Good ole days

Hell, NewMexiKen would probably even vote for her if they still looked like this.

The Audacity of Dreams

NewMexiKen has read both of Senator Obama’s books now — the autobiographical Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance and the more issue-oriented The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream.

I strongly recommend both of them. The first as an outstanding memoir — good reading by any standard. The second as a statement of issues facing the nation.

How does this happen?

The temperature is well into the 70s now and so time to break out the summer uniform — shorts and polo shirts. The problem is it seems that my shorts have shrunk over the winter. How do clothes shrink while they are put away in drawers?

Iz

Israel Kamakawiwo’ole, “White Sandy Beach of Hawai’i”

April 19th already is a holiday

. . . in Massachusetts. (Well, I guess it’s the third Monday now, but whatever.)

Today we celebrate the birthday

. . . of TV’s Wyatt Earp. Hugh O’Brian is 83.

. . . of Elinor Donahue. Donahue has nearly 100 credits listed at IMDB, but foremost she was the oldest daughter on famed 1950s sitcom “Father Knows Best.” Betty “Princess” Anderson is 71.

. . . of Ashley Judd, 40.

. . . of Oscar-nominee (2001) Kate Hudson. More than almost famous at 29.

. . . of Oscar-nominee (2005) Catalina Sardino Moreno. She’s full of grace at 27.

. . . of Maria Sharapova, 21.

Ole Evinrude was born on this date in 1877. Guess what he invented.

Eliot Ness was born on this date in 1903.

Ever since Eliot Ness first published The Untouchables in 1957, the public has fallen in love with the adventures of this authentic American hero. His book was a runaway best seller because it was the exciting true story of a brave and honest lawman pitted against the country’s most successful gangster, Al Capone. The television series that followed in the 1950’s and the Kevin Costner movie in 1987 built fancifully on the same theme.

The Crime Library

Vera Jayne Palmer was born on this date in 1933. We know her as Jayne Mansfield.

Grace Kelly became Her Serene Highness Princess Grace on this date in 1956.

By 1956, Grace Kelly was calling it quits after a movie-acting career of only five years—but what a career it was. Her 11 films included the 1952 classic High Noon, the 1956 musical High Society, and the Alfred Hitchcock-directed masterpieces Dial M for Murder, Rear Window, and To Catch a Thief. She had won an Oscar for her role in 1954’s The Country Girl—and all this before her twenty-seventh birthday.

American Heritage.

The uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto started 65 years ago today. The Writer’s Almanac from American Public Media has background.

The shot heard ’round the world

April 19, 1775.

At Lexington Green, the British were met by 77 American Minute Men led by John Parker. At the North Bridge in Concord, the British were confronted again, this time by 300 to 400 armed colonists, and were forced to march back to Boston with the Americans firing on them all the way. By the end of the day, the colonists were singing “Yankee Doodle” and the American Revolution had begun.

The Library of Congress

Indeed, if actions spoke louder than words, today would be Independence Day.

Oklahoma City Memorial

It was 13 years ago that the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City was bombed, killing 168 people and injuring 500. NewMexiKen has been to the Memorial twice. I’ve created an album with 12 photos taken in 2006 at this striking, yet somber place.

Oklahoma City Memorial

The greatest of the war correspondents

Earlier NewMexiKen noted Ernie Pyle’s death 63 years ago today. Here’s some more, this via CNN:

COMMAND POST, IE SHIMA April 18, (AP) — Ernie Pyle, war correspondent beloved by his co-workers, G.I.s and generals alike, was killed by a Japanese machine-gun bullet through his left temple this morning.

The bulletin went via radio to a ship nearby, then to the United States and on to Europe. Radio picked it up. Reporters rushed to gather comment. In Germany General Omar Bradley heard the news and could not speak. In Italy General Mark Clark said, “He helped our soldiers to victory.” Bill Mauldin, the young soldier-cartoonist whose warworn G.I.’s matched the pictures Pyle had drawn with words, said, “The only difference between Ernie’s death and that of any other good guy is that the other guy is mourned by his company. Ernie is mourned by the Army.” At the White House, still in mourning only six days after the death of Franklin Roosevelt, President Harry Truman said, “The nation is quickly saddened again by the death of Ernie Pyle.”

Here’s one small, but wonderful, sample of Pyle’s work from a collection of eight published earlier this year by AP and found at The Seattle Times:

Italy, Jan. 10, 1944. Pyle’s most famous column concerned the death of infantry Capt. Henry Waskow, who was exceptionally popular with his men. His body was brought down a mountainside by mule, and laid next to four others:

“The men in the road seemed reluctant to leave … one soldier came and looked down, and he said out loud, ‘God damn it.’ That’s all he said and then he walked away …

“Then a soldier came and stood beside the officer and bent over, and he too spoke to his dead captain, not in a whisper but awfully tenderly, and he said: ‘I sure am sorry, sir.’

