PicoBlog

I have a rather eclectic assortment of podcasts on my iPhone. To keep track of politics in the US I have Rachel, Nicole, and NPR Politics. To maintain my financial literacy I listen to Planet Money. Because we all need smut and gossip, I listen to Even the Rich. And because I slept through history class, I enjoy This Week in History. So today, let me take you to my version of this week in Portuguese history.

One of my go-to cocktails at my favorite Brooklyn local, The Long Island Bar, located just up the block from my apartment, is their house take on the classic Boulevardier, the traditionally equal-parts blend of whiskey, Campari, and sweet vermouth. Created by the bar’s co-owner Toby Cecchinifor the opening menu in 2013, the LIB Boulevardier quickly became one of the bar’s signature drinks and has remained on the menu ever since.

Downloading a game from Google or Apple’s app stores is a potential minefield every single time. There’s a game for every conceivable topic, from mermaids to puppies, and so many claim they’re “free.” Many of those “free” games, however, are engineered to extract money from unsuspecting parents and ignorant children, between exploitative microtransactions and frustrating ads. But there are a few companies you can trust to deliver a pleasant experience for both the parent and the child, and that’s when you see the Toca Boca logo.

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Prince Rogers Nelson was born on June 7, 1958 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. A transcend star with immense musical gifts, an eccentric vision, and charisma, his impact on pop culture endures. In July his greatest pop culture moment, the film and album ‘Purple Rain,’ will be forty years old. This is a throwback column to interactions with him when I was a music time musical journalist and he was building his legend.

The issue of supplying cluster munitions reared its ugly head recently amid the White House’s decision to send the bombs as part of its next $800 million defense package to Ukraine. (Both Russia and Ukraine already deployed the horrific munitions ever since Moscow’s invasion last year.) Such weapons, outlawed by most of the world, including America’s closest allies, come with significant failure-to-detonate rates and claim the lives and limbs of mostly children long after the dust on a battleground has settled – hence my staunch opposition to the delivery as an American taxpayer now funding war long after the war has ended.

Hughes Mearns (1875–1965) was a bad guy. Oh, not in any strict sense of bad behavior. Just someone who lived a long happy life and left a baleful legacy. A theorist of American education, he was a Harvard undergraduate who went on to direct education programs in Pennsylvania and Columbia University. A passionate extender of the theories of John Dewey, Mearns was a dynamic figure, just filled with bubbly ideas about how to educate children in the modern age.

In 1868, in the Riverside Magazine for Young People, Elizabeth Prentiss (1818–1878) published a poem called “Mr. Nobody” — a light-verse tale of family members all denying responsibility for the mishaps that plague the household: every plate we break was cracked / By Mr. Nobody. Unfortunately, the magazine left her name off the page with the poem (though “E. Prentiss” is listed in the magazine’s index). The next year, Prentiss would put the poem in one of her books, with a character reciting the comic verses in Little Lou’s Sayings and Doings, an 1869 collection of linked prose stories, but the damage was done.

October 16 (in 2007) marks the death of the incredible musician Todor "Toše" Proeski who was killed in a car accident after a much-too-short career.  Proeski was a Balkan star, referred to as an “Elvis,” a great singer, quite the linguist (he sang in many languages, including English.  He was Macedonian, and he spoke Aromaian, one of the Romance languages, (influenced by Greek and surrounded by Slavic languages).  Proeski, born in 1981, sang in several different languages, and he helped others.