Author: NewMexiKen

A father’s ambitions for his child

Still, I thought, maybe Starbuck would benefit from leniency. If we let him hide under the dinner table and gobble Pez from his Batman dispenser, he might become one of those superhumanly cool kids who succeed at everything. He’ll be a running back and class president; he’ll snowboard Whistler and start a band; every summer he’ll build houses with Habitat. Eventually, he’ll practice medicine with Doctors Without Borders, where he’ll meet a beautiful daughter of France, and together they’ll run a clinic and raise babies in Paris while he writes his trilogy on the human comedy, in which there will figure largely a beneficent, wise father.

Dispatches From Adjunct Faculty at a Large State University from McSweeney’s Internet Tendency.

Wampum

Wampum, a blog that bills itself “Progressive Politics, Indian Issues, and Autism Advocacy,” has been providing some much-needed attention to the Indian tribes’ point of view in the Abramoff matter.

Big brother

The Bush administration, seeking to revive an online pornography law struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court, has subpoenaed Google for details on what its users have been looking for through its popular search engine.

Google has refused to comply with the subpoena, issued last year, for a broad range of material from its databases, including a request for 1 million random web addresses and records of all Google searches from any one-week period, lawyers for the U.S. Justice Department said in papers filed Wednesday in federal court in San Jose, California.

AP via Wired News [emphasis added]

First they came for the porn users, but I was not a porn user — so I said nothing. Then they came for the Social Democrats, but I was not a Social Democrat — so I did nothing. Then they came for the trade unionists, but I was not a trade unionist. And then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew — so I did little. Then when they came for me, there was no one left who could stand up for me.

The World’s Best Quotes in 1-10 Words

I’ve collected thousands of inspirational quotes. It seems that nearly everything that can be said, has been said, simply and eloquently, in a way that can seldom be improved. Winston Churchill wrote, “Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words best of all.” So, I collected “The world’s best quotes in one to ten words.”

Click to read the ten quotations with brief commentary. Good stuff.

‘Til the Cows Come Home

Along Highway 4, northwest of Albuquerque and west of Santa Fe, in the Jemez Mountains is one of the most stunning scenic views anywhere. It is Valle Grande, a part of the Valles Caldera National Preserve, described here last week in the words of Scott Momaday:

Of all the places that he knew, this valley alone could reflect the great spatial majesty of the sky. It scooped out of the dark peaks like the well of a great, gathering storm, deep umber and blue and smoke-colored. The view across the diameter was magnificent; it was an unbelievably great expanse. As many times as he had been there in the past, each new sight of it always brought him up short, and he had to catch his breath. Just there, it seemed, a strange and brilliant light lay upon the world, and all the objects in the landscape were washed clean and set away in the distance. In the morning sunlight the Valle Grande was dappled with the shadows of clouds and vibrant with rolling winter grass. The clouds were always there, huge, sharply described, and shining in the pure air. But the great feature of the valley was its size. It was almost too great for the eye to hold, strangely beautiful and full of distance. Such vastness makes for illusion, a kind of illusion that comprehends reality, and where it exists there is always wonder and exhilaration. He looked at the facets of a boulder that lay balanced on the edge of the land, and the first thing beyond, the vague misty field out of which it stood, was the floor of the valley itself, pale and blue-green, miles away. He shifted the focus of his gaze, and he could just make out the clusters of dots that were cattle grazing along the river in the faraway plain.

Maintaining that sublime view is more easily promised than done. Writing in the Santa Fe Reporter, Laura Paskus gives us an update on the National Preserve and its unique management plan. Some background from the article:

In 2000, when the federal government bought the private Baca Ranch in the Jemez Mountains for $97 million and created the Valles Caldera National Preserve, that move in and of itself was seen as a victory.

The 89,000-acre preserve sits about 50 miles from Santa Fe and spreads across a million-year-old collapsed volcanic crater, as well as grassy valleys, volcanic domes and the 11,254-foot-tall Redondo Peak. The thought of those lands finally being open to the public had elk hunters, trout fishermen, backpackers, cross country skiers and ranchers alike champing at the bit.

