Today, The Grandma is going to celebrate this wonderful night, the Castanyada, with TinaPicotes, Joseph de Ca'th Lon and ClaireFontaine.She wants to talk about this October, 31, a wonderful day celebrated in different cultures in different ways but with the same origin: Occitania.
Samhain is a Gaelic festival marking the end of the harvest season and the beginning of winter or the darker half of the year. Traditionally, it is celebrated from 31 October to 1 November, as the Celtic day began and ended at sunset. This is about halfway between the autumn equinox and the winter solstice.
It is one of the four Gaelic seasonal festivals, along with Imbolc, Bealtaine and Lughnasadh. Historically, it was widely observed throughout Ireland, Scotland and the Isle of Man. Similar festivals are held at the same time of year in other Celtic lands; for example the Brythonic Calan Gaeaf, in Wales, KalanGwav, in Cornwall, and Kalan Goañv, in Brittany, both Celtic branches are roughly as old as each other.
In the 9th century AD, the Western Christian church shifted the date of All Saints' Day to 1 November, while 2 November later became All Souls' Day.Over time, Samhain and All Saints/All Souls merged to create the modern Halloween. Historians have used the name Samhain to refer to Gaelic Halloween customs up until the 19th century.
Since the later 20th century, Celtic neopagans and Wiccans have observed Samhain, or something based on it, as a religious holiday. Neopagans in the Southern Hemisphere often celebrate Samhain at the other end of the year, about 1 May.
In Modern Irish as well as Scottish Gaelic the name is Samhain. Older forms ofthe word include the Scottish Gaelic spellings Samhainn and Samhuinn. In Manx Gaelic the name is Sauin.
The Grandma celebrates the Castanyada
Castanyada in Catalan, the festival is also celebrated across Catalonia on both sides of the French-Catalan border.
It is a popular party in Portugal,where it is called magusto. It has also spread internationally as chestnut party.
The common elements of this celebration are the celebration in the month of November or end of October and the main elements are chestnut and fire. With this feast the chestnut tree recovers the importance that the corn and the potato have snatched from him in the last centuries.
The magosto is a traditional festival in some areas of northern Spain, such as Galicia, Cantabria, Asturias and the provinces of León, Zamora and Salamanca and Cáceres.
It is a party of Celtic roots, the party that celebrates the end of summer and begins the middle of the dark and cold year. In all the regions where it is celebrated and especially in Galicia, it is deeply related to the cult of the dead, being habitual to leave the fire of the house set and food around the fireplace so that the spirits of the deceased of the family return to their homes to warm up tonight. Numerous traditional rituals are celebrated throughout this feast, both for purification, healing, remembering ancestors, attending mass or visiting the local healer.
In Euskalherria, this festivity is known as Gau Beltza.
Some days ago, a horrible anti-Semitic attack happened in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where 11 worshippers were killed at the Tree of Life synagogue. The Grandma was shocked thinking about how is possible to happen something like this in the 21th century.
Lately, terrible things like antisemitism, homophobia, and xenophobia are rising up without control. They are clear symptoms of an emergent fascism that is growing more and more taking advantage of the economic crisis, the globalization, the intolerance, the ignorance and the corruption of the political class. Hungary, Poland, The USA, Brazil, Spain, Italy, Turkey, Saudi Arabia... the list of emergent fascism seems to not finish and this is a terrible problem that we must fight against, control and erase before it was too late.
We must learn from our History and we have recent events to remember, to never forget and, the most import, to not repeat again, like the WWII, a terrible moment in our history that left sad stories to read, reread and explain to all the present and future generations, stories like Anne Frank's life.
Annelies Marie Frank (12 June 1929-February or March 1945) was a German-born diarist. One of the most discussed Jewish victims of the Holocaust, she gained fame posthumously with the publication of The Diary of a Young Girl, originally Het Achterhuis in Dutch, The Secret Annexin English, in which she documents her life in hiding from 1942 to 1944, during the German occupation of the Netherlands in World War II. It is one of the world's most widely known books and has been the basis for several plays and films.
