While in Paris for a school trip this summer my oldest daughter stayed with a local family. It was a very interesting experience for her, particularly in light of the fact that her host family spoke no English (and she speaks no French). She learned, however, that hospitality and graciousness is a universal language and she had a wonderful time visiting with them and seeing various sights in Paris. One of the things she found most amusing was the family told her that many of the places they took her to see were places that they, in fact, had never seen themselves. She found it so hard to believe that someone could live in the midst of all those famous attractions and not visit them every single day. We like to think that if we lived next door to the Louvre we would start and end each and every day there.
The reality is that in day to day life we often miss things right under our nose and it takes a special guest or visitor coming around to get us out and about. Today I learned a number of new things, and discovered another piece of history here, in my own backyard, so to speak.
I attended the dedication for the Harry “Suitcase” Simpson memorial in local West Hill Cemetery. Now Mr. Simpson is buried in what was once the “colored” portion of the cemetery. Segregation relegated all non-white residents to the back of the cemetery, as far away from everyone else as possible. Simpson is buried at the very top of the hill that overlooks the rest of the cemetery, and also looks out on what is undoubtedly the most picturesque view of the mountains that surround the community. What wonderful justice, pushed back to the “cheap seats” that are now clearly the best of them all. It’s a nice reminder that sometimes, in the end, things do work out as they should, if you are patient and on the side of what is right and true.
“Suitcase” as he was called by those in baseball, “Goody” to his family, was an African- American outfielder and first basemen in Major League baseball, and more importantly (to those of us gathered today) a member of the Dalton Nine, the first black baseball team organized here in this town. The Dalton Nine became the Dalton Tigers in the 1930’s.
Here is some “bio” I picked up while reading about Suitcase, and the Negro Baseball leagues, and my own community:
-He was born in Atlanta, Georgia and died in Akron, Ohio- He was one of the earliest black players in the American League, playing first with the Cleveland Indians in 1951.
There is debate about where the nickname “Suitcase” originated. This from Wiki:
-That his nickname of “Suitcase” came from his being frequently traded during his playing career is a common misconception. According to the 1951 Cleveland Indians Sketch Book, he was called “Suitcase” by sportswriters after the Toonerville Trolley character, Suitcase Simpson. This is years before his many trades. His real nickname was “Goody” which came from his willingness to run errands and help neighbors in his hometown of Dalton, Georgia.
And this from NLBPA:
Simpson earned the nickname Suitcase by playing for 17 different Negro, Major and Minor League teams during his professional career.
http://www.nlpa.com/simpson_harry.html
I spent the morning surrounded by local and sports history (I wish I could remember the name of the gentleman who was there-a track and field record holder) enjoying the view, and learning a thing or two. Not bad.
And suddenly I’m in the mood for a good baseball game.
(from NLPA)
Today is Tuesday and I’ve just gotten around to some more of the Sunday New York Times. So here’s what I learned. I’m not even going to add to it in any way. The article is fascinating on it’s own.
Rest In Peace Mr. Marsters.
(from the New York Times Obituaries, Sunday, August 23rd)
Sign language, lip reading and speech training helped James Marsters get through college and dental school and made it possible for him to succeed as an orthodontist. He could communicate very well face to face.
But for most of his first 40 years, the telephone was a barrier.
“All of us in the family, whenever a call came for my dad,” his son James Jr. said on Friday, “we picked up this handset attached to the phone so that we could listen in and relay to my father what the caller was saying. He would read our lips and then reply in his own voice.”
Dr. Marsters and two deaf colleagues broke that barrier for themselves and tens of thousands of other hearing-impaired people in 1964 when they converted an old, bulky, clacking Teletype machine into a device that could relay a typewritten conversation through a telephone line. It was the first example of what became commonly known as a TTY and is now, in a greatly updated and compact version, called a text telephone.
Dr. Marsters died of natural causes at his home in Oakland, Calif., on July 28, his son said. He was 85.
A mutual acquaintance, aware that two of his friends were thinking along the same lines, introduced Dr. Marsters to Robert H. Weitbrecht, a physicist at Stanford University,in 1964. Both were soon fiddling with the nearly obsolete Teletype machines cluttering Dr. Marsters’s garage.
Mr. Weitbrecht came up with the idea of using an acoustic coupler — now called a modem — to connect two of the Teletype machines. The coupler changed electrical signals coming from one Teletype machine into tones sent through a telephone wire; at the other end, the tones were changed back into electrical signals so that the message could be printed on the receiving machine.
Another tinkerer, Andrew Saks, an electrical engineer and a grandson of the founder of Saks Fifth Avenue, was soon working in the garage as well. Dr. Marsters and Mr. Weitbrecht had gone to him for financing.
With the intention of building a network of TTY users, the three men began collecting and reconditioning the Teletype machines that were being discarded by news services and companies like Western Union. They formed a company, the Applied Communications Corporation, to refurbish and donate TTYs. Dr. Marsters traveled around the country, educating the deaf community about the new technology, forming partnerships with other organizations and lobbying for support from government officials.
There were only 18 TTYs in operation in 1966, Karen Peltz Strauss, the author of “A New Civil Right: Telecommunications Equality for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Americans” (Gallaudet University Press,2006), said in a telephone interview on Thursday. By 2006, there were about 30,000 listings in the Blue Book a national directory of TTY users.
Pointing out that the Internet has since greatly reduced the need for text telephones, Ms. Peltz Strauss said, “I would say that by the mid-1990s it had peaked at tens of thousands of people who had and used them regularly.”
Dr. Marsters, she said, “got the ball rolling for future generations of people with hearing loss to achieve telecommunications equality.”
Beyond making their technological breakthrough and starting the network, Dr. Marsters and his partners, working with other leaders of the deaf community, played significant roles in reshaping government policy.
When they introduced their device, the partners met strong resistance from AT&T, which then had virtual control over the nation’s telephone system and prohibited direct connections to its network. In 1968, the Federal Communications Commission struck down AT&T’s restrictive policy, saying it had no right to deny the connection to its network as long as there was no harm to its operations.
In the 1970s, Dr. Marsters and Mr. Saks made arrangements with several local telephone companies in California to introduce relay services — technology that allowed deaf people to communicate with hearing people.
“Dr. Marsters and his partners provided the forerunner of what is now a nationwide network of telecommunication relay services,” Ms. Peltz Strauss said. “These services are now completely free to anybody who wants them because they are required by law under the Americans With Disabilities Act.”
James Carlyle Marsters was born in Norwich, N.Y., on April 5, 1924, one of two sons of Guy and Anna Belle Marsters. His father was a pharmaceutical company executive.
Besides his son James, Dr. Marsters is survived by another son, Guy; a daughter, Jean Marsters; and two grandchildren. His wife of 49 years, the former Alice Dorsey, died in 2003.
In infancy, Jimmy Marsters lost his hearing to scarlet fever and measles. As a toddler, he received lip-reading and speech training. After graduating from the Wright Oral School for the Deaf in New York City in 1943, he earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry at Union College,in Schenectady, N.Y.
For three years, Mr. Marsters worked in a necktie factory in New York while his applications to dental schools were repeatedly rejected. Eventually, the New York University College of Dentistryadmitted him, with the understanding that it would offer no special accommodations. He received his dental degree in 1952, then moved to California, where two years later he earned a master’s degree in orthodontics at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.Dr. Marsters opened his orthodontics practice in Pasadena, Calif., in 1954; he retired in 1990. Mr. Weitbrecht died in 1983, and Mr. Saks died in 1989.
One day in May 1964, when both were at their homes in California, Dr. Marsters and Mr. Weitbrecht made the first TTY call on a traditional telephone line.
Their communication was garbled at first. But after some adjustments were made, their typed words were clear and concise: “Are you printing me now?” Mr. Weitbrecht asked Dr. Marsters. “Let’s quit for now and gloat over the success.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/23/us/23marsters.html?ref=obituaries
On the evening news tonight there was a story about the college class of 2013, how they think and what their world view is like. One commentator noted that this group of young people has never used a card catalog; she then went on to note how difficult it was for the news crew to even find a card catalog for the purposes of shooting the story.
(I have one at my house, she could’ve called me!)
I’ve written at length before about my love of books, reading, and especially public libraries. I think libraries are the greatest things in the world and that none of us visit them often enough. To this day I can still vividly remember the smell of the public library in my hometown of Jonesboro, Georgia. I remember the cool rush of air conditioned wind upon entering the building, the excitement of hoping hoping hoping that they’d have the item for which I was searching and, alas , I remember how I was on their “most wanted list” for overdue books- I was terrible about getting things returned on time. That little library changed my world-long before one touch ordering from Amazon.com.
