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Yesterday, today and tomorrow
NEWS BULLETIN & 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 interest to labor in particular and seekers of justice in general. Copyright © 2008 Dennis Myers.]]
UPDATE MONDAY 6-30-2008, 12:01 p.m. PDT, 19:01 GMT/SUT/CUT — EXCLUSIVE
New wrinkles: Teamsters resume talks with Reno-Sparks bus system July 1
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21:00-23:00 GMT/CUT/SUTThe 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 MONDAY 6-30-2008, 12:31 a.m. PDT, 07:31 GMT/SUT/CUT — On this date in 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 1899, the Nevada State Journal ran an article entitled The Italian farmer/As he is found in the Truckee Valley that described Italians as thieves and drunks which it defended the next day but then apologized for three days later; in 1905, the Reno Athletic Club paid $1,000 for the county license to stage the Jack Root/Marvin Hart prize fight; 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 1933, the amount of material excavated for the Boulder Dam project reached 6,900,000 cubic yards (57 tunnels had been driven, their cumulative lengths totalling 33,208 feet or 6 and three tenths miles, and 505,230 yards of concrete had been poured); 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 1942 near Luzon, the U.S. submarine Sturgeon torpedoed the unescorted Japanese auxiliary ship Montevideo Maru which carried Allied prisoners of war, killing more than a thousand Australian prisoners and civilians, the greatest maritime disaster in Australian history; 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 1953, six months after leaving office, former Democratic vice president Alben Barkley's television program, Meet the Veep (the term veep had been coined specifically for Barkley) was moved into prime time (the program ran on NBC in one time slot or another for seven months during the first year of the Eisenhower administration); in 1966, The Beatles arrived in Tokyo to appear at Budokan Hall in Tokyo, among their most successfully bootlegged appearances, released under the titles Five Nights In A Judo Arena and Three Nights In Tokyo; in 1977, a U.S. House communications subcommittee announced that it was stepping up its investigation of whether television networks had begun to control the sports they carried; 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, the City of Reno's court fight against legislation that took the airport it built and turned it over to a regional airport authority began in Nevada district court; 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, Paul and Yoko 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 SUNDAY 6-29-2008, 12:25 a.m. PDT, 07:25 GMT/SUT/CUT — On this date in 1652, more than a century before the colonial declaration of independence, Massachusetts declared itself independent of England; in 1835, William Travis raised a company of 25 men to fight for independence for northern Mexico because of the new Mexican constitution's abolition of slavery; 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 1906, Anazasi 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 (Stokely 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 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 soundtrack); 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 1965, NASA introduced the latest batch of astronauts — six more white guys: Duane Graveline, Joseph Kerwin, Curtis Michel, Edward Gibson, Owen Garriott and Harrison Schmitt; 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 SATURDAY 6-28-2008, 11:12 a.m. PDT, 18:12 GMT/SUT/CUT — On this date in 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 1890, the Nevada Board of Regents chose Mary Emery as principal of the Normal Department (teachers college); in 1902, Congress gave President Theodore Roosevelt permission to enter into negotiations with Colombia on construction of a canal across central America (Roosevelt exceeded his instructions, fomenting a rebellion against the Colombian government by its Panamanian province, then sending a canal treaty with Panama to Congress without first bothering to negotiate it with the new Panamanian government); in 1919, Germany and the Allies signed the treaty of Versailles formally ending the world war (and starting the next one); in 1915, Nevada Attorney General George Thatcher informed Nevada Mines Inspector A.J. Stinson that mining companies that were "prospecting on lode claims for mineral with churl drills on a twelve hour shift" were breaking the state's eight-hour law; 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, state distict court judge George Marshall of Las Vegas resigned his judgeship to run for the United States Senate (he came in second in the Republican primary); 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 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, the incoming Reno city council voted to have city crews remove Harrah's Casino's personal traffic lane on Center Street, installed to accommodate the casino's valet parking, and turn it back into a regular street lane; in 1977 in a concurring opinion in Nixon vs. Adminstrator of General Services, in which Richard Nixon tried to regain control of "his" tape recordings of White House conversations, Justice John Paul Stevens (appointed by Gerald Ford) wrote that it was legitimate for Congress to single Nixon out for different archival requirements from other presidents because Congress acted on a clear showing that he was "an unreliable custodian of his papers"; 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").
Fri, 27 Jun 2008 06:08:33 PDT
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 this date in 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 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 1918 in a surprise, Non-Partisan League candidate Charles A. Lindbergh (father of the aviator) lost the Republican primary for Minnesota governor by 50,000 votes (the League, an influential force along the middle border, was targeted by the Wilson administration's repression, including imprisonment in Leavenworth for sedition of League U.S. senate candidate James Peterson and national president Arthur Towley); in 1932 on the opening day of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, the presidential campaign of Chicago banker 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 1940 San Francisco News editor Wilbur Burkhardt, in ill health and on a leave of absence, jumped off the Bay Bridge to his death; in 1942 eight alleged German agents who had been put ashore from a submarine were taken into custody; in 1950, President Truman shocked official Washington by effectively declaring war ("I have ordered United States air and sea forces to give the Korean government troops cover and support") and some members of Congress like Senator James Kem tried to object but were overwhelmed by flag waving leaders like Senate GOP floor leader William Knowland, R-Calif., who rallied behind Truman, thus setting a significant precedent by doing nothing to assert its authority when Truman acted without congressional authorization (Senate Republican leader Robert Taft said "I would say there is no authority to use armed forces in support of the United Nations in the absence of some previous action by Congress dealing with the subject"); in 1954, a U.S.-engineered coup d'etat overthrew the elected government of Guatemala, which for the next forty years lived under a reign of terror (the Eisenhower administration produced an assassination instruction manual and a list of 58 leaders it planned to murder); in 1954 Pogo began running in the Nevada State Journal; in 1964 Jan and Dean's Little Old Lady From Pasadena was released and Under the Boardwalk made it onto the Billboard chart; 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 helped give 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 1970, Ohio by Crosby Stills Nash, about the killings at Kent State, was released; in 2001, six-time Golden Globe winner, two-time Oscar winner, and two-time Cannes Palme d'Or winner Jack Lemmon died; in 2002, Who bass player John Entwistle was found dead in a Las Vegas hotel room; in 2007 asked on the Sean Hannity program if he supported the "fairness" doctrine, U.S. Senator George Voinovich, R-Ohio, replied "I'm all for the fairness doctrine, whatever that is."Date: Thu, 26 Jun 2008 00:33:58 PDT
On this date in 1807, a lighting bolt struck an armory in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, exploding a powder magazine and killing 230 to 300 people (reports differ); in 1876 a day after Colonel George Custer led much of the7th Cavalry to its doom at Little Big Horn, Major Marcus Reno took command of its survivors; in 1876 in Wadsworth, a Central Pacific paycar from San Francisco paid local workers and then headed east, after having gone straight through Reno without paying the three months arrears it reportedly owned its Reno workers; in 1886 grocer and former state senator William O.H. Martin was awarded the contract to supply groceries to the state asylum; 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 1919 the New York Daily News began publication; in 1924 after eight years of occupation, American troops left the Dominican Republic; in 1933 the Washoe County commissioners decided to try to tap federal tribal roadbuilding funds to build a hard surface highway to Pyramid Lake; in 1940 in Washington, U.S. Senator Key Pittman of Nevada, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said that Prime Minister Winston Churchill's previously announced plan to move the British seat of government to Canada should be implemented because, Pittman said, Hitler was likely to conquer the British isle (a British government source responded to Pittman by saying Churchill's government "does not have the slightest intention" of moving its operations to Canada until forced to do so), and U.S. Representative James Scrugham of Nevada said there was "a ten to one chance" that England would be defeated by Hitler; in 1946 en route to an atomic detonation at Bikini Atoll on board the U.S.S. Appalachian, Major John Slocum, while briefing correspondents aboard, said atomic explosions would spread a "rain of death" in radioactivity, a contention later U.S. officials would deny; 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 1957 the Nevada State Journal carried a front page photo of a mushroom cloud produced by a southern Nevada atomic test accompanied by text commenting on the "iridescent" colors but nothing about the dangers; in 1958 Nevada Governor Charles Russell held a meeting in the capital to plan for keeping the government functioning in the event of an atomic attack; in 1963 President Kennedy gave his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner" to a crowd in the plaza in front of Berlin city hall, apparently so excited by the reception he received in the city that he denounced his own policy of peaceful coexistence: "And there are some who say, in Europe and elsewhere, we can work with the communists. Let them come to Berlin!" (an urban legend that his Ich bin ein Berliner comment actually means "I am a jelly donut" has taken in The New York Times, Time magazine and many other media entities); in 1993, President Clinton bombed Baghdad in retaliation for what intelligence sources (the kind that would later report weapons of mass destruction) claimed was an Iraqi plot to assassinate the first President Bush, though questions were quickly raised about the reliability of those claims by investigative reporter Seymour Hersh in the November 1 1993 edition of The New Yorker (after U.S. occupation forces seized Iraqi archives, no evidence was found of the plot); in 2003, Human Rights Watch accused the Bush administration of extending its campaign against an international war crimes tribunal to exempting U.N. troops from the authority of the court.
