I decided to skip summarizing our city stops on our 60-day journey.  You can read those postings at  Seattle ,  Chihuly Museum ,  Amsterdam  and  Zurich. As would be expected,  Time' s  2024 Person of the Year will be Donald Trump .   Is it  because he was the most fabulous individual of the year? Nope.  To quote. A person, group, idea, or object that "for better or for worse ... has done the most to influence the events of the year". [ 2 ] Time   points out that controversial figures such as   Adolf Hitler (1938);   Joseph Stalin   (1939 and 1942);   Nikita Khrushchev   (1957); and   Ayatollah Khomeini (1979) have also been granted the title for their impact on events. [ 16 ] Here, read the  Time  2January1939  article about Adolf Hitler .  Turns out that the just-elected president of the USA is now ALWAYS the Person of the Year. Other noteworthy selections. The first...

Sunday is my spiritual day, and I many times post on religion.  Life and Death...God...our ultimate future.    Don McLean was recently interviewed,   and while I have written about him on numerous occasions, for his   American Pie   is about the death of Buddy Holly ( 22 ), Richie Valens ( 17 ) and the Big Bopper ( 28 ), this article evoked sufficient emotions as to inspire me to do this one more time. I was not aware that McLean had a premonition when he was 15 that his father was going to die.  A few days later, showing no particular symptoms, he dropped dead right in front of him.  His father was his hero. Now 75, he talked further of his 1971  American Pie  he wrote at the age of 24.  Said he cried for two years and blamed himself for his father's death.  Thus the song of the '60's from that plane crash, the day the music died.  His original handwritten lyrics sold in 2015 for $1.2 million.  A broadway show is pla...

If you search for any list of the greatest humans of all-time, you will find religious people tend to dominate, and they're all male.   Here is one with Jesus Christ at the top.  Next are scientists/technologists, with world leaders also prominent.  In this list of 100 there are only two females, Queen Isabela at #65 and  Queen Elizabeth I ( not II ) as 94, among 98 men.  A case can be made that it's harder to gain fame these days: Five years ago, I wrote a tongue firmly in cheek posting on   ELON MUSK vs PAT TAKAHASHI .  A few friends thought it was hilarious.  On this Sabbath, I toyed with doing a similar analysis involving Jesus Christ.  Then I thought, nah, it would probably not be taken in good humor by some.  So what about a famous artist-technologist like Leonardo da Vinci? Leo has it all over me in the art department, for he painted the Mona Lisa ( worth $850 million ) and the Last Supper ( only around $100 million )....