Anne Frank
Born in Frankfurt, Germany, she lived most of her life in or near Amsterdam, Netherlands, having moved there with her family at the age of four and a half when the Nazis gained control over Germany. Born a German national, she lost her citizenship in 1941 and thus became stateless.
The Franks
were liberalJews, and did not observe all of the customs and traditions
of Judaism. They lived in an assimilated community of Jewish and
non-Jewish citizens of various religions.
Edith was the more devout
parent, while Otto was interested in scholarly pursuits and had an
extensive library; both parents encouraged the children to read.
In
1933, after Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party won the federal election, Edith
Frank and the children went to stay with Edith's mother Rosa in Aachen.
Otto Frank remained in Frankfurt, but after receiving an offer to start a
company in Amsterdam, he moved there to organize the business and to
arrange accommodations for his family. He began working at the Opekta
Works, a company that sold the fruit extract pectin, and found an
apartment on the Merwedeplein in the Rivierenbuurt neighbourhood of
Amsterdam.
By February 1934, Edith and the children had joined him in
Amsterdam. TheFranks were among 300,000 Jews who fled Germany between
1933 and 1939.
After
moving to Amsterdam, Anne and Margot Frank were enrolled in school,
Margot in public school and Anne in a Montessori school. Margot
demonstrated ability in arithmetic, and Anne showed aptitude for reading
and writing.Anne's friend, Hanneli Goslar, later recalled that from
early childhood, Frank frequently wrote, although she shielded her work
with her hands and refused to discuss the content of her writing.
In
May 1940, Germany invaded the Netherlands, and the occupation
government began to persecute Jews by the implementation of restrictive
and discriminatory laws; mandatory registration and segregation soon
followed. Otto Frank tried to arrange for the family to emigrate to the
United States, the only destination that seemed to him to be viable, but
Frank's application for a visa was never processed, due to
circumstances such as the closing of the U.S. consulate in Rotterdam and
the loss of all the paperwork there, including the visa application.
Even if it had been processed, the U.S. government at the time was
concerned that people with close relatives still in Germany could be
blackmailed into becoming Nazi spies.
Anne Frank
By May 1940, the Franks were trapped in Amsterdam by the German occupationof the Netherlands. As persecutions of the Jewish population increased in July 1942, the Franks went into hiding in some concealed rooms behind a bookcase in the building where Anne's father, Otto Frank, worked.
From then until the family's arrest by the Gestapo in August 1944, she kept a diary she had received as a birthday present, and wrote in it regularly.Following their arrest, the Franks were transported to concentration camps.
For
her thirteenth birthday on 12 June 1942, Frank received a book she had
shown her father in a shop window a few days earlier. Although it was an
autograph book, bound with red-and-white checkered cloth and with a
small lock on the front, Frank decided she would use it as a diary, and
she began writing in it almost immediately. In her entry dated 20 June
1942, she lists many of the restrictions placed upon the lives of the
Dutch Jewish population.
On 3 September 1944, the
group was deported on what would be the last transport from Westerbork
to the Auschwitz concentration camp and arrived after a three-day
journey.
On 28 October,
selections began for women to be relocated to Bergen-Belsen. More than
8,000 women, including Anne and Margot Frank, and Auguste van Pels, were
transported. Edith Frank was left behind and died from starvation.
Tents were erected at Bergen-Belsen to accommodate the influx of
prisoners, and as the population rose, the death toll due to disease
increased rapidly.
October, 30 1944. Anne and her sister, Margot, were transferred from Auschwitz to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where they died, probably of typhus, a few months later. They were originally estimated by the Red Cross to have died in March, with Dutch authorities setting 31 March as their official date of death, but research by the Anne Frank House in 2015 suggests they more likely died in February.
Otto, the only survivor of the Franks, returned to Amsterdam after the war to find that her diary had been saved by his secretary, Miep Gies, and his efforts led to its publication in 1947.
Anne Frank
It was translated from its original Dutch version and first published in English in 1952 as The Diary of a Young Girl,and has since been translated into over 60 languages.
In July 1945, after the Red Cross confirmed the deaths of the Frank sisters, Miep Gies gave Otto Frank the diary and a bundle of loose notes that she had saved in the hope of returning them to Anne. Otto Frank later commented that he had not realized Anne had kept such an accurate and well-written record of their time in hiding.
