I post a weekly diary of historical notes, arts & science items, foreign news (often receiving little notice in the US) and whimsical pieces from the outside world that I often feature in "Cheers & Jeers".

OK, you've been warned - here is this week's tomfoolery material that I posted.

CHEERS to Bill and Michael in PWM, our Laramie, Wyoming-based friend Irish Patti and ...... well, each of you at Cheers and Jeers. Have a fabulous weekend .... and week ahead.

ART NOTES — the final resting place of Tutankhamun: Treasures of the Golden Pharoah will be at t he new Grand Egyptian Museum — just outside of Cairo on the Giza Plateau (and next door to the Great Pyramids) — when this museum opens with an expected date of this November.

YOUR WEEKEND READ #1 is this lengthy yet lively wrap-up of the career of Boris Johnson by The Guardian’s nonpareil analyst Jonathan Freedland. And #2 is his follow-up, noting that Boris … “is a Remainer, after all”.

HAIL and FAREWELL to the actor Larry Storch who has died exactly six months short of his 100th birthday. While he’ll be best remembered for his roles in the films The Great Race, Airport 1975 and of course as Corporal Agarn on the sitcom F Troop … my fondest memory will be his role on the 1968 Get Smart episode as The Groovy Guru …...

… whose “hottest rock band in the country” known as The Sacred Cows are trying to take-over-the-world(!) with their music (my profile is at this link).

THURSDAY's CHILD is named Dylan the Cat — an English kitteh who helps a university mentor counsel students with anxiety, autism and ADHD — and he is a finalist for the UK’s National Cat Awards (Cat Colleagues category) in August.

YOUR WEEKEND READ #3 is this interview in Der Spiegel with the prime minister of Latvia, Krišjānis Kariņš — who, interestingly, was born in Wilmington, Delaware (as his parents fled the Soviets) — saying that Putin's war means there is no longer a middle path for Eastern Europe. “Either countries join the EU … or they become part of the Russian empire”.

FRIDAY's CHILD is a Washington state kitteh who was rescued from a three-inch PVC pipe by the local fire department (and is recuperating well).

BRAIN TEASER — try this Quiz of the Week's News from the BBC ...… and the usually easier, less UK-centered New York Times quiz.

SON-FATHER? — former SNL cast member Pete Davidson and (as a younger man) the former Two and a Half Men co-star Jon Cryer.

...... and finally, for a song of the week ...........................… two Brazilian acoustic guitarists of the 20th Century who were present-at-the-creation of the Bossa Nova movement yet are not as well-known as either Laurindo Almeida or Gilberto Gil are  … Bola Sete and Baden Powell … who deserve at least some mini-profiles. Of different ages (Bola Sete born fourteen years before Baden Powell) they shared several traits. Both were Black musicians born in Rio de Janeiro, both played a variety of musical styles (classical, mambo, samba, jazz and the Great American Songbook), had several common guitar influences (Django Reinhardt, Les Paul and Barney Kessel) and both died at the age of sixty-three. One difference: while Bola Sete settled in the Bay Area and lived-out his life there, Baden Powell settled in Europe for two decades before returning home later in life.

Born as Djalma de Andrade in 1923, Bola Sete took his name from the Portuguese word for 7-ball in the game of Snooker (what the 8-ball is in billiards) and in the 1950’s was touring throughout South America when the manager of the Sheraton Hotel chain noticed him. He offered him work performing throughout North America at the hotel properties. He performed at the 1962 historic Bossa Nova Festival at Carnegie Hall and while in San Francisco:  was noticed by trumpet great Dizzy Gillespie, who brought him on tour. Later, he joined the trio of pianist Vince Guaraldi (the creator of the music for the Peanuts television series) and released several albums with them.

Forming his own new band, he appeared at the Monterey Jazz Festival as well as the Fillmore in San Francisco before taking a sabbatical. Later, he was befriended by the roots music guitarist/musicologist and record label owner John Fahey, achieving some later re-discovery before his death from lung cancer in February, 1987.   

Here is a solo number he performed (while appearing with the Guaraldi Trio) on the San Francisco PBS television music show hosted by Ralph Gleason (who co-founded Rolling Stone just a few years later).

Born as Roberto Baden Powell de Aquino in 1937 (named by his father after the British founder of the Boy Scouts), he studied at the conservatory in São Paulo and focused on classical guitar in his youth. Eventually he began performing in Rio nightclubs (combining samba with traditional Afro-Bahian rhythms) and was a key performer at the dawn of Bossa Nova movement in the US and Europe in the early 1960’s. He relocated to France in 1968, and while he toured in the US: he did not achieve as much fame in the US as Bola Sete did.

Another reason was that he suffered from health problems (diabetes and alcoholism, with his manager blaming “A friend named Johnnie Walker")  and was in semi-retirement during much of the 1980’s. He recuperated, then returned to Brazil, where he regained the fame of his youth. He died in 2000 from bacterial pneumonia.

Perhaps his most famous tune is Samba Triste — covered by Stan Getz and other American guitarists during the Bossa Nova era of the early 1960’s.