#62: WUNDERBAR

This blog site has officially shifted to: 

New SIMPLE SOLUTIONS for PLANET EARTH AND HUMANITY

I will maintain this current site, but only until the end of the year.  Then, this blog will become my testing ground for new books I will be drafting, plus a few jokes and photos of general interest.

From Worldometer:

           DAY USA  WORLD  Brazil     India   South Africa

June     9     1093    4732         1185      246         82

July    22     1205     7128        1293     1120       572

Aug    12     1504     6556       1242       835       130

Sept     3     1094     5886         830     1083       174
            9     1208     6222       1136      1168         82

Oct      8       957     6420          730       967       160

          12       316     3757          203       710         83

          13       843    5006           354       723       165

          14       970    6075           716       694       123

          15       873    6106           734       835       158

          17       638    5639           461     1032         38

          18       448    4040           215       578         63 

          19       442    4392           321       594         21

          20       952    6169           662       714       164         

          21     1225    6849           571       703         85 

          22       973     6470          503       683       102 

          23       903     6526          566       656         48 

          24       784     5599          398       575         53

          25       442     4629          237       463         24

          26       529     5095          288       505        40

          27     1039     7023          530       519        45

          28     1030     7116          487       509        58

Summary:  The World and USA are on our third wave.  Will this one be the worst?

The New York Times indicated the following this morning:

Among the most successful Canadian regions have been the four small provinces along the Atlantic Ocean, all of which have almost extinguished the virus. They have done so by largely closing their borders — a strategy that has also worked in several other countries, including Australia, Ghana, Taiwan and Vietnam, despite skepticism from some political liberals around the world. Hawaii just re-opened up to tourism, and the great majority will come from the USA.  I worry about a next wave for the state.

My song #62 will come from:

• Hello Young Lovers:  The King and I
• Wunderbar:  Kiss Me Kate

The King and I by Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein opened on Broadway in 1951 with Gertrude Lawrence and Yul Brynner, who made his show biz debut.  There are several worthy songs, especially Getting to Know You.  The film came in 1956 with Deborah Kerr (sung by Marni Nixon) and,  again, Yul Brynner.

If I did not watch Classic Arts Showcase this morning, Wunderbar would not have been #62.  Here were Alfred Drake and Patricia Morison, and I was enchanted.  Kiss Me Kate, (Rotten Tomatoes:  91/67) with lyrics by Cole Porter, opened on Broadway in 1949 and won the Tony for Best Musical.  The show was inspired by Alfed Lunt and Lyn Fontanne in their 1935 production of Shrew.  In 1953 Kiss Me Kate became a film, with Kathryn Grayson and Howard Keel.

We need some humor, so here is a clip from The Late Show four years ago where then President Barack Obama urged people to vote.  This time he is doing it more personally, as you might have seen this week on television.

Awa Odori is a traditional dance most popularly performed on the island of Shikoku in Japan during the Obon Season.  You can't beat this performance for cuteness, but you'll need to wait for 1 minute and 40 seconds or so to enjoy the effort of this rather young performer.  

Kochi on that island has another festival called the Yosakoi Matsuri.  I've been to this event a couple of times because close by is a deep ocean laboratory just like at the Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii on the Big Island.  Living there is Mac Takahashi, former University of Tokyo engineering professor, who wrote a definitive text on ocean thermal energy conversion, and is in the process of translating my SIMPLE SOLUTIONS for Planet Earth.  Here we are with now, probably, the eminent active scholar of OTEC,  Yasuyuki Ikegami (at the top) of Saga University.

Hurricane Zeta was a mile per hour short of being a Category 3 when it struck Louisiana, causing three deaths and leaving a couple of million powerless.  The next to come will be Eta, which has a 60% chance of attaining hurricane strength, making it the 29th of the year for the Gulf/Atlantic, breaking the all-time record:

A similar storm Typhoon Molave struck Vietnam, its fourth in a month, killing more than 25.

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