Creekside Chatter

I've gotten several emails in the last two days telling me there's a problem with my electronic payment to the IRS. The address they want you to visit and "fix" this problem was a .gov site but not the IRS. I went to the real IRS site and learned that they will never contact you by email regarding your return. If you receive a similar message, forward it to phishing@irs.gov so they can research - and hopefully shut down - these bad guys. Then delete the message.

Do NOT click on any of the links in the message.

Just received the iLuv Anti-Glare Protective Film and it really does cut the glare. There are two screen protectors in the package. Easiest installation of any screen protector I've tried.

“We left Grafton-Underwood at 1700 hours 26 June 1943 to bomb Villacoublay. After making landfall over France we encountered flak and were attacked by FW-190’s….The whole ship was shaking violently…”

Recently released by the National Archives, digitized Escape and Evasion Reports are now available for download in PDF format to your eReader of choice.

Detailed firsthand accounts of harrowing escapes and near-captures by Axis occupiers, Allied aircrew no longer remain faceless.  Instead, we learn their names, hometowns and quite possibly a new view of World War II that up until now was not available online.

The fastest way of getting to the reports is via the link from the NARAnations blog. Clicking on the link, http://arcweb.archives.gov/arc/action/ExternalIdSearch?id=305270, will bring you to the main entry for all the reports.  Once there you can browse the list or do further searching, depending upon what subject or person(s) you might be interested in.

Additional tabs at the top give you more background and information about the reports, including Scope & Content, Archived copies (where the actual materials are stored), and Hierarchy, or where this particular report fits into the larger collections made available by the National Archives.

Choosing to browse the reports en masse results in a long list of individual names. While it’s fun to look at individual’s reports, this can prove quite time consuming  if you are looking for something specific.  Searching within the results of all the reports, which is an option, might prove more fruitful.

Selecting a name and clicking on it will bring you to the main entry point for the resource.  While there is some basic information about the person and subject, etc., your best results will be in actually downloading the PDF.

It’s important to note that the reports I did download and sample had been scanned in as images and were not searchable within their contents.  To be perfectly honest, however, in all actuality, OCR’ing these reports would be difficult as they are a mixture of handwritten interviews mixed with typewritten official documents.

From the eReader standpoint, you should be able to transfer and view the reports without too many problems as most devices now support PDF formats, albeit not always easily in some cases.

There’s also the issue of reading a PDF on a small device such as the phone or iPod, but zoom controls, etc. can help to make things more legible.

Along these same lines, there might be some issues with some older devices with limited memory and weaker processors. Given these files are in image-driven PDF, you might have to wait an extra minute or two for them to render on screen.

Even with these limitations, this remains a wonderful resource if you are a World War II buff or historian and helps to bring a face or a name to a mass of reports that might not have otherwise been made available.  If you have a moment give it a try.  Below, you will find links to the actual site as well as NARA to get you started.  Have fun!

Links:

NARAnations blog release: http://blogs.archives.gov/online-public-access/?p=2751

Archival Research Catalog link to reports: http://arcweb.archives.gov/arc/action/ExternalIdSearch?id=305270

Sources:

Images courtesy National Archives, http://www.archives.gov/, and are VLC snapshots of multimedia available on site.  War poster courtesy National Archives war poster collection.

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Courtesy of www.frederic-remington.org The breed was small, tough and agile – the result of centuries of crossbreeding in Spain.

Explorer Juan Ponce de León brought the ancestors of what became the Cracker Horse to Florida in 1521. He hadn’t planned to abandon them but his departure from Florida was kind of hasty.

Ponce de León brought 50 horses and other domestic animals, including Spanish cattle. He also brought 200 men and farming equipment. He planned to set up a colony.

But the native Calusas didn’t want new neighbors. They attacked the Spaniards to make it clear that visitors were not welcome, especially ones who were planning to stay. Ponce de León was hit with a poison arrow during the melee and his men got the message.

They set sail quickly and headed back to Havana, where Ponce de León died from his wound. They left the cattle and the horses in Florida to fend for themselves.

The horse breed was small, tough and agile – the result of centuries of crossbreeding in Spain, where the Spanish Sorraia and the North African Barb eventually became the Iberian horse in the 16th century.

The horses and cattle roamed free and thrived, adapting to their new environment and becoming breeds apart and specially suited to Florida. Explorers who followed Ponce de León brought horses to Florida, too.

During the English Period (1763-1783) and the Second Spanish Period (1783-1821), horse breeding and cattle ranching were well established, built from the feral Spanish herds.

By the 1760s, when Seminoles were breaking away from the Creek nation and moving into Florida, the horse breed the Spanish explorers had brought to the New World was quite at home.

In another 50 years or so, the United States took possession of Florida and encouraged settlers to move into the new territory. These descendants of Colonial era Scots-Irish and English American pioneers streamed into the peninsula, established farms and raised cattle.

They were called Crackers. Historians still debate the origin of the term. Some note that in Middle English, the word crack meant entertaining conversation as in cracking a joke. It also was used to describe a braggart. "What cracker is this same that deafs our ears with this abundance of superfluous breath?" asks Austria in the Shakespeare’s The Life and Death of King John.

The Florida cow hunter or Cracker cowman didn’t use lassos like their Spanish or western counterparts, for such tools weren’t suited to the palmetto prairies. Instead, they used braided leather cow whips and dogs. The cracking sound of the whips gave rise to the Cracker name, suggest others.

Given some cowmen’s reputations for being raconteurs, the two theories are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

In any case, the lean, quick horses they rode and the scrub cows they drove acquired their names from the men who herded them.

Florida Cracker horses have remained a vital part of cattle ranching in the state. They are known for having strength, endurance and “cow sense,” a strong herding instinct. They are 54 to 60 inches high and weigh 750 to 900 pounds. They are quick animals with a fast walking gait.

The Cracker Horse was nearly lost during the Depression. A government program designed to provide help to ranchers had unintended consequences.

Before the 1930s, cattle roamed the state free and cow men rode Florida Cracker horses to herd them. During the Depression, though, cattle were shipped to Florida from Oklahoma’s Dust Bowl but some of the cows had screwworms, which had to be treated. So fencing and dipping vats were introduced for the first time in Florida.

Ranchers started using the larger Quarter Horse to work the cattle. The Florida Cracker Horse lost demand and became rare.

Only a few old-time ranching families continued to breed the Florida Cracker Horse, among them the Ayers, Bronsons, Harveys, Matchetts, Partins and Whaleys.

The Florida Cracker Horse Association was organized in 1989 to search for remnant herds of Cracker Horses. The non-profit organization’s mission is to promote the horse as a valuable and vital part of Florida’s heritage.

It is dedicated to the preservation and perpetuation of the Cracker Horse as distinct and unique Colonial Spanish breed descended from the horses of Juan Ponce de León.

Information from the Florida Cracker Horse Association, Juan Ponce de Leon and the Discovery of Puerto Rico and Florida (2000) by Robert H. Fusion, Cracker: Cracker Culture in Florida History (2006) by Dana Ste Claire and Florida’s Seminole and Miccosukee Peoples (1996) by John K. Mahon and Brent R. Weisman was used in this report.

Though it’s only October, I know you organized creative types are already planning ahead for holiday crafts and designs. So I put together a nice big selection of holiday script lettering for you. Click on the image below to access the FREE PDF file.

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