In his memoir, he described the painful process of reading the diary, recognizing the events described and recalling that he had already heard some of the more amusing episodes read aloud by his daughter.
He saw for the first time the more private side of his daughter and those sections of the diary she had not discussed with anyone, noting, For me it was a revelation ... I had no idea of the depth of her thoughts and feelings ... She had kept all these feelings to herself. Moved by her repeated wish to be an author, he began to consider having it published.
Frank's diary began as a private expression of her thoughts; she wrote several times that she would never allow anyone to read it. She candidly described her life, her family and companions, and their situation, while beginning to recognize her ambition to write fiction for publication.
In March 1944, she heard a radio broadcast by Gerrit Bolkestein, a member of the Dutch government in exile, based in London, who said that when the war ended, he would create a public record of the Dutch people's oppression under German occupation. He mentioned the publication of letters and diaries, and Frank decided to submit her work when the time came.
Today, The Grandma has continued reading the Joseph's guide about the Neapolitan city of Baia. It's so exciting that she has been also seeing the photos that Joseph took there.
Among the most significant and remarkable remains are several dome-like structures such as the great so-called Temple of Mercury, the Temple of Venus, and the Temple of Diana, which were traditionally credited to some of the more famous residents of the town's villas, although they were not temples but parts of thermal baths.
This colossal ogival dome, today half collapsed, originally collected vapours coming from the ground below and was used for thermal baths. It was decorated with marble friezes depicting hunting scenes.
The Temple of Mercury consists of an enormous 21.5 m diameter dome, a miracle of engineering and the largest in the world prior to the construction of Rome's Pantheon in AD 128. The dome has a central hole or oculus and was made with large tuff blocks.
It was, and is still today, used to enclose the frigidarium or cold pool of the public baths. From eighteenth century descriptions it appeared to have had six niches of which four were semicircular.
A Joseph's selfie in the Archaeological Park of Baia
The Temple of Venus is another octagonal building, sunken 3 metres in the ground, had eight large arched windows and a balcony inside overlooking the pool. It owes its name to Scipione Mazzella who claimed to have found the statue of the goddess there.
Overlooking the sea is the Villa of the Ambulatio with a series of six terraces connected to each other by a complex of staircases of which the last leads to the sector of Mercury. It is named after the 'ambulatio', the long corridor with two longitudinal naves on the second terrace, intended to be a covered walk with large openings with a magnificent panorama of the gulf below. Traces of precious stucco can be seen on the brick structure of the central pillars.
On the upper terrace were the residential areas, once richly decorated with several rooms dedicated to leisure. The third terrace is now transformed into a tree-lined garden. The fourth terrace was for service areas. On the fifth terrace are several rooms probably used as places to stay and rest, open to the sea and to the last terrace below that once was occupied by a garden, as today, perhaps surrounded by a colonnade.
Founded by two parallel staircases is the sector or Temple of Sosandra from the name of the statue found in 1953 and now located in the National Museum of Naples.
The complexity of this
sector on four terraces does not allow its intended use to be identified
but it was either a spa, a villa, a hospitalia, a sort of hotel for
visitors to the nearby spa, or even a meeting place of Nero for the entertainment of sailors of the nearby Classis Misenensis, the Miseno fleet.
Joseph at Il Tempio di Venere, the Temple of Venus
On the highest terrace are service areas and a small balneum with rich stucco decorations on the ceiling. The next level has a large terrace open to the sea and bordered on three sides by a portico. In the garden are four parallel walls that perhaps delimited three triclinia in the open.
Above the peristyle are several residential rooms, once richly finished, particularly the original precious mosaic floors representing theatrical masks inside geometric frames. Below this level there is a semicircular building surmounted by five vaulted rooms once hidden by a façade decorated with niches and columns, overall making an impressive composition.
On the axis of the
complex is a room perhaps used as a nymphaeum from which flowed the
water that fed an existing large external circular tank. On the
peristyle of the lower terrace are paintings from two successive
periods: those with an egyptian taste, characters and symbols of the
cult of Isis, from the middle of the 1st century AD; these are
largely covered by paintings of the 2nd century, which depict male and
female figures within architectural schemes.
