Under the heading “There’s a Holiday for Everything”, March 28th is “National Weed Appreciation Day”. Yep. I’m not even making that up. National Weed Appreciation Day was established to remind people that a weed is just a plant growing where you don’t want it to grow. Blackberries are fantastic when you find them growing wild in the forest, but are perhaps less desirable when you find them growing in the middle of your rhododendron bushes. That’s basically the details of what makes a weed a weed, and there are hundreds of ‘weeds’ that are incredibly important in health, science, and culinary uses. After all, dandelion wine isn’t just a pretty name! Growing up, when we visited my Italian grandparents, we always had dandelion salad. My grandfather would grow patches of the dandelions on purpose, just to harvest the greens. They were bitter as all get-out, but when washed down with homemade wine… well… you forget about the bitterness really fast... Nobody likes doing laundry. And we have machines. Pity the homemakers before the machine age. Clothes had to be washed in the bathtubs, usually with nothing more than household soap, and then hung out on lines outside to dry. When families consisted of six or eight or more children, it must have been an enormous undertaking. Not surprising, then, that patents for washing machines appeared just after the perfection of steam power — automatizing the washing of clothes was an obvious time and energy saver, and the relatively simple motions of the wash making the machine fairly easy to build. On this day, March 28, in 1797 the first United States patent for “Clothes Washing” was granted a New Hampshire man, Nathanial Briggs. This was known as the Box Mangler. It consisted of a heavy frame containing a large box filled with rocks, resting on a series of long wooden rollers. Washing was laid flat on a sheet and wound round one of the rollers. Two people pulled on levers to move the heavy box back and forth over the rollers. It was large and expensive and required heavy labor to operate. A New Brunswick man improved on Brigg’s invention to build a washing machine with a wringing mechanism, and by early 1900s the first patents for electric washers and driers began appearing. On this date in 1881, the "Greatest Show On Earth" was formed by PT Barnum & James A Bailey when they merged their two circuses together (Ringling Brothers would come later). Phineas Taylor Barnum was the most remarkable entrepreneur and entertainer in 19th century America. He is an icon of American ingenuity and our patron saint of promotion, his story is a fascinating exploration of 19th century social, commercial, political and industrial history, and his tale begins long before his famous circus was created in 1872. He was an entrepreneur, museum proprietor, business leader, politician, urban developer, community benefactor, philanthropist, temperance leader, emancipationist, lecturer and author. Barnum was committed to the intellectual and cultural development of society, and was a voice for the pursuit of freedom and choice. The circus was P.T. Barnum’s retirement project – Barnum was a well-established entertainer and 61 years old when he began the “Greatest Show On Earth.” Barnum introduced fine arts to America by engaging the Swedish opera singer Jenny Lind to tour the United States, paying her an unheard-of $1,000 a night to rave reviews. Barnum created the 10,000-seat New York Hippodrome as a home for his circus venture, but you might know it by its later name: Madison Square Garden. Barnum had an office there until his death in 1891, and some of his last words are reported to have been the question: “…what were the receipts at the Garden?” James Bailey is probably the least known of the founders of the now closed Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus. At age thirteen James ran away from this home, barefooted and with only the clothes on his back and a broken pocket knife. He found work at a farm, working for $ 3.25 a month with lodging and food. During this period of working at the farm, young Bailey happened to meet a billposter for 'Robinson and Lake's Old Time Circus". James was hired to put up posters for the show, earning him free tickets to the performance. When the circus came to town Bailey was introduced to Mr. Robinson, James told him that he was an orphan and wanted to join the show. He was hired and began working hard in an environment that he loved. Robinson liked the young man and soon began treating him as his own son, however three years later Robinson died. Bailey then at age sixteen began working for circus owner James E. Cooper, as an advance agent for his show. Again Bailey worked hard and greatly impressed Mr. Cooper, who eventually made Bailey a partner in the circus. The show was then renamed the "Cooper and Bailey Circus". Cooper died in 1873; Bailey soon partnered with famed impresario P.T. Barnum. When Barnum died in 1891, his widow sold her interest in the circus to Bailey, who began a five-year tour of Europe with the circus in 1897. By the end of the century, the Barnum & Bailey Circus featured five performance rings and more than 1,000 employees and traveled in some 85 railroad cars. It became one of the most successful circuses in the country until his death in 1906, when the Ringling brothers bought it. And this date in 1971 marks the end of the Ed Sullivan show. From 1948 until its cancellation in 1971, the show ran on CBS every Sunday night from 8–9 p.m. Eastern Time, and it is one of the few entertainment shows to have run in the same weekly time slot on the same network for more than two decades (during its first season, it ran from 9 to 10 p.m. ET). Virtually every type of entertainment appeared on the show; classical musicians, opera singers, popular recording artists, songwriters, comedians, ballet dancers, dramatic actors performing monologues from plays, and circus acts were regularly featured. The format was essentially the same as vaudeville and, although vaudeville had undergone a slow demise for a generation, Sullivan presented many ex-vaudevillians on his show. The Ed Sullivan Show is especially known to the World War II and baby boomer generations for introducing acts and airing breakthrough performances by popular 1950s and 1960s musicians such as Elvis Presley, The Beatles, The Supremes, The Dave Clark Five, The Animals, Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Beach Boys, The Jackson 5, Stevie Wonder, Janis Joplin, The Rolling Stones, The Mamas and the Papas, The Lovin' Spoonful, Herman's Hermits, The Doors, Dionne Warwick, Barbra Streisand, and The Band. Bill Haley & His Comets performed their hit "Rock Around the Clock" in early August 1955, later recognized as the first rock and roll song broadcast on a national television program. In the late 1960s, Sullivan remarked that his program was waning as the decade went on. He realized that to keep viewers, the best and brightest in entertainment had to be seen, or else the viewers were going to keep on changing the channel. Along with declining viewership, Ed Sullivan attracted a higher median age for the average viewer (which most sponsors found undesirable) as the seasons went on. These two factors were the reason the show was cancelled by CBS on March 16, 1971, as part of a mass cancellation of advertiser-averse programming. While Sullivan's landmark program ended without a proper finale, Sullivan produced one-off specials for CBS until his death in 1974, including an Ed Sullivan Show 25th anniversary special in 1973. We had 25 people come out to play this week. TWENTY-FIVE! Including our own Ms. Dot! We were so happy to see her and Jim come through the door! We paid out six places and three teams this week: 1st Place: Jerry Gooden with an 18/8/+134 2nd Place: Glenn McMahon with a 14/7/+78 3rd Place: Jim Townsend with a 13/6/+65 4th Place: Allan Simpson with a 13/6/+58 5th Place: Fran Ward with a 12/6/+31 6th Place: John Morch an 11/5/+24 First Team: Jeff Seidenstein (11) and Megan Player (8) Second Team: Kristy Haught (10) and Larry Phifer (9) Third Team: Bernard Whitfield (10) and Jeff raynes (8) Thanks, Kristy, for handling the end-of-night partner stuff! Full results are posted on the website, with the top-10 standings below: Jerry is making a move on Jeff -- can Jeff be overtaken? STAY TUNED! For those of you thinking of coming out to the tournament this weekend, walkins are totally accepted (cash only). Thanks for all the support! See many of y'all this weekend, the rest on Monday! ~ Jennifer
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I can't believe we're almost through with March! Where has the time gone??? But, it's still Women's History Month, so our first story is about a historical woman... The U.S. Naval Reserve Act of 1916 permitted the enlistment of qualified “persons” for service in the Navy. When the Secretary of the Navy asked whether this applied only to males and was told that it did not, the Navy began enlisting women less than a month later. Historical records reflect that on March 17, 1917, the first woman to enlist in the Navy was Loretta Perfectus Walsh. She was born on April 22, 1896, in Philadelphia and thus had the distinction of being the first woman to service in any of the U.S. armed forces in other than a nursing assignment. Until Walsh’s enlistment, women had served as Navy nurses but were civilian employees with few benefits. On March 21, 1917, Walsh was sworn in as Chief Yeoman, becoming the first woman Chief Petty Officer in the Navy. She served her active duty at the Naval Shipyard in Philadelphia and when World War I ended, Walsh and all the Yeoman(F) personnel were released from active duty. As Walsh had enlisted in the Naval Reserve for a 4-year enlistment she continued on inactive reserve status, receiving a modest retainer pay, until the end of her enlistment on March 17, 1921. Walsh fell victim to influenza in the fall of 1918 and later contracted tuberculosis. She died on August 6, 1925, at the age of 29 in Olyphant, Pennsylvania. In memory of Walsh and her bold actions, the official history program of the Department of the Navy identifies March 21, 1917, as a date in American naval history. Annually, in recognition of Walsh’s historic service, a wreath laying ceremony is held at her gravesite on this date Also on this date, but in 1940, "Rebecca", directed by Alfred Hitchcock, premiered in Miami, Florida. The film follows a young woman (Joan Fontaine) who finds herself swept away into a romance with a mysterious widower named Maxim de Winter (Laurence Olivier). Everything feels like a fairy tale for the new Mrs. de Winter until they arrive at Maxim’s country home, Manderley. There, our heroine discovers that she is haunted by the omnipresent memory of her predecessor, the glamorous Rebecca de Winter. Ever since Daphne du Maurier published Rebecca in 1938, the story has been synonymous with dread and glamour. That’s due to the power of du Maurier’s text as well as its very first film adaptation. The original Rebecca, won the Best Picture Oscar and remains a beloved classic to this day. And, on this date in 1963 Alcatraz prison in San Francisco Bay was closed after 29 years of operation. It did not close because of the disappearance of Morris and the Anglins (the decision to close the prison was made long before the three disappeared), but because the institution was too expensive to continue operating. Alcatraz Island (more accident than design) was destined to become the army's first long-time prison. In the summer of 1861, the commander of the Department of the Pacific, Brig. Gen. Edwin V. Sumner, found an expedient solution to the problems of the growing numbers of military prisoners and of improving military security by ordering the transfer of prisoners in the Presidio guardhouse to Alcatraz on August 27. Surely, no one that day envisioned that this was the first step in a 73-year history of military penology on the Rock. By the end of the month, the 13 local prisoners in the guardhouse had been joined by another 13 who had come across the bay from the Presidio. In October 1933 the Justice Department prepared a statement saying that it had completed arrangements for taking over the military prison. Stressing the security of the island, the statement pointed out that Alcatraz had long been known as one of the best disciplined and most secure penal institutions in the country. It would serve well for the present campaign against racketeers and confirmed criminals. The first Bureau of Prisons personnel took up residency on Alcatraz in early February, 1934. By August, just before the first federal prisoners arrived, Alcatraz had 52 guards on the payroll. Alcatraz was to be operated on the principle of very limited privileges to inmates. The privilege of having visitors was to be earned; prisoners were to come only by transfer from other institutions; inmates could obtain lawyers only after the written permission of the attorney general. On average, the time of residence was about eight years. Men were never directly sentenced to Alcatraz and usually had to earn their way. There were only two men ever paroled directly from Alcatraz to the free world. Over the course of its incarnation as a prison, Alcatraz housed between 222 and 302 prisoners. There were approximately 1545 total men imprisoned there. We had 23 peggers come out! It's so wonderful to see our numbers increasing back to pre-pandemic levels. With that many people, we did sitters-and-movers, which kept us moving right along. We paid out six places and three teams. Alphabetically, all our winners fell between last names P and S. For some reason, things like that make my inner geek smile. First Place: Jeff Raynes, with a 15/7/104 Second Place: Robert Smothers, with a 15/7/+42 Third Place: Jeff Seidenstein, with a 14/7/20 Fourth Place: Megan Player with a 14/6/+69 Fifth Place: Steve Podolski, with a 13/6/+56 Sixth Place: Allan Simpson with a 12/5/+5 1st Team: Al Robinson (11) and John Morch (10) 2nd Team: Jennifer Johnson (11) and Tom Goeschel (9) 3rd Team: Kristy Haught (9) and Brian Wilson (8) No Bernard this week, so your fivers were safe for one more week! Full results are up on the website, but here are the top-10 in the standings: With only 7 weeks left in the season (plus the GRNT) we are running out of time for someone to prevent Jeff from a repeat Champion season. Jerry and Frank have a shot, if Jeff would stop making great plays, getting great cards, ya know, all that stuff. We'll see how the rest of the season plays out :) < Posted Thursday > Thanks to everyone for your thoughts and prayers for my niece, who underwent back surgery to fix severe scoliosis on Tuesday this week. She's doing great (though in considerable pain) and is up and walking around -- probably going home on Saturday. That's all I have for this week, see ya'll Monday! ~ Jennifer Beware the Ides of March.... but why? Blame Shakespeare. It's the soothsayer’s warning to Julius Caesar. But the Ides of March actually has a non-threatening history. Kalends, Nones and Ides were ancient markers used to reference dates in relation to lunar phases. Ides simply referred to the first new moon of a given month, which usually fell between the 13th and 15th. In fact, the Ides of March once signified the new year, which meant celebrations and rejoicing. Yet when heroes in movies, books and television shows are faced with the Ides of March, it’s always a bad omen. Several television shows have had episodes named “The Ides of March.” And it’s never good news. On this almost-Ides in 1794 Eli Whitney patented the cotton gin machine, thereby revolutionizing the cotton industry in the southern US states. In 1792, after graduating from Yale College (now Yale University), Whitney headed to the South. He originally planned to work as a private tutor but instead accepted an invitation to stay with Catherine Greene the widow of American Revolutionary War general Nathanael Greene, on her plantation, known as Mulberry Grove, near Savannah, Georgia. While there, Whitney learned about cotton production–in particular, the difficulty cotton farmers faced making a living. In many ways, cotton was an ideal crop; it was easily grown, and unlike food crops its fibers could be stored for long periods of time. But cotton plants contained seeds that were difficult to separate from the soft fibers. A type of cotton known as long staple was easy to clean, but grew well only along coastal areas. The vast majority of cotton farmers were forced to grow the more labor-intensive short-staple cotton, which had to be cleaned painstakingly by hand, one plant at a time. The average cotton picker could remove the seeds from only about one pound of short-staple cotton per day. Whitney built a machine that could effectively and efficiently remove the seeds from cotton plants. The invention, called the cotton gin (“gin” was derived from “engine”), worked something like a strainer or sieve: Cotton was run through a wooden drum embedded with a series of hooks that caught the fibers and dragged them through a mesh. The mesh was too fine to let the seeds through but the hooks pulled the cotton fibers through with ease. On this date in 1958, Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) certified the first gold record (Perry Como's Catch A Falling Star). Como, a 50-something holdover in a cozy cardigan sweater, stood for everything that youthful rock and roll did not, after all. Where rock and roll promised sex, excitement and social change, Como’s act evoked much more staid pursuits. Yet “Catch A Falling Star” was not the only hit record for Perry Como in the early years of the rock-and-roll “revolution.” Songs like “Hot Diggity” and “Round And Round” more than held their own against more rebellious fare, and while they might not have been “cool,” they didn’t need to be in order to find an audience in late 1950s America. The RIAA’s next honoree was Laurie London for “He’s Got the Whole World In His Hands.” And Elvis Presley was the third artist to receive such an honor (for “Hard Headed Woman”) in August, 1958. And of course, March 14, or 3/14 or 3.14 is better known as Pi Day! That day where math geeks everywhere celebrate Pi with pie. Or with having pi-recitation contexts. I'll take the pie. Every time. I brought home a wicked cold from Reno (not COVID, I tested), and wanted to keep it allllll to myself, so I eschewed club in favor of a pile of blankets and some hot soup. Jeff Raynes took the reins this week (thanks Jeff!). I'm glad I stayed away, because I would have felt terrible if Dot Davis caught whatever illness I was shedding like crazy. That's right, Ms. Dot came for the second week in a row! We're so glad that she's feeling up to coming out! We also had a Steve Hooker sighting (!!) and Henry and Robert came out to play, too. Looks like I picked a terrible week to miss! There were 21 players in attendance, so the group did sitters and movers, and finished up just after 10pm. Not too bad for such a big field. With 21 players, 5 places and 3 teams were paid out: 1st Place: Joe Greiner with a massive 20/8/223 2nd Place: Larry Phifer with a 15/7/53 3rd Place: Al Robinson with a 14/7/37 4th Place: Jeff Raynes with a 13/6/37 5th Place: Frank Abernathy with a 12/5/102 For teams, we had: 1st: Fran Ward (10) and Liz Henderson (9) 2nd: Andy Wagner (11) and Heather Chilsen (8) 3rd: Jerry Gooden (10) and Robert Smothers (8) Did you do better than Bernard? He scored a 4/2 this week, so maybe :) There was also an oddity of the day as reported by Jeff during his game with Heather: "On two of her consecutive deals, Heather had a crib flush; both of them were in hearts. I don't remember ever seeing that in my 40 years." Pretty cool, that. There is an errant cross-check issue with the cards this week, so the results haven't yet been posted and the standings are not yet updated. BUT, using my brain and a little light math (read as: Microsoft Excel), here's what I came up with: I'll be back this week, and will have flyers for Spring Fling, our GRNT (those should be in the box) and the National Open. Take a Tree Home With You! Ciao for now, ya'll! ~ Jennifer I've been battling a cold since coming home from Reno (cold, not COVID, thankfully), and work has been sapping all my energy. So this is woefully late in posting. On this date in 1857, a change was made to make a baseball game length be 9 innings. In baseball's infancy, not only was it a game without a clock, but it was also a game without a set number of innings. Instead, teams played until one of them scored 21 aces -- the 19th century equivalent of a run. This wasn't a problem at first, in an age in which scoring runs was pretty commonplace -- games lasted an average of only six innings in the 1840s, and featured scores as high as 60-100 combined runs. A problem was brewing, though: As skill levels increased and pitching caught up to hitting, those 21 aces were harder and harder to come by. After an 1856 game ended in a 12-12 tie on account of darkness, it was clear that a change needed to be made. The decision to limit the number of innings gave way to the issue of exactly how many innings should make up each regulation-length game. This was connected to the minimum number of players each side had for a game to go forward. The issue had been so divisive among the baseball clubs that a committee was formed to standardize the number of men and innings games played between clubs would feature. The committee ultimately decided upon nine innings and nine men would be the standard. On this date a few years later, 1876, Alexander Graham Bell successfully received a patent for the telephone and secured the rights to the discovery. Days later, he made the first ever telephone call to his partner, Thomas Watson. Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922) was born in Scotland and moved to Boston in 1872 to open a school for teachers of the deaf. He became a U.S. citizen in 1882. His early experiments included ways to improve and use telegraphy. The telegraph conveyed messages through a system of electrical sounds that, when decoded, could be translated into words. It was dependent on skilled technicians and never became a home appliance. Rather, it required you to go to a telegraph office to send or receive a message, or perhaps a messenger did this for you. Bell sought something revolutionary: to transmit not only the sound of the human voice, but audible words. With the telephone, Bell wrote in 1878, "It is possible to connect every man's house, office or factory with a central station, so as to give him direct communication with his neighbors." And Happy Birthday, NC State! On this date in 1887, North Carolina State University was founded by the North Carolina General Assembly. NC State was established under the auspices of the federal Morrill Act of 1862, which allowed the U.S. government to donate federally owned land to the states for the purpose of establishing colleges that would teach “agriculture and the mechanic arts.” NC State University was founded on March 7, 1887. Under considerable pressure and not without controversy, the General Assembly passed the act which authorized the establishment of the "North Carolina College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts." The brand-new school held its first classes in the fall of 1889 with 72 students, six faculty members and one building. The first faculty of six professors offered courses in agriculture, horticulture, pure and agricultural chemistry, English and bookkeeping, and mathematics and practical mechanics. President Alexander Quarles Holladay served as professor of history. Courses in military science and physics were added later. The building behind the Bell Tower, now Holladay Hall, was originally known as Main Building. It was the first and only building on campus when the doors opened on October 3, 1889. The cornerstone was laid in August 1888, but most of the building was damaged by fire before it could open (Note: the building is constructed on a family grave site, and one theory was that a ghost burned it down). Pink and Blue were the original school colors adopted from an early literary society on campus. The original colors were replaced with Brown and White in September of 1895 by the Athletic Association, but it only lasted for one football game (the A&M Farmers verses UNC Chapel Hill). The Chancellor, Dr. George Tayloe Winston disliked the colors so much, he put it to a vote of the student body. The majority vote was for Red and White, and it has remained uncontested ever since. We had a modest turnout this week, with 17 players coming out to peg. we also had a guest come to check us out, Bruce Johnson. Hopefully he feels like a good fit for us! With 17 players, we had 5 places and 2 teams pay out:
1st Place: Andy Wagner, with a 14/7/+57 2nd Place: Jeff "can't stop me" Raynes earned a 14/6/+94 tonight. 3rd Place: Steve Podolski with a 14/6/+61 4th Place: Larry Phifer with a 13/6/+70 5th Place: Kristy Haught with a 13/6/+65 1st Team: Jerry Gooden (12) and Bernard Whitfield (10) 2nd Team: Jeff Seidenstein (11) and Dot Davis (11) Are you down? Bernard's 10-point card left only about six players doing not-as-well. Thanks Jeff, for handling the team match-ups. I was so woefully late in getting this up, that I don't have the standings this week; but they'll be up as soon as I get around to getting LAST week's stuff up. It's been a tough couple of weeks :-) See ya'll soon! ~ Jennifer |
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