Those were the days when you had to find the title in the card catalog and then search for it on the shelf. Frankly I loved the search, I am not a fan of today’s computer system that tells me if a book is in and when/if it will be returned. It ruins the anticipation and the thrill of the hunt.
So all this thinking about libraries got me thinking about what I wanted to learn today-I decided to read up on the Dewey Decimal System. I will confess, I thought I knew all there was to know about those Dewey Decimals-turns out I was wrong. There’s a lot more to it than just numbers on the side of books. I set out to learn
Just who was Dewey?
I learned there is an entire website dedicated to the Dewey System. http://www.oclc.org/dewey/ The content there is written in library-speak, so I searched on.
This site was much more fun http://frank.mtsu.edu/~vvesper/dewey2.htm complete with graphics including Hewey, Dewey, and Lewey. (The ducks) Here’s what they have to say about Dewey (from Encylopedia Britannica)
-Melvin Dewey was born Dec. 10,1851 and died Dec. 26, 1931
-He devised the Dewey Decimal Classification for library cataloging and is considered the “father” of modern library sciences.
-In 1874 he published A Classificiaton and Subject Index for Cataloguing and Arranging the Books and Pamphlets of a Library. This system was eventually adopted by libraries around the world.
-He also founded the Library Journal
-Here’s a fun fact:
- Keenly interested in simplified spelling, he shortened his first name to Melvil as a young adult, dropped his middle names and, for a short time, even spelled his last name as Dui. Dewey was an advocate of English language spelling reform and is responsible for, among other things, the “American” spelling of the word Catalog (as opposed to the British Catalogue. (from OLC)
Then Wiki (that I loathe) had this to say about Mr. Dewey/Dui
Dewey’s personal views might be considered racist and sexist today. Even in his own day, his career as New York State Librarian was negatively affected by the anti-Semitic policies of the Lake Placid Club, while his role in the ALA was curtailed by his overly familiar attention to women.
I dug around a bit, it seems I’m going to have to do more extensive reading to find out exactly what Mr. Dewey’s personal views were, and precisely how “overly familiar” he was with women.
In learning about Dewey I, of course, had to review the DDC, and learned a thing or two. The system is more involved than I imagined, which explains that decimal and all those numbers that come after it.
This site, designed by sixth graders, did a lovely job of filling me in on the system, and a little about Mr. Dewey too. (The sixth grade site of course made no mention of that problem with women) http://library.thinkquest.org/5002/ They even have puzzles, games, and quizzes. I will tell you, I didn’t do to well on a few of those tests-clearly I’m not as smart as a sixth grader when it comes to cataloging library books…
And I learned this from his NYT obituary:
Mr. Dewey and his wife also founded the Lake Placid Club at Lake Placid, N.Y. and was devoted to the cause of the Winter Olympic games. Dewey and his son Godfrey were active in arranging the winter games and he was the Chairman of the N.Y. State Winter Olympic Games Committee.
All this library talk reminded me-I need to finish the book I’m reading-it may very well be overdue. (Don’t you hate it when someone won’t return the book you want in a timely fashion?!)
This came across my twitter feed today from @tvcarol: Hungry? World’s largest cupcake = 2 million calories!
I knew immediately that I wanted to learn more about said cupcake. I’m not really a cupcake fan, unless presented with lovely and tasty ones like those I discovered once in Nashville at Gigi’s Cupcakes. We stumbled upon this glorious shop while in town for a swimming event. It was like a museum, only with edible art. http://www.gigiscupcakesusa.com/
They were truly (almost) too beautiful to eat.
And, in the interest of full disclosure, I don’t bake cupcakes. Really, I don’t bake much at all, but when I do it’s cake-full size. Cupcakes-sadly my children are most familiar with that which is called a cupcake but really tastes less than delicious found at the local grocer’s bakery.
Reading about this world record cupcake of course led me to today’s learning.
When was the first cupcake baked?
What I learned-cupcakes are HUGE right now. Not as in world’s record huge, but popularity huge. There are a lot of sites out there talking about cupcakes, baking cupcakes, and eating cupcakes; and even more it seems dedicated to photographing cupcakes. So beware, if you proceed on and follow my links you will walk away hungry.
I couldn’t pin point when the first cupcake was baked but found out some interesting tidbits-but not much more than this. There are a lot of people writing about cupcakes, but there’s not a lot out there on the history of them.
The term ‘cupcake’ is first mentioned in E. Leslie’s ‘Receipts’ of 1828
From:http://www.crazyaboutcupcakes.com/learning.htm
And a different take:
One of the earliest records comes from the Fanny Merritt Farmer’s Boston Cooking-School Cook Book. In this book the cook is instructed to bake individual cakes in tin cups. Paper liners were not used until just after World War I when the James River Corporation manufactured cupcake liners on machines that a few years before were making artillery shells. Commercial cupcakes reached the market some time before World War II. Hostess introduced the Hostess Cupcake in the 1950’s.
From http://bakingdesserts.suite101.com/article.cfm/cupcakes
I wouldn’t call call what Hostess makes a cupcake…
The cupcake evolved in the United States in the 19th century, and it was revolutionary because of the amount of time it saved in the kitchen. There was a shift from weighing out ingredients when baking to measuring out ingredients. According to the Food Timeline Web, food historians have yet to pinpoint exactly where the name of the cupcake originated. There are two theories: one, the cakes were originall y cooked in cups and two, the ingredients used to make the cupcakes were measured out by the cup.
In the beginning, cupcakes were sometimes called “number” cakes, because they were easy to remember by the measurements of ingredients it took to create them: One cup of butter, two cups of sugar, three cups of flour, four eggs, one cup of milk, and one spoonful of soda. Clearly, cupcakes today have expaned to a wide variety of ingredients, measurements, shapes, and decorations – but this was one of the first recipes for making what we know today as cupcakes.
Cupcakes were convenient because they cooked much quicker than larger cakes. When baking was down in hearth ovens, it would take a long time to bake a cake, and the final product would often be burned. Muffin tins, also called gem pans, were popular around the turn of the 20th century, so people started created cupcakes in tins. From:http://iml.jou.ufl.edu/projects/Spring07/Ayers/history.html
Whether it was a “cup,” “measure” or “number” cake, the shift to measuring from weighing was indeed a significant one, according to “The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America.” But it goes on to explain that the cup name had a double meaning because of the practice of baking in small containers — including tea cups.
It’s interesting to note that the cakes were likely called “number” cakes because of a mnemonic device for remembering the recipe: One cup of butter, two cups of sugar, three cups of flour and four eggs plus one cup of milk and one spoonful of soda. http://cupcakestakethecake.blogspot.com/2005/04/little-cupcake-history.html
Cupcakes are called “fairy cakes” in Britain. (per Wiki, that I loathe)
I wonder how long it would take to drive to Nashville?
A totoro cupcake. (from www.allthingscupcake.com)
I must confess, I’m cheating today. Yesterday I discovered what I wanted to learn , but I didn’t get to it until today. So really this is what I learned yesterday and today, if we are keeping track.
I attended a party yesterday at a friend’s house. She has lovely piece of land nestled in the valley with a view of the mountains .The back patio is adjacent to their small family run vineyard, so it’s grape vines as far as the eye can see. The children splashed in the pool while the grown-ups sat in the shade on the covered deck. It was a lovely afternoon with just enough breeze to make the hot August afternoon bearable. As the day wore on I looked up at the ceiling, stretching myself, when I noticed something odd. Hanging from the ceiling rafters were small ziploc bags of water. I looked at them for a moment, one, three, five, nine total. Must be for some unusual party game, I thought.
About that time the lady seated next to me pointed to the ceiling and inquired of our hostess, “what are the water bags for?”
“They keep the flies away. This property is adjacent to a horse farm, we have terrible flies. This is the only thing that works.”
Realllllllllllllllllllllllllllly?, several of us said.
She went on to explain that it a very common remedy and that outdoor restaurants, such as bbq joints, swear by it.
So the skeptic in me decided that I would make that my weekend thing to learn:
Do hanging water bags deter flies?
Here’s what I learned: It depends on who you ask. There is no shortage of information on the web about this one. Some claim it is a solid, scientific fact. Others, an “old-wives” tale. Some say it’s simply a matter of people not understanding cause and effect.
-The WikiAnswers answer to the question just sounded completely ridiculous
The common house fly has a morbid fear of drowning and is somewhat clostraphobic so goes out of its way to avoid enclosed bodies of water. (PLEASE NOTE: Wikki has misspelled claustrophobic-that should tell you something!)
And exactly how does Wiki know that? Are the flies all discussing their drowning fears in fly therapy?
E-Answers, Yahoo, how-stuff-works, and a number of others offered this bit of skeptical explanation:
- There are many folk “remedies” for fending off pests,from brown paper bags to keep the bees away to deterring slugs and snails through the use of beer traps at the base of plants. The efficacy of the bulk of these methods is up for debate, and the practice of filling and hanging clear plastic bags with water to ward off flies is no different. The question of “how does it work” should essentially be supplanted with “does it work?”. There is actually no empirical evidence fully supporting or entirely debunking the water-filled plastic bag theory; however, the following are the most popularly presumed theories on why it might work.
Light Refraction Theory I
- The most popular theory is that the refraction of light through the water in the bag confuses the flies in one of two ways. The first being that the fly sees its own reflection in the water, which is somehow frightening and/or confusing. This keeps it away from your doorway, and by extension, out of your house. While this theory is certainly on the inventive side, it doesn’t entirely hold water, so to say.
Light Refraction Theory II
- The second and slightly more plausible light refraction theory is that the light is refracted in a way that magnifies activity in the vicinity of the bag, and that this movement appears to be a predator, thus making the fly wary of the area. The plausibility factor is slightly higher for this theory, as it has a direct correlation to the fly’s ocular physiology, relating to the fly’s multifaceted eyes–though the theory remains unproven. In any event, many people swear by this method of pest deterrence, though science isn’t entirely on the side of it being 100 percent effective.
Does it Work?
(I can buy that a fly would be frightened away by the site of those million little beady fly eyes staring back at it much easier than I can that the fly is afraid of drowning.)
There are HUNDREDS of sites that address this question-who knew so many people were talking about flies?!
I read a lot, about flies, insect repellant, home remedies, fly swatters, bug sprays, and on and on.
So what I learned is this: WHO KNOWS if it works, but people swear by it. There are even sites where people from around the world claim to use this method with absolute success.
The one thing that surprises me most about this is that some marketer somewhere hasn’t tried to sell “specially made bags of water” designed to repel flies. For only $19.99 you get ten bags and they throw in a Snuggly. (Water not included of course.)
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Photo examiner.com
Is it okay to learn a new thing this early in the morning? Does it mean I’m going to close my mind for the rest of the day?
I hope no, but this article in the NYT sparked my interest and I had to delve deeper.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/08/14/opinion/20090814opart-fountains.html
It’s about water fountains. Reading it made me think-when was the last time I used a water fountain, or even saw one?
I’m sure it’s been a while since I took a big gulp from one, I’m a little germ phobic that way. I had a girlfriend once whose only directive to her children on the first day of school was DON’T USE THE WATER FOUNTAINS. I always felt bad for the them thinking of their parched little throats after recess, but I understood her logic. Have you ever looked at the water fountain before taking a drink? The “ick” factor is rather substantial.
I think there are still water fountains in schools. I hope so, for without them how will youngsters these days endure the right of passage that comes from accidentally squirting yourself in the face resulting in a giant water drip stain on the front of your shirt just moments before school picture time.
So I decided to take this odd train of thought somewhere to see if I could learn:
When was the first public water fountain used?
I will tell you right now this made for very interesting reading. It led me to stories about water safety, the plague, typhoid fever, water fountains during segregation, and lots more.
-The modern drinking fountain was invented and then manufactured in the early 1900s by two men and the respective company each man founded: Halsey Willard Taylor and the Halsey Taylor Company; and Luther Haws and the Haws Sanitary Drinking Faucet Co. (ask.com)
-Luther Haws was a part-time plumber, sheet metal contractor
-Halsey W. Taylor’s dedication to providing a safe and sanitary drink to the public was prompted by his father’s death from typhoid fever caused by a contaminated water supply.(pmenginger.com)
-The first generation of drinking fountains provided room temperature drinking water. However, demand for chilled drinking water motivated the upgrade to fountains that could provide cool water. Therefore, 20-pound blocks of ice were used to cool the water. Not only were the drinking fountains ice-chilled, they were extremely cumbersome. In fact, the typical unit could only be moved by several men.
This site has lots of fun facts about drinking fountains and great pictures of fountains over the years. http://www.squidoo.com/drinking-fountains-history
-During World War I, sanitary drinking water was desperately needed. In response to the high demand, Halsey Taylor created the double bubbler drinking fountain. The double bubbler used two separate streams. The streams were angled to converge and create a pyramid of water. Not only did this lead to a fuller sip, it decreased the spreading of germs due to mouths being further from the bubbler heads.
I learned that in some regions drinking fountains are referred to as “bubblers”.
-The government got into the regulation of water fountains-in terms of making them accessible for wheelchairs-has been extensive. Also, The Safe Drinking Water Act and State Legislation makes professional plumbing contractors, engineers, architects and building owners, as well as maintenance and facilities managers, responsible for the quality of water dispensed from the products they specify or install.
So The SDWA means the water has to be clean, but does it say anything about the germs, or the bubblegum jammed underneath? Noooooooooooooooooooo.
From squidoo
Unique modern fountains is the heading .I’m sorry but I’m not drinking from a toilet fountain
I could go on all day, the reading was very interesting.
But, I’m thirsty.
TAB anyone?
They say that in a band it’s the drummer that always gets the girl.
Not me, I was always loved the guitar players. My childhood crush played the guitar ,so couple those starry eyes with my total adoration of John Denver (I slept under his poster, go ahead, laugh if you will) and you know where my heart was. Forget the drums and the drummer, play the guitar and I’m putty in your hands.
I tried to learn to play the guitar, it was a miserable failure. I think it’s because I’m a lefty-and I needed it re-strung, or I was holding it wrong, or some other debacle. My complete lack of eye-hand coordination and abysmal fine motor skills probably played into my musical defeat.
Now, my eldest daughter is learning to play, and she’s pretty good. Her instructors tell me she’d be very, very good, if she’d ever practice. She claims to love her guitar, but willingly allows it to gather dust between weekly lessons. When it came time to buy her a new guitar I forked over more money than I had expected . With advice and counsel from a friend on what to look for in a guitar (which all sounded like greek to me as he explained it) we got one that would last her a long time and “looked cool”-apparently an important consideration when you are thirteen. As I paid for it I looked her in the eye and said “You will play until you are eighteen. You can’t quit now I just bought you!”
I couldn’t tell you what kind of guitar she has, but I do know it’s not the one she wanted-a blue Les Paul. 
Which brings me to what I learned today. Les Paul died today. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/14/arts/music/14paul.html?_r=1&hp
I shared this news with my daughter and we had a conversation about it, and somehow she asked me about Gibson-and she wanted to know- is there a real Gibson of the Gibson guitars?
Today I learned that
Yes, there is a real man behind the Gibson Guitar.
(From Wiki)
Orville Gibson (born 1856, Chateaugay, New York) started making mandolins in Kalamazoo, Michigan ,United States. The mandolins were distinctive in that they featured a carved, arched solid wood top and back and bent wood sides. Prior to this mandolins had a flat solid wood top and a bowl-like back (similar to a lute) made of multiple strips of wood. These bowl-back mandolins were very fragile and unstable. Disdainful of the shape, Orville Gibson characterized them as “potato bugs”. Gibson’s innovation made a distinctive, darker-sounding mandolin that was easier to manufacture in large numbers. Orville Gibson’s mandolin design, with its single-pieced carved sides and a single-pieced neck, was patented in 1898; it would be the only innovation he patented. Orville Gibson died in 1918
In 1902, the Gibson Mandolin-Guitar Mfg. Co, Ltd. was incorporated to market the instruments. Initially, the company produced only Orville Gibson’s original designs. Aware of changing trends, the company hired designer Lloyd Loar in 1919 to create newer instruments. During the 1920s Gibson was responsible for many innovations in guitar and mandolin design.
In the 1930s, Gibson began exploring the concept of an electric guitar. In 1936 they introduced their first “Electric Spanish” model, the ES-150. Other companies were producing electric guitars but the Gibson is generally recognized as the first commercially successful electric guitar. Other instruments were also “electrified”; such as steel guitars banjos and mandolins.
(Electrified-I think that explains what it sounds like when most teen boy garage bands are playing!)
In 1948, Gibson hired music industry veteran, Ted McCarty He was promoted to company president in 1950. During his tenure (1950–1966), Gibson greatly expanded and diversified its line of instruments. The first notable addition was the “Les Paul” guitar. manufacturers were contemptuous of the concept of a solid-body guitar.
And get this-
Although guitarist Les Paul was one of the pioneers of solid-body electric guitar technology, the guitar that became known as the “Les Paul” was developed with very little input from its namesake. After the guitar was designed, Les Paul was asked to sign a contract to endorse the guitar to be named after him. At that point he asked that the tail piece be changed, and that was his only contribution. The “Les Paul” was released in 1952.
Who knew, he had very little to do with the design, and the tail piece that he wanted added was soon dropped.
I spent time reading about guitars-I’m bleary eyed and still not sure I understand a lot of it-necks, bodies, hollow, acoustic, electric, bass and on and on. I read a good deal about Les Paul himself too, he was a fascinating man.
And I think, tonight, in honor of my new found learning, I am going to go out, and listen to some live music and admire the guitarist.
Les Paul, image NYT.
I recently slogged through A Room Of One’s Own, by Virginia Woolf. Historically, while I’m not wild about Woolf, I have enjoyed reading her. I didn’t enjoy this go round, but I think I shouldn’t blame Woolf. She is a writer that requires her readers to slow down, think, and examine, and lately I can’t concentrate enough to examine much of anything. Frankly, I am a bit tired of examining and ready to pick up up the pace of life around here.
Nonetheless, while discussing Woolf with a friend he informed me that Woolf wrote her books standing up. I was skeptical. How in the world would such a fascinating tid bit have made it past me all these years? So I looked it up.
And that’s what I learned today:
Best I can find everywhere I read Woolf did, in fact, stand up to write.
She used a standing writing table.
One source said that it might have had something to do
with her sister who was an artist and, like most artists/painters, they stand up to paint at an easel.
She somehow thought that it was more workmanlike and inspirational to do the same.
All I can say is if she wrote A Room of One’s Own while standing, it deserves another look from me. Honestly, I’ve been alone at my desk without my child, work responsibilities, and minimal calls from the former companion, for ten days-and I’ve managed to crank out a whopping 810 words-while sitting comfortably at my desk. That’s a daily average of 81 per day.
Maybe I need to stand up?
Yeah, that’s the ticket. I’m sure I’ll be more productive then…..
photo from Brittanica.
I didn’t post yesterday. It’s not that I didn’t learn something new, I’m sure I did. However, I was busy learning life lessons. Thinking and pondering in the aftermath of events. Learning about trust, friendship, relationships, love, and honesty. A lot about honesty. At the days end I was too tired to think, or write.
AND, I didn’t write because it was sooooooo hard. I was having computer problems, or so I thought.
Actually I suspected it was a malfunction of my keyboard. I have spent two days moaning and complaining about it. My FB friends became very adept at recognizing that I was not “drunk typing” rather words came ooooooooooooouttt likethisb ecause someeeeeeeeeeething was wrong the computer/keyboard.
Here’s where I tell you what I learned.
WIRELESS KEYBOARDS NEED NEW BATTERIES EVERY SO OFTEN.
Now I am taking my sad, embarrassed self to bed.
More learning tomorrow…
I was going to write about forks, but I will save that for another day. I decided to share something about which I learned today, or rather, “tweaked” my learning .
Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme.
Fromme, a member of the infamous Manson “family”, is being released from federal prison today after 34 years. I saw the headline and immediately remembered her story-the girl who shot President Ford. (I was 11 at the time and have some memories of this event.)
WRONG!
She did not shoot Ford,she just pointed an unloaded gun at him.
So, there you have it.
I read a few accounts of the whole matter, the CNN piece is a good summary.
Nothing else to say, I stand corrected.
Fromme was convicted in 1975 of pointing a gun at then-President Gerald Ford in Sacramento, California. Secret Service agents prevented her from firing, but the gun was later found to have no bullet in the chamber, although it contained a clip of ammunition.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/08/05/squeaky.fromme.release/index.html
While reading I also learned this:
There have been 90 known attempts to kill sitting and former Presidents as well as Presidents-elect. Four attempts on sitting Presidents have succeeded: Abraham Lincoln (the 16th President), James A. Garfield(the 20th President), William McKinley (the 25th President) and John F. Kennedy (the 35th President). Two other Presidents were injured in attempted assassinations: then former President Theodore Roosevelt and then sitting President Ronald Reagan.
(from Wiki and various sources)
90- I would never guessed that. I’m going too research how they define “attempt”.
