Removal

On this day in 1830, President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act, a vaguely written piece of legislation later used as a pretext by state and federal authorities to dispossess the few remaining tribes in the southeastern United States — “removing” them to lands west of the Mississippi.

Read more about one of the many chapters of American imperialism at The Edge of the American West.

Gud riters

Wednesday evening I read John Updike’s short story The Full Glass and Ian Frazier’s article Hungry Minds, both in last week’s New Yorker. (Alas, the link for Frazier is just to an abstract of the article.)

Both are so magnificent that I just sat there after each shaking my head.

Best line of the day, so far

“[R]eckless initiatives like the Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep offer to subsidize gasoline for three years for people who buy its gas guzzlers are the moral equivalent of tobacco companies offering discounted cigarettes to teenagers.”

Tom Friedman

Michael Bolton would be proud

Not that Michael Bolton. The Michael Bolton that worked with Peter Gibbons and Samir Nagheenanajar.

A California man has been indicted for an inventive scheme that allegedly siphoned $50,000 from online brokerage houses E-trade and Schwab.com in six months — a few pennies at a time.

Michael Largent, of Plumas Lake, California, allegedly exploited a loophole in a common procedure both companies follow when a customer links his brokerage account to a bank account for the first time. To verify that the account number and routing information is correct, the brokerages automatically send small “micro-deposits” of between two cents to one dollar to the account, and ask the customer to verify that they’ve received it.

Largent allegedly used an automated script to open 58,000 online brokerage accounts, linking each of them to a handful of online bank accounts, and accumulating thousands of dollars in micro-deposits.

Threat Level from Wired.com

Best line of the day, so far

“Anyone can have, free, my entry in the contest: dumping the hideous, un-American, Orwellian, Teutonic-in-the-bad-sense term ‘Homeland’ and renaming both the department and the entire concept “domestic” security.”

James Fallows commenting on a contest for the best idea to improve “Homeland Security.”

When is an error not an error?

National Georgraphic correction:

“The map on page 101 misplaced Albuquerque, New Mexico, and omitted Santa Fe.”

Omitting Santa Fe. Hmm. Error? Not error?

Correction via Regret the Error.

Cody Unser drives fast

Not even paralysis can black-flag those racing Unsers.

Cody Unser, 21, a paraplegic since contracting a rare degenerative spinal-cord disease nine years ago, gets around in a car equipped with special hand controls in much the same fashion her father Al Jr., grandfather Al and great-uncle Bobby did in winning the Indianapolis 500 nine times. As in: fast.

“I always tell the officer when he pulls me over that it’s in my blood,” she told the Indianapolis Star. “The only difference is, I don’t have a lead foot. I have a lead hand.”

Sideline Chatter

The Unsers are royalty in Albuquerque.

“New Mexico is proud to honor a family which has served as such great ambassadors. In racing the name Unser is synonymous with Albuquerque and New Mexico.” — Governor Bill Richardson

May 28th

Jerry West is 70 today.

Jerry West was on the fast track to stardom from the day he touched a basketball. Throughout the NBA’s history, it would be hard to find a better pure shooter. At West Virginia University, West led the Mountaineers to the NCAA Finals and captured the tournament’s Most Outstanding Player award in 1959. In a superlative senior season, West was a consensus All-America and led West Virginia to its third consecutive conference championship. In Los Angeles, West played virtually his entire career with Hall of Famer Elgin Baylor, and five years with Wilt Chamberlain. When the game was on the line, West’s Los Angeles Laker teammates always found a way to get the ball to “Mr. Clutch.” His cool, calm, and collected personality and his leadership on the court was a coach’s dream. When he retired, West’s name was on nearly every page of the record books. He scored 25,192 points (third), averaged 27.0 ppg (fourth), made 7,160 free throws (second), dished out 6,238 assists (fifth). West was equally adept on the defensive end, named to the NBA All-Defensive First-Team four times.

Official Website of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame

Rudolph Giuliani is 64 today. This alone disqualifies May 28th from any consideration as a holiday.

Gladys Knight is 64. The Pips are various ages.

Gladys Knight and the Pips - brother Merald “Bubba” Knight and cousins Edward Patten and William Guest - are one of the most respected and longest-lived soul groups, with hits spanning four decades. Knight was born in Atlanta, Georgia, where she began singing at age four with her brother and cousins at Baptist church functions. The group first recorded for the Brunswick label in 1958 and dented the charts with “Every Beat of My Heart” (1961) and “Letter Full of Tears” (1962), both on Fury Records. After a few more singles and personnel changes, which cemented Gladys Knight and the Pips in their most enduring and best-known lineup, the group signed with Motown’s Soul label in 1966. Motown founder Berry Gordy, who saw them perform at Harlem’s Apollo Theater in 1966, made note of Knight’s “class, artistry and stage presence….She could talk to an audience and articulate what she wanted to say with just the right words.”

At Motown, Gladys Knight and the Pips quickly rose to prominence with their version of “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” (#1 R&B, #2 pop), which boasted more of an uptempo, gospel-style arrangement than Gaye’s own recording of it.

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

John Fogerty is 63 today. Fogerty was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993 with Creedence Clearwater Revival.

John Fogerty now firmly at the helm as guitarist, singer, songwriter and producer, Creedence took off with their neo-psychedelic reworking of Dale Hawkins’ rockabilly classic “Suzie Q.” From then on, the hits kept coming as the band churned out six albums of powerful, roots-oriented rock and roll between 1968 and 1970: Creedence Clearwater Revival, Bayou Country, Green River, Willie and the Poorboys, Cosmo’s Factory and Pendulum. Ten of Creedence’s singles cracked the Top Ten during the period 1968-71. Although the group was not overtly political, several of their songs - particularly “Fortunate Son” and “Who’ll Stop the Rain” - eloquently expressed the counterculture’s resistance to the Vietnam War and sympathy for those who were fighting in what now stand as anthems of those troubled times.

Oh, put me in, coach - I’m ready to play today;
Put me in, coach - I’m ready to play today;
Look at me, I can be centerfield.

Sondra Locke is 61 today. Though never married, she and Clint Eastwood were a couple from 1975-1990.

The Dionne Quintuplets were born in Corbeil, Ontario, Canada, 74 years ago today.

Annette Lillianne Marie Dionne
Cécile Marie Emilda Dionne
Emilie Marie Jeanne Dionne (died 1954)
Marie Reina Alma Dionne (died 1970)
Yvonne Edouilda Marie Dionne (died 2001)

Together, the five girls, at least two months premature, weighed about 14 pounds. They were put by an open stove to keep warm, and mothers from surrounding villages brought breast milk for them. Against all expectations, they survived their first weeks. Watch video.

According to the CBC Archives:

When the quints are still babies, the Ontario government takes the sisters from their parents, apparently to protect their fragile health, and makes the girls wards of the state. For the first nine years of their lives, they live at a hospital in their hometown that becomes a tourist mecca called “Quintland.” The Ministry of Public Welfare sets up a trust fund in their behalf with assurances that the financial well-being of the entire Dionne family would be taken care of “for all their normal needs for the rest of their lives.”

Between 1934 and 1943, about 3 million people visit Quintland. The government and nearby businesses make an estimated half-billion dollars off the tourists, much of which the Dionne family never sees. The sisters are the nation’s biggest tourist attraction — bigger than Niagara Falls.

After nine years and a bitter custody fight, the girls rejoined their family.

There is still a mystery surrounding what happened to the money the Ontario government placed in a trust fund for the quints, though it’s believed that most of the funds went to pay for the many employees of “Quintland.”

In 1998 the surviving quints were awarded $4 million by Ontario.

NewMexiKen has a vague memory of seeing the Dionne quints on display (so to speak) at the Michigan State Fair when I was a little kid. Perhaps only four were there, depending on when it was.

And the greatest athlete of the first half of the 20th century was born near Prague, Oklahoma, on this date in 1888. His Sac and Fox given name was Wa-Tho-Huk (Bright Path). We know him as Jim Thorpe.

Thorpe was named by ESPN as the 7th greatest athlete of the 20th century (after Jordan, Ruth, Ali, Brown, Gretsky and Owens). Read the biographical essay, Thorpe preceded Deion, Bo. A couple of items from the biography:

• Thorpe won both the decathlon and the pentathlon at the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm. Swedish King Gustav V told him, “Sir, you are the greatest athlete in the world.” Thorpe reputedly replied, “Thanks, king.”
• Jim Thorpe was a twin. His brother Charles died of pneumonia at age 8.

The Virginian

Considered the first serious western, The Virginian was published on this date in 1902. The novel by Owen Wister sold 300,000 copies in its first year. The University of Wyoming (the novel is set in Wyoming) has an online exhibit concerning The Virginian. According to the site:

Since its 1902 publication, The Virginian has left a lasting impact upon the American cultural landscape. In earlier years after its publication, The Virginian did much to popularize the American West. As a result, a romanticized view of the West became an integral part of the American popular imagination and cultural identity. In recent years, The Virginian has come under scrutiny. Wister’s portrayal of the West is seen by many as a myth at odds with reality.

When the San Francisco Chronicle listed the 100 best Western works of fiction in 1999, Wister’s novel was 46th.

Life is just a bowl of cherries

This story from Jill, official oldest daughter of NewMexiKen, was first posted here four years ago today.

[Three-year-old] Mack and I picked out some lovely ripe cherries at the market today. We’re going to chop them up put them in homemade ice cream.

At lunch I diced some of them and gave them to [8-month-old] Aidan.

He grabbed a couple and stuffed them in his mouth. Immediately, his eyes shot to me with an expression that perfectly conveyed two thoughts:

“My God, but I do love you, woman.”

and

“Exactly what else have you been keeping from me?”

Subtle elegance

James Fallows points out one of the finer points in Obama’s Wesleyan commencement speech.

Is it more efficient to leave your car idling?

Simple answer. No.

Today’s cars use electronic fuel injectors, which rigorously control the amount of gas delivered to the engine when you hit the ignition. As a result, virtually no fuel is wasted during startup, and only a thimbleful is burned as the car roars to life. So forget about the 30-minute axiom you were raised on—the threshold at which it makes more sense to shut off rather than to idle should be expressed in seconds, not minutes.

How many seconds, exactly? A lot of environmental organizations advocate the 10-second rule: If you’re going to be stopped for more than 10 seconds, it’s best to shut off your engine. The one exception is when you’re stopped in street traffic—it’s illegal to kill the engine in many states, due to concerns that switched-off cars are more easily rear-ended (especially if an absent-minded driver forgets to restart once the gridlock abates).

. . . The researchers concluded that restarting a six-cylinder engine—with the air conditioner switched on—uses as much gas as idling the same car for just six seconds.

Idling is similarly wasteful in frigid temperatures. Contrary to popular belief, cold-weather drivers needn’t warm up their cars for longer than 30 seconds. The best way to raise an engine’s temperature to optimal levels is to drive it almost immediately after startup . . .

Slate Magazine

Kindergartener Voted Out

A Port St. Lucie, Fla., mother is outraged and considering legal action after her son’s kindergarten teacher led his classmates to vote him out of class.

Melissa Barton says Morningside Elementary teacher Wendy Portillo had her son’s classmates say what they didn’t like about 5-year-old Alex. She says the teacher then had the students vote, and voted Alex, who is being evaluated for Asperger’s syndrome — an autism spectrum disorder — out of the class by a 14-2 margin.

CBS News

Dick Martin

Comedian Dick Martin died Saturday at age 86. Martin’s biggest claim to fame by far was the TV show Laugh-In that ran 1968-1973. Martin is on the right with partner Dan Rowan.

Is she still Goldie Hawn, or do we just call her Kate Hudson’s mother now?

Passing in the night

Do you get the feeling that gas prices and housing prices are going to pass each other going in opposite directions sometime soon?

Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller said its national home price index fell 14.1 percent in the first quarter compared with a year earlier, the lowest since its inception in 1988. The quarterly index covers all nine U.S. Census divisions.

