Galileo, Galileo, Galileo Vigaro!

Otto was born in Davenport, IA on July seventh, eighteen hundred and eighty, one hundred thirty seven years ago today. Fifth child for his parents, it was still a momentous occasion, but probably not quite as momentous as the first four. He grew up a quiet simple life, apprenticed himself to a jeweler at a young age. But when he reached his majority he wanted to get a little more out of life. So he headed to Chicago and trained to be an optometrist, getting his degree in optics at the ripe age of twenty.

Educated and filled with ambition, he headed back west and settled in St Joseph, MO. St Joe is these days barely a city, but at the time it was bustling. The city farthest west accessible by rail until after the Civil war, it has been the start point of the Oregon trail and the terminus of the pony express. It was the center of all fur trade in the midwest, and when the coward Robert Ford assassinated Jesse James there in 1882, the town’s notoriety only increased.

Lil’ Ricky grew up in his Grandmother’s brothel. Gram was too old to be turnin tricks (at least to the general populace, most madams kept a few gentlemen clients that have aged up with them), but Ricky’s mom was at the top of her game, and went to work outside the family’s business, but not out of the family business altogether, if you get our meaning. So lil Ricky and his three sibs got dumped a Gram’s ol Whorehouse, where they lived the life you might expect children to have in those circumstances.

It’s no wonder Ricky had to leave school at age fourteen, or that he spent most of his two years of soldier service in an army prison. But once he got out, he hit the world like a velveteen sledgehammer. By age 23 he was working in New York, opening for Nina Simone, performing alongside Woody Allen and Bob Dylan. To be clear these were separate events. Then came TV appearances, National tours, Platinum albums and writing gigs, little Ricky Pryor had arrived.

Little Lhamo was a rambunctious child. Fearless, the wise gurus of his province described. The ruler of his people had recently moved onto a higher plane, and the remaining leaders were searching for a decent replacement. And when the corpse of the great leader moved his head to face to the southeast, all the wise men redoubled their search into the Quinghai province.

Sera Lama, the leader of one search group, decided to see the fearless boy for himself, and he posed as a servant, and sat alone in the kitchen and waited for the boy to approach. He held in his hand a rosary that belonged to the great leader, and when the boy approached his spied it and said “That’s mine.” Sera told the boy he could have the rosary if he could guess his name, and the boy cried “Sera Lama, Sera Lama.” and he spoke to the man in a language his mother had never heard before, and Sera Lama knew this boy was the next incarnation of Avalokitesvara, the Buddha of compassion, and was the fourteenth Dalai Lama.

The Babylonians were astronomical bastards. Thousands of years before the beginning of the common era, without the benefit of glass or radio, they discovered and plotted the the orbits of Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. Of course the planets weren’t called by those names at that time, that naming happened later, when Rome ruled the world, and their gods were the ones filled the heavens. Saturn wasn’t a god at all, but a titan and father to all the gods, so certainly god like, anyway. And for thousands of years, those were the only planets we know.

In 1781, on March 13 (coming up Monday, it we need a second celebration) William Herschel, first spotted a faint object moving in our sky. He first thought it was a comet, but on further observation and calculation he and his peers decided it was a planet. And he was the one lucky enough to get to name it. He initially wanted to name it Georgium, after his Majesty King George III. He felt the Roman naming convention was fine for those meagre planets known to the Romans, but this new discovery should be memorialized so that all historians would know under whose reign it was discovered.

Johnny was born wild. The son of a grocer, and a deacon, he was treated harsh, in the name of love, of course. Spare the rod and all that. But When Johnny started running with the wrong crowd, and gettin scraped up with the law, his pa moved them out into the country, to get away from the disturbing influences of the big city. Did them no nevermind, though, Johnny was taken for a bit of auto theft and he was back in the system.

A stick up at a Grocery store (take that, dad) netted him fifty dollars and eight years in the hoosegow. And it was there Johnny learned all his stealcraft. Taken under wing of several of the more experienced inmates, he learned all he could about his chosen profession. He vowed when he got out he’d be the meanest son of a bitch who ever was. After eight years, he hit his first bank two months after release.

They’d gone through it a couple times before. The people of Cuba had risen up against their Imperial Spanish overlords previously in the Ten Years War and the Little War (way to give a war a complex) and both times the rebellions were quelled. This was back in the 1870’s, and we were a little preoccupied with our reconstruction projects. But twenty years later, when a new generation of revolting Cubans were formented, we took notice.

February 24, 1895, one hundred twenty two years ago today, coordinated revolts sprung up all over the cuban island, most notably in Guantanamo and Santiago. Spain responded by sending a fleet to quell the uprisers, and we sent a ship down to monitor the whole shebang. Unfortunately, our ship, the Maine exploded in Havana harbor. It’s never really been determined how the ship blew up, but common understanding suggests it was an onboard accident. But Hearst and Pulitzer had none of that, and alongside the puffed up stories of Spanish atrocities to the Cuban people, we have a fabricated attack by Spain against one of ours.

We’d only had the damn constitution for twelve years before we broke it. The election of 1800 was rough. Adams was an unpopular president, known mostly for the sedition acts, and seen by some as a poor successor to Washington. Jefferson had strong support in the south and thought he was able to swing enough of the mid Atlantic to change the direction of the country. THough Adams and Jefferson were friends and mostly remained gentlemen, their supporters were a bunch of rabble. There were accusations of sexual perversions and transvestism, corruption, devil worship, political punditry at it’s finest.

So when the election ended, and back in those days it took months to collect all the votes, Jefferson’s crew seemed to take it. But it didn’t work quite the same as it does now. Every appointed elector was allowed two votes for the presidency, and whomever had the most votes was President, whomever had the second most votes was vice president. This allowed for a Federalist President, Adams, to have a Democratic-Republican Vice President, Jefferson. Having such a divided house did not help Adams failed administration, so the plan was for the electors in Federalist areas to cast their votes for a running team, Adams and Charles Pickney, and the Democratic-Republican states would have their electors vote for the team of Jefferson and Aaron Burr (can’t trust a guy with that many double letters in his name). The Feds had one guy who didn’t cast a second vote so Adams would still be top dog, and the Dems planned on doing the same. But it didn’t work out.

Don’t ask me how St. Scholastica, the patron of nuns, got to associated with higher learning, but the students of Oxford long found the day of her feast to be one of revelry. College revelry has a long standing history of irritating the locals, and back in 1355 it was no different.

Two students were drinking at the Swindlestock tavern. To be fair, there were more than two students there, but these two in particular were the starters of this particular fire. The were dissatisfied with the quality of the wine being served them. This was not a new complaint, and there was much strife in Oxford as to the quality of all amenities afforded the student population by the local business. The chancellor had already petitioned the King for redress, but the crown moved slow.

Jiles always was a big fucker. Tall, sturdy built, he played a defensive lineman in high school. Ol number 85. It was a fair balance for his choir and band enthusiasms which were his true passion. He got himself into college, but when the night time DJ gig started bringing in real scratch, the college just had to go. And apart from a couple years of mandatory military service, Djing is where he stayed. Though workin radar in Fort Bliss is still in radio, I guess.

He tried his hand at songwriting, and george Jones turned his ‘White Lightnin’ into a hit. Sadly another of his penned tunes ‘Running Bear’ didn’t get immediate enough release. But he finally conned someone into letting him record one of his own songs, and it became a top ten record. It was time for Jiles to head out with the real stars.