Happy Heavenly Birthday to my dad, Phil Gregg, today. Light snow during the night has covered all, making it look like a frozen fairy land. Won't last long as right now it's 33°, feels like 32°, cloudy skies, humidity is at 97%, dew point is 33°, wind is from the SSE at 5 mph, pressure is falling from 29.26 inches, cloud cover is 100%, and visibility is 5 miles. PM snow showers today.

ON THIS DAY On February 2, 1887, Groundhog Day, featuring a rodent meteorologist, is celebrated for the first time at Gobbler’s Knob in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. According to tradition, if a groundhog comes out of its hole on this day and sees its shadow, it gets scared and runs back into its burrow, predicting six more weeks of winter weather; no shadow means an early spring.

Groundhog Day has its roots in the ancient Christian tradition of Candlemas, when clergy would bless and distribute candles needed for winter. The candles represented how long and cold the winter would be. Germans expanded on this concept by selecting an animal–the hedgehog–as a means of predicting weather. Once they came to America, German settlers in Pennsylvania continued the tradition, although they switched from hedgehogs to groundhogs, which were plentiful in the Keystone State.

Groundhogs, also called woodchucks and whose scientific name is Marmota monax, typically weigh 12 to 15 pounds and live six to eight years. They eat vegetables and fruits, whistle when they’re frightened or looking for a mate (they’re sometimes called whistle pigs) and can climb trees and swim.

They go into hibernation in the late fall; during this time, their body temperatures drop significantly, their heartbeats slow from 80 to five beats per minute and they can lose 30 percent of their body fat. In February, male groundhogs emerge from their burrows to look for a mate (not to predict the weather) before going underground again. They come out of hibernation for good in March.

In 1887, a newspaper editor belonging to a group of groundhog hunters from Punxsutawney called the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club declared that Phil, the Punxsutawney groundhog, was America’s only true weather-forecasting groundhog. The line of groundhogs that have since been known as Phil might be America’s most famous groundhogs, but other towns across North America now have their own weather-predicting rodents, from Birmingham Bill to Staten Island Chuck to Shubenacadie Sam in Canada.

In 1993, the movie Groundhog Day starring Bill Murray popularized the usage of “groundhog day” to mean something that is repeated over and over. Today, tens of thousands of people converge on Gobbler’s Knob in Punxsutawney each February 2 to witness Phil’s prediction. The Punxsutawney Groundhog Club hosts a three-day celebration featuring entertainment and activities. (history.com)

DID YOU KNOW THAT Apple paid a couple $1.7 million dollars for their plot of land, which was only worth $181,700. While Apple was building a huge data center in the middle of North Carolina, they wanted to occupy the area of a couple that lived there for 34 years. When the couple refused to leave, Apple paid them $1.7 million dollars for their land. (thefactsite.com)

WORD OF THE DAY prognosticate (prahg-NAHSS-tuh-kayt) which means:
1 : to foretell from signs and symptoms : predict
2 : to give an indication of in advance : foreshadow
Prognosticate, which comes from the Greek prognōstikos ("foretelling"), first appears in English during the 15th century. Since that time, prognosticate has been connected with things that give omens or warnings of events to come and with people who can prophesy or predict the future by such signs. William Shakespeare used the "prophesy" sense of prognosticate in the sonnet that begins "Not from the stars do I my judgement pluck." "Of thee this I prognosticate," the Bard penned, "Thy end is truth's and beauty's doom and date." (merriam-webster.com)

It's 35° outside this morning, wind chill is 25°, humidity is at 89%, dew point is 32°, wind is from the SSW at 12 mph with gusts to 18 mph, pressure is falling from 29.78 inches, cloud cover is 100%, and visibility is 10 miles. Rain and snow expected this morning. Overcast for this afternoon. Late night snow showers are likely.

ON THIS DAY February 1, 1884: The first portion, or fascicle, of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), considered the most comprehensive and accurate dictionary of the English language, is published. Today, the OED is the definitive authority on the meaning, pronunciation and history of over half a million words, past and present

Plans for the dictionary began in 1857 when members of London’s Philological Society, who believed there were no up-to-date, error-free English dictionaries available, decided to produce one that would cover all vocabulary from the Anglo-Saxon period (1150 A.D.) to the present. Conceived of as a four-volume, 6,400-page work, it was estimated the project would take 10 years to finish. In fact, it took over 40 years until the 125th and final fascicle was published in April 1928 and the full dictionary was complete–at over 400,000 words and phrases in 10 volumes–and published under the title A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles.

Unlike most English dictionaries, which only list present-day common meanings, the OED provides a detailed chronological history for every word and phrase, citing quotations from a wide range of sources, including classic literature and cookbooks. The OED is famous for its lengthy cross-references and etymologies. The verb “set” merits the OED’s longest entry, at approximately 60,000 words and detailing over 430 uses.No sooner was the OED finished than editors began updating it. A supplement, containing new entries and revisions, was published in 1933 and the original dictionary was reprinted in 12 volumes and officially renamed the Oxford English Dictionary.

Between 1972 and 1986, an updated 4-volume supplement was published, with new terms from the continually evolving English language plus more words and phrases from North America, Australia, the Caribbean, New Zealand, South Africa and South Asia.

In 1984, Oxford University Press embarked on a five-year, multi-million-dollar project to create an electronic version of the dictionary. The effort required 120 people just to type the pages from the print edition and 50 proofreaders to check their work. The online version of the dictionary has been active since 2000.

At a whopping 20 volumes weighing over 137 pounds, it would reportedly take one person 120 years to type all 59 million words in the OED. (history.com)

DID YOU KNOW THAT Octopuses and squids have beaks. The beak is made of keratin – the same material that a bird’s beak, and our fingernails are made of. (thefactsite.com)

WORD OF THE DAY fissile (FISS-ul) which means:
1 : capable of or prone to being split or divided in the direction of the grain or along natural planes of cleavage
2 : capable of undergoing fission
When scientists first used fissile back in the 1600s, the notion of splitting the nucleus of an atom would have seemed far-fetched indeed. In those days, people thought that atoms were the smallest particles of matter that existed and therefore could not be split. Fissile (which can be traced back to Latin findere, meaning "to split" or "to cleave") was used in reference to things like rocks. When we hear about fissile materials today, the reference is usually to nuclear fission: the splitting of an atomic nucleus that releases a huge amount of energy. But there is still a place in our language for the original sense of fissile (and for the noun fissility, meaning "the quality of being fissile"). A geologist, for example, might refer to slate as being fissile. (merriam-webster.com)

It's 30° this morning, cloudy skies, humidity is at 90%, dew point is 28°, wind is from the SSE at 4 mph, pressure is 30.18 inches, cloud cover is 100%, and visibility is 10 miles. Pretty much a carbon copy of the past two days, although there is a 40% chance for snow showers late tonight.

ON THIS DAY in 1933, with the stirring notes of the William Tell Overture and a shout of “Hi-yo, Silver! Away!” The Lone Ranger debuts on Detroit’s WXYZ radio station.

The creation of station-owner George Trendle and writer Fran Striker, the “masked rider of the plains” became one of the most popular and enduring western heroes of the 20th century. Joined by his trusty steed, Silver, and loyal Indian scout, Tonto, the Lone Ranger sallied forth to do battle with evil western outlaws and Indians, generally arriving on the scene just in time to save an innocent golden-haired child or sun-bonneted farm wife.

Neither Trendle nor Striker had any connections to or experience with the cowboys, Indians, and pioneers of the real West, but that mattered little to them. The men simply wanted to create an American version of the masked swashbuckler made popular by the silent movie actor Douglas Fairbanks in The Mark of Zorro, arming their hero with a revolver rather than a sword. Historical authenticity was far less important to the men than fidelity to the strict code of conduct they established for their character. The Lone Ranger never smoked, swore, or drank alcohol; he used grammatically correct speech free of slang; and, most important, he never shot to kill. More offensive to modern historical and ethnic sensibilities was the Indian scout Tonto, who spoke in a comical Indian patois totally unrelated to any authentic Indian dialect, uttering ludicrous phrases like “You betchum!”

Historical accuracy notwithstanding, the radio program was an instant hit. Children liked the steady stream of action and parents approved of the good moral example offered by the upstanding masked man. Soon picked up for nationwide broadcast over the Mutual Radio Network, over 20 million Americans were tuning into The Lone Ranger three times a week by 1939. In an early example of the power of marketing tie-ins, the producers also licensed the manufacture of a vast array of related products, including Lone Ranger guns, costumes, books, and a popular comic strip.

The Lone Ranger made a seemingly effortless transition from radio to motion pictures and television. The televised version of The Lone Ranger, staring Clayton Moore as the masked man, became ABC’s first big hit in the early 1950s. Remaining on the air until 1957, the program helped define the golden age of the TV Western and inspired dozens of imitators like The Range Rider, The Roy Rogers Show, and The Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok. (history.com)

DID YOU KNOW THAT the first service dogs were established in Germany?

While there is evidence that man's relationship with wolves stretches back 400,000 years, man's domestication of dogs coincides with the evolution of early breeds of dogs about 150,000 years ago.

The first special relationship between a dog and a blind person is lost in the mists of time, but perhaps the earliest recorded example is depicted in a first-century AD mural in the buried ruins of Roman Herculaneum. There are other records from Asia and Europe up to the Middle Ages, of dogs leading blind men.

However, the first systematic attempt to train dogs to aid blind people came around 1780 at 'Les Quinze-Vingts' hospital for the blind in Paris. Shortly afterwards, in 1788, Josef Riesinger, a blind sieve-maker from Vienna, trained a Spitz so well that people often questioned whether he was blind.

In 1819, Johann Wilhelm Klein, founder of the Institute for the Education of the Blind (Blinden-Erziehungs-Institut) in Vienna, mentioned the concept of the guide dog in his book on educating blind people (Lehrbuch zum Unterricht der Blinden) and described his method for training dogs. A Swiss man, Jakob Birrer, wrote in 1847 about his experiences of being guided over a period of five years by a dog he had specially trained.

The modern guide dog story, however, begins during the First World War, with thousands of soldiers returning from the Front blinded, often by poison gas. A German doctor, Dr Gerhard Stalling, got the idea of training dogs en masse to help those affected. While walking with a patient one day through the hospital grounds, he was called away urgently and left his dog with the patient as company. When he returned, he saw signs, from the way the dog was behaving, that it was looking after the blind patient.

Dr Stalling started to explore ways of training dogs to become reliable guides and in August 1916 opened the world's first guide dog school for the blind in Oldenburg. The school grew and many new branches opened in Bonn, Breslau, Dresden, Essen, Freiburg, Hamburg, Magdeburg, Münster and Hannover, training up to 600 dogs a year. These schools provided dogs not only to ex-servicemen, but also to blind people in Britain, France, Spain, Italy, the United States, Canada and the Soviet Union.

Unfortunately, due to a reduction in dog quality, the venture had to shut down in 1926, but by that time another large guide dog training centre had opened in Potsdam, near Berlin, which was proving to be highly successful. This school's work broke new ground in the training of guide dogs and it was capable of accommodating around 100 dogs at a time and providing up to 12 fully-trained guide dogs a month.

Around this time, a wealthy American woman, Dorothy Harrison Eustis, was already training dogs for the army, police and customs service in Switzerland. It was to be Dorothy Eustis's energy and expertise that would properly launch the guide dog movement internationally.

Having heard about the Potsdam centre, Eustis was curious to study the school's methods and spent several months there. She came away so impressed that she wrote an article about it for the Saturday Evening Post in America in October 1927.

A blind American man, Morris Frank, heard about the article and bought a copy of the newspaper. He later said that the five cents the newspaper cost him "bought an article that was worth more than a million dollars to me. It changed my life". He wrote to Eustis, telling her that he would very much like to help introduce guide dogs to the United States.

Taking up the challenge, Dorothy Eustis trained a dog, Buddy, and brought Frank over to Switzerland to learn how to work with the dog. Frank went back to the United States with what many believe to be America's first guide dog. Eustis later established the Seeing Eye School in Morristown, New Jersey, in 1929, but before this went back to Switzerland to do further work there. Meanwhile, an Italian Guide Dog organisation, Sculola Nazionale Cani Guida per Ciechi was also established in 1928.

The success of the United States experience encouraged Eustis to set up guide a dog school at Vevey in Switzerland in 1928. She called this school, like the one a year later in New Jersey, 'L'Oeil qui Voit', or The Seeing Eye (the name comes from the Old Testament of the Bible - 'the hearing ear and the seeing eye', Proverbs, XX, 12). The schools in Vevey, New Jersey and Italy were the first guide dog schools of the modern era that have survived the test of time.

In 1930, two British women, Muriel Crooke and Rosamund Bond, heard about The Seeing Eye and contacted Dorothy Eustis, who sent over one of her trainers. In 1931, the first four British guide dogs completed their training and three years later The Guide Dogs for the Blind Association was founded in the UK.

Since then, guide dog schools have opened all round the world, and more open their doors every decade. Thousands of people have had their lives transformed by guide dogs, thanks to the organisations that provide them. The commitment of the people who work for these organisations, and the people who financially support them, is as deep today as it ever was, and the heirs of Dorothy Eustis's legacy continue to work for the increased mobility, dignity and independence of blind and partially-sighted people the world over. The movement goes on. (igdf.org.uk)

WORD OF THE DAY gist (JIST) which means:
1 : the ground of a legal action
2 : the main point or part : essence
The word gist often appears in such contexts as "the gist of the conversation was that…" to let us know that what follows will be a statement or summary that in some way encapsulates the main point or overarching theme. The gist of a conversation, argument, story, or what-have-you is what we rely on when the actual words and details are only imperfectly recalled, inessential, or too voluminous to recount in their entirety. Gist was borrowed from the Anglo-French legal phrase laccion gist ("the action lies or is based [on]") in the 17th century, and it was originally used in law as a term referring to the foundation or grounds for a legal action without which the action would not be legally sustainable. (merriam-webster.com)

It's 22° this morning, cloudy skies, calm wind, humidity is at 87%, dew point is 19°, pressure is at 30.22 inches, cloud cover is 100%, and visibility is 10 miles. Just another gray, cloudy day. At least there is nothing to shovel.

ON THIS DAY in 1977 sees the premiere of Roots, a groundbreaking television program. The eight-episode miniseries, which was broadcast over eight consecutive nights, follows a family from its origins in West Africa through generations of slavery and the end of the Civil War. Roots one of the most-watched television events in American history and a major moment in mainstream American culture's reckoning with the legacy of slavery.

The miniseries was based on Alex Haley's novel Roots: The Saga of an American Family, which he claimed was based on research he had conducted into his own family history. Though these claims were later debunked, the story succeeded in dramatizing and personalizing the brutal, true story of the Atlantic slave trade and slavery in America. It begins with Kunta Kinte, a warrior belonging to the Mandinka ethnic group and living in what is now the Gambia. Kunta is captured and sold to slave traders, endures a harrowing journey aboard a slave ship, and is eventually sold to a plantation owner in Virginia. The story follows the remainder of his life, including a brutal scene in which he is tortured into acknowledging his slave name, Toby, and continues to follow his family for several generations. Kunta's daughter, her son George, and his sons Tom and Lewis experience life on various plantations and are subjected to many historically-accurate brutalities, including the separation of slave families and harassment from whites after the abolition of slavery. The book and miniseries were recognized for balancing this sweeping narrative with intensely personal stories and brutally realistic depictions of the horrors of slavery.

Due to fears about the audience's reaction to these depictions, ABC decided to air Roots on eight consecutive nights as a way of cutting its losses. Instead, Roots achieved unprecedented popularity. An estimated 140 million people, accounting for over half of the population of the United States, saw the series, and its finale remains the second-most-watched series finale in American television history. A cultural phenomenon, it was nominated for 37 Emmys and won nine, including Best Limited Series and Best Writing in a Drama Series. A sequel miniseries, Roots: The Next Generations, aired in 1979 to impressive ratings and several more award nominations.

Some found Roots to be divisive—future president Ronald Reagan opined that "the bias of all the good people being one color and all the bad people being another was rather destructive." Other commentators noted that the series went out of its way to include "good" or morally conflicted white characters who did not exist in the book. Overall, however, critics praised Roots for "dealing with the institution of slavery and its effect on succeeding generations of one family in a dramatic form," something uncommon in American culture and virtually unheard of on American television at the time. Roots continues to be remembered as both a moving work of fiction and a step forward in America's difficult confrontation with its racial history. (history.com)

DID YOU KNOW THAT an Englishman invented German's Sweet Chocolate cake. Instead, it's named after Samuel German, an Englishman known as “Sammy” who had come to Dorchester, Massachusetts, and eventually got a job at the Baker Chocolate Company, the first American chocolate factory. (thefactsite.com)

WORD OF THE DAY allege (uh-LEJ) which means:
1 : to assert without proof or before proving
2 : to bring forward as a reason or excuse
These days, someone alleges something before presenting the evidence to prove it (or perhaps without evidence at all), but the word actually derives from the Middle English verb alleggen, meaning "to submit (something) in evidence or as justification." Alleggen, in turn, traces back to Anglo-French and probably ultimately to Latin allegare, meaning "to send as a representative" or "to offer as proof in support of a plea." Indeed, allege once referred to the actions of someone who came forward to testify in court; this sense isn't used anymore, but it led to the development of the current "assert without proof" sense. (merriam-webster.com)

Cloudy skies again. It's 28°, feels like 19°, wind is from the NNW at 9 mph, humidity is 81%, dew point is 23°, pressure is 30.03 inches, cloud cover is 100%, and visibility is 10 miles. Today is pretty much a repeat of yesterday.

ON THIS DAY At 11:38 a.m. EST, on January 28, 1986, the space shuttle Challenger lifts off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and Christa McAuliffe is on her way to becoming the first ordinary U.S. civilian to travel into space. McAuliffe, a 37-year-old high school social studies teacher from New Hampshire, won a competition that earned her a place among the seven-member crew of the Challenger. She underwent months of shuttle training but then, beginning January 23, was forced to wait six long days as the Challenger‘s launch countdown was repeatedly delayed because of weather and technical problems. Finally, on January 28, the shuttle lifted off.

Seventy-three seconds later, hundreds on the ground, including Christa’s family, stared in disbelief as the shuttle broke up in a forking plume of smoke and fire. Millions more watched the wrenching tragedy unfold on live television. There were no survivors.

In 1976, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) unveiled the world’s first reusable manned spacecraft, the Enterprise. Five years later, space flights of the shuttle began when Columbia traveled into space on a 54-hour mission. Launched by two solid-rocket boosters and an external tank, only the aircraft-like shuttle entered into orbit around Earth. When the mission was completed, the shuttle fired engines to reduce speed and, after descending through the atmosphere, landed like a glider. Early shuttles took satellite equipment into space and carried out various scientific experiments. The Challenger disaster was the first major shuttle accident.

In the aftermath of the disaster, President Ronald Reagan appointed a special commission to determine what went wrong with Challenger and to develop future corrective measures. The presidential commission was headed by former secretary of state William Rogers, and included former astronaut Neil Armstrong and former test pilot Chuck Yeager. The investigation determined that the disaster was caused by the failure of an “O-ring” seal in one of the two solid-fuel rockets. The elastic O-ring did not respond as expected because of the cold temperature at launch time, which began a chain of events that resulted in the massive loss. As a result, NASA did not send astronauts into space for more than two years as it redesigned a number of features of the space shuttle.

In September 1988, space shuttle flights resumed with the successful launching of the Discovery. Since then, the space shuttle has carried out numerous important missions, such as the repair and maintenance of the Hubble Space Telescope and the construction of the International Space Station.

On February 1, 2003, a second space-shuttle disaster rocked the United States when Columbia disintegrated upon reentry of the Earth’s atmosphere. All aboard were killed. Despite fears that the problems that downed Columbia had not been satisfactorily addressed, space-shuttle flights resumed on July 26, 2005, when Discovery was again put into orbit. (history.com)

DID YOU KNOW THAT today is a lesson in Italian. A single strand of Spaghetti is called a “Spaghetto”. Cannoli, like spaghetti, is a plural noun in Italian. Its singular is canolo. One ravioli is called a raviolo. Panini is a plural noun; its singular form is panino. Salami is plural too, but its singular is salame, not salamo, because it’s a feminine noun in Italian. (thedailymeal.com)

WORD OF THE DAY diligent (DIL-uh-junt) which means characterized by steady, earnest, and energetic effort : painstaking. You're more likely to be diligent about something if you love doing it. The etymology of diligent reflects the fact that affection can lead to energetic effort. The word, which entered English in the 14th century by way of Anglo-French, descends from the Latin verb diligere, meaning "to value or esteem highly" or "to love." The Latin diligere was formed by adding the di- prefix (from dis-, "apart") to the verb legere, an ancestor of the English legend, meaning "to gather, select" or "to read." Of course, you don't need to care for the task at hand in order to be diligent, but it certainly does help! (merriam-webster.com)

Cloudy skies this morning, 31°, feels like 28°, wind is from the north at 6 mph, humidity is at 83%, dew point is 27°, pressure is 29.88 inches, cloud cover is 100%, and visibility is 10 miles.

ON THIS DAY On January 27, 1888, the National Geographic Society is founded in Washington, D.C., for “the increase and diffusion of geographical knowledge.”

The 33 men who originally met and formed the National Geographic Society were a diverse group of geographers, explorers, teachers, lawyers, cartographers, military officers and financiers. All shared an interest in scientific and geographical knowledge, as well as an opinion that in a time of discovery, invention, change and mass communication, Americans were becoming more curious about the world around them. With this in mind, the men drafted a constitution and elected as the Society’s president a lawyer and philanthropist named Gardiner Greene Hubbard. Neither a scientist nor a geographer, Hubbard represented the Society’s desire to reach out to the layman.

Nine months after its inception, the Society published its first issue of National Geographic magazine. Readership did not grow, however, until Gilbert H. Grosvenor took over as editor in 1899. In only a few years, Grosvenor boosted circulation from 1,000 to 2 million by discarding the magazine’s format of short, overly technical articles for articles of general interest accompanied by photographs. National Geographic quickly became known for its stunning and pioneering photography, being the first to print natural-color photos of sky, sea and the North and South Poles.

