Home Page
|
|
|
Yesterday, today and tomorrow
CURRENT NEWS BULLETINS & ALMANIACAL ARCHIVES
Also see NevadaLabor.com's Statewide U-News RoundupClick here to get on our news & bulletins mailing list...
But before you do so, please read this note. —AB[[EDITOR'S NOTE: Unless otherwise noted, historical items appear courtesy of longtime Nevada reporter Dennis Myers' Poor Denny's Almanac. [PDA] Items highlighted in blue are of particular interest to labor. Copyright © 2007 Dennis Myers.]]
The Dean of Reno Bloggers could very well be Andrew Barbano, self-described "fighter of public demons," who started putting his "Barbwire" columns online in 1996 and now runs 10 sites.
UPDATE: June 30, 2007, 12:59 a.m. PDT, 19:59 CUT/SMT/SUT — On June 30, 1997, in Hong Kong, the Union Jack was lowered for the last time over Government House as Britain prepared to hand the colony back to China after ruling it for 156 years. [New York Times/AP e-headlines]
On June 30, 1834, Congress created the Indian Territory, a sort of state for Native Americans who were forcibly relocated to it (and then displaced when whites decided they wanted it); in 1869, Camp Ruby in White Pine County, slated for abandonment by the U.S. Army, was auctioned off and purchased by Thomas Short; in 1894, the city of Chicago swore in as deputy marshals more than a thousand railroad employees (later described by Chicago's police commissioner as "thugs, thieves, and exconvicts") who then fanned out across the city killing strikers and starting fires to create an impression that the Pullman strike by 129,000 workers was getting out of hand (President Cleveland was taken in, and over the objections of Illinois' governor, sent troops, which provoked real violence — thirty deaths and several riots — and broke the strike); in 1899, the Nevada State Journal ran an article, The Italian farmer/As he is found in the Truckee Valley, that described Italians as thieves and drunks, an article it defended the next day but then apologized for three days later; in 1913, Governor Tasker Oddie said he had received Attorney General George Thatcher's report on the conduct of Nevada District Judge Frank Langan but was not yet prepared to say whether he would call a special session of the Nevada Legislature to remove Langan from office; in 1919, striking Reno electrical workers were angry because of a letter sent to them by Bell Telephone offering wage increases for themselves but not for striking telephone operators (referred to in a news report as "the telephone girls"); in 1932, a U.S. organization called the Friends of the New Germany was founded, and a 1934 congressional investigation found that although the pro-Nazi group was financially supported by the Third Reich, it violated no federal law; in 1936, one of the most pervasive and enduring sources of racism in U.S. history was published: Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell (see below), so rancid in places that during filming of the movie version Clark Gable refused to speak some of the lines; in 1937, F.F. Walter, an emissary from U.S. Interior Secretary Harold Ickes, arrived in Nevada to set new wage rates and other matters for unhappy Boulder Dam workers, and he met with them promptly after he arrived and supervised a vote in which they rejected a 48-hour work week and elected to work a 40-hour week; in 1947, Boston Mayor (and former Nevada mining investor) James Curley, the inspiration for Edwin O‚Connor's novel The Last Hurrah, was imprisoned in Danbury for mail fraud but continued serving as mayor; in 1947, mail was delivered to Yuma by rocket from Winterhaven, California; in 1960, Reno Police Department night matron Pat Fladager resigned in protest against the firing of chief Bill Gregory and said that several officers wanted to do the same but could not financially afford to leave their jobs; in 1966, The Beatles arrived in Tokyo to appear at Budokan Hall, among their most successfully bootlegged appearances, released under the titles Five Nights In A Judo Arena and Three Nights In Tokyo; in 1966, after FBI agent Burns Toolson testified that he had installed listening devices in the Desert Inn, Clark County District Attorney Ted Marshall said he had opened an investigation and was prepared to prosecute federal agents for wiretapping; in 1977, Vatican sources told United Press International that Paul VI was considering turning the case of rebellious French priest Marcel Lafebvre over to the Inquisition; in 1977, music licensing firm Broadcast Music Inc., better known as BMI, sued the Pioneer Inn and B Flat in Reno for using songs by Lennon and McCartney, Neil Sedaka and Howard Greenfield, John Fogarty, Eddie Hewood, Kris Kristofferson, Tom Johnston, Mac Davis, Layne Martine, Jimmie Rodgers, Mike Stoller and Jerry Lieber, and Sterline Whipple without paying the licensing fees; in 1977, more than a thousand Nevada miners struck Anaconda and Kennecott; in 1991, UNLV withdrew from the Western Athletic Conference; in 1999, historian Phil Earl retired as curator of history at the Nevada Historical Society after 30 years of state service; in 2006 in Las Vegas, Ringo, Yoko, and Paul appeared together for the debut of Love, a stage show built around Beatles music.
From Gone With The Wind: How stupid Negroes were! [page 390]...niggery smell...increased her nausea [page 407]...Negroes were provoking sometimes and stupid and lazy, but there was loyalty in them that money couldn't buy, a feeling of oneness with their white folks [page 447]...insolent grins...black apes [pages 551-52]...lazy and shiftless [page 597]...creatures of small intelligence ... [l]ike monkeys [page 611]...negroes sat in the legislature where they spent most of their time eating goobers [page 828] [from a list compiled by Joel Rubenfeld for an article in the Yale Law Journal]UPDATE: June 29, 2007, 12:32 a.m. PDT, 19:23 CUT/SMT/SUT — On June 29, 1995, the shuttle Atlantis and the Russian space station Mir docked, forming the largest man-made satellite ever to orbit the Earth. [New York Times/AP e-headlines]
On June 29, 1652, more than a century before the colonial declaration of independence, Massachusetts declared itself independent of England; in 1861, in Virginia City's Territorial Enterprise, Myron Lake placed an advertisement announcing his takeover of the river crossing that would become downtown Reno, using the headline "Bridge and Hotel at Fuller's Crossing."; in 1874, nine days after Congress ordered a federal takeover of the Freedman's Bank (formed in 1865 to help former slaves make the transition to freedom) because of white mismanagement, the bank closed, devastating tens of thousands of African-Americans; in 1901, Editor & Publisher, a newspaper for the newspaper industry, began publication; in 1906, Anasazi ruins at Mesa Verde were declared a national park; in 1940, Dick Grayson's family of high wire artists were killed by mobsters and Dick became Bruce Wayne's ward; in 1941, Kwame Ture (Stokeley Carmichael) was born in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago; in 1944, the 'liberty ship" H.G. Blasdel (named for Nevada's first elected governor) was in convoy EMC 17 on its way to Omaha Beach when it was torpedoed by the German submarine U-984 about thirty miles south of the Isle of Wight (the liberty ships were rapidly built, mass produced emergency ships constructed to a standard design from prefabricated pieces, called the "ugly ducklings" by President Franklin Roosevelt); in 1946, Los Angeles District Attorney Fred Howser said he had created an "Anti-Cornero detail" to put Tony Cornero Stralla, operator of the Mr. Lucky-style gambling ship Lux, out of business; in 1955, Rock Around the Clock by Bill Haley and the Comets reached the top of the pop music charts, becoming known as the first rock 'n' roll single (the record died on its first release but then became a hit when it was used on The Blackboard Jungle movie soundtrack); in 1960, former Miss Nevada 1959 Dawn Wells, then a student and Alpha Chi Omega sorority member at the University of Washington, returned to Reno for an ACO luncheon; in 1963, From Me To You by Del Shannon became the first Lennon/McCartney song to break into the top 100 in the U.S.; in 1992, a 5.6 earthquake occurred on a previously unknown fault at Little Skull Mountain, 12 miles from Yucca Mountain in Nye County; in 1994, WABC New York radio talk show host Bob Grant, who had been known to call African[Americans "savages", made this on-air observation about the Gay Pride Parade: "Ideally, it would have been nice to have a few phalanxes of policemen with machine guns and mow them down."
