Shiraz/Syrah from Barossa Valley, Australia
Purchase Price: $13.95
Vivino 90, WE 86, ElsBob 89
ABV 14.5%
Deep purple, oaky, dark berry fruits, with a hint of spice aromas, medium-full body, dry, and smooth. A good pick to serve with beef or lamb.
A very good fine wine priced 2-3 times less than similarly rated red wines but one probably shouldn’t pay more than $10.
Rateliff’s soulful story telling lyrics just get better and better with the release of his 4th studio album in June of this year by the Memphis soul machine label: Stax.
His songs take on a more personal note, encouraged by the album’s producer, Brad Cook, but manage to keep what Jim Shahen of ‘The Journal of Roots Music’ calls a ‘gritty rock ‘n’ soul’ sound that is the backbone of Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats’.
Mojo comments that the 11 album tracks are ‘Deep, rewarding songs, rich in authorly detail, which, not for the first time, position Rateliff, still only 45, as a new Springsteen.’
Source: South of Here Review by Mojo, 2024. Album Review: Nathaniel Rateliff…by Jim Shahen, 2024, Journal of Roots Music. Graphic: Album Cover STAX copyright.
Chivalry ‘framed an ideal of the heroic character, combining…strength and valor, justice, modesty, loyalty to superiors, courtesy to equals, compassion to weakness, and devotedness to [God],’ as defined by Bulfinch in his 1858 ‘The Age of Chivalry, or Legends of King Arthur’.
Chivalry in the Middle Ages was a lifestyle and a philosophy. A lifestyle that guided a knight’s actions and decisions backed-up by a philosophy that defined chivalrous principles and virtues.
Every year the Knights of the Round Table renew their oaths of chivalry as proclaimed by the King Arthur during the Christian holiday of Pentecost.
The time of Pentecost was likely chosen because it was a time of renewal and commitment for Christians.
Source: Bulfinch’s Mythology, 1991. Graphic: Knight Rescuing a Maiden, AI generated.
Up until 2012, Jonah Lehrer was a wunderkind of everything he touched; Rhodes Scholar, degree in neuroscience, contributor to The New Yorker, The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Wired, etc, and author of three books.
Then people started noticing alarming similarities in his writings. At first it was just self-plagiarism, borrowing text from his books to write newer articles. Some still argue that plagiarizing yourself is no crime but when you are getting paid for original work it probably should be, well, original.
Next up was grabbing material from press releases and pasting them into his articles without attribution. Then onto very slightly modified posts written by others without any attribution. Made up quotes followed.
After in-depth investigations into his work Jonah Lehrer was fired from The New Yorker and Wired plus two of his books were recalled.
Source: The Fall of Johah Lehrer by Jonathan Bailey, 2012, Plagiarism Today. Johnah Lehrer’s Journalistic Misdeeds at Wired.com by Charles Seife, 2012, Slate. Graphic: AI generated, 2024.
Nixon announced wage and price controls this week in 1971 to combat an inflationary problem caused by Johnson’s and Nixon’s excessive war and domestic government spending.
In a nationally televised address to the nation in August of 71, he ordered a 90-day freeze on all prices and wages. After the 90 day freeze any increases in wages or prices would have to be approved by the federal government.
By the summer of 1972 it was obvious that the controls weren’t providing any positive benefits and lots of negative ones, including empty store shelves. Treasury Secretary George Shultz in 1973 told Nixon that at least we learned ‘that wage-price controls are not the answer’ for fighting inflation.
Milton Friedman predicted the program’s ‘utter failure’ and the re-ignition of inflation in the near future. After all the controls were removed in the spring of 1974 inflation shot up to 11 percent and stayed high until Paul Volcker created two recessions in 1980 and 1981-1982 to finally end the inflationary pressures from the late 60s through the early 80s.
Theodor Reik said in 1965, ‘history may not repeat itself, it merely rhymes’. In this case it will likely repeat itself.
Source: Nixon’s Price Controls by Gene Healy, 2011, Cato.org. Graphic: Orissapost.com, 2021.
HUD estimated that there were 650,000 homeless in the U.S. as of Jan 2023. A 12% increase from 2022. By the end of 2023 homelessness has likely has hit the highest number ever recorded in the U.S.
Since the beginning of 2020 homelessness has been increasing by about 10% per year. If 2024 holds to the same increase, there will be an estimated 715,000 homeless living and sleeping in the parks, streets, and abandoned buildings of this country’s cities.
Kevin Adler suggests in his new book on homelessness that poverty is not the main reason for people living on the streets but rather it is due to the loss of family and friends willing to help. The loss of family support falls into the all too familiar buckets of substance abuse and mental health conflicts.
Source: GAO Report to Congress: Homelessness 2024. HUD-AHAR – 2023. People Become Homeless by Courtney Martin, 2024. Graphic: HUD 2023.
Tom Reagan (Byrne), indispensable man to prohibition crime boss Leo (Finney), is caught up in a no-win love affair, mounting gambling debts, and to add some juice, Irish and Italian mobs are competing for his unique talents. With everything to lose Reagan plays to keep his hat.
A suspenseful movie playing tribute to film noir/crime noir flicks of the 40s and 50s with inspiration from Dashiell Hammett’s ‘The Glass Key’ and ‘Red Harvest’. The plot is complicated that with a patty wagon full of characters it takes considerable effort, initially, to keep ‘em all straight.
This is Coens’ 3rd movie coming after ‘Blood Simple’ in 1984 and ‘Raising Arizona’ in 1987.
Genre: Crime—Drama—Film Noir–Thriller
Directed by: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
Screenplay by: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
Music by: Carter Burwell
Cast: Gabriel Byrne, Albert Finney, John Turturro
Film Locations: New Orleans
Els: 8.5/10
IMDb: 7.7/10
Rotten Tomatoes Critics: 93/100
Rotten Tomatoes Audience: 90/100
Metacritic Metascore: 66/100
Metacritic User Score: 8.4/10
Theaters: 21 September 1990
Runtime: 115 minutes
Budget: $10-14 Million
Worldwide Box Office: $5 Million
Source: IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes, Metacritic, Wikipedia. Graphic: Movie Poster by 20th Century Fox.
Zinfandel from Lodi, California, USA
90% Zinfandel, 10% Petite Sirah
Purchase Price: $7.95
Vivino 90, Wine Enthusiast 85, ElsBob 86
ABV 14.5%
Ruby red in, oak with muted fruit aromas, medium body, dry, and acidic. Typically, medium-bodied zinfandels peak around 3-5 years in the bottle and this one does not appear to be an exception. I believe it’s past its prime.
This probably was a good wine several years ago. If you have it in your inventory drink it now but only after the alcohol has been flowing freely for an hour or two.
Flash in time band 6MB’s 2nd and final album, ‘Shake it Down’ is a Texas country rock album delivering a spiced-up studio album honed in the dives and bars between the concrete of Fort Worth, the college hangouts of Tarleton State, onto the stock yard sights and smells of Abilene.
Clayton Landua, frontman for the band says in a Billboard interview, “Shake It Down” is a mixture of styles, from the Seeger / Dylan vibe of “Stand,” as well as the 70s sounds of “The Painter” and “Say It.”
The band with two well received albums under their belt, the big time seemed close by, when Landua decided to leave the group in 2014 to try something on his own. The remaining members thought about carrying on but not much of nothing went into that future.
If you give the album a listen, and you should, during the 13th track song, ‘Hey Mr. Indian Man’, Josh Serrato, lead guitarist, breaks into Deep Purple’s famous ‘Smoke on Water’ riff for reasons unknown and unstated but it did bring a smile to the lips quickly spreading over to the cheeks with a slow scratch to the head.
Source: Six Market Blvd. by Messick, Lone Star Music Mag., 2024. 6MB Takes Final Bow by Josh Harville, 2014 JTAC. 615 Spotlight by Chuck Dauphin, 2013, Billboard. Graphic Shake it Down Album Cover, Vision Entertainment copyright.
Monet loved water, the sea, lakes, rivers, mist, fog, it didn’t matter. He searched it out and painted it. Plants, people, buildings were extensions of his water.
His 1872 seascape, Impression: Sunrise, from which the style ‘Impressionism’ is derived, is a study of the morning light unsuccessfully trying to break through the mist of solitude surrounding the boaters. Water fills the painting from top to bottom.
Taillandier in his monograph, ‘Monet’ wrote, “His fascination with water was such that he painted leaves, grass, and meadows as he painted water, the brushstrokes like so many quivering waves in the air”.
Monet painted water. Houses were painted like so many waves. The sky rippled. Skin erupted with steam and stones dissolved into mist.
Source: Monet by Yvon Taillandier, 1987. Graphic: Impression: Sunrise by Monet, 1872, Public Domain.
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