Up and Coming Weekly is a weekly publication in Fayetteville, NC and Fort Bragg, NC area offering local news, views, arts, entertainment and community event and business information.
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Happy 100th Birthday 1913 by PITT DICKEY If you can read this, the Mayans were wrong. In my most recent column, I bid both of my faithful readers goodbye as I was convinced that the Mayan Apocalypse was at hand. Surprisingly, the world did not end. As Roseanne Rosannadanna would say, ���Never mind.��� Let us move on into the auspiciously numbered year 2013. What could possibly go wrong in the only year out of a century that ends with the number 13? Let us count the ways. As a clue to the upcoming events of 2013, let���s begin by reminding ourselves that 2013 will be the 100th anniversary of 1913. Even though past performance by a year ending in ���13 is no guarantee of future results, those who forget the past are doomed to ���unk history 101. Let���s join Mr. Peabody in his Way Back Machine and take a trip through 1913 to see what it augers for our very own 2013. All of the following events took place in 1913. Since no one was innocent, no names have been changed. Franz Kafka stopped working on his magnum opus ���Amerika.��� He never ���nished it. Who knew Franz was a quitter? The art world was introduced to Picasso, Matisse and Duchamp at the New York Armory Show. This exhibit hastened the decline of high culture from safe, dull representational art into abstract oddness. As a plus, it did allow millions of amateur art critics to say ���My 3-year-old can paint better than that.��� The ���rst prize was inserted into a box of Cracker Jacks giving birth to the art of selling sugar-coated junk food to children by tempting them with pieces of plastic junk. The 16th Amendment to the Constitution was rati���ed creating the Federal Income Tax. The initial tax rate was 1 percent of income. Like the Kraken rising from the depths, the law and the rate have expanded a tad over the years. The regulations interpreting IRS law have grown like kudzu on a rainy August day. Proust and Faulkner would both be proud of the Little Income Tax that could. The IRS regulations currently clock in at 13,458 pages. The IRS law itself, my personal favorite night-time reading, is a sleek 3,387 pages in length. Mr. League of Nations himself, Woodrow Wilson, was inaugurated as President of the United States. President Wilson almost kept us out of the War to End All Wars. Much to the disgust of Ron Paul fans everywhere, President Wilson also signed the law that brought the Federal Reserve Bank into existence in 1913. Not to be outdone by a mere president, Gideon Sundback, of Sweden, patented the ���rst zipper, thereby initiating the great button versus zipper wars which continue to this very day. Imitating King Canute, the British Parliament voted to deny women the right to vote, thereby establishing the father-knows-best phenomenon still followed today by the more colorful elements of the American Republican Party. Death Valley set a new and still standing record for the hottest recorded day in U.S. history by attaining 134 degrees on July 10, 1913. Congress, duly inspired by Death Valley, made chronic efforts to top this amount of hot air during its deliberations. Ever supportive of America���s womenfolk, inventor Mary Phelps Jacob patented the ���rst modern elastic brassiere in November 1913. The Mona Lisa painting, which was stolen in 1911 from the Louvre, was recovered in December 1913 just in time to take advantage of Jacob���s newly invented unmentionable. So what are we to make of 2013 as seen through the glass darkly of 1913? Romeo might have said, ���But soft, what light from yonder window of 1913 breaks?/It is the Mayan non- apocalypse and 2013 is the sun/Arise fair 2013, and kill the envious 1913/Who is already sick and pale with Wilsonian grief/That thou, her centennial, art far more fair than 1913.��� It is 2013, sleep deprived, hungry and cranky. You only get one year that ends in 13 every hundred PITT DICKEY, Columnist. years, so enjoy it while you can. We COMMENTS? may wish the Mayans were right. Editor@upandcomingweekly.com Take Marketing Matters Into Your Own Hands We can help market your business right and put it at the fingertips of customers in two ways. In print and online! Look for it online now at www.upandcomingweekly.com. Connecting a Community 208 Rowan St. 910.484.6200 6 UCW JANUARY 2-8, 2013 WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM