THE REMARKABLE JOSEPHINE BAKER

From Worldometer,  COVID-19 new deaths:

           DAY USA   WORLD   Brazil      India   South Africa

June      9     1093    4732        1185      246         82

July       1       676    4857        1057      438         92

             5       251    3572          535       421       173

             7       993    5504        1312       479       192

           12       380    4118          659       500       108

           14       935    5414        1341       586       174

           15     1001    5760        1261       614       107

           19       412    4606          715       675         85

           21     1119    5669        1346       671        195

           22     1205    7128        1293     1120        572

           26       450    4307         556       715        114
           28    1266     5589         955       776        190
Aug      1    1462     6429       1191       765        193
            2     1123     5601       1048       852        148
            3       467     4430         514       514        213

            5     1362     6292       1394       849        345

          10       534     4813         593     1013        198
          11       569     4575         721       887        213
          12     1504     6556       1242       835        130
          13     1386     6816       1164       950        129
          14     1284     6653       1301     1006        260
          15     1071     5410         726       950        121
          16       522     4525         582       961        162

Summary:  Hey, Donald Trump was right, things are getting better.  Sure, we saw that a week ago, and days going back to July 5 when only 251 new deaths resulted that day.  Mondays have regularly shown misleadingly low numbers in the past because of the weekend lag.

I never before bothered to watch any national political convention, even those that were accompanied by riots or other serious turmoil.  Plus, the NBA playoffs begin today, with NHL playoffs and MBL games continuing.

However, I suspect I'll do some watching, even though my nap time will get in the way.  Begins tonight at 9PM EDT (3PM Hawaii) for two hours.  Speakers tonight in this order:

• Senator Amy Klobuchar
• Senator Catherine Cortez Masto:  from Nevada, the first Latino to serve in the U.S. Senate
• Governor Andrew Cuomo
• Governor Gretchen Whitmer
• Representative Jim Clyburn
• Convention Chairman Bennie Thompson
• Representative Gwen Moore:  from Wisconsin, first African-American from state in Congress, in her 16th year and regularly gets 70% of votes
• Senator Doug Jones:  from Alabama, and is expected to lose to Tommy Tuberville on Nov. 3
• Maggie Rogers:  activist young White singer
• Leon Bridges:  Black soul singer from Texas with a Grammy
• Senator Bernie Sanders
• Michelle Obama

I've now and then posted on remarkable women.  My #1 choice as the most effective leader in history is a female, Maria Theresa.  Read that posting, and you might agree.  I also had one on The Amazing Hedy Lamarr.

Today, I feature The Black Venus or The Black Pearl, Josephine Baker.  What a life!

She was born Freda Josephine McDonald in St. Louis, Missouri, to a black mother and an uncertain father who might have been white.

She had an especially crummy young life, at times homeless.  She first married at 13, then at 15.  She kept the Baker part after her second husband.  She joined vaudeville and a turbulent relationship with her mother resulted in an escape to France at the age of 19.  She became a hit for her erotic dancing, being practically nude onstage, with her signature performance being a banana dance (left).  Click on that...worth 16 minutes of your life.

Ernest Hemingway called her "the most sensational woman anyone ever saw," and Picasso drew paintings depicting her alluring beauty.  Her success coincided in 1925 with the exposition des Arts Decoratifs, or Art Deco.

She was bisexual and married 4 times.  Her association with noted Mexican artist Frida Kahlo is steeped in mystery.

Well, what's so great about that?  Here are three other worthy reasons:

• In 1934 she became the first black woman to star in a major motion picture, Zouzou.  It's in French, but that is the whole 1 hr 23 min film.  She is also well-remembered for Princess Tam Tam in 1935.  There are also four movies about her life:  Chasing a Rainbow (1987, the whole 1 hr 20 min documentary), The Josephine Baker Story (1991, the whole movie), Josephine Baker:  Black Diva in a White Man's World (2006) and Josephine Baker, The Story of an Awakening (2018).

• During World War II she was a spy for the French Resistance.  Her status as a celebrity enabled her to be around influential people, including Italian, Nazi and Japanese officials.  She wrote secret messages on her sheet music with invisible ink and stored important documents inside her underwear, including secret photographs of German military equipment.  She was the first American woman awarded the Croix de Guerre.

• In the 1950's she fought against racial discrimination in the U.S.  She was the lone female speaking alongside Martin Luther King at the March on Washington where he delivered "I Have a Dream."  When King was assassinated, Coretta, his wife, asked Baker to lead the civil rights movement.  She decline for fear of endangering her children.  The NAACP named May 20 as Josephine Baker Day.

• She adopted 12 children, 10 boys and 2 girls, from Finland, Japan, France, Belgium and Venezuela, dubbing her clan the Rainbow Tribe.  At one point she did run into financial difficulties and couldn't pay rent for the castle where they lived.  However, Princess Grace Kelly came to her rescue and the tribe moved to Monaco.  They were life-friends.  

• Her experiment to show that ethnic and religious harmony was possible was not successful.  To quote Akio from Japan, though:  She was a great artist and she was our mother.  Mothers make mistakes.  Nobody's perfect.

She passed away at the age of 68 with a cerebral hemorrhage, just after finishing a performance of her life revue, Josephine a Bobino.

Appropriately enough, Tropical Storm Josephine just weakened into a depression:

Remember how Amazon wiped out bookstores?  Will Starbucks kill off most bars?

Only 70 of them have added alcohol, but there are more than 31,000 to go.  Well, maybe not, for there are around two million bars in the world.

Something is happening to my anthurium patch in my living room.  Once all pink, the colors now range from whitish to purple to red:

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