Father Vincent Robert Capodanno.

May 25th, 2020

Father Capodanno was ordained as a Catholic priest in 1958. He did missionary work in Taiwan and Hong Kong. But he felt a stronger calling.

So he enlisted, went through Officer Candidate School and was commissioned as a Lieutenant in 1965. He served with the United States Navy Chaplain Corps, and was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 7th Marines, 1st Marine Division. Later he was transferred to the 1st Medical Battalion, 1st Marine Division to finish out his first tour. He took six months of leave, and then re-enlisted and was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 5th Marines. Shortly after that, he was reassigned to the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines, 1st Marine Division.

Father Capodanno was more than a priest ministering within the horrific arena of war. He became a constant companion to the Marines: living, eating, and sleeping in the same conditions of the men. He established libraries, gathered and distributed gifts and organized outreach programs for the local villagers. He spent hours reassuring the weary and disillusioned, consoling the grieving, hearing confessions, instructing converts, and distributing St. Christopher medals. Such work “energized” him, and he requested an extension to remain with the Marines.

The troops called him “The Grunt Padre”.

Lt. RJ Marnell remembers, “Fr. Capodanno was … told several times it was not his job to go on patrols, fire sweeps, etc. Yet you had to watch him like a hawk as it was not uncommon to see a group of Marines running to get on a helicopter to go into battle, and all of a sudden this figure comes out of nowhere, no rifle, just his priest gear, and jumping in the helicopter before anybody could catch him. He wanted to be with his Marines and didn’t feel his job was simply to say Mass on Sundays.”

…

He became a true father to young boys on the front lines. He was “out there” with his men where he lived, ate, and slept as they did. To the young recruits thrust into the terrifying reality of battle, he was always available in his tent where anyone could drop in for comfort and guidance.
He shared his salary, rations and cigarettes with anyone in need. He could always be counted upon for a cold soda or a book from his reading library. When Christmas came around and soldiers felt forgotten, Father Vincent saw to it that no Marine was without gifts which he obtained through a relentless campaign from friends and organizations all over the world.
More importantly, he heard confessions for hours on end, instructed converts, and administered the sacraments. His granting of General Absolution before battle unburdened the consciences of the Marines and instilled in them the courage to fight. His mere presence in a unit was enough to lift the morale of all on patrol.
When men died, he was at their side so they would not die alone. He gave them Last Rites encouraging them to repent and persevere. In addition, he wrote countless letters of personal condolence to parents of wounded and dead Marines and offered solid grounding and hope to fellow Marines who lost friends.
When the pseudo-peace movement began to oppose the war, Fr. Vincent raised the spirits of demoralized soldiers in the field. He encouraged his men to oppose that same brutal communist system, which still oppresses Vietnam today.

When his second tour of duty was up, he begged his superiors for an extension. That extension was denied: he was supposed to go home in November of 1967.

On September 4, 1967, at 4:30 am, during Operation Swift in the Thang Binh District of the Que Son Valley, elements of the 1st Battalion, 5th Marines encountered a large North Vietnamese Army (NVA) unit of approximately 2,500 men near the village of Dong Son. The outnumbered and disorganized Company D of the 1st Battalion was in need of reinforcements. By 9:14 am, 26 Marines were confirmed dead, and two rifle companies from the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines were committed to the battle. At 9:25 am, the commander of 1st Battalion requested further reinforcements.

…

In response to reports that the 2d Platoon of M Company was in danger of being overrun by a massed enemy assaulting force, Lt. Capodanno left the relative safety of the company command post and ran through an open area raked with fire, directly to the beleaguered platoon. Disregarding the intense enemy small-arms, automatic-weapons, and mortar fire, he moved about the battlefield administering last rites to the dying and giving medical aid to the wounded. When an exploding mortar round inflicted painful multiple wounds to his arms and legs, and severed a portion of his right hand, he steadfastly refused all medical aid. Instead, he directed the corpsmen to help their wounded comrades and, with calm vigor, continued to move about the battlefield as he provided encouragement by voice and example to the valiant marines. Upon encountering a wounded corpsman in the direct line of fire of an enemy machine gunner positioned approximately 15 yards away, Lt. Capodanno rushed a daring attempt to aid and assist the mortally wounded corpsman. At that instant, only inches from his goal, he was struck down by a burst of machine gun fire.

