In my 13th vignette last November, I wrote about The Woman Who Wouldn't Tell. Mary Hulbert Peck was Woodrow Wilson's paramour for many years, including some when he was President. She set the gold standard for Presidential paramours, by refusing offers of considerable amounts of money and luxury goods in exchange for any letters she might have. Her involvement with the President would have remained a secret that she carried to her grave were it not for Woodrow Wilson's carefully preserved correspondence with her that became available to federal archivists in 1952 after his second wife's death.

Wilson was not the only President to have extra-marital love interests. George Washington maintained a relationship with Mary Gibbons of New Jersey from the time of his Revolutionary War service through his presidency. Thomas Jefferson quite openly maintained a household with Sally Hemmings, his black mistress, even taking her to France with him where she became a free woman the moment she stepped ashore. It's a tribute to Sally's dedication that she willingly returned to America with Jefferson. She had several offers from French dignitaries. Several other 19th century presidents are rumored to have had similar arrangements, though the records are inconclusive.

Since Woodrow Wilson's presidency we've had Warren G. Harding, who liked to knock off a mid-day quickie with his secretary, Nan Britton, in the White House broom closet. FDR also had a fairly well known affair with his secretary Missy LeHand, and for a while he was boffing Princess Marta of Norway while she was living in the White House as a refugee from WW II. JFK is reputed to have had legions of willing young women at his beck and call during his term in office. He certainly had affairs with Marilyn Monroe and Angie Dickinson, and is rumored to have also carried on with Blaze Star and Judy Campbell (while she was also the mistress of Chicago mobster, Sam Giancana!)

While Dwight D. Eisenhower was president, he played a lot of golf in Denton, Texas, the home of his wartime driver and secretary Kay Summersby. Mamie didn't go along on those golfing trips.

Then, of course, there's Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinski. I trust that's a recent enough matter I don't need to go into any greater detail.

Gacked from feministing.com:

According to POLITICO, it turns out the RNC's insurance plan it purchases from Cigna has covered elective abortion for years, since the early 90s. This is significant because a. The GOP's platform has an anti-abortion policy - referring to the procedure as “a fundamental assault on innocent human life;” and b. "176 House Republicans joined 64 Democrats in voting for the so-called Stupak amendment, a measure that prohibits federal funds from being used to buy health insurance that covers elective abortions." RNC Chairman Steele immediately reacted and is demanding immediate changes from the policy coverage it receives from Cigna.



x-posted to my LJ

Part of the Borg will be at Windy Con this weekend. This is a good thing. By the time we get home Sunday Marcey will have (almost) totally moved out, because she is divorcing us. This is a sad thing. Kathi (The girl in "Night Lights" from Riding the Hell-bound Train) has been with us for 6 months and it is working out very well. That is a happy thing. All in all, things are pretty balanced.

Like I said in a twitter earlier today, "Poyamory is not for pussy's. It takes a lot of work."

Notes augmented

We've enhanced and de-bugged Notes. If you haven't tried it yet, now's the time! You can create a private note when you ban multiple users. You can also delete multiple notes at once. Lastly, paid users have the option to add a note (visible only to you) whenever you add or remove a friend (guaranteed to avoid embarrassing social mishaps). If you don't currently have a paid account, you can upgrade now! It only takes a few minutes and costs less than a bad shopping mall haircut (plus, it's way more fashionable)!

Product tweaks and bug kill

1. In another effort to zap spam, comments containing links from domains LiveJournal deems untrustworthy are now automatically screened
2. If you sign up to get notifications of the Writer's Block question of the day, you'll now see the daily question in the email notification, so you'll have a little extra time to ponder before you post. You can subscribe to Writers Block notifications here
3. The issue causing random comments to vanish has been fixed!
4. If you visit a LiveJournal page and get prompted to log in, you'll be returned to the same page after you sign in (Thanks, Dreamwidth)!
5. If you don't edit the timestamp for an entry at all, the entry timestamp will indicate the time the entry was posted instead of the time the Update Journal page was loaded
6. Comments with paddings/backgrounds render correctly within the comment box (and will no longer wrap outside the box and break frames/margins)

New FCK fixes rich text editor!

