December 22

On the 22nd in 1964, Lenny Bruce was convicted of obscenity. Viewed from a vantage point over 40 years on, Bruce’s conviction seems just plain silly. His brand of comedy now seems distressingly banal. But then again many things that at one time seemed frightening are now simply plain, edging ever closer to becoming unforgivably boring. As hard as it may be to believe, there was a time when rock and roll was innovative and dangerous; now it is nothing more than the rather tepid, corpulent beneficiary of corporate largesse. Today people react rather than respond to musicians like Marilyn Manson whereas they responded to Marc Bolan and Ziggy Stardust. There is a huge difference between reacting and responding and I find this development to be somewhat sad in a way. Personally, I think rock and roll was far more interesting when it was dangerous.

December 21

Walt Disney’s movie Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs[i] premiered on the 21st in 1937, at a theater in Los Angeles, California. It went into general release on February 4, 1938. As you must know, the movie was remarkably successful. The Motion Picture Academy would give Walt Disney an honorary Academy Award for the movie and Disney was presented with a full-size Oscar trophy and seven miniature ones by Shirley Temple. Snow White has the distinction of being the second oldest animated movie[ii] whose running time made it eligible for an Academy Award.
[i] Before deciding that the seven dwarfs would be named Bashful, Doc, Dopey, Grumpy, Happy, Sleepy and Sneezy Disney gave serious consideration to naming them Blabby, Jumpy, Shifty, and Snoopy, Scrappy, Cranky, Dirty, Awful, Silly, Daffy, Flabby, Jaunty, Biggo Ego, Chesty, Bald, Gabby, Nifty, Sniffy, Burpy, Lazy, Puffy, Dizzy, Stuffy and Tubby.
[ii] The oldest surviving animated movie is The New Gulliver, produced in the Soviet Union and released in 1935. The New Gulliver tells the riveting story of young boy who dreams of himself as a version of Gulliver who lands in Lilliput and suffers under capitalist inequality and exploitation. I don’t know about you but the plot line alone makes me want to immediately run out and look for a copy of that one. There is something about cartoons detailing the workers’ struggle to break free of the iron fist of the brutal ruling class that just sets my heart aflutter and I find myself having to fight the temptation to have a clenched fist tattooed on my forehead.

December 20

If I were to mention the name Arco, would the name ring any bells for you? Well, it is the name of a gasoline company but Arco is also the name of a small desert town in Idaho. Its one claim to fame (the town’s, not the gas company’s) is that it is the home of the Experimental Breeder Reactor – 1 (EBR-1) that has been designated a United States National Historic Landmark. This puts it in the company of the Statue of Liberty and slew of other landmarks, probably including the first International House of Pancakes and In and Out Burgers. Still in the dark? Let me grab a flashlight and shed a bit of light on the subject. On the 20th in 1951, at 1:50 in the afternoon, EBR-1 began to generate electricity, enough electricity, difficult though this may be to believe, to actually power four 200-watt light bulbs. ERB-1 was not only the first nuclear reactor to generate power but also the first breeder reactor, producing plutonium as a by-product. There were some problems however and on November 29, 1955, an operator error resulted in a partial meltdown of the reactor.

December 19

American Presidents have a wide range of reputations. A reputation for having unusual pets, or even particularly nice ones, is not generally among them. Household pets for the White House seem to be limited to rather bland ones like dogs, often ones with a tendency, like their owners, to roll around drooling on the carpet in the Lincoln bedroom. On rare occasions, the leader of the free world will choose a cat, showing better judgment in their taste in pets than in their plans for the nation and the world. One president chose a pet that was practical as well as just a bit unusual for the most powerful man on the planet. President William Howard Taft, 27th President of the United States, had not one but two cows as pets. Pauline Wayne, a Holstein cow, replaced Mooly Wooly in the President’s household. Miss Wayne, as she was called, would wander around the White House grounds keeping the lawn neatly trimmed. She did double duty and supplied the Taft household with fresh milk. It is also rather nice that Miss Wayne did not also provide the main course for any dinners, state or otherwise. She was essentially a pet and people should not eat pets. This practical yet tender side of Taft explains many things. It explains why, on the 19th in 1912, Taft pardoned William H. Van Schaick, the captain of the steamship General Slocum, who had been imprisoned for 3 ½ years in Sing Sing prison after being found liable for the deaths of over 1,000 people when the steamship General Slocum burned and sank in New York City’s East River on June 15, 1904.

December 18

Saki was born on the 18th in 1870. Wait a minute, isn’t that a Chinese wine made from rice, generally served warm? That, of course, assumes that you will have the patience to warm the stuff up and don’t just pour it on your cereal in the morning. I am fairly certain that Saki, with an ‘i’ has something to do with the 18th, hang on a moment while I go through my notes. I really have to straighten this place up a bit. A saki is a small, monkey with a very long tail, from the Western hemisphere. What? That can’t be it. As far as I can tell species do not celebrate birthdays. Excuse me once again. Here it is - Saki was the nom de plume of Hector Hugh Munro who was born on the 18th in 1870. As it is with all writers, you either like his work or you don’t, but anyone who comes up with the line ‘say what you will about the decay of Christianity, but the religion that produced Green Chartreuse can never really die’ certainly deserves to have his birthday remembered.

December 17

On the 17th in 1903, the Wright Brothers, Wilbur and Orville, were finally successful in their quest to build a heavier-than-air flying machine. The fourth flight of the day, with Wilbur at the controls, lasted 59 seconds. On April 19, 1944, Orville went on his last airplane flight, as a guest of Howard Hughes, who was at the controls of a Lockheed Constellation. Orville was quick to point out that the wingspan of the Constellation was longer than the first airplane flight.

In his 1905 book, Gleanings in Bee Culture, Amos Root was for some inexplicable reason moved to write, “While up in the air there is but very little to injure or to put any great strain on any part of the machinery. If you run into a tree or a house, of course, there would be a smash-up. No drinking man should ever be allowed to undertake to run a flying-machine."

Decenber 16

New York is a city filled with niche museums and even a tireless visitor would be hard pressed to visit more than a handful of them. To name just a few, there is the American Folk Art Museum, the Fisher Landau Center, the Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art, The Cloisters, the American Numismatic Society, the New York Hysterical Society, and the National Museum of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender History. And then there is the Brooklyn Children’s Museum. The Brooklyn Children’s Museum opened its doors, in Crown Heights, Brooklyn on the 16th in 1899. Being a resident of the finest of New York’s five boroughs, Brooklyn, whose official slogan is ‘Brooklyn, where the weak are killed and eaten’, I paid a visit to the Brooklyn Children’s Museum one day recently. Having been expanded beginning in 1930 with the aid of hundreds of artists and artisans courtesy of the Works Progress Administration; the site is really quite impressive. There are over 27,000 items on display. Overall, however, I must admit that I was rather disappointed with this museum. In the entire place, there is not a single child on exhibit, not even a little one. It took a little time and a great deal of energy but I was eventually able to get the price of admission that I had paid refunded.