Day: July 31, 2009

Leadville

Friday night in Leadville, Colorado. Elevation 10,152 feet. Temperature at 8:30 48 degrees. Forecast low 35.

Staying at the Delaware Hotel, built in 1886. Plumbing and electrical updated since then. Second floor room; no elevator. Fourth time I climbed the stairs, I felt the altitude.

Leadville was once the largest city between St. Louis and San Francisco.

Had breakfast for dinner; eggs, hash browns, sourdough toast. And a beer.

Lunch today was in Taos. Fantastic scenery all day.

Z enjoying the trip too.

(Blogged from my phone.)

July 31st

Other than J.K. Rowling mentioned in a previous post, there aren’t many well-known individuals born on the last day of July. Oh sure, Wesley Snipes is 47 and Geraldine Chaplin is 65. The governor of Massachusetts is 53. (Quick now, what is his name?) S.S. Kresge was born on this date in 1867. Wonder what he’d think of K-Mart today?

No, I guess we’ll just have to make today a national holiday to celebrate Nora’s birthday. Generous, gracious, attractive, intelligent, educated, accomplished. Sounds like holiday material to me (even if I am biased in favor of a daughter-in-law).

Oh, and a secret, Nora’s birthday today is a round year.

Campground justice

It was first light, the twilight just before dawn. Two shots rang out. The campers awake in their tents and RVs were startled; then they relaxed and fell back asleep. They realized that it was just some right-minded person meting out justice to the jerks breaking camp with all the subtlety and quiet of the circus leaving town.

Above first posted here four years ago. It is all true, except for the shots.

Post reprise of the day

Two of the four coincidences posted by John Steele Gordon at AmericanHeritage.com:

1) Probably the most famous coincidence in American history is that both Thomas Jefferson and John Adams died on the same day. And it was not just any day but July 4, 1826, the fiftieth anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. The cherry on top is that Adams and Jefferson were the only two signers of the Declaration to later become President. We will never know, of course, but I’ve always suspected that both Jefferson and Adams, old and rapidly failing though they were (Adams was 90, Jefferson 83) were aware of what day it was and perhaps at some level decided that it was a good day to die. President James Monroe also died on July 4, in 1831. So more than 8 percent of deceased American Presidents have died on the nation’s birthday, and three of the first five did.

3) In the 1940s two of the mightiest and most iconic of American industrial corporations were General Motors and General Electric. The president of GM from 1941 until 1953 was a man named Charles E. Wilson. The president of General Electric from 1940 to 1950 (except from 1942 until 1945, when he worked for the government) was a man named . . . Charles E. Wilson. They were unrelated and were known as Engine Charlie and Electric Charlie to keep them separate. (Runner up in this category, perhaps, is the fact that Chief Justice Earl Warren was succeeded in office by Chief Justice Warren Earl Burger.)

She’s the real wizard

The best-selling author ever is 44 today. That’s J.K. Rowling, who has sold more than 400 million Harry Potter books.

According to The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor her first book “started with a print run of 1,000 copies. The last book in the series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (2007), had a first print run of 12 million copies in the United States, the largest first printing of any book in history.”