Steve Winwood at 17?

Well 17 or 18 anyway, with The Spencer Davis Group of course. He started playing/singing with them at 14 in 1962. I believe this video is from 1966.

Cardinal Bob Gibson Playing With the Harlem Globetrotters?

Many people know that Cardinal pitching great, Bob Gibson, was also a great basketball player in college at Creighton during the mid to late 1950s. He also played with the Harlem Globetrotters during their 1957-58 season before turning to baseball fulltime. I've never been able to find any footage of him playing at Creighton, but I may have found some of him playing with the Globetrotters in 1958. At least 1958 is the date of this video. I know that Wilt Chamberlain played with them during the 1958-59 season, and he's obviously not in this video, so I'm guessing it's from the 57-58 season when Gibson should have been there. He was a 6'1" guard, but I have no idea what his jersey number was. I'm guessing, however, that if he's in this video at all he must be number 33.



Gibson averaged over 20 pts. per game at Creighton and was the only non-white player on the team. In fact, he was their first non-white player ever. He had great leaping ability, and even at only 6'1" he could stuff the ball backwards with both hands.

His roommate with the Trotters was actually Meadowlark Lemon who years later said, “I thought Bob was a better basketball player than a baseball player. I think Bob could have played with any NBA team. He was that good.”

Do You Know What A Fox Sounds Like?

I've heard this sound in the woods before and never knew what it was.



And here's another:

Pokey Lafarge - "Central Time"

A St. Louis 30s French type dance band on David Letterman's show about a month ago. Good fun.

Orson's Rant

You must have heard by now about Orson Scot Card in the news comparing Obama to Hitler, but have you actually read his blog essay for yourself? He sounds like he's suddenly turned into Glen Beck:

 

Orson's Essay

 

I'm fairly conservative I guess, but I can't take these paranoid tea party types. They're everything that's wrong with conservatism. This essay is absolutely bizarre, and I say this as a fan of Card's books. I own several. But this is enough to make any conservative want to cut off all ties with republicans and libertarian knuckleheads. Enough already! Paranoia is not conservatism.

The Past Comes Walking Into The Present

Here's a photo I found in a news article today. It's one of several old photos that have been colorized. This is of course Mark Twain. People often think that old photos are bad photos shot with inferior cameras. Actually, camera technology has not really changed that much since 1900 or so. I've seen many photos from over a hundred years ago that have incredible quality, and this is one of them. However, once it's been properly colorized (using what are known period color schemes for the clothing, furniture etc. of the day), it becomes astounding! It's as though the past has just walked into the present. And the past doesn't seem so different after all. I feel like I could have been having a conversation with Twain yesterday.

Vatican Priest Accused of Money Smuggling-Laundering

Nunzio Scarano

Interesting article today from the Christian Science Monitor about a priest at the Vatican, Rev. Nunzio Scarano, who was caught along with two cohorts trying to smuggle 26 million dollars in cash on a plane going from Switzerland to Italy. The money was owned by a family that has a shipping company in Naples. He was apparently going to "privately" deposit the money into a Vatican bank either to help the family avoid paying taxes on it, or perhaps to launder it in the case that it might have been illegally gotten money.

What caught my attention more than anything was the fact that all three men met through their membership in the Constantine Order of St. George, a society of ecclesiastical knights who's history is sketchy at best. The article also mentions the last great Vatican banking scandal in the 1980s when the chairman of an Italian bank in which the Vatican was the primary shareholder was found hanging dead under the Blackfriars Bridge and five members of the Italian Mafia were tried for his murder, but all were acquitted for lack of evidence.

In short, I think it's great that Pope Francis is doing his best to straighten out the Vatican banking mess, but if big money and the Mafia are involved, he's going to have a very difficult undertaking ahead of him. We may start seeing dead priests hanging from bridges in the near future.

The article is here.