Good morning, Good Noon, Good afternoon, Good Day and welcome to the Good News Round Up here at DailyKos, your daily dose of balance, sanity, hope, tidings of comfort and joy, cat pictures, dog pictures (and, any day now, pet iguana pictures) for the living of these days. Being the keeper of the flame at the History Corner of Good News (specializing in both Good and Goofy moments) that have happened this day, let us start with music, ground-breaking, even revolutionary music…..and one of the THE musicians of musicians:
1770 Bonn, Germany Birth of Ludwig Beethoven, pianist and composer. Talented from an early age at the keyboard, his father tried to pass him off as the next prodigy after Mozart, teaching him music so harshly at times that Ludwig was left in tears. Dad Beethoven hired 2 or 3 music tutors at various stages, one of whom only worked at night and at times dragged Ludwig out of bed for a lesson. Still, his talent led to his public debut at age 8 and to popular acclaim by age 13 (when he wrote a set of 3 piano trios.) Moved to Vienna and moved in circles with Haydn, Mozart, Salieri, etc. In his 20s his piano work was so vigorous that Viennese piano builders started casting the internal frame for piano strings out of iron, rather than building it from wood (harpsichord-style) and inventing new ways to make piano wire for him to play…..and amaze audiences. One opera, several piano concertos and sonatas among other works, and nine symphonies that have become the measuring rod for greatness.
Semi-Biographical Beethoven Moment with a Personal Angle: In 1946, in Augsburg, Germany, refugees from Estonia and Lithuania are living in Displaced Persons Camps under the eye of the American Army, living off of rations, trying to pick up their lives. They had survived the War but with Stalin occupying the Baltics, there was no home to go home to. Among the refugees were musicians, some professional, some good students. They found each other and somehow in the rubble found instruments, music stands, and scores. They formed a Refugee Orchestra, rehearsed under a conductor, and got permission from the Military Governor to put on a concert (who also had to approve the program ahead of time in these days of de-Nazification.)
My Dad the Displaced Person traded a pack of Lucky Strike cigarettes (one day’s workman’s wages) for a ticket. Beethoven’s 5th was the final piece. Since 1940, all the refugees had listened many a night on a hidden, shortwave radio for the BBC news, opening each broadcast with the 3 eighth note As and a half note F. Three short, one long: Morse Code for the letter “V”---for Victory over fascism. The theme haunts the first 3 movements and stirred hearts in the hall: this 3rd movement has a mouse-like character to it in the brittle woodwinds, reminding everyone how they scurried for cover in air raid shelters, day and night, as the Allied bombers came in…..with the low strings here brooding like aircraft engines while tolling doom for Hitler.
And then comes the 4th movement----from C minor emphatically to C major, with brass, and drums and fierce rejoicing. At the end, the Augsburg audience, weeping and cheering, rushed the stage to the musicians. Instead of just the 1st chair, 1st violinist receiving a polite handshake from the conductor, every last musician down to the 3rd Triangle player had their hand wrung over and over by everyone within reach. The conductor was hoisted onto six shoulders and carried around the hall on his back while he waved. Men patted his clothes and women tried to kiss a hand.
They had survived…...and lived…..and while the future was cloudy, for at least one moment, there was cause for rejoicing.
1773 Boston, Massachusetts Ah, Britain and her American colonies. After all that British blood and treasure spent during the French & Indian world war, someone has to pay for it. In 1765 Parliament imposes taxes on the colonies. The colonists refuse to pay. The internal taxes are dropped. The colonists boycott goods carrying external taxes. Parliament drops all the levies, except one on tea, both to preserve by example their right to tax, and to pay off a favor for the East India Tea company. On this night, colonists, many dressed as Native Americans, heave almost 350 chests of tea into the harbor. Britain takes a dim view, and the march to a Revolution is definitely underway.
News and Notes about January 6th (A)
September 1787, Philadelphia 14 years and a major war AFTER the Boston Tea Party, the Constitutional Convention has finished its work (in secret) and the result of their labors is being published. A Philadelphia woman recognized Dr. Benjamin Franklin, stopped him and asked, “So, what have you given us?” Franklin eyed her evenly and replied, “A Republic, madam, if you can keep it.”
Well, that Republic has been kept, with some troubles along the way (Whiskey Rebellion; War of 1812) and with one major accident (see Confederacy), but that Lady of Liberty still stands. HOWEVER, the current test and Franklin-esque challenge is at hand in our time: can we Keep It?
- A retired Army colonel (Waldron) who apparently CIRCULATED the infamous 38-slide Powerpoint inside and outside the White House at several meetings and may (or perhaps it was Mark Meadows) SHOWED IT ON CAPITOL HILL to various GQP Representatives and Senators on January 4 & 5…..HERE.
- A report that Senator Chuck Grassley sent off a telling tweet. As the longest serving current Senator, he is the Pro Tempore (usually “pro-Tem”) of the Senate and presides in the absence of the Vice-President. According to THIS REPORT Grassley tweeted on January 5 (to someone! Who?) that he, Grassley, would be presiding over the Electoral College Vote the next day on January 6 because “Pence will not be there.” Oh really? You know this HOW?
