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 & Jeers. Have a fabulous weekend .... and week ahead.

ART NOTES — an exhibition entitled Harvey Dunn: Imagining Others will be at the South Dakota Art Museum in Brookings through May 3rd.

PROGRAMMING NOTE — next week I (like several of you) will be away for the long Thanksgiving weekend: hence, there will not be an Odds & Ends diary, nor a Friday C&J post. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone — will return during the first week of December.

YUK for TODAY — the former chess champion (and anti-Soviet conservative, now Never Trumper) from Azerbaijan originally, Garry Kasparov— has this essay, in which he compares Fox with the old Pravda he grew-up with:

As the joke went, there were three TV channels in the USSR — Channel 1 was Brezhnev, Channel 2 was Brezhnev, and Channel 3 was a KGB guy warning you to stop changing channels. That’s what the Republicans are doing now …...  “Don’t look with your eyes or listen with your ears, comrades, just turn back to Channel 1!"

HISTORY NOTES — the home in Branau-am-Inn, Austria where Adolf Hitler was born (although his family only lived there for a short time) had been used previously as a center for disabled citizens but now — in an attempt to thwart visits from neo-Nazis — will become a police station.

THURSDAY's CHILD is named Sasha the Cat— an Oregon kitteh who went missing five years ago …. now to be reunited with his family due to his microchip … after being located in Santa Fe, New Mexico: twelve hundred miles away.

LITERARY NOTES — twelve years after his death, a new museum opened earlier this month in his hometown of Indianapolis dedicated to the life of Kurt Vonnegut— containing personal effects, his WW-II Purple Heart, rejection letters, a reading room and art inspired by his works — on the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Slaughterhouse Five.

QUOTE of the WEEK — from the Baby Blue Cherub, Duncan ‘Atrios’ Black:

I of course don't love conservative Democrats, but I distinguish between the ones who are basically "Morning Joe Democrats" — and ones who actually try to win over the locals who are, you know, the ones who vote. A bad thing about Morning Joe Democrats (Hi Claire!) is their thing is basically, "I would have won if not for AOC and annoying liberals on twitter."  

It isn't enough that they are annoyingly conservative (or "moderate").  They blame their failures to win elections on people trying to win elections, and their voters, elsewhere, even if they aren't being explicitly criticized by them.

It's fair for the Joe Manchins to say, "Lay off, I got this."  Because he does!  But the Morning Joe Democrats...often don't.  

FRIDAY's CHILD is named Nevada the Cat— an Indiana kitteh who has spent one hundred days at a shelter but — thanks to a police dispatcher who publicized her case (and a reduced adoption fee of only twenty dollars) — shelter officials are hoping she will soon find her forever home.

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

Nice thing that Trump won't wear glasses so these kinds of notes always have to be big enough for reporters to pick up. https://t.co/lFzPIICUpu

— emptywheel (@emptywheel) November 20, 2019

OLDER-YOUNGER BROTHERS? — actor Dean Winters (from the Allstate “mayhem” commercials) and Canadian journalist Daniel Dale (formerly with the Toronto Star, now with CNN).

...... and finally, for a song of the week ...........................… this week: two mini-profiles of less well-known blues/roots rock musicians. If you ever watch/listen to the Music Choice cable channels on DirecTV, Verizon or Comcast — their blues channel alerted me to these two. Some commonalities: both female, from the Midwest, had an initial inspiration from their father, then their epiphany came from sneaking into nightclubs underage, both released their latest albums two months ago and sharing a January 30th birthday. The differences? Different generations, one a vocalist, the other noted more for guitar and had quite different childhoods as a teenager. Their stories are worth knowing.

At only age thirty, Samantha Fish has already released seven albums in her own name, and appeared on two other collaboration projects. The Kansas City native had a guitarist father who sometimes jammed with friends at home, and she was raised on a diet of classic rock radio.

She began to sneak into Kansas City’s noted Knuckleheads Saloon to hear touring bands and began to sit-in with some after turning eighteen. Her first record release was (as a twenty year-old in 2009) a live album, and two years later teamed-up with some of her peers (Cassie Taylor and Dani Wilde) on the album Girls with Guitars— featuring original songs as well as Steve Miller & Stones covers.

Her first studio album was 2011’s Runaway and she is part of a (sometimes) collective known as The Healers— with Wet Willie singer Jimmy Hall and former Stevie Ray Vaughn keyboardist Reese Wynans — with a 2013 live album from which proceeds went to the Blue Star Connection— a charitable organization that provides access to musical instruments for children/young adults with cancer and other serious illnesses. That same year, she made a guest appearance on an album by Devon Allman — the son of Gregg Allman — in a duet of the Stevie Nicks tune “Stop Dragging My Heart Around”.

She released her most recent album Kill or Be Kind two months ago (after a move to New Orleans and utilizing numerous song collaborators), has an upcoming Midwestern tour and she has won several Independent Blues Awards while perhaps receiving her greatest tribute from blues legend Buddy Guy— whom she sat-in with back in 2013 and was so taken by her playing he said, “I’ll play all night”.

By contrast, blues/Americana singer Janiva Magness is from an earlier generation (at age sixty-two) and her career started later. Born in Detroit, her early years were spent absorbing the rise of Motown and her father’s record collection. Then tragedy struck: both her parents committed suicide, she was shuttled between foster homes, became pregnant at age seventeen — which was more of a taboo in the early seventies — and had to give the baby up for adoption. Talk about someone who has earned the right to sing-the-blues.

But then (like Samantha Fish) an underage Janiva Magness snuck into a Minneapolis nightclub, where she saw the Chicago blues guitarist Otis Rush (who died just over a year ago). She was taken by his leave-it-all-on-the-stage show, when she accepted an offer to be a back-up singer. In time she relocated first to Phoenix (where she joined a popular local band, the Mojomatics) and then to Los Angeles in 1986.

After some independent releases, she had her first recording for NorthernBlues in 2004, with two albums— the second of which (Do I Move You?) reached #8 on the blues album charts.

In 2008, she signed with the major blues label Alligator Records and released the album What Love Will Do— which now established her on the blues circuit. Until 2014, her work was largely interpreting the songs of others — then her first release on her own label was entitled Original, with twelve songs she wrote herself or with a partner.

Her next album Love Wins Again resulted in a 2016 Grammy nomination, (for Contemporary Blues album), her most recent album is this year’s Change in the Weather— a tribute album to John Fogerty — and has a current tour in the West underway. 

Given her teenage year difficulties, she is a tireless advocate for foster care and has written her memoirs entitled Weeds Like Us— covering her life story.

And so for songs? One from each performer … and why not their most current releases? From Samantha Fish, the title track from Kill or Be Kind.

And as for Janiva Magness — here is her spirited rendition of my favorite John Fogerty song, Fortunate Son.