from Bruce
Anecdotes
Gifts
• The family that Louisa May Alcott, author of Little Women, grew up in was poor but was also concerned about families who were poorer than they were. The Alcott family often ate two meals a day, giving away the third meal to an even poorer family. Louisa’s father, Bronson, was thoroughly impractical. A kind neighbor once gave the Alcott family a load of wood, but Bronson gave it away to a family with an ill baby, even though his own family needed it. Fortunately, another neighbor arrived with another gift of wood for the Alcotts. Branson then told his family, “I told you we would not suffer.”
• The 18th-century French philosopher and writer Denis Diderot once received an elegant gift: a Chinese silk robe. He put it on and was delighted with it. But then he noticed that his slippers looked shabby, so he bought elegant new slippers. And when he wore the Chinese silk robe and sat down to write, he noticed that his desk looked shabby, so he bought an elegant new desk. And so it went until he had ended up completely renovating his entire writing room.
• George Bernard Shaw once gave English entertainer Joyce Grenfell a present — seven postcard-sized photographs of himself that he had signed. When he gave her the present, he told her, “One for every day in the week and all out on Sunday. And don’t sell them until I’m dead.”
Good Deeds
• When young-adult novelist Robert Cormier was in the 8th grade, his family’s house burned down, and the suit that he was going to wear to his 8th-grade graduation ceremony burned up with it. Fortunately, the Cormiers’ neighbors contributed money to buy clothing for them, and young Robert was able to wear a suit to his graduation ceremony. As an adult, Mr. Cormier did good deeds for other people. His novel I Am the Cheese contained a telephone number, which was his. He once received a call from a girl in a psychiatric institution who felt that she could identify only with the protagonist in the novel. Mr. Cormier says that he and she “had a long talk about how this Adam [the protagonist] in the book was really a reflection of her own life, even though the circumstances were much different.” In the novel, Adam calls his friend Amy Hertz three times. That is the telephone number that the girl in the psychiatric institution called, and many other young people also called it. Sometimes they would ask for Amy. If Mr. Cormier answered the phone, he would pretend to be Amy’s father. If his youngest daughter, Renee, answered the phone and was asked if Amy was there, she would say, “Speaking.”
• On New Year’s Eve, Virginia Woolf and her husband, Leonard Woolf, also a famous author, attended a party for 12-year-old Angelica, their niece. All the attendees, including the Woolfs, were dressed as characters from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. After the party was over, the Woolfs left, and in the street they saw a couple of men harassing an intoxicated woman. Police arrived, the two harassing men ran away, and the police began to question the intoxicated woman in an accusatory manner. Mr. Woolf stood up for the woman. Dressed in a paper hat and a green apron so he could portray the Carpenter of Alice in Wonderland, he told the police that they should leave the woman alone and instead find and question the men who had been harassing her. Mrs. Woolf, who was wearing the ears and paws of the March Hare, also joined in her husband’s criticism of the police.
• In 1933, seven-year-old Nelle Lee saw some older boys assaulting young Truman Streckfus Persons in what was supposed to be a game known as “Hot Grease in the Kitchen, Go Around!” In the game, the older boys stood in a line, crossed their arms, and dared someone to try to get past them and into a sandpit. Truman loved to be the center of attention, so he accepted the dare. Unfortunately, he was small, and the boys were able to keep him out of the sandpit and knock him to the ground and hit him. Nelle yelled, “Get offa him!” She also knocked the older boys off small Truman and then escorted him away from the older boys. The two became friends, and they became famous. Nelle Harper is better known as Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird. Truman Streckfus Persons is better known as Truman Capote, author of In Cold Blood.
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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
Music: "By the Strings"
Album: THIS IS ROCK ’N’ ROLL
Artist: Christian Shields
Artist Location: Austin, Texas
Info:
“I’m Christian Shields. Text me! 1 (512) 856-7460.”
Facebook
Twitter
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christianshieldsrocks.com
Price: $1 (USD) for track; $10 (USD) for 10-track album
Genre: Rock and Roll
Links:
THIS IS ROCK ’N’ ROLL
Christian Shields on Bandcamp
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Christian Shields Official Website
Other Links:
Bruce’s Music Recommendations: FREE pdfs
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Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
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
Gas up another 2¢ to $4.35/gal. at the no-name, cash preferred station.
PEN Award
Elaine May
Elaine May is receiving a literary prize named for a director and stage performer she knew well.
The 89-year-old May is this year’s recipient of the PEN/Mike Nichols Writing for Performance Award, a $25,000 prize established in 2019 to honor the legacy of Nichols, whose many achievements included his work with May as one of the leading comedy duos of the late 1950s and early ’60s. On her own, May directed such acclaimed films as “The Heartbreak Kid” and “Mikey and Nicky” and worked on the screenplay for “Heaven Can Wait” and the Nichols film “The Birdcage” among others.
On Wednesday, PEN also announced that Kenyan author Ngugi wa Thiong’o received the $50,000 PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature and playwright Jackie Sibblies Drury the $10,000 PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater Award.
PEN America, the literary and human rights organization, will celebrate the winners Feb. 28 at an in-person event in New York hosted by Seth Meyers.
Elaine May
2022 Nominees
Rock Hall
Dolly Parton, Eminem, Lionel Richie, Duran Duran and A Tribe Called Quest are among this year’s first-time nominees for induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
The Cleveland-based institution announced 17 artists and groups being considered for Rock Hall induction, including Rage Against the Machine, Pat Benatar, Dionne Warwick, Carly Simon, Judas Priest and Beck.
This year’s class will be announced in May, with an induction ceremony planned for later this year.
Artists must have released their first commercial recording at least 25 years before they’re eligible for induction.
The other nominees are Kate Bush, DEVO, Eurythmics, Fela Kuti, MC5 and the New York Dolls.
Rock Hall
Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young
Reunited
David Crosby, Graham Nash, and Stephen Stills have not agreed on much of anything since they dissolved their group back in 2015 after a bitter dispute, but Neil Young’s move to remove his music from Spotify has inspired them to come together and do the same.
In a new group statement, they are asking their labels to remove the CSN catalog from Spotify along with their solo works. “We support Neil and we agree with him that there is dangerous disinformation being aired on Spotify’s Joe Rogan podcast,” they said. “While we always value alternate points of view, knowingly spreading disinformation during this global pandemic has deadly consequences. Until real action is taken to show that a concern for humanity must be balanced with commerce, we don’t want our music — or the music we made together — to be on the same platform.”
Nash began the process of taking his music off Spotify earlier this week, but Crosby indicated he was unable to make such a move after selling his publishing last year. As of press time, every CSN/CSNY album was available on Spotify along with the complete solo catalogs of David Crosby, Stephen Stills, and Graham Nash. It’s unclear when that will change, or if they have the power to remove their albums simply by issuing a public request.
Neil Young’s albums were taken down from the service last week due to Covid-19 misinformation being platformed on Rogan’s podcast. “I support free speech,” Young wrote. “I have never been in favor of censorship. Private companies have the right to choose what they profit from, just as I can choose not to have my music support a platform that disseminates harmful information.”
In the aftermath of Young’s move, Nils Lofgren and India.Arie has also removed their music from Spotify.
Reunited
Docu-Series For ESPN
Colin Kaepernick
Spike Lee will direct a multi-part documentary for EPSPN on Colin Kaepernick that features extensive interviews with the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback and access to his personal archive.
ESPN Films announced Tuesday that Lee would weave never-before-seen footage for Kaepernick’s archive to provide “a full, first-person account of his journey.”
Kaepernick last played pro football in 2016, the same year he started kneeling during the national anthem to protest racial injustice. Although the NFL has encouraged teams to look at Kaepernick, he has yet to receive another pro contract.
No title or release date for the docu-series was announced.
Colin Kaepernick
Closing Indefinitely
National Butterfly Center
A butterfly sanctuary near the US-Mexico border has closed indefinitely amid ongoing threats and conspiracy theories raising baseless allegations that it is involved with human trafficking.
