The S.S. United States, 70th anniversary

I have written a number of times, in this space, about the S.S. United States, the legendary ocean liner.  

I also wrote about the ship in my book about early television. The last telecast of Your Hit Parade's 1951-1952 season originated from the ship.  Though my mother did not know it at the time, the telecast from the United States would be her last appearance on the program.  

The broadcast from the ship aired on June 28, 1952, on NBC.  This was five days prior to the United States' maiden voyage--from Pier 86 in New York Harbor, to Southampton, England.  The voyage began on July 3, 1952, seventy years ago today.  The ship arrived in England on July 7th.

The United States was in service from 1952 until 1969.  The liner has been docked on the Philadelphia waterfront since 1996--in disrepair, and having been stripped of its interior fittings (in the 1980s and 1990s) prior to being taken to Philadelphia. Despite its disrepair, the ship remains, in person, an astonishing, and beautiful, sight. At 990+ feet, it exceeds, by more than one hundred feet, the length of the Titanic. 

In 2011, the United States was acquired by the S.S. United States Conservancy, a group devoted to the ship's history, and preservation. The purchase was made possible by a substantial grant from the noted Philadelphia philanthropist H. F. "Gerry" Lenfest. Mr. Lenfest died in 2018, at age 88.  

The first photograph, below, was taken in New York, the day the United States began its maiden voyage.

The next photograph was taken the week before.  It is of an NBC cameraman, his camera trained upon the ship; it is one of many photographs my mother was given in 1952--many of them rehearsal photographs--related to the season-ending Hit Parade broadcast.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lastly, the photograph below is of the United States on the Philadelphia waterfront. I was given a tour of the ship in the fall of 2000, by a representative of the ship's then-owner, and was accompanied by Philadelphia-based photographer and artist Jenny Lynn (referred to in a recent post), who took many photos during the tour, including this one.

(Photograph of the United States, maiden voyage, © UPI/Corbis-Bettmann; photo of NBC cameraman and ship, 1952, taken by a Hit Parade photographer; 2000 photograph of the United States, © Jenny Lynn)

Cassidy Hutchinson, and the January 6th House committee

Today's House testimony from Cassidy Hutchinson--who served in the White House as a top aide to Mark Meadows, Donald Trump's last chief of staff--was remarkable, riveting; it felt akin to the 1973 appearances by John Dean and Alexander Butterfield, in front of the Senate Watergate panel.

Poem by Frank O'Hara

A while ago I read the poem "Music," in the 1964 book Lunch Poems, by Frank O'Hara (City Lights Books).

The poem, the first in the book, is dated 1953.  Mr. O'Hara died in 1966, at age forty, two years after Lunch Poems was published.

There is a phrase in the poem--just part of a sentence--which has stayed with me; I have re-read it several times.

Mr. O'Hara wrote:

It's like a locomotive on the march, the season 

      of distress and clarity

Watergate

Today is the 50th anniversary--50 years? My heavens--of the break-in at the Watergate complex.  The arrest of the burglars led, ultimately, to the 1974 resignation of President Nixon.

Earlier this month, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who, notably, covered the Watergate scandal for The Washington Post, published a "Perspective" piece, in the Post.  It is titled: "Woodward and Bernstein thought Nixon defined corruption. Then came Trump."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/06/05/woodward-bernstein-nixon-trump/

Liz Cheney, and the House hearings

I have written previously, in this space, about Wyoming Representative Liz Cheney.

Ms. Cheney, one of two Republicans on the House Select Committee investigating the January 6th insurrection, was featured prominently during the committee's opening hearing Thursday night.

New Yorker writer Susan B. Glasser wrote this about Cheney, and the initial hearing: 

Speaking directly to her fellow-Republicans in Congress, the vast majority of whom have continued to support and promote Trump even after a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol and sent them fleeing for their lives, she concluded her presentation with a warning: "There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain."

Cheney's words--about Trump, January 6th, and the state of the Republican party--are routinely, and strikingly, eloquent. 

Yet her oratorical style--her manner of presentation--also commands attention.

It is the speaking style, one might say, of stoicism.  The style is unadorned, sober. There is often a near-flat quality to her oratory.

Yet one guesses it is precisely because of this--that her style is so unusually restrained, is so often without ornament--that her words, at their best, become that much more powerful, and dramatic.

The House Select hearings continue Monday morning, at 10 o'clock Eastern time.

(This post was edited, slightly, on June 14th, and on June 27th.)

D-Day

The image, below, is of the front page of New York's Daily Mirror, a tabloid paper, from D-Day, June 6, 1944 (seventy-eight years ago today). 

I've had the newspaper (along with other newspapers about D-Day) for decades--probably fifty-plus years.

At some point (as is perhaps evident, in the image), the front page separated from the rest of the paper.  Also, at some point, the page itself split in half, around the area of the fold.

I believe--I am not certain of this--that the group of newspapers was given to me by my maternal grandparents.