from Bruce
Anecdotes
Food
• Comedian Carol Burnett married Joe Hamilton, a divorced man with eight children. They then proceeded to add three daughters to the already large family. With the addition of other family members and friends, they enjoyed some very large dinners. For a single meal, Carol once fried 67 pieces of chicken!
Friends
• Friends Bing Crosby and Bob Hope played an exhibition golf match together. Getting ready to putt, Mr. Crosby wanted to know how fast the green was, so he asked his caddy if the green had been cut that morning. After hearing that it had been cut, Mr. Crosby putted—and holed out. Mr. Hope then prepared to putt and asked the same caddy, “What time this morning?”
• At the 1998 Winter Olympic Games in Nagano, Japan, Tara Lipinski was in second place following the short program. However, Tara telephoned her best friend, Erin Elbe, to say, “I’m in second. Tomorrow it’ll be different.” It was different—Tara came from behind to win the gold medal in women’s figure skating.
• Joe Louis clobbered Max Baer for a while before knocking him out. Afterward, Mr. Baer told his friend, Jack Dempsey, “Kid me all you like, but just the same I gave Louis a terrific scare.” Mr. Dempsey agreed: “You sure did. For a while, he must have thought he killed you.”
Gays and Lesbians
• Sometimes, homosexuals are accepted by people who seem unlikely to accept them—even people they have been warned not to come out to because it might kill them. A gay man from an Italian Catholic family was visiting his 81-year-old grandmother while she was watching soap operas, and suddenly she pointed to an actor and said, “Isn’t he beautiful?” He looked surprised, so she said, “I’m not stupid, you know. I know you don’t like girls.” Then she smiled and added, “I watch all of the talk shows. I know what’s going on in the world.” Finally, the gay man was able to say, “Grandma, I’m gay, and I was afraid to tell you.” She told him, “When you get to be my age, a lot of things don’t bother you that used to bother you. You realize that a lot of things aren’t important enough to get upset over. What’s important is that people are happy.”
• Lesbian comedian Judy Carter knows a lesbian mother who came out to her children. Her 14-year-old son was worried about what his friends might think, so she promised that she would not out herself to his friends. In addition, she said that if any of his friends ever asked if she was a lesbian, he should joke, “Why? Does your mother want to date her?”
• When gay author Michael Thomas Ford came out to his sister, her response was, “Well, you know I’m okay with it, but God says it’s wrong, so you’re probably going to hell.”
Gifts
• At the 1992 Olympic Games in Albertville, France, figure skater Elvis Stojko finished seventh. When he returned home, his aunt and uncle gave him a gift: a round medallion that had been specially made for him. On one side of the medallion appears an engraving of the Olympic rings and the words, “Sixteenth Olympic Winter Games.” On the other side of the medallion appear the words, “Congratulations, Elvis, You’re Number One.” Mr. Stojko has worn that medallion at every competition he has appeared in since it was given to him.
• A few years after Martina Navratilova defected from Czechoslovakia to the United States, her parents moved to Dallas, Texas, and tried to adapt to American life. However, they grew homesick for their home country, language, and culture, so they moved back to Czechoslovakia. Martina gave them $50,000 so they could buy a very nice home and 40 apple trees.
• The best friend of R.L. Stine, author of the Fear Street and Goosebumps books, is Joe Arthur, who is known for his absolutely inappropriate but always funny gifts. When Mr. Stein’s son, Matt, was born, Mr. Arthur sent him a baby present—a very heavy shot put that cost almost $100 to mail. And when Matt was older, Joe gave him one walkie-talkie.
• A woman once sent her nephew a gift—cherries, preserved in brandy. The nephew wrote her a very nice thank-you note: “Dear Aunt, a thousand thanks for your kind gift. I appreciate the cherries immensely, not so much for themselves as for the spirit in which they are sent.”
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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
Track: "Lucky I’m Not Dead"
Album: One-Sided Single
Artist: Mike Ratliff
Artist Location: McConnelsville, Ohio
Info:
“A ‘live’ recording of a song about my drinking days flirting with other people’s girlfriends, getting beat up, and other fun stuff. Lol.”
“Thank Goodness for the gas station hotdog.” Mike Ratliff
BIO
“It was 4 in the morning when it happened. Another trucker swerved into Mike Ratliff's 18-wheeler, sending itself off the highway. Ratliff found himself pulling the man out of the vehicle in flames saving his life. Within moments, the truck exploded. This event would not only change the course of his route — it would change the course of his life.
“Now emerging as a solo artist, Mike is your everyday everyman who proves there's something special about that. In the Ohio coalfields, Mike Ratliff was raised with ritz's in his teeth, and a heart of compassion. He grew up listening to his uncle's band, and once had a short-lived band of his own. But for the 20 years he worked as a trucker, he also worked on his craft. On highway berms and in all-night diners, he wrote songs about the things he observed and the people he encountered.
“During this period, Mike formed the Non Members, a performing duo that played everywhere from nursing homes to notable regional songwriter showcases, including Charleston's community radio's MUSICIAN'S EDITION and the WOODY HAWLEY SERIES, hosted by NPR's MOUNTAIN STAGE bandleader Ron Sowell. In this time, he cut his musical teeth as a writer and performer.
“His songs are standouts of lyrical storytelling - and, his stories themselves are extraordinary. His acoustic guitar work provides an earthy backdrop that reminds us there's power in simplicity. He narrates these stories of the day-to-day with an evocative vocal delivery that is both passionate and well-restrained.
“The accident on that fateful day, though tragic, had a redeeming effect: it emboldened Mike Ratliff to live his artistic vision on his own terms.”
— Arthur Deras
Price: Name Your Price (Includes FREE)
Genre: Acoustic. Americana. Folk. Singer-Songwriter.
Links:
“Lucky I’m Not Dead”
Mike Ratliff on Bandcamp
Mike Ratliff on YouTube
Mike Ratliff Official Website
Other Links:
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David Bruce's Smashwords Page
David Bruce's Blog #1
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David Bruce's Blog #3
David Bruce's Apple iBookstore
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
Stephen Suggests
Solar Panels
New Venture
Michael Egan
Bonus Links
Jeannie the Teed-Off Temp
Reader Comment
Current Events
Linda >^..^<
We are all only temporarily able bodied.
Thanks, Linda!
that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
The defective rooster is up extra early - sunrise is at least 3 hours away.
Charity Livestream Show
Billy Corgan
Rock singer Billy Corgan of The Smashing Pumpkins will perform a charity livestream show on July 27 to benefit the victims of the Fourth of July parade shooting in suburban Chicago that killed seven people and wounded more than 30.
Corgan, a 20-year resident of Highland Park, where the shooting happened, said the show will be at the city’s plant-based tea house Madame Zuzu’s, which he owns with his partner Chloe Mendel.
Corgan said the show will feature several special guests. So far, Smashing Pumpkins drummer Jimmy Chamberlin and jazz saxophonist Frank Catalano have been named.
The show will be streamed for free on the Smashing Pumpkins YouTube page. There will be a link for viewers to donate.
Billy Corgan
1912 Olympics
Jim Thorpe
Jim Thorpe has been reinstated as the sole winner of the 1912 Olympic pentathlon and decathlon in Stockholm — nearly 110 years after being stripped of those gold medals for violations of strict amateurism rules of the time.
The International Olympic Committee announced the change Friday on the 110th anniversary of Thorpe winning the decathlon and later being proclaimed by King Gustav V of Sweden as “the greatest athlete in the world.”
Thorpe, a Native American, returned to a ticker-tape parade in New York, but months later it was discovered he had been paid to play minor league baseball over two summers, an infringement of the Olympic amateurism rules. He was stripped of his gold medals in what was described as the first major international sports scandal.
In 1982 — 29 years after Thorpe’s death — the IOC gave duplicate gold medals to his family but his Olympic records were not reinstated, nor was his status as the sole gold medalist of the two events.
Jim Thorpe
US Stamps
Mariachi
The U.S. Postal Service on Friday celebrated the release of a new series of stamps honoring mariachi. The first-day-of-issue ceremony was held in New Mexico’s largest city as musicians and fans from around the world convened for a weekend of concerts hosted by the 30th annual Mariachi Spectacular de Albuquerque.
