Quote:“Who Advanced This?”: The RFK Funeral Train (JFK Library Blog)

By Abigail Malangone, Processing and Reference Archivist

New York Times reporter Charlotte Curtis recorded in her notes that the train carrying the body of the late Senator Robert F. Kennedy lurched out of New York City’s Penn Station at 1:07 pm on June 8, 1968. This funeral train, carrying Kennedy and hundreds of mourners, was due to arrive at Union Station in Washington, D.C. four hours later; it arrived at 9:09 pm.

It is unclear who gets the credit for suggesting a train. Dave Hackett gave full credit to John Seigenthaler, while Seigenthaler intimated that it would have been the family’s decision. In any event, the plan to have the funeral at St. Patrick’s Cathedral and the burial at Arlington National Cemetery made the train as transport a practical decision. The two days between Senator Robert F. Kennedy’s death and burial were a sleepless blur for many Kennedy staffers, friends, and family as arrangements were made to honor the fallen Senator with a fitting funeral and burial. Details big and small were delegated to and carried out with efficiency by individuals in various camps in New York City and Washington, D.C. This work began in the early hours of the morning on June 6, 1968 and did not end until the late hours of the night on June 8, 1968. Unfortunately, the sheer number of individuals involved, the geographic dispersal of duties, and the unfathomably quick turnaround time for planning leaves the Kennedy Library with very little documentation of these arrangements.

Quote:The decommissioning schedule for the U.S. Navy’s remaining 13 Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruisers has been set. Next to leave service will be the Vicksburg (CG 69) in June 2024, followed by the Cowpens (CG 63) in August, Antietam (CG 54) and Leyte Gulf (CG 55) in September. Overall, the last two cruisers will likely be Chosin (CG 65) and Cape St. George (CG 71), both to be decommissioned in fiscal 2027. The close of their careers will bring an end to the service life of the class, the world’s first to be equipped with the Aegis combat system.

Vicksburg and Cowpens had been two of the seven cruisers inducted in the mid-20-teens into the Navy’s Cruiser Modernization Program, and the cost of their protracted, never-finished modernizations has approached nearly one billion dollars. Although Congress had directed otherwise, the U.S. Navy in early 2024 ordered all further work on the ships to stop and they were placed on the decommissioning list. Of the seven cruisers in the program, only Gettysburg and Chosin have been redelivered, with work continuing on Cape St. George. Two other ships in the program, Hue City (CG 66) and Anzio (CG 68), were decommissioned in 2022 in poor condition and far from completion.

This list presents the 13 remaining cruisers in the order they’re currently scheduled to be decommissioned. Specific projected dates such as these are subject to change, but there is not expected to be any change in the overall order or in the decision to inactivate all cruisers by the end of fiscal 2027, which is 30 September 2027. Unless otherwise noted, all ships are to become Logistical Support Assets – that is, spare parts sources. After that, they presumably will either be scrapped or used in sinking exercises (SINKEXs).

The cruisers are being decommissioned approximately at the end of their planned 35-year service lives. They are being replaced in the air warfare commander role by new Flight III Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, only one of which currently is in service.

This list presents the 13 remaining cruisers in the order they’re currently scheduled to be decommissioned. The dates are from the most recent Navy directive regarding fiscal 2024 inactivations and an appendix from the 2025 30-year shipbuilding plan, issued in March 2024.

U.S. Navy’s Cruiser Countdown to Decomm

Quote:International hackers stole nearly a half-million dollars from the town of Arlington [Massachusetts] by impersonating a vendor working to rebuild the community’s high school, town officials said.

The theft is the latest in a series of costly cyberattacks on area municipalities. In this case, Arlington was targeted by a complicated spoofing and hacking scheme, according to Arlington town manager Jim Feeney.
Over a four-month period, $445,945.73 was wired to accounts supposedly controlled by a legitimate vendor working on the high school construction project, but that were actually controlled by a “well-resourced” group of cybercriminals.

The scheme, according to town officials, was a detailed ruse that began when hackers compromised some town employees’ emails.

The hackers were able to monitor email discussions of the high school project between Arlington officials and outside vendors. Using a fraudulent email domain to pose as an established vendor, the hackers requested that the town change payment methods, from check to electronic transfer. Four monthly payments were transferred under the new payment method.

