On this date in history -- Jan. 3, 1959 -- the United States admits a territory as a state

from HISTORY dot-com -- On This Date section of website: On January 3, 1959, President Eisenhower signs a special proclamation admitting the territory of Alaska into the Union as the 49th and largest state. The European discovery of Alaska came in 1741, when a Russian expedition led by Danish navigator Vitus Bering sighted the Alaskan mainland. Russian hunters were soon making incursions into Alaska, and the native Aleut population suffered greatly after being exposed to foreign diseases. In 1784, Grigory Shelikhov established the first permanent Russian colony in Alaska on Kodiak Island. In the early 19th century, Russian settlements spread down the west coast of North America, with the southernmost fort located near Bodega Bay in California. Russian activity in the New World declined in the 1820s, and the British and Americans were granted trading rights in Alaska after a few minor diplomatic conflicts. In the 1860s, a nearly bankrupt Russia decided to offer Alaska for sale to the United States, which earlier had expressed interest in such a purchase. On March 30, 1867, Secretary of State William H. Seward signed a treaty with Russia for the purchase of Alaska for $7.2 million. Despite the bargain price of roughly two cents an acre, the Alaskan purchase was ridiculed in Congress and in the press as "Seward's folly," "Seward's icebox," and President Andrew Johnson's "polar bear garden." Nevertheless, the Senate ratified purchase of the tremendous landmass, one-fifth the size of the rest of the United States. Despite a slow start in settlement by Americans from the continental United States, the discovery of gold in 1898 brought a rapid influx of people to the territory. Alaska, rich in natural resources, has been contributing to American prosperity ever since.

Lake Effect Snow Advisory -- Berrien County, Michigan (Southwest area of state near Lake Michigan) - Jan.3, 2014

Issued at 3:39 p.m. Eastern Time by National Weather service -- from online article at www.weather.com/ A BAND OF HEAVY LAKE EFFECT SNOW IS FORECAST TO PIVOT INTO FAR NORTHWEST INDIANA AND SOUTHWEST LOWER MICHIGAN THIS EVENING BEFORE WEAKENING LATER TONIGHT. ________________ SNOWFALL RATES AROUND 2 INCHES PER HOUR WITHIN THIS SNOW BAND WILL BE POSSIBLE... MAKING TRAVEL VERY DANGEROUS WITH NEAR ZERO VISIBILITIES POSSIBLE AT TIMES. SNOWFALL TOTALS OF 3 TO 6 INCHES CAN BE EXPECTED... WITH LOCALLY HIGHER AMOUNTS POSSIBLE ACROSS NORTHWEST LA PORTE COUNTY IN INDIANA AND FAR SOUTHWEST BERRIEN COUNTY IN MICHIGAN. _______________ IN ADDITION... WIND CHILLS ARE EXPECTED TO DROP TO AROUND 15 BELOW FROM LATE THIS EVENING THROUGH FRIDAY MORNING ACROSS FAR NORTHEAST INDIANA... .SOUTH CENTRAL LOWER MICHIGAN... AND NORTHWEST OHIO.

Marc Chagall exhibit (through Feb. 2, 2014) -- New York City's Jewish Museum: Love, War, Exile

