The Daily Dose/September 22, 2018
By Gaylon Kent
America’s Funniest Guy
Capsule Book Review
Alexander Hamilton: Profile in Paradox by John C Miller: Alexander Hamilton remains one of the more interesting figures that attended America’s birth. Born illegitimate in the West Indies, he made his way to New York City, armed with both the genius and the ambition to make the societal and professional rises he yearned for. Miller does a very good job of making Hamilton accessible and his book as the details you would expect and is written in an urbane style that is actually rather funny at times, not because Miller is a humorist, but because he knows how to write. He does an excellent job of showing Hamilton at his best – a genius with a knack for the audacious – to his worst – a pest unopen to anything other than his worldview – which eventually got him killed.
As an aside, this book took us forever to read, about four months, which is a long time even for leisurely readers like us. But we have assorted projects going on, plus other things, too, and we did have the hour or so every day to devote to it.
Rating Scale: 1 – The very best; 2 – Superior; 3 – Good; 4 – Not too bad. 5 – A steaming pile
Final Rating: 2. Serious students of history will find, have found, Miller’s work to have no small amount of merit and casual readers will find it useful as well. Certainly worth your time.
Today at the Site
Today, on The Diary of a Nobody, Sparrow announces that one of the sacrifices demanded by his new teeth is the swapping of chunky peanut butter for creamy. Also, he is still getting mileage from the “mouth looked like an archaeological dig” line plus here is one of those fancy Keurig coffee machines in the breakroom at the retailer.
We’re grateful for [the Keurig] because the ground coffee they provide company-wide is some of the worst coffee you will ever have…It tastes as if they roasted the beans with some old sweat socks…But the K machine rules…
John C Miller, in the book we reviewed above, has The Thought for the Day, a quote about preparing yourself for your emergence.
Hamilton had been born to unmarried parents in the West Indies and was determined to rise to an exalted station, both socially and professionally…Hamilton, much like Benjamin Franklin, remains an outstanding example of someone of modest birth who saw the life he wanted to live and went out and lived that life.
On This Date
In 1975 – Sara Jane Moore attempts to assassinate President Gerald Ford in San Francisco. Moore fired one shot from about 40 feet away with a gun purchased that morning because the police had confiscated her personal weapon the day before. The sights were off and she missed. Moore was sentenced to life in prison and was paroled in 2007, a year after Ford died. Her attempt came 17 days after Lynette Fromme tried to assassinate Ford in nearby Sacramento.
In 1911 – Cy Young of the Boston Rustlers, later known as the Braves, earns the win in a 1-0 victory over the Pittsburgh Pirates. It is the 511th and final win of Young’s major league (ML) career, a record that still stands. Young would go on to lose his last three starts, finishing with 316 losses, also an ML record that still stands. Young had been baseball’s all-time wins leader since 1903 and it’s all-time losses leader since 1911.
In 1945 – You Two-Timed Me One Time Too Often by Tex Ritter is #1 on Billboard’s country chart, then known as the Most Played Juke Box Folk Records chart, for the fourth of eleven non-consecutive weeks. The song would spend five weeks at #1 in this its third of five stints at #1 for the year. It was the second of three number ones for Ritter and the song was written by Jenny Lou Carson and was the first #1 country song written by a woman.
Answer To The Last Trivia Question
President Dwight Eisenhower nominated Potter Stewart to the United States Supreme Court.
Today’s Stumper
Whose major league career wins and losses records did Cy Young break? – Answer next time!
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