In great haste, because this is breaking and I have seven minutes left on my coffee break:
Baltimore mayor Catherine E. Pugh resigned today.
The mayor has been on leave since April 1st, dealing with health issues.
Healthy Holly update.
May 2nd, 2019Obit watch: May 1, 2019.
May 1st, 2019ESPN: The Magazine. (As TMQ always used to add, “Published on Earth: The Planet”.)
Gino Marchetti, defensive end for the Baltimore Colts.
He was also an 11-time Pro Bowl selection and a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
In the waning moments of the 1958 championship game against the Giants, he pulled down Frank Gifford inches from a first down, forcing the Giants to give the ball back to the Colts for one last-ditch drive. Quarterback Johnny Unitas and the Baltimore offense took advantage of the opportunity, driving 70 yards for a tying field goal.
Marchetti, who broke his leg making the game-saving tackle, watched Unitas’s heroics from a stretcher on the sidelines, then looked on as the running back Alan Ameche scored eight minutes into overtime to give the Colts the victory in what many still refer to as the greatest game ever played.
There’s no sun up in the sky…
May 1st, 2019They keep predicting apocalyptic rain for the Austin area. And they keep pushing back the start time of said rain. Now it’s a 40% chance of rain starting at 6 PM Austin time.
So, here. Enjoy two clips that happened to pop up while I was looking at YouTube. Both of these are from “Stormy Weather”, the movie. The resolution on this first one isn’t great, but you should really go buy the DVD or blu-ray from Amazon. (I recommend the blu-ray, but that’s just my opinion.) There’s just something I find haunting and wonderful in Horne’s rendition here.
This is at a much better resolution, and just pure darn fun.
You can see what Gregory Hines was talking about, can’t you?
Hoplobibilophilia.
April 30th, 2019My birthday was a week ago last Saturday (April 20th).
You know what this means, right?
Right. I’ve been buying books.
I ordered some things off of my Amazon wish list, since there were several items available used in the right combination of price and condition. Right now, I’m reading Tuchman’s Practicing History: Selected Essays: since that’s a collection of shorter work, I’m also planning to start Five Came Back: A Story of Hollywood and the Second World War and alternate the two for variety.
(And, yes, I kind of want to see the Netflix series based on Five Came Back. Between that and “The Highwaymen”, I’m really tempted to get a Netflix trial, even though I refuse to pay for television.)
(Other things that were in the Amazon batch: The Scientific Sherlock Holmes: Cracking the Case with Science and Forensics, which won an Edgar a few years back. The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories from My Life. The Life You Save May Be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage, for your obligatory Catholic content (CathCon?). More seriously, I like a lot of O’Connor, I know Rod Dreher is a big Walker Percy fan and I’d like to understand why, and I’m kind of interested in Merton. (Though, going back to Mr. Dreher again, I’m not sure now that I want to read Merton.) And The Infernal Library: On Dictators, the Books They Wrote, and Other Catastrophes of Literacy.)
Mike the Musicologist came up Friday night and we spent the weekend running around. We had a very good joint birthday dinner (Lawrence‘s is a few days before mine) at Lonesome Dove.
After dinner, we went back to Lawrence‘s and watched the 1943 “Stormy Weather“. “Stormy Weather” sort of presents itself as a loose “biography” of Bill “Bojangles” Robinson (renamed “Bill Williamson” for the film). In truth, the biographical elements are an extremely thin skeleton…upon which is hung a whole bunch of fantastic musical performances by Robinson, Lena Horne, Cab Calloway, Fats Waller, the Nicholas Brothers, and others.
(I love this entry from Wikipedia about the Nicholas Brothers: “Gregory Hines declared that if their biography were ever filmed, their dance numbers would have to be computer generated because no one now could emulate them.“)
Unfortunately, our plans for Sunday fell through (they caught the kangaroo) but we were able to spend the afternoon talking about kitchen remodeling with some friends of ours. Yes, this is the exciting life of a 54-year-old.
I took Monday off (another perk of being a full-time Cisco employee: you get a free day off on or around your birthday) and went running errands with Mom. This involved stopping at both the Round Rock and central Half-Price Books locations. And HPB sent me a 15% off your total purchase coupon for my birthday. And it just so happened that they had a whole bunch of interesting gun books…
Obit watch: April 30, 2019.
April 30th, 2019These are mostly for the historical record at this point, since I took a few days off. (More on that later.)
Richard Lugar, former Indiana Senator.
Manuel Luján Jr., former Congressman from New Mexico and Secretary of the Interior under George H.W. Bush.
Jo Sullivan Loesser, actress:
She also co-starred in “The Most Happy Fella”, which is significant because she ended up marrying Frank Loesser and left acting. After Mr. Loesser’s death in 1969, she became the keeper of his legacy.
She raised their two daughters and, after Loesser died of lung cancer at 59 in 1969, she managed his music publishing company, Frank Music, until it was bought by CBS in 1976. (It was subsequently sold to Paul McCartney, but she retained creative control over her husband’s theater music and productions for Frank Loesser Enterprises.)
In 1977, feeling free of business obligations and with her daughters grown, Mrs. Loesser attended a party where Morton Gottlieb, a theatrical producer, urged her to return to singing — specifically, to perform her husband’s repertoire at the Ballroom, a restaurant and cabaret in SoHo.
She did, billed as Jo Sullivan, and her comeback was triumphant.
You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#55 in a series)
April 26th, 2019We have now come to the point where I have done as many of these as I have “Art, damn it, art!” watches. (And more of these than Art Acevedo watches.)
The mayor of Edinburg, Texas, and his wife have been arrested on charges of election fraud and illegal voting.
Edinburg is in the southern part of the state, in the area generally called the “Rio Grande Valley”.
More:
Nearly 20 people have been arrested since last year in connection with the fraud case. Prosecutors said the scheme — involving Mr. Molina, his wife and paid campaign workers — was largely carried out by having numerous voters who did not live in Edinburg claim they were residents, including many who stated they lived in an apartment complex Mr. Molina owns.
According to court documents, Mr. Molina and his wife were both registered as volunteer voter registrars in the 2017 election and were authorized to help people fill out voter registration applications. Several of those with false addresses were signed by Mr. Molina and included his voter registrar number, according to the criminal complaint.
This does not exactly strike me as being a genius scheme.
The Mr. Garcia mentioned above is Richard Garcia, the former mayor, who Mr. Molina defeated by 1,240 votes in the 2017 election.
Bang! goes another kanga on the bonnet of the van…
April 26th, 2019I live fairly near Wimberly, TX. The surrounding area is pretty nice: there’s a fair amount of undeveloped land, and a few ranches.
One of the local ranchers specializes in “exotic animals”. He brought a kangaroo down to his ranch: “This was something of a trial run by him for kangaroos.”
The trial run is not working out so well: the kangaroo has busted out and is on the run.
Helm said he and others have been going out every couple of hours to take a gander at the kangaroo as it bounds across the rural locale, munching on grass and flowers. He said the area is the perfect habitat for the animal, which is native to Australia.
“He’s not hurting anybody,” Helm said. “He’s healthy, and he’s eating good.”
The authorities would prefer that you not try to pet, capture, feed, or otherwise approach the roo:
Helm said the animal really doesn’t like humans, and won’t let anybody get closer than about 80 feet before taking off.
“You better wear a cape and an ‘S’ on your chest if you want to catch this thing,” Helm said. He said it will likely take someone with a tranquilizer dart and dogs to be able to capture the animal. Even after being sedated, Helm said the kangaroo could probably cover a couple of miles in a matter of minutes. “I’m afraid if anyone even got close enough to put a rope on it, they’re going to end up in the emergency room real fast.”
I seem to remember having kangaroo meat once, at a restaurant on the Riverwalk in San Antonio. Oddly, I don’t remember the name of the place, and it’s probably gone by now anyway.
After the jump, subject line hattip and musical interlude.
You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#54 in a series)
April 25th, 2019I want to note here that the flaming hyenas watch is not literal: I don’t intend for crooked politicians to catch fire. “You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena!” is a reference to a classic “Bloom County” strip that, sadly, isn’t available on line.
Why does this matter? I’ll get to that.
But first: I was trying to keep up with Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh and the whole “Healthy Holly” scandal. Really, I was. But I got busy with Holy Week and taxes and other stuff and…fortunately, Lawrence sent me the latest news.
