Poor Jane’s Almanac

Harvard historian Jill Lepore has a must-read op-ed piece in the Sunday Times. It begins:

The House Budget Committee chairman, Paul D. Ryan, a Republican from Wisconsin, announced his party’s new economic plan this month. It’s called “The Path to Prosperity,” a nod to an essay Benjamin Franklin once wrote, called “The Way to Wealth.”

Franklin, who’s on the $100 bill, was the youngest of 10 sons. Nowhere on any legal tender is his sister Jane, the youngest of seven daughters; she never traveled the way to wealth. He was born in 1706, she in 1712. Their father was a Boston candle-maker, scraping by. Massachusetts’ Poor Law required teaching boys to write; the mandate for girls ended at reading. Benny went to school for just two years; Jenny never went at all.

Their lives tell an 18th-century tale of two Americas. Against poverty and ignorance, Franklin prevailed; his sister did not.

Click and read it all.

Idle thought

Trying to decide who was more stupid . . .

The woman driving the wrong way around the traffic circle.

Or the idiot who let his new iPad slip out of his full arms onto the garage floor.

(It seems OK. Dented though.)

Sebastian Junger Remembers Tim Hetherington

You and I were always talking about risk because she was the beautiful woman we were both in love with, right? The one who made us feel the most special, the most alive? We were always trying to have one more dance with her without paying the price. All those quiet, huddled conversations we had in Afghanistan: Where to walk on the patrols, what to do if the outpost gets overrun, what kind of body armor to wear. You were so smart about it, too—so smart about it that I would actually tease you about being scared. Of course you were scared—you were terrified. We both were. We were terrified and we were in love, and in the end, you were the one she chose.

Vanity Fair has Junger’s full tribute to his friend and colleague. They co-directed the excellent film Restrepo, my choice for best documentary of 2010.

I’m shocked I tell you. Shocked!

Remember the H1N1 uproar two years ago — schools and offices closed in Mexico, pigs slaughtered in Egypt, ERs swamped in the U.S., $10 billion spent on “influenza preparedness” worldwide.

Guess what? Some reports indicate that the large pharmaceutical companies may have influenced the World Health Organization to overstate the danger of a pandemic.

Imagine that.

The New York Review of Books has the story.

April 22nd ought to be a national holiday

It’s not just Earth Day, it’s Jack Nicholson’s birthday. He is 74 today.

Nicholson has been nominated for an Academy Award 12 times, eight times for best actor in a leading role and four times for best actor in a supporting role. He won for best actor for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1976) and As Good As It Gets (1998). He won for best supporting actor for Terms of Endearment (1984). Nicholson has been nominated for an Oscar for films made in the 60s (Easy Rider), 70s, 80s, 90s, and 00s (About Schmidt).

The best actress Oscar went to a co-star each time Nicholson won — Louise Fletcher for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Shirley MacLaine for Terms of Endearment and Helen Hunt for As Good As It Gets.

According to IMDB, Nicholson “was raised believing his grandmother was his mother and his mother was his older sister. The truth was revealed to him years later when a Time magazine researcher uncovered the truth while preparing a story on the star.”

Estelle Harris is 79 today. She played Estelle Costanza on Seinfeld.

Glen Campbell is 75 today.

Peter Frampton is 61.

Charles Mingus was born in Nogales, Arizona, on this date in 1922.

Irascible, demanding, bullying, and probably a genius, Charles Mingus cut himself a uniquely iconoclastic path through jazz in the middle of the 20th century, creating a legacy that became universally lauded only after he was no longer around to bug people. As a bassist, he knew few peers, blessed with a powerful tone and pulsating sense of rhythm, capable of elevating the instrument into the front line of a band. But had he been just a string player, few would know his name today. Rather, he was the greatest bass-playing leader/composer jazz has ever known, one who always kept his ears and fingers on the pulse, spirit, spontaneity, and ferocious expressive power of jazz.

All Music Guide

Mingus died in 1979.

Pithecanthropus Erectus already on the CD player
And I just push that remote button to sublimity
And listen to the sweet sculptural rhythms of Charles Mingus
And J.R. Monterose and Jackie Mclean
Duet on those saxophones

And the sound makes it’s way outta the window
Minglin’ with the traffic noises outside, you know and
All of a sudden I’m overcome by a feelin’ of brief mortality
‘Cause I’m gettin’ on in the world
Comin’ up on forty-one years

Forty-one stoney gray steps towards the grave
You know the box, awaits it’s grissly load
Now, I’m gonna be food for worms
And just like Charles Mingus wrote
That beautiful piece-a music, ‘Epitaph for Eric Dolphy’

I say, so long Eric, so long, John Coltrane
And Charles Mingus, so long, Duke Ellington
And Lester Young, so long, Billie Holliday
And Ella Fitzgerald, so long, Jimmy Reed
So long, Muddy Waters, and so, long Howlin’ Wolf

“Woke Up This Morning” A3 (Alabama 3) [Longer version of The Sopranos theme]

J. Robert Oppenheimer was born on April 22nd in 1904. Oppenheimer headed the Manhattan Project.

A brilliant nuclear physicist, with a comprehensive grasp of his field, Dr. Oppenheimer was also a cultivated scholar, a humanist, a linguist of eight tongues and a brooding searcher for ultimate spiritual values. And, from the moment that the test bomb exploded at Alamogordo, N.M., he was haunted by the implications for man in the unleashing of the basic forces of the universe.

As he clung to one of the uprights in the desert control room that July morning and saw the mushroom clouds rising in the explosion, a passage from the Bhagavad-Gita, the Hindu sacred epic, flashed through his mind. He related it later as:

“If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One.”

And as the black, then gray, atomic cloud pushed higher above Point Zero, another line–“I am become Death, the shatterer of worlds”–came to him from the same scripture.

Obituary, New York Times, 1967

Vladimir Ilich Lenin was born on this date in 1870.

It is the 122nd anniversary of the Oklahoma Land Rush. Boomer Sooner.

Best Easter food line of the day

I think Peeps cry out for a tartly acidic, simple white, so I’ll be celebrating the Resurrection of our Lord and Savior this Holy Sunday with Chateau Bonnet Entre-Deux-Mers ($14). Its simple crispness and subdued flavors of grapefruit and the French countryside are the perfect counterpoint to the entirely artificial experience of eating Peeps. The key is to take a bite of the Peep — preferably the head, which has the best balance of spray-on falvor elements and interior mush — and then sip the wine through the rapidly disintegrating cloud of artificially colored, emulsified sugar. It’s the perfect Easter combination.

From a discussion of Easter wine writing at Louisville Juice.

Best Fake News Story of the Day

CUPTERINO, CAL. (SatireWire.com)— Apple iPhones secretly track and record their owners’ location, a potentially devastating privacy breach that experts warn could force people to face the fact that they never really go anywhere interesting.

British researchers who uncovered the hidden file say it logs the phone’s whereabouts for the previous 10 months, and includes a date and time stamp with each location. They also created a program allowing users to upload their data and build a map that researchers termed “remarkably detailed” and iPhone owners called “depressingly accurate.”

. . .

Line of the day

“A plurality of Republican voters, 47 percent, said they believed Mr. Obama, who was born in Hawaii, was born in another country; 22 percent said they did not know where he was born, and 32 percent said they believed he was born in the United States.”

Poll Finds Few Favorites as G.O.P. Fight for President Gels – NYTimes.com

So, put another way, two-thirds of Republican voters, based on this poll, are ignorant or stupid. Or perhaps, ignorant and stupid.

Stuff

A more thoughtful if critical look at Three Cups of Tea and Greg Mortenson: What Mortenson Got Wrong.

It’s just one side of the story, but once you read scores of them confirming your own experience, you figure with enough smoke there must be some fire: Customer Catches Best Buy Breaking Law, Gets Banned From Store.

Joe Posnanski takes a look at some ballplayers who appear to have played at Hall of Fame levels, but never even got a serious look: The Hall of Not Famous Enough.

Also, Joe wants to know which is the Greatest Rock Band In The World. If you aren’t familiar with Arcade Fire, Muse, Wilco and the Flaming Lips, this discussion is not for you.

Elizabeth R

Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and Her other Realms and Territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith is 85 today.

Her actual name is Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor. She signs Elizabeth R (R for Regina, Latin for Queen).

John Muir

. . . was born on this date in 1838. The following is from the autobiography of Theodore Roosevelt (1913):

When I first visited California, it was my good fortune to see the “big trees,” the Sequoias, and then to travel down into the Yosemite, with John Muir. Of course of all people in the world he was the one with whom it was best worth while thus to see the Yosemite. He told me that when Emerson came to California he tried to get him to come out and camp with him, for that was the only way in which to see at their best the majesty and charm of the Sierras. But at the time Emerson was getting old and could not go.

John Muir met me with a couple of packers and two mules to carry our tent, bedding, and food for a three days’ trip. The first night was clear, and we lay down in the darkening aisles of the great Sequoia grove. The majestic trunks, beautiful in color and in symmetry, rose round us like the pillars of a mightier cathedral than ever was conceived even by the fervor of the Middle Ages. Hermit thrushes sang beautifully in the evening, and again, with a burst of wonderful music, at dawn.

I was interested and a little surprised to find that, unlike John Burroughs, John Muir cared little for birds or bird songs, and knew little about them. The hermit-thrushes meant nothing to him, the trees and the flowers and the cliffs everything. The only birds he noticed or cared for were some that were very conspicuous, such as the water-ouzels always particular favorites of mine too. The second night we camped in a snow-storm, on the edge of the cañon walls, under the spreading limbs of a grove of mighty silver fir; and next day we went down into the wonderland of the valley itself. I shall always be glad that I was in the Yosemite with John Muir and in the Yellowstone with John Burroughs.

This photo was taken in 2005 from the attic of John Muir’s home, directly above his study, or what he called his “scribble den.” Muir lived in the home in Martinez, California, from 1890 until his death in 1914. Most of his most important work was done while living and working here, though of course he travelled widely.

The service station appears to be a more recent addition to the neighborhood. One imagines that the conservationist would appreciate the convenience of being able to walk across the street for a half-gallon of milk or a Slushee, or to fill up the family SUV.

(The photo was taken through a window pane.) MuirGasStation.jpg

This is the study where John Muir produced some of the classics of American nature writing.

Why should man value himself as more than a small part of the one great unit of creation? ScribbleDen.jpg

The metal cup on the desk, easily hung on a belt, was a badge of membership in the Sierra Club, which Muir co-founded in 1892.

In the bowl on the mantle were balls of dried bread; Muir’s snack food.

I never saw a discontented tree. They grip the ground as though they liked it …

SierraClubCup.jpg

John Muir National Historic Site

Still My Favorite ‘What if’

Had Booth missed, Lincoln could have risen from his chair to confront his assassin. At that moment the president, cornered, with not only his own life in danger but also Mary’s, would almost certainly have fought back. If he did, Booth would have found himself outmatched facing not kindly Father Abraham, but the aroused fury of the Mississippi River flatboatman who fought off a gang of murderous river pirates in the dead of night, the champion wrestler who, years before, humbled the Clary’s Grove boys in New Salem in a still legendary match, or even the fifty-six-year-old president who could still pick up a long, splitting-axe by his fingertips, raise it, extend his arm out parallel with the ground, and suspend the axe in midair. Lincoln could have choked the life out of the five-foot-eight-inch, 150-pound thespian, or wrestled him over the side of the box, launching Booth on a crippling dive to the stage almost twelve feet below.

But Lincoln had not seen Booth coming.

From James L. Swanson’s Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer, a great read.

Go try that thing with an axe or other long-handled tool.

It Ought to Be a Holiday

RonHowardsBro

Ron Howard is no doubt celebrating his brother’s 52nd birthday today.

Ron Howard’s brother has more than 200 film and television credits including roles in many of his brother’s films — Cocoon, Apollo 13, Cinderella Man and Frost/Nixon come to mind. Many will remember Ron Howard’s brother also as the 8-year-old kid in the TV series Gentle Ben. Howard’s younger sibling was also the voice of Roo in the Disney Winnie the Pooh films, and more recently the voice of the balloon man in Curious George.

Best line of the day

Medical care is an area in which crucial decisions — life and death decisions — must be made . . .

That’s why we have medical ethics. That’s why doctors have traditionally both been viewed as something special and been expected to behave according to higher standards than the average professional. There’s a reason we have TV series about heroic doctors, while we don’t have TV series about heroic middle managers or heroic economists.

The idea that all this can be reduced to money — that doctors are just people selling services to consumers of health care — is, well, sickening. And the prevalence of this kind of language is a sign that something has gone very wrong not just with this discussion, but with our society’s values.

Paul Krugman

‘Privacy, what’s that?’ line of the day

“Apple has made it possible for almost anybody – a jealous spouse, a private detective – with access to your phone or computer to get detailed information about where you’ve been.”

Pete Warden who, with Alasdair Allan, has discovered that Apple’s 3G devices keep a record of your locations (precise latitude and longitude) indefinitely. The data is on the iPhone or iPad (3G version) and in the iTunes created backup files on your computer.

And indeed it is!

Warden has an app you can download (Macs only) and see for yourself. You run the app on the computer where you have been backing up your iPhone or iPad.