Today is the 50th anniversary of the Greensboro sit-in. Be sure to read Howell Raines’ criticism of news media coverage of civil rights issues in today’s New York Times: “What I am suggesting is that the one thing the South should have learned in the past 50 years is that if we are going to hell in a handbasket, we should at least be together in a basket of common purpose.”
Four young men turned a page of history on February 1, 1960, at a lunch counter in a Woolworth’s store in Greensboro, North Carolina.
Ezell A. Blair, Jr. (now Jibreel Khazan), Franklin E. McCain, Joseph A. McNeil, and David L. Richmond, sat down at the counter to order lunch. Because they were African Americans, they were refused service. Patiently, they stayed in their seats, awaiting justice.
On July 25, nearly six months later, Woolworth’s agreed to desegregate the lunch counter.
Ezell A. Blair, Jr. (now Jibreel Khazan), Franklin E. McCain, Joseph A. McNeil, and David L. Richmond leave the Woolworth store after the first sit-in on February 1, 1960. (Courtesy of Greensboro News and Record) (Smithsonian Institution)
News of the “sit-in” demonstration spread. Others joined in the non-violent protests from time to time, 28 students the second day, 300 the third day, and some days up to 1,000. The protests spread geographically, too, to 15 cities in 9 states.
Smithsonian caption: "On the second day of the Greensboro sit-in, Joseph A. McNeil and Franklin E. McCain are joined by William Smith and Clarence Henderson at the Woolworth lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina. (Courtesy of Greensboro News and Record)"
Part of the old lunch counter was salvaged, and today is on display at the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum of American History. The museum display was the site of celebratory parties during the week of the inauguration as president of Barack Obama.
Part of the lunchcounter from the Woolworth's store in Greensboro, North Carolina, is now displayed at the Smithsonian's Museum of American History, in Washington, D.C.
May 4, 1861, letter from Millard Fillmore to Abraham Lincoln – Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress
Transcription of the letter:
From Millard Fillmore to Abraham Lincoln, May 4, 1861
Buffalo May 4, 1861.
My Dear Sir,
The bearer, Dr. Martin Mayer, a Stranger to me, has asked of me a letter of Introduction to your Excellency, and produced such high proofs of character, that I do not feel at liberty to refuse it; and therefore while I decline any interference, in any appointment he may desire, (which is my uniform practice) I desire simple to ask that he may be heard.
Respectfully yours
Millard Fillmore
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Students would have to find the old photos at the library, or at your local historical association or museum. Most of your students already have the electronic photo equipment though . . .
Angst over the state of education never goes away:
Much more important is the way we seem to have turned away from the very idea of education that sustains a healthy, vibrant liberal democracy. As I write this I am conscious of how unfashionable it sounds. However, there has been a steady erosion of the notion that education can and should fuel our individual ability to think critically about the world as we find it – which requires knowledge and understanding of how the world has come to be. We are swamped with a language of targets, skills and 21st century ‘learning to learn’, but have forgotten what it is that distinguishes learning (a word that now seems to carry huge weight and always deemed a good thing in itself, when clearly it is not) from education. All worthwhile education is, in the end self-education, based on the student’s curiosity, their need to know and readiness to rise to the challenge of finding out. Indeed, offering challenge to young people is one way to motivate them – so different from today’s orthodoxy which says we should make learning accessible, bite-sized and achievable by all.
That fat pay the denialists keep claiming comes to the scientists, and urges them to misreport the data?
The only remuneration IPCC scientists get – as a quick check of last week’s ad would have made clear — is travel costs and living expenses while they are at IPCC meetings. The IPCC work is on top of their day jobs as academics and researchers.
You know that denialists won’t apply to do the job. Most of us suspect they don’t have the courage of their convictions to do it, but there’s another problem: Very few of them are qualified. They don’t do science.
Our local classical station, WRR-101.1 FM promises appropriate playing of his music, even taking requests with that modern device, the internet:
Listen to WRR, Classical 101.1 as WRR plays works exclusively by Mozart, born Jan. 27, 1756. All your favorite symphonies, concertos, opera overtures and chamber works by this musical titan will be spotlighted.