The preserve was set up to run like no other in the country. It was to function as a working ranch, be financially self-sufficient and managed by a nine-member trust, rather than the US Forest Service or National Park Service.

In the early days, that trust, a Clinton-appointed board, worked well with the Valles Caldera Coalition, a group of conservation, recreational and ranching groups that lobbied for the preserve’s creation and remain involved now.

“Our approach was not to be confrontational, but to work collaboratively with the board of trustees,” says Ernie Atencio, who was the coalition’s first co-ordinator from 2001 until 2003.

Those days have changed.

Link via New West Network.

It’s the birthday

… of Jean Stapleton. Edith Bunker is 83. She won three Emmys and two Golden Globes in that role.

… of Tippi Hedren. The actress in Hitchcock’s The Birds is 76.

… of Phil Everly. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee (with older brother Don) is 67.

Phil and Don transformed the Appalachian folk, bluegrass and country sounds of their Kentucky boyhood into a richly harmonized form of rock and roll. The sons of entertainers Margaret and Ike Everly, a traveling country and western team, the Everly Brothers performed as part of the family act on radio and in concert. On their own, they sang beguilingly of adolescent romance in crisp, shimmering voices. With Don taking the melody and Phil harmonizing above him, the Everlys released a steady string of hit records between 1957-1962 that crossed over from country to pop and even R&B charts. (Rock and Roll Hall of Fame)

… of Shelley Fabares. Donna Reed’s television daughter is 62.

… of Dolly Parton. She’s 60.

With their strong feminine stances in the 1960s and 1970s, Dolly Rebecca Parton, along with fellow female pioneers Loretta Lynn and Tammy Wynette, revolutionized the world of country music for women performers. Then Parton took her crusade a step farther by crossing over to the pop world—landing on the cover of Rolling Stone, achieving pop hits, and starring in a series of Hollywood movies. Along the way, however, she ultimately lost much of her core country audience, to the point that in 1997 she dissolved her fan club, which had been one of the staunchest in country music. But Parton’s career—and her appeal to fans of hard country—was far from over. Beginning in 1999 she returned to the music of her youth and began rebuilding a tradition-minded fan base with a series of critically acclaimed bluegrass albums. (Country Music Hall of Fame)

Cezanne Chrysanthemums… of Desi Arnaz Jr. Little Ricky is 53.

… of Katey Sagal. The Married…With Children mom is 49.

… of Drea de Matteo. The actress who was whacked on The Sopranos is 34.

Paul Cezanne was born on this date in 1839. Click Cezanne painting of Chrysanthemums to enlarge.

The Raven

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore–
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“‘Tis some visiter,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door–
Only this and nothing more.”

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow;–vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow–sorrow for the lost Lenore–
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore–
Nameless here for evermore.

The first two of 18 stanzas of “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe, born on this date in 1809.

Project Gutenberg has an illustrated version from 1885. The poem was first published in 1845.

The Poe Museum has a nice, concise biography of Poe.

Most popular blogs

Technorati’s Top 100 Blogs list is based on links from blogs, to blogs, in the last six months. Here’s the top 15:

  1. Boing Boing: A Directory of Wonderful Things
  2. Engadget
  3. PostSecret
  4. Daily Kos: State of the Nation
  5. The Huffington Post
  6. Gizmodo, The Gadget Blog
  7. Instapundit.com
  8. Crooks and Liars
  9. Michelle Malkin
  10. spaces.msn.com/members/samzhu
  11. dooce
  12. Thought Mechanics
  13. Blog di Beppe Grillo
  14. Lifehacker, the Productivity and Software Guide
  15. spaces.msn.com/members/locker2man

NewMexiKen comes in at number 40,804, which sounds awful until you realize that 40,804th out of 25.5 million ain’t bad.

Annabel Lee

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise but I see the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling, my darling, my life and my bride
In her sepulchre there by the sea,
In her tomb by the side of the sea.

