Category: People & Human Interest

A Czech fable: A poor farmer whose livestock is a single dairy cow goes to the field one morning to milk the cow and discovers that she’s dead. He falls to his knees and looks skyward, shaking his fists and cursing God for his misfortune. Suddenly a voice is heard from the heavens: “Your cries have reached me, my son. Tell me what you would like me to do.” The farmer gazes upward and says to God, “Please, Lord, kill my neighbor’s cow.”

Emily Yoffe at Slate Magazine.

I think you could substitute Czech with just about any other group.

I think Tom wants to drink alone.

What brings joy to others gives me a feeling deep in my gut that is familiar to anyone who remembers what it’s like to be six years old and watching an accidentally-released helium balloon float into the sky, just out of reach.

Just go read it.

EL PASO — A 7-year-old Glen Cove Elementary School third-grader was attempting to run away from gunmen when he was shot several times in the back, Juárez police say.

The same gunmen had just shot and killed his father.

The boy, Raul Xazziel Ramirez-Ramirez, is the youngest student from an El Paso school to die in the savage and unrelenting war among rival drug cartels in Juárez. The death toll this year has already reached a little more than 2,200.

Raul was reportedly visiting his father in Juárez when he was gunned down.

El Paso Times

I didn’t live in New Mexico when Bruce King was governor, but Jim Baca makes me grieve for a politician I didn’t even know.

This is a engrossing article: Cameron Todd Willingham, Texas, and the death penalty. I urge you to read it.

Caroll Spinney has been the Man Inside Big Bird since he was 35. He’s 75 now. Interesting short profile.

According to a 2007 Pew Research survey, two-thirds of Americans (68%) completely or mostly agree that angels and demons are active in the world (and not just on Halloween). Just 14% completely disagree with this idea. Among religious groups, Mormons (88%), evangelical Christian (87%) and members of historically black churches (87%) are the most likely to agree that angels and demons are active in the world. Jewish Americans are by far the most likely to disagree that these spirits stalk the planet (73% disagree with 52% completely disagreeing). Buddhists (56% disagree), Hindus (55%) and the religiously unaffiliated (54%) are other faith groups disagreeing that angels and demons exist in our world. Happy Halloween!

Pew Research Center

Try texting and washing the dishes. Kerplunk.

I’m waiting for the iPhone to dry out before I find out what the next $tep is.

Just before it happened I thought to myself, this is stupid. (But for the record I was filling the sink, not actually washing the dishes.)

Three weeks ago, I spent an afternoon in [John Wooden’s] Encino condo, which must be one of the most amazing 1500 of square feet in all of Los Angeles. His Presidential Medal of Freedom hangs next to one from the local YMCA. His letter from Mother Teresa hangs near his great grand daughter’s report card. There are far more signed baseballs (his favorite sport) than basketballs, and nearly as many books about Abraham Lincoln (his hero) than there are jellybeans (his weakness.)

I like going to Wooden’s house for the same reason people like going to church: It makes me want to be a better man.

Rick Reilly’s Go Fish

Heather says, Now I understand why cardboard was invented.

Don’t ask why. Just do it. It won’t take you long.

Read ‘Burque Babble: To A Colleague.

Take along some tissues.

“I knew I would marry her when, instead of scolding me and complaining that video games were more important than her, she sat down beat my high score.”

Story #3318

Redux post of the day; from 2006.

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Guy #1: That was a beautiful pit bull.

Guy #2: Yeah, I’d love to have that pit bull, but I’m not responsible enough to have a dog. I’m gonna have some kids first so they can be responsible for the dog.

–Amtrak train

— Overheard in New York

Heavy rains, beginning on September 19th, dumped between 15 and 20 inches of rain over three days on parts of Georgia, Alabama and Tennessee. The deluge overwhelmed natural and man made systems, and the record-breaking downpour turned streams into rivers, swamping neighborhoods, washing out roads and, unfortunately, taking at least nine lives. Damage costs are estimated at $250 million, the cleanup just now beginning. Georgia’s Republican Governor Sonny Perdue recently announced that President Obama has issued a Federal Disaster Declaration for individual assistance to aid residents of five affected counties. Collected here are a few recent photos around the area, largely centered on Atlanta, Georgia. (30 photos total)

The Big Picture – Boston.com

SCOTUSblog has an excerpt from the transcript of an interview with Justice Sotomayor.