Something from Mozart you’d like to hear? Share it with us at facebook.com/wrr101 and we may add it to the birthday celebration!
Mozart’s stock rose in the 1990s with the production of the play and movie Amadeus! I like to think it rose at least partly because people like his music, too, as this essay suggested way back then:
Turn your channel to PBS, where Hugh Downs or Peter Ustinov is narrating a Mozart special. Turn to one of the commercial channels, and Mozart’s Piano Concerto K. 466 and “Little” G Minor Symphony K. 183/173dB are selling MacIntosh computers, Don Giovanni gives class to Cheer laundry detergent, The Marriage of Figaro hawks the Sirocco automobile, the Requiem’s Lacrymosa seemingly sanctifies Lee Jeans, and another piano concerto (K. 482) perks Maxwell House coffee. The recovery of a Mozart symphony, even if juvenilia, receives front-page coverage from The New York Times. Dealers and collectors will go to any extreme for a piece of the action; Mozart autographs sell at the same prices as fine paintings, and dealers in one case dismembered the “Andretter” Serenade K. 185, retailing it piecemeal for greater profit. The Marriage of Figaro and Don Giovanni now rival the box-office receipts of La Boheme and Madame Butterfly.
So, what will you do to celebrate?
In a chldren's play, everyone but his sister has forgotten Mozart's birthday. Photo by Chalemie
Invite others to celebrate, too!
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
YELLOWSTONE VOLCANO OBSERVATORY INFORMATION STATEMENT
Thursday, January 21, 2010 2:26 PM MST (Thursday, January 21, 2010 2126 UTC)
Yellowstone Volcano
44°25’48” N 110°40’12” W, Summit Elevation 9203 ft (2805 m)
Current Volcano Alert Level: NORMAL
Current Aviation Color Code: GREEN
The earthquake swarm on the northwest edge of Yellowstone Caldera that began on January 17, 2010 continues.
PRESS RELEASE FROM YVO PARTNER UNIVERSITY OF UTAH SEISMOGRAPH STATIONS
Released: January 21, 2010 2:00PM MST
This release is a continuation of information updates building upon our two previous press releases on the ongoing earthquake swarm on the west side of Yellowstone National Park. The University of Utah Seismograph Stations reports that a pair of earthquakes of magnitude 3.7 and 3.8 occurred in the evening of January 20, 2010 in Yellowstone National Park.
The first event of magnitude 3.7 occurred at 11:01 PM and was shortly followed by a magnitude 3.8 event at 11:16 PM. Both shocks were located around 9 miles to the southeast of West Yellowstone, MT and about 10 miles to the northwest of Old Faithful, WY. Both events were felt throughout the park and in surrounding communities in Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho.
These two earthquakes are part of an ongoing swarm in Yellowstone National Park that began January 17, 2010 (1:00 PM MST). The largest earthquake in the swarm as of 12 PM, January 21, 2010, was a magnitude 3.8. There have been 901 located earthquakes in the swarm of magnitude 0.5 to 3.8. This includes 8 events of magnitude larger than 3, with 68 events of magnitude 2 to 3, and 825 events of magnitude less than 2. There have been multiple personal reports of ground shaking from observations inside the Park and in surrounding areas for some of the larger events (for felt reports, please visit http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/dyfi/). Earthquake swarms are relatively common in Yellowstone.
The swarm earthquakes are likely the result of slip on pre-existing faults rather than underground movement of magma. Currently there is no indication of premonitory volcanic or hydrothermal activity, but ongoing observations and analyses will continue to evaluate these different sources.
Seismic information on the earthquake can be viewed at the University of Utah Seismograph Stations: http://www.seis.utah.edu/.
Anyone who has felt earthquakes in the swarm are encouraged to fill out a form on the USGS Community Felt reports web site: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/dyfi/.
