Why is it that you can buy $50 or $60 worth of gasoline with a credit card without showing anyone the card or signing, but still have to sign, say for $15 worth of pizza?
There’s actually a reason. The credit card companies have exempted certain categories of merchants from the signature requirement and, after all, those gasoline purchases are authorized electronically.
Credit card companies do not require you to show ID. In fact, their rules prohibit a merchant from denying a credit card transaction because you refuse to show ID. They do require your card to be signed and they do expect the cashier to verify some commonality between the card signature and the signature on the receipt (ha, good luck with that).
Putting “Ask for ID” on your credit card instead of your signature is not acceptable and your card should not be accepted without a signature according to the credit card companies. Besides, who wants to be flashing their driver’s license (with your address, etc.) to every Tom, Dick and Sally that asks for ID? You don’t have to according to Visa, Master Card, etc. The credit card companies discourage the use of ID because the ID and the card taken together provide not only the card number but, more than likely, the billing address. And nearly everyone these days has a camera in their pocket if they get a moment with the card and ID out of your sight.
None of the above applies at Best Buy however, which requires a DNA sample for a credit card purchase.
No matter what the stores call their sales, the federal holiday today — the reason there is no mail delivery — is Washington’s Birthday. There is no such federal holiday as Presidents’ Day.
If there had been a calendar on the wall the day George Washington was born, it would have read February 11, 1731. In 1752 however, Britain and her colonies converted from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar, the calendar we use today. The change added 11 days and designated January rather than March as the beginning of the year. Accordingly, Washington’s birthday became February 22, 1732.
A federal holiday was celebrated on February 22 from its approval in 18791 until legislation in 1968 designated the third Monday of February the official day to celebrate Washington’s birthday.
The states are not obliged to adopt federal holidays, which only affect federal offices and agencies. While most states have adopted Washington’s Birthday, a dozen of them officially celebrate Presidents’ Day. A number of the states that celebrate Washington’s Birthday also recognize Lincoln’s Birthday as a separate legal holiday.2
14 weeks until the next holiday.
___________
1 Washington’s Birthday was the fifth federal legal holiday. Only New Year’s Day, Independence Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas Day preceded it. There are 10 now, but Labor Day will be eliminated soon.
2 There is no state holiday today in New Mexico. The state chooses to celebrate Presidents’ Day the day after Thanksgiving.
Our greatest president was born 205 years ago today. It seems a good reason to read, once again, some of his most meaningful words — read them slowly and meticulously, perhaps almost saying them aloud as he did.
The Address at Gettysburg (November 19, 1863):
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met here on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of it as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But in a larger sense we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled, here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they have, thus far, so nobly carried on. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom; and that this government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
And, from his Second Inaugural Address (March 4, 1865):
Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. “Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.” If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.
George Gershwin’s phenomenal blending of jazz and classical music, premiered at Aeolian Hall, in New York City, on February 12, 1924, 90 years ago tonight. Gershwin wrote the piece in three weeks, reportedly improvising some of the piano parts during the premiere.
Rhapsody in Blue was one of NPR’s 100 most important American musical works of the 20th century. You can listen to the NPR report from NPR Music.
This video (audio with photographs actually) is an acoustic recording made in June 1924 with Paul Whiteman and his Orchestra with Ross Gorman playing the clarinet opening as he did during the premier, and the composer at the piano.
It sure as hell ought to be a national holiday. Not only the debut of “Rhapsody in Blue” (1924), Abraham Lincoln (1809) and Charles Darwin (1809), but it’s the birthday of Bill Russell for heaven’s sake! And Alice Roosevelt! And Omar Bradley!
[Note, I used “heaven” and “hell” in the same short paragraph. And some of you think I am not religious.]
Bill Russell - Sportsman of the Year - December 23, 1968
Bill Russell is 80. Back-to-back NCAA championships at the University of San Francisco, 1955-1956 — 55 consecutive wins. Eleven NBA championships with the Celtics in 13 years, 1957-1969 — Russell was the only player there for all 11. Simply the greatest winner in basketball history. (And the best laugh.)
Today is also the birthday
… of Joe Garagiola, 88.
… of author Judy Blume. She was born Judith Sussman 76 years ago today.
Ray Manzarek died last May; he would have been 75 today.
