Airport Update -- May 17, 2019

Airport itself still on schedule (?) to open later this autumn, 2019.

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Meanwhile, In California

Link here.

Go ahead, make my day.

"Road-to-California." LOL. Roads may not be needed. Oh, that's right -- EVs. 

Such small thinkers.

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The Book Page

Valiant Ambition: George Washington, Benedict Arnold, and the Fate of the American Revolution, Nathaniel Philbrick, c. 2016


Summer of 1776. Multiple regions of concern for the patriots in the northern campaign: a) Lake Champlain, Fort Ticonderoga, Skenesborough; b) the coast: Sandy Hook, the Delaware River, the Chesapeake Bay, Philadelphia; c) Albany, Mohawk River, Fort Stanwix, German Flatts.

Fort Stanwix: had been rechristened Fort Schuyler but still commonly referred to by its original name; commanded by a 28-year-old patriot of Dutch heritage, Colonel Peter Gansevoort. West of Albany, all that stood between Albany and the Brits coming from the west, from the eastern shores of Lake Ontario, was Fort Stanwix.

Fort Stanwix came under siege by the Brits and their Indian allies. Benedict Arnold agreed to a crazy plan concocted by one of his officers, Lt Col John Brooks, to persuade the Indians to give up the siege. His plan worked, the Indians gave up the siege, and the Brits had no choice but to abandon their attack on Fort Stanwix.

Back story, from p. 134:

During the march through the wilderness of Maine in the fall of 1775, [General Benedict] Arnold had been accompanied by a group of Abenakis that included Natanis, who along with his brother Sabais had been there during the storming of Quebec. According to a tradition not recorded until the 1870s, Natanis prophesied that Arnold, whom he called "The Dark Eagle," would ultimately fail in accomplishing his overly ambitious objectives. Although the account of the prophecy is probably apocryphal, Arnold had nonetheless extensive experience working with native peoples by the time he had led the rescue mission up the Mohawk River. While in German Flatts, he began to realize that the Iroquois might hold the key to saving the Americans at Fort Stanwix.

The six tribes of the Iroquoi were the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, and Tuscarora, whose territories stretched from the Hudson River and Champlain Valley into western Pennsylvania. The Iroquois had enjoyed centuries of peace within their nation and developed a highly sophisticated culture and political structure that some have argued contributed to the Americans' evolving ideas of how thirteen English colonies might become a single nation. But the Revolution had changed everything. Most of the tribes of the Iroquois had sided with Great Britain, but the Oneida, due in part to their proximity to the American settlements along the Mohawk River and the influence of the Presbyterian missionary Sameul Kirkland, had sided with the United States. With the unity of the Iroquois broken, Arnold recognized an opportunity.

Bad Company, Five Finger Death Punch