Month: September 2008

Even the lobo has stopped howling

In my 10th year in Albuquerque, NewMexiKen buys season tickets to University of New Mexico football. And what happens? Two of the six home games have been played already and the Lobos are 0-2. And not that good.

First, a 26-3 loss to TCU, then yesterday a 28-22 defeat by a mediocre Texas A&M team. And two of yesterday’s New Mexico scores came in the last six minutes when the game was likely out of reach. Earlier two interceptions led to two A&M TDs; a fumble lead to another. Ugly.

And the crowds have been small (70% of capacity yesterday) and listless (as one might expect in games where the home team is down 16-0 and 14-0 early. Some dental group sponsors shots of fans flashing their smiles during breaks in the action. Any UNM fans smiling yesterday should have been tossed from University Stadium.

This Saturday a third home game, this time against NewMexiKen’s very own alma mater, The University of Arizona, off to its best start in years. I’ll be wearing red again this week, but it’ll have an A on it, not a NM.

(A little boy about 5 or 6 sat in front of me yesterday with his dad. The kid watched the action on the large TV on the end zone scoreboard. To my knowledge he didn’t look at the field once. A few more games like the first two and that may be true for all of us.)

Mindset List

This month, almost 2 million first-year students will head off to college campuses around the country. Most of them will be about 18 years old, born in 1990 when headlines sounded oddly familiar to those of today: Rising fuel costs were causing airlines to cut staff and flight schedules; Big Three car companies were facing declining sales and profits; and a president named Bush was increasing the number of troops in the Middle East in the hopes of securing peace. However, the mindset of this new generation of college students is quite different from that of the faculty about to prepare them to become the leaders of tomorrow.

Beloit College Mindset List

Here’s some of the 60:

For these students, Sammy Davis Jr., Jim Henson, Ryan White, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Freddy Krueger have always been dead.

Harry Potter could be a classmate, playing on their Quidditch team.

They have always been looking for Carmen Sandiego.

GPS satellite navigation systems have always been available.

Coke and Pepsi have always used recycled plastic bottles.

Shampoo and conditioner have always been available in the same bottle.

Gas stations have never fixed flats, but most serve cappuccino.

Electronic filing of tax returns has always been an option.

Girls in head scarves have always been part of the school fashion scene.

All have had a relative–or known about a friend’s relative–who died comfortably at home with Hospice.

Films have never been X rated, only NC-17.

The Warsaw Pact is as hazy for them as the League of Nations was for their parents.

Clarence Thomas has always sat on the Supreme Court.

Schools have always been concerned about multiculturalism.

We have always known that “All I Ever Really Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.”

There have always been gay rabbis.

IBM has never made typewriters.

McDonald’s and Burger King have always used vegetable oil for cooking french fries.

The Tonight Show has always been hosted by Jay Leno and started at 11:35 EST.

Authorities have always been building a wall along the Mexican border.

Lenin’s name has never been on a major city in Russia.

Employers have always been able to do credit checks on employees.

Personal privacy has always been threatened.

Caller ID has always been available on phones.

Living wills have always been asked for at hospital check-ins.

The Green Bay Packers (almost) always had the same starting quarterback.

They never heard an attendant ask “Want me to check under the hood?”

Iced tea has always come in cans and bottles.

Soft drink refills have always been free.

They have never known life without Seinfeld references from a show about “nothing.”

The Hubble Space Telescope has always been eavesdropping on the heavens.

98.6 F or otherwise has always been confirmed in the ear.

Off-shore oil drilling in the United States has always been prohibited.

Radio stations have never been required to present both sides of public issues.

Grandparents Day

Today is Grandparents Day. Cash, checks and fine wines accepted.

Grandparents Day was the brainchild of Marian McQuade of Fayette County, W.Va., who hoped that such an observance might persuade grandchildren to tap the wisdom and heritage of their grandparents. President Jimmy Carter signed the first presidential proclamation in 1978 — and one has been issued each year since — designating the first Sunday after Labor Day as National Grandparents Day. The first official observance was Sept. 9, 1979.

US Census: Grandparents Day 2008

Wisdom and heritage R us.

September 7, 2008

Elizabeth was born on September 7th in 1533. The queen Virginia is named after.

Anna Mary Robertson was born on September 7th in 1860. Grandma Moses lived until 1961, and only started painting at age 76.

Two-time best director Oscar winner, Elia Kazan was born on September 7th in 1909. Kazan won for Gentleman’s Agreement and On the Waterfront. He had three other directing nominations.

David Packard was born on September 7th in 1912. The “P” in HP.

Senator Daniel Inouye was born on September 7th in 1924. He’s 84 today.

Tenor saxophonist Theodore Rollins — Sonny Rollins — was born on September 7th in 1930. He is 78 today.

Buddy Holly was born on September 7th in 1936. Just 22 when the music died.

Gloria Gaynor was born on September 7th in 1949. Still surviving at 59.

Go on now go walk out the door
just turn around now
’cause you’re not welcome anymore
weren’t you the one who tried to hurt me with goodbye
Did you think I’d crumble
Did you think I’d lay down and die
Oh no, not I
I will survive
Oh as long as i know how to love
I know I will stay alive
I’ve got all my life to live
I’ve got all my love to give
and I’ll survive
I will survive (hey-hey)

Julie Kavner was born on September 7th in 1951. NewMexiKen liked her best in Awakenings, but we all know her as the voice of Marge Simpson. She’s 57 today.

W. Earl Brown was born on September 7th in 1963. He’s Dan Dority of Deadwood and 45 today.

Now that’s a hall monitor with some street cred

NewMexiKen just posted this last year, but I believe in recycling to help protect the planet.

NewMexiKen has been reading Angie Debo’s excellent 1976 biography of Geronimo. I recommend it. Here’s a couple of trivial items I thought were interesting.

When Geronimo’s and Naiche’s (son of Cochise) bands were consolidated at Mount Vernon Barracks, Alabama, in 1887 and 1888, the post doctor was Walter Reed. Yes, THE Walter Reed.

A school was eventually set up at the Alabama camp, where the Apaches were prisoners of war — men, women and children. Geronimo reportedly monitored the children’s attendance and deportment, walking up and down the aisles with a stick.

I’m thinking many of our schools today could use Geronimo patrolling their classrooms.

The Apaches were relocated to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, in 1894.

Update: Finishing the biography, amused to learn when that Geronimo traveled he would sell photos and autographs and even the buttons off his coat. He’d sell the buttons to people gathered to see him come by at the train station, then before the next station he’d sew on a new set of buttons.

Geronimo also rode in Teddy Roosevelt’s inaugural parade in March 1905. The Apache would have been about 75, nearly 76. It was said he could still vault onto his pony. This NewMexiKen post has a photo of Geronimo taken at the St. Louis Fair in 1904. He died in 1909, about age 80.

Special Public Service Announcement

With the election just 8 weeks away NewMexiKen wanted to pass along this public service announcement. Because of difficulties counting ballots in Florida after the 2000 vote, and in Ohio after the 2004 vote, and in New Mexico after any vote larger than for 8th grade class president, there has been a change of procedures nationwide.

All who wish to vote for Barack Obama for President are still supposed to vote on November 4.

All who wish to vote for John McCain for President are supposed to wait and vote on November 6.

Remember, November 4th for Obama, November 6th for McCain. Don’t show up on the wrong day.

Batshit crazy in fact

So let me get this straight.

A Gallup Poll late in August found that 81% of the American people were “dissatisfied with the way things are going in the United States at this time.” 18% were satisfied, and 1% don’t know what the hell they think.

Right now the election is seemingly close; Gallup says 45% favor John McCain.

We’ll grant that the 18% who say they are satisfied will vote for the incumbent party. That still means that 27% of the American people who are dissatisfied intend to vote for the party that got us here. (18+27=45)

Or, put another way, 27% of the electorate are insane — that is, doing the same thing over again and expecting different results.

The world’s best-known and best-loved woman

Jane Addams was born on September 6th in 1860.

Miss Addams has been called “the greatest woman in the world,” the “mother of social service,” “the greatest woman internationalist” and the “first citizen of Chicago.” With her idealism, serene, unafraid, militant, was always paramount. Devoted to the cause of social and political reform, to the betterment of the economic condition of the masses, to world peace and to internationalism, Miss Addams’s influence was world-wide. She was, perhaps, the world’s best-known and best-loved woman.

