Randy Twizzle

Jerome Rodale a health fanatic and publisher died on the Dick Cavett show in 1971: In a New York Times Magazine interview, this 72-year-old longevity guru announced, "I'm going to live to be 100, unless I'm run down by a sugar-crazed taxi driver." A guest on the Dick Cavett Show the next day, while Cavett was discussing politics with journalist Pete Hamill, Rodale's head dropped to his chest and he was heard to let out what sounded like a snore. "Are we boring you, Mr. Rodale?" asked Cavett. There was no response -- Rodale was dead. The show was never broadcast." http://www.snopes.com/horrors/freakish/onstage.htm

According to the Washington Post the news about Carson sending jokes to Letterman was leaked by former Tonight Show producer Peter Lassally "Lassally revealed the secret about the jokes because he was trying to get inquiring TV columnists off the topic of Carson's health, not wanting to discuss it any more than necessary. The National Enquirer had splashed a story about Carson being rushed to the hospital on its front page, and the tabloid is usually accurate when dealing with stories of celebrity illness."

she was to me buddy. i loved her and miss her already. she kept america entertained for over 30 years with her late night monologues.

I was going to post it in politics but the phone rang, I got distracted and accidently posted it here.

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) -- Rose Mary Woods, the devoted secretary to President Nixon who said she inadvertently erased part of a crucial Watergate tape, has died. She was 87. Woods died Saturday night at a nursing home in Alliance, Roger Ruzek, owner of a funeral home in Sebring, said Sunday. He did not know the cause of death. The 18 1/2-minute gap in the tape of a June 20, 1972, conversation between Richard Nixon and chief of staff H.R. Haldeman was critical to the question of what Nixon knew about the break-in at Democratic headquarters in the Watergate complex three days earlier -- and when he knew it. Woods, who moved to northeastern Ohio after leaving the disgraced president's staff in 1976, never talked much about her years with the only American president to resign the office. But Nixon considered her a member of the family. He wrote in his memoirs that it was Woods he asked to inform first lady Pat Nixon and his daughters in 1974 that he had decided to resign on Aug. 9. ``My decision was irrevocable, and I asked her to suggest that we not talk about it anymore when I went over for dinner,'' Nixon said. When the time came for the family to privately say goodbye to Nixon before he climbed aboard the helicopter headed for Air Force One, Woods stood by with Mrs. Nixon, daughters Tricia and Julie, and their husbands. ``Rose ... is as close to us as family,'' Nixon said. Woods, the granddaughter of an Irish stowaway, was born in Sebring, 20 miles southwest of Youngstown, on Dec. 26, 1917, and was raised in a strict Roman Catholic family. She worked as a pottery company secretary in Sebring, then moved to Washington to become a typist on Capitol Hill, where she caught the eye of a rising Republican star, Congressman Richard Nixon of California. Nixon biographer Jonathan Aitken said the two hit it off immediately. Nixon, elected to the Senate in 1950, hired Woods as his secretary. ``She was intelligent, literate, clamlike in her discretion. Technically superb, she possessed the high-speed skills of shorthand and typing necessary to keep up with her boss's often frantic and always demanding schedule,'' Aitken wrote. ``One of the reasons why Woods struck up such a good rapport with her boss was that their characters were similar. Disciplined in her emotions yet passionate in her convictions, Woods was intuitive, protective and obsessive about privacy.'' Nixon defended his loyal employee when fingers pointed at Woods, who had spent weeks transcribing subpoenaed White House tapes. ``I know I did not do it,'' Nixon said. ``And I completely believe Rose when she says that she did not do it.'' She denied she caused the full 18 1/2-minute gap, testifying later that she inadvertently erased four or five minutes. The phone rang while she was transcribing the tape, she said. She accidentally hit the record button. A picture in which she demonstrated her action -- stretching one foot forward while reaching back to get the phone -- became one of the most famous images of the era. A panel of experts set up in the 1970s by federal judge John Sirica, who presided over the Watergate criminal trials, concluded that the erasures were done in at least five -- and perhaps as many as nine -- separate and contiguous segments. The panel never figured out what was erased. Who erased the rest of the tape? No one knows. Alexander Haig, who succeeded Haldeman as chief of staff, blamed the gap on ``sinister forces.'' Experts later examined the tape and found as many as nine deliberate erasures. They said Woods could not have done the whole thing. In an interview on the 25th anniversary of the 1972 break-in, Woods said she was rarely asked about Watergate anymore. ``Every once in a while I get notes and things from some of the people who were with us, but not much,'' she said. ``Everybody gets sort of separated.''

This picture was taken only a couple of weeks ago as Carson was entering a Malibu movie theatre.

From 1955

It's not offensive to me, but it sounds like a title for an off Broadway musical revue featuring cabaret singers sitting on stools, singing show tunes (the singers not the stools).

Here's some early Kerouac from the Lowell Sun in 1942. Ain't much bop prosody here

The trumpeter is Jack Sheldon. It's from the album Mink Jazz. Keep the figalagee but remember that Flick Lives.

