Author: NewMexiKen

How I thought I’d become a footnote to history

In 1976, the House of Representatives established a Select Committee on Assassinations to investigate the murders of President John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King. Among the things the Committee sought was a thorough examination of all the photographic evidence in the Kennedy murder. At that time it took a mainframe computer to do what probably could be done on a personal computer today — that is, scan, enhance and thoroughly analyze the images. The image enhancement would be done at the Aerospace Corporation in California. The agreement with the National Archives, which had custody of the Kennedy assassination evidence in Washington, stipulated that the photographic records must be in the custody of the Archives or an Archives employee at all times. For two days I was that employee.

The only copy of the photographs, film, x-rays, etc., was brought by courier to California and put in a safe within a secure area at the National Archives facility in Laguna Niguel, where I worked at the time. The image enhancement was being done in El Segundo near Los Angeles International Airport, some 60 miles away. Each day we opened the safe, verified that each item was present, put the briefcase and “suit” box (think of a four-inch high pizza box) into the trunk of a rented car and made the commute.

That first day (it was Easter week 1978) I followed the procedure carefully even taking the materials with me to lunch, thinking to myself “if the people around me only knew what I had.” It was fascinating to see the enhancements and hear the analysis of the few experts working on the project and sworn to secrecy (as was I). Late in the afternoon I packed everything back up, put it in the trunk, returned to the office and locked it all in the safe. I remember thinking on the way home, this stuff would be worth a million dollars or more on the black market. Am I being followed? Am I in danger?

The second morning we began the inventory. Everything was there, of course. Except — EXCEPT! — on one x-ray, right in the middle of the damaged part of President Kennedy’s skull, there was a bubble. I didn’t remember any damage to any of the x-rays. Now it looked as if this one x-ray had been too close to heat and the image had been burned. How did this happen? Where had I put the box that this could have happened? Was the computer console in the lab too hot? Was there a problem with the exhaust in the rental car that the trunk floor got excessively hot? My god, somehow I’ve damged the only copy of a piece of evidence in the most important murder of the 20th century. My boss was visibly shaken. I was hyper-ventilating. My career is over. I’m a footnote in the Kennedy conspiracy books.

There was nothing to do but put the briefcase and box in the car (inside with me this time) and make the drive to El Segundo. It was a lonely 90 minutes. Once there I trudged in and immediately confessed my crime.

“Oh, that. Some doctor got it too close to a lamp years ago.”

[The photographic and forensic experts I talked to were convinced the photographic evidence at least was consistent with one shooter — Oswald. As a reward for my participation in this project I was later permitted to see some other the other evidence including Oswald’s clothing (blood stained) and his Mannlicher-Carcano rifle.]

Romeo and Juliet 2005 SMS

SMS stands for Short Message Service — like the kind you send/receive on your cell phone (you do text message don’t you?).

Now you can get plot outlines in SMS. Here’s Romeo and Juliet:

FeudTween 2hses- Montague&Capulet. RomeoMfalls_<3w/_JulietC@mary Secretly Bt R kils J’s Coz &&is banishd. J fakes Death. As Part of Plan2b-w/R Bt_leter Bt It Nvr Reachs Him. Evry1confuzd-bothLuvrs kil Emselves

More here.

Or perhaps you’d prefer the tabloid version.

As for NewMexiKen, I’m still contemplating: 2b? Nt2b? …

Link Wray

Link Wray, the electric guitar innovator who is often credited as the father of the power chord, died earlier this month at his home in Copenhagen, apparently of natural causes. He was seventy-six.

He may have died quietly, but Wray’s life was notable for its enthusiastic devotion to volume. “Rumble,” the guitarist’s 1958 signature song, had the unique distinction of being widely banned by radio stations across America despite the fact that it had no words.

As legend has it, Wray poked a pencil through the cone of his amplifier to achieve the song’s groundbreaking fuzz tone. Its ragged, ominous chords, overdriven and dragged to a crawl, sounded like an invitation to a knife fight. At a time of national hysteria over juvenile delinquency, many cultural scolds took the song’s implied threat literally.

Wray’s early, highly stylized instrumental swagger, further evidenced in follow-up hits such as “Raw-Hide” and “Jack the Ripper,” would prove to be a great inspiration for some of the most potent guitarists of the classic rock era, including Pete Townshend, Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen. Bob Dylan, another teenage fan, opened his show in London Sunday night by playing “Rumble” in tribute.

