A lot of interesting things this week, as well as a couple of… Well, sad ones.
- Let’s start with the passing of Jeopardy host, beloved Canadian, and all-around good guy Alex Trebek. Plenty of memorial pieces, including this one from The New Yorker.
- I didn’t mention the passing of Sean Connery last week, but in light of Trebek, it certainly came at an odd time – given the two were linked through one of the most popular Saturday Night Live sketches ever – Celebrity Jeopardy. This is the retrospective from The New York Times.
- For a little relaxation and creativity, all 403 episodes of Bob Ross’s The Joy of Painting are streaming free. Here are some of my favorite quotes from Mr. Ross:
- “Anything we don’t like, we’ll turn it into a happy little tree or something. We don’t make mistakes, we just have happy accidents.”
- “Friends are the most important commodity in the world. Even a tree needs a friend.”
- “Sometimes you learn more from your mistakes than you do from your masterpieces.”
- “There’s an artist hidden at the bottom of every single one of us.”
- An interesting interview regarding the value of clothes. I hadn’t ever thought much about it. I’m fairly easy-going in style choices, and look for inexpensive time and again (I’ve been given several bags of hand-me-down clothing from more fashionably-minded friends, and I wear those often). It also delves into usage of time, boredom, and the relationship with money/consumerism.
- New York’s Strand Bookstore – an icon amongst the city’s literati – faces uncertainty amidst the pandemic and accompanying challenges.
- And, finally, there was a determination in the counts, naming Joe Biden as President-Elect, and Kamala Harris as VP. This week had accompanying challenges as well, but less-so than last week, and hopefully more than next week. We all wait with bated breath.
***As for titling this post, when the matter of naming is seemingly so trivial, and yet so important. Perhaps I’ll never actually be satisfied with any ongoing usage of titles on this blog. Just thinking out loud here.
Michael's Musings 