#62: WUNDERBAR

    From Worldometer:

        DAY  USA  WORLD   Brazil    India    South Africa

June     9     1093    4732        1185       246          82

July    22     1205    7128        1293      1120         572

Aug    12     1504     6556       1242       835         130

Sept     3      1094    5886        830     1083         174
            9      1208    6222        1136      1168          82

Oct      8        957    6420         730       967        160

          12       316     3757           203       710          83

          13       843     5006           354      723       165

          14       970     6075           716       694       123

          19       442     4392           321       594         21

          20       952     6169           662       714       164

          21     1225     6849            571       703         85

          22       973     6470           503       683       102

          23       903     6526          566       656        48 

          24       784     5599          398       575         53

          25       442     4629          237       463         24

          26       529     5095          288       505        40

          27     1039      7023          530       519         45

          28     1030      7116          487       509         58

Summary:  The World and USA are on our third wave.  Will this one be the worst?

The New York Times indicated the following this morning:

Among the most successful Canadian regions have been the four small provinces along the Atlantic Ocean, all of which have almost extinguished the virus. They have done so by largely closing their borders — a strategy that has also worked in several other countries, including Australia, Ghana, Taiwan and Vietnam, despite skepticism from some political liberals around the world. Hawaii just re-opened up to tourism, and the great majority will come from the USA.  I worry about a next wave for the state.

My song #62 will come from:

• Hello Young Lovers:  The King and I
• Wunderbar:  Kiss Me Kate

The King and I by Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein opened on Broadway in 1951 with Gertrude Lawrence and Yul Brynner, who made his show biz debut.  There are several worthy songs, especially Getting to Know You.  The film came in 1956 with Deborah Kerr (sung by Marni Nixon) and,  again, Yul Brynner.

If I did not watch Classic Arts Showcase this morning, Wunderbar would not have been #62.  Here were Alfred Drake and Patricia Morison, and I was enchanted.  Kiss Me Kate, (Rotten Tomatoes:  91/67) with lyrics by Cole Porter, opened on Broadway in 1949 and won the Tony for Best Musical.  The show was inspired by Alfed Lunt and Lyn Fontanne in their 1935 production of Shrew.  In 1953 Kiss Me Kate became a film, with Kathryn Grayson and Howard Keel.

We need some humor, so here is a clip from The Late Show four years ago where then President Barack Obama urged people to vote.  This time he is doing it more personally, as you might have seen this week on television.

Awa Odori is a traditional dance most popularly performed on the island of Shikoku in Japan during the Obon Season.  You can't beat this performance for cuteness, but you'll need to wait for 1 minute and 40 seconds or so to enjoy the effort of this rather young performer.  

Kochi on that island has another festival called the Yosakoi Matsuri.  I've been to this event a couple of times because close by is a deep ocean laboratory just like at the Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii on the Big Island.  Living there is Mac Takahashi, former University of Tokyo engineering professor, who wrote a definitive text on ocean thermal energy conversion, and is in the process of translating my SIMPLE SOLUTIONS for Planet Earth.  Here we are with now, probably, the eminent active scholar of OTEC,  Yasuyuki Ikegami (at the top) of Saga University.

Hurricane Zeta was a mile per hour short of being a Category 3 when it struck Louisiana, causing three deaths and leaving a couple of million powerless.  The next to come will be Eta, which has a 60% chance of attaining hurricane strength, making it the 29th of the year for the Gulf/Atlantic, breaking the all-time record:

A similar storm Typhoon Molave struck Vietnam, its fourth in a month, killing more than 25.

-