The Society used its revenues from the magazine to sponsor expeditions and research projects that furthered humanity’s understanding of natural phenomena. In this role, the National Geographic Society has been instrumental in making possible some of the great achievements in exploration and science. To date, it has given out more than 1,400 grants, funding that helped Robert Peary journey to the North Pole, Richard Byrd fly over the South Pole, Jacques Cousteau delve into the sea and Jane Goodall observe wild chimpanzees, among many other projects.

Today, the National Geographic Society is one of the world’s largest non-profit scientific and educational institutions. The Society sees itself as a guardian of the planet’s natural resources, and in this capacity, focuses on ways to broaden its reach and educate its readers about the unique relationship that humans have with the earth. (history.com)

DID YOU KNOW THAT on this day in 1945, Soviet troops entered Auschwitz, Poland, freeing the survivors of the concentration camps? Did you know that one of the survivors was a midwife who delivered 3,000 babies in unfathomable conditions?

Auschwitz is best known as a place of death—a hellish extermination camp, the largest of its kind, where at least 1.1 million people are thought to have been murdered. So it’s strange to think of the camp as a place of life as well.

It was, though—thanks to a woman named Stanislawa Leszczyńska. During her two-year internment at Auschwitz, the Polish midwife delivered 3,000 babies at the camp in unthinkable conditions. Though her story is little known outside of Poland, it is testament to the resistance of a small group of women determined to help their fellow prisoners.

Leszczyńska’s desire to help others is what landed her in Auschwitz in the first place. She was born in Lodz in 1896 and spent her early years in relatively peace—marrying, studying for her midwife’s certificate, having children.

In 1939, everything changed when the Nazis marched into Poland. Suddenly, Leszczyńska lived in an occupied country, and her city—home to the second largest number of Jews in Poland—became home to a ghetto. More than a third of the city’s population was cramped into a tiny area and forced to work for the Nazis.

Horrified by the conditions in the ghetto, Leszczyńska and her family, including her four children, decided to help. They smuggled false documents and food to Jews inside the ghetto as part of a growing Polish resistance.

In 1943, the family’s work was discovered and they were interrogated by the Gestapo. Though Leszczyńska’s husband and oldest son managed to escape, the younger children and their mother were arrested. Leszczyńska was separated from her sons, who were sent to different camps to do forced labor, and sent to Auschwitz with her daughter, a medical student. Her husband kept fighting the Nazis, but was killed during the Warsaw Uprising of 1944. She never saw him again.

When she arrived at the camp, Leszczyńska found a German doctor and told him she was a midwife. He assigned her to work in the camp’s “maternity ward,” a set of filthy barracks that was less a place to care for pregnant women than a place to usher them into death.

Most pregnant women at Auschwitz were simply sent to the gas chambers. Women who found out they were pregnant at the camp were sometimes given abortions by Gisella Perl, a doctor who helped prevent hundreds of women from giving birth. Often, when women were discovered to be pregnant they were summarily executed.

Others were sent to a hospital barracks to wait out the rest of their pregnancy in squalid conditions. “Sister Klara,” a midwife who had been sent to the camp for murdering a child, oversaw the barracks with a woman named “Sister Pfani.” They were in charge of declaring babies born in the ward stillborn, then drowning them in buckets, often in front of the mothers who had just given birth. Sister Klara’s role did not include assisting with deliveries.

“This division of labor was one of the most grotesque examples of the Nazis, on the one hand, cynically adhering to “legal” standards—not having the disbarred nurse assist childbirths—but on the other hand, assigning her to murder newborn Jewish babies,” writes historian Michael Berkowitz.

When Leszczyńska heard what was expected of her in the macabre maternity ward, she refused. When she was taken to the doctor who oversaw the entire camp, she again refused. “Why they did not kill her then, no one knows,” said Leszczyńska’s son Bronislaw in 1988.

Despite threats and beatings by Klara, Leszczyńska simply began caring for mothers and delivering their babies. Despite knowing that most babies she delivered would be killed within a few hours, she worked to save as many of the mothers’ lives as she could. It was almost impossible work—no running water, few blankets, no diapers, little food. Leszczyńska quickly learned to have women in labor lie on the rarely lit brick stove in the center of the barracks—the only place that could accommodate a laboring woman. Lice and diseases were common in the “hospital,” which would fill with inches of water when it rained.

Leszczyńska, assisted by her daughter and other prisoners, later said she delivered 3,000 babies during her two years at Auschwitz. She continued to refuse to kill babies despite repeated orders to do so, even standing up to Dr. Josef Mengele, the camp’s infamous “Angel of Death,” who was known for his brutal experiments on twins and other inmates.

Not every baby was immediately murdered: Beginning in 1943, some were taken to give to Nazi couples as “Aryan” babies under Nazi Germany’s Lebensborn program, which kidnapped up to 100,000 babies in Poland alone. Leszczyńska and her assistants did their best to tattoo the babies who were taken in the hopes they would later be identified and reunited with their mothers. Other women killed their babies themselves rather than hand them over to the Nazis.

Some non-Jewish women were allowed to keep their babies, but they usually perished quickly due to the conditions in the camp. However, a few Jewish babies were allowed to live, though it’s unclear what happened to them. In the words of historian Zoé Waxman, “If a child was allowed to survive it was likely to be for a specific purpose and for a specific time.”

Leszczyńska felt helpless as she watched the babies she delivered be murdered or starve to death, their mothers forbidden to breastfeed. But she kept on working, baptizing Christian babies and caring as best as she could for the women in the barracks. They nicknamed her “Mother.”

Of the 3,000 babies delivered by Leszczyńska, medical historians Susan Benedict and Linda Sheilds write that half of them were drowned, another 1,000 died quickly of starvation or cold, 500 were sent to other families and 30 survived the camp. It is believed that all of the mothers and all of the newborns survived childbirth.

In early 1945, the Nazis forced most inmates of Auschwitz to leave the camp on a “death march” to other camps. Leszczyńska refused to depart, and stayed in the camp until its liberation.

Leszczyńska’s legacy lived on long after the liberation of Auschwitz—both in the memories of the survivors whose babies she attempted to give a dignified birth, the lives of the few children who left the camp alive, and the work of her own children, all of whom survived the war and became physicians themselves.

“To this day I do not know at what price [she delivered my baby],” said Maria Saloman, whose baby Leszczyńska delivered, in the 1980s. “My Liz owes her life to Stanislawa Leszczyńska. I cannot think of her without tears coming to my eyes.”

Leszczyńska returned to life as a midwife in Lodz after the war and only began to discuss her time at Auschwitz when she retired in 1957. She is still revered in Poland and has been nominated for sainthood in the Catholic church. But even if she never becomes an official saint, her crucial work in a living hell speaks for itself. (history.com)

WORD OF THE DAY parvenu (PAHR-vuh-noo) which means one that has recently or suddenly risen to an unaccustomed position of wealth or power and has not yet gained the prestige, dignity, or manner associated with it. French has been generous in providing us with terms for obscure folks who suddenly strike it rich. In addition to parvenu, French has loaned us nouveau riche, arriviste, and roturier, all of which can describe a rich person of plebeian origins, especially one who is a bit snobby. Those colorful and slightly disparaging terms for the newly moneyed clearly show their French heritage, but it may be harder to see the French background of a term Massachusetts locals once used for coastal merchants made rich through the fishing trade: codfish aristocracy. Codfish comes from Middle English (beyond that its origin is a mystery), but aristocracy passed into English via Middle French (it is ultimately from Greek aristos, meaning "best"). (merriam-webster.com)

It's 33° this morning, feels like 21°, wind is from the west at 12 mph with gusts to 16 mph, humidity is 92%, dew point is 31°, pressure is 29.72 inches, cloud cover is 100%, and visibility is 10 miles. Today will be generally cloudy and a few flurries or snow showers are possible (20%)

ON THIS DAY in 1979, “The Dukes of Hazzard,” a television comedy about two good-old-boy cousins in the rural South and their souped-up 1969 Dodge Charger known as the General Lee, debuts on CBS. The show, which originally aired for seven seasons, centered around cousins Bo Duke (John Schneider) and Luke Duke (Tom Wopat) and their ongoing efforts to elude their nemeses, the crooked county commissioner “Boss” Jefferson Davis Hogg (Sorrell Booke) and the bumbling Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane (James Best).

