Good morning seekers of Good News for the living through of these days! Its early, but the door is now open, the awnings cranked out, sidewalks tables set with DRIED OFF tops and chairs. Coffee, tea, hot cocoa and the orange juicer/squeezer are all competing to scent the air. Over THERE along the side, the smiling bartender is finishing writing “$3 off this morning!” under the neon chalk sign that reads “Thursday Mimosas!”
Bring your Good News, your Good stories, your Good tales (and those Good four-foot-friends with TAILS are welcome here too) to add to the comments, while passing around these plates I have assembled for your Third Thursday. As Keeper of the History Corner you can take in significant dates from August 18ths from centuries past, and hopefully see if I have connected them to nuggets of Good News from the last few days.
Most scholars agree the Olympic Games began in 776 BCE (a Major-ly BCE, Minus, Way-the-heck-back there date) and were held at 4 year intervals for centuries (and maybe in August….and maybe on an 18th....) The events mostly derived from training of soldiers: they needed to fight hand to hand, so boxing and wrestling. At a distance, you attacked your foes by throwing rocks (putting the shot), or arrows (archery), or spears (javelin) or flinging an edged platter (discus.) Running (both sprints and over distance) was vital for carrying messages between commanders, while jumping over distances (long jump), or over low walls (high jump and, later, hurdles), or high walls (vaulting them with a pole) let you either retreat or advance in the flow of battle.
The Games were observed for centuries, surviving earthquakes, famines, conquerors (see Rome, who adopted the Games) and even corruption (the Emperor Nero personally entered the Games and, wonder of wonders, won the victor’s crown of laurels in every single event he competed in….what a guy!) But while this reference to 776 BCE will figure in at the END of today’s Good News Round Up, another ancient bit of Good News is more reliably dated to this day:
295 or 293 BC (Either one, a minus, BCE date!) Rome. On this day the temple to Venus Obsequens was dedicated, and tomorrow, the 19th of August, was joined to the day of celebration because for centuries the 19th has been the day of Vinalia Rustica. Before she became/passed her finals for the goddess of love, Venus was worshipped as the goddess of gardens, crops and green, growing things. The Vinalia Rustica was a harvest festival of sorts, but as a preliminary.
The grape harvest was in September, but this solemn (yet heavy drinking day) involved a lamb sacrifice by a priest and earnest prayers especially to Jupiter to protect the coming grape harvest from bad weather (like hail or heavy rains) or from diseases to the grapes. All the prayers were repeated at home and each one sealed with another sip of wine (from the prior year.) I raise my wine glass to all the Gnusies! May your harvest of Good News be plentiful (gulp), delicious (slurp), and may the pressing of the grapes/votes in November run blue (!) with excitement from fields and vineyards you have never expected to hear from. Hail Venus!
>>>» Bad News for Trumpers is Good News for us! Rudi Guiliani yesterday spent SIX HOURS answering questions in front of the Georgia Grand Jury looking into Election Tampering. No word if he took the Fifth, or how many Kleenex he used during the day while melting under questioning. (And he IS now a TARGET in this investigation…..)
>>>>>>>>>While the GQP has just pulled millions of dollars for advertising in support of GQP Senate candidates (because they are hard up for money! YAY!) Priorities USA Action, a Democratic action group, has just bought $2 million in digital ads aimed at UN-registered voters under age 35, to get them registered. There has been a decades-long factor that “the younger, the more Democratic” as a demographic trend, so this is yet ANOTHER sign of good targeting for the midterms and beyond. YAY!
1492 Madrid, Spain Yes, yes that Italian navigator Columbus has taken three ships and sailed west to try to reach the East, and just left the other week. But there is a different kind of excitement in the Spanish Court today. A book has been produced, “Gramatica de la Lengua Castellana,” the first grammar of the Spanish language, and is this day formally presented to Queen Isabella. A watershed moment in the history and development of one of the most widely spoken languages on the planet.
1735 Boston, Massachusetts Continuing with literary landmarks, this day marks a publication, the first issue of “The Evening Post”, Boston’s first newspaper. (Regular issues, like weekly, or even daily, would come later, along with op-eds, crossword puzzles, comics and adverts….However, wrapping fresh fish in old copies got started quite early in this seafood town….)
1750 Legnano, Italy Birth of Antonio Salieri, composer. Enamored with music from his early days, he twice ran away from home to hear an older brother play a violin concerto in a neighboring city. Lost both parents within a year of each other when he was 15. Was sponsored by a friend of his father who saw he completed his education and music studies in Vienna. Composer of many operas; an occasional rival of Mozart (but Amadeus, both the play and movie, overplay this greatly. Indeed, Mozart invited Salieri to the premiere of his opera the “Magic Flute” (which Wolfgang conducted) and noted at the end how enraptured Salieri had been all through it with many “bravos” and “bellos”.) They even collaborated on a cantata for voice and piano for a soprano returning to the stage they both admired. The work was attested to but considered lost after it was performed in 1785 UNTIL (quoting from Wikipedia) “ the Schwabische Zeitung reported on the discovery by musicologist and composer Timo Juoko Herrman of a copy of its text and music while doing research on Antonio Salieri in the collections of the Czech Museum of Music.”
1868 Across India Astronomers have calculated (correctly) that a total solar eclipse will happen here today, and it does. Since this was figured out in advance, several European astronomers have come here for observations. Among these is French astronomer Pierre Janssen. He sets up some new equipment that measures the spectrums of light in the sun’s corona. He notes a particularly bright shade of yellow. Physics has advanced far enough to posit that different elements produce differing (and unique) spectrum colors. First guess of this bright yellow was sodium, but further work back in France showed Janssen this was not correct. After further work he announces the discovery of helium, that the Sun has a lot of the stuff. It took several years to confirm today’s announcement; helium was not known on planet Earth to science and for a while was thought to be unique to the Sun. (In 1895 English scientist William Ramsey accidently discovered helium on earth, matching Janssen’s spectrum line from today.)
Solar Panels may well be our salvation, but we are still getting kinks out of them. One issue is facing them toward the Sun. Solar chips and panels work best (i.e. most efficiently and produce the most power) when light falls squarely upon them, rather than at an obtuse or acute angle. The problem with mounting them on a roof is that the Earth turns, constantly changing the optimum angle as the day goes by. Yes, you can mount tracking motors that pivot the panels to follow the Sun, but this uses power and makes for several new things to go wrong and need maintenance. Now comes THIS STORY from a few weeks back here on DailyKos that offers up the idea of using pieces of glass in pyramid-shaped sheets to BEND the sunlight for optimum angle…..no moving parts! VERY COOL…...(and pyramidology moves up 2 notches toward respectability…..)
Mind you, there’s money to be made (and a planet to be saved) building solar panels, and there are many start-up and not-so-small companies in nation after nation screwing these together. But you know, sometimes the thing closest to home is the hardest to see. (There is that old saying from the days of cobblers, “The children of the shoemaker always go barefoot”-----same idea.) Well Solar Landscapes Inc. of Neptune, New Jersey (sounds like a town almost out of this solar system!) builds solar panels and somebody finally held up a mirror to them and they said, “HEY! That’s US!” So now comes THIS STORY of them putting solar panels on their own, flat-roofed storage buildings! The panels crank out enough power to light up 1400 homes! They may be a bit chagrined, but Good on them too for doing the right, popular, Green and even profitable thing.
…...And what do you want to use all that clean electric power for? Well EVs (electric vehicles) are coming on strong (indeed, a year ago in Norway, for the first time anytime and any country in the world, 56% of all New Car sales were all-electric.) Yep: electric motors driving car and truck tires, juiced by rechargeable batteries (and the technology of these keeps improving.) BUT what about those electric motors? Well the good and better ones use a combination of magnets and rotors and such, and these jazzy magnets use rare-earth materials that (unfortunately) are, well, rare, and are mostly found in China. :-(
But now comes Robert Sansone, who is building a better mousetrap…..or in this case, a better electric motor. Some of the basic principles have been known for decades among physicists and electrical engineers, with minimal use of magnets, but now Sansone has improved these so that certain versions run without magnets and are made from steel (not that exotic) and …..copper wire (helpfully distributed in landfills around the planet.) The coolest thing about THIS STORY is that Robert Sansone is….wait for it….only 17 years old! Whoa…..and he might help save the planet too!
>>» Good News from Nepal. Tigers (Big Kitty, Kitties!) there are MAKING A BIG COMEBACK from near-extinction, thanks to science and conservation.
>>>>» Good News from Herders…..Dog Herders. Keep them dogies movin’/ Movin’, movin’. movin’….rawhide! Well SOMEBODY has to keep those pre-schoolers moving…..and keep those cars and trucks stopped and in their places and showing some respect!! And THIS STRAY DOG has made it a daily chore, so you there, behind the wheel? Keep your foot near the brake pedal!! Yes YOU! ARFF!!
1872 Chicago After age 10 New Jersey man Aaron Montgomery Ward grew up in Michigan, then relocated to Chicago as the Civil War ended. He was a traveling salesman for a few years, covering hundreds of miles every week on the railroads sprawling out from Chicago. He saw endless country folk (a majority of the country at the time) being overcharged for shoddy merchandise from the cities with no recourse. He came up with a business plan, raised some money and built up a warehouse of goods-----all of which were burned in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. He found new investors, amassed some goods and on this day mailed out his first 1st mail-order catalog (163 pages) to some of the customers from his salesman days. He only took cash (and small-town merchants offered credit) but because he cut out so many wholesalers and middlemen and their commissions and charges, he undercut them all. His variety, prices, quality of goods, and delivery by mail to absolutely everywhere it seemed (since the rails were going everywhere the and the post office made heavy use of these) to earn a lasting place in American business wherever the mails could go.
