Author: NewMexiKen

Thinking about Columbus Day

NewMexiKen is well aware of the feelings among many American Indians about Columbus Day. One Lakota woman who worked for me used to ask if she could come in and work on Columbus Day, a federal holiday.

My feeling is we can’t have enough holidays and so I choose to think of Columbus Day as the Italian-American holiday. Nothing wrong with that. We have an African-American holiday on Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday. We have the Irish-American celebration that is St. Patrick’s Day. And Cinco de Mayo is surely the Mexican-American holiday, a much larger celebration here than in most of Mexico.

So, instead of protesting Columbus Day, perhaps American Indians should organize and bring about a holiday of their very own. Given the great diversity among Indian nations (and, lets face it, a proclivity for endless debate), the tribes might never reach agreement, though, so NewMexiKen will suggest a date.

The day before Columbus Day.

It’s the birthday

… of Eleanor Roosevelt, born on this date in 1884. The following is excerpted from the White House Biography of Eleanor Roosevelt:

Eleanor RooseveltA shy, awkward child, starved for recognition and love, Eleanor Roosevelt grew into a woman with great sensitivity to the underprivileged of all creeds, races, and nations. Her constant work to improve their lot made her one of the most loved–and for some years one of the most revered–women of her generation.

She was born in New York City on October 11, 1884, daughter of lovely Anna Hall and Elliott Roosevelt, younger brother of Theodore. …

In her circle of friends was a distant cousin, handsome young Franklin Delano Roosevelt. They became engaged in 1903 and were married in 1905, with her uncle the President giving the bride away. Within eleven years Eleanor bore six children; one son died in infancy. …

From [Franklin’s] successful campaign for governor in 1928 to the day of his death, she dedicated her life to his purposes. She became eyes and ears for him, a trusted and tireless reporter.

When Mrs. Roosevelt came to the White House in 1933, she understood social conditions better than any of her predecessors and she transformed the role of First Lady accordingly. She never shirked official entertaining; she greeted thousands with charming friendliness. She also broke precedent to hold press conferences, travel to all parts of the country, give lectures and radio broadcasts, and express her opinions candidly in a daily syndicated newspaper column, “My Day.”

Mrs. Roosevelt

Mrs. Roosevelt died in 1962.

And then there were nine

Nine major college football teams remain unbeaten — USC, Texas, Virginia Tech, Florida State, Georgia, Alabama, Penn State, UCLA and Texas Tech. All of the nine are in BCS conferences, so this year there will be none of the yapping from the Utahs and Boise States. (Of the nine remaining unbeatens, only the two Techs have never won or shared in a national championship.)

Before the bowls, at least four of the nine will lose. Texas plays Texas Tech October 22. USC plays UCLA December 3. If they win out, Virginia Tech and Florida State will play in the first ever ACC championship game. And, if they win out, Georgia and Alabama will play in the SEC championship. Penn State has tough games remaining at Michigan and Michigan State.

Elmore Leonard

Elmore Leonard is 80 today.

“Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip” — one of Elmore Leonard’s Ten Rules of Writing.

Elmore has written a serial novel for the New York Times Sunday Magazine which will appear in the magazine between September 18 and December 18, 2005. The first chapter is, “The Hanging of Willi Martz.” The setting is Camp Deep Fork, a German POW camp in October, 1944 outside of Okmulgee, Oklahoma where a couple thousand of the hundreds of thousands of German POWS imprisoned in America during the war are kept. Carl Webster (from The Hot Kid, Elmore’s latest hardcover novel) is sent to investigate a death in the camp. Was it suicide or murder?

Read the serialized novel.

(If you hadn’t guessed, yes, NewMexiKen is an Elmore Leonard fan.)

Columbus Day — ‘with fifty men we could subjugate them all’

They … brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears and many other things, which they exchanged for the glass beads and hawks’ bells. They willingly traded everything they owned…. They were well-built, with good bodies and handsome features…. They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron. Their spears are made of cane…. They would make fine servants…. With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.

— Christopher Columbus writing in his log upon meeting the Arawaks.

Best line of the day, so far

“Short with big ears.”

Annotation on an admissions form for Harvard, circa 1960s, as reported by Malcolm Gladwell in his excellent New Yorker piece on Ivy League admissions.

Social scientists distinguish between what are known as treatment effects and selection effects. The Marine Corps, for instance, is largely a treatment-effect institution. It doesn’t have an enormous admissions office grading applicants along four separate dimensions of toughness and intelligence. It’s confident that the experience of undergoing Marine Corps basic training will turn you into a formidable soldier. A modelling agency, by contrast, is a selection-effect institution. You don’t become beautiful by signing up with an agency. You get signed up by an agency because you’re beautiful.

