There are two places named “Greenport” in the state of New York. One is located at the eastern end of Long Island and was a whaling port in the 19th century. The other is located upstate, near Hudson, NY.
Rensselaer, New York (“REN-suh-LEER”) is a city in Upstate New York on the Hudson River, in Rensselaer County. It is on the east side of the Hudson, directly across from Albany, New York’s state capital.
Original natives of the area called it Petuquapoern and Juscum catick. The Van Rensselaer family, which were the feudal landholders of the entire future Rensselaer County built a residence in the future city of Rensselaer. Early-day Rensselaer was inown as Greenbush, a hamlet about one square mile in size. The village of Greenbush was incorporated in 1815. In 1897, Greenbush was chartered as a city, and its name was changed to Rensselaer.
RPI, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, is located a few mile upriver in Troy, NY.
The Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, Inc. is an organization based in Beacon, New York that seeks to protect the Hudson River and surrounding wetlands and waterways through advocacy and public education. Founded by folk singer Pete Seeger with his wife Toshi Seeger in 1966, the organization is known for its sailing vessel, the sloop Clearwater, and for its annual music and environmental festival, the Great Hudson River Revival.
Pete Seeger was in a folk singing group called The Weavers. There was a documentary about them called Wasn’t That a Time.
The other original members of the Weavers were Ronnie Gilbert, Lee Hays, and Fred Hellerman.
Baseball manager Earl Weaver was ejected from games at least 91 times during the regular season and several more times during post-season play. He was ejected from both games in a doubleheader three times. He was ejected before a game started twice, both times by Ron Luciano.
Earl Warren served as a prosecutor, Governor of California and Tom Dewey’s 1948 running mate before being named Chief Justice of the United States by President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
Allen Welsh Dulles, former Director of Central Intelligence and head of the Central Intelligence Agency, was a member of the Warren Commission. He was the younger brother of John Foster Dulles, the Secretary of State during the Eisenhower Administration.
Carol Burnett first came to public attention singing a song on the Jack Paar show entitled “I Made a Fool of Myself Over John Foster Dulles.” Dulles was Dwight Eisenhower’s peripatetic and somewhat stodgy Secretary of State. The lyrics went:
I made a fool of myself over John Foster Dulles
Oh I made a chump of myself over John Foster Dulles
The first time I saw him t’was at the UN
Oh I never have been one to swoon over men
But I swooned and the drums started poundin and then
I made a fool of myself over John Foster Dulles
The main terminal of Washington Dulles International Airport was designed in 1958 by famed Finnish architect Eero Saarinen.
The only NYC skyscraper designed by Eero Saarinen is the CBS building, aka “Black Rock”, on Sixth Avenue.
Chris Rock briefly held the world record for having the largest audience during a live-comedy performance after performing in front of 15,900 people in London in May 2008. The record was broken by Mario Barth in July of that year.
The Gateway Arch in St. Louis is the tallest man-made monument in the United States, Missouri’s tallest accessible building, and the world’s tallest arch. It was designed by Finnish-American architect Eero Saarinen.
“Hail, Columbia” is the official march of the Vice President of the United States, currently Joe Biden, Democrat of Delaware.
Joe Biden is the 47th Vice President of the United States, and he is the first Roman Catholic and the first Delawarean to become VP. In high school he was a standout halfback/wide receiver on the football team, and he helped lead the perennially losing team to an undefeated season in his senior year.
Joe Biden once promised us that the President has a big stick.
Three of the four men on the ballot in the 1920 election went on to be President. Harding was elected President; his Vice-presidential candidate, Coolidge, succeeded him on his death; and the Democratic VP candidate, Roosevelt, won the 1932 election. Only the Democratic candidate for President, Cox, never became President.
One of the better known analyses of the 1920 election is in author Irving Stone’s book about defeated Presidential candidates, They Also Ran. Stone rated James W. Cox as superior in every way over Warren Harding, claiming the former would have made a much better president; the author argued that there was never a stronger case in the history of American presidential elections for the proposition that the better man lost.
They Also Ran was published in 1943. In 1966 it was updated and covered the 1944-1964 elections. It made a case for why Americans in 1960 should have elected Nixon over Kennedy.
John Milton’s sonnet “On His Blindness”, written when his condition was virtually complete, asks what God wants of the blind, and answers himself “They also serve who only stand and wait.”