from Bruce
Anecdotes
Umpires
• Baseball players have tricks to fool the umpires. Some umpires at first base will look at the feet of the runner and listen for the sound of the baseball hitting the first baseman’s glove. Therefore, some first basemen will try to fool the umpire by pounding their fist in the glove to imitate the sound of a baseball hitting their glove. Once, Larry Goertz was umpiring and watching the feet of runner Johnny Moore. Umpire Goertz heard what he thought was the sound of a baseball hitting the glove of first baseman Sam Leslie while Mr. Moore was two steps from first base, so he called Mr. Moore out—and was surprised when Mr. Moore, who was not known to be a complainer, became very upset. Mr. Moore said to Umpire Goertz, “Larry, I feel I have a right to argue. Leslie doesn’t have the ball. They made the play at third base instead.”
• Umpire Tim Hurst was a very intelligent man. When John McGraw was a baseball player, he liked to bet on the horses and a racetrack was conveniently located just outside the St. Louis ballpark. Therefore, Mr. McGraw decided to get on Umpire Hurst so he could be thrown out of the game and could leave and go to the racetrack. After Umpire Hurst called a play, Mr. McGraw ran over to argue the decision. Unfortunately for Mr. McGraw, Umpire Hurst knew what he was doing, so Umpire Hurst told him, “You’re not going to be thrown out of this game, so get back and play third base. And if you expect to place anything on the horses, you’d better send a boy over to do it for you. You’re playing ball.” Mr. McGraw played third base and sent a boy over to place a bet for him.
• St. Louis Cardinal manager Frankie Frisch used to insult umpires, but he was careful not to say anything so insulting that he would be thrown out of the game. However, once he slipped up. He shouted something that the umpire didn’t hear, and when the umpire asked what he had said, Frankie said, “You guessed at everything else today. See if you can guess what I just said.” The umpire replied, “OK, I will, and for saying it, you’re out of the game, Frisch.
• Detroit Tiger Donnie Bush did not care for the way that umpire Silk O’Loughlin was officiating, so he let him know how he felt—loudly and angrily. Umpire O’Loughlin simply walked away, and Mr. Bush kept following him and continuing to let him know how he felt. Eventually, umpire O’Loughlin walked out the gate near first base. Mr. Bush followed him. Then umpire O’Loughlin turned around and told Mr. Bush, “Keep walking. You’re through for today.”
• Jackie Robinson broke the color line in modern major-league baseball. For a long time, he was treated differently because of his race. In 1948, he heckled an umpire who threw him out of the game. This actually made Jackie happy—the umpire would have done exactly the same thing to a white player who had done what Jackie did. Jackie treasured the next day’s newspaper headline: “Jackie Just Another Guy.”
• Frankie Frisch was manager of the Gas House Gang in St. Louis. One day, Mr. Frisch got into an argument with umpire Bill Klem, and after shouting a while, he pretended to faint in an attempt to avoid being thrown out of the game. The Pump House Gang started shouting, “Heart attack!”—but Mr. Klem leaned over Mr. Frisch and said, “Frisch, dead or alive, you’re out of the game.”
• As an African-American major-league umpire, Eric Gregg used to dance with the Philadelphia mascot, the Phillies Phanatic. When people asked why he was the only umpire who did that, he used to reply, “That’s easy. I’m the only umpire who can dance.”
• Charlie Moran used to be an umpire in the National League. Once, he was very slow in making a call about a hit ball, so some ballplayers surrounded him, asking, “Is it safe, or is it out?” Mr. Moran snarled, “It ain’t nothing until I call it.”
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© Copyright Bruce D. Bruce; All Rights Reserved
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Presenting
Michael Egan
U.S.A. replied:
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION
BANDCAMP MUSIC
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION OF BANDCAMP MUSIC
Music: "Skin"
Album: DONE
Artist: Barry White Gone Wrong
Artist Location: Lisbon, Portugal
Info: “Barry White Gone Wrong is Peter De Cuyper’s (ex Peephole, ex Le Divan) new Project. On a trip to Oslo, Norway, he met his musicians and they started composing in November 2010. In June 2011 a first single ‘Glamour Road’ (2 songs + 1 remix) was launched and BWGW immediately received airplay on several important radios in Portugal ( Antena3, RadarFM, RUC, etc.) After 10 months of hard work in the studio, BWGW started playing Live.” — Reverb Nation
Price: €1 (EURO) for track; €10 for nine-track album
Genre: Rock. Blues Rock.
Links:
DONE
Barry White Gone Wrong on Bandcamp
Barry White Gone Wrong on YouTube
Other Links:
David Bruce's Amazon Author Page
David Bruce's Smashwords Page
David Bruce's Blog #1
David Bruce's Blog #2
David Bruce's Blog #3
David Bruce's Apple iBookstore
David Bruce has over 140 Kindle books on Amazon.com.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
Stephen Suggests
LA
As Randy Newman would declare," I love LA."
New Venture
Michael Egan
Bonus Links
Jeannie the Teed-Off Temp
Reader Comment
Current Events
Linda >^..^<
We are all only temporarily able bodied.
Thanks, Linda!
that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
So, thought I'd be back in PA today, but I'm not.
Sigh.
RERUN
FRESH
Makes Thoughts Clear
Howard Stern
Howard Stern has made his thoughts very clear about people refusing the COVID-19 vaccine: "F*** them."
Stern, who is no stranger to airing his controversial opinions, went on a rant against anti-vaxxers on his SiriusXM show this week.
"As I remember, when I went to school, you had to get a measles vaccine. You had to get a mumps vaccine... When are we going to stop putting up with the idiots in this country?" he said on Tuesday's The Howard Stern Show. "F*** them. F*** their freedom. I want my freedom to live. I want to get out of the house already. I want to go next door and play chess. I want to go take some pictures. This is bulls***."
The 67-year-old shock-jock added, "the other thing I hate is that all these people with COVID who won't get vaccinated are in the hospitals clogging it up."
Stern's longtime co-host, Robin Quivers, chimed in, saying she has "trouble drumming up compassion" for "people that stupid."
Howard Stern
Global Citizen Live
Stevie Wonder
Stevie Wonder will headline Global Citizen Live’s star-studded 24-hour event in Los Angeles this month to help raise awareness around poverty, climate change and the need for more access to COVID-19 vaccine doses worldwide.
Global Citizen officials announced Thursday that Wonder will be among several performers — including H.E.R., Adam Lambert and Demi Lovato — to take part in the event at The Greek Theatre on Sept. 25. The event will feature other performances by Chloe x Halle, OneRepublic, The Lumineers, 5 Seconds of Summer and Ozuna.
The London lineup will include Duran Duran, Kylie Minogue, Mĺneskin, Nile Rodgers and Chic, and Rag’n’Bone Man.
Jennifer Lopez, Billie Eilish, Ed Sheeran, Coldplay, Usher, Lizzo, Elton John, Doja Cat, Metallica, Camila Cabello and Black Eyed Peas are set to perform from different locations.
The event will air on BBC on Sept. 25 and on ABC the next day. Other networks from around the world will share the event including Australia’s Channel 9, Brazil’s Multishow and Bis, France’s TF1/TMC and Singapore’s Mediacorp.
Stevie Wonder
Minnesota’s Poet Laureate
Gwen Nell Westerman
A Dakota scholar, author and artist has been named Minnesota’s poet laureate, the first time the honor has been bestowed upon a Native American, the governor’s office announced Thursday.
Minnesota State University, Mankato English professor Gwen Nell Westerman is a citizen of her father’s people, the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate in the Dakotas. Her mother’s people are from the Flint District of the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma.
Westerman has written about Dakota history and language. She has won two Minnesota Book Awards for her work about Dakota people called “Mni Sota Makoce: The Land of the Dakota.” Her poetry collection, “Follow the Blackbirds,” was written in English and Dakota. Her poems and essays have been published in journals and anthologies across the country.
Westerman is also a fiber artist. She has works in the permanent collections of the Minnesota Historical Society, the Great Plains Art Museum, the University Art Galleries at the University of South Dakota and the Children’s Museum of Southern Minnesota.
Westerman’s appointment is chance to “reflect on our shared history” and ”imagine the future together,” said Minnesota Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, a member of the White Earth Nation of Ojibwe.
Gwen Nell Westerman
‘Ned Flanders Crossing’
Portland
D’oh! One of the most famous (and annoying, depending on your perspective) cartoon neighbors is now the namesake for Portland’s newest pedestrian bridge.
That’s right, the recently completed bridge over I-405 in Northwest Portland has been dubbed the Ned Flanders Crossing — named after the ever-optimistic and neighborly character from The Simpsons series. The name and a coinciding plaque were unveiled by Transportation Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty, along with Springfield Mayor Sean VanGordon and Travel Portland CEO Jeff Miller on Thursday morning.
Matt Groening, the creator of The Simpsons, is a Portland native and Lincoln High School graduate. Despite his wild success, there was nothing in the city to officially honor the show and all of Groening’s iconic characters.
According to the Portland Bureau of Transportation, naming the bridge after Ned Flanders “not only honors the cultural phenomenon that is The Simpsons, but also the creative spirit that has animated Portlanders for so long and will continue to do so long into the future.”
Springfield, Oregon has had a longtime connection with The Simpsons as well, being the “real” Springfield from the show. Groening designed a 15-by-30-foot mural back in 2014, which became a site for many laughs and family photos throughout the years since.
