… was first proclaimed a national monument by President Theodore Roosevelt under the Antiquities Act 105 years ago today (1906). It became a national park in 1962.
With one of the world’s largest and most colorful concentrations of petrified wood, multi-hued badlands of the Painted Desert, historic structures, archeological sites, and displays of 225 million year old fossils, this is a surprising land of scenic wonders and fascinating science.
Seven of which are in Texas and California. The eighth is in Indiana.
The 8 Biggest Wind Farms in the World
And here is a video on how they work.
http://vimeo.com/13759005
In the natural world, scientists have documented a vast range of shifts in biological behavior related to climate change, from birds laying their eggs earlier to bears emerging earlier from hibernation in time for the first blossom of spring.
As it turns out, humans are not excluded from such behavioral changes. Over the last 30 years, a new study has found, peak park attendance has shifted by about four days, probably in response to climate change.
“14 years is not a day too much for political corruption.”
Some 100 survivors of the attack on Pearl Harbor will gather in Hawaii today 70 years after the day which drew the US into World War II. The Japanese air and naval strike on the American military base claimed nearly 2,400 hundred lives, destroyed over 160 aircraft and beached, damaged or destroyed over 20 ships. President Franklin D. called it ” a date which will live in infamy” when he addressed the Congress the next day asking to declare war with Japan. — Lloyd Young (35 photos total)
Today is the birthday
… of Eli Wallach. Tuco is 96. “Hey Blondie, do you know what you are? You’re a stinking son of a….” [Theme starts.]
Wallach has more than 150 acting credits lidsted on IMDb.
… of Ellen Burstyn. Alice is 79. Ms. Burstyn has been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress five times, winning for Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore in 1975. She was also nominated for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for The Last Picture Show.
… of Johnny Bench. The Hall of Fame catcher is 64.
As one of the most impressive defensive catchers, Johnny Bench was also considered to be an outstanding hitter. A durable catcher, noted for his excellent baseball intelligence, Bench won 10 Gold Glove Awards, two Most Valuable Player Awards and the Rookie of the Year Award during his 17-year National League career. A skilled hitter, the 14-time All-Star selection belted 389 home runs and led the league in RBIs three times as a leader of the Big Red Machine teams of the 1970s.
… of Tom Waits. He’s 62. His voice is 138.
http://youtu.be/1ymBaAsSqDE
… of Larry Bird. The Basketball Hall of Famer is 55.
Harry Chapin was born on this date in 1942. He died in 1981. “Cat’s in the Cradle” was his only number one song.
My child arrived just the other day
He came to the world in the usual way
But there were planes to catch and bills to pay
He learned to walk while I was away
And he was talkin’ ‘fore I knew it, and as he grew
He’d say “I’m gonna be like you dad
You know I’m gonna be like you”
And the cat’s in the cradle and the silver spoon
Little boy blue and the man on the moon
When you comin’ home dad?
I don’t know when, but we’ll get together then son
You know we’ll have a good time then
Ted Knight, Ted Baxter of the Mary Tyler Moore Show, was born Tadeusz Wladyslaw Konopka on this date in 1923. He died in 1986. Knight received six Emmy nominations for playing Baxter; two wins.
Richard Warren Sears was born December 7, 1863, in Stewartville, Minnesota. In 1886, seeking to make some extra money, he took a number of watches on consignment and sold them all to fellow railroad stations agents. Within six months he quit the railroad and formed the R.W. Sears Watch Company, a mail-order business. He joined with watch repairman Alvah C. Roebuck the next year. Sears, Roebuck and Co. moved to Chicago in 1893.
Willa Cather was born in Back Creek Valley, Virginia, on this date in 1873. The following is from her New York TImes obituary in 1947.
One of the most distinguished of American novelists, Willa Sibert Cather wrote a dozen or more novels that will be long remembered for their exquisite economy and charm of manner. Her talent had its nourishment and inspiration in the American scene, the Middle West in particular, and her sensitive and patient understanding of that section of the country formed the basis of her work.
Much of her writing was conceived in something of an attitude of placid reminiscence. This was notably true of such early novels as “My Antonia” and “O Pioneers!” in which she told with minute detail of homestead life on the slowly conquered prairies.
Perhaps her most famous book was “A Lost Lady,” published in 1923. In it Miss Cather’s talents were said to have reached their full maturity. It is the story of the Middle West in the age of railway-building, of the charming wife of Captain Forrester, a retired contractor, and her hospitable and open-handed household as seen through the eyes of an adoring boy. The climax of the book, with the disintegration of the Forrester household and the slow coarsening of his wife, is considered a masterpiece of vivid, haunting prose.
