayer, tearful plea, every single thing. So tonight and tomorrow I'm feasting Our Lady; I'm thanking the mother of New Orleans for all the times she's been my mother too, shooing inconveniences out of my path and giving me that thing I wanted just because I said I wanted it. I love you, I love you, I love you.

[spacetimewithstuartgary]

Bends of the Alabama River

An astronaut aboard the International Space Station shot this photo of large meanders of the Alabama River while orbiting over the southern United States. The river’s smooth water surface reflects sunlight back toward the astronaut’s camera, producing an optical phenomenon known as sunglint. When photographing Earth, astronauts often take advantage of sunglint’s tendency to increase the contrast between water surfaces and surrounding land surfaces.

The river’s large meander at the center of this image is known as Gee’s Bend, named after Joseph Gee, who founded a plantation there in 1816. The nearby community of Boykin (Gee’s Bend) has become known for its “vibrant folk art,” which since the early 2000s has resulted in major exhibitions in 12 of the largest art institutions in the United States.

The Alabama River flows southwest towards the Gulf of Mexico and connects with the Intracoastal Waterway along the Gulf Coast, which in turn allows barges to reach destinations in many parts of the United States. Damming of the Alabama River in the 1960s created Dannelly Reservoir, located 65 miles (100 kilometers) west-southwest of Montgomery, Alabama’s capital. Before the dam was built, the Alabama River was a comparatively narrow waterway, as seen on the far left of the image.

Construction of the dam raised water levels upriver. This resulted in flooding at several points along the river, such as Chilatchee Creek. These flooded zones are typical of floodplains—the low, flat areas immediately next to larger rivers. In this image, flooded zones appear as irregular, bright shapes extending away from the river. The widest flooded sector along the river appears in the area of Gee’s Bend southwest of Boykin.

Astronaut photograph ISS069-E-25553 was acquired on June 26, 2023, with a Nikon D5 digital camera using a focal length of 400 millimeters. It is provided by the ISS Crew Earth Observations Facility and the Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit, Johnson Space Center. The image was taken by members of the Expedition 69 crew. The image has been cropped and enhanced to improve contrast, and lens artifacts have been removed. The International Space Station Program supports the laboratory as part of the ISS National Lab to help astronauts take pictures of Earth that will be of the greatest value to scientists and the public, and to make those images freely available on the Internet. Additional images taken by astronauts and cosmonauts can be viewed at the NASA/JSC Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth. Caption by Justin Wilkinson, Texas State University, Jacobs JETS Contract at NASA-JSC.

[thatonebirdwrites]

I really wish I could have gone to the north-east and Hawaii before I got sick. But I never got the chance. Even if I can visit somehow, I'd be in my wheelchair with a stamina of less than one, which sucks. This illness sucks, but at least I have some stories of adventures from before I got ill. (That's the line in my life. The Before I Got Sick and After I Got SIck.) No, I have no idea how I skipped Oregon, South Carolina, and Oklahoma. At least northeast made sense since it's a region, the other three who knows. (I took the train a lot Before I Got Sick but I also drove a lot or drove with others who drove a lot). Before I Got Sick, I worked in California, Texas, Lousiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Wyoming, and Iowa. The only reason I worked in the south was due to AmeriCorps*NCCC who stationed my team there to clean up after a nasty hurricane ripped the region apart.

Mississippi is where I almost drowned, but a bird diving in front of my face saved my life. I grabbed it, and the bird showed me which way was up in that murky-ass water. I can't swim well, but birds can swim. Bird was very unhappy about the whole me grabbing them. I got my hand pecked at pretty good, but at least I survived! My teammates rescued me when I burst free from the water and unleashed the bird from my hand. That story is one of the many reasons why my nickname is Bird. The moral of this story is Beware Of Rip Tides and Don't Wade Too Deep If You Can't Swim Well.

There's also the time I fell off a 500 foot bluff in Wisconsin, landed in a tiny-ass tree, and clung to it like a Bird for five hours in 25 degree Fahrenheit weather with no coat. Because I was a smart teenager, you know. How I got up there and why I fell is not important.

The moral of this story is Do Not Climb Sandstone Bluffs. Sandstone is very brittle and will easy crack and break with any amount of pressure. Also, I'm majorly sad that I missed the helicopter rescue of the Bluff incident. My younger sister swears it happened, but I guess I was too high on hypothermia to really register a fucking helicopter above my head. I guess it makes sense in retrospect since why else would the firefighter be hanging from a rope next to my little tree? All I could think about at the time is how kind the person was to give me the firefighter's coat, so I could be warm again and pretend I'm a firefighter.

Since this also happened in the middle of nowhereland Wisconsin, emergency teams used my rescue as practice. So I got strapped down to stretcher, unstrapped, and strapped again by each trainee/person needing practice. I think this happened after they confirmed no major injuries, but honestly who knows. I was tripped out hypothermic/dissociating at the time. Moral of that story is Wear A Coat In Cold Weather, Especially Below Freezing Weather.

I got lost in Wyoming with some of my Polish friends once. I had been taking pictures of the scenery behind us with my flipphone (gosh were those photos poor quality but I had no other phone at the time). This was our first misadventure too. Well, we ended up lost, way south of where we hoped to go, and ran out of water. I had one water treatment tablet, so we used that for the water from streams. We also had a bag of peanuts for some reason. I realized I'd been taking pictures behind us, mostly because I liked to see how far we'd gone. Made me feel like we made progress. So I matched the landscape to the photo, and we backtracked to the start of the trail that way. This is why I only take photos of where I've been when I hike (or used to hike).

Moral of that story is Read The Map More Often and Bring More Water Treatment Tablets.

The second misadventure in Wyoming with my Polish friends involved the Turquoise Lake expedition. We made it to the lake by correctly reading maps. That lake was gorgeous as fuck. However, we started at six in the morning, failed to keep track of time, and got to the lake at five pm in afternoon. Which meant half our journey back to civilization was done in the dark. With very little ways to verify landmarks.

