JFK assassination, 50 years on

John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963

November 25, 1963

I've long been fascinated by the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, TX on November 22, 1963, an event that is receiving lots of attention this month on its fiftieth anniversary.  I've read numerous books on the subject and consider myself fairly well-versed in most aspects of the case.  (I actually have vague memories of the events as they were covered on television, though I was only four years old at the time.) The killing of Kennedy, of course, gave rise to all sorts of conspiracy theories, to which several factors contributed heavily.  One, the doctors who performed the autopsy on Kennedy's body botched several aspects of the post-mortem, especially the track of the first bullet that hit him.  (They initially failed to consider that the exit wound might have been obliterated by the tracheotomy that the ER doctors in Dallas performed on him.)  Two, Lee Harvey Oswald, the presumptive assassin, was himself gunned down two days later while in the Dallas PD's custody.  The police's negligence in guarding Oswald while moving him from the police station to the county jail quite understandably gave rise to suspicions that it was a contract killing to "silence" him.

Three, the notion that a single bullet could pass through Kennedy and cause all of Governor John Connally's wounds, all without fragmenting, seemed fantastical to many people.  And, absent that explanation, there necessarily had to have been multiple gunmen and, by definition, a conspiracy.  Four, as others have pointed out, the idea that an inconsequential person like Oswald could murder the president of the United States, without help, created a psychological need on many people's part to rationalize the deed by imagining it was the product of some large-scale, nefarious plot.  Five, most people assumed from the start -- especially since the assassination happened in a conservative city in a southern state -- that the attack came from the "environment of hate" on Kennedy's political right.  That the attack actually came from his political left just didn't fit in the heads of a lot of people.  And, last, for most people Oswald didn't appear to have a clear motive to kill Kennedy; after all, why would an avowed Marxist shoot at a liberal Democrat (a popular image of Kennedy that has only deepened over time)?  However, as many have pointed out, Kennedy was a committed anti-communist, and reportedly his administration had for some time been trying to assassinate Fidel Castro.  Is it really that far-fetched to believe a Castro supporter would want to kill him?

I have generally been inclined to accept the conclusions of the Warren Commission, in large part due to Occam's Razor -- and Oswald's having been the lone assassin is easily the simplest explanation of the killing.  There are many indicia of his guilt (although, of course, in the fever swamp of conspiracy-theorist brains, those indicia merely serve to highlight how complex and far-reaching the "plot" to get Kennedy really was).

One, there is little reason to doubt that Oswald owned the rifle used in the assassination, and he had taken in to work that day a parcel wrapped in brown paper that was roughly the size of the rifle when disassembled.  Two, ballistics tests later suggested that the Oswald rifle had been used in an attempt to assassinate retired Major General Edwin Walker, a right-wing political figure in Texas, in April 1963.  No one seems to dispute much that Oswald pulled the trigger on Walker, who was spared only because the bullet hit a window frame and was deflected.  Three, multiple people in Dealey Plaza saw someone of Oswald's description in the corner sixth-story window of the Texas School Book Depository prior to the shooting.  The fact (a) that two people watching the presidential motorcade from the fifth-floor window below heard three shots, the repeated operation of the bolt action of the weapon, and the spent shell casings hitting the floor above them, (b) that multiple witnesses on the ground saw the rifle barrel sticking out of the window as the shots were being fired, and (c) that three shell casings were later found in the sniper's nest are pretty conclusive evidence that shots were, indeed, fired from the sixth-floor window.

Four, Oswald left his workplace at the Book Depository almost immediately after the shooting and was the only employee not accounted for that afternoon.  Five, in what David Belin, an assistant counsel to the Warren Commission, called the "Rosetta Stone" to solving the Kennedy assassination, Oswald killed Officer J.D. Tippit of the Dallas PD.  I know Oliver Stone (in his film JFK) portrayed the proof of Oswald's guilt in the Tippit murder as shaky and inconclusive at best, but he had to ignore completely the overwhelming weight of the eyewitness testimony and other evidence to do so.  There simply isn't any reasonable doubt that Oswald killed Tippit, which begs the question that Belin posed: Why would Oswald kill a police officer if he hadn't already shot the president?

Finally, although there are no verbatim transcripts of Oswald's questioning during the two days he was in police custody, by all accounts he was smug, arrogant, and evasive the entire time.  In short, he didn't act like a person who was being framed for something he didn't do; rather, his demeanor was that of the proverbial cat that swallowed the canary.

As for evidence of a conspiracy, well, I'll say this.  There is no compelling evidence that any of the bullets hitting inside the presidential limousine came from any direction but the right rear of the car.  The words "back and to the left" have become a mantra for people who insist the fatal head shot came from the front; however, Frame 313 of the Zapruder film clearly shows blood and brain tissue coming out the front half of Kennedy's skull, indicative of a shot from the rear.  Who can say what a human body will do after a bullet takes out half of the person's brain -- especially a person wearing a back brace?  Thus I agree that the "back and to the left" motion of Kennedy's body is easily explained as a neuromuscular reaction to the devastating brain injury he suffered.  The "magic bullet" that passed through Kennedy's neck and hit Governor Connally was hardly supernatural; the 3-D renderings that people have done recently of pertinent frames from the Zapruder film satisfy me that the bullet didn't have to "zig-zag" through the air to cause all the wounds.  The bullet, though it didn't fragment, still was significantly deformed—flattened along its length—when it was found on the stretcher Connally had occupied at the hospital after the shooting.  And the fact that Connally was struck in the back by a tumbling bullet is proof that it had passed through something before it hit him -- and what could that possibly have been if not President Kennedy?

[Update 12/21/19: I’ve recently become aware that one or more doctors at Parkland Hospital in Dallas who were involved in the futile efforts to save President Kennedy on 11/22/63–and, if I remember correctly, an x-ray technician at Bethesda Naval Hospital (where the autopsy was done)—continued to insist to their dying day that Kennedy’s gaping head wound was located in the rear (occipital region) of his skull. If there were credible evidence of a frontal entrance wound, this would be it; however, to believe these doctors (and the x-ray technician) requires the conclusion that the autopsy photos and x-rays were faked, pretty much on the fly. If Occam’s Razor undercuts any part of the various outlandish JFK assassination conspiracy theories, it is that the post-mortem photographic/radiographic evidence was fabricated. The much-simpler explanation is simply that these people were mistaken or were outright lying.]

Did Jack Ruby, Oswald's killer, have mob connections?  Maybe, but his actions after Kennedy was killed show to my satisfaction that the man was mentally unbalanced and almost uncontrollably prone to acting on impulse.  (The evidence also shows that Ruby's presence in the basement of the police station, at the precise moment Oswald was brought out, was an amazing coincidence, but a coincidence nonetheless.)  He simply wasn't the kind of man an intelligent mob boss would hire to do a "hit" on Oswald.  But he was the kind of man who was stupid enough in the moment to think he'd be hailed as a hero for killing the president's assassin -- that he'd spend a day or two in police custody before being set free -- when all he really accomplished was to get himself locked up for life and to give birth to a thousand conspiracy theories. 

Was Oswald acting on anyone's orders?  Mary Anastasia O'Grady of the Wall Street Journal believes that Fidel Castro may well have known about Oswald's intent to shoot Kennedy, and that Oswald, whose application for a visa to enter Cuba (submitted at the Cuban consulate in Mexico City only a few weeks before the Kennedy assassination) had been rejected, may have been motivated by a desire to establish his Marxist-revolutionary bona fides to the Cuban government.  (On the other hand, it isn't clear that Oswald ever had much hope of getting away, as he didn't appear have an escape plan to speak of.)  O'Grady, however, doesn't believe Castro, who probably knew the U.S. government had been trying to kill him, specifically ordered Oswald to kill President Kennedy.  I agree -- who would have sent an unstable neurotic like Oswald on such a mission, even if one were rooting for the end result?

Thus we may never know if Oswald had specific connections to the Cuban government.  Many of the people who believe in a conspiracy are the ones least likely to suspect Castro of complicity in the assassination, or even to investigate the possibility thereof.  After all, President Kennedy was, and especially is now, the darling of the liberal left; it's simply inconceivable to them that one of their heroes, Castro, could have wanted to take out their patron saint, Kennedy.

In closing, I'll make a few comments about John F. Kennedy the man.  We know now what most of the American public didn't know about Kennedy while he was president -- namely (a) that his health was extremely tenuous and could have turned grave at any moment, and (b) that he was wildly, recklessly, even predatorially promiscuous (particularly in the case of his affair with 19-year-old White House press-office intern Mimi Alford, on whom, by her recent account, he essentially forced himself in their first liaison in his wife's bedroom).  His sexual conquests only enhance his image as far as his current-day admirers are concerned, but, back in the day, there was a lot about him that had to be kept secret in order to get him elected and then to keep him in office.  Bill O'Reilly believes, notwithstanding Kennedy's many infidelities, that the latter genuinely loved his wife Jackie, and I'm willing to grant him that.  

Kennedy also took some pretty conservative positions on foreign-policy and economic issues of the day.  (In the light of history, he clearly was correct on civil rights for people of color.)  Those positions were hardly outside of the mainstream for a Democrat of that era; it was only later in the 1960s that the Democratic Party tacked "hard-a-larboard," and some people think JFK's murder was the primary catalyst for the America-hating mindset from which arose the modern political Left in this country.  (It was no coincidence that various conservative Democrats, including John Connally himself, became Republicans in the 1970s.)  The question I ask myself about JFK, not to mention Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy, is where his politics would have ended up had he lived.  Would he have remained moderate, or would he have become an arch-liberal like his younger (and much-duller) brother Teddy?  We’ll obviously never know.

[Update 12/19/13: I came across this photo of JFK and Jackie, taken after they arrived at Love Field in Dallas on November 22, 1963.  It's striking for the vibrant colors of Mrs. Kennedy's suit and the roses that had been handed to her -- and for the knowledge in hindsight that, inside of an hour, JFK would be dead and that pink suit would be stained with his gore.]

[Update 2/27/14: This National Geographic documentary paints a very poignant picture of the last hours of President Kennedy's life, as seen through the camera lens and in the memories of various people who saw him and Mrs. Kennedy and shook their hands  I don't know how long it will stay up on Youtube, but it's worth watching multiple times.]

[Embedded video deleted from YouTube.]

Winrock in the early 1960s

The attached photo, a scan from another postcard I bought online, shows the interior of the Winrock Shopping Center in uptown Albuquerque.  Judging from the layout of the mall, and the fact that the little girls are wearing dresses, I'm guessing this photo was taken shortly after Winrock first opened in March 1961.  I originally thought that the view here is west-facing, but the amount of light coming through on the right side of the photo (presumably south) suggests that the perspective is actually facing east.  Thus the photographer was probably standing near the entrance of the old J.C. Penney store (years before it closed and re-located to the nearby Coronado Shopping Center).  Montgomery Ward, always one of my favorite stores, would have been at the far end of the mall on the right.  Winrock was an open-air (but roofed) mall in the early days, not being fully enclosed and temperature-controlled until years later; a number of additions were made over the years, including what once was the most-popular food court in town.  However, for whatever reason(s), Winrock just couldn't compete with Coronado, and when Montgomery Ward ceased retail operations in early 2001, the mall went into a nosedive from which it has never recovered.  There's always talk of efforts to revive Winrock, but none of them seems to involve any plan to recapture its old charms -- and perhaps that's impossible, at any rate, now that Walmart, Target, and Amazon.com (and the rest of the Internet) dominate the lower end of the retail world.  Still, I'm the sentimental sort, and I feel a great deal of nostalgia for Winrock in its various configurations.

[Update 5/9/14: I found this aerial photo of Winrock in the 1962 Sandia HS yearbook (which, of course, means it also dates from shortly after the mall opened).  I've marked Ward's, Penney's, and Cook's Sporting Goods, where my mother bought me my 12th birthday present in 1971, a pair of Adidas Superstar basketball shoes -- the "Air Jordans" of their day and expensive at $16.95/pair.]

Straining to think of things to write....

1. The attached photo shows me as a small child, probably sometime in the spring of 1960, with my brothers (Robin, Roger, Jeff, Kelly) in our back yard.  I was the object of a lot of attention at that age, particularly since there was a five-year gap between Kelly and me; however, that spread in age proved detrimental to me in the end, as it wasn't too much longer before my brothers started growing up and ignoring me for the most part.  (And, of course, our mother had another baby, her only daughter Kristen, in 1961.)  I was always a relative wimp -- heck, in many ways I was an absolute wimp -- and my getting eyeglasses at age 8, an ignominy that none of my siblings faced until later in life, compounded my fear of being punched in the face.  I wouldn't say I had an unhappy, or even a deprived, childhood, but most of my character flaws and personality shortcomings had root in my early years.  As I've always said, there is no part of my life that I'd want to re-live if it meant having to live out the intervening years again -- but, if I had to live my life over again, and if I had the benefit of the wisdom I've acquired through experience, there's a lot I'd do differently.

2. The massive difficulties associated with the roll-out of the "Healthcare.gov" website, by means of which people were supposed to be able to enroll in various Obamacare-related healthcare plans, didn't exactly surprise or dismay me.  Rather, it further serves to confirm my strong suspicion that the Obamacare legislation was never intended to foster a functional healthcare system, but merely to create inertia sufficient to arrive at a full-blown single-payer system within a short period of time.  Don't be shocked when, a year or two from now, we hear comments like the following from Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi: "This isn't working -- we need to give more control to the government!"

3. My health continues to go south.  I've written endlessly about the combined effect that my sleep disorder and my mal de debarquement have had on my life, but things are continually getting worse, not better.  My medications are like a band-aid to a gunshot wound -- and possibly a dirty band-aid at that.  I've more or less given up on the idea of running three miles in 30 minutes at the gym, as I don't have the aerobic fitness for it, much less the ability to bear the physical toll on my connective tissue.  (Lately I've been doing 2.7 miles in 30 minutes (5.4 mph), which, for the moment, is a fairly comfortable workout.)  And the mental fatigue caused by sleep deprivation and the constant sensation of motion could ultimately force me to retire from work sooner than later.  We can't afford it, but neither can my employer afford to keep paying a dullard.

4. I'm losing my ability to sit down and read something -- virtually anything -- on the printed page.  First, I can't remember the last time I read a novel (or, at least, one that I hadn't read previously).  Second, despite my being a "JFK assassination" buff of long standing, it's taking me a long time to read Vincent Bugliosi's Parkland, a book that would have engrossed me ten years ago.  And, third, I can't even sit down and read an issue of Sports Illustrated, something that I loved to do thirty years ago.  I have a subscription to the magazine and receive it in the mail every Friday; however, most of the time I give it a cursory look and never get back to reading the feature articles.  (Now, SI has changed through the years, and I find the current format to be overly "busy" and distracting -- although its being condensed down to less than half of its former number of pages actually tends to make it an easier read -- but it still represents high-quality sports journalism.)  I simply don't have much of an attention span anymore.

5. As usual, we've got lots of things to do to our house but little will to do them.  We did recently install a new storm door, which was more work than it ought to have been, and we'll have to get a new dishwasher soon; however, the trim on the outside of our house is a weather-beaten disgrace -- and we need a new garage door, and the stucco needs repairs and/or painting, and we need to chisel/grind down the uneven parts of our driveway (caused by tree roots passing underneath it in years past), and we need to cut down more trees (and trim the others).  I think it would be worth paying other people to do all these things, but there's very little that Dorine doesn't prefer us to do ourselves, however long it takes to get to it.

6. The list I made in 2008 of my fifty favorite movies is still fairly representative, but there are a lot of movies that I like about as well as most of the films on the original list.  Here are some, in no particular order: the Austin Powers trilogy (especially Goldmember, oddly) (1997-2002); The Blues Brothers (1980); Lonely Are the Brave (1962); Men In Black (1997); The Fugitive (at least the first three-quarters of it) (1993); Sherlock Holmes (2009); Little Big Man (1970); The Day of the Jackal (1973); Airplane! (1980); Chariots of Fire (1981); Roxanne (1987); Wayne's World (1992); Rudy (1993); Little Women (1994); Amazing Grace (2006); Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003); Mission Impossible (1996); Cold Comfort Farm (1995); The Breakfast Club (1985); Blackbeard's Ghost (1968); The Mummy (1999); On Any Sunday (1971); and The Ghost and Mr. Chicken (1966).

Leah Brooke Hamblin, b. 10/10/13

Juan Carlos Duque, actualizado

A few years ago, I wrote about Juan Carlos Duque's song "Promesas" and the memories it held for me of Chile and my church mission there in 1979-80.  A lady named Patty Páez, whom I'd known in La Cisterna (a comuna of Santiago) when she was a young girl, came across my original blog post and recently, out of the blue, sent me a copy of Duque's 2006 CD Queda tanto por andar (see attached image).  I'm really impressed with the CD -- the music is great and Duque, after all, was ~58 years old when the CD was released (and is now ~65 years old); I mean, most singers at that age, if they're still recording, tend to do middle-of-the-road standards, not vibrant, modern, meaningful pop tunes.  Patty implied that Duque's importance to the music scene in Chile is indicative of an overall lack of talent there; I can't speak to that question, but Duque's abilities as a songwriter, arranger, musician, and singer are undeniable as far as I'm concerned.  (By the way, the new album even has an updated, guitar-heavy version of "Promesas.")

Garry Winogrand's "Albuquerque 1957"

Albuquerque 1957

I don't buy many postcards on-line, although a couple of years ago I bought an early postcard of the Western Skies Hotel on an eBay-like site called Bidstart.  Bidstart has since sent me periodic e-mails with "suggestions" for other postcards I might like, and one of these e-mails contained a captivating image that conjured up all sorts of childhood memories for me.  I had never seen the photograph before, so I had no idea that either the image or Garry Winogrand, the photographer, was famous; rather, I mistakenly assumed that it was someone's family photo that somehow had ended up on a postcard.  Winogrand, I've since found out, was famed for his street photography, and Albuquerque 1957 is one of the photographs for which he is most remembered.  (His most-famous photo is probably one of several iconic images of Marilyn Monroe with her dress being swept up, while standing on a grate over an air duct, as part of the publicity surrounding the release of the film The Seven Year Itch.)

Anyway, Albuquerque 1957 (see attached) shows a toddler, in cloth diapers, at the top of the driveway to a home that obviously was a Dale Bellamah home of a style that is common in Princess Jeanne Park, the subdivision in which I grew up in northeast Albuquerque.  It also shows the "U" -- the small peak in the Sandia foothills (now commonly called "U Mound") that I've already written about extensively.  My searching on Google revealed that a fellow named Joe Van Cleave investigated the location of the house and ultimately identified it, convincingly, as 1208 Muriel Street, NE, which indeed is in Princess Jeanne Park and is located between Lomas Blvd. and Constitution Ave. (more specifically, one block west of Juan Tabo Blvd. and just north of Mountain Rd.).  When Winogrand took the photo, I was still a gleam in my daddy's eye, but my family had already lived in its home on Gretta Street (some distance southwest of 1208 Muriel) for two years.  The area has been completely developed now -- there are houses all the way to within 50 yards or so of the "U," which thankfully is located in a city "open space" area -- but the image captures perfectly a place, and a moment in time, when Albuquerque was rapidly expanding to the east.

The kids of the families who lived on Muriel Street between Lomas and Constitution attended the same elementary school I did, although I lived a lot closer to it.  I remember that a kid my age named Kenny D_____ lived with his family on Muriel near its intersection with Mountain Rd.  He and I weren't friends, as he had a fearsome reputation in school as a fighter/bully, but he may have been in one or two of my classes.  For all I know, his family could have lived in the house at 1208 Muriel in that timeframe, as the neighborhood tended to be fairly transient even in the early days.

[Update 10/2/13: Here are a couple of Google Earth shots which give some perspective on the Winogrand image.  The left one is a broader view of the area and contains a number of area landmarks, including my parents' home.  The one on the right is a closer view of the 1208 Muriel home and the "U," showing just how much development has occurred since 1957.)

 








[Update 10/30/13:Here is the current Google "Street View" of 1208 Muriel NE -- 56 years after Winogrand's photo of the toddler.]

Camping Trip to Villanueva, August 23-24, 2013

Kiley with Joey

Kayla

Devery and Easton

Easton with Noelle

Walking down to the playground

On the way to the playground

Heidi and Devery and kids

Sam, Kiley, and Joey

Panoramic view of our campsite

Dorine

Me with the boys

The shelter structure at our site

Sam with his foil dinner

Lighting the lantern

Devery and Easton

Panoramic view of the bridge crossing the Pecos River

We took our annual overnight camping trip to Villanueva State Park on Friday, August 23, and Saturday, August 24.  Devery, Heidi, and I drove up several hours early to try to secure a decent campsite; we were about five minutes late to get a site on the river, but we were able to get the large shelter site at the top of the hill, which I'd almost prefer in any case.  (Dorine, Easton, and Kiley and Sam came up later on Friday.)  Family camping is always a chore to get ready for, so I continually wonder if one night is worth all the trouble; however, the kids always eat it up, and it's fun to be outdoors with family.  The Pecos was really low on this trip, even after it rained on Friday afternoon, so we didn't do any tubing.  We cooked foil dinners on charcoal on Friday night, then had a hearty breakfast of eggs, sausage, and hash browns on Saturday morning.  We didn't even bother doing any real hiking on this trip, either -- I felt tired and run-down.

Having said that, I do have some thoughts....

Darren and Cait at the "Eye"

1. Zimmerman/Martin Case.  I had a feeling George Zimmerman was going to be acquitted in the Trayvon Martin killing in Florida, and I'm wondering now how anyone could have expected a different outcome, given that even the leftoid press's reports on the trial seemed to indicate that the prosecution was proving the defense's case at every turn.  Not being African American, I wonder what it is about this case that I'm not getting.  One, the evidence certainly could reasonably (and apparently did, in the jury's minds) lead to the following conclusions: (a) that Martin was acting suspiciously prior to his altercation with Zimmerman; (b) that, instead of going back to his father's girlfriend's house, Martin chose to hang around and pick a fight with the neighborhood watch captain who was following him around; and (c) that Martin simply chose to beat up the wrong person, in the wrong place, at the wrong time -- and paid the ultimate price for it.  And, two, African American teenagers and children -- many of whom are completely innocent bystanders caught in crossfire -- are killed almost every day in gun-related violence in America's largest cities -- except that usually the shooters are themselves black.  What is it about Martin's killer's not being black (while still not being white [i.e., Anglo], or at least not any more so than, say, Barack Obama) that invests Martin's life, and his death, with so much more significance than that attaching to African American victims of African American gunfire?  The only plausible answer is that he is hugely symbolic of white oppression to the black community -- more so, unfortunately for them, than the actual facts of the case will support.  Is there still racism in the United States?  I'm not so blind or naive to say there isn't, but it's insulting for anyone to suggest there hasn't been any progress at all in the last two or three.generations.

2. Ken Burns's Baseball.  Despite my not really liking Jazz, I went ahead and bought a copy of Ken Burns's film Baseball (including the "10th Inning" update) on eBay.  I don't really know why, but it seems like every topic on which Burns chooses to do a documentary ends up being a dead horse; I haven't quite decided if they were "dead" before he addressed them, or if he plays a significant role in "killing" them, but they somehow seem diminished when he's done.  His most-acclaimed film is probably still The Civil War, which I've watched five or six times.  I get the impression, however, that some critics have re-thought their position on it.  It could be that it now seems overly sentimental to them, especially as regards the notion that the Union was worth the cost of preserving it.  Jazz made clear that jazz music played a tremendous role in the cultural development of the U.S.; however, in considering the music's history, one is forced to conclude that it has become all but irrelevant, except as the stuff of nostalgia, in modern-day America.  And, likewise, Baseball, while interesting as history, serves to illustrate a number of reasons why the sport has declined in the last couple of generations, especially (1) the widespread use of PEDs (and the confusion and perturbation they have caused about the latter-day breaking of records), (2) skyrocketing salaries and ticket prices, and (3) the fact that children in this country, to the extent they aren't becoming fat and brain-dead on fast food and video games, are choosing to play other sports.  (I think it's telling that slow-pitch softball -- admittedly a sissified form of baseball, albeit one that many ex-baseball players have traditionally played -- has become glaringly less-popular in Albuquerque than it was just twenty years ago, as many vacant and dark fields testify.  It doesn't seem that long ago that the city had to go rent private fields to have enough parks in which to schedule all the teams wanting to play.)

3. Barack Obama's love of titles.  I've come to dislike writing about President Obama, as I prefer not to think of him much at all.  (And I've found that I have rather mild feelings toward him compared to many other people -- talk to just about any small-business owner, for example.)  One thing that has occurred to me, however, is that he seems to like ceremonial titles very much -- editor of the Harvard Law Review, senator, president of the United States -- but somehow he finds distasteful the idea of having to carry out the office to which the title pertains.  Many people, myself included, lack an aptitude or a liking for leadership, but most of us have the sense not to run for elective office.

4. My love for my family.  Increasingly, I find myself living almost exclusively for my family -- my wife, children, and grandchildren.  It isn't like I'm constantly doing things to serve them or to enrich their lives, but they are the reason I go to work during the week and to church on Sundays.  I hope it means something to them that I try to tell them regularly that I love them.

5. My leg injury.  On the evening of July 26, I was running on a treadmill at Planet Fitness when I suffered a pretty severe tear in one of my calf muscles.  My left Achilles tendon was aching as I ran, so I was kind of favoring it; I should have stopped, of course, but I was 23 minutes into a 30-minute run and was anxious to get through it.  I nearly fell off the treadmill when the tear happened; I was afraid I'd ruptured my Achilles, although both my calf and my Achilles have steadily gotten better since then.  I haven't gone to the gym much lately, and when I've gone, I've ridden a stationary bike, as I did for well over two years before I got back on the treadmill last November.  I may simply have to face the fact that running beats me up too much these days; I'm too old and fat for it.

6. The temple.  Back in February, Dorine and I "re-upped" to serve as temple ordinance workers for another two years.  Since that time, however, Dorine was assigned to be the sister shift coordinator for all the Wednesday shifts we work (Weeks 2, 4, and now 5, when there is one), and now I only ever see her in passing.  It's almost like not having her there, which in turn makes it much less enjoyable for me.  I'm still the "trainer" in Week 4; I'm probably better at it than I typically give myself credit for, but it isn't something I relish doing.

7. The effect of cutting down trees in our back yard.  The house to our east was sold sometime back, and one thing the new owners did was to cut down the junipers in their back yard.  A number of trees (a large maple, several cypresses) have died in our back yard, as well, and we've been cutting them down.  (The maple has provided us with what will probably be a ten-year supply -- for us -- of firewood.)  The effect of all this tree-cutting has been two-fold: (1) we now have a direct line of sight to the back windows of several neighbors' houses on the street behind us (leaving us with less perceived privacy); and (2) our back yard seems even bigger than it did before.

8. BYU football.  I'm looking forward to the college football season and am excited to watch BYU play.  They have a tough schedule this year, playing Virginia, Texas, Utah, Georgia Tech, Houston, Boise State, Wisconsin, Notre Dame, and Nevada.  If the team really comes together, especially on offense (down-field passing and pass-blocking), a 9-3 record would probably still be a tremendous accomplishment; however, if their offense isn't better than it was last year, a 3-9 record, and no bowl game, is a real possibility.  (I'm taking nothing for granted this year!)  I like BYU's independent status in football, and the schedules it is starting to produce -- I really like being able ot watch most of their games on television -- but it isn't fun to watch them sputter.

9.  U.S. men's soccer and the 2014 World Cup.  The U.S. men's national soccer team has been playing very well lately, winning several World Cup qualifiers and then winning the CONCACAF Gold Cup competition.  (Curiously, the U.S.'s resurgence has coincided with a stretch of mediocre play by Mexico, its primary regional rival and the gold medalists in the 2012 Olympics.)  It's easy to conclude that the biggest difference has been the influence of Jurgen Klinsmann, the team's German coach, who seems to be teaching a certain flair, especially in the offensive third of the field, that the U.S. has never really had.  The most-exciting thing, however, is that the U.S. has done all this without having its three best field players -- Landon Donovan, Clint Dempsey, and Michael Bradley -- in the lineup at the same time.  That bodes well for the 2014 World Cup in Brazil.

10.  The hikes and camping trip(s) we haven't taken this summer.  I really wanted to do a couple of strenuous hikes this summer in the Sandias, but the only real hike I've done this year was to go up to the "Eye of the Sandias," and then down the so-called "Mano Trail," with Darren and Cait on the Saturday before Memorial Day -- which only took about two-and-a-half hours.  (See photo above.)  Likewise, we haven't gone camping with any of the kids and grandkids this summer, although Dorine is talking about going somewhere next weekend (but only because Devery brought it up).

