Five books in five days (5)

NewMexiKen spent much of the afternoon with M. Scott Momaday’s House Made of Dawn, a superb novel that won the Pulitzer Prize in 1969. It’s my fourth complete book since Thursday.

In compelling language, Momaday tells the story of Abel, an American Indian veteran who returns home to his pueblo in 1945. In telling Abel’s story we learn also stories about Abel’s grandfather, the priest, women in Abel’s life, friends. All this takes place in Walatowa, a fictional pueblo whose geography resembles the actual Pueblo of Jemez, the surrounding mountains and canyons, and in Los Angeles among relocated Indians.

And, while the story is moving and meaningful, it is Momaday’s language that soars. Abel at Valle Grande in the Jemez Mountains (truly, in real life, one of the world’s great scenic wonders):

Of all the places that he knew, this valley alone could reflect the great spatial majesty of the sky. It scooped out of the dark peaks like the well of a great, gathering storm, deep umber and blue and smoke-colored. The view across the diameter was magnificent; it was an unbelievably great expanse. As many times as he had been there in the past, each new sight of it always brought him up short, and he had to catch his breath. Just there, it seemed, a strange and brilliant light lay upon the world, and all the objects in the landscape were washed clean and set away in the distance. In the morning sunlight the Valle Grande was dappled with the shadows of clouds and vibrant with rolling winter grass. The clouds were always there, huge, sharply described, and shining in the pure air. But the great feature of the valley was its size. It was almost too great for the eye to hold, strangely beautiful and full of distance. Such vastness makes for illusion, a kind of illusion that comprehends reality, and where it exists there is always wonder and exhilaration. He looked at the facets of a boulder that lay balanced on the edge of the land, and the first thing beyond, the vague misty field out of which it stood, was the floor of the valley itself, pale and blue-green, miles away. He shifted the focus of his gaze, and he could just make out the clusters of dots that were cattle grazing along the river in the faraway plain.

Or this, the Navajo Ben Benally remembering a snow-filled day:

And afterward, when you brought the sheep back, your grandfather had filled the barrel with snow and there was plenty of water again. But he took you to the trading post anyway, because you were little and had looked forward to it. There were people inside, a lot of them, because there was a big snow on the ground and they needed things and they wanted to stand around and smoke and talk about the weather. You were little and there was a lot to see, and all of it was new and beautiful: bright new buckets and tubs, saddles and ropes, hats and shirts and boots, a big glass case all filled with candy. Frazer was the trader’s name. He gave you a piece of hard red candy and laughed because you couldn’t make up your mind to take it at first, and you wanted it so much you didn’t know what to do. And he gave your grandfather some tobacco and brown paper. And when he had smoked, your grandfather talked to the trader for a long time and you didn’t know what they were saying and you just looked around at all the new and beautiful things. And after a while the trader put some things out on the counter, sacks of flour and sugar, a slab of salt pork, some canned goods, and a little bag full of the hard red candy. And your grandfather took off one of his rings and gave it to the trader. It was a small green stone, set carelessly in thin silver. It was new and it wasn’t worth very much, not all the trader gave for it anyway. And the trader opened one of the cans, a big can of whole tomatoes, and your grandfather sprinkled sugar on the tomatoes and the two of you ate them right there and drank bottles of sweet red soda pop. And it was getting late and you rode home in the sunset and the whole land was cold and white. And that night your grandfather hammered the strips of silver and told you stories in the firelight. And you were little and right there in the center of everything, the sacred mountains, the snow-covered mountains and the hills, the gullies and the flats, the sundown and the night, everything—where you were little, where you were and had to be.

Awesome book; simply awesome.

Being able to spin straw into gold is another good way

“More than one in five Americans believe the best way to get rich is to win the lottery, while 11 percent say inheriting money is the way to go, a survey showed on Monday.”

Reuters Yahoo! News

Persons who make anonymous and annoying comments

… on this blog will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

Language in the “Violence Against Women and Department of Justice Reauthorization Act of 2005,” signed by the President last week, amended the Communications Act of 1934, so that now:

Whoever — … utilizes any device or software that can be used to originate … communications that are transmitted, in whole or in part, by the Internet … without disclosing his identity and with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten, or harass any person … who receives the communications … shall be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.

