Half-Mind Weblog

Here’s the CW (conventional wisdom) on early hash history: Gispert & friends started the Hash House Harriers in Kuala Lumpur in 1938.  The club grew and by the start of WWII in 1941 had run over 100 hashes. In 1946, after the war, returning members put the Kuala Lumpur H3 back together and started hashing [...]

Just got word that Wolfgang Gust, aka The Wolf, passed away on trail today.  Wolf was one of the legendary figures of hashing and I’m proud to have known and have hashed with him.  To die while literally on trail . . . now there was a hasher’s hasher! In memory of Wolf, I’m reposting [...]

In yesterday’s post, I commented on an email someone sent me about Phil Kirkland’s famous quote: “If you’ve half a mind to try hashing, that’s all you’ll need.” Re-reading the message, something else catches my eye. The message, addressed to regional and national hash directory webmasters, contains a proposal to adopt a standardized set of [...]

Like many hashers, I’m interested in our origins and history.  I read everything I can get my hands on.  When I go to interhashes, I seek out experienced hashers and ask them for their take on things.  I’ve swilled beer and talked trash with old-timers around the world, including Ian Cumming, Bill Panton, and Magic [...]

The idea: As I argued in an earlier post, the Hash House Harriers grew out of the Harriers.  The main difference between us and those who came before is the “Hash House” in our name. When you read about the various hash-style clubs and associations that date back to at least 100 years before the [...]

Sometimes nothing happens on the hash list; sometimes it erupts.  Such an eruption occurred today, in the wake of yesterday’s hash history post from Hazukashii (see my previous entry).  Outraged hash historians weighed in on inaccuracies that have found their way into the Wikipedia Hash House Harriers entry, driving  Hazukashii, normally a mild-mannered person, to [...]

Friend and fellow hash publisher Hazukashii recently dusted off the charter of the Kuala Lumpur Hash House Harriers, aka the Mother Hash, and posted it to the hash list under the heading “Earliest Recorded Rules of the Hash House Harriers.” And indeed, these are rules. We like to say there are no rules in hashing, [...]

Here’s a preliminary one-word assessment of the Las Vegas H3′s Red Dress Run weekend, October 30-November 1, 2009: brilliant. LVH3 RDR Friday night pub crawl: Nose Candy, Pick'n'Flick, Green Flagger, Flying Booger Pick’n’Flick and I helped revitalize an almost-dormant Las Vegas H3 when we were posted to Nellis Air Force Base in 1995.  During our [...]