This is the next-to-last planned photo collection from Puerto Vallarta. All photos taken from deck of home where we stayed.
Previous photos are here:
Today’s Photo
Another Photo
Puerto Vallarta
Jennifer Anniston is 43 today.
Hank Gathers might have been 45 today. The Loyola Marymount basketball star — he lead the nation in scoring and rebounding 1988-89 with 32.7 points and 13.7 rebounds — collapsed and died on the court during a game in 1990 at age 23.
Sarah Louise Heath Palin is 48 today. I can see her birthday from here.
Sheryl Crow is 50. Fifty.
All I wanna do is have some fun;
I got a feeling I’m not the only one.
Jeb Bush is 59.
Gerry Goffin is 73. With his then wife Carole King, Goffin wrote some great songs — “Will You Love Me Tomorrow,” “The Locomotion,” “Don’t Say Nothing About My Baby,” “One Fine Day,” “Up on the Roof.”
Burt Reynolds is 76.
Gene Vincent was born February 11, 1935. He died at age 36.
Though he landed his contract with Capitol Records largely because he sounded like Elvis Presley, Gene Vincent quickly established himself as a rockabilly pioneer and the very personification of rock and roll rebellion. Born Vincent Gene Craddock, he grew up in Norfolk, Virginia, and served in the Korean war as an enlisted navyman until a motorcycle accident resulted in a crippling leg injury. Vincent listened to country music as a youngster and picked up the guitar in his teens, so it was a natural progression for him to embrace rock and roll. A radio station-WCMS in Hampton Roads, Virginia-solicited talent for Country Showtime, a Grande Ol Opry-style showcase aired live from a local theater on Friday evenings, and Vincent showed up. He won a spot owing to his uncanny covers of Elvis Presley songs. He also had a song of his own called “Be-Bop-A-Lula.”
Manuel Antonio Noriega Moreno is 78 today. He has been in custody since 1990, currently back in Panama.
Tina Louise is 78. Ginger — Ginger! — Seventy. Eight.
Leslie Nielsen was born in Regina, Saskatchewan, 86 years ago today. He died in 2010. The doctor on Airplane! was his first comedy role.
Daniel “Chappie” James Jr. was born on February 11, 1920. In 1975 he became the first African-American four-star general (USAF). James attended Tuskegee Institute and trained the Tuskegee Airmen, but did not fly combat duty himself until Korea. He flew 101 combat missions there.
Eva Gabor, the Gabor sister on Green Acres, was born February 11, 1919. She died in 1995. Eva was the youngest of the Gabor sisters, Zsa Zsa and Magda. Eva was married five times; Zsa Zsa nine; Magda six.
Max Baer, the one-time Heavyweight Champion of the World, was born February 11, 1909. He held the title for 364 days before losing it to the Cinderella Man, James J. Braddock. Baer’s most famous victory was over the German Max Schmeling at Yankee Staduium in 1933. Baer, partly Jewish, wore a Star of David on his trunks.
Thomas Alva Edison was born in Milan, Ohio, on this date in 1847. Edison’s stature has diminished since his death; technology has evolved so much since then. But he was still a hero when he died in 1931. These are the sub-headlines from his obituary in The New York Times:
World Made Over By Edison’s Magic
He Did More Than Any One Man to Put Luxuries Into the Lives of the Masses
Created Millions Of Jobs
Electric Light, the Phonograph, Motion Pictures and Radio Improvements Among Gifts
Lamp Ended “Dark Ages”
He Held the Miracle of Menlo Park, Produced on a Gusty Night 50 Years Ago, His Greatest Work
We think downloading music is sooo modern. But a century ago they brought music to your door.
Edison photo from The American Experience.
Jean Baptiste Charbonneau was born at Fort Mandan in what is now North Dakota on this date in 1805. His mother was Sacagawea. The infant accompanied Lewis and Clark to the Pacific and back 1805-1806. Little Pomp, as he was called, later was raised by Clark and became a successful trapper, scout, prospector and entrepreneur. He died in 1866 after an accident in Oregon. He is the only child ever depicted on U.S. currency (with his mother on that beautiful $1 coin).
It began 154 years ago today.
