Good morning Gnusies and all seekers of uplift, hope, respite and ponderings! The 3rd Wednesday of the month edition hosted by yours truly WineRev celebrates……..Middle-Ness! Not only are we here on a Wednesday, the middle of the week of 7 days. (Mittwoch in German “Mid-Week”, and, inspired by 700 years of German upper crust in Estonia, the Estonian is “Kesk-Nadal” or “Mid/middle/center” and “week.”). Given this is November of “30 days hath November” fame, an even number divided in half gives us the 15th. I mean, how middle a day can you get?
Anyway, the Gnuville Breakfast Brunch and Central Meeting Hall of Middle-ness is in full regalia this morning. Coffee, tea and mocha-cocoa are all served on the revolving Hot Drink-ery Contraption in the middle fo the room, while mimosas of various fruit flavorings come swirling into fluted glasses to welcome the day. In the Feet Up Lounge, you can join in reading stories, commenting, asking, answering, expanding on, digressing from, being reminded of, Good News stories and moments. Feel free to add and join in; light humor always welcome and appreciated!
As keeper of the History Corner here in Gnuville, I will note to you there are not only groupings of Good News stories, but likewise historical and at times hysterical moments from November 15ths of Old Times, all making an appearance here for your further bemusement or rib-tickling.
Good News in Arts, Music and Fun
>>>>>» Now while my handle in these parts is WINE-Rev my years in the wine trade made me familiar with other beverages that would have been banned during Prohibition. One of the phenomena of the past 40 years or so (ever since President Jimmy Carter signed a bill repealing several Prohibition Era provisions in federal law…….and opening the door to…...experimentation!) has been the rise of craft brewing of beer. All sorts of small operations have cooked up their IPAs,
stouts, porters, ales and shandies, some staying local, some (like New Glarus of Wisconsin) deliberately limiting themselves to one state, yet others going regional, and some making it big on the national market (Sam Adams; Sierra Nevada).
Now comes a story that needs to be told. Climate change looms upon our planet in many ways, causing a slew of effects, many of these unexpected. It has occurred to some of these craft brewers, “How will climate change affect our BEER?”
Now THERE is question all of us should ask and ponder…..because its beer, of course! As arhpdx noted yesterday in her Tram Ride Diary of Delights, (and repetition is good!) now comes THIS HEARTENING STORY that brewers and farmers (like the farm President Biden visited the other week near Northfield, Minnesota, and that his policies are encouraging) are taking steps to ensure the flow of barley, wheat, hops and water will continue uninterrupted from vat to bar stool. YAY…….and Cheers!
>>>>>>» Who ARE those people? Them…...over there? They go in and out from somewhere, and their faces are familiar, but who are they? Do they live near here? Does that make them …...neighbors? But how to meet them? Chat with them? OK, random moments walking the dog, or waving snow shovels at each other on a snowfall morning (maybe even shoveling their walk?), but that seems pretty thin. What to do?
THIS FINE STORY fills us in on “Republique des Hyper Voisins”, in a neighborhood of Paris. These folks living in one of the world’s greatest cities met social isolation head on and invented “The Republic of Good Neighbors” to regularly, deliberately bring the appeal of a small town into a giant city.
And what is a neighborhood gathering without MUSIC? A little singing, a garage band, a hearty chorus of a fight sing…..hey, music. Holland too, chips in to the neighborhood of Europe, with a composer born this November 15th.
1696 (Arts, Music and Fun have been going on for a long time!) Groningen, Netherlands Birth of Gerhardus Havingha, keyboardist and composer. Son of an organist he earned a steady income from it his whole life. Gerhardus was in demand as an organist and played in churches and cathedrals around the country. Best remembered a thick volume of pieces for the harpsichord, suites and sonatas, and which included a manual of instruction that attracted a following among students. The collection of “8 suites” was controversial at the time (“there’s no such thing as bad publicity”) and in many circles was considered “too personal” with ”overly attractive ornamentation”. These same qualities have kept him in sight in later decades.
