“35. Number of words the current issue of TIME magazine devotes to Judge Anna Diggs Taylor’s ruling that President Bush’s warrantless domestic wiretapping program is unconstitutional.
“1,109. The number of words in the same issue on the extradition of John Mark Karr.”
And the best political cartoon of the day, so far.
On this date in 1680, the surviving Spanish settlers under siege decided to abandon Santa Fe and began the trek to Chihuahua. The Spanish did not return to New Mexico for 12 years.
Colonists from Mexico first settled in New Mexico, north of present-day Santa Fe, in 1598. By the 1620s there were 2,000 colonists taking land and forcing labor from the Puebloans, occasionally executing dozens of Indians for the murder of one settler. In the 1660s a drought further stressed conditions for all, especially as Apaches and others raided the Pueblos. Many Puebloans began to feel that deserting their own religion to accept Christianity had brought on these disasters. There were occasional uprisings, but nothing sustainable until Popé, a San Juan medicine man, began unifying resistance among the various independent Pueblos in 1675.
On August 10, 1680, the Indians launched a unified all-out attack on Spanish settlers. Colonists were killed, churches burned, horses and cattle seized. Priests were singled out and killed in all the Pueblos, including Acoma, Zuni and Hopi (in modern Arizona). About 1,000 survivors escaped to Santa Fe and the town was put under siege on August 12. By the 16th the Indians occupied all of the town except the plaza and its surrounding buildings. According to reports, as they burnt the town the Indians sang Latin liturgy to taunt the Spanish.
Three-hundred-and-twenty-six years ago today the settlers were allowed to withdraw from Santa Fe. When they reached El Paseo del Norte in October, there were 1,946 from of a population that had been about 2,500. About 400 had been killed, another 150 escaped to Mexico independently.
The Puebloans removed all signs of the Spanish — the churches, the religion itself, the crops, even the animals (the horses let loose on the plains, eventually transforming the culture of the Plains Indians). One vestige remained: one man rule. Popé declared himself that man and moved to the Palace in Santa Fe.
Spanish attempts at reconquest failed until 1692.
Via Andrew Tobias, a primer on electric cars from Tesla finanacial backer Elon Musk. Assuming Mr. Musk is credible, this is pretty interesting, including his polite take-down of hybrids.
Tesla is the all electric sports car that goes from 0 to 60 in 4.0 seconds and gets 135 miles per gallon EPA equivalent.
As Tobias notes, if Ford had been thinking this creatively they’d be hiring 20,000 workers instead of laying off that many.
NewMexiKen watched the video linked-to in the article. It’s a great looking car, range 250 miles on a charge, all the bells and whistles, etc., and NO SOUND. Hello guys, go listen to a Porsche and figure out how to reproduce THAT SOUND, and you’ve got something.
Which reminds me that I saw a tragic accident the other day near home. It didn’t appear anyone was injured, so it wasn’t a horrible accident, but it was tragic. A pickup had rear-ended a Porsche 911. Damage to pickup: None. Damage to Porsche: Lots and lots.
“A hundred and seventy-five years ago today, a 30-year-old black slave named Nat Turner, supported by about 60 followers armed with guns, clubs, axes and swords, launched the bloodiest slave revolt in American history.”
Joshua Zeitz has more on the revolt, its context, aftermath and legacy at AmericanHeritage.com.
Kenny Rogers is 68.
Patty McCormack is 61. The actress, known now as Patricia McCormack, was nominated for the supporting actress Oscar as an 11-year-old for her performance in The Bad Seed.
Kim Cattrall of Sex in the City is 50.
William “Count” Basie was born on this date in 1904.
Hawaii entered the Union as the 50th state on this date in 1959. The eight major islands in the chain are Ni’ihau, Kaua’i, O’ahu, Moloka’i, Lāna’i, Kaho’olawe, Maui and Hawai’i.
Today is the 999th day that NewMexiKen has something posted on this blog.
Wilt Chamberlain was born in Philadelphia 70 years ago today. Usually called “The Stilt” because it rhymed with Wilt, Chamberlain actually preferred the nickname “The Big Dipper.”
Chamberlain died in 1999.