“The Dukes of Hazzard” was known for its car chases and stunts and the General Lee, which had an orange paint job, a Confederate flag across its roof and the numbers “01” on its welded-shut doors, became a star of the show. The General Lee also had a horn that played the first 12 notes of the song “Dixie.” Due to all the fast driving, jumps and crashes, it was common for several different General Lees to be used during the filming of each episode.

The General Lee also had a CB (Citizens Band) radio and Luke and Bo Duke’s CB nicknames or “handles” were Lost Sheep #1 and Lost Sheep #2, respectively. “The Dukes of Hazzard” (along with the 1977 trucking movie “Smokey and the Bandit”) helped promote the CB craze that swept America from the mid 1970s to the early 1980s.

Among the other cars featured on the show were Boss Hogg’s white Cadillac Deville convertible, Uncle Jesse Duke’s (Denver Pyle) Ford pickup truck and various tow trucks and vehicles belonging to Cooter Davenport (Ben Jones), the local mechanic. Bo and Luke’s short-shorts wearing cousin Daisy Duke (Catherine Bach) drove a yellow Plymouth Roadrunner with black stripes and later a Jeep with a golden eagle emblem on the hood and the word “Dixie” on the doors.

The final episode of “The Dukes of Hazzard” originally aired on August 16, 1985. The show spawned several TV specials and a 2005 movie starring Johnny Knoxville, Seann William Scott and Jessica Simpson. (history.com)

DID YOU KNOW THAT At the outbreak of WWII, a young Polish doctor was finishing his medical studies and looking forward to using his skills for the well-being of his fellow citizens. Little did he know he was on the verge of an event so large it would change the course of history.

Eugeniusz Sławomir Łazowski was a Polish physician responsible for saving 8,000 Jews from certain death in the concentration camps of Nazi Germany. When the war was declared, Lazowski was drafted into the Polish Army as a Second Lieutenant on a Red Cross train. After the quick collapse of the Polish Army, he went into hiding, ultimately joining the resistance, which was in desperate need of capable medical staff.

In the meantime, Lazowski’s friend and colleague, Stanislaw Matulewicz had made a discovery. Following experiments, he concluded that by injecting dead typhus cells into a patient they would not have any symptoms of the disease nor the disease itself. However, a blood sample would contain the bacteria and therefore test positive for typhus.

It may not sound like much, but in occupied Poland, it became a clever way of saving thousands of lives. Matulewicz proved his discovery on a friend who obtained special leave from a work camp in Germany. His friend was willing to try anything, as he was certain he would not survive the hard labor he had been given.

When the doctor injected him with the vaccine, he tested positive for Epidemic Typhus. The results were sent back to Germany, and he was relieved of his duties in the work camp. More and more people were vaccinated, and less returned to the work camps.

Nazi Germany feared epidemics, as such diseases were hard to control or eradicate in wartime conditions. Typhus was one of the most dangerous diseases of the 20th century. It claimed hundreds of thousands of lives all over the world during and after the First World War.

Lazowski, knowing of the fear the Germans had for the disease, came up with a plan to stage a false typhus epidemic in Poland. He could prevent the Germans taking prisoners, as they would rather isolate the “sick” into quarantines, than risk any contact with them. He operated in a town called Stalowa Wola, where the Rozwadow ghetto had been established.

He knew he could not inject his Jewish neighbors with typhus, as the Germans would simply massacre them all to avoid an epidemic outbreak. Instead, he injected the vaccine into the inhabitants of neighboring suburbs, who were Poles. That way the whole town needed to be quarantined and the ghetto became untouchable. The Germans assumed the illness would eventually infect the ghetto and do their work for them.

To confirm this, a special medical team was sent to Rozwadow, where Dr. Lazewski welcomed them. They were offered food, which they accepted, and then collected numerous blood samples with haste. As the blood samples all showed signs of typhus, the case was proven. Rozwadow and the surrounding villages were quarantined.

Lazewski had outwitted the Nazis. His actions could easily have gotten him killed. Aiding Jews was punishable by death during the occupation of Poland. Towards the end of the war, however, the Germans became suspicious as the sick were not dying.

All clues led to one person; Eugeniusz Lazowski. He was tipped off to leave town by a German soldier he had previously helped. With his family, he managed to escape to Warsaw. German soldiers reportedly began killing Jews from the ghetto after that, but thankfully, the war ended before they could claim many lives.

After the war, Lazewski settled in the United States where he became a Professor of Pediatrics at the State University of Illinois in 1976. He wrote his memoirs entitled My Private War upon which a TV documentary was made in 1990. The program included testimonies from the people that survived the war thanks to him.

Eugenisz Lazewski, later renamed as Eugene, was named a Righteous Among Nations by the State of Israel, as one of the many Poles who helped the Jews during the Holocaust.(warhistoryonline.com)

WORD OF THE DAY sublimate (SUB-luh-mayt) which means:
1 : to pass or cause to pass directly from the solid to the vapor state
2 : to divert the expression of (an instinctual desire or impulse) from its unacceptable form to one that is considered more socially or culturally acceptable
To sublimate is to change the form, but not the essence. Physically speaking, it means to transform solid to vapor; psychologically, it means changing the outlet, or means, of expression from something base and inappropriate to something more positive or acceptable. The word sublimate comes from the Latin verb sublimare, which means "to lift up" or "to raise" and which is also the ancestor of our sublime. Sublimate itself once meant "to elevate to a place of dignity or honor" or "to give a more elevated character to," but these meanings are now obsolete.(merriam-webster.com)

First of all, a very Happy Birthday to Amy Burris!!

It's 34° right now, feels like 24°, wind is from the east at 12 mph, humidity is at 93%, dew point is 32°, pressure is 30.12 inches, cloud cover is 100%, and visibility is 7 miles. There is a special weather statement noting that there are areas of freezing drizzle and light snow. If you are in one of those areas, please be very careful.

ON THIS DAY Larry Nassar, a former doctor at Michigan State and for USA Gymnastics, is sentenced to 40 to 175 years in prison for sexual assault on January 24, 2018. Nassar was found guilty of using his position in sports medicine to abuse hundreds of women and girls in one of the most high-profile cases to arise from the #MeToo movement. The scandal resulted not only in his imprisonment, likely for the rest of his life, but also criticism of the institutions that failed to detect and respond to his behavior. In the wake of the revelations, the president of Michigan State and the entire board of USAG resigned, while Nassar’s accusers, which number over 260, received the Arthur Ashe Courage Award.

Nassar began working in sports medicine at a young age and began working as a trainer for the U.S. national gymnastics team in 1986. He later received his doctorate in osteopathic medicine from Michigan State and went on to work at the school’s College of Medicine as well as at the Karolyi Ranch, the Texas training center of the US gymnastics team. It was there that he sexually assaulted gymnast Maggie Nichols during a medical exam during a national team training camp in 2015. After a coach heard Nichols and another athlete discussing Nassar’s examinations, she reported the doctor to USAG. USAG contacted the Federal Bureau of Investigation but did not take immediate action against Nassar or notify his university.

