God has given wine to gladden the hearts of people. Ps. 104
Trump Trial Day 3
Thought I’d use this for a first header, since it’s what we are all here for. Really. That one of the most egregious people of moral vacancy, born to wealth, raised in cruelty, and majoring in condescension, that SUCH a person (whose status as a member of the human race casts a baleful shade upon the rest of us who are striving to do Good and be Persons of Good) is NOW…..at LAST….far too late, but still…...AT FREAKIN’ LAST is Facing Justice/the music/his accusers/his victims who wail for recompense and measured punishment, yeah, well that is the APRIL GOOD NEWS writ large. Whew!
Otherwise, welcome to the Good News Round Up of the Kos-est of Daily and the Daily-est of Kos-es you’ll find on the Internet. Here at a sturdy, progressive, respectful (except for pie fights) arena, millions throngs thousands hundreds fifties scores dozens, handfuls, pairs, some number of Seekers of respite, consolation, laughter, thoughtfulness, inspiration, and givers and receivers of Hope stop by daily for refreshment, renewal and learning. The Powers that Be, all dressed in Orange, let me your host, WineRev, 1 turn per month, at the helm/on the bridge/at the desk/in the saddle/on the Ox/…..the Chance to bring you the Good News as found by scouring the Inter Tubes and other sources (yes, there are still many) and assembled for your Wednesday.
So I invite you and all the Good News-ers (affectionately nicknamed “Gnusies” or even “Gnus”) into the Gnuville Breakfast Brunch for you mental munching. Have your coffee, tea, mocha-cocoa or Morning Mimosa (opening or subsequent) at the ready. Let your toast-able, fry-able, zap-able, baked-able, cook-able breakfast
“Breakfast was 2 minutes ago……”
foods help you open your eyes and face the day (yea verily, even let there be the gentle clinkering (clinkering, I say….as a coinage!) of flakes or loops into the ceramic bowl, splashed with some milk and very softly sprinkled with a snatch from the sugar bowl and call it “cereal”). Here below there be stories of Good Things, as well as (per my custom) the Good and the Goofy from April 17ths of years gone by but not forgotten, noted here for their examples and support from our ancestors.
And below that is YOUR TURN, for comments, reactions, questions, answers, links, recommends, digressions, additions, corrections, expansions and some sprinkles of nuttiness, because YOU and your reactions, run through your flying digits tapping the keys, and then Wi-Fi-ed into the Cyber and onto this page……..well that’s what we do, and I personally am grateful. The interactions, reactions, and all the rest makes for community, and support, and uplifting and upholding and consolation and inspiration, so thank you in advance for your input!
(Back in February I posted some little vignettes of US First Ladies, and many Good News Fans here had nice and complimentary things to say, both about them and to me for digging up some of their stories. So in my once-a-month stint of leading the Round Up last month I put up a short biography of a couple of them. Again, thoughtfully received and kind words from you.
Now my sweetie and partner SageHagRN has said with the Criminal Trial #1 of the Groper-in-Chief starting this week, more legal debacles in Alabama (IVF) and Arizona (Territorial laws from 1864???), and the on-going insult to the surface of the Earth by the screeching of MTG, stories about First Ladies in their Times are more needed (and appreciated) more than ever.
So, allow me to stud in 2 more for this month.)
Good News in Science and Engineering/Eco-Green
>>>>>>>>> I tell ya, those scientists and engineers are still plugging away at Things of Nature and things continue to be exciting. (What is that observation, that over 90% of all the scientists that have ever lived are alive right now? That part of the fame of, say, a DaVinci or a Newton or an Archimedes was there was so little competition.) And while a fair bit of our challenge of climate change/global warming can be charged off in part for earlier generations taking discoveries and breakthroughs too far (the Greeks: “Too much of a good thing is not good.”), they are still working hard to make things better and correct earlier mistakes. So HERE IS A HEARTENING STORY from Europe, that after reading everybody’s meters across the Continent and doing some number crunching, for January and February of 2024, 60% (YESSSSS!) of all European electricity came from renewable and Green sources. Better than half!! And likely still rising!
>>>>>>>» And while we’re talking Renewables, since the 1970s we’ve all learned to pronounce “photo-voltaic” cell, those blu-ish sandwiches of silicon and certain other metals and SECRET SAUCE that grab photons zooming by and stuffing them down their chip pants (sort of Solar Sponge Bobs.) That gets the pants so excited they knock loose electrons and send them along wires as electricity. Yet it looks like its getting even better. THIS DIARY from the other day tells of some quantum breakthroughs that could well mean even faster, stronger, more efficient solar cells, and cleaner, cheaper ways of making them (and baby, when you’re breaking through quantums, you KNOW Star Trek is becoming real before our very eyes…….)
>>>>>» Meanwhile, suppose you are in Earth orbit, hanging around the ISS, astronom-izing, space-walking and doing all that other astronautical really cool stuff we’ve been admiring since the 1960s. (Food paste in a squeeze bag. Orange TANG “like the astronauts drink!”) Now the thing is, EVERY last THING you need to do all that stuff Up There (including stay alive) has to come from Down Here. ALL of that has to go up, insulated from the vacuum of space and the Kelvin-esque Cold. Now NASA and the Europeans and other space-faring countries HAVE sent up stuff ahead of time, without people aboard, so that when there’s a launch that DOES include people, their first set of luggage has already been delivered.
We need 10 gallons, cleaned windows, and Green Stamps!
But re-supply is hard….and if you don’t re-supply, people die. So late or cancelled shipments are not an option. And while most of the energy aboard spacecraft typically is solar generated, not all of it is. Sometimes you just gotta fire thrusters, ya know? And if you fire them, SOMETHING has to burn, some kind of fuel. The fuel of choice is hydrazine but it is NOT naturally occurring (so something ELSE that needs to get launched.) But launching people aboard a lot of hydrazine when “main engine running”, well, that’s a dodgy and dangerous project.
Now comes a better idea: a gas station. Yep! The Orbit Fab Company (likely they mean “Orbit Fabrication Company” but to a certain generation it sounds like the company Muzak in all the cubicles and offices will be All Beatles, All the time…..”really Fab, you know?”) is planning TO LAUNCH ANOTHER 'TANKER' into orbit for anybody out there who needs some.
We give Green Stamps!
You just pilot your craft over the rubber airhoses so the bell rings at the Happy! Hydrazine Service Station, the attendant comes out and you say, “Fill it up with ethyl”. He tips his cap, nods and asks, “Check the oil for you too, miss?” You nod and float over to the ceramic building and head inside for the powder room. Then you come out, take a glance at the stack of 7 year old copies of “Monthly Crankshaft”, put a nickel in the slot and pull the knob under the Planters Peanuts, put the little sack in your purse and head back out to the pump. Get back inside your spacecraft, sign the little slip, tear off the top copy and hand the carbon, bottom copy and mini-clipboard back to Gomer, and back you go to studying micro-meteorites that contain gold or a Darth Vader Power Ring inside.
Mind you, there ARE those who went before us, and on April 17ths they were doing this:
1930 Wilmington, Delaware All sorts of things keep the test tubes boiling in town here at the DuPont labs. In 1930, the discovery of a new rubber-like compound was recorded by Dr. Arnold M. Collins in his laboratory notebook. He had noticed that a mixture that had stood from some weeks before, had solidified “to white, somewhat rubber-like masses,” from polymerization of monovinylacetylene mixed with concentrated HCl. He theorized the new compound was 2-chloro-1,3-butadiene. His research group at the Du Pont Company, over the next several weeks, but only gradually, recognized its potential as the first synthetic rubber. Wallace Carothers named it chloroprene. It was announced as DuPrene in 1931. After more development, it was sold as a material useful for products impervious to oil, for electrical wire insulation and as a coating compound. From 1936, it is known as Neoprene.« ……...(The quest of sources of natural rubber led Japan to eventually invade Indonesia to try to gain a monopoly and world control of a critical military resource. Artificial rubber from DuPont kept various Allied armies rolling and flying (especially after Pearl Harbor) and knocked a weapon from the hand of Imperial Japan…..)
1964 On this day at the New York World’s Fair, Ford Motor Company unveiled its new
Mustang model. The base price was $2,368. One of the design engineers who rummaged through the Ford parts bins to come up with the “long nose, short deck” look was Lee Iacocca, his first mark as a rising star.
………….ALSO, in TODAY’s 1964 DOUBLEHEADER DATE, Columbus, Ohio A solo plane landed in today in my hometown. Hometown woman and Instant heroine Jerrie Mock became the first woman to complete a solo airplane flight around the world. (She left on March 19th.)……
1970 Pacific Ocean Apollo 13 was the 3rd mission to the moon…...until an explosion aboard crippled the ship. In a hair-raising set of desperate measures, the 3 astronauts and a great bunch of frantic engineers here on earth stopped the venting of oxygen (a REALLY good thing in space!), ad-libbed a way to address a carbon-dioxide build-up and otherwise used the (not launched) lunar lander as a life raft. TODAY, that huge sigh of relief that circled the globe was pinpointed as launching in Houston, Texas: Apollo 13 splashed down…...safely. (In the grim words of flight director Gene Krantz, “We’ve never lost an American in space and we’re not going to lose one on my watch!”)
“WHEW……..!”
Also made into a helluva good movie “Apollo 13”, starring Tom Hanks…..and into a hysterical “Thanksgiving at the Krantzes” parody: LINKED HERE.
Meet a First Lady
Lucy Webb (First Lady to Rutherford Hayes 1877-1881) Born 1831 in Chillicothe, Ohio (only 72 years before the beginning of the GREAT Chillicothe Pumpkin Show….so she missed out on that….) Dad and 2 older brothers were doctors so education was prized and supported; Lucy graduated Cincinnati Wesleyan Female College and celebrated by visiting an older sister for several months and met Rutherford Hayes (9 years older.) Married 2 years later and in time produced 8 children (5 of whom reached adulthood.) Hayes was an Ohio lawyer and moderately anti-slavery, but Lucy was strongly opposed and at her urging he started taking cases defending runaway slaves from recapture in 1850s Ohio. The couple gained such fame that one morning they found a black infant abandoned on their front porch…..knowing the baby would be well cared for.
In the Civil War Hayes was a major in the 23rd Ohio regiment. Lucy and some of their children often visited “dad” in camp between maneuvers and battles. (One of Lucy’s brothers was the regimental surgeon.) After the War Hayes’ war record and speaking ability got him elected governor of Ohio (for 3 terms.) Lucy was noted for showing up regularly at the Ohio Legislature on her own, lobbying them for better laws and more money for public schools, orphanages and insane asylums.
In 1876 the Hayes-Tilden Presidential election ended in a virtual tie, with endless arguments over the winner in and out of Congress. In March, 1877 the Hayes family took the train from Columbus to DC, stopping overnight in a hotel in Harrisburg, PA. Over breakfast the next morning Hayes got a telegram declaring him finally, officially the winner, and to finish his trip to DC so that he could get Inaugurated….the day after tomorrow (and likely get a partial refund on the round-trip tickets he may have bought, just in case…..)
Lucy was not only the first First Lady with a full college degree, she was also the first First Lady to be called the “First Lady”, in print and regularly. Congress was stingy with the annual appropriation for White House operations, so Lucy got old furniture stored in the attic to set around the mansion “and hide the holes in the carpets and floors and walls.” Things improved later and she did oversee the installation of the first running water system in the place, (signaling the end of the White House well) as well as the first ever, 1-year-since-patenting telephone.
Even with some money from Congress, Lucy preferred to spend a fair bit of it on conservatories and greenhouses at the White House, so that there were fresh bouquets of flowers every day in several rooms (even in winter) and other bouquets were sent regularly to Washington hospitals. The greenery proved especially popular with White House visitors and guests, and Lucy enjoyed showing them through. (Guests were often also greeted by the White House cat, the 2 White House dogs, and even by the White House goat…..all joyfully tended to by Lucy.)
She also enjoyed music and arranged White House concerts, and, starting with Marie Selika Williams, welcoming black performers in as well. (Lucy herself could play guitar and sing. In the family quarters many evenings, just to pass the time, she regularly would lead singing sessions, featuring Secretary of the Interior Schurz on piano, Vice President Wheeler, Treasury Secretary John Sherman and John’s brother William Tecumseh (who had a reputation as a fine general) in various harmonizing and gospel tunes.)
The Hayes’ traveled often and long, (to the point the newspapers nicknamed him “Rutherford the Rover”) and not always together. At times, Lucy went off on her own tours, which she typed out herself ahead of time for the press. She did this as the first First Lady to use a typewriter, and to have her own schedule and followers in the press. The pair DID travel to the West Coast for a trip (first time a President in office visited the Pacific shore) and heard an impassioned speech from Sarah Winnemucca appealing for Native peoples and their land and their grievances, an appeal that left Lucy publicly in tears.
It became widely known that the Hayes’ invited the White House staff and their families to joint Thanksgiving Day dinners, (that somebody ELSE cooked and cleaned up after!), as well as having all these over to the White House for Christmas Day so everyone could open presents under a great big tree with the First Family. When Congress one spring was in a stuffy mood and refused to allow local children and their families to have an Easter Egg roll and hunt on the Capitol lawn (harrumph!), Lucy invited everyone over to the White House grounds; a tradition still observed.
Their travel and her charm and kindnesses went some way in healing at least a few of the hurts of the nation after the Civil War.
Good News In Society and Politics
>>>>>>>>THE Trial of Trump has begun, officially, in a courtroom, with The Defendant REQUIRED to be present (if asleep; Where’s Mike Lindell of “My Pillow” when you need him?; sample titles: Don Snorleone, The NodFather, Sleepy Don, “He’s been Grumpy and Dopey, so why not Sleepy? 4 dwarfs to go…..”, Dozo the Clown, Reporters: Trump fell asleep at his trial/ Stormy Daniels: I told you he couldn’t stay up long….). 7 Jurors so far have been seated, so well on the way to 12, plus 6 alternates. And the whole thing is a Big Deal for Americans. YouGov has been polling on “is this trial serious and a big deal?” for several months. THIS NEW YOU-GOV POLL reports a new high of 57% of Americans think this is a Serious Big Deal. Just wait until we get to, you know…..evidence! Testimony!
>>>>>» How sketchy is that ALLEGED $175 million appeal bond Trump posted in his NY Civil Case? Well, Sketchy is as Sketchy does. Who in their right minds would have a company that makes bonding loans…..to Donald Trump? A man who has deliberately gone through personal bankruptcy 6 different times in his life in order to get out from under having to re-pay or pay what he owes? And yet there is such an outfit: Knight Specialty Insurance Company.
Trump needed (needs) $175 million that is liquid and real to put into escrow with the NY court system so that he has the right to appeal his $454 million (and $112,000 more each day in interest!!) loss in the Trump Organization FRAUD case (civil, not criminal). Now, any bonding outfit wants to make money off of bonds it puts up AND they would like to get their money back if the appeal loses (and becomes part of the award to those who won the case.) There are all sorts of murky, back channel ways of “making it happen” but now comes THIS HOT STORY that connects the Cayman Islands banking sector to Donald Trump. The Caymans? Being shady? That linkage alone has more red flags in it than a Moscow May Day parade back in Soviet times.
And just recently, Trump is reassuring the Court that the $175 million bond “is secure”, but NY Attorney General James IS CHALLENGING tHAT formally…..so…….
But look, more Bad News for Trump is Good News for Us, at all times and in all places, so we’ll take a story or 2 or 3 like that ANY time!
Now in times past, there have been other…...moments that have affected The Many in many ways, and some of these echo down to our days as well.
1521 Wurms, Germany Staying with things medieval, Martin Luther, monk, theologian, professor and rambunctious debater, had gotten himself excommunicated from the (Roman Catholic) Church on Jan. 3 of 1521. That made him subject to the death penalty and anyone who did the deed was in line for earthly and heavenly rewards, so the good Doctor was in a bind. On this day, under the protection of Frederick the Wise, elector of Saxony, (meaning he was part of the group that elected the Holy Roman Emperor, so for Luther, safe conduct….and probably big dudes wearing armor and carrying swords as an escort service…..a food taster) Luther appears before Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and the Imperial Diet (NOT a food comment or menu plan) to face charges stemming from his religious writings (and also to let Luther back down; no need for executions as a first resort.) Frederick the Wise, Charles V and Luther are all in somewhat delicate straits. The debates and discussions reached several impasses over several weeks. (Members of the Diet question Luther as well, and since this all took place in Wurms, the ‘Diet of Wurms’ jokes have been in circulation for 503 years.) Later on Charles V declared Luther an outlaw (with a price on his head. He got away clean and went into hiding, thanks to Frederick, for a couple years. He passes the time by translating the Bible into the local German. (THE beginning of Modern German, as significant to that language as Shakespeare a few decades later to English). Luther goes 1525 high-tech and has his translation PRINTED, and it becomes a best seller, strengthening the Reformation.
1524 Giovanni da Verrazano, a Florentine navigator, was exploring the North American coastline, working north from Cape Fear eventually to Newfoundland. On this day he comes across (later named) New York Bay, passing between Staten and Long Islands, and spent several days sailing up the (later named) Hudson River. He died soon after, but his report circulated in Europe and eventually both the Dutch and the British showed up to scrap about the place. In the 1960s a giant engineering project connected Staten and Long Island and was christened the Verrazano Narrows Bridge in his memory.
Garden Statue of St. Marguerite and school children in Montreal
1620 Troyes, Champagne, France Birth of Marguerite Bourgeoys, nun, educator, pioneer. In her 20s, already a nun in Troyes, asked to bring her teaching talent to New France. Arrives Quebec and pushes upriver to Fort Ville-Marie. Insistent upon teaching girls and the poor. He dedication won over the fort commander, who granted her a stable to use as a school, the first school in the village outside the fort (later named for a hill…. Mont-Real.) She made two return trips to France to recruit other nuns as teachers, to persuade church authorities to let them live un-cloistered and move about freely, and to have the support of the Crown. She succeeded on all counts. She (!) was founder of the Congregation of Notre Dame and in 1982 became the first saint of Canada.
“They call me MISTER Gibbs!”
1823 Philadelphia, PA Birth of Mifflin Wistar Gibbs, carpenter, businessman, politician. As a young black man in a hurry, already in his 20s he was a friend of Frederick Douglass and working with other abolitionists in strengthening the Underground Railroad. Little formal education but compensated with a quick mind and a great appetite of reading that made him a fine writer. Migrated to San Francisco in 1850; started as a bootblack, became a successful and influential merchant, founded and edited a black newspaper ‘Mirror of The Times.’ In 1858 migrated to Victoria, British Columbia and prospered again in business as a contractor. In 1866 elected to the Victoria city council, becoming only the second black elected official in Canada and the third anywhere in North America. Studied law at Oberlin College (Ohio) (at age 47) and after Civil War settled in Little Rock, AR and soon became the first elected black judge in the US. His reputation rode high enough that in 1897 (age 74) President McKinley appointed him ambassador to Madagascar (for 4 years.) AFTER that diplomatic tour he moved back to Little Rock, started a bank, was on the board on the municipal electric company. And until I started these History Corners I had no inkling this man even existed……
1989 Warsaw, Poland. Nine years after its beginning with strikes in the shipyards of Gdansk, the Solidarnosc labor union this day was officially recognized as a legal organization by the Polish courts. (Until now everything connected with it had been technically illegal; only the Party was legal, comrade.) This was widely seen as a milestone a) of the impact of Gorbachev’s promotion of glasnost/openness, b) that perestroika/restructuring was a real thing and/or c) that Communism’s grip was slipping.
Meet a First Lady
Helen Herron (Taft) Born in Cincinnati, the 5th of 10 children and 7 weeks after the firing on Fort Sumter, “Nellie” (as she was always known her entire life), just missed the Civil War. Her father could support them all with a successful law practice (he had been close friends in law school with Benjamin Harrison (Pres. 1888) and his law partner was Rutherford Hayes (Pres. 1876). Dad expected educated children and could afford it, so Nellie had a private girls’ school education and a few years in a music academy. When she was 17 she got to travel with Dad to visit the Hayes White House and Nellie was enchanted with Lucy Hayes and settled strongly on the idea of becoming First Lady herself.
When she was 25 she married lawyer William Taft. While raising 3 children with him she taught kindergarten for a year and was founder and first president for 8 years of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra Association (that established that organization to this day.) Now while Nellie dreamed of the White House, William dreamed of the Supreme Court. To that end he became the US Solicitor General for a year, and then served 8 years as a federal circuit judge in DC---where Nellie became friends with First Lady Ida McKinley. Nellie, via Ida, may well have influenced President McKinley to appoint Taft as Governor-General of the Philippines (a war prize acquired by the US from Spain.)
She was delighted (moving from the Judiciary to the Executive branch) and they spent 3 years there. (Also officially visited several Asian nations and made acquaintance and even friends with several political leaders from Singapore to Tokyo.) Nellie loved the Philippines, learning to ride horseback and sailing to several islands of the chain so she could tour it on her own (while Bill was Governing), and learned the local language. They both did their best to combat segregation and discrimination (inherited from Spanish rule), entertaining local leaders and often attending weekly outdoor concerts by local artists at Manila’s Luneta Park. At the Governor’s events they made sure “European-only” events were rare, inviting local musicians to perform and entertain and teach songs and local dances…..and rubbing elbows with local Filipino mayors and town councilmen and religious leaders, all to the indignation of (bigoted, usually Southern) US military occupation leaders. Back in DC Taft was in Teddy Roosevelt’s Cabinet as Secretary of War, then won the Presidency in 1908 (to Nellie’s ecstatic delight.)
She was the first First Lady to ride in an Inaugural Parade, which kicked off a kerfuffle as this was seen as supporting the vote for women (one of 2 burning Constitutional changes on the stove; Prohibition was the other.) In the White House Nellie Taft integrated the staff with African-Americans…..in full, formal dress as the occasion (frequently) demanded (and hired white boys as dishwashers…..) She overturned an unwritten ban on divorced persons at formal White House events----and these always included Cabinet and Congressional members…...and locally stationed military men….AND their spouses …..AND their children.
Suffered a stroke in 1909 (age 48) that left her incapacitated for several months as she had to re-learn to speak. (She always asked for a serious pose in pictures as she worried the stroke affected her facial expressions.)
Remembering Manila’s music fondly Nellie and the Secretary of Agriculture planned and arranged for outdoor summer concerts in Washington in Potomac Park (which was then being used as an auto racing track.) The summer of 1909 a bandstand and bleachers somehow appeared. Nellie arranged and paid for a Filipino band to sail to the US for the premiere concert and she wore a formal gown of Filipino design and style in their honor and to set an inclusive tone at the events. In 1911 the improvement plan got a major boost with the gift of several thousand Japanese cherry trees from the mayor of Tokyo (still the highlight of spring in DC.)
Whoa…..Nellie!
Technology changing as it was, Nellie oversaw the change-over of the White House stables and Presidential carriages to White House garages and CARS, and she learned to drive. More privately Nellie liked parties and had a smashing recipe for champagne punch, much to the annoyance of the growing Prohibitionists. She also loved to (discreetly but avidly) play poker (and the drinking that went with it) with various Cabinet members and military leaders (and was said to be pretty good at it to boot.)
After William’s term ended, followed by World War I, in 1921 he became US Chief Justice, a lifelong dream. Nellie was content as well, rather enjoying the roar of the Roaring 1920s. She went to racy plays and naughty silent films in theaters that were frequently raided by the police. (Never caught Nellie so far as I know….) One time the Tafts were visiting England and there was a reception for them at the American Embassy. Wine and cocktails were served and consumed, BUT, as the Embassy was/is technically US soil, and the 18th Amendment (Prohibition) applied here as well as the rest of American soil, there was a ruckus on this side of the Atlantic, which they both weathered with aplomb.
The Tafts were both immensely proud of their daughter (also named Helen) as she pushed through to earn a PhD and then became president of Bryn Mawr University. After William’s death in 1931 Nellie went globe-trotting (starting at age 70): Egypt’s pyramids, breweries in Mexico, sea voyages in the South Pacific. The first First Lady to write her own memoirs of being a First Lady. The first First Lady buried at Arlington National Cemetery (and lately, joined by only the second, Jackie Kennedy.) A life fully lived!
Good News in Arts, Music and Literature…..and Fun
>>>>>» “Put that down!” “Eeewww, that’s icky…..” “How many times do I have to tell you…..” “Hey, this
“I found one! I found one!”
is really cool. Lookatit…...”
Ever have those phrases circle around your head? Oh, not lately I’d imagine, but long ago. Kids don’t know stuff, and part of the fun (and sometimes danger) of being a kid is……..finding out stuff! Or just finding stuff…..just to have it----”’cause I found it…..and its mine.” Maybe decades later you come across a little box of little goodies like that from when you were little and you look at that little chip of glass, a dented thimble, or a certain marble and try to recall just why these little things seemed to mean so much that you saved them. And once in great while…….
12-year-old Rowan Brannan of Sussex, England is one of those Picker-Uppers of just everything and anything, and his mother is constantly carping at him about it (her favorite line: “Put that down!”) Well, Rowan picked a up shiny bit of, well, wrapping? Some sort of ribbon? “Mum? What’s this?” “Oh that’s just a…...a…...now just what IS that?”
Now and again in England you find something that tells you other people were in England a long time ago. In Rowan’s case, he struck gold…….literally. THE "WHAT'S THIS?" turns out to be an arm band, a decoration. It was awarded like the military does these days with medals. This thing was also metal…….gold…….and goes back a ways…...to the Romans. Whew! Ah to be a curious kid growing up in an old country!
>>>>>>» PSA (Public Service Announcement) Everyone here reading the Good News Round Up is…...reading the Round Up. Reading has been a big part of my life (can’t get through seminary without reading…..reading…….reading…...Hebrew…...reading….Greek…….reading…….Martin Luther in German……...reading….) and I enjoy it like most of you likely do. Curling up with a good book, the little screen glowing with E-bookery, or a well-aimed little light over the shoulder falling crisply on the page…….
Well if you are a reader, and by extension a book liker, book lover, book acquaintence-r, book-ophiliac, book collector, book-aholic, professional librarian, then here is a bookmark-able story. Again in England, a high percentage of the population reads English. There have been centuries of English folk writing books in England using England as a setting (see Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, mid-14th century.) THIS DELIGHTFUL STORY includes a listing of 35 top sites to visit in the UK that are connected to…...BOOKS! 221 Baker Street…….the Globe Theater…...Jane Austen’s cottage. A fine resource for planning your next visit there!
1387 A double header for you fans of Middle English. According to scholars the characters in Geoffrey Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales” (landmark literary work of the Middle Ages, for Middle English students) begin their pilgrimage to Canterbury. (Not quite leaving the Shire and setting off to destroy the One Ring, but everyone in both stories dresses about the same.) On this day 10 years later in 1397, this time in London, Chaucer himself is at the court of King Richard II and begins telling/reciting/reading the “Tales” (since Peter Jackson hadn’t made it into a 9 part trilogy of trilogies……and since movies hadn’t been invented yet, or electricity tamed, or anything that looks like modern life had happened at all, the best thing going was to be at court and somebody could tell a story.) Prithee have we comest a longish way…….
1738 Oxford, England Birth of Philip Hayes, organist, composer. Son of the organist at Oxford University, Philip followed dad into the family business, his voice and his keyboard talent earning him degrees from Oxford in music right up through a doctorate. Discovered and preserved many manuscripts of earlier composers that were in danger of being lost (Purcell, for example), thereby making sure they stayed in music history. Composed several pieces, particularly for organ. Noted for a set of works that he carefully scored for both harpsichord and piano, among the first to acknowledge the differences between the two and recognizing the rise of the piano over the earlier harpsichord.
1897 Madison, Wisconsin Birth of Thornton Wilder, novelist and playwright. Spent his early years in China. Grew up in California and served in World War I. Graduated Yale and then Princeton. Winner of 3 Pulitzer Prizes for both drama and novels. His work included "Our Town" and "The Bridge of San Luis Rey" “The Ides of March” and “The Eighth Day.”
1964 Washington DC and soon across the radios and in the malt shops of America. While Washington DC is generally NOT connected to the entertainment industry or pop trends, today was a moment for them, and in a stunning surprise, led by Law Enforcement! Federal Law Enforcement!! After months of analysis by audio engineers, applying various instruments and techniques, on this day the FBI Laboratory issues a final report: they officially can NOT determine the lyrics to “Louie, Louie”, so they cannot rule it is offensive …...or subversive……... or Communist. (“Me gotta go now/ yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah…..”)
The Officially FBI-Approved version, cleared by censors, dismayed and over-wroughtly condemned endlessly by True Pastors of True Churches who wear True Horn-Rimmed glasses and True black wing-tips to go with their True White polyester shirts, and danced to by Beehived Bouffant-ed Boppers…...loudly proclaiming…...SOMETHING! (And the band, from Portland, Oregon, performing their one-hit wonder, recognized they were on national TV in black-and-white, and so DRESSED for the occasion!)
Good wine, good bread, good friends = good life.
Alright friends and neighbors, Gnusies and Hope-ers of better things and better days, its your turn now in the comments below to add, subtract, multiply or divide this Round Up exponentially, reveling in the Obtuse and the Off-Beat, working out derivatives, angling for acute remarks, calculating circumferential comments, triple explaining your cubic conceptions.
Thank you for tuning in and stopping by on your Wednesday on the way through your slice of life this day.
May all your News be Good, comforting and inspiring.
Shalom.
