Archive through September 10, 2002
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TV ClubHouse: Archive: ARCHIVE TWO: How Long Will It Be Before Will Need Medical Intervention: Archive through September 10, 2002

Earthmother

Monday, September 09, 2002 - 04:12 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
Truly..there have been many movies made about it..Not on the top ten I guess.lol

They should all just ignore him..he's a child looking for attention. It's not like he has to stay there. That front door will open all he has to do is step out.

Woodpecke®

Monday, September 09, 2002 - 04:21 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
I missed his reason for a hunger strike. Did he actually have one?

Trulyscrumtious

Monday, September 09, 2002 - 04:33 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
Cause he behaves like a petulant little child in desperate need of attention...?

Trulyscrumtious

Monday, September 09, 2002 - 04:35 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
Earthmother...can you give me the name of a good one? I'd like to see it. I really enjoyed the John Malkovich movie 'Alive', which seems to be along the same lines.

Letmeinthere

Monday, September 09, 2002 - 04:36 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
ROFL Truly... you are truly right!

Hummingbird

Monday, September 09, 2002 - 04:49 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
I am sure there have been many movies containing references to the Donner Party. Maybe even one with the complete story. I even remember some comedy skit where a guy was tired of being harassed about it. His line was, "Eat one leg and you're branded a cannibal for life."

Kae

Monday, September 09, 2002 - 04:56 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
There was a movie called "The Donner Party (1992)" by Ric Burns.

Marci will be fine.

Sounds like more Marci whining. Nobody likes a bitter queen. :) When Marci speaks in his usual acidic tone, many gays everywhere whences ... uh at least this one does.

Bohawkins

Monday, September 09, 2002 - 05:14 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
The general rule is that humans cannot live for longer than four minutes without oxygen, four days without water and forty days without food.

W.C. Fields said: "Once, during Prohibition, I was forced to live for days on nothing but food and water."

Gidget

Monday, September 09, 2002 - 05:21 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
I have disliked everything about Marcellas since about day 3 until now. I don't think he would be so obstinate about the pb&j if they had had a real chance to win food.

Tresbien

Monday, September 09, 2002 - 05:27 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
The above-mentioned movie about the Donner Party is available for purchase from PBS at www.pbs.org.

Twiggyish

Monday, September 09, 2002 - 05:34 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
This is a very informational thread..LOL I remember reading a book about the Donner Party years ago. (not light reading)
The girls better watch out if Marc starts getting that hungry look in his eyes.. Any chianti and fava beans?

Sia

Monday, September 09, 2002 - 09:35 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
You'll love this: I was subbing for a Government teacher (about the early '90s, I guess) who asked that I show a video about the Donner Party to her high school seniors at the local vocational school. I started the tape and after telling the class that the events took place during the winter of 1846-47 and that of about 83 people who began the journey from Missouri (I think that's where the official departure point was), only about half made it, a student piped up, "Um, Miss So-and-so, if most-a them died, like, who took the video?"

Another student immediately joined in, "Are we gonna see them actually EAT people?" I stopped the tape and explained that while photography as an art/science EXISTED in 1846 & that there are photographs of some of the party before they left "civilization" that it was STILL PHOTOGRAPHY and very expensive. The CAMCORDER hadn't been invented! The kids just didn't seem to get that the VHS was a RE-ENACTMENT with ACTORS playing PARTS! It took several minutes to straighten things out before we could proceed!

Sia

Monday, September 09, 2002 - 09:44 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
Side note: the group missed making it through the Sierra Madre mts LITERALLY by a DAY; had they not gotten lost taking a supposed "shortcut" they'd read of in a book--but which had not actually been TRIED by the man who wrote the book, had they not lost precious days in the Salt flats of Utah dragging an obscenely large double-decker wagon (owned by the Reeds), had there not been an argument and a murder over the mistreatment of a team of animals, had they not foolishly had to physically haul their wagon-beds up a mountain with ropes, had they not had lost their way, had they not stopped to BURY their dead along the way, etc. (ad infinitum), they would have made it before the snow fell. Just one day might have meant all the difference.

On the last day of their trek past Truckee Lake, they were caught in waist-deep snow and simply couldn't make it. The few remaining livestock they had wandered off in the snow and froze to death--they never found the animal carcasses in time to eat the meat. A few of the men could have made it across the pass at that time, but they would not leave the women and children. The rescue, when it finally took place four months after they were stranded (exact timing uncertain; my memory's not so good), it was because a team of maybe 6 or 8 men and women snowshoed out with hand-made snowshoes and finally reached a cabin at Bear Lake/Johnson's Ranch. Two men, fathers and husbands of some of those left behind had departed even earlier, but had been unable to raise enough money to effect a rescue--but, more importantly, couldn't get enough volunteers, as the military had conscripted all available men of age. It was a harrowing experience.

Bbfntic

Monday, September 09, 2002 - 09:57 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
marc just announced "internet, marcelles is eating!"

Sia

Monday, September 09, 2002 - 09:58 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
Cannibalism took place at several points during the Donner Party's ordeal, contrary to what some people might believe. There were two encampments, one on Alder Creek, where people were living in tents made of animal hides stretched across tree branches (the dirt-floors were always wet; they made cots of branches to keep themselves off the floor), and the second encampment a group of rude huts built of logs. (There was already one structure standing on the site closer to the Pass, a rough cabin which had been built a year or two previously by a group of two or three young men who were similarly forced to winter-over), and it is believed that the two groups were forced to resort to cannibalism for survival at different points, but at roughly the same time. It was not a joint consensus; it happened. The party of about 8 snowshoers also resorted to cannibalism as they were making their way to Bear Lake; they did try to maintain a semblance of "civility" and refused to eat their own kin. There were married couples, a father with two grown daughters, etc. It was horrendous. They were caught in a blizzard and nearly all died.

