OK…on to more Carson City NV Fun Stuff©

It turns out that political shenanigans aren’t limited to today’s time…they’ve been around for hundreds of years. For instance…back in the ‘30s Franklin Roosevelt tried to pack the Supreme Court with more justices that he would appoint…this was solely because the existing 9 justices kept declaring his New Deal solutions to the Great Depression unconstitutional…this effort failed. Now today…most of the Democratic candidates for President are also talking about increasing the number justices or having them serve rotating terms…again the reason for this is that the progressives keep having their demands thwarted by a Supreme Court membership that believes more in “the Constitution says what it says” rather than “the Constitution says what I want it to say”. Turns out that both of these efforts…and similar political shenanigans…have been going on for quite awhile…bit I’m gettin’ a bit ahead o’myself. Don’ worry yourself though…there’s a point to this paragraph once I get to it.

When last we left our intrepid explorers…they had completed their longest day trip of our stop here…back east out past Fallon to Middlegate for the shoe tree…the worst tourist attraction we’ve ever been to…and the best cheeseburger in Nevada…at least according to Middlegate Station Restaurant and we can’t disagree with them although we’ve only had 2 cheese burgers here so far…and returned safely to the rig…that was Saturday.

Sunday we went to Mass…then Monday we set off for a Fun Stuff© day here in Carson City. First up was the Nevada State Capitol building…continuing our tradition of visiting the various state capitol buildings we are near. Amazingly enough…this one hasn’t burned down and been reconstructed like most of them have…although it did have a renovation back in the ‘70s…it was essentially gutted except for the outer walls and interior stone walls then a steel and concrete modern construction methods interior was added on. We spent 45 minutes or so taking the self guided tour which included the Nevada State Museum.

Front view of the capitol building and the fiberglass dome that replaced the original one during the restoration…along with the planting of large numbers of shade trees around the building.

Legislature building…constructed as part of the renovation and the state house and senate moved from the main capitol building to this one next door.

Sara Winnemucca…sort of the patron saint…although she is not a saint, just an ordinary Indian woman…but then that pretty much describes a lot of actual saints…of Nevada. A Northern Paiute woman who became an educator…she was responsible for a lot of the educational system in the state for both her tribe and other native peoples.

And now we get to that political shenanigans thing…

Way back in mid 1864…during the Civil War when Abe Lincoln was President…he was running for reelection in a 3 way race against two former generals that he had fired during the war for incompetence…and as of summer 1864 Lincoln was trailing. By that time…the war itself was all but won…but Lincoln needed to win reelection so as to implement his ideas for Reconstruction in the post war period…he wanted to welcome the southern states back into the fold, free the slaves, and not overly punish them…as opposed to his opponents who planned on a more punitive attitude.

Anyway…Old Abe…or maybe it was the Republican Party…figured out that if they got one more state admitted to the union…and they were targeting Nevada as the Republican Congress had passed legislation authorizing Nevada’s entry into the union in March 1864…but in order for that to happen Nevada had to approve a state Constitution and get it to Washington DC before the election so that an expected victory by Lincoln in Nevada would give him the additional electoral votes he needed.

Nevada approved their new state constitution on September 14, 1864 and mailed a copy to Washington…with expected arrival by October 1. As of October 14…you guessed it…the mailed copy was lost in the mail someplace…with not enough time for the mail to get a replacement to Washington on time. So the administration asked Nevada to telegraph it to Washington DC…all 175 pages containing 16,543 words. This started on October 26…it took some time for the request to make its way to Nevada…but there was no direct telegraph link to Washington from Nevada at the time. So it was sent from Carson City to Salt Lake City, then on to Chicago, Philadelphia, and finally to Washington. Each transmission took at least 7 hours followed by collation of the document and then retransmission…and naturally telegraph operators may or may not be working 24 hour shifts…so the final certified copy of the Nevada Constitution was delivered to Lincoln on October 31…just 8 days before the election. Lincoln immediately issued an Executive Order declaring that Nevada was a state by an Act of Congress…and hence he would have the two additional electoral votes they thought he needed.

During this time however…one of his opponents dropped out and Lincoln ended up winning 55% of the popular vote and by 221-21 in the Electoral College…so much for the pre-election thoughts that Lincoln needed the Nevada electoral votes to win…apparently polling back then wasn’t any better than it is today.

Nonetheless…at least according to the exhibits in the Nevada State Museum…Abe Lincoln went one better than packing the Supreme Court…he packed the entire country. As I said…political shenanigans have been going on since Socrates in ancient Greek days.

Interesting facts about the 1864 Presidential election…Lincoln was the first President to win reelection since Andrew Jackson in 1832 and the first Northern President to ever win reelection…and since Lincoln was actually the nomination of the National Union Party which consisted of the Republican Party and what were called War Democrats…he was the last President that was not elected as either a Republican or a Democrat.

Here’s the exhibit that talks all about the admission of Nevada to the Union.

Next…we stopped at the Chamber of Commerce and turned in our Loneliest Road passports…they’ll fill our and mail our “I Survived the Loneliest Road” certificates and mail them to us.

Next stop…the Nevada State Railroad Museum…which while decent wasn’t as cool as the one we saw earlier back in Ely.

It had some pretty neat models…most of these are in the 2 feet long range and are incredibly detailed.

This plaque tells the story of George S. Sheffield…a cabinet maker who built himself a 3 wheeled vehicle that could travel illegally on the tracks…he later found a broken rail and prevented an accident so he was given a pass to continue traveling on the railroad company’s track. He called his invention a Velocipede and manufactured and sold copies of it.

Grindstone used for finishing forged parts before they were installed on locomotives or used to maintain track.

There are the requisite old locomotives and train cars naturally.

This is the wye…somewhat like a round house only instead of turning locomotives around it was used to move them from one track to another in a relatively small area. Seems like they would end up backwards on the final track though…but perhaps there was a roundhouse or other turn around area elsewhere…or maybe they just backed up instead.

We spotted this flowering plant outside the museum…we have no idea what it is like nothing we had never seen before.

After that…we headed home for lunch and rest…we are using a lot of our time here in Carson City to rest up from the pretty busy schedule we’ve had ever since arriving at the rally in early May.

Tuesday…we scheduled a visit 30 miles up the road to Reno…the primary reason was to get Li’l Red an oil change but in addition we wanted to stop by the cemetery there and get some info on Neil’s relatives who lived in Reno back in the ’70s and ’80s.

Headstone for Eleanor Brooke and Grace C. Frederick…Eleanor is Neil’s great uncle’s mother and Grace C. Frederick is his great-grandmother…at least that’s what Connie decided she was and she’s the genealogy expert ‘round here.

Merle A Brooks (Neil’s great aunt) and her husband Barton’s headstone. They owned a house in Reno and Neil’s Aunt Rosemerle lived with them along with his grand mother Myrtle for many years before she moved back to Mobile. Rosemerle died and was cremated by the same cemetery…with her ashes picked up by Noel Wesley…who Neil thinks is Rosemerle’s stepson…at least that’s what he thinks and Connie hasn’t figured out whether he was right or not. When the lady at the cemetery said her ashes were picked up by Noel…Neil said he recognized the name and that Noel lived with the family…to his best recollection he was Rosemerle’s husband’s (Charles Wesley) son by his first marriage.

We stopped by the house they all used to live in…pretty nice house if you ask me. Two huge wings with a covered breezeway connecting them…it’s almost like two houses.

Then it was home for lunch…we blew off the lunch out and stopping by the Shoe Tree Brewery as we didn’t want to have to kill another almost 3 hours in Reno before we headed for lunch.

Wednesday…our sole activity beyond buying groceries and resting was an afternoon trip to the Genoa Bar and Saloon in Genoa about 8 miles south of Carson City.

By the way…that’s pronounced not as in Jen-Uh-Wa (first syllable emphasis) like the city in Italy but Jen-O-Wa with the emphasis on the second syllable…we were corrected by the bartender. 

It’s quite a cool little bar…established in 1853…and we still think that after making their way across the Great Basin with it’s many lower mountains…then finding water and flat land here and seeing the Sierra’s immediately west that they just decided to stop.

Interior panos of the bar.

And of course no self respecting western bar is complete without a painting of a nekkid woman hanging over the bar…there were in fact 3 different ones…but the other two were in the glare coming from the doors so no good photos possible.

Outside shots.

We didn’t actually miss the Shoe Tree Brewery as it turned out that the saloon had their Ash Canyon Amber Ale on tap…and we also had a couple of tasty cocktails we had never heard of before. Then it was home for dinner…frozen fish fillets, leftover chicken/rice/cheese stuff from the night before and some corn.

Thursday morning was devoted to fixing our water filter setup…one of the pieces had cracked and the replacement parts were delivered on Tuesday so Neil fixed them. After that we went out and filled Big Red with diesel…it’s 55 cents a gallon cheaper here in NV than over the border in the Democratic Peoples Republic of California…we might have enough to get to Oregon but if not we’ll buy as little there…and give them as little of our money in taxes as possible.

Dinner Thursday was at the Fox Brew Pub…it’s up in town across from the capitol building. This turned out to be one of the better places we’ve tried this travel season. Really great beer…we had their own Naughty Boo Boo which was a most excellent brown ale…in fact it was the best brew we’ve had in quite awhile. We split a salami and pineapple pizza…again really good…while Connie had another brew but Neil saw they had Ginger Beer so he had a Kraken spiced dark rum with Ginger Beer…the latter is like ginger ale on steroids and is a far superior mixer to regular ginger ale.

Friday…another rest and get ready to travel day. Dinner was at Red’s Old Grill…lobstah ravioli…but Ima finishing this post Friday before dinner as all of our other chores are done…Neil even made Blueberry Crisp for dessert tonight. I’ll report on our dinner at Red’s in my next post since we’re traveling tomorrow…since we’re nowhere near water and the ensuring fresh lobstah availability Neil’s not holding out a whole lot of hope for the lobstah ravioli but he’s willing to both give it a try and to be either pleased or disappointed.

Math and Computer Nerds…get ready for this next part.

You too can try to break the world’s record for the largest number of digits of Pi…you know, that constant used to calculate the circumference of a circle amongst many other things…it’s a number that never runs out of digits. Anyway…it turns out that you can calculate the value of pi using something called the Chudnovsky Algorithm…you can read more details about it here…but the short answer is that this formula can be run through a computer to calculate the digits of Pi.

So plug that into your computer(s) and start calculating…the current record is 31.4 trillion digits which was calculated from 9/2018 to 1/2019…but it was google that calculated it using their massive cloud based computing array…so you’ll probably need several billions of dollars worth of computers to beat the record.

The diagram below reveals how the founding fathers were brilliant in inventing the Electoral College for the election of our President…their intent was to make sure that the small states had a voice in the election and that New York, Massachusetts, and Virginia (at the time) didn’t solely determine the Presidency…and proves once again that despite the intense efforts of some to either get around the Electoral College or abolish it entirely…anyway this is why we need it. The orange are and red area have the same population…which shows that if the Electoral College was abolished essentially coastal California/Washington/Oregon (and not even the whole state, just the coastal region) along with the East coast from the waterline to about 100 miles inland…would have more say in the election than center 2/3 of the country. Add in the rest of the populous East and Left coast states…and essentially California, New York, and Florida would determine the outcome. Instead…because of the Electoral College…presidential candidates are forced to run a national campaign including what the Democrats call the flyover states…in order to win the election. I say good-on-ya to the founding fathers…ya got it pretty darned right.

Interesting stuff found on the net.

Only engineers and scientists will probably get this one…basically Schrödinger said that merely observing a process would potentially change the outcome of the process…his example was that if you had a cat in a sealed box you didn’t know whether it was alive or dead and that by opening the box to observe you changed the outcome from “don’t know” to “alive or dead depending on what you observed”.

Tell Schrödinger I survived.

Until my next report from the Democratic People’s Republic of California or DPRC…

Cyas.