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Mickey Rooney remained with the project until shortly before shooting began in April 1938, when he was suddenly pulled by MGM. Ignoring Paramount's casting department, Ruggles told his assistant director, Arthur Jacobson, "Find me another Mickey Rooney and we'll start the picture." It so happened that Jacobsen was scheduled to attend a benefit for the Motion Picture Relief Fund at the Biltmore Hotel, emceed by Bob Hope; in addition to movie stars, a few vaudeville acts were recruited to fill out the bill, amng them the O'Connor Family, with its sparkling twelve-year-old wunderkind, Donald. Jacobson made an appointment with O'Connor. "I asked him if he could act. He said, 'If it's entertainment, I can do anything. I can sing, I can dance, I can act." Asked if he could ride a racehorse, Donald replied, "No, but I'll learn," and did. Jacobson asked him to listen to prerecordings by Bing and Fred and harmonize with them. Within days Donald knew the script cold. On Monday morning Jaco brought him to see Ruggles, who immediately advised Paramount to sign him. O'Connor had been on the stage since he was three days old. He had played every kind of theater and circus. When he Bing, he felt as though he already knew him: "I would see him on the screen in between shows and, like everybody else, I always thought he was a friend of mine. So when I met Bing, he was extremely nice. Had a wonderful smile. And he never said too much to me on the movie. He was very, very patient with me. I was a very small child at twelve and I was riding this big goddamned race-horse and I was scared to death of this horse. There was one scene down at the track, an exposition scene, where I tell him I've been bribed, I've got the money and I feel awful, I'm letting the family down. It's a long scene and Bing is in front leading me on the horse and he's pumping me and at the same time reassuring me not to be worried. We get right down to the end and I blow my lines. So we turn the horse around, all the way back, and it was a cold day at Santa Anita, and we have to start again with all the crying and everything. I blow the line again. We must have done that forty times. And Bing never complained, not once. I told him, "I'm so sorry, my mind just can't get this." He said, "Don't worry about it, kid, you'll get it, we have no place to go." We had a lot of fun on that movie. He treated me like a pal." Gary Giddins, "Bing Crosby: A Pocketful of Dreams - The Early Years 1903 - 1940" (2002)

Inside, children shriek with delight as they throw chips and crackers into the cages. Signs indicate not only breed but through which Kim the animal was gifted - whether directly or indirectly, via some other dubious luminary of Second and Third World politics. An elephant from Ho Chi Minh, presented to Great Leader Kim Il Sung in Juche 48 (1959). A Cuban crocodile presented to the Dear Leader Kim Jong 11 by the Cuban Embassy in Juche 69 (1980). A lion from Robert Mugabe. There is a separate house for dogs and cats. Household pets are uncommon in Pyongyang, so according to local logic, such creatures should naturally be showcased in the zoo. A trio of gray mutts stand at abrupt attention at the end of a steel cage, separating us by a waist-size concrete partition. "Go ahead, the one in the middle hasn't had one yet," a young mother instructs her toddler, who gleefully tosses in a cracker and then watches the dogs fight over the morsel before popping one into her own mouth. When another cracker lands on the concrete partition, just on the other side of the fence, Hwa approaches and nudges it with the end of his umbrella till it lands within dog reach. There's a long, unmoving line waiting to get inside the penguin house. Apparently, as foreigners, we're allowed to jump it, as we're immediately ushered in. Inside, we join a group of college-aged elites for whom a private viewing has been arranged. They stand around casually chatting and snapping photos and videos of the penguins, who swim back and forth in the aquarium against a painted desert island backdrop. Another popular attraction is the talking parrots. Min elbows her way through the crowd of children to record the creatures, which have been trained to croak out "Hi!" when you toss them a cracker. Elsewhere, a mobile photo studio offers laminated photos of your tots seated on a live pony. Sample photos show entire families weighing down the poor beast's back. Travis Jeppesen "See You Again in Pyongyang: A Journey into Kim Jong Un's North Korea" (2018)

JOURNALS Journal entry 1995: I have to tell you that the freedom of choice is almost unbearable for me. I often find myself thinking more about the road not taken than the one I took. As a result, I am a very messy chooser. I tend to get paralyzed by the choice, then freak out, short circuit, act out and drive everyone nuts. I'm a passive person and I don't want to be ashamed of that passivity. I want to make it work. FAMILY I wanted to see my son; after all, I'd never seen him and now he was eight months old. I was completely unaware that this was a long time. I was under the impression that once a baby, always a baby. I guess I thought of six years old as the end of babyhood. I had no idea that eight months was quite a way along in the development of a child. I called Kathie and went to see them. She woke the baby, lifted him out of the crib, and he went right for her breast. When I saw that, I knew there was no need for a blood test. I saw the back of my father's head in his head. I saw my brother Rocky's eyes. I saw a distant mirror, I saw a little lust flower. I saw a glorious accident. I saw a completely formed, whole human being, and I experienced a perfect paradox at that moment; I knew now that I could die and that I had to stay alive to help this little guy through. Kathie had a radical plan. She said, "You haven't seen him for eight months, you should go bond with him. Take him off alone, to your summer house in the country." And I did. I thought it was a completely mad idea, but I didn't question it. I was on the train to Brewster North with this eight-month-old creature, who was in my arms. I assumed he was beautiful, because everyone on the train kept stopping to say, "Oh my goodness, what a lovely granddaughter you have." And when I got up to the house, I put him on the floor like a rug rat, a hamster, a cat or a dog - let him do his thing; while I do my thing - get out the bloody mary mix, the salmon, the green peas and prepare dinner. And then I had to change his diaper. Bending over him, I looked down into his eyes and I fell in. I did not expect the gaze that came back, it was absolutely forever. Long, pure, empty, not innocent, because way beyond innocence, mere being, pure consciousness, the observing self that I'd always been trying to catch was staring back at me; they were no-agenda eyes. Clear, open, not blinking, not judging, not tempting, not needing, not hurting, not consoling. Just pure - not old, not new, because not in time. And I just stared until I blinked. And had to pull away. I couldn't go on anymore in there. I took him in my arms and we were together for five hours. He ate with me, in my lap. And when I chewed my green peas, he reached into my mouth and took them out to feed himself. I got the image of Mother Bird, Mother Robin, the way they spit the food into their babies' mouths. So I took his little head and, holding it, went to spit the green peas into his mouth like a mother bird, and he gave me a straight arm. And I thought, My God, he's got boundaries! Where would he get them at eight months? I could learn something from him. His dad doesn't have them at fifty-two! Spalding Gray "Spalding Gray Stories Left To Tell" (2008)

They tried to distance themselves from Ban Johnson's proposal. The first and most resonant of his critics was John Tener, the National League president. "Let Ban Johnson confine his remarks to his own league. We are fully competent to take care of our own affairs," said Tener. "I would not go one inch toward Washington to ask President Wilson or the Secretary of War for special favors for baseball," Tener added that if any of his club owners made a request like Johnson's, he would "walk out of this office and never return." He called Johnson's suggestion "unpatriotic" and "selfish," saying "nothing could be further from the purposes of baseball." He also ridiculed Johnson's whole idea of players marching around in close-order drill with wooden bats. A number of dub owners in both leagues lined up to echo Tener. The National League owners who spoke out were, like Tener, quick to emphasize that Johnson was an American League guy and shouldn't presume to speak for them. "It is the misfortune of the National League that it must bear part of the stigma of this thing; said Phillies president W F. Baker. Even some American League owners took public issue with Johnson's remarks. Yankees owner Colonel Jacob Ruppert, whose title came by way of eight years of service in the National Guard, took particular umbrage, reminding everyone that his co-owner, Captain Tillinghast Huston, was then on active duty. "My partner ... is now in France dodging German shells and helping his country to win the war. I certainly am not in favor of asking exemption for a ball player, while my partner is risking his life in the service." Public reaction was likewise roundly critical. A few of Johnson's longtime friends in the press, most notably Joe Vila of the New York Sun, tried to spin the story to Johnson's benefit, but otherwise the president of the American League was "panned to a crisp in the leading Eastern and Southern papers," noted Fred Lieb, who then proceeded to pan Johnson to a crisp himself "The more one analyzes Johnson's plan," wrote Lieb, "the more audacious it appears. The audacity of an amusement promoter putting 'the high standards' of his particular amusement above the welfare of a country at war is shocking to the sensibilities of the average American. "Another brazen part of Johnson's suggestion is the manner in which he offers his bench warmers and extra pitchers to the government, saying 'we would willingly sacrifice these men.' The idea of turning his least competent players over to the government strikes at the heart of the democratic idea behind the elective draft, whose primary aim was to put the millionaire's son on the same plane with the son of the village shoemaker and the $l5,OOO-a-year Tris Speaker with $l5OO-a-year colt pitcher. Were such a plan adopted it would be favoritism of the rankest sort." Johnson was forced to retract. He maintained he hadn't been seeking any favors from the government. "My suggestion that eighteen men on each of the Major League teams be exempted was merely that - a suggestion." He insisted he had simply been offering his thoughts about how baseball might still be played in wartime. The criticism of Johnson's pronouncement was mainly focused on style rather than substance. Johnson had made the game look petty and selfish at a time when it needed all the sympathy and goodwill it could get. But the truth of the matter is that Johnson had said what everybody in baseball was thinking; when the sixteen owners convened in December, the only item on the docket was how they might persuade the government to keep their players out of the draft and playing during the 1918 season. Early signs from local draft boards were encouraging. Most of the men who had had deferments - anyone with dependents mostly - retained those deferments. And in their planning for 1918, the owners were cautious. Attendance had been down in 1917 from the record-breaking 1916 season - not dramatically, but measurably. They feared a greater drop-off in 1918. They also agreed to limit 1918 rosters to eighteen players, not because

Many children with autism become fixated on various subjects. Some teachers make the mistake of trying to stamp out the fixation. Instead, they should broaden it and channel it into constructive activities. For example, if a child becomes infatuated with boats, then use boats to motivate him to read and do math. Read books about boats and do arithmetic problems on calculating boat speed. Fixations provide great motivation. Leo Kanner stated that the path to success for some people with autism was to channel their fixation into a career. One of his most successful patients became a bank teller. He was raised by a farm family who found goals for his number fixation. To motivate him to work in the fields, they let him count the rows of corn while the corn was being harvested. Dr. Kanner also noted that an autistic person's fixations can be their way to achieve some social life and friends. Today, many people with autism become fascinated with computers and become very good at programming. An interest in computers can provide social contacts with other computer people. The Internet, the worldwide computer network, is wonderful for such people. Problems that autistic people have with eye contact and awkward gestures are not visible on the Internet, and typewritten messages avoid many of the social problems of face-to-face contact. The Internet may be the best thing yet for improving an autistic person's social life. Tom McKean said when he was a college student that computers were a godsend because he could communicate with other people and not have to concentrate on trying to talk normally. Temple Grandin "Thinking in Pictures" (1996)

George Lazenby on the Simon Dee Show He is unhappy and increasingly paranoid. He has always been prone to constructing clandestine explanations for humdrum events, but his sense of a conspiracy is escalating. He complains that he has spotted men in black hunched behind hedgerows, taking photographs of him; he is also convinced his telephone is bugged. Some blame his paranoia on marijuana, but he argues that, on the contrary, it is marijuana that keeps him sane. Dee greets his first guest in the green room. (Oddly enough, Dee too auditioned for James Bond; he tells friends he was rejected simply because he was too tall.) His first impression of Lazenby is that he looks nothing like he did as James Bond; he now sports a beard and long hair, and is dressed like a cowboy. But, ever the pro, Dee masks his surprise. The interview begins very slowly. Lazenby is perhaps a little distant, but Dee sees no real cause for alarm. Then, out of nowhere, Lazenby dips into his pocket, pulls out a piece of paper, turns to the camera and shouts: 'I would like to draw everybody's attention to the fact that the following senators were involved in a plot to kill President Kennedy!' He starts reciting a long list of names. Dee attempts to steer the interview onto another topic by bringing in Diana Rigg. 'That's very interesting' George. What does Diana make of all that then? Isn't she lovely!' But Lazenby is furious at the interruption, and continues to read his list of murderous senators in a louder and louder voice. An enthusiast for conspiracies, Dee nevertheless realizes that naming individual senators as conspirators in a presidential assassination is taking things too far. Across Lazenby's shoulder, he sees the studio floor manager making furious 'wind up' signals to him, but Lazenby proves unstoppable. Dee attempts to distance himself from Lazenby's rants by saying, 'I really don't know anything about this subject, folks; and finally says, 'Fascinating stuff, George. Thank you. And we'll be talking to two more fascinating people, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, in just two minutes!' This is the signal for an advertising break. The show is recorded a few hours before transmission, so Dee imagines that any offending passages will be edited out. But for some reason they are not. On Monday morning, the newspapers are full of it. Dee is summoned by Stella Richman, Managing Director of LWT. 'Who said you could talk about Kennedy?' 'I didn't talk about Kennedy. Lazenby did, and it happens to be his right as a guest to talk about anything he likes: Richman behaves, in Dee's opinion, 'like some demented puppet', accusing him of plotting the incident. 'If you ever mention Kennedy on air again I shall tear up your contract. Now leave!' Dee is affronted. 'It really was an amazing moment. Here was this female terrier telling me that she had the right to tell me who I could or couldn't book on my show and what I was supposed to say to them! And if I disagreed with her then I was out of a job!' The incident fuels Dee's already highly developed sense of conspiracy. Has he fallen into a carefully laid trap? Conspiracy piles upon conspiracy: he suspects Lazenby was put up to it by his old enemy Ronan O'Rahilly, who also talked Lazenby out of renewing his James Bond contract ('All that Bond stuff's on the wane, man. Look at Easy Rider and things, that's the way to go'). But Dee remains bullish. 'I don't give a damn. Last night, for this so-called disastrous program, I had the highest viewing figures ever for a Sunday-night show. I'm supposed to feel ashamed of that? ... So George made a fool of himself, not me. He died the death, baby, not me! It doesn't worry me, baby! I'm running my show, not anybody else: It is the beginning of the end for both host and guest. Soon afterwards, it is announced that this first series of The Simon Dee Show on LWT will also be the last. Dee blames this on his opposition to Britain entering the EEC. A brand-new late-night chat show is hosted by a relative unknown, whose name is Michael Parkinson. Dee's slot on the BBC is given to

I won't quarrel with my bread and butter (Jonathan Swift) Well of course this WAS said by Jonathan Swift. I'm not denying that and my case does not rest on that at all. But it was said at another time by another man whom I think some tribute at this point or juncture. The man is Edward J. Mason, who every week compiles the programs, compiles all the questions. And what people don't know is that Edward J. Mason, Captain Edward J. Mason, as he is known, had a very distinguished war record. In fact, they were going to film his war record. He was going to be played by Anna Neagle But all I heard when I asked about it was that it fell through. They didn't tell me what fell through but Miss Neagle is all right, so it must have been something to do with Edward J. Mason But this war experience of his is rather interesting because although a young man, he'd only been in the army about eighteen months and already he'd earned quite a name for himself. He'd blown up three ammunition dumps and two air fields and then he was sent overseas. And the idea was that he was to work in France creating alarm and despondency among the occupying troops by broadcasting on the Freedom Radio panel games. So, he was dropped into France what the service called the hard way; that's without a parachute. And he set up these programs and he did hit on one program, which was called Mon Mot, which is quite untranslatable into English. The idea was that certain people were asked to name the origins of phrases or the next line of a quotation. But what wasn't generally known was that the quotations that were chosen had a special meaning to British intelligence who monitored them. So if they said, "Earth has not shown anything to show more fair," then that would mean that three troop transports coming through; be ready for it on the nineteenth. They had this whole code. And it was listened to in a little room in Maedervale. You know that all sorts of odd things go on in little rooms in Maedervale. At this time it was listened to. And he did very well and passed a lot of information back until one day he had this very important message that was coded into the quotation "I won't quarrel with my bread and butter." And he had this on a slip of paper and was just about to broadcast it when there was a knocking on the door [I mustn't forget that loaf of bread to take back. You will remind me. And the Petri dish.] and in burst the enemy. Well, luckily, Mason knew that whatever happens to the code mustn't be captured. So he took this piece of paper with "I won't quarrel with my bread and butter." And he swallowed it. Well, it's not a very nice death being choked to death by a quotation. And when the news got back. And they said, Mason's had it, choked to death on "I won't quarrel with my bread and butter." Thank heavens, it may have been brutish, but it was Swift. Denis Norden 580616b