The Doors formed in the summer of 1965 around Morrison and Manzarek, who’d met at UCLA’s film school. A year later the group signed with Elektra Records, recording six landmark studio LPs and a live album for the label. They achieved popular success and critical acclaim for their 1967 debut, The Doors (which included their eleven-minute epic “The End” and “Light My Fire,” a Number One hit at the height of the Summer of Love), and all the other albums that followed.
Lorne Greene (aka Ben Cartwright) was born on this date in 1915.
One of four appearances of John L. Lewis on the cover of Time, this from December 1946.
John L. Lewis was born on February 12, 1880. Lewis was president of the United Mine Workers (UMW), 1920-1960. In the 1930s, with others, he formed the Congress of Industrial Organizations. The CIO lead the unionization of steel, rubber, auto, glass, electrical equipment and meat industries. He withdrew the UMW from the CIO however, supported Wilkie against FDR in 1940, and took his miners out on strike during World War II. He remained popular with miners, of course, but his reputation and that of organized labor suffered. Even so, Lewis was awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964.
Alice Roosevelt Longworth, Teddy Roosevelt’s daughter and Speaker of the House Nicholas Longworth’s wife, was born on February 12th in 1884. Ms. Longworth was prominent in Washington until her death in 1980. This despite the fact — or maybe because of it — that her only child was not with her husband, but a result of her affair with Senator William Borah. Embroidered on her sofa pillow was “If you haven’t got anything good to say about anybody, come sit next to me.”
Omar Bradley, the G.I General, was born on this date in 1893.
General Omar Bradley - Time - December 4, 1944
Except for his original division assignments, Bradley won his wartime advancement on the battlefield, commanding American soldiers in North Africa, Sicily, across the Normandy beaches, and into Germany itself. His understated personal style of command left newsmen with little to write about, especially when they compared him to the more flamboyant among the Allied commanders, but his reputation as a fighter was secure among his peers and particularly with General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Supreme Commander, who considered him indispensable.
Self-effacing and quiet, Bradley showed a concern for the men he led that gave him the reputation as the “soldier’s general.” That same concern made him the ideal choice in 1945 to reinvigorate the Veterans Administration and prepare it to meet the needs of millions of demobilized servicemen. After he left active duty, both political and military leaders continued to seek Bradley’s advice. Perhaps more importantly, he remained in close touch with the Army and served its succeeding generations as the ideal model of a professional soldier.
And it’s the birthday of artist Thomas Moran, born on this date in 1837. The National Gallery of Art has an outstanding online exhibit on Moran. Click the image for a larger replica of his classic painting “Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone.”
… was proclaimed a national monument on this date in 1933. It became a national park in 1994.
In this below-sea-level basin, steady drought and record summer heat make Death Valley a land of extremes. Yet, each extreme has a striking contrast. Towering peaks are frosted with winter snow. Rare rainstorms bring vast fields of wildflowers. Lush oases harbor tiny fish and refuge for wildlife and humans. Despite its morbid name, a great diversity of life survives in Death Valley.
On any given summer day, the valley floor shimmers silently in the heat. For five months of the year unmerciful heat dominates the scene, and for the next seven the heat releases its grip only slightly. Rain rarely gets past the guardian mountains, but the little rain that does fall is the life force of the wildflowers that transform the desert into a vast garden.
Despite the harshness and severity of the environment, more than 1000 kinds of plants live within the park. Those on the valley floor have adapted to a desert life by a variety of means. Some have roots that go down 10 times the height of a person. Some plants have a root system that lies just below the surface but extends out in all directions. Others have leaves and stems that allow very little evaporation and loss of life giving water.
