Good morning to all the Gnus in Gnuville getting ready to note, celebrate, mark and otherwise call attention to….the Last Full day of Spring! Yep….tomorrow afternoon the tilt of the earth in its Northern Hemisphere has its maximum of effect of nodding toward our Sun and the longest daylight day of the year is at hand. So light and sun fans, this is YOUR Party Week!
The Good News Round Up is a daily feature here at DailyKos, and once a month the Great and All-Powerful Wise Ones allow me into the control room to deliver various uplifting news matters that are informative and/or off-beat and/or reassuring and/or hopeful. (Letting little old ME do this shows that the Great and Powerful Wise Ones have a wry sense of humor as well.)
So come on in to the Gnuville (for new arrivals: Good News….Gnusies, as in “gnu”) Good News Round Up. I assume we all live in Gnuville, which features a Daily Breakfast Brunch. Have yourself some coffee, tea, or mocha-cocoa just the way you like it (after all, its your pixel screen and your hot bev mug to fill however you like it.)
And some Gnusies start their day with an eye-opening mimosa. Mimosas are a GREAT way to celebrate the Last Full Day of Spring. (On Friday, Mimosas will be a GREAT way to celebrate the First Full Day of Northern Hemisphere Summer; the second mimosa will of course celebrate the First Full Day of Southern Hemisphere Winter.) Find a favorite chair, couch, cozy corner, snuggly nook, or a hearty, backslapping long table of Extroverts, and have a look at this morning’s stories. Please feel free to comment, ask, answer, expound, impound, explain, construct, de-construct, rec, tip any and all of the comments and stories here. After all, when you do, we all enjoy coming here all the more.
Special Announcement from the Mimosa Bar:
“The Not-so-Great Presidential Pretender of the House of Orange” the other week publicly trashed the city of Milwaukee, which is hosting the Republican National Convention next month. You’ve read he called it a “Horrible City”.
Now Milwaukee is a beer-making town and has been for decades. Even their major league baseball team is named the Milwaukee Brewers. And located in Wisconsin, there is a long, proud history of progressive, left-of-center politics around town. So, if you put all that together, the crafty craft brewers of Milwaukee have to answer, and they have. Mobcraft Brewing has announced they are brewing “Not-So Horrible City IPA.” You can pre-order ahead of the “goes on sale date” of July 8.
(And BTW, if that doesn’t lead you to hoist a brew in the Gnuville Brunch Lounge, you can go down
the road to Minocqua, home of Progressive Beers, Choice Wine, and the in-your-face WOKE Collection of roasted coffees. Visit them ONLINE HERE and impress your next gathering by serving up “Biden Beer”, “Bernie Brew” or “Dark Brandon Espresso Stout.” )
(As per my custom, you will also notice Historical moments of June 19ths of yesteryear, taking a fresh turn of recognition and notice here in 2024. Also, a few months ago, a did some biographical notes on a couple of American First Ladies. Many Gnusies have enjoyed these and asked for more, so you’ll see a couple of these as well.)
>>>>>>>>From a reply I made yesterday afternoon, updated:
We are beginning recovery from a burst water pipe on the top floor; 20 minutes before we discovered it and got to the shut off valve and went into bucket and towel action, but it will be weeks recovering.
Thank you all for your kindness and good wishes. SageHagRN, Toby the Cat and I are STILL waiting for the first contact…...from the insurance adjuster, upon whom all things depend and rely (timelines, money, timeline for money, what will be covered and what is not.) We know his name now (and that he’s a “he”) but……..
We filled Tuesday by packing clothes, packing books, taking down stuff from the walls, packing up the antique china and crystal. More of same today, along with the arrival of “The Pod”. NOT a First Contact meeting with ETs, but one of those mobile storage units. Thursday & Friday the young bucks rescue team members will load the Pod…..”Packing Out” ….with all the furniture from the 4 affected rooms and these boxes we’ve been packing today.
And STILL we await…..the Adjuster…….has a very “waiting for Messiah” vibe….
Shalom.
Good News from Science and Engineering
>>>» Its out there. REALLY out there! What is? Voyager 1, a satellite launched in the 1970s on a plotted trajectory to head out of our solar system. Even got a starring role in the first “Star Trek Movie” as “Vjer”, something of a runaway machine that needed to be stopped. But there is a team of people at NASA who stay in touch with Voyager, even at 15 billion-with-a-B miles distance.
Still ticking along…….
Last fall it looked like “the little satellite that could” had reached its hardware/software expiration date, and transmissions went down to just this side of static. BUT God bless them, the brain-y engineers said “We can damn sure try to get some jumper cables on that little guy!” Word came in April that after everyone stood “CLEAR!” and the paddles were removed: “we have a pulse.” And now in THIS INTERSTELLAR BIT OF NEWS (how often do you get to print THAT?? NOT as sci-fi, or as a joke, but REAL News from beyond our Solar System) it looks like things are FIXED. Voyager has 4 instruments on board and all of them are once again taking readings and transmitting data back to us. YAY!
>>>>» A couple diaries in the last couple weeks have had this noted, but it’s just too good NOT to put up one more time. A group of researchers from the Dr. Doolittle Study of Animals Society has been listening and recording ELEPHANTS and their grunts, trumpetings, whistles, snorts and such. Having analyzed these very carefully, IT SURE LOOKS LIKE these wise and ponderous four-foots-on-the-ground seem to greet each other with the same distinct set of sounds. In other words, they seem to start their “chats” BY NAME. Every Tom, Dick, Sally, Ashley and Pat on the team are delighted, so much so that they start their morning conversations by getting each other as “Mrumph”, “Durrach”, “Schlougah”, “AaayO” and “Grack” (which are how the Big Ear Crew addresses each of them…..politely…...hmmm…...I thought I heard that but maybe I just made it up….)
>>>>>» Open FIRE!……...FIRE IN THE HOLD!……..Ready…..Aim…… These dramatic phrases have studded war stories and crime dramas ever since the invention of gunpowder. Now mind you, before that, there was plenty of fighting too. A lot of it was one-on-one, hand to hand (which is why the events of original Olympic Games were for men only, based on soldiers’ training: boxing an opponent, wrestling with them, throwing heavy rocks at them (“putting the shot”) or spears (javelin) or flying spinning stuff (discus) or arrows (archery). Messengers needed to be able to run quickly with verbal orders (sprints) or cover ground (middle distance) or trot for hours (marathon). Along the way they would need to jump over fences, bushes and hedges (hurdles, high jump), leap over various holes (long jump), even use poles to clear wooden stockades (pole vault).
Also, some of ancient warfare was hitting at a distance with something heavy: huge logs to batter city gates and also certain engines that used physics to heave huge rocks (ballistas, catapults, onangers.) With the coming of gunpowder and other chemicals some of these withered into mere sports, and burning stuff took their place. Those chemicals can be now be formulated to lift stuff into Earth orbit or even beyond (see Voyager…..).
But now comes an amazing story that there is a company proposing to launch satellites into orbit…..using a catapult! Really! They have had a record of successful tests and are looking to launch satellites up to 200 kilos (440 pounds) into orbits 500 miles up or more. No rocket fuel, just electricity, physics and some really “outside the box” engineering…...that, again, has a record of successful tests.
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Mind you, scientists and engineers have been observing, measuring, mulling and inventing stuff for centuries, and June 19ths are proud to report that 6/19 has had its scientific and engineering days in the sun.
240 BCE (A rare, MINUS, Before Zero, Date) Alexandria, Egypt Mathematician and astronomer Eratosthenes, a Libyan by birth, has risen to become Chief Librarian of one of THE World’s greatest libraries here at Alexandria. He has been working on a really basic problem: how big is our home? That is, how far around is it? Eratosthenes concluded the Earth was a sphere (already pretty cutting edge!) and is recorded this day as finishing his calculation. South of Alexandria was the town of Syene (about the modern Aswan.) They had a town well and the people there said that on the first day of sumner (SOLSTICE) at high sun, the beams made it all the way to the bottom to reflect off the water.
Eratosthenes reasoned this meant the sun was directly overhead on that day at that point. He arranged for a pole the ground in Alexandria on the same day, measured out to be exactly 5000 stadiae (a measure of length, like “a league” or “a mile”) north of that well. He and helpers took as precise a measurement of the angle of the shadow cast by the pole at this same moment. By applying geometry Eratosthenes estimated the circumference of the Earth at 252,000 stadiae. When we convert that ancient measurement into modern terms, we find Eratosthenes missed the actual number…..by 1.4%! As they say in Texas, for somebody working 23 centuries ago, that was “pretty good shootin’, Tex!”
1623 Clermont-Ferrand, France Birth of Blaise Pascal, mathematician, physicist and Christian philosopher. He formulated the first laws of atmospheric pressures (which scientists measure in Pascals in his honor). In mathematics, Pascal did serious foundational work on probability theory. He invented the roulette wheel to study probability (and as an effort to invent a perpetual motion machine.) (Perhaps he coined the famous phrase, “Quelles sont les chances?” which Seinfeld translated as “What are the odds?”) He wrote poetry “The heart has its reasons, which reason does not comprehend”. He was also a nimble, intellectual defender of the Christian faith in his famous book, Pensees (Thoughts).
1931 West Haven, Connecticut Did you know you could use light and shadow to open and close an electric circuit? Well, on this day that laboratory curiosity moves into the mainstream. Savin Rock Amusement Park has a BIG dining hall that seats 1000. It was here the first photoelectric cells were installed to open and close the doors “automatically” when you stepped near. While Savin Rock Park is gone almost 60 years, those automatic doors have caught on everywhere.
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Legal & Lawyer Lighter Moment #1
We are all enjoying (enjoying, I say!) Donald Trump’s legal troubles and convictions. Nearly 1000 of the Coup-ers of J6 have also met with the Justice system. Trump’s lawyers are having licenses suspended and are being sued down to their socks and are even (let THIS be the start of a TREND!) going to jail (right, Peter Navarro? Right, Steve Bannon?)
Now all this is serious business. It is also rather satisfying for us to see justice being done, with all the carefully constructed legal steps and protections being observed and in play. Some of those lawyers know what they are doing (and we cheer for the prosecutors in these cases.) Some of those lawyers do NOT know what they are doing (and keep getting fired by Trump.)
But there are times when a lawyer in court is so focused on not just the forest, not just the trees, not just A tree, but on the texture of the bark on a certain tree…..and they get carried away. They prepare. They live by the dictum “Never ask a question you don’t know the answer to”. They try to prepare for every eventuality. And yet……..”too much of a good thing is not good.” And also, “Being too efficient can be…. inefficient, Mr. Spock.” (Captain Kirk)
So here (and sprinkled in below as well) are a few excerpts from a book entitled “Disorder in the Court”, which collects actual court transcripts of actual lawyers addressing actual witnesses…..and getting swung into an unexpected turn that is, well, unintentionally funny (because every case is serious, you know!)
NILM WARNING: No Liquids in Mouth.
ATTORNEY: What was the first thing your husband said to you that morning?
WITNESS: He said, 'Where am I,Cathy?'
ATTORNEY: And why did that upset you?
WITNESS: My name is Susan!
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ATTORNEY: What gear were you in at the moment of the impact?
WITNESS: Gucci sweats and Reeboks.
____________________________________________
ATTORNEY: What is your date of birth?
WITNESS: July 18th.
ATTORNEY: What year?
WITNESS: Every year.
____________________________________________
ATTORNEY: How old is your son, the one living with you?
WITNESS: Thirty-eight or thirty-five, I can't remember which.
ATTORNEY: How long has he lived with you?
WITNESS: Forty-five years.
Good News in Arts, Literature and Music
Sometimes, on certain days, some things just DON’T happen. June 19ths seem to be a day that the artists, writers and composers were basically all given the day off. Still, we do have one:
1810 Hamburg, temporarily French Empire (!), now Germany Birth of Ferdinand David, composer. Ferdinand was born one year later yet in the same house as Felix Mendelssohn, and Felix and his sister Clara (later Schumann) and Ferdinand were good friends for years. An outstanding violinist David had a concert career, often touring in the Russian Empire. In his early 30s he helped establish the Leipzig Conservatory and was its first teacher of the violin. He composed about 50 works in all, often for the violin, but also concertos and light works for various instruments. He is remembered to this day for his Concertino for Trombone & Orchestra, which is still THE required piece for a trombone audition to join an orchestra or band. (“OK kid, let’s hear how good your ‘David’ is”…..and this kid playing won an international competition…..)
But as things are thin today for the arts, let us turn to a position that for many years was expected to have a certain appreciation and support for the arts, and literature and music, although in an unusual setting: as the
First Lady of the Second President of the United States.
I give you Abigail Smith…..later, Abigail Adams.
Abigail Smith, 2nd of 5 children, was born in 1744 in Weymouth, Massachusetts. Her father was a Congregationalist pastor, and 19 years later he presided over Abigail’s wedding to lawyer John Adams. Abigail’s grandfather on her mother’s side, John Quincy, was a member of the Massachusetts Governor’s Council (a major governing body copied in several American colonies) and served for 40 years (!) as Speaker of the Massachusetts Assembly. He lived nearby, so between Dad and Grand dad, Abigail, who never had any formal schooling but whose mother taught her to read, write and cipher, could read at length in 2 substantial private libraries. Her favorites were Shakespeare, philosophy, government and law.
At age 19 she married struggling lawyer John Adams from Braintree. (How struggling? They were married at Abigail’s house. Afterwards, John hoisted Abigail onto his horse and got up to ride double to take her home, since he could not afford a carriage or a second horse.) They soon began having children (5 in all) and in 1774 John was elected to the First Continental Congress and went away for several months to Philadelphia. This began a steady correspondence between them of a great number of letters. (By good fortune, many of these are extant, providing scholars with an inside view of their lives and the events shaking the Colonies in those days.)
How determined for Revolution was Massachusetts? Well in 1775 they opened fire at Lexington and Concord, besieged Boston and mauled an attacking force at Bunker (Breed’s) Hill, and sent John Hancock and Adams to a Second Continental Congress. But also, the Massachusetts General Court appointed Hannah Winthrop (wife of the Governor), Mercy Warren, and Abigail Adams as a 3-woman panel to examine (for the Court!) Massachusetts women accused of acting, by word or deed, in favor of Great Britain.
After Independence was won in 1783, John was appointed Ambassador to Great Britain and Abigail joined him there, and also in visiting France, for 4 years. Back in the semi-United States in 1787, Adams went to Philadelphia for a Constituting Convention. One of Abigail’s letters to him at this time has her famously calling on him to “not forget the ladies” in the new government, including the right to vote.
In 1797 she missed John’s Inauguration as President as she was tending to her dying father-in-law. She then joined him as First Lady on and off for about 18 months (of his 48 month term) in both Philadelphia (where a residence hotel served as the President’s house) and 4 months in the new Federal City of the District of Columbia. (There the President’s Mansion was not yet finished as she arrived in November for the last 4 months of the term. She used the unfinished East Room strung with clotheslines to let the family laundry dry in the winter.)
Abigail had clear political views (pro equal education of women as far as their minds would take them.) She was also pro-Emancipation, out loud and in public (her husband was pretty accommodating about this, even though it caused him some political headaches.) Also, since in those days the winner for the Presidential vote became President and the #2 finisher became Vice-President (a practice changed in the Constitution in the early 1800s) she had conversations and even quiet clashes with VP Thomas Jefferson, slave holder and leader of the Anti-Federalist Party (later the Democratic-Republicans and eventually, the Democrats.)
Since she was vocal about her views, she became a target of the Anti-Federalists in Congress and in their newspapers. These papers were helped by party members who were postmasters. When they saw letters between John and Abigail (as they continued writing when they were apart, which was often) they would sometimes purloin her letters, read the contents, and if they were political, pass them on to friendly newspapers to print in part. This kept ratcheting up the political heat, contributing to Adams’ defeat in his try for a 2nd term.
After leaving public life, Abigail was touched by the death of the new President’s daughter, Maria Jefferson Eppes, and wrote him a very sympathetic note, which Jefferson answered gravely and kindly, leading to a level of healing between them.
(They tacitly avoided politics in these exchanges and simply became friends, which led to Thomas and John becoming old friends----both of them dying on July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the Declaration. (John Adams’ last words were, “Thomas Jefferson survives”….not knowing Jefferson had died a few hours before in Virginia.)
Abigail had preceded them, passing away in 1818, 6 years before her son, John Quincy, was elected President. In 1848 one of her grandsons who had collected and preserved many of her letters published a few of these….thereby making Abigail’s writings the first published from a First Lady.
Legal & Lawyer Lighter Moment #2 (Same rule on mouth liquids applies….)
ATTORNEY: This myasthenia gravis, does it affect your memory at all?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: And in what ways does it affect your memory?