At the heart of the American obsession with the Ivy League is the belief that schools like Harvard provide the social and intellectual equivalent of Marine Corps basic training—that being taught by all those brilliant professors and meeting all those other motivated students and getting a degree with that powerful name on it will confer advantages that no local state university can provide. …

The extraordinary emphasis the Ivy League places on admissions policies, though, makes it seem more like a modelling agency than like the Marine Corps, …

Best line of the day, so far

“This isn’t 1989, when the mainstream media was stuck with a couple of things it no longer has: comparatively archaic channels of distribution, and a dose of self-respect.”

Salon’s Ask the pilot (Patrick Smith) discussing the JetBlue emergency landing September 21. He says it was no big deal.

… as time went by the airline faced an interesting quandary: leave the TVs running, and sensational commentary was liable to scare the shit out of everyone on the plane; pull the plug, and people would quickly suspect the situation was more dire than the crew was letting on. The whole thing set up a weird voyeuristic triangle: The passengers believed they were watching themselves, when actually they were watching the rest of us watch them.

Good stuff, worth a click, as is this week’s column on outsourcing aircraft repair. Note: Salon requires a subscription or viewing a brief ad.

Just wondering

Genesis Chapter 1, Verse 16: “And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.”

But half the time, the lesser light, the moon, is in the daytime sky.

Recent natural disasters point to return of Jesus Christ

Prominent US preacher Pat Robertson said that recent natural disasters around the world point to the end of the world and the imminent return of Jesus Christ.

“These things are starting to hit with amazing regularity,” Robertson told CNN, remarking on the coincidence of a major earthquake that killed thousands in Asia Saturday and recent killer hurricanes slamming the United States.

Those disasters come less than a year after a massive tsunami levels huge portions of South Asia, killing more than 31,000 people and leaving some a million left homeless.

Devout Christians believe that the “last days” will be marked by political and geological upheaval, and Roberts said recent events show that those days might have arrived.

Yahoo! News

Not before the World Series, I hope.

A whole new meaning for ‘Diamond Anniversary’

Leave it to a U.S. firm to find a way to turn cremated remains into jewelry. LifeGem needs just eight ounces of those precious ashes to transform a loved one into a diamond. Actually, enough carbon is present in those ashes to make quite a few gems — maybe 20 — with several pounds left over. Extremely hot ovens turn ashes into graphite, which is pressed into blue and yellow diamonds that retail for $2,700 to $20,000. The experience is extremely positive for those who immortalize their loved ones in baubles, according to a VP: “We have people that approach us who have just experienced a tragedy and they say I can’t wait, I’m so excited about this,” he said. Maybe you can’t take it with you, but you could be a stone around your family’s neck for a long, long time.

Wired News: Furthermore

Boy, 9, Swims From Alcatraz to San Francisco

SAN FRANCISCO – A nine-year-old boy has just finished a pretty tough morning swim — from Alcatraz to San Francisco.

Johnny Wilson, from Hillsborough, made the 1.4-mile swim in under two hours, braving choppy morning waters and rough winds in a portion of the San Francisco bay known to have sharks as well.

Wilson’s classmates were waiting for him on shore, cheering as he made it all the way to Aquatic Park.

His effort raised about $30,000 for the Red Cross Katrina Hurricane Victims Fund.

Wilson said the toughest part of the swim was the beginning, because it was cold and windy.

Yahoo! News

The American Indian Great-Grandmother Princess

A fascinating article from Wired on the “blood feud” between the Five Civilized Tribes of Oklahoma (the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek and Seminole) and the descendants of “Freedmen.”

And yet, three-quarters of a century after the death of Cherokee legend Stick Ross, there’s no room for his great-grandson in the Cherokee Nation. Leslie Ross has been denied citizenship in the tribe on the grounds that he is not truly Indian. “They said I don’t have any Indian blood. They say blacks have never had a part in the Cherokee Nation,” says Ross, his usually calm voice swelling with anger. “The thing is, there wouldn’t be a Cherokee Nation if it weren’t for my great-grandfather. Jesus, he was more Indian than the Indians!”

Ross is just one of at least 25,000 direct descendants of Freedmen who cannot join Oklahoma’s largest tribes. Once paragons of racial inclusion and assimilation, the Native American sovereign nations have done an about-face and systematically pushed out people of African descent. “There’s never been any stigma about intermarriage,” says Stu Phillips, editor of The Seminole Producer, a local newspaper in central Oklahoma. “You’ve got Indians marrying whites, Indians marrying blacks. It was never a problem until they got some money.”

Since Sliced Bread

We’re looking for fresh, new ideas for a better America. Do you have a common-sense idea that will improve the day-to-day lives of everyday Americans? Or an opinion on how working families can succeed in the new global economy?

You have until December 5, 2005, to submit your idea and to weigh in. A panel of judges will select the top 21 ideas. All of America will be able to vote on the finalists, and on February 1, one person will win $100,000—runners up receive $50,000 each.

SinceSlicedBread.com

October 9

John Lennon should have been 65 today.

Charles Walgreen was born on this date in 1873. Yes, he’s the man who began the Walgreen’s drug store chain, starting in Chicago. It was a Walgreen’s soda fountain employee who invented the malted milkshake in 1922, which puts him right up there with Edison as far as NewMexiKen is concerned.

