from Bruce
Anecdotes
Money
• British ballerina Violette Verdy was happy when impresario Paul Szilard managed her financial contracts when she worked as director of the Paris Opera Ballet and then as director of the Boston Ballet. She told him, “I am so happy that you are looking after me, because finally I can fly business class, rather than economy.”
• Being a stand-up comedian isn’t always fun. Once, Carrie Snow was performing at a benefit for charity in a hotel when someone offered to donate $5,000 if she would stop performing. She stopped performing, left the room, and then started crying.
• Jack Benny’s comic persona was that of a tightwad. Whenever Rochester, the actor playing his valet, was asked whether Mr. Benny collected anything, he always replied that Mr. Benny had a hobby that kept him very happy — he collected money.
• Comedian Red Skelton was very poor as a child, but very rich as an adult. Frequently, this combination leads to recklessness in personal finance. For example, at one time Mr. Skelton had 200 ties — all the same color (maroon).
Mothers
• Amy Tan, the author of The Joy Luck Club, also has a Chinese name, An-mei, which means “blessing from America.” Her parents had emigrated from China and had been in the United States for only a short time before having her. Amy’s mother, who grew up in China, once told her that she was not affected by World War II, but a few days later, she spoke of running away to get cover from the bombs being dropped from airplanes, adding, “We were always scared that the bombs would fall on top of our heads.” When Ms. Tan reminded her mother that she had said that she wasn’t affected by the war, she replied, “I wasn’t — I wasn’t killed.”
• Kris Ashman Cypress is very tall, as was her mother. When Kris was a teenager and self-conscious about her height, she asked her mother if she could have an operation to shorten the bones in her arms and legs. Her mother replied, “Yes, but we can only afford to do your legs. So I guess your arms will drag beside you when you walk.” Kris writes, “When I finally got the joke, she grabbed me and told me how beautiful I was and how much she loved me. It was her humor and way of looking at life that shocked me out of my teenage bubble of insecurity.”
• Alan Bloom scored a major literary success with The Closing of the American Mind. Suddenly he had money, and suddenly he began appearing on all the major television shows, including the one hosted by his favorite, Oprah Winfrey. From being a professor, he became a celebrity. When his 90-year-old mother had a stroke, doctors weren’t sure about her mental abilities and even whether she would recognize her son. When Mr. Bloom walked into her hospital room, she said, “I know who you are. You wrote The Closing of the American Mind.”
• “Zora” is the name of a character and a comic strip by lesbian cartoonists Kirsten Zecher and Lori Priestley. In one series of cartoons, Zora’s mother, based on the real-life mother of Ms. Zecher, comes out for a visit with her lesbian daughter. Ms. Zecher’s mother loved the character based on her, and when the character disappeared in the fourth cartoon of the series, she demanded that they tell her what had happened to the character.
• Ballet mothers help their ballerina daughters in many ways. For example, Eugenia Toumanova, the mother of baby ballerina Tamara Toumanova, used to wear Tamara’s new ballet shoes to break them in for her.
Music
• Rhythm and blues superstar Aretha Franklin wears what she likes. Sometimes, she goes to work in a limousine, wearing a mink coat — over top of her T-shirt and jeans. By the way, Aretha often sang one of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s favorite songs, “Precious Lord,” for him. The last time Ms. Franklin sang it especially for him was in April of 1968 — at his funeral. Also by the way, Aretha wanted to make sure that blacks heard her music in segregated areas. Therefore, her contract stated that her audiences would always be either integrated or all-black — she declined to perform in front of an all-white audience.
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© Copyright Bruce D. Bruce; All Rights Reserved
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Presenting
Michael Egan
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION
BANDCAMP MUSIC
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION OF BANDCAMP MUSIC
Music: "Bohemian Rhapsody"
Album: XXV
Artist: The Harvard-Radcliffe Veritones
Artist Location: Cambridge, Massachusetts
Info:
“We are the Veritones, a co-ed a cappella singing group at Harvard College. Founded in 1985 by freshmen (including Academy Award winner Mira Sorvino), the group originally sang spirituals. These days, we are known for a diverse repertoire, our offbeat sense of humor, sense of public service, and friendships that make the group more than an extracurricular.”
