Best line of the day

“Rick Santorum, Bachmann and Ron Paul ganged up on Perry for trying to get Texas girls inoculated against cervical cancer. This is a big deal for some social conservatives, but it’s still interesting to think that we have presidential candidates who believe that they could score a stunning upset victory on an anti-cancer-prevention platform.”

Gail Collins

WTF line of the day

SAN ANTONIO — A 6-year-old boy in the Blanco Independent School District has been placed into in-school suspension during the first week of school.

He is accused of violating the school dress code by sporting a diamond earring and wearing his hair too long.

Kandi Shand said Gareth is growing his hair long so he can donate it to Locks of Love in a few months.

As for the earring, she said he has worn it for five years with no problems.

She pointed to a similar incident in El Paso, where the mother of a kindergarten student is also fighting the district to allow her son to wear his diamond earring.

The district’s parent-student handbook says boys cannot wear earrings. It also requires they have their hair neat, clean and well-groomed.

kens5.com San Antonio

Line of the day, without comment

“I don’t know how much God has to do to get the attention of the politicians. We’ve had an earthquake; we’ve had a hurricane. He said, ‘Are you going to start listening to me here?’ Listen to the American people because the American people are roaring right now. They know government is on a morbid obesity diet and we’ve got to rein in the spending.”

Michele Bachmann as reported by The Atlantic Wire

Valles Caldera National Preserve

The Valles Caldera is one of the most beautiful places in America. For 10 years however, the administration of the National Preserve has become one of continually unfulfilled expectations. Two weeks ago, Joey Peters of Santa Fe Reporter had an excellent report on the political morass that binds this extraordinary piece of land, Burned Ambition. I highly recommend the article, but here’s a brief excerpt:

The Valles Caldera National Preserve was established in 2000 in a class of its own; no other wilderness area in the United States is run like it. Created as an experiment, it’s essentially a public park operated with a private mentality. A presidentially appointed board of trustees operates the land. The trustees work closely with the US Forest Service, which also manages the nearby Santa Fe National Forest. The board’s goal is to make the caldera financially self-sustainable without excluding the public from the wilderness area.

But in its 11 years as a public park, Valles Caldera is nowhere near on track to meet its 2015 deadline of financial self-sustainability. In fiscal year 2010—one of the trust’s better years to date—the caldera recovered just over $700,000 of its $3.5 million in operating costs. 

For the public, accessing the caldera has proven restrictive and costly, prompting nearby residents and interest groups to push for a change in management. But the aftermath of the Las Conchas fire, which charred 30,000 acres of the preserve—along with several square miles of the surrounding land—now further complicates the caldera’s already uncertain future.

Five years ago the Preserve had a rare public day, and even that mixed disaster and joy. I posted this at the time.

NewMexiKen has written about the Valles Caldera previously. The Valle Grande alone, just the one-fourth of the Preserve that’s visible from New Mexico Highway 4, is magnificent.

As Scott Momaday wrote in House Made of Dawn:

Of all the places that he knew, this valley alone could reflect the great spatial majesty of the sky. It scooped out of the dark peaks like the well of a great, gathering storm, deep umber and blue and smoke-colored. The view across the diameter was magnificent; it was an unbelievably great expanse. As many times as he had been there in the past, each new sight of it always brought him up short, and he had to catch his breath. Just there, it seemed, a strange and brilliant light lay upon the world, and all the objects in the landscape were washed clean and set away in the distance.

Saturday [August 26, 2006], the Trust that has managed the Preserve since it came into federal ownership in 2000, opened the property to all comers. Normally access is tightly restricted, so it was a big event for many of us — a chance to see the back country, if only from the window of a car. According to local news reports, about 1500 vehicles showed up, more than expected and more than could be accommodated. Rains had washed out parts of the planned tour route and the result was congestion unfitting for such a beautiful place.

Still, we were glad we went. Even driving just a few miles across Valle Grande changed perceptions and made it seem beautiful all over again.

Photos rarely serve the Valle Grande well. For one, its almost too big for the human eye, let alone the two-dimensional reproduction. That said, here a few photos taken Saturday, including some of the traffic. You may click on any image for a larger version.

Traffic Lined Up Sign

Traffic backed up in both directions on Hwy 4 waiting to turn in.

Traffic Going In Get a Horse

View showing the road into Valle Grande, and a way of travel many of us envied.

Flowers in the Breeze East Fork Jemez River

Some of the beauty found, especially in our verdant summer of 2006.
That’s the East Fork of the Jemez River.

A Vista Tree Framed Vista

Too beautiful for words. Too beautiful for photos.

Too Many Cars

Too many car-bound nature lovers snake along at a few miles an hour.

Handsome Eye Contact

Would you like a rider, good lookin’? How about you? Hmm, maybe not.

Best redux line of the day

First posted here in 2008.

Lewis Black suggested in one of his comedy routines a better way to select the president.

As soon as the next American Idol is chosen, blindfold them and have them throw a dart at a map of the U.S. Then take a monkey, put a parachute on him, and drop him from a plane at the spot where the dart hit. The first person the monkey takes by hand, that’s the president.

Works for me.

Today’s Birthdays: August 27th

Lyndon Baines Johnson, the 36th President of the United States, was born 103 years ago today. He died, at age 64, in January 1973.

Antonia Fraser is 79

William Least Heat-Moon was born as William Trogdon 72 years ago today. He’s the author, among other works, of Blue Highways, an excellent travel memoir published in 1982. (The roads in blue on highway maps go to the out-of-way places Least Heat-Moon wrote about.)

Daryl Dragon, the Captain of the Captain and Tennille, is 69 today.

Once-upon-a-time sex kitten Tuesday Weld is 68. According to IMDb, “At nine years of age she suffered a nervous breakdown, at ten she started heavy drinking. One year later she began to have affairs, and at the age of twelve she tried to commit suicide.” Weld turned down the role of Lolita and of Bonnie in Bonnie and Clyde.

Herbert Streicher is 64 today. As Harry Reems, he was the unnoticed star of Deep Throat.

Texas football coach Mack Brown is 60. Pre-Snap Read has the Longhorns 18th going to next week’s season-opener.

Paul Reubens, Pee-Wee Herman, is 59.

Downtown Julie Brown is 52.

Chandra Wilson of Grey’s Anatomy is 42.

Jim Thome, now of the Cleveland Indians, is 41. 601 home runs.

Lester Young was born 102 years ago today. If you don’t know who Lester Young was, you really should. He was called the “Prez” (for President of Jazz).

Sweetness is what Young was all about. When he started to gain attention, the dominant style of the day was the aggressive, hard-driving saxophone of Coleman Hawkins. But Young played in the upper range of his tenor in a lyrical, relaxed style.

“He had marvelous sensitivity and taste,” says Dan Morgenstern, who wrote the book Living in Jazz. “Never played a tasteless note in his life.”

Morgenstern, who met Young in 1958, says the saxophonist always told a story in his solos, in an original way.

“He had this ‘floating’ style, where he would kind of float above the rhythm. He was like an acrobat,” Morgenstern says. “And, you know, at the same time, his melodic imagination was so marvelous. The combination of rhythm and melody — nobody else quite ever had that.”

Young was an original in other ways. Rather than holding his saxophone vertically, he held it high and to the right at a 45-degree angle. He famously wore a porkpie hat and moccasins. Young also had a flair for language: He said he had “big eyes” for the things he liked, he nicknamed Billie Holiday “Lady Day,” and he called women’s feet in open-toed shoes “nice biscuits.” He also made up new words that found their way into songs.

Young’s cachet among hipsters led to his popularizing now-common words. Everyone started using the word “cool” after they heard him say it, according to jazz historian Phil Schaap.

“But the one that really makes the most sense,” Schaap says, “you call up Lester Young for a gig, he’d say, ‘Okay, how does the bread smell?’ So he used ‘bread’ for money for the first time.”

Lester Young: ‘The Prez’ Still Rules At 100 : NPR

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6ogRiaWXaU

Stevie Ray Vaughan died in a helicopter crash 21 years ago today.

The Myth of Pressure

Joe Posnanski thinks the best player is the best player, regardless of the pennant race. Pressure he says, is not on the winners.

Think about it: What pressure is there on players in pennant races? The pressure to win? Sure. But players come to the ballpark energized. Everyone on the team is into it. The crowd is alive and hopeful. The afternoon crackles. Anticipation. Excitement. There is nothing in sports quite like the energy in a baseball clubhouse during a pennant race. Players arrive early to prepare. Teammates help each other. Everyone’s in a good mood. There’s a feeling swirling around: This is exactly the childhood dream. The added importance of the moment could, in theory I suppose, create extra stress. But the reality I’ve seen is precisely the opposite. The importance sharpens the senses, feeds the enthusiasm, makes the day brighter. Baseball is a long season. Anything to give a day a little gravity, to separate it from yesterday, to make it all more interesting … anything like that, I think, is much more likely to make it EASIER to play closer to the peak.

A losing clubhouse? Exactly the opposite. The downward pressure is enormous and overwhelming — after all, who cares? The town has moved on. A Hawaiian vacation awaits. Teammates are fighting to keep their jobs or fighting to impress someone on another team or just plain fighting. The manager might be worried about his job. The reporters are few, and they’re negative. Smaller crowds make it easier to hear the drunken critics. Support is much harder to come by, and there is constant, intense force demanding that you just stop trying so hard. After all: Why take that extra BP? You’ve got the swing down. Why study a few extra minutes of film? You’ve faced that hitter before. Why take that extra base? Why challenge him on that 3-1 pitch? Why? You’re down 9-3 anyway.

Click above to read Joe’s analysis of pressure. Click here to read his strategy for the AL MVP vote.

The Worst 50 States in America

America! Who likes it? It’s merely a schizophrenic jumble of 50 warring personalities all vying to be number one. But of course they can’t all be. So which state is the best? And more importantly, which one is worst? Well, we’ve set out to determine just that. Welcome to the Worst States in America.

Gawker ranks The Worst 50 States in America. New York is the best. Which could be the worst?

Upsetting

… to hear 5-year-old Reid crying in the background when I checked in with Jill about the earthquake. The epicenter was no more than 55-60 miles from both daughters’ homes. Things shook and fell, but no damage.

A 5.3 quake hit near Trinidad, Colorado, near the Colorado-New Mexico late last night. It was the biggest quake in Colorado in 129 years.

Update: Largest quake in Virginia since 1897.

Stand by Me

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4_ghOG9JQM

As pop auteurs who wrote, arranged and produced countless recordings by the above-mentioned artists and others, Leiber and Stoller advanced rock and roll to new heights of wit and musical sophistication. They were particularly influential during rock and roll’s first decade, beginning with the original recording of “Hound Dog” in 1953 and continuing through to the Drifters’ “On Broadway” in 1963. They brought a range of stylistic flavor to their story songs, which ranged from wisecracking, finger-popping hipster tunes to quieter love ballads. They even made a foray into country & western at Elvis Presley’s request, penning “Just Tell Her Jim Said Hello.” About all that their songs had in common was a fundamental grounding in rhythm & blues.

Leiber, the son of Jewish immigrants from Poland, was born in 1933 and grew up on the edge of Baltimore’s black ghetto. Stoller, also born in 1933, was raised in Queens, learning the basics of blues and boogie-woogie from black kids at summer camp. The pair met in Los Angeles in 1950 and began writing right away. Leiber served as the sharp-witted lyricist, while the classically trained but jazz- and R&B-loving Stoller wrote the music.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum