Archive for January, 2023
Frank Mansfield, call your office, please.
Wednesday, January 18th, 2023Firings watch.
Tuesday, January 17th, 2023Day of the .45, part 1. (Random gun crankery)
Monday, January 16th, 2023Before I get too far into this, I want to say: McThag is responsible for this. I don’t “blame” him, but he is responsible (as he noted in a previous post), and I owe him a very public “thank you” for this. So: thank you, Angus McThag. I also owe you a beer or three if we’re ever in the same place at the same time.
After the jump, an explanation of why McThag is responsible, as well as some background and pictures. I’m doing a jump because I expect this to be long, there will be pictures, and a lot of background for my readers who are not People of the Gun…
Obit watch: January 16, 2023.
Monday, January 16th, 2023A 1955 film, “La Donna Più Bella del Mondo” (“The Most Beautiful Woman in the World” — a term some in Hollywood came to use about Ms. Lollobrigida herself), released in the United States as “Beautiful but Dangerous,” brought Ms. Lollobrigida her first major acting award: the David di Donatello, Italy’s equivalent of the Oscar. She won the Donatello twice more, for “Venere Imperial” (1962), in a tie with Silvana Mangano, and for “Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell,” in a tie with Monica Vitti.
Ms. Lollobrigida was always considered more a sex symbol than a serious actress — at least by the American press — but she was also nominated for a BAFTA award as best foreign actress in “Pane, Amore e Fantasia” (1953). She received Golden Globe nominations for “Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell” in 1969 and for a recurring role on the prime-time television soap “Falcon Crest” in 1985.
Al Brown. Other credits include “12 Monkeys” (the Gilliam film, not the TV series), “Forensic Files”, “The F.B.I. Files”, and something called “Fartcopter”.
Charles White, 1979 Heisman Trophy winner with U.S.C.
White, who went on to play eight seasons in the N.F.L., was part of U.S.C.’s lineage of elite running backs, four of whom also won the Heisman: Marcus Allen, O.J. Simpson, Mike Garrett and Reggie Bush. White’s 6,245 rushing yards exceed the 4,810 gained by Allen, who ranks second on U.S.C.’s all-time list.
White was not especially big or fast; rather than elude defenders, he bulled his way through them. And he was a workhorse: In 1978, he rushed 374 times (65 more than anyone else in the N.C.A.A.’s top ranks) for 1,859 yards. The next year he ran for 2,050.
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White was chosen by the Cleveland Browns in the first round of the N.F.L. draft in 1980, but in four seasons, he never rushed for more than 342 yards. After he was released by the Browns, he was signed by the Rams, who were then coached by Robinson, for the 1985 season.
His first two seasons with the Rams were uneventful, but he was spectacular in 1987, carrying the ball 324 times for a league-leading 1,374 yards and 11 touchdowns. However, the season was tainted by a 24-day players’ strike, during which games were played largely by nonunion replacements for three weeks. White was one of a group of players who crossed the union’s picket lines.
He started the 1988 season serving his four-game suspension and never regained his starting job. He gained only 323 yards that year, and Greg Bell led the Rams with 1,212 rushing yards.
He also struggled with substance abuse and dementia (possibly caused by CTE). He was 64 and died of esophageal cancer.
Brief note on film.
Monday, January 16th, 2023The management of this theater suggests that, for the greater entertainment of your friends who have not yet seen the picture, you will not divulge to anyone the secret of the ending of Witness for the Prosecution.
Don’t worry. I’m not going to give away the ending.
The Saturday Movie Group did watch Witness, though. I had never seen the movie until now, and one thing I did not realize until we got settled in:
Witness for the Prosecution is hilarious.
This is unusual, for a documentary about the treatment of cardiac patients in the late 1950s British court procedural. Make no mistake: it is a drama, with high stakes, but it also sparkles with wit and sharp writing. RoadRich compared it to a good episode of “M*A*S*H” and I kind of agree.
In particular, the interplay between Sir Wilfrid Robarts Q.C. (Charles Laughton) and Miss Plimsoll (Elsa Lanchester) is a delight. The nurse and the barrister play off each other well. (Of course, the screenplay by Billy Wilder, Larry Marcus, and Harry Kurnitz helps with that. While Witness is based on a 1953 play written by Agatha Christie, the entire Robarts/Plimsoll relationship was added for the movie.)
(And a bit of triva I did not realize until I looked up Laughton: he was married to Elsa Lanchester, which may explain why they had such great on-screen chemistry. They met in 1927, when they were cast in the same play, married in 1929, and stayed together until Laughton’s death in 1962.)
Spoiler free clip of my favorite bit from the movie. While the full clip is 3:10, the part that had me in stitches is in the first 20 seconds.
I commend Witness for the Prosecution to your attention, especially if you wait for one of Kino Lorber’s periodic sales. I think I paid $9.99 for the blu-ray.
