from Bruce
Anecdotes
Fights
• Patty Barton was a jockey at Waterford Park in West Virginia in the 1970s. She quickly learned that she would have to be tough to make her way as a jockey in a man’s world. In fact, she is tough and muscular — she says, “I’m the only mother I know whose kids bring the neighbors in to look at her muscles.” In a race, another jockey by the name of Clifford Thompson deliberately knocked into her horse and hit her across her rear end with his whip. After the race, she waited for him. He snuck into the male jockeys’ room, and she followed him there, then she started a fight. Blood flowed for a while, and after the fight had been broken up, a steward asked what had caused the fight. Ms. Barton pulled down her pants and underpants and showed the steward the welt caused by her opponent’s riding whip. Both jockeys were fined, but Mr. Thompson was fined twice as much as Ms. Barton. (In addition, Ms. Barton was requested in future to ask the track nurse to examine her instead of pulling down her underpants in front of a male steward.) In another fight with a male jockey, she grabbed his genitals. Later, she said, “You go tell that little so-and-so that there was hardly anything to get hold of.”
• Cathy Gale is a feminist character in the 1960s British tongue-in-cheek TV series The Avengers. Instead of screaming for help when attacked by a thug, Mrs. Gale responded with martial arts, including kicks to the groin. This didn’t happen at first. Honor Blackman, who performed the role of Mrs. Gale, disliked some of the early scripts because her character was “so wet.” She finally told the writers, “Look, write my part as if I were a man, and I’ll turn it into a woman’s part.”
• Heavyweight boxer Jerry Quarry won a televised match in Madison Square Garden in March of 1969. Unfortunately for the audience watching at home, commercials for a Ford dealership were shown between the rounds of the match, with the commercial cutting off the end of one round and the beginning of the next round. After the fight was over, irritated viewers at home were delighted when, after winning the fight, Mr. Quarry was awarded a new General Motors Pontiac.
• Practitioners of the martial arts are very willing to walk away from fights they know they can easily win. (If they respect their opponent, they will fight.) Martial arts master Tajima once entered a town where news of his arrival quickly spread. A hothead eager to make a name for himself challenged Tajima to a duel to the death, but Tajima replied, “You are too young — and unworthy — to die,” then left the town.
• Jackie Robinson, the African-American player who integrated baseball’s major leagues, was a fighter no matter what sport he played. While playing basketball for Pasadena Junior College, he faced an opponent who kept sticking his hand in Mr. Robinson’s face, including in his mouth. Mr. Robinson grew tired of the abuse, so he bit the opposing player’s finger — and bit it hard. This almost caused a riot.
• When Mike Tyson fought Michael Spinks in Atlantic City, New Jersey, Mr. Tyson won quickly. In fact, writer Bill Barich sat near the seat of a man who had purchased a $1,500 ticket but failed to return from the restroom in time to witness any of the 91-second fight.
Firsts
• The Boston Celtics basketball team scored a couple of notable firsts in opening doors to talented African Americans. In 1950, Walter Brown drafted Chuck Cooper, an African-American forward who played for Duquesne University. Another owner of an NBA team tried to convince Mr. Brown not to become the first team owner to draft an African-American player, but Mr. Brown replied, “I don’t give a damn if he’s striped or polka-dot or plaid — Boston takes Charles Cooper of Duquesne.” In addition, when Red Auerbach quit coaching the Celtics, he handpicked center Bill Russell to be his replacement. Mr. Russell thus became the first African-American head coach or manager in a major team sport in the United States. In appreciation for Mr. Russell’s talents, the Celtics paid him $100,001 — $1 more than Philadelphia star Wilt Chamberlain received.
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© Copyright Bruce D. Bruce; All Rights Reserved
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Presenting
Michael Egan
U.S.A. took the day off.
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION
BANDCAMP MUSIC
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION OF BANDCAMP MUSIC
Music: "Ain’t No Stranger"
Album: GYPSY BLUES
Artist: Blue Moon Marquee
Artist Location: Alberta, Canada
“Blue Moon Marquee is a swinging jazz and blues band born of the wild rose country. They currently make their home in an island shack on the coast of the Salish Sea. A.W. Cardinal (vocals/guitar) and Jasmine Colette a.k.a. Badlands Jass (vocals/bass/drums) write and perform original compositions influenced by anything that swings, jumps or grooves.”
