discovered gold on the property of Johann A. Sutter near Coloma, California, on this date in 1848. Nearly 100,000 people arrived in California in 1849.
But these days, as The Gatlin Brothers sang —
All the gold in California
Is in a bank in the middle of Beverly Hills
In somebody else’s name
was designated as such on this date in 1923.
Aztec Ruins National Monument preserves structures and artifacts of Ancestral Pueblo people from the 1100’s through 1200s. People associated with Chaco Canyon to the south built and used the structures, then people related to the Mesa Verde region to the north used the site in the 1200’s.
Report from the Los Angeles Times
NewMexiKen has completed reading Walter Isaacson’s biography of Benjamin Franklin. I recommend it enthusiastically.
was born on this date in 1910. Reinhardt was the first hugely influential jazz figure to emerge from Europe — and he remains possibly the most influential European to this day. Play Jazz Guitar.com has some interesting background.
A violinist first and a guitarist later, Jean Baptiste “Django” Reinhardt grew up in a gypsy camp near Paris where he absorbed the gypsy strain into his music. A disastrous caravan fire in 1928 badly burned his left hand, depriving him of the use of the fourth and fifth fingers, but the resourceful Reinhardt figured out a novel fingering system to get around the problem that probably accounts for some of the originality of his style. According to one story, during his recovery period, Reinhardt was introduced to American jazz when he found a 78 RPM disc of Louis Armstrong’s “Dallas Blues” at an Orleans flea market. He then resumed his career playing in Parisian cafes until one day in 1934 when Hot Club chief Pierre Nourry proposed the idea of an all-string band to Reinhardt and Grappelli. Thus was born the Quintet of the Hot Club of France, which quickly became an international draw thanks to a long, splendid series of Ultraphone, Decca and HMV recordings.
The Red Hot Jazz Archive has some on-line recordings of the Quintette of the Hot Club of France.
Bow and sing praise, NewMexiKen aced the Quiz. Ten correct out of 10. Take The Week Quiz.
The 12-hour mini-series Roots premiered on this date in 1977. According to the Encyclopedia of Television:
Roots remains one of television’s landmark programs….For eight consecutive nights it riveted the country. ABC executives initially feared that the historical saga about slavery would be a ratings disaster. Instead, Roots scored higher ratings than any previous entertainment program in history. It averaged a 44.9 rating and a 66 audience share for the length of its run. The seven episodes that followed the opener earned the top seven spots in the ratings for their week. The final night held the single-episode ratings record until 1983, when the finale of M*A*S*H aired on CBS….
Apprehensions that Roots would flop shaped the way that ABC presented the show. Familiar television actors like Lorne Greene were chosen for the white, secondary roles, to reassure audiences. The white actors were featured disproportionately in network previews. For the first episode, the writers created a conscience-stricken slave captain (Ed Asner), a figure who did not appear in Haley’s novel but was intended to make white audiences feel better about their historical role in the slave trade. Even the show’s consecutive-night format allegedly resulted from network apprehensions. ABC programming chief Fred Silverman hoped that the unusual schedule would cut his network’s imminent losses–and get Roots off the air before sweeps week.
Silverman, of course, need not have worried. Roots garnered phenomenal audiences. On average, 80 million people watched each of the last seven episodes. 100 million viewers, almost half the country, saw the final episode, which still claims one of the highest Nielsen ratings ever recorded, a 51.1 with a 71 share. A stunning 85% of all television homes saw all or part of the mini-series….Today, the show’s social effects may appear more ephemeral, but at the time they seemed widespread. Over 250 colleges and universities planned courses on the saga, and during the broadcast, over 30 cities declared “Roots” weeks.
NewMexiKen co-sponsored a symposium at the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 1979, that included Alex Haley, the author of Roots. Haley, who also wrote The Autobiography of Malcolm X, 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.
was born on this day in 1899. According to MPR’s The Writer’s Almanac
[Bogart] was expelled from Massachusetts’ Phillips Academy and immediately joined the Navy to fight in World War I, serving as a ship’s gunner. One day, while roughhousing on the ship’s wooden stairway, he tripped and fell, and a splinter became lodged in his upper lip; the result was a scar, as well as partial paralysis of the lip, resulting in the tight-set mouth and lisp that became one of his most distinctive onscreen qualities.
Why do the media (and others) talk about 500 American casualties in Iraq? Casualty means “injured, killed, captured, or missing in action through engagement with an enemy” [American Heritage Dictionary]. There have been 500+ killed. Clearly many more, possibly hundreds more, have been wounded.
When David Letterman played the video Tuesday night on CBS’s “Late Show,” Dean’s head appeared to explode at the end of the speech. “Did you see Howard Dean ranting and raving?” he asked the audience. “Here’s a little tip, Howard: cut back on the Red Bull.”
On NBC’s “Tonight Show,” host Jay Leno joked: “I’m not an expert in politics, but I think it’s a bad sign when your speech ends with your aides shooting you with a tranquilizer gun.”
If you have a high-speed connection and QuickTime you can enjoy New Year’s Eve in Times Square with a Full Screen QTVR panoramic image — and use your mouse to make yourself dizzy.
Type miserable failure into Google and you still get the same result — the official White House biography of George W. Bush — but Jimmy Carter, Michael Moore and Hilary Rodham Clinton are moving up.
Google French military victories and read the first entry of the search results.
Read Engineering Google Results to Make a Political Point in The New York Times if you want to know more.
From News of the Weird
Joy to the World! Jonathan Cantu, 39, and Charles J. Kern, 50, each feeling slighted at the other’s Christmas gift, smacked each other over the head with flowerpots and were hospitalized (San Rafael, Calif.). And Brandi Nicole Nason, 20, also dissatisfied with a gift, allegedly tossed a Molotov cocktail into her ex-mother-in-law’s house, causing $200,000 in damage (Hermosa Beach, Calif.). And a woman was arrested for beating a man with a Christmas tree after he complained that the gifts he was carrying were heavier than the tree that she was carrying (Victoria, British Columbia). And after Donna Simmons-Groover won her apartment complex’s Christmas-lights competition, a losing neighbor ripped out part of her display in a rage (Jensen Beach, Fla.)….
Police said a 29-year-old woman ordered her 11-year-old daughter to help her shoplift clothing, including some items the woman later returned to the girl as Christmas presents (Fort Myers, Fla.).
From the Los Angeles Times
Deep down, Michael O’Hara knew the huge profits at Financial Advisory Consultants Inc. “were just too good to be true.”
So when his 70th birthday rolled around in 2000, and he had to start drawing down his individual retirement accounts, he hedged his bets by taking out more money than required by law.
O’Hara, a prosperous insurance agent from Placentia, regarded the $106,000 he had deposited in the 1990s in an FAC investment fund as “Vegas money.” And with the fund reporting annual returns of nearly 40%, O’Hara seemed to have hit the jackpot: Late last year, even after he had withdrawn $123,000, his FAC account balance was $700,000.
Then FAC crapped out. Two days before Christmas, the Securities and Exchange Commission charged the Lake Forest company and its owner, James P. Lewis Jr., with operating an elaborate, 20-year fraud.
An FBI raid of FAC’s office on El Toro Road turned up assets worth a bit more than 1% of the $813.9 million that Lewis’ clients supposedly had accumulated. Lewis, known to his family, friends and clients as an investment genius, was nowhere to be found. As of late Friday, he was being sought by the FBI.
Among the cruel twists of the FAC debacle is that so many investors, like O’Hara, were gambling with their retirement funds. Many lost virtually everything. According to SEC filings and attorneys involved in the case, the victims include Lewis’ computer technician, who mortgaged his house to invest with FAC, and the mother of Lewis’ live-in companion, who handed over her entire $250,000 in retirement savings.
Exactly what it says — subversive cross stitch.
NewMexiKen has had visitors from 10 11 different time zones today.
Among the sites nominated for Best American Weblog is dooce. Some highlights:
If the baby in my womb has its legs crossed during tomorrow’s ultrasound, I am totally going to put him/her into a time-out.
