“While I was watching the sweet sixteen college basketball games, my wife and I got into a conversation about life and death, and the need for living wills. During the course of the conversation I told her that I never wanted to exist in a vegetative state, dependent on some machine and taking fluids from a bottle.
“She got up, unplugged the TV and threw out all my beer.”
First posted here two years ago. Originally in an email sent to Debby.
Taking a lesson from Saint Francis Xavier, born on this date in 1506 (see here), NewMexiKen has decided to raise the level of the insults I hurl, for example, at other drivers. From now on, instead of “Hey, a**hole,” or “m*****f*****,” or some other Deadwood appropriate language, I am simply going to yell:
“It upsets me to know that at the hour of your death you may be ordered out of paradise.”
Here’s a CNN news item I first posted four years ago today. I wonder how mother and child are doing.
A pregnant woman in Mexico gave birth to a healthy baby boy after performing a caesarean section on herself with a kitchen knife, doctors said on Tuesday.
It is thought to be the first known case of a self-inflicted caesarean in which both the mother and baby survived.
The unidentified 40-year-old, who lived in a rural area without electricity, running water or sanitation that was an eight-hour drive from the nearest hospital, performed the operation when she could not deliver the baby naturally.
A fine and insightful review by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar of Herbie Hancock’s Grammy-winning album of the year.
HISTORY:
Daniel Walker Howe, “What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848”
BIOGRAPHY:
John Matteson, “Eden’s Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father”
FICTION:
Junot Diaz, “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao”
GENERAL NONFICTION:
Saul Friedlander, “The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945”
DRAMA:
Tracy Letts, “August: Osage County”
POETRY:
Robert Hass and Philip Schultz, “Time and Materials,” by Robert Hass ” and “Failure,” by Philip Schultz
MUSIC:
David Lang, “The Little Match Girl Passion”
SPECIAL CITATIONS:
Bob Dylan
“One historian indicated that his reason for rating Bush as worst is that the current president combines traits of some of his failed predecessors: ‘the paranoia of Nixon, the ethics of Harding and the good sense of Herbert Hoover. . .’ ”
History News Network report on historians’ poll.
I like this one too:
“‘Bush does only two things well,’ said one of the most distinguished historians. ‘He knows how to make the very rich very much richer, and he has an amazing talent for f**king up everything else he even approaches. His administration has been the most reckless, dangerous, irresponsible, mendacious, arrogant, self-righteous, incompetent, and deeply corrupt one in all of American history.'”
And that’s the bright side.
I’m talking about the food crisis. Over the past few years the prices of wheat, corn, rice and other basic foodstuffs have doubled or tripled, with much of the increase taking place just in the last few months. High food prices dismay even relatively well-off Americans — but they’re truly devastating in poor countries, where food often accounts for more than half a family’s spending.
From an important column by Paul Krugman today. Read it.
I blame Bush.
“Perplexed by the U.S. economy? You’re not alone. Law professor Michael Greenberger joins Fresh Air to explain the sub-prime mortgage crisis, credit defaults, the shaky future of other types of loans and what we can expect from the U.S. financial markets.”
I’ve read that this NPR “Fresh Air” discussion is a pretty good explanation of what’s going on in the economy. You can get it from NPR here or as a podcast here.
39 minutes.
As I said in an earlier post, any candidate who supports corn ethanol is unqualified to lead the country. By that standard, we don’t have any qualified candidates for president. But the bar should be higher than that. If we don’t know who will advise them, how they plan to pay the bills, and who they would nominate for the Supreme Court, they haven’t given us the minimum information needed to support them.
The above from Scott Adams.
Today is the birthday
. . . of Ravi Shankar. Norah Jones’ father is 88.
. . . of Hendley “The Scrounger,” Bret Maverick and Jim Rockford. That’s James Garner, 80 today.
. . . of Trapper. Wayne Rogers is 75.
. . . of Governor Moonbeam. Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown is 70.
. . . of Francis Ford Coppola. The Oscar-winning writer and director is 69. Coppola has been nominated 14 times overall, winning five, three for writing (Patton, Godfather and Godfather II). He won the best director and best picture Oscars for Godfather II.
. . . of David Frost. The journalist, television celebrity is 69.