WITNESS: I forget..
ATTORNEY: You forget? Can you give us an example of something you forgot?
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ATTORNEY: Now doctor, isn't it true that when a person dies in his sleep, he doesn't know about it until the next morning?
WITNESS: Did you actually pass the bar exam?
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ATTORNEY: The youngest son, the 20-year-old, how old is he?
WITNESS: He's 20, much like your IQ.
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ATTORNEY: Were you present when your picture was taken?
WITNESS: Are you shitting me?
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ATTORNEY: So the date of conception (of the baby) was August 8th?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: And what were you doing at that time?
WITNESS: Getting laid
Good News in Society, Politics and Fun
>>>>» NO. NO. NO. You canNOT try to overthrow a government, fail, and then expect to get away scot-free. Nope. The FAFO (“F*** Around and Find Out”) Fallout from January 6 keeps hitting the fan. Perhaps the most pernicious (pernicious, I say!) was the Fake Elector plotting from Eastman, Rudi, Kraken, Ellis, et. al. Now those were/are the plotters at the national level. They were getting help in certain states.
Those states have been steadily tackling their own messes with their own courts and laws. Arizona, Georgia (go Fani!) and Michigan have made the news from time to time with developments. Wisconsin was another such spot, and the investigation there is reaching the indictment stage. In a particularly forceful rooting out, attorney Jim Troupis, Fake Elector, is getting what’s coming to him. IN THIS STORY Troupis has been suspended from his state job…...which is as a member of…..wait for it…..the Judicial Ethics Panel! Yes, you can make a certain distinction between personal and public ethics, but still…….a guy on the state Ethics Panel was a Fake Elector? Oh yeah, let’s clean out that stall with a BIG manure pitchfork…….
>>>>>» On a more reassuring note, there is Dr. Alan Lichtman. He is the political analyst and professor of political science who several years back developed what he calls the 13 Keys to the Presidency. If a candidate has 7 or more Keys in her/his favor, they have an edge for the election. The more Keys, the more reliable. Lichtman has a sterling record applying his Keys.
So Lichtman has lately discussed his Keys for the 2024 Election, and the news is solidly in Biden’s favor.
You can exhale for a couple minutes after the video.
But wait, there’s more to Good News for Society, Politics and Fun, some of it well-aged:
1464 Paris This sending and receiving of messages and letters and important documents is a real hit-and-miss mess up until now. Important stuff gets lost, letters fall into the wrong hands, and could even lead to war. On this day King Louis XI addresses this in a systematic way: by edict of the king, there shall henceforward be a postal service in France. There will be stations, relays of horses, a packaging that will list who is sending and who is supposed to get the stuff, and there will be fees. Vive the Bureau de Poste!
1865 Galveston, Texas Union General Gordon Granger, has arrived to occupy the last town to return to Union control. He finds the local slaveholders have carefully kept word of the Emancipation Proclamation from their slaves. Granger strikes off a proclamation and has copies hung all over town, with Union soldiers offering readings to the illiterate. The newly freed begin celebrating, calling the nineteenth of June “Juneteenth” as Emancipation Day, or “the day freedom came” almost 2 1/2 years after Lincoln’s Proclamation. And in 2021, this becomes a National Holiday. We have not yet overcome……..but we overcame a lot on this day……
1910 Spokane, Washington Sonora Smart Dodd really loved her Dad. Mom had died and her father raised her as a single parent; quite rare for a father to be that single parent. Sonora was grateful, and got the city fathers to proclaim this day as the first Father’s Day in celebration. The idea spread and in 1927 President Calvin Coolidge began issuing an annual proclamation setting aside the third Sunday in June to focus national attention on the idea.
Quite the fashion statement…..
