Thanks to Bob P. This article was published on History Link by Duane Colt Denfeld, Ph.D.
On January 1, 1918, two armed-services football teams, composed largely of former star college players now on active duty, meet in the 1918 Rose Bowl. The Camp Lewis 91st Division team from Washington loses to the Mare Island Marines from California by a score of 19 to 7. The unusual meeting in what is normally a college bowl game comes during World War I. College football teams have been depleted as students leave for military service, while the armed services have been able to field teams with all-star players. Military leaders particularly emphasize football, considering it excellent combat training and arguing that it teaches discipline, teamwork, and following orders. For the 1917 season, Camp Lewis, the large army base south of Tacoma in Pierce County, organized a 12-team intramural league. The best players from that league have been selected for a camp team, the Camp Lewis 91st Division, which played against colleges and other service teams. The Camp Lewis team has proved to be one of the best service or college teams on the West Coast, winning a berth in the 1918 Rose Bowl.
College Sports During Wartime
With the mobilization that followed U.S entry into World War I on April 6, 1917, many college athletes joined or were drafted into the military. Universities found themselves with diminished enrollments and, in a patriotic move, colleges dropped or cut back their sports programs. For example, in 1917 the Washington State College football team had a limited schedule, which included a game against the Camp Lewis team. When Tournament of Roses officials considered their January 1, 1918, game, the Rose Bowl, they debated canceling it. In discussions that reached the White House it was decided for public morale to play the New Year’s Day game. (cont)
Universally as we age, we can unfortunately experience loss and grief. The following is an essay from the current issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
You will be glad that you read it, especially those who know Key Biscayne, Florida. I hope you’ll pass it on.
It happened every Friday evening, almost without fail, when the sun resembled a giant orange and was starting to dip into the blue ocean.
Old Ed came strolling along the beach to his favorite pier. Clutched in his bony hand was a bucket of shrimp. Ed walks out to the end of the pier, where it seems he almost has the world to himself. The glow of the sun is a golden bronze now.
Everybody’s gone, except for a few joggers on the beach. Standing out on the end of the Pier, Ed is alone with his thoughts … and his bucket of shrimp.
Before long, however, he is no longer alone. Up in the sky, a thousand white dots come screeching and squawking, winging their way toward that lanky frame standing there on the end of the pier.
Before long, dozens of seagulls have enveloped him, their wings fluttering and flapping wildly. Ed stands there tossing shrimp to the hungry birds. As he does, if you listen closely, you can hear him say with a smile, “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you”
In a few short minutes, the bucket is empty. But Ed doesn’t leave. He stands there lost in thought, as though transported to another time and place.
When he finally turns around and begins to walk back toward the beach, a few of the birds hop along The Pier with him until he gets to the stairs, and then they, too, fly away.
And old Ed quietly makes his way down to the end of the beach and on home.
If you were sitting there on the pier with your fishing line in the water, Ed might seem like a ‘funny old duck,’ as my Dad used to say. Or, to onlookers, he’s just another old codger, lost in his own weird world, feeding the seagulls with a bucket full of shrimp.
To the onlooker, rituals can look either very strange or very empty. They can seem altogether unimportant, maybe even a lot of nonsense.
Old folks often do strange things, at least in the eyes of Boomers and Busters. Most of them would probably write Old Ed off, down there in Florida. That’s too bad. They’d do well to know him better. His full name: Eddie Rickenbacker. He was a famous hero in World War I, and then he was in WWII. On one of his flying missions across the Pacific, he and his seven-member crew went down. Miraculously, all of the men survived, crawled out of their plane and climbed into a life raft.
Captain Rickenbacker and his crew floated for days on the rough waters of the Pacific. They fought the sun. They fought sharks. Most of all, they fought hunger and thirst. By the eighth day, their rations ran out. No food. No water. They were hundreds of miles from land and no one knew where they were or even if they were alive.
Every day across America millions wondered and prayed that Eddie Rickenbacker might somehow be found alive. The men adrift needed a miracle. That afternoon they had a simple devotional service and prayed for a miracle. They tried to nap. Eddie leaned back and pulled his military cap over his nose. Time dragged on. All he could hear was the slap of the waves against the raft. Suddenly Eddie felt something land on the top of his cap.
It was a seagull! Old Ed would later describe how he sat perfectly still, planning his next move. With a flash of his hand and a squawk from the gull, he managed to grab it and wring its neck. He tore the feathers off, and he and his starving crew made a meal of it – a very slight meal for eight men. Then they used the intestines for bait. With it, they caught fish, which gave them food and more bait…and the cycle continued. With that simple survival technique, they were able to endure the rigors of the sea until they were found and rescued after 24 days at sea.
Eddie Rickenbacker lived many years beyond that ordeal, but he never forgot the sacrifice of that first life-saving seagull… And he never stopped saying, ‘Thank you.’ That’s why almost every Friday night he would walk to the end of the pier with a bucket full of shrimp and a heart full of gratitude.
* Reference: (Max Lucado, “In The Eye of the Storm”, pp…221, 225-226) PS: Eddie Rickenbacker was the founder of Eastern Airlines. Before WWI he was a race car driver. In WWI he was a pilot and became America’s first ace. In WWII he was an instructor and military adviser, and he flew missions with the combat pilots. Eddie Rickenbacker is a true American hero. And now you know another story about the trials and sacrifices that brave men have endured for your freedom As you can see, I chose to pass it on. It is a great story that many don’t know. You’ve got to be careful with old guys, you just never know what they have done during their lifetime. P.S. And the road into Key Biscayne is the Rickenbacker Causeway
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Where the air was in the two weeks before causing the PNW heatwave, Near the end of June 2021 a high-pressure zone moved east along 49degN. Air was sinking from the upper troposphere to the surface, warming as it fell. Extremely low soil moisture also contributed to the heat wave, the Swiss authors say. Wet soils buffer extreme heat, and had the land conditions been moister, temperatures might have been 5°C cooler.
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Illustration by Nicolás Ortega. Source: “Turris Babel,” Coenraet Decker, 1679.
What would it have been like to live in Babel in the days after its destruction? In the Book of Genesis, we are told that the descendants of Noah built a great city in the land of Shinar. They built a tower “with its top in the heavens” to “make a name” for themselves. God was offended by the hubris of humanity and said:
Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down, and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.
The text does not say that God destroyed the tower, but in many popular renderings of the story he does, so let’s hold that dramatic image in our minds: people wandering amid the ruins, unable to communicate, condemned to mutual incomprehension.
The story of Babel is the best metaphor I have found for what happened to America in the 2010s, and for the fractured country we now inhabit. Something went terribly wrong, very suddenly. We are disoriented, unable to speak the same language or recognize the same truth. We are cut off from one another and from the past.
It’s been clear for quite a while now that red America and blue America are becoming like two different countries claiming the same territory, with two different versions of the Constitution, economics, and American history. But Babel is not a story about tribalism; it’s a story about the fragmentation of everything. It’s about the shattering of all that had seemed solid, the scattering of people who had been a community. It’s a metaphor for what is happening not only between red and blue, but within the left and within the right, as well as within universities, companies, professional associations, museums, and even families.
More than 117,000 Americans are shot each year, including 6,000 children and youth. Gun violence is now the leading cause of death for kids. Hundreds of police officers are shot every year. Hundreds of mass shootings occur every year. America has the highest rate of gun ownership in the world, and the highest gun death rate in the world among high-income countries (by a factor of four) to show for it.
As the start of the 2023 legislative session nears, Gov. Jay Inslee, Attorney General Bob Ferguson and several legislators announced three bills during a press conference on Monday to help further reduce gun violence in Washington state.
Inslee is requesting legislation to require a permit to purchase a firearm, certifying that the purchaser is eligible to possess a firearm and has completed a state-certified safety training program. Every firearm purchase would be accompanied by an additional background check and 10-day waiting period. Connecticut passed a similar law following Sandy Hook, and observed nearly a 40% reduction in gun violence since.
“This epidemic of gun violence we are facing is unacceptable,” said Inslee. “What might have been a fistfight in a parking lot is now someone dead in the street. We cannot surrender to this epidemic. I refuse to accept that we’re powerless.”
Inslee and Ferguson will jointly request two other bills: a ban on assault weapons, and liability for firearm industry irresponsibility. Victims of gun violence and their families are deprived of legal recourse against gun manufacturers under federal law – the latter bill will allow civil suits for gun manufacturer failures to enact reasonable safety controls, such as chain-of-custody standards and responsible marketing.
Washington voters and legislators have consistently supported substantive, commonsense gun violence measures including universal background checks; bans on bump stocks, ghost guns and high capacity magazines; extreme risk protection orders sometimes known as “red flag laws;” and open carry restrictions in certain public spaces. In 2020, legislators approved creation of a new state Office of Firearm Safety and Violence Prevention that partners closely with community and law enforcement leaders to pursue data-driven solutions to gun violence.
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The red and white candy cane has a long and storied past. But is there a right way to eat one?
Dangling from the Christmas tree, tucked into party favors, or bathing in a cup of hot chocolate, candy canes are winter sweets that show up as a familiar guest to many winter holiday gatherings.
Candy canes are available throughout the year, but about 90% of them are sold in the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas Day. | Credit: Getty
“Americans love the tradition of including chocolate and candy in their celebrations of the winter holidays – and nothing is more iconic during this time than candy canes,” says Carly Schildhaus, spokesperson for the National Confectioners Association.
The first canes were made entirely of white candy and without the trademark hook, but sometime in the early 1900s the familiar red and white canes appeared. Today they are available in traditional peppermint, along with fruit, sour or even cereal flavors.
The Sweet Beginnings of the Candy Cane
When it comes to the origins of the candy cane, we only have legends. Some say a creative choirmaster in Germany in the 1600s handed out the sweets to the child singers to keep them quiet during a Christmas ceremony, bending the canes to give a nod to the shepherds in the story of the Nativity. (cont)
Of course, if it’s an emergency call 911 and let the concierge know of your call (or have them call 911). But often, it’s not a 911 issue. What about having a concern about COVID symptoms or a urinary infection or other non-emergent concerns? It’s 10 AM on a Sunday morning and your doctor’s office recording advises you to go to urgent care (which may be at Northgate or University Village).
One resident recently solved the problem by having a home visit from an In Home Urgent Care provider called DispatchHealth (click on the link to visit the web site). She was visited by a nurse practitioner, had an on site quick lab test and a specimen taken for culture. Her insurance was billed and she had a co-pay of $35. The cost is similar to a visit to urgent care and much much less than an ER visit. The DispatchHealth visit can be booked by phone or on-line.
I have no personal experience with DispatchHealth and would appreciate any comments from others who have used them.
Scientists have uncovered a genetic mutation that makes it dangerously difficult to distinguish a black bear from a grizzly.
A cinnamon-colored black bear in Glacier National Park in Montana.
By Sam Jones in the NYT
Black bears have black fur, right? It’s there in the name.
“In the eastern part of North America, where I grew up, we have American black bears, and they’re only black,” said Emily Puckett, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Memphis.
People are even warned with a color-coded aphorism about how to behave during a bear encounter: “If it’s black, fight back; if it’s brown, lie down; if it’s white, say good night.”
The American black bear, Ursus americanus, did not get the memo when that saying was circulated: It comes in a variety of shades, including blond and cinnamon. The cinnamon bear is a U. americanus that wears a reddish brown coat and can look strikingly similar to grizzlies and other brown bears of the species Ursus arctos.
Recently, Dr. Puckett and colleagues uncovered the mutation that gave rise to this cinnamon situation millenniums ago, which potentially gave some bears an evolutionary edge. The scientists also discovered a mutation responsible for the amber coat of the grizzly. Their findings were published inthe journal Current Biology on Friday.
To find out what genetic change or changes could have led to the cinnamon coat, the researchers sequenced the genomes of nearly 200 U. americanus bears and identified a mutation in the gene for the protein TYRP1, known to be involved in melanin pigment production. The same mutation causes a form of albinism in people. The researchers uncovered a different mutation, also in TYRP1, in U. arctos.
The researchers suspected that a mutant version of TYRP1 would be enough to produce a lighter colored coat. To test this, they introduced the U. americanus and U. arctos mutations — separately — into pigment-producing cells, and they did indeed find that those cells produced little to no pigment.
They then calculated that the TYRP1 mutation first cropped up in U. americanus over 9,000 years ago in western North America, where it is still most common. Scientists have proposed that a lighter coat mimicking that of grizzlies would be advantageous in the west, where American black bears and grizzlies share territory and resources. A lighter coat also absorbs less heat, potentially benefiting a bear in the warm southwest.
Ed note: if you happen to use Amazon, please consider using AmazonSmile. AmazonSmile is a simple way for you to support your favorite charitable organization every time you shop, at no cost to you. AmazonSmile is available at smile.amazon.com on your web browser and can be activated in the Amazon Shopping app for iOS and Android phones. When you shop , you’ll find the exact same low prices, vast selection and convenient shopping experience as Amazon.com, with the added benefit that AmazonSmile will donate 0.5% of your eligible purchases to the charitable organization of your choice.
This is your quarterly AmazonSmile donation notification. Your chosen charity, Skyline at First Hill Residents Association, recently received a quarterly donation of $165.61 from AmazonSmile. To date, Amazon has donated a total of:
$1,122.19 to Skyline at First Hill Residents Association
Over $400 million to all US charities
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The National Weather Service in Seattle has issued a Winter Storm Warning for Seattle and surrounding areas from 7:00 PM Monday through 7:00 PM Tuesday. Snow accumulations from 2-8 inches are possible. Heavy accumulating snow will likely impact the morning and evening commutes on Tuesday, making travel very difficult. Avoid or delay travel if possible. If you must travel, check road and transit conditions before beginning your trip and prepare for possible delays. Take winter travel safety precautions: keep an extra flashlight, food, water, warm clothing, and a way to communicate with you and in your vehicle in case of emergency.
Extremely cold weather will continue through this week, with low temperatures well below freezing and potential wind chills in the single digits. These temperatures are dangerous. Emergency warming spaces are available for people without shelter and their pets. All residents should keep pets indoors during extreme cold.
Ed note: This essay from the current issue of the New England Journal reminds us that we, as patients, have choices. Our providers may or may not agree, but making our wishes known in the way Josephine did engendered a respect and understanding from her doctors–even though she was setting limits on their care and advice.
Ed note: I suspect that looking back 90 years from now, our current legislators may look as silly, but hopefully not as racist as those of1933.
From HistoryLink: On December 22, 1933, amid growing fears over the perceived threat posed by that relatively new fad, jazz music, Washington State Representative William A. Allen submits his proposal (House Bill 194) to establish a commission that will study the presumably dangerous and deleterious effects that the largely African American art form might be having on the general public. Allen’s bill never comes to a vote, but it exemplifies a long tradition, which will be repeated a generation later for rock ‘n’ roll, of efforts by authorities to clamp down on new trends in music.
Fear of Music
In countless instances over the centuries, new forms of music have been forbidden by rulers, religious leaders, and other societal and governmental authorities all across the globe — often because music is seen as a potentially destabilizing force. These authorities’ various angles of attack have included condemning songs for their beats, tempo, chord structures, instrumentation, volume, associated dance moves, or what they consider offensive lyrical content.
This fear of music is, however, not completely without merit as songs can have the ability to convey new ideas; to explore shockingly innovative chordal, melodic, and rhythmic terrain; to introduce radical instruments and their sounds; and to inspire new sensual body movements by dancers. The historical record reveals that most attempts to formally ban such things have failed. But not all — and when jazz music arose about a century ago (as with rock ‘n’ roll music, five decades later), its detractors were legion.
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