HISTORY: SELMA, ALABAMA .... 1965 .. EVEN I REMEMBER HIS ONE!

Okay - So, I was all of 1 1/2 yrs old when this happened, yet, I can remember it very well.

Maybe it's because they taught it so much in school - maybe because I actually remember wactching it on tv .... whatever the reason, it happened and it's true.....

And I have found a video on the History CHannel's YouTube channel to tell you the story .... from a disctinct point of view .... but still, it DID happen ..... 

Let's learn ....
Let's never let this happen again!

40 Years ago today

Okay not 'today' in the strictest sense ... actually it was yesterday.

Monday marks the Landing on the Moon.

So I figured I'd offer up some fun facts:

• Launched July 16, 1969
• First man to walk on the moon: Neil Armstrong (oh cool story about him coming up)
• 21 hrs, 38 minutes, 21 seconds=time people were on the moon for that first time
• 238,900 miles = distance between Earth and Moon
• 1/6th = moon's gravity as compared to earth (you'd feel so much skinnier up there!)
• tin foil = the thickness of the walls of the lunar lander
• the moon dust would be deadly to inhale, particles are not like regular Earth dust, they are more like microscopic shards of glass

This will be a growing list so keep an eye on it!

Crafts to Share

If you find that you are getting a tad too cold at night then instead of turning up the furnace and running up your energy bill, and causing extra carbons to be released (yeah yeah, I know 'tree hugger' speak) ... perhaps all you need is a bit of wisdom from our Ancestors.

In the colonial days, and perhaps before that, people work hats to bed to hold in the extra body heat at night ... so here is a link as to how to make a simple Mob Hat from The American Girls.

Felicity's Mob Hat

You will need

a 20" piece of white cloth

18" of 1" wide ribbon

some scissors, needle, and thread - of course

that should get you started. Just think of the different patterns you can use -- experiment and see which materials work best for you.

P.S. - it will save your pillowcases as well as it will keep the caustic oils from your head from penitrating thru the threads ... and making you have to wash them so often.

Presidential Initials

List of Presidents of the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Okay so recent post (last one) made we wonder about Presidential initials .... Barack's initials are 'BO'

So before I jump off task -- here is a quicky chart of our Presidents and their initials:

# 2IN 3IN President
1 GW G_W George Washington
2 JA J_A John Adams, Jr.
3 TJ TJJ Thomas James Jefferson
4 JM J_M James Madison, Jr.
5 JM J_M James Monroe
6 JA JQA John Quincy Adams(used middle name to distinguish himself from his father, John Adams Jr.)
7 AJ A_J Andrew Jackson
8 MvB MvB Martin Van Buren(not sure how a initials of a double-lastname works)
9 WH WHH William Henry Harrison
10 JT J_T John Tyler
11 JP JKP James Knox Polk
12 ZT Z_T Zachary Taylor
13 MF M_F Milard Fillmore (only a single 'L' in Milard)
14 FP F_P Franklin Pierce (often a 'K' is used for a middle initial but there are no official records alluding to it, according to Wikipedia it could be a reference to his mother's maiden name)
15 JB J_B James Buchanan
16 AL A_L Abraham (Abe) Lincoln
17 AJ A_J Andrew Johnson
18 UG USG Ulysses Simpson Grant
19 RH RBH Rutherford Birchard Hayes
20 JG JAG James Abram Garfield
21 CA CAA Chester Alan Arthur
22 GC SGC Stephen Grover Cleveland
23 BH B_H Benjamin Harrison
24 GC SGC (Cleveland's second term)
25 WmK WmK William McKinley
26 TR T_R Theodore (Teddy, TR) Roosevelt
27 WT WHT William Howard Taft
28 WW TWW Thomas Woodrow Wilson
29 WH WGH Warren Gamaliel Harding
30 CC JCC John Calvin Coolidge
31 HH HCH Herbert Clark Hoover
32 FR FDR Franklin Delano Roosevelt
33 HT HST Harry S. Truman(his middle name was 'S' just 'S')
34 JK JFK John Fitzgerald Kennedy
35 LJ LBJ Lyndon Baines Johnson
36 RN RMN Richard Milhous Nixon
37 GF GRF Gerald Rudolph Ford, Jr.
38 JC JEC James (Jimmy) Earl Carter, Jr.
39 RR RWR Ronald Wilson Reagan
40 GB GHWB George Herbert Walker Bush(only president with TWO middle names)
41 BC WJC William (Bill) Jefferson Clinton
42 GB GWB George Walker Bush
43 ?? ??? Now that is the question isn't it?

A few notes:
for 2IN (first/last name) ... I used the name they ran under (such as BC for Bill Clinton instead of WC for William Clinton); I wasn't sure how McNames & VanNames worked so I put the prefix in lower case.

for 3IN (first/middle/last name) ... many Presidents did not have a middle name. Some used their middle name to run (Calvin Coolidge for instance), so their real first name is italicized.

Full Names:
There have been several "Jr"s, whether they used the Jr in their campaign or not - I have included them in the full name section.

You will notice some middle names have been italicized ... well that's just a quirk where I got a kick out of their middle names - ones you don't hear much of ... such as 'Knox' and 'Milhous" ... but most refer to lineage of the person. (My favorite is Rudolph, but then its my very favorite holiday show).

Only one president has TWO middle names, thus 4IN - George HW Bush (current president's father).

One president has initials that we would find offensive (MF = Milard Fillmore) but at the time the offensive language we would associate with it was not used, first reference is in 1928 or 1933 depending on the form used.

So the current Presidential hopefuls??

BO BHO Barack Hussein Obama
JmC JSmC John Sidney McCain III (the third)

Just for info - not a political stance by anymeans.

Movie Monday - Calling all motor heads

Today is the anniversary of the first Corvette -- production began in 1953 and here is a tribute I found on YouTube that does a great job at showing how the car has changed over the years.

I have to say ... I really don't like the 'sedan' aspect of it though -- the whole point of having a 'Vette is to taking that mini-vacation from the kids ... not giving you a way to take them with you.

See--its not just me!!!

USATODAY: Teens losing touch with common cultural and historical references :

"Among 1,200 students surveyed:
•43% knew the Civil War was fought between 1850 and 1900. [geez, you only gave them a 5 decade time frame! what happened to single decade ranges?? are they that dumb? 'hmm, did we fight the civil war this century or last, hmmm]
•52% could identify the theme of '1984'.
•51% knew that the controversy surrounding Sen. Joseph McCarthy focused on communism.
In all, students earned a C in history and an F in literature, though the survey suggests students do well on topics schools cover.
For instance, 88% knew the bombing of Pearl Harbor led the USA into World War II [grandparents and great grandparent stories, that's why], and 97% could identify Martin Luther King Jr. as author of the 'I Have a Dream' speech [but what else can they tell you about the man? not much]
Fewer (77%) knew Uncle Tom's Cabin helped end slavery a century earlier [that is better than when I was in school and the book was banned though...we thought UTC was about camping]

'School has emphasized Martin Luther King, and everybody teaches it, and people are learning it,' says Chester Finn of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, an education think tank. 'What a better thing it would be if people also had the Civil War part and the civil rights part, and the Harriet Tubman part and the Uncle Tom's Cabin part. [what about the Southern states part too....you know there was a reason they went to war and it wasn't just over slavery; in fact it was one of the last issues they had]'"

I have always said that they are forgetting too much of black history when they only focus on MLK & the Civil Rights movement...I'd like to know how many kids realized that Lincoln created the country of Liberia and offered free passage to any slave who wanted to return there.
How many kids realize that the "Emmancipation Proclaimation" only freed the southern slaves and that there WERE slaves in the north?
How many kids realize that people could sell themselves BACK INTO slavery and often did?

Yup there is a LOT of history that the kids miss.
Sometimes I think they can learn more watching the History channel more than they can sitting in a classroom all year.
Worse part is when I was telling my 18yr old (the one I just praised a few posts back) about the Civil War stat...he said he didn't remember the dates of the war either=--=you would not believe his ACT scores and he can't recall the dates? What is going on here?

I hoping he's just pulling my leg

Drawing useless conclusions...

Okay. We all know I do that a lot but I was downloading the 'Scarlet Pimpernel' from Librivox.org {great place if you haven't been there yet} and I noticed the author's name [or should that be playwright's name since it actually started as a play before it was a novel?] and it reminded me of something:

The author in question is: Baroness Emma Orczy...she was a playwright in 1903

The thing that crossed my mind was 'Age of Innocence' by Edith Wharton. The 'antiheroine' is:
Countess Ellen Olensky written in 1920

Now on the surface it may seem as if the names are nothing alike...unless you grew up with an Eastern European surname as I did. People tend to change any name if they can't pronounce it at first glance to something close but they always end it with a -sky or -ski.

Nor would it be difficult to mix up a Baroness for a Countess, they are basically the same in most respects.

Emma was from Hungary....Ellen was married to a Polish Count. (Emma married an English Clergyman's son)

Differences:
Emma had a very long and happy marriage lasting nearly 50 yrs.
Ellen was in a very unhappy marriage and had even run away with another man before moving to America where she met Archer.

however, being that Wharton was writing a book which was exposing the less savory things about 'high society', as most of her novels do, especially when it comes to women....it is not surprising that she would set Ellen up in this circumstance.

Ellen is, without a doubt, a shadow of Wharton herself...

But I am wondering if there isn't also a lot, a lot, of Baroness Emma in her as well. I can not find anything to support this theory....but it sounds very likely to me.

Can you really blame them??

FOXNews.com - Vatican Ambassador Attends Holocaust Memorial Service in Boycott Reversal:

"Yad Vashem believes that it was inappropriate to link an issue of historical
research with commemoration of the victims of the Holocaust,' she said."

Okay, I can understand the outrage of the Jewish people over the church not taking a firm stand....I can even totally understand the church trying to canonize the pope at the time...but what I can not understand is why the museum would put up something they know would upset the catholic church and then call them in to look at it.

Sorry that's just rude. Even after the church has told them that their research is wrong and offered other proof that the church was helping behind the scenes in such a way as to be able to save thousands instead of coming straight out and shutting off those lines of escape.

While we can look back now and say "you were wrong", at the time, the move put the church in great danger and was probably the best way to handle things.

What really gets me is the quote above by the museums creator...if he really felt that it was wrong to link historical research to the mouring for the victims--why didn't he just take down the offending blirp next to the pope's photo????? because he doesn't really believe it!!

I don't blame the church for wanting to boycott it....in fact I wouldn't blame ANY of the countries who are being lame-basted for not showing up.

While we should never forget the horrors or how it happened....a good host never embarrasses their guests on purpose...and this is definately on purpose.

Check out the story for the exact wording they used to describe the pope's actions....more than slightly inflamatory!!!