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.
Josephine
Minutillo http://www.architecturalrecord.com/articles/12910-obituary-gunnar-birkerts-1925-2017
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 (“hidden, undetected”).
(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 (“hidden, undetected”). (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.
No comments:
Post a Comment