Pay As You Go

I read John Feinstein’s Where Nobody Knows Your Name: Life In the Minor Leagues of Baseball the other day.

Among other things, I learned that when a minor league player — that is, one without a major league contract — is called up, he is paid for each day at the rate of the minimum major league salary ($500,000 this season) divided by 180 days. A player called up for three days, for example, would be paid $8333.33 ($500,000 divided by 180 times 3). A typical AAA player is paid $2,150 a month (for the five month season), so a few days in the big league is quite a bonus.

At lower levels the pay is much less — “Most earn between $3,000 and $7,500 for a five-month season.” [In lawsuit minor leaguers charge they are members of ‘working poor’]

Major league players receive $100 a day for food on the road; minor league players $25. Minor league umpires are paid $1900-3500 a month (for five months).

In the higher minors, the players, manager and coaches are employed (and paid) by the major league team. The local franchise — for example, the Albuquerque Isotopes — controls and manages everything else, but not the baseball.

Actually April 13th Really Should Be a Holiday

It seems to NewMexiKen that the country could use a federal holiday during that long spell from Washington’s Birthday to Memorial Day — for shopping and sales and stuff. I propose that April 13th, Jefferson’s birthday, would be ideal.

Thomas Jefferson by Rembrandt Peale, 1800

Thomas Jefferson was born on April 13th in 1743. [It was April 2nd on the calendar when he was born, but it’s that old Julian-Gregorian thing again.]

Eighty-three years later, at the end of his remarkable life, he wished to be remembered foremost for those actions that appear as his epitaph:

Author of the
Declaration
of
American Independence
of the
Statute of Virginia
for
Religious Freedom
and Father of the
University of Virginia.

Thomas Jefferson

At a White House dinner honoring 49 Nobel laureates in 1962, President Kennedy remarked, “I think this is the most extraordinary talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.”

The Essentials: Five Books on Thomas Jefferson

Top 10: Misconceptions about Jefferson

How Thomas Jefferson Created His Own Bible

Jefferson's draft, with a little help from his friends.
Jefferson’s draft, with a little help from his friends.

NewMexiKen photos, October 2012. Click for larger versions.

 

 

April 13th Ought to Be a Holiday

Tony_Dow_Barbara_Billingsley_Jerry_Mathers_Leave_It_to_Beaver_1959 Tony Dow

It’s the birthday of Wally Cleaver. Tony Dow is 69. That’s him in the photos, then and more recently.

Paul Sorvino is 75 today. Sorvino has more than 100 credits at IMDB, including a season as Detective Sergeant Philip “Phil” Cerreta on Law & Order and Henry Kissinger in Nixon.

The Reverend Al Green is staying together at 68.

With his incomparable voice, full of falsetto swoops and nuanced turns of phrase, Al Green rose to prominence in the Seventies. One of the most gifted purveyors of soul music, Green has sold more than 20 million records. During 1972 and 1973, he placed six consecutive singles in the Top 10: “Let’s Stay Together,” “Look What You Done for Me,” “I’m Still in Love With You,” “You Ought to Be With Me,” “Call Me” and “Here I Am (Come and Take Me).” “Let’s Stay Together” topped the pop chart for one week and the R&B charts for nine; it was also revived with great success by Tina Turner in 1984. In terms of popularity and artistry, Green was the top male soul singer in the world, voluntarily ending his reign with a move from secular to gospel music in 1979.

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

http://youtu.be/COiIC3A0ROM

Chess champion Gary Kasparov is 51.

Rick Schroeder, just nine when he won a Golden Globe, is 44.

It’s also the birthday of playwright and novelist Samuel Beckett, born on this date in 1906. Waiting for Godot was published in 1952.

Apollo 13 on April 13th

Here, from AP, is the actual recording 41 years ago today of Astronaut Jack Swigert and then (it seems) Commander James Lovell telling Houston we have a problem.

In the film, Tom Hanks as Lovell has the line.

This report is from the next day’s New York Times:

The Apollo 13 Astronauts, their lives threatened by a serious oxygen leak, were forced to evacuate their command ship late last night and use their intended moon-landing craft as a “lifeboat” for a fast return to the earth.

In cool and cryptic words, they were instructed by mission control here to use the attached lunar module’s rocket to power them back to an emergency splashdown in the Pacific Ocean at about noon on Friday.

There will be great risks and little margin for error or delay. …

Capt. James A. Lovell Jr. of the Navy, the commander, and his two civilian co-pilots, Fred W. Haise Jr. and John L. Swigert Jr., crowded into the two-man lunar module at about 11:40 P.M. Eastern standard time.

NewMexiKen attended the Washington, D.C., premiere of Ron Howard’s film Apollo 13. Astronauts Lovell and Haise were there with several of the other principals from NASA. (Astronaut Swigert, played by Kevin Bacon in the film, died in 1982, shortly after being elected to Congress from Colorado.)

The film was very well done. Late in the movie as suspense builds over whether the astronauts will survive and make it back to earth, I actually had to remind the person next to me: “Relax. It’ll be OK. They make it back. They’re here in the theater.”

Organ Pipe National Monument (Arizona)

… was established on this date in 1937.

Organ Pipe

Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument celebrates the life and landscape of the Sonoran Desert. Here, in this desert wilderness of plants and animals and dramatic mountains and plains scenery, you can drive a lonely road, hike a backcountry trail, camp beneath a clear desert sky, or just soak in the warmth and beauty of the Southwest. The Monument exhibits an extraordinary collection of plants of the Sonoran Desert, including the organ pipe cactus, a large cactus rarely found in the United States. There are also many creatures that have been able to adapt themselves to extreme temperatures, intense sunlight and little rainfall.

Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument exhibits an extraordinary collection of plants and animals of the Sonoran Desert. This is a showcase for creatures who have adapted themselves to the extreme temperatures, intense sunlight, and little rainfall that characterize this Southwest region. Twenty-six species of cactus have mastered the art of living in this place, including the park’s namesake and the giant saguaro.

National Parks and National Monuments are both administered by the National Park Service, and are identical in their function and purpose. Both are types of federally protected lands, and share the common goal of preserving and protecting significant natural and cultural resources.

The major difference between a national park and a national monument is the manner in which they are created. A national park is established through an Act of Congress, and the land may originate from a variety of sources, including public and private land. A national monument is established by Presidential proclamation, and this land is to be taken only from existing public (federal) ownership.

Organ Pipe National Monument

Last Night’s Photo

First Pitch

First pitch of the second home game of the season. Click for large version.

The ball can be seen — I think — in the air with the tarp behind it, between the umpire and the 3rd baseman. iPhone 5s photo.

Alas, Rainiers 9 Isotopes 7 in a classic high desert pitchers’ duel.

Fort Pillow

On April 12, 1864 — the third anniversary of the firing on Fort Sumter — a Confederate force led by the brilliant and brutal Nathan Bedford Forrest attacked Union troops holding Fort Pillow, an obscure post in West Tennessee. What happened after Forrest’s men captured Fort Pillow remains one of the most notorious and controversial incidents of the Civil War.

Disunion: Remember Fort Pillow!

The war in Tennessee : Confederate massacre of Federal troops after the surrender at Fort Pillow, April 12th, 1864. Published in 1894.
The war in Tennessee : Confederate massacre of Federal troops after the surrender at Fort Pillow, April 12th, 1864.
Published in 1894.

Arches National Park (Utah)

… was proclaimed Arches National Monument on this date in 1929. It became a national park in 1971.

Arches

Visit Arches and discover a landscape of contrasting colors, landforms and textures unlike any other in the world. The park has over 2,000 natural stone arches, in addition to hundreds of soaring pinnacles, massive fins and giant balanced rocks. This red rock wonderland will amaze you with its formations, refresh you with its trails, and inspire you with its sunsets.

The forces of nature have acted in concert to create the landscape of Arches, which contains the greatest density of natural arches in the world. Throughout the park, rock layers tell a story of millions of years of deposition, erosion and other geologic events. These layers continue to shape life in Arches today, as their erosion influences elemental features like soil chemistry and where water flows when it rains.

Arches is located in a “high desert,” with elevations ranging from 4,085 to 5,653 feet above sea level. The climate is one of very hot summers, cold winters and very little rainfall. Even on a daily basis, temperatures may fluctuate as much as 50 degrees.

Arches National Park

FDR

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, War President of the United States and the only Chief Executive in history who was chosen for more than two terms, died suddenly and unexpectedly at 4:35 P. M. today at Warm Springs, Ga., and the White House announced his death at 5:48 o’clock. He was 63.

