from Bruce
Anecdotes
Charity
• Entertainer Eddie Cantor put his knowledge of human nature to use while raising money for charity in what was reputed to be a tough town for fundraising. He did it by appearing to get sicker and sicker just before the fundraiser, even calling to see if someone could host the event for him at the last minute — which of course no one could. Because the people of the town thought Mr. Cantor was dying and was making his last request, he succeeded in raising $450,000 in a town where he normally would have been lucky to raise $150,000.
• Andrew Carnegie was a very wealthy man who had a reputation for donating money to charitable causes. Mark Twain wrote him to say that he wanted to buy a $2 hymnbook, pointing out that “I will bless you, God will bless you, and it will do a great deal of good.” Mr. Twain then added a postscript: “Don’t send the hymn-book — send me the two dollars.”
Children
• During a session of a junior church league, the preacher, Edwin Porter, was delayed, so he asked his oldest daughter, Janette, who was about 10 years old, to begin the session without him. The session started well, with 15 young children singing, “When the Roll is Called Up Yonder.” Next came individual prayers, spoken out loud, during which Reverend Porter arrived in time to hear one young girl pray about his daughter Janette, “Dear Jesus, make that preacher’s daughter quit stealing my sweetheart — and send him back to me.” Another little girl prayed about one of Reverend Porter’s young sons, “You know I need a husband — give me Edd Porter for my own.” Yet another little girl — the daughter of two prominent members of his church — prayed, “Dear God, do keep Mama and Papa from fussing so much of the time.”
• Abraham, the first Jew, was the son of Terach, a maker of clay idols. When Abraham was a boy, he sometimes watched the shop while Terach was away. One day, while Terach was away from the shop, Abram (who was later called Abraham) broke all the idols. When Terach returned, he asked Abram what had happened. Abram said, “It was terrible. The smaller idols got angry and began fighting, then the bigger idols got angry and began fighting, and finally all the idols broke each other into bits.” Terach said, “Idols don’t get angry, and idols don’t fight. They’re made of clay — they just sit there.” Abram replied, “So why do you worship them?”
• A woman used to say “God!” whenever she was annoyed, which was several times a day, so her son — a regular attendant at Sunday School — decided to teach her a lesson. He called out, “Mommy!” She responded, but then he did not say anything. He did this five times in one day, and finally his mother said, “You don’t have anything to say, so why do you call me all the time?” Her son replied, “Mom, I called you five times, and already you have lost your patience. Each day, you call ‘God!’ more than five times. I wonder whether God has lost His patience with you.”
• Mrs. Miriam Pincus was a Rabbi’s wife who used her histrionic ability to teach her young Hebrew School students Bible stories. While telling about David and Goliath, she used deep growls for the giant’s voice and the voice of a hero for David. She also sang comic songs to keep her young students entertained. One Monday, three tots rang the Rabbi’s doorbell. When the Rabbi came to the door, they asked, “Can Mrs. Pincus come out and play?”
• Quaker unprogrammed meetings frequently include long periods of silence. A small child who was attending his first meeting sat quietly for a while, then he asked his mother, “Why are they all sitting so silently?” The mother hushed the child, but a Quaker rose and said, “Our first speaker this morning has put before us a most important question.”
• Mary Farwell’s five-year-old son was playing with his Speak-and-Spell computer. He typed the word “G-O-D” into it, but he was surprised when the computer told him, “Word not found.” He tried it again, only to meet with the same unsatisfactory result. He then looked at his computer and said, “Jesus is not going to like this!”
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© Copyright Bruce D. Bruce; All Rights Reserved
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Presenting
Michael Egan
U.S.A. said:
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION
BANDCAMP MUSIC
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION OF BANDCAMP MUSIC
Music: "Game of Thrones Theme"
Artist: Frankie and the Pool Boys
Artist Location: San Francisco, California
Info: “Frankie and the Pool Boys — Surf band, party band! Original music in the style of the first wave of Southern California beach music. An emphasis on melody, grooves, and fun. Instrumentals only, because who needs a bunch of dumb lyrics?”
Price: $0.99 (UDS) for track; this is a one-sided single
Genre: Surf Instrumentals.
Links:
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Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
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America When India Dies
New Venture
Michael Egan
Bonus Links
Jeannie the Teed-Off Temp
Reader Comment
Current Events
Triumvirate of sleaze
As if slimy, grasping, lying Kevin McCarthy wasn't bad enough. Add odious, scheming Steve Scalise--his near-death experience did nothing to humanize him. And now they have officially added power-hungry, grasping, disgusting chick Stefanik--she showed how low class she was during the Impeachment hearings. Add
Moscow Mitch--what a dumpster fire of low-lifes!
Part of why I love Joe
Biden kills Trump’s sculpture garden of ‘American heroes’: Biden today revoked several of the executive orders issued in his predecessor’s last year in office, including the sculpture garden Trump proposed on July 4 at an event at Mount Rushmore
Linda >^..^<
We are all only temporarily able bodied.
