The Twentieth Amendment to the US Constitution establishes the beginnings of both presidential and congressional terms. For the Congress, initial assembly of the body is mandated for noon on 3 January in odd-numbered years. So we can easily cast a chart for the incoming 116th Congress, which may prove to be one of the most consequential in American history, holding as it does the fate of the current President in its hands.
On Thursday, 30 November 2018, George H. W. Bush died at his home in Houston, Texas, at age 94. The 41st president of the United States, Bush was the son of a Senator, the father of the 43rd US president and of a former governor of Florida. Bush served two terms as Vice President for Ronald Reagan before succeeding to the office for a single term, losing the presidency to Bill Clinton in 1992. The subsequent friendship which grew between the two men (Bush and his wife Barbara often referred to Clinton as another son) was a beautiful example of a nonpartisan spirit that seems quaint and antiquated in today’s cruder, rough-and-tumble political atmosphere.
Shortly after Shabbat services began at the Tree of Life Synagogue in the Squirrel Hill section of Pittsburgh, PA on Saturday, October 27, 2018, a lone gunman entered and began shooting up the congregation with a semi-automatic AR-15 rifle and two Glock hand guns. He left 11 dead and another six wounded, including several police officers who responded to the 911 calls. The suspect, Robert Bowers, was apprehended after being shot by police and remains in the hospital, though he faces arraignment on 29 Federal charges on the Monday. Bowers had a history of anti-Semitic posts on social media sites, and told arresting officers that he “just wanted to kill Jews”, whom he accused of bringing terrorists into the US to destroy the country.
The rampage is the most deadly act of anti-Semitism in US history, and the 294th mass shooting in the country this year. Obviously, we’ve been down this road many times before; it is wide and commodious, and there appears to be no turning.
“Welcome to my house. Enter freely and of your own will.” From this first intonation of his opening line in the 1931 horror classic “Dracula”, Bela Lugosi was a star. Suave and elegant, with opera cape, top hat and cane, sans the fangs and gore, Lugosi’s portrayal of Bram Stoker’s malignant villain virtually singlehandedly vaulted the vampire from grotesque to sex symbol. His sophisticated appearance and exotic eastern European accent set him in the firmament of Hollywood glitterati, indelibly linked with his undead character for all time.
On October 25, 1978, in Kansas City, Missouri, director John Carpenter premiered his third feature film, “Halloween”, with a plot involving a psychotic, knife-wielding killer stalking a group of libidinous teens in a sleepy Illinois town on Halloween night. The movie starred Hollywood scion Jamie Lee Curtis, daughter of Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh, in her film debut, with a role that would soon become known as that of “the final girl”, that is, the lone survivor of the killer’s rage. A new terminology was required, for “Halloween” broke unhallowed ground in the horror genre, essentially inventing the slasher film
On September 6th, 2018, noted actor Burt Reynolds suffered a heart attack and died at a Florida hospital. Reynolds was best known for his popular action films of the ‘70s and ‘80s, including “Smokey and the Bandit” and “The Cannonball Run”, but also received an Oscar nomination for his work in 1997’s “Boogie Nights”. During his heyday, Reynolds’ life was frequent tabloid fodder, with long-term relationships with singer and talk show hostess Dinah Shore, actress Sally Field (his co-star in the “Bandit” films) and TV personality Loni Anderson, whom he eventually married, then divorced.
