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Marc Chagall
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Birth name Moishe Shagal
Born July 7, 1887
Liozna, Russian Empire (now in Belarus)
Died March 28, 1985 (aged 97)
Saint-Paul de Vence, France
Nationality Russian-French
Field Painting
Training St. Petersburg Society of Art Supporters, Zvantseva School of Drawing and Painting

Marc Chagall (Yiddish: מאַרק שאַגאַל‎; Belarusian: Мойша Захаравіч Шагалаў Mojša Zaharavič Šagałaŭ; Russian: Марк Захарович Шага́л Mark Zakharovich Shagal) (7 July 1887 - 28 March 1985) was a Russian-Belarusian-French painter of Jewish origin who was born in Belarus, at that time part of the Russian Empire. He is associated with the modern movements after impressionism.





Biography

Marc Chagall was born Moishe Shagal (משה שאגאל - Shagal is a dialectal, North-Eastern Yiddish variant of the surname "Segal"); his name was rendered in the Russian language as Mark Zakharovich Shagalov. Chagall was born in Liozno, near Vitebsk, Belarus, the eldest of nine children in the close-knit Jewish family led by his father Khatskl (Zakhar) Shagal, a herring merchant, and his mother, Feige-Ite. This period of his life, described as happy though impoverished, appears in references throughout Chagall's work. Currently the Shagal's house on Pokrovskaya Street in Vitebsk is restored as part of the Marc Chagall's Museum.[1]

After he began studying painting in 1906 under famed local artist Yehuda Pen, Chagall moved to St. Petersburg some months later, in 1907. There he joined the school of the "Society of Art Supporters" and studied under Nikolai Roerich, encountering artists of every school and style. From 1908-1910 Chagall studied under Leon Bakst at the Zvantseva School of Drawing and Painting.


I and the Village, 1911, oil on canvas.This was a difficult period for Chagall; at the time, Jewish residents were only allowed to live in St. Petersburg with a permit, and the artist was jailed for a brief period for an infringement of this restriction. Despite this, Chagall remained in St. Petersburg until 1910, and regularly visited his home town where, in 1909, he met his future wife, Bella Rosenfeld.

After gaining a reputation as an artist, Chagall left St. Petersburg to settle in Paris to be near the burgeoning art community in the Montparnasse district, where he developed friendships with such avant-garde luminaries as Guillaume Apollinaire, Robert Delaunay, and Fernand Léger. In 1914, he returned to Vitebsk and, a year later, married his fiancée, Bella. While in Russia, World War I erupted and, in 1916, the Chagalls had their first child, a daughter they named Ida.

Chagall became an active participant in the Russian Revolution of 1917. Although the Soviet Ministry of Culture made him a Commissar of Art for the Vitebsk region, where he founded Vitebsk Museum of Modern Art and an art school, he did not fare well politically under the Soviet system. He and his wife moved to Moscow in 1920 and then back to Paris three years later, in 1923. During this period, Chagall published his memoirs in Yiddish, which were originally written in Russian and translated into French by Bella. He also wrote articles, poetry and memoirs in Yiddish, published mainly in newspapers (and only posthumously in book-form). Chagall became a French citizen in 1937.

With the Nazi occupation of France during World War II and the deportation of Jews, the Chagalls fled Paris, seeking asylum at Villa Air-Bel in Marseille, where the American journalist Varian Fry assisted in their escape from France through Spain and Portugal. In 1941, the Chagalls settled in the United States of America.

On September 2, 1944, Chagall's beloved Bella, the constant subject of his paintings and companion of his life, died from an illness. Two years later, in 1946, he returned to Europe. By 1949 he was working in Provence, in the South of France. That same year, Chagall took part in the creation of the MRAP anti-racist NGO.

The depression Chagall experienced following Bella's death was alleviated when he met Virginia Haggard, with whom he had a son, David (McNeil). At this time, Chagall received financial aid from theatrical commissions and, in his painting, rediscovered a free and vibrant use of color. His works of this period are dedicated to love and the joy of life, with curved, sinuous figures. He also began to work in sculpture, ceramics, and stained glass.


Chagall remarried in 1952 to Valentina Brodsky (whom he called "Vava"). He traveled several times to Greece and in 1957 visited Israel. In 1960, he created stained glass windows for the synagogue of the Hadassah Ein Kerem hospital in Jerusalem and, in 1966, wall art for the new parliament being constructed in that city.

During the Six Day War the hospital came under severe attack, placing Chagall's work under threat. In response to this, Chagall wrote a letter from France stating "I am not worried about the windows, only about the safety of Israel. Let Israel be safe and I will make you lovelier windows.". Luckily, most of the panels were removed in time, with only one sustaining severe damage. In 1973, Israel issued a series of stamps featuring the Chagall windows, which depict Twelve tribes, such as Levi, pictured here.

