from Bruce
Anecdotes
Christmas
• Although usually joyous, Christmas can be a stressful time. In Philadelphia, the Old First Reformed Church, United Church of Christ, always has a Christmas crèche (a representation of the Christmas story with Joseph, Mary, and the baby Jesus lying in a manger) with live animals. One year, the crèche featured a couple of kids (baby goats). The kids were a big attraction, as they were lively and would sometimes climb up on the back of the cow and walk around. One night, however, they wrecked the crèche — the mannequins representing Joseph and Mary were toppled over, and some of the mannequins representing the shepherds even had their heads knocked off. The pastor of the church, Geneva M. Butz, surveyed the wreckage, then told a passerby, “Isn’t this how many of us feel on Christmas morning?”
• Sculptor Louise Nevelson once saw a patch of very bright yellow in a snowstorm. Intrigued, she followed the yellow, which turned out to be a shoeshine box. Impressed by the brightness of the shoeshine box, she offered to buy it from the elderly man who was carrying it, but the man declined, offering instead to show her “the most beautiful shoeshine box in the world.” Ms. Nevelson went with the man, who showed her a shoeshine box that he had created and decorated with flowers, beads, costume jewelry, buckles, bells, and even pretty doorknobs. She was dazzled by it, and so she took the man and his homemade shoeshine box to the Museum of Modern Art. Officials there were also dazzled by the work of art, and they displayed it as a Christmas exhibit in the museum lobby.
• Enrico Caruso enjoyed giving gifts. One day, Aimé Gerber, paymaster of the Metropolitan Opera Association, left a prized pair of cuff links on his desk. Unfortunately, they turned up missing. Fortunately, a few days later, on Christmas Eve, Mr. Caruso brought him two packages. In one package were the missing cuff links. In the other was a matching stickpin. Mr. Caruso explained, “I want to make sure I get the pattern right, so I swipe cuffs and all while you were away, to show to the jeweler!”
• In the old West, a man named Uncle Smokey Brown was having some Christmas fun and decided that he wanted to be hitched to a one-horse buggy. After inviting a few friends to ride in the buggy, he pulled it gently for a while, but then he ran away with it, smashing it against the corner of the court house, capsizing it, and dumping his friends on the ground. He paid the damages for the buggy, but explained that it was his first time being hitched to a buggy and so of course he was skittish.
• During the holiday season, the American Civil Liberties Union tends to make itself unpopular by insisting on a separation of church and state in such things as Christmas decorations. At a time when the ACLU was insisting on the removal of a large star at the top of the Texas state capitol, governor Ann Richards said, “Oh, I’d hate to see that happen. This could be the only time we’ll ever have to get three wise men in that building.”
• During a children’s Christmas pageant, a small Joseph carrying a staff led the way down the center aisle of the church. Suddenly, the young Joseph stopped and used the staff to whack one of the parishioners on the head, then he continued down the aisle. Afterward, his horrified mother asked him why he had used the staff to hit the man. The young Joseph replied, “He was making funny faces at me.”
• In Vienna, opera singer Leo Slezak’s wife once was excited to see a piece of circa 1740 French rococo vitrine in a store window. Her husband told her to go ahead and buy it, but she worried that it was too expensive. Soon afterward, the piece disappeared from the shop window. That Christmas, she received the piece as a gift — Mr. Slezak had purchased it the day after she had mentioned it to him.
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© Copyright Bruce D. Bruce; All Rights Reserved
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Presenting
Michael Egan
U.S.A. said:
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION
BANDCAMP MUSIC
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION OF BANDCAMP MUSIC
Music: "Pirate Chick"
Album: From the album THE ART OF SINGING WHILE DROWNING
Artist: Carol Martini
Artist Location: California
Info: “Carol has been performing as a singer-songwriter throughout Southern California since the early 1990s, helping to create the original coffee house circuit.”
“Coming off my CD THE ART OF SINGING WHILE DROWNING, this song is about the desire to be well, a pirate chick.”
Price: $1 (USD) for track
The 23-track album can be downloaded from Amazon.
Genre: Folk
Links:
“Pirate Chick”
Carol Martini on Bandcamp
Carol Martini Official Site
THE ART OF SINGING WHILE DROWNING
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
Sunny and extra, extra toasty. Ack.
$100 Million
A Quiet Place Part II
When it came out in theaters earlier this month, A Quiet Place Part II technically sort of opened higher than the first movie, a sure-fire sign that American movie theaters are slowly coming back to more or less full strength… and also a sure-fire sign that the movie didn’t have a ton of competition, it opened on a long weekend and therefore hand extra day that the first movie didn’t have, and it’s a sequel to a movie that had more of a tail than it did a huge, splashy opening weekend. Still, though, it made good money, and now it has continued to make money over the last few weeks. In fact, it has now much so much money that A Quiet Place Part II is officially the first movie to cross $100 million at the U.S. box office during “the pandemic era.”
This news, and that somewhat vague descriptor, come from Variety, which points out that John Krasinski’s spooky sequel is sitting at $108 million domestic and $80 million internationally. Godzilla Vs. Kong is currently at $99.6 million, so it will most likely cross $100 million soon, but A Quiet Place was the first one to hit that milestone. One interesting detail to note here is that Godzilla Vs. Kong opened simultaneously at the box office and on HBO Max, while A Quiet Place Part II was only in theaters, so traditionalists might put that as a point in favor of regular theatrical releases rather than an all-streaming future—though we’re talking a difference of $8 million, so you could really use the fact to argue both points if so inclined.
But let’s go back to early days of 2020 now, before the plague and before everything shut down, to determine what movie was the last one to cross $100 million. One good guess would be Onward, which came out right before everything fell apart and had that Disney/Pixar cartoon prestige, but no, it only made $60 million in the U.S. before theaters closed. How about Bad Boys For Life, the biggest movie of 2020 by a vast margin? It made $200 million, but no, there was another big movie in between those two… but you’ve gotta go fast if you want to catch it.
Yes, we’re talking Sonic The Hedgehog, which would’ve gone down in history as the final successful movie ever if theaters not begun to bounce back. In an even worse version of 2020 where society fully collapsed, people would be staging reenactments of Sonic like that scene in Reign Of Fire where Gerard Butler and Christian Bale do Star Wars. Remember Reign Of Fire? It made $82 million worldwide. Maybe we should be reenacting that for future kids.
A Quiet Place Part II
Tries Stand-Up
Kayleigh
The White House press secretary turned Fox News contributor Kayleigh McEnany (R-Professional Liar) has claimed she “never lied” while speaking for Donald Trump.
Addressing a conservative group on Sunday, McEnany said of her first steps in the role: “And then there was the question, ‘Will you ever lie to us?’, and I said without hesitation, ‘No’, and I never did, as a woman of faith.
“As a mother of baby Blake, as a person who meticulously prepared at some of the world’s hardest institutions, I never lied. I sourced my information, but that will never stop the press from calling you a liar.”
The press has questioned the veracity of McEnany’s claims. So have political factchecking sites. For instance, Politifact gave McEnany a “pants on fire” rating last September after she told reporters: “The president never downplayed the virus.”
McEnany is one of a number of veterans of the Trump White House to have found roles at Fox "News", where she is a commentator and co-hosts Outnumbered.
Kayleigh
Link To Abolition Movement
Jane Austen
While Jane Austen admirers savor the wit and romance of “Pride and Prejudice” and her other enduring novels, scholars ferret out details of Austen’s life and times, including a family link to slavery that surfaced 50 years ago.
The effort to place the writer in the social and political context of her day has yielded a new and contrasting discovery: A favorite brother was part of the 19th-century abolition movement.
Devoney Looser, an Arizona State University professor and author of “The Making of Jane Austen,” unearthed the Rev. Henry Thomas Austen’s attendance at the 1840 World Anti-Slavery Convention in London, which drew some 500 delegates.
“I was stunned to find that fact,” Looser said in an interview. She first detailed her research in an essay for The Times Literary Supplement.
“The family’s commitments and actions changed profoundly, from known complicity in colonial slavery to previously unnoticed anti-slavery activism,” Looser wrote. “Henry became a next-generation Austen publicly supporting a political commitment to abolish slavery across the globe.”
Jane Austen
Unsold Cookies
Girl Scouts
The Girl Scouts have an unusual problem this year: 15 million boxes of unsold cookies.
The 109-year-old organization says the coronavirus — not thinner demand for Thin Mints — is the main culprit. As the pandemic wore into the spring selling season, many troops nixed their traditional cookie booths for safety reasons.
The impact will be felt by local councils and troops, who depend on the cookie sales to fund programming, travel, camps and other activities. The Girl Scouts normally sell around 200 million boxes of cookies per year, or around $800 million worth.
It’s unclear how much of a financial hit the Girl Scouts suffered because of the decline in sales since the organization won’t reveal those figures. And it isn’t the biggest blow the cookie program has ever faced. That likely came during World War II, when the Girl Scouts were forced to shift from selling cookies to calendars because of wartime shortages of sugar, butter and flour.
But the glut of cookies has laid bare some simmering issues within the Girl Scouts’ ranks. Some local leaders say this year’s slower sales should have been better predicted because falling membership was threatening cookie sales even before the pandemic began. Around 1.7 million girls were enrolled in Girl Scouts in 2019, down almost 30% from 2009.
Girl Scouts
Out Of Prison
Reality Winner
A former government contractor who was given the longest federal prison sentence imposed for leaks to the news media has been released from prison to home confinement, a person familiar with the matter told The Associated Press on Monday.
Reality Winner, 29, has been moved to home confinement and remains in the custody of the federal Bureau of Prisons, the person said. The person could not discuss the matter publicly and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity.
She pleaded guilty in 2018 to a single count of transmitting national security information. Winner was sentenced to five years and three months in prison, which prosecutors said at the time was the longest ever imposed for leaking government information to the news media.
Her release was hailed as a cause for celebration after advocates had spent years fighting for her release or a pardon. Her lawyer, Alison Grinter Allen, said in a statement that Winner and her family are working to “heal the trauma of incarceration and build back the years lost.”
Previously, Winner had unsuccessfully tried to shorten her sentence by seeking a pardon from President Donald Trump (R-Lock Him Up) — whom she had once mocked on social media as a “soulless ginger orangutan” — and by arguing she had health conditions that made her more vulnerable to COVID-19 infection. Her sister said last July that Winner tested positive for the coronavirus but didn't show symptoms.
Reality Winner
Conserve Energy
Texass
The power grid of Texas urged state residents to conserve power amid a heat wave in the state on Monday, less than a year after the state’s junior Republican senator mocked California for the exact same reason.
A news release from the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) urged Texans to “reduce electric use as much as possible” through Friday, as a result of an energy shortage brought on by outages at power stations.
The power shortages come less than 12 months after California faced power outages in August of 2020, though California officials at the time only asked state residents to conserve power for a few hours.
Mr Cruz jumped on the opportunity to attack the blue state and nationally-recognised Democrats including President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at the time, claiming that the power shortages caused by a heat wave were actually the result of liberal policies.
The Texas senator was previously ridiculed earlier this year after absconding to Cancun, Mexico in the aftermath of a devastating winter storm that that left millions in his state without power, many of whom were still struggling to stay warm while Mr Cruz left the state.
Texass
25 Corporations
Marking Pride
June is Pride month, and many US corporations are advertising their support for the LGBTQ+ community. A new study, however, has found that 25 companies otherwise eager to wave the rainbow flag have donated more than $10m to anti-LGBTQ+ federal and state politicians over the past two years.
The study, released on Monday by the Popular Information newsletter, found that alongside pronouncements of LGBTQ+ support, corporations including CVS, AT&T, Walmart and Comcast have supported candidates who seek to block or otherwise restrict equal rights based on gender or sexual orientation.
Many of the corporations have 100% ratings on the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) 2020 Corporate Equality Index, which measures workplace policies and “public commitment to the LGBTQ community”. The index does not take political donations into account.
The study found that CVS, while receiving a perfect HRC score and announcing on Twitter it was “proud to join more than 100 companies that have signed HRC’s Business Statement Opposing Anti-LGBTQ State Legislation”, also supported sponsors of anti-trans legislation in Texas, North Carolina and Tennessee, through its corporate political action committee.
Others named in the study include cable giant Comcast, which has donated more than $1m to anti-LGBTQ+ politicians since 2019.
Marking Pride
Scientists Unravel Mystery
Echidnas
Scientists in Australia have uncovered the mystery behind the bizarre four-headed echidna penis by creating an advanced 3D model of the peculiar organ.
There are four species of echidnas that, along with platypuses, make up a unique group known as monotremes — the smallest of the three mammal groups — whose members lay eggs like birds and fish, but also produce milk like other mammals. Much about this group remains a mystery, the study researchers said.
One of the biggest monotreme mysteries is the echidna penis, which has four separate heads, or glans, at the end of the shaft. If that wasn't weird enough, only two of the heads are used during each erection, and echidnas can alternate between which two they use.
In addition to their distinctive shape, echidna penises are also unusual because, unlike those of most other mammals, they are used only for sexual reproduction and not urination. Instead, echidnas use a cloaca — a multipurpose opening for urinating, defecating and, in females, egg laying. When not in use, echidnas' penises are retracted inside their bodies and emerge through the cloacal opening when erect; their testes, which unusually have no scrotum, remain inside their bodies all the time.
In addition to their unconventional genitalia, echidnas' sperm are also unconventional and have the astonishing ability of being able to work as a team.
Echidnas
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