Author: NewMexiKen

The Gift of the Magi

This is a Christmas season perennial here at NewMexiKen. Go ahead, read it again. It makes everything about the season seem simpler yet more precious.

Merry Christmas!

The Gift of the Magi
by O. Henry (William Sydney Porter), 1906.

One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And
sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two
at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and
the butcher until one’s cheeks burned with the silent
imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied.
Three times Della counted it. One dollar and eighty-seven
cents. And the next day would be Christmas.

Continue reading The Gift of the Magi

I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas

From The Miami Herald [2003 — no link]:

Before White Christmas, the holidays meant traditional carols and religious hymns. After it, secular tunes became part of the fiber of popular culture.

Rosen estimates 125 million copies of the three-minute song have been sold since it was first recorded in 1942.

”Is there another song that Kenny G, Peggy Lee, Mantovani, Odetta, Loretta Lynn, the Flaming Lips, the Edwin Hawkins Singers and the Backstreet Boys have in common?” writes Rosen. “What other tune links Destiny’s Child, The Three Tenors and Alvin and the Chipmunks; Perry Como, Garth Brooks and Stiff Little Fingers; the Reverend James Cleveland, Doris Day and Kiss?”

And Crosby’s performance marks a turning point in the music industry.

”It marks the moment when performers supplant songwriters as the central creative forces at least in mainstream American pop music,” he told NPR in 2002. “After the success of White Christmas, records become the primary means of disseminating pop music, and they replace sheet music. And the emphasis shifts to charismatic performances recorded for all time and preserved on records….”

Some facts about the “hit of hits”:

• Bing Crosby first performed White Christmas on Dec. 25, 1941, on NBC’s Kraft Music Hall radio show.

• Crosby first recorded the song for Decca on May 29, 1942. He rerecorded it March 19, 1947, as a result of damage to the 1942 master from frequent use. As in 1942, Crosby was joined in the studio by the John Scott Trotter Orchestra and the Ken Darby Singers.

• The song was featured in two films: Holiday Inn in 1942 (for which it collected the Academy Award for best song) and 12 years later in White Christmas.

• Crosby’s single sold more than 30 million copies worldwide and was recognized as the bestselling single in any music category until 1998 when Elton John’s tribute to Princess Diana, Candle in the Wind, overtook it.

• Irving Berlin so hated Elvis Presley’s cover of White Christmas that he launched a fierce (and fruitless) campaign to ban Presley’s recording.

‘Twas the Night Before Christmas

From an October 26, 2000, article in The New York Times:

Every Christmas for more than 150 years, children have hung their stockings by the chimney with care and learned to thank Clement Clarke Moore for the tradition.

Moore, a wealthy Manhattan biblical scholar, went down in history as the man who in 1823 created the American image of Santa Claus as author of the “Account of a Visit from St. Nicholas.” Better known as “The Night Before Christmas,” it became one of the most widely read poems in the world.

But did Moore really write it? In a new study of the poem’s early history, Don Foster, an English professor at Vassar College and a scholar of authorial attribution, accuses Moore of committing literary fraud. He marshals a battery of circumstantial evidence to conclude that the poem’s spirit and style are starkly at odds with the body of Moore’s other writings.

In a new book, “Author Unknown,” (Henry Holt & Company) Mr. Foster argues that “A Visit From St. Nicholas,” first published anonymously in a Troy, N.Y., newspaper in 1823, closely matches the views and verse of Henry Livingston Jr., a gentleman-poet of Dutch descent.

The article goes on to explain Professor Foster’s findings.

The Writer’s Almanac in 2003 also discussed the poem and its origins at length.

Today is Christmas Eve, the subject of the beloved holiday poem that begins:

Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;
The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of sugarplums danced in their heads.

The poem, now known as “The Night Before Christmas,” was first published anonymously in a small newspaper in Upstate New York in 1823, and its original title was “Account of a Visit From St. Nicholas.” It was a huge success, and it has been published in book form so many times that it now exists in more editions than any other Christmas book ever printed.