Rolling Stone

It’s “Rumble” that’s heard in Pulp Fiction. NewMexiKen had an entry about Wray last year.

222 years ago today

Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and François Laurent, the marquis d’ Arlandes, flew in a untethered hot air balloon over Paris for 20 minutes on this date in 1783. The balloon was made of silk and paper and was constructed by Jacques Étienne and Joseph-Michel Montgolfier, who first took notice that smoke (i.e, hot air) would cause a bag to rise. The Montgolfiers experimented with paper bags before sending a balloon aloft with a sheep, a rooster and a duck (September 19, 1783). De Rozier went up in a tethered balloon on October 15.

But November 21 is the date man first flew, untethered to the earth.

The winds have welcomed you with softness,
The sun has blessed you with his warm hands
You have flown so high and so free,
That God has joined you in laughter,
And set you gently again,
Into the loving arms of mother earth.

The Balloonists Prayer

It’s the birthday

… of three generations of sports hall-of-famers. Stan Musial is 85, Earl Monroe is 61, and Troy Aikman is 39.

Also, Kate Hudson’s mother is 60 today. (That’s Goldie Hawn.) “That Girl,” Marlo Thomas is 68.

Update: Aikman is not yet in the Hall-of-Fame. He’s on this year’s list.

Edge of America

The subject of modern Native American life is largely untapped, and any number of interesting films might have been made about it, especially now that casinos have brought new revenue and competing ideologies to some reservations. It is a shame that the producers instead chose to make a film concluding with the wisdom, “The basketball is round, like Mother Earth.”

From Ginia Bellafante in a The New York Times review of the Showtime movie Edge of America. The film is about an African-American coach and an American Indian girls high school basketball team.

Here’s what I think

First, these stories from Representative Murtha’s statement last Thursday:

I have a young fellow in my district who was blinded and he lost his foot. They did everything they could for him at Walter Reed, then they sent him home. His father was in jail. He had nobody at home. Imagine this. A young kid that age, 22, 23 years old, goes home to nobody. VA did everything they could do to help him. He was reaching out.

So they sent him — to make sure that he was a blind, they sent him to Johns Hopkins. Johns Hopkins started sending bills. Then the collection agency started sending bills. Well, when I found out about it, you could imagine they stopped the collection agency and Walter Reed finally paid the bill. But imagine, a young person being blinded, without a foot, and he’s getting bills from a collection agency.

I saw a young soldier who lost two legs and an arm, and his dad was pushing him around.

I go to the mental ward; you know what they say to me? They got battle fatigue. You know what they say? “We don’t get nothing. We get nothing. We’re just as bruised, just as injured as everybody else, but we don’t even get a Purple Heart. We get nothing. We get shunted aside. We get looked at as if there’s something wrong with us.”

Saw a young woman from Notre Dame. Basketball player, right- handed, lost her right hand. You know what she’s worried about? She’s worried about her husband because he lost weight worrying about her. These are great people. These soldiers and people who are serving, they’re marvelous people.

I saw a Seabee lying there with three children. His mother and his wife were there. He was paralyzed from the neck down. There were 18 of them killed in this one mortar attack. And they were all crying because they knew what it would be like in the future.

I saw a Marine rubbing his boy’s hand. He was a Marine in Vietnam, and his son had just come back from Iraq. And he said he wanted his brother to come home. That’s what the father said, because the kid couldn’t speak. He was in a coma.

He kept rubbing his hand.

He didn’t want to come home. I told him the Marine Corps would get him home.

I had one other kid, lost both his hands. Blinded. I was praising him, saying how proud we were of him and how much we appreciate his service to the country. “Anything I can do for you?” His mother said get me a — “Get him a Purple Heart.” I said, “What do you mean, get him a Purple Heart?”

He had been wounded in taking care of bomblets, these bomblets that they drop that they have to dismantle. He had been wounded and lost both his hands. The kid behind him was killed.

His mother said, “Because they’re friendly bomblets, they wouldn’t give him a Purple Heart.”

I met with the commandant. I said, “If you don’t give him a Purple Heart, I’ll give him one of mine.” And they gave him a Purple Heart.

I think we should stop letting this happen to our American warriors. I do care if oil goes to $100 a barrel because Iraq has a civil war, but I care much, much more about continuing to waste our national treasure — human and — on this counter-productive war. Giving the benefit of the doubt to those who began the war, the United States went in to remove Saddam Hussein and his weapons of mass destruction. Hussein is captured; there were no weapons. Mission Accomplished.

Bring the American troops home as quickly as feasible. Murtha says it would take six months; sounds right to me.

Almost Famous

The BBC World Service has a new program — World Have Your Say, which broadcasts daily at 1800 GMT (11:00 AM MST).

This morning, Kevin Anderson, a producer for the program, contacted NewMexiKen as a result of my post quoting Paul Krugman. He said he’d read the post and:

I work for a new global discussion programme on the BBC World Service, called World Have Your Say. One of the issues that we’re talking about today are the calls for withdrawal from Iraq. This is in the wake of Rep Murtha’s proposal last week and the dust up on the floor of the House of Reprentatives.

I know it’s a bit of short notice, especially if you are in New Mexico, but I wondered if you might be available … to take part in our programme?

Now I must confess that since I was about 10-years-old all I’ve really ever wanted to do was be on the radio. And imagine, the BBC World Service!

So I said no.

While I am quite flattered that you ask, that post is entirely the work of Paul Krugman of The New York Times. I agree with Krugman and so post his point of view, but I do not think my thoughts on the Iraq war are well-formed enough to contribute to any discussion.

Actually my thoughts are well-formed enough. It’s articulating them that had me concerned. There’s an old expression: “That’s a thinker, not a sayer.” Good advice.

World Have Your Say has a page on How to Join the Conversation. Kevin Anderson blogs for the BBC at Up All Night Blog.

On this date, the letter to Mrs. Bixby

Executive Mansion,
Washington, Nov. 21, 1864

Dear Madam, –I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts, that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle.

I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save.

I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours, to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of Freedom. Yours, very sincerely and respectfully,

A. Lincoln.

[As it turns out, this letter, made even more famous when read in the film Saving Private Ryan, may have been written by John Hay, Lincoln’s secretary. Further, only two of Mrs. Bixby’s five sons had died in battle. One was honorably discharged, one was dishonorably discharged, and another deserted or died in a prison camp. Not that losing three sons in whatever way isn’t horrible enough.]

Time to Leave

Paul Krugman today on leaving Iraq:

Representative John Murtha’s speech calling for a quick departure from Iraq was full of passion, but it was also serious and specific in a way rarely seen on the other side of the debate. President Bush and his apologists speak in vague generalities about staying the course and finishing the job. But Mr. Murtha spoke of mounting casualties and lagging recruiting, the rising frequency of insurgent attacks, stagnant oil production and lack of clean water.

Mr. Murtha – a much-decorated veteran who cares deeply about America’s fighting men and women – argued that our presence in Iraq is making things worse, not better. Meanwhile, the war is destroying the military he loves. And that’s why he wants us out as soon as possible.

Key point:

Pessimists think that Iraq will fall into chaos whenever we leave. If so, we’re better off leaving sooner rather than later. As a Marine officer quoted by James Fallows in the current Atlantic Monthly puts it, “We can lose in Iraq and destroy our Army, or we can just lose.”

Pile of Schmidt

Tom at Functional Ambivalent concludes a fine analysis of patriotic criticism of one’s country with this:

I was raised to respect veterans, to honor their service and listen to their voices. Jean Schmidt clearly was not. She could have made her point without insulting the service of a brave man. She could have explained in passionate words the importance of the war to this country and the world. But she didn’t. Instead, in the service of politics, not patriotism, Schmidt said what she said. Make no mistake about why she said it, and how little it had to do with patriotism.

Go read the whole essay.

Computers in the classroom

At Slate, “The Rules of Distraction – Hey, you—with the laptop! Ignore your professor and read this instead” by Avi Zenilman:

The Internet is, of course, a distraction. There are some ground rules: I always try to position myself so my screen isn’t in the line of sight of the professor or one of the teaching assistants. And after a bad pop-up ad experience, I always press the mute button. Still, even when a lecture engages me, it can be hard to pay attention when the little AIM man starts bobbing up and down at the bottom of my screen.

But are these distractions worse than the old-fashioned ones—doodling, dozing, reading, playing footsie, passing notes?

Key point: “Perhaps the real problem with laptops in lectures isn’t the laptops, but professors’ over-reliance on the lecture as a learning tool.”

Interesting.

Coleman Hawkins, Father of the Tenor Sax

… was born on this date in 1904. Listen to his seminal recording of Body and Soul [RealPlayer].

As writer Len Weinstock noted,

Hawkins himself didn’t think there was anything outstanding about his Body and Soul saying “it was nothing special, just an encore I use in the clubs to get off the stand. I thought nothing of it and didn’t even bother to listen to it afterwards”. But the solo, two choruses of beautifully conceived and perfecly balanced improvisation, caused an immediate sensation with musicians and the public. It is still the standard to which tenorists aspire. A parallel can be drawn between Hawkins’ Body and Soul and Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address . Both were brief, lucid, eloquent and timeless masterpieces, yet tossed off by their authors as mere ephemera.

Lincoln well knew what he had done at Gettysburg, but it’s a nice analogy even so.

Hawkins died in 1969.

Tribes’ Basketball Passion Turns Into Business

From the front page of today’s New York Times, an article on basketball, Indian tribes and the Yakama Sun Kings.

The stands in the SunDome were unusually full Tuesday night when Yakima’s minor league basketball team, the Sun Kings, bounded onto the court for an exhibition game a few days before the start of the season.

The crowd itself was atypical, too, filled with hundreds of members of the Yakama Nation, an Indian tribe that rarely mingles with the world outside its vast reservation about five miles east of here. But in a move that riveted tribes across the country and created a rift among Indians here, leading to the ousting of three tribal officials, the Yakama Nation became the new owners of the Sun Kings last spring.

And after Tuesday’s game, the first at home under the new ownership, the Sun Kings signed an Indian player, a Sioux from Montana who had electrified the crowd with his dazzling shooting for the opposing team. The player, Richard Dionne, a 6-foot-5, 210-pound forward, is believed by officials to be the only American Indian on the roster of the Continental Basketball Association, a national eight-team league that can be a steppingstone to the N.B.A.

The tribal ownership of the team and the signing of Mr. Dionne, 24, who had been playing here for a nonprofit team not in the league, come as Indians are slowly making their way into college, semiprofessional and professional basketball.

Indians have passionately played basketball for decades on the crude courts of reservations, on half-court patches of Alaska’s frozen tundra, or anywhere they can hang a hoop. Now, for the first time, tribes are looking to buy teams as they expand their reach beyond gambling and other traditional tribal businesses.

And this, at the end:

The team’s new logo features a band wrapped around a basketball with two feathers, replacing a flaming ball. And Mr. Palmer, the tribal director, said he would suggest to team and tribal officials that they start home games with an Indian prayer and traditional Yakama drumming, to go along with the Pledge of Allegiance.

Review of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

The following is by Jill, official oldest daughter of NewMexiKen:

The fourth Harry Potter film is sensitive, scary and mostly satisfying. The film remains basically true to the book, with several unimportant omissions and a few small plot changes obviously made to allow a 734-page book to become a two-and-a-half-hour movie.

The actors continue to get better with each film. Thanks to their growing skills, and some excellent direction, this movie is the best so far at conveying some of the complicated undertones of its accompanying book. In this case, these have to do with the encroaching adolescence of Harry and his friends Ron and Hermione. The movie does a deft job showing how complicated, exciting and downright humiliating the first teenage years can be. In the scenes on this topic, it is poignant and very funny.

Additionally, the movie subtly, beautifully illustrates Harry’s growing sense of separation from his peers — his feeling that he is cursed never to enjoy the simple pleasures that they take for granted.

This is the most frightening of the movies thus far, which is fitting as the fourth book was significantly “darker” than those which came before it. Several of the scenes caused even this adult — who knew what happened next — to squirm a bit.

My one big complaint about the film is that the filmmakers seem to have made a very conscious effort not to hew too closely to the book. In some ways this is good. But, since Goblet of Fire is my favorite Harry Potter book, it was also somewhat of a letdown. There are certain lines, certain scenes, that stand out in the book as special. Often, watching the movie, the appropriate line of dialogue from the book would run through my head just before a character should have spoken the line onscreen. But the “right” words never came. Every time, the line was either altered or omitted entirely. Additionally, my favorite scene in the book, and probably of the whole series, did not appear in the film at all (I’ll leave the details of this out, for the sake of those who haven’t seen the movie).

I understand that the filmmakers did not set out to make a Jill-personalized film and that they cannot include all my favorite tidbits. However, I imagine that some of my favorites are also the favorites of many other millions of people. A few direct quotations from the book would have made us feel oh-so-special.

