Home Page
|
|
|
Yesterday, today and tomorrow
NEWS BULLETIN & ALMANIACAL ARCHIVES
Also see NevadaLabor.com's Statewide U-News RoundupClick here to get on our news & bulletins mailing list...
But before you do so, please read this note. —AB
2:00-4:00 p.m. PST, 22:00-24:00 ZULU/GMT/CUT/SUT[[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.]]
Not even 30 pieces of silver
Reno City Council Signs Community TV Death Warrant
Contact Sen. Harry Reid for help
Barbwire / Daily Sparks Tribune / 11-23-2008
Live Streaming Barbwire.TV
Monday thru Friday
Reno-Sparks-Washoe Charter cable channels 16 and 216
2 :00-4:00 p.m. PST
22:00-24:00 ZULU/GMT/CUT/SUTThe Dean of Reno Bloggers could very well be Andrew Barbano, self-described "fighter of public demons," who started putting his "Barbwire" columns online in 1996 and now runs 10 sites.
The price of a piece/6-17-2007
Boxing Pandora/9-23-2007
The Lady in the Red Dress
10-28-2007
November 30
On this date in 1861 the report of the commissioner of the U.S. General Land Office said, „The surveyor general reports that the population of Nevada Territory is 17,000, mostly found in towns and mining districts; the latter possessing unlimited mineral resources, which are being largely developed.‰ (see below); in 1894 more than a hundred people attended a meeting at the Lander County Court House in Austin and formed the Lucy Stone Non-Partisan Equal Suffrage League; in 1896 after 45 years, the hyphen appeared in the name flag of the New-York Times for the last time (a period after the s continued to appear until February 21 1967); in 1910 following the death of Mrs. Emma Ross, Reno physician F. Wichman was indicted for performing an abortion and murder; in 1936 after 32 years of operation, a post office serving ranchers in the Ruby Valley area shut down; in 1958 „16 Candles‰ by the Crests was released; in 1967 U.S. Senator Eugene McCarthy announced his candidacy for president; in 1995 President Clinton became the first U.S. president to visit British occupied Ireland; in 1999 white supremacists threw a cement weight through a window of Reno's Temple Emanu-El and followed it with a Molotov cocktail; in 1999 massive street protests by workers and labor unions in Seattle forced the cancellation of the opening of a World Trade Organization meeting, the protesters later being portrayed by columnists as flat earthers and conspiracy freaks (when the globalization talks finally began, they failed to produce an agreement).
REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF THE GENERAL LAND OFFICE.
GENERAL LAND OFFICE
November 30, 1861
NEVADA.
The Territory of Nevada, organized March 2, 1861. -Its geographical limits are 39° west longitude of Washington meridian on the east; 370 of north latitude on the south; 42° of north latitude on the north, and the dividing ridge separating the waters of Carson valley from those that flow into the Pacific ocean, from the 37th to the 41st degree of north latitude, and thence due north to the southern boundary of Oregon, embracing 64,550 square miles, or 41,312,000 acres, formerly constituting the western portion of the Territory of Utah, and embracing a strip from the eastern side of California; but the latter only upon the condition of that State's assent.
The surveyor general of this Territory having been appointed under the pro visions of the organic act above mentioned, after receiving his instructions from this office for the government of the surveying operations, left New York on the 21st May last, and reached Carson city, in Nevada, via San Francisco, on the 22d June, 1861. Some of the standard lines governing the surveys of the public lines in California, and counting from the Mount Diablo meridian, having been extended east across the Snowy mountains in California, and now partly forming the eastern boundary thereof, the surveyor general of Nevada was instructed to extend the same further east to the valley of Carson river, in Nevada, and establish therein Carson river guide meridian, with standard parallel, so as to reach the localities of actual settlers. To this end the sum of $10,000 was set apart, with the Secretary's concurrence, from unexpended balances of former appropriations for surveys in Utah.
Surveys in Carson's valley, Nevada, had been made by Mormon county surveyors, under color of authority from the Utah legislature, when the region of country formed a part of Utah. The surveyor general of the latter Territory, under orders from this office, had given public notice of the illegality of such surveys, and of the invalidity of any claims resting upon the same, with a warning of the penalty prescribed for violation of the laws of the United States in that respect.
Such was the state of matters existing at the passage of the act organizing the Territory of Nevada when the extension of the lines of the public surveys was determined upon. The surveyor general of Nevada was consequently instructed to carry on his surveying in the valleys of Carson, Walker, and Truckee, or Salmon Trout rivers, and embrace actual settlements, together with those of one hundred and ninety petitioners, who, on the 3d December, 1860, had applied to the surveyor general of Utah to have the lands in Carson county surveyed, and which would have been surveyed under his superintendence during the present year and paid for out of the surveying fund of Utah, had the lands not been included in the surveying district of Nevada.
Upon opening his office at Carson city, the surveyor general of Nevada, after making reconnoissance of Carson valley and the valleys of Washoe lake and Bigler lake, also the settlements of China Town, Silver City, Gold Hill and Virginia City, into contract for the survey of Carson river guide meridian, corresponding very nearly with the 42° 30' of west longitude of Washington meridian, and standard parallels at thirty miles apart from each other, amounting in all to one hundred and forty-eight lineal miles of surveying, which will form sufficient bases for the sub-divisional surveys during this year and next fiscal year, for which an estimate of $5,000 has been submitted by this office.
The surveyor general reports depredations committed by parties claiming to hold the lands under the territorial laws of Utah, suggesting early surveys, with a view to speedy sale by the United States.
It is also stated that the lands in Carson valley are claimed by persons waiting the extension of surveying lines, so that they may conform their boundaries to the government surveys.
The Washoe valley, being on the west side of the lake of that name, is fifteen by five miles; contains numerous settlers, represented as holding large ranches under illegal grants.
The Walker valley, above Water lake Indian reservation, is represented as containing about 300,000 acres suitable for settlement.
The Truckee River valley, eighty miles above Pyramid lake Indian reservation, contains a large amount of the best lands in the Territory, fit for agricultural and grazing purposes, occupied by settlers holding extensive claims of from one to three thousand acres, under color of Utah territorial legislation.
The surveyor general reports that the population of Nevada Territory is 17,000, mostly found in towns and mining districts; the latter possessing unlimited mineral resources, which are being largely developed.
In 1855 the existing system of timber agencies was instituted by this office, under the provisions of the penal act of 2d March, 1831, „for the punishment of offences committed in cutting, destroying, or removing live oaks and other timber or trees preserved for naval purposes,‰ and in view of the decision in the case of the United States vs. Ephraim Briggs, (9th Howard, p. 351,) in which the Supreme Court decided that the said act authorized the prosecution and punishment of all trespassers on public lands by cutting timber, whether such timber was fit for naval purposes or not.
The present system was embodied in a circular letter, dated December 24, 1855, addressed to the registers and receivers, devolving the duties connected therewith upon the officers of the local land districts. There being as yet no such officers in Nevada, the duties of the register and receiver in this particular were assigned by this office to the surveyor general on the 9th September, 1861, requiring him to act in carrying out the system as developed in that circular, when necessary to protect the public timber from spoliation in NevadaÝ
German Foreign Minister Richard von Kuhlmann/November 30 1918: Our eyes at the present are turned toward the east. Russia has set the world ablaze. The gang of bureaucrats and sycophants, rotten to the core, overruling the weak and misguided through probably well meaning autocrat, surreptitiously brought about the mobilization of that country, which was the actual and immediate cause of the gigantic catastrophe which befell the world. Now, however, Russia has swept aside the culprits, and she is laboring to find through an armistice and peace an opportunity for her internal reconstruction.
Truman press conference/November 30 1950:
THE PRESIDENT. We will take whatever steps are necessary to meet the military situation, just as we always have.
Q. Will that include the atomic bomb ?
THE PRESIDENT, That includes every weapon that we have.
Q. Mr. President, you said „every weapon that we have.‰ Does that mean that there is active consideration of the use of the atomic bomb?
THE PRESIDENT. There has always been active consideration of its use. I don't want to see it used. It is a terrible weapon, and it should not be used on innocent men, women, and children who have nothing whatever to do with this military aggression. That happens when it is used.
White House statement/November 30 1950: The President wants to make it certain that there is no misinterpretation of his answers m questions at his press conference today about the use of the atom bomb. Naturally, there has been consideration of this subject since the outbreak of the hostilities in Korea, just as there is consideration of the use of all military weapons whenever our forces are in combat. Consideration of the use of any weapon is always implicit in the very possession of that weapon. However, it should be emphasized, that, by law, only the President can authorize the use of the atom bomb, and no such authorization has been given. If and when such authorization should be given, the military commander in the field would have charge of the tactical delivery of the weapon. In brief, the replies to the questions at today's press conference do not represent any change in this situation.
Live Streaming Barbwire.TV
Monday thru Friday
Reno-Sparks-Washoe Charter cable channels 16 and 216
2 :00-4:00 p.m. PST
22:00-24:00 ZULU/GMT/CUT/SUTThe Dean of Reno Bloggers could very well be Andrew Barbano, self-described "fighter of public demons," who started putting his "Barbwire" columns online in 1996 and now runs 10 sites.
The price of a piece/6-17-2007
Boxing Pandora/9-23-2007
The Lady in the Red Dress
10-28-2007
November 29, 2008
On this date in 1859 the Walker River and Pyramid Lake Paiute reservations were established; in 1864 Colorado Territory militia led by Colonel John Chivington (a Methodist minister) attacked and destroyed a village of Cheyenne and Arapaho at Sand Creek, an unusual instance of a white massacre of Native Americans that was not spun into a noble victory (see below), though Chivington was never tried or disciplined because of a post-Civil War amnesty; in 1918 in a confusing story, Stars and Stripes in Paris reported that the U.S. 91st Division in the world war, which included soldiers from six states˜one of them Nevada˜used a war cry of „Powder River‰ to throw off military censors, though it did not explain how a cry on the battlefield had anything to do with censorship; in 1939 Nevada Assemblymember Dewey Sampson, first Native American member of the legislature, said it was tribal members in western Nevada (not U.S. Senator Patrick McCarran, as some reports had it) who arranged the transfer of Indian Agent Alida Bowler from Carson City to Los Angeles: „You may not be aware of the fact that the Indians of Nevada and California have never favored the Indian bureau system and have tried to make it plain to those in power in Washington that they hope some day to be rid of the supervision of a body of white people who live at ease while the Indians sometimes suffer for the necessities of life.‰; in 1947 without asking the permission of the residents, the United Nations General Assembly approved a plan partitioning Palestine into two states, one Jewish and the other Arab with Jerusalem outside both, a plan that set off immediate violence in Palestine and is today known as the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People; in 1959 the Reno chapter of Hoo Hoo, a lumber group, announced new officers and plans for a December party at Lawton‚s Hot Springs; in 1961 Enos the chimp orbited the earth in a U.S. spacecraft (at his news conference, President Kennedy said, „He reports that everything is perfect and working well.‰); in 1965 Unsafe at Any Speed/The Designed-In Dangers of the American Automobile by Ralph Nader, named in 1999 as one of the 100 best works of journalism of the 1900s, was published by Grossman Publishers; in 1969 both sides of a Beatles single, „Come Together‰ b/w „Something‰ hit number one on the Billboard magazine chart, the first time such a thing had happened since Elvis‚s „Don‚t‰ b/w „I Beg of You‰ in 1958; in 2006 in a post-election ABC News panel discussion on the Iraq war moderated by ABC‚s Charles Gibson, Gibson said the options were more troops, continuing the current troop level, or withdrawal˜and then introduced a three-person panel to discuss the alternatives that did not include any supporters of the withdrawal option.
Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War: As to Colonel Chivington, your committee can hardly find fitting terms to describe his conduct. Wearing the uniform of the United States, which should be the emblem of justice and humanity; holding the important position of commander of a military district, and therefore having the honor of the government to that extent in his keeping, he deliberately planned and executed a foul and dastardly massacre which would have disgraced the verist savage among those who were the victims of his cruelty. Having full knowledge of their friendly character, having himself been instrumental to some extent in placing them in their position of fancied security, he took advantage of their in-apprehension and defenceless condition to gratify the worst passions that ever cursed the heart of man. (New York Times July 23d 1865)
November 28, 2008
On this date in 1877 John and Mary Gardner, for whom Gardnerville is named, sold part of their Carson Valley ranch to Leander Ezell; in 1919 U.S. Senator William King of Utah charged that the U.S. Department of Labor was „honeycombed‰ with Bolshevism and announced that he would introduce legislation transferring authority for administering the law on deportation of political radicals from the DOL to the Department of Justice; in 1923 Helen Delich Bentley, former U.S. House member from Maryland and U.S. Maritime Commission chair, was born in Ruth, Nevada; in 1933 ss part of a program to reduce the number of sheep growing on a tribal reservation in Arizona in order to reduce soil erosion, the Federal Emergency Relief Administration planned to purchase a hundred thousand sheep from the Navaho, some of which would be distributed as food to Nevada tribes; in 1936 the Las Vegas police department advertised for bids on its first police cars with two-way radios; in 1939 U.S. Agriculture Secretary Henry Wallace was asked to investigate the alleged kidnap/beating of a Memphis African American who had expressed his intention to vote in a county farm district election; in 1949 syndicated Hearst columnist Westbrook Pegler published a column attacking reporter/author Quentin Reynolds as a nudist, liar, defrauder, war profiteer, and coward, provoking a landmark lawsuit that resulted in a then-record $175,000 libel judgment against Pegler and Hearst (the case inspired the Broadway play and television movie A Case of Libel, with Daniel J. Travanti as Reynolds and Ed Asner as his lawyer Louis Nizer); in 1962 Harrah‚s Lake Tahoe workers voted down affiliation with bartender and culinary unions; in 1962 the White House announced that President Kennedy would visit the atomic test site in Nevada on December 8; in 1964 twenty five days after Lyndon Johnson was elected president on a pledge of no wider war in Vietnam, his top advisors Dean Rusk, Robert McNamara, Maxwell Taylor and other members of the National Security Council agreed to recommend a U.S. bombing campaign in Vietnam; in 1970 „My Sweet Lord‰ by George Harrison was released.
Nov. 27, 2008
Archibald MacLeish/The Nation/November 27-December 4 1937 edition: The remedy in the United States is not less liberty but real liberty˜an end to the brutal intolerance of churchly hooligans and flag waving corporations and all the rest of the small but bloody despots who have made the word Americanism a synonym for coercion and legal crime.
On this date in 1095 in a field at Clermont in France, Pope Urban II launched the first crusade against Islam; in 1914 Boston suffrage leader and labor organizer Margaret Foley said of the successful 1914 Nevada ballot campaign in which she campaigned extensively, „It seems like a dream, a dime novel, a moving picture‰˜but also said she „wouldn‚t go through it again for $1,000,000݉; in 1919 Native Americans installing a pipeline for the Winnemucca Water and Light Company struck for fifty cents a day or more, and the contractor D.O. Church agreed to the raise for fear the ground would freeze (other details of the strike are lacking because the Silver State‚s report was mostly devoted to trivializing the incident and belittling the tribal members˜„Heap Big Indian Union. No. 1‰, etc.); in 1931 Maurice Ravel‚s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand, which he composed as a commission from Paul Wittgenstein (a promising concert pianist whose right arm was amputated in World War One), was performed for the first time by Wittgenstein, who would become identified with the piece; in 1933 two hundred county officials met in Reno with federal relief administrator for the district Pierce Williams and state labor commissioner William Royle, who briefed them on how to administer 3,000 federally created jobs in the state, which would pay 60 cents an hour; in 1966 billionaire recluse Howard Hughes arrived in Las Vegas where he remained for four years and the Las Vegas Review Journal learned of his arrival and reported it (the Las Vegas Sun, which knew in advance of Hughes‚ plans to move to Las Vegas but withheld the news from its readers, published an editorial castigating the R/J for violating Hughes‚ privacy); in 1970 All Things Must Pass by George Harrison was released; in 1978 San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk were murdered in city hall and former supervisor Dan White was arrested for the crime, which came on the heels of the Jonestown mass suicide by members of the People‚s Temple that had previously been headquartered in San Francisco (The Sean Penn movie Milk will be released next month); in 1980 an extortionist's bomb exploded inside Harvey's Wagon Wheel Casino at Lake Tahoe during efforts to defuse it; in 2002 U.N. inspectors began a new round of inspections in Iraq that found no weapons of mass destruction, a conclusion George Bush and his administration refused to accept.
November 26, 2008
On this date in 1789 President Washington declared a day of thanksgiving for the U.S. Constitution; in 1859 the former Genoa newspaper Territorial Enterprise was revived in Carson City; in 1907 a month after the second stock market crash of the Panic of 1907, Governor John Sparks issued a proclamation saying he would not call the Nevada Legislature into special session to cut taxes; in 1942 as Allied forces secured North Africa and liberated Casablanca (only to make it captive again by returning it to French colonial rule), the film Casablanca debuted three weeks before the Roosevelt/Churchill/de Gaulle summit in Casablanca (the film premiered at the Hollywood Theatre in New York City, but was not released into theatres until 1943); in 1950 after General Douglas MacArthur ignored warnings from China as he drove his forces toward the Chinese border in Korea, the Chinese (who had repeatedly ignored provocations) finally entered the war, throwing tens of thousands of troops into counterattacks and ultimately driving Allied forces out of North Korea and nearly out of the south; in 1956 Merle Travis‚s mine worker song „Sixteen Tons‰ by Ernie Ford, the fastest selling single in history, hit number one on the Billboard chart where it remained for seven weeks; in 1979 President Carter tried to place a telephone call to former Nevada governor Grant Sawyer but was unable to reach him, then spoke with him later in the day; in 1986 One >From the Heart, a Francis Ford Coppola movie filmed in an artificial Las Vegas built in southern California for the film, was released (the movie never recovered its cost and bankrupted Coppola‚s Zoetrope Studios, becoming one of the legendary failures of motion picture history); in 2006 in post-election „news‰ coverage after Democrats won congressional majorities on the issue of opposition to the Iraq war, NBC reporter Norah O‚Donnell said on-air that „not one military or foreign policy expert‰ supported withdrawal from Iraq, prompting Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting to produce a list of such experts.
November 25, 2008
Edward R. Murrow, narration over footage: This scene is not taking place in the Congo. It has nothing to do with Johannesburg or Cape Town. It is not Nyasaland or Nigeria. This is Florida. These are citizens of the United States, 1960. This is a shape up for migrant workers. The hawkers are chanting the going piece rate at the various fields. This is the way the humans who harvest the food for the best fed people in the world get hired. One farmer looked at this and said, "We used to own our slaves; now we just rent them."
On this date in 1881 Angelo Roncalli, later John XXIII, was born in Sotto il Monte; in 1907 after the arrest of eleven alleged „hop heads‰ in Reno, the Rhyolite Daily Bulletin commented, „The public has known for some time that something was wrong in Reno and this probably explains it. They have evidently been smoking a few Œgreen‚ pills.‰; in 1915 the Knights of Mary Phagan met on Stone Mountain in Georgia and formed a new Ku Klux Klan; in 1933 United Press reported that the Roosevelt administration was considering putting nonproductive farm lands into the public domain to be used for grazing; in 1950 with the Korean war seeming nearly ended and MacArthur pushing toward the Chinese border against the advice of other military officials and President Truman, China sent 300,000 troops over the border, throwing U.S. troops into headlong flight south; in 1960 Harvest of Shame, the landmark Edward R. Murrow documentary about migrant farm workers in the United States was broadcast the day after Thanksgiving (after Murrow became director of the United States Information Agency, he tried to block the broadcast of Harvest in Europe); in 1963 on the day of John Kennedy‚s funeral, an apparently concerned J. Edgar Hoover spoke with President Johnson about a Washington Post editorial calling for an independent commission to investigate the assassination, unaware that Johnson was taping the phone call (Johnson assured Hoover that there would be no such commission); in 1972 the Oakland Tribune reported that a federal investigation of Howard Hughes‚s Las Vegas operations had begun in the spring of ‚72 and that indictments could be returned by early ‚73; in 1986 President Reagan and Attorney General Edwin Meese shocked the nation and stunned Congress by admitting that $10 to $30 millions in profits earned from arms sold to Iran through Israeli agents had been turned over to Nicaraguan rebels; in 1998 the dueling pistols used in the 1859 Broderick/Terry duel (in which former California supreme court justice David Terry killed U.S. Senator David Broderick) were sold at auction for $34,500.The time-hallowed custom of setting apart one day out of the three hundred and sixty-five for the offering up, by a grateful people, of thanks to Almighty God for blessings received in the past and prayers for a continuation of those blessings has become an unwritten law of our land and each succeeding year finds the custom more deeply, more reverently intrenched in the hearts and minds of our people. The time is again at hand for the observance of such a day.
The year now drawing to a close has been marked by storm as well as sunshine. A disastrous financial panic, nation wide, seriously affected for a time the prosperity of our state. The untimely death, last May, of our honored Governor, John Sparks, cast a pall over our Commonwealth that has not yet lifted.
Yet we have enjoyed many great blessings for which devout thanks should be returned by the Giver of all Good. The bitter industrial strife which, at the beginning of the year, threatened , for a time, the peace and tranquility of our State has given place to mutual understanding and harmony of action between the contending forces. Our mines have poured forth a steady stream of the precious metals for the enrichment of our people and the blessing of mankind. Our State is constantly and rapidly growing in population and wealth and we have within our boundaries less of extreme poverty than any other State in the American Union.
Now, therefore, I, D.S. Dickerson, Lieutenant and Acting Governor of the State of Nevada, in conformity with the proclamation of the President of the United States, do hereby designate as a day of general thanksgiving Thursday, the twenty-sixth of this present November and do hope and recommend that throughout the State the people cease from their wonted occupations, and at their several homes and places of worship reverently thank God for the manifold blessings He has bestowed upon us.
Given under my hand and the Great Seal of the State of Nevada, at the Capitol, in Carson City, this 12th day of November, in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and eight.
D.S. Dickerson,
Lieutenant and Acting Governor
By the Governor:
W.G. Douglass
Secretary of State.
Live Streaming Barbwire.TV
Monday thru Friday
Reno-Sparks-Washoe Charter cable channels 16 and 216
2 :00-4:00 p.m. PST
22:00-24:00 ZULU/GMT/CUT/SUTThe Dean of Reno Bloggers could very well be Andrew Barbano, self-described "fighter of public demons," who started putting his "Barbwire" columns online in 1996 and now runs 10 sites.
The price of a piece/6-17-2007
Boxing Pandora/9-23-2007
The Lady in the Red Dress
10-28-2007
Mon, 24 Nov 2008 07:52:49
On this date in 1850 Pius IX appointed Jean Baptiste Lamy vicar apostolic of the Catholic district of New Mexico, which included a part of present-day Nevada, a quarter of Colorado, all of Arizona, and New Mexico except the southern strip which would later be added by the Gadsden Purchase; in 1899 U.S. attorney for Nevada, Nevada supreme court justice, and Nevada gaming commission chair Miles Pike was born in Wadsworth; in 1900 Governor Hazen Pingree of Michigan traveled to D.C. to consult with the U.S. State Department about the loss of property of Native Americans of Burt Lake, who had been evicted from their ancestral lands by a timber speculator who claimed to own their settlement as a result of a delinquent tax sale (the land had been deeded to governors of Michigan „in trust for the Indians‰); in 1922 the Colorado River Compact, allocating the river‚s water, was signed by representatives of Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming (and later approved by their legislatures); in 1933 former Democratic presidential nominee Al Smith published an attack on President Franklin Roosevelt in New Outlook magazine; in 1940 the Goshute people of Nevada and Utah incorporated as the Confederated Tribes of the Goshute Reservation; in 1949 birder Ned Johnson of Reno reported sightings of a slate colored jungo (junco hyemalis); in 1963 two days after the president‚s assassination, Las Vegas gambling figures John Gaughan, Benny Binion, and Jack Binion had a conversation at a Las Vegas rodeo about Jack Ruby, according to an FBI report included in the Warren Commission report; in 1963 Lee Oswald was murdered in Dallas, the first murder broadcast live as it was happening, by NBC with reporter Tom Pettit describing the event: „There is Lee Oswald. [Sound of shot is heard] He‚s been shot! He‚s been shot. Lee Oswald has been shot. There‚s a man with a gun. There is absolute panic, absolute panic here in the basement of Dallas police headquarters. Detectives have their guns drawn. Oswald has been shot. There is no question about it. Oswald has been shot. Pandemonium has broken loose in the basement of the Dallas police headquarters.‰ in 1972 „Happy Xmas (War Is Over)‰ by John and Yoko, the Plastic Ono Band with the Harlem Community Choir, now a holiday standard, was released in England (on December 1 in the U.S.); in 1991 Reverend Little Richard Penniman married Cyndi Lauper and David Thornton at Friends Meeting House in New York City.
Sun, 23 Nov 2008 16:18:09
On this date in 1654 sometime between 10:30 and half past midnight, mathematician Blaise Pascal later wrote, Jesus appeared to him, prompting him to lay out what became known as „Pascal‚s wager‰, a sort of mathematical precautionary principle of faith that it is better to bet on the existence of God than not˜„Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God exists... If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation, that He exists.‰ (Pascal‚s notes on the wager did not become public until publication of the posthumous Pensées); in 1872 the Nevada State Journal printed a message which the U.S. Centennial Commission requested newspapers to publish, pointing out that unlike recent expositions in England and France which were supported by their governments, the U.S. Congress had not seen fit to fund the centennial exhibition in Philadelphia and therefore „The Commission looks to the unfailing patriotism of the people of every section, to see that each contributes its share to the expenses...‰; in 1906 the Bullfrong Miner reported that a local judge had called attention to the encroachment of the „redlight diocese‰ of Rhyolite on the residential sections of town; in 1910 a 33 page booklet titled Reno Reveries by Leslie Curtis was published, a peculiar collection of legal matter, poems, anecdotes about divorce, etc. (an expanded version was published as a book by Reno‚s Armanko Stationers store in 1924); in 1914 U.S. Forest officials said they would pony up $7,000, to be matched by about $3,000 from Elko County, to build a wagon road through Secret Pass to Ruby Valley; in 1933 the Rotary Club in Ely asked a local high school teacher to describe what was happening in Germany under the Nazis; in 1944 the U.S. War Department issued a casualty list of 1,896 soldiers including Edward O‚Grady of Las Vegas, killed in the European theatre; in 1956 nineteen year old Louis Balint began a seven day sentence in the Toledo workhouse for bursting into a private hotel lounge and attacking Elvis Presley while yelling „my wife carries your picture but she doesn‚t carry mine‰; in 1964 „I Feel Fine‰ b/w „She‚s A Woman‰ by the Beatles was released in the U.S.; in 1968 the Vatican disclosed that it was receiving hundreds of letters each day asking that the late Pope John XXIII be made a saint; in 1968 Pyramid Lake Tribal chair William Abraham told the Nevada Indian Affairs Commission that the tribe was losing its lands and its water rights and that the reservation was constantly being plundered of gem stones and petrified wood; in 1971 U.S. Representative Walter Baring of Nevada, a long time hawk on Vietnam, said he was withdrawing his support from the war and had voted to cut off spending for it; in 1971 a news report said Elko had two new attorneys-- Robert Manley and Byron Bilyeu (Manley later became Elko County District Attorney and Bilyeu later became Nevada Assembly speaker); in 1974 It's Only Rock ŒN‚ Roll by the Rolling Stones hit number one on the Billboard album chart; in 2001 Washington Post „style‰ columnist Hank Steuver called for school age Harry Potter fans to be „pummeled at the first bell of recessÝWhere are the kids who are supposed to be beating up the kids who like Harry Potter? Where is the bully who is going to tell them what kinda dork-face fairies they‚re being?‰ (Post editor Eugene Robinson defended the piece, but it has vanished from the newspaper‚s web site); in 2006 Southern Connecticut State University master's degree candidate Christopher Lohse said he had found a link between psychosis and predilection to vote for George W. Bush: „Our study shows that psychotic patients prefer an authoritative leader. If your world is very mixed up, there‚s something very comforting about someone telling you, ŒThis is how it‚s going to be.‚ ... Bush supporters had significantly less knowledge about current issues, government and politics than those who supported Kerry.‰ (he said he‚d found the same inclination among 1972 Nixon supporters).
Sat, 22 Nov 2008 14:23:05
On this date in 1633 between two and three hundred colonists set sail on the ships Ark and Dove to occupy Maryland (neglecting to ask the existing residents); in 1897 poet Ralph Frank was born in Cherry Creek, Nevada (see below); in 1928 Bolero by Ravel debuted in Paris (told that a woman in the audience had declared him mad, Ravel responded that she understood the piece); in 1936 an air mail letter was received in Las Vegas forty one hours after it left Honolulu; in 1961 the Nevada Hospital Advisory Board was considering commissioning an out of state expert or experts to investigate charges of elderly abuse at the state mental hospital; in 1963 Aldous Huxley, John Kennedy, and C.S. Lewis died; in 1963 visiting Dallas, from which he departed before John Kennedy arrived, Richard Nixon predicted that Kennedy would drop Lyndon Johnson from the Democratic ticket in 1964; in 1964 members of a Cuban exile group said they tried to murder Cuban Prime Minister Fidel Castro (plus, apparently, many bystanders) in John Kennedy‚s memory by sending an old B26 bomber to bomb a stadium where Castro was speaking but Cuban fighter planes drove the bomber off; in 1964 the Nevada State Journal carried a front page story on the one-year anniversary of John Kennedy‚s death, including comments from Reno High School student Andrea Dieringer, police sergeant Bob Guardia, UN physical education major Tony Osborn, county employee Tom Bourke, and others; in 1965 after declaring himself Christian redeemer against Muhammed Ali's Muslim faith („...how much harm he has done by joining the Black Muslims. He might as well have joined the Ku Klux Klan.‰; „...the image of a Black Muslim as the world heavyweight champion disgraces the sport and the nation‰), Floyd Patterson lost to Ali when the referee stopped the fight in the twelfth round.; in 1967 „Alice's Restaurant‰ by Arlo Guthrie was released; in 1968 The Beatles by the Beatles (better known as the white album) was released in England (and in the U.S. on the 25th); in 1974 representatives of U.S. senate candidates Harry Reid and Paul Laxalt held a negotiating session at which they agreed on the date (December 3d) for the start of their recount and then deadlocked on all other issues; in 1977 following in a family tradition (Pat Boone robbed black performers like Little Richard of their hits by providing quick white covers of their songs), Debby Boone covered Kasey Cisyk's soundtrack version of „You Light Up My Life‰; in 2004 a Scottish firm released a video game that lets players assassinate President Kennedy; in 2005 the DVD was released of Cry of Battle, one of two films playing in the Texas Theatre when Lee Oswald was captured there.
Lament
by Ralph FrankOn a lonely Nevada hillside
Grease woods wave above a native girl's grave.
Oh why, in nature's lonely wild
Must ever thus sleep this desert child?
She sleeps in desolation's lonely shadow
With the sleep of eternity upon her brow.
Oh why, from childhood's happy hour
Did wilt and die this summer flower?
From a land that is sunny and wide.
Why lay her to rest on the cold hillside -
And leave her forever with the greasewoods
Which wave above her unmarked grave.Fri, 21 Nov 2008 08:00:19
On this date in 1789 North Carolina ratified the Constitution and became the twelfth state; in 1933 Christian Arthur Wellesley, who said he was the fourth earl of Cowley, announced his intention to renounce his peerage and settle down with his wife Mary (former hat checker at Reno‚s Cedars night club) on a Washoe Valley ranch; in 1936 Boulder City Episcopal priest James Terry, reported dead by the Boulder City Journal, turned up alive; in 1956 Dawn Wells of Reno opened in a three week run of The Solid Gold Cadillac at Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri where she was a junior; in 1967 The Who Sell Out was released; in 1976 Nevada Governor Mike O‚Callaghan said he would not accept an appointment with the Carter administration (of course, he hadn‚t been asked, either); in 1980 eighty seven people died in the MGM casino/hotel fire in Las Vegas; in 1996 a six story iron tower on West John Street in Carson City, used for ham radio purposes for many years, was taken down; in 2004 Ray Hagar and Sandi Wright reported in the Reno Gazette Journal that local schools attended by low income students tended to be the most poorly maintained schools in 2006 Love, an album of remixed Beatles music produced by George Martin and his son, was released in connection with the Las Vegas stage show of the same name.
Thu, 20 Nov 2008 00:40:22
On this date in 1866 a group of Congregationalists met in D.C. and decided to establish a school for African-American preachers, which eventually became Howard University; in 1871 Chester Arthur was appointed collector of the port of New York, one of the most desirable patronage appointments of the gilded age (it provided a third of all federal revenues), by President Grant (President Hayes subsequently removed Arthur because of the rampant corruption at the port office, and Arthur was nominated for vice president and became president after the assassination of James Garfield); in 1896 in the novel Bid Time Return by Richard Matheson, which became the film Somewhere In Time starring Jane Seymour and Christopher Reeve, actress „Elise McKenna‰ appeared on stage: „And in one of the [display] cases is a program for a play performed in the hotel theater (wherever that was) on November 20, 1896; The Little Minister by J. M. Barrie, starring an actress named Elise McKenna. Next to the program is a photograph of her face; the most gloriously lovely face I've ever seen in my life.‰; in 1915 there were 25 motor vehicles in the Amargosa Valley-- five cars in Beatty, ten in Rhyolite, four in Carrara, two in Pioneer, two in the county, plus two trucks, with Studebaker, Ford, Overland, Mets, and Reos all represented; in 1936 the Clark County caucus of the Nevada Legislature, headed by Lieutenant Governor Fred Alward, met for the first time since the 1936 election; in 1945 the trials of German Nazis at Nuremberg began; in 1961 the U.S. Supreme Court denied the Navajo Nation Reservation of Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah the right to take part in a court case over division of Colorado River waters among Nevada and four other states after the U.S. Justice Department argued that it represented tribal interests adequately; in 1965 Whipped Cream And Other Delights by the Tijuana Brass hit number one on the Billboard album chart and was there for eight nonconsecutive weeks; in 1975 MGM announced it would build another Grand Hotel, this one in Reno, a project that became a turning point in the city‚s quality of life˜and which, in a puffy and uncritical front page story, was portrayed by the Nevada State Journal as an unalloyed benefit to the city: „Plans which would make Cinderella's fairy godmother jealous˜turning an ugly east Reno gravel pit into a glamorous hotel-casino݉; in 2002 Washoe County Senator William Raggio underwent successful heart surgery; in 2004 acting under dubious open meeting and due process conditions, the Nevada Board of Regents fired Ron Remington as community college president and John Cummings as his consultant; in 2007 with six surviving Munchkins on hand for the ceremony, the Munchkins were given a star on the Hollywood „walk of fame‰.
