First Looks category archive

Chores.

From the lead to a story in the most reactionary paper in Virginia, offered without comment (emphasis added):

Five members of the Kansas-based hate group Westboro Baptist Church . . . .

I used to tell my classes, when they decided to go into Philly for the night, where to go, where not to go, and to be sure to park legally, because “Philly’s a tough town on parking.”

Philadelphia police say at around 3:00 a.m. Sunday, two (tow truck–ed.) drivers got into an argument about territory. After heated words, the argument became physical and that’s when police say McDaniel got into his truck and struck the other man who drove for Siani’s towing.

He’s charged with homicide.

Well, maybe not so much:

Beekeepers and honey packers around the country are fuming about products masquerading as real honey, and they hope the state-by-state strategy will secure their ultimate goal: a national rule banning the sale of any product as pure honey if it contains additives.

Americans consume about 350 million pounds of honey per year, but just 150 million pounds are made domestically, creating a booming market for importers and ample temptation to cut pure honey with additives such as corn syrup that are far less expensive to produce.

In memoriam Atlanta Braves.

The Phillies are on a tear.

It’s a September thing.

(To play 21 ball games and lose only three is one hell of a run in baseball, where two out three is excellence.)

Roy Oswalt and a pair of relievers combined on a one-hitter and the NL East-leading Philadelphia Phillies beat Atlanta 1-0 Wednesday night for their 10th straight win, increasing their bulge over the Braves to six games.

(snip)

The Phillies are 44-15 since July 21, when they trailed the Braves by seven games. They are 18-3 in September.

I’m glad the game was not televised here. My heart probably couldn’t have taken it.

I was out most of the evening to support Andrew. I tried to follow the game on ESPN on my Android G1 (really, first things first), but there was no signal in the auditorium.

I did catch the eighth inning in my truck on the skip from WPHT. (Now that I know I can catch it on the skip, I’ll likely be spending most of my evenings in my truck in the parking lot . . . .)

Couldn’t get it in the condo, but I got to watch the end at the Phillies website.

Most satisfactory.

In the 1800s, free blacks were not free.

In an eerie precursor to Montgomery, black folks were not allowed to ride the street cars in Philadelphia or to otherwise live as free persons. Black folks who tried to ride street cars were subject to beatings, unless they stayed on the platform outside the body of the car.

Radio Times discusses the first American civil rights movement, which included gaining the right to ride street cars in Philly. The movement was news to the authors of the book, news to the interviewer, and news to me, even though my field of study in history was U. S. Southern (yeah, Philly ain’t southern, but even so this was relevant).

From the website:

Philadelphia Inquirer writer MURRAY DUBIN and Philadelphia Inquirer editor and Pulitzer Prize winner DANIEL BIDDLE tell the story of Octavius Valentine Catto, a 19th century, southern-born, ‘free’ black man who moved north. In Philadelphia, he was a teacher at an African American school, a second baseman on Philadelphia’s black baseball team and became a civil rights pioneer who spent his life educating newly freed slaves, long before the modern civil rights era. Dubin and Biddle’s new book is called, “Tasting Freedom: Octavius Catto and the Battle for Equality in Civil War America.”

Follow the link to learn more or listen here (MP3).

Afterthought:

It is so much easier to deny rather than to confront or admit bigotry.

Hence the fiction that the Civil War was about anything–anything–other than chattel slavery.

Quip of the day:

“If he holds up 10 fingers, I know there’s really only two. He’s just one of those guys that can’t not embellish a story.”

Read the whole thing.

The power went out this morning. We had to make coffee the old fashioned way.

The local rag finishes up a four-part series on the Blue Ridge Parkway today on the year of the 75th anniversary of the road, reviewing its history and previewing its future.

I have ridden most of the road, not all at once, but in bits and pieces. It would probably take three days to drive the whole thing because of the slow speeds and almost-constant curves

The Blue Ridge Parkway and the Shenandoah Drive combined are easily the most beautiful legacy of the New Deal.

Rather than post the links piecemeal, I decided to wait until the print series was finished; the last piece came out today and is scheduled to hit their website tomorrow.

Read it here.

Two hours earlier than usual to allow persons to attend Virginia Beach City Council Candidates Forum at 7 p. m. at Thalia Trinity Presbyterian Church, 420 Thalia Road, Virginia Beach

• What: Third Thursday Dinner
• When: September 16th, 5:00 PM
• Where: Kelly’s Hilltop Tavern, 1936 Laskin Road, Virginia Beach, VA 23454 (map)

Show up, order off the menu (separate checks), socialize, and talk politics–or whatever else interests you.

I have attended several of these. They tend to be smaller gatherings, highly informal, and a lot of fun.

For more information, email VaBeachBoy@aol.com

Out and about.

The HTML website upgrade continues on my test machine.

I’m revising the older parts of the website this week.

Cynthia Tucker on the new Know Nothings:

This country’s founding principles express the most benevolent and hopeful aspirations for a civil society. As examples, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,” and “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” are declarations that separate the United States from even other Western democracies. They are also principles of which most of us are justly proud.

As Americans, we like to think that our country is exceptional partly because of those ideals. But, at the moment, we’re having a hard time living up to them. Indeed, some of the people most enamored of the notion of American exceptionalism are among those least committed to the principles of individual freedoms — at least for those who are somehow a bit different in worship or accent. (During the Bush years, many conservatives liked to say that jihadists attacked us on 9/11 because they “hate our freedoms.” Sometimes, we don’t like them much, either.)

Josh Marshall takes a thoughtful look at the confluence between fundamentalist Christianity and “radical secularism.”

My friend has been asking me to try napping on the couch (I like my La-Z-Boy). She finds it not particularly nappabilicious.

(Four hours later.)

Can’t prove it by me.

Earl stayed well out to sea.

We had April showers that dropped more rain and did more damage. Even the Banks seem to have gotten off lightly:

On Roanoke Island, Coast Guard assessments turned up little more than a few downed trees, said Lt. Greg Mosko, a supervisor with the Outer Banks safety detachment.

“We’re seeing some minor flooding on the roadways, a few trees on the ground – that’s really all,” Mosko said. “So far all the marinas I’ve looked at, they’re in good shape.”

About 10:20 a.m., Dominion’s (Power-ed.) website was reporting that a little more than 3,400 of its customers were without electricity. About 250 customers were without service in Virginia.

Judging from the water in the flower pots, there’s been about 1/2 to 3/4 of an inch of rain.

It should be an interesting weekend.

From my car insurance company:

As Hurricane Earl approaches, we trust that you are taking every precaution to ensure you will suffer no injury or damage to your property.

We realize our most important responsibility to our policyholders following a loss is to ensure the claim settlement process is quick and easy. We are busy preparing to do just that; teams of GEICO claim adjusters have deployed along the projected storm path, and they will remain in affected areas until they have resolved every hurricane-related claim.

And so on.

PayPal is the worst company in the world, in solidarity with John Cole, who seems to have sunk into a bureaucratic no exit at PayPal which exceeds anything any DMV ever did to me.

John’s request:

*** Update #2 ***
If you have a website, I would appreciate your help making a google bomb. Use the title of this post and link back to me.

No doubt they were bombed.

A PennDot archaeological team arrived at a dig under I-95 this morning to find two men drinking beer and sitting on a 20-foot-long torpedo they apparently had found hours earlier in the Delaware River.

The archaeologists called police and the Bomb Squad evacuated the immediate area at Richmond and Cumberland Streets, near I-95.