1958 American entrepreneurs Richard Knerr and Arthur Melin have been inspired by pictures of a toy popular with Australian children. They have made a large, lightweight hoop out of rattan and they swing it around their hips. Knerr and Melin convert the idea into a plastic ring about 3 feet in diameter and today get a trademark for it. They license the idea to the Wham-O Toy Company, who produced them and marketed them as the Hula Hoop. The craze goes crazy: in the next 12 months Americans alone (let alone the rest of the world) will buy 100 million hoops at a suggested retail price of $1.98. (Wham-o stock was a strong buy……)
1964 Washington DC The House of Representatives has done its duty, and sent a big, earthquake-sized bill over to the Senate. The Democrats are in the majority there and Democrat Lyndon Johnson awaits in the White House, but…..its the Senate. And, Southern Democrats are fighting the Civil War again, using the filibuster to kill the bill. It was a talking filibuster, so these aged men in their 70s and 80s were there, still intoning against the dangers of racial equality. Majority Leader Hubert Humphrey stayed in touch with Johnson, and with the Republicans too; he was willing to let the Southerners talk themselves out while he worked for a cloture vote. Finally, with an assist from several Republicans led by Illinois Senator Everett Dirksen, there are the 67 votes to shut off the filibuster (different rules back then.) The bill comes to the Senate floor and on this 99th Juneteenth day THE Civil Rights Bill of 1964 passes the Senate 73-27 and goes to the President. We may not yet have overcome……but we overcame a lot this day……
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Legal & Lawyer Lighter Moment #3 (Same rule on mouth liquids applies….)
ATTORNEY: She had three children, right?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: How many were boys?
WITNESS: None.
ATTORNEY: Were there any girls?
WITNESS: Your Honor, I think I need a different attorney. Can I get a new attorney?
____________________________________________
ATTORNEY: How was your first marriage terminated?
WITNESS: By death.
ATTORNEY: And by whose death was it terminated?
WITNESS: Take a guess.
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ATTORNEY: Can you describe the individual?
WITNESS: He was about medium height and had a beard
ATTORNEY: Was this a male or a female?
WITNESS: Unless the Circus was in town I'm going with male.
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ATTORNEY: Is your appearance here this morning pursuant to a deposition notice which I sent to your attorney?
WITNESS: No, this is how I dress when I go to work.
First Lady of the 1920s, Grace Coolidge
Grace (Goodhue) Coolidge, married to the 30th President, Calvin.) Born in January, 1879 in Burlington, Vermont, Grace Goodhue was the only child of millworker Andrew and Lemira. (Grace is one out of only 5 First Ladies to have been an Only child; others were Eliza Johnson, Ellen Arthur, Nancy Reagan and Laura Bush.) Grace was a bright child, allowed to start school a year younger than usual (at 5); her teacher, Cornelia Underwood, later became a life-long friend. Grace was an athletic youngster and teen, good at ice skating, tobogganing, and handling horse-drawn sleighs (with jingle bells in certain seasons.) In high school she had two years of piano and voice lessons and was a rare girl in a ½ year class of boys on diction and public speaking (which stayed with her for life.) She attended the University of Vermont. After graduating she spent 2 years attending Clarke School for the Deaf, which trained teachers for the deaf, and then applied this, supporting herself teaching such students at Clarke for 2 more years until her marriage.
She married Calvin Coolidge (the only US President to be born on the 4th of July (1872)) at age 26. They had a one week honeymoon in exotic Montreal, and in the next few years had 2 sons, John and Calvin. Dad’s political life was accelerating (mayor of Boston, election to the state legislature, governor of Massachusetts) and Grace was mostly at home, raising the boys on her own. In 1920 Coolidge was nominated as Vice President on the ticket with Warren Harding. Grace was somewhat disappointed because she thought he was settling for second best, when he was capable of a greater office.
As Second Lady, Grace and the boys lived at the Washington DC Willard Hotel (since there was no official residence for the Vice President.) Lois Marshall, 2nd Lady for her husband under Woodrow Wilson, was very kind to Grace in helping her make the transition from a private person to a public one, and they became fast friends. Grace made other friends especially among the wives of Senators. She also hosted a weekly, Wednesday social at the Willard that was open to the public for just dropping by for a cup of punch. At times VP Coolidge dropped by on these. The introverted and socially shy VP was very grateful for his out-going wife’s socializing and providing him a chance to learn some new life skills.
In August, 1923 President Harding abruptly died on a Presidential visit out West, making Coolidge President and Grace First Lady. They were vacationing back home in New England when the telegram arrived by night. They went to Calvin’s father (a local notary public) and Grace lit a kerosene lamp. Then the notary public father (a public position!), with an ordinary member of the public holding a kerosene lamp as a witness, administered the Oath of Office to his son, now the President.
Calvin Coolidge conceived of the First Lady’s role in the White House in very closed off terms, and Grace complied. She did enjoy frequently, nearly daily, walking around the streets of Washington for exercize. She liked to attend sporting events (she saw plenty of Washington Senators baseball games, and took the trains to attend the Army-Navy football games in Philadelphia). All these were done very incognito. Any inquiring reporter was turned away with complete silence beyond a “Good day.”
(She was quite the Boston Red Sox fan. When she knew they had a game she would often go down to the White House Telegraph Room and have an operator pick up the cryptic play by play which radio reporters turned into “coverage.” E.g. The telegraph ticked of “Top 3, AB 36” which came across the airwaves as “OK, Red Sox Fans, now #36, Rocky Morris, rangy left fielder, steps to the plate to lead off the top of the 3rd. (Telegraph: “1-0”) Out on the mound, Collins looks in for the sign, sets, and nope, the pitch is outside, ‘ball one.’ Morris knocks some dirt from his cleats and gets ready for what Collins might try next….” )
Inside the White House she was very curious to discover what the other women in her role had thought and lived, and she regretted there was so little material to be found. (This touched off a field of study among American historians…..) Grace also made an effort to learn and assemble the history of the various rooms in the White House, how they had been used, and various events that had happened in them (like if anyone had, say, hung up laundry to dry in the East Room.) Grace was able to arrange frequent White House recitals and other musical and theatrical performances (which Calvin rather approved and even attended from time to time). One of these had Sergei Rachmaninoff perform at the White House piano. She also went about town solo to catch movies and live theater (laughing heartily with everyone else at Groucho Marx, for example.)
In the 1924 Presidential campaign Grace was nearly invisible with one noted exception. On a certain summer day the press was invited to the White House lawn, with still cameras and those newsreel ones too. (BTW Grace was enamored of these she bought a home movie camera for herself to shoot home movies.) Her personal desk was brought out onto the lawn, and then she sat down and filled out her absentee ballot (to Massachusetts), folded it, licked it shut and put the correct postage on it. Women had only had the vote for four years, and the Coolidges both strongly believed that the habit of voting by women needed to be established by public example. (One of her few public statements for the press and for public consumption as First Lady….)
She also continued her interest in the deaf and otherwise disabled. During her First Lady years she raised over $2,000,000 in endowment money for the Clarke School she had taught at. (Today’s equivalent: $36 million.) She also had a widely publicized meeting with Helen Keller.
AFTER 1928 (won by Herbert Hoover) she and Calvin tried to retire to a quiet life in New England. She spent a good deal of time in reaction to her discovery of so little information from previous First Ladies by compiling a manuscript of her own years there, events, incidents and anecdotes, typing it out herself. Two excerpts were printed in Good Housekeeping magazine, and the entire book was published in the 1990s.
Calvin died of a heart attack in 1933 leaving Grace a widow for the next 25 years. She was easy with being on her own (although Coolidge’s former chief of staff actually proposed to her, which she declined), staying mostly clear of politics. She learned to drive, finally got to fly in a plane, and arranged that 1 home game a year, the Red Sox would donate part of the day’s ticket sales to Clarke School for the Deaf. Spoke out strongly and repeatedly in support of the war effort in World War II but was distressed at its ending and the use of the atomic bomb. In reaction she became a very public proponent and supporter of the United Nations. Passed away in 1957.
Legal & Lawyer Lighter Moment #4 (Same rule on mouth liquids applies….)
ATTORNEY: Doctor , how many of your autopsies have you performed on dead people?
WITNESS: All of them. The live ones put up too much of a fight.
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ATTORNEY: ALL your responses MUST be oral, OK? What school did you go to?
WITNESS: Oral…
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ATTORNEY: Do you recall the time that you examined the body?
WITNESS: The autopsy started around 8:30 PM
ATTORNEY: And Mr. Denton was dead at the time?
WITNESS: If not, he was by the time I finished.
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ATTORNEY: Are you qualified to give a urine sample?
WITNESS: Are you qualified to ask that question?
_____________________________________
And last:
ATTORNEY: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: Did you check for blood pressure?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: Did you check for breathing?
WITNESS: No..
ATTORNEY: So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: How can you be so sure, Doctor?
WITNESS: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.
ATTORNEY: I see, but could the patient have still been alive, nevertheless?
WITNESS: Yes, it is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law.
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May all your news be Good, comforting and inspiring.
Shalom.