Price: $1.50 (CAD) for track; $15 (CAD) for 12-track album
Genre: Blues
Links:
GYPSY BLUES
Blue Moon Marquee on Bandcamp
Blue Moon Marquee Official Website
Other Links:
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David Bruce's Blog #1
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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
This coming Monday the epage will have been around for 20 years.
44th Class
Kennedy Center
The Kennedy Center Honors will return in December with a class that includes Motown Records creator Berry Gordy, “Saturday Night Live” mastermind Lorne Michaels and actress-singer Bette Midler. Organizers expect to operate at full capacity, after last year’s ceremony was delayed for months and later conducted under COVID-19 restrictions.
This 44th class of honorees for lifetime achievement in the creative arts is heavy on musical performers. The honorees also include opera singer Justino Diaz and folk music legend Joni Mitchell.
All will be honored on Dec. 5 with a trademark program that includes personalized tributes and performances that are kept secret from the honorees.
The 43rd Kennedy Center Honors class was delayed from December 2020 as the center largely shut down its indoor programming. A heavily slimmed-down ceremony was finally held in May of this year, with a series of small socially distanced gatherings and pre-taped video performances replacing the normal gala event.
The Dec. 5 ceremony will be the centerpiece of the Kennedy Center’s 50th anniversary of cultural programing. The center opened in 1971 and a young Diaz, now 81, actually performed at the grand opening of the opera house.
Kennedy Center
Hall of Fame
Alex Karras
A dozen NFL seasons packed with All-Pro roughhousing, easy celebrity and lots of laughs would be a fulsome career for any man. That was just Alex Karras’ opening act.
Karras was a natural in front of the camera, whether crumpling quarterbacks on a muddy field in Detroit or spilling locker-room secrets across the desk from Johnny Carson on “The Tonight Show.” After his final season in 1970, he didn’t stay benched for long.
Karras put that tough-guy image and excellent timing to good use, launching a second career that introduced him to a new generation. He was a part-time pro wrestler, sportscaster, popular TV series guest, co-star of a hit sitcom, “Webster,” and all the while, a movie actor with credits ranging from “Against All Odds” to “Victor/Victoria” and perhaps most memorably to “Blazing Saddles.”
For all the acclaim that followed, Karras died at age 77 in 2012 without one of the honors he coveted most: a bust in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
Better late than never, Karras will be formally enshrined as part of the Hall’s Centennial Class of 2020. During a small ceremony at Canton, Ohio, in April, Hall officials unveiled the bronze bust of Karras and handed it to his grandson.
Alex Karras
Hollywood Walk O'Fame
Marla Gibbs
Legendary actress and comedian Marla Gibbs is in good spirits after she appeared to faint while accepting her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame Tuesday, a representative says.
The Emmy-nominated performer’s career has spanned five decades, including roles in classic sitcoms “The Jeffersons” and “227.” She was introduced Tuesday by famed producer Norman Lear.
The 90-year-old guest of honor was delivering her acceptance speech when she began slumping over.
Gibbs’ son stepped in, helping his mother to a chair with some water. The actress moved inside briefly, apparently suffering from heat exhaustion in the 88-degree heat.
The ceremony picked back up about a half an hour later, when Gibbs was formally presented her star.
Marla Gibbs
Recreated Playboy Cover
Dolly Parton
Dolly Parton celebrated her husband Carl Thomas Dean's birthday by recreating her iconic Playboy cover from 1978.
The decorated country singer shared a video of herself on Tuesday in a black bustier and pink-and-white collar with a bow tie.
"Hey!" Parton said as she opened the video. "You're probably wondering why I'm dressed like this. Well, it's for my husband's birthday."
She added: "Remember some time back I said I was going to pose on the Playboy magazine when I was 75? Well, I'm 75, and they don't have a magazine anymore."
Parton was 32 years old when she first posed for Playboy, and dreams of her second cover shoot were squashed when the magazine went out of print after its spring 2020 issue.
Parton said that Dean had always loved her original cover, so to "make him happy" on his birthday, she decided to get a duplicate outfit and set up her own photo shoot.
