Practicing “Place”

Practicing “place” on rocks and downed trees.

Franken-Fido

Frankenstein is a story of unintended consequences.

Dr. Frankenstein was not a bad man. He was simply trying to push death beyond the horizon by returning life to the recently deceased. 

He did not set out to make a monster. 

For the record, Author Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein story has roots in reality.  

Its core premise was rooted in a scandal of her time — body snatching done by, and for, doctors who were studying human anatomy in order to teach medicine and make medical advances to save lives.

Anatomy beyond the skin is learned through dissection, and it was through dissection that Herophilus, Leonardo DaVinci, Michelangelo, and even Benjamin Franklin learned about bones, heart, lungs, kidneys, muscles, and the human circulatory system. 

Up to the start of the 20th Century, most medicine was built on the dissected bodies of dead men and women.  By studying the dead, the health problems of the living could be understood and perhaps even reduced.

The first bodies used for anatomy were those of criminals who came fresh from the gallows, and their use by medical science for this purpose was legal. 

But as the pursuit of medicine and science exploded, and capital punishment became rarer, the demand for bodies outpaced the supply.  

In order to bridge the gap, doctors and universities began to pay grave robbers to find a supply of fresh bodies by any means necessary.

This was the era before embalming, and bodies turned bad quickly, especially in warm weather.

A man might die on a Friday evening, be buried Saturday afternoon, and the body dug up and disappeared by Sunday morning.

The problem was severe enough that in New York City in 1788, there was a small riot by the poor against doctors who were employing grave robbers (called "resurrectionists") to provide corpses.

This was the background against which 20-year old Mary Shelly wrote her novel, Frankenstein, a cautionary tale about scientists playing God and acting in isolation on the ragged edge of permitted thought and action.

Dr. Victor Frankenstein sought to banish death to a distant shore by discovering the spark of life that, when extinguished, resulted in grief for living friends and relatives. 

Surely, that spark could be reignited?

After all, electricity made dead limbs jerk and still hearts pump again. This was a mechanical problem -- a simple question of wiring and chemistry -- was it not?

And so Victor Frankenstein set out to make a new Adam and, by doing, rid the world of sorrow.  

He set out to do good, not evil.

But that's not how it worked out, was it?

Instead, Victor Frankenstein created a monster. 

Instead of banishing death, he created a thing that brought fear, death, and destruction with it.

Here was a tale of unintended consequences; of good intentions gone to very bad results.

Frankenstein was first printed in 1823.

At the time, grave robbing was so common that massive stones and even ironwork cages were being put over graves to thwart the activity. 

Relatives and hired men watched over graves for a week or more after burial to thwart those looking for fresh corpses.

And yet, the demand for fresh corpses for anatomy students continued unabated.

Capitalism being what it is, incentives were paid for grave robbers to move fast and find a "fresh one."

Apparently the incentives were enough to spark murder.

In 1828, some five years after the first publication of Frankenstein, William Burke and William Hare along with their wives, began murdering in order to provide fresh corpses for their patron, Dr. Robert Knox of Edinburgh, Scotland. 

Many of the murders were travelers lodging at Hare's house. 

All in all, Hare and Burke killed at least 16 people before they were finally caught and put on trial. 

Dr. Knox received no charges at all even though, at some point, he clearly knew that the men he was paying were in fact murdering the poor and sick for quick cash.

William Hare avoided the gallows by implicating Burke and Burke's wife, Helen McDougal.

Burke was found guilty of murder on Christmas Day 1828 and, in a twist of irony, the court ruled that: "Your body should be publicly dissected and anatomized. And I trust, that if it is ever customary to preserve skeletons, yours will be preserved, in order that posterity may keep in remembrance your atrocious crimes."

Burke's body was, in fact, dissected at the local medical school.  His skin was turned into a book cover.  His bones are still on display at the Edinburgh Medical School.

What’s all this have to do with dogs?

A bit.

You see, the eugenic ideas of Francis Galton, upon which the Kennel Clubs are built, were hammered up with good intentions.

Galton’s cousin, Charles Darwin, had postulated that the invisible hands of Mother Nature and Father Time had come together to forge the fires of Natural Selection.

But natural selection was so slow!

Surely, things could be speeded up by the hands of man, as stock man Robert Bakewell had already done with cattle and sheep?

And so “unnatural selection” at the hand of man was created.  The idea here was simple:  select a few dozen of the best of a form or type, and then breed best to best, ad infinitum, until perfection was achieved.  What could go wrong?  Nothing!

But while cattle, sheep, and chicken breeders had a steak-and-eggs axis against which to judge their efforts, dog breeders did not.

The result was increased selection for exaggeration, leading to serious deformity and dysfunction. 

In addition, small closed gene pools meant that invisible recessive genes (an idea not yet fully understood) were often doubled up on, resulting in a rise in disease.

Here was Franken-fido come to life; German Shepherds unable to stand unaided, Bulldogs that could not breed or whelp on their own, and Dogue du Bourdeaux that routinely expired at age five or six.

No one started the Kennel Club intending any of this to happen, anymore than Dr. Victor Frankenstein intended to unleash a monster on the world.

But there it was; unintended consequences. 

Now the question was “What are we going to do about it?”

And the answer, so far, has been to fumble the ball for a hundred years.

Blue Heron on Yesterday’s Bike Ride

Recapitulating Scotland’s Mistake

 The older I get, the more I see patterns, and so often those patterns are repeated mistakes.

It’s often racism, war-mongering, and capitalism run amok, but sometimes it’s slower, less dramatic, and every bit as brutal.

This video is about how an ancient mountain range was divided by the Atlantic Ocean, and then the Scottish side was denuded of its forests, losing its soil, exposing its rock which was used to create stone walls to pen sheep, which kept the forest from growing back until the sheep economy began to collapse.

This  video is also about how immigrants from Scotland and other parts of the UK and “Old England” came to New England to do the same thing.

Watch the whole thing.  Long, but worth it.

For those wondering how this relates to terrier work, see >>   https://terriermandotcom.blogspot.com/2016/12/the-glory-of-british-dogs.html?

52 Years Ago Today

Found a Third Box Turtle in the Yard

This one was floating in a tiny 50-gallon deer watering “pond” next to where I set out corn for deer.  This Box Turtle was fine (they can float), but he’s not a water turtle, and I fished him out and put in a escape ramp to avoid future water problems

Today’s Box Turtle is picture #1.  The other pictures are of the other two Box Turtles found earlier.  They can live 50 years, and lay only 4-5 eggs a year.

Now We Re-Elect the Crooks

Woodward and Bernstein watching Nixon’s resignation announcement, 52 years ago this evening. Where were you? I was in a camp ground, bicycling between Bangor, Maine and Boston, Massachusetts.

A Very Handsome Grandson

Eastern Cicada Killer Wasp

Eastern Cicada Killer Wasps are giant wasps that paralyze cicadas and then pick them up and fly them to burrows.  The cicadas are still alive when the wasp lays there eggs in them.

The Cicada Killer wasps are pretty harmless, but their presence attracts another wasp.  

This other wasp is a wingless reddish wasp, sometimes called a “Velvet Ant,” but more accurately called a “Cow Killer” wasp. The sting of Velvet Ants is extremely painful.

Drone, Drone on the Range

  Back in 2012, I wondered:

“How hard would it be to put a small gun on a drone and fly it into forest or field... or through a window for assassination purposes? Not hard, I can assure you. Sure it would probably be a one-shot deal (blow back and all), but you can bet that little problem will be fixed soon enough. 

“Imagine a world with everyone flying cheap drones with guns on them. The possibilities for extortion, murder, and mayhem are legion, and so too will be the desire and rationalizations of the police, and others, who are likely to use them to invade privacy and snoop in all kinds of ways now unimaginable.”

The 2012 post >> https://terriermandotcom.blogspot.com/2012/09/photo-source-wired-add-caption-back-in.html? .

Go Ahead and Look Up (But it won’t matter)

Splitting Two Coreopsis

My goal was to get six new plants out of two big Coreopsis.  I got 23 new plants out of them.  They got planted out yesterday, along with 25 more Rudbeckia.

The Struggle Was Real

Eastern Jack-o'lantern mushrooms (Omphalotus illudens) are growing on an oak tree stump in the yard.

The Yard Work List Grows

TOMORROW’s AGENDA is to plant 25 more Black-eyed Susans, and split and plant two large Coreopsis four-ways, as well as three Catmints two-ways.  I also have about 6 daylilies to set out. 

The mulch work might start Friday or Saturday.  No rush.  

Lots of other stuff to do: mowing, chainsaw work, string trimming, fern planting, etc.

There Will Come Soft Rains

Apocalypse stories are about the end of man, which is often described as a beneficence to nature.

Ray Bradbury’s story, “There Will Come Soft Rains,” is read here by Leonard Nimoy.  It begins in August 4, 2026, and yes there is a dog. 

Is the AKC Running Out of Gas?

Ted Phillips, the Chief Financial Officer of the American Kennel Club, delivered the June 9, 2026  First Quarter Financial Report, which shows a continued decline across nearly every category.  

▪️Annual AKC registrations seem to have slipped south of 500,000. In 1992, they were 1.53 million. 

▪️AKC registration decline continues despite the fact that, on a per capita basis, Americans own more dogs than ever before *and* the population of the US continues to grow.  

▪️When you factor in the 34 percent US population growth between 1992 and 2024 (257 million to 346 million), we find the relative decline in AKC registrations in the last 30 years is about 78 percent. To put it another way, if AKC registrations had simply kept pace with US population growth since 1992, they would be well over 2 million a year, not under 450,000.

▪️Total AKC operating revenue was $21.9 million, or 6 percent lower than the same quarter in 2025.

▪️Total operating expense was $22.7 million, or 7 percent lower than the same quarter in 2025.

▪️Registration and event fees totaled $14.7 million in the first quarter of 2026, which is 4 percent, or $595,000 lower than the previous first quarter period.

▪️Advertising, sponsorship, and royalties totaled $3.8 million were down about 16 percent,or $713,000. 

▪️Products and service sales totaled $3.5 million, down about 6 percent, or $203,000. 

▪️Dog registration totaled $5.3 million, which is a decline of 7 percent, or $378,000, and litter registration totaled $2.6 million, which is a decline of 12 percent,or $360,000. 

▪️Litter registrations and dog registrations equally declined by 11 percent in their respective categories, with litters landing at 49,697 and dog registrations at 111,864. 

▪️Conformation revenue increased by 19 percent to $1.5 million; Companion events increased by 8 percent to $1.9 million, and Performance events increased by 19 percent to $813,000. The only underperformer in this area was the Family Dog program, which was lowered by 11 percent at $846,000, as compared to $946,000 in the prior year's period. 

▪️Event entries are down 3 percent to 783,000. The number of events, however, has increased to a little over 6,000.

 ▪️Sponsorship revenue totaled $2.5 million and is down by about 11 percent from the prior year.

▪️Advertising revenue totaled $763,000, which is 

31 percent lower. 

▪️Royalties were down by 11 percent, as compared to the prior year.

Source >> https://www.akc.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Minutes-June-2026-Delegate-Meeting-FINAL.pdf

Larry Adler and Yitzhak Pearlman :: Summertime

Incentivized Doom Notices

The Medicare Board of Trustees has a long track record of being wrong.

In 1995, Medicare Trustees said Medicare would be broke by 2002.

In 2016, Medicare Trustees said Medicare would will be insolvent by 2028.

Earlier this year, the Medicare Board of Trustees said its projected Medicare would become insolvent in 2033.

Yes, being conservative in solvency projections is good, BUT let’s not forget that the media and the privatizers are incentivized to bang the drum of doom.

A Good News Story

The US has the same beaver recovery trajectory over the same period. The lesson: If we take our boot off Mother Nature’s neck, she’ll generally bounce up and dance a jig.

Who’s Your Daddy?

I have a suspicion…..