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 An Epic of Earth and Water— wood engravings of New England commissioned for the Wedgwood company by Clare Leighton — will be at the Birmingham, Alabama Museum of Art through May 2nd.
YOUR WEEKEND READ #1 is this concise (yet comprehensive) remembrances of twenty-three women who covered the White House the past four years.
AFTER a real mis-communication from my state’s public health department and health-care providers this past Thursday — where they were afraid that the state’s Covid vaccine website would crash on Friday (the start of Phase 1b) and intended to rely on health-care providers to provide information (and who knew nothing about this) — somehow, Phase 1B got straightened out on Friday ... and I have now been scheduled for the vaccine the first week in February.
THURSDAY's CHILDREN are named Daisy & Dexter the Hero Cats— kittehs who alerted a Gorgie, Scotland resident to a fire in their building, and while “extremely shaken up and hid away for hours: are now enjoying lots of treats and cuddles."
YES, I’LL ADMIT that praising public officials for simply doing the jobs they were hired for rankles a bit — and I suspect that Brad Raffensperger and Gabriel Sterling will support future voting restrictions that the Georgia GOP will propose.
That said: they did their jobs (forthrightly defending themselves on “60 Minutes”) despite relentless public pressure from the White House, Sens. David Purdue and Kelly Loeffler, plus private death threats not from liberals but from (in the words of BiPM), the “Republican horde”. And after Georgia counties finalized results last Friday: these two men had until this past Friday to certify statewide … yet did so this past Tuesday (despite some faulty totals from Fulton County) so that Raphael Warnock & Jon Ossoff were able to be sworn-in during the Inauguration.
YOUR WEEKEND READ #2 is this Yale University essay entitled, On U.S. Public Lands, Can Biden Undo What Trump Has Wrought?
THE OTHER NIGHT yours truly hosted the Top Comments diary with a look at setting New Year’s Goals— as “resolutions” (often with no benchmarks) are often mocked (and rarely achieved).
FRIDAY's CHILD is named Paisley the Cat— also a Scottish kitteh, and one of several at a shelter who have been put on diets to lose weight (in her case, more than six pounds) due to the pandemic resulting in people overfeeding their pets.
BRAIN TEASER— try this Quiz of the Week's News from the BBC ...… and the usually easier, less UK-centered New York Times quiz (no common questions).
YOUR WEEKEND READ #3 is this essay in the New Yorker by Jane Mayer, an update of her previous revealing profile of Mitch McConnell to reflect current events— with one observer describing his situation as being “Like a cartoon character striding aside a crack that’s getting wider as the two plates drift farther apart. They may not come back together. If they can’t reattach, they can’t win.”
SEPARATED at BIRTH— Allegheny County, Pennsylvania executive Rich Fitzgerald — who scorched Ted Cruz’s climate accord remarks regarding Pittsburgh — and film star Jeff Daniels.
...... and finally, for a song of the week .............................. in a busy week, there was no time for a full profile. Instead, I'll look at a novelty song about an American institution. On an important political trend? A scandal at a major bank? The Three Stooges? .... why, soitenly! → I gave the troupe’s back-story in 2014 at this link.
For now: Jerome (Curly) Horwitz who — along with his brothers Moses (Moe) and Samuel (Shemp) used as a stage name the last name Howard — was born in 1903 and was the foil for Moe and Larry Fine from their start in film shorts (1934) until 1946, when Curly suffered a debilitating stroke - and he died in 1952 at the age of only 49. (As the photos that follow indicate, the Stooges often looked different off-camera than what you recall them looking like).
Shemp replaced him until his own death in 1955, whereupon Joe Besser (who had portrayed Stinky on the old Abbot & Costello TV show) joined them until the end of the Stooges shorts in 1958.
The Chicagoland-based Jump 'N the Saddle Band never had another hit ... but their 1983 song Curly Shuffle— which reached #15 in the pop charts — was a standard offering at Shea Stadium during 1980's NY Mets games.
And - for those of a certain (ahem) age ….. this song still resonates.