Author: NewMexiKen

Wordy

If you graduated from high school–no matter the year!–you should know these 10 words, according to the editors of the American Heritage Dictionaries. Actually you should 90 more, too. And they’re all in “100 Words Every High School Graduate Should Know.” But let’s start with these 10.

Gee, don’t they have an inventory of their holdings?

In January the Library of Congress made a momentous musical find: a tape of the Thelonious Monk quartet with John Coltrane at Carnegie Hall on Nov. 29, 1957, a rarity by a little-recorded and short-lived band that had major historical significance. That tape – containing nearly an hour of music – will be released by Blue Note on Sept. 27, under the title “Thelonious Monk With John Coltrane: Live at Carnegie Hall,” the record label announced.

Arts, Briefly – New York Times

Thanks to Jen for the pointer.

Helen Keller …

was born on this date in 1880. The following is from the obituary in The New York Times when she died in 1968.

For the first 18 months of her life Helen Keller was a normal infant who cooed and cried, learned to recognize the voices of her father and mother and took joy in looking at their faces and at objects about her home. “Then” as she recalled later, “came the illness which closed my eyes and ears and plunged me into the unconsciousness of a newborn baby.”

The illness, perhaps scarlet fever, vanished as quickly as it struck, but it erased not only the child’s vision and hearing but also, as a result, her powers of articulate speech.

Her life thereafter, as a girl and as a woman, became a triumph over crushing adversity and shattering affliction. In time, Miss Keller learned to circumvent her blindness, deafness and muteness; she could “see” and “hear” with exceptional acuity; she even learned to talk passably and to dance in time to a fox trot or a waltz. Her remarkable mind unfolded, and she was in and of the world, a full and happy participant in life.

What set Miss Keller apart was that no similarly afflicted person before had done more than acquire the simplest skills.

But she was graduated from Radcliffe; she became an artful and subtle writer; she led a vigorous life; she developed into a crusading humanitarian who espoused Socialism; and she energized movements that revolutionized help for the blind and the deaf.

Brush those teeth and gums

The study, among the findings presented last week at the first Alzheimer’s Assn. International Conference on Prevention of Dementia, examined lifestyle factors of more than 100 pairs of identical twins. All of the pairs included one twin who had developed dementia and one who hadn’t. Because identical twins are genetically indistinguishable, the study involved only risk factors that could be modified to help protect against dementia.

Twins who had severe periodontal disease before they were 35 years old had a fivefold increase in risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease, the researchers found.

Los Angeles Times

Virulent virus

Richard Preston’s Demon in the Freezer (2002) is a terrifying study of both the anthrax scare of 2001 and the exponentially greater danger of smallpox, the worst disease man has known.

There is no natural immunity to smallpox. And the vaccines that those among us old enough once received provided immunity for just five years.

Or to put it another way, if there is an outbreak of smallpox we may be relying on a vaccine that was invented in 1796.

Best line of the day, so far

“In fact, [biomedical researcher Lisa] Hensley did have a date lined up that night, a first date with a man she didn’t know very well. Finally, she phoned him and asked if he wouldn’t mind putting off the date, since she had just had a potential exposure to Ebola virus.

“He was very understanding.”

Richard Preston in his frightening book, The Demon in the Freezer (2002).

Ms. Hensley was fine. The potential exposure had been through an accidental cut in two layers of gloves with children’s scissors (real scissors are not permitted in Level 4 biocontainment).

Maybe if he’d said “stainless steel”

Danica Patrick got another phone call from Bernie Ecclestone, and she remains puzzled by this series of exchanges after the Formula One boss likened women to “domestic appliances.”

“He said that … he didn’t mean to be harmful to me,” said Patrick, who received a phone message from Ecclestone when she got off a plane. “He said, ‘I wasn’t trying to insult you. Quite the opposite, really.'”

SI.com

What he reportedly first saPOSTID: “Women should be all dressed in white like all other domestic appliances.”

Did you know?

