NOSTALGIA TUESDAY

From the New York Times this morning:

Republican political leaders and media figures have spoken so negatively about the vaccines that about 30 percent of Republican adults still have not received a shot. The vaccine gap, tragically, has resulted in a much higher Covid death rate in conservative parts of the country.

Covid will have some relevance to the campaign, because it feeds into a larger pattern. Covid is one more issue on which many voters, including swing voters, view today’s Republican Party as out of touch. Other issues on that list include abortion, health care costs, taxes on the affluent and the Jan. 6 attack on Congress, polls suggest.

The Republican Party’s radicalism has kept the party from maintaining its once large lead in the polls, despite a problematic economy and the opposition party’s usual advantage in a midterm election. The latest polls are close. Political analysts say Republicans are modestly favored to retake the House, while Democrats are modestly favored to keep Senate control.

On the sports front, 24-year old Frances Tiafoe defeated 22-time grand slam champion Rafael Nadal at the U.S. Open in over three hours--6-4, 4-6, 6-4, 6-3--to enter the quarterfinals.  So what's the big deal?  He is American, and the first to reach the quarterfinals of our open since 2006!  He is ranked #26 in the world.  Never heard of him.  But:

• Four years ago won his only tournament, the Delray Beach Open, becoming the youngest American man to win an ATP tour since Andy Roddick in 2002.
• Son of Sierra Leone immigrants.

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  His father Constant worked as a day laborer on the construction crew that built the Junior Tennis Champions Center in College Park, Maryland.  When the facility was completed, he was hired as the on-site custodian and given a spare office at the center.  Frances and his twin brother Franklin lived with their father from the age of 4 at the center for five days/week for the next 11 years.  Otherwise, stayed with their mother when she was not working night shifts as a nurse.  The twins were able to get training without the usual fees.
• He is now 6 feet 2 inches tall and can serve at over 140 MPH.
• Has been sponsored by Nike since 2016 and uses a Yonex VCORE Pro 97 racket with Polytour Pro 125 strings.
• I once played a lot of tennis--750 out of 752 days in one stretch while in high school--and, while I don't keep up with this field anymore, am still surprised that this is the first time I've heard his name.

The National Football league kicks off its regular-season schedule on Thursday night 8:20 PM EDT (2:20PM Hawaii) in Los Angeles with the Rams hosting the Buffalo Bills at SoFi Stadium on NBC.  

• The league has an 18-week, 272 -game schedule.  
• In future Thursday night games from Week 2, Amazon Prime Video (you need to be a subscriber) will be the only channel available.
• Fourteen teams will make the postseason.
• Superb Bowl LVII will occur on 12February2023 at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona.

• 
  I'm ready, for I have drafted three ESPN teams.  
• Still time for you to draft a team or two at THIS SITE.  
• It's FREE!
• Click on Join a Public League.
• If new, click on Beginner, and choose Snake draft, it's easier.
• Leave on Draft Now and click on Join a League.
• Good luck.

A Beautiful Noise is coming to Broadway on November 2 at the Broadhurst Theater.  

• Prices start at $81.50.  Will Swenson will be Neil Diamond.
• Actually opened in Boston this summer in Boston and got good reviews.

During his more than 50-year career, Diamond put out dozens of albums, 21 of which went platinum, and 38 top 40 singles with over 130 million sold, according to Universal Music Entertainment group.

• One of his songs was Beautiful Noise.
• A long time ago I went to his show in Honolulu.
• Diamond was diagnosed with Parkinson's in 2018 and is now 81 years old.

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  However, here he is a couple of months ago at Fenway Park in Boston singing Sweet Caroline.  A more traditional 8th inning break.  This all began in 1997.  As you can see, this is now a world-wide phenomenon.  If those did not bring tears to your eyes, you're not normal.

With all that nostalgia, I should have stopped this posting.  However, here are some photos people have sent me, some I had to correct.

Around 94% of countries implemented remote learning because of the COVID pandemic.   Here a Chicago photo from 1937 (the caption shown below is wrong) showing the polio outbreak keeping children at home and taught by radio.  The city closed schools for 315,000 children in grades 3-8, and 80% had access to a radio.  Sixteen teachers fielded phone calls.  In various parts of the nation in the past, scarlet fever, measles, diphtheria and influenza also closed schools.  Then came vaccines.  The Spanish Flu a century ago kept schools closed in some cities for many months.

Ringo Starr published a book in 2013 with a photo he took in 1964 of six U.S. high schoolers in a Chevy Impala.  The surviving five (there are six in the top, but one just barely) 50 years after that shot, alumni of Fair Lawn High School in New Jersey, came together to have the bottom photo taken.  Oh how we change over time.

There is this 1926 photo of a triple decker bus in Berlin that keeps returning.  Turns out that there was no such vehicle.  It was an April Fools' joke by Echo Continental, a corporate newspaper, of Hannover AG.  Something so high is unstable, and could hit trees, bridges, etc.  However, below the joke is a triple decker bus developed for a 2004 Harry Potter movie.

In 1863 1500 Confederate Virginians broke through the Union line on Cemetery Ridge, starting the intense bloody battle of Gettysburg, killing 3000 soldiers.  50 years later, the South's General Pickett survivors are on the right, with the Union Blues to the left.  The photo is colorized.

Some places just do not change.

Ever heard of CJ Walker?  First female black millionaire.  There is a Netflix mini-series about her:  Self-Made:  Inspired by the Life of Madam C.J. Walker, starring Octavia Spencer.  Next....she will be a Barbie doll.

Maybe not particularly nostalgic, but this tree is ancient, and has been said to be the oldest living thing on earth.  But the African baobabs are mysteriously dying.  A 2450 year-old Zimbabwe version named Panke, perhaps the oldest, just passed away.  With a scientific name of Adansonia digitata, it is the oldest living flowering plant, or angiosperm.

Foster Botanical Garden in Honolulu has half a dozen baobabs, but the oldest is only a little more than a hundred years.  Followed by a flower.

Even older, a 225-million-year-old petrified opal tree trunk, which can be seen in the Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona.  Many Hollywood westerns have been filmed here.

Typhoon Hinnamnor caused some damage, resulting in a few deaths in the Busan area, but nothing close to what could have happened, and is now heading for Russia.

Finally, some activity in the Atlantic. Tropical Storm Earl is currently halfway between Bermuda and the northern Caribbean islands, and is expected to soon reach Category 3 strength.  However, like previous storms this year, he will move north and east, not west.

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