History Break
Alright, alright, this is getting heavy for a Good News Round Up. Necessary News, yes, but hardly Good or Goofy news (although just by opening his mouth, Grassley can be endlessly Goofy trying to speak in complete sentences.)
So, for a mental break, we note that December 16 also marks another birthday:
1775 Hampshire, England Birth of Jane Austen, beloved novelist. The 6th of 7 children, she had a checkered schooling and in her teen years mostly improved herself by reading widely. Her works brought her recognition and modest sums in royalties, but these rose steadily through her life. Now hailed as one of the first true novelists and still inspiring plays and movies based on her works. “Sense and Sensibility", “Pride and Prejudice", “Mansfield Park", “Lady Susan", and “Emma", as well as the later “Persuasion" and “Northanger Abbey" published posthumously.
If you are like me, those J6 Insurrectionists deserve everything they are already getting (over 600 arrests). Even more important, those who enlisted them, riled them, PAID them, PAID THEIR WAY to DC, and wanted to, in all seriousness to us them against the Republic, their LEADERS are now coming to light.
Now the LAST TIME there was this sort of challenge to Keep the Republic, let it be noted the Republic had no qualms about fighting back……big time. Like on this Day, December 16, back in Tennessee:
1864 Nashville In late summer the irascible Confederate general John Hood could not stop Union General Sherman from taking Atlanta. After Sherman did, Hood took his troops into northwest Georgia with the idea of cutting Sherman’s supply line. Instead of protecting this line, Sherman abandoned his supply line and took 60,000 men to march to the Atlantic while living off the countryside and “making Georgia howl.” (They still do.) Hood cast around for something to make Sherman turn back and decided capturing Nashville and threatening invasion up to Cincinnati might do it. This did mean capturing Nashville first, the Union’s supply center for the West.
2 years of Union fortifying would make this very hard nut to crack and Union General George Thomas would make it impossible.
Despite an ice storm on the 12th so severe people couldn’t cross the street without falling, Thomas readied his troops. Hood came up and entrenched and Thomas went out to meet him for 2 days. On this, the second day, Thomas’ troops, nearly half composed of USCT regiments (black men), completely turn and crush Hood’s flank, pierce his center and crumble his right. The victory was so one-sided not only was Hood sacked from command but the remnant of his “Army of Tennessee” was never again a fighting force…..Keeping the Republic indeed.
News and Notes about January 6th (B)
- That quickly-becoming-infamous 38 slide PowerPoint (entitled “Coups for Dummies”?) has come to light from the material Mark Meadows handed over to the Select Committee on one of his “co-operation” days. It seems it was attached to an e-mail Meadows sent to SOMEONE on January 5 (and it seems the Select Committee knows WHO) but in some quarters lurks the excuse that Meadows “was just passing it along” and didn’t have anything other than that to do with it. But THIS LINK not only glues Meadows to it, but also attaches Velcro to the PowerPoint and rolls it under the bed in the White House to see what other lint-y loonies get snagged.
- Earlier in December, the J6 Committee noted they had subpoenaed PHONE RECORDS from the telecom companies. Now (Dec. 15) comes WORD that AT&T WILL COMPLY with the subpoena. Not the content of the calls, mind you (that would require a wiretap order from a court), but dates and times of numbers calling and numbers called and length of conversations. WHO, you ask? Lauren Boebert, Andy Biggs, Mo Brooks, Madison Cawthorn, Matt Gaetz, Louie Gohmert, Paul Gosar, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Jody Hice, Jim Jordan, Scott Perry. They are miffed=scared…...YES!
- Finally, just the other day, DailyKos front pager Mark Summer put up THIS excellent rundown on what we know so far, complete with TIMELINE of major events. Worth reading and bookmarking; also serves as a template for more detailed timelines we will be seeing from the Select Committee that will reach from your computer screen all the way to the most infamous resident of Merde-A-Lard-O.
The Good News needs more Music.
Not just Beethoven (although he will CERTAINLY do!) but also:
1893 New York City Here in what Europe calls the “New World”, at the show place of Carnegie Hall, Anton Dvorak attends (although does not conduct) the world premiere of his "New World Symphony”, to excellent reviews.
And the Good News needs more things to read and more people to remind us about what it means to be people….and human…..and primal goodness…..and the many ways we both hurt each other and can atone for those hurts.
1901 London, UK Beatrix Potter’s "The Tale of Peter Rabbit," is printed for the first time. DOUBLE HEADER DATE Doylestown, PA Birth of Margaret Mead, cultural anthropologist, author. Her father was a Wharton professor and her mother a sociologist, so Margaret seemed destined for an intellectual life. She graduated from Barnard College and received a PhD in anthropology from Columbia. She spent years in American Samoa developing her views on culture and parenting (and coming down strongly on the “nurture” side of the “nature-nurture” spectrum,) Her observations on sexuality formed the academic cornerstone of feminism in the 1960s. A major figure in helping us figure out what it means to be human with each other.
