Month: March 2005

Homework

“I understand there is now a new virginity movement in high schools around the country where kids are now saving themselves for the right teacher.”

Jay Leno

Pay daze

According to www.baseball-almanac.com, this is the 75th anniversary of Yankees GM Ed Barrow’s declaration that “no one in baseball will ever be paid more than Ruth” after he signed the Babe to a two-year deal for $80,000 a season.

Fast-forward to 2005, when Alex Rodriguez will make $80,000 — about every five innings.

Sideline Chatter

Pancho Villa …

and his forces attacked Columbus, New Mexico, on this date in 1916.

Why? Columbus had a garrison of about 600 U.S. soldiers. Villa had been sold blank ammunition by an arms dealer in the town. The United States was supporting Carranza in the continuing Mexican revolution. A few days earlier 10 Mexicans had been “accidentally” burned to death while in custody in El Paso during a “routine” delousing with gasoline.

Pancho VillaThe attack at dawn lasted about three hours before American troops chased Villa’s forces into Mexico. The town was burned and 17 Americans, mostly private citizens, were killed. About 100 of Villa’s troops were reportedly killed. The arms dealer was absent from Columbus that morning. He had a dental appointment in El Paso.

The next day President Wilson ordered General Jack Pershing and 5,000 America troops into Mexico to capture Villa. This “Punitive Expedition” was often mis-directed by Mexican citizens and Villa allegedly hid in the dust thrown up by Pershing’s vehicles. (The American Army used aircraft for reconnaissance for the first time. This is considered the beginning of the Army Air Corps.)

Unsuccessful in the hunt, by February 1917 the United States and Pershing turned their attention to the war in Europe. Minor clashes with Mexican irregulars continued to disturb the border from 1917 to 1919. Engagements took place near Buena Vista, Mexico, on 1 December 1917; in San Bernardino Canyon, Mexico, on 26 December 1917; near La Grulla, Texas, on 8-9 January 1918; at Pilares, Mexico, about 28 March 1918; at Nogales, Arizona, on 27 August 1918; and near El Paso, Texas, on 15-16 June 1919.

NewMexiKen’s very own grandfather served in Columbus during World War I, making him the first NewMexiKen.

Villa surrendered to the Mexican Government in 1920 and retired on a general’s pay. He was assassinated in 1923.

The Amistad case …

was decided by the Supreme Court on this date in 1841. The National Archives has a web page on the Amistad with links to images of several documents. The Archives summarizes the case:

In February of 1839, Portuguese slave hunters abducted a large group of Africans from Sierra Leone and shipped them to Havana, Cuba, a center for the slave trade. This abduction violated all of the treaties then in existence. Fifty-three Africans were purchased by two Spanish planters and put aboard the Cuban schooner Amistad for shipment to a Caribbean plantation. On July 1, 1839, the Africans seized the ship, killed the captain and the cook, and ordered the planters to sail to Africa. On August 24, 1839, the Amistad was seized off Long Island, NY, by the U.S. brig Washington. The planters were freed and the Africans were imprisoned in New Haven, CT, on charges of murder. Although the murder charges were dismissed, the Africans continued to be held in confinement as the focus of the case turned to salvage claims and property rights. President Van Buren was in favor of extraditing the Africans to Cuba. However, abolitionists in the North opposed extradition and raised money to defend the Africans. Claims to the Africans by the planters, the government of Spain, and the captain of the brig led the case to trial in the Federal District Court in Connecticut. The court ruled that the case fell within Federal jurisdiction and that the claims to the Africans as property were not legitimate because they were illegally held as slaves. The case went to the Supreme Court in January 1841, and former President John Quincy Adams argued the defendants’ case. Adams defended the right of the accused to fight to regain their freedom. The Supreme Court decided in favor of the Africans, and 35 of them were returned to their homeland. The others died at sea or in prison while awaiting trial.

In 1997 Steven Spielberg directed a fine movie concering the case with Anthony Hopkins portraying John Quincy Adams. Morgan Freeman and Anna Paquin are other “stars” in the film, but many critics thought Djimon Honsou as Cineque was the heart of the film. Retired Justice Harry Blackmun played Justice Joseph Story.

What it takes

Jon at Albloggerque, on what it takes:

Jeff Diamond is a retired kindergarten teacher. I hang out with a couple more retired men kindergarten teachers: Bob Evans and Pete Ziegler. In fact I taught kindergarten for 9 years myself. We have about 90 years of kinder experience between us. What do all three of us have in common as people that would drive us to such an unusual profession for men?

* We like to play.
* We are pretty even tempered.
* We like to play.

