Month: April 2008

Shiloh

The first great battle of the American Civil War began on this date in 1862. The Union Army, under Grant, was encamped in a poorly chosen position at Pittsburg Landing, Tennessee,. They were attacked by Confederates under Johnston and Beauregard early Sunday, April 6. ShilohBy the end of the day, Confederates had catured the key position of Shiloh church and driven Union lines nearly to the Tennessee River. Grant, reinforced by Buell, counter attacked Monday morning, regained the lost ground, and forced the Confederates to retreat to Corinth, Mississippi. It was ostensibly a Union victory, though Grant was faulted for a lack of precaution that led to the first day’s disaster. Under criticism to remove Grant, Lincoln replied, “I can’t spare this man, he fights.”

According to James M. McPherson in Battle Cry of Freedom:

The 20,000 killed and wounded at Shiloh (about equally distributed between the two sides) were nearly double the 12,000 battle casualties at [First] Manassas, Wilson’s Creek, Fort Donelson, and Pea Ridge combined.

Shiloh was the beginning of total war.

Gravatars

If you’d like a little image to show up next to your comments (very small in the Latest Comments section in the sidebar, not so small next to the actual comment), you will need to sign up for a Gravatar — a Globally Recognized Avatar.

Sign up requires an email address and a password, uploading the image you want to use (and cropping it), a few other minor tweaks, and voila wherever you comment using that email address the image (the gravatar) will appear — well, it will appear if the particular website or blog is configured for gravatars, as NewMexiKen now is.

The hardest part for me was choosing an image — something I still haven’t settled on.

Just making stuff up

The news media can’t even decide when Charlton Heston was born (see earlier post), but The Writer’s Almanac has the birthday of Sacajawea. I didn’t even know the Shoshone were keeping birth certificates in 1786.

It’s the birthday of the Shoshone woman Sacajawea, born in Idaho (1786), who served as interpreter for Lewis and Clark’s expedition (1804). Born to a Shoshone chief, kidnapped at 10 by the Hidatsa tribe, and sold into slavery, she was then bought by a French Canadian trapper named Charbonneau, who married her. When Lewis and Clark hired Charbonneau to guide them to the Pacific, his teenage wife — with her two-month-old baby on her back — was part of the package. Officially she acted as interpreter, speaking half a dozen Indian languages, but she also knew which wilderness plants were edible and saved the explorers’ records when their boat overturned. She served as camp cook, housekeeper, and peacemaker with the watchful tribes they met along their way.

Of course, Sacajawea did NOT serve as a guide in 1804. Lewis and Clark didn’t even meet Charbonneau until the winter of 1804-1805. And, of course, the two-month old (in April 1805) was a nine-month-old by the time they wintered 1805-1806 near present-day Astoria, Oregon.

Whatever.

Charlton Heston

In case you’ve noticed the discrepancy in various news reports, Charlton Heston’s birth year seems to be either 1923 or 1924. (In either case he was born on October 4.) Why no enterprising obituary writer saw fit to check some vital records is beyond me.

April 6th

Today is the birthday

… of Andre Previn. The composer-conducter and 13-time Oscar nominee — he won for Gigi, Porgy and Bess, Irma la Douce and My Fair Lady — is 79. Previn was married to Mia Farrow for most of the 1970s. They had three children and adopted three more.

… of Merle Haggard. The Country Music Hall of Fame inductee is 71.

Haggard has recorded more than 600 songs, about 250 of them his own compositions. (He often shares writing credits as gestures of financial and personal largess.) He has had thirty-eight #1 songs, and his “Today I Started Loving You Again” (Capitol, 1968) has been recorded by nearly 400 other artists.

In addition, Haggard is an accomplished instrumentalist, playing a commendable fiddle and a to-be-reckoned-with lead guitar. He and the Strangers played for Richard Nixon at the White House in 1973, at a barbecue on the Reagan ranch in 1982, at Washington’s Kennedy Center, and 60,000 miles from earth—courtesy of astronaut Charles Duke, who brought a tape aboard Apollo 16 in 1972. Haggard has won numerous CMA and ACM Awards including both organizations’ 1970 Entertainer of the Year awards, been nominated for scores of others, was elected to the Songwriters’ Hall of Fame in 1977, and won Country Music Hall of Fame membership in 1994. In 1984 he won a Grammy in the Best Country Vocal Performance, Male category for “That’s the Way Love Goes.” (Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum)

… of Billy Dee Williams. Lando Calrissian is 71. Williams played Gale Sayers in the classic 1971 TV movie Brian’s Song.