1993 Seal Beach, California Okay so here’s one as fodder for bar bets. On yesterday the 14th, 71-year-old Dr. Tom Amberry, a retired podiatrist, was working out at the Rosmoor Athletic Club. He stepped to the free throw line on the basketball court and sank a free throw……and another……and another……all in a row. After 12 straight hours he stopped because the janitors wanted to finish closing the club and cleaning up. (And they say retirees don’t know what to do with all their time……) He came back the next morning and on this day picked up where he left off and completed 2,750 consecutive free throws for a new world record. (If an NBA team wanted a free throw specialist they could call Mr. Automatic, they should have given Dr. Tom a contract…….)
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The Flashmob fad seems to have lost some of its momentum more recently, but it was remarkable in many ways. Whenever I need a lift, I’ll watch this sneaky yet wonderful flashmob. The fun was set in Spain, in a public library. The “SHHHHH” rule applies here like any library BUT…...the acoustics in this particular wing are really good. Some singers noticed, and rehearsed, IN SWAHILI, and plotted, and got some friends to do sneaky things with microphones to record the sound here and there and a camera crew to shoot video. And then they visited the library…..casually…...one afternoon…..(and you don’t need to know a single word of Swahili or Spanish, and you’ll recognize the Hebrew “Hallelujah”…...Basses and tenors starting, adding altos, then sopranos, and then, swinging in with huge smiles, that first soprano descant……..YAY!)
You’ll also notice in the closing credits that the singers are part of the “Coro de Gospel Good News”, and this IS Good News set to music!
Good News in Science and Technology
>>>>>» The Electric Revolution is sparking along, with every day another windmill starts spinning, or another solar array hums to life. The urgency of climate change adds to the excitement scientists and engineers live for in their fields, and between the two, ideas keep lighting up. Take batteries, which are obviously going to play a key role going forward. We’ve come far from the lead-acid block under your hood and the brown stuff oozing out of your old flashlight (from 1969, and just rediscovered in the back of a garage.
What sort of things can be used to store electrical power? Starting with our Palm Pilots we all learned to say in a cool, off-hand yet OH SO HIP way, “lithium-ion.” Lately other metals are holding hands and charging up, including a heavy duty connection of “iron-ion.” Now comes a head-turning STORY FROM THE BBC bringing a report on the possibilities of using seawater in batteries (something we have A LOT of!) But what about…...cotton? Really? (Mind you, under certain conditions, my 100% cotton tighty-whiteys certainly seem to convey a certain charge, but I think this is something different…...)
>>>>>» On a different front of cleaning up the environment, we know we have a plastics problem, a BIG problem. Just collecting the stuff costs a LOT of time and money, and then recycling them into something else is not all that economical. But now the American Chemical Society HAS A REPORT that a strain of E. coli bacteria can be used to…….wait for it…...EAT plastics. The little beasties chomp on polyethylene terephthalate (PET) waste and…...ahem…...excrete apidic acid. And those chemists can say with confidence that apidic acid can be (and is) used to make drugs, fragrances, and nylon materials. Now as long as those particular E. coli have no interest in eating on US, this sounds BIG…….and Good News.
Of course none of this is all that new. In years past, other scientists and engineers have landed on November 15ths for various discoveries and inventions as well, as you can see below:
1867 New York City. In a stock brokerage house near Wall Street, 20-year-old Thomas Edison’s first patented invention clattered to life today, the world’s first stock ticker, spewing out printed symbols of trades on the floor very nearly as they happened in real time. (It was later discovered that the paper tape of result (“ticker tape”) made a great form of confetti when thrown out of window in celebration during parades.)
1897 Niagara Falls AND Buffalo, New York OK, its time to get serious about Mr. Edison’s lightbulb idea. That electricity stuff is proving more and more useful, so we need more of it. George Westinghouse’s factory has built and installed a set of generators that are driven by Niagara’s rushing waters. On this day the electric plant throws the switch to send power 26 miles away to Buffalo, showing it could be done, and touching off an endless series of improvements and more wires everywhere. (Part of why you are reading this; electricity replaced the early coal-fired, steam driven computers of the Babbage company and made laptops small enough not to crush laps or break tables or desks…..those cast iron boilers were HEAVY…...)
1937 Washington, DC Okay, November 15 is hardly high summer in DC, and it can be pretty chilly, frankly. Still, since the equipment had been installed and maybe it was a warm day, so it was switched on. This day marks the 1st US congressional session to take place in air-conditioned chambers. (After all, more and more movie theaters are advertising “air-cooled” seating, and Congress can be down right theatrical, and also prone to generating LOTS of hot air, so this is a natural….)
1971 Mountain View, California (part of a valley……with large silicon deposits?) The Intel Corporation is three years old and builds memory chips for those room-sized computers. But there’s been other work on other ideas (like those 1897 entry steam-powered computers) and this day it pays off. Intel advertises their 4004 micro-processor for sale in the trade publication Electronic News. It contained 2,300 transistors, each the size of a red blood cell, and powered the “desktop computer” revolution. (Intel built and sold the chip for 2,392,861 Internet years----known to mere mortals as “discontinued in 1981” and the company is still around…..)
Oh, and speaking of chips and such, one of the tech gurus (Qualcomm) was a guy named Franklin Antonio. He died not that long ago and now his will has been made public because of one of his bequests. He left a gift of $200 million to……….the SETI Project, the “Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence.” THIS ARTICLE runs down the particulars…..sort of a real-life version of billionaire Mr. Haddon of Haddon Industries in the movie “Contact.” Scientist Arroway (Jodie Foster) gets a fresh source of funding from Haddon for her SETI and in this scene…….gets an ET ANSWER:
Good News in Politics and Society
Well last Tuesday was an EXCELLENT day for democracy in general and the Democratic party in particular. There were big wins (e.g. Beshear in Kentucky, flipping the Virginia House of Delegates) and plenty of small ones too (the odious Moms for Liberty got clobbered in school board races from coast to coast.)
Here in Minnesota the reputation of the Scandinavian settlers is part of the fabric (Sven & Ole & Lena jokes, krumkakke, lefse and…..if you must…..lutefisk) and yet not everyone has a sing-song accent and cheers for the Vikings. Here in our little suburb there was a school board slate up for election. One of the new faces apparently was a MAGA-breathing type who was trying to get a foot in the door and a seat on the local suburban board. Three seats in all were up for grabs and there were about 7 candidates. The Minnesota Democratic party let it be known that their preferred candidates were a happy combination of last names that spelled out A-B-C. The good news is the ABC set all won a seat (shutting out the MAGA and others.) But it is a measure of how much the Scandinavian heritage here has made room for new faces and new immigrants. The winners were surnamed Anderson (how Scandinavian can you get?), Bogusdewzski (Slavic East Europe heard from) and Chu (from Asian heritage.) YAY!
Oh, and BTW, in the last weeks leading up to the elections the DailyKos Elections team produced several diaries on the significance and possible predictive power of off-year and special elections. Now comes an observation regarding Democrat Beshear winning re-election as governor of Kentucky. That state is one of a handful that elects its governor in odd-numbered years (and for a 4-year term.) So starting in 2003 and running through 2007, 2011, 2015, and 2019 (a streak of 5) the winner of the Kentucky governor’s race, his PARTY went on to win the White House the following year. And Re-elected Governor Beshear is a Democrat, so………6 for 6??!! We hope so!!
In years of Yore, the 15ths of November have also noted things social and political (although the 1660 entry could comfortably move up to the Arts, Music and Fun department)
1660 New Amsterdam (now New York City), New Netherlands (now New York State) Its been about 5 years since some of the early Jewish settlers here were given permission to practice their faith and to even establish their own cemetery. But now, something far tastier! By act of the New Amsterdam governing council and the leaders of his synagogue, Mr. Asser (or Assher) Levy is licensed as the first kosher butcher in New Amsterdam. (Now if we know the first bakery to make rye bread, and the first mercantile store to carry mustard, we will know the birth of the first hot pastrami on rye within sniffing distance of the Hudson River, which would certainly be historic.)
1805 (One day to come the site of the aptly to be named town of) Seaview, Washington. Captain Merriwether Lewis and four men of the “Corps of Discovery” reach the Pacific Ocean. The 5 return to “Station Camp” and three days later Captain Clark and eleven other men in the Corps follow Lewis’ markings for their own view of the Pacific.
1856 San Francisco The Gold Rush was back in ’49 and the demand to get here caused ship builders back East to design the famed “Clipper ships”, the final, speedy designs of the era of sail. On this day the clipper ship Neptune’s Car arrives in port, 136 days out from New York City. Captain Joshua Patten took the helm as they sailed south through the Atlantic but fell dangerously ill a few weeks along. The rest of the (successful) voyage was commanded by Mary Ann Patten, the pregnant 19-year-old (!) wife of Joshua. A woman commanding a ship caused a sensation, and she was the toast of the town (except among certain superstitious sailors who could not support a woman captain.) She gave birth a month after arriving (so as captain she was quite pregnant!) Early next year Captain Joshua died from his seaborne illness, leaving a widow and orphan.
1899 Natal, South Africa London’s Morning Post newspaper has sent 24-year-old Winston Churchill as their war correspondent to cover the fighting between British and Boer (Dutch extraction) troops for control of South Africa. On this day Churchill and a fellow reporter are too close to the front and are captured by the Boers and taken to prison in Pretoria. Over a month later, on December 12, they escape, and after several days chase, reach safety in British-held Durban. Churchill wrote it all up and wired it in to the Morning Post. They published the daring escape over several days, making a ton of money printing extra copies. The breathless tale made Churchill famous (apart from his pedigreed family) for the first time. It was during the days and nights on the run that he later noted “The greatest thrill in anyone’s life is to be shot at…..and missed!”
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There is a disturbing rise along the fringe of American politics called “Christian Nationalism.” (CN) This amalgam of religion and fascism is toxic news for democracy. These people slide into the position that their POLITICAL opinions (white supremacy, misogyny, militarism) are approved, even commanded by God. So then anyone with differing political opinion is OPPOSING GOD.
This same crapola is ALSO toxic to Christianity. For instance, the CN mythology is the Founding Fathers were all Christians who imposed their faith on the new nation. (I’ve had one set-to with such a fanatic. I pointed out that Washington, Jefferson, Patrick Henry, George Mason were Virginians . Only members in good standing of the Anglican/now Episcopalian were eligible to hold office. Presbyterians and Methodists could vote but not run. And those pesky Baptists? They weren’t allowed to vote at all. SOOooooo, I asked if the guy was an Episcopalian, since the leading Founding Fathers were all members of the one, true Right Church. If you aren’t, then…….He was miffed, and left in a blather…...)
For those who don’t want to follow me into History, I have another one up my sleeve. There are 8 verses in the Bible that condemn homosexuality. (And I’ll get an ‘amen’ on that from these CN bigots.) Then I point out there are 27 verses in the Bible that condemn left-handed-ness, so we should apply the same sanctions and penalties…..times 3, since there are SO MANY MORE verses…...right?
BUT, friends and neighbors of the Good News who are of the Organized Religion persuasion, there is pushback. There was (and seems to be reviving) a movement called “Christian Socialism” (the formal name of several European political parties. And THIS HEARTENING< THOUGHTFUL ARTICLE lays out what this means in practical, even political terms. The piece highlights that United Auto Worker’s President Shawn Fain, who just led a spectacular strike for his work mates, is NOT SHY about applying his reading of Scripture to Union organizing and bargaining with management. (And President Joe Biden walked that picket line as a good Catholic who practices his faith in surprising ways.)
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Well I hope this gets you started and gets you going in your midweek, mid-month, mid-morning, mid-day, mid-afternoon, yea even unto mid-night pondering, commenting, adding, revising, correcting and snarking for all to see and hear. Welcome to the Round Up!
May all your News be Good, comforting and inspiring.
Shalom.