Below is a transcript excerpt from C-SPAN’s one-on-one interview with Justice Sonia Sotomayor, which will air during its “Supreme Court Week.” Justice Sotomayor described her anxiety in waiting for the president’s call and the frantic drive from New York to Washington the night before her nomination was announced…

It’s fun to read. She puts her robe on one leg at a time just like the rest of us.

First published four years ago today.

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For some reason earlier today NewMexiKen got to thinking about his very first day of work. It was Thanksgiving 1960. The place was the Cliff House restaurant in Tucson. At the time, the Cliff House was considered one of the best restaurants in town — great menu plus a wonderful view of the city from its foothill location on Oracle Road. The chef was known simply by his first name, Otto.

Thanksgiving was a very busy day at the Cliff House. I started at noon and got off sometime around 10:30. I was the dishwasher’s second assistant. The dishwasher, who on a regular shift worked just by himself, needed all the help he could get on Thanksgiving. He sprayed the loose residue off the plates and out of the cups and glasses and loaded the racks to go into the machine. The first assistant took the clean dishes out of the machine and got them back into circulation. My job was to clear the trays as the busboys brought them in, scraping the uneaten turkey and dressing and mashed potatoes off the plates into the garbage pail. For more than 10 hours. For $1 an hour.

I did well for my first day of work, being reprimanded only once — by Otto himself, no less. I was throwing out the uneaten dinner rolls instead of returning them to the bread warmer. In chefly like fashion he blew his top, but calmed down when he realized no one had told me differently (and I was a nice deferential kid whose mom was a waitress).

As the day went on into evening, however, this fine restaurant developed a mini-crisis. The Cliff House ran out of cranberries. Now there is one thing a restaurant must have on Thanksgiving and that is turkey. And there is one thing a restaurant must serve with turkey and that is cranberries (or cranberry sauce). And someone had miscalculated and none was left.

It was the dishwasher’s second assistant who saved the day. As the dirty dishes came in from the dining room I not only rescued the dinner rolls, I now also recycled the cranberries. From each plate I corralled the dark red glob and scraped it into a bowl. Periodically Otto would come over and switch out my trove with an empty new bowl. He’d take the cranberries I had reclaimed and scoop them (not so generously as earlier) onto some eager gourmand’s plate.

Amazingly I still love cranberries (especially cranberry relish).

Several of my former co-workers have asked what retired people, like me, do to make their days interesting.

I went to the store the other day. I was only in there for about 5 minutes. When I came out there was a cop writing out a parking ticket.

I went up to him and said, “Come on, buddy, how about giving a senior a break?”

He ignored me and continued writing the ticket. I called him a Nazi.

He glared at me and started writing another ticket for having worn tires.

So I called him a piece of shit. He finished the second ticket and put it on the windshield with the first. Then he started writing a third ticket.

This went on for about 20 minutes…the more I abused him, the more tickets he wrote.

I didn’t give a damn. My car was parked around the corner.

I try to have a little fun each day now that I’m retired. It’s important at my age.

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First posted here five years ago; Ralph had it first.

… birthday here today at NewMexiKen.

John is a multi-talented guy — photography, as you can see below, black belt, cyclist, actor, loving husband and care-giver, bon vivant and world traveler. (Apparently a whole different set of genes than me.) Here’s a couple of my favorites among photographs he has taken (click images for larger versions).

I’m in a really good mood because it is my baby brother’s birthday and reposting this just seems appropriate. It was first published here two years ago.

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NewMexiKen remembers living in the San Francisco Bay area when the tolls on the bridges were 50¢ and it was not uncommon to give the toll taker a buck and tell him you were paying for the car behind you too.

Now the toll is $3 and most locals use FasTrak. Alas, such is progress.

Anyway the story that follows reminded me of that lost tradition in a random acts of kindness kind of way. I never actually do this kind of thing myself, but I think it’s really nice that others do.

I was in the drive-thru at Tim Hortons by my house and had just ordered a coffee and croissant. I waited to get to the window and they handed me my order and said it had been paid for already. I curiously asked, “Who paid for it?” And the girl said, “The woman ahead of you. She does it all the time for people. And all she asks me to tell you is ‘pay it forward.'”

This made my entire day, and I made sure to tell everyone at work about it!

