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 .... and week ahead.
ART NOTES — an exhibition of the later years of the Belgian surreal artist René Magritte will be at the San Francisco, California Museum of Modern Art through October 28th.
BOOK NOTES — sixty years after he first arrived on children’s bookshelves, the final adventure of Paddington Bear is being released with the publication of “Paddington at St Paul’s” — the manuscript for which his creator (Michael Bond) completed just three weeks before his death last year.
HAIL and FAREWELL to the veteran Chicago bluesman Eddy Clearwater — a Mississippi native who was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 2016, and released a total of 17 albums in his musical career that spanned six decades — who has died at the age of 83.
THURSDAY's CHILD is named Arthur the Cat — one of the finalists for Britain’s ‘Most Caring Cat’ in a national charity competition, having helped a woman live an independent life following a three-and-a-half year stay at a mental health unit.
WHILE IT WAS NOT PART OF his (initially) being rejected as the interim prime minister by Italy’s president — the suspicion that his coalition’s finance ministerial choice would try to take Italy out of the Eurozone was the cause — the jurist Giuseppe Conte did have a faulty academic CV: listing 2008-2012 summers spent at New York University (which the school finds no records of) as well as ‘legal studies’ at Vienna’s Internationales Kulturinstitute (but which is solely a German language school). Nonetheless, after jettisoning the finance minister candidate: Conte today was sworn-in as the new interim Italian prime minister.
FRIDAY's CHILDREN are to take part in a cat yoga joint venture between a local Humane Society and a yoga studio.
YOUR WEEKEND READ is the short yet comprehensive essay by Jamelle Bouie about the pardon for Dinesh D’Souza … and what it means to the right wing.
BRAIN TEASER - try this Quiz of the Week's News from the BBC.
FATHER-SON? — TV star and film director Rob Reiner and former John McCain aide (and present-day TV commentator) Steve Schmidt.
...... and finally, for a song of the week ...........................… a short week (and a hectic one at that). So there will be no profile, just a timely song from my favorite musician, the late bassist Jack Bruce. A song from his final recording (released seven months before his death in October, 2014), with lyrics by his long-time songwriting partner Pete Brown. Per the chorus of Fields of Forever: I hope for all of you (in the Northern Hemisphere) that .. “Your garden’s full of summer weather”.
I wrote myself a sad song ... a million years ago
It took off down a road I couldn't predict
With wild kicks and crazy kicks
Spent a lot of miles building up my name
Driving through the wind and the rain
Working that circuit that has no end
Looking out for danger round the twisted bends
I lived myself some lives ... a long time back
Took me down some strange dark tracks
Good times and troubles you wouldn't believe
Fighting through a jungle full of pirates and thieves
Used a lot of money running from the truth
Didn't add up to nothing but the blues
Didn't ever fall but I sometimes stumbled
Always got up when I heard the wheels rumble
Now I'm back home for a while (with a smile)
And my garden's full of summer weather
I’m going to keep on with the work, though it sometimes hurts
When you're looking at the fields of forever