From an editorial in the Los Angeles Times:
“If that job comes open, I’m gone.” That’s what Condoleezza Rice told Ebony magazine last November when she was asked about her oft-repeated desire to become commissioner of the National Football League. With Commissioner Paul Tagliabue’s announcement Monday that he plans to step down in July, it may be time for President Bush to look for another secretary of State.
Foreign affairs is one thing, but let’s not screw around with the NFL.
If Zacarias Moussaoui and his gang receive 70 virgins each in heaven, what in God’s name did that many virgins do to deserve Moussaoui and the hijackers as punishment?
Link via Day-of-the-dead-ly.
NewMexiKen leaves New Mexico for Virginia and after two weeks there’s been more precipitation in Albuquerque than here (northern Virginia). Neither has had much — 12-hundredths of an inch at home; just 3-hundredths in Virginia.
On average though, you should expect nearly an inch of rain a week in this part of Virginia during March.
… of actor Karl Malden. The Oscar-winner (supporting actor in A Streetcar Named Desire) is 94. Malden was also nominated for supporting actor for On the Waterfront.
… of pantomimist Marcel Marceau. He’s 83.
… of Stephen Sondheim. The composer-lyricist (West Side Story) is 76.
… of actor William Shatner. Captain Kirk is 75.
… of musician George Benson. He’s 63.
… of broadcaster Wolf Blitzer. He’s 58.
… of Andrew Lloyd Webber. The composer (Cats, Evita, Jesus Christ Superstar, Phantom of the Opera) is 58.
… of sportscaster Bob Costas. He’s 54.
… of recent Oscar-winner Reese Witherspoon. She’s 30.
“Girl: …I mean, who doesn’t like being warm? It’s not like they call it ‘Global Sweltering’! So who cares?”
–West 4th Street station
… was designated a national monument on this date in 1946.
In the spring and summer of 1876 the United States Government launched a military campaign upon a portion of the Sioux and Cheyenne Indians, who refused to live within the boundaries of the Great Sioux Reservation. They chose to continue their traditional nomadic way of life. The campaign was initiated when a Government ultimatum to return to the Great Sioux Reservation, in South Dakota, by January 31st, 1876 was ignored.
Gen. Philip Sheridan responded by ordering three military expeditions to approach the gathering Indians from the East, West and South. The Army anticipated the off reservation Sioux and Cheyenne would be found in Eastern or South Central Montana Territory.
As the military threat to these nomadic Sioux and Cheyenne developed, they began to gather for protection. Sitting Bull became the spiritual and political headman for the gathering village and remained so while it was together. A few weeks before the Battle, Sitting Bull conducted a Sun Dance during which he experienced a vision of a great victory over soldiers.
Lt. Colonel George Armstrong Custer and 647 men of the 7th Cavalry, part of the eastern column, were ordered by General Terry, south along Rosebud Creek. Ahead of the main column, Custer’s 6 Crow and 39 Arikara Indian Scouts found the massive village. In the Valley of the Little Bighorn River, the Seventh Cavalry and their Indian allies attacked the village of 6,000 to 7,000 people, on June 25th,1876. After the battle was over, 263 7th Cavalrymen lay dead, including George Custer. 350 7th Cavalrymen survived.
An accurate count of the Sioux and Cheyenne dead was not possible, but at least 60 are known to have died. The Great Sioux War was an inevitable conflict similar to other 17th, 18th, and 19th century conflicts between [I]ndians and non-[I]ndians. All of the participants saw themselves as perhaps patriots-fighting for their country, land, or way of life.
“There are two sides in Iraq right now fighting. The side that hates us and the side that really hates us.”
David Letterman
“I’ve got Hulk in my belly.”
Two-year-old Aidan describing his flu.
NewMexiKen would be remiss to allow the death of basketball coach Ray Meyer at age 92 to pass without mentioning the time the DePaul coach dropped by our high school cafeteria to recruit a classmate. All these years later I can still remember the scene and how awestruck we all were — nudging each other and whispering. Meyer was already a legend, having coached basketball’s first big man, 6-10 George Mikan.
Our classmate went on to play for DePaul; at 6-10, he was the tallest player there since Mikan (1941-1945).
A Missouri teen shattered Mike Powell’s world record by nearly a quarter-mile, but unfortunately this long jump was a bit wind-aided.
A tornado’s 150 mph winds blew Matt Suter, 19, wearing only his boxer shorts, clean out of his grandmother’s trailer home near Fordland and sent him flying into a grassy field — some 1,307 feet away, according to a National Weather Service GPS reading.
Except for getting briefly KO’d and cut on the scalp by a flying table lamp, Suter escaped remarkably unscathed.
As Tom Grazulis, a Vermont-based tornado researcher, told the Springfield (Mo.) News-Leader: “I’ve never heard of anyone going that far in a tornado and surviving.”
… was born in Los Angeles on this date in 1891.
Among the decisions the Supreme Court made under Warren as Chief Justice were those that:
(Source: The New York Times)
Warren’s parents were born in Norway (father) and Sweden (mother). Elected governor of California three times (1942, 1946, 1950), Warren was so popular he won both the Democratic and Republican primaries in 1946. The darkest mark against Warren’s public service was the wartime internment of Japanese Americans.
President Eisenhower appointed Warren chief justice in 1953; he retired from the Court in 1969. NewMexiKen considers Warren the most significant historical figure I’ve ever seen in person (briefly at the 1964 New York World’s Fair) — and I’ve seen four presidents.
NewMexiKen missed the first three, but aced the rest to get seven correct out of ten on The Week Quiz. And you?
Bruce Willis is 51 today, Glenn Close is 59 and Ursula Andress is 70.
Congress approved Daylight Saving Time on this date in 1918. Word hasn’t reached Indiana and Arizona.
Bob Dylan’s first album was released on this date in 1962.
Wyatt Earp was born on this date in 1848. He died in 1929, age 80. Larry McMurtry has an essay on Wyatt, Back to the O.K. Corral, in the current New York Review of Books.
I am talking, of course, about the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, which, for starters, wasn’t fought in the O.K. Corral—the shooting occurred across the street in a vacant lot adjacent to the local photographer Camillus Fry’s rooming house. Some say the shooting only lasted fifteen seconds; others give it twenty seconds, or even thirty. Local estimate was that some thirty shots were fired, at close if not quite point blank range. Three men were killed and three wounded. The shoot-out at the O.K. Corral was neither more nor less violent than a number of shootings that had occurred in Tombstone or its environs in the few short years of the community’s existence. It solved nothing, proved nothing, meant nothing; and yet, 123 years later, the gunfight at the O.K. Corral is reenacted every day in Tombstone, Arizona, to paying customers—lots of paying customers.
The most recent O.K. Corral movie stars Kevin Costner as Wyatt; the next most recent, released a few months earlier, stars Kurt Russell as Wyatt, with Val Kilmer as Doc. There are so many gunfight-at-the O.K.-Corral movies that they constitute a kind of subgenre of the western. In the most lyrical version, John Ford’s My Darling Clementine (1946), Henry Fonda plays Wyatt Earp.
What I’m wondering is why, in this day and time, anyone should care about Wyatt Earp, or any Earp, or the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, either. The Battle of the Little Bighorn at least offers heroism, spectacle, and mass, whereas the gunfight at the O.K. Corral was merely a bungled arrest. Virgil Earp, not Wyatt, was the peace officer in charge that day. How do we get from a bungled arrest to Henry Fonda, Hugh O’Brian, Burt Lancaster, Kevin Costner, Kurt Russell, and all the other movie land Wyatts? I’d like to know.
It’ll cost you $3.00 to read the whole thing unless you subscribe, but it’s worth it.
[Reposted from 2005 with some added items.]
So, one of the rumors going around the internets is that Tony Soprano really did get whacked by Uncle Junior in the sixth season opening show of The Sopranos (last Sunday). The remaining 17-or-so episodes will consist of flashbacks to events before the shooting while we — the audience — all wait to learn Tony’s fate.
“I really do believe this man will go down as the worst president this country has ever had.”
Senator Harry Reid quoted in The New York Times.
No doubt, James Buchanan is pulling for just that.
“I drove north to tiny Bernalillo (where the beloved Range Cafe serves a triethnic crowd of ranchers, gamblers and the hiply ironic).”
Bruce Selcraig in a New York Times article about Indian-owned golf courses.
From a report in The New York Times:
Today, there are more than 50 tribal-owned courses in some 17 states, with several more under construction. From the San Carlos Apache tribe’s Apache Stronghold Golf Club in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona to the Mohicans’ Pine Hills Golf and Supper Club in the Wisconsin woods, tribal courses have changed Indian country’s physical and cultural landscape, helped diversify the tribes’ casino-dependent economies and given American golf some of its finest new playgrounds.
In nearly every case, the courses sit near the tribes’ casinos, whose profits have allowed some American Indian nations to pay in cash for their golf ventures, which run about $5 million to $9 million.
But many of the tribal courses are so good that they are hardly seen as mere casino amenities. Twin Warriors Golf Club, on the Santa Ana Pueblo north of Albuquerque, is ranked 49th on Golf Digest’s 2006 list of the best 100 publicly accessible courses in America. Thirty miles north, near Española, N.M., the Santa Clara Pueblo’s Black Mesa Golf Club was named the 62nd best modern (post-1960) design by Golfweek, which also gave the 93rd spot to the Barona Band of Mission Indians’ Barona Creek Golf Club near San Diego.
“I think the tribal courses are probably the single most impressive force in golf architecture over the last 10 years,” said Ron Whitten, Golf Digest’s architecture critic. “I’ve been impressed with every one.”
Nowhere in America has tribal golf had more impact than in New Mexico, which has the equivalent of nine 18-hole courses on six reservations. By any impartial golf standard, they are uniformly challenging and well-maintained and have a restorative solitude. All but one are found roughly between Albuquerque and Santa Fe, at 5,000 to 7,000 feet, built along mountain foothills or near the banks of the Rio Grande in the fragrant piñón-and-juniper high desert, which still surprises some tourists who come expecting arid desolation.
There’s more worth reading in this well-done article.
By the way, those who know far more about golf than I, don’t consider Twin Warriors, good as it is, to be the best public course near Albuquerque. First place usually goes to Paako Ridge (not mentioned in the article because it isn’t Indian-owned).
Talk to a person instead of a computer phone tree with these access numbers from the gethuman database.
Our goal is to improve the quality of customer service and phone support in the US. This free website is run by volunteers and is powered by over one million consumers who demand high quality phone support from the companies that they use.
Thanks to Veronica for the link.
NewMexiKen assumes all his Irish children and grandchildren are wearing green today in honor or Ireland’s patron saint.
May the road rise to meet you,
May the wind be always at your back,
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
The rains fall soft upon your fields,
And until we meet again,
May God hold you
In the palm of his hand.
A year ago today, according to AAA, gasoline prices reached a new high with regular averaging $2.055 nationwide.
32 sudden death games in two days; 16 yesterday, 16 today. Win or go home. NewMexiKen only picked 11 correct in Thursday’s brackets (damn those comebacks by George Washington and Indiana); hope we all do better today.
Bear Down! Arizona.
“In his first interview since the Olympics Bode Miller says that he has received many letters calling him a disgrace to the country. To give you an idea of how bad it is — most of the letters came from Tonya Harding.”
Conan O’Brien
… was established on this date in 1938.
Salem Maritime, the first National Historic Site in the National Park System, was established to preserve and interpret the maritime history of New England and the United States. The Site consists of about nine acres of land and twelve historic structures along the waterfront in Salem, Massachusetts, as well as a Visitor Center in downtown Salem. The Site documents the development of the Atlantic triangular trade during the colonial period, the role of privateering during the Revolutionary War, and the international maritime trade, especially with the Far East, which established American economic independence after the Revolution. The Site is also the focal point of the Essex National Heritage Area, designated in 1996, which links thousands of historic places in Essex County around three primary historic themes: colonial settlement, maritime trade, and early industrialization in the textile and shoe industries.