June 1 Reads

 I think it is long past time to invoke the 25th amendment.

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Some Friday Reads

 It was always a LIE that Biden was and is in mental "decline."

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Obituary:  Actress Loretta Swit, 87, best remembered for her role as "Major Houlihan" in the longrunning 1970s-1980s sitcom M.A.S.H., has died, reportedly of natural causes.    She died at her home in NYC.

Snip:

Sally Kellerman played Houlihan in the movie version and Swit took it over for TV, eventually deepening and creating her into a much fuller character. Her sexuality was played down and she wasn’t even called “Hot Lips” in the later years.

The growing awareness of feminism in the ’70s spurred Houlihan’s transformation from caricature to real person, but a lot of the change was due to Swit’s influence on the scriptwriters.

“Around the second or third year I decided to try to play her as a real person, in an intelligent fashion, even if it meant hurting the jokes,” Swit told Suzy Kalter, author of “The Complete Book of ‘M.A.S.H.’”

“To oversimplify it, I took each traumatic change that happened in her life and kept it. I didn’t go into the next episode as if it were a different character in a different play. She was a character in constant flux; she never stopped developing.”

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Swit took the sexism that had been in the movie version of the character.

Wednesday Reads

 Obit:  The last surviving grandchild of President John Tyler, with Tyler having been born in the 1700s and who was president nearly two centuries ago, has died.  He was 96 and had dementia.

Snip:

One hundred eighty years after his grandfather served in the White House, Harrison died of dementia in a Virginia nursing home, according to The Richmond Times-Dispatch. He died five years after his last remaining sibling, Lyon Gardiner Tyler Jr., who died in September 2020 at age 95. 

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Tuesday Night at the Obituary Page

 Singer and musician Rick Derringer, 77, most famous for being the lead singer for the 1960s group The McCoys and had a major hit with the classic "Hang On, Sloopy, has died.  He died yesterday, but no cause of death was given.

His real name was Richard Dean Zehringer.

He was in his teens when he got started in the business, so it is kind of a shock he was as young as he was when he died.  "Hang On Sloopy" was a big hit for his band in 1965.   

Snip:

As a teen, he formed the McCoys with his brother, Randy, and found fame singing “Hang On Sloopy,” a No. 26 hit about lovers from different socioeconomic circumstances. Derringer enjoyed his first solo hit with “Rock and Roll, Hoochie Koo,” which was used in the fourth season of “Stranger Things.”

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South African actor Presley Chweneyagae, 40, best known for his performance in the 2006 film, Tsotsi, reportedly died.  So far there were no details as to the cause of death.

Snip:

Chweneyagae was also a gifted writer and director, co-authoring the internationally acclaimed stage play “Relativity” with Paul Grootboom.

The South African government paid tribute to Chweneyagae, lauding his outstanding contribution to the film, television and theatre fraternity.

“The nation mourns the loss of a gifted storyteller whose talent lit up our screens and hearts,” the government said in a post on X. “Your legacy will live on through the powerful stories you told.”

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Some Monday Reads

 Peter Thiel is one of the most evil people in the country.  He has no business even living here if he doesn't even believe in our system of government or not believing women should have the right to vote.

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Obituary:  Former NY representative Charles Rangel, 94,  has died.  He served in the US House for 46 years, starting in 1971.  He had been chair of the Ways and Means Committee.

Snip:

CCNY said Rangel's greatest legislative accomplishments included: championing the national Empowerment Zone program, Affordable Care Act, Low Income Housing Tax Credit, American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), Work Opportunity Tax Credit, Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI), Africa Growth and Opportunity Act, and the 'Rangel Amendment' which sounded the death knell of Apartheid in South Africa.

Even after retiring in 2017, Rangel remained in the political spotlight. He stayed busy with the City College and launched the Charles B. Rangel Infrastructure Workforce Initiative to create jobs, particularly in the Bronx.

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The View from Interstate 5

 I took these pictures of the iconic Mount Shasta today:

A Few Reads for Sunday

 A small Idaho town gets inundated with religious crackpots of the Doug Wilson ilk.

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Obituary:  Journalist, author, and political activist, Susan Brownmiller, 90, one of the original second wave feminists, died yesterday after being ill.  This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of her famous work, Against Our Will.   It was considered a landmark book for it tackled the issue of rape.  The book became a bestseller.

Snip:

In her 1999 memoir "In Our Time," Brownmiller likened the writing of "Against Our Will" to "shooting an arrow into a bulls-eye in very slow motion." Brownmiller started the book in the early 1970s after hearing stories from friends that made her shriek “with dismay.” It was chosen as a main selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club and considered newsworthy enough for Brownmiller to be interviewed on the "Today" show by Barbara Walters. In 1976, Time magazine placed her picture on its cover, along with Billie Jean King, Betty Ford and nine others as "Women of the Year."

Brownmiller's book inspired survivors to tell their stories, women to organize rape crisis centers and helped lead to the passage of marital rape laws. It was also received with fear, confusion and anger. Brownmiller remembered a newspaper reporter shouting at her, "You have no right to disturb my mind like this!"

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A Few Reads for Saturday

 A young woman who thought she had food poisoning found out what she had was way more serious.

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Thursday Reads

 An even more dangerous crackpot in Idaho is now trying to exercise clout in D.C.

He is a "disciple" of the infamous nutjob R.J. Rushdoony, the man who came up with the notion of "Christian reconstructionism."

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