Prices nationwide are at levels not seen since the third quarter of 2004 . . .

Las Vegas had the worst performance in March, falling 25.9 percent from a year earlier, followed by Miami and Phoenix.

Yahoo! News

Meanwhile AAA says that the nationwide average price for regular is $3.937, up 9.4% (33.8¢) in a month. Up a dime a gallon in five days! I want my 18.4¢ a gallon federal tax rebate.

How come Clinton and McCain quit talking about that rebate?

Best list of the day, so far

Cheers and Jeers thinks we should name this year’s hurricanes after the Bushies. You know —

Ashcroft
Brownie
Condi
Dick
Enron
Feith
Gonzales

etc. He’s got all 26.

Best line of the day, so far

“But man is a part of nature, and his war against nature is inevitably a war against himself.”

Rachel Carson, born on May 27, 1907

Another reason to make May 27th into a holiday

Hubert Humphrey was born in Wallace, South Dakota, on this date in 1911. Humphrey was first elected mayor of Minneapolis in 1945 and U.S. Senator in 1948. Senator Humphrey introduced his first bill in 1949; it became law in 1965 and we know it as Medicare.

Humphrey became Vice President with the election of President Lyndon Johnson in 1964. After Johnson withdrew from the 1968 campaign, and after Robert Kennedy was killed, Humphrey was nominated as the Democratic candidate for President. He lost to Richard Nixon in one of the closest elections in history. Some commented that with the vote trending as it did, had the election been one or two days later Humphrey would have won.

But then we wouldn’t have had Watergate and Nixon to kick around.

May 27th ought to be a holiday

Best-selling mystery author Tony Hillerman was born on this date in 1925.  The Shape Shifter is the 18th book in the series centered on Navajo Tribal policemen Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee.  Hillerman had an interesting website with excerpts from all the books, but it has disappeared.  There he told us that:

Leaphorn emerged from a young Hutchinson County, Texas, sheriff who I met and came to admire in 1948 when I was a very green ‘crime and violence” reporter for a paper in the high plains of the Panhandle. He was smart, he was honest, he was wise and humane in his use of police powers–my idealistic young idea of what every cop should be but sometimes isn’t. 
. . . 

Jim Chee emerged several books later. I like to claim he was born from an artistic need for a younger, less sophisticated fellow to make the plot of PEOPLE OF DARKNESS make sense–and that is mostly true. Chee is a mixture of a couple of hundred of those idealistic, romantic, reckless youngsters I had been lecturing to at the University of New Mexico, with their yearnings for Miniver Cheever’s “Days of Old” modified into his wish to keep the Navajo Value System healthy in universe of consumerism.

Mystery writer Samuel Dashiell Hammett was born on this date in 1894.  Hammett departed from the intellectualized mysteries of earlier detective novels (Sherlock Holmes for example) and transformed the genre with his less-than-glamorous realism.  He is considered one of the most influential writers of the 20th century.  

Hammett actually was a detective with Pinkerton for a few years just before World War I. Contracting TB during military service, he realized his health would keep him from resuming as a detective.  He turned to writing.  He published his first story in 1922, and then about 80 more, many in the popular pulp crime magazine Black Mask. Hammett’s first novel was Red Harvest, published in 1929.  His most famous character, Sam Spade, made his appearance in Hammett’s third novel, The Maltese Falcon (1930). (It was the third—and only successful—attempt to turn that novel into a film when Humphrey Bogart played the role in 1941.) The Thin Man (1934) was the last of Hammett’s novels. 

By the early-thirties, Hammett was established and famous.  He began a relationship with playwright Lillian Hellman that lasted for 30 years despite his drinking and womanizing.  Though both eventually divorced their spouses, they never married. Hammett served in the Army in World War II, enlisting as a private at age 48.  His involvement in left-wing politics and unwillingness to testify about it before Congress however, and the continued drinking, diminished his stature.  Hammett died in 1961.

John Cheever was born on this date in 1912.

He wrote for more than 50 years and published more than 200 short stories. He’s known for writing about the world of American suburbia. Even though he was one of the most popular short-story writers of the 20th century, he once said that he only earned “enough money to feed the family and buy a new suit every other year.”

In 1935 he was published in The New Yorker for the first time, and he would continue to write for the magazine for the rest of his life. His stories were collected in books including The Way Some People Live (1943) and The Enormous Radio and Other Stories (1953). The Stories of John Cheever, published in 1978, won the Pulitzer Prize and became one of the few collections of short stories ever to make the New York Times best-seller list.

The Writer’s Almanac

Cheever died in 1982.

The Golden Gate Bridge

. . . opened on this date in 1937. Vehicular traffic began the next day. Jumping off began three months later.

Read about the world’s leading location for suicide from a 2003 article in The New Yorker.

On the bridge, Baldwin counted to ten and stayed frozen. He counted to ten again, then vaulted over. “I still see my hands coming off the railing,” he said. As he crossed the chord in flight, Baldwin recalls, “I instantly realized that everything in my life that I’d thought was unfixable was totally fixable—except for having just jumped.”

Ken Baldwin, one of 26 known survivors

The Golden Gate Bridge had the longest suspension span in the world (4,200 feet) until 1964. It’s now ninth.

Best. Image. Ever.

“That is exactly what you think it is: Phoenix descending to the Martian surface underneath its parachute. This incredible shot was taken by the HiRISE camera on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. You can easily see the ‘chute, the lander (still in its shell) and even the tether lines!”

Go see the Best. Image. Ever.

It’s the idea that such an image is possible, not the picture itself that is so amazing.

May 26th

James Arness — Marshall Dillon — is 85.

Brent Musburger is 69. ABC must have some sort of mandatory retirement age.

Levon Helm of The Band is 68.

The Band, more than any other group, put rock and roll back in touch with its roots. With their ageless songs and solid grasp of musical idioms, the Band reached across the decades, making connections for a generation that was, as an era of violent cultural schisms wound down, in desperate search of them. They projected a sense of community in the turbulent late Sixties and early Seventies - a time when the fabric of community in the United States was fraying. Guitarist Robbie Robertson drew from history in his evocative, cinematic story-songs, and the vocal triumvirate of bassist Rick Danko, drummer Levon Helm and keyboardist Richard Manuel joined in rustic harmony and traded lines in rich, conversational exchanges. Multi-instrumentalist Garth Hudson provided musical coloration in period styles that evoked everything from rural carnivals of the early 20th century to rock and roll revues of the Fifties.

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

Stevie Nicks is 60 today. A moment of silence please.

Finally, the platinum edition of Fleetwood Mac came together in 1975 with the recruitment of Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks. The San Francisco duo had previously cut an album together as Buckingham-Nicks. Drummer Fleetwood heard a tape of theirs at a studio he was auditioning, and the pair were drafted into the group without so much as a formal audition. This lineup proved far and away to be Fleetwood Mac’s most durable and successful. In addition to the most solid rhythm section in rock, this classic lineup contained strong vocalists and songwriters in Buckingham, Nicks and Christine McVie. Male and female points of view were offered with unusual candor on the watershed albums Fleetwood Mac (1975) and Rumours (1977).

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

Sally K. Ride is 57. Ride Sally Ride.

Lenny Kravitz is 44.

Shakespeare is 38. That’s actor Joseph Fiennes.

New Mexico Road Trip

If you’re looking for anyone at home in Texas this weekend, forget it. They’re all in Ruidoso, Cloudcroft, or at the Inn of the Mountain Gods in the Sierra Blanca Mountains of New Mexico.

Every little New Mexico town has a funky but authentic bar and grill with lots of character — an old, often historic bar; somewhat rickety tables and chairs; pool tables; lots of taxidermy; some bikers as customers; etc. There’s the Owl Bar and Cafe in San Antonio, The Outpost in Carrizozo, Los Ojos in Jemez Springs, the Mine Shaft in Madrid, and so on. You think this could actually be some sort of chain-franchise deal?

White Sands National Monument is one of the best places in the world. Why? The beautiful white gypsum sand dunes? The amazing vegetation that seemingly survives without water and soil? The spacious skies and distant mountain views? The stunning sunsets? No. It’s because you can go sledding and not get cold and wet. Scores of children of all ages were riding down the slopes — in 80-degree weather.

White Sands is one of New Mexico’s greatest attractions. If you’ve never been, go soon — though best when the weather is moderate. I recommend arriving before sunset for the best light, then returning the next morning before the sun is too high. Be sure to take a hike — the mile long Dune Life Nature Trail was excellent. (Click image for larger version. That’s not snow you see plowed along the edge of the road — it’s sand.)

Visiting Smokey Bear’s gravesite in Capitan is a little freaky. Why did I feel I had to be so quiet and respectful — he was just a bear. (Click image for larger version.)

And, seemingly some things never change. The not-to-be-missed Lincoln State Monument in — duh — Lincoln, New Mexico, tells the story of the famed Lincoln County War. President Hayes referred to Lincoln’s main street (now Highway 380) as “the most dangerous street in America.” I had never given this part of New Mexico history much thought, though I had the outline in mind — two factions, Billy the Kid, and so on. I just guessed the fighting erupted over land or sheep vs. cattle like it did in so many places. Nope. It was over government contracts.  

The short film at the Lincoln SM visitor center gives short shrift to the Mexican settlers who founded the community.  Worse, the film is downright disrespectful to the American Indians in the area, past and present.  The film needs to be redone.

The Flag Today

“Protocol for flying the American flag on Memorial Day includes raising it quickly to the top of the pole at sunrise, immediately lowering it to half-staff until noon, and displaying it at full staff from noon until sunset.”

Library of Congress

Decoration Day

In 1868, Commander in Chief John A. Logan of the Grand Army of the Republic issued General Order Number 11 designating May 30 as a memorial day “for the purpose of strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country during the late rebellion, and whose bodies now lie in almost every city, village, and hamlet churchyard in the land.”

The first national celebration of the holiday took place May 30, 1868 at Arlington National Cemetery, where both Confederate and Union soldiers were buried. Originally known as Decoration Day, at the turn of the century it was designated as Memorial Day. In many American towns, the day is celebrated with a parade. …

In 1971, federal law changed the observance of the holiday to the last Monday in May and extended it to honor all soldiers who died in American wars. A few states continue to celebrate Memorial Day on May 30.

Library of Congress

From each end of the Mississippi River

Today, as I’ve noted, Bob Dylan is 67. Thinking about him and listening to four decades of his music — love those iTunes smart playlists — as I was walking around doing other stuff, I concluded Dylan is arguably one of the two or three most significant Americans of the past 100 years — in music I mean.

Who else?

Louis Armstrong certainly. Chuck Berry most likely.

Keep in mind that I am talking significant and that implies influence. These are not necessarily the most important “entertainers” of the past 100 years — Sinatra and Elvis make that list. What I am asking is who had the most significant influence on subsequent music?

I say Armstrong and Dylan.

In McCain’s Court

The question, as always with McCain these days, is whether he means it. Might he really be a “maverick” when it comes to the Supreme Court? The answer, almost certainly, is no. The Senator has long touted his opposition to Roe, and has voted for every one of Bush’s judicial appointments; the rhetoric of his speech shows that he is getting his advice on the Court from the most extreme elements of the conservative movement. With the general election in mind, McCain had to express himself with such elaborate circumlocution because he knows that the constituency for such far-reaching change in our constellation of rights is small, and may be shrinking. In 2004, to stoke turnout among conservatives, Karl Rove engineered the addition of anti-gay-marriage voter initiatives to the ballots in Ohio and other states; last week, though, when the California Supreme Court voted to allow gay marriage in that state, only hard-core activists were able to muster much outrage. When it comes to the Constitution, McCain is on the wrong side of the voters, and of history; thus, his obfuscations.

Jeffrey Toobin

Follow the link to read more of Toobin’s analysis.

Best line of the day, so far

“San Antonio flies back home for Game 3 after three quarters, enabling Los Angeles to finish with 30-point victory.”

