#thompson canyon

[vintagecamping]

Train spotting while hiking in Thompson Canyon

British Columbia

1968

[rabbitcruiser]

The Colony of British Columbia (1858 – 66) was established on 2 August 1858 by the Parliament of the United Kingdom.  

[thomaswaynewolf]

[aisling-saoirse]

Thompson Wash, Utah - May 20th 2023

[herpsandbirds]

Arizona Woodpecker (Leuconotopicus arizonae), male, family Picidae, order Piciformes, Madera Canyon, AZ, USA

photograph by Mick Thompson

[unteriors]

Thompson Canyon Road, Curlew, Washington.

[singemall-stayallnight]

Documentary With Led Zeppelin Stories

Led Zeppelin's John Bonham, John Paul Jones, Robert Plant, and Jimmy Page at the Chateau Marmont, 1969. | © Jay Thompson

Similar accounts of Led Zeppelin’s abusive behavior are given by Sharon Osbourne, in a 2012 documentary titled Sunset Strip, which is currently free on the Tubi app, and by others in the book Led Zeppelin by Bob Spitz.

In Sunset Strip, Sharon talked about how the members of Led Zeppelin would abuse and were pushy with the starstruck girls around them. Led Zeppelin is discussed by several other people in the film as well. The portion on the band starts at around 52:12. Everything that was said about Led Zeppelin in the documentary is transcribed below:

"I stayed with Led Zeppelin there (Hyatt House) a lot, and they had the entire sixth floor. They always rented out the entire sixth floor and, you know, took over." Grins

-Pamela Des Barres

"Everyone knew in Hollywood that Zeppelin were in town, and those guys were so fuckin' wild. They'd abuse the chicks. They liked to push it to see how far they can go. Burning 'em, cuttin' their hair off, handcuffin' 'em. I mean, you know, leaving them handcuffed for a couple of days in the room."

-Sharon Osbourne

"They'd ride motorcycles up and down the hallway at the Continental Hyatt House, and throw these wild, wild parties. You know, up all night, and throwing TV's out the window. All that stuff was true."

-Rodney Bingenheimer

Then, there's an old video shown, presumably from the 70s, in which three unidentified women are talking about LZ.

The clip begins by one woman saying, "Led Zeppelin did lots of stuff. Richard Cole, he took this leather strap and he started beating me, and I didn't even know him. They threw Cynthia in the swimming pool and ruined all her velvet clothes. They were really weird."

"Hostile," one of the other women chimes in.

Cuts back to Sharon

"They were probably the worst, but they were many that abused loads of people on the Strip. But that would never, ever, ever have been tolerated anywhere else but America. In America, they were like, 'Oh, do you wanna hit me some more? Do you wanna burn me? Do you wanna fuck me with a fucking, you know, rod of iron? We'll do it.' And that's, that's how it was."

-Sharon Osbourne

Rodney Bingenheimer, Jimmy Page, and Lori Mattix in Los Angeles, 1972. | Credit: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

Sharon's recollections corroborate a pattern of behavior described in the book Led Zeppelin by Bob Spitz: p. 190

"Once, during Led Zeppelin's stay at the Chateau Marmont, Peter Grant wandered into one of the empty bungalows they'd rented and found a naked young woman tied to the bed by her wrists and ankles. 'I said, 'Hello, what are you doing here?' She said, 'I don't know, but guys keep coming in and fucking me.' I said, 'Oh okay, well, have a nice day.'

No one gave a thought to whether these girls were well below the age of consent. Some were eighteen, some were sixteen, some were fourteen, occasionally younger--mostly no one bothered to ask."

p. 503

"LA meant it was party time. Swan Song and Atlantic rented a fabulous house in one of the canyons and packed it with a guest list of relatively high-profile friends, everyone from Roger McGuinn, Keith Moon, and Rod Stewart to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. It was a glittery champagne-and-cocaine affair that soon devolved into debauchery. The company pulled out all the stops, somehow sensing this might be a send-off, the last time Led Zeppelin performed in LA.