The five graphic stamps were the creation of artist Rafael López, who lives and works in both Mexico and San Diego. Each features an individual performer dressed in traditional clothing with their instrument. While the outfits are ornate, the backgrounds are simple and bright, inspired by the palette of another Mexican craft — papel picado, the banners of elaborate paper cutouts that are often put up for parties and other events.
While mystery surrounds the origins of mariachi, López said there’s no doubt the beats and rhythms that evolved over centuries in tiny Mexican villages are now known around the globe. There’s something special about mariachi’s celebratory nature and Latinos are proud to be able to share that with other cultures, López said.
The images also were inspired by movie posters from Mexico’s golden era of cinema during the 1940s and ’50s and by travel posters put out by the U.S. government in the late 1930s and early ’40s.
Mariachi
New Hotline
988
Quick help for suicidal thoughts and other mental health emergencies will soon be as easy as 9-8-8.
The United States’ first nationwide three-digit mental health crisis hotline goes live on Saturday. It’s designed to be as easy to remember and use as 911, but instead of a dispatcher sending police, firefighters or paramedics, 988 will connect callers with trained mental health counselors.
The federal government has provided over $280 million to help states create systems that will do much more, including mobile mental health crisis teams that can be sent to people’s homes and emergency mental health centers, similar to urgent care clinics that treat physical aches and pains.
The 988 system will build on the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, an existing network of over 200 crisis centers nationwide staffed by counselors who answer millions of calls each year — about 2.4 million in 2020. Calls to the old lifeline, 1-800-273-8255, will still go through even with 988 in place.
988
Fake Anonymous Diary
Go Ask Alice
In 1971, the YA book Go Ask Alice hit shelves and almost immediately set off a firestorm. Purportedly the real-life diary of a straitlaced teen girl who lost her life to drugs, it was an instant hit, touted by critics across the country as a must-read for parents and teenagers alike. Over the ensuing decades, it sold tens of millions of copies — beloved by teens for its frenetic entries about taboo subjects, and by adults because it was a text they could point to as proof of the ills of drugs. But by the early 21st century, questions had arisen about the book’s veracity, as well as the true identity of its “anonymous” author — something only known by the book’s editor, a supposed child psychologist named Beatrice Sparks.
It was Sparks who captured Rick Emerson’s imagination one day back in 2015. Driving home from lunch, Emerson — who wasn’t born when the book came out, but lived through the Reagan-Era D.A.R.E. classes and War on Drugs it helped to fuel — began wondering about the mysterious author. Who was she, really? Where could he find out more about her? When he got home, he realized that the book he wanted to read didn’t exist, so he set out to write it himself. What he discovered was more shocking than he could have imagined. “Go Ask Alice was the bright, shiny object that started the story,” he tells Rolling Stone. “But then it got much bigger, much faster.”
In short, Emerson found something that one of her follow-up YA books, Jay’s Journal, an equally suspicious “diary” of a teen boy’s descent into occultism and suicide, may have helped ignite that other late-20th-century moral freak-out: the Satanic Panic, a two-decade span of Americans blaming the devil and occultists for everything from depression to suicide and murder. “As I worked my way from the outside in, [I realized] the shadow and the scope and the scale that these books had, especially combined,” he says. “It went literally from Hollywood to the Oval Office to Quantico, and then into high schools in small towns throughout America.”
Seven years since that idea popped into his head, Emerson has finally published Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter behind the World’s Most Notorious Diaries, out this month from BenBella Books. Based on intensive research — scouring Sparks’ personal letters; conducting dozens of interviews with those who knew the real families who lost children, and with the families themselves; meticulously picking through Sparks’ other books, as well as their source material — he’s created a portrait of a fabulist so intent on spinning her legend that she stole the stories of others for her own gain. But in telling the real stories, he also brings a sort of justice for the kids and their families whose experiences had been exploited for profit.
Go Ask Alice
Like Father Like Son
Musks
Elon Musk’s unique approach to growing his family seems to be hereditary. On Tuesday, Musk’s father, Errol Musk, 76, revealed that he had a second child with his stepdaughter Jana Bezuidenhout, 34, three years ago — and gave the creepiest explanation as to why.
“The only thing we are on Earth for is to reproduce,” Errol told The Sun. (Hold your vomit.)