Completely submerged by the waters is the nymphaeum of Emperor Claudius whose sculptures have been transferred to the town's archaeological museum, the Museo Archeologico dei Campi Flegrei or Phlegraean Fields Archaeological Museum which also contains other items excavated on the site.
The public and private baths of Baiae were filled with warm mineral water directed to their pools from underground hot springs, as many still are today. Roman engineers were also able to construct a complex system of chambers that channelled underground heat into facilities that acted as saunas. In addition to their recreational function, the baths were used in Roman medicine to treat various illnesses and physicians would attend their patients at the springs.
Baiae was supplied with fresh drinking water from a branch of the AquaAugusta aqueduct, a cross-section of which can be seen nearby.
Today, The Grandma has been reading an archaeologic guide about Baia, in Naples, that Joseph de Ca'th Lon brought her some days ago.
Joseph has been in Baia practising one of his favourite sports, diving. He was able to enjoy the great chance of diving between ancient ruins under the sea and discover the past of these lands thanks to its monuments.
Baiae, in Neapolitan Baia, was an ancient Roman town situated on the northwest shore of the Gulf of Naples, and now in the comune of Bacoli. It was a fashionable resort for centuries in antiquity, particularly towards the end of the Roman Republic, when it was reckoned as superior to Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Capri by the super-rich who built luxurious villas here from 100 BC to 500 AD. It was notorious for its hedonistic offerings and the attendant rumours of corruption and scandal.
The lower part of the town later became submerged in the sea due to local volcanic, bradyseismic activity which raised or lowered the land, and recent underwater archaeology has revealed many of the fine buildings now protected in the submerged archaeological park.
Many impressive buildings from the upper town can be seen in the ParcoArcheologico delle Terme di Baia.
Baiae was said to have been named after Baius in Greek Βαῖος, Baîos, the helmsman of Odysseus's ship in Homer's Odyssey, who was supposedly buried nearby.
Parco Sommerso di Baiae, Naples
The adjacent Baian Gulf, in Latin Sinus Baianus was named after the town. It now forms the western part of the Gulf of Pozzuoli.
The settlement was also mentioned in 178 BC under the name Aquae Cumanae, Cumaean Waters.
Baiae was built on the Cumaean Peninsula in the Phlegraean Fields, an active volcanic area. It was perhaps originally developed as the port for Cumae.
Baiae was particularly fashionable towards the end of the Roman Republic. Marius, Lucullus, and Pompey all frequented it. Julius Caesar had a villa there, and much of the town became imperial property under Augustus. Nero had a notable villa constructed in the middle of the 1st century and Hadrian died at his villa in AD 138. It was also a favourite spot of the emperor SeptimiusSeverus.
The resorts sometimes capitalised on their imperial associations: Suetonius mentions in his history that the cloak, brooch, and gold bulla given to the young Tiberius by Pompey's daughter Pompeia Magna were still on display around AD 120.
According to Suetonius, in AD 39, Baiae was the location for a stunt by the eccentric emperor Caligula to answer the astrologer Thrasyllus's prediction that he had no more chance of becoming emperor than of riding a horse across the Gulf of Baiae. Caligula ordered a 3-mile-long pontoon bridge to be built from impounded ships of the area, fastened together and weighted with sand, stretching from Baiae to the neighbouring port of Puteoli. Clad in a gold cloak, he then crossed it upon a horse.
Parco Sommerso di Baiae, Naples
Cassius Dio's Roman History also includes the event, with the detail that the emperor ordered resting places and lodging rooms with potable water erected at intervals along the bridge.
As late as the 18th century, scattered fragments were still being shown to tourists as the Bridge of Caligula. Malloch has argued that Suetonius's account was likely coloured by his bias against Caligula; instead, he claims that the act of bridging the Bay of Naples was an excellent, and safe, means by which to lay the foundation for [Caligula’s] military glory.”