'I brought along a friend unlike Lori, a thirty-five-year-old, successful woman who knew how to take care of herself,' says Betty Iannaci. Later, Peter Grant invited Iannaci's guest to his room. 'He had come into a large quantity of cocaine and was feeling very generous.' Eventually Betty's friend wound up naked and handcuffed to the pipe under Grant's bathroom sink so that, for an entire weekend, she was at the disposal of anyone who came in. Jimmy came across her almost by accident and, in an uncustomary show of gallantry, found a key to unlock the cuffs and helped her to escape."

Led Zeppelin & Manager Peter Grant. | Source: Pinterest

When I first watched the Sunset Strip documentary, I thought if those girls were restrained and abandoned alone in a hotel room, they were sitting ducks. Any number of terrible things could've been done to them. Zep regularly threw parties at the hotels they stayed in. People would roam from floor to floor and wander into different rooms. Those girls could've been raped.

Then, I read Spitz's book and found out that is what happened. Women and girls were handcuffed or tied up, ditched, and gang raped, sometimes over the course of days. They couldn't consent. They were literally trapped. A man walks into the room and gets to do whatever he wants to whichever girl is there. And she has no choice in the matter.

The men who violated the women & girls who were physically restrained and left alone in unlocked hotel rooms are the ones solely responsible for choosing to rape. But the fact that the Zeppelin band members were restraining women & girls, then leaving them for days at a time is abusive.

Ann Wilson wrote in her review of Spitz's book that Led Zeppelin's story was one of, "rape and pillage," (among other things) and it really was. There were occurrences of statutory rape and two instances of attempted forcible rape by John Bonham.* Let's not forget the multiple incidents of violence committed by Bonham against numerous people, including women, such as the female journalist he punched in the face for smiling at him.

The degeneracy, including rape, is brought up in another review of the book:

https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/bob-spitz-new-book-led-zeppelin-the-biography.1117692/

"I thought the book was fairly well written. I’ve only read one or two other books on Zep, so a lot of the info was new to me. The best parts of the book were the chapters covering the formation of the band, which really painted a detailed picture of the late 60’s music scene. The parts of the book covering the recording sessions were also very well done. Once the 70s and the drugs kick in, the depravity and excesses were all consuming. Very difficult to come to grips with these parts as a fan. I know the text is unrelenting in its depiction of this period, but I dont think there is any other way to tell it. Unfortunately, the serial stories of drugs and rape weren’t punctuated with a few arrests and prosecutions.

Grant was a small time gangster right from the beginning, so it doesn’t surprise me how he ended up. Page hooked their destiny to a star that was inevitably going to burn out… and in a big way. Grant used force and intimidation to get his way and ended up alienating the press and US promoters.

After Bozo died from his disease, Plant was the only one to carve out a semblance of a solo career. JPJ dropped off of the map and Jimmy adopted a very low profile. I strongly suspect his musical skills were damaged by the 70s lifestyle. It is obvious after reading this book why the band would rather not discuss their history, which is extremely unfortunate. It would be nice if they could educate a new generation about one of the best bands ever. Of course, their feeble archive program doesn’t help."

-johnnyb1964, Jun 28, 2023

Led Zeppelin at the Continental Hyatt House Hotel, AKA the Riot House, on the Sunset Strip, 1973. | © James Fortune | Courtesy: modernrocksgallery.com

Sharon's statement that Led Zeppelin were, "probably the worst" reminds me of the bolded line in this comment:

https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/i-just-read-richard-coles-book-and-i-may-never-listen-to-zeppelin-again.225428/page-2

"It's interesting to contrast this thread with the controversy about Francisco Rodriguez (K-Rod), the New York Met's star relief pitcher, who was arrested for attacking his girlfriend's father and was charged with third-degree assault.

None of the sports fans I've spoken with have said, 'It doesn't matter if K-Rod punches a 53-year-old man, I enjoy watching him play, he's one of the best in the business, and his private behavior doesn't matter.' Rather, most of them are not only disgusted by his behavior, but they want him off the team.

