Albuquerque’s first lady, Margaret Aragón de Chávez, announced last Thursday that she was divorcing Mayor Martin Chávez. This came as no surprise to those of us who attended a major charity event earlier this year. The Mayor was a no show at a ball that was honoring his wife.
And it was Valentine’s Day.
From The Washington Times:
New Border Patrol uniforms, ordered in the wake of the agency’s transfer last year to the Department of Homeland Security, arrived this month and some agents are not very happy: The new uniforms were “Made in Mexico.”
Link via The Melting Blog.
Meredith Baxter and Michael Gross, the wife and husband on the TV sitcom Family Ties, are both 57 today. Alex, their son on the show, was played by Michael J. Fox, who was 43 on June 9th.
ratified the U.S. Constitution on this date in 1788, thereby becoming the ninth state. Nine was the necessary number to put the Constitution into effect.
Live Free or Die
Dooce pays a nice Father’s Day tribute to her husband.
Angry Bear predicts the future:
Tuesday is the day for My Life, Bill Clinton’s book. Here I shall write for you, the reader, a list of what you will hear over the next few days, so that you can safely ignore the blathering pundits:
- Clinton is hurting Kerry by stealing the spotlight.
- Clinton is hurting Kerry by stealing the spotlight, so that Kerry will lose and Hillary can run in 2008.
- Clinton’s charisma and eloquence make Kerry look bad [but they will rarely if ever be contrasted to W. Bush’s lack of skills in those areas.]
- Clinton got blowjobs. In the Oval Office.
- Bill Clinton’s book is outselling Hillary’s 7 to 1.
- Monica Lewinsky. Monica Lewinsky. Monica Lewinsky. Monica Lewinsky. And, did I mention, Monica Lewinsky?
- Whitewater. Travelgate. FBI files. Waco.
- And, maybe if you listen very closely, at just the right time: eight years of peace and prosperity. Budget surplus. Record job growth. Surging home ownership. Real income growth. Fiscal responsibility. Compassion. Good relations with allies around the world. More popular than Reagan, based on exit polls in 1989 and 2001.
NPR has a Ray Charles page that includes a link to his 20 greatest hits (courtesy of Rhino Records). The page also has links to a recording of the Charles’ memorial service last Friday and a number of other NPR features about “The Genius.”
Attempting satire, Kimit Muston, writing in the L.A. Daily News, suggests it’s time for the City of Los Angeles to rid itself of its religious name.
Before the Spanish started putting up subdivisions, I believe the Yang-na tribe called this place, “Ours,” which is a great name, but I’m not sure their word “ours” means the same thing as our word “ours.” We might just call ourselves, “Here,” and then refer to everywhere else as “There,” but that could get confusing. And “Laker Town” seems to be out of the running for now.
We might rename our town “La Brea,” after the pits on Wilshire where creatures have the life sucked out of them by a black viscous fluid. Or not. I even considered changing our name to “Beverly Hills,” just to stick it to those snobs shopping on Rodeo Drive, but then, Tuesday afternoon it came to me in a flash, a new name that would fit our terrain, our vision, our history and our future.
So I humbly suggest as the new non-religious name for Los Angeles, California — Shaker Heights.
By the way, it’s worse than Muston realizes. The original full name of Los Angeles was El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Angeles de Porciúncula, which means The Town of Our Lady the Queen of the Angels of the Little Portion (i.e., small parcel of land).
Firefox 0.9 is available. NewMexiKen has been using Firefox as my primary browser since February. No pop-ups. Tabbed browsing. Fast.
NewMexiKen watched an interview early this evening with mystery writer Tony Hillerman. If he’s unfamiliar to you, I suggest you take remedial action. Suffice it to say that his main characters are Navajo policemen Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee, and his whole cachet is the Navajo culture where he sets his stories.
Anyway, Hillerman said he sent his first novel, The Blessing Way (1970), to his agent, who had trouble selling it. As Hillerman put it, the novel was caught between genres — not quite a mystery, not quite a literary novel. Hillerman asked the agent what he should do about rewriting the book. “Get rid of all that Indian stuff,” she replied.
NewMexiKen means no disrespect to the late Ronald Reagan by posting this item. I actually respect the office too much to “dis” any but an incumbent President I happen to disagree with. But I think it is interesting to put the recent national mourning into perspective. Frank Rich does it well.
A total of some 200,000 Americans passed by the [Reagan] coffin in California and Washington. The crowds watching the funeral procession in Washington numbered in the “tens of thousands,” reported The Washington Post. By comparison, three million Americans greeted the cross-country journey of Warren Harding’s funeral train from San Francisco to Washington when he died in office in the steamy August of 1923, according to Mark Sullivan’s history, “Our Times.” It took 3,500 soldiers to direct the crowd in his hometown of Marion, Ohio, alone. The grief for Harding was so pronounced in New York, a city that hardly knew him, that The Times reported how theaters canceled their shows to hold impromptu memorial gatherings for those citizens unable to jam into the packed services held in Trinity Church at Wall Street and Temple Emanu-El uptown and most houses of worship in between. Next to that, the Reagan outpouring, much of it carried out by bubbly TV-camera-seeking citizens in halter tops and shorts, was grief lite.
The entire Rich column is well-worth reading.
He’s clearly skilled, and obviously quite popular with the gallery, but is there anyone who looks less like an athlete than Phil Mickelson? And what’s with the wristwatch? He have an appointment somewhere this afternoon?
Update: Maybe he wore the watch to remember his appointment with the throat specialist.
