An Occasional Story or Magazine

Bumbastories Semi-Annual June Magazine

Welcome to June, the sixth month. Although Bumba has grown lax and indolent, he nonetheless feels obliged to celebrate the perfect number six because, well, it’s a “perfect number”

The ancient Greeks regarded all numbers as holy, but the six was praised above all others . Its factors: 3, 2, and 1, when summed, add up to 6. How’s them apples?

According to the Bible, God created the world in six days – which, as the Jewish sage Maimonodes pointed out, indicates that the holiness of six preceded the existence of God. Pretty holy in my book. Furthermore, there are six colors in the color wheel and six strings on a guitar. Six is the atomic number of carbon, the basis of life on earth – unless, of course, you’re “six feet under”. There’s the six-shooter, the six-pack, six degrees of separation, The Moon and Sixpence, and the Six Flags Amusement park. You can get your kicks on Rte 66 and gas up at Phillips 66. And there’s always a light on for you at Motel 6.

Six was the uniform number for the great Bill Russell, arguably the greatest basketball player ever, also Dr. Julius Erving, arguably the most exciting. Baseball’s Al Kaline of the Detroit Tigers, and Stan the Man Musial of the St. Louis Cardinals wore the number six. The best reserve player on a five-person basketball team is called the sixth man. The Clippers’ Jamal Crawford won the “Sixth Man of the Year Award” three times (that’s half of six). The Cippers’ Lou Williams also won the Sixth Man of the Year Trophy three times. We at Bumbastories still love Jamal and Lou Williams, and we love the six. Someone complained to me the other day. They said to me: “For goodness sakes, Bumba. Six, six, six! That’s all you ever talk about! What are you, some kind of six maniac? …

Guilty as charged.

The six sided figure is the hexagon, a favorite shape for bees and people alike. Bees also like fives and anything symmetrical, but most any bee will wax (sorry) nostalgic and tell you that hexagons are wonderfully stable shapes, and make a honey (not sorry anymore) of an apartment complex.

Six tesselates so easily. Six conveys completeness and order. The Star of David has six points. And while we’re talking religion, did I mention the six pack?

Escher, inspired by the tesselations at the Alhambra palace in Grenada, often used hexagons to plot his magnificent drawings.

The radius of a circle circumscribes exactly six times in a circle! Try it: take a compass, draw a circle, and then start marking off lengths of that radius along the circumference. It fits exactly six times! Why this should be so is a mystery. Mathematics has a number of these fortuitous sorts of”coincidences”.

And, as Yogi Berra said: “There’s too many coincidences for it to be a coincidence.”

So, I suppose it’s no coincidence that we like the six so much.

Happy sixth month of the year,

Happy June!

Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain

Maybank hasn’t been around much, but we did get to play last week. Used to be, I could record our sessions and use material from it to post on the blog. Not this time. We were terrible.

We did do Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain pretty nice, tho.

It certainly is a wonderful song. Willie Nelson does it so well that I thought he wrote it. But no, it was written back in 1946 by a songwriter named Fred Rose. Roy Acuff recorded it first. Hank Williams also did it. Legend has it that Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain was the last song that Elvis ever sang on this earth. What a song! Check out Willie Nelson’s version.

Bumbastories Magazine Salutes the 99 Cents Store: A Final Chapter in the Saga

Yes, it’s true. Sad, but true. The ‘99 cents only’ grocery chain is closing. Bumba, along with thousands of Los Angeles bargain shoppers are heartbroken. However, you could see it coming for a while now. The shelves weren’t always fully stocked. There were fewer customers. The 99 cent stores, already a bit shabby, were even shabbier. You could see the end coming. Still it’s a tough loss, a punch to the chin of Angeleno consumers. The 99 cents only store was a beacon of light for us.

George Packard, roving reporter for Bumbastories, ambled over to the 99 cents store this morning to see if he could achieve some journalistic scoop, a breaking news story. The sign outside announced a clearance sale.

Alas, there was no news story, no scoops to be found. The shelves were nearly empty. No bargains, either. They were only taking 10 % off. Like I say, it was sad.

A parting photo of the first 99 cents store on Fairfax and Sixth — The first ‘99 cents only’ store on Fairfax and Sixth Street

Bumbastories has been reporting faithfully and glowingly on the 99 cents only store for years.

Here’s a re-post from an old Bumbastories Magazine from 2015:

CONSUMER CORNER

Here’s to the bargain hunter’s paradise: the 99 cents store, nothing over 99 cents. Mostly job lots, but also very decent merchandise – often the same products they have in the supermarket but at half, sometimes a third of the price. In terms of consumer awareness, the 99 cent stores have been highly educational. We shoppers didn’t realize just how badly we were being ripped off.

