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What I Heard This Week 08-22-2024

What I Heard This Week August 21, 2024

   

In case you didn’t read this column last week, I’ll bring you up to date. The Source Weekly will publish our last paper on August 29th, 2024. It just couldn’t be helped. It’s just time. Some responses from our dedicated advertisers and readers have imagined and are kindly blaming many things on our closing. Like blaming the postage stamp for losing the Pony Express. Things just change. If we need to blame something, blame Facebook, bad weather… 3 winter power outages, Hurricane Harvey, Hurricane Beryl, definitely COVID, the rising costs of insurance because of ALL the bad weather… it’s just a different world with different people and different needs now than 25-years ago… Oh, and in answer to your questions… no, it is not health related, but I love you all for your concerns and questions. No, I am not marrying my ex-husband, or anyone’s ex-husband. Connie is not running off with the rodeo. Tina is not joining a rock-and-roll band… yet. Your sweet and kind messages, cards, emails and responses have made us feel so loved and needed. We are suggesting that you call The Facts or The Bulletin or any publication for your advertising needs. I’m sure they will take good care of you. But, thank you for loving us. If you want to see what kind of changes we have had in our world in the past 25 years… read on.


Have you ever wanted to know what was happening in our world on a certain date, like a birthday or anniversary? Go to Dmarie.com. Then find Time Capsule, and enter the date you are interested in. Then go to Quick Page and see what was actually happening back when. The following is just a taste of what was going on when The Source Weekly was first published back in 1999…

U.S. President: Bill Clinton
Vice-President: Al Gore
Best Picture: Shakespeare in Love
Best Actor: Roberto Benigni for Life is Beautiful
Best Actress: Gwyneth Paltrow for Shakespeare in Love
TV Shows: The Simpsons, ER, Survivor, Frasier, Friends, Who Wants to be a Millionaire? The X-Files, The Sopranos
Hot New Toys: Moon Walk Shoes, Baby Furby, Pokémon Gameboy Game, Electronic Elmo
Average Loaf of Bread: $1.99 ($2.50 today)
Average Gallon Milk: $2.87 ($3.96 today)
Average Dozen Eggs: $1.22 ($4.25 today because of a widespread outbreak of H5N1, a highly transmissible and fatal strain of avian influenza, or bird flu. The outbreak started in early 2022 and has grown into the largest bird flu outbreak in U.S. history.)
Average New Car Price: $20,686 (according to Kelley Blue Book, $48,008 today)
Average Gasoline: $1.22/gal (averaging $3 per gallon today)
Average price of a Home: $195,800 ($395,000 today)
Stamps: 33 cents each (73 cents today – we should have stocked up when the Forever stamp came out in 2007 for 41 cents)
Minimum Wage: $5.15/hr. (today $7.25/hr.)
Dow Average: 10,481 (2024 average so far is unbelievable 40,834.97 today as I write this)


Things change…RECENT BIRTHDAYS: Computer scientist and Apple Co-founder Steve Wozniak is 74. Wrestler actor Hulk Hogan is 71. Actor Robert Redford is 88. Actor Edward Norton is 55. Actor Jill St. John is 84. Singer Billy J. Kramer is 81. Country singer-songwriter Eddy Raven is 80. Singer Ian Gillan of Deep Purple is 79. Actor Gerald McRaney is 77. Bassist John Deacon of Queen is 73. Actor Peter Gallagher is 69. Actor Adam Arkin is 68. Singer-songwriter Gary Chapman is 67. Actor John Stamos is 61. News anchor Connie Chung is 78. Singer Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin is 76. Singer Rudy Gatlin of the Gatlin Brothers is 72. Singer-songwriter John Hiatt is 72. Actor-director Peter Horton of thirtysomething is 71. Today show weatherman Al Roker is 70.


THE pioneer of daytime TV talk show hosting, Phil Donahue, died at 88, after a long illness. He was married for 44 years to actress Marlo Thomas, best known for That Girl. Donahue hosted his influential talk show from 1967 to 1996, which incorporated participation from the studio audience, something not really done often at the time. Oprah Winfrey has said that while Donahue “may not have invented talking to people on television, he just did it better than anyone who came before him,” and “all of us who came after Phil Donahue owe him a tremendous debt of gratitude.”