Murder, he wrote.
Sunday, January 15th, 2023As best as I can determine, Elizabeth Short was murdered either on January 14 or 15, 1947: it isn’t clear which day.
So I can claim that this is timely: “Black Dahlia: On the Anniversary of Elizabeth Short’s Murder, a Guide for the Hasty Reporter“, by Larry Harnisch. This is a re-run of an article originally published in the LAT, but now paywalled.
And as an extra bonus for you, freshly posted, and featuring Mr. Harnisch himself:
Obit watch: January 14, 2023.
Saturday, January 14th, 2023Robbie Knievel, daredevil and Evel’s son. He was 60: pancreatic cancer got him.
In one of his best known jumps, in 1989, Mr. Knievel, decked out in a star-spangled, white-leather suit, vaulted 150 feet over the fountains at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas. It was a kind of tribute to Evel Knievel, who had cleared the same fountains in 1967, only to land in a bone-breaking crash that horrified viewers.
“When I made the jump and said, ‘That was for you, Dad,’ he ran up and hugged me, with tears in his eyes,” the son recalled years later. “I had never seen him so emotional.”
Robbie Bachman, of Bachman-Turner Overdrive.
Hannes Keller, one of the pioneers of deep diving.
On December 3, 1962, he dived down 1,000 feet.
Mr. Keller and his expedition partner, Peter Small, a journalist and a veteran diver, knew that critical to the mission would be how well the gas they breathed mitigated the possibility of getting “the bends” — the potentially deadly decompression sickness caused when bubbles of nitrogen form in divers’ bodies during rapid ascents.
Mr. Keller enlisted the help of a cardiopulmonary specialist in Zurich and an IBM computer to conceive a secret formula of oxygen, nitrogen and helium, as well as a plan to dispense it at different mixtures at different depths.
The descent, on Dec. 3, 1962, went well — “Anybody can go down,” Mr. Keller told Life magazine in 1961 — but when Mr. Keller exited the Atlantis on the floor of the Pacific Ocean to plant Swiss and American flags, his breathing hoses became entangled with them. He dropped the flags and returned to the vessel. But he started to feel dizzy and soon fell unconscious. So did Mr. Small.
When the mission’s operations crew was pulling up the vessel, they saw the unconscious men on a television feed and sent two divers to investigate. One of them was able to shut the vessel’s hatch after cutting away a piece of Mr. Keller’s flipper, which had become stuck between the door and its frame, allowing pressure to build inside the bell. The other diver went missing. His body was never found.
Mr. Keller revived while still inside the bell. Mr. Small woke up, too, but he was weak, thirsty and sleepy, and eventually Mr. Keller had to give him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Mr. Small died of decompression sickness before he could be transported to a hospital.
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Despite the deaths on that dive, Mr. Keller and Dr. Albert Buhlmann, the cardiopulmonary specialist who had helped Mr. Keller design his gas mixture, signed a contract in 1964 with Shell International Petroleum to continue their research.
“Hannes Keller’s prominence in the world of deep diving was relatively brief but definitely bold,” Mr. Hellwarth said in an email. “His thousand-foot dive turned into a Houdini-like spectacle, unfortunately with disastrous consequences.”
Mr. Keller moved on. In the late 1960s, he and a business partner, Hans Hess, developed a deep-sea diving suit and an aerodynamic ski-racing suit. Over the next few decades he started a line of computers, developed software programs and created an online art and photo museum.
He was also “a classical pianist who occasionally appeared in concert”, but I’ll leave that story for the reader.
Obit watch: January 13, 2023.
Friday, January 13th, 2023Paul Johnson, noted conservative British historian.
A writer of immense range and output, capable of 6,000 words a day when in harness, Mr. Johnson modeled his career after earlier English men of letters, like Thomas Babington Macaulay and G.K. Chesterton. With an affable prose style and supreme confidence in his own opinions, he was happy to deliver forceful judgments on almost anything: the tangled politics of the Middle East, his personal quest for God or the cultural meaning of the Spice Girls.
The author or the editor of more than 50 books, Mr. Johnson alternated between large histories (of Christianity, Judaism, England, the United States, the middle years of the 20th century, art) and slim biographies of eminences from the ancient or more immediate past (Socrates, Jesus, Edward III, Elizabeth I, George Washington, Mozart, Napoleon, Darwin, Churchill, Eisenhower, Pope John XXIII.)
Writing more for a popular audience than for the approval of specialists, he filtered his wide reading through an ethical lens. As a historian, he looked back to the Victorians, for whom readable prose was as crucial as archival research, and, like those old-fashioned moralists, he was fond of hierarchies. Whether the subject was Renaissance sculptors or American humorists, no era, nation, religion, politician, event, building or piece of art or music was safe from his need to compare and rank.
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Lawrence emailed an obit for William Consovoy, prominent lawyer.