The National Butterfly Center – a private nature preserve in the Rio Grande Valley – has been a frequent target of far-right conspiracy theorists falsely accusing the centre of supporting a border-crossing trafficking ring, accusations that trade in the same false claims that propelled the QAnon movement.
Last week, the centre announced that it was forced to close over the weekend “due to credible threats” ahead of a “We Stand America” rally in nearby McAllen, Texas, featuring Donald Trump-allied figures like former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and prominent election fraud conspiracy theorist Patrick Byrne.
The 100-acre wildlife centre and native species botanical garden is the flagship facility for the North American Butterfly Association, hosting dozens of species found only in the Lower Rio Grande Valley. It also is home to the annual Texas Butterfly Festival.
Right-wing anti-immigrant campaigns have collided with sex trafficking conspiracy theories that have been central to the QAnon movement. But conspiracy theories involving the sanctuary have repeatedly materialised into in-person intimidation and harassment as well as threatening emails, phone calls and messages on social media.
National Butterfly Center
Judges Walk Off In Protest
‘The Masked Singer’
Rudy Giuliani (R-Disbarred Attorney/Unindicted Conspirator) was unmasked as an exiting costumed contestant in last week’s taping of the first Season 7 episode of Fox’s popular primetime series The Masked Singer. Deadline hears that as soon as they saw Giuliani, judges Ken Jeong and Robin Thicke quickly left the stage in protest.
The show is known for its jaw-dropping surprises when celebrity contestants shed their headpieces after they are eliminated. The reaction to Giuliani was perhaps the most polarizing the show has seen since 2020. The Masked Singer faced criticism then when another controversial Republican politician, Sarah Palin, was unveiled as The Bear.
We aren’t revealing which costume Rudy wore or what his swan song was — his exit episode won’t air until next month — so you can still revel in his reveal. The theme of the new season is “The Good, The Bad and The Cuddly”; your political affiliation determines which category Giuliani fits.
Deadline hears that while Jeong and Thicke exited (they eventually returned), fellow judges Jenny McCarthy and Nicole Scherzinger remained onstage. They bantered with Giuliani, a controversial figure for pressing what is widely derided as a baseless claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from his client Donald Trump.
‘The Masked Singer’
Bought Spyware
Pegasus
The FBI has confirmed purchasing NSO Group’s powerful spyware tool Pegasus, whose chronic abuse to surveil journalists, dissidents and human rights activists has long been established. It suggested its motivation was to “stay abreast of emerging technologies and tradecraft.”
The agency added in a statement Wednesday that it obtained a limited license from the Israeli firm “for product testing and evaluation only,” never using it operationally or to support any investigation.
But critics wondered why the premier U.S. law enforcement agency would need to pay for access to a notorious surveillance tool that has been extensively researched by public interest cyber sleuths if its interest was so limited.
“Spending millions of dollars to line the pockets of a company that is widely known to serially facilitate widespread human rights abuses, possible criminal acts, and operations that threaten the U.S.’s own national security is definitely troubling,” said Ron Deibert, director of Citizen Lab, the University of Toronto internet watchdog that has exposed dozens of Pegasus hacks since 2016.
NSO Group has said Pegasus is programmed not to target phones with the +1 U.S. country code, but American citizens living abroad have been among its victims.
Pegasus
Giant Iceberg Blocks Study
‘Doomsday Glacier’
Antarctica’s so-called Doomsday Glacier, nicknamed because it is huge and coming apart, is mostly thwarting an international effort to figure out how dangerously vulnerable it is.
A large iceberg broke off the deteriorating Thwaites glacier and, along with sea ice, it is blocking two research ships with dozens of scientists from examining how fast its crucial ice shelf is falling apart.
Scientists from around the world are part of a multi-year $50 million international effort to study the Florida-sized glacier by land, sea and below for the brief time the remote ice is reachable during the Antarctic summer.
Plans to examine the glacier’s crucial ice shelf haven’t been stopped but are sidetracked a bit, officials said.
This was the last of three international scientific expeditions aimed at the vulnerable ice shelf, said British Antarctic Survey geophysicist Rob Larter, chief scientist of the first research mission.
‘Doomsday Glacier’
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