from Bruce
Anecdotes
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• A United Kingdom ad for the Yellow Pages shows an old man going to a used bookstore, looking for a copy of Fly Fishing by J.R. Hartley. He is unsuccessful, so he goes home and tries the Yellow Pages. Using it, he quickly locates a copy of the book, then while still on the telephone, says, “My name? Oh yes, it’s J.R. Hartley.” This TV commercial was so successful that a book was created because of it — the book was Fly Fishing by — of course — J.R. Hartley.
• Diarmuid Russell and Henry Volkening ran Russell and Volkening Literary Representatives. One of Mr. Volkening’s clients advised Bernard Malamud to call up Mr. Volkening and let him be his literary agent, but Mr. Russell became Mr. Malamud’s literary agent instead. How did this happen? According to Mr. Russell, “When Bernard called, I answered the phone.”
• Comedian Steve Allen — as you would expect — had a sense of humor. The front cover of my copy of his book More Funny People shows a photograph of a cleanly shaven Steve Allen. But on the back cover appears a photograph of Mr. Allen’s “ghost writer” — the photograph shows a bearded Steve Allen.
• F. Scott Fitzgerald could be disconcerting to talk to. Sometimes during a conversation, he would reach into a pocket, take out a pad of paper, write on it, return it to his pocket, then say, “I just thought of a phrase I didn’t want to forget. Now then, what were you saying?”
Bloopers
• Here are a few bloopers: 1) Ed Sullivan once did a quick public service message on his TV program: “And now a word about tuberculosis. Help stamp out TV.” 2) On 7 May 1964, President Lyndon Johnson and Ohio Governor James Rhodes came to Athens to help Ohio University celebrate its 160th anniversary. Governor Rhodes got a little mixed up in his choice of words and referred to OU as “this venereal institution.” 3) A man whose wife had just had a baby requested a disk jockey to play this song: “I Didn’t Know the Gun was Loaded.”
• On Marcus Welby, the good doctor talked with his son-in-law about his daughter’s pregnancy and told him, “Well, at least you’re over the hump.”
Books
• King Ptolemy III wanted the library at Alexandria to have a copy of every book in the world, even if he had to be unjust to do it. Whenever travelers arrived at Alexandria, their books were confiscated, and if the king wanted to keep a particular book for the library, the traveler was given a poorly and quickly made copy of the book. In addition, he borrowed comedies from the library at Athens and then refused to return them.
• Mark Twain once showed a visitor his library. The visitor commented on the large numbers of books piled everywhere — on the floor, in chairs, everywhere handy. Mr. Twain explained, “It’s next to impossible to borrow shelves.”
Bridges
• San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge was completed on May 26, 1937, and the following day was Pedestrian Day — pedestrians were allowed on the bridge. Hundreds of thousands of people showed up, many of whom did silly things. Officials at first thought that one woman was ill, but it turned out that she was trying to be the first person to walk across the bridge with her tongue sticking out. Other firsts on Pedestrian Day were the first person to walk across the bridge on stilts, the first dog to cross the bridge, the first sisters to cross the bridge on roller skates, the first twins to cross the bridge, and the first baby to cross the bridge in a baby carriage. The day after Pedestrian Day was the first day vehicles were allowed to cross the bridge.
• In 1958, MIT students decided to measure the length of the Harvard Bridge using a new kind of measurement: Smoots. A Smoot was the length of first-year student Oliver Smoot, who was a pledge of Lambda Chi fraternity. The fraternity used swimming pool paint to mark each Smoot on the bridge and to write out in full the measurement for every 10 Smoots. The length of the bridge is 364.4 Smoots, plus one ear. Lambda Chi pledges repaint the Smoot markings every two years, and Cambridge, Massachusetts, police use the Smoot markings to indicate exactly where on the bridge an accident took place.
***
© 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: "(Can’t Stop Those) Crazy Legs"
Album: TEENAGEJUVENILEDELINQUENTROCKNROLLHORRORBEACHPARTY!
Artist: Boom! Boom! Deluxe
Artist Location: Auckland, New Zealand
Info:
“Special guest Glen Matlock of the Sex Pistols sings a duet with DD on ‘Against The Law.’”
“Boom! Boom! Deluxe! are the legendary New Zealand Rock ’n’ Roll and Rockabilly band. Fantastic fun live, playing a mix of their own songs and authentic 1950's and 1960's classics, as well as a few clever re-workings of modern songs in the Rockabilly style!”