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Mr. Consovoy often led the charge in attacking existing laws in court or defending new ones. In 2020 alone, he argued against an extension of the deadline for mail-in ballots in Wisconsin, the re-enfranchisement of felons in Florida and a California plan to send absentee ballots to all registered voters.
He was equally involved in efforts to strike down affirmative action by colleges and universities. He played a supporting role in Fisher v. the University of Texas, a case that originated in 2008 and came before the Supreme Court twice. In both instances, the university successfully defended its plan to automatically admit in-state students who had graduated in the top 10 percent of their class.
Mr. Consovoy then worked closely with Mr. Blum on cases against Harvard and the University of North Carolina, arguing that their affirmative action programs — and, by extension, college and university affirmative action programs generally — were unconstitutional.
Those cases, brought on behalf of Students for Fair Admissions, an organization that Mr. Blum founded, reached the Supreme Court last fall. By then, Mr. Consovoy was too ill to argue them himself, so two of his partners did instead. The court is widely expected to decide in favor of Students for Fair Admissions before the end of the term, most likely in June.
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Lisa Marie Presley. THR. Pitchfork.
Constantine II, Olympic gold medalist (sailing, 1960) and the last king of Greece.
A lot of this took place shortly before or shortly after I was born, but it’s an interesting story I was previously not aware of.
…public support faded after he tried to influence Greek politics, machinations that led to the collapse of the newly-elected centrist government of Prime Minister Georgios Papandreou.
Constantine appointed a series of defectors from Mr. Papandreou’s party as prime minister without holding elections, a widely unpopular chain of events that became known as “the Apostasy.”
The increasing instability culminated in a coup led by a group of army colonels in 1967, considered one of the darkest moments in Greece’s modern history. It set off seven years of a brutal dictatorship for which many Greeks still blame the former king.
Constantine initially accepted the junta before attempting a counter-coup in December of the same year. When it failed, he was forced to flee to Rome, where he spent the first years of his exile.
After the dictatorship ended in 1974, Greece’s new government called a referendum on the monarchy, and 69 percent of Greeks voted to abolish it. The vote effectively deposed Constantine and ended a monarchy that had ruled Greece since 1863, except for the period from 1924 to 1935, when it was first abolished and then restored.
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His relationship with the Greek authorities after his dethroning remained prickly. In 1994, the Socialist government passed a law stripping him of his nationality and expropriating the former royal family’s property. Constantine took the case to the European Court of Human Rights, which in 2002 ordered Greece to pay him and his family nearly $15 million in compensation, a fraction of what he had sought. He accused the government of acting “unjustly and vindictively.”
“They treat me sometimes as if I’m their enemy,” he said in 2002. “I am not the enemy. I consider it the greatest insult in the world for a Greek to be told that he is not a Greek.”
The former king could have regained a Greek passport by adopting a surname, which the government demanded that he do to acknowledge that he was no longer king. But he insisted on being called only Constantine, and continued to cast himself as king and his children as princes and princesses.
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In 1964, he married Princess Anne-Marie of Denmark, who became queen.
She survives him, as do their five children: Alexia, Pavlos, Nikolaos, Theodora and Philippos; nine grandchildren; and two sisters, Sofia, the former queen of Spain, and former Princess Irene.
Obit watch: January 12, 2023.
Thursday, January 12th, 2023I find it difficult to write about music: I just don’t know enough. Perhaps one of my commenters will have something more to say about Mr. Beck.
Dorothy Tristan. Other credits include “Fear on Trial”, “Down and Out in Beverly Hills”, and “Rollercoaster”.
Carole Cook. Other credits include “The Gauntlet”, “Quincy M.E.”, and “The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis”.
Ben Masters. Other credits include “Kolchak: The Night Stalker”, “Petrocelli”, and “Noble House”.
Barrie Youngfellow. Other credits include “Carter Country”, “The Eddie Capra Mysteries”, and “WKRP in Cincinnati”.
Hubert G. Wells, noted animal trainer.
Quick firings watch.
Wednesday, January 11th, 2023There haven’t been any additional head coach firings in the past couple of days, but there have been a few lower level firings:
Mike LaFleur out as offensive coordinator for the Jets.
Scott Turner out as offensive coordinator for the Washington Generals Redskins Commanders.
The Tennessee Titans fired offensive coordinator Todd Downing on Monday. Also out: ffensive line coach Keith Carter, secondary coach Anthony Midget and offensive skill assistant Erik Frazier.
Obit watch: January 11, 2023.
Wednesday, January 11th, 2023George Pell, Cardinal and former Vatican treasurer.
From 2014 to 2019, Cardinal Pell was the church’s financial czar and third-in-command, and he tried to push through reforms to make its finances more transparent. Those efforts were truncated in 2017, when he was forced to return to Australia to face trial on charges of sex abuse dating to the 1990s. The case transfixed Australia — cameras met Cardinal Pell at the airport when he arrived from Rome.
In December 2018, he was convicted by an Australian jury of five counts of child sexual abuse of two choir boys that were said to have occurred in 1996, during his time in Melbourne. Less than two years later, in April 2020, Australia’s highest court overturned the conviction, saying that there was “a significant possibility” that he was not guilty.
Throughout the proceedings, Cardinal Pell maintained his innocence. At a news conference in Rome in 2017, he said he had been a victim of “relentless character assassination.” He said, “The whole idea of sexual abuse is abhorrent to me.”
At the time of his death, Cardinal Pell faced a civil suit by the father of a now-deceased choir boy who alleged that the cleric had abused the boy when he was archbishop of Melbourne. In a statement, the claimant’s lawyer said the suit would continue, adding: “There is still a great deal of evidence for this claim to rely upon.”
Separately, a 2017 Australian government inquiry into the abuse of tens of thousands of children in churches, schools and other institutions over a period of decades found that Cardinal Pell had been aware of the sexual abuse of children by other Roman Catholic priests as early as 1974, but failed to take action.
Blake Hounshell, NYT reporter and editor.
The number for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-TALK (8255). You can also dial 988 to reach the Lifeline. If you live outside of the United States or are looking for other help, TVTropes has a good page of additional resources.
Obit watch: January 10, 2023.
Tuesday, January 10th, 2023Quinn Redeker, actor.
He did a fair number of cop and PI shows, among other credits, including “The Rockford Files”, “Harry O”…
…and “Mannix”. (“Falling Star“, season 1, episode 15. He was “Jim Dancy”.)
Mike Hill, film editor. He won an Oscar for “Apollo 13”.
Diamond Lynnette Hardaway, of “Diamond and Silk”.
Timothy Vanderweert. He ran the “Leicaphilia” blog, which has been on the sidebar for a while now.
Adolfo Kaminsky. I swear I have written something about him before, but I can’t find it now.
He was a forger. Specifically, he forged documents to get people out of the hands of the Nazis.
The forged documents allowed Jewish children, their parents and others to escape deportation to Auschwitz and other concentration camps, and in many cases to flee Nazi-occupied territory for safe havens.
At one point, Mr. Kaminsky was asked to produce 900 birth and baptismal certificates and ration cards for 300 Jewish children in institutional homes who were about to be rounded up. The aim was to deceive the Germans until the children could be smuggled out to rural families or convents, or to Switzerland and Spain. He was given three days to finish the assignment.
He toiled for two straight days, forcing himself to stay awake by telling himself: “In one hour I can make 30 blank documents. If I sleep for an hour 30 people will die.”
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Using the pseudonym Julien Keller, Mr. Kaminsky was a key operative in a Paris underground laboratory whose members — all working for no pay and risking a quick death if discovered — adopted aliases like Water Lily, Penguin and Otter, and often contrived documents from scratch.
Mr. Kaminsky learned to fashion various typefaces, a skill he had picked up in elementary school while editing a school newspaper, and was able to imitate those used by the authorities. He pressed paper so that it, too, resembled the kind used on official documents, and photoengraved his own rubber stamps, letterheads and watermarks.
Word of the cell spread to other resistance groups, and soon it was producing 500 documents a week, receiving orders from partisans in several European countries. Mr. Kaminsky estimated that the underground network he was part of helped save 10,000 people, most of them children.
Obit watch: January 9, 2023.
Monday, January 9th, 2023Bernard Kalb, former foreign correspondent for CBS, NBC, and the NYT.
He reported for The Times from 1946 to 1962, for CBS during the next 18 years (during which he joined his brother, Marvin, on the diplomatic beat) and as NBC’s State Department correspondent from 1980 to 1985. Then, for nearly two years, he served in the Reagan administration’s State Department — a stint that ended contentiously.
As a CBS correspondent in 1972, Mr. Kalb accompanied President Richard M. Nixon on the trip to China that proved to be a major step in the normalization of relations between the two nations. He also made virtually every overseas trip with Henry A. Kissinger, Cyrus R. Vance, Edmund S. Muskie, Alexander M. Haig Jr. and George P. Shultz during their tenures as secretary of state.
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Russell Banks, novelist.
Joyce Meskis, former owner of The Tattered Cover.
In addition to creating a bookstore famed for its vast selection and bibliophile-friendly atmosphere, Ms. Meskis often took a stand in matters related to censorship and the First Amendment. Sometimes those positions were not easy ones to embrace.
In 1991, for instance, when she was president of the American Booksellers Association, she testified against the proposed Pornography Victims Compensation Act, a bill introduced by Senator Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican, that would have allowed victims of sex crimes to sue distributors of pornography, including bookstores, if they could demonstrate that pornography influenced their attacker. Opponents of that bill (which died in committee) were sometimes labeled pro-pornography, but Ms. Meskis knew the real issue was that the law would make bookstores wary of selling anything controversial.
