Enjoying the sunset

A little anthropomorphism from Garret — or is he right?

I’ll go out to water between 7 and 8 o’clock, and all the trees are populated with birds.  Not flitting about, as you might imagine, calling to each other and busily making baby birds.  No, they’re sitting perched on the tops of the highest trees.  Sitting still.  Every one of them facing west, watching the sunset.  I only see them doing this on days when there’s a middling to spectacular sunset.  They never sit there for the cloudy, dull ones.  Nor the completely clear ones. 

Every so often, they’re accompanied by a rabbit or three.  Facing the same direction.  Never chewing grass or leaves.  Just sitting, watching.

Now That’s Rich

Paul Krugman’s Friday column talks about levels of rich and middle class — a topic we’ve been playing with around here for a couple of days. Krugman includes this:

The trouble with Mr. Warren’s question was that it seemed to imply that everyone except the poor belongs to one of these two categories: either you’re clearly rich, or you’re an ordinary member of the middle class. And that’s just wrong.

In his entertaining book “Richistan,” Robert Frank of The Wall Street Journal declares that the rich aren’t just different from you and me, they live in a different, parallel country. But that country is divided into levels, and only the inhabitants of upper Richistan live like aristocrats; the inhabitants of middle Richistan lead ample but not gilded lives; and lower Richistanis live in McMansions, drive around in S.U.V.’s, and are likely to think of themselves as “affluent” rather than rich.

Even these arguably not-rich, however, live in a different financial universe from that inhabited by ordinary members of the middle class: they have lots of disposable income after paying for the essentials, and they don’t lose sleep over expenses, like insurance co-pays and tuition bills, that can seem daunting to many working American families.

Indeed. Our society is much too complex to be divided into poor, middle and rich; eight or nine tiers are probably the minimum to have any meaning.

Krugman’s whole column deserves a read.

These kids will make great employees someday

Dallas public school students who flunk tests, blow off homework and miss assignment deadlines can make up the work without penalty, under new rules that have angered many teachers.
. . .

For example, the new rules require teachers to accept late work and prevent them from penalizing students for missed deadlines. Homework grades that would drag down a student’s overall average will be thrown out.

Dallas Morning News

Thanks to Bob for the link.

Who’s rich?

The discussion continues.

The Olympic Games

Precisely.

Most people will stay home and watch the events on TV, having no other option, but be warned: what NBC chooses to broadcast is not the Olympic Games. They offer selected clips of selected American athletes, largely in major sports, sometimes hours after the event, whereas, if the bruised Olympic ideal still means anything, it means loosing yourself, for a couple of weeks, from the bonds of your immediate loyalties and tastes. It means watching live sports you didn’t know you were interested in, played by countries you’ve never been to, at three o’clock in the morning—not just watching them, either, but getting into them, deluding yourself that you grasp the rules, offering the fruits of your instant expertise to anyone who will listen (“I think you’ll find the second waza-ari counts as ippon”), and, most bewildering of all, losing your heart.

Anthony Lane from Beijing. It’s a good article — and even if you disagree with the above, which is almost an aside, you may well appreciate Lane’s review of the first week.

Deflection

NewMexiKen still thinks the housing flap is irrelevant, but I must say that McCain spokesman Brian Rogers takes the cake for non sequitur responses: “This is a guy who lived in one house for five and a half years — in prison.”

McCain’s camp is fast approaching its own form of Rudy Tourette Syndrome, replacing Rudy’s “noun, verb, 9-11″ with “noun, verb, POW.”

Who cares?

The Obama forces are all atwitter today because McCain doesn’t know how many houses he and Cindy own. (Seven seems to be a conservative estimate; Josh Marshall says 10.)

Hello, the McCains are worth more than $100 million dollars. Big deal, they own seven houses. How could it possibly matter?

What matters is that McCain is wrong on the issues — the wars, the economy, drilling as a solution, abortion, social security, taxes. Beat him there.

