Good morning, Whitewater.

We’ll have an even chance of snow showers today, on a day cloudy skies and a high of thirty-six.  Sunrise is 7:07 and sunset 4:21, for 9h 14m 10s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 57.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 2001, Enron files for bankruptcy.  It wasn’t just any company – it was a fraud repeatedly and falsely touted by prominent officials as an innovation leader.   Honest to goodness, marketing doesn’t make the man:

Enron Corporation (former New York Stock Exchange ticker symbol ENE) was an American energy, commodities, and services company based in Houston, Texas. Before its bankruptcy on December 2, 2001, Enron employed approximately 20,000 staff and was one of the world’s major electricity, natural gas, communications, and pulp and paper companies, with claimed revenues of nearly $111 billion during 2000.^[1]Fortune named Enron “America’s Most Innovative Company” for six consecutive years.

At the end of 2001, it was revealed that its reported financial condition was sustained substantially by an institutionalized, systematic, and creatively planned accounting fraud, known since as the Enron scandal. Enron has since become a well-known example of willful corporate fraud and corruption. The scandal also brought into question the accounting practices and activities of many corporations in the United States and was a factor in the enactment of the Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002. The scandal also affected the greater business world by causing the dissolution of the Arthur Andersen accounting firm.^[2]

Enron filed for bankruptcy in the Southern District of New York in late 2001 and selected Weil, Gotshal & Manges as its bankruptcy counsel. It ended its bankruptcy during November 2004, pursuant to a court-approved plan of reorganization, after one of the most complex bankruptcy cases in U.S. history. A new board of directors changed the name of Enron toEnron Creditors Recovery Corp., and emphasized reorganizing and liquidating certain operations and assets of the pre-bankruptcy Enron.^[3] On September 7, 2006, Enron sold Prisma Energy International Inc., its last remaining business, to Ashmore Energy International Ltd. (now AEI).^[4]

On this day in 1954, Wisconsin’s Sen. McCarthy fares poorly:

1954 – McCarthy Censured by Senate

On December 2, 1954, the United States Senate voted to censure Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy. Declaring his behavior “contrary to senatorial traditions,” the 1954 Senate resolution officially condemned McCarthy…

Here’s the midweek game from Puzzability:

This Week’s Game — November 30-December 4

The Possessive Filmfest

This week features some very personal movies. For each day, we’ll give you a series of clues, each of which leads to a word. You must drop one letter out of each of these answer words and put them together (in order), adding spaces as needed, to get the title of a movie that starts with a possessive first name.

Example:

Container for groceries / improved / out of danger / when dessert is served in a meal

Answer:

Babette’s Feast (bag / better / safe / last)

What to Submit:

Submit the movie’s title and the smaller words (as “Babette’s Feast (bag / better / safe / last)” in the example) for your answer.

Wednesday, December 2

Member of England’s upper house / implement for cocky crossword solvers / place to see interesting animals / give away the ending

Good morning, Whitewater.

Our new month begins with cloudy skies and a high of forty. Sunrise is 7:06 and sunset 4:21, for 9h 15m 29s of daytime.

Whitewater’s Common Council meets tonight at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1955, Rosa Parks refused to relinquish her place on a public bus to a white passenger:

Sixty years ago Tuesday, Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give her seat to a white passenger on a bus in Montgomery, Ala. A police officer made the arrest that set off the modern civil rights movement. Today police recruits in Alabama’s capital city are being schooled in that history in a course designed to eliminate bias in policing.

If you want to be a cop in Montgomery, first you have to take a bus tour of sorts. About two dozen police recruits, in cadet blues, are in the Rosa Parks Museum in downtown Montgomery, standing in front of a replica of a city bus.

In silhouette, through the bus windows, they watch as the driver orders Parks to give her 11th-row seat to a white passenger. She stays put.