Father Capodanno was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his actions.

The Catholic Church is considering the case to canonize Father Capodanno as a saint. As I understand it, he has been named “Servant of God”, which is the first step in the process, but I can’t tell if there’s been any progress on this since 2013.

Posted in Heroism, History, Leadership, Religion | 3 Comments »

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 55

May 24th, 2020

Science Sunday!

I thought I’d go back to the early days, starting with the 1950s.

From 1953, and the Bell System, “The Transistor”, an early documentary about the transistor and its anticipated impact on society. (Remember, this was six years after the transistor was invented.)

Wrist radios! Portable televisions! Computers that can fit into “a good sized room”! The future!

Bonus video #1: “Genesis of the Transistor”. Also from the Bell System, but from 1965 this time: the origins and development of the device.

Bonus video #2: “The Incredible Machine”. Electronic circuit design, digital drawing with a pen, computer animation, computer music composition, speech synthesis…none of this stuff is extraordinary today. But it was in 1968.

The Bell Labs ‘Graphic 1’ computer system consisted of a Digital Equipment Corporation ‘PDP-5’ computer coupled with input devices such as the ‘Type 370’ light pen and Teletype Corporation ‘Teletype Model 33’ keyboard, married to a Digital Equipment Corporation ‘Type 340’ precision incremental display backed by 36-bit Ampex ‘RVQ’ buffer memory capable of storing 4096 ‘words’. The resolution on the monitor was 1024×1024.
This system was designed to transform the graphics-based input into output to be fed into a IBM ‘7094’ (200 Kflop/s). The entire thing was attached to a microfilm-based recorder – the Stromberg Carlson ‘SC 4020’, which took hours to read and record the data.

Posted in Geek, History | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 54

May 23rd, 2020

Since it is Memorial Day weekend…

“The Legacy of the Thresher”. This is (according to the YouTube notes) an old “CBS Reports” special from 1964. (The USS Thresher was lost April 10, 1963.)

Of possible amusement value to some folks: this features a very young Dan Rather.

Bonus video: this is a little shorter, if you’re pressed for time on this Saturday. It also fits in thematically with Lawrence’s Battleswarm post today.

From the Department of the Navy and the US National Archives: “To the Shores of Iwo Jima”.

Posted in History, TV | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 53

May 22nd, 2020

Here’s something I haven’t done before. Remember the days of auto stunt shows? Guys jumping over cars? Demolition derbies?

“So You Want Thrills!” No, that’s the name of the movie, not a statement of fact. Featuring Jimmy Lynch and his Death Dodgers. And what do the Death Dodgers drive? If you said “Dodge cars”, take two gold stars and advance to the next blue square.

That one is from 1948. Our bonus video is from the early 1980s, and alsp features Chrysler/Dodge cars: “The Hell Driver Formula”.

That’s something I wish I could have seen when I was younger. Unfortunately, there really weren’t any tracks in the Houston area where a team could do this kind of driving. They did do a stunt show/demolition derby in the Astrodome when I was young, and I remember going to that at least once: the high point for me was the guy who sealed himself in a coffin and blew himself up. There was also a car jump involved, as I recall, but (odd as it may seem) space in the Astrodome didn’t allow for a truly epic long car jump.

(They were doing these shows in the Astrodome at least up until 1985: a Wikipedia search reminded me that Karel Soucek, a “Canadian daredevil” who went over Niagra Falls in a barrel, was killed during one of those shows.)

Oh, what the hell, one more: “Paul Riddell’s Imperial Hell Drivers”. I think this is from Canada, eh? Oh, wait, I’m sorry: I checked Wikipedia, and it is actually from a show in Quebec. Apologies to both the Canadians and the Québécois in my audience.

