(Roughly) Daily

In his reply to President Obama’s Not-a-State-of-the-Union Address to Congress earlier this week, the avatar of the new Republican Party, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, invoked “volcano monitoring” as an example of government waste…

Scientific American explains just what he was attacking.  Readers may conclude, as your correspondent has, that the lesson learned by Republicans from the debacle of Katrina was no lesson at all.

And all of this, while the governor’s nose was growing, right there on national television…

As we recall the Boy Scout motto, we might also remember that it was on this date in 1883 that Oscar Hammerstein patented the cigar-rolling machine… and began to amass a fortune that he promptly reinvested in theaters and concert halls, becoming one of Americas first great impressarios…  a fact worth honoring, as history tends to overlook Oscar the First in favor of his grandson,  Oscar Hammerstein II, the librettist/lyricist and partner of Richard Rodgers.

Hammerstein (on left, with cigar) and conductor Cleofonte Campagnini

Eras are marked by their conflicts (World War II), their leaders (The Victorian Era), the technologies that shaped them (The Space Age)– and by the fads that spread like pandemics through the cultures of one period and another.

CrazyFads.com has come to the aid of historians with a compendium of crazes, from the 20s up to today…  from Flappers and the Magic 8 Ball through peasant skirts and lamps to Razor scooters and American Idol— they’re all here.

As we water our pet rocks, we might might spare a sympathetic thought for Dante Alighieri, who was exiled from Florence on this date in 1302… though we might temper that sympathy with gratitude, as it was on his subsequent wanderings that he wrote The Divine Comedy.  (In June, 2008, the city council of Florence finally passed a motion rescinding Dante’s sentence…)

Signorelli’s portrait of Dante, from a fresco in the Duomo at Orvieto

Brooke Boering is a man of many accomplishments.  The author of a couple of versions of Klondike, the aggressively addictive pc solitaire game; creator of Ceemac, an early Apple graphics language; and the coder of electronic EKG software…

Still he found time to compile the definitive site– the Biography of a Machine— documenting the Comptometer.

It’s all there:  the history of the machine, an account of the world into which it was released and the role it played in business, the competition that emerged (including Burroughs, which played a role in the ultimate development of computers and created the fortune that supported the literary efforts of Wm. S. Burroughs), and the company’s ultimate demise… a fascinating slice of history.

As we oil the crank, we might recall that on this date in 1564 poet and playwright Christopher Marlowe was baptized in Canterbury, England– two months before the birth of his fellow playwright William Shakespeare.

Marlowe earned his B.A. from Cambridge in 1584. He was nearly denied his master’s degree in 1587, until the queen’s advisers intervened, recommending he receive the degree and referring obliquely to his services for the state. (Historians believe Marlowe served as a spy for Queen Elizabeth while at Cambridge)

While still in school, Marlowe wrote his first play Tamburlaine the Great, about a 14th-century shepherd who became an emperor. The blank verse drama was a hit, and Marlowe wrote five more plays before his death in 1593, including The Jew of Malta and Dr. Faustus. He also found time to translate Ovid’s Elegies.

In May of 1593, Marlowe’s former roommate, playwright Thomas Kyd, was arrested and tortured for treason. He told authorities that “heretical” papers found in his room belonged to Marlowe, who was subsequently arrested. While out on bail, Marlowe became involved in a fight over a tavern bill and was stabbed to death…  Even today, theorists imaging that the dangerously political Marlowe’s death was in fact a set-up– that’s to say, murder.

Christopher Marlowe

“2002“– the longest palindrome in English?

As we rehearse reversals, we might recall that it was on this day in 1956 that Sylvia Plath met Ted Hughes at a party in Cambridge (UK). The two poets fell in love at first sight and married four months later… not the happiest of unions, but the source of much memorable verse.

Ted and Sylvia

So, one wonders if one can safely consume that pizza inadvertently left on the counter over night…  or that package of Ho-Hos that’s materially past its “sell by” date…

Wonder no longer!  At StillTasty.com— “Your Ultimate Shelf Life Guide”– all is answered!

As we squeeze and sniff, we might recall that it was on this date in in 1998 that Reginald Dwight was knighted, becoming Sir Elton John.  (For the derivation of Sir Elton’s  stage name, see the almanac entry at “Waste Time, Fight Hunger.”)

Sir Elton