Another of her famous books is “Death Comes for the Archbishop,” 1927, in which she tells in the form of a chronicle a simple story of two saints of the Southwest. Her novel, “One of Ours,” won the Pulitzer Prize in 1922.
http://youtu.be/10kL5oOiHRk
Navy dispatch from the ranking United States naval officer in Pearl Harbor, Commander in Chief Pacific (CINCPAC), to all major navy commands and fleet units provided the first official word of the attack at the ill-prepared Pearl Harbor 70 years ago this morning.
Eleven.
Born April 9, 2000.
Jackie Evancho.
She has 4 albums.
The video looks off, but that is her singing.
pourmecoffee says this is the video clip of the year. No dispute here.
Today is the birthday
… of Dave Brubeck. Dave’s taken five for 91 years.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwNrmYRiX_o
… of Tom Hulce. The actor who played Mozart in Amadeus is 58. (The film came out in 1984.) Hulce got an Oscar nomination for that performance. He shows up from time-to-time, but the only other role that comes to mind is as Larry Kroger in Animal House.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ciFTP_KRy4
… of Steven Wright. He’s 56.
… of Judd Apatow. The director is 44.
Tony Lazzeri was born on this date in 1903. He once hit for the natural cycle, one of only 14 players to do so. That’s a single, a double, a triple and a homerun in that order. (His home run was a grand slam.) Lazzeri was an all-star with the Yankees in the 1920s-1930s.
Agnes Moorehead was born on this date in 1900. She won an Emmy and two Golden Globe awards and had four Academy Award and six Emmy nominations. Ms. Moorehead was in Orson Welles’s War of the Worlds and Citizen Kane (she played Kane’s mother). She earned lasting fame in the Suspense broadcast of “Sorry, Wrong Number,” a stunning performance you must listen to! (Listen with the lights out.) Alas, she is probably most widely know now for playing Samantha’s mother Endora on Bewitched.
And there is this from Wikipedia: “Moorehead appeared in the 1956 movie The Conqueror, which was shot near Saint George, Utah– downwind from the Yucca Flat, Nevada nuclear test site. She was one of over 90 (of 220) cast and crew members–including costars Susan Hayward, John Wayne, and Pedro Armendariz, as well as director-producer Dick Powell–who, over their lifetimes, all developed cancer(s); at least 46 from cast and crew have since died from cancer(s), including all of those named above.”
One of America’s great lyricists, Ira Gershwin was born on this date in 1896.
Summertime
And the livin’ is easy,
Fish are jumpin’
And the cotton is high.
Oh yo’ daddy’s rich
An’ yo’ ma is good lookin’
So hush, little baby,
Don’t you cry.
[with Dubose Heyward]
*****
You’ve made my life so glamorous
You can’t blame me for feeling amorous.
Oh! ‘S wonderful! ‘S marvelous!
That you should care for me!
‘S wonderful! ‘S marvelous!
That you should care for me!
‘S awful nice! ‘S paradise!
‘S what I love to see!
*****
The way you wear your hat,
The way you sip your tea,
The mem’ry of all that —
No, no! They can’t take that away from me!
The way your smile just beams,
The way you sing off key,
The way you haunt my dreams —
No, no! They can’t take that away from me!
Alfred Joyce Kilmer was born on December 6th in 1886. He published his most famous poem in 1914.
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
John Singleton Mosby, the Gray Ghost, was born on this date in 1833. A Virginian, Mosby sided with his state during the secession. He organized a partisan ranger company, the 43rd Battalion, Virginia Cavalry, also known as Mosby’s Rangers or Mosby’s Raiders, and conducted what Union leaders considered to be guerilla raids in northern Virginia, from the Shenandoah Valley to the Potomac River. After the war, Mosby became politically aligned and friendly with Republican President Grant, was a successful lawyer, and entertained a young George S. Patton with Civil War stories. He lived until 1916.
That’s Kunstler’s painting Fairfax Raid, depicting Mosby’s daring saunter behind enemy lines on March 9, 1863. That morning he captured Union General Edwin H. Stoughton. According to a story reported in Wikipedia, “Mosby found Stoughton in bed and roused him with a slap to his rear. Upon being so rudely awakened the general shouted, ‘Do you know who I am?’ Mosby quickly replied, ‘Do you know Mosby, general?’ ‘Yes! Have you got the rascal?’ ‘No, but he has got you!” His group also captured 30 or more sentries without firing a shot.”
You can’t drive two miles in the Fairfax-Manassas, Virginia, area without seeing this or that Mosby shopping center, neighborhood, school and so on.
And you can’t walk past Jill’s dining room without seeing a nicely framed print of “Fairfax Raid.”
To get a glimpse of the future, look to East Africa today.
The Horn of Africa is in the midst of its worst drought in 60 years: Crop failures have left up to 10 million at risk of famine; social order has broken down in Somalia, with thousands of refugees streaming into Kenya; British Aid alone is feeding 2.4 million people across the region.
That’s a taste of what’s to come, say scientists mapping the impact of a warming planet on agriculture and civilization.
New Legislation in Honor of Making Things Easier for Rick Perry
Two Hos! for Santa is plenty. Look at the man! Does he look like he really needs three?
Peter, Paul, and … you know, the girl.
. . .Rock, paper and scissors now simply rock and another rock.
More LOL lines in this one.
Today is the birthday
… of Richard Penniman, born 79 years ago today (1932).
He claims to be “the architect of rock and roll,” and history would seem to bear out Little Richard’s boast. More than any other performer – save, perhaps, Elvis Presley, Little Richard blew the lid off the Fifties, laying the foundation for rock and roll with his explosive music and charismatic persona. On record, he made spine-tingling rock and roll. His frantically charged piano playing and raspy, shouted vocals on such classics as “Tutti Frutti,” “Long Tall Sally” and “Good Golly, Miss Molly” defined the dynamic sound of rock and roll. Onstage, he’d deliver wild, piano-pounding epistles while costumed in sequined vests, mascara, lipstick, and a pompadour that shook with every thundering beat. His road band, the Upsetters, has been credited by James Brown and others with first putting the funk in the rock and roll beat.
In a 1990 interview, Little Richard offered this explanation for the birth of rock: “I would say that boogie-woogie and rhythm & blues mixed is rock and roll.” . . .
Little Richard, 55 years ago.
… of Joan Didion and Calvin Trillin, two of America’s finest writers, both of whom have written movingly about the loss of their spouse. Didion is 77 and Trillin is 76.
[B]orn in Sacramento, California (1934). [Didion] was a shy girl, without too many friends. She loved to read and she was a good student, nothing special; she chose UC Berkeley because it was so big, and she wanted to be anonymous. She remembered herself at the age of 23: “Skirts too long, shy to the point of aggravation, always the injured party, full of recriminations and little hurts and stories I do not want to hear again.” As a senior at Berkeley, she won first place in an essay contest for Vogue, and her prize was a job at the magazine, where she started her writing career.
. . .A couple of months ago, she published a new memoir, Blue Nights (2011), about her relationship with her adopted daughter, Quintana Roo, who died just before the publication of The Year of Magical Thinking.
Eventually, [Trillin] was hired by The New Yorker. For 15 years, from 1967 to 1982, he traveled around the country writing a column for The New Yorker called U.S. Journal. He also writes about food, and has a humorous poetry column in The Nation.
He said, “The most remarkable thing about my mother is that for thirty years she served the family nothing but leftovers. The original meal has never been found.”
Both of the above excerpts from The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor.
… of James Lee Burke, author of the “Dave Robicheaux” detective novels. He’s 75.
… of John Weldon “J.J.” Cale, 73. The Grammy winner is the author of “Cocaine” and “After Midnight”.
Tenor José Carreras is 65. Jim Messina is 64. So is Heisman-winner Jim Plunkett.
Frankie Muniz is 26 today. Party on, Malcolm.
Walter Elias Disney was born 110 years ago today.
From his fertile imagination and industrious factory of drawing boards, Walt Elias Disney fashioned the most popular movie stars ever to come from Hollywood and created one of the most fantastic entertainment empires in history.
In return for the happiness he supplied, the world lavished wealth and tributes upon him. He was probably the only man in Hollywood to have been praised by both the American Legion and the Soviet Union.
Where any other Hollywood producer would have been happy to get one Academy Award–the highest honor in American movies–Mr. Disney smashed all records by accumulating 29 Oscars.
“We’re selling corn,” Mr. Disney once told a reporter, “and I like corn.”
David Low, the late British political cartoonist, called him “the most significant figure in graphic arts since Leonardo.”
Walt Disney, 65, Dies on Coast; Founded an Empire on a Mouse (1966)
Rose Wilder Lane was born on December 5, 1886. She is the daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder and Almanzo Wilder. She collaborated with her mother in writing the Little House books. She was also instrumental in founding the Libertarian movement.
Bill Pickett was born on December 5, 1870.
Bill Pickett…is credited with founding bulldogging or steer wrestling, as it is known today. Legend has it that Pickett resorted to biting the lip of a recalcitrant steer to wrestle it to the dirt to get it into the corral. Pickett moved from ranch work into the show arena in the 1890s, when he and his brother began the Pickett Brothers Bronco Busters and Rough Riders Show that toured fairs and rodeos. In 1907, Pickett was hired as a cowhand on the 101 Ranch in Oklahoma and participated in the Miller Brothers’ 101 Ranch Wild West Show. He worked on the ranch when he was not traveling with the Miller Brothers for more than 25 years. He died April 2, 1932, after being kicked in the head while breaking a colt at the ranch. He was later honored by the U.S. Postal Service, who featured Pickett on a stamp as part of its Legends of the West series.
One problem with the stamp. Artist Mark Hess depicted Bill’s brother Ben in the orginal artwork for the 1993 20-stamp panel Legends of the West. When the family notified the Postal Service, they had Hess re-do the art and withdrew 5 million panes of stamps (that’s 100 million stamps). Alas, some had already been sold and rather than create a rare collector’s item, the Postal Service sold 150,000 of the incorrect panels to create a not-so-rare collector’s item. The wrong stamp is worth about $150 today. (The Bill Pickett incident)
Ben on the left, Bill on the right.
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George Armstrong Custer was born on this date in 1839. The PBS series The West has a fair essay on his life, career and legacy.
Custer’s blunders cost him his life but gained him everlasting fame. His defeat at the Little Bighorn made the life of what would have been an obscure 19th century military figure into the subject of countless songs, books and paintings. His widow, Elizabeth Bacon Custer, did what she could to further his reputation, writing laudatory accounts of his life that portrayed him as not only a military genius but also a refined and cultivated man, a patron of the arts, and a budding statesman.
Martin Van Buren was born on December 5, 1782, in Kinderhook, New York. He was the tenth Secretary of State, eighth Vice President and eight President of the United States (1837-1841).
Just five feet six inches tall, with reddish-blond hair, Van Buren earned the nicknames “The Little Magician” and the “Red Fox of Kinderhook” for his legendary skill in political manipulation. Alongside his gift for politics, however, Van Buren harbored a sense of idealism that helped lead him, late in his career, to oppose the westward expansion of slavery.
Van Buren rose to national fame under the wing of Andrew Jackson, who defeated President John Quincy Adams in Adams’ 1828 bid for a second term. Before coming to Washington as a senator in 1821, Van Buren crafted the powerful New York political machine known as the “Albany Regency.” In 1825, he put his formidable political skills at Jackson’s disposal.
Having assembled the coalition that made possible “Old Hickory”‘s ascension to the presidency in 1828, Van Buren was rewarded with an appointment as secretary of state. The election, the first in which a candidate directly appealed for the popular vote, marked a turning point in American politics and confirmed the emergence of the Democratic Party as heir to the Jeffersonian Republicans.
The 21st Amendment was ratified by the 36th state on this date 78 years ago (1933), thereby repealing the 18th Amendment.
On December 5, 1776, Phi Beta Kappa, America’s most prestigious undergraduate honor society, was founded at The College of William and Mary in Virginia. Membership in the organization is based on outstanding achievement in the liberal arts and sciences and typically limited to students in the upper tenth of their graduating class.
Organized by a group of enterprising undergraduates, Phi Beta Kappa was the nation’s first Greek letter society. From 1776 to 1780, members met regularly at William and Mary to write, debate, and socialize. They also planned the organization’s expansion and established the characteristics typical of American fraternities and sororities: an oath of secrecy, a code of laws, mottoes in Greek and Latin, and an elaborate initiation ritual. When the Revolutionary War forced William and Mary to close in 1780, newly-formed chapters at Harvard and Yale directed Phi Beta Kappa’s growth and development.
19 degrees, very windy, blowing snow. Not nice, not pretty, not welcome.
From Nov. 2nd to Nov 8th, 2011 we orchestrated the largest ever nationwide poll on the future of the Department of Homeland Security.
Our poll concerned the most pressing question of all: Should DHS be renamed? We provided a list of alternative names and invited the American People to vote for their favorites. By the end of the polling period, a total of 3,253 people had voted; as respondents were allowed to choose more than one response, a total of 4,064 votes were cast.
See the results — The People have Spoken: Results of Our DHS Poll
Other experiments showed that [marijuana] acts on parts of the brain involved in memory, appetite, pain and mood.
Crap, I did not know cannabis could so that. Especially that appetite, mood, and pain thing. Did you know that? Hell, that needs more research. I don’t know that anybody has ever noticed that before.
Juanita Jean’s | The World’s Most Dangerous Beauty Salon, Inc.
Today is the birthday
… of Jeff Bridges. The six-time Oscar nominee is 62 — three for supporting, three for leading, winning for Crazy Heart. He received his first Oscar nomination in 1972 and his most recent this year.
… of Marisa Tomei. The three-time Oscar nominee — winning for best supporting actress in My Cousin Vinny — is 47.
… of Tyra Banks, 38.
I love nativity sets because of all the Christmas decorations they express most closely the true meaning of the season.
This one with penguins is particularly rich in religious symbolism.