This press release was prepared by the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory partners of the U.S. Geological Survey, the University of Utah, and the National Park Service: http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/yvo/
—
The Yellowstone Volcano Observatory (YVO) is a partnership of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), Yellowstone National Park, and University of Utah to strengthen the long-term monitoring of volcanic and earthquake unrest in the Yellowstone National Park region. Yellowstone is the site of the largest and most diverse collection of natural thermal features in the world and the first National Park. YVO is one of the five USGS Volcano Observatories that monitor volcanoes within the United States for science and public safety.
CONTACT INFORMATION:
Peter Cervelli, Acting Scientist-in-Charge, USGS
pcervelli@usgs.gov (650) 329-5188
The Yellowstone Volcano Observatory (YVO) was created as a partnership among the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), Yellowstone National Park, and University of Utah to strengthen the long-term monitoring of volcanic and earthquake unrest in the Yellowstone National Park region. Yellowstone is the site of the largest and most diverse collection of natural thermal features in the world and the first National Park. YVO is one of the five USGS Volcano Observatories that monitor volcanoes within the United States for science and public safety.
Outside of the Yellowstone and Intermountain areas, students will probably ask about 2012. Tell them the Mayans didn’t know anything about Old Faithful.
Here’s a paranoia site –– commenters wonder if the nation is planning for what to do if that corner of Wyoming heads for the Moon, as if there were anything that could be planned for
Shake a little news to the rest of the world:
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
On January 24, 1950, the U.S. Patent Office awarded Percy L. Stevens patent # 2,495,429, for his “Method of Treating Foodstuffs” with waves from a magnetron oscillator. Sixty years ago today Percy Stevens changed culinary life forever.
You guessed it: The microwave oven.
Patent for "Method for Treating Foodstuffs," granted January 24, 1950, to Percy L. Stevens of the Raytheon Corp. - the microwave oven. Image via FreePatentsOnline.com
On CBS “Sunday Morning” Charles Osgood said that in 1975 microwave oven sales surpassed conventional oven sales for the first time. This is more remarkable because the first commercial microwave in 1955 was too big for home kitchens, and at $1,300, too pricey. Japanese modifications of the magnetron to shrink it made microwave ovens much like those we have today ready for the market for the first time in 1967. Eight years from market entry to majority of the market.
It only makes sense: Today offices on every floor of every office building have microwave ovens in their break rooms, but almost none ever had conventional ovens. College students have microwaves in their dormitory rooms. Even gasoline stations offer foods for microwaving by customers.
Spencer’s invention makes it possible to heat foods quickly with a relatively small device, in thousands of places where no conventional oven would work well, or be welcomed.
According to legend — accurate? — Spencer got the idea after working with magnetron tubes while carrying a chocolate bar in his pocket. He noticed the chocolate bar melted. Within a short time he had demonstrated the ability to pop popcorn and burst an egg with the microwaves from the tube.
Sign of the changing times: Many children today do not know how to pop popcorn without a microwave. Legend has it that children in elementary school ask where the Massachusetts natives kept the microwaves with which they popped the corn that delighted the settlers of the Plymouth Colony.
Microwave oven inventor Percy Spencer with early microwave equipment at Raytheon - photo from Spencer family archive
THE BILL OF RIGHTS INSTITUTE SPONSORS NATIONAL HISTORY DAY PRIZE
Students nationwide can compete for the Constitutional Rights in History prize
The Bill of Rights Institute announced their collaboration with National History Day (NHD) today. The Institute is sponsoring the Constitutional Rights in History prize, awarded to an outstanding entry in any category from both the senior and junior divisions which documents and analyzes how individuals have exercised their constitutional rights throughout American history.
The 2010 theme for National History Day is “Innovation In History: Impact and Change.” Students must demonstrate through their project how their chosen individual’s actions had an impact on history.
Each year more than half a million students, encouraged by thousands of teachers nationwide, participate in the NHD contest. Students choose historical topics related to a theme and conduct extensive primary and secondary research through libraries, archives, museums, oral history interviews and historic sites. The Bill of Rights Institute’s prize will be awarded at the National Finals held in June 2010 in College Park, Maryland.
