Author: NewMexiKen

On the Twelfth Day of December

… of Bob Barker. C’mon down, he’s 85.

… of Connie Francis. Do you suppose she’s still trying to get to where the boys are at 70.

… Dionne Warwick. Perhaps she’d just as soon walk on by her 68th birthday.

… of Dickey Betts. The member of the Allman Brothers band is 65.

… of Cathy Rigby. The Olympic gymnast is 56.

… of Tracy Austin. The one-time tennis prodigy is 46.

… of Oscar-winner Jennifer Connelly. She’s 38.

John Jay was born on this date in 1745. Jay, a delegate from New York, served in the First and Second Continental Congresses. During the War for Independence Jay served as president of the Continental Congress, minister plenipotentiary to Spain, and peace commissioner (in which he negotiated vital treaties with Spain and France). He was Secretary of Foreign Affairs under the Articles of Confederation. During the ratification of the Constitution, Jay was author of the Federalist Papers, along with Madison and Hamilton. He was the first Chief Justice of the United States. While Chief Justice, Jay negotiated a vital, though flawed treaty with Great Britain in 1794, the Jay Treaty.

Pennsylvania ratified the Constitution on this date in 1787, thereby becoming the second state.

The first radio transmission across the Atlantic was made by Guglielmo Marconi on this date in 1901 (Cornwall, England, to Newfoundland, Canada). The message consisted of Morse code for the letter “s”. That would be dot-dot-dot.

Which is better than a lot of stuff on the air 107 years later.

And today is not a national holiday, why?

Frank Sinatra was born in Hoboken, New Jersey, 93 years ago today (1915).

This from Sinatra’s New York Times obituary in 1998:

Widely held to be the greatest singer in American pop history and one of the most successful entertainers of the 20th century, Sinatra was also the first modern pop superstar. He defined that role in the early 1940’s when his first solo appearances provoked the kind of mass pandemonium that later greeted Elvis Presley and the Beatles.

During a show business career that spanned more than 50 years and comprised recordings, film and television as well as countless performances in nightclubs, concert halls and sports arenas, Sinatra stood as a singular mirror of the American psyche.

His evolution from the idealistic crooner of the early 1940’s to the sophisticated swinger of the 50’s and 60’s seemed to personify the country’s loss of innocence.

La Virgen de Guadalupe

Today is the 477th anniversary of the appearance of La Virgen de Guadalupe on the cloak of Juan Diego.

Virgen de Guadalupe

Guadalupe is, strictly speaking, the name of a picture, but the name was extended to the church containing the picture and to the town that grew up around the church. It makes the shrine, it occasions the devotion, it illustrates Our Lady. It is taken as representing the Immaculate Conception, being the lone figure of the woman with the sun, moon, and star accompaniments of the great apocalyptic sign with a supporting angel under the crescent. The word is Spanish Arabic, but in Mexico it may represent certain Aztec sounds.

Its tradition is long-standing and constant, and in sources both oral and written, Indian and Spanish, the account is unwavering. The Blessed Virgin appeared on Saturday 9 December 1531 to a 55 year old neophyte named Juan Diego, who was hurrying down Tepeyac hill to hear Mass in Mexico City. She sent him to Bishop Zumárraga to have a temple built where she stood. She was at the same place that evening and Sunday evening to get the bishop’s answer. The bishop did not immediately believed the messenger, had him cross-examined and watched, and he finally told him to ask the lady who said she was the mother of the true God for a sign. The neophyte agreed readily to ask for sign desired, and the bishop released him.

Juan was occupied all Monday with Bernardino, an uncle, who was dying of fever. Indian medicine had failed, and Bernardino seemed at death’s door. At daybreak on Tuesday 12 December 1531, Juan ran to nearby Saint James’s convent for a priest. To avoid the apparition and the untimely message to the bishop, he slipped round where the well chapel now stands. But the Blessed Virgin crossed down to meet him and said, “What road is this thou takest son?” A tender dialogue ensued. She reassured Juan about his uncle, to whom she also briefly appeared and instantly cured. Calling herself Holy Mary of Guadalupe she told Juan to return to the bishop. He asked the sign for the sign he required. Mary told him to go to the rocks and gather roses. Juan knew it was neither the time nor the place for roses, but he went and found them. Gathering many into the lap of his tilma, a long cloak or wrapper used by Mexican Indians, he came back. The Holy Mother rearranged the roses, and told him to keep them untouched and unseen until he reached the bishop. When he met with Zumárraga, Juan offered the sign to the bishop. As he unfolded his cloak the roses, fresh and wet with dew, fell out. Juan was startled to see the bishop and his attendants kneeling before him. The life size figure of the Virgin Mother, just as Juan had described her, was glowing on the tilma. The picture was venerated, guarded in the bishop’s chapel, and soon after carried in procession to the preliminary shrine.

The coarsely woven material of the tilme which bears the picture is as thin and open as poor sacking. It is made of vegetable fibre, probably maguey. It consists of two strips, about seventy inches long by eighteen wide, held together by weak stitching. The seam is visible up the middle of the figure, turning aside from the face. Painters have not understood the laying on of the colours. They have deposed that the “canvas” was not only unfit but unprepared, and they have marvelled at apparent oil, water, distemper, etc. colouring in the same figure. They are left in equal admiration by the flower-like tints and the abundant gold. They and other artists find the proportions perfect for a maiden of fifteen. The figure and the attitude are of one advancing. There is flight and rest in the eager supporting angel. The chief colours are deep gold in the rays and stars, blue green in the mantle, and rose in the flowered tunic.

(The Catholic Community Forum, taken from a 1911 Catholic Encyclopedia article)

The Republican economic recovery plan

“So where did the auto-bailout negotiations break down? Over the demand by anti-union Southern Republican senators that domestic automaker workers be forced to accept immediate wage cuts, and the loss of benefits. I’m with Barney Frank on this one: No one asked the rank-and-file employees of Citigroup or AIG or Morgan-Stanley to cut their salaries in exchange for government handouts. Assembly-line workers at GM and Chrysler, on the other hand, must tighten their belts.”

Andrew Leonard

Even Cheney supported relief for the automakers.

Other Sweeties

Nora, one of two official daughters-in-law of NewMexiKen, posted a photo on Facebook illustrating why she and Jason “can’t have a real tree, or any ornaments…”

Christmas Pets

Click the image for a larger version. That’s Barkley on the left and Rocky in the tree.

Go Boom

At 3:25 P.M. on December 2, 1942, the Atomic Age began inside an enormous tent on a squash court under the stands of the University of Chicago’s Stagg Field. There, scientists headed by Enrico Fermi engineered the first controlled nuclear fission chain reaction. The result, sustainable nuclear energy, led to creation of the atomic bomb and nuclear power plants—two of the twentieth century’s most powerful and controversial achievements.

The Library of Congress has more.

The Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act

… became law on this date in 1980, more than doubling the size of the national park system.

Mt. Wrangell

According to America’s National Park System: The Critical Documents edited by Lary M. Dilsaver:

In the waning days of the Carter Democratic administration, Congress acted to further protect and expand preserved areas in Alaska, many rescued from exploitation two years earlier by presidential proclamation. This complex and lengthy act defines preserved parks, forests, wilderness areas, wildlife refuges, wild and scenic rivers, and Native American corporation lands and the degrees of preservation and usage for each. It prescribes timber, fish, and wildlife protection and use by Native Americans and other citizens.

New areas for the national park system included Aniakchak National Preserve, Cape Krusenstern National Monument, Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve, Kenai Fjords National Park, Kobuk Valley National Park, Lake Clark National Park and Preserve, Noatak National Preserve, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, and Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve. The act also added new lands to Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve, Katmai National Monument and Preserve, and Denali National Park and Preserve (renamed from Mount McKinley National Park).

New wild and scenic rivers under Park Service administration included Alagnak, Alatna, Aniakchak, Charley, Chilikadrotna, John, Kobuk, Mulchatna, Noatak, North Fork of the Koyukuk, Salmon, Tinayguk, and Tlikakila rivers. Other wild and scenic rivers are designated or expanded in wildlife refuges and in other areas.

