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17 Apr 05 - 10:17 AM (#1463501) Subject: Happy! - April 17 From: Abby Sale Happy Alferd G Packer Day! It was celebrated April 17th at University of Colorado, from 1968-1995 and may still be. Packer remains a basic icon there, noted in his museum, the Alferd Packer Grill http://umc.colorado.edu/food/grill_pages.html & the Mexican food counter, El Canibal. Packer remains the only US convicted anthropophagus. On 2/9/1874 Packer, as guide for a mining party, with 5 miners left camp in the (now-called) Cannibal Plateau in the San Juan Mts of Colorado. On 4/16, Packer reached town alone, but fit & healthy. In August their bodies were found. It was evident that they had been murdered and that flesh had been cut from them. Packer served 18 years of a life sentence. He admitted eating the men but always claimed he didn't actually kill them; they killed each other & the last one attacked Packer. Packer barely saved himself by shooting the actual murderer. He died 4/23/1907 at age 65 (b1842). There's a great deal one might write about him, mostly comical. In 1995, a medical forensics team, as an exercise, exhumed & examined. They concluded he was the murderer & was correctly convicted. They found, AND I QUOTE, "like Packer's victims, justice had been served." There are a number of traditional and recent songs about him including a great catchy tune in "Cannibal! The Musical," directed by & staring Trey Parker. The following most closely matches the oral tradition surrounding Packer: When the judge pronounced the sentence He was in a righteous rage; And what he said can still be read Upon the yellowed page; He wished that they could hang old Al Until completely dead, So when he banged the gavel, It was in anger that he said: "Oh, Alfred Packer, You should be skinned alive! There was only seven Democrats - [in the county] And you bastard, you et five." "Ballad of Alfred Packer," by Jack Guinn, 10,000 Goddam Cattle, Katie Lee & also in DigTrad, Filename ALPACKER. [Thanx Alan Thiesen] |
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17 Apr 05 - 10:23 AM (#1463508) Subject: RE: Happy! - April 17 From: Liz the Squeak Not really, it's 31 years ago today my brother was killed by a drunk driver. Having seen the amount of idiots on the road last night, I'm only sad that things haven't really changed. LTS |
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17 Apr 05 - 10:57 AM (#1463529) Subject: RE: Happy! - April 17 From: Jeri "!" - ?...!!! ;-) Makes one think a bit before telling someone 'bite me' doesn't it? I remember seeing a program recently that found the evidence that he killed the men before eating them inconclusive. There was nothing to indicate they weren't dead prior to consumption, just that mabye it was Al, maybe it wasn't. |
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17 Apr 05 - 12:39 PM (#1463602) Subject: RE: Happy! - April 17 From: Amos I was going to ignore this thread, but for Abby's name, and I am glad I paid heed. Thanks to that bit of intelligent decision I now know the word ANTHROPOPHAGUS!! What joy!! To think, I learned it on the Mudcat!! LOL Thanks, Abby!! A 1) anthropophagus. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000. ...Inflected forms: pl. an·thro·poph·a·gi (-j) A person who eats human flesh; a cannibal. Latin anthropophagus, from Greek anthropophagos, man-eating : anthropo-, anthropo-. |
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17 Apr 05 - 04:19 PM (#1463745) Subject: RE: Happy! - April 17 From: Liz the Squeak And I learned it from Flanders and Swann nearly 20 years ago! (Fro the song 'The Reluctant Cannibal' - "he's a regular anthropopagi".) LTS |
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17 Apr 05 - 04:52 PM (#1463778) Subject: RE: Happy! - April 17 From: black walnut Oh Liz! ~b.w. |
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18 Apr 05 - 09:40 AM (#1464288) Subject: RE: Happy! - April 17 From: Abby Sale No wonder if many are not familiar with the term. Oddly, there doesn't seem to be any Anglo or Saxon or even Romance word for it. (I haven't checked into Slavic yet.) "Cannibal" comes from a Carib indian term. Far as I can tell, all the Romance and Germanic languages use some variation of the Greek, anthropopagus. Makes me wonder what the Greeks were about that was different from the rest of Europe. |
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18 Apr 05 - 09:55 AM (#1464296) Subject: RE: Happy! - April 17 From: GUEST,Scaramouche Antropophagi were a fabled race of cannibals, lots of allusions to them |
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18 Apr 05 - 10:29 AM (#1464322) Subject: RE: Happy! - April 17 From: Abby Sale That might explain it, Scar, But the word simply & literaly means "man-eaters." |