from Bruce
Anecdotes
Perspective
• A woman continually cried, no matter what the weather was like. If it rained, she cried. If it was sunny, she cried. When she was asked why she continually cried, she explained that she had two daughters. One daughter was married to a shoe salesman and the other daughter was married to an umbrella salesman. The woman cried when it was raining because no one would go out into the rain and buy shoes, and she cried when it was sunny because no one would bother to buy an umbrella. A wise person asked her why she didn’t smile when it rained because it meant that people would buy umbrellas, and why she didn’t smile when it was sunny because it meant that people would buy shoes. After that, no matter what the weather was like, the old woman smiled.
Poor
• The motherhouse of Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity had no stoves, no washing machines, no electric fans, no air conditioners. Mother Teresa explained, “I do not want them. The poor we serve have none.” When she first had the idea of starting the Missionaries of Charity, she even thought that she would allow the nuns to eat only the kind of food the very poorest people ate — rice and salt. However, she asked advice from Mother Dengal, who told her, “How do you expect your sisters to work, if their bodies receive no sustenance?” As a result of the advice, Mother Teresa allowed her nuns to eat well, but to eat only simple food.
• During years of interviewing children for his TV program House Party, Art Linkletter occasionally interviewed an underprivileged child. (Mr. Linkletter himself grew up in a poor family. He writes in Kids Say the Darnest Things! that if the church hadn’t donated dinners to his family, holidays such as Thanksgiving and Christmas would have been bleak.) In one interview, he asked an impoverished child, “What makes a happy home?” The little boy answered, “A steady paycheck.”
• In an inn, a rich man mistook Rebbe Zusia for a beggar and mistreated him. However, when he discovered that it was Rebbe Zusia he was mistreating, and not a beggar, he asked Zusia for forgiveness. Rebbe Zusia replied, “You have treated Zusia with respect; it is a poor beggar that you have mistreated. Go and ask forgiveness from beggars everywhere.”
Practical Jokes
• Lorenzo Dow was a traveling evangelist in the old days. At a camp meeting, he met a preacher who had a habit of ending every sermon with the cry, “Hurry up, Gabriel, and blow your horn!” Therefore, the Reverend Dow hired a boy to hide in a tall tree before the preacher’s sermon, and at the conclusion of the sermon, while hidden by the tree’s leaves, to blow on a hunting horn.
• Gregor Mendel, whose work with peas led to the development of the science of genetics, was a priest in the Order of Saint Augustine. Priests aren’t supposed to have children, but Father Mendel enjoyed shocking visitors to his monastery by telling them, “Now I am going to show you my children.” He would then lead the visitors to his garden and show them his pea plants.
• Mark Twain listened to a sermon, then he told the preacher that he had at home a book that contained every word of the preacher’s sermon. This astonished and worried the preacher because he did not want to be guilty of even unintentional plagiarism. He asked to see a copy of the book, and Mr. Twain sent it to him — it was a dictionary.
Prayer
• Art Rooney felt that he had gotten a good price when he bought the Pittsburgh Steelers partly because his two sisters were nuns and his brother was a priest. Another person with a religious connection was Joe Paterno, coach of Penn State. When Penn State was having a big winning streak, his mother would listen to the games, and if Penn State was losing, she would go into the bathroom with her rosary and pray. In the Orange Bowl, Kansas led Penn State for most of the game, and with Mr. Paterno’s mother in the bathroom praying, Penn State scored to come within one point, 14-13. Mr. Paterno decided to go for a win with a two-point conversion, but the attempt failed. With his mother still praying, a referee called a penalty on Kansas for having too many players on the field, and on its second attempt, Penn State made the two-point conversion to win by one point. After the game, Mr. Paterno received a telegram from Mr. Rooney: “Congratulations. I’ll trade you my brother and two sisters for your mother, straight up.”
***
© Copyright Bruce D. Bruce; All Rights Reserved
***
250 Anecdotes About Religion — Buy
250 Anecdotes About Religion -- Buy the Paperback
250 Anecdotes About Religion -- Kindle
250 Anecdotes About Religion -- Apple
250 Anecdotes About Religion -- Barnes and Noble
250 Anecdotes About Religion -- Kobo
250 Anecdotes About Religion -- Smashwords: Many Formats, Including PDF
Presenting
Michael Egan
U.S.A. replied.
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION
BANDCAMP MUSIC
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION OF BANDCAMP MUSIC
Music: "How Can You Break?"
