What I Heard This Week! 10-29-2020
The word lunatic comes from the Roman moon goddess Luna. Ancient Greek and Roman philosophers posed the idea that water in the brain might be subject to the same kind of gravitational force that affects open bodies of water such as oceans and lakes, creating strange behavior whenever there was a full moon. You have heard the stories. Since most humans are made of mostly water, this does not make much sense, but for the sake of this column I’m going with it. There is a higher rate of crime, more babies born, mood changes and weird emergency room admissions during the time of a full moon. It affects menstrual cycles, sea turtles come ashore to lay their eggs because the high tide will take them further into the shore, and even birds communicate differently with other birds during different phases of the moon. Which leads me to this. There is a full moon on Saturday. To do something “once in a blue moon” is to do it very rarely. This moon will be the 2nd of 2 full moons this calendar month of October, which normally only happens every 2- 3 years, but will happen again August 22, 2021.
With Fall in the air, go outside and pick up an acorn. What do you see? An acorn or a tree?
Pray tell, how can we celebrate the Full Moon? Glad you asked. I say, find a copy of the book, Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak, and read about Max as he shouts, “let the wild rumpus begin.” Then dance like the ‘wild things’ dance, romp in the moonlight, hang from the trees, and act like a roomful of kindergartners on a sugar high. You will want to own a copy of this children’s book because, in my opinion, it is very much an adult classic. If you are older, like me, then perhaps you can listen to the Ella Fitzgerald version of Blue Moon, or Dancing in the Moonlight by King Harvest. How about Bad Moon Rising by Creedence Clearwater Revival, Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd., Blue Moon of Kentucky by Bill Monroe, Bark at the Moon by Ozzy Osbourne, Fly Me to the Moon by Tony Bennett, Two Sides of the Moon by Asia, or my personal favorite Moon Shaddow by Cat Stevens. I love the Andy Williams and Elton John versions of Moon River, but I also adore Audry Hepburn’s sweet version from Breakfast at Tiffany’s. If none of this sounds good, then watch the movie Moonstruck with Oscar winner Cher, or Oscar winning Paper Moon. How about the 1902 silent film A Trip to the Moon, or Reese Witherspoon in The Man in the Moon? If all else fails, either take a moon bath, open a Blue Moon Belgian White Ale garnished with an orange slice, or practice casting a spell on someone you either love or dislike, then settle back and open your heart to the magic of the moon. Sit on your back porch, relax, and let her fill you with positive energy, and you may be able to make it through the rest of 2020. We are going to need all the inner contentment we can get.
“Someone struggled for your right to vote. Use it.” Susan B. Anthony
The Paris Wife by Paula McLain is a New York Times bestseller, written about Ernest Hemingway’s first of four marriages. It is historical fiction depicting the blissful love affair between Hadley Richardson and Hemingway…that is, until he left her to marry her best friend, Pauline Pfeiffer. I just finished the book, and you should read it. (Hemingway later left the 2nd wife for journalist and writer, Martha Gellhorn, that he married. Then after having met Time magazine correspondent Mary Welsh only three times, he asked her to marry him and they were together until he committed suicide in 1961.) He was brilliant, writing the draft of The Old Man and the Sea in eight weeks, saying that it was “the best I can write ever for all of my life.” Medical records made available in 1991 confirm that Hemingway had been diagnosed with hemochromatosis in early 1961, which is the excessive accumulation of iron in tissues culminating in mental and physical deterioration. His father, sister, and brother, all committed suicide. Almost exactly 35 years after Hemingway’s death, his granddaughter Margaux Hemingway died. She was a supermodel and actress, co-starring with her sister Mariel in the 1976 movie Lipstick. Her death was later ruled a suicide, making her “the fifth person in four generations of her family to commit suicide“.
RECENT BIRTHDAYS: Actor Jonathan Lipnicki is 30. Stuart Little, and Jerry Maguire. Country singer Dwight Yoakam is 64. Singer Weird Al” Yankovic is 61. Rolling Stones bassist Bill Wyman is 84. Actor Kevin Kline is 73. Dave. Actress Marion Ross is 92. Happy Days. Actress Jaclyn Smith is 75. Charlie’s Angels.TV host Pat Sajak is 74.Wheel of Fortune. Actor-comedian John Cleese is 81. Country singer Lee Greenwood is 78. God Bless America. Singer Gary Puckett is 78. The Union Gap. This Girl is a Woman Now, Young Girl. Astronaut Mae Jemison is 64. First African American female astronaut.
Jerry Jeff Walker, country singer and songwriter who wrote the pop song Mr. Bojangles, died at 78. He was one of the greats in music. He recently donated more than 100 boxes of his music archives to Texas State University, including tapes, photographs, hand-written lyrics, and artifacts. James Redford, an activist, filmmaker, and philanthropist, died at 58. His father is actor and director Robert Redford. Spencer Davis, whose namesake was The Spencer Davis Group, died at 81. Two of their hits were Gimme Some Lovin, and I’m a Man.
