Back alive (almost)

[dorispulaski]

That's the thing I expect to see Dean Kamen doing--some clever spin off of his Segway design. And I hope he does it. Mr. Ski uses a scooter at events, and you just don't take the stairs, you wait for the elevator. The three wheel design has some real advantages, but it's tippy over bumps.

Dean accesses his island home (North Dumpling Island, NY) from our town in CT, so we have some local visibility to his doings.

 

[Violet Bliss]

It better has an automatic mechanism to stop before a cliff, or some other gliding or flying device if it leaves the ground.

 

[Tonichelle]

Us Spokaneites say "down there" cause it is quite a bit south and of course a bit east.

everything is "down there" from where I sit

 

[dorispulaski]

Except Fairbanks, Nome, Barrow & Nunavut, Northwest Territory & Yukon Territory in Canada

 

[Tonichelle]

Except Fairbanks, Nome, Barrow & Nunavut, Northwest Territory & Yukon Territory in Canada

or for that matter Anchorage!

 

[Violet Bliss]

Except Fairbanks, Nome, Barrow & Nunavut, Northwest Territory & Yukon Territory in Canada

All the Canadian cities are down South for the Inuit and Cree people of Canada. This is OT but I just had a conversation this morning with a friend who attended the Plan Nord project presentation last Saturday as invitee of Quebec Premier who is selling it quite well. I brought up how Canada also needs to establish territories in the Artic as the Americans and the Russians are attempting to take it over as the passage way opens up more due to the warming. And there are mining prospects in the North as well. The only people they could possibly persuade to actually live "up there" as a community are the Native people who I hope will use the opportunities to negotiate better deals for themselves since almost all the historical treaties have been renegaded by the new European Canadians and they have largely been used and exploited as needed since then. Many of them are lost in the Southern cities but they survive whereas the Southerners would not survive half a day "up there" on their own.

So Chris, how did Mr. Chan skate? Anything we didn't see via video?

 

[CoyoteChris]

Mr. Chan was great! I really enjoyed the music for the long program and his interpretation of it and so did the crowd (disclaimer: I am a huge Sarah Brightman fan) . When he jumps and lands right in front of you, its awesome.
I have to wonder how Mr. Dice's music may have negatively effected his crowd response, or the judge's scoring of his interpretation of it.

You know why they call him the "Chanman", dont you? Because when he skates well, it is like he puts his competition to "sleep".

 

[Mathman]

I brought up how Canada also needs to establish territories in the Artic as the Americans and the Russians are attempting to take it over as the passage way opens up more due to the warming.

Quite so. It is kind of ironic. A lot of that territory was first explored by European adventurers looking for the Northwest Passage. Now that global climate change is apparently about to open up a northwest passage indeed, the Americans and Russians are scrambling to dig up old records about arctic enclaves that they maintained during World War II and rushing scientists up there to establish research stations.

 

[CoyoteChris]

Another fun filled fact. I would estimate real body attendance at each event, except for the gala and ladies final, to be about 600 -800 fans and of course plus many coaches and skaters from other countries, as well as those broodmorr people, USFSA folk, photogs, and other interlopers. There was pleanty of folk that just sat down in a front row seat and were almost never displaced once they found out no one ever sat in that seat. The front row isle seat I had was great cause the next seat to me was never taken, unless one of my friends sat there, so I just put a spare coat in it so I could talk to the pretty Japanese lady in the next seat over. She is off to Nice and even though my Japanese is about non exsisstant (or less, Hai) and her English was broken, I was able to do her some courtesies and she gave me some nice, simple Japanese gifts. I would like to send her some e-mails thanking her and sending her the pics I took of her so I think I need an e-mail interpretation program on the web to write to her! I did find out she lives in the same city as Mao with her parents in a house, wasnt effected by the earthquake, but couldnt find out what she did for a living.
I always carry big photographs of my wife and three dogs, and our ranch, etc which really helps when you are trying to connect with someone of a distant land....she carried a blank writing tablet to draw pics on which was helpful in communication. I might do that too since I am going to Canada and cant understand a thing those people say....two people separated by a common language....maybe there is a pocket computer with a translation app I can use in London Ontario, eh?

 

[Violet Bliss]

Mr. Chan was great! I really enjoyed the music for the long program and his interpretation of it and so did the crowd (disclaimer: I am a huge Sarah Brightman fan) . When he jumps and lands right in front of you, its awesome.

Very interesting. From all the groaning in the forum, Aranjuez is supposed to be so stale and either yawn inducing or grating on nerves, and Chan's interpretation is often alluded to as soulless or wooden. (Disclaimer: I love this music and his interpretation but I seem to be one of the few exceptions here.)