The FBI raided the mayor’s home this morning.
And City Hall.
And “several other locations” associated with the mayor.
Telling detail:
In other news: Tyus Byrd was mayor of Parma, Missouri. She lost her re-election bid. Her successor was sworn in a little more than a week ago.
Right after the swearing in, Mayor Byrd’s house caught fire.
Sounds like bad luck, right? You lose the mayor’s race, then your house catches fire?
Then City Hall caught fire, too.
What began as a small-town changing of the guard has quickly become a statewide investigation. The authorities suspect foul play, and the state fire marshal’s office is assisting the local sheriff’s office in an arson inquiry. At the same time, the state auditor’s office announced it had opened an audit into Parma’s finances after finding credible allegations of problems under Ms. Byrd’s watch. Some have tied the two investigations together, suggesting that the fires were meant to destroy evidence, while another theory purported that Ms. Byrd had been targeted because of her race.
Chris Hensley, a chief deputy with the New Madrid County Sheriff’s Department, said that the evidence showed that multiple fires had been set at City Hall and that arson was suspected.
The building is apparently intact, but (quel frommage!) “nearly all records and the computer” (?) were destroyed.
“Once is an accident. Twice is a coincidence. Three times is an enemy action.” But this is a case where I don’t think we need to wait for a third time.
Obit watch: April 25, 2019.
April 25th, 2019Wow. Lots going on.
This is breaking news: Lawrence beat me to it (because I had to wait for my lunch hour to post).
Former Williamson County DA Jana Duty was found dead in a South Texas condo yesterday.
I have a WCDA tag for reasons: if you go back and look, or read Lawrence’s post, you’ll see that former DA Duty was controversial and apparently had some issues during her tenure. But this is still a sad and awful thing.
Mark Medoff, playwright. He was best known for “Children of a Lesser God”, which won multiple Tony awards and was the basis for the Oscar winning Marlee Matlin movie.
This one is for Mike the Musicologist: Heather Harper, soprano.
An unanticipated performance in 1962 brought Ms. Harper international attention when, on 10 days’ notice, she substituted for Galina Vishnevskaya in the premiere of Britten’s “War Requiem.” The work was written to dedicate the new Coventry Cathedral in England, the original 14th-century structure having been bombed into ruin during World War II.
As a gesture of reconciliation, Britten, a pacifist, had intended the soloists to be the tenor Peter Pears (an Englishman), the baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (a German) and Ms. Vishnevskaya (a Russian). But the Soviet government refused to allow Ms. Vishnevskaya to travel to Coventry for the premiere. Ms. Harper, just turned 32, took her place and triumphed.
She did a lot of work with Britten (including Ellen in the 1969 BBC production of “Peter Grimes”) but she had a larger repertoire, including singing “Lohengrin” at Bayreuth.
Fay McKenzie, actress. Her story is interesting:
She was also in five Blake Edwards movies and five Gene Autry movies. Ms. McKenzie was 101 when she passed.
Ken Kercheval. He did a lot of TV work (no “Mannix”, though) and was probably most famous as Cliff Barnes on “Dallas”. (He was also in “Devil Dog: The Hound of Hell“, which I’d kind of like to watch. Lawrence, however, does not seem to care much for movies involving demonic dogs.)
Finally, Grand Duke Jean of Luxembourg. Noted:
As the crown prince, he fled Luxembourg with the grand ducal family after Germany invaded the country in May 1940 and found refuge in France, Portugal, the United States and Canada before moving to Britain to join the Irish Guards, a regiment of the British Army, as a private in 1942.
He participated in the Allies’ invasion of Normandy in 1944 and fought in the Battle for Caen there. Three months later he took part in the liberation of Brussels.
Among other honors, he received a Silver Star from the United States, a War Medal from Britain and the French Croix de Guerre. He was promoted to colonel in the Irish Guards in 1984 and was made an honorary general of the British Army in 1995.
Headline of the day.
April 24th, 2019From the HouChron:
Bonus: Florida man!
Double bonus:
Bill Grotjahn, who investigated the death for the Medical Examiner’s Office, said Hajos had died from trauma inflicted by the bird. He called it “such an unusual situation.”