From the Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, 209 years ago today:
Meriwether Lewis:
The party that were ordered last evening set out early this morning. the weather was fair and could wind N. W. about five oclock this evening one of the wives of Charbono was delivered of a fine boy. it is worthy of remark that this was the first child which this woman had boarn and as is common in such cases her labour was tedious and the pain violent; Mr. Jessome informed me that he had freequently adminstered a small portion of the rattle of the rattle-snake, which he assured me had never failed to produce the desired effect, that of hastening the birth of the child; having the rattle of a snake by me I gave it to him and he administered two rings of it to the woman broken in small pieces with the fingers and added to a small quantity of water. Whether this medicine was truly the cause or not I shall not undertake to determine, but I was informed that she had not taken it more than ten minutes before she brought forth perhaps this remedy may be worthy of future experiments, but I must confess that I want faith as to it’s efficacy.—
Background by Journals editor:
Jean Baptiste Charbonneau would have a varied and lengthy career on the frontier, starting with his role as the youngest member of the Corps of Discovery. Clark nicknamed him Pomp or “Pompy,” and named Pompey’s Pillar (more properly Clark’s “Pompy’s Tower”) on the Yellowstone after him in 1806. Clark offered to educate the boy as if he were his own son, and apparently took him into his own home in St. Louis when the child was about six. In 1823 he attracted the notice of the traveling Prince Paul of Wurttemburg, who took him to Europe for six years. On his return to the United States he became a mountain man and fur trader, and later a guide for such explorers and soldiers as John C. Frémont, Philip St. George Cooke, W. H. Emory, and James Abert. He eventually settled in California and died in Oregon while traveling to Montana in 1866.
Abraham Lincoln made these remarks in Springfield before boarding the train for Washington 153 years ago today. He transcribed them on the train — it’s Lincoln’s handwriting at first, then his secretary John Nicolay’s. The movement of the train is seen in the scrawl. Click image for a larger version. The text is below.
My friends—No one, not in my situation, can appreciate my feeling of sadness at this parting. To this place, and the kindness of these people, I owe every thing. Here I have lived a quarter of a century, and have passed from a young to an old man. Here my children have been born, and one is buried. I now [2] leave, not knowing when, or whether ever, I may return, with a task before me greater than that which rested upon Washington. Without the assistance of that Divine Being, who ever attended him, I cannot succeed. With that assistance I cannot fail. Trusting in Him, who can go with me, and remain with you and be every where for good, [3] let us confidently hope that all will yet be well. To His care commending you, as I hope in your prayers you will commend me, I bid you an affectionate farewell
Scott was the case where the Supreme Court ruled that persons of African descent could never be citizens of the United States whether free or slave and that the federal government had no constitutional authority to limit slavery in the territories.
King William III and Queen Mary II granted the charter to found William and Mary 321 years ago today.
The College of William & Mary is the second-oldest college in America. The original plans for the College date back to 1618—decades before Harvard—but were derailed by an “Indian uprising.” We couldn’t make this stuff up.
On February 8, 1693, King William III and Queen Mary II of England signed the charter for a “perpetual College of Divinity, Philosophy, Languages, and other good Arts and Sciences” to be founded in the Virginia Colony. And William & Mary was born.
Workers began construction on the Sir Christopher Wren Building, then known simply as the College Building in 1695, before the town of Williamsburg even existed. Over the next two centuries, the Wren Building would burn on three separate occasions, each time being re-built inside the original walls. That makes the Wren the oldest college building in America, and possibly the most flammable.
The College has been called “the Alma Mater of a Nation” because of its close ties to America’s founding fathers. A 17-year-old George Washington received his surveyor’s license through the College and would return as its first American chancellor. Thomas Jefferson received his undergraduate education here, as did presidents John Tyler and James Monroe. [And NewMexiKen daughters Jill and Emily.]
William & Mary is famous for its firsts: the first U.S. institution with a Royal Charter, the first Greek-letter society (Phi Beta Kappa, founded in 1776), the first student honor code and the first law school in America.
The College became a state-supported school in 1906 and went coed in 1918. In 1928, John D. Rockefeller, Jr. chose the Wren as the first building to be returned to its 18th-century appearance as part of the iconic Colonial Williamsburg restoration.
… “An act to provide for the allotment of lands in severalty to Indians on the various reservations…” was approved by President Grover Cleveland on this date in 1887.
Named for its chief author, Senator Henry Laurens Dawes from Massachusetts, the Dawes Severalty Act reversed the long-standing American policy of allowing Indian tribes to maintain their traditional practice of communal use and control of their lands. Instead, the Dawes Act gave the president the power to divide Indian reservations into individual, privately owned plots. The act dictated that men with families would receive 160 acres, single adult men were given 80 acres, and boys received 40 acres. Women received no land.
The most important motivation for the Dawes Act was Anglo-American hunger for Indian lands. The act provided that after the government had doled out land allotments to the Indians, the sizeable remainder of the reservation properties would be opened for sale to whites. Consequently, Indians eventually lost 86 million acres of land, or 62 percent of their total pre-1887 holdings.
