Ennio Morricone

Forget Celine Dion (great pipes, no heart) and hear some of Ennio Morricone’s wonderful film music, “The Ecstasy of Gold” from The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (Buono, il brutto, il cattivo).

Bad day at black rock

It was on this date in 1861 that Congress organized the Territory of Colorado and stole the Rio Grande headwaters, the San Luis Valley and a big chunk of plains from New Mexico.

The bastards!

How’s your maths?

Take a 10 question test from BBC.

NewMexiKen had eight correct, same as three years ago when I first posted this item.

Brotherly love

If you click and enlarge this photo you will see 6-year-old Mack’s snowball about to hit a very unsuspecting 3-year-old Aidan. Photo taken in northern Virginia Sunday.

This’ll work as long as 4-year-old girls are getting married

If your nuptial dreams include a fairy-tale wedding, Walt Disney Co. might have the perfect solution.

The company is using its stable of imaginary princesses as inspiration for a new line of wedding gowns. Disney and bridal designer Kirstie Kelly have developed a line of ethereal gowns that pay homage to Cinderella, Jasmine, Snow White, Ariel and Sleeping Beauty.

“They will be high-fashion and very modern,” said Paulette Cleghorn, president of Designer Loft Productions, a New York public-relations firm representing Kelly. “We are modernizing the princess concept. There is a difference between a girl who is inspired by Snow White and one who wants to dress like Snow White.”

Orlando Sentinel

The B&O

“It is with no ordinary feelings we announce the fact—that a plan for making a railroad from the city of Baltimore to some point on the Ohio River, has been considered and adopted.” These words in a Baltimore newspaper, Niles’ Weekly Register, told the world that a group of businessmen had gotten a charter, 180 years ago today, to build the first public railroad in America.
. . .

A year and a half later, the first passengers were riding the B&O. In May 1830 they could travel as far as Ellicott’s Mills, about 10 miles west of the city. The cars, which resembled stagecoaches, were initially pulled by horses over wooden rails capped with iron. Those searching for a better means of propulsion suggested cars driven by the wind or powered by a horse on a treadmill. Both ideas were soon superseded by a more revolutionary concept. In 1830 Peter Cooper’s one-ton locomotive Tom Thumb proved the viability of steam power, and before long the B&O began carrying both passengers and freight in steam-driven trains of cars. To support the weight, cast-iron rails replaced the wooden ones.

Andrew Jackson became the first U.S. President to ride on a railroad, taking a short trip on the B&O in 1833. Two years later, the company opened a line connecting Washington and Baltimore. It was along that route that Samuel F. B. Morse sent the words “What hath God wrought!” 40 miles over wires in 1844. They were the first telecommunication in history.

B&O, of course, stands for Baltimore and Ohio. The line reached the river at Wheeling on New Year’s Day 1853. There’s more by Jack Kelly at AmericanHeritage.com.

Supreme Court Gives Gore’s Oscar to Bush

Just days after former Vice President Al Gore received an Academy Award for his global warming documentary “An Inconvenient Truth,” the United States Supreme Court handed Mr. Gore a stunning reversal, stripping him of his Oscar and awarding it to President George W. Bush instead.

For Mr. Gore, who basked in the adulation of his Hollywood audience Sunday night, the high court’s decision to give his Oscar to President Bush was a cruel twist of fate, to say the least.

But in a 5-4 decision handed down Tuesday morning, the justices made it clear that they had taken the unprecedented step of stripping Mr. Gore of his Oscar because President Bush deserved it more.

“It is true that Al Gore has done a lot of talking about global warming,” wrote Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority. “But President Bush has actually helped create global warming.”

The Borowitz Report

Think twice before using hotel room coffee pots

Ask just about anyone in law enforcement, and they’ll tell you to be careful if you ever brew coffee in a hotel room.

“I know enough now that whenever I go to a hotel, regardless of how nice it is, I’ll never use a coffee pot,” said Marshall County District Attorney Steve Marshall.

Instead of brewing coffee, coffee pots are sometimes used to brew methamphetamine.

WAFF 48 News

February 28th is the birthday

… of Gavin MacLeod. The captain of the Love Boat and Mary Tyler Moore’s wisecracking news writer is 76.

… of Dean Smith. The hall-of-fame basketball coach is 76.

… of Mario Andretti. He’s in the left lane with his blinker on at age 67.

… of Bubba Smith. The football star turned actor is 62.

