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FATHER-SON? - a college-age Newt Gingrich and TV character Dwight Schrute (from "The Office", as portrayed by actor Rainn Wilson).
Well, you can come out of your air-raid shelters, now .... and stop 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 - North America's first large-scale international survey of Surrealist women artists in Mexico and the United States is at the Los Angeles, California Contemporary Museum of Art through May 6th.
ATTENTION, READERS - posted last month in this space was this year's quiz from King William's College (a prep school located on the UK's Isle of Man) - with said quiz known as its General Knowledge Paper officially.
It consists of 18 groups of 10 questions - the first section on events 100 years ago, and the last on events of 2011. Each group has a common theme (though perhaps not immediately recognizable) that helps if you can answer at least one of that group's questions - and is among the most difficult general knowledge quizzes on earth (quite British literature-laden, as you might well imagine).
At this link is this year's quiz if you didn't have a chance to take it.
Well, now the answers are available at this link - and your truly did 33% better than 2010 by improving from 3 correct answers to 4 (out of 180).
TUESDAY's CHILD is Ripples the Cat - a kitteh who got loose from his carrier on an Air Canada flight in Nova Scotia, causing a four-hour delay before being located ... in the cockpit.
POLITICAL NOTES - an analyst for the New York Times suggests that evangelical opposition to Mormonism in general (and Mitt Romney's candidacy in particular) has little to do with the doctrinal differences they cite (which could also apply to Seventh-day Adventists, Christian Scientists and Jehovah's Witnesses) nor with its old practices of polygamy and treatment of blacks - but instead, with the faith's rapid expansion worldwide (similar to Islam) which was a non-factor when his father George Romney ran for president in 1968.
FATHER-SON? - a young Rick Santorum and film character Napoleon Dynamite (as portrayed by Jon Heder).
PET ADOPTION NOTES - two noted bloggers - Kevin Drum as well as Digby - express sympathy with this essayist in Slate who takes to task animal rescue shelter workers (who undoubtedly have seen the worst in human behavior) for setting such unrealistically high standards for potential adoptors that families give up ... and go to pet stores, breeders or Craigslist in frustration.
ON WHAT WOULD HAVE BEEN his 94th birthday, gifts received by the late Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu were auctioned off under his title "The Golden Age" - purportedly the good life existing in Romania - while ordinary citizens endured food shortages, power outages and the secret police.
ART NOTES - works marking the 150th anniversary of the birth of Indian artist Rabindranath Tagore are at the Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois to April 15th.
AT AGE 38 you might think that the NFL future Hall of Fame wide receiver Terrell Owens ought to be enjoying life - but for once, no team wants to hire him ... at a time when he really needs the money.
FORTY YEARS AGO a Japanese soldier was found in the jungles of Guam, surviving there for nearly three decades after the end of WW-II, in the belief his comrades would one day return for him. He was given a hero's welcome on his return to Japan but - big surprise - never quite felt at home in modern society.
WEDNESDAY's CHILD is Cyrano the Cat - actually, his full name is Cyrano L. Catte II - who is recuperating well from a knee replacement, made necessary after having undergone life-saving chemotherapy and radiation for bone cancer.
Alas, this account couldn't resist calling it ...... "ortho-PET-ic surgery".
THE AFRICAN NATION of Niger struggles to feed itself at the best of times - and with erratic rainfall and financial strife, these are far from the best of times.
POLITICAL NOTES - the essayist Ed Kilgore says GOP insiders hoping for a last-minute 'savior' from the current crop of candidates are naive: describing in detail the 2008 example of Fred Thompson - who didn't fizzle-out due to money or ideology but simply because he was coaxed into running, not because he was driven to - which probably describes today's 'saviors', too (at least at this time).
ART NOTES - fifty-five drawings from 1890-1921 by Pablo Picasso are at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. through May 6th.
WHEN ONE THINKS of jazz in the early 20th Century: New Orleans, Chicago, New York (or maybe Paris) comes to mind. But in a 4-minute BBC radio piece, another city with a flourishing jazz scene in the 1930's was .... Bombay, India - as many black musicians sought an escape from the racism back home.
POLITICAL NOTES - at a time when analysts are wondering about the possibility of the GOP having a brokered national convention: the original national convention smoke-filled room was in Chicago's Blackstone Hotel back in 1920.
THURSDAY's CHILD is Meshach the Cat - an Oregon kitteh found badly burned last Christmas (and at this link is a video) - but is now recuperating from surgery, with a waiting list to adopt him.