Price: $1 (NZD) for track; $13 (NZD) for 13-track album
Links:
TEENAGEJUVENILEDELINQUENTROCKNROLLHORRORBEACHPARTY!
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Michael Egan
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION
POVERTY: PERSONAL EXPERIENCES
POVERTY: PERSONAL EXPERIENCES
CHAPTER 3: MYSELF AND MY STUDENTS: Part 2
Many of my assignments as a composition teacher at Ohio University were practical writing because I wanted my students to get jobs when they graduated. My assignments gave students things to talk about at job interviews and papers to add to their writing portfolio.
For example, I assigned a problem-solving letter in which students would write someone and make a recommendation about solving a problem. No one was allowed to write their roommate and recommend that he or she take more showers, but they could write a former manager about ways of increasing profits, raising employee morale, and improving customer satisfaction.
I learned some things from students by reading their assignments, some of which were autobiographical essays. Sometimes I could read between the lines and realize some things that the student may not have realized.
Some of my students wrote about special nights when everyone would eat pancakes for supper. Kids like pancakes with syrup or sprinkled with sugar or spread with peanut butter, so these were really special nights.
If this happens once, then Mom and Dad are probably tired and don’t feel like cooking, but sometimes they happened a few nights in a row.
When and where I was growing up, it wasn’t unusual for a mother to send a kid over to borrow a cup of flour or a cup of sugar or a couple of eggs. The family was having a special-pancake supper because it was the end of the month and money and food were running low.
Parents really do take special care of their kids. Jerry Clower, a country comedian, remembers that when he was young whenever his mother made chicken, she would tell her kids, “Save the back for me! That’s my favorite part!”
Of course, a chicken back is not good eating, and when he got older, he realized that his mother loved her kids and wanted them to eat the best parts of the chicken.
Kids often realize later in life what their parents did for them when the kids were growing up. Sometimes a single mother would sit her kids down at the dinner table, feed them, and not eat. Later, the kids would see her eating peanut butter and crackers. When they got older, they would realize that there wasn’t enough good food to go around, so the mother would feed the kids first, eat what they left behind, and then fill up on peanut butter and crackers.
One of my students wrote about one of the best weeks in her life. She was in elementary school, and one day she got off the school bus and went inside her home. The electric lights were off, and her mother and father were wearing jackets inside the house.
Her parents told her that they had a special treat for her: They were going to go camping — in the living room.
They used candles because you don’t have electric lights when you go camping, her parents made a tent out of a rope and blankets, and her mother cooked on a tiny portable camp stove that was normally used by backpackers. The “campfire” was twelve tealights (small candles) on plates in the middle of the living room; they cooked marshmallows over those tealights. Her parents sang camp songs and told scary camp stories, and they told family stories about how Mommy and Daddy met and what their little girl was like as a baby. My student had a really fun time camping out in the living room because her parents made it a fun time: She had lots of quantity time and quality time with her parents.
Then one day she came home from school, walked inside her home, and the electric lights were on and the house was warm.
My father made good money as a power lineman, but before he went to lineman school, his job was turning off people’s electricity if they couldn’t pay their bill. Sometimes, he would knock on the door of a run-down trailer, and a poorly dressed pregnant woman, or a poorly dressed woman holding a baby, or a poorly dressed woman with a couple of toddlers standing behind her would answer the door. Often, the poorly dressed woman wouldn’t have the money to pay the electric bill, so my father would tell her that she needed to pay it quickly or her electricity would be cut off. He would then mark on a form that no one was home at the trailer because if no one was home he wasn’t allowed to cut off the electricity. He always had to give them a chance to pay their overdue bill, and if they weren’t home, they didn’t have that chance.
Make no mistake. It’s good not to experience poverty, but I think it’s good to know what poverty is as long as poverty exists.
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Reader Comment
Current Events
Rittenhouse
Get ready to see lots more of this psychopath. Infuriating but true:
Rittenhouse is getting off. Whether the jury comes back with an immediate "not guilty" verdict or Judge Schroeder grants a mistrial, it's happening.
that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Feels more like the middle of August than the middle of November.
Coming Out In Book Form
“1619 Project”
The “1619 Project,” which began two years ago as a special issue of The New York Times magazine, has been at the heart of an intensifying debate over racism and the country’s origins and how they should be presented in the classroom.
The project has been welcomed as a vital new voice that places slavery at the center of American history and Black people at the heart of a centuries-long quest for the U.S. to meet the promise — intended or otherwise — that “all men are created equal.” Project creator Nikole Hannah-Jones received a Pulitzer Prize for commentary.
At the same time, opposition has come from such historians as the Pulitzer Prize winner Gordon Wood, who denounced the project’s initial assertion that protecting slavery was a primary reason for the American Revolution (the language has since been amended) and from Republican officials around the country. Sen. Tom Cotton, of Arkansas, has proposed a bill that would ban federal funding for teaching the project, and the Trump administration issued a “1776 Commission” report it called a rebuttal against “reckless ‘re-education’ attempts that seek to reframe American history around the idea that the United States is not an exceptional country but an evil one.”
In 2021, Republican objections to the 1619 project and to critical race theory have led to widespread legislative action. According to Jonathan Friedman, director of free expression and education at PEN America, dozens of bills around the country have been proposed or enacted that call for various restrictions on books seen as immoral or unpatriotic. Two bills passed in Texas specifically mention the 1619 project.
“1619 Project”
Bronze Statue
Tennessee Williams
The first home of Tennessee Williams will undergo restoration, and a new life-size bronze statue of the playwright will be installed out front.
WCBI-TV reported that the Tennessee Williams Home and Welcome Center has been awarded two grants from the Mississippi Department of Archives and History and the Mississippi Hills Heritage Area. The Victorian-era house is the headquarters for tourism promotion in Columbus, Mississippi.
The grants will go toward repairs and renovation, including plasterwork inside and repainting outside.
Renovations of the Tennessee Williams home are expected to start in a few months. Work on the statue could take about a year.
Born as Thomas Lanier Williams in 1911, he spent part of his childhood in Columbus and Clarksdale, Mississippi, before his family moved to St. Louis. He lived in New Orleans as an adult. The Pulitzer Prize winner’s plays include “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” “The Glass Menagerie” and “Streetcar Named Desire.”
Tennessee Williams
Fundraiser Postponed
Dave Chappelle
Dave Chappelle’s appearance at his former high school in Washington, D.C. has been postponed by a threat of a student walkout.
The Duke Ellington School of the Arts in Georgetown said students were uncomfortable with Chappelle’s remarks on transgender people in his Netflix special, The Closer. The fundraiser would have been held on Nov. 23, but now has been moved to April 22.
The monies raised would have gone toward a new theater named after Chappelle, according to Politico Playbook, which broke the news
The walkout threat arose when students reportedly had what was described as “a heated debate” with faculty over an exhibition honoring Chappelle that would be unveiled on the same day as the fundraiser.
The postponement appears to be a compromise, as the school originally elected to cancel the fundraiser. Chappelle has been a generous donor over the years, donating $100,000 to the school and giving it one of his Emmy Awards in 2017. He also was a commencement speaker, held a master class, and brought celebrity friends to the campus.
Dave Chappelle
“Mueles de ble”
Vincent van Gogh
A Vincent van Gogh landscape seized by the Nazis during their Second World War occupation of France has sold at auction in New York for $35.9 million, a record for a watercolor by the Dutch impressionist.
The 1888 work, “Mueles de ble”, was purchased for well above its pre-sale estimate of $20-30 million, auction house Christie’s said. It was last exhibited in 1905.
“Mueles de ble” depicts a haystack in Arles, France, where van Gogh lived for more than a year in the 1880s. Unlike his best-known work, which were painted with oils, the painting was executed in watercolor, gouache, pen and ink on paper.
The work was initially owned after the artist’s suicide at 37 by his brother, Theo van Gogh. After passing through several owners, it was seized by Nazi forces during their occupation of France.
Vincent van Gogh
Trying To Destroy
Democracy
Steve Bannon was criminally charged on Friday for defying a subpoena issued by the House committee investigating Jan. 6. The charges were announced not long after Bannon very emphatically reminded listeners of his War Room podcast that the he and the right are trying to do away with democracy by “taking over elections” and overturning Trump’s loss last November.
“We’re taking action. We’re taking over school boards. We’re taking over the Republican Party with the precinct committee strategy. We’re taking over all the elections,” Bannon said.