Later that year, USAG cut ties with Nassar. A year later, in September 2016, the Indianapolis Star broke the news that two other gymnasts had accused him of sexual abuse, resulting in his firing from Michigan State. In November, Nassar was indicted on the charge of repeatedly abusing an unidentified child, beginning in 1998 when the child was six years old.

From there, the allegations snowballed. Three more athletes went public with their accusations on 60 Minutes in 2017, calling out the “emotionally abusive environment” at national team training camps. More came forward in subsequent interviews or using #MeToo on Twitter. Among the wave of accusers were several who had become household names for winning gold during the Rio 2016 Olympics, including McKayla Maroney, Aly Raisman, and Simone Biles. The involvement of athletes who had so recently been celebrated in the media further boosted the visibility of the Nassar case. All told, over 260 women have alleged that Nassar abused them, in many cases while they were still minors. An FBI raid found more than 37,000 images of child pornography in Nassar’s possession; he pleaded guilty to the possession charge in July of 2017.

The trials for Nassar’s other charges featured multiple days of testimony from his victims. He pled guilty to multiple allegations in Michigan state court, receiving a sentence of 40 to 175 years in prison, but will first serve a sentence of 60 years in federal prison for possession of child pornography.

In addition to Nassar’s convictions, the investigation brought scrutiny on the institutions that employed him. Reporting by the Star and other outlets found that USAG failed to adequately monitor its coaches and had knowingly refused to act on multiple allegations of abuse. At Michigan State, too, the problem proved to extend beyond Nassar. After allegations of repeated failure to investigate claims of assault against members of the football team, three players pled guilty to a lesser charge in a sexual assault case in 2018. The dean of the university’s school of osteopathic medicine, who oversaw Nassar’s clinic, was also charged with groping and possessing nude photos of a student.

A 2019 congressional report concluded that USAG, the university, the U.S. Olympic Committee, and even the FBI had all dragged their feet, allowing Nassar to continue to see patients as they slowly investigated and coordinated their response to the predicted public outcry. The university reached a settlement of $500 million with Nassar’s victims, the largest ever settlement of its kind, and former president Lou Anna Simon faces felony charges for lying to or misleading law enforcement regarding her knowledge of accusations against Nassar.

The Nassar case made international headlines. Nassar’s behavior and the failure of multiple institutions to protect his victims echoed many similar cases of serial abuse, such as Jerry Sandusky scandal at Penn State University or the decades of abuses committed by film producer Harvey Weinstein. The rapid expansion of the case from a few allegations to literally hundreds of women over multiple decades was a prime example of the power of the #MeToo movement. As with other cases brought to light in the #MeToo era, the Nassar case was both a sorely overdue reckoning with institutional abuse and a reminder that even the most prolific abusers can escape justice for decades. (history.com)

DID YOU KNOW THAT The scientific name for Giant Anteater is Myrmecophaga Tridactyla. This means “ant eating with three fingers”. (thefactsite.com)

WORD OF THE DAY euphoria (yoo-FOR-ee-uh) which means a feeling of well-being or elation. Health and happiness are often linked, sometimes even in etymologies. Nowadays euphoria generally refers to happiness, but it derives from euphoros, a Greek word that means "healthy." Given that root, it's not surprising that in its original English uses euphoria was a medical term. Its entry in an early 18th-century dictionary explains it as "the well-bearing of the Operation of a Medicine; that is, when the Sick Person finds himself eas'd or reliev'd by it." Modern physicians still use the term, but they aren't likely to prescribe something that will cause it. In contemporary medicine and psychology, euphoria can describe abnormal or inappropriate feelings such as those caused by an illicit drug or an illness. (merriam-webster.com)

Is this the January thaw?? Right now it's 34°, humidity is 77%, dew point is 28°, wind is from the south at 4 mph, pressure is at 30.11 inches, cloud cover is 100%, and visibility is 10 miles. We might get a few snow showers today and tonight (if the temperature drops some)

ON THIS DAY January 23, 1957, machines at the Wham-O toy company roll out the first batch of their aerodynamic plastic discs—now known to millions of fans all over the world as Frisbees.

The story of the Frisbee began in Bridgeport, Connecticut, where William Frisbie opened the Frisbie Pie Company in 1871. Students from nearby universities would throw the empty pie tins to each other, yelling “Frisbie!” as they let go. In 1948, Walter Frederick Morrison and his partner Warren Franscioni invented a plastic version of the disc called the “Flying Saucer” that could fly further and more accurately than the tin pie plates. After splitting with Franscioni, Morrison made an improved model in 1955 and sold it to the new toy company Wham-O as the “Pluto Platter”–an attempt to cash in on the public craze over space and Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs).

In 1958, a year after the toy’s first release, Wham-O—the company behind such top-sellers as the Hula-Hoop, the Super Ball and the Water Wiggle—changed its name to the Frisbee disc, misspelling the name of the historic pie company. A company designer, Ed Headrick, patented the design for the modern Frisbee in December 1967, adding a band of raised ridges on the disc’s surface–called the Rings–to stabilize flight. By aggressively marketing Frisbee-playing as a new sport, Wham-O sold over 100 million units of its famous toy by 1977.

High school students in Maplewood, New Jersey, invented Ultimate Frisbee, a cross between football, soccer and basketball, in 1967. In the 1970s, Headrick himself invented Frisbee Golf, in which discs are tossed into metal baskets; there are now hundreds of courses in the U.S., with millions of devotees. There is also Freestyle Frisbee, with choreographed routines set to music and multiple discs in play, and various Frisbee competitions for both humans and dogs–the best natural Frisbee players.

Today, at least 60 manufacturers produce the flying discs—generally made out of plastic and measuring roughly 20-25 centimeters (8-10 inches) in diameter with a curved lip. The official Frisbee is owned by Mattel Toy Manufacturers, who bought the toy from Wham-O in 1994. (history.com)

DID YOU KNOW THAT The Buddha commonly depicted in statues and pictures is a different person entirely. The real Buddha was actually incredibly skinny because of self-deprivation. (thefactsite.com)

WORD OF THE DAY outlandish (out-LAN-dish) which means:
1 : of or relating to another country : foreign
2 a : strikingly out of the ordinary : bizarre
b : exceeding proper or reasonable limits or standards
3 : remote from civilization
In olden times, English speakers used the phrase "outlandish man" to refer to a foreigner—or, one who came from an outland, which originally meant "a foreign land." From here, outlandish broadened in usage from a word meaning "from another land" to one describing something unfamiliar or strange. Dress was a common early target for the adjective; English novelist Henry Fielding, in Tom Jones (1749), writes of a woman who was "drest in one of your outlandish Garments." Nowadays, the word can be applied to anything that strikes us as out of the ordinary, from bizarre conspiracy theories to exaggerated boasting. (merriam-webster.com)

August 29, 1924 ~ January 8, 2020 (age 95)

I'm off-island tomorrow morning on an 8:00 flight for a dentist appointment, so hopefully Joe will pick up my slack. It's 26° outside this morning, feels like 11°, cloudy skies, wind is from the WSW at 15 mph with gusts to 21 mph, humidity is at 78%, dew point is 20°, pressure is 30.41 inches, cloud cover is 91% and visibility is 10 miles.

ON THIS DAY On January 21, 1990, at the Australian Open in Melbourne, American tennis player John McEnroe becomes the first player since 1963 to be disqualified from a Grand Slam tournament for misconduct.