Fourteen years after its first publication, an editor attributed the poem to a wealthy professor of classical literature named Clement Clarke Moore. At first, Moore dismissed the poem as a trifle, but he eventually included it in a volume of his collected Poems (1844). A legend grew that Moore had been inspired to write the poem for his children during a sleigh ride home on Christmas Eve in 1822, and that he had based his version of Saint Nicholas on his Dutch chauffeur.

Recently, new evidence has come out that a Revolutionary War major named Henry Livingston Jr. may have been the actual author of “The Night Before Christmas.” His family has letters describing his recitation of the poem before it was originally published, and literary scholars have found many similarities between his work and “The Night Before Christmas.” He was also three quarters Dutch, and many of the details in the poem, including names of the reindeer, have Dutch origins.

But whoever wrote the poem, “The Night Before Christmas” changed the way Americans celebrate the holiday of Christmas by reinventing the character of Santa Claus. The name Santa Claus comes from Sinter Klaas, the Dutch name for Saint Nicholas. He was a bishop in Southwest Turkey in the 4th century and had a reputation for extraordinary generosity. He became known as the patron saint of children, and many European children began to celebrate St. Nicholas Eve on December 5th. On that day in Hungary, children leave boots out for St. Nicholas to fill with presents. In Germany, Switzerland and Belgium, children are visited by a man in bishop’s robes who listens to prayers and gives presents. In Holland, St. Nicholas arrives by steamboat from Spain, and travels around the country on a white horse, tossing gifts down chimneys.

“The Night Before Christmas” combined the celebrations of St. Nicholas Day and Christmas, and made children the focus of Christmas celebrations. The poem was also the first representation of Santa Claus as a magical, elf-like being who travels through the air on a sleigh pulled by eight reindeer.

After the publication of the poem, the ritual of gift giving became a boon to merchants, and they became Santa’s biggest fans. Stores began to launch Christmas advertising campaigns on Thanksgiving, and Thanksgiving Day parades first began as Christmas shopping promotions. In 1939, the retail business community persuaded Franklin Roosevelt to set the annual date of Thanksgiving as the fourth Thursday in November, which ensured a four-week shopping season each year. Retailers now count on Christmas for more than 50 percent of their annual sales. In Holland, children are now visited by St. Nicholas on December 5th, and on Christmas Eve they are visited by Santa Claus, whom they call, “American Christmas Man.”

What Might Have Been

Matthew Yglesias and Atrios write about the newspaper industry — and what might have been.

They are getting closer to the truth I think. Newspapers publish news, comics, and ads in order to create what they sell. And what they sell is you. They sell you to advertisers (just as television does).

The product of newspapers is readers. The content on newspapers is the means to attract readers. Except for a sense of community involvement — real in some instances, perceived in most — a newspaper’s relationship with “journalism” is a marriage of convenience.

December 23rd

Two football hall-of-famers, Paul Hornung (73) and Jack Ham (60) were born on this date. Those numbers are their ages, not their jersey numbers. Hornung wore 5 with Green Bay, Ham 59 with the Steelers.

It’s the birthday of Montgomery Burns, Smithers, Ned Flanders, Principal Skinner and Reverend Lovejoy. Comedian and voice actor Harry Shearer is 65 today.

Another hall-of-famer, Susan Lucci, is 62 today.

The author Norman Maclean was born on this date in 1902.

He grew up in Montana. He taught English at the University of Chicago for many years, and built a cabin in Montana, near the Big Blackfoot River, and he spent every summer there.

After he retired from teaching, at the age of 70, he wrote his famous autobiographical novella, A River Runs Through It, which was published in 1976 by the University of Chicago Press. It was the first work of fiction the press ever published, and it was a huge best-seller, and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.

It begins: “In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing. We lived at the junction of great trout rivers in western Montana, and our father was a Presbyterian minister and a fly fisherman who tied his own flies and taught others. He told us about Christ’s disciples being fishermen, and we were left to assume, as my brother and I did, that all first-class fishermen on the Sea of Galilee were fly fishermen and that John, the favorite, was a dry-fly fisherman.”

The Writer’s Almanac

Joseph Smith began his 38 years on earth on this date in 1805.

The Federal Reserve System was created by the Owen-Glass Act, signed by President Wilson on this date in 1913.

The first major banking reform to follow the Civil War, the Federal Reserve was organized to regulate banking and provide the nation with a more stable and secure financial and monetary system. It remains the central banking authority of the United States, establishing banking policies, interest rates, and the availability of credit. It also acts as the government’s fiscal agent and regulates the supply of currency.

Expanded since its founding, in both size and function, the Federal Reserve consists of a board of governors, nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate, twelve regional Federal Reserve banks, the Federal Open Market Committee, the Federal Advisory Council, a Consumer Advisory Council, and several thousand member banks.

Library of Congress

George Washington resigned as commander-in-chief of the Army on December 23, 1783.

December 22nd

Today is the birthday

… of Hector Elizondo. Better-known for Chicago Hope, NewMexiKen remembers this fine character actor best as the gracious hotel manager in Pretty Woman. He’s 72.

… of Steve Carlton. Lefty is 64.

Steve Carlton was an extremely focused competitor with complete dedication to excellence. He thrived on the mound by physically and mentally challenging himself off the field. His out-pitch, a hard, biting slider complemented a great fastball. He won 329 games – second only to Warren Spahn among lefties – and his 4,136 strikeouts are exceeded only by Nolan Ryan. Lefty once notched 19 strikeouts in a game, compiled six 20-win seasons, and was the first pitcher to win four Cy Young Awards.

National Baseball Hall of Fame

… of Diane Sawyer. She’s 63.

… of Robin Gibb. The twin of Maurice (d. 2003) and brother of Barry and Andy (d. 1988) is 59.

… of Ralph Fiennes. The actor, twice nominated for the best actor Oscar, is 46.

Claudia Taylor Johnson was born on this date in 1912. NewMexiKen worked at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library in the mid-1970s where I met and occasionally chatted with Mrs. Johnson. She was a warm, impressive and attractive woman.

Best thoughts of the day, so far

While it is currently 5 degrees out — so cold the dogs prefer barking at squirrels through thermopane glass rather than going outside and actually chasing them — I’d like to point out that as of yesterday, the days are getting longer. Ah, yes, the Winter Solstice, something I didn’t fully appreciate until I moved back to the lower midwest from blandly sunny California. Now, I’m totally on-board the pagan train, and when the sun starts moving back north I’m lighting fires and painting myself blue in the hope that godless ritual will bring spring more quickly. And if the cold isn’t enough to do it my recent gas bill is.

I note as well that every day brings us one day closer to the opening of spring training, when the simple knowledge that grown men have gone south to practice a boy’s game warms me to my marrow. There are only 52 days until pitchers and catchers report. …

Funtional Ambivalent has more you should read.

Momma’s girl

Saturday, six-year-old Kiley, the second oldest of The Sweeties, was decidedly unhappy about being separated from her mother even for three hours to attend a play with her grandma.

Her grandma asked, “Kiley, I’ve been thinking about going to Denver and that you could go along and visit Sofie.” (Sofie is Kiley’s five-year-old cousin.) “If you’re six and can’t leave your mom long enough to go to a play, how old would you have to be to go to Denver and leave your mom for five days?”

Kiley thought about it for a moment and replied, “Thirty-six.”

Best sports line of the day

On the first play of the second half, the Lions broke the huddle with 12 men. The first play of the second half. Now, it’s important to keep two things in mind:

1. The Lions had known for nearly two hours that they would have the ball at the start of the second half.

2. Only 11 men are allowed on the field at a time. That is a new rule for the 2008 season. Oh, wait, my bad: That’s actually been the rule for, like, 100 years.

Michael Rosenberg writing about the futility of the 0-15 Detroit Lions.

2010 Ford Fusion Hybrid: 52 mpg and the darkness before dawn

Dan Neil informs us that all is not bad in Motown. Go read it all (because Neil is the best), but here’s the teaser:

The 2010 Ford Fusion Hybrid, and its twin, the Mercury Milan Hybrid, are mid-to-full-size sedans that seat five in surprising comfort and offer a full-size trunk measuring around 12 cubic feet. They measure 190.6 inches long and weigh a goodly 3,720 pounds. The gas-electric output is 191 horsepower and zero to 60 mph acceleration is under 9 seconds.

The retail price of a nicely equipped Fusion Hybrid — with blandishments such as rearview camera, blind-spot alert and 17-inch alloy wheels — is $27,270. With the applicable federal tax credit, the car should cost consumers about $25,000, I estimate (final numbers have not been announced).

On a test drive of a Fusion Hybrid last week in West L.A. traffic, I managed, without much trouble, to get 52 mpg in mixed city-highway driving.

Knucklehead

I’ve told Jill, official oldest daughter of NewMexiKen and the mother of three boys, that I intend to get the book Knucklehead: Tall Tales and Almost True Stories of Growing Up Scieszka by Jon Scieszka so I can read it aloud to her boys my next visit.

From the review:

Scieszka gets children, and he gets their humor. Especially boy humor. He tells the truth about what really goes on when parents aren’t looking. (Chapter 34, “Fire”: “There is something about boys and fire that is like fish and water, birds and air, cats and hairballs. They just go together.” Good thing Scieszka’s mom was a nurse.

The book’s design is also inviting. There are 38 chapters of two to three pages each, with titles like “Who Did It?” With the timing of a stand-up comedian, Scieszka writes in “Watch Your Brothers”: “That’s what my mom used to tell me and Jim — ‘Watch your brothers.’ So we did. We watched Jeff roll off the couch. We watched Brian dig in the plants and eat the dirt. We watched Gregg lift up the lid on the toilet and splash around in the water.”

As someone who grew up with three brothers, I am familiar with boy knuckleheadedness. Scieszka makes the case for certain truths of boyhood, like why nothing beats a good game of “slaughter ball.” “One guy would throw the football up in the air. The rest of us would try to catch it. Then once you caught it, you had to run around and try not to get ‘slaughtered’ by everyone else. It was a great game because you got to smash into a lot of people and then end up in a giant pile.” Did you know it takes only seven pounds of pressure to break a collarbone?

December 21st ought to be a national holiday

The Solstice was at 5:04 this morning Mountain Time.

Ancient peoples believed that because daylight was waning, it might go away forever, so they lit huge bonfires to tempt the sun to come back. The tradition of decorating our houses and our trees with lights at this time of year is passed down from those ancient bonfires.

The Writer’s Almanac (2005)

Today is the birthday

… of Joe Paterno. The football coach at Penn State is 82.

… of Phil Donahue. The talk show host is 73.

… of Jane Fonda. The two-time Oscar-winning actress is 71. Miss Fonda has been nominated for the best actress Oscar six times, winning for Klute and Coming Home. She was also nominated for best supporting actress for On Golden Pond.

… of Carla Thomas. Gee Whiz, she’s 66.

… of Michael Tilson Thomas, he’s 64.

His grandparents, the Thomashefskys, were famous Yiddish theatrical stars. He graduated from the school of music at the University of Southern California and then got a fellowship conducting at Tanglewood, in the Berkshires. At 23, he was the youngest assistant conductor ever hired by the Boston Symphony.

He was the protégé of Leonard Bernstein, and is frequently compared to him. Like Bernstein, he stepped in at a major performance when the principal conductor got sick, and so made his reputation at age 24. He was founder of the New World Symphony in Miami, and in 1995 he went to direct the San Francisco Symphony, and he’s been there ever since. He hosts a classical music series on PBS called Keeping Score.

He said, “I believe that music is the most important when the music stops. When a piece ends, that’s when I really measure what effect it had on me or those who heard it.”

The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor

… of Samuel L. Jackson. Mace Windu is 60. Jackson was nominated for the best actor Oscar for his portrayal of Jules Winnfield in Pulp Fiction.

… of Chris Evert. The tennis hall-of-famer is 54.

… of Jane Kaczmarek. Malcolm’s mom is 53.

… of Ray Romano. Raymond is 51.

… of Kiefer Sutherland. He’s 42.

… of Julie Delpy. The actress, who was nominated for a writing Oscar for Before Sunset, is 39.

