Beauty Abounds

Tucson Weather Today

____________________

177 pounds

While walking West on the sidewalk alongside Speedway Boulevard I encountered a still young but nearing middle-age blond lady with an extremely attractive face, trim athlete's body, and a long, free-flowing ponytail. She was someone I had said "Hi" to several times in passing, a seemingly happy, smiling woman who was usually breezing along at a brisk clip, evidently running  for her health.

But this time she was walking slowly, and appeared to be limping a bit. Being the enquiring (nosy) fellow that I am, I stopped and asked if she was all right. She said she was and that she had just fallen a moment ago and had bruised her knee and hit her chin on the concrete. She told me thanks for asking but she couldn't spare any of her time for self-pity because she was training for an upcoming race.

I wished  her all the best in that upcoming race, and we went our separate ways, each at our self-appointed pace.


Farther along to the West I spotted a flowering cactus pair that begged for me to photograph them.

So I did.

Scene In The 8,000 Block Of Speedway Boulevard

Tucson, Arizona   March 2014

_____

We had some excitement here at Toscana Cove Apartments; we had a fire that did quite a bit of damage to building 10, the building right across from where I live. The fire broke out in a single apartment but (according to what the manager told me) eighteen units were rendered temporarily unlivable (smoke damage, etc.) -- the residents were temporarily moved to other units.

Some of the fire-damaged apartments

Here is some more information on and photos of the fire.

Fire Department

If I get any more information I will be sure to reveal it in a future entry.

_____

Did You Know . . .?

Government vehicles in Cuba are legally required to pick up any hitchhikers.

_____

HISTORICAL EVENT

On this day in 1945, the commander of the German Home Army, Gen. Friedrich Fromm, was shot by a firing squad for his part in the July plot to assassinate the Fuhrer. Many high-ranking German officials had made up their minds that Hitler must die. He was leading Germany in a suicidal war on two fronts, and they believed that assassination was the only way to stop him.

Fromm's last-ditch effort to distance himself from the plot failed. Fromm was arrested. In February 1945, and he was tried before the People's Court and denigrated for his cowardice in refusing to stand up to the plotters. But he was spared the worst punishment afforded convicted conspirators -- strangulation on a meat hook. He was shot by a firing squad on March 19.

_____

WORD FOR TODAY

beauty [byoo-tee]
noun
something that is beautiful in nature or in some natural or artificial environment.

Beauty is a characteristic of a person, animal, place, object, or idea that provides a perceptual experience of pleasure or satisfaction. Beauty is studied as part of aesthetics, sociology, social psychology, and culture. An "ideal beauty" is an entity which is admired, or possesses features widely attributed to beauty in a particular culture, for perfection.
--Wikipedia

_____

CELEBRITY BIRTHDAYS

Walter Bruce Willis

(born March 19, 1955)

Bruce Willis is an American actor, producer, and singer. His career began on the Off-Broadway stage and then in television in the 1980s, most notably as David Addison in Moonlighting (1985-89) and has continued both in television and film since, including comedic, dramatic, and action roles. Probably best known for his role of John McClane in the Die Hard series. He has also appeared in over sixty films, including the box office hits, Pulp Fiction (1994), 12 Monkeys (1995), The Fifth Element (1997), Armageddon (1998), The Sixth Sense (1999), Unbreakable (2000), and Sin City (2005).

Glenn Close

(born March 19, 1947)

Glenn Close is an American film, television and stage actress. Close began her professional stage career in 1974 in Love for Love, and was in The World According to Garp (1982), which she followed up with supporting roles in The Big Chill (1983), and The Natural (1984). She would later receive nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actress in Fatal Attraction (1987), Dangerous Liaisons (1988), and Albert Nobbs (2011). Since 2005, she has been known for her television roles in The Shield and as Patty Hewes in the FX TV series Damages.

Phyllis Newman

(born March 19, 1933)

Phyllis Newman is an American actress and singer. She guest starred in an episode of Beverly Garland's groundbreaking crime drama, Decoy. She was then cast in 1960 as Doris Hudson in the CBS summer replacement series Diagnosis: Unknown. Newman became a major television celebrity of the 1960s and 1970s, a frequent panelist on the top-rated network game shows What's My Line?, Match Game, and To Tell the Truth and a perennial guest of Johnny Carson's on NBC's The Tonight Show.

Newman created the role of Rene Buchanan on the ABC soap opera One Life to Live and was a regular on the primetime series 100 Centre Street and the NBC satirical series That Was The Week That Was. Other television credits include The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Burke's Law, ABC Stage 67, thirtysomething, Murder, She Wrote, The Wild Wild West, and Coming of Age. On screen, she appeared in Bye Bye Braverman, The Beautician and the Beast, A Price Above Rubies, Mannequin (1987), and The Human Stain.

Ursula Andress

(born March 19, 1936)

Ursula Andress is a Swiss-American actress and sex symbol of the 1960s. She is known for her role as Bond girl Honey Rider in the first James Bond film, Dr. No (1962), for which she won a Golden Globe. She later starred as Vesper Lynd in the Bond-parody Casino Royale (1967).

__________

Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears.
--Edgar Allan Poe

NASA TV

This Is Who I Am

   

To Shamelessly Lie

    

Tucson Weather Today

 

____________________

Yesterday morning on the History Channel (H2) I viewed a compilation of home movies made in Nazi Germany before and during WWII. The first part was a two-hour episode titled Third Reich - The Rise. This was followed immediately by part 2,  another two hours titled Third Reich - The Fall.

The main theme running through the entire four hours was, to me, that horrendous damage can be inflicted on the people of the world by the arrogant misuse of power by a single person, when backed by unscrupulous people who enable him.

"By the skillful and sustained use of propaganda, one can make a people see even heaven as hell or an extremely wretched life as paradise."
--Adolf Hitler

Make the lie big, make it simple,

keep saying it, and eventually

they will believe it.
--Adolf Hitler

And the simple moral of the above is:
"Beware of leaders who lie."

_____

Did you know that . . . ?

The first toilet ever seen on television was on "Leave It To Beaver".

_____

HISTORICAL EVENT

On this day in 1944 Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt was reelected president of the United States for a record third time, handily defeating his Republican challenger, Thomas Dewey, the governor of New York, and becoming the first and only president in history to win a fourth term in office.

Three months after his inauguration, while resting at his retreat at Warm Springs, Georgia, Roosevelt died of a massive cerebral hemorrhage at the age of 63. Following a solemn parade of his coffin through the streets of the nation's capital, his body was buried in a family plot in Hyde Park, New York.

_____

WORD FOR TODAY

prevaricate
verb
To stray from or evade the truth; equivocate.
synonyms
fabricate, falsify, misrepresent, misspeak

_____

CELEBRITY BIRTHDAYS

 

William Franklin "Billy" Graham, Jr.
(born November 7, 1918)

Billy Graham is an American Christian evangelist, ordained as a Southern Baptist minister, who rose to celebrity status in 1949 reaching a core constituency of white, middle-class, moderately conservative Protestants. He held large indoor and outdoor rallies; sermons were broadcast on radio and television, some still being re-broadcast today.

Marie Curie
(Nov 7, 1867 – July 4, 1934)

Marie Curie was a Polish and naturalized-French physicist and chemist, famous for her pioneering research on radioactivity. She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the only woman to win in two fields, and the only person to win in multiple sciences. She was also the first female professor at the University of Paris, and in 1995 became the first woman to be entombed on her own merits in the Panthéon in Paris.

Archie Campbell
(Nov 7, 1914 – Aug 29, 1987)

Archie Campbell was an American writer and star of Hee Haw, a popular long-running country-flavored network television variety show. He was also a recording artist with several hits on the RCA label in the 1960s.

Dana Michelle Plato
(Nov 7, 1964 - May 8, 1999)

Dana Plato was an American actress notable for playing the role of Kimberly Drummond on the U.S. television sitcom Diff'rent Strokes. After leaving the cast of Diff'rent Strokes, Plato attempted to establish herself as a successful actress, with mixed success: she worked sporadically in made-for-TV movies and in independent films, and also did voice-over work.

