Lady Wolverines are victorious over Penasco in the State Basketball Tournament. They will be playing at the Pit in Albuquerque at 4:00 pm on Friday 3/12/10 against Navajo Pine. Texico Schools will dismiss at 11:50 am with the buses running at 12:00 pm.

I wonder how many made the 464-mile round trip.

This was also on the website and struck me as a part of America that most of us left long ago.

Please keep Lucero family and the Anderson family in your prayers for the recent loss of their grandmothers.

The word Texico is a portmanteau. That’s a blending of two words.

[Navajo Pine High School is on the Arizona border. The two schools are more than 400 miles apart.]

ALBUQUERQUE — With the season on the line in the final minute of one of the most thrilling, intense and improbable come-from-behind victories of the 2010 Girls State Basketball Championships, there was no time for jokes.

Unless you’re Lakeshia Padilla.

With around 8,000 screaming fans on the edge of their seats and eyes transfixed on The Pit floor, the imposing 6-foot-1 post presence of the second-seeded Santa Fe Indian School Lady Braves walked up to junior point guard Jenine Coriz and whispered something in her ear before a critical free throw with 58 seconds remaining in a Class AAA semifinal with No. 6 Lovington.

“I just told her to call 1-800-Everytime,” Padilla said. “Then she’ll make them every time.”

The Santa Fe New Mexican

Coriz made the free throw and the Lady Braves went on to come from a 15-point deficit to defeat Lovington in the state 3AAA semi-final game. Last night SFIS defeated West Las Vegas in OT to win the 3AAA state championship.

… of Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Mike Stoller. He’s 77.

Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller have written some of the most spirited and enduring rock and roll songs: “Hound Dog” (originally cut by Big Mama Thornton in 1953 and covered by Elvis Presley three years later), “Love Potion No. 9″ (the Clovers), “Kansas City” (Wilbert Harrison), “On Broadway” (the Drifters), “Ruby Baby” (Dion) and “Stand By Me” (Ben E. King). Their vast catalog includes virtually every major hit by the Coasters (e.g., “Searchin’,” “Young Blood,” “Charlie Brown,” “Yakety Yak” and “Poison Ivy”). They also worked their magic on Elvis Presley, writing “Jailhouse Rock,” “Treat Me Nice” and “You’re So Square (Baby I Don’t Care)” specifically for him. All totaled, Presley recorded more than 20 Leiber and Stoller songs.

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum

Leiber wrote the lyrics. Stoller wrote the music.

… of Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Neil Sedaka. He’s 71.

Singer, songwriter, and pianist Neil Sedaka enjoyed two distinct periods of commercial success in two slightly different styles of pop music: first, as a teen pop star in the late ’50s and early ’60s, then as a singer of more mature pop/rock in the 1970s. In both phases, Sedaka, a classically trained pianist, composed the music for his hits, which he sang in a boyish tenor. And throughout, even when his performing career was at a low ebb, he served as a songwriter for other artists, resulting in a string of hits year in and year out, whether recorded by him or someone else. For himself, he wrote eight U.S. Top Ten pop hits, including the chart-toppers “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do,” “Laughter in the Rain,” and “Bad Blood.” The most successful cover of one of his compositions was Captain & Tennille’s recording of “Love Will Keep Us Together,” another number one.

All Music

… of William H. Macy. He’s 60. Macy was nominated for the best supporting actor Oscar for his performance in Fargo.

Percival Lowell was born March 13th in 1855. Lowell is credited with the discovery of Pluto, but Pluto isn’t even mentioned in his obituary. The foremost “discovery” of Professor Lowell’s career concerned Mars. The following is an excerpt from his obituary in 1916:

The great controversy among astronomers, in which he played a leading part, began in 1907 after his announcement that the observations made by his astronomical station, the Lowell Observatory at Flagstaff, Ariz., proved that Mars was inhabited. Professor Lowell had put the theory forward tentatively as early as 1895. Many eminent astronomers in this country and Europe accepted his conclusions of 1907 as unassailable. Others were skeptical. Professor Lowell continued from year to year to produce fresh evidence in favor of his theory by his observations at Flagstaff, where is located the best astronomical plant in the world for the observation of Mars.

Professor Lowell’s theory begins with the demonstration that the primary requisites for human life exist on the planet–water, heat, and atmosphere. His positive proof of the existence of human life on Mars is the network of lines which mark certain areas of the planet’s face, indicating the digging of artificial canals, which would require an intelligence and engineering skill as great or greater than that possessed by the inhabitants of this earth.

The New York Times

From an article in The Santa Fe New Mexican exploring the book The Pueblo Revolt and the Mythology of Conquest: An Indigenous Archaeology of Contact by Michael V. Wilcox.

Barbara Feldon, Agent 99 of the “Get Smart” TV series, is 77.

James Taylor is 62 today. He’s seen a lot of fire and he’s seen a lot of rain by now.

Liza Minnelli is 64.

Jon Provost is 60. Who? Timmy on Lassie.

Courtney B. Vance is 50.

Dave Eggers is 40.

While he was in college at the University of Illinois, his mother was diagnosed with stomach cancer. Then, just after his mother went through severe stomach surgery, his father was diagnosed with cancer. Six months later, both of his parents were dead. Eggers was just 21 years old.

Of the experience of losing both of his parents so suddenly, Eggers later said, “On the one hand you are so completely bewildered that something so surreal and incomprehensible could happen. At the same time, suddenly the limitations or hesitations that you might have imposed on yourself fall away. There’s a weird, optimistic recklessness that could easily be construed as nihilism but is really the opposite. You see that there is a beginning and an end and that you have only a certain amount of time to act. And you want to get started.”

