August 5th

As noted earlier, Maureen McCormick is 55 today. That’s Marcia Brady. The Brady Bunch originally aired on ABC from September 1969 to March 1974 (117 episodes). McCormick was 13-17 while making the show. It’s reported that at least one episode of The Brady Bunch could be seen somewhere in the world every single day from 1975 through 2008. Unfortunately during several of those first years Ms. McCormick was stoned and missed the rest of her career. Her life improved after she married a man 1985 who claimed to have never seen the show. That’s her at a book signing on Maui a year-and-a-half ago.

Twelve individuals have walked on the surface of the moon. The first of them, Neil Armstrong, is 81 today. All you current and former civil servants out there should find Armstrong to be your particular hero. The first man on the moon was a federal employee of NASA, a GS-14.

John Huston, the director, writer and actor, was born on this date in 1906. Huston received five Oscar nominations for direction, eight for writing and one each for acting and best picture. He won for best direction and writing for Treasure of the Sierra Madre in 1949. Among his other films are The Maltese Falcon, The Asphalt Jungle, The African Queen, Prizzi’s Honor, Moby Dick and Moulin Rouge. Huston cast his father Walter in Treasure of the Sierra Madre and his daughter Anjelica in Prizzi’s Honor. Both won Academy Awards. John Huston played the title role in The Cardinal, his acting Oscar nomination, and the vile father of the Faye Dunaway character in Chinatown.

The first federal income tax was imposed 150 years ago today (1861). It was 3% on all income above $800. The following July a $600 deduction was established and a second bracket was added, taxing income above $10,000 at 5%. The first withholding also began in 1862. This Civil War income tax was abolished in 1872 — and direct taxes were ruled unconstitutional when attempted again in 1894. The 16th amendment (ratified in 1913) made direct taxes on individuals constitutional.

Marilyn Monroe was found dead on this date in 1962. She was 36. According to Joe DiMaggio biographer Richard Ben Cramer, after Monroe’s marriage to Arthur Miller had ended, she and DiMaggio had reconciled. By 1962 they planned to re-marry. The wedding was set for Wednesday, August 8, 1962. Very private, very hush-hush. Five days before the wedding date, on Saturday night, August 3, Marilyn died, a presumed suicide. According to Cramer, no coroner’s inquest was held. Monroe’s funeral was August 8, 1962.

American Bandstand went national on ABC on this date in 1957. Nelson Mandela went to prison on this date in 1962. He was released in 1990. Ronald Reagan fired 11,359 striking air traffic controllers 30 years ago today. The American labor movement failed to stand behind its brothers and unions have been struggling ever since.

Abo Canyon

Longtime reader and commenter Mi3ke took a train ride and came back with a fascinating photo essay. Here’s his introduction, but as his blog’s title says, it’s Things My Camera Sees and the photos tell the story.

BNSF Railroad runs a transcontinental mainline from west coast ports to Chicago.  With all but 32 miles of the track being double track, one of the biggest bottlenecks was a 5 mile stretch of single track in Abo Canyon, just east of Belen, New Mexico.  The track runs 80 to 90 trains a day, about one every 15 minutes. They go through 400 to 500 foot high bluffs, cuts 100 to 150 feet deep and over 9 bridges over 80 feet high and up to 500 feet long. In the train industry, time is money.  This stretch could stop a train for up to 3 hours.  Time to blow stuff up!

Continue at Things My Camera Sees

Niagara Falls High-Wire Walk

From an article in Today’s New York Times:

Nik Wallenda is a seventh-generation circus performer, scion of the famed Flying Wallendas. He set the world record for farthest distance traveled by bicycle on a high wire. And now he has set his sights on a new deed of daredevilry — walking the 1,800 feet across the gorge of Niagara Falls while balancing on a two-inch-diameter steel cable.

But before he can attempt his funambulist feat, Mr. Wallenda must persuade officials in both Canada and the United States to abandon their century-old aversion to “stunting” as a distraction from the majesty of the falls. So for several days, Mr. Wallenda has been attempting his own form of tightrope diplomacy, shuttling across the falls and meeting with lawmakers and parks overseers in both countries as he pleads for support.

“This is a dream of mine that I’ve always wanted to do,” Mr. Wallenda, a 32-year-old father of three, said on Thursday, sitting on the pool deck of a hotel here and surveying the waterworks in the distance. “I get chills thinking about it.”

I get chills just thinking about it too.

But I’ve been to Niagara Falls. The falls themselves are spectacular (if a suggestion of their natural self), but it is also one of the most tourist tacky places anywhere. So yes, we wouldn’t want any “stunting” to distract from the majesty.

FAA: Fuck America Again

“Reminder: the main budgetary disagreement is over what the GOP considers ‘wasteful’ spending of about $16 million per year. The ongoing shutdown, which prevents the FAA from collecting airline taxes, is costing the Treasury more than $20 million per day.”

James Fallows – The Atlantic

An estimated 70,000 people are out of work (FAA, construction at airports, related services). Airport inspectors (you know, government workers) are working without pay or reimbursement for their travel expenses. Meanwhile Congress has gone on vacation for the month.

Chris Weigant suggests the President make a speech. An excerpt:

This is unacceptable. This is beyond dysfunctional. This is, in fact, an outrage. So I’m giving Congress a grace period of precisely two days, to get their butts back to Washington to fix this problem immediately. If I don’t have a bill on my desk by the end of this Friday, I will instruct my Attorney General to immediately put every member of Congress on the “no-fly” list. To be blunt, if they can’t find the time to fund the F.A.A. and prefer to take weeks off on vacation instead, then they will not be allowed to use the F.A.A.’s services in the meantime. Period.

Fallows adds:

This episode is such a flagrant illustration of “let them eat cake”-ism on the part of legislators — tens of thousands of families suddenly with no paychecks because of our pouting! hundreds of millions lost to the Treasury! but we don’t care! — and of deep dysfunction in our system, that perhaps it will have some turning-point effect. On the other hand, probably not.

August 4th

Zack and Cody are 19 each. That’s the Sprouse twins, Dylan and Cole. They had the title roles in Disney Channel’s The Suite Life of Zack & Cody, later Suite Life on Deck. Dylan’s older. He’s named for the poet. Cole is younger. He’s named for Nat King Cole. The twins earned $40,000 an episode in 2010.

NASCAR’s Kurt Busch (#22) is 33 today. Jeff Gordon (#24) is 40.

Roger Clemens is 49.

If his birth certificate can be believed, Barack Hussein Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, 50 years ago today.

Lauren Tom is 50 today also. She was Lena St. Clair in The Joy Luck Club, Julie on Friends and does a lot of voiceover work, Futurama and King of the Hill (Minh and Connie Souphanousinphone), for example.

Mary Decker Slaney is 53 today. Among the best runners in the world, she was too young for the 1972 Olympics, injuries kept her from the 1976 games. (The U.S. did not compete in the 1980 Moscow Olympics.)

In Los Angeles in 1984 she fell and was injured in a collision with Zola Budd during 3000 meters final. This is from Sports Illustrated, August 24, 1984 (via Wikipedia). The photo was by Bob Thomas.

Mary decker

That last brutal kilometer would begin in about 300 meters, on the backstretch. Now, as Decker relaxed, gathering herself, the slight, pale, barefoot, 92-pound form of Budd again came even with her. Budd had been outside Decker’s right shoulder almost from the start, and Decker knew it. They had bumped elbows at 500 meters, a result of Budd’s wide-swinging arm action, and Decker had shot her a sharp look. Budd had sensed the slowing pace and didn’t like it. Her training and temperament combine to make her natural race one of constantly increasing pressure. She and her coach, Pieter Labuschagne, knew that she couldn’t kick with a fresh Decker or (Maricica) Puica. If she was to run her best in this Olympic final, the pace would have to go faster. So she passed Decker on the turn, just after, 1,600 meters. Decker felt her uncomfortably close. “She was cutting in on the turn, without being near passing,” Decker would say. By the end of the turn, Budd appeared to have enough margin to cut in without interfering with Decker’s stride, but instead she hung wide, on the outside of Lane 1, as they came into the stretch. Decker was near the rail, a yard behind Budd. Budd’s teammate, Wendy Sly, had come up to third, off Budd’s shoulder, and Puica was fourth, tucked in tight behind Decker, waiting. Decker sensed Budd drifting to the inside. “She tried to cut in without being, basically, ahead,” Decker would say. But Decker didn’t do what a seasoned middle-distance runner would have done. She didn’t reach out to Budd’s shoulder to let her know she was there, too close behind for Budd to move to the pole. Instead, Decker shortened her stride for a couple of steps. There was contact. Decker’s right thigh grazed Budd’s left foot. Budd took five more strides, slightly off balance. Trying to regain control, she swayed in slightly to the left. Decker’s right foot struck Budd’s left calf, low, just above the Achilles tendon. Budd’s left leg shot out, and she was near falling. But Decker was falling, tripped by that leg all askew. “To keep from pushing her, I fell,” she would say. She reached out after Budd, inadvertently tearing the number from her back and went headlong across the rail onto the infield.

Academy Award winner (adapted screenplay for Sling Blade), Billy Bob Thornton is 56. He was Mr. Angelina Jolie 2000-2003.

Potomac Valley Indigenous Persons running back John Riggins is 62 today. Best Riggins line among many, to Justice Sandra Day O’Connor “Loosen up, Sandy baby.”

Munch is 67 today. That’s actor Richard Belzer.

The Rocket, Maurice Richard was born on August 4th 90 years ago today. The hall of fame right wing played for the Montreal Canadiens, 1942-1960. He died in 2000.

And Louis Armstrong was born 110 years ago today. That should be enough to make it a holiday.

Did You Vote for Divided Government?

Voters don’t choose divided government. It’s chosen for them by a system, unique in the democratic world, of multiple overlapping elections held at different intervals in which different electorates fill different offices, none of whose occupants have ultimate responsibility. The electorate of 2008 chose Obama and the Democrats. The electorate of 2010—consisting mainly of McCain voters, and smaller by forty-five million—chose the Republicans. Hardly anybody voted as they did out of a desire for “divided government,” as opposed to a desire for a government that would embody their own political and ideological leanings.

Hendrik Hertzberg, from a brief blog post.

Songs for a Presidential Birthday

From New Yorker music writer Ben Greenman:

Barack Obama turns fifty today, placing him in the esteemed company of other celebrities such as Wayne Gretzky, Ricky Gervais, and Eddie Murphy. The occasion was marked Wednesday with a high-end benefit at Chicago’s Aragon Ballroom that featured performances by Herbie Hancock, OK Go, and Jennifer Hudson; tickets were priced at up to $35,800 per couple. If you want to hold on to your $17,900 and still wish the President a happy birthday, we’ve put together a playlist that will cost you absolutely nothing, composed entirely of songs from the year of Obama’s birth. There’s one for each decade, and one for good luck.

He starts it off with Jimmy Reed, “Big Boss Man.” [YouTube audio/video.]