At age 34, after years of struggling with poverty and substance abuse, Plato took a lethal overdose of the painkiller Lortab and the muscle-relaxant Soma.

__________

Success is the sole earthly judge of right and wrong.
--Adolf Hitler

NASA TV

This Is Who I Am

    

Motorcycles, Etc.

     

Tucson Weather Today


___________________________

Since I have no interest in riding motorcycles, I am not conversant with the Arizona laws regarding riding them, such as the wearing of helmets and  other such safety apparel. But as I was walking toward the Fry's Market yesterday I observed a motorcycle that turned  just a few feet in front of me into the  market's entrance road. It was being piloted by a beefy young woman dressed in shorts, a t-shirt, and flip-flops, with no helmet, goggles, or anything like that.

True, she handled the bike with an appearance of professional skill, but I couldn't help wondering if the motor vehicle laws in Arizona wee actually as lax as all that or if perhaps she simply did not pay attention to laws.

I do not intend to look up the laws, though,because I really don't care all that much.


I eat a lot of fish. And I am pretty sure it is good for me. I like it, so I eat it. Strangely enough, one of the more popular kinds of fish seems to be Talapia. But when I first tasted it I found that I did not care much for its fatty flavor. It reminded me of the taste of carp, which I ate when I was just a kid because it was so easy to catch in the river near my home. But it was my least favorite. Talapia was better than the oil soaked carp, but not by a whole lot.

Imagine my surprise when I read an article in Science Daily that began: "Farm-raised tilapia, one of the most highly consumed fish in America, has very low levels of beneficial omega-3 fatty acids and, perhaps worse, very high levels of omega-6 fatty acids, according to new research from Wake Forest University School of Medicine."

The researchers say the combination could be a potentially dangerous food source for some patients with heart disease, arthritis, asthma and other allergic and auto-immune diseases that are particularly vulnerable to an "exaggerated inflammatory response." Inflammation is known to cause damage to blood vessels, the heart, lung and joint tissues, skin, and the digestive tract.

More about Talapia

_____


On this day In New York City, George Washington, the great military leader of the American Revolution, was inaugurated as the first president of the United States.

More about the inauguration


And on April 30 in 1803, representatives of the United States and Napoleonic France conclude negotiations for the Louisiana Purchase, a massive land sale that doubles the size of the young American republic.


Also, on this day, April 30 in 1945, holed up in a bunker under his headquarters in Berlin, Adolf Hitler committed suicide by swallowing a cyanide capsule and shooting himself in the head. Soon after, Germany unconditionally surrendered to the Allied forces, ending Hitler's dreams of a "1,000-year" Reich.

Details and video

_____


WORD FOR TODAY

grandiose
adjective
-  Impressive or magnificent in appearance or style, esp. pretentiously so.
-  Excessively grand or ambitious.
synonyms
grand - magnificent - stately - pompous

_____


CELEBRITY BIRTHDAYS


Willie Hugh Nelson
(born April 30, 1933)

Willie Nelson is an American country music singer-songwriter, as well as an author, poet, actor, and activist. The critical success of the album Shotgun Willie (1973), combined with the critical and commercial success of Red Headed Stranger (1975) and Stardust (1978), made Nelson one of the most recognized artists in country music.

Nelson wrote his first song at age seven and joined his first band at ten. During high school, he toured locally with the Bohemian Polka as their lead singer and guitar player. After graduating from high school, in 1950, he joined the Air Force but was later discharged due to back problems. After his return, Nelson attended Baylor University for two years but dropped out because he was succeeding in music.

During this time, he worked as a disc jockey in Texas radio stations and a singer in honky tonks. Nelson moved to Vancouver, Washington, where he wrote "Family Bible" and recorded the song "Lumberjack" in 1956. In 1960, he signed a publishing contract with Pamper Music which allowed him to join Ray Price's band as a bassist. During that time, he wrote songs that would become country standards, including "Funny How Time Slips Away", "Hello Walls", "Pretty Paper", and "Crazy". In 1962, he recorded his first album, And Then I Wrote. Due to this success, Nelson signed in 1964 with RCA Victor and joined the Grand Ole Opry the following year. After mid-chart hits in the late 1960s and the early 1970s, Nelson retired in 1972 and moved to Austin, Texas. The rise of the popularity of hippie music in Austin motivated Nelson to return from retirement, performing frequently at the Armadillo World Headquarters.

In 1973, after signing with Atlantic Records, Nelson turned to outlaw country, including albums such as Shotgun Willie and Phases and Stages. In 1975, he switched to Columbia Records, where he recorded the critically acclaimed album, Red Headed Stranger. The same year, he recorded another outlaw country album, Wanted! The Outlaws, along with Waylon Jennings, Jessi Colter, and Tompall Glaser.

During the mid-1980s, while creating hit albums like Honeysuckle Rose and recording hit songs like "On the Road Again", "To All the Girls I've Loved Before", and "Pancho & Lefty", he joined the country supergroup The Highwaymen, along with fellow singers Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, and Kris Kristofferson. In 1990 Nelson's assets were seized by the Internal Revenue Service, which claimed that he owed US $32,000,000. It was later discovered that his accountants, Price Waterhouse, did not pay Nelson's taxes for years. The difficulty of paying his outstanding debt was aggravated by weak investments he had made during the 1980s. In 1991, Nelson released The IRS Tapes: Who'll Buy My Memories?; by 1993, the profits of the double album, destined to the IRS, and the auction of Nelson's assets cleared his debt.

During the 1990s and 2000s, Nelson continued touring extensively, and released albums every year. Reviews ranged from positive to mixed. He explored genres such as reggae, blues, jazz, and folk. Nelson made his first movie appearance in the 1979 film The Electric Horseman, followed by other appearances in movies and on television.

Kirsten Caroline Dunst
(born April 30, 1982)

Kirsten Dunst is an American actress, singer and model. She made her film debut in Oedipus Wrecks, a short film directed by Woody Allen for the anthology New York Stories (1989). At the age of 12, Dunst gained widespread recognition playing the role of vampire Claudia in Interview with the Vampire (1994), a performance for which she was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress. She appeared in Little Women the same year and in Jumanji the following year to further acclaim. After supporting roles in the television series ER (1996) and films such as Wag the Dog (1997), Small Soldiers (1998) and The Virgin Suicides (1999), Dunst transitioned into romantic comedies and comedy dramas, starring in Drop Dead Gorgeous (1999), Bring It On (2000), Get Over It and Crazy/Beautiful (both 2001).

Dunst achieved international fame as a result of her portrayal of Mary Jane Watson in the Spider-Man trilogy (2002–07). Since then her films have included the romantic comedy Wimbledon (2004), the romantic science fiction Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) and Cameron Crowe's tragicomedy Elizabethtown (2005). She played the title role in Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette (2006) and starred in the comedy How to Lose Friends & Alienate People (2008). She won the Best Actress Award at the Cannes Film Festival and the Saturn Award for Best Actress for her performance in Lars von Trier's Melancholia (2011).

John Mark "Johnny" Galecki 

(born April 30, 1975)

Johnny Galecki is an American actor. He is best known for his roles as David Healy in the ABC sitcom Roseanne, Rusty Griswold in National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, and Leonard Hofstadter in the CBS sitcom The Big Bang Theory.

Kunal Nayyar
(born April 30, 1981)

Kunal Nayyar is a British Indian actor best known for his role as Rajesh Koothrappali on the CBS sitcom The Big Bang Theory and Gupta in Ice Age: Continental Drift.


__________

The ode lives upon the ideal, the epic upon the grandiose, the drama upon the real.
--Victor Hugo

There Is No Easy Way To The Stars From The Earth

     

Tucson Weather Today

_________________

On my daily two-mile fitness walk yesterday morning I took some pictures of Monday night's snow accumulation on the higher Catalina mountains located just a few miles North of where I live. The first is with my camera's Zoom set at Normal and the second one is set at the Full 4X Optical Zoom.

Zoom setting Normal

Setting Full 4X Optical Zoom

To see those two pictures full size, click the link is below:

LINK

_____

Earth From Space

Detailed satellite images reveal the web of connections that sustain life on Earth. Airing February 13, 2013 at 9 pm on PBS.

"Earth From Space" is a groundbreaking two-hour special that reveals a spectacular new space-based vision of our planet. Produced in extensive consultation with NASA scientists, NOVA takes data from earth-observing satellites and transforms it into dazzling visual sequences, each one exposing the intricate and surprising web of forces that sustains life on earth. Viewers witness how dust blown from the Sahara fertilizes the Amazon; how a vast submarine "waterfall" off Antarctica helps drive ocean currents around the world; and how the sun's heating up of the southern Atlantic gives birth to a colossally powerful hurricane. From the microscopic world of water molecules vaporizing over the ocean to the magnetic field that is bigger than Earth itself, the show reveals the astonishing beauty and complexity of our dynamic planet.

Preview of video

_____

HISTORICAL CLIP

On this day in 1933, President Paul von Hindenburg named Adolf Hitler, leader or fuhrer of the National Socialist German Workers Party (or Nazi Party), as chancellor of Germany.

Hitler's emergence as chancellor on January 30, 1933, marked a crucial turning point for Germany and, ultimately, for the world. His plan, embraced by much of the German population, was to do away with politics and make Germany a powerful, unified one-party state. He began immediately, ordering a rapid expansion of the state police, the Gestapo, and putting Hermann Goering in charge of a new security force, composed entirely of Nazis and dedicated to stamping out whatever opposition to his party might arise. From that moment on, Nazi Germany was off and running, and there was little Hindenburg or von Papen—or anyone—could do to stop it.

_____

WORD FOR TODAY

Geosynchronous [jee-oh-SIN-kruhn-uhs]
Adjective
of or having an orbit with a fixed period of 24 hours.

Geosynchronous satellites have the advantage of remaining permanently in the same area of the sky, as viewed from a particular location on Earth, and so permanently within view of a given ground station.

Geostationary satellites have the special property of remaining permanently fixed in exactly the same position in the sky, meaning that ground-based antennas do not need to track them but can remain fixed in one direction. Such satellites are often used for communication purposes.

_____


BORN ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY


Gene Hackman

Born Jan 30, 1930
Age:  82 years old

Eugene Allen "Gene" Hackman is a retired American actor and novelist.

Nominated for five Academy Awards, winning two, Hackman has also won three Golden Globes and two BAFTAs in a career that spanned five decades. He first came to fame in 1967 with his performance as Buck Barrow in Bonnie and Clyde. His major subsequent films include The French Connection (1971), in which he played Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle; The Poseidon Adventure (1972); The Conversation (1974); Superman (1978), in which he played arch-villain Lex Luthor; Hoosiers (1986); Mississippi Burning (1987); Unforgiven (1992); The Firm (1993); Crimson Tide (1995); Get Shorty (1995); The Birdcage (1996); Enemy of the State (1998); and The Royal Tenenbaums (2001).

Dick Martin

Born Jan. 30, 1922
Died May 24, 2008

Thomas Richard "Dick" Martin was an American comedian and director, best known for his role as the co-host of the sketch comedy program Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In from 1968 to 1973.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Born Jan 30, 1882
Died Apr 12, 1945

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, also known by his initials, FDR, was the 32nd President of the United States (1933–1945) and a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century, leading the United States during a time of worldwide economic depression and total war. A dominant leader of the Democratic Party and the only American president elected to more than two terms, he built a New Deal Coalition that realigned American politics after 1932, as his domestic policies defined American liberalism for the middle third of the 20th century.

Dick Cheney

Born Jan. 30, 1941
Age:   71 years old

Richard Bruce "Dick" Cheney is an American politician and businessman who was the 46th Vice President of the United States from 2001 to 2009, under President George W. Bush.

