11PROTO

Nov 11

November 11, 2011. Nigel Tufnel day (11/11/11)

Events:

Rochester  ,November 11 Songs and Stories at the Portable Pantry 6:45 PM featuring Pat Obrien . The Pantry's great food will be available during the performance.

Donations will be accepted at the door. All proceeds will be donated to the local food pantry for Thanksgving. (Pat O’Brien, 332-6357)

Born:

Yen Jo-chu  1636-   Chinese scholar of Ch'ing dynasty

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Yen-Jo-chu/113460875370593

Abigail Smith Adams  (1744 – 10/28/1818)   US First Lady (2)

http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=4
Ephraim McDowell ( 1771 – June 25, 1830) – American surgeon (pioneered abdominal surgery)

http://www.mcdowellhouse.com/

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky 1821- February , 1881 Russia, novelist (Crime & Punishment)

http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/fdosto.htm

Thomas Bailey Aldrich  (1836 – 03/19/1907)  US writer-, author/editor

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search.html/?default_prefix=author_id&sort_order=downloads&query=311

No Songs in Winter

The sky is gray as gray may be,
There is no bird upon the bough,
There is no leaf on vine or tree.

In the Neponset marshes now
Willow-stems, rosy in the wind,
Shiver with hidden sense of snow.

So too 'tis winter in my mind,
No light-winged fancy comes and stays:
A season churlish and unkind.

Slow creep the hours, slow creep the days,
The black ink crusts upon the pen--
Just wait till bluebirds, wrens, and jays
And golden orioles come again!

http://www.online-literature.com/thomas-bailey-aldrich/sisters-tragedy/

Alfred Hermann Fried 1864 – MAY 5,1921  Germany, pacifist (Nobel 1911)
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1911/fried-bio.html

General George S. Patton  (1885 – 12/21/1945)  US military
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=1144
Charles "Lucky" Salvatore Lucania; Luciano 1897 – January 26, 1962  - NYC Mafia gangster

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,989779,00.html

http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=651

Rene Clair 1898 - March 15, 1981 Fr.  director (I Married a Witch)

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0163229/

Sam Spiegel 1901 - December 31, 1985  Ger producer (On the Waterfront, Bridge over River Kwai)

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0818545/
Alger Hiss 1904 - 15th November, 1996 State Department official and spy

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAhiss.htm\

Howard  Melvin Fast 1914 –March 12,2003  US screenwriter (Rachel & the Stranger, Spartacus)

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0268779/

William Proxmire  (1915 – 12/15/2005)  US Senator (WI) (Golden Fleece Awards)

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKproxmire.htm

Dallas McCord "Mack" Reynolds ( 1917 - January 30, 1983) was an American science fiction writer.

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?400

Kalle Päätalo 1919-2000 Finnish writer

http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/paatalo.htm

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.  (1922 – 04/11/2007)  US writer
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/vonnegut.htm

http://www.nndb.com/people/928/000022862/

Mose Allison  (1928 – )  US singer, songwriter -jazz artist
http://moseallison.com/

Carlos Fuentes (1928 – )  Mexican writer
http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/fuentes.htm

http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/fue0bio-1

Rep. Barbara Boxer  (1940 – )  US Senator (CA)
http://www.barbaraboxer.com/

Andy Partridge  (1953 – )  English singer, songwriter, guitarist (XTC)
http://www.allmusic.com/artist/andy-partridge-p19785

Passed:

Nat Turner   Oct 2,1800--1831 slave,

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part3/3p1518.html

Soren Kierkegaard    (05/05/1813 –1855)  Danish philosopher

http://www.tameri.com/csw/exist/kierkegaard.shtml

Lucretia Coffin Mott  (01/03/1793 –1880)  US social reformer

http://www.mott.pomona.edu/

Henry Beam Piper (March 23, 1904 – 1964) American science fiction author

http://www.zarthani.net/

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search.html/?default_prefix=author_id&sort_order=downloads&query=8301

Sir Alan P. Herbert  (09/24/1890 –1971)  English writer

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,822222,00.html

http://blog.gaiam.com/quotes/authors/sir-alan-patrick-herbert
Stringbean [David Akeman], June 17, 1915– 1973 banjoist/comedian (Hee Haw)

http://www.cmt.com/artists/az/stringbean/bio.jhtml

http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=1885

Alexander Calder  (07/22/1898 –1976)  US sculptor
http://calder.org/life/page/biography.html

Yasser Arafat  (08/24/1929 –2004)  Palestinian president
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1994/arafat-bio.html

http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=9747634

Peter F. Drucker  (11/19/1909 –2005)  Austrian educator, writer, management consultant
http://www.cgu.edu/pages/292.asp

Rudyard Kipling as a Job Consultant

If you can get yourself a fancy title,
Though no one knows just what your job’s about,
If you can screw up projects that are vital,
Then shift the blame before they find you out;
If you can treat a rival like a brother,
Then stab him in the back each chance you can;
If you can steal the program of another,
Then take the credit that it was your plan;

If you can rig expenses that are phony,
While everyone believes that they are real;
If you can take long lunches with a crony,
And make your boss believe you’ve closed a deal;
If you can get the office staff to love you,
When in your heart of hearts you think they’re dirt;
If you can look alive to those above you,
When nine to five no effort you exert;

If you can seem free-thinking and courageous,
Yet always end up siding with your boss;
If you can get a mammoth raise in wages,
Yet make him feel you’re working at a loss;
If every line that’s written here you’ve noted,
And every rule and precept you obey,
Then to the highest spot you’ll be promoted,
Unless, of course, you’re knifed along the way.

                                                            by Frank Jacobs

Copyright 1994 by Frank Jacobs. All rights reserved. Read more acerbic parodies by Frank Jacobs in Pitiless Parodies and Other Outrageous Verse. Foreward by Martin Gardner. Great book. Buy it.

http://holyjoe.org/poetry/jacobs.htm

Sites:

http://www.loc.gov/today/pr/2011/11-223.html

http://robertfrostfarm.org/

http://robotics.nasa.gov/

http://www.newbanner.com/SecHumSCM/WhereAmI.html

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/dreiser/carrie.html

http://thedizzies.blogspot.com/

http://www.victoriamansion.org/

History:

1620 The "Mayflower Compact" was signed by the 41 Separatists among the passengers of the "Mayflower," serving as the basis for combining themselves "into a civil body politic." Democratic in form, the Compact comprised the first written American constitution, and remained in force until 1691.

http://www.historyplace.com/unitedstates/revolution/mayflower.htm

1918 Armistice Day-WW I ends (at 11 AM on Western Front)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/8029948/First-World-War-officially-ends.html
1921 President Harding dedicates Tomb of Unknown Soldier

http://www.tombguard.org/

1959 1st episode of "Rocky & His Friends" airs

http://bullwinkle.toonzone.net/history.htm

Bonus Poem:

The Gift Outright

The land was ours before we were the land's.
She was our land more than a hundred years
Before we were her people. She was ours
In Massachusetts, in Virginia,
But we were England's, still colonials,
Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,
Possessed by what we now no more possessed.
Something we were withholding made us weak
Until we found out that it was ourselves
We were withholding from our land of living,
And forthwith found salvation in surrender.
Such as we were we gave ourselves outright
(The deed of gift was many deeds of war)
To the land vaguely realizing westward,
But still unstoried, artless, unenhanced,
Such as she was, such as she would become.


                                                 Robert Frost

Essay:

My dad served with the OSS in the Battle of the Bulge. He told me he was behind the lines as often as not; as a courier it was his job to drive his Jeep “Bonnie V”, wherever and for what -ever reason they told him to go. One of his favorite jobs was delivering captured officers to interrogation. He had nothing but nice things to say about the German people. He brought home a box of odds and ends –arm-bands, books, coins that these prisoners would trade for a cigarette.

He told me about travelling the heights of the Alps and there are photos of Dad and his friends on leave. He loved Paris, but his talk of London was tainted by buzz-bomb nightmares. He slept alone; it was a dangerous thing to wake him from a sound sleep- he would bound out of bed with his arms up in a gesture of self-defense.

The story he told me about being behind enemy lines involved a period when he got sick. He said he was taken care of (saved) by some people he met. If he was behind the lines I like to think he was taken care of by Germans. He said he was in a little trouble when he showed up at a rendezvous late and was listed “MIA” ,but there were a lot of MIAS in the theatre of war.

What is special to me is that he started responding to questions about his part in the war about the time he received his medals for his part in the war.-about 50 years after his release-he was OSS and the records were kept secret for that group and time. The Greatest Generation,Indeed!

There are a few pages he gave me that he wrote about the enlistment, training and travel to Europe that I treasure. Many questions I would ask are still unanswered…

 We’ll never know- dad died 5 years ago this week.

Dad! My war hero!

Skip

Thanks to all my friends who have spoken about their feelings about our defenses through the years  - The peaceniks, the historians, and the vets…many, my treasured friends.

…Nate, Al, Barry, Mac, Eric, Pat, and Pat Barb, Tom, Jim, Ed, and Uncle Gil.

slm