Crabs and Beer!

Today is the birthday, in 1892, of Janet Flanner. She was an American writer and pioneering narrative journalist who served as the Paris correspondent of The New Yorker magazine from 1925 until she retired in 1975. She wrote under the pen name “Genêt“. She was a prominent member of America’s expatriate community living in Paris before WWII. Along with her longtime partner Solita Solano, Flanner was called “a defining force in the creative expat scene in Paris”. She returned to New York during the war. Flanner split her time between there and Paris until her death in 1978.

After a couple years at the University of Chicago and a stint at the Indianapolis Star, she moved to New York and was in the circle of the Algonquin Round Table, but was not a member. She also met the couple Jane Grant and Harold Ross and Ross offered Flanner the position of French Correspondent to The New Yorker. Ross famously thought Flanner’s pen name “Genêt” was French for “Janet”. Flanner and Grant had been members of the Lucy Stone League which fought for women to preserve their maiden names after marriage, in the manner of Lucy Stone.

Flanner was a prominent member of the American expatriate community in Paris which included Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Dos Passos, E. E. Cummings, Hart Crane, Djuna Barnes, Ezra Pound, and Gertrude Stein – the world of the Lost Generation and Les Deux Magots. While in Paris she became very close friends with Gertrude Stein and her lover, Alice B. Toklas.

She played a crucial role in introducing her contemporaries to new artists in Paris, including Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Henri Matisse, André Gide, and Jean Cocteau, and the Ballets Russes dance company.

Her New Yorker work during World War II included not only her famous “Letter from Paris” columns, but also included a seminal 3-part series in 1936 profiling Hitler. Flanner covered the Nuremberg trials for The New Yorker. She covered the Suez Crisis, the Soviet invasion of Hungary, and the strife in Algeria which helped the return to power of Charles de Gaulle.

Flanner at Les Deux Magots, during the liberation of Paris, 1944, with Ernest Hemingway

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Whose stupid idea was this?????

I’m not surprised…

There’s a lesson here somewhere…

Today is the birthday, in 1949, of American singer Donald York the original vocalist for the rock and roll and doo-wop revival group Sha Na Na. After gaining initial fame for their performance at the Woodstock Festival, made possible with help from their friend Jimi Hendrix, the group hosted Sha Na Na, a syndicated variety TV series that ran from 1977 to 1981. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isvK4PzeA4c

On this day in 1989, Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee, an English computer scientist, submited his proposal to CERN for an information management system, which subsequently develops into the World Wide Web. implemented the first successful communication between a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) client and server via the Internet in mid-November. He devised and implemented the first Web browser and Web server and helped foster the Web’s subsequent development. He is the founder and emeritus director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which oversees the continued development of the Web.

In 1989, CERN was the largest Internet Node in Europe and Berners-Lee saw an opportunity to join hypertext with the Internet:

I just had to take the hypertext idea and connect it to the TCP and DNS ideas and—ta-da!—the World Wide Web.

— Tim Berners-Lee

Berners-Lee published the first website, which described the project itself, on 20 December 1990; it was available to the Internet from the CERN network. The site provided an explanation of what the World Wide Web was, and how people could use a browser and set up a web server and a website. On 6 August 1991, Berners-Lee first posted, on Usenet, a public invitation for collaboration with the WorldWideWeb project.

In a list of 80 cultural moments that shaped the world, chosen by a panel of 25 eminent scientists, academics, writers and world leaders in 2016, the invention of the World Wide Web was ranked number one, with the entry stating: “The fastest growing communications medium of all time, the Internet has changed the shape of modern life forever. We can connect with each other instantly, all over the world.”

Berners-Lee, 2005

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Useful police report…

Today is the birthday, in 1949, of American pianist Bill Payne who co-founded with Lowell George the American rock band Little Feat. Their best-known songs are ‘Dixie Chicken’ and ‘Sailin Shoes’. Payne has also worked and recorded with J. J. Cale, Doobie Brothers, Emmylou Harris, Bryan Adams, Pink Floyd, Bob Seger, Toto, Linda Ronstadt, Jackson Browne, James Taylor, Bonnie Raitt, Stevie Nicks and Robert Palmer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3z-GwdaKrn8

On this day in 1708, Queen Anne withheld royal assent from the Scottish Militia Bill – the last time a a monarch vetoed British legislation.

Anne was Queen of England, Scotland, and Ireland from 8 March 1702, and Queen of Great Britain and Ireland following the ratification of the Acts of Union 1707 merging the kingdoms of England and Scotland, until her death in 1714. Anne was born during the reign of her uncle King Charles II. Her father was Charles’s younger brother and heir presumptive, James, whose suspected Roman Catholicism was unpopular in England. On Charles’s instructions, Anne and her elder sister Mary were raised as Anglicans. Mary married her Dutch Protestant cousin, William III of Orange, in 1677, and Anne married Prince George of Denmark, a Lutheran, in 1683.

On Charles’s death in 1685, James succeeded to the throne, but three years later he was deposed in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Mary and William became joint monarchs. After Mary’s death in 1694, William reigned alone until his own death in 1702, when Anne succeeded him.

Anne was plagued by poor health throughout her life. Despite 17 pregnancies, she died without surviving issue and was the last monarch of the House of Stuart. The loss of her young son, Prince William, precipitated a potential succession crisis. Under the Act of Settlement 1701, which excluded all Catholics, Anne was succeeded by her second cousin George I of the House of Hanover.

