[1] I’m concerned that some of us (myself included) our on the verge of overdosing from Schadenfreude with all the good news FINALLY coming out.
[2] I have a doctor’s appointment in less than two hours.
Can’t help but feel I’d be remiss if I did not memorialize the good news of the week in some manner, so I think a sampling of the headlines from major newspapers across the country would be a good way:
So what was Fox news (sic) covering instead of these major stories?
CNN: Cohen implicates Trump MNBC: Cohen implicates Trump Fox News: Is a giraffe a type of tall horse?
Today we begin on a somber note in tribute to Aretha Franklin. For now (and hopefully for the rest of my life) I can still remember her voice from back when I had hearing. And what a voice!
The internet is rightfully ablaze with tributes to Aretha, but I will only focus on two: one very unique how New Yorkers paid tribute using their subway stations, and the other is a reminder of what we had for eight years and what we sadly have to put up with now.
Compare Twitler’s totally self-absorbed and tone-deaf “tribute” to Aretha Franklin …
TWITLER:
“I want to begin today by expressing my condolences to the family of a person I knew well. She worked for me on numerous occasions…. So just want to pass on my warmest best wishes….”
Aretha helped define the American experience. In her voice, we could feel our history, all of it and in every shade—our power and our pain, our darkness and our light, our quest for redemption and our hard-won respect. May the Queen of Soul rest in eternal peace. pic.twitter.com/bfASqKlLc5
Moving on to brighter moments. Leave it to the Dutch to create a one-off promotion by the Rijksmuseum for their brand new, just opened addition Rijksmuseum Schiphol. It’s a 240-foot long (73 meters) luggage belt in the baggage claim area featuring master works of art!
“The luggage carousel gives an overview of Dutch art history, from the Middle Ages to the present with artworks from artists including Rembrandt and Vincent van Gogh.”
It’s open 24/7 – and it’s FREE! You can learn more about it here:
And how could we pass up another in an endless series of monumental goofs that proves (yet again) Fox news (sic) leads the way in misinformation and outright lying!
Ainsley Earhardt on “Fox & Friends” in rebuttal to Gov. Cuomo wanted to prove that America IS great by reminding us of how we defeated “Communist Japan”!
Ainsley Earhardt proudly remembers the time that the United States "defeated communist Japan," proving we are truly a Great country. pic.twitter.com/xFMHWtuQ8v
And although Judge Ellis has also forbidden prosecutors to even say the word “oligarch” in relation to the “financing” Manafort received from Russian billionaire oligarchs like Oleg Deripaska, it doesn’t look like Manafort’s defense has an Oleg to stand on.
In fact the only option that was left to Manafort’s legal beagles was to try and impeach Rick Gates’ credibility on the grounds that no jury could possibly trust anyone who was willing to work for a proven tax-cheating, lying crook like Manafort.
Not to be left out of the Legal Odds & Ends, Rudy Giuliani is trying to dictate the terms that Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller must follow in even questioning Twitler.
Rudy is proposing absolutely ridiculous terms like “No discussion dealing with collusion” and “No discussion dealing with obstruction of justice.”
For those of us old enough to remember Jeffrey Dahmer(he was convicted of multiple rapes ad murders of his young male victims, and freezing them for cannibalism later on) that would be like Dahmer’s lawyers telling the prosecutor: “We won’t allow any questions about the body parts in our client’s freezer.”
(Turns out Dahmer did have Ben & Jerry in his freezer. The problem was, it wasn’t ice cream.)
HOLY COW! Have you herd where even some Bovine Deputies wanted to wrangle their way into Legal Odds & Ends by corralling a suspected car thief? You might think it’s a bunch of bull – but it’s true! Have I ever steered you wrong?
I found the story udderly amoosing. It looks like there was a real beef between them and the suspect. They quickly took stock of the situation, and even though the steaks were high, they got the job done. Seems pretty clear they wanted to tan her hide!
(Have I milked this one for all it’s worth? I hope you don’t think I butchered too many of the puns. And if it’s late when you read this and it’s pasture bedtime – I wish you pleasant dreams.)
Truthfully, a belated “Happy Birthday!” because Franklin was actually “born” on July 31, 1968. And what a “birth” it was!
Undoubtedly you are probably asking yourselves, “Who is this Franklin that he’s talking about? Other than Benjamin, I don’t know any Franklins.”
But I bet dollars to donuts you do – even though Franklin was only a couple inches tall when he first came into the world fifty years ago.
As noted, the story of how Franklin came into being is one worth sharing!
During the Civil Rights struggles of the late 1960s, and only eleven days after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Harriet Glickman, a retired schoolteacher and mother of three from the Los Angeles suburbs, sat down at her typewriter to craft a letter to Charles Schulz requesting the inclusion of a Negro character in his wildly popular and famous comic strip, “Peanuts”.
But Glickman’s sentiments were not created de novo. Her upbringing was exemplary as she explained in an interview almost three years ago about what motivated her to draft her letter in the first place.
My parents… were very concerned about others, and the values that they instilled in us about caring for and appreciating everyone of all colors and backgrounds — this is what we knew when we were growing up, that you cared about other people.
And so, during the years, we were very aware of the issues of racism and civil rights in this country. And remember, when I was young, black people had to sit at the back of the bus, black people couldn’t sit in the same seats in the restaurants that you could sit… the period before I wrote the letter was the major period of civil rights activities. Every day I would see, or read, about black children trying to get into school and seeing crowds of white people standing around spitting at them or yelling at them … and the beatings and the dogs and the hosings and the courage of so many people in that time.
So it wasn’t as if, one day, I said, oh things are bad and Martin Luther King was shot and I should do something. It was the accumulation of all the years of seeing the discrimination, the segregation, the hatred and all….
Glickman was amazed when she actually got a reply from Schulz. While he told her he liked the idea, he was worried that it would appear to be patronizing.
Glickman wrote back asking if it would be alright if she shared his letter with several of her Negro friends and then have them share their thoughts about it with him. He heartily approved, and her friends were very supportive of the idea in their correspondence to Schulz.
A short while later Schulz wrote to Glickman telling her to keep an eye out on his comic strip panels during the last week in July of 1968. And so the character Franklin was “born” on July 31, 1968.
It was over recovered a beach ball, baseball and crooked sand castles that Franklin and Charlie Brown form a friendship – a first for syndicated comics!
While widely acclaimed, that didn’t mean Franklin’s introduction didn’t meet with some resistance – particularly from editors in the South. They especially pleaded with Schulz to NOT show any panels with Franklin in the same school with the other characters, because they were dead-set against integration.
It wasn’t long before Schulz soon thereafter put Franklin in the same schoolroom … seated right in front of a little white girl, Peppermint Patty!
Schulz recalled a discussion with Larry Rutman, head of the company that distributed “Peanuts” (King Features Syndicate):
“I remember telling Larry at the time about Franklin—he wanted me to change it, and we talked about it for a long while on the phone, and I finally sighed and said: ‘Well, Larry, let’s put it this way: Either you print it just the way I draw it or I quit. How’s that?’”
[Emphasis added]
In truth, it would be hard to argue against folks who have complained that Franklin is a little too one-dimensional and a little too perfect – always wise, fair and just.
And it’s true he does lack the eccentricities that all of Schulz’s other characters possess. But at the same time, I think we can agree that Franklin has gently nudged readers toward the notion that, as Martin Luther King Jr. famously said, the content of your character is more important than the color of your skin.
So “Happy 50th Birthday!” Franklin! And thanks for all you’ve done!
NOTE:
The “Peanuts” comic strip ran until Mr. Schulz’s death in 2000. It was published in more than 2,600 newspapers in 75 countries and translated to 21 languages, and it has reached more than 300 million people around the world.
BONUS FEATURE:
Interview with Ms. Glickman at the Charles M. Schulz Museum in 2014 on how she wrote to Schulz:
By unanimous acclamation we can now declare the “Mother of The Year Award” goes to … a Common Merganser Duck on Lake Bemidji in Minnesota – who takes care of SEVENTY-SIX ducklings!
