Cooley Hurd
Cooley Hurd's JournalWhat We Found at Hart Island, The Largest Mass Grave Site In the U.S.
It’s a place where few living New Yorkers have ever set foot, but nearly a million dead ones reside: Hart Island, the United States’ largest mass grave, which has been closed to the public for 35 years. It is difficult to visit and off-limits to photographers. But that may be about to change, as a debate roils over the city’s treatment of the unclaimed dead. Never heard of Hart? You’re not alone—and that’s part of the problem.
Hart Island is a thin, half-mile long blip of land at the yawning mouth of Long Island Sound, just across the water from City Island in the Bronx. Depending on who you ask, it was named either for its organ-like shape or for the deer (or hart) that thrived here after trekking across the frozen sound in the 18th century. Hart is dense with history; it’s been used as a prison for Confederate soldiers, a workhouse for the poor, a women's asylum, and a Nike missile base during the Cold War.
Its most important role has been to serve as what’s known as a potter’s field, a common gravesite for the city’s unknown dead. Some 900,000 New Yorkers (or adopted New Yorkers) are buried here; hauntingly, the majority are interred by prisoners from Riker’s Island who earn 50 cents an hour digging gravesites and stacking simple wooden boxes in groups of 150 adults and 1,000 infants. These inmates—most of them very young, serving out short sentences—are responsible for building the only memorials on Hart Island: Handmade crosses made of twigs and small offerings of fruit and candy left behind when a grave is finished.
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Burns explores Roosevelt legacy in new documentary
WARM SPRINGS, Ga. (AP) — Filmmaker Ken Burns said Saturday that he wants to tell the story of three of the most famous Roosevelts, their strengths and weaknesses, in an upcoming documentary on one of America's most famous political families.
He previewed part of the 14-hour series that will air next year during a reunion of the extended Roosevelt family at the former polio clinic in rural Georgia that President Franklin Roosevelt purchased after coming to seek a cure for his crippled legs. Roosevelt built a home here known as the Little White House, where he died in 1945.
Burns' film explores the political and family ties between President Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt and his wife, Eleanor. The filmmaker acclaimed for documentaries on the Civil War, baseball and World War II said he aimed for an honest portrayal of political figures who were sometimes reduced to caricatures.
Contrasting American ideals of heroism with those of the heroes of ancient Greece, Burns remarked that the Greeks "saw heroes as having very obvious strength but also very obvious and sometimes equal weaknesses."
"Achilles had his heel," Burns said. "And so I think for us, it's always been what kind of American history do you show? One that's sort of treacly and superficial or one that gets deeper?"
Defining a common legacy between the three figures is tricky since their lives span from 1858 to 1962. The political populism of Theodore Roosevelt — for example, his anti-monopoly stances and efforts to improve food safety and regulation — arguably found a new expression in the New Deal politics championed by Franklin Roosevelt to alleviate the suffering inflicted by the Great Depression.
The film follows Eleanor Roosevelt as she emerged from her role as first lady after Roosevelt's death and successfully worked to adopt a United Nations declaration of human rights. She was the niece of Theodore Roosevelt and a distant relation to Franklin Roosevelt.
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Something to look forward to!!!
(X-post from GD) Auburn (NY) native Amy Dacey named CEO of the Democratic National Committee
The Democratic Party's new chief executive officer has Cayuga County and central New York ties.
Amy Dacey, a 1989 graduate of Auburn High School who was inducted into the Auburn Education Foundation's Hall of Distinction this year, has been named CEO of the Democratic National Committee by DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
Dacey will begin serving as the party's CEO in January 2014.
"I'm honored to join Chair Wasserman Schultz and the great team at the Democratic National Committee as we help advance the president's agenda and support Democrats all over the country," Dacey said in a statement provided by the DNC. " It's an exciting time to be a Democrat as we work to implement the Affordable Care Act, pass common sense immigration reform, create jobs and continue our economic recovery.
"I'm thrilled to come aboard as we focus on maintaining control of the Senate, taking back the House, expanding our map and electing Democrats up and down the ballot and all across the country. We have lots of work to do and are building the team to ensure Democrats have the tools and resources they need to be successful."
Dacey currently serves as executive director of EMILY's List, a post she has held since 2010. Before EMILY's List, she was the director of government relations for the Service Employees International Union, a leading labor organization. Her work experience includes stints as traveling political director on John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign and national political director at Kerry's Keeping America's Promise political action committee during the 2006 election cycle.