Album: ROLLING EYES & SIGHS
Artist: Jonathan Nicholas
Artist Location: Swansee, UK
Info: “This isn’t light gentle acoustic, there’s a strength to the guitar playing and vocals that give it a power and feel that a lot of acoustic artists just don’t have.” — SwanScene
Not on the Album: Ramblin' On My Mind - Jonathan Nicholas (a Robert Johnson blues classic)
Price: £1 (GBP) for track; £3 (GBP) for 5-track album
Genre: Acoustic. Singer-Songwriter.
Links:
ROLLING EYES & SIGHS
Jonathan Nicholas on Bandcamp
Jonathan Nicholas on YouTube
Other Links:
David Bruce's Amazon Author Page
David Bruce's Smashwords Page
David Bruce's Blog #1
David Bruce's Blog #2
David Bruce's Blog #3
David Bruce's Apple iBookstore
David Bruce has over 140 Kindle books on Amazon.com.
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
Seems firework season is already upon us.
Tricked Into Retweeting
Oswald
Journalist Ken Klippenstein tricked prominent Republicans like Congressman Matt Gaetz, Matt Schlapp, and Dinesh D'Souza into retweeting a military portrait of President John F. Kennedy's assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, on Memorial Day.
"Congressman, my grandpa's a big fan of yours and is a veteran, he would be thrilled if you could RT this photo of him for Memorial Day. Here he is as a young Private First Class," he tweeted along with a photo of Oswald in military uniform.
The journalist sent a similar tweet to Schlapp. Gaetz retweeted the photo with an American flag emoji in the caption and Schlapp tweeted "Wow @kenklippenstein it's my honor to retweet the photo of a veteran on a day we remember his fallen friends. God bless your grandfather."
Some Twitter users mocked the two Republicans for falling for the prank. Conservative commentator Candace Owens. on the other hand, found the tweets reprehensible.
Twitter users were quick to point out Oswald was a member of the US military prior to the assassination of JFK and the portrait Republicans were mistakenly retweeting was not photoshopped at all, it was really his military portrait.
Oswald
Publisher Lobbied Against Hiring
Nikole Hannah-Jones
Walter Hussman, the newspaper publisher whose name adorns the University of North Carolina's journalism school, warned the university against hiring New York Times magazine journalist and 1619 Project creator Nikole Hannah-Jones, according to emails obtained by the digital magazine The Assembly.
Hussman, an alumnus whose $25 million donation to the school in 2019 led to his name being affixed to the institution, felt that Hannah-Jones didn't give enough credit to white Americans who fought for civil rights and questioned whether her hiring would attract unwanted attention to the journalism school.
The 1619 Project, which was published by The New York Times Magazine in 2019, examines the legacy of slavery and the contributions of Black Americans throughout the nation's history, drawing the ire of conservatives who have disputed its historical accuracy and are seeking to ban the project from schools across the country. Hannah-Jones received the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary for the project in 2020.
In April, Hannah-Jones was offered a position as the Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism at UNC.
However, after Hannah-Jones went through an extensive tenure process with the backing of faculty and the tenure committee, her application hit a roadblock with the UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Trustees.
Nikole Hannah-Jones
Doesn't Wear Sweatpants
Dolly Parton
Dolly Parton's sense of style persists even during her downtime at home.
In an interview with WSJ. Magazine published Monday, the country legend revealed she "[doesn't] wear sweat clothes" at home — but insisted that doesn't mean she sacrifices relaxation for fashion.
To that end, she has her "own little house clothes, like a little dress-type teddy, a long teddy, then I have a little jacket or shirt to match if I get cold."
Parton's beauty routine might also seem unconventional to some. As the "Jolene" songstress explained, she does "all my beauty work and cleaning my face in the morning because I usually try to keep my makeup on at night."
The reasoning? "I never know if there's going to be an earthquake or a tornado or a storm and I'm going to have to go out in the middle of the night!" she said, joking in addition, "I don't like to go home and just tear down completely, because my poor husband has to look at me."
Dolly Parton
Better Technique
'Memory Palace'
An ancient memory technique developed by Aboriginal Australians may work better than the "mind palace" invented in ancient Greece and popularized by the BBC version of Sherlock Holmes.
Both methods involve mentally attaching information to a physical object or location, but the Aboriginal technique adds a storytelling component. Researchers aren't sure if it's the narrative element or some other aspect that seemed to boost the Aboriginal technique's effectiveness, and the study is small. But the research highlights that cultures put in a lot of effort in order to pass along information without modern-day technology or even writing.
The "mind palace" is a method of remembering that attaches information to objects inside an imaginary building or room; also known as the method of loci, the technique is said to have originated when the Greek poet Simonides of Ceos narrowly avoided being crushed in a building collapse during a crowded banquet. Simonides was able to identify the bodies of his fellow revelers by remembering where they'd been sitting before he stepped out of the room, illustrating the value of attaching memories to a physical location — even if just in the mind. The character of Holmes uses the technique to help him crack cases in the BBC series "Sherlock," which aired between 2010 and 2017. Research on the mind palace technique shows that it boosts both short- and long-term memory.
A new study tests the mind palace technique against the one used by untold generations of Aborigines. This technique also attaches information to physical geography, but in the form of a narrative that incorporates landmarks, flora and fauna. The idea to compare the two arose when Reser and a fellow lecturer, Tyson Yunkaporta, were chatting about memory and ways to incorporate Indigenous culture into the medical school curriculum. Yunkaporta, now at Deakin University in Victoria, Australia, is a member of the Apalech Clan and author of "Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World" (HarperOne, 2020).
'Memory Palace'
Coup Like Myanmar
Former Advisor
Michael Flynn, who served as President Donald Trump (R-Lock Him Up)'s national security adviser, told a crowd at a QAnon conference in Dallas, Texas, this weekend that the US should have a coup like the one in Myanmar.
On February 1, Myanmar's military overthrew its democratically elected government and arrested its leaders. The coup immediately sparked protests across the country, prompting the junta to launch a campaign against its own citizens.
Flynn, who has become a prominent figure in the QAnon conspiracy theory, was a main attraction at the event, held at the Omni Hotel in Dallas.
In a video shared on Twitter, an attendee asks Flynn: "I want to know why what happened in Myanmar can't happen here."
The crowd immediately cheers, followed by Flynn's response: "No reason. I mean, it should happen here."
Former Advisor
Offers To Prosecute
Colonel
Lieutenant Colonel Yevgeny "Eugene" Vindman, a US Army officer fired and derided by Donald Trump (R-Lock Him Up), said he would be willing to prosecute a court martial of Michael Flynn, the former president's one-time national security adviser, over comments he made suggesting he wanted to see a coup in the US similar to the one that took place in Myanmar.
Mr Flynn made the statements during the "For God & Country Patriot Roundup," in Dallas on Sunday.
Mr Vindman took to Twitter to denounce Mr Flynn and offer his services to prosecute the retired lieutenant general.
Steve Vladeck, a professor at the University of Texas School of Law, pointed out on Twitter that despite being retired, Mr Flynn still is subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice.
As for Mr Flynn, since leaving the White House he has become something of a celebrity in the world of QAnon and extremist right wing Trump supporters.
Colonel
Global Heat Deaths
Climate Change
More than one-third of the world’s heat deaths each year are due directly to global warming, according to the latest study to calculate the human cost of climate change.
But scientists say that’s only a sliver of climate’s overall toll — even more people die from other extreme weather amplified by global warming such as storms, flooding and drought — and the heat death numbers will grow exponentially with rising temperatures.
Dozens of researchers who looked at heat deaths in 732 cities around the globe from 1991 to 2018 calculated that 37% were caused by higher temperatures from human-caused warming, according to a study Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change.
That amounts to about 9,700 people a year from just those cities, but it is much more worldwide, the study’s lead author said.
The highest percentages of heat deaths caused by climate change were in cities in South America. Vicedo-Cabrera pointed to southern Europe and southern Asia as other hot spots for climate change-related heat deaths.
Climate Change
Monarch Butterflies
California
A conservation group is planting more than 30,000 milkweed plants in California in the hope of giving Western monarch butterflies new places to breed.
The San Francisco Chronicle reported Monday that the River Partners group has joined with others and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife on the plantings along the Sacramento, Feather and Kern rivers.
The plants are seen as critical because the orange-and-black butterflies lay their eggs on them. Their caterpillars also eat them.
The butterflies head south from the Pacific Northwest to California each winter. Earlier this year, researchers said an annual winter count recorded fewer than 2,000 of the butterflies — a massive decline.
Scientists have said the butterflies are at critically low levels in western states because of destruction to their milkweed habitat along their migratory route as housing expands and use of pesticides and herbicides increases.
California
| CURRENT MOON lunar phases |