On this day in 1884, a fire rearranges classes at UW-Madison:

1884 – Fire Destroys UW Building

On this date fire destroyed Science Hall on the UW-Madison campus. As a result, engineering students were forced to use the cramped space of the former dormitory, North Hall, for the next four semesters. [Source: College of Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison]

Here’s Tuesday’s game from Puzzability:

This Week’s Game — November 30-December 4

The Possessive Filmfest

This week features some very personal movies. For each day, we’ll give you a series of clues, each of which leads to a word. You must drop one letter out of each of these answer words and put them together (in order), adding spaces as needed, to get the title of a movie that starts with a possessive first name.

Example:

Container for groceries / improved / out of danger / when dessert is served in a meal

Answer:

Babette’s Feast (bag / better / safe / last)

What to Submit:

Submit the movie’s title and the smaller words (as “Babette’s Feast (bag / better / safe / last)” in the example) for your answer.

Tuesday, December 1

Like hair that’s not quite curly / tennis court divider / saber or foil / pot topper

Good morning, Whitewater.

Our months ends with a rainy day, and a high of thirty-nine, in town. Sunrise is 7:05, and sunset 4:22, for 9h 16m 52s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 76.2% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Friends of the Effigy Mounds Preserve meet tonight at 6:30 PM.

It’s Mark Twain’s birthday:

Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910),^[1] better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist. He wrote The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885),^[2] the latter often called “The Great American Novel“….
Samuel Langhorne Clemens was born in Florida, Missouri, on November 30, 1835. He was the son of Jane (née Lampton; 1803–1890), a native of Kentucky, and John Marshall Clemens (1798–1847), a Virginian. His parents met when his father moved to Missouri and were married in 1823.^[7][8] Twain was the sixth of seven children, but only three of his siblings survived childhood:Orion (1825–1897); Henry (1838–1858); and Pamela (1827–1904). His sister Margaret (1833–1839) died when he was three, and his brother Benjamin (1832–1842) died three years later. Another brother, Pleasant (1828–1829), died at six months.^[9] Twain was born two weeks after the closest approach to Earth of Halley’s Comet. His ancestors were of Scots-Irish, English, and Cornish extraction.^{[10][11][12][13]}

When he was four, Twain’s family moved to Hannibal, Missouri,^[14] a port town on the Mississippi River that inspired the fictional town of St. Petersburg in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.^[15] Slavery, then legal in Missouri, was a theme Twain would explore in these writings.

Puzzability begins a new series this week, The Possessive Filmfest. Here’s the 11.30.15 game:

This Week’s Game — November 30-December 4

The Possessive Filmfest

This week features some very personal movies. For each day, we’ll give you a series of clues, each of which leads to a word. You must drop one letter out of each of these answer words and put them together (in order), adding spaces as needed, to get the title of a movie that starts with a possessive first name.

Example:

Container for groceries / improved / out of danger / when dessert is served in a meal

Answer:

Babette’s Feast (bag / better / safe / last)

What to Submit:

Submit the movie’s title and the smaller words (as “Babette’s Feast (bag / better / safe / last)” in the example) for your answer.

Monday, November 30

Bouillabaisse or mulligatawny / seek’s counterpart / “___ sweet sorrow” / your instrument if you’re a singer

Good morning, Whitewater.

In town, Sunday will be mostly sunny with a high of forty-one.  Sunrise is 7:04 and sunset 4:22, for 9h 18m 20s of daytime.  The moon is a waning gibbous with 83.9% of its visible disk illuminated.

On Friday’s FW poll, on preferred shopping times, respondents selected from these choices (with multiple selections possible): Black Friday (26.83%), Small Business Saturday (25.61%), Cyber Monday (14.63%), but the most-selected choice was Other (32.93%).

