… but I’ve always questioned the Michelin Guide ratings when they fail to account for the mounted moose head in a hotel lobby. Photo from The Delaware Hotel, Leadville, Colorado.
Speaking of mooses. Some folks with South Carolina accents and license tags asked me while we were admiring the view in the San Juan Mountains yesterday, if I’d seen any moose. Are there moose in Colorado? I did see an elk grazing along the side of the road.
“[Vin] Scully also adheres to a maxim of the late Rep. Tip O’Neill: Speak only if it improves the silence.”
The Chicago Tribune’s Phil Rosenthal quoted at The Daily Fix.
Tomorrow will be the sixth anniversary of this blog. What is wrong with me?
Ernie Pyle was born on this date in 1900. Until he was killed by enemy machine-gun fire in April 1945, Pyle “blogged” World War II for millions of Americans.
Perhaps Pyle’s most famous piece: The Death of Captain Waskow. If you’ve never read it, do so now! If you’ve read it before, read it again!
From The New York Times obituary.
Ernie Pyle was haunted all his life by an obsession. He said over and over again, “I suffer agony in anticipation of meeting people for fear they won’t like me.”
No man could have been less justified in such a fear. Word of Pyle’s death started tears in the eyes of millions, from the White House to the poorest dwellings in the country.
President Truman and Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt followed his writings as avidly as any farmer’s wife or city tenement mother with sons in service.
Mrs. Roosevelt once wrote in her column “I have read everything he has sent from overseas,” and recommended his writings to all Americans.
For three years these writings had entered some 14,000,000 homes almost as personal letters from the front. Soldiers’ kin prayed for Ernie Pyle as they prayed for their own sons.
NewMexiKen has before posted this quote from Pyle, but why not do so again on his birthday, and because there’s no place like home.
Yes, there are lots of nice places in the world. I could live with considerable pleasure in the Pacific Northwest, or in New England, on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, or in Key West or California or Honolulu. But there is only one of me, and I can’t live in all those places. So if we can have only one house — and that’s all we want — then it has to be in New Mexico, and preferably right at the edge of Albuquerque where it is now. Ernie Pyle, January 1942
Pyle’s home on Girard SE is now a branch of the Albuquerque/Bernalillo County Library System.
Today is also the birthday
… of author P.D. James. Phyllis Dorothy James is 89.
… of Tony Bennett. He’s 83.
… of Martin Sheen, 69. Sheen won one Golden Globe for West Wing, but no Emmys. He did win an Emmy once for a guest role on Murphy Brown.
… of Martha Stewart, 68.
… of hockey hall-of-famer Marcel Dionne and of Jay North (TV’s Dennis the Menace). They’re 58 each.
… of Randy Scruggs, 56.
… of quarterback Tom Brady, 32.
The Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) walked off their jobs with the Federal Aviation Administration 28 years ago today. President Reagan threatened to fire the controllers if they didn’t return within 48 hours. Other unions failed to support PATCO. And so began the end of the labor movement in the United States.
Reagan fired 11,345 striking air traffic controllers.
… was designated such by President Wilson on this date in 1918.
For over a thousand years, prehistoric farmers inhabited much of the present-day state of Arizona. When the first Europeans arrived, all that remained of this ancient culture were the ruins of villages, irrigation canals and various artifacts. Among these ruins is the Casa Grande, or “Big House,” one of the largest and most mysterious prehistoric structures ever built in North America. Casa Grande Ruins, the nation’s first archeological preserve, protects the Casa Grande and other archeological sites within its boundaries.
Those Europeans, by the way, began heading this way 517 years ago today, when Columbus set sail from Palos, Spain.
Update: Why is the word “prehistoric” in that National Park Service description (twice)? What purpose does it serve?
“Some dismissed the event as a mere photo op, but surely there is a place for symbolic gesture in the effort to instill in future generations the importance of facing racial difficulties with relaxed, respectful conversation. It seems that message is being received loud and clear. When asked what he learned this week, third-grader Billy Etherington, of Plano, Texas, said, ‘If you have fights or problems or whatever, you can usually fix them with drinking.’”
The Cartoon Lounge : The New Yorker
My own best beer talk line: “Obama should have ordered a Dos Equis; Lou Dobbs’s head would have exploded.”
“I have been married to Ed for more then 20 years. I can truthfully say that I love him more today than on either of the two times I married him (long story). Having admitted that, there are times I would gladly trade him for an iced venti cafe mocha with an extra shot from Starbucks.”
Z isn’t talking to me because she noticed me eyeing a Ferrari parked on the street in Aspen. Before that though, she was eager that I share that she got 33.6 mpg on the 425 mile trip up from Albuquerque (via Leadville).
It’s August 1st in Leadville, Colorado, and you know what that means.
Fall!
It’s 34 degrees with a thick frost. Wind chill 30.