Speaking of Zozobra, as I did in the post about the State Fair just below, NewMexiKen made a small web album of so-so photos from this year’s burning of Zozobra, Old Man Gloom in Santa Fe.
Merrill Lynch is being sold; Lehman is being liquidated. AIG, my car insurer is asking the Fed for a $40 billion bridge loan. And next is probably Washington Mututal (WaMu).
But that’s good news for me. I mean WaMu owns my mortgage, so if they go under I won’t have to make any more payments, right?
Life in the Land of Enchantment is … is … well enchanting. We’ve got the Zozobra, and UNM defeating Arizona in football, and the Balloon Fiesta coming up, and — of course, the New Mexico State Fair, the 70th edition of which began September 4th and runs through next Sunday.
NewMexiKen loves the fair and wrote about it here three years ago (with lots of photos). This year not so many photos, just three taken with my iPhone (click on each for a larger version).
| This is Primo (I think). I thought the longhorn steer was posing, but I was a little slow and I see now that what I thought was a grin might have been more of a grimace. Later this week Primo and some of the other longhorn steers (which can weigh 2,500 pounds) will actually be ridden. |  |
| Then I got to be a celebrity (I’ve already had more than my allotted 15 minutes, so I think this was extra celebrity time). At the Fair today they were constructing the world’s longest ristra. |  |
| Donna and I walked up just as they were finishing up and yours truly got to be the official very last person to add my three chiles (pictured here, only you can just see two) to the nearly 100 foot long ristra.
I was videotaped and interviewed by Channel 13 and everything — totally freezing and unable to say anything the least bit interesting or bright. |
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Though, when asked my name, I was coherent enough to say Ken. And when asked for my whole name, I said, proudly, “NewMexiKen.”
And when asked if I was having a good time at the fair I said, “It’s always a great day at the Fair.”
And it is!
The college-age sister of a friend was T-boned this past week by a driver whose breathalyzer score was .19 (.08 is the legal limit).
The intoxicated driver was test driving a Ford 150 pickup from a local dealer. He ran a stop sign at 35 miles per hour.
Fortunately our friend’s sibling was not seriously injured.
But I’d own that car dealer before it was over if it was me.
Click image for larger version.
In order to disguise the fact that the core of his campaign is to continue the same Bush policies that have led 80 percent of the country to conclude we’re on the wrong track, McCain has decided to play the culture-war card. Obama may be a bit professorial, but at least he is trying to unite the country to face the real issues rather than divide us over cultural differences.
If you need a few more words:
McCain talks about how he would build dozens of nuclear power plants. Oh, really? They go for $10 billion a pop. Where is the money going to come from? From lowering taxes? From banning abortions? From borrowing more from China? From having Sarah Palin “reform” Washington — as if she has any more clue how to do that than the first 100 names in the D.C. phonebook?
Midshipmen are persons of integrity: They stand for that which is right.
They tell the truth and ensure that the full truth is known. They do not lie.
They embrace fairness in all actions. They ensure that work submitted as their own is their own, and that assistance received from any source is authorized and properly documented. They do not cheat.
They respect the property of others and ensure that others are able to benefit from the use of their own property. They do not steal.
Idea from Talking Points Memo.
A friend sent NewMexiKen this amazing story:
I was in Wal-Mart buying a large bag of Purina for my Labrador Retriever and was in line to check out.
A woman behind me asked if I had a dog.
On impulse, I told her that no, I was starting The Purina Diet again, although I probably shouldn’t because I’d ended up in the hospital last time, but that I’d lost 50 pounds before I awakened in an intensive care ward with tubes coming out of most of my orifices and IVs in both arms. I told her that it was essentially a perfect diet and that the way that it works is to load your pants pockets with Purina nuggets and simply eat one or two every time you feel hungry & that the food is nutritionally complete so I was going to try it again.
I have to mention here that practically everyone in the line was by now enthralled with my story, particularly a tall guy behind her.
Horrified, she asked if I’d been poisoned and was that why I was in the hospital.
I said no … I’d been sitting in the street licking my balls and a car hit me.
An Israeli doctor says…..”Medicine in my country is so advanced that we can take a kidney out of one man, put it in another, and have him looking for work in six weeks.”
A German doctor says……..”That is nothing, we can take a lung out of one person, put it in another, and have him looking for work in four weeks.”
A Russian doctor says…….”In my country, medicine is so advanced that we can take half a heart out of one person, put it in another, and have them both looking for work in two weeks.”
The Texas doctor, not to be outdone, says…”You guys are way behind. We took a man with no brain out of Texas, put him in the White House, and now half the country is looking for work.”
Today is the birthday of Margaret Sanger, born on this date in 1879. From her obituary in The New York Times (1966):
As the originator of the phrase “birth control” and its best-known advocate, Margaret Sanger survived Federal indictments, a brief jail term, numerous lawsuits, hundreds of street-corner rallies and raids on her clinics to live to see much of the world accept her view that family planning is a basic human right.
The dynamic, titian-haired woman whose Irish ancestry also endowed her with unfailing charm and persuasive wit was first and foremost a feminist. She sought to create equality between the sexes by freeing women from what she saw as sexual servitude.
Hal Wallis was born on this date in 1899. A producer, Wallis was nominated for the Best Picture Oscar 15 times, winning for Casablanca in 1942. Wallis died in 1986.
The itinerant hall-of-fame basketball coach, Larry Brown, is 68 today.
Sam Neill was born in Northern Ireland 61 years ago today. Neill has appeared in numerous films, most famously The Hunt for Red October, Jurassic Park and as the ass-of-a-husband in The Piano.
Amy Winehouse is 25. With some rehab, next year on this date she might be 26.
William McKinley died on this date in 1901, seven days after being shot by Leon Czolgosz. Theodore Roosevelt became the 26th President of the United States, and the youngest ever. He was 42 years, 10-1/2 months old.
It was on this day in 1812 that Napoleon’s army invaded the city of Moscow. He began the invasion of Russia in June of that year. The Russian forces kept retreating, burning the farmland as they went so the French wouldn’t be able to draw provisions from the land.
The troops were exhausted and hungry by the time they reached Moscow on this day, in 1812. The gates of the city were left wide open. And as the French came through, they noticed that all over the city small fires had begun. The Russians had set fire to their own city. By that night, the fires were out of control.
Napoleon watched the burning of the city from inside the Kremlin, and barely escaped the city alive. The retreat began across the snow-covered plains, one of the great disasters of military history. Thousands of troops died from starvation and hypothermia.
Of the nearly half million French soldiers who had set out in June on the invasion, fewer than 20,000 staggered back across the border in December.
— The Writer’s Almanac (2005)
The confusion and horror of the French retreat through the Russian winter are well described. “The air itself,” wrote a French colonel, “was thick with tiny icicles which sparkled in the sun but cut one’s face drawing blood.” Another Frenchman recalled that “it frequently happened that the ice would seal my eyelids shut.” Prince Wilhelm of Baden, one of Napoleon’s commanders, gave the order to march on the morning of Dec. 7, only to discover that “the last drummer boy had frozen to death.” Soldiers had resorted to looting, stripping corpses and even to cannibalism by the time the march was over.
— From a Washington Post review of Moscow 1812: Napoleon’s Fatal March
U.S. President George W. Bush writes a note to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during a Security Council meeting at the 2005 World Summit and 60th General Assembly of the United Nations in New York September 14.
— Reuters via Yahoo! News.
Hey, when you gotta go, you gotta go. And Bush really needs to go!
[First posted here three years ago.]
… was formed on this date in 1950 by combining the much smaller national park established in 1929 (which included just the Tetons and the lakes) and the Jackson Hole National Monument established in 1943. Today the park includes nearly 310,000 acres.
Located in northwestern Wyoming, Grand Teton National Park protects stunning mountain scenery and a diverse array of wildlife. The central feature of the park is the Teton Range — an active, fault-block, 40-mile-long mountain front. The range includes eight peaks over 12,000 feet (3,658 m), including the Grand Teton at 13,770 feet (4,198 m). Seven morainal lakes run along the base of the range, and more than 100 alpine lakes can be found in the backcountry.
Elk, moose, pronghorn, mule deer, and bison are commonly seen in the park. Black bears are common in forested areas, while grizzlies are occasionally observed in the northern part of the park. More than 300 species of birds can be observed, including bald eagles and peregrine falcons.
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