Author: NewMexiKen

Most Endangered Places

Mount Taylor (which I can see from here) is included on the 2009 listing of America’s most endangered historic places. The list will be announced officially Tuesday by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

The New York Times tells us very briefly about the 11 places on this year’s list. There is a photo slideshow

Links to each the National Trust’s background for each:

Century Plaza Hotel, Los Angeles, CA
Miami Marine Stadium, FL
Dorchester Academy, Midway, GA
Lāna’i City, HI
Unity Temple, Oak Park, IL
Ames Shovel Shops, Easton, MA
Memorial Bridge, Portsmouth, NH & Kittery, ME
Mount Taylor, Grants, NM
Human Services Center, Yankton, SD
Cast-Iron Architecture of Galveston, TX
The Manhattan Project’s Enola Gay Hangar, UT

Such a deal

GM has been advertising employee pricing at times during the past several months. They’ll have a new gimmick now. Owner pricing. Yup, the general public will get to buy at corporate owner prices.

That’s because you and I and our fellow taxpayers in the general public will be owners of 50% of General Motors if the package they put on the table this morning is adopted. Congratulations. I want my share to be in the Corvette division.

The United Auto Workers get 39%; bondholders 10%, and current stockholders the remaining 1%.

Oh, and 2,641 dealers disappear.

Wanna box? How many rounds?

From Elin McCoy at Bloomberg.com:

Just in time, the latest box wines are going upscale and hip, touting their higher quality and planet-friendly packaging. Because the compact, 3-liter box costs less to produce and weighs less than the four 750-milliliter bottles it replaces, it costs less to transport and has about half the carbon footprint of the same amount of bottled wine.

In fact, according to Nielsen, the premium 3-liter box wine category is the fastest-growing segment of the wine industry. In the fourth quarter of 2008, table-wine sales growth slowed to 2.8 percent, yet premium boxes zoomed 32 percent. Key buyers? Those with incomes of $70,000 and up, especially men.

Box wine itself isn’t new. The packaging system, developed about 50 years ago by Illinois-based Scholle Corp. for sulfuric acid, was first used for wine in Australia, where the now wildly popular box is known as a “wine cask.” A flexible plastic bag with a built-in spigot holds the wine inside a sturdy box. Vacuum-sealed, the bag collapses as wine is drawn off, which prevents oxygen from spoiling the remainder, as happens to a half-full bottle within a day or two. Most brands claim that opened box wines will stay fresh for a month to six weeks, though I’ve found that three weeks is usually the max.

I’m not a wine snob, but I have sent back a bottle at a restaurant, so I do have some standards. Thanks to the recommendation from the proprietor of Louisville Juice, I tried Black Box Merlot and found it to be just fine. I’m trying their Cab next — $18 for three liters at that big warehouse store I favor.

Best line of the day

“What General Lee’s feelings were I do not know. As he was a man of much dignity, with an impassible face, it was impossible to say whether he felt inwardly glad that the end had finally come, or felt sad over the result, and was too manly to show it. Whatever his feelings, they were entirely concealed from my observation; but my own feelings, which had been quite jubilant on the receipt of his letter, were sad and depressed. I felt like anything rather than rejoicing at the downfall of a foe who had fought so long and valiantly, and had suffered so much for a cause, though that cause was, I believe, one of the worst for which a people ever fought, and one for which there was the least excuse.”

Ulysses S. Grant writing in his Memoirs about the surrender at Appomattox Court House.

Grant’s Nicknames

Hiram Ulysses Grant was born on this date in 1822.

In 1839, his Ohio congressman nominated him for the U.S. Military Academy, but mistakenly as Ulysses S. Grant. The cadet simply adopted the name. Because his new initials were U.S., the same as those of Uncle Sam, Grant was nicknamed Sam in the Army.

The name U.S. Grant took on a whole new meaning in 1862 however.

HEADQUARTERS ARMY IN THE FIELD
Camp near Fort Donelson
February 16, 1862.
 
General S. B. BUCKNER,
Confederate Army.

     SIR: Yours of this date, proposing armistice and appointment of commissioners to settle terms of capitulation, is just received. No terms except unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted. I propose to move immediately upon your works.

I am, sir, very respectfully, your obedient servant,
U.S. GRANT,
Brigadier-General, Commanding.
 

From then the U.S. in U.S. Grant stood for Unconditional Surrender.

The other Walter

Walter Lantz was born 110 years ago today (1899). Lantz was the creator of such animated characters as Andy Panda, Chilly Willy, Wally Walrus and the greatest cartoon character of them all, Woody Woodpecker. Lantz was nominated for the Academy Award 10 times. He received the Academy’s Life-Time Achievement Award in 1979.