BY JOCELYN GECKER ASSOCIATED PRESS JAKARTA, Indonesia -- Top hotels in several Asian capitals have stopped ordering sea bass and sole from waters off their tsunami-ravaged coastlines to ease diners' concerns about fish feasting on corpses. Some have turned to suppliers in Australia, while others are buying fish from Indonesian islands off the Pacific Ocean that were untouched by disaster -- dealing another blow to fishermen whose livelihoods were shattered by the giant waves. Health officials say fears of fish are unwarranted and insist there is no evidence of a risk posed by eating fish from the Indian Ocean, where at least 160,000 people died in Asia and Africa. But, in a region that suffered through bird flu and other recent food scares, several top eateries and their suppliers are unwilling to take chances. Markus Schneider, a manager at Jakarta's Mandarin Oriental, said the hotel's first reaction to the Dec. 26 disaster was to collect donations for victims. Then, the focus turned to seafood dishes at the hotel's three restaurants. "We went straight to our suppliers to make sure their supplies didn't come from Sumatra," he said. Many did, including the shrimp for an Italian risotto, the antipasti's calamari and the sea bass filets served over sauteed greens. Tens of thousands died on Sumatra after the magnitude 9 temblor and tsunami that followed. Some of the hotel's fish was already imported, but all orders that had come from Indonesia were switched to Australia. That increases costs by about 15 percent, a figure that doesn't worry hotels that cater to business travelers and tourists. "We didn't want people to be concerned. There's nothing worse than a sick customer," said Schneider. The hotel's branch in Thailand's capital, Bangkok, has taken similar precautions, he said. International health agencies, including the World Health Organization and the Food and Agriculture Organization, say the fears are unfounded. "The fish myth is making the rounds all over the place," said Harsaran Pandey, a WHO spokeswoman. "The fears are not scientifically based." There is no evidence fish in tsunami-hit areas are feeding off corpses or that it would cause a health risk if they were, Pandey said. And Pandey said there also is no evidence of higher mercury levels or other toxins in the Indian Ocean since the tsunami, noting that most of what washed away were villages and beachfront properties rather than industries.

Here I am during my lunch break.

Okay, maybe Glickton's not brilliant, but he still looks like a genius compared to the joker who wrote the article.

"This will be a rare performance," says clarinetist and sax man Glickman. "Just preparing for it has been challenging." He'll also bring his frequently present banjo. Thursday's program will progress from early 20th century jazz (and Glickman's own song about its performers) and progress to "real music from real guys" of late '20s — Charley Parker, Felonius Monk, Dave Brubeck, to "big" jazz bands at the tailend of the swing era. http://www.ashlandwi.com/placed/index.php?...story_id=191734

Burns is quite diabolical

A busybody health professor has just discovered that gym class can be a waste of time. That's precisely why I enjoyed it; it had no redeeming social value. My high school gym teachers were a surly bunch of aging ex-jocks, some with drinking and/or gambling problems which they made little attempt to hide. They largely didn't give a damn and that's why we loved them. .The Associated Press Updated: 3:22 p.m. ET Jan. 17, 2005 NASHVILLE, Tenn. - Lisa Lewis, a health professor, heard her two sons talk about how bad their high school P.E. class was, so she went to see for herself. “It’s been terrible,” she said. The teacher was a basketball coach, and “that’s basically all they did — play basketball between 40 and 50 kids.” Many students, especially those who weren’t athletic, just stood on the sidelines of the disorganized game. Physical education experts say there’s little accountability for P.E. teachers in most schools. They say the classes are often poorly run, and students don’t spend much time in them anyway — even as American children grow fatter and more out of shape. Nearly one-fifth of all high school P.E. teachers don’t have a major and certification in physical education, according to the most recent numbers from the National Center for Education Statistics. Focus on winning, not on health Often the instructor is a coach more interested in winning games than in producing healthy students, experts say. “That stigma that a coach cares more about the team than his physical education class does exist,” said George Graham, professor of kinesiology at Penn State University. “When a teacher or coach is doing that, it’s really up to the principal to get in there and say, 'We want to win ball games, but the kids in P.E. deserve a good education too.'’ The lack of respect for P.E. also appears in the number of students required to take it. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that in 2003, only 28 percent of high school students nationwide attended a daily P.E. class, but 38 percent watched television for three hours or more each school night. While 71 percent of the nation’s freshmen were in P.E. at least one day a week — hardly enough to be effective, experts say — those numbers drop to 40 percent by the students’ senior year. Participation varies by state But participation varies widely by state. In Tennessee, for instance, only 18 percent of seniors were enrolled in a P.E. class, while New York has better than 90 percent participation. The National Association for Sport and Physical Education says Illinois is the only state that requires daily physical education K-12, while Alabama requires it for K-8. In California, Kentucky, Maine, Missouri, New York, South Carolina and Vermont, accountability standards are being developed for health and physical education programs. “Unless we hold physical education teachers accountable for the fitness of the student ... there’s no way to evaluate who is good or who is bad because we’re more concerned with math and reading,” Lewis said. “There needs to be some sort of minimal national fitness standard — that would be a very easy thing to establish.” Some schools have done just that — like the Victor Central School District just outside Rochester in Victor, N.Y. Superintendent Timothy J. McElheran said his teachers are held to specific goals and judged like any math or science teacher would be.

Here's an August 14,1961 story about some other young people who went to that convention. Unfortunately Dr King doesn't get much ink here. According to this article the topic of "Space" was discussed by Congressman Walter H Moeller.

Guys, Dolls, Cover Star and New Star

I'm reading "Ted Williams The Biography of an American Hero" by Leigh Montville

E Buzz Miller and Lorraine

The Pee Wee column came from the Portland (Maine) Press Herald. I found it and all the other articles I've posted at newspaperarchive.com. It''s very easy to find interesting stories there. If you love old newspapers it's damn near paradise and well worth the yearly membership fee. I might add that I'm not in any way affiliiated with the site.

Correction: it's from Feb 16, 1951

Here's a surprisingly honest 1950 newspaper column about Pee Wee's health problems: