from Bruce
Anecdotes
Travel
• Noah Webster is famous for his spelling book and for his dictionary. Because during and for a while after the American Revolutionary War, the British were the bad guys, he changed some English spellings to create American spellings. For example, colour became color, and musick became music. He also invented the word demoralize. He had great accomplishments, and he had great pride. When he visited Philadelphia, Benjamin Rush, a famous physician, said to him, “I congratulate you on your arrival in Philadelphia.” Mr. Webster replied, “You may, if you please, sir, congratulate Philadelphia upon the occasion!”
• A friend of food writer Peg Bracken’s once made the climb up Fujisan, but she was bitterly disappointed. The travel books had promised her a breathtaking experience, but she saw trash lining the path up the mountain, and she was bothered by the steady line of 30,000 people all climbing up the mountain. Her husband, who had not read the travel books, felt the experience was breathtaking — he was amazed by the view.
Typewriters
• Frederick Forsyth has written many novels, including The Day of the Jackal. How does he write? The same way he has written for 50 years, he says: “With a typewriter.” One of those typewriters — a portable with a steel case — has seen a lot of action, and it demonstrated a great superiority over computers: “It had a crease across the lid which was done by a bullet in Biafra. [Mr. Forsyth was a foreign correspondent in the 1960s.] It just kept tapping away. It didn’t need power, it didn’t need batteries, it didn’t need recharging. One ribbon went back and forward and back until it was a rag, almost, and out came the dispatches.” Of course, typewriters have other advantages over computers. Mr. Forsyth points out, “I have never had an accident where I have pressed a button and accidentally sent seven chapters into cyberspace, never to be seen again. And have you ever tried to hack into my typewriter? It is very secure.” And, of course, typewriters have yet another advantage over computers: tangible words. Mr. Forsyth says, “I like to see black words on white paper rolling up in front of my gaze.”
• Lois Lowry’s first novel was A Summer to Die, which she sent to Melanie Kroupa, an editor at Houghton Mifflin Publishers. Instead of leaving for a scheduled vacation, Ms. Kroupa stayed in her office and read the entire book in one sitting, then shouted in a hallway, “We have to publish this!” Good choice. Ms. Lowry has won two Newbery Medals: one for Number the Stars, and one for The Giver. By the way, one good thing that came about from the publication of the novel was an important gift. She had typed the novel on a manual Smith Corona typewriter that her father had given her when she was 13 years old. To celebrate the publication of her first novel, he gave her an electric typewriter.
Valentine’s Day
• American poet Emily Dickinson was a nonconformist throughout her life. In 1849, when she was 19 years old, she attended the Mount Holyoke Seminary in South Hadley, Massachusetts. The head of the school, Miss Mary Lyon, told the students that Valentine’s Day cards were foolish and that the students weren’t allowed to send them. That February, Ms. Dickinson mailed more than 150 Valentine’s Day cards.
War
• Yoshiko Uchida and her family heard the news on the radio that Japan had attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, but they didn’t believe it. Because Yoshiko was worried about taking her final exams at the University of California at Berkeley, she left her home to study at the library. When she returned home, she discovered that her father had been taken away for questioning and that FBI men were in her family’s living room. The Uchidas and 120,000 other innocent Asian Americans were forced to leave their homes and be herded into internment camps on American soil — without a trial. At Tanforan Racetrack, the Uchidas lived for five months on four cots in a small and dark horse stall that stank of manure, then were assigned to the internment camp at Topaz, Utah. Yoshiko did graduate from Berkeley — with honors. Her diploma was delivered by mail to “stall number 40.” Later, she became the renowned author of Journey to Topaz.
***
© Copyright Bruce D. Bruce; All Rights Reserved
***
The Coolest People in Books — Free Downloads
The Coolest People in Books — Apple
The Coolest People in Books — Barnes and Noble
The Coolest People in Books — Kobo
The Coolest People in Books — Smashwords: Many formats, including PDF
The Coolest People in Books — Can Be Read Here
Presenting
Michael Egan
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION
BANDCAMP MUSIC
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION OF BANDCAMP MUSIC
Music: "Bardott (ft Danny Amis - Los Straitjackets)"
Album: ADULTERIO ESTEREOFONICO [STEROPHONIC ADULTERY]
Artist: Matorralman [Scrubman]
Artist Location: Mexico
Info:
matorralman@hotmail.com
“Imagine if Duane Eddy met Esquivel. The result would be a combination of the classic deep twangy guitar sound of the 1950s thrown on its head by the king of experimental Mexican lounge tunes. Matorralman is Miguel Rizo, a selector, composer and producer from Mexico City. His debut album is GUATEQUE ESTELAR, a collection of songs that fuse electronic lounge music with surf rock and retro 60s sounds like go go, ye-ye and psychedelia. A tribute to those classic times of science fiction and foxy ladies.” — Amazon
Price: $100 (MXN) for 10-track album; this is approximately $4.95 (USD)
Genre: Instrumental. Surf.
Links:
ADULTERIO ESTEREOFONICO
Matorralman on Bandcamp
Other Links:
Bruce’s Music Recommendations: FREE pdfs
David Bruce's Smashwords Page
David Bruce's Blog #1
David Bruce's Blog #2
David Bruce's Blog #3
davidbrucebooks: EDUCATE YOURSELF - Free PDFs
David Bruce's Apple iBookstore
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
Stephen Suggests
Things
Things that many of us take for granted as we go about our day.
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
Four years ago yesterday the kid & I were 'swatted', and four years ago today, started one of the most miserable experiences of my life - nearly 2 months on jury duty.
The case had nothing to do with justice - just a pissing match between 2 insurance companies, each willing to spend over a half-million dollars to save $100,000.
Got to learn about X-Rays, MRIs, billing practices, what doctors are paid to testify as an expert, why the local police want to spend a year on Catalina, and lawyers in suits from JC Penney, shoes from PayLess, with extraordinary collections of Rolex and Philippe Patek watches.
Weekend Box Office
‘Uncharted’
Tom Holland might be without his Spider-Man suit in “Uncharted,” but his latest action-adventure is still doing good business at the North American box office.
The video game adaptation starring Holland and Mark Wahlberg is on its way to earning $51 million over the long Presidents Day weekend, according to studio estimates Sunday. Sony Pictures estimated its Friday through Sunday grosses will be $44.2 million, putting it at No. 1.
Channing Tatum’s “Dog,” which he co-directed (with his longtime producing partner Reid Carolin) and stars in, also opened on 3,677 screens this weekend. United Artists estimates that it’ll earn $15.1 million for the weekend and $18.1 million including Monday. Tatum plays an Army ranger tasked with driving a traumatized military dog from Oregon to Arizona for her handler’s funeral in the film, which was received well by critics and audiences. Plus, it only cost around $15 million to make.
In its second weekend Kenneth Branagh’s “Death on the Nile” landed in fourth place with $6.3 million, behind “Spider-Man,” while “Jackass Forever” took fifth place with $5.2 million.
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.
1. “Uncharted,” $44.2 million.
2. “Dog,” $15.1 million.
3. “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” $7.2 million.
4. “Death on the Nile,” $6.3 million.
5. “Jackass Forever,” $5.2 million.
6. “Marry Me,” $3.7 million.
7. “Sing 2,” $2.8 million.
8. “Scream,” $2 million.
9. “Blacklight,” $1.8 million.
10. “The Cursed,” $1.7 million.
‘Uncharted’
Opal Sells At Alaska Auction
“Americus Australis”
A gemstone, billed as one of the largest gem-quality opals in existence, was sold for $143,750 at auction in Alaska on Sunday.
The opal, dubbed the “Americus Australis,” weighs more than 11,800 carats, according to the auction house Alaska Premier Auctions & Appraisals. It also has a long history.
Most recently, it was kept in a linen closet in a home in Big Lake, north of Anchorage, by Fred von Brandt, who mines for gold in Alaska and whose family has deep roots in the gem and rock business.
The opal is larger than a brick and is broken into two pieces, which von Brandt said was a practice used decades ago to prove gem quality.
Von Brandt said the stone has been in his family since the late 1950s, when his grandfather bought it from an Australian opal dealer named John Altmann.
