Root-Boy Slim & The Sex Change Band: This Date in History

[grimes70]

Guy Fawkes executed in London

On this day in 1606, British provocateur Guy Fawkes—one of the Gunpowder Plot conspirators, who sought to blow up Parliament and to assassinate King James I for his repression of Roman Catholics—was executed in London.

 

[grimes70]

@donbosco probably has more depth regarding this. Still a pretty important event in the cause for Civil Rights in NC nd beyond.

1960,Protesting a segregated lunch counter at a Woolworth's in Greensboro, North Carolina, four African Americans began a sit-in; its success led to a wider sit-in movement throughout the South.

 

[donbosco]

It is certainly a much 'deeper' story than we tend to learn.

There is a second set of four stories to the Greensboro Sit-In—about workers caught between providing & protesting. I suspect the ‘caught’ nature of matters extended the entire duration of the February 1 — July 25 period that we recognize today & beyond. Indeed, they, like so many workers of color fought daily battles against both white supremacy & class hierarchies. On the flip side, so very many of those white people who stood against the brave actions of the local college students in Greensboro & other places to desegregate were themselves precariously perched workers. Scan the faces of the people who staged counter-protests, profile the KKK who threatened violence on the action by their presence & the historical narrative they brought to bear, & you will find working class folk. Keeping them from recognizing the economic ties that bound them to African American laborers has long been the strategy of those who rule, hire, manage, pay, & dismiss. Don’t forget the working folk. Class solidarity is key.

#OTD in 1960 African American customers were served at the Woolworth’s lunch counter in #Greensboro. Sit-Ins, protests, & negotiations had been initiated on February 1 by the four NC A&T University students. On July 25 Woolworth’s employees Geneva Tisdale, Susie Morrison, Anetha Jones & Charles Bess, were the first served by invitation of the store. Bess is the worker in this famous photo of the second day of the sit-in. Sit-in Victory in Greensboro, 1960

Two Stories About The 4 Served: WOOLWORTH: WORKER SERVED TO INTEGRATE\

AND: The Man Behind the Counter — THE BITTER SOUTHERNER

 

[donbosco]

 

[05C40]

While I was of the target age when the first GI Joe was marketed, two things intervened to prevent me from ever wanting one. 1) By the time these toys got to were I was in Eastern NC, I was too old. 2) Even if GI Joe's had been test marketed in my hometown, I'm pretty just I would recoiled with a disgusted, "I'm not going to play with a doll!" B/T/W, I distinctly remember thinking #2 at the time they were rolled out. ETA1: Not proud to admit this, but sexism and homophobia were rampant where I grew-up. (Also racism, j/f/t/r, ran both deep, on the surface, and everywhere in-between where I grew-up.) ETA2: My Dad was a MARINE! Why would I even want a Army soldier doll? Fortunately, when my own time to join the armed forces came, I views on the relative merits of the Marines and the Army had changed.

 

[Zoo_View]

While I was of the target age when the first GI Joe was marketed, two things intervened to prevent me from ever wanting one. 1) By the time these toys got to were I was in Eastern NC, I was too old. 2) Even if GI Joe's had been test marketed in my hometown, I'm pretty just I would recoiled with a disgusted, "I'm not going to play with a doll!" B/T/W, I distinctly remember thinking #2 at the time they were rolled out.

I never had or wanted any G.I. Joe toys. As you said, it’s a doll. When at a buddy’s house if the options were Hot Wheels, run around outside, or G.I. Joe, Joe was a distant third.

 

[grimes70]

Groundhog Day, in the United States and Canada, day (February 2) on which the emergence of the groundhog (woodchuck) from its burrow is said to foretell the weather for the following six weeks. The beginning of February, which falls roughly halfway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox, has long been a significant time of the year in many cultures. Among the Celts, for example, it was the time of Imbolc, observed in anticipation of the birth of farm animals and the planting of crops, and February 2 is also the date of the Christian festival of Candlemas, also called the feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin. During the Middle Ages there arose the belief that animals such as the badger and the bear interrupted their hibernation to appear on this day. If the day was sunny and the animal saw its shadow, six more weeks of winter weather remained. If, however, the day was cloudy, it was a sign that the weather during the following weeks would be mild, leading to an early spring. German immigrants to the United States carried the legend with them, and in Pennsylvania the groundhog came to be substituted for the badger.

Since 1887 an animal in Punxsutawney, in the west-central part of the state, has been the centre of a staged appearance each February 2. In what has become a media event, a groundhog designated Punxsutawney Phil is the centre of attention of television weathermen and newspaper photographers. Although promoters of the local festival surrounding Punxsutawney Phil claim that the animals have never been wrong, an examination of the records indicates a correlation of less than 40 percent. (Whether a groundhog does or does not emerge is thought to be related to the amount of fat it was able to store before going into hibernation.) Canada has a number of groundhogs that serve as weather prognosticators, perhaps the best known being those portraying Wiarton Willie, a white-furred, pink-eyed creature that has appeared on the Bruce Peninsula, northwest of Toronto, since 1956.