11. My musical tastes.  I haven't bought much music, MP3s or CDs, in a long time.  Occasionally I'll hear a song, usually in a restaurant or on a movie soundtrack, that I like and want to buy, but otherwise my taste in music is pretty fixed in time, being largely bounded by the period from about 1965 to about 1985.  I have electronic copies of most of the songs I grew up liking, or which I used to like to dance to back in the early 1980s; thus I just don't see the need to shop for more.  I haven't put any new music on my iPod(s) in at least a couple of years.

11th Ward Reunion on 5/25/13 - The Videos Arise

Hard-core ROMA dude

On the evening of May 25, 2013, I attended a reunion of the Albuquerque 11th Ward, the singles ward that I attended in the early 1980s.  (Dorine couldn't go because Darren and Cait were in town that weekend.)  Unfortunately, not too many people (myself included) thought to take photos of the actual event, which took place at the Quarters BBQ on Ellison NW on Albuquerque's West Side.  However, it was great to see quite a few old friends, especially my old college roommates and singles-ward compadres (and co-conspirators) Tracy Carroll and Ken Mantlo.  The thing that made the evening magic, however, was the location, the playing, and the ultimate digitizing and distribution of the old "Academy Awards" videos that ward members produced back in the summer of 1982 for a ward "movie night" activity.  The videos aren't as good, or even as funny, as I'd remembered them, much of the problem being the relatively primitive "VHS camcorder" technology available to us thirty-plus years ago.  (Another major problem where I'm concerned was my abjectly cringe-worthy performance in the "dating spoof" video.)  However, they capture a time and place -- and a fun-loving singles ward -- like little else could, and for that reason they are priceless to me.  I had long been under the impression that there were numerous copies of the videos floating around, but, as it turned out, the only complete copy ever made was the actual VHS "master" tape played at the "movie night" activity in 1982, which had ended up in the hands of former ward member Randy Franklin.  Randy not only brought the tape to the reunion, but he generously lent it to another former ward member, Virgil Clawson, to digitize and send to interested parties on DVD.  I received my copy a few days ago, and it was almost like being presented with the Holy Grail.  The last reunion, which took place in March 2011 --  I couldn't attend, as Dorine and I were in Utah that particular weekend -- was great for all the old photos it brought to light; this reunion, though a lot of people couldn't come to it, was special for its resurrecting the videos.  (The still-frame above shows me singing, as a member of the "Royal Order of Ministering Angels" [or "ROMA"], the J. Geils Band's "Love Stinks.")  At some point, I think I'll ask someone more tech-savvy than me to do some editing to make the videos more watchable, but for now it's enough to have them in my possession.

[Update 8/10/13: I uploaded all of the videos to Youtube and created a playlist of the three files.  Here's an embed.]

Trip to Branson and Nauvoo, June 28-July 6, 2013

A cave on our hike near Branson

Judy and Mike near Branson

Dorine and I near Branson

The OKC bombing memorial

The Beatles tribute band we saw in Branson - loads of fun!

In Nauvoo at the "Last Ride" monument

In front of our hotel room in Nauvoo

At the Browning gunsmithing shop

Outside the visitors' center, Nauvoo

An original (?) sunstone from the temple

Dorine on one of the carriage tours

Mike before the "Sunset" show

Outside the printing shop

On the banks of the Mississippi

"Sunset Over the Mississippi"

Seventies Hall - Interior

On a barge of the type used to ferry wagons

Mike with a petite guide at the BY home

Seventies Hall - Exterior

With the draft horses used for the carriage

Dorine outside BY's root cellar

At the tinsmith's shop

At the "coopering" display

Quote by Louisa Barnes Pratt

Pointing out Rebecca Mangum's name

"Bueller?  Bueller?"

Carthage Jail

4th of July parade in Carthage, IL

Looking down where Joseph fell

Carthage Jail

The hole from the bullet that killed Hyrum

Old Nauvoo Burial Ground

On the spot where Joseph was martyred

At the graves of Joseph, Emma, Hyrum

Old Smith/Bidamon family home

At the Smith "Red Brick" store

Mansion House

At the site of Porter Rockwell's residence in Nauvoo

"The Prophet's Last Ride"

Rebuilt Nauvoo Temple

Liberty Jail

Sunset over the River

Awful place to spend five months

Liberty Jail

At the Cheesecake Factory in KC

Outside Liberty Jail

"Oh Lord, my God!"

Outside the Cheesecake Factory in KC

Family Living Center in Nauvoo

BYU fans are everywhere

Dorine and I traveled with Mike and Judy to the Midwest for some sight-seeing.  I got to visit or pass through a number of states that I'd never been to before -- Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois (except an airport), Iowa, and Kansas, to be exact.  The trip had two real aims: one was to visit Branson, Missouri and see a couple of shows there, and the other was to take a tour of church-history sites in Nauvoo, Illinois, Carthage, Illinois, and Liberty, Missouri.

We left Albuquerque on the morning of Friday, June 28, driving east on I-40 to Oklahoma City and staying the night in a Residence Inn there.  We ate dinner at a popular local steakhouse (whose name escapes me), although I wasn't too impressed after waiting for an hour for a table and then getting a cut of meat with more than a little gristle in it.  That night we drove down to the Oklahoma City National Memorial (the site of the Murrah Federal Building bombing in 1995, in which 168 people were killed), which was both impressive and somewhat eerie.

The next morning we got back on the road and drove to Branson.  I"d pictured Branson as being a greener, more-humid version of the Las Vegas Strip, but it actually doesn't have gambling and is located in the heart of the Missouri Ozarks.  We stayed two nights at the Worldmark resort there, seeing a Beatles tribute band ("Liverpool Legends") at the Andy Williams Theater on Saturday and a show of Chinese acrobats at the New Shanghai Theater on Sunday.  In between, we attended sacrament meeting in one of the Branson wards and took a hike on Sunday afternoon.

On Monday morning, July 1, we hopped in the car and headed northeast to Nauvoo.  It was a bit of an adventure finding it, especially using the "eccentric" GPS in Mike's Lexus; we ended up on several obscure back roads trying to get across the Mississippi River, then we drove north on the Illinois side to Nauvoo.  I'm not sure what I was expecting when we got there, but our hotel (the Nauvoo Family Inn & Suites) was decent, if expensive.  The most-striking things about Nauvoo are (a) the massive investment that the LDS Church has sunk into restoring much of it -- including re-building the long-gone Nauvoo Temple (in which we did an endowment session on Wednesday, July 3) -- as a site to do missionary work, and (b) the fact that most of the local residents, generally not Mormons, seem unenthused about any aspect of the tourist trade beyond what it does for the local economy. 

In general, the Mormons were in the area only about seven years (1839-1846), from the time they were driven out of Missouri to the time when they were more or less driven out of Illinois; however, that period looms so large in Mormon lore that most active Mormons will make a pilgrimage there at some time in their lives.  I have ancestors on both sides of my family who lived in Nauvoo -- Kartchners, Hunts, and Pratts on my dad's side, and Richeys, Mangums, and Chapmans on my mom's side -- and thus I've long felt a particular draw to the place, notwithstanding my not ever going there before.  (Note the pictures above that show me with (a) the name of Rebecca Mangum, a third-great grandmother on my mother's side, who died at Winter Quarters, Nebraska, and (b) a plaque on the "Trail of Hope" with a quote from Louisa Barnes (not Barns) Pratt, a third-great grandmother on my father's side -- obviously a true pioneer in women's rights.)

We toured most of the church sites and displays/demonstrations in the three days we were in Nauvoo.  The younger "performing" missionaries -- singers, musicians, actors -- do much to give a "period" flavor to the place; especially affecting were the twilight "Trail of Hope" vignettes acted out along Parley Street, the Saints' route of evacuation from the city (and across the frozen river) in 1846.  On Thursday, we got around to touring the "Community of Christ" (f/k/a the Reorganized LDS Church) facilities, which include the Joseph Smith home, the Mansion House, the Smith family cemetery, and the Smith "Red Brick Store."  It provided a stark contrast with the LDS presence: one, the information was presented from almost a strictly secular-history viewpoint; and, two, it emphasized the fact that Emma, Joseph Smith's widow, stayed in Nauvoo, married a man named Lewis Bidamon, and was instrumental in convincing her oldest son, Joseph Smith III, to "reorganize" the church some years after the bulk of the Saints had gone to Utah and had recognized Brigham Young as Joseph's successor.  One senses that the Community of Christ, which hardly seems to venerate Joseph Smith these days, is sort of bored with Nauvoo; it wouldn't surprise me if, someday soon, it sold the Smith sites to the LDS Church for the big money that the latter would certainly pay for them.

We also drove to Carthage, Illinois and toured the old Carthage Jail, where Joseph Smith and his older brother Hyrum were assassinated by a mob in June 1844.  It is a somber place that causes one to meditate sincerely on Joseph's life and prophetic calling, although, again, the local population seems largely oblivious to the jail's significance to Mormons.  (On the way to Carthage, we passed through a small village called "Ferris"; I couldn't resist taking a photo of the town's water tower and then using Microsoft Paint to add the word "SAVE" as an homage to Ferris Bueller's Day Off. (See above.)

We drove down the river a ways on the evening of July 4 to watch Keokuk, Iowa's fireworks display from across the river in Illinois.  The next day, we left Nauvoo and started driving home, passing first through Liberty, Missouri, stopping at the church's facility at the Liberty Jail, where Joseph was held in jail for five long, cold months in 1838-1839.  We then stopped in Kansas City, where we had lunch at the Cheesecake Factory.  Later, we spent the night in Wichita, Kansas, where I had an incredible fit of what literally must have been hay fever.  And we finally arrived back home on Saturday, July 6; it was on that day that I finally realized just how much time we'd spent in the car -- what a slog!

Overall, I enjoyed the trip immensely and am glad we went.  We like to travel with Mike and Judy, as they are always good company and take the tedium out of long stretches on the highway.