… of Bernadette Lazzara, known to us as Bernadette Peters. The star of stage, screen and television (beginning at age 3) is 59 today. She’s won two a Tony twice as Best Leading Actress in a Musical — “Song and Dance” and “Annie Get Your Gun.”

… of Gilbert Gottfried, 52.

N. Scott Momaday

… is 73 today.

Momaday has always understood who he is. “I am an Indian and I believe I’m fortunate to have the heritage I have,” he says, speaking as a Kiowa Indian who defines himself as a Western Man. But that sense of identity didn’t evolve without difficulty. “I grew up in two worlds and straddle both those worlds even now,” Momaday says. “It has made for confusion and a richness in my life. I’ve been able to deal with it reasonably well, I think, and I value it.” (PBS - The West)

From Momaday’s Pulitzer Prize-winner, House Made of Dawn, the Navajo Ben Benally remembering a snow-filled day:

And afterward, when you brought the sheep back, your grandfather had filled the barrel with snow and there was plenty of water again. But he took you to the trading post anyway, because you were little and had looked forward to it. There were people inside, a lot of them, because there was a big snow on the ground and they needed things and they wanted to stand around and smoke and talk about the weather. You were little and there was a lot to see, and all of it was new and beautiful: bright new buckets and tubs, saddles and ropes, hats and shirts and boots, a big glass case all filled with candy. Frazer was the trader’s name. He gave you a piece of hard red candy and laughed because you couldn’t make up your mind to take it at first, and you wanted it so much you didn’t know what to do. And he gave your grandfather some tobacco and brown paper. And when he had smoked, your grandfather talked to the trader for a long time and you didn’t know what they were saying and you just looked around at all the new and beautiful things. And after a while the trader put some things out on the counter, sacks of flour and sugar, a slab of salt pork, some canned goods, and a little bag full of the hard red candy. And your grandfather took off one of his rings and gave it to the trader. It was a small green stone, set carelessly in thin silver. It was new and it wasn’t worth very much, not all the trader gave for it anyway. And the trader opened one of the cans, a big can of whole tomatoes, and your grandfather sprinkled sugar on the tomatoes and the two of you ate them right there and drank bottles of sweet red soda pop. And it was getting late and you rode home in the sunset and the whole land was cold and white. And that night your grandfather hammered the strips of silver and told you stories in the firelight. And you were little and right there in the center of everything, the sacred mountains, the snow-covered mountains and the hills, the gullies and the flats, the sundown and the night, everything—where you were little, where you were and had to be.

The New Disorder

David Denby asks some good questions:

As an Academy Award nominee for best picture, “Babel” was a startling choice. The movie, which was written by Guillermo Arriaga and directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu, is composed of three stories held together by a slender thread, and the mood is darkly calamitous; even the few joyous moments are suffused with dread. In the Arriaga-Iñárritu world, if something bad can happen it happens—hardly a typical American movie’s view of life. Earlier, the two men made, in Mexico, the bloody, turbulent “Amores Perros” (2000) and, in the United States, the dolorous “21 Grams” (2003), which starred Sean Penn, Naomi Watts, and Benicio Del Toro. Now, however, the collaborators have had a falling out (each claiming the greater credit for what appears in the movies). As they seem to be heading in separate directions, these fate-driven films can be seen as a kind of trilogy. All three send characters from separate stories smacking into one another in tragic accidents; all three jump backward and forward in a scrambling of time frames that can leave the viewer experiencing reactions before actions, dénouements before climaxes, disillusion before ecstasy, and many other upsetting reversals and discombobulations.

The Arriaga-Iñárritu films are hardly the sole topsy-turvy narratives out there. In recent years, we’ve had movies, like “Adaptation” (written by the antic confabulator Charlie Kaufman), that are explicitly about the making of movies, and others, like “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” (also written by Kaufman), that move forward dramatically by going backward in time. Then, there is a related group of clogged-sink narratives, like “Traffic,” “Syriana,” and “Miami Vice,” which are so heavily loaded with subplots and complicated information that the story can hardly seep through the surrounding material. “Syriana” made sense in the end, but you practically needed a database to sort out the story elements; the movie became a weird formal experiment, testing the audience’s endurance and patience.

Some of the directors may be just playing with us or, perhaps, acting out their boredom with that Hollywood script-conference menace the conventional “story arc.” But others may be trying to jolt us into a new understanding of art, or even a new understanding of life. In the past, mainstream audiences notoriously resisted being jolted. Are moviegoers bringing some new sensibility to these riddling movies? What are we getting out of the overloading, the dislocations and disruptions?

Read Denby’s assessment.

In Every Job That Must Be Done There Is an Element of Fun

Guy #1 flipping through showbill: So, what else has Mary Poppins done?

Girl #1: Greg*.

Guy #1: What?

Guy #2: Oh, yeah — you know Greg from work? Apparently he did the chick playing Mary Poppins back when they were both living in LA. He lost his virginity to her, in fact.

Girl #2: Wait, wait — you know a dude who cashed in his V card with Mary Poppins? Oh my god, that is just all sorts of awesome!

–Intermission of Mary Poppins

Overheard in New York and copied here because I loved their title.

On my hiatus, such as it was and may be

The simple truth is that I find something cathartic about quitting or taking a formal break from this blog. A day, or two, or five days later, and it’s like new batteries have been installed.

It’s not, as it appears, an attention seeking device. In fact, I find it more than a little embarrassing that I’ve pulled this stunt a half-dozen times or more. (The recent lapses while I was in Tucson however, weren’t purposeful. They were simply because I had no internet access.)

Whatever.

(More than 10,000 posts and you’d be crazy, too.)

Best Albuquerque line of the day, so far

“Seattle came in second behind Albuquerque, N.M., among America’s fittest cities in Men’s Fitness magazine’s ninth annual rankings announced this month, belying the fact Seattle is an anagram for ‘let’s eat.’ (Albuquerque, in case you’re wondering, is an anagram for ‘Albuquerque.’)”

Dwight Perry, Sideline Chatter

Here’s the poll.

How about my birthday in 2009?

The BMW Z4 prototype for 2009.

The 2008 Audi R8.

February 27th is the birthday

… of Academy Award winning actress Joanne Woodward. She is 77 today. Miss Woodward won the best actress Oscar for The Three Faces of Eve (1957). She was nominated for best actress three other times. Woodward and Paul Newman have been married 49 years.

… of two-time Academy Award winning actress Elizabeth Taylor. She is 75 today. Miss Taylor won best actress Oscars for Butterfield 8 (1960) and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966).

… of Ralph Nader. He’s 73.

… of Chelsea Clinton. She’s 27, which means she was 12 when her father was elected president.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born on this date in 1807.

Under a spreading chestnut-tree
The village smithy stands;
The smith, a mighty man is he,
With large and sinewy hands;
And the muscles of his brawny arms
Are strong as iron bands.

His hair is crisp, and black, and long,
His face is like the tan;
His brow is wet with honest sweat,
He earns whate’er he can,
And looks the whole world in the face,
For he owes not any man.

Week in, week out, from morn till night,
You can hear his bellows blow;
You can hear him swing his heavy sledge,
With measured beat and slow,
Like a sexton ringing the village bell,
When the evening sun is low.

And children coming home from school
Look in at the open door;
They love to see the flaming forge,
And hear the bellows roar,
And catch the burning sparks that fly
Like chaff from a threshing-floor.

He goes on Sunday to the church,
And sits among his boys;
He hears the parson pray and preach,
He hears his daughter’s voice,
Singing in the village choir,
And it makes his heart rejoice.

It sounds to him like her mother’s voice,
Singing in Paradise!
He needs must think of her once more,
How in the grave she lies;
And with his haul, rough hand he wipes
A tear out of his eyes.

Toiling,–rejoicing,–sorrowing,
Onward through life he goes;
Each morning sees some task begin,
Each evening sees it close
Something attempted, something done,
Has earned a night’s repose.

Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend,
For the lesson thou hast taught!
Thus at the flaming forge of life
Our fortunes must be wrought;
Thus on its sounding anvil shaped
Each burning deed and thought.

Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, “who observers believe influenced American life more than any of his colleagues in modern time,” was born on this date in 1886. The Constitution was his bible.

“Where’s my Constitution?” Justice Black asked, ruffling through his pockets and spreading out the papers on his desk.

“I always keep my Constitution in my coat pocket. What could have happened to it? Have you got one on you?” he asked of a visitor a few years ago.

“You ought to keep one on you all the time,” he said, buzzing for his secretary. “Where’s my Constitution?”

The woman searched his desk drawers and scanned the library shelves in the spacious Supreme Court chambers, but found no Constitution.

“I like to read what it says. I like to read the words of the Constitution,” Justice Black said in a slight Southern drawl, after dispatching the secretary to fetch one. “I’m a literalist, I admit it. It’s a bad word these days, I know, but that’s what I am.”