NewMexiKen wonders if the commenter’s IP address could be sufficient identification to be a legal defense against the “anonymous” stipulation in this statute.

Wal-Mart does have at least this good point

From A Closet Full of Rattling Bones. Go, read, be amused.

The comments are fun, too.

No, this isn’t Albuquerque in March

It’s a Sand Storm in Iraq: April 26, 2005. Incredible photos.

Link via Day of the Dead(ly) who got it from Ample Sanity.

Do you have anything in an exit row?

Andrew Tobias has a little perspective:

I am listening to 1776 on my Nano, and it’s 2 degrees Fahrenheit (in Boston, in 1776) and people are dragging 120 tons of can[n]ons from Ft. Ticonderoga 300 miles to General George Washington in Dorchester, and the suffering of the troops — civilians like you and me, who’ve left their families to fight the British — is astounding. Sentries are literally freezing to death. And all I can think about is how upset we get if we’re assigned a middle seat.

If you want to make a law, make it a illegal to sell ‘warm’ beer

At Functional Ambivalent, Tom has the story about Another Republican For Big Government — this one wants to make it illegal to sell cold beer. He got the idea from a fifth grader.

Blazing mouse sets fire to house

A US man who threw a mouse onto a pile of burning leaves could only watch in horror as it ran into his house and set the building ablaze.

Luciano Mares, 81, of Fort Sumner, New Mexico, found the mouse in his home and wanted to get rid of it.

“I had some leaves burning outside, so I threw it in the fire, and the mouse was on fire and ran back at the house,” he was quoted as saying by AP.

Though no-one was injured, the house and everything in it was destroyed.

“I’ve seen numerous house fires, but nothing as unique as this one,” Fire Department Captain Jim Lyssy said.

New Mexico has seen several major blazes after unseasonably dry and windy conditions which have destroyed 10 homes and devastated more than 53,000 acres (21,200 hectares) of land.

BBC News

NewMexiKen doubts the mouse realized he had the last laugh, but I like to think he somehow knew.

Download of the Day

Via Lifehacker, the Google Pack Screensaver without the Google Logo.

The Google Pack screensaver, which displays photos from your digital picture collection, is a really neat bauble. Even though Windows can do a screensaver that rotates photos in a particular folder, the Google Pack screensaver is better because you can specify which subfolders of photos to display or not (uncheck “office” or “naughty” and include “holidays” and “family”) and also lets you choose between effects (collage, wipe, cross-fade) which you can’t do in XP.

However, the Google Screensaver includes the Google logo in the top right. Amit’s version does not.

Shades of Judith Miller

Someone at The New York Times sure is excited about Wonkette (Ana Marie Cox) and her novel, Dog Days.

They’ve reviewed the book one, two, three times in a week (each time with a photo) and published her op-ed about Jack Abramoff.

Five books in five days (4)

The End of Faith by Sam Harris was NewMexiKen’s third book in my project to read five books in five days. I began book four, M. Scott Momaday’s House Made of Dawn last night, so am almost back on target.

In The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason, Sam Harris argues that religious faith is the problem in the world — a problem that endangers us all. The more fundamental the belief — Judaism, Christianity and Islam most of all — the more threatening it is.

Our situation is this: most of the people in this world believe that the Creator of the universe has written a book. We have the misfortune of having many such books on hand, each making an exclusive claim as to its infallibility. People tend to organize themselves into factions according to which of these incompatible claims they accept—rather than on the basis of language, skin color, location of birth, or any other criterion of tribalism. Each of these texts urges its readers to adopt a variety of beliefs and practices, some of which are benign, many of which are not. All are in perverse agreement on one point of fundamental importance, however: “respect” for other faiths, or for the views of unbelievers, is not an attitude that God endorses. While all faiths have been touched, here and there, by the spirit of ecumenicalism, the central tenet of every religious tradition is that all others are mere repositories of error or, at best, dangerously incomplete. Intolerance is thus intrinsic to every creed. Once a person believes—really believes—that certain ideas can lead to eternal happiness, or to its antithesis, he cannot tolerate the possibility that the people he loves might be led astray by the blandishments of unbelievers. Certainty about the next life is simply incompatible with tolerance in this one.