Posted in Cars, History | Comments Closed

Obit watch: May 22, 2020.

May 22nd, 2020

Legendary Army Ranger, trainer, and gun guy Chuck Taylor passed away a few weeks ago. I wasn’t aware of this until Bayou Renaissance Man posted a nice tribute to Mr. Taylor on his blog, which I encourage you to go read.

Theodore “Ted” Keith passed away last September. I was not aware of this until it was posted on one of the forums for Smith and Wesson collectors.

Ted Keith was the son, and last surviving child of, the legendary gun guy Elmer Keith, about whom I have written in the past and certainly will in the future.

Ted Keith was a special guest at the 2012 S&WCA meeting in Boise. I didn’t get as much of a chance to talk to him as I would have liked (his time was pretty booked), but I have one outstanding memory of him: I was standing in the Boise Cabela’s with a bunch of other S&WCA folks looking at the Elmer Keith Museum (which, at the time, was located in the Boise Cabela’s). Ted was going around introducing himself to everyone there: he walked up to me, stuck out his hand, and said “Hi, I’m Ted Keith.”

The man was a class act.

Ted bagged bear, deer, elk, moose, antelope, ducks, pheasants, geese and wild boar. “The older I get, the smaller the game I pack out,” was a favorite sentiment.

Posted in Guns, Obits | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 52

May 21st, 2020

Pan Am was founded in 1927. By an obscure mathematical property known as addition, this would mean that 1977 was their 50th anniversary.

So they decided to do something special. Pan Am flew a 747-SP1, the “Clipper New Horizons” around the world from San Francisco…

…over the North and South Pole. The flight took 54 hours, 7 minutes, and 12 seconds.

Here’s a Pan Am promo film/documentary about the flight.

Bonus video #1: would you like to watch a reasonably attractive blonde in a Boeing promo film for the 747? Then “Assignment 747” is for you!

Bonus video #2: If you want something with a little bit more substance, “The New Era: Flight Testing the 747 Superjet”. Personally, I think I’d watch this one before I watched the one with the blonde, but that’s just the kind of hairball I am.

Posted in History, Planes | 1 Comment »

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 51

May 20th, 2020

Would you believe the Central Intelligence Agency has a YouTube channel? Probably.

Would you believe the (even more secretive) National Reconnaissance Office has one? Maybe.

A couple of short ones today, and a longer one:

“Development of CORONA, The World’s First Reconnaissance Satellite”. This is on the CIA’s channel, but was apparently prepared by the NRO. I’ve touched on CORONA before, but this is a more recent, better quality, and declassified look.

Bonus video #1: From the NRO itself: “The Last Bucket Catch”, about the film retrieval from CORONA. As you may recall from the previous CORONA video, they were basically snatching containers of undeveloped film out of the air.

Bonus video #2: Because we all love it, “Angels in Paradise: The Development of the U-2 at Area 51”. From the CIA in 1960: according to the YouTube notes, “This video was made for family members of the people working on the Angel reconnaissance plane to explain the workers’ long absences from home.”

There are times when I just can’t believe this stuff is out there…

Posted in History, Planes | Comments Closed

Obit watch: May 20, 2020.

May 20th, 2020

Annie Glenn. The phrase “love story for the ages” is over-used, in my opinion. But it fits here. She and John Glenn were childhood playmates, and were married for 73 years.

