The VintageGent-ette’s sister, the Modern Gentress, was almost beguiled by a young man offering her quotes of Rumi. Unlike V-Gette who has a deep appreciation for ancient and medieval lit, the Modern Gentress turned up the Modern nose. “That’s just a bunch of old crap.”  What does she want? A guy to lure her with something more modern? Someone the American Classics, as opposed to the Persian classics, like “Someone’s In the Kitchen with Dinah” just don’t set the mood.

A Gent named Jerry Forman was intrigued, unlike the MG, by Rumi, and the wandering dervish Yunus Emre.  I was previously familiar with Whirling Dervishes, but was completely ignorant of the existence of Wandering Dervishes. Did they represent different philosophies, or with all the whirling, did one have to mix it up and wander once in awhile.  That would make one more of a Stumbling Dervish, if my freshman acting method acting class is any sort of corollary (for the uninitiated, spin someone around 10 times before they play a scene about being confused and the true authentic emotion will come out for sure). I digress.

Getting back on track, Jerry Forman has a nifty site (http://www.RumiPoems.com) that he has been adding poems and lyrics to for folks’ enjoyment. what’s more, is Jerry has composed original music to accompany them (when you go to RumiPoems.com, there are links to “Lyrics,” which are just the printed words. Click on the title of the song/poem and a player opens up for you to listen to them.)  The first one, Spring, reminds me of the slow-paced ballads that mariachis would play, sans the horns and rumba shakers just a single guitar. But that’s just me. Whether you are a fan of Jerry’s styling and voice or not, it is ambitious and way more original than holding a boombox in the window and throwing rocks to get the objet d’affection’s attention.  So, up your game.

He does identify Rumi as a “secularist,” when in fact, you analyze his poetry, he was not nearly so at the time. He did seem to hold a philosophy of the evolution of ego, but his work heavily reflected some sensibilities in the Quran. In fact a branch of Sufism evolved in light of his work. Hardly a secularist and unspiritual, his work takes on more depth in the context and understanding of his belief in God. In fact, his lyrics and poetry has been read in places of worship from Buddhist monasteries to Christian churches. Not bad staying power for someone who penned the paper in the 1200’s, no?

One of my absolutely favorite travel shows on TV is The Naked Archaeologist. Simcha Jacobovici is a photojournalist from Canada and he has a show in which he poses a Biblical question and then toes in search of the answer. I’ve only seen him fail to find a satisfactory answer perhaps twice. The man is hysterically funny, has an attitude problem I can appreciate, plus the resources to travel all over the Holy Land to find answers to questions everyone wants to know. It’s been two thousand years since that bit of history happened and many would love to know what it looked like, how life was lived and maybe what they ate or wore.

I can’t wait to watch his show on DirectTV HD Channels because he speaks to not only archaeologists but scientists, college professors, Biblical experts and researchers. Together, these people travel all over the Holy Land showing the viewing public what it felt like back then, whom the main characters were, what they did for a living and a hundred other fascinating facets. What has earned Mr. Jacobovici my undying respect is that the man isn’t a dry academic but an interested observer with a sense of humor and a twisted mind, in some respects. He isn’t partial to any one religion, but fairly and as completely as he is able to represents the truth as he digs it up. My favorite part is seeing where he travels and what the people are like or not like.

It mainly focuses on the many sites in Los Angeles, California, but has extended to includes spots in Nevada, Maryland, Arizona, Washington and beyond. So, go look up a historic place and show up in your vintage clothing! It would make a great retro photo!  I usually try to look up places along every route I am planning more than a two hour car drive, just in case I should come across something classy or outrageous.

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This week, the history world was abuzz with the news of family lore confirmed. An inscription that was rumored to have been in Abraham Lincoln’s pocket watch was proven true.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A gold watch owned by Abraham Lincoln bears a message marking the start of the U.S. Civil War, but the president never knew of the “secret” inscription uncovered on Tuesday at the National Museum of American History.

The engraving, by watchmaker Jonathan Dillon, is dated April 13, 1861, and reads in part: “Fort Sumpter was attacked by the rebels” and “thank God we have a government.”

The museum said it agreed to open the watch to find out if the message really was there after it was contacted by the watchmaker’s great-great-grandson, Doug Stiles of Waukegan, Illinois.

The American Civil War began when Confederate troops opened fire on Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina, on April 12, 1861.

Forty-five years later, Dillon the watchmaker told The New York Times that he was repairing Lincoln’s watch when he heard that the first shots of the Civil War had been fired.

Dillon said he unscrewed the dial of the watch and used a sharp instrument to mark the historic day on the president’s watch. He told the newspaper that, as far as he knew, no one had ever seen the inscription.

“Lincoln never knew of the message he carried in his pocket,” Brent Glass, director of the National Museum of American History said in a statement. “It’s a personal side of history about an ordinary watchman being inspired to record something for posterity.”

Lincoln was elected the 16th president of the United States in November 1860. In the lead up to the Civil War, South Carolina and six other states seceded from the Union before Lincoln’s inauguration in March 1861.

(Reporting by JoAnne Allen; Editing by Patricia Zengerle)

Does this make you want to go verify all of Grandpa or Grandma’s old stories to see if they were true? You never know what little piece of history you might unearth.

Those are the facts.

Now what the website is debating is the underlying motive.  It has been believed by some that the motive of this was to act as a genocide against the Ukraine.  The website is debating that it was not a deliberate genocide, that people died because of the faulty and ill executed policies of Stalin.   The former was supported by Viktor Yuschenko and others.  The latter is supported by the EU.  When a resolution was made, I wasn’t too versed on all the details of it, but do know that it was hotly debated in the areas densely populated by former Russians within the United States.  The United Nations resolved that Golodomor, also referred to as Holodomor, was a crime against humanity.  It was more than coincidental that even though people in central Russia died, that the deaths were more concentrated in areas where nationalism was rising, such as the Ukraine.

It seems completely plausible that they died by byproduct, which further proves that communism and extreme socialism do NOT work.  However, the trend of denying genocide is dangerous and irrefutable.   Either way, I do believe whether the seizure of grains was a deliberate attack of certain groups of people, or whether that was just a byproduct, Stalin, with all the scientists around him, was not stupid, and he had to know that deaths would toll in the millions.

What do you think, dear readers?   Will modern events be refuted and changed by who can make the most noise on the internet?  And what do you think about the actual event? Click to read the website in question about Holodomor.

Doubledecker buses are a common site in classic films, and if you go there, you can ride comfortabley with the sun out of your eyes.  More properly, since it is London, it will more likely keep the rain off of your hair.  At right is one of the “modern” concepts.

I recently found doubledecker cufflinks on Amazon.  They are under thirty bucks. Very cool to remind yourself of London.  They are offered by Cuff-Daddy and they have a lifetime guarantee.  Women are wearing cufflinks for funky outfits too these days.

I have recently learned that The California Flammability Act went into effect. (Exciting, huh? Well, it certainly changed the fabric and clothing industry)

Retailers were ordered to clear their shelves of any clothing and “yard goods” were constructed of a flammable fabric. Some retailers purchased or were provided with test equipment to determine which goods were at risk. Not all retailers immediately complied.

Fabrics were not graded on the failure to protect the individual from a large scale fire (such as a house fire or those also involving flammable liquids), but the sudden catching of fire from a very small source such as a heat glow or a spark. Fabrics were considered flammable when they caught fire in less than 6 seconds. Materials most targetted were, according to Fairchild’s Mens Wear Magazine of March 7, 1947, “long napped rayons, sweaters and robes with the same characteristic, or with short or finer nap, nets as used in evening gowns, and thin, coated fabrics.” In fact, for a time, any synthetic fabric more flammable than natural cotton was banned.

The ban did not include hats, gloves, shoes, purses, or interlining materals that were not exposed.

Not only mills in the state were barred from producing them, retailers were fined or penalized for carrying flammable clothing and purchased or supplied with equipment to test fabrics. They were ordered to clear their shelves and check their insurers for liability.