Bernadette Soubirous was born in 1844, the first child of an extremely poor miller in the town of Lourdes in southern France. The family was living in the basement of a dilapidated building when on February 11, 1858, the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to Bernadette in a cave above the banks of the Gave River near Lourdes. Bernadette, 14 years old, was known as a virtuous girl though a dull student who had not even made her first Holy Communion. In poor health, she had suffered from asthma from an early age.
There were 18 appearances in all, the final one occurring on the feast of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, July 16. Although Bernadette’s initial reports provoked skepticism, her daily visions of “the Lady” brought great crowds of the curious. The Lady, Bernadette explained, had instructed her to have a chapel built on the spot of the visions. There the people were to come to wash in and drink of the water of the spring that had welled up from the very spot where Bernadette had been instructed to dig.
According to Bernadette, the Lady of her visions was a girl of 16 or 17 who wore a white robe with a blue sash. Yellow roses covered her feet, a large rosary was on her right arm. In the vision on March 25 she told Bernadette, “I am the Immaculate Conception.” It was only when the words were explained to her that Bernadette came to realize who the Lady was.
Few visions have ever undergone the scrutiny that these appearances of the Immaculate Virgin were subject to. Lourdes became one of the most popular Marian shrines in the world, attracting millions of visitors. Miracles were reported at the shrine and in the waters of the spring. After thorough investigation Church authorities confirmed the authenticity of the apparitions in 1862.
Bernadette Soubirous died, a nun, at age 35. She was canonized by the Catholic Church in 1933.
One wonders exactly what “scrutiny” means in this case.
24-year-old Jennifer Jones won the best actress Oscar for playing the 14-year-old French girl in the 1943 film Song of Bernadette.
On this date in 1803 Marbury v. Madison was argued before the Supreme Court.
Marbury was the case that established the Supreme Court’s standing as the arbiter of the Constitution.
On this date in 1856 Dred Scott v. Sandford was argued before the Supreme Court.
Scott was the case where the Supreme Court ruled that persons of African descent could never be citizens of the United States whether free or slave and that the federal government had no constitutional authority to limit slavery in the territories.
U.S. interstate highways shown as a subway map. Kinda cool.
When you have a few minutes (because there are a lot of them), Letterheady has a fascinating collection of letterheads from celebrities, companies and more.
“If men could get pregnant, BC pills would be [in] gumball machines in every lobby in the country. #CanIGetAWitness”
Boris Leonidovich Pasternak was born in Moscow on this date in 1890. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1958. He declined the Prize because the Soviet government was unhappy with the publication of Doctor Zhivago, smuggled out of the U.S.S.R. and published in 1957.
James Francis Durante was born in Brooklyn on February 10, 1893. Durante was a vaudevillian, singer, comedian, and TV personality in its early years. “Good night, Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are.”
Bill Tilden was born in Philadelphia on February 10, 1893. Tilden won won 14 majors including 10 grand slam events and was ranked the number one tennis player in the world for seven years. Tilden’s name is included with Babe Ruth, Howie Morenz, Red Grange, Bobby Jones, and Jack Dempsey as part of the Golden Age of Sport.
Leontyne Price is 85 today. The soprano was the first African-American to become a leading artist at the Metropolitan Opera.
Elaine Lobi (E.L.) Konigsburg is 82 today. She is one of just five American authors to win the Newberry Medal twice, for From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler and The View From Saturday.
Roberta Flack is 75. “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” and “Killing Me Softly with His Song” won the Record of the Year Grammy back-to-back in 1973 and 1974. She was born in Black Mountain, North Carolina and was raised in Arlington, Virginia. Flack enrolled at Howard University at age 15.
Luis Donaldo Colosio might have been 62 today. He was assassinated at a political rally in Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico in 1994 while a candidate for President of Mexico.
Mark Spitz is 62 today. Spitz won seven swimming gold medals at the 1972 Olympics.
Two-time British Open winner Greg Norman is 57 today.
Laura Dern is 45. Dern was nominated for the best actress Oscar for Rambling Rose in 1992. Her mother Diane Ladd played her mother in the film. Ladd was nominated for best supporting actress (her third such nomination). Neither won.
Queen Victoria married her first cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, on February 10th in 1840. Albert died in 1861. Victoria died in 1901. (Victoria and Albert were both born in 1819 — the same midwife assisted at their births, Victoria in London in May and Albert near Coburg, Germany, in August.)
The 25th Amendment was ratified by the essential 38th state (Nevada) and became part of the Constitution on this date in 1967. Quick, what does it say?
“So he made a movie in which he traces the route of the Pilgrims from England, to Holland, and thence to Plymouth, where they established their colony so generations of Massachusetts schoolchildren can go there on field trips and say, in perfect harmony, ‘What the fk? It’s just a rock.’ ”
Puerto Vallarta was named less than 100 years ago in 1918 for a former governor of Jalisco (1872-1876), Ignacio Vallarta. (Puerto is Spanish for Port.) Before, as a small port serving the much more important mountain mining towns, it had been known as Las Peñas de Santa María de Guadalupe (from 1859). The Bahía de Banderas (Bay of Flags), Mexico’s largest, was named by Francisco Cortés, the Conquistador’s nephew, in 1524.
It remained a small town well into the 20th century. An airport opened in 1932 and the first road connecting the village inland in 1942; the first paved road wasn’t until 1956. Tourists and expats began arriving in the 1950s. In 1963, John Huston brought Richard Burton, Ava Gardner, Deborah Kerr and Sue Lyon to film Tennessee Williams’s The Night of the Iguana. Elizabeth Taylor joined Burton and the international media followed to publicize their affair.
(Burton bought Taylor a 22,900-square-foot home in PV as a wedding gift, Casa Kimberley. They lived there and in Casa San Angel, another home across the street connected by a pink bridge, for 11 years.)
Puerto Vallarta, having been “discovered” is now a city of 250,000. Presidents Gustavo Díaz Ordaz and Richard Nixon met there in 1970.
At 20°40′N. Puerto Vallarta is in the tropics (technically anyplace between 23° 26′ 16″ S. and 23° 26′ 16″ N. latitude). It was 80-85º each afternoon, dropping to 68-70º at night. Perfect late January, early February weather if you ask me. Most of the bay side of the house was windows and sliding glass doors.
We stayed 10 miles outside Puerto Vallarta near Mismaloya where The Night of the Iguana was filmed. One evening we took the local bus into town (fare $7 — that’s pesos, or about 56¢ U.S. — by the way, the $ sign originated with Spain, not the U.S.).
Below are a few iPhone street views and two photos of the La Iglesia de Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe, the Puerto Vallarta Cathedral. It’s relatively new as the churches of Mexico go, built in the 20th century and not completed until 1952. The crown was added to the steeple in 1963 and has been rebuilt twice as a result of erosion and a 1995 earthquake. The crown is said to replicate that of Empress Carlota, wife of Maximiliano, the French-imposed Emperor of Mexico 1864-1867.
Later we heard a good singer and terrific guitar player at The River Cafe and had an excellent dinner at La Palapa on the beach.
Today is the birthday
… of Roger Mudd, 84.
… of Nobel Prize-winner for literature J.M. Coetzee. He’s 72.
… of Carole King. Tonight You’re Mine Completely, You Give Your Love So Sweetly — at 70. Songs she’s written or co-written are listed at CaroleKing.com — there are three pages of titles beginning with A alone, 6 beginning with I.
Lookin’ out on the morning rain
I used to feel uninspired
And when I knew I had to face another day
Lord, it made me feel so tiredBefore the day I met you, life was so unkind
But your love was the key to my peace of mind‘Cause you make me feel
You make me feel
You make me feel like
A natural woman
One fine day
You’ll look at me
And you will know our love was meant to be
One fine day
You’re gonna want me for your girl
Stayed in bed all morning just to pass the time
There’s something wrong here, there can be no denying
One of us is changing
Or maybe we just stopped tryingAnd it’s too late, baby, now it’s too late
Though we really did try to make it
Something inside has died
And I can’t hide and I just can’t fake it
My life has been a tapestry of rich and royal hue
An everlasting vision of the ever-changing view
A wondrous, woven magic in bits of blue and gold
A tapestry to feel and see, impossible to hold
That’s her in 2010 in the video below accompanying a friend (of 40 years) on some song she wrote.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=in4o9yJ4GYo
… of Joe Pesci. Tommy DeVito is no longer a “yute,” he’s 69.