A left-handed serve-and-volleyer with a masterful touch, McEnroe was a dominant force in professional tennis in the early 1980s, winning three Wimbledon and four U.S. Open titles between 1979 and 1984, against such formidable opponents as Bjorn Borg, Jimmy Connors and Ivan Lendl. Over his career, he would win 17 total Grand Slams, including nine in men’s doubles and one in mixed doubles. His Davis Cup record was 41-8 in singles and 18-2 in doubles, and he helped the United States win five Cups. McEnroe’s masterful play was often overshadowed, however, by his explosive temper. Always a fan favorite, McEnroe was dubbed “Superbrat” by the British tabloids at the age of 20 and was famous on the tour for his constant arguments and badmouthing of umpires and linesmen.

At the 1990 Australian Open, the 30-year-old McEnroe was trying to win his first major tournament since the 1984 U.S. Open. On January 21, he took on Sweden’s Mikael Pernfors, a two-time National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) champion, in the fourth round. McEnroe won the first set easily, but Pernfors lifted the level of his game to win the second set. After the players traded service breaks in the third, McEnroe led 2-1. During the changeover, he stopped in front of a lineswoman he thought had made a bad call, glaring at her while bouncing a ball on his racket. The chair umpire, Gerry Armstrong, gave McEnroe a conduct code violation for unsportsmanlike conduct.

Bigger trouble began in the seventh game of the fourth set, with McEnroe leading overall 6-1, 4-6, 7-5, 2-4. Hitting a forehand wide to go down 15-30, McEnroe threw his racket to the ground, where it bounced on the court’s hard surface. Another wide McEnroe forehand prompted another racket smash, this one cracking the racket’s head. Armstrong called another code violation, for racket abuse, and McEnroe started swearing at him, demanding the intervention of Ken Farrar, the Grand Slam chief of supervisors. Farrar arrived and spoke with McEnroe, whose continued complaints and swears were audible to spectators and TV viewers. With Farrar’s authorization, Armstrong called a third and final code violation: “Default Mr. McEnroe. Game, set, match.” The crowd of 150,000 rose to their feet, booing and chanting their support for McEnroe, as McEnroe himself stood with his hands on his hips, stunned. The last player to be disqualified from a Grand Slam for misconduct had been Willie Alvarez of Spain, in the 1963 French Open, 17 years earlier.

In a press conference following the match, a subdued McEnroe explained that he had misunderstood the rules, and was unaware that the previous year’s four-step process to default had been changed to a new three-step rule: first a warning, then a point penalty, then a default. (history.com)

DID YOU KNOW THAT There is actually a difference between coffins and caskets – coffins are typically tapered and six-sided, while caskets are rectangular. (thefactsite.com)

WORD OF THE DAY bonhomie (bah-nuh-MEE) which means good-natured easy friendliness. English speakers borrowed bonhomie from French, where the word was created from bonhomme, which means "good-natured man" and is itself a composite of two other French words: bon, meaning "good," and homme, meaning "man." That French compound traces to two Latin terms, bonus (meaning "good") and homo (meaning either "man" or "human being"). English speakers have warmly embraced bonhomie and its meaning, but we have also anglicized the pronunciation in a way that may make native French speakers cringe. (We hope they will be good-natured about it!) (merriam-webster.com)

Cloudy skies this morning, 24°, feels like 14°. wind is from the WNW at 9 mph, humidity is 64%, dew point is 13°, pressure is rising from 30.48 inches, cloud cover is 100%, and visibility is 10 miles.

ON THIS DAY One of America’s most beloved actresses, Audrey Hepburn, dies on January 20, 1993, near her home in Lausanne, Switzerland. The 63-year-old Hepburn had undergone surgery for colon cancer the previous November.

The daughter of an aristocratic Dutch mother and an English businessman father, Hepburn was born in Brussels, Belgium, and educated mostly in England. During World War II, the young Audrey and her mother were in the Netherlands when the Nazis invaded that country. The war left a permanent mark on Hepburn’s family: An uncle and a cousin were executed, and one of her brothers was interned in a Nazi labor camp. At war’s end, Hepburn was finally able to return to England, where she modeled and began landing parts in movies as a chorus girl and dancer. While shooting one of these films in Monaco, the lithe and graceful Hepburn was spotted by the French author Colette, who recommended her for the starring role in the upcoming theatrical adaptation of her novel Gigi.

Gigi opened in November 1951 at New York City’s Fulton Theater, and Hepburn received glowing reviews for her performance. Impressed with her screen test, the director William Wyler held production on his film Roman Holiday while Hepburn finished her run on Broadway. “That girl,” Wyler is said to have remarked after filming was completed, “is going to be the biggest star in Hollywood.” After the release of Roman Holiday in 1953, his prediction seemed well on its way to coming true: Hepburn won an Academy Award for Best Actress for her role as a princess on the loose in Rome who falls in love with a journalist (Gregory Peck). The same year, she won a Tony Award for her starring turn in Broadway’s Ondine.

Slim, elegant and unfailingly stylish, Hepburn turned the image of the bosomy blonde Hollywood starlet on its head, presenting a new ideal of beauty for millions of moviegoers. In Sabrina (1954), Funny Face (1957) and Love in the Afternoon (1957), she matched off with Hollywood’s leading men (William Holden and Humphrey Bogart, Fred Astaire, and Gary Cooper, respectively). Hepburn’s embodiment of Holly Golightly, the ultimate free spirit, in Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961) was one of her most enduringly popular roles, and earned her a fourth Oscar nomination for Best Actress. (She was also nominated for Sabrina and 1959’s A Nun’s Story). In 1964, controversy flared when Hepburn was chosen to play Eliza Doolittle in the film version of the musical My Fair Lady, beating out Julie Andrews, who had originated the role on Broadway. Playing opposite Rex Harrison, Hepburn acquitted herself well, although her singing was dubbed (by Marni Nixon).

In 1967, Hepburn got her fifth Academy Award nomination for her performance as a blind woman whose house is burglarized in Wait UntilDark. Soon after that, she left full-time acting and lived mostly in Switzerland, appearing infrequently in movies that were both praised (1976’s Robin and Marian with Sean Connery) and panned (1979’s Bloodline and 1981’s They All Laughed). Married to the actor Mel Ferrer in 1954, Hepburn had two sons with him before they divorced in 1968; the following year she married Andrea Dotti, an Italian psychiatrist, with whom she had one son. They later divorced, and she began a relationship with Robert Wolders, a Dutch actor, in 1980.

Hepburn’s most significant work over the last two decades of her life was not captured on film. Named a special ambassador for UNICEF, the United Nation’s children’s fund, in 1988, Hepburn traveled extensively raising money and awareness for the organization. Her UNICEF field trips spanned the globe, from Guatemala, Honduras, Venezuela and El Salvador, to Turkey, Thailand, Bangladesh and Sudan. In addition to field work, Hepburn was an eloquent public voice for the organization, testifying before the U.S. Congress, participating in the World Summit for Children and giving numerous speeches and interviews about UNICEF’s work. In 1992, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Even after she was diagnosed with cancer, Hepburn continued her travel and work for UNICEF. Mourned by countless fans, she was posthumously given the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award at the 1993 Academy Awards, which her son accepted on her behalf. In her last screen appearance–Steven Spielberg’s Always (1989)–Hepburn played an angel guiding the movie’s protagonist to heaven, and the role served as a fitting reflection of the screen goddess’s public image during the last years of her life. (history.com)

DID YOU KNOW THAT Calling “shotgun” when riding in a car comes from the term “shotgun messenger”.This term which was used to refer to the guard who sat next to the Stagecoach driver. The guards would use a shotgun to keep robbers and criminals away. It made its way into society due to Hollywood’s love of Western flicks. (thefactsite.com)

WORD OF THE DAY dauntless (DAWNT-lus) which means incapable of being intimidated or subdued: fearless, undaunted. The history of the world is peopled with dauntless men and women who refused to be "subdued" or "tamed" by fear. The word dauntless can be traced back to Latin domare, meaning "to tame" or "to subdue." When our verb daunt (a domare descendant adopted by way of Anglo-French) was first used in the 14th century, it shared these meanings. The now-obsolete "tame" sense referred to the taming or breaking of wild animals, particularly horses: an undaunted horse was an unbroken horse. Not until the late 16th century did we use undaunted with the meaning "undiscouraged and courageously resolute" to describe people. By then, such lionhearted souls could also be described as "undauntable" as well as "dauntless." (merriam-webster.com)

It's a wee bit nippy this morning at 17°, feels like 4°, wind is from the north at 10 mph with gusts to 20 mph, humidity is 75%, dew point is 10°, pressure is rising from 30.00 inches, cloud cover is 90%, and visibility is 10 miles. Looks like its going to be one of those gray, winter days with lots of cloudy skies.

ON THIS DAY in 1966, following the death of Indian Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri, Indira Gandhi becomes head of the Congress Party and thus prime minister of India. She was India’s first female head of government and by the time of her assassination in 1984 was one of its most controversial.

Gandhi was the daughter of Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of the independent Republic of India. She became a national political figure in 1955, when she was elected to the executive body of the Congress Party. In 1959, she served as president of the party and in 1964 was appointed to an important post in Lal Bahadur Shastri’s ruling government. Soon after becoming prime minister, Gandhi was challenged by the right wing of the Congress Party, and in the 1967 election she won only a narrow victory and thus had to rule with a deputy prime minister.

In 1971, she won a resounding reelection victory over the opposition and became the undisputed leader of India. That year, she ordered India’s invasion of Pakistan in support of the creation of Bangladesh, which won her greater popularity and led her New Congress Party to a landslide victory in national elections in 1972.

During the next few years, she presided over increasing civil unrest brought on by food shortages, inflation, and regional disputes. Her administration was criticized for its strong-arm tactics in dealing with these problems. Meanwhile, charges by the Socialist Party that she had defrauded the 1971 election led to a national scandal. In 1975, the High Court in Allahabad convicted her of a minor election infraction and banned her from politics for six years. In response, she declared a state of emergency throughout India, imprisoned thousands of political opponents, and restricted personal freedoms in the country. Among several unpopular programs during this period was the forced sterilization of men and women as a means of controlling population growth.

In 1977, long-postponed national elections were held, and Gandhi and her party were swept from office. The next year, Gandhi’s supporters broke from the Congress Party and formed the Congress (I) Party, with the “I” standing for “Indira.” Later in 1978, she was briefly imprisoned for official corruption. Soon after the ruling Janata Party fell apart, the Congress (I) Party, with Indira as its head, won a spectacular election victory in 1980, and Gandhi was again prime minister.

In the early 1980s, several regional states intensified their call for greater autonomy from New Delhi, and the Sikh secessionist movement in Punjab resorted to violence and terrorism. In 1984, the Sikh leaders set up base in their sacred Golden Temple in Amritsar. Gandhi responded by sending the Indian army in, and hundreds of Sikhs were killed in the government assault. In retaliation, Sikh members of Gandhi’s own bodyguard gunned her down on the grounds of her home on October 31, 1984. She was succeeded by her son, Rajiv Gandhi. (history.com)

DID YOU KNOW THAT In 2006, a Coca-Cola employee offered to sell Coca-Cola secrets to Pepsi. Pepsi responded by notifying Coca-Cola. (thefactsite.com)

WORD OF THE DAY intercalate (in-TER-kuh-layt) which means:
1 : to insert (something, such as a day) in a calendar
2 : to insert between or among existing elements or layers
Intercalate was formed from the Latin prefix inter-, meaning "between" or "among," and the Latin verb calāre, meaning "to proclaim" or "to announce." It was originally associated with proclaiming the addition of a day or month in a calendar. An instance of intercalation occurred in the earliest versions of the Roman calendar, which originally consisted of 304 days and 10 months and was determined by the lunar cycle (the remaining 61.25 days of winter were apparently ignored). According to some Roman legends, it was Numa Pompilius, the second king of Rome, who intercalated the months January and February. Eventually, the word's use broadened to include other instances of introducing new elements or layers into a preexisting system. (merriam-webster.com)

Great Lakes Islands Summit Final Report

December 20, 2019

View the complete document HERE

Emerald Ash Borer Report from the BIAA

View map of EAB Traps HERE

The Founding Documents for the Airport Commission

The Intergovernmental Agreement

The Rules for Procedure

Beaver Island Transfer Station Information

BI Transfer Station and Recycle Center

Beaver Island Transfer Station Rates Effective 1_2019

The Emerald Ash Borer and Wood Movement to the Islands

In 2019, the Townships of Peaine and St. James passed an ordinance regulating and banning the movement of firewood, logs, lumber and wood pallets from the mainland to the Beaver Island Archipelago. Any wood brought to the Islands had to be bark free and/or processed in a manner which made it free of insects and disease.

The major concern was for the forests of the Archipelago, as there has been a massive incursion of the Emerald Ash Borer in the State of Michigan-- which has devastated the Ash tree population on the Michigan mainland. In hopes of keeping the Beaver Islands free of infestation, island volunteers have been monitoring our forests for years, with the help of the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development.

In 2017, an Emerald Ash Borer trap captured a female emerald ash borer. Tests in 2018 and this spring have also found the beetle’s larvae in two isolated Ash locations on Beaver Island. A full court press has ensued with a multidisciplinary team coming to the Island in March of this year to conduct surveys and to begin eradication processes. The team, consisting of the Michigan Department of Agriculture, Michigan Department of Natural Resources and the Charlevoix-Antrim-Kalkaska-Emmet Cooperative Invasive Species Management Area (COKE CISMA) and volunteer members of the Beaver Island Association.

Pamela Grassmick, a resident of Beaver Island and a member of the Beaver Island Association, has been instrumental in bringing attention to the issue. She and others have worked for over a decade in monitoring our forests and wetlands for invasive species of all kinds. “We actually stripped the trees and looked at the larvae. There are different stages of the larvae and we found all stages present in two spots on the island,” Grassmick said.

Due to the early detection and the control methods now in place, forestry experts think Beaver Island has a good chance of controlling this pest. “The professionals feel confident we can control this on the island – if we get on top of it right now,” Grassmick said.

To that end, the Townships have passed this ordinance and will plan on enforcing it. Signs, bringing attention to the Ordinance, will be placed at all ports of entry to the island. The Beaver Island Ferry Company and both airports will have warning signs placed where travelers to the Islands can see them. Businesses, campgrounds and other gathering places will also post these signs. Pam Grassmick adds: “The Beaver Island Townships’ signs are a vital step in controlling the movement of untreated wood which could harbor invasive forest pests. Islanders recognize that the ecology and economic future are dependent on the health of our forests and it is great to see the township’s support in action.”

All are encouraged to buy or obtain fire wood locally, and to be especially mindful not to move Ash wood around the island or between the islands of the Beaver Island Archipelago.

For more information on the Emerald Ash Borer and the work that is taking place to eradicate it, please go to the Beaver Island Association website: www beaverislandassociation.org. The Township websites will also carry more information about this ordinance.

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