Author: NewMexiKen

The War of the Worlds

It’s the anniversary of Orson Welles’s broadcast of “The War of the Worlds” in 1938. Welles wrote an adaptation of an H.G. Wells novel in which Martians invade Earth, and presented it as if it were really happening on the Halloween broadcast of a show called “Mercury Theater on the Air.” It began, “Ladies and gentlemen, I have a grave announcement to make. Incredible as it may seem, strange beings who landed in New Jersey tonight are the vanguard of an invading army from Mars.” Thousands of listeners missed the first part of the show and didn’t know it was Welles’s “The War of the Worlds.” People clogged the switchboards trying to get more information about the landing. A few people reported seeing the aliens.

— The Writer’s Almanac

If you’ve never heard the broadcast, you should give it a listen — the first half, at least. Here’s an mp3 version from a Mercury Theatre on the Air website.

It’s the birthday

… of Grace Slick of Jefferson Airplane and Otis Williams of the Temptations. Both are 66 today.

… of Henry Winkler. The Fonz, is 60.

… of Timothy B. Schmit. A member of the Eagles for 28 years, Schmit is 58. Before the Eagles, he was in Poco.

José Manuel Gallegos

José Manuel Gallegos was born in Spanish colonial Mexico, in the town of Abiquiú, Nuevo México, on October 30, 1815. His people were Hispanos, descendants of early Spanish settlers, and Gallegos went on to become New Mexico’s first delegate to the U.S. Congress.

Raised during the Mexican revolution, Gallegos was surrounded by republican ideals during his formative years of education with the Franciscan missionaries in Taos and Durango. Ordained a Catholic priest at age 25, Gallegos readily added political tasks to his clerical responsibilities. He became pastor of San Felipe de Neri church in La Villa de Albuquerque, as well as one of the nineteen “electors,” men who chose Nuevo México’s deputy to the Mexican Congress.

In 1848, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ceded the Southwest, from Texas to California, to the United States. Nuevo México became the U.S. territory of New Mexico, and Gallegos was elected to its first Territorial Council. He won the election for delegate to the U.S. Congress in 1853, the second Hispanic Congressional Representative in U.S. history. Thirty-one years had elapsed since Joseph Marion Hernández, from the territory of Florida, had become the first Hispanic in Congress in 1822.

Suspended from the priesthood for refusing to accept the authority of French religious superior, Bishop Jean Baptiste Lamy (who became the subject of Willa Cather’s novel, Death Comes for the Archbishop), Gallegos put increasing energy into his political life. Subsequently, he was elected to the New Mexico Territorial House of Representatives, served as treasurer of the territory, and was superintendent of New Mexico Indian affairs. Gallegos returned to the U.S. House of Representatives for a second term in 1871.

— Library of Congress

Author Robert Caro

… was born on this date in 1936. The Writer’s Almanac tells us about Caro today, including this:

Since 1974, Caro has been working on a four-volume biography of Lyndon Johnson. He says he picked Johnson to write about because he wanted to write about political power, and he believes Lyndon Johnson was the most masterful getter and user of political power in the 20th century. For his research on Johnson, Caro has gone through 34 million documents at the LBJ Library in Austin, Texas, and he has conducted more than 1,000 interviews. He lived in Johnson’s hometown for three years so that he could get to know the people there well enough that they would open up to him. He also tracked down every living member of Johnson’s grammar school class.

Caro eventually uncovered the fact that Johnson had committed an unprecedented series of lies, manipulations, and vote tampering on his way to becoming a United States Senator. But what fascinated Caro was the fact that a politician who would commit such crimes in order to get power could still use that power for good. He points out that, when Johnson got into office, he became the greatest advocate for civil rights of any politician since Abraham Lincoln. Caro’s most recent volume about Johnson, Master of the Senate, came out in 2002 and won the Pulitzer Prize.

Tuitama update

Arizona freshman quarterback Willie Tuitama in his second game, first start: 13 completions in 22 attempts, 336 yards, 2 touchdowns, no interceptions in a 29-27 victory at Oregon State.

Opposites

From Maureen Dowd:

This administration’s grand schemes always end up as the opposite. Officials say they’re promoting national security when they’re hurting it; they say they’re squelching terrorists when they’re breeding them; they say they’re bringing stability to Iraq when the country’s imploding. …

And the most dangerous opposite of all: W. was listening to a surrogate father he shouldn’t have been listening to [Cheney], and not listening to his real father, who deserved to be listened to.

Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument (New Mexico)

… was authorized on this date in 1980.

Salinas Pueblo Missions

Once, thriving American Indian trade communities of Tiwa and Tompiro speaking Puebloans inhabited this remote frontier area of central New Mexico. Early in the 17th-century Spanish Franciscans found the area ripe for their missionary efforts. However, by the late 1670s the entire Salinas District, as the Spanish had named it, was depopulated of both Indian and Spaniard. What remains today are austere yet beautiful reminders of this earliest contact between Pueblo Indians and Spanish Colonials: the ruins of four mission churches, at Quarai, Abó, and Gran Quivira and the partially excavated pueblo of Las Humanas or, as it is known today, Gran Quivira. Established in 1980 through the combination of two New Mexico State Monuments and the former Gran Quivira National Monument, the present Monument comprises a total of 1,100 acres.

