No reason for the picture above, except that they are drinking coffee. It adds life to life! Also, you might want to try decaf if you drank so much one of your lids crimped down permanently in the blink position:
It really does look as if her eye-skin melted and fused into a smooth surface, adn she decided to go out wearing an insect with many feathery limbs.
It is Coffee Ads over in the 50s section. There's nothing for 1952. I checked to see if I'd missed anything. Not really. The ad above is for Nescafe, and she's winking at us because it is GUARANTEED to be the best coffee you have ever had, or it's free. It is not possible that decaf can be the best coffee you have ever had. I'm stunned they made the offer. I think they counted on people keeping it around in case a guest wanted some. There's always one.
Tuesday was good, aside from the tax-paying part. They should give you a cigar after you've filed. Not a Cohiba, but its anagram dark twin, a Bohica. Then I went to work and had a hamburger pattie with Grey Poupon, and wrote. Hoisted weights. Left. Slept; did national radio. Made dinner. And now here we are. And here we go:
I’m not going to make fun of the “crew” for Blue Origin, because it isn’t necessary. You just have to quote them. Katy Perry’s line about putting the “ass” in “astronaut” was the most revelatory line, because it shows what vulgar dullards our modern celebs can be. C'mon, Ms. P - “estronauts” was just sitting there waiting. I wish there’d been a Russian woman on board to put the “Cosmo” in “cosmonaut.” As many pointed out, the first woman in space actually did something besides take pictures for the ‘Gram: Valentina Terischova, whose name I remember from a tribute song by a Kraftwerk knock-off.
I salute their bravery, but they weren’t a crew, anymore than I could be called an old salt swabby because I’ve taken some ocean cruises. The same day the Bezos rocket went up and down, a SpaceX rocket went up and down for the 400th time, and actually put something in orbit. I mention this because I’ve had this hanging around in my Blog Fodder notes folder for some time.
I actually lost it, and had to do a search - which turned up a ton of similar sentiments.
And so on and so on.
First of all, I love Carnegie Libraries, and I love Andy for building them. Well, funding them. Of course the anti-billionaire people would prefer if the government took all the money and built the libraries themselves, and if it meant half as many were constructed because Reasons, that would be fine.
But. Starlink gives library access to towns that will never have a library. The most isolated village can have the world’s greatest collection of knowledge beamed down from space in a trice. NOT THE SAME, I’m sure some will say. People have to pay for it!
Nearly all of Carnegie's libraries were built according to "the Carnegie formula", which required financial commitments for maintenance and operation from the town that received the donation.
Carnegie required the elected officials—the local government—to:
• demonstrate the need for a public library;
• provide the building site;
• pay staff and maintain the library;
• draw from public funds to run the library—not use only private donations;
• annually provide ten percent of the cost of the library's construction to support its operation; and,
• provide free service to all.
He burdened local governments with the cost of his vanity project, and committed them to expenditures in the future! And for this he gets canonized with a stained glass window?
Kidding. I didn’t know that Carnegie didn’t pay for the entire thing, but fine. Still a noble project. Here’s more about the good old days when billionaires built libraries instead of playing with rockets: he had critics who said he was doing it for the wrong reasons, and shouldn’t have had the money to do it in the first place. Also, he was arrogant and condescending:
Carnegie's own steel workers echoed this (criticism), arguing that his wealth would be better spent on improving working conditions for his own employees, rather than on library buildings across the country.[Carnegie's response to those criticisms and the ensuing Homestead Steel Strike was telling of what he thought of his workers' concerns: "If I had raised your wages, you would have spent that money by buying a better cut of meat or more drink for your dinner. But what you needed, though you didn't know it, was my libraries and concert halls.”
If any modern billionaire decided to build libraries in small towns, he would be criticized if he chose the architectural style of Carnegie’s buildings. Too Eurocentric, ergo white supremacy. Grok, draw me a Carnegie Library in the modern style:
There. Not a single cultural reference, just an object unmoored from antecedents. Perfect. Inside you'll find the bios of the people who pushed through the laws to take the property away from the people who had the wrong quantity. No one ever checks them out, but they have ten copies of each.
It’s 1904.
I didn't know this:
It's just a throwaway story, assuming people knew the backstory.
The Reed Smoot hearings, also called Smoot hearings or the Smoot Case, were a series of Congressional hearings on whether the United States Senate should seat U.S. Senator Reed Smoot, who was elected by the Utah legislature in 1903. Smoot was an apostle in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), one of the top 15 leaders of the church. The hearings began in 1904 and continued until 1907, when the Senate voted. The vote fell short of a two-thirds majority needed to expel a member so he retained his seat.
Popular opposition against Smoot's seating in the Senate centered on the church's practice of polygamy, which the church officially abandoned in 1890; as the hearings revealed, however, the practice continued unofficially well into the 20th century.
The editor of the paper seems to be one of those fellows who spent a lot of time thinking about precious metals and their value. I have no idea what the Minnesota reference means. Something to do with streetcar tokens and monetary value, I presume. I mean, duh, brilliant me.
I get the feeling the newspaper was a one-man shop.
Can’t proof everything twice.
Who?
This rather dour fellow. Railroad man, eventually, among other things.
The name may be familiar because of his descendants, including William Averell Harriman. As for the Harriman at hand, it's full of interesting details:
As a young boy, Harriman spent a summer working at the Greenwood Iron Furnace in the area owned by the Robert Parker Parrott family that would become Harriman State Park.
Well, that suggests an inversions of fortune, no? Did he buy it to triumph over his hot days in the furnace?
Ah, a true Horatio Alger tale:
He quit school at age 14 to take a job as an errand boy on Wall Street in New York City. His uncle Oliver Harriman had earlier established a career there. By age 22, he was a member of the New York Stock Exchange.
Take a look at that picture again.
Stephen Birmingham writes in the book Our Crowd that "Ned" Harriman was considered one of the most disagreeable men of his period.
Hah! And I'll bet that was a completely objective evaluation. Perhaps it was true.
On the other hand, “Naturalist John Muir, who had joined him on the 1899 Alaska expedition, wrote in his eulogy of Harriman, ‘In almost every way, he was a man to admire.’"
When he died in 1909, he left an estate valued at 150 - 200 mil.
High speeds, said one doctor, will lead to elongated, slanted brains.
This doesn’t seem particularly comfortable.
That will do for today. Except, of course, for the Decades Project update, and the Miscellany and Outtakes at the Substack. Thank you for your patronage, and I'll see you tomorrow.
