A New Year’s Day reception in quarters given by commanders of battalions and regiments was a feature of regimental life until well into my time as a subaltern. Attendance was not compulsory but expected. My first assignment was to the Second Battalion, Second Infantry Regiment then stationed at Ft. Devens, Massachusetts, coincidentally the post at which I had been born. One Year a few bachelor lieutenants preferred to go skiing and agreed that one of their number would attend the CO’s reception and leave all their calling cards in the silver tray on a table near the front door to show they had been there. Unfortunately the designated deliverer had a few two many eggnogs and dropped the cards in the tray with a rubber band still around them. When asked to explain, they sensibly threw themselves on the mercy of the CO’s wife, a lovely Puerto Rican lady who graciously forgave them all. pl
——
This was a story told by Colonel Lang back in 2019. The same custom continued at Schofield Barracks into the late 70s. On New Year’s Day in 1978 I donned my dress whites while SWMBO wore a beautiful Hawaiian print gown and we set out for the quarters of LTC “Crazy” Harry Baccus, our battalion commander. His wife encouraged us to bring our not quite six month old baby son. Like in Colonel Lang’s day, attendance was never described as mandatory, but it was expected. We had a grand little visit even though the custom of calling cards had since fallen by the wayside. At one point LTC Baccus insisted on holding my son. In appreciation, my son promptly spit up on him. It was white on white so no lasting stain. I was worried, but both LTC Baccus and his wife had a good laugh just to put my wife and I at ease. Those were good days back in the old 1/35th Infantry.
TTG
This day in history ..
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/mutiny-of-the-pennsylvania-line
On this theme of dates especially new years. interesting that the tale of
Doctor Acula – Count Dracula was inspired simultaneously on the same evening which Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Though it was on Jan 1, 1818 that her famous book was first published.
A British Nobleman Lord Ruthven.
Ven – vein, venal. Ruth – the name is interesting.
In Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) the evil Count has hired British real estate agent Jonathan Harker to purchase properties in London where he relocates with his fiendish retinue.
Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” is published | January 1, 1818 | HISTORY
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/frankenstein-published
Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is published. The book, by 20-year-old Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, is frequently called the world’s first science fiction novel. In Shelley’s tale, a scientist animates a creature constructed from dismembered corpses. The gentle, intellectually gifted creature is enormous and physically hideous. Cruelly rejected by its creator, it wanders, seeking companionship and becoming increasingly brutal as it fails to find a mate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vampyre
“The Vampyre” is a short work of prose fiction written in 1819 by John William Polidori taken from the story Lord Byron told as part of a contest among Polidori, Mary Shelley, Lord Byron, and Percy Shelley. The same contest produced the novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus.[1] “The Vampyre” is often viewed as the progenitor of the romantic vampire genre of fantasy fiction.[2] The work is described by Christopher Frayling as “the first story successfully to fuse the disparate elements of vampirism into a coherent literary genre.”
—————–
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruthenia
Ruthenia[a] is an exonym, originally used in Medieval Latin, as one of several terms for Kievan Rus’.[1] It is also used to refer to the East Slavic and Eastern Orthodox regions of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland, and later the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, corresponding to what is now Belarus and Ukraine. Historically, the term was used to refer to all the territories of the East Slavs.
The Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria (1772–1918), corresponding to parts of Western Ukraine, was referred to as Ruthenia and its people as Ruthenians.[4] As a result of a Ukrainian national identity gradually dominating over much of present-day Ukraine in the 19th and 20th centuries, the endonym Rusyn is now mostly used among a minority of peoples on the territory of the Carpathian Mountains, including Carpathian Ruthenia.
—————–
From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruthenium
A minor application for ruthenium is in platinum alloys and as a chemistry catalyst. A new application of ruthenium is as the capping layer for extreme ultraviolet photomasks. Ruthenium is generally found in ores with the other platinum group metals in the Ural Mountains and in North and South America.
——————-
The year 1818 is interesting, to me anyway, due to a mythical story of 36 men who are divided into two groups of 18 each. That a simpleton might write it as 666-666 is also intriguing given the fictional characters – Frankenstein and Dracula –
given birth to on the first day of that year – if you only count publication day of Frankenstein. Looking closer:
“Mary Shelley created the story on a rainy afternoon in 1816 in Geneva ..”
It sounds like mental illness to say it but Geneva – gen Eva (genesis, genealogy, etc) Eve was seduced by the serpent. Later she appears in history as the wife, Eva Braun, of the madman Hitler, whose first name Adolph when paired with Eva suggests Adam and Eve.
————
Suffer it to be mentioned but I too was once dressed up as a female – it was in college, by a very pleasant young lady because she wanted me to go to a costume party. I did, and even stopped traffic. The vehicle was driven and occupied by several extremely enthusiastic male individuals. Off I went, unharmed, to the soiree. It was very interesting to experience the attention, to turn heads etc. I suspect that has something to do with the epidemic of social sexual breakdown currently on display.
When I was a LT in Germany during the Cold War, the officers of each DS FA Battalion would meet at the Battalion and go to the DivArty Commander’s Quarters in Hanau at a Kaserne that wasz neazr nothing,
We would go on the Battalion Bus (some thing I only saw in Germany),
Needless to say, no one was happy to put on formal attire to waste about 3 hours of a day off on the project. I would say it was compulsory, if you did not have something like Staff Duty to avoid it.
Needless to say, I learned to be on Staff Duty on January 1st (rather than o December 31st) after my first year.
I’m unaware of any such tradition in the USN, what I remember was that having the duty on Christmas and New Years was nice because it was relaxing — especially in a port like Norfolk where there were numerous flags, each with staffs that had time to go down to the waterfront and look for things that were not “ship-shape”. Irish pennants (lines hanging over the side of the ship), cigarette butts on the pier, failure to execute evening colors in perfect unison with SOPA (senior officer present afloat), things like that. Or running a “zulu five oscar” (Z-5-O) drill where they would attempt to get some unauthorized person onboard (in those days of “neither confirm nor deny” security drills were pretty much a daily event. As command duty officer / CDO I would have to go to the small arms locker, draw a .45 and two mags, and take charge.) On those holidays the staffs pretty much left us to our own devices, with the cooks working to make some decent chow.
scott s.,
Did you ever write a Deck Log Poem on January 1?
Happy New Year! Bless the Harry Baccus’s of this world and also that lovely first lady of the 2/2nd Inf.
Happy New Year to all.
Back from a 15-day stay in the mountains. Little or no internet. The chainsaw was busy for firewood, oak and chestnut, some wild cherry trees, 30 to 50 years old. The stockpile is about 3 years, so we have time.
A merry Christmas with people I didn’t know, including a very friendly German family. All these people renovate old farmhouses, either for vacations or for their own use. A lot of work with often paltry means.
My retirement motto: 11 months vacation, 5 weeks work.
Happy New Year TTG. Sorry I didn’t get my predictions out. #1 was going to be America hit with an increase in procrastination.
Ukraine is protesting in Italy of Italy allowing the Russians to hold a pubic event there Celebration Russia’s Reconstruction of Mariople….
Jim