THE STONES ARE GOING TO MEET MAGNUM P.I. IN OAHU

Today, The Stones have received the wonderful visit of Thomas Sullivan Magnum III, a private investigator and old friend of The Grandma. They have been talking about common friends and he has offered himself to The Stones to be the guide during their staying in Hawaii. Before meeting Magnum, The Stones and The Grandma have studied some English grammar. They have worked Future Continuous and Plural of Nouns.

Magnum, P.I. is an American crime drama television series starring Tom Selleck as Thomas Magnum, a private investigator (P.I.) living on Oahu, Hawaii.

The series ran from 1980 to 1988 during its first-run broadcast on the American television network CBS.

According to the Nielsen ratings, Magnum, P.I. consistently ranked in the top twenty U.S. television programs during the first five years of its original run in the United States.

A reboot series of the same name was ordered to series on May 11, 2018, and premiered on September 24, 2018 on CBS.

Thomas Sullivan Magnum III is a private investigator played by Tom Selleck. He resides in the guest house of 81 ha beachfront estate called Robin's Nest, in Hawaii, at the invitation of its owner, Robin Masters, the celebrated, but never-seen, author of several dozen lurid novels.

Ostensibly this is quid pro quo for Magnum's services based upon his expertise in security; the pilot and several early episodes suggest Magnum had done Masters a favor of some kind, possibly when Masters hired him for a case. The voice of Robin Masters, heard only in five episodes, was provided by Orson Welles, one last appearance was provided by a different actor, Red Crandell.

More information: Future Continuous & Plural of Nouns

Magnum lives a luxurious life on the estate and operates as a P.I. on cases that suit him.

The only thorn in the side of his near-perfect lifestyle is Jonathan Quayle Higgins III, played by John Hillerman. An ex-British Army Sergeant Major, he is on the surface a stern, by-the-book caretaker of Robin's Nest, whose strict ways often conflict with Magnum's more easy-going methods. He patrols Robin's Nest with his two highly trained lads, Doberman Pinschers named Zeus and Apollo. 

Magnum has free use of the guest house and the car, a Ferrari 308 GTS Quattrovalvole, but as a humorous aside in various episodes, often has to bargain with Higgins for use of estate amenities such as the tennis courts, wine cellar and expensive cameras.

The relationship between Magnum and Higgins is initially cool, but as the series progressed, an unspoken respect and fondness of sorts grew between the pair. 

Aside from Higgins, Magnum's two main companions on the islands are Theodore Calvin "T.C." (Roger E. Mosley), who runs a local helicopter charter service called Island Hoppers, and often finds himself persuaded by Magnum to fly him during various cases, and Orville Wilbur Richard "Rick" Wright (Larry Manetti), who refuses to use his given name Orville and who owns a local bar.

In the pilot episode, this was Rick's Cafe Americain in town, inspired by Casablanca, with Rick appearing in suitable 1930s attire. After completing the pilot, though, executives felt that audiences would be unable to fully connect with this element. Instead, Rick moved to running the plush, beachside King Kamehameha Club, which has exclusive membership and Higgins on the board of directors. Magnum often strolls around the club, using its facilities and running up an ever-unpaid tab, further fueling the Magnum-Higgins feud.

More information: Click Americana

T.C. and Rick are both former Marines from Marine Observation Squadron 2 (VMO-2) with whom Magnum, a former Navy SEAL and Naval Intelligence officer, served in the Vietnam War. The series was one of the first to deal with Vietnam veterans as human beings and not as shell-shocked killers, and was praised by many ex-servicemen groups for doing so.

Magnum often dupes or bribes T.C. and Rick into aiding him on his cases, much to their frustration, though the deep friendship within the group, including Higgins, proved to be one of the key elements of the program over its eight-season run.

Magnum comes and goes as he pleases, works only when he wants, and has the almost unlimited use of the Ferrari and many other luxuries of the estate. He keeps a mini-refrigerator with a seemingly endless supply of beer, Old Düsseldorf in a long neck, wears his father's treasured Rolex GMT Master wristwatch and is surrounded by countless beautiful women, who are often victims of crime, his clients, or are connected in various other ways to the cases he solves.