Managing the agencies who carry out the policies requires a focus on what government is supposed to do. Democrats tend to make better managers, because they wish government to work well and efficiently. Republicans prefer government to go away, and too often since Dwight Eisenhower’s administration, Republicans have intentionally created havoc for agencies, to stymie their operation at all.
So, how has Obama done in his first year? A couple of radio hosts in Washington, D.C., asked expert opinion.
Federal News Radio asked Joe Ferrara, Associate Dean at Georgetown University’s Public Policy Institute, to give the President a report card on the Chief Executive’s effect on federal employees and the operation and business of government.
Here are the Dean’s grades and a few comments:
Overall grade: B
“In terms of some of the initiatives he’s been pushing: stabilizing the economy, pushing health care.”
Federal Government Management Issues
Effort: A
“They have definitely shown a lot of energy in pushing initiatives on contracting, transparency, modernizing technology, etc.”
Results: C
“In part because it’s still early. Yes, he has been in office for a year, but as you well know, it takes time for changes to sort of filter through a bureaucracy as large as the federal government.”
Overall Planning
“If you look at the last couple of administrations, certainly Bush and Cheney…their umbrella concept was the President’s Management Agenda. They ran it out of the White House. They ran it out of OMB. Clinton and Gore had Reinventing Government. They ran that out of the White House, not necessarily OMB, but a task force made up largely of career federal employees. But they had an over-arching concept: Reinventing Government.”
The lack of a stated overall approach is “worrisome.” “As a former federal employee, I worry about your average federal manager out there seeing the initiative of the day coming forth from OMB, coming forth from the White House, and wondering how does this all fit together.
Transparency
“I know they’ve published this Open Government directive. I think that’s definitely a step in the right direction.” Data.gov and the recovery and stimulus fund websites make it “easier for Congress, your average citizen, people in industry to figure out where’s all the money going and what are agencies doing.”
One caveat: “politicians themselves, from the President on down” have to be transparent in pronouncements and the way they make decisions. “It’s not just the technology solution to transparency. That’s an important part of it, but there’s also political solution and I think ultimately you need those two to go together for citizens to really have a strong sense of trust in what the Government’s doing.”
Cybersecurity
The delay in announcing a selection for cybersecurity coordinator “more viewed as sort of the Obama-style of gathering inputs, mulling over options, getting second opinions, getting third opinions – a very extensive vetting process kind of like what we saw with the Afghanistan decision. On the one hand, there’s nothing wrong with that.” On the other hand, said Ferrara, the longer you take to make decisions the more likely it is people will think you don’t put a high priority on the subject.
Cybersecurity “is a very complex bundle of policy issues” and could explain the apparent delay.
Joe Ferrara is Associate Dean at Georgetown University’s Public Policy Institute.
President Obama’s self-reporting report card to Congress, the State of the Union address, is scheduled to be delivered a week from today, January 27th, at 9 pm EST.
NASA GISS [Goddard Institute for Space Studies] has released the estimated monthly temperature for December 2009, which closes out the year 2009, which closes out the decade of the 2000s. The result: 2005 is still the hottest calendar year, 2009 is the 2nd-hottest year ever, although it’s really in a statistical tie with 1998, 2002, 2003, 2006, and 2007.
They’ve confused weather with climate. They’ve failed to keep score. Perhaps they’ve spent wasted their time hacking e-mails instead of measuring climate.
The past year, 2009, tied as the second warmest year in the 130 years of global instrumental temperature records, in the surface temperature analysis of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS). The Southern Hemisphere set a record as the warmest year for that half of the world. Global mean temperature, as shown in Figure 1a, was 0.57°C (1.0°F) warmer than climatology (the 1951-1980 base period). Southern Hemisphere mean temperature, as shown in Figure 1b, was 0.49°C (0.88°F) warmer than in the period of climatology.
Caption from RealClimate: Figure 1. (a) GISS analysis of global surface temperature change. Green vertical bar is estimated 95 percent confidence range (two standard deviations) for annual temperature change. (b) Hemispheric temperature change in GISS analysis. (Base period is 1951-1980. This base period is fixed consistently in GISS temperature analysis papers. . . Base period 1961-1990 is used for comparison with published HadCRUT analyses in Figures 3 and 4.)
Heat things up a bit, and spread the alarm:
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Interior of main floor (second floor) of Utah Capitol, looking west from the Rotunda to the House of Representatives' chamber - Wikimedia photo by BigBen
Got a couple of hours in Salt Lake City?
Utah’s copper-domed capitol building is among my favorites in the U.S. for style and grace. The high-hillside location gives one a hawk’s eye view of Salt Lake City and especially State Street (which runs, by tradition, south about 400 miles to the Utah-Nevada border). So it’s a good piece of architecture to tour.
Starting March 3, it will also have a display on Utah’s many attempts to become a state. Between 1847 and 1896 when finally admitted to the union, Utah submitted seven different constitutions trying to get approval of Congress. Utah relocated its capital to the center of the state, named the town Fillmore and the county Millard to flatter the sitting president. That didn’t work, either. Later the capital was moved back to Salt Lake City, nearer to where most of the people resided.
To assuage fears that Utah would upset the balance of power in Washington, at one point Latter-day Saint church authorities designated every-other household Democrat or Republican, giving Utah a 50/50 split electorate that survived in that fashion until the 1970s.
It’s all there at the exhibit, in the capitol building.
It took 7 Constitutions and 47 years to get Utah admitted as the Nation’s 45th state. The Utah State Capitol celebrates that effort in a free exhibit opening on March 3,2010. Open March 2010 through Jan. 2011! Free to the Public! Docent guided tours available! For more information visit www.utahstatecapitol.utah.gov Hours: Mon-Fri: 8 a.m. – 8 p.m. Sat & Sun: 8 a.m. – 6 p.m. This exhibit is a building-wide exhibit. Main displays are located on the 1st and 4th floors. Ask any Capitol Docent for additional help.
News reports in Texas this morning said that several of the right-wing, gut-education-standards changes proposed to social studies standards had failed in voting on Thursday, January 14. But, much more was to be done, and the SBOE adjourned early last night to continue voting today.
In a pattern familiar to education advocates in Texas, board member Don McLeroy (R-Pluto) today proposed a long series of amendments, apparently off-the-cuff, but probably written up in earlier strategy sessions. These last-minute amendments tend to pass having missed any serious scrutiny.
Will he be able to ruin Texas education for the next decade? I cannot follow the live webcasts; Steve Schafersman is working to stop the amendments, rather than merely blog about them. We probably won’t know the extent of the damage for weeks. McLeroy cherishes his role as a Port-au-Prince-style earthquake to Texas education. (Pure coincidence, I’m sure — Ed Brayton summarizes McLeroy’s politics today.)
Watch that space, and other news sources. I may provide updates here, as I can get information.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Or, until that account is unsuspended by the forces supporting Donald Trump: Follow @FillmoreWhite, the account of the Millard Fillmore White House Library
We've been soaking in the Bathtub for several months, long enough that some of the links we've used have gone to the Great Internet in the Sky.
If you find a dead link, please leave a comment to that post, and tell us what link has expired.
Thanks!
Retired teacher of law, economics, history, AP government, psychology and science. Former speechwriter, press guy and legislative aide in U.S. Senate. Former Department of Education. Former airline real estate, telecom towers, Big 6 (that old!) consultant. Lab and field research in air pollution control.
My blog, Millard Fillmore's Bathtub, is a continuing experiment to test how to use blogs to improve and speed up learning processes for students, perhaps by making some of the courses actually interesting. It is a blog for teachers, to see if we can use blogs. It is for people interested in social studies and social studies education, to see if we can learn to get it right. It's a blog for science fans, to promote good science and good science policy. It's a blog for people interested in good government and how to achieve it.
BS in Mass Communication, University of Utah
Graduate study in Rhetoric and Speech Communication, University of Arizona
JD from the National Law Center, George Washington University
Posted by Ed Darrell 
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 