1. We've updated our RTE (Rich Text Editor) to FCKeditor version 2.6.5
2. When switching from the RTE to HTML editor, links for syndicated feeds are no longer broken
3. RTE now functions properly in Safari 4.0
4. An extra line/space will not be auto-inserted whenever you switch from RTE to HTML editor
5. The insert image link now works correctly in all browsers

LiveJournal Cares

We’re pleased to introduce you to lj_cares, a new LiveJournal community dedicated to raising awareness and funds for U.S. charitable organizations that improve the health and well-being of people around the world. Each month, we’ll spotlight a nonprofit that is making a significant global impact through medical research, public outreach, and/or humanitarian social programs. Charities will be selected in accordance with the U.S. calendar of national health observances based on a high rating (of over 60%) on Charity Navigator and global scope of impact.

In this, our inaugural month of November, we will celebrate national adoption month by offering a charitable virtual gift (priced at $2.99) to support Love Without Boundaries, an organization that saves the lives of orphans with life-threatening diseases and places them in loving homes around the world. LiveJournal will donate 100% of the proceeds from the sale of charitable vgifts (we'll cover the cost of credit card transaction fees). To learn more about Love Without Boundaries, please visit lj_cares and read about how they helped save Baby Kang and the Rainbow Twins from fatal illnesses, who are now thriving in nurturing families. You can purchase your Love Without Boundaries gifts in the Virtual Gift shop.

Papered in postcards

A couple of weeks ago, we asked you to send in postcards to surround us with LiveJournal community. Thanks for coming through! We've received postcards all the way from Germany, Finland, and Canada and from all over the US, including Texas, Florida, Alaska, Montana, Wyoming, Indiana, Hawaii, and Oklahoma just to name just a handful. We're thrilled with our improved decor.

Please keep the love coming for one more week by writing to Frank the Goat, Esq., c/o LiveJournal, Inc., 539 Bryant Street, Suite 210, San Francisco, CA 94107. Be sure to include your username, since we'll be drawing the names of ten random contributors next Thursday to win paid account credits!

Photos of the week

We have more dazzling images posted by talented LiveJournal photographers from around the world. We're hoping to span the entire globe, so please continue posting and tagging. Of course, you can also sit back and enjoy the view at lj_photophile.

You can see a sample of this week's gorgeous photos and check out spotlight communities and awesome user content after the jump!

( Read more... )

Curtains

We thank you, once again, for joining us. See you next week!

Tuesday: didn't even try and go swimming, but did make it to a yoga class with Marni Task. Her yoga style, unlike what I take at home, is "jivamukti with anusara flair", whatever that means! All I know is the room was hot (advertised at 82-85F), so I sat next to the exterior door and prayed for a draft breeze.

The teacher started talking about ayurveda and the three types, and used that as the basis for class. It didn't make alot of sense, I only knew I wasn't kapha (calm, heavy bone frame, slow eater, slow speaker, slow walker, have a hard time waking in the morning).

After yoga I dashed off (see? I'm not kapha!) to Skyline and ate a three way with milk and oyster crackers. Plus lots of hot sauce. Yummmm. My next stop was Half Priced Books (briefly) and World Market. I purchased a 1kg bar of Cadbury Dairy Milk at World Market, plus some tea for Dad. On the way back to work I stopped at Miles Market and picked up another pie. This was #3 (Mum had bought one Apple and one Fruits of the Forest before I arrived, but I knew that wouldn't last), and I chose Blackberry, which is my favourite.

I then spent Tuesday afternoon hacking on a Windows 2000 laptop trying to get it to talk to ancient CNC Hardware (after wiping the machine & the viruses it had accumulated). Vacation? Who needs vacation? Managed to get out of work at 5, stopped to pick up some dinner (Teriyaki Stirfry with chicken & veggies) and home.

I could have packed on Tuesday night but didn't; did that Wednesday morning instead. Note that aside from Monday when I planned to swim, I didn't set an alarm the whole time I was away. One morning I slept until 6, which was a shocker. The rest of the time I woke between 5 & 5:30.

Mum and Dad had a customer coming into the office to see them, so I dropped Mum off at work while Toby and I stopped for a Hot Chocolate then I took him for a walk. He was well behaved, and I only had to drag him a little ways before he realized he wanted to walk after all. We were back at the office for about 9:30, 9:45. We went out to lunch at a soup place around the corner just before noon.

My flight was due to go at 3:30, so Mum had me at the airport for 2:00. Through security, annoyed that the only good shop at Cleveland airport was gone (the bookshop), went to gate C16 to wait. I found myself an electrical plug and whiled away the time until flight was called at 2:50. We actually left a little early, and I was (predictably) asleep just after push back. Through diligence I had scored an exit row seat, but it was a non-reclining seat. Of course, I can sleep (almost) anywhere, so I wasn't too perturbed by my posture.