The members of LZ weren't punching middle-aged men, but their behavior was no less reprehensible. Yes, rock and roll is (or at least used to be) about rebellion and sex and freedom, but it doesn't have to involve doing degrading things to other people. There's a difference between rowdy and mean, between hooking up with groupies and treating women like utter garbage, between being reckless and intentionally destroying other people's expensive things. All those stories about LZ's behavior aren't legendary because they're typical -- it's because they were at the extreme end of rock star behavior. They're lucky that they're not in jail, or that they weren't shot by someone whom they pissed off.

Now, despite my little rant, I'm able to enjoy my Zeppelin CDs without thinking about any of this. But I understand Zack's feelings.

My question for everyone is, is there a degree of behavior that WOULD cause you to feel like Zack? (Other than, say, the artist brickwalling his or her CDs?;)) Someone mentioned Gary Glitter…has anyone stopped listening to him? What if your favorite artist drove drunk into a schoolbus, killing a dozen 6-year-olds? Or killed his wife?"

-Matty, Aug 20, 2010

Robert Plant with friends at the Riot House. | Credit: Michael Ochs Archives/Pixels

They were other bands behaving badly at the time, but Zep's bad behavior still stands out. I'm unaware of Bonham ever expressing guilt or apologizing for any of his atrocious actions, but as I said in a previous post, I believe the other three former members of LZ see various things differently now and have changed for the better. They certainly have much to feel contrite about, though.

More than one person on here has said they want to maintain a balanced view of Led Zeppelin and not overlook the wrong they've done. Well, here ya go. These are additional glimpses into the foul side of Led Zeppelin's history.

*Ellen Sander went into detail about the attempted gang rape she experienced at the hands of John Bonham and another man. That all four members of the band attacked her is a persistent rumor surrounding Zeppelin, but Bonham was the only LZ band member involved in the attack.

Trips is mostly inspirational — and, as in her chapter on the Plaster Casters of Chicago, iconic groupies known for making casts of various rock legends’ penises — also massively entertaining. But the book doesn’t shy away from the dark side of rock life. One chapter chronicling a 1969 U.S. Led Zeppelin tour starts as a triumphant road movie and ends as a horror film. Sander writes that, when she went to say goodbye to the group and their entourage on the last night of the tour, she ended up in physical peril.

'Two members of the group attacked me, shrieking and grabbing at my clothes, totally over the edge,' she writes. (Sander now specifies that the aggressors were John Bonham and a member of the band’s entourage.) ' I fought them off until [manager] Peter Grant rescued me but not before they managed to tear my dress down the back.'

Reached through a representative, Led Zeppelin declined to comment on the incident. Though in Mick Wall’s 2008 Zeppelin bio When Giants Walked the Earth, when asked about Sander’s account by the author, Page replied, 'That’s not a false picture.'

Sander recently took some time to reflect on that traumatic night, which she calls 'the nadir of that whole arc of experience with Sixties rock & roll.'

So, regarding the Zeppelin incident, I only want to discuss it insofar as you’re comfortable with it.

I’m totally comfortable with any aspect of it, so just go ahead. It was a long time ago. I believe I have healed from that, many times over.

The account in the book is fairly brief. Could you set that scene for me and recall what you remember happening?

You know, we’d been on the road together. I’d been at recording sessions in New York and they had a date at the Fillmore. I had a certain timespan on the tour and I wasn’t going to see them again. I saw the show at the Fillmore. It was splendid, and I went backstage to say goodbye and got attacked.

It was [a member of the band’s entourage] and Bonzo and I don’t know who else. I know it wasn’t Jimmy [Page] or John [Paul Jones] because they were in the corner just flapping their heads. It was only an instant. It couldn’t have been more than 20 seconds, or something like that. Then Peter Grant just sprang up from his seat and just picked them up by the cuff and pulled them off me. They came at me from the front, I crossed my arms over myself, and I turned my back, and I had on this dress, that was tied in the back. The top of it was tied in the back, and they just ripped that down, but I still kept the dress up because I had my arms crossed over my front. And there I stood with the back of my dress torn and Peter said, “Why don’t you take my car home?” So we went downstairs in the back, and he put me in his limousine, and I went home, shaking. I don’t know if I was frightened or if I was angry or both, but I was just shaking. I was terrified.

I just never thought that would happen. I knew about the behavior with the groupies ’cause they would talk about it all the time, and I’d see a little bit of it. What I saw, I wrote about. I was kind of like, 'That’s just with them, but I’m different. I’m a reporter. I’ll do my story for Life magazine. I won’t be vulnerable to that.' And I was.

So just to clarify, this was basically in front of a room full of people?

It was backstage, so it wasn’t all that full. It was the band, the road crew and Peter Grant, maybe a couple other people, but those weren’t very big rooms upstairs backstage at the Fillmore East. I just came in to say goodbye. I wasn’t coming in to hang out. I just wanted to say, “Goodbye. It’s been exhausting but wonderful working with you and best of luck, you’re great, thanks, goodbye.” And I was going to go home and start writing — well, I had a bunch of notes. And that was that.

Would you say that it was John Bonham who was the primary aggressor?

No, it was [the member of their entourage]. And then Bonham was right on it, but it was [the other man] who, I think, started it and then as soon as he encouraged it, then Bonham.

I don’t know where [Robert] Plant was, but I saw Jimmy Page and I saw John Paul Jones. And Jimmy Page was just, like, holding his forehead going, “No.” And John Paul Jones just kind of turned his face to the wall, like he always did. He was always apart from them. He was never into their orgies.

And you said the person who broke it up was …?

Peter Grant. And he was a big guy. Really, he could pick up 220-something guys and just lift them up and put them down. So you know, as it turned out, I was never in any real danger, but I didn’t know that.

So the entire Zeppelin road piece was written after that incident? I think you wrote that you took a year off.

Yes. I decided not to write a piece that would promote them. And plus I was having trouble having any emotional distance from it, which I hope is understandable.

Of course.

My editor was very understanding. I just backed off, and I got busy with a lot of other stuff. And then a year later I was looking at it, looking at my notes and going, “You know what? I’m putting this in the book.”

In terms of getting to that point, was it really just a process of time? Or was there some therapy, or other methods?

Yeah, it was time. You know, it’s been, what, 50 years? It was time and also that I knew that it was an anomalous event. Everybody else I ever worked with treated me very well or better.

Overall, your piece is surprisingly sympathetic to the band, in light of what happened.

Well, I mean it didn’t seem like bitterness to the point of focusing the truth elsewhere. I mean, I loved the story more than I loved them. I just took it from the notes, the way it was. Before that happened, I was very sympathetic. Empathetic maybe.

And their music, I still respect and love. The virtuosity of Jimmy Page still amazes me.

Thinking about what’s happened in so many other industries with the MeToo movement, if something like the Zeppelin attack happened today and it came to light, there would be a huge uproar about it. Do you ever wish that that cultural shift had happened earlier?

I don’t think anybody who ever heard from me or read that story, I don’t remember anybody not being upset and outraged about it. And as I say, it was anomalous. … But men with power always took sexual advantage, and all of a sudden, it’s being called into question, and it’s about time.

I mean, my 50-year-old editor at Saturday Review — my agent put it this way — chased me around the desk. And when I told her about it, I was really upset; she laughed. And I felt very betrayed that she laughed. But then, I felt like, OK, nothing bad happened, it’s just something I have to put up with — I want the gig. And he never did it again, and we never talked about it.

[allthecanadianpolitics]

Environment Canada has issued 25 air quality alerts for British Columbia, amid raging wildfires and a provincial state of emergency. The federal weather agency is warning that the smoke will last another 24 to 48 hours. Even in low concentrations, wildfire smoke can be harmful to human health. The alerts cover virtually all of Vancouver Island south of Port McNeill, all of the Sunshine Coast apart from Howe Sound, the entire Lower Mainland, and all of the Fraser Valley and Fraser Canyon. It also includes the Lakes District, Stuart-Nechako and North Thompson regions, as well everything south of that in B.C.’s Interior, the Okanagan, and the Kootenays.

Continue Reading.

