Novelist, poet, story teller and screenwriter …

Sherman Alexie was born on this date in 1966. Alexie’s father is a Coeur d’Alene Indian and his mother is a Spokane Indian

The Writer’s Almanac has quite a bit about Alexie concluding with:

His first big success was his collection of short stories The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (1993). It was one of the first works of fiction to portray Indians as modern Americans who watch all the same TV programs and eat the same breakfast cereal as everybody else. He has since written about Indians who are gay intellectuals, basketball players, middle-class journalists, elderly movie extras, rock musicians, construction workers, or reservation girls whose cars only go in reverse because all the other gears are broken. His most recent is the story collection Ten Little Indians, which came out last year.

Sherman Alexie said, “All too often, Indian writers write about the kind of Indian they wish they were. So I try to write about the kind of Indian I am. I’m just as much a product of ‘The Brady Bunch’ as I am of my grandmother.”

The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven was adapted for the excellent and amusing film Smoke Signals.

Chillin’

From Sideline Chatter —

Pitcher Pedro Martinez, it appears, will be the first Red Sox player in four decades to be featured on a Wheaties box.

Noted Randy Turner of the Winnipeg Free Press: “Ironically, the last Boston baseball hero to have such an honor was Ted Williams, who, according to industry sources, can now be found in your grocer’s frozen-food section.”

Does he think people won’t check?

“Now, in my capacity as vice president, I am the president of Senate, the presiding officer. I’m up in the Senate most Tuesdays when they’re in session.”

— Vice President Cheney during debate last night.

Actual fact: In nearly four years Cheney has presided on just two Tuesdays (out of 127).

Furthermore, Edwards has presided twice during that time also.

Info via Kos.

You can be sure …

if it’s Westinghouse. George Westinghouse was born on this date in 1846 in Central Bridge, New York.

In 1869, Westinghouse received a patent for the air brake, which permitted the locomotive engineer to apply the brakes equally to all cars. Previously brakemen had applied the brakes manually and accidents were common. The invention was adopted by most railroads worldwide.

In 1884, Westinghouse formed Westinghouse Electric and acquired Nikola Tesla’s patents for alternating current. He was opposed by Thomas Edison whose own company (General Electric) fostered direct current. Ultimately, of course, alternating current (and Westinghouse) emerged victorious, but not before one of the more gruesome battles in industrial competion. The following is from the Kirkus review of Executioner’s Current: Thomas Edison, George Westinghouse, and the Invention of the Electric Chair:

Enron and Worldcom executives take heart: this grim account of the origins of execution by electrocution proves that business-based sleaze can go a lot further than accounting fraud. As Moran (Sociology/Mount Holyoke Coll.) shows, the Edison Electric Co., with Thomas A. himself at the helm, relentlessly lobbied the State of New York in 1890 to establish electrocution as the preferred “humane” disposal of those given the death penalty. What actually motivated Edison, despite his professed opposition to capital punishment, was his rivalry with the Westinghouse Company for the vast US market for electrical lighting and power. Edison equipment generated only direct current (DC), but the tide was turning towards the Westinghouse alternative, AC power. Each side claimed that the other had serious safety deficiencies. By persuading authorities to adopt alternating current for the death chair, Edison and his minions hoped to foster a public image of AC as the truly “lethal” form of electricity. Moran spares readers no details of the gruesomely botched first electrocution at Auburn Prison in August 1890, during which convicted murderer William Kemmler was seen by some witnesses to “suffer horribly,” as current from the Westinghouse dynamo (purchased under false pretenses) was shut off twice while attending doctors pondered the presence of respiration and heartbeat, then switched on again. Its proponents, however, continued to endorse electrocution as a best-case method (absent the bungling at Auburn) while the debate continued over decades. The author points out that we still don’t know exactly how electricity kills a human being (cardiac arrest being the prime suspect), and survivors of serious accidental shocks do report varieties of excruciating pain.