Thanks, Linda!
that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Live Sumo @NHK (5:10am ET/1:10am PT).
Promises New Album
Bruce Springsteen
At the beginning of 2021, Bruce Springsteen said he wouldn’t tour until 2022 but told SiriusXM that he had a “big surprise” coming: Last night, he revealed the surprise: He has a record coming out soon that’s set in the West.
Springsteen speaks on the role that the state of California has played in his “most topical” songwriting, “The ’90s, the 2000s, and even now on a record coming out soon set largely in the West,” he explained. “So I got very involved in telling those Western stories through my work.”
He made the fan-thrilling announcement during a remote acceptance speech as the eighth recipient of the Woody Guthrie Prize, an award that goes to artists who honor and create in the spirit of the legendary folksinger.
In accepting the award, Springsteen follows recipients Pete Seeger, Mavis Staples, Kris Kristofferson, Norman Lear, John Mellencamp, Chuck D, and Joan Baez. He pledged his appreciation to Guthrie and and said, “I’ve always said that Bob Dylan was the father of my country, but [Woody Guthrie] was the grandfather of my country.”
Bruce Springsteen
Tulsa Massacre Remembrance
John Legend
Grammy-award winning singer and songwriter John Legend will headline a nationally televised ceremony in remembrance of the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre, an event official said Friday.
“When we sat back and asked ourselves who could really elevate this, who could take it to the next level, John Legend was obviously a great fit,” 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial Commission director Phil Armstrong told the Tulsa World.
Legend will headline the Remember & Rise event on May 31 at ONEOK Field.
Legend is scheduled to speak and perform during the event that Armstrong said will include other, yet to be announced speakers and performers.
John Legend
'Feud Implies Equal Ground'
Seth Rogen
Seth Rogen appeared Thursday on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert and explained why his so-called feud with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Cancunt) is "not a feud."
Rogen is known for being openly opinionated on social media and, back in January, he and Cruz had a days-long Twitter exchange, which all started on Inauguration Day, when Cruz criticized President Joe Biden for reentering the Paris Climate Agreement.
On Thursday, host Stephen Colbert asked the actor to explain why he is calling his social media spar with Cruz "not a feud."
"Feud implies equal ground," Rogen explained. "If someone's trying to murder someone with a baseball bat and someone is yelling that person to stop, is that a feud between the baseball bat-wielder and the person yelling at the baseball bat-wielder? I don't know if that's a feud."
Rogen added, "I think feud implies two people hitting each other with baseball bats. I'm, like, Ted Cruz is a fascist. He denies the reality of the election. His words cause people to die, and I'm making jokes about it. Is that a feud? I don't know. To me, it doesn't seem like a feud. To me, it seems like I'm pointing out the fact that he is a terrible man whose words have resulted in death."
Seth Rogen
$120M Severance?
ViacomCBS
ViacomCBS said Friday that former CBS CEO Les Moonves will not get his $120 million severance package from his firing in 2018, ending a long-running dispute over the money.
Moonves was ousted in 2018 after a company investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct spanning three decades found Moonves violated company policy and did not cooperate with the investigation.
But Moonves challenged the decision and his $120 million severance was set aside until the matter could be resolved.
On Friday, New York-based ViacomCBS said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that the matter had been resolved, the arbitration dismissed, and the $120 million would be going back to ViacomCBS in its entirety. It give no further details.
Moonves was one of television’s most influential figures, credited for turning around the fortunes of CBS when he took over as entertainment chief in 1995. He had been one of the highest-paid executives in the nation, making about $70 million a year at the end of his run with the company.
ViacomCBS
Debut
National Portrait Gallery
A picture is worth a thousand tweets. Donald Trump (R-Lock Him Up) gained immortality of sorts on Friday when he made his debut at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington. But he also ran into some “good trouble”.
The photo of Trump was taken by New York–based Pari Dukovic for Time magazine on 17 June 2019, the day before the president officially announced he would seek re-election. It shows him sitting at the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, wearing his trademark long red tie.
The picture is accompanied by a caption in neutral museum language, noting that Trump was elected “after tapping into populist American sentiment” and that he “put forth an ‘America First’ agenda”. It records his two impeachments and says the coronavirus pandemic “became a key issue during his re-election campaign”.
The caption adds: “Trump did not concede [defeat], and a mob of his supporters, who refused to accept the results, attacked the US Capitol complex on 6 January 2021, when Congress was working to certify [Joe] Biden’s win.”
The caption also appears in Spanish, a policy rarely seen at the Trump White House.
National Portrait Gallery
Expletive-Laden Message
Proud Boys
Proud Boys leader Ethan Nordean lashed out at President Donald Trump (R-Lock Him Up), accusing him of misleading his supporters and then deserting them despite their unwavering loyalty.
"We are now and always have been on our own. So glad he was able to pardon a bunch of degenerates as his last move and s--- on us on the way out," Nordean said in an expletive-laden message about the former president. "F--- you trump you left us on [t]he battle field bloody and alone."
Prosecutors say Nordean, along with other Proud Boys members, planned to push through police barricades and force themselves inside the building that day. Nordean, the self-described "sergeant-at-arms" of the Proud Boys' Seattle chapter is facing several charges, including conspiracy, obstruction of an official proceeding, and aiding and abetting.
In a court filing Thursday, prosecutors detailed communications sent through the instant messaging app Telegram that they say show additional evidence that Nordean and other Proud Boys members conspired to breach the Capitol. Prosecutors included the anti-Trump diatribe in which Nordean seemed to acknowledged he and others are facing criminal charges because they followed Trump's lead.
"I've followed this guy for 4 years and given everything and lost it all. Yes he woke us up, but he led us to believe some great justice was upon us...and it never happened," Nordean wrote on Jan. 20, after Proud Boys members were charged, "now I've got some of my good friends and myself facing jail time cuz we followed this guys lead and never questioned it."
Proud Boys
Brain-Injury Payouts Show Bias
NFL
Thousands of retired Black professional football players, their families and supporters are demanding an end to the controversial use of “race-norming” to determine which players are eligible for payouts in the NFL’s $1 billion settlement of brain injury claims, a system experts say is discriminatory.
Former Washington running back Ken Jenkins, 60, and his wife Amy Lewis on Friday delivered 50,000 petitions demanding equal treatment for Black players to Senior U.S. District Judge Anita B. Brody in Philadelphia, who is overseeing the massive settlement. Former players who suffer dementia or other diagnoses can be eligible for a payout.
Under the settlement, however, the NFL has insisted on using a scoring algorithm on the dementia testing that assumes Black men start with lower cognitive skills. They must therefore score much lower than whites to show enough mental decline to win an award. The practice, which went unnoticed until 2018, has made it harder for Black former players to get awards.
“My reaction was, ‘Well, here we go again,’” said Jenkins, a former running back. “It’s the same old nonsense for Black folks, to have to deal with some insidious, convoluted deals that are being made.” Jenkins is now an insurance executive and is not experiencing any cognitive problems, but has plenty of NFL friends who are less fortunate.
The majority of the league’s 20,000 retirees are Black. And only a quarter of the more than 2,000 men who sought awards for early to moderate dementia have qualified under the testing program. Lawyers for Black players have asked for details on how the $800 million in settlement payouts so far have broken along racial lines, but have yet to receive them.
NFL
Free Offices
Lighthouses
Dreading your eventual return to the office? The federal government is making available — for free — some waterfront workspaces with killer views that are sure to entice. But there’s a catch.
The General Services Administration says the U.S. Coast Guard has decided it no longer needs four of the nation’s most picturesque lighthouses, and it’s inviting certain types of organizations to take them over at no cost.
The GSA, which has been getting rid of its large inventory of obsolete lighthouses, said Thursday that Beavertail Lighthouse in Jamestown, Rhode Island — America’s third-oldest lighthouse, and a beacon that defeated British forces torched out of spite in 1779 as they withdrew from the new nation — is up for grabs.
So are Watch Hill Light in Westerly, Rhode Island, not far from Taylor Swift’s beachside mansion; Cleveland Harbor West Pierhead Light in Ohio; and Duluth Harbor North Pierhead Light in Minnesota.
Conditionally, that is: The government says it’ll make the historic lighthouses and their outbuildings available free of charge to federal, state and local agencies; nonprofit organizations; educational and community development agencies; or groups devoted to parks, recreation, culture, or historic preservation.
Lighthouses
Intestinal Respiration
Pigs And Rodents
As you're sitting there, reading these words, you're probably breathing. Down the air goes, into your lungs, via the upper respiratory tract that includes your mouth and nose; up it comes again, back out the same way, after delivering its precious oxygen payload.
This, we assume, is how most mammals breathe - but maybe it's not actually the complete picture. According to new research, rodents and pigs can also respirate through their butts.
Technically, delivery of oxygen via their rectal intestines suggests a new, enema-like means of ventilating patients under respiratory distress - if the same strange ability can be demonstrated in humans.
Intestinal respiration sounds extremely weird, but it's actually been known about for some time - in fish, anyway. In emergency low oxygen, or hypoxic, conditions, some aquatic animals such as sea cucumbers, freshwater catfish, and freshwater loaches can maximize their oxygen intake by breathing through their guts.
Naturally, this raised the fascinating question of whether other animals can do the same - including mammals. Although it seemed unlikely, a team of Japanese and American scientists led by thoracic surgeon Ryo Okabe of Kyoto University decided to try and find out, in the hopes of determining the feasibility of rectal ventilators for human patients.
Pigs And Rodents
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