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 of the works of the artist Malangatana Ngwenya— from the years of 1959-1975 (when Mozambique gained independence from Portugal) is at the Art Institute of Chicago until November 16th.
CHEERS to having spent a few days hiking in the White Mountains of northern New Hampshire — as the changing season (and some chilly nights) has chased-off the insects for the rest of the year …. and returned the hiking trails to us mere mortals. Beautiful, dry weather w/light cool breeze …. ideal.
YOUR WEEKEND READ #1 is this essay by Adam Serwer noting that — despite his rhetoric about unnecessary wars and wasted spending — the Military Industrial Complex has a friend in the Trumpster.
THURSDAY's CHILD is named Smokey the Cat— who was rescued from among the various fires in Oregon by a state trooper, and taken to a local vet.
YOUR WEEKEND READ #2 concerns the new Eisenhower Memorial unveiling in D.C. — and that while he is a model Republican compared to now, he wasn’t truly as bipartisan as one is led to believe.
OPERA NOTES— the Serbian performance artist Marina Abramović has filmed a tribute to the late soprano entitled the 7 Deaths of Maria Callas— portraying her (yet using archival recordings of Callas’ arias) — with Willem Dafoe appearing as (a thinly disguised) Aristotle Onassis, whose marriage to Jacqueline Kennedy sent Callas into a spiral of depression before her early death (at age 53) and which is streaming on the Bavarian State Opera’s website for the next month.
FRIDAY's CHILD is the late Stanley the Cat— who has been memorialized in the Ace Hardware store in Maryland where he served as mouser and store greeter.
BRAIN TEASER— try this Quiz of the Week's News from the BBC ...… and the usually easier, less UK-centered New York Times quiz. A bonus for this week: there is one question in common.
THE OTHER NIGHT yours truly hosted the Top Comments diary with a look at Jack “Murph the Surf” Murphy, whose incredible life story has the good (violin and tennis prodigy, champion surfer) the bad (burglar), the ugly (murderer) and the redemptive prison counselor, who has died this past week at age eighty-three.
SEPARATED at BIRTH— Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Minnesota resident Stephanie Oyen — who dressed like her attending a 2019 rally (causing some to mistake her for the senator) and when she met her was told with a smile, “We need to talk”.
...... and finally, for a song of the week ...........................… with my time away, did not have a chance to compile a full profile. So, just a quick salute to Jimi Hendrix, who left this world fifty years ago This past Friday.
I was not an immediate admirer of him, not caring for Purple Haze and Foxy Lady at first listen, nor all of his special effects. Plus, I was at that time fixated with Cream, a more balanced power-trio talent-wise than Jimi’s band the Experience.
Digging deeper into his repertoire, I quickly saw the error-of-my-ways: with his more contemplative work and even acoustic guitar playing winning me over soon thereafter. Songs like Bold as Love, plus Angel and Burning of the Midnight Lamp are among my favorite songs of his. And due to the amazing amount of time he spent in the recording studio not specifically for album releases: there are far more album releases after his death than was the case before.
My favorite song of his is the haunting 1983 medley— but for tonight, the song that began my appreciation: The Wind Cries Mary (and when my musical hero Jack Bruce covered this song, I felt was an omen).
Jimi wrote this in 1967 about his girlfriend at the time, Kathy Mary Etchingham. If the title sounds sounds exotic …. well …… she recalled (in a February, 2013 Q Magazine interview, "We'd had a row over food. Jimi didn't like lumpy mashed potato. There were thrown plates and I ran off. When I came back the next day, he'd written that song about me. It's incredibly flattering."
After all jacks are in their boxes And the clowns have all gone to bed You can hear happiness staggering on down the street Footprints dressed in redA broom is drearily sweeping Up the broken pieces of yesterday's life Somewhere a queen is weeping Somewhere a king has no wife
The traffic lights turn blue tomorrow And shine their emptiness down on my bed The tiny island sags downstream Because the life that they lived is dead
Will the wind ever remember The names it has blown in the past? And with its crutch, its old age and its wisdom It whispers "No, this will be ... the last"
And the wind cries Mary