The next time I was in the same drive through, I paid for the person behind me. The best part about the whole thing was that I could spend the rest of the day imagining how that person felt. I know how good it made me feel, and it stuck with me.

You never know how someones day is going, and a small act like paying for a persons coffee can turn their entire day around.

Help Others.org

First posted here four years ago today. I’ve made a couple of minor edits.

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The news item Recruits Sought for Porn Squad reminds NewMexiKen of one of the things I don’t list on my résumé. I’ve already served on an FBI “porn squad.”

About 30 years ago, a lawsuit was brought against the National Archives and the FBI for violating the Federal Records Act. The Archives, it was alleged, had allowed the Bureau too much independence in deciding which records to keep under the Act. As a result of the litigation, the Court ordered the Archives to exert much more oversight. In practice it was almost as if the Bureau couldn’t empty its wastebaskets without the Archives sifting through to make sure there were no valuable records.

Things began to pile up. Among the heaps were whole warehouses full of confiscated pirated copies of popular films and music, particularly in Los Angeles (that is, Hollywood) where I was the National Archives’ regional archivist. Ultimately I was dispatched to the Los Angeles FBI field office to “review” these tapes and affirm they were not legally records and that they could be disposed of consistent with the court order. I’d slap a cassette into the VCR, watch enough of it to attest that it was in fact just another copy of “Patton” or “The Empire Strikes Back,” sampling my way through endless boxes and palettes. Then I’d go back to the office and draft a document saying such-and-such was trash. The Deputy Archivist of the U.S. would sign the affidavit and file it with the court. We cleaned out a large warehouse this way. (Keep in mind that this was just bulk confiscated material. A sample was retained with the case materials to serve as evidence and to provide a historical record.)

[I was not, however, allowed to apply my sampling process to the confiscated cars in the FBI garage. Even then, L.A. drug distributors drove some fancy automobiles.]

It turned out about this time that there was a big bust of audio-visual materials in Honolulu and the FBI field office there was bursting at the seams with worthless junk. “Could I go out to Hawaii for a week and help them out?” “Well,” I said, “OK. If I have to.”

But, in Honolulu, the pirated copies of popular movies were interspersed with confiscated pornography — and in those days at least, the pornography the FBI confiscated wasn’t smut. It was animals and kids and stuff. So there I was in a darkened room at the FBI offices in Honolulu putting cassettes into the VCR and sampling enough to attest that it was in fact just another pornographic film and not a federal record.

Take it from NewMexiKen, there are better ways to spend one’s day than on an FBI porn squad.

From 2007:

As the we noted here a few days ago, as Jeff Foxworthy says: “If you ever start feeling like you have the goofiest, craziest, most dysfunctional family in the world, all you have to do is go to a state fair. Because five minutes at the fair, you’ll be going, ‘you know, we’re alright. We are dang near royalty.’”

Here’s two of the four examples from the Alibi Blog:

Father to group of kids outside of the Monkey Man booth: “You will hold hands or I will fuck you up!”

Mother to daughter at the petting zoo: “Janessaaaaaaaaaaaa … you think you know everything, but you’re just a little shit.”

Things to think about on The Referendum at the Happy Days Blog. What’s the Referendum?

The Referendum is a phenomenon typical of (but not limited to) midlife, whereby people, increasingly aware of the finiteness of their time in the world, the limitations placed on them by their choices so far, and the narrowing options remaining to them, start judging their peers’ differing choices with reactions ranging from envy to contempt.

Personally I think the Referendum begins at about age two and lasts until dementia, but then maybe my experience is stilted. I did attend 10 years of Catholic schools.

A kiss – a simple act that can convey a diverse array of meanings. A kiss can be intimate and private, or meant for public display, it can convey love and affection, or simply provide comfort. Its use as a greeting is under fire in our current climate of H1N1 fear, as the French government has begun encouraging citizens to forgo “la bise”, their traditional cheek-to-cheek kiss, for health reasons. Gathered here are 33 recent photos of kisses expressing greetings and farewells, congratulations and joy, respect and, above all, love. (33 photos total)

The Big Picture – Boston.com

“More than one grizzled White House correspondent told me at the time, and more than one has told me since, that Jody was the best White House press secretary ever, bar none.”

From a very nice and very readable tribute to his one-time colleague Jody Powell by Hendrik Hertzberg. Good stuff.