Frank Zappa was born on this date in 1940. He died in 1993.

The singer, songwriter, and composer was born in Baltimore, Maryland (1940). Zappa’s father was a meteorologist in the Army who studied the effects of weather on explosions and poisonous gases. The gas masks and chemical paraphernalia his dad brought home were some of young Zappa’s first toys. When Frank Zappa started playing atonal classical music on his electric guitar, he said that his goal was to make sounds that would cause people to run from the room the moment they heard it. He was also a political activist, and he once proposed that the United States form a fourth branch of government devoted entirely to creativity.

The Writer’s Almanac from American Public Media

Joseph Stalin was born on this date in 1879. This from his obituary in 1953:

Joseph Stalin became the most important figure in the political direction of one-third of the people of the world. He was one of a group of hard revolutionaries that established the first important Marxist state and, as its dictator, he carried forward its socialization and industrialization with vigor and ruthlessness.

During the second World War, Stalin personally led his country’s vast armed forces to victory. When Germany was defeated, he pushed his country’s frontiers to their greatest extent and fostered the creation of a buffer belt of Marxist-oriented satellite states from Korea across Eurasia to the Baltic Sea. Probably no other man ever exercised so much influence over so wide a region.

The New York Times

Best line of the day, so far

“Because the truth is that promoting science isn’t just about providing resources – it’s about protecting free and open inquiry. It’s about ensuring that facts and evidence are never twisted or obscured by politics or ideology. It’s about listening to what our scientists have to say, even when it’s inconvenient – especially when it’s inconvenient.”

President-elect Barack Obama

Solstice at Newgrange

Tomorrow’s solstice marks the southernmost point of the Sun’s annual motion through planet Earth’s sky and the astronomical beginning of winter in the north. In celebration of the northern winter solstice and the International Year of Astronomy 2009, you can watch a live webcast of the the solstice sunrise from the megalithic tomb of Newgrange, in County Meath, Ireland. Newgrange dates to 5,000 years ago, much older than Stonehenge, but also with accurate alignments to the solstice Sun. In this view from within the burial mound’s inner chamber, the first rays of the solstice sunrise are passing through a box constructed above the entrance and shine down an 18 meter long tunnel to illuminate the floor at the foot of a decorated stone. The actual stone itself would have been directly illuminated by the solstice Sun 5,000 years ago. The long time exposure also captures the ghostly figure of a more modern astronomer in motion. To watch the live webcast follow the indicated link below. The webcast is planned to go live at 0830 coordinated Universal Time (for example, at 3:30am Eastern Time in the US) tomorrow, Sunday, the 21st.

Astronomy Picture of the Day has all the links and the photo described above.

Winter in the northern hemisphere begins at 5:04 AM Sunday Mountain Standard Time.

It’s always interesting to locate in relation to neighborhood landmarks where the sun rises and/or sets on the day of the December solstice and then compare those locations to the same events in June.

Louisiana Territory

The French colors were lowered and the American flag raised in New Orleans on this date in 1803, signifying the transfer of sovereignty of Louisiana from France to the United States. Arguably the transfer was one of the two or three most defining moments in American history.

As ultimately defined, Louisiana Territory included most of the U.S. west of the Mississippi River, east of the Rocky Mountains, except for Texas and New Mexico; that is, parts or all of Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Colorado, Wyoming and Montana.

Football national champions

The Richmond Spiders defeated the Montana Grizzlies 24-7 Friday evening to win the national championship of the NCAA Football Championship Subdivision (formerly Division I-AA). Richmond finished the season 13-3, Montana 14-2.

It’s Richmond’s first national championship in football. They defeated three-time defending national champion Appalachian State in the quarter finals. Montana has won the national championship twice; this was their fourth time as national runner-up.

Sixteen teams competed in the FCS playoffs, which began November 29th. There are 122 FCS schools.

Meanwhile back in the Bowl Championship Subdivision, Saturday will feature BYU 10-2, Navy 8-4, four teams that are 7-5, and a couple of teams that are 6-6 in four meaningless bowl games.

Richmond is the alma mater of Byron, one of the two official sons-in-law of NewMexiKen.