Day: November 22, 2008

Cross Country Sweetie

Mack Near the FinishSecond-grader Mack, who’ll be eight in a few weeks, ran in the Regional Junior Olympics cross country meet Saturday morning against kids his age (born in 2000 or later) from Georgia, the Carolinas, Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia. Mack had been home from school two days during the week, sick with the flu, and unable to work out. The temperature was in the 30s.

Jill, Mack’s mom, sent this report on the 2K race:

[Mack] struggled during the race and ran about 25 seconds slower than last week, and both times I saw him on the course he just didn’t look himself. He just looked tired and like he couldn’t pick his feet up like normal. Usually I love to watch him run. But today I actually felt like hopping the rope and pulling him off the course. He did have a pretty good finish where he was seesawing with another boy on the way in and he beat him to the line.

Jill sent this report a little later:

I was looking at the race photos with Mack and showing him how he just didn’t look like he was having fun except when he was battling that kid at the end. Turns out that, as that kid passed him earlier in the race, [the kid] said, “See ya!” as he went by. So Mack came after him and found him and beat him by .25 second.

Mack ran 10:27.73. That’s him in the photo as he was passing the “See ya!” kid (not shown). Mack passed eight kids on the way to find him.

The winner, from South Carolina, ran a phenomenal 7:59.89.

Things are really tough

How tough are they?

Well, for decades near the end of every college football game on television Chevrolet has honored the best player on each team with a donation of $1000 in the player’s name to the school’s scholarship fund.

Now the players have to give Chevrolet the $1000.

American Made

NewMexiKen has begun reading American-Made: The Enduring Legacy of the WPA: When FDR Put the Nation to Work by Nick Taylor. It seemed pertinent.

I am only 60 pages into this 530-page historical narrative, so this reaction is somewhat preliminary. Put another way, I haven’t even gotten through the 1932 election yet. That said, it’s proven quite good so far. The style is anecdotal-narrative, relatively fast-paced. And there are enough parallels to today to elevate your interest. For example, just today President-elect Obama called for a 2.5 million person jobs program.

I have noticed a few errors by Taylor — for example, saying FDR was 53 in 1932, when in fact he was 51. This is absolutely unimportant, but when I see these kind of things I do wonder if more significant details are carefully researched and described.

But, more importantly, the book is good enough that I wanted to mention it. And being reminded about MacArthur’s reaction to The Bonus March was enough to give me chills all over again.

November 22nd

Today is the birthday

… of Billie Jean King. She’s 65.

… of Steve Van Zandt. Little Steven, E Street Band member and Sopranos actor, is 58.

… of Jamie Lee Curtis. She’s 50.

… of Mariel Hemingway. She’s 47.

… of Boris Becker. He’s 41.

… of Scarlett Johansson. She’s 24.

Abigail Adams, America’s second first lady and the mother of the sixth president, was born on this date in 1744.

Songwriter Hoagy Carmichael was born on this date in 1899: “Stardust,” “Georgia on My Mind,” “Up The Lazy River,” “Heart and Soul.”

Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve (Colorado)

… was redisignated on this date in 2000, pending land acquisition. It had been a national monument since 1932. The land was acquired and Great Sand Dunes became America’s 57th national park in 2004.

In this high mountain valley are the tallest dunes in North America, flanked by some of the highest peaks in the Rocky Mountains. The park and preserve protects much of the Great Sand Dunes’ natural system, including alpine tundra and lakes, forests, streams, dunes, grasslands, and wetlands.

Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve

And National Parks Traveler tells us that Great Sand Dunes is one of the quietest places in the U.S.

The best thing I’ve read on the GM crisis

First some flavor:

Tom has been an employee of General Motors since he graduated from Evansville University in 1974. At the time, for a Midwestern kid from “stonecutter” Bedford, Indiana, it was kind of like going to work for Google today.

As you can imagine, Tom’s seen a lot happen in the energy and auto industries in the last 34 years, but before this year he never considered that his retirement, his health care, and indeed his professional future would be in such dramatic jeopardy. In fact, without ever changing careers, he once worked for the largest and arguably the most influential corporation in the world; now he’s getting these emails. He never dreamed that he’d need to be calling his congressmen to save the company to which he’s always been loyal, and upon which he and his family’s livelihood has depended. I can speak with such certainty about Tom’s past because I’ve known him for 27 of the 34 years he’s been with General Motors, and we’re very close.

Tom is my dad.

Go read it all — GM Goes Grassroots. A Son is Torn.

Seriously. Go read it.

How I thought I’d become a footnote to history

In 1976, the House of Representatives established a Select Committee on Assassinations to investigate the murders of President John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King. Among the things the Committee sought was a thorough examination of all the photographic evidence in the Kennedy murder. At that time it took a mainframe computer to do what probably could be done on a personal computer today — that is, scan, enhance and thoroughly analyze the images. The image enhancement would be done at the Aerospace Corporation in California. The agreement with the National Archives, which had custody of the Kennedy assassination evidence in Washington, stipulated that the photographic records must be in the custody of the Archives or an Archives employee at all times. For two days I was that employee.

The only copy of the photographs, film, x-rays, etc., was brought by courier to California and put in a safe within a secure area at the National Archives facility in Laguna Niguel, where I worked at the time. The image enhancement was being done in El Segundo near Los Angeles International Airport, some 60 miles away. Each day we opened the safe, verified that each item was present, put the briefcase and “suit” box (think of a four-inch high pizza box) into the trunk of a rented car and made the commute.

That first day (it was Easter week 1978) I followed the procedure carefully even taking the materials with me to lunch, thinking to myself “if the people around me only knew what I had.” It was fascinating to see the enhancements and hear the analysis of the few experts working on the project and sworn to secrecy (as was I). Late in the afternoon I packed everything back up, put it in the trunk, returned to the office and locked it all in the safe. I remember thinking on the way home, this stuff would be worth a million dollars or more on the black market. Am I being followed? Am I in danger?

The second morning we began the inventory. Everything was there, of course. Except — EXCEPT! — on one x-ray, right in the middle of the damaged part of President Kennedy’s skull, there was a bubble. I didn’t remember any damage to any of the x-rays. Now it looked as if this one x-ray had been too close to heat and the image had been burned. How did this happen? Where had I put the box that this could have happened? Was the computer console in the lab too hot? Was there a problem with the exhaust in the rental car that the trunk floor got excessively hot? My god, somehow I’ve damged the only copy of a piece of evidence in the most important murder of the 20th century. My boss was visibly shaken. I was hyper-ventilating. My career is over. I’m a footnote in the Kennedy conspiracy books.

There was nothing to do but put the briefcase and box in the car (inside with me this time) and make the drive to El Segundo. It was a lonely 90 minutes. Once there I trudged in and immediately confessed my crime.

“Oh, that. Some doctor got it too close to a lamp years ago.”

[The photographic and forensic experts I talked to were convinced the photographic evidence at least was consistent with one shooter — Oswald. As a reward for my participation in this project I was later permitted to see some other the other evidence including Oswald’s clothing (blood stained) and his Mannlicher-Carcano rifle.]