From Morning Edition in the Los Angeles Times:
Jack Nicklaus, commenting on his steadily declining golf game: “Everyone has always wanted to play like Nicklaus. Now they really can.”
joined the Union as the 35th state on this date in 1863.
According to the Library of Congress:
The land which formed the new state originally constituted part of Virginia. Historically, the two areas differed culturally, as pioneering individuals traditionally settled the western portion, while a slave holding aristocratic society developed in the eastern portion. Westerners made an unsuccessful attempt to formally separate from Virginia in 1769. When Virginia seceded from the Union in 1861, the residents of the western counties, few of whom owned slaves, decided to stay with the Union. “Mountaineers always freemen” is the state’s motto.
View President Lincoln’s handwritten corrections to Secretary of State Seward’s opinion on the admission of West Virginia.
According to The Writer’s Almanac:
Mother’s Day is the busiest day of the year for florists, restaurants, and long distance phone companies. Father’s day is the day on which the most collect phone calls are made.
The question, in the NBA and in life, is not whether or not you can shoot. The question is whether or not you can get your shot.
Ralph Wiley at ESPN.com: Page 2 (May 27, 2004).
Wiley died of heart failure this past Sunday at age 52. In the column noted above he speculated that the Pistons “have a better-than-even shot of exploding the Laker Myth.”
Jon Stewart takes a look at Clinton’s “pickle stepping into history” (video).
Update: The link is no longer working. Here is what Stewart said:
“The Bushes hosted their predecessors at the White House yesterday, for the official unveiling of Bill and Hillary Clinton’s White House portraits. The occasion moved the current commander in chief to a rare show of gracious bipartisanship…. Bush then handed the mic over to Clinton. It’s been a long time since this skilled orator spoke in the White House. I’m sure he’s got some profound words to share…. [clip of Clinton: ‘All those kind and generous you said, made me feel like I was a pickle stepping into history.’] … Uhhh, I don’t get that at all. As a matter of fact, if I remember correctly, your pickle’s already stepped into history.”
From Steve Gilliard’s News Blog:
What you have to understand is this: Paul Johnson was a dead man when they took him. The Saudi version of Al Qaeda is especially hard core and vicious. They are not into concessions and general humanity. They are the outgrowth of a fundamentalist society riven with hypocrisy. Think about this, in a country where the religious police forced girls to burn alive rather than escape a fire in their school, these guys think that they have to make the country more fundamentalist.
Link via Kos.
Napoleon was defeated by Wellington at the Belgian village of Waterloo on this date in 1815.
The BBC has a concise history of the battle including this introduction:
The Battle of Waterloo was fought thirteen kilometres south of Brussels between the French, under the command of Napoleon Bonaparte, and the Allied armies commanded by the Duke of Wellington from Britain and General Blücher from Prussia. The French defeat at Waterloo drew to a close 23 years of war beginning with the French Revolutionary wars in 1792 and continuing with the Napoleonic Wars from 1803. There was a brief eleven-month respite when Napoleon was forced to abdicate, exiled to the island of Elba. However, the unpopularity of Louis XVIII and the economic and social instability of France motivated him to return to Paris in March 1815. The Allies soon declared war once again. Napoleon’s final defeat at Waterloo marked the end of the Emperor’s final bid for power, the so-called ‘100 Days’, and the final chapter in his remarkable career.
The Writer’s Almanac has a brief history as well. Hear Garrison Keillor tell it.
NewMexiKen has been negligent about posting links to those fine folks that link to this site. It is a network after all.
These sites have added NewMexiKen during the past month. Check ’em out:
Others from before:
Three Bed Two Bath (the first!)
NewMexiKen has been a Lakers fan for a long time and remained loyal until way past too late Tuesday. But the Pistons may have won me over.
Rasheed Wallace showed up at the Pistons celebration Thursday wearing a Gordie Howe Detroit Red Wings sweater. Nothing will render a native Detroiter’s heart faster than memories of Mr. Hockey.
Free Press pissed at Pistons:
Teenagers selling T-shirts bearing an image of the Detroit Free Press’ Pistons championship front page were accosted before the team’s victory parade Thursday by Pistons officials who said they could not sell images of the league. …
At issue is whether the First Amendment protects newspapers when they print on something other than paper.
“We have the right to sell the Free Press image whether it’s presented on paper, on cotton or on titanium plates,” Fink said. “It isn’t an image of the NBA, it’s an image of our front page.” …
Some of the kids were able to sell shirts before being confronted by the alleged NBA officials. Detroit police officers were among their customers.
The Queen of Soul’s anthem rendition was recorded at her home last year. See story in the Detroit Free Press.
Well, it was over for the Lakers even if the fat lady didn’t sing.
From AP via The Santa Fe New Mexican:
Three juveniles have admitted starting a forest fire that has burned 8,400 acres in western New Mexico’s Zuni Mountains, a fire-information officer said Thursday. …
The youngsters, who built a campfire in a restricted area, told investigators they put it out using water, sand and a stick, he said.
The fire started when they rested the stick against a tree, and its hot tip apparently fell off into a clump of pine needles…
The Forest Service closed the La Luz trail today due to the danger of fire. The trail is a 7-mile trek from the high foothills near Albuquerque to the Sandia Crest (10,678 feet/3255 m). It is an extremely popular hike and run. Among those interviewed for an Albuquerque Tribune article on the closing was this fellow:
Lionel Ortega, 82, said he wouldn’t run the La Luz this year because he was training for another trail run up Pikes Peak in Colorado.
Ortega, who would like everyone to know he’s single, said he was up early because it was cool and also so he could complete his run in time to get to the senior center before breakfast closed.
“If you’re not there on time, you don’t eat,” Ortega said as he hustled down the trail.
