~ firefly-dreaming a virtual home to learn (or teach!) alternative methods of solving problems we find facing us each day. By sharing ideas & knowledge on living with less stress, more joy & embracing tolerance & compassion we are working towards building a sustainable future for all living beings.
Recycling isn't limited to paper, glass and metals ...
OLDER-YOUNGER BROTHERS? - two former GOP governors and presidential contenders: Wisconsin's Tommy Thompson (now running for the US Senate) ....
... and Mike Huckabee from Arkansas (and now, Fox).
....in the words of Rick Perry, "oops". Well, help lighten-the-load by stopping in for a look at news items outside the headlines, in the arts and sciences; foreign news that generates little notice in the US media and ....well, just plain whimsy.....
ART NOTES - over forty artists in an exhibit entitled (and with works made from) Extreme Materials is at the Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester, New York through January 15th.
I'LL ADMIT that I didn't pay much attention to this story when three young men were released from prison this past summer ... but after reading this account of the unfair treatment that the so-called West Memphis Three were given, I'm sorry it took me so long to do so.
YUK for today - the Canadian singer Michael Bublé has revealed how some people walk out of his concerts because of ... his bad language on stage.
AFTER LEARNING of the death of Kim Jong-il has died - here is how he was depicted on the cover of The Economist magazine several years ago, after he broke his long-held isolation to hold a meeting with South Korea's then president Kim Dae-jung ....
... and I'll admit thinking at the time: "Who wears a Mao suit these days? All that was missing was a cap with a star on it!" And then thinking ....
"Now, if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao" ......
MONDAY's CHILD is Itty the Cat - who is the hero cat in a film production entitled "When the Bough Breaks" - and a woman representing the American Humane Association was on-set (along with a trainer) to make sure Itty was treated appropriately.
SIGN of the TIMES - the Guatemalan president Alvaro Colom has apologized to the relatives of the victims of a 1982 massacre - in which Guatemalan soldiers killed more than 200 people in the village of Dos Erres - and it was not until earlier this year that four former soldiers were sentenced to life in prison for the crime.
CHEERS to Stewie the Cat for helping to calm a crying baby.
AGRICULTURAL NOTES - a researcher who is examining the drought-survival mechanisms of tea plants grew up in South Africa's drought-prone northern province of Limpopo, where crop failures are frequent.
Reader-suggested OLDER-YOUNGER BROTHERS? - the retired star baseball pitcher Greg Maddux ................
....... and Chris Cillizza - the pundit and Washington Post columnist.
A CAMPAIGN in Britain against the pink/blue divide - especially pink toys for girls - has achieved a major success when a major toy store announced it would phase-out having separate boys and girls color-coded floors.
ART NOTES - the photography exhibit In Focus: Los Angeles, 1945-1980 begins today at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, California and runs through May 6th.
WITH THE RECENT overreaction by the Lowe's home improvement chain (of its sponsorship of the "American Muslim" program) after one complaint by the Florida Family Association - the BBC notes several reasons that Florida is particularly suited to be a hotbed of anti-Muslim politics.
AFTER a RECENT trip down memory lane writing about some noteworthy teachers in my life in an essay - I heard back from my 7th grade English teacher in 1968 ... which was his first year teaching, to my surprise.
TUESDAY's CHILD is Ginger the Cat - currently at a Colorado Springs shelter, inexplicably whose microchip indicates a hometown of Missoula, Montana.
IN THIS YEAR of history in Antarctic exploration: the remains of Frank Wild - the second-in-command to Sir Ernest Shackleton, whose ice-pack stranded voyage on the Endurance was nonetheless among the most remarkable sea voyages of the 20th Century - have now been laid-to-rest next to his old skipper on South Georgia Island, where six men sailed 800 rough miles (in a lifeboat) in order to rescue the entire crew from Elephant Island (off the coast of Antarctica).
ART NOTES - an exhibition of prints along with photographic enlargements depicting The New Deal is at the Blanden Art Museum in Fort Dodge, Iowa through March 31st.
TV NOTES - she was cast as Dana Scully in The X-Files at age 24, but now Gillian Anderson will appear as the youngest-ever Miss Havisham on a BBC production of "Great Expectations".
BOOK NOTES - with the recent death of its founder George Whitman: an essayist looks at the Parisian bookstore Shakespeare and Company - declaring it to be "a writer's haven on the River Seine" for books published in English.
WEDNESDAY's CHILD is the late Gretzky the Cat - who died in 2010, but for whom constituents of California congresswoman Loretta Sanchez wanted him to remain in her holiday card.
CHEERS to a reader who recommended this Web Economy Bull***t Generator - which randomly assigns a verb, adjective and noun to generate something that .... well, at least sounds good on your job application.
ADVERTISING NOTES - in what may be the long-awaited successor to the career advice of "Plastics!" in the film "The Graduate" - a Canadian advertising agency has a spoof ad extolling the business opportunities (at this link) in Cat-vertising .... of which a Time magazine analyst wishes was for real.
FATHER-SON? - TV/film star Alan Alda and essayist/author Michael Tomasky.
JEERS TO ..... ahh, nobody: it's Christmas!
TRANSPORTATION NOTES - with ever-growing numbers of commuters between Malmö (in southern Sweden) and Denmark's capital, Copenhagen: an undersea subway line is one idea to improve the already-stressed transportation choices.
ART NOTES - prints and drawings make up the exhibit Visions of Saints begin tomorrow at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Texas, through March 18th.
TV NOTES - if you enjoy watching a televised December 25th Yule Log burning (with Christmas music in the background) - at this link is a nationwide schedule.
CHEERS to more than 1,000 readers in a single week who cancelled their subscription to the Basler Zeitung newspaper after it was revealed that the paper is owned by the family of far-right Swiss People's Party deputy leader Christoph Blocher - and after several hundred people rallied on the streets of Basel to voice their discontent, three Swiss media unions issued a joint statement saying: "When one of the richest Swiss citizens (and vice-president of the strongest party) buys into the media, we are on the way to Berlusconisation".
THURSDAY's CHILD is Shari the Cat - one of this year's annual Twelve Cats of Christmas at a shelter in Albert Lea, Minnesota - and she is the only one of her litter yet to be adopted.
CHEERS to boarding Amtrak tomorrow for a nice Yuletide visit to the NY/NJ area with family and friends, including our annual bash for four old friends whose birthdays fall at this time of year: our 36th annual celebration doing so. Also tomorrow morning, I will post my weekly Odds & Ends wrap-up diary.
If you celebrate it: Happy Hanukkah and Merry Christmas. And to all: a wonderful 2012.
Reader-suggested SEPARATED at BIRTH a Facebook visage of someone named White Jesus ...................
... and Kenny Loggins the musician (of "Footloose" fame).
...... and finally, for a song of the week ......................................... with such a busy week, I'll simply reprise my annual holiday profile. One reviewer called him "the most listened-to jazz pianist of all time" and with the Christmas season upon us, it might well be true that Vince Guaraldi achieved that status - in a quiet way - due to a certain comic strip of note.
A San Francisco native, Guaraldi attended San Francisco State College and worked as an Army cook in the Korean War. His career began in 1956 (playing in Woody Herman's band) and went on to perform with such varied musicians as Nina Simone, Cal Tjader, Stan Getz, Jimmy Witherspoon, Paul Winter and Mongo Santamaria before forming his own piano trio. In the "File under Impossible Tasks" department, it was written that his first important gig was .... "filling-in for Art Tatum". Yikes!
His breakthrough hit (in more ways than one) was the 1963 Grammy-winning tune Cast Your Fate to the Wind - a gorgeous melody that eight years later the James Gang's guitarist Joe Walsh - later to join The Eagles - worked into a medley (most improbably) with a hard rock song entitled The Bomber in 1971.
Vince Guaraldi was successful in the jazz world, yet comparatively unknown to the American public. But that changed - dramatically - with a 1965 cab ride that TV producer Lee Mendelson took across the Golden Gate Bridge.
In much the same way that The Sopranos producer David Chase decided upon his show's theme song - by hearing the UK band "Alabama 3" perform it on the radio - Lee Mendelson heard "Cast Your Fate to the Wind" on the radio in that cab ride. He asked for help from the noted music writer Ralph Gleason (who helped co-found Rolling Stone magazine later that decade) - and was thus able to contact Guaraldi about composing for the upcoming Charlie Brown Christmas special.
Sixteen TV shows (and one feature film) later, the music of Vince Guaraldi is an integral part of the Peanuts experience - with the theme song Linus and Lucy plus the irresistible song Skating among his best-loved Peanuts music.
Vince Guaraldi died in 1976 (at only age 47) in-between sets of a gig in Menlo Park California. The musician David Benoit cites Guaraldi as an inspiration, and it's difficult to imagine Peanuts with any other music backing it - for the trumpeter Wynton Marsalis "Peanuts" was the only chance to hear jazz on TV in his youth. Wynton was also excited that his pianist father Ellis - the patriarch of the talented Marsalis musical family - knew Vince Guaraldi. "Our father knew somebody who was connected to television!", he later wrote.
While most of Vince Guaraldi's work is instrumental: appropriately for the season, the song Christmas Time Is Here (fair-use extract below) had lyrics written by the show's producer Lee Mendelson for kids to sing. A nice grown-up version was recorded a few years ago by Diane Reeves - the featured nightclub singer in the film "Good Night and Good Luck". And below you can hear Vince Guaraldi's original version.
Christmas time is here
Happiness and cheer
Fun for all that children call
Their favorite time of year
Snowflakes in the air
Carols everywhere
Olden times and ancient rhymes
Of love and dreams to share
Sleigh bells in the air
Beauty everywhere
Yuletide by the fireside
And joyful memories there
Christmas time is here
We'll be drawing near
Oh, that we could always see
Such spirit through the year...