I can safely blame iTunes for Windows when my child asks why I can’t help her pay for her college education.
The scariest thing about this whole baby thing is knowing that I won’t be able to say to her, “You’re poopy? Your mom will change your diaper when she gets home.” I WILL BE THE MOTHER.
I’m pretty sure I’m going to give birth to an 8-lb Nacho Cheese Dorito.
Feeling guility: For hoping that this baby doesn’t decide to make her entrance into the world during the season premiere of “Survivor.” She needs to get her priorities straight early.
And:
Things in the Past Week That Have Brought Me to Uncontrollable, Blubbering Tears
The finely orchestrated piece of crap otherwise known as the finale to “Joe Millionaire.”
The look on my dog’s face when I took away his bone last night.
The delicate beauty of a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup.
The moment we realized that the bed sheet we bought at Target was too small to fit the mattress for the baby’s crib, and the thought of my baby having to sleep on a bed sheetless mattress for the rest of her life.
The amount of money the plumber told us he is going to charge us to move our kitchen sink 24 inches to the right.
The realization that Paris Hilton is someone’s daughter.
Orcas off Port Aransas including photos and a video.
Nominated as best-designed weblogs for 2004 are:
NewMexiKen would be interested in comments on these designs.
2004 marks the Fourth Annual Weblog Awards and the nominees were announced yesterday. If you don’t have time to visit the site, don’t worry. NewMexiKen will glean all the highlights for you starting with the nominees for best weblog tagline:
NewMexiKen is thinking “Half Wisdom, Half Whimsy, Half Wit” wasn’t half bad.
Unfortunately NewMexiKen’s snowfall didn’t last much longer than the time it took to blog about it. By early afternoon the snow had stopped and the little that did fall was gone. Rats!
From the Fairbanks News-Miner
A cold air mass that settled over the Tanana Valley late last week from the Yukon Territory resulted in bitter cold temperatures throughout much of the central Interior. The temperature dropped to 40 degrees below zero on Friday and stayed there for most of the next four days, though it did climb up to 38 below on Saturday at one point.
The coldest temperature recorded in the Interior was 57 below at Dry Creek, on the Alaska Highway between Delta Junction and Tok, and sub-50 below temperatures were reported from several other Interior communities. A low of 55 below was recorded at Circle Hot Springs and Manley Hot Springs. It was 52 below in Central, Eagle, Nenana and Tok.
The lowest temperature recorded at the Fairbanks International Airport, the official recording site for the weather service, was 46 below on Sunday, but a low of 52 below was recorded in North Pole. Two Rivers reported 51 below.
From the Anchorage Daily News
Mid-January temperatures in Bethel, ALaska, normally hover around zero, according to the National Weather Service. Last week, a chill set in that bottomed out at minus 30 Sunday morning, though winds were light all weekend.
Monday was a different story. With the temperature at 29 below, northeast winds gusted to nearly 40 mph, driving the wind chill below minus 60….
Jan. 19 is also the day Epiphany is celebrated in the Russian Orthodox Church, a holiday that celebrates the baptism of Christ. At St. Sophia church in Bethel, parishioners usually chop a hole in the Kuskokwim River ice and dip out water for the Rev. George Berezkin to bless.
Not this year. Too cold, said subdeacon Nick. In a typical year, parishioners must remove their hats during the service, he said, and the priest dips a cross into the river three times during the ceremony, then holds the dripping cross while reciting long prayers.
“Without hats and gloves, their hands would freeze right on the cross,” Nick said. He’s seen that happen, though the power of the Holy Spirit prevented the people from suffering frostbite, he said.
This year, George blessed water inside. He gave it to parishioners Monday, after getting a ride to church. His car wouldn’t start, he said.
Sonja Olofsson was ready for the restorative powers of running after waking Monday morning to frozen pipes. The taps worked all weekend but slowed down, then stopped.
A veteran of a dozen Bethel winters, Olofsson said she’s used to cold snaps. “This is about normal around here,” she said. “Unfortunately.”