No Mayhem

Happy Saturday Morning – Yes siree, this morning some of our nearby areas are supposedly experiencing this fall’s first frost. We’re fine. Having said that, it might be just me but this morning’s hot coffee tastes exceptionally good.

With that, I do believe that Marcia and I warrant a bowl of hot oatmeal for breakfast.

Yesterday was Friday the Thirteenth. Did you know that any month that begins on a Sunday will have a Friday the Thirteenth? See, this wee bit of knowledge makes reading this week’s Ramblings completely worthwhile.

As a Friday the thirteenth gift it only seems proper that since Microsoft’s Outlook product suffered an enormous service outage that Microsoft give all their employees yesterday off. If they didn’t, they should have.

Life with Ai – in our parts the Fall colors are quickly disappearing and people throughout the neighborhood are busily at work bagging leaves. Luckily, we, living in a condo have that whole business under complete control – as the landscaping truck rolls up – right on time.

I thought that the following piece dealing with Fall colors and falling leaves describes beautifully what life will be like as Ai integrates more and more into our daily life. Enjoy!

Corner of Chaos & Mayhem – This from me sitting up in the Corner’s crow’s nest. The corner of C&M is usually mentioned by me after some strange happening. This week we’re getting ready for something better. In a couple of days, on Monday, the corner will have a celebratory crowd as the city revises our side street to be recognized as “Bettye T Oldham Way”. This for a lady who lived a “Life of Courage, Culture, Service, and Extraordinary Legacy.”

Aside from educational citations Bettye Oldham (1934-2026) served on the Boards of our Symphony and Ballet and was heavily involved with Cincinnati’s Art Museum.

What made her a standout is that she helped bring the Amistad Research Center to Cincinnati. Bettye was also a founding supporter of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture and was named as a Woman of the Year in 1978 and received a Key to the City.

The fact that Bettye, who lived here in North Avondale for more than 70-years, was the first African American to purchase a home on E Mitchell Ave. has in no small part led to her being honored by the street naming.

DOGE – From the “Free Speech Zone” of EmpowerU I spent an evening listening to a discussion with a Senior Advisor at DOGE, Tyler Hassen. If you remember, we, via our media were quickly informed that the members of the DOGE team were just a belligerent bunch of young ‘frats’.

Wrong!

Tyler has first-hand experience includes late-night meetings in the West Wing to high-stakes confrontations with senators — along with the California water crisis that set off a media firestorm and an $830 million contract request for a supposed customer service survey off shore.

Tyler Hassen Quotation: the way we’re treating our nation’s National Debt seems like “we’re playing in the sand on the beach, oblivious about the tsunami that’s heading for the shore.”

One of Tyler’s conclusions is that we should not just “drain the swamp” — we should also “flood the swamp”
Quoting Tyler: “Yes, ‘flood the Swamp’ with energetic talent, including engineers, entrepreneurs, lawyers, and business leaders. He stresses that our national debt that is still growing dramatically does not care about partisan politics, and we need to be doing more together as Americans to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse so that our government uses our hard-earned taxpayer dollars more effectively. If we do not, I’m concerned about what $100 trillion in national debt will do to our country in 20 years”

Wow, that was an amazingly insightful evening.

NFL in Madrid Spain – What the better part of the citizenry of the ‘Nati saw last Sunday morning was something for the record books. Probably the most definitive game ever by the Cincinnati Bengals. What we were treated to by our quarterback, Joe Burrow, was as good as it gets (just named NFL Player of the Week); it was a classic!

But that wasn’t all of it. The stadium, built for the Madrid soccer team, Real Madrid FC, known as the Santiago Bernabéu Stadium is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. The real grass grid-iron/pitch is kept, grown, and maintained, underground in massive trays six levels below the playing field and brought up via an elevator system.

This means that any change, from soccer to football, from concert to tennis, from convention show space to tennis or basketball, the facility can see a complete changeover in about six hours. Pretty stunning stuff.

The YouTube below is an animated behind the scenes look at how the whole system works

This week’s Interlude – This is a fun one. The writer of the song is Canadian from one side of the nation. This week’s singer made that song a huge hit, is also Canadian, but from the other side of the nation. And no, these two never sang today’s musical ‘interlude’ as a duet. Both won multiple JUNO awards (Canada’s Music Awards). Today’s singer’s version is regarded as the “definitive” and ultimate version of the piece.

Your job; guess who sang this version, and from which side of Canada this singer came, all based on a mere minute of music. Good luck, I know you’ll get it right; no cheating on the answer.

Enjoy!

Life is AMAZING!

Dirk

BONUS POINTS:

The individuals named below were African-Americans living between the early slave days and emancipation through Reconstruction and the Jim Crow era and so forth. Staying away from anything these people may have experienced, I have a question; I am just asking you to point to the correct name.
Here is the question – which one of these individuals’ native tongue was Dutch?

1. Harriet Tubman
2. Sojourner Truth
3. Benjamin Banneker
4. Zipporah Potter Atkins
5. John Punch
6. Bettye T Oldham
7. John Berry Meachum
8. Frederick Douglass
9. Booker T. Washington
10. Rosa Parks

Last week’s Bonus Points answer – #7
Answer, this week’s Interlude: k.d.lang “Hallelujah” Recollection (Disc 1), born in Alberta