 

[grimes70]

Pretty damn important one. Will we see it bastardized with the currebt SCOTUS?

Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution ratified

On this day in 1870, the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States was ratified, guaranteeing the right to vote regardless of race and intending to ensure, with the Fourteenth Amendment, the civil rights of former slaves.



Many will bitch but you gotta pay to live in a decent society. Unfortunately the machinations of the income tax code mostly written by corporate interests has made a shambles and mockery out of it.

1913 The Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, granting Congress the authority to levy income taxes, was ratified.

 

[nashcounty]

But February made me shiver
With every paper I'd deliver
Bad news on the doorstep
I couldn't take one more step
I can't remember if I cried
When I read about his widowed bride
But something touched me deep inside
The day the music died

 

[grimes70]

But February made me shiver
With every paper I'd deliver
Bad news on the doorstep
I couldn't take one more step
I can't remember if I cried
When I read about his widowed bride
But something touched me deep inside
The day the music died

Somehow I knew you were going to post this. And you added Don Mclean's paean as well. Nice touch. Waylon sure lucked out.

 

[grimes70]

1974 Newspaper heiress Patty Hearst was kidnapped by members of the Symbionese Liberation Army.

Patty Hearst (born February 20, 1954, Los Angeles, California, U.S.) is an heiress of the William Randolph Hearst newspaper empire who was kidnapped in 1974 by leftist radicals called the Symbionese Liberation Army, whom she under duress joined in robbery and extortion.

The third of five daughters of Randolph A. Hearst, she attended private schools in Los Angeles, San Mateo, Crystal Springs, and Monterey, California, and took courses at Menlo College and the University of California, Berkeley. On the night of February 4, 1974, she and her fiancé, Steven Weed, were at her Berkeley flat when three members of the Symbionese Liberation Army broke in, beat up Weed, and abducted Hearst. She was allegedly coerced and brainwashed under humiliating conditions of confinement in the closet of an apartment hideaway and thereafter began making public statements, through tape recordings, condemning the capitalistic “crimes” of her parents.

Hearst became known as “Tania,” the nom de guerre of Haydée Tamara Bunke Bider, who fought with Latin American revolutionary Che Guevara. The Symbionese Liberation Army extorted from her father $2 million in a food giveaway to the poor and allegedly forced her to join in at least two robberies, of a San Francisco bank and a Los Angeles store.

The Symbionese Liberation Army probably never had more than 11 or 12 members, six of whom—including the leader, Donald DeFreeze—were killed in a police shootout and house fire in Los Angeles on May 17, 1974. Hearst remained at large with her captors or confederates (notably William and Emily Harris), crisscrossing the country as far as New York City and Pennsylvania. On September 18, 1975, back in San Francisco, she and another confederate, Wendy Yoshimura, as well as the Harrises, were captured by the FBI.

Patricia HearstPatricia Hearst posing in front of the Symbionese Liberation Army emblem.

Hearst was tried and convicted in March 1976 for bank robbery and felonious use of firearms. Her defense attorney was F. Lee Bailey. Sentenced to seven years, she spent the next three years partly in prison and partly at liberty (during appeals). She was released in February 1979 after U.S. Pres. Jimmy Carter commuted her sentence. Shortly thereafter she married her former bodyguard Bernard Shaw.

She wrote (with Alvin Moscow) an account of her ordeal from 1974 to 1979: Every Secret Thing (1982). In 2001 she was granted a full pardon by outgoing U.S. Pres. Bill Clinton. Hearst occasionally acted, notably appearing in several John Waters’s films, including Cry-Baby (1990) and Cecil B. DeMented (2000).

 

[donbosco]

 

[grimes70]

And look where we are today.

2020 After being impeached by the House of Representatives over his actions in the Ukraine scandal, Pres. Donald Trump was acquitted in the Senate.

 

[donbosco]

Fighting Fascism brought these three together at Yalta Feb. 4-11, 1945.

https://www.history.navy.mil/content/history/museums/nmusn/explore/photography/wwii/wwii-conferences/yalta-conference.html

 

[05C40]

Fighting Fascism brought these three together at Yalta Feb. 4-11, 1945.

https://www.history.navy.mil/content/history/museums/nmusn/explore/photography/wwii/wwii-conferences/yalta-conference.html

I always loved the quote from someone in Roosevelt's entourage who said of Soviet Minister of Foreign Affairs Molotov during the Tehran conference in November 1943, "He only knows three words of English, no and second front."