Eggers had to drop out of college to become the guardian of his 8-year-old younger brother. They moved to San Francisco, and Eggers used the insurance money from his parents’ deaths to start his own magazine with some high school friends. They called their publication Might Magazine, because the liked the fact that the word “might” conveyed both strength and hesitation. The magazine developed a cult following for the way it satirized the magazine format. Each issue included an erroneous table of contents, irrelevant footnotes, and fictional error retractions. In one issue, they wrote, “On page 111, in our ‘Religious News Round-up,’ we reported that Jesus Christ was a deranged, filthy protohippy. In fact, Jesus Christ was the son of God. We regret the error.” To raise money for the magazine, they sold the contents of their recycle bins to readers.

Excerpt above from The Writer’s Almanac (2008)

If you have never read Eggers’s A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, stop what you’re doing, get a copy and read it. NOW!

I’ve also been told that Eggers new book, Zeitoun is a must read.

Jean-Louise Kerouac was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, on this date in 1922.

The story about how Kerouac composed On the Road is well-known: He cut up strips of tracing paper so that they’d fit in the typewriter, and taped them all together so he wouldn’t have to interrupt his flow of writing to adjust or add paper. He wrote the whole thing from start to finish in three weeks, with no paragraph breaks and minimal punctuation; and when he got up from his typewriter, he had in his hands a 119-foot-long scroll of a book that defined his generation.

The Writer’s Almanac

The above is an excerpt. Click the link for a better look at how the book was created.

President Franklin Roosevelt spoke to the people on the banking crisis just eight days after taking office. He began:

My friends:

I want to talk for a few minutes with the people of the United States about banking — to talk with the comparatively few who understand the mechanics of banking, but more particularly with the overwhelming majority of you who use banks for the making of deposits and the drawing of checks.

You may read or listen to the entire talk here.

In all, Roosevelt gave about 30 Fireside Chats. The National Archives describes them:

During the 1930s almost every home had a radio, and families typically spent several hours a day gathered together, listening to their favorite programs. Roosevelt called his radio talks about issues of public concern “Fireside Chats.” Informal and relaxed, the talks made Americans feel as if President Roosevelt was talking directly to them. Roosevelt continued to use fireside chats throughout his presidency to address the fears and concerns of the American people as well as to inform them of the positions and actions taken by the U.S. government.

Hugh

Arizona had been there every year beginning in 1985 — twelve times to the Sweet 16 or better, four times to the Final Four — and the national championship in 1997.

Why did they even bother to nominate those other four actresses for best supporting actress?

Mo’Nique was extraordinary in a difficult role. I’m shaking my head as I type just thinking about it.

Gabourey Sidibe gave a stunning performance as well in the title role. I have seen three of the five best actress performances now. I thought Meryl Streep was wonderful, but would have voted for Sanda Bullock before tonight. Now I’m not so sure.

If you haven’t already seen Precious, find the time.

Ralph Abernathy was born on this date in 1926. Abernathy was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s friend and associate and assumed leadership of the the Southern Christian Leadership Conference when King was killed in 1968. Abernathy was with King at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis that day. This photo of the two was taken in 1961.

Lawrence Welk was born in North Dakota on this date in 1903. He died in 1992.

One of television’s most enduring musical series, The Lawrence Welk Show, was first seen on network TV as a summer replacement program in 1955. Although the critics were not impressed, Mr. Welk’s show went on to last an astonishing 27 years. His format was simple: easy-listening music, what he referred to as “champagne music,” and a “family” of wholesome musicians, singers, and dancers.

The show ran on ABC for the first 16 years and was known in the early years as The Dodge Dancing Party. ABC canceled the show in 1971, not because of lack of popularity, but because it was “too old” to please advertisers. ABC’s cancellation did little to stop Welk, who lined up more than 200 independent stations for a successful syndicated network of his own.
. . .

There were many show favorites throughout the years including the Lennon Sisters, who were brought to his attention by his son Lawrence Jr. who was dating Dianne Lennon in 1955. Other favorites included the Champagne Ladies (Alice Lon and Norma Zimmer); accordionist Myron Floren, who was also the assistant conductor; singer-pianist Larry Hooper; singers Joe Feeney and Guy Hovis; violinist Aladdin; dancers Bobby Burgess and Barbara Boylan; and Welk’s daughter-in-law, Tanya Falan Welk.

Most of the regulars stayed with the show for years, but a few moved on–or who were told to move on by Mr. Welk. In 1959, for example, Welk fired Champagne Lady Alice Lon for “showing too much knee” on camera. After receiving thousands of protest letters for his actions, he attempted to have Alice return, but she refused.

The Museum of Broadcast Communications

Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Adams was born on March 11, 1952. He died from a heart attack in 2001.

So I took my daughter to soccer practice this evening, and another dad and I were talking to one of the moms, whom we both know and whom we have both seen roughly once a week for the past six months. After we talked for about 10 minutes, a second mom showed up, and immediately said to the mom we’d been talking to: “YOU HAD YOUR BABY!” And then they hugged, and the new mom got out baby pictures. And the other dad and I looked at each other and realized that not only had we failed to notice that she’d had a baby, but we had been at most only dimly aware that she had been pregnant. We apologized, and she assured us that it was no big deal. Women are accustomed to the cluelessness of guys in these matters.

The thing is, if she had shown up carrying a cool new cell phone, we would have noticed that.

As Nancy Astor said, when she admitted that she married beneath her, but then, ‘all women do.’”

While getting out of the car, the 3-year-old scooted into the driver’s seat. Told it was time to go, he replied, “Ok. I just wanted to call someone a jackass.”