The first 99 cents store, which is located in Los Angeles on 6th St. just around the corner from the one pictured below, opened in 1982. Dave Gold, a retailer who lived in the neighborhood, founded the store and quickly built the 99 cent store into a huge corporation, which went public in the nineties and which sold in 2011, after Dave’s death, for $1.5 billion.

Hats off to the 99 cents only store, a venerable and venerated Los Angeles institution. To our great sorrow and disappointment, the 99 cents store now sells things for over a dollar. The packages are also smaller than they used to be. But generally they try to stick to the 99 cents standard.

The stores are perhaps a bit more hectic than most. It’s not a store for the upper classes or for the creme de la creme of LA society, which is fine with me. But overall, like I said, every one I know likes the 99 cents store. And everybody has their favorite 99 cents items. For me it’s the pretzels, the LED flashlights, also the dollar watermelons, the cookies, the toothpaste (and you’ll need the toothpaste after those cookies) …….All items that cost double at the pharmacy or super.

So a hearty 99 thanks to the 99 cents store.

So reported Bumbastories in 2015. Today the final chapter of the 99 cents store is being written. The 99 cents only store will remain forever in our hearts.

Fourth Bumbastories April Magazine:

Welcome again to the month of April.

News flash: Peace declared in Middle East! Trump convicted!….

April Fool’s. Ha Ha.

As they used to say in England back in the 14th century……

“When that Aprille with his shoures soote

The droghe of March hath perced to the roote,

And bathed every veyne in swich liccur

Of which vertu has engendered is the flour…….” Etc, etc.

Happy April. Happy Spring. And since April is the fourth month of the calendar year, Bumbastories continues its march through the numbers. What for? you ask. Or was that “What four?”….

Well, we like numbers. We do. We’re fortunate to have the four. Thank goodness we have the four corners of the universe, the four winds, the four Marx brothers (OK, it was five with Gummo), the four horsemen, the four musketeers, and the George Foreman grill. Then there’s the four-bagger, the home run. And don’t pass over the four questions of Pesach, the four seasons, and the Four Tops. One- two – three – four. Hurray for the four! Hurray four tesselations. Have a pleasant walk down the quadri-symmetrical sidewalk in the photo gallery.

There are a million applications of the four. Think of all the quadripeds, our four-legged friends: all those doggies, and horses, lions, sun-bathing lizards. Think of all those herds of zebra standing around on four legs thinking about the fourth dimension.

Four, which is 2 squared, luckily manifests itself in space. Think of all those squares and rectangles! The square makes for easy tesselations, as you can see.

So we’re fourtunate to have the four. And fortunate that it’s spring, a new year upon us. Happy Spring!

Tri-Centennial March Magazine

03/01/24
Happy March! Happy Third Month of the Gregorian Calendar!

Hurray for the Three! The Triad! The Triangle! The Holy Trinity! The Three Graces…….

To get spiritual about it:

The Two (the number two, the concept of duality) splits unity (the One) into our world of opposites: life and death, present or absent, matter and energy, up and down, back and forth, figure/ground, yin and yang, Etc and etc

When you connect two points you have a line: One dimension. Connect three points you have a plane. Two dimensions. Now we’re getting somewhere. Well, it was plane to see. So three points make a plane, and there’s interplay between three points, three forces or vectors.

The intersection of two circles –the vesica picsis – generates the equilateral triangle. The three is created by the intersection of the two. Thus we obtain the triangle! We were introduced to the triangle in geometry class. Remember? Congruent triangles, similar triangles, isoscoles, and right angle ones? The triangle is the cornerstone of trigonometry – and the main character in Euclid’s plane geometry – which has provided scientists and the rest of us with the template for logic – a system where you need to prove things before you think they’re true .

Once again, hurray for the triangle! Hurray for its strength of structure!

More on the three: We grow up listening to stories about the Three. The Three Bears, The Three Little Pigs. Three wishes! As adults we encounter the Three Musketeers, Three Coins in the Fountain, Three Days of the Condor, Three Dog Night, the Three Stooges, and the Tri-State area. In basketball there’s Phil Jackson’s triangle offense and the Triple Double (which sounds like an oxymoron). Baseball has the triple play (it’s a treat to see one. I saw one once at Dodger Stadium). Baseball has three bases to touch or tag (the fourth base is called Home), and three strikes (and you’re out!). Hey, baseball season is fast upon us. It’s spring season! It’s spring, the time of rebirth, the time to plant seeds, the time of renewal and new beginnings.

Here’s a song that doesn’t mention the three, but it’s in 3/4 time, which is the best I could do. Sing along! Admittedly, I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry is one of Hank Williams’ saddest ones. But one his most beautiful ones too. And one plus two is three, so I’m out of here.

February Magazine

Hey, it’s February already.

February is a short month, a consequence of fitting 12 months into 365 days. Somebody, one of the months, had to draw the short stick, and it was February. However, we must be thankful because this year is a leap year and we get 29 days this February. Hurray!

Naturally, with February being the second month, Bumbastories feels obliged to return to a consideration of the numeral 2. A second look as it were. Our March Through the Numbers continues!

The two – the dos, the deux – is the first real number, because one can’t be considered a regular number. After all, One is unity. One encompasses all the numbers, the One is everything, it’s not a true number. But when you get to the two, hey, now you’re starting to count.

Our world, the world of opposites, comes into being with this division: heaven and earth, good and evil, life and death, present and absent, holy and secular, male and female, up and down, true and false, etc. and etc.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

Life as we know it began when the first organism split in two. This fundamental process of mitosis has put us in good stead. The cells of our body are reproducing all the time. These things go on whether you know it or not, which is quite a relief. Imagine if you had to sign off on several million mitosises every day.

Two is the first prime number! It is also the first even number! In fact the two generates all the odds and evens. Numbers are either 2n or 2n +1.

The symmetry of the two, bilateral symmetry, is basic to all vertebrates and arthropods, even worms. That’s to say all us more “advanced” animals. Let’s face it: we bilaterals have a definite edge when it comes to getting around. Unlike the clams, oysters,sponges and jellyfish, we have a left and a right. Bilateral symmetry also forces you to think about a front and a back. We humans with our big brains can even get to conceptualize things like “going forward” and “making progress” in our “lives”. Generally it’s considered a good thing to be moving forward. Presumably a jellyfish would have a different point of view.

The yin and yang, the dialectic, the class struggle, the dynamism of the two is how the world operates, and how we see things as happening. Instinctually, we discriminate between figure and ground. When you come down to it, things are either there, or they ain’t. Two is how it is, my friend.

It takes two to tango. The dance, the interplay – and I’m trying to keep this clean – of the sexes, is the greatest game in town. Meiosis and sexual reproduction has accelerated the pace of evolution, which some may regret, but that’s how it is. The Good Lord put two of every animal on Noah’s ark. The ark, by the way used port and starboard, fore and aft, and also used a lot of mops and pails.

So many things come in pairs. How many can you think of? Personally, I can think of franks and beans, corned beef and cabbage, wine and roses, and burgers and fries. Not to mention peanut butter and jelly. In baseball 2nd base is right there in the middle, and a double is a very good hit.

There's nothing like going for a double! Except going for a triple, but that's already the next number!

As for the two in our language, there are just too many twos to mention. And please, don’t mention the ballerina’s tutu.

Before we get sentimental about the two, let’s remember that to “speak with a forked tongue” is not a cool thing. Neither are “snake eyes”, second-in-command, or Bi-Polar disorder. To quote Joe E. Brown at the end of Some Like It Hot, “Well, nobody’s perfect”. Neither is the two. It is also incumbent upon me to remind you that “number two” is the well-known toilet euphemism for poop. Well, I won’t waste any more of your time. Except to remind you that 2 is the atomic number of helium, and that Hank Williams said “If you loved me half as much as I love you, you wouldn’t worry me half as much as you do….”Click to twice to hear

Leadbelly

Together with Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly (who purportedly carried a few souvenir bullets in his belly, but whose real name was Hudie Ledbetter) is considered a founding father of the American folk music movement. Pete Seeger lionized Leadbelly. In the 1930’s Leadbelly introduced traditional blues to the north, to a broader, whiter audience. A charismatic performer, Leadbelly not only played the blues on a booming 12 string guitar, he also sang all the popular tunes of his era, as well as a cornocopia of traditional folk music and slave songs.

The “king of the 12-string guitar” was born in Shreveport, Louisiana in the year of 1888. By age 12 he was playing “professionally” in the Shreveport red light district. By age 20 he had already served several terms in the Louisiana prison system. Legend has it that the folklorists John and Alan Lomax recorded Leadbelly in prison, and attached a phonograph record of Leadbelly’s Irene Goodnight to his parole petition – which indeed was granted in 1934 by Louisiana governor Oscar K. Allen. Such is the legend for what it’s worth.

