Good morning O ye seekers of hope, respite and even a bit of escape. The 3rd Wednesday of the month Good News Roundup is on the air, and yours truly, WineRev, serves as host and once-a-month pilot in the control room. In fact, the automatic camera just took an automatic picture of our control room! (Since I was sitting in the right place, right time, this counts as a selfie…..especially once the flashbulb cooled off enough to go into the trash…..)
The lights and gauges are really neat-o!
This little corner of the Internet is a place of checking in for a cup of cheer…...and after the last 2 weeks nearly all of us can use a WHOLE lot of that, and not just a cup either. So let me lead you over to the village Breakfast Brunch, where the coffee, tea and mocha-cocoa are free (as though you were in your own kitchen), made just the right way (as though you were in your kitchen.) The Mimosa Bar and bartender knows just the right balance of bubbles and your fruit request (as though you were at your home bar.)
Now, if you would raid your kitchen for all the things that make for a breakfast worth eating, c’mon in to the Exhale Lounge. Land your beverage on a table, set down your tray or plates, and then choose among a rocker, a recliner, a wingback or a sofa. Once you choose and settle….THEN you Exhale. Now…..a deep breath…..hold it…...and another LONG exhale. Wiggle and wriggle your back side to get it set just right, then let your pixel screen reach into the overhead ether for the Wi-Fi. That way there are stories to read, links to click and follow, comments to make, recs to check off, questions to ask or answers to give, digressions to wander after, and even the little smile or wry mouth corner for a lighter moment.
As you plow onward though this morning’s Round Up, you will see I am continuing my custom of the History Corner, running down the November 20ths of yesterday and yester-century. There were moments then, some Good, some Goofy, just to show as the human race, we’ve always been up to something worth noting.
And, at the bottom, comes the IMPORTANT Part of today….YOU! Yep, you! It is your comments, remarks, recs, clinks and links that make this little corner of the Internet worth coming to Every Single Day. So have at it, and welcome to Wednesday!
Good News in Society & Politics (and even a touch of religion)
Yes, it’s been one HELL OF a couple weeks, and starting January 20th, things could get visibly harder. Still, there are things to ponder that may brace us.
>>>>>» OK, this is one of those “keep your ear tuned” sort of days. TODAY, Wednesday, the US House Ethics committee is holding a meeting. I believe it is behind closed doors but the press gaggle outside those doors promises to be 30-deep in every direction.
Inside those closed, watched and (likely) sound-proof doors, the committee (the only one by design in the House that is always with an equal # of each party, 5 & 5) will decide on whether to release their report on Matt Gaetz.
Inside the room we don’t know how long the discussion might take.
……../They could vote to keep it confidential.
……../We don’t even know if this will be Release Publicly/Do Not Release voice vote,……. OR a little 2-rounder of “all those in favor/opposed hold up a hand”,……. OR if it might be a secret vote on paper, with the slips slid over to the chair. (Some reading the tea leaves hope for this last; if one or more of the GQPers on the panel are going to go against Gaetz/tRump they might do so under cover of anonymity but otherwise might chicken out.)
…….../They might try to split the difference and sort of punt in a way: vote to release copies ONLY to the Senate Judiciary Committee (who will be holding confirmation hearings….supposedly.)
………/The best we know on timing is “sometime today.”
>>>>>» When I was at Seminary there was LOTS of reading. One of the lights we had to read were works by Walter Bruggeman, a American professor of Old Testament. (Still with us at age 91….has his own website; clearly still enjoying being part of the World Conversation.) Starting from an OT, 3000-year-old perspective, well, there have been hard times before for the Faithful. So now Bruggeman HAS CHIPPED IN that linked article, published 2 weeks ago TODAY…..that morning after, the night before…. and I thought its not half bad for my still recovering mood…..
>>>>>» On the more straight political side, The Guardian (a truly broad-based and reader supported UK newspaper and news source; if you’d like to throw a few shekels their way to keep them in the fight, I know they would be grateful) here comes a story looking past the political hurly-burly of chaotic Cabinet announcements. We KNOW that the 1% types are readying all sorts of ….crapola…… using their Pumpkin Puppet in the White House. THIS FINE PIECE at the link gives a helpful list of 20 items to watch for, brace for, and as targets for sabotaging (by us!)
Of course, politics have been rambunctious for a LONG time, and both shaped and been shaped by Society
1620 Massachusetts Bay The Mayflower is bobbing in the bay and pilgrim/settlers are going ashore to get set up, but right now everyone sleeps on board each night. On this day William and Susanna White, have a son, Peregrine White. He was the first child born of English parents in present-day New England.
As entered in the records…...
1789 Trenton, New Jersey When the Constitution came around a couple years ago shopping for ratification, New Jersey was 3rd to ratify, less than a month after Delaware and a few days after Pennsylvania. Now came this package of 10 Amendments to the Constitution (“In order to form a more perfect Constitution….”) going by the nickname, “The Bill of Rights.” New Jersey isn’t waiting around this time; the state is the first to ratify the entire package.
RFK, 1968, hearing from a voter-someday about living in poverty……..
1925 Brookline, Massachusetts Birth of Robert F. Kennedy, politician. From a prominent family (father was eventually US Ambassador to Great Britain in the opening years of World War II; he was a defeatist and did NOT like Churchill) Robert joined the US Naval Reserve while studying at Harvard. In an ironic twist, he served as a seaman aboard a destroyer, the USS Joseph P Kennedy, named for his eldest brother who was killed early in the war. His brother, President John Kennedy, appointed him US Attorney General (and took the heat about nepotism). Robert was then elected to the Senate, then ran for President in 1968. Still hurts, but the flame burns in memory and in the deeds of many of us here at Daily Kos and throughout the nation….thanks to his inspiration….which has been Good News….
1934 Washington DC The midterm elections did NOT swing against the President’s party in his first term; the New Deal would continue. All those new agencies to regulate banks……and Wall Street…..and a minimum wage. It was all too much for the 1934’s 1% and they took action. On this day the McCormack–Dickstein Committee began examining evidence of the Business Plot against Franklin Roosevelt. On November 24 the committee released a statement about the plot and its preliminary findings, including testimony from retired Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler. Butler testified that Gerald McGuire, head of the American Legion (veterans of World War I; parallel to the VFW but much farther RW) offered him an army of 500,000 to march on Washington, with arms to be supplied by Remington Manufacturing (then a division of General Motors, whose president, Alfred Sloan, was in on the scheme), serious money, and the chance to make FDR into a figurehead. This exposure by the committee ruined the element of surprise and the plot fizzled. (A DailyKos Diary AT THIS LINK from 2014 will fill you in on some of the details.) Eerie parallels to Jan 6…..but it failed, making this a dark Good News moment.
Thank you, sir…...for everything…...”Salute”
1942 Scranton, PA Birth of Joseph Robinette Biden, politician. Family moved to Delaware when Joe was 11. Was marked as a rising star early on and was elected to the US Senate in 1972. Since he wasn’t sworn in until January of 1973, he just made the Constitutional minimum age requirement (30; Biden is the sixth youngest Senator ever elected.) Ran for President in 1988, losing the nomination to Dukakis. Elected Vice-President in 2008. Elected President in 2020, the oldest person ever elected to the office (82 today), and the first to have a woman (Harris) as Vice President.
1945 Nuremburg, Germany (The Ultimate BAD NEWS for BAD GUYS is Good News for everyone else) After all the atrocities inflicted upon civilians apart from the ravages of World War II, on this day the International War Crimes Tribunal opens. 24 Nazi leaders (22 in person, 1 in absentia) were charged with a new thing: war crimes and crimes against humanity, in particular, genocide against the Jewish people (Holocaust). After nine months trial in front of a panel of 9 judges (2 from the UK, 2 from France, 3 from the US and, most regrettably, 2 from the Soviet Union). 12 were found guilty and sentenced to death (including #3 Nazi Martin Bormann, in absentia), 3 sentenced to life imprisonment, 4 more were sentenced to between 10 and 20 years. 3 were acquitted.
Good News in Science & Engineering
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>In geography there are straits and there are isthmuses. Ismuthses (or ismuthsi?) are narrow strips of land between major bodies of water (think Panama). Straits are narrow channels of water separating notable land masses (Gibraltar between Europe & Africa; Cook Strait between the North and South Island of New Zealand.)
Now THAT is engineering at a very high pitch…...whew!
For centuries people have looked across the Strait of Messina and tried to figure out a way to link the Island of Sicily to mainland Italy. (Right at the point of the “toe of Italy” is about kickoff the “football of Sicily.”) There are old stories the Romans, clever engineers they were, managed to connect the two with a sort of pontoon bridge. A bridge has been proposed many times, defeated each time by the limits of then-current technology.
But NOW, as an actual Bridge spans the Dardanelles Strait and connects Turkey to Europe, there is inspiration and even hope. Bridge to connect Sicily to mainland Italy! THIS LINKED STORY notes this would be the World’s longest suspension bridge, but a remarkable effort!
Also on November 20ths of yesteryear:
Pedals on the front wheel!…..brakes, gears, inflatable tires, Spandex would come later…...
1866 Washington DC A French mechanic and inventor, Pierre Lallemont, has been working on a new idea to improve velocipedes, those 2 wheeled gizmos that steer at the front, have a saddle in the middle, and move by lightly striding (‘veloci-‘ from velocity, and ‘pede’ step/foot). This day Lallemont receives a US patent for his version that is powered by pedals mounted on the hub of the front wheel, a major step toward today’s bicycle. (Chain drive to the rear hub yet to come….but PEDALS!)
1889 Marshfield, Missouri Birth of Edwin Powell Hubble, astronomer. A gifted athlete in his youth he led the University of Chicago basketball team to their first conference title in 1907. Honoring his father’s wishes he studied law, earning a master’s in the field. Once his father died, he turned to his real passion, science, and particularly astronomy, earning a PhD in the field in 1917. In 1924, using a 100-inch telescope, he proved the existence of galaxies beyond that of the Milky Way (confirming an idea from Immanuel Kant as early as 1755) thereby proving the universe is a lot larger than had been thought. Combined with observations made by Belgian astronomer Georges Lemaitre, he advanced the idea of an expanding universe (Hubble-Lemaitre Law.) NASA’s orbital Hubble Telescope is named in his honor.
Dr. Hubble…..holding his CAT!…..who no doubt gave him ideas…….
Pleasingly posed on a couch…..Mom & daughter together
1914 Washington DC (Engineering impacts Society!) Taking advantage of advancing technology and particularly the Eastman-Kodak company’s widely available and inexpensive photographic film (supplanting glass plates), the US State Department this day imposes a new requirement: all US passports will be REQUIRED to contain a photograph of the holder. (Took a while for this to spread further; my first driver’s license was a paper one, with typed entries and a raised seal from the state of Ohio. A laminated one with a photo came on renewal in the early ‘70s. Made it harder to sneak into bars….)
1923 Cleveland, Ohio Garrett Morgan, the “Black Edison” was already quite famous for several of his inventions. (His gas mask had been adopted by the US Army in the trenches of World War I and had saved thousands of lives.) Driving around Cleveland (the first black man in the city to own a car, and one of the first to know how to drive) he witnessed a traffic accident. A carriage had been unable to pull to halt when the traffic signal changed from green to red while another vehicle, anticipating the change, was still rolling on the sudden green into the intersection. Morgan went to work tinkering and on this day received a patent for his improvement on traffic signals, one that used three lights (red-yellow (new in the middle)-green) to warn vehicle drivers of the coming change. Eventually sold the rights to General Electric, which manufactured them by the thousands. Still in use….101 years later…...as you may have noticed…….
Back in March this year I put up a couple profiles of a couple of American First Ladies and asked if anyone wanted more. The answer was yes, so since then on my monthly stint I’ve added one or two more, some obscure, many forgotten, and a few with her own profile. Today, well, the entire idea had to start with someone, so
Profile of the First “First Lady”
Martha Dandridge “I wasn’t always old like in most of the pictures you’ve seen of me” Custis Washington
Martha Dandridge was born June 2, 1731 at her father’s Virginia plantation (named “Chestnut Grove”), the first of 8 children. As the eldest, in her later childhood she had a hand in raising her siblings (the youngest of whom, a sister, was 25 years her junior.) Being born into a high circle she received a good women’s education from several tutors. Surprisingly, she was also a fine horsewoman; as a feisty teenager, one day she rode her horse down the road and turned up the lane to a relative. She rode…... into her uncle’s house, up and then down the main staircase. She escaped a major scolding because of her skill in pulling off that stunt.
When she was 19 she married David Custis, age 39. Custis was one of the wealthiest men in the English colonies, a tobacco grower with over 300 hundred slaves. The wedding was at his plantation (named “White House”) and the couple soon had 4 children. Sadly each of the first two died at age 3. When Custis was 46 (and Martha 26) Custis himself died of an infection. Surprisingly (for the times), his will left 1/3 of his entire estate to his widow Martha, and 1/3 each to his 2 remaining children (John and Martha--- “Patsy”). Each of these three received about $33,000 (today, about $1 million), and a portion of 17,000 acres of land. Martha showed excellent ability managing 5 different plantations and impressing agents of several London tobacco traders with her business acumen.
A year later (so 1757) during the winter social season she was introduced in Williamsburg to a militia colonel and member of the Virginia legislature, George Washington. After a rather deliberate and careful courtship, they married in January, 1759 at Martha’s “White House” plantation. Later in the year they moved to Washington’s mansion of “Mount Vernon.” Her wealth allowed for several improvements and in the next few years 2 new wings were added at George’s place. Theirs was a marriage of deep although very private love, as well as mutual and lively minds, with nearly every supper at Mount Vernon with yet another guest (of his or hers) having long conversations on every possible topic.
The Washingtons had no children of their own, but over the next 16 years George helped raise both his step children, John and “Patsy” as his own. (Sadly, Pasty suffered from epilepsy and died of a seizure at age 17. John later married, helped his mother keep Mount Vernon running during the Revolution, and eventually joined his step-father as a civilian aide-de-camp. During the Yorktown siege he contracted and died of typhoid fever at age 28.)
Martha went to be with George several times during the Revolution when the Army was in winter quarters, a great comfort to him. She led the wives of other high officers in sewing circles to mend uniforms for the men. After the Revolution succeeded they both retired to Mount Vernon, raising various nieces and nephews (as well as two children of John Custis, Martha’s grand children.)
When both were in their mid-50s George was called away to the Constituting Convention and then a couple years later was elected first President under the new Constitution.
Martha (now age 58) had mixed feelings about becoming a semi-public figure, not joining George in the temporary capitol of New York until 2 months after the first swearing-in. Her journey that spring from Virginia to join him was a sensation, and her short address at the end, thanking everyone for greeting her, is counted as the first “Public Speech” by a “First Lady” and was widely re-printed. (As everything was being started and invented, no one quite knew how to address either the President or Martha. After a while, they became, “His Excellency, the President” and “Lady Washington.” (About 9 years later, the new President Jefferson asked for a simple “Mr. President”, disliking the “too British” use of “Excellency”.)
Martha began a custom of having the Presidential home be open to the public for a reception every New Year’s Day (a custom observed every year until 1930.)
Also ….she (with George’s encouragement) also held a “drawing room” event every Friday evening that pointedly included women as well as men. Various events, amusements and entertainments were held, (a form of those nightly dinners at Mt. Vernon with topics of all sorts.) There was conversation and light refreshments until the stroke of nine p.m. (when the Washingtons bade the entire room “good night”). Aside from the inclusion of women, the other “house rule” at these drawing room events was “no political talk, please”, and if things drifted that way, a change of subject was always expected. (Otherwise, a fresh invitation for another Friday…...might not appear…...)
