Taking Rumors into the DDR

‘I bought this awesome record in Budapest when I was 18 in 1978 during my first trip abroad from East Germany to Hungary. I thought I couldn’t believe my eyes when I found my absolute favourite record at this Hungarian record store, because it was really not available in my country. I scraped together my last Forints and bought the record. But I didn’t know how to carry my treasure on my East German 150ccmMotorBike. I kept it warm and safe in one of my saddlebags and hoped it wouldn’t break or wouldn’t be confiscated by Czech or East German customs. But though I crashed the bike twice a little on this 1000km tour home, my record remained unharmed. Today my favourite record has a place of honor in my record collection… When I open my record box it’s just in front and number one to see. Sweet memories ! Thank You Fleetwood Mac !’

YouTube post @Tommy-uh6ki, Tommy, April, 2024 below a bootleg post of Fleetwood Mac’s Rumors.

ds=dQ/T and You!

‘Eminent scientists will discuss the survival of democracy in a technological age in a program appropriately, if cryptically, entitled ‘ds=dQ/T, and You!’ on the Columbia Broadcasting System, a week from tomorrow.
The hour-long live symposium will be the first gathering in the week-long off-screen Centennial Convocation of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which has a more sedate title: ‘International Conference on Scientific Engineering Education.’
A usually well-informed source disclosed that the show’s title referred to the second law of thermodynamics, but he was effectively interrupted before he could elaborate on it.
Participants in the telecast will include Jerome B. Wiesner, chief scientific adviser to President Kennedy and director of the M.I.T. Research Laboratory of Electronics; Raymond Aron, French journalist and member of the University of Paris faculty; Sir Eric Ashbi, botanist and master of Clare College, Cambridge; John E. Burchard, dean of M.I.T’s School of the Social Sciences and the Humanities; Dr. Isidor I. Rabi, nuclear physicist of Columbia University, and Jerold R. Zacharias, Professor of Physics at M.I.T. and head of the Physical Sciences Study Committee.’

The program  ds=dQ/T, and You! is available on YouTube.

Richard F. Shepard, The New York Times, Saturday March 26, 1961.

The Whyte House Fish

My essay about the journey of a clown triggerfish to brief worldwide attention was published by Litro. The photograph above is of a clown triggerfish, one of over 40 species of fish belonging to the family of Balistidae. The essay can be found here: https://www.litromagazine.com/usa/2024/04/the-whyte-house-fish/

Photograph by: Amada 44.

The World of Models, 1978

It is a Tuesday morning and the reception room is full. One of the interviewers has called to say she is sick and unable to talk to prospective models. So Eileen Ford–founder of the Ford modeling agency and doyenne of the New York modeling world–says she will do some of the interviewing herself.
A tall, pale girl with fuzzy hair follows Mrs. Ford into her office. The girl says that she has just started college.
‘But if I could get into modeling I would drop out of school,’ she offers eagerly.
‘Oh no, you wouldn’t,’ Mrs. Ford shoots back. ‘You need your education. Let me see your legs.’
The girl rolls up her corduroy pants. She is wearing heavy pink socks and sandals.
‘You have skinny ankles, but heavy legs,’ Mrs. Ford says, shaking her head. ‘You’re pretty enough though. God knows, I could probably do it. But…’
She looks pensively at the girl’s legs…
‘No,’ she says. ‘I don’t think so.’

Deirdre Carmody, ‘The World of Models: Chaos with Glamor,’ The New York Times, B1, December 7, 1978.

Can a Chapter be 1500 Words?

Google.com response to the question ‘Can a chapter be 1500 words?’ April 15, 2024. 

Parasailing Incident in Nuevo Vallarta

Real Housewives of Orange County veteran Vicki Gunvalson joined the cast of Season 17 on a trip to Tulum, Mexico, demonstrating with this story why she featured in 15 seasons:

‘Okay, just let me tell you what happened in Mexico. In February, a lady was out in front of my condo, she parasailed. The storm was coming in, she was out there on the string. The next thing you know, the string broke, and she went flying for a very long time. She went to Nuevo Vallarta, and she landed on top of a building and they could not get her down.’