The next group that had to rely upon cannibalism were found by one of the three or four groups of men who FINALLY came to rescue them (in April '47, I'm thinking) around a campfire with deceased party-members' parts brewing. This group of people were walking away from Truckee Lake down the mountain and missed by YARDS some packs of food left by earlier rescue parties. The rescuers were horrified that the organs seemed to be what was being cooked rather than meat from larger parts of the body. Rationale of those rescued: warmth deep in the body made removal easier.

The last man to leave the encampment--and sole survivor of the small group left behind--was accused of actually MURDERING a couple of very young children and of killing Tamsen Donner in order to eat her flesh, as well. It's not absolutely documented so that you can sit firmly on one side or the other of this argument. It was said that he later bragged that she was tasty--he was asked why he would resort to cannibalism rather than eat a rediscovered oxen leg that was found as the snow began to melt; it was found near one of the tents at Alder Creek. His explanation was that Tamsen came up to the upper cabins from Alder Creek and that she'd fallen into an icy stream. He tried to warm her up, they fell asleep, and when he awoke she was already DEAD, so why not take advantage of what providence had given him?

No, the BB hamsters will NOT resort to cannibalism. FWIW, that's my story.

Sia

Monday, September 09, 2002 - 10:22 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
heard in the background: "Roddy, go away! You were evicted fair-and-square, now get outta here before ya kill the thread!"

Pie_Eyed

Monday, September 09, 2002 - 10:28 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
LOL Sia! Too bad you weren't in house with Roddy. He could have had some brain cell stimulation.

Sia

Monday, September 09, 2002 - 10:40 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
Pie_Eyed, last fall I just took a notion to read up on the Donner Party. Above is some of what I remember from my readings. Fascinating story. Since reading the account of their ordeal, I've learned that I have NOTHING TO COMPLAIN ABOUT. I don't know true hardship, have never known real deprivation. Nothing I can think of rivals their desperate situation.

Earthmother

Monday, September 09, 2002 - 11:10 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
Someone tell Marc to shut-up, we are discussing important things out here like people really STARVING..and wheter he eats or not is of no importance to us. lol

Pie_Eyed

Monday, September 09, 2002 - 11:21 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
Earth~ How is your "reduced calorie consuption" plan going? I don't believe in the "D" word.

Creampuff

Monday, September 09, 2002 - 11:34 pm EditMoveDeleteIP
Sia~

You related the story of the Donner Party beautifully. I am within close proximity to that area and it is in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. I do believe you meant to say that rather than the Sierra Madre, which is in Mexico.

Gruesome story, but then not all of history was pretty.

Trulyscrumtious

Tuesday, September 10, 2002 - 12:46 am EditMoveDeleteIP
Wowzers Sia - GREAT STORY!!! THANKS! clap

Trulyscrumtious

Tuesday, September 10, 2002 - 12:53 am EditMoveDeleteIP
PS...Anyone seen the movie Ravenous? It was a great movie about cannibalism. (that just don't sound right, lol, but it was a movie i thoroughly enjoyed). smile

Bernie

Tuesday, September 10, 2002 - 01:44 am EditMoveDeleteIP
Don't know where everyone is tonight-it's late and I just got here after a nap, but there was also a more modern episode of cannibalism, just a few years ago. A team of South American footballers, I think it was, were in a plane crash and ended up on top of a mountain, bare rock and snow, with no way out, and the survivors ate parts of some of their dead team-mates. When they were finally rescued, it was a cause celebre, but everyone rallied round them, and said they did what they did to survive. The dead were killed by the crash and exposure, they didn't kill them to eat them, but it was a big deal at the time. Their story was also made into a TV movie, which I saw.
We also had a bush pilot here in Canada on a medical mercy flight which crashed in the far north, who survived by eating part of the nurse who was on the flight. The young-about 13 0r 14 years old-Inuit boy who also survived the crash wouldn't eat the nurse, and died. The pilot was vilified in some quarters, but he also did not kill, just ate someone who was already dead, and that was taken into account.
All three of these occurrences involved people in situations of life or death, where they had human bodies which were preserved by cold. The urge to survive is a powerful thing, and there but for the grace of God, and all that. Marcellas doesn't know what privation means, and the internet couldn't care less what he eats-except if it meant he'd be out of the running for the prize, for health reasons. I wouldn't object in the slightest!

Trulyscrumtious

Tuesday, September 10, 2002 - 02:12 am EditMoveDeleteIP
Yeah, I mentioned that one as well. It was called 'Alive' with John Malkovich and Ethan Hawke, but it wasn't a TV movie, it was in theaters. Anyway, that was a GREAT movie (It's out on video and I highly recommend it). I watched a documentary with the remaining survivors a while back that was just as good.

I found this to be an interesting little tid-bit; The first person they ate was the pilot, lol. The man who suggested they eat the dead (to the shock and repulsion of the others) said screw it, he got us into this, I'm eating him!

Edited: I have to mention this...At the very end of the movie, during the credits, there is an aerial shot of the top of the mountain (The Chilean Andes I believe) where a cross has been mounted in honor of those who died there. It's an extremely moving scene, made even more so by the phenomenal version of 'Ave Maria' by Aaron Neville that is playing. Like I said, GREAT flic.