“If you had the power to pick your next-door neighbors, you would pick Tony and Marie Hillerman. They are smart, funny, compassionate, unpretentious human beings God gave us as something to strive toward.”
Jim Belshaw, Albuquerque Journal
NewMexiKen has read most of Hillerman’s Leaphorn and Chee mysteries, and more, and I’ve been wanting to say something about him since his death at age 83 Sunday here in Albuquerque. I’ll let Belshaw’s line serve.
Just sayin’.
In convo with Playbook, a top McCain adviser one-ups the priceless “diva” description, calling her “a whack job.”
They’re getting warmer.
Again, giving credit where it is due, I have stolen the title of this post from Atrios.
Pew says 15% say they have already voted and Obama is beating McCain among that group 53% to 34%. In a poll of registered voters taken October 23-26, Obama leads 52-36; 53-38 among likely voters.
Reason Magazine has calculated that even if McCain gets every undecided vote, Obama still wins 306 electoral votes.
And FiveThirtyEight.com tells of a study that says for the presidential election at least, New Mexicans have the greatest chance of having their one vote matter.
— Jay Leno
The financial crisis this week is the implosion of the “emerging markets.”
What’s an emerging market?
They’re the rich poor countries — China, India, Russia, Turkey, Eastern Europe, Mexico, Brazil, Venezuela. (As opposed to the rich countries like the U.S., Western Europe, Japan.)
What’s the problem?
Think of the emerging markets as people buying more house than they can afford. These countries showed some economic progress, borrowed big, now can’t pay back the loans in the global slowdown because their products or commodities are depressed — and/or because they spent the money on luxuries rather than infrastructure that would increase production.
More risky loans by banks in other words. (And no, Fannie and Freddie didn’t cause this problem either.)
Information gleaned from yesterday’s Planet Money podcast.
Today is the birthday of Charlie Daniels. The devil in Georgia is 72.
Actress Jane Alexander is 69 today. Ms. Alexander has four Oscar nominations in her career; two for best actress and two for best supporting actress.
Det. Andy Sipowicz is 64. That’s Dennis Franz.
Bill Gates, the former resident of Albuquerque, is 53 today.
When he was in 8th grade, the [Seattle] Lakeside Mothers Club had a rummage sale and used the money to buy computer equipment for the school. Gates and his friend Paul Allen got completely swept up in the excitement of this new technology. They rummaged through dumpsters at the nearby Computer Center Corporation to find notes written by programmers, and with that information, they wrote a 300-page manual. He and Paul Allen moved to Albuquerque and started Microsoft in 1975.
Oscar winner Julia Roberts (Erin Brockovich) is 41. Ms. Roberts was also nominated for best actress for Pretty Woman and best supporting actress for Steel Magnolias.
Joaquin Phoenix, who has already been nominated for a best supporting actor (“Gladiator”) and a leading actor (“Walk the Line”) Oscar, is 34.
Costume designer Edith Head was born on October 24th in 1897. Ms. Head was nominated for 35 Oscars, winning eight.
The developer of the first polio vaccine, Dr. Jonas Salk was born on this date in 1914.
He created the vaccine at the height of a polio epidemic in the mid-1950s, when parents were so worried about their children that they kept them home from swimming pools in the summer. Salk’s discovery was that a vaccine could be developed from a dead virus, and he tested the vaccine on himself, his family, and the staff of his laboratory to prove it was safe. The vaccine was finally released to the public in 1955, and the number of people infected by polio went down from more than 10,000 a year to fewer than 100. Salk was declared a national hero.
The Writer’s Almanac (2007)
Harvard College was founded on this date in 1636.
Click image for larger version and to learn more.
… began as Gran Quivara National Monument in 1909, but evolved over the years and was renamed Salinas Pueblo Missions 20 years ago today.
