January 27, 2019
A good Sunday morning to you, many thanks for stopping by.
Today we have a rather poignant On This Date for you. Sometimes we try to funny up this segment a little bit, but that is not possible today. Elsewhere, Top of the Charts investigates 1973 and a quote from Roots provides the fodder for today’s edition of Philosophy 101.
THE DAILY ALMANAC
On This Date:
In 1945 – The 322nd Rifle Division of the Soviet Red Army liberates the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland. It had been in operation for five years and was responsible for killing over one million Jews.
In 1967 – Three American astronauts, Gus Grissom, Ed White Roger Chaffee are killed when the command module they were testing catches fire at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. An investigation concluded the fire was caused by a spark in some faulty wiring, aided by the pure oxygen atmosphere in the spacecraft. Manned flights were suspended for almost two years, and the first manned Apollo mission, Apollo 7, was not launched until October 1968.
Top of the Charts
#1 songs on this date in 1973:
Hot 100 – Superstition– Stevie Wonder (only week)
Soul Chart – Why Can’t We Live Together…Timmy Thomas (1st of two weeks)
Country Chart – (Old Dogs, Children and) Watermelon Wine…Tom T Hall (only week)
Album Chart – No Secrets…Carly Simon (3rd of five weeks)
– Chart data courtesy of Billboard.
Numbers Racket
10,630: the continuous number of days the US has been at war.
21.961: the number of dollars, in trillions, of America’s national debt. – Source: usdebtclock.org
649: days until Election Day 2020.
Philosophy 101
Would he spend the rest of his life here…watching hope slip away along with the years until there was nothing left to live for and time had finally run out?
Alex Haley
Roots: The Saga of an American Family
Roots, of course, is a story of Haley’s ancestors, one of whom was captured in The Gambia and shipped to America for duty as a slave, and today’s quote is about one of these ancestors, though we neglected to note which one. Roots remains one of the finest books we’ve ever read and we were dismayed to find out Haley plagiarized some of it.
If you are reading this you are not subject to being a slave, unless your master provides you with Internet access, but today’s quote is as relevant to us as it was to Haley’s ancestors because we must ask ourselves these questions every day: Are the years slipping away? Will time finally run out? And the only question that really matters: will we make our time on this planet serve us, or will we squander our time here?
We must always have something to live for. Slaves only had more forced labor to live for, but we have 24 hours every day – the only commodity each of us is issued in equal measure – to make something good happen for ourselves. Those that get on in this life are the ones who take advantage of those 24 hours. They make their time serve them, whether it’s a champion athlete you see on television or the mechanic who expertly fixes your car, know what they were meant to do with their lives, they have the courage to go and do it and they have the patience to do it every day. Not some days and not others, not some years and not others, but every day, from the time they make the commitment until the day they die.
We can be no different; The life we were meant to live is there for all of us, but we have to go and get it; it’s not going to fall in our laps. We must pursue our path with diligence and courage.
Thank you for reading. We look forward to seeing you tomorrow.
xoxoxo
Kaitlyn