Deadspin

No, May 24th REALLY ought to be a holiday

Bob Dylan’s influence on popular music is incalculable. As a songwriter, he pioneered several different schools of pop songwriting, from confessional singer/songwriter to winding, hallucinatory, stream-of-conscious narratives. As a vocalist, he broke down the notions that in order to perform, a singer had to have a conventionally good voice, thereby redefining the role of vocalist in popular music. As a musician, he sparked several genres of pop music, including electrified folk-rock and country-rock. And that just touches on the tip of his achievements. Dylan’s force was evident during his height of popularity in the ’60s — the Beatles’ shift toward introspective songwriting in the mid-’60s never would have happened without him — but his influence echoed throughout several subsequent generations. Many of his songs became popular standards, and his best albums were undisputed classics of the rock & roll canon. Dylan’s influence throughout folk music was equally powerful, and he marks a pivotal turning point in its 20th century evolution, signifying when the genre moved away from traditional songs and toward personal songwriting. Even when his sales declined in the ’80s and ’90s, Dylan’s presence was calculable.

The beginning of Stephen Thomas Erlewine’s profile at allmusic.

Bob Dylan - Thunder On The Mountain

May 24th ought to be a national holiday (and it is in Canada)

Robert Allen Zimmerman was born in Duluth, Minnesota, on May 24th 67 years ago. That’s Bob Dylan, of course.

From the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame:

Bob Dylan is the pre-eminent poet/lyricist and songwriter of his time. He re-energized the folk-music genre, brought a new lyrical depth to rock and roll when he went electric, and bridged the worlds of rock and country by recording in Nashville. As much as he’s played the role of renegade throughout his career, Dylan has also kept the rock and roll community mindful of its roots by returning often to them. With his songs, Dylan has provided a running commentary on a restless age. His biting, imagistic and often cryptic lyrics served to capture and define the mood of a generation. For this, he’s been elevated to the role of spokesmen - and yet the elusive and reclusive Dylan won’t even admit to being a poet. “I don’t call myself a poet because I don’t like the word,” he has said.

Here’s a video of Tangled Up In Blue.

Tommy Chong, he’s Chong of Cheech and Chong, is 70.

Walter “Radar” O’Reilly, that is Gary Burghoff, is 68.

Patti LaBelle is 64 today.

Priscilla Presley is 63.

Alfred Molina is 55.

Rosanne Cash is 53. She was born a month before her father released his first record, “Cry, Cry, Cry.”

Kristin Scott Thomas is 48.

Michael Chabon is 45 today.

After Wonder Boys, Chabon stumbled on a box of comic books he’d kept since childhood. He hadn’t looked at them in 15 years. He said, “When I opened it up and that smell came pouring out, that old paper smell, I was struck by a rush of memories, a sense of my childhood self that seemed to be contained in there.” It gave him the idea to write a novel about the golden days of the comic book trade called The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. It came out in 2000, and won a Pulitzer Prize. It was the story of a Jewish kid who flees the Nazis just before World War II — has to leave his family behind and come to America. Along with his cousin, he creates a comic book super hero called “The Escapist.”

The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor

John C. Reilly is 43. “Shake ‘n Bake.”

Victoria was born on May 24, 1819. She was the daughter of Edward, Duke of Kent, the fourth son of George III. None of her uncles had legitimate children who survived, so when her uncle William IV died in 1837, she became queen at age 18. Her reign lasted until 1901; the longest of any British monarch. She had nine children and is Elizabeth II’s great great grandmother.

Victoria Day has been celebrated in Canada since 1845. The holiday is now the Monday before May 24th, unless Monday is May 24th.

The first passenger railroad in the U.S. began service between Baltimore and Ellicott’s Mills, Maryland, on May 24th in 1830. That’s 13 miles.

The first telegraph message was transmitted by Samuel F. B. Morse on May 24th in 1844. Sent from Washington to Baltimore it said, “What hath God wrought!”

The Brooklyn Bridge opened on May 24th in 1883. Click here for every fact you ever needed to know about this landmark.

The first Major League Baseball night game was played in Cincinnati on May 24, 1935. The Reds beat the Phillies 2-1. The Reds played seven night games that year (one against each National League opponent).