Maria Branyas Morera, living in Spain but born in the U.S., who lived through two world wars, the Spanish Civil War, the 1918 flu pandemic and the COVID pandemic, has died at 117. Guinness World Records had officially acknowledged her status as the world’s oldest person.

Elvis died 47 years ago. Do you remember what you were doing when you heard? I was working a telephone switchboard at Forrest Chevrolet & Cadillac in Cleburne, Texas. Elvis was 42 when he died.

Wallace “Wally” Amos, of the Famous Amos cookie empire, died from complications of dementia at home in Hawaii at 88. He founded the world’s first cookie store on Sunset Boulevard in LA in 1975. In his store, he had a reading room and spent Saturdays sitting on a rocking chair, wearing a watermelon hat and reading to children. He eventually lost ownership of the company as well as the right to use the Amos name. Amos once said the Famous Amos cookies sold today are unlike his cookies, which had lots of chocolate, real butter and pure vanilla extract. “You can’t compare a machine-made cookie with a handmade cookie,” he said. “It’s like comparing a Rolls Royce with a Volkswagen.”


As of today, Tuesday August 20th, 2024, I have rewritten this paragraph three times because the information has changed every day. Look up VolcanoesAndEarthquakes.com/region/Texas. In the past few weeks, at least 103 earthquakes have rattled Scurry County in West Texas. The last two were 4.9 and 5.0 quakes. So strong that it was felt all the way to Oklahoma and New Mexico. In a week. You should look it up because I won’t be here to tell you all about it. One man said he had just fed his horses, sat down in his Lazy-Boy recliner and it turned the whole chair over.


Snoop Dogg has a very large handbag collection, and said this, “I’m not gonna call it a man purse, ‘cause it ain’t. I got less than a thousand, more than five hundred.” Hmmm. Maybe when some people smoke, they snack…maybe Snoop gets online and shops for handbags.


MTV.com is officially gone. Home Depot is having a Halfway-to-Halloween Sale. Pumpkin Pie Spice everything is here… already. They are calling it Aug-tober. The almost 90-year-old River Oaks Theater on West Gray in Houston is almost finished with renovations and ready for 365 days a year occupancy. There will be a two-theater movie theater and performing arts venue, plus lots of fun. Houston’s own Beyonce Knowles-Carter has teamed up with Moet Hennessy to launch SirDavis, a new whiskey named in honor of her paternal great-grandfather Davis Hogue. Michelle Pfeiffer will lead the next chapter of Yellowstone. New seasonal Blizzard flavors at Dairy Queen are OREO Hot Cocoa, Snickerdoodle Cookie Dough, Caramel Fudge Cheesecake, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup Pie and Choco Dipped Strawberry. Use the DQ app from Sept. 11 to Sept. 24, and your Blizzards are only 85 cents each. The CDC says COVID is at very high or very high activity levels in 44 states… last week it was just seven states. Go to: CDC.gov for a COVID Data Tracker.


My mom called me and told me how much she liked watching Snoop Dogg at the Olympics and I had to remind her that she grounded me for buying his CD once.


A couple of weeks ago I was working outside, but it started to rain so I decided to cut the cat’s nails and brush them on the back porch… and watch the rain. Two cats down and everyone was doing well until I decided that I should brush Sully’s tail. She instructed me NOT TO DO THAT. I know the rules about her tail, but I thought it was going so well, that I would soldier on and finish the brushing. She bit me, I bled, I did hydrogen peroxide, band-aided with antibiotic ointment, then apologized profusely to Sully because I knew not to bother her tail. Did I mention there was a lot of blood, and I thought she had broken a bone in my hand. My thoughts were, if a cat is capable of eating a squirrel or a mouse, why in the world would I think she couldn’t bite through my skinny, bony little hands. I still have a hole, but it’s healing and doesn’t hurt as much as it did.
When the rain stopped, I got to work to finish weeding, digging and putting down new mulch where old mulch had washed with recent storms. Before I knew it, dark was upon me, and mosquitoes were arriving in record numbers. I was working on my third bag of mulch, had cut it open with my very sharp, extra-long, thin, and did I mention sharp… cutting shears, that my sweet sister had sent me for my birthday last year. As I scooted the heavy mulch bag up the sidewalk steps, the bag caught the shears that I had left wide-open on the ground, and I pulled them straight into my left foot. Now, there happened to be way more blood this time around than with a little bitty cat bite… I shuffled into the kitchen to try and stop the bleeding. Did I mention I was wearing flip-flops, not gardening shoes like a normal person? I wrapped my foot in paper towels, held pressure for a while, then secured those paper towels on my foot and shoe with a rubber band and went back outside. Yep. A rubber band. Am I tough or what? The show must go on. I was NOT finished mulching yet. My shower, about an hour later, felt pretty dang good. I limped to CVS for a tetanus shot the next day. I guess that shot makes me eligible for ten more years of bad choices.


You think it’s bad that we are closing?!? Avon just filed for bankruptcy. They have been around since 1886. Avon’s founder David McConnell started as a door-to-door book salesman in NY, offering free perfume samples as a gift, before realizing his customers were way more interested in perfume samples than books. He offered women an opportunity to become entrepreneurs… at one time the number of representatives reached one million… and they even had Avon men. Things do change


Another opportunity to mention how much we have appreciated spending time with you…thank you for all that you’ve done for us the past 25 years.

LISA


Send comments to Lisa Baker at lisa@thesourceweekly.com

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    by on October 25, 2023 - 0 Comments

    Former US astronaut Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the moon, recently remarried for the fourth time, which also happened to be on the occasion of his 93rd birthday. This time it was to Dr. Anca Faur, his 63-year-old, long-time companion (who looks like she wants to be 27), has a PhD in chemical engineering, and is now the executive vice president of Aldrin’s company, Buzz Aldrin Ventures.  He was first married to Joan Ann Archer in 1954 until divorcing in 1974. The next year he married Beverly Van Zile; they divorced after three years. His third marriage was to Lois Driggs Cannon in 1988 on Valentine's Day, divorcing 23 years later. Looks like he hasn’t given up on ‘love’ quite yet. He has sued two of his children and his former business manager claiming they stole money from him and are slandering his legacy, and that they also undermined his "personal romantic relationships" by forbidding him from getting married. His children say he is also spending money at an alarming rate. Sounds like those children are out of luck. There is a new sheriff in town and her name is MRS. Aldrin. ☹ Notes: Aldrin is also a strong advocate for human exploration of Mars. In 2002, he escaped assault charges after punching a man who demanded he swear on a Bible that the Moon landing was not staged. Good for him. He also said, “Tang sucks. “

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    by on November 29, 2023 - 0 Comments

    Former US astronaut Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the moon, recently remarried for the fourth time, which also happened to be on the occasion of his 93rd birthday. This time it was to Dr. Anca Faur, his 63-year-old, long-time companion (who looks like she wants to be 27), has a PhD in chemical engineering, and is now the executive vice president of Aldrin’s company, Buzz Aldrin Ventures.  He was first married to Joan Ann Archer in 1954 until divorcing in 1974. The next year he married Beverly Van Zile; they divorced after three years. His third marriage was to Lois Driggs Cannon in 1988 on Valentine's Day, divorcing 23 years later. Looks like he hasn’t given up on ‘love’ quite yet. He has sued two of his children and his former business manager claiming they stole money from him and are slandering his legacy, and that they also undermined his "personal romantic relationships" by forbidding him from getting married. His children say he is also spending money at an alarming rate. Sounds like those children are out of luck. There is a new sheriff in town and her name is MRS. Aldrin. ☹ Notes: Aldrin is also a strong advocate for human exploration of Mars. In 2002, he escaped assault charges after punching a man who demanded he swear on a Bible that the Moon landing was not staged. Good for him. He also said, “Tang sucks. “

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