On writing

It’s the birthday of Pulitizer Prize-winning writer John McPhee. He’s 74. The Writer’s Almanac has an excellent profile of McPhee that includes this:

McPhee has published more than 25 books, even though he rarely writes more than 500 words a day. He once tried tying himself to a chair to force himself to write more, but it didn’t work. He said, “People say to me, ‘Oh, you’re so prolific.’ God, it doesn’t feel like it—nothing like it. But, you know, you put an ounce in a bucket each day, you get a quart.”

The Thing?

Anyone that has driven Interstate 10 between Tucson and New Mexico has passed the roadside attraction (and curio store, gas station and Dairy Queen) called The Thing? (Mile 322). Dozens of large yellow billboards advertise the place for miles and miles in both directions.

The Thing? has been there for as long as 40 years and NewMexiKen has passed it many, many times, never stopping. Recently I decided to stop, pay the $1 admission, and see what it was.

So now I’ve seen The Thing?

The Dreaded Dred Scott Decision

was handed down by the Supreme Court on this date in 1857.

The Missouri State Archives has an extensive report on Dred Scott, from which the following is taken:

Dred Scott[Chief Justice] Taney’s “Opinion of the Court” stated that Negroes were not citizens of the United States and had no right to bring suit in a federal court. In addition, Dred Scott had not become a free man as a result of his residence at Fort Snelling because the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional; Congress had no authority to prohibit slavery in the federal territories. Furthermore, Dred Scott did not become free based on his residence at Fort Armstrong (Rock Island), because his status, upon return to Missouri, depended upon Missouri law as determined in Scott v. Emerson. Because Dred Scott was not free under either the provisions of the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 or the 1820 Missouri Compromise, he was still a slave, not a citizen with the right to bring suit in the federal court system. According to Taney’s opinion, African Americans were “beings of an inferior order so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.”… Taney returned the case to the circuit court with instructions to dismiss it for want of jurisdiction.

Bob Wills …

was born on this date in 1905.

You can see the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tennessee,
It’s the home of country music, on that we all agree.
But when you cross that ole Red River, hoss,
that just don’t mean a thing,
‘Cause once you’re down in Texas,
Bob Wills is still the King.

(“Bob Wills Is Still The King” by Waylon Jennings)

Bob Wills was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1968 and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1999. The following is from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Inductee Detail:

Bob Wills was the driving force behind Western Swing, a form of country & western that was broader in scope than the parent genre. A master at synthesizing styles, Wills brought jazz, hillbilly, boogie, blues, big-band swing, rhumba, mariachi, jitterbug music and more under his ecumenical umbrella. He has been called “the King of Western Swing” and “the first great amalgamator of American music.”

Wills grew up in a part of Texas where diverse cultures and forms of music overlapped. His enthusiasm and mastery were such that he assimilated disperate genres into what might best be termed American music. (Wills called it “Texas fiddle music.”) “We’re the most versatile band in America,” Wills forthrightly asserted in 1944. He might’ve added that they were most innovative band as well. Certainly, they forced country music to open up in its acceptance of electric instruments. Even rock and roll’s freewheeling spirit of stylistic recombination has antecedents in the work of Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys.

Wills was born into a family of fiddlers that included his father, John Wills, who regularly won Texas fiddling competitions. Bob Wills learned how to play fiddle and mandolin from his father. As a young man, Wills performed at house dances, medicine shows and on the radio. With commercial sponsorship, Wills’ bands performed on radio in the early Thirties as the Aladdin Laddies (for the Aladdin Lamp Co.) and the Light Crust Doughboys (for Light Crust Flour). Following a salary dispute, Wills renamed his band the Texas Playboys and relocated to Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he had a live radio show. This exposure led to a contract with American Recording Corp. (later absorbed into Columbia Records).

In 1935, Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys laid down 24 tunes during their historic first session at a makeshift recording studio in Dallas. The group recorded prolifically in the late Thirties and early Forties, laying down such classics as “Steel Guitar Rag” (written by Leon McAuliffe, the Texas Playboys’ longtime steel guitar player), “Take Me Back to Tulsa” and Wills’ signature song, “New San Antonio Rose.” Their biggest hit, “New Spanish Two Step,” topped the country charts for 16 weeks in 1946.

Would I like to go to Tulsa, you bet your boots I would.
Just let me off at Archer, and I’ll walk down to Greenwood.
Take me back to Tulsa, I’m too young to marry.

(“Take Me Back To Tulsa” by Bob Wills and Tommy Duncan)

Elizabeth Barrett Browning …

was born on this date in 1806.

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right.
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.