The Scottish Militia Bill was intended to arm the Scottish militia, which had not been recreated at the Restoration. On the day the bill was meant to be signed, news came that the French were sailing toward Scotland for the planned invasion of 1708 and there was suspicion that a significant portion of the Scottish population might be disloyal. Therefore, support for a veto was strong and the Queen refused her royal assent to the bill.

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a couple of possible interpretations…

Valuable Coupon!

Can’t Touch This! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otCpCn0l4Wo

On this day in 1831, the French Foreign Legion, Légion étrangère, also known simply as la Légion, was created by King Louis Philippe. The Legion is a corps of the French Army created to allow foreign nationals into French service. It formed part of the Armée d’Afrique, French Army units associated with France’s colonial project in North Africa, until the end of the Algerian War in 1962.

Legionnaires are today renowned as highly trained soldiers whose training focuses on traditional military skills and on the Legion’s strong esprit de corps, as its men come from different countries with different cultures. Consequently, training is often described as not only physically challenging, but also very stressful psychologically. Legionnaires may apply for French citizenship after three years’ service, or immediately after being wounded in the line of duty: This latter provision is known as “Français par le sang versé” (“French by spilled blood”).

Members come from 140 countries. In the past, legionnaires were forced to enlist under a pseudonym (“declared identity”). This policy was designed to allow recruits who wanted to restart their lives to enlist. The Legion held the belief that it was fairer to make all new recruits use declared identities. French citizens can enlist under a declared, fictitious, foreign citizenship (generally, a francophone one, often that of Belgium, Canada, or Switzerland). As of 20 September 2010, new recruits may enlist under their real identities or under declared identities. Recruits who do enlist with declared identities may, after one year’s service, regularize their situations under their true identities. After serving in the Foreign Legion for three years, a legionnaire may apply for French citizenship.

As the Foreign Legion is composed of soldiers of different nationalities and backgrounds, it is necessary to develop an intense esprit de corps, which is achieved through specific traditions, the loyalty of its legionnaires, the quality of their training, and the pride of being a soldier in an elite unit. n contrast to all other French Army units, the motto embroidered on the Foreign Legion’s regimental flags is not Honneur et Patrie (Honour and Fatherland) but Honneur et Fidélité (Honor and Fidelity). Legio Patria Nostra (in French La Légion est notre Patrie, in English The Legion is our Fatherland) is the Latin motto of the Foreign Legion.

Because of its traditional slower marching pace, the Foreign Legion is always the last unit marching in any parade

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Repossessions are ruthless…

A proper Tramp Stamp…

Where to store your cat…

Bada Bing!

I got my shot for Shingles today. Just to be safe, l also got one for Vinyl Siding too!

Turns out you can just buy a birthday cake anytime and eat it yourself. Nobody checks.

Are the conservatives more afraid of the drag queens or the books they’re reading to the kids?

I have this cool phone app that shows me what I would look like as an old person. It’s called “camera.”

There is no bigger test of patience than using a remote to type your email address on a TV.

Does anyone know when W-2s for Walmart’s self checkout will be sent out?

I thought Ariana Grande was a font.

Every time I go out in public, the public is there. I can’t keep living like this!

I’m so poor I rub cologne from magazines on my shirt. When people say, “Oh, you smell good, what is that?” I say, “Page 14.”

I heard they’re building a mirror factory in my town. I could see myself working there.

So……where exactly are all these clinics that clinically approve everything?

I’m eating a second cookie because I ate the first one absentmindedly and didn’t appreciate it enough.

A man has passed out on the Ferris Wheel at the local fair. Paramedics on site say he is slowly coming around.

I will also be posting telepathically today. So if you think of something funny, that was me.

Guy in emergency room with several broken limbs. “But those pants DID make her butt look big!”

Why did they name them sea-monkeys when ‘shrimpanzees’ was sitting right there?!

Cop: Do you know why I stopped you? Me: Looking back at my trailer full of donkeys… “Because I’m hauling ass?”

Any pan can be a non-stick pan if you non-cook in it.

That look you get on your face when you say you’re bored and someone suggests some form of exercise.

The spaces between ladder rungs have increased because Americans are getting taller. Manufacturers claim it’s due to climb it change. 

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Some people are not as smart as others…

Here’s Alicia Keys… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J91ti_MpdHA

Today is the anniversary of the première performance of Giuseppe Verdi’s opera, Nabucco. It is an Italian-language opera in four acts composed in 1841 by Giuseppe Verdi. It is the opera that is considered to have permanently established Verdi’s reputation as a composer. The opera follows the plight of the Jews as they are assaulted, conquered and subsequently exiled from their homeland by the Babylonian king Nabucco (Nebuchadnezzar II). The historical events are used as background for a romantic and political plot.

the Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves (known as Va, pensiero) from the third act of the opera Nabucco was used an anthem for Italian patriots, who were seeking to unify their country and free it from foreign control in the years up to 1861 (the chorus’s theme of exiles singing about their homeland, and its lines such as O mia patria, si bella e perduta / “O my country, so lovely and so lost” were thought to have resonated with many Italians).

Verdi’s operas remain among the most popular in the repertoire today. In addition to Nabucco, Aida, Rigoletto, La Traviata, Otello and Falstaff are produced regularly around the world.

Photograph of Giuseppe Verdi, circa 1872

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Same here…

No car…no problem…

slow news day…

Verdi – Nabucco Va Pensiero – MET 2002 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GS6L_9xUT5E