The President, stricken by a cerebral hemorrhage, passed from unconsciousness to death on the eighty-third day of his fourth term and in an hour of high-triumph. The armies and fleets under his direction as Commander in Chief were at the gates of Berlin and the shores of Japan’s home islands as Mr. Roosevelt died, and the cause he represented and led was nearing the conclusive phase of success.

From The New York Times obituary, April 12, 1945, written by Arthur Krock.

There is an interesting and prescient remark in the article concerning Truman: “He is conscious of limitations greater than he has.”

When called at the Capitol and told he should rush to the White House, Truman is reported to have exclaimed, “Jesus Christ and General Jackson.” Once at the White House, Truman was told of FDR’s death by Mrs. Roosevelt.

The following day, Friday the 13th, is when Truman told several reporters: “Boys, if you ever pray, pray for me now. I don’t know whether you fellows ever had a load of hay fall on you, but when you told me yesterday what had happened, I felt like the moon, the stars, and all the planets had fallen on me.”

Information and quotations from David McCullough’s outstanding biography of Truman. Photo from the National Archives via the White House web site.

The First Shot

Fort Sumter — a man-made island some four miles from Charleston, South Carolina — was a symbol well beyond its strategic value in the tensions leading up to the Civil War. Since December 1860, South Carolina officials had been demanding the surrender of the fort as state property. To Northerners, surrendering the fort meant surrendering the very idea of the Union.

National Park Service photo.

When Lincoln took office on March 4, 1861, he was informed that the small garrison at Fort Sumter was running out of supplies. By April, he ordered a relief expedition and informed the Governor of South Carolina that it would be “with provisions only,” not men, arms or ammunition. This put the next move into the hands of Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Davis ordered that the fort be reduced before the supplies arrived.

The Confederacy opened fire at 4:30 AM on April 12, 1861. The Union garrison surrendered after 33 hours, and the American flag was lowered at Fort Sumter on April 14, 1861.

It was raised there again on April 14, 1865.

American Voices

Two years after the discovery of a papyrus that includes the phrase “Jesus said to them, ‘my wife,’” researchers have announced that the fragment is not a forgery and was likely written in the Middle Ages, though it does not necessarily prove Jesus had a wife. What do you think?

American Voices respond.

Tierra y libertad

“There have been men who, dying, have become stronger. I can think of many of them — Benito Juárez, Abraham Lincoln, Jesus Christ — Perhaps it might be that way with me.”

Emiliano Zapata, Mexican revolutionary, who became stronger on this date in 1919, when he was lured into a trap and killed by one of Carranza’s generals.

Emiliano Zapata, 1914
Emiliano Zapata, 1914

Today’s Photo

Twice a year at sunset, the Sun and the Mittens in Monument Valley line up so the shadow of West Mitten appears on East Mitten. March 27, 2010, was one of those times. This photo was taken a few feet from our campsite. It's better if you click for the larger version.
Twice a year at sunset,the Sun and the Mittens in Monument Valley line up so the shadow of West Mitten appears on East Mitten. March 27, 2010, was one of those times. This photo was taken a few feet from our campsite. It’s better if you click for the larger version.

The Tenth of April

Today we celebrate the birthday

Morgan & Felton

… of Harry Morgan. IMDb lists 162 credits for Morgan, who died in 2011 at the age of 96. If you’d like to see him as a relatively young actor, view the 1943 classic The Ox-Bow Incident. Morgan was Henry Fonda’s sidekick. Great, great film.

You may not know the name Verna Felton, but you know the voice. She was the character actress heard in many Disney animations — a matriarchical elephant in Dumbo, the Fairy Godmother in Cinderella, the Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland, Aunt Sarah in Lady and the Tramp. She also appeared with Harry Morgan in an early fifties sitcom December Bride — and its 1960 spinoff Pete and Gladys. She died in 1966, but Morgan kept Felton’s photo on Sherman Potter’s desk on the M*A*S*H set to portray Mrs. Potter.

That’s Morgan in the photo, with Felton (right) and Spring Byington, who played the title role on the TV series, December Bride.

… of Max von Sydow, 85.

… of Omar Sharif. Dr. Zhivago is 72. Sharif was nominated for a best supporting actor Oscar for Lawrence of Arabia.

… of John Madden. He’s 78. Madden was the Raiders head coach for 158 games, including post season. His team won 112 of them including Super Bowl XI. Why is John Madden’s Birthday not a significant national holiday?

… of Paul Theroux (rhymes with through). He’s 73.

It’s the birthday of novelist and travel writer Paul Theroux, born in Medford, Massachusetts (1941). After college he decided to join the Peace Corps in 1963. He later said, “I had thought of responsibilities I did not want—marriage seemed too permanent, grad school too hard, and the army too brutal.” He said the Peace Corps was a kind of “Howard Johnson’s on the main drag to maturity.”

The Peace Corps sent him to live in East Africa. He was expelled from Malawi after he became friends with a group that planned to assassinate the president of the country. He continued traveling around Africa, teaching English, and started submitting pieces to magazines back in the United States. While living in Africa, he became friends with the writer V.S. Naipaul, who became his mentor and who encouraged him to keep traveling.

He had published several novels when he decided to go on a four-month trip through Asia by train. He wrote every day on the journey, and he filled four thick notebooks with material that eventually became his first best-seller, The Great Railway Bazaar: By Train Through Asia (1975).

The Writer’s Almanac (2006)

… of Anne Lamott. She’s 60 today.

“You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.” Anne Lamott

Don Meredith was born in Mount Vernon, Texas, on April 10th, 1938. He died in 2010. “Turn out the lights, the party’s over.”

The Pulitizer Prize winning author David Halberstam should have been 80 today.

One of America’s most successful authors, David Halberstam began his career as a journalist in the 1950s, first as a reporter for The Daily Times Leader in West Point, Mississippi and later for the Nashville Tennessean. In 1960 he joined The New York Times and shortly thereafter was assigned to the paper’s bureau in Saigon. Halberstam was among a small group of reporters there who began to question the official optimism about the growing war in Vietnam. Halberstam’s work from Vietnam so rankled official Washington that President Kennedy once asked the publisher of The New York Times to transfer Halberstam to another bureau. In 1964, at age 30, Halberstam earned a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting from Vietnam. His best-selling book, The Best and The Brightest, chronicles America’s deepening involvement in Vietnam through the Kennedy and Johnson administrations.

Reporting America at War | PBS

Joseph Pulitzer himself was born in Budapest, Hungary, on this date in 1847.

Frances Perkins, the first woman presidential cabinet member — FDR’s Secretary of Labor — was born on this date in 1880. Perkins and Interior Secretary Harold Ickes were the only cabinet members to serve Roosevelt’s entire 12+ years. The Department of Labor Building in Washington is named for Secretary Perkins.

When Frances Perkins married in 1913 she had to go to court to win the right to keep her own name.

Frances Perkins Time 1933

April 9th

Hugh Hefner is 88.

Michael Learned — Momma Walton — is 75.

Dennis Quaid is 60.

Cynthia Nixon is 48.

Keshia Knight Pulliam — Rudy Huxtable — is 35.

Paul Robeson was was born on this date in 1898.

Paul Robeson was the epitome of the 20th-century Renaissance man. He was an exceptional athlete, actor, singer, cultural scholar, author, and political activist. His talents made him a revered man of his time, yet his radical political beliefs all but erased him from popular history. Today, more than one hundred years after his birth, Robeson is just beginning to receive the credit he is due.

Read more from the profile of Robeson at the PBS site for American Masters.

Two Misconceptions about Albuquerque

1. No, Albuquerque is not as hot as Phoenix, Las Vegas or Tucson. Last year the temperature rose to 100º F or more just twice. Not at all in some years. The temperature goes above 100º in Phoenix more than one hundred days a year.

2. Yes, Albuquerque is just as high above sea level as Denver. In fact, parts of Albuquerque are higher than any part of Denver. The altitude in Denver ranges from 5,130 to 5,470 feet above sea level. The altitude in Albuquerque ranges from 4,946 to 6,120 feet above sea level. Albuquerque has the highest altitude of any of the 50 largest cities.

Photo Contest Finalists

We’re proud to announce the winners of our 11th Annual Photo Contest. Our photo editors selected the 60 finalists from over 50,000 photographs submitted by photographers from 132 different countries. Ten were selected from each of six categories: The Natural World, Travel, People, Americana, Altered Images and Mobile, a new category this year.

Smithsonian Magazine

Vote for the Readers’ Choice award.