Monday, August 21, 2017

How Moonshine Bootlegging Gave Rise to NASCAR by Jennifer Billock   Even before Prohibition, erstwhile distillers were gathering in secret locations throughout rural areas in the south, brewing up homemade spirits to sell under the radar and away from alcohol taxes and bans.  The drinks were made under the light of the moon, in hopes that no one would detect smoke rising from the stills and ultimately bust the operation—a practice that earned the booze its name “moonshine.”  Moonshining dates back to the 1700s, when officials imposed taxes on liquor sales.  Farmers and immigrants throughout the south took to making their own batches to sell for extra money, tax free, to counteract the effects of extreme poverty in the region.  And with the introduction of Prohibition, production skyrocketed, creating a thriving black market business for secretly distilled hooch.  Each hidden distillery needed to use runners—drivers in understated or otherwise ordinary-looking cars who could smuggle moonshine from the stills to thirsty customers across the region.  On the outside, the cars looked “stock,” normal enough to avoid attention.  But inside, both the mechanics of the cars and the drivers behind the wheel were far from ordinary.  The vehicles were outfitted with heavy-duty shocks and springs, safeguarding the jars containing the hooch from breaking on bumpy mountain roads.  The seats in the back were usually removed so more booze could fit.  And high-powered engines gave the cars extra speed to outrun any cops and tax agents along the route.  As for the drivers, they knew every path in the area like the backs of their hands, able to outpace those in pursuit, even turning off headlights and still successfully navigating.  They became known for their high-speed reckless driving—coining maneuvers like the bootleg turn, in which the drivers would quickly turn the car around in a controlled skid, either to elude the cops chasing them or to play a game of chicken with them, driving head-on at full speed until they abruptly changed course.  When the runners weren’t smuggling alcohol, many spent their free time racing other runners for bragging rights.  From the 1930s on, once Prohibition had ended, demand for bootlegged alcohol waned and the runners found themselves with souped-up cars yet out of work—though they continued to take part in organized races.  On December 14, 1947, one of these runners, Big Bill France, held a meeting with other drivers, car owners and mechanics to finally put in place some standardized rules for the races—thus NASCAR, the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing, was born.  The first official race was held two months later.  Read more and see pictures at http://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/how-moonshine-bootlegging-gave-rise-nascar-180962014/

Pumpernickel is probably the most German of all breads.  While German-style wholesome and wholegrain breads can nowadays be found in other countries, under European Union law authentic Westphalian pumpernickel can only be made in Germany.  The commercial use of the term Westfälischer Pumpernickel (Westphalian Pumpernickel) is regulated by the European Union scheme of protected geographical indications (PGIs).  Bread may only be sold under that name if the production process, from the mixing of the dough to the baking, takes place in Westphalia, an area where rye is a traditional crop and pumpernickel has been baked for more than five centuries.  The dark brown bread sold as pumpernickel in the United States has no resemblance with the real thing.  Instead of baking the bread the traditional way, which is at very low temperature for 12 to 16 hours, in the US molasses are added to the dough to give it its dark color.  In authentic pumpernickel, the sugars slowly caramelize during the baking process in a steam oven.  Pumpernickel must not contain any preservatives yet it has a very long shelf life.  Shrink-wrapped, it keeps for several months, and in metal cans for up to two years.  Authentic pumpernickel is a pure rye bread made of at least 90% coarsely ground rye flour or wholemeal rye grain, or a mixture of both, plus water, salt, and yeast.  Other optional ingredients are malt, sugar beet, or syrup. Sometimes, a little bit of stale pumpernickel is added to the dough.  This intensifies the flavor and uses up leftovers at the same time.  Find recipe at https://www.196flavors.com/germany-pumpernickel/

Forty years after blasting off, Earth's most distant ambassadors—the twin Voyager spacecraft—are carrying sounds and music of our planet ever deeper into the cosmos.  August 20, 2017 marks the 40th anniversary of NASA's launch of Voyager 2, now almost 11 billion miles distant.  Voyager 1 followed a few weeks later and is ahead of Voyager 2.  Each carries a 12-inch, gold-plated copper phonograph record (there were no CDs or MP3s back then) containing messages from Earth:  Beethoven's Fifth, chirping crickets, a baby's cry, a kiss, wind and rain, a thunderous moon rocket launch, African pygmy songs, Solomon Island panpipes, a Peruvian wedding song and greetings in dozens of languages.  There are also more than 100 electronic images on each record showing 20th-century life, traffic jams and all.  "The Farthest - Voyager in Space," airs at 9 p.m. EDT August 23, 2017 on PBS.  The two-hour documentary describes the tense and dramatic behind-the-scenes effort that culminated in the wildly successful missions to our solar system's outer planets and beyond.  It was Carl  Sagan who, in large part, got a record aboard each Voyager.  The 55 greetings for the Voyager Golden Records were collected at Cornell University, where Sagan taught astronomy, and the United Nations in New York.  The music production fell to science writer Timothy Ferris, a friend of Sagan living then in New York.  For the musical selections, Ferris and Sagan recruited friends along with a few professional musicians.  They crammed in 90 minutes of music recorded at half-speed; otherwise it would have lasted just 45 minutes.  How to choose from an infinite number of melodies and melodious sounds representing all of Earth?  Beethoven, Bach and Mozart were easy picks.  Louis Armstrong and His Hot Seven represented jazz, Blind Willie Johnson gospel blues.  For the rock 'n' roll single, the group selected Chuck Berry's 1958 hit "Johnny B. Goode."   Marcia Dunn  http://www.nwitimes.com/entertainment/television/nasa-pbs-marking-years-since-voyager-spacecraft-launches/article_8306e2f0-a825-5be7-846b-ff8c7f5fb850.html

“Every structure that I have built has been a ‘first’ for me—I have refused to emulate any existing form or idea.”  So wrote Gunnar Birkerts in the preface to a 2009 monograph of his work.  The Latvian-American architect died August 15, 2017 at the age of 92.  Considered part of a second wave of foreign-born modernists in the United States, Birkerts came to prominence in the 1970s.  He began his studies in architecture as a ‘displaced person’ at the Technische Hochschule in Stuttgart, Germany just as World War II ended.  There, studying with Rolf Gutbrod, Birkerts trained under a strong Bauhaus curriculum.  “We had a faculty of Bauhaus people there.  And right across the street, practically, from the college, from our building, was the Weissenhof—an arrangement of buildings by all the Modernists,” Birkerts recalled in a 2014 interview.  “There was Mies van der Rohe, Hans Scharoun . . . everybody had a building.  It was almost like a village.  So this thing was sort of absorbed, inhaled.”  After coming to America and showing up unannounced at Eero Saarinen’s office, he completed a brief apprenticeship in the Chicago office of Perkins + Will from 1950-51, until Saarinen was able to hire him.  He worked there for several years, an experience he referred to as both “destiny” and “profound.”  He would later become chief designer at Minoru Yamasaki’s firm before founding his own practice in the Detroit area in the early 1960s.

Prominent Polish playwright and screenwriter Janusz Głowacki died in Warsaw on August 19, 2017 less than a month before his 79th birthday.  Born in 1938, Głowacki graduated from the Polish Studies Department at the University of Warsaw.  In 1960, while still a student, he made his prose debut and four years later joined the editorial board of the popular weekly Kultura, contributing weekly columns and short stories to it.  When martial law was imposed in Poland in December 1981, he happened to be in London for the British premiere of his play Cinders.  He stayed in the UK for some time, before going to New York, where he settled.  It was in the US that he wrote his best-known plays:  Hunting Cockroaches, Antigone in New York, and The Fourth Sister.  In 1993, Antigone in New York was included in the list of 10 best plays of the year compiled by Time magazine.  His film scripts include Andrzej Wajda’s Hunting Flies (1969) and Wałęsa: Man of Hope (2013).  http://www.thenews.pl/1/11/Artykul/321670,Polish-writer-Janusz-Glowacki-dies

Dick Gregory, the pioneering standup comedian and civil rights activist who made his advocacy work a key component of his on-stage persona, died August 19, 2017 in Washington, D.C.  He was 84.  Gregory was active on the standup and public speaking circuit on and off for more than a half-century.  Gregory recently released a new book, “Defining Moments in Black History:  Reading Between the Lies,” and he penned a guest column for Variety on how communities can band together to end police brutality.  In June, Gregory was the subject of a lengthy profile on “CBS Sunday Morning.”  Actor Joe Morton explored the ups and downs of Gregory’s standup career in the one-man show “Turn Me Loose,” which ran in New York last year.  Cynthia Littleton 


http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1757  August 21, 2017  On this date in 1888, the first successful adding machine in the United States was patented by William Seward Burroughs.  On this date in 1987, Oldsmobile, a brand of American automobiles, was founded.  On this date in 1911, the Mona Lisa was stolen by a Louvre employee.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_21  Word of the Day  occultation  noun  (astronomy)  An astronomical event that occurs when one celestial object is hidden by another celestial object that passes between it and the observer when the nearer object appears larger and completely hides the more distant object.  The state of being occult (hiddenundetected). (astronomy)  An astronomical event that occurs when one celestial object is hidden by another celestial object that passes between it and the observer when the nearer object appears larger and completely hides the more distant object.  The state of being occult (hiddenundetected)(Shia Islam)  The disappearance of the messianic figure, or Mahdi, who will one day return to the world.  On this day in 2017, a total solar eclipse is visible within a band across the contiguous United States, the first time since June 8, 1918.

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