This Day in History
The allotment of lands ended in 1934. The problems The Dawes Act created continue in perpetuity.
Here are two from February 7th and 8th eight years ago (2006).
Kings and Queen
NewMexiKen viewed the French film Kings and Queen (Rois et reine) last evening. I’m not even certain why I added it to my Netflix queue, but I’m glad I did. The film is in French with English subtitles; it runs about 150 minutes.
The movie is essentially about Nora (Emmanuelle Devos), a beautiful 35-year-old art gallery manager and single mother. It details her past and present relationships with her eleven-year-old son, her dying father, her first (and dead) husband, and her second husband, the erratic and unstable Ismaël (Mathieu Amalric).
This is a film about relationships — with lovers, children, siblings, co-workers — and that relationships often are not what they seem. The movie is long enough that the viewer begins to think they know Nora and Ismaël — and the father and others — but not so.
The contrasting personalities of Nora and Ismaël are study enough to make the film interesting. Catherine Deneuve in a brief appearance as the psychiatrist, Mme. Vasset, is a bonus. “You’re very beautiful,”says Ismaël. “I’ve been told,” says Mme. Vasset.
Recommended for a contemplative evening, though the film is not without humor. (There are no ‘splosions or car chases.)
Yesterday
Tonight NewMexiKen watched another outstanding foreign film that I had somehow added to my Netflix queue — Yesterday, a film I watched in Zulu with English subtitles.
As with many foreign films, the action here moves at an unhurried, less frentic pace than so much American film-making, where camera movement and split-second cut-aways resemble nothing more than 8mm home movies. In Yesterday, the camera stays on a subject long enough for the viewer to enter the character, to begin to understand (perhaps) and empathize (perhaps).*
Yesterday is the name of the lead character, a small-village Zulu woman of about 25, played by the beautiful actress Leleti Khumalo. Yesterday has a five-year-old daughter, Beauty, and a husband, John, working in the mines in Johannesburg. The movie opens with the mother and daughter walking (for more two hours we learn) so that Yesterday can visit the doctor. As the movie progresses, we learn that Yesterday is very sick — about half-way through the film we learn she is HIV positive.
What follows is an extraordinarily powerful story of sadness, friendship, fear, pain, courage and love — but never really anger. If there are saints on this planet (and I believe there are), then Yesterday is surely among them.
Not to be missed.
* (It’s interesting to contrast Yesterday, an African-made movie, with the otherwise excellent The Constant Gardener, a European film about Africa, where the camera movement is so rapid, that NewMexiKen actually felt nauseated.)
There are few moving cars in this film, so no car chases, and few men, too, so no ‘splosions.
NewMexiKen wouldn’t have missed this film, but I must say I am in need of a comedy. Fortunately, Wedding Crashers is due to arrive from Netflix tomorrow.
With the headline Death Of Fred Douglass, The New York Times reported his death in 1895. It’s a fascinating contemporary article. An excerpt:
Frederick Douglass has been often spoken of as the foremost man of the African race in America. Though born and reared in slavery, he managed, through his own perseverance and energy, to win for himself a place that not only made him beloved by all members of his own race in America, but also won for himself the esteem and reverence of all fair-minded persons, both in this country and in Europe.
Mr. Douglass had been for many years a prominent figure in public life. He was of inestimable service to the members of his own race, and rendered distinguished service to his country from time to time in various important offices that he held under the Government.
He became well known, early in his career, as an orator upon subjects relating to slavery. He won renown by his oratorical powers both in the northern part of the United States and in England. He had become known before the civil war also as a journalist. So highly were his opinions valued that he was often consulted by President Lincoln, after the civil war began, upon questions relating to the colored race. He held important offices almost constantly from 1871 until 1891.
Mr. Douglass, perhaps more than any other man of his race, was instrumental in advancing the work of banishing the color line.
On this date in 1778, the United States and France signed the Treaty of Amity and Commerce. France recognized America as an independent nation and offered trade concessions. The two nations also signed a Treaty of Alliance, which stipulated that if France entered the war, neither country would lay down its arms until America won its independence, that neither would conclude peace with Britain without the consent of the other, and that each guaranteed the other’s possessions in America. This was the only bilateral defense treaty signed by the United States until 1949 (NATO).