I have to wonder how Mr. Dice's music may have negatively effected his crowd response, or the judge's scoring of his interpretation of it.

What do you mean? I thought everybody loves Mr. Dice's dancing to the music and considers his music refreshing and his interpretation superior. And we did see how he was cheered loudly and lustily, as usual.

This is confusing.

You know why they call him the "Chanman", dont you? Because when he skates well, it is like he puts his competition to "sleep".

Competition doesn't watch him unless they already skated, and often they did. But what is sleep-skating like?

 

[dorispulaski]

Ironically, my grandparents gave away part of the US's claims to an area above Hudson Bay due to a request by the US government that my grandad cede discoverer's rights, inherited from his uncle, to the Canadian government.

I have a clipping from the 1930's describing the paperwork Grandad had to file.

This would be my grandad's uncle, Captain John O. Spicer who discovered the Spicer Islands in the Foxe Basin in 1879. He also had a fixed base at Akuliak on Baffin Island:
http://www.mysticseaport.org/index....id=16182FF4-1E4F-379B-60CCAEDFE10A8C30#spicer

Capt. Spicer reported his discovery in Canada, as recorded here:
http://books.google.com/books?id=0x...6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=john spicer whales&f=false

 

[fscric]

CoyoteChris, thanks for your interesting recount of your experience at Colorado Spring. As a fan of Patrick Chan, it's particularly great to read about your impression of seeing him skate live.

 

[Violet Bliss]

Quite so. It is kind of ironic. A lot of that territory was first explored by European adventurers looking for the Northwest Passage. Now that global climate change is apparently about to open up a northwest passage indeed, the Americans and Russians are scrambling to dig up old records about arctic enclaves that they maintained during World War II and rushing scientists up there to establish research stations.

Oh yes, I remember Dr. Sheldon Cooper and his team spending a few months up there.

 

[Olympia]

Ironically, my grandparents gave away part of the US's claims to an area above Hudson Bay due to a request by the US government that my grandad cede discoverer's rights, inherited from his uncle, to the Canadian government.

I have a clipping from the 1930's describing the paperwork Grandad had to file.

This would be my grandad's uncle, Captain John O. Spicer who discovered the Spicer Islands in the Foxe Basin in 1879. He also had a fixed base at Akuliak on Baffin Island:
http://www.mysticseaport.org/index....id=16182FF4-1E4F-379B-60CCAEDFE10A8C30#spicer

Capt. Spicer reported his discovery in Canada, as recorded here:
http://books.google.com/books?id=0x...6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=john spicer whales&f=false

Doris, that's so exciting that you have a family story like that! Nobody in my family ever did anything remotely that adventurous.

Captain Spicer looks like a man who could take care of himself. I bet he had some tales to tell.

 

[Violet Bliss]

Lots of people have ancestors who were immigrants with historical stories but few were recorded in books with photographs even. That's enviable, especially when the family is still rooted where the pioneering adventurer settled, making for a rich history.

 

[Mathman]

What a fascinating account, Doris. That is so cool!

 

[dorispulaski]

He was a cool guy. He was also involved in a court case where he had 2 whales stolen from his Inuit factor at Akuliak. The case hinged on whether Inuits were people and were to be allowed to give evidence in a US court. The result of the case was that Johnnibo, (the American nickname for the Inuit factor) was allowed to give testimony in court, which basically established that the Inuit were people, something that seems self-evident now, but was not then.

That story is told here:

http://books.google.com/books/about/When_the_whalers_were_up_North.html?id=DAJ2AAAAMAAJ

The interesting thing is that the Canadian woman who wrote this book, Dorothy Eber, went up to Baffin Island in the 1970's looking to write a story about Captain Comer, another whaling Captain from Connecticut who collected samples of Inuit items and of Arctic animals for anthropologist Franz Boas down at Yale. She kept asking the Inuit about Captain Comer, who was there in the early 1900's, but what the Inuit wanted to tell her about was Captain Spicer who had been there in the 1870's.

She called me up and I told her the story as my grandfather told it to me. The interesting thing is that the Inuit story was nearly identical, after over 100 years had passed.

I have a greater belief in the accuracy of oral history these days.

Apparently the opponents of Captain Spicer said that the Inuit were animals like dogs, and should not testify. Spicer apparently said the Inuit were people, but one could recognize dogs because they stole things, and clearly his opponents were dogs and worse than dogs. The Inuit particularly remembered that and liked it.