“Americus Australis”
Make-Up Artists & Hair Stylists
Guild Awards
Coming 2 America and Saturday Night Live both took home three wins Saturday at the ninth annual Make-Up Artists & Hair Stylists Guild Awards, making the former the front-runner in the craft category at the Oscars.
The Amazon Studios sequel starring Eddie Murphy won for Best Contemporary Make-Up, Best Special Make-Up Effects and Best Contemporary Hair Styling, besting the feature film field during tonight’s ceremony at the Beverly Hilton.
Other film winners included Amazon’s Being the Ricardos for Best Period Hair Styling and/or Character Hair Styling, and Disney’s Cruella for Best Period and/or Character Make-Up.
The night was full of multiple winners, with NBC’s Saturday Night Live taking three wins: for Best Period and/or Character Make-Up, Best Special Make-up Effects and Best Contemporary Make-Up.
Also on the TV side, The Kelly Clarkson Show (Daytime Television), Nickelodeon’s Danger Force (Children and Teen Television Programming) and Cinderella (La Cenerentola) (Theatrical Productions – Live Stage) scored both the make-up and hair styling awards in their respective categories.
Guild Awards
Olympics Deal
NBC
There were many reasons to think NBC made a savvy business deal in 2014 when it locked up the American media rights to the Olympics through 2032 for $7.75 billion.
As the Beijing winter games come to a close, it’s harder to see them now.
These Olympics were a disaster for the network: a buzz-free, hermetically-sealed event in an authoritarian country a half-day’s time zone away, where the enduring images will be the emotional meltdown of Russian teen-agers after a drug-tainted figure skating competition and a bereft Mikaela Shiffrin, sitting on a ski slope wondering what went wrong.
Many American athletes underperformed, and arguably the most successful — freestyle skier Eileen Gu — competed for China.
Viewers stayed away in alarming numbers, and NBC has to wonder whether it was extraordinarily bad luck or if the brand of a once-unifying event for tens of millions of people is permanently tainted.
NBC
Ponzi Scheme
Salute Vodka
The vodka company, Salute Vodka, was featured on a Fox News morning program in a segment about National Hire-A-Veteran Day
A Connecticut businessman has pleaded guilty to operating an unpatriotic Ponzi scheme that pocketed $900,000 from investors looking to buy a pro-veteran vodka company.
Brian Hughes, 57, of Madison, Conn., admitted raising money to buy Salute American Vodka and then expand it, then going on to use much of the money to pay his own credit-card debt and tax bill.
Hughes also admitted cheating investors by purportedly raising money on behalf of another liquor company to which he had no connection.
In all, prosecutors say Hughes stole $889,000 from investors while also failing to pay almost $500,000 he would have owed in taxes. The fraud led Salute to cease operations in 2019.
Salute Vodka
Fossil Rewrites Theory
'Out of Africa'
A 1.5 million-year-old vertebra from an extinct human species unearthed in Israel suggests that ancient humans may have migrated from Africa in multiple waves, a new study finds.
Although modern humans, Homo sapiens, are now the only surviving members of the human family tree, other human species once roamed Earth. Prior work revealed that long before modern humans made their way out of Africa as early as about 270,000 years ago, now-extinct human species had already migrated from Africa to Eurasia by at least 1.8 million years ago, during the early parts of the Pleistocene (2.6 million to 11,700 years ago), the epoch that included the last ice age.
Scientists had debated whether ancient humans dispersed from Africa in a one-time event or in multiple waves. Now, researchers have discovered the latter scenario is more likely, based on a newly analyzed vertebra from an unknown human species. At about 1.5 million years old, the vertebra is the oldest evidence yet of ancient humans in Israel, study lead author Alon Barash, a paleoanthropologist and human anatomist at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, told Live Science.
The bone was discovered in the prehistoric site of 'Ubeidiya in the Jordan Valley, the second-oldest archaeological site outside Africa. The site includes not only ancient stone artifacts resembling those found at sites in East Africa but also a rich collection of animal bones belonging to extinct species such as saber-toothed cats and mammoths.
In 2018, after reexamining bones initially unearthed in 'Ubeidiya in 1966, the scientists discovered what appeared to be a vertebra from the lower back of a hominin, the group that includes humans, our ancestors and our closest evolutionary relatives.
'Out of Africa'
South Dakota
Wolakota Buffalo Range
A trio of bison has gathered around a fourth animal’s carcass, and Jimmy Doyle is worried.
“I really hope we’re not on the brink of some disease outbreak,” said Doyle, who manages the Wolakota Buffalo Range here in a remote corner of south-western South Dakota in one of the country’s poorest counties. The living bison sidle away as Doyle inspects the carcass, which is little more than skin and bones after coyotes have scavenged it.
So far, at least, the Wolakota herd has avoided outbreaks as it pursues its aim of becoming the largest Indigenous American-owned bison herd. In the two years since the Rosebud Sioux tribe started collecting the animals on the 28,000-acre range in the South Dakota hills, the herd has swelled to 750 bison. The tribe plans to reach its goal of 1,200 within the year.
With their eyes on solving food shortages and financial shortfalls, restoring ecosystems and bringing back an important cultural component, dozens of indigenous tribes have been growing bison herds. Tribes manage at least 55 herds across 19 states, said Troy Heinert, executive director of the InterTribal Buffalo Council.
Although the words are used interchangeably, bison and buffalo are different animals. Bison – named the US’s national mammal in 2016 – are found in North America and Europe, while buffalo are native to Asia and Africa.
Wolakota Buffalo Range
Mushroom Rabbi
Denver
On a picturesque autumn evening in early November, the sunset belied a briskness to the Denver breeze. But inside a nondescript brick building downtown, anticipation was heating up the air.
A group of 25 people sat in a circle on the floor, each with a ramen spoon full of a brownish paste. Among them was Rabbi Ben Gorelick, a fast-talking 42-year-old with a multi-colored mohawk. On that night, Gorelick’s tempo was a couple beats slower than usual as he calmly instructed those in the room to consume what was on the spoon — a customized mixture of psychedelic mushroom extract — and find a spot to lay on the floor as they prepared to “drop in” during a guided breathing exercise.
The people in the room were part of a spiritual group called The Sacred Tribe, which Gorelick founded in 2018 and which since has grown to more than 270 members. About once a month, Gorelick hosts a weekend-long retreat that creates space for people to explore “the relationship to self, community and God” using psilocybin mushrooms that his team grows in Denver.
“This is not what a normal conservative or reform synagogue looks like,” said Gorelick, adding that his approach falls in line with Kabbalah, or Jewish mysticism. “The goal is not to blast people to the moon. It’s to give people just enough of a threshold dose that they have that openness to connecting.”
Scenes like this have become more commonplace in the American underground, as shrooms and other psychedelics have experienced increased exposure and a recent renaissance in the research of their potential medical benefits. Denver, which became the first city to decriminalize personal possession and consumption of psilocybin in 2019, has been a leader in this movement and helped inspire a wave of similar initiatives from Oakland, California, to Washington, D.C.
Denver
Finnish Skier Suffers
Remi Lindholm
A Finnish skier competing in a cross-country event at the 2022 Beijing Olympics finished in 28th place after suffering perhaps the strangest malady of this year’s Winter Games: A frozen penis.
Reuters reports that Remi Lindholm, a Metallica-loving skier on Team Finland, began suffering frostbite on his third pole during the 50km mass start race event Sunday; the event itself was conducted under such brutal, frigid conditions that the race was first delayed by an hour and then shortened to 30 kilometers instead of 50 to protect the competitors, who wore a thin layer.
“You can guess which body part was a little bit frozen when I finished,” Lindholm told the Finnish media. “It was one of the worst competitions I’ve been in. It was just about battling through.”
Despite the frozen appendage, Lindholm still managed to place in the middle of the field in the 60-skier event, falling roughly four minutes short of the medal winners but 16 minutes ahead of the back of the pack.
Reuters notes that, somehow, this isn’t the first time Lindholm’s penis has froze mid-race, as a similar incident happened during a cross-country skiing event in Finland in 2021.
Remi Lindholm
| CURRENT MOON lunar phases |