I've heard that drinking hot lemon water first thing in the morning can have various health benefits. Is that true? In a video on TikTok, a woman has a lemon in one hand and a mug in the other as she espouses the benefits of her beverage: Within a week of drinking hot lemon water daily, she said, you can expect to burn more calories, become more hydrated, harbor fewer toxins and have an improved immune system, better digestion, less bloating, smoother skin and more energy and focus. But while sipping warm lemon water can be a refreshing and healthy way to start the day, the evidence for many of its benefits does not hold up, said Emily Ho, a professor of nutrition and the director of the Linus Pauling Institute at Oregon State University. Hot lemon water's main nutritional asset is that it's hydrating, Dr. Ho said. That's especially beneficial first thing in the morning, she added, when "you haven't had anything to drink all night." The body needs to be hydrated to maintain its temperature, lubricate and cushion the joints, and remove waste through processes like sweating and urination. Good hydration is also associated with healthier skin, better mood and sharper thinking. That said, there isn't anything special about lemon water, said Joan Salge Blake, a dietitian and clinical professor of nutrition at Boston University. "Any fluid is going to hydrate you," she said. Fluid is essential for keeping your digestive system moving, whether it's spiked with lemon or not, said Judy Simon, a clinical dietitian and instructor at the University of Washington Medical Center in Seattle. In a 2020 study of more than 4,500 adults in Turkey, researchers found that those who drank the most water - more than eight cups per day - had a 29 percent lower risk of developing constipation compared with those who drank the least water - less than four cups per day. We couldn't find any studies that looked into how lemon water influences constipation, but there is some limited evidence that lemon juice might help break down food in the stomach by stimulating stomach acid secretion. In a study published in 2022, researchers found that lemon juice increased the rate at which the stomach emptied. But this study was small, Dt. Ho said, so the results should be taken with a grain of salt. There is a kernel of truth to the idea that hot lemon water can benefit the immune system. Lemons are loaded with vitamin C, Dr. Ho said. If you squeeze half of a large lemon into your cup, as many recipes suggest, that provides about a quarter of the recommended daily amount. Vitamin C is essential for immune function and healing, and it acts as a powerful antioxidant that can thwart DNA damage. But there isn't much evidence that you'll improve your immune system by consuming more vitamin C - whether through supplements or hot lemon water. If you're drinking hot lemon water in place of a higher calorie beverage, like a sugary coffee drink, for example, it might help you lose weight, Ms. Simon said. However, there's no solid evidence that hot lemon water has any measurable effect on weight or metabolism, she added. Some research suggests that eating lemons and other citrus fruits could help stabilize blood sugar, Dr. Ho said. And long-term studies have found associations between citrus consumption and reduced risks for Type 2 diabetes. But that evidence is still weak, Dr. Ho said. Isobel Whitcomb

Suitcase Orchestra The final step in making a film is the music. I love music, but I have no musical education and need a lot of help to find out exactly what I want for my film. I only know it when I hear it. The claim can be made that music has greater power than any other element in a film. It sometimes strikes me as an altogether higher form of communication, a pure flow of feeling, so sudden and immediate that at times it's as if a character ripped his heart out and handed it to the audience. At the same time, music is so abstract that I never know how to talk about it. And I have found out that most composers don't really know how to talk about their art either, at least not to a layman like me. John Klein had taken the job of a stand-in in Cuckoo's Nest so he could hang out with me in Salem and San Francisco. John knows about music. One day he brought me a record he liked. The LP was recorded by the London Symphony Orchestra, even though its composer, Jack Nitzsche, was now working mostly in pop music. He had scored the film Performance, and John knew him personally. I liked Nitzsche's music a lot, so in the editing room I played sections of his record with our scenes they seemed to fit wonderfully. In fact, I even cut a few sequences to the strains of Nitzsche's record. When I had the rough cut, I asked John to invite the composer to a screening. I proudly played my selections from his record, expecting him to be flattered, but Nitzsche got so furious that he nearly stopped talking to me. "What is this! This is all wrong! This is nonsense!" he screamed. I was close to panic. We had deadlines and delivery schedules to meet. We were running out of time and now I was afraid I had mortally offended Nitzsche and would wind up with some by-the-numbers hack composing the score. Mercifully, John Klein was able to smooth things over. Jack agreed to have new music by the deadline. He went away and worked, but he didn't bother to give me any progress reports. Our recording date was fast approaching, so I collected my courage, called Nitzsche, and gingerly asked him what he would require in the way of studio musicians for the upcoming session. "I don't know yet," he snarled. "Okay, fine, sure, sorry," I said and hung up. We never got an answer about his musician requirements, so to be safe we ordered a complete orchestra for our recording date. The session was to take place at Fantasy Records, where we were still polishing the final cut, so on the appointed day, from an upstairs window, I watched Nitzsche arrive. He came in a cab, accompanied by an old man lugging a huge suitcase. We got to the recording studio at the same time. Jack strolled in, took one glance at the army of musicians waiting for him there shook his head, and sent the entire orchestra home. "Jack, listen, are you sure you don't need ANYBODY?" I asked. "Yes, I am," he said. "You want ALL these people to go home?" "They can stay here, but I don't need them." "Not even a drummer, or, I don't know, a piano player?" "No." "Okay, Jack." While we talked, the old man opened his suitcase and started pulling out glasses of different height, thickness, and size and spreading them around the table in the recording studio. "Oh, I do need something after all, Milos Nietzsche said suddenly. "We'll need some water." We got a pail of water, and the old man poured it into his glasses, carefully creating columns of different heights. He then wiped off the table and was ready to go to work. He rubbed his fingers around the rims of his glasses, coaxing strange, mournful sounds out of the tap water and glass. The effect made your hair stand on end. jack later added some more traditional passages as well as some music of buzz saws and other imaginative instruments, but he recorded most of the soundtrack that morning with only the old man and his suitcase orchestra. I loved the music. Milos Forman, "Turnaround: A Memoir" (1993)

