from Bruce
Anecdotes
Movies
• At the end of the movie Schindler’s List, many Jews saved by Oskar Schindler are shown placing stones on his burial marker. This is a Jewish tradition — the stones symbolize that the memory of this man will not be blown away by the wind.
Nazis
• One form of resistance against the Nazis was the telling of jokes. (The powerful never like to be mocked.) In one story, Nazi propagandist Paul Joseph Goebbels toured a school where he asked the children for patriotic slogans. One student shouted, “Heil Hitler!” Goebbels was pleased and said, “Very good.” Another student shouted, “Deutschland über alles.” Goebbels was again pleased, but asked, “How about a stronger slogan than these?” A small boy raised his hand, then declared, “Our people shall live forever.” “Excellent,” Goebbels said. “That is indeed a stronger slogan than the others. What’s your name, little boy?” The boy replied, “Israel Goldberg.”
• Billy Wilder, the Jewish-American film director, served with the United States Army Psychological Warfare Division during World War II. After the war, some Germans wrote him for permission to put on a play depicting the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. After investigating the Germans, Mr. Wilder discovered that they had been either storm troopers or members of the Gestapo. Therefore, Mr. Wilder said that he would give them permission to put on the play — as long as they used real nails.
• Josef Müller was a Catholic priest in Grossdungen who was sentenced to death for telling an anti-Nazi joke. Father Müller told about a dying German soldier who asked to have a photograph of Adolf Hitler placed on one side of him and a photograph of Gestapo head Hermann Goering placed on the other. When he was asked why, he replied, “That way I can die like Jesus — between two thieves.”
Peace
• Betty Williams was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and in general she was in favor of the activities of the Irish Republican Army until the day she saw a young British soldier get shot and die. As he lay dying, she knelt beside him and they prayed together. In 1976, she and Mairead Corrigan won the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts to stop the violence in Northern Ireland.
• John Roberts, a Quaker in New Jersey, was going by the market place, when he stooped to tie his shoe. As he did so, a man hit him in the back and said, “Take that for Jesus’ sake!” Mr. Roberts didn’t look back at the man; instead, he merely straightened up and said, “So I do,” then continued on his way. A couple of days later, the man who had hit him begged to be forgiven.
People with Handicaps
• As a person with cerebral palsy, which affects his motor skills, Cordell Brown learned to put other people at ease. At a church camp, Mr. Brown knew that the other campers were uneasy with his cerebral palsy. After unsuccessfully trying several times to plug in his electric razor, he turned to the other campers and said, “Just call me speed and coordination.” The other campers laughed; after that, Mr. Brown became friends with them.
• People with mental retardation can be religious, too. To prepare for her Bat Mitzvah, Leslie Fish, who became mentally retarded after suffering from meningitis as a baby, studied Hebrew for five years — which she says was “hard.” She wrote her own speech for the ceremony; in her speech, she talked about being responsible for her actions.
Perspective
• Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach took his message to everyone, including the very poor and even the mentally disturbed. He delivered a talk to Manhattan’s Diamond Dealers’ Club, where a man asked, “Shlomo, we love your music and your Hasidic tales are also very nice, but there’s one thing that bothers some of us and which we just can’t understand: Why are you always so busy with low-lifes and crazies?” Rabbi Shlomo replied that he knew he was among diamond experts, and he asked if any of them had ever thrown away a million-dollar diamond because it was a diamond in the rough. The diamond dealers laughed and said that none of them would ever do that. Rabbi Shlomo then said, “My sweetest friends, please try to remember this because it’s the most important thing to know in life. Everyone — everyone — is a diamond in the rough.”
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Presenting
Michael Egan
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Michael Egan
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Reader Comment
Current Events
Linda >^..^<
We are all only temporarily able bodied.
Thanks, Linda!
that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
2nd jab last week kicked my ass pretty good for a couple days, but nearly back to what passes for normal.
Weekend Box Office
‘Quiet Place’
Moviegoing increasingly looks like it didn’t die during the pandemic. It just went into hibernation.
John Krasinski’s thriller sequel “A Quiet Place Part II” opened over the Memorial Day weekend to a pandemic-best $48.4 million, according to studio estimates Sunday. Including the Monday holiday, the studio forecasts the film will gross $58.5 million in North America. It added another $22 million in ticket sales overseas.
The contrasting release strategies between “A Quiet Place Part II” and “Cruella” offered a test case for Hollywood. How much does a day-and-date release cost a movie like “Cruella” in ticket sales? Is it worth it? Without knowing how much “Cruella” benefitted Disney+, a true comparison isn’t possible. But the strong returns for the theater-only “A Quiet Place Part II” are telling, says Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for data firm Comscore. He called it a “pivotal weekend” for the movie industry that proved predictions of the movie theater’s demise “flat-out wrong.”
“That ‘Quiet Place Part II’ did so well makes a strong case that a theatrical-first release for a big movie is the way to go,” Dergarabedian said. “This is the best possible news for an industry that’s been dealing with probably the most profoundly challenging chapter in the history of the movie theater.”
Memorial Day weekend, usually one of the busiest for theaters, still didn’t look like it normally does at the movies. Total box office exceeded $80 million but that’s about a third of the holiday weekend’s normal business. Last Memorial Day, when nearly all operating theaters were drive-ins, ticket sales amounted to $842,000, according to Comscore.
‘Quiet Place’
Magic Mushrooms ‘Saved My Life’
Mike Tyson
Mike Tyson says that magic mushrooms “saved my life” and now hopes psychedelics can change the world.
The former heavyweight champion of the world says that his personal and professional comeback is the result of taking mind-altering substances containing psilocybin as well as spiritual development.
“Everyone thought I was crazy, I bit this guy's ear off," Tyson told Reuters, referring to his 1997 fight against Evander Holyfield.
The Brooklyn-born fighter, who now is also a cannabis entrepreneur, says he has never felt better.
“To think where I was - almost suicidal - to this now. Isn't life a trip, man? It's amazing medicine, and people don't look at it from that perspective.”
Mike Tyson
Describes Ripping Pope Photo
Sinéad O’Connor
Sinéad O’Connor says she has no regrets, and that includes her notorious 1992 appearance on Saturday Night Live during which she tore up a photograph of Pope John Paul II.
In her new memoir, Rememberings, the iconic Irish singer, 54, writes about her intentions behind the shocking incident, which resulted in her being banned from NBC for life.
In an excerpt published in Rolling Stone, O'Connor explains that the catalyst for the incident stemmed from her own anger of growing up in an unhappy home in Ireland. When her mother passed away, she discovered a photograph of the pope from his 1979 visit to her home country. During the appearance, the pope "made a show" of telling the “young people of Ireland" that he "loves" them.
"What a load of claptrap. Nobody loved us. Not even God," writes O'Connor. "Even our mothers and fathers couldn’t stand us."
She continues, "My intention had always been to destroy my mother’s photo of the pope. It represented lies and liars and abuse. The type of people who kept these things were devils like my mother. I never knew when or where or how I would destroy it, but destroy it I would when the right moment came. And with that in mind, I carefully brought it everywhere I lived from that day forward. Because nobody ever gave a s*** about the children of Ireland."
Sinéad O’Connor
Cancels ‘X Factor Israel’ Appearance
Simon Cowell
Simon Cowell has canceled his scheduled appearance as a judge on the upcoming season of “X Factor Israel.”
Late last year, the veteran producer and reality TV judge signed a deal to serve as one of the judges on the next season of the Israeli musical reality show, which is slated to begin filming this summer.
On Sunday, a spokesperson for Reshet, which produces “X Factor Israel,” told Variety that Cowell was canceling “for his own reasons.” Reshet declined to say whether Cowell would have any part in the production of “X Factor Israel” outside of judging.
Amid rumors of his cancellation last week, a Reshet representative told Variety that members of Cowell’s staff had reached out with “legitimate concerns” over his participation in the show after the recent violence between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, but that at the time he had made no final decision.
Representatives for Cowell did not respond to multiple requests for comment. A Jewish News report last week cited a source close to Cowell as saying that the media mogul was “bitterly disappointed” that he could not take part for “a number of reasons.”
Simon Cowell
Store Apologizes
Nashville
A hat store in Nashville, Tennessee has apologized after selling “NOT VACCINATED” badges in the shape of a yellow Star of David.
“In NO WAY did I intend to trivialize the Star of David or disrespect what happened to millions of people,” the store, hatWRKS, wrote in an Instagram post. “I sincerely apologize for any insensitivity.”
The shop had faced a furious backlash on social media and a crowd of real-life protesters after a previous post, which cheerfully advertised the Holocaust-themed badges.