UPDATE: June 28, 2007, 12:47 a.m. PDT, 19:47 CUT/SMT/SUT — On June 28, 1919, the Treaty of Versailles was signed in France, ending World War I. [New York Times/AP e-headlines]
Advertisement for Easton, Crane, and Pike Co. of Pittsfield, Massachusetts / Stars and Stripes European edition / June 28, 1918: Lafayette, when he came to this country and offered his sword to the American Colonists fighting for liberty, little dreamed that the day would come when a newspaper named The Stars and Stripes, and printed in the American language, would circulate in France among so many native born Americans as now make up the subscription list of The Stars and Stripes.
On June 28, 1839, Sengbe Pieh was kidnapped from west Africa by slavers (he was later sold in Cuba and led the rebellion aboard La Amistad, later becoming known as Joseph Cinque); in 1863, the Washoe Typographical Union was organized in Virginia City; in 1870, twenty-three-year-old U.S. cavalry trooper Emanuel Stance became the first buffalo soldier (African-American soldiers) to win the Medal of Honor, for action against Apaches on May 20, 1870; in 1878, Bannock tribal leader Tambiago was hanged at the Idaho Territorial Prison for a shooting incident that preceded the Bannock war; in 1905, the Sutro tunnel was wired for electricity; in 1933, German Nazi minister of the interior Wilhelm Frick declared "Only when the State and the public health authorities will strive to make the core of their responsibilities the provision for the yet unborn, then we can speak of a new era and of a reconstructed population and race policy."; in 1956, a two day picket line at Nellis Air Force Base was brought down after the base agreed to comply with the Davis/Bacon Act's wage requirements; in 1960, at the recommendation of a county grand jury, the Reno City Council fired Police Chief William Gregory for favoritism; in 1964, Malcolm X founded the Organization for Afro-American Unity; in 1969, New York City police staged a brutal raid of the Stonewall gay bar, which backfired on them when the crowd that was ejected from the tavern turned around and trapped police inside, a folk singer was then pulled by police into the bar and beaten, and police and protesters rioted the rest of the night and on two subsequent nights, fueling the gay rights movement (police violence against homosexuals was then common across the nation, though New York City had been retreating from that policy); in 1971, four years after Muhammed Ali refused to be drafted, one year after it heard the case, the U.S. Supreme Court with its usual promptness overturned his conviction; in 1971, at a meeting of the Reno city council, 13 women and two men protested the removal of Reno city clerk Kay Kistler because (according to Mayor John Chism) the position "should be a man's job"; in 1980, a meeting of domestic violence activists from around Nevada was held in Washoe Valley, resulting in the establishment of the Nevada Network on Domestic Violence; in 1998, executives of the Cincinnati Enquirer retracted and apologized for a story about Chiquita Brands AKA United Fruit Company (alleging mistreatment of its plantation workers, cocaine shipments, pollution, illegal land dealings, anti-union activities, bribery) that many of its newspeople still believed was accurate, because of questions about the methods used to obtain information (an Enquirer reporter later pleaded guilty to hacking into the corporation's voice mail system, the Securities and Exchange Commission fined Chiquita for bribing foreign officials, and The New York Times reported that "some of the allegations cannot be dismissed so easily, despite the questions raised about the reporting method").UPDATE: June 27, 2007, 3:29 p.m. PDT, 22:27 CUT/SMT/SUT — BREAKING NEWS: The Reno City Council this afternoon listened to Building Trades Council criticisms of Cabela's contractors and voted unanimously to postpone action on STAR Bond tax subsidies for the west Reno retail construction project. Councilmembers were concerned about union complaints of illegally operating contractors to the state contractors board and questions about compliance with building codes and regulations. The council meeting will be rebroadcast in its entirety on Sierra Nevada Community Access Television (SNCAT), Reno-Sparks-Washoe County Charter cable channel 13. (1st Replay: Thursday, June 28, at 10:00 a.m.; 2nd Replay: Sunday, July 1, 10:00 a.m.)
UPDATE: June 27, 2007, 12:57 p.m. PDT, 19:57 CUT/SMT/SUT —
NEW — CaBellyup.com
Unions and other taxpayers protest Cabela's corporate welfare
State investigates use of illegal, unlicensed contractorsUPDATE: June 27, 2007, 12:17 a.m. PDT, 07:17 CUT/SMT/SUT — On June 27, 1950, President Truman ordered the Air Force and Navy into the Korean War following a call from the United Nations Security Council for member nations to help South Korea repel an invasion from the North. [New York Times/AP e-headlines]
Franklin Roosevelt accepting renomination for the presidency / June 27, 1936: Concentration of wealth and power has been built upon other people's money, other people's business, other people's labor. Under this concentration, independent business was allowed to exist only on sufferance. It has been a menace to American democracy.
On June 27, 1844, Mormon Church founder and Nauvoo, Illinois Mayor Joseph Smith was assassinated by a mob after imposing repressive measures in the town; in 1865, in general order 118, President Johnson assigned Major-General Irwin McDowell command of the Department of California, which included the states of California and Nevada and the territories of Arizona and New Mexico; in 1877, Booker Washington began a campaign tour of West Virginia urging African-American voters to support Charleston over Clarksburg or Martinsburg for state capital; in 1880, the Nevada State Journal carried an excerpt from Mark Twain's A Tramp Abroad that dealt with chatting with blue jays; in 1900, it was reported that F.C. Savage would open a plumbing and heating business in Reno on about July 1; in 1932, on the opening day of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, the campaign of presidential candidate Melvin Traylor (supported by Chicago's Mayor Anton Cermak) was somewhat undercut by a run on his bank, and Traylor was preoccupied standing on a pedestal in the bank lobby begging depositors not to withdraw their money; in 1956, Nevada superintendent of schools Glenn Duncan died; in 1968, Elvis held a news conference in Burbank in connection with the start of taping that same day of his comeback special for NBC; in 1969, during a period when the Honduran government had been scapegoating illegal aliens from El Salvador for the nation's problems and days after Hondurans had been roughed up and the Honduran flag insulted at a soccer match in Tegucigalpa, Honduras broke diplomatic relations with El Salvador (two weeks later the "soccer war" began with Salvadoran land and air attacks); in 1969, a military-style assault by police on the Stonewall Inn (now on the National Register of Historic Places) in Greenwich Village and its patrons gave birth to the gay rights movement; in 1969, Michael James Themmen of Las Vegas, Nevada died in Tay Ninh province, Vietnam (panel 21w, row 26 of the Vietnam wall); in 1989, the Nevada Legislature approved a $2.1 million appropriation for construction of a journalism school at UNR; in 2001, Jack Lemmon died; in 2001, a Churchill County, Nevada, jury awarded nearly $9 million for the lifetime medical costs of a woman whose doctors (a) misdiagnosed her condition, then (b) gave her a drug screen because they suspected her of complaining of abdominal pain in order to get illegal drugs, then (c) were dilatory in re-diagnosing her condition, all of which caused her bowel obstruction to worsen, with the result that she will have to be fed intravenously for the rest of her life (the jury award covers about half her medical costs).UPDATE: June 26, 2007, 12:37 a.m. PDT, 07:37 CUT/SMT/SUT — On June 26, 1963, President Kennedy visited West Berlin, where he made his famous declaration: "Ich bin ein Berliner" ("I am a Berliner"). [New York Times/AP e-headlines]
On June 26, 1541, Francisco Pizarro was assassinated in Lima, Peru; in 1794, in the Battle of Fleuris in Belgium during the War of the First Coalition (a war by neighboring nations to try to stop the French Revolution), J. M. M. Coutelle piloted the French reconnaissance balloon l'Entreprenant, marking the first military use of an aircraft that had decisive influence on the outcome of the battle; in 1844, Julia Gardiner and Acting President John Tyler were married in New York City; in 1870, the first section of the Atlantic City Boardwalk opened along the New Jersey beach; in 1893, Illinois Governor John Peter Altgeld announced that, because of fabricated testimony and bias on the part of trial judge Elbert Gary, he would pardon the anarchists convicted in the Haymarket Square bombing in Chicago in 1886, an unpopular action that made Altgeld a political pariah for a time, prevented his advancement to the U.S. senate, won him immortality in Vachel Lindsay's verse The Eagle That Is Forgotten and a mention in Profiles in Courage (see below); in 1894, U.S. railway workers went out on strike in sympathy with Pullman workers; in 1903, veteran Reno teacher Mary Doten, who after teaching for fourteen years was forced to leave the state for her health, returned to the city in improved condition; in 1907, at the Boise trial of labor leader William Haywood in the case of the assassination of Idaho Governor Frank Steunenberg, miner William Davis of Goldfield, Nevada, took the stand for the defense and contradicted the testimony of chief prosecution witness Harry Orchard; in 1916, the Cleveland Indians became the first big league team to put numbers on player uniforms, though the innovation was later abandoned; in 1924, after eight years of occupation, American troops left the Dominican Republic; in 1933, Washoe County commissioners decided to try to tap federal tribal boatbuilding funds to build a hard surface highway to Pyramid Lake; in 1939, Los Angeles Power and Light announced plans to build an office building in Boulder City; in 1946, Yoshia Kamecka, interpreter at a Japanese prisoner of war camp, was convicted of war crimes charges in a case in which the testimony of Vincent Owen of Las Vegas played a part; in 1952, in a state-by-state rundown of the race for the Republican presidential nomination, the Associated Press reported that Taft was leading Eisenhower in Nevada by seven delegate votes to two; in 1958, Nevada Governor Charles Russell held a meeting in the capital to plan for keeping the government functioning in the event of atomic attack; in 1964, the soundtrack album of A Hard Day's Night was released in the U.S. by United Artists, minus five Beatles songs that were in the British version released by Parlophone on July 10 (the U.S. version, however, had instrumentals by George Martin that the British version lacked); in 1992, Las Vegas' Tailhook scandal claimed Navy Secretary Lawrence Garrett, who resigned; in 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned state laws outlawing sex by gays.
Brand Whitlock, aide to Governor Altgeld:
He knew the cost to him; he had just come to the governorship of his state, and to the leadership of his party, after its thirty years of defeat, and he realized what powerful interests would be frightened and offended if he were to turn three forgotten men out of prison; he understood how partisanship would turn the action to its advantage. It mattered not that most of the thoughtful men in Illinois would tell you that the "anarchists" had been improperly convicted, that they were not only entirely innocent of the murder of which they had been accused, but were not even anarchists.
And so, one morning in June, very early, I was called to the governor's office, and told to make out pardons for Fielden, Neebe, and Schwab. I took them over to the governor's office. I was admitted to his private room, and there he sat, at his great flat desk. The only other person in the room was Dreier, a Chicago banker, who had never wearied, it seems, in his efforts to have these men pardoned.
The Governor took the big sheets of imitation parchment, glanced over them, signed his name to each, laid down the pen, and handed the papers across the table to Dreier. The banker took them, and began to say something. But he only got as far as "Governor, I hardly" when he broke down and wept.
I saw the Governor as I was walking to the Capitol the next morning. The Governor was riding his horse — he was a gallant horseman — and he bowed and smiled that faint, wan smile of his, and drew up to the curb a moment. I said: "Well, the storm will break now."
"Oh, yes," he replied, with a not wholly convincing air of throwing off a care, "I was prepared for that. It was merely doing right." I said something to him then to express my satisfaction in the great deed that was to be so willfully, recklessly, and cruelly misunderstood. I did not say all I might have said, for I felt that my opinions could mean so little to him. I have wished since that I had said more, said something that could perhaps have made a great burden a little easier for that brave and tortured soul. But he rode away with that wan, persistent smile. And the storm did break, and the abuse it rained upon him broke his heart.
Click here for statewide Radio/TV/Webcast/Podcast info.UPDATE: June 25, 2007, 1:07 a.m. PDT, 08:07 CUT/SMT/SUT — On June 25, 1580, the Lutheran Church published the Book of Concord; in 1876, General George Custer attacked a Sioux village at Little Big Horn, unaware that the village contained four warriors for every one of his calvarymen; in 1887, Nevada teacher, Lincoln County school board member and president, and state legislator Hazel Baker Denton was born in Monroe, Utah; in 1903, the Nevada Board of Regents took several actions on the Girls Cottage, denied use of the University Hospital to any except students, accepted a bid for granite coping for the stone wall at the entrance to the campus, and appointed Robert Lewers to be acting President until September 1, 1903; in 1917, a businessperson told the Churchill County Liquor Control Board he was having trouble getting enough workers because of drunkenness, so the board shut down saloons between 11 at night and 7 in the morning; in 1927, the month-long Transcontinental Highways Exposition opened in Reno, Nevada (two features of the expo lasted long after the fair left — Idlewild Park, which was the grounds of the fair, and an arch over Reno's main street); in 1935, Joe Louis, described by the newspapers as the "dark dynamiter", beat Primo Carnera (the "man mountain") in Madison Square Garden when the referee stopped the fight in the sixth round; in 1940, after 23 years, an iron flagpole erected on top of Green Mountain near Tonopah when the U.S. entered the world war toppled over under the force of high winds; in 1940, a news report said the chamber of commerce in Kingman, Arizona, was seeking establishment of a U.S. Army Air base near Boulder Dam; in 1946, Arthur Detrie, totally disabled veteran of the Burma/India theatre of World War Two, was ordered by Las Vegas Judge A.S. Henderson in the fourth trial of his divorce case to pay $100 a month in alimony and $50 a month in child support (his monthly disability payment was $196.87); in 1953, the Sparks Tribune called for federal removal of reefs in the Truckee River (where the river leaves the Truckee Meadows and enters the canyon east of Sparks) because the reefs were causing flooding of ranches at the mouth of the canyon (a second editorial endorsed the 18-year-old vote); in 1962, in Engel vs. Vitale, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against recitation in schools of a government prayer; in 1967, on a television program originating from all over the world and broadcast by satellite, England offered The Beatles from Abbey Road Studios, who introduced All You Need Is Love to two hundred million viewers worldwide, now considered a benchmark of the summer of love; in 1970, Thomas Joseph Davis of Las Vegas died in Hua Nghia province, Vietnam (panel 09w/row 090 of the Vietnam wall); in 2001, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that misconduct by State of Nevada officers on tribal land is not subject to the jurisdiction of tribal courts; in 2003, Nevada legislators returned to Carson City for a second special session of the legislature in a last ditch effort to end the budget deadlock before the fiscal year ended.