“I’ve been doing this for 18 years and I’ve never had a thing like this,” he said. “I’ve had them killed by alligators and snakes but never by a bird like that. I know ostriches and emus have their moments, but cassowaries are an extremely, extremely dangerous bird. You don’t want to fool around with them. They have no sense of humor.”
“…this doesn’t look like any ostrich attack that I’ve ever seen.”
(Yes, yes, I know: cassowaries are not ostriches or emus. But unless I’m badly misreading Wikipedia, they are in the same family.)
Obit watch: April 24, 2019.
April 24th, 2019Henry W. Bloch, co-founder of H&R Block, has passed away at 96.
I don’t get as much of an opportunity to use these tags as I would like, so I have to note the death of Verena Wagner Lafferentz, Richard Wagner’s last surviving grandchild.
…
…
In 1943, when she was 23, she was back in the public eye when she married Bodo Lafferentz, who had joined the Nazi Party a decade earlier, had worked for Volkswagen and had since 1939 been a high-ranking officer in the SS, assigned to the Race and Settlement office.
He oversaw a rocket research center at an outpost of the Flossenbürg concentration camp, where, according to the book “Bayreuth, the Outer Camp of Flossenbürg Concentration Camp” (2003), Wieland Wagner recruited inmates as laborers to build sets for the Bayreuth Festival.
Obit watch: April 23, 2019.
April 23rd, 2019Jacqui Saburido passed away on Sunday Saturday. She was 40.
On the night of September 19th, 1999, she and three friends were returning from a party at Lake Travis. Along RM 2222, their car was hit by a drunk driver. Two people died in the crash. Two more were pulled out of the car before it caught fire.
The drunk driver, Reggie Stephey, was convicted on two counts of intoxication manslaughter and sentenced to seven years in prison.
Obit watch: April 20, 2019.
April 20th, 2019Warren Adler, novelist. He is perhaps most famous as the author of The War of the Roses, which was adapted into the Michael Douglas/Kathleen Turner film.
James W. McCord Jr., leader of the Watergate burglars.
On June 17, 1972, four expatriate Cubans and Mr. McCord, chief of security for the Nixon re-election campaign and a leader of the White House “plumbers” unit assigned to plug information leaks, broke into Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate complex in Washington to fix problematic listening devices that they had planted weeks earlier.
But a night watchman alerted the police, and they were caught, odd burglars in business suits carrying cameras and walkie-talkies. E. Howard Hunt, a former C.I.A. agent, and G. Gordon Liddy, the re-election committee’s general counsel, who ran the break-in from a nearby hotel room, fled but were soon arrested. Mr. McCord revealed at an arraignment that he had once worked for the C.I.A., and the unraveling began.
Interesting thing about this obit: Mr. McCord apparently passed away in June of 2017, but his death was not widely reported until recently.
Lorraine Warren, “psychic” fraud.
This was noted elsewhere earlier in the week, but for the historical record: Geraldyn M. “Jerri” Cobb, noted pilot and an early recruit for the astronaut program.
Noted.
April 18th, 20191. Judith Clark has been granted parole. Officer Waverly Brown and Sgt. Edward O’Grady of the Nyack Police Department were unavailable for comment, as was Brinks employee Peter Paige.
2. Thread:
at some point I'd like to write something in long-form about Magnum Force (the second Dirty Harry movie) vs A Few Good Men as different manifestations of what might be called the centurion pattern.
— QWRhbSBFbGt1cw== (@Aelkus) April 17, 2019
I haven’t seen “A Few Good Men” yet. (I feel like I should, but: Sorkin.) But I agree with his points on “Magnum Force”. I swear I’ve written about this before, but I think “Dirty Harry” and “Magnum Force” are both much more complicated movies than the people who call them “fascist” give them credit for. “Dirty Harry” is about a good man who is trying to do his job, while coming to terms with a world that’s changing around him. “Magnum Force” is about that same man, who, when given a chance to reject those changes, makes the moral choice not to.
3. Article about Father Fournier from the NYT. Mike the Musicologist sent over a Reddit thread as well.
It seems somehow inappropriate to refer to a priest as a bad a–, but I can’t think of a better word. Before rushing into a burning building, the Father had:
- served with French forces in Afghanistan, and survived an ambush that killed 10 men
- went into Bataclan while the shooting was going on to provide absolution for the victims
Clint Eastwood, call your people, please: Father Fournier would be a good subject for your next movie.
Tactical advice from a priest:
From a military base in Afghanistan to a revered cathedral torn by flames, the rule, he said, is the same: “Always be on the move, or else you die.”
Inside Notre-Dame, he said, he kept the safety of his fellow firefighters foremost in his mind. “Artworks can be reproduced, while a human life can’t,” he said.
“The one who tells you that he’s not afraid in that kind of situation is either very dangerous or foolish,” the chaplain said. “Even for a firefighter, to go inside a building in flames isn’t that natural.”
4. Should Roberto Clemente’s number 21 be retired across all of baseball? My feelings about baseball are well known, so I’m not the person to ask. But I do kind of like Clemente, who died nobly and far too young.
5. The Alliance of American Football has filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy.
Notre-Dame.
April 17th, 2019I don’t feel like I have to comment on everything in the news here, but I feel like I have to say something. I’ve spent the past couple of days going around in my head about this.
I don’t have the personal connection to Notre-Dame de Paris that a lot of folks do: I’ve never been to France, much less seen it up close and personal. I feel like I should have more of a connection, being a frustrated amateur historian and Notre-Dame being one of the spiritual centers of my people.
I don’t know that I have any kind of profound take on it, compared to other, smarter people. There is a part of me that finds some level of symbolism in the fire taking place this week, of all weeks: Notre-Dame rising from the ashes as symbolic analogy to Christ rising from the tomb.
There is another part of me that wants to echo Pirsig from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and the distinction he makes: the church as corporate body that pays bills and employs people and owns buildings, and the Church as the great mass of believers, the continuity of belief and tradition in the lives of people, not in a building. Notre-Dame might burn, but the true Church will never die as long as there are believers.
But that seems dismissive. On the other hand, there are some takes I’ve liked:
I took a survey course of Catholic cathedral architecture taught by a remarkably cynical former priest and on the first day of class he was like “of cathedrals have multiple dates for different parts, burning down is an essential part of the life cycle of Catholic architecture.”
— ghost wife (@eponawest) April 15, 2019
(Thread.)
The fire department in Paris followed a protocol: Save the people, save the art, save the altar, save what furniture you can, then focus on the structure, in that order. They know what can be rebuilt and what can't.
— Michael … .-.. .- …- .. – -.-. …. (@_theek_) April 15, 2019
(Also thread. But calling out:
The steeple and the beams supporting it are 160 years old, and oaks for new beams awaits at Versailles, the grown replacements for oaks cut to rebuild after the revolution.
— Michael … .-.. .- …- .. – -.-. …. (@_theek_) April 15, 2019
Remind you of anything in particular?)
It looks now like there’s a lot of reason to be optimistic: the rose windows survived, the art and relics were rescued (and if there’s any justice at all in France, Father Fournier will never be able to pay for a drink or meal with his own money for the rest of his life), and the cathedral will be rebuilt. As other, smarter people have pointed out, this isn’t the first time: Notre-Dame was desecrated and damaged during the French Revolution, and restored between 1844 and 1864.
This was York Minster in 1984. Today you’d have no idea it happened. pic.twitter.com/FtzNRFscZr
— Daniel Benneworth-Gray (@gray) April 15, 2019
(True side note: my mother emailed me and asked if Quasimodo made it out. I had to explain to her that he wasn’t actually in the cathedral at the time, but was in a small space behind the building: the hutch back of Notre-Dame. Thank you, I’ll be here all week.)
Paris is at prayer and the Cross and the altar still stand amid the wreckage. These things should strike the Christian faithful as significant indeed.
— Fr. Brendon Laroche (@padrebrendon) April 15, 2019
Edited to add: One thing I forgot to note: we know a lot about Notre-Dame.
I know this doesn't help, but we have exquisite 3D laser maps of every detail of Notre Dame, thanks to the incredible work of @Vassar art historian Andrew Tallon. Prof Tallon passed away last November, but his work will be absolutely crucial https://t.co/YJl3XXUZTg
— Hannah Groch-Begley (@grouchybagels) April 15, 2019