The mighty Jupiter and glorious ringed Saturn find themselves relatively close together every 20 years, meaning that there is only a degree or two between them. However, on December 21st, the two planets will be closer than they have been since 1632, only 14 years after Galileo made his first telescope. Space.com explains that “they will be separated by just one-fifth of the apparent diameter of the full moon!” Mark your calendar, but do not wait until then to start watching. The planets are visible tonight and every night, near each other for the rest of 2020, and you can watch them draw closer together. The extra-close Jupiter-Saturn conjunction in 2020 will not happen again until the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction of March 15, 2080. Oh, and December 21st is also the date of the December solstice, the shortest day of the year. From the winter solstice, until the summer solstice (June 21st), the amount of daylight increases about 2 minutes per day. I put this in as my first paragraph because I think it is the most important. But there is more. A total solar eclipse is happening on December 14, 2020. It is the famous hole in the sky, one of the world’s greatest displays. A solar eclipse occurs when the Moon passes between Earth and the Sun. Be sure to have a pair of solar eclipse glasses handy. Parts of South America will be plunged into total darkness for about two minutes when the total eclipse happens. Because of COVID, many people across the world that planned to witness this event, canceled their plans, and will stay at home. COVID, go away.
After we bring food home from the grocery store…Dogs must think we are the greatest hunters ever!
– Ann Taylor
The Mike Tyson (54) vs. Roy Jones Jr. (51) exhibition fight last week ended in a draw. I guess that means they could not decide on a winner or a loser, so in my mind, they both won. When the final bell rang, three former WBC champions scored the fight a draw. USA TODAY Sports scored the fight 78-74 for Tyson. “I’m glad I got this under my belt,” said Tyson, who also said he was good with the draw “because I entertained the crowd.” Before the fight began, it was reported that Tyson appeared to be blinking back tears, an emotional moment as he prepared to fight for the first time in 15 years.
Australia is burning again. Firefighters have been battling a massive bushfire on Fraser Island for six weeks now as the country experiences its hottest November on record. The blaze on Fraser Island was sparked by an illegal campfire. Recent cooler conditions and rain have brought some relief, but more than 50 fires are still burning in Queensland and New South Wales. Bushfires are common across the country, but especially hot and dry conditions in recent years have led to worsening blazes. Experts worry the continued record heat could set up another devastating season. Last year’s Black Summer was Australia’s worst bushfire season ever, burning 30 million acres and killing at least 33 people along with an estimated 1 billion animals. The amount of land burned is immense and our world has never seen anything quite like these fires.
The cool weather is here and the only good thing to do when the temperature is below 70 degrees, is to make a big pot of soup. This past weekend, I made one of our family favorites, Chicken and Rice soup with chili oil, then another day was Tomato Basil soup with Grilled Three-Cheese sandwiches, then came freezer soup the next day, where you take all the leftovers out of the freezer and throw it in a pot. I just love any kind of soup. Our condiment of the moment is Mongolian Fire Oil made by Tsang, sprinkled on just as you serve. It is a yummy blend of chili peppers, garlic, onion, ginger, sesame, and cottonseed oil. It adds so much flavor to soups and more. I even add it to the olive oil when I am roasting sweet potato fries or Brussel sprouts.
RECENT BIRTHDAYS: Singer Ozzy Osbourne is 72. Singer Mickey Thomas is 71. Jefferson Starship. Actor Daryl Hannah is 60. Actor, producer and director Norman Lloyd is 106. French actor Alain Delon is 85. Screen sex symbol from the 60’s. Singer Bonnie Raitt is 71. Chef and TV personality Gordon Ramsay is 54. Nobel Prize-winning British novelist, screenwriter and short-story writer Kazuo Ishiguro is 66. Blues musician John Mayall is 87. Actor Diane Ladd is 85. Musician Chuck Mangione is 80.
Actor-comedian Howie Mandel is 65. Actor Cathy Moriarty is 60. Raging Bull. Singer Jonathan Knight is 52. New Kids on the Block. Bassist Roger Glover is 75. Deep Purple. Singer Billy Idol is 65. Guitarist John Ashton is 63. Psychedelic Furs. Actor-director Ben Stiller is 55. Singer Clay Aiken is 42. American Idol. Actor-director Woody Allen is 85. Singer Dianne Lennon of the Lennon Sisters is 81.
Singer-guitarist Eric Bloom is 76. Blue Oyster Cult. Drummer John Densmore is 76. The Doors. Actor-singer Bette Midler is 75. Singer Gilbert O’Sullivan is 74. Actor Treat Williams is 69. Actor Charlene Tilton is 62. Dallas. Actor Cathy Lee Crosby is 76. News anchor Stone Phillips is 66. Bassist Rick Savage is 60. Def Leppard. Singer Britney Spears is 39.
Actor Mary Alice is 79. Effie Williams in the 1976 musical drama Sparkle. Actor Julianne Moore is 60. Game show host Wink Martindale is 87. Actor-producer-director Max Baer Junior is 83. Jethro Bodine. Singer-bassist Chris Hillman is 76. The Byrds, Flying Burrito Brothers. Actor Jeff Bridges is 71. Guitarist Gary Rossington is 69. Lynyrd Skynyrd, The Rossington Collins Band. Actor Patricia Wettig is 69. Singer Jim Messina is 73. Loggins and Messina, Poco. Actor Frankie Muniz is 35. Malcolm in the Middle.
David Prowse died at age 85 of complications from Covid-19. He was an English bodybuilder, weightlifter, 6’6” tall character actor in British film and television, but best known for physically portraying Darth Vader in the original Star Wars trilogy. In 2015, he starred in a documentary concerning that role, entitled I Am Your Father.
One month after his death, Sean Connery’s deactivated Walther PP pistol from the 1962 ‘first’ Bond film, Dr. No, will be up for auction. The handgun is expected to bring as much as $200,000. “In the cinematic debut of the character of James Bond, Connery uses this hero weapon throughout the film and helped to establish and define the character that has been featured in books, films, and other media for the past nearly six decades,” said Julien’s Auction House.
When Linda Hill died last year, she had been an assistant professor of English at Claflin University in South Carolina for 46 years. Recently, her family announced that she left $350,000 to the university to be used to establish an endowment to support student scholarships. Nice. Celebrity chef, David Chang, became the first celebrity to win the top prize in Who Wants to Be a Millionaire and donated the entire $1 million prize money to restaurant workers who have been impacted by the pandemic. The final question was to name the first US president to have electricity in the White House. ANSWER: President Benjamin Harrison. I would have walked away with nothing.
The last day of hurricane season was November 30th but since all historical rules were broken in 2020, who knows, we might just see some straggler storms in December. Now that I think about it, most historical rules were broken in 2020. The 5-day Tropical weather outlook shows a large non-tropical low-pressure system centered north of the Madeira Islands. The last year a named storm developed in December was Olga in 2007. The next Greek letter is Kappa. Sounds like a sorority girl to me.
On November 18th, a helicopter crew found an unmarked, tall, silver rectangle (quadrilateral) stuck among the red rocks in a remote area of the Utah desert while they were counting bighorn sheep. The crew went down to investigate. It was 10-12 feet high and looked like it had been planted in the ground. Like an art piece. Desert art. (Google Earth shows it to have been standing there since 2015, at least.) Sometime during the night of November 27th, it was removed by an unknown party. Less than two weeks later, halfway around the world, a second mysterious monolith was found in Romania. The mayor of Piatra Neamt, the city where it was found, seems to have found humor in the situation. He said, “My guess is that some alien, cheeky and terrible teenagers left home with their parents’ UFO and started planting metal monoliths around the world. First in Utah and then at Piatra Neamt,” he added. “I am honored that they chose our city.” Well, the plot thickens. The location soon became a hotspot, and the monolith was removed in the middle of the night by four men who were secretly photographed by a professional photographer who was there taking pictures of the object. One comment I read said, “We’ve really moved on from planking, and eating Tide pods.” If there was ever a year that we would graciously welcome aliens, it would be 2020. Bring ‘em on. Times a wasting.
For a limited time, Chipotle is adding smoked brisket to the menu. I bet that it’s better than good. Los Angeles County, the biggest county in the US, is now under a stay-at-home order. A new study shows that dinosaurs were thriving on Earth, until an asteroid wiped them out 66 million years ago. Moderna says its coronavirus vaccine is more than 94 percent effective, and has asked the FDA to authorize it. If all goes well, the drug could begin reaching Americans by December 21. Along with the fight to see who gets the vaccine first…that is the day of the winter solstice, in case you forgot to mark your calendar. 😊
“Saving one dog will not change the world, but surely for that one dog, the world will change forever.”- Karen Davison
Just when you thought you knew everything, then something comes along that makes your heart feel so good. Maybe I liked this so much because I just adopted a dog (Teller) to add to my family of two kids and, and three rescue cats. Time magazine said that when President-elect Joe Biden takes office on January 20, there will be two German shepherds who go with his family to live at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Champ Biden, and Major Biden. Major will be the first White House rescue shelter dog ever. I read another source that said that President Lyndon B. Johnson’s mixed breed dog Yuki was found by daughter Luci at a gas station on Thanksgiving Day in 1966. Luci officially gave the dog to her dad as a birthday gift in 1967. Abraham Lincoln also had a foundling pup named Fido, but the yellow mixed-breed dog never lived in the White House because he was scared of crowds and loud noises. The Lincolns gave Fido to another family before Lincoln took office, according to the Presidential Pet Museum. Yes, there is a U.S. Presidential Pet Museum in Williamsburg, Virginia, that keeps tabs on the animal companions of each commander-in-chief. It was founded in 1999 as a means of preserving information, artifacts and items related to the presidential pets. There is a portrait of President Reagan’s dog, Lucky, made from the dog’s own hair. There is the cowbell that hung around the neck of Pauline Wayne, the last cow to graze the White House lawn. Richard Nixon had a French Poodle named Vicky. Amy Carter had a border collie mix named Grits. When the Kennedy family moved into the White House, they brought a Welsh terrier named Charlie, despite the president’s allergies to animal hair. President John F. Kennedy enjoyed animals and wanted his children to have the experience of having pets. Thomas Jefferson, 3rd President, owned 2 pit bulls. There is more fun information just a Google search away.
Next week, I’ll tell you the story of Teller, the downtown, hairless stray that is now laying on a rug in my office with a 5” rawhide chewie that was about 10” long last week. He is the greatest. His story has affected my family, my office, and a multitude of kind hearts in LJ and Angleton. I will also tell you about the words of the year because I just ran out of room. Have a great week and as always, thank you so much for reading The Source Weekly. Please remember to always shop local this holiday season. It will make a difference.
Lisa
