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[[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.]]

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The Dean's List

   The Dean of Reno Bloggers could very well be Andrew Barbano, self-described "fighter of public demons," who started putting his "Barbwire" columns online in 1996 and now runs 10 sites.

RENO NEWS & REVIEW, 11-9-2006

 

UPDATE: Friday, October 31, 2008, 12:10 a.m. PDT, 07:10 ZULU/GMT/CMT/SUT — On this date in 1805, Lewis and Clark saw Beacon Rock on what is now the Columbia River (Captain Clark actually called it Beaten Rock in his journal); in 1864 in the high point of his administration, President Lincoln signed Nevada's admission to the union; in 1882, the Nevada State Journal wrote "Last evening was Hollow Eve, and yet the people were so absorbed in political and other matters that few were aware of the fact."; in 1904, Nevada's first first lady, Sarah Jane Blasdel died in Fruitvale, California, on Nevada admission day; in 1914, the White Pine Suffragist published for a single known edition; in 1932, Acting Governor Morley Griswold ordered a twelve-day bank holiday in Nevada while Governor Fred Balzar was in Washington seeking a loan from the Hoover administration for the twelve Nevada banks owned by political boss George Wingfield; in 1953, the Nevada Day Committee sponsored as part of the admission day entertainment in Carson City "Dat So La Lee/An Indian Legend" with a cast of 200 Native Americans, plus "the mysterious and beautiful Puberty Dance", and "Battle of the River of the Washoe-Paiute War"; in 1956, two days after Israel launched an unprovoked attack on Egypt, Britain and France — over the objection of the U.S. — joined the attack (the Eisenhower administration said it stood by its 1950 declaration pledging assistance to any Middle East victim of aggression, but it failed to come to Egypt's aid); in 1964, Baby Love by The Supremes, their biggest hit and the second of five straight hits, went to number one on the Billboard magazine chart (the song was used as a protest against police brutality in Purple Haze aka More American Graffiti) and this was the first week's top 100 chart not to feature a Beatles song since January; in 1965, the only Sunday Nevada Day parade was held, never repeated because of objections from Christians; in 2000, Russia offered intercontinental ballistic missiles for sale.

From Davenport [Iowa] Daily Gazette/October 31, 1864:

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:
A PROCLAMATION

WHEREAS, The Congress of the United States passed an Act, which was approved on the 21st day of March last, entitled "An Act to enable the people of Nevada to form a Constitution and State Government, and for the admission of such State into the Union on an equal footing with the original States:"

And whereas, the said Constitution and State Government have been formed, pursuant to the conditions prescribed by the fifth section of the Act of Congress aforesaid, and the certificate required by the said Act, and also a copy of the Constitution and ordinances, have been submitted to the President of the United States;

Now, therefore, be it known, that I, ABRAHAM LINCOLN. President of the United States, in accordance with the duty imposed on me by the Act of Congress aforesaid, do hereby declare and proclaim that the said State of Nevada is admitted into the Union on an equal footing with the original States. In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand, and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.

Done at the city of Washington this thirty-first day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-four, and of the independence of the United States the eighty-ninth.

(signed)
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
By the President:
WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State.

Elko Independent/October 30, 1931: Nevada's 67th Birthday

Nevadans will celebrate Saturday, October 31, the sixty-seventh anniversary of the admission of their state into the Union. A monster pageant is planned at Reno and there will be lesser observances of the occasion in many schools and by civic organizations throughout the state.

All this great terrain, known prior to 1861, as "The Washoe Country," taken largely from California and Utah [no part of Nevada came from California] when Nevada became a recognized Territory of the United States, then was accorded recognition among the sisterhood. In 1864, full statehood was granted to Nevada.

Tradition of our wide ranges, our precious metal mines, our vast flocks and our limitless herds has spread to all the farthest reaches of the land and Nevada, while still little known along the Atlantic seaboard and in other far removed sections, has won a place of envy, ranking above many of her sister commonwealths in many respects.

With a little less than 90,000 population all told, the state is a small factor as yet in the House of Representatives. Her senators, having equal voice with those of other states in all matters affecting national affairs, have made themselves and their presence in Washington felt, to the great credit of themselves and their state. Especially is it true of former Senator Charles B. Henderson and Senator Key Pittman.

No truly comprehensive history of Nevada has, as yet, been compiled. Many early settlers are still living among us who can recall Nevada's first days of statehood, and before. From their number, perhaps, one may arise to catalogue Nevada's past and her present so that generations yet unborn may have a true and an accurate picture of this great state's development. At least it is not too much to hope that some of these early settlers will cooperate with a younger writer to effect this much to be desired accomplishment.

Let us all give thought to October 31 — the state's 67th birthday, with gratitude and thanksgiving for the blessings which are ours and the glory which is the state's, in past, present, and future; for, with the passing of the years, Nevada is sure to become one of the really great states and to be peopled with many thousands who will come to us because of the excellence of the climate, the beneficence of the desert sun, the limitless stretch of our acres and the blessings of a real freedom from cant and hypocrisy.

UPDATE: Thursday, October 30, 2008, 9:45 a.m. PDT, 16:45 ZULU/GMT/CMT/SUT — On this date in 1880, the Portsmouth Times in Ohio reported "The State of Nevada is now sure for Hancock. Fair will beat Sharon for the U.S. Senate." (Winfield Scott Hancock did indeed beat James Garfield — the first Democratic victory in a Nevada presidential race since the Civil War — and the 1881 Nevada Legislature did appoint James Fair over William Sharon for the U.S. senate seat); in 1933, The Romance of Helen Trent, a CBS soap opera showing "that because a woman is 35, or older, romance in life need not be over, that the romance of youth can be extended into middle life and even beyond", debuted and ran for 7,222 episodes over 27 years and two actresses playing the title character; in 1952, the Las Vegas Sun, which had earlier endorsed Dwight Eisenhower for the presidency, switched its endorsement to Adlai Stevenson in reaction to Eisenhower's willingness to accommodate McCarthyites, with publisher Hank Greenspun writing "Right thinking people cannot condone the embracement of McCarthy in Wisconsin and Jenner in Indiana, no matter what the end result may be."; in 1959, Washoe County commissioners were snarling about the commission's appointment of Ray Crosby to a Democratic seat in the Nevada Assembly, with Democratic commissioner J.S. McKenzie saying that the two Republican commissioners had appointed Crosby because he was really a Republican who only recently switched parties; in 1961, Elvis' version of the 1911 song Come Back to Sorrento, with new lyrics and a different title Surrender, hit number one on the Billboard chart; in 1978, an unforgettable episode of WKRP in Cincinnati, Turkeys Away, was first broadcast, implanting a memorable sentence in the minds of a generation of viewers: "As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly."; in 1988 in its drive for diversification and respectability as tobacco faded, Philip Morris paid $13.1 billion to take over Kraft Foods which, when added to its previous holdings, made the corporation the world's largest producer of consumer goods; in 2001, three weeks after September 11 and before any Bush administration officials had floated ideas of torture, Newsweek columnist Jonathan Alter proposed that the U.S. use psychological torture in the U.S. and ship victims overseas for physical torture (he began and ended the column with protective caveats that he didn't really mean it); in 2004, John Lukac of Las Vegas died near Fallujah, Iraq.

UPDATE: Wednesday, October 29, 2008, 12:38 a.m. PDT, 07:38 ZULU/GMT/CMT/SUT —

Déjà vu all over again —> Black Friday +79: On Oct. 29, 1929, stock prices collapsed on the New York Stock Exchange amid panic selling. Thousands of investors were wiped out. [New York Times/AP e-headlines]

On this date in 1892, the Nevada State Journal questioned why former U.S. representative William Woodburn supported Francis Newlands for the Silver Party nomination but was now running against him as the candidate of the Republican Party; in 1904, Democratic-Silver candidate for state senator Patrick McCarran spoke at Wadsworth, and Wadsworth and Olinghouse precincts were reported to be strongly in favor of Democratic candidates; in 1923, returning from Washington where governors met with President Coolidge, Nevada Governor James Scrugham announced in Elko that he was calling a November 12 law enforcement conference at which a strategy would be mapped to make alcohol prohibition work; in 1929, after several days of stock market crashes, the biggest one of all hit (see below); in 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt signed executive order 8927, withdrawing Nevada public lands from public use for National Defense Purposes; in 1956, without provocation, Israel launched an invasion of the Sinai, heading toward Egypt; in 1959, the Nevada board of examiners asked state agencies to start unloading "outdated and worthless" records, but not to dispose of historic or legal value (no hints were offered on how to tell the difference); in 1962, in her first of two appearances on Bonanza, former Miss Nevada 1959 Dawn Wells played the part of a girl who lives at an isolated way station and yearns to see what the outside world is like (episode 106, The Way Station); in 1966, 96 Tears by ? and the Mysterians hit number one on the Billboard magazine chart (? is Rudy Martinez); in 1975, President Ford made A speech to the National Press Club on New York City's financial problems (the speech was broadcast in the city) in which he urged financial restraint and said "I can tell you now that I am prepared to veto any bill that has as its purpose a federal bailout of New York City to prevent a default." (The stock market went into a tailspin and the New York Daily News produced a headline classic:

      FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD
            Vows He'll Veto Any Bailout
            Abe, Carey Rip Stand
            Stocks Skid, DOW Down 12

From The New York Times/October 30, 1929:

STOCKS COLLAPSE IN 16,410,030-SHARE DAY,
BUT RALLY AT CLOSE CHEERS BROKERS;
BANKERS OPTIMISTIC, TO CONTINUE AID

CLOSING RALLY VIGOROUS

Leading Issues Regain
From 4 to 14 Points
in 15 Minutes

INVESTMENT TRUSTS BUY

Large Blocks Thrown on Market
at Opening Start Third
Break of Week.

BIG TRADERS HARDEST HIT

Bankers Believe Liquidation
Now Has Run Its Course
and Advise Purchases

Stock prices virtually collapsed yesterday, swept downward with gigantic losses in the most disastrous trading day in the stock market‚s history. Billions of dollars in open market values were wiped out as prices crumbled under the pressure of liquidation of securities which had to be sold at any price.

There was an impressive rally just at the close, which brought many leading stocks back from 4 to 14 points from their lowest points of the day.

From every point of view, in the extent of losses sustained, in total turnover, in the number of speculators wiped out, the day was the most disastrous in Wall Street‚s history. Hysteria swept the country and stocks went overboard for just what they would bring at forced sale.

Efforts to estimate yesterday‚s market losses in dollars are futile because of the vast number of securities quoted over the counter and on out-of-town exchanges on which no calculations are possible. However, it was estimated that 880 issues, on the New York Stock Exchange, lost between $8,000,000,000 and $9,000,000,000 yesterday. Added to that loss is to be reckoned the depreciation on issues on the Curb Market, in the over the counter market and on other exchanges.

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The Dean's List

   The Dean of Reno Bloggers could very well be Andrew Barbano, self-described "fighter of public demons," who started putting his "Barbwire" columns online in 1996 and now runs 10 sites.

RENO NEWS & REVIEW, 11-9-2006

 

Two Extra Dividends Declared

There were two cheerful notes, however, which sounded through the pall of gloom which overhung the financial centres of the country. One was the brisk rally of stocks at the close, on tremendous buying by those who believe that prices have sunk too low. The other was that the liquidation has been so violent, as well as widespread, that many bankers, brokers and industrial leaders expressed the belief last night that it now has run its course.

A further note of optimism in the soundness of fundamentals was sounded by the directors of the United States Steel Corporation and the American Can Company, each of which declared an extra dividend of $1 a share at their late afternoon meetings.

Banking support, which would have been impressive and successful under ordinary circumstances, was swept violently aside, as block after block of stock, tremendous in proportions, deluged the market. Bid prices placed by bankers, industrial leaders and brokers trying to halt the decline were crashed through violently, their orders were filled, and quotations plunged downward in a day of disorganization, confusion and financial impotence.

Change Is Expected Today

That there will be a change today seemed likely from statements made last night by financial and business leaders. Organized support will be accorded to the market from the start, it is believed, but those who are staking their all on the country‚s leading securities are placing a great deal of confidence, too, in the expectation that there will be an overnight change in sentiment; that the counsel of cool heads will prevail and that the mob psychology which has been so largely responsible for the market‚s debacle will be broken.

The fact that the leading stocks were able to rally in the final fifteen minutes of trading yesterday was considered a good omen, especially as the weakest period of the day had developed just prior to that time and the minimum prices for the day had then been established. It was a quick run-up which followed the announcement that the American Can directors had declared an extra dividend of $1. The advances in leading stocks in this last fifteen minutes represented a measurable snapback from the lows. American Can gained 10; United States Steel common, 7 /2, General Electric, 12; New York Central, 14 1/2, Anaconda Copper, 9 1/2; Chrysler Motors 5 1/4; Montgomery Ward, 4 1/4 and Johns Manville, 8. Even with these recoveries the losses of these particular stocks, and practically all others, were staggering.

Yesterday‚s market crash was one which largely affected rich men, institutions, investment trusts and others who participate in the stock market on a broad and intelligent scale. It was not the margin traders who were caught in the rush to sell, but the rich men of the country who are able to swing blocks of 5,000, 10,000 up to 100,000 shares of high-priced stocks. They went overboard with no more consideration than the little trader who was swept out on the first day of the market‚s upheaval, whose prices, even at their lowest of last Thursday, now look high in comparison.

The market on the rampage is no respecter of persons. It washed fortune after fortune away yesterday and financially crippled thousands of individuals in all parts of the world. It was not until after the market had closed that the financial district began to realize that a good-sized rally had taken place and that there was a stopping place on the downgrade for good stocks.

Third Day of Collapse

The market has now passed through three days of collapse, and so violent has it been that most authorities believe that the end is not far away. It started last Thursday, when 12,800,000 shares were dealt in on the Exchange, and holders of stocks commenced to learn just what a decline in the market means. This was followed by a moderate rally on Friday and entirely normal conditions on Saturday, with fluctuations on a comparatively narrow scale and with the efforts of the leading bankers to stabilize the market evidently successful. But the storm broke anew on Monday, with prices slaughtered in every direction, to be followed by yesterday‚s tremendous trading of 16,410,030 shares.

Sentiment had been generally unsettled since the first of September. Market prices had then reached peak levels, and, try as they would, pool operators and other friends of the market could not get them higher. It was a gradual downward sag, gaining momentum as it went on, then to break out into an open market smash in which the good, the bad, and indifferent stocks went down alike. Thousands of traders were able to weather the first storm and answered their margin calls; thousands fell by the wayside Monday and again yesterday, unable to meet the demands of their brokers that their accounts be protected.There was no quibbling at all between customer and broker yesterday. In any case where margin became thin a peremptory call went out. If there was no immediate answer the stock was sold out „at the market‰ for just what it would bring. Thousands, sold out on the decline and amid the confusion, found themselves in debt to their brokers last night.Three Factors in Market

Three factors stood out most prominently last night after the market‚s close. They were: Wall Street has been able to weather the storm with but a single Curb failure, small in size, and no member of the New York Stock Exchange has announced himself unable to meet commitments.

The smashing decline has brought stocks down to a level where, in the opinion of leading bankers and industrialists, they are a buy on their merits and prospects, and brokers have so advised their customers.

The very violence of the liquidation, which has cleaned up many hundreds of sore spots which honeycombed the market, and the expected ability of the market to right itself, since millions of shares of stock have passed to strong hands from weak ones...

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What may well be the first marriage of talk radio, talk TV and webcast webchat

UPDATE: Tuesday, October 28, 2008, 9:03 a.m. PDT, 16:03 ZULU/GMT/CMT/SUT — Oct. 28, 2008—> On TV and online TODAY: The premiere of Renoite Robert Joshlin's hilarious, deliciously nihilistic and prescient paean to political burnout, Margin of Error—> Tomorrow: César Chávez tribute album producer Ray De La Paz with the premiere of his new CD Little Heroes—> Thursday: Hizzoner Judge Bob Perry. Read more about it: Judge in the Sludge—> Analysis of Reno's Charter cable dealbacle: Caveat Emptor—> Read it and weep at ReSurge.TV.

EBULLIENT E-BULLETIN: WHASSUP ON COMMUNITY TELEVISION THIS WEEK
PREMIERES AND POLITICS

On TV and online ON THE BARBWIRE TODAY: Oct. 28, 2008—> The premiere of Renoite Robert Joshlin's hilarious and deliciously nihilistic song of follytix, "Margin of Error. " Local artists are encouraged to submit their material to the address, below. Stormy Monday Blues by Reno blues/soul/jazz/gospel diva Pat Esters has become the opening theme for each week.

WEDNESDAY, Oct. 29 ON THE BARBWIRE —> César Chávez tribute album producer Ray De La Paz with the premiere of his new CD "Little Heroes." De La Paz may bring his Cesar tribute show to Reno's annual Cesar Chavez Celebration next March 31. Watch cesarchaveznevada.org

THURSDAY, Oct. 30 ON THE BARBWIRE —> Washoe District Judge Bob Perry. Washoe D.A. Dick Gammick was also invited to appear, but did not respond. Judge Perry and Mr. Gammick's designated hitter, Elliott Sattler, will appear on Sam Shad's Nevada Newsmakers today (Oct. 28) on KRNV TV-4 at 12:30 p.m. (9:30 p.m. on regional Charter cable).

FRIDAY, Oct. 31 ON THE BARBWIRE —> Nevada Day rebroadcast of the July 15 program with KRNV TV-4 news anchor Tad Dunbar. Let's party hearty in Carson City!

—> SURVIVAL MODE: Analysis of the City of Reno's Charter cable dealbacle: Caveat Emptor—> Read it and weep at ReSurge.TV

—> BASIC CABLE FREEBIE ALERT. Michael Moore's 2008 feature film Slacker Uprising continues its first run on Sierra Nevada Community Access Television (SNCAT), which hosted the motion picture's Nevada premiere earlier this month. Partially filmed at UNR's Lawlor Events Center during Moore's 62-city 2004 national tour, the movie will be rebroadcast on Charter channels 16 and 216 this Friday at 9:00 a.m. Watch Barbwire.US for additional presentations.

—> DERBY (D) VS. HELLER (R): The challenger and the congressman. Interviews were conducted by independent Reno journalist Lisa Stiller for broadcast on SNCAT Channels 16 and 216. The programs rerun today at 10:30 a.m. (Heller) and 11:15 a.m. (Derby); Thursday 5:00 and 5:45 p.m.; Saturday 5:30 and 6:15 p.m. The segments have been re-purposed for the web to make them available to those who may not subscribe to Charter cable.

“By going to our website (sncat.org) and clicking on the links provided, it is possible to pull up each interview in two separate players and compare the candidates’ responses side by side,” SNCAT Executive Director Les Smith states.

The video files of the interviews have been bookmarked, so that viewers may use the pop-up menu at the bottom of each player to jump to specific questions. Because the same questions were used in both interviews, it’s possible to compare candidate responses. This technology offers a new way of getting candidates’ honest views on pressing issues and serves as a demonstration of new communications technologies available through SNCAT.

Tune in, turn on and tell a friend.

Thank you.

Be well. Raise hell.

Andrew Barbano
ReSurge.TV

Barbano on the Barbwire airs LIVE 2-4 p.m. PDT / 21:00-23:00 ZULU/GMT/CUT/SUT,
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Live phone calls: (775) 682-4144
Simulcast LIVE webchat (where I prove that I can talk, type and chew gum at the same time) streaming at Barbwire.TV and KJIV.org (SNCAT's new community radio station, soon to add over-the-air broadcast to its 24/7 webcasting)
______
SAVE COMMUNITY TELEVISION IN NORTHWESTERN NEVADA. Please consider donating to the ReSurge.TV cable ratepayer defense fund. We have secured pro bono legal counsel from former PUC attorney Neil Grad, as well as paralegal support. We need help with costs and fees. If you can afford it, you may donate via PayPal with your credit or debit card at ReSurge.TV. You may also mail a check or money order to ReSurge.TV, P.O. Box 10034, Reno, NV 89510. Complete details at ReSurge.TV. Thank you.

-30-

UPDATE: Tuesday, October 28, 2008, 7:59 a.m. PDT, 14:59 ZULU/GMT/CMT/SUT —

George Bush/October 28, 2003: as you know, these are open forums, you're able to come and listen to what I have to say.

On this date in 1862, at the battle of Island Mound a detachment of African-Americans in Kansas, drawn from the ranks of fugitives who fled slave states, became the first black soldiers to see combat in the U.S. civil war; in 1870, the first child was admitted to the Nevada Orphans' Home in Carson City; in 1908 after eliciting a health warning from the city health board during a period of anti-Chinese sentiment, city leaders burned Reno's Chinatown to the ground with no warning to residents (to prevent them from getting a court order stopping the action), who were left homeless in the snow and with a labor group promising to drive the refugees out of town; in 1912 with just a few days before election, Vice-President James Sherman, President Taft's reelection running mate and the first vice presidential candidate to be nominated twice in a row, was believed to be on his deathbed, prompting speculation on whether he would be replaced on the ticket (Sherman did die before the election and his name remained on the ballot but he was replaced after the election for electoral vote purposes by the anti-Semitic president of Columbia University, Nicholas Murray Butler, not that it mattered — Republicans Taft and Sherman came in third behind the Democratic and Progressive tickets); in 1918, the Washoe County Henderson Club mailed out a letter urging voters to "Help Henderson Help Wilson" by retaining appointed U.S. Senator Charles Henderson; in 1919, Congress approved the Volstead Act, the legislation implementing the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, providing for prohibition of alcoholic beverages; in 1930, a power supply for use in the construction of Hoover Dam was secured when federal officials signed a contract with the Nevada/California Power Company and the Southern Sierras Power Company for the construction of a transmission line from San Bernadino to Boulder City and the transmission of power on the line; in 1942, Nevada council of defense director Hugh Shamberger spoke to a public meeting of civil defense workers on "the block plan of organization for civilian war services"; in 1950 at the University of Nevada in Reno, Nevadan Pat Brady punted 99 yards against Loyola, a record that still stands; in 1958, Cardinal Angelo Roncalli of Venice was elected pope, supposedly as a caretaker — but he became the greatest pope of the century (he startled the college of cardinals by selecting the name John XXIII, which had been the name of the last Pope John, an antipope); in 1962, television actress Dawn Wells, a Reno native, was married to theatrical agent Larry Rosen in Las Vegas; in 1971, John and Yoko recorded Happy Xmas (War Is Over); in 2001, The Washington Post reported that George Bush had signed an executive order — but never disclosed it — allowing operatives of his administration to murder those they claimed were "terrorists" (the authority under the order has been used at least once, in Yemen in 2002, to assassinate six men).

Live Streaming Barbwire.TV
Monday thru Friday
Reno-Sparks-Washoe Charter cable channels 16 and 216
2 :00-4:00 p.m. PDT
21:00-23:00 ZULU/GMT/CUT/SUT

The Dean's List

   The Dean of Reno Bloggers could very well be Andrew Barbano, self-described "fighter of public demons," who started putting his "Barbwire" columns online in 1996 and now runs 10 sites.

RENO NEWS & REVIEW, 11-9-2006

 

UPDATE: Monday, October 27, 2008, 7:31 a.m. PDT, 14:31 ZULU/GMT/CMT/SUT —

Dorothy Hadjys, mother of Allen Schindler: When my son told the captain of his ship he was homosexual, he was informed that because of just saying he was gay, he could end up with a dishonorable discharge and lose everything he had ever worked for the four years he was in the Navy.

Allen Schindler, in his journal: If you can't be yourself, then who are you?

On this date in 1775, George III sent a war message to the British Parliament about the Atlantic colonies: "The rebellious war now levied is become more general, and is manifestly carried on for the purpose of establishing an independent empire. I need not dwell upon the fatal effects of the success of such a plan. The object is too important, the spirit of the British nation too high, the resources with which God hath blessed her too numerous, to give up so many colonies which she has planted with great industry, nursed with great tenderness, encouraged with many commercial advantages, and protected and defended at much expence of blood and treasure. It is now become the part of wisdom, and (in its effects) of clemency, to put a speedy end to these disorders by the most decisive exertions. For this purpose, I have increased my naval establishment, and greatly augmented my land forces; but in such a manner as may be the least burthensome to my kingdoms."; in 1837, Seminole Chief Osceola, having led his people away from a relocation camp, was taken prisoner as he approached US Major General Thomas Jesup while they were both under flags of truce (he was imprisoned in the fortress of the Castillo San Marcos at St. Augustine where he died the next year); in 1879, Ulysses Grant visited Virginia City and spoke to the public from the second floor balcony of the Savage building; in 1914, Nevada Governor Tasker Oddie signed a proclamation declaring a holiday on the half-century of Nevada's admission to statehood; in 1925, a contract was awarded to Varney Air Lines to carry mail between Elko, Nevada, and Pasco, Washington with a stop in Boise, Idaho (the storied route was featured in the Christopher Reeve/Rosanna Arquette movie The Aviator); in 1928, Perry Smith, one of the alleged killers profiled in Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, was born in Elko County, Nevada; in 1947, You Bet Your Life, hosted by Groucho Marx, debuted on radio; in 1949, Republican plans to make statism an issue in the 1950 election hit a snag when a Gallup survey indicated that 68 percent of those surveyed didn't know what the word meant; in 1949, a hearing at the State Building in Reno on whether the city should end rent control drew 1,500 people, most of them opposed; in 1954, shots were fired at Egyptian President Gamal Abdul Nasser at a nighttime rally in Alexandria, coming so close that a floodlight over his head was shot out, leaving the hysterical crowd in doubt about whether he was still dead or alive, until his voice called out "I am still alive...Let them kill Nasser! He is one among many. You are all Gamal Abdul Nassers."; in 1956, U.S. Senator William Knowland of California, the GOP floor leader, campaigned for Republican candidates in his wife's home town of Ely, Nevada, where Democratic floor leader Lyndon Johnson had visited on October 13; in 1962, the U.S. agreed to remove missiles from the border of the Soviet Union and not again invade Cuba if the Soviets removed missiles from Cuba, rendering the entire terrifying "missile crisis" unnecessary, since the agreement could have been reached with normal diplomatic negotiations; in 1975, the Washoe County grand jury, after hearing several witnesses on the hazing death of University of Nevada-Reno student John Davies, adjourned its investigation until November 5; in 1992, two United States Navy sailors trailed their USS Belleau Wood shipmate Allen Schindler to a park in Sasebo, Nagasaki, Japan, near their base, and beat him to death, a case of gay bashing that unfolded during the months when Congress and President Clinton refused to allow gays to serve openly in the military (the case was the basis for the Bonnie Bedelia film Every Mother's Son); in 2002, The New York Times report on an antiwar march in Washington said that "thousands of protesters marched through Washington's streets. Fewer people attended than organizers had said they hoped for," followed three days later by a second Times report on the very same march that it said "drew 100,000 by police estimates and 200,000 by organizers‚, forming a two-mile wall of marchers around the White House. The turnout startled even organizers, who had taken out permits for 20,000 marchers."

UPDATE: Sunday, October 26, 2008, 6:16 p.m. PDT, 01:16 10-27-2008 ZULU/GMT/CMT/SUT —

John Kennedy/Amherst College/October 26, 1963: I look forward to a great future for America, a future in which our country will match its military strength with our moral restraint, its wealth with our wisdom, its power with our purpose. I look forward to an America which will not be afraid of grace and beauty, which will protect the beauty of our natural environment, which will preserve the great old American houses and squares and parks of our national past, and which will build handsome and balanced cities for our future. I look forward to an America which will reward achievement in the arts as we reward achievement in business or statecraft. I look forward to an America which will steadily raise the standards of artistic accomplishment and which will steadily enlarge cultural opportunities for all of our citizens. And I look forward to an America which commands respect throughout the world not only for its strength but for its civilization as well. And I look forward to a world which will be safe not only for democracy and diversity but also for personal distinction.

George Bush/Des Moines/October 26, 2006: You know, when I campaigned here in 2000, I said, I want to be a war President. No President wants to be a war President, but I am one.

On this date in 1882 at the Tlingit town of Angoon in Alaska after a Northwest Trading Company whaling gun exploded, killing Tlingit tribe member Tith Klane (a company employee) and the company refused to pay 40 blankets as compensation to the tribe, the U.S. Revenue Cutter Service (now called the Coast Guard) shelled the town after which crewmen went ashore and burned its structure, killing seven adults and burning six children alive (the tribe experienced great suffering that winter, since the coast guardsmen also destroyed the tribe's canoe fleet and only five structures still stood in the town); in 1909, with university varsity games at an end for the rest of the year (possibly because of the shortage of men during wartime), Reno high school and university first year students were planning a rugby game; in 1925, Reno Mayor Edwin Roberts received a wire informing him that Governor George Dern of Utah had appointed a committee to plan that state's participation in the Transcontinental Highway Exposition in Nevada and that the committee had recommended a $25,000 expenditure for a Utah building and exhibits; in 1936, SS commander Heinrich Himmler formed, within the Security Police, the Reich Central Office for Combating Abortion and Homosexuality; in 1953, the Reno city council approved acquisition of land for extension of Peavine Road to Keystone, looking toward providing a main thoroughfare from central Reno to the northwest, which was growing rapidly in the postwar, baby boom years; in 1955 after an election in which he attracted 98.2 percent of the vote (U.S. officials had advised him not to make the theft of the election too obvious) Ngo Dinh Diem declared himself president, prime minister, defense minister and armed forces commander of the Saigon regime; in 1963, Project Shoal, the first atomic detonation in Nevada outside the borders of the Nevada Test Site, took place in Churchill County to "study the effects of different geological media (e.g., granite) on seismic waves produced by underground nuclear shots and to determine whether seismic waves produced from underground nuclear testing could be differentiated from natural earthquakes"; in 1965 at Buckingham Palace, the government of Prime Minister Harold Wilson made John, Paul, George, and Ringo MBEs — Members of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (which they received after getting high in a palace restroom) for their "services to the export industry", causing several earlier recipients to return their MBEs (Lennon later returned his MBE as a protest against British policies on Vietnam and Biafra); in 1972, twelve days before the election Nixon national security advisor Henry Kissinger launched the last dirty trick of the campaign, declaring of the Vietnam war, "Peace is at hand" (the supposed agreement evaporated after the election); in 1982, federal officials announced that after 21 months of President Reagan's economic policies, the United States was $110 billion in debt, the largest debt in human history; in 1995, the Washington Times criticized Admiral Jeremy Boorda, chief of naval operations, for sending a message to all commands "to honor the North American Indian's contribution to the form of government that we practice today" (many of the concepts in the U.S. form of government such as separation of powers originated with tribal governing bodies); in 2001, George Bush signed the PATRIOT Act; in 2002, Gabbs and McDermitt high schools played a six-man game of football in Gabbs, believed to be the first six-man prep game played in 40 years; in 2006, The Times They Are A Changin', a Twyla Tharp musical built around Bob Dylan's music, hit Broadway after touring the provinces.

UPDATE: Sunday, October 26, 2008, 12:09 p.m. PDT, 19:09 ZULU/GMT/CMT/SUT —

Falling all over ourselves
Barbwire by Barbano / Daily Sparks Tribune / 10-26-2008

UPDATE: Saturday, October 25, 2008, 9:12 p.m. PDT, 04:12 10-26-2008 ZULU/GMT/CMT/SUT —

From Bat Masterson's last column: There are those who argue that everything breaks even in this old dump of a world of ours. I suppose these ginks who argue that way hold that because the rich man gets ice in the summer and the poor man gets it in the winter things are breaking even for both. Maybe so, but I'll swear I can't see it that way.

On this date in 1846, after five days of rest in the Truckee Meadows, the Donner party resumed its trek toward the Sierra and history; in 1877, Carson City supporters of the Republican presidential/vice presidential ticket of Garfield and Arthur traveled to Reno for a torchlight parade with supporters there, with torchlights, transparencies projected, oratory, and singing; in 1918, the October 5 death of third baseman Eddie Grant, who had played for the Cleveland Indians (1905), Philadelphia Phillies (1907-1910), Cincinnati Reds (1911-1913), and New York Giants (1913-1915) was announced (Grant was draft-deferred because of his age of 33 but volunteered for Army service anyway, and was killed by a German shell while leading his unit to an attempted rescue of the Lost Battalion, a force of about 500 Allied soldiers trapped by German forces in the Argonne forest), the Paris Stars and Stripes headline reading BASEBALL LOSES BIG LEAGUE STAR IN GREATER GAME; in 1921, New York City sports writer William "Bat" Masterson died at his desk at the New York Telegraph while writing his last column; in 1926 in Elko, Governor James Scrugham defended himself against Republican Fred Balzar's claims that the state was living beyond its means; in 1937, maritime union organizer Joseph Curran called for the ouster of Joseph Kennedy as chair of the National Maritime Commission because of the jailing of 14 sailors aboard the government owned SS Algic who struck for union recognition (the ship was docked, not at sea); in 1950 in Boulder City, Republican candidate for governor Charles Russell declared he was opposed to any additional taxes, a pledge that bound him when he took office and caused the state to lose four years in dealing with the impact of the baby boom on schools; in 1950, the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs in D.C., concerned about tribal attorneys, including the Pyramid Lake Paiute tribe's lawyer James Curry, was considering adopting a policy restricting the use of lawyers by tribes; in 1962, U.S. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson presented photographic evidence of the presence of nuclear missiles in Cuba, but failed to produce any evidence of their illegality under international law; in 1968, Chicago community organizer Saul Alinsky offered Wellesley College student Hillary Rodham a job as a community organizer, which she rejected, having written a thesis that questioned the effectiveness of Alinsky's organizing techniques compared to those of conventional politics (Barack Obama did accept a job as an organizer with an Alinsky group); in 1979, reporter Lea Thompson of television station WRC in D.C. reported that the botched recall of two baby formulas had left the products on store shelves and were responsible for numerous cases of serious infant illness and, it was later learned, even brain damage, a report that received a Columbia/Dupont award, the highest broadcast journalism prize (ABC's 20-20 and Geraldo Rivera later repackaged the same material for a supposed investigative report without crediting Thompson); in 1983, the United States of America (population 230,000,000) invaded Grenada (population less than 100,000); in 1986, the Mets won game six of the world series when a ground ball rolled between the legs of Red Sox first baseman Bill Buckner; in 2002, U.S. Senator Paul Wellstone of Minnesota was killed in a plane crash; in 2008, Barack Obama spoke at Peccole Stadium at the University of Nevada, Reno.

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The Dean's List

   The Dean of Reno Bloggers could very well be Andrew Barbano, self-described "fighter of public demons," who started putting his "Barbwire" columns online in 1996 and now runs 10 sites.

RENO NEWS & REVIEW, 11-9-2006

 

Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama/Reno/October 25, 2008: Nevada, in just 10 days, you'll have the chance to elect your next President. And you'll have the chance to bring the change we need to Washington. That's the good news. But we're going to have to work, and struggle, and fight for every single one of those 10 days to move our country in a new direction. We cannot let up. And we won't.

Because one thing we know is that change never comes without a fight. In the final days of campaigns, the say-anything, do-anything politics too often takes over. We've seen it before. And we're seeing it again today. The ugly phone calls. The misleading mail and TV ads. The careless, outrageous comments. All aimed at keeping us from working together, all aimed at stopping change.

Well, this isn't what we need right now. The American people don't want to hear politicians attack each other - you want to hear about how we're going to attack the challenges facing middle class families each and every day. So what we need now is honest leadership and real change, and that's why I'm running for President of the United States.

This is a moment of great uncertainty for America. The economic crisis we face is the worst since the Great Depression. Businesses large and small are finding it impossible to get loans, which means they can't buy new equipment, or hire new workers, or even make payroll for the workers they have.

We've lost more than 750,000 jobs this year - and unemployment here in Nevada is up 30% this year. Wages are lower than they've been in a decade, at a time when the cost of health care and college have never been higher. It's getting harder and harder to make the mortgage, or fill up your gas tank, or even keep the electricity on at the end of the month. At this rate, the question isn't just "Are you better off than you were four years ago?", it's "Are you better off than you were four weeks ago?"

So what we need right now is a real debate about how to fix our economy and help middle class families. But that's not what we're getting from the other side. A couple of weeks ago, my opponent's campaign said that "if we keep talking about the economy, we're going to lose", so they said they'd be focusing on attacking me instead.

And that's one campaign promise they've actually kept. Senator McCain has been throwing everything he's got at us, hoping something will stick. He's even called me a socialist for suggesting that we focus on tax cuts, not for corporations and the wealthy, but for the middle class.

Then, the other day, he took it to a whole new level. He said that I was like George W. Bush. You can't make this stuff up, folks. In what may be the strangest twist of all, Senator McCain said that I would somehow continue the Bush economic policies - and that he, John McCain, would change them.

He actually denounced the President for letting things - and I quote - "get completely out of hand."

That's right, John McCain has been really angry about George Bush's economic policies - except during the primaries, when he said we've made "great progress economically" under George Bush. Or just last month, when he said that the "fundamentals of our economy are strong." In fact, John McCain is so opposed to George Bush's policies, that he voted with him 90 percent of the time for the past eight years. That's right, he decided to really stick it to him - 10 percent of the time.

Well, let's be clear: John McCain attacking George Bush for his out-of-hand economic policy is like Dick Cheney attacking George Bush for his go-it-alone foreign policy.

Fortunately, President Bush doesn't seem to be at all offended - because yesterday, he cast his vote - early - for Senator McCain. And that's no surprise, because when it comes to the policies that matter for middle class families, there's not an inch of daylight between George Bush and John McCain.

Like George Bush, John McCain wants to keep giving tax breaks to oil companies and CEOs and companies that ship our jobs overseas. It's the same, failed, Wall Street first/Main Street last economic policy - and we're going to change it.

Like George Bush, John McCain wants to tax your health care benefits for the first time in history, and let insurance companies keep discriminating against people who need health care the most. It's the same, failed, insurance company first/your family last health care policy - and we're going to change it.

Like George Bush, John McCain wants to privatize Social Security - and leave it to the whims of the market. Like George Bush, John McCain ignored this housing crisis until it was too late - and then proposed a $300 billion bailout for Wall Street banks that does hardly anything to help people stay in their homes. Like George Bush, he wants less government regulation of business - he said it again just yesterday, the twenty-first time he's called for less regulation just this year. Now none of us want to see unnecessary burdens on business. But after what we've seen on Wall Street, isn't it obvious by now that we need some commonsense rules of the road to protect consumers and our economy?

I think we've had enough of the Bush-McCain economics. I can take ten more days of John McCain's attacks, but the American people can't take four more years of the same failed policies and the same failed politics. We're not going to let George Bush pass the torch to John McCain. It's time for change.

I know these are difficult times. I know folks are worried. But I believe that we can steer ourselves out of this crisis because I believe in this country. Because I believe in you. I believe in the American people.

We are the United States of America. We are a nation that's faced down war and depression; great challenges and great threats. And at each and every moment, we have risen to meet these challenges - not as Democrats, not as Republicans, but as Americans. With resolve. With confidence. With that fundamental belief that here in America, our destiny is not written for us, but by us. That's who we are, and that's the country we need to be right now. But Nevada, I know this. It will take a new direction. It will take new leadership in Washington.

It's time to turn the page on eight years of economic policies that put Wall Street before Main Street but ended up hurting both. We need policies that grow our economy from the bottom-up, so that every American, everywhere, has the chance to get ahead. Not just the person who owns the factory, but the men and women who work on its floor. Not just the CEO, but the secretary and the janitor. Because if we've learned anything from this economic crisis, it's that we're all connected; we're all in this together; and we will rise or fall as one nation - as one people.

The rescue plan that passed the Congress was a necessary first step to easing this credit crisis, but if we're going to rebuild this economy from the bottom up, we need an immediate rescue plan for the middle-class - and that's what I will do as President of the United States.

I've proposed a new American jobs tax credit for each new employee that companies hire here in the United States over the next two years. I'll stop giving tax breaks to companies that ship jobs overseas and invest in companies that create good jobs right here in Nevada. I'll help small businesses get back on their feet by eliminating capital gains taxes and giving them emergency loans to keep their doors open and hire workers. And I will create a Jobs and Growth fund to help states and local governments save one million jobs and pay for health care and education without having to raise your taxes.

I'll also act quickly to help people stay in their homes, something that's especially critical here in Nevada where foreclosure rates are five times the national average. I'll help responsible homeowners refinance their mortgages on affordable terms, and put in place a three-month moratorium on foreclosures to give folks the breathing room they need to get back on their feet. And I won't let banks and lenders off the hook when it was their greed and irresponsibility that got us into this mess. We should not be bailing out Wall Street - we should be restoring opportunity on Main Street.

These are the steps that we must take - right now - to start getting our economy back on track. But we also need a new set of priorities to grow our economy and create jobs over the long-term.

It starts with tax relief. There's been a lot of talk about taxes in this campaign. And the truth is, my opponent and I are both proposing tax cuts. The difference is, he wants to give a $700,000 tax cut to the average Fortune 500 CEO. I want to put a middle class tax cut in the pockets of 95% of workers and their families. My opponent doesn't want you to know this, but under my plan, tax rates will actually be less than they were under Ronald Reagan.

It's true that I want to roll back the Bush tax cuts on the wealthiest Americans and go back to the rate they paid under Bill Clinton. John McCain calls that socialism. What he forgets is that just a few years ago, he himself said those Bush tax cuts were irresponsible. He said he couldn't "in good conscience" support a tax cut where the benefits went to the wealthy at the expense of "middle class Americans who most need tax relief." Well, he was right then, and I am right now.

So let me be crystal clear: If you make less than a quarter of a million dollars a year - which includes 98% of small business owners - you won't see your taxes increase one single dime. Not your payroll taxes, not your income taxes, not your capital gains taxes - nothing. That is my commitment to you.

For the last eight years, we have tried it John McCain's way. We have tried it George Bush's way. We've given more and more to those with the most and hoped that prosperity would trickle down to everyone else. And guess what? It didn't. So it's time to try something new. It's time to grow this economy by investing in the middle class again.

If I am President, I will invest $15 billion a year in renewable sources of energy to create five million new, green jobs over the next decade - jobs that pay well and can't be outsourced; jobs building solar panels and wind turbines and fuel-efficient cars; jobs that will help us end our dependence on oil from Middle East dictators.

I'll also put two million more Americans to work rebuilding our crumbling roads, schools, and bridges - because it is time to build an American infrastructure for the 21st century. And if people ask how we're going to pay for this, you tell them that if we can spend $10 billion a month in Iraq, we can spend some money to rebuild America.

If I am President, I will finally fix the problems in our health care system that we've been talking about for too long. This issue is personal for me. My mother died of ovarian cancer at the age of 53, and I'll never forget how she spent the final months of her life lying in a hospital bed, fighting with her insurance company because they claimed that her cancer was a pre-existing condition and didn't want to pay for treatment. If I am President, I will make sure those insurance companies can never do that again.

My health care plan will make sure insurance companies can't discriminate against those who are sick and need care most. If you have health insurance, the only thing that will change under my plan is that we will lower premiums. If you don't have health insurance, you'll be able to get the same kind of health insurance that Members of Congress get for themselves. And we'll invest in preventative care and new technology to finally lower the cost of health care for families, businesses, and the entire economy. That's the change we need.

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The Dean's List

   The Dean of Reno Bloggers could very well be Andrew Barbano, self-described "fighter of public demons," who started putting his "Barbwire" columns online in 1996 and now runs 10 sites.

RENO NEWS & REVIEW, 11-9-2006

 

And if I'm President, we'll give every child, everywhere the skills and the knowledge they need to compete with any worker, anywhere in the world. I will not allow countries to out-teach us today so they can out-compete us tomorrow. It is time to provide every American with a world-class education. That means investing in early childhood education. That means recruiting an army of new teachers, and paying them better, and giving them more support in exchange for higher standards and more accountability. And it means making a deal with every American who has the drive and the will but not the money to go to college. My opponent's top economic advisor actually said that they have no plan to invest in college affordability because we can't have a giveaway to every special interest. Well I don't think the young people of America are a special interest - they are the future of this country. That's why I'll make this deal with you: if you commit to serving your community or your country, we will make sure you can afford your tuition. No ifs, ands or buts. You invest in America, America will invest in you, and together, we will move this country forward.

Now, make no mistake: the change we need won't come easy or without cost. We will all need to tighten our belts, we will all need to sacrifice and we will all need to pull our weight because now more than ever, we are all in this together.

At a defining moment like this, we don't have the luxury of relying on the same political games and the same political tactics that are used every election to divide us from one another and make us afraid of one another. With the challenges and crises we face right now, we cannot afford to divide this country by class or region; by who we are or what policies we support.

There are no real or fake parts of this country. We are not separated by the pro-America and anti-America parts of this nation - we all love this country, no matter where we live or where we come from. There are patriots who supported this war in Iraq and patriots who opposed it; patriots who believe in Democratic policies and those who believe in Republican policies. The men and women from Nevada and all across America who serve on our battlefields may be Democrats and Republicans and Independents, but they have fought together and bled together and some died together under the same proud flag. They have not served a Red America or a Blue America - they have served the United States of America.

We have always been at our best when we've had leadership that called us to look past our differences and come together as one nation, as one people; leadership that rallied this entire country to a common purpose - to a higher purpose. And I am running for President of the United States of America because that is the country we need to be right now.

This country and the dream it represents are being tested in a way that we haven't seen in nearly a century. And future generations will judge ours by how we respond to this test. Will they say that this was a time when America lost its way and its purpose? When we allowed the same divisions and fear tactics and our own petty differences to plunge this country into a dark and painful recession?

Or will they say that this was another one of those moments when America overcame? When we battled back from adversity by recognizing that common stake that we have in each other's success?

This is one of those moments. I realize you're cynical and fed up with politics. I understand that you're disappointed and even angry with your leaders. You have every right to be. But despite all of this, I ask of you what's been asked of the American people in times of trial and turmoil throughout our history. I ask you to believe - to believe in yourselves, in each other, and in the future we can build together.

Together, we cannot fail. Not now. Not when we have a crisis to solve and an economy to save. Not when there are so many Americans without jobs and without homes. Not when there are families who can't afford to see a doctor, or send their child to college, or pay their bills at the end of the month. Not when there is a generation that is counting on us to give them the same opportunities and the same chances that we had for ourselves.

We can do this. Americans have done this before. Some of us had grandparents or parents who said maybe I can't go to college but my child can; maybe I can't have my own business but my child can. I may have to rent, but maybe my children will have a home they can call their own. I may not have a lot of money but maybe my child will run for Senate. I might live in a small village but maybe someday my son can be president of the United States of America.

Now it falls to us. Together, we cannot fail. And I need you to make it happen. If you want the next four years looking like the last eight, then I am not your candidate. But if you want real change - if you want an economy that rewards work, and that works for Main Street and Wall Street; if you want tax relief for the middle class and millions of new jobs; if you want health care you can afford and education that helps your kids compete; then I ask you to knock on some doors, make some calls, talk to your neighbors, and give me your vote. In Nevada, you can vote early right here, and right now. To find out how, just go to voteforchange.com. And if you stand with me in ten days, I promise you - we will win Nevada, we will win this election, and then you and I - together - will change this country and change this world.

Thank you, God bless you, and may God bless America.


Getting the signals straight: Republican U.S. House candidate Dean Heller warmed up the crowd for Sarah Palin at the Reno Sparks Convention Center today by yelling “Who’s against the bailout?” and drawing cheers, apparently forgetting that Palin supports the bailout. Palin, a supporter of redistributing wealth upwards through the bailout, attacked Barack Obama for wanting to redistribute wealth downward. (Posted by Dennis Myers @ 2008 10-21 2:22 p.m. at the Reno News & Review website)

UPDATE: Friday, October 24, 2008, 11:43 a.m. PDT, 18:43 ZULU/GMT/CMT/SUT —

On Barbwire.TV TODAY: preview of Martin Luther King, Jr. weekend celebration

UPDATE: Friday, October 24, 2008, 10:59 a.m. PDT, 17:59 ZULU/GMT/CMT/SUT — On this date in 1868, U.S. Minister (ambassador) to Uruguay and Argentina Henry Worthington of Nevada presented his credentials to the Uruguay government; in 1902, William Jennings Bryan campaigned for Democratic candidates in Carson City, Virginia City, and Reno; in 1918 as a war measure, Manhattan hotels began rationing letterhead stationary, guests being required to apply at the front desk for the exact number of sheets they required; in 1940, U.S. workers got a 40-hour work week under a new federal law; in 1945, the United Nations charter was ratified; in 1950, the Mills family, final owners of the Virginia and Truckee Railroad (which was being dismantled), donated Foley's Forest, 51 acres of forest on the east side of Carson City, to the city and Engine 27 and a coach to the State of Nevada; in 1954, President Eisenhower offered military assistance to the "nation" of South Vietnam, which was invented by Eisenhower's administration in violation of the 1954 Geneva settlement of the Indochina war; in 1960, I Want To Be Wanted by Brenda Lee hit number one on the Billboard magazine chart; in 1973, former Nevada Assemblymember Flora Dungan, who transformed Nevada politics with her lawsuit to restore Nevada's original population-based legislative apportionment system and overturn the "little federal" plan that gave each county one senator, died; in 2003, the supersonic Concorde jet, described by U.S. Representative Morris Udall as a "filthy flying turkey", flew its last commercial flight; in 2006, U.S. Representative Jim Gibbons was given the daily "worst person in the world" award by MSNBC's Keith Olbermann after Gibbons explained a parking garage altercation with an inebriated cocktail waitress by saying he was helping her to her car and that "Gosh, I learned an important lesson — never offer a helping hand to anybody ever again" (Gibbons won the award a second time after becoming governor for the revelation that he had engineered a congressional earmark in the intelligence budget for a hometown crony).

UPDATE: Wednesday, October 22, 2008, 8:46 p.m. PDT, 03:46 ZULU/GMT/CMT/SUT Oct. 23, 2008 —

George Bush (apparently denouncing his own central policy), to George Stephanopoulos of ABC News / October 22, 2006: "We're never been stay-the-course, George."

On this date in 1836, Texas, having escaped a ban on slavery under new Mexican law by fighting a war of independence to become a republic, inaugurated Sam Houston as its president; in 1887, journalist John Reed, who would marry fellow journalist Louise Bryant of Nevada, was born in Portland (Reed and Bryant were portrayed by Warren Beatty and Diane Keaton in Reds); in 1922, Vladivostok, reportedly the last outpost held by the White Guards, fell to Soviet troops, effectively ending resistance to the Russian revolution; in 1934, Charles "Choc" Floyd (called "Pretty Boy" by reporters) was killed by FBI officers near Wellsville, Oklahoma; in 1943, Annette Funicello was born in Utica, New York; in 1956, the Ely Daily Times reported that Elko had broken with Ely on their expensive joint effort to bring air service to eastern Nevada; in 1956, two weeks before the election, Senator John Kennedy of Massachusetts made a nationally broadcast radio address for the Democrats; in 1956, U.S. Senator Alan Bible, introducing Senator John Kennedy of Massachusetts at Reno's Twentieth Century Club, said he thought Kennedy might one day be president or vice-president; in 1962, President Kennedy announced that because he disapproved of newly discovered Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba, he was ordering a military blockade of the island — an act of war that was illegal under international law (on October 27, Kennedy secretly agreed to remove U.S. nuclear missiles from Turkey and promised not to again invade Cuba — the U.S. had sponsored a 1961 invasion — in exchange for Khrushchev removing the Cuba missiles, thus rendering the entire "crisis" unnecessary, particularly since both Kennedy and defense secretary Robert McNamara conceded that the Cuba missiles represented no change in the balance of power); in 1972, Nixon advisor Henry Kissinger met twice with Saigon dictator Nguyen Van Thieu to plead that Thieu not block a cease fire in order to allow Nixon to claim a peace agreement before the election; in 1986, President Reagan signed legislation stripping from the public one of the few tax loopholes enjoyed by ordinary people — deductability of interest on consumer credit, including car loans, credit cards, vacation loans; in 1990, President Bush the Elder vetoed Senate Bill 2104, the Civil Rights Act of 1990.


UPDATE: Wednesday, 22 Oct. 2008 3:27 a.m. PDT, 10:37 ZULU/GMT/SUT/CUT — New Ironworkers training center breaks ground today. For more info, call (775) 331-8696.

Ironworkers from Local 118 raising the high iron at the Reno Peppermill Hotel-Casino expansion in 1999. The union will hang the first steel at the new downtown Reno ballpark on Oct. 28, 2008.

RENO — This Wednesday brings the groundbreaking of the Ironworkers Union's new apprenticeship training center in Stead. The finished facility will encompass about 12,000 square feet on two acres at Alpha and Mt. Bismark. Q&D Construction of Sparks is the general contractor. The $3.5 million facility is scheduled to be up and running by next June. Ironworkers Local 118 is celebrating its centennial year and has 1,600 members in Nevada and California, 400 of whom are based out of its Sparks offices.

Former business agents Al Van Tress and Richard Ciesynski, a longtime Sparks resident, will attend.

A MEMO FROM LOCAL 118: Right now, we have over 100 apprentices divided into eight 8 periods of training in a four-year program. Each apprentice goes through 40-hour training sessions four times a year in addition to ongoing Saturday orientation courses (eight-week blocks). There is also journeyman retraining on Saturdays and weeknights for welding upgrades and ongoing trade-related safety courses (cpr, first aid, rigging, MSHA, OSHA, forklift, etc).

For the past 12 years, we have rented office space from Plumbers & Pipefitter Local 350 in Sparks. Before that, we were at Truckee Meadows Community College. Further back in time, it was Saturday training at Wooster High School. Our local is a sublocal of Ironworkers 118 in Sacramento which covers the area from Battle Mountain to Vacavile, Calif. Our north/south jurisdiction is from the Oregon border to Modesto, Calif., and Austin, Nev.

The reno sublocal pretty much covers northern Nevada, Lake Tahoe, the Truckee area and Susanville . Local 118 has just over 1,600 members, of whom 400 are based out of the Reno sublocal. John Rafter is the business manager and former Reno business agent. Danny Costella has served as Reno agent since 2001. Reggie Brantley is the head Reno instructor. Calvin Winup is the welding instructor and James Lee is MSHA (Mine Safety and Health Administration), safety instructor.

All five of us were in the Wooster Class of 1981 and were told back then that we would eventually have a Reno school. Past business agents Richard Ciesynski and Al Van Tress will be attending the ground breaking.

We feel that this investment shows the confidence we have in the Reno area's plan and the local economy. Our program has grown to meet the demand of the growth over the last decade and improved our ability to provide the best trained workers for local contractors in the area.

A union ironworker building the second tower at John Ascuaga's Nugget, 1995.

The funding for the school is provided by the District Council of Ironworkers California and Vicinity, (includes Arizona, Hawaii, Nevada and California).

Every two years, there is an international competition of Irowworker apprentices from all over the United States and Canada. In order to make the finals, you have to compete in a local competition, then a district council competition and then the international finals. Local 118 Reno-Sacramento has been consistantly sending apprentices to the final competion. This year in Philadelphia, Erik Cochrane of Reno took the bronze. He works for Reno Iron Works. Our district council placed three in the top 10. The competition is a comprehensive compilation of ironworkers skills and knowledge. There is a written test and hands-on trials which include knot tying, rebar tying, column climbing, welding, torch burning, instrument reading, layout, architectural curtain wall assembly andand rope fall reaving.

You can access the website at www.ironapprentices.com/Media_files/winners.pdf and www.universityofiron.org

We have been part of almost every major high-rise and project in Northern Nevada and Lake Tahoe. The major university projects including Lawlor Events Center, downtown hotels, area highway bridges, ski resorts, schools, many warehouses and shopping malls; the Downtown Events Center, the National Bowling Stadium, train trench, the downtown ballroom, Livestock Events Center, Tracy power plant, sewer and water treatment facilities thoughout the area, Fallon Naval Air Station and many prisons and jails, courthouses, Nevada Supreme Court and legislative buildings, all area hospitals — the list goes on and on.

The work has provided training for local area residents and career jobs with benefits and pensions for 100 years (founded in 1908). We just celebrated our 100th anniversary. Our signatory contractors include Martin Ironworks, Reno Ironworks (which was the first union iron contractor in Reno), Blue Mountain Steel, Viper Steel, R&R Ironworks, Mercury Steel, Liberty Steel,Northern Nevada Rebar, Bragg Crane services, Lift Services Inc., Harris Rebar of Carson City, PCS, and CMC and many other California and out of area contractors who perform work in the area on occasion.

UPDATE: Wednesday, 22 Oct. 2008 12:34 a.m. PDT, 07:34 ZULU/GMT/SUT/CUT —
Reno City Council considers Charter cable settlement

Tuesday, 21 Oct 2008 06:48:30 PDT — On this date in 1864, with only ten days to go until his great achievement (signing Nevada‚s statehood papers) and two weeks to his reelection, President Lincoln and his son Tad watched a torchlight parade (see below); in 1882 Chief Winnemucca died; in 1887 when the Western Union telegraph line in Esmeralda County was sold on a tax judgment, the county bought it; in 1918 Charles Ellis Beuhanon, a U.S. soldier of Wells, Nevada, died at base hospital no. 55 in France; in 1947 the Las Vegas Review Journal reported that one of its news services reported a tip that Bing Crosby had died, then pulled the story back when Crosby was found alive in Los Angeles (rodeo star Bob Crosby, no relation, had died at his Roswell, New Mexico ranch on October 20); in 1957 Jailhouse Rock was released into theatres, the same day the song of the same name hit number one on the Billboard magazine chart; in 1967 the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam (the Mobe), a coalition of 150 groups, held its first Washington protest and the largest protest of the Johnson administration, chronicled in Norman Mailer‚s The Armies of the Night: History As a Novel/the Novel As History (Abbie Hoffman tried to levitate the Pentagon but was not entirely successful); in 1967 To Sir With Love by Lulu hit number one on the Billboard magazine chart; in 1970 the U.S. House Armed Services Committee disclosed that six soldiers in Vietnam had charged that they were ordered to invent fictitious heroism for Brigadier General E.P. Forrester so he could receive the Silver Star and the Distinguished Flying Cross; in 1985 Ringo Starr, George Harrison, Eric Clapton, Roseanne Cash, and members of the Stray Cats participated in the taping of a television program about Carl Perkins at Limehouse studio in London; in 1995 in New York City waiter Jonathan Larson, who had worked at the Moondance Diner for nine years while trying to break into Broadway, finally quit the job to join the production of the show he wrote˜Rent, which opened off-Broadway 95 days later, the same day Larson died at age 35 of an undiagnosed aneurysm (he received the Pulitzer prize for playwriting on April 9 1996); in 2004 Jesse M. Samek of Rogers, Arkansas, based at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada, was killed in a helicopter accident in western Afghanistan; in 2008 Sukkot ends.

Washington Daily Morning Chronicle/October 22 1864: [A torchlight parade] passed through the grounds in front of the Presidential Mansion, where a large crowd had gathered, and kept up a continual blaze of light with rockets, bluelights, Roman-candles, &c., lighting up the upper windows under the portico, at which stood the President and "little Thad,' . . . After the procession had left the grounds, the crowd called loudly for the President, and he responded as follows:

FELLOW-CITIZENS: I was promised not to be called upon for a speech to-night, nor do I propose to make one. But, as we have been hearing some very good news for a day or two, I propose that you give three hearty cheers for Sheridan. While we are at it we may as well consider how fortunate it was for the Secesh that Sheridan was a very little man. If he had been a large man, there is no knowing what he would have done with them. I propose three cheers for General Grant, who knew to what use to put Sheridan; three cheers for all our noble commanders and the soldiers and sailors; three cheers for all people everywhere who cheer the soldiers and sailors of the Union-- and now, good night.

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The Dean's List

   The Dean of Reno Bloggers could very well be Andrew Barbano, self-described "fighter of public demons," who started putting his "Barbwire" columns online in 1996 and now runs 10 sites.

RENO NEWS & REVIEW, 11-9-2006

 

Mon, 20 Oct 2008 07:12:07 PDT, 07:07 ZULU/CUT/SUT/GMT —

Eugene Debs: Your honor, years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.

On this date in 1819, (Muharram 1, 1235 A.H.) the Báb was born in Shiraz, Persia; in 1874 the Nevada State Journal reprinted a Belmont Courier dispatch accusing Democratic U.S. House candidate A.C. Ellis of having southern sympathies (Ellis lost to Republican William Woodburn by 613 votes out of 18,000 cast); in 1890 Indian Agent Daniel Royer at the Pine Ridge Agency, feeling threatened by the ghost dance that had spread from Nevada across the nation, requested six to seven hundred troops, setting in motion the tragedy at Wounded Knee Creek; in 1921 Nevada Attorney General Leonard Fowler issued a formal opinion in response to an inquiry from Assemblymember J.H. Hart saying that hiring a courthouse janitor who was a citizen of another nation violated state law; in 1926 Eugene Debs, the most popular socialist in the nation˜he won nearly a million votes for president while he was a political prisoner of the Wilson administration˜who advocated a supposedly radical program (worker‚s injury insurance, pensions, an eight-hour workday, sick leave, social security), died in Elmhurst, Illinois; in 1934 two hundred African American workers at the Basic Magnesium plant near Las Vegas struck the plant with a demand that separate white and black restrooms be abolished (management blamed it all on labor organizers); in 1951 in a game between Drake and Oklahoma A&M, Oklahoma players — particularly defensive tackle Wilbanks Smith — kept attacking Drake's African-American halfback John Bright (the nation's leading ground gainer) after Bright had already passed or handed off, battering him and breaking his jaw, a pattern of brutality exposed the next day in a series of a dozen photographs taken from overhead by Don Ultang and John Robinson and published in the Des Moines Register and Tribune and later in Life magazine, winning the Pulitzer Prize, after which Drake withdrew from the conference and severed all ties with Oklahoma A&M, and the NCAA made illegal hits grounds for suspension and also mandated facemasks and mouth guards for all players (Bright played most of the game injured, recovered from his injuries, and later passed up a draft into the NFL in favor of the Canadian Football League, where he spent a great career); in 1952 U.S. Senator Patrick McCarran of Nevada wrote a letter from Nevada to his wife in D.C.: „It seems both Stevenson and Isenhour [Eisenhower] are dumb as to law. "The Jews are misleading both of them. This fellow who has the democratic nomination here [U.S. senate candidate Thomas] Mechling is going wild with his lies about me, and I‚m going to answer him on the radio. He too is being led by eastern Jews, and Commies‚."; in 1956 Republican U.S. senate candidate Cliff Young‚s campaign raised the issue of Democratic vice presidential nominee Estes Kefauver˜who had investigated the organized crime ties of Nevada casinos˜against Democratic U.S. senate candidate Alan Bible; in 1962 Monster Mash by Bobby "Boris" Pickett and the Crypt-Kickers (Leon Russell was on piano) hit number one on the Billboard magazine chart; in 1969 George Harrison attended a Ravi Shankar concert in London; in 1970 Pat Nixon campaigned in Reno for Republican U.S. Senate candidate William Raggio, whose mother Clara told a reporter, "Just think, the first lady came clear out here for my boy"; in 1971 Senator Edward Kennedy, the nation‚s most prominent Irish American, demanded that the British leave Northern Ireland and called for an end to repression of the Catholic minority (he later joined with two other congressmembers in sponsoring a resolution calling for an end to "the knock on the door, the violent entry, the arrest in the dark of night"); in 1976 The Song Remains the Same, a concert film about three nights of Led Zeppelin concerts at Madison Square Garden in New York City in 1973 , was released (critic Leonard Maltin wrote that the movie will "clean out all eight sinus cavities"); in 1977 three members of Lynyrd Skynyrd died in a plane crash; in 1990 a Florida jury, in a case that was first concocted in a conspiracy in Governor Bob Martinez' office, acquitted 2 Live Crew on obscenity charges after the defense argued the band's lyrics were meant to amuse (it seemed to work: the jury laughed at testimony by a deputy who tried to interpret the lyrics on a poorly recorded sheriff's recording of a concert); in 2004 the New York Yankees became the owners of one of the biggest chokes in sports history (on Google the next day, a search for the combined terms "Yankees" and "choke" produced 12,700 hits, and the sports blogosphere went nuts: "the biggest choke team money can buy", "I hope the over-paid chokers burn in hell for having the greatest collapse in sports history. Against the Red Sox, no less.", "This morning someone got to my blog via Google by searching for 'Yankee choke pictures'").

Cleansing the soap opera of Follytix 2008
Barbwire / Sparks Tribune / 10-19-2008

UPDATE: October 18, 2008, 11:37 a.m. PDT, 18:37 ZULU/GMT/CMT/SUT —

Union caravans blitz Sparks-Reno-Washoe today
Actor Kal Penn will rally participants this afternoon at 1:30 p.m.

RENO (Sat, Oct. 18) — Actor Kal Penn (House, Superman Returns, Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle) will rally returning union precinct canvassers at 1:30 this afternoon at the Washoe County Senior Services Center.

More than 300 union members are canvassing Washoe County today in a massive household contact effort.

"Placing this many people on the streets in a single day very probably dwarfs any other campaign effort in the area," stated longtime campaign organizer Liz Sorenson of Communications Workers of America Local 9413.

"We have been walking every day, but this event at the beginning of early voting is our most intense," Sorenson said.

She added that organized labor members and retirees are targeting union households with information on key issues critical to working families: economic security, pension protections, worker rights and health care.

The caravans formed early this morning at the Washoe County Senior Services Center, 1155 E. Ninth Street at Sutro in northeast Reno. Penn will rally returning participants this afternoon.

"We are, of course, encouraging eligible participants to drop by the Washoe County Registrar of Voters office across the parking lot to vote before they go home," Sorenson said.

UPDATE: October 14, 2008, 8:03 a.m. PDT, 15:03 ZULU/GMT/CMT/SUT —

Douglas Matejovsky, 1934-2008

Dear Brothers and Sisters:

It is with heavy heart and warm memories that I forward this information about the passing of our friend and brother Doug Matejovsky.

He was the longtime Financial Secretary-Treasurer of Reno-based Carpenters Local 971 and in the mid-1990's served several terms as president of the Northern Nevada Central Labor Council/AFL-CIO.

A memorial service will be heldat 10:30 a.m. this Friday, Oct. 17, at St. Therese Church of the Little Flower at Plumb and Kietkze in Reno. A reception will follow immediately thereafter at the Carpenters Union Hall, 1150 Terminal Way, in Reno.

Las Vegas Review-Journal
October 9, 2008

DOUGLAS J. MATEJOVSKY, 74, of Las Vegas and Reno, died Monday, Oct. 6, 2008, at Nathan Adelson Hospice, from Leukemia. He was born Jan. 29, 1934, to John and Anna Matejovsky, of Wolf Point, Mont. Doug attended business college, then enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps, where he made the rank of Lance Corporal. He joined the local Carpenters Union, Local #1294 in Wolf Point in 1969, which eventually took him to the Reno area Local #971. Doug served many offices in the Carpenters Union, retiring in January 1997. He was a member of the Knights of Columbus for 48 years, serving in many offices, which the highest position being State Deputy, from 1990 to 1991. Doug was also a member of Council 978 and of the American Legion, Post 1, both in Reno. He was a very thoughtful and considerate person and generous to those in need. He was well-liked by all who knew him. Doug was preceded in death by his parents; and his brother, Eugene. He is survived by his wife, Clara; sister, Celeste; brother, David; along with 11 nieces and nephews. Viewing will be from 2-4 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 11, with services at 4 p.m., both at Davis Funeral Home, 6200 S. Eastern Ave., in Las Vegas. Services will also be held at a later date in Reno and Wolf Point, Mont. Burial will be in the family plot in Poplar, Mont. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to Nathan Adelson Hospice or your favorite charity.

Remembrances may be posted at this URL at the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
http://www.reviewjournal.com/obituaries/individual_display.jsp?obitID=4562091#guestbook

You may also send them to me for uploading at NevadaLabor.com and for possible use in next Sunday's Sparks Tribune.
Thanks.

In Solidarity,

Andrew Barbano
NevadaLabor.com
Barbwire.TV

CWA 9413/AFL-CIO

Breaking News

Cleansing the soap opera of Follytix 2008
Barbwire / Sparks Tribune / 10-19-2008

Drag queens for change
Nugget makes workers an offer they can't refuse
Charter cable on the financial skids as AT&T enters market
Shoddy Sequoia voting machines play into Karl Rove's hands
Jeannette Rankin: The Greatest Story Never Told
Expanded from the 10-12-2008 Daily Sparks Tribune

The good, the bad and the ugly
Illegal voting machines and killer vaccines
Michigan judge's ruling will affect Nevada cable ratepayers
Expanded from the 10-5-2008 Daily Sparks Tribune

Paul Newman: Driven Star
New Michael Moore film premieres on SNCAT this week
Slow progress on saving community radio-TV stations
Expanded from the 9-28-2008 Daily Sparks Tribune

Charter negotiates Russian-style: Will accept 100% of everything
 Daily Sparks Tribune 9-5-2008

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., ready to join legal action against Charter Cable

Fight Back!

WE WIN ROUND ONE — As the Barbwire show scooped the state on Friday, Aug. 22: Charter has caved in and postponed the execution date for 90 days. Thanks for bringing the heat. See the Barbwire in the Sunday Sparks Tribune for all the inside baseball. Be well. Raise hell. AB

SPARKS, WASHOE, CARSON AND DOUGLAS CABLE CUSTOMERS URGED TO CONTACT LOCAL OFFICIALS
ReSurge.TV may broaden legal action to include ratepayers
and program producers outside of Reno
8-25-2008, Updated 8-28-2008

Donate to the cable ratepayer legal defense fund

The evil empire eats its appetite
Community television wins a 90-day stay of execution
Barbwire / Sparks Tribune / 8-24-2008

Reno city council votes unanimously to sue Charter Communications to keep community TV accessible
Resurge.TV will also file

Bandwidth bandidos admit to their greed
Barbwire / Sparks Tribune 8-17-2008

The people were heard on Aug. 14. Call, write or show up at Reno City Hall at 10:00 a.m. on Thursday, Aug. 20.

The people vs. Charter's pirate ship
Time to sue the bastards
Barbwire / Sparks Tribune 8-10-2008

Charter cable attempts to kill community TV
Deregulation is never having to say you're sorry
Bad news for cable subscribers, good news for Hug High School
Barbwire / Sparks Tribune 8-3-2008
Donate to the cable ratepayer legal defense fund

Reno-Sparks-Washoe Charter cable channels 16 & 216
2:00-4:00 p.m. PDT, 21:00-23:00 ZULU/GMT/CUT/SUT
What may well be the first marriage of talk radio, talk TV and webcast webchat

Sun, 19 Oct 2008 17:23:41 — On this date in 1781 French forces, assisted by colonials, won the American revolution for the colonists by defeating the British at Yorktown; in 1893 the Student Record, the University of Nevada‚s first student newspaper which later changed its name to Sagebrush, began anonymous publication in defiance of campus administrators (see below); in 1905 Virgil Earp died in Goldfield, Nevada; in 1906 Nevada Secretary of State John Koontz, who served for six and a half terms and helped establish the Nevada State Archives, was born in Goldfield; in 1917 the Army named its new airstrip in Dallas „Love Field‰ (the name had no relevance to Texas or Dallas˜it was named for a lieutenant who died in a San Diego plane crash and had been stationed for five months in Texas City); in 1920 in two spectacular plays in game five of the world series, (1) Cleveland pitcher Elmer Smith hit a homer with the bases loaded, sending Charlie Jamieson, Tristram Speaker, and Smith home, the first grand slam in world series history, and then, (2) Cleveland second baseman Bill Wambsganss caught a line drive hit by Brooklyn‚s Clarence Mitchell, stepped on second base to put Pete Kilduff out, and tagged Otto Miller coming from first base, the only unassisted triple play in world series history; in 1931 news reports said U.S. Senator Tasker Oddie had switched from dry to wet and would vote to modify the Volstead Act; in 1938 there was much fish and game news in Southern Nevada˜U.S. Senator Key Pittman predicted that Boulder Lake would become a bass mecca, the U.S. Biological Survey (later the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service) was trapping wild turkeys in Arizona for transplanting to Clark County, and the Nevada Fish and Game Commission reported that its past experiments in planting pheasant in Clark County had been successful and would be accelerated; in 1943 Rutgers graduate student Albert Schatz made the breakthrough discovery that led to the development of streptomycin (named by the New York Times as one of the ten great discoveries of the 20th century) only to see his professor Selman Waksman take credit and receive worldwide acclaim for the discovery until a lawsuit established Schatz‚s entitlement˜though the scientific community continued to ostracize Schatz; in 1956 Republicans swept a mock election at the University of Nevada in Reno˜Eisenhower and Nixon over Stevenson and Kefauver (396 to 118), Republican U.S. senate candidate Cliff Young over Democrat Alan Bible (299 to 211), and Republican U.S. house candidate Richard Horton over Democrat Walter Baring (286 to 218); in 1967 „I Second That Emotion‰ by Smokey Robinson and the Miracles was released; in 1970 officials of Alpine County in northern California, which had only 367 voters, said they would lead residents into resisting a planned takeover of the county by the Los Angeles Gay Liberation Front, which was trying to recruit 200 gays to move to the county; in 1987 the stock market crashed, losing nearly a fourth of its value, the largest losses in stock market history; in 1997 the Broadway revival of Annie at the Martin Beck Theatre closed.
The Student Record/October 19 1893: We trust that the appearance of the Record will be a glad surprise to the public and especially to the friends and patrons of our State University. No apology is needed for the publication of such a journal, as it enters a field unoccupied by any other of its class. Our primary object is to create in the minds of the young men and women of Nevada, and adjacent territory, a conviction of the need of a higher education and inspire them with a determination to obtain it. We will also aim to promote the college spirit among the students of the State University and to elevate athletics in that institution, to the important place that it occupied in the leading colleges of our country. The Record will be independent in politics and reserve the right to criticize all parties and measures. It will, however, advocate the enactment of such laws as will restore silver to the place it occupied previous to its demonetization. The petition presented to the Board of Regents, at its last meeting, by the students of the State University, asking the privilege to publish a college paper, not having been granted has, in some measure, made necessary the publication of the Record. While our columns are freely offered to the public they are especially tendered the University students as the medium through which they may voice their sentiments on all matters that affect their interests.

Sat, 18 Oct 2008 10:15:56 —

George Bush/October 18 2000: Families is where our nation finds hope, where wings take dream.

George Bush/October 18 2004: September the 4th 2001, I stood in the ruins of the Twin Towers. It's a day I will never forget.

George Bush/October 18 2007: We'll be sending a person on the ground there pretty soon to help implement the malaria initiative, and that initiative will mean spreading nets and insecticides throughout the country so that we can see a reduction in death of young children that — a death that we can cure.

On this date in 1860 in the Opium wars fought by the British to force the Chinese to accept the opium trade, British soldiers destroyed Beijing's summer palace; in 1898 during the Spanish American War, U.S. troops supposedly liberated Porto Rico (but refused to leave after the war); in 1923 the American Legion, competing with the like-minded Ku Klux Klan for memberships and struggling with how to oppose the increasingly powerful Klan without alienating Klan members, adopted a national convention resolution only mildly critical of the Klan; in 1934 under a New Dwater development program, seven artesian wells had so far been successfully developed in Nevada, five of them at Stillwater wetlands in Churchill County; in 1938 actress and Miss Nevada Dawn Wells was born in Reno; in 1952 Joseph Stacher, refused a gambling license in Nevada and wanted in New York for forgery and gambling offenses at Saratoga Springs spa and race track, was arraigned in Las Vegas with Harry Claiborne as his lawyer (Nevada Governor Charles Russell signed an extradition to New York on November 21st, and ten minutes later Claiborne obtained a writ of habeas corpus and freed Stacher); in 1955 Bao Dai, France's Saigon puppet ruler, tried to fire Ngo Dinh Diem, The U.S.'s Saigon puppet ruler; in 1961 in a letter to his Random House editor‚s wife, Nevada novelist Walter Van Tilburg Clark (The Ox Bow Incident) wrote, „I have turned nearly deaf݉; in 1967 How I Won The War, the antiwar film directed by Richard Lester and starring Michael Crawford as „Goodbody‰ and John Lennon as „Gripweed‰, premiered; in 1968 the U.S. Olympic Committee, unwilling to resist the demand of the International Olympic Committee, suspended the great African American athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos (who had trained at Lake Tahoe) from the Mexico City olympic games for giving the black power salute on the victory stand after winning their events (U.S. African American olympians Bob Beamon, Ralph Boston, Lee Evans, Larry James and Ron Freeman nevertheless subsequently found additional ways to protest during the games); in 1996 Bill Clinton, speaking in Houston before an audience of his rich campaign contributors in his reelection campaign, denounced himself for the rather small tax increase they had to endure under his program, which he blamed on the Republicans and on fellow Democrats who had gone out on a limb to vote with him: "Probably there are people in this room still mad at me at that budget because you think I raised your taxes too much. It might surprise you to know I think I raised them too much too."; in 2008 the HMS Titanic-related memorabilia of Millvina Dean, last known survivor of the sinking, will be sold at auction today to help pay her medical and nursing home fees unless another solution is found (<http://www.henry-aldridge.co.uk/>www.henry-aldridge.co.uk/); in 2008 there are 94 days left until the next presidential inaugural.

[[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.]]

Fri, 17 Oct 2008 12:24:48

New Hampshire Gazette/October 17 1863: Editors on Parole -The editor of a Democratic paper in Nevada Territory acknowledges the defeat of his party in his city very briefly. — He says "We met the enemy yesterday and are out on parole this morning."

Albert Camus, in the second of his "Letters to a German Friend" in the French resistance newspaper Liberation during the Nazi occupation/December 1943: This is what separated us from you; we made demands. You were satisfied to serve the power of your nation and we dreamed of giving ours her truth.

On this date in 1869 the SS Sierra Nevada, a wooden side-wheeled steamer, was wrecked on a reef south of Monterey; in 1871 Thomas Wren of Hamilton, Nevada (later a member of Congress from the state) received a patent for something having to do with silver ores (the record is unclear); in 1876 after a clash between the Ku Klux Klan and the African American state militia in South Carolina was followed by bloodshed, rioting and pillaging, President Grant declared that the „rifle clubs‰ of the Klan, „though forbidden by the laws of the State, can not be controlled or suppressed by the ordinary course of justice‰ and dispatched federal troops to the state; in 1926 in a pattern repeated many times around the U.S., the New Orleans Morning Tribune, joined shortly by the New Orleans Item, began an inflammatory anti-marijuana campaign (the drug was then legal) filled with alarmist and irresponsible reporting that caused the 1927 Louisiana Legislature to enact marijuana prohibition; in 1926 the Republican nominee for Nevada treasurer, Clara Cunningham, was killed in a car wreck (because the election was so near, the state GOP agreed not to replace Cunningham on the ballot, throwing the election uncontested to incumbent Democrat Ed Malley, who was removed from office the next year after he embezzled state funds and invested them in oil stocks); in 1933 less than three weeks before the Nazis took power in Germany, Albert Einstein arrived in the United States as a refugee over the objections of the U.S. Department of State and U.S. right wingers (the FBI quickly began tapping his phone and opening his mail); in 1957 Albert Camus received the Nobel prize for literature; in 1960 „Save the Last Dance for Me‰ by the Drifters hit number one on the Billboard magazine chart; in 1964 „Do Wah Diddy Diddy‰ by Manfred Mann hit number one on the Billboard magazine chart; in 1973 Arab oil producing nations responded to the Yom Kippur war by imposing an embargo on oil shipments to nations that supported Israel in the war, sparking the first high oil prices in U.S. history, gas lines, the 55 mile an hour speed limit, and substantial damage to the economy; in 2005 a statue honoring 1968 olympic medalists Tommie Smith and John Carlos for their black power salutes, for which they were suspended from the U.S. team, was unveiled in San Jose.

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Monday thru Friday
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The Dean's List

   The Dean of Reno Bloggers could very well be Andrew Barbano, self-described "fighter of public demons," who started putting his "Barbwire" columns online in 1996 and now runs 10 sites.

RENO NEWS & REVIEW, 11-9-2006

 

Date: Wed, 15 Oct 2008 20:09:42 — On this date in 1815 Napoleon and thirty of his followers arrived at St. Helena, a tiny British occupied island in the south Atlantic to which he was exiled after his defeat in the Battle of Leipzig, where he spent the rest of his life under guard; in 1868 Oregon rescinded its previous ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (a post-Civil War amendment guaranteeing citizens due process and equal protection of the laws and extending the protection of the Bill of Rights˜previously a protection only against the federal government˜to actions by the states), an action which was probably invalid; in 1895 Erwin W. Harris of Palisade, Nevada, received a patent for a furnace door; in 1918 a month before the world war ended, Corporal Adolf Hitler was hospitalized with blindness following a mustard gas attack; in 1934 Democratic nominee for governor of Nevada Richard Kirman spoke in the party stronghold of Ruth, pledging his support to Franklin Roosevelt‚s programs; in 1934 in a real-life horror movie scenario, Berkeley chemist Robert Cornish claimed he had brought dogs back from the dead said he wanted to try his technique on human subjects˜persons executed in Nevada, Arizona, and Colorado prisons˜and Arizona Governor Benjamin Moeur rejected the idea while Nevada Warden Matt Penrose said he was open to the idea before checking with Nevada Governor Morley Griswold˜who gave a flat no; in 1943 the U.S. War Department announced that Ronald C. Hutchison, son of William Hutchison of Las Vegas, was a prisoner of the Japanese; in 1956 it was announced that United States Treasurer Ivy Baker Priest would come to Nevada at the end of the month to campaign for President Eisenhower and be honorary marshal of the Nevada Day parade; in 1960 what is believed to be the first recordings by the 1962-1969 Beatles (with Ringo Starr, who would permanently replace Pete Best two years later) were made in Hamburg with the group acting as backup group for Lu Walters, bass player of Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, who on this occasion was singing; in 1962 film that had been shot by Air Force planes flying over Cuba (illegally, under international law) was developed and showed nuclear missile sites being built (legally, under international law); in 1965 Catholic Worker volunteer David Miller burned his draft card to protest the Vietnam war, the first known instance of that form of protest being used since it was made illegal a few months earlier, and was sent to prison for two years; in 1967 Nevada Governor Paul Laxalt was given an audience bow on the Ed Sullivan Show; in 1969 in the largest demonstration in human history, millions of people in the United States and around the world participated in Moratorium Day, protesting the U.S. government‚s war in Vietnam; in 2005 William I. Salazar of Las Vegas was killed in Karabilah, Iraq.

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 07:49:49 PDT, 14:49 ZULU/GMT/CMT/SUT — On this date in 1644, William Penn, who would found Pennsylvania as a refuge for Quakers and become one of the few colonial leaders who treated with Native Americans as full partners, was born in London; in 1656 (some sources say October 21) Quakerism was outlawed in Massachusetts, along with transporting Quakers into the colony (see law below); in 1657 Massachusetts added provisions to the 1656 law providing for male Quakers who returned to the colony to lose an ear˜and a second ear on a second return — and female Quakers who returned to be whipped, and any Quaker returning a third time should have his tongue bored through with a hot iron (the same penalties applied to Puritans); in 1869 Nevada Controller William Parkinson died halfway through his term of office; in 1891 lecturer, translator, teacher, author Thocmetony (Shell Flower) also known as Sarah Winnemucca, died at Henry‚s Lake, Idaho; in 1920 Nevada Attorney General Leonard Fowler's office issued a legal opinion, requested by Nevada Federation of Women's Clubs representative Mrs. Hugh Brown, that said "School laws cannot be too liberally construed. Necessarily a construction should not be so contracted that it will defeat the purpose of a particular Act. The intent of the Legislature must govern. When the Legislature of Nevada passed an Act permitting the use of school money in certain cases for the purchase of books, it can hardly be contended that the Legislature had in contemplation any such thing as Victor talking-machine records."; in 1930 the musical Girl Crazy, which made a star of Ethel Agnes Zimmerman (later Merman) and was conducted by George Gershwin, premiered in New York's Alvin Theatre (the play was originally a tale of the black sheep of a New York family who settled in Custerville, Arizona; when it was restaged in 1992 as Crazy For You, it told the story of a banker who traveled to Deadrock, Nevada, to foreclose on a theatre); in 1934, the Nevada State Federation of Labor began its three day state convention in Ely; in 1943 a meeting of the Washoe County library trustees was scheduled to discuss the purchase for $1,943 of a set of bound volumes of The New York Times being sold by British Type Investors Inc. (an investment group facing Securities and Exchange Commission charges) after the county auditor objected to the purchase, saying that because it exceeded $500 it must be put out to bid; in 1944, with Hitler threatening Field Marshal Erwin Rommel's family unless Rommel committed suicide for his part in the July 20 plot to kill Hitler, Rommel used poison to kill himself; in 1949, police were investigating an incendiary bomb thrown into the newsroom of the Las Vegas Review-Journal during a strike; in 1957, Wake Up Little Susie by the Everly Brothers, banned by some radio stations because of its suggestive lyrics, hit number one on the Billboard chart; in 1964, it was announced that Martin Luther King would receive the Nobel Prize for peace; in 1970, syndicated columnist Jack Anderson accused Nevada gambling regulator Frank Johnson of telling Las Vegas casinos to promote the September 14 visit of Vice-President Spiro Agnew; in 2004, John Kerry and George Bush both campaigned in Nevada.

Whereas there is a cursed sect of haereticks lately risen up in the world, which are commonly called Quakers, who take uppon them to be immediately sent of God, and infallibly assisted by the spirit to speake and write blasphemouth opinions, despising government and the order of God in church and commonwealth, speaking evill of dignities, reproaching and reviling magistrates and ministers, seeking to turne the people form the faith and gaine proselytes to theire pernicious waies, this Court, taking into serious consideration the premises, and to prevent the like mischiefe as by their meanes is wrought in our native land, doth hereby order, and by the authoritie of this Court be it ordered and enacted, that nay commander of a vessel that shall bring into this jurisdiction any knowne Quaker or Quakers, or any other blasphemous haereticks as aforesaid, shall pay the fine of 100 pounds, except it appeare that he wanted true knowledge or information of theire being such; then to give bonds to carry them to the place whence he brought them.

Any Quaker coming into this jurisdiction shall be forthwith committed to the house of correction, and at their entrance to be severely whipt, and by the master thereof to be kept constantly to worke, and none suffered to converse or speak with them during the time of their imprisonment, which shall be no longer than necessitie requireth.

Mon, 13 Oct 2008 07:47:15 PDT, 14:47 ZULU/GMT—On this date in 1863, Clement Vallandigham, a leader of Peace Democrats critical of the civil war, was defeated for governor of Ohio (his campaign was handicapped by his exile in Canada, where he had been forced to go by President Lincoln's policy of jailing antiwar leaders); in 1864 on a visit to the State Department telegraph room where he often hung out with cronies to relax, President Lincoln listed eight states with 114 electoral votes that he expected to lose to Democrat George McClellan and ten states plus New England with 117 votes that he expected to carry against McClellan, and Major Thomas Eckert predicted that Lincoln could add Nevada‚s three votes if it completed its statehood tasks before election day (Lincoln admitted Nevada to the union on October 31, nine days before the election, and the new state voted for Lincoln); in 1880 a James Erskine of Monmouth College defeated William Jennings Bryan of Illinois College in an oratorical contest at Galesburg, Illinois (James Addams was eliminated in an earlier round) and a local newspaper observed, "Mr. Bryan is a fine orator, and although he has not a strong voice, has a clear enunciation, and did his subject such justice that all felt that justice had been done when he was awarded the second prize."; in 1903 Boston won over Pittsburg in the first World Series, a best-of-nine affair; in 1907 Ely Constable Edwin Gilbert was shot and killed during an incident with a prostitute and her pimp; in 1917 Nevada Attorney General George Thatcher advised the Nevada Tax Commission that a widow who used the state's widow's thousand- dollar tax exemption to exempt $50 in taxes in one county could not then claim a $950 exemption in another county; in 1934 national parks officials visting Ely announced that a contingent of about 50 from the Civilian Conservation Corps camp near Panaca would be sent to the Lehman Caves for the winter where they would clean the caverns, build a "comfort station", complete a water system, and create a camp ground; in 1935 a month after his reappointment by right wing Governor Frank Merriam, California state health officer Walter Dickie announced that he would have his officers study community health problems and whether they were fostered by "increasing trends of radicalism"; in 1941 President Roosevelt approved two $45,000 appropriations for construction of recreation halls at Las Vegas and Hawthorne; in 1942 former University of Nevada Sagebrush editor Walker Matheson (BA, '25) entered a plea of innocent to a charge of being a Japanese agent after being accused of writing and publishing material of which the U.S. government disapproved while allegedly receiving a subsidy from the Japanese (Matheson was working in Nelson Rockefeller's Office of Inter-American Affairs writing short wave broadcast scripts at the time of his arrest); in 1943 Twenty six year old poet Robert Lowell was jailed in New York City for refusing conscription in protest against Allied fire bombing; in 1960 the third Nixon/Kennedy "debate" was held, with the candidates in different locations and the program often done by split screen; in 1971 Michael Lee Darrah of Reno, Nevada died in Vietnam (panel 2w/row 38 of the Vietnam wall); in 1977 after seven years underground, radical leader Mark Rudd surfaced; in 1992, in what many observers saw as reprisal for coal strikes that damaged conservative political prospects in the 1970s, the Thatcher government announced that it would close a third of Britain‚s deep coal mines (Margaret Thatcher called miners "the enemy within"), putting 31,000 people out of jobs and sharply undercutting labor union power (the shutdown of the Grimethorpe colliery threatened the existence of its renowned brass band, formed in 1917 as a leisure time activity for miners, as dramatized in the film Brassed Off!)

Sun, 12 Oct 2008 14:33:20

On this date in 1786, Thomas Jefferson wrote the famed "head/heart" letter to Maria Cosway, a married women with whom he had fallen in love, in which he described his struggle to use his reason to win out over his heart: "Having performed the last sad office of handing you into your carriage at the pavillon de St. Denis, and seen the wheels get actually into motion, I turned on my heel & walked, more dead than alive..." (text: <http://www.juntosociety.com/i_documents/tjheadheartltr.html>www.juntosociety.com/i_documents/tjheadheartltr.html); in 1837 to combat the lack of credit during the Panic of 1837, Congress approved the issuance of 10 million dollars in treasury bonds, a step which failed (the depression continued for another seven years); in 1874 the University of Nevada opened in Elko, where it would remain for eleven years; in 1915 British nurse Edith Cavell, who had remained in German-occupied Belgium, was executed for treating war victims of all nationalities˜German, British, Belgian, French˜by a German firing squad after telling a priest that nationalism was partly to blame˜„patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone"; in 1922 in a San Francisco appearance, Nevada Governor Emmet Boyle urged that city‚s Downtown Association to support the construction of the coast-to-coast Victory Highway, which was then one-fourth complete; in 1932 Dick Gregory, who in the 1960s more or less gave up his career as a comedian to dedicate himself to the civil rights movement, was born in St. Louis, Missouri (see below); in 1933 outlaws Harry Pierpont, Charles Makley, and Russell Clark repaid John Dillinger for engineering their escape from Indiana‚s Michigan City Prison by breaking him out of the Lima, Ohio jail; in 1938 G. L. "Red" Adams, one of the leaders of a contingent of Boca, California workers who tried to support striking workers on a highway project at Verdi Glen, Nevada, reported to the Truckee sheriff‚s office that five shots had been fired at his car; in 1940 Tom Mix, the first Hollywood western superstar, died in a car wreck in Arizona; in 1951 preparations were complete for the first atomic tests involving U.S. troops, and the Atomic Energy Commission claimed the troops would not be exposed to the tests but would be at observation points out of range; in 1961 the U.S. Public Health Service reported that increased levels of radioactive iodine were appearing in food and milk, probably due to U.S. and Soviet atomic tests (the same day a Soviet atom bomb was exploded at Semipalatinsk Test Site in East Kazakhstan); in 1967 at a controversial news conference, U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk attacked Congress and journalism and then responding to a question about whether Vietnam really represents an important part of the nation‚s defense, made his "yellow peril" statement about what was at stake in Vietnam: „Within the next decade or two, there will be a billion Chinese on the Mainland, armed with nuclear weapons, with no certainty about what their attitude toward the rest of Asia will be."; in 1977 University of Nevada, Las Vegas President Donald Baepler confirmed that he contacted U.S. Senator Howard Cannon of Nevada to try to stop a congressional investigation of the National Collegiate Athletic Association requested by U.S. Representative James Santini; in 1999 the Pakistan military overthrew democratically elected Prime Minister Muhammad Nawaz Sharif and installed dictator Pervez Musharraf (who was later embraced as an ally by George Bush); in 2007 Canadian troops fighting Taliban forces in Afghanistan said ten-foot-high marijuana plants were being used for cover and „marijuana plants absorb energy, heat very readily. It's very difficult to penetrate with thermal devices‰ and when the plants were burned to remove the cover, they either didn't burn because of high water content or they gave allied troops downwind a big hit off a massive doobie.

Dick Gregory: Love is man's natural endowment, but he doesn't know how to use it. He refuses to recognize the power of love because of his love of power.

In the South they don't mind how close I get, so long as I don't get too big. In the North they don't mind how big I get, so long as I don't get too close.

We used to root for the Indians against the cavalry, because we didn't think it was fair in the history books that when the cavalry won it was a great victory, and when the Indians won it was a massacre.

I never learned hate at home, or shame. I had to go to school for that.

I am really enjoying the new Martin Luther King Jr stamp - just think about all those white bigots, licking the backside of a black man

When you have a good mother and no father, God kind of sits in. It's not enough, but it helps.

I eat at this German-Chinese restaurant and the food is delicious. The only problem is that an hour later you're hungry for power.

[To a mostly white audience:] If they took all the drugs, nicotine, alcohol and caffeine off the market for six days, they'd have to bring out the tanks to control you.

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The Dean's List

   The Dean of Reno Bloggers could very well be Andrew Barbano, self-described "fighter of public demons," who started putting his "Barbwire" columns online in 1996 and now runs 10 sites.

RENO NEWS & REVIEW, 11-9-2006

 

Date: Sat, 11 Oct 2008 13:38:49

"Marie 'Slim' Browning" / To Have and Have Not:" You know you don't have to act with me, Steve. You don't have to say anything, and you don't have to do anything. Not a thing. Oh, maybe just whistle. You know how to whistle, don't you, Steve? You just put your lips together and blow."

On this date in 1521 Pope Leo X rewarded Henry VIII with the title "defender of the faith" for writing the anti-Reformation book The Assertion of the Seven Sacraments; in 1906 the Nevada Board of Regents instructed University of Nevada President Joseph Stubbs to have a contract drawn between Clarence Mackay and the Northwestern Construction Company for the construction of a mining building on campus (the action came after Stubbs visited Mackay in New York and Mackay agreed to increase his contribution to $70,000); in 1912 U.S. Senator Francis Newlands of Nevada spoke for Democratic presidential nominee Woodrow Wilson to a packed house in Winnemucca‚s Nixon Opera House; in 1933 Houghton Mifflin published Adolf Hitler‚s My Battle in the United States in spite of threats, including bomb threats; in 1938 after Washoe County Sheriff Ray Root and a couple of hundred American Legion „deputies‰ tried to block CIO solidarity pickets from Boca, California, from entering Nevada to join local union members picketing Isbell Construction at Verdi Glen, the Californians set up on the west side of the state line and picketed the state of Nevada, asking motorists not to enter the state; in 1944 the marvelous Warner Brothers production of Ernest Hemingway‚s To Have and Have Not debuted at the Hollywood Theatre in New York featuring the first teaming of Humphrey Bogart and a dazzling 19 year old Lauren Bacall plus a script that was improved over the book by Hemingway himself, Howard Hawks, Jules Furthman, Cleve F. Adams, Whitman Chambers, and William Faulkner plus on-camera music and songs by Hoagy Carmichael and Bacall (the tale, set in Vichy-controlled Martinique, is reminiscent of the earlier Casablanca); in 1946 the Nevada Board of Regents were informed that Rex Daniels of Reno had been appointed general alumni secretary by the Alumni Association; in 1956 Republican leaders got their signals mixed: On the same day that President Eisenhower in Washington said that U.S. Senator George Malone of Nevada „has little place in the new Republican Party‰, Vice President Richard Nixon in Elko disagreed that Malone should leave the party; in 1961 in a benchmark meeting on the way into involvement in Vietnam, the Joint Chiefs of Staff told President Kennedy that the southern insurgency could be dealt with by 40,000 U.S. troops and any threat posed by northern or Chinese troops could be handled with 120,000 troops; in 1968 as a thousand military servicemembers conducted the first „GI/vets march for peace‰ in San Francisco, at the Presidio across town mentally disabled stockade inmate Richard Bunch was shotgunned to death by a military police officer as Bunch allegedly walked away from a work detail, leading three days later to the Presidio mutiny by more than 25 other prisoners including in-service Vietnam resisters; in 1971 John Lennon‚s „Imagine‰ was released; in 1975 Saturday Night Live debuted with George Carlin as host; in 1987 hundreds of thousands of gays marched in D.C. to demand legal rights and protections already offered to other groups, an event now observed worldwide as Coming Out Day; in 2002 the U.S. Senate voted 77 to 23 to go to war in Iraq; in 2005 an episode of the Geena Davis television series Commander in Chief offers a conservative wet dream˜the U.S. president makes one speech asking the people of a nation called San Pasquale to overthrow their leader of whom the U.S. government does not approve˜and they do it. New York World/October 11 1896 [a commentary on the free silver campaign of the Democrats]:

A Mine Owner's Plea. (Any old tune.)

I have come from far Nevada, where I own a silver mine,
And I dream of bullion all the day.
For I see each silver nugget stamped with such a neat design
And Uncle Sam the freight will gladly pay.
When fifty cents are worth a dollar, don‚t you know,
Earth will be a paradise divine
For the man from far Nevada or the man from Idaho
With his little
Silver
Mine.

Laborers and farmers, please bring your little votes
To help the poor and needy Western man.
From now until November on you he fondly dotes
And you shall profit with him, if you can.
For though the mill be idle and the farmer‚s home must go
Earth will be a paradise divine
For the man from far Nevada or the man from Idaho
With his little
Silver
Mine.

Date: Fri, 10 Oct 2008 00:01:05

Hillary Clinton/October 10 2002: In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including Al Qaeda members, though there is apparently no evidence of his involvement in the terrible events of September 11, 2001. It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons. Should he succeed in that endeavor, he could alter the political and security landscape of the Middle East, which as we know all too well affects American security.

On this date in 1850 the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal was finally opened along its entire 184.5 mile length from D.C. to Cumberland, Maryland (smaller sections had been opened as they were completed); in 1888 A.L. Frost of San Francisco purchased all the property on Rubicon Point at Lake Tahoe with plans to lay sites out in groves and build cottages for sale; in 1908 a 25 room hotel was under constrution in the new mining camp of Chafey in Humoldt County; in 1933 after California cotton growers declared war on labor organizers, one African American and four Latino farm workers were murdered and arrest warrants were issued for several farmers; in 1941 there were news reports that a million acres in Nye County would be withdrawn from public use so they could be used for bombing and gunnery purposes; in 1944 after Allied governments learned of the "Moll Plan" to thoroughly destroy all the people, structures, and equipment in the Auschwitz complex to remove all trace of the crimes committed there, a warning was broadcast by radio from Washington at noon and by BBC radio at six and nine p.m., that perpetrators would be held responsible, and for whatever reason the atrocity was not carried out; in 1957 Ghana Finance Minister Komla Agbeli Gbedemah received an apology from President Eisenhower after he was refused service at a Howard Johnson restaurant in Delaware, one of dozens of such incidents involving African diplomats during the period; in 1958 Zorro, a Walt Disney television series starring Guy Williams, went on the air; in 1964 Eddie Cantor, who made the transition from vaudeville to radio to theatre to film to television, made numerous songs (If You Knew Susie, Ma! He's Making Eyes At Me, Makin' Whoopee, How Ya Gonna Keep 'Em Down on the Farm?, Yes Sir, That's My Baby, Ain't She Sweet?, Margie) into standards, and coined the term "March of Dimes" (after the March of Time newsreels) which he promoted for many years, died in Hollywood; in 1964 Reno Postmaster Ernest Arch complained about the etiquette rule that formal invitations and announcements be mailed without a return address; in 1967 at a U.S. Senate hearing, International Voluntary Services official Don Luce testified that when he began working in Vietnam in 1958, Vietnamese mostly fled the Viet Cong, but after 1965 they mostly fled the U.S. and its herbicides and bombing; in 1970 Quebec Vice-Premier and Minister of Labour Pierre Laporte was kidnapped by the Front de Libération du Québec (FLQ) five days after the similar kidnapping of a British trade official, prompting Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau to invoke a war powers act to outlaw the FLQ, suspend civil liberties, arrest Quebec separatists without charges and call up thousands of troops (Leporte was strangled to death on October 17); in 1976 the first federally designated Native American Awareness Week began, a commemoration that was in subsequent years shifted around the calendar under different names, finally coming to rest in November as Native American Awareness Month (and October 10 is still marked as First Nations Day in some jurisdictions); in 2002 Senator Edward Kennedy spoke in the U.S. senate raising major questions, based on his briefings from military officers, about the Bush administration's claims of weapons of mass destruction and news of the speech was suppressed by the media (the Washington Post gave it one sentence); in 2002 the U.S. House of Representatives voted 296 to 133 to authorize war against Iraq.

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The Dean's List

   The Dean of Reno Bloggers could very well be Andrew Barbano, self-described "fighter of public demons," who started putting his "Barbwire" columns online in 1996 and now runs 10 sites.

RENO NEWS & REVIEW, 11-9-2006

 

Date: Thu, 9 Oct 2008 12:55:01
On this date in 1701 the English colonial legislature of Connecticut chartered the Collegiate School of Saybrook, now Yale University; in 1776 Francisco Palou founded Mission San Francisco de Asis, and thus San Francisco, the sixth mission in the 21 mission chain in Alta California, this one named for St. Francis of Assisi; in 1915 motion picture footage of the United States Senate was shot for the first time; in 1923 a Reno man named John Hanks who beat a woman with a rock was allowed to plead to a charge of drunkenness and pay a ten dollar fine and a second man named Jack Wilson suspected of being in on the attack was released after the woman turned out not to have the skull fracture originally diagnosed; in 1940 John Lennon was born in Liverpool (also see 1975, below); in 1956 newspapers in Nevada reported that Albert Deutsch, who wrote a scorching, insightful, and unfortunately enduringly relevant piece for Colliers magazine on the poor quality of life in Nevada ("The Sorry State of Nevada", March 18 1955), spoke to the annual meeting of the National Tuberculosis Association on the same subject, detailing the high rates of TB, cancer, heart disease, polio, and the low availability of treatment facilities in the state; in 1956 the governor‚s office announced that Governor Charles Russell had departed the state on October 8 for surgery at the Sansum Clinic in Santa Barbara and Lieutenant Governor Rex Bell was acting governor; in 1961 „Hit the Road Jack" by Ray Charles hit number one on the Billboard magazine chart; in 1967 the Bolivian military helped to assure Che Guevara‚s immortality by executing him; in 1975 Sean Lennon was born; in 1980 a skywriter hired by Yoko wrote „Happy Birthday" over New York City; in 1986 impeached U.S. District Judge Harry E. Claiborne of Nevada was convicted by the U.S. Senate and removed from office; in 1992 a football-sized meteroite landed in the trunk of a Chevy Malibu parked in a driveway in Peekskill, New York; in 2002 when New York Times reporter Judith Miller and Kenneth Pollack of the Brookings Institution appeared on Oprah Winfrey‚s television program to exaggerate the threat of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq (on the day before the U.S. House voted on authorizing war) and an audience member questioned their facts, Winfrey mocked the woman and shut her off with, „Okay, but˜okay. You have a right to your opinion."; in 2007 with Ringo, Sean Lennon, and Olivia Harrison on hand, Yoko Ono unveiled the Imagine Peace Tower, a column of light projected into the sky near Reykjavik from a stone well that has „Imagine Peace‰ carved on it in 24 languages, drawn from an idea of John and Yoko‚s before his death (the tower, created in Iceland because of the eco-friendly use of geothermal, is lit each year from John's October 9 birthdate to the December 8 date of his assassination).

Former U.S. District Judge Harry Claiborne/Las Vegas Sun/October 3d 1996: My road through life has indeed been a rocky one, but, my God, it has been exciting. I'm the lucky one.

Date: Wed, 8 Oct 2008 08:01:57
On this date in 1871 starting today and over three days, the city of Chicago was destroyed by fire, leaving 200 to 300 dead, an event that obscured another more massive and deadly fire to the north that swept across Michigan and Wisconsin, destroying several cities and killing 1,200 people; in 1923 the American Federation of Labor convention revoked the credentials of a delegate of whose political opinions it disapproved, voted down the idea of "one big union", and denounced fascism, including the Ku Klux Klan; in 1931 materials arrived in Clark County for construction of a ferry across the Colorado River at Cashman‚s Landing by the Boulder-Grand Canyon Navigation Company headed by James Cashman; in 1935 bandleader Ozzie Nelson married his vocalist Harriet Hilliard in New Jersey (see 1944); in 1939 Nevada tribes applied to the Nevada Diamond Jubilee Commission for funds to participate in events during the week of Nevada Day; in 1956 in a subway series, Yankee pitcher Don Larsen pitched the only perfect World Series game (no hits, no walks, not runs) against Brooklyn; in 1957 Jerry Lee Lewis recorded „Great Balls of Fire"; in 1965 Dodgers Pitcher Sandy Koufax went to synagogue in Minneapolis instead of pitching the first game of the world series, which fell on Yom Kippur; in 1971 John Lennon‚s album Imagine was released in England; in 1989 in Brooklyn two Jewish teenagers (and a third who tried to come to their aid) were attacked and beaten by a group of ten white men.

NPR host Bob Edwards/October 8 2001: Members of Congress were quick to issue a statement in support of the military action in Afghanistan. Were there any dissenters?

Cokie Roberts: Well, none that mattered.

Date: Tue, 7 Oct 2008 01:55:02

On this date in 1542 an expedition led by Spanish explorer Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo invaded what is now Santa Catalina Island off the coast of southern California and was welcomed by the Pimungan (or Pimuvit) residents, and Cabrillo returned their friendliness by claiming their island; in 1861 Nevada Territorial Secretary Orion Clemens delivered a design for a proposed territorial seal to the legislature; in 1908 a postal money order belonging to a student at a military school in Osborne, England, was cashed, prompting an accusation against another student, 13 year old George Archer-Shee, and leading to a monumental court action by the child and his parents against Queen Victoria (the school was a state school) that attracted wide attention and ended in the prosecutors conceding the innocence of the boy, who died in action at the first battle of Ypres six years later (the case has been the subject of numerous books and dramatizations, including the often-filmed play The Winslow Boy); in 1913 U.S. Senator Key Pittman of Nevada made his maiden speech in the senate, in support of the destruction of the Hetch Hetchy Valley (a twin to Yosemite) to create a reservoir; in 1951 a Speotyto cunicularia (burrowing owl) was sighted at Bonnie Clare in Nye County; in 1957 the notorious "Operation Plumbbob" series of atomic tests at the Nevada Proving Ground, which poured huge amounts of fallout into the atmosphere and onto soldiers placed in harm‚s way, came to an end; in 1970 Adam Clayton Powell told a group of 400 University of Nevada students in Reno, „Don‚t be afraid of a clenched fist that‚s raised in righteousness. If it's in your face, that's another thing."; in 1970 Miss Nevada Vicki Jo Todd, speaking for an anti-feminist group called Happiness of Women, opposed the Equal Rights Amendment; in 1985 in response to Israeli bombing of Tunis and U.S. failure to warn Tunisians of the planned bombing, four Palestinian Liberation Organization members hijacked the passenger ocean liner Achille Lauro, demanding the release of 50 political prisoners held by Israel (U.S. news services generally withheld the Tunis angle of the story from readers); in 1998 gay University of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard was beaten, robbed, and abandoned tied to a fence post near Laramie, dying five days later; in 1998 the Washington Post reported that How Parents Can Help Children Live Marijuana Free, a new leaflet published by the Salt Lake Education Foundation (forward by Orrin Hatch), named as danger signs for parents to watch out for: „excessive preoccupation with social causes, race relations, environmental issues, etc.‰ (Salt Lake school debate coach Jacque Conkling said that after the leaflet was distributed in schools, two parents forced their children to drop debate).

Report by University of Nevada President Joseph Stubbs to the Nevada Board of Regents/October 7 1899: The Professors report a studious spirit among their students. The interest in Athletics continues and the organization of Athletics among the students is better than hitherto. This being the season for foot-ball, from thirty to forty young men may be found on the foot-ball field every evening. The Athletic Association has employed a Coach from the University of Pennsylvania, Mr. A. King Dickson, who seems to be doing good work and seems to exercise a moral influence among the young men. The young ladies have taken up basket-ball with considerable zeal and many of them may be found every afternoon, practicing either in the Gymnasium or upon the field in the open air.

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Reno-Sparks-Washoe Charter cable channels 16 and 216
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The Dean's List

   The Dean of Reno Bloggers could very well be Andrew Barbano, self-described "fighter of public demons," who started putting his "Barbwire" columns online in 1996 and now runs 10 sites.

RENO NEWS & REVIEW, 11-9-2006

 

Date: Mon, 6 Oct 2008 02:02:22

Fannie Lou Hamer: I am sick and tired of being sick and tired [grave marker inscription].

On this date in 1866 the Reno brothers boarded and robbed an eastbound Ohio & Mississippi Railroad train near Seymour, Indiana, the first train robbery in U.S. history; in 1887 the Nevada State Journal printed a letter from a Californian describing his 1850 experience of finding a large granite rock covered with „heiroglyphics‰ along the Truckee River; in 1917 U.S. Senator Robert LaFollette, accused of sympathizing with Germany in the world war, spoke in the senate for three hours on freedom of expression in wartime, for which Democratic Party leaders launched a treason investigation of him (after the war the senate dropped the probe and paid LaFollette‚s legal expenses but did not apologize; when a panel of scholars voted on the best hundred speeches of the 20th century, the LaFollette speech was number 59-- see below); in 1917 human rights leader Fannie Lou Hamer was born in Montgomery County, Mississippi; in 1931 at the start of jury selection in the Al Capone tax trial, Judge James Wilkerson switched jury pools with another judge, a major setback for Capone, whose operatives had been tampering with the first pool; in 1949, Iva Toguri D'Aquino, a U.S. citizen who was trapped in Japan during a visit at the outbreak of the war, declared an enemy alien and made homeless, nearly starved to death, and was forced to host radio programs for Japan under the air name Orphan Ann, was convicted of treason and sentenced to ten years in prison for being Tokyo Rose (she was pardoned by President Ford on the strength of the testimony of other POWs who supported her account, though she never received an apology); in 1968 in Vietnam, U.S. Fourth Infantry Division commander General Charles Stone confirmed that he had a policy of putting soldiers who fail to salute superior officers into the front lines and that it had been used against two soldiers; in 1969 race riots occurred in Las Vegas, with 40 blocks closed off by police, the national guard assembled but not used, a hundred arrests, 40 injuries, and much of the violence centered around Golden West shopping center; in 1981 Egyptian President Anwar El Sadat and nine others were killed by a group of Egyptian army officers; in 2006 Iraq war critic Darrell Anderson of Kentucky, who was wounded by a roadside bomb while serving in the war and fled to Canada when threatened with a second tour, received an „other than honorable‰ discharge from the Army and then was admitted to a trauma treatment center (an American Legion official, Jim McKinney, said Anderson should have been dishonorably discharged and stripped of his Purple Heart).

Robert LaFollette/October 6 1917: If I alone had been made the victim of these attacks, I should not take one moment of the Senate's time for their consideration, and I believe that other Senators who have been unjustly and unfairly assailed, as I have been, hold the same attitude upon this that I do. Neither the clamor of the mob nor the voice of power will ever turn me by the breadth of a hair from the course I mark out for myself, guided by such knowledge as I can obtain and controlled and directed by a solemn conviction of right and duty. But, sir, it is not alone Members of Congress that the war party in this country has sought to intimidate. The mandate seems to have gone forth to the sovereign people of this country that they must be silent while those things are being done by their Government which most vitally concern their well-being, their happiness, and their lives. To-day and for weeks past honest and law-abiding citizens of this country are being terrorized and outraged in their rights by those sworn to uphold the laws and protect the rights of the people.

Date: Sun, 5 Oct 2008 11:11:38
Chief Joseph/October 5 1877: I am tired of fighting. Our chiefs are killed; Looking-glass is dead. Too-hul-hul-suit is dead. The old men are all dead. It is the young men, now, who say ‚yes‚ or ‚no‚[in council votes]. He who led on the young men is dead. It is cold, and we have no blankets. The little children are freezing to death. My people--some of them--have run away to the hills, and have no blankets, no food. No one knows where they are---perhaps freezing to death. I want to have time to look for my children, and see how many of them I can find;maybe I shall find them among the dead. Hear me, my chiefs; my heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever.
On this date in 1877 in the Bears Paw Mountains of Montana, just short of safety in Canada, Nez Perce Chief Joseph surrendered his forces after a military campaign by the tribe that is still studied by scholars, with a statement now remembered as one of the great orations of history; in 1918 eight of twelve jurors in the Wilson administration‚s judicial attempt to shut down the magazine The Masses by convicting its editors and staff of espionage voted for acquittal, hanging the jury and freeing the defendants (the magazine, which had lost its mailing rights, had already been shut down by the time of the verdict); in 1926 world series bulletins were posted in front of the Clay Peters Building on Virginia Street in Reno; in 1932 the Mountain City Copper Company, which was developing mining at Rio Tinto southwest of Mountain City, filed its articles of incorporation; in 1939 Acting Senate Democratic Leader Key Pittman of Nevada, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, engaged in an angry exchange with isolationist leaders while managing President Roosevelt‚s effort to repeal the arms embargo in the Neutrality Act; in 1943 there were unconfirmed reports that former Nevada senator Fred Fall, missing from Guam since just after the start of the war, had been freed from a Japanese prison camp; in 1950 the Groucho Marx radio program You Bet Your Life began its television years; in 1954 Republicans obtained a temporary restraining order from Nevada District Judge Antonio Maestretti ordering the Washoe County clerk not to list the names of Republican Ernest Brown and Democrat Alan Bible on the ballot to fill out the late Patrick McCarran‚s term (Brown had been appointed to the senate by Governor Charles Russell on October 1, and Republicans were hoping to keep Brown seated until the 1956 election while Democrats wanted the seat filled by election in ‚54); in 1959 Bobby Darin, disdainful of rock and roll, achieved a benchmark in his goal of crossing over to Sinatra-style ballad singing — his Mack the Knife hit number one on the Billboard magazine chart; in 1964 Pyramid Lake tribal chair Allen Aleck made a plea for public support in protecting the lake against the effects of the Washoe Project (a water management project created by whites) and against a recent U.S. Interior Department report; in 1988 vice presidential candidates Lloyd Bentsen and Dan Quayle debated in Omaha's civic auditorium (see below); in 2005 British air force medical officer Lt. Malcolm Kendall-Smith was charged with refusing to obey orders to train for deployment to Iraq in protest against the illegality of the war.

Tom Brokaw: Senator Bentsen, you were a businessman before you entered the U.S. Senate. Let me offer you an inventory if I may: Lower interest rates, lower unemployment, lower inflation and an arms control deal with the Soviet Union. Now two guys come through your door at your business and say, "We'd like you to change," without offering a lot of specifics. Why would you accept their deal?

Lloyd Bentsen: You know, if you let me write $200 billion worth of hot checks every year, I could give you an illusion of prosperity too. [Laughter/applause] This is an administration that has more than doubled the national debt, and they've done that in less than eight years. They have taken this country from the No. 1 lender nation in the world to the No. 1 debtor nation in the world. And the interest on that debt next year, on this Reagan-Bush debt of our nation, is going to be $640 for every man, woman, and child in America because of this kind of a credit-card mentality. So we go out and we try to sell our securities every week, and hope that the foreigners will buy them. And they do buy them. But every time they do, we lose some of our economic independence for the future. Now they‚ve turned around and they've bought 10 percent of the manufacturing base of this country. They bought 20 percent of the banks. They own 46 percent of the commercial real estate in Los Angeles. They are buying America on the cheap. Now, when we have other countries that can't manage their economy down in Central and South America, we send down the American ambassador, we send down the International Monetary Fund, and we tell them what they can buy and what they can sell and how to run their economies. The ultimate irony would be to have that happen to us, because foreigners finally quit buying our securities. So what we need in this country is someone like Mike Dukakis, who gave ten balanced budgets in a row there, and was able to do that, meet that kind of a commitment, set those tough priorities. We need an administration that will turn this trade policy around and open up those markets, stand tough with our trading partners to help keep the jobs at home and send the products abroad.

Judy Woodruff: Senator Quayle.

Dan Quayle: Senator Bentsen talks about running up the debt. Well, the governor of Massachusetts has run up more debt than all the governors in the history of Massachusetts combined, going back to the days of the Pilgrims. I don't believe that that‚s the kind of policy that we want. The question went to the heart of the matter, Tom. You asked the question why would we change. Well, we have changed since 1980. We‚ve got interest rates down, we've got inflation down, people are working again, America is held in respect once again around the world. But we are going to build on that change. And as we made those positive changes of lower interest rates, lower rate of inflation, the governor of Massachusetts fought us every step of the way. We are proud of the record of accomplishment and the opportunities and the hope for millions of Americans. Hope and opportunity of these Americans is because of the policies that we have had for the last eight years, and we want to build on that and change it for even the better.

Date: Sat, 4 Oct 2008 13:55:37
On this date in 1887 the Nevada State Journal published a letter written by Republican U.S. representative William Woodburn of Nevada to a Carson City resident denying an Arkansas Gazette report that Woodburn would support Allen Thurman or Roscoe Conkling for president: "My candidate stands higher in the hearts of the people than either of them. If elected he will run this Government upon the American plan and not in the interest of Wall Street cliques and foreign financial rings. His name is James G. Blaine."; in 1909 all night telephone service began in Winnemucca; in 1916 after the Nevada Council on Defense asked newsdealers not to carry Hearst Publications "under penalty of being considered unpatriotic", the federal court in Carson City denied Hearst an injunction or restraining order to overturn the council's action; in 1931 Dick Tracy by Chester Gould began appearing (the first week, Tracy's girlfriend Tess Trueheart was kidnapped so he joined the police department as a plainclothes detective, tracked down the kidnappers and rescued Tess, then decided to remain on the force); in 1938 a mass meeting of 300 people at the city court house in Las Vegas, called to protest increased business license fees, organized a taxpayers league and called for consolidation of city and county governments; in 1943 Bing Crosby recorded a new holiday song, I'll Be Home For Christmas, which was a bigger seller and got more airplay than his 1942 hit White Christmas; in 1965 in a speech to the United Nations, Pope Paul VI spoke words that soon found their way onto posters and buttons: No more war. Never again war.; in 1969, Suite: Judy Blue Eyes by Crosby Stills and Nash was released; in 1977 in an address to the United Nations, President Carter promised that the United States would never use nuclear weapons except in self defense (the next president, Ronald Reagan, revoked the no-first-strike pledge that had been a tenet of U.S. nuclear policy under every president of both parties since the development of atomic energy); in 2006 The New York Times reported "Tucked away in fine print in the military spending bill for this past year was a lump sum of $20 million to pay for a celebration in the nation's capital, for commemoration of success‚ in Iraq and Afghanistan. Not surprisingly, the money was not spent." (the funds were rolled over for use in 2007, or sometime).

Date: Fri, 3 Oct 2008 19:38:20
On this date in 1776 the national debt began when Congress borrowed $5 million to pay for the revolution; in 1875 the Nevada State Journal reported "authoritatively" that the Virginia and Truckee and Central Pacific railroads, notorious tax scofflaws, were expected to pay their unpaid taxes "and that hereafter both railroads will pay their taxes without litigation" (the railroads went to the next session of the legislature and were suspected of bribing lawmakers to win forgiveness of their unpaid taxes and fought a court fight all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court to avoid paying); in 1902 a fusion rally was held at Glendale east of Reno, with U.S. Representative Francis Newlands, Patrick McCarran, H.R. Cooke, Lemuel Allen, and other political leaders in attendance (fusion referred to joint tickets of the Silver and Democratic parties); in 1914 after hearing a presentation from Grace Benefiel Cotterill, representing the Nevada Equal Suffrage Society, the Reno Bakers Union endorsed equal suffrage (the 1914 ballot included voter approval of a suffrage amendment to the Nevada Constitution); in 1917 Congress enacted a huge tax hike to pay for the world war; in 1931 in Searchlight, actress Clara Bow left the Bell ranch where she was staying to drop in to the Northern Saloon for a wedding party; in 1932 Irak gained its liberation from England and became a member of the League of Nations, paving the way for other Arab nations like Egypt, Syria; in 1935 Italy invaded Ethiopia, one of two African nations not colonized, and European nations that colonized the rest of Africa were deeply appalled by Italy‚s behavior; in 1940 Governor Edward Carville appointed the state and local draft boards in Nevada, including former Governor Richard Kirman on the state board; in 1955 the Mickey Mouse Club went on the air, making a group of Mouseketeers (including Reno's Sharon Baird) familiar to a generation, or at least to those who lived in communities with television (it was not seen in Reno); in 1960, The Andy Griffith Show premiered, creating half a dozen characters who became embedded in the public mind and staying on the air until September 16 1968 (it was television's highest rated program in its last year); in 1967 the most successful draft card protest of the Vietnam war occurred with more than 1,500 men returning their cards to Selective Service on this single day; in 1971 in Washoe Valley, the first Peace Fair of many held over the years took place at Washoe Pines Ranch; in 2003 Roy Horn of Siegfried & Roy was mauled by a tiger during a Las Vegas performance.

Albert Einstein/October 3d 1933: If we want to resist the powers which threaten to suppress intellectual and individual freedom we must keep clearly before us what is at stake and what we owe to that freedom which our ancestors won for us after hard struggles. Without such freedom there would have been no Shakespeare, Pasteur, or Lister. There would be no comfortable houses for the mass of the people, no railways or wireless, no protection against epidemics, no cheap books, no culture, no enjoyment of art at all. There would be no machines to relieve people from the arduous labor needed for the production of the essential necessities of life. Most people would lead a dull life of slavery just as under the ancient despotisms of Asia. It is only men who are free who create the inventions and intellectual works which to us moderns make life worth while.

Date: Wed, 1 Oct 2008 20:25:39
On this date in 1187 after 88 years of Christian occupation following the first crusade, Muslims reclaimed Jerusalem following a long seige, and resisting the desire for vengeance for their discovery of the desecration of Islamic sites in the holy city as well as for the slaughter of the Muslim and Jewish population of Jerusalem by Christians in 1099, they granted Christian prisoners the right to be ransomed to freedom, protected Christian sites, and allowed Christians to worship at those sites; in 1780 General George Washington issued a general order implementing the decision of the Congress "to erase from the register of the names of the officers of the army of the United States, the name of Benedict Arnold"; in 1878 after something called the "Pavilion Committee" warned Chinese to leave town, the Nevada State Journal reported that "not a heathen was left [in Reno]. They had gone and the haunts which know them once will know them no more forever."; in 1887 Dr. Rodney Richardson of Delaware arrived at the Pyramid Lake reservation to take up his duties as tribal agency physician; in 1922 the New York Stock Exchange moved into its new building at 11 Wall Street; in 1931 Nevada tribes were expected to earn $22,500 ($303,730.69 in 2007 dollars) for the 1931 pine nut crop, shipping upwards of 1,500 sacks from Reno alone; in 1949 at the 120th semiannual Latter Day Saints conference in Salt Lake City, Apostle Joseph Merrill said the church must stop President Truman‚s program by defeating what he described as :welfare state" members of Congress and bringing labor union leaders to heel; in 1966 housing developments spreading north from Reno were encroaching on ranches and one rancher reported he was receiving threatening phone calls and his cattle were being killed with high powered rifles; in 1975 Internal Revenue commissioner Donald Alexander testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee that in 1974 alone the IRS turned 29,520 tax returns on 8,210 people over to other federal agencies, and Alexander agreed with committee chair Frank Church that the IRS had no business complying with a CIA request for a tax audit of Ramparts magazine but he did not apologize to the magazine; in 2006 in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania, a shooter took hostages in a one-room Amish school and then killed five girls and then himself (in the days after the shooting, there were inspirational reports that the families of the girls spoke of forgiveness for the shooter, provided comfort and assistance to his family, and set up a fund for his family); in 2006 the New York Times published an essay by Ted Koppel arguing that Iran be allowed to develop nuclear weapons in order to give the United States, if a "dirty" atom bomb was exploded in the U.S. by some terrorist group, a pretext to make war on Iran whether that nation was responsible or not: "If a dirty bomb explodes in Milwaukee, or some other nuclear device detonates in Baltimore or Wichita, if Israel or Egypt or Saudi Arabia should fall victim to a nuclear 'accident'‚ Iran should understand that the United States government will not search around for the perpetrator. The return address will be predetermined, and it will be somewhere in Iran."

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The Dean's List

   The Dean of Reno Bloggers could very well be Andrew Barbano, self-described "fighter of public demons," who started putting his "Barbwire" columns online in 1996 and now runs 10 sites.

RENO NEWS & REVIEW, 11-9-2006

 

Date: Tue, 30 Sep 2008 20:52:26

William Henry Harrison/October 1 1840: I believe and I say it is true Democratic feeling, that all the measures of the Government are directed to the purpose of making the rich richer and the poor poorer.

On this date in 1861 the Delaware declared their support for the Union and 170 of 201 Delaware men volunteered for the army; in 1895 John Pershing, who would become the highest ranking officer in U.S. military history and for whom a Nevada county is named, was promoted to first lieutenant and given command of the African American 10th Cavalry Regiment (all of whose officers were white); in 1915 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Thomas Edison‚s Motion Picture Patents Company, which used gangs of thugs to break up the equipment and productions of competitors and gave many companies reason to leave the moviemaking center of New York for southern California, was an illegal trust; in 1938 in a nationally broadcast radio address, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black of Alabama confirmed reports that he had once been a member of the Ku Klux Klan but that he had left it before entering the U.S. Senate in March 1927: "I did join the Klan. I later resigned. I never rejoined. What appeared then, or what appears now, on the records of the organization, I do not know. Before becoming a senator, I dropped the Klan. I have had nothing whatever to do with it since that time. I abandoned it." (he did not explain why he left the Klan but said that scrutiny of the "character and conduct" of public men like himself was necessary); in 1938 Reno City Councilmember W.A. Justi announced that he would seek the suspension of chief of police Lou Gammell "because of the reign of crime that is now existing in the city."; in 1943 the German occupiers of Denmark scheduled the roundup of the Danish Jews for this date, but in a remarkable effort the entire gentile population of Denmark hid the entire Jewish population and then smuggled the Jews to safety in Sweden; in 1949 Shirley Robison, identified as the next to last remaining member of the original Nevada state police force, retired; in 1949 as part of a series of "education for atomic age" classes sponsored by the Reno Classroom Teachers Association (helping fuel the postwar mania in uranium prospecting), University of Nevada Professor Vincent Gianella held sessions on how to use Geiger counters to find uranium; in 1960 Dick Graves sold the Sparks Nugget to John Ascuaga for $3,750,000; in 1961 with a swing that was a thing of beauty (see below), Roger Maris hit his 61st home run of the season, breaking the season home run record and ending his ordeal at the hands of the press and resentful fans of Babe Ruth (the record stood for 37 years — longer than Ruth held it — until September 8 1998 when Mark McGwire broke it while Maris' widow and his children watched from the stands at McGwire's personal invitation); in 1962 "The $275,000 Sack of Flour", about an incident in Nevada, was broadcast on Death Valley Days (episode # 11.2) with James Best as Ruel Gridley; in 1964 the arrest of Jack Weinberg for setting up a table with civil rights literature and the shutdown of a free speech area in Sproul Plaza by administrators at the University of California at Berkeley launched the Free Speech Movement (a couple of thousand students surrounded the police car containing Weinberg and held it for more than thirty hours); in 1966 the Reno Sparks Indian Colony kicked off a fund raising drive for an improvement and beautification program, including construction of a community center and park; in 1971 the Internal Revenue Service hit the Fremont Hotel in Las Vegas with a $1,400,000 fine for skimming; in 1992 WABC New York radio talk show host Bob Grant expressed the on-air wish that Magic Johnson "go into full blown AIDS"; in 2001 with U.S. media outlets in war fever in the wake of September 11, there was one major instance of emphasizing peace˜a program of John Lennon music at Radio City Music Hall that was carried live on U.S. television.

October 1 1961/New York Times
Maris Hits 61st in Final Game
Yank First to Exceed 60 Home Runs in Major Leagues

By JON DREB

Roger Maris yesterday became the first major league player in history to hit more than sixty home runs in a season.

The 27-year-old Yankee outfielder hit his sixty-first at the Stadium before a roaring crowd of 23,154 in the Bombers' final game of the regular campaign.

That surpassed by one the sixty that Babe Ruth hit in 1927. Ruth‚s mark has stood in the record book for thirty-four years.

Artistically enough, Maris‚ homer also produced the only run of the game as Ralph Houk's 1961 American League champions defeated the Red Sox, 1 to 0, in their final tune-up for the world series, which opens at the Stadium on Wednesday.

Maris hit his fourth-inning homer in his second time at bat. The victim of the blow was Tracy Stallard, a 24-year-old Boston rookie right-hander. Stallard's name, perhaps, will in time gain as much renown as that of Tom Zachary, who delivered the pitch that Ruth slammed into the Stadium's right-field bleachers from No. 60 on the next to the last day of the 1927 season.

Along with Stallard, still another name was bandied about at the Stadium after Maris‚ drive. Sal Durante, a 19-year-old truck driver from Coney Island, was the fellow who caught the ball as it dropped into the lower right-field stand, some ten rows back and about ten feet to the right of the Yankee bull pen.

For this achievement the young man won a $5000 award and a round trip to Sacramento, Calif. offered by a Sacramento restaurant proprietor, as well as a round trip to the 1962 World's Fair in Seattle.

Maris was fooled by Stallard on an outside pitch that he stroked to left field for an out in the first inning. He let two pitches go by when he came to bat in the fourth with one out and the bases empty. The first one was high and outside. The second one was low and appeared to be inside.

Waist-High Fast Ball

The crowd, interested in only one thing, a home run, greeted both pitches with a chorus of boos. Then came the moment for which fans from coast to coast had been waiting since last Tuesday night, when Maris hit his sixtieth.

Stallard's next pitch was a fast ball that appeared to be about waist high and right down the middle. In a flash, Roger's rhythmic swing, long the envy of left-handed pull hitters, connected with the ball.

Almost at once, the crowd sensed that this was it. An earsplitting roar went up as Maris, standing spellbound for just an instant at the plate, started his triumphant jog around the bases. As he came down the third-base line, he shook hands joyously with a young fan who had rushed onto the field to congratulate him.

Crossing the plate and arriving at the Yankee dugout, he was met by a solid phalanx of team-mates. This time they made certain the modest country lad from Raytown, Mo., acknowledged the crowd's plaudits.

He had been reluctant to do so when he hit No. 60, but this time the Yankee players wouldn't let Roger come down the dugout steps. Smiling broadly, the usually unemotional player lifted his cap from his blond closecropped thatch and waved it to the cheering fans. Not until he had taken four bows did his colleagues allow him to retire to the bench.

Ruth's record, of course, will not be erased. On July 17, Commissioner Ford C. Frick ruled that Ruth's record would stand unless bettered within a 154-game limit, since that was the schedule in 1927. Maris his fifty-nine homers in the Yanks‚ first 154 games to a decision. He hit his sixtieth four games later.

However, Maris will go into the record book as having hit the sixty-first in a 162-game schedule.

Maris finished the season with 590 official times at bat. Ruth, in 1927, had 540 official times at bat. Their total appearances at the plate, however, were nearly identical˜698 for Maris and 692 for Ruth.

According to the official baseball rules, a batter is not charged with an official time at bat when "he hits a sacrifice bunt or sacrifice fly, is awarded first base on four called balls, is hit by a pitched ball or is awarded first base because of interference or obstruction."

Though it had taken 162 games (actually, 163, since the Yankees played one tie), a player finally had risen from the ranks to pass Ruth's majestic record. Maris himself missed only two of these games, although he sat out a third without coming to bat, when, after playing the first inning in the field, he was bothered by something in his eye.

For thirty-four years the greatest sluggers in baseball had striven to match Ruth's mark. Mickey Mantle fought Maris heroically through most of the season, but in the closing weeks he fell victim to a virus attack and his total stopped at fifty-four.

The two who came closest in the past were Jimmy Foxx and Hank Greenberg. In 1932, Foxx hit fifty-eight. In 1938, Greenberg matched that figure. Indeed, Greenberg had the best chance of all to crack the record. When he hit No. 58, he still had five games to play in a 154-game schedule.

When Stallard came to bat in the fifth the fans, who earlier had booed him when it seemed he might walk Maris, now generously applauded the hurler.

In the sixth, Maris, coming up for the third time, tried mightily to oblige the crowd with another home run. This time, however, Stallard struck him out on a 3-and-2 pitch.

With the Boston right-hander then stepping out for a pinch hitter, Chet Nichols, an experienced 30-year-old left-hander, opposed Maris on his last turn at bat in the eighth. Roger ended the inning with a pop fly that the second baseman, Chuck Schilling, caught for the third out.

Apart from Maris, the Yankee hitters did not overly distinguish themselves, but Manager Ralph Houk saw enough to satisfy him. Superlative pitching made the biggest home run of 1961 stand up to the end.

Bill Stafford, who is to pitch in the third game of the series against the Reds, hurled the first six innings and allowed only two hits, both by Russ Nixon. The first was a single, the second a triple. Hal Reniff then retired three Red Sox in the seventh and Luis Arroyo held them to one single in the last two innings.

31 Homers on the Road

A breakdown of Maris‚ home runs this year shows that he hit thirty-one on the road. The one he hit Sunday was his forty-ninth off a right-hander.

Mantle hit thirty of his fifty-four homers on the road. Mickey connected forty-two times off right-handers.

Maris won the American League runs-batted-in championship with his sixty-first homer. That run brought his total to 142, one more than Jim Gentile of the Baltimore Orioles finished with.

Schilling, playing his first year in the majors, set an American League record today when he finished the season with only eight errors. He had 400 putouts and 452 assists.

The major league mark for second basemen, seven, is held by Jackie Robinson of the old Brooklyn Dodgers. The best previous low in the American League was nine, a mark shared by Bobby Doerr of the Red Sox and Nellie Fox of the White Sox.

Dr. Sidney Gaynor's report to Houk on Mantle virtually assured the Switcher's appearance in the Yankee line-up for the series opener.

According to the Yankee physician, Mickey will be released early today from Lenox Hill Hospital where he underwent minor surgery for an abscess on his right hip. If he feels spry enough, he may even dash up to the Stadium, don a uniform and engage in a light workout.

In any case, he'll surely work out tomorrow and, according to Houk, he definitely will be in center field on Wednesday.

The Reds and Yankees will stage workouts today and tomorrow at the Stadium. The Yanks will take the field at 11 A.M., the Reds at 1:30 P.M.

The Yanks closed the season with 109 victories, one short of their record in 1927. That year, of course, the Yanks played only 154-game schedule, as, by this time, every baseball fan in the country must know.

The crowd gave the Yanks a home attendance total of 1,747,726, their best at the Stadium since 1951 when they reached 1,950,107. On the road, the Yanks set a major league mark of 1,946,292.

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[[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.]]

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