Retailers did not all immediately comply. There were some questionable fabrics that individual stores inquired the fire marshall about. In doing so, the retailer could probably sell off the remaining forbidden items because it took 6 months at times for the subsequent ruling.

It is very interesting to think about the presence of particular fabrics lending towards accurately dating a garment. However, since the regulation did not immediately spread across the country, nor did it become federal law, fabric content alone cannot be relied upon to accurately date a suit or a nightie, except perhaps in the case of California Designers of the times.

I was looking around on the SportsVids site and came across this casual gem from the 1920s. They always say people dressed more formally in decades past, which is true, but I have a feeling that this game just spontaneously broke out in front of someone’s house:

I hope more people will go to SportsVid, an online sports videos site, and share the gems that have been languishing.  Maybe they had their camera ready at a historic match up of famous athletes, or perhaps someone somewhere has footage of a lost sport that we just don’t play very often today.  You may just have an important piece of the past for someone to jog a memory or to research a time past.

It is a Minerva stopwatch previously owned by a Mr. Arthur Bloom. Mr. Bloom was a television director and one of the founder’s of the perennial news magazine “60 minutes.” He lent it to the production crew and on Oct. 22, 1968, the familar tick of Bloom’s stopwatch greeted America for the first time. The watch is an icon, and has been dramatized and parodied hundreds of times over.

Artie Bloom passed away but the Minverva…now computer generated (as the article informs)…ticks on…

reprinted from http://www.cbsnews.com

‘60 Minutes’ Founder Arthur Bloom Dies

NEW YORK, Jan. 29, 2006

Arthur Bloom (CBS)
Arthur Bloom (CBS)

(CBS)Arthur Bloom, the award-winning CBS News television director responsible for the distinctive on-screen look of >60 Minutes since its debut 37 years ago and who led the modernization of on-screen graphics at CBS News, died at home Saturday of cancer. He was 63 and resided in Grandview-on-Hudson, N.Y.

He was one of the last remaining original 60 Minutes founders still working for the program. Bloom also played a role in helping to train Dan Rather to succeed Walter Cronkite in the CBS News anchor chair in 1981.

Bloom spent his entire 45-year career at CBS and used his keen eye and a symphonic vision of camera work to become one of the medium’s best directors of live political event coverage. His outstanding talent was recognized with the first Lifetime Achievement Award in News Direction from the Directors Guild of America (DGA) in 1995. The same organization had honored him twice before, once for news direction of CBS News coverage of the 1976 Democratic and Republican conventions and, before that, in 1973 for his work on 60 Minutes.

Most of Bloom’s time was devoted to 60 Minutes; he helped to create and then honed the consistent, classy look of the broadcast. Each week he worked in Studio 33 in the CBS Broadcast Center monitoring the program’s studio production and directing the 60 Minutes correspondents as they taped introductions and tags for their reports. He influenced some of the broadcast’s most basic elements, starting with its famous ticking stopwatch.

The first stopwatch was Bloom’s own. The timepiece symbol began as part of 60 Minutes creator Don Hewitt’s idea for “60 minutes of reality” and came to life when Bloom filmed his own Minerva stopwatch. The concept worked well enough to be used at the beginning of the broadcast’s third edition on Oct. 22, 1968.

Soon it was shown between segments, eventually becoming the iconic logo recognized by generations. Bloom updated the logo, but only in barely noticeable ways at intervals of several years. His modernizing touches included the use of slimmer typography and the addition of subtle shading and texture to the logo’s background. He oversaw the stopwatch’s transition from a filmed image to a computer-generated one.

“Artie had an eye for what worked visually and what didn’t – he was invaluable to me,” said Hewitt. “I depended on him to make the broadcast as visually appealing as it turned out to be. He was at my side every step of the way.”

Bloom also helped Hewitt execute the graphic concept for 60 Minutes as a magazine for television, deciding on a mock-up of a magazine page to put behind the correspondent to begin each of the broadcast’s segments. Now also computer-generated, the magazine concept has essentially remained the same.

Save that for a cocktail party. You are sure to dazzle someone with your knowledge!