 

[grimes70]

Babe Ruth (born February 6, 1895, Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.—died August 16, 1948, New York, New York) was chosen as one of the first five members of the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1936, a year after he finished his career. He transformed baseball through his home-run hitting, which produced an offensive revolution in the sport. His accomplishments, together with his personal charisma and his rags-to-riches life story, made Ruth the most celebrated American athlete of his era, immortalized as the Sultan of Swat and the Bambino.

And so began the curse.

The deal that changed the game

Written by: Matt Kelly

In the early months of 1919, everything appeared to be going smoothly for the Red Sox.

Just below the surface, however, financial woes were threatening the future of the Boston club. Despite a pennant-winning season in 1918, dwindling wartime attendance caused the club’s gate receipts to drop 35 percent. Meanwhile, club owner Harry Frazee was hemorrhaging money due to struggles with his theatrical productions in New York.

Amid all of this, the team’s most popular player began to feel that he was worth more than what he was being paid. In January 1919, Babe Ruth demanded a new contract. Specifically, he requested his yearly salary be raised from $7,000 to $15,000 – a figure that only the great Ty Cobb was making at the time. He also wanted to play left field exclusively, telling the press, “I’ll win more games playing every day in the outfield than I will pitching every fourth day.”



Frazee scoffed at Ruth’s demands, and Ruth held out and became front-page fodder for Hub newspapers. But when the team’s ship set sail for Spring Training in Florida – and a lucrative exhibition series scheduled with John McGraw’s Giants – without its star on board, both sides sensed it was time to come to the table. Frazee and Ruth settled for a $10,000 yearly salary just weeks before Opening Day, but when the slugger set a new home run record with 29 blasts in 1919, it was clear that new three-year contract would not stick. That winter, Yankees owners Jacob Ruppert and Tillinghast Huston offered the cash-poor Frazee a deal he felt he couldn’t refuse, setting into motio

 

[05C40]

Babe Ruth (born February 6, 1895, Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.—died August 16, 1948, New York, New York) was chosen as one of the first five members of the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1936, a year after he finished his career. He transformed baseball through his home-run hitting, which produced an offensive revolution in the sport. His accomplishments, together with his personal charisma and his rags-to-riches life story, made Ruth the most celebrated American athlete of his era, immortalized as the Sultan of Swat and the Bambino.

And so began the curse.

The deal that changed the game

Written by: Matt Kelly

In the early months of 1919, everything appeared to be going smoothly for the Red Sox.

Just below the surface, however, financial woes were threatening the future of the Boston club. Despite a pennant-winning season in 1918, dwindling wartime attendance caused the club’s gate receipts to drop 35 percent. Meanwhile, club owner Harry Frazee was hemorrhaging money due to struggles with his theatrical productions in New York.

Amid all of this, the team’s most popular player began to feel that he was worth more than what he was being paid. In January 1919, Babe Ruth demanded a new contract. Specifically, he requested his yearly salary be raised from $7,000 to $15,000 – a figure that only the great Ty Cobb was making at the time. He also wanted to play left field exclusively, telling the press, “I’ll win more games playing every day in the outfield than I will pitching every fourth day.”



Frazee scoffed at Ruth’s demands, and Ruth held out and became front-page fodder for Hub newspapers. But when the team’s ship set sail for Spring Training in Florida – and a lucrative exhibition series scheduled with John McGraw’s Giants – without its star on board, both sides sensed it was time to come to the table. Frazee and Ruth settled for a $10,000 yearly salary just weeks before Opening Day, but when the slugger set a new home run record with 29 blasts in 1919, it was clear that new three-year contract would not stick. That winter, Yankees owners Jacob Ruppert and Tillinghast Huston offered the cash-poor Frazee a deal he felt he couldn’t refuse, setting into motio

Apparently in addition to his prodigious baseball skills, the Babe had quite the sexual appitite. But still had enough common decency not to force himself on anyone who was unwilling. It is reported that at his hotel room parties, at one point in the proceeding the Babe would announce, "Seizing the moment, savoring the time, perhaps a bit tipsy, the Babe climbed atop a piano and bellowed at the women, ‘OK, girls, anyone who does not want to get [bleep]ed now can leave!’ ”

Link: BABE HOMERED WITH GIRLS, TOO

 

[Patb78]

Apparently in addition to his prodigious baseball skills, the Babe had quite the sexual appitite. But still had enough common decency not to force himself on anyone who was unwilling. It is reported that at his hotel room parties, at one point in the proceeding the Babe would announce, "Seizing the moment, savoring the time, perhaps a bit tipsy, the Babe climbed atop a piano and bellowed at the women, ‘OK, girls, anyone who does not want to get [bleep]ed now can leave!’ ”

Link: BABE HOMERED WITH GIRLS, TOO

I was sitting in my doctor’s waiting room several years ago. I was reading a Sports Illustrated that had excerpts from a book that was coming out which had stories about the Yankees from the 20’s thru the ‘50’s. The Yankees were on a road trip in the 30’s and the beat writers traveled with them. The team provided the writers with all with everything (food, liquor, women) with the understanding they wouldn’t cover the personal lives of the players. After dinner one night the reporters set up card tables in their car. They had only been playing for a few minutes when the door to the car burst open and Babe Ruth came running in completely naked. Right behind him was a naked woman with a pair of scissors in her hand. One of the old writers looked up from his cards and said, “There’s another story we won’t be covering.”