“These events are the most fun events to play in, the major championships. I just thoroughly enjoy coming down the stretch on the back nine with a chance to win it. That’s why I practice as hard as I do and what I live for.”
Tiger Woods, quoted in a column by Michael Wilbon.
NewMexiKen priced a prize winning Hopi Katsina (formerly known as Kachina) at the Santa Fe Indian Market Sunday. A gorgeous piece, about 18 inches tall, perfectly sized for a nicho I have. In the rain, I figured prices would be reduced.
$8000.
Alas, blogging doesn’t pay that well. It was beautiful, down to the detail in the Indian corn.
“How do you scare people who love martyrdom?”
A European intelligence officer how how conditions have changed regarding the use of force in the Middle East as reported by Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker.
… of Issac Hayes. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee is 64.
… of Connie Chung. The newscaster is 60.
… of Robert Plant. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee (as part of Led Zeppelin) is 58.
… of Al Roker. The weatherman who’s not half of what he used to be is 52.
… of Joan Allen. The three-time Oscar nominee — Nixon, The Crucible, The Contender — is 50.
From The Writer’s Almanac:
It was on this day in 1977 that Voyager 2 was launched by NASA to explore the planets of our solar system. It was the first of two spacecraft to serve that purpose, though it’s a mystery why Voyager 2 was launched before Voyager 1. Both Voyagers went on to take the first up-close photographs of the giant planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.
Just before the Voyagers took off, a committee of scientists, led by Carl Sagan, decided to include a message from Earth on each Voyager in case extraterrestrials ever found them. At the time, the Cold War was at its height, and some members of the committee considered that these spacecraft and their contents might be the last traces of the human race left in the universe after a nuclear war.
So the Voyagers were each equipped with a gold-plated phonograph containing a variety of earthly sounds, including a heartbeat, a mother’s kiss, wind, rain, surf, a chimpanzee, footsteps, laughter, the music of Bach, Mozart, and the Chuck Berry song “Johnny B. Goode.” There were also images of humans, the sun, the planets, the Taj Mahal, the Sydney Opera House, and greetings in fifty-five languages, including ancient Sumerian. Carl Sagan said, “The launching of this bottle into the cosmic ocean says something very hopeful about life on this planet.”
Today, the Voyagers have traveled farther from earth than any other human-made objects in history. Both have gone well beyond Pluto, the farthest planet from the sun. Voyager 2, which launched on this day in 1977, is currently headed toward Sirius, the brightest star in the sky.
… was designated a national monument on this date in 1969.
A beautiful mountain valley just west of Pikes Peak holds spectacular remnants of the earth’s prehistoric life. Huge petrified redwoods and incredibly detailed fossils of ancient insects and plants reveal a very different Colorado of long ago. Almost 35 million years ago, enormous volcanic eruptions buried the then-lush valley and petrified the redwood trees that grew there. A lake formed in the valley and the fine-grained sediments at its bottom became the final resting-place for thousands of insects and plants. These sediments compacted into layers of shale and preserved the delicate details of these organisms as fossils.
Take a look at the rug that won Best of Show at the Santa Fe Indian Market.
The Urban Dictionary, an online resource for only the hippest words and phrases recently added the term “Katherine Harris crazy” to its lexicon.
No joke. (Any nonbelievers can check it out themselves at www.urbandictionary.com.) Here’s how they define Katherine Harris crazy: Noun. As insanely optimistic as Congresswoman Katherine Harris. Usually characterized by an overly optimistic estimation of someone’s chances of achieving success.
According to the dictionary, here’s how the phrase is used in a sentence: “Did you hear Jim just bought 500 dollars in lottery tickets? That boy is just Katherine Harris crazy if he thinks he’s going to hit the jackpot.”
Harris is trailing Bill Nelson 60-25 in polls. Ah, what goes around comes around.
NewMexiKen prefers Apple, because if you have a Mac you can visit the Genius Bar, but if you’re a Windows user you have to deal with the Geek Squad.
‘Burque Babble has a rant about gentrifying New Mexico. You should read the whole thing, but here’s a taste:
What’s this I hear about New Mexico going to two automobile license plates? If it ain’t bad enough that we’re gonna get more than one area code, now we gotta consider getting all cosmopolitan by stickin’ another license plate on the front of our cars. What’s next, High Occupancy Vehicles lanes? Light rail? Thai restaurants in the South Valley?
