from Bruce
Anecdotes
Sons
• Comedian Robin Williams often watched Saturday morning cartoons with Zach, his young son. While watching, Mr. Williams sometimes did funny voices and made funny remarks. Usually, Zach enjoyed this, but sometimes he told his father, “Daddy, don’t use that voice. Just be Daddy.”
• One day, Bobbie, Beatrice Lillie’s son, came in the house after playing in the garden. Ms. Lillie saw the dirt on her son’s face and arms and asked what he had been doing. He said, “I’ve been in the garden playing with the faeries.” She replied, “Faeries? Elves, dear.”
• Jack, Art Linkletter’s son, attended Beverly Hills High School, where he once ran for class president. Because 85 percent of the school’s students were Jewish, Jack used the name “Linkletterberg” for campaigning purposes and almost won the election.
Thanksgiving
• According to Totie Fields, her sister (Rosie), was the best cook in the family. Just before one Thanksgiving, Rosie prepared a feast of Jewish dishes — mushroom and barley soup, noodle pudding, brisket, and so on. (Totie says that this is what the Jewish Pilgrims ate.) Because the refrigerator and freezer were already full, they carried the Thanksgiving food out to the garage and left it there, knowing that the weather was cold enough to keep the food safe. Thanksgiving morning they went to the garage, only to discover that a gardener had left the door to the garage open and a neighborhood dog had enjoyed the feast. For Thanksgiving, they ate in a restaurant, then drove around the neighborhood looking for a dog with heartburn.
War
• Michael, the son of children’s author Walter Dean Myers, served in the Persian Gulf War and came back to the United States safe and sound. About the experience of having a child serve as a soldier in a war, Mr. Myers says, “You hear this story about a woman waking up in the middle of the night in fear, and later she learns that her husband was killed at that exact moment. Well, that’s a bunch of crap. The truth is, you wake up every night in fear. It was a very scary time.” (Mr. Myers’ younger brother died in Vietnam.)
• One of Emma Washa’s sons had an unenviable job during World War II. He worked in a hospital ward, and the wounded soldiers sometimes went crazy with pain and suffering. His job was to kneel on them to keep them from getting out of bed and hurting themselves. Later, this son died from a brain tumor. According to Ms. Washa, the brain tumor was caused by the insanity of war.
Weddings
• In the first half of the 20th century, Edwin Porter was a preacher in Texas, where he performed many weddings. In those days, etiquette books said that $3 was the proper amount to pay the preacher for performing the wedding, but when asked what he was owed Rev. Porter simply answered, “Just pay me whatever you think your wife is worth.” One new husband dug a quarter out of his pocket and asked if Rev. Porter had change! But another new husband dug into his pockets and hauled out bills, quarters, and other change, then he handed all his money to Rev. Porter without counting it, saying, “My wife is worth all I’ve got.” (Because the marriage fees varied so widely, Rev. Porter’s children made a game out of guessing the amount the groom would pay their father.)
• In a Haverhill, Massachusetts, cemetery are several funeral stones dedicated to the wives of Captain Nathaniel Thurston. His final wife, who outlived him, is not there. During the good captain’s final trip to the cemetery from Lansinburgh, New York, she rode beside his coffin in the undertaker’s wagon while the undertaker and his son rode up front. On the way back home from the cemetery, she rode beside the undertaker up front while his son rode in back. When she and the undertaker returned back home to Lansinburgh, New York, they got married.
• Aung San Suu Kyi of Burma fell in love with British citizen Michael Aris. In 1971, when he was working as a tutor in Bhutan for the royal family and she was working in New York City, she sent him 187 letters. They married even though Suu Kyi came from a prominent Burmese family and the Burmese people often are against intermarriage with foreigners. In fact, Chit Myaing, former Burmese ambassador to Great Britain, said, “The Burmese people would not like [Suu Kyi] marrying a foreigner. I knew that if I attended the wedding, I would be fired that day.”