And Bruce Catton was born on this date in 1899.

Bruce Catton was fifty when he began work on the first two of what would become thirteen books on the Civil War – Mr. Lincoln’s Army, (1951) followed one year later by Glory Road. His debut was hailed by the Chicago Tribune as “military history at its best.” He “combines the scholar’s appreciation of the Grand Design with a newsman’s keenness for meaningful vignette,” said Newsweek. Catton immersed himself in a vast range of primary materials, especially the diaries, letters and anecdotal reports of soldiers on the ground, which gave his books from the outset their unique, “you are there” ambience.

In 1954, Catton became the first editor of American Heritage Magazine in Washington, where he remained as Senior Editor until his death in 1978.

“There is a near-magic power of imagination in Catton’s work,” wrote Oliver Jensen, who succeeded him as editor of the magazine, “that seemed to project him physically into the battlefields, along the dusty roads and to the campfires of another age.”

Indeed, there is an inexorable atmosphere from the first pages of A Stillness at Appomattox, as the Union Army begins to consolidate the diverse tributaries of its forces for the last series of offensives. The intensive orderliness of the Northerners stands in dramatic contrast to the skirmishing, impromptu manner of the Confederates when Grant’s aggressive and arrogant campaign seems to take on a life of its own.

As we march along with the Army of the Potomac, Catton swoops and peaks, from the lofty perspective of the White House down to the cries of the wounded in the mud; from General George Gordon Meade pacing back and forth with agitation under a tree, watching the battle unfold on a field below, to the ever-shrinking gap between the forces in blue and the outskirts of Richmond.

But there is one color permeating the entire narrative, and that is neither blue nor grey, but rather the relentless flow of blood — “one long funeral procession,” laments a despairing General Gouverneur Warren. Through the grandeur of its elegiac tone, A Stillness at Appomattox speaks magisterially of all wars.

Neil Baldwin

She’s that good

From The Seattle Times: Sideline Chatter:

Ryder Cup captain Tom Lehman wasn’t among the neighsayers when golf phenom Michelle Wie announced she was turning pro at age 15.

“I’ve always felt like she’s Secretariat,” Lehman told The Associated Press. “You can give her minor adjustments — adjust the bit in her mouth — but it’s like, ‘Let her go.’ She’s that good.”

Rock Star? Quarterback?

From The New York Times:

It turns out that George Washington was one good-looking guy.

The image of Washington as a young man is slowly becoming clearer, and it is not what first comes to mind when people think of the “father of our country.” Instead of a white-haired old man, think of a rangy hunk who looks like a quarterback.
…

Standing 6-foot-3, very tall for his time, he had a prominent nose, a square jaw undamaged by dental disease and a slim, muscular build. With his piercing gray-blue eyes and long auburn hair that he wore in a ponytail, in another age he might have been a rock star.

We support cruel, inhuman treatment

The nine U.S. Senators who voted no on the McCain amendment, which would ban use of “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment” against anyone in United States government custody. Ninety senators voted yes (there was one absent).

Allard (R-CO)
Bond (R-MO)
Coburn (R-OK)
Cochran (R-MS)
Cornyn (R-TX)
Inhofe (R-OK)
Roberts (R-KS)
Sessions (R-AL)
Stevens (R-AK)

Earn an MBA in four questions

The following short quiz consists of four questions and will tell you whether you are qualified to be a professional manager. Scroll down for each answer. The questions are NOT difficult. But don’t scroll down UNTIL you have answered the question!

1. How do you put a giraffe into a refrigerator?

 
 
 
 
 
 

The correct answer is: Open the refrigerator, put in the giraffe, and close the door. This question tests whether you tend to do simple things in an overly complicated way.

2. How do you put an elephant into a refrigerator?

 
 
 
 
 
 

Did you say, open the refrigerator, put in the elephant, and close the refrigerator?

Wrong Answer.

Correct Answer: Open the refrigerator, take out the giraffe, put in the elephant and close the door. This tests your ability to think through the repercussions of your previous actions.

3. The Lion King is hosting an animal conference. All the animals attend … except one. Which animal does not attend?

 
 
 
 
 
 

Correct Answer: The Elephant. The elephant is in the refrigerator. You just put him in there. This tests your memory.

Okay, even if you did not answer the first three questions correctly, you still have one more chance to show your true abilities.

4. There is a river you must cross but it is used by crocodiles, and you do not have a boat. How do you manage it?

 
 
 
 
 
 

Correct Answer: You jump into the river and swim across. Have you not been listening? All the crocodiles are attending the Animal Meeting. This tests whether you learn quickly from your mistakes.

According to Andersen Consulting Worldwide, around 90% of the professionals they tested got all questions wrong, but many preschoolers got several correct answers. Andersen Consulting says this conclusively disproves the theory that most professionals have the brains of a four-year-old.

Thanks to Driskill for the quiz.