Three, Two, One, None; An Apple Watch Update -- March 2, 2017

Two Down, One To Go

 The DAPL camps:

• the first to go: the main protest camp, Oceti Sakowin, cleared out last week by the US Army Corps of Engineers 
• the second to go: the original protest camp, Sacred Stone Camp, on land owned by "Ladonna Allard's family (a third) and the federal government (2/3rds); cleared out yesterday upon eviction notice by the BIA
• yet to go: the Seventh Generation/Blackhoop camp; has also received a trespass notice

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The Apple Page

From Macrumors: Apple Watch's record-breaking quarter was opposite one of Fitbit's "largest decline ever."

And folks doubted the Apple Watch.

• Fitbit: quarterly, year-over-year; went from 8.4 million to 6.5 million; market share from 30% to 20%
• Apple: quarterly, year-over-year, went from 4.1 million to 4.6 million; market share from 14.1% to 13.6%

So, although Apple is not moving much, Fitbit took a huge hit. Other three rounding out top 5: Xiaomi (I would like to buy a vowel); Garmin; and, Samsung.

My wife loves her Apple Watch, as does our older daughter. My wife bought a new watch band this past week.

As for me, a 7-year-old Samsung clamshell / flip phone. It may be older; I've had it forever.

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The Literature Page

Updates

March 3, 2017: and there's even more -- from Inforum. 

Not less than fifteen minutes after posting the story below, a reader sent me this article from The Bismarck Tribune:

The first white child born in what is now North Dakota came into the world on Deceember 29, 1807, in Pembina. This child, James Scarth, was born here despite the policy that no white women were allowed into the area.

How could this be? The mother was known by everyone at the post as John Fubbister, an "Orkney lad." The real identity of John Fubbister was Isabel Gunn. The alleged father of James was John Scarth, who was serving at a post at Grandes Fourches (Grand Forks) at the time of the birth.

Sources vary regarding the birth of Isabel Gunn. Some state she was born August 10, 1780, to John Gunn and Isobel Leask in Tarkerness on the Orkney Island north of Scotland. Another source lists her birth date as August 1, 1781, and her parents as John Fubbister and Girzal Allan.

Her family was poor and her future looked bleak unless she could marry into wealth. After contracting smallpox, which disfigured her face, she believed that hope was lost. Isabel's older brother worked for the Hudson Bay Co. and, on his return visits home, he told stories of excitement and adventure to his family.

The fact that he also was earning good money added to the lure of being an employee of Hudson Bay. She was larger than most women, and the fact that she had worked hard while growing up convinced her that she could handle that kind of employment.

In the summer of 1806, she disguised herself as a boy, took on the alias of John Fubbister, and signed a three-year contract with Hudson Bay. On June 29, she sailed from the port city of Stromness. On the ship with Isabel was veteran Hudson Bay employee John Scarth, who also was from Orkney.

After reaching the States, Gunn and Scarth took a boat 80 miles up the Albany River to Fort Albany, a Hudson Bay trading post, where Gunn began working for company.

The only person to discover Gunn's true sex was Scarth, who shared a cabin with her. With this knowledge, Scarth would have been able to hold it over her because she would have been quickly released by Hudson Bay had the truth been known.

Finish at the link.  

Original Post

Dr James Barry: A Woman Ahead of Her Time

Michael du Preez and Jeremy Dronfield

c. 2016

Unfortunately the full review at London Review of Books is available only to subscribers. But maybe folks can find other reviews elsewhere on the net.

The essay begins:

In the category of premeditated deceit, imposture is for the real gamblers because it demands the broadest array of accomplices or dupes. If you’re pretending to be someone else, you can’t just fool your spouse or your child or your creditors. You have either to fool all of the people all of the time, or persuade them to collude with you.

Bram Stoker, who made a literary career out of the intersection of the far-fetched and the eerily credible, thought that impostors exposed the true magnitude of the public’s gullibility. Stoker’s Famous Impostors (1910) included chapters on royal pretenders, pages of wild speculation that Queen Elizabeth I was in fact a boy from the town of Bisley, and a chapter on women who masqueraded as men, including a subset whom Stoker deemed the most implausible impostors of all: women who masqueraded as military men.

The tyrannical army surgeon Dr James Barry – prone to picking quarrels and partial to red-heeled, thigh-high boots paired with an outsized dress sword – doesn’t figure in Stoker’s parade.

It’s a strange omission – Barry’s story was well known to Edwardians – but Stoker had plenty of other cross-dressing buccaneers to consider, including Hannah Snell, who enlisted in a regiment of marines as James Gray and survived the sieges of Pondicherry and Devicotta undetected before outing herself to the public in 1750.

Still, Barry’s was as spectacular a tale of imposture as any novelist of sensation could have dreamed up. It was a case that fascinated the eminent physician Sir William Osler, who compiled his own dossier on Barry, as well as the sexologist Havelock Ellis, who included Barry in his roster of distinguished instances of transvestism.

Barry served the British army as a surgeon for 45 years, rising to the position of inspector general of hospitals, the medical man’s equivalent to brigadier general. Only after his death in 1865 was the secret Barry had concealed under his dandified outfits finally revealed. Not only was Dr James Barry a woman but he had given birth to a child.

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Shadow in a Mirror, Chris Isaak