“I believe in the Church of Baseball. I’ve tried all the major religions, and most of the minor ones. I’ve worshipped Buddha, Allah, Brahma, Vishnu, Siva, trees, mushrooms, and Isadora Duncan. I know things. For instance, there are 108 beads in a Catholic rosary and there are 108 stitches in a baseball. When I heard that, I gave Jesus a chance….”
Annie Savoy
Pitchers and catchers begin reporting in two weeks.
Jeanne, official friend of NewMexiKen, sent this along back in 2008. Thought it was worth reposting.
Look at the photo above. Click the image for a larger version.
You can see where the truck broke through the guardrail, to the right where the people are standing on the road pointing. The pick-up was traveling from right to left when it crashed through the guardrail. It flipped end-over-end, across the culvert outlet, and landed right side up on the left side of the culvert, facing the opposite direction from which it was traveling.
Two people I worked closely with are retiring today.
I was going to send them an article from the Wall Street Journal’s The Wallet about retirement coaches.
But then I remembered, when I was ready to retire I was more interested in getting a retirement couch.
“[T]hose who meditated for about 30 minutes a day for eight weeks had measurable changes in gray-matter density in parts of the brain associated with memory, sense of self, empathy and stress.”
How Meditation May Change the Brain – NYTimes.com
I can’t remember the last time I meditated and I don’t understand the people who do meditate. Life is too busy. Who has time for that shit?
“[M]ost people get worse as they grow older, because they become more like themselves.”
Paul Krugman stating a particular example from Issawi’s Law on the conservation of evil.
Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart was born in Salzburg on this date in 1756. Theophilus—or Gottlieb—or Amadé means “loved by God.” As an adult Mozart signed Wolfgang Amadé Mozart or simply Mozart. In the family he was known as Wolfgangerl or Woferl.
The actor James Cromwell is 74. Cromwell was nominated for the best supporting actor Oscar for Babe. So the pig had the lead role?
Mikhail Baryshnikov is 66.
Chief Justice John Roberts is 59 today.
Cris Collinsworth is 55
Keith Olbermann is 55.
Margo Timmins of the Cowboy Junkies is 53. At 29 People thought she was one of the 50 most beautiful.
Peter Fonda’s daughter — Henry Fonda’s granddaughter — Bridget is 50.
Patton Oswalt is 45.
Oscar-winner Donna Reed was born in Denison, Iowa, on January 27, 1921. She won for a supporting role in From Here to Eternity.
Donna Reed as Alma: I do mean it when I say I need you. ‘Cause I’m lonely. You think I’m lying, don’t you? Montgomery Clift as Robert E. Lee “Prew’ Prewitt: Nobody ever lies about being lonely.
1992 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Elmore James was born on January 27th in 1918.
Bluesman Elmore James was inspired by the local performances of Robert Johnson to take up the guitar. It was, in fact, a number by Johnson (“Dust My Broom”) that became James’ signature song and laid the foundation for his recording career. First cut by James in August 1951, “Dust My Broom” contains the strongest example of his stylistic signature: a swooping, full-octave opening figure on slide guitar. His influence went beyond that one riff, however, as he’s been virtually credited with inventing blues rock by virtue of energizing primal riffs with a raw, driving intensity.
Rickover underwent submarine training between January and June 1930. His service as head of the Electrical Section in the Bureau of Ships during World War II brought him a Legion of Merit and gave him experience in directing large development programs, choosing talented technical people, and working closely with private industry.
Assigned to the Bureau of Ships in September 1947, Rickover received training in nuclear power at Oak Ridge Tennessee and worked with the bureau to explore the possibility of nuclear ship propulsion.
In February 1949 he received an assignment to the Division of Reactor Development, U.S. Atomic Energy Commission and then assumed control of the Navy’s effort as Director of the Naval Reactors Branch in the Bureau of Ships. This twin role enabled him to lead the effort to develop the world’s first nuclear-powered submarine, USS Nautilus (SSN-571). The latter joined the fleet in January 1955.
Promoted to the rank of Vice Admiral by 1958, Rickover exerted tremendous personal influence over the nuclear Navy in both an engineering and cultural sense. His views touched matters of design, propulsion, education, personnel, and professional standards. In every sense, he played the role of father to the nuclear fleet, its officers, and its men.