Lantz.jpg

Click on the image above to visit The Walter Lantz Cartune Encyclopedia for audio and video clips and lots of other goodies.

Gertrude Pridgett

… was born on this date in 1886. Gertrude Pridgett began performing in 1900, singing and dancing in minstrel shows. In 1902, she married performer William “Pa” Rainey and became known as Ma Rainey.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum has this to say about inductee Ma Rainey.

If Bessie Smith is the acknowledged “Queen of the Blues,” then Gertrude “Ma” Rainey is the undisputed “Mother of the Blues.” As music historian Chris Albertson has written, “If there was another woman who sang the blues before Rainey, nobody remembered hearing her.” Rainey fostered the blues idiom, and she did so by linking the earthy spirit of country blues with the classic style and delivery of Bessie Smith. She often played with such outstanding jazz accompanists as Louis Armstrong and Fletcher Henderson, but she was more at home fronting a jugband or washboard band.

Jealous Hearted Blues

Duane Eddy

… was born on this date in 1938, which would make him 71 today. Eddy was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994.

One of the earliest guitar heroes, Duane Eddy put the twang in rock and roll. “Twang” is a reverberating, bass-heavy guitar sound boasted by primitive studio wizardry. Concocted by Eddy and producer Lee Hazlewood in 1957, twang came to represent the sound of revved-up hot rods and an echo of the Wild West on the frontier of rock and roll. Eddy obtained his trademark sound by picking on the low strings of a Chet Atkins-model Gretsch 6120 hollowbody guitar, turning up the tremolo and running the signal through an echo chamber. Behind the mighty sound of twang, Eddy became the most successful instrumentalist in rock history, charting fifteen Top Forty singles in the late Fifties and early Sixties. He has sold more than 100 million records worldwide. No less an authority than John Fogerty has declared, “Duane Eddy was the front guy, the first rock and roll guitar god.” Eddy’s influence is widespread in rock and roll. A twangy guitar drove Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run,” and twang echoes in the work of the Beatles, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Dave Edmunds, Chris Isaak and many more.

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum

“Cannonball,” “Rebel Rouser,” “Forty Miles of Bad Road” and I’m cruising Speedway Boulevard in Tucson all over again. Someone else is driving — I’m not that old — but nevertheless, little rock and roll is as evocative as Duane Eddy, dated as it seems now.

Ah Choo or Boo Hoo

NewMexiKen’s allergies are so bad, it’s as if I were crying full time. As a result, when I see something mildly interesting on the internets I think, “Wow, that’s so funny it made me cry,” or “Wow, that’s so touching it made me cry,” or even “Wow, that’s so aggravating it made me cry.”

I fear I’ve been posting a lot of stuff here that probably isn’t that good — unless, maybe your allergies are making you cry too.

A Tail Wind

Mack's Bib

If 8-year-old Mack does well in this morning’s 5K, perhaps it’s because he had some Mephistophelean help.

Or has his mother said, “Whoever assigned the bib numbers for this race obviously knows Mack.”

Click and Clack

Fans of Click and Clack might enjoy seeing them talk about the Car of the Future on NOVA. Link is to the video, which is a year old.

For the uninitiated, Click and Clack are the Tappet brothers, Tom and Ray Magliozzi, of Car Talk, a call-in show about cars and car repairs that’s been on the radio in Boston since 1977 — and on NPR nationally since 1987. They can be an acquired taste, but I’ve always found them amusing and informative.

Sampling Twitter

If you’re curious about Twitter but you don’t want to sign up, you can read any Twitterer’s tweets simply by going to twitter.com and entering slash + their Twitter user name.

For example, John Mayer is at http://twitter.com/johncmayer

Lance Armstrong http://twitter.com/lancearmstrong

Shaq http://twitter.com/THE_REAL_SHAQ

Demi Moore http://twitter.com/mrskutcher

You get the idea. Just Google twitter + the name of the individual and you should get the Twitter link.

Beware however, some are phony and some are ghost written.

And few are interesting beyond about 15 minutes.

Not big enough to not fail

From the FDIC: Failed Bank List, the number of failed banks 2003-2008:

2003: 3
2004: 4
2005: 0
2006: 0
2007: 3
2008: 25

This year, through April 17th, there had also been 25 closings. Yesterday there were four more:

26. American Southern Bank, Kennesaw, Georgia

27. Michigan Heritage Bank, Farmington Hills, Michigan

28. First Bank of Beverly Hills, Calabasas, California

29. First Bank of Idaho, FSB, Ketchum, Idaho

There are 35 more Fridays in 2009. (The FDIC acts on Friday to have the weekend to get things squared away.)

The Soloist

We took in our first movie of 2009 Friday evening. The film was The Soloist.

The story is based on L.A. Times columnist Steve Lopez’s encounter with a street person, Nathaniel Anthony Ayers Jr., a Julliard dropout. Robert Downey Jr. plays Lopez, Jamie Foxx plays Ayers.

It’s good. Go see it.

‘The Soloist’ Trailer

A friendly dialogue

Charles Pierce on April 10th, reacting to a couple of postings by Kos:

I would like an explanation, in detail, of how much the people who work for the various “organically sprouting” news operations, both locally and nationally, actually will get paid. I know the HuffPo doesn’t pay its contributors, and I’m willing to bet that nobody at A Better Oakland makes enough to live on, either. Is this the new business model for the new paradigm? Don’t pay the reporters and writers?

Geez, Louise, I wonder why nobody ever thought of that before. I have been a working journalist for 30 years now, in one way or another. I have made a living and raised three children that way. I’m one of the lucky ones. There are thousands of people all over the country at newspapers large and small, people who cover sewer commissions and city councils and high school football, and who do so because they believe in the importance of newspaper journalism as a life’s work, and even though they realize at some level that they might be working in the buggy-whip industry. I am not unaware of the problems in my profession. I frequently rail against them. But it is still a profession and, I believe, an honorable and important one, and one at which people should be trained and paid what they’re worth. It deserves to be a profession at which people can make a living.

Kos replies on April 20th:

For Charlie Pierce and many of his journalism friends, this debate is about how they continue to get paid. For me, I don’t give a shit who gets paid or how much, but whether people get the news they need to make informed decisions in a democracy. If people get paid in the process, great! If they don’t, but people still get good information, then great!

And you know what? Lots of “amateurs” are producing excellent information. Sometimes, even better than what the pros used to deliver. Now the old media types can rail and complain and bitch and moan about this, but it is what it is. The times are changing, and the culture with it. And consumers are getting increasingly sophisticated about how and where and from whom they consume their news. Shoot the messenger, Charlie, but it doesn’t change anything. I’m not the reason people are deciding to take more direct ownership of their media production and consumption.

Oh, and one more thing Charlie: The Huffington Post does pay its reporters.

Pierce comes back yesterday:

I would argue that there are a great number of people in a great number of professions having a great number of conversations about how they will continue to get paid. Auto workers come immediately to mind. I give a shit about all of them, including the people in my profession. I would argue that giving a shit about whether or not people should get paid a decent wage for an honest day’s work is what progressive populism used to be about. I don’t recall any legitimate progressive determining on his own which work is worthy of having a shit given about it. I would argue that my friend in Chicago, who was a decent and honorable sportswriter with two young kids and a mortgage, and who was laid off this week because the Chicago Tribune is owned by a vicious vandal named Sam Zell who needs to have his balls in the mouth of a shark right about now, is worthy of having a shit given about him. I would argue that the cafeteria workers, security guards, printers, drivers–and the newsroom staffs–at the newspapers in Seattle and Denver that went under are worthy of having a shit given about them. ….

Of course, I do not understand the new world of progressive activism, where some professions are unworthy of having a shit given about them. I weep at my ignorance, of course.

You will note, for the record, that there is nothing in that previous passage that can be reasonably interpreted as having “attacked the messenger.” The message, yes, but not the messenger. Were I to go on and point out that, for someone who doesn’t give a shit whether people get paid for gathering and disseminating the news we need to make informed decisions in a democracy, The Future seems to be making a pretty tidy living his own self, and were I to go on to point out that making yourself comfortable while convincing the suckers to work for the honor of it is a business plan that would make Sam Zell green with envy, and were I to point out further that the great Australian phrase, “I got mine, Jack” seems now apropos to the discussion, that would be “attacking the messenger.” I hope this clears up any confusion on the matter.

I’m with Pierce on this one.

The Supreme Court is neither hot nor bothered by strip searches

Dahlia Lithwick has a must read piece on how the Supreme Court takes failing to get it to a new level.

She begins:

When constitutional historians sit down someday to compile the definitive Supreme Court Concordance of Not Getting It, the entry directly next to Lilly Ledbetter (“Court fails utterly to understand realities of gender pay discrimination”) will be Savana Redding (“Court compares strip searches of 13-year-old girls to American Pie-style locker-room hijinks”).