LBJ vs Wallace 3/20/65

On March 20, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson notifies Alabama’s Governor George Wallace that he will use federal authority to call up the Alabama National Guard in order to supervise a planned civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery.

Intimidation and discrimination had earlier prevented Selma’s Black population—over half the city—from registering and voting. On Sunday, March 7, 1965, a group of 600 demonstrators marched on the capital city of Montgomery to protest this disenfranchisement and the earlier killing of a Black man, Jimmie Lee Jackson, by a state trooper.

In brutal scenes that were later broadcast on television, state and local police attacked the marchers with billy clubs and tear gas. TV viewers far and wide were outraged by the images, and a protest march was organized just two days after “Bloody Sunday” by Martin Luther King Jr., head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). King turned the marchers around, however, rather than carry out the march without federal judicial approval.

This Day in History - What Happened Today - HISTORY

The Godfather 

The Godfather, American gangster epic film, released in New York on March 15, 1972, that was adapted from the 1969 best-selling novel by Mario Puzo and has been regarded as a masterpiece since its release. Its creative cinematography, haunting score, and unforgettable performances by such actors as Marlon Brando and Al Pacino made the multigenerational saga an enduring cultural touchstone.

The Godfather is set in the 1940s and takes place entirely within the world of the Corleones, a fictional New York Mafia family. It opens inside the dark office of the family patriarch, Don Vito Corleone (also known as the Godfather and played by Brando), on the wedding day of his daughter, Connie (Talia Shire).   Vito’s youngest son, Michael (Pacino), who has distanced himself from the family business, attends the festivities with his non-Italian girlfriend, Kay (Diane Keaton).   A few months later, Vito is nearly killed by gunmen sent by a rival family, and Michael saves him from another attempt while he is recovering in the hospital.  Michael then takes revenge, killing a corrupt police captain as well as the man who ordered the hit on Vito, after which he flees to Sicily as a gang war breaks out.  Vito’s eldest son, Sonny (James Caan), is gunned down, and the violence eventually reaches Michael when his Sicilian wife is killed during an attempt on his life.  Michael returns home and marries Kay, and Vito makes peace with the rival families. Michael succeeds his father as don, and, after bringing prosperity to the family, he launches a campaign to systematically wipe out all those who had ever attacked the Corleones.

Director and cowriter Francis Ford Coppola shared an Academy Award for the screenplay that he and Puzo wrote. Dialogue from the movie—especially the line “I’ll make him an offer he can’t refuse”—became common parlance, and scenes from the film were frequently quoted in other movies and TV shows.  Nino Rota’s score was nominated for an Academy Award but was removed from the list after it was learned that portions of the music were originally composed for the 1958 Italian film Fortunella. The Godfather made a star of Robert Duvall, who played the family consigliere, and revitalized Brando’s career. Brando, however, refused the Oscar that he won for his performance in order to protest the treatment of Native Americans by the film industry.  The Godfather was in the second group of films selected for the National Film Registry (1990) and was named in 2002 as one of the National Society of Film Critics’ 100 Essential Films. 

Net Discussion Questions:

1. To those stations who have any experience with FT8, please share what you know:

2. Ease of “station” (radio / interface / computer / software) set up

3. Typical FT8 QSO format…13 characters per tx…what is said?

• Logging

• Operations

The Godfather:

1. Did you see it when it first came out?

2. Thoughts….

CELEBRATING INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY & WOMENS INVOLMENT IN AMATUER RADIO

Why do we celebrate women's day on March 8?

International Women's Day (IWD) is a global holiday celebrated annually on March 8 as a focal point in the women's rights movement, bringing attention to issues such as gender equality, reproductive rights, and violence and abuse against women.  International Women's Day 2023 campaign theme: #EmbraceEquity

For International Women's Day and beyond, let's all fully #EmbraceEquity.

Equity isn't just a nice-to-have, it's a must-have.

A focus on gender equity needs to be part of every society's DNA.

WOMENS INVOLMENT IN AMATUER RADIO

When you hear the phrase “Ham radio operator,” you instantly think of a man, most likely an older man, with a radio.  And that’s only fair. Ham Radio is an overwhelmingly male dominate hobby.

·         You go to Ham conventions. There are men.

·         You go on air. Men are chatting away.

·         You log on to YouTube to learn more about Ham radio, and most top-ranking videos feature male Hams.

·         This begs the question, are there any female Ham operators at all?

·         Are there any Female Ham Operators Genuinely Interested in Ham Radio?

In short yes, many women are interested in Amateur radio as a hobby. Some have already acquired their licenses, becoming female Ham operators, while others aspire to join their ranks soon.

Ham radio offers unique challenges and an opportunity to learn and connect with other like-minded people on air. Apart from that, it also prepares you for effective emergency communications.

Women know that. And most of them want to enjoy and benefit from all that Amateur radio offers. 

The female representation in the Ham radio community, however, is low.

Percentage of Women to Men in Ham Radio

According to ARRL’s website, women represent only 15% of the US ham radio operators’ population.

That’s embarrassingly low, especially since we are living in the 21st century and have achieved some milestones of equality in several other fields.  This low representation is abundantly clear in Ham radio meetups, whether they take place on the ground or on air.  And the small representation is what becomes one of the barriers for more women who want to join the hobby.