The Secretary of the Senate and the Chief Administrative Officer of the House of Representatives (upon certification by the Clerk of the House of Representatives), respectively, shall deduct from the monthly payments (or other periodic payments authorized by law) of each Member or Delegate the amount of his salary for each day that he has been absent from the Senate or House, respectively, unless such Member or Delegate assigns as the reason for such absence the sickness of himself or of some member of his family.

US CODE: Title 2, 39. Deductions for absence

Is this done?

On the other side of the river

From Killing Custer:

Nor does this picture change. Whether Custer is portrayed as a hero, as Errol Flynn did in the World War II-era They Died with Their Boots On, or as a genocidal nut, as in the Vietnam-era Little Big Man, he is still the center of attention. The recent miniseries Son of the Morning Star depicted Custer as a naughty, hot-blooded, fratboy type-but he is still the character that the cameras follow, the man whose death has always been the point of telling the story. No matter that in fact his famous hairline was beginning to recede, that his remaining hair was cut short, and that it was too hot to wear buckskin that summer day. Or that the Lakotas and the Cheyennes had no idea who had attacked them or which particular army commander they were fighting. More than a century after his death, Custer has the kind of name recognition that would make any aspirant for national political office jealous.

But if you switch the focus, the story becomes infinitely richer. Late on a cold November night, with the wind howling outside his trailer on the Pine Ridge Reservation, Johnson Holy Rock began talking to us about Crazy Horse. Nearly eighty, Johnson is a former tribal chairman whose father was a young boy in Crazy Horse’s camp at the Little Bighorn. “Traditional history tells us that Crazy Horse could ride in front of a line of soldiers and they could all take a potshot at him and no bullet could touch him,” Johnson said, moving his arms back and forth for emphasis. “He’d make three passes, and after the third pass, then his followers were encouraged to make the charge. ‘See, I haven’t been wounded. I’m not shot.’ We would charge.”

I was intrigued, not by Crazy Horse’s ability to ward off bullets in the story, but by Holy Rock’s use of the term “traditional history.” Traditional history according to whom? Not the folks who wrote the history textbooks I read at Glen Rock Junior/Senior High School back in northern New Jersey. Amid George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, and even George Custer, figures like Crazy Horse-and, in fact, centuries of Native Americans-rated barely a mention. Traditional history.

The Battle of Little Bighorn …

Custer.jpgwas fought on this date in 1876. Dee Brown wrote the following for The Reader’s Companion to American History:

In 1876, under command of Gen. Alfred Terry, Custer led the Seventh Cavalry as one force in a three-pronged campaign against Sitting Bull’s alliance of Sioux and Cheyenne camps in Montana. During the morning of June 25, Custer’s scouts reported spotting smoke from cooking fires and other signs of Indians in the valley of the Little Bighorn. Disregarding Terry’s orders, Custer decided to attack before infantry and other support arrived. Although scouts warned that he was facing superior numbers (perhaps 2,500 warriors), Custer divided his regiment of 647 men, ordering Capt. Frederick Benteen’s battalion to scout along a ridge to the left and sending Maj. Marcus Reno’s battalion up the valley of the Little Bighorn to attack the Indian encampment. With the remainder of the regiment, Custer continued along high ground on the right side of the valley. In the resulting battle, he and about 250 of his men, outnumbered by the warriors of Crazy Horse and Gall, were surrounded and annihilated. Reno and Benteen suffered heavy casualties but managed to escape to a defensive position. Since that day, “Custer’s Last Stand” has become an American legend. The battle site attracts thousands of visitors yearly.

Evan S. Connell’s Son of the Morning Star is generally regarded as the finest book on the battle; indeed, one of the finest on western American history. James Welch’s Killing Custer tells the story more from the Indian perspective.

Oldie but goodie

From article in the Los Angeles Times, Hitting the Big Eleven-O

Marion Higgins is very good at remembering. She remembers writing her first book 10 years ago. She remembers moving into Seal Beach’s Leisure World in 1989. She remembers the history of furniture acquired at long-ago garage sales and celebrating the end of the World War — both II and I. She remembers hearing the Titanic had just sunk, and the long railroad ride to her family’s homestead in a new state called Idaho. And she remembers hating sunbonnets.