Brent Cizek, a wildlife photographer, was blown away when he snapped his first photo on June 27 on Lake Bemidji in Minnesota showing a Momma taking care of 56 ducklings. It shows how a truly successful family daycare center can be run.
Here’s his story:
Then, as he motored toward the boat slip, Cizek saw something remarkable: a female Common Merganser surrounded by more than 50 little ducklings. While Cizek watched, the little mergansers formed a long, orderly line behind their mom and began swimming away. The scene was too good to pass up.
“I probably shot 50 pictures, and I was just praying that one was going to turn out sharp because the waves were so strong it was nearly impossible to even keep them in the frame,” Cizek says. To further complicate things, he had to alternate between maneuvering his little trolling motor and quickly snapping pictures. “Luckily enough, just one picture turned out.”
Cizek says he has been photographing wildlife in his spare time for about two years and only recently became interested in birds. Last year, he saw a Common Goldeneye with 20 ducklings in tow and thought that was extraordinary. He had no idea ducks could care for so many ducklings—much less 50.
Actually, she’s more likely to be “Grandmother of the Year” or even “Great-Grandmother” as this species of ducks, the Common Merganser, frequently have an older, more experienced mom take care of their duckling in what is called a crèche.
But a week or so later he went back and spotted her caring for 76 ducklings! And Cizek’s Tweet of July 16th showing a photo of the 76 has been retweeted over three-thousand times.
MAMA MERGANSER! I was able to track down the now famous Lake Bemidji Common Merganser that has an adopted brood of over 76 babies! I love the story that these photos tell.
You can see them in the above Tweet, but you have to scroll down to spot the actual photo of the 76 – maybe 77 ducklings:
Minnesota Department of Natural Resources area supervisor David Rave believes the leading duck is probably the oldest female duck on the lake. And that most of the ducks on the lake are likely related.
Rave says that crèches of 20 to 30 are not uncommon (and he’s seen 30-40), and the first photo by Cizek of a crèche of 50 was mind-blowing. But when Cizek went back a week or so later and found Super Mom increasing her crèche to 76 … well, that’s one for the record books!
The common merganser typically lays up to a dozen eggs at a time, but will often spread them out by laying them in other birds’ nests so as to increase the offsprings’ chances of survival – quite literally following the sage advice of “not putting all your eggs in one basket”.
That way if a racoon invaded her nest and ate the entire brood, their genes would still have a good chance of surviving from her eggs in other nests.
While a good number of the ducklings might be her own, they can’t all be hers. That’s because it’s physically impossible for her to incubate more than 20 eggs as a max, according to Kenn Kaufman, Field Editor for Audubon.
Truly an amazing sight! And I think it’s true – he really does love those birds!
What a disgrace in Helsinki! Someone failed to inform Twitler that “Summit” is NOT spelled “S-u-b-m-i-t”.
Finally coming to the realization of what an abject failure his traitorous performance was, Trump demands a “Do-Over” and tries to salvage at least a little bit by declaring an “Oopsie” and changing what he actually said ( and truly meant):
“I have President Putin. He just said it’s not Russia. I will say this. I don’t see any reason why it would be.”
With his bend-over-backwards-tie-me-in-linguistics-knots attempt to clarify with a “sort of double negative” – basically admitting that his own words were “fake news”:
“In a key sentence in my remarks I said the word ‘would’ instead of ‘wouldn’t.’ The sentence should have been: ‘I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t be Russia.’ Sort of a double negative. So, you can put that in, and I think that probably clarifies things pretty good by itself.”
Clarifies? Ahhh, no – not really. But Twitter elected to have fun with his would – wouldn’t flip-flop.
Clearly the most straightforward (and sadly, truest) is that Trump got mixed up about what he was supposed to say because his text was badly translated from the original Russian.
And that opened the floodgates with Kim Jong Un wanting to take advantage of that precedent
The most important thing for Twitler? He added in with his Sharpie “There was no colusion (sic)”. Of course that “stable genius” (as he refers to himself) couldn’t spell it correctly.