According to some stats, the average ARRL member or Ham radio operator in the US is a 68-year-old white male.

For people looking from the outside, and even for women who have been on the “inside,” this paints a grim picture. It reflects the general notion that Ham radio is primarily occupied by baby boomers and older men.  The idea of connecting and chatting with a 60-year-old male Ham would be less appealing to a female ham operator. She would naturally have more in common with, and hence would be more interested in talking to people her own age.

While the tide has started to shift, we still have a long way before we could have more young people and female representation.

While low in numbers, women are a critical part of the Ham radio community. They are paving the way for a massive change that is due for a while and striving to realize the dream of a more gender-neutral Ham radio community.

But we still have a long way to go and many changes to make before this becomes a reality.

Fortunately, some of these change-makers are already in place as most male Ham radio operators are trying their best to make the hobby more welcoming for their female peers.  But that doesn’t mean there aren’t any problems facing female Ham operators.

We need to acknowledge these issues, eliminate them, and foster an environment that encourages more women to join.

 Net Discussion Questions:

1. Why do you think there are so few women involved with the amateur radio?

2. What ideas might you have to increase women’s involvement?

3.  What do you think happened to Malaysia Airlines flight 370?

DISAPPEARANCE Malaysia Airlines flight 370  

Passenger airliner Malaysia Airlines flight 370 disappeared on March 8, 2014, during a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing.  The disappearance of the Boeing 777 with 227 passengers and 12 crew members on board led to a search effort stretching from the Indian Ocean west of Australia to Central Asia. The perplexing nature of the loss of flight 370 is such that it has become one of history’s most famous missing aircraft.

Disappearance and search

Flight 370 took off at 12:41 AM local time and reached a cruising altitude of 35,000 feet at 1:01 AM. The Aircraft Communication Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS), which transmitted data about the aircraft’s performance, sent its last transmission at 1:07 AM and was subsequently switched off. The last voice communication from the crew occurred at 1:19 AM, and at 1:21 AM the plane’s transponder, which communicated with air-traffic control, was switched off, just as the plane was about to enter Vietnamese airspace over the South China Sea.  At 1:30 AM Malaysian military and civilian radar began tracking the plane as it turned around and then flew southwest over the Malay Peninsula and then northwest over the Strait of Malacca.  At 2:22 AM Malaysian military radar lost contact with the plane over the Andaman Sea.  An Inmarsat satellite in geostationary orbit over the Indian Ocean received hourly signals from flight 370 and last detected the plane at 8:11 AM.

Initial searches for the plane concentrated on the South China Sea. On March 15, a week after the plane had disappeared, the Inmarsat contact was disclosed. Analysis of the signal could not locate the plane precisely but did determine that the plane might have been anywhere on two arcs, one stretching from Java southward into the Indian Ocean southwest of Australia and the other stretching northward across Asia from Vietnam to Turkmenistan. The search area was then expanded. On March 24 Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak announced that, based on analysis of the final signals, Inmarsat and the U.K. Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) had concluded that the flight crashed in a remote part of the Indian Ocean 2,500 km (1,500 miles) southwest of Australia. Thus, it was extremely unlikely that anyone on board survived.

The search for wreckage was hampered by the remote location of the crash site. Further searches were conducted using a robotic submarine. However, the pings had been spread over a wide area, the submarine found no debris, and tests found that a faulty cable in the acoustic equipment could have produced the pings.

Debris discovery

The first piece of debris was not found until July 29, 2015, when the right wing flaperon was discovered on a beach on the French island of Réunion, about 2,300 miles west of the Indian Ocean area that was being searched by Australian authorities. Over the next year and a half, 26 more pieces of debris were found on the shores of Tanzania, Mozambique, South Africa, Madagascar, and Mauritius. Three of the 27 pieces were positively identified as coming from flight 370, and 17 were thought to have likely come from the plane. Two pieces came from the cabin interior, suggesting that the plane had broken up, but whether the plane broke up in the air or on impact with the ocean could not be determined. Study of the Réunion wing flaperon and a piece of the right-wing flap found in Tanzania showed that the plane had not undergone a controlled descent; that is, the plane had not been guided to a water landing. Some researchers note that flight 370 could have struck the water vertically, a possibility in which the results of one modeling study conducted before the flaperon’s discovery suggests could explain the dearth of physical evidence. The debris locations were used to narrow the search area in the Indian Ocean, since some possible crash sites would have been unlikely to produce debris that would have drifted to Africa.

Possible causes of the aircraft’s disappearance

In the weeks following flight 370’s disappearance, theories ranged from mechanical failure to pilot suicide. The loss of the ACARS and transponder signals spurred ongoing speculation about some form of hijacking, but no individual or group claimed responsibility, and it seemed unlikely that hijackers would have flown the plane to the southern Indian Ocean. That the signals had likely been switched off from inside the aircraft suggested suicide by one of the crew—a possibility that Malaysian authorities have yet to rule out—but nothing suspicious was found in the behavior of the captain, the first officer, or the cabin crew prior to the flight. After the discovery of the debris, some speculated that flight 370 was shot down, but no evidence of shrapnel from a missile or other projectiles has been found.