That is the last stanza of “Annabel Lee,” a poem by Edgar Allan Poe, born on this date in 1809.

The Gender Gap

Kevin Drum tells us about a new study of the gender gap:

Ken Hilton is a New York statistician who has studied gender differences in school achievement and concluded that the reason more girls go to college than boys is because girls have way better reading skills. In the New Republic this week, Richard Whitmire investigates:

Combine Hilton’s local research with national neuroscience research, and you arrive at this: The brains of men and women are very different. Last spring, Scientific American summed up the best gender and brain research, including a study demonstrating that women have greater neuron density in the temporal lobe cortex, the region of the brain associated with verbal skills. Now we’ve reached the heart of the mystery. Girls have genetic advantages that make them better readers, especially early in life. And, now, society is favoring verbal skills. Even in math, the emphasis has shifted away from guy-friendly problems involving quick calculations to word and logic problems.
…Ninth grade is where boys’ verbal deficit becomes an albatross that stymies further male academic achievement. That’s the year guys run into the fruits of the school-reform movement that date back to the 1989 governors’ summit in Charlottesville, Virginia, where Democrats and Republicans vowed to shake up schools. One outcome of the summit is that, starting in ninth grade, every student now gets a verbally drenched curriculum that is supposed to better prepare them for college. Good goal, but it’s leaving boys in the dust.

Read the whole thing — quickly and fluently if you’re female, slowly and laboriously if you’re male — to find out what he thinks we ought to do to fix this.

Trader Joe’s but no Nordstrom

The Trib has heard the scuttle, too. Around town, on Web logs and in coffee shops, people are talking about what they’ve heard is coming to the Duke City. Among them, J.Crew, Nordstrom, J.Jill and Urban Outfitters.

The first two gave The Tribune a definite and resounding no on plans to announce an Albuquerque store opening. Women’s clothier J.Jill, however, seems more promising – the customer service department says yes but couldn’t find confirming details. The company’s spokeswoman said she would not be able to confirm anything for a few weeks about the Boston store’s expansion in the West.

Urban Outfitters, which is rumored to be ready to occupy space on Central Avenue, also did not return calls for this story.

The Albuquerque Tribune

The excitement is over more Wal-Marts, Office Depots and — hold your breath — a second Bed, Bath & Beyond.

NewMexiKen loves Albuquerque, but where’s Crate & Barrel, Pottery Barn, Restoration Hardware, Panera, an Apple Store, jeez, a Kohl’s even?

The first Albuquerque Trader Joe’s opens soon.

Female Boxer Offers Hope to a New Mexico Town Short of Heroes

NewMexiKen would be remiss if I didn’t point out this article from the National section of today’s New York Times:

She is more Cinderella than Cinderella Man and no one’s Million-Dollar Baby, but Monica Lovato, a slip of a super flyweight boxer at 5-foot-5 and 115 pounds, is carrying the hopes of her drug-ravaged hometown on her narrow shoulders.

Heroes have been hard to come by in Espanola, the mile-high seat of Rio Arriba County, where drug overdoses lead the nation in taunting proximity to northern New Mexico’s moneyed enclaves of Santa Fe, Taos and Los Alamos.

Ms. Lovato, 28, who has fought her way out of a tormented family history to a 4-1 record and has been known to relax by jumping out of airplanes, is as much a champion as Espanolans have cheered in some time.

Our very own “Mo cuishle.”

The article is as much about the problems — especially drug-related — in Rio Arriba county as it is about the boxer.

Key quotation: “[W]here a Rio Arriba County commissioner once protested a [drug] crackdown saying, ‘We’re not going to declare war on our own relatives.'”

The Classic Won’t Be a Classic Minus Cuba

From George Vecsey’s column in The New York Times:

But first the Classic needs a gesture of diplomacy, or at least a quiet bureaucratic stamping of papers. The Bush administration has refused permission for Cuba, one of the great baseball powers in the world, to enter the United States to play in the tournament, as part of the longstanding American embargo on trade with Cuba.