Top Ten Visited National Parks

These numbers from 2006 courtesy of National Parks Conservation Association. Of the 391 NPS units, just 58 are designated National Parks.

Source: National Park Service

NewMexiKen has never been to numbers 1 and 8.

The Pueblo Revolt

On this date in 1680, the surviving Spanish settlers under siege decided to abandon Santa Fe and began the trek to Chihuahua. The Spanish did not return to New Mexico for 12 years.

Colonists from Mexico first settled in New Mexico, north of present-day Santa Fe, in 1598. By the 1620s there were 2,000 colonists taking land and forcing labor from the Puebloans, occasionally executing dozens of Indians for the murder of one settler. In the 1660s a drought further stressed conditions for all, especially as Apaches and others raided the Pueblos. Many Puebloans began to feel that deserting their own religion to accept Christianity had brought on these disasters. There were occasional uprisings, but nothing sustainable until Popé, a San Juan medicine man, began unifying resistance among the various independent Pueblos in 1675.

On August 10, 1680, the Indians launched a unified all-out attack on Spanish settlers. Colonists were killed, churches burned, horses and cattle seized. Priests were singled out and killed in all the Pueblos, including Acoma, Zuni and Hopi (in modern Arizona). About 1,000 survivors escaped to Santa Fe and the town was put under siege on August 12. By the 16th the Indians occupied all of the town except the plaza and its surrounding buildings. According to reports, as they burnt the town the Indians sang Latin liturgy to taunt the Spanish.

Three-hundred-and-twenty-six years ago today the settlers were allowed to withdraw from Santa Fe. When they reached El Paseo del Norte in October, there were 1,946 from of a population that had been about 2,500. About 400 had been killed, another 150 escaped to Mexico independently.

The Puebloans removed all signs of the Spanish — the churches, the religion itself, the crops, even the animals (the horses let loose on the plains, eventually transforming the culture of the Plains Indians). One vestige remained: one man rule. Popé declared himself that man and moved to the Palace in Santa Fe.

Spanish attempts at reconquest failed until 1692.

August 21st in History and Birth

1680: The Pueblo Revolt

On this date in 1831 “… a 30-year-old black slave named Nat Turner, supported by about 60 followers armed with guns, clubs, axes and swords, launched the bloodiest slave revolt in American history.” Joshua Zeitz has more on the revolt, its context, aftermath and legacy at AmericanHeritage.com.

1858: Lincoln-Douglas

Kenny Rogers is 70 today.

Patty McCormack is 63. The actress, known now as Patricia McCormack, was nominated for the supporting actress Oscar as an 11-year-old for her performance in The Bad Seed.

Kim Cattrall of Sex in the City is 52.

Hayden Panettiere of Heroes is 19.

William “Count” Basie was born on this date in 1904.

Count Basie was a leading figure of the swing era in jazz and, alongside Duke Ellington, an outstanding representative of big band style.

Quotation from the PBS website for Jazz: A Film by Ken Burns. The page has a nice biography of Basie with some audio clips, including Basie’s 1937 recording of “One O’Clock Jump,” one of NPR’s 100 “most important American musical works of the 20th century.”

Wilt Chamberlain was born in Philadelphia 71 years ago today. Usually called “The Stilt” because it rhymed with Wilt, Chamberlain actually preferred the nickname “The Big Dipper.”

• Scored 800 points in first 16 high school games.
• Unanimous All-American at Kansas 1957, 1958, averaging nearly 30 points per game.
• Four-time NBA MVP.
• Scored 31,419 points (30.1 ppg) in 1,045 pro games, including 100 in one game against the Knicks.
• All-time scoring leader when he retired, since surpassed.

Chamberlain died in 1999.

Hawaii entered the Union as the 50th state on this date in 1959. The eight major islands in the chain are Ni’ihau, Kaua’i, O’ahu, Moloka’i, Lāna’i, Kaho’olawe, Maui and Hawai’i.