“I could never get through a whole sentence,” she told The New York Times in 1980. “Sometimes I would open my mouth and nothing would come out.”
But in 1973, in her 50s, she decided to address her stuttering by participating in a fluency-shaping program developed by Dr. Ronald Webster at Hollins College (now Hollins University) in Virginia.
“I cannot make telephone calls, so John called and enrolled me,” she told The Boston Globe in 1975. “The first requirement was to do a taped interview. That established the fact that I’m an 85 percent stutterer, which is in the ‘most severe’ range.”
She immersed herself in Dr. Webster’s intensive, three-week program. By the end of it, she said, she could do things that had been beyond her before, like go to a mall and comfortably ask a store clerk where to find something.
“Those three weeks, we weren’t allowed at all to see our family, or to call, or anything,” she said.
“When I called John” at the program’s end, she added, “he cried.”
She became a champion for people with speech disorders and an adjunct professor in the speech pathology department at Ohio State University’s department of speech and hearing science. In 1987, the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association created an award in her honor, known as the Annie, presented annually to someone who demonstrates, as the organization puts it, her “invincible spirit in building awareness on behalf of those with communication disorders.”
“Annie Glenn remains a hero to many of us who in various periods of our lives couldn’t get a word, a thought, or a sentiment past our lips,” David M. Shribman, executive editor emeritus of The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, wrote in February in The Boston Globe on the occasion of Mrs. Glenn’s 100th birthday.
“She fought her condition, to be sure,” Mr. Shribman, a stutterer himself, wrote, “but she also fought for broad public understanding of stuttering, for the idea that stutterers weren’t merely shy, weren’t unintelligent, weren’t social pariahs.”

I don’t want to give away the end of the obit: I encourage you to go read it.

Posted in Heroism, History, Obits | 1 Comment »

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 50

May 19th, 2020

I don’t want to burn off all of my military content before Memorial Day. But as it turns out, I’ve got a couple of things in reserve.

So here’s something we hope you’ll really like: “Floating Fortress”, from 1952. A slice of life onboard the USS New Jersey during the Korean War. Nice video of the big guns being loaded and fired.

Bonus video #1: As you may know, Bob, the battleship New Jersey is currently a museum ship in Camden. As you may have guessed, the museum is closed for the moment…

…so the good folks there put a virtual tour of the New Jersey up on YouTube.

Bonus video #2: “The American Dreadnaught” from 1968, which covers the de-mothballing and recommissioning of the New Jersey during Vietnam.

Posted in History | Comments Closed

Obit watch: May 19, 2020.

May 19th, 2020

Everybody and his brother sent me this, so: Ken “Eddie Haskell” Osmond.

I’ve never been a fan of “Leave It to Beaver”, but much respect to the late Mr. Osmond for honorable service with the LAPD:

“I’m not complaining, because Eddie’s been too good to me, but I found work hard to come by,” he said. “In 1968, I bought my first house, in ’69 I got married, and we were going to start a family and I needed a job, so I went out and signed up for the L.A.P.D.”
As an officer on motorcycle patrol, he grew a mustache to disguise himself. In 1980, he was shot three times in a chase with a suspected car thief but escaped serious injury: One bullet was stopped by his belt buckle, the others by his bulletproof vest. He was put on disability and retired from the force in 1988.

Michel Piccoli, prominent French actor.

Posted in California Über Alles, Cops, Law, Movies, Obits, TV | 1 Comment »

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 49

May 18th, 2020

I’m being lazy today, I admit: I had an eye doctor appointment this afternoon, didn’t have time to get this done before my appointment, and my right eye is still kind of messed up. But I didn’t want to miss a day.

So, please to enjoy: “Action at Dog Island”, a 1972 film about drug interdiction from…the Royal Navy?

Please also to excuse any typos.

Posted in History | Comments Closed

Obit watch: May 18, 2020.

May 18th, 2020

Phyllis George, former Miss America and former co-host of “The NFL Today”.

Hired as a co-host of CBS Sports’s weekly pregame football show — which featured the high-profile hosts Brent Musburger and Irv Cross and the gambling commentator Jimmy Snyder, or Jimmy the Greek, as he was known — Ms. George immediately became the most prominent woman in sportscasting.
But with her beauty-queen background and her modest television résumé, she was criticized for lacking the traditional sportscaster credentials. She was not a former sportswriter, like Mr. Musburger, and she was obviously not a retired football player, like Mr. Cross.
She responded to her critics by saying that she knew enough about sports, especially football, to get by.
“I’m from Texas,” she told People magazine in 1976, “and down there you follow the Texas Longhorns and the Dallas Cowboys or you don’t belong.”

Excuse me?

She was married twice: to John Y. Brown Jr., former Governor of Kentucky, and Robert Evans.

Captain Jenn Casey, Royal Canadian Air Force. She was a public affairs officer with the Snowbirds demonstration team: the plane she was in crashed during a demo in Kamloops yesterday. The pilot, Captain Richard MacDougall, ejected but suffered serious injuries.

McThag has some thoughts on the subject.

Posted in 1970s, NFL, Obits, Planes, Sports, TV | 1 Comment »

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 48

May 17th, 2020

Science Sunday!

Today, we’re wrapping up the Bell System Science Series. Previous posts:

We’re still in the “produced “under the personal supervision of Jack L. Warner”/Owen Crump era. But according to Wikipedia, the Bell System wasn’t all that happy with the first two Warner films, and actually approached Frank Capra about coming back. I gather he turned them down.

Film number seven in the series: “Thread of Life”, about DNA and related matters (heredity, genetics, all that stuff). This is from 1960, so it’s worth considering where we were at the time: it wasn’t until 1952 that DNA was established as the carrier of genetic information, and it wasn’t until 1953 that Crick and Watson published the double helix paper. Franklin and Gosling’s X-ray diffraction photo was from 1952.

In an influential presentation in 1957, Crick laid out the central dogma of molecular biology, which foretold the relationship between DNA, RNA, and proteins, and articulated the “adaptor hypothesis”. Final confirmation of the replication mechanism that was implied by the double-helical structure followed in 1958 through the Meselson–Stahl experiment. Further work by Crick and co-workers showed that the genetic code was based on non-overlapping triplets of bases, called codons, allowing Har Gobind Khorana, Robert W. Holley, and Marshall Warren Nirenberg to decipher the genetic code. These findings represent the birth of molecular biology.

This is literally within a couple of years of the beginnings of molecular biology, and the Bell System is trying to present these concepts to the general public.

What if – and I know this is a crazy thought – but what if someone like Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos produced a one hour video once a year to explain some scientific concept to the general public? Get some real hotshot director like Tarantino to direct, bring in subject matter experts who come across well on camera, hire a charismatic host…? I think you could do this without veering into the political arena, though I’m sure the temptation would be hard to resist for some.

Just a thought.

Rowland Barber wrote the screenplay for this one: he’s perhaps more famous as the author of The Night They Raided Minsky’s, basis for the early William Friedkin movie.

Film number eight in the series: “About Time”. The people of Planet Q have a problem. They haven’t been into the concept of “time”, but they just got their first clock and want to know what time they should set it to. They are unhappy with the initial answer – “Set it anywhere you like.” which leads to a discussion of time, the nature of time, timekeeping, how do we really know what time it is anyway, and relativity theory.

Spoiler #1: the ultimate answer turns out to be…”Set it anywhere you’d like.” But there’s a catch: the people of Planet Q are looking for audiophiles who are interested in high quality cassette tapes.

Spoiler #2: if you don’t want to watch the whole film, but are just interested in the guest appearance, Dr. Richard P. Feynman appears at about the 45 minute mark.

Is it just me, or is there a little bit of resemblance between Feynman and Leonardo DiCaprio?

Okay, that may not have been the best DiCaprio photo I could have picked, but I have reasons. I really think DiCaprio could pull off the Feynman role, if they ever make that film of his life.

But I digress. There was one more film in the series: “The Restless Sea”. Unlike the first eight, it was only 30 minutes long. It also wasn’t produced by Capra or Warner: this was actually a Disney production. Les Clark, one of the early Disney animators, directed, and Walt Disney appears as himself.

Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find this one anywhere. Wikipedia’s page lists various public domain/DVD/VHS/laserdisc releases of the Bell System Science Series, but none of them seem to include “The Restless Sea”. I suspect this is locked away in the Disney vault, possibly on the same shelf as “Song of the South”.

Next week: I want to continue the “Science Sunday” theme, but I don’t have any good ideas right now. Suggestions from the gallery are very welcome.

Posted in Geek, History | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: May 16, 2020.

May 16th, 2020

Fred Willard. Damn.

Edited to add: NYT. Variety.