The new Elton John Barbie retails for $50. She was released to mark the 45th anniversary of the singer’s record-breaking performances at Dodgers Stadium in Oct. 1975. Her multi-colored “Elton” bomber jacket has stars on the sleeves and rainbow stripes on the hem. She also has rainbow-patterned platform boots, a purple bowler hat and Elton’s signature sparkly pink sunglasses. New research shows that there is water on the moon’s surface, and ice may be hiding in the shadows, confirming a theory that it is possible, someday in our future, astronauts could live there for extended periods. Sending water through space costs thousands of dollars per gallon. Santa is skipping Macy’s for the first time in 159 years. You will just have to support the post office this year and mail a letter to Santa. Guinness is making a non-alcoholic version of its iconic stout, for a full-bodied beer without full-body effects. BallotPedia.org for those of you that still need a little help on November 3rd. Caroline Giuliani is the daughter of President Trump’s personal attorney and former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani. She is urging Americans to “end this nightmare” by voting for Democratic nominee Joe Biden. I bet Thanksgiving at their house will NOT be one tiny bit of fun this year. Especially after the new Sacha Baron Cohen movie. Giuliani says he is innocent, and after watching the scene, I think he just made a really bad decision. Hormel was having a contest with winner receiving Hormel Black Label Breathable Bacon Facemasks. If you see me on the street either eating my mask, or being followed by a bunch of dogs, you will know I won.
Each week I try to remember to pull up National Hurricane Center at the last minute to let you know what is going on. Last week, I forgot, so when I did remember…Epsilon was already a hurricane. This is only the second time the Greek alphabet has been used to name storms. The first was during the 2005 hurricane season, where the last-named storm was Zeta, a very late-developing storm that formed during late December2005, a month after the season’s official end. Zeta2020 formed and will be the fifth storm to have made landfall in Louisiana this year, the most since the state started keeping records in 1851. Hurricane season does not end until November 30th. Hmmm. Poor Louisiana.
Ruby Tuesday Restaurants filed for bankruptcy. (I can hear the Rolling Stones singing in the background.) They permanently closed 185 restaurants that had shut their doors during the pandemic. I found the story behind the song…who knows if it is the right story, but here it is. “This song isn’t as big a “mystery” as most of the Stones songs. Generally, both Richards and Jagger do not fully remember the stories behind a lot of their songs; time, drugs and life have all contributed to this. Ruby Tuesday, according to Keith Richards, it was after his (then) girlfriend, Linda Keith had left him for Jimi Hendrix. It was a bleak Tuesday, and he was feeling the loss of Linda and worried about her path… the “bleak” Tuesday was a “Ruby Tuesday” as Keith describes it.” This year, the parent company of Chuck E. Cheese, Sizzler, and California Pizza Kitchen also filed for bankruptcy, along with Pizza Hut and Golden Corral.
Sweat from people infected with COVID-19 has a distinct smell. We can’t smell it, but dogs can. In the past, dogs have shown an ability to pick up on airborne chemicals, detecting when people are infected with malaria, infectious bacteria, and even certain types of cancer. It only takes about a week to train most of the dogs. More later. To me, this is amazing information.
Last night after I finished unloading my car from a Costco trip, I made a mental note to make sure I drove my jeep around the neighborhood after I finished putting up groceries, to keep the battery alive since I don’t drive the vehicle often. After I closed the tailgate of my car, I got into the Jeep, but didn’t walk around to the front of the vehicle. This information will make sense in a moment. I drove around the neighborhood for a while, then headed back to the house where I saw my son parked out front, so I asked him if he wanted to go make a round with me. He climbed in and off we went. We were gone for about 10 minutes then headed back. After I parked, I walked around and saw that I still had a little rug on the bumper, that I had rinsed off with the water hose and hung there to dry. But wait. I had also rinsed out a litter box the day before and hung it on the other front bumper to dry. So where was the litter box? We hopped back in the car and started looking for the silly thing. We retraced our route, then gave up and headed back home. There it was, in the alley, about three houses away from our driveway. SOO, I had been driving around for about 30 minutes with a litter box and a rug attached to the front of my vehicle. I worry about me.
As people socially distance from friends and family, they look for ways to connect during this crazy time. No one could have told us back in February, that we would still be in the clutches of this crazy virus, but it looks more and more like we will be spending the holidays with just our immediate families. So, send a card. Send five cards. The number of people buying holiday cards this year is expected to increase by at least 7% compared with last year, and about a third of consumers plan to send more holiday cards this year than they did last year. FYI. Maybe I will finish my Christmas letter this year and put it in the envelopes with the cards that I had made in 2011. Hmmm. Maybe.
Paul McCartney has a new album coming out on December 11. You can pre-order McCartney III. McCartney III is a stripped back, self-produced, solo work, marking the opening of a new decade in the tradition of Paul’s 1970 debut solo album McCartney, and 1980’s second one-Paul-band effort McCartney II. He is amazing.
In Florida, a man stole a bulldozer, then made his way down the street running over every Joe Biden sign in sight. He had already removed two signs from one house, so he went back to run over the same homeowner’s fence with the bulldozer. In Michigan, a city employee was ordered to remove Trump yard signs that were located too close to a street. Ouch. Someone had taped razor blades to the bottom of the sign and the poor man ended up with 13 stitches in his hand. Why would someone booby trap a yard sign? In Massachusetts, a farmer made a giant Biden-Harris sign out of hay bales, then someone set the whole installation on fire. In Virginia, a bomb squad was called out to check on suspicious devices attached to political campaign signs supporting President Donald Trump. However, the devices were not bombs, just small alarms. The Fire Marshall said, “It appears that the purpose of the devices was to thwart the theft or removal of the sign.” Yard signs are an essential part of any election What has happened to honor, respect, and manners in our United States of America? Happy Halloween, Happy Election Day, don’t forget to Fall Back to Daylight Saving Time and please make time to celebrate once in a Blue Moon. Vote. Thanks for reading us. We need you. All small businesses need you.
Lisa
