from Bruce
Anecdotes
Animals
• When Sue Pirtle was growing up in the small town of Stonewall, Oklahoma, residents treated Everett Shaw with a great deal of respect because he was a world champion steer roper. One woman marveled, “Isn’t it nice—a small town of only 300 like ours can produce a world champion!” Mr. Pirtle gave young Sue her first Shetland pony and soon, with lots of help from Mr. Shaw and another friend named Terry Allison, Sue became the town’s second world champion. In 1974 and 1976, Ms. Pirtle earned the Girls’ Rodeo Association title of All-Around Champion Cowgirl.
• Wilson Mizner was an unruly youth, so his family decided to send him to Santa Clara College, which had a reputation for straightening out upper-class delinquents. The “college” even had half-starved, ferocious dogs roaming the grounds at night to keep the youths from slipping away for some fun. Young Wilson got even with the authorities by tying a sirloin steak to the fire bell rope. In their attempts to eat the steak, the dogs kept jumping up and ringing the fire bell all night.
• Poet Nikki Giovanni’s father once had some bushes trimmed, and the trimming destroyed some birds’ nests. When Ms. Giovanni’s young son, Thomas, found some dead baby birds lying on the ground, he became very angry with his grandfather. Ms. Giovanni says that her father had never apologized to anyone in his entire life, but after thinking for a while, he apologized to his grandson.
• Actor Vincent Price’s dog, Joe, was once accused of running in front of a bicycle and causing an accident that broke the cyclist’s collarbone. In the resulting trial, Mr. Price and Joe were forced to appear in court. At one point in the proceedings, an X-ray of the cyclist’s broken collarbone was shown and Joe stood up and begged for food. (By the way, the jury found Joe innocent.)
• When country comedian Jerry Clower was a boy, his family owned a bulldog named Mike. This bulldog looked out for the children of the family, and whenever Jerry’s mother wanted to spank him, first she had to lock up the bulldog, because if she didn’t, as soon as she started to spank Jerry, it would bite her.
• When she was young, track and field star Florence Griffith Joyner owned a pet five-foot-long boa constrictor named Brandy. Whenever Brandy shed her skin, Florence kept it and painted it various colors. One day, Florence took her snake to the mall, but she had to take it home because shoppers were scared of it.
• In Paris, ballerina Suzanne Farrell and her choreographer husband, Paul Mejia, went to a fancy restaurant, where the maitre d’ offered to look after their dog for them. After the meal was over, they discovered that their dog had been fed a meal on a silver platter and the meal was charged to them!
• Dogs can be mischievous pets. When Albert E. Kahn was in the home of Soviet ballerina Galina Ulanova, her dog, which she had named Bolshoi, ate part of the skirt of Tamara Mamedova, who was too busy translating to notice the dog’s meal.
• Ballerina Yvette Chauviré, a favorite of the 1950s Paris Opéra, collected swans. They were tributes to her wonderful performances as the dying swan. Unfortunately, many of the swans were chipped—her cats did not respect her collection.
• Susan Butcher, a four-time winner of the 1,049-mile-long Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race in Alaska, had a dog named Crackers, so whenever he sired a new litter of puppies, she gave the puppies the names of various kinds of crackers.
Birth
• Senator Chauncey Depew once made fun of President William Taft’s obesity by looking at his waistline, then saying, “I hope, if it is a girl, Mr. Taft will name it for his charming wife.” President Taft overheard him and replied, “If it is a girl, I shall, of course, name it for my lovely helpmate of many years. And if it is a boy, I shall claim the father’s prerogative and name it Junior. But if, as I suspect, it is only a bag of wind, I shall name it Chauncey Depew.”
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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
Track: "Falling’s Easy"
Album: RUMOURS OF LIGHT 3: A 60 SONG DIGITAL BOXSET IN SUPPORT OF THE DISASTERS EMERGENCY COMMITTEE AND THE PEOPLE OF UKRAINE
Artist: The Scatterlings
Artist Location: Asheville, North Carolina
Record Company: Aldora Britain Records (“The worldwide hub of independent and underground music since 2013.”)
Record Company Location: Rothley, UK
Info:
“Original song written by Elfy Kornfeld.”
“Rustic, Rootsy, and Sunny-Side Dark.”
“Americana/Roots music with mountain influences, folk stylings, astutesongwriting, textural instrumentation, songs about heartbreak, whiskey, killings, hangings and other happy things.”
“The Scatterlings are a four-piece acoustic/Americana band based in Asheville, North Carolina.”
“Aldora Britain Records proudly presents the third installment of 'Rumours Of Light', our fundraiser compilations for the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) and the people of Ukraine.
