Posts Tagged ‘draft’
“There is nothing permanent except change”*…
Menudo has been ranked one of the Biggest Boy Bands of All Time by several publications (Billboard, Us Weekly, Seventeen, and Teen Vogue, among others)– the only Latin band on their lists. The Puerto Rican boy band, founded by producer Edgardo Díaz in 1977, has had 39 members– who’ve been routinely replaced as they “age out,” usually at 16. It has launched the careers of a number of popular international stars, including Ricky Martin (in Menudo 1984–89) and Draco Rosa (1984–87), and sold over 20 million albums worldwide.
The band disbanded in 2009, but re-formed on its old template in 2019. And it’s just announced its latest roster, bringing its count of members up to 44…
Nearly a year after Menudo Productions announced they were on the search for new members to form the next generation of Menudo, the band has officially unveiled the five boys that will comprise the group.
On Monday (March 20), Nicolas Calero (10), Gabriel Rossell (13), Andres Emilio (14), Alejandro Querales (15) and Ezra Gilmore (12) were announced as the new faces of the eternally youthful boy band. And, in celebration of the announcement, the group also released their very first single “Mi Amore,” the first song off their upcoming debut album…
What’s old is new again: “New Menudo Boy Band Members Unveiled,” from @billboard.
* Heraclitus
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As we board the Ship of Theseus, we might recall that it was on this date in 1958, at 6.35am, that Elvis Presley reported to the Memphis draft board to be inducted in the U.S. Army. From there Elvis and twelve other recruits were taken by bus to Kennedy Veterans Memorial Hospital where the singer was assigned Army serial number 53310761.
“War is progress, peace is stagnation”*…
Even if one doesn’t share Hegel’s copacetic take on conflict, one can observe that wars do, in fact, usually encourage bursts of technological innovation. Indeed, most of us are pretty familiar (in both senses of the phrase) with the range of epoch-defining technologies that were a product of World War II: radar, radio navigation, rocketry, jet engines, penicillin, nuclear power, synthetic rubber, computers… the list goes on.
But we are perhaps a little less familiar with the advances– now so ingrained that we take them for granted– that emerged from World War I. Readers will recall one such breakthrough, and its author: Fritz Haber, who introduced chemical warfare (thus lengthening the war and contributing to millions of horrible deaths), then used some of the same techniques– nitrogen fixation, in particular– to make fertilizer widely and affordably available (thus feeding billions).
Five other key developments at “The 6 Most Surprising, Important Inventions From World War I.”
* Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
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As we look for the silver lining, we might that it was on this date in 1917, “Army Registration Day,” that the draft was (re-)instituted in the U.S. for World War I. Draft board selections were subsequently made, and conscription began on July 20.
These draft boards were localized and based their decisions on social class: the poorest were the most often conscripted because they were considered the most expendable at home. African-Americans in particular were often disproportionately drafted, though they generally were conscripted as laborers.
Young men registering for conscription during World War I in New York City, New York, on June 5, 1917.
“First Impressions”…
… was the tentative title with which Jane Austen worked before she settled on Pride and Prejudice.
George Orwell’s publisher convinced him that “The Last Man in Europe” simply wasn’t going to send copies flying off booksellers’ shelves, convincing Orwell to switch to his back-up title, 1984.
Discover more literary “might-have-beens,” featuring F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Joseph Heller, Bram Stoker, and others– at Mentalfloss.
As we think again about our vanity plate orders, we might recall that it was on this date in 1943 that then-26-year-old poet Robert Lowell, scion of an old Boston family that had included a President of Harvard, an ambassador to the Court of St. James, and the ecclesiastic who founded St. Marks School, was sentenced to jail for a year for evading the draft. An ardent pacifist, Lowell refused his service in objection to saturation bombing in Europe. He served his time in New York’s West Street jail.
Lowell (left) in 1941, with (his then wife) novelist Jean Stafford, and their friend, novelist and short-story writer Peter Taylor, at Kenyon College, where they studied with John Crowe Ranson (source)
He who writes (the rules) wins the game…
(from the ever-illuminating Language Log)
As we sharpen our pencils, we might recall that it was on this date in 1971 that the U. S. Supreme Court overturned the conviction of Paul Cohen for disturbing the peace, setting the precedent that “vulgar” writing is protected under the First Amendment.
In April of 1968, Cohen had been arrested in the L.A. County Courthouse for wearing a jacket the back of which read “F–k the Draft”; he was charged with and later convicted of violating section 415 of the California Penal Code, which prohibited “maliciously and willfully disturb[ing] the peace or quiet of any neighborhood or person [by] offensive conduct.”
In a 5-4 decision, SCOTUS upheld Cohen’s appeal. In the majority opinion, Justice John Marshall Harlan averred that “one man’s vulgarity is another’s lyric.” (For the minority, Justice Harry Blackmun demurred, arguing that Cohen’s “absurd and immature antic” was conduct, not speech– and thus should not be afforded First Amendment protection.)
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