Random Access

Tuesday – 21 February 2012
Ugh. That’s how I felt this morning when my alarm went off. Not because the girls woke up in the middle of the night. (Which was fine, as they woke up about 4:15 and were asleep again shortly thereafter.) No, last night’s broken sleep came courtesy of some rather disturbing dreams. Disturbing enough that it took me a while to want to go back to sleep. Yeah, it was that much fun.

The evening, however, was good. It was another bath night for the girls. After last week’s experience with Vanessa (a.k.a. “Splash-O-Matic 5000”), I decided to change into shorts before giving the girls their baths. And, of course, this week, both girls were fairly subdued. Still, bath time was good.

After the girls were down, SaraRules! made a fantastic chicken curry dish (with chickpeas and spinach) over rice. We ate and knocked a couple of episodes of NCIS: Los Angeles and Castle off the DVR. When those were done, we saw that Blade Runner was on AMC. We watched part of it and realized that neither of us had watched the whole film in a while. We plan on rectifying that in the not-too-distant future.

Chew on This: Food for Thought – Black History Month
Today’s person of note is: Leslie Uggams, an American actress and singer.

Leslie Uggams was born on May 25, 1943 in New York City, to Harold and Juanita Uggams. As a small child Uggams would sing along to records, exhibiting a remarkably mature voice. The fact that Uggams had vocal talent was not a total surprise. Her father was a member of the Hall Johnson Choir, and her mother was a chorus girl at the Cotton Club.

In 1949, at age six, Uggams sang in public for the first time at St. James Presbyterian Church in New York City. The following year, she made her acting debut with a small part on an episode of the television comedy Beulah, which starred the legendary Ethel Waters. Uggams played Beulah’s niece.

At 9-years-old Leslie, opened for such legends as Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald and Dinah Washington at the Apollo Theater. She also made appearances on Your Show of Shows, The Milton Berle Show, and The Arthur Godfrey Show. After completing the third grade, Uggams left her local public school to enroll at the Professional Children’s School, a private institution in Manhattan catering to children with show business connections.

At 15 , she appeared on the CBS-TV quiz show “Name That Tune,” winning $12,500 toward her college education. The appearance gave Uggams a chance to showcase her vocal skills. Her rendition of “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands” was noticed by record producer Mitch Miller who, as director of artists and repertory at Columbia Records, was one of the most influential figures in popular music during the 1950s. Miller signed Uggams to a contract, and her first album was released in 1959. Despite increasing career demands, Uggams continued to excel at school. At the Professional Children’s School, from which she graduated in 1961, Uggams was editor of the yearbook and president of the student body.

When Miller got his own television show, Sing Along with Mitch, in 1961, Uggams was asked to appear on it, first as a guest vocalist, then as a regular member of the all-singer cast. She became the lone African American performer regularly appearing on network television. The presence of an African American singer on the Sing Along with Mitch show drew relatively little controversy, although some stations in the South refused to air the program. “Mitch was told either I go or the show goes. He said, ‘Either she stays or there’s no show.’ He loved that show, and he had been trying to sell it for so long that to turn around and do that was heroic,” Uggams told Nadine Brozan of the New York Times in 1994. Uggams sometimes found her position as television’s only African American performer difficult to bear. “It was a heavy load. I was responsible for having a clean image. I wanted people to have respect for black people.”

Monday – 20 February 2012
It’s a new work week. Yay (or something to that effect).

I am, however, rather excited as the girls – for the second time in three days – slept through the night!

Vanessa (l), Sara, and Diana

That’s right, seven-and-a-half hours of sleep. (If only I didn’t have such disconcerting dreams last night…)

The rest of the weekend was good, as well. Saturday afternoon, I judged a tournament for Dr. Volt’s Comic Connection. Saturday evening, I attended Utah Symphony‘s performance of Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto N0. 2 and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 4 with Melissa Sanders. It was a fantastic concert.

Sunday was a relaxing day, spent mostly at home. We did venture out for a bit to Black Water Coffee Company and Fashion Place Mall… where the girls went on a shopping spree. Seriously. They cleaned up. (Okay, okay… it helped that Carter’s was having a pretty big sale. Still…) Later in the day, we headed up to SaraRules!’ parents for dinner before heading home for little girls’ bedtime. And, we wound up the evening with The Walking Dead and with me playing a little Modern Warfare 3.

And today is Presidents Day.

Chew on This: Food for Thought – Black History Month
After taking the weekend off from blogging, let’s get back into the swing of things with an all-music selection of notables:

• Questlove (also known as ?uestlove), is an American drummer, DJ, music journalist and record producer.
  
  Ahmir Khalib Thompson (January 20, 1971) Thompson was born in Philadelphia. His father was Lee Andrews of Lee Andrews & the Hearts, one of the great 50s doo-wop groups. Ahmir, who started drumming at the age of 2, often accompanied his parents on tour. By the age of 8, he was well-versed in life on the road, learning how to “cut gels, place mics, place lights. Then I became the sound guy and tech guy. One night the drummer didn’t make it, and then I was [my father’s] drummer.”

  Thompson’s first gig came at the age of 13, during a performance at Radio City Music Hall. “My parents didn’t trust babysitters back in the early 70s,” Thompson told Mother Jones magazine in 2011. “So I had to play bongos on stage with them ’cause ‘No stranger’s gonna watch my son in Muncie, Indiana!’” That same year, Thompson was named the musical director for his father’s group, and he became determined to establish his own career in music.

  Questlove’s parents then enrolled him at the Philadelphia High School for the Creative and Performing Arts. By the time he graduated, he had founded a band called The Square Roots (later dropping the word “square”) with his friend Tariq Trotter (Black Thought). After high school, Thompson was offered a spot at the prestigious Juilliard School in New York, but the young musician couldn’t afford the tuition. Instead, Thompson devoted himself to making his unique style of music. The Roots’ roster was soon completed, with Questlove on percussion, Tariq Trotter and Malik B on vocals, Josh Abrams (Rubber Band) on bass (who was replaced by Leonard Hubbard in 1994), and Scott Storch on keyboards.

  Questlove currently performs with The Roots on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, occasionally performing solos titled ‘re-mixing the clips’ where he draws on his production and DJ abilities to dub video clips, cue audio samples in rhythm, and play drum breaks simultaneously.

  Thompson, not one to rest on the heels of his success, has also been involved in a dizzying array of side projects. He appeared as a drummer for the instrumental jazz album, The Philadelphia Experiment in 2001, and in 2002 he released the compilation ?uestlove Presents: Babies Making Babies. He has also served as an executive producer for artists such as D’Angelo and Common; has written film scores; and drummed for artists like Christina Aguilera, Fiona Apple and Joss Stone.

• Otis Redding (September 9, 1941 – December 10, 1967) was an American soul singer-songwriter, record producer, arranger, and talent scout.
  
  Otis Ray Redding, Jr. (September 9, 1941 – December 10, 1967) was born in the small town of Dawson, Georgia to gospel singer Otis Redding, Sr., and housekeeper Fannie Redding. At an early age, he sang in the Vineville Baptist Church choir and learned guitar and piano. From the age of 10, he took drum and singing lessons. Later, at Ballard-Hudson High School, he sang in a school band. Every Sunday he earned $6 (USD) by performing songs for Macon radio station WIBB. His passion was singing and often cited Little Richard and Sam Cooke as major influences.

  At age fifteen, he abandoned school to help his family financially. His father had contracted tuberculosis and was often hospitalized, leaving his mother as the primary financial provider for the family, while Redding worked as a well digger, gas station attendant and guest musician in the following years. His breakthrough came when he played Little Richard’s “Heebie Jeebies”, winning a $5 contest fifteen weeks in a row, until being banned.Redding was soon hired by Little Richard’s band The Upsetters.