At the age of 97, Chagall died in Saint-Paul de Vence on the French Riviera on March 28, 1985 and was buried at the local cemetery. His plot is located in the most westerly aisle upon entering the cemetery.


Art

The Fiddler, 1912-1913Chagall took inspiration from Belarusian folk-life, and portrayed many Biblical themes that reflected his Jewish heritage. In the 1960s and 1970s, Chagall engaged in a series of large-scale projects involving public spaces and important civic and religious buildings.

Chagall's artworks are difficult to categorize. Working in the pre-World War I Paris art world, he was involved with avant-garde currents, however, his work was consistently on the fringes of popular art movements and emerging trends, including Cubism and Fauvism, among others. He was closely associated with the Paris School and its exponents, including Amedeo Modigliani.

Abounding with references to his childhood, Chagall's work has also been criticized for slighting some of the turmoil which he experienced. He communicates happiness and optimism to those who view his work strictly in terms of his use of highly vivid colors. Chagall often posed himself, sometimes together with his wife, as an observer of a colored world like that seen through a stained-glass window. Some see The White Crucifixion, which is rich with intriguing detail, as a denunciation of the Stalin regime, the Nazi Holocaust, and the oppression of Jews in general.

For more information about his art, see the list of Chagall's artwork.


Use of symbolism
Cow: life par excellence: milk, meat, leather, horn, power.
Tree: another life symbol.
Cock (rooster): fertility, often painted together with lovers.
Bosom (often naked): eroticism and fertility of life (Chagall loved and respected women).
Fiddler: in Chagall's town Vitebsk the fiddler made music at crosspoints of life (birth, wedding, death).
Herring (often also painted as a flying fish): commemorates Chagall's father working in a fish factory.
Pendulum Clock: time, and modest life (in the time of prosecution at the Loire River the pendulum seems being driven with force into the wooden box of the pendulum clock).
Candlestick: two candles symbolize the Shabbat or the Menorah (candlestick with seven candles) or the Hanukkah-candlestick, and therefore the life of pious Jews (Chassidim).
Windows: Chagall's Love of Freedom, and Paris through the window.
Houses of Vitebsk (often in paintings of his time in Paris): feelings for his homeland.
Scenes of the Circus: Harmony of Man and Animal, which induces Creativity in Man.
Crucifixion of Jesus: an unusual subject for a Jewish painter, and likely a response to the rise of anti-Semitism in Germany in the late 1930s.[2]
Horses: Freedom.
The Eiffel Tower: Up in the sky, freedom.

Exhibitions

Chagall's work is housed in a variety of locations, including the Palais Garnier (the old opera house), the Chase Tower Plaza of downtown Chicago, the Metropolitan Opera, the cathedral of Metz, France, Notre-Dame de Reims, the Fraumünster abbey in Zürich, Switzerland, the Church of St. Stephan in Mainz, Germany and the Biblical Message museum in Nice, France, which Chagall helped to design.

The only church in England with a complete set of Chagall window-glass is located in the tiny village of Tudeley, in Kent, England. Chagall painted 12 colorful stained-glass windows in Hadassah Hospital Ein Kerem in Jerusalem, with each frame depicting a different tribe. In the United States, the Union Church of Pocantico Hills contains a set of Chagall windows commemorating the prophets, which was commissioned by John D. Rockefeller, Jr. [1].

At the Lincoln Center in New York City, Chagall's huge murals, The Sources of Music and The Triumph of Music, are installed in the lobby of the new Metropolitan Opera House, which opened in 1966. Also in New York, the United Nations Headquarters has a stained glass wall of his work. In 1967 the UN commemorated this artwork with a postage stamp and souvenir sheet.[3]

In 1973, the Musée National Message Biblique Marc Chagall (Chagall Museum) opened in Nice, France. The museum in Vitebsk which bears his name was founded in 1997, in the building where his family lived on 29 Pokrovskaia street, although, prior to his death, years before the fall of the Soviet Bloc, Chagall was persona non grata in his homeland. The museum only has copies of his work.

In 2007, an exhibition of his work entitled, "Chagall of Miracles" at Il Complesso del Vittoriano was displayed and included works such as the Red Jew (1915), Above the City (1914-1918), Composition with Circles and Goat (1920), and The Fall of the Angel (1923-1947), which impacte viewers the most. Chagall was Jewish but was heavily influenced by Christian iconography, as well as a dreamer whose works touched on the harsh realities of war and persecution, and also an avant-garde artist that did not align himself with one particular movement. The works in this exhibition highlighted all these points of Chagall's personality. [4]


Tributes

Cuban singer-songwriter Silvio Rodríguez released in 1978 one of his most widely known songs, ?"leo de mujer con sombrero (Oil of woman with hat) in tribute to Chagall's work.