“Thread-jacking,” the cyberattack strategy used to target Arlington, is relatively common, according to Brian Krebs, a cybersecurity researcher and consultant.

“These types of attacks are some of the most frequent, and they are among the most profitable,” Krebs said. “It’s fairly remarkable, because they don’t really require much, if any, upfront financial investment by the attackers. And they potentially net them millions or tens of millions of dollars, when they trick state and local governments into moving money where they shouldn’t.”

Arlington loses nearly $500,000 in high school construction funds to hacking scheme

Quote:Scarcely can I portray in words the dire and dismal scenes that met my vision here. . . . For here, where on the previous night had throbbed hot and high the flood-tide of London’s evening gaiety, was now presented to my poor fevered sight, the worst, the most awful features of the whole terrific calamity. I had entered into the very heart and home of horror itself.

This is the way the world ends: not with a bang but a bronchial spasm. That is, at least, according to William Delisle Hay’s 1880 novella, The Doom of the Great City. It imagines the entire population of London choked to death under a soot-filled fog. The story is told by the event’s lone survivor sixty years later as he recalls “the greatest calamity that perhaps this earth has ever witnessed” at what was, for Hay’s first readers, the distant future date of 1942.

Bad Air

Quote:The vast parade and rally, organized by a coalition of peace groups, brought together pacifists and anarchists, children and Buddhist monks, Roman Catholic bishops and Communist Party leaders, university students and union members. There were delegations from Vermont and Montana, Bangladesh and Zambia, and from many other places. The smiling, hand-clapping line of marchers was more than three miles long, and the participants carried placards in dozens of languages.

"There's no way the leaders can ignore this now," said Alex Willentz, who drove overnight from Utica, N.Y., for the event. "It's not just hippies and crazies anymore. It's everybody."

Late in the afternoon, Alice T. McGillion, a Police Department spokesman, said there might be as many as 600,000 or 700,000 people around the park. "There's so much movement it's hard to be certain," she said.

The sponsor of the demonstration was the June 12 Rally Committee, an umbrella organization of religious and secular peace groups. The groups participating ranged from radicals seeking immediate unilateral disarmament by the United States to moderates asking a resumption of negotiations on arms cutbacks.

Perhaps the only dissenters in the huge throng were a group of about 40 people who stood for a time at 42d Street and First Avenue. They carried signs saying, "Build Up or Freeze to Death" and "Peace Is a Soviet Weapon of Conquest." Leonard Holihan, a businessman based in London, said his organization was called Coalition for Peace Through Security. Profusion of Placards

Among the marchers, there was a profusion of placards: "Choose Life"; "Bread Not Bombs"; "No Nukes"; "Reagan Is A Bomb - Both Should Be Banned"; "U.S. Out of El Salvador"; "Freeze or Burn"; "Build Houses Not Bomb Shelters"; "A Feminist World Is a Nuclear-Free Zone," "Arms Are for Embracing." A little girl carried a sign saying, "I Hate Nuclear War," and one marcher had an inflated rubber whale with the legend "Save the Humans."

Further along the route, one policeman stood in the center of a group of marchers and talked to them. "I was in the service in the 60's," he said. "You know how they brainwash you there. Well, when I got out, most of the marching in '69 was over, and there was a new era. But now, it's just like a resurrection. This march is for everybody. Whatever happens, we're going to get toasted."

THRONGS FILL MANHATTAN TO PROTEST NUCLEAR WEAPONS

Quote:President John Tyler was born in 1790 during the Washington administration. Tyler was an originalist, meaning he was a vehement devotee of the Constitution, holding that it was the most supreme governing document in the land and should be adhered to with no hesitation or compromise. He held this belief during his entire life, but it was especially solidified during his collegiate years spent at the College of William and Mary where he studied law. Political upheaval was constant during the 19th century as the issues of states rights and slavery moved to the political forefront; as abolitionist groups augmented in number, so did the number of staunch supporters of the system of slavery. Tyler was a fervent supporter of states rights, including regarding slavery – when serving in the House of Representatives for the 23rd district of Virginia, he voted against the Missouri Compromise of 1820 because the federal legislation would make Missouri a slave state and Maine a free state in perpetuity. As the states were not obliged to decide on the issue of slavery for themselves, it was for this reason that Tyler voted against it. Tyler did own slaves though he was opposed to the institution.

*Author’s Note: It is said that William Henry Harrison was the first victim of the “Tippecanoe Curse”. Also known as Tecumseh’s Curse, this urban legend is said to have emerged after the Battle of Tippecanoe in 1811 when then-Governor of the Indiana Territory (Harrison) defeated Tecumseh’s united Native American forces. The curse is said to affect United States Presidents voted into office in years that end with zero and can be divisible by twenty.

So far, the curse has been very effective: 1840 – President Harrison died in office from illness, 1860 – President Lincoln was assassinated during his second term, 1880 – President Garfield was assassinated by an ex-Oneida madman, 1920 – President Harding died in office after suffering a heart attack, 1940 – President Roosevelt died while in his fourth term in office, 1960 – President Kennedy was assassinated while visiting Dallas, and 1980 – there was an attempted assassination on President Reagan, who thankfully survived and may have broken the curse.*

“White House Kids” Series – Harrison Ruffin Tyler, Grandson of 10th President John Tyler

Quote:The Folklore Project of the Federal Writers’ Project, a New Deal program established in 1935, employed writers to collect life histories from a broad spectrum of American citizens. Many of those interviewed expressed gratitude for the New Deal programs:

Quote:    I am heartily in favor of the New Deal, and its results are apparent even in my neighborhood. In former years, my pastor…was often hard put to it to take care of some of his flock. But the work furnished and the wages paid to those in our neighborhood on the WPA [Works Progress Administration] are apparent, and if it is so in this small section, what must its accomplishments and rehabilitative affects be throughout the United States?

    “Mrs. Eulalia McCranie.” Rose Shepherd, interviewer; Jacksonville, Florida, ca. February 23, 1939. American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936 to 1940. Manuscript Division

A New Deal: The First 100 Days

Quote:Retired lawyer is the son of Vampira but is Orson Welles the father?

A DNA check and Ancestry.com confirmed that retired attorney David Putter of Montpelier, Vermont, is Nurmi’s biological son.

“My partner here is always accusing me a blood-sucking lawyer now. She didn’t use to use that term, now she does,” Putter, 76, joked in an interview with WCAX-TV, CBS-3, in South Burlington, Vermont.

However, there has been no DNA test to determine if he is related to Welles — and the claim might best be taken with a grain of salt.

However, Nurmi revealed in an interview weeks before her death in January 2008 how she met Welles in a New York casting office while he was separated from Hayworth. Welles was living in New York in the spring and summer months of 1946 when he was staging Around the World on Broadway. Nurmi said she and Welles dated for several months before he reunited with Hayworth to film The Lady from Shanghai in October 1946.

Nurmi made it clear to the interviewer she did not get involved with married men, but Welles and Hayworth were separated at the time.

(06-17-2024, 07:34 AM)BIAD Wrote:

Grey Monday sky and drizzle as I type.

Quote:On the night of June 17, 1972, security guard Frank Wills was making his usual rounds when he noticed a piece of duct tape covering the lock of the back parking lot door to the Watergate Office Building in Washington, D.C. As noted in the Security Officer’s Log (NAID 304970), he removed the tape, only to return thirty minutes later to find that another piece of tape had reappeared. Wills quickly contacted authorities about his strange observation. The local police arrived at the building and searched each office suite. The police, along with Wills, found five men hiding in the Democratic National Committee (DNC) Headquarters office. These men were identified as Bernard L. Barker, Virgilio Gonzalez, Eugenio Martinez, James W. McCord Jr., and Frank Sturgis. All of these men had connections to Richard M. Nixon’s reelection campaign.

“Wills on Duty:” The Guard that Discovered the Watergate Break-in

Quote:QUESTION:  Well, you said yesterday at some point if one side continues to change its demands, you have to question whether they’re proceeding in good faith.  So let’s be direct: Is Hamas negotiating in good faith?

SECRETARY BLINKEN:  The proof will be in whether we can bring this to a conclusion, and bring it to a conclusion quickly, fast. From our perspective, it’s time for the haggling to stop; it’s time for a ceasefire to start.  And you have one man who’s probably somewhere deep underground in Gaza for Hamas, Mr. Sinwar, who’s making all of these decisions.  Well, he’s relatively safe underground.  The people that he purports to represent, they’re suffering every day.  So if he has their interests at heart, he will come to a conclusion to bring this to a conclusion.

Secretary Antony J. Blinken With Savannah Guthrie of The Today Show on NBC (June 13, 2024)

(06-17-2024, 08:02 AM)Bally002 Wrote:

(06-17-2024, 07:34 AM)BIAD Wrote:

Grey Monday sky and drizzle as I type.

Crikey.  Those temps are our maximum here in winter where I am.

Min here presently is about 2C.

Bally)

Quote:At the corner of Whitecross Street and Old Street in East London, on the walls above Jane Roe Kitchen, you’ll see a commemorative blue plaque dedicated to a certain Miss Priss Fotheringham, who has laid claim to the rather salacious title of “the second best whore in the city.” The title was awarded to her in 1660 by John Garfield in The Wandering Whore, a directory of prostitutes working in 17th century London.



Born in Scotland around 1615, Priss Fotheringham later moved to London, where she worked as a prostitute. In her youth, she was described as a "cat-eyed gypsy, pleasing to the eye," but by her thirties, her face had been scarred by smallpox and worsened by quack medicines. Years of heavy gin consumption also negatively affected her appearance.


In 1652, Priss was charged with running a house of ill repute, after being discovered “sitting between two Dutchmen with her breasts naked to the waist and without stockings, drinking and singing in a very uncivil manner.” She was convicted and sent to Newgate Prison.

In 1656, Priss married Edmund Fotheringham, whose mother ran a seedy brothel on Cow Lane, Finsbury. Edmund used to bully and beat her and acted as her pimp, forcing Priss to leave her husband for a sword sharpener, taking much of her husband's money with her. In 1658, she was arrested again by Middlesex Justice of the Peace:

Quote:For being a notorious strumpet, a common field walker and one that hath undone several men by giving them the foul disease, for keeping the husband of Susan Slaughter from her ever since December last and hath utterly undone that family, and also for threatening to stab said Susan Slaughter whenever she can meet her, the woman being very civil woman, and also for several other notorious wickedness which is not fit to be named among the heathen.

When the money ran out the sword sharpener left her, and she returned to her husband who reported her for theft. Once again, Priss found herself before the judges who decided that the sooner they hanged the depraved lady, the better. But the new Lord Protector Richard Cromwell stepped in and pardoned her.

Priss spent about a year in Newgate Prison, where she met fellow brothel-keepers Damaris Page and Elizabeth Cresswell and the writer of The Wandering Whore, John Garfield. After her release, Priss established herself as the madam of The Jack-a-Newberry, a tavern located at the corner of Whitecross Street and Old Street. She later renamed the tavern to The Six Windmills, where she gained notoriety through London's burgeoning printing industry. References to the Fotheringham's brothel appear in John Garfield's The Wandering Whore (1660), and The Unparalleled Practices of Mrs Fotheringham (1660), Strange and True News from JackaNewberries (1660), the Strange and True Conference between Two Notorious Bawds (1660) and Man in the Moon (1660).

Quote:Sally Ride was very good at keeping secrets. As the first American woman in space, she protected countless confidences during a lifetime of public appearances. During her post-NASA years, she regularly wrote and reviewed classified government material on high-profile commissions. When she died in 2012 of pancreatic cancer, a diagnosis hidden from all but a tiny handful of family and close friends, I started unraveling the mysteries for her biography. She was a brilliant, mischievous enigma.

But the most surprising revelation was the one that came at the end of her obituary: that for 27 years, she’d been in a loving relationship with another woman, Tam O’Shaughnessy. The collective gasp from an admiring public reverberated for days. A small minority complained that she’d squandered an opportunity to speak out for their rights. A few spouted homophobic hatred. Selfishly, as her pal of more than three decades, I was stunned; hurt, that I did not know Sally fully, that I could not celebrate her happiness with Tam. Then I thought, why does her sexual orientation matter? Finally, I got it.