1909 Washington, DC The mayor of Tokyo, Mr. Yukio Ozaki, is on something of a world goodwill tour, and everyone who is anyone wants to meet the exotic foreigner. On this day he meets with President William Taft and comes bearing a gift: 2000 cherry tree saplings. President Taft accepts, and decides to plant them near the Potomac. Cherry blossom time is a huge, annual event in DC (and the trees survived the anti-Japanese hard feelings of World War II) and graces the city with a beautiful charm.
1920 Nashville, Tennessee. The Tennessee Legislature is called into special session for a solemn, weight event: consideration of an Amendment to the US Constitution. One of, if not THE youngest member of the House, 22-year-old (!) Harry Burn receives a letter this morning from his mother regarding the Amendment. He notes this is a short floor speech and becomes THE deciding vote to ratify the 19th Amendment, which makes Tennessee the 36th and therefore the 3 quarter-est state to so ratify. The right to vote for women becomes part of the Constitution.
1940 Over the skies of England The Luftwaffe is making their supreme effort to knock the RAF from the sky and allow for the Nazi Invasion of Britain. It is the 4th straight day of very heavy raids, and this day goes down later as The Hardest Day. The British pilots and anti-aircraft batteries bring down 69 German planes but the RAF loses 68 today (and they have started this fight outnumbered 3:1, so losses like these for England will be crippling if they continue (but…..they don’t…..Still, at sundown today, The Hardest Day.)
1962 Liverpool, England Having signed various papers and shaken a few hands with the rest of the blokes in the band (see yesterday’s 1962 entry) this evening Ringo Starr sits down at the drum set and plays his first rhythms and kept the beat for his mates as a Beatle.
1969 Woodstock, New York The Music & Art Fair closes today. Band of Gypsys is the final act, featuring Jimi Hendrix. They play their set and then Hendrix rips into a personal version of the “Star Spangled Banner” that stunned, shocked, and amazed everyone.
Musings from music….I suppose it is a mark of getting older to note the passing of certain music icons that have been important in our lives. We sang along, tried to copy a favorite, mused over the lyrics of certain ballads, cried a little tear here and there, and fastened some life memories to a certain set of tunes at a certain time in life. Just in the last week word has come of the passing of Olivia Newton John, who marked the early and mid 1980s with a soaring voice, catchy tunes, some fun-spirited acting in Grease opposite John Travolta and a hard luck upbringing that formed a dark back story to her stage success.
Like Newton-John, the other day we also said goodbye to Judith Durham. Another Australian, Durham was on the charts years before Newton-John. No, hers was not a solo career, but she made her mark. The Seekers were a quartet of three blokes on guitars and stand-up bass, and Judith’s soprano voice. That voice! Opera quality, and yet she reined it in for the sake of blend and harmony, making music that I for one liked a lot and now miss.
Here from 1964 The Seekers go to the studio to record their biggest hit: (and if you look closely at the opening seconds, the studio in in London; it had an upstairs studio for use by the Beatles…..and a basement studio for everyone else. You won’t see studio equipment like that again but that harmony and those words…..well, my heart sings them (and my lips join in) to my children and the now the sweetie in my life, Kossack SageHagRN:
in 2013, …...49 years later.…...the Seekers, a beloved rock band in their native Australia, went on a Farewell Tour. They sang their standards and their hits (“Hey there, Georgy Girl!”). Of COURSE, the had to do “I’ll Never Find Another You”, and if you listen here below, you will be amazed…..after 49 years…..Judith still wears bangs…..and, yeah…..they’ve STILL GOT IT!
If we can open and close a musical group, well then this Good News Round Up can do likewise between Ancient and Modern, Olympic style. On August 18….
2004 Olympia, Greece Athens hosted the first modern Olympic Games in 1896 as a nod to the Greeks who had started the whole idea 26 centuries (!) before. In 2004, Athens hosted the Games again but as is common, certain events are held in satellite locations outside Athens.
Archeologists in the village of Olympia had determined a certain field between a pair of long, low mounds had been THE original site for the shot put competition. Like in 400 BC, so also in 2004, spectators sat on the grass;
concessionaires sold refreshments; people cheered, officials took measurements, and standings went up on a board. But UNLIKE ancient times, when all the events were for men (and the athletes were in the nude), on this day in THIS venue, THIS Olympic shot put competition was for men AND for women. Yumileidi Cumbá of Cuba wins women's gold; American Adam Nelson men's gold. Among the competitors and among the spectators (one of the hottest tickets in 2004!) there were frequent tears and gasps as both athletes and the crowds sensed the history of the place pressing down upon them.
(Maybe my mind is playing tricks on me, but I know I watched this event, and I’m pretty sure that some of the crowd shots here and there showed people dressed in chiton and sandals…...)
OK Gnusies! I hope this sets the table, and the venue, and the dress code possibilities…...and the musical motifs…..for your Thursday of the Good News!
There is space below for your additions, corrections, breaking stories, up beat moments, requests for help, support and invitations to rejoice with you and hope alongside you.
Enjoy the day and, in the words of John Denver,
“Come dance with west wind
And touch on the mountaintops,
Sail o’er the canyons and up to the stars,
And reach for the heavens, and hope for the future, and all that we can be,
May all your News be Good, comforting and inspiring.