This & that: A quake; a new Juneteenth; remembering a Purdue Nobel winner
A little of this, a little of that on a Saturday morning …
A little of this, a little of that on a Saturday morning …
A new Juneteenth celebration in Greater Lafayette
A Juneteenth celebration Saturday moves from Columbian Park in Lafayette last year to Tapawingo Park and the John T. Myers Pedestrian Bridge in West Lafayette.
Your hosts for the community event – the first as an official national holiday – will be the Student Baptist Foundation at Purdue.
Opening ceremonies, with speakers and performances, start at 10 a.m. Music, exhibits and more continue until 6 p.m.
Juneteenth marks the day, on June 19, 1865, when word of the Emancipation Proclamation was delivered to Galveston, Texas. President Abraham Lincoln had proclaimed the emancipation of slaves as of Jan. 1, 1863, more than two years earlier. Texas was the last Confederate state to have the proclamation announced.
On Thursday, President Joe Biden signed a bill that named Juneteenth a federal holiday, ending years of pushing to get that done.
Deanna McMillan, one of the coordinators of Saturday’s event in West Lafayette, said she was excited about that news. She said she hoped Americans took it as a day to reflect on what the day means.
“I hope it's not an excuse for another barbecue,” McMillan said.
For a full lineup Saturday, here you go.
The rumble felt in Lafayette
How did everyone out there survive the great quake of 2021?
The U.S. Geological Service recorded a 3.8 magnitude earthquake from a fault near Montezuma, a town about 65 miles southwest of Lafayette, around 3:18 p.m. Thursday. From here, Montezuma is like going to Shades or Turkey Run state parks and then added another 10 miles.
It was the second I can remember feeling in Lafayette. The other one, I don’t remember the date – and Indiana has had more than a dozen so far this century. But as we were talking about it yesterday, we remember it woke us up and the room felt almost like it was rolling. (It was enough to make us say, Whoa. It was enough for someone we know to start praying, because the Second Coming, it was here.)
This one rumbled a second-floor room I was in, like a big truck was working out front. And it was enough to remind me I need to get a better screw to tighten the lampshade on the side table. It rattled and rattled for a minute or more, it seemed.
The beauty of a low-grade earthquake – yeah, we all heard from plenty of transplanted Californians who were all, like, “meh” – was being able to ask: Did you feel it.
Then, let the thread roll.
Here’s one that builds from here:
Tribute to a ‘rock star’ Purdue Nobel Prize winner
Speaking of great threads, Eric Weddle, a Lafayette J&C alum now with WFYI in Indianapolis, posted a terrific series, remembering his time with Ei-ichi Negishi, when the Purdue professor went to Stockholm to accept the 2010 Nobel Prize in chemistry.
Negishi died June 6 at age 85, news the university announced this week. Negishi was a huge star on campus and in his field, winning a Nobel for his work to create – as Purdue put it – “a method to build complex organic molecules necessary for numerous purposes — from pharmaceutical manufacturing to electronics.”
I say, “as Purdue put it,” because in that incredible time of reporting on Negishi’s win and his work, it was all any of us at the paper could do to really understand how the chemistry really worked. Weddle and then J&C projects editor David Smith – now proprietor of the great Smittybread on Fourth Street – did much of the heavy lifting. (Even then, when bringing in some of Negishi’s students to make sure graphics and stories were on point, Smitty wondered aloud if they even understood …)
Weddle initially was denied credentials for Negishi’s Nobel trip to Sweden. Until he took it up with Negishi, who welcomed the hometown paper’s reporter to go with him. Weddle’s work was outstanding, from everything I remember. And Negishi proved to be an entertaining, captivating subject worth daily coverage.
As Weddle wrote after Negishi’s death: “I’m no Nobel expert, but it seems most science laureates are outwardly humble. Yet Negishi declared his own excellence and became a rock star in Stockholm for his glee of winning. It was contagious. Local and Japanese media followed his every move. He loved it.”
What a time.
Weddle tells more. Here’s the thread.
FOR MORE: Here’s Purdue’s obit of Negishi, including tidbits about how he woke up to the Nobel win and then excused himself to go teach a class: Ei-ichi Negishi, one of 2 Nobel Prize winners from Purdue University, dies
And here was another from the Washington Post, which took a deep dive into Negishi’s influence, including this passage that puts his work into context:
While Dr. Negishi’s name is little known outside of chemistry, his research proved crucial to the creation of compounds used in everything from fungicides to organic light-emitting diodes, which are used to make razor-thin television and computer screens. “If you make molecules, you know his work,” said James Tour, a Rice University chemistry professor.
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