After the fact I realized today that the TSA agent let me through with the wrong boarding pass. I went through airport security in Albuquerque with a boarding pass for a flight originating in Atlanta.
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So the people of Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, Michigan (sort of), South Carolina and Florida (sort of) have had a chance to vote and they have eliminated Biden, Dodd, Richardson, Kucinich, Edwards, Brownback, Hunter, Tancredo, Thompson, Giuliani and just about Huckabee, Paul and Romney.
Wasn’t that kind of them? Six states, most them arguably untypical of the larger country, and here we are left with Clinton, Obama and McCain.
Do you feel like you didn’t have much of a say?
Today is the birthday
… of Carol Channing. Broadway’s Dolly Gallagher Levi is 87.
… of Jean Simmons. The actress (The Robe, Spartacus, Elmer Gantry) is 79. Miss Simmons was twice nominated for an Oscar; Hamlet (supporting) and The Happy Ending (leading).
… of Ernie Banks. The baseball hall-of-famer is 77. Let’s play two.
… of composer Philip Glass. He’s 71.
The new musical style that Glass was evolving was eventually dubbed “minimalism.” Glass himself never liked the term and preferred to speak of himself as a composer of “music with repetitive structures.” Much of his early work was based on the extended reiteration of brief, elegant melodic fragments that wove in and out of an aural tapestry. Or, to put it another way, it immersed a listener in a sort of sonic weather that twists, turns, surrounds, develops.
… of Queen Beatrix. She’s 70. Do you know what country is she queen of?
… of Nolan Ryan. The baseball hall-of-famer is 61.
… of KC. He’s 57. And his band was?
Minnie Driver is 38. Justin Timberlake is 27.
Suzanne Pleshette, Emily on the ”The Bob Newhart Show” and Annie (the teacher) in The Birds, would have been 71 today.
Norman Mailer was born on the last day of January in 1923. Here’s what NewMexiKen posted before on Mailer’s birthday.
Thomas Merton was born on this date in 1915. Here’s a previous entry for Merton.
John O’Hara was born on this date in 1905.
[O'Hara] went on to become one of the most popular serious writers of his lifetime, writing many best-selling novels, including Appointment in Samarra (1934) and A Rage to Live (1949). Most critics consider his best work to be his short stories, which were published as the Collected Stories of John O’Hara (1984). He holds the record for the greatest number of short stories published by a single author in The New Yorker magazine.
And Pearl Zane Grey, the first American millionaire author, was born on this date in 1872. Here’s a previous entry on Grey.
“[I]f Americans were to reduce meat consumption by just 20 percent it would be as if we all switched from a standard sedan — a Camry, say — to the ultra-efficient Prius.”
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First, John Edwards, who I believe is the most correct on issues of all the leading candidates, has left the race for president.
Two, in that family it should have been Elizabeth Edwards who became the politician and the presidential candidate.
“Amy Winehouse may want to attend the Grammys on Feb. 10, but it doesn’t look like she can go, go, go. She’s too busy going to rehab, to which she’d earlier said, ‘No, no, no,’ of course.”
Today is the birthday
… of Gene Hackman. The Oscar-winning actor is 78. He won Best Actor for The French Connection and Best Actor in a Supporting Role for The Unforgiven. He has received three other nominations.
… of Vanessa Redgrave. The six-time Oscar nominee, one-time winner (for Julia), is 71.
… of Dick Cheney. The Vice President is 67. Well past retirement age.
… of Phil Collins. Something in the Air Tonight is 57.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt was born on this date in 1882.
First of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.
“By the time [Bush's] gone, this country is going to look like a hotel suite after Van Halen passed through town. We’re going to need to burn the mattresses, pull up the carpeting and start over.”
Runner-up:
“Joe was twenty, with fewer prospects than a box turtle on a four-lane highway.”
Gerri Hirshey, writing in Rolling Stone about Joe Brown, father of James Brown — The Definitive Profile of the Godfather of Soul.
Jeanne, official friend of NewMexiKen, sent this along.
Look at the photo above. Click the image for a larger version.