  Redding joined Johnny Jenkins’s Pinetoppers, a local Georgia band, and also served as the group’s driver. When the group traveled to Memphis, Tennessee, to record at the famed Stax studios, Redding sang two songs of his own at the end of the session. One of the two, “These Arms of Mine” (1962), launched his career, attracting both a record label executive (Jim Stewart) and a manager (Phil Walden) who passionately believed in his talent.Redding’s open-throated singing became the measure of the decade’s great soul artists. Unabashedly emotional, he sang with overwhelming power and irresistible sincerity. “Otis wore his heart on his sleeve,” said Jerry Wexler, whose Atlantic label handled Stax’s distribution, thus bringing Redding to a national market. Redding’s influence extended beyond his gritty vocals. As a composer, especially with his frequent partner Steve Cropper, he introduced a new sort of rhythm-and-blues line—lean, clean, and steely strong. He arranged his songs as he wrote them, singing horn and rhythm parts to the musicians and, in general, sculpting his total sound. That sound, the Stax signature, would resonate for decades to come.

  Redding developed polyps on his larynx, which he tried to treat with tea and lemon or honey. He was hospitalized in September 1967 at Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York to undergo surgery. In the winter of 1967, he again recorded at Stax. One new song was (Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay, written by Cropper and Redding. Redding was inspired by the Beatles album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and tried to create a similar sound, against the label’s wishes, and his wife was dissatisfied with its atypical melody. Redding wanted to change his musical style to avoid boring his audience. The Stax crew were similarly dissatisfied; Stewart thought that it was not R&B, while bassist Donald “Duck” Dunn thought its sound would damage Stax’s reputation. However, Redding thought it was the best song he ever wrote and would top the charts. Redding died just three days later, when his chartered plane crashed into Lake Monona, Wisconsin. Redding was entombed at his ranch in Round Oak, about 20 miles (32 km) north of Macon. Jerry Wexler delivered the eulogy. Redding was survived by his wife and three children.

• Tupac Shakur (June 16, 1971 – September 13, 1996), was an American rapper and actor.
  
  Tupac Amaru Shakur was born on the East Harlem section of Manhattan in New York City. He was named after Túpac Amaru II, a Peruvian revolutionary who led an indigenous uprising against Spain and was subsequently executed. His mother, Afeni Shakur, and his father, Billy Garland, were active members of the Black Panther Party in New York in the late 1960s and early 1970s; he was born just one month after his mother’s acquittal on more than 150 charges of “Conspiracy against the United States government and New York landmarks” in the New York Panther 21 court case.

  At the age of twelve, Shakur enrolled in Harlem’s 127th Street Repertory Ensemble and was cast as the Travis Younger character in the play A Raisin in the Sun, which was performed at the Apollo Theater. In 1986, the family relocated to Baltimore, Maryland. After completing his second year at Paul Laurence Dunbar High School he transferred to the Baltimore School for the Arts, where he studied acting, poetry, jazz, and ballet. As a teenager, Shakur attended the Baltimore School for the Arts, where he took acting and dance classes, including ballet. While living in Baltimore, he discovered rap and began performing as MC New York.

  In June 1988, Shakur and his family moved to Marin City, California. He began attending the poetry classes of Leila Steinberg in 1989. That same year, Steinberg organized a concert with a former group of Shakur’s, Strictly Dope; the concert led to him being signed with Atron Gregory who set him up as a roadie and backup dancer with the young rap group Digital Underground in 1990.

  In 1991, Shakur emerged as a solo artist – using the name 2Pac – with his debut album 2Pacalypse Now. The track “Brenda’s Got a Baby” reached as high as number three on the Billboard Hot Rap Singles chart. His second album Strictly 4 My N. I. G. G. A. Z. crossed over to the pop charts, with singles “I Get Around” and “Keep Ya Head Up.” The album went platinum, selling more than a million copies. Around this time, Shakur also appeared in several films, including Poetic Justice (1993) opposite Janet Jackson.

  Tupac became quite a sensation, earning praise for his musical and acting talent as well as condemnation for his explicit, violent lyrics. Many of his songs told of fights, gangs, and sex. He appeared to be living up to his aggressive gangster rap persona with several arrests for violent offenses in the 1990s. In 1994, he spent several days in jail for assaulting director Allen Hughes and was later convicted of sexual assault in another case.

  Shakur himself fell victim to violence, getting shot five times in the lobby of a recording studio during a mugging. On the night of November 30, 1994, the day before the verdict in his sexual abuse trial was to be announced, Shakur was shot five times and robbed after entering the lobby of Quad Recording Studios in Manhattan by two armed men in army fatigues. He would later accuse Sean Combs, Andre Harrell, and Biggie Smalls—whom he saw after the shooting—of setting him up. According to the doctors at Bellevue Hospital, where he was admitted immediately following the incident, Shakur had received five bullet wounds; twice in the head, twice in the groin and once through the arm and thigh. He checked out of the hospital, against doctor’s orders, three hours after surgery. In the day that followed, Shakur entered the courthouse in a wheelchair and was found guilty of three counts of molestation, but innocent of six others, including sodomy. On February 6, 1995, he was sentenced to one-and-a-half to four-and-a-half years in prison on a sexual assault charge.

  After serving eight months in prison, Shakur returned to music with the album All Eyez on Me. He was reportedly released after Death Row Records CEO Marion “Suge” Knight paid a bond of more than $1 million as part of Shakur’s parole. In his latest project, Shakur as the defiant street thug was back in full force on this recording. The song “California Love” featured a guest appearance by famed rapper-producer Dr. Dre and made a strong showing on the pop charts. Besides his hit album, he tackled several film roles.

  On a trip to Las Vegas to attend a boxing match, Shakur was shot while riding in a car driven by Knight on September 7, 1996. He died six days later on September 13 from his injuries. His killer has never been caught. Since his death, numerous albums of his work have been released, selling millions of copies.

• Tina Turner is an American singer and actress whose career has spanned more than 50 years
  
  Tina Turner (born Anna Mae Bullock; November 26, 1939) was born in Nutbush, Tennessee, the daughter of Zelma Bullock, a factory worker, and Floyd Richard Bullock, a Baptist deacon, farm overseer, and factory worker. Zelma Bullock later relocated to St. Louis, Missouri. Floyd Bullock moved to Detroit and later settled in California. Anna Mae and her sister relocated to Brownsville where they were raised by their grandmother.  She performed on several talent shows as a child and sang at her church choir. She later moved to St. Louis and, following her graduation from high school in 1958, took work as a nurse aide at Barnes-Jewish Hospital.

  In between the time Anna Bullock had moved to St. Louis, she was enthralled by the city’s thriving nightclub scene and her sister often took her to several of the clubs, much to their mother’s chagrin. Anna was introduced to Ike Turner and his Kings of Rhythm band after her sister took her to Club Manhattan where Alline served as a barmaid. Anna pursued Ike Turner for months asking him to let her sing with his band. When she was seventeen, she sang during a band intermission to a B. B. King song which impressed Turner. Eventually Turner allowed her to join the band as a background vocalist. Turner gave Bullock her first stage name, “Little Ann,” during this time and included her in his record, “Box Top”, which was a local hit in St. Louis.