She made enemies. Her views were sometimes considered dangerously radical. Socialists and other radicals met at Hull House, and her opponents sometimes forgot that her liberal attitude in permitting such meetings did not include a membership in the groups she tolerated. In the World War her efforts for peace were unabated even when the United States entered the struggle and the wartime hysteria which ensued obscured for a time the American public’s realization of Miss Addams’s purity of purpose and character.

Above from Ms. Addams New York Times obituary in 1935.

Here’s some more:

Miss Addams moved into Hull House in September, 1889, and it was her home thereafter. It was then between a saloon and an undertaking shop, and there was an annex to a factory in its rear. Thousands of the foreign born–Miss Addams always held welcoming arms to the strangers–including Poles, Jews, Russians, Italians, Greeks, Germans, Irish and Bohemians were welcomed there. Negroes were also cordially received.

Persons later to be famous lived there in those early days. Among them were Mr. and Mrs. Gerald Swope, who were married there, Mackenzie King, later Premier of Canada, Francis Hackett, and Professor John Dewey, dean of American philosophers, and his family.

Hull House grew to be known as one of the largest and best-known of the nation’s settlements. It commenced with the ordinary activities of children’s clubs and free kindergartens and later it sponsored courses in languages, literature, music, painting, history, mathematics, elocution, dancing, wood-carving, pottery, metal work, bookbindery, dressmaking, lacework, cooking and basketwork. A labor museum was also established at Hull House.

Dozens of clubs were organized to aid working women. A lunch room was opened, as was a nursery for the children of employed women. There was also a gymnasium, a natatorium, a penny savings bank, a lodging house, as well as a circulating library and an employment bureau. Miss Addams personally directed all these activities, which were models for hundreds of others throughout the world.

Of course, she was just a community organizer.

September 6, 2008

Jane Curtin is 61.

Jeff Foxworthy is 50. Some Foxworthiness:

  • “I’ve been to all 50 states, and traveled this whole country, and 90 percent of the people are good folks. The rest of them take after the other side of the family.”
  • “If you ever start feeling like you have the goofiest, craziest, most dysfunctional family in the world, all you have to do is go to a state fair. Because five minutes at the fair, you’ll be going, ‘you know, we’re alright. We are dang near royalty.'”
  • “You may be a redneck if… your lifetime goal is to own a fireworks stand.”

Rosie Perez is 44. Ms. Perez was nominated for a best supporting actress Oscar in 1994 for Fearless.

Macy Gray is 41.

Author Alice Sebold is 45.

She was a freshman in college when one night she was attacked while she was walking home, dragged into an underground tunnel, and raped. She thought that she was going to be murdered throughout the experience. When she later talked to the police, they said that a girl had recently been murdered in that same tunnel, and so she should consider herself lucky for having survived. A few weeks later, Sebold spotted the rapist on the street, and she went to the police. He was arrested, and Sebold testified against him at the trial. The rapist was convicted and received the maximum sentence, and Sebold thought that the end of the trial would put the experience behind her.

The Writer’s Almanac (2007)

Of course, that wasn’t the end of it. Follow The Writer’s Almanac link to learn how the aftermath led to Sebold’s The Lovely Bones, the best-selling book of 2002.

Author Robert M. Pirsig was born on this date in 1928.

In 1968, [Pirsig] decided to take a trip by motorcycle from Minneapolis to California with his twelve-year-old son. He thought he’d write a travel essay about the journey, but the travel essay turned into a book about using Eastern philosophy to come to terms with his life. He called the book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974). It was rejected by 121 publishers before one publisher finally took a chance on it. It went on to become the best-selling non-fiction book of the 1970s, selling more than 4 million copies.

Robert Pirsig said: “I think metaphysics is good if it improves everyday life; otherwise forget it.”

The Writer’s Almanac (2007)

Marie Joseph Paul Yves Roche Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette was born on this date in 1757. Not yet 20, Lafayette was commissioned a major general in the American army by the Continental Congress. (It helped that he served without pay and funded his own troops.)