CAREER I answer the phone and it's Gregory Mosher, the director of Lincoln Center Theater, saying, "Listen, Spalding, how would you like to play the Stage Manager in Thornton Wilder's Our Town on Broadway?" I can't believe what I'm hearing and I say, "Gregory, listen, thank you very much. I am honored, but I don't think I could do it. I simply don't think I could say those lines. They're too wholesome and folksy. Get Garrison Keillor." "We don't want Garrison Keillor, we want you. We want your dark, New England, ironic sensibility." "Well, Gregory, you got me there. I'll tell you what. Give me a day to think about it." I hang up. I think, My God! This is a chance of a lifetime. Here it is. It's a limited run. The role is great. I could speak from my heart at last - provided I could memorize the lines - and I could at last use my New England accent. So I think I'd better just call my Hollywood agent, see if she has any opinions on this before I say yes or no. I call her up and she says, "Dear heart, dear heart! No way! Why, after all these years of acting, would you want to be a stage manager?" So I say yes. Much to my surprise, I find that I love doing the play because I'm able to get in touch with Thornton Wilder's language. I get swept back to New England where I came from. I get swept back to New England where I used to believe in God and eternity and all the things the play is about. The cemetery scene is the most powerful for me. You see, Emily dies in childbirth and her funeral takes place on stage in the third act. And when the mourners exit, Emily dressed in a simple white dress walks across the stage to sit in the straight-backed chair that represents her grave. And she sits down amongst all the other recent dead who are all sitting bolt upright, staring up at the stars above. Everyone is so peacefully concentrated. Franny Conroy, who is playing Mother Gibbs, is sitting in the front row. She has been doing transcendental meditation for the past fifteen years and she's in a deep trance. The little boy playing Emily's brother, Wally Webb, is an eleven-year-old boy, and he is sitting there, as well, not blinking for forty minutes while I talk about eternity. And in the play I say, "And they stay here while the earth part of them bums away, bums out. .. They're waitin' for something they feel is comin'. Something important, and great. Aren't they waitin' for the eternal part in them to come out clear?" And every night I would perform this and every night it would basically be the same. Except often, when you do a long run of a play you have what I call a unifying accident, in which something so strange happens in the play, that it suddenly unites the audience in the realization that we are all here together at this one moment in time. It's not television. It's not the movies. It happened as I was speaking of the dead and I say, "And they stay here while the earth part of them bums away, burns out. .. They're waitin' for something they feel is comin'. Something important and great..." As I say this, I turn and gesture to them, waiting, and, just as I turn and gesture, the little eleven-year-old boy playing Wally Webb projectile vomits! Like a hydrant it comes, hitting some of the dead on their shoulders! The other dead levitate out of their chairs, in total shock, around him and drop back down. Franny Conroy, deep in her meditative trance, is slowly wondering, "Why is it raining on stage?" The little boy flees from his chair, vomit pouring from his mouth. Splatter. Splatter. Splatter. I'm standing there. My knees are shaking. The chair is empty. The audience is thunderstruck! There is not a sound coming from them, except for one little ten-year-old boy in the 8th row. He knows what he saw ... He is laughing! At this point, I don't know whether to be loyal to Thornton Wilder and go on with the next line as written, or attempt what might be one of the most creative improvs in the history of American Theater. At last I decide to be loyal to Wilder and simply go on with the next line, and I tum to the empty chair and say

St. Paul had been a middle-of-the-pack team under Comiskey, and it was beginning to see its attendance numbers slip. Comiskey wanted to come home to Chicago; Johnson helped him get there. Over drinks, Johnson talked about the matter with Cubs owner James Hart, who was not at all interested in sharing his city with another ball club, least of all a team - minor league or not - operated by a well-known and popular hometown boy like Comiskey. But Johnson kept pouring and kept talking. Comiskey could open a ball field down by the stockyards, Johnson told Hart, far away from the Cubs West Side Park and the city's Gold Coast fans. Hart agreed to that. He also agreed to let Comiskey call the new team the White Sox, a new-century version of the historic name of Cap Anson's White Stockings, the National League predecessors of Hart's Cubs. The one concession Hart won from Johnson was that Comiskey would not use "Chicago" as part of the team name. Johnson and Comiskey agreed, knowing that whatever the official name of the franchise, Hart could not stop newspapers from identifying it by its home city. Charles Fountain "The Betrayal: How the 1919 Black Sox Scandal Changed Baseball" (2016)

Learning Social Rules Children and adults on the autism spectrum are concrete, literal thinkers. Ideas that can't be understood through logic or that involve emotions and social relationships are difficult for us to grasp, and even more difficult to incorporate into our daily lives. When I was in high school, figuring out the social rules was a major challenge. It was not easy to notice similarities in people's social actions and responses because they were often inconsistent from person to person and situation to situation. Over time, I observed that some rules could be broken with minor consequences and other rules, when broken, had serious consequences. It perplexed me that other kids seemed to know which rules they could bend and break and which rules must never be broken. They had a flexibility of thinking that I did not have. I knew I had to learn these rules if I wanted to function in social situations. If I had to learn them, they somehow had to be meaningful me, to make sense to me within my own way of thinking and viewing the world. I started observing others as would a scientist and discovered I could group the rules into an organizational format to which I could relate: into major and minor categories. By the time I was a senior in high school, I had a system for categorizing some of the social rules of life. I still use the same system today. I developed four rule categories: 1) Really Bad Things; 2) Courtesy Rules; 3) Illegal But Not Bad; and 4) Sins of the System. Really Bad Things I reasoned that in order to maintain a civilized society, there must be prohibitions against doing really bad things such as murder, arson, rape, stealing, looting, and injuring other people. If really bad things are not controlled, a civilized society where we have jobs, food in the stores, and electricity cannot exist. The prohibition against really bad things is universal in all civilized societies. Children need to be taught that cheating - in all forms, not just on tests - is bad. Learning to "play fair" will help a child grow into an adult who will not commit really bad things. The child can be taught the concept of playing fair with many specific examples. Courtesy Rules All civilized societies have courtesy rules, such as saying "please" and "thank you." These rules are important because they help prevent anger that can escalate into really bad things. Different societies have different courtesy rules, but they all serve the same function. In most countries, some common courtesy rules are: standing and waiting your turn in a line, good table manners, being neat and clean, giving up your seat on a bus to an elderly person, or raising your hand and waiting for the teacher to point to you before speaking in class. Illegal But Not Bad These rules can sometimes be broken depending upon the circumstance. Rules in this category vary greatly from one society to another and how an individual views these rules will be influenced by his or her own set of moral and personal beliefs. Be careful though: consequences for breaking some are minor; for others, there may be a fine. Included in this category is slight speeding in cars. One rule I often recommend breaking is the age requirement for attending a community college. I tell parents to sign up the child so he can escape being teased in high school. However, the parent must impress upon the child that this is a grown-up privilege and he must obey all the courtesy rules. An example of a rule that would not fall in this category would be running a red light. Doing this carries the possibility of injuring or killing someone, which is a Really Bad Thing. Sins of the System These are rules that must never be broken, although they may seem to have little or no basis in logic. They must simply be accepted within our country and our culture. For instance, a small sexual transgression that would result in your name being added to a sex-offender list in the U.S. may have little or no consequence in another country. In the U.S., the four major sins of the system are sexual transgressions, dru