Tagging: @politicsofcanada

[heavenlybackside]

Snowing really good in the Big Thompson Canyon..🌨🌨🌨

Big Thompson River 💦❄️

Big Thompson Canyon 🏔

3/14/24

💙🌨❄️🌨🩵✨️

[fatehbaz]

In early August of 1864, a contingent of thirty-six U.S. soldiers, led by an army captain named John Thompson, left Fort Defiance in the northeastern corner of Arizona Territory and trudged north under the hot sun through the sprawling homeland of the Navajos. Diné Bikéyah, as Navajos call their land [...]. He and his thirty-six men headed straight from Fort Defiance to the deep gorge at the heart of Diné Bikéyah -- Tséyi’ or Canyon de Chelly, the now-famous canyon lined with swaying cottonwoods and pockmarked with ancient Pueblo ruins. As Thompson and his men marched through the canyon, [...] they engaged in a fierce, and roundly victorious, battle against an unlikely enemy: the peach orchards that had been cultivated over hundreds of years by Diné families. In the course of his march, Thompson and his soldiers felled a remarkable 4,150 fruit- bearing peach trees and, for good measure, “effectually destroyed” at least eleven acres of corn and beans. Oddly, these binges of violence against Navajo peaches, corn, and beans came after the majority of Diné in the area had already surrendered to the army, following an aggressive and violent campaign for their removal from the canyon. [...]

---

We can ask, of course, just what it was about these peach trees, corn stalks, and bean plants that invited such unnecessary violence, such “systematic eradication” of fruits, grains, and legumes.

Historian Peter Iverson muses, “perhaps the army simply wanted to remove evidence that contradicted the image of Navajos as full-time nomadic wanderers,” which had provided the (quite effective) rationale for their removal in the first place. Perhaps, too, the orchards and fields evidenced a Diné proficiency at agriculture in the high arid climes of the New Mexico territory that surprised Americans who expected Navajo country to be useless for agricultural purposes, a sprawling wasteland described in 1868 by William Tecumseh Sherman, the general of Union Army fame, as “utterly unfit for white civilization.” It is not implausible to venture a guess that these binges of violence against peach trees occurred as proxy to settler and soldier frustrations about the newly conquered Southwest and the challenges it presented to American notions of what good agricultural land should look like. Indeed, ideas about landscape and people, throughout this notorious removal campaign, served as the primary and most powerful impetus for colonial violence against people and peaches alike. Notions that the Colorado Plateau was uninhabited wasteland unfit for farming draw us quite a clear map of how we get from Thompson and his vexed tree felling to more contemporary cases of the interplay between nature, people, colonization, and power. [...]

---

The social construction of the high, arid landscapes of the Southwest as “more or less worthless” has been a fundamental component of colonization of the Diné, as well as other southwestern and Great Basin tribes. In fact, the inhabitation of dry, arid landscapes by Native nations was used as evidence of their low status on the Western hierarchy of civilization, following a kind of environmental determinism that posited that “barren” landscapes supported villainous and savage peoples. [...]

The surviving Diné were to return to Diné Bikéyah, and General Sherman, who made the final decision to permit the Diné to return to their homeland, did so believing that he was sending them to what he considered, as one historian put it, a “waterless worthless waste” -- certainly not the kind of land [...] that would support fine orchards of thousands of fruit trees and scores of acres of beans and corn. In fact, upon returning to Diné Bikéyah, the Navajos of Canyon de Chelly masterfully regrew their orchards and, by the 1880s, were harvesting peaches once more.

---

Text by: Traci Brynne Voyles. “In Search of Treasure.” Wastelanding: Legacies of Uranium Mining in Navajo Country. 2015. [Some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me.]

[na-bird-of-the-day]

BOTD: Canyon Wren

Photo: Mick Thompson

"One of the best songsters in the west, the Canyon Wren is usually heard before it is seen. Surprisingly elusive and skulking even in open terrain, this dark rusty wren disappears and reappears as it creeps about the jumbled rocks of an eroded cliff or steep canyon wall. If the observer waits, the bird will eventually jump to the top of an exposed boulder to pour out another song, a rippling and musical cascade of notes, well suited to beautiful wild canyons."

- Audubon Field Guide

[azurezfiction]

Power Rangers ship list

Because everyone seems to be doing it; here is my ship list!

Everything under the read more because it's a ton:

MMPRS1-Turbo 1: Tommy x Kimberly Zack x Trini Billy x Trini Jason x Tommy Billy x Skull (because of augment-techs) Stone Canyon Trio Rocky x Adam Aisha x Shawna Bulk x Connie David Truehart x Trey Tanya x Kat Tanya x Adam Tanya x Zack Aisha x Zack Turbo II - Lost Galaxy: Ashley x Cassie Andros x Ashley Zhane x Andros Zhane x Astronema/Karone Karone x Maya Mike Corbett x Carlos Vallerte Kai x Damon Leo x Andros TJ x Damon Lightspeed Rescue - Wild Force Joel x Miss Fairweather Kelsey Winslow x Nancy Thompson Carter x Ryan Dana x Taylor Taylor x Alyssa Merrick x Cole Eric x Wes Wes x Jen x Eric Katie x Trip Eric x Trip Danny x Max

Ninja Storm - SPD Dustin x Hunter Tori x Blake Blake x Trent Tori x Kira Dustin x Conner x Hunter Ethan x Cassidy

Mystic Force - RPM Nick x Xander Chip x Vida Udonna x Leanbow Leelee x Phineas Claire x Xander RJ x Casey Lilly x Theo Jarrod x Camilla Casey x Jarrod (x RJ) Ziggy x Dillion Flynn x Gemma

Samurai - Dino Charge Antonio x Jayden Lauren x Mia Troy x Jordan Noah x Orion Gia x Emma One-sided Jake x Noah (Jake crushing on Noah). Tyler x Shelby Tyler x Ivan Ivan x Tyler x Matt Koda x Phillip

Ninja Steel - Cosmic Fury Brody x Preston Calvin x Preston Calvin x Men. Sarah x Hayley Devon x Blaze Ravi x Roxy Ollie x Javi Amelia x Javi Izzy x Fern Zayto x Aiyon Zayto x Javi

Comics: Ace x Gent* Trek x Ace* Violet x Zack Ellarien x Remi Nikolai x Daniel Grace x Jamie x Terona Grace x Terona Matt Cook x Billy Cranston Crossover ships: Andrew Hartford x Mr Kelman (1995 Movie) x Dane Romero Fred Kelman x Justin Stewart Cam x Kimberly Conner McKnight x muscular guys Merrick x RJ Chad x Danny Chad x Aurico Delphine x Hayley Ziktor

*I have so many headcanons about these two ships and how it connects to canon, I'm really hoping to get it out soon!

[xtruss]

Poinsettias adorn the Zocalo, the main square in modern Mexico City. Indigenous to Mexico and Central America, the plant became a symbol of Christmas with a little help from European missionaries and an American diplomat named Joel Poinsett. Photograph By Carrie Thompson, Alamy Stock Photo

How The Rugged Poinsettia became Our Favorite Holiday Flower

Long before a clever marketer turned it into a Christmas staple, the Aztec and Maya celebrated the colorful shrub for its medicinal value.

— By Bill Newcott | Published: December 22, 2022

Think “Poinsettia” and you think “Christmas,” right? Well, think again. At the time of the first Christmas, the closest poinsettia to the little town of Bethlehem was 8,000 miles away, clinging to life in a rocky canyon in what’s now southwestern Mexico.

“The Aztec called the plant cuetlaxochitl (brilliant flower), and the Maya referred to it as k’alul wits (ember flower),” says Mark Hoddle of the University of California Riverside’s department of entomology. He became fascinated with the poinsettia while working on his doctoral dissertation in the 1990s, exploring ways to control whiteflies, a common scourge of the holiday plants.

There’s evidence the indigenous peoples of Central America appreciated the plant for its seasonal red leaves, he says, but mostly they saw medicinal value.

“When you break a leaf or branch of a poinsettia, it leaks a milky white sap,” Hoddle says. “The cultures believed that sap had healing properties.” Aztecs applied the sap to the breasts of nursing mothers to increase milk production. They also used the sap as a depilatory.

Even today, Hoddle says, descendants of the ancient Maya in Mexico boil the leaves to create a remedy for obstetrical or gynecological hemorrhaging. And if you happen to be bitten by a snake, the locals say, there’s nothing better than boiled root of k’alul wits.

The poinsettia is named in honor of Joel Roberts Poinsett, an American diplomat and avid amateur botanist who introduced the plant to the United States in the 1820s. Library of Congress

The First Christmas Poinsettias

Franciscan missionaries arrived in Mexico in the 16th century and eventually began setting up elaborate manger scenes at Christmastime. Holly, Europe’s holiday flora of choice, was nowhere to be found for the dioramas, but when the missionaries saw the red and green colors of this local plant—that happened to burst into color every December—they knew they had the perfect stand-in.

By the time an American diplomat named Joel Poinsett arrived in Mexico in the 1820s, those bright leaves were a common sight in local churches at Christmastime. A swashbuckling U.S. congressman from Charleston, South Carolina, Poinsett spoke six languages, dined with Russia’s czar, served President James Madison as a covert agent to protect U.S. business interests in South America, and somewhere along the way became, for a short time, a general in the Chilean army.

Yet despite all his exploits, Poinsett is remembered primarily as the amateur botanist who became fascinated with those red and green plants from Mexico. He sent some home to Charleston, where people began growing them in their gardens. Their notoriety grew under a variation of Poinsett’s name.

Poinsettias Become A Christmas Star

For the first 100 years or so after those first transplants arrived in Charleston, fragile poinsettias were nearly impossible to keep alive in a pot. They were sold primarily as cut flowers.

“That all changed with these guys,” says Fred Clarke, keeper of what’s likely the world’s only poinsettia library. He’s leading me toward a large, translucent white shed tucked into a corner of the Flower Fields at Carlsbad Ranch, a bit north of San Diego, California.

Each spring Carlsbad’s famous Flower Fields become a fantasia of red, yellow, and white ranunculus flowers. Clarke is the horticulturalist in charge of making sure those 80 million flowers grow and get to market, but it’s clear his passion plant grows inside this shed.

“Here we are!” he enthuses as we step inside. Sitting on a series of low, tiered risers are scores of potted poinsettias arranged chronologically in order of their historical development.

Clarke doesn’t have a sample of Joel Poinsett’s iteration, but his chronology does include a close relative: the legendary St. Louis Red. The first mass-produced poinsettia, it was introduced in 1924 by Louis Bordet of Missouri.

Long-stemmed and fragile, the St. Louis Red was still primarily a cut flower. But a self-taught Southern California agriculturalist named Paul Ecke started toying with the Red’s genetics, breeding varieties that exploded with multiple colored leaves, didn’t mind growing in a greenhouse, and, most importantly, could be shipped in pots.

Following the lead of those long-ago missionaries, Ecke began marketing poinsettias as “The Christmas Flower.” He convinced Hollywood to use them as decorations on seasonal TV specials. (Ecke’s son personally saw to it that Johnny Carson had an extravagant display behind his Tonight Show desk each year.)

For decades, the Ecke family grew nearly all their poinsettias on what’s now Carlsbad’s Flower Fields. Today, poinsettias are grown primarily outside the U.S., so the Ecke family focuses on developing and patenting new varieties. The results are on proud display in Clarke’s poinsettia library.

Ushering me through the collection, Clarke—who started working with the Ecke family 42 years ago—ticks off the subsequent varieties. They include the Flaming Sphere (1950), a floppy version that never caught on. The C-1 (1968) was the first poinsettia that could withstand the rigors of transport. The Limo (1988) introduced the deep red of present-day poinsettias. Freedom Family (1991) was the first with rounded, elephant-ear-shaped bracts rather than long, pointy ones. And the Prestige (2002), known for its rich color and stamina, is now the most popular poinsettia on the planet.

After touring the poinsettia library, Clarke invites me to enjoy one of the Flower Fields’ famous strawberry milkshakes. As we head for a small stand, he suddenly stops and turns back toward the shed and his red-leafed congregation. He smiles.

“These guys have come a long way,” he says.

[dimsilver]

tagged to share a good song for each letter of my url - thanks @accidental-spice! this list is heavily slanted towards my summer playlist :)

Daylight by Watchouse

It Would Be You by Ben Rector

Man in Room 39 by The Arcadian Wild

Summerland by half•alive

I’ll Fly Away by The Gray Havens

Like the Dawn by the Oh Hellos

Venice by Canyon City

Eden Bound by Jac Thompson

Round Prairie Road by Jamestown Revival

open tag - please share some music if you’re so inclined :)

[readjthompson]

Shamrock Rebellion was a lot of fun. Here are some clips I filmed of Gen and the Degenerates, Face to Face, Buzzcocks, Frank Turner and the Sleeping Souls, Flogging Molly, pit people, and me. Cheers.

[katblu42]

Day 11 - Rocky Mountaineer part 1

I'm behind again! Mostly because I've been busy experiencing stuff, and not connected to tech!!

Anyway, Day 10 started pretty early - coach pick up at the hotel was 7:50am, but our luggage had to be outside our rooms for collection an hour before that.

Our coach was the first to arrive at the station, so we had about half an hour to hang around before the welcome (which involved bagpipes), and then boarding.

(This is a Gold Leaf carriage - I was travelling on Silver Leaf)

We set off at 8am, and while we were still slowly trundling out of Vancouver the first refreshments were served - coffee and tea, then a 2 course breakfast!

We had an unexpected and sudden stop when the emergency brake was pulled due to "an issue with the crossing ahead." Not sure what the issue was, but when the emergency brake is pulled the whole length of train has to be walked to check the brake has been released. I think we were stopped for about 10 minutes.

(The stop also caused a service cart at the back of our carriage to topple. These carts basically never to that, so this was definitely unusual according to our 3 cabin hosts!)

Not long after that we had a glimpse of Mt Barker (which is over the border in the US - Washington).

At this point I feel the need to point out 2 important things: 1. I took over 200 photos today 2. All photos were taken through the windows of the train, and are therefore subject to reflections off the glass - watch out for the little UFOs, they are reflections of the lights in the carriage ceiling!

I also should point out seeing mountains like these is kinda exciting for me - Australia's mountains aren't like this! And the train follows the Fraser River pretty closely. The grey-green colour of the water is apparently due to the sediments it carries - they never get a chance to settle.

Speaking of colours . . . this mixture of blues and greens is because it's part of where the Fraser meets the Thomson River, which the train then follows to our eventual overnight stop in Kamloops.

This train trip is like being in a moving restaurant - we were supplied with drinks and a snack, then a 3 course lunch by the time we hit this point!

Rainbow Canyon - the colours of the rocks caused by oxidation of iron, copper and sulfur (I think that's what they said!)

I was really on the wrong side of the train to get shots of the rapids on the Thompson, where some of the rocks have names! Can you spot the rock called the frog? (right pic above)

Murray Creek Falls . . .

On one of our many stops while waiting on a siding for a freight train to pass in the opposite direction, we had a Bald Eagle circling beside us. Not easy to snap pics!

Somewhere near Black Canyon we had one of the best chances to shoot pics of the front of the train - my carriage was the second last of 22 "pieces of equipment" (engine, carriages inc non-passenger cars), and the last passenger car. (I still had trouble getting a decent shot without reflections or telephone wires in the way!)

We spent much of the day spotting Osprey nests! (And one or two eagle nests)

Does anyone recognise Rainbow Bluffs? Apparently they appeared in the X-Files. (right pic above)

After many, many delays pulling into sidings for freight trains (the two I counted cars for were 150 and 194 cars long - so not short trains!), and our afternoon snack and drink, we finally came up along Kamloops Lake. Lots of winding track as the train closely follows the shoreline.

And that's my 30 image limit!

We were late getting into Kamloops - so many stops along the way we even got a second afternoon snack!! So, when we finally reached our hotels it was around 9pm. That's basically a 13hr train trip! Certainly not boring though.