Posted in Movies, Obits | 1 Comment »

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 47

May 16th, 2020

This is kind of a three-way tip of the hat to:

  • Morlock Publishing, continuing yesterday’s theme.
  • Borepatch and ASM826, because this is related to some things they’ve been posting
  • and RoadRich, because planes. Also, tonight is “12 O’Clock High” night.

“The Story of Willow Run”, from FoMoCo. Willow Run was where Ford built the B-24. They initially were turning out parts that Consolidated and Douglas put together, but that turned out to be troublesome. In October of 1941 Willow Run got permission to build complete planes, and ran the line until May 1945. At peak, the line was turning out a finished bomber every 55 minutes.

Bonus video: unrelated to the above, but related to something earlier in the week. From 1937: “Boulder Dam”, a film from the US Archives about the construction of the dam that later became known as “Hoover Dam”.

Posted in History, Planes | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 46

May 15th, 2020

It’s Friday. It’s the weekend. I feel like I can run a little long going into the weekend.

This video did come up in my recommendations, but my decision to feature it today was inspired by this tweet from Morlock Publishing:

and this re-tweet from the same:

From 1959, another film from those wonderful folks at Shell Oil: “The Drama of Metal Forming”. Lots and lots of hot metal being worked: this is another one of those things that fascinates me.

Bonus video: from the good folks at the Ford Motor Company (FoMoCo): “Steel on the Rouge”, about making steel at the River Rouge plant.

As best as I can tell, the River Rouge steel mill is still in operation (this video is from 1968): FoMoCo apparently sold off the steel mill part of their business in 1989, and the Rouge mill has changed hands a couple of times. Currently, it seems like it is owned and run by AK Steel Holding.

Posted in History | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 45

May 14th, 2020

Priority override Archimedes.

The Thunderbirds did a flyover of Austin and San Antonio yesterday.

I shot this video from our back porch. I wasn’t sure which direction they’d be coming from or what altitude they would be out, so I erred on the side of shooting at a wider angle.

One of the things I feel lucky about in my life: I visited Las Vegas before 9/11. Which means Mike the Musicologist and I were lucky enough to tour the Thunderbirds museum before it was closed off to anyone without a DoD ID. We were also lucky enough to be able to take the Hard Hat Tour of Hoover Dam. I need to dig out my hard hat from storage.

(I still have never actually seen the Thunderbirds at an air show. The Blue Angels, yes, when I was really young.)

Bonus video, just for the heck of it: “Odyssey 1977”, video of the F-18 prototype at the Paris Air Show that year.

Posted in History, Planes | Comments Closed

Obit watch: May 14, 2020.

May 14th, 2020

Joel Kupperman has passed away at 83.

The name probably doesn’t ring any bells with you unless you are really old:

For a time, during World War II and its aftermath, Joel Kupperman was one of the most famous children in the country, and also one of the most loathed.

More specifically…

From 6 to 16, Joel was a star on “The Quiz Kids,” a thunderously popular radio program that later migrated to television. He captivated Marlene Dietrich and Orson Welles by performing complex math problems, joked with Jack Benny and Bob Hope, charmed Eleanor Roosevelt and Henry Ford. He played himself in a movie (“Chip Off the Old Block,” in 1944), addressed the United Nations and was held up as an exemplar of braininess to a generation of children. (Hence all the loathing.)

…

“All of us on the program experienced to some degree ‘child star letdown,’ but we remembered the actual experience fondly,” Richard L. Williams, the show’s other math whiz, now a retired diplomat, said in a phone interview. “It was a high for us. But Joel said it destroyed his childhood. When he was 6, I was 11. The program put stress on the smallest kids. They got the most attention and were the least equipped to deal with it.”
He added: “Once the show went on television they kept Joel, because he was so well known, but the general age got lower and lower. I’m guessing that experience was pretty sour for him. No real competition and no real comradeship.”

After he left the show, Mr. Kupperman went to the University of Chicago: a professor there suggested that he leave the country.

