The other day, I mentioned the daffodils coming up even after the dirt had been moved to put piers under the house. I got a pic yesterday before the windstorm moved in, with the first blossom.
Beyond that for health breaks, I’ve been walking and playing with Ollie. He got pretty tuckered out, but he’s still looking to play ball some more if someone else starts the game. Meanwhile, he’s catching 40 winks.
| March 15, 1869 The first proposed amendment to the constitution guaranteeing women’s suffrage was introduced in the U.S. Congress. |
| March 15, 1942 Over 1300 Norwegian teachers were arrested by the German Nazi-installed government run by Vidkun Quisling after 12,000 of 14,000 nationwide had refused to join the new teachers’ association and resisted nazification of the curriculum. Half were held in a concentration camp outside the capital of Oslo. The rest were shipped to the Arctic for forced labor alongside Russian prisoners of war. The loss of the arrested teachers forced a school shutdown for several weeks. Each day the imprisoned teachers were marched to their job of unloading supply ships, citizens stood respectfully by as they passed. When the teachers returned home later in the year, they were treated as heroes.  Hitler and Quisling Following Germany’s defeat, Quisling was tried for treason, convicted and sentenced to death. Quisling is now considered a synonym for traitor. Vidkun Quisling – ‘The Hitler of Norway’ |
| March 15, 1963 Students from South Carolina State and Claflin College organized to integrate the lunch counter at Kresge 5&10 in Orangeburg, South Carolina. Though their efforts were disciplined and peaceful, 400 were attacked by police then herded behind fences in the largest mass arrest of the civil rights movement.  More than a 1000 students marched peacefully to integrate lunch counters in Orangeburg, South Carolina. Convicted of “Breach of the Peace,” the U.S. Supreme Court later overturned those convictions because those arrested were petitioning for redress of grievances within the protection of the 1st Amendment. More on the Orangeburg action |
| March 15, 1965 Less than a week after the Bloody Sunday police attacks on peaceful marchers at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, President Lyndon Johnson addressed the American people before a televised Joint Session of Congress. He said, “There is no issue of States rights or national rights. There is only the struggle for human rights . . . We have already waited a hundred years and more, and the time for waiting is gone . . . .” Watch video or read the text of his speech |
| March 15, 1993 The United Nations Commission on the Truth for El Salvador concluded that most of the murder and human rights abuses during its civil war had been committed by the U.S.-backed Salvadoran government through its various military, security and allied paramilitary organizations. Truth Commission: El Salvador, U.S. Institute of Peace |
https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorymarch.htm#march15
March 14, 1879 Physicist and peace activist Albert Einstein was born in Ulm, Germany. The Nobel Prize winner opposed militarism and became a champion of nuclear disarmament. Though he supported the development of the atomic bomb out of fear that Germany would develop it first, he warned in a 1944 letter to the Manhattan Project’s Niels Bohr: “When the war is over, then there will be in all countries a pursuit of secret war preparations with technological means which will lead inevitably to preventative wars and to destruction even more terrible than the present destruction of life.” Read more |
| March 14, 1934 The National Civil Liberties Council was founded in England, principally to monitor the policing of protests. Renamed Liberty in 1989, it has campaigned to protect and promote rights and freedoms for over 75 years.  About Liberty’s history The organization today |
| March 14, 1970 During a second attempt by Native American activists to claim Fort Lawton (about 50 miles south of Seattle, Washington), 78 were arrested for entering the site.United Indians for All Tribes was demanding the city give the unused facility to Native Americans for use as a cultural center. One week earlier about the same number had been arrested for occupying what had been declared federal surplus property. The Daybreak Star Cultural Center is now operating on the site.  Indians demonstrating at Fort Lawton Background The Daybreak Star Cultural Center Recent pictures of the center |
| March 14, 2004 Opposition Socialists scored an upset win in Spain’s general election three days following the Madrid train bombings. The conservative government had joined the U.S.-led coalition that invaded Iraq the previous year though Spanish public opinion was overwhelmingly opposed to it. José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and his party, Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE), had opposed the Iraq War and Spain’s involvement. The coordinated bombings, which left 191 dead and 1600 injured, were the worst terrorist attack in Europe aside from the downing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. Thoughtful article on the bombings and the political situation in Spain |
https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorymarch.htm#march14
(Then see “Furbabies” )
Healthy cartoons by Nancy Beiman
Readers asked for them. Read on Substack
here’s a little image from an upcoming cartoon. Mrs. Oldman makes a joke.
The story line starts today, March 11. (snip)
It’s fun to observe. For instance, my local grocery store sells all their bakery pies for 3.14 (which is a bargain on some of them.) I like to buy 3, and then put them in the store’s breakroom. I started that several years ago; they said someone would eat them if they were in there, so I did it, and brought home an apple pie. Now I do it each year, because it’s fun to observe with pie. I bet everyone knows someone who’d like some pie today!
If you work with people who enjoy math, and especially if you work with learners of math, well, have a great time today! It’s Friday, it’s Pi Day, and a fine day to play with pi and with the rest of math, too!
You can even make a pie. Enjoy the day!
(This car photo is my favorite!)
Celebrate Pi Day with Chocolate Cream Pie March 14, 2012
This publication is not one that I read, except when items like this are brought to my attention by publications I do read, so there’s that, too.
Abe Asher Tuesday 21 March 2023 17:23 EDT
Michael Knowles, The Daily Wire commentator who called for “transgenderism to be eradicated” from public life at CPAC last month, reportedly starred in a student film as a queer character and dressed in drag in previous years.
The Daily Dot reported on Monday that when Knowles was in college at Yale University in 2012, he starred in a student film entitled The House of Shades. In the film, which runs just over 15 minutes, Knowles plays a queer man who seduces another young man at a nightclub he belongs to.
Near the end of the film, which is available on YouTube, Knowles’ character confesses that he has feelings for the man. A friend advises him not to get caught up on him. The unearthing of Knowles’ portrayal in the film comes after the same outlet reported that he had dressed in drag on at least two occasions in 2016 in a racist portrayal of Sen Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.
Ordinarily, Knowles’ performance in the student film would be unremarkable. But the Daily Wire pundit has aggressively argued in recent years for the upholding of traditional gender roles and strictly heteropatriarchal sexual mores, calling gay marriage “the most radical political shift our civilization has ever embraced” and attacking drag shows.
Knowles defended himself from charges of hypocrisy in a tweet on Friday. (snip-MORE he’s an arrogant little human, and hypocritical.)
All the tabs (links) of things that should be read, plus commentary as only Wonkette can provide!
Time To Defund Your Public School! Tabs, Thurs., March 13, 2025 by Rebecca Schoenkopf
Morning news roundup and things to read! Read on Substack
Explaining the House’s funding bill. It has something to do with John Travolta and Nicolas Cage wearing each other’s faces. House Democrats actually all voted (except one schmuck) against it, and then they yelled at the Senate like so:
What did the Senate do? Presumably I will find out before I finish writing this tabs! (The Fucking News)
What the Senate did, if they ever fucking vote on it before I turn this goddamn laptop and go to bed, goes here!
Time to defund your public school! (CNN)
Trump’s economic excuses: stupid and lying! (Paul Krugman)
The FBI is demanding Citibank freeze accounts for Habitat for Humanity, United Way, New York state tax department, and a bunch of statewide climate investment banks, like for instance Michigan Saves. So that’s are you fucking kidding me! (Citibank filing)
Child genital exams without a parent’s consent, West Virginia? “It also says that all intersex people are ‘either male or female’ but does not give a basis for assigning a sex to them.” Oh, word? Word. (LGBTQ Nation)
Six federal agencies are investigating the two trans girl athletes in Maine. (Pro Publica)
I have not even a single clue what this means or how it would work, but the Department of Housing and Urban Development wants to crypto … ??? (Pro Publica)
Sacrificing “critical safety functions” at the FAA, upside down smile emoji. (The Atlantic archive link)
Tesla owners, Polestar will give you $20,000 to not be a Tesla owner anymore. (Polestar)
Faine Greenwood went to Canada’s Gaspe Peninsula and would like to show us all the pictures. We are all super fucking sorry about all this, Canada! (Little Flying Robots)
That’s right I’m still hounding you to buy the pizzas. Detroit Public Schools is working on the assumption we’ll have budget cuts next year of between $30 and $80 million for just our district. You help me fund the girls’ Detroit public elementary school, and I help you eat delicious fucking pizza, mailed right to your door. Buy the fucking pizzas everybody. They’ll FedEx em right to your door. Pizzas. (Pizzas.) This motherfucking pizza ad will be up all month. (snip)
By Edward-Isaac Dovere, CNN 4 minute read Published 8:09 PM EDT, Wed March 12, 2025
Tim Walz is headed back out on the road – this time, for a tour of House districts represented by Republicans who have stopped holding in-person town halls amid the raucous receptions some of their colleagues have gotten across the country.
The Minnesota governor and 2024 vice presidential candidate will start on Friday in Iowa, in the district represented by Rep. Zach Nunn, then head across the border to Nebraska, for the district represented by Rep. Don Bacon – both of whom won tight races for re-election last year. Walz’s team is already planning stops in Wisconsin, Minnesota and Ohio for the coming weeks, with more stops expected to be added.
Given his national profile after his time on the Democratic ticket last year, Walz said he felt obligated to step up.
“There was just a primal scream of folks recognizing what’s going on with the Trump administration, their authoritarian tendencies, and what they viewed was a lack of a proper response from their representatives,” he told CNN on Wednesday. “It was about these Republican representatives recognizing this stuff’s really unpopular, so they’re going to quit the town halls. These folks need to be heard. They need to be heard, and to be candid with you, Democratic leadership needs to hear them.”
Walz’s plans started with a post last week on X, responding to House Republican leaders who advised their colleagues to stop holding town halls. Republicans have accused those town halls of being packed with paid activists – though those making such accusations haven’t provided any evidence or explanations of why Democratic members’ town halls have also been packed.
Walz said he’d been overwhelmed by the response to that tweet, and his staff has been sifting through what an aide told CNN was hundreds of invitations from local party leaders and candidates asking him to come. He said he found that response reassuring after he and Kamala Harris lost to Donald Trump and JD Vance.
“I always feared that they would become apathetic after this last election and just check out, but they are not doing that,” Walz said.
Other than independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who has taken two swings of his own through the Midwest in the past month, no major Democratic leaders have been stepping forward with similar kinds of public events. Walz chalked that up in part to his party “trying to find our feet,” but the situation clearly frustrates him.
“I’m going to tell them that it doesn’t have to be this way,” he said, referencing the Trump administration’s moves to dismantle the Department of Education as a prime example. “I’m going to say ways that they can mobilize to fight back, ways that I think are the most effective ways. And I fully expect them to tell me ways that they’re looking for.”
As the Tea Party rose through a different set of town hall protests in the 2010 election cycle, Walz was a congressman in a tight district running for a third term. He won, but that experience was a rough one, he said, and he warned Republicans now to ignore what’s happening at their own peril.
“I’m a catalyst to provide them a megaphone to lift up their voice. And I think that’s what people are looking for,” he said. “I understand now my responsibility. I have a little more of a national voice, so I should bring it to them, and I’m going to basically be handing the megaphone to them.”
But he said when Democrats are “just being a foil to Trump, we are not crossing into that space we need to, to have them believe us, to know what we stand for.”
After going deliberately quiet in the months after the campaign – following a largely low-profile role as running mate that sources say was designed by the Harris campaign leadership – Walz has been stepping out more in recent weeks.
Many expect Walz to run for a third term as governor next year, and he downplayed the suggestion that this effort was laying the groundwork for a future national run.
“I will do anything possible to make sure that we win in ‘28. I do not need to be on that ticket,” he told CNN. “That’s not my pursuit here. My pursuit is that I am still in a position where I have a platform and I have some power to make a difference, and if 20 people show up that’s good by me because those 20 people are making a difference. This isn’t about drawing a crowd. I’ll go to states where it wouldn’t matter, but it matters to those people. And that’s what I’m going to do.”
| March 13, 1830 The term “rat,” referring to a worker who betrays the interests of fellow workers, first appeared in print. The New York Daily Sentinel reported on replacement workers who had agreed to work for two-thirds of the going rate. “ . . . [many printers are out of work, others are being paid about 2/3 the regular pay; they should join in cooperative associations, ‘as we have done’] “ [While] the master printers [fill] their offices with boys and two-thirds men, alias ‘rats,’ it will be difficult to find a remedy.” |
| March 13, 1864 The first contingent of 14,030 Navajo reached Fort Sumner, New Mexico. Men, women and children had been forced to march almost 400 miles from northeastern Arizona and northwestern New Mexico to Bosque Redondo, a desolate tract on the Pecos River in eastern New Mexico. Traveling in harsh winter conditions for almost two months, about 200 Navajo died of cold and starvation along the way. More died after they arrived at the barren reservation. The forced march, led by Kit Carson, an Indian agent and military leader in both the Mexican and Civil Wars, became known by the Navajos as the “Long Walk.”  A grueling 400-mile march to imprisonment in a sterile land. More on The Long Walk |
March 13, 1945 Pax Christi, an international Catholic peace organization, was founded in France. From their website: “Pax Christi is a ground up organization – it began with a few committed people who spoke out, prayed and worked for reconciliation at the end of the second world war, and is now active in more than 60 countries and five continents, with more than 60,000 members worldwide.”Pax Christi history  |
| March 13, 1968 Clouds of nerve gas drifted outside the Army’s Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah, poisoning 6,400 sheep in nearby Skull Valley.  Sign near Dugway: Warning Hazardous Area: This area may contain Chemical, Biological and Radiological contaminated material and explosives . . . Read more about Dugway – the home of Amerian WMD |
https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorymarch.htm#march13
Scottie's Playtime 