Similarly, the case she took to the Colorado Supreme Court some two decades ago pitted her against law enforcement officials, who were trying to build a case against a customer suspected of making methamphetamine. In 2000 the police found two books on drugmaking in a trailer home used as a meth lab; they also found an envelope with Ms. Meskis’s bookstore listed as the return address. Hoping to link the drugmaking to the recipient whose name was on the envelope, they sought Ms. Meskis’s sales records — and, though her stand read as pro-drug to some, she again saw the bigger picture.
“This is about access to private records of the book-buying public,” she told The New York Times in 2000. “If buyers thought that their records would be turned over to the government, it would have a chilling affect on what they buy and what they read.”
In 2002 the State Supreme Court ruled that both the First Amendment and the Colorado Constitution “protect an individual’s fundamental right to purchase books anonymously, free from governmental interference.”
Adam Rich. Other credits include “CHiPs”, “Silver Spoons”, and “Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star”.
Owen Roizman, cinematographer. “The French Connection”, “The Exorcist”, and “Network”? Wow.
Art McNally, NFL official credited as being “the father of instant replay”.
Earl Boen. Other credits (he has 291 as an actor: man worked) include video game spun offs from a minor 1960s SF TV series, “Battle Beyond the Stars”, the good “Hawaii 5-0”, and “Richie Brockelman, Private Eye”.
Your Bloody Monday thread.
Monday, January 9th, 2023The NFL regular season ended yesterday. You know what that means.
Yes, the firings will continue until morale improves. This is your Bloody Monday NFL firings thread, which I will try to keep updated today.
Starting with yesterday’s “Damn, you didn’t even wait to get him in the house” firing: Lovie Smith out as head coach of the Texans after one season. 3-13-1 as Texans coach. From the NYPost:
This team was so inept, they couldn’t even get the first draft choice. What the heck happened? The Texans used to be at least competitive.
Joe Woods out as defensive coordinator in Cleveland. At least the Browns were competitive (7-10 this season).
More later, if there are any more firings today.
Edited to add: Kliff Kingsbury out as head coach of the Cardinals, and Steve Keim stepping down as GM. Keim’s resignation is apparently for health reasons.
Kingsbury was 28-37-1 overall, and the team was 4-13 this season. Interestingly, both Kingsbury and Keim had their contracts extended last March.
Preview of coming attractions. (Random gun crankery.)
Sunday, January 8th, 2023
Saturday did turn out to be The Day of the .45. Didn’t plan it that way, it just worked out.
Posts on both guns to come as soon as the cedar stops trying to kill me and I can get some better photos. But that’s 100+ years of history right there.
The Whipped Cream Difficulties Home for Unloved Firearms. (Random gun crankery)
Friday, January 6th, 2023I like guns that have a story. Even if I don’t always know what that story is.
There are people who throw conniption fits when they see a vintage military gun that someone has modified. For me, it depends on two things:
- How good the modifications are. There’s a reason people refer to “Bubba gunsmithing”.
- The relative rarity of the gun. Someone who hacks on a vintage M1917 Enfield these days is doing something stupid and appalling. Someone who modified one of those guns back in the day when you could pull them out of barrels at the Army Surplus store and they were cheap enough to use as tomato stakes…that’s a different story.
I’ve written before about my fondness for esoteric small bore cartridges, like the .22 Jet and the .224 Harvey Kay-Chuk. This isn’t just limited to handguns, but extends to rifles as well. Indeed, I’ve been kind of looking for a good .22 Hornet. (CZ made nice ones for a while, but they seem hard to find now. The ideal would be a heavy-barrelled pre-64 Model 70, but those are not cheap.) I also wouldn’t mind finding a nice .22 Magnum rifle, to go with my two .22 Magnum revolvers, but those are more common and fairly easy to find.
Mike the Musicologist and I were out a few months ago and visited Provident Arms in Spicewood. This was on the used rack and, while it isn’t in .22 Hornet, it was nicely priced ($400 plus tax, out the door). I heard it softly calling my name, and well…it followed me home. In addition to the nice price, it opens up several new rabbit holes for me. And it feels like this gun does have a story, though I don’t know what that story is.
This is a custom gun. The base is a M1903A3 receiver. Some of the markings are obscured by the scope mount, but as best as I can figure out from what I can read, and this serial number table, it was made by Remington in 1942.
(This one says September 1943.) I’m pretty sure this is safe to shoot as it falls outside of the low serial number range, but I would welcome hearing from any 1903A3 experts out there. If you know anything about 1903A3 rifles, you know more than I do, and are thus an expert.
The scope is a Bushnell 3-14. It seems like a pretty good scope, though I won’t know for sure until I shoot the rifle. We’ll talk about that later. Assuming it holds zero and isn’t otherwise broken, I could probably take it off and get back at least $100 of the purchase price. But that would leave me with a gun with no sights, so why would I want to do that?
The other thing is, someone rechambered this in .220 Swift. No, really.
.220 Swift is one of those super-odd cartridges. Factory ammunition is “available”: Remington makes one loading, Federal makes one loading, and Winchester makes one. Good luck finding those in stock anywhere, though. Most folks seem to handload for .220 Swift.
And there are good reasons for that. You can really push .220 Swift, if you want. It uses a .224 diameter bullet, same as the .221 Fireball, .223/5.56, .22 Hornet, 5.7×28, and some other cartridges. I’ve seen claims that it is the fastest commercially produced rifle cartridge, and, based on skimming reloading data, that seems accurate. With lightweight bullets (35 grains or so) you can get over 4,000 feet per second out of the .220 Swift. That’s…astonishing. At that velocity, from what I’ve seen claimed, you can sight in 1.5″ high at 100 yards, and (depending on the the load) hold dead-on target out to 300 yards without the bullet being more than 1.5″ above or below your aim point. This would be a really great cartridge for varmint hunting.
But it is also a very controversial one. The sources I’ve read say that the factory ammo makers originally loaded it at the 4,000 fps level, but shooters found that it tore the crap out of barrels quickly, like within 500 rounds. The factories backed off their loads some in an attempt to improve barrel life. It’s also worth keeping in mind that the .220 Swift was introduced in 1935 (Winchester chambered it in the Model 54 at first, and then in the Model 70 when that was introduced the next year.) Since 1935, our knowledge of metallurgy and barrel-making has advanced considerably, and apparently newer barrels don’t get shot out as fast. Especially if you don’t feed them a high-volume of maximum loads in a short time: the consensus seems to be one or two shots on a varmint, then letting the gun cool down before taking more shots, is the way to go.
The other issue seems to be people trying to make .220 Swift do things it wasn’t designed to do, like take larger game. There was a guy in the 1940s who claimed it was the best cartridge he’d found for “feral burros”, while other people used it for deer, elk, and even tiger. On the other hand, if you’ve read Ruark’s Horn of the Hunter (and if you have, first drink’s on me next time we meet) the rifle he attempted to use to take a hyena (and threw away in disgust) was allegedly a .220 Swift. This may have been a bullet construction issue: fast moving hollow points would blow up on impact, while other bullet types (such as monolithic copper) give better penetration to vital areas.
Personally, I’d stick to game not much bigger than coyotes (Call me, Martha).
Of course, I’d welcome hearing from any .220 Swift experts out there. If you know anything about .220 Swift, you know more than I do, and are thus an expert.
I haven’t had a chance to shoot this yet. The temperatures are mild enough that I can finally go rifle shooting, but I need to find an outdoor range with open lanes. If I go to an indoor range, that makes it much harder to chronograph loads, and I do want to do some chrono work: not just with this gun, but with the Scout and the XP-100. And it seems like whenever I go indoor, there’s always someone there who has brought their .22 Eargesplitten Loudenboomer or something that produces an equal amount of concussion.
Mike the Musicologist, RoadRich, and I went shooting last Sunday at Lone Star. But the only range they had open without more of a wait than we wanted was the .22 rimfire range. That was fine, we brought .22s with us, but it did mean that I didn’t have a chance to check any of my other guns.
I actually do have ammo for this gun, oddly enough. I ordered some of the Remington load from Midway. Mike and I went down to Cabela’s the day after I bought the rifle: while they had no factory .220 Swift ammo, they did have two boxes of Hornady unfired .220 Swift cases, and RCBS loading dies for .220 Swift. Someone in my extended circle reloads, and did a batch of .220 Swift for me using those dies and cases. (As I recall, I bought 55 grain Hornady bullets for those loads.) I’ve also managed to accumulate some factory loaded ammo from various places (gun shows, gun shops, etc.).
This might turn into a fun project. It’s already been an interesting diversion.
And I’m still looking for a .22 Hornet. And a .22 Jet: I’m thinking a Jet might be my target of opportunity at the Symposium in June.
(This article from Outdoor Life was a useful source of background in writing this blog entry.)
Obit watch: January 6, 2023.
Friday, January 6th, 2023Kenneth Rowe, also known as Lt. No Kum-Sok of the North Korean Air Force.
This is an interesting historical footnote (recommended for use in schools) that I was previously unaware of.
Lt. Kum-Sok was born in what was then “the northern part of the Japanese-occupied Korean Peninsula”. He became a navel cadet, transferred to the North Korean Air Force, and learned to fly MIGs.
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On the morning of September 21, 1953, while flying in a patrol of 16 planes, he broke off from the formation and flew across the DMZ to Kimpo AFB in South Korea.