Professor Kupperman earned a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Cambridge in England and joined the philosophy department of the University of Connecticut in 1960, remaining there until his retirement in 2010. His scholarly focus was on ethics and aesthetics, and he was an early champion of Asian philosophy at a time when Eastern traditions were considered more akin to religion or mysticism than philosophy.
He drew from a variety of traditions, many of them ancient, which made his work cosmopolitan and original, said David Wong, a professor of philosophy at Duke University.
“The tone of much of Joel’s work is that of a gentle and wise interlocutor who refrains from lecturing to us on what the good life is,” Professor Wong added, “but rather assists us in our individual and collective endeavors to live a good life by articulation of much good advice and well-taken cautions.”

He was extremely reluctant to discuss his time as a Quiz Kid: his family says he’d walk away if anyone brought it up.

He met Karen Ordahl in Cambridge, Mass., after she had earned a master’s degree in history at Harvard University, and they married in 1964, settling down together in Storrs, Conn., near the University of Connecticut campus.
“When we were dating that first summer, if a store clerk heard his name, they would invariably say, ‘I hated you when I was a kid,’” Ms. Kupperman said. “He was really determined to reinvent himself, and by college he was already thinking of himself as a philosopher. He wanted to retreat into the life of the mind, and in many ways he succeeded. He really lived in his head.”
And yet when his wife decided to pursue her Ph.D. in history at the University of Cambridge, Professor Kupperman took a sabbatical for a year followed by another year without pay so that she could do so. In England he cared for Michael and Charlie, then 7 and 4, while she worked toward her doctorate — not typical male behavior for the times, Ms. Kupperman said.

Ms. Kupperman survives him, as do a son and a daughter. His son, Michael Kupperman, is an artist who wrote a graphic novel memoir of his father called All The Answers (affiliate link).

Posted in Obits, Radio, TV | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 44

May 13th, 2020

We’re all looking forward to travel again, right? Flying on luxurious airliners, with plenty of legroom, free (and excellent) meals, and just a few short hours to an exotic destination like Hawaii.

(This is also targeted content for great and good FOTB RoadRich and the 1940 Air Terminal Museum, who I haven’t done anything for in a couple of weeks, at least.)

We’ll get there. But first, your coffee break historical bite: “Sentinel in the Sky”, from 1955. A Pan Am promotional film about radar: how it works, and how Pan Am plans to use it in their aircraft.

Bonus video #1, which is a little longer: “Holiday in Hawaii”, from an airline that still exists (for now). This is from sometime in the 1950s: a promotional film for United Airlines, the DC-7, and travel to Hawaii. As the YouTube notes say, this is a relic of a time before jet travel made going to Hawaii fast, easy, and (I guess relatively) affordable.

Bonus video #2: giving equal time to the (now defunct) competition, “Wings to Hawaii”. A video on a similar theme, but this time from Pan Am. You know, the folks with radar?

Posted in History, Planes | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 43

May 12th, 2020

I don’t really have a theme today. I also don’t have anything that is as short as I’d like. And I’m holding off on military aviation videos for the moment, as Borepatch and ASM826 are ahead of me on that front. Sorry about that. But here are a couple of YouTube recommendations I found interesting.

“Broken Arrow – Response to a Nuclear Weapons Accident”. 1980 DoD training film capturing a “broken arrow” exercise (not an actual incident – at least, that’s what they want you to think).

From 1969, “Tunnel Destruction”. Exactly what it says on the tin: how to destroy enemy tunnels with various tools. Mostly explosives.

Posted in Explosives, History | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 42

May 11th, 2020

Seems like it has been a while since we were on the beat, so let’s go back on patrol.

“Stay Alert, Stay Alive: The Techniques and Mechanics Of Arrest”, a vintage FBI training film from sometime in the 1960s.

“Uniforms and jurisdictions change, but hoodlums…don’t.”

Bonus video: we’ve seen British police from the 1970s. Now, how about…the 1980s?

Posted in Cops, History, Law | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: May 11, 2020.

May 11th, 2020

Jerry Stiller, of the comedy team Stiller and Meara, movies, theater, and a couple of obscure TV shows.

Mr. Stiller’s accomplishments as an actor were considerable. He appeared on Broadway in Terrence McNally’s frantic farce “The Ritz” in 1975 and David Rabe’s dark drama “Hurlyburly” in 1984. Off Broadway, he was in “The Threepenny Opera”; in Central Park, he played Shakespearean clowns for Joseph Papp; onscreen, he was seen as, among other things, a police detective in “The Taking of Pelham One, Two, Three” (1974) and Divine’s husband in John Waters’s “Hairspray” (1988). But he was best known as a comedian.

…

The comedy partnership of Mr. Stiller and Ms. Meara flourished for more than a decade and found a new outlet when they began doing commercials. But they eventually went their separate ways professionally — although they remained happily married and continued to perform together from time to time. Ms. Meara died in 2015.

…

Mr. Stiller remained active throughout his 80s. He was typically manic in a series of commercials for Capital One Bank, seen on television and heard on radio in 2012.
That same year, he played a group-therapy patient in the independent film “Excuse Me for Living.” In 2014, he provided the voice for the title character in an unorthodox animated television special, “How Murray Saved Christmas.”

“How Murray Saved Christmas” from “Great But Forgotten“.

There’s a great story at the end of the NYT obit that I won’t spoil here.

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“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 41

May 10th, 2020

Science Sunday!

When last we left the Bell System Science Series, Frank Capra had departed, and the films were being produced “under the personal supervision of Jack L. Warner.” What this actually amounted to was: Owen Crump was producing, and also directed the first three of the four Warner films.

Geoff Alexander and Rick Prelinger have written, “From the perspective of overall cohesion, writing, and set design, Crump’s Bell series films are superior to those of Capra. Crump did not overtly proselytize, relied less on animated characters interacting with Dr. Baxter, and utilized the set design as almost a character in itself, as exemplified by William Kuehl’s sound stage set for Gateways to the Mind, and his madcap carnival-like set for Alphabet Conspiracy.” See the screenshot for one example of Kuehl’s work. Marcel LaFollette has commented that, while the “spiritual tone” of the Capra films wasn’t present the Warner films, “overt appeals to religion also appeared in the four created by Warner Brothers”.

The fifth film in the series, from 1958: “Gateways To the Mind”, about the five senses and how they work. This one was written by Henry F. Greenburg. As Wikipedia notes, the sound stage is kind of trippy. Also, the animation was directed by Chuck Jones.

Film number six, from 1959: “The Alphabet Conspiracy”. “A young girl named Judy is having trouble with her English homework. She has a dream were she means The Mad Hatter and The Jabberwock from Alice In Wonderland.” She joins up with the Mad Hatter in a conspiracy to get rid of the alphabet until “Dr. Linguistics” shows her the error of her ways.

Hans Conried plays the Mad Hatter, and Friz Freleng directed the animation. Leo Salkin and Richard Hobson did the writing.

Next week: Time and DNA. And a special guest appearance from one Dr. Richard P. Feynman.

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Noted.

May 9th, 2020

I didn’t want to put this in the main jail feed, but I did want to make note of it: YouTube is telling me that “The Wrecking Crew” documentary is available for free (with ads).

I know that great and good FOTB and highly valued contributor pigpen51 was a fan of this movie, so I figure it’s worth your time to watch.

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“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 40

May 9th, 2020

Today is Saturday, so I feel like I can run a bit long. And there’s been one thing missing from this series to date: trains. I’m sure at least some of my readers are train fans, right?

“On the Track”, a 1940s film made by Carl Dudley for the Association of American Railroads. Mr. Dudley was apparently a fairly well known railroad film maker.

Bonus video #1: from 1952, “Northwest Empire”, a Union Pacific promo film about travel around Oregon and Washington.

Bonus video #2: “At This Moment”, from 1954. Propaganda film about the importance of American railroads.

I have to admit: “Kelly” is kind of cute in that 1950s way. I can see why someone would send her a dozen roses.

Posted in History, Movies, Music, Trains | Comments Closed

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