BEVERAGE NOTES - like champagne, tequila may be called tequila only if it comes from a specific region and thus only five of Mexico's 31 states have the exclusive right to produce it. Bottlers elsewhere have used terms such as "agave liquor" instead, which the official producers are trying to stop.
HISTORY NOTES - at age 97, Raymond Aubrac is the the last surviving member of the French Resistance and tells his story to the BBC (including a year studying engineering at MIT). This story doesn't mention it, but a 1997 French film titled after his wife Lucie Aubrac also chronicled their life in the Resistance.
SEPARATED at BIRTH - Academy Award winner Tom Hanks and drummer Neal Peart of the veteran Canadian rock band Rush.
SCIENCE NOTES - although a three-year period is required to declare the nation of India to be polio-free - the fact that it has been over a year since a case was diagnosed may lead to the day that - what was once a global scourge - will be endemic to a mere three countries: Afghanistan, Nigeria and Pakistan.
FRIDAY's CHILD is might glad that police foiled plans by a man to extort a wealthy former attorney, then electrocute him in the bath and finally ...... frame this East St. Louis, Illinois kitteh .... as the culprit!
......and finally, for a song of the week ............... rather than focus on a specific performer, this week I'd like to focus on two old songs with an uncertain provenance: Wayfaring Stranger and O Shenandoah - both of which have numerous performers who have recorded them, which is unsurprising since both date back to the 1800's.
The history of Wayfaring Stranger - such as it is known - is a spiritual about a plaintive soul on the journey through life. It became widely popular due to the efforts of Charles Tillman - a Southern gospel pioneer - who published lyrics combined from two sources and combined that with the minor key tune of various African American and Appalachian nuance.
It became one of Burl Ives's signature songs and has been recorded by the likes of Bill Monroe, Tim Buckley, Eva Cassidy, Joni Mitchell, Joan Baez, Jerry Garcia, Duane Eddy ... and this version by Johnny Cash.
I'm just a poor wayfaring stranger
Traveling thru this world below
Theres no sickness, no toil, no danger
In that bright land to which I go
I know dark clouds will gather round me,
I know my way is hard and steep
But beauteous fields arise before me
Where Gods redeemed their vigils keep
I'm going there to see my Father
And all my loved ones who've gone old
I'm just going over Jordan
I'm just going over home
O Shenandoah has an even more unclear origin, but appears to have come into vogue at the time of the Civil War.
American folklorist Alan Lomax suggested that "Shenandoah" was a sea-shanty and that the "composers" quite possibly were French-Canadian voyageurs. Sea shanties were work songs used by sailors to coordinate the efforts of completing chores such as raising the ship's anchor or hauling ropes.
Some believe that the song refers to the river of the same name. Others suggest that it is of Native American origin, for it tells the tale of Sally, the daughter of the Indian Chief Shenandoah, who is courted for seven years by a white Missouri River trader. Still other interpretations tell of a pioneer's nostalgia for the Shenandoah River Valley in Virginia, or of a Confederate soldier in the American Civil War, dreaming of his country home in Virginia.
Fifteen years ago, the Virginia legislature rejected making the tune its official state song - to replace "Carry Me Back to Old Virginia" due to its slave-era lyrics - because some thought it spoke of a time when people were migrating out-of-state, and others focusing on the Missouri River aspect.
Either way, it has been recorded by the likes of Paul Robeson, Harry Belafonte, Thin Lizzy, Bob Dylan, Bing Crosby, Leontyne Price, Bruce Springsteen, Pete Seeger, Van Morrison, Judy Garland, Glen Campbell, Sergio Franchi ...... if there's a pattern there, I fail to discern it.
But in 2009 he recorded a bluegrass album called Rambling Boy - with his four musical children assisting - which brought him full-circle to the music his family had played growing up. He had contracted a mild case of bulbar polio in his teens, which affected his vocal chords and ended his singing career. But to conclude this album, he decided to sing one song as a labor-of-love.
And given that Charlie Haden was born in Shenandoah, Iowa and had grown-up in Missouri - he decided to record a version of "O Shenandoah" with the guitarist Pat Metheny - who is a native of Missouri himself.
O Shenandoah,
I long to see you
Away you rolling river
Oh Shenandoah,
I long to see you
Away, I'm bound away
'cross the wide Missouri
'Tis seven years
since last I've seen you
And hear your rolling river
'Tis seven years
since last I've seen you
Away, we're bound away
Across the wide Missouri
