“I wanted this girl bad,” Travolta told Merv Griffin on TV in 1981. “The perfect Sandy, the ultimate Sandy, would be Olivia Newton-John.”

But the 28-year old Australian singer was skeptical about playing a high school student.

“I couldn’t do an American accent, and I was too old,” she told the Today show in 2019. “And I had all these reasons why I couldn’t do it. We did a screen test. The chemistry was there. It worked and when John came to see me at my house — how could you say no to John Travolta?”

No one, it seemed, could say no to Grease. The soundtrack was wildly successful. A duet with Travolta ended up as a best-selling single.

Read it all.

Olivia Newton-John, one of the biggest pop stars in the 1970s and early 1980s, has died at the age of 73.https://t.co/MPlvcC6Lbi

— NPR (@NPR) August 8, 2022

The Global South Christians still hold to the old-time religion.

Christians in the West have so imbibed secular values and swallowed them whole that they have brainwashed themselves into believing that secular values are Christianity.

They are not.

So what will happen? There is much talk of ‘agreeing to differ’ and ‘two integrities.’ But agreeing to differ is a meaningless term:for to differ is to disagree. And ‘two
integrities’ is a similar absurdity: for integrity means the unity of a single body.

It is fairly obvious to see what the outcome will be when the Lambeth talking shop is over and done with: the Christians will return to Africa and the secularised post-Christian churches in the West will get back to their being…well, secularised post-Christian churches, the transitioning clinics and net-zero.

Read it all (subscription) from the Church of England newspaper, August 5, 2022, page 7.

His biographies of two underappreciated presidents, John Adams and Harry S. Truman, shone a light on their achievements and earned him two Pulitzer Prizes.

When he turned his attention to the great forces and figures in American history, such as the American Revolution (“1776”) or President Theodore Roosevelt (“Mornings on Horseback”), he brought to life the grand sweep of time and place, as well as the colorful, minute historical details that characterized his widely lauded storytelling skills.

With his sonorous and somber voice, commanding presence and shock of white hair, Mr. McCullough appeared frequently on television series such as PBS’s “American Experience.” He often collaborated with filmmaker Ken Burns and narrated Burns’s Emmy Award-winning documentary series “The Civil War.”

“He’s had a profound influence on all I’ve done because he taught me how to tell a story,” Burns told an audience in 2015.

Mr. McCullough’s honors included two National Book Awards and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, presented in 2006 by George W. Bush.

Read it all.

Remember and honor the incomparable David McCullough (1933-2022): pic.twitter.com/VgFm4eVNiX

— Michael Beschloss (@BeschlossDC) August 8, 2022

For Theresa Clarke, a retiree in New Canaan, Conn., the rising cost of living means not buying Goldfish crackers for her disabled daughter because a carton costs $11.99 at her local Stop & Shop. It means showering at the YMCA to save on her hot water bill. And it means watching her bank account dwindle to $50 because, as someone on a fixed income who never made much money to start with, there aren’t many other places she can trim her spending as prices rise.

“There is nothing to cut back on,” she said.

Jordan Trevino, 28, who recently took a better paying job in advertising in Los Angeles with a $100,000 salary, is economizing in little ways — ordering a cheaper entree when out to dinner, for example. But he is still planning a wedding next year and a honeymoon in Italy.

And David Schoenfeld, who made about $250,000 in retirement income and consulting fees last year and has about $5 million in savings, hasn’t pared back his spending. He has just returned from a vacation in Greece, with his daughter and two of his grandchildren.

Read it all.

The poor are disproportionately affected by high inflation. They are *also* disproportionately affected by high unemployment — which is the likely consequence of the Fed's efforts to fight inflation.
My latest w/ @jeannasmialek:https://t.co/RpUDpci1e2

— Ben Casselman (@bencasselman) August 8, 2022

Almighty God, whose servant Dominic grew in knowledge of thy truth and formed an order of preachers to proclaim the good news of Christ: Give to all thy people a hunger for your Word and an urgent longing to share the Gospel, that the whole world may come to know thee as thou art revealed in thy Son Jesus Christ; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Today the Church of England celebrates Dominic, Priest, Founder of the Order of Preachers, 1221 https://t.co/GGr4HzaTTJ

Image: Window in the chapel of the Dominican House of Studies, Washington DC showing Dominic sending out the friars. Photo by Lawrence OP, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0. pic.twitter.com/xO8YF55a2U

— The Anglican Church in St Petersburg (@anglicanspb) August 8, 2022

O God, who hast given us not the spirit of bondage, but the Spirit of adoption into thy family: Grant us the witness of thy Spirit within our hearts, testifying that we are thy children; and give us that fellowship with the sufferings of Christ which shall end in our being glorified with him; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord.

Early Mottled Skies. 17°C. A Kestrel hovering. pic.twitter.com/2W3dlFIkHc

— Yorkshire Wolds Weather (@WeatherWolds) August 8, 2022

And all the assembly kept silence; and they listened to Barnabas and Paul as they related what signs and wonders God had done through them among the Gentiles. After they finished speaking, James replied, “Brethren, listen to me. Simeon has related how God first visited the Gentiles, to take out of them a people for his name. And with this the words of the prophets agree, as it is written,

”After this I will return,
and I will rebuild the dwelling of David, which has fallen;
I will rebuild its ruins,
and I will set it up,
that the rest of men may seek the Lord,
and all the Gentiles who are called by my name,
says the Lord, who has made these things known from of old.’

Therefore my judgment is that we should not trouble those of the Gentiles who turn to God, but should write to them to abstain from the pollutions of idols and from unchastity and from what is strangled and from blood. For from early generations Moses has had in every city those who preach him, for he is read every sabbath in the synagogues.”

–Acts 15:12-21

Early this morning – the Northern Lights made a grand appearance near the Lynden, WA/British Columbia border! #wawx #pnw @AuroraSlayerWA @NWSSeattle @TamithaSkov @Aurora_Alerts @ScottSeattleWx @ShannonODKOMO @MorganKIRO7 @ErinMayovsky @spann @ThePhotoHour @StormHour @abbyacone pic.twitter.com/1X2h61ybLK

— Randy Small – Whatcom County Weather (@RandySmall) August 8, 2022