vp

Whilst in no way diminishing all the firsts portrayed here, we learn that Ms Harris is not the first to be the second highest officer of the executive of the US government of bi-racial, non-European heritage thanks to Miss Cellania (whom we congratulate as a new regular contributing happy mutant for Boing Boing). If one goes to the column at the bottom occupied by Dick Cheney then moves up three rows (past Gerald Ford and Harry Truman), one lands on the square with the gentleman to have this distinction, attorney and senator from Kansas, the Honourable Charles Curtis (*1860 – †1936). Serving in the administration of Herbert Hoover at a time before the position was a running-mate and holding very antithetical views to his president’s platform, their ticket consisted of the winner of the highest number of party electors and the individual coming in second-place. Curtis was affiliated with the Kaw Nation—having three-eights Native American blood (what a tedious and litigious way to celebrate one’s ancestry) but Curtis was deservedly disowned by contemporary and future members of his tribe and the rest of the indigenous population for his legislative agenda and political career that was instrumental in dismantling the sovereignty and self-governance, transforming communal, shared land into allotments for individual households and selling the unclaimed surplus to settlers. Furthermore, Curtis championed assimilation and the practise of sending Native American youth to boarding schools to add to cultural erosion and replacement. The vice-presidency being then a sine cure appointment, Curtis was prevented from doing further damage after 1928, the duo loosing during the next election in the midst of the Great Depression to FDR and John Nance Garner. From this dark chapter, we can look toward the future—the Kaw people and other nations reorganised and have regained a measure of political autonomy since the late 1950s and through the subsequent decade.

jz

Born this day in 1699, Johann Zach (†1773, also called by the Czech equivalent Jan) was a versatile Bohemian composer, violinist and organist who helped bridge musical traditions from the old Baroque style to the emerging Classical one, punctuated with counterpoint (the clavier vs the orchestra) and the so called style galant, and importantly incorporated Italian influences with folk music from his native land—though his eccentricities and difficult personality made it hard for him to secure employment or keep a positon for long. Despite this reputation and temperament, Zach did hold the office of Kapellmeister for the court of the Prince-Elector and Archbishop of Mainz for over a decade which were among his most productive years, including the performance below of his Stabat mater (a hymn to Mary, setting to music the first line—the incipit—from the Council of Trent’s liturgical sequence, Stabat mater dolorósa—the sorrowful mother was standing).

animal magnetism

Intending to attend the demonstration at the Manchester Athenæum by the mesmerism (after Herr Doktor Franz Mesmer’s invisible, natural binding force he called Lebensmagnetismus) itinerant Charles Lafontaine as a sceptic, the gentleman scientist and surgeon James Braid (*1795 – †1860) who developed life-changing interventions to help those suffering from clubfoot, bandy legs and scoliosis was rather captivated by the performance he witnessed on this day in 1841. Rather than audience to the act of a fraudster, the demonstration seemed credible and genuine and bore further investigation in Braid’s mind—neither seeking to discredit the practitioner nor seeking confirmation for a preconceived pursuit of interest, and would devote the balance of his professional career, research and writing to the development of what Braid dubbed as hypnotism and hypnotherapy, documenting the corrective value of heightened states of suggestibility in rehabilitating nervous disorders—though not yet ready to entertain the possibility of the psychosomatic.

hipaa compliant

A masterful grifter whose practises might even make the Trump crime family blush at some of its techniques whose sole business is that of scalping and alienating both artists and audiences now wants the medical histories of future concert-goers to reboot its venues with a guise of safety, allowing only those certified with a clean bill of health to attend events—facing no consequences of course when these measures fail and ceding further control to their entertainment enterprise. We had hoped that the pandemic would have broken up rackets (as the Trump syndicate will fall) like this rather than make stronger them cling harder to their power.

your daily demon: vual

Ruling the twentieth to twenty-fourth degrees of Scorpio—corresponding from today until the seventeenth of November, we make the acquaintance of the infernal grand duke Vual that presents according to the Ars Goetia et al. as a great and terrible dromedary. 

This camel demon controls thirty-seven legions of spirits and is a master negotiator, both politically and in romance. Their sigil looks a bit like a single-humped desert wanderer.

gie

 

Via Boing Boing, here is another spot-on comic by Ruben Bolling (see previously, which also makes us contemplate this future presidential library or this duly decorous display at this Berlin wax museum) that aptly addresses the emergent situation of the “wouldn’t it be a gas if we acidebtal kissed” constitutional crisis and QVC coup of the deposed, alternative government of a subnational territory that is the Winter White House.

set me free

Three days after the Wall unexpectedly opened, an impromptu, eleven-hour long Konzert für Berlin was held for an estimated fifty thousand visitors in a West Berlin concert hall on this day in 1989.  The line-up included Melissa Etheridge, Joe Cocker & Band, Udo Lindenberg, Nina Hagen, BAP, Nena, die Puhdys and many more. Residents were asked to position their radios in their windowsills so the audio would be available to all, with the Governing Mayor of West Berlin acknowledging the historical significance of this first all-German rock concert and opening the show, especially emotionally charged at that pivotal moment. Both mayors jointly opened more crossing points to accommodate the crowds now crossing freely.  Not broadcasting counter-programming but most radio stations and television networks carried a benefit concert from the city’s philharmonic that had been scheduled well in advance, so not much actual footage from the event is available but performers reprised their numbers for a studio album.

dreamtime

The radio telescope observatory—colloquially known as “the Dish”—originally named for the nearby host settlement of Parkes, New South Wales (itself namesake of Sir Henry Parkes, a nineteenth century statesman and premier of the state, advocating the continental railway network and federation of Australia and critic of the practise of using the land as a penal colony) is redesignated as Murriyang—the toponym meaning Skyworld in the language and culture of the Wiradjuri people who have lived there for the past sixty-five thousand years. This realm was the dwelling place of the creator god called Biyaami and the renaming ceremony is meant to celebrate and highlight an endangered yet enduring (loanwords include kookaburra, bunyip and wombat) heritage. Built in 1961, the campus played a pivotal part in the Apollo missions—including the televised coverage, surveying for extraterrestrial technologies, discovering and articulating the phenomenon of fast radio bursts and continues to monitor and track outer space operations.