Here is your open thread for March 25, 2020.
Today is the birthday of Aretha Franklin.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hx7jngexT3I
Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens discovered Titan, the largest moon of Saturn, 365 years ago today. It’s possible we may have to qualify that statement some day to say that he was the first human from Earth to discover the existence of Titan, but for now this seems to belong in the more elite category of actual discoveries.
On March 25, 1894, “Coxey’s Army” set out from Massilon, Ohio, to march on Washington in protest of unemployment in what was, at the time, the worst depression in US history.
On March 25, 1911, a fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory — a sweatshop in New York City — killed 146 workers. The explicit goal and agenda of the Roberts Court is to roll back safety, wage, and labor protections for American workers to roughly what they were on March 24, 1911. This is what 81 percent of white evangelicals have redefined their faith to support.
The Scottsboro Boys were arrested on March 25, 1931 — less than 100 years ago — for alleged rapes that: A) probably did not ever happen, and B) certainly were not committed by any of the nine black boys and young men accused of them. It took more than 80 years for them to receive a posthumous pardon from the state of Alabama.
On March 25, 1947, a coal mine explosion in Centralia, Illinois, killed 111 miners. Try not to confuse this Centralia mining disaster with the mining disaster in Centralia, Pennsylvania. And see again the note above about the Roberts Court.
On March 25, 1988, Czechoslovakian police violently suppressed the candle demonstration in Bratislava, attacking thousands of peaceful demonstrators with water cannons and beating them with batons. The authoritarian government was pretty sure they had successfully silenced the protesters. They were confident in that right up until November of the following year, when the Velvet Revolution relit all those candles, and then some.
What happened in 1989 was impossible, right up until it wasn’t.
Character actor Ed Begley was born 119 years ago today. He won an Oscar for best supporting actor, but not for 12 Angry Men, for which — absurdly — he wasn’t even nominated. (And yes, he’s Ed Begley Jr.’s father.)
Director David Lean was born 112 years ago today. (Everybody’s always all ooh Lawrence of Arabia, which is true, but also Bridge Over the River Kwai, man.)
Sportscaster Howard Cosell was born 102 years ago today. If you don’t know someone’s age, you can determine if they’re Generation X or Millennial by whether or not they can do a passable Howard Cosell impression.
“The type of mind that can understand good fiction is not necessarily the educated mind,” Flannery O’Connor wrote, “but it is at all times the kind of mind that is willing to have its sense of mystery deepened by contact with reality, and its sense of reality deepened by contact with mystery.” O’Connor was born 95 years ago today.
You can listen to Flannery O’Connor reading her story “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” here.
Songwriter Hoyt Axton was born 82 years ago today. Here’s “Never Been to Spain.”
Gloria Steinem turns 86 today. Sir Elton John is 73. Lee Mazzilli is 65 and Tom Glavine is 54.
Finally, today is the Feast of the Annunciation, which has been a favorite subject for painters for centuries, but the one that nailed it, I think, was this one, from Henry Osawa Tanner in 1898:
Talk amongst yourselves.
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