Shortly, the Constitution was delivered. Hugo LaFayette Black, then 81 years old and completing his 30th year on the United States Supreme Court, laid it tenderly on his lap and opened it to the Bill of Rights.

“Now,” he said with a warm smile, “now let’s see what it says.”

Perhaps as well as anything else, the incident illustrated what formed Chief Justice Earl Warren called the “unflagging devotion” of Mr. Black to the Constitution of the United States.

Perhaps no other man in the history of the Court so revered the Constitution as a source of the free and good life. Few articulated so lucidly, simply and forcefully a philosophy of the 18th- century document. Less than a handful had the impact on constitutional law and the quality of the nation as this self-described “backward country fellow” from Clay County, Alabama.

“I believe that our Constitution,” Justice Black once said, “with its absolute guarantee of individual rights, is the best hope for the aspirations of freedom which men share everywhere.”

John Steinbeck was born on this date in 1902.

Among the masters of modern American literature who have already been awarded this Prize - from Sinclair Lewis to Ernest Hemingway - Steinbeck more than holds his own, independent in position and achievement. There is in him a strain of grim humour which, to some extent, redeems his often cruel and crude motif. His sympathies always go out to the oppressed, to the misfits and the distressed; he likes to contrast the simple joy of life with the brutal and cynical craving for money. But in him we find the American temperament also in his great feeling for nature, for the tilled soil, the wasteland, the mountains, and the ocean coasts, all an inexhaustible source of inspiration to Steinbeck in the midst of, and beyond, the world of human beings.

The Swedish Academy’s reason for awarding the prize to John Steinbeck reads, “for his realistic as well as imaginative writings, distinguished by a sympathetic humour and a keen social perception.”

Nobel Prize in Literature 1962 - Presentation Speech

“I know this—a man got to do what he got to do.”

Maybe they just hate Florida

For the first time since the Depression, more Americans ages 75 and older have been leaving the South than moving there, according to a New York Times analysis of Census Bureau data.

The reversal appears to be driven in part by older people who retired to the South in their 60s, but decided to return home to their children and grandchildren in the Northeast, Midwest and West after losing spouses or becoming less mobile.

A stream of elderly transplants leaving Florida was detected by sociologists two decades ago, including so-called half-backs, who stopped short of returning to their home states and settled elsewhere in the South. What is new is the growth in the number of people leaving the region entirely and the dimension of the migration.

The New York Times

Has film crew found the DNA of Jesus?

Although the evidence contained in the film and book is hardly definitive, it is compelling.

Inscribed in Hebrew, Latin or Greek, six boxes — taken from a 2,000-year-old cave discovered in 1980 during excavation for a housing project in Talpiyot, south of Jerusalem — bear the names: Yeshua [Jesus] bar Yosef [son of Joseph]; Maria [the Latin version of Miriam, which is the English Mary]; Matia [the Hebrew equivalent of Matthew, a name common in the lineage of both Mary and Joseph]; Yose [the Gospel of Mark refers to Yose as a brother of Jesus]; Yehuda bar Yeshua, or Judah, son of Jesus; and in Greek, Mariamne e mara, meaning ‘Mariamne, known as the master.’ According to Harvard professor François Bovon, interviewed in the film, Mariamne was Mary Magdalene’s real name.

There’s much more at The Globe and Mail.

A movie buff

NewMexiKen correctly picked 17 of 24 award-winners at last night’s Oscars.

Alan Arkin and those lousy short-subjects were my downfall.

How did I get 17 right? I’ll let you know my secret — I cheated.

Complete list of 79th annual Academy Award winners.

February 26th is the birthday

… of Betty Hutton. The actress is 86. She was Annie Oakley in the eponymous 1950 film, and the trapeze artist who saves the circus in The Greatest Show on Earth.

… of Antoine “Fats” Domino. The Rock and Roll Hall of Famer is 79 — and he still Wants to Walk You Home.

… of columnist Robert Novak. He’s 76 and ought to be shuffling off to Florida with David Broder.

… of Mitch Ryder. He’s 62. No report on the ages of the Detroit Wheels.

… of Michael Bolton. The singer is 54. The computer programmer’s age in Office Space isn’t known.

Johnny Cash was born on this date in 1932.

Jackie Gleason was born in Brooklyn on this date in 1916. One of the greats of early TV, known primarily now for his portrayal of bus driver Ralph Kramden in the Honeymooners. He was in a number of films and received an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actor in The Hustler. Gleason also won a Tony Award.