Certainly, Leadbelly’s powerful voice and 12 string guitar style had an impact on the folk music movement. As I say, his repertoire included ragtime, traditional folk songs, and the pop music of his time. He penned, or is credited with writing such folk favorites as Midnight Special, Pick a Bale of Cotton, Rock Island Line, Irene Goodnight, and a host of other spirituals and blues songs. Thanks to the above-mentioned Lomaxes, many of Leadbelly’s recordings are preserved in the Library of Congress. Click below to hear two Leadbelly songs, the first of which, Pick a Bale of Cotton, was recorded only last week by me and Maybank somewhere outside the Louisiana prison walls (fortunately), and which is not to be found in the Library of Congress (also fortunately).

Pick a Bale of Cotton

Midnight Special is always a good song to play. I think a lot of people think that John Fogerty wrote this song, but it was Leadbelly. Here’s Midnight Special.

Midnight Special

And here’s Irene Goodnight by me and Maybank

Special Report from George Packard

Special Report from George Packard, roving reporter for Bumbastories.

Although the rough, colder weather had constained George’s usual journalistic routine of ….well, just bicycling around, usually to the beach, in search of breaking news stories, he had nonetheless continued his quest tireless, or rather tireless quest, and taken to simply walking the streets of Los Angeles. Again, in search of a breaking news story.

Yesterday he was treated to an LA rarity: a sunshower accompanied by a bold clear rainbow, nay double rainbow, for the good part of an hour.

As George walked on, he calculated that the pot of gold must be there a couple of blocks past Fairfax.

Of course, the report about the rainbow yesterday is not news by now and certainly not breaking. However, George felt obliged to at least make report about something nice.

On Vocational Choices

“Roll in My Sweet Baby’s Arms”

This traditional American folk song says it all for me.

To “roll in my sweet baby’s arms” is undeniably quite an admirable pasttime and a fine ambition in life in my opinion. Likewise “laying around the shack ’til the mailtrain gets back”. What ambition. What lyrics!

Regarding employment: “I ain’t gonna work for no railroad, ain’t gonna work on no farm” pretty much sizes up and I’d say encapsulates my own, personal attitude and feelings toward questions of vocation.

Keep singin’ that country music!

Another November Magazine

We live in troubled times, terrible times. I’m an old guy and I can’t remember the political outlook ever being so grim, so difficult, so daunting, so “challenging” if you like. These are hard times: a new age of cellular dystopia. People lost. On the phone. Downloading. Democracy threatened all over the world. Disinformation, misinformation. The earth continuing to heat up like a runaway train. Weather catastrophes increasing. Now a war in Israel. Suddenly we are back to 1948.

The cold war, or perhaps a neo-version of it.

””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””

It’s depressing, but we’re going to continue our March through the Numbers nonetheless. Perhaps the numbers will provide some relief. I hope so.

In any case, November is definitely the eleventh month……

ELEVEN

Eleven,Onze. A fine number. A prime! Composed of two skinny numerals, two 1’s. Mathematically, the eleven is not particulary interesting, it’s not useful in constructing things. Nothing in nature uses eleven-fold symmetry if I’m not mistaken. But we humans harbour a certain liking for the eleven. We do. We like the eleven. Eleven connotes a certain solidity, a feeling of dominance, or power. Eleven, which is derived in English from “one lef” or “one left over after the ten” appears surprisingly frequently in our languages and in our various cultures. The 7-11 convenience store network comes to mind. And I wish it didn’t.

The Statue of Liberty stands on Bedloe Island in N.Y harbor on what was originally an eleven-pointed island (It has eroded a bit at the corners). What a beautiful symbol. Long may she stand on her eleven-sided island!

The Canadian dollar coin and the Indian two-rupee coin are eleven sided.

Football is played with 11 men. Likewise cricket. Did I mention the 7-11 convenience store? I have to go there later. There’s the 11 O’Clock News, Apollo 11, and Remembrance Day, Poppy Day, and Veterans’ Day – which are commemorated on 11/11, because World War I ended on the eleventh hour on the eleventh day of the eleventh month back in 1918. May the memory of those millions who died in WWI be blessed. Looking back at history, we can see that WWI was avoidable. All those millions of soldiers didn’t have to die. May all the fallen soldiers from all the wars rest in peace. And let us always strive to avoid wars and to seek peace.

Happy November, and long live Democracy! Vote!