“Released November 20, 2010 in celebration of the 25th Anniversary of the Harvard-Radcliffe Veritones, one of Harvard's premiere co-ed a cappella groups founded in 1985.”
Price: $1.50 (IISD) per track; $15 (USD) for 15-track album
Genre: A Capella.
Links:
XXV
The Harvard-Radcliffe Veritones on Bandcamp
The Veritones on YouTube
The Harvard-Radcliffe Veritones Official Website
Other Links:
Bruce’s Music Recommendations: FREE pdfs
David Bruce's Amazon Author Page
David Bruce's Smashwords Page
David Bruce's Blog #1
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David Bruce's Blog #3
David Bruce's Apple iBookstore
David Bruce has over 140 Kindle books on Amazon.com.
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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
There was a party a couple blocks away and they had horses!
Not a pony ride, but half a dozen full-size horses, all saddled up, trotting up the alley and cantering down the street, carrying party-goers.
Then the live music started.
Think I need to meet these neighbors.
French Pantheon
Josephine Baker
France is inducting Josephine Baker — Missouri-born cabaret dancer, French World War II spy and civil rights activist — into its Pantheon, the first Black woman honored in the final resting place of France’s most revered luminaries.
On Tuesday, a coffin carrying soils from the U.S., France and Monaco — places where Baker made her mark — will be deposited inside the domed Pantheon monument overlooking the Left Bank of Paris. Her body will stay in Monaco, at the request of her family.
French President Emmanuel Macron decided on her entry into the Pantheon, responding to a petition lobbying for her “pantheonization.” In addition to honoring an exceptional figure in French history, the move is meant to send a message against racism and celebrate U.S.-French connections.
“She embodies, before anything, women’s freedom,” Laurent Kupferman, the author of the petition for the move, told The Associated Press.
After the war, Baker got involved in anti-racist politics. She fought against American segregation during a 1951 performance tour of the U.S., causing her to be targeted by the FBI, labeled a communist and banned from her homeland for a decade. The ban was lifted by President John F. Kennedy in 1963, and she returned to be the only woman to speak at the March on Washington, before Martin Luther King’s famed “I Have a Dream” speech.
Josephine Baker
Documentary Dispels Myth
Yoko Ono
Yoko Ono appears to agree with fans who believe that a new documentary about the Beatles dispels the notion that she broke up the band.
Peter Jackson’s newly released three-part documentary titled Get Back follows the British group as they make their final album, 1970’s Let It Be.
The 88-year-old artist, who was also the wife of John Lennon, has routinely been villainised as the reason why the Beatles disbanded.
On Saturday (27 November), Ono shared an article titled “Beatles Fans Think ‘Get Back’ Dispels The Idea That Yoko Ono Broke The Band Up” with her 4.6 million Twitter followers.
The archival footage featured in Jackson’s documentary shows that while Ono was present during the making of Let It Be, she seemed to keep to herself. In numerous scenes, she is seen knitting, eating, or reading the newspaper as opposed to getting involved with the band members.
Yoko Ono
Weekend Box Office
‘Encanto’
Thanksgiving weekend moviegoing was still far from the feast it normally is, but Disney’s “Encanto” and the Lady Gaga-led “House of Gucci” both gave a lift to two genres that have been particularly battered by the pandemic: family movies and adult dramas.
“Encanto” led the box office with $27 million over the weekend and $40.3 million across the five-day holiday frame, according to studio estimates Sunday. While well off the pace of past Disney animated movies released over Thanksgiving — “Coco” launched at the same time of year with $72 million and “Ralph Breaks the Internet” did as well with $84 million — the result was the best opening for an animated movie during the pandemic.
Last week’s top film, “Ghostbusters: Afterlife” slid to second place with $24.5 million in its second week after a modest 44% drop. The Sony Pictures release has grossed $87.8 million domestically and $28 million internationally. The studio’s horror division, Screen Gems, also opened the R-rated “Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City,” a reboot in the now seven-film videogame adaptation franchise. It debuted with $5.3 million for the three-day weekend and $8.8 million for the holiday frame.
In its fourth weekend of release Marvel’s “Eternals” added $7.9 million in ticket sales over the three-day weekend to bring its North America cumulative total to $150.6 million and $368 million globally.
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.
1. “Encanto,” $27 million.
2. “Ghostbusters: Afterlife,” $24.5 million.
3. “House of Gucci,” $14.2 million.
4. “Eternals,” $2.5 million.
5. “Resident Evil: Welcome to Racoon City,” $5.3 million.
6. “Clifford the Big Red Dog,” $4.9 million.
7. “King Richard,” $3.3 million.
8. “Dune,” $2.2 million.
9. “No Time to Die,” $1.8 million.
10. “Venom: Let There Be Carnage,” $1.6 million.
‘Encanto’
500-Year-Old Masterpiece
Albrecht Dürer
A sketch purchased for $30 at a house clearance sale in Massachusetts is believed to be a rare artwork worth as much as $50 million, reports say.
Experts identified the drawing of a mother and child as an original by German Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer, The Art Newspaper reported.
An unnamed man purchased the sketch in Concord, Massachusett.
After an authentication process that lasted two years, leading experts have confirmed the drawing is a previously unknown Dürer, the paper reported.
Scholars pointed to the "AD" monogram inscribed on the work, one of the most famous signatures in art history, which had been written with the same ink used in the drawing.
Albrecht Dürer
‘Greatest Grift in U.S. History’
Cohen
Donald Trump (R-Lock Him Up)’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, said that he believes the former president will not run again, having already pulled off “the greatest grift in U.S. history” raising money from his supporters who believe his lies that the 2020 election was stolen from him.
Cohen, during a Meet the Press appearance on Sunday, said that Trump wants to keep the grift going and hopes to continue raising millions of dollars from his supporters to purportedly help overturn the election. According to Cohen, Trump running again in 2024 might put that in jeopardy.
“Yeah, so this should become a documentary, and it should be called the greatest grift in U.S. history. Donald Trump has made it very clear that he is grifting off of the American people, these supporters, these individuals that are just sending money to him at record levels,” Cohen said. “So, one of the biggest problems for Donald Trump is that he makes a statement, right, that ‘I’m thinking about it, I’m thinking about [running].’ That’s only to keep the grift growing and to keep the grift going.”
Cohen continued, saying that Trump would tease a potential run right up to the “very last second” when he will bow out, similar to what he did when he hinted at a run in 2011. Prolonging the possibility of a 2024 run, Cohen said, would allow the grift to continue.
“One of the things Donald Trump has done is grift off of the big lie, that the election was stolen from him in 2020. It was not stolen from him,” Cohen said. “If he loses, and he will in 2024, what happens to the big lie? The big lie disappears. He can’t now be like the boy who cried wolf. ‘Oh, they stole it from me in 2020, they now stole it from me in 2024.’ Right? Now that goes out the door, and there goes his money, there goes the big grift. So, like I said before, it’s not going to happen. He’s going to run it — like he did in 2011 — right to the very, very last second.”
Cohen
‘Fact Free’
Briefings
During intelligence briefings, former President Donald Trump (R-Lock Him Up) was “fact free” and prone to “fly off on tangents,” said James Clapper, former director of national intelligence.
Clapper’s comments come from a recently released CIA publication, Getting to Know the President, which chronicles the relationship between the intelligence community and U.S. presidents during their transition and administration. Written by retired intelligence officer John L. Helgerson, the latest chapter covers Trump and reveals how unprepared and unconventional Trump was. It is important to note, however, that this is not a neutral account, given Trump’s rocky history with the intelligence agencies.
“Briefing Trump presented the IC with the most difficult challenges it had ever faced,” Helgerson wrote. According to the report, the intelligence community struggled large part because Trump “doubted the competence of intelligence professionals and felt no need for regular intelligence support.” Not since Nixon, nearly 50 years earlier, did the nation’s intelligence staff have such a difficult time with a president, Helgerson said.
After he was elected, Trump delayed receiving intelligence briefings by a week because his team was “not fully prepared to launch transition operations, apparently having not expected to win the election.” “Some awkwardness developed,” Helgerson wrote, when CIA personnel wanted to share printed classified information with Trump at Trump Tower, but no one on his staff wanted to be responsible for it and they had no way to store it securely. To solve the problem, the CIA installed a safe.