“And away we go” was one of Gleason’s stock lines. It is also the inscription at his grave site.

John Harvey Kellogg was born on this date in 1852.

When he became a physician Dr. Kellogg determined to devote himself to the problems of health, and after taking over the sanitarium he put into effect his own ideas. Soon he had developed the sanitarium to an unprecedented degree, and he launched the business of manufacturing health foods. He gained recognition as the originator of health foods and coffee and tea substitutes, ideas which led to the establishment of huge cereal companies besides his own, in which his brother, W. K. Kellogg, produced the cornflakes he invented. His name became a household word. (The New York Times)

There might have been something to it. Kellogg lived to 91.

George Washington shares a birthday

… with Don Pardo. The original “Jeopardy!” and “Saturday Night Live” announcer is 89.

… with Senator Edward Kennedy. He’s 75.

… with Sparky Anderson. The baseball hall-of-fame manager is 73.

… with Julius Erving. Dr. J is 57.

… with that ass, doctor/senator Bill Frist. He’s 55.

… with Kyle MacLachlan. The actor is 48.

… with Vijay Singh. He’s 44.

… with Drew Barrymore. The actress is 32.

Artist Peter Hurd was born in Roswell, New Mexico, on this date in 1904. That’s his watercolor, “The Winos.”

American poets James Russell Lowell and Edna St. Vincent Millay were born on this date; Lowell in 1819 and Millay in 1892.

Edna St. Vincent Millay was a terse and moving spokesman during the Twenties, the Thirties and the Forties. She was an idol of the younger generation during the glorious early days of Greenwich Village when she wrote, what critics termed a frivolous but widely know poem which ended:

My candle burns at both ends, It will not last the night; But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends, It gives a lovely light!

All critics agreed, however, that Greenwich Village and Vassar, plus a gypsy childhood on the rocky coast of Maine, produced one of the greatest American poets of her time. (The New York Times)

Rembrandt Peale was born on this date in 1778. His brothers were named Raphael, Rubens and Titian. Son of portrait-painter Charles Wilson Peale, Rembrandt Peale is known primarily for his many renditions of George Washington. Most are based on his most famous work, this portrait of Washington from 1795 (click to view larger version). Rembrandt Peale also painted a classic portrait of Thomas Jefferson.

Steve Irwin, The Crocodile Hunter, should have been 45 today.

9,999

And so, this is the 9,999th post here at NewMexiKen. There have actually been many more than that, but some never made it to publication, or were quickly discarded, or deleted along the way (outdated and broken links, for example).

But when I click the publish button, this will be 9,999.

A good place to take a break; 10,000 is just so excessive, so 1990s.

I’ll be back. I always miss it. But not for a while.

Just assume I gave it up for Lent.

[Oops. NewMexiKen found three AWOL posts. There are actually 10,002 currently active.]

Ash Wednesday

[Ash Wednesday] probably dates from at least the eighth century. On this day all the faithful according to ancient custom are exhorted to approach the altar before the beginning of Mass, and there the priest, dipping his thumb into ashes previously blessed, marks the forehead — or in case of clerics upon the place of the tonsure — of each the sign of the cross, saying the words: “Remember man that thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return.” The ashes used in this ceremony are made by burning the remains of the palms blessed on the Palm Sunday of the previous year.

Catholic Encyclopedia

Lent

Forty days of Lent to mark Jesus’s forty days of fasting in the wilderness.

Forty you say. But today is February 21 and Easter is April 8. That’s 46 days (four this week, then six more weeks). 6 times 7 equals 42 plus 4 equals 46

Aha! But the six Sundays don’t count. (No one told me that when I was a kid giving up candy for Lent.)

The date for Ash Wednesday, of course, is determined by counting back 46 days from the date for Easter Sunday.

The usual statement, that Easter Day is the first Sunday after the full moon that occurs next after the vernal equinox, is not a precise statement of the actual ecclesiastical rules. The full moon involved is not the astronomical Full Moon but an ecclesiastical moon (determined from tables) that keeps, more or less, in step with the astronomical Moon.

The ecclesiastical rules are:

• Easter falls on the first Sunday following the first ecclesiastical full moon that occurs on or after the day of the vernal equinox;
• this particular ecclesiastical full moon is the 14th day of a tabular lunation (new moon); and
• the vernal equinox is fixed as March 21.

resulting in that Easter can never occur before March 22 or later than April 25.

U.S. Naval Observatory

The equinox this year is March 20th in the Western Hemisphere (March 20, 6:07 PM MDT).

February 21st is the birthday

… of Blanche Elizabeth Hollingsworth Devereaux. Rue McClanahan is 72 today.

… of Mary Beth Lacey. Tyne Daly is 61.

… of Anthony Daniels. 3CPO is 61.

… of Patricia Nixon Cox. The former first daughter is 61.

… of Frasier Crane. Kelsey Grammer is 52 today.

… of Mary Chapin Carpenter. Celebrating, one hopes, down at the Twist and Shout, she’s 49 today.

… of Charlotte Church. She’s 21. Hasn’t she been one of the PBS fund drive specials for about 20 years?

Erma Bombeck was born on this date in 1927. According to The Writer’s Almanac:

[Bombeck] became famous for her humor column called “At Wits End”, about the daily madness of being a housewife. She knew she wanted to be a journalist from the eighth grade, and she had a humor column in her high school newspaper. She got a job at the Dayton Journal-Herald writing obituaries and features for the women’s page, but when she married a sportswriter there, she chose to quit her job and stay home with the kids. She spent a decade as a fulltime mother, and then in 1964 she decided she had to start writing again or she would go crazy. She said, “I was thirty-seven, too old for a paper route, too young for social security, and too tired for an affair.”

She got a column at a small Ohio paper and wrote about the daily trials and tribulations of the average housewife. Within a few years, she was one of the most popular humor columnists in America.

NewMexiKen thought Bombeck funniest when she really was a a full-time mom. When she became rich and famous the humor often seemed more contrived and strained. But then I’d rather be rich and famous than funny, too.

The great classical guitarist Andrés Segovia was born on this date in 1893. This from his obituary in The New York Times in 1987.

The guitarist himself summed up his life’s goals in an interview with The New York Times when he was 75 years old: ”First, to redeem my guitar from the flamenco and all those other things. Second, to create a repertory - you know that almost all the good composers of our time have written works for the guitar through me and even for my pupils. Third, I wanted to create a public for the guitar. Now, I fill the biggest halls in all the countries, and at least a third of the audience is young - I am very glad to steal them from the Beatles. Fourth, I was determined to win the guitar a respected place in the great music schools along with the piano, the violin and other concert instruments.”

NewMexiKen once attended a performance by Segovia.

Is it too late for birthday present hints?

Pay at the Pump

Gas prices are on the way up again and could likely pass $3 again this summer in many areas, according to the Detroit News. Gas in Detroit is up a whopping 38 cents in a month, and based on last years’ precedent is on course to again pass 3 bucks in May.

If you don’t live on the West Coast, consider yourself fuel-lucky. In Sacramento gas is now at $2.72 compared to the national average of $2.26.

WIRED Blogs: Autopia

Robert Altman

… was born on this date in 1925.

It was Alfred Hitchcock who noticed Altman’s work early on and hired him to direct episodes of the television show Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Altman went on to write and direct numerous TV shows, including Bonanza, but he began to experiment with a new way of portraying dialog in movies. He thought it was unrealistic to have only one actor speaking at a time, since in real life groups of people are constantly interrupting each other and talking over each other. So he developed a style in which he would put a microphone and a camera on each of the actors in a scene, and he encouraged them to improvise dialogue and to interrupt each other and talk over each other and to have simultaneous conversations.

Altman finally got his first chance to try out his new style when he chose to direct a movie about a group of military surgeons in the Korean War. The script had been passed over by 14 other directors. It was written as a comedy, but Altman chose to film the surgery scenes like a documentary, with the actors talking over each other and being interrupted by announcements on a loud speaker. And he chose to use lots of fake blood. The studio almost didn’t release the movie because the executives thought the mixture of violence and comedy was morbid and the profanity was too strong. But when it came out at the height of the Vietnam War, M*A*S*H (1970) became the highest-grossing movie of the year.

Altman went on to make a series of movies that are now considered classics, including McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971), about a brothel in the Old West; and Nashville (1975), about the country music industry.

The Writer’s Almanac

Ansel Adams

… was born on this date in 1902.

In a career that spanned more than 50 years, Mr. Adams combined a passion for natural landscape, meticulous craftsmanship as a printmaker and a missionary’s zeal for his medium to become the most widely exhibited and recognized photographer of his generation.

His photographs have been published in more than 35 books and portfolios, and they have been seen in hundreds of exhibitions, including a one-man show, ”Ansel Adams and the West,” at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1979. That same year he was the subject of a cover story in Time magazine, and in 1980 he received the Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.

In addition to being acclaimed for his dramatic landscapes of the American West, he was held in esteem for his contributions to photographic technology and to the recognition of photography as an art form.

The New York Times Obituary

The Ansel Adams Gallery

The Queen

Hard to believe there’s ever been a better performance in a film than Helen Mirren in The Queen, a pretty good movie overall.

John Glenn

… was the first American to orbit the earth — on this date 45 years ago.

Cape Canaveral, Fla., Feb. 20 — John H. Glenn Jr. orbited three times around the earth today and landed safely to become the first American to make such a flight.

The 40-year-old Marine Corps lieutenant colonel traveled about 81,000 miles in 4 hours 56 minutes before splashing into the Atlantic at 2:43 P.M. Eastern Standard Time.

He had been launched from here at 9:47 A. M.

The astronaut’s safe return was no less a relief than a thrill to the Project Mercury team, because there had been real concern that the Friendship 7 capsule might disintegrate as it rammed back into the atmosphere.

There had also been a serious question whether Colonel Glenn could complete three orbits as planned. But despite persistent control problems, he managed to complete the entire flight plan.

The New York Times

Fat Tuesday

There are well-known season-long Carnival celebrations in Europe and Latin America, including Nice, France; Cologne, Germany; and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The best-known celebration in the U.S. is in New Orleans and the French-Catholic communities of the Gulf Coast. Mardi Gras came to the New World in 1699, when a French explorer arrived at the Mississippi River, about 60 miles south of present day New Orleans. He named the spot Point du Mardi Gras because he knew the holiday was being celebrated in his native country that day.

Eventually the French in New Orleans celebrated Mardi Gras with masked balls and parties, until the Spanish government took over in the mid-1700s and banned the celebrations. The ban continued even after the U.S. government acquired the land but the celebrations resumed in 1827. The official colors of Mardi Gras, with their roots in Catholicism, were chosen 10 years later: purple, a symbol of justice; green, representing faith; and gold, to signify power.

Mardi Gras literally means “Fat Tuesday” in French. The name comes from the tradition of slaughtering and feasting upon a fattened calf on the last day of Carnival. The day is also known as Shrove Tuesday (from “to shrive,” or hear confessions), Pancake Tuesday and fetter Dienstag. The custom of making pancakes comes from the need to use up fat, eggs and dairy before the fasting and abstinence of Lent begins.

Catholic Roots of Mardi Gras

The Radical Roots of Barack Obama

A worth-your-time profile of Barack Obama by Ben Wallace-Wells in Rolling Stone.

The real cost of bottled water

Most of the price of a bottle of water goes for its bottling, packaging, shipping, marketing, retailing and profit. Transporting bottled water by boat, truck and train involves burning massive quantities of fossil fuels. More than 5 trillion gallons of bottled water is shipped internationally each year. Here in San Francisco, we can buy water from Fiji (5,455 miles away) or Norway (5,194 miles away) and many other faraway places to satisfy our demand for the chic and exotic. These are truly the Hummers of our bottled-water generation. As further proof that the bottle is worth more than the water in it, starting in 2007, the state of California will give 5 cents for recycling a small water bottle and 10 cents for a large one.

San Francisco Chronicle

This article convinces me. What a waste (in most locations).

The Most Annoying Things About Windows Vista

There’s lots to like in the newest version of Windows. Vista’s look is stunning, the OS should be more secure, and finding things is often easier. But Windows wouldn’t be Windows without those aspects, big and small, that just drive you nuts with frustration. Here’s our list of Vista features that just make us wonder, “What were they thinking?”

PC World via Yahoo! News

Sidney Poitier

… is 80 today.

American Masters from PBS sums it up nicely:

More than an actor (and Academy-Award winner), Sidney Poitier is an artist. A writer and director, a thinker and critic, a humanitarian and diplomat, his presence as a cultural icon has long been one of protest and humanity. His career defined and documented the modern history of blacks in American film, and his depiction of proud and powerful characters was and remains revolutionary.

Lilies of the Field — with Poitier’s Oscar winning performance — has been one of NewMexiKen’s favorites since it was released more than 40 years ago. If you don’t know the film, you should.

Jesus and George

From Functional Ambivalent:

Beliefnet takes a look at the Christianity of George Washington:

What do the knowable facts show? A portrait not likely to be satisfying to either extreme in the culture war – a spiritual man who believed God was protecting him and the nation, and yet who showed disinterest in and sometimes disdain for important facets of Christianity.

In some ways, the Father of Our Country bears a striking resemblance to a lot of other fathers:

He was a casual observer of the Sabbath and a semi-regular attendee of church – a little more than once a month, according to Boller’s review of Washington’s diaries. For instance, Washington attended church four times in the first five months of 1760 and 15 times in the year 1768. Sometimes bad weather prevented him from making the lengthy trip but there’s also evidence that Washington visited friends, traveled or went foxhunting instead of to church.

He did all of that because there were no golf courses within riding distance from Mt. Vernon.

Read the whole fascinating thing here.

The Worst President of Them All

“Buchanan, Harding, Nixon, Dubya …? Much more fun than your high school History class, this year’s President’s Day tribute is to the very worst of them.”

Nicholas von Hoffman reviews the worst.

The holiday today

The federal holiday today — the reason there’s no mail delivery — is Washington’s Birthday.

There is no state holiday today in New Mexico. The state chooses to celebrate Presidents’ Day the day after Thanksgiving, November 23rd this year.

The next holiday is Memorial Day, May 28th this year. That’s 14 weeks from now!

U.S. Code: Title 4, § 6103. Holidays

(a) The following are legal public holidays:
New Year’s Day, January 1.
Birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr., the third Monday in January.
Washington’s Birthday, the third Monday in February.
Memorial Day, the last Monday in May.
Independence Day, July 4.
Labor Day, the first Monday in September.
Columbus Day, the second Monday in October.
Veterans Day, November 11.
Thanksgiving Day, the fourth Thursday in November.
Christmas Day, December 25.

The Greatest American

It was a speech so moving the crowd wept. It was a speech so personally important George Washington’s hand shook as he read it until he had to hold the paper still with both hands. After the ceremony, he handed the thing to a friend and sped out the door of the State House in Annapolis, riding off by horse. [December 23, 1783]

For centuries, his words have resonated in American democracy even as the speech itself — the small piece of paper that shook in his hands that day — was quietly put away, out of the public eye and largely forgotten.

Today, however, amid festivities celebrating his birthday, Maryland officials plan to unveil the original document — worth $1.5 million — after acquiring it in a private sale from a family in Maryland who had kept it all these years. . . .

The speech, scholars say, was a turning point in U.S. history. As the Revolutionary War was winding down, some wanted to make Washington king. Some whispered conspiracy, trying to seduce him with the trappings of power. But Washington renounced them all.

By resigning his commission as commander in chief to the Continental Congress — then housed at the Annapolis capitol — Washington laid the cornerstone for an American principle that persists today: Civilians, not generals, are ultimately in charge of military power.

The Washington Post

Follow this link for a copy of the document. Here’s the text version:

The great events on which my resignation depended, having at length taken place, I have now the honor of offering my sincere congratulations to Congress, & of presenting myself before Congress them, to surrender into their hands the trust committed to me, and to claim the indulgence of retiring request permission to retire from the service of my country.

Happy in the confirmation of our independence and sovereignty, and pleased with the opportunity afforded the United States, of becoming a respectable Nation as well as in the contemplation of our prospect of National happiness, I resign with satisfaction the appointment I accepted with diffidence — a diffidence in my abilities to accomplish so arduous a task, which however was superseded by a confidence in the rectitude of our Cause, the support of the supreme Power of the Union, and the patronage of Heaven.

The successful termination of the War has verified the most sanguine expectations- and my gratitude for the interposition of Providence, and the assistance I have received from my Countrymen, increases with every review of the momentous Contest.

While I repeat my obligations to the army in general, I should do injustice to my own feelings not to acknowledge in this place the peculiar services and distinguished merits of the Gentlemen who have been attached to my person during the war. — It was impossible the choice of confidential officers to compose my family should have been more fortunate. –Permit me Sir, to recommend in particular those, who have continued in service to the present moment, as worthy of the favorable notice & patronage of Congress.–

I consider it an indispensable duty duty to close this last solemn act of my Official life, by commending the Interests of our dearest Country to the protection of Almighty God, and those who have the superintendance direction of them, to his holy keeping.–

Having now finished the work assigned me, I retire from the great theatre of action, — and bidding an affectionate a final farewell to this August body, under whose orders I have so long acted, I here offer today deliver? my Commission, and take my ultimate leave of all the employments of public life.–