Live Streaming Barbwire.TV
Monday thru Friday
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21:00-23:00 GMT/CUT/SUTThe 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.
Date: Wed, 25 Jun 2008 08:27:38 PDT
On this date in 1887 Nevada teacher, Lincoln County school board member and president, and state legislator Hazel Baker Denton was born in Monroe, Utah; in 1906 at a night club atop Madison Square Garden eccentric socialite Harry Thaw approached socially prominent architect Stanford White's table and shot and killed White for allegedly deflowering Thaw's wife, model Evelyn Nesbit, several years earlier (the Thaw family later financed a motion picture that portrayed Thaw as a hero and White as a villain, helping swing public sentiment to Thaw); in 1927, the monthlong Transcontinental Highway 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 U.S. Senate leaders agreed on scales of rates for higher taxes on large incomes, corporate profits, and inheritances; in 1938, Nevada's only known civil war veteran, William O. Phillips, left for a Grand Army of the Republic reunion in Gettysburg; 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 1946 using a little-known state election law that allows people to place someone's name on the ballot, a group of prominent Republicans presented a petition beating 135 signatures to place the name of former acting governor Morley Griswold on the Nevada ballot as a candidate for U.S. senator, but the secretary of state ruled that they used the wrong form; in 1952 in the closing day of a trial of a woman for burglarizing Reno millionaire LaVere Redfield's Mt. Rose Street home and taking the goods across state lines, the federal government revealed that in the basement of the mansion there was a secret room containing 270,000 silver dollars and that his will contained this language: "The government can't tax wealth that can't be located. Burn this and tell no one. Carry on as though no coin or currency was left."; 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; in 1970 Thomas Joseph Davis of Las Vegas died in Hua Nghia province, Vietnam (panel 09w/row 090 of the Vietnam wall); in 1986 President Reagan spoke at a Las Vegas Hilton thousand dollar a plate dinner on behalf of (former Democratic Rep.-turned-GOP-U.S.-Senate candidate) James Santini; 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; in 2007 at one minute after midnight, a posting on Wikipedia traced to World Wrestling Federation headquarters in Connecticut reported the death of wrestler Chris Benoit's wife Nancy even though her murder was not discovered until half a day later and he had died by his own hand a day earlier (a Connecticut teenager later confessed to writing the entry as a joke and was shocked when his entry came true: "I just can't believe what I wrote was actually the case.").
Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2008 19:39:03 PDT
On this date 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, for which state officials arrested him and his brother, jailed them in Carthage, and charged them with treason; in 1896 the steamer Tahoe was launched on the Nevada side, joining the Meteor on the lake; in 1911 the Overland Limited was derailed by a broken rail just outside Reno, throwing nine cars off the track but causing no injuries; 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 1914 ancient Sumerian tablets found by Oxford archeologist Stephen Langdon at the site of Nippur and dated to 2000 BC were reported to tell a different tale of the tree of knowledge, the fall of man, and the flood — with Noah the sinner who caused the fall; in 1918 after a worker in a Reno cigar factory was heard making comments critical of the war, he was arrested for sedition on a warrant issued by U.S. Attorney William Woodburn; 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 for Democrats (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 1938, the Mexican Confederation, a labor union group, demanded the deportation of Jewish merchants from Mexico; in 1941 after the invasion of Russia, Germany occupied Kovno, former capital of Lithuania, a center of Jewish learning and culture with a renowed yeshiva, four high schools, and a hundred Jewish organizations (a fourth of the city's population was Jewish), and turned pro-German Lithuanian mobs loose, then added mobile killing units (einsatzgruppe) to provide efficiently organized killing, then established a ghetto in which the city's thirty thousand remaining Jews were sealed, providing slaves for the army and town, though the killing went on (the einsatzgruppe wiped out nearly a third of the ghetto inhabitants in a single day); in 1942 Mick Fleetwood was born; in 1965 A Spaniard In The Works by John Lennon was published; in 1999 strikes by Israel against Lebanon killed at least nine and destroyed bridges and power plants, prompting the Lebanese resistance group Hezbollah to retaliate with strikes in northern Israel that killed two, all of which U.S. media outlets like The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times reported by reversing the order of the two events to make it seem that Israel, not the Lebanese, were retaliating (European media outlets reported the two events in the correct order); 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.
Senator John Kennedy of Massachusetts / National Conference of Christians and Jews / February 16, 1956: As the [1924] Democratic Convention prepared to meet in New York City, the burning issue was whether the Klan — dominant in Southern Democratic politics and influential elsewhere — would be condemned, condoned or even mentioned. The advisors of Senator Oscar W. Underwood of Alabama — a former Presidential candidate (in 1912), a former Democratic floor leader in both the House and the Senate, author of the famous tariff bill which bore his name, and a leading Presidential possibility — urged that he say nothing to offend the Ku Klux Klan. But Senator Underwood, convinced that the Klan was contrary to all the principles of Jeffersonian democracy in which he believed, denounced it in no uncertain terms, insisted that this was the paramount issue upon which the party would have to take a firm stand, and fought vigorously but unsuccessfully to include an anti-Klan plank in the party platform. The Louisiana delegation and other Southerners publicly repudiated him, and from that moment on his chances for the Presidency were nil. But it was the courage of such men as George W. Norris and Oscar W. Underwood that paved the way for the progress in race relations and religious tolerance that has brightened the years since their brave deeds were done.
UPDATE MONDAY 6-23-2008, 2:37 a.m. PDT, 09:37 GMT/SUT/CUT — A day which will live in infamy:
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]
UPDATE SUNDAY 6-22-2008, 11:27 p.m. PDT, 06:27 GMT/SUT/CUT — George Carlin 1937-2008
From the album Parental Advisory: Explicit Lyrics
I don't like words that hide the truth. I don't like words that conceal reality. I don't like euphemisms, or euphemistic language. And American English is loaded with euphemisms, because Americans have a lot of trouble dealing with reality. Americans have trouble facing the truth, so they invent the kind of a soft language to protect themselves from it, and it gets worse with every generation. For some reason, it just keeps getting worse. I'll give you an example of that.
There's a condition in combat. Most people know about it. It's when a fighting person's nervous system has been stressed to its absolute peak and maximum. Can't take anymore input. The nervous system has either snapped or is about to snap. In the First World War, that condition was called shell shock. Simple, honest, direct language, two syllables: shell shock. Almost sounds like the guns themselves. That was seventy years ago. Then a whole generation went by and the Second World War came along and very same combat condition was called battle fatigue. Four syllables now, takes a little longer to say, doesn't seem to hurt as much. Fatigue is a nicer word than shock. Shell shock — battle fatigue. Then we had the war in Korea, 1950. Madison Avenue was riding high by that time and the very same combat condition was called operational exhaustion. Hey, we're up to eight syllables now, and the humanity has been squeezed completely out of the phrase. It's totally sterile now. Operational exhaustion. Sounds like something that might happen to your car. Then of course, came the war in Vietnam, which has only been over for about sixteen or seventeen years, and thanks to the lies and deceits surrounding that war, I guess it's no surprise that the very same condition was called post-traumatic stress disorder. Still eight syllables, but we've added a hyphen and the pain is completely buried under jargon — post-traumatic stress disorder.
I'll bet you if we'd of still been calling it shell shock, some of those Vietnam veterans might have gotten the attention they needed at the time. I'll bet you. I'll bet you. [PDA] (EDITOR'S NOTE: Carlin delivered these words in Reno about 15 years ago.)Mr. Carlin was hailed for his commentary, observations of the absurdities of everyday life, and routines like "Seven Words You Can Never Use on Television." — By MEL WATKINS, Published: June 24, 2008
from The New York Times, 6-23-2008EDITOR'S NOTE: Ahead of his time, even in death, The Times dates his obituary for tomorrow. Makes perfect sense.
UPDATE SUNDAY 6-22-2008, 11:26 a.m. PDT, 18:26 GMT/SUT/CUT — On this date in 1880, the Eureka Leader editorialized against Democratic Party claims that it was the most anti-Chinese, insisting that the GOP was best at exclusion and pointing to anti-Chinese legislation sponsored by U.S. Representative Thomas Wren of Nevada; in 1891, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Field and District Judge Matthew Deady of Oregon organized the new U.S. Court of Appeals for the ninth circuit in San Francisco with Ernest Hawley of Carson City, Nevada, as crier; 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, the Nevada State Journal reported that the intermittent success of Coaldale, an Esmeralda County coal boom town, was finally coming to fruition (actually, the town's best days were behind it); in 1932, the Nevada pubic service commission ordered the Western Pacific Railroad, which shut down its Sand Pass station without obtaining PSC permission, to reopen the station (the station was between Flanigan and Gerlach); 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 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 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 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, Democrats exploded in anger at the Eisenhower administration's efforts to hold down defense spending, with senators like Stuart Symington and Henry Jackson insisting that the Air Force accept more money and Defense Secretary Charles Wilson announcing that he and the joint chiefs were planning another military workforce cutback; in 1959, Memphis by Chuck Berry was released; in 1961, Congress extended for the tenth time taxes imposed as a Korean war measure; in 1961, the members of the Nevada Highway Board — Governor Grant Sawyer, Attorney General Roger Foley and Controller Keith Lee — were criminally charged with violating the Nevada open meeting law after Ormsby County District Attorney researched the law, Gazette/Journal capitol bureau chief Frank Johnson swore out a complaint, and Justice of the Peace Peter Supera issued warrants; in 1963, Wipe Out by The Surfaris 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; in 2004, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Robert Schnider made a decision that sent dominos tumbling: Over the objections of both banker Jack Ryan and actress Jeri Ryan, Schnider unsealed the record of their divorce custody case, revealing that she had accused him of unusual sexual practices, which in turn led to his withdrawal from the Republican U.S. Senate race in Illinois (he had already won the party primary), throwing the nomination to Alan Keyes of Maryland, who in turn lost to Barack Obama.
UPDATE SATURDAY 6-21-2008, 11:13 a.m. PDT, 18:13 GMT/SUT/CUT —
James Chaney
Michael Schwerner
Andrew GoodmanOn this date in 1874, Effie McNeeley, a teacher at the school in Brown’s (a hamlet seven miles south of Reno), was forced to leave her job by an inflammation that threatened her eyesight; in 1879, if recent research is correct, William Edward White became the first African-American player in major league baseball by playing one game for the Providence Grays, which would have preceded Moses Walker’s forty-two 1884 games with the Toledo Blue Stockings; in 1912, barnstormer Roy Francis, later a pilot in the world war, flew the skies above Reno; in 1918, after the head of the National Prohibition Committee asked state governors to call their legislatures into special sessions to ratify the federal constitutional amendment outlawing alcoholic beverages, Governor Emmet Boyle said he would not do so but that he was confident that the 1919 Nevada Legislature would ratify; in 1921 in one of its first arbitrations, the League of Nations directed that the Aaland Islands (Aterforeningenlan), 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 1932, a phrase entered the language when Jack Sharkey beat Max Schmeling by a decision and Schmeling’s manager Joe Jacobs said, "We was robbed"; 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 Revolver; 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 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 sixty years in prison).
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21:00-23:00 GMT/CUT/SUTThe 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 FRIDAY 6-20-2008, 8:38 a.m. PDT, 15:38 GMT/SUT/CUT — On this date in 1851, Sojourner Truth gave her famed "Ain't I a woman?" speech at a women's rights convention in Akron; 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 under General William Henry Harrison, 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 1876, coiner Loudon Snowden delivered 2,526 Nevada medals he struck from Nevada silver ore on a U.S. Mint press to Charles Stevenson, chair of the Nevada state centennial exposition board, to be sold at the Nevada Building on the exposition grounds; in 1890, Josiah and Elizabeth Potts were executed in Elko County for murder; 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 1919 in Concord, New Hampshire, where interracial marriage was legal, Mabel Puffer and Arthur Hazzard of Ayer, Massachusetts, were waiting for the delivery of their marriage license after a five-day waiting period when they were kidnapped (with the connivance of Concord officials and some distant Puffer relatives) by Ayer's police chief and taken back to Massachusetts where Puffer was eventually committed to a mental institution and the two lovers never saw each other again; 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 1943, with African-Americans still facing unemployment in the midst of wartime prosperity and white workers refusing to work alongside them, rioting broke out in Detroit, leaving 34 dead; in 1960, Harry Belafonte received the first Emmy awarded to an African-American; in 1962, Sam Peckinpah's celebrated Ride the High Country, a tale of two aging gunfighters played by two western actors in the twilight of their careers (Joel McCrea and Randolph Scott), was released; 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 2006, Cirque du Soleil with licensing from Apple Corps opened Love, a stage show utilizing recordings of The Beatles' music, at the Mirage in Las Vegas (Ringo was disdainful of the $150 million production).
UPDATE THURSDAY 6-19-2008, 12:06 a.m. PDT, 07:06 GMT/SUT/CUT —
Roy Wilkins / Arlington National Cemetery / June 19, 1963: Medgar Evers believed in his country. It now remains to be seen whether his country believes in him.
On this date in 1862, slavery was outlawed in the territories, including the Territory of Nevada; in 1865, African-Americans in Texas were told, incorrectly, that the emancipation 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, with the end of the world war still five months away, 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 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 1963, assassinated civil rights leader Medgar Evers was buried in Arlington National Cemetery; in 1964 after they voted for the cloture motion that ended the filibuster against the 1964 civil rights act, senators Edward Kennedy and Birch Bayh with Marvella Bayh and Kennedy aide Edward Moss took a small private plane from D.C. to West Springfield, Massachusetts, for the Massachusetts Democratic Convention and the plane crashed enroute, killing pilot Ed Zinny and Moss and breaking Kennedy's back (the Bayhs got him out of the plane in case it caught fire and then went for help); in 1967, Jack Edward Cossins of Henderson, Nevada, died in Gia Dinh Province, Vietnam (panel 22e/row 0100 of the Vietnam wall); in 1970, Mark Crouse of Yerington, Nevada, was wounded in action in Cambodia with a foot injury and shrapnel in the back and arm; in 1982 at Lake Tahoe, Steve Miller began a tour to promote his album Abracadabra; 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 forty years, events dramatized in the film The Rookie with Dennis Quaid playing Morris.UPDATE WEDNESDAY 6-18-2008, 7:55 a.m. PDT, 14:55 GMT/SUT/CUT —
Nevada State Journal / June 18, 1878: The Truckee Meadows, near Reno, are now in their loveliest. The immense tracts of valley land that but a few years ago were regarded as unfit for the profitable growing of agricultural products, have of later years been cultivated until now but a few hundred acres, between Reno and Steamboat Springs, remain in their primitive state. This is good for Reno. It gives to that town backbone and sinew that will cause it to flourish when some of its neighboring towns will know only the past. (Reprinted from the Territorial Enterprise)
On this date in 1812, over the objections of New England governors who refused to provide coastal defenses and of 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 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 1941, President Roosevelt met with A. Phillip Randolph and other civil rights leaders to try to convince them not to hold a march on Washington (they agreed after eliciting concessions, but the idea was revived in 1962 and the march was finally held in 1963); in 1947 as an end to British occupation of India neared, Mahatma Gandhi arranged a meeting between the Muslim League's Mohammad Ali Jinnah and the nonviolent Pathan leader Ghaffar Khan (known as the Frontier Gandhi) to discuss whether the North West Frontier Province should be a part of the new nation of Pakistan or independent — the British opposed independence — but it resolved nothing, prompting Gandhi to support Ghaffar Khan's call for independence; in 1954 in Paris, Bao Dai, the western-created playboy emperor of Vietnam swore Belgian Catholic monk Ngo Dinh Diem in as the new U.S.-sponsored prime minister of the new U.S.-invented nation of "South Vietnam"; 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 1968, Keith Degero Taylor of Carson City, Nevada died in Quang Nam province, Vietnam (panel 56w, row 28 of the Vietnam wall); in 1972, a few hours after the arrests at Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate in Washington, Gordon Liddy approached U.S. Attorney General Richard Kleindienst at Burning Tree Country Club, told him the Nixon campaign was responsible for the break-in and asked him to get the burglars out of jail (Kleindienst rejected Liddy's overture but kept Liddy's confession to himself); in 1994, a huge crowd turned out for an Eagles concert at UNLV.UPDATE TUESDAY 6-17-2008, 7:27 a.m. PDT, 14:27 GMT/SUT/CUT — On this date in 1775, colonial forces lost the battles of Breed's and Bunker hills, the latter marked by the heroism of former slave Peter Salem fighting for the colonials; in 1789, the members of the Third Estate of the French Estates General (parliament), joined by some members of the Second Estate, declared themselves the National Assembly and the only rightful governing body, triggering the French Revolution, which began ten days later when Louis XVI recognized the legitimacy of the National Assembly; in 1877, the Nez Perce War began with the decisive defeat of U.S. forces at White Bird Creek; in 1913, a decade after the U.S. claimed to have put down the Filipino rebellion against U.S. conquest, the latest reports of final victory came from Jolo; in 1913, legislation exempting workers and farmers organizations from antitrust laws, vetoed by President Taft, were on their way to President Wilson for his signature; in 1914, telephone lines strung from the west and east coasts (130,000 poles were used) met and were linked at Wendover, Utah (the line was not used until January 1915); in 1938, a "bowl of rice party" benefit dance was held at Reno's El Patio to raise money for food, medicine and shelter in China during the Sino-Japanese war, and the consul general from the Chinese consulate in San Francisco attended; in 1947, President Truman said that failing to impose universal military training on the nation's youth would weaken the resistance of the free world to "the encroachment of totalitarian pressures"; 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 1963, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against government sponsored Bible and Lord's Prayer recitations in schools; in 1967, Carrie Anne by The Hollies was released; in 1971, retired General Duong Van Minh began his presidential campaign against the U.S.-backed NyugenVan Thieu, calling a military victory impossible and offering a softer approach to the Hanoi government (he withdrew his candidacy a few weeks later when operatives began murdering leaders of his campaign, after which U.S. Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker tried unsuccessfully to bribe him back into the race to provide a charade of democracy); in 2004, Sue Powers, docent at the Atomic Testing Museum and widow of cold war hero Francis Gary Powers, died in Las Vegas.
UPDATE TUESDAY 6-17-2008, 1:05 a.m. PDT, 08:05 GMT/SUT/CUT — Today is the diamond jubilee of the federal minimum wage. Ho hum.
The New York Times 6-17-2008
EDITORIAL OBSERVER
After 75 Years, the Working Poor Still Struggle for a Fair Wage
By ADAM COHEN
On the anniversary of the federal minimum wage, more
attention should be paid to the working poor, who were hit
especially hard by recent economic policies.
UPDATE MONDAY 6-16-2008, 7:40 a.m. PDT, 14:40 GMT/SUT/CUT — On this date in 1829, Geronimo was born in Mexico; in 1858 in the Illinois capital, Abraham Lincoln gave his "house divided" speech; in 1874, C.C. Powning's Nevada State Journal carried an article on Adolf Sutro that began "The old Jew is at his tricks again."; in 1904 in James Joyce's novel Ulysses, protagonist "Leopold Bloom" spent this date on an odyssey around Dublin while preoccupied by his troubled marriage and the death of his son, a journey that is now celebrated as a secular holiday in Ireland each June 16; in 1919, the Supreme Court of Nevada ruled that the existence of Pershing County was legal, rejecting a challenge by Humboldt County; in 1937, while newsreel cameras rolled, the Hoover Dam outlets were opened, sending spectacular spouts of Boulder Lake water forth from the face of the dam; in 1947, a U.S. House public lands subcommittee approved $300,000 for construction of a grade and high school on the Owyhee Reservation in Nevada; in 1953, the Nevada Tax Commission heard testimony on plans to bring "a game called jai alai" — as news reports put it — to a proposed new Las Vegas hotel casino (one of the partners in the enterprise was Matthew Tracy, identified by the Kefauver Senate Crime Committee as a Florida organized crime figure); in 1965, Herman's Hermits qualified for a gold record for Mrs. Brown, You've Got A Lovely Daughter; in 1971, U.S. Senators Howard Cannon and Alan Bible twice voted against ending the war in Vietnam by setting a mandatory deadline for withdrawal of all U.S. forces; in 1971, Danny Gerald Studdard of Virginia City, Nevada died in Quang Tin province, Vietnam (panel 3w, row 78 of the Vietnam wall); in 2005, Deux Gros Nez cafe in Reno marked its 20th anniversary.UPDATE SUNDAY 6-15-2008, 8:01 p.m. PDT, 03:01 6-16-2008 GMT/SUT/CUT —
Teamsters reject Reno-Sparks bus system contract proposal 130-2
RTC caves, returns to bargaining table
Read the plantation proposal for yourself
Union files charges of illegal unfair labor practicesUPDATE SUNDAY 6-15-2008, 11:46 a.m. PDT, 18:46 GMT/SUT/CUT —
Sioux Chief Red Cloud / Council of Peace, New York City / June 15, 1870: The Great Spirit placed me and my people on this land poor and naked. When the white men came we gave them lands, and did not wish to hurt them. But the white man drove us back and took our lands. Then the Great Father made us many promises, but they are not kept. He promised to give us large presents, and when they came to us they were small; they seemed to be lost on the way.On this date in 1833, after an African-American couple — Lucie and Thornton Blackburn — living happily in Detroit was discovered, arrested, and convicted as fugitive slaves, a crowd of 200 rioted, rescued them, and got them safely into Canada (whose lieutenant governor refused requests for their extradition); in 1889, John Philip Sousa's Washington Post March, commissioned by the newspaper, was performed for the first time; in 1936, the Nevada labor federation called for vacation with pay for Boulder Dam workers; in 1937, the Virginia and Truckee Railroad sold coaches 3 and 4 to Paramount Pictures to star in the film Wells Fargo; in 1946, after Nashua Dodgers manager Walter Alston was ejected from a game, Roy Campanella took over the managerial duties, making him the first African-American to manage a professional baseball team; in 1971, the National Labor Relations Board reported that a petition by a Las Vegas dealers union to represent Aladdin Casino employees in collective bargaining had been filed; in 1973, University of Nevada professor James Richardson criticized Nevada's lack of support for education, provoking a so's-your-mother comment from Carson City Republican Senator Archie Pozzi that Richardson "spends only three hours per week in the classroom."; in 2004, five months before the election, George Bush revived the gay marriage issue but on the same day the Senate voted to include gays in the protections of federal hate crime law.
UPDATE SATURDAY 6-14-2008, 9:40 a.m. PDT, 16:40 GMT/SUT/CUT —
Thomas Jefferson / letter to John Norvell / June 14, 1807: I will add, that the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods & errors.
On this date in 1855, after 35 days of travel from Utah, Mormon settlers arrived at the present site of Las Vegas; in 1865, Company I of the Sixth Infantry Regiment organized in California for Civil War service, arrived at Fort Churchill, Nevada; in 1917, in a vitriolic Flag Day speech in D.C. after he signed the Espionage Act, President Wilson made it clear he would use the law to crack down on more than espionage, that he would prosecute citizens and shut down presses that opposed U.S. participation in the world war: "Woe to the man or group of men that seeks to stand in our way in this day of high resolution."; in 1942, Clark County began a wartime scrap drive; in 1943, the U.S. Supreme Court protected religious school children from forced salutes to the flag; in 1953, Elvis graduated from high school in Memphis; in 1954, President Eisenhower signed a law enacted by Congress altering the text of the pledge of allegience as written by its author, socialist Francis Bellamy, to add the words "under God"; in 1971 in Las Vegas, Marshall McLuhan told the American Society of Medical Technologists that television is the root cause of drug abuse; in 1971, Senator Barry Goldwater told The New York Times that during his 1964 presidential campaign he tried unsuccessfully to get his opponent, President Lyndon Johnson, to agree to a joint declaration that the Vietnam war would have to be widened with bombing and increased troop levels — exactly what Johnson did after the election; in 1995, a monorail between the MGM Grand and Bally's casinos in Las Vegas began operation; in 2001, Las Vegas FBI security analyst James Hill was arrested for selling classified files to organized crime and others; in 2008, there remain 220 days until the next presidential inaugural.UPDATE FRIDAY 6-13-2008, 7:51 a.m. PDT, 14:51 GMT/SUT/CUT — On this date in 1905, night post office hours in Reno were discontinued; in 1911, a banquet was held at Reno's Congregational Church by the boys in the Anti-Cigarette Club; in 1942, a day after the Navy reported that the aircraft carrier Lexington had been sunk by the Japanese a month earlier during the battle of Coral Sea, it was reported in Reno that local man Gordon Bitler was aboard the ship but had survived (though it was not immediately reported, a second Reno man, Walter Hollingsworth, was also aboard and also survived); in 1947, Tommy Myers was born in Los Angeles; in 1957, in a meeting at El Rancho Vegas, unions and contractors reached an agreement that made possible the end of a work stoppage that had shut down nearly every large construction project in the valley; in 1967, Thurgood Marshall was nominated to be the first African-American justice on the U.S. Supreme Court; in 2006, the London Guardian reported on efforts by the U.S. to stir up divisions among Palestinians that had resulted in near civil war in Gaza, a report that was widely reprinted or posted in the U.S. by Associated Press, National Public Radio, Cable News Network, the Los Angeles Times, San Jose Mercury News, and Long Island's Newsday — all of whom removed a quote from a U.S. diplomat before publication: "I like this violence" (The Washington Post retained the quote but put it deep inside the paper).
UPDATE THURSDAY 6-12-2008, 11:55 a.m. PDT, 18:55 GMT/SUT/CUT — Contract negotiations might bring public transportation to a halt
Daily Sparks Tribune 6-12-2008Teamsters Local 533 strike archives
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21:00-23:00 GMT/CUT/SUTThe 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 TUESDAY 6-10-2008, 7:07 p.m. PDT, 02:07 6-11-2008 GMT/SUT/CUT — Strike alert: The talk on the street and among some insiders says don't bet against a Reno-Sparks-Washoe County bus strike happening as soon as this Saturday, June 14. Stay tuned to this website and Barbwire.TV for insider updates.
UPDATE THURSDAY 6-12-2008, 7:44 a.m. PDT, 14:44 GMT/SUT/CUT — On this date in 1859, an exploring party led by army topographical engineer James Simpson arrived at Genoa; in 1918, the Churchill County Standard published In Flanders Fields, the memorable poem written by physician John McCrae to vent his anguish after seeing a good friend die a gruesome death in the second battle of Ypres (see below); in 1929, First Lady Lou Henry Hoover had congressional wives, including African-American Jessie DePriest, to tea at the White House, resulting in heavy criticism of Ms. Hoover and even introduction of a congressional resolution condemning her; in 1941, President Roosevelt appointed three members of the U.S. Supreme court in a single day — Robert Jackson, Harlan Stone (as chief), and James Byrnes; in 1944, a war bond rally was held at the War Department Theatre at the Reno Army Air Base; in 1944, the Washoe County General Hospital board of trustees approved a $1,250,500 postwar expansion of the hospital and submitted it to the county commission; in 1947, seventeen days after former Vice-President Henry Wallace said he might run against President Truman on a third party line, the House UnAmerican Activities Committee said it had opened an investigation of Wallace; in 1950, The Buffalo Bills won the annual championship of the Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barbershop Quartet Singing in America, subsequently becoming the most famous quartet in barbershop history, including 1,500 performances in The Music Man on Broadway, in the movie version, and for several years as regulars in a variety show; in 1957, Radio Hanoi called on Britain and the Soviet Union, as joint chairs of the 1954 Geneva conference on Indochina, to crack down on U.S. violations of the Geneva agreement; in 1969, it was announced in London that Prime Minister Harold Wilson had named the four Beatles to receive the MBE — the Membership of the most excellent order of the British Empire — provoking other MBEs to return theirs to the government ("I thought you had to drive tanks and win wars to get the MBE," said John Lennon, who would later return his to protest the British government's support of the U.S. war against Vietnam); in 1973, brothel owner Joe Conforte was deeply offended — he called it a "dirty deal" — that University of Nevada boosters refused his $400 purchase of tickets to a fund raising dinner; in 2006, a gunman in a dowtown Reno parking garage fired a high powered rifle at the high rise office of Nevada District Judge Charles Weller; Weller and his aide Anne Allison were both hit.
IN FLANDERS FIELDS
by John McCraeIN FLANDERS FIELDS the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.UPDATE WEDNESDAY 6-11-2008, 9:01 a.m. PDT, 16:01 GMT/SUT/CUT —
Thomas Jefferson to John Adams / June 11, 1812: in the early part of my life, I was very familiar [with Native Americans], and acquired impressions of attachment and commiseration for them which have never been obliterated. Before the Revolution, they were in the habit of coming often and in great numbers to the seat of government [Williamsburg], where I was very much with them. I knew much the great Ontassete, the warrior and orator of the Cherokees; he was always the guest of my father, on his journeys to and from Williamsburg. I was in his camp when he made his great farewell oration to his people the evening before his departure to England. His sounding voice, distinct articulation, animated action, and the solemn silence of his people filled me with awe and veneration, although I did not understand a word he said.
On June 11, 1875, Montgomery Queen's Great Moral Circus performed in Reno, including somersault rider Mollie Brown ("Pre-eminent Princess of Arenic celebrities") and Charles Fish ("declared Champion Rider of England, Prussia, Austria, and Russia") plus the "ONLY LIVING GIRAFFE EVER SEEN IN CALIFORNIA, THE GREAT Hogopotamus from the Nile. The Nondescript Onadad. TAWNY LIONESS OF AFRICA. And Four Young Cubs"; in 1876, three days before the start of the Republican National Convention at which he was expected to be nominated for president, U.S. Senator James G. Blaine of Maine collapsed while walking from his home to church in D.C. and remained unconscious for two days during which rumors circulated that he was dying (the day before the convention opened, he wired a message to the delegates that he was on the way to recovery but the convention turned to Rutherford B. Hayes for a nominee; he finally won the nomination in 1884); in 1918, President Wilson submitted the name of Albert Gray to the U.S. senate for confirmation as receiver of the U.S. land office in Carson City, Nevada; in 1931, California Governor James Rolph inspected the death chamber at the Nevada State Prison as part of deciding whether to sign legislation switching his state from hanging to the gas chamber; in 1938, the rising waters of Lake Mead behind Boulder/Hoover Dam began to cover the mining and farming community of St. Thomas, Nevada (in 2002 and again this year when droughts shrank the lake, St. Thomas began to emerge again); in 1953, President Eisenhower, in a speech at Mt. Rushmore, taunted communist nations, warning them not to attack the U.S. "except at your peril" — and four days later fresh Chinese assault battalions launched the biggest offensive in two years against Allied lines in Korea; in 1957, roving mobs of European Christians in Algiers beat Moslems to death, destroyed their stores, and burned their cars (glass from shop windows was scattered in the streets); in 1963, Buddhist monk Quang Duc set himself on fire and died at a central Saigon intersection to protest Buddhist persecution by the U.S.- created Saigon government; in 1963 in Carson City, brothel operator Joe Conforte, serving a three to five year term in state prison for attempting to extort Washoe County District Attorney William Raggio, was sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge William C. Mathes to three years in federal prison after pleading guilty to evading his taxes as part of a plea bargain under which three additional tax charges were dropped; in 1971, at a meeting at Stewart, Nevada Inter Tribal Council executive director Robert Hunter ended his tenure after five years and was replaced by Harold Wyatt; in 1986 at his news conference, President Reagan bungled a question about the SALT talks, confused a court decision on abortion with a court decision on medical treatment of malformed infants, confused a Warsaw Pact proposal with a Soviet proposal (the White House issued a flurry of corrections and clarifications), setting Washington buzzing about his mental competence, yet not a single reporter wrote about it, prompting a Reagan aide to wonder to the Los Angeles Times about "how easy the press was on him".
UPDATE TUESDAY 6-10-2008, 7:07 p.m. PDT, 02:07 6-11-2008 GMT/SUT/CUT —
President John Kennedy / American University / June 10, 1963: What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children — not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women — not merely peace in our time but peace for all time. I speak of peace because of the new face of war. Total war makes no sense in an age when great powers can maintain large and relatively invulnerable nuclear forces and refuse to surrender without resort to those forces. It makes no sense in an age when a single nuclear weapon contains almost ten times the explosive force delivered by all the allied air forces in the Second World War. It makes no sense in an age when the deadly poisons produced by a nuclear exchange would be carried by wind and water and soil and seed to the far corners of the globe and to generations yet unborn. ... Some say that it is useless to speak of world peace or world law or world disarmament — and that it will be useless until the leaders of the Soviet Union adopt a more enlightened attitude. I hope they do. I believe we can help them do it. But I also believe that we must reexamine our own attitude — as individuals and as a Nation — for our attitude is as essential as theirs. And every graduate of this school, every thoughtful citizen who despairs of war and wishes to bring peace, should begin by looking inward — by examining his own attitude toward the possibilities of peace, toward the Soviet Union, toward the course of the cold war and toward freedom and peace here at home.
On this date in 1692, Bridget Bishop was hanged as a witch in Salem; in 1859, an exploring party led by army topographical engineer James Simpson crossed the Carson River at Pleasant Grove; in 1908, a statue by Gutzon Borglum of Comstock mining tycoon John Mackay was dedicated on the University of Nevada campus in Reno; in 1911, a root-attacking parasite was threatening Churchill County's new sugar beet industry; in 1942, after the assassination of deputy SS chief Reidnhard Heydrich by Czech partisans in occupied Czechoslovakia, Hitler personally selected the town of Lidice for reprisal — the occupants of the town were gathered together, men and women were split into groups and sent to the death camps, the children were taken away to be educated, and the town was bulldozed, buildings torn down or exploded, the land leveled and grass planted over the former site of Lidice; in 1943 after several days of rioting by white U.S. Navy sailors who went on "search and destroy" missions against Latinos in Los Angeles who the press called "zoot suited hoodlums" (thus giving the events their name — the Zoot Suit Riots), the press started reporting that Latino "girl gangster auxiliaries" had joined the battles; in 1944, Bertha Raffetto, composer of Home Means Nevada, was the keynote speaker at the Nevada Republican Convention; in 1953, an eleven-day strike by Las Vegas Carpenters Local 780 ended when members voted for a second proposed agreement with the Associated General Contractors; in 1960, Salt Lake City's Oakland Construction Company won a $1,352,850 contract for construction at the Nevada atomic test site; in 1963, above-ground atomic testing ended at the Nevada test site, never to resume, when President Kennedy at American University pledged the U.S. not "to conduct nuclear tests in the atmosphere so long as other states do not do so; we will not be the first to resume," a promise that led to a breakthrough in test ban negotiations and resulted in the first nuclear test ban treaty 45 days later; in 1966, Parlophone released the Beatles single Paperback Writer b/w Rain in Britain, eleven days after their U.S. release (Rain was the first instance of a use of tape being run backwards as part of the recording, in this case of John's voice); in 1971, at least 25 protestors — and possibly many more — were killed in the Corpus Cristi Massacre, part of Mexico's "dirty war" in which thousands of pro-democracy activists were murdered and others were "disappeared" (33 years later, in 2004, former president Luis Echeverria — who was interior minister at the time of the killings — and the attorney general of Mexico were indicted for genocide in the massacre, but arrest warrants were quashed by a judge); in 1978, the Chicken Ranch brothel in Nye County was burned down by arsonists, setting off a major scandal in the county's political machine that resulted in federal investigations and prosecutions.
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21:00-23:00 GMT/CUT/SUTThe 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 MONDAY 6-9-2008, 2:52 p.m. PDT, 21:52 GMT/SUT/CUT — On this date in 1843, Austrian novelist Bertha Suttner, whose antiwar leadership influenced Alfred Nobel to create the peace prize and who received the first Nobel peace prize, was born in Prague; in 1874, U.S. Attorney General George Williams rendered a legal opinion that U.S. law gives jurisdiction over the introduction of alcoholic beverages into Native American territory to the Department of War; in 1877, the Journal editorialized that "the V. & T. R.R. is being run alone in the interest of Mr. Mills [road president Darius O. Mills] and the others, and not in any sense for the people. It is time that the people were placed on an equal footing."; in 1911, a weights and measures inspector of the U.S. Department of Commerce and Labor said his inspections in the mining boom camp of Goldfield led him to believe that measures in the camp were chronically wrong both because of carelessness and because of fraud; in 1913, a chautauqua opened on Belle Isle in Reno; in 1920 in remarks in Reno, Las Vegas Age editor Charles Squires said the southern city was "looking forward to a period of rapid development and prosperity" that would result from the growing of cotton; in 1927, a federal corruption scandal hit Nevada when U.S. prohibition agent Robert Scoular was indicted by a federal grand jury and arrested in Reno on bribery charges, the first of many such indictments made public; in 1937, Lincoln County's 1871 "million dollar court house" (built for $16,400 but plagued with inflated costs, unfulfilled contracts, a decline in mining activity that led to endless interest payments on the bonds) was finally paid off — as a new court house was being constructed; in 1941, President Roosevelt ordered the Army to seize the North American Aviation plant in Inglewood, California, which had been struck by the UAW, and operate it until the strike was settled; in 1954 in a nationally televised confrontation, Army counsel Joseph Welch denounced U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy to his face and before a nationwide television audience: "Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?" (see below); in 1963, a group of voter registration campaigners, including Fannie Lou Hamer, were falsely arrested and beaten nearly to death in Winona, Mississippi, with Hamer losing an eye and suffering kidney damage; in 1983, Pulitzer Prize-winning African-American composer Scott Joplin was depicted on a U.S. postage stamp.
McCarthy: ...in view of Mr. Welch's request that the information be given once we know of anyone who might be performing any work for the Communist Party, I think we should tell him that he has in his law firm a young man named Fisher whom he recommended, incidentally, to do the work on this Committee, who has been, for a number of years, a member of an organization which is named, oh, years and years ago, as the legal bulwark of the Communist Party, an organization which always springs to the defense of anyone who dares to expose Communists. Knowing that, Mr. Welch, I just felt that I had a duty to respond to your urgent request that „before sundown,‰ when we know of anyone serving the Communist cause we let the agency know. We're now letting you know that your man did belong to this organization for either three or four years, belonged to it long after he was out of law school. And I have hesitated bringing that up, but I have been rather bored with your phony requests to Mr. Cohn here, that he, personally, get every Communist out of Government before sundown. Whether you knew that he was a member of that Communist organization or not, I don't know. I assume you did not, Mr. Welch, because I get the impression that while you are quite an actor, you play for a laugh, I don't think you have any conception of the danger of the Communist Party. I don't think you, yourself, would ever knowingly aid the Communist cause. I think you're unknowingly aiding with it when you try to burlesque this hearing in which we're attempting to bring out the facts.
Welch: Mr. Chairman —
Mundt: The Chair may say that he has no recognition or no memory of Mr. Welch recommending either Mr. Fisher or anybody else as counsel for this Committee.
McCarthy: I refer to the record, Mr. Chairman...to the news story on that.
Welch: Mr. Chairman. Under the circumstances, I must myself have something approaching a personal privilege.
Mundt: You may have, sir —
Welch: Senator McCarthy, I did not know, Senator — Senator, sometimes you say — may I have your attention —
McCarthy: I'm listening.
Welch: May I have your attention?
McCarthy: I can listen with one ear.
Welch: No, this time, sir, I want you to listen with both. Senator McCarthy, I think until this moment —
McCarthy: — Good. Just a minute. Jim, Jim, will you get the news story to the effect that this man belongs to the — to this Communist front organization....
Welch: I will tell you that he belonged to it.
McCarthy: Jim, will you get the citation, one of the citations showing that this was the legal arm of the Communist Party, and the length of time that he belonged, and the fact that he was recommended by Mr. Welch. I think that should be in the record....
Welch: Senator, you won't need anything in the record when I finish telling you this. Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty, or your recklessness. Fred Fisher is a young man who went to the Harvard Law School and came into my firm and is starting what looks to be a brilliant career with us. When I decided to work for this Committee, I asked Jim St. Clair, who sits on my right, to be my first assistant. I said to Jim, "Pick somebody in the firm to work under you that you would like." He chose Fred Fisher, and they came down on an afternoon plane. That night, when we had taken a little stab at trying to see what the case was about, Fred Fisher and Jim St. Clair and I went to dinner together. I then said to these two young men, "Boys, I don't know anything about you, except I've always liked you, but if there's anything funny in the life of either one of you that would hurt anybody in this case, you speak up quick." And Fred Fisher said, "Mr. Welch, when I was in the law school, and for a period of months after, I belonged to the Lawyers' Guild," as you have suggested, Senator. He went on to say, "I am Secretary of the Young Republicans League in Newton with the son of [the] Massachusetts governor, and I have the respect and admiration of my community, and I'm sure I have the respect and admiration of the twenty-five lawyers or so in Hale & Dorr." And I said, "Fred I just don't think I'm going to ask you to work on the case. If I do, one of these days that will come out, and go over national television, and it will just hurt like the dickens." And so, Senator, I asked him to go back to Boston. Little did I dream you could be so reckless and so cruel as to do an injury to that lad. It is, I regret to say, equally true that I fear he shall always bear a scar needlessly inflicted by you. If it were in my power to forgive you for your reckless cruelty, I would do so. I like to think I'm a gentle man, but your forgiveness will have to come from someone other than me.
McCarthy: Mr. Chairman, may I say that Mr. Welch talks about this being cruel and reckless. He was just baiting. He has been baiting Mr. Cohn here for hours, requesting that Mr. Cohn before sundown get out of any department of the government anyone who is serving the Communist cause. Now, I just give this man's record and I want to say, Mr.Welch, that it had been labeled long before he became a member, as early as 1944 —
Welch: Senator, may we not drop this? We know he belonged to the Lawyers' Guild. And Mr. Cohn nods his head at me. I did you, I think, no personal injury, Mr. Cohn?
Cohn: No, sir.
Welch: I meant to do you no personal injury.
Cohn: No, sir.
Welch: And if I did, I beg your pardon. Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator.
McCarthy: Let's, let's —
Welch: You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?
McCarthy: I know this hurts you, Mr. Welch.
Welch: I'll say it hurts.
McCarthy: Mr. Chairman, as point of personal privilege, I'd like to finish this.
Welch: Senator, I think it hurts you, too, sir.
McCarthy: I'd like to finish this. I know Mr. Cohn would rather not have me go into this. I intend to, however, and Mr. Welch talks about any sense of decency. I have heard you and everyone else talk so much about laying the truth upon the table. But when I heard the completely phony Mr. Welch, I've been listening now for a long time, saying, now before sundown you must get these people out of government. So I just want you to have it very clear, very clear that you were not so serious about that when you tried to recommend this man for this Committee.
Welch: Mr. McCarthy, I will not discuss this further with you. You have sat within six feet of me and could ask, could have asked me about Fred Fisher. You have seen fit to bring it out, and, if there is a God in heaven, it will do neither you nor your cause any good. I will not discuss it further. I will not ask, Mr. Cohn, any more witnesses. You, Mr. Chairman, may, if you will, call the next witness.
[Note: James St. Clair later became the attorney for President Nixon in the White House tapes case and the impeachment inquiry.]
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21:00-23:00 GMT/CUT/SUTThe 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 SUNDAY 6-8-2008, 3:59 p.m. PDT, 22:59 GMT/SUT/CUT — Ringers & zingers go down in flames
The end of a pseudo-Democrat's new political career
Barbwire / Sparks Tribune 6-8-2008On June 8, 632, Muhammad died in Medina (Madinah) in northern Arabia; in 1789, U.S. Representative James Madison of Virginia, often called the father of the United States Constitution, proposed a bill of rights, including a section of the second amendment protecting conscientious objectors ("no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms, shall be compelled to render military service in person") that was not finally adopted, apparently because the right was considered already well protected, and restrictions on state governments ("No state shall violate the equal rights of conscience, or the freedom of the press, or the trial by jury in criminal cases") that also were not adopted until the adoption of the fourteenth amendment; in 1911, two Native Americans, believed to be from Pyramid Lake, were arrested for selling trout in Reno; in 1915, U.S. Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan resigned in protest against President Wilson's belligerence, which Bryan said would lead to war; in 1918, Robert Preston (Beau Geste, The Music Man, Victor Victoria, Junior Bonner, The Last Starfighter) was born in Newton Highlands, Massachusetts (Richard Burton: "the best American actor, with a voice like golden thunder"); in 1937, Gilbert Ross, the Nevada director of the Works Progress Administration (the WPA was a New Deal agency that put people to work constructing highways and buildings, clearing slums, reforesting and on other kinds of projects) announced that he had been instructed to reduce the number of people being given jobs in the state from 2,000 to 1,700; in 1941, a U.S. Army observation plane took off from France Field, Panama, and disappeared (in April, 1999, wreckage of the plane was found and the remains of the three crew members — James D. Cartwright, Augustus J. Allen and Paul R. Stubb — were recovered and returned to their families; in 1947, in a call that fans of both teams condemned, first base umpire Charlie Berry ruled that an out of bounds hit in Fenway was fair, giving the Cleveland Indians the game's only two runs over the Boston Red Sox and causing the season to end with the two teams tied (Associated Press "From the time Berry made his decision until he walked from the field after the game, he took a loud riding from the fans who waved handkerchiefs and shouted 'fair ball' in raucous tones any time a foul was hit near first base."); in 1953, Henderson, Nevada, was incorporated; in 1953, KLAS television in Las Vegas was named a primary affiliate of CBS; in 1959, the United States Post Office issued a four-cent stamp commemorating the centennial of the discovery of silver in Nevada; in 1961, Wild in the Country starring Hope Lange and Elvis Presley was released; in 1967, on the fourth day of the Six Day War, Israel attacked the U.S.S. Liberty, a U.S. spy ship, with PT boats and planes, killing 34 and wounding 171; in 1972, South Vietnamese military jets dropped white phosphorus and napalm on a village and screaming children running from the village were photographed by Huynh Cong Ut, the photo winning the Pulitzer Prize (Phan Thi Kim Phuc, the naked girl running down the road with her body aflame in the photo, spent years getting skin grafts and became a peace activist); in 1978, the "Mormon will" which left $150 million of the Howard Hughes estate to Fallon and Gabbs resident Melvin Dummar, a student at Weber State, was declared a forgery in a Clark County court.
UPDATE FRIDAY 6-6-2008, 2:35 a.m. PDT, 09:35 GMT/SUT/CUT —
Nevada civil rights legend Pat Baker on Barbwire.TV
Friday, June, 6, 2-4:00 p.m.UPDATE THURSDAY 6-5-2008,12:15 a.m. PDT, 07:15 GMT/SUT/CUT — On June 5, 1968, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy was shot and mortally wounded just after claiming victory in California's Democratic presidential primary. Gunman Sirhan Bishara Sirhan was immediately arrested. [New York Times/AP e-headlines]
UPDATE WEDNESDAY 6-4-2008, 1:52 a.m. PDT, 08:52 GMT/SUT/CUT — On June 4, 1989, Chinese army troops stormed Tiananmen Square in Beijing to crush the pro-democracy movement; hundreds - possibly thousands - of people died. [New York Times/AP e-headlines]
Reno-Sparks NAACP asks that Regional Transportation Commission finally honor Martin Luther King, Jr., Holiday
Negotiations stalled, federal mediator called in, contract expires June 12
Talks resume June 7 — Foreign-owned managers offer a pay cut disguised as a one percent per year raiseOne night only: Civil rights legend returns to Reno as living history with 1968 video from Charles Kuralt
Limited tickets still availableAlan Paton / June 8, 1966: Kennedy was like a fresh wind from the outer world. It was exhilarating to hear again that totalitarianism cannot be fought by totalitarianism, that independence of thought is not a curse, that security and self preservation are not the supreme goals of life, that to work for change is not a species of treachery. It was to feel part of the world again. [see 1966]
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21:00-23:00 GMT/CUT/SUTThe 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.
On June 4, 1876, a train arrived in San Francisco three days and 11 hours after leaving New York; in 1877, Southern Pacific announced it had purchased the Los Angeles and Independence Railroad for $195,000 from John Jones of Santa Monica, California, who was then serving as a U.S. senator from Nevada; in 1892, the Sierra Club was incorporated; in 1901 in Denver, the Western Federation of Miners —which would become a powerful force in Nevada's Goldfield mining boom — adopted a resolution opposing an increase in the size of the nation's small standing army; in 1912, the Grand Theatre in Reno was showing newsreels on the Titanic disaster; in 1924, with the support of U.S. Representative Charles Richards of Nevada, three of Senator Key Pittman's bills were approved by the House: one to strip title of reservation land from the Pyramid Lake tribe and turn it over to white squatters, another to provide land and water rights for the Te-Moaks in Ruby Valley, and a third to drain another 840 acres of Piute land for the benefit of the Newlands project; in 1931 in an old fashioned gunfight that followed a fist fight, Reno underworld figure and political boss William Graham and F.R. "Blackie" McCracken shot it out in a Reno speakeasy, with Graham finally killing McCracken; in 1939 in a radio debate, U.S. Representative Josh Lee of Oklahoma advocated his legislation to draft capital as well as people during wartime; in 1953, one of Nevada's most honored citizens, novelist Walter Van Tilburg Clark, jolted Nevadans by resigning a lecturer position at the University of Nevada in protest against "an increasingly autocratic administrative attitude at the school"; in 1966, U.S. Senator Robert Kennedy arrived in South Africa for four busy days of speeches and meetings that sent tremors through the apartheid government, inspired apartheid foes, and reverberated in the nation for years; in 1968, the day before his assassination, Robert Kennedy was shown an assessment of delegates to the Democratic National Convention complied by his campaign and it showed that of Nevada's 22 delegate votes, he currently had three, Humphrey eleven, McCarthy one, with seven uncommitted (the compilation also gave five as the maximum target number that could be expected from the delegation); in 1971, the U.S. Department of Justice charged seventeen Las Vegas casinos and hotels, four unions, and the Nevada Resort Association with discrimination against African-American employees; in 1974, Frank Sinatra began a Pacific tour during which he was in rare form, calling an Australian reporter a "two bit whore", calling other journalists "fags" and "pimps", and objections from newspaper unions spread to transport workers and waiters and Sinatra ended up under siege in a Sydney hotel room where he was finally sprung by the intervention of union leader (and future prime minister) Robert Hawke (the tour inspired the film The Night We Called It a Day with Dennis Hopper as Sinatra); in 1984, Bruce Springsteen's Born in the USA album was released; in 2007, a censored version of the documentary Six Days in June, about the 1967 war between Israel and Egypt, was shown on the Public Broadcasting System in the United States and PBS was excoriated because it did not contain any mention of the 6,000 deaths of Palestinians during the war (which was included in all versions of the documentary shown outside the U.S.), it played down the Israeli annihilation of a 700-year-old Palestinian neighborhood in Jerusalem, it portrayed Israel as the underdog (thus exaggerating its triumph), and it contained no mention of the Israeli attack on the US spy ship Liberty.
UPDATE TUESDAY 6-3-2008, 7:31 a.m. PDT, 14:31 GMT/SUT/CUT —
Vatican press statement/June 3d 1963: He suffers no more.
On this date in 1647, Puritans in the British Parliament outlawed Christmas; in 1825, the U.S. expropriated all Kansa tribal land, putting the tribe on a reservation and giving their land to whites; in 1864, former CaliforniaGovernor John Bigler, after whom Lake Tahoe was once named, left Virginia City after a visit to use the hot springs at Steamboat south of Reno; in 1904, Charles Drew, who devised the procedure for separating blood so it could be stored (plasma) and who developed the concept of the blood bank, was born (the story that he bled to death after a traffic accident in 1950 because he was refused admission to a whites-only Alabama hospital is a myth, but he was critical of Army/Navy segregated blood donations during World War Two and of the Red Cross practice of maintaining separate blood banks for the races); in 1933, members of a posse tracking a robber or robbers who held up the Lander County Bank in Austin went from the Lincoln Highway (U.S. 50) to New Pass, down New Pass Canyon to Alpine Valley where they found a camp where someone had shaved and left behind a blackjack; in 1937, the Las Vegas Typographical Union began an effort to convince businesses to get their printing done in the community and not send it out to Los Angeles or other cities; in 1953, after dancer Gene Nelson and singer Marguerite Piazza refused to appear at the Las Vegas Sahara with Christine Jorgensen, the Sahara claimed to have found evidence that Jorgensen was not really a woman and broke its contract with her (in London, Jorgensen demanded that the casino produce its proof); in 1963, one of the monumental figures of the 20th century, Pope John XXIII, died in Rome after a life that included the rescue of Bulgarian Jews from the Nazis and the beginnings of reconciliation of the Catholic Church with Protestants and Jews; in 1967, Light My Fire by The Doors was released; in 2003, the Nevada Legislature adjourned at 1:25 a.m., though it probably had no legal effect since the legislative session ended automatically an hour and a half earlier when its 120-day limit was reached; later that same day in 2003 a special session of the Nevada Legislature, the first of two in June, began at Governor Kenny Guinn's order less than a day after the regular 2003 legislative session ended.
It was the third of June, another sleepy, dusty Delta day.
I was out chopping cotton and my brother was baling hay.
And at dinnertime we stopped and walked back to the house to eat.
And Mama hollered out the back door "y‚all remember to wipe your feet,"
And then she said "I got some news this morning from Choctaw Ridge,
"Today, Billy Joe MacAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge."
UPDATE MONDAY 6-2-2008, 9:55 p.m. PDT, 04:55 6-3-2008 GMT/SUT/CUT —
Southern Nevada Building & Construction Trades Council to Strike at Project City Center at Midnight on June 3, 2008, Over Worker Safety Concerns
Las Vegas, Nev. — Over the weekend, another construction worker lost their life working to erect Project City Center. This is the sixth construction worker to lose their life since the start of construction on Project City Center.
Representatives of the Southern Nevada Building and Construction Trades Council and its affiliated unions have been meeting with representatives from Perini Building Company and MGM/Mirage over the past several weeks to discuss safety concerns on the job site.
“We have made several suggestions on ways to improve worker safety at the job site,” said Steve Ross, Secretary/Treasurer of the Southern Nevada Building and Construction Trades Council.
The Southern Nevada Building and Construction Trades Council has suggested the following measures:
- Submit to an immediate work site safety assessment administered by the CPWR; Center for Construction Research & Training.
- Institute on-site OSHA-10 training courses administered by the CPWR; Center for Construction Research & Training, at the expense of the owner or general contractor.
- Grant full job site access to union officials and safety directors.
While neither Perini nor MGM/Mirage executives have objected to any of these suggestions, to date, not one of the recommendations has been acted upon.
At their regular meeting on Monday, June 2, 2008, the Southern Nevada Building & Construction Trades Council voted unanimously to authorize a strike of Project City Center over worker safety concerns.
“It is time to stop talking about worker safety and time to start putting into place policies that are going to improve worker safety on this job site. We will not send our workers to an unsafe job site. We need Perini and MGM/Mirage to contractually agree to our worker safety requests,” Ross said.
“The Southern Nevada Building & Construction Trades Council and its affiliated union are proud to have built some of the most impressive construction projects in the world right here in Las Vegas. These projects are a testament to the hard work and skill of our members.”For more information, contact Steve Redlinger, Southern Nevada Building & Construction Trades Council, (702) 271-5248.
UPDATE MONDAY 6-2-2008, 8:13 a.m. PDT, 15:13 GMT/SUT/CUT — On this date in 553, Catholicism condemned Nestorianism, a Christian interpretation of Christ (Jesus as two beings, one divine and one human); in 1860, after decisively losing the first battle of Pyramid Lake, Nevada settlers invoked the Powell Doctrine and sent overwhelming force — regular U.S. Army troops and more than 700 volunteers — against the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe, whose warriors held off the whites while elders, women, and children escaped; in 1863, Harriet Tubman led a Union army raid in Maryland that freed 700 slaves; in 1888, a new hotel, the Bellevue, was open on Sugar Pine Point at Lake Tahoe; in 1897, Mark Twain was quoted saying that "the report of my death was an exaggeration" (not "Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated"); in 1910, the U.S. House, acting on a concern that antitrust law could be used against unions, adopted an amendment to an appropriations bill stipulating that none of the funds in the bill could be used for that purpose, though Republicans pointed out that except for the Democratic Cleveland administration, no presidential administration had ever done such a thing; in 1918, Why Marry? by Jesse Lynch Williams won the first Pulitzer prize for playwriting; in 1947, Governor Vail Pittman and Attorney General Alan Bible met with a group of businesspeople and promised a crackdown on roadhouses along Highway 40 that were reportedly cheating tourists with fixed gambling; in 1948, Stewart Indian School officials said a 16th victim of a Christmas Day fire in Dresslerville had died at a Tacoma, Washington, Indian medical service hospital; in 1962, a two-day meeting of the Nevada board of regents approved the transfer of history/poli sci prof Eleanore Bushnell from the Nevada Southern campus to UNR and also approved a list of graduates that included Paul Bible (later Nevada Gaming Commission chair), Janice Crumley (later a Reno City Council member), Frank Fahrenkopf (later Republican national chair), Robert Heaney (later a Nevada Assemblymember), Mary Ellen Glass (author of several books on Nevada history), Peter Morros (later Nevada state water engineer), and Roy Woofter (later Las Vegas city attorney and Clark County district attorney); in 1966, Robert Earle Garey of Las Vegas, Nevada, died in Quang Nam province, Vietnam (panel 7e, row 133 of the Vietnam wall); in 1972, Dion and the Belmonts reunited for one night in concert at Madison Square Garden; in 1988, the Nevada Board of Regents engaged in a wide ranging discussion of racial diversity in the state's colleges; in 2004, in an appearance at the New York Historical Society, former deputy New York City police inspector Seymour Pine apologized for his role in leading the brutal raid on the Stonewall tavern that helped fuel the gay rights movement in 1969.
UPDATE SUNDAY 6-1-2008, 9:41 a.m. PDT, 16:41 GMT/SUT/CUT —
Helen Keller: I am no worshiper of cloth of any color, but I love the red flag and what it symbolizes to me and other Socialists. I have a red flag hanging in my study, and if I could I should gladly march with it.
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21:00-23:00 GMT/CUT/SUTThe 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.
On this date in 1859, Patrick McLaughlin and Peter O'Riley found high grade ore in Six Mile Canyon east of the later site of Virginia City; in 1865, seven weeks after Appomattox, Confederate Gen. Joseph Shelby, who had not surrendered his forces, led them across Texas to the Rio Grande, crossed the river and encountered Juaristas, sold their arms to the rebels, continued south to Mexico City and were accepted by Emperor Maximilian as settlers and given land at Tuxpan and Carlota, though the colonies were short-lived and nearly everyone eventually returned to the U.S. (the Confederate exodus to Mexico was dramatized in the Rock Hudson film The Undefeated); in 1898, the Trans-Mississippi and International Exposition and Indian Congress opened in Omaha and included a Nevada exhibit (the Indian Congress opened on August 4); in 1911, a Tonopah waiter named Harry Brant found a baby's coffin with four candles and a skull and crossbones in his room at a boarding house when he returned from work, leading police to believe he had been targeted by the Black Hand; in 1918, Governor Emmet Boyle announced that wool from the First Sheep (a flock kept on the White House grounds) arrived in Reno where it would be auctioned off, the money becoming Nevada's wartime contribution to the American Red Cross; in 1921, white rioting in Tulsa resulted in 1,115 homes and businesses owned by African-Americans burned down and left 21 whites and 300 blacks dead; in 1926, Norma Jean Mortensen was born in Los Angeles; in 1926, Andy Samuel Griffith was born in Mount Airy, North Carolina; in 1936, Western Air Express began a scenic flight over Boulder Dam, Boulder Lake, Cedar Breaks National Monument and Zion National Park; in 1942, an underground Warsaw newspaper, Liberty Brigade, using information provided by escapee Emanuel Ringelblum, published the first report of the death camps, revealing that tens of thousands of people were being gassed at Chelmo; in 1954, Edward Lansdale, who always seemed to be close at hand when bad U.S. foreign policy decisions were made or screwball schemes launched and who was the model for the classic Vietnam novel The Quiet American as well as for the novel The Ugly American, arrived in Vietnam to operate for the CIA while posing as a diplomat; in 1962, the University of Nevada building committee voted to construct new academic buildings in Mackay Stadium after a new stadium was completed (there are now several buildings there, including social science, business and journalism); in 1962 on her 36th birthday, Marilyn Monroe appeared in front of a movie camera for the last time, during the making of the unfinished Something's Got To Give; in 1967, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band was released in England (on June 2d in the U.S.); in 1968, Harold Joseph Knittle of Las Vegas, Nevada, died in Thua Thien province, Vietnam (panel 61w, row 003 of the Vietnam wall); in 1968, Helen Keller died in Westport, Connecticut; in 1988, serial corporate polluter W.R. Grace and Company pleaded guilty to lying about the amount of a chemical it dumped in Woburn, Massachusetts, two years after it reportedly paid $8 million to Woburn residents for the dumping (the case was featured in the Robert Duvall film A Civil Action); in 1999, Elton John gave a concert at the University of Wyoming in memory of hate murder victim Matthew Shepard.
Geneticist Craig Venter: I first heard Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band on June 1st, 1967, on the radio in Berkeley, in an environment of free speech and protests just before being sent to Da Nang. Listening to it in Vietnam was surreal — it connected me to a different world and time.
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