Bayard Rustin

The Man Who Organized The March On Washington
by CHERYL CORLEY
August 15, 2013 5:42 PM
http://www.npr.org/

The trailblazing strategist behind the 1963 March on Washington will this year by posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. That's a long way from the days when civil rights activists counted on Bayard Rustin's hard work, but tried to push him aside because he was gay.

For 60 years, Rustin fought for peace and equal rights — demonstrating, organizing and protesting in the United States and around the world.

'Strategic Nonviolence'

In the summer of 1963, he was the main organizer of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. On Aug. 28, speaker after speaker roused a crowd of 250,000, including Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., with his seminal "I Have A Dream" speech.

Rustin had less than two months to organize what was the largest demonstration the country had ever seen.

"As we follow this form of mass action and strategic nonviolence," he said. "We will not only put pressure on the government, but we will put pressure on other groups which ought by their nature to be allied with us."

Washington, D.C.'s Congressional Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton was a law student in 1963 and a volunteer for the march. Rustin was her boss. "Bayard was one of a kind, and his talent was so enormous," she says.

"The great achievement of the March on Washington is that Rustin had to work from the ground up," Norton says. "There had been many marches from the South ... but calling people from all over the country to come to Washington, the capital of the United States, was unheard of."

Speaking Truth To Power

Rustin grew up in West Chester, Pa. In college in the 1930s, he joined the Communist Youth League for a few years, attracted by the group's anti-racist efforts. He later embraced Socialism.

He was a gay black man, tall, with high cheekbones, and a gifted singer. He played a bit part in a Broadway musical alongside Paul Robeson, and Rustin often sang for his audiences as he toured the country, conducting race-relations workshops.

Rustin was considered a master organizer, a political intellectual and a pacifist; he served time in prison for refusing to register for the draft. He created the first Freedom Rides, which challenged segregation on interstate buses. Along with Dr. King, Rustin was one of the founders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

He had two strong mentors. A.J. Muste, the head of the pacifist organization the Fellowship of Reconciliation, hired Rustin as a youth secretary to conduct workshops and demonstrations against war and segregation. Rustin's other mentor was A. Philip Randolph, the head of the first predominantly black union, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters.

"What Rustin took away from Randolph, especially, is the recognition that economic issues and racial justice issues are completely intertwined," D'Emilio says.

Despite his extensive involvement in the civil rights movement, Rustin was content to remain behind the scenes, says his biographer, John D'Emilio.

"I think of it as part of the Quaker heritage that he internalized. You don't push yourself forward," D'Emilio says. "It doesn't matter if you don't get the credit for it. What is important is this notion of speaking truth to power."

A Matter Of Orientation

In 1953, Rustin's homosexuality became a public problem after he was found having sex in a parked car with two men. He was arrested on a morals charge. Later, when he was chosen to organize the 1963 March, some civil rights activists objected. In an effort to discredit the march, segregationist Sen. Strom Thurmond took to the Senate floor, where he derided Rustin for being a communist, a draft dodger and a homosexual. Ironically, author D'Emilo says, it became a rallying point — for the civil rights leaders.

"Because no one could appear to be on the side of Strom Thurmond, he created, unwittingly, an opportunity for Rustin's sexuality to stop being an issue," he says.

The march was a success, and at its end, a triumphant Rustin stepped up to the microphone to read the demands that the leaders of the civil rights movement would take to President John F. Kennedy.

First on the list: "effective Civil Rights legislation — no compromise, no filibuster — and that it include public accommodations, decent housing, integrated education, [fair employment], and the right to vote."

Rustin wanted to move the civil rights agenda from protesting to politics and to work within the system — blacks and whites together — to create jobs and other opportunities. His effort fell flat, stymied by a more militant generation and the dominant issue of the times, the Vietnam War. Rustin said, "It has split the civil rights movement down the middle. It has caused many white people who were in it to say, 'That must wait now until we stop Vietnam.' "

'A Visionary'

In his later years, Rustin continued to speak out on a variety of fronts, and his personal life also changed: He met Walter Naegle.