Westinghouse opposed the execution, of course, and even helped fund Kemmler’s appeals, but Westinghouse’s money was no match for Edison’s celebrity.

It’s the birthday

… of Janet Gaynor. Ms. Gaynor was born on this date in 1906. In 1929, she won the very first Oscar for Best Actress, winning for Seventh Heaven, Sunrise and Street Angel. (The only time the award was based on multiple roles.) She was also nominated for best actress for A Star is Born.

… of Carole Lombard. Oscar nominee Lombard (she received a nomination for best actress for My Man Godfrey) was born in 1908.

Today in History

Today marks the anniversary of the first American train robbery. An east bound Ohio & Mississippi passenger train was boarded by the Reno brothers near Seymour, Indiana, on this date in 1866.

The Today in History page at the Library of Congress (redesigned since yesterday) provides background about train robberies and early railroads including this excerpt from “The Early Days in Silver City” —

I happened to be riding that train. I had gone overland to Safford and Solemisvelle prospecting. I decided to come home Thanksgiving to be with my family at Silver City. I boarded the train at Wilcox. There was a large shipment of gold on the train. Just out of Steins Pass we could see a large bon-fire. One of the trainmen remarked, ‘Wonder what the big fire is, I hope we don’t run into any trouble.’ The bon-fire we discovered to our sorrow was on the R. R. Then as today curiosity got the best of some of us so we had to find out why the train came to an abrupt stop, and what the bon-fire was put on the track. We found ourselves looking into the barrel of guns.

Tick tock

Bob Somerby dismisses Wonkette (Ana Marie Cox) and takes NBC to task for wasting time with her (scroll down to “Brokaw’s New Low”).

NewMexiKen has enjoyed reading Wonkette, but I have to admit her shtick is getting old and worn and not altogether becoming. Her 15 minutes may be about up.

You are! No you are!

Had Dick Cheney or John Edwards stood on their chairs and shouted “liar, liar pants on fire,” it might have surprised viewers, but it would not have changed the tenor of Tuesday night’s debate.

Marc Sandalow, San Francisco Chronicle

If Cheney and Edwards actually had stood on their chairs and shouted “liar, liar pants on fire” it would have been a lot more fun to watch. They could put that kind of debate on pay-per-view and I’d tune in.

Flip-flop

“Last week, Senator Kerry was eight points behind President Bush, today he is three points ahead. Is this the kind of indecision we want in a president?”

Announcer in a mock Bush-Cheney ad, “Late Show With David Letterman”

Oops oops!

Also from Marshall:

In a rather churlish moment, Cheney told Edwards that the two of them had never met before tonight’s debate, despite the fact the Edwards is a serving senator and Cheney’s the body’s presiding officer.

But as Atrios and no doubt many others have now pointed out, one can easily find a citation on the web of a prayer breakfast the two men attended together in February 2001. And the Dems are already circulating a picture from the event showing the two standing right next to each other.

Here’s the photo from 2001.

Update: According to Dan Froomkin, AP has identified three meetings:

• “On Feb. 1, 2001, the vice president thanked Edwards by name at a Senate prayer breakfast and sat beside him during the event.

• “On April 8, 2001, Cheney and Edwards shook hands when they met off-camera during a taping of NBC’s Meet the Press, moderator Tim Russert said Wednesday on Today.

• “On Jan. 8, 2003, the two met when the first-term North Carolina senator accompanied Elizabeth Dole to her swearing-in by Cheney as a North Carolina senator, Edwards aides also said.”

Oops!

From Josh Marshall:

And then there’s another rather humorous screw-up. Cheney clearly wanted to send folks to factcheck.org; but he sent them to factcheck.com.

So close and yet so far.

Factcheck.com is George Soros’s website.

Some guys are just lucky, I guess. Soros spends millions on the campaign. And Cheney sends him a blizzard of more free media.

Update: In case you’re unaware, billionaire Soros is a leading anti-Bush advocate.

It’s a-hard and it’s hard, ain’t it hard

From Charles Pierce (writing at Altercation):

So it’s a hard job being president, is it? In all my days, which go back to the end of Second Ike, I have never heard an incumbent president mention how difficult the job is. They’re always “honored by the trust” the American people — or, in this case, Antonin Scalia — have placed in them. I mean, as I have learned in this big old new book of political history that I brought with me, FDR served for 16 years, through the Great Depression and World War II, and it was only at the very end that he even made mention of the fact that he was in a wheelchair. That C-Plus Augustus made (by my count) nine references to the difficulty of his job last week is the best measure that he was coming a little unstrung. What did he possibly hope to gain by it? The sympathy of some laid-off sheet-metal worker? The understanding of some wounded vet? A pat on the head from Karen Hughes?

It’s supposed to be hard, as Tom Hanks says in that women’s baseball movie. If it wasn’t hard, everybody would do it. And, as we’ve come to learn, not everybody can.

All Creatures Great and Small

Pardon me if I mourn the lost coffee more than the spider who died what must have been an unpleasant death in the carafe sometime between the first cup and the expected second cup this morning.

I will fight no more forever

I am tired of fighting. Our Chiefs are killed; Looking Glass is dead, Ta Hool Hool Shute is dead. The old men are all dead. It is the young men who say “Yes” or “No.” He who led the young men is dead. It is cold, and we have no blankets; the little children are freezing to death. My people, some of them, have run away to the hills, and have no blankets, no food. No one knows where they are – perhaps freezing to death. I want to have time to look for my children, and see how many of them I can find. Maybe I shall find them among the dead. Hear me, my chiefs! I am tired. My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever.

Chief Joseph of the Nez-Percé surrendering to Gen. Nelson Miles on this date in 1877.

The Library of Congress tells us:

With 2,000 U.S. soldiers in pursuit, Chief Joseph led fewer than 300 Nez Percé Indians towards freedom at the Canadian border. For over three months, the Nez Percé outmaneuvered and battled their pursuers traveling over 1,000 miles across Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Montana. On October 5, 1877, Chief Joseph, exhausted and disheartened, surrendered in the Bear Paw mountains of Montana, 40 miles south of Canada.

The National Museum of Ben Nighthorse Campbell

Timothy Noah doesn’t much like the new National Museum of the American Indian:

The new museum stubbornly refuses to impose any recognizable standard of scholarship, or even value, on the items in its galleries. Precious artifacts are mingled with present-day kitsch, with few if any clues provided about what makes them significant. The museum’s curators regard the very notion of a Native American cultural heritage as anathema because it clashes with the museum’s boosterish message that Native American culture is as vibrant today as it ever was. This isn’t a museum; it’s a public service announcement.

NewMexiKen hasn’t been to NMAI, so I don’t know what to make of Noah’s criticism (other than it has been a common lament among the published critics). Indeed, one wonders what the reaction was when the National Museum of American History first opened — perhaps all new museums need a time to mature. Whatever, Noah’s essay is worth reading.

It’s the birthday

… of Charlton Heston. Moses is 80 today. Heston won the best actor Oscar for Ben-Hur (1959).

… of Susan Sarandon. The five-time nominee for best actress (she won for Dead Man Walking) is 58 today.

Win some, lose some

It’s the birthday of Rutherford Birchard Hayes, 19th President of the United States. Hayes was born in Delaware, Ohio, on this date in 1822.

As the Library of Congress tells it:

Rutherford B. Hayes became…president in 1877 after a bitterly-contested election against Democrat Samuel J. Tilden of New York. Tilden won the popular vote, but disputed electoral ballots from four states prompted Congress to create a special electoral commission to decide the election’s result. The fifteen-man commission of congressmen and Supreme Court justices, eight of whom were Republicans, voted along party lines deciding the election in Hayes’s favor.