Lafayette was wounded at Brandywine, served Washington loyally at Valley Forge and during an attempted cabal against the Commander-in-Chief, saved American troops and supplies in Rhode Island, was instrumental in obtaining vital French assistance from Louis XVI, and was on the field at Yorktown in 1781 when the British surrendered. By then Lafayette was 24.

Best line of the day, so far

I’m finding the Republican attempts to derail the conversation from the actual state of the country really depressing and disgraceful this year. They practice Orwellian politics of the crudest sort. They are trying to sell a big lie–that the election is about the social issues of the 1960s, or Barack Obama’s patriotism or his eloquence, or the “angry left,” when it’s really about turning toward a more moderate path after the ideological radicalism and malfeasance of the past eight years.

Joe Klein, Time

If you’re on-board with what the GOP is doing, fine — but at least admit it to yourself.

But as for NewMexiKen, their America is not the America I live in.

Charlie Brown has never knowingly taken steroids

From McSweeney’s Internet Tendency (2006). Funny stuff. A couple of excerpts:

DISTRICT ATTORNEY OTHMAR: Wah wah-wah wah, wah, wah wah-wah-wah wah?

CHARLIE BROWN: I’m sorry, sir, but I didn’t knowingly lie to the grand jury.

D.A.: Wah-wah-wah-wah?

BROWN: I did not knowingly take steroids, sir. Period. Snoopy gave me something to make me throw harder, but he said it was flaxseed oil and vitamin drops. I was tired of having the ball hit back up the middle and all my clothes torn off.

BROWN: My head’s always been this big. Ask Sally. And I’m not going bald; I’ve never had more than three hairs, sir.

Two best lines

Two best lines from Charles Pierce:

The other night, I heard John King on CNN earnestly explaining to me the difference between “Wal-Mart Moms,” “Soccer Moms,” and “Hockey Moms.” Basically, it caused me to wonder why smart women don’t just go around to the cable news outlets explaining things with Louisville Sluggers. As Alison Porchnik says to Alvy Singer in Annie Hall, “No, I love being reduced to a cultural stereotype.”

Worst visual of the convention: watching the Palin family hand baby Trig down the line every time the camera went on. They could teach something to the U.S. 4X100 relay teams, I’ll tell you that.

Where home prices may actually … rise?

Believe it or not, in the future people will be buying and selling homes. Some of them will even make a profit.

It’s not so crazy an idea. Consider Albuquerque, N.M. The mid-sized Southwestern city has experienced housing price declines since a peak in the third quarter of 2007, job growth has been flat, and housing starts are expected to fade by 45 percent through the end of 2008. Nevertheless, it’s a city that home builders and economists are bullish about for 2010 and beyond.

Forbes has the story.

A house on my street that sold last summer for top dollar is on the market again (it’s a long story). The asking price is just 2% less than last year. Of course, they haven’t sold it after three weeks. Still . . .

Thanks to Byron for the link.

More information than we need

Jill, official older daughter of NewMexiKen, reports:

There was a time, a gentler time, when, if a woman was…expecting…she would retire to her country home and quietly await the arrival of the child, keeping the news from all but closest family, and never discussing it in mixed company.

Now, when the baseball coach sends an e-mail asking who can come to practice tonight, the whole e-mail list gets this in response:

“We cannot confirm whether [our son] will be able to attend practice this evening or not. I’m dilated 4 cm and might be having this baby at any minute!”

School

The Sweeties® are all in school this year, Mack in 2nd grade, Kiley in kindergarten and the others in pre-school.

Aidan’s teacher didn’t have to discuss his behavior with Aidan’s mom until the second day this year, a new personal best for Aidan.

But let’s keep in mind his older brother’s approach:

“[Mack] also told us about the green-yellow-red behavior system and said that he won’t get any reds but we should expect a few yellows.”

Mack later said that it’s not that he might purposefully break a rule, it’s that you don’t always know the rules. Indeed. It’s difficult to go through kindergarten, or any other part of life, without a few yellows.

September 5

Jesse James was born on this date in 1847. If James were alive today, he’d be the kind of guy who’d park a Ryder truck in front of a federal building. He was not the Robin Hood character many learned, but rather a racist, anti-emancipation, anti-union murdering terrorist long after the civil war had effectively decided the larger matters. See T.J. Stiles masterful Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War.

“As this patient biography makes clear, violence came to Jesse James more or less with his mother’s milk.” — Larry McMurtry.

“Overall, this is the biography of a violent criminal whose image was promoted and actions extenuated by those who saw him as a useful weapon against black rights and Republican rule.” — Eric Foner

John Cage was born on this date in 1912. On his death in 1992, The New York Times described Cage as a “prolific and influential composer whose Minimalist works have long been a driving force in the world of music, dance and art.” Cage’s most influential and famous piece is 4’33”. It consists of four minutes and 33 seconds of silence. The work was among National Public Radio’s 100 most important American musical works of the 20th century.

The piece, premiered in 1952, directs someone to close the lid of a piano, set a stopwatch, and sit in silence for four minutes and thirty-three seconds. Musicians and critics alike initially thought the piece a joke. But its premiere pianist, who never played a note, calls it his most intense listening experience. “4:33” speaks to the nature of sound and the musical nature of silence.

Bob Newhart is 79. John Stewart of The Kingston Trio is 69. Raquel Welch is 68. Michael Keaton is 57.

Burning the Zozobra (Old Man Gloom)

The Fiesta de Santa Fe, celebrated annually since 1712, began Thursday night with the burning of Old Man Gloom before a crowd of 25,000.

Zozobra centers around the ritual burning in effigy of Old Man Gloom, or Zozobra, to dispel the hardships and travails of the past year. …

The effigy is a giant animated wooden and cloth marionette that waves its arms and growls ominously at the approach of its fate. A major highlight of the pageant is the fire spirit dancer, dressed in a flowing red costume, who appears at the top of the stage to drive away the white-sheeted “glooms” from the base of the giant Zozobra. …

Zozobra is a well crafted framework of preplanned and pre-cut sticks, covered with chicken wire and yards of muslin. It is stuffed with bushels of shredded paper, which traditionally includes obsolete police reports, paid off mortgage papers, and even personal divorce papers.

— The Burning of Zozobra – Official Site

NewMexiKen deposited his gloomy thoughts in writing in the gloom box and I feel much better now that they’ve been burned along with the Zozobra. (It’s cheaper than a shrink, and probably as effective.)

This was the 84th burning of the Zozobra. The marionette was about 50-feet tall.

My take

The parent team — or at least its player-manager — could see their chances of making the playoffs diminish, so they called up the kid from A ball.

And in her first at bat, before a home town crowd, she knocked it out of the park. Got to give the rookie credit. (Some argue it was only a ground rule double.)

But I suggest we withhold judgement until she faces a major league curve ball on the road playing every day.

September 4

L.A. was founded on this date in 1781. They didn’t call it L.A. then. They called it El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora La Reina de los Ángeles de Porciúncula (The Village of Our Lady, the Queen of the Angels of Porziuncola).1

The Edsel was introduced by the Ford Motor Company 51 years ago today.

Paul Harvey is 90 today, and that’s the rest of the story.

Tom Watson (59) and Raymond Floyd (66) share this birthday.

Beyonce Knowles is 27.

Richard Wright was born 100 years ago today.

Wright spent ten years in Chicago, working as a ditch-digger, delivery boy, hospital worker, and a postal clerk. He began to write short stories and his first book was the collection Uncle Tom’s Children (1938). Two years later, he published his masterpiece Native Son (1940), the story of a black man named “Bigger Thomas” who gets a job as a driver for a beautiful, young white woman and then accidentally kills her. Wright based the character on every bully, rebel, and outlaw he’d ever known.

The Book-of-the-Month-Club demanded that he delete some of the more explicitly sexual scenes from the novel, and publishers worried that even the edited version would be too shocking for most readers. But Native Son sold 215,000 copies in three weeks and went on to become the first bestselling novel by an African American writer. The unedited text of the novel was finally published in 1991.

The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor

1 The Spanish mission at the Pecos Pueblo had a similar name: Nuestra Señora de los Ángeles de Porciúncula de los Pecos. Porciúncula or Porziuncola is the name of a small chapel near Assisi, Italy, where St. Francis established the Franciscan Order in the early 13th century.