No Country for Old Men

NewMexiKen read and enjoyed Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men this week. It was good, and like all of McCarthy’s work, well-worth reading.

It was, however, just as enigmatic as the movie (which follows the book rather faithfully).

Little-Known Stories of American History

From a review of Tony Horwitz’s newest book, A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World. Quoting the author:

In our version of America, we don’t go back nearly far enough. It’s the winners who make history, and that’s why we start with the Pilgrims: with the Anglo-American and New England version of the story. Culturally, we need to expand the story to include the Spanish in particular, but also the French and the Portuguese. Not only are we not an Anglo nation now, but we never really were. Early America, if you think about it, was a lot like America today — very diverse — and even the parts of the story we think we know, we don’t know at all.

Horwitz is a NewMexiKen favorite, having enjoyed his Confederates in the Attic and Blue Latitudes and this terrific essay, which no doubt came from the research for A Voyage Long and Strange.

NewMexiKen spent part of this afternoon in San Felipe Pueblo (May 1st is the feast of St. Philip), so named by the Spanish in 1591, and the other part of the afternoon in Santa Fe, founded in 1610. The story of large parts of early America have never been taught.

I ordered the book.

What’s the State of Your Air?

“Two of every five people—42 percent—in the U.S. live in counties that have unhealthful levels of either ozone or particle pollution. Almost 125 million Americans live in 216 counties where they are exposed to unhealthful levels of air pollution in the form of either ozone or short-term or year-round levels of particles.”

The American Lung Association grades your air quality.

Albuquerque does well — but not today, when there is enough dust in the air to endanger Lawrence of Arabia.

Sportswomanship

“Western Oregon senior Sara Tucholsky had never hit a home run in her career. Central Washington senior Mallory Holtman was already her school’s career leader in them. But when a twist of fate and a torn knee ligament brought them face to face with each other and face to face with the end of their playing days, they combined on a home run trot that celebrated the collective human spirit far more than individual athletic achievement.”

A good story from Graham Hays at ESPN. Read it; get your heart warmed.

Best line of the day, so far

“You really can’t run a middle-class democracy with a multimillionaire press corps.”

Daily Howler

Best line of the day, so far

“And on ABC News tonight, they said gas prices are now flirting with $4 a gallon. Flirting? Huh? Aren’t we a little beyond flirting? Aren’t we getting screwed at this point?”

Jay Leno

May 1st ought to be a national holiday

Judy Collins is 69. Rita Coolidge is 63. Dann Florek is 57. Tim McGraw is 41.

Kate Smith was born 101 years ago today.

Everything about Kate Smith was outsized, including Miss Smith herself. She recorded almost 3,000 songs -more than any other popular performer. She introduced more songs than any other performer – over a thousand, of which 600 or so made the hit parade.

She made more than 15,000 radio broadcasts and, over the years, received more than 25 million fan letters. At the height of her career, during World War II, she repeatedly was named one of the three or four most popular women in America. No single show-business figure even approached her as a seller of War Bonds during World War II. In one 18-hour stint on the CBS radio network, Miss Smith sold $107 million worth of War Bonds, which were issued by the United States Government to finance the war effort. Her total for a series of marathon broadcasts was over $600 million.
…

But her identification with patriotism and patriotic themes dates from the night of Nov. 11, 1938, when, on her regular radio program, she introduced a new song written expressly for her by Irving Berlin – ”God Bless America.”

In a short time, the song supplanted ”The Star-Spangled Banner” as the nation’s most popular patriotic song. There were attempts – all unsuccessful – to adopt it formally as the national anthem.

For a time, Kate Smith had exclusive rights to perform ”God Bless America” in public. She relinquished that right when it became apparent the song had achieved a significance beyond that of just another new pop tune.

Mr. Berlin and Miss Smith waived all royalties from performances of ”God Bless America.” The royalties continue to be turned over to the Boy and Girl Scouts of America.

The New York Times (1986)

Calamity Jane

According to her very brief autobiography, Martha Jane Canary was born in Princeton, Missouri, on this date in 1852. That may or may not be any more truthful than the rest of that short work. A decent brief biography is found at the Adams Museum & House web site.

Calamity Jane went downtown and became a dance hall celebrity, frequenting E.A. Swearengen’s Gem Theater. She worked as a prostitute and dance hall girl in Deadwood and briefly managed a house of her own. Despite the fact that she was a coarse woman, adept at profanity, and drunk a great deal of the time, Calamity Jane was also known for her kindness.

What’s unbelievable is to have watched the wonderful portrayal of Jane by Robin Weigert on Deadwood, and then think that Calamity Jane was played by Doris Day in the movie Calamity Jane (1953) and Jane Alexander in the made-for-TV movie Calamity Jane (1984).

‘Pray for the dead, and fight like hell for the living.’

Mary Harris Jones was born on this date in 1830 (or, more likely, 1837). She is better known to us as Mother Jones. The magazine named after her has a nice biographical essay that begins:

The moniker “Mother” Jones was no mere rhetorical device. At the core of her beliefs was the idea that justice for working people depended on strong families, and strong families required decent working conditions. In 1903, after she was already nationally known from bitter mine wars in Pennsylvania and West Virginia, she organized her famous “march of the mill children” from Philadelphia to President Theodore Roosevelt’s summer home on Long Island. Every day, she and a few dozen children — boys and girls, some 12 and 14 years old, some crippled by the machinery of the textile mills — walked to a new town, and at night they staged rallies with music, skits, and speeches, drawing thousands of citizens. Federal laws against child labor would not come for decades, but for two months that summer, Mother Jones, with her street theater and speeches, made the issue front-page news.

The rock of Mother Jones’ faith was her conviction that working Americans acting together must free themselves from poverty and powerlessness. She believed in the need for citizens of a democracy to participate in public affairs.

NewMexiKen has known about Mother Jones since the eponymous magazine first came out in 1976. What amazes me is that I had no knowledge of her before that, despite majoring in American history, and even though “For a quarter of a century, she roamed America, the Johnny Appleseed of activists.”

The essay is well worth reading.

Five Years Ago Today

U.S. combat deaths before “Mission Accomplished” — 139
U.S. combat deaths after “Mission Accomplished” — 4,388