“Then the first man squatted down, and he reached down and took the dead hand in his own, he sat there for a full five minutes … looking intently into the dead face, and he never uttered a sound all the time he sat there.

“And finally he put the hand down, and then reached up and gently straightened the points of the captain’s shirt collar, and then he sort of rearranged the tattered edges of the uniform around the wound, and then he got up and walked away down the road in the moonlight, all alone.”

National Park Week April 19-27

National Park Week is an annual Presidentially proclaimed week for celebration and recognition of Your National Parks.

Your National Parks are living examples of the best this Nation has to offer - our magnificent natural landscapes and our varied yet interrelated heritage. Parks can provide recreational experiences, opportunities to learn and grow, and places of quiet refuge.

This year, take a moment, an hour, a day to visit the national parks near you.

National Park Service

Follow the link for a schedule of events.

That important 15%

Albert Einstein died on this date in 1955. He was 76.

Albert Einstein’s work laid the groundwork for many modern technologies including nuclear weapons and cosmic science.

After his death, Einstein’s brain was removed and preserved for scientific research by Canadian scientists.

It was found that the part of Einstein’s brain responsible for mathematical thought and the ability to think in terms of space and movement was 15% wider than average.

It also lacked a groove which normally runs through this region suggesting that the neurons were able to communicate.

In 1999 Albert Einstein was named “person of the century” by Time magazine.

BBC On This Day

I’ll bet you didn’t know

… that John McCain doesn’t wear a flag lapel pin either.

That’s him on April 15 about to deliver his economics speech in a photo copied from the official campaign site — John McCain 2008.

Think I’m wrong? Then find a recent photo showing him wearing the pin.

It’s not that I care. I think the pins are silly — like flare at Chotchkie’s. But if you doubt the political media has a double standard, how come McCain’s choice isn’t bandied about like Obama’s?

You may click the image for a larger version.

By the way, that is a seriously old looking dude.

Earthquake Risk

Map excerpted from USGS by The Lede - New York Times Blog. Click image for larger version.

Poor Kenneth

In answer to the comment:

I love Seattle and believe, perhaps foolishly, that the weather wouldn’t bother me all that much.

But I have no plans to make my April Fool’s Day prank actually happen.

If I ever change the name of this blog, it will become “Poor Kenneth’s Almanack.” Benjamin Franklin’s famous serial publication (25 years) is somewhere in my mind as I do this, even now.

April 18th

Today is the birthday

. . . of Pollyanna. Hayley Mills is 62.

. . . of two-time Oscar nominee James Woods. He’s 61.

. . . of Rick Moranis, 55.

. . . of Daphne Moon. Jane Leeves of “Frasier” is 47.

. . . of Conan O’Brien. He’s 45.

. . . of America Ferrera; she’s 24.

Lawyer and author Clarence Darrow was born on this date in 1857.

Darrow became famous for defending some of the most unpopular people of his time. In the 1925 Monkey Trial, he defended high school teacher John Scopes for teaching Darwin’s theory of evolution in a Tennessee school. In “The Crime of the Century,” in 1924, he successfully defended two confessed teenage murderers, Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold, from receiving the death penalty.
. . .

He once said: “I never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with a lot of pleasure.”

The Writer’s Almanac from American Public Media

The first game was played at Yankee Stadium on this date in 1923.

War correspondent, and Albuquerquean, Ernie Pyle was killed by Japanese gunfire on the Pacific island of Ie Shima, off Okinawa, on this date in 1945.

Albert Einstein died at age 76 on this date in 1955.

And it was on this date in 1775 that Paul Revere and others rode to warn their countryman that British troops were mobilizing.

Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.

Continue reading Paul Revere’s Ride by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

It’s beginning to look like a recession

Question for the Class

Do you think if Barack Obama had left his seriously ill wife after having had multiple affairs, had been a member of the “Keating Five,” had had a relationship with a much younger lobbyist that his staff felt the need to try and block, had intervened on behalf of the client of said young lobbyist with a federal agency, had denounced then embraced Jerry Falwell, had denounced then embraced the Bush tax cuts, had confused Shiite with Sunni, had confused Al Qaeda in Iraq with the Mahdi Army, had actively sought the endorsement and appeared on stage with a man who denounced the Catholic Church as a whore, and stated that he knew next to nothing about economics — do you think it’s possible that Obama would have been treated differently by the media than John McCain has been?  Possible?