 

[CoyoteChris]

Sometimes I have false memories, but my section gave Chan a standing ovation, even the many Japanese in my section. Many gave Mr. Dice a standing ovation and yelled alot, but then there were lots of folks from Japan and of Japanese descent there which pre-loaded the jury for him. The Japanese are quite the fans. I took pics of some of the elegant and beautiful silk like posters they hung up all over the arena...I cant imagine what they must have cost. I will put those up on my website too. BTW, I really dont hate Mr. Dice...he is a very skilled skater for sure...if he would have skated to Phantom maybe I would have liked him better....Heck, I would have liked anyone who skated to "East of Eden" or "The Untouchables" because if a piece of music means alot to me, then I tend to enjoy the art more. Dice's music does nothing for me.
Interesting factoid for the day about Colorado Springs. The seats are well padded but narrow, quite a shock after the wide seats of San Jose. But the locals seem to be narrower too, upon the whole. And totally clueless about figure skating. They just wanted to see "the show". It was interesting to see THEIR reactions to skates. They probably thought I and my friends were nuts giving standing ovations and clapping loudly for certain skaters that maybe had some rough times and some rough skates but who we respected and loved, like Mark and Amanda.

CoyoteChris, thanks for your interesting recount of your experience at Colorado Spring. As a fan of Patrick Chan, it's particularly great to read about your impression of seeing him skate live.

 

[CoyoteChris]

Doris, can you elaborate on the paperwork? Very interesting indeed. Borders are usually eventually settled by treaties, purchases, firepower, etc...not "discoverys", or who lives where.
Ask the people of Austro-Hugarian Empire.
Chris who believes in 54 40 or FIGHT! We can take those Canadians.....they still think they won the War of 1812.....

 

[dorispulaski]

Chris, 1879 was a warm year, so Captain Spicer was able to sail into the Foxe Basin further than he had in previous years, and there found a low lying piece of land that he named Spicer Island (why not, if you've got it, flaunt it AFAIR, Captain Spicer claimed those island(s) for himself, not for the United States. it was a different age.) In following years, Foxe Basin was frozen in again all year. Finally when another ship got into the area, they didn't find the island, and people assumed Captain Spicer was hallucinating or drunk when he found the Spicer Islands, or had simply named a large ice floe.

And so the islands were not listed when Canada was made a Confederation in 1867, because they were not discovered yet. So they never belonged to the British Empire. Then the ownership of the islands were not enumerated whenever the US and Canada wrote & signed whatever treaties described the extent of their demesnes in any subsequent years because no one believed they existed. As the original post said, even today things are unsettled in the Arctic. And islands in the Eastern part of the north are of mixed ownership, usually Danish and Canadian, but there are even two tiny islands, St. Pierre and Miquelon, close to southern Newfoundland that still belong to France.

And that's how the situation was in the 1930's. Then in the early 1930's, a Canadian plane flew over the area and saw the islands (perhaps they were mapping the north); the newspaper didn't say. What to do! These islands of dubious ownership existed. The newspaper clipping said that at the behest of the US government, Mr. William C. Spicer Sr., my grandad, had ceded ownership of Spicer Island(s) to the Canadian government, and it said this was done in a formal document. I think I remember seeing part of the document itself, but I could be imagining things. If you're really interested, when I get back to Groton, I'll dust off my copy of the Spicer Genealogy where I found the article tucked in, and see if I can find exactly what it says.

For one thing, I don't remember whether Cap (my grandad) ceded ownership of all the islands known as the Spicer Islands, or whether he just ceded Spicer Island. There are certainly a North and South Spicer Island, and there are apparently more than were originally apparent (at least four little bitty ones). You can check this out if you Google Map North Spicer Island, Baffin, Nunavut, Canada. And I don't think the area Captain Spicer occupied for many years on Baffin Island, Akuliak (or Spicer's Harbor) was ceded to Canada formally. I believe Baffin had been covered in earlier treaties, but I'm thinking that since Captain Spicer wasn't one to do claiming for the US, perhaps a point could be stretched, and that he had a claim there, too.

So if the US government wants to claim ownership of bases in the Arctic, perhaps they should come to me (as the executrix of my Dad's estate, dad being Cap's only child, as Cap was executor of his dad's estate, and his dad was the person Captain John Spicer left his residual estate to, as he had no children), and I will happily sell them my personal rights to whatever it is we might own in the Arctic. For one thing, I don't remember whether Cap signed over mineral rights Back in the 1930's this was all kind of a big joke in The New London Day, our local paper, which still exists BTW. I don't think those documents were loophole free.

That would be so cool! I could afford to go to skating competitions again.