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 Wyoming-based friend Irish Patti and ...... well, each of you at Cheers and Jeers. Have a fabulous weekend.
ART NOTES - an exhibition entitled Voice of Freedom: A Story about Frederick Douglass is at the Cedar Rapids, Iowa Museum of Art through May 3rd.
WITH THE LOSS of the city of Hamburg to the opposition Social Democrats ... Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats now are shut out of governance in all of Germany's ten largest cities.
HAIL and FAREWELL to the first black Latin American star player in major league baseball, Minnie Minoso who has died at the age of 89 ... or some believe 92. Either way, he was the first major league player in Chicago history (playing for the White Sox), has fallen just-short of Hall of Fame status a few times, played in games in the 40's, 50's, 60's, 70's and one game in 1980 ... but was barred by the league from making a token appearance in 1990. Known as "Mr. White Sox", his death comes just weeks after the death of "Mr. Cub" Ernie Banks - whose funeral Minnie Minoso attended.
HAIL and FAREWELL to the former president of the University of Notre Dame and a transformative figure in education, the Rev. Ted Hesburgh - changing his school from a backwater into a research institution - who has died at the age of 97. He was also a civil rights activist working with Dr. King (and against nuclear proliferation/global hunger), a recipient of 150 honorary degrees, friend to several US presidents and winner of both the Presidential Medal of Freedom (in 1964) and the Congressional Gold Medal decades later (in 1999).
He received tributes from three presidents named
Obama, Carter and Clinton and - if I recall correctly - often served as a reference for Ann Landers in her advice columns.
This was a life well-lived, methinks.
FINALLY I loved this quote that opened Jen Hayden's diary on Leonard Nimoy - "My parents went to the United States as immigrant aliens ... and became citizens. I was born in Boston (as) a citizen, then went to Hollywood ... and became an alien".
THURSDAY's CHILD is Missan the Cat - a Swedish kitteh claimed to be age twenty-six which (if proven) would merit inclusion in the Guinness Book of Records as the world's oldest living cat.
SIMILAR to a changeover in the USA just a few years ago, the UN has set June 17 as the deadline for moving from analog to digital transmission - yet only a few African countries seem prepared for the change, with even large TV markets on the continent lagging behind.
SIMILAR TO THAT of the GOP here in the USA: David Cameron's party in Britain also faces a demographic time-bomb - wherein the 2010 general election the Tories won 36% of the vote, but only 16% among ethnic-minority voters. Lord Ashcroft (a pollster) writes, "Not being white was the single best predictor that somebody would not vote Conservative."
IF YOU HAVE 3 MINUTES TO SPARE .... please watch this video and see if you don't agree ..... that these two high school basketball players from Waco (named Hudson Bradley and Ben Martinson) represent the best of what Texas is. It'll be the most heartwarming three minutes of your day.
FRIDAY's CHILD is Jerry the Cat - the mascot of the University of Alabama men's & women's golf teams ... catching many of the field-mice scurrying through the school's golf complex.
THE OTHER NIGHT yours truly hosted the Top Comments diary with a look at a recent conservative publication's in-depth report on right-wing fundraising scams ... and the push-back that the National Review pundit Jonah Goldberg has received in publicizing the report.
BRAIN TEASER - try this Quiz of the Week's News from the BBC.
Oh, and JUST FOR THE RECORD - with regards to The Dress ...... I saw powder blue with gold/tan trim.
SEPARATED at BIRTH - TV star, comic and best-selling author Chelsea Handler and TV/film star Elizabeth Banks ("Hunger Games", "30 Rock").
.....and finally, for a song of the week ............... among those musicians who have spurned mass popularity in favor of a more personal road is Rickie Lee Jones - which may reflect growing up in an itinerant family as a child. A fierce sense-of-self (along with a delicate voice) is how I've thought of her over the years, and while she turned away from early success: it probably couldn't be any other way for her.
Born in Chicago in 1954, her family moved to California, Arizona and Olympia, Washington by the time she reached high school (her father lost his mother at age 4, lived in a boarding home and Boys Town in his youth, rarely staying long in any one place). Along with a free-spirited friend, she was expelled from high school and began life on the road. She eventually settled in the Los Angeles area in the mid-70's, waitressing and singing freelance.
