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.
ART NOTES— an exhibition entitled Southwest Rising: Contemporary Art and the Legacy of Elaine Horwitch— who championed the cause of contemporary art in the Southwest and helped launch the careers of many of artists from the region — is scheduled to be at the Tucson, Arizona Museum of Art to September 20th.
SCIENCE NOTES #1— a paper presented by the German Aerospace Center suggests that wind turbine farms in the Northern Hemisphere would see a 23% increase in efficiency (at night) if their blades were re-configured to turn counter-clockwise— with the reverse being true in the Southern Hemisphere.
THURSDAY's CHILD is named Kümülonimbus the Cat— a kitteh who accompanied a Turkish couple returning home (from a work assignment in Tanzania) in the plane’s cabin, once travel restrictions for pets were recently lifted.
SCIENCE NOTES #2— researchers are seeing promising results in developing a system to recharge electric cars wirelessly— making extended journeys much easier and, if successful: universal standards are being sought that would allow any vehicle to use any charger (unlike what was the case for plug-in vehicles).
FRIDAY's CHILD is named Richard Parker the Cat— an English kitteh (currently nursing a paw injury) so his family came up with an idea to turn their house into a cat-sized art gallery.
THE OTHER NIGHT yours truly hosted the Top Comments diary with an update on some of the stories of mine: 90 year-old NYC restaurateur Jimmy Neary, the college entrance scandal still focused only on two female TV stars, the two Massachusetts crime lab chemists gone bad, and resolving the origin of a sixty-five year-old solution to a problem that nearly scuttled the NBA ... that (in the end) involved an algebra equation.
FROM A YOUTH RALLY at the 1972 Miami Beach GOP convention, with the Mike Curb Congregation as Sammy Davis Jr.’s back-up band:
YOUR WEEKEND READS are two essays on the documentary of the death-bed confession of Norma “Jane Roe” McCorvey that she was paid-off by the anti-abortion movement. One is a short essay from Laura Bassett, positing that this was not an isolated incident of dishonesty by that movement. The other is a longer NYT OpEd by Michelle Goldberg, focusing on the woman herself and how awkward she was for the pro-choice movement, thus making her a ripe target.
BRAIN TEASER - try this Quiz of the Week's News from the BBC.
SEPARATED at BIRTH—
...... and finally, for a song of the week ...........................… someone I suspected nearly twenty-five years ago might be a here-today, gone-tomorrow, one-hit-wonder pop singer was Joan Osborne - whom I couldn't have been more wrong about. She has become one of the most versatile popular music singers I can think of: not only with her own material, but has appeared on stage with blues, country, R&B and even classical performers. Not everything she tries succeeds ... but even when it doesn't, you're glad she made the effort ... and it's hard to think of a genre she couldn't somehow make her own.
The suburban Louisville, Kentucky native found success in New York like another female singer from Louisville, Mary Travers (of Peter, Paul & Mary) .... except that Joan Osborne didn't accompany her family at a young age: instead, enrolling in NYU film school in her late twenties. While there she began singing at open-mike nights, where her musical influences (Etta James, Billie Holiday and Ray Charles) helped convince herself that this was her career path. She decided (in that pre-Internet era) not to seek a major label deal, but rather to form her own record label, Womanly Hips - which released some early live performances. In addition to some early songwriting attempts, it included covers such as The Beatles' Lady Madonna, Cat Stevens' Wild World and the blues classic Help Me by Sonny Boy Williamson.
Eventually she received an offer from Mercury Records, and her first major release was entitled Relish - which came out in 1995. This contained the song One of Us - which reached #4 on the US charts, and was used as the theme song for the CBS television series Joan of Arcadia (which ran from 2003-2005). With minor hits such as St. Teresa and Right Hand Man, she received several Grammy nominations (for both the song and the album) and her career was launched, with an invitation to perform on the Lilith Fair tour of 1997.
She took her time before recording her second album, which Mercury Records filled-in with a re-release compilation of those earlier recordings. Meanwhile, she became involved with Rock the Vote as well as Planned Parenthood - which even garnered some death threats.
Finally in the year 2000, she released her follow-up album Righteous Love - which garnered some critical praise yet had no hit singles to propel record sales, hence it garnered little airplay. The year 2002 saw her delve more deeply into R&B: with her own album How Sweet It Is and she also appeared in the documentary Standing in the Shadows of Motown that involved recording some new material with the surviving members of the Funk Brothers - the relatively anonymous back-up band for that label. This association didn't end that year, as I saw Joan with the Funk Brothers at the 2004 Montreal Jazz festival - a free show, too.
The year 2003 saw her first perform with members of the Grateful Dead (Phil Lesh, as well as Bob Weir) plus their reunion tours as The Dead — similar to the way that another border-state versatile musician (Bruce Hornsby) has done — and those collaborations have continued from time-to-time up to today.
In 2006 she reached back to her country music roots with the album Pretty Little Stranger - including covers of songs by Rodney Crowell, Patty Griffin and Kris Kristofferson - with an appearance at the Grand Ole Opry in February, 2007. That same year she released her latest foray into soul music with Breakfast in Bed and the following year reunited the team that helped produce her major-label debut album, and recording Little Wild One.
Her 2012 album was a venture into the heart of the blues, with Bring It On Home - featuring guest appearances by Allen Toussaint, Rufus Thomas' daughter Vaneese and the Harlem-based Holmes Brothers - earning a Grammy nomination in the process. She had album of all-original, very personal songs in 2014, and her most recent release is 2017’s Songs of Bob Dylan— with an emphasis on some of his lesser-known songs, not just the most popular tunes.
Along the way, she has never lost her activism: working on the Half the Skymovement founded by NY Times columnist Nicholas Kristof. The liberal blogger Eric Alterman has been a big fan of hers, and Joan was delighted to hear One of Us used on the TV program Glee years ago.
Possibly the best way to describe her versatility is to list some of the artists she has performed on-stage with. These include Stevie Wonder, Melissa Etheridge, Taj Mahal, Luciano Pavarotti, the Funk Brothers, the Dead, Cheap Trick, Bob Dylan, and the Chieftains - if there is a pattern there, I fail to discern it.
Joan Osborne will turn age fifty-eight in July, has a tour scheduled to begin that month, has an aggregate total of seven Grammy nominations and recently marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of her debut album thusly:
“I have people come up to me on a regular basis when I’m on the road or even at a cocktail party or something. People will come up and they’ll single out a particular song and they’ll say what that song really meant to them in their lives. I’ve had people who were growing up gay in a small town in Idaho come up to me and be in tears about how the record really saved their life. How they knew that there was another way of looking at themselves other than the way that their community thought of them.”
On her 2012 blues album, I was delighted to hear her rendition of a wonderful John Mayall ballad Broken Wings from his album The Blues Alone in 1967 — the lyrics of which speak for themselves.
Somebody broke your wings Little bird, you can't fly Somebody hurt you bad Beaten down enough to cry And the price you had to pay you'll be paying in years of your lifeSomebody is to blame Can't you see I'm feeling sad? Somebody got away and it makes me feel sad And the price you'll have to pay you'll be paying in years of your life
Somebody's gotta help you I believe I love you so Somebody's gotta touch you I don't believe I'll let you go And the love I have to give I'll be giving in years of my life