“Patches are here!!” hatWRKS wrote on its Instagram above a photo of a smiling woman wearing one of the yellow badges. “They turned out great. $5ea.”
The apparel company Stetson also announced that it was cutting ties with the shop.
Nashville
Spiked During the Pandemic
Gun Buying
It was another week with another horrific mass shooting. In cities across the country, gun homicides were climbing. Democrats and Republicans argued over the causes. President Joe Biden said enough.
But beneath the timeworn political cycle on guns in the United States, the country’s appetite for firearms has only been increasing, with more being bought by more Americans than ever before.
In March 2020, federal background checks, a rough proxy for purchases, topped 1 million in a week for the first time since the government began tracking them in 1998. And the buying continued, through the protests in the summer and the election in the fall, until a week this spring broke the record with 1.2 million background checks.
“There was a surge in purchasing unlike anything we’ve ever seen,” said Dr. Garen J. Wintemute, a gun researcher at the University of California, Davis. “Usually it slows down. But this just kept going.”
Not only were people who already had guns buying more, but people who had never owned one were buying them too. New preliminary data from Northeastern University and the Harvard Injury Control Research Center show that about one-fifth of all Americans who bought guns last year were first-time gun owners. And the data, which has not been previously released, showed that new owners were less likely than usual to be male and white. Half were women, one-fifth were Black and one-fifth were Hispanic.
Gun Buying
‘Expanding God’s Kingdom’
Rod of Iron
A Pennsylvania church known for worshiping with AR-15 rifles and preaching that Joe Biden is a fake president has found just the location to “expand God’s Kingdom”: Texas.
Pastor Hyung Jin “Sean” Moon, son of the late Rev. Sun Myung Moon of the Unification movement, leads the church that’s buying a Lake Limestone RV park and marina near Groesbeck, east of Waco.
“Liberty Rock has now begun!” Moon told the Texas audience at a April opening, later mocking the movement’s derogatory 1970s nickname: “You are coming into the community of the Moonies, so to speak.”
Moon’s Sanctuary Church in Newfoundland, Pennsylvania, is known for preaching that AR-15s are the “rod of iron” in the biblical book of Revelation. Also known as Rod of Iron Ministries, the church hosted a mass wedding in 2018 for 250 armed couples.
Moon and worshippers also joined protests in Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C., seeking to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
Rod of Iron
‘Extremely Rare Phenomenon’
Saguaros
A hint of crazy things to come may be playing out in the Arizona desert — and it involves a giant species of cacti.
Saguaros, which can live for centuries and grow to nearly 80 feet, have erupted in spring blooms that are spreading far beyond the norm. It’s almost as if the plants are breaking out in a rash of blooms.
This is happening in the Sonoran Desert and experts suspect it may be an example of how the warming environment is impacting even the oldest of plants.
Saguaro are considered to be a “symbol of the American west,” yet they are rare, NPS officials say. “These majestic plants, found only in a small portion of the United States, are protected by Saguaro National Park” near Tuscon.
While beautiful, the flowering phenomenon is foreboding, leaving botanists wondering what will happen next. There has been anecdotal evidence in the past year that other plants are blooming out of season across the country, including prickly pears in Arizona, hyacinth bulbs in Illinois, and aloe vera in Southern California, McClatchy News reported last year.
Saguaros
Weird Electromagnetic Bursts Before
Earthquakes
For some time, seismologists have been aware of brief, subtle anomalies in underground electrical fields leading up to an earthquake, sometimes occurring as soon as a few weeks before the quake happens.
It's tempting to think these electromagnetic bursts could be used to predict when a quake will strike. Up until now, however, the cause of the strange bursts hasn't been clear.
New research suggests that the key lies in the gases that get trapped in what's known as a fault valve and can build up ahead of an earthquake. These impermeable layers of rock can slip across a fault, effectively creating a gate that blocks the flow of underground water.
When the fault valve eventually cracks and pressure decreases, carbon dioxide or methane dissolved in the trapped water is released, expanding in volume and pushing the cracks in the fault. As the gas emerges, it also gets electrified, with electrons released from the cracked surfaces attaching themselves to gas molecules and generating a current as they move upwards.
"The results supported the validity of the present working hypothesis, that coupled interaction of fracturing rock with deep Earth gases during quasi-static rupture of rocks in the focal zone of a fault might play an important role in the generation of pre- and co-seismic electromagnetic phenomena," write the researchers in their published paper.
Earthquakes
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