She also worked for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee during the 2000 election cycle and served as deputy political director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the Senate Democrats' campaign arm, during the 2002 cycle.
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Local person makes good in the DNC! She graduated from my High School (6 years after me)!
Auburn (NY) native Amy Dacey named CEO of the Democratic National Committee
The Democratic Party's new chief executive officer has Cayuga County and central New York ties.
Amy Dacey, a 1989 graduate of Auburn High School who was inducted into the Auburn Education Foundation's Hall of Distinction this year, has been named CEO of the Democratic National Committee by DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
Dacey will begin serving as the party's CEO in January 2014.
"I'm honored to join Chair Wasserman Schultz and the great team at the Democratic National Committee as we help advance the president's agenda and support Democrats all over the country," Dacey said in a statement provided by the DNC. " It's an exciting time to be a Democrat as we work to implement the Affordable Care Act, pass common sense immigration reform, create jobs and continue our economic recovery.
"I'm thrilled to come aboard as we focus on maintaining control of the Senate, taking back the House, expanding our map and electing Democrats up and down the ballot and all across the country. We have lots of work to do and are building the team to ensure Democrats have the tools and resources they need to be successful."
Dacey currently serves as executive director of EMILY's List, a post she has held since 2010. Before EMILY's List, she was the director of government relations for the Service Employees International Union, a leading labor organization. Her work experience includes stints as traveling political director on John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign and national political director at Kerry's Keeping America's Promise political action committee during the 2006 election cycle.
She also worked for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee during the 2000 election cycle and served as deputy political director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the Senate Democrats' campaign arm, during the 2002 cycle.
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Local person makes good in the DNC! She graduated from my High School (6 years after me)!
Marcia Wallace, actress from 'The Simpsons' and 'The Bob Newhart Show', dies at 70
Source: EW
As Edna Krabappel on The Simpsons, Marcia Wallace may be the only 4th-grade teacher to have the same student for 24 years. Before that, she was beloved as Carol Kester, the lovelorn, wisecracking secretary on The Bob Newhart Show.
Wallace, who was a breast cancer survivor for 28 years, has died at age 70, according to the showrunner of The Simpsons. “I was tremendously saddened to learn this morning of the passing of the brilliant and gracious Marcia Wallace,” producer Al Jean said in a statement to EW. “She was beloved by all at The Simpsons and we intend to retire her irreplaceable character.”
It has become a sad tradition of the extremely long-running show to simply cease using characters whose voice actors pass away. The first instance was when Phil Hartman died in 1998, and the show retired his sleazy attorney Lionel Hutz and desperate pretty-boy actor Troy McClure.
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Read more: http://insidetv.ew.com/2013/10/26/marcia-wallace-actress-from-the-simpsons-and-the-bob-newhart-show-dies-at-70/
Cross gently Marcia.
An aside, Ms Krabappel was an homage to Miss Crabtree of Our Gang fame, played by June Marlowe.
Images (gif; jpg) not displaying in DU mail
Hi Skinner. As of yesterday, picture url's aren't displaying in DU Mail messages. Is this by design? Thanks!
Jovanka Broz, Marshal Tito's widow, First Lady of Yugoslavia, dies aged 88
Source: DNA India
Jovanka Broz, who spent three decades as Yugoslavia's First Lady but was left stateless and forgotten as war shattered the socialist federation built by her husband 'Tito', died on Sunday in a Belgrade hospital. State television RTS said Broz had died of cardiac arrest.
She was 88 and had lived largely in isolation since the death of Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito in 1980, squirreled away in a crumbling state-owned villa in the Serbian capital without a passport or ID. Born in Croatia, Broz became a nurse with Tito's Partisan fighters in World War Two, then his personal secretary and finally his third wife in 1952. Tito was 32 years her senior, and presided over a federation of 22 million people balanced between Cold War East and West.
Unlike the grey, staid Communist leaders of the Soviet bloc, Tito and his wife revelled in ostentation and glamour. Dead three days short of his 88th birthday, Tito's funeral gathered heads of state and dignitaries from across the Cold War divide, including Britain's Margaret Thatcher and ailing Soviet president Leonid Brezhnev. His wife had already been removed from the public eye in the late 1970s, as the party elite had grown increasingly suspicious of her influence over the elderly president.
Soon after Tito's funeral, authorities confiscated all property and personal belongings of the couple and placed Broz under virtual house arrest in a dilapidated government-owned villa in Belgrade's hilltop Dedinje district. With Tito gone and the Cold War over, his widow looked on as nationalist tensions tore apart Yugoslavia in the 1990s, spawning seven new states during a decade of war and ethnic cleansing that killed more than 125,000 people.
