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Yesterday, today and tomorrow
NEWS BULLETIN & ALMANIACAL ARCHIVES
Also see NevadaLabor.com's Statewide U-News RoundupClick here to get on our news & bulletins mailing list...
But before you do so, please read this note. —AB
[[EDITOR'S NOTE: Unless otherwise noted, historical items appear courtesy of longtime Nevada reporter Dennis Myers' Poor Denny's Almanac. [PDA] Items highlighted in blue are of interest to labor in particular and seekers of justice in general. Copyright © 2008 Dennis Myers.]]
The Dean of Reno Bloggers could very well be Andrew Barbano, self-described "fighter of public demons," who started putting his "Barbwire" columns online in 1996 and now runs 10 sites.
UPDATE TUESDAY 4-1-2008, 07:13 a.m. PDT, 14:13 GMT/SUT/CUT —
Reno César Chávez event plays to overflow crowdOn this date in 1869, White Pine County was created with Hamilton as its county seat; in 1881, Ed Vesey gave up his lease on Reno's Lake House (on the site of today's Riverside), possibly to move to Sierra Valley, and Myron Lake took over operation of the property again; in 1894, the town of Greenfield, Nevada, changed its name to Yerington, thirteen years after Henry Yerington's C & C railroad used a route that bypassed the town; in 1896, the Nevada State Journal reported that Mrs. M.C. Lake would move into the Lake mansion; in 1913, Washoe County District Attorney William Woodburn was asked for a legal opinion on whether the new state glove contests law required the $100 fee be paid for a day's fights or for each individual fights, and whether the law limited the number of rounds; in 1914, the streets of the Native American village in Lovelock were being outfitted with electric lights and a pumping plant for irrigation was being considered; in 1930, the U.S. seized a British ship carrying rum off Nassau, and the ship was carrying papers from St. Pierre and Miquelon, a tiny French island colony that is northeast of Maine; in 1952, officials of the Calaveras County Fair came up with a grisly publicity stunt — to prove or disprove stories that frogs had emerged alive from stonemasonry after being inside for years, the fair would entomb a frog in a wall for a year; in 1957, Bye Bye Love by the Everly Brothers was released on Cadence; in 1964, Nevada casinos changed the rules of blackjack to defeat a successful system for beating the house that was then in use; in 1968, the underground newspaper Changing Times began publication in Las Vegas, becoming a target of official harassment and being driven out of business within thirteen weeks; in 1971, the Nevada Senate voted to kill a public vote on whether to make abortion legal; in 1971, the Riverside Hotel in Reno reopened under the ownership of Jessie Beck; in 1987, after years of deaths, President Reagan finally declared AIDS a public health emergency, but "he remained reluctant to use his presidential bully pulpit to send a clear public message about the AIDS epidemic," his biographer Lou Cannon wrote; in 2003, U.S. forces invaded an Iraqi hospital at Nasiriyah to seize Private Jessica Lynch (earlier the Iraqis, who saved Lynch's life, had tried to turn her over to U.S. forces, who refused to accept her).
UPDATE MONDAY 3-31-2008, 05:22 GMT/SUT/CUT — Reno, Sparks and Washoe County, Nevada, declare March 31, 2008, as César Chávez Day
News & Review Blog: Dennis Myers on César Chávez
Robert Kennedy to farm workers at Delano, August 10 1968: And when your children and grandchildren take their place in America, going to high school and college and taking good jobs at good pay — when you look at them, you will say, "I did this. I was there, at the point of difficulty and danger". And though you may be old and bent from many years of labor, no man will stand taller than you when you say, "I marched with César".
On March 31, 1870, Thomas Peterson Mundy of Perth Amboy became the first African-American to vote under the 15th amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which had been ratified the previous day; in 1879, a Carson Reform Club was formed in Carson City to open a club room for local boys in order to keep them out of saloons; in 1900, the Nevada State Journal wrote "The world is fall of material that will be used to make bombs for the destruction of protection to labor. Organized capital, for the illegitimate purpose of enslaving labor in manifold form, is forcing the conflict that will in due time culminate in a severe conflict. Capital at the present time holds the fort and its guns are directed against the rights of labor.; in 1911, after three years of prosecutions by the Roosevelt and Taft administrations of newspapers that reported on tawdry government conduct in the construction of the Panama canal, the cases — which were thrown out by the courts — formally came to an end when a U.S. attorney in New York requested permission to enter a filing called a nolle prosse dropping all criminal libel charges; in 1917, the United States took ownership from Denmark (for $25,000,000) of the Danish West Indies, 50 Caribbean Sea islands in the Lesser Antilles, changed their name to the Virgin Islands and turned them over to the Navy to run (a decision that was a fiasco); in 1927, César Chávez was born near Yuma, Arizona; in 1945 at the Ravensbruck women's death camp, a Russian Orthodox nun and poet (see below) named Elizabeta Skobtsova but known as Mother Maria who had aided and rescued Jews in France, was gassed; in 1949, attorney Madison Graves filed charges against Las Vegas police officers after a teenager was beaten in the city jail and then given no medical attention to head injuries for four hours; in 1957, the first and only musical written by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II for television, Cinderella, was broadcast (performed live!) and introduced the United States to a new performer until then seen only on Broadway — Julie Andrews ("Just before I went on, a very kind soul pointed out to me that more people probably would see me in that single telecast than all the full houses of My Fair Lady for 100 years"), a program not broadcast again until December 9, 2004; in 1961, what was reported to be Reno's first sit-in was staged by African-Americans at the Overland Hotel's café while elsewhere in the downtown a picket line was thrown up at the Nevada Bank of Commerce; in 1965, a massive airborne offensive began in Vietnam, with a hundred U.S. planes pouring tons of napalm, phosphorus bombs and fuel oil on a 19,000-acre section of Vietnam; in 1965, the members of the University of Nevada debate team quit on the eve of a 40-college championship tournament hosted in Reno by the UN and issued a statement saying it was the result of a dispute with the campus hate group Coffin and Keys; in 1968, Lyndon Johnson agreed to negotiations with the Vietnamese, ordered a partial bombing halt in Vietnam, and withdrew from the presidential race; in 1982, a massive avalanche hit Alpine Meadows ski resort, killing seven and entombing chairlift operator Anna Conrad, who was trapped under a bank of lockers buried in ten feet of snow (she was found alive in a hollowed-out ice cave five days later); in 2006, in the most scientifically exacting investigation of whether prayer can heal illness to date, a study of 1,802 coronary bypass patients in six hospitals published by the American Heart Journal found no difference between patients prayed for by strangers (provided by St. Paul's Monastery in Minnesota, the Community of Teresian Carmelites in Massachusetts, and Silent Unity in Missouri) and those who were not prayed for, and a higher rate of complications among those patients who knew they were being prayed for, which physicians attributed to anxiety (Oklahoma City physician Charles Bethea: "It may have made them uncertain, wondering, Am I so sick they had to call in their prayer team?"); in 2008, it will be announced that French architect Jean Nouvel will receive the Pritzker Prize, the most prestigious architecture award; in 2008, there will be 295 days remaining in George Bush's term of office; in 2008, César Chávez Day will be celebrated with a large gathering at the Circus Circus Hotel in Reno.
Israel
by Elizabeta SkobtsovaTwo triangles, a star,
The shield of King David, our forefather.
This is election, not offense.
The great path and not an evil.
Once more in a term fulfilled,
Once more roars the trumpet of the end;
And the fate of a great people
Once more is by the prophet proclaimed.
Thou art persecuted again, O Israel,
But what can human ill will mean to thee,
who have heard the thunder from Sinai?UPDATE SUNDAY 3-30-2008, 11:27 a.m. PDT, 18:27 GMT/SUT/CUT — On this date in 1867, a treaty of purchase was signed in Washington, beginning the formal process of U.S. purchase of Alaska from Russia, though no one bothered asking the native inhabitants of the region if they wanted their land sold (treatment of the natives became more brutal under U.S. occupation); in 1870, after artificial bans on slavery like the Emancipation Proclamation and Juneteenth, slavery finally became illegal in the United States with ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment and celebrations were planned throughout the nation, including at Elko (where it was the occasion for demands for integrated local schools) and Virginia City; in 1900, a traveling man in Reno on business commented on the lack of a public park in a city of seven thousand people and suggested that the city plaza would be a good location for a park; in 1920, officials estimated that U.S. citizens were spending a billion dollars annually (about $10.7 billion in 2005 dollars) in Mexican border towns like Mexicali, Nogales, Juarez and Tijuana where alcohol was legal; in 1923, invitations went out for the wedding in the governor's mansion in Carson City of a University of Nevada Tri-Delt, the fulfillment of an agreement under which Nevada First Lady Julia Scrugham leased the Scrughams' Reno home during the governorship to Delta Delta Delta and the first Tri Delt engaged would agree to be married in the mansion; in 1932, the last concrete was poured for the Cat Creek Dam for the water supply for the Hawthorne army depot; in 1948, on the eve of state takeover of the Basic Magnesium industrial complex in Henderson from the federal government, Governor Vail Pittman and other officials sought to reassure residents of the company town that they would not have to pay higher rates now that the state was operating their power company; in 1963, aeronautical engineer Ed Dwight, an African-American air force test pilot, was admitted to U.S. astronaut training, where — after full public relations mileage was obtained from him — he was harrassed and threatened into quitting (he is now a renowned sculptor); in 1969, twenty year-old Charles Lynn Hodge of Reno, Nevada, died in Tay Ninh province, Vietnam (panel 28w, row 91 of the Vietnam wall); in 2006, Harraj Mann was pulled off an airliner in London and questioned for three hours because a cabdriver told police the man had listened to The Clash's London Calling and Led Zep's Immigrant Song in the cab.
UPDATE SATURDAY 3-29-2008, 10:26 a.m. PDT, 17:26 GMT/SUT/CUT — UAW and other unions protest unfair trade at Reno General Motors warehouse Reno Gazette-Journal 3-29-2008
Update from the morning edition: The union has collected more than 600 signatures thus far. Keep them cards and letters coming in. Thanks!
Sign the petition onlineOn March 29, 1890, the Nevada State Journal reported "There will have to be imitation savages in the circuses this Summer, as the Secretary of the Interior has decided that no more Indians shall be allowed to leave the agencies for this purpose because of the demoralizing effects upon them. Representatives of the various circus companies protest against this order, and they have appealed to the President who, however, sustains Secretary [John] Noble. They explained to the President that they had already advertised their attractions for the coming year, and had gone to great expense in printing show bills and circulars in which they offer as an attraction to the public, scenes in savage life, and that they will be put to a great loss unless they are allowed to carry out their plans. The President [Benjamin Harrison] listened to them patiently, but would not yield, and they will have to find the best possible substitute. As soon as the Indians who are now with Buffalo Bill in Europe return to this country, they will be ordered back to their agencies and will be required to stay there."; in 1920, the Washoe County Bar Association voted to call for rescission of actress Mary Pickford's divorce on grounds of residence fraud, then rescinded the vote and expunged all record of it from the association minutes; in 1926, Washoe County Sheriff John Hillhouse abandoned his search for the Weston Band, a gang of cattle rustlers, but the state police continued the search into Churchill County; in 1934, Renoites lined the Truckee River watching to see if a new island formed in the river between Virginia and Center after the construction of the Center Street Bridge would withstand heavy flows driven by upstream rains; in 1948, residents of an East Liberty Street neighborhood gave a petition to the Reno city council asking for construction of a crossing guard where the Virginia and Truckee railroad crossed Liberty Street; in 1949, Richard Trachok was hired by the Reno School District No. 10 to be head football and track coach at Reno High School at a salary of $2,820 a year; in 1962, Gene Chandler received a gold record for Duke of Earl; in 1967, CBS corporate lawyer Arnold Zenker entered the elite group of principal anchors of the CBS Evening News, replacing Walter Cronkite for 13 days during a strike (Cronkite's open on his first day back: "This is Walter Cronkite sitting in for Arnold Zenker"); in 1973, the United States withdrew ground forces from Vietnam but kept bombing the devil out of the unfortunate nation; in 2007, Rush Limbaugh described the U.S. public as "a bunch of blithering idiots who have no idea what they're talking about"; in 2008, Warren Olsen of Reno was celebrated by his wife, children, grandchildren and friends at Sierra Bible Church.
Time magazine / April 07 1967:
Portrait of the Artists"Direct from our newsroom in New York, in color, this is the CBS Evening for News, with Arnold Zenker substituting for Walter Cronkite and. . ." Arnold Zenker? Across the U.S. last week, televiewers gawked curiously at the unfamiliar faces — balding salesmen, pert secretaries, scrubbed junior executives — telling about "Veet Nom," "Cheeze Juftif Warren," "cloddy skies" and "mosterly easterly winds." All, like 28-year-old Arnold Zenker, manager of program administration for CBS, were filling in — and sometimes falling apart —f or regular newscasters as the result of a strike called by the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists.
The walkout, the first in the union's 30-year-history, involved announcers, newsmen, disk jockeys and performers working on TV and radio stations owned by CBS, NBC, ABC and the Mutual Broadcasting System. The principal issue in the dispute is a salary increase for 100 newsmen at network-owned stations in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. The union was demanding a base salary of $325 plus 50% of the fees earned from sponsored programs; the networks are offering $300 and 25%.
Swallow or Spit? Though lumping all these people in a union of "artists" is a bit like calling a tailback a tap dancer, the performance of some of the pinch newscasters was worthy of an Emmy, or at least a Hammy, for the best comedy show of the season. Scripts rattled, eyes squinted at TelePrompTers.In Chicago, WLS Advertising Director Frank Nardi made his broadcasting debut as a substitute disk jockey, struggled hysterically to keep up the machinegun patter.
Sample: "Hey there! That was the great Ramsey Lewis Duo. . . aah. . .trio. . .whee. . .It's. . .aah. . . . . .three minutes. . .aah. . .I mean twelve minutes after three. . . wheee."
At Chicago's WBBM-TV, Salesman Frank Palmer all but burned up the airways. Winding up the 5 p.m. news, he lit his pipe just like a real Walter Cronkite, burned his fingers, dumped tobacco all over the desk, grinned wanly and shrugged. In Los Angeles, KNBC viewers telephoned the station to complain that Pinch Newscaster Harry Howe was chewing gum while reading the financial news. Not so, Howe later explained. Seems that while struggling with all those Dow-Jones figures, he dislodged a filling in his tooth and, not knowing whether to swallow it or spit it out, bounced it from cheek to cheek between syllables.
Morning, Hugh. On the first day of the strike, Hugh Downs, host of NBC's Today show, arrived live and in color at Manhattan's RCA Building in a pelting rain, disembarked from his NBC-supplied limousine, clapped on his sandwich board, popped open his umbrella, walked the picket line for a while, popped back into his Caddy and drove off. Other familiar pickets, such as Bud Collyer, Edwin Newman and Peter Jennings, were kept busy signing autographs, using the back of each other's signs for support.But whatever frivolity existed on the picket line during the early hours of the strike was later tempered by NBC News caster Chet Huntley's announcement that he would not honor the walkout because A.F.T.R.A. is a union of "singers, actors, jugglers, announcers, entertainers and comedians whose problems have no relation to ours."
He sent a telegram to 40 fellow newsmen calling for their support and suggesting that a National Labor Relations Board election be held to decide representation and possible withdrawal of newscasters from the union. Claiming that he had received the approval of 37 of the 40 newsmen, Huntley said: "If I carry the ball, they're completely behind me."
Good Night, Chet! NBC Newsmen Frank McGee, Morgan Beatty and Ray Scherer joined Huntley in crossing the picket line. At the other networks, CBS's Cronkite and ABC's Howard K. Smith demurred.Said Cronkite: "I think the time to complain is past. If you don't like the army, you get out before the battle starts."
As for David Brinkley, the Washington-based half of the Huntley-Brinkley Report, he stayed out of the controversy and away from the studio.
The reaction of some newsmen to the Huntley-Huntley Report was good night, Chet! Snapped NBC's Jack Costello: "Chet Huntley is the biggest liar and scab in the world."
But most seemed to agree with ABC's Jules Bergman: "Huntley's stand is valid, but we won't forgive him because he weakened our position."
At Hurley's bar in Manhattan, hangout for network staffers, one picketer placed a photograph of Huntley in the window and wreathed it with black crepe paper. Whatever the upshot of the strike, it at least provided the best broadcasting entertainment of the year.
UPDATE FRIDAY 3-28-2008, 1:10 a.m. PDT, 08:10 GMT/SUT/CUT —
George Bush / March 28, 2000: Reading is the basics for all learning.
On this date in 1834, by a vote of 26 to 20 the U.S. Senate censured President Jackson for removing the government's deposits without the permission of Congress, causing a business downturn; in 1862, the civil war battle at La Glorietta Pass in New Mexico was fought, known as the "Gettysburg of the West"; in 1900, the Nevada State Journal bragged that its campaign against illegal fishing in the Truckee was making headway and complained about Native Americans: "It is reported that a number of Indians have been infringing the law between here and Laughton's [west of Reno] and it would be well if the offenders were captured and made an example of."; in 1915, for the first time in the United States people were told publicly how to use a contraceptive, in remarks by Emma Goldman before a crowd of 600 at New York's Sunrise Club, resulting in her conviction for "inflammatory speech" and a sentence of 15 days in the workhouse, the first of many such court actions (a woman journalist wrote in the Little Review that "Goldman was sent to prison for advocating that women need not always keep their mouths shut and their wombs open"); in 1934, unclaimed freight addressed to 44 Ridge Street in Reno (there was no such address) was opened in Los Angeles and found to contain machine guns; in 1944, the two-day murder of all the Jewish children in Lithuania's Zezmariai death camp was completed; in 1953, the greatest U.S. athlete of the 20th century, Jim Thorpe, aka Bright Path of the Sac and Fox Native American Nation, died in Philadelphia (when his native Oklahoma was indifferent to providing him with a resting place, the tiny towns of Mauch Chunk and East Mauch Chunk in Pennsylvania merged and changed their name to Jim Thorpe, all by public vote, and he was buried there in 1954); in 1962, public radio reporter Carol Cizauskas was born in Bonn, daughter of a U.S. Foreign Service officer; in 2000, Fellowship of the Rings movie director Peter Jackson told New Zealand's Wellington Evening Post that The Beatles once had plans for production of the Rings trilogy, with John slated to play Gollum, Paul to play Frodo, George to play Gandalf, and Ringo to play Sam, but the project was personally vetoed by J.R.R. Tolkien.
The Dean of Reno Bloggers could very well be Andrew Barbano, self-described "fighter of public demons," who started putting his "Barbwire" columns online in 1996 and now runs 10 sites.
UPDATE THURSDAY 3-27-2008, 12:11 a.m. PDT, 07:11 GMT/SUT/CUT —
César Chávez Day brings labor and management together in Reno
Annual event at Circus Circus March 31 will also bring together César Chávez and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.On this date in 1883, James Reavis filed his famed Spanish "Peralta land grant" with the Surveyor General of the Territory of Arizona, claiming a 75 by 250 mile strip in Arizona and New Mexico containing nearly 19,000 square miles of land, a claim that kept the southwest in an uproar for the next eleven years (Reavis had spent years traveling to alter old Spanish and Mexican land records in Madrid, Seville and California to support the fraudulent claim); in 1886, Geronimo surrendered to General George Crook at Cañon de Los Embudos in Sonora (and had second thoughts within hours and escaped, with the result that General Crook was replaced by Nelson Miles); in 1886, the Buffalo Bill Dramatic Combination appeared in Reno a day after it was in Carson City and two days after a Virginia City performance (Territorial Enterprise: "The Pawnee Indians — real genuine Indians by the way — performed their parts with eloquent silence, their catlike movements on the stage were very impressive and formed quite an attraction to the general rounding of the performance."); in 1912, the first of three thousand cherry trees donated to the United States by the Japanese government were planted on the north bank of the tidal basin of the Potomac River; in 1923, after a day of searching, Reno post office officials, who had been informed by Washington of a fourth class post office in a Washoe County town called Diessner of which they had never heard, finally located it twenty miles north of Vya and six miles south of the Oregon border; in 1923, the Literary Digest published a poem written by Nevada's U.S. Senator John Jones (who served in the senate from 1873 to 1903) that he gave to U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Harlan (see below); in 1932, Mayor Edwin Roberts turned Idlewild Park over to Reno children, who searched for thousands of Easter eggs provided by Gray Reid Wright department store and the Nevada State Journal, with 25 golden eggs redeemable for live bunnies; in 1948, faced with a dispute over whether a fishing or hunting license was required to catch bull frogs, the Nevada Fish and Game Commission reclassified them from game animals to game fish, prompting the Eureka Sentinel to comment that the commission "accomplished what nature and evolution have been unable to do in the last million years"; in 1949, engineers said Davis Dam, which would provide a fourth of its power to Nevada, would be complete by August 1, and meanwhile a effort was underway to name the lake created by the dam Mohave for the tribe whose land would be submerged; in 1956, the University of Nevada withdrew the expulsions of six students for participating in a demonstration against campus president Minard Stout; in 1961, after a morning in which African-Americans from around Nevada poured into the state capital, a senate committee kept approving a weak civil rights bill and then revoked its approval, finally allowing a full senate vote by which the measure lost 9 to 8; in 1999, over a story in which three international law experts said there was a sound legal basis for criticism that President Clinton's war in Kosovo was illegal under international law, The New York Times placed this headline: "Legal Scholars Support Case for Using Force."
Silver Jack's Religion
By John Jones
I was on the drive in sixty working‚ under Silver Jack,
Which the same is now in Jackson & ain't soon expected back;
There was a chap among us, by the name of Robert Waite,
Who was kinder, slick & tonguey˜I guess he were a graduate.
Bob could gab on any subject, from the Bible down to Hoyle;
And his words flowed out so easy, just as smooth and slick as oil.
He was what they called a "skeptic," & he loved to sit & weave
Highfalutin‚ words together, sayin‚ what he didn't believe.One day as we was waitin‚ for a flood to clear the ground,
We all sat smokin‚ niggerhead, & hearing Bob expound:
"Hell, he said, was a humbug & he proved as clear as day
That the Bible was a fable;" we allowed it looked that way.As for miracles and sich like, 'twas more than he could stan‚;
And for Him they call "The Saviour," he was just a common man.
"'You're a liar,' shouted someone, "& you‚ve got t take that back."
Then ev'ry body started — 'twas the voice of Silver Jack!
Jack clicked his flats together & he shucked his coat & cried,
"'Twas by that thar religion my Mother lived & died:
"And though I haven't always used the Lord exactly right
"When I hear a chump abuse Him, he must eat his words or fight."Now Bob, he war'nt no coward, & he answered bold & free,
"Stack your duds & cut your capers, for you'll find no flies on me."
And they fit for forty minutes, & the boys would hoot & cheer,
When Jack choked up a tooth or two, & Bob he lost an ear.At last, Jack got Bob under, & he slugged him onst or twiced,
The Bob at last admitted the Divinity of Christ.
Still Jack kept reasonin' with him, till the cuss began to yell.
And allowed he'd been mistaken in his views concernin' Hell.Thus that controversy ended, & they ris up from the ground.
And someone found a bottle & kindly passed it round.
And we drak to "Jack‚s Religion," in a quiet sort of way;
So the spread of infidelity was checked in Camp that day.UPDATE WEDNESDAY 3-26-2008, 6:53 a.m. PDT, 13:53 GMT/SUT/CUT —
Rick Williams / American Indian College Fund: Vine Deloria was a wonderfully gifted Lakota man who quite possibly saved Indian people from extinction.
The Dean of Reno Bloggers could very well be Andrew Barbano, self-described "fighter of public demons," who started putting his "Barbwire" columns online in 1996 and now runs 10 sites.
On this date in 1804, Congress approved legislation providing to the president "a sum not exceeding fifteen thousand dollars...for the purpose of extinguishing Indian claims..."; in 1862, President Lincoln forwarded to Congress a request from Governor James Nye of the Territory of Nevada a request for a private secretary and a salary increase for federal officials in the territory; in 1878, a few days after a Native American was murdered in Reno, a procession of tribal family and friends passed through Reno to the hillside cemetery where the body of the victim was exhumed, removed from its coffin, and then reburied as part of tribal rites; in 1907, a day after he said he would appoint Carson City newspaper publisher and former state controller Sam Davis to be the head of the new Nevada Publicity Commission, Governor John Sparks backed away from the appointment after receiving some complaints; in 1923, the U.S. Post Office informed the Reno postmaster that Washoe County had a new fourth class post office at Diessner, a location of which no one in Reno had ever heard and could not find; in 1923, arriving from San Francisco in Carson City, former Acting Governor Denver Dickerson was sworn into office as state inspector of pharmacies, a newly created post paying $3,000 a year (the equivalent of about $31,545 in 2003 dollars); in 1933, Vine Deloria Jr., historian, author, Episcopal theologian and national leader whose seminal Custer Died For Your Sins and other books educated a generation on Native American history, was born near the Pine Ridge Oglala Lakota Reservation; in 1942, newspapers carried a photo of a long line of dozens of vehicles crossing the desert near Lone Pine, California, transporting a thousand U.S. citizens from Los Angeles to an internment camp in the Owens Valley; in 1955, The Ballad of Davy Crockett became number one on the hit parade; in 1956, the U.S. Information Agency denounced equality in the Soviet Union, describing jobs to which U.S. women would seek entry fifteen years later: "True to their principle of' 'equality‚' women labor in steel mills, lumber camps and mines, and on railroads, hod carriers on construction jobs, as street cleaners, loggers, stokers, machinists, truck drivers, carpenters, and so on."; in 1956, with police brutality charges on their way to the Clark County grand jury, Las Vegas Police Chief George Allen said that so far as he could determine, there was no truth to accusations that officers beat two Latino prisoners; in 1956, a Nevada Assembly select committee on taxation issued a report saying the 1955 enactment of a sales tax was unnecessary and could have been prevented if the legislature had been better informed on all possible revenue sources, and the committee said it would gather such information to provide to lawmakers if the sales tax was overturned by voters in the 1956 election; in 1960, under a threat of protest marches organized by Dr. James McMillan, casinos in Clark County, Nevada, desegregated their facilities; in 1960, Elvis taped an appearance with Frank Sinatra at the Fontainbleu Hotel in Miami for later broadcast, helping Sinatra finally break his losing streak as a television ratings performer; in 1968, twenty-four year-old Larry Earl Barger of Las Vegas, Nevada, died in Binh Dinh province, Vietnam (panel 46e, row 28 of the Vietnam wall); in 1969, twenty-eight year-old Carlos Wilson Rucker of Las Vegas, Nevada, died in Khanh Hoa province, Vietnam (panel 28w, row 52); in 1999, in an NPR commentary, war game designer Austin Bay lamented reduced Pentagon budgets (in fact, Pentagon spending was rising, not falling).
UPDATE TUESDAY 3-25-2008, 6:34 a.m. PDT, 13:34 GMT/SUT/CUT —
Allen Ginsberg / Howl: I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix; Angel-headed hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of the night.
On March 25, 1879, Cheyenne leader Little Wolf, one of the most successful military figures in U.S. history (he participated in the Fetterman battle, Fort Phil Kearney sieges, and Little Bighorn) surrendered his forces to a cavalry unit; in 1896, a measles epidemic in Lincoln County was hitting Native Americans particularly hard, with six of them dead in a week; in 1917 at a rally in New York's Metropolitan Opera House held to celebrate the February revolution, Charles Evans Hughes, Alton Parker, Theodore Roosevelt and Elihu Root spoke or sent messages expressing pleasure at the entry of Russia into the community of democratic nations and pledging to aid the new nation; in 1917, a representative of a new national organization, the League to Enforce Peace, arrived in Reno to form a local chapter and advance an April speech in Reno by former Minnesota governor Adolph Eberhart (peace organizing was very risky during the world war because the Wilson administration prosecuted it under the Espionage Act); in 1927, U.S. Senator Tasker Oddie of Nevada was throwing a fit after learning that U.S. Interior Secretary Hubert Work had arranged the acquisition of land in Secret Valley in California's Lassen County for a site in competition with Nevada's Hawthorne for a Army ammunition depot; in 1939 with war talk common, the Nevada Bureau of Mines was doing a study of the prospects for development of strategic war minerals in the state; in 1955, customs inspectors seized a shipment of copies of Allan Ginzberg's Howl as they were brought in to the U.S. (Lawrence Ferlinghetti's City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco responded by publishing the book in the U.S.); in 1970, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young's only album, the magnificent Déjà vu (containing Teach Your Children, Helpless, Our House, Woodstock), went gold; in 1975 in a Nevada Assembly judiciary committee hearing on a measure to hike the penalties for marijuana possession, ACLU of Nevada lobbyist Richard Siegel pointed out that jail time for possession in Nevada was already six times longer than the maximum sentence possible for conspiracy to murder (the committee responded by ordering a bill draft to make jail time equal for the two crimes); in 1977, Governor Mike O'Callaghan vetoed Assemblymember Steve Coulter's legislation repealing the mandatory motorcycle helmet law for adults; in 1977, Sid Doan testified in court that in 1973 he had threatened beating city councilmember James Vernon "within an inch of his life" if his Sierra Sid's truck stop was denied a gambling license; in 1992, cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev returned to a changed world after ten months on the Mir space station (his nation, the Soviet Union, no longer existed).UPDATE MONDAY 3-24-2008, 10:26 a.m. PDT, 17:26 GMT/SUT/CUT —
The labor movement has lost one of our true leaders. It is with deep sadness that I report to you the death of Frank L. Caine. Frank passed away yesterday (March 23) in southern California. As you know, Frank was a longtime president of the Building and Construction Trades Council of Southern Nevada and local leader of the Ironworkers Union. Funeral arrangements are not yet final. I am told he will be buried at Forest Lawn near his home in Oceanside, Calif. We will send details as soon as they are available.
UPDATE: Frank Caine's memorial service will be held at 11:00 a.m. on Thursday, March 27, at St. Francis of Assisi, 524 W. Vista Way in Vista, California (92083). Entombment will follow at 11:00 a.m. on Friday, March 28, at Forest Lawn Memorial Park, 1712 S. Glendale Ave., Glendale, Calif., 91205. Labor leaders are planning a southern Nevada memorial service at a later date.
UPDATE: The Nevada memorial service for Frank Caine will be held at 5:30 p.m. on Wednesday, April 30, at the Culinary Training Academy of Las Vegas, 710 W. Lake Mead Blvd., North Las Vegas, Nev., 89030.
UPDATE MONDAY 3-24-2008, 2:32 a.m. PDT, 09:32 GMT/SUT/CUT —
EXCLUSIVE BREAKING NEWS
Week of the Giants Begins
United Auto Workers demonstrate while Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and César Chávez offer advice
Barbwire/ Daily Sparks Tribune / 3-23-2008
Date: Mon, 24 Mar 2008 07:16:00
On this date in 1886 the Reese River Reveille said that lobbyists were costing the state of Nevada thousands of 1886 dollars: „If such a thing were possible there are at least half a dozen men in Nevada who should be quarantined for sixty days every two years.‰; in 1890 in a railroad case, Chicago, Milwaukee, & St. Paul Railroad vs. Minnesota, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a corporation is a person within the meaning of the 14th amendment to the Constitution; in 1923 the University of Nevada freshman class performed its semiannual task of painting the block N on Peavine Mountain; in 1934 people crowded into Reno‚s civic auditorium for Governor Fred Balzar‚s funeral (work on the Boulder Dam project was halted for three minutes at 2 p.m., the start time of the funeral), and a major topic of conversation at the funeral was the disappearance of former Reno City Councilmember Roy Frisch, chief prosecution witness in the federal bunco trial of Reno political/crime bosses James „Cinch‰ McKay and William Graham; in 1956 U.S. Navy officials confronted Lt. Thomas Dooley with the results of an investigation into his sexuality and forced him to resign his commission; in 1960 Harold‚s Club general manager Raymond I. Smith resigned as secretary treasurer of the All American Society, a group he founded to warn against „creeping communism‰ whose officers included American Legion official Thomas Miller and former U.S. representative Cliff Young; in 1965 with the support of 200 professors and over the opposition of Governor George Romney and the Michigan Senate, the first Vietnam teach-in was held at the University of Michigan, an action that spread across the nation (Michigan Supreme Court Justice Paul Adams attended, calling the teach-in „a vital service...in promoting debate on the question of U.S. policy in Vietnam‰); in 1980 during a U.S. funded war by the El Salvador government against its own people that claimed 3,000 lives a month, Archbishop Oscar Romero was assassinated while he said mass, shortly after he unsuccessfully begged President Carter to stop financing the slaughter, and a United Nations investigation later concluded that the murder had been ordered by Salvadoran Major Roberto D'Aubuisson; in 1980 ABC News, which had promised to keep airing its late night news program America Held Hostage until the Iran hostages were freed, changed the name of the program to Nightline; in 1996 the Las Vegas movie Showgirls starring Elizabeth Berkley won the 16th annual Golden Raspberry Award; in 1999 the Clinton/NATO bombing war against Kosovo began, eventually involving 38,000 bombing missions and drawing harsh criticism from U.S. Republican leaders and even the American Legion; in 2002 Halle Berry and Denzel Washington won the best acting Oscars; in 2008 there are 302 days left in George Bush's term of office.
Seymour Hersh: You have to give Bill Clinton his due —when he bombed Kosovo in 1999, he became the first president since World War Two to bomb white people.
CNN News anchor/March 24 1999: Let's bring in our Pentagon spokesman — excuse me, our Pentagon correspondent.
Date: Sun, 23 Mar 2008 12:43:42
On this date in 1806 the Lewis and Clark expedition began its return trip out of Fort Clatsop in the Oregon country to St. Louis after failing to find a northwest passage; in 1874 President Grant issued an executive order affirming the existence „for the Pah-Ute and other Indians residing thereon‰ of the Pyramid Lake Indian Reservation, which had existed uncertainly since 1859; in 1877 Mormon leader John Lee, a former U.S. Indian agent and Utah state legislator, was executed by firing squad for leading the Mountain Meadows massacre; in 1918 Lithuania‚s independence was recognized by German emperor Wilhelm II; in 1923 Chollar Mine worker Andy Antunovich lost an arm on the job as rumors circulated of a miners strike on the Comstock; in 1932 Nevada State Journal: „A life of enforced idleness, huddled on a narrow parcel of barren land, wind-swept in winter and sun-scorched in summer, with the dingiest of shanties and Œdog houses‚ as homes, is rapidly causing the deterioration of the Indians on the Reno reservation between here and Sparks. The United States senate Indian affairs committee promised the Indians the aid of the federal government in providing them some means of earning a livelihood˜perhaps an industry of some small nature, a few dairy cows to give milk for the young, water to grow small quantities of truck crops. The committee left here May 26, 1931, and disappeared as completely as if it never existed. Ý The people in Reno and other cities do not want to employ Indians, according to Meredith Crooks, Indian officer in charge of the reservation.‰; in 1942 Evacuation of U.S. citizens from their homes to internment camps began (see below); in 1954 French Chief of Staff General Paul Ely and U.S. Joint Chiefs chair Admiral Arthur Radford concocted a plan called Operation Vulture (Opération Vautour) to use an atom bomb in Vietnam to rescue the besiged French at Dien Bien Phu (both Vulture and other plans for U.S. involvement died when the Eisenhower administration was unable to lure British Prime Minister Winston Churchill into the scheme); in 1954 former cowboy actor Rex Bell of Las Vegas, who lost a congressional race in 1944, announced that he would oppose Reno Mayor Francis „Tank‰ Smith and White Pine County Assemblymember George Hawes in the Republican primary for lieutenant governor; in 1956 in her newspaper column, Eleanor Roosevelt wrote, „There must be great pride, not only among the Negroes but among white people all over the country, in the remarkable restraint and courage shown by the Negroes in their struggle for their rights in Montgomery, Ala., and other places in the South. Never before has such a peaceful but determined movement taken place. It is inspired by the example of Mahatma Gandhi and his followers in India and calls for remarkable fortitude and perseverance. Dr. Luther King, in his insistence that there be no hatred in this struggle, is asking almost more than human beings can achieve. Yet there has not been one single word of praise from any member of the [Eisenhower] administration.‰; in 1956 Nevada labor commissioner D.W. Everett reminded employers that adult women workers must be paid the minimum wage, $1 an hour, and that women under 18 must be paid a minimum of 87.5 cents an hour; in 1960 after Nevada District Judge Richard Hanna declared Joe Conforte‚s Triangle Ranch brothel a public nuisance, Storey County Sheriff Cecil Morrison burned it down (meanwhile, a few hundred yards away in Lyon County, another branch of the brothel continued doing business); in 1963 „Surfin‚ U.S.A.‰ by the Beach Boys was released; in 2002 Rex Daniels, who took the first master‚s degree in journalism from the University of Nevada, died in Reno; in 2003 Donald John Cline Jr.of Sparks, Nevada and Frederick Pokorney Jr. of Nye County, Nevada died in Nasiriyah, Iraq; in 2003 the Institute for Policy Studies in D.C. reported that, according to the U.S. State Department's own human rights survey, many of the members of the Bush administration's Iraq "coalition of the willing" were themselves terrorist states (Albania, Azerbaijan, Colombia, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Georgia, Macedonia, Nicaragua, Philippines, Turkey, and Uzbekistan); in 2003 Michael Williams of Yuma, who was born in Reno, died in Nasiriyah, Iraq
The Dean of Reno Bloggers could very well be Andrew Barbano, self-described "fighter of public demons," who started putting his "Barbwire" columns online in 1996 and now runs 10 sites.
San Francisco News
March 23, 1942
MASS EXODUS OF JAPS BEGUN
Motorcade Starts Trek from L.A.
BY E.A. EVANS
Scripps-Howard staff writer
LOS ANGELES, March 23.˜Large-scale evacuation Japanese aliens and their American-born children from strategic Pacific Coast military and industrial areas began today as a caravan of 350 autos and trucks left Pasadena for the Army‚s new reception center east of the Sierra Nevadas.
More than 600 aliens and American citizens of Japanese descent assembled before dawn at Pasadena‚s Rose Bowl, scene of the annual New Years‚ Day football classic in pre-war years.
In scenes reminiscent of the flight of Oklahoma and Texas dust bowl refugees to California a few years ago, the Japanese piled their household belongings on their autos and trucks, many of them ready for the junkyard.
Each evacuee wore an identifying card on his lapel and carried a ditty bag stuffed with personal effects. Many of the American-born youths wore sweaters indicating recent participation in high school and college sports.
Dozens of added travelers dashed up to the assembly point in taxicabs at the last moment. There were brief family reunions with wives and children who had come to the Rose Bowl to see their menfolk off for the camp at Manzanar, in the Owens Valley, 230 miles north of Los Angeles.
Then Major C.V. Caldwell, provost general for the sector, gave the order to start. There were grinds of self-starters, a few orders from officers, and the long parade began.
Nearly 200 of the vehicles were operated by the evacuees. They represented all types of jalopies˜dilapidated pickup trucks, open touring cars, „cut-downs‰ in collegiate style, and one Model T Ford.
Army ŒJeeps‚ in Line
Three large trucks loaded with baggage led the motorcade as it headed north through San Fernando Valley, making a parade between five and six miles long. Interspersed after every 10th car was an Army „jeep‰ carrying military police.
The procession helds its speed to about 30 miles an hour because of the questionable endurance of some of the conveyances. Army ambulances, tow cars, a water car and a field kitchen accompanied the motorcade.
Evacuees leaving today were largely carpenters and other skilled workmen sent to assist in final construction phases of the reception center.
Japanese will do most of their own policing and governing under Army supervision.
Two Simple Orders
Clayton E. Triggs, camp administrator and former Los Angeles County WPA head, said two simple orders would apply at the camp: All persons registered there must remain there unless special orders were issued, and no liquor would be allowed.
Barber shops, the hospital, beauty parlors, tobacco stores and similar establishments will be functioning by the end of the week, officials said, with each of the 48 blocks to have its own recreation center.
Japanese-American leaders proposed erection of a defense industry on the reservation for manufacture of nonvital parts of military airplanes. They mentioned articles, such as instrument panels and metal fittings, not capable of being sabotaged.
Security Wages
Workers chosen to remain at the reception center will be paid security wages ranging from $50 a month for unskilled labor to $94 for skilled, with $15 a month deducted for subsistence.
Scores of other Japanese left from the Union Railroad Station and bus depots in Los Angeles.
By nightfall between 1000 and 1500 are expected to reach Manzanar.
A visitor from the East, watching this start of what will become a vast hegira˜quite in the booster spirit of Southern California it is referred to here as „the greatest orderly mass movement of civilians in history‰˜is impressed by two queerly contradictory facts.
First, about 90 per cent of the people of Los Angeles seem to be profoundly relieved that the Army-directed evacuation of Japanese is at last getting under way.
Second, about 90 per cent of them also seem to feel deep regret that this job has to be done on so wholesale a scale.
Teachers Would Follow
Teachers in the Los Angeles schools are offering to follow their 9300 Japanese pupils to new settlements. Federal agencies are working to protect the property rights of the exiles. At San Francisco, the other day, the sophomore class at St. Ignatius High School chipped in to buy a watch for Bill Morizumi, an honor member of the ROTC, who was "going away." But severe hardships undoubtedly will be unavoidable. The great evacuation involves unprecedented problems, many of them not solved. Some 94,000 Japanese must go from California alone, about two-thirds of them citizens by birth, and 20,000 more from Oregon and Washington.
WASHINGTON, March 23.˜Henry J. Ennis, Department of Justice official, told the Senate immigration committee today that Japanese nationals are co-operating with the War Department in leaving strategic Pacific Coast zones.
Otherwise, the removal plans would require employment of all Army troops now on the West Coast, with a consequent neglect of their military duties.
Date: Sat, 22 Mar 2008 19:53:45
Edmund Burke/speech supporting the appeasement of America/March 22d 1775: I do not know the method of drawing up an indictment against a whole people. The natural rights of mankind are indeed sacred things, and if any public measure is proved mischievously to affect them, the objection ought to be fatal to that measure, even if no charter at all could be set up against it. Only a sovereign reason, paramount to all forms of legislation and administration, should dictate.
On this date in 1861 President Lincoln appointed James Nye of New York as governor of the new Territory of Nevada, and Orion Clemens of Iowa as territorial secretary; in 1903 a commission appointed by President Roosevelt to end a nationwide United Mine Workers strike issued its report calling for a wage hike, fewer hours, corporation recognition of the union, and an open shop; in 1923 Two instances of claim jumping in Elko county oil fields were reported; in 1934 former U.S. Representative Samuel Arentz of Nevada was reported recovered after hospitalization in Salt Lake City as a result of exposure to mercury at his mine and mill in Manning, Utah; in 1949 Nevada Governor Vail Pittman vetoed a bill making prostitution legal if localities consented, calling on legislators „to protect the name of Nevada˜to keep it synonymous with personal liberty but not with licentiousness‰; in 1951 Carson City March of Dimes chair Paul Laxalt reported that a house to house solicitation had produced $849.53 for the anti-polio campaign; in 1954 The headline on the cover of the new issue of Newsweek (postdated March 29) asked in the wake of See It Now‚s McCarthy broadcast, „Should television take sides?‰; in 1956 „MONTGOMERY, Ala., March 22. - (UP) - A circuit court judge found a young Negro minister guilty of conspiring to boycott segregated city buses and sentenced him to a $500 fine or 140 days at hard labor. The trials of 89 other Negroes on the same charge were continued until a higher court rules on the first case, that of the Rev. Martin Luther King, 27. ݉; in 1961 a tobacco industry scientific advisory board announced that after six years of work it had found no evidence of a link between smoking and lung cancer; in 1961 a Clark County grand jury convened to investigate local police was dismissed after filing a report calling officers „burglars behind badges‰ but also saying that the police department was making progress in reforming itself; in 1965 Bob Dylan's album Bringing It All Back Home was released; in 1971 the captain commanding 53 armored cavalry troopers who refused to obey orders to protect a damaged helicopter and their commanding officer‚s vehicle at Khe Sanh was relieved of his command but Gen. John Hill said he would take no action against the other men; in 1971 Governor Mike O‚Callaghan said he would comply with a federal court order reinstating welfare recipients who had been thrown off the welfare rolls by his administration; in 1980 Dark Side of the Moon broke Tapestry's record for longest stay on the Billboard top 100 album chart; in 2003 a group of about 300 (including Lt. Jim Ballard and Washoe County Deputy District Attorneys Jim Shewan and Roger Whomes) left the site of a pro-war demonstration in downtown Reno and walked to the site of an antiwar protest in a different part of downtown Reno and overran the peace vigil, tearing signs from protesters‚ hands, yelling to drown out hymns, and spitting on protesters while police stood by observing and doing nothing (the antiwar group had altered the plans for their protest at the request of police in order to avoid interacting with the prowar group).
Date: Fri, 21 Mar 2008 00:51:49
On this date in 1857 Australian journalist, trade union activist, and anti-imperialist Alice Henry, who started Chicago‚s Women‚s Trade Union League, was born in Richmond, Tasmania; in 1864 President Lincoln approved legislation allowing the people of Nevada for write a constitution and form a state government and allowing the president to declare Nevada a state when the prep work was finished; in 1871 famed stalker Henry Stanley began his search for David Livingstone in Zanzibar; in 1907 the United States attacked Honduras, one of at least seven U.S. invasions of that nation; in 1923 the first charges (against two men arrested in a Taylor Street home in Reno) were filed under Nevada‚s state alcohol prohibition law, setting the stage for a court test of the law, which state Attorney General Michael Diskin contended was unconstitutional; in 1935 the Nevada Senate approved an Assembly bill to hire one staff person to care for the untended Nevada Historical Society collection in the basement of the State Building in Reno; in 1938 in their ongoing fight against Senator Pat McCarran‚s bill perennial measures to force the Pyramid Lake tribe to sell part of the reservation to whites who had been squatting for decades, the tribal council asked President Roosevelt to veto the measure if it passed, and also appealed to the public for support in defeating the bill; in 1939 Billie Holliday recorded „Long Gone Blues‰ on the Columbia label; in 1950 after being acquitted of all fraud charges brought against him by federal prosecutors, car manufacturer Preston Tucker filed suit against the prosecutors; in 1952 in Cleveland, Alan Freed's Moondog Coronation Ball, a rhythm and blues show, was shut down by police after fans who could not get in (Freed had wildly oversold tickets) rioted and beat down the doors; in 1953 President Eisenhower endorsed construction of the Glen Canyon Dam, which obliterated a river canyon some considered another Grand Canyon (an effort is now underway to remove the dam and restore the canyon); in 1954 the National Security Council approved joint chiefs chairman Arthur Radford‚s plan to use nuclear weapons in Vietnam to reverse the recent victory of the Vietnamese over the French; in 1956 „Robert Rich‰ won the Oscar for best writing of a motion picture story for The Brave One but he failed to appear to claim the statuette and the audience was told that he was at his wife‚s side as she gave birth (the screenplay was actually written by the blacklisted Dalton Trumbo; a public ceremony was finally held on May 2 1975 at which the Oscar was presented to him); in 1960 at Sharpeville, South African officers raked a crowd of protesters with machine gun fire, killing 69 people and provoking young attorney Nelson Mandela's abandonment of nonviolence; in 1961 the Beatles appeared in the Cavern Club for the first time; in 1966 the U.S. Supreme Court, acting on a prosecution launched by the Kennedy administration and personally approved by Attorney General Robert Kennedy, upheld the obscenity conviction of Ralph Ginsburg for marketing or distributing a magazine called Eros, a newsletter called Liaison, and a book titled The Housewife‚s Handbook on Selective Promiscuity; in 1985 at a march in Langa, South Africa to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Sharpeville massacre (see 1960), police again opened fire on protesters, killing at least 21; in 2002 veteran Nevada journalist Lee Adler, a skilled reporter and writer, died in Carson City.
Guy Clifton/Reno Gazette Journal/March 29 2002: PASSAGE: Lee Adler was a New York City boy who found a home in the high desert of Nevada. He died in Carson City last week at age 65. Adler covered Carson City for several of the state‚s newspapers for parts of four decades ˜ working at a famously messy desk in the basement of the Capitol. The late Guy Shipler, legendary dean of the Capitol press corps, wrote of Adler in 1985: „During the 1981 session of the legislature, Adler could cover three committee meetings at once. He managed this feat by using three tape recorders, two of them borrowed, scurrying from one meeting to the other to make sure the tapes had not run out. No other inhabitants of our basement burrow have shown that much ingenuity or energy. He alone among us could somehow accomplish this juggling act flawlessly enough to come up with three authoritative and informative stories."
The Dean of Reno Bloggers could very well be Andrew Barbano, self-described "fighter of public demons," who started putting his "Barbwire" columns online in 1996 and now runs 10 sites.
Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2008 12:00:29
Benjamin Franklin, proposing a plan for colonial governance that drew on tribal practices/March 20 1751: It would be a strange thing if Six Nations of ignorant savages should be capable of forming a scheme for such an union, and be able to execute it in such a manner as that it has subsisted agrees and appears indissoluble; and yet that a like union should be impracticable for ten or a dozen English colonies, to whom it is more necessary and must be more advantageous, and who cannot be supposed to want an equal understanding of their interests.
On this date in 1549, Thomas Seymour, younger brother of the third wife of Henry 8th and fourth husband of the sixth wife of Henry 8th, was beheaded for treason; in 1841 Poe's „The Murders in the Rue Morgue‰ was published, introducing the detective story; in 1852 Uncle Tom's Cabin, written by Harriet Beecher Stowe in protest against the fugitive slave laws, was published, spreading anti-slavery sentiment (in the novel, Tom is an African American who is portrayed as a noble, courageous, and self sacrificing figure, so naturally when white playwrights got ahold of the story they changed the character into a groveling, submissive figure); in 1854 a group of former Whigs met in Ripon, Wisconsin, to start the Republican Party; in 1863 President Lincoln offered the land in western Washington of the Cowlitz tribe for public sale˜without, of course, bothering to ask the permission of the Cowlitz (in 1951, the tribe filed a claim with the U.S. Indian Claims Commission, which 22 years later ruled that the U.S. had deprived the Cowlitz „of its aboriginal Indian titleÝwithout payment of any compensation therefore‰ and the tribe was later offered compensation of fifty cents an acre); in 1903 the Reno Evening Gazette: „J. Pierpont Morgan was in Washington the other day. He visited the President and also saw Senator Gorman and Senator Hanna. We will now hear that the trusts have ordered the removal of the capitol to Wall Street.‰; in 1903 the Washoe County library board advertised for architects to submit plans for the county‚s first library at a cost of no more than $15,000; in 1903 Carson City‚s Ormsby House was sold and the new owners planned to renovate the hotel; in 1916 African pygmy Ota Benga, who was brought to the U.S. for a world's fair and then put on exhibit in a monkey house at the Bronx Zoo, committed suicide; in 1923 in Blanding, San Juan County, Utah, Sheriff W.E. Aliver was pistol whipping a Native American in the jail when another tribal member grabbed his gun and the two Paiutes disarmed him, locked him in the cell, and escaped (newspaper reports referred to the two as „young bucks‰); in 1928 the installation of dial telephones began in Reno, though they were not yet functional for dial calls; in 1935 at a funeral for his friend Grant Rice at Reno‚s Ross-Burke funeral home, amateur songwriter Raymond Penry spoke the words of a song he wrote for the deceased˜„Softly Now the Light of Day, Fades Upon My Sight Away‰˜and then died himself; in 1939 the German reich was in negotiations with Lithuania over the fate of Memel, which had been administered by France under a League of Nations mandate since the end of the world war; in 1940 University of Nevada freshman halfback Marion Motley killed an elderly Japanese man in a car accident and was charged with negligent homicide; in 1945 Governor Edward Carville had on his desk awaiting signature measures sponsored by Senator Kenneth Johnson of Ormsby County to ratify under white law marriages performed under tribal law and to appropriate $1,500 ($16,613.29 in 2006 dollars) for state acquisition of Dat So La Lee‚s renowned woven baskets; in 1949 Gentleman's Agreement, an indictment of anti-Semitism in the U.S., won the Academy Award for best picture of the year; in 1953 in New Orleans T Bone Walker recorded „Long Distance Blues‰; in 1954 in the Indiana high school basketball finals in Indianapolis, the Milan High School Indians defeated the powerhouse Muncie Central team with an epic last minute shot by Bobby Plump, a thrilling David over Goliath win that became legendary, inspiring the Gene Hackman/Barbara Hershey movie Hoosiers, placing the 1954 Indians on the Sports Illustrated list of the twenty best teams of the 20th century, and electrifying Indiana (two days later the line of cars following the team back to Milan for welcoming ceremonies was thirteen miles long and swelled the town‚s population temporarily from 1,150 to 40,000); in 1954 official Washington coped with a shocking turn of events, the apparent victory of the Vietnamese over the French at Dien Bien Phu, as French General Paul Ely arrived to seek U.S. help (the chair of the U.S. joint chiefs would propose using nuclear weapons against the Vietnamese); in 1988 over a park in Mountain View, California, a passing aircraft snagged the tail of a kite, lifting 8-year old DeAndra Anrig off the ground and carrying her 100 feet, when she let go (she was not seriously injured); in 1999 Las Vegas civil rights pioneer James McMillan died.
Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2008 08:10:15
On this date in 624 Muhammed proclaimed the „Day of Deliverance‰; in 1799 Napoleon laid seige to Acre, Palestine; in 1907 Chattanooga African American Ed Johnson was lynched just hours after the U.S. Supreme Court stayed his execution and granted him an appeal hearing, leading to a remarkable federal intervention˜the Secret Service investigated the lynching and filed a report implicating 21 members of the mob and local officials including Sheriff Joseph Shipp, who were hailed before the Supreme Court in Washington for a two day hearing with the officials found guilty of contempt of court and slapped with jail sentences; in 1917 in Wilson vs. New, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the eight hour day and minimum wages by approving the Adamson act of 1916, enacted to cover railroad workers; in 1914 the U.S. Senate voted for a women‚s suffrage constitutional amendment, though not by the majority needed for passage, after Senator James Vardaman of Mississippi was defeated in his effort to tie repeal of the 15th amendment (guaranteeing the African American right to vote) to passage of women‚s suffrage and most southern Democrats voted against it without the Vardaman attachment (Senator Charles Townsend of Michigan said it was unnecessary to do injustice to blacks in order to do justice to women, and white supremacist Senator Francis Newlands of Nevada said he favored making the U.S. a white man‚s nation but said women‚s suffrage was not the vehicle for it); in 1918 Iowa farmer Raymond Hall of Minerva, who had just been exempted from the draft on an agricultural exemption, was dragged from his home by a group of eight me, driven eight miles into the country, painted head to toe in yellow and black, and left to walk home (Hall attributed the action not to resentment of his exemption but to jealousy for his recent marriage to Miss Grace Jones); in 1919 Leo Henrikson, later a labor leader in Las Vegas, was born in Charleston, South Carolina; in 1926 Genovaite Cizauskas, matriarch of the Cizauskas clan that has included a diplomat, NPR reporter, hangliding instructor, brewing exec, and Fannie Mae exec, was born Genovaite Ambraziejus in Brooklyn (<http://www.cizauskas.net/gac.html>www.cizauskas.net/gac.html); in 1931 gambling was made legal again in Nevada; in 1943 the Reno USO Council held a meeting to decide what to do after the owner of a building rented for a USO center for African American soldiers cancelled the rental agreement, returned the rent check, and told Mayor Froehlich he had received complaints from nearby property owners; in 1960 during campaigning in the Wisconsin presidential primary, which was being contested by senators John Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey, an estimated 5,000 anti-Catholic letters were mailed around the state from a post office in Hutchinson, Minnesota; in 1968 a group of „wise men‰ presidential advisors convened by President Johnson, many of whom had supported getting into Vietnam, advised Johnson to get out of Vietnam; in 1991 Phoenix lost the right to host the 1993 Super Bowl because of the behavior of state political leaders in denigrating Martin Luther King Jr; in 1997 President Clinton named George Tenet as CIA director; in 2003 the United States government launched a preemptive attack on Iraq, prompting a wave of protests around the world and in the U.S., some of which gridlocked urban areas; in 2003 U.S. State Department official Ann Wright (a thirty-year Army veteran) resigned in protest against the war; in 2006 in an essay published by the New York Times, retired major general Paul Eaton, who had spent two years training Iraqi forces, wrote that „Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is not competent to lead our armed forces. First, his failure to build coalitions with our allies from what he dismissively called Œold Europe‚ has imposed far greater demands and risks on our soldiers in Iraq than necessary. Second, he alienated his allies in our own military, ignoring the advice of seasoned officers and denying subordinates any chance for input. In sum, he has shown himself incompetent strategically, operationally and tactically, and is far more than anyone else responsible for what has happened to our important mission in Iraq.‰ (Eaton also criticized Rumsfeld for muscling General Eric Shinseki out of the service for disageeing with Rumsfeld‚s policies).
Addendum: I've noticed confusion in some commentaries about the date of the start of the war. That's because it started on different dates. Where it actually happened, it started at approximately 5:32 am Baghdad time on March 20. But in the United States it started at 9:32 pm EST on March 19.
Sun Tzu [aka Sun Wu], Chinese general (6th century BCE): There is no instance of a nation benefiting from prolonged warfare.
Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2008 07:46:25
Robert Kennedy/University of Kansas/Lawrence, Kansas/March 18 1968: Too much and too long, we seem to have surrendered community excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our gross national product ... if we should judge America by that - counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for those who break them. It counts the destruction of our redwoods and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and the cost of a nuclear warhead, and armored cars for police who fight riots in our streets. It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children. Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages; the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage; neither our wisdom nor our learning; neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country; it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.
On this date in 1834 six members of a farmworkers union in Tolpuddle, England, were sentenced to banishment on the penal colony of Australia, prompting widespread anger and helping bestow legitimacy on the trade union movement; in 1849 on his first day at sea after sailing from Massachusetts for the California gold fields, nineteen year old Alf Doten began the diary that he would keep all his life (including his years as a Nevada editor), eventually stretching to 79 volumes that would be edited by Walter Van Tilburg Clark and published in three mammoth volumes by the University of Nevada Press seventy years after his death; in 1852 Wells and Fargo Company was formed in New York to provide cross country shipping during the California gold rushes; in 1881 With the construction of an insane asylum in Washoe County impending, the Reno Evening Gazette reprinted an essay from the Eureka Leader calling for decent treatment for the mentally disabled; in 1897 a day after their heavyweight championship fight in Carson City, new champion Robert Fitzsimmons was still in the capital and former champ James Corbett was in San Francisco getting a tooth repaired and showing himself in the streets to quash a rumor that he was dead; in 1932 traveling to San Francisco to embark on a ship to Hawai`i to handle the Fortescue Massie case, Clarence Darrow was interviewed while his train was standing in Reno and predicted that President Hoover would be swept out of office in November by an „astounding‰ vote; in 1936 as Boulder Lake behind Hoover Dam slowly spread, filling valleys and canyons, a National Geographic Society bulletin said, „Originally planned for power, irrigation, and flood control, Boulder Lake also is developing into a scenic gem of first rank.‰; in 1942 the U.S. War Relocation Authority was created to handle the internment around the nation of U.S. citizens of Italian, German, Japanese, Romanian, and miscellaneous other descents; in 1950 with the support of the United States, Taiwan (Formosa) invaded China with thousands of soldiers and sailors, establishing a toehold for a few weeks and then being driven back into the sea, an incident that caused serious diplomatic difficulties for the U.S.; in 1954 Las Vegas school officials said construction of Rancho High School would begin within a month; in 1969 the illegal bombing of Cambodia began at the order of President Nixon, a bombing campaign that was kept secret from the Congress and the U.S. public; in 1971 California Assemblymember Gene Chappie said he did not expect problems in the state for his bill, already approved by the assembly, to turn Coso Hot Springs over to the Paiute/Shoshone of Inyo County; in 1972 Neil Young‚s „Heart of Gold‰ (with Linda Ronstadt and James Taylor on background vocals) hit number one on the Billboard chart; in 1979 U.S. feminist Kate Millett was arrested in Iran for aiding the Persian women's movement; in 1991 silent film star Vilma Banky, who starred in The Winning of Barbara Worth, filmed in Pershing County in 1926, died in Los Angeles.
Robert Kennedy/March 18 1968/Kansas State University/Manhattan, Kansas: I am concerned -- as I believe most Americans are concerned -- that our present course will not bring victory; will not bring peace; will not stop the bloodshed; and will not advance the interests of the United States or the cause of peace in the world. I am concerned that, at the end of it all, there will only be more Americans killed; more of our treasure spilled out; and because of the bitterness and hatred on every side of this war, more hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese slaughtered; so that they may say, as Tacitus said of Rome: „They made a desert, and called it peace.‰ And I do not think that is what the American spirit is really all about.
The Dean of Reno Bloggers could very well be Andrew Barbano, self-described "fighter of public demons," who started putting his "Barbwire" columns online in 1996 and now runs 10 sites.
Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2008 00:43:56
On this date in 1812 U.S. troops invaded Florida‚s panhandle in an effort to seize the territory from Spain, which took it from the inhabitants; in 1871 the republican Paris Commune, the first government of the working class, was formed; in 1897 after the Nevada Legislature hastily made boxing legal, a heavyweight title fight between Bob Fitzsimmons and Jim Corbett was held in Carson City (as late as 1999 the film of the fight received a vote in a Village Voice poll of film critics as the best film of its decade); in 1923 Governor James Scrugham vetoed senate bill 148, which designated the Lincoln Highway as the primary highway route across the state, a veto that had been urged by the Humboldt County Chamber of Commerce; in 1928 Knights of Columbus official Joseph Becker said in Salt Lake City that being raised by mothers and being taught in school and church by female teachers were making boys effeminate; in 1932 tribal police and federal narcs raided an alleged Carson City opium den at 425 East 3d Street that also reportedly served whisky; in 1932 New York Governor Franklin Roosevelt moved into the lead over U.S. Speaker John Garner for the first time in a crude public opinion survey being conducted by the Nevada State Journal, Elko Free Press, and Las Vegas Review Journal; in 1939 the Nevada Legislature was trying to wrap up business for the year, and the clock had been stopped at midnight on March 16; in 1957 President Magsaysay of the Philippines died in a plane crash; in 1957 the cornerstone was laid for the first building of Nevada Southern University; in 1959 the fourteenth Dalai Lama vanished from public view in Tibet, being given up for dead at the hands of Chinese occupation forces but actually eventually escaping across the Khenzimana Pass into India; in 1960 President Eisenhower approved a covert paramilitary plan, illegal under international law, to overthrow the government of Cuba; in 1960 Las Vegas dentist and civil rights leader James McMillan, who on March 11 gave the city‚s whites-only casinos until the 26th to integrate or face protest marches, sent a formal request to Mayor Oran Gragson seeking a meeting among city officials, the NAACP, and civic leaders and also said that if the casinos did not meet the deadline, protests would include passive resistance; in 1960 the Washoe County sheriff and Reno and Sparks police chiefs announced a crackdown on „obsenity‰˜comic books and magazines depicting „criminal news, police reports, accounts of criminal deeds, drawings and photos of deeds of blood shed, lust‰ and other crimes; in 1965 the Beatles announced the title of their next movie would be Eight Arms To Hold On To You (it was released as Help!); in 1966 farm workers led by Cesar Chavez began a march from Delano to Sacramento; in 1990 Lithuania rejected a Soviet demand that it revoke its March 11 declaration of independence and the New York Times ran an editorial praising the Bush I administration for not recognizing Lithuania and leaving the matter to the U.S.S.R and Lithuania (the Soviet occupied Vilnius and in January launched a general attack on Lithuania); in 2003 the contributions of U.S. socialists were finally recognized on a coin when the Alabama quarter was released with socialist and IWW leader Helen Keller featured.
Helen Keller/November 3d 1912: If I ever contribute to the Socialist movement the book that I sometimes dream of, I know what I shall name it: Industrial Blindness and Social Deafness.
Date: Sun, 16 Mar 2008 13:08:22
On this date in 1875 a Nevada District Judge charged a Eureka County grand jury to take special note of those trying to buy elections because such practices put the public „at the mercy of men whose means and lack of conscience, and fearlessness of the laws, shall enable them to control the election of men to office who will be their tools and minions, ending in overthrowing republican government and erecting in its stead an incompetent and wicked monarchy, presided over by these alleged corruptionists‰; in 1907 mine owners in Goldfield issued a joint announcement saying that they had all agreed not to hire members of the Industrial Workers of the World; in 1912 former first lady Patricia Ryan (Nixon) was born in Ely, Nevada; in 1926 the eternal rest of revolutionary war hero Margaret Corbin was disturbed by the Daughters of the American Revolution, who dug up her bones from her gravesite and reburied them on the grounds of West Point (in a battle at Fort Washington, Corbin had taken her husband‚s place on the battle line after he was killed, taking three wounds herself and losing the use of one arm); in 1936 the New Deal project of constructing Rye Patch Dam in Pershing County, Nevada, was hit with a fire that destroyed a machine shop; in 1939 the Nevada Assembly defeated a last ditch attempt to approve a state constitutional amendment legalizing a lottery that had already been approved by the 1937 legislature and the Nevada Senate in 1939; in 1942 Fats Waller recorded „Jitterbug Waltz‰ for Bluebird Records; in 1953 the Nevada Assembly killed a civil rights bill not by a straight vote but by „indefinite postponement‰; in 1963 the Peter, Paul, and Mary song „Puff the Magic Dragon‰ was released (a rumor attributed by PP&M to Time magazine claimed it was a drug song); in 1967 Pink Floyd began work on Piper at the Gates of Dawn at Abbey Road studios; in 1968 over a period of four hours, four hundred Vietnamese were murdered in two sections of Son My village in Quang Ngai province, the My Lai massacre becoming famous after a coverup and the My Khe massacre remaining little known because news outlets didn‚t have photos (the Pentagon has asked journalists to discontinue the use of the term „massacre‰ in favor of „incident‰, and many journalists have complied); in 1968 U.S. Senator Robert Kennedy announced his candidacy for president; in 1997 Nevada's first professional historian, Russell Elliott, died after a distinguished career that produced a half dozen books on Nevada, including the standard History of Nevada (Elliott was hired on September 1 1949 by the University of Nevada as an assistant professor of history and political science at a salary of $3,600 a year); in 1984 Jesse Jackson won the Mississippi Democratic caucuses, the first instance in U.S. history of an African American candidate winning a presidential preference contest.UPDATE SATURDAY 3-15-2008, 1:15 p.m. PDT, 20:15 GMT/SUT/CUT — On this date in 1867, the first special session of the Nevada Legislature began, lasting three weeks, to deal with a state revenue shortfall; in 1877, the Reno Evening Gazette quoted a threatening letter sent to a witness in a local trial by a 601 committee (vigilante committee) and observed "We believe the law strong enough and entirely sufficient to maintain public peace and afford protection to our citizens. We deprecate the policy of taking the administration of justice out of rightful hands, and private citizens themselves summarily judging a man's case. Due provision has been made for meting out justice, and our little town does not need a "601‚ organization."; in 1886, President Cleveland nominated Miles Goodwin to be postmaster of Virginia City; in 1907, Senator Wilson Locklin of Storey County introduced legislation to repeal the just-passed appropriation to build a governor's mansion; in 1915, sixteen cartons of ore specimens were ready for shipment to the St. Louis world's fair as part of Nevada's exhibit; in 1928, with all roads to Lake Tahoe closed except Kingsbury Grade, plans were being made to open the Kings Canyon grade west of Carson City and an appeal went out to Renoites with homes at Tahoe to bring their snow shovels and help; in 1939, Jim Thorpe of the Sac and Fox tribe, 1912 Olympic decathlon and pentathlon winner, football great and professional baseball player who also excelled in hockey, basketball, golf , lacrosse, baseball, swimming, rowing and boxing, and is generally considered the athlete of the century, spoke to an assembly at Sparks High School "in full Indian regalia"; in 1954, The Chords (one of the "hallway groups" that harmonized in school, on streetcorners, or in the subway) recorded Sh-boom as the B side of a 78-rpm record on the Cat label, setting off the doo-wop era (unfortunately, a white group called The Crew Cuts quickly covered The Chords' version, draining away the Chords' earnings and their hit); in 1954, the NAACP launched a boycott of Las Vegas after African-American delegates to the convention of the American Public Welfare Association were denied lodging in the city's large hotels; in 1954, the main Las Vegas office of the U.S. Bureau of Internal Revenue closed at 5 p.m., but a branch office at the War Memorial Building stayed open until 9 p.m. to accept late filers (the filing deadline was then March 15); in 1955, Elvis unfortunately took on Tom Parker as his manager; in 1957, the Atomic Energy Commission revealed that an atomic reactor at Los Alamos had exploded on February 12, but gave no explanation for the delay in the announcement; in 1963, the University of Nevada in Reno took possession, after removal of graves, of a former cemetery parcel, now the site of the Nye Hall dormitory (approximate date); in 1988, a four-day battle began in the area of Halabja on the Iran/Iraq border during which the city was gassed by what the Reagan administration said was an Iranian attack (fourteen years later, the second Bush administration changed that story as part of its campaign for war, claiming the attack was launched by Saddam Hussein's forces, and charging that "he gassed his own people"). [EDITOR'S NOTE: The Army War College analyzed the incident and concluded that the deaths did not occur as reported. The story appeared as an investigative report by the San Francisco Chronicle in early 1991, but was lost in the Gulf War hysteria jinned up by Bush the Elder and his oil warriors. Ironically, the Chron reported the Bush spin as fact in the 2002 runup to Oil War II. Reader comments herewith totally debunk the paper's coverage.]
UPDATE FRIDAY 3-14-2008, 6:16 a.m. PDT, 13:16 GMT/SUT/CUT — Workers protest sales tax revenue being redirected to non-responsible contractors
SPARKS, Nev. — Local construction workers and their families will conduct picketing at the "Legends at Sparks Marina" project on Friday, March 14, 2008. Protesters will gather at the entrance to the Scheels store at the end of Lincoln Way west of Sparks Blvd.
"In this day of tax revenue shortages and governmental budget cuts, it is not right to redirect tax revenues to contractors who are not responsible." stated Russ James, organizer for Local Union 567 of District Council 16 of the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades.
"We are here protesting Custom Painting and Decorating today because they are one of the non-responsible contractors working on the Scheels store. A responsible contractor is one that pays its workers a fair wage and fair benefits such as employer-paid family health care coverage, pension benefits and apprenticeship programs.
"Custom Painting provides none of these benefits to its employees." James added.
"Construction records provided to us by the City of Sparks show at least eight out-of-state contractors who don’t utilize local labor performing work at the Scheels store. These contractors and their employees are taking our money and running." James stated.
"While we understand that the construction created by sales tax anticipated revenue (STAR) bonds can benefit our city when performed by responsible contractors, this for the most part has not been the case at the Scheels store. Now is the perfect time for the City of Sparks to fix this issue, as they are currently drafting an amendment for additional public funding for this project. Responsible contractor language in this amendment would insure the best investment of public funds for the local economy," James asserted.
Local Union 567, located in Sparks, has been chartered for over 100 years and currently has over 500 members.
Russ James has resided in Sparks for over 15 years.UPDATE: City won't touch "responsible contractors" issue / Daily Sparks Tribune 3-15-2008
NevadaLabor.com corporate welfare war room
The Dean of Reno Bloggers could very well be Andrew Barbano, self-described "fighter of public demons," who started putting his "Barbwire" columns online in 1996 and now runs 10 sites.
On March 14, 1881, Assemblymember James Adams of Eureka County was shot in a saloon fight and was not expected to live; in 1904 in Hawthorne, Abe Summerfield pleaded guilty to stealing a truck full of opium and $500 in gold coin from a Chinese man and was sentenced to five years in prison; in 1913, Woodrow Wilson of New Jersey became president of the United States, beginning an era of white supremacy, militarism and repression never equaled in a single presidency; in 1915, a portrait of Abraham Lincoln by painter Charles Shean, purchased by the State of Nevada to hang in the Nevada Assembly, was unveiled; in 1921, police in the city of Elko, claiming that there were more than a hundred drug users in the tiny town, were conducting a "war on drugs" to rid the city of this "class of undesirables"; in 1928m Oklahoma's Quapaw tribe, drawn into the Teapot Dome scandal, was in court trying to recover their lead and zinc mines from which they had earned $2,000,000 a year until President Harding's corrupt interior secretary Albert Fall transferred them to the Eagle Picher Corporation; in 1939, the Nevada Assembly voted to shut down the Nevada Historical Society and create a Nevada Museum and Art Institute by passing legislation sponsored by Assemblymember Peter Amodei of Ormsby County; in 1954, United Press reported that there was danger of a negotiated settlement between France and Indochina, which the news service called "an unsure peace of appeasement in Indochina"; in 1959, a new First National Bank of Nevada branch building in Carson City was opened at a ceremony attended by Governor Grant Sawyer (the building is now a Nevada State Museum annex); in 1961, attorney and former Cuban consul (at the San Francisco embassy) to the U.S. Rodrige Parajon was working at Harrah's at Lake Tahoe as a busboy; in 1964, The Beatles performed in Washington, D.C., a concert carried by closed circuit to sold out houses and stadiums in Cleveland, El Monte and Oak Park, Illinois; in 1980, international liberal leader, former U.S. Representative, and organizer of the successful Democratic Party "Dump Johnson" movement Allard Lowenstein was murdered by civil rights activist Dennis Sweeney; in 1989, Edward Abbey, the Thoreau of the desert who worked to redefine the west and especially the desert from a movie stereotype to a besieged region victimized by corporate greed and government exploitation, died in Arizona; in 1998, beat generation poet, painter, publisher and co-founder of the legendary independent City Lights book store Lawrence Ferlinghetti spoke at the 3d Annual Anarchist Book Fair in San Francisco.
UPDATE FRIDAY 3-13-2008, 11:08 a.m. PDT, 18:08 GMT/SUT/CUT — On this date in 1865 at Robert E. Lee's request, the Confederate Congress approved the use of African-American troops against the north; in 1867 in Galaxy magazine there appeared in the fiction short story Captain Tom's Fright the first known instance in the U.S. of someone being described as tied hand and foot and left on a railroad tracks, a story that subsequently was copied by other dramatists and then in real life (honest! it really happened); in 1897, the gloves to be used in the Fitzsimmons/Corbett heavyweight championship fight in Carson City on St. Patrick's Day were delivered, weighed and accepted, and a bell that previously was used in a Virginia City mine to signal raising and lowering the hoist was installed as the fight bell; in 1913, a California state senator introduced a resolution declaring Lake Tahoe to be a California asset, objecting to federal reclamation drainage of the lake for Nevada farming, and instructing the state attorney general to sue Nevada to determine rights to the lake's water, prompting Nevada state legislators to table a resolution providing $100,000 for the Panama Pacific Exposition in San Francisco; in 1913, the Wadsworth Club of Sparks sent a letter to Nevada Assembly Speaker Thomas Brandon objecting to the revival of gambling in Nevada; in 1917, the U.S. Surpeme Court upheld the Adamson Act, which was enacted in September 1916 to avert a national railroad strike by limiting workdays to eight hours; in 1924, a day after U.S. senators Key Pittman and Tasker Oddie told a federal reclamation fact finding commission that the Newlands project had been neglected, Oddie met with President Coolidge to lobby for plans to turn the Spanish Springs Valley north of Sparks into a reservoir; in 1928, Herbert Hoover and Al Smith won the New Hampshire presidential primary; in 1928, Nancy Ann Miller of Seattle coverted to Hinduism so she could become the third wife of the maharajah of Indore; in 1939, Ellen Holmsen, who had earlier been barred from a Reno courtroom and thrown out of a restaurant in Reno for wearing pants, was "deported" from her New Jersey home town for the same reason; in 1947, The Best Years Of Our Lives won the Academy Award for best picture of the year; in 1954, after building a military base on a flat plain surrounded by supposedly impassable mountainous terrain and daring the Viet Minh to attack, the French at Dien Bien Phu received a terrible shock: Over many months 50,000 Vietnamese had hauled 200 heavy artillery pieces, anti-aircraft guns, huge supplies of ammunitions, and four rocket systems up the steep mountains, surrounding the French in a deadly trap — one of the legendary logistical achievements of military history; in 1956, the album Elvis Presley was released by RCA and went straight to number eleven on the Billboard chart, becoming the first million-selling album; in 1961, Nevada state highway engineer Otis Wright announced that the construction of the Third Street route of the Interstate 80 freeway through Reno (which would never be built) would begin June 30 in spite of U.S. Representative Walter Baring's objections to the route; in 1965, a rally or