. . . of Jackie Chan, 54.
. . . of Russell Crowe. The 3-time best actor Oscar nominee is 44. He won for Gladiator.
. . . of Tiki and Ronde. The Barber brothers are 66.
Eleanora Fagan was born on this date in 1915. We know her as Billie Holiday.
Miss Holiday set a pattern during her most fruitful years that has proved more influential than that of almost any other jazz singer, except the two who inspired her, Louis Armstrong and the late Bessie Smith.
Miss Holiday became a singer more from desperation than desire. She was named Eleanora Fagan after her birth in Baltimore. She was the daughter of a 13-year-old mother, Sadie Fagan, and a 15-year-old father who were married three years after she was born.
The first and major influence on her singing came when as a child she ran errands for the girls in a near-by brothel in return for the privilege of listening to recordings by Mr. Armstrong and Miss Smith.
. . .At Jerry Preston’s Log Cabin, a night club, she asked for work as a dancer. She danced the only step she knew for fifteen choruses and was turned down. The pianist, taking pity on her, asked if she could sing. She brashly assured him that she could. She sang “Trav’lin’ All Alone” and then “Body and Soul” and got a job–$2 a night for six nights a week working from midnight until about 3 o’clock the next afternoon.
Miss Holiday had been singing in Harlem in this fashion for a year or two when she was heard by John Hammond, a jazz enthusiast, who recommended her to Benny Goodman, at that time a relatively unknown clarinet player who was the leader on occasional recording sessions.
She made her first recording, “Your Mother’s Son-in-Law” in November, 1933, singing one nervous chorus with a band that included in addition to Mr. Goodman, Jack Teagarden, Gene Krupa and Joe Sullivan.
Two years later Miss Holiday started a series of recordings with groups led by Teddy Wilson, the pianist, which established her reputation in the jazz world. On many of these recordings the accompanying musicians were members of Count Basie’s band, a group with which she felt a special affinity. She was particularly close to Mr. Basie’s tenor saxophonist, the late Lester Young.
It was Mr. Young who gave her the nickname by which she was known in jazz circles–Lady Day. She in turn created the name by which Mr. Young was identified by jazz bands, “Pres.” She was the vocalist with the Basie band for a brief time during 1937 and the next year she signed for several months with Artie Shaw’s band.
The New York Times (1959)
Billie Holiday and Francis Ford Coppola. It ought to be a national holiday.
“Poll of historians shows 60% of them think Bush is the worst president ever, 98% think he is a ‘failure’. Poll results show he did keep one campaign promise: he is a uniter, not a divider”
Here’s the background on the poll from History News Network.
The first great battle of the American Civil War began on this date in 1862. The Union Army, under Grant, was encamped in a poorly chosen position at Pittsburg Landing, Tennessee,. They were attacked by Confederates under Johnston and Beauregard early Sunday, April 6. 
By the end of the day, Confederates had catured the key position of Shiloh church and driven Union lines nearly to the Tennessee River. Grant, reinforced by Buell, counter attacked Monday morning, regained the lost ground, and forced the Confederates to retreat to Corinth, Mississippi. It was ostensibly a Union victory, though Grant was faulted for a lack of precaution that led to the first day’s disaster. Under criticism to remove Grant, Lincoln replied, “I can’t spare this man, he fights.”
According to James M. McPherson in Battle Cry of Freedom:
The 20,000 killed and wounded at Shiloh (about equally distributed between the two sides) were nearly double the 12,000 battle casualties at [First] Manassas, Wilson’s Creek, Fort Donelson, and Pea Ridge combined.
Shiloh was the beginning of total war.
If you’d like a little image to show up next to your comments (very small in the Latest Comments section in the sidebar, not so small next to the actual comment), you will need to sign up for a Gravatar — a Globally Recognized Avatar.
Sign up requires an email address and a password, uploading the image you want to use (and cropping it), a few other minor tweaks, and voila wherever you comment using that email address the image (the gravatar) will appear — well, it will appear if the particular website or blog is configured for gravatars, as NewMexiKen now is.
The hardest part for me was choosing an image — something I still haven’t settled on.
The news media can’t even decide when Charlton Heston was born (see earlier post), but The Writer’s Almanac has the birthday of Sacajawea. I didn’t even know the Shoshone were keeping birth certificates in 1786.
It’s the birthday of the Shoshone woman Sacajawea, born in Idaho (1786), who served as interpreter for Lewis and Clark’s expedition (1804). Born to a Shoshone chief, kidnapped at 10 by the Hidatsa tribe, and sold into slavery, she was then bought by a French Canadian trapper named Charbonneau, who married her. When Lewis and Clark hired Charbonneau to guide them to the Pacific, his teenage wife — with her two-month-old baby on her back — was part of the package. Officially she acted as interpreter, speaking half a dozen Indian languages, but she also knew which wilderness plants were edible and saved the explorers’ records when their boat overturned. She served as camp cook, housekeeper, and peacemaker with the watchful tribes they met along their way.
Of course, Sacajawea did NOT serve as a guide in 1804. Lewis and Clark didn’t even meet Charbonneau until the winter of 1804-1805. And, of course, the two-month old (in April 1805) was a nine-month-old by the time they wintered 1805-1806 near present-day Astoria, Oregon.
Whatever.
Robert E. Peary and Matthew A. Henson reached the North Pole 99 years ago today. They were the first known to do so.
In case you’ve noticed the discrepancy in various news reports, Charlton Heston’s birth year seems to be either 1923 or 1924. (In either case he was born on October 4.) Why no enterprising obituary writer saw fit to check some vital records is beyond me.
Today is the birthday
… of Andre Previn. The composer-conducter and 13-time Oscar nominee — he won for Gigi, Porgy and Bess, Irma la Douce and My Fair Lady — is 79. Previn was married to Mia Farrow for most of the 1970s. They had three children and adopted three more.
… of Merle Haggard. The Country Music Hall of Fame inductee is 71.
Haggard has recorded more than 600 songs, about 250 of them his own compositions. (He often shares writing credits as gestures of financial and personal largess.) He has had thirty-eight #1 songs, and his “Today I Started Loving You Again” (Capitol, 1968) has been recorded by nearly 400 other artists.
In addition, Haggard is an accomplished instrumentalist, playing a commendable fiddle and a to-be-reckoned-with lead guitar. He and the Strangers played for Richard Nixon at the White House in 1973, at a barbecue on the Reagan ranch in 1982, at Washington’s Kennedy Center, and 60,000 miles from earth—courtesy of astronaut Charles Duke, who brought a tape aboard Apollo 16 in 1972. Haggard has won numerous CMA and ACM Awards including both organizations’ 1970 Entertainer of the Year awards, been nominated for scores of others, was elected to the Songwriters’ Hall of Fame in 1977, and won Country Music Hall of Fame membership in 1994. In 1984 he won a Grammy in the Best Country Vocal Performance, Male category for “That’s the Way Love Goes.” (Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum)
… of Billy Dee Williams. Lando Calrissian is 71. Williams played Gale Sayers in the classic 1971 TV movie Brian’s Song.
“There’s always been a lot of misunderstanding about Lando’s character. I used to pick up my daughter from elementary school and get into arguments with little children who would accuse me of betraying Han Solo.”
… of Barry Levinson. The six-time Oscar nominee (writing, directing) won for best director for Rain Man. He’s 66.
… of John Ratzenberger. Best known as Cliff Clavin the mailman on Cheers, Ratzenberger is also the voice of Hamm the Piggy Bank in the Toy Story movies and Yeti in Monsters, Inc. Ratzenberger is 61.
… of Jason Hervey. Wayne Arnold of “The Wonder Years” is 36.
… of Zach Braff. He’s 33 today.
In this week’s The New Yorker, Michael Kinsley has about as accurate an analysis of aging as any I’ve read. Worthwhile for oldsters of all ages. He also touches poignantly on his Parkinson’s.
Some excerpts:
What’s more, of all the gifts that life and luck can bestow—money, good looks, love, power—longevity is the one that people seem least reluctant to brag about. In fact, they routinely claim it as some sort of virtue—as if living to ninety were primarily the result of hard work or prayer, rather than good genes and never getting run over by a truck. Maybe the possibility that the truck is on your agenda for later this morning makes the bragging acceptable. The longevity game is one that really isn’t over till it’s over.
Anyway, the answer is sixty-three. If a hundred Americans start the voyage of life together, on average one of them will have died by the time the group turns sixteen. At forty, their lives are half over: further life expectancy at age forty is 39.9. And at age sixty-three the group starts losing an average of one person every year. Then it accelerates. By age seventy-five, sixty-seven of the original hundred are left. By age one hundred, three remain.
For a yuppie careerist, the first painful recognition that you have crossed the invisible line probably comes at work. You’ve done fine, but guess what? You will not be chairman of the company, or editor of the newspaper, or president of the university. It’s mathematically inevitable that for every C.E.O. there will be half a dozen vice-presidents whose careers will seem successful enough to everybody but themselves. Nevertheless, to them this realization is poignant.
Precisely.
“Will Charles Keating get his own holiday too? I understand that Johnny Mac was ‘wrong’ about him as well.”
Commenter at Wonkette on McCain’s apology for voting against the Martin Luther King holiday.
In the past two weeks, the following events transpired. A Department of Justice memo, authored by John Yoo, was released which authorized torture and presidential lawbreaking. It was revealed that the Bush administration declared the Fourth Amendment of the Bill of Rights to be inapplicable to “domestic military operations” within the U.S. The U.S. Attorney General appears to have fabricated a key event leading to the 9/11 attacks and made patently false statements about surveillance laws and related lawsuits. Barack Obama went bowling in Pennsylvania and had a low score.
Here are the number of times, according to NEXIS, that various topics have been mentioned in the media over the past thirty days:
“Yoo and torture” – 102
“Mukasey and 9/11” — 73
“Yoo and Fourth Amendment” — 16
“Obama and bowling” — 1,043
“Obama and Wright” — More than 3,000 (too many to be counted)
“Obama and patriotism” – 1,607
“Clinton and Lewinsky” — 1,079
Glenn Greenwald, who has more. Go read his Update, if nothing else.
“A crescent moon of perilous beauty is about to appear in the evening sky.”
The item continues: “The best night to look is Tuesday, April 8th, when the moon joins the Pleiades star cluster for a must-see conjunction.”
. . . on this date in 1614. Jamestown Rediscovery, the web site of the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities’ Jamestown Rediscovery archaeological project, tells the story.
Pocahontas was an Indian princess, the daughter of Powhatan, the powerful chief of the Algonquian Indians in the Tidewater region of Virginia. She was born around 1595 to one of Powhatan’s many wives. They named her Matoaka, though she is better known as Pocahontas, which means “Little Wanton,” playful, frolicsome little girl.
Pocahontas probably saw white men for the first time in May 1607 when Englishmen landed at Jamestown. The one she found most likable was Captain John Smith. The first meeting of Pocahontas and John Smith is a legendary story, romanticized (if not entirely invented) by Smith. He was leading an expedition in December 1607 when he was taken captive by some Indians. Days later, he was brought to the official residence of Powhatan at Werowocomoco, which was 12 miles from Jamestown. According to Smith, he was first welcomed by the great chief and offered a feast. Then he was grabbed and forced to stretch out on two large, flat stones. Indians stood over him with clubs as though ready to beat him to death if ordered. Suddenly a little Indian girl rushed in and took Smith’s “head in her arms and laid her owne upon his to save him from death.” The girl, Pocahontas, then pulled him to his feet. Powhatan said that they were now friends, and he adopted Smith as his son, or a subordinate chief. Actually, this mock “execution and salvation” ceremony was traditional with the Indians, and if Smith’s story is true, Pocahontas’ actions were probably one part of a ritual. At any rate, Pocahontas and Smith soon became friends.
Relations with the Indians continued to be generally friendly for the next year, and Pocahontas was a frequent visitor to Jamestown. She delivered messages from her father and accompanied Indians bringing food and furs to trade for hatchets and trinkets. She was a lively young girl, and when the young boys of the colony turned cartwheels, “she would follow and wheele some herself, naked as she was all the fort over.” She apparently admired John Smith very much and would also chat with him during her visits. Her lively character and poise made her appearance striking. Several years after their first meeting, Smith described her: “a child of tenne yeares old, which not only for feature, countenance, and proportion much exceedeth any of the rest of his (Powhatan’s) people but for wit and spirit (is) the only non-pariel of his countrie.
Continue reading Pocahontas married John Rolfe
NewMexiKen first posted this four years ago after Debby had posted it elsewhere:
When NASA was preparing for the Apollo Project, it took the astronauts to a Navajo reservation in Arizona for training. One day, a Navajo elder and his son came across the space crew walking among the rocks.
The elder, who spoke only Navajo, asked a question. His son translated for the NASA people: “What are these guys in the big suits doing?” One of the astronauts said that they were practicing for a trip to the moon. When his son relayed this comment the Navajo elder got all excited and asked if it would be possible to give to the astronauts a message to deliver to the moon.
Recognizing a promotional opportunity when he saw one, a NASA official accompanying the astronauts said, “Why certainly!” and told an underling to get a tape recorder. The Navajo elder’s comments into the microphone were brief. The NASA official asked the son if he would translate what his father had said. The son listened to the recording and laughed uproariously. But he refused to translate.
So the NASA people took the tape to a nearby Navajo village and played it for other members of the tribe. They too laughed long and loudly but also refused to translate the elder’s message to the moon.
Finally, an official government translator was summoned. After she finally stopped laughing, the translator relayed the message: “Watch out for these assholes. They have come to steal your land.”
This story has been around the Internet since at least 1995. According to the Urban Legends Reference Pages —
Although it might possibly have earlier antecedents as yet unknown to us, the origin of this tale appears to be a joke Johnny Carson included in his Tonight Show monologue on the evening of 22 July 1969, two days after Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first men to set foot on the surface of the moon.
Today is the birthday
. . . of Gale Storm. My Little Margie is 86. That TV series ran 1952-1955. Storm’s real name was neither Gale, nor Margie (nor Susanna Pomeroy). It was Josephine Cottle.
. . . of Colin Powell. He’s 71. As NewMexiKen exited my office in 2001, I nearly ran into Secretary Powell and Condoleezza Rice walking down the hall after leaving one of Vice President Cheney’s Energy Task Force meetings. Powell is one of eight Secretaries of State that I’ve met or seen, but the only one I almost knocked down.
. . . of Michael Moriarty. He’s 67. Moriarty has won three Emmy awards, but none for playing Ben Stone in Law and Order despite five nominations. NewMexiKen liked Moriarty best as Henry “Author” Wiggen in Bang the Drum Slowly (with Robert De Niro). The IMDB mini biography for Moriarty says he’s 6-feet-4. Interestingly, the mini biography was written by Michael Moriarty.
Booker T. Washington was born on this date in 1856.
An incident of Dr. Washington’s life that stirred up a controversy throughout the country was the occasion of his dining at the White House with President Roosevelt on Oct. 16, 1901. Dr. Washington went to the White House at the invitation of the President, and, when the news was spread abroad, thousands, both North and South, who were moved by race prejudice or by a belief that social equality between blacks and whites had been encouraged, became angry. Most of the criticism fell upon Colonel Roosevelt, but the incident served also to injure Dr. Washington’s work in some parts of the South.
Spencer Tracy was born on this date in 1900. Tracy was nominated for the Best Actor Oscar nine times and won twice, for Captains Courageous and Boys Town. Tracy died in 1967.
Ruth Elizabeth Davis was born on this date in 1908. As Bette Davis she was nominated for the Best Actress Oscar 11 times, winning for Dangerous and Jezebel. Davis died in 1989.
Conductor Herbert von Karajan was also born on this date in 1908 and he, too, died in 1989.
Gregory Peck was born on this date in 1916. Peck was nominated for the Best Actor Oscar five times, winning for To Kill a Mockingbird. Mr. Peck also won the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. Peck died in 2003.
Joseph Lister was born on this date in 1827. His principle that bacteria must never enter a surgical incision was a breakthrough for modern surgery. Lister died in 1912.
“The other night, Barbara Walters had a special called ‘Live to be 150.’ And she showed people who are over 100 years old, leading active lives: jogging, hiking; one guy even running for president in the Republican Party.”
Jay Leno
Meanwhile, Letterman’s McCain is old joke of the night:
“And John McCain has one of those 3:00 a.m. campaign commercials. In this one, it is 3 a.m. and he just gets up to go to the bathroom.”