Traffic sucks , try swimming with the sharks 🦈 ☺️ hehe loved this one !!!
Whatcha gonna do, when Hulkamania runs wild on you!
Hulk Hogan
@MissAdventurous Watch the Twilight Zone episode "Time Enough At Last" (season 1 episode 8)
Hollywood has never made a love story better than this one.
He was a cowboy. She was a ballerina. Jack Omohundro grew up in a fine southern home in Palmyra, Virginia, and Giuseppina Morlacchi was born in Milan, Italy. His education was earned on horseback, hunting in the wilderness along the Rivanna River, and hers was at La Scuola di Ballo del Teatro Alla Scala (the La Scala Theatre Ballet School), the most prestigious classical ballet school in the world, where she endured marathon sessions from the age of five.
During the Civil War, he became a man, joining the Army of Northern Virginia and serving as a courier, cavalryman, and spy for General JEB Stuart. She traveled across Europe, playing some of the most demanding ballet roles for royal audiences in Paris, Lisboa, Berlin, and London.
After the war, he set out for Texas on a barge that overturned in the Gulf, stranding him for a time on the west coast of Florida, where he made a living as a rural school teacher. Her passage to America was expedited aboard the fastest boat that had ever crossed the Atlantic. He earned the name "Texas Jack," delivering a herd of cattle from the Lones Star State to drought-stricken and meat-starved Tennessee. The press fawned over her performances and dubbed her "The Peerless" Morlacchi, as no ballerina in the world could match her grace and beauty.
In 1869, he traveled north from Texas towards Nebraska, where he met a young Army scout named William F. Cody. They hunted together, drank together, chased Sioux warriors, and led aristocrats on buffalo hunts across the prairie. She started her own ballet troupe, making headlines in New York and New Orleans, Boston, and San Francisco, delighting critics and audiences everywhere she performed.
Newspapers carried stories about the adventures of "Texas Jack" and "Buffalo Bill." Back east, readers devoured dime novel stories of these brave scouts rescuing maidens from fierce braves and renegades. At the same time, newspapers reported on their real-life exploits, like Texas Jack leading the Pawnee tribe on a summer buffalo hunt or lassoing and capturing eight live bison for the Niagara Falls museum. As Morlacchi continued to enchant audiences everywhere she went, newspapers reported that her legs had been insured for the exorbitant sum of $100,000, over $1.5 million in today's dollars.
In December of 1872, she wrapped up a series of engagements in Chicago at Nixon’s Amphitheatre when she was approached to star in a new kind of play. We will never know why she agreed to act with untrained actors in an untried play with an untested manager. By all accounts, she didn't need the money. There was no time even to rehearse the show, as it was set to premiere just four days later, and her costars were busy capturing a pair of bears that had been released in Lincoln Park. Nevertheless, she took the part of Dove Eye, "the beautiful Indian maiden with an Italian accent and weakness for scouts."
By all accounts, the first show was a disaster. Morlacchi was a consummate professional and performed her part to perfection, but Texas Jack and Buffalo Bill, her costars, forgot every single one of their lines. The show was saved only by the fact that even though they were incredibly bad actors, Jack and Bill were handsome and rugged scouts of the first degree. The show's manager decided to work with Buffalo Bill personally and asked Morlacchi to instruct Texas Jack on the finer points of acting.
Buffalo Bill's wife Louisa wrote "Many a time I heard Texas Jack call a dance. Many a time, I saw him swing off his horse, tired and dusty from miles in the saddle, worn from days and nights without sleep when perhaps the lives of hundreds depended on his nerve, his skill with the rifle, his knowledge of the prairie." But she had never seen Texas Jack scared—had never seen him unsure until the moment when the brave cowboy was introduced to the beautiful ballerina. “Texas Jack put out his hand in a hesitating, wavering way," she wrote, and "His usually heavy bass voice cracked and broke. There were more difficulties than ever now, for Jack had fallen in love, at sight…And never did a pupil work harder than Texas Jack from that moment!”
When the tour ended, Jack returned to North Platte just long enough to hunt buffalo with his partner Buffalo Bill Cody and their good friend Wild Bill Hickok. Then he raced to Rochester, New York, where Morlacchi's ballet troupe was performing, and asked for her hand in marriage. They were married 150 years ago on August 31, 1873, at St. Mary's Roman Catholic Church in Rochester.
I wish I could tell you that they lived happily ever after, but Texas Jack's life was tragically cut short a month shy of his 34th birthday when he was stricken by pneumonia in the Rocky Mountain town of Leadville, Colorado. Morlacchi retired from performing and passed away of cancer just six years later. But the short time they shared together was filled with the kind of love and adventure that Hollywood wishes it could write.
Lola Montez (1821-1861), an Irish dancer, actress, and courtesan, was skillful with both pistol and rapier…She once challenged a journalist to meet her with pistols according to prevailing rules governing such meetings, and, upon his refusal to do so, thrashed him with a cowhide upon a public street:
“Sir— The extraordinary article concerning me, which appeared in your paper this morning, calls for an extraordinary reply. I use the word extraordinary, because I am astonished that a respectable Editor could lie with so much impudence, and could prove destitute of courtesy and gallantry. I am a woman, but I do not claim the privilege of the sex, and can take upon myself the chastisement of all Jack-a-napes. After so gross an insult, you must put on petticoats. I have some with me which I will give you for the occasion. We must fight. I leave you the choice of arms, because I am very magnanimous. You may choose between pistols, and pills, one of which shall be poisoned. I pray you to arrange the affair by your seconds as soon as possible, for my time is as precious as yours. - LOLA MONTES.” (Sacramento, July 8, 1853)
Montez was highly critical of the “Modern Women’s Rights Movement” and felt that rather than lobbying men to give them more rights, women should endeavor to become strong and powerful themselves:
“One or two hundred women getting together in a convention and resolving that they are an abused community, and that all the men are great tyrants and rascals, proves plainly enough that they the women are somehow discontented, and that they have, perhaps, a certain amount of courage, but I can not see that it proves them to have any remarkable strength of mind. Really strong-minded women are not women of words but of deeds, not of resolutions but of actions… The Amazons were regular woman’s rights women; for they made laws by which the women were enjoined to go to the wars, and the men were kept at home in a servile state, spinning wool and doing all manner of household work. No woman was allowed to marry till she had slain at least one enemy on the battlefield.”
“Let it be clearly understood that no man need hesitate to challenge me because I am a woman, or think he will be called on to show me any consideration for that reason. I grant no favors and I certainly ask none… I hope someone who desires to sustain the reputation of his sex will challenge me before I get to be an old woman and give the ‘new woman’ another chance to prove she is the superior of man.”
Ella Hattan (1859-190?), known as “Jaguarina,” was one of the greatest swordswomen of the nineteenth century, and perhaps of all time. As America’s champion fencer, and proficient in the use of the foil, broadsword, rapier, dagger, and Bowie knife, Hattan would defeat more than sixty men in high-profile combats on both horseback and on foot; more than half of whom were fencing masters. In 1903, she recalled:
"A woman always labors under a disadvantage in any athletic tournament. Being a woman, she has to do twice the work any ordinary man would have to do to prove ability. In my case the audiences always seemed to take it for granted that there was a certain amount of gallantry on the part of the man fencing against me, simply because he was not fencing with one of his own sex. If any point was in doubt and was finally allowed to me, the spectators were sure to say; 'Oh, he’s gallant, and has allowed her that point.' That was why I always put forward my utmost efforts to beat an opponent so hard, fast and decisively that there could be no possible doubt as to my superiority. Some of the scars I carry on my face, sword arm and body show conclusively how much chivalric consideration was shown me because I was a woman."
After retiring around 1907, Hattan completely disappeared from the public record. To this day, her ultimate fate remains a mystery.
The following extract from 1860 from author Henry M'Manus had a lot to say on the seal, an important animal in the life and folklore of Connemra.
'Seals are still common in their native haunts in Connemara. It is not easy to shoot them as they are remarkably quick at diving the moment a gun is levelled at them.
The most successful plan is to attack them at night in their haunts and kill them with clubs. On such occasion they sometimes show fight.
Once a seal seized in its mouth the stick of an assailant and flung it so high up on the cliff that it remained there inaccessible.
If they got the limb of the man between their teeth, they would never relax their hold until the bone is heard to crack.
When a seal is wounded, its cry resembles that of a human being.
Most readers have heard of the ingenious seal on the coast of Mayo which when attacked screams 'don't kill me, I am your grandfather.'
In Connemara too, seals are believed to be an animal under enchantment.
A party of fishermen were once plying their vocation at Killary and they took refuge in a sea-cave. One man, having fallen into a deep sleep, remained behind after the others had left.
To his surprise, he was awakened by the entrance to the cave of a number of seals. After some time, all assumed human shapes and cast their old skins aside and spoke as humans do.
After a while, they resumed their former shapes but the fisherman, having admired one of the females, seized her before her metamorphosis.
In vain she strove to get free but he held her fast and brought her home, carrying her skin and hiding it in the thatch.
They were married, had a family and lived happily together.
In the course of time, however, the thatch of the house took fire and the seal skin came into view. No sooner did she smell it burning than she seized it and became a seal once more, fleeing home to the sea.
Afterwards, she was often seen swimming near the shore and in keeping with maternal love she warned off any children who came too near.
According to another tradition in Connemara the tribe of Conneely, of which there are many to this day, are cast by their enemies as 'd'chineal na rointigh'
Perfer et obdura, dolor hic tibi proderit olim. It's a Latin phrase that means " be strong and tough, for one day this pain will be useful to you
^^^^^ A definitive yes. I think everyone does if they possess critical introspection.
No matter how long it lives, the Greatest Lion will eventually die miserably. That's the world.
At their Peak, they rule, chase other animals, catch, devour, gulp and leave their crumbs for hyenas. But age comes fast.
The old Lion can't hunt, can't kill or defend itself. It roams and roars until it runs out of luck. It will be cornered by the hyenas, nibbled at and eaten alive by them. They won't even let it die before it is dismembered.
Life is short. Power is ephemeral. Physical beauty is short-lived, I have seen it in lions. I have seen it in old people. Everyone who lives long enough will become weak and very vulnerable at some point.
Therefore, let us be humble. Help the sick, the weak, the vulnerable and most importantly never forget that we will leave the stage one day
(Author unknown)
@lonelytauros I think Simba said that but Disney cut it because Disney doesn’t do realism.
My work is loving the world. Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird — equal seekers of sweetness. Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums. Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.
Are my boots old? Is my coat torn? Am I no longer young and still not half-perfect? Let me keep my mind on what matters, which is my work,
which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished. The phoebe, the delphinium. The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture. Which is mostly rejoicing, since all ingredients are here,
which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart and these body-clothes, a mouth with which to give shouts of joy to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam, telling them all, over and over, how it is that we live forever. ~Mary Oliver
(Art: Photograph by Édouard Boubat)
The year was 1982:
It was the year that Canada obtained full and complete sovereignty, Britain went to war with Argentina over the Falkland Islands, Italy won the World Cup, Henry VIII’s flagship the Mary Rose was raised in the Solent after 437 years on the seabed and the first CD player was sold in Japan.
At the cinema, we became acquainted with ET, Tootsie, Conan the Barbarian, The Thing, Gandhi and Blade Runner.
Asia released their incredible self-titled debut, Duran Duran introduced us to Rio, Simple Minds had a New Gold Dream, Iron Maiden revealed the Number of The Beast and Thriller, the biggest selling album of all time was unleashed.
And of course, it was that year that saw the release of Rush’s ninth studio album, Signals.
It’s 43 minutes and 12 seconds of audio perfection and it’s a sonic time machine that immediately whisks me back to being an analog kid who dreamed of that fawn-eyed girl with sun-browned legs.
Danforth & Pape
Honestly “Life isn’t based of sympathy”
Fall in love with some activity, and do it! Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn't matter. Explore the world. Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough. Work as hard and as much as you want to on the things you like to do the best. Don't think about what you want to be, but what you want to do. Keep up some kind of a minimum with other things so that society doesn't stop you from doing anything at all. ~Richard Feynman