Odds & Ends: News/Humor (with a "Who Lost the Week?" poll)

I post a weekly diary of historical notes, arts & science items, foreign news (often receiving little notice in the US) and whimsical pieces from the outside world that I often feature in "Cheers & Jeers".

OK, you've been warned - here is this week's tomfoolery material that I posted.

CHEERS to Bill and Michael in PWM, our Laramie, Wyoming-based friend Irish Patti and ...... well, each of you at Cheers and Jeers. Have a fabulous weekend .... and week ahead. And a Thanksgiving we can enjoy (even with GOP families).

ART NOTES — a career retrospective of an artist overshadowed by her older sister entitled Ida O’Keeffe: Escaping Georgia’s Shadow will open at the Dallas, Texas  Museum of Art this Sunday (and running through February 24th).

Georgia O’Keefe’s sister had it, too

CHEERS to a nice weekend (two weekends back) visiting old friends in Albany, New York. I had almost two days discussing very little about politics before Election Day …. got some rest and my blood pressure thanked me.

YOUR WEEKEND READ is the story of a felafel house in Tennessee being named the Nicest Place in America… due to the efforts of its Syrian refugee owner. 

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... "the only thing that's missing is a paternity test." https://t.co/DcrzoaXnvtpic.twitter.com/cb3CI9rZTw

— fake nick ramsey (@nick_ramsey) November 14, 2018

THURSDAY's CHILD is named Fred the Cat— a Maine kitteh who was stuck in a deep backyard hole until firefighters were able to free him.

            Fred the Cat

ADVERTISING in traditional means (print, radio, broadcast television) has been losing ground to online ads … except for billboards, where online practices have been adopted and which are more difficult to ignore than in other mediums.

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Billy Idol becomes a US citizen: "It's a nice day for a naturalization ceremony" https://t.co/rKVD5ysxFxpic.twitter.com/dgCKmKcHPY

— The Hill (@thehill) November 18, 2018

CHEERS for my venture last weekend: attending the annual conference of Drinking Liberally chapter hosts in Savannah, Georgia. Some came from Wisconsin, New York, Chicago and other blue states … many came from red states where our meet-ups are a lifesaver for people’s sanity. The South Carolinians were most pleased to have Joe Cunningham as their new Democratic congressman.

    Your faithful correspondent is the geezer in the last row (second-from-the-right)

We did indeed, drink liberally … as well as discuss ways in which we could make our chapters run more effectively. Very good news: our clunky old website should be completely overhauled in the next six weeks.

PROGRAMMING NOTE — I will, once again, be travelling next weekend for Thanksgiving … and thus will neither have a Cheers & Jeers posting on Friday (nor an Odds & Ends diary on Sunday). See you at the end of the month (and I will also have a Top Comments diary on Thursday, November 29th).

FRIDAY's CHILD is the late Morty the Cat— a Wisconsin pet store kitteh who lived until age seventeen despite many illnesses and gave “skull-cracking head-butts”.

           Morty the Cat

HAIL and FAREWELL to an old stalwart of this site, kjoftherock— who has died of cancer. I met her at the Minneapolis gathering of Netroots Nation, and she was a good friend of Cedwyn’s …. in fact, she did not know of Cedwyn’s illness until it was too late. KJ’s cancer also spread rapidly, taking this artist from us too soon.

BRAIN TEASER - try this Quiz of the Week's News from the BBC.

SEPARATED at BIRTH — film stars Jessica Chastain (The Help, Zero Dark Thirty)  and Bryce Dallas Howard (Jurassic World, and is the daughter of Ron Howard).

Jessica Chastain (b 1977) Bryce Howard (b 1981)

...... and finally, for a song of the week ...........................… although it was written by Joni Mitchell (who seems to be recuperating well, thank heavens) …. each year at this time, I feature the man who popularized it and — according to Rolling Stone — ushered in the singer/songwriter era. “I wasn’t sure if they were crediting me or accusing me,” he remarked.

Say what you will, Tom Rush gets around. He was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, came-of-age in Massachusetts, made his mark at the Boston/Cambridge coffeehouses of the early 1960's, has lived in the Rockies and the West Coast, then Vermont, now back in Massachusetts and who-knows-where tomorrow.  

As Steve Leggett of the All-Music Guide puts it, “Rush's warm and slightly world-weary baritone” has a way of growing on you, and he was one of the first performers to feature works by Jackson Browne and others when they were just beginning. Garth Brooks has cited him as an influence, with James Taylor going so far as to say, "I took as much from Tom Rush as possible and unwittingly modeled myself on him. Like a lot of people who do what I do, I owe my career to him".

For a few years, Tom Rush has had an album of humorous tunes Trolling for Owls - which he notes is "not available in stores!" And one of them - The Remember Song - has received in excess of 7.3 million hits on YouTube. After being told it had gone viral he wrote, "I thought I was being accused of being a musical equivalent of Ebola ......... but my children explained to me that this was a good thing".

And for several years, The Very Best of Tom Rush has provided listeners with his classic songs. But it wasn't until 2009 that he released What I Know— which was his first new studio recording in 35 years— because as he explained, "I don't like to rush headlong into these things".

Earlier this year he released the album Voices— with some traditional tunes as well as several new songs— of which he says, “There are very few labels that are just content to put out good music and make a reasonable profit at it. Appleseed Recordings, the label I’m on, is one of them, and I’m very thankful to be working with them.”

This marks the 56th anniversary of the career of Tom Rush and — at age 77 — is still quite active. In 2012 he recorded What's Wrong with America?— a spoof of Mitt Romney's notorious 47% comments. He performs in a lot of college towns and — without mentioning you-know-who by name — said two years ago:

In terms of the politics, I try to create kind of a little oasis from the problems of the world. So I don’t tend to get political, because I really don’t want to remind people of how much things suck. I’d rather give them a little holiday from all the turmoil.

On the other hand, there are times when I just can’t help myself and have to comment on something. I’ve been saying lately there are aspects of the recent election cycle that make you realize we really have to spend more on education. You can make of that what you will.

For many years he performed an annual show in Boston's Symphony Hall in December, with his current tour bringing him around the Midwest for the next few days (along with a Georgia show in February).

Tom Rush (in the mid-60’s)

… and much more recently

That Joni Mitchell song that Tom Rush helped to popularize: is her 1966 tune Urge for Going - about the oncoming Canadian winter (which she did not release on an album until 1972). Below you can hear Tom Rush sing it (with the accent guitar of the late Bruce Langhorne that, to me, truly makes his version special).

I awoke today and found the frost perched on the town It hovered in a frozen sky then it gobbled summer down When the sun turns traitor cold and all the trees are shivering in a naked row I get the urge for going ... but I never seem to go

Now the warriors of winter give a cold triumphant shout And all that stays is dying and all that lives is getting out See the geese in chevron flight flapping and racing on before the snow They got the urge for going and they've got the wings to go

And they get the urge for going when the meadow grass is turning brown Summertime is falling down Winter's closing in

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