About a week ago, Joared of Along the Way posted REDHEAD AGING NATURALLY UP DATE . For her information, I sent her this selfie (below).
[The above photo shows Joared the color of this redhead's hair at age 81.]
[For comparison, the next photo is at age 41.]
In July of 1960, shortly after moving to Derby (for the first time!), I purchased a 33 1/3-rpm recording made by Yma Sumac - photo of the jacket, below.
At the time, Yma had a cult following among us under-30s in the USA. Below is the blurb from the back of the record jacket.
The "video", below, is a remastered version of the album - audio, only.
Below is a posting that I originally posted 11/7/2008 5:00am.
Losses to the world of music and books
There have been three deaths in the last several days that sadden those who love books and music: Yma Sumac, Tony Hillerman, and Michael Crichton have left us.
From the Los Angeles Times:
Yma Sumac, 'Peruvian songbird' with multi-octave range, dies at 86
Bursting onto the American music scene after signing with Capitol Records in 1950, the raven-haired Sumac was known as the "Nightingale of the Andes," the "Peruvian Songbird" and a "singing marvel" with a 4 1/2-octave (she said five-octave) voice.The singer with a persona matching her exotic voice became an international sensation in the 1950s.Yma Sumac, the Peruvian-born singer whose spectacular multi-octave vocal range and exotic persona made her an international sensation in the 1950s, has died. She was 86.
From the Associated Press:
Acclaimed author Tony Hillerman dies at 83
PHOENIX (AP) — Tony Hillerman, author of the acclaimed Navajo Tribal Police mystery novels and creator of two of the unlikeliest of literary heroes — Navajo police officers Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee — died Sunday of pulmonary failure. He was 83.
From Remembering.ca:
Author Michael Crichton dies in L.A.
Paula Bustamente, AFP
Published: Wednesday, November 05LOS ANGELES - Michael Crichton, author of more than a dozen best-selling science fiction adventures including "Jurassic Park" and "The Andromeda Strain," died of cancer in Los Angeles, aged 66, his family said Wednesday.
"Michael Crichton died unexpectedly in Los Angeles Tuesday, November 4, 2008 after a courageous and private battle against cancer," said a statement posted on the author's website.
...
"The Andromeda Strain," which catapulted him to Hollywood fame after it was published in 1969, told the story of US scientists battling an alien virus that lands in New Mexico from outer space and drives humans to bizarre and grisly deaths.
From the Improbable Research website:
January 11th, 2018
“Despite the widespread use of high-heeled footwear in both developing and modernized societies, we lack an understanding of this behavioral phenomenon at both proximate and distal levels of explanation.”
Prompting the development a new (experimentally-tested) hypothesis by David M. G. Lewis, Eric M. Russell, Laith Al-Shawaf, Vivian Ta, Zeynep Senveli, William Ickes and David M. Buss, presented in the journal Frontiers in Psychology, Nov. 2017.
“[…] we hypothesized that high heels influence women’s attractiveness via effects on their lumbar curvature. Independent studies that employed distinct methods, eliminated multiple confounds, and ruled out alternative explanations showed that when women wear high heels, their lumbar curvature increased and they were perceived as more attractive. Closer analysis revealed an even more precise pattern aligning with human evolved psychology: high-heeled footwear increased women’s attractiveness only when wearing heels altered their lumbar curvature to be closer to an evolutionarily optimal angle.”
See: Why Women Wear High Heels: Evolution, Lumbar Curvature, and Attractiveness
Note: The authors cite the work of Ig Nobel Physics Prize winners (2009) Katherine K. Whitcome of the University of Cincinnati, USA, Daniel E. Lieberman of Harvard University, USA, and Liza J. Shapiro of the University of Texas, USA, for analytically determining why pregnant women don’t tip over. Ref. “Fetal Load and the Evolution of Lumbar Lordosis in Bipedal Hominins,” Nature, vol. 450, 1075-1078 (December 13, 2007).
Also see: Heel thyself (The Guardian, Nov. 2014)
Why I don't believe it: The hypothesis is centered on only one of the two sexes. As far as I could tell, the researchers didn't even consider why men wear/have worn high heels. According to a BBC posting, Why did men stop wearing high heels?:
....
"The high heel was worn for centuries throughout the near east as a form of riding footwear," says Elizabeth Semmelhack of the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto.
Good horsemanship was essential to the fighting styles of Persia - the historical name for modern-day Iran.
"When the soldier stood up in his stirrups, the heel helped him to secure his stance so that he could shoot his bow and arrow more effectively," says Semmelhack.
At the end of the 16th Century, Persia's Shah Abbas I had the largest cavalry in the world. He was keen to forge links with rulers in Western Europe to help him defeat his great enemy, the Ottoman Empire.
So in 1599, Abbas sent the first Persian diplomatic mission to Europe - it called on the courts of Russia, Germany and Spain.