from Museum's Online announcement -- www.jewishmuseum dot-org: Chagall: Love, War, and Exile, for the first time in the U.S., explores a significant but neglected period in the artist’s career from the rise of fascism in the 1930s through 1948, years spent in Paris and then in exile to New York. Marc Chagall (1887–1985), one of the foremost modernists of the 20th century, created his unique style by drawing on elements from richly colored folk art motifs, the Russian Christian icon tradition, Cubism, and Surrealism. Beginning with the evocative paintings from his years in France, the exhibition illuminates an artist deeply responsive to the suffering inflicted by war—often expressed with Christian imagery—and to his own personal losses and intimate sorrows. The exhibition includes 31 paintings and 22 works on paper, as well as selected letters, poems, photos, and ephemera. Escaping the hardships of Soviet life following the Revolution, Chagall moved to Paris with his wife, Bella, and daughter, Ida. During this productive period, Chagall assimilated the French artistic tradition, creating a series of portrait-like flower paintings, vibrant in color and texture. Chagall’s exile from Russia also inspired work based on memories of his childhood and of the Bolshevik Revolution. Chagall depicted a cathedral that dominated the town of Vitebsk, and drew on a remembered storehouse of symbols meaningful to both Jews and Christians, presaging the Christian imagery—in particular the Crucifixion—in work to come. Like many Eastern European Jews who had fled to France, Chagall’s world was threatened by Nazism. In 1941, with an invitation from Alfred Barr of the Museum of Modern Art, he and Bella escaped to New York City. With the onset of the war and this second exile in New York, themes of violence and disruption characterize Chagall’s work. The most prevalent image Chagall used during World War II was of Jesus and the Crucifixion. For Chagall, the Crucifixion was a symbol for all the victims of persecution, a metaphor for the horrors of war, and an appeal to conscience that equated the martyrdom of Jesus with the suffering of the Jewish people and the Holocaust. While other Jewish artists depicted the crucified Jesus, for Chagall it became a frequent theme. Unlike his years in Paris, Chagall was never completely comfortable during his wartime exile in New York. The artist felt disconnected from the places he understood best – Russia and Paris. This feeling of alienation was compounded by a devastating personal tragedy—the sudden death of his wife, Bella, in September 1944. Chagall soon established a new relationship with Virginia Haggard McNeil, moving with her to High Falls in upstate New York. His work from this time often expresses a tension—between the memory of Bella and the new presence of Virginia—resulting in fraught but revealing compositions. Gradually, as the artist emerged from his sadness, and the horrors of war receded, the work from this period begins to reflect the more familiar Chagall, expressed in joy-filled paintings replete with intense color and levitating figures. Chagall: Love, War, and Exile is organized by Susan Tumarkin Goodman, Senior Curator Emerita at The Jewish Museum. A fully illustrated, 148-page catalogue featuring 72 color reproductions, 27 black and white illustrations, and eleven of Chagall’s rarely seen poems will be co-published with Yale University Press. - See more at: http://www.thejewishmuseum.org/exhibitions/chagall-love-war-exile#sthash.RpLKnC9X.dpuf

Brooklyn is site of NY City Mayor's inauguration (1/1/14)

from WALL STREET JOURNAL coverage (reporter was Michael Howard Saul) of the city ceremony (www.wsj.com) : Mr. de Blasio's speech echoed the rallying cry of the mayor's campaign—that New York is marked by income inequality. "Today we commit to a new progressive direction in New York. And that same progressive impulse has written our city's history. It's in our DNA," he said. Mr. de Blasio was sworn in by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman shortly after midnight, outside his home in Park Slope, Brooklyn, as his wife, Chirlane McCray, and the couple's teenage children, Chiara and Dante, stood nearby. The de Blasios are New York City's first interracial First Family; Mr. de Blasio is white, and Ms. McCray is black. After reciting the oath, Mr. De Blasio signed the city clerk's register and paid his $9 filing fee. "I want to say to all of you how grateful we are. From the beginning this has been our family together reaching out to the people of the city to make a change. . ." "To everyone," he added," "this is a beginning of a road we will travel together. I want to wish everyone a very, very happy new year. Many great things ahead for all of us." Mr. de Blasio's decision to be sworn in at his Brooklyn row house underscored that he is the first mayor elected from outside Manhattan in four decades. The last non-Manhattan mayor was Abraham Beame, also of Brooklyn, who took office in 1974 and was sworn in at his vacation home in Queens. http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304137304579292431198637454