Never before had the words astronaut and lesbian appeared in the same sentence. Google them today, and you get more than half a million hits, all pegged to Sally Ride. Most salute her as an icon with an added, posthumous message of hope for the LGBTQ community. So why the secrecy?

What made this 61-year-old pioneer—so bold in her actions, so non-traditional in her choice of careers and devotion to science; this baby-boomer whose life had been transformed by the space age and the social revolution of the ’60s and ’70s—keep silent, so long, about being gay?

(06-19-2024, 04:25 AM)Freija Wrote: Did you forget it’s Pride Month? Your bit on Sally Ride failed to mention she was gay and in a loving relationship with another woman for 27 years!

Quote:Sally Ride was very good at keeping secrets. As the first American woman in space, she protected countless confidences during a lifetime of public appearances. During her post-NASA years, she regularly wrote and reviewed classified government material on high-profile commissions. When she died in 2012 of pancreatic cancer, a diagnosis hidden from all but a tiny handful of family and close friends, I started unraveling the mysteries for her biography. She was a brilliant, mischievous enigma.

But the most surprising revelation was the one that came at the end of her obituary: that for 27 years, she’d been in a loving relationship with another woman, Tam O’Shaughnessy. The collective gasp from an admiring public reverberated for days. A small minority complained that she’d squandered an opportunity to speak out for their rights. A few spouted homophobic hatred. Selfishly, as her pal of more than three decades, I was stunned; hurt, that I did not know Sally fully, that I could not celebrate her happiness with Tam. Then I thought, why does her sexual orientation matter? Finally, I got it.

Never before had the words astronaut and lesbian appeared in the same sentence. Google them today, and you get more than half a million hits, all pegged to Sally Ride. Most salute her as an icon with an added, posthumous message of hope for the LGBTQ community. So why the secrecy?

What made this 61-year-old pioneer—so bold in her actions, so non-traditional in her choice of careers and devotion to science; this baby-boomer whose life had been transformed by the space age and the social revolution of the ’60s and ’70s—keep silent, so long, about being gay?

Sally Ride’s Secret: Why the First American Woman in Space Stayed in the Closet

Why Sally Ride waited until her death to tell the world she was gay

Astronaut Sally Ride brought women and the LGBTQ+ community to the final frontier 40 years ago

Quote:“After de War I was what you call a freedman. De Indians had to give all dey slaves forty acres of land. I’se allus lived on dis land which jines dat of Ole master’s and I’se never stayed away from it long at a time.” Thus did Frances Banks, a formerly enslaved African American, describe herself and the situation for other formerly enslaved people in Indian Territory when interviewed by a Works Progress Administration (WPA) field worker in 1938.

Banks was born on a farm near Doaksville in the southeastern corner of the Choctaw Nation before the Civil War. Her parents belonged to the Wright family, whose prominent members included Allen Wright, principal chief of the Choctaw Nation from 1866 to 1870, and later a judge by the same name in the state of Oklahoma. Her short interview—which, like many conducted with former slaves, was transcribed using stereotypical Black speech patterns—offers a provocative glimpse at slavery, the Civil War, and emancipation, all familiar subjects in American history, but from a less familiar vantage point: Indian Territory.

Although the term “enslaver,” for most Americans, is likely to conjure up the image of a white plantation owner, Native tribes such as the Choctaw also enslaved people of African descent and had done so for more than a century before the Civil War. European traders and settlers introduced the Choctaws to enslaved Africans as early as the 1720s. By 1831, a federal census conducted in preparation for removing Choctaw Indians from the Mississippi River Valley to Indian Territory enumerated 17,963 Indians, 151 white persons, and 521 enslaved people. Just eight years later in 1839, there were approximately 600 enslaved people of African descent living among the Choctaws. And by 1860, enslaved people of African descent made up 14 percent of the population in the Choctaw Nation...

Choctaw Confederates

Quote:Several years ago, I began researching the history behind this extraordinary piece of filmmaking. I obtained copies of some of the production records and I interviewed one of the key people behind its creation. In addition to reading the original novel and screenplay adaptations, I also reviewed numerous articles, reviews and book excerpts.

This post presents what I have learned about THE PARALLAX VIEW Test Film.

“SOUNDS A LITTLE CRAZY”