Sunday Morning Coming Down

 I was too young to get the full impact of Elvis Presley's early years but his performances came from a lot of different places.  He was only 42 years old at his death but he was instrumental in the development of rock and roll using country music, rhythm and blues and the popular music of the time and the media of TV and radio. Heartbreak Hotel, Hound Dog and a lot of other songs made it to the top of the charts.  It is said that Elvis sold more records than any other performer, over 500,000,000 recordings.  He had a movie career with a string of popular movies that featured his singing and pretty girls in a wide variety of settings. Drafted in 1958, the teen idol that spent time in the army in Germany serving his country, where it seemed his every move was written about.  You could be forgiven if you thought Bye Bye Birdie was an autobiography that became a movie  The chart topper from 1956-1958, the movies from 1960-1968, and his comeback special in 1968...

Thanksgiving Day has a history that included the Pilgrams and the Wapanoag and Squanto.  Today we celebrate Native American Heritage Day.  On May 28, 1830, President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act. The Indian Removal Act was signed into law on May 28, 1830, by United States President Andrew Jackson. The law authorized the president to negotiate with southern Native American tribes for their removal to federal territory west of the Mississippi River in exchange for white settlement of their ancestral lands.  At the beginning of the 1830s, nearly 125,000 Native Americans lived on millions of acres of land in Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, North Carolina and Florida–land their ancestors had occupied and cultivated for generations. By the end of the decade, very few natives remained anywhere in the southeastern United States. Working on behalf of white settlers who wanted to grow cotton on the Indians’ land, the federal government forced them to leave their homela...

The Miami Herald for which I will be eternally grateful pretty much got it right in an article on Page 6A.   Fidel Castro became an unwitting father of modern Miami Castro's march into Havana brought repression and economic failure and a stream of exiles, entrepreneurs, and political refugees to Miami that by sheer mass and hard work have made Miami an international hub between the Caribbean, along with Central and South America. Working at 1800 SW 1 Street I witnessed the Mariel Boatlift, Guantanamo Rafters and a subsequent Cuban Visa Program that allowed about 20,000 to leave the island annually.  "About 1/3 of Miami Dade's population is either Cuban-born or of Cuban descent which translates to just under a million people. Along with Cubans came refugees and immigrants from Nicaragua, Columbia, Panama, Venezuela, and Puerto Rico who are neither refugee or immigrants.  Business, trade, location, the Spanish Language and Cuban exiles have made Miami the hub it is tod...

 Dwight D. Eisenhower was first elected in 1952 and reelected in 1956.  He came to the presidency after a distinguished career in the military where he led the allied forces against Hitler planning and executing the D-day Invasion of France. Both major parties would have been thrilled to have him run for president in 1952 and he easily defeated Adlai Stevenson, Democrat from Illinois. It is said his military background and experience were keys to ending the shooting part of the Korean War.   Another "accomplishment" of the Eisenhower Administration was the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1957 which did little to advance civil rights for African Americans but it was the first civil rights legislation since the 1870's.  It added a Civil Rights Division to the Department of Justice.  The legislation passed with broad bi-partisan outside of the still segregated Jim Crow southern states. The Eisenhower Administration sponsored and signed the Federal aid Highw...

It's November 22 and in 1963 I was in 7th grade when my homeroom class learned that President Kennedy had been shot and had died in Dallas.  The whole weekend weekend was a blur.  For more than a few folks my age it was our 9/11. Fifty eight years later folks are still writing about the whodunit aspects of the assassination of  President Kennedy. Shortly after Kennedy's death there were stories about the Curse of Tippecanoe and   the deaths in office of presidents of the United States who were elected in years with the digit 0, which are all divisible by 20.    I'm not sure if the Warren Commission has been discredited but there are a lot of conspiracy theories out there and some state secrets for lack of a better term that have not been released by those who follow the subject.  

Women weren't granted the right to vote by the U..S. Constitution until 1920 The Equal Credit Opportunity Act was passed in 1974.  Before that it was possible for lenders to deny a credit card to a woman who was unmarried or a married "housewife".  These days it is almost impossible to imagine anyone with a job and work history being denied a credit card. The "Equal Pay for Equal Work Act was passed in 1963. In theory it was to equalize pay between the sexes.  In 2009 the "Lilly Ledbetter Act was passed to address some shortcomings in previous equal pay laws regarding the statute of limitations that applied. There is still a gender gap in wages for men and women.  Women make .82 cents for each $1.00 a man makes. And on a related front, birth control pills became available in 1960 and Roe vs. Wade was decided in 1973. The jury is still out on the latter two, it is almost too easy but still important for anyone to be able get a credit card.  

 Brown vs. Board of Education: was decided on May 17, 1954.  Legally it set the idea of  "separate but equal" on its ear in public school education.  After the Civil War, after the Emancipation Proclamation, after the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution which was supposed to guarantee rights to former slaves came the Compromise of 1877 and the withdrawal of Federal Troops that tried to enforce the constitutional amendments. One of the fig leaves that ushered in Jim Crow Laws and the disenfranchisement of former slaves was the legal concept of "separate but equal".  The State of Florida first mandated separate rail cars for trains to enforce racial segregation and segregation rapidly spread to buses, hotels, theaters, restaurants, swimming pools and schools.  The idea that one rail car was as good as another for transportation and ex-slaves were as good as white folks but they should stay in their own rail car, hotels, or schools lasted way t...

I was struck by a twitter post that went something like this: Year 2021 minus 50 years equals 1971.  And I'm adding the following: 1971 minus 50 years is 1921.  I was born in 1951, my mother was born in 1921 and my Dad was born in 1919.  Had they survived they would have been over 100 years old. My parents ages, and my age might seem almost trivial but in a lot of ways the current events that they lived through and the current events that even I have lived through constitute a kind of history that is mind boggling in the amount of changes the world has gone through.   In 1950 the Korean War started when North Korea which had been divided into North and South Korea after WWII invaded South Korea.  In many ways it was a proxy war between the U.S.A. and Russia which had spheres of influence in South and North Korea and the real beginning of the "Cold War". It could also be considered a Civil War where both countries wanted to be united under North or South Kor...

 I was almost a history major in college but it required too much time reading and there were a lot of books you were supposed to buy. I was good at dates, names, and the trivia that was what I thought history was. Me bad.

 I watched Jeopardy while Aaron Rogers was a replacement for Alex Trebek.  I thought he did a good job and would be a step above a few ex-players who traded their jersey for a job in the main stream sports media.  I get most of my sports info from the radio over night or on the way to sleep or in the car. Rogers was a late bloomer in football and as kind of surprise to me he attended the University of California Berkley.  Transferring from a junior college he played for the Cal Bears.  He left school skipping his senior for the NFL Draft. Very recently the rich college dropout said he was immunized when asked whether he had been vaccinated after testing positive for COVID 19.  He had not. If you are a fan of the Green Bay Packers and still believe  that Rogers has shown great leadership skills as a quarterback you have been the victim of a hoax.  Maybe a 37 year old football player can roll the dice and avoid the worst aspects of COVID 19 but the ...

 I watched and bet the races from Del Mar yesterday.  The Breeder's Cup ran their two year old races yesterday.  Two year old's racing these days often don't have a lot of races to review and  ponder.  You sort of pick and pray. The biggest controversy was related to a late scratch of a horse that sat down in the starting gate and another horse that came out of the front starting gate to avoid further issues. The issue was that the 2-year-old colt was running as a non-wagering interest, for purse money only, since he had been prematurely scratched by the Breeders' Cup veterinary team due to a starting gate incident.  From the Paulick Report: The full field of 14 had loaded into the gate uneventfully and was waiting for the start when Modern Games grew restless and reared in the one gate, triggering stablemate Albahr (GB) to spook, rear, and fall onto the turf under the gate. Jockey Frankie Dettori, aboard Albahr, managed to extricate himself from the gate w...

 I have only the vaguest ideas of all that is in the two "infrastructure" bills that are languishing in Congress.  This is very frustrating for elected officials that want to move forward on roads and bridges and stuff that will make the country more efficient in the long run.  Adding improved social programs that are targeted to underserved areas are also good things. Given that these projects will or should be apportioned throughout the country to places and people who would benefit from them, it would seem to be a slam dunk that the programs would be passed and on their way to implementation. The train wreck that allows one or two Senators to hold almost a veto over actions related to climate change, improved highways, repaired or replaced bridges, helping to pay for long term care, assistance for more affordable housing, and more affordable health care is tiresome at best. Let's go congress.