Naegle, Rustin's surviving partner, says that in the final years of his life, Rustin became more involved in gay rights.

"He saw this as another challenge, another barrier that had to be broken down — a larger struggle for human rights and for individual freedoms," Neagle says.

Or, as Rustin put it:

"The barometer of judging the character of people in regards to human rights is now those who consider themselves gay, homosexual, lesbian. The judgment as to whether you can trust the future, the social advancement, depending on people, will be judged on where they come out on that question."

Activist Mandy Carter says Rustin was a visionary, understanding the parallels in the civil rights struggle and the gay rights movement. Carter is on the leadership council the National Black Justice Coalition, an LGBT civil rights group.

"For me and for a lot of us who are black, and gay and lesbian, bi, trans, who see ourselves as social justice advocates as well, to have this person — such an amazing role model," she says.

Carter says there was just no one like him, and she is delighted such a key individual in the civil rights movement is now being recognized with the nation's highest honor.

Rustin died in 1987 in New York. He was 75.

The Great Emu War of 1932

This is really off track from The Great War, but it is a hoot and I needed to share. Once I post this, I can get back to Persian and my Polish Armored Division projects. I promise Mark.

So I was taking Maya my administrative assistant and dog for a walk. I will often listen to podcasts at random. My wife and daughter will tease me about having an iPod and no music on it. Well today I was listening to one from the folks over at Stuff You Missed in History Class and it was dealing with returning Great War veterans to western Australia. (I knew if I tried hard enough I could get the tie in.)

I hope you will take the time to listen to it but in essence, these veterans went west to farm on substandard land and had to fight, bureaucracy, prices drops, droughts, the Great Depression and rabbits. The last straw was to be Emus, 20,000 of them.

If you want, think of them as big locust that likes to eat, bugs, fruit and wheat. This was a huge problem for these substance farmers.

They asked their state government for help and they dispatched the army. Well it was a group of soldiers, a Major and two Lewis machine guns. So what could go wrong?

Well the Emus were not dumb and learned to avoid the solders. They were also hard to hit. They headed for different watering holes and in the process ran over the crops that they had not already eaten.

After 10,000 rounds of ammunition and a few dead birds the government in Canberra got wind of this and called a stop to it. A second attempt was tried and that failed as well.

My favorite line from the Australian House of Representatives over this has to be,

“They can face machine guns with the invulnerability of tanks. They are like Zulus whom even dum-dum bullets could not stop.”

It is hard to hit a 40mph bird running for the trees.

So for the gaming question, were can I buy a couple thousand emus in 28mm to go with these solders?

The Movies of Seinfeld

Imagining the 'Seinfeld' Movie Posters

By Adam D'Arpino | Aug 13, 2013 | 12:00 PM

http://www.nextmovie.com/

Remember "Seinfeld"? Of course you do. Remember how every episode was funny about fifty different ways? Remember how occasionally Jerry, George, Elaine and Kramer would go to fictitious movies with hilarious titles and characters that were frequently voiced by an off-camera Larry David?

Us, too. That's why we've decided to revisit the best fake movies "Seinfeld" had to offer ... and update their posters to reflect who might be cast in them in 2013. And because, after over 15 years, we'd still rather check out "Sack Lunch" than "The English Patient" any day.

Artwork courtesy of Old Red Jalopy

Dick Francis

Dick Francis

Born 31 October 1920

Tenby, Pembrokeshire, Wales

Died 14 February 2010 (aged 89)

Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands, Caribbean

Occupation Jockey-turned-novelist

Language English

Nationality British

Ethnicity Welsh

Citizenship United Kingdom

Period 1957–2010

Genres Crime fiction

Spouse(s) Mary Margaret (née Brenchley; m. 1947–2000)

Children Merrick, Felix

http://en.wikipedia.org/

www.dickfrancis.com

Richard Stanley "Dick" Francis CBE FRSL (31 October 1920 – 14 February 2010) was a British steeplechase jockey and crime writer, whose novels centre around horse racing in England, while also featuring a variety of locations and occupations. A columnist for The Houston Chronicle said that Francis "writes believable fairy tales for adults - ones in which the actors are better than we are but are believable enough to make us wonder if indeed we could not one day manage to emulate them."