Source: National Park Service

Note: Other sources say 1988.

That worked

On October 28, 1919, Congress passed the Volstead Act providing for enforcement of the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution, ratified nine months earlier. Known as the Prohibition Amendment, it prohibited the “manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors” in the United States.

The movement to prohibit alcohol began in the early years of the nineteenth century when individuals concerned about the adverse effects of drink began forming local societies to promote temperance in consumption of alcohol. The first temperance societies were organized in New York (1808) and Massachusetts (1813). Members, many of whom belonged to Protestant evangelical denominations, frequently met in local churches. As time passed, most temperance societies began to call for complete abstinence from all alcoholic beverages.

Source: Library of Congress

Same philosophy still in effect for drugs.

Money and Other Subjects

“The great spiritual leader Gandhi walked barefoot most of the time, causing his feet to be quite sore and calloused. His unusual and spare diet made him physically weak and gave him bad breath [at least for the purposes of this riff]. Thus, it is said of Gandhi, that he was a super-calloused fragile mystic hexed with halitosis.”

— Via Andrew Tobias, who also says “to have in the stock market only cash we won’t actually need (for things like rent and food) for several years.”

Best line of the day, so far

“By Bush administration standards, the choice of Ben Bernanke to succeed Alan Greenspan as chairman of the Federal Reserve was just weird.

“For one thing, Mr. Bernanke is actually an expert in monetary policy, as opposed to, say, Arabian horses.”

— Paul Krugman, who adds:

“All of this raises a frightening prospect. Has President Bush been so damaged by scandals and public disapproval that he has no choice but to appoint qualified, principled people to important positions?”

Who raised these people?

NewMexiKen sat next to an off-duty flight attendant on the trip east Wednesday. She told me that once while she was administering CPR to a passenger who had had a heart attack, the man behind her across the aisle tapped her on the shoulder and asked if she was going to get his drink or not.

Red Cross Borrowing Funds for Storm Aid

From a story in The Washington Post on the need for the Red Cross to borrow money to cover its Katrina/Rita expenses:

The Red Cross holds near-mythic status as the premier U.S. disaster relief agency, a role reinforced by the federal government, which has incorporated the organization as a key part of its disaster response.

But the $3 billion charity spends two-thirds of its resources on blood collection, not disaster relief. And 90 percent of its disasters are small fires and local mishaps. During larger events — such as violent storms, wildfires and the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks — the Red Cross has stumbled repeatedly, misleading donors on how contributions are used and underserving victims, particularly in rural minority communities, according to other relief groups and experts on nonprofit agencies.

Always Low Wages, Always

An internal memo sent to Wal-Mart’s board of directors proposes numerous ways to hold down spending on health care and other benefits while seeking to minimize damage to the retailer’s reputation. Among the recommendations are hiring more part-time workers and discouraging unhealthy people from working at Wal-Mart.
…

To discourage unhealthy job applicants, Ms. Chambers suggests that Wal-Mart arrange for “all jobs to include some physical activity (e.g., all cashiers do some cart-gathering).”

— The New York Times

Get out and stay out

What’s the deal with public libraries anyway? Everywhere I’ve ever lived they start herding people out the door with announcements, flashing lights, computers shutting off and dirty looks well before the actual closing time. It happened to me again tonight. They close at 8:00 and at 7:45 they’ve got more rounding up going on than a well-led cattle drive.

NewMexiKen managed a public research facility for ten years. I well remember that some diehards would hang in until the last minute, but I don’t remember having to be rude about it. And I don’t remember my staff or I ever getting agitated if the last stragglers were still pulling together their belongings and filing out at two minutes after quitting time.

Who do these public library staffs work for anyway?

(For the record, I left the library tonight at 7:50, ten minutes before closing. I know what time it was because as I was leaving they made an announcement saying it was ten minutes to closing and you could no longer use your library card.)

Best line of the day, so far

“Dignified. Defiant. Strong. Modest. Courageous. Gracious. Unassuming. Revered.”

— First line of an editorial about Rosa Parks in today’s Detroit Free Press

The Montgomery Advertiser has a lot of good background on Parks and the Montgomery bus boycott.

Thank you Miss Rosa, you are the spark,
You started our freedom movement
Thank you Sister Rosa Parks.
Thank you Miss Rosa you are the spark,
You started our freedom movement
Thank you Sister Rosa Parks.

Chorus of “Sister Rosa Parks” by the Neville Brothers

Best line of the day, so far

“The administration’s performance during its first four years would have been even worse without [then Secretary of State Colin] Powell’s damage control. At least once a week, it seemed, Powell trooped over to the Oval Office and cleaned all the dog poop off the carpet.”

— Lawrence B. Wilkerson (Powell’s chief of staff) in the Los Angeles Times

Someone should have trained the dog.

Clinton Deposition Exhibit One

Some timely background from Colorado Luis:

But as those days come back to haunt us now, it is important to remember that Clinton’s best defense wasn’t that he was lying about a blow job, or even that the lawsuit against him was funded by right wing nuts specifically for the purpose of bringing him down, it was that what he said was Not Perjury.

Luis explains.