Luck was with him. The American air defense radar just north of Kimpo had been shut down for routine maintenance, and neither American planes aloft nor antiaircraft crews had spotted him.
During the late stages of the Korean War, the Air Force had dropped leaflets over North Korea offering a $100,000 reward to the first North Korean pilot to defect with a MIG. Mr. Rowe maintained that he knew nothing of that reward and said he had simply wanted to live a free life. But he accepted it.
This was the first intact MIG that the United States was able to analyze. (At least, according to the NYT: Wikipedia claims that Franciszek Jarecki, a Polish pilot, defected in one on March 5, 1953.)
Again per Wikipedia (quoting Yeager’s autobiography), “the MiG-15 had dangerous handling faults…during a visit to the USSR, Soviet pilots were incredulous he had dived in it, this supposedly being very hazardous.”
He was 90 when he passed.
And his plane?
Seven decades later, that plane still exists, and resides at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force near Dayton, Ohio.
Its red star repainted, it is on display alongside an American F-86 Sabre jet, a remembrance of the dogfights of the Korean War in the swath of sky known as MIG Alley.
Firings watch.
Thursday, January 5th, 2023Chris Beard out as head coach of Texas basketball.
His UT record was 29-13, including the school’s first NCAA Tournament win since 2014 last season.
The problem wasn’t his record: Texas is currently ranked 6th, and is 12-2 this season.
The problem is: Mr. Beard got arrested.
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Police said they were dispatched to Beard’s house in his Tarrytown neighborhood around 2 a.m. on Dec. 12 after Trew called 911 to say the coach had attacked her.According to the arrest affidavit, Trew said the couple had been arguing about their relationship for several days. She told police she approached Beard in a guest bedroom and, after Beard ignored her, she became frustrated and took his eyeglasses from his hand and broke them. She also told police that she “did not feel safe.”
Even though Trew later clarified that Beard may have acted in self-defense and had never strangled her, Beard has never spoken publicly about the episode. Her statement was given to the American-Statesman and the Associated Press.
Perry Minton, a lawyer representing Beard, issued a statement after the arrest saying Beard is innocent and that the woman wanted all charges dismissed.
Happy New Year! Have some more gun books!
Thursday, January 5th, 2023But first, answers to a couple of questions:
“Did you get any guns for Christmas?” No, not as presents. I expect to pick up one gun on Saturday, and may pick up a second one off of layaway at the same time. I’ll blog them once I have them, as I think folks will find these guns historically interesting. (Hint: if everything works out the way I want it to, Saturday will be The Day of the .45.)
“Did you get any gun books for Christmas?” Not yet: my beloved and indulgent sister has been wrestling with Amazon, but I don’t know what she got me, I’m not looking (that’d ruin the surprise!), and so I don’t know if there are any gun books in the lot. (Speaking of new gun books, though, this interests me: I liked American Gunfight, his book with Stephen Hunter, so I’m willing to take a chance. And speaking of Stephen Hunter, I pre-ordred a signed copy of The Bullet Garden from The Mysterious Bookshop, but that won’t be released until later this month.)
(And before you say “Isn’t it kind of late for Christmas?”, as all people of goodwill know, the Christmas season runs through January 6th, the Feast of the Epiphany, and so anything given, or even ordered, in this period earns you full faith and credit. Also, you can leave your Christmas decorations up until after the 6th. If the Judgy McJudgersons say anything to you, tell them I have spoken. So let it be written, so let it be done.)
Anyway, some more gun books. One was ordered before Thanksgiving, one was picked up at Half-Price Books while I was out after the holiday.
Obit watch: January 5, 2023.
Thursday, January 5th, 2023Fay Weldon, British novelist. (The Life and Loves of a She-Devil).
In 2001, she struck an unusual brand-placement deal with the jeweler Bulgari, reportedly worth £18,000 (about $23,000), to mention the company’s name and products in a book. The ensuing novel, “The Bulgari Connection,” raised eyebrows among purists, but she brushed the criticism aside.
At first, she said, she thought: “‘Oh, no, dear me, I am a literary author. You can’t do this kind of thing; my name will be mud forever.’ But then after a while I thought, ‘I don’t care. Let it be mud. They never give me the Booker Prize anyway.’”
James “Buster” Corley, co-founder of Dave and Busters. He was 72: according to his family, he suffered a stroke four months ago that caused “severe damage to the communication and personality part of his brain”, and his death was a suicide.
Obit watch: January 4, 2023.
Wednesday, January 4th, 2023Walter Cunningham, Apollo 7 astronaut. NASA.
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Apollo 7 — which blasted off on Oct. 11, 1968, following unmanned Apollo flights in the wake of the disastrous fire — passed its maneuverability and reliability tests. The capsule rendezvoused with an orbiting stage of the Saturn 1-B rocket that had sent it into space, indicating that it would have no trouble docking with a lunar module that would carry two astronauts from the capsule to the moon and back. The Apollo 7 astronauts, who comprised NASA’s first three-man crew, also successfully tested an engine in the rear of their capsule designed to put the spacecraft into and out of lunar orbit on a future mission.
