Rob Leonard was an undergraduate at Columbia University in 1968 when he and his brother George transformed the school’s a-cappella group by having them dress and style their hair like 1950s punks from Brooklyn. They sang doo-wop hits from that early rock ‘n’ roll era. They added instruments and became a nationwide success as Sha Na Na. (The name is from the The Silhouettes’ hit song, “Get A Job.”) The high point for Leonard came when Jimi Hendrix asked the band to open for him at Woodstock. Rob Leonard sang the lead on “Teen Angel” prior to Hendrix electrifying the world with his “Star Spangled Banner.”
Why Libraries Smell Funny
Even in our high-tech Internet age, libraries are still operating. Maybe not as many hours per week as a couple decades ago, maybe not as meeting places for teenagers on school nights, but they still serve a function beyond providing rest rooms for homeless people.
Just for fun, librarians responded to a survey asking what unusual things have they found inside library books. It is probably no surprise that people apparently eat while reading. Some edible surprises found inside library books:
- Bologna
- Pop Tart
- Bologna
- Uncooked bacon
- A taco
- French fries
- Bologna
- Marijuana leaf
- Kraft Singles cheese slice
- Pickle slices
For more, including non-food items, click here.
Truth Becomes Fiction Becomes Truth
In the movie O Brother, Where Art Thou?, the Coen Brothers retold – sort of – Homer’s Odyssey, but relocated to depression-era Mississippi. (It also generated interest in so-called “Americana” or “Roots” music,” thanks to the best-selling soundtrack put together by T-Bone Burnett.) George Clooney played Ulysses Everett McGill, a chain-gang escapee and con man, trying to get back to his estranged wife Penny, portrayed by Holly Hunter, and their seven daughters. He needs to prove he’s “bona fide,” so they will take him back.
You’re probably asking what this has to do with Donald Trump.
Organic Agriculture Report
California recently joined Oregon, Washington, Colorado and other states by making legal the sale and use of marijuana for no purported medical reasons. Whether this will eliminate the surreptitious growers illegally using private and public land and who poison the ground and water with chemicals and trash and divert water from streams in the midst of serious drought… well, we’ll see.
The End of Hawaiian Sugar
Tourists visiting Maui can no longer ooh and aah at the spectacular flames – and choking smoke – from burning sugar cane after the harvest. The last shipment of sugar from Hawaii was recently unloaded at the C & H (California & Hawaiian) plant in the tiny town of Crockett, northeast of San Francisco. After 145 years – one year less than Ringling Brothers Circus – the sugar industry is no more in Hawaii. Government subsidies and cheap labor have made sugar from Florida the winner in the marketplace.
The Notorious Pink Lady of Malibu Canyon
Fed up with the graffiti despoiling the area around the Malibu Canyon tunnel, Lynne Westmore Bloom decided to do something about it. During the night she suspended herself with ropes down the rocks above the tunnel’s entrance. She went to work to chipping away at the defacement. Finally, after several months of nocturnal labor removing graffiti and clearing out scraggly brush, in one night, October 1966, using ordinary house paint, she created her gift to Los Angeles commuters: a sixty-foot-tall naked lady.