Almanacs “The Almanac - OfficialWire” plus 4 more

The Almanac - OfficialWire
The Bachmann burr - Washington Post
On Native Ground - American Reporter
Enjoy fall now, plant some trees for later - Akron Beacon Journal
Gardener's almanac - Wichita Eagle

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Posted: 24 Oct 2009 12:45 AM PDT

The moon is waxing. The morning stars are Mercury, Venus, Mars and Saturn. The evening stars are Neptune, Jupiter and Uranus.

Those born on this date are under the sign of Scorpio. They include pioneering Dutch microscope maker Anton Van Leeuwenhoek in 1632; journalist Sarah Josepha Hale, author of "Mary Had a Little Lamb," in 1788; attorney Belva Lockwood, the first woman candidate for U.S. president, nominated by the National Equal Rights Party, in 1830; film producer-director Merian Cooper (the original "King Kong") in 1893; former Rolling Stone Bill Wyman in 1936 (age 73); former NAACP president Kweisi Mfume in 1948 (age 61); actors David Nelson in 1936 (age 73), F. Murray Abraham in 1939 (age 70) and Kevin Kline in 1947 (age 62); and singer Monica (Arnold) in 1980 (age 29).

On this date in history:

In 1648, the Treaty of Westphalia ended the Thirty Years' War in Europe.

In 1861, the first telegram was transmitted across the United States from California Chief Justice Stephen Field to U.S. President Abraham Lincoln in Washington.

In 1901, daredevil Annie Edson Taylor became the first person to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel.

In 1945, following Soviet ratification, U.S. Secretary of State James Byrnes announced the U.N. charter was in effect. Establishment of the United Nations came less than two months after the end of World War II.

In 1984, the FBI arrested 11 alleged chiefs of the Colombo crime family on charges of racketeering in New York City.

In 1989, TV evangelist Jim Bakker was sentenced to 45 years in prison and fined $500,000 for fleecing his flock.

In 1993, the death of Burundi President Melchior Ndadaye in a military coup was confirmed.

In 1995, the United Nations marked its 50th anniversary with the largest gathering of world leaders in history.

In 2002, police arrested two suspects in the three-week series of sniper attacks in the Washington area that killed 10 and wounded three others. John Allen Muhammad, 41, and John Lee Malvo, 17, were found sleeping in a car at a rest stop outside Frederick, Md.

In 2003, an era in aviation history ended when the supersonic Concorde took off from New York to London on its final flight.

In 2004, a series of severe earthquakes in northern Japan killed 21 people and injured more than 1,500 others.

In 2005, Hurricane Wilma roared into Florida, packing 125 mph winds and lashing rain, inflicting heavy damage to beaches and buildings. Ten deaths were reported and some 2.5 million South Floridians were without power.

Also in 2005, U.S. President George Bush nominated Ben Bernanke to replace Alan Greenspan as Federal Reserve Board chairman.

In 2006, a CNN poll indicated 60 percent of U.S. citizens contracted said they believed neither the United States nor insurgents were winning the war in Iraq.

In 2007, strong and gusty winds fanning 15 large wildfires in Southern California began to ease after 656 square miles and at least 1,155 homes had been charred.

In 2008, OPEC announced that it would cut oil production 1.5 million barrels a day after a three-month plunge in prices sent the cost of a barrel of crude oil from $147 in mid-July to $64 Oct. 24. The drop was spurred by expectations that a global economic slump would mean less demand for petroleum, experts said.

A thought for the day: Hindu nationalist leader Mohandas Gandhi said, "I believe that a man is the strongest soldier for daring to die unarmed."

The Bachmann burr - Washington Post

Posted: 24 Oct 2009 05:46 AM PDT

The state senator from her district in suburban Minneapolis-St. Paul had been in office for 17 years, had stopped being pro-life and started supporting tax increases, so that morning Michele Bachmann had skipped washing her hair, put on jeans and a tattered sweatshirt and went to the local Republican nominating caucus to ask the incumbent a few pointed questions. There, on the spur of the moment, some similarly disgruntled conservatives suggested that she unseat him. After she made a five-minute speech "on freedom," the caucus emphatically endorsed her, and she handily won the subsequent primary.

After six years in the state Legislature, she ran for Congress and now, in her second term, has become such a burr under Democrats' saddles that recently the New York Times profiled her beneath a Page One headline: "GOP Has a Lightning Rod, and Her Name Is Not Palin." She is, however, a petite pistol that occasionally goes off half-cocked.

For example, appearing on MSNBC's "Hardball" 18 days before last year's election, she made the mistake of taking Chris Matthews's bait and speculating about whether Barack Obama and some other Democrats have "anti-American" views. In the ensuing uproar -- fueled by people who were not comparably scandalized when George W. Bush was sulfurously vilified -- her opponent raised nearly $2 million and her lead shrank from 13 points to her winning margin of three.

Some of her supposed excesses are, however, not merely defensible, they are admirable. For example, her June 9 statement on the House floor in which she spoke of "gangster government" has been viewed on the Internet about 2 million times. She noted that, during the federal takeover of General Motors, a Democratic senator and one of her Democratic House colleagues each successfully intervened with GM to save a constituent's dealership from forced closure. One of her constituents, whose dealership had been in the family for 90 years, told her that the $15 million dealership had been rendered worthless overnight, and, Bachmann said, "GM is demanding that she hand over her customer list," probably to give it to surviving GM dealerships that once were competitors.

In her statement, Bachmann repeatedly called such politicization of the allocation of economic rewards "gangster government." And she repeatedly noted that the phrase was used by a respected political analyst, Michael Barone, principal co-author of the Almanac of American Politics, who coined it in connection with the mugging of GM bondholders in the politicized bankruptcy. Bachmann, like Barone, was accurate.

Because Walter Mondale was saved by 3,761 Minnesota voters from losing his home state to Ronald Reagan in 1984, it is the only state to have voted Democratic in nine consecutive presidential elections. Minnesota is a blue state but is given to idiosyncratic political flings. Minnesotans, Bachmann says, like "authentic" people of whatever political inclinations, from the cerebral Eugene McCarthy to the visceral Jesse Ventura.

Bachmann, an authentic representative of the Republican base, had quite enough on her plate before politics. She and Marcus, a clinical psychologist, were raising their children -- they had four then; they have five now -- and, as foster parents, were raising some other people's children, 23 of them, a few teenagers at a time.

Born in Iowa but a Minnesotan by age 12, Bachmann acquired what she calls "her family's Hubert Humphrey knee-jerk liberalism." She and her husband danced at Jimmy Carter's inauguration. Shortly thereafter, however, she was riding on a train and reading Gore Vidal's novel "Burr," which is suffused with that author's jaundiced view of America. "I set the book down on my lap, looked out the window and thought: 'That's not the America I know.' " She volunteered for Reagan in 1980.

Looking toward 2012, she is not drawn merely to Sarah Palin or other darlings of social conservatives. She certainly is one of those, but she knows that economic hardship and government elephantiasis now trump other issues.

When she was a teenager in Anoka, Minn., she was a nanny for a young girl named Gretchen Carlson. Today, Carlson, a Stanford honors graduate who studied at Oxford, is a host of "Fox & Friends," the morning show on -- wouldn't you know -- Fox News Channel. See how far ahead the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy plans?

georgewill@washpost.com

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On Native Ground - American Reporter

Posted: 23 Oct 2009 09:32 PM PDT

On Native Ground
MY BACK PAGES: WATCHING MY CRAFT CHANGE OVER 30 YEARS
by Randolph T. Holhut
American Reporter Correspondent
Dummerston, Vt.

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Printable version of this story

DUMMERSTON, Vt. -- I got my first job in journalism at the age of 18 in the spring of 1980. I was a freshman in college and landed a night shift gig at WSPR, a radio station in Springfield, Mass.

News came over an Associated Press teletype machine at 65 words a minute. Changing the heavily inked ribbons was always a chore, not to mention making sure the paper didn't run out.

Stories were typed on battered old manual typewriters that dated back to the 1940s.

Computers? Still a new-fangled technology that hadn't yet seeped down to this level of the business.

The Internet? There were only a few hundred people using it. If you needed to look up an address, you got a phone book or a city directory. If you needed to confirm a stray fact, you pulled out The World Almanac.

They were still using reel-to-reel tape recorders, and a razor blade and Scotch tape were your tools for editing audio. It was still an analog world, with dials and meters and black telephones with dials.

In the fall of 1985, when I started working in newspapers, video display terminals were cutting edge technology. Two years later, I went out and got my first computer - a Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 100 laptop. With its built-in 300 baud modem, I could file a story anyplace I could find a pay phone.

Cellphones? That was as futuristic as the communicators they used on "Star Trek."

There were still a few smokers in the first city room I worked in. The barroom downstairs was still a place where you could find reporters between shifts. The building also shuddered just a little from the giant presses when they fired up, and the stairwells were coated with a thin film of ink.

That first newspaper company I worked for - the Worcester (Mass.) Telegram and Evening Gazette - had four morning and six afternoon editions and a dozen bureaus in the county it published in. There were two separate news staffs, and even though they worked for the same company, the competition was still fierce.

One of my several jobs was working in the morgue - the newspaper's library - where we still clipped stories out of each day's edition and filed them away in envelopes. When a reporter or editor needed background on a subject, my job was to retrieve the right folders with the right clippings in a room filled with hundreds of cabinets with files that went back decades.

Pneumatic tubes brought pictures up to the composing room, and page proofs came down to the copy desk the same way. The darkroom was just that, a dark room filled with a dozen photo enlargers and photographers rushing make prints on deadline. I eventually learned how to do darkroom work and how to go from taking the film out of the camera to producing a finished print in under 30 minutes. The photos from the AP came one at a time from a LaserPhoto printer, in 8 minute intervals. Waiting for photos was a constant hassle.

The old photographers I encountered then were old enough to have used Speed Graphics - the bulky, hard-to-focus 4 x 5 inch cameras that were the newspaper standard from the 1920s to the 1960s.

The old compositors I encountered then were old enough to remember linotypes and the smell of melting lead.

The old editors I encountered then were old enough to remember pastepots and black pencils and making and remaking a newspaper on the fly with a few written instructions and a lot of teamwork in the mechanical departments.

Pagination - making a pages on a computer - was just starting to creep into use. I remember the first such unit - a Mac Plus - which was used to make graphic. Within 10 years of seeing that Mac for the first time, I would be making pages on a computer. The compositors - the wizards with Exacto knifes that could do just about anything you asked, just don't touch the type, please - were out of a job.

Automation changed lots of things. I was replaced by a computer terminal in the paper's morgue. Indexing was now done with a few keystrokes, not with a heavy steel straight edge tearing pages. Digital photography made the darkroom obsolete. The teletype printers disappeared, and wire service news came flying into the mainframe computers at thousands of words a minute.

And now I feel as ancient as the people I met when I started out, the tribe that started out in the 1940s and 1950s, when newspapers were king and the work that reporters did was the stuff of movies.

Twenty years ago this month, I went through my first buyout. The T & G had been sold two years before, and changes were in the works. Being a junior member of the staff who lashed three part-time jobs into something of a living, I was thrown overboard immediately. But I was struck by how many people, the elders of the paper that I looked up to and learned from, chose to take a buyout and leave than stick around and face an uncertain future. Most of that generation left, and I got my first education on the harshness of the newspaper business.

The morning and evening papers merged the following year. The T & G's bureaus started to disappear. The presses moved out of the hulking old building on Franklin Street and went to a remote site a few miles away. The papers were sold again, this time to The New York Times Co. They eliminated zoned editions this year and the paper is struggling to survive.

Since that bleak Yuletide two decades ago, I've been through three more newspaper sales. I've become an elder, talking about the old days of afternoon papers, pasting-up pages, teletypes and darkrooms to a generation that Googles phone numbers and needs MapQuest to find an address. And I've watched my profession go from fat and sassy to threadbare and dying in one generation.

I'm still young enough to be a bridge between the analog and digital eras, and still looking forward to the shape of journalism to come. The tools we have now to tell stories were barely dreamed of when I started out, but I recognize how important they are and working to master them. We just have to remember that the need to tell stories is primal, and that storytellers will always be needed.

What will the young reporters I work with now be saying when they look back at their careers 20 years from now? Will they be talking about that gruff and crabby gray-bearded editor they had as their first mentor? The rickety first-generation iMacs that they have to use to write their stories on? The lack of reliable Internet and cellphone service? Or will they talk about working in newspapers at a time when they became quaint relics of a bygone age?

My love for the printed page is still abiding, but it's hard to remember what it was like before the Internet, before desktop computers, before digital cameras and voice recorders, before the avalanche of data that pours from the Web each day, before the 24-hour news cycle, before all the changes that I have seen in nearly three decades of broadcast, print and online journalism. The past is a nice place to visit, but the future is still the place I hope to see.

Randolph T. Holhut has been a journalist in New England for nearly 30 years. He edited "The George Seldes Reader" (Barricade Books). He can be reached at randyholhut@yahoo.com.

Enjoy fall now, plant some trees for later - Akron Beacon Journal

Posted: 23 Oct 2009 10:44 PM PDT

My friend Joe McBride, professor of landscape architecture and forestry from the University of California-Berkeley, was in Ohio this week for two seminars and as the keynoter for OSU Extension's Why Trees Matter Forum at the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center in Wooster. He grew up in the Ozarks, has now lived for decades in the Bay Area and was understandably wowed by one of Ohio's great world-class assets. Barberton chicken? Buckeye candies? Or from the other end of the spectrum, emerald ash borers?

No. Joe was exhilarated by the luminous art show that nature throws us in late October each year. Ohio's fall foliage in our landscapes, communities and, most prominently, in our woodlands is something for us all to behold and truly appreciate. We sometimes take it for granted, but seeing it reflected in Joe McBride's eyes reminded me of the truly special nature of deciduous forests of maples, and sour gums, and witch-hazels and sweet gums, and the delicate pale yellowing leaves of pawpaws making their final turn toward winter.

The process of woody plants unveiling these pigments begins in late summer with chlorophyll breakdown as day length lessens, and eventually will result in leaf abscission and drop as plants retract water and go into winter sleep. The highly evident result of this process for us is the kaleidoscope of colors to marvel at right now — this weekend. Get thee out to parks and forests and arboreta, from Metro Parks, Serving Summit County, to Stan Hywet Hall & Gardens in Akron, to Holden

Arboretum in Geauga County and Secrest Arboretum in Wooster, to Kingwood Center in Mansfield and Quail Hollow State Park near Hartville.

We really do have it good. Arguably better than the Ozarks, certainly better than the limited fall colors of California (which admittedly does have other natural assets), our mixed species woodlands of the northeastern and Appalachian United States are on a par with the best the entire world offers, perhaps matched only by similar forests in China. We hear about the maples of Vermont and New Hampshire, but see for yourself the glowing sugar maples of Johnson Woods Nature Preserve near Orrville and feel the blessings. Go forth!

Here are some short notes of a few plants to add to your landscape that will make your autumns more memorable.

• Pagoda dogwood (Cornus alternifolia). Purples, reds, oranges and yellows are the leaf colors on this small native dogwood tree. Pagoda dogwoods lack the spectacular flowers of Cornus florida, a springtime favorite, but fall foliage colors are fine, horizontal branching structure is pleasing, and blue fruits, reddish fruit stalks and purple-red stems are excellent ornamental features. And this from Michael Dirr in the new edition of his Manual of Woody Landscape Plants:

''I am not absolutely convinced that I absorbed the true beauty of this species until late summer in 1997 when, on vacation in Maine, Bonnie and I would surprise the tree during our frequent walks. The whorled branch development literally jumps from the surrounding vegetation and grabs one by the nape of the neck. The fruits, particularly the stalks, are beautiful. Certainly a wonderful native plant perhaps best reserved for that hallowed niche.''

• Witch-hazels (Hamamelis). Spring-blooming witch-hazels (Hamamelis vernalis and various Chinese and Japanese hybrids) have combinations of orange, red and yellow foliage right now, perfect fall counterpoints to their late winter and early spring blooms. Even more special are our fall-blooming native witch-hazels (Hamamelis virginiana) with their soft butter-yellow strap-like petals blossoming now in a woodland near you. Yes — flowering now. I caught their subtle act this past week at Silver Creek Metro Park and at Secrest Arboretum.

• Sweet birch (Betula lenta). I grew up in Lancaster, 30 miles southeast of Columbus, and one of its charms is the Fairfield County Fair, the latest county fair in Ohio. Towering sycamores and the fall foliage of nearby Rising Park and Mount Pleasant are etched in my memory. I revisited the past at the fair last weekend, enjoying an icy cup of birch beer. Most birch beer is now made from synthetic flavorings, which may actually be for the best, since in the old days, the bark of hundreds of Betula lenta saplings was needed to make one pint of oil of wintergreen used to flavor the beverage. Check out a garden center that will order some sweet birches from a native plant nursery. Maybe you won't plant enough to make birch beer, but you can enjoy the oil of wintergreen aroma by scratching and sniffing the twigs any time of year, and right now you would be enjoying a great display of lemon-yellow fall foliage on your sweet birch.

• Chinese chestnuts (Castanea mollissima). Back to China, where they, too, have wonderful fall foliage shows. And one last tree for this Almanac. Not necessarily the most ornamental tree, with stinky flowers, and incredibly prickly fruits. No great stuff with respect to fall color. But the seeds inside those prickly fruits— not perhaps the same as the storied American chestnut Thanksgiving stuffing of old, but yum. We harvested last week in anticipation of storage and that nutty flavorful feast to come a little more than one month from today.

To close: Joe McBride told wonderful stories of the importance of trees for children at our forum this Thursday, inspiring us all to preserve and grow the natural connection we have for our place within nature. And he shared these words from his good friend Burt Litton: ''The landscape, real and of three dimensions, surrounds us and reaches toward infinity. Within this envelope of space, we live our lives. We should be happy enough to be here all together.''

Jim Chatfield is a horticultural educator with Ohio State University Extension. If you have questions about caring for your garden, write: Jim Chatfield, Plant Lovers' Almanac, Ohio State University Extension, 1680 Madison Ave., Wooster, OH 44691. Send e-mail to chatfield.1@cfaes.osu.edu or call 330-466-0270. Please include your phone number if you write.

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Gardener's almanac - Wichita Eagle

Posted: 23 Oct 2009 09:11 PM PDT

No tall grass for winter _ It sounds right to let the lawn go into winter at a tall height for insulation. But Ward Upham of K-State says that tall grass can get matted and be more prone to winter diseases. He recommends staying within the usual heights for whatever type of grass you have: tall fescue, 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 inches; Kentucky bluegrass, 2 to 3 inches; perennial ryegrass, 2 to 3 inches; buffalograss, 2 to 3 inches; Bermudagrass, 1 to 2 inches; and zoysiagrass, 1 to 2 inches.

Plant — Tulip, daffodil, crocus and other spring-flowering bulbs, through October; garlic, through October; mums, pansies, kale and asters.

Family of Four Garden _ Salad greens are getting close to a fall harvest in the Family of Four Garden at the Extension Education Center. Extension agent Rebecca McMahon is taking a poll on her blog to find out what kinds of vegetables, herbs and flowers people would like to see the master gardeners grow next year. You can put your two cents in at http://thedemogardenblog.wordpress.com.

Daylily meeting _ The next meeting of the Prairie Winds Daylily Society will be at 7 p.m. Monday at Botanica. The program will be a review of the first year of the club. The public is invited to attend, and people are asked to bring their favorite garden tool for show-and-tell.

Plant a Row for the Hungry — Kevin Enz of the Kansas Food Bank reports that it has received 48,105 pounds of produce to date this year for the needy. The donations to Plant a Row for the Hungry have included 686 pounds of turnips from master gardener Ray Holt. "I am sure that Ray and others will be dropping a bit of produce before the snow blows," Kevin says. Ouch, I wish he wouldn't have mentioned snow.

Here's where you can donate:

* Kansas Food Bank, 1919 E. Douglas

* Augusta Ace Hardware, 316 W. Seventh Ave. in Augusta

* Brady Nursery, 11200 W. Kellogg

* Hillside Nursery, 2200 S. Hillside

* Hillside Feed & Seed, 1805 S. Hillside

* Johnson's Garden Centers, 802 N. Ridge Road, 21st and Woodlawn, 2707 W. 13th St.

* Valley Feed & Seed, 1903 S. Meridian.

Celtic concert at arboretum — Dyck Arboretum of the Plains in Hesston will feature a concert by Celtic musicians Matt and Shannon Heaton at 4:30 p.m. Sunday. It's the second performance in the Prairie Window Concert Series. The Heatons, of Boston, play updated and traditional Irish music.

The Prairie Window Concert series overlooks the prairie at the arboretum. Visitors can come early to walk the gardens and enjoy the fall color. A soup supper will be served between sets for a donation to offset the costs of vandalism at the arboretum this summer. To reserve tickets for the concert, call 620-327-8127. The cost is $17 for adults, $10 for children. Proceeds will help maintain the native plantings at the arboretum.

Dracula orchid talk _ Karlene Sanborn, owner and operator of Prairie Orchids in El Dorado, will be at Botanica on Wednesday to talk about growing Dracula orchids, natives to Colombia and Ecuador but able to be grown in Kansas. Karlene will also show several samples of Dracula. The lunchtime lecture, from 12:15 to 1 p.m., is included in Botanica admission. Lunch from Truffles will be available for $6.

Prairie exploration _ A group will set out from Dyck Arboretum of the Plains in Hesston at 4 p.m. Tuesday to gather seed, observe birds and insects, and identify prairie plants on high-quality prairie remnants. All ages are welcome; bring a sandwich. The trip will be over by twilight, about 8 p.m. The cost is $5; children under 14 are free. Call 620-327-8127 to reserve a spot.

Tropical bonsai workshop _ Botanica will have a workshop on the basics of bonsai featuring Bill Burrow on Nov. 14. Each participant will bonsai an aralia stump parsley to take home. Hours will be 9 to 11:30 a.m., and the cost is $35, $30 for Botanica members. Register by calling 316-264-0448.

_ Annie Calovich

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