The vast majority of acreage in the Denali, Gates of the Arctic, Glacier Bay, Katmai, Kobuk Valley, Lake Clark, Noatak, and Wrangell-St. Elias units is designated wilderness.

Photo taken by Ken, official oldest son of NewMexiKen, 1998.

GM says CEO will drive to Washington

This time, GM Chief Rick Wagoner will drive a company car to Washington instead of flying by corporate jet as he seeks a government bailout, a spokesman says.

Wagoner will drive in a Chevrolet Malibu hybrid sedan when he makes the 520-mile trek from Detroit to Capitol Hill, General Motors Corp. spokesman Tony Cervone said Tuesday.

AP via Yahoo! Finance

Poor bastard. Next time he’ll probably be on a Greyhound bus.

‘I did not get on the bus to get arrested; I got on the bus to go home.’

As told by the Library of Congress:

On the evening of December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, an African American, was arrested for disobeying an Alabama law requiring black passengers to relinquish seats to white passengers when the bus was full. Blacks also were required to sit at the back of the bus. Her arrest sparked a 381-day boycott of the Montgomery bus system and led to a 1956 Supreme Court decision banning segregation on public transportation.

Rosa McCauley was born on February 4, 1913, in Tuskegee, Alabama. In 1932, she married Raymond Parks and with his encouragement earned a high school diploma. The couple was active in the Montgomery Chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). While working as a seamstress, Mrs. Parks served as chapter secretary and, for a time, as advisor to the NAACP Youth Council. Denied the right to vote on at least two occasions because of her race, Rosa Parks also worked with the Voters League in preparing blacks to register.

. . .

Although her arrest was not planned, Park’s action was consistent with the NAACP’s desire to challenge segregated public transport in the courts. A one-day bus boycott coinciding with Parks’s December 5 court date resulted in an overwhelming African-American boycott of the bus system. Since black people constituted seventy percent of the transit system’s riders, most busses carried few passengers that day.

The success of the boycott mandated sustained action. Religious and political leaders met at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church and formed the Montgomery Improvement Association (later the Southern Christian Leadership Conference). Dexter’s new pastor, Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., was appointed the group’s leader. For the next year, the Montgomery Improvement Association coordinated the bus boycott and King, an eloquent young preacher, inspired those who refused to ride:

If we are wrong—the Supreme Court of this nation is wrong. If we are wrong—God almighty is wrong! If we are wrong—Jesus of Nazareth was merely a utopian dreamer and never came down to earth. If we are wrong—justice is a lie. And we are determined here in Montgomery to work and fight until justice runs down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.
Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., Montgomery, Alabama, 1955.

Allen Stewart Konigsberg

… is 73 today. NewMexiKen saw Woody Allen doing stand-up once upon a time when we were both a lot younger (about 45 years ago, sigh).

Here’s a few of his insights, some possibly from that very time.

“A fast word about oral contraception. I asked a girl to go to bed with me, she said ‘no’.”

“I had a terrible education. I attended a school for emotionally disturbed teachers.”

“I am thankful for laughter, except when milk comes out of my nose.”

“Some guy hit my fender, and I told him ‘be fruitful, and multiply.’ But not in those words.”

“I was thrown out of college for cheating on the metaphysics exam; I looked into the soul of the boy sitting next to me.”

“If it turns out that there is a God, I don’t think that he’s evil. But the worst that you can say about him is that basically he’s an underachiever.”

“More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.”

Conservation President

Thirty years ago today President Jimmy Carter took abrupt and sweeping action to preserve 17 endangered areas in Alaska. Carter used the 1906 Antiquities Act to prevent exploitation while the Congress deliberated. Carter’s proclamation established:

Admiralty Island National Monument
Aniakchak National Monument
Becharof National Monument
Bering Land Bridge National Monument
Cape Krusenstern National Monument
Denali National Monument
Gates of the Arctic National Monument
Enlarging the Glacier Bay National Monument
Enlarging the Katmai National Monument
Kenai Fjords National Monument
Kobuk Valley National Monument
Lake Clark National Monument
Misty Fiords National Monument
Noatak National Monument
Wrangell-St. Elias National Monument
Yukon-Charley National Monument
Yukon Flats National Monument

Two years and a day later the Congress passed the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act.