from Bruce
Anecdotes
Children
• Chase, the young son of Christian writer Dale Hanson Bourke, had a babysitter who had lost a leg when she was a young girl in Peru, leaving her with a wooden leg that caused her to limp. One day, Ms. Bourke saw the babysitter and young Chase walking together, and she noticed that her son was limping before he came running to her. The babysitter, Doris, explained, “He always walks that way with me.” When Ms. Bourke asked why, Doris replied, “So we can be alike.”
• While on his own as a youngster after running away from home, comedian W.C. Fields would sometimes crawl through a punched-out window into a cellar where he would sleep by a furnace. This was very good quarters for him at that time. Unfortunately, one day he discovered that the window had been fixed, probably because he had been stealing the housewife’s preserves. “The thing taught me a lesson,” he said later. “You’ve got to know where to stop.”
• When he was a 12-year-old boy living in New Concord, Ohio, astronaut John Glenn wanted to be a Boy Scout, but there was no local troop for him to join. No problem. He and his friends organized their own scouting group and called it the Ohio Rangers. They engaged in such activities as swimming upstream, hiking in snow, and sleeping outdoors in the rain. Mr. Glenn says, “We told one another we were tougher than Scouts — so tough they wouldn’t have us.”
• Lady Astor, the first woman to sit in either of the British Houses of Parliament, was once heckled by a woman who shouted, “My children are as good as yours.” Lady Astor replied, “As which of mine? I’ve got some worse than any of yours — but I might have one who is better.” Another time, a man shouted, “Your husband’s a millionaire, ain’t he?” Lady Astor replied, “I should certainly hope so — that’s why I married him.”
• The two young sons of Francis Hodgson Burnett, author of A Little Princess and The Secret Garden, supported James Garfield during his Presidential election. The boys used to hang from one of their upstairs windows and shout, “Rah for Garfield!” After he was elected, they were invited to the White House, where they rode their bicycles in the halls and knocked down Senators and other VIPs.
• When R’ Dov Ber of Mezritch was an eight-year-old boy, the home of his family burned down. His mother began to cry, and so he asked why she was crying. She replied that it wasn’t because of the house, but because the fire had destroyed a document recording the family tree, which went back to R’ Yochanan HaSandlar. The child replied, “Don’t worry, mother. I will be the start of a new family tree.”
• Groucho Marx’ young daughter, Melinda, came to him one night and asked him to tell her the bedtime story “Little Red Riding Hood.” Because Groucho was busy, he asked her if someone else could tell the story to her. But Melinda insisted that he told the story better than anyone else. When Groucho asked why, she explained, “Because you put more food in Red Riding Hood’s basket.”
• Children loved comedian Joe E. Brown. He tells about a letter written by one of the mothers of those children. Just six years old, the child saw one of Mr. Brown’s movies, then asked his mother, “Mommy, when Joe E. Brown dies, will he go to Heaven?” The child’s mother replied, “Why, of course, darling.” “Golly, Mommy,” the child said. “Won’t God laugh!”
• A friend of author Sharon Salzberg had a four-year-old son whose caregiver, to whom he was very attached, was going to move away to live with her sister and so would not be able to take care of him anymore. She explained this carefully to him, and he said, “Mommy, tell me that story again but with a different ending.”
• On the First Sunday in Lent, the pastor visited a Sunday School class taught by Rolf E. Aaseng. The pastor wore his clerical vestments and spoke about why the vestments’ colors change during the year. One little girl was very impressed and later told her mother, “God came to Sunday School today!”
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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: "Ruzgar, Denis"
Album: (FREE) Green Cookie Sampler 2019-2020
Artist: Palmiyeler
Artist Location: Istanbul, Turkey
Record Company: Green Cookie Records
Record Company Location: Thessaloniki, Greece
Info:
“Palmiyeler invites you for a drink by wavy beaches where you can enjoy their fun-psych-surf-pop sounds with serious lyrics darken by Istanbul’s genuine chaos.”
“Ruzgar, Denis” is also on the Palmiyeler album AKDENIZ. Price: $7 (USD) for seven tracks
Price: Name Your Price (Includes FREE) for six tracks by various artists
Genre: Soft Rock. Various.
Links:
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Akdeniz by Palmiyeler
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Michael Egan
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION
Ukraine and More
Trump on Trial
Norman Eisen, Doonald Ayer, Joshua Perry, Noah Bookbinder, and E. Danya Perry” “Trump on Trial: A Guide to the January 6 Hearings and the Question of Criminality” (Brookings, PDF)
Of course, we know that the ultimate decision whether to seek charges can be made only by federal and state prosecutors. We understand the significant distance between “likely guilty” and provably “guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.” And we do not think that prosecution should lightly be instituted against anyone—including against a former President of the United States who remains supported by a significant percentage of the electorate. But we believe that the integrity of our legal system depends upon living up to the principle that no person is above the law. Thus the job ahead must be to apply the law to all the known facts, and adhere to traditional principles in deciding whether to move forward with prosecution. It is critically important to the rule of law that its penalties apply to all persons equally, regardless of their influence or political stature.
Andrew Tobias: What Ordinary Republicans Think About January 6
Stephen Pizzo (about the above PDF): “I just read the whole damn thing, and it’s the most devastating indictment of criminality I have ever re … and I’ve read a lot of indictments. Reading it is like listening to the closing argument to a jury by a federal prosecutor, strong and so full of illegality and violations of laws that it’s simply stunning one man could be so criminal. If you haven’t read it, you should before the live hearings. It gives you a road map to the committee’s findings and will produce enormous pressure on the DOJ to prosecute Trump and those closest to him during this sorry episode in American history. From the conclusion: ‘There has never been a case where securing accountability for wrongdoing was more critical to the future of the nation.'”
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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
Sunny and on the toasty side.
Postpones Summer Tour
Ringo Starr
Ringo Starr was forced to postpone the remainder of his summer tour after two members of the All-Starr Band tested positive for Covid.
The legendary Beatles drummer and his touring unit — which included Steve Lukather, Colin Hay, Warren Ham, Gregg Bissonette, Hamish Stuart and Edgar Winter — were midway through a 22-date trek; the remaining 12 shows on the itinerary have now been pushed to September.
During the second night of Starr’s three-night stand at New York’s Beacon Theater earlier this week, he alerted the audience that keyboardist Edgar Winter was missing the show due to Covid. Although the All-Starr Band soldiered through a few more gigs, guitarist Steve Lukather next tested positive, making continuing on too difficult.
Ringo Starr
Root Cause
Bill Maher
In the wake of mass shootings in Buffalo and Texas, many people are crying out for someone to “do something.” Yet some of the loudest voices in that chorus are among the biggest hypocrites when it comes to creating an atmosphere that promulgates violence among the feeble minded.
Bill Maher gave Hollywood a shot across the bow in his Friday Real Time on HBO, calling on the entertainment industry to look at its own culture of violence as a stimulant that creates justification for violent actions in some minds.
Maher noted how the average American kid sees an estimated 200,000 acts of violence before age 18. “Hollywood is the wokest place on earth,” Maher said, pointing out the good done under those principles. “But when it comes to romanticizing gun violence, crickets.”
Hollywood loves extolling vengeance, as noted by the dozens of films with that word in the title. “Because no impressionable young male would ever imitate that,” Maher said, sarcastically.
Guns are presented “over and over again” as the best soution to life’s problems. “They call them action movies,” said Maher. “They should call them revenge movies.”
Bill Maher
“Rudy! A Documusical”
Tribeca
A new documentary about Rudy Giuliani premiering at the Tribeca Festival weaves in musical performances to give the ups and downs of the man once commonly referred to as “America’s Mayor” an operatic flavor.
“Rudy! A Documusical,” directed by Jed Rothstein, is in large part a sober, conventional analysis of the unlikely trajectory of Giuliani’s political life, from New York prosecutor, mayor and Sept. 11 hero to the pusher of bogus legal challenges to the 2020 election for then-President Donald Trump. But to fully convey the exaggerated highs and lows of Giuliani, Rothstein felt he needed a Greek chorus.
“His story is very operatic,” Rothstein said in an interview. “The music can bring out emotional truths that’s different than having someone talk about it. It’s certainly unconventional in a documentary, but it brings out its own truth. I wanted to have a film that captured the craziness of his arc.”
Giuliani didn’t participate in the documentary, though Rothstein says he made many attempts to convince him to sit for an interview. “Rudy!” instead features interviews with former New York City Police Commissioner Bill Bratton; Al Sharpton; journalist Andrew Kirtzman, author of “Rudy Giuliani: Emperor of the City” and Giuliani’s press secretary in his first successful mayoral run, Ken Frydman. It also includes a forensic psychiatrist to help explain some of the actions around the Capitol riot.
Tribeca
Moore Seeks To Revive Lawsuit
Sacha Baron Cohen
A lawyer for Roy Moore tried to persuade some skeptical federal appeals judges Friday to revive a $95 million defamation lawsuit that the former Alabama candidate for U.S. Senate brought against comedian Sacha Baron Cohen.
Attorney Larry Klayman complained during arguments before a panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan that Moore wasn’t treated fairly when a judge tossed his lawsuit last July. He even compared his client to actor Johnny Depp, saying Moore also deserves to have a jury determine the validity of his claims.
U.S. District Judge John P. Cronan said in his written ruling last year that a 2018 segment with Moore on “Who Is America” — a comedy series in which Cohen plays fictional characters — could not have defamed him because it was “clearly a joke and no reasonable viewer would have seen it otherwise.”
Cronan said it should have been “abundantly clear to any reasonable viewer” that Cohen was using humor to comment on accusations in news reports that Moore had had inappropriate sexual encounters, including with a minor.
Circuit Judge Gerald E. Lynch noted that Moore had signed a release provision for the show, before he knew Cohen was involved, disclaiming reliance on “any representation made about who these people are and what they’re up to.”