Dolly Parton
Drops Steeply
Life Expectancy
Life expectancy in the United States has fallen more steeply than at any point since the Second World War, with minorities hit hardest.
Figures first reported by The New York Times on Wednesday from the National Centre for Health Statistics’s (NCHS) revealed that life expectancy fell by almost a year and a half, or 15 months, for all Americans in 2020.
It would mean that a child born today could be expected to live until the age of 77.3, compared to 78.8 years in 2019. The fall is thought to be the result of Covid, which has exposed inequalities across a range of issues.
For Black Americans, life expectancy decreased by 2.9 years, and for Hispanic Americans, a fall of three years was experienced last year, which was the worst of all groups. White Americans, meanwhile, were better off – with a decrease of 1.2 years.
The NCHS’s report also revealed a decrease of 1.8 years in life expectancy among men, and 1.2 years for women, among all Americans.
Life Expectancy
Fury Cross The Mersey
Liverpool
Civic leaders in Liverpool expressed outrage Wednesday after the English port city was stripped of its World Heritage status by the United Nations’ culture organization.
UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee voted in a secret ballot to remove the designation because of developments in the city center and on its historic River Mersey waterfront. The committee said the projects, including a planned new stadium for soccer team Everton, were “detrimental to the site’s authenticity and integrity” and had caused “irreversible loss of attributes.”
Liverpool was one of the world’s busiest ports in the 18th and 19th centuries, growing prosperous from trade in goods and — until the trade in humans outlawed by Britain in 1807 — slaves. The docks declined and became derelict in the 20th century, but have been restored with museums, shops, bars, restaurants and new housing developments, making Liverpool a symbol of urban renewal.
The city that gave birth to The Beatles was added to UNESCO’s World Heritage list in 2004, joining sites including India’s Taj Mahal, Egypt’s pyramids and the Tower of London.
But it was placed on the organization’s heritage in danger list in 2012 amid concerns that modern development was marring the docklands’ historic character.
Liverpool
Ancient Viruses Identified
Tibetan Glaciers
Like the start of a horror movie, ancient creatures are emerging from the cold storage of now-melting permafrost: from incredibly preserved extinct megafauna like the woolly rhino, to the 40,000-year-old remains of a giant wolf, and bacteria over 750,000 years old.
Not all of them are dead. Centuries-old moss was able to spring back to life in the warmth of the laboratory. So too, incredibly, were tiny 42,000-year-old roundworms.
These fascinating glimpses of organisms from Earth's long distant past are revealing the history of ancient ecosystems, including details of the environments in which they existed. But the melt has also created some concerns about ancient viruses coming back to haunt us.
Thanks to new metagenomics techniques and new methods for keeping their ice core samples sterilized, the researchers are working on getting a better understanding of what exactly lies within the cold.
In the new research, the team was able to identify an archive of dozens of unique 15,000-years-old viruses from the Guliya ice cap of the Tibetan Plateau, and gain insights into their functions.
Tibetan Glaciers
Gloucestershire Meteorite
Carbonaceous Chondrite
A crumbling hunk of rock found in a field in England is a rare meteorite from the earliest days of the solar system, dating back about 4.6 billion years.
The meteorite was found in Gloucestershire in March by Derek Robson, a resident of Loughborough, England, and the director of astrochemistry at the East Anglian Astrophysical Research Organisation (EAARO). The meteorite was sitting in the imprint of a horseshoe left behind in a field, according to Loughborough University.
The space rock is a carbonaceous chondrite, a rare category that makes up only 4% to 5% of meteorites that are found on Earth. These meteorites hail from the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter and formed early in the history of the solar system. Intriguingly, they often contain organic, or carbon-bearing, compounds, including the amino acids that make up the basic building blocks of life. This raises questions about whether these meteorites hold clues to how living things first emerged in the solar system.
Unlike other space debris, this chunk of rock didn't endure the violent collisions and intense heat involved in the creation of the solar system's planets and moons.
The rock is small, charcoal-colored and fragile, sort of like a chunk of crumbling concrete. The meteorite is mostly made of minerals such as olivine and phyllosilicates, Fowler said, as well as round grains called chondrules, which were partially molten beads incorporated into the asteroid when it first formed.
Carbonaceous Chondrite
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