Several breaks came to her at this time: (a) having a romance with fellow bohemian Tom Waits - and thus gaining some important contacts, (b) offered a job singing lead for the band Easy Money - a 9-piece country band, (c) leading to jobs singing jazz standards and a wide array of music, and (d) having a song of hers called Easy Money sung for Lowell George of Little Feat on the phone - which he recorded for the final album before his death.
Record producer Tommy LiPuma sent Dr. John to scout her for Warner Brothers, which landed her a recording contract in late 1978. And talk about an early success: the announcement of the death of Lowell George coincided with her appearance on the cover of Rolling Stone and on Saturday Night Live in April, 1979.
Based upon a real-life songwriting character in her Los Angeles bohemian circles - named Chuck E. Weiss - Rickie Lee Jones had a break-out #4 hit with Chuck E.'s In Love that same year, and her self-titled debut album reached #3. All of which led to her receiving the Best New Artist at the 1980 Grammy Awards.
Two years later, her second album Pirates overcame the sophomore jinx syndrome, using longer song structures and several jazz stars (Randy Brecker and Steve Gadd) and had a critical success with We Belong Together and my favorite song of hers (reaching #64 on the charts), A Lucky Guy which - when people at party ask for a favorite lovemaking song - always gets some "awwwws" when I answer with that.
After a change-of-pace with her 1983 live album - featuring some Great American Songbook tunes - she had a poor-selling 1984 album The Magazine - and then disappeared for several years due to the birth of a child and alcohol problems, eventually settling in France for a time.
After a guest spot on an album by (seemingly) everyone's favorite itinerant double bassist Rob Wasserman - she rebounded nicely with 1989's Flying Cowboys that recaptured her old sound, particularly Satellites which she sang on Saturday Night Live just over ten years after her debut there. She also had a hit duet with old friend Dr. John on Making Whoopee - earning her a second Grammy.
Two years later she offered another diversion: Pop Pop - an album of pop/Great American Songbook classics. Rickie Lee Jones always bristles at being compared to Joni Mitchell, but she does share one trait: recording with many jazz performers. And here, Joe Henderson, Robben Ford and Charlie Haden help her navigate I'll Be Seeing You to My One and Only Love - and then shift to Jimi Hendrix's Up from the Skies and one of my favorite ballads of all: Comin' Back To Me by Marty Balin.
After another hiatus for the first half of the 1990's: the past fifteen years she has had a lower profile but with some notable works. Naked Songs features her solo on either guitar or piano, her 2000 album It's Like This again visits both standards and rock classics, and her 2003 The Evening Of My Best Day features the song Ugly Man - a most unsubtle look at our former president.
2007 saw the release of a religious/spiritual themed album The Sermon on Exposition Boulevard - based upon the book The Words by Lee Cantelon. Next came her 2009 album Balm in Gilead which continued a spiritual theme, with the late Vic Chesnutt contributing on vocals. And it includes a re-make of "The Moon is Made of Gold" - which her father Richard Jones wrote for her in the year of her birth, 1954.
Her most recent recording is 2012's The Devil You Know - with covers of classic tunes from the Rolling Stones, Donovan, Neil Young, The Band, Van Morrison and Tim Hardin's Reason to Believe - in what she calls her "most carefully crafted album ever".
Rickie Lee Jones has an excellent career retrospective album in Duchess of Coolsville - which is what Jay Cocks of Time Magazine dubbed her in 1979 - was named by VH-1 as #30 in its list of the 100 Greatest Women of Rock & Roll in 1999 .... and at age 60, she'll undoubtedly have more surprises before her career ends.
One of the other songs on her 2003 "Evening of my Best Day" recording was Tell Somebody (Repeal the Patriot Act Now) - another critical tune about ... well, you figure it out.
Not long ago it was alright
There were no bad dreams
that kept me up at night
It was not brother against brother
mother against mother
Now they want us to just get in line
behind a president
When you know they spent
millions of dollars
Condemning and accusing
the last one from the other side
So tell somebody
You've got to tell somebody
Tell somebody
what happened in the USA