NewMexiKen attended a graduation party Friday evening for the daughter of a dear friend. The daughter recently graduated from prep school and will be attending the University of New Mexico.
Or, as we in Albuquerque call it — UNM.
University Near Mom.
Try The Weekly Quiz. You should be able to beat NewMexiKen’s score of only five correct out of ten.
The Supreme Court yesterday substantially diminished Americans’ right to privacy in their own homes. The rule that police officers must “knock and announce” themselves before entering a private home is a venerable one, and a well-established part of Fourth Amendment law. But President Bush’s two recent Supreme Court appointments have now provided the votes for a 5-4 decision eviscerating this rule.
This decision should offend anyone, liberal or conservative, who worries about the privacy rights of ordinary Americans.
…If Justice Sandra Day O’Connor had stayed on the court, this case might well have come out the other way. For those who worry that Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito will take the court in a radically conservative direction, it is sobering how easily the majority tossed aside a principle that traces back to 13th-century Britain, and a legal doctrine that dates to 1914, to let the government invade people’s homes.
NewMexiKen believes it is the erosion of our civil liberties that will mark the Roberts Court. And so it begins.
“If there’s a fire, get out of house.”
2-year-old Aidan on the phone without prompting. He also advised not to go back in for any toys.
“She seems convinced that extremism in the defense of book sales is no vice.”
Alessandra Stanley regarding Ann Coulter in a discussion of Leno and Letterman.
“It’s graduation time around New York City. We have a lot of honor students here. Yes your honor, no your honor, not guilty your honor.”
David Letterman
Bill Gates Strikes a Pose for Teen Beat Photospread (ca. 1984).
Or take a look at this mug shot from NewMexiKen’s very own Albuquerque Police Department. Surely you will recognize Albuquerque’s most famous short-term resident. The arrest in 1977 was related to a traffic violation.
From the Santa Fe New Mexican, the original Microsoft team in Albuquerque (1978). Story here.
And here is the official current Microsoft photo and bio.
William and Mary yesterday filed an appeal with the NCAA, which last month ruled that the nickname “Tribe” coupled with a logo including feathers could be viewed by Native Americans as offensive.
“Present NCAA determinations of mascot policy – what is allowed and what is forbidden – are neither comprehensible nor capable of being sensibly defended,” Gene R. Nichol, W&M’s president, wrote in a cover letter addressed to Myles Brand, the NCAA president.
In the appeal, W&M points out that the NCAA has made exceptions to its policy, allowing Florida State to remain the “Seminoles,” Utah to remain the “Utes,” and other schools to keep Native-American nicknames or imagery because those schools were granted permission to do so by specific tribes.
“To put it bluntly, the NCAA is now a complicit partner in the practices it seeks to condemn,” states a W&M-produced summary of the 21-page appeal. The appeal contends that W&M’s “nickname and logo are a natural expression of the College’s unique history and location.”
W&M established a school to educate Native Americans in 1697. That school operated for seven decades.
…“Few will understand why the College – where athletes regularly don Phi Beta Kappa keys at commencement, gain admission to competitive graduate and professional programs in unusually high numbers, and avoid the corrupting misconduct that too often mars university sports programs elsewhere – has made it to the top of the NCAA’s regulatory agenda,” Nichol wrote to Brand, the NCAA president.
“It would make more sense to study and export William & Mary’s approach to athletics than to penalize it.”
Jill and Emily, official daughters of NewMexiKen, are alumnae of The College of William and Mary. Jill was employed in the athletic department for several years.
John Fleck makes an excellent point about the professionalism of firefighters contrasted with that of TV journalists:
I have a great frustration with traditional television news coverage of wildfires, because it generally leaves the impression of a chaotic, uncontrolled and unpredictable situation. Sometimes it is that way. But more often, the fire crews have a pretty clear idea of terrain, fuel load and weather. They know where the fire is now, and where it’s likely to go in the next 24 hours. They have a strategy for fighting the fire, which generally involves cutting a line behind it, flanking it with lines, and picking a safe distance in front of it to cut a line. It’s hard work, but most of the time it’s a fairly orderly process. The importance is to distinguish that orderly process from the times that the fire gets unruly rather than just treating the whole event as unruly chaos.
Abraham Lincoln delivered his House Divided Speech at Springfield, Illinois, on this date in 1858.
“A house divided against itself cannot stand.”
I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.
I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided.
It will become all one thing or all the other.
Either the opponents of slavery, will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the states, old as well as new — North as well as South.
The speech was made at the Illinois Republican State convention that had nominated Lincoln for U.S. Senator. It was a precursor to the Lincoln-Douglas debates in the campaign that followed, which Lincoln lost. It seems to be about as succinct a statement of the core issue of the Civil War as one could find.
Ford Motor Company entered the business world on June 16, 1903, when Henry Ford and 11 business associates signed the company’s articles of incorporation. With $28,000 in cash, the pioneering industrialists gave birth to what was to become one of the world’s largest corporations. …
The earliest record of a shipment is July 20, 1903, approximately one month after incorporation, to a Detroit physician. With the company’s first sale came hope—a young Ford Motor Company had taken its first steps.
Several sources give June 16, 1829, as Geronimo’s date of birth. It’s not clear to NewMexiKen that the Apaches were using the Gregorian calendar at that time. And, indeed, one of those sources, The New York Times, stated in its obituary of Geronimo in February 1909 that he was nearly 90 — not 79 as this birth date would indicate. But, he had to be born some time. So why not June 16?
In her excellent 1976 biography of Geronimo, Angie Debo concludes:
Geronimo was born in the early 1820’s near the upper Gila in the mountains crossed by the present state boundary [Arizona-New Mexico], probably on the Arizona side near the present Clifton. …
He was given the name Goyahkla, with the generally accepted meaning “One Who Yawns,’ why or under what circumstances is not known.
As an adult in battle he was called Geronimo by Mexican soldiers, perhaps because they could not pronounce Goyahkla, or perhaps to invoke Saint Jerome (Geronimo is Spanish for Jerome). The name was adopted for him by his own people.
In its obituary of Geronimo, The Times provided this quote:
Gen. Miles, in his memoirs, describes his first impression of Geronimo when he was brought into camp by Lawton, thus: “He was one of the brightest, most resolute, determined-looking men that I have ever encountered. He had the clearest, sharpest dark eye I think I have ever seen, unless it was that of Gen. Sherman.”
Some have wondered what motivated Geronimo to fight so fiercely. Perhaps this from his autobiography (written with S.M. Barrett in 1905) explains a little:
In the summer of 1858, being at peace with the Mexican towns as well as with all the neighboring Indian tribes, we went south into Old Mexico to trade. Our whole tribe (Bedonkohe Apaches) went through Sonora toward Casa Grande, our destination, but just before reaching that place we stopped at another Mexican town called by the Indians Kas-ki-yeh. Here we stayed for several days, camping outside the city. Every day we would go into town to trade, leaving our camp under the protection of a small guard so that our arms, supplies, and women and children would not be disturbed during our absence.
Late one afternoon when returning from town we were met by a few women and children who told us that Mexican troops from some other town had attacked our camp, killed all the warriors of the guard, captured all our ponies, secured our arms, destroyed our supplies, and killed many of our women and children. Quickly we separated, concealing ourselves as best we could until nightfall, when we assembled at our appointed place of rendezvous–a thicket by the river. Silently we stole in one by one: sentinels were placed, and, when all were counted, I found that my aged mother, my young wife, and my three small children were among the slain. There were no lights in camp, so without being noticed I silently turned away and stood by the river. How long I stood there I do not know, but when I saw the warriors arranging for a council I took my place.
… of novelist Joyce Carol Oates. She’s 68.
She is one of the most prolific writers of her generation, having published almost one hundred books in forty years, including novels, short stories, plays, poetry and essays. She’s the author of many novels, including Them (1969), Bellefleur (1980), and We Were the Mulvaneys (1996).
…When asked how she can write so much, Oates says she just works steadily, about eight or ten hours a day. She spends a lot of her time thinking about her work while she’s running, walking, or bicycling. She said, “At such times the imagination floats free, and one can contemplate one’s work with an almost magical detachment.”
… of Lamont Dozier, 65 today. Who is Lamont Dozier you say? Along with Eddie and Brian Holland, Dozier wrote a few songs you may know, among them:
Baby I Need Your Loving
Baby Love
Bernadette
Come See About Me
Nowhere To Run
I Hear a Symphony
My World Is Empty Without You
Reach Out, I’ll Be There
How Sweet It Is To Be Loved By You
(Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch) I Can’t Help Myself
Stop! In The Name Of Love
This Old Heart Of Mine
It’s The Same Old Song
Jimmy Mack
… of Roberto Duran. “No mas” is 55. (In a 1980 fight with Sugar Ray Leonard, with 16 seconds remaining in the 8th round, Duran had enough. He told the referee, “No mas, no mas.”)
… of Phil Mickelson. Lefty is 36 today.
And, it was on this date in 1904 that Leopold Bloom took his epic journey through Dublin in James Joyce’s Ulysses. Happy Bloomsday.
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