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 #1 - works from three generations of painters exemplifying American realism in an exhibition entitled The Wyeths are at the Philbrook Museum of Art in Tulsa, Oklahoma through November 8th.
HAIL and FAREWELL to the noted New Orleans chef Paul Prudhomme - who made Cajun and Creole food known to the rest of America - who has died at the age of 75 .... and Steve Mackay - the saxophonist best known for his work with the Iggy and the Stooges, has died at the age of 66.
CLASSICAL MUSIC NOTES - hoping to change the demographics of classical music concert-goers (old, greying and wealthy), the use of audience voting and virtual reality are some of the means that orchestras are relying upon.
THURSDAY's CHILD is a Japanese kitteh testing an onsen box - a vented wooden structure offering privacy for the use of a litter box (which is currently appearing on a Japanese crowd-funding site).
ART NOTES #2 - after being shunned by art galleries for decades, centuries-old Japanese erotic woodblock prints known as shunga are now on display in Tokyo.
HISTORY NOTES #1 - a number of medals awarded to the Anglo-Irish Antarctic explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton have raised £585k (nearly $900k) at a Christie's auction in London.
HISTORY NOTES #2 - with the death (three months ago) of the comedian Jack Carter - standing in the back row below - there is now only one comedian still alive from this 1966 photo:
(Second row: Milton Berle, Wally Cox, Soupy Sales, Dick Martin, Bob Hope, Jimmy Durante and Dick Shawn).
(Bottom row: Dan Rowan .... and Bill Dana - who turned age 91 earlier this week).
FRIDAY's CHILD is named Mia the Cat - a 6-7 week-old Scottish kitteh discovered in the bushes next to a fire station, not caught for awhile due to her quickness .... now at the SPCA until her family reclaims her.
BRAIN TEASER - try this Quiz of the Week's News from the BBC.
OF ALL of the fifteen real secret agents that allegedly provided the basis for Ian Fleming’s super suave spy 007 – few know about Sir William Samuel Stephenson whose hometown was London, Edinburgh .... Winnipeg, Manitoba.
OLDER-YOUNGER SISTERS? - Brazilian-born model Gisele Bundchen and British pop singer Ella Henderson (with "Ghost" reaching #21 on the US charts last year).
...... and finally, for a song of the week .............................. although a song I annually feature after the autumnal equinox was written by Joni Mitchell (and let's hope she is recuperating well) I feature the man who popularized it and - according to Rolling Stone - ushered in the singer/songwriter era.
Say what you will, Tom Rush gets around. He was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, came-of-age in Massachusetts, made his mark at the Boston/Cambridge coffeehouses of the early 1960's, has lived in the Rockies and the West Coast, then Vermont, now back in Massachusetts and who-knows-where tomorrow. Garth Brooks has cited him as an influence, with James Taylor going so far as to say, "I took as much from Tom Rush as possible and unwittingly modeled myself on him. Like a lot of people who do what I do, I owe my career to him".
For a few years, Tom Rush has had an album of humorous tunes Trolling for Owls - which he notes is "not available in stores!" And one of them - The Remember Song - has received in excess of 6.8 million hits on YouTube. After being told it had gone viral he wrote, "I thought I was being accused of being a musical equivalent of Ebola ......... but my children explained to me that this was a good thing".
And for several years, The Very Best of Tom Rush has provided listeners with his classic songs. But it wasn't until 2009 that he released What I Know - his first new studio recording in 35 years - because as he explained, "I don't like to rush headlong into these things".
This marks the 52nd anniversary of the career of Tom Rush and - at age 74 - is still quite active. In 2012 he recorded What's Wrong with America? - a spoof of Mitt Romney's notorious 47% comments.
He traditionally performs an annual show in Boston's Symphony Hall in December, with his current tour bringing him to upstate New York this weekend.
That Joni Mitchell song that Tom Rush helped to popularize: is her 1966 tune Urge for Going - about the oncoming Canadian winter. And below you can hear Tom Rush sing it (with the accent guitar of Bruce Langhorne that truly makes it special) as we move into autumn.
I awoke today and found
the frost perched on the town
It hovered in a frozen sky
then it gobbled summer down
When the sun turns traitor cold
and all the trees are shivering in a naked row
I get the urge for going
But I never seem to go
Now the warriors of winter
Give a cold triumphant shout
And all that stays is dying
And all that lives is getting out
See the geese in chevron flight
Flapping and racing on before the snow
They got the urge for going
And they've got the wings to go
And they get the urge for going
When the meadow grass is turning brown
Summertime is falling down
Winter's closing in