from Bruce
Anecdotes
Education
• Sometimes, dancers can do more than they think they are capable of. When choreographing to the music of Ballade for Piano and Orchestra, George Balanchine named a sequence of steps for Merrill Ashley to dance. She and all the dancers watching the session laughed because they thought that that particular sequence of steps was much too difficult for anyone to do. However, dancers want to please Mr. Balanchine, so Ms. Ashley attempted the steps — and nailed them on her first attempt! Then she repeated the successful execution of the steps!
• Choreographer George Balanchine educated his dancers. Frequently, he told them, “Don’t relax! The time to relax is in the grave.” In addition, he would work hard to get a dancer to perform a step correctly. Frequently, the dancer would say about a difficult step, “I’ll try.” Mr. Balanchine would reply, “Don’t try — just do!” When the dancer had succeeded, he would say, “That’s right!” Then he would add, “But now, dear, make it beautiful.”
• Some elementary schoolteachers have uncontrollable kids. A teacher in Marblehead, Massachusetts, once told a mother that her son was “the worst brat in 10 states.” The mother responded that the schoolteacher was “repressing her boy’s natural vivaciousness.” However, the schoolteacher did not believe that; instead, she responded that the next time the boy bit her she would send “him home in a cage.”
• When George Balanchine choreographed, he sometimes did more than create a beautiful dance. Often, he choreographed as a way to teach other people. For example, he knew that Jerome Robbins was a wonderful choreographer, but that his dance training in the classical style was weak, so he choreographed Caracole and put Mr. Robbins in it as a way to train him in the classical style of dancing.
• Lincoln Kirstein once took dance lessons from Michel Fokine in Paris, but he demonstrated little dancing ability. Later, Mr. Kirstein and George Balanchine created the School of American Ballet (and the company that became the New York City Ballet), causing Mr. Fokine to ask, “How can Kirstein be the director of a ballet company? He took some ballet lessons from me, and he can’t get his feet off the floor!”
• Giacomo Puccini began to learn how to play the piano in an interesting way. His father put coins on certain keys of the piano, and in grabbing the coins, the young Giacomo pounded out a tune. By the way, the favorite opera of King George V of England was Puccini’s La Boheme. When asked why it was his favorite, he replied, “Because it’s much the shortest.”
• When the Dance Theatre of Harlem was first started, classes took place in a garage on 140th Street and St. Nicholas Avenue. During the summer, the garage doors were opened up. Occasionally, passersby would become intrigued by the dance classes and watch — and sometimes sign up to become students themselves.
• Trinity College at the University of Cambridge is known for its arrogance. When one of its Fellows won a Nobel Prize, the Master began his speech by saying, “Anywhere else, I could say that this is a very special occasion.”
• One of rocker Rod Stewart’s major influences was gospel and pop singer Sam Cooke. In fact, Mr. Stewart once spent two years listening to Mr. Cooke and only Mr. Cooke.
Fans
• Comedian Bob Hope was a big fan of Charlie Chaplin and when he was young, he even won a contest doing a Chaplin imitation. In New York, a friend told him that Mr. Chaplin’s car was parked outside a restaurant, so Mr. Hope waited around for 90 minutes just to catch a glimpse of Mr. Chaplin.
• When Napoleon was traveling to his coronation, people turned out to see him and to cheer for him. Napoleon looked at the crowd, then said that exactly the same people would turn out to see him if he were on his way to the guillotine.
***
© Copyright Bruce D. Bruce; All Rights Reserved
***
Boredom is Anti-Life: 250 Anecdotes and Stories — Buy
Boredom is Anti-Life: 250 Anecdotes and Stories — Buy The Paperback
Boredom is Anti-Life: 250 Anecdotes and Stories — Buy Kindle
Boredom is Anti-Life: 250 Anecdotes and Stories — Buy Apple
Boredom is Anti-Life: 250 Anecdotes and Stories — Buy Barnes and Noble
Boredom is Anti-Life: 250 Anecdotes and Stories — Buy Kobo
Boredom is Anti-Life: 250 Anecdotes and Stories — Buy Smashwords: Many Formats, Including PDF
Presenting
Michael Egan
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION
BANDCAMP MUSIC
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION OF BANDCAMP MUSIC
Music: "Escape from the Bat People"
Album: ESCAPE FROM THE BAT PEOPLE
Artist: Jay Poisön and the Bat People
Artist Location: Lyon, France
Info: “Sloppy surf punk from the caves!”
