Friday, November 29, 2013
CONTACT ME AT: manessmorrison2@yahoo.com


News Clips For The Day



Thanksgiving shopping? Not in states that ban it
By Michelle R. Smith, The Associated Press
November 28, 2013

Shoppers ride escalators in a mall in Cambridge, Mass., Tuesday, Nov. 26, 2013. Shoppers in many states will line up for deals hours after their Thanksgiving dinners, but stores in a handful of states are barred by law from opening on the holiday.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Shoppers won't be lining up for Thanksgiving Day deals at stores in Rhode Island, Maine and Massachusetts. They can't.
It's the legacy of so-called "blue laws," which prohibit large supermarkets, big box stores and department stores from opening on Thanksgiving. Some business groups complain, but many shoppers, workers and even retailers say they're satisfied with a one-day reprieve from work and holiday shopping.

Some business groups complain it's an unnecessary barrier during an era of 24-hour online shopping, and there have been some recent failed legislative attempts to change things. But many shoppers, workers and even retailers say they're satisfied with the status quo: a one-day reprieve from work and holiday shopping.

"I shop all year. People need to be with their families on Thanksgiving," said Debra Wall, of Pawtucket, R.I., who will remain quite happily at home Thursday, cooking a meal for 10.

The holiday shopping frenzy has crept deeper than ever into Thanksgiving this year. Macy's, J.C. Penney and Staples will open on Thanksgiving for the first time. Toys R Us will open at 5 p.m., and Wal-Mart, already open

24 hours in many locations, will start holiday deals at 6 p.m., two hours earlier than last year. In recent years, some retail employees and their supporters have started online petitions to protest stores that open on Thanksgiving — but shoppers keep coming.

Bill Rennie, vice president of the Retailers Association of Massachusetts, said many shoppers are crossing into border states that allow Thanksgiving shopping, including Connecticut, Vermont, New York or New Hampshire, which is even more alluring because it doesn't have a sales tax.

"Why not give stores in Massachusetts the option?" he said.
The group has backed legislation, which has so far gone nowhere, to roll back the laws and allow stores to open on Thanksgiving and Christmas.

From New York to Paris, department stores get into the holiday spirit with lavish window displays.
That would include grocery stores, which also must stay closed on the holidays. Woe to the Massachusetts cook who forgets a crucial ingredient or messes up the turkey and is forced to find a replacement at a convenience store. Convenience stores are allowed to open, as are movie theaters, pharmacies, restaurants and some other businesses.

The laws do not prohibit stores from opening at non-traditional hours Friday, and some will open at midnight or 1 a.m., when holiday deals will start.
Blue laws were once widespread throughout the country and are thought to date back to Colonial times, although some of the current regulations in Maine were instituted in the 1960s. The name may be derived from an 18th-century usage of blue meaning "rigidly moral," according to the Encyclopedia Brittanica.
The rules vary among the states. Retailers smaller than 5,000 square feet can operate in Maine, for example.

Thanksgiving and Christmas are the main holidays affected in all three states, but in Massachusetts, blue laws also prohibit stores from opening on the mornings of Columbus and Veterans Day without state permission. Easter and New Year's Day are also sometimes included.

Rhode Island lawmakers have in recent years rolled back blue law prohibitions on Sunday sales of alcohol and cars, but the Thanksgiving ban remains. Maine lawmakers shot down legislation this year that would have allowed stores to open on the holiday.
Law enforcement officials in all three states said there had been no recent incidents they could recall of retailers breaking the law. In 2005, Massachusetts Attorney General Tom Reilly sent a warning letter to upscale grocery chain Whole Foods after a competitor discovered it was planning to open on Thanksgiving. In Maine, a violation is punishable by up to six months in prison and a $1,000 fine. 

