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 - works by Jacob Lawrence telling the story of Toussaint L’Ouverture - the founding father of Haiti - are at the Taft Museum in Cincinnati, Ohio through January 16th.
PROGRAMMING NOTE - I will be away for a long Halloween weekend, on an annual trip to visit friends in Albany, New York - thus, there will not be an Odds & Ends next weekend. See you on the first weekend in November.
HAIL and FAREWELL to the singer Cory Wells - one of the front-line singing trio for the band Three Dog Night - who has died at the age of 71 ....... the veteran jazz singer Mark Murphy - who has died at the age of 83 .... and the folksinger Leon Bibb - a mainstay of the early 60's folk scene, with appearances on Hootenanny and several times on the Ed Sullivan Show - who has died at the age of 93.
THURSDAY's CHILD is named Kitty Galvan - a pootie stranded in a drain on a Texas overpass, who was rescued by a policeman ... and now has a forever home.
TRANSPORTATION NOTES - Norway's capital city of Oslo plans to ban gas-powered automobiles from its city center by the year 2019.
BRAIN TEASER - try this Quiz of the Week's News from the BBC.
SPORTING NOTES - it is down to the last semi-final in the Rugby World Cup taking place in England (with today's match featuring Argentina vs. Australia). The winner takes on New Zealand in the championship match next Saturday (on Halloween) in London.
FRIDAY's CHILD is named Boo the Cat - a Pennsylvania kitteh who disappeared under concrete work done around a family's backyard pool ... who was dramatically rescued by a landscaping firm (that did not charge for their work excavating Boo).
THERE IS LESS THAN A WEEK for your local DJ to refer to this month as ... ROCKTOBER.
QUOTE for TODAY - from Matt Tiabbi, political reporter for Rolling Stone (and a frequent critic of HRC) ... on one of the loudmouths from Thursday:
"Alabama Republican Martha Roby .... reminded me of a bowling alley manager worried to death ... that she didn't have enough size 9's to get through a Friday night.
Roby looked terrified, like she just wanted to make it through to the end without mispronouncing all of those foreign locations".
SEPARATED at BIRTH - TV/film star Olivia Munn ("The Daily Show", "Mortdecai")
and the goalkeeper for the US Women's World Cup championship team, Hope Solo.
...... and finally, for a song of the week .............................. actually, this week's tune is profiled in my Top Comments diary from the other night, as it was much-too-long to include in Odds & Ends.
It concerns a hit song from over forty years ago, which furthered the career of a young singer on her way to stardom (after a bright debut a year earlier). Yet what merited this more in-depth profile was: the interesting back-story to it (which regular readers know that I am a sucker for). Add to that a mystery/disagreement amongst the principals .... well, I just couldn't resist.
I was a high school student when I heard Roberta Flack sing Killing Me Softly (With His Song) in 1973, taking it to #1 on the pop charts. It won the 1973 Grammy for Record of the Year (with Fox and Gimbel receiving Song of the Year honors). Her version was ranked by Rolling Stone as #360 in its 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list.
Yet Roberta Flack first heard the song by a young California singer-songwriter named
Lori Lieberman from her 1972 debut self-titled album. And the back-story to the song's writing and inspiration is quite interesting (involving Don McLean, of all people).
You can read that story at this link - for now, here is the original recording by Lori Lieberman that Roberta Flack heard on an American Airlines flight ... then made it famous.