One more reminder of the struggle and challenge to the Republic (and other Republics) that have been met and mastered on a past December 16th:
1944 Along the German frontier of France, Belgium and Holland. Six months after the surprise Allied landings at Normandy, Paris has been liberated as well as France, along with much of the Low Countries. On this day the Germans mount their own surprise, a winter offensive along the frontier that puts a large and growing bulge in the Allied lines and give the battle it’s name. For a few days there was a danger this latest blitzkrieg might drive through to the North Sea coast and split the Allied forces. Eisenhower and Bradley got the situation in hand and shifted forces from offense to defense. The US 101st Airborne didn’t do a patented parachute jump, but they went to Bastogne, Belgium and followed the rest of their training: dig in, fight hard when surrounded at a key point, throw off the enemy logistics and timetables, and wait to be relieved. Montgomery squeezed from the north and Patton charged from the south. When the weather cleared, the British and American Air Forces swatted away the Luftwaffe and then battered the offensive with impunity. An Allied counter-offensive in January restored the lines ending Hitler’s last shot on the Western front.
Great Green Good News
So, if we can treat each other as companions, nurture our children to do the same, and harness the gifts we have each been given for the good of all, we might not only survive as a species but even thrive. Renewables are coming. Grids and places are adapting to a solar-wind-tidal-geothermal future before our eyes. Now, to get FROM one place TO another means moving the transportation sector off of fossil fuels (their last bastion.) Electric vehicles are ramping up and the Build Back Better Bill (a GREAT Christmas present for the country and even the world) includes funding for a network of 500,000 (!) charging stations. (As of 2018 according to THIS Article there are about 225 US cars for each gasoline PUMP. EVs will get charged A LOT at home, but even 3 years ago, there were about 16 EVs for each CHARGING STATION. So a half-million new ones being rolled out will seem to have the capacity.)
And how about “charging while driving”?
According to physicists (and maybe your high school physics class) an electric current passing through a wire generates a magnetic field around it, an invisible jacket of sorts. BUT ALSO, if you turn the experiment around and you move a wire across lines of magnetic force (like in the space between the poles of a horseshoe magnet) the magnetic lines generate an electric current in the wire.
So the idea is if you sort of mount a coil of wires under your electric vehicle, and set up a magnetic field IN THE ROAD PAVEMENT, this will generate a current that can be stored in your vehicle battery. Works in the lab, but now there are stories HERE, THERE and EVEN AROUND THE CORNER that show real life demonstration projects with real EVs.
More Green Transportation Technology
Meanwhile, up in the air, if you spin a propeller or jet turbine fast enough, it can pull an airplane through the air fast enough over curved wings so that it can fly. (Hat tip: Wright Brothers.) You spin the prop or turbine with an engine. And why can’t that engine actually be an electric motor? Why not indeed! THIS story reports on a test flight using an electric powerplant at speeds faster than a World War II British Spitfire fighter (so approaching 400 mph!)
Can we get there? Yep! Can we do it? Yes. We. Can. After all, look at where we were almost a quarter century ago on December 16th:
1997 Among the moons of Jupiter. (What a location byline!) The Galileo spacecraft flies within 124 miles of the surface of moon Europa. Video and still frames show volcanic ice flows, strongly suggesting a sub-surface ocean. Jupiter put on a giant lightning show during the fly-by, and certain measurements from them indicated the presence of a magnetic field around moon Ganymede. Certain instruments measured Ganymede, Europa and moon Io with metallic cores, but not Callisto. On the other hand, measurements of moon Callisto showed a hydrogen and carbon dioxide atmosphere. A very successful mission and the first close-up look at the king of the planets.
A Little Light Stuff found in the Tubes of the Internet
- The octagon is the failed attempt of someone to draw a square; they were lazy and cut corners.
- From a poster at Democratic Underground:
There once was a man from Fox News
Who thought he had nothing to lose
He texted Mark Meadows
Now he’s out of the shadows
And everyone knows what he knew.
- (And, if we’re going to tell limericks, here’s one from a most unlikely source---President Woodrow Wilson!)
I sat next to the Duchess at tea What I heard I could hardly believe Her rumblings abdominal Were truly phenomenal And everyone thought it was me!
Alright, Gnusies! The floor is yours…...climb the walls…..surf from the couches…...shout from the rooftops…..putter from the garden……..post your 4-footer pix……..add to the Good News in this place.
Prosit!
L’Chaim!
Prost!
Salud!
Cheers!
Salutations via the Earth custom of lifting a cup of alcoholic beverage toward an honoree and adding a pithy reason, quote or epigram to note the significance of the moment. (The custom is one the people of my planet find attractive, and the procedure is establishing itself on two of our continents and has been noted in various communication media.)
May all your News be Good, comforting, and inspiring.
Shalom.