Once, thriving American Indian trade communities of Tiwa and Tompiro speaking Puebloans inhabited this remote frontier area of central New Mexico. Early in the 17th-century Spanish Franciscans found the area ripe for their missionary efforts. However, by the late 1670s the entire Salinas District, as the Spanish had named it, was depopulated of both Indian and Spaniard. What remains today are austere yet beautiful reminders of this earliest contact between Pueblo Indians and Spanish Colonials: the ruins of four mission churches, at Quarai, Abó, and Gran Quivira and the partially excavated pueblo of Las Humanas or, as it is known today, Gran Quivira. Established in 1980 through the combination of two New Mexico State Monuments and the former Gran Quivira National Monument, the present Monument comprises a total of 1,100 acres.
Source: National Park Service
On October 28, 1919, Congress passed the Volstead Act providing for enforcement of the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution, ratified nine months earlier. Known as the Prohibition Amendment, it prohibited the “manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors” in the United States.
The movement to prohibit alcohol began in the early years of the nineteenth century when individuals concerned about the adverse effects of drink began forming local societies to promote temperance in consumption of alcohol. The first temperance societies were organized in New York (1808) and Massachusetts (1813). Members, many of whom belonged to Protestant evangelical denominations, frequently met in local churches. As time passed, most temperance societies began to call for complete abstinence from all alcoholic beverages.
Source: Library of Congress
Same philosophy still in effect for drugs.
I see they finally caught up with that scofflaw Ted Stevens for almost running me down in a crosswalk in front of the National Archives in 1973.
Ha!
And there’ll be at least one less vote for Stevens in his reelection bid next Tuesday.
His.
Felons can’t vote in Alaska until they’ve finished serving their sentence.
“What I do know is this, everyone is a genius in a bullmarket. The last 5 years, that wasn’t a stock market. THIS is a stockmarket.”
Barack Obama, March 18, 2008:
There is a young, twenty-three year old white woman named Ashley Baia who organized for our campaign in Florence, South Carolina. She had been working to organize a mostly African-American community since the beginning of this campaign, and one day she was at a roundtable discussion where everyone went around telling their story and why they were there.
And Ashley said that when she was nine years old, her mother got cancer. And because she had to miss days of work, she was let go and lost her health care. They had to file for bankruptcy, and that’s when Ashley decided that she had to do something to help her mom.
She knew that food was one of their most expensive costs, and so Ashley convinced her mother that what she really liked and really wanted to eat more than anything else was mustard and relish sandwiches. Because that was the cheapest way to eat.
She did this for a year until her mom got better, and she told everyone at the roundtable that the reason she joined our campaign was so that she could help the millions of other children in the country who want and need to help their parents too.
Now Ashley might have made a different choice. Perhaps somebody told her along the way that the source of her mother’s problems were blacks who were on welfare and too lazy to work, or Hispanics who were coming into the country illegally. But she didn’t. She sought out allies in her fight against injustice.
Anyway, Ashley finishes her story and then goes around the room and asks everyone else why they’re supporting the campaign. They all have different stories and reasons. Many bring up a specific issue. And finally they come to this elderly black man who’s been sitting there quietly the entire time. And Ashley asks him why he’s there. And he does not bring up a specific issue. He does not say health care or the economy. He does not say education or the war. He does not say that he was there because of Barack Obama. He simply says to everyone in the room, “I am here because of Ashley.”
“I’m here because of Ashley.” By itself, that single moment of recognition between that young white girl and that old black man is not enough. It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children.
But it is where we start. It is where our union grows stronger. And as so many generations have come to realize over the course of the two-hundred and twenty one years since a band of patriots signed that document in Philadelphia, that is where the perfection begins.
FiveThirtyEight.com reminded me of this and of two other Ashleys. Click the link and read the context.
But I too am here because of Ashley Baia and her story.
“That’s how we’ve always grown the American economy – from the bottom-up. John McCain calls this socialism. I call it opportunity, and there is nothing more American than that.”
Three of the Sweeties won medals in a regional cross country competition in a pouring rain Saturday.
Second-grader Mack took second in his age group and third overall. His pre-K brother Aidan took second among boy kindergartners.
And Kiley won first place among kindergarten girls in her first-ever competition.
All three ran one mile; 33 kids competed in the K through 2nd age group.
Jill, official older daughter of NewMexiKen and mother of two of the competitors, reports:
It was so cute. They had flags, like little landscaping flags, laid out to mark the course in places where it was indistinct. I watched Mack finish, then ran back over and cheered Kiley up through this muddy, slippery hill. Aidan was about 30 seconds behind her. He was coming towards me and running kind of weird and I was thinking, “Is he struggling? Is he okay?” Then I realized he was running around each flag, in a little slalom, like you do with cones at soccer practice. He did it all the way up the hill and down past me, as everyone around me chuckled and I yelled, “Honey, run straight! You can run straight!”
Probably cost the little guy first place, but he should prove to be a good skier some day.
And an update. The 39-year-old was disqualified from the K-2 group so Mack won his first-ever 5K last week.
… of Ruby Dee. The actress and Kennedy Center Honor recipient is 84.
… of John Cleese. He’s 69, which means he doesn’t have too many more years to undermine his reputation from the Monty Python days with a continuing string of asinine TV commercials.
Theodore Roosevelt was born on this date in 1858. Roosevelt is still the youngest President ever. He was 42 when he succeeded McKinley in 1901.
The Welsh poet Dylan Thomas was born on this date in 1914. (He died in 1953.)
My birthday began with the water –
Birds and the birds of the winged trees flying my name
Above the farms and the white horses
And I rose
In rainy autumn
And walked abroad in a shower of all my days
The Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Sylvia Plath was born on this date in 1932. She died, from suicide, at age 30 in early 1963.
The cottonwoods are turning and the Rio Grande flows by. No place any prettier in the autumn than a walk along the Rio Grande through the bosque in Albuquerque.
Taken yesterday with my iPhone. Click each image for larger version. If you look closely there’s a horse and rider across the river. We saw a coyote just south of Paseo del Norte, but he wouldn’t pose for a photo.
“It’s really a wonder, when you think about it, that there are still two guys in the race to become U.S. president, pulling out all the stops in these last eight days of campaigning to be chosen as the one to face the nightmare.”
Perhaps 50,000 to see Obama in Albuquerque last night; 100,000 in Denver today.
What’s happening?
It’s the birthday of Pat Conroy. The author of The Prince of Tides and The Great Santini is 63 today. Four years ago NewMexiKen relayed a good story about Conroy’s introduction to literature at D.C.’s Gonzaga High School — We should both cherish it.
Today is Pat Sajak’s birthday. His wheel has spun for 62 years.
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton is 61 today.
And it’s the birthday of Mahalia Jackson, born on this date in 1911 (she died in 1972). As The New York Times noted in Ms. Jackson’s obituary:
“I been ‘buked and I been scorned/ I’m gonna tell my Lord/ When I get home/ Just how long you’ve been treating me wrong,” she sang in a full, rich contralto to the throng of 200,000 people as a preface to Dr. King’s “I’ve got a dream” speech.
The song, which Dr. King had requested, came as much from Miss Jackson’s heart as from her vocal cords. The granddaughter of a slave, she had struggled for years for fulfillment and for unprejudiced recognition of her talent.
She received the latter only belatedly with a Carnegie Hall debut in 1950. Her following, therefore, was largely in the black community, in the churches and among record collectors.
Although Miss Jackson’s medium was the sacred song drawn from the Bible or inspired by it, the words–and the “soul” style in which they were delivered–became metaphors of black protest, Tony Heilbut, author of “The Gospel Sound” and her biographer, said yesterday. Among blacks, he went on, her favorites were “Move On Up a Little Higher,” “Just Over the Hill” and “How I Got Over.”
Singing these and other songs to black audiences, Miss Jackson was a woman on fire, whose combs flew out of her hair as she performed. She moved her listeners to dancing, to shouting, to ecstasy, Mr. Heilbut said. By contrast, he asserted, Miss Jackson’s television style and her conduct before white audiences was far more placid and staid.
Tombstone, Arizona, now a sleepy retirement community of 1,500 trying to milk its history, was a silver boom town of 10,000 in the early 1880s. Lawlessness was rampant — so much so that martial law was threatened by President Arthur in 1882.