“There’s always been a lot of misunderstanding about Lando’s character. I used to pick up my daughter from elementary school and get into arguments with little children who would accuse me of betraying Han Solo.”

… of Barry Levinson. The six-time Oscar nominee (writing, directing) won for best director for Rain Man. He’s 66.

… of John Ratzenberger. Best known as Cliff Clavin the mailman on Cheers, Ratzenberger is also the voice of Hamm the Piggy Bank in the Toy Story movies and Yeti in Monsters, Inc. Ratzenberger is 61.

… of Jason Hervey. Wayne Arnold of “The Wonder Years” is 36.

… of Zach Braff. He’s 33 today.

Mine Is Longer than Yours

In this week’s The New Yorker, Michael Kinsley has about as accurate an analysis of aging as any I’ve read. Worthwhile for oldsters of all ages. He also touches poignantly on his Parkinson’s.

Some excerpts:

What’s more, of all the gifts that life and luck can bestow—money, good looks, love, power—longevity is the one that people seem least reluctant to brag about. In fact, they routinely claim it as some sort of virtue—as if living to ninety were primarily the result of hard work or prayer, rather than good genes and never getting run over by a truck. Maybe the possibility that the truck is on your agenda for later this morning makes the bragging acceptable. The longevity game is one that really isn’t over till it’s over.

Anyway, the answer is sixty-three. If a hundred Americans start the voyage of life together, on average one of them will have died by the time the group turns sixteen. At forty, their lives are half over: further life expectancy at age forty is 39.9. And at age sixty-three the group starts losing an average of one person every year. Then it accelerates. By age seventy-five, sixty-seven of the original hundred are left. By age one hundred, three remain.

For a yuppie careerist, the first painful recognition that you have crossed the invisible line probably comes at work. You’ve done fine, but guess what? You will not be chairman of the company, or editor of the newspaper, or president of the university. It’s mathematically inevitable that for every C.E.O. there will be half a dozen vice-presidents whose careers will seem successful enough to everybody but themselves. Nevertheless, to them this realization is poignant.

Precisely.

The U.S. establishment media in a nutshell

In the past two weeks, the following events transpired. A Department of Justice memo, authored by John Yoo, was released which authorized torture and presidential lawbreaking. It was revealed that the Bush administration declared the Fourth Amendment of the Bill of Rights to be inapplicable to “domestic military operations” within the U.S. The U.S. Attorney General appears to have fabricated a key event leading to the 9/11 attacks and made patently false statements about surveillance laws and related lawsuits. Barack Obama went bowling in Pennsylvania and had a low score.

Here are the number of times, according to NEXIS, that various topics have been mentioned in the media over the past thirty days:

“Yoo and torture” – 102

“Mukasey and 9/11” — 73

“Yoo and Fourth Amendment” — 16

“Obama and bowling” — 1,043

“Obama and Wright” — More than 3,000 (too many to be counted)

“Obama and patriotism” – 1,607

“Clinton and Lewinsky” — 1,079

Glenn Greenwald, who has more. Go read his Update, if nothing else.

Pocahontas married John Rolfe

. . . on this date in 1614. Jamestown Rediscovery, the web site of the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities’ Jamestown Rediscovery archaeological project, tells the story.

Pocahontas was an Indian princess, the daughter of Powhatan, the powerful chief of the Algonquian Indians in the Tidewater region of Virginia. She was born around 1595 to one of Powhatan’s many wives. They named her Matoaka, though she is better known as Pocahontas, which means “Little Wanton,” playful, frolicsome little girl.

Pocahontas probably saw white men for the first time in May 1607 when Englishmen landed at Jamestown. The one she found most likable was Captain John Smith. The first meeting of Pocahontas and John Smith is a legendary story, romanticized (if not entirely invented) by Smith. He was leading an expedition in December 1607 when he was taken captive by some Indians. Days later, he was brought to the official residence of Powhatan at Werowocomoco, which was 12 miles from Jamestown. According to Smith, he was first welcomed by the great chief and offered a feast. Then he was grabbed and forced to stretch out on two large, flat stones. Indians stood over him with clubs as though ready to beat him to death if ordered. Suddenly a little Indian girl rushed in and took Smith’s “head in her arms and laid her owne upon his to save him from death.” The girl, Pocahontas, then pulled him to his feet. Powhatan said that they were now friends, and he adopted Smith as his son, or a subordinate chief. Actually, this mock “execution and salvation” ceremony was traditional with the Indians, and if Smith’s story is true, Pocahontas’ actions were probably one part of a ritual. At any rate, Pocahontas and Smith soon became friends.

Relations with the Indians continued to be generally friendly for the next year, and Pocahontas was a frequent visitor to Jamestown. She delivered messages from her father and accompanied Indians bringing food and furs to trade for hatchets and trinkets. She was a lively young girl, and when the young boys of the colony turned cartwheels, “she would follow and wheele some herself, naked as she was all the fort over.” She apparently admired John Smith very much and would also chat with him during her visits. Her lively character and poise made her appearance striking. Several years after their first meeting, Smith described her: “a child of tenne yeares old, which not only for feature, countenance, and proportion much exceedeth any of the rest of his (Powhatan’s) people but for wit and spirit (is) the only non-pariel of his countrie.
Continue reading Pocahontas married John Rolfe

Rhetorical mooning

NewMexiKen first posted this four years ago after Debby had posted it elsewhere:

When NASA was preparing for the Apollo Project, it took the astronauts to a Navajo reservation in Arizona for training. One day, a Navajo elder and his son came across the space crew walking among the rocks.

The elder, who spoke only Navajo, asked a question. His son translated for the NASA people: “What are these guys in the big suits doing?” One of the astronauts said that they were practicing for a trip to the moon. When his son relayed this comment the Navajo elder got all excited and asked if it would be possible to give to the astronauts a message to deliver to the moon.

Recognizing a promotional opportunity when he saw one, a NASA official accompanying the astronauts said, “Why certainly!” and told an underling to get a tape recorder. The Navajo elder’s comments into the microphone were brief. The NASA official asked the son if he would translate what his father had said. The son listened to the recording and laughed uproariously. But he refused to translate.

So the NASA people took the tape to a nearby Navajo village and played it for other members of the tribe. They too laughed long and loudly but also refused to translate the elder’s message to the moon.

Finally, an official government translator was summoned. After she finally stopped laughing, the translator relayed the message: “Watch out for these assholes. They have come to steal your land.”

This story has been around the Internet since at least 1995. According to the Urban Legends Reference Pages —

Although it might possibly have earlier antecedents as yet unknown to us, the origin of this tale appears to be a joke Johnny Carson included in his Tonight Show monologue on the evening of 22 July 1969, two days after Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first men to set foot on the surface of the moon.

April 5th

Today is the birthday

. . . of Gale Storm. My Little Margie is 86. That TV series ran 1952-1955. Storm’s real name was neither Gale, nor Margie (nor Susanna Pomeroy). It was Josephine Cottle.

. . . of Colin Powell. He’s 71. As NewMexiKen exited my office in 2001, I nearly ran into Secretary Powell and Condoleezza Rice walking down the hall after leaving one of Vice President Cheney’s Energy Task Force meetings. Powell is one of eight Secretaries of State that I’ve met or seen, but the only one I almost knocked down.

. . . of Michael Moriarty. He’s 67. Moriarty has won three Emmy awards, but none for playing Ben Stone in Law and Order despite five nominations. NewMexiKen liked Moriarty best as Henry “Author” Wiggen in Bang the Drum Slowly (with Robert De Niro). The IMDB mini biography for Moriarty says he’s 6-feet-4. Interestingly, the mini biography was written by Michael Moriarty.

Booker T. Washington was born on this date in 1856.

An incident of Dr. Washington’s life that stirred up a controversy throughout the country was the occasion of his dining at the White House with President Roosevelt on Oct. 16, 1901. Dr. Washington went to the White House at the invitation of the President, and, when the news was spread abroad, thousands, both North and South, who were moved by race prejudice or by a belief that social equality between blacks and whites had been encouraged, became angry. Most of the criticism fell upon Colonel Roosevelt, but the incident served also to injure Dr. Washington’s work in some parts of the South.

The New York Times

Spencer Tracy was born on this date in 1900. Tracy was nominated for the Best Actor Oscar nine times and won twice, for Captains Courageous and Boys Town. Tracy died in 1967.

Ruth Elizabeth Davis was born on this date in 1908. As Bette Davis she was nominated for the Best Actress Oscar 11 times, winning for Dangerous and Jezebel. Davis died in 1989.

Conductor Herbert von Karajan was also born on this date in 1908 and he, too, died in 1989.

Gregory Peck was born on this date in 1916. Peck was nominated for the Best Actor Oscar five times, winning for To Kill a Mockingbird. Mr. Peck also won the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. Peck died in 2003.

Joseph Lister was born on this date in 1827. His principle that bacteria must never enter a surgical incision was a breakthrough for modern surgery. Lister died in 1912.