It’s no surprise then that his son Elon — with nine children that we know of — has previously said he wants to do his “best to help the underpopulation crisis” by having as many children as humanly possible since he thinks that “a collapsing birth rate is the biggest danger civilization faces by far.”
In his procreation-driven interview with The Sun, Errol said his new child’s birth “wasn’t planned” but that he likely impregnated Bezuidenhout during the year-and-a-half they were living together following the birth of their son Rushi. No regrets.
Errol said that the two are no longer living together and that he realized that their 42-year age gap might be a bit much. (Aside from the fact that she’s his stepdaughter, of course. His other kids “still feel a bit creepy about it,” he said.)
Musks
'Unfit For Human Consumption'
Skittles
Skittles is facing legal action over its use of a toxic chemical found in artificial coloring.
In a lawsuit filed Thursday in the Northern District of California, plaintiff Jenile Thames claims that Skittles-maker Mars Inc. is deceiving customers and putting their health at risk over its continued use of titanium dioxide for its candy's trademark hues. The suit also takes issue with the package design, which it says hinders the efforts of "reasonable consumers" to inform themselves.
Mars pledged in 2016 to phase out the use of titanium dioxide, or TiO2, stating at the time that it would remove the chemical and all artificial colorings from its products over the next five years.
Titanium dioxide is commonly used in industrial applications such as paints, plastics, inks, adhesives, and roofing materials. It is also a popular component of mineral sunscreens.
The use of TiO2 in food is more controversial, and safety regulators have noted that the nanoparticles that make it so effective as a sunblock are indigestible by humans. Researchers have found its presence in the body has led to a host of health ailments, including alterations to DNA, chromosomal damage, inflammation, and cell neurosis.
Skittles
1.2 Billion-Years-Old
Groundwater
Groundwater that was recently discovered deep underground in a mine in South Africa is estimated to be 1.2 billion years old. Researchers suspect that the groundwater is some of the oldest on the planet, and its chemical interactions with the surrounding rock could offer new insights about energy production and storage in Earth's crust.
In fact, Oliver Warr, a research associate in the department of Earth sciences at the University of Toronto in Canada and lead author of a new study about the groundwater discovery, described the location in a statement as a "Pandora's box of helium-and-hydrogen-producing power."
The gold and uranium mine, known as Moab Khotsong, sits about 100 miles (161 kilometers) southwest of Johannesburg and is home to one of the world's deepest mine shafts, plunging to depths of 1.86 miles (3 km) below the surface at its deepest, according to the mine(opens in new tab).
The new find follows the prior discovery of approximately 1.8 billion-year-old groundwater made during a 2013 research expedition (also led by Warr). That finding occurred at Kidd Creek Mine in Ontario, which lies beneath the Canadian Shield, a geologic structure comprised of igneous and metamorphic rock dating to the precambrian supereon (4.5 billion to 541 million years ago). The Canadian Shield spans 3 million square miles (nearly 8 million square km), and Warr referred to it as a "hidden hydrogeosphere" — an abundance of hydrogen — in a blog post(opens in new tab) published July 5.
Groundwater
People Are Confused
Light-Years
JWST released the deepest highest resolution view of the infrared universe earlier this week, with people amazed at the distant galaxies, gravitationally lensed by the galaxy cluster SMACS 0723. The light from one of those galaxies comes from 13.1 billion years ago. However, people were surprised to know that the galaxy is not 13.1 billion light-years away. It is actually much further away – 30 billion light-years. So what gives?
Looking deeper into the universe means looking back in time. That is due to the finiteness of the speed of light. Take, for example, Betelgeuse. The red giant is the right shoulder of the constellation of Orion, located around 550 light-years away (with a fair bit of uncertainty). That means that the light that we see now (or the great dimming of two years ago) actually happened half a millennium ago.
As a rule of thumb, for galactic distances, you can turn how long light took to get here into light-years. This also works for intergalactic distances in the very local universe. So, the light from the Andromeda galaxy has traveled for 2.5 million years, and the large spiral galaxy is indeed 2.5 million light-years away.
Once things start being a few billion light-years away, the equivalence doesn’t work anymore. Let’s take SMACS 0723, the cluster at the center of the JWST image. Its light comes from 4.6 billion years ago – but its actual distance from us today is almost one billion light-years more. This is due to the expansion of the Universe.
Light-Years
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