"Mr. President, we've got something that Biegun and Azar need to run by you," Mulvaney said. Biegun opened with what he and the group thought would be a basic overview of the effort to bring home diplomats and permanent residents. as well as protections to ensure the evacuated Americans didn't spread the virus after returning. The president wanted to know how many people. Biegun estimated it would be several hundred right away, and eventually could be a couple of thousand. Trump exploded. "We're not letting them come back," he said. "You risk increasing my numbers. You won't increase my numbers." Trump didn't want sick Americans landing on U.S. soil, even if they were working for the State Department, or else the government would have to report a rise in infections, and that would make the public - the voters - nervous. The president was always thinking about the political ramifications for himself, even during a crisis. Biegun and Azar explained the measures under way to screen and isolate the passengers who had already landed in California. "The first flight was a mistake," Trump said. "Those people shouldn't have been in China in the first place." Azar and Mulvaney exchanged a look. The president was talking about Americans who had gone to China to serve the U.S. government as if they had irresponsibly or illegally crossed into a foreign country. Biegun compared their situation in Wuhan to a war zone. United States government employees deserved protection and services that could not reliably be provided to them in a city where the virus had overrun hospita1 wards and created a true emergency. "It would be like leaving a man on the field of battle," Biegun added. Azar urged the president to consider his mantra of placing America - and thus Americans - first. "This would be contrary to your brand of protecting Americans, Mr. President," he said. O'Brien walked into Mulvaney's office midconversation. Trump said he thought doing so amounted to a dangerous risk. But Biegun and Azar stuck to their guns. They appealed to Trump's media instincts, telling him it would look horrible not to bring Americans home when there was a relatively safe way to do so. Trump gradually eased back, and by the end of the call he described himself as supporting the flights. The president said there was no other choice. Then he hung up. In the coming weeks, Tramp would fully embrace the repatriation of Americans after hearing it first-person accounts of some of the early evacuees. "All right," Mulvaney said, turning to the group. "The president approved the flights." Azar warned Mulvaney he wasn't sure the president was entirely on board. After his painful e-cigarette experience with Trump, Azar wondered who the president would blame for this later down the road. "Mick, the president is not at rest on the issue," he said. Carol Leonnig "I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump's Catastrophic Final Year" (2021)

I have you on the hip (Shakespeare, Othelllo) Do you know, I don't think there's anybody, from Mozambique, to the cold gray harbor of Reykjavik who doesn't know the story of old Sticky Walberton, so, as everybody knows it, I want to tell you another story. This is about a wedding I went to. Now I don't normally like going to weddings. I went to my own. I think one has to. But I don't normally like it, but on this occasion I went with a friend of mine called Jimmy Edwards. You probably haven't heard the name. He's a kind of comedian, very inconspicuous, kind of gentle sort of chap. It was during the period when he was engaged, one of the periods when he was engaged He wanted me to go along with him because he wanted to see what happened at weddings. What's going to happen to him. And I went along. Now, I don't know if you're the same, but most of us have compulsions. I mean some people, for instance, at this sort of function are "us'ns" When people sing, "For he's a jolly good fellow, for he's a jolly good fellow," when it comes to "and so say all of us," they always go, "us us", "and so say all of us", "us us." You see? Well, they're "us'ns." Later on in these functions you have have the deen'ahs. When the wine has flowed a little and they sing Nellie Dean. When they sing Nellie Dean, he's the one that also sings, "Nellie Dean-ah" They're deeners. I'm a "hip-hip-hipper". At any function I can't be restrained from saying, "Three cheers for the bride. Hip hip hip." And the trouble is I HAVE to be restrained, because on the hooray I always spill my champagne over somebody. The only time I don't spill my champagne over somebody is when there isn't any champagne and I spill something else over somebody. So Jimmy Edwards said, "Now, I'm going to ask you to come to this wedding with me, but for heaven's sake, don't start raising cheers to the bride or you'll spill champagne over everybody and there'll be the most fearful mess. And I promised. And I went to the church with him and we sat through the service. Very nice it was too. The nice sentimental atmosphere of a wedding is like breathing golden syrup. When we got to point in the service where the bridegroom said, "With all my worldly goods I thee endow," Jimmy Edwards went white and had to be helped out of the church. And that's the last we saw of him. So I went on to the reception on my own without Jimmy's restraining influence. And they were jolly nice people, the bride and groom. The groom was an advertising chap, for Pericles Tires. I don't know if you know them. He was the one who did the slogan Perciles, the Prince of Tires. And she was a sort of artist, very artistic girl. She did very primitive things with damp globs of clay. And there they were, very happily married, and there was a photographer standing by and of course the old compulsion came over me. And I said, "Everybody, three cheers for the bride. Hip Hip Hip hooray." And on the "hooray," of course, as usual, I whisked up my glass of champagne. It caught in the fountain pen clip in the pocket of the bride's father and all down the bride's dress went the champagne. And the flashbulb went. And there was the photographer and he came over and said, "I've taken a very nice photograph of you." And I said, "Oh no. What's your name?" And he said, "My name is Sticky Wolberton, as a matter of fact. Why do you ask?" I said, "I just wanted to know, because, please destroy the photograph. Because on the hooray I went like this." And he said, "Oh, that's all right. I didn't take you on the hooray. I have you on the hip." Frank Muir 580616a

Ask Well I've heard there are microplastics in tea bags. Is that true? How can I stay safe and still enjoy my favorite beverage? Clothing, water bottles, takeout containers, cutting boards — it's challenging to keep up with the growing number of items that expose us to tiny plastic particles. Now some tea bags have joined the list. In a 2024 study, scientists found that brewing tea with a tea bag made from the plastic polypropylene released about 1.2 billion small pieces of plastic per milliliter of tea. "That's a fair amount," said Mark R. Wiesner, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Duke University. But experts said that while it's good to be cautious, there isn't enough evidence to ditch your favorite tea just yet. Tea bags are made from various types of material. Many are composed of paper (itself made from plant fibers like cellulose, wood and hemp) and flexible plastics (like nylon and polypropylene). Some tea bags are also made from a new kind of material called biodegradable plastics, like polylactic acid. Tea bags made from paper will theoretically shed fewer (or no) microplastics when compared with plastic versions, said Hailey E. Hampson, a postdoctoral fellow who studies microplastics at the University of Southern California and the University of Washington. But it's not always easy to figure out what your tea bag was made from. Of the 12 tea companies we contacted for this article, six responded: Bigelow, Lipton, Twinings, Yogi, Traditional Medicinals and Stash. They all said that their tea bags were free of microplastics, mainly because they were made from paper or other plant-based materials. However, even paper tea bags aren't guaranteed to be plastic-free, Dr. Hampson said. "There are lots of little hidden ways plastic can get into the tea bags," Dr. Hampson said. Microplastics can enter our blood and tissues from the food we eat and the air we breathe. "They're not just going through the digestive tract and being excreted," Dr. Hampson said. Scientists have found potential links between microplastic exposures and health conditions like inflammatory bowel disease, cardiovascular disease and cancer. But these studies have limitations. and it's unclear if the microplastics themselves caused these health effects, Dr. Hampson said. If you're concerned, experts offered several ways to reduce your exposure. CHOOSE THE RIGHT TEA Drinking loose-leaf tea is probably the best way to limit your exposure to microplastics. And while paper tea bags aren't guaranteed to be plastic free, Dr. Hampson said, they're probably a safer bet than plastic. CONSIDER A PRE-WASH There's some research suggesting that briefly soaking your tea bag in room temperature water, then discarding that water before brewing, can help reduce the microplastics in your tea, Dr. Hampson said. AVOID REHEATING YOUR TEA BAG If you do so with the tea bag still present, it could potentially release even more microplastics, Dr. Wiesner warned. If you need a warm-up, he suggested removing the tea bag first. TRY NOT TO SWEAT IT If worrying about microplastics in tea is causing stress, think about other, easier ways to reduce your exposure, Dr. Li said. You might replace plastic cutting boards with wooden ones, or plastic food storage containers with glass versions. "You shouldn't overworry about how many particles you're drinking," Dr. Li said, "especially if tea makes you happy" Caroline Hopkins Legaspi

"Mr. President, we've got something that Biegun and Azar need to run by you," Mulvaney said. Biegun opened with what he and the group thought would be a basic overview of the effort to bring home diplomats and permanent residents. as well as protections to ensure the evacuated Americans didn't spread the virus after returning. The president wanted to know how many people. Biegun estimated it would be several hundred right away, and eventually could be a couple of thousand. Trump exploded. "We're not letting them come back," he said. "You risk increasing my numbers. You won't increase my numbers." Trump didn't want sick Americans landing on U.S. soil, even if they were working for the State Department, or else the government would have to report a rise in infections, and that would make the public - the voters - nervous. The president was always thinking about the political ramifications for himself, even during a crisis. Biegun and Azar explained the measures under way to screen and isolate the passengers who had already landed in California. "The first flight was a mistake," Trump said. "Those people shouldn't have been in China in the first place." Azar and Mulvaney exchanged a look. The president was talking about Americans who had gone to China to serve the U.S. government. Carol Leonnig "I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump's Catastrophic Final Year" (2021)

JOURNALS Journal entry 1992: I went to a Chinese deli to buy water and when I walked out I had a very blissful moment, could almost call it a perfect moment. I watched a fast-blowing cloud break up and go through the most extreme colors of turquoise to magenta. I felt suddenly free and open and not in need. For me, the bubbles are often perfect moments that lift me out of my sadness and despair. I can't be creative without being self-destructive because I'm like Humpty Dumpty. There are two me's deeply built in. The smasher and the rebuilder. I am both Humpty and the king's men. I am both lost and found. Spalding Gray "Spalding Gray Stories Left To Tell" (2008)

The Comiskey-Johnson rift - which grew into a hatred that might have consumed the game - may have begun over nothing more than the simple fact that proximity often breeds irritation. The two men saw one another in their shared office in the Fisher Building on a daily basis for more than seven years. The camaraderie of the early years inevitably began to wane as the years passed, and each man tended to his separate interests. The origins of the falling-out are murky, and were perhaps murky even to the principals, but it seems to have started, as such feuds often do, with little things. [Ban] Johnson took umbrage at being the victim of some Woodland Bards pranksterism in the early days of the trip - some accounts put it in 1902, others in 1904, others as late as 1912. Johnson had had custom-made a new Parker shotgun and a natty suede hunting vest to go with it He was quite proud of each, showing them to one and all on the overnight train ride to the trailhead. His days as the group's worst hunter were over, he assured his friends. In the morning, while Johnson and most of the group were having breakfast at the train station, two of the Bards replaced the pellets in Johnson's shotgun shells with paper wadding. On the carriage ride through the forest, Johnson was given the prized spot, in the front seat next to the driver, so that he might test his new weapon upon the partridge that were sure to present themselves on the daylong ride to the cabin. In the target-rich environment, Johnson blasted away to no avail, to his great frustration and the increasing amusement of his fellow Bards, who laughed and teased and passed the flask. Now the one fundamental decorum of bird hunting is that the target must be taken on the wing, but Johnson, champion of fair play and the civil treatment of umpires in baseball, grew so exasperated that at one point he climbed down from the wagon, crept up on a sitting bird, and fired point-blank. The bird survived and flew off. Finally Johnson nailed a paper target to a tree, fired from a foot away, and realized hed been had. All of the Bards laughed, but Johnson blamed only Comiskey for his humiliation - "I can't believe Commy would do this to me," he said. He pouted uncharacteristically, and was a frosty companion for a couple of days before arranging to leave the forest early. Charles Fountain "The Betrayal: How the 1919 Black Sox Scandal Changed Baseball" (2016)

A three-year-old child would be labeled autistic if he or she lacked both social relatedness and speech or had abnormal speech. This diagnosis is also called classic Kanner's syndrome, after Leo Kanner, the physician who first described this form of autism, in 1943. These individuals usually learn to talk, but they remain very severely handicapped because of extremely rigid thinking, poor ability to generalize, and no common sense. Some of the Kanner people have want skills, such as calendar calculation. The savant group comprises about 10 percent of the children and adults who are diagnosed. A child with classic Kanner's syndrome has little or no flexibility of thinking or behavior. Charles Hart describes this rigidity in his autistic brother, Sumner, who had to be constantly coached by his mother. He had to be told each step of getting undressed and going to bed. Hart goes on to describe the behavior of his autistic son, Ted, during a birthday party when ice cream cones were served. The other children immediately began to lick them, but Ted just stared at his and appeared to be afraid of it. He didn't know what to do, because in the past he had eaten ice cream with a spoon. Another serious problem for people with Kanner's syndrome is lack of common sense. They can easily learn how to get on a bus to go to school, but have no idea what to do if something interrupts the routine. Any disruption of routine causes a panic attack, anxiety, or a flight response, unless the person is taught what to do when something goes wrong. Rigid thinking makes it difficult to teach people with Kanner-type autism the subtleties of socially appropriate behavior. For example, at an autism meeting, a young man with Kanner's syndrome walked up to every person and asked, "Where are your earrings?" Kanner autistics need to be told in a clear simple way what is appropriate and. inappropriate social behavior. Uta Frith, a researcher at the MRC Cognitive Development Unit in London, has found that some people with Kanner's syndrome are unable to imagine what another person is thinking. She developed a "theory of mind" test to determine the extent of the problem. For example, Joe, Dick, and a person with autism are sitting at a table. Joe places a candy bar in a box and shuts the lid. The telephone rings, and Dick leaves the room to answer the phone. While Dick is gone, Joe eats the candy bar and puts a pen in the box. The autistic person who is watching is asked, "What does Dick think is in the box?" Many people with autism will give the wrong answer and say "a pen." They are not able to figure out that Dick, who is now outside the room, thinks that the box still contains a candy bar. People with Asperger's syndrome, who tend to be far less handicapped than people with Kanner-type autism, can usually pass this test and generally perform better on tests of flexible problem-solving than Kanner's syndrome autistics. In fact, many Asperger individuals never get formally diagnosed, and they often hold jobs and live independently. Children with Asperger's syndrome have more normal speech development and much better cognitive skills than those with classic Kanner's. Another label for Asperger's syndrome is "high-functioning autism." One noticeable difference between Kanner's and Asperger's syndromes is that Asperger children are often clumsy The diagnosis of Asperger's is often confused with PDD, a label that is applied to children with mild symptoms which are not quite serious enough to call for one of the other labels. Children diagnosed as having disintegrative disorder start to develop normal speech and social behavior and then regress and lose their speech after age two. Many of them never regain their speech, and they have difficulty learning simple household chores. These individuals are also referred to as having lowfunctioning autism, and they require supervised living arrangements for their entire lives. Some children with disintegrative disorder improve and become high-functioning, but overall, children in this category are likely to remain low-

The Night Bullets Hit The White House The gunman parked his black Honda directly south of the White House, on a closed lane off Constitution Avenue. It was about ten minutes to nine on the evening of November 11, 2011. He pointed a semiautomatic rifle out the passenger window, aimed directly at the home of the president of the United States, and pulled the trigger. Then again, and again. A bullet smashed a window on the second floor, just steps from the First Family's formal living room. Another lodged in a window frame, and several more pinged off the roof, sending bits of debris to the ground. At least eight bullets flew seven hundred yards across the South Lawn. Seven of them struck the Obama family's upstairs residence. President Obama and his wife were out of town on that chilly evening. But their younger daughter, Sasha, and Michelle Obama's mother, Marian Robinson, were inside the home. Their older daughter, Malia, was expected back any moment from an outing with friends. Secret Service officers rushed to respond. One, stationed directly under the second-floor terrace where the bullets struck, drew her .357 handgun and prepared to crack open an emergency gun Carol Leonnig "Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service" (2021)