Baiae was notorious for the hedonistic lifestyle of its residents and guests. In 56 BC, the prominent socialite Clodia was condemned by the defence at the trial of Marcus Caelius Rufus as living as a harlot in Rome and at the crowded resort of Baiae, indulging in beach parties and long drinking sessions.
An elegy by Sextus Propertius written in the Augustan Age describes it as a den of licentiousness and vice. In the 1st century, Baiae and Vice formed one of the moral epistles written by Seneca the Younger; he described it as a vortex of luxury and a harbour of vice where girls went to play at being girls, old women as girls and some men as girls according to a first century BC wag.
It never attained municipal status, being administered throughout by nearby Cumae.
From 36BC, Baiae included Portus Julius, the base of the western fleet of the Roman Navy before it was abandoned because of the silting up of Lake Lucrinus, from which a short channel led to Lake Avernus, for the two harbours at Cape Misenum 4 miles south.
Parco Sommerso di Baiae, Naples
Baiae was sacked during the barbarian invasions and again by Muslim raiders in the 8th century.
It was deserted owing to recurrent malaria by 1500, but Pedro de Toledo erected a castle, Castello di Baja, in the 16th century.
The site had occasionally revealed Roman sculptures. The Aphrodite of Baiae, a variant of the Venus de Medici, was supposedly excavated there sometime before 1803, when the English antiquary Thomas Hope began displaying it in his gallery on Duchess Street in London.
The important archaeological remains were intensively excavated from 1941, revealing layers of buildings, villas and thermal complexes belonging to periods from the late Republican age, the Augustan, Hadrianic to the late empire.
The lowering of the ground below sea level, due to bradyseism, seems to have occurred in two phases: between the third and fifth centuries, still in the late Imperial era, followed by a more substantial submersion a century later. The lower part of Baiae was largely submerged by the sea by the 8th century.
A cache of plaster casts of Hellenistic sculptures was discovered in the cellar of the Baths of Sosandra at Baiae; they are now displayed at the town's archaeological museum. The collection includes parts of several famous sculptures, including Athens's Harmodius and Aristogeiton and the Athena of Velletri. It suggests that the area had a workshop mass-producing marble or bronze copies of Greek art for the Italian market.
Yesterday, The Grandma had a meeting with some old friends who she hadn't seen for a long time. It was a fantastic rencounter and they were talking about their lives during these last years.
For The Grandma, it was a perfect day, as perfect as the Lou Reed's song, the wonderful singer who died on a day like today in 2013.
Lou Reed is one of The Grandma's favourite singers and she remembers strongly when, in 2007, she could listen to him with his wife Laurie Anderson and Patti Smith in the Baryshnikov Arts Center in New York City reading Catalan poetry. It was an amazing experience, it was another perfect day, like yesterday.
Lewis Allan Reed (March 2, 1942-October 27, 2013) was an Americanmusician, singer and songwriter. He was the lead guitarist, singer and principal songwriter for the rock band the Velvet Underground and also had a solo career that spanned five decades. The Velvet Underground achieved little commercial success during their existence, but are now regarded as one of the most influential bands in the history of underground and alternative rock music.
Lou Reed
After leaving the band in 1970, Reed released twenty solo studio albums. His second, Transformer (1972), was produced by David Bowie and arranged by Mick Ronson, and brought mainstream recognition.
After Transformer, the less commercial Berlin reached No. 7 on the UK Albums Chart. Rock n Roll Animal, a live album released in 1974, sold strongly, and Sally Can't Dance (1974) peaked at No. 10 on the Billboard 200, but for a period Reed's work did not translate into sales, leading him deeper into drug addiction and alcoholism.
Reed cleaned up in the early 80s, and gradually returned to prominence with New Sensations (1984), reaching a critical and commercial later career peak with his 1989 album New York.
Reed participated in a revival of the Velvet Underground in the 1990s, and made several more albums, including a tribute to his mentor Andy Warhol. He contributed music to two theatrical interpretations of 19th-century writers, one of which he developed into an album. He married his third wife Laurie Anderson in 2008, and recorded the album Lulu with Metallica.
Reed's distinctive deadpan voice, poetic lyrics and experimental guitar playing were trademarks throughout his long career.