Francis was born in Coedcanlas, Pembrokeshire, Wales. Some sources report his birthplace as the inland town of Lawrenny, but at least two of his obituaries stated his birthplace as the coastal town of Tenby. His autobiography says that he was born at his maternal grandparents' farm at Coedcanlas on the estuary of the River Cleddau, roughly a mile north-west of Lawrenny. He was the son of a jockey and stable manager and he grew up in Berkshire, England. He left school at 15 without any qualifications, with the intention of becoming a jockey and became a trainer in 1938.

During World War II, Francis volunteered, hoping to join the cavalry. Instead, he served in the Royal Air Force, working as ground crew and later piloting fighter and bomber aircraft, including the Spitfire and Hurricane. He said in an interview that he spent much of his six years in the Air Force in Africa.

In October 1945, he met Mary Margaret Brenchley (17 June 1924 – 30 September 2000), at a cousin's wedding. In most interviews, they say that it was love at first sight. (Francis has some of his characters fall similarly in love within moments of meeting, as in the novels Flying Finish, Knockdown, and The Edge.) Their families were not entirely happy with their engagement, but Dick and Mary were married in June, 1947, in London. She had earned a degree in English and French from London University at the age of 19, was an assistant stage manager and later worked as a publisher's reader. She also became a pilot, and her experiences flying contributed to many novels, including Flying Finish, Rat Race, and Second Wind. She contracted polio while pregnant with their first child, a plight dramatized to a greater extent in the novel Forfeit, which Francis called one of his favorites. They had two sons, Merrick and Felix (born 1953).

In the 1980s, Francis and his wife moved to Florida; in 1992, they moved to the Cayman Islands, where Mary died of a heart attack in 2000. In 2006, Francis had a heart bypass operation; in 2007 his right leg was amputated. He died of natural causes on 14 February 2010 at his Caribbean home in Grand Cayman, survived by both sons.

Horse racing career

After leaving the RAF in 1946, Francis became a celebrity in the world of British National Hunt racing. He won over 350 races, becoming champion jockey in the 1953–54 season.

Shortly after becoming a professional, he was offered the prestige job of first jockey to Vivian Smith, Lord Bicester.

From 1953 to 1957 he was jockey to Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother. His most famous moment as a jockey came while riding the Queen Mother's horse, Devon Loch, in the 1956 Grand National when the horse inexplicably fell when close to winning the race. Decades later, Francis considered losing that race his greatest regret and called it "a disaster of massive proportions."

Like most jump jockeys, Francis had his share of injuries. Unlike most, he was hospitalized at the age of 12 when a pony fell on him and broke his jaw and nose. A career featuring broken bones and damaged organs found its way into many novels, whose narrators suffer a variety of damaged bodies. In 1957, after one too many serious falls, the Queen Mother's adviser, Lord Abergavenny, advised him that she wanted him to retire from racing for her.

Contributions to racing

In 1983, the Grand National at Aintree Racecourse in England "stood at the brink of extinction," according to The Philadelphia Inquirer. News reporter Don Clippinger wrote, "Britain's Jockey Club negotiated a $14 million deal to buy the land and save the race forever. The only problem was that the Jockey Club did not have $14 million, so two prominent racing personalities - Lord Derby and novelist Dick Francis - were selected to raise the money in a worldwide campaign." Other philanthropists, including Charles C. Fenwick Jr., who rode Ben Nevis to victory in the 1980 Grand National, and Paul Mellon, a breeder and racing enthusiast, also contributed to save the race.

Writing career

Francis wrote more than 40 international best-sellers. His first book was his autobiography The Sport of Queens (1957), for which he was offered the aid of a ghostwriter, which he spurned. The book's success led to his becoming the racing correspondent for London's Sunday Express newspaper, and he remained in the job for 16 years.

In 1962, he published his first thriller, Dead Cert, set in the world of racing. Subsequently he regularly produced a novel a year for the next 38 years, missing only 1998 (during which he published a short-story collection). Although all his books were set against a background of horse racing, his male heroes held a variety of jobs including artist (In the Frame and To the Hilt), private investigator (Odds Against, Whip Hand, Come to Grief, Under Orders—all starring injured ex-jockey Sid Halley, one of only two heroes used more than once), investigator for the Jockey Club (The Edge), pilot (Rat Race and Flying Finish), wine merchant (Proof) and many others. All the novels are narrated by the hero, who in the course of the story discovers himself to be more resourceful, brave, tricky, than he had thought, and usually finds a certain salvation for himself as well as bestowing it on others. Details of other people's occupations fascinated Francis, and the reader finds himself or herself immersed in the mechanics of such things as photography, accountancy, the gemstone trade, restaurant service on transcontinental trains—but always in the interests of the plot. Dysfunctional families were a subject which he exploited particularly well (Reflex, a baleful grandmother, Hot Money, a multi-millionaire father and serial ex-husband, Decider, the related co-owners of a racecourse).

Writing routine

Francis described a typical year of research and writing to an interviewer in 1989:

In January, he sits down to write, staring down the barrel of a deadline. "My publisher comes over in mid-May to collect the manuscript," he says, "and it's got to be done."

The book's publication takes place in England in September. American publication in past years has been in February, although his next book, Straight, is set to be published in November. Once the manuscript is out of his hands, he takes the summer off, while percolating the plot of his next book. Research on the next book begins in late summer and continues through the fall, while he's gearing up for his promotional tour for the just-published book. Come January, he sits down to write again.

He doesn't like book tours. He is not one for revelations, major life changes, and intimacies with strange interviewers, and he says he gets tired of answering the same questions again and again.

He shuns the lecture circuit. He'd prefer to let his novels and his sales volume speak for themselves... And though he doesn't love the act of writing a 2287038nd [sic] [and] could easily retire, he finds himself planning his new book as each summer ends.

He says, "Each one, you think to yourself, 'This is the last one,' but then, by September, you're starting again. If you've got money, and you're just having fun, people think you're a useless character."

Or, as independently wealthy Tor Kelsey says in The Edge, explaining why he works for a minuscule salary: "I work... because I like it, I'm not all that bad at what I do, really, and it's useful, and I'm not terribly good at twiddling my thumbs."

Collaboration

Francis collaborated extensively in his fiction with his wife, Mary, until her death, which came as a later surprise to some readers and reviewers. He credited her with being a great researcher for the novels. In 1981, Don Clippinger interviewed the Francises for The Philadelphia Inquirer and wrote, "When Dick Francis sits down each January to begin writing another of his popular mystery-adventure novels, it is almost a certain bet that his wife, Mary, has developed a new avocation... For instance, in Rat Race, operated an air-taxi service that specialized in carrying jockeys, trainers and owners to distant race courses. Before that book came out in 1970, Mrs. Francis obtained a pilot's license and was operating an air-taxi service of her own. Francis' newest novel, Reflex, is built around photography, and sure enough, Mary Francis has become accomplished behind the camera and in the darkroom... And, in their condominium, they have set up the subject of his 20th novel [Twice Shy] - a computer. While he is touring the country, she is working on new computer programs."

Mary Amoroso wrote for New Jersey's The Record, "Mary does much of the research: She went so far as to learn to fly a plane for Flying Finish. She also edits his manuscripts, and serves as sounding board for plot line and character development. Says Francis, 'At least the research keeps her from going out shopping.'"Francis told interviewers Jean Swanson and Dean James, Mary and I worked as a team. ... I have often said that I would have been happy to have both our names on the cover. Mary's family always called me Richard due to having another Dick in the family. I am Richard, Mary was Mary, and Dick Francis was the two of us together.

Francis' manager (and co-author of his later books) was his son Felix, who left his post as teacher of A-Level Physics at Bloxham School in Oxfordshire in order to work for his father. Felix was the inspiration behind a leading character, a marksman and physics teacher, in the novel Twice Shy. The older son, Merrick, was a racehorse trainer and later ran his own horse transport business, which inspired the novel Driving Force.

