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Today is the birthday, in 1941, of Otis Redding., influential singer in pop music. He died in a plane crash in 1967 at the age of 26. Shortly before his death he recorded this song which went on to become the first posthumous number one song on both the Billboard Hot 100 and the R&B charts.
Proofreading is for the weak…
Bada Bing!
Do you suppose the run on Ivermectin has been caused by Republicans who have finally decided to get serious about global worming?
In retrospect, hiding all the microchips in Horse Dewormer was a stroke of genius.
The spouse and I took up woodworking.A friend said he didn’t know we were carpenters.I said, “We’ve only just begun”.
When I was in school, I had a second-hand calculator that had no multiplication button.I tell you, times were hard back then.
Do you remember, before the internet, that it was thought that the cause of collective stupidity was the lack of access to information?Well, it wasn’t that!
Due to the internet, stupidity has just gone public.
When people want to be stupid they always found a way to be stupid, Internet or not.
How many terrorists are there in Afghanistan now? We don’t know because we can’t count them. There’s a tally ban.
I’m not sure how many cookies it takes to be happy but so far it’s not 27.
The Roomba vacuum cleaner just beat me to a piece of popcorn I dropped on the floor, This is how the war against the machines begins.
A new scientific study claims that fertility is hereditary. If your parents didn’t have any children, chances are you won’t either.
I went to an antique auction and people started bidding on me.
A newly married man asked his wife, “Would you have married me if my father hadn’t left me a fortune?”“Honey,” his wife replied, “I’d have married you, no matter who left you a fortune.”
I came home tonight to find out someone had broken into my home.Seems the only things that were taken were light bulbs. I was delighted.
Today is the birthday, in 1932 in Winchester, Virginia, of Virginia Patterson Hensley, also known as ‘Ginny’. She was one of the most influential vocalists of the 20th century and one of the first country music artists to successfully cross over into pop music under her stage name – Patsy Cline.
I recently finished reading Cathedral by Ben Hopkins. It’s not something I would ordinarily read, but it came highly recommended and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The hardcopy version is some 600 pages and it looks a bit like some saga but the writing is bright and the many interlocking stories are interesting and include some insightful commentary on modern issues.
The book revolves around the building of a cathedral in the mythical town of Hageburg in Alsace. The book is set in the ‘high middle ages’ with the action beginning in the 13th century. The focus is on the mercantile aspects of the town and people and highlights the emergence of the guilds as a counterweight to the hereditary aristocracy.
Hopkins’ father was an economist and there’s no lack of focus on money and how such a giant undertaking as a cathedral might be paid for. Hopkins is also a film maker and has a good eye for scenes with tension and some surprises.
There are plenty of villains in this parade of skirmishes and subterfuges, and few who might pass as heroes. Among the latter are a stonemason who must hide his most intimate feelings, a Jewish entrepreneur with complicated father issues and a nobleman whose designs for the cathedral’s spectacular rose window somehow survive his own lost dreams. And although she’s too conniving to be a conventional heroine, the sharp-tongued peasant girl who grows up to command her own fortune just might turn out to be the winner in Hagenburg’s high-stakes historical lottery.
I enjoyed the book and I recommend it if you have some time on your hands. It’s also a book you can put down and pick up again, so don’t think you have to read the whole thing all at once. Give it a try, though. You might like it.
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