Price: Name Your Price (Includes FREE)
Genre: Surf.
Links:
ESCAPE FROM THE BAT PEOPLE
Jay Poisön and the Bat People on Bandcamp
Other Links:
Bruce’s Music Recommendations: FREE pdfs
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
New Venture
Michael Egan
Part 3
Bruce’s Stories
The angels among my students made me marvel at their work. I frequently taught freshman and junior composition and technical writing, and I attempted to make the writing my students did useful. I would assign the writing of a 10- to 20-page manual in many classes, but I would allow students to write more pages and many students responded with 60-page manuals. Why? They got into the project and knew that it would help them. They were writing for themselves, not just for a grade, which is the way it should be.
Two of my students who had studied in France as part of the Ohio University Study Abroad Program worked together on a manual for students who would be in that program. Jobs in France opened up that were associated with the Study Abroad Program, and both students applied for those jobs and both submitted copies of the manual they had co-written. One student was given a job immediately. The other student was officially a little too young, but she got the job after a slight delay. Why did she get the job? She got it because of the manual she had co-written for my class. In fact, the person who hired her was flipping through the manual and looking at and reading it as he talked to my student on the phone to tell her she had the job. These two students got paid to live in France. Nice!
Another student wrote a 60-page employee manual for the job he did working for the Ohio University football team. He was responsible for such tasks as getting things ready for game day. He was in Sports Sciences, and he ended up getting a very competitive job internship because he sent the sports organization a copy of the manual he wrote for my class.
Michelle Griesmer wrote a huge manual about how to be a lighting director. She worked professionally one summer on a TV program and was excited to get a copy of the program. Of course, she looked for her name in the credits; unfortunately, she was listed as Michael Griesmer.
Another student did a long problem-solving manual for the company she worked for. She identified problems at the company and made recommendations about how to solve those problems. She was given a $1,000 bonus for writing the problem-solving manual.
In my composition classes, I always had the assignment of writing a problem-solving letter in which students identify one or more problems and make recommendations about how to solve it or them. I have had students actually mail the letters, which was optional in my class. At least one student received the offer of a promotion and a raise to come back after graduation and work at that company. (She turned the company down because she had a better offer.)
One of my favorite assignments in some of my composition classes was the autobiographical essay, which focused mainly on funny incidents in my students’ lives. I well remember many of those essays. For example, Maggie Wendell wrote about the first day of her first class as a freshman at Ohio University. It was a public-speaking class, and she was shocked when she learned that the professor was going to have the students speak for five minutes without preparation on a topic that the professor would tell them. Maggie is a student who likes to be super-prepared for every test and every assignment, so impromptu speaking is not at all her thing. When it was her turn and she got her topic, she immediately began staring at the back wall and spewing whatever verbal diarrhea came into her mind. She even invented an Asian-American friend as she talked about the youth in Asia. When her five minutes was up, she stopped talking and saw that the other students were looking at her and trying to stifle laughter. What was wrong? Were her pants unzipped? Her professor said, “Thank you, Ms. Wendell, for your enlightening talk on the youth in Asia, but your topic was euthanasia. You may know it better as mercy killing.” She said weakly, “I know what euthanasia is,” sat down, and after the class was over, immediately dropped it and took another class. Fortunately, embarrassment plus time equals comedy, and by the time Maggie was a senior, she thought that what had happened was funny.
Also by the way, Ohio University frequently hosts such special occasions as Moms Weekend, during which students’ mothers come to visit them. I once got a big laugh at the beginning of a class by saying after one Moms Weekend, “I must be getting old. Some of these OU moms look hot!”
Kids Are Not Always Angels — Buy
Kids Are Not Always Angels — Buy The Paperback
Kids Are Not Always Angels — Buy Kindle
Kids Are Not Always Angels — Buy Apple
Kids Are Not Always Angels — Buy Barnes and Noble
Kids Are Not Always Angels — Buy Kobo
Kids Are Not Always Angels — Buy Smashwords: Many Formats, Including PDF
David Bruce has over 140 Kindle books on Amazon.com
.
Bonus Links
Jeannie the Teed-Off Temp
Reader Comment
Current Events
From this morning's Politico:
“If DONALD TRUMP tries to run for president again,” Peter Nicholas writes for The Atlantic, “one of his former campaign advisers has a plan to dissuade him. Anticipating that Trump may not know who ADLAI STEVENSON was or that he lost two straight presidential elections in the 1950s, this ex-adviser figures he or someone else might need to explain the man’s unhappy fate. They’ll remind Trump that if he were beaten in 2024, he would join Stevenson as one of history’s serial losers. ‘I think that would resonate,’ said this person, who, like others, spoke on condition of anonymity to talk more freely. ‘Trump hates losers.’”
Linda says--hates losers? He IS a loser--a total loser (bankrupt casino, Predator University, Predator steaks, Predator water, money-losing golf courses, grifting charities, etc., etc., etc,!) Look in a mirror, Loser!
Linda >^..^<
We are all only temporarily able bodied.
Thanks, Linda!
that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Extra toasty for late November.
Weekend Box Office
‘Ghostbusters: Afterlife’
Heading into Thanksgiving weekend, the latest attempt to revive “Ghostbusters” drew a sizable audience to theaters, while the awards darling “King Richard,” like most dramas in the pandemic era, is struggling.
With a reverence for nostalgia and a few high-profile cameos in its arsenal, “Ghostbusters: Afterlife” opened above industry expectations with $44 million in ticket sales from 4,315 locations, according to studio estimates Sunday. The Sony movie directed by Jason Reitman and starring Paul Rudd, Finn Wolfhard and Mckenna Grace is playing exclusively in theaters.
The weekend’s other high-profile offering didn’t fare as well. “King Richard,” the well-reviewed drama starring Will Smith as the father of tennis greats Venus and Serena Williams, earned $5.7 million from 3,302 locations, missing its modest expectations by almost half. The Warner Bros. film was released simultaneously on HBO Max and in theaters.
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.
1. “Ghostbusters: Afterlife,” $44 million.
2. “Eternals,” $10.8 million.
3. “Clifford The Big Red Dog,” $8.1 million.
4. “King Richard,” $5.7 million.
5. “Dune,” $3.1 million.
6. “Venom: Let There Be Carnage,” $2.8 million.
7. “No Time to Die,” $2.7 million.
8. “The French Dispatch,” $970,000.
9. “Belfast,” $940,000.
10. “Ron’s Gone Wrong,” $888,000.
‘Ghostbusters: Afterlife’
Resign Over Propaganda
Propagandists
Fox "News" contributors Jonah Goldberg and Stephen Hayes have resigned following the release of Tucker Carlson (R-Silver Spoon)'s documentary on the January 6 Capitol insurrection, "Patriot Purge," citing concerns about the documentary's potential to incite violence and the cable news outlet's direction of coverage in the post-Trump era, The New York Times reported.
Goldberg and Hayes joined Fox News as contributors in early 2009 while also working for conservative political magazines. In 2019, they worked together to found The Dispatch, a conservative online publication with nearly 30,000 paying subscribers, according to The New York Times.
Ultimately, the release of "Patriot Purge" brought the pair to an impasse, which they said forced them to choose between running their own publication and remaining loyal to Fox News, according to a statement about their resignation.
The "Patriot Purge" documentary baselessly suggested that the January 6 insurrection was a "false flag" plot by President Joe Biden to conduct an ideological purge and persecute conservatives.
The duo were not the only Fox News employees to publicly condemn the documentary. One of Carlson's colleagues, Geraldo Rivera, called the false flag theory pushed in the documentary "bullshit."
Propagandists
Protest Planned
MeinPillow
MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell said on his Friday evening broadcast that he was planning to protest outside Fox News' New York headquarters.
The Daily Beast quoted Lindell as saying: "We are going to do something out in front of Fox News. I think we should have — you know, if people want to go down there, maybe we should give out Frank Speech signs."
Lindell said that the broadcaster was a "big part of our country being taken from us." The business mogul also called Fox News "controlled opposition," according to The Daily Beast.
As one of Fox News's biggest sponsors, MyPillow grew its business by advertising on the network. Relations between the CEO and Fox went south, however, when the network announced Biden's victory in the 2020 US election.
Lindell's spreading of baseless election-fraud claims has previously led to MyPillow products being pulled by retailers.
MeinPillow
False Claims
Voter Fraud
Sen. Rafael "Ted" Cruz (R-Born In Canada) appeared on Face the Nation where he predictably spread lies and disinformation about the 2020 election and absurdly claimed that voter fraud has been a problem ever since the very first election.
The election conversation began when CBS host Margaret Brennan asked Cruz to confirm what Bob Woodward and Robert Costa reported in their book, Peril: that he and Trump spoke on Jan. 6 and that Cruz, who specialized in constitutional law, knew that “there was no congressional authority to overturn the election.” In the book, the authors wrote that Cruz was aware that Congress could not reverse the election results.
Cruz skirted Brennan’s question about knowing Congress didn’t have the power to overturn the election by saying he has not read the book, and he denied having any conversation with Trump on the day of the insurrection. “I didn’t happen to have any conversations with President Trump on Jan. 6,” Cruz said. “I had many conversations with him in days and weeks and months leading up to Jan. 6. I talked to the president sometimes as often as once a week or once a day.”
The senator then launched into a stream of election disinformation. “We right now have a substantial chunk of our country that has real doubts about the integrity of the election,” he said. “And if we had had a credible electoral commission do an emergency audit, it would have enhanced faith in democracy. But instead, Democrats and a lot of the press decided to just engage in incendiary rhetoric rather than acknowledge voter fraud is real. It is a problem and one of the allegations of voter fraud needed to be examined on the merits.”
Of course, Cruz conveniently ignored that the main reason “a substantial chunk of our country… has real doubts about the integrity of the election” is because he, Trump and other Republicans have been telling them lies, without any evidence, to make Americans believe exactly that! Even Trump’s own Justice Department acknowledged there was no widespread election fraud in 2020.
Voter Fraud
Lifts Ban
GoFundMe
The GoFundMe website has announced its ban on fundraisers for Kyle Rittenhouse has been lifted following his acquittal on Friday.
The site previously banned Rittenhouse legal defense fundraisers because he was accused of a violent crime. His exoneration in his trial on Friday cleared that hurdle.
“If someone is acquitted of those charges, as Rittenhouse was today, a fundraiser started subsequently for their legal defense and other expenses would not violate this policy,” the statement read. “A fundraiser to pay lawyers, cover legal expenses or to help with ongoing living expenses for a person acquitted of those charges could remain active as long as we determine it is not in violation of any of our other terms and, for example, the purpose is clearly stated and the correct beneficiary is added to the fundraiser.”
Although cleared of criminal charges, Rittenhouse could potentially face civil or federal civil rights lawsuits related to his shooting incident. He is also involved in a dispute over a $2 million bond posted by his former attorney, John Pierce.
GoFundMe
Failure To Comply
Marine Corps
Up to 10,000 active-duty Marines will not be fully vaccinated against the coronavirus when their deadline arrives in coming days, a trajectory expected to yield the U.S. military's worst immunization rate.
While 94 percent of Marine Corps personnel have met the vaccination requirement or are on a path to do so, according to the latest official data, for the remainder it is too late to begin a regimen and complete it by the service's Nov. 28 deadline. Within an institution built upon the belief that orders are to be obeyed, and one that brands itself the nation's premier crisis-response force, it is a vexing outcome.
The holdouts will join approximately 9,600 Air Force personnel who have outright refused the vaccine, did not report their status, or sought an exemption on medical or religious grounds, causing a dilemma for commanders tasked with maintaining combat-ready forces - and marking the latest showdown over President Joe Biden's authority to impose vaccination as a condition of continued government service.
"Marines know they're an expeditionary force, and pride themselves on discipline and being first to fight," said David Lapan, a retired Marine Corps officer and former communications chief for the service. Leadership, he said, should be alarmed that the Marine Corps ethos of always being ready for the next mission appears to be tarnished in this case. "Why," Lapan asked, "did they decide not to follow a direct order?"
Answering that question will be essential, he added, "if this is somehow indicative of a problem" that could arise again in the future.
Marine Corps
Migrants From 12 Countries
Mexico
Migrants from 12 countries were among 600 people found hidden in the back of two trucks in eastern Mexico on Friday, most of them from neighboring Guatemala, the government's National Migration Institute (INM) said on Saturday.
The INM said 401 of the people were from Guatemala, 53 from Honduras, 40 from the Dominican Republic, 37 from Bangladesh, 27 from Nicaragua, 18 from El Salvador and eight from Cuba.
There were also six men from Ghana, four people from Venezuela, four men from Ecuador, a man from India and a man from Cameroon in the two trailers discovered in Veracruz state.
The institute said 455 of the migrants were male, and 145 female. The people detained would either be sent home or given the chance to have their stay in Mexico regularized, it added.
Most migrants who enter Mexico head for the United States and say they are seeking to escape poverty or violence in their homelands.
Mexico
Warming Events
Antarctic Ice Sheet
Here's another reminder of the precarious position that the world's climate and ecosystems are in: a new study estimates that global warming could push the Antarctic ice sheet past a tipping point in as little as 10 years.
In other words, the point of no return in terms of ice sheet loss is arriving earlier than previously thought, and we may well already be in the midst of it. That could have serious consequences when it comes to sea level rise globally, and the local habitats that animals in Antarctica rely on.
To get a better idea of what's happening right now, the researchers went back into the past, looking at the continent's history over the last 20,000 years – back to the last ice age – through ice cores extracted from the sea floor.
"Our study reveals that during times in the past when the ice sheet retreated, the periods of rapid mass loss 'switched on' very abruptly, within only a decade or two," says paleoclimatologist Zoë Thomas, from the University of New South Wales in Australia.
"Interestingly, after the ice sheet continued to retreat for several hundred years, it 'switched off' again, also only taking a couple of decades."
Antarctic Ice Sheet
Black Stripes Or White Stripes?
Zebras
Zebras are iconic for their distinctive coats, but have you ever wondered whether zebras are white with black stripes or black with white stripes?
The stunning black-and-white coloration of the zebra's hide stands out in stark contrast with the dry, brown-and-green, treeless grasslands and savannah woodlands of their home territories of East and southern Africa, according to the African Wildlife Foundation.
These stripes are unique to each individual. There are three zebra species living today — the plains zebra (Equus quagga), the mountain zebra (E. zebra) and the Grevy's zebra (E. grevyi) — and each of those species has a different striping pattern, too. For some, the darker portions of their hide are black, whereas others have browner coloring, and some have stripes only on their bodies but not on their legs. An extinct subspecies of the plains zebra called a quagga (E. quagga quagga) had minimal striping on its head, mane and neck, according to The Quagga Project.
Despite these different patterns and coloring, all zebras have the same skin color: black, said Tim Caro, a behavioral and evolutionary ecologist and conservation biologist at the University of California, Davis. However, this doesn't answer the question of whether their fur is black with white stripes or vice versa. For that, we have to look to the zebra's melanocytes, or the cells that produce pigment for their fur.
The production of melanin from melanocytes is "prevented during the development of a white hair, but not of a black hair," Caro told Live Science in an email. In other words, for zebras, the animals' default state is to produce black hair, making them black with white stripes, according to Brittanica.
Zebras
| CURRENT MOON lunar phases |