All in all, I definitely recommend this film if you are a Harry Potter fan. And if you are not a Harry Potter fan….then what the heck are you thinking?

Politicians need to know which way the wind doth blow

Winged Victory

Winged Victory, a 16-foot high weather vane, adorns the dome. With a purchase price of $160 the weather vane was less expensive than a traditional statue. She was designed after the Greek statue Nike of Samothrace with arms and head added. Her right hand holds the torch of liberty and her left hand presents a victory wreath. In the 1950s the legislature had her immobilized to face the front of the Capitol. Once restoration was completed in 1981, the Winged Victory was set free to turn in the wind once again.

Source: Arizona State Library

NewMexiKen photo 2003. Click to enlarge.

America’s Least Wanted

According to Bruce Reed at Slate, George W. Bush has now caught his father George H.W. Bush. The two are tied with the third highest presidential disapproval rating in the Gallup Poll since World War II — 60 percent.

Nixon is second at 66 percent disapproval; Truman number one at 67. Jimmy Carter is fifth at 59.

“Truman needed seven years to hit bottom, Nixon six, and Bush the son five. The elder Bush tanked in three and a half.”

Chilis — Hot, Hotter and Omigod

Henry Shukman writes about chilis in a New York Times review of three new Santa Fe restaurants: Aqua Santa, Trattoria Nostrani and Kasa Soba.

One of the many things I’m grateful to New Mexico for, now that I’ve lived there on and off for over a decade, is converting me to the chili. It happened one afternoon, on a long, lonely drive through the Black Mountains. I stopped at a small general store and bought tortilla chips, and on a whim, a jar of hot sauce called Religious Experience: The Wrath. It was the name that did it. I set the jar between my legs as I drove, and began by touching just the corner of a chip to the oil on the salsa’s surface. As I drove I kept mechanically doing it. Something happened. The pain started up, but instead of shying away from it, I dipped back for more. Soon I was shoveling it in. By the time I reached my destination, I was a high, happy devotee. And the jar was empty.

Among hot sauces in NewMexiKen’s kitchen (all unopened I confess):

Dr. U.B. Burnin
Dave’s Insanity Sauce
Viper Venom Hot Sauce
Whoop Ass Hot Sauce
Two Flaming Arrows
Smart Ass Hot Sauce
Arizona Gunslinger
Sudden Death Sauce

Harry Potter’s ‘Goblet’ runneth over

Jill called it in her comment earlier today. Here’s the first report from Reuters:

“Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” sold an estimated $181.4 million worth of tickets, including $101.4 million in North America, where it easily eclipsed the first three [Potter] films and ranks as the fourth-largest opening ever, distributor Warner Bros. Pictures said on Sunday.

It also enjoyed a wide lead over the No. 2 film in North America, the Johnny Cash biopic, “Walk the Line,” which rang up a better-than-expected $22.4 million in its first three days.

Best line of the day, so far

“Imagine if there’d been some sort of hideous Pentagon mess-up and someone had decided that the Army would go into battle driving a fleet of Camrys. . . . So why in the name of all that’s holy is it somehow acceptable to cruise down to the mall in a military vehicle?”

Richard Porter, author of Crap Cars, regarding the Hummer H1, quoted in a review by Roy Blount Jr.

Also included is Porter’s advice on the Geo Metro Convertible: “Don’t buy a car that’s smaller, and indeed less comfortable, than your shoes.”

Pharm Land

Joe Queenan reviews Generation Rx: How Prescription Drugs Are Altering American Lives, Minds, and Bodies by Greg Critser.

“Generation Rx” contends that large drug companies have co-opted the federal government, seduced the medical establishment and mesmerized a temperamentally supine public into taking far more drugs than is strictly necessary, much less healthy. Worse, Americans have fallen victim to “polypharmacy”: using so many drugs for so many ailments that they have no idea how the various medications are interacting.
…

Despite the book’s misleading title, the triumph of “big pharma” is yet another national tragedy, like Michael Flatley’s career, that can be laid directly at the feet of baby boomers. As Critser writes, “The generation of Americans who rebelliously experimented with drugs is now a generation upon whom drugs are experimented, with barely a squeak of protest.”

Actually, this argument is a bit hard to follow. Young baby boomers never protested against drugs, merely their price, quality, availability and the advisability of buying them from furtive men named Sweet Memphis or Chucky the Swede. So why on earth should they complain about drugs now? (For the answer to this question, go ask Alice. When she’s 10 feet tall.)