Stuff

We've always assumed that our eldest granddaughter Shannon was the family's drama queen. Most of the time she kids the role which makes it funny. We hadn't counted on her five year old sister Maggie upstaging her. They stayed with us and Saturday morning Carol introduced Maggie and her seven year old sister Reagan to Go Fish. My God, those silent screen ladies had nothing on Maggie when it came to dramatically demonstrating her various reactions.

When Maggie was doing all right she laughed and beamed but when she wasn't doing all right she'd slap both hands over her face or throw her arms up in the air or hang her head and shake it. The fact that neither of them quite grasped the game didn't matter. For a time Maggie wanted to see if Reagan had any "one" cards. We had to remind her that cards started at two. And neither of them got the idea about the face cards. Kings were K and Jacks J etc. At the end when Reagan won Maggie looked at me and said "This is the worst day of my life!" She had the grace to laugh with the rest of us. All we can figure out is that while all the other kindergartners are sleeping on their rugs Maggie is watching soap operas somewhere.

----------Dave Zeltserman's Pariah has made the Washington Post's Best Books of 2009 list. He made the list last year too.

----------Bob Randisi has a mighty fine new story on Beat To A Pulp.

----------I watched a two hour History Channel documentary on the Protestant Reformation. Fascinating. The most interesting part concerned the split that came a century later between Protestants ministers on the subject of slavery. Some ministers owned slaves and were in the trade. Others despised it. But what interested me most was the discussion with Bible experts. Nowhere in the Bible is slavery condemned. On the contrary most references advocate slavery. Even Christ with the parable of Ham seems to encourage it. One more reason not to take the Bible seriously.

---------Singer/musician John Pizzarelli and his singer/musician wife Jessia Mulaskey have a great jazz radio show called Radio DeLuxe. Yesterday John talked about a recent event honoring a famous jazz musician. Enormous stars of several generations were there that night. Pizzarelli and a handful of other singers took the stage and offered songs. Pizarelli said that every single one of them (himself included) blew the lyrics and that a few just sort of wandered around inside the music, including Tony Bennett. That would've been a hoot--of a kind.