Maine allows certain sporting goods stores to remain open, an exemption that allows Freeport-based outdoor retailer L.L. Bean to operate 24 hours per day, 365 days per year. Spokeswoman Carolyn Beem said workers sign up for shifts on a volunteer basis and get paid extra for working the holiday. She said they generally have more volunteers than shifts on what she calls a generally slower business day.
But along the New Hampshire border, the Kittery Trading Post in Kittery, Maine, will remain closed, even though it could operate under the same exemption, said vice president Fox Keim. He said giving employees the day off is part of the store's "core values."

"What's more important to us is keeping our staff happy and keeping morale at the company at a high level," he said.
Diane Mareira, who has worked for BJ's Wholesale Club for 29 years and now manages its store in Northborough, Mass., said she remembers the days when people spent Sundays home with their families, but said that has all changed. BJ's, which operates stores in 15 states, won't open until Friday, even in states that allow it.

"You have both parents working in the household. There's very few days that you can set aside and dedicate to your families," Mareira said. "Those are days that we should be home."
Mareira said she's planning to do just that on Thursday. She'll have her extended family over to cook, eat and enjoy the day with each other.



I have been caught once at a Publix grocery store on Thanksgiving Day only to find it closed, but luckily, Winn Dixie was open and I got my groceries. Other than that, I don't shop on Thanksgiving Day. For the last week there have been local news shots of shoppers camped outside Wal-Mart and other stores in the 38 degree night temperatures in order to be first in line to get into the store on “Black Friday.”

When the stores open there are sometimes mad rushes to get into the door, with even some people being trampled or pushed down. To me, that is shameful and a sign of mass insanity. I personally don't care how many stores they close, it won't impact me. I no longer do Christmas shopping, by group decision in my family, and if I did I wouldn't buy the high-ticket items that the wild and crazy shoppers are trying to get on discount.





Navajo Code Talker says Redskins name not derogatory – NBC
By Felicia Fonseca and Matthew Brown
November 28, 2013

A leader of the Navajo Code Talkers who appeared at a Washington Redskins home football game said Wednesday the team name is a symbol of loyalty and courage — not a slur as asserted by critics who want it changed.
Roy Hawthorne, 87, of Lupton, Ariz., was one of four Code Talkers honored for their service in World War II during the Monday night game against the San Francisco 49ers.
Hawthorne, vice president of the Navajo Code Talkers Association, said the group's trip was paid for by the Redskins. The four men met briefly with team owner Dan Snyder but did not discuss the name, Hawthorne said.

Still, he said he would endorse the name if asked, and the televised appearance in which three of the Native Americans wore Redskins jackets spoke for itself.
"We didn't have that in mind but that is undoubtedly what we did do," Hawthorne said when asked if he was intending to send a statement with the appearance. "My opinion is that's a name that not only the team should keep, but that's a name that's American." 

Monday night's brief, on-field ceremony came as some Native Americans and civil rights leaders wage a "Change the Mascot" campaign that targets the term redskins as a racial epithet.
The Navajos' appearance drew heated comments from both sides on social media, including assertions that the Code Talkers were being used as props in a public relations stunt meant to deflect criticism over the name.

Jacqueline Pata, head of the National Congress of American Indians, called the appearance "a political play rather than a heartfelt recognition of the Code Talkers."
Pata, a member of the Tlingit Tribe of Alaska, said she reveres the Code Talkers for the work they have done but added that people often fail to recognize that the origins of the term "redskin" date to a period when Native Americans faced efforts to annihilate their culture.

"We were outlawed during that same period the mascot was created from practicing our own religion and our own cultures," she said. "That term is associated with getting rid of the Indians."
Snyder has called the team name and mascot a "badge of honor." The name dates to the team's first years in Boston in the 1930s, and has survived numerous outside efforts to change it. The team has been in the Washington, D.C., area since 1937.

Tony Wyllie, Redskins senior vice president said there was no truth to suggestions that the Code Talkers were used to bolster the team's resistance to a new name.
"They're American heroes, and they deserved recognition," he said.
Also attending Monday's game were Code Talker president Peter MacDonald Sr., George Willie Sr. and George James Sr.

The Navajo Code Talkers used codes derived from their native language to shield military communications from interception by Japanese troops. Hawthorne said there are now about 30 surviving Code Talkers.

The trip to Washington was the second this month for Hawthorne, who last week joined other Code Talkers to receive Congressional Gold Medals for the role they played in World War I and World War II.

The Navajo are perhaps the best known of the Code Talkers, but the Defense Department says the program began in 1918 and at its peak included more than 400 Native Americans who used 33 dialects to make their codes indecipherable. 


The American Indians have always been considered by the white settlers to be a foe to be feared, thus their being named as a mascot for a sports team to show their prowess. The term “Redskin” is the biggest problem, since in the West it was a derogatory term which arose in the time of the “trail of tears” when many Indians were killed and the reservations were set up.

I am happy to say that, as the story goes, there is a Cherokee Indian on my father's side of the family. I have never been DNA tested, so I don't have proof of the statement. I honor the American Indians as they live among the whites today, “fitting in,” while maintaining some memories of their tribal cultures and languages. The whites didn't win, if their goal was to exterminate them.

As for changing the name of the sports team, I don't have strong feelings about it. I understand the desire to prevent further abuse of the Indians by changing the name. I would think the Redskins would willingly make the change. They will still be a good football team no matter what they are called.





Australian police find 328 guns, 4.2 tons of ammo at farm --NBC

By Alexander Smith,
November 29, 2013

A father and his two sons have been arrested in Australia after police found a $3 million arsenal of more than 300 guns and 4.2 tons of ammunition at their farm, police said Thursday.

The men, aged 69, 46 and 42, were charged with possessing restricted firearms after police found the weapons stockpile stashed in sheds at their property in Monto, Queensland.
A selection of the firearms from a huge stockpile of 328 guns and 4.2 tons of ammo recovered by police in Queensland, Australia.

Among the 328 weapons were military-style automatic rifles, some of which were worth up to $50,000 each, and Glock handguns worth $10,000, police said.
“This is certainly one of the largest hauls of firearms, ammunition and weapons we have uncovered,” said Detective Superintendent Jon Wacker of the Queensland Police. “These firearms are very disturbing.”

The men, who have not been named, were licensed to have 71 weapons. But most of the stockpile was illegal, modified or converted in some way, Wacker said.
As well as the Glock handguns, the haul contained military-style guns such as AK-47s, MP5 sub-machine guns and rifles featuring telescopic lenses.

An audit of the men's weapons was carried out sometime in the past two months, in accordance with Australian firearms law, but police would not say if that led to the raid.

Wacker told a news conference Thursday that it appeared the men were "holding" many of the weapons for other people. "[The firearms] will be matched with a national database to see if any of the firearms have been used in other offenses," he added.
"Our fear is that these firearms are high-caliber firearms that if they got into the wrong hands they could certainly be used in a nasty way."
The three men charged are due to appear in front of magistrates next month.


$50,000 for a rifle and $10,000 for a Glock, 328 weapons – these men were clearly set to make a fortune. So many people are in love with guns in the US that they want weapons that they have no practical use for. You don't hunt with a military rifle. Maybe these guns were being held for paramilitary groups in foreign countries, or drug king-pins. The whole turn of mind makes me angry. The only purpose for guns like that is to kill people. Yet the gun lobby members talk in such high flown terms about the right to bear arms. All of our rights in this country have some limitations, as they should.




Presidential turkey pardons, not as long a history as you might think – NBC

By Domenico Montanaro, Deputy Political Editor
November 29, 2013

The annual ceremony of the presidential turkey pardon is so ingrained in the American Thanksgiving tradition that it might seem as old as the holiday itself. But the ritual of White House clemency for a pair of lucky fowl is actually relatively recent.
President Barack Obama will officially pardon "Popcorn" and "Caramel" this week at the White House.

President Harry Truman is often cited, incorrectly, as the first president to pardon a Thanksgiving turkey.
(Just Google first president to pardon a turkey and see how many amateur-website Truman answers you get.)

Adding to the confusion, President Bill Clinton attributed the first Thanksgiving-related poultry acquittal to Truman during his own pardoning session in 1997.
But the Truman Library wrote in 2003: "The Library's staff has found no documents, speeches, newspaper clippings, photographs, or other contemporary records in our holdings which refer to Truman pardoning a turkey that he received as a gift in 1947, or at any other time during his Presidency."

Slideshow: A look back at presidential turkey pardons
In fact, Truman was fairly blunt about the fact that the tasty birds that came to the White House weren’t exactly headed toward blissful retirement after a high-profile political absolution.

"Truman sometimes indicated to reporters that the turkeys he received were destined for the family dinner table," the library wrote.

It appears that Abraham Lincoln, in a way, was the first to spare a turkey. But it wasn't a Thanksgiving turkey. It was a turkey his son adopted as a pet during the Christmas season, which is apparently the kind of thing kids did in the mid-1800s.
"[T]he tradition actually began 83 years earlier when President Lincoln received a turkey for Christmas holiday,” Clinton said during that same 1997 speech. “His son, Tad, grew so attached to the turkey that he named him 'Jack,' and President Lincoln had no choice but to give Jack the full run of the White House."

President George W. Bush made reference to the same story in his “pardoning” ceremony in 2001.
So which president was the first to actually pardon a Thanksgiving turkey?
President John F. Kennedy reaches out to touch a 40-pound turkey presented to him Nov. 19, 1963, at the White House.

It appears it was John F. Kennedy in 1963. An NBC News archive search found a Los Angeles Times article dated Nov. 20, 1963 with the headline, "Turkey gets presidential pardon."
And that turkey was a monster. The paper described it as a "55-pound broad white tom."
Despite a sign hanging around the bird's neck that read, "Good eating, Mr. President," Kennedy took a look down at the "frightened, panting bird" and said, "We'll just let this one grow."

One more – albeit morbid – note about these pardoned birds. They're bred to be eaten, and they only live an average of two years after the leave the White House.
On that appetizing note, enjoy your Thanksgiving dinner!


This is one of the best of our American traditions. It gives the president a lighthearted moment no matter what his problems at the time, and it does remind us that even animals bred to be eaten have a life. The presidents always look like they are enjoying meeting the turkey and they usually stroke his feathers. It's good to have some fun.



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Tax Break For Mass-Transit Commutes May Soon Be Slashed – NPR
by David Welna
November 29, 2013
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Unless Congress acts quickly, taking mass transit to work is about to get more expensive for some people.
For the past four years, public transportation users and people who drive their cars to work and pay for parking have been able set aside up to $245 a month in wages tax free if they're used for commuting costs or workplace parking.

The transit tax break expires at the end of the year. So starting Jan. 1, the benefit for riders will be cut nearly in half — to $130 a month. Drivers, on the other hand, will get a slightly bigger break as their parking benefit rises to $250.

"It doesn't make sense at all, the fact that you get a bigger tax break for driving your car than riding a train," says Dan Smith, who lobbies Congress on tax issues for the U.S. Public Interest Research Group. He says many commuters don't realize that the parity for transit and parking tax breaks vanishes in the new year. But they soon will.

Oregon Rep. Earl Blumenauer, who rides his bike to work, is sounding the alarm.
"We've heard lots of talk about fiscal cliffs, a dairy cliff, but at the end of the year, we are facing a transit commuter cliff," he says.

Blumenauer has rounded up five House Republicans and 44 fellow Democrats to co-sponsor legislation that would keep the parking subsidy, which by law is automatically renewed, equal to the transit subsidy, which requires congressional approval every year:
"You might tilt it the other way and provide greater benefit for people who are having less impact on the planet," he says. "But the fact is, this is embedded, ingrained and accepted, so we want to at least just have transit parity for the full range of commuter options."