  In November 1959, when a male vocalist failed to show up for a recording session, Anna was told to give a guide vocal to the song. Ike Turner then sent the song to New York where he met with Sue Records president Juggy Murray and played the song to him. Upon hearing it, Murray insisted Turner keep Anna’s vocals on the song, giving Turner a $25,000 advance, convinced the song would be a hit single. In response to this, Turner decided to form a duo around him and Bullock. In the process, he changed her stage name to “Tina Turner.” The two achieved considerable success as a rhythm-and-blues vocal duo and became known for their electrifying stage and television performances. However, after years of abuse, the marriage and professional partnership was officially dissolved in 1976.

  After a slow start, Turner’s solo career took off with a remake of Al Green’s Let’s Stay Together in 1983. Her much anticipated solo album, Private Dancer, won four Grammy Awards and sold well over 20 million copies worldwide. Subsequent albums include Break Every Rule (1986), Tina Live in Europe (1988, Grammy for Female Rock Vocal Performance) and Foreign Affair, which included the hit single “(Simply) The Best.” In the 1990s, she released Wildest Dreams and Twenty Four Seven.Turner also launched an acting career, appearing in the films Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdrome starring Mel Gibson and The Last Action Hero with Arnold Schwarzenegger. She has also made several recordings for soundtracks, including “We Don’t Need Another Hero,” “Goldeneye,” and “He Lives In You” for The Lion King II: Simba’s Pride.

  In 1993, Turner’s best-selling 1986 autobiography I, Tina was made into the motion picture What’s Love Got to Do with It? starring Angela Bassett. Her soundtrack for the movie went double platinum in the U.S.

  Though she is now semi-retired, Turner does make rare appearances and recordings. She returned to the stage in 2008 to embark on her “Tina!: 50th Anniversary Tour.” It became one of the highest-selling ticketed shows of 2008 and 2009.

Stray Toasters

• Spotlight: Princeless
  I picked up the first couple of issues of this title. It’s a great spin on the “princess needs rescuing” trope. I highly recommend it.
• New Museums to Shine a Spotlight on Civil Rights Era
• New Civil Rights Museums Emerge
• Girl in iconic March on Washington photo identified
• Afrocyberpunk: The future and science fiction in Africa
• States Try to Fix Quirks in Teacher Evaluations
• Frank Zappa explains the decline of the music business
• NASA salutes John Glenn, Mercury astronauts
• How Companies Learn Your Secrets
• Phone Booths Reincarnated as Bookshelves Finally Make Phone Booths Useful… for people other than Clark Kent

Namaste.

Thursday – 16 February 2012
It’s not only NBN Thursday, but it’s also “Technical Friday.”

Last night, SaraRules! and I had Pasta & Movie Date Night. We co-cooked dinner (grilled chicken and broccoli over spaghetti, with alfredo sauce) and watched Source Code. I enojyed it… for the most part. In fact, I think the thing that I disliked the most was that the blu-ray disc started skipping in the middle of Chapter 11, making us miss roughly five minutes of the film.

*shakes fist*

Aside from that, it was a good movie. It remined me of Seven Days, with a hint of Groundhog Day.

Chew on This: Food for Thought – Black History Month
Today’s person of note is: P.B.S. Pinchback, the first non-white and first person of African American descent to become governor of a U.S. state.

Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback (May 10, 1837  – December 21, 1921) was born in Macon, Georgia, to Eliza Stewart, a former slave, and William Pinchback, her former master, who were living together as husband and wife. Pinchback was brought up in relatively affluent surroundings. He was raised as white and his parents sent him north to Cincinnati, Ohio, to attend school. In 1848, however, Pinchback’s father died. William Pinchback’s relatives disinherited his mulatto wife and children and claimed his property in Mississippi. Fearful that the northern Pinchbacks might also try to claim her five children as slaves, Pinchback’s mother fled with them to Cincinnati.

In 1860 Pinchback married Nina Hawthorne of Memphis, Tennessee. The Civil War began the following year, and Pinchback decided to fight on the side of the Union. In 1862 he furtively made his way into New Orleans, which had just been captured by the Union Army. He raised several companies for the Union’s all black 1st Louisiana Native Guards Regiment. Commissioned a captain, he was one of the Union Army’s few commissioned officers of African American ancestry. He became Company Commander of Company A, 2nd Louisiana Regiment Native Guard Infantry (later reformed as the 74th US Colored Infantry Regiment). Passed over twice for promotion and tired of the prejudice he encountered from white officers, Pinchback resigned his commission in 1863.

At the war’s end, he and his wife moved to Alabama, to test their freedom as full citizens. Racial tensions there during Reconstruction were reaching shocking levels of violence, however, he brought his family back to New Orleans and became active in the Republican Party, participating in Reconstruction state conventions. In 1868, he organized the Fourth Ward Republican Club in New Orleans. That same year, he was elected as a State Senator, where he became senate president pro tempore of a Legislature that included 42 representatives of African American descent (half of the chamber, and seven of 36 seats in the Senate). In 1871 he became acting lieutenant governor upon the death of Oscar Dunn, the first elected African-American lieutenant governor of a U.S. state.

In 1872, the incumbent Republican governor, Henry Clay Warmoth, suffered impeachment charges near the end of his term. State law required that Warmoth step aside until convicted or cleared of the charges. Pinchback, as lieutenant governor, succeeded as governor on December 9 and served for 35 days until the end of Warmoth’s term. Warmoth was not convicted and the charges were eventually dropped.

In 1872 Pinchback was elected to Congress, but his Democratic opponent contested the election and won the seat. A year later he was elected to the U.S. Senate, but he was again refused the seat amid charges and countercharges of fraud and election irregularities—although some observers said it was the colour of his skin that counted against him. He was appointed to his last office in 1882 as surveyor of customs in New Orleans.

At the age of 50 he decided to take up a new profession and entered Straight College, New Orleans, to study law; he was subsequently admitted to the bar. Disillusioned with the outcome of Reconstruction and the return to power of the traditional white hierarchy, he moved to Washington, D.C., where he remained active in politics.

Pinchback died in Washington in 1921 and is interred in Metairie Cemetery in New Orleans. His service as governor helped him to be interred there although the cemetery was segregated and reserved for whites.

Stray Toasters

• Fighting Poverty, Armed with Violins
• Mr. Jones Watches
• Do We Need Even Tighter Controls on Sudafed?
• The 100 ‘Greatest Books for Kids’
• Audit Uncovers Extensive Flaws in Foreclosures
• Beating the Cheating: Five Ways to Combat the Plague
• 
• How NASA Brings Space Down to Earth
• Propaganda Posters of Soviet space program 1958-1963
• This Won’t Fly: RyanAir’s Sexist Ad Banned
• Street Fashion (From Close to the Pavement)
• A Place Called ‘Space Available’

Namaste.

Tuesday – 14 February 2012
Happy Valentine’s Day to all!

And here’s a little Valentine’s Day cuteness for you:

Vanessa (l) and Diana

Last night, my mother-in-law came over to help get the girls situated for bed while SaraRules! was at a Justice League meeting. Diana has recently started skipping her late-afternoon nap… so she was “a little” tired and cranky before bed. Nothing insurmountable, though.

After the girls were down, I started getting things ready for SaraRules!’ Valentine’s Day:

• I made chocolate and vanilla candy hearts.
• I made a CD for her morning commute.  (That’s right. CD. Old school.)
• And, I hid her gifts and cards, so that I could wrap them after she went to bed.

I managed to get everything but the wrapping taken care of before she got back home. Barely. But, I did. Making the candy became something of a race against time, as the meeting – which I expected to last until at least 9 PM – was over at 8:00. I was more than slightly anxious when SaraRules! called to say that she was on her way home. Fortunately, the Lords of Confection smiled upon me and allowed me to finish (and hide) the candy before she made it home.

Whew.