Read more: http://www.dnaindia.com/world/1906206/report-jovanka-broz-marshal-tito-s-widow-first-lady-of-yugoslavia-dies-aged-88
One day, Bobby came to town...
A user on Facebook has been posting pictures that she purchased at a yard sale - all centered around my hometown of Auburn, NY. Amongst these jems was this pic:
This would be the US Senate campaign for the NY Senate seat in the 1964 midterms. That's the Auburn City Hall steps. I was -1. So cool, I just had to share.
...on edit - and a view form the rear:
Florida boy, 6, drowns in Carnival cruise ship pool
Source: CNN.com
(CNN) -- A 6-year-old central Florida boy drowned in a pool on a Carnival Cruise ship over the weekend after hasty efforts to resuscitate him failed, the cruise line said Monday.
The boy, of Winter Garden just outside of Orlando, was spotted under water in a mid-ship pool by passengers Sunday, according to a police report and one witness account. It occurred when the ship was returning from its last leg of a four-day Caribbean cruise.
Passenger Deshaun Christian, 23, who witnessed the rescue, told CNN iReport that the incident caught people, enjoying music and dancing, off-guard.
Christian said a DJ first discovered the boy struggling in the water and immediately stopped the music. A guest then jumped into the pool with his clothes on and pulled the boy out, followed by a crew member who unsuccessfully tried to revive the boy, Christian said. The boy was pronounced dead shortly after.
"It was a lot of chaos, people were going crazy, people were praying, they had their hands to the sky. It was a scary scene, seeing a little boy just lifeless," Christian said.
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Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/14/us/florida-boy-drowns-carnival-cruise/index.html?hpt=hp_t2
How can this happen with lifeguards around the pool? It sounds like chaos that turned into tragedy.
80 years ago today - first instance of aircraft brought down by onboard bomb
Restored Boeing 247 in United Air Lines livery, similar to the crashed aircraft. This one is on display at the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum.
On October 10, 1933, a Boeing 247 propliner operated by United Air Lines and registered as NC13304, crashed near Chesterton, Indiana. The transcontinental flight, carrying three crew and four passengers, had originated in Newark, New Jersey, with its final destination in Oakland, California. It had already landed in Cleveland and was headed to its next stop in Chicago when it exploded en route. All aboard died in the crash, which was proven to have been deliberately caused by an on-board explosive device.
Eyewitnesses on the ground reported hearing an explosion shortly after 9 p.m., and saw the plane in flames at an altitude of about 1,000 feet (300 m). A second explosion followed after the plane crashed. The crash scene was adjacent to a gravel road about 5 miles (8 km) outside of Chesterton, centered in a wooded area on the Jackson Township farm of James Smiley.
Investigators who combed through the debris were confronted with unusual evidence: The toilet and baggage compartment had been smashed into fragments. Shards of metal riddled the inside of the toilet door while the other side was free of the metal fragments. The tail section had been severed just aft of the toilet and was found mostly intact almost a mile away from the main wreckage.
Melvin Purvis, head of the Chicago office of the United States Bureau of Investigation described the damage, "Our investigation convinced me that the tragedy resulted from an explosion somewhere in the region of the baggage compartment in the rear of the plane. Everything in front of the compartment was blown forward, everything behind blown backward, and things at the side outward." He also noted: "The gasoline tanks, instead of being blown out, were crushed in, showing there was no explosion in them."
An investigator from the Porter County coroner's office, Dr. Carl Davis, and experts from the Crime Detection Laboratory at Northwestern University examined evidence from the crash, and concluded that the crash had been caused by a bomb, with nitroglycerin as the probable explosive agent. One of the passengers was seen carrying a brown package onto the plane in Newark, but investigators who found the package amidst the wreckage ruled it out as being the cause of the explosion. A rifle was found in the wreckage but it was determined to have been carried aboard as baggage for a passenger who was en route to attend a shoot at Chicago's North Shore Gun Club. Despite the efforts of the investigators, no suspect was ever identified or charged in this incident, and it remains unsolved.[citation needed] This is thought to be the first proven act of air sabotage in the history of commercial aviation.
Pilot Captain Terrant, his co-pilot, flight attendant Alice Scribner and all four passengers were killed. Scribner was the first United flight attendant to be killed in a plane crash.
Never heard of this before today.
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