That would have been in the ’90s — the 1890s.

Mrs. Higgins turns 112 on Sunday. She is the oldest living Californian and is believed to be the 21st oldest living human. She belongs to an exclusive but growing population of super-old folks whose longevity is so much more than a family bragging rite.

Her life has spanned the terms of 20 of the 43 presidents in U.S. history.

What he said

Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a certain poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself. You need to take up the challenges that we face as a nation and make them your own. Not because you have a debt to those who helped you get here, although you do have that debt. Not because you have an obligation to those who are less fortunate than you, although I do think you do have that obligation. It’s primarily because you have an obligation to yourself. Because individual salvation has always depended on collective salvation. Because it’s only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realize your true potential.

U.S. Senator Barack Obama at Knox College

Heavens to Betsy!

The other day NewMexiKen explained how historians believe that Betsy Ross, contrary to folklore, had no actual involvement in the making of the first American flag. Emily and Jill, official daughters of NewMexiKen, commented that there was some documentation that Ross made the case for the five-pointed star by showing how it could easily be cut from fabric.

Whatever, none of that matters. I have now learned what Betsy Ross’ real contribution to the American War of Independence might have been.

According to David Hackett Fischer in his outstanding book Washington’s Crossing, after some skirmishes with American militia near Mount Holly, New Jersey, the British commander Hessian Colonel Carl Emilius Ulrich von Donop “had found in his quarters the exceedingly beautiful young widow of a doctor.” (Quotation from a German officer who was present.) As Fischer reports, “The colonel spent the night of December 23 in the widow’s house. He decided to stay on Christmas Eve, and then on Christmas as well.” Bottom line, von Donop and his troops were 18 miles from Trenton, instead of the six they were supposed to be in case of a major American attack.

Which is precisely what the Americans did after crossing the Delaware River Christmas night. They attacked Trenton the morning of December 26, 1776, and had a decisive victory.

At least one German officer thought von Donop’s dalliance cost Britain the colonies: “partly to the fault of Colonel Donop, who was led to Mount Holly by the nose…and detained there by love….”

And who was the beautiful widow? “Could she have been an American agent?” Fischer asks. Attempts to identify her as someone from the community have been without success.

However, Fischer tells us:

In December 1776, there was a young and very beautiful young widow, a “Free Quaker” strongly sympathetic to the American cause, who lived in Philadelphia, had family connections in Gloucester County, New Jersey, was married there, and often went back and forth. She was acquainted with Margaret Morris, and also with George Washington. Her name was Betsy Ross. One historian, Joseph Tustin, has raised the possibility she may have been the mysterious widow of Mount Holly. Her husband, John Ross, who had died in 1776, came from Gloucester County and may have been related to Doctor Alexander Ross, who was a physician practicing at Mount Holly in 1776.

There is no evidence; just speculation. But hey, there was no evidence she sewed the first flag either and this is a more intriguing story.

[NewMexiKen is completing Fischer’s Washington’s Crossing after a couple of unexplainable false starts. It is a delightful, informative historical narrative. Truly deserved of all its awards and your attention.]

Best line of the day, so far

It’s my first day in the building, I have not taken a single vote, I have not introduced one bill, had not even sat down in my desk, and this very earnest reporter raises his hand and says:

“Senator Obama, what is your place in history?”

I did what you just did, which is laugh out loud. I said, place in history? I thought he was kidding! At that point, I wasn’t even sure the other Senators would save a place for me at the cool kids’ table.

U.S. Senator Barack Obama in commencement address at Knox College

Read the entire Commencement Address. It’s outstanding.

I walk the line

I’ll tell you an interesting story. I was at an automobile plant in Mississippi…. And I was with the line workers. And I said, how many of you all have 401(k)s? In other words, how many of you are managing your own money? And I bet 90 — I didn’t count, but a lot, 90 percent of the hands went up. These are people from all walks of life, all income groups.

President Bush at Social Security Conversation in Maryland.

Interesting automobile assembly line, what with all those walks of life working on it.