Chew on This: Food for Thought – Black History Month
Today’s person of note is: Jessye Norman, an American opera singer.

Jessye Mae Norman was born on September 15, 1945 in Augusta, Georgia to Silas Norman, an insurance salesman, and Janie King-Norman, a school teacher. She was one of five children in a family of amateur musicians; her mother and grandmother were both pianists, her father a singer in a local choir. Norman’s mother insisted that she start piano lessons at an early age.

At the age of nine, Norman heard opera for the first time on the radio and was immediately an opera fan. She started listening to recordings of Marian Anderson and Leontyne Price whom Norman credits as being inspiring figures in her career. At the age of 16, Norman entered the Marian Anderson Vocal Competition in Philadelphia which, although she did not win, led to an offer of a full scholarship at Howard University, in Washington, D.C. In 1966, she won the National Society of Arts and Letters singing competition. After graduating in 1967 with a degree in music, she began graduate-level studies at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore and later at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan, from which she earned a Masters Degree in 1968.

After winning the Bavarian Radio Corp. International Music Competition in 1968, Norman made her operatic debut as Elisabeth in Richard Wagner’s Tannhuser in 1969 in Berlin. Norman also enjoyed success as a recitalist with her thorough scholarship and her ability to project drama through her voice. She toured throughout the 1970s, giving recitals of works by Franz Schubert, Gustav Mahler, Wagner, Johannes Brahms, Erik Satie, Olivier Messiaen, and several contemporary American composers. She made her American debut in 1982 as Jocasta in Oedipus Rex and her Metropolitan Opera debut the following year as Cassandra in Les Troyens. By the mid-1980s she was one of the most popular and highly regarded dramatic soprano singers in the world.

In 1990, Norman performed at Tchaikovsky’s 150th Birthday Gala in Leningrad and she made her Lyric Opera of Chicago début in the title role of Gluck’s Alceste. In 1994, Norman sang at the funeral of former first lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. In September 1995, she was again the featured soloist with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, this time under Kurt Masur’s direction, in a gala concert telecast live to the nation by PBS making the opening of the orchestra’s 153rd season.

On March 11, 2002, Norman performed “America the Beautiful” at a memorial service unveiling two monumental columns of light at the site of the former World Trade Center, as a memorial for the victims of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York City.

After more than thirty years on stage, Norman no longer performs ensemble opera, concentrating instead on recitals and concerts. In addition to her busy performance schedule, Jessye Norman serves on the Boards of Directors for Carnegie Hall, the New York Public Library, the New York Botanical Garden, City-Meals-on-Wheels in New York City, Dance Theatre of Harlem, National Music Foundation, and Elton John AIDS Foundation.

Stray Toasters

• I think that this is my second-favorite drawing that SaraRules! has ever made for me:
  This one, however, is  my absolute favorite.
• Scenes From a Marriage That Segregationists Tried to Break Up
• Despite how its title sounds, this is actually a lovely story: A Brother And Sister Get Married (And Later, Their Son Tweets It)
• Las Vegas Embraces Bad Guys of Its Past

• 
• What Happens When a 911 Emergency Call Goes Silent?
  
• How to avoid being tagged as a terrorist: Don’t pay cash for coffee
• Apple Asks Outside Group to Inspect Factories

Namaste.

Thursday – 09 February 2012
This NBN Thursday is a bit grey and hazy.  But, I started the morning with SaraRules! and the girls, so it was a good kick-off to the day.

Last night, we watched Killer Elite (not to be confused with the movie with almost the same title from 1975) for Movie Date Night. Robert DeNiro. Clive Owen. Jason Statham. All kicking ass and, in some cases, taking names. The premise was a little different than I expected, but not in a bad way. There were a couple of plot holes, but what movie doesn’t have those these days? In the end, it made for a decent night’s viewing.

Also, I tried out something different with my bike trainer: Disengaging the tension wheel, so that the back wheel spun freely. Works, but without any resistance, I was pedaling as easily in the higher gears (15 and up) as I was in the first three gears. Still, it’s an option.

Chew on This: Food for This – Black History Month
Today, you’re getting a double d0es of Black History Month goodness.

• The first person of note is James Weldon Johnson, author, politician, poet, songwriter, and educator, and early civil rights activist.James Weldon Johnson (June 17, 1871 – June 26, 1938)  was born in Jacksonville, Florida, the son of Helen Louise Dillet and James Johnson. His brother was the composer J. Rosamond Johnson. Johnson was first educated by his mother (the first female, black teacher in Florida at a grammar school) and then at Edwin M. Stanton School. At the age of 16 he enrolled at Atlanta University, from which he graduated in 1894. In addition to his bachelor’s degree, he also completed some graduate coursework there.

  After graduation he returned to Stanton, a school for African American students in Jacksonville, until 1906, where, at the young age of 23, he became principal. As principal Johnson found himself the head of the largest public school in Jacksonville regardless of race. Johnson improved education by adding the ninth and tenth grades. During his tenure at Stanton, Johnson wrote Lift Every Voice and Sing — often called “The Negro National Hymn”, “The Negro National Anthem”, “The Black National Anthem”, or “The African-American National Anthem” — set to music by his brother John Rosamond Johnson (1873–1954) in 1900.

  In 1897, Johnson was the first African American admitted to the Florida Bar Exam since Reconstruction. He was also the first black in Duval County to seek admission to the state bar. In order to receive entry, Johnson underwent a two-hour examination before three attorneys and a judge. He later recalled that one of the examiners, not wanting to see a black man admitted, left the room.

  In 1906 President Theodore Roosevelt appointed him U.S. consul to Puerto Cabello, Venezuela, and in 1909 he became consul in Corinto, Nicaragua, where he served until 1914. He later taught at Fisk University. Meanwhile, he began writing a novel, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (published anonymously, 1912), which attracted little attention until it was reissued under his own name in 1927.

  In 1920 Johnson was elected to manage the NAACP, the first African American to hold this position. While serving the NAACP from 1914 through 1930 Johnson started as an organizer and eventually became the first black male secretary in the organization’s history. In 1920, he was sent by the NAACP to investigate conditions in Haiti, which had been occupied by U.S. Marines since 1915. Johnson published a series of articles in The Nation, in which he described the American occupation as being brutal and offered suggestions for the economic and social development of Haiti. These articles were reprinted under the title Self-Determining Haiti. Throughout the 1920s he was one of the major inspirations and promoters of the Harlem Renaissance trying to refute condescending white criticism and helping young black authors to get published.

  Johnson died while vacationing in 1939, when the car he was driving was hit by a train.

• The second person of note is Mat Johnson (no relation), an American writer of literary fiction.Johnson (born August 19, 1970) grew up in “racially stratified” Philadelphia. His mother is African American; his father, Irish American. After his parents’ divorce, he was raised by his social worker mother in a largely black section of the city, Germantown, where he often felt like a standout. “When I was a little kid, I looked reallywhite—I was this little Irish boy in a dashiki.”In his teens, he transferred to a private school, Abingdon Friends, in a more affluent neighborhood. “It was the first time I was around a lot of white people. I suddenly realized I had an ethnic identity, and started to think about race.” He listened to Public Enemy and devoured The Autobiography of Malcolm X and books by W.E.B. DuBois and Toni Morrison. “African-American literature felt like an intellectual home, this place where I fit and belonged,” he says gratefully.

  Like the late playwright August Wilson, Johnson seems to identify almost exclusively with the African roots of his biracial family tree. “African-American is a Creole culture. It embraces the mix,” he asserts.