“Suck on this!” he added. “Ninety-five percent of the ballots in Virginia were occupied with election officials and poll watchers and that is a principle reason we secured the election of Youngkin. They know it. They’re there to have a free and fair count. We’re going to continue that and get to the bottom of 3 November and we’re going to decertify the electors and you’re going to have a constitutional crisis.
Don’t worry, though. Bannon took the time to comfort his listeners. Everything will be totally fine, he said. Just trust him as he walks the nation off a constitutional cliff. “But you know what?” Bannon said. “We’re a big and tough country, and we can handle that, we’ll be able to handle that. We’ll get through that.”
Democracy
Gifts That Will Keep On Giving
Judges
Two of the three federal judges enacting a ban on President Joe Biden's vaccine mandate were appointed by his predecessor Donald Trump (R-Lock Him Up).
The case is an example of how Trump's sweeping actions to reshape the judiciary while in office may be felt long after the end of his term.
Biden's vaccine rules are being held up on the decision of a three-member panel of the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
On Friday it issued an opinion Friday calling Biden's rules "staggeringly overbroad," and rejected a White House request to let the rules stand while the case is being argued.
Engelhardt and Duncan were appointed to the court by Trump, while Jones was appointed by Ronald Reagan.
Judges
Sinterklaas's Controversial Sidekick
'Black Pete'
About 100 anti-racism protesters chanted “Kick Out Black Pete” Saturday at an event where children could meet the Dutch version of Santa Claus and his controversial sidekick.
The Black Pete character, often played by adults wearing blackface makeup, has sparked a decade of demonstrations and counter-demonstrations in the Netherlands by protesters who consider him a racist caricature and supporters who insist he is a harmless children's character.
Amid the long-running protests, people playing the character increasingly use different color face paint, including daubs of soot. Many towns and cities organizing children's parties and parades to welcome the Sinterklaas character have moved away from Black Pete. At the event in the southern city of Breda, Sinterklaas was accompanied by Gray Petes.
Sinterklaas — a Dutch version of St. Nicholas — is celebrated in the Netherlands on Dec. 5 with gifts for children, but tradition has it that he sails to the country from Spain a few weeks earlier, leading to celebrations across the nation to mark his arrival.
'Black Pete'
Climate Change
Troposphere
Earth's atmosphere is rising because of climate change, a new study shows.
Weather balloon measurements, taken in the Northern Hemisphere over the past 40 years, reveal that the lowest layer of Earth's atmosphere — called the troposphere — has been expanding upward at a rate of roughly 164 feet (50 meters) per decade, and climate change is the cause, according to findings published Nov.r 5 in the journal Science Advances.
The troposphere is the layer of the atmosphere we live and breathe in. It extends from sea level to a height ranging from 4.3 miles (7 kilometers) above the poles to 12.4 miles (20 km) over the tropics. As the layer of atmosphere that contains the most heat and moisture, it's also where a lot of atmospheric weather occurs.
Air in the atmosphere expands when it's hot and contracts when it's cold, so the troposphere's upper boundary, called the tropopause, naturally shrinks and expands with the changing of the seasons.
But by analyzing atmospheric data such as pressure, temperature and humidity — taken between 20 and 80 degrees north latitude — and pairing it with GPS data, researchers showed that as increasing quantities of greenhouse gases trap more heat in the atmosphere, the tropopause is rising higher than ever before.
Troposphere
Defies China, Opens Exhibit
Brescia, Italy
A provocative exhibit by dissident Chinese artist Badiucao opened Saturday in the industrial northern Italian city of Brescia despite pressure from the Chinese embassy in Rome to cancel it.
A letter from the embassy included veiled economic threats, noting Italy’s trade with China, in a bid to prevent the first solo exhibit by Badiucao — the pseudonym used by the artist whose work takes aim at China's policies and human rights record.
Brescia Mayor Emilio Del Bono “responded with delicacy and firmness,” said Elettra Stamboulis, curator of the exhibit at the city’s Museum of Santa Giulia.
After a previous attempt to stage a solo show in Hong Kong in 2018 was canceled under pressure, Badiucao said he is “proud and happy” that the Brescia exhibit is finally open to the public.
The exhibition, which runs until Feb. 13, traces Badiucao’s artistic career from its start to most recent works created in response to the health crisis triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. A former assistant to the Berlin-based Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei, Badiucau currently works in exile from Australia.
Brescia, Italy
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