UPDATE: June 24, 2007, 12:01 a.m. PDT, 07:01 CUT/SMT/SUT — On June 24, 1997, the Air Force released a report on the so-called "Roswell Incident," suggesting the alien bodies witnesses reported seeing in 1947 were actually life-sized dummies. [New York Times/AP e-headlines]
On this date in 1807, former vice president Aaron Burr was indicted for treason (he was found not guilty); in 1844, Mayor Joseph Smith of Nauvoo, Illinois, the Mormon founder, ordered the suppression of church rebels (which sparked violence, which in turn prompted Smith to call out the town militia and destroy a local newspaper's printing press, for which state officials arrested him and his brother and jailed them in Carthage where they were assassinated by a mob); in 1893, the U.S. established a post office at Los Vegas, Nevada (the spelling is correct, as used by postal officials until 1903).; in 1912, Congress enacted legislation assigning to itself the authority to determine the exact proportions of features of the U.S. flag, bringing to an end the long era of the public being able to design the arrangement of stars for themselves; in 1918, after a worker in a Reno cigar factory was heard making comments critical of the world war, he was arrested for sedition on a warrant issued by U.S. Attorney William Woodburn [EDITOR'S NOTE: A cigar maker's union operated in Reno at the time.]; in 1924, the Democratic National Convention began in Madison Square Garden and quickly developed into a 16-day deadlocked convention whose polarization and divisions and dominance by the Ku Klux Klan were broadcast on radio through 103 ballots for the presidential nomination, destroying the party's prospects in an otherwise promising year (the refusal of U.S. Senator Oscar Underwood to accept the presidential nomination under Klan sponsorship was dramatized in the 1964 television series Profiles in Courage, based on the John Kennedy book); in 1929, James Seastrand, later mayor of North Las Vegas, was born in American Fork, Utah; in 1939, the film crew of Grantland Rice's Sportlight (a short subject shown in movie theatres) arrived in Boulder City to film a segment; in 1939, 'Miss Boulder Dam" Bettina Norberg, who was a resident of Burlingame, California, and had never actually seen the structure whose name she bore, arrived in Nevada to tour the dam; in 1940, the Las Vegas Evening Review Journal published a letter and copy of a telegram from U.S. Senator Key Pittman of Nevada, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in which Pittman said that because of belligerent U.S. policies, he would not vote for war if a U.S. battleship was lost and that three fourths of Congress felt the same way (the telegram was a reply to a Nevada couple; see below); in 1942, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes approved an $18,966,392 contract for construction of the Bullshead dam and power house on the Colorado River between Arizona and Nevada; in 1944, President Roosevelt signed the Servicemen's Readjustment Act, also known as the GI bill of rights; in 1962, Ladeo Corporation advertised availability of "first come - first served" reservations for a 500 unit trailer park then under construction in Cactus Springs, Nevada, near Mercury; in 1971, Daniels and Bell became the first known African American-owned firm to gain a seat on the New York Stock Exchange (co-owner Travers Bell's son Gregory Bell has written a history of African-Americans on Wall Street titled In The Black); in 1978, Russ McDonald, former Washoe County manager, director of the Nevada Legislative Counsel Bureau, and author of the 1978-80 tax cutting Ballot Question 6 (the Nevada version of California's Proposition 13), was honored at a testimonial dinner in Reno; in 1995, the first game of the Major Indoor Soccer League was played at UNLV between Sacramento and Las Vegas; in 2003, historian Beverly Mobley gave a lecture at the Nevada State Museum on the history of the Stewart Indian School; in 2003, Philip Deale, owner of Philip's Supper Club who was once sued by other restaurant owners for paying cab drivers $3 to refer passengers to his club, died in Las Vegas; in 2003, the Nevada Trial Lawyers Association gave a testimonial dinner for former state district judge Jerry Whitehead, who was forced off the bench by federal prosecutors in 1995.
Telegram from U.S. Senator Key Pittman to Tim and Lulu Harnedy of Las Vegas (published 6-24-1940):My dear Sir and Madam:
I am today in receipt of the following telegram from you: "Your very discourteous remarks directed at Col. Lindbergh, a real patriot and hero, are a reflection on the intelligence of the people of the State of Nevada."
I attempted to be courteous to Col Lindbergh in my analysis of the position he took in his speech. I fully admitted his courage and his patriotism. I am surprised that you do not recognize not only his discourtesy but his attack upon the patriotism of the president of the United States. His statement in his speech that "We must have a nation ready to give whatever is required for its future welfare, and leaders who are more interested in their country than in their own advancement" is a very serious and absolutely unjustifiable attack. I unhesitatingly assert that there is no intelligent, unprejudiced person in the United States who doubts the patriotism of the president or that he would in every case place the welfare of the United States, particularly in this great emergency, over his personal advancement. The whole tenet of Col. Lindbergh's speech clearly discloses that his subject is political; that he is attempting through arousing a false fear that the president is seeking to lead us into war to defeat the president at the coming election and to defeat the other leaders in his administration who are supporters of the president.
It is well known that Mr. Lindbergh, since his recent return to the United States after an absence of several years in Great Britain, has been advising with republican politicians, some of whom lost their positions with the United States government through the defeat of the republican party in 1932 by an overwhelming vote of the people of this country. The president has clearly shown that he intends to take national defense out of politics. That alone would demonstrate to an unprejudiced person that he thinks more of the welfare of his country than he does of his own political advancement...
The Dean of Reno Bloggers could very well be Andrew Barbano, self-described "fighter of public demons," who started putting his "Barbwire" columns online in 1996 and now runs 10 sites.
UPDATE: June 23, 2007, 1:03 a.m. PDT, 08:03 CUT/SMT/SUT — On June 23, 1947, the Senate joined the House in overriding President Truman's veto of the Taft-Hartley Act. [New York Times/AP e-headlines]
Abigail Adams / June 23, 1798: I wish our Legislature would set the example & make a sedition act to hold in order the base Newspaper calumniators.
On June 23, 1683, William Penn met in Philadelphia with Lenape chiefs led by Tamanend and purchased (note: not stole, purchased) four pieces of native land and paid a substantial price in goods; in 1862, Jacob Marklee recorded a land claim of 160 acres in Douglas County, Nevada, not realizing that it was actually in California (the Alpine County Courthouse now sits on the site in Markleeville); in 1863 at Dayton, Nevada, John Thoroughman enlisted in the army for three years and was inducted at Fort Churchill (after Civil War service, he ended up in the Ormsby County Poor Farm where he died); in 1874 at a meeting of the Nevada Board of Regents at Walley's Hot Springs, the board accepted title to land in Elko County for the state's first university, directed that the deed be recorded, and noted the authority of the Nevada Legislature's "Act to Create the State University and to Provide for the Control and Management of the Same", approved March 7, 1873; in 1878, a key battle in the Bannock war was fought between the cavalry and Paiutes and Bannocks at Silver Creek, Oregon; in 1896, the Nevada State Journal carried an essay on women's suffrage by Reverend Caroline Bartlett; in 1927, U.S. Rep. John Q. Tilson of Connecticut, the GOP floor leader, joined President Coolidge on vacation in the Black Hills to tell him that Boulder Dam was not needed, that a small dam costing $15 million would suffice; in 1944, playing off the myth that Hitler was once a wallpaper hanger, Harold's Club in Reno ran a full page newspaper advertisement promoting the sale of war bonds that showed Hitler being papered against a wall by a bond (the ad was designed by PFC Ken Vares at the Reno Army Air Base); in 1964, Henry Cabot Lodge resigned as U.S. ambassador to Vietnam so he could return to the United States after unexpectedly winning the New Hampshire presidential primary election as a write in candidate; in 1965, Motown released The Tracks Of My Tears by Smokey Robinson and the Miracles (it would later also be a hit for Johnny Rivers and Linda Ronstadt); in 1969, U.S. Representatives Harold Johnson of California and Walter Baring of Nevada introduced legislation to launch an investigation of the land and water resources of the Beatty/DeathValley/Amargosa River Basin region; in 1970, Harold Lee Linville of Reno, Nevada, died in Phong Dinh province, Vietnam (panel 9w, row 84 of the Vietnam wall); in 1971, actress Carrie Fisher made her show business debut at the Sparks Nugget, appearing in the show starring her mother, Debbie Reynolds; in 1972, Title IX banned sex discrimination in educational institutions that receive federal assistance; in 1972, six days after the arrests at the Watergate, there occurred the key moment in the scandal — President Nixon made a fateful decision, telling his aide H.R. Haldeman (and his hidden microphones) to instruct the FBI "Don't go any further into this case, period" on grounds that CIA activities could be compromised; in 1983, the Native Hawaiians Study Commission submitted its final report to Congress, laying the groundwork for the apology by the United States for the subversion of the Kingdom of Hawaii; in 1997, nurse, educator and widow of Malcolm X, Betty Shabazz, died after suffering for three weeks from burns inflicted when her home was torched by an angry grandson; in 2003, in Grutter vs. Bollinger, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of the University of Michigan Law School using race as a factor in deciding admissions because of "the educational benefits that diversity is designed to produce. These benefits are substantial. ... In order to cultivate a set of leaders with legitimacy in the eyes of the citizenry, it is necessary that the path to leadership be visibly open to talented and qualified individuals of every race and ethnicity. All members of our heterogeneous society must have confidence in the openness and integrity of the educational institutions that provide this training. As we have recognized, law schools cannot be effective in isolation from the individuals and institutions with which the law interacts."UPDATE: June 22, 2007, 5:15 p.m. PDT, 00:15 CUT/SMT/SUT — In television interviews, NALC President Bill Young announced Reno's dubious distinction: the first instance in the country of which the union is aware of existing postal jobs being given to private contractors. A Utah company will take over the local routes formerly serviced by 10 postal workers.
UPDATE: June 22, 2007, 4:30 p.m. PDT, 23:30 CUT/SMT/SUT — Letter carriers picket Reno main post office
Postal workers demonstrate at Reno main branch today
National letter carriers president joins local picketers
RENO (U-News) – National Association of Letter Carriers President Bill Young will join his Nevada members in a demonstration at the Reno main post office, 2000 Vassar Street, from 4:30 to 6:00 p.m. today.
The picketing is part of a national series of protests of the subcontracting of new city routes to private companies, thus compromising the security of the mail.
It also jeopardizes support of U.S. service personnel.
"The new subcontracting policy eliminates any preference for returning war veterans, something which the United States Postal Service has offered for decades," stated Nevada Assn. of Letter Carriers President Mickey Grizzle.
Union leaders support S. 1457, a bill by Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, to curb postal subcontracting. Support for S. 1457 has grown to 31 senate co-sponsors.
House Resolution 282, which also opposes the subcontracting policy, currently has more than 220 co-sponsors, including southern Nevada Representatives Shelly Berkley, D, and Jon Porter, R.
Northern Nevada Rep. Dean Heller, R, has not signed on, Grizzle noted.
Other aspects of the subcontracting program criticized by the workers and their union:
[] The normal recruitment and hiring process has been bypassed, subverting the proper screening of personnel.
[] Using contractors undermines accountability by putting mail in the hands of unknown workers. (The U.S. Mail is not pizza delivery, with all due respect to pie purveyors.)
[] The process lacks transparency. Wage levels of contract workers are reportedly less than half of those of career letter carriers. Other payments and fees paid to subcontractors for such catch-alls as vehicle expenses and overhead costs wipe out any labor cost savings. The details of contract delivery services are subject to little or no scrutiny.
[] Outsourcing threatens the sanctity and security of the mails. Recruited with minimal screenings, contractors and subcontractors become vulnerable to identity thieves, convicted felons and other unqualified workers who may gain access to Americans' mail and their mail boxes.More information:
http://www.nalc.org
http://www.postalreporter.com/
BARBWIRE: Want Halliburton in your mailbox?
"In Florida, deliveries to a new shopping mall are being handled by a private contractor whose criminal record would prevent him from working directly for the USPS," one union leader says.UPDATE: June 22, 2007, 12:25 a.m. PDT, 07:25 CUT/SMT/SUT — On June 22, 1940, during World War II, Adolf Hitler gained a stunning victory as France was forced to sign an armistice eight days after German forces overran Paris. [New York Times/AP e-headlines]
On this date in 1877, the New York Herald reported "No part of the world ever presented so favorable an opportunity as the coal regions for the rich to oppress the poor workingman. In many instances the opportunity was not neglected."; in 1902, while working both as a freighter for the Tonopah Mining Company and as a deputy U.S. marshal in Tonopah, Wyatt Earp (as a deputy) served notice of a lawsuit on his (private) employer Tasker Oddie, general manager of the mining company; in 1914, with the state fiscal year a week short of complete, the state workers injury insurance system reported that there had been 1,203 injuries and twenty nine deaths during the year to date and that more than $201,000 in claims had been paid out with $227,000 paid in as premiums; in 1937, Joe Louis won the world heavyweight championship against James Braddock; in 1938, two years after Nazi leaders trumpeted Max Schmeling's defeat of Joe Louis as a triumph of racial supremacy, Louis beat Schmeling in two minutes and four seconds in at a Yankee Stadium rematch, knocking Schmeling down four times in the only round until the referee stopped the fight (Schmeling was not the Aryan champion the Nazis suggested; on Kristallnacht, he saved the lives of two Jewish brothers); in 1940, French representatives surrendered to Adolf Hitler and German officers in the railroad car at Compiegne where Germany had surrendered to France in 1918 (Nazi officials had ordered communications from the site cut off so they could control the spin on the even after it was over, but CBS newsman William Shirer got a line out and narrated events to his U.S. audience); in 1940, in Las Vegas, Victor Matteucci, blinded by a bullet in his head from an unsuccessful suicide attempt, and Maryl Marshall, who read of his plight in the newspaper and went to the hospital where she spent long hours working to raise his spirits and restore his interest in life, took out a marriage license; in 1944, the War Department announced that two Nevadans, Pvt. Henry Miller of Las Vegas and 2d Lt. Robert Christensen of Ely, were prisoners of war of Germany; in 1947, the Las Vegas Age reported that Los Angeles officials were "baffled" by the gangland slaying in Beverly Hills of Las Vegas casino operator Benjamin Siegel (inside, the newspaper published an ad for the "largest prizes in the history of Las Vegas" and a "direct wire to all major tracks" at Siegel's Flamingo Hotel); in 1956, the California Highway Commission decided to relocate U.S. 40 from Donner Lake to Floriston, bypassing Truckee; in 1959, Memphis by Chuck Berry was released; in 1961, Congress extended for the tenth time taxes imposed as a Korean war measure; in 1963, Wipe Out by The Surfaris was released; in 1968, Classical Gas by Mason Williams was released; in 1969, the legendary one and only album of Blind Faith was released; in 1971, the United States Senate for the first time voted (57 to 42) to order an end to the war in Vietnam; in 1992, in RAV vs. St. Paul, a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court ruled that adding additional penalties onto crimes because they are motivated by animosity ("hate crimes") is an impermissible punishment of opinion.
UPDATE: June 21, 2007, 12:01 a.m. PDT, 07:01 CUT/SMT/SUT — On June 21, 1964, three civil rights workers [Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman, requiesecant in pacem] disappeared in Philadelphia, Miss. Their bodies were found buried in an earthen dam six weeks later. Eight members of the Ku Klux Klan went to prison on federal conspiracy charges; none served more than six years. [New York Times/AP e-headlines]
James Chaney
Michael Schwerner
Andrew Goodman
On June 21, 1854, Seattle minister David Blaine wrote to his eastern relatives complaining about whites mixing with Native Americans: "We have in our community many of the most intelligent and better class of persons, many of whom have moved in refined society at home, who have been moral and upright until they came to the Pacific Coast, but now they show no respect for religion nor regard for the Sabbath. They live with savages and live as savages. When they left the states their only aim was to get rich, and to secure the wealth they seek. They violate every moral principle with the utmost recklessness and profess all kinds of infidelity to quiet their consciences and pollute and excuse their wickedness."; in 1861, Tennessee became the first Confederate state to authorize state militia companies composed of free African-Americans; in 1866, Congress enacted the Southern Homestead Act, a post-Civil War measure to assist newly emancipated slaves by opening public lands in five southern states to settlement by people of all races; in 1874, the Pioche Record was predicting completion of the railroad between Palisade and Eureka by June 27; in 1877, fourteen labor union miners were hanged in Pennsylvania for murder on the testimony of a Pinkerton private "detective" paid by the mine owners; in 1883, Churchill County leader W.C. Grimes said his county had been badly damaged by the construction of the Carson and Colorado Railroad, which had "driven off the towns" and dried up the market for the county's farm produce; in 1910, on the day "great white hope" James Jeffries arrived in Reno to begin preparations for his fight with heavyweight champion Jack Johnson, the owner of the Novelty Theatre in Ely staged a boxing match and refused to pay the $1,000 license fee (and was arrested) in an apparent effort to provoke a court test of the state's licensing law, a test that might stop the Reno bout; in 1915, in Guinn vs. United States, Oklahoma's grandfather clause allowing residents to avoid a literacy test for voting if their grandfathers were voters was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court because its practical effect was that illiterate whites were able to vote but not illiterate blacks whose grandfathers were nearly all slaves and therefore barred by law from both voting and literacy; in 1921, in one of its first arbitrations, the League of Nations directed that the Aland Islands, chronically disputed among Finland, Sweden and Russia and considered a threat as a military staging ground by Britain and Sweden, should remain a part of Finland but be granted autonomy and prohibited from having military facilities, conditions that prevailed through the Nazi period and continue today; in 1927, newspapers reported a warning to businesses from Nevada highway engineer Sam Durkee to remove their billboards and signs from along state highways or see them destroyed in compliance with a state law that forbade all advertising alongside highways; in 1940, the U.S. Census Bureau released a 110,014 population figure for Nevada (32,366 in Washoe, 16,358 in Clark, 12,352 in White Pine, 10,857 in Elko, all other counties in four digits); in 1962, Humboldt County Senator John Fransway said that "the civil rights problem in Nevada has been magnified away out of proportion by outside interests" and objected to the NAACP's "marches, posters, hymn singing, sit ins, ultimatums, deadlines, and threats"; in 1964, three civil rights workers vanished in Philadelphia, Mississippi, their bodies later found in an earthen dam, a case later dramatized in the film Mississippi Burning (which gave the FBI a role it did not have in solving the case) and told by William Bradford Huie in his book Three Lives For Mississippi, a case which also produced one of the unforgettable photographic images of the civil rights era, of laughing deputies being arraigned while chewing Red Man tobacco; in 1966, The Beatles recorded She Said She Said by John Lennon for the Revolver album; in 1968, Native Americans participating in the Poor People's Campaign protested in front of the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs building in D.C.; in 2004, in the major privacy case Hiibel v. Sixth Judicial District Court of Nevada, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a law abiding citizen has no right to stand mute when asked by police to identify him/herself and can be arrested and convicted for doing so; in 2005, forty one years to the day after the murders of the three civil rights workers in 1964, Edgar Killen was convicted of manslaughter in the slayings (he was later sentenced to 60 years in prison); in 2006, Roger Waters of Pink Floyd visited the west bank wall in Bethlehem, wrote Tear down the wall and No thought control on it, and moved a concert from Tel Aviv to Neve Shalom/Wahat al Salam, a village where Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel work together in spite of Israeli government policies; in 2007, a National Day of Prayer to Protect Native American Sacred Places is being commemorated.
UPDATE: June 20, 2007, 5:38 p.m. PDT; 00:38 June 21, 2007, CUT/SMT/SUT — MISSING MINER: Midas tunnel swallows Newmont worker. (Elko Daily Free Press, 6-20-2007, 4:23 PM PDT) On its 5:30 p.m. newscast today, Reno's KOLO TV-8 news reported that the miner remains missing and that a medevac helicopter is standing by. Stay tuned.
UPDATE — Search for missing miner continues
Elko Daily Free Press, Wednesday, 6-20-2007 5:47 PM PDTUPDATE 6-22-2007 — The search, now in its fourth day, continues. A team from Naval Air Station Fallon has joined the effort. The mine remains shut down.
UPDATE 6-30-2007 (rgj.com/AP) — WINNEMUCCA — The body of a miner trapped underground at a gold mine near Winnemucca was located Saturday, 11 days after he turned up missing, Newmont Mining Corp. officials said.
Dan Shaw, 30, was working with a blasting crew 200 feet below the Midas mine’s portal on June 19 when the ground gave way beneath the loader he was operating. No one else was injured.
Newmont spokeswoman Mary Korpi said Shaw’s body was seen with the help of night-vision equipment through a hole drilled through the debris.
“We haven’t seen any indication of movement,” she said.
Korpi said crews must remove more rock and dirt, and it was uncertain when they would be able to reach the body. Crews have removed more than 5,000 tons of rock and dirt so far.
“It’s very confined space they’re working in,” she said. “The crews are dedicated to get in and recover him.”
The mine operations remain suspended and an around-the-clock effort relying on specialized equipment continues to reach the body.
Newmont officials are coordinating the effort with state and federal mine safety regulators.
Shaw began work at Newmont in 2003, most recently as a blaster.
Copyright © 2007 Reno Gazette-Journal / Associated Press
[EDITOR'S NOTE: Links to Reno Gazette-Journal stories are now rarely provided as most quickly become stale with Gannett randomly nuking its subsidiary newspapers' archives as a way to save disk server space — which should erode their web traffic and thus negatively affect profitability. And all this time I thought all they cared about was money.]Body of Nevada miner recovered just after 1:00 a.m. PDT July 2 (AP/Lahontan Valley News)
Rest in peace, brother.
The Dean of Reno Bloggers could very well be Andrew Barbano, self-described "fighter of public demons," who started putting his "Barbwire" columns online in 1996 and now runs 10 sites.
UPDATE: June 20, 2007, 9:11 a.m. PDT, 16:01 CUT/SMT/SUT — On June 20, 1967, boxer Muhammad Ali was convicted in Houston of violating Selective Service laws by refusing to be drafted. The conviction was later overturned by the Supreme Court. [New York Times/AP e-headlines]
On this date in 1803, Thomas Jefferson sent a letter to Capt. Meriwether Lewis describing the goals of a proposed expedition into the interior of the continent: "The object of your mission is to explore the Missouri River... its course and communication with the waters of the Pacific ocean...." (see below); in 1806, Meriwether Lewis wrote in his journal that stocks of meat for the expedition "being now nearly exhausted", Native American hunters told him that "their greatest excertions would not enable them to support us here more than one or two days longer" and so the expedition would risk a move to find an area with better game; in 1863, West Virginia was admitted to the union and under legislation later approved by the new legislature, this was the last day former slaves were permitted to enter the state to reside; in 1866, Lewis Cass, member of the Ohio Legislature, brigadier general in the war of 1812, military governor of Detroit and west Canada, governor of Michigan Territory, secretary of war under President Jackson, minister to France under President Van Buren, U.S. Senator from Michigan, secretary of state under President Buchanan, and the Democratic presidential nominee in 1848, died in Detroit; in 1872, the first church service in Lamoille, Nevada, was held; in 1874, Congress ordered a takeover of the white-administered Freedman's Savings and Trust Company, a bank created in 1865 to help former slaves make the transition to freedom that had been subverted by white overexpansion, mismanagement, abuse and fraud and by the Panic of 1873; in 1879 in Elko, the Nevada Board of Regents met, approved the principal's salary (the state university then included pre-collegiate instruction), approved the janitor's salary and adjourned; in 1893, Lizzie Borden was found not guilty of murdering her parents; in 1903, Marius Krarup and Tom Fetch left San Francisco to drive a Packard across the United States at a time when there were no cross country highways, crossing Nevada en route and beating by two days another car that went around Nevada; in 1917, newspapers were making a fuss over William Teller, a Shoshone from the Duck Valley reservation, because he purchased a liberty bond (war bond); in 1939, two years away from war in the far east, the Las Vegas Review-Journal ran an editorial on the gathering far eastern crisis that led to the Pacific war entitled "Not As Serious As It Looks"; in 1940, with war still 17 months away, President Roosevelt jolted Washington by forming a coalition war cabinet, appointing Republicans Henry Stimson as secretary of war and Frank Knox as navy secretary (the move for some reason convinced many in Washington that FDR would not seek a third term); in 1940, Emma Nevada died; in 1940 in Philadelphia, former Acting Nevada Governor Morley Griswold was appointed to the national defense committee at the Republican National Convention; in 1947, Las Vegas mobster Benjamin Siegel was murdered in Beverly Hills; in 1963, the U.S.S.R. and U.S., seeking to cool cold war tensions in the wake of the missile crisis, agreed to establish a telegraph link between Moscow and Washington to provide instant communication, a link that became known as the hot line; in 1967, heavyweight champion and Muslim minister Muhammad Ali was convicted of violating the federal draft law (he was stripped of his title and blacklisted from working for years); in 1972, the Tallahatchie Bridge, made famous by singer (and Bill Harrah spouse) Bobbie Gentry, collapsed; in 1979, at a routine Managua checkpoint during the last days of the Somoza dictatorship, ABC News reporter Bill Stewart, lying face down on the street, was executed by a member of the Nicaraguan guardia while a camera (unknown to the killer) rolled and the disturbing footage showing Stewart's body jerk from the impact of the bullet in his back helped dissolve U.S. support for the tyrant, an incident later dramatized in the Joanna Cassidy/Nick Nolte film Under Fire (in which a Nicaraguan woman is portrayed saying "Fifty thousand Nicaraguans can die...Maybe we should have killed an American journalist fifty years ago."; the guardia had been formed by the United States Marines in 1927 during a U.S. occupation of Nicaragua and became the Somozas‚ personal police force); in 1981, the Dutch novelty group Stars on 45 (also known as Starsound) hit number one on the Billboard chart with the song that had the longest name in history: Medley: Intro Venus/Sugar Sugar/No Reply/I'll Be Back/Drive My Car/Do You Want to Know a Secret/We Can Work It Out/I Should Have Known Better/Nowhere Man/You're Going to Lose That Girl/Stars on 45.
David Plotz / October 2, 2006 / Slate: "If Lewis and Clark had died on the trail, it wouldn't have mattered a bit," says Notre Dame University historian Thomas Slaughter, author of the forthcoming Exploring Lewis and Clark: Reflections on Men and Wilderness. Like the moon landing, the Lewis and Clark expedition was inspiring, poetic, metaphorical, and ultimately insignificant.First of all, Lewis and Clark were not first of all. The members of the Corps of Discovery were not the first people to see the land they traveled. Indians had been everywhere, of course, but the corps members were not even the first whites. Trappers and traders had covered the land before them, and though Lewis and Clark may have been the first whites to cross the Rockies in the United States, explorer Alexander MacKenzie had traversed the Canadian Rockies a decade before them.
After the celebration of their safe return, Lewis and Clark quickly sank into obscurity, and for good reason. They failed at their primary mission. Jefferson had dispatched them to find a water route across the continent — the fabled Northwest Passage — but they discovered that water transport from coast to coast was impossible. Jefferson, chagrined, never bragged much about the expedition he had fathered.
Not discovering something that didn‚t exist was hardly Lewis and Clark's fault, but the expedition also failed in a much more important way. It produced nothing useful. Meriwether Lewis was supposed to distill his notes into a gripping narrative, but he had writer‚s block and killed himself in 1809 without ever writing a word.The captains' journals weren't published until almost 10 years after the duo's return; only 1,400 copies were printed, they appeared when the country was distracted by the War of 1812, and they had no impact. The narrative was well-told, but it ignored the most valuable information collected by Lewis and Clark — their mountains of scientific and anthropological data about the plants, animals, and Indians of the West. That material wasn't published for a century, long after it could have helped pioneers.
Lewis and Clark didn't matter for other reasons. At the time of the journey, the Corps of Discovery "leapfrogged Americans‚ concerns," says American University historian Andrew Lewis (no relation to Meriwether). "They were exploring the far Missouri at a time when the frontier was the Ohio River. They were irrelevant."In a few years, Lewis and Clark disappeared from the American imagination ... By the late 19th century, Lewis and Clark were negligible figures. They weren't found in textbooks, according to the University of Tulsa's James Ronda, a leading scholar of the expedition. Americans didn't hearken back to the adventure. It was so unimportant that Henry Adams could dismiss it in no time flat in his history of the Jefferson administration as having "added little to the stock of science and wealth." ... But by the late '60s, Americans had rediscovered Lewis and Clark, and their fervor has not flagged since. ... But our fascination with Lewis and Clark is much more about us than about them. The expedition is a useful American mythology: How a pair of hardy souls and their happy-go-lucky multiculti flotilla discovered Eden, befriended the Indian, and invented the American West. The myth of Lewis and Clark papers over the grittier story of how the United States conquered the land, tribe by slaughtered, betrayed tribe. ...
Lewis and Clark didn't give Americans any of the tools they required to settle the continent, not new technology, not a popular narrative, not a good route, not arable land. It didn't matter. Nineteenth-century pioneers were bound to take the great West, with or without Lewis and Clark. Their own greed, ambition, bravery, and desperation guaranteed it. They did not need Lewis and Clark to conquer and build the West.But we do need Lewis and Clark to justify having done it.
[Emphases added]
UPDATE: June 19, 2007, 12:39 a.m. PDT, 07:39 CUT/SMT/SUT — On June 19, 1964, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was approved after surviving an 83-day filibuster in the United States Senate. [New York Times/AP e-headlines]On this date in 1754, delegates from most of the northern British colonies and representatives from the Six Iroquois Nations met in Albany in a forerunner of the continental congresses and considered a plan of union offered by Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania that was derived from the governing practices of the Iroquois Confederacy (Franklin's Iroquois plan was not adopted in Albany but its elements later became a part of the U.S. Constitution); in 1862, slavery was outlawed in the Territory of Nevada and other U.S. territories; in 1865, two months after Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, African-Americans in Texas were told, incorrectly, that the proclamation had freed the slaves, the day becoming known among blacks as Juneteenth; in 1865, the first of several meetings called to organize to support "equal rights before the Law to all the Colored Citizens of the State of Nevada" was held in Virginia City; in 1918, there was hope that the German near-monopoly on potash (a form of potassium carbonate used in the manufacture of glass and soap and as a fertilizer) might be broken by the discovery of a potash field in Dixie Valley, Nevada; in 1918, northern Nevadans were surprised to learn that an arbitration conference in a decade-old Truckee River water rights case had been scheduled by federal officials — in Denver, and the Churchill County Standard compared the case to Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce in Bleak House (Dickens: "The scarecrow of a suit has, in course of time, become so complicated, that no man alive knows what it means. The parties to it understand it least; but it has been observed that no two Chancery lawyers can talk about it for five minutes, without coming to a total disagreement as to all the premises. Innumerable children have been born into the cause; innumerable young people have married into it; innumerable old people have died out of it. Scores of persons have deliriously found themselves made parties in Jarndyce and Jarndyce, without knowing how or why; whole families have inherited legendary hatreds with the suit."); in 1936, Max Schmeling, heavyweight champion from 1930 to '32, came back as a ten to one underdog to beat Joe Louis for the championship, a victory German Nazi officials portrayed as a triumph of racial supremacy; in 1939, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee voted to reject President Roosevelt's nomination of William Boyle as U.S. Attorney for Nevada, which Nevada's Senator Key Pittman had championed but which its other senator, Pat McCarran, had called "personally offensive to me" because he considered the nomination retribution for McCarran's opposition to FDR's court packing plan; in 1962, a Long Beach company, Kit Manufacturing, was hired to construct bachelor quarters at Mercury, Nevada, for the Atomic Energy Commission; in 1962, on the hottest day of the year, North Las Vegas' water system went dry and at the Las Vegas convention center a dozen spouses of conventioneers collapsed from heat prostration; in 1967, Jack Edward Cossins of Henderson, Nevada, died in Gia Dinh Province, Vietnam (panel 22e/row 0100 of the Vietnam wall); in 1970, Pvt. Mark Crouse of Yerington, Nevada, was wounded in action in Cambodia with a foot injury and shrapnel in the back and arm; in 1971, a festival called Indiana Black Expo debuted at the Indiana state fairgrounds, highlighting the cultural, educational and entertainment contributions of black Hoosiers (the event drew Ralph Abernathy, Jesse Jackson, Bill Russell and John Mackey); in 1982 at Lake Tahoe, Steve Miller began a tour to promote his album Abracadabra; in 1997, when Julia Roberts was introduced on Letterman, the band played Julia from the white album (the song is about John Lennon's mother); in 1999, high school coach Jim Morris tried out for the Tampa Bay Devil Rays and his fast ball was clocked at 98 miles an hour, resulting in his being signed and sent to Devil Ray teams (Orlando and Durham) and finally making a major league debut for Tampa Bay on September 18, 1999, as the oldest rookie in 40 years, events dramatized in the film The Rookie with Dennis Quaid playing Morris; in 2002, U.S. Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama disclosed information he received as a member of the Select Committee on Intelligence to Fox Network reporter Carl Cameron, but although a grand jury was empaneled on the matter, the Bush administration chose not to prosecute; in 2004, a marker was dedicated in Virginia City commemorating African-Americans on the Comstock near the site of the Boston Saloon, an African-American owned business of the 1860s that was the subject of a 1999 dig by archeologist Kelly Dixon.
Justice Hugo Black / Torcaso vs. Watkins / June 19, 1961: There were, however, wise and far-seeing men in the Colonies — too many to mention — who spoke out against test oaths and all the philosophy of intolerance behind them. One of these, it so happens, was George Calvert (the first Lord Baltimore), who took a most important part in the original establishment of the Colony of Maryland. He was a Catholic and had, for this reason, felt compelled by his conscience to refuse to take the Oath of Supremacy in England at the cost of resigning from high governmental office. He again refused to take that oath when it was demanded by the Council of the Colony of Virginia, and as a result he was denied settlement in that Colony. A recent historian of the early period of Maryland's life has said that it was Calvert's hope and purpose to establish in Maryland a colonial government free from the religious persecutions he had known — one "securely beyond the reach of oath." When our Constitution was adopted, the desire to put the people "securely beyond the reach" of religious test oaths brought about the inclusion in Article VI of that document of a provision that "no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States." Article VI supports the accuracy of our observation in Girouard v. United States that "[t]he test oath is abhorrent to our tradition." Not satisfied, however, with Article VI and other guarantees in the original Constitution, the First Congress proposed and the States very shortly thereafter adopted our Bill of Rights, including the First Amendment. That Amendment broke new constitutional ground in the protection it sought to afford to freedom of religion, speech, press, petition and assembly. Since prior cases in this Court have thoroughly explored and documented the history behind the First Amendment, the reasons for it, and the scope of the religious freedom it protects, we need not cover that ground again. What was said in our prior cases we think controls our decision here...We repeat and again reaffirm that neither a State nor the Federal Government can constitutionally force a person "to profess a belief or disbelief in any religion." Neither can constitutionally pass laws or impose requirements which aid all religions as against non-believers, and neither can aid those religions based on a belief in the existence of God as against those religions founded on different beliefs.[[EDITOR'S NOTE: Unless otherwise noted, historical items appear courtesy of longtime Nevada reporter Dennis Myers' Poor Denny's Almanac. [PDA] Items highlighted in blue are of particular interest to labor. Copyright © 2007 Dennis Myers.]]
UPDATE: June 18, 2007, 12:27 a.m. PDT, 07:27 CUT/SMT/SUT — On June 18, 1948, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights adopted its International Declaration of Human Rights. [New York Times/AP e-headlines]
Susan B. Anthony / June 18, 1873: I shall earnestly and persistently continue to urge all women to the practical recognition of the old revolutionary maxim, "Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God."
On this date in 1812, over the objections of New England governors who refused to provide coastal defenses and of antiwar critics like Francis Scott Key (who would soon write the national anthem) and of the financial community, Congress declared war on England by votes of seventy-nine to forty-nine in the House, and nineteen to thirteen in the Senate; in 1863, the 54th Massachusetts Colored Infantry attacked Fort Wagner, S.C., an event that became the climax of the movie Glory; in 1868, the first passenger train arrived in Reno; in 1873, Susan B. Anthony was fined $100 for "knowingly, wrongfully and unlawfully" voting; in 1917, a presidential order reserved 60 acres for a Winnemucca Paiute colony (another 60 acres were added on February 8, 1918, ten more on May 21, 1928, and another ten on May 28, 1928); in 1934, the Indian Reorganization Act, aka the Wheeler Burton Act, aka the Indian New Deal was enacted by Congress to reverse the Dawes Act's efforts to break up reservations and distribute tribal lands to individual tribe members and restore some self government and control of assets to tribes; in 1954, in the chronically corrupt Alabama town of Phenix City, the Democratic nominee for state attorney general, Albert Patterson, was assassinated while campaigning on a promise to crack down on corruption just three days before he was scheduled to testify before a grand jury on alleged voter fraud used against him by the incumbent attorney general, who was under indictment (these events were dramatized the next year in the movie The Phenix City Story); in 1961, an Italian archeologist revealed that the name of Pontius Pilate had been found carved (TIVSPILATVS, reconstructed by scholars to have been PONTIVSPILATVS in the undamaged original) on a broken section of stone or wall in the former site of Caesarea, the Roman capital of Palestine, the first hard evidence of the existence of the Roman procurator; in 1967, Reno police chief Elmer Briscoe, a week after announcing he would retire, said he had been forced out "under duress because of that poll" (a reference to a private poll by Reno Mayor Roy Bankofier of city council members that indicated the council would give Briscoe a resign-or-be-fired choice); in 1968, Keith Degero Taylor of Carson City, Nevada died in Quang Nam province, Vietnam (panel 56w, row 28 of the Vietnam wall); in 1970, in a shocking upset that no opinion surveys (including the vaunted Gallup poll) had forseen, the Conservative Party turned Prime Minister Harold Wilson's Labour Party out of office; in 1971, appearing in court in Tonopah, Nevada, actor Jean Peters obtained a divorce from billionaire Howard Hughes (news reports said she married Hughes in Searchlight in 1957, but other accounts say in Tonopah or at sea or on Mulholland Drive in Los Angeles); in 1991, Wellington Webb was elected the first African-American mayor of Denver; in 1994, a huge crowd turned out for an Eagles concert at UNLV; in 2001, U.S. House Resolution 168 was enacted urging schools to instruct students on the contributions Native Americans have made to American history, culture and education, a step toward a legal Native American holiday on the fourth Friday in September.
The Dean of Reno Bloggers could very well be Andrew Barbano, self-described "fighter of public demons," who started putting his "Barbwire" columns online in 1996 and now runs 10 sites.
UPDATE: June 17, 2007, 2:43 a.m. PDT, 09:43 CUT/SMT/SUT — On June 17, 1928, Amelia Earhart embarked on the first trans-Atlantic flight by a woman. She flew from Newfoundland to Wales in about 21 hours. [New York Times/AP e-headlines]
On this date in 1703, John Wesley, founder of Methodism, was born; in 1775, colonial forces lost the battle of Breed's and Bunker hills, marked by the heroism of former slave Peter Salem fighting for the colonials; in 1759, pirate Francis Drake, his ship Golden Hind overloaded with stolen goods, was forced ashore in Alta California (northern California) at an unknown location where he reputedly built a fort, became acquainted with local Native Americans, and installed a brass plaque claiming California for England (the plaque that has never been located); in 1871, anthropologist, author, journalist, poet, educator, lawyer, songwriter, civil rights activist and Harlem Renaissance figure James Weldon Johnson, author of the song known as the black national anthem, Lift Every Voice And Sing, was born in Jacksonville, Florida; in 1877, the Nez Perce War began with the decisive defeat of U.S. forces at White Bird Creek; in 1927, confessed bootlegger and mother Daisy Bell of Las Vegas spent about a day in the city jail but found it not to her liking so she paid the $100 fine instead; in 1932, on a 62-to-18 vote, the U.S. Senate defeated immediate payment of the adjusted service payment — better known as the bonus — to veterans, with Nevada's Tasker Oddie voting against payment and Key Pittman not voting but paired in favor of payment; in 1933, at Kansas City's Union Station, outlaws Adam Richetti and Verne Miller tried to rescue captured bank robber Frank Nash from seven lawmen in the busy train station, killing four of the escorting officers (and Nash), a highly publicized incident that became known as the Kansas City massacre and helped fuel approval of federal anti-crime measures (the feds spread the word that Charles "Pretty Boy" Floyd participated in the crime, but it's unlikely he was involved); in 1938, a Hollywood crew looking for a western location rejected Tombstone, Arizona, because improvements had made it too modern: "There's not a street we could photograph without telephone or telegraph poles."; in 1944, Iceland declared independence from Denmark; in 1944, in a ceremony at Reno Army Air Base, Louis Ellertson of Carson City received the Air Medal posthumously awarded to his son, Lt. Woodrow Ellertson (a 22 year-old assistant manager of a Reno Walgreen's when he was drafted) for five missions over Europe, including the one in which he died; in 1947, Native American Ray Steve, identified as a marine war hero with an artificial leg as a result of his combat injuries, was stabbed to death in the hobo jungle behind the Union Pacific depot in Las Vegas; in 1954, with the French public profoundly weary of the Indochina war, Prime Minister Pierre Mendès-France promised to resign if he failed to negotiate an armistice by July 20; in 1963, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against government-sponsored Bible and Lord's Prayer recitations in schools; in 1966, Big Brother and the Holding Company with their new singer Janis Joplin began two days of appearances at the Red Dog Saloon in Virginia City; in 1967, Carrie Anne by The