Other characteristics specific to Magnum are his thick moustache, baseball caps (usually a Detroit Tigers or VMO-2 cap), a rubber chicken, and a variety of colorful Aloha shirts. Nearly every episode is narrated, in voice-over, by Magnum at various points.

At the end of the seventh season, Magnum was to be killed off, to end the series. Following an outcry from fans who demanded a more satisfactory conclusion, an eighth season was produced to bring Magnum back to life and to round off the series.

More information: Mental Floss

Hawaii is one of those places that, keeps topping itself. 

Just when you think you'll never see another sunset as beautiful, 

there comes a sunrise that only Gauguin could imagine. 

It kind of makes unemployment easier to take.

Thomas Magnum

THE ORACLE: FROM MAGNA GRAECIA TO SPRINGFIELD

Donald Trump & Homer Simpson in 2000.

The Grandma is on The Orient Express travelling to Istanbul. She's crossing some lands which were part of the Magna Graecia some centuries ago and it's impossible not thinking in our Mediterranean origins. Greece is the beginning of our history. The relation between Heracle & Hermes and the Mediterranean lands is a great evidence and the Greek influence in our culture nowadays is obvious.

The Grandma has been reading the press with the latest news in The USA. It's not a surprise. It's the consequence of thinking only in the economic markets and forgetting working people. It's impossible to read the news without making a reflexion about the paper of the press nowadays: is the press offering information or creating it? The press is acting like those Greek oracles who guessed the future, not because they had magic powers, but they knew what was going to happen.

Today, we have our own oracle. It's a yellow family who lives in Springfield and they have a glass ball to guess the future.

Dodona, Greece

In classical antiquity, an oracle was a person or agency considered to provide wise and insightful counsel or prophetic predictions or precognition of the future, inspired by the gods. As such it is a form of divination.

The word oracle comes from the Latin verb ōrāre (to speak) and properly refers to the priest or priestess uttering the prediction. In extended use, oracle may also refer to the site of the oracle, and to the oracular utterances themselves, called khrēsmoi (χρησμοί) in Greek.

Oracles were thought to be portals through which the gods spoke directly to people. In this sense they were different from seers (manteis, μάντεις) who interpreted signs sent by the gods through bird signs, animal entrails, and other various methods.

The most important oracles of Greek antiquity were Pythia, priestess to Apollo at Delphi, and the oracle of Dione and Zeus at Dodona in Epirus. Other temples of Apollo were located at Didyma on the coast of Asia Minor, at Corinth and Bassae in the Peloponnese, and at the islands of Delos and Aegina in the Aegean Sea. The Sibylline Oracles are a collection of oracular utterances written in Greek hexameters ascribed to the Sibyls, prophetesses who uttered divine revelations in frenzied states.

In Egypt the goddess Wadjet (eye of the moon) was depicted as a snake-headed woman or a woman with two snake-heads. Her oracle was in the renowned temple in Per-Wadjet (Greek name Buto). The oracle of Wadjet may have been the source for the oracular tradition which spread from Egypt to Greece. 

Oracular inscription on sheet of lead

In Greece the old oracles were devoted to the Mother Goddess. At the oracle of Dodona she will be called Diōnē (literally heavenly), who represents the earth-fertile soil, probably the chief female goddess of the PIE pantheon. Python, daughter (or son) of Gaia was the earth dragon of Delphi represented as a serpent and became the chthonic deity, enemy of Apollo, who slew her and possessed the oracle.

Dodona was another oracle devoted to the Mother Goddess identified at other sites with Rhea or Gaia, but here called Dione. The shrine of Dodona was the oldest Hellenic oracle, according to the fifth-century historian Herodotus and in fact dates to pre-Hellenic times, perhaps as early as the second millennium BC when the tradition probably spread from Egypt. Zeus displaced the Mother goddess and assimilated her as Aphrodite.

It became the second most important oracle in ancient Greece, which later was dedicated to Zeus and to Heracles during the classical period of Greece. 

 

 Everything you need for better future and success has already been written. And guess what? All you have to do is go to the library. 

Henri Frederic Amiel