Observations of this sort pose an immediate problem for us, however, because criticizing a person’s faith is currently taboo in every corner of our culture. On this subject, liberals and conservatives have reached a rare consensus: religious beliefs are simply beyond the scope of rational discourse. Criticizing a person’s ideas about God and the afterlife is thought to be impolitic in a way that criticizing his ideas about physics or history is not. And so it is that when a Muslim suicide bomber obliterates himself along with a score of innocents on a Jerusalem street, the role that faith played in his actions is invariably discounted. His motives must have been political, economic, or entirely personal. Without faith, desperate people would still do terrible things. Faith itself is always, and everywhere, exonerated.

Harris is unlikely to make many converts, nonetheless he is convincing in his analysis of the danger. He is less convincing in his later chapters when he discusses alternative forms of belief and spirtuality, once we are weaned from the religious beliefs of our ancestors. Still, it’s a remarkable and worthwhile book.

“The belief that certain books were written by God (who, for reasons difficult to fathom, made Shakespeare a far better writer than himself….”

“Any culture that raises men and boys to kill unlucky girls [i.e., rape victims], rather than comfort them, is a culture that has managed to retard the growth of love. Such societies, of course, regularly fail to teach their inhabitants many other things—like how to read. Not learning how to read is not another style of literacy, and not learning to see others as ends in themselves is not another style of ethics. Its is a failure of ethics.”

Muir Woods National Monument (California)

… was proclaimed such by President Theodore Roosevelt on this date in 1908.

Until the 1800’s, many northern California coastal valleys were covered with coast redwood trees similar to those now found in Muir Woods National Monument. The forest along Redwood Creek in today’s Muir Woods was spared from logging because it was hard to get to. Noting that Redwood Creek contained one of the San Francisco Bay Area’s last uncut stands of old-growth redwood, Congressman William Kent and his wife, Elizabeth Thacher Kent, bought 295 acres here for $45,000 in 1905. To protect the redwoods the Kents donated the land to the United States Federal Government and, in 1908, President Theodore Roosevelt declared it a national monument. Roosevelt suggested naming the area after Kent, but Kent wanted it named for conservationist John Muir.

Source: Muir Woods National Monument

Small beginnings

According to The History Channel’s This Day in History, on this date in 1958:

The Toyota and Datsun (later Nissan) brand names made their first appearances in the United States at the Imported Motor Car Show in Los Angeles, California. Previously, these auto makers had sold in the U.S. only under American-brand names, as part of joint ventures with Ford and GM.

Wind Cave National Park (South Dakota)

… was established on this date in 1903.

One of the world’s longest and most complex caves and 28,295 acres of mixed-grass prairie, ponderosa pine forest, and associated wildlife are the main features of the park.

The cave is well known for its outstanding display of boxwork, an unusual cave formation composed of thin calcite fins resembling honeycombs.

The park’s mixed-grass prairie is one of the few remaining and is home to native wildlife such as bison, elk, pronghorn, mule deer, coyotes, and prairie dogs.

Source: Wind Cave National Park

It’s the birthday

… of Bart Starr. The hall-of-fame quarterback is 72.

… of Dick Enberg. The sportscaster is 71 (oh, my!).

… of Joan Baez. The singer is 65.

… of Jimmy Page. The Led Zeppelin rocker is 62.

… of Brenda Gayle Webb. Loretta Lynn’s little sister Crystal Gayle is 55.

… of Dave Matthews. He’s 39.

Richard Nixon was born on this date in 1913.

Many years ago NewMexiKen was contacted by the staff working with Richard Nixon on his memoirs, RN. I was asked to see if I could determine from among the Nixon papers in my custody the time of day he was born. As I remember it, my research was inconclusive. Someone else’s must have been helpful.

The memoirs begin:

I was born in a house my father built. My birth on the night of January 9, 1913, coincided with a record-breaking cold snap in our town of Yorba Linda, California.