Confiscated Airport Items Bring Cash

Pennsylvania turns a small profit by disposing of these castoff items, which it accepts from security contractors at 12 airports in five states, by selling them to the highest bidders at the online auction site eBay.

And what about the abundance of liquids and gels discarded since the alleged British terror plot caused U.S. airports to prohibit them? Edward Myslewicz, a spokesman for the General Services Department told the Seattle Times that state officials are considering selling some of those items too.

Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport has perhaps the most charitable approach. Airport spokeswoman Lexie Van Haren told the Seattle Times it plans to give 11 boxes of surrendered items to the city’s human-services department, which will distribute items to homeless shelters.

Airport officials are still finding their way with these new items. Up to now, most of the contraband merchandise has been knives, nail clippers and cuticle scissors that were forbidden as carry-on items following the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

But at the Pennsylvania collection center, there’s also Wiffle Ball bats, frosting-encrusted wedding cake servers, sex toys and a couple of chain saws.

CBS News

Fidel Castro

… is 80 today.

Castro wrote a letter to President Franklin Roosevelt in 1940. (He says he was 12, but should have been 14.) “If you like, give me a ten dollars bill green american in the letter [back] because never have I not seen a ten dollars bill green american and I would like to have one of them.” Castro went on to say, “I don’t know very English but I know very much Spanish and I suppose you [FDR] don’t know very Spanish but you know very English because you are American but I am not American.”

A more complete copy of the letter is here.

NewMexiKen actually was able to view a speech Castro gave outside the Hotel Nacional in Havana in 1993. It was interesting to see in person the man who has been so much a focus of America for more than 40 years.

Appomattox Court House National Historical Park (Virginia)

… was designated a national historical monument on this date in 1935. It became a national historical park in 1954.

Brothers Make Peace

Walk the old country lanes where Robert E. Lee, Commanding General of the Army of Northern Virginia, surrendered his men to Ulysses Grant, General-in-Chief of all United States forces, on April 9, 1865. Imagine the events that signaled the end of the Southern States’ attempt to create a separate nation. The National Park encompasses approximately 1800 acres of rolling hills in rural central Virginia. The site includes the McLean home (surrender site) and the village of Appomattox Court House, Virginia, the former county seat for Appomattox County. The site also has the home and burial place of Joel Sweeney – the popularizer of the modern five string banjo. There are twenty seven original 19th century structures on the site.

Appomattox Court House National Historical Park

Photo shows two brothers, often at war, making peace with a hug outside the McLean home in Appomattox Court House. It’s not known whether Grant and Lee hugged.

Oh you need timin’

NBC News has learned that U.S. and British authorities had a significant disagreement over when to move in on the suspects in the alleged plot to bring down trans-Atlantic airliners bound for the United States.

A senior British official knowledgeable about the case said British police were planning to continue to run surveillance for at least another week to try to obtain more evidence, while American officials pressured them to arrest the suspects sooner. The official spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the case.

In contrast to previous reports, the official suggested an attack was not imminent, saying the suspects had not yet purchased any airline tickets. In fact, some did not even have passports.

MSNBC.com

So, the U.S. couldn’t, say, advise travelers that liquids and gels would be banned on all flights beginning at midnight? What, and diminish the newsteria?

Tuesday: Lieberman loses
Wednesday: White House says Democrats favor terrorists
Thursday: Big plot, arrests in Britain, airport lunacy in the name of security

As Jimmy Jones sang:

Oh you need timin’ a tick a tick a tick a
Good timin’ a tock a tock a tock a tock a
Timin’ is the thing it’s true
Good timin’ brought me to you

Sabino Canyon is ‘forever changed’

Anyone with roots in Tucson, like NewMexiKen, loves Sabino Canyon — often a summertime oasis in the desert, a place you could skinny dip after school. (Those days are long since gone. The congestion became so great as Tucson grew, that the Forest Service prohibited cars and ran a shuttle bus.)

But now, even that has changed as this story in the Arizona Daily Star tells. It begins:

It’s still a deep-cut, saguaro-studded slice of paradise on the edge of our daily lives — but flood-struck Sabino Canyon will never be the same.

“The canyon is forever changed,” said Heidi Schewel of the U.S. Forest Service as she trekked up Sabino this week.

“Whole sections of some slopes just collapsed and fell away. There are new channels entering the main channel that weren’t there before. The creek blew right through one section of the road and covered others with boulder fields. … Sabino is a different place now.”

No wonder.