But most folks on Twitter had fun with seeing what kind of impact the “would-wouldn’t” switcheroo have on movies:
Apollo 13 actually went quite well:
“Houston, there’s no problem. Nothing has been better. It’s Fake News!”#TrumpMovieQuotes
Why, they even revived the much-loathed and mocked “Clippy” to try to help Twitler out with his editing – but I don’t think even Clippy can save Twitler.
Worst of all – that was just Act I. Putin is now coming to America to see what HIS new country looks like.
First, the old adages “Too cute by half” and “Be careful what you wish for …” apparently were totally foreign to felon-in-waitingPaul Manafort and his team of “legal beagles”.
For weeks they endlessly whined to U.S. District Court Judge T.S. Ellis that having Manafort jailed (as a VIP) in a facility two hours south of Washington was impeding their ability to defend their client – to the point they wanted his trial delayed.
But the wise Judge solved the problem by moving Manafort from the plush Northern Neck Regional Jail in Warsaw (Virginia – not Poland) …
To the much closer Truesdale Adult Detention Center in Alexandria
OOPS! Manafort’s “legal beagles” realized their bigly error and begged the Judge to stop the move because of concern for Manafort’s safety. But Judge Ellis would have none of it, assuring them that officials at the federal lockup in Alexandria have experience handling inmates such as “foreign and domestic terrorists, spies and traitors.”
But it truly is a step down from his other homes, like his condo that the FBI raided last August, and where he was able to stay under house arrest until he got caught tampering with witnesses.
(Judge Ellis is handling the Virginia case against Manafort, where he faces charges of bank fraud, tax evasions and failure to report foreign bank accounts. But Manafort also faces additional charges in Washington for money laundering, failing to register as a foreign agent and witness tampering.)
Poor, poor Paulie … it’s a shame you are THAT STUPID!
But on an even brighter note is the great success the folks of the UK, and their snarling baby blimp, had in making Twitler feel – in his very own words – “UNWELCOMED”!
After his fiasco performance flop at the NATO conference …
(I will say one thing for Twitler, he does “CLUELESS” even better than Dubya did. And no, that picture is NOT Photoshopped.)
He went to visit Prime Minister May in London. Here he is arriving on Air Force One
The highlight for us – and the lowlight for him – was that snarling, diapered baby blimp in bright orange with his trademark white tanning goggle marks.
So Twitler decided to hightail it out of London to the Prime Minister’s country home, Chequers. But his helicopter was forced to fly directly over a Moat Farm field in Stoke Mandeville with a 650-foot wide … hmmm, errr … greeting … in Russian that’s loosely translates as “FUCK TRUMP”!
(The word in Cyrillic script literally means “whore” – but is commonly used for the “F Word”. A marketing agency, The Tenth Man, came forward on Thursday to take credit for the prank with the help of artists from Circlemakers. They reported the circle took over two weeks to design and over 12 hours for a crew to create.)
So THIS is what being well-respected around the world looks like. Now aren’t you glad Trump was elected to make America so well-respected by our Allies? </snark>
Last Saturday the theme for the day was clearly “Families Belong Together”
Activists shout during the rally to protest the Trump administration’s immigration policies Saturday, June 30, 2018, in New York, New York. (AP Photo/Kevin Hagen)
And literally hundreds of thousands joined in over 700 rallies across America to echo that theme while protesting Trump’s inhumane mishandling of immigrants. (And just a reminder: Seeking asylum is NOT illegal!)
The crowds came from Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Houston, DC, Boston, Salt Lake City, Portland, ME – towns big, small and in-between.
I believe it would be worthwhile to enjoy a few of the tens of thousands of signs that sent a message to our representatives from the Oval Office to our City Councils. In viewing hundreds of signs it seems like there were some common themes. One of the most repeated was …
SHAME
And related to that were ones that were …
RELIGIOUS
But the ones that were the most passionate were the ones calling out Twitler …
GODWIN BE DAMNED
Which of course inspired quite a few to actually graphically demonstrate what he was doing to children …
CAGED
But to end on a lighter note, of course there were clever ones …
And my all time favorite – and I don’t think Paul Simon would mind one bit …
And of course the bottom line answer to end this travesty is …
