Light Reading for Labour Day

 Or "Labor" Day if you are from farther south and prefer shorter spellings. It is a nice day here in London, but before I go out to enjoy it, here are a couple of short items in case it is not nice where you are. 

Curious About the Curtis Cup? 
   It is highly likely that you missed this sporting event since there are many others at this time of year and you probably aren't interested in golf anyway. The Curtis Cup is for girls, what the Walker Cup is for guys. That is, they are golf events where the best amateur players from the U.S. compete against those from Great Britain and Ireland. This year, the GB&I team defeated the Americans at Sunningdale in England. 
   About the Cups, you can easily learn more by reading the sporting news from last weekend or consulting Wikipedia. I was curious, however, about the composition of the GB&I team and was willing to wager that most of the players on it had been playing their golf in the country which they defeated. My hunch was correct.
   If you don't watch much golf you may not know that golfers with the most exotic of names mostly seem to have attended universities located in the sunnier areas of the United States (I am speaking here about White players with foreign-looking names, not Black ones with unusual ones.) One assumes that foreign golfers don't have to take the usual tests required, because they are clearly smart enough to realize that getting a free, expensive university education while playing golf in a warn place is a good deal.
   Eight of the players on the GB&I team are listed below, along with the universities they attended. Only one went to a British university and, unsurprisingly it is one of the few in that country that offers financial support. I did not check the universities of the American players, but assume that most did not go abroad. 
   Here are the players. To make it a bit more challenging, I have provided the names of the teams, not the universities. For example, one of the Rhodes sisters, Euphemie, became a Deacon, while Patience became a Sun Devil. 

Lottie Woad - Seminole

Sara Byrne - Hurricane

Aine Donegan - Tiger

Hannah Darling - Gamecock

Beth Coulter - Sun Devil

Patience Rhodes - Sun Devil

Euphemie Rhodes - Deacon

Lorna McClymont - University of Sterling

*** Speaking of unusual names, Asterisk Talley beat Lottie Woad in the last match. She is 15. 

Al Pacino and Me
   There is a chance that you are more interested in Al than me, so that is Al pictured above. It is that picture that led to this post. It was noticed in a recent issue of the New Yorker which offers a portion of Pacino's new biography ("An Exclusive Excerpt From Al Pacino's Memoir, Sunny Boy: Personal History, Early Scenes," August 26, 2024. 

   Given that you are not interested in me, I will point out that I am dressed as Hopalong Cassidy in the picture above and he is marginally more interesting. I think I received the costume from an aunt and there was plenty of Hoppy memorabilia available for purchase. 

  Although Al was from the very urban South Bronx in New York and I was from the more rural Eastern Shore of Maryland, you may have noticed that we were both armed. Those were different times.

  If it was not such a nice day, I would go on about kids and guns and whether children should now be allowed to pretend and play with them - even Nerf guns or water pistols. Instead, read up about old "Hoppy" or wait a bit for Pacino's book.

  That is my picture, as I am now. Since not much of interest has been presented, here are a couple of tidbits you can read without much labour. 
  Pacino is older than I am, but he is much more active. At the age of 83, he just produced another child. Perhaps he is just trying to stay ahead of his old pal De Niro who had one at 79.  Pacino's partner, by the way, is more than 50 years younger than he is and he has other children, but has had no wives.
  He also has a better memory than I, since he recalls events that happened when he was four.