Sacha Baron Cohen
Facing Santa Claus
Mrs. Palin
Alaska’s new voting system and an unexpected special election have attracted a crowd of 48 candidates to run for the state’s lone House seat this year, including former vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin and a Democratic socialist from the city of North Pole, who legally changed his name to Santa Claus.
The contest on Saturday is the state’s first foray into nonpartisan primaries and ranked-choice voting after a narrowly passed 2020 ballot measure upended the typical party primary system.
The new system had been expected to launch later in the state’s scheduled August primary, but longtime Rep. Don Young’s death in March forced a special election to fill his seat more quickly. Now, onlookers and candidates wonder how voters will engage with the new system: Will they stick with party-endorsed candidates, or will they give a more nontraditional candidate, like Claus, a chance at a seat in Congress?
Alaska’s new voting system is unique in the U.S., although other states use elements of it. California and Washington have nonpartisan primaries, for example, but they elevate only two — not four — candidates to the general election, while Maine and dozens of cities use ranked-choice voting in certain contests.
Mrs. Palin
First Peoples Mountain
Yellowstone
A government panel has renamed a Yellowstone National Park mountain that had been named for a U.S. Army officer who helped lead a massacre of Native Americans.
Mount Doane will now be called First Peoples Mountain after the unanimous vote by the U.S. Board on Geographic Names, the National Park Service announced Thursday.
The 10,551-foot (3,200-meter) peak in southeastern Yellowstone in Wyoming had been named for Lt. Gustavus Doane, who in 1870 helped lead an attack on a band of Piegan Blackfeet in northern Montana.
Doane bragged for the rest of his life about what become known as the Marias Massacre. The attack in response to the alleged slaying of a white fur trader killed at least 173 American Indians, including many women, elders and children suffering from smallpox, Yellowstone officials said in a statement.
Yellowstone
WWII Pope
Pius XII
The Vatican has long defended its World War II-era pope, Pius XII, against criticism that he remained silent as the Holocaust unfolded, insisting that he worked quietly behind the scenes to save lives. A new book, citing recently opened Vatican archives, suggests the lives the Vatican worked hardest to save were Jews who had converted to Catholicism or were children of Catholic-Jewish “mixed marriages.”
Documents attesting to frantic searches for baptismal certificates, lists of names of converts handed over by the Vatican to the German ambassador and heartfelt pleas from Catholics for the pope to find relatives of Jewish descent are contained in David Kertzer’s “The Pope at War,” being published Tuesday in the United States.
The book follows on the heels of Kertzer’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “The Pope and Mussolini,” about Pius’ predecessor, Pius XI. It uses the millions of recently released documents from the Vatican archives as well as the state archives of Italy, France, Germany, the U.S., and Britain to craft a history of World War II through the prism of the Pius XII papacy and its extensive diplomatic network with both Axis and Allied nations.
Kertzer concludes that Pius was no “Hitler’s Pope” — the provocative title of the last Pius-era blockbuster by John Cornwell. But neither was he the champion of Jews that Pius’ supporters contend.
Pius XII
End Of The Line
Farmer John
Visitors to Los Angeles often put on their list of city sights the Hollywood sign, the Venice boardwalk, the Watts Towers, and for the more adventurous and olfactory-challenged, the Farmer John’s meatpacking plant in Vernon.
A favored destination for location scouts, for aficionados of camp, muralists and hot dog connoisseurs, this hidden-away abattoir was less distinguished for what took place inside its walls than for its civic packaging.
From the corners of Bandini Boulevard, Soto Street and Vernon Avenue, tourists and locals alike can take in scenes of a bucolic, agrarian past such as Los Angeles has never known. Painted pigs gambol in green fields by meandering streams under blue, cloud-studded skies happily oblivious of the fate that awaited them within.
That fate took a slightly different turn Friday when the owner of the facility, Smithfield Foods, announced the facility will close early next year. The Virginia-based company said that this step is necessary due to “the escalating cost of doing business in California.”
For many Angelenos though, the loss may be anticlimactic. Many are still reeling from the decision at the end of the 2019 Dodger season by Smithfield not to renew its contract with the team in blue.
Farmer John
New Kind of Relative Discovered
Higgs Boson
Sometimes the discovery of new physics demands insane levels of energy. Big machines. Fancy equipment. Countless hours of sifting through reams of data.
And then sometimes the right combination of materials can open a doorway to invisible realms in a space little bigger than a tabletop.
Take this new kind of relative to the Higgs boson, for example. It was found lurking in a room temperature chunk of layered tellurium crystals. Unlike its famous cousin, it didn't take years of smashing up particles to spot it, either. Just a clever use of some lasers and a trick for unweaving their photon's quantum properties.
"It's not every day you find a new particle sitting on your tabletop," says Kenneth Burch, a Boston College physicist and the lead co-author of the study announcing the discovery of the particle.
Burch and his colleagues caught sight of what's known as an axial Higgs mode, a quantum wiggle that technically qualifies as a new kind of particle.
Higgs Boson
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