Portland
Hottest On Record
Summer
The United States had its hottest summer on record this year, narrowly edging out the previous milestone that was set 85 years ago during the Dust Bowl.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced Thursday that the average temperature this summer for the contiguous U.S. was 74 degrees Fahrenheit, or 2.6 degrees warmer than the long-term average. The heat record caps off a season full of extremes, with parts of the country experiencing persistent drought, wildfires, record-breaking heat waves, hurricanes and other extreme weather exacerbated by climate change.
This summer beat the previous record set in 1936 by a hair, coming in at less than 0.01 degrees warmer than during the Dust Bowl year, when huge portions of the West and Great Plains were parched by severe drought.
NOAA's report spans "meteorological summer," which covers June, July and August. During that time, 18.4 percent of the country experienced record-high temperatures, including five states — California, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon and Utah — that had their warmest summers in recorded history, according to the agency.
Global warming is making heat waves and other extreme weather events both more likely and more severe, and climate scientists have said conditions this summer offer a glimpse of what could become more common in the future.
Summer
Afghanistan
Zebulon Simentov
The last member of Afghanistan's Jewish community has left the country.
Zebulon Simentov, who lived in a dilapidated synagogue in Kabul, kept kosher and prayed in Hebrew, endured decades of war as the country's centuries-old Jewish community rapidly dwindled. But the Taliban takeover last month seems to have been the last straw.
Moti Kahana, an Israeli-American businessman who runs a private security group that organized the evacuation, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that the 62-year-old Simentov and 29 of his neighbors, nearly all of them women and children, have been taken to a “neighboring country.”
Reporters who visited Simentov over the years — and paid the exorbitant fees he charged for interviews — found a portly man fond of whiskey, who kept a pet partridge and watched Afghan TV. He observed Jewish dietary restrictions and ran a kebab shop.
Born in the western city of Herat in 1959, he always insisted Afghanistan was home.
Zebulon Simentov
To Auction
Macklowe Collection
Sotheby’s on Thursday announced the sale of a private modern and contemporary art collection featuring Andy Warhol and Pablo Picasso pieces valued at more than $600 million, saying that was the highest estimate ever placed on any collection to come to auction.
The 65 works in the Macklowe Collection represent “an unrivalled ensemble that charts the high points of Western artistic achievement of the last 80 years,” Sotheby’s said in a press release.
Real estate mogul Harry Macklowe and his wife Linda acquired the pieces over the course of their decades-long marriage, but a New York judge ordered them to sell the collection and split the proceeds during their 2018 divorce trial.
The first auction will feature iconic works such as Warhol’s silkscreen portraits of Marilyn Monroe, an enormous tritone painting by Mark Rothko, and a seascape by Gerhard Richter.
Other distinctive pieces that will be sold in November include Alberto Giacometti’s “Le Nez” sculpture of a long-nosed figure in a cage, a painting from Cy Twombly’s “A Scattering of Blossoms” series, and a Picasso sculpture dedicated to his friend, the French poet Guillaume Apollinaire.
Macklowe Collection
Yikes. Stripes
Cats
Ever wonder how your favorite furry feline got its stripes? A new study of domestic cats has revealed which genes give felines their distinctive fur patterns and hints that the same genetics may grant wild cats, such as tigers and cheetahs, their characteristic coats.
How cats get their stripes is a decades-old mystery in the life sciences, senior author Dr. Gregory Barsh, a geneticist at the HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology in Huntsville, Alabama, told Live Science in an email. About 70 years ago, scientists began developing theories as to why and how organisms come to bear periodic patterns, like the stripes on a zebra or the squidgy segments of a caterpillar's body.
In some animals, like the zebrafish, these patterns emerge due to the arrangement of different types of cells. "But in mammals, the skin and hair cells are exactly the same across the entire body, and the color pattern comes about because of differences in genetic activity between, say, cells underlying a dark stripe and cells underlying a light stripe," Barsh said. So the question of how cats get their stripes comes down to how and when various genes switch on in their cells and how those genes influence the animals' development. In short, it's complicated.
One gene, called Transmembrane aminopeptidase Q (Taqpep), they'd identified previously, in a study published in 2012 in the journal Science. Cats that carry one version of the Taqpep gene end up decked out in dark, narrow stripes, while those with a mutant version of the gene bear "large whorls" of dark fur; the "whorl" version of the gene is most common in feral cats.
To investigate what additional genes might shape the diverse markings on cats' coats, the team began collecting discarded tissue from clinics that spay feral cats; some of the resected cat uteruses contained non-viable embryos, which the researchers examined in the lab.
They noticed that, at about 28 to 30 days old, cat embryos develop regions of "thick" and "thin" skin; at later stages of development, the thick and thin skin gives rise to hair follicles that produce different types of melanin — eumelanin for dark fur, and pheomelanin for light fur.
Cats
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