We also had to hide from a moose who walked onto our trail and started munching berries. Moose are brutal and will rip you apart (even tear into cars! Like when I hung out with the Mormons, whose jeep got chased by a bull moose for three miles! I thought we were done for, but that little jeep somehow escaped). Moral of that story is Either Plan For An Overnight Complete With Supplies or Turn Back To Avoid Getting Caught Walking In Darkness In A Mountainous Forest. Oh, the Mormon Jeep story's moral is Do Not Piss Off Moose.

I have other ridiculous stories from the times Before I Got Sick. My illness destroyed my ability to hike or do much exercise, so my stamina is shit now. Now all I have is stories. Let me know if you wanna hear more.

Maybe it's a good thing I'm relegated to a wheelchair now. I can't get into ridiculous fixes with a wheelchair...

... or can I?

[lboogie1906]

Buffalo Soldier First Sergeant Mark Matthews (August 7, 1894 – September 6, 2005) was a veteran of WWII and a Buffalo Soldier. Born in Alabama and growing up in Ohio, he joined the 10th Cavalry Regiment when he was only 15 years old, after having been recruited at a Lexington, Kentucky racetrack and having documents forged so that he appeared to meet the minimum age of 17. While stationed in Arizona, he joined General John J. Pershing’s Mexico expedition to hunt down Mexican general Pancho Villa. He was transferred to Virginia, where he took care of President Roosevelt and First Lady Eleanor’s horses and was a member of the Buffalo Soldiers’ Drum and Bugle Corps. He served in combat operations in the South Pacific during WWII and achieved the rank of first sergeant. He was noted as an excellent marksman and horse showman.

He took a job as a security guard in Maryland, rising to the rank of chief of the guards and then retiring in 1970. He told stories of military experiences and grew to become a symbol of the Buffalo Soldiers. He met with Bill Clinton and Colin Powell and dedicated a barracks in Virginia in honor of the Buffalo Soldiers. He was recognized as the oldest living Buffalo Soldier as well as the oldest man, and the second-oldest person in DC.

He was born in Greenville, Alabama, and grew up in Mansfield, Ohio. His horse riding career began early when he would deliver newspapers on the back of a pony. When he was only 15 years old, he met members of the 10th Cavalry, the original Buffalo Soldier unit, while tending to horses on a racetrack in Lexington. Although there is disagreement as to the origins of the name “Buffalo Soldiers,” it referred to several segregated units within the Army.

His wife of 57 years, Genevieve Hill Matthews, died in 1986.

For his 108th birthday in 2002, he met Colin Powell, where Powell was presented with a portrait of Matthews. He was a member of his local church, a Prince Hall Masonic Temple, and the Washington chapter of the 9th and 10th Cavalry Association until his death. #africanhistory365 #africanexcellence

[openheartfanfics]

Newly Added Fics

July 15 - 21, 2023  

🎭 Angst  |  🦚 Angsty Fluff  |  🛸 AU  |  ☁ Fluff  |  ♥ NSFW  |  📚 Series  |  📷 Edit  |  📱 TextFic  |  Ⓜ Mature

BRYCE X F!MC

Can I Have this Dance? - @storyofmychoices ☁

Some dances last a few minutes, others a lifetime, but every so often, there's one that lasts forever.

ETHAN X F!MC

Moving On - @jerzwriter 🎭

When Ethan left for a WHO mission without saying a word to Casey, then returned with a "reset" in mind, he told her that he wanted her to move on. Now that she has, he's not taking it too well. [Broke up; With Someone Else]

My Best Friend's Wedding: Rumor Has It - @jamespotterthefirst ☁

A childhood friend realizes he's the love of her life. The problem is he's about to marry someone else.

Relaxation - @potionsprefect 📷

Being heavily pregnant means Victoria needs to be spoilt every now and then. [Domestic; Pregnancy]

Total Surrender - @liaromancewriter ♥

After following Cassie’s command to the letter, Ethan is determined to collect his reward. [Oral Happenings]

Trip North - @potionsprefect 🦚

Luke and Lily get to know Ethan Hudson. [Domestic; Family]

What Could Have Been - @liaromancewriter 📚🎭

[extended: wip] When Ethan breaks his promise, Cassie is forced to accept they’re not inevitable after all.

CH 2: Facing the Consequences.

When life gets in the way - @coffeeheartaddict2 ☁

Casey received some unexpected news that expedites some plans. [Domestic; Pregnancy]

Wonderstruck - @jamespotterthefirst 📚🛸

[mini: wip] As a hopeful med student, she sneaks into a masquerade-themed gala hoping to meet one of the greatest minds of her time. However, fate has different plans.

Part 1

ETHAN X M!MC

Taken Care Of - @peonyblossom ☁

When Ethan finds Sydney completely wasted at Donahue's, Ethan takes him home and takes care of him. [Donahue's; Drunk]

LOVE TRIANGLE

Anytime I Want - @cariantha 🦚

A rewrite of the final scenes from the movie Sweet Home Alabama. Rafael Aveiro x F!MC; Ethan Ramsey x F!MC

Mixed Signals - @alj4890 📚

[mini: wip] Dr. Tobias Carrick x F!MC. Dr. Ethan Ramsey x F!MC. Dr. Bryce Lahela x F!MC. Set after the poison attack.

Prologue

Who are you? - @coffeeheartaddict2 ♥

Ethan reconnects with an old flame at an event for his book. Upon his return to Edenbrook he takes things further with Harper. Feat. Ethan Ramsey x Harper Emery, Ethan Ramsey F!OC Estelle Campion

PLATONIC/THE GANG

Coffee Time - @liaromancewriter 📱

Cassie and the gang plan a coffee heist.

TOBIAS X F!MC

I'll Have What She's Having - @jerzwriter 📚🛸

[mini: wip] Tobias & Casey are good friends and two doctors working at neighboring hospitals.

Part 1

Life's a Beach - @jerzwriter 📷

Tobias and Casey are on a beach vacation.

_

SUBMIT OPEN HEART FICS & WRITERS HERE

[sagehaubitze]

So I fucked up my back again and wasn't planning on heading out anywhere, but I did go out in the front yard to look at the aurora, and it was barely visible to the naked eye but my phone picked up enough color to make me pack up my camera gear and drive north into Tennessee to try to get better photos. I went about two hours north and saw.. a whole lot of fucking nothing. These are from the front yard:

And then this was in Tennessee lol:

Sometimes expeditions don't work out, and that's okay, but it's still disappointing. I've seen some beautiful photos from around Alabama and southern Tennessee, and I'm sad that I didn't get the opportunity to take them.

[transgenderer]

The domestication of the Syrian hamster began in the late 1700s when naturalists cataloged the Syrian hamster, also known as Mesocricetus auratus or the golden hamster. In 1930 medical researchers captured Syrian hamster breeding stock for animal testing. Further domestication led this animal to become a popular pet.

The Syrian hamster's natural habitat is in a small region of Northwest Syria near the city of Aleppo.[1] It was first described by science in the 1797 second edition of The Natural History of Aleppo, a book written and edited by two Scottish physicians living in Syria.[2] The Syrian hamster was first recognized as a distinct species in 1839.[3] In 1930, a scientist seeking animal subjects for medical research had the first Syrian hamsters captured to become laboratory animals.[4] Scientists bred those hamsters and during the 1930s sent their descendants to various other laboratories around the world.[5] By the late 1940s in the United States, a commercial hamster industry had begun to provide hamsters for laboratory use and at the same time to popularize hamsters as pets.[6] In later years, further expeditions back to Syria captured other hamsters to increase genetic diversity among the populations of hamsters shared among breeders.

Wild Syrian hamsters become tame in a matter of days after being captured and handled by humans.[7] Wild hamsters are quick to adapt to captivity and thrive in a laboratory setting.[7]

Albert Marsh of Mobile, Alabama established the commercial hamster industry in the United States in the 1940s.[30] Marsh first got a hamster when he was gambling and won it in a wager.[24] Somehow he got more hamsters after this one, perhaps from the breeding stock managed by Guy Henry Faget in Carville, Louisiana.[24] At the time, Marsh was a highway engineer but unemployed.[24] After getting his hamsters, he learned to breed them and founded Marsh Enterprises and the Gulf Hamstery, which promoted Syrian hamsters as pets, for laboratory use, and in business schemes.[24] Marsh took advertisements in magazines, comics, and livestock trade journals which praised hamsters as pets and presented the idea that breeding hamsters was a good business investment.[24] In his business, he shipped hamsters to people who would be breeders, then he coordinated the shipment of various breeders' hamsters to other breeders or to laboratories.[24]

Marsh was successful in part because of the professionalism he brought to the art of hamster husbandry. He authored a book, The Hamster Manual, which had a distribution of 80,000 copies by its 6th edition in 1951.[24] In 1946, Marsh began a campaign to legalize the ownership of hamsters in California, which were prohibited. On 10 February 1948, with the help of the governor of Alabama and others, Marsh was successful in convincing the California State Department of Agriculture to designate Syrian hamsters as "normally domesticated animals".[19]

The hamstery business peaked from 1948-1951 then profitability dropped to almost nothing in the early 1950s.[31] The market changed when small hamsteries, most of which started with hamsters from Marsh, became available everywhere and satisfied local demand for pet hamsters.[31] Marsh's Gulf Hamstery closed in the 1950s.[31]

hamsters only became pets in the 40s...

[jaydoesresearch]

Meet Nick! This dolphin was first seen during a routine field expedition. He was in a small pod with four other dolphins, guiding them through the choppy waters of Lake Borgne. Our Researchers will use his dorsal fin- which is completely unique from any other dolphin- to study him, his social dynamics, and habitat use throughout his life! Nick is one of hundreds of dolphins monitored by IMMS via photo-ID. To learn more about our research, check out our website: https://imms.org/research/ With the news of The University of Alabama’s head football coach, Nick Saban, retiring, our Researchers have decided to name this dolphin in honor of his legacy. Enjoy retirement, Coach Saban!

[directedbywomen]

Today I reupped my Netflix subscription so I could watch Descendant directed by Margaret Brown. Visit the film's official website to find out more about the making of Descendant and to learn about actions you can take to preserve "Africatown’s story and fighting for its future."

"History exists beyond what is written. The Africatown residents in Mobile, Alabama, have shared stories about their origins for generations. Their community was founded by enslaved ancestors who were transported in 1860 aboard the last known and illegal slave ship, Clotilda. Though the ship was intentionally destroyed upon arrival, its memory and legacy weren’t. Now, the long-awaited discovery of the Clotilda’s remains offers this community a tangible link to their ancestors and validation of a history so many tried to bury.

Director Margaret Brown’s layered contemplation explores the interplay between memory and evidence and the question of how history passes and is preserved. Brown also reveals the enduring power imbalance that persists between the descendants of Timothy Meaher, the man who chartered the illegal expedition, and the descendants of those who were enslaved aboard it. The Meaher family owns much of the heavily industrialized area that surrounds Africatown. Elevated cases of cancer and illness are prevalent there, but the Africatown community persists. Residents celebrate their heritage and take command of their legacy by bringing their history to the surface."

Listen to filmmaker Margaret Brown talk about her filmmaking process in this IndieWire interview... "So the whole time I was making the film, I was always very cognizant of how do I translate the experience of how I feel — the smells, the sounds, the sort of lushness of this place alongside this gray blight — into a movie? Because I come from a poetry background, but film is this visceral thing you can almost enter into, and I just felt like the world of Africatown was that visceral and I wanted to offer that up to the audience to know what the community was a part of, or what their life was like."

Also look for Brown's earlier work... Be Here to Love Me: Townes Van Zandt, The Great Invisible, and The Order of Myths.

[arizonaconservativegal]

KEVIN FREKING

Thu, December 22, 2022 at 11:27 AM EST

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate passed a massive $1.7 trillion spending bill Thursday that finances federal agencies through September and provides another significant round of military and economic aid to Ukraine one day after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's dramatic address to a joint meeting of Congress.

The bill, which runs for 4,155 pages, includes about $772.5 billion for domestic programs and $858 billion for defense and would finance federal agencies through the fiscal year at the end of September.

The bill passed by a vote of 68-29 and now goes to the House for a final vote before it can be sent to President Joe Biden to be signed into law.