After sixty-four years of service, Rickover retired from the Navy as a full admiral on 19 January 1982.
… Then he met Oscar Hammerstein II, who became a lifelong friend, and the two collaborated on Show Boat in 1927. This musical gave us the songs “Ol’ Man River” and “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man.” In 1933, Kern and Hammerstein produced Roberta, which included the famous song “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes.”
Kern moved to Hollywood in 1935, and he enjoyed success there. He wrote “The Way You Look Tonight” for the movie Swing Time, and the song won an Academy Award. In 1941, Kern and Hammerstein wrote “The Last Time I Saw Paris” because Paris had just been occupied by Nazi Germany, and that song also won an Academy Award.
Billings Learned Hand was born on this date in 1872.
Learned Hand served as a federal judge longer than any other man—52 years. His opinions were prodigious, totaled more than 2,000, covering every phase of the law from maritime liens to complicated antitrust cases. His tart observations (“Judges can be damned fools like anybody else”) were treasured. On the bench. Judge Hand was a formidable figure, a stocky man with the broad shoulders of his Kentish forebears, glittering eyes under dense brows, and craggy features that might have been carved by Gutzon Berglum. Intolerant of lawyers who strayed from the point or became too verbose. Judge Hand sent wayward attorneys scampering back to the facts with an acid query—”May I inquire, sir, what are you trying to tell us?”—or just a furious “Rubbish!”‘ Once, confronting the ferocious old judge at a Yale Law School moot court, a terrified student fainted dead away.
In writing his decisions. Hand followed the meticulous painstaking procedure that he demanded in his court. He invariably wrote three or four drafts of every opinion in longhand on yellow foolscap before the language and reasoning finally satisfied him. His opinions cut to the marrow of the issue and proceeded eloquently but rapidly to the point. Hand’s famed 28-page opinion on United States v. Aluminum Co. of America, in which he ruled that “good” monopolies had no more legality than “bad” monopolies, was distilled from 40,000 pages and four years of testimony, has been a model for every subsequent antitrust suit.
Friedrich Wilhelm Viktor Albrecht von Preußen was born on this date in 1859. His mother was Victoria, Princess Royal of the United Kingdom, and his father was Prince Frederick Wilhelm of Prussia. He was the first grandchild of Queen Victoria. Wilhelm became King of Prussia and German Emperor in 1888. He abdicated in November 1918, but lived until 1941.
And he would become two-thirds of a tweed-wearing Englishman when he was in England. Then he’d go back to Berlin and he’d become a Prussian prince dressing up in German uniforms – eventually a German emperor, with even more uniforms. He had this really split personality. But the interesting and most important thing for European diplomacy and the future of the continent – which was going to lead up to the First World War – was Wilhelm’s admiration and envy of the British navy. He was from an almost landlocked country, which didn’t have and didn’t need a navy and yet he was taught to love the sea and ships.
“He was a symbol of a political system that was out of control. There was no one authority that actually could operate, even though the law said that he was it. So, when the time came for major decisions to make, you both have a vision that the Kaiser’s hysterical, and that he makes the decisions.
“The answer is probably both, and neither, because the real core of the German Empire is the army and the navy. They run the show before the First World War behind the scenes. They run it during the war from the Front.”
Edward Smith, the captain of the RMS Titanic, was born on this date in 1850. He went down with his ship on April 15, 1912.
Samuel Gompers was born in London in 1850 and came to New York in 1863.
Samuel Gompers was the first and longest-serving president of the American Federation of Labor (AFL); it is to him, as much as to anyone else, that the American labor movement owes its structure and characteristic strategies. Under his leadership, the AFL became the largest and most influential labor federation in the world. It grew from a marginal association of 50,000 in 1886 to an established organization of nearly 3 million in 1924 that had won a permanent place in American society. In a society renowned for its individualism and the power of its employer class, he forged a self-confident workers’ organization dedicated to the principles of solidarity and mutual aid. It was a singular achievement.
. . .
As a local and national labor leader, Gompers sought to build the labor movement into a force powerful enough to transform the economic, social and political status of America’s workers. To do so, he championed three principles. First, he advocated craft or trades unionism, which restricted union membership to wage earners and grouped workers into locals based on their trade or craft identification. This approach contrasted with the effort of many in the Knights of Labor to organize general, community-based organizations open to wage earners as well as others, including employers. It also contrasted sharply with the “one big union” philosophy of the Industrial Workers of the World.
Second, Gompers believed in a pure-and-simple unionism that focused primarily on economic rather than political reform as the best way of securing workers’ rights and welfare. Gompers’s faith in legislative reform was dashed in the 1880s after the New York Supreme Court overturned two laws regulating tenement production of cigars that he had helped pass. Gompers saw that what the state gave, it could also take away. But what workers secured through their own economic power in the marketplace, no one could take away.
Third, when political action was necessary, as Gompers increasingly came to believe in his later years, he urged labor to follow a course of “political nonpartisanship.” He argued that the best way of enhancing the political leverage of labor was to articulate an independent political agenda, seek the endorsement of existing political parties for the agenda and mobilize members to vote for those supporting labor’s agenda.
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson was born January 27, 1832. We know him as Lewis Carroll.
“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”
“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.
“I don’t much care where—” said Alice.
“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.
John Chivington was born on this date in 1821.
The hero of Glorietta Pass and the butcher of Sand Creek, John M. Chivington stands out as one of the most controversial figures in the history of the American West.
. . .
When the Civil War broke out, Colorado’s territorial governor, William Gilpin, offered Chivington a commission as a chaplain, but he declined the “praying” commission and asked for a “fighting” position instead. In 1862, Chivington, by that point a Major in the first Colorado Volunteer Regiment, played a critical role in defeating confederate forces at Glorietta Pass in eastern New Mexico, where his troops rapelled down the canyon walls in a surprise attack on the enemy’s supply train. He was widely hailed as a military hero.
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A month later, while addressing a gathering of church deacons, he dismissed the possibility of making a treaty with the Cheyenne: “It simply is not possible for Indians to obey or even understand any treaty. I am fully satisfied, gentlemen, that to kill them is the only way we will ever have peace and quiet in Colorado.”
Several months later, Chivington made good on his genocidal promise. During the early morning hours of November 29, 1864, he led a regiment of Colorado Volunteers to the Cheyenne’s Sand Creek reservation, where a band led by Black Kettle, a well-known “peace” chief, was encamped. Federal army officers had promised Black Kettle safety if he would return to the reservation, and he was in fact flying the American flag and a white flag of truce over his lodge, but Chivington ordered an attack on the unsuspecting village nonetheless. After hours of fighting, the Colorado volunteers had lost only 9 men in the process of murdering between 200 and 400 Cheyenne, most of them women and children. After the slaughter, they scalped and sexually mutilated many of the bodies, later exhibiting their trophies to cheering crowds in Denver.
“Osama bin Laden released his first new audiotaped message in over a year. While there is some new material in the message, insiders say it’s mostly a Greatest Threats collection. A White House spokesman says they plan to check out the message in its entirety, but they’re too busy listening to your phone calls.”
One of the most important songwriters of the 20th century, Antônio Carlos Brasileiro de Almeida Jobim was born on January 25, 1927. The Brazilian was the primary force behind bossa nova and was especially influential in the U.S., most notably for “The Girl from Ipanema (Garota de Ipanema)” which he composed. Others include “Corcovado” (Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars), “Desafinado” (Slightly Out of Tune) and “Samba de Uma Nota Só” (One Note Samba). Jobim died in 1994.
Pro Football Hall of Fame member Lou Groza was born on January 25, 1924. He played for Ohio State and the Cleveland Browns (1946-1959, 1961-1967). How good was Groza? The award for best college place kicker each years is the Lou Groza Award. Groza died in 2000.
William Earnest “Ernie” Harwell was born 96 years ago today. Harwell broadcast baseball games from 1948-2002, primarily in Detroit (1960-1991, 1993-2002). For decades he was one of the best things about Detroit. Harwell died in 2010. In 1981, Harwell, was recipient of the Baseball Hall of Fame’s Ford C. Frick Award, just the fifth announcer so honored.
Harwell made his major league debut in 1948 after becoming the only broadcaster who ever figured in a baseball trade. Earl Mann, President of the Atlanta Crackers, agreed to let him go to Brooklyn if Branch Rickey would send Montreal catcher Cliff Dapper to Atlanta to manage the club. Harwell also worked for the New York Giants and for the Baltimore Orioles before coming to Detroit in 1960. . . .
Virginia Woolf was born Adeline Virginia Stephen on January 25th in 1882. She married Leonard Woolf in 1912.
I feel certain that I am going mad again. I feel we can’t go through another of those terrible times. And I shan’t recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I can’t concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I don’t think two people could have been happier ’til this terrible disease came. I can’t fight any longer. I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work. And you will I know. You see I can’t even write this properly. I can’t read. What I want to say is I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that – everybody knows it. If anybody could have saved me it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can’t go on spoiling your life any longer. I don’t think two people could have been happier than we have been. V.
Woolf’s note to her husband just before she drowned herself in 1941.
Charles Curtis was born in Kansas on this date in 1860. Curtis was the 31st vice president of the United States, serving under President Herbert Hoover, 1929-1933. Curtis is the first person with non-European ancestry to ever serve as President or Vice President. His mother was part Kansa or Kaw, Osage and Potawatomi and part French. Curtis had a one-eighth Indian blood quantum.
George Edward Pickett was born on this date in 1825. He was 59th out of 59 in the Class of 1846 class at West Point, but was a hero at the Battle of Chapultepec in September 1847. On July 3, 1863, Maj. Gen. Pickett was one of three Confederate generals under Gen. James Longstreet who led their men against the Union forces on Cemetery Ridge outside Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Pickett’s division suffered over 50% casualties. All three of Pickett’s brigade commanders and all 13 of his regimental commanders were casualties. Pickett himself lived until 1875.
Robert Burns was born on this date 254 years ago.
The wintry west extends his blast,
And hail and rain does blaw;
Or the stormy north sends driving forth
The blinding sleet and snaw:
While, tumbling brown, the burn comes down,
And roars frae bank to brae;
And bird and beast in covert rest,
And pass the heartless day.
“The sweeping blast, the sky o’ercast,”
The joyless winter day
Let others fear, to me more dear
Than all the pride of May:
The tempest’s howl, it soothes my soul,
My griefs it seems to join;
The leafless trees my fancy please,
Their fate resembles mine!
Thou Power Supreme, whose mighty scheme
These woes of mine fulfil,
Here firm I rest; they must be best,
Because they are Thy will!
Then all I want-O do Thou grant
This one request of mine!-
Since to enjoy Thou dost deny,
Assist me to resign.
… was discovered by James W. Marshall on the property of Johann Sutter near Coloma, California, 166 years ago today (1848). By the end of the year the rush was on and nearly 100,000 people arrived in California in 1849.
But these days, as The Gatlin Brothers sang —
All the gold in California
Is in a bank in the middle of Beverly Hills
In somebody else’s name
Around 1100 A.D. ancient peoples embarked on an ambitious building project along the Animas River in northwestern New Mexico. Work gangs excavated, filled, and leveled more than two and a half acres of land. Masons laid out sandstone blocks in intricate patterns to form massive stone walls. Wood-workers cut and carried heavy log beams from mountain forests tens of miles away. In less than three decades they built a monumental “great house” three-stories high, longer than a football field, with perhaps 500-rooms including a ceremonial “great kiva” over 41-feet in diameter.
A short trail winds through this massive site offering a surprisingly intimate experience. Along the way visitors discover roofs built 880 years ago, original plaster walls, a reed mat left by the inhabitants, intriguing “T” shaped doorways, provocative north-facing corner doors, and more. The trail culminates with the reconstructed great kiva, a building that inherently inspires contemplation, wonder, and an ancient sense of sacredness.
Ancestral Puebloans related to those from the Chaco region farther south built an extensive community at this site beginning in the late 1000s A.D. Over the course of two centuries, the people built several multi-story structures called “great houses,” small residential pueblos, tri-wall kivas, great kivas, road segments, middens, and earthworks. The West Ruin, the remains of the largest structure that they built and which has since been partially excavated, had at least 450 interconnected rooms built around an open plaza. Several rooms contain the original wood used to build the roof. After living in the area about 200 years, the people left at about 1300 A.D.
Tonight NewMexiKen watched another outstanding foreign film that I had somehow added to my Netflix queue — Yesterday, a film I watched in Zulu with English subtitles. 
