Good morning, Whitewater.

Saturday in town will bring a twenty-percent chance of snow showers with a high of twenty-eight. Sunrise is 6:41 and sunset 5:34, for 10h 52m 46s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 9.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1972, Nixon arrives in China:

Before even being elected president, Richard Nixon had talked of the need for better relations with the PRC, with which the U.S. did not maintain diplomatic relations as it recognized the government of the Republic of China on Taiwan as the government of China. Early in his first term, Nixon and National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger began sending subtle overtures hinting at warmer relations to the PRC government. After a series of these overtures by both countries, Kissinger flew on secret diplomatic missions to Beijing, where he met with Premier Zhou. On July 15, 1971, the President announced that he would visit the PRC the following year.

Occurring from February 21 to 28, 1972, the visit allowed the American public to view images of China for the first time in over two decades. Throughout the week the President and his most senior advisers engaged in substantive discussions with the PRC, including a meeting with Chairman Mao Zedong, while First Lady Pat Nixon toured schools, factories and hospitals in the cities of Beijing, Shanghai and Hangzhou with the large American press corps in tow. Nixon dubbed the visit “the week that changed the world.”
The repercussions of the Nixon visit were vast, and included a significant shift in the Cold War balance, pitting the PRC with the U.S. against the Soviet Union. “Nixon going to China” has since become a metaphor for an unexpected or uncharacteristic action by a politician.

On this day in 1918, Wisconsin’s Assembly stands with La Follette:

…a move to denounce Sen. Robert La Follette and the nine Wisconsin congressmen who refused to support World War I failed in the State Assembly, by a vote of 76-15. Calling LaFollette “disloyal,” the amendment’s originator, Democrat John F. Donnelly, insisted that La Follette’s position did not reflect “the sentiment of the people of Wisconsin. We should not lack the courage to condemn his actions.” Reflecting the majority opinion, Assemblyman Charles F. Hart retorted that “The Wisconsin State Legislature went on record by passing a resolution telling the President that the people of this state did not want war. Now we are condemning them for doing that which we asked them to do.” [Source: Capital Times 2/21/1918, p.1]

Good morning, Whitewater.

The work week ends with a high of seventeen and a seventy-percent chance of snow. Daytime accumulation will be about an inch. Sunrise is 6:43 and sunset 5:33, for 10h 49m 58s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 3.5% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1950, Sen. McCarthy makes his accusations on the Senate floor:

1950 – McCarthy Delivers Allegations to Senate
On this date, in a six-hour speech delivered before the U.S. Senate, Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy claimed he had the names of 81 U.S. government officials actively engaged in Communist activities, including “one of our foreign ministers.” [Source: Internet Archives]

Puzzability‘s Oscar Losers series ends today:

This Week’s Game — February 16-20

Oscar Losers

Sometimes when you lose, you lose big. For each day this week, we started with a nominee for the Best Actor Oscar who didn’t win it in at least one year (though he may have won it in another year). We then removed all instances of the letters in OSCAR, though not all five of the letters necessarily appear in the name.

Example:

HINFD

Answer:

Harrison Ford

What to Submit:

Submit the actor’s name (as “Harrison Ford” in the example) for your answer.

Friday, February 20

PENETY

Good morning, Whitewater.

It’s a cold Thursday in town, with winds of 5 to 10 mph, wind chill values between -15 and -25, and a high of just one degree. Sunrise today is 6:44 and sunset 5:32, for 10h 47m 10s of daytime. We’ve a new moon.

Happy (Lunar) New Year —

The Police and Fire Commission is scheduled to meet tonight at 6:30 PM.

There’s a new Dr. Seuss book to be published this July:

For the first time in 25 years, a new book by Dr. Seuss will be published this year from an original manuscript and sketches discovered in the home of the beloved children’s author, Random House announced today.

What Pet Should I Get? captures the excitement of a classic childhood moment—choosing a pet—and features the brother and sister characters that Dr. Seuss introduced in One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish. The new book, to be published in July, was likely written between 1958 and 1962 as the brother and sister are the same age in both stories.

The box filled with pages of text and sketches was found shortly after Ted’s death in 1991 when his widow Audrey Geisel was remodeling her home, according to a release. At that time it was set aside with other of Ted’s materials. It was rediscovered in the fall of 2013 by Mrs. Geisel and Claudia Prescott—Ted Geisel’s longtime secretary and friend—when they were cleaning out his office space. They reviewed the materials, finding the full text and illustrations for What Pet Should I Get? among other work.

On this day in 1868, a noted photographer is born near Whitewater:

1868 – Photographer Edward S. Curtis Born
On this date Edward Sheriff Curtis was born near Whitewater. As a young boy, he taught himself photography. His family eventually moved to the Puget Sound area of Washington state. He settled in Seattle and opened a photography studio in 1897.