Father and son collaborated on four novels; after Dick's death, Felix carried on to publish novels with his father's name in the title (Dick Francis's Gamble (2011), Dick Francis's Bloodline (2012)).

Adaptations

His first novel, Dead Cert, was filmed under the same title in 1974. Directed by Tony Richardson, it starred Scott Antony, Judi Dench and Michael Williams. It was adapted again as Favorit (a Russian made-for-television movie) in 1977.

Francis's protagonist Sid Halley was featured in six TV movies made for the program The Dick Francis Thriller: The Racing Game (1979-1980), starring Mike Gwilym as Halley and Mick Ford as his partner, Chico Barnes. One of the shows, Odds Against, used a Francis title; the others were created for the program.

Three more TV films of 1989 were adaptations of Bloodsport, In the Frame, and Twice Shy, all starring Ian McShane and featuring protagonist David Cleveland, a name actually used only once by Francis, in the novel Slayride.

Honours

Francis is the only three-time recipient of the Mystery Writers of America's Edgar Award for Best Novel, winning for Forfeit in 1970, Whip Hand in 1981, and Come To Grief in 1996. Britain's Crime Writers Association awarded him its Gold Dagger Award for fiction in 1979 and the Cartier Diamond Dagger Lifetime Achievement Award in 1989. he was granted another Lifetime Achievement Award . Tufts University awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1991. In 1996 he was given the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Award, the highest honour bestowed by the MWA. In 2000, he was granted the Malice Domestic Award for Lifetime Achievement. He was created an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1983 and promoted to Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2000.

Mary Amoroso wrote in 1989, "And yet he has a keen sense of the evanescence of literary endeavors. 'Whole months of work can be gone in four hours,' he says ruefully. 'People say they can't put my books down, and so they read them in one sitting of four hours.' Francis has been long accustomed to celebrity as a British sports star, but today he is a worldwide phenomenon, having been published in 22 languages. In Australia, he is recognized in restaurants, from his book-jacket picture. He and Mary will see people reading the novels on planes and trains."

Francis was elected in 1999 a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Grover, John John, Lost Paperclips, and Figgy Fizz Bottle Caps

Treasures of New York

Flo Jo

Norbert

Sprites

Sprites: A Rarely Seen Sky Phenomenon Caught On Camera

by EYDER PERALTA

August 13, 2013 3:36 PM

When thunderstorms emit lightning, we see the white, snaking electricity from the ground. But if you flew above the clouds, you would see a sky phenomenon known as sprites.

These are rarely seen bolts of red light that look like very fast burning sparklers. The Capital Weather Gang over at The Washington Post describes them like this:

"[Sprites] can reach 50-60 miles into space and penetrate downward into the middle of the stratosphere (15-20 miles high) with jellyfish-like tendrils."

What's more, they last only milliseconds. As you can imagine, that makes them terribly hard to capture, but scientist and University of Alaska, Fairbanks graduate student Jason Ahrns did just that when he photographed and videotaped the phenomenon from the National Center for Atmospheric Research's Gulfstream-V plane.

The results are stunning. Here's one image Ahrns took on Monday over Red Willow County, Neb.:

Sprites sparkle over Red Willow County, Neb., on Monday.

Jason Ahrns/via Flickr

And here's a video he took at 10,000 frames per second of the same sprites:

We asked Ahrns what surprised him about sprites after he finally got the chance to fly up and see them.

"I've seen sprites with my naked eye for the first time, and they're really tall! I've seen pictures and watched them in video monitors during the research campaigns, and in my mind I knew they were on the order of 50km from top to bottom, but knowing it and seeing it for yourself are two different things," he told us via email. "When we're flying 120 miles away from the storm and the sprite is still tall enough to fill my vision from top to bottom, that leaves an impression!"

Ahrns, by the way, keeps a blog about his exploits. It's well worth the read:

http://musubk.blogspot.com/