***
© Copyright Bruce D. Bruce; All Rights Reserved
***
The Funniest People in Families — Free Downloads
The Funniest People in Families — Smashwords (Free Download)
The Funniest People in Families — Apple (Free Download)
Don’t Fear the Reaper — Kobo (Free Download)
The Funniest People in Families — Barnes and Noble (Free Download)
The Funniest People in Families — (Read Online Free)
MANY FREE PDFs:
davidbrucebooks: FREE PDFs
David Bruce at Smashwords (PDFs and Other Formats)
NEW BLOG - davidbrucebooks: FREE PDFs
Presenting
Michael Egan
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION
BANDCAMP MUSIC
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION OF BANDCAMP MUSIC
Track: “Change the World” (Clapton Cover)
Single: One-Track Single
Artist: noble
Artist Location: Lawrenceburg, Kentucky
Info:
noble has 31 one-track singles on Bandcamp. Some are NAME YOUR PRICE (Includes FREE). Others are $1 (USD).
Price: $1 (USD) for one-track single
Genre: Blues. Rock. Instrumental.
Links:
“Change the World”
noble 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
davidbrucebooks: EDUCATE YOURSELF - Free PDFs
David Bruce's Blog #3
David Bruce's Apple iBookstore
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
Stephen Suggests
Hatpin Abortion
New Venture
Michael Egan
Bonus Links
Jeannie the Teed-Off Temp
Reader Comment
Current Events
Subversive CrossStitch
The Subversive CrossStitch lady in Dallas has been at it again--attached are pictures of 2 of her latest offerings.
Linda >^..^<
We are all only temporarily able bodied.
Thanks, Linda!
that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Running late - ISP was down for a little over six hours.
NBC Fundraiser
Ukraine: Answering the Call
On Sunday, July 3, NBC will air a primetime special hoping to raise money to benefit victims of Russia’s war in Ukraine.
The special, Ukraine: Answering the Call, will run on NBC, MSNBC and CNBC at 7 pm Sunday, with guest appearances scheduled from Paul McCartney, Billie Eilish, Sheryl Crow, Jon Batiste, Alicia Keys, Simu Liu and others. Ben Stiller, who was recently in Ukraine, will make an appearance. Ukraine’s president Zelensky will also appear.
But what viewers at home may not realize is that the special was cooked up by MSNBC Deadline: White House anchor Nicolle Wallace while in line at a Chick-fil-A drive-through. Wallace serves as an executive producer on the special.
Wallace had been covering the invasion on her show every day, and she had developed sources in the country, including Igor Novikov, a former aide to Zelensky, who had at one point floated the idea of a “We are the World” type song for Ukraine (“We are the World” being the famous 1985 single that raised money for victims of famine in Africa). A few weeks later, Zelensky appeared on the Grammy Awards where he asked for support from the music community.
Ukraine: Answering the Call
Seventeen On List
Medal of Freedom
President Joe Biden will present the nation’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, to 17 people, including actor Denzel Washington, gymnast Simone Biles and the late John McCain, the Arizona Republican with whom Biden served in the U.S. Senate.
Biden will also recognize Sandra Lindsay, the New York City nurse who rolled up her sleeve on live television in December 2020 to receive the first COVID-19 vaccine dose that was pumped into an arm in the United States, the White House announced Friday.
Biden’s honors list, which the White House shared first with The Associated Press, includes both living and deceased honorees from the worlds of Hollywood, sports, politics, the military, academia, and civil rights and social justice advocacy.
The Democratic president will present the medals at the White House next week.
Medal of Freedom
Reunited With Stolen Guitar
Randy Bachman
Canadian rock legend Randy Bachman’s long search came to an end Friday when he was reunited in Tokyo with a cherished guitar 45 years after it was stolen from a Toronto hotel.
“My girlfriend is right there,” said Bachman, 78, a former member of The Guess Who and Bachman-Turner Overdrive, as the Gretsch guitar on which he wrote “American Woman” and other hits was handed to him by a Japanese musician who had bought it at a Tokyo store in 2014 without knowing its history.
He said all guitars are special, but the orange 1957 Gretsch 6120 Chet Atkins he bought as a teenager was exceptional. He worked at multiple jobs to save money to buy the $400 guitar, his first purchase of an expensive instrument, he said.
When it was stolen from the Toronto hotel in 1977, “I cried for three days. It was part of me,” he said. “It was very, very upsetting.” He ended up buying about 300 guitars in unsuccessful attempts to replace it, he said.
In 2020, a Canadian fan who heard the story of the guitar launched an internet search and successfully located it in Tokyo within two weeks.
Randy Bachman
Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction
Jesmyn Ward
The 2022 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction has gone to Jesmyn Ward, who at 45, is the youngest person to receive the library’s fiction award and is being honored for her lifetime of work examining racism and social injustice.
Ward’s “Salvage the Bones” earned the 2011 National Book Award and her “Sing, Unburied, Sing” was winner of the 2017 National Book Award. Her nonfiction work includes the memoir “Men We Reaped,” a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the 2020 work “Navigate Your Stars.”
She is also the editor of the anthology “The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks About Race.” Ward, who is a professor of creative writing at Tulane University, was the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship in 2017.
The virtual prize ceremony will take place at the 2022 National Book Festival on Sept. 3 in Washington, D.C.
Jesmyn Ward
Buffer Zone
SCOTUS
Soon after the draft of its decision stripping abortion rights got leaked, the Supreme Court resembled a fortress. The courthouse was ringed with eight-foot fencing and public streets and walkways near the grounds were closed to the public.
There was thick irony in the fact that the high court justices had created a “buffer zone” to limit pro-abortion demonstrators from getting up-close-and-personal. The court has spent decades declaring broad buffer zones around abortion clinics unconstitutional, forcing patients to run an intimidating (and often abusive) gauntlet of anti-abortion protesters.
This irony runs deeper still. The anti-abortion group Liberty Counsel jumpstarted the war on clinic buffer zones with a 1994 Supreme Court case, and continues to battle such restrictions as an intolerable infringement on First Amendment rights. The group has an outpost in Washington, D.C., but Americans cannot protest there either — because the Supreme Court buffer zone actually encompasses its building too.
Liberty Counsel maintains, under its umbrella, a D.C. ministry called Faith & Liberty, which sits in the shadow of the Supreme Court — across the street to the east. That street has been cordoned off with security checkpoints, and access has been limited to residents and workers on the block, keeping potential demonstrators far from the ministry, which is marked by giant stone tablets inscribed with the 10 Commandments.
Liberty Counsel takes credit for bringing the 1994 case, Madsen v. Women’s Health Center, which led the Supreme Court to strike down a 300-foot buffer zone around abortion clinics in Florida. In another 2014 buffer zone case, McCullen v. Coakley, Liberty Counsel filed an amicus brief with the high court decrying a 35-foot buffer zone in Massachusetts as a “significant threat to bedrock First Amendment freedoms,” arguing that such zones “chill the very kind of controversial speech the Founders sought to protect.” The brief concluded: “It is critically important that citizens’ free speech rights not be sacrificed in order to protect others from having to encounter offensive or controversial speech.”
SCOTUS
Chattering for a Year
Secret Service
Following the bombshell testimony of former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson before the Jan 6. committee, a war of leaks and secret source commentary has erupted over what took place in the presidential motorcade on the day of the Capitol riot.
Sources within the Secret Service now tell CNN that a description of an incident involving the former President Trump angrily demanding to be taken to the Capitol on Jan. 6, and lunging at agents within the president’s vehicle, circulated amongst staff for months following the events. Two Secret Service sources told CNN they heard the story from multiple agents, including the driver of the presidential vehicle where the events allegedly took place.
The public first became aware of the incident through testimony from Hutchinson, an aide to former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, who detailed a conversation with Secret Service official Anthony Ornato. Ornato described to Hutchinson an irate Trump manbaby yelling at Secret Service agents attempting to transport him back to the White House. “I’m the f-ing president,” Trump the twice-impeached loser allegedly demanded. “Take me to the Capitol now.” Hutchinson also said that Ornato described to her how Trump Individual #1 tried to grab the vehicle’s steering wheel before “lunging” toward Secret Service agent Bobby Engel.
