We have been reading about the “radio priest”—the young Catholic Father who broadcasts his beliefs from a small chapel in Michigan, and gets as many as three hundred and ninety thousand letters a day from members of the radio audience. He employs eighty-three secretaries to handle this mail—a larger payroll, you must admit, than most young shepherds command. He speaks against birth control, pacifism, and internationalism; and in favor of the multiplication of the body as commanded by God, and of the sanctity of patriotism. This, it seems to us, is a phenomenal leadership. We get accustomed to thinking of the radio merely as an instrument for increasing the sale of trademarked products and the vanity of tenors; yet here is an advocate of the sanctity of patriotism and other barbarous causes, with so many listeners and converts that he can’t handle them without secretaries. We happen to be, in a small way, on the other side of the fence from Father Coughlin on all his points; but we must confess, after reading the statistics about his audience, that being on the other side of the fence from him is like standing all alone in a million-acre field. What an impressive thing it is! Talking against internationalism over the radio is like talking against rain in a rainstorm: the radio has made internationalism a fact, it has made boundaries look so silly that we wonder how mapmakers can draw maps without laughing; yet there stands Father Coughlin in front of the microphone, his voice reaching well up into Canada, his voice reaching well down into Mexico, his voice leaping national boundaries as lightly as a rabbit—there he stands, saying that internationalism will be our ruin, and getting millions of letters saying he is right. Will somebody please write us one letter saying that he is wrong—if only so that we can employ a secretary?
Author: NewMexiKen
Best line of the day
“But what makes the Post still worth reading is its news pages. They are separate from the editorial page operation, which is a notably weak part of the overall product. If you took an equal number of random Washington, D.C., citizens off the street and gave them the job of running the newspaper’s editorial and op-ed pages, you could hardly do worse. You might well do better.”
Why?
121 American soldiers died in Afghanistan in July and August.
The next four months are boring
Why is it that four of the months have never been named for anything but a number, while the first eight months of the year are named for someone or something?
January is named for Janus (that two-faced guy); February after februa, a celebration of purification and forgiveness; March for Mars, the god of war. April comes from aperire, Latin for opening, as in the opening of buds in the spring (or possibly from Aphrodite); May is named for Maia, the goddess of of plants; June for Juno, the goddess of marriage and well-being.
Then along comes Julius Caesar and he has the gall in 44 B.C.E. to rename Quintilis (for fifth month, as it was then) to Julius (July). Not to be outdone, Augustus renamed Sextilis (for sixth month) to Augustus (August) in 8 B.C.E.
So, why did it stop 2018 years ago? I mean, there are September (seven), October (eight), November (nine) and December (ten) just sitting out there like blank billboards waiting for a clever new name. (And the numbers are no longer even correct!)
Surely, Julius and Augustus can’t be the last two guys in Western culture with enough ego to rename a month after themselves.
Or more fit for our times, commercialize the names of the months; the rights could be purchased like bowl games. It’s not the Orange Bowl anymore, it’s the FedEx Orange Bowl. It’s not November anymore, it’s Toyota November, it’s Bud Light December. Just think, their logo on every calendar.
Revised from four years ago.
Ghost Wars
At Live From Silver City Avelino takes a look at Steve Coll’s Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001. One-third of the way through, and Avelino is already recommending the book.
“I’m incredibly impressed with Ghost Wars. It’s an elaborate, if chilling, history of the events leading up to some of the most important events in our lifetimes.”
He also recommends Jon Krakauer’s Where Men Win Glory, the story of Pat Tillman and the coverup.
“Like other Krakauer books, the text is engaging and (at least to me) moving.”
Follow the link above and read more of what Avelino has to say about these two books. He got me interested.
So who’s first and second?
Since May Pre-Snap Read has been reviewing the 120 Bowl Championship Division football teams. (New Mexico was 116 and New Mexico State 115.) With Nebraska Saturday, Oklahoma early today and Ohio State just now, he’s down to the top two (play begins Thursday).
Looks like 1 and 2 are Alabama and —
wait for it
— Boise State.
Or maybe 1 and 2 are Boise State and Alabama.
Click the link above for the list. Here’s the rest of the Pre-Snap Read top 10.
3. Ohio State
4. Oklahoma
5. Nebraska
6. T.C.U.
7. Virginia Tech
8. Oregon
9. Iowa
10. Florida
Boise State and Virginia Tech play Monday at FedEx Field.
Best line of the day, so far
“Those who like to believe they have picked themselves up by the bootstraps sometimes forget that they wouldn’t even have boots were it not for the women who came before.”
From The Mother of All Grizzlies about Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg by Dahlia Lithwick. An excerpt:
To which I would just add that Palin and the Mama Grizzlies also owe a debt of thanks directly to Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who almost single-handedly convinced the courts and legislatures to do away with gender classifications in matters ranging from a woman’s right to be executor of her son’s estate (Reed v. Reed, 1970), to a female Air Force lieutenant’s right to secure housing allowances and medical benefits for her husband (Frontiero v. Richardson, 1973), and the right of Oklahoma’s “thirsty boys” (her words) to buy beer at the Honk n’ Holler at the same age as young women (Craig v. Boren, 1976).
Not exactly sunny-side up
“Filthy conditions at henhouses linked to the egg recall include infestations by rodents, flies, maggots, and wild birds, FDA inspectors report.
“Some of the egg-producing hens were caged above manure pits four to eight feet deep.”
New Yellowstone Visitor Center
Edward Rothstein has reviewed the new Old Faithful visitor center at Yellowstone. It opened last week.
I commend the article to you; I particularly liked this paragraph.
But as the symbol of one of the country’s most visited national parks, Old Faithful actually seems least faithful — least suggestive of untrammeled nature. From its measured eruptions to its paved surroundings, it can seem a manufactured extravaganza. Three hotels have grown around it, the most famous of which, the 1904 Old Faithful Inn, probably inspires far more gasps, with its fanciful, rustic, pine-log construction than the famed geyser’s jets of water. As for spectacle, the Bellagio’s Las Vegas fountains outdo nature, at least in this case.
Which is better, the Bellagio or Old Faithful?
If Historical Events Had Facebook Statuses
Funny (and some not so funny) stuff from Cool Material.
Thanks to Veronica for the link.
The penultimate day of August
Teddy Ballgame is 92 today. Again as he has in recent years, Ted Williams will spend the day hanging out and just chillin’.
Williams played his entire career with the Red Sox. He was American League MVP twice, won the batting title six times and twice won the Triple Crown (led league in batting average, home runs and rbi). (The MVP years and the Triple Crown years were four separate seasons!) Williams career average was .344 and he hit 521 home runs.
Williams was the last hitter to bat over .400, hitting .406 for the season in 1941. “If I was being paid thirty-thousand dollars a year, the very least I could do was hit .400.”
Williams did not play during the 1943-1944-1945 seasons due to military service. And he only played 43 games over the 1952-1953 seasons, also due to military service. Nearly five years between age 24 and 34 missing from his career. Had he been available to play those seasons he might have reached Ruth’s 714 home runs.
It’s also the birthday —
… of Ellen Muriel Deason, known to us as Kitty Wells, and famous for “It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels.” Miss Wells is 91 today.
It wasn’t God who made Honky Tonk angels
As you said in the words of your song
Too many times married men think they’re still single
That has caused many a good girl to go wrong
… of Bill Daily. He was the goofy other guy on I Dream of Jeannie, and the neighbor on The Bob Newhart Show. Daily is 83.
… of the other Buffet, Warren. The one who’s not wasting away again in Margaritaville. The billionaire chairman of Berkshire Hathaway is 80.
… of the cartoonist R. Crumb, 67.
… of Peggy Lipton. The original Mod Squad member is 63.
… of Lewis Black. The comedian, and regular on The Daily Show, is 62.
… of basketball hall-of-famer Robert Parish. He’s 57. Parish played in 1,611 NBA games, the record.
… of Cameron Diaz. Princess Fiona is 38.
… of Andy Roddick. He’s 28.
Fred MacMurray was born on this date in 1908. MacMurray required that all his scenes for My Three Sons be filmed at one time. After MacMurray was done, the rest of the cast started filming the shows in the normal sequence. IMDb has MacMurray saying: “The two films I did with Billy Wilder, ‘Double Indemnity’ and the ‘The Apartment’ are the only two parts I did in my entire career that required any acting.” It showed Fred, it showed.
Oscar-nominee Raymond Massey was born on this date in 1896. Massey received the nomination for Abe Lincoln in Illinois. Massey, related to the Masseys of Massey-Ferguson (tractors and such), was in a lot of westerns and did a lot of TV.
Best actress Oscar-winner Shirley Booth was born on this date in 1898. Booth won the award for Come Back, Little Sheba. Sadly, she’s probably better known for playing the maid Hazel on the sitcom.
The Kingfish, Huey Long, was born on August 30th in 1893. Governor of Louisiana 1928-1932 and U.S. Senator 1932-1935, Long was assassinated at age 42. Historians have argued whether he was dictator, demagogue, messiah or populist. I’d say he was just a little more megalomaniacal than any other politician.
Ty Cobb made his major league debut 105 years ago today.
Breakfast at the Road Runner Cafe
A good New Mexico poem today at The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor.
Redux best line of the day
“In England, an elderly Swedish tourist lay down on the luggage conveyor belt, after her suitcase, believing that was how she was told to board her plane. Confused? Or prophetic?”
Unknown
Antietam National Battlefield (Maryland)
… was established as a national battlefield site on this date in 1890. It was redesignated a national battlefield in 1978.
23,000 soldiers were killed, wounded or missing after twelve hours of savage combat on September 17, 1862. The Battle of Antietam ended the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia’s first invasion into the North and led to Abraham Lincoln’s issuance of the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation.
It was the bloodiest day in American history. Among the battlefields I’ve visited, Antietam is my favorite, perhaps because it less congested and monumented-up than Gettysburg. It retains, it seems, more of its 1862 feel.
Fort Bowie National Historic Site (Arizona)
… was authorized on this date in 1964. According to the National Park Service:
Fort Bowie commemorates in its 1000 acres, the story of the bitter conflict between the Chiricahua Apaches and the United States military. For more than 30 years Fort Bowie and Apache Pass were the focal point of military operations eventually culminating in the surrender of Geronimo in 1886 and the banishment of the Chiricahuas to Florida and Alabama. It was the site of the Bascom Affair, a wagon train massacre, and the battle of Apache Pass, where a large force of Chiricahua Apaches under Mangus Colorados and Cochise fought the California Volunteers. The remains of Fort Bowie today are carefully preserved, the adobe walls of various post buildings and the ruins of a Butterfield Stage Station.
Visiting Fort Bowie requires a three mile round trip hike — unless you use the handicap entrance, which they keep a secret until you show up after walking a mile-and-a-half on a July afternoon with a daughter eight months pregnant and a two-year-old grandson.
29 August
Senator John McCain is 74-years-old today.
Seven-time Oscar nominee for best actress, Ingrid Bergman was born on this date in 1915. She won the award three times: Gaslight, Anastasia, Murder on the Orient Express. No, she was not nominated for Casablanca. Ms. Bergman’s last role was as Golda Meir in 1982. She died that same year on her birthday, August 29.
Charlie Parker was born on this date in 1920.
Charlie Parker was one of the most influential improvising soloists in jazz, and a central figure in the development of bop in the 1940s. A legendary figure in his own lifetime, he was idolized by those who worked with him, and he inspired a generation of jazz performers and composers.
Parker died in 1955.
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Ruth Jones was born on this date in 1924.
Dinah Washington skirted the boundaries of blues, jazz and popular music, becoming the most popular black female recording artist of the ’50s.
She changed her name from Ruth Jones upon joining jazz vibraphonist Lionel Hampton’s band in 1943. After leaving Hampton in 1946, she began her own recording career, leading to Top 10 R&B hits in “Baby Get Lost” (No. 1, 1949), “Trouble in Mind” (No. 4, 1952), “What a Diff’rence a Day Makes” (No. 4 R&B, No. 8 pop, 1959), and “This Bitter Earth” (No. 1 R&B, No. 24 pop, 1960).
In 1960, Washington also sang two No. 1 R&B duets with Brook Benton, “Baby (You’ve Got What It Takes)” (No. 5 pop) and “A Rockin’ Good Way” (No. 7 pop).
Washington died in 1963 after mixing alcohol and pills.
Sir Richard Attenborough is 87 today. Attenborough won Oscars for best director and best picture for Gandhi. He’s acted in several dozen films, most notably as Roger Bartlett in The Great Escape and Mr. Hammond in the Jurassic Park films.
Two-time Oscar nominee for director, William Friedkin is 75 today. He won for The French Connection; he was nominated for The Exorcist.
Oscar nominee Elliott Gould is 72 today. He was nominated for a supporting role in Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice. Gould was married to Barbra Streisand 1963-1971.
Actress Rebecca DeMornay is 51. That was her opposite Tom Cruise in Risky Business and most famously as the twisted nanny in The Hand That Rocks the Cradle.
Lea Michel of Glee is 24.
August 29th is the birthday of Michael Jackson. He would have been 52 today.
Most prescient line of the day
“What it came down to was that a significant fraction of the American population, backed by a lot of money and political influence, simply does not consider government by liberals (even very moderate liberals) legitimate. . . .
“What happens when Obama is elected? It will be even worse than it was in the Clinton years. For sure there will be crazy accusations, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see some violence.”
Paul Krugman October 2008
America’s real school-safety problem
Last fall, a Delaware student was suspended from school after bringing a knife into his classroom. Because of his school’s zero-tolerance weapons policy, he was suspended for 45 days and forced to attend an alternative school. Swift justice? Perhaps — except that the student, Zachary Christie, was a first grader at the time and the “weapon” was his Cub Scout-issued fork-spoon-knife tool.
A researcher and author argues that we are teaching kids to take a police state for granted; that there may be better and certainly less draconian ways to prevent violence.
State Fair
A writer visits three state fairs — Delaware, Ohio and Maine. As he says, “I was raised in a farm state, Indiana, but it was in an industrial suburb of Chicago. The only farm I knew was Pepperidge.”
“Despite urbanization, suburban sprawl, the collapse of family farms and the rise of corporate agriculture, every year, regular as the seasons, the midways light up, the Tilt-a-Whirls clang to life and the judges study the ample rumps of the local livestock.”
And there’s the chocolate covered bacon.
The New Mexico State Fair is September 10-26 (but closed on Mondays and Tuesdays this year, a sure sign of hard times).
Strangest news lede of the day
“A man in Las Vegas has spent the last four months searching for his missing wife, not having any idea that her body was actually buried amidst the clutter of their home.”
Her husband, Bill, and police had reportedly searched the house on several occasions, even using police dogs to help locate the woman. Apparently, the sheer volume of clutter in the house prevented even the dogs from tracking the scent of the missing woman.
It wasn’t until last Wednesday when Bill James spotted a pair of feet poking from beneath a “floor-to-ceiling pile of junk,” that he released his wife had actually been in their home the whole time.
Best line of the day
“If President Obama has a big economic initiative up his sleeve, as he hinted recently, now would be a good time to let the rest of us in on it.”
Best line of the day
“Love is the master-key that opens the gates of happiness, of hatred, of jealousy, and, most easily of all, the gate of fear. How terrible is the one fact of beauty!”
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., born 201 years ago today in Cambridge, Massachusetts, quoted at The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor
“In The Poet at the Breakfast Table (1872) [Holmes] wrote, ‘We are all tattooed in our cradles with the beliefs of our tribe; the record may seem superficial, but it is indelible.’ ”
Holmes wrote poetry, helped found The Atlantic, practiced medicine, taught at Harvard Medical School, and was the father of a supreme court justice.
Katrina
Katrina made landfall five years ago this morning. The first levee at New Orleans was breached at 8:14 am. By the next day, 80% of the city was underwater.
Spike Lee’s documentaries When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts and If God Is Willing and da Creek Don’t Rise, David Simon’s Treme, and Dave Eggers’s excellent book Zeitoun
What you heard and saw on TV during the actual event was mostly bull shit.
Redux post of the day
First posted here seven years ago today.
Country lyrics
- “Cause he’s gonna live forever if the good die young” — Tracy Lawrence
- “You can’t help how you don’t feel” — Lonestar
- “I’ve always been crazy, but it’s kept me from going insane” — Waylon Jennings
- “I’m much too young to feel this damn old” — Garth Brooks
- “I’m a little past Little Rock but a long way from over you” — Lee Ann Womack
- “It’s too hot to fish, too hot for golf, and too cold at home” — Mark Chesnutt
- “She said: ‘I’m gonna’ hire a wino
to decorate our home,
So you’ll feel more at ease here,
and you won’t have to roam.
We’ll take out the dining room table,
and put a bar along that wall.
And a neon sign, to point the way,
to our bathroom down the hall.'” — David Frizzell
Redux best line of the day
From two years ago today:
“I’ve heard of trophy brides before, but this is the first time I’ve ever heard of a trophy vice presidential candidate.”
NewMexiKen