Pat Garret's descendants are against it. Gov Richardson's possible justification for this pardon rest upon past history such as this:
"Historical documents show that Mr. Wallace struck a deal with the Kid that if he would testify before a grand jury about a killing he had witnessed, the governor would grant him a pardon for his many crimes. Billy the Kid did testify but the pardon never came, something the outlaw grumbled about as he managed to escape the law, get caught and then escape again, only to be gunned down in the dark by the frontier lawman in 1881."
This is former governor of New Mexico, Lew Wallace, who also is the author of the enormously popular novel, at least for many decades in the past, Ben-Hur: A Story of the Christ. Which is how we came to have still famous Charleton Heston chariot race in the Colisseum.
History lives, yay history!
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Friday, August 13, 2010
"The Dog Days of Summer" - Are We In Them?
"Dog Days of Summer" seems quaint, doesn't it, here in this August of the twenty-first century?
As a farm child the 'dog days' meant the particular time of summer in August that initiated harvest of the grains in the part of the world where I grew up. The second haying was in progress. In the garden strawberries, raspberries, rubarb, string beans and peas were long over. The first tiny 'new' potatoes could be dug, the first cantalopes and watermelons were ripe. We gorged on fresh corn and froze gallons of it by the pint and quart. Tomatoes were on the table at every meal and lunch / snack except breakfast. As were cucumbers with dill (our own dill, from the garden, carefully deadheaded and trimmed to keep tender and aromatic enough for our own dill pickles), cream and vinegar. Pickling time was also upon us. We were freezing peaches and canning pears (cherries had been accomplished back in June with the strawberries, raspberries and blueberries). Second butchering and freezing of the chickens was in progress. The kitchen was always hot even though we utilized the attached car garage and the basement for the hot water tubs in which we scalded the chickens for plucking the feathers, and for blow torches with which we singed the pinfeathers. (Actually that was my mom and sometimes grandmothers who did that -- I didn't have to do that, at least!) I was part of the continuous mowing chores of the colossal pieces of ground that were our lawn and the yard. Flower beds had to be weeded and watered, as was the garden, not to mention the picking. Cattle, pigs and chickens had to be watered and fed.
Hard, constant work all day, everyday, until long after dark, often even Sundays because harvest and hay don't wait even for God, so no Sunday School after church, or catechism instruction during the week. Hard, constant play too, for the kids (mothers taking turns to drive the kids to the lake, swimming lessons, 4-H and church activities), and at night for us adolescents, and for the adults too, on Friday and Saturday nights -- if the flax, wheat and hay allowed. And hot. At least in the summers when things went right, and the rain had come earlier when it should and stopped for harvest. Dances on the weekend were hot, sticky, wet affairs -- I am speaking of the temperature and humidity in the vast spaces the dances took place -- no a/c, no fans even, except in the more expensive spots that our parents and their friends went, not us! Church was hot at 8 AM service, with all the windows open to the smells of the flowers planted below, where we went every Sunday morning, no matter how late we adolescents and our parents went to bed the night before, no matter how hung over our parents might be.* The weeks and churchless Sundays spent at the lake cabin in the slower days of July were already long behind us, as were my dad's fun as the local crop spray plane pilot.
As an undergraduate I assumed the Dog Days had been invented by newspapers and magazines -- another way of saying the silly season, because presumably, with D.C. shut down for summer break there wasn't anything worth covering in the news. Thus the silly. As well as harvest season, so everyone was focused on that, and nobody was bothering with either newspapers or, later, television. When I was still home in my high school years, the only time the television was turned on during this period was after dinner was cleared away (meaning what non-farmers were calling 'lunch'), dishes done and I returned to the week's ironing, which took my Monday and Tuesday and some Wednesday early afternoon hours. This is how I first heard the names of Ibsen, Maeterlinck, Chekhov, Strindberg, Pirandello -- the educational programs ran during that time segment. It wasn't until the spring of my sophomore year that we got both the ABC network and a public television station out there in Small Family Farmlandia. Until then it was NBC and CBS only. That's how far out of the mainstream of the rest of the country our location still was, even then, leaning toward the end of the twentieth century.
Now? It seems Dog Days because I'm so busy I can't think much -- just like August back when I was growing up. But so different -- I'm not ironing or freezing or canning, for one thing.
Most of all it seems the Dog Days because it is a month of natural catastrophe all over the world. Extreme weather and weather disasters, signature of global climate change and the global warming that is, among other factors, including deforestation, causing it. The pariah dog, slinking starved, sunken-ribbed through debris and rubble of disasters and war detritus. A third of Pakistan is under water. Ames, Iowa has no drinking water. The Gulf of Mexico is horribly poisoned. China is flooded and broken by earthquake. Russia wheat is burning in fires caused by prolonged firey temperatures and drought, same as my part of the world, sans the wildfires, for which I'm supremely grateful.
However, I lnow that neither the newspapers nor the twentieth invented 'Dog Days.' You can find the origin here, which I didn't discover until a class in English literature of the 16th and 17th centuries.
How are you doing in this year's Days of the Dog?
__________________
* Parents hung over, yes, but not us, at least not us Good Girls, of which I was smart enough to be one of, because my eye was firmly fixed on getting the hell outta this Dodge, the moment I graduated from high school, and as ignorant as I was I had no idea how not to get pregnant, and also I didn't want the boys to Talk About Me. I broke rules all the time of my community and family, but I was very careful as to which rules were broken -- such as 'forgetting' it was Monday morning -- clothes washing day -- and taking off on my bicycle with a friend and riding all over the township -- o was Mom furious that I was nowhere to be found. The joys of wine, beer and other such things were still far in my future.
As a farm child the 'dog days' meant the particular time of summer in August that initiated harvest of the grains in the part of the world where I grew up. The second haying was in progress. In the garden strawberries, raspberries, rubarb, string beans and peas were long over. The first tiny 'new' potatoes could be dug, the first cantalopes and watermelons were ripe. We gorged on fresh corn and froze gallons of it by the pint and quart. Tomatoes were on the table at every meal and lunch / snack except breakfast. As were cucumbers with dill (our own dill, from the garden, carefully deadheaded and trimmed to keep tender and aromatic enough for our own dill pickles), cream and vinegar. Pickling time was also upon us. We were freezing peaches and canning pears (cherries had been accomplished back in June with the strawberries, raspberries and blueberries). Second butchering and freezing of the chickens was in progress. The kitchen was always hot even though we utilized the attached car garage and the basement for the hot water tubs in which we scalded the chickens for plucking the feathers, and for blow torches with which we singed the pinfeathers. (Actually that was my mom and sometimes grandmothers who did that -- I didn't have to do that, at least!) I was part of the continuous mowing chores of the colossal pieces of ground that were our lawn and the yard. Flower beds had to be weeded and watered, as was the garden, not to mention the picking. Cattle, pigs and chickens had to be watered and fed.
Hard, constant work all day, everyday, until long after dark, often even Sundays because harvest and hay don't wait even for God, so no Sunday School after church, or catechism instruction during the week. Hard, constant play too, for the kids (mothers taking turns to drive the kids to the lake, swimming lessons, 4-H and church activities), and at night for us adolescents, and for the adults too, on Friday and Saturday nights -- if the flax, wheat and hay allowed. And hot. At least in the summers when things went right, and the rain had come earlier when it should and stopped for harvest. Dances on the weekend were hot, sticky, wet affairs -- I am speaking of the temperature and humidity in the vast spaces the dances took place -- no a/c, no fans even, except in the more expensive spots that our parents and their friends went, not us! Church was hot at 8 AM service, with all the windows open to the smells of the flowers planted below, where we went every Sunday morning, no matter how late we adolescents and our parents went to bed the night before, no matter how hung over our parents might be.* The weeks and churchless Sundays spent at the lake cabin in the slower days of July were already long behind us, as were my dad's fun as the local crop spray plane pilot.
As an undergraduate I assumed the Dog Days had been invented by newspapers and magazines -- another way of saying the silly season, because presumably, with D.C. shut down for summer break there wasn't anything worth covering in the news. Thus the silly. As well as harvest season, so everyone was focused on that, and nobody was bothering with either newspapers or, later, television. When I was still home in my high school years, the only time the television was turned on during this period was after dinner was cleared away (meaning what non-farmers were calling 'lunch'), dishes done and I returned to the week's ironing, which took my Monday and Tuesday and some Wednesday early afternoon hours. This is how I first heard the names of Ibsen, Maeterlinck, Chekhov, Strindberg, Pirandello -- the educational programs ran during that time segment. It wasn't until the spring of my sophomore year that we got both the ABC network and a public television station out there in Small Family Farmlandia. Until then it was NBC and CBS only. That's how far out of the mainstream of the rest of the country our location still was, even then, leaning toward the end of the twentieth century.
Now? It seems Dog Days because I'm so busy I can't think much -- just like August back when I was growing up. But so different -- I'm not ironing or freezing or canning, for one thing.
Most of all it seems the Dog Days because it is a month of natural catastrophe all over the world. Extreme weather and weather disasters, signature of global climate change and the global warming that is, among other factors, including deforestation, causing it. The pariah dog, slinking starved, sunken-ribbed through debris and rubble of disasters and war detritus. A third of Pakistan is under water. Ames, Iowa has no drinking water. The Gulf of Mexico is horribly poisoned. China is flooded and broken by earthquake. Russia wheat is burning in fires caused by prolonged firey temperatures and drought, same as my part of the world, sans the wildfires, for which I'm supremely grateful.
However, I lnow that neither the newspapers nor the twentieth invented 'Dog Days.' You can find the origin here, which I didn't discover until a class in English literature of the 16th and 17th centuries.
How are you doing in this year's Days of the Dog?
__________________
* Parents hung over, yes, but not us, at least not us Good Girls, of which I was smart enough to be one of, because my eye was firmly fixed on getting the hell outta this Dodge, the moment I graduated from high school, and as ignorant as I was I had no idea how not to get pregnant, and also I didn't want the boys to Talk About Me. I broke rules all the time of my community and family, but I was very careful as to which rules were broken -- such as 'forgetting' it was Monday morning -- clothes washing day -- and taking off on my bicycle with a friend and riding all over the township -- o was Mom furious that I was nowhere to be found. The joys of wine, beer and other such things were still far in my future.
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Friday, August 6, 2010
M & K Home, Finally
They were ensconced in the - St. loft by 10 PM. K bouncy and confident, whizzing around, shouting Aibobo! at all moments, to all and sundry, not in the least intimidated by people speaking English. She hardly saw a white person or anyone not speaking Kreyole all her life until she got to the airport.
M, how can I describe? Her confident, pleased, curious, healthy daughter says it best. K is very much her warrior mother's soul and character. In the meantime though, M. may have one hell of a crash, now that she's where they are safe. The first thing M. says is, "Thank you, thank you, thank you," to everyone. But we all know, that in the end it was her, and Mz, who actually DID it. She is ill with a mild form of malaria. She is tired. She'd gotten little sleep for weeks in the heat, humidity, mosquitoes and other dangers, and then none at all the last two days, with getting to the U.S. Embassy so early two days in a row because the U.S. Embassy and the INS f*ed up.
We are discussing family therapy, which is available to members of the Haitian community here affected by the earthquake. Who knows entirely what K saw and experienced before M was able to get there and take custody?
They are home, they really are home! It was the shock of the familiar so long absent, to hear her voice again on the cell. It was the unique, unmistakable voice of our friend. I did not burst into tears upon hearing M's voice.
I seldom cry these days, for if I did weep over whatever is worthy to weep over, I'd never not be crying.
M, how can I describe? Her confident, pleased, curious, healthy daughter says it best. K is very much her warrior mother's soul and character. In the meantime though, M. may have one hell of a crash, now that she's where they are safe. The first thing M. says is, "Thank you, thank you, thank you," to everyone. But we all know, that in the end it was her, and Mz, who actually DID it. She is ill with a mild form of malaria. She is tired. She'd gotten little sleep for weeks in the heat, humidity, mosquitoes and other dangers, and then none at all the last two days, with getting to the U.S. Embassy so early two days in a row because the U.S. Embassy and the INS f*ed up.
We are discussing family therapy, which is available to members of the Haitian community here affected by the earthquake. Who knows entirely what K saw and experienced before M was able to get there and take custody?
They are home, they really are home! It was the shock of the familiar so long absent, to hear her voice again on the cell. It was the unique, unmistakable voice of our friend. I did not burst into tears upon hearing M's voice.
I seldom cry these days, for if I did weep over whatever is worthy to weep over, I'd never not be crying.
Thursday, August 5, 2010
HBO *Treme* Brings Postmamboism to Instanbul and Turkey
HBO Treme's Music Supervisor in Instanbul. He is now returned to the U.S. and working on the music for Season 2.
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Boysssss 'n Girls, We Can Scream BP AND Government BullShyte!
"U.S. Finds Most Oil From Spill Poses Little Additional Risk"
How farkin' DARE THEY???????? When satellite photos show the mess in the Gulf the size of Massachusetts? How stupid do they think we are? Wait, don't answer that. They just look at faux noose #####s and birthers and the tbaggers, and that's how stupid they know we are.
Nothing to see here folks, just move along. Out of sight out of mind. This isn't just me. There are at this time nearly 400 comments in response. It tear-jerkingly easy to see the difference among those who are paid propagandists for bp, the gummit, etc. Most of the comments notice this as well. This one, for instance:
"Just say there is no problem, and by magic it will disappear." This is what every institution from the federal gummit to the local level, from banks and financial global corps, to the military, to you name it, has been doing since the first moments of the first day of the reagan regime and its gut motivated faith-based government. Change the words = equals change of perception > make it Alllllllll Better! But bullshit is still bullshit and this is bullshit.
WASHINGTON — The government is expected to announce on Wednesday that three-quarters of the oil from the Deepwater Horizon leak has already evaporated, dispersed, been captured or otherwise eliminated — and that much of the rest is so diluted that it does not seem to pose much additional risk of harm.
Only about 26 percent of the oil from the Deepwater Horizon leak is still in the water or onshore, and most of it is diluted and breaking down rapidly, officials say.
How farkin' DARE THEY???????? When satellite photos show the mess in the Gulf the size of Massachusetts? How stupid do they think we are? Wait, don't answer that. They just look at faux noose #####s and birthers and the tbaggers, and that's how stupid they know we are.
Nothing to see here folks, just move along. Out of sight out of mind. This isn't just me. There are at this time nearly 400 comments in response. It tear-jerkingly easy to see the difference among those who are paid propagandists for bp, the gummit, etc. Most of the comments notice this as well. This one, for instance:
Two hundred million gallons of oil mixed with a million gallons of Corexit, and there is no risk.
What do you expect them to say? It's like the air at Ground Zero. No problem.
Just say there is no problem, and by magic it will disappear.
I guess the "authorities" know in their heart of hearts that if they admit something very big and very important is beyond their control, everyone will see that the emperor has no clothes, and of course the danger there is maybe we will start thinking about whether there is a better way for the human race to be doing business.
"Just say there is no problem, and by magic it will disappear." This is what every institution from the federal gummit to the local level, from banks and financial global corps, to the military, to you name it, has been doing since the first moments of the first day of the reagan regime and its gut motivated faith-based government. Change the words = equals change of perception > make it Alllllllll Better! But bullshit is still bullshit and this is bullshit.
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Kind Of Overwhelmed
With the ever worse news out of the Gulf, all that has to be accomplished here before going there, i.e. C'town. I find myself wishing we were there already -- so tired am I have of my neighborhoods in which you can't walk anywhere anymore because of the density of out-of-towners, out-of-neighborhooders, tourists, etc. It's just farkin' miserable. I have these fantasies of this small, picturesque town, with so few people around, if only because it is a car culture and nobody walks. While, I, on the other hand, living so close to the river, can walk there easily whenever I want to.
AND, far more cheering, on my other tail -- it is certain, as far as these things can be, that M and her daughter are arriving at JFK tomorrow!
Do not forget, it's not only the Louis Armstrong festival in New Orleans, but the second celebration of Pops' birthday starts at midnight, edst here on the east coast, on WKCR Radio out of Columbia University.
AND, far more cheering, on my other tail -- it is certain, as far as these things can be, that M and her daughter are arriving at JFK tomorrow!
Do not forget, it's not only the Louis Armstrong festival in New Orleans, but the second celebration of Pops' birthday starts at midnight, edst here on the east coast, on WKCR Radio out of Columbia University.
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