And — this is fun to contemplate — if Michelle Obama had been an adulteress, drug addict thief with a penchant for plagiarism — do you think that she would be subject to slightly different treatment from the media than Cindypills McCain has been?  Anyone?   

Cogitamus

Via Crooks and Liars.

Bisphenol A Update

Popular plastic water bottles, sippy cups and baby bottles made with a chemical called bisphenol A may be on their way out.

Two big signs in this morning’s papers: Wal-Mart says it’s going to stop selling BPA baby bottles early next year, and the company that makes Nalgene water bottles says it will stop using the chemical as well.

Wall Street Journal

Fine and Mellow

Despite the rube doing the introduction, one of the great performances ever.

Lost Town Blues

Good insight as always from Timothy Egan. He writes here about the real plight of small town America.

“People who live in small towns that have been passed over don’t need to be told that they’re bitter, or heroic. They’re stuck, is what they are.”

They don’t get it even when they get it

David Bohrman, who oversees all of the political coverage at CNN, took particular issue with the lapel-flag question, which was posed to Mr. Obama by a voter appearing on tape. Mr. Bohrman said he would have instead had the moderators ask each candidate about their stance on a possible amendment to the Constitution banning flag-burning. “That’s a legitimate flag question,” Mr. Bohrman said. “I think the voters are expecting more from us.”

Reported in The New York Times.

The bone-bending, ergonomic hell of economy class

Ask the pilot, Patrick Smith talks about airliner seats:

When carriers offer improvements, the focus, all too often, is on legroom. The various souped-up economy cabins out there — marketed as Economy Plus, Premium Economy, etc. — emphasize legroom as their biggest selling point. I can’t speak for everybody — I’m under 6 feet tall — but among the least of my concerns is the lack of space for my legs. A bigger issue is the inability to lift my legs.

What he talks about is actually kind of interesting for anyone who flies, including something I’ve never thought about before — why no cup holders?

Late night best lines

• Actually, one really embarrassing moment — you see this on the news? When the Pope blessed the crowd with holy water, well, some of it splashed on Dick Cheney, burned his skin.

• Some news from Iran. The chief of police in Tehran, who is in charge of fighting vice and bad morals, was found naked with six hookers. His name, Ahmed Spitzer.

— Jay Leno

• Well, big news, ladies and gentlemen –- the Pope is in the United States, flew into Washington, D.C. Hillary Clinton declined to meet the Pope at the airport. You know, she was worried about sniper fire.

— David Letterman

The Cougar Ace

A fascinating article from “Wired” about righting a capsizing ship off Alaska with $100 million worth of new Mazdas on board. Worthy of the click if only to peruse the photos.

High Tech Cowboys of the Deep Seas: The Race to Save the Cougar Ace

I gotta find another way to spend my time (rather than blogging)

Here’s the top four search strings in the past few hours here at NewMexiKen:

katrina campins 306
virgen de guadalupe 13
warning sign 11
“katrina campins” 9

Katrina Campins was among the first group on the Apprentice. It’s no doubt her photo they want now. I’m guessing this is the one.

I feel used. I’ve never posted that photo or linked to it before. The one I have that gets the traffic headed this way is, I suppose, this one from four years ago.

It’s a good day to love the whole world

Why do so many pro baseball players have August birthdays?

“Since 1950, a baby born in the United States in August has had a 50 percent to 60 percent better chance of making the big leagues than a baby born in July. The lesson: If you want your child to be a professional baseball player, you should start planning early. Very early. As in before conception.”

Greg Spira has the details at Slate Magazine.

The storyline

That has been the dominant media theme for the last two decades in our political discourse, and particularly in our national elections. Leave policy and ideology to the side. Just ignore it. What matters is that Democrats and liberals are weak, effete, elitist, nerdy, military-hating, gender-confused losers, whose men are effeminate, whose women are emasculating dykes, and who merit sneering mockery and derision. Republican right-wing male leaders are salt-of-the-earth, wholesome, likable tough guys — courageous warriors and normal family men who merit personal admiration and affection.

From an excerpt of Great American Hypocrites, newly published by Glenn Greenwald.

Best irony in a line so far, today

“The debate also touched on Iraq, Iran, the Middle East, taxes, the economy, guns and affirmative action.”

The Washington Post

Also. Touched. On.

H/T to Glenn Greenwald for the idea.

The Disgusting Debate

In my ideal political world, both candidates would have told Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos to shut up and change the subject.

Rustbelt Intellectual

An hour into the latest Democratic Debate and overwhelmingly, the consensus is that ABC is doing a fine job… of completely ignoring the issues that concern Americans and focusing on minutia that is hurting the race, the Democratic party and the American electoral process.

Crooks and Liars

At the end, Gibson pompously thanked the candidates — or was he really patting himself on the back? — for “what I think has been a fascinating debate.” He’s entitled to his opinion, but the most fascinating aspect was waiting to see how low he and Stephanopoulos would go, and then being appalled at the answer.

Tom Shales

After the first forty minutes of last night’s Democratic debate, it was clear we were watching something historic. Not historic in a good way, mind you, but historic in the sense of being something so deeply embarrassing to the nation that it will be pointed to, in future books and documentary works, as a prime example of the collapse of the American media into utter and complete substanceless, into self-celebrated vapidity, and into a now-complete inability or unwillingness to cover the most important affairs of the nation to any but the most shallow of depths.

Congratulations are clearly in order. ABC had two hours of access to two of the three remaining candidates vying to lead the most powerful nation in the world, and spent the decided majority of that time mining what the press considers the true issues facing the republic. Bittergate; Rev. Wright; Bosnia; American flag lapel pins. That’s what’s important to the future of the country.

Daily Kos

An open letter to Charlie Gibson and George Stephanapoulos

It’s hard to know where to begin with this, less than an hour after you signed off from your Democratic presidential debate here in my hometown of Philadelphia, a televised train wreck that my friend and colleague Greg Mitchell has already called, quite accurately, “a shameful night for the U.S. media.” It’s hard because — like many other Americans — I am still angry at what I just witnesses, so angry that it’s hard to even type accurately because my hands are shaking. Look, I know that “media criticism” — especially when it’s one journalist speaking to another — tends to be a genteel, collegial thing, but there’s no genteel way to say this.

With your performance tonight — your focus on issues that were at best trivial wastes of valuable airtime and at worst restatements of right-wing falsehoods, punctuated by inane “issue” questions that in no way resembled the real world concerns of American voters – you disgraced my profession of journalism, and, by association, me and a lot of hard-working colleagues who do still try to ferret out the truth, rather than worry about who can give us the best deal on our capital gains taxes. But it’s even worse than that. By so badly botching arguably the most critical debate of such an important election, in a time of both war and economic misery, you disgraced the American voters, and in fact even disgraced democracy itself. Indeed, if I were a citizen of one of those nations where America is seeking to “export democracy,” and I had watched the debate, I probably would have said, “no thank you.” Because that was no way to promote democracy.

Will Bunch at Philadelphia Daily News. There’s more.

Bunch, a journalist himself, says: “Although, to be blunt, I would also urge the major candidates in 2012 to agree only to debates that are organized by the League of Women Voters, with citizen moderators and questioners. Because we have proven without a doubt in 2008 that working journalists don’t deserve to be the debate ‘deciders.’”

A-fucking-men.

Movie Spoiler T-Shirt

A very cool T-shirt design.

Some sobering stories

These kinds of stories keep appearing.

Holy Macanoly!

It’s snowing at Casa NewMexiKen!

It was 80º yesterday.

April 17th ought to be a national holiday

Today we celebrate the birthday

. . . of Olivia Hussey. Sixteen when she played Juliet in Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet, she’s 57 today.

. . . of Nick Hornby. He’s 51.

The book was called Fever Pitch (1992), and it came out at a time when football fans were generally looked down upon by the British upper class. But the book became something of a phenomenon in Great Britain, selling hundreds of thousands of copies, making it one of the best-selling books about sport ever published in the English language. Part of what made the book so popular was that it captured the way people can rely on a sports team to give their lives drama and meaning. Hornby wrote, “The natural state of the football fan is bitter disappointment, no matter what the score.”

The Writer’s Almanac

. . . of Liz Phair. She’s 41.

. . . of Jennifer Garner. She’s 36.

J. P. Morgan was born on this date in 1837.

[Morgan] began his career in 1857 as an accountant, and worked for several New York banking firms until he became a partner in Drexel, Morgan and Company in 1871, which was reorganized as J.P. Morgan and Company in 1895. Described as a coldly rational man, Morgan began reorganizing railroads in 1885, becoming a board member and gaining control of large amounts of stock of many of the rail companies he helped restructure. In 1896, Morgan embarked on consolidations in the electric, steel (creating U.S. Steel, the world’s first billion-dollar corporation, in 1901), and agricultural equipment manufacturing industries. By the early 1900s, Morgan was the main force behind the Trusts, controlling virtually all the basic American industries. He then looked to the financial and insurance industries, in which his banking firm also achieved a concentration of control.

The American Experience

Karen Dinesen was born on this date in 1885. We know her as Isak Dinesen.

[S]o she decided to write about her experiences in Africa. Instead of writing an ordinary memoir, she wrote about her time in Africa as though it was a half-remembered dream in her book Out of Africa (1937).

She wrote, “Looking back on a sojourn in the African high-lands, you are struck by your feeling of having lived for a time up in the air.”

And, “[I watched] elephants … pacing along as if they had an appointment at the end of the world … [and I once saw a] lion … crossing the grey plain on his way home from the kill, drawing a dark wake in the silvery grass, his face still red up to the ears.”

The Writer’s Almanac from American Public Media

Nikita Khrushchev was born on this date in in 1894. Khrushchev was Soviet Premier from 1954-1964. The New York Times has posted its lengthy obituary from 1971. One of the more infamous moments at the United Nations took place when Khrushchev visited there in 1960 and reportedly banged his shoe on the desk in a protest. Or maybe he didn’t. Read what NewMexiKen posted about this incident in 2004.

Thornton Wilder was born on this date in 1897.

As a boy, he lived near a university theater where they performed Greek dramas, and his mother let him participate as a member of the chorus. He never forgot the experience, and he decided then that he would try to write for the theater someday. He got a job at the University of Chicago and began to write a series of experimental one-act plays that used a minimum of scenery and props, and often included an all-knowing character called the Stage Manager. Then, in 1938, he produced the play for which he is best known, Our Town, one of the first major Broadway plays to use almost no stage scenery, so that the audience had to imagine the world in which the characters lived.

Our Town is about the New England village of Grover’s Corners, where the characters George Gibbs and Emily Webb grow up, fall in love at the soda fountain, and get married. When Emily dies in childbirth, she gets to relive the day of her 12th birthday and realizes how little she cherished life while she was alive.

The Writer’s Almanac

William Holden was born on this date in 1918. Holden was nominated three times for the Best Actor Oscar, winning for Stalag 17 in 1954. His other nominations were for Sunset Blvd. and Network. Holden is probably as well known for his portrayal of Hal Carter opposite Kim Novak in Picnic and as the leader of the demolition team intent on destroying Alec Guiness’ Bridge on the River Kwai.

But, most importantly, Emily, official younger daughter of NewMexiKen, was born on April 17th. Happy birthday Emily!

Horton Hears a Misogynist

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar takes exception to the sexism in Horton Hears a Who (the film).

What’s especially insidious here isn’t just that the subplot was written and approved and filmed, but that since the movie has come out, there hasn’t been a popular outcry about it. That we don’t even ask why, in the years it took to make the movie, no one along the line said, “This isn’t a good message to send to our kids.” Is it because sexism is so ingrained in our society that we don’t even flinch at it when it’s shoved in our faces?

Go read what he has to say.

And click here to see a mighty big rocking chair!

‘Over here on E Street, we’re proud to support Obama for President’

He has the depth, the reflectiveness, and the resilience to be our next President. He speaks to the America I’ve envisioned in my music for the past 35 years, a generous nation with a citizenry willing to tackle nuanced and complex problems, a country that’s interested in its collective destiny and in the potential of its gathered spirit. A place where “…nobody crowds you, and nobody goes it alone.”

Part of a letter to “Friends and Fans” from Bruce Springsteen.

The other Obama

“If Michelle runs in eight years, anyone who bitches about ‘dynasty’ voting gets smacked.”

Bitch Ph.D. Go see the video accompanying this headline.

How about an Obama-Edwards ticket? Michelle and Elizabeth!

Best line of the day, so far

Yesterday Smokey, the apartment maintenance man next door, helped me haul a dead washing machine to the city dump. I asked him what he thought about the Obama thing.

“Huh?” he said.

He spoke for millions.

Joe Bageant

Bageant also tell us: “And I wouldn’t vote for any of the three even if they knocked on my door bearing a bucket of smoked pork ribs and a bottle of Jack Daniels.”

Call for help

This is addressed to any readers in the Albuquerque area. I need the name of a reliable tree service. Casa NewMexiKen has about a dozen piñons that appear to have black scale. The needles are dying quickly. I called a service and they came out and sprayed and talked a good story, but frankly I felt like I was doing business with somebody headquartered in a motel on Central on their way through town. That’s probably not fair, but I feel like I feel.

This is an emergency, but it gets expensive fast and I need reliability — and a strong comfort zone.

Anyone? You can comment or email.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Nobody