George’s slightly off-center view of the world
People who interest me
Newly-elected representative Cliff Bentz, the sole Republican in Oregon’s congressional delegation, cast his first votes last week. The freshman congressman joined 138 other representatives and eight senators voting to overturn election results.
The New York Times has provided us with a handy reference, including portraits, of the 147 legislators who cast votes against democracy.
Click here for the list of those with whom Rep. Bentz’s name will forever live in ignominy.
The Constitution of the United States went into effect March 4, 1789. The Electoral College, as prescribed in Article II, Section 1, elected George Washington president that same year, with 69 votes. Washington was re-elected with 132 votes in 1792. John Adams received the second-most votes, thus winning the vice-presidency, both times.
Presidential elections worked smoothly all the way up to the vote in 1800. Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr each received 73 votes, sending the election to the House of Representatives. (Jefferson thought he was running against John Adams; Burr was Jefferson’s intended vice-president.) The Constitution had not foreseen the possibility of a tie. After thirty-six votes, the House named Jefferson president and Burr vice-president.
Continue reading “Electoral College Follies”What to do with that old roll of undeveloped film you found in the back of a drawer. Take it to Costco or your neighborhood drug store? A few years too late for that.
Send it to Levi Bettwieser in Boise, Idaho. He will process the film and post digital copies of all discernible photos for you to download. You will not receive negatives. (Maybe you’re not old enough to know what negatives are.) There is no charge, but you do agree to relinquish all rights. (He does accept donations.)
Bettwieser started his Rescued Film Project in 2013 after developing 140 rolls of film he had accumulated over years of rummaging at garage sales. He was taken by the images that came to life. Photographs of family and friends, dogs and cats, holiday celebrations and vacations, birthday parties, including lots of pictures of cakes.
Rescued Film Project has about 16,000 images in its archive. A one-person operation, Bettwieser has a backlog of 2,000 rolls to process. It’s a labor of love; he holds down a regular job, so Rescued Film is a night and weekend project. If you send film to him, it could be months before you receive a response.
In the meantime, browse through the archives. If you recognize anyone in the photographs, Bettwieser would like to hear from you. Occasionally he is able to reunite a person with long-lost snapshots.
Bob Dylan has sold his songwriting portfolio for somewhere in the neighborhood of $300, maybe $400, million. That means that whenever “Like a Rolling Stone”, “Blowin’ in the Wind” or any of six hundred other Dylan songs is sold, streamed, played on the radio or used in a commercial, the songwriting royalty payment will go to the Universal Music Publishing Group, not Bob Dylan. This includes songs covered by other artists, such as “Mr. Tambourine Man” by The Byrds or Jimi Hendrix’s version of “All Along the Watchtower.”
Could it be that Mr. Dylan, now seventy-nine years old, decided it was time to take the money? With nobody buying CDs or records any more, and no live performances in this era of COVID 19, and Spotify and other streaming services paying infinitesimal royalties, an upfront lump-sum payment is the reverse-mortgage of the music business.
Continue reading “Take the Money When You Can”Washington-state voters in the 2020 election gave erstwhile presidential candidate Jay Inslee his third term as governor. Inslee beat his Republican challenger, Loren Culp, by a 57.2% to 42.8% margin.
Culp has refused to concede, claiming “irregularities. “Something smells fishy,” he told his Facebook followers. But of course he offered no evidence.
Culp had taken a leave of absence from his job as police chief of the town of Republic to campaign for governor. Republic (population 1,100) is in the deep-red northeastern part of the state, near the Canadian border.
Chief Culp had previously been in the news with his declaration that a gun-regulation initiative passed by Washington voters in 2018 violated both the state and federal constitutions and he would not allow his officers to enforce them.
Declining tax revenues later prompted the city of Republic to reduce the size of its police force to one. Loren Culp was chief and sole employee of the department. While he was on leave campaigning, the city contracted with the Ferry County sheriff’s department for police services.
The arrangement with Ferry County apparently worked well, as Republic has de-funded its police department. Loren Culp now has no job to go back to. “Not even a letter or thank you. Not a plaque for 10 years of service,” said Culp.
Andrew “Rube” Foster was a premier pitcher during the first two decades of the twentieth century. He gained fame with the (Philadelphia) Cuban X Giants. Foster pitched four of the five X Giants wins in the 1903 “colored championship of the world,” beating the Philadelphia Giants. The next year, Foster joined the Philadelphia Giants. He won twenty games, including two no-hitters, and led the team to the championship, beating his former team, the X Giants.
(The Cuban Giants formed in 1885 as being dark-skinned Latin American players to evade the ban on Negro players. The X Giants split off from the Cuban Giants.)
Foster posted a 25-3 won-lost record win in 1905 and the Philadelphia Giants repeated as champions. In 1907, he became player/manager for the Chicago Leland Giants. The team won 110 games, including a 48 consecutive, and lost only ten.
Continue reading “A Baseball Centennial”