Photograph: Jean-Philippe Boulet.

The American Fair, Osaka, March 1950

Visitors examine a replica of Mount Rushmore at the American Fair in Osaka, Japan in March of 1950.

Photo by Takamasa Inamura.

Helen Gurley Brown’s Morning After Tips

Helen Gurley Brown’s Having It All- Love-Success-Sex-Money Even If You’re Starting with Nothing (1982) is quite the advice book. The creator/editor of Cosmopolitan magazine advises her fellow ‘mouseburgers’ on crash diets (‘This is one of my favorite crashes–to be followed for two days, preferably Saturday and Sunday for a loss of two pounds. Breakfast: One egg cooked without butter, one glass of white wine. Lunch, two eggs without butter, two glasses of white wine. Dinner: medium steak, all fat trimmed, broiled, and finish the bottle of wine. You’ll need one bottle of white wine per person per day’) Places to Make Love (‘Your office, his office, tourist section of an uncrowded airplane en route to Europe late at night with lights off, also the john of a 747. Cars are marvelous.’) and instructs women to give overnight callers a parting gift in number eleven of her thirteen point guide ‘On How to Be A Delight the Morning After, When He Stays Over:’ 

’11. Before he leaves, you may want to consider giving him a present…. not something that seems to come from your handy present file, stocked for just such occasions (even if it is!), but a spontaneous gift you want him to have because you’re so happy and feeling such friendship for him. Suggestions: one of your own silk handkerchiefs (‘I think this would look super in that coat pocket’), a special book by (Rupert Broooke in a sweet, mock-leather edition or Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s sonnets), some small objet d’art from your apartment–a small brass lion (because he’s a lion), a papier-mâché knight on horseback because the knight reminds you of him.’

Helen Gurley Brown, Having it All -Love-Success-Sex-Money-Even If You’re Starting With Nothing, Simon & Schuster, Linden Press, 1982.

Trump International Golf Club Championship Trophy, 2024

‘It is my great honor to be at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach tonight, AWARDS NIGHT, to receive THE CLUB CHAMPIONSHIP TROPHY & THE SENIOR CLUB CHAMPIONSHIP TROPHY. I WON BOTH! A large and golfing talented membership, a GREAT and difficult course, made the play very exciting. The qualifying and match play was amazing. A large and distinguished group will be there tonight. Very exciting, thank you!!!’
Donald J. Trump, (at)realdonaldtrump post on Truth Social, March 24, 2024, 5:28 PM.
Photograph: Shealah Craighead, Official White House Photograph of President Donald J. Trump watching as Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe makes a putt during their golf game Sunday, May 26, 2019, at the Mobara Country Club in Chiba, Japan.

How to Pronounce ‘Streisand’

One of the greatest (if not the greatest) entertainers of the 20th and 21st centuries has published one of the greatest autobiographies of all time (she does for parentheses what David Foster Wallace did for footnotes). In this passage, Streisand breaks down how to pronounce her name:

”I sang it on The Ed Sullivan Show on December 16,  and Ed Sullivan couldn’t pronounce my name either. During rehearsals, I kept hearing him say, ‘Here’s a young Columbia recording star, a very great talent… Barbra Streis-land.’ It was driving me crazy, and I wanted to makes sure he didn’t get it wrong on the broadcast. So just before I went on, I whispered to him one last time from behind the curtain, ‘STREI-SAND! STREI-SAND! Like sand on the beach,’ and he started to laugh right in the middle of the introduction….. ‘She’s breaking me up over here’…. but at least he got my name right, for once.

Even now, after six decades in show business, people are still mispronouncing my name.

Does anybody say Oprah WINE-fry? No. Judy Gar-LAND. No.

Someone recently showed me that when you ask your iPhone a question about me, even Siri says my name wrong.

So I called Tim Cook at Apple. And was told they’re going to fix it. And they did.”

My Name is Barbra, Barbra Streisand, Penguin Random House, 2023.