A wave of interest in all things Persian passed through Western Europe. Persian style shoes were enthusiastically adopted by aristocrats, who sought to give their appearance a virile, masculine edge that, it suddenly seemed, only heeled shoes could supply.
As the wearing of heels filtered into the lower ranks of society, the aristocracy responded by dramatically increasing the height of their shoes - and the high heel was born.
In the muddy, rutted streets of 17th Century Europe, these new shoes had no utility value whatsoever - but that was the point.
"One of the best ways that status can be conveyed is through impracticality," says Semmelhack, adding that the upper classes have always used impractical, uncomfortable and luxurious clothing to announce their privileged status.
"They aren't in the fields working and they don't have to walk far."
When it comes to history's most notable shoe collectors, the Imelda Marcos of his day was arguably Louis XIV of France. For a great king, he was rather diminutively proportioned at only 5ft 4in (1.63m).
He supplemented his stature by a further 4in (10cm) with heels, often elaborately decorated with depictions of battle scenes.
....
Although Europeans were first attracted to heels because the Persian connection gave them a macho air, a craze in women's fashion for adopting elements of men's dress meant their use soon spread to women and children.
"In the 1630s you had women cutting their hair, adding epaulettes to their outfits," says Semmelhack.
"They would smoke pipes, they would wear hats that were very masculine. And this is why women adopted the heel - it was in an effort to masculinise their outfits."
From that time, Europe's upper classes followed a unisex shoe fashion until the end of the 17th Century, when things began to change again.
It is my hypothesis that, like some of the men of old, women took to wearing high heels to give them more stature (figuratively and literally) within the population. I know it gives me a crick in my neck to constantly be looking up to people who are much taller than am I. For whatever reason (some reasons make sense, others are nonsense), people equate height with greatness. Physical height is desirable. Never mind that it would be much easier to feed a human population that includes no one taller than five feet: We must have height!
I leave you with this titillating thought (you may go to the above BBC article to learn how they got from the above paragraphs to the following one):
Semmelhack, author of Heights of Fashion: A History of the Elevated Shoe, believes that [...an] association with pornography led to high heels being seen as an erotic adornment for women.
Several things have occurred to me for posting; but, for some time, now, I've been unable to sit for a useful length of time. Sciatica! For the past couple of days, my exercises (suggested by a PTD - Doctor of Physical Therapy - in 2010 when last I suffered a bout with sciatica) seem to be edging me toward pain relief. Thus, I'll post at least a bit of what's been happening around here.
While Elder Brother was with us last weekend, I answered the doorbell to find a US Postal Service delivery person at our door with a box from Hutchinson, Kansas. The outside of the box held the name of the sender, whose name I recognized as belonging to a volunteer out in the Colby, Kansas, area. She and a couple of her cohorts from that area, nurses all three, had shipped me a box of goodies to thank me for the help I've provided them over the past few months. What a welcome surprise - especially since I had done nothing special, in my view, for them - just doing my volunteer job. I had met the three women in Salina, Kansas, in March when we were all in attendance at the 2017 Regional Disaster Training Institute. How thoughtful of them!
In particular, I enjoyed the rhubarb pie - which was shared with no one! (Fortunately, neither Elder Brother nor Hunky Husband is a rhubarb fan.)
Yesterday, WichiDude and Dudette dropped by so that Dudette could show us her new car. Her car history comprises:
1. AMC product - year and make not recalled - that she purchased for $400 in about 1977. I co-signed the loan for her which she paid off early!
2. Chevelle - year not recalled - that her Dad and I had given her for her 21st birthday in 1980. I had purchased it from an estate in 1978 or 1979, and found it too large for comfort in my garage. Of course, in 1982, WichiDude and Dudette moved into my house when I moved to Florida. The garage didn't grow for them, but Dudette put up with the fit.
3. 1982 Mazda 626 - that she had purchased from me when I came back to Kansas in 1990. Dudette drove it until 2000, from which time her daughter (our Wonderful GrandDaughter) drove it for another several years.
4. 2002 Ford Taurus SHO - that was a gift from me in 2000, reflecting the profit I had made on the sale of the house that she and WichiDude had rented from me for 10 years. I've never felt it right to profit off of our daughters!
5. 2017 Ford EDGE - her first brand-new automobile, purchased from the same woman who has sold me my last two, and HH his last, vehicles.
Well done, Dudette!
There is a posting on the Military Advantage Blog that is mostly about military pay/benefits. It does, however, include a paragraph on possible registration of women for the Selective Service draft, which is excerpted, below.
Military Update: With U.S. forces still at war and House members up for re-election in November, the House Armed Services Committee rejected almost every idea the Obama administration proposed in its 2017 budget request to dampen military compensation and apply dollars saved to other defense priorities.
....
Women Draft Registration — With all combat jobs now open to women, the committee voted 32-30 for an amendment to require women to register with Selective Service System. Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), who opposes women serving in infantry or Special Forces, said he offered the amendment to spark a debate that the Congress, so far, has avoided.
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