The Castro regime has offered to donate any profits from the Classic to Hurricane Katrina victims, but the Bush administration is under intense pressure from Cuban exiles in South Florida to apply the ban against the Cuban team. The Treasury Department is reconsidering the application, while baseball officials nervously await the answer.

As athletes who never had a chance to play in a world competition, [Sadaharu] Oh and [Henry] Aaron seemed concerned that Cuba could be kept out.

“I don’t know anything about politics, but since it is called the World Classic, I hope Cuba will play,” Oh said through an interpreter.

Aaron said: “The world is not the world until it’s complete. I hope Cuba will play. I hope politics doesn’t get involved in this, the way it does everything else.”

This isn’t the worst thing the Bush Administration has done, or the stupidest, but it is certainly the most asinine. No justification for the denial other than catering to the Cuban vote in south Florida. Let Cuba play.

The War That Made America

Virginia Heffernan reviews the PBS four-part edutainment series on the French and Indian War that debuts this evening. An excerpt:

She [co-executive producer Laura Fisher] has set out to render in lavish particulars the story of the strange war between the French and British empires for control of the Ohio River Valley in the 1750’s and 60’s. The war was triangulated: American Indians, for whom the valley was a homeland, played the empires against each other, eventually tipping the balance of power in favor of the British. The Indians’ strategy, diplomacy and unorthodox military tactics are the chief focus of this program, which attends closely to their considerable role in the war. (Graham Greene, the actor and Oneida Indian whose ancestors fought in the war, serves as narrator.)

Update: The first two hours (of four) were shown January 18th (remainder January 25th). NewMexiKen watched and it was good, though somewhat slow-paced. Greene’s narration explains most of what is happening in a useful but not burdensome way. The Indian role and agenda is demonstrated more thoroughly than ever before in a production of this type.

NewMexiKen assumes (but has no documentation) that I may well have had ancestors fighting for both the English and French sides.

Now here’s a pessimist

I still say “Gore/Obama 08,” but I think McCain will be nearly impossible to beat and I’ve changed my mind about him being un-nominatable. (Jeb is the wild card, by the way.) But if McCain does turn out to be the nominee, maybe Democrats had just better nominate Hillary and get it over with”.

Eric Alterman

McCain will be 72 in 2008, or some other age if that suits his ambitions better.

Annie Proulx tells the story behind ‘Brokeback Mountain’

From Advocate.com, an intreview with Annie Proulx that includes this:

AP: How did you feel about seeing it on the big screen?

Proulx: It was really quite a shock because I had had nothing to do with the film. So for 18 months, I had no idea what was happening. I had no idea if it was going to be good or frightful or scary, if it was going to be terribly lost or sentimentalized or what. When I saw it in September, I was astonished. The thing that happened while I was writing the story eight years ago is that from thinking so much about the characters and putting so much time into them, they became embedded in my consciousness. They became as real to me as real, walk-around, breathe-oxygen people. It took a long time to get these characters out of my head so I could get on with work. Then when I saw the film, they came rushing back. It was extraordinary—just wham—they were with me again.

AP: What did you think of the performances by Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal?

Proulx: I thought they were magnificent, both of them. Jake Gyllenhaal’s Jack Twist…wasn’t the Jack Twist that I had in mind when I wrote this story. The Jack that I saw was jumpier, homely. But Gyllenhaal’s sensitivity and subtleness in this role is just huge. The scenes he’s in have a kind of quicksilver feel to them. Heath Ledger is just almost really beyond description as far as I’m concerned. He got inside the story more deeply than I did. All that thinking about the character of Ennis that was so hard for me to get, Ledger just was there. He did indeed move inside the skin of the character, not just in the shirt but inside the person. It was remarkable.

NewMexiKen read the story again last evening and it is excellent. It’s in Proulx’s wonderful collection of Wyoming stories Close Range. Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana adapted Proulx’s story for the screenplay.

Link via kottke.org.