Today in History: Nov. 22

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

I do not know if my family home was more or less Kennedy-saturated than the homes of other American families that were begun in the 1960s like ours: we had three JFK-memorial books and one LP recording of the late President delivering his speeches that had a glossy full-color portrait on the front of the sleeve and his inaugural address printed as a liner note on the back.

There were November 1963 issues of Life magazine boxed up—Life was the newsweekly that people kept and preserved and re-visited as if events had not happened until confirmed on the giant pages of that publication. (The media preferences I was exposed to when I was young stayed with me into adulthood: Life, not Look; Time, not Newsweek, NBC news, not CBS. To younger ears, I suppose all of that is akin to preferring Safari to Chrome.)

In all of those publications—memorial books and Life magazine alike—color is introduced with photos of the president’s inaugural and then re-visited in photos taken on the morning of November 22, 1963. Those photos remain almost painfully colorful—the bright silver of Air Force One at Love Field, the almost-cloudless blue sky, Mrs. Kennedy’s pink pillbox hat, even the president’s flesh tones—but black and white is re-introduced with the photos taken later that sad day.
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Mean People Stink

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

I am too sensitive …

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Each of the last few Thanksgiving weeks I have shared on Facebook whichever article I can find (this year it was from NBC News) that provides a list of retail store chains that will be open on Thanksgiving Day. (The article usually identifies those chains that will be closed on that holiday.)

This is of some importance to me as I used to work in retail (a major department store chain, now extinct; an independent bookseller, now a memory; an electronics retailer, now going out of business, too.) I worked many “Black Fridays,” that day when the Christmas sales season is launched—a couple of those Black Fridays, I was behind the counter ringing sales with live (barely awake) customers at 5:00 a.m. I never worked on Thanksgiving Day itself, though, as the phenomenon of opening stores for customers on a national holiday had not quite started when my life as an employee ended in 2010.

I am glad for that, because I would not have much liked working on Thanksgiving.
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Today in History: Nov. 21

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Rocky, a film written by and starring Sylvester Stallone and directed by John Avildsen, opened in theaters 40 years ago today. Made for $1 million, it has officially grossed more than $225 million.

At the following year’s Academy Awards, Stallone was nominated for Best Screenplay and Best Actor, and the film won Best Picture and Avildsen won Best Director. Six sequels have followed, including four that were directed by Stallone.
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