Archive for December 26th, 2012

Random notes: December 26, 2012.

Wednesday, December 26th, 2012

The NYT was running a little behind yesterday, and didn’t post their Charles Durning obit until later in the day. (Also, thanks to Lawrence and Guffaw for their comments yesterday.)

Likewise, the A/V Club is operating on holiday time: they did publish a nice obit for Jack Klugman, but have not gotten around to Charles Durning yet. (Edited to add: the A/V Club’s obit for Durning is up now.)

On the night after Christmas 40 years ago, two buses carved a thin line across the vast blackness of the New Mexico plains. They carried 58 young people and seven chaperones from Woodlawn Baptist Church in South Austin, the passengers still reveling in the merry holiday glow, en route to a religious retreat and skiing in the eastern New Mexico mountains.

19 people were killed when one of the buses crashed. 16 of them were teenagers. This is one of those bits of Austin history that I was previously unaware of; I commend the Statesman story (and the sidebar about how horrible the highway bridge was) to your attention.