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Out of Data, Waterlogged boxes of books, more cufflinks and butterfly-winged jewelry
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Blog
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I'm out of data, 4 days before my end of cycle, 8 days in the hospital will do that to you.
This is fine, I've been scrolling too much to little avail. Virgin - when you were out of data, let you keep online, just at a breathtakingly slow pace. Public Mobile, I've discovered, ends your internet entirely. You can top up your plan at rates which exceed your monthly bill for a few tiny gigabytes, I've learned my lesson. SO - texting is out, as is scrolling and email must be gotten from the library; but this being offline, I'll live, it'll be fine.
I'm unpacking boxes of books, more discoveries: a small box of cufflinks, one pair worth keeping (an Arc De Triomphe, but from where? gilt under glass domes...), a couple of ugly sets, a few strays. A box of vintage silver butterfly-wing jewelry - 2 pairs of screw in earrings, a brooch depicting a palm tree in front of a tropical sunset, a pine tree against the northern lights, a heart shaped pendant and bracelet. a soldering iron, a pile of how-to art books, "Walter Foster", how to make art you couldn’t bear to look at, draw faces you’d never stop kicking, landscapes you’d only see in hell, domiciles that promise an escape from all thought and emotion, art entirely devoid of emotion or intelligence just rote formulas for arranging the scene; a few books of art history (none of which mention Walter Foster), Jansen’s Art History, and an entire box of books that somehow were beneath a leaking roof in the storage locker, something about books warped and destroyed that breaks my heart; I try pressing warped-spines beneath towers of other books in an effort to reshape them into a saleable form, others are fit only for the rubbish. This is a shame, "Trilby" deserved another reader, as did "Lucien" in volumes I-III, and many others made non-saleable by a rubbish storage unit with a leaky roof.
So, now at the library making use of the free internet; then off to try and liquidate a few of my more recent discoveries and get my teeth back into a couple of paintings...
Ghost Towns of British Columbia - Bruce Ramsey
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Books
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This was, given my newly acquired original Fisher Gold Bug, essential reading and I must find a place for it on my shelf. My shelf, already stuffed and overflowing...
First published in 1963 the author had a chance to interview a lot of the original inhabitants of the ghost towns, even then in their 90's, and the book is well furnished pictures, maps, descriptions, conversations, it's a reference book, a guide to gold creeks and treasures, photos taken back in the day of ruins long since vanished - some of the towns won back, like Ferguson, others vanished, lidar will be the tool to search for their remains.
There are the Coal mining towns, Lumber & Sawmill towns (ghost towns by the 20's as even then forestry was a little overly zealous), Fishing towns, vanished Forts and Trading Posts, Silver and mining towns, all these of interest, but no one laid up a cache of lumber in a sawmill town that I can metal detect my way to fortune, same with the silver, coal (I found a tin full of coal! I’m rich! I’m rich!); no, it’s the gold mining encampments that stir the imagination, the hidden unrecovered pokes and caches of gold and coins and robberies with spoils buried under trees….
Anyways, it was - as I noted before, a lyrical and poetic waxing on places long disappeared, and between the conversations and descriptions of decaying ballrooms and threaded in the writings of long dead reporters there are abundant clues to lead me on to treasure...
The Disappearance of RAAF Douglas C-47
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Ideas & Questions
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This is interesting, not least because there were at least 3 instances of survivors contacting/radioing for help after their plane went down. Meaning that they went down on land, supposedly north of Darwin, and in the over 80 years since no trace has been found of them or their plane.
Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1945_RAAF_Douglas_C-47_disappearance
I find it fascinating that this can still be unsolved. It has some parallels to the case of Canada's missing Douglas C-54; which disappeared enroute Anchorage to Great Falls, and there were suggestions of broadcasts from the downed plane afterwards. The Australian Plane seems definitely likely to have landed (3 broadcasts) - and the fate of the crew & passengers is curious indeed.
Link: https://rodboyle.com/index.php/archives/blog/ideas-a-questions/missing-1950-douglas-c-54d
Note: I used to be interested in tales of people who went missing - just vanished - until I realized that there was often a mundane explanation that authorities couldn't share with the public. The possibility of murder, probability even, only they didn't want to implicate the suspected boyfriend/spouse/ex or family members, or the possibility of suicide (probability) in cases where the vanished went off for a walk in the woods, or the ease with which it is to get lost in unforgiving wilderness terrain, and most peoples basic unpreparedness for wilderness survival, most missing persons cases do not bear any close scrutiny. Even MH 370 - the missing Malaysian Airlines flight, bore no scrutiny when you learned a very little of the pilots background. But these, the cases where the planes may have landed intact and where still no clue has been found - well, until they're found they're still baffling.
Boone Helm
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: People
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One of the American Characters in the Cariboo, known there primarily for murdering 3 men and leaving an unrecovered cache he supposedly buried near Quesnel.
Links: http://www.cariboogoldrush.ca/murderers-gulch.html, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boone_Helm
Note the Wiki doesn't mention his Cariboo years.
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