A chance meeting on Mount Rainier resulted in Curtis being appointed official photographer on railroad magnate E.H. Harriman’s expedition to Alaska. Curtis also accompanied George Bird Grinnell, editor of Field and Stream magazine, to Montana in 1900 to observe the Blackfoot Sun Dance. After this, Curtis strove to comprehensively document American Indians through photography, a project that continued for over 30 years.

Working primarily with 6 x 8-inch reflex camera, he created over 40,000 sepia-toned images. His work attracted national attention, most notably from Theodore Roosevelt and J. Pierpont Morgan, whose family contributed generously to his project. His monumental work, The North American Indian, was eventually printed in 20 volumes with associated portfolios. Curtis’ work included portraits, scenes of daily life, ceremonies, architecture and artifacts, and landscapes. His photographs have recently been put online by the Library of Congress.[Source: Dictionary of Wisconsin Biography, SHSW 1960, pg. 892]

Here’s the Thursday game in Puzzability‘s Oscar Losers series:

This Week’s Game — February 16-20

Oscar Losers

Sometimes when you lose, you lose big. For each day this week, we started with a nominee for the Best Actor Oscar who didn’t win it in at least one year (though he may have won it in another year). We then removed all instances of the letters in OSCAR, though not all five of the letters necessarily appear in the name.

Example:

HINFD

Answer:

Harrison Ford

What to Submit:

Submit the actor’s name (as “Harrison Ford” in the example) for your answer.

Thursday, February 19

UELLWE

Good morning, Whitewater.

Wednesday in town will be partly sunny and cold, with a high of four degrees. Sunrise is 6:46 and sunset 5:30, for 10h 44m 24s of daytime. It’s a new moon today.

On this day in 1885, Mark Twain publishes Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in the United States:

Twain initially conceived of the work as a sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer that would follow Huckleberry Finn through adulthood. Beginning with a few pages he had removed from the earlier novel, Twain began work on a manuscript he originally titled Huckleberry Finn’s Autobiography. Twain worked on the manuscript off and on for the next several years, ultimately abandoning his original plan of following Huck’s development into adulthood. He appeared to have lost interest in the manuscript while it was in progress, and set it aside for several years. After making a trip down the Hudson River, Twain returned to his work on the novel. Upon completion, the novel’s title closely paralleled its predecessor’s: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Tom Sawyer’s Comrade).[13]

As it relates to the actual body of text during the time of publication, Mark Twain composed the story in pen on notepaper between 1876 and 1883. Paul Needham, who supervised the authentication of the manuscript for Sotheby’s books and manuscripts department in New York in 1991, stated, “What you see is [Clemens’] attempt to move away from pure literary writing to dialect writing”. For example, Twain revised the opening line of Huck Finn three times. He initially wrote, “You will not know about me”, which he changed to, “You do not know about me”, before settling on the final version, “You don’t know about me, without you have read a book by the name of ‘The Adventures of Tom Sawyer’; but that ain’t no matter.”[14] The revisions also show how Twain reworked his material to strengthen the characters of Huck and Jim, as well as his sensitivity to the then-current debate over literacy and voting.[15][16]

A later version was the first typewritten manuscript delivered to a printer.[17] Demand for the book spread outside of the United States. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was eventually published on December 10, 1884, in Canada and the United Kingdom, and on February 18, 1885, in the United States.[18] The illustration on page 283 became a point of issue after an engraver, whose identity was never discovered, made a last-minute addition to the printing plate of Kemble’s picture of old Silas Phelps, which drew attention to Phelps’ groin. Thirty thousand copies of the book had been printed before the obscenity was discovered. A new plate was made to correct the illustration and repair the existing copies.[19][20]

In 1885, the Buffalo Public Library’s curator, James Fraser Gluck, approached Twain to donate the manuscript to the library. Twain did so. Later it was believed that half of the pages had been misplaced by the printer. In 1991, the missing half turned up in a steamer trunk owned by descendants of Gluck’s. The library successfully proved possession and, in 1994, opened the Mark Twain Room to showcase the treasure.[21]

In relation to the literary climate at the time of the book’s publication in 1885, Henry Nash Smith describes the importance of Mark Twain’s already established reputation as a “professional humorist”, having already published over a dozen other works. Smith suggests that while the “dismantling of the decadent Romanticism of the later nineteenth century was a necessary operation,” Adventures of Huckleberry Finn illustrated “previously inaccessible resources of imaginative power, but also made vernacular language, with its new sources of pleasure and new energy, available for American prose and poetry in the twentieth century.”[22]

Here’s Puzzability‘s film-inspired Wednesday game:

This Week’s Game — February 16-20

Oscar Losers

Sometimes when you lose, you lose big. For each day this week, we started with a nominee for the Best Actor Oscar who didn’t win it in at least one year (though he may have won it in another year). We then removed all instances of the letters in OSCAR, though not all five of the letters necessarily appear in the name.

Example:

HINFD

Answer:

Harrison Ford

What to Submit:

Submit the actor’s name (as “Harrison Ford” in the example) for your answer.

Wednesday, February 18

LENDDIPI