I’m afraid NM is losing that inefficient, podunk feel that brought many of us here in the first place. …
Thankfully, we haven’t turned all HOV lanes and pad thai yet. As I’ve mentioned before, NM has a stunningly high number of folks who not only don’t have two license plates on their car, they don’t even have one metal license plate. Instead, there is a piece of paper illegibly stuck inside their dark-tinted rear window.
At The Dilbert Blog, everything you need to know about human behavior.
The maintenance man is moving the thermostat in our office today. I started talking with him about the “Thermostat Wars” [from Dilbert comics]. He told me about one office with 30 women where they could never get the temperature to an agreeable level. At his suggestion they installed 20 dummy thermostats around the office. Everyone was told that each thermostat controlled the zone around itself.
Problem solved. Now that everyone has “control” of their own thermostat there is no problem.
NewMexiKen once attended a meeting of various office managers that turned into a heated discussion about assigned parking places. The building had about 100 employees and 5,000 free parking places.
According to reports, two million New Mexicans spent more than $154 million on Powerball and other lottery tickets in the year ending June 30. That’s $77 each (on average) for every man, woman and child.
… of Ginger Baker of Cream and Blind Faith. Peter Edward Baker, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee, is 67.
… of Johnny Nash. He’s 66.
I can see clearly now, the rain has gone
I can see all obstacles in my way
… of Jill St. John; she’s 66. A sixties hottie, St. John, real name Jill Oppenheim, reportedly has an IQ of 162.
… of Fred Dalton Thompson. The actor and former U.S. Senator is 64.
… of Tipper Gore. She’s 58.
… of Kyra Sedgwick, 41.
… of Matthew Perry. The Friend is 37.
There was no measurable rain yesterday officially in Albuquerque; just a trace was recorded at the airport.
Less than 10 miles away at San Mateo and Candelaria where I was having dinner, however, it rained as hard as I have ever seen. The streets were running curb high. Driving home I was splashed by a truck and there was enough standing water that the wave went completely over my car.
But it didn’t rain at the airport (where there had been measurable rainfall 16 of the last 25 days).
Update: The storm Friday evening dropped from one inch near Casa NewMexiKen to more than two near where I was having dinner according to news reports.
Dave Plotz argued we should get rid of August five years ago at Slate. His arguments are still valid. He began:
August is the Mississippi of the calendar. It’s beastly hot and muggy. It has a dismal history. Nothing good ever happens in it. And the United States would be better off without it.
August is when the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, when Anne Frank was arrested, when the first income tax was collected, when Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe died. Wings and Jefferson Airplane were formed in August. The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour debuted in August. (No August, no Sonny and Cher!)
Pika at Quirky Burque, Albuquerque’s best blogger ever, summed up the relationship between Albuquerque and Santa Fe in a few words and NewMexiKen posted it here two years ago today.
JUST 60 MILES TO THE NORTHEAST, as we all know, the situation is quite different. Our fair sister-city, Santa Fe, prances around LIKE A BLEACH-BLONDE TROPHY WIFE whom writers can’t stop telling us is oh-so-pretty, so popular, and did we mention she married a Texas billionaire? All while poor dusty Albuquerque worries whether she’ll ever get a date to the Prom.
NewMexiKen likes them both, but Albuquerque is definitely the better prom date. For one, we had Pika Brittlebush, though, alas, she went on to other things.
William Jefferson Clinton is 60 today.
And you know what that means President Clinton?
It means a year from now you’ll be 61. And the year after that …
Mack, oldest of The Sweeties, called to say:
Where do they go to eat at the North Pole?
Brrrr-ger King.
What do ghosts do when they dance?
Shake their Boo!-ties.
This is the 85th year.
Each year the Santa Fe Indian Market includes 1,200 artists from about 100 tribes who show their work in over 600 booths. The event attracts an estimated 100,000 visitors to Santa Fe from all over the world. Buyers, collectors and gallery owners come to Indian Market to take advantage of the opportunity to buy directly from the artists. For many visitors, this is a rare opportunity to meet the artists and learn about contemporary Indian arts and cultures. Quality is the hallmark of the Santa Fe Indian Market.