“This is one of the most significant appropriations packages we have done in a very long time,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. “The range of people it helps is large and deep."

Lawmakers were racing to get the bill approved before a partial government shutdown would occur at midnight Friday, and many were anxious to complete the task before a deep freeze and wintry conditions left them stranded in Washington for the holidays. Many also want to lock in government funding before a new GOP-controlled House next year could make it harder to find compromise on spending.

Senators heard from Zelenskyy about the importance of U.S. aid to his country for its war with Russia on Wednesday night. The measure provides about $45 billion in military, economic and humanitarian assistance for the devastated nation and NATO allies, more than Biden even requested, raising total assistance so far to more than $100 billion.

“Your money is not charity,” Zelenskyy told lawmakers and Americans watching from home. “It’s an investment in the global security and democracy that we handle in the most responsible way.”

Lawmakers were in disagreement over which amendments were to be voted upon to lock in a final vote on an expedited basis. The impasses had the potential to prevent passage of the bill before the midnight Friday deadline. But negotiations overnight led to a breakthrough and senators gathered early Thursday morning to work through more than a dozen amendments before getting to a final vote.

The House won't be able to take up the bill until Friday morning, and while it is expected to pass, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said the chamber will also approve a stopgap spending resolution to ensure government services continue without interruption before the bill is signed into law.

The spending bill was supported by Schumer and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, though for different reasons.

McConnell cited the bill's nearly 10% boost in defense spending, which he says will give America's Armed Forces the funding and certainty needed to ensure the country's security.

“The world’s greatest military will get the funding increase that it needs, outpacing inflation," McConnell said. “Meanwhile, non-defense, non-veterans spending will come in below the rate of inflation, for a real-dollar cut."

McConnell faced pushback from many Republicans who don’t support the spending bill and resent being forced to vote on such a massive package with so little time before a potential shutdown and the Christmas holiday.

“There has not been enough time for a single person to have read this entire bill. The bill and process ignores soaring inflation, rising interest rates and our ballooning debt of $31 trillion," said Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky. “Enough is enough."

Eighteen Republican senators joined with Democrats in voting for the bill.

For two senators, the bill puts the finishing touches on their work in Washington. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., is retiring after serving some 48 years in the Senate and as the current chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. He negotiated the bill for months with Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, the committee's ranking Republican, who was elected to the Senate in 1986 and is also retiring.

“What a capstone to a brilliant career," Schumer said.

The bill also contains roughly $40 billion in emergency spending in the U.S., mostly to assist communities across the country recovering from drought, hurricanes and other natural disasters.

And, of course, it includes scores of policy changes unrelated to spending that lawmakers sought to include in what is going to be the last major bill of the Congress, else they start from scratch next year in a divided Congress where Republicans will be returning to the majority in the House.

One of the most notable examples was a historic revision to federal election law that aims to prevent any future presidents or presidential candidates from trying to overturn an election. The bipartisan overhaul of the Electoral Count Act is in direct response to former President Donald Trump’s efforts to convince Republican lawmakers and then-Vice President Mike Pence to object to the certification of Biden’s victory on Jan. 6, 2021.

The bill also allowed Congress to follow through on some of the most consequential bills it had passed over the past two years, such as a measure aiming to boost computer chip production in the U.S. and another to expand health care services to veterans exposed to toxic burn pits. Some $5 billion was provided help the VA implement some of the changes called for in the PACT Act, and the amount of money provided specifically for VA health care soared 22% to nearly $119 billion.

“These benefits are deserved," Leahy said. “They were earned, and they are owed."

To put this in perspective, this bill is roughly the size of all seven original Harry Potter books combined and about as dry as the Sahara. Rand Paul is right: absolutely no one read this garbage.

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 5.9

328 – Athanasius is elected Patriarch of Alexandria. 1009 – Lombard Revolt: Lombard forces led by Melus revolt in Bari against the Byzantine Catepanate of Italy. 1386 – England and Portugal formally ratify their alliance with the signing of the Treaty of Windsor, making it the oldest diplomatic alliance in the world which is still in force. 1450 – 'Abd al-Latif (Timurid monarch) is assassinated. 1540 – Hernando de Alarcón sets sail on an expedition to the Gulf of California. 1662 – The figure who later became Mr. Punch makes his first recorded appearance in England. 1671 – Thomas Blood, disguised as a clergyman, attempts to steal England's Crown Jewels from the Tower of London. 1726 – Five men arrested during a raid on Mother Clap's molly house in London are executed at Tyburn. 1864 – Second Schleswig War: The Danish navy defeats the Austrian and Prussian fleets in the Battle of Heligoland. 1865 – American Civil War: Nathan Bedford Forrest surrenders his forces at Gainesville, Alabama. 1865 – American Civil War: President Andrew Johnson issues a proclamation ending belligerent rights of the rebels and enjoining foreign nations to intern or expel Confederate ships. 1873 – Der Krach: The Vienna stock exchange crash heralds the Long Depression. 1877 – Mihail Kogălniceanu reads, in the Chamber of Deputies, the Declaration of Independence of Romania. The date will become recognised as the Independence Day of Romania. 1901 – Australia opens its first national parliament in Melbourne. 1915 – World War I: Second Battle of Artois between German and French forces. 1918 – World War I: Germany repels Britain's second attempt to blockade the port of Ostend, Belgium. 1920 – Polish–Soviet War: The Polish army under General Edward Rydz-Śmigły celebrates its capture of Kiev with a victory parade on Khreshchatyk. 1926 – Admiral Richard E. Byrd and Floyd Bennett claim to have flown over the North Pole (later discovery of Byrd's diary appears to cast some doubt on the claim.) 1927 – The Old Parliament House, Canberra, Australia, officially opens. 1936 – Italy formally annexes Ethiopia after taking the capital Addis Ababa on May 5. 1941 – World War II: The German submarine U-110 is captured by the Royal Navy. On board is the latest Enigma machine which Allied cryptographers later use to break coded German messages. 1942 – The Holocaust in Ukraine: The SS executes 588 Jewish residents of the Podolian town of Zinkiv (Khmelnytska oblast. The Zoludek Ghetto (in Belarus) is destroyed and all its inhabitants executed or deported. 1946 – King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy abdicates and is succeeded by Umberto II. 1948 – Czechoslovakia's Ninth-of-May Constitution comes into effect. 1950 – Robert Schuman presents the "Schuman Declaration", considered by some to be the beginning of the creation of what is now the European Union. 1955 – Cold War: West Germany joins NATO. 1960 – The Food and Drug Administration announces it will approve birth control as an additional indication for Searle's Enovid, making Enovid the world's first approved oral contraceptive pill. 1969 – Carlos Lamarca leads the first urban guerrilla action against the military dictatorship of Brazil in São Paulo, by robbing two banks. 1974 – Watergate scandal: The United States House Committee on the Judiciary opens formal and public impeachment hearings against President Richard Nixon. 1979 – Iranian Jewish businessman Habib Elghanian is executed by firing squad in Tehran, prompting the mass exodus of the once 100,000-strong Jewish community of Iran. 1980 – In Florida, United States, Liberian freighter MV Summit Venture collides with the Sunshine Skyway Bridge over Tampa Bay, making a 1,400-ft. section of the southbound span collapse. Thirty-five people in six cars and a Greyhound bus fall 150 ft. into the water and die. 1980 – In Norco, California, United States, five masked gunmen hold up a Security Pacific bank, leading to a violent shoot-out and one of the largest pursuits in California history. Two of the gunmen and one police officer are killed and thirty-three police and civilian vehicles are destroyed in the chase. 1987 – LOT Flight 5055 Tadeusz Kościuszko crashes after takeoff in Warsaw, Poland, killing all 183 people on board. 1988 – New Parliament House, Canberra officially opens. 1992 – Armenian forces capture Shusha, marking a major turning point in the First Nagorno-Karabakh War. 1992 – Westray Mine disaster kills 26 workers in Nova Scotia, Canada. 2001 – In Ghana, 129 football fans die in what became known as the Accra Sports Stadium disaster. The deaths are caused by a stampede (caused by the firing of tear gas by police personnel at the stadium) that followed a controversial decision by the referee. 2002 – The 38-day stand-off in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem comes to an end when the Palestinians inside agree to have 13 suspected terrorists among them deported to several different countries. 2018 – The historic defeat for Barisan Nasional, the governing coalition of Malaysia since the country's independence in 1957 in 2018 Malaysian general election. 2020 – The COVID-19 recession causes the U.S. unemployment rate to hit 14.9 percent, its worst rate since the Great Depression. 2022 – Russo-Ukrainian War: United States President Joe Biden signs the 2022 Lend-Lease Act into law, a rebooted World War II-era policy expediting American equipment to Ukraine and other Eastern European countries.

[isawken]

On those days when the wind stops blowing across the face of the southern plains, the land falls into a silence that scares people in the way that a big house can haunt after the lights go out and no one else is there. It scares them because the land is too much, too empty, claustrophobic in its immensity. It scares them because they feel lost, with nothing to cling to, disoriented. Not a tree, anywhere. Not a slice of shade. Not a river dancing away, life in its blood. Not a bump of high ground to break the horizon, give some perspective, spell the monotone of flatness. It scares them because they wonder what is next. It scared Coronado, looking for cities of gold in 1541. It scared the Anglo traders who cut a trail from Independence to Santa Fe, after they dared let go of the lifeline of the Cimarron River in hopes of shaving a few days off a seven-week trek. It even scared some of the Comanche as they chased bison over the grass. It scared the Germans from Russia and the Scots-Irish from Alabama — the Last Chancers, exiled twice over, looking to build a hovel from overturned sod, even if that dirt house was crawling with centipedes and snakes, and leaked mud on the children when thunderheads broke.

It still scares people driving cars named Expedition and Outlander. It scares them because of the forced intimacy with a place that gives nothing back to a stranger, a place where the land and its weather — probably the most violent and extreme on earth — demand only one thing: humility.

-The Worst Hard Time, Timothy Egan

[revolutionarywarhistory]

From the Revolutionary War to the 1790s: the Creek Nation in the Southern Gulf Region

A map of indigenous nations before the 'Trail of Tears' courtesy of Pinterest.

Where we last left off, I wrote about how Gaither, a veteran of the Maryland 400, had served "seven years on the Georgian frontier, and two years in the Mississippi Territory as a U.S. Army officer" in which he was involved in numerous incidents on the frontier of Georgia, with disputes between the Creek Nation (Muskogee), other indigenous nations, and Georgian inhabitants. Specifically I told the stories of an incident in 1793 at the fork of the Tallahatchie River, reports of  robbery and murder of two Whites on the St. Mary’s River later that year and anger among the Creek Nation after James Seagrove, US Ambassador to the Creek Nation, called for retribution. Beyond this, I told the story of Major General Elijah Clarke's failed expedition to invade Spanish territory in Louisiana in mid-1794, alarming even George Washington's government, and Gaither at the end of his life, serving on the Mississippi River, and dying in 1811, at age 61 on a Washington D.C. plantation. A relatively new book by Early American/"North American borderlands" historian Kathleen DuVal titled Independence Lost: Lives on the Edge of the American Revolution sheds light on the Creek Nation, which is even reviewed positively in the New York Times by Woody Holton and the post-war environment on the new frontier.

Reprinted from my History Hermann WordPress blog.

Before the revolutionary war, the Creek, Chickasaw, and Choctaw Nations spread from the Gulf Coast into the interior of the North American continent. [1] While these nations dominated the Southern Gulf (of Mexico) Coast region, the Choctaws likely had the biggest population, numbering, likely, twenty thousand by the early 1700s, in contrast to the five thousand Chickasaw and ten thousand Creek at the same time. [2] By the 1770s, Payamataha, chief of the Chickasaw, had made peace with the Choctaws, Cherokees, Catawbas, Creeks, and Quapaws, other nearby indigenous nations, while Creek-Chickasaw peace, starting in 1760s, continued to flourish. [3] As for the Creeks, the main focus of this story, they had a unique form of government. Living in the river valleys in a region that would become the present-day states of Alabama and Georgia, the Creeks, divided into the Lower Creeks and Upper Creeks comprised a loose confederation of 60 towns which had their own farms and lesser towns in their jurisdiction, with limited consultation on foreign policy and defense. [4] While this meant that each town or clan had the decision to go to war, engage in diplomacy, or create new towns,with a broad spread of governance, most of those in the towns spoke "related languages" and had "similar cultural practices and beliefs" to fellow members of the society. [5]

One man, named Alexander McGillivray, tried to change this. McGillivray, born into a matrilineal Creek society, with his mother, Sehoy Marchand, and maternal uncle, Red Shoes, was multi-racial because his father was a Scottish highlander and trader named Lachlan McGillivray. [6] He soon tried to gain an important role in the world of Creek politics and society. However, he had trouble persuading the Creek people as a whole to succeed against the British not only because "no one could dictate foreign policy to even one Creek town of clan, much less the loose Creek Confederacy" but he was not a Creek headman and proven warrior. [7] Additionally, the British, seemed be fighting against the Continental Army and pro-revolutionary individuals, but not against settlers, leading certain US individuals to try and sway the Creeks, complicating McGillivray's attempts at diplomacy and persuasion of the Creek people. Apart from this changing aim, the Creek-British alliance seemed to go forward despite failed efforts at British-indigenous coordination, especially in 1778, leading to tension among the indigenous nations such as the Creeks and Chickasaws who fought alongside the British. [8] Additionally, the minds of the Creek people were taken off the war for a number of reasons. For one, the spread of smallpox across the continent limited the ability of the Creeks to contribute especially since they quarantined fellow indigenous (and British) towns infected by smallpox, and the involvement of the French and Spanish in the revolutionary war led to less inclination to be involved in an inter-empire conflict. [9]

By 1781, as the siege of Pensacola, then a town within colonial British Florida, seemed imminent, with the approach of a Spanish fleet, people's hopes were scattered, depending on the groups of people affected. For McGillivray, who "hoped for personal glory and Creek victory," he had trouble getting the Creeks to fight the Spaniards but succeeded by stressing stressed Creek interests in the war and "opportunities for glory on the Gulf coast." [10] Not everyone was convinced, however, as some Creeks went to the Spanish as a show of strength and attempt an alliance, but this failed not only because of the unification on foreign policy, like the Chickasaws, and because the two parties (Spanish and Creek) could not come to an agreement. [11] In a united front, January 8, 1781, Maryland and Pennsylvania loyalists fought alongside hundreds of Lower Creeks and Choctaws on an attack on a Spanish post at the "Village, which was on the other side of bay from Mobile. [12] In the attack, ending in a clear Spanish victory, Daniel Higgins of Maryland Loyalist Regiment, could have been among those who fought, along with many other loyalists from Maryland and Pennsylvania. [13] There were two other complicating factors. For one, despite the fact that about 1,700 soldiers under the command of General John Campbell, who had been in British West Florida since 1778, the city's defense depended on warriors from the Chickasaw, Creek, and Choctaw nations since reinforcements had not arrived. [14] The other factor was that many Creeks were tired of the British treating them poorly, with some questioning McGillivray's motives, since he was paid as a British agent, but he was successful yet again in countering them by saying that "cultivating interdependence with the British would facilitate Creek protection of their eastern border, where the British were fighting the Creeks' most hated enemies, Georgians and Virginians" as DuVal notes. [15]

On May 8, the Spanish, helped by the French, were victorious in their siege, as the city of Pensacola surrendered. Generally this meant that "the British had lost a colony that had not rebelled" and it would lead to a British decision to  "recognize American independence before things got any worse." [16] As Ray Raphael has pointed out, even after the Battle of Yorktown, resulting in the British surrender of Lord Cornwallis's almost 7,000 troops, on October 17, the war was far from over despite what "conventional wisdom" says. Not only was King George III not ready to capitulate, but Washington was worried of future British advances, and peace was not even proposed by British military commanders until August 1782, with a preliminary peace treaty signed on November 30 of the same year. [17] Compounding this was a total of 47,000 British soldiers stationed in New York, Canada, South Carolina, Georgia, and the West Indies, "four times as many as those serving in the Continental Army." [18] It is worth also noting that Washington was worried about a separate peace treaty between British and France, dooming the colonies, that over 300 revolutionary soldiers dying after Yorktown, the global nature of the American Revolutionary War, the "strategic retreat" rather than surrender by the British, which tells more of the story than acting like the battle at Yorktown was the end of the war. [19]

For the Creeks the was also not over. As the Creeks left Pensacola before Spanish victory, they instructed Alexander Cameron to describe Creek commitment and bravery during the siege, especially the "details of Creek and Choctaw participation," in a letter to the British in Georgia. [20] Apart from this, the Creeks and their allies fought even harder. Hundreds of Continental soldiers were killed until the final peace agreement in 1783 and the fight against US settlers moving westward intensified as the British were pulling out of their colonies. [21] While the British, Spanish, French, Creeks, Choctaws, and Chickasaws, had seemed like bigger players in the war in the Southern Gulf region than the revolutionaries/"rebels," the postwar arrangement would change all that. [22]

The Treaty of Paris, actually negotiated, in part, in the Versailles Palace, was signed by the US and Britain, with France and Spain begrudgingly accepting it. Angriest of all were the Creeks, Chickasaws, and Cherokees. In a letter to the Spanish King,these indigenous chiefs, brought together by McGillivray, said that the Treaty was not valid. They argued that the British ceded land they never possessed and that the Creek, Chickasaw, and Cherokee were nations of indigenous people who had independence and natural rights. [23] To complete this insult, the US government under the Articles of Confederation, made a broad assertion. They declared that indigenous nations between the Appalachians and Mississippi were not sovereign nations but aggressors in the war. [24] Essentially, this denied "independent sovereignty" of indigenous nations, which had been accepted by the British and Spanish in their negotiations with such nations, especially during the Revolutionary War.

In the years after the war, there were a number of changes. For one, McGillivray  went back to the town his mother was living, staying there with his family as his   British connections had become irrelevant. [25] Around the same time, Hoboithle Miko, also called the Tame King, Tallassee King, and Halfway-House King, the latter which recognized his role in negotiating good terms for those on both sides, of Great Tallassee, an Upper Creek town, and Niko Miko of Cussita, a Lower Creek town, led the negotiations with North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia since the British gave St. Augustine to the Spanish, along with broadly removing themselves from the region. [26] In terms of diplomacy, McGillivray led the way, helping push forward an alliance and trade with the Spanish, at a time that large numbers of Americans settling in lands claimed by Spanish and indigenous people. [27] The Creeks also experienced the unfriendly nature of the new United States first hand. When Hoboithle Miko and Niko Miko attended a meeting of the Georgia legislature, in 1783, to try to maintain good relations with the United States, a treaty was quickly negotiated. [28] While Georgians thought it was valid, Creeks from only a few towns out of the 60 were there, meaning that it held no weight, but the Georgians did not realize this, possibly because of their ignorance of Creek customs, leading to tension. On the same token, while the idea of "advantageous independence," which DuVal defines as people trying to "establish a balance in which they might have more control over dependent relationships," expressed itself most strongly in the postwar period, just like during the war, a planter culture developed. [29] This culture, in which Creeks were slaveowners, created a disparity in the Creek Nation which hadn't been seen before despite its existence in the nation for many years before.

In the following years, McGillivray tried to steer the Creek Nation in a more nationalist direction. First off, an alliance between the Creek and Spanish  recognized sovereignty on both sides and "mutually beneficial trade," giving the Creeks a "European ally." [30] Secondly, McGillivray tried to centralize the foreign policy of the Creek Nation, recognizing that  it would be more effective if this was implemented in "conjunction with other southeastern nations and even Indians to the north," trying to create a Southern Confederacy, even as this proved exceedingly difficult. [31] Thirdly, McGillivray presented to the world, but especially to the Europeans and Americans, a strong nationalist statement. While he didn't want the Creek Nation to become a U.S. state, he did develop "a language of independent nationhood that carried particular weight with late-eighteenth century Europeans and Americans" with his explicit claims that the Creeks governed their "own independent nation." [32] This went beyond the arrangement in the past were issues of Creek governance were debated internally instead of projected to other governments.

As Western expansion continued, Creeks began to be nervous. With Georgians encroaching on Creek hunting lands, and they were harder to remove, the Creek National Council took up arms in their defense, along with beginning to engage in small-scale raids into Georgia starting in 1785. [33] Not only did this lead to tension, but the Georgians seemed aloof by the attacks, not understanding their role and they attempted to negotiate. Adding to this was the complications that Spain faced in white US settlers entering disputed lands in Creek Country since it was not technically Spanish land, and Georgians had major claims, even as they secretly funded the actions of the Creeks. [34]

Tension between the Spanish and Creek Nation began to grow. When the Spanish welcomed immigration from the newly created United States of America, with the Creeks seeing no value in this. [35] McGillivray was hurt by these developments as he worked on gaining connections in the United States, gaining a truce with Georgia, along with other diplomacy to force the hand of Spain. Due to these strained relations, the Creeks were glad to hear that the British were involved in the region again. As a result, they tried to gain British connections, with supplies to the Creek nation, but this faltered due to the false promises by William Augustus Bowles, a former member of the Maryland Loyalist Regiment. [36] By 1788, the situation had changed as the Spanish had reversed their previous decision. They had begun to supply the Creeks with weapons. They sent  weapons, which helped them wage "wars against the United States through the War of 1812 and beyond." [37] It is worth noting that the Creek Nation was by no stretch a colony of the Spanish or the British, but engaged in their own independent foreign policy, like the other indigenous nations at the time.

By the 1790s, the McGillivray's influence in the Creek Nation seemed to waning. While the Creeks continued truce with US [38], until a new government was inaugurated in 1791 with the end of ratification, McGillivray signed a Congressional treaty. The document set the border between the Creek Nation and Georgia at the Oconee River which many Creeks thought was too much of a compromise, as did Georgians about the terms put forward by the administration of George Washington. [39] There was additional tension. In 1791, a Creek and Cherokee delegation to London said that the Creeks and Cherokees were united into one with the Chickasaws and Choctaws also swayed by the Council's measures. [40] However, the Choctaws and Chickasaws did not agree, leading to increased friction among the indigenous nations. On February 17, 1793, he died  in Pensacola, with his first and second wives mourning him and his plantations distributed among his children. [41]

DuVal's book, in terms of historical narrative, basically ends there, with some exceptions. She notes that by 1814, few Creeks came to defend Pensacola because "a few months earlier Jackson's forces had fought alongside one Creek faction to defeat another in a disastrous civil war." [42] She also adds that in 1834, which may have seemed unthinkable in 1793, the US "forcibly removed most Creeks across the Mississippi" with the Chickasaws only held out a few years longer. [43] Near the end, she says that the remove of Creeks and Chickasaws from their homelands "in the 1830s took their county but not their nationhood" but that Native American sovereignty has had a resurgence in recent years. [44]

Some readers may be wondering how this all ties to Henry Chew Gaither, a revolutionary war veteran and Marylander who was a major of the First Regiment of the U.S. Army from 1791 to 1792 and Lieutenant Colonel Commandant of the Third Sub-Legion from 1793 to 1802. The truth is that he likely never met McGillivray, since he died in the sixth month of Gaither's deployment. Even so, the history of this article is directly relevant to the experience of Gaither while spent time on the Georgian frontier, until he went to Fort Adams, which sat alongside the Mississippi River in 1800, staying until 1802, when he finally retired from the military for good. In the end, even though Gaither is not part of this story, the connections to the Maryland Loyalist Regiment and expansion of the history of the Southern Gulf Region makes DuVal's book valuable for understanding the Early American period while informing the happenings of the present.

© 2016-2023 Burkely Hermann. All rights reserved.

Notes

[1] Kathleen DuVal, Independence Lost: Lives on the Edge of the American Revolution (New York: Random House, 2015), xvii.

[2] Ibid, 9, 13.

[3] Ibid, 17, 19.

[4] Ibid, xviii,  xxii, 9, 25-26. The Upper Creeks lived "along the Alabama, Coosa, and Tallapoosa rivers in present-day Alabama" and the Lower Creeks  near "the Chattahoochee River, the present-day border between Alabama and Georgia" as DuVal notes.

