Day: July 6, 2009

Tragedy follow up

Sheriff Greg Solano and District Attorney Spence Pacheco are releasing the blood test results from the June 28th crash involving Scott Owens age 28, and five teenagers one of which remains hospitalized in Albuquerque NM. After Sheriff’s Deputies received a Search warrant tests on The Blood Alcohol content on Scott Owens was found to be 0.16 which is twice the legal limit of .08. A search warrant was obtained for the blood of Avree Koffman, age 16, driver of the vehicle in which 4 teens were killed and those results came back as .00 revealing no alcohol in the blood. Only Alcohol content was revealed in the initial tests. Tests for drugs are not included in these results.

Sheriff Greg Solano

A tale of two borders

WASHINGTON – At a recent meeting of the Senate Judiciary Committee, lawmakers implored Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to make sure new passport requirements don’t get in the way of French-Canadian grandparents crossing the U.S.-Canadian border to visit their grandchildren.

There was no mention of how those new rules might hurt Mexican grandparents trying to cross the U.S.-Mexican border to visit their grandkids in Arizona, California, New Mexico or Texas.

The Arizona Republic elaborates.

Snacks

From The Arizona Daily Star, a story without a happy ending.

At first Stewart Loew was excited by the sight: a mountain lion on the family’s farm near Amado.

In 40 years on the Agua Linda Farm, Loew said this was first large cat he had seen when it appeared in the donkey pen about a month ago.

But soon, his animals started to turn up mauled or dead. First there were four sheep. Then, on June 15, an awful sight: 16 pygmy and nubian goats — all the mammals in the farm’s petting zoo — were killed. Only the geese were spared.

Yeah, and who taught him?

Daniel McCoy, of Grants, was arrested Friday after a Bernalillo County Sheriff’s deputy spotted him near Dennis Chavez and 118th SW speeding and crossing over the center yellow lines into oncoming traffic, according to a criminal complaint.

The deputy stopped McCoy, and observed a little girl sitting on McCoy’s lap. The complaint said when the deputy asked McCoy what the girl might be doing on his lap while he was driving, McCoy replied, “I’m trying to teach my daughter how to drive.”

McCoy was charged with child abuse. 

ABQNews Lights and Sirens

Another damn dam

The Santa Fe New Mexican has a good story on Cochiti Pueblo and Cochiti Dam.

In the 1950s, this was their playground as boys. They would swim in the river, hunt birds and scoop up Rio Grande silvery minnows by the bucketful. “We used to fry them up. They were really good,” Pecos recalled, as the river water lapped almost to his shoes.

The men are old enough to remember picking fruit all summer and fall — apples, apricots, plums, cherries — from pueblo family orchards along the river. “Every family had a plot of land by the river,” said Suina. “Life was out there on the farm.”

“Everyone helped during harvest,” Pecos said. “Everyone shared food. That’s what kept the community together.”

It all changed in a generation.

July 6th is the birthday

… of former President George W. Bush, 63 today.

… of Sylvester Enzio Stallone, also 63 today. Stallone is one of three people to be nominated for a writing Oscar and an acting Oscar for the same movie. The others are Chaplin and Welles.

… of Nancy Reagan (88) and William Schallert, Patty Duke’s TV father, (87).

… of Ned Beatty. Beatty, who is 72 today, was nominated for the supporting actor Oscar for Network.

Bill Haley (“Rock Around the Clock”) was born on this date in 1925; he died in 1981.

The Mexican artist Frida Kahlo was born on this date in 1907 [she claimed 1910]. Ms. Kahlo died in 1954. The following is from the obituary in The New York Times when Ms. Kahlo died in 1954:

Frida Kahlo, wife of Diego Rivera, the noted painter, was found dead in her home today. Her age was 44. She had been suffering from cancer for several years.

She also was a painter and also had been active in leftist causes. She made her last public appearance in a wheel chair at a meeting here in support of the now ousted regime of Communist- backed President Jacobo Arbenz Guzman of Guatemala.

Frida Kahlo began painting in 1926 while obliged to lie in bed during convalescence from injuries suffered in a bus accident. Not long afterward she showed her work to Diego Rivera, who advised, “go on painting.” They were married in 1929, began living apart in 1939, were reunited in 1941.

Usually classed as a surrealist, the artist had no special explanation for her methods. She said only: “I put on the canvas whatever comes into my mind.” She gave one-woman shows in Mexico City, New York and elsewhere, and is said to have been the first woman artist to sell a picture to the Louvre.

Some of her pictures shocked beholders. One showed her with her hands cut off, a huge bleeding heart on the ground nearby, and on either side of her an empty dress. This was supposed to reveal how she felt when her husband went off alone on a trip. Another self-portrait presented the artist as a wounded deer, still carrying the shafts of nine arrows.