CURRENT EVENTS

¿Qué Pasa? or What’s Happening?

Picture taken of Gun Map at Art Prize in Grand Rapids, MI a few years ago.

Waco, Texas

Twenty people were killed and dozens more injured on Saturday morning in a massacre at an El Paso, Texas, Walmart that was packed with back-to-school shoppers, making it one of the deadliest mass shootings in U.S. history, officials said. (Source: ABC News)

Dayton, Ohio

BOOK OF THE WEEK

Anger

By Thich Nhat Hanh

I read this book back in 2008 and although I am a fan of self-help books and even wrote one myself. I’m sorry to say that like all the many diet books, nothing can help you until you are ready to help yourself. Still I think such books are  motivators for those who really do want to change.

It was under the bodhi tree in India twenty-five centuries ago that Buddha achieved the insight that three states of mind were the source of all our unhappiness: wrong knowing, obsessive desire, and anger.

All are difficult, but in one instant of anger—one of the most powerful emotions—lives can be ruined, and health and spiritual development can be destroyed.

With exquisite simplicity, Buddhist monk and Vietnam refugee Thich Nhat Hanh gives tools and advice for transforming relationships, focusing energy, and rejuvenating those parts of ourselves that have been laid waste by anger. His extraordinary wisdom can transform your life and the lives of the people you love, and in the words of Thich Nhat Hanh, can give each reader the power to “change everything.” (Source: Goodreads)

MOVIE OF THE WEEK

Medici The Magnificent

Netflix Season 2

If you have been following this blog, you know that I watched Season 1 of the Medici, so it is no surprised that I have just finished watching Season 2. Season 3 of the Medici has already been filmed and will be released on Netflix in early 2020.

I

MUSIC OF THE WEEK

I came across this video and liked it. I hope you do too.

Km Music’s Brimful of Asha (Norman Cook Remix)

By Cornershop

“Brimful of Asha” is a 1997 single by British alternative rock band Cornershop. The recording originally reached number 60 on the UK Singles Chart in 1997. After a remixed version by Norman Cook became a radio and critical success, the song was re-released and reached number one on the UK chart in February 1998 and number 16 on the US Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart. The lyrics are a tribute to Asha Bhosle. (Wikipedia)

ART OF THE WEEK

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

Here is another play that I saw at the LookingGlass Theater on Michigan Ave. while I was recently in Chicago. I have no idea how many plays I have seen in my life since I’ve been a season ticket holder for several decades at various theaters. However, this play was certainly memorable. If you are in Chicago, I urge you to see it.

  EXTRAORDINARY PERSON OF THE WEEK

Mary Shelley

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (30 August 1797 – 1 February 1851) was an English novelist who wrote the Gothic novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818). Her father was the political philosopher William Godwin, and her mother was the philosopher and feminist Mary Wollstonecraft.

After Wollstonecraft’s death less than a month after her daughter Mary was born, Mary was raised by Godwin, who was able to provide his daughter with a rich, if informal, education, encouraging her to adhere to his own anarchist political theories. When Mary was four, her father married a neighbor, with whom, as her stepmother, Mary came to have a troubled relationship.

In 1814, Mary began a romance with one of her father’s political followers, Percy Bysshe Shelley, who was already married. Together with Mary’s stepsister Claire Clairmont, Mary and Shelley left for France and travelled through Europe. Upon their return to England, Mary was pregnant with Percy’s child. Over the next two years, she and Percy faced ostracism, constant debt, and the death of their prematurely born daughter. They married in late 1816, after the suicide of Percy Shelley’s first wife, Harriet.

In 1816, the couple famously spent a summer with Lord Byron, John William Polidori, and Claire Clairmont near Geneva, Switzerland, where Mary conceived the idea for her novel Frankenstein.

The Shelleys left Britain in 1818 for Italy, where their second and third children died before Mary Shelley gave birth to her last and only surviving child, Percy Florence Shelley. In 1822, her husband drowned when his sailing boat sank during a storm near Viareggio. A year later, Mary Shelley returned to England and from then on devoted herself to the upbringing of her son and a career as a professional author. The last decade of her life was dogged by illness, most likely caused by the brain tumor which killed her at age 53. (Source: Wikipedia)

THIS WEEK’S JOKE

PHYSICAL TRAITS

Here is some advice for us older guys.

CHARACTER TRAITS

SOCIAL TRAITS 

LEARNING TRAITS

MISCELLANEOUS

LAST WEEK’S POLLS