Happy Birthday -- to those who have no official record of birth -- Afghanistan and other war-torn societies (Wash. Post feature article)

featured in online version of the national periodical - newspaper (Jan. 1, 2014): Journalist is Kevin Sieff -- Dateline Kabul, Afghanistan: The first day of January isn’t celebrated as New Year’s Day in Afghanistan. But since the American invasion, it’s become a new kind of holiday — a de facto birthday for thousands of Afghans who don’t know when they were born. During protracted wars in the 1980s and ’90s, the government didn’t have a system in place to register births. Because identification cards and driver’s licenses weren’t standard in this impoverished nation, families saw no reason to record the exact dates. Government paperwork asked only for an approximate birthday on the Islamic calendar. But when the United States and its NATO allies arrived, they brought with them a flurry of job opportunities, visa applications and Web sites that all required a specific birthday on the Roman calendar. “Those of us who don’t know when we were born selected January 1st,” said a U.S. Army interpreter named Tariq, who first wrote the date on his job application with the military and would repeat it when he applied for a visa, and whenever anyone asked. “It was very easy to remember.” Like many Afghans, Tariq, who requested that his last name not be used to avoid Taliban threats, has only a vague sense of his birthday, which occurred during the country's collapse into civil war in the early 1990s. The question of birthdays has arisen with even greater frequency as Internet access has become more widespread, with 3G networks advertised in the country’s major cities. Urban Afghans were quick to create accounts on Facebook, Twitter and Gmail, all of which ask for the registrant’s date of birth. In the digital age, the collective birthday has become something of an inside joke here, as young Afghans send each other messages to celebrate. “Happy birthday to 30 friends . . . whose birthdays are tomorrow on the first of January,” Barat Ali Batoor, an Afghan refugee in Australia, wrote on Facebook. “In two days, it’s every Afghan’s birthday,” Mohammad Hassanzai, an Afghan living in London, tweeted Monday. “I have been using the 1st of January for every online registration and social network site,” said Nazer Hussain, 23, a recent university graduate who rattled off a list of Web sites he signed up for using his fake birthday. “In the past, people weren’t well-educated enough to keep a record of birthdays.” Some worry that the lack of official birth registration — a problem that persists today, particularly in rural parts of the country — could have serious implications. “Birth registration is instrumental in safeguarding other human rights because it provides the official ‘proof’ of a child’s existence,” said a 2007 U.N. report on the topic. It listed Afghanistan as one of the 10 countries with the largest numbers of unregistered children. The birth records are useful in reuniting families after conflicts or natural disasters, as well as in helping children apply for refugee status. And in the absence of a census, institutionalized birth registration can offer an estimate of the country’s population. “In Afghanistan, even though national legislation requires registration of children at birth, 23 years of conflict decimated both the administrative mechanisms and the social institutions that support them,” the U.N. report said. Afghanistan isn’t the only war-torn nation whose citizens have chosen Jan. 1 as a makeshift birthday. In Vietnam, Somalia, and Sudan, many birth dates weren’t recorded during years of unrest and institutional upheaval. When residents applied for visas or refu­gee status, thousands chose the first of the year — or, in some cases, the U.S. State Department chose it for them. The department has bestowed that birthday upon more than 200,000 refugees since the Vietnam War, according to several estimates.

End of 2013 -- what was the "Word of the Year"? (Merriam Webster dictionary techies)

found at Dictionary dot-com; While the Oxford University Press honored "selfies" as its 2013 Word of the Year, celebrating those quickly snapped self-portraits, Merriam-Webster is taking a more academic approach to its annual linguistic spotlight. The dictionary has declared "science" its 2013 Word of the Year. The honor is based on increased interest as measured by the number of people looking up a word over time. If you haven't looked it up online, here's how Merriam-Webster defines science: "knowledge about or study of the natural world based on facts learned through experiments and observation." Science, according to Merriam-Webster Editor-at-Large Peter Sokolowski, is the word behind the news in 2013. http://www.livescience.com/41649-science-word-of-the-year.html

Winter Storm Warning (Jan. 1 - 2, 2014): National Weather Service for Southwest Michigan counties

Winter Storm Warning for Berrien and Cass counties, Michigan until 4 p.m. January 2, 2014 Further details are forthcoming.