[5] Ibid, 25-27.

[6] Ibid, xviii, 24-25.

[7] Ibid, 77-81.

[8] Ibid, 85-87, 99, 115.

[9] Ibid, 165-166, 176.

[10] Ibid, xxv-xxvi, 177-178.

[11] Ibid, 181, 185-186. DuVal writes that among the Choctaws there was broad disagreement with some joining the Spanish and others the British.

[12] Ibid, 167, 182.

[13] Higgins was related to Peter Higgins of the Fourth Independent Company, which had Archibald Anderson as its First Lieutenant and James Hindman as its Captain. While it is possible that Barnet Turner, a veteran of the Maryland 400, was part of the Maryland Loyalist Regiment, he had deserted in 1778, three years before the fighting near Pensacola. Looking this up more in-depth, the Maryland Historical Society seems to have the muster rolls of the Maryland Loyalist Regiment in 1782, the Canadian Archives seems to have some records, there's a 1778 Orderly Book of the Maryland Loyalists (along with other Ancestry databases here and here), relevant documents on the regiment transcribed here, this muster list, parts of this book, this orderly book, bits and pieces noted here, some results in the Journal of the American Revolution, and so on.

[14] Ibid, 194, 196, 205; George C. Osborn, "Major-General John Campbell in British West Florida," The Florida Historical Quarterly, Vol. 27, No. 4, p. 318, 332, 339.

[15] Ibid, 206-208.

[16] Ibid, 218.

[17] Ray Raphael, Founding Myths: Stories That Hide Our Patriotic Past (New York: The New Press, 2004), 211-214.

[18] Ibid, 214.

[19] Ibid, 215-225.

[20] DuVal, 217.

[21] Ibid, 228-229.

[22] Ibid, 128.

[23] Ibid, 236.

[24] Ibid, 236-237.

[25] Ibid, 246-247.

[26] Ibid, 247, 251.

[27] Ibid, xv, 248.

[28] Ibid, 250-253.

[29] Ibid, xxi, 249.

[30] Ibid, 257-258, 260.

[31] Ibid, 295-296.

[32] Ibid, 254-255.

[33] Ibid, 298-301.

[34] Ibid, 310-311.

[35] Ibid, 323, 326-327.

[36] Ibid, 327-329.

[37] Ibid, 341.

[38] Ibid, 332.

[39] Ibid, 342.

[40] Ibid, 304.

[41] Ibid, 343.

[42] Ibid, 340.

[43] Ibid, 343-344.

[44] Ibid, 350.

[akaessi]

Is there a 'correct' pronunciation for Appalachia or Appalachian? [Incoming linguistic rant!]

Origins of the Term (Simplified)

In 1528, a group of Spanish explorers known as the Narváez Expedition traveled along the northern coast of what is now Florida, where they found an indigenous settlement. They transcribed the name as Apalchen or Apalachen (typically rendered as /aˈpal(a)tʃen/ in IPA), which was furthered altered into Spanish Apalache. This term was used to describe the region and the tribe further inland to the north. By 1540, the term was used by some to describe the Appalachian Mountain ranges.

However, the term Appalachia was not commonly used to refer to the entire mountain range as we understand it today. Another commonly used term (for some portions) is the Allegheny Mountains!

Pronunciations

If you've gone through the notes or if you're from the region yourself, you're probably well aware of the competing pronunciations! In the Southern US and the Southern Core of Appalachia the "latch" pronunciations are used:

 /æpəˈlætʃənz/ (app-a-latch-ins), /ˌæ.pəˈlæ.t͡ʃən/ (ap-a-lat-chin), /ˌæ.pəˈlæ.tʃə/ (App-a-latch-uh)

In the Northern US region of Appalachia, the 'ch' is often pronounced as 'sh' instead:

/ˌæ.pəˈleɪ.(t)ʃən/ (App-a-lay-chins), /æpəˈleɪʃənz/ (App-a-lay-shins).

"latch" versus "laysh" are both dialectal versions of this term and since both are used by Appalachians in their subregions of Applachia, both are technically "correct!" Another thing to know is that this word, and associated words, are English borrowings of a Spanish transcriptional approximation of a Muskogean word (we'll get into that). The Spanish transcription, /aˈpal(a)tʃen/, is roughly pronounced "a-pal-lah-t-chen," kinda. So to English ears unused to a /tʃ/ cluster, it could be altered/understood/simplified as either "latch" or "laysh".

Etymology

As mentioned, the term derives from a Spanish transcription of an indigenous settlement name. These people were known as the Apalachee and their language, often referred to as the Apalachee language, is now extinct.

We know, however, that their language was from the Muskogean Language family, which is centered in the Southeast portion of North America and includes languages and language branches such as: Muskogee (previously referred to as Creek), Alibamu/Alabama, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and others.

Since the Apalachee language is now extinct, we have to study the other related languages to determine their pronunciations! So, in the end, everyone's right and everyone's wrong! And languages are cool and weird! and obligatory side note! my dad is from Tennessee and I grew up in Pennsylvania, so we use both pronunciations interchangeably.

[ainews]

An Alabama man was arrested in 2016 for deceiving an elderly couple out of their life savings, but the story took an unexpected twist when it was revealed the man's getaway vehicle was a rare and gentle pony.

The man had taken his grandmother's Ford Expedition without her permission and was driving it around town with no license or insurance. He eventually caught the attention of police and was placed in custody. However, a few days earlier, he had used the same car to transport a small horse he had recently purchased on the side of the road.

When authorities searched the man's vehicle, they found a 5-year-old palomino pony named Whinny hidden in the trunk. The elderly couple he deceived owned Whinny, and it's believed the man used the pony to transport money and sell items he had stolen from the couple.

A spokesperson for the Alabama District Attorney's office said the pony's seizure was integral to bringing the man to justice. The authorities eventually returned the pony to its rightful owners, who said the animal was "nonviolent and in good spirits" upon its return.

"It's amazing that such a small animal can make such a big impact on a criminal case," the spokesperson said. "Whinny's unwavering loyalty and innocence was invaluable in bringing a thief to justice."