  Mat Johnson attended West Chester University, University of Wales-Swansea, and ultimately received his BA from Earlham College, and in 1993, he was awarded a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship. Johnson received his MFA from Columbia University School of the Arts in 1999. Johnson has taught at Rutgers University, Columbia University, Bard College, The Callaloo Journal Writers Retreat, and is now a permanent faculty member at The University of Houston Creative Writing Program.

  Mat Johnson’s first novel, Drop (Bloomsbury USA in 2000), was a coming of age novel about a self-hating Philadelphian who thinks he’s found his escape when he takes a job at a Brixton-based advertising agency in London, UK.  Drop was listed among Progressive Magazine’s “Best Novels of the Year.” In 2003, Johnson published Hunting in Harlem (Bloomsbury USA 2003), a satire about gentrification in Harlem and an exploration of belief versus fanaticism. Hunting in Harlem won the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Legacy Award for Novel of the Year.

  Johnson made his first move into the comics form with the publication of the five-issue limited series Hellblazer Special: Papa Midnite (Vertigo 2005), where he took an existing character of the Hellblazer franchise and created an origin story that strove to offer depth and dignity to a character that was arguably a racial stereotype of the noble savage. The work was set in 18th Century Manhattan, and was based around the research that Johnson was conducting for his first historical effort, The Great Negro Plot, a creative non-fiction that tells the story of the New York Slave Insurrection of 1741 and the resultant trial and hysteria.

  In February 2008, Vertigo Comics published Johnson’s graphic novel Incognegro, a noir mystery that deals with the issue of passing (racial identity) and the lynching past of the American south.

  He was named a 2007 USA James Baldwin Fellow and awarded a $50,000 grant by United States Artists, a public charity that supports and promotes the work of American artists. On September 21, 2011, Mat Johnson was awarded the Dos Passos Prize for Literature.

Information courtesy of Chronogram.com, DCComics.com, matjohnson.info and Wikipedia

Stray Toasters

• I’d like to add this to The Covet List.
• …and an order of these, too.
• Retro Fitted
• I drew some tweets, by The Oatmeal
• Try Medieval Hot Pants? Surely, You Joust
  Well, I don’t… but it is my home state’s official state sport.
• 
• States Negotiate $26 Billion Agreement for Homeowners
• I like this Project: Rooftop redesign of the X-Men’s White Queen’s outfit.
• Steampunk Magazine is back!
• China police chief may seek U.S. asylum
• MINE!
  
  I had to order this. Compelled to, I say! It’s the location of Beth Steel that my father used to work for.
• US Approves Two New Nuclear Reactors
• The science-fiction effect
• Tai Chi May Help Parkinson’s Patients Regain Balance

Namaste.

Monday – 06 February 2012
Not only is today the start of a new work week, but – more importantly – it’s my niece, Grace’s, birthday:

This past weekend has been good. It has included, but not been limited to:

• Hanging out with the twins.
  

  Diana (l) and Vanessa

• Playing HeroClix: Star Trek Tactics with the guys.
• Judging a tournament for Dr. Volt’s Comic Connection.
• Tracking down (after THREE attempts!) and watching Contagion.
  
• Taking the girls to their third train show!
• Watching the Super Bowl.

Chew on This: Food for Thought – Black History Month
It’s catch-up time for our Black History Month items:

• Paul Laurence Dunbar (June 27, 1872 – February 9, 1906) was a poet, novelist, and playwright of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, born in Dayton, Ohio.
  
  Both of Dunbar’s parents were former slaves; his father escaped to freedom in Canada and then returned to the U.S. to fight in the Civil War. The young Dunbar was the only black student in his Dayton high school, where he was both the editor of the school newspaper and class president, as well as the president of the school literary society. Also of note: He was a classmate of aviation pioneer Orville Wright.Dunbar wrote a dozen books of poetry, four books of short stories, five novels, and a play. He also wrote lyrics for In Dahomey – the first musical written and performed entirely by African-Americans to appear on Broadway in 1903; the musical comedy successfully toured England and America over a period of four years – one of the more successful theatrical productions of its time.^[12] His essays and poems were published widely in the leading journals of the day. His work appeared in Harper’s Weekly, the Saturday Evening Post, the Denver Post, Current Literature and a number of other publications. During his life, considerable emphasis was laid on the fact that Dunbar was of pure black descent.

  Dunbar became the first African-American poet to earn nation-wide distinction and acceptance. The New York Times called him “a true singer of the people — white or black.” Much of Dunbar’s work was authored in conventional English, while some was rendered in African-American dialect. Dunbar remained always suspicious that there was something demeaning about the marketability of dialect poems. One interviewer reported that Dunbar told him, “I am tired, so tired of dialect”, though he is also quoted as saying, “my natural speech is dialect” and “my love is for the Negro pieces”.

  In 1900, he was diagnosed with tuberculosis and his doctors recommended drinking whisky to alleviate his symptoms. He moved to Colorado with his wife on the advice of his doctors. Dunbar and his wife separated in 1902, but they never divorced. Depression and declining health drove him to a dependence on alcohol, which further damaged his health. He moved back to Dayton to be with his mother in 1904. Dunbar died from tuberculosis on February 9, 1906, at age thirty-three.

• Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington (April 29, 1899 – May 24, 1974), composer, pianist, and big band leader,  was born in Washington, D.C.
  
  Ellington grew up in a secure middle-class family in Washington, D.C. Daisy, his mother, surrounded her son with dignified women to reinforce his manners and teach him to live elegantly. Ellington’s childhood friends noticed that “his casual, offhand manner, his easy grace, and his dapper dress gave him the bearing of a young nobleman”, and began calling him “Duke.”His family encouraged his interests in the fine arts, and he began studying piano at age seven, but his first piano lessons came appeared not to have had that much lasting effect upon him. As Duke’s piano lessons faded into the past, Duke began to show a flare for the artistic. Duke attended Armstrong Manual Training School to study commercial art instead of going to an academics-oriented school.

  Duke began to seek out and listen to ragtime pianists in Washington and, during the summers, in Philadelphia or Atlantic City, where he and his mother vacationed. While vacationing in Asbury Park, Duke heard of a hot pianist named Harvey Brooks. At the end of his vacation, Duke sought Harvey out in Philadelphia where Harvey showed Duke some pianistic tricks and shortcuts. Duke later recounted that, “When I got home I had a real yearning to play. I hadn’t been able to get off the ground before, but after hearing him I said to myself, ‘Man you’re going to have to do it.’” Thus the music career of Duke Ellington was born. Duke was taken under the wings of Oliver “Doc” Perry and Louis Brown, who taught Duke how to read music and helped improve his overall piano playing skills. Duke found piano playing jobs at clubs and cafes throughout the Washington area. Three months shy of graduation, Duke dropped out of school and began his professional music career.

  Ellington made his first professional appearance as a jazz pianist in 1916. By 1918 he had formed a band, and after appearances in nightclubs in Harlem he became one of the most famous figures in American jazz. Ellington first played in New York City in 1923. Later that year he moved there and, in Broadway nightclubs, led a sextet that grew in time into a 10-piece ensemble. Extended residencies at the Cotton Club in Harlem (1927–32, 1937–38) stimulated Ellington to enlarge his band to 14 musicians and to expand his compositional scope. He selected his musicians for their expressive individuality, and several members of his ensemble were themselves important jazz artists. Ellington’s orchestra, playing his own and Billy Strayhorn’s compositions and arrangements, achieved a fine unity of style and made many innovations in the jazz idiom.