One source, a longtime Secret Service employee, told CNN that agents had described to him how the president “sort of lunged forward … Nobody said Trump the former guy assaulted him; they said he tried to lunge over the seat. For what reason, nobody had any idea.” The source also relayed that agents often spoke of outbursts from Trump the tiny-handed grifter in which the president would throw or break things.
Secret Service
Living in Space
Astronauts
Astronauts lose decades' worth of bone mass in space that many do not recover even after a year back on Earth, researchers said Thursday, warning that it could be a "big concern" for future missions to Mars.
Previous research has shown astronauts lose between 1 to 2 percent of bone density for every month spent in space, as the lack of gravity takes the pressure off their legs when it comes to standing and walking.
To find out how astronauts recover once their feet are back on the ground, a new study scanned the wrists and ankles of 17 astronauts before, during and after a stay on the International Space Station.
The bone density lost by astronauts was equivalent to how much they would shed in several decades if they were back on Earth, said study co-author Steven Boyd of Canada's University of Calgary and director of the McCaig Institute for Bone and Joint Health.
Astronauts
"Very Close to The Theoretical Limit"
Tonga Volcano
The massive eruption from the underwater Tonga volcano in the Pacific earlier this year generated a blast so powerful, it sent massive pressure waves rippling through the atmosphere and around the globe.
These waves were the fastest ever observed within our atmosphere, reaching speeds of 720 miles (1,158 kilometers) per hour, a new study finds.
"This was a genuinely huge explosion, and truly unique in terms of what's been observed by science to date," study lead author Corwin Wright, a Royal Society University Research Fellow based at the Centre for Space, Atmospheric and Oceanic Science at the University of Bath in the UK, said in a statement.
The atmospheric waves triggered by the volcano traveled at unprecedented speeds, "very close to the theoretical limit", he said.
The volcano – known as Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai, or just Hunga – lies about 40 miles (65 kilometers) northwest of the Tongan capital of Nuku'alofa and sits within a line of volcanoes called the Tonga-Kermadec volcanic arc.
Tonga Volcano
Never-Before-Seen Crystals
Meteorite Dust
Researchers have discovered never-before-seen types of crystal hidden in tiny grains of perfectly preserved meteorite dust. The dust was left behind by a massive space rock that exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia, nine years ago.
On Feb. 15, 2013, an asteroid measuring 59 feet (18 meters) across and weighing 12,125 tons (11,000 metric tons) entered Earth's atmosphere at around 41,600 mph (66,950 km/h). Fortunately, the meteor exploded around 14.5 miles (23.3 kilometers) above the city of Chelyabinsk in southern Russia, showering the surrounding area in tiny meteorites and avoiding a colossal single collision with the surface. Experts at the time described the event as a major wake-up call to the dangers asteroids pose to the planet.
The Chelyabinsk meteor explosion was the largest of its kind to occur in Earth's atmosphere since the 1908 Tunguska event. It exploded with a force 30 times greater than the atomic bomb that rocked Hiroshima, according to NASA(opens in new tab). Video footage(opens in new tab) of the event showed the space rock burning up in a flash of light that was briefly brighter than the sun, before creating a powerful sonic boom that broke glass, damaged buildings and injured around 1,200 people in the city below, according to Live Science's sister site Space.com(opens in new tab).
In a new study, researchers anlyzed some of the tiny fragments of space rock that were left behind after the meteor exploded, known as meteorite dust. Normally, meteors produce a small amount of dust as they burn up, but the tiny grains are lost to scientists because they are either too small to find, scattered by the wind, fall into water or are contaminated by the environment. However, after the Chelyabinsk meteor exploded, a massive plume of dust hung in the atmosphere for more than four days before eventually raining down on Earth’s surface, according to NASA. And luckily, layers of snow that fell shortly before and after the event trapped and preserved some dust samples until scientists could recover them shortly after.
Meteorite Dust
| CURRENT MOON lunar phases |