Lewis Allan Reed was born on March 2, 1942 at Beth El Hospital, now Brookdale, in Brooklyn and grew up in Freeport, Long Island. Reed's family was Jewish; his father had changed his name from Rabinowitz to Reed. Reed said that although he was Jewish, his real god was rock 'n' roll.
In 1964, Reed moved to New York City to work as an in-house songwriter for Pickwick Records. That year he wrote and recorded the single The Ostrich, a parody of popular dance songs of the time, which included lines such as put your head on the floor and have somebody step on it. His employers felt that the song had hit potential, and assembled a supporting band to help promote the recording.
Lou Reed in an Andy Warhol's creation
The ad hoc band, called The Primitives, included Welsh musician John Cale, who had recently moved to New York to study music and was playing viola in composer La Monte Young's Theatre of Eternal Music, along with Tony Conrad.
Cale and Conrad were surprised to find that for The Ostrich, Reed tuned each string of his guitar to the same note, which they began to call his ostrich guitar tuning. This technique created a drone effect similar to their experimentation in Young's avant-garde ensemble. Disappointed with Reed's performance, Cale was nevertheless impressed by Reed's early repertoire, including Heroin, and a partnership began to evolve.
Throughout the 1970s, Reed was a heavy user of methamphetamine and alcohol.
In February 2000, Reed worked with Robert Wilson at the Thalia Theater again, on Poe-Try, another production inspired by the works of a 19th-century writer, this time Edgar Allan Poe.
In April 2000, Reed released Ecstasy. In January 2003, Reed released a two-CD set, The Raven, based on it. The album consists of songs written by Reed and spoken-word performances of reworked and rewritten texts of Edgar Allan Poe by the actors, set to electronic music composed by Reed. It features David Bowie and Ornette Coleman. A single disc CD version of the album, focusing on the music, was also released.
Reed had suffered hepatitis and diabetes for several years. In October 27, 2013, he died from liver disease at his home in East Hampton, New York, at the age of 71.
Today, The Grandma is having an intensive and bureaucratic day. She's sending lots of mails, attending her whatsapp groups, revising her Twitter account and improving her Instagram one. It's a hard work to keep your 2.0 tools a day.
While she was doing these tasks, TheGrandma has been thinking about the importance of the Social Networks in our days and about how they were and how they were used two centuries ago. She has thought in a wonderful history, the origin of Pony Express, an American Postal Service that officially ceased operations on a day like today in 1861 and about one of its most memorable members, Buffalo Bill.
The Pony Express was a mail service delivering messages, newspapers, and mail. Officially operating as the Leavenworth and Pike's Peak Express Company of 1859, in 1860 it became the Central Overland California and Pikes Peak Express Company; this firm was founded by William H. Russell, Alexander Majors, and William B. Waddell, all of whom were notable in the freighting business.
During its 18 months of operation, it reduced the time for messages to travel between the Atlantic and Pacific coasts to about 10 days. From April 3, 1860 to October 1861, it became the West's most direct means of east–west communication before the transcontinental telegraph was established in October 24, 1861, and was vital for tying the new state of California with the rest of the United States.
The
idea of a fast mail route to the Pacific coast was prompted largely by
California's newfound prominence and its rapidly growing population.
The Pony Express
After gold was discovered there in 1848, thousands of prospectors, investors and businessmen madetheir way to California, at that time a new territory of the U.S. By 1850, California entered the Union as a free state. By 1860, the population had grown to 380,000. The demand for a faster way to get mail and other communications to and from this westernmost state became even greater as the American Civil War approached.
In the late 1850s, William Russell, AlexanderMajors, and William Waddell were the three founders of the Pony Express. They were already in the freighting and drayage business. At the peak of the operations, they employed 6,000 men, owned 75,000 oxen, thousands of wagons, and warehouses plus a sawmill, a meatpacking plant, a bank and an insurance company.
Russell was a prominent businessman, well respected among his peers and the community. Waddell was co-owner of the firm Morehead, Waddell & Co. After Morehead was bought out and retired, Waddell merged his company with Russell's, changing the name to Waddell & Russell.
In 1855 they took on a new partner, Alexander Majors, and founded the company of Russell, Majors & Waddell. They held government contracts for delivering army supplies to the western frontier, and Russell had a similar idea for contracts with the U.S. Government for fast mail delivery.
By utilizing a short route and using mounted riders rather than traditional stagecoaches, they proposed to establish a fast mail service between St. Joseph, Missouri, and Sacramento, California, with letters delivered in 10 days, a duration many said was impossible. The initial price was set at $5 per 14 g, then $2.50, and by July 1861 to $1. The founders of the Pony Express hoped to win an exclusive government mail contract, but that did not come about.
The Pony Express Route
Russell, Majors, and Waddell organized and put together the Pony Express in two months in the winter of 1860. The undertaking assembled 120 riders, 184 stations, 400 horses, and several hundred personnel during January and February 1861. Majors was a religious man and resolved by the help of God to overcome all difficulties. He presented each rider with a special edition Bible and required this oath, which they were also required to sign.
The Pony Express demonstrated that a unified transcontinental system of communications could be established and operated year-round. When replaced by the telegraph, the Pony Express quickly became romanticized and became part of the lore of the American West. Its reliance on the ability and endurance of individual young, hardy riders and fast horses was seen as evidence of rugged American individualism of the Frontier times.
From 1866 until 1889, the Pony Express logo was used by stagecoach and freight company Wells Fargo, which provided secure mail service. The United States Postal Service (USPS) used Pony Express as a trademark for postal services in the US. Freight Link international courier services, based in Russia, adopted the Pony Express trademark and a logo similar to that of the USPS.
In 1860, there were about 186 Pony Express stations that were about 16 km apart along the Pony Express route. At each station stop the express rider would change to a fresh horse, taking only the mail pouch called a mochila, from the Spanish for pouch or backpack, with him.
The National Pony Express Association, INC
The employers stressed the importance of the pouch. They often said that, if it came to be, the horse and rider should perish before the mochila did. The mochila was thrown over the saddle and held in place by the weight of the rider sitting on it. Each corner had a cantina, or pocket. Bundles of mail were placed in these cantinas, which were padlocked for safety.
The mochila could hold 9 kg of mail along with the 9 kg of material carried on the horse. Eventually, everything except one revolver and a water sack was removed, allowing for a total of 75 kg on the horse's back. Riders, who could not weigh over 57 kg, changed about every 120–160 km, and rode day and night. In emergencies, a given rider might ride two stages back to back, over 20 hours on a quickly moving horse.
It is unknown if riders tried crossing the Sierra Nevada in winter, but they certainly crossed central Nevada. By 1860 there was a telegraph station in Carson City, Nevada. The riders received $100 a month as pay. A comparable wage for unskilled labor at the time was about $0.43–$1 per day.
Alexander Majors, one of the founders of the Pony Express, had acquired more than 400 horses for the project. He selected horses from around the west, paying an average of $200. These averaged about 147 cm high and averaged 410 kg each; thus, the name pony was appropriate, even if not strictly correct in all cases.
The approximately 3,100 km route roughly followed the Oregon and California Trails to Fort Bridger in Wyoming, and then the Mormon Trail, known as the Hastings Cutoff, to Salt Lake City, Utah. From there it followed the Central Nevada Route to Carson City, Nevada before passing over the Sierra into Sacramento, California.
The route
started at St. Joseph, Missouri on the Missouri River, it then followed
what is modern-day U.S. Highway 36, US 36 the Pony Express Highway, to
Marysville, Kansas, where it turned northwest following Little Blue
River to Fort Kearny in Nebraska. Through Nebraska it followed the Great
Platte River Road, cutting through Gothenburg, Nebraska, clipping the
edge of Colorado at Julesburg, Colorado, and passing Courthouse Rock,
Chimney Rock, and Scotts Bluff, before arriving at Fort Laramie in
Wyoming.
The Pony Express statue, Julesburg
From there it followed the Sweetwater River, passing Independence Rock, Devil's Gate, and Split Rock, to Fort Caspar, through South Pass to Fort Bridger and then down to Salt Lake City.