We landed almost half an hour early, and I took some time to sniff through a couple of duty free shops looking for yet more Dairy Milk chocolate. Unfortunately, while two shops had chocolate, one had some that was past date, and another had only Dairy Milk with Whole Nuts. I will need to find another source for my chocolatey goodness.

The trip home wasn't bad. Wednesdays are pretty good for travelling, it seems, as I was able to score seats on the Silver Li(n)e and Red Line. Once I reached home I ran out to the grocery store to pick up milk and figured everything else could wait until Thursday. I typically have yoga on Wednesday evening but I didn't get home until 6:50, and would have had to walk right back out the door again. I will have to wait.

( redux )

off to see the nephew next week for his first birthday. So excited!

On November 4th 1933, Erwin Schrödinger arrived at Oxford University where he had been elected a fellow of Magdelen College. In company with Schrödinger were his wife Anny and his wife Hildi.

Erwin Schrödinger was neither the first nor the last scientist to maintain an unconventional household. He was noteworthy for being the most highly visible, though he was really quite tame and sociable in general. In contrast to him, there was John D. Bernal.

John Desmond Bernal was an Irish mathematical physicist whose talents were on par with the very best of his peers. He was also a vocal advocate of free love, open marriage, and communism. While the scientific establishment was willing to overlook the first two, they could not overlook the last. Bernal's strongly stated Communist views almost certainly prevented him from being awarded a Nobel prize for his work involving the x-ray diffraction of protein crystals.

Bernal married Eileen Sprague the day after he was awarded his bachelor's degree. Two years his senior, Eileen was as much a radical as Bernal. Their marriage was open from the very beginning, and over the years Bernal had long-term involvements with the British Communist author Margot Heinemann, with his graduate student Dorothy Hodgkin, and with the artist Margaret Gardiner who bore him a son. The Bernals and Gardiner cohabited, and she called herself Mrs. Bernal, with Eileen's agreement, though they never did marry.

Bernal also may have had a romantic involvement with Rosalind Franklin, who first photographed the x-ray crystolographic images of DNA which eventually led to the Nobel prize for the discovery of the DNA molecule. (Unfortunately, Rosalind Franklin died before the prize was awarded, and the Nobel Committee doesn't award prizes to dead people.) What is known for sure is that Franklin left her post at King's College, London after a falling-out with her colleague Maurice Wilson, and went to work with Bernal at Birkbeck College, where Bernal was the chair of the physics department.

I wrote last year about the improbable sight of two men running out the back door of Del Monico's Steak House carrying a satchel overflowing with cash. One of those men was Jay Gould, the most hated man in America at the time. The other was his business partner, Jim Fisk.

Jubilee Jim was a former circus strong man. He was brought into the world of Wall Street finance by Daniel Drew, who liked the big friendly galoot. For Jim Fisk, every day was a holiday, and every meal a banquet. He was a big man who lived large. Physically and emotionally the opposite of the short, dark, and taciturn Gould; tall and blond Jim Fisk was everybody's friend. Of course, with his circus and carnival background he wasn't averse to fleecing people. But he understood the psychology of the stock market better than any of the other robber barons, and his marks were usually back for another fleecing a few months later.

Jim had a wife, Lucy, who he had married when she was 15 and he was 19. He never brought her to New York, though he did maintain her in fairly comfortable circumstances at her family home in Boston throughout his life. It's generally assumed Lucy knew of Jim's extramarital involvements with other women, though there's no written record to confirm this.

In any case, Jim's wandering ways did him in. He kept Josie Mansfield, a show-girl, in an apartment adjacent to his offices at the Erie Railroad. Josie eventually took up with Fisk's assistant, Edward Stokes. Apparently Stokes tried to extort money from Fisk, who laughed at him and told him to tell the newspapers whatever he wanted. Stokes, enraged, then shot Fisk. While the wound was mortal, Fisk didn't die immediately. He lived long enough to tell the police who had shot him and why. Edward Stokes was convicted of Fisk's murder and served four years at hard labor. His sentence would have been more severe, but New York society was glad to see the end of Jubilee Jim.

On the other hand, New York's poor were saddened to lose one of their most generous benefactors. After Fisk's death, a popular song was written about him: "Jim Fisk (He Never Went Back on the Poor)".

Two days ago I noted the anniversary of the loss of the Edmund Fitzgerald in 1975. In addition to those things I already recounted, there's a bit more to the story.

On that stormy night in November 1975, Captain Don Erickson had safely brought his freighter, the William Clay Ford into anchorage at Whitefish Bay. The Ford was an older sister ship of the Fitz, built in the same shipyard to the same general design specs -- though the Fitz was longer. When word started to spread around the anchorage about the apparent loss of the Fitz, Don Erickson decided to go back out into the storm and search for survivors. Establishing contact with the captain of the Arthur Anderson, which had been following the Fitz, Erickson directed a search for survivors that had the two freighters sailing half a mile apart. No survivors were found.

In recognition of the Ford's role, the Great Lakes Maritime Institute presented the ship with a plaque that reads:

"On the night of November 10–11, 1975, these men voluntarily left a safe harbor to face the dangers of gale force winds and vicious seas, in the blackness of a storm which had already claimed as a victim the steamer Edmund Fitzgerald, to search for possible survivors of that disaster, exemplifying the finest traditions of the maritime profession."

You can see that plaque today. The pilot house of the Ford became a permanent part of the Great Lakes Maritime Museum on Belle Isle, near Detroit, when the Ford was decommissioned and scrapped. The plaque is in that pilot house.

Lioness tells the story of a group of female Army support soldiers who were part of the first program in American history to send women into direct ground combat. Without the same training as their male counterparts but with a commitment to serve as needed, these young women fought in some of the bloodiest counterinsurgency battles of the Iraq war and returned home as part of this country’s first generation of female combat veterans. Lioness makes public, for the first time, their hidden history.

There's a trailer on the website that requires QuickTime to watch. Or you can view it here on YouTube. Definitely worth the time it takes to view it.

Near as I can tell, the only way to see this movie is to catch it at a military base when the team happens to visit, or buy the DVD. You can do that from the website. It's $19.95 for the home edition. Anyone local to me is welcome to view my copy after it arrives.

You mean the culture of git is leading to project fragmentation?

Gosh, there's a shock.

Edward C. Patterson and other indie authors have started a "grassroots project" to send ebooks to soldiers.  It started small, at Amazon, but Mark Coker @ Smashwords found out and the project has snowballed.

I encourage all authors to participate.  Spread the word.  Thanks.

(Proud mother of a veteran)

The guns fell silent.

Here Dead We Lie

Here dead we lie
Because we did not choose
To live and shame the land
From which we sprung.

Life, to be sure,
Is nothing much to lose,
But young men think it is,
And we were young.

-- A. E. Housman

Whether you call it Armistice Day, Remembrance Day, or Veterans Day doesn't matter; the day itself does.

Thank you to all who have served and are serving today: family, friends, and others.

May the results of your service be worthy of your sacrifices.

As I scanned through my f-page just now, I saw lots and lots and lots of posts that are some version of "Thanks to all the Veterans." So rather than go through and put in individual comments, I'm just posting this to say, "Thanks for saying so."

To all my fellow veterans out there, my sincere thanks for your service.

To all of you, keep in mind that this day is called Remembrance Day in many parts of the world. Remember those who didn't come home, and those who came home changed forever.

So, I've been thinking about the holiday shopping season, and what a tough year it is for so many of us, and how even those of us who can afford to spend money on gifts may be looking to make those dollars count.

And I thought it might be fun, and useful, to ask the assembled ElJay masses to put their virtual heads together and share our suggestions for good things to buy, and good places to buy them.

"Good" is pretty subjective, but what I'm thinking about are qualities like:

• Good value for the money. Genuine bargains, or things that aren't cheap but are worth the money because of superior quality.
  
• Good craftmanship: Stuff that looks good, is well-made, and lasts.
  
• Good values: Socially responsible gift-giving, however you might define that. Green products. Things of good value being made/sold by people who genuinely need the money.
  
• Good service. Vendors that ship quickly, have great customer service, good refund or exchange policies.
  
• Good ol' *fun*: Gifts that lift the mood, make people laugh or smile, or generally fill the recipient's heart with delight.

Being as how we're doing this online, I'm kind of partial to online vendors. But if you want to throw in a bricks-and-mortar store, or conventional catalogue house, feel free - just tell people how to find it.

I'll start things off below the cut with a few that come immediately to my mind. If you want to play along, add yours in the comments. I'll even unlock the friends-only setting on this post, so feel free to refer others here. Tuck the post in your memories so you can take advantage of it when you're doing your shopping. Who knows? We might start a new holiday tradition.
( Ze cut tag )