  He wrote nearly two thousand compositions before his death in 1974 – among his best-known short works are “Mood Indigo,” “Solitude,” and “Sophisticated Lady.” He also wrote jazz works of complex orchestration and ambitious scope for concert presentation, notably Creole Rhapsody (1932), Black, Brown and Beige (1943), Liberian Suite (1947), Harlem (1951), and Night Creatures (1955), and composed religious music, including three sacred concerts (1965, 1968, and 1973). Ellington made many tours of Europe, appeared in numerous jazz festivals and several films, and made hundreds of recordings. In 1969 he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

  Ellington died of lung cancer and pneumonia on May 24, 1974, a month after his 75th birthday

• James Leonard Farmer, Jr. (January 12, 1920 – July 9, 1999) was a civil rights activist and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement.
  
  Farmer was a child prodigy; at the age of 14, he enrolled at Wiley College, where he was the captain of the debate team. While there, a professor of English, Melvin Tolson, became his mentor. Farmer earned a Bachelor of Science at Wiley College in 1938, and a Bachelor of Divinity from Howard University School of Religion in 1941. Inspired by Howard Thurman, a professor of theology at Howard University, Farmer became interested in Gandhi-style pacifism. During the 1950s, Farmer served as national secretary of the Student League for Industrial Democracy (SLID), the youth branch of the socialist League for Industrial Democracy. SLID later became Students for a Democratic Society. Farmer talked to A. J. Muste, the executive director of the Fellowship of Reconciliation(FOR), about an idea to combat racial inequality. Muste found the idea promising but wanted to see it in writing. Farmer spent months writing the memorandum making sure it was perfect. A. J. Muste wrote him back asking him about money to fund it and how they would get members. Finally, Farmer was asked to propose his idea in front of the FOR National Council. In the end, FOR chose not to sponsor the group, but gave Farmer permission to start the group in Chicago. When Farmer got back to Chicago, the group began setting up the organization. The name decided upon was CORE, the Committee of Racial Equality. The name was changed about a year later to the Congress of Racial Equality.In 1961 Farmer, who was working for the NAACP, was reelected as the national director of CORE, at a time when the civil rights movement was gaining power. Despite the Irene Morgan Supreme Court decision and the Boynton decision, interstate buses were still segregated. Gordon Carey proposed the idea of a second Journey of Reconciliation. Farmer jumped at the idea. This time, however, the group planned to journey through the Deep South. Farmer coined a new name for the trip: the Freedom Ride. The plan was for a mixed race and gender group to test segregation on interstate buses. The group would spend time in Washington D.C. for intensive training. They would embark on May 4, 1961 half by Greyhound and half by Trailways. They would go through Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and finish in New Orleans on May 17. For overnight stops there were planned rallies and support from the black community. There were usually talks at local churches or colleges.

  Growing disenchanted with emerging militancy and black nationalist sentiments in CORE, Farmer resigned as director in 1966. He took a teaching position at Lincoln University, a historically black college (HBCU), and continued to lecture. In 1968 Farmer ran for U.S. Congress as a Liberal Party candidate backed by the Republican Party, but lost to Shirley Chisholm. His defeat was not total; in 1969 the newly elected President Richard Nixon offered him the position of Assistant Secretary of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (now Health and Human Services). The next year, frustrated by the Washington bureaucracy, Farmer resigned from the position.

  Farmer retired from politics in 1971 but remained active, lecturing and serving on various boards and committees. In 1975 he co-founded Fund for an Open Society. Its vision is a nation in which people live in stably integrated communities, where political and civic power is shared by people of different races and ethnicities. He led this organization until 1999. From 1984 through 1998, Farmer taught at Mary Washington College (now The University of Mary Washington) in Fredericksburg, Virginia, where a bust of him now stands on campus and the multicultural center is named after him. They also named a program after him that encouraged minority students to enroll and enter college. It is the James Farmer Scholars program.

  In 1998 President Bill Clinton awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

  Farmer died in 1999 in Fredericksburg, Virginia of complications from diabetes.

• Grambling State Universityis a historically black, public, coeducational university, located in Grambling, Louisiana, United States.
  Grambling State University opened on November 1, 1901 as the Colored Industrial and Agricultural School. It was founded by the North Louisiana Colored Agriculture Relief Association, organized in 1896 by a group of African-American farmers who wanted to organize and operate a school for African Americans in their region of the state.

  In response to the Association’s request for assistance, Tuskegee Institute’s Booker T. Washington sent Charles P. Adams to help the group organize an industrial school. Adams became its founding president.

  In 1905, the school moved to its present location and was renamed the North Louisiana Agricultural and Industrial School. By 1928, after becoming a state junior college and being renamed the Louisiana Negro Normal and Industrial Institute, the school began to award two-year professional certificates and diplomas. In 1936, and the curriculum emphasis shifted to rural teacher education; students were able to receive professional teaching certificates after completing a third academic year. The first baccalaureate degree was awarded in 1944, in elementary education.

  In 1946, the school became Grambling College, named after P.G. Grambling, the white sawmill owner who had donated the parcel of land where the school was constructed. In addition to elementary educators, Grambling prepared secondary teachers and added curricula in sciences, liberal arts and business, transforming the college from a single purpose institution of teacher education into a multipurpose college. In 1949, the college earned its first accreditation by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS).

  In 1974, the addition of graduate programs in early childhood and elementary education gave the school a new status and a new name – Grambling State University. The university expanded and prospered between 1977 and 2000. Several new academic programs were incorporated and new facilities were added to the 384-acre campus, including a business and computer science building, school of nursing, student services building, stadium, stadium support facility and an intramural sports center.

  Alumni of Grambling State include: Willie Brown (Green Bay Packers), eight-time Mr. Olympia winner Ronnie Coleman, Grammy-winner Erykah Badu (although she began concentrating on music full-time and left the university before graduating); former NFL quarterback and Super Bowl XXII MVP Doug Williams, who currently serves as the Tigers head football coach. Award winning and world renowned jazz artist Michael Thomas is a Grambling alumnus and he was a member of the Tiger Marching Band along with jazz artists Lovett Hines and Bob French. The writer Judi-Ann Mason was a double major graduate of Grambling.

Information courtesy of AllAboutJazz.com, Biography.com, FactMonster.com, the Grambling State University website (www.gram.edu), PBS.org and Wikipedia

Stray Toasters

• Brown student uncovers lost Malcolm X speech
• 100 Random Observations from Super Bowl XLVI
• Utah Symphony has announced their 2012-2013 season.
• Boundless information: Mining social networks
• Austrian Law Student Faces Down Facebook
• 
• Today’s out of context phrase that made me laugh: “orgy spork”
• FBI call gives clues into Anonymous, Lulzsec probes
• Top 10 list of ugly cars includes Ford Mustang, BMW
• 
• 17 and sudoku clues
• Art History Through Sci-Fi Colored Glasses

Namaste.

Thursday – 02 February 2012
It’s not just another NBN Thursday, it’s also Groundhog Day.

Yep. It’s just like that. And, apparently, the groundhog predicts six more weeks of winter. (Apparently, Utah never gets that memo.)

Last night was Movie Date Night around the household. The movie I chose was Drive, as SaraRules! and I both have an affinity for car chase movies. It was good… and far from what I expected, which was a pleasant surprise. I can’t really say “how” or “why”, but I will say this: The movie is not for the squeamish.

After the movie, I played a little CoD: Modern Warfare 3. There was one round that was horrid. Seriously abominable. The team we faced locked my team down on a map and just ate us up. We’d respawn. We’d die. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. Fortunately (or “mercifully”), the round was over fairly quickly.

Chew on This: Food for Thought – Black History Month
Today’s person of note is Benjamin Banneker.

Benjamin Banneker (November 9, 1731 – October 9, 1806) was a free African American astronomer, mathematician, surveyor, almanac author and farmer.

It is difficult to verify much of Benjamin Banneker’s family history. Some writers have stated that he was a grandson of a European American named Molly Welsh, who came to colonial America as an indentured servant.Researchers have questioned this, as Banneker described himself only as having an African ancestry. None of Banneker’s surviving papers describe a white ancestor or identify the name of his grandmother.

Born on November 9, 1731 near Elliott City, Maryland, Benjamin Banneker was educated by Quakers, however, most of his education was self-taught. He quickly revealed to the world his inventive nature and first achieved national acclaim for his scientific work in the 1791 survey of the Federal Territory (now Washington, D.C.).

Benjamin Banneker has been called the first African American intellectual; because of his dark skin and great intellect he was called the “sable genius.” Benjamin Banneker was a self-taught mathematician and astronomer. In 1753, after studying the inner workings of a friend’s watch, he made a wooden pocket watch – one of the first watches made in America – that accurately kept time for more than 40 years. Twenty years later, Banneker began making astronomical calculations that enabled him to successfully forecast a 1789 solar eclipse.

From 1791 to 1802, he published the Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia Almanac and Ephemeris, which contained tide tables, future eclipses, and medicinal formulas. It is believed to be the first scientific book published by an African American. Also a surveyor, Banneker was appointed by President George Washington to the District of Columbia Commission, which was responsible for the survey work that established the city’s original boundaries. When the chairman of the committee, Pierre Charles L’Enfant, suddenly resigned and left, taking the plans with him, Banneker reproduced the plans from memory, saving valuable time. A staunch opponent of slavery, Banneker sent a copy of his first almanac to then-Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson to counter Jefferson’s belief in the intellectual inferiority of blacks.

On August 19 1791, Banneker sent a copy of his first almanac to secretary of state Thomas Jefferson. In an enclosed letter, he questioned the slaveholder’s sincerity as a “friend to liberty.” He urged Jefferson to help get rid of “absurd and false ideas” that one race is superior to another. He wished Jefferson’s sentiments to be the same as his, that “one Universal Father . . . afforded us all the same sensations and endowed us all with the same faculties.” Jefferson responded with praise for Banneker’s accomplishments.

Banneker never married. Because of declining sales, his last almanac was published in 1797. After selling much of his farm to the Ellicotts and others, he died in his log cabin nine years later on October 9, 1806, exactly one month before his 75th birthday. A commemorative obelisk that the Maryland Bicentennial Commission and the State Commission on Afro American History and Culture erected in 1977 stands near his unmarked grave in an Oella, Maryland, churchyard.

Tuesday – 31 January 2012
It’s the end of the month. More specifically, it’s the last Tuesday of the month. That must mean it’s time for Guys’ Night Out. Amen. The only thing that could – and did – make the day better was starting the morning with cuddles from Diana and Vanessa, as well as a kiss and a hug from SaraRules! Quadruple win.

I would also like to thank Ms. Galadriel for coming over (again) last night to help put the twins to bed while SaraRules! was at a Justice League meeting. There was no wailing, moaning or gnashing of teeth. And the twins were fine, too.

My subconscious has been drawing from my memories of 70’s and 80’s TV shows. This has become especially apparent over the past few nights’ dreams.  A few nights ago, Nicholas Hammond (probably most “known” for playing Peter Parker in CBS’ prime-time, live-action The Amazing Spider-Man) made an appearance. And last night, I had a dream sequence that was like a scene from the old Lynda Carter Wonder Woman. (Although the costume was a little wrong.) It was a little odd, but amusing, nevertheless.

And, I woke up with this running through my head:

Stray Toasters

• What Comes After Segregation?
• She Has No Head! – Interview with ‘Princeless’ Creator Jeremy Whitley
• What Is It About Mormons?
  Having lived in The Land Behind the Zion Curtain for more than a decade, my answer is: “There’s nothing ‘about’ them.” I have made a number of good friends who are LDS and they are just as human – for better and/or worse – as anyone else.
• 
• It’s fairly common knowledge that I’m a fan of Fringe. As such, I’ve come to like Lance Reddick‘s Agent Broyles/Colonel Broyles character(s) over the past few seasons. But, I think that both of them could learn a few things from his Toys R Me character.
• And yet another reason to like him: He’s from Baltimore.
• Letters of Note: To My Old Master, courtesy of
• From the “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot…?!” file: Teacher charged with lewd acts allegedly told kids it was ‘game’
• 
• N.F.L. Super Bowl Ad Will Stress Safety
• YORU FOOT
• Ask the Captain: What happens when all systems fail during flight?
• 
• Illinois Assemblyman withdraws urine-testing for welfare bill when colleague adds urine-testing for Assemblyman amendment

Namaste.

Monday – 30 January 2012
Wow. Looks like it’s been almost a week since I posted. Long time, that. So let’s get to it…

It’s been a good week. In a nutshell, it’s included:

• Spending time with SaraRules! and the girls:
  

  Vanessa (l) and Diana… with Tigger and Pooh

• Watching Real Steel with SaraRules! (It wasn’t bad; think “Rocky Meets Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots”)
• Kicking off a new multi-month ‘Clix event series for Dr. Volt’s… (in addition to the regular tourneys)
• Playing a fair bit of Modern Warfare 3… and a little Gears of War 3
• Picking up a Butterfinger-dipped caramel apple (!!!)
• Seeing Utah Opera’s performance of Rigoletto.

Yeah, It was a good week.

This week has the possibility of being quite nice, as well.

Stray Toasters

• My mother-in-law made a fantastic chicken tortilla soup for dinner last night. I feel sorry for those of you who didn’t get a chance to sample it.
• Superheroines, and Their Better Halves
• Airline Fees
• This is a great article about my friend, Jake Black: Super story: Father, husband, comic book writer and cancer survivor enjoys the simple life
• The Avengers Shouldn’t Text
• 
• The Bookstore’s Last Stand
• From the “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot…?!” file: Report: Body in storage unit for 17 years
• It’s Time to Rethink Steampunk
• It’s Illegal to Talk About the Super Bowl?
• Ruling on Contraception Draws Battle Lines at Catholic Colleges

Namaste.

Tuesday – 24 January 2012
For a day that started off grey with low clouds, it sure is sunny and bright out there. Of course, that’s a marked improvement over yesterday evening’s snow, so I’ll not complain.

Yesterday morning:

This morning:

Last night, came over. The original plan was for her to help me get the girls to bed while SaraRules! attended a Junior League meeting… but the meeting got rescheduled. So, she just came over and hung out with us, instead. She also tried to teach Diana to do The Time Warp, but it didn’t go so well. (I attribute it to the fact that the twins can’t stand yet, let alone dance.) But, I applaud her effort.

And, here’s a shot of the girls from this past weekend:

Stray Toasters

• Chaotic Start to Egypt’s First Democratically Elected Parliament
• Funny Ad for DC’s New Logo Parodies Fan Backlash
• This article is about a young lady that some friends of mine know: Colorado Teen Girl Recalls Train Accident: “I was watching my legs get crushed by coal cars.”
  Click through to The Times Call interview/article.  It’s worth it, for many reasons.
• Ex-Stanford Prof Starts a Totally-Free Online School
• Carroll Shelby marks 50 years with 800 hp Super Snake
• Yeah… add this to The Covet List.
• I got to spend the day surrounded by “quite a few” Shelbys when I went to Miller Motorsports Park a couple of years ago.
• 6 Made Up Nerd Words That Made It to Common Usage, and 8 That Should
• From the “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot…?!” file: In Police Training, a Dark Film on U.S. Muslims
• Strongest solar storm since 2005 hitting Earth
• Solar radiation storm sweeps over Earth
• Storms in the Void: Space Weather and Childhood’s End
• Not Quite Smart Enough

Thursday – 19 January 2012
It’s another NBN Thursday in the valley… but it’s one without snow. Mother Nature appears to have overlooked us, at least for the moment.

Last night, the girls slept pretty well. Thankfully. Vanessa woke up for a bit at 10:30, but found her way back to sleep about 45 minutes later. Again, thankfully. Both girls were up for a 2:15-ish feeding, followed by another four hours of sleep. So, all things considered, I’d call it a “good” night.

After the girls went to sleep, SaraRules! and I watched Limitless. We had an inkling of what to expect, but I found they took a couple of turns that I didn’t see coming. I appreciated that. While it wasn’t a perfect movie, I thought that it was well-done and quite entertaining. I give it a definite “thumbs-up with an okay.”

Stray Toasters

• Zombie Family Car Stickers
• By way of Maddox: I hope SOPA passes
• In Fight Over Piracy Bills, New Economy Rises Against Old
• …and, combining two great tastes that taste great together:
  
• The Soul of a Demon
• World Bank warns countries to prepare for a global slump
• America’s Worst Weather Airports
• A Way of Life on Its Way Out in Wichita
• Bum’s the word in Japan security scans

And… done with meetings for the day. Finally.

Wednesday – 18 January 2012
Midweek is upon us once more. It seems as though Mother Nature has plans to introduce…

…into our weather pattern. Soon. We shall see how this plays out.

Last night was a long night for the girls. Vanessa seems to be on the downhill slope of her “cold-like thing.” She had a bit of a time falling asleep, but managed to meet Morpheus and wander through The Dreaming for a couple of good stretches. But, according to SaraRules!, Diana was up roughly every 45 minutes to an hour. Hopefully, she’ll get a better night’s sleep tonight.

Stray Toasters

• This Is What an Internet Protest Looks Like
• Protest on Web Uses Shutdown to Take on Two Piracy Bills
• 
• 3 New ‘Legend of Korra’ Videos Emerge for ‘Avatar: the Last Airbender’ Sequel
• Fashion Week: Best Looks, Fall/Winter 2012
• If I was a betting man, I’d have put money on Jeff Fisher going to Miami over St. Louis.
• Is Cooking Ever an Art?
• 10 Ways to Have a Productive Meeting
  I wish more of the meetings I attended adhered to these ideas…
• Few Cities Have Regained Jobs They Lost, Report Finds

Tonight is “Pasta and Movie Date Night.” I have a couple of tentative ideas for a movie, but nothing that jumps out at me. Hopefully, inspiration will hit before I get home.

Namaste.

Friday – 13 January 2012
It’s Friday. Hallelujah! And the fact that it’s Friday the 13th? Meh. It’s my “on” Friday, but it’s quiet around the office, so I should be able to get a few things accomplished with minimal interruption. That would be a “good” thing.

It’s also Playoff Purple Friday:

Last night was a fairly quiet night around the homestead. It was bath night for little girls, both of whom took their baths without much ado. And, they even went to sleep fairly easily. Although, Diana did wake up about 12:45… which is almost an hour earlier than her norm. I am chalking it up to the fact that she – and Vanessa – seem to be a bit congested, of late and that’s making sleep a little more difficult.

After the girls went to sleep – and after dinner and an episode of NCIS: Los Angeles – I played CoD: MW3. I was able to team up with a few friends, which made it all the more fun.

Stray Toasters

• When Cosplay Collides with Cuteness
  Our kids are sca-rewed.  🙂
• Obama to Ask Congress for Power to Merge Agencies
• 
• Court rules Black minister owns title to building housing famous KKK shop
• Uneasy Neighbors in a Southern Gothic Tale
• Bill Cowher has turned down at least three NFL teams
• The Inbreeding Coefficient of Superheroes
• 
• Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego?
• Morgan Freeman doesn’t just make movies — he’s a fan
• From the “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot…?!” file: Dumb, dumber and dumbest: Burglars snort ashes of a man and two dogs after they mistook them for cocaine

Namaste.

Thursday – 12 January 2012
It’s another NBN Thursday in the valley. There’s sun, but it’s still quite cold outside. But, my morning started out with cuddles from both girls, so I got a good kickoff to the day.

And, speaking of the little ladies, this picture was taken during last night’s “tummy time:”

Vanessa (l) and Diana
(*waits to see how long before this picture appears on my mother’s Facebook page…*)

Last night was also “Pasta and Movie Date Night” at our house. SaraRules! picked up a movie on the way home: Tangled. It was a cute – and rather fun – movie, putting a slightly different spin on the Rapunzel fairy tale.

Before bed, I read a little more of World War Z. I’m still enjoying it. After turning out the light and calling it a day, I was treated to a few hours of zombie-infested dreams. Go figure. But it wasn’t all The Walking Dead. It was more like “The Walking Dead meets Resident Evil (movies) meets S.H.I.E.L.D. meets The X-Men.” Yeah, it was that weird. Suspenseful. Action-packed. Slightly frenetic. And I think it is that combination of things that kept it from being outright scary/fear-inducing.

Stray Toasters

• I was listening to Huey Lewis and the News yesterday (thanks, Spotify!) and realized something: They made a lot of fun/amusing videos and it was pretty easy to see that the band just really seemed to have fun playing music.
• Author of SOPA Is a Copyright Violator
• Survey Finds Rising Perception of Class Tension
• From the “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot…?!” file:
• Oh My Fucking God This Woman Coughed Up Her Own Tumor
• Man Killed in Train Accident Sued By Woman His Flying Body Parts Injured
• Religious Groups Given ‘Exception’ to Work Bias Law
• Miss. judge blocks release of 21 convicts Barbour pardoned
• I still haven’t seen a purple cow.
• Spam with QR code targets mobile users
• Cremation, Burial or Body Farm?

Namaste.

Monday – 09 January 2012
A new week begins. My day started with cuddles from Little Miss Diana (Vanessa was still asleep), so how could my day be bad?

I’ll get this out of the way now:

Yeah. John Fox’s Denver Broncos hosted the guys from Steeltown… and won. To sum up my thoughts on the game, I turn to a paraphrasing of the words of S.H.I.E.L.D. Director Nick Fury :

Nick Fury: You’ve been very busy […] you’re giving away all your stuff. You let your friend fly away with your suit playoff spot. Now, if I know better…
Tony Stark: [interrupts] You don’t know better. I didn’t give it to him. He took it.
Nick Fury: Whoa, whoa, whoa. He took it? You’re Iron Man Big Ben and he just took it? The little brother walked in there, kicked your ass and took your suit spot? Is that possible?

In this case, Nick Fury would be portrayed by Ball So Hard University’s Terrell Suggs and Tony Stark would be played by Ben Roethlisberger.

I’ve never been a huge Denver fan, but I was one yesterday. I was also glad to see that Coach Fox – formerly the head coach of the Carolina Panthers – was able to take his team to the playoffs and have a good showing.

Stray Toasters

• Cadillac ATS goes diesel to pluck BMW 3-Series buyers
• Badass of the Week: Dakota Meyer
• How to Investigate Your Elected Officials
• Hackers say they have Symantec’s Norton AV source code
• 
• A Tech Show Loses Clout as Industry Shifts
• Scrolling LEGO TV brings minifig Superman to life
• From m3lodywise and the “People Are Strange When You’re a Stranger” file comes this.
• Airbus Refuses to Ground A380s Despite Cracks in Their Wings

Namaste.