From Salt Lake City it generally followed the Central Nevada Route blazed by Captain James H. Simpson of the Corps of Topographical Engineers in 1859. This route roughly follows today's US 50 across Nevada and Utah. It crossed the Great Basin, the Utah-Nevada Desert, and the Sierra Nevada near Lake Tahoe before arriving in Sacramento. Mail was then sent via steamer down the Sacramento River to San Francisco. On a few instances when the steamer was missed, riders took the mail via horseback to Oakland, California.
There were 184 stations along the long and arduous route used by the Pony Express. The stations and station keepers were essential to the successful, timely and smooth operation of the Pony Express mail system. The stations were often fashioned out of existing structures, several of them located in military forts, while others were built anew in remote areas where living conditions were very basic.
The route was divided up into five divisions. To maintain the rigid schedule, 157 relay stations were located from 8 to 40 km apart as the terrain would allow for. At each swing station, riders would exchange their tired mounts for fresh ones, while home stations provided room and board for the riders between runs. This technique allowed the mail to be whisked across the continent in record time. Each rider rode about 120 km per day.
William Frederick Buffalo Bill Cody (February 26, 1846-January 10, 1917) was an American scout, bison hunter, and showman. He was born in Le Claire, Iowa Territory, now the U.S. state of Iowa, but he lived for several years in his father's hometown in Toronto Township, Ontario, Canada, before the family returned to the Midwest and settled in the Kansas Territory.
William Frederick Cody aka Buffalo Bill
Buffalo Bill started working at the age of eleven, after his father's death, and became a rider for the Pony Express at age 14. During the American Civil War, he served the Union from 1863 to the end of the war in 1865. Later he served as a civilian scout for the US Army during the Indian Wars, receiving the Medal of Honor in 1872.
One of the most colorful figures of the American Old West, BuffaloBill's legend began to spread when he was only twenty-three. Shortly thereafter he started performing in shows that displayed cowboy themes and episodes from the frontier and Indian Wars. He founded Buffalo Bill's Wild West in 1883, taking his large company on tours in the United States and, beginning in 1887, in Great Britain and continental Europe.
Probably
more than any other rider in the Pony Express, William Cody, better
known as Buffalo Bill, epitomizes the legend and the folklore, be it
fact or fiction, of the Pony Express. Numerous stories have been told of
young Cody's adventures as a Pony Express rider.
At
the age of 15 Cody was on his way west to California when he met Pony
Express agents along the way and signed on with the company. Cody helped
in the construction of several way-stations. Thereafter, he was
employed as a rider and was given a short 72 km delivery run from the
township of Julesburg which lay to the west.
After
some months he was transferred to Slade's Division in Wyoming where he
made the longest non-stop ride from Red Buttes Station to Rocky Ridge
Station and back when he found that his relief rider had been killed.
Buffalo Bill
The distance of 518 km over one of the most dangerous sections of the
entire trail was completed in 21 hours and 40 minutes, and 21 horses
were required to complete this section. On one occasion when carrying
mail he unintentionally ran into an Indian war party but managed to
escape.
Cody
was present for many significant chapters in early western history,
including the gold rush, the building of the railroads and cattle
herding on the Great Plains. A career as a scout for the Army under
General Phillip Sheridan following the Civil War earned him his nickname
and established his notoriety as a frontiersman.
In 1869, the twenty-three year-old Cody met Ned Buntline, who later published a story based on Cody's adventures, largely invented by the writer, in Street and Smith's New York Weekly and then published a highly successful novel, Buffalo Bill, King of the Bordermen, which was first serialized on the front page of the Chicago Tribune, beginning that December 15.
Many other sequels followed by Buntline, Prentiss Ingraham and others from the 1870s through the early part of the twentieth century. Cody later became world-famous for Buffalo Bill's Wild West, a touring show which traveled around the United States, Great Britain, and Continental Europe. Audiences were enthusiastic about seeing a piece of the American West.
Emilio Salgari, a noted Italian writer of adventure stories, met Buffalo Bill when he came to Italy and saw his show; Salgari later featured Cody as a hero in some of his novels.