And for the first time, astronauts carried a camera providing TV images. They demonstrated how they could float in their weightless environment in what became known as “The Wally, Walt and Donn Show,” and they put together a hand-lettered sign that said, “Hello From the Lovely Apollo Room, High Atop Everything.”
There was a problem, though: Captain Schirra had a heavy head cold, Major Eisele had a lesser cold and Mr. Cunningham, as he would later recall, felt “a little blah.” NASA feared that the colds could result in the bursting of eardrums as the astronauts returned to Earth.
They were, in fact, just fine when they splashed down some 325 miles south of Bermuda, less than a mile off target. Their mission was so successful that Apollo 8 orbited the moon, another important prelude to the moon landing in July 1969.
But Apollo 7 had its blemishes. It would be remembered for Captain Schirra’s disputes with NASA controllers in Houston. Speaking on an open microphone monitored by the press, he protested the agency’s ambitious schedule for TV transmissions, which he felt took valuable time away from the astronauts’ work. He also insisted that the astronauts dispense with the rule requiring pressurized helmets on re-entry, fearing that this could damage their eardrums in light of their colds. He got his way.
Captain Schirra, who flew in the Mercury and Gemini programs, had told NASA he planned to retire after Apollo 7. That mission proved to be not just the first but also the last for both Mr. Cunningham and Major Eisele.
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…
The Apollo 7 crewmen did have to settle for NASA’s second-highest award, the Exceptional Service Medal, while subsequent Apollo crews and the crews of the Skylab program were given the top award, the Distinguished Service Medal.
NASA upgraded the Apollo 7 astronauts’ medals to the Distinguished Service citation at an October 2008 ceremony, citing the mission’s success, notwithstanding the arguments with flight controllers. But Mr. Cunningham was the only crewman alive by then. Major Eisele, who died in 1987, was represented by his widow, Susan Eisele-Black; Captain Schirra, who died in 2007, by the astronaut Bill Anders.
Mr. Kraft struck a conciliatory stance. “We gave you a hard time once, but you certainly survived that and have done extremely well since,” he told Mr. Cunningham in a recorded message. “You’ve done well by yourself, you’ve done well for NASA, and I am frankly very proud to call you a friend.”
Obit watch: January 3, 2023.
Tuesday, January 3rd, 2023Very quick roundups from the past few days:
Fred White, drummer for Earth, Wind and Fire.
Anita Pointer, of the Pointer Sisters.
Jeremiah Green, drummer for Modest Mouse.
Uche Nwaneri, former offensive lineman for the Jacksonville Jaguars. He was 38.
RoadRich sent over an obit for Ken Block, rally driver and YouTuber. He was 55, and died in a snowmobile accident.
Chris Ledesma, music editor for “The Simpsons”. He worked on every episode through May of 2022.
Cereal experiments lame.
Monday, January 2nd, 2023Mike the Musicologist and I have a tradition, dating back quite a while: if we find ourselves in a grocery store, we go look in the cereal aisle…for silly cereals.
Over the weekend, we went by a WalMart Supercenter because we were looking for a specific silly cereal.
Yes, that is “Elf on the Shelf Hot Cocoa Cereal with Marshmallows”. That was the only flavor (and the only box) WalMart had, but there’s also “Sugar Cookie” flavor and “North Pole Snow Creme” flavor.
Other things that we found, but did not buy, because we’re not that silly.
Kellogg’s Frosted Pandora Flakes. Do you suppose that anyone at Kellogg’s thought about the symbolism of opening a box labeled “Pandora”?
“Wendy’s Frosty Chocolatey Cereal With Wendy’s Frosty Flavor”. “Frosty” is not a flavor.
“IHOP Mini Pancake Cereal”, for when you want the taste of IHOP pancakes, but don’t want to deal with the Mongolian fire drill that IHOP has become.
Not cereals, but on the same aisle:
“Mrs. Butterworth’s Fruity Pebbles Flavored Syrup” and “Cap’n Crunch’s Ocean Blue Artificially Maple Flavored Syrup”. There are so many things wrong with these, I can’t even.
I’ll throw in one more photo from the weekend that’s totally unrelated. I like the way this came out, though I did manually adjust the exposure and crop. (I thought it came out a little dark: it was more overcast than I thought it was.)
Christmas “tree” at Garrison Brothers Distillery in Hye, Texas.
Historical note, suitable for use in schools.
Sunday, January 1st, 2023The Diary of Samuel Pepys begins their third read-through today.
I’ve said before that I think this is the way Pepys’s diary should be read: in blog form. It genuinely surprises and delights me that they’ve already gone through the diary twice, and I’m looking forward to following this third read-through.