Among the early residents were the Earp brothers, James, Virgil, Wyatt, Morgan, and Warren (ages 40 to 25 respectively in 1881). The Earps were, more or less, itinerant lawmen, politicians, security guards, and gamblers. By 1881, Virgil and Wyatt were established in Tombstone, seeking political office and running gaming tables. When the town marshal disappeared, Virgil Earp was appointed to the job.
The Clantons — father N.H. “Old Man,” and sons Ike, Phin, and Billy — were part of the town rowdy cowboy crowd, probably rustling cattle from Mexico and generally being unsavory, at least as far the the establishment was concerned. They were also Southern Democrats. The Earps were Union men (James had been seriously wounded in the war).
The bad blood between the two families seems to have grown out of finger pointing between them. The Earps would accuse the Clantons of some nefarious activity and the Clantons would point right back — and, of course, both were basically telling the truth. Wyatt, intent on a big splash to assure his election as sheriff, negotiated with Ike to reveal the identities of the Contention stage coach robbers and killers so he, Earp, could capture them. The negotiations fell through, but knowledge of them became public, making Ike look like the turncoat he was. He blamed Wyatt.
On October 26, 1881, Virgil Earp arrested Ike Clanton, who had been making threats since the previous evening. As Virgil hauled Clanton to the courthouse, Wyatt ran into a friend of Clanton’s, Tom McLaury. They had a heated exchange that ended when Wyatt hit McLaury over the head with a pistol. After this, Ike and Tom, joined by their brothers Billy and Frank respectively, considered their options, including leaving town. Billy Claiborne joined them. Virgil Earp, the town marshal, enlisted Wyatt, Morgan, and their friend Doc Holliday to help arrest the Clantons and McLaurys.
They met in a vacant on Fremont Street near the O.K. Corral livery stable. Thirty shots were fired in about 30 seconds. Billy Clanton and the McLaury brothers were killed. Virgil and Morgan Earp were wounded. The two prime antagonists, Ike Clanton and Wyatt Earp, were unhurt, as was Claiborne. The Earps were accused of murder, but a justice of the peace found they had acted as officers of the law.
The gunfight was the end of the Earps political plans in Tombstone. Virgil lost his post as town marshal. Family and friends of the Clantons began a vendetta, seriously wounding Virgil in December and killing Morgan in March 1882. Wyatt killed a deputy sheriff and another man suspected of being involved in Morgan’s shooting.
Virgil and Wyatt took their skills and ambitions to California, Colorado, and Alaska. Warren Earp was killed in Wilcox, Arizona, in a gunfight that might have been fallout from the O.K. Corral. Virgil died of pnuemonia in 1906. Wyatt Earp died in 1929. He was 80.
I for one appreciate the McCain campaign treating us like children. McCain will bring us back to a simpler time. A time when you could identify your neighbors’ jobs by the hats they wore. Like Sam the Fireman, Bill the Cowboy and Jose the stereotype. These are the people in your neighborhood. The people that you meet when you’re walking down the street. They’re the people that you meet each day. And what the people in your neighborhood, the Joe the Plumber, the Wendy the Waitress need are tax cuts for the wealthy and off shore drilling. They don’t need universal health care or last names.
The Colbert Report
I see some of the commentariat are starting to fret at the “danger” of having the presidency and both houses of congress in Democratic hands.
It is something to think about. I mean look at what happened after the 1964 election when there was a Democratic mandate in the 89th and 90th congresses.
I hope we don’t get that kind of progress again.
Estimates for the crowd for the Obama rally in Albuquerque last night range from 35,000 to 45,000.
Three things to keep in mind.
1. People don’t vote at rallies.
2. Still, John McCain attracted a crowd of less than 1,000 in this same city only hours earlier.
3. If 40,000 people were at the Obama rally, while it lasted the rally was the 7th largest city in the state of New Mexico.
UPDATE: It now appears 45-50,000 were at the rally. That would make the Obama gathering larger than all but four New Mexico cities.
Or, put another way, 2½% of the entire state population.