__________
"Non est ad astra mollis e terris via."
--Seneca
(see Title at top for translation)
 

To Heck With Titles

I managed to retain a few sentences from the mixed bag of pseudo-sensible nonsense that clicked and clacked from my keyboard at various intervals yesterday. Just exactly how long they will remain intact in my 'current' file is questionable, but my avowed intention is to keep (and not delete) the entire contents of this file until selected items can be incorporated into what--for lack of a better name--I have been calling my novel.

Here is one of those sentences:

Of course one man can make a difference; Adolph Hitler made a difference.

Here is another:

Sometimes as a last resort you just have to split yourself into two distinct entities and become both Strong Guy and Weak Guy; Strong Guy constantly reassures Weak Guy that Strong Guy will always watch out for, care for, and sustain Weak Guy.

. . .

Last night on the Writer's Almanac website I read a poem that I really liked, titled:
two nights before my 72nd birthday
by Charles Bukowski

It's the last link on the above marked site's list of his poems.

Maybe the reason that I liked it is because next year my own 72nd birthday will occur.

Maybe.

Another poem on that list -- a place in Philly -- might be of interest to at least one of my readers.

Or not.


Charles Bukowski reportedly said (or wrote). "The nine-to-five is one of the greatest atrocities sprung upon mankind. You give your life away to a function that doesn't interest you. This situation so repelled me that I was driven to drink, starvation, and mad females, simply as an alternative."

Imagine that.

. . .

The lyrics of an old song titled Don't Fence Me In have been bouncing in and out of my consciousness for the last couple of weeks. If my memory is correct, this song was the very first one I ever heard, from the very first record, played on the first record player my parents ever owned, back in the early 1940s. Here are those maddeningly-repeating lyrics:

“Let me be by myself in the evenin’ breeze
And listen to the murmur of the cottonwood trees
Send me off forever but I ask you please
Don’t fence me in."

--Cole Porter

Click HERE to hear Bing Crosby and The Andrews Sisters sing the complete song.

Or, if you prefer, Willy Nelson sings it HERE.

And Ella Fitzgerald sings it HERE.

Additionally, Louis Armstrong and his All-Stars perform it HERE.

I heartily recommend that you listen to all of these, especially those of you who are under 21 years old and not yet overly cynical, and also those older than 50. who have probably progressed beyond the bonds of pompous cynicism.

. . .

You have a great day now... ya' hear?

From Simplicity to Complexity and Back

While sorting through an old cardboard accordion file containing a mix of hoarded trash and treasure I found a yellowed and tattered copy of The Pueblo Chieftain (Pueblo Colorado) dated May 1, 1939 -- published only eighteen days before the date of my birth. On the front page, below the fold, I read:

So much for the opinion of a Chicago politician.

An ad in the same newspaper

How unbelievable is that? Huh?

I read in The Writer's Almnac that Amy Tan began her career by writing business manuals and speeches for executives. She felt pressured to write under an American-sounding pseudonym, so she chose May Brown -- she rearranged Amy to get May, and Brown is a synonym of Tan.

I found that seemingly innocuous little factoid to be of monumental interest. (Which probably reveals more about me than I intended)

At Language Log I read: John D. Muccigrosso wrote to point out something that's obvious in retrospect, namely that all those pages that say "This page intentionally left blank" are thereby not, in fact, left blank.

I found that to be amusing enough to read on, and did so for more more than an hour. Language Log's revelations fascinate me to no end, much more I'm sure than is probably healthy for me.

Speaking of amusing subjects, they literally abound on the Internet (or 'the web', or the 'blogosphere', or whatever)

For example:

There is a cute little strip published Monday, February 15, 2010 in Sheldon Comicsthat I enjoyed. Check it out. In case you missed that link, the actual URL is:

http://www.sheldoncomics.com/archive/100215.html

Strange how a phrase will sometimes announce itself within even a restless roving mind and mysteriously lodge itself therein. Such as:

. . . a hunger for sophistication . . .

The above is just a note for me to remember that I liked the blog in which I found the little sticky-mote phrase: http://betweenfactandfiction.blogspot.com/

I have recently been spending a lot of time reading and little time writing. And today's skeletal entry illustrates that fact, doesn't it?

Oh well . . .