In 1790 the capital moved temporarily to Philadelphia, which Martha preferred to New York. She was closer to home in Virginia and it was easier for her to visit and family and friends to visit her. She enjoyed taking these to various sights around town and was a faithful attender of the Episcopal church every Sunday.
She was opposed to George accepting (and winning) a 2nd term and found the pageantry being invented around the Presidency to be empty and boring. She resented being accused (in opposition, “Anti-Federalist” newspapers) of putting on the airs of aristocracy, while at the same time being pilloried for being “too informal” at events. (She disliked paying daily attention to her clothes and hair and deliberately dressed in homespun clothing, believing this was more fitting for a republic.) She was quite relieved when George refused a third term so they could return to Mount Vernon.
He died of a throat infection a couple years later in 1799. Martha turned over running Mount Vernon to several relatives and quietly spent her days writing replies to letters. She passed away in 1802.
Good News in Arts, Literature and Music
>>>>>>» Not strictly speaking Arts…..or Literature…..or Music. But Goofy is as Goofy Does. And sometimes you gotta wonder. Now you have insurance, on various things, and your health, and even your very life, right? Sure. And as long as there has been insurance, there have been been people scheming to Collect on the Insurance with the insurance company none the wiser.
SOoooo….insurance companies take steps to protect themselves. They require police reports, or medical bills specifying what services were rendered. They want photographs of damages. All in all, fairly routine stuff.
And then…...then comes this story from Lake Arrowhead, California. A tony sort of place that attracts an upscale crowd, one who drive a Rolls Royce Ghost….or a Mercedes G63 AMG …. or a Mercedes E350. Several insurance companies compared notes, and found each of these 3 cars had been attacked…..in the same place…..on the same night…..in the same way. 4 owners had put in claims totaling $140,000 for damages to their vehicles caused by…….a bear. A rampant, runaway bear with a taste for high-end cars. BUT there was video AND THIS STORY tells the “bear” was….surprisingly behaving and acting…...like a Human. He just happened to LOOK like a bear….sort of. Claims denied and now…….arrests made on charges of insurance fraud…...
1897 Adelaide, Australia Birth of Margaret Sutherland, pianist, composer. (Not the typical birthplace for composers) From a well-to-do family that included artists and physicists, Margaret’s aunt first taught her piano. She then had further education from some German émigré professors and began performing publicly in her (and The) 20’s. (Was married for 20 years to a psychiatrist but ended in divorce; her ex was so upset by her composing he consulted colleagues about musical composing in a woman being a symptom of mental derangement.) Wrote a well-regarded number of vocal pieces as well as some instrumental works: a symphony, an opera, an orchestral tone poem. Also a good deal of chamber music (The Four Temperaments), several quartets and concertos, and some unusual works for voice, piano and orchestration.
A certain 20th century urgency….
1976 Across the USA That NBC late-night show seems to be a hit, and there’s enough variety that all sorts of celebrities manage to get on the air. Tonight Saturday Night Live scores big, managing to snag George Harrison (THAT George…..of the Beatles “George”) as a musical guest! He is kind enough to perform one of his signature pieces…...But WAIT! Who is that playing with him, and singing along?? Rub your eyes, rock fans…..yes that really is Paul Simon(THAT Paul…...of the “& Garfunkel”).
48 years ago (and boy they looked young) and I’m still mesmerized…
What the 1940’s cover looked like
1986 Across the world. Back on October 1 the History Corner noted the first sale back in 1940 of a new line of children’s book called the “Little Golden Books”. At a time when children’s books were not common and often cost $2 or $3 a copy, Little Golden Books were aimed at toddlers and kindergartners and sold for 25 cents each. The line grew into a publishing legend and went international. On this day the one billionth (with a “B”) Little Golden Book was printed, another copy of ‘The Poky Little Puppy.’
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Good wine…...good bread…...good friends…...
Alright I thank you for stopping by. Now please stay a while, have read, make a rec if you like, put up a comment. ADD your OWN Good News notes and stories. (These days we’ll take second helpings on all of these.) Thank you for visiting.
May all your News be Good, comforting and inspiring.
Shalom.