The torrent that scoured the treasured recreation site northeast of Tucson July 31 was the worst flood ever recorded there — topping out at about 17,000 cubic feet per second, said Robert Lefevre, watershed program manager for the Forest Service.

Thanks to Dad for the link.

Where the deer and the antelope play

The high plains of northeastern New Mexico along I-25 from Raton Pass down past Wagon Mound were just gorgeous this afternoon. The rains have turned the plains green as far as one can see, bringing a soft pastoral look to what can be harsh scenery. Even the stock and wildlife seemed to appreciate the beauty — colts playing tag, cattle lolling around, pronghorn by the score nibbling away.

It was, honestly, heartbreakingly beautiful.

Locks only keep out the honest people

NewMexiKen arrived home Saturday afternoon to discover I left last Sunday without ever closing, let along locking one door. Everything is fine and it doesn’t appear to have even rained in, though my neighbor tells me we had a storm that brought one inch of rain in 15 minutes.

Guess the threat I left on NewMexiKen scared all the crooks away.

So

… they took all the confiscated, potentially explosive-carrying water bottles and toothpaste and mixed it in containers and the airports are taking the containers to trash dumps.

From Atlanta to Albuquerque, New Mexico, airport maintenance crews were ordered to dump any confiscated items along with the rest of the garbage.

— CNN.com

If it isn’t explosive, why’d they take it away? And if it is explosive, why are they dumping it in the trash? Or worse, Sky Harbor may be giving explosives to the homeless:

Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport planned to give 11 boxes of surrendered items to the city’s human services department, which will give the unopened bottles of shampoo, toothpaste and other items to homeless shelters, airport spokeswoman Lexie Van Haren said.

— CNN.com

The stuff is, as the report states, unopened. So it could be explosives. But I guess if they can give it away, it must not be explosives. So why did they confiscate it?

And we put up with illogical idiotic nonsense in the name of security, why?

Marilyn vos Savant

… is 60 today. She’s the Parade magazine columnist and one-time holder of the title of world’s highest IQ. Her IQ was once measured at 228, but more modern tests now reveal it to be simply a lofty 180. She is married to Robert Jarvik, inventor of the Jarvik artificial heart.

The Wikipedia article on vos Savant is interesting and discusses two well-known instances of vos Savant’s answers being controversial — the Monty Hall problem and Fermat’s last theorem.

Vos Savant took her mother’s surname.

Terry Gene Bollea

… was born on this date in 1953. Who’s that, you ask?

Does 6’8″ (2.03m) help?
How about 275 pounds (124.7kg)?
Long blond hair, but balding? Fu Man Chu mustache?

Twenty years ago NewMexiKen saw this man in the St. Louis Airport. I had no idea who he was, but knew he had to be somebody. He was huge. His shirt was artistically slit. Twelve-year-old boys were all a twitter.

I finally asked one of the boys, “So, who is that?”

He looked at me like I had just arrived from Mars.

“Hulk Hogan, of course!”

Alex Haley

… was born on this date in 1921. Haley was the author of two publishing phenomena — The Autobiography of Malcolm X (6 million copies) and Roots, which was not only a best-seller, but led to one of the most successful television series ever. Nearly half the people in the country watched the last episode in January 1977. Haley won a special Pulitizer for Roots, “the story of a black family from its origins in Africa through seven generations to the present day in America.”

NewMexiKen co-chaired a symposium at the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 1979, that included Haley. He was a very self-possessed and self-assured speaker, confident yet pleasant and informal. He spoke for some time without notes, telling the story about the story — that is, how he learned about his family. Along with the Archivist of the U.S. and Professor Wesley Johnson, I sat on the stage behind Haley as he spoke and could see the rapture on the faces of his listeners. To an audience of genealogists this was the Sermon on the Mount.

Subsequently it bothered me to learn he plagarized sections of the book and possibly fudged some of the genealogy. Clearly, that wasn’t right. Even so, the good his work did in educating both black and white America (and I include both books) was a legacy of major proportion.

Haley, who served in the U.S. Coast Guard 1939-1959, before becoming a full-time writer, died of a heart attack in 1992. The Coast Guard has named a cutter for him.

Two voices you know

Bobbie Hatfield was born on this date in 1940. When Hatfield died in November 2003 NewMexiKen posted this:

The Righteous Brothers — blue-eyed soul. No one believed they were white. The name had something to do with that, but it was the sound that fooled everyone.

Bobby Hatfield had the higher voice; Bill Medley the lower. In the book accompanying the Phil Spector compilation, Back to Mono, songwriter Cynthia Weil recalls that:

After Phil, Barry [co-writer Barry Mann] and I finished the song, we took it over to The Righteous Brothers. Bill Medley, who has the low voice, seemed to like the song. I remember Bobby Hatfield saying, “But what do I do while he’s singing the whole first verse?” and Phil said, “You can go directly to the bank!”

On AM radio in those days deejays didn’t like songs that lasted more than three minutes. Lovin’ Feelin’ is 3:46. On the label Spector printed 3:05. It was number one for two weeks in February 1965.

Veronica Bennett was born on this date in 1943. That’s Ronnie Spector, one-time Mrs. Phil Spector (married 1968-1974), and lead singer of The Ronettes (with her sister and cousin). Hits included Be My Baby and Walkin’ in the Rain.

“I like to look the way Ronnie Spector sounds: sexy, hungry, totally trashy. I admire her tonal quality.” — Madonna, quoted at RonnieSpector.com.

Herbert Clark Hoover

… was born on this date in 1874. Mr. Hoover, who was the 31st President of the United States, lived until 1964. Among the presidents, only Reagan, Ford and the first Adams have lived longer.

Born in Iowa, orphaned at nine, Hoover grew up in Oregon. He was in the first class at Stanford University, graduating as a mining engineer. Hoover earned millions in mining before turning his attention to public service. He was instrumental in relief and humanitarian efforts during and after World War I. He was Secretary of Commerce under Presidents Harding and Coolidge.

Hoover, the Republican, defeated Al Smith, the Democrat, handily in the 1928 election with 58% of the popular vote.

President at the time of the stock market crash and subsequent depression, Hoover believed that, while people should not suffer, assistance should be primarily a local and voluntary responsibility. Even so, he supported some measures to aid businesses and farmers; indeed, among his party he was moderate. But he was simply not bold enough to meet the crisis.

Hoover lost to Franklin Roosevelt in 1932, 57.3% to 39.6% of the popular vote, 472-59 in the electoral vote.

Blame it on the Moon

The 2006 Perseid meteor shower is going to be a dud. Oh, Earth will pass through the Perseid meteoroid stream, as usual. And meteors will flit across the sky. But when the shower peaks on August 12th and 13th, the glare of the 87%-full Moon will overwhelm most Perseids, making them impossible to see.

That sounds like the end of the story — but don’t stop reading.

You might see some Perseids, after all. The trick is to look before the Moon rises. Plan your meteor watch for 8:30 p.m. to 10 p.m. on Saturday, August 12. The Moon won’t be up yet and, in the darkness just after sunset, a special kind of meteor may appear: the Perseid Earthgrazer.
(Note: Because the Perseid peak is broad, Friday evening, August 11, may be as good or better than Saturday evening, August 12. If you’re ambitious, try both nights between 8:30 p.m. and 10:00 p.m. local time.)

Source: NASA, which has more.

Fort Necessity National Battlefield (Pennsylvania)

… was designated such on this date in 1961.

Fort Necessity

On July 3, 1754, in the wilderness of the Allegheny Mountains, Colonial troops commanded by 22 year old Colonel George Washington were defeated in this small stockade at the “Great Meadow”. This opening battle of the French and Indian War began a seven year struggle between Great Britain and France for control of North America. Great Britain’s success in this war helped pave the way for the American Revolution.

Fort Necessity National Battlefield is located in the mountains of southwestern Pennsylvania, about 11 miles east of Uniontown. The park comprises approximately 900 acres in three separate sites. The main unit contains the visitor center, the battlefield with the reconstructed Fort Necessity, and the Mount Washington Tavern. The Braddock Grave unit is approximately 1.5 miles west of the main unit and the Jumonville Glen unit is approximately seven miles northwest of the main unit.

Fort Necessity National Battlefield

Places to go, people to see

NewMexiKen will be away for the next several days, hanging-out with a couple of The Sweeties, camping, sight-seeing, playing Chutes and Ladders. I will try and blog when I can, but instead of the usual half-wisdom, half-whimsy, half-wit you get around here, it may only be one-eighth.

While I am gone Hannibal Lecter will be house-sitting at Casa NewMexiKen, along with my pit bulls, Attila and Genghis. The recent rains (again, big-time last night) have raised havoc with the rattlesnakes in the backyard. I think they have moved inside and resettled among the wires and cables behind the television and surround sound.