Jon Anderson, singer from the popular group Yes, met Chagall in the town of Opio, France as a young musician. Jon credits him as a seminal inspiration. He has recorded a piece of music in his honor, as well as the charitable Opio Foundation which he established in memory of his connection with the artist. In 1997, Pasqualina Azzarello painted A Celebration of Imagination: a Tribute to Marc Chagall, a 15'x30' public mural in Central Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

In 2005, musician Tori Amos recorded and released the composition "Garlands," with lyrics inspired by a series of Chagall lithographs.

In 2006, the musical group The Weepies released their album Say I Am You. One of the tracks is titled "Painting by Chagall"; part of the chorus is: "...we float like two lovers in a painting by Chagall, all around is sky and blue town, holding these flowers for a wedding gown, we live so high above the ground..." "Do Jump!", a physical theatre based in Portland, Oregon, created an acrobatic/trapeze theatre performance in tribute to Chagall.

In 2006, the fiction book "The World to Come" written by Dara Horn is about a writer who steals a painting by Marc Chagall from a local Jewish museum believing it once belonged to his parents. The book switches back and forth from the present to the 1920's, where Chagall teaches art to orphans of the Soviet pogroms. This book is a kaleidoscope of lives, eras, tragedies, and characters from Russia to Vietnam to New Jersey and follows the fictional writer's family backwards in time and Chagall's wondrous life forward. This book is based on the real event of June 7, 2001 in which the $1 million dollor "Study for Over Vitebsk" was stolen at a lively cocktail reception at the Jewish Musuem in New York City. A ransom note was received on June 12, 2001 from a group calling themselves the International Committee for Art and Peace asking for peace to be established between the Israelis and Palestinians in the Middle East, a request beyond the control of the Jewish Museum. The painting was eventually discovered in February 2002 in a postal office in Topeka, Kansas and was returned to the Jewish Musuem on February 21, 2002.

On July 07, 2008 Google remade their logo using his artwork, in honor of his birthday.


Quotations

Marc Chagall stained-glass window at the U.N. in New York City."All colors are the friends of their neighbors and the lovers of their opposites."
"Great art picks up where nature ends."
"I am out to introduce a psychic shock into my painting, one that is always motivated by pictorial reasoning: that is to say, a fourth dimension."
"I work in whatever medium likes me at the moment."
"If a symbol should be discovered in a painting of mine, it was not my intention. It is a result I did not seek. It is something that may be found afterwards, and which can be interpreted according to taste."
"If I were not a Jew… I wouldn't have been an artist, or I would be a different artist all together."
"In our life there is a single color, as on an artist's palette, which provides the meaning of life and art. It is the color of love."

Pasqualina Azzarello's tribute mural"My name is Marc, my emotional life is sensitive and my purse is empty, but they say I have talent."
"Will God or someone give me the power to breathe my sigh into my canvases, the sigh of prayer and sadness, the prayer of salvation, of rebirth?"
"Will there be anymore!?"
"We all know that a good person can be a bad artist. But no one will ever be a genuine artist unless he is a great human being and thus also a good one."
"Only love interests me, and I am only in contact with things I love."

Great song, edgar, and I just did a quick bit of research of Tyrone Power. My word, he died when he was 44. Really liked him as the villain in Witness for the Prosecution. I do wish, folks, that TCM would run more of those old films. Wish that I had watched None but the Lonely Heart which was on several nights ago.

Oops, will wait for the hawkman to finish, before continuing.

Robert A. Heinlein
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Born July 7, 1907(1907-07-07)
Butler, Missouri, United States
Died May 8, 1988 (aged 80)
Carmel, California, United States
Pen name Anson McDonald, Lyle Monroe, John Riverside, Caleb Saunders, Simon York
Occupation Novelist, short story author, essayist, screenwriter
Genres Science fiction, Fantasy
Literary movement Science fiction, Fantasy

Influences

H. G. Wells, James Branch Cabell, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Rudyard Kipling, Mark Twain

Influenced

Allen Steele, Spider Robinson, George R. R. Martin, Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, John Varley

Robert Anson Heinlein (July 7, 1907 - May 8, 1988) was an American novelist and science fiction writer. Often called "the dean of science fiction writers"[1], he is one of the most popular, influential, and controversial authors of "hard science fiction". He set a high standard for science and engineering plausibility and helped to raise the genre's standards of literary quality. He was the first writer to break into mainstream, general magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post, in the late 1940s, with unvarnished science fiction. He was among the first authors of bestselling, novel-length science fiction in the modern, mass-market era. For many years, Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, and Arthur C. Clarke were known as the "Big Three" of science fiction.[2][3]

Within the framework of his science fiction stories Heinlein repeatedly integrated recognizable social themes: The importance of individual liberty and self-reliance, the obligation individuals owