December, Part Two

Issue No.:  36

© 2007 Dean Perchik                                                                             deanperchik@earthlink.net

New York is a city filled with niche museums and even a tireless visitor would be hard pressed to visit more than a handful of them.  To name just a few, there is the American Folk Art Museum, the Fisher Landau Center, the Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art, The Cloisters, the American Numismatic Society, the New York Hysterical Society, and the National Museum of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender History. And then there is the Brooklyn Children’s Museum.  The Brooklyn Children’s Museum[i] opened its doors, in Crown Heights, Brooklyn on the 16^th in 1899.  Being a resident of the finest of New York’s five boroughs, Brooklyn, whose official slogan is ‘Brooklyn, where the weak are killed and eaten’, I paid a visit to the Brooklyn Children’s Museum one day recently.  Having been expanded beginning in 1930 with the aid of hundreds of artists and artisans courtesy of the Works Progress Administration; the site is really quite impressive.  There are over 27,000 items on display.  Overall, however, I must admit that I was rather disappointed with this museum.  In the entire place there is not a single child on exhibit, not even a little one.  It took a little time and a great deal of energy but I was eventually able to get the price of admission that I had paid refunded.

On the 17^th in 1903, the Wright Brothers, Wilbur and Orville, were finally successful in their quest to build a heavier-than-air flying machine[ii].  The fourth flight of the day, with Wilbur at the controls, lasted 59 seconds.  On April 19, 1944, Orville went on his last airplane flight, as a guest of Howard Hughes, at the controls of a Lockheed Constellation.  Orville was quick to point out that the wingspan of the Constellation was longer than the first airplane flight.

Saki was born on the 18^th[iii] in 1870.  Wait a minute, isn’t that a Chinese wine made from rice, generally served warm?  That, of course, assumes that you will have the patience to warm the stuff up and don’t just pour it on your cereal in the morning.  I am fairly certain that Saki, with an ‘i’ has something to do with the 18^th, hang on a moment while I go through my notes. I really have to straighten this place up a bit.  A saki is a small, monkey with a very long tail, from the Western hemisphere.  What?  That can’t be it.  As far as I can tell species do not celebrate birthdays.  Excuse me once again.  Here it is - Saki was the nom de plume of Hector Hugh Munro who was born on the 18^th in 1870.  As it is with all writers, you either like his work or you don’t, but anyone who comes up with the line ‘say what you will about the decay of Christianity, but the religion that produced Green Chartreuse can never really die’ certainly deserves to have his birthday remembered. 

American Presidents have a wide range of reputations.  A reputation for having unusual pets, or even particularly nice ones, is not generally among them.  Household pets for the White House seem to be limited to rather bland ones like dogs, often ones with a tendency, like their owners, to roll around drooling on the carpet in the Lincoln bedroom.  On rare occasions, the leader of the free world will choose a cat, showing better judgment in their taste in pets than in their plans for the nation and the world.   One president chose a pet that was practical as well as just a bit unusual for the most powerful man on the planet.  President William Howard Taft, 27^th President of the United States, had not one but two cows as pets. Pauline Wayne, a Holstein cow, replaced Mooly Wooly in the President’s household.  Miss Wayne, as she was called, would wander around the White House grounds keeping the lawn neatly trimmed.  She did double duty and supplied the Taft household with fresh milk.  It is also rather nice that Miss Wayne did not also provide the main course for any dinners, state or otherwise.  She was essentially a pet and people should not eat pets.  This practical yet tender side of Taft explains many things.  It explains why, on the 19^th in 1912, Taft pardoned William H. Van Schaick, the captain of the steamship General Slocum, who had been imprisoned for 3 ? years in Sing Sing prison after being found liable for the deaths of over 1,000 people when the steamship General Slocum burned and sank in New York City’s East River on June 15, 1904.

If I were to mention the name Arco, would the name ring any bells for you?   Well, it is the name of a gasoline company but Arco is also the name of a small desert town in Idaho.  Its one claim to fame (the town’s, not the gas company’s) is that it is the home of the Experimental Breeder Reactor – 1 (EBR-1) that has been designated a United States National Historic Landmark.  This puts it in the company of the Statue of Liberty and slew of other landmarks, probably including the first International House of Pancakes and In and Out Burgers.  Still in the dark?  Let me grab a flashlight and shed a bit of light on the subject.  On the 20^th in 1951, at 1:50 in the afternoon, EBR-1 began to generate electricity, enough electricity, difficult though this may be to believe, to actually power four 200-watt light bulbs.  ERB-1 was not only the first nuclear reactor to generate power but also the first breeder reactor, producing plutonium as a by-product.  There were some problems however and on November 29, 1955, an operator error resulted in a partial meltdown of the reactor.

Walt Disney’s movie Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs[iv] premiered on the 21^st in 1937, at a theater in Los Angeles, California.  It went into general release on February 4, 1938.  As you must know, the movie was remarkably successful.  The Motion Picture Academy would give Walt Disney an honorary Academy Award for the movie and Disney was presented with a full-size Oscar trophy and seven miniature ones by Shirley Temple.  Snow White has the distinction of being the second oldest animated movie[v] whose running time made it eligible for an Academy Award.

On the 22^nd in 1964, Lenny Bruce was convicted of obscenity.  Viewed from a vantage point over 40 years on, Bruce’s conviction seems just plain silly.  His brand of comedy now seems distressingly banal.  But then again many things that at one time seemed frightening are now simply plain, edging ever closer to becoming unforgivably boring.  As hard as it may be to believe, there was a time when rock and roll was innovative and dangerous; now it is nothing more than the rather tepid, corpulent beneficiary of corporate largesse.  Today people react rather than respond to musicians like Marilyn Manson whereas they responded to Marc Bolan and Ziggy Stardust.  There is a huge difference between reacting and responding and I find this development to be somewhat sad in a way.  Personally, I think rock and roll was far more interesting when it was dangerous.

[vi]On the 23^rd in 1986, pilots Dick Rutan[vii] and Jeana Yeager landed their airplane, named Voyager, at Edwards Air Force Base in California.  There is nothing particularly interesting in that, except for one little thing: they had taken off from Edwards Air Force Base on December 14.  In the interim, they had flown around the planet without landing or re-fueling, becoming the first people to fly an aircraft non-stop around the world[viii].  A transcript of the cabin voice recorder indicates that a large portion of the flight consisted of Yeager saying to Rutan, “For crying out loud, just pull over and ask for directions.  I don’t understand why you won’t ask someone how to get there.  What is wrong with you?  It’s not a crime to ask for directions, heck, anyone can get lost.  It’s not a big deal; just ask for directions.  You never want to ask anyone for directions.”

On Christmas Eve, 1906, radio innovator Reginald Fessenden broadcasting from Brant Rock, Massachusetts, made the first radio broadcast containing programming. The broadcast included Fessenden playing Silent Night, on the violin, and reading both poetry and a passage from the Bible.

"Silent Night[ix]" is a traditional Christmas song.  Its first performance was on the 25^th in 1818 when a choir sang it during Christmas services in the Church of St. Nikolaus in Oberndorf, Austria.  The song quickly became a staple of the Christmas season.  During World War I, a war that probably set the standard for brutality in the modern era, on Christmas Day in 1914, the song was sung, simultaneously, in English and German, by the troops facing each other near Ypres, Belgium.  When they finished singing, the soldiers from both sides exchanged gifts.  After gathering, the Germans and the Allies also conducted a group reading of the 23^rd psalm.  Sadly, after burying their dead it was back to business as usual for both sides.

Norman Angell was born on the 26^th in 1872.  He was a British politician, who somehow managed to finagle his way to a Nobel Peace Prize.  It seems almost to be an oxymoron to use the word peace in the same sentence as politician but the Nobel committee rarely asks for my advice.  Angell’s worldview is perhaps best illustrated by the following quote “Political nationalism has become...the most important thing in the world, more important than civilization, humanity, decency, kindness, and pity; more important than life itself."

If you have ever lived in a building that had low water pressure, or shared a home with one and a half bathrooms, you may have encountered the problem of someone flushing while you were in the shower, the result of which drenched you with very hot water.  The first reaction is to lash out at the offending individual who flushed offering strong arguments justifying the flusher’s placement in a spot on the food chain beneath amoebas.  The Flushing Remonstrance is, however, a bird of a different feather.  It is a document crafted in the 17^th century.  The Flushing Remonstrance was signed on the 27^th in 1657.  The document was intended as a protest against the religious persecution carried out by Peter Stuyvesant in the Dutch settlement in what is today the county of Queens in New York City.  It is considered by many to be one of the seminal documents drawn on the Founding Fathers drafted the United States’ Constitution.

John C. Calhoun, Vice President in John Quincy Adams’ administration, on the 28^th in 1832, became the first Vice President of the United States to resign.  Vice Presidents choosing to resign are not rare, Spiro Agnew immediately springs to mind. Calhoun has the distinction, however, of being one of only two Vice Presidents[x] to serve in the same position in the administrations of two Presidents.  He also served in Andrew Jackson’s administration.

At times it seems as if people have lost the ability to age gracefully.  Strategies to turn back the hands of time are published daily in the various media.  Plastic surgery, liposuction, hormone therapies, medicines, creams, and salves beyond measure appear on the market constantly.  Some people, principally women, starve themselves almost to the point of death to make themselves, at least in their minds, beautiful.  A seemingly limitless number of diets are published to help people already under-weight lose even more weight.  Unfortunately, a few people cross the line and actually do starve themselves to death.  An exception is a 17^th century member of minor nobility, Countess Elizabeth B?thory. She believed that she had discovered an efficacious beauty regimen, though perhaps she took it a tad too far.  On the 29^th in 1610, she was arrested on charges of murder.  It seems that since 1585 she had been in the practice of acquainting herself with an unknown number of young women, torturing and then killing them so that she could bath in their blood.  By her own estimation, the number of her victims was in excess of 650.  As a result, the dear countess was placed under house arrest, a condition in which she would remain until her death on August 21, 1614.

Edwin Powell Hubble[xi] was an American astronomer who was born at the end of the 19^th century.  After completing his university studies he was offered a job by George Ellery Hale[xii], who was the founder and director of the Mount Wilson Observatory.  On the 30^th in 1924, Hubble made the startling discovery that there existed, outside of our own comfy Milky Way, innumerable other galaxies[xiii].

Have you made your plans for New Year’s Eve yet?  If not, please consider the following.  Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins was a 19^th century English sculptor who became friends with paleontologist Sir Richard Owen (pictured).  There is nothing terribly startling or interesting in that is there?  It was bound to have happened because they were both British, ran in the same circles, met and hit it off.  The men met when they both became involved with London’s Great Exhibition of 1851.  Combining their two talents, the pair built a life-size model of an Iguanodon, a fierce ornithopod dinosaur, for the Exhibition.  On the 31^st in 1853, they hosted a dinner party for twenty inside the Iguanodon, which seemed like a good way to ring in the New Year.  While it may not have been quite Capote’s black and white ball it still must have been very cool.