“In the first two weeks since the election, President-elect Barack Obama has broken with a tradition established over the past eight years through his controversial use of complete sentences, political observers say.”
Click and read it all the way to the end.
“This year we celebrate the desacralized ‘holidays’ amid what is for many unprecedented economic ruin — fortunes halved, jobs lost, homes foreclosed. People wonder, What happened? One man’s theory: A nation whose people can’t say ‘Merry Christmas’ is a nation capable of ruining its own economy.”
Merry F’n Christmas.
… was born on this date in 1904.
As writer Len Weinstock noted,
Hawkins himself didn’t think there was anything outstanding about his Body and Soul saying “it was nothing special, just an encore I use in the clubs to get off the stand. I thought nothing of it and didn’t even bother to listen to it afterwards”. But the solo, two choruses of beautifully conceived and perfecly balanced improvisation, caused an immediate sensation with musicians and the public. It is still the standard to which tenorists aspire. A parallel can be drawn between Hawkins’ Body and Soul and Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. Both were brief, lucid, eloquent and timeless masterpieces, yet tossed off by their authors as mere ephemera.
Lincoln well knew what he had done at Gettysburg, but it’s a nice analogy even so.
Hawkins died in 1969.
Once again from Five Acres with a View, a sunrise photo that merits your click.
Executive Mansion,
Washington, Nov. 21, 1864
Dear Madam, –I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts, that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle.
I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save.
I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours, to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of Freedom. Yours, very sincerely and respectfully,
A. Lincoln.
[As it turns out, this letter, made even more famous when read in the film Saving Private Ryan, may have been written by John Hay, Lincoln’s secretary. Further, only two of Mrs. Bixby’s five sons had died in battle. One was honorably discharged, one was dishonorably discharged, and another deserted or died in a prison camp. Not that losing three sons in whatever way isn’t horrible enough.]
Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and François Laurent, the marquis d’ Arlandes, flew in a untethered hot air balloon over Paris for 20 minutes on this date in 1783. The balloon was made of silk and paper and was constructed by Jacques Étienne and Joseph-Michel Montgolfier, who first took notice that smoke (i.e., hot air) would cause a bag to rise. The Montgolfiers experimented with paper bags before sending a balloon aloft with a sheep, a rooster and a duck (September 19, 1783). De Rozier went up in a tethered balloon on October 15.
But 225 years ago today, November 21, 1783, is the date man first flew, untethered to the earth.
The winds have welcomed you with softness,
The sun has blessed you with his warm hands
You have flown so high and so free,
That God has joined you in laughter,
And set you gently again,
Into the loving arms of mother earth.