“Through the power of music, we are aiming to raise as much money as possible to benefit innocent men, women and children who are fleeing the conflict. The main areas that the DEC help with are food, water, shelter, healthcare and protection.
“RUMOURS OF LIGHT III is available for £9.15 or donations over. The album features the work of sixty different artists from 16 different countries from all around the globe.”
Price: £9.15 (GBP) for 60-track charity-appeal album.
“Falling’s Easy” is also available on The Scatterlings’ album BEING HUMAN. Price: $7 for 10-track album.
Genre: Americana. Various.
Links:
RUMOURS OF LIGHT 3: A 60 SONG DIGITAL BOXSET IN SUPPORT OF THE DISASTERS EMERGENCY COMMITTEE AND THE PEOPLE OF UKRAINE
BEING HUMAN
The Scatterlings on Bandcamp
The Scatterlings on YouTube
Aldora Britain Records on Bandcamp
Aldora Britain Records on YouTube
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Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
New Venture
Michael Egan
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION
Ukraine
Click on left image for a more readable version
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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
Whole lotta people spent a whole lotta money to make a whole lotta noise.
Escorts Ukraine Refugees To Canada
Phan Thi Kim Phuc
Phan Thi Kim Phuc, the girl in the famous 1972 Vietnam napalm attack photo, on Monday escorted 236 refugees from Russia's war in Ukraine on a flight from Warsaw to Canada.
Phuc’s iconic Associated Press photo in which she runs with her napalm-scalded body exposed, was etched on the private nongovernmental organization plane that is flying the refugees to the city of Regina, the capital of the Canadian province of Saskatchewan.
Kim, 59, a Canadian citizen, said she wants her story and work for refugees to be a message of peace. With her husband, Bui Huy Toan, she traveled from Toronto to board the humanitarian flight.
The refugees, mostly women and children from across Ukraine, are among thousands of Ukrainians that Canada has provided humanitarian visas in the wake of Russia’s invasion of their country. Millions of Ukrainians have fled since Russia attacked on Feb. 24. Almost 5.5 million have registered with humanitarian organizations in Europe, according to the U.N.
Phan Thi Kim Phuc
Olympic Medals To Auction
Ryan Lochte
All of Ryan Lochte’s Olympic silver and bronze medals are up for auction, with the proceeds going to a charity benefitting children.
The 37-year-old swimmer earned 12 medals over four Olympics, including six gold that he plans to keep for now.
The medals are being sold in three lots by Boston-based RR Auction. The sale ends July 21.
His selected charity is Jorge Nation Foundation, a non-profit that raises money to send children with a terminal illness and their families on a dream trip from South Florida to a destination of their choice. Lochte said he’s worked with the foundation for over 10 years. His agent is on its board of directors.
Ryan Lochte
Election Fraud Claims
Rupert
In the months following the 2020 US presidential election, rightwing TV news in America was a wild west, an apparently lawless free-for-all where conspiracy theories about voting machines, ballot-stuffed suitcases and dead Venezuelan leaders were repeated to viewers around the clock.
There seemed to be little consequence for peddling the most outrageous ideas on primetime.
But now, unfortunately for Fox News, One America News Network (OAN), and Newsmax, it turns out that this brave, new world wasn’t free from legal jurisdiction – with the three networks now facing billion-dollar lawsuits as a result of their baseless accusations.
In June, Dominion Voting Systems, which provided voting machines to 28 states, was given the go-ahead to sue Fox Corp, the parent company of Fox News, in a case that could draw Rupert Murdoch (R-Evil Incarnate) and his son, Lachlan (R-Daddy Issues), into the spotlight.
In the $1.6bn lawsuit, Dominion accuses Fox Corp, and the Murdochs specifically, of allowing Fox News to amplify false claims that the voting company had rigged the election for Joe Biden.
Rupert
Halts Most European Production
HBO Max
HBO Max is halting original productions across much of Europe, Variety has reported. The streaming service confirmed that it will no longer produce originals in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Central Europe, the Netherlands and Turkey, leaving only Spain and France untouched. The news is part of a plan from parent Warner Bros. Discovery to cut some $3 billion in costs following its split from AT&T.
"We are reviewing our current content proposition on the existing services," a spokesperson told Variety in a statement. "As part of this process, we have decided to remove a limited amount of original programming from HBO Max, as well as ceasing our original programming efforts for HBO Max in the Nordics and Central Europe. We have also ceased our nascent development activities in the newer territories of Netherlands and Turkey, which had commenced over the past year."
Some of the service's most praised shows including Lust (Sweden) and Kamikaze (Denmark) came from the Nordics and other affected regions. On top of ceasing production, HBO Max will remove those shows along with the Hungarian drama The Informant from its service globally. Projects already in production and other approved shows will reportedly continue — but they may be sold to other platforms, with Warner acting strictly as producer.
Streaming content production has been a bright spot in Europe, as Netflix and other platforms have hit the 30 percent local content quotas required in major markets there. HBO Max's announcement may put a damper on that, though, as "redundancies are likely across [HBO Max's] European business," Variety noted.
More ominously, "similar decision-making for HBO Max is currently taking place in all territories where the streamer operates, which spans the U.S., Latin America and parts of Europe," it added. Along with layoffs recently announced by Netflix, it's the first sign of dark clouds during the era of peak TV.
HBO Max
Whitewash
Shireen Abu Akleh
Palestinian officials, human rights advocates, and the family of Shireen Abu Akleh have reacted with anger and condemnation to a report announced by the US State Department that failed to conclusively find that the Al Jazeera journalist was killed by deliberate Israeli gunfire.
On Monday, the US State Department said a report by independent investigators had found that Abu Akleh was likely killed by “unintentional” gunfire from Israeli positions, but could not reach a definitive conclusion about the origin of the bullet that struck her.
Abu Akleh, a veteran Al Jazeera journalist and a Palestinian American, was killed on May 11 while covering an Israeli raid in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin, despite wearing a helmet and flak jacket clearly marked “PRESS”.
Prior investigations by The Associated Press news agency, broadcaster CNN, the New York Times and the Washington Post newspapers, as well as monitoring conducted by the Office of the UN human rights chief have lent support to witness accounts that Abu Akleh was killed by Israeli forces.
On Saturday, Palestinian officials said they had handed the bullet over to US officials but conflicting reports over who would conduct the tests on the bullet emerged the following day – with an Israeli military spokesman saying the Israelis would test the bullet in the presence of US officials. Palestinian officials maintain that Israel cannot be trusted to conduct a fair and transparent investigation into the killing.
Shireen Abu Akleh
“Where is Peng Shuai?”
T-Shirts
Four activists wearing “Where is Peng Shuai?” T-shirts were stopped by security at Wimbledon on Monday and had their bags searched.
Peng is a retired professional tennis player from China who last year accused a former high-ranking member of the country’s ruling Communist Party of sexual assault. She has made very few public appearances since then.
Jason Leith of the Free Tibet organization said he and his three colleagues put on the white T-shirts after entering the grounds of the All England Club on Monday.
“We didn’t have these on when we came in because we worried about not being let in. So we put them on and we were just walking around and a few people wanted selfies with us, so we were taking pictures with people,” said Leith, who is British.
The men were allowed to remain at the grass-court Grand Slam and keep wearing the shirts but were asked not to approach any other spectators to talk about Peng, Leith said.
T-Shirts
Loses UK Fight
Kellogg
Breakfast food giant Kellogg Co. lost a legal bid Monday to block new anti-obesity measures in England banning the promotion of sugary cereals.
The U.S. company that makes Coco Pops, Frosted Flakes, Frosties and Rice Krispies had challenged the U.K. government over regulations taking effect in October restricting the promotion of foods high in fat, sugar or salt.
A High Court judge rejected the company’s argument that the regulations don’t take into account the nutritional value of milk added to cereal.
Judge Thomas Linden said that mixing a breakfast cereal that’s high in sugar with milk does not change the fact that it’s high in sugar.
Kellogg’s argument that its cereals like Crunchy Nut Clusters and Milk Chocolate Curls “somehow become healthy products if they are consumed with milk is wholly unconvincing, as the addition of milk does not alter the nutritional profile of the products themselves,” the judge wrote.
Kellogg
In Need Of Full Repairs
Eiffel Tower
The Eiffel Tower is riddled with rust and in need of full repairs, but instead it is being given a cosmetic 60 million euro paint job ahead of the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris, according to confidential reports cited by French magazine Marianne.
The wrought-iron 324-metre (1,063 ft) high tower, built by Gustave Eiffel in the late 19th century, is among the most visited tourist sites in the world, welcoming about six million visitors each year.
However confidential reports by experts cited by Marianne suggest the monument is in a poor state and riddled with rust.
The tower is currently undergoing a repaint costing 60 million euros in preparation of the 2024 Olympics, the 20th time the Tower has been repainted.
Some 30% of the tower was supposed to have been stripped and then have two new coats applied but delays to the work caused by the COVID pandemic and the presence of lead in the old paint means only 5% will be treated, Marianne said.
Eiffel Tower
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