… of Barbara Lewis. Baby I’m Yours and I’ll be Yours Until the Stars Fall from the Sky — or until she’s 69.
… of Alice Walker. One assumes her birthday cake is The Color Purple as she turns 68 today.
… of Mia Farrow. The former Mrs. André Previn, Mrs. Frank Sinatra and significant other of Woody Allen is 67.
… of Ciarán Hinds. The actor who played Julius Caesar on Rome is 59 today.
… of Travis Tritt. He’s 49. Here’s A Quarter (Call Someone Who Cares).
… of Julie Warner. Vialula is 47 today.
Bill Veeck, the man who brought a dwarf (Eddie Gaedel) to bat in the major leagues, was born on this date in 1914. Veeck was owner of three different major league franchises (Cleveland Indians, St. Louis Browns and Chicago White Sox) and created many of the publicity innovations we take for granted today. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1991.
Country star Ernest Tubb was born in Crisp, Texas, on February 9, 1914.
Honky-tonk singer-songwriter, movie actor, record retailer, a longtime Grand Ole Opry star, and member of the Country Music Hall of Fame, Ernest Dale Tubb was among the most influential and important country performers in history. Throughout his own illustrious fifty-year career he gave numerous younger stars invaluable broadcast and concert exposure.
Dean Rusk, Secretary of State in the Administrations of Kennedy and Johnson, was born February 9, 1909. I met Secretary Rusk at the Johnson Library. Unlike most high-profile board members, Rusk thought meeting the staff was a considerate thing to do.
Mary Margaret Wood was born February 9, 1892. As Peggy Wood she appeared in an early TV series “Mama” and as the head nun in The Sound of Music.
Samuel J. Tilden was born on this date in 1814. Along with Andrew Jackson in 1824 and Albert Gore in 2000, Tilden in 1876 shares the honor of winning the popular vote and having the electoral vote taken from him.
William Henry Harrison, the ninth President of the United States, and the one serving the shortest period of time — just 30 days — was born on February 9th in 1773. Harrison’s grandson, Benjamin, was the 23rd president.
The Beatles first appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show 48 years ago today.
The United States went on year-around Daylight Saving Time, called War Time, on February 9, 1942 (it ended on September 30, 1945).
“…for the Republican Party to be a majority, you have to have some people in the Silicon Valley passing around white wine and cheese and at the same time you have Republicans in Kentucky passing around live rattlesnakes.”
Sal Russo, founder of the Tea Party Express, quoted at Juanita Jean’s
Here are two from February 7th and 8th six years ago (2006).
Kings and Queen
NewMexiKen viewed the French film Kings and Queen (Rois et reine) last evening. I’m not even certain why I added it to my Netflix queue, but I’m glad I did. The film is in French with English subtitles; it runs about 150 minutes.
The movie is essentially about Nora (Emmanuelle Devos), a beautiful 35-year-old art gallery manager and single mother. It details her past and present relationships with her eleven-year-old son, her dying father, her first (and dead) husband, and her second husband, the erratic and unstable Ismaël (Mathieu Amalric).
This is a film about relationships — with lovers, children, siblings, co-workers — and that relationships often are not what they seem. The movie is long enough that the viewer begins to think they know Nora and Ismaël — and the father and others — but not so.
The contrasting personalities of Nora and Ismaël are study enough to make the film interesting. Catherine Deneuve in a brief appearance as the psychiatrist, Mme. Vasset, is a bonus. “You’re very beautiful,”says Ismaël. “I’ve been told,” says Mme. Vasset.
Recommended for a contemplative evening, though the film is not without humor. (There are no ‘splosions or car chases.)
Yesterday
Tonight NewMexiKen watched another outstanding foreign film that I had somehow added to my Netflix queue — Yesterday, a film I watched in Zulu with English subtitles.
As with many foreign films, the action here moves at an unhurried, less frentic pace than so much American film-making, where camera movement and split-second cut-aways resemble nothing more than 8mm home movies. In Yesterday, the camera stays on a subject long enough for the viewer to enter the character, to begin to understand (perhaps) and empathize (perhaps).*
Yesterday is the name of the lead character, a small-village Zulu woman of about 25, played by the beautiful actress Leleti Khumalo. Yesterday has a five-year-old daughter, Beauty, and a husband, John, working in the mines in Johannesburg. The movie opens with the mother and daughter walking (for more two hours we learn) so that Yesterday can visit the doctor. As the movie progresses, we learn that Yesterday is very sick — about half-way through the film we learn she is HIV positive.
What follows is an extraordinarily powerful story of sadness, friendship, fear, pain, courage and love — but never really anger. If there are saints on this planet (and I believe there are), then Yesterday is surely among them.
Not to be missed.
* (It’s interesting to contrast Yesterday, an African-made movie, with the otherwise excellent The Constant Gardener, a European film about Africa, where the camera movement is so rapid, that NewMexiKen actually felt nauseated.)
There are few moving cars in this film, so no car chases, and few men, too, so no ‘splosions.
NewMexiKen wouldn’t have missed this film, but I must say I am in need of a comedy. Fortunately, Wedding Crashers is due to arrive from Netflix tomorrow.
Photo taken January 31st from balcony of residence near Puerto Vallarta. That’s the tail of a humpback whale, most likely a mother whale as she had a littler version alongside. More photos to follow.
This one was taken at 300mm, f/10, 1/320. No tripod and not a VR (or IS) lens. Click the image to enlarge.
“This week’s news that the National Park Service has O.K.ed a ban on the sale of small disposable water bottles at the Grand Canyon National Park, reportedly over the objections of the Coca-Cola Company, a major donor, put me in mind of Edward Abbey. . . . ”
Read more from The New Yorker.
NewMexiKen spent last week near Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, Mexico (where I was just MexiKen). This unedited photo was taken the first evening, looking west across Bahía de Banderas out to sea.
In all I have nearly 450 photos — albeit many of the same scene — but none surpasses this one. Click the image to see the larger version.
Top Twitter User Rankings & Stats
As you might guess:
Lady Gaga 18.9 million
Justin Bieber 17.2 million
Katy Perry 14.7 million
Shakira 13.6 million
Rihanna 13.0 million
The next five are Kim, Britney, Barack, Taylor and Selena.
… “An act to provide for the allotment of lands in severalty to Indians on the various reservations…” was approved by President Grover Cleveland on this date in 1887.
Named for its chief author, Senator Henry Laurens Dawes from Massachusetts, the Dawes Severalty Act reversed the long-standing American policy of allowing Indian tribes to maintain their traditional practice of communal use and control of their lands. Instead, the Dawes Act gave the president the power to divide Indian reservations into individual, privately owned plots. The act dictated that men with families would receive 160 acres, single adult men were given 80 acres, and boys received 40 acres. Women received no land.
The most important motivation for the Dawes Act was Anglo-American hunger for Indian lands. The act provided that after the government had doled out land allotments to the Indians, the sizeable remainder of the reservation properties would be opened for sale to whites. Consequently, Indians eventually lost 86 million acres of land, or 62 percent of their total pre-1887 holdings.
This Day in History
The alloment of lands ended in 1934. The problems The Dawes Act created continue.
Yesterday
“Because what I really believe is, Let’s spend a little more time leaving everybody alone. These people who are making a big deal out of gay marriage? I don’t give a fuck about who wants to get married to anybody else! Why not?! We’re making a big deal out of things we shouldn’t be making a deal out of.”
As someone who has spent many happy hours studying Christian theology, from Origen to Hans Kung, as well as modern scholarship about Jesus, I supposed I should be pleased by this eruption of holy fervor among the Republican candidates for the highest office in the land. But there’s just one little problem.
Jesus would have been appalled by the whole pack of them.
We do not know very much about the historical Jesus. But everything we know indicates that the carpenter from Galilee would not have been pleased to learn that this pack of coldhearted, sanctimonious, wealth-exalting politicians were claiming to be his followers.
I’m not saying that Jesus would have been a Democrat. Anyone who pretends to find support for specific political policies or ideologies in the Bible is delusional.
From Jesus versus the GOP, a fascinating, informed look at politics and religion.
Experimental blog post listing tweets during the past 24 hours.
Yesterday
Tuesday Morning