You can see where the truck broke through the guardrail, to the right where the people are standing on the road pointing. The pick-up was traveling from right to left when it crashed through the guardrail. It flipped end-over-end, across the culvert outlet, and landed right side up on the left side of the culvert, facing the opposite direction from which it was traveling.
Now click here for a little better perspective.
At the same time, we recognize that not everyone out there loves a potty mouth. So if there’s an obvious bad word on a blog, story comment, or message board post, we’ll try to censor it.
It seems though that FOX Sports’ censor can become a little too zealous. This is from This Week in History: Jan. 23-29.
Via Awful Announcing .
[It's Walter Johnson.]
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“Watched our President give his last State of the Union last night - which is to say I made a margarita and yelled at the TV.”
This story tells us a little bit about both candidates, don’t you think?
“I had just been asked a question — I don’t remember which one — and Obama was sitting right next to me. Then the moderator went across the room, I think to Chris Dodd, so I thought I was home free for a while. I wasn’t going to listen to the next question. I was about to say something to Obama when the moderator turned to me and said, ‘So, Gov. Richardson, what do you think of that?’ But I wasn’t paying any attention! I was about to say, ‘Could you repeat the question? I wasn’t listening.’ But I wasn’t about to say I wasn’t listening. I looked at Obama. I was just horrified. And Obama whispered, ‘Katrina. Katrina.’ The question was on Katrina! So I said, ‘On Katrina, my policy . . .’ Obama could have just thrown me under the bus. So I said, ‘Obama, that was good of you to do that.’”
The Super Bowl, in the eyes of real sports fans, is for the tourists. It’s not just that you must sift through the clutter of all the off-field hype for an interminable two weeks, or that it’s the one sporting event covered by morning talk-show hosts who otherwise have no apparent connection to the world of football today. (Like, say, Tiki Barber.) It’s that the actual game of football, at the moment when it is supposed to be at its glorious peak, is utterly irrelevant. It is impossible to keep up the appropriate level – the expected level — of psychotic fandom when the pregame show is 10 hours long, three-quarters of the people at your party are sprinting into the room when the commercials come on and Vegas is taking bets on the duration of the inevitable Tom Petty nipple slip. When the Patriots and Giants take the field Sunday, a fan can be forgiven for thinking, for the first time, that the game itself is oddly small.
Reported by Jill, official oldest daughter of NewMexiKen:
I’m finally reading Killing Yourself to Live, by Chuck Klosterman. He talks about how, just out of college, he got a job writing a column for the largest daily paper in North Dakota, which made him “a mini-celebrity in downtown Fargo.” Then he footnotes: “Which is kind of like being the hottest guy in the Traveling Wilburys.”
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“Electile Dysfunction: The inability to become aroused over any of the choices for president put forth by either party in the 2008 election year.”
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“Bill Clinton Got More Coverage Last Week Than Any Republican in the Race ”
Of course, this reveals more about the media than it does about the Republicans.
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From the Hollywood Stock Exchange:
AwardOptions allow traders to buy and sell the Oscar nominees with exclusive Hollywood Derivatives centered around the 80th Academy Awards.
Five HSX AwardOptions will be issued for the nominees in this category. Each AwardOption is offered at H$5.00. The AwardOptions will halt trading at 4 p.m. EST on Sunday, February 24, in preparation for the awards ceremony to be held that evening.
The AwardOption for the winner in this category will cash out at H$25.00, while those failing to win will delist at H$0.00.
Right now No Country for Old Men, the Coens, Daniel Day-Lewis and Julie Christie seem to be the favored investments.
Among all the other reasons why Rudy Giuliani would be a horrible president, his presidential campaign itself reveals a deeply flawed individual. Harp on one theme (9-11) to the point of caricature; spend most of your time in one state. It’s as if he was campaigning to be Homeland Security director for Florida.
Rudy’s expected to come in fourth today in the Florida Republican primary. If that holds, it will be interesting to see if he withdraws from the race or continues this self-immolation. If he continues, I would say it demonstrates even further his close dance with insanity.
Update: Giuliani came in third just ahead of Huckabee. Word is he’s withdrawing from the race tomorrow and endorsing John McCain.
Apple stock is under $130, down from a high just 32 days ago of $202.
Good time to buy?
In the middle of the nineteenth century, the United States embarked on a new relationship with death, entering into a civil war that proved bloodier than any other conflict in American history, a war that would presage the slaughter of World War I’s Western Front and the global carnage of the twentieth century. The number of soldiers who died between 1861 and 1865, an estimated 620,000, is approximately equal to the total American fatalities in the Revolution, the War of 1812, the Mexican War, the Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, and the Korean War combined. The Civil War’s rate of death, its incidence in comparison with the size of the American population, was six times that of World War II. A similar rate, about 2 percent, in the United States today would mean six million fatalities. As the new southern nation struggled for survival against a wealthier and more populous enemy, its death toll reflected the disproportionate strains on its human capital. Confederate men died at a rate three times that of their Yankee counterparts; one in five white southern men of military age did not survive the Civil War.
Above from This Republic of Suffering by Drew Gilpin Faust, a new history of the reaction to the unprecedented death and dying of the American War of the Rebellion.
Thomas Paine was born in England on this date in 1737.
These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.
Today is the birthday
… of Katharine Ross. Mrs. Robinson’s daughter is 68.
… of Tom Selleck. Thomas Magnum is 63. He’s much older than me, you know.
… of Oprah Winfrey. She’s 54.
… of Judy Norton Taylor. Mary Ellen Walton is 50. (Which makes her five years older than Patricia Neal was when playing the mother in the original Walton film, The Homecoming: A Christmas Story. And a whole lot older than Michael Learned was when she became the Walton mom in the TV series. Learned was just 33.)
… of actor Edward Burns. He’s 40.
… of Sara Gilbert. Darlene Conner on “Roseanne” is 33.
… of blues singer Jonny Lang, all of 27.
Edward Abbey was born in Indiana, Pennsylvania, on this date in 1927. The Writer’s Almanac had this in 2005:
In 1956 he began working as a park ranger and a fire lookout for the National Park Service. He worked there for fifteen years, and this led him to write about the wilderness of Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. He said, “For myself I hold no preferences among flowers, so long as they are wild, free, spontaneous. Bricks to all greenhouses! Black thumb and cutworm to the potted plant!” His book Desert Solitaire (1968) is about his time working as a ranger in Arches National Park, Utah. In it he argues for, among other things, a ban on cars in wilderness preserves. In a memorial piece about Abbey, Edward Hoagland says of him, “Personally, he was a labyrinth of anger and generosity, shy but arresting because of his mixture of hillbilly and cowboy qualities, and even when silent he appeared bigger than life.”
NewMexiKen gathered these Abbey quotations:
If you’re never ridden a fast horse at a dead run across a desert valley at dawn, be of good cheer: You’ve only missed out on one half of life.
The indoor life is the next best thing to premature burial.
I have written much about many good places. But the best places of all, I have never mentioned.
In all of nature, there is no sound more pleasing than that of a hungry animal at its feed. Unless you are the food.
Phoenix, Arizona: an oasis of ugliness in the midst of a beautiful wasteland.
The idea of wilderness needs no defense, it only needs defenders.
May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds.
Edward Abbey died in 1989.
William Claude Dukenfield, better known as W.C. Fields, was born in Philadelphia on this date in 1880 or 1889.
A thing worth having is a thing worth cheating for.
Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on people.
I always keep a supply of stimulant handy in case I see a snake–which I also keep handy.
I never vote for anyone; I always vote against.
Last week, I went to Philadelphia, but it was closed.
A rich man is nothing but a poor man with money.
A woman drove me to drink and I didn’t even have the decency to thank her.
Anyone who hates children and animals can’t be all bad.
I am an expert of electricity. My father occupied the chair of applied electricity at the state prison.
I cook with wine, sometimes I even add it to the food.
If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There’s no point in being a damn fool about it.
If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bull.
Some things are better than sex, and some are worse, but there’s nothing exactly like it.
There comes a time in the affairs of man when he must take the bull by the tail and face the situation.
(When “caught” reading a Bible) “Just looking for loopholes.”
Fields died on Christmas Day 1946.
Ari at The Edge of the American West asked some historians “Has the state of the union ever been worse?” You should read the whole posting, but here’s the verdict.
Yes, there have been darker moments for the nation. Three of them. First, 1814, at the low ebb of the War of 1812, around the time the British sacked Washington. Second, the spring and early summer of 1863, when the Union couldn’t find a general to deal with Robert E. Lee’s treasonous hijinks. And third, 1933, before FDR’s New Deal began to alleviate the worst effects of the Depression.
In its September issue, National Geographic Adventure Magazine picked the “best mountain, urban, coastal, wilderness, and small towns in every state, where you can live the adventure dream daily”
Among cities, these were the top ten:
Chicago, Illinois
Nashville, Tennessee
Austin, Texas
Huntsville, Alabama
Gainesville, Florida
Overland Park, Kansas
Albuquerque, New Mexico
Tulsa, Oklahoma
Springfield, Missouri
Hattiesburg, Mississippi
Las Vegas was the top “adventure” spot overall.
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Eric at The Edge of the American West identifies the celebrity who originally called Bill Clinton the “first black president.” Guess what? It wasn’t Toni Morrison.
I’m not usually a weather wimp — well, except for lightning — but we just had a sustained gust of wind here at Casa NewMexiKen that got my attention. I mean it was almost like having the Big Bad Wolf out there huffing and puffing. They’re forecasting gusts to 50, but I have to think this particular gust saw that and raised it 10 or 20.
An inch or snow fell in the last hour. More overnight.
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Today is the birthday
… of Alan Alda. He’s 72.
… of Barbie Benton. Hugh Hefner’s one-time main squeeze is 58.
… of Sarah McLachlan. She’s 40.
… of Bilbo Baggins. Elijah Wood is 27.
Lucien B. Maxwell sold the “Maxwell Land Grant” for $1,350,000 on this date in 1870. The grant was more than 1.7 million acres, the largest tract of privately owned land in the Western Hemisphere. (Source: New Mexico Magazine)
Jackson Pollock was born on this date in 1912. Click image for larger version.
In 1929, Pollock began studying under Thomas Hart Benton, the realist mural painter, at Manhattan’s Art Students League. Pollock said, “He drove his kind of realism at me so hard I bounced right into nonobjective painting.” Pollock became deeply influenced by Pablo Picasso’s work and the work of other surrealist painters, and this led Pollock to experiment with his painting. He developed the “drip” technique, where he would draw or drip paint onto enormous canvases. Sometimes he applied paint directly from the tube, and other times he used aluminum paint to make his work more brilliant. He was so energetic in his attacks on the canvas that his approach to painting became known as “action painting.”
The Space Shuttle Challenger exploded moments after takeoff on this date in 1986. Read about it from The New York Times.
The Root has several brief videos that relate some family history for several individuals including Don Cheadle, Morgan Freeman, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Chris Rock and Tina Turner. The videos are excerpts from the upcoming PBS show African American Lives 2.
Save the Morgan Freeman video for last.
Thanks to Jill for the pointer. You’re right Jill, these are good.
The Today Show crew does a loving testimonial for the new Apple laptop, the MacBook Air.
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What do we mean when we say that first of all we seek liberty? I often wonder whether we do not rest our hopes too much upon constitutions, upon laws and upon courts. These are false hopes; believe me, these are false hopes. Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it. While it lies there it needs no constitution, no law, no court to save it. And what is this liberty which must lie in the hearts of men and women? It is not the ruthless, the unbridled will; it is not freedom to do as one likes. That is the denial of liberty, and leads straight to its overthrow. A society in which men recognize no check upon their freedom soon becomes a society where freedom is the possession of only a savage few; as we have learned to our sorrow.
“What then is the spirit of liberty? I cannot define it; I can only tell you my own faith. The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which seeks to understand the mind of other men and women; the spirit of liberty is the spirit which weighs their interests alongside its own without bias; the spirit of liberty remembers that not even a sparrow falls to earth unheeded; the spirit of liberty is the spirit of Him who, near two thousand years ago, taught mankind that lesson it has never learned but never quite forgotten; that there may be a kingdom where the least shall be heard and considered side by side with the greatest.
Judge Learned Hand
Remarks are excerpted from a speech Hand gave at “I Am an American Day” in 1944. Hand was born on January 27 in 1872. Many consider Judge Hand the most influential American jurist to have not served on the Supreme Court.
Learned Hand: The Man and the Judge is a lengthy book review of the major legal biography of Hand. The 1961 obituary from Time is worthwhile.
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Chief Justice John Roberts is just 53 today.
The actor James Cromwell is 68. Among his many roles, Cromwell was the farmer in Babe. The role earned him an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor. Who was the lead in that film — the pig?
Mikhail Baryshnikov is 60.
Sultry-voiced Margo Timmins of the Cowboy Junkies is 47.
Peter Fonda’s daughter Bridget is 44.
Jerome Kern was born on this date in 1885.
Kern and his wife returned to America, where he enhanced the scores of European musicals and worked as a rehearsal pianist. Then he met Oscar Hammerstein II, who became a lifelong friend, and the two collaborated on Show Boat in 1927. This musical gave us the songs “Ol’ Man River” and “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man.” In 1933, Kern and Hammerstein produced Roberta, which included the famous song “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes.”
Kern moved to Hollywood in 1935, and he enjoyed success there. He wrote “The Way You Look Tonight” for the movie Swing Time, and the song won an Academy Award. In 1941, Kern and Hammerstein wrote “The Last Time I Saw Paris” because Paris had just been occupied by Nazi Germany, and that song also won an Academy Award.
Kern died in 1945 with Hammerstein at his side. At the memorial service, Hammerstein said of his friend Jerome Kern, “He stimulated everyone. He annoyed some. He never bored anyone at any time.”
… was born in Salzburg on this date in 1756. Theophilus—or Gottlieb—or Amadé means “loved by God.” As an adult Mozart signed Wolfgang Amadé Mozart or simply Mozart. In the family he was known as Wolfgangerl or Woferl.
A delightful Mozart web site is Wolfgang Amadé Mozart, complete with music while you browse. Among other things, the site has an analysis of the truth and fiction in the wonderful film Amadeus. (It’s “Amadeus, an apologia” when you open the Biography section. The site is structured in a way that prevents a direct link.)
Fiction or not, watching Amadeus seems like a wonderful way to celebrate Mozart’s birthday.
Photographer’s Guide to New Mexico (and a little bit of Colorado).
It begins:
There are three cultures co-existing in New Mexico (if you read the middle third of my Summer 1994 travelogue then you might question the extent to which these actually co-exist). The Indians created interesting pueblos. The Spanish some impressive churches. The Anglos … mostly some houses that look like they could have been imported from Cleveland.
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This from Glenn Greenwald:
As it turns out, the South Carolina polls were even more inaccurate than the New Hampshire polls were, though that fact hasn’t received much attention because predicting the wrong winner (as the New Hampshire polls did) is a far more dramatic error than under-predicting the winner’s ultimate margin of victory (as the South Carolina polls did). But, mathematically speaking, the magnitude of the polling error is actually greater in South Carolina.
The average of the pre-New Hampshire polls showed Obama with an 8 point lead, and Clinton won by almost 3 points — a difference of 11 points. By contrast, the average of the pre-South Carolina polls showed Obama with an 11 point lead, and he won by 28 points — a difference of 17 points.
Greenwald thinks it was the racial campaigning by Bill Clinton that gave Obama the last-minute surge, just as it was the negative treatment by the press that gave Hillary her come from behind victory in New Hampshire.
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Strange Maps has a interesting map that has U.S. counties color-coded to show the leading religious denomination for each county. Worth a glance.
“I have never had a president who inspired me the way people tell me that my father inspired them. But for the first time, I believe I have found the man who could be that president — not just for me, but for a new generation of Americans.”
Caroline Kennedy makes an endorsement.
“If the constitution allowed it, I’d happily have Clinton back. I’d happily have Hillary in his place. But I don’t want them both.”
Josh Marshall in a very thoughtful piece titled “The Problem with Bill 2.0.”
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