Best line last night

“The other night, Barbara Walters had a special called ‘Live to be 150.’ And she showed people who are over 100 years old, leading active lives: jogging, hiking; one guy even running for president in the Republican Party.”

Jay Leno

Meanwhile, Letterman’s McCain is old joke of the night:

“And John McCain has one of those 3:00 a.m. campaign commercials. In this one, it is 3 a.m. and he just gets up to go to the bathroom.”

Martin Luther King

Lorraine Motel

. . . was assassinated while standing on the balcony outside his room at the Motel Lorraine in Memphis, Tennessee, on this date in 1968.

The evening before King concluded his speech with:

You know, several years ago, I was in New York City autographing the first book that I had written. And while sitting there autographing books, a demented black woman came up. The only question I heard from her was, “Are you Martin Luther King?”

And I was looking down writing, and I said yes. And the next minute I felt something beating on my chest. Before I knew it I had been stabbed by this demented woman. I was rushed to Harlem Hospital. It was a dark Saturday afternoon. And that blade had gone through, and the X-rays revealed that the tip of the blade was on the edge of my aorta, the main artery. And once that’s punctured, you drown in your own blood—that’s the end of you.

It came out in the New York Times the next morning, that if I had sneezed, I would have died. Well, about four days later, they allowed me, after the operation, after my chest had been opened, and the blade had been taken out, to move around in the wheel chair in the hospital. They allowed me to read some of the mail that came in, and from all over the states, and the world, kind letters came in. I read a few, but one of them I will never forget. I had received one from the President and the Vice-President. I’ve forgotten what those telegrams said. I’d received a visit and a letter from the Governor of New York, but I’ve forgotten what the letter said. But there was another letter that came from a little girl, a young girl who was a student at the White Plains High School. And I looked at that letter, and I’ll never forget it. It said simply, “Dear Dr. King: I am a ninth-grade student at the White Plains High School.” She said, “While it should not matter, I would like to mention that I am a white girl. I read in the paper of your misfortune, and of your suffering. And I read that if you had sneezed, you would have died. And I’m simply writing you to say that I’m so happy that you didn’t sneeze.”

And I want to say tonight, I want to say that I am happy that I didn’t sneeze. Because if I had sneezed, I wouldn’t have been around here in 1960, when students all over the South started sitting-in at lunch counters. And I knew that as they were sitting in, they were really standing up for the best in the American dream. And taking the whole nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the Founding Fathers in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. If I had sneezed, I wouldn’t have been around in 1962, when Negroes in Albany, Georgia, decided to straighten their backs up. And whenever men and women straighten their backs up, they are going somewhere, because a man can’t ride your back unless it is bent. If I had sneezed, I wouldn’t have been here in 1963, when the black people of Birmingham, Alabama, aroused the conscience of this nation, and brought into being the Civil Rights Bill. If I had sneezed, I wouldn’t have had a chance later that year, in August, to try to tell America about a dream that I had had. If I had sneezed, I wouldn’t have been down in Selma, Alabama, been in Memphis to see the community rally around those brothers and sisters who are suffering. I’m so happy that I didn’t sneeze.

And they were telling me, now it doesn’t matter now. It really doesn’t matter what happens now. I left Atlanta this morning, and as we got started on the plane, there were six of us, the pilot said over the public address system, “We are sorry for the delay, but we have Dr. Martin Luther King on the plane. And to be sure that all of the bags were checked, and to be sure that nothing would be wrong with the plane, we had to check out everything carefully. And we’ve had the plane protected and guarded all night.”

And then I got to Memphis. And some began to say the threats, or talk about the threats that were out. What would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers?

Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter with me now. Because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. And I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

April 4th

Today is the birthday

… of Maya Angelou. The poet is 80.

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I’m not cute or built to suit a fashion model’s size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I’m telling lies.
I say,
It’s in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.

I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please,
And to a man,
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees.
Then they swarm around me,
A hive of honey bees.
I say,
It’s the fire in my eyes,
And the flash of my teeth,
The swing in my waist,
And the joy in my feet.
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.

Read more Maya Angelou poetry (including the rest of “Phenomenal Woman”).

… of Craig T. Nelson. The voice of Mr. Incredible is 64. Nelson won an Emmy for Coach.

… of Steve Gatlin of The Gatlin Brothers. He’s 57.

Led by Larry Gatlin, the Gatlin Brothers are one of the most popular country groups in the music’s history. Adopting the close harmony vocal techniques of the Louvins and the Everlys to the highly polished country-pop era, Larry and the Gatlin Brothers scored a number of hits during the ’70s and ’80s. Often, the group walked the line between intricate, inventive country and pure commercial material, which resulted in strong sales but occasionally poor reviews. (allmusic)

All the gold in California
Is in a bank in the middle of Beverly Hills
In somebody else’s name

… of Robert Downey Jr. The Oscar-nominee (for Chaplin) is 43.

Jamie Lynn Spears is 17.

Heath Ledger should have been 29 today.

Anthony Perkins was born on this date in 1932. Tony Perkins is best known for his portrayal of Norman Bates in Psycho but he was nominated for the Oscar for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for Friendly Persuasion. Perkins died in 1992 as a result of pnuemonia brought on by AIDS.

Muddy Waters

… was born on this date in 1915. His real name was McKinley Morganfield.

The following is excerpted from Waters’ obituary written by Robert Palmer in The New York Times, May 1, 1983:

Beginning in the early 1950’s, Mr. Waters made a series of hit records for Chicago’s Chess label that made him the undisputed king of Chicago blues singers. He was the first popular bandleader to assemble and lead a truly electric band, a band that used amplification to make the music more ferociously physical instead of simply making it a little louder.

In 1958, he became the first artist to play electric blues in England, and while many British folk-blues fans recoiled in horror, his visit inspired young musicians like Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Brian Jones, who later named their band the Rolling Stones after Mr. Waters’s early hit “Rollin’ Stone.” Bob Dylan’s mid-1960’s rock hit “Like a Rolling Stone” and the leading rock newspaper Rolling Stone were also named after Mr. Waters’s original song. …

But Muddy Waters was more than a major influence in the pop music world. He was a great singer of American vernacular music, a vocal artist of astonishing power, range, depth, and subtlety. Among musicians and singers, his remarkable sense of timing, his command of inflection and pitch shading, and his vocabulary of vocal sounds and effects, from the purest falsetto to grainy moaning rasps, were all frequent topics of conversation. And he was able to duplicate many of his singing techniques on electric guitar, using a metal slider to make the instrument “speak” in a quivering, voice-like manner.

His blues sounded simple, but it was so deeply rooted in the traditions of the Mississippi Delta that other singers and guitarists found it almost impossible to imitate it convincingly. “My blues looks so simple, so easy to do, but it’s not,” Mr. Waters said in a 1978 interview. “They say my blues is the hardest blues in the world to play.”

Blah blah blahs

NewMexiKen will be returning to the Land of Enchantment later today. In the meanwhile, I haven’t much to say.

I don’t know why The Sweeties disappeared from the right sidebar — well, I know why but I can’t seem to fix it. I’ll get them back somehow. Update: Replaced old version with new slideshow version. It still needs some tweaking — and some new photos, but The Sweeties are back!

Dinner last night at a West Seattle waterfront restaurant included a stunning view of the city skyline across Elliott Bay on a beautifully clear evening. Mount Rainier stood out above the haze and from different vantage points one could see the North Cascades in the east and the Olympic Mountains across Puget Sound. This really is a magnificent setting and a great city to visit. If you haven’t been here, make a point of it.

I had salmon Friday, Sunday, Wednesday lunch and Wednesday dinner. Monday I had halibut. Oh, and oysters on the half-shell both Sunday and Monday. Yummy. (It’s not as if fresh fish isn’t available just about anywhere these days, but it just seems right when one is near the ocean.)

Take me out to the ballgame

NewMexiKen and a group of friends saw the Seattle Mariners defeated by the Texas Rangers 5-4 Tuesday night at Safeco Field. Frankly it was too cold and damp for a ballgame, but the park is beautiful, we got to see the retractable roof close, and it was a pretty exciting game if a disappointing ending. The crowd of around 25,000 was really into it when the home team rallied in the eighth, but it got very quiet after J.J. Putz blew a save allowing a two-run homer in the ninth.

Here’s two photos. The first looks toward the outfield just before the game began — the roof open. The second is Seattle pitcher Felix Hernandez delivering the first pitch. Hernandez threw a great game and had several sparkling fielding plays. Click each photo for a larger version.

Safeco Field First pitch

Cool

The music in the lobby of the Seattle Westin (and I believe in all Westin Hotels) is terrific. It’s a delightful collection of music from around the world.

On the negative side, I can’t find the exact playlists online.

The Maserati parked in the motor entrance was pretty cool, too. Maybe when I get relocated here in Seattle I’ll get a Maserati.