Even once Trump started receiving the President’s Daily Brief (PDB), a daily summary of high-level national security and intelligence issues, Trump chose not to read it, according to Ted Gistaro, a career CIA analyst who frequently briefed Trump. This backed up earlier reports that Trump did not read the PDB. “He touched it,” Gistaro said when asked how closely Trump read the briefs. “He doesn’t really read anything.”
Briefings
‘A Bunch of Kooks’
Flynn
Michael Flynn, who once filmed his family at a July 4 barbecue saying the QAnon oath, “Where we go one, we go all,” said in private that the Q conspiracy theory was “total nonsense” and a “disinformation campaign created by the left.”
In a recording of a phone call purportedly between Trump lawyer Lin Wood and Flynn released late Saturday night, Trump’s disgraced former national security advisor said of QAnon, “I think it’s a disinformation campaign that the CIA created. That’s what I believe. Now, I don’t know that for a fact, but that’s what I think it is. I think it’s a disinformation campaign.”
Flynn has been a prominent figure in the QAnon movement, with some followers believing Flynn himself may have been the anonymous poster known as “Q,” who posted nearly 5,000 messages online between 2017 and 2020. Many of those messages contained cryptic hints that followers in the movement believe point to a “Deep State” conspiracy of Satanic rituals performed by cannibal pedophiles in the U.S. government.
Flynn’s disbelief, however, has not stopped him from profiting off of the Q conspiracy. In 2016 shortly after Trump’s election, Flynn said that “army of digital soldiers” got Trump into office. Flynn trademarked the phrase “digital soldiers,” which later became a rallying cry for the Q movement. Even as recently as this summer, he spoke at a conference attended by QAnon believers — the “For God & and Country Patriot Roundup” — where he appeared to endorse the violent overthrow of the U.S. government. In 2017, Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his conversations with then-Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak.
“I find it total nonsense,” Flynn continued. “And I think it’s a disinformation campaign created by the left and the types of people that can create something like that are the kinds of people that we trained with certain skills in the CIA, so I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s what it was.”
Flynn
3,000 Ethiopians
Israel
Israel's government on Sunday approved the immigration of several thousand Jews from war-torn Ethiopia, some of whom have waited for decades to join their relatives in Israel.
The decision took a step toward resolving an issue that has long complicated the government's relations with the country's Ethiopian community.
Some 140,000 Ethiopian Jews live in Israel. Community leaders estimate that roughly 6,000 others remain behind in Ethiopia.
Although the families are of Jewish descent and many are practicing Jews, Israel does not consider them Jewish under religious law. Instead, they have been fighting to enter the country under a family-unification program that requires special government approval.
Community activists have accused the government of dragging its feet in implementing a 2015 decision to bring all remaining Ethiopians of Jewish lineage to Israel within five years.
Israel
What If
Speed Of Sound
The clouds are hanging low on the horizon; the air is sticky and sizzling with electricity. Suddenly, a silent bolt of lightning cracks open the sky. The boom follows a full four seconds later.
Compared with light, which moves at a stunning 186,000 miles per second (300,000 kilometers per second), sound waves are downright sluggish, moving through air at 0.2 miles per second (0.3 km per second). That's why you see lightning before you hear the thunder. But what would happen if the speed of sound suddenly were a million times faster — the same as the speed of light?
Of course, thunder would reach you at the precise moment of lightning. But that bolt of lightning would also look pretty eerie. Sound waves are composed of particles, each moving slightly enough to collide into the next. That creates areas of higher and lower density within the wave, said George Gollin, a professor of physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Just think of a slinky: as the toy moves, the coils continually bunch together and then spread out again. Sound waves are similar. At slow speeds, that change in density is imperceptible. At the speed of light, it's a different story.
"What would happen is you have pretty humid air [during a lightning storm], the sound wave comes through and squeezes stuff really hard, and then expands out and the pressure drops a lot," Gollin told Live Science. Because pressure corresponds to temperature, the sudden drop in air pressure after a clap of thunder would cause the humid air to freeze. You'd see the lightning bolt through a dense fog of ice crystals.
An ultra-fast speed of sound would completely change the way our world sounds. Voices, for instance, would be so high-pitched, they would be inaudible. "Not even your dog could hear you," said William Robertson, a professor in the department of physics and astronomy at Middle Tennessee State University.
Speed Of Sound
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