Indeed, eliminating or even reducing the parking subsidy is a bipartisan non-starter in Congress.
"My own view is there are some people — many people — who don't have the luxury of being able to take transit," says Sen. Barbara Boxer, chairwoman of the Environment and Public Works Committee.

The California Democrat defends the tax break for people who drive to work:
"I don't agree that you should put one group against the other," she says. "I think we should encourage fuel-efficient cars, and if someone really needs their car for work, I don't have a problem with saying, you know what, there's enough expense here, we can make sure that this isn't exorbitant for you."

That's unfortunate, says Elyse Lowe. She's one of Boxer's constituents as well as the executive director of Move San Diego, a group advocating smart growth in that city. For Lowe, it makes sense to subsidize public transit users, not drivers:
"This is at the heart of getting people to change their travel behaviors through economic incentives," she says, "and typically people don't actually look at their own personal behavior until there's some sort of economic reason to do so."

Rhode Island Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse agrees. He's skeptical, though, that Congress can act in time to keep the transit break on par with the parking subsidy.
"What certainly doesn't make sense is to favor that over using public transportation. But given the general level of blockade of anything and everything by our Republican friends around here, I can't promise that we'll get to that."
Making parity between transit and parking subsidies — one more casualty of congressional gridlock.


They need to amend that law so that it doesn't have to be renewed every year. It is a good incentive to those who can commute by train or bus to do so, and therefore save CO2 emissions. When I lived in Washington DC I didn't keep a car – as a result I not only was more physically fit, I was contributing to the national good. It took longer to get home, but I didn't have to look around everywhere I went for parking spots.



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Book News: 1640 Psalm Book Nets $14.2 Million At Auction – NPR
by Annalisa Quinn
November 29, 2013
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A 1640 book of psalms translated from Hebrew sold for a record breaking $14.16 million at auction on Tuesday. Known as the Bay Psalm Book, it is the first book published in English in what is now the U.S. There are only 10 other known copies. The buyer was David M. Rubenstein, co-founder of the private equity firm the Carlyle Group, who says he plans to loan the book out to museums.

The Rev. Nancy Taylor of the Boston church that sold the book, explained the decision to sell it in a press release last year: "We want to take this old hymn book from which we literally sang our praises to God and convert it into doing God's ministry in the world today." The preface to the book — which can be viewed online — describes it as "a plaine and familiar translation of the psalms and words of David into english metre." The translators wrote that they did not "smooth our verses with the sweetnes of any paraphrase, and soe have attended Conscience rather then Elegance, fidelity rather then poetry in translating the hebrew words into english language, and Davids poetry into english meetre that soe wee may sing in Sion the Lords songs of prayse according to his owne will."

Cheryl Strayed, Wally Lamb, Dave Berry, Sherman Alexie, James Patterson and hundreds of other authors will volunteer as booksellers this Saturday, known as "Small Business Saturday." In an open letter published in September, Alexie asked other "book nerds" to volunteer, writing that "now is the time to be a superhero for independent bookstores."

Publisher's Weekly has named Oren Teicher, CEO of the American Booksellers Association, together with the ABA's board, its "Person of the Year." Publisher's Weekly praised the ABA "for their role in leading the resurgence of independent bookselling."


Bay Psalm Book
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The early residents of the Massachusetts Bay Colony brought with them several books of psalms: the Ainsworth Psalter (1612), compiled by Henry Ainsworth for use by Puritan "separatists" in Holland; the Ravenscroft Psalter (1621); and the Sternhold and Hopkins Psalter (1562, of which there were several editions). Evidently they were dissatisfied with the translations from Hebrew in these several psalters and wished for some that were closer to the original. They hired "thirty pious and learned Ministers", including Richard Mather and John Eliot, to undertake a new translation, which they presented here.[4] The tunes to be sung to the new translations were the familiar ones from their existing psalters.

The first printing was the third product of the Stephen Day (sometimes spelled Daye) press, and consisted of a 148 small quarto leaves, including a 12-page preface, "The Psalmes in Metre", "An Admonition to the Reader", and an extensive list of errata headed "Faults escaped in printing". As with subsequent editions of the book, Day printed the book for sale by the first bookseller in British America, Hezekiah Usher, whose shop at that time was also located in Cambridge.[5] An estimated 1,700 copies of the first edition were printed.[6]

The third edition (1651) was extensively revised by Henry Dunster and Richard Lyon. The revision was entitled The Psalms, hymns and spiritual songs of the Old and New Testament, faithfully translated into English meetre. This revision was the basis for all subsequent editions, and was popularly known as the New England Psalter or New England Version. The ninth edition (1698), the first to contain music, included 13 tunes from John Playford's A Breefe Introduction to the Skill of Musick (London, 1654).[7]


$14.16 million is an amazing price for any book. It will be lent to museums for display, according to this article. That was a very generous act by the buyer Rubenstein, making it available to the public and I assume to scholars as well. In downtown Jacksonville there is a museum which houses only important manuscripts. I have never been there. I should get together with a friend and go see the exhibits.




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Yes, Your Toddler Really Is Smarter Than A 5-Year-Old – NPR
by Nancy Shute
November 29, 2013
­ Parents, does your 18-month-old seem wise beyond her years? Science says you're not fooling yourself.
Very small children can reason abstractly, researchers say, and are able to infer the relationships between objects that elude older children who get caught up on the concreteness of things.

In experiments at the University of California, Berkeley, children as young as 18 months were able to figure out the relationship between colored blocks.
The child would watch a researcher put two blocks on top of a box. If the blocks were identical, the box would play music. The majority of children were able to figure out the pattern after they were shown it just three times. They would then help the researcher pick the correct block.

The toddlers did much better at this task than do chimpanzees and other primates. The non-human primates have to practice doing the task themselves thousands of times to figure it out. And even then, it's only with lots of treats thrown in.
That's not such a big surprise. What really got the researchers' attention is that the diaper set did better at this sort of abstract thinking than children who were just a few years older.

What Do Babies Think?
"Older kids tend to be really bad at analogies," says Caren Walker, a graduate student at in cognitive development who led the study. It was published online in the journal Psychological Science. She says that older children tend to focus on the objects rather than the relationships between them. "Learning may actually harm these kids' abilities to do abstract reasoning."

Walker is working in the lab of Alison Gopnik, a developmental psychologist who has made a career out of devising experiments that reveal the inner thoughts of children still too young to talk. Her take is that babies are smart, and in many ways smarter than adults.

In this experiment, the box actually hides a wireless doorbell, and the researcher moving the blocks controls the music by tapping a hidden button with her foot. But the illusion of control is compelling, not just for the toddlers but for the parents who watch the experiment with their children, Walker says.

The researchers tested their hypothesis by running the same experiment but letting the children see only one of the pair of blocks. They couldn't get the right answer more often than they would by chance. By contrast, 61 percent of the children got it right when they could see the blocks.

And in a third variation, almost 80 percent were able to correctly deduce that they needed to choose sets of blocks that included pairs if they were going to do the experiment.

"Even as incredibly young children, 18-month-olds are extremely powerful little learning machines," Walker told Shots.
Walker and Gopnik are repeating the same experiment with older children, to see if they do indeed lose this very early ability to think abstractly, only to regain it later in the context of language and culture.


It's clear that parents should be more careful what they do and say in front of their 18 month old children. Hearing frequent fights between the parents or receiving harsh punishments could have a lasting effect. Why the love bonds fail to form between some parents and their children, or what causes some babies to become very timid, could be explained by this.

I wish the article covered some of the results of this period of high intelligence.
At this age babies are learning to talk in sentences and becoming more independent from their parents, also. They need to receive some discipline to avoid becoming little tyrants, but it needs to be gentle. They are the cutest at this age because they are still very young, but very responsive to interaction with others.