 

[donbosco]

Dean Smith passed away on this day in 2015. He had been a presence in my life for all the years of which I had conscious memory. I was born in 1958 and he came to Carolina as an assistant men’s basketball coach to Frank McGuire in that same year. In 1961 he became the head coach, a job he was offered because he was known to be honest and because that team’s comportment had recently been dishonest. He also had no true head coaching experience and would come cheap. His slate was basically clean.

Coach Smith went on to become a legend of intellect, honesty, fair play, education, and “snatching victory from the jaws of defeat.” He coined the phrase “athletics are the front porch of the university” and from 1961 until he retired in 1997 kept his program — a program because it was so much more than just a team that played games — invitingly respectable.

I was a ‘sporty’ kid, first captivated by baseball. Because I ended up playing third base in Little League I gravitated to the Baltimore Orioles, where the greatest fielder of all time, Brooks Robinson, played that position. It was around that time, 1967 or so, that Batman, Zorro, and Tarzan began to give way to real life heroes of the diamond and the hard court. My first basketball icons were very local - the high school Chatham Central Bears whose wins and losses I saw live on chilly Chatham evenings in the packed and partisan gym in Bear Creek.

Thanks to C.D. Chesley, by 1970 we were getting two Atlantic Coast Conference basketball games a week on television. I lived in a Carolina home so we knew where to find the rest of ‘our’ games on the radio. Deep echoes of Bill Currie, “The Mouth of the South” are embedded in my memory but it was Woody Durham that really came to voice the Tar Heels for the many untelevised games ‘back then.’ But between the sometimes broadcast TV games, the always-on-the-radio ones, the heavy basketball coverage in ‘The Greensboro Daily News,’ and the not-to-be-missed “Dean Smith Show” on Sunday I came to know my coach. My Deddy also flavored how I valued Coach Smith with his carefully chosen words spoken during time outs, post game, and pasture walks counting cows. When he respected someone there was no doubt left in his tone of voice. And he truly revered Coach Smith.

I became a basketball player, a point guard, and Coach Smith’s principled and rational ‘Carolina Way’ was my inspiration. I was fortunate beyond any of my imaginings in those days to attend the ‘Carolina Basketball School’ in the early 1970s. I mowed a lot of yards and tilled gardens to foot that bill but it may have been the best money I ever spent. Really.

Coach Smith very intentionally called his summer programs in Chapel Hill a school and not a camp. So much more than game skills were communicated there. “Play hard, play smart, play together,” seems like such a simple precept - and it is - but when embraced fully it is a blueprint for living. I’m not going to go all full blown testimonial here but I will say that I came to find Coach Smith’s worldview as one worthy of emulation in times of challenge.

Had Coach’s life not been lived so openly and had he not so crucially met enduring challenges so much bigger than a 40-minute game he’d be but a personality I suppose. But instead he was a philosopher - Kierkegaard was one of his muses. At the risk of being sacreligious I admit that I have indeed asked myself, “What Would Dean Smith Do?” and his book, “A Coach’s Life” has been a guide to living.

It is not lost on me - in fact it struck me hard many years ago - that Coach Smith’s ideology was born of Christian theology and Progressive political thought. He found the left side of the aisle to be by far the most human, giving, honest, and by application, the most successful. He was as hated for that as he was loved.

I miss him and from the heat of “down eight points with seventeen seconds” moments to what is the genuinely ethical thing to do when I vote to every interaction in between, I do my best when I include a reflection of Coach Smith’s philosophy in my decision-making. I don’t say that with even an inkling of flippancy. Coaches can be our guides as readily as teachers or preachers - they can lead us for the common good or toward selfish ends.

Teams, collective enterprises, moments when the sum total is greater than the parts, communities — all succeed when the individuals in them work for a common goal that brings to each what they most need to thrive. Coach Smith taught that on a small scale with 15 young men at a time, modeling how we could be our best selves.

“Play Hard, Play Smart, Play Together” friends and we can carry the day.

Dean Smith, 2/29/31 — 2/7/15.

 

[nycfan]

No, the Vietnam era GI Joe with scruffy beard and Kung-fu grip, that was my GI Joe.