On this day in 1942, America adds coffee to the list of rationed goods:

As of 1 March 1942, dog food could no longer be sold in tin cans, and manufacturers switched to dehydrated versions. As of 1 April 1942, anyone wishing to purchase a new toothpaste tube, then made from metal, had to turn in an empty one.^{[3]:129–130}Sugar was the first consumer commodity rationed, with all sales ended on 27 April 1942 and resumed on 5 May with a ration of .5 pounds (0.23 kg) per person per week, half of normal consumption. Bakeries, ice cream makers, and other commercial users received rations of about 70% of normal usage.^[6]Coffee was rationed nationally on 29 November 1942 to 1 pound (0.45 kg) every five weeks, about half of normal consumption, in part because of German U-boatattacks on shipping from Brazil.^[9] By the end of 1942, ration coupons were used for nine other items.^[3]:138Typewriters,gasoline, bicycles, footwear, silk, nylon, fuel oil, stoves, meat, lard, shortening and oils, cheese, butter, margarine, processed foods (canned, bottled, and frozen), dried fruits, canned milk, firewood and coal, jams, jellies, and fruit butter were rationed by November 1943.^[10] Many retailers welcomed rationing because they were already experiencing shortages of many items due to rumors and panics, such as flashlights and batteries after Pearl Harbor.^[3]:133

Rationing of some foods and non-medical items, however effective or ineffective, was yet a small price to pay to defeat the Axis.  (Rationing of medicine was, needless to say, a more significant sacrifice.)

On this day in 1848, Milwaukee gets an opera house:

On this date Milwaukee opened its first opera house with a performance of As You Like It. Over 1,000 patrons attended this inaugural performance. The idea for this arts structure was conceived and promoted by John B. Rice, later mayor of Chicago, who arrived in Milwaukee in 1846 to establish a first rate theater. [Source: History of Milwaukee, Vol II, p. 122]

Good morning, Whitewater.

Friday in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of thirty-six. Sunrise is 7:01 and sunset 4:23, for 9h 21m 23s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 96.2% of its visible disk illuminated.

It’s been a century since Einstein’s general theory of relativity, and here’s a quick video summary of his remarkable insight:

On this day in 1882, a first performance, and on this day in 1903, the birth of a great player:

1882 – Ringling Brothers’ First Performance

On this date the Ringling brothers of Baraboo, Wisconsin performed their first show to an audience in Mazomanie. The brothers called their show the “Ringling Brothers Classic Comic Concert Company.” The show was barely a success, bringing in 59 paid admissions – just enough money to meet their hotel expenses. However, the brothers continued to tour and raised over $300 in three months, performing in Wisconsin, Iowa, and the Dakotas. After extensive investment and practice, the brothers launched their first circus in Baraboo on May 19, 1884. [Source: Badger Saints and Sinners by Fred L. Holmes, p.476-492]

1903 – Green Bay Packer Johnny Blood Born

On this date Johnny Blood (aka John McNally) was born in New Richmond. Blood was an early NFL halfback playing for Green Bay from 1929 to 1933 and 1935 to 1936. He also played for the Milwaukee Badgers, Duluth Eskimos, Pottsville Maroons, and the Pittsburgh Pirates. An elusive runner and gifted pass receiver, he played a major role in the Packers’ drive to the first three championships in 1929, 1930 and 1931. Johnny Blood died on November 28, 1985, at the age of 82. Titletown Brewing Co. in Green Bay named their brew Johnny “Blood” Red Ale after the famed halfback. [Source: Packers.com]

Here’s the final game in Puzzability‘s Eat! Eat! series:

This Week’s Game — November 23-27

Eat! Eat!

We’re serving up some trivia for this week’s feast. The answer to each day’s quiz question is a title or phrase that contains the sequence EAT in two places. Some instances of EAT may have a space between letters.

Example:

What 2013 hit by the indie rock band The Neighbourhood evokes autumn’s climate?

Answer:

“Sweater Weather”

What to Submit:

Submit the title or phrase (as “Sweater Weather” in the example) for your answer.

Friday, November 27

What tiny Off-Off-Broadway venue in New York was founded in 1996 to create “a joyful hell in a small space”?