Some assorted things Kent and Marilyn have recently learned, and then smiled about

1 – The word of the week is ‘risibly’, meaning:  deserving to be laughed at, eliciting laughter, ludicrous.  

2 – The New York Times recently commemorated the 50th anniversary of the Beatles arrival in the United States, and their first appearance on the Ed Sullivan TV show.  The newspaper ran a full-page memorial, containing the newspapers very first article that introduced the Beatles to America.  The opening paragraph read:  ‘Question - Multiply Elvis Presley by four, subtract six years from his age, add British accents and a sharp sense of humor.  The Answer:  It’s the Beatles (Yeah, Yeah, Yeah)’.

3 - Comedian David Brenner, age 78, frequent guest host of the Tonight Show, with more than 150 appearances, recently passed away.  His family stated that, in his “final request”, he asked that one hundred dollars in small bills be placed in his left sock ‘just in case tipping is recommended where I’m going’.

4 – A recent column in the Sunday NY Times was cleverly titled, ‘Religion for $1,000 Alex’, a take-off on the TV show Jeopardy.  The article pointed out how largely ignorant Americans are about religion.  The closing paragraph read, “we do not want to emulate the long-ago Texas governor who, in one of those stories that may be too good to be true, opposed Spanish instruction in the state because, ‘If English was good enough for Jesus, it’s good enough for us.’

5 -  Donald Rumsfeld (Chief of Staff and Secretary of Defense under Gerald Ford, and Secretary of Defense under George W. Bush), both the youngest and oldest Secretary of Defense, sends a similar letter with his tax returns to the IRS every year.  It reads, “this note is to alert you folks that I know that I do not know whether or not my tax returns are accurate.” 

6 - The local Idaho Falls newspaper is the Post Register.  Recently it contained an article entitled, ‘Lunar Eclipse to Cover Western Hemisphere’.  The article, about a future event began, “North and South America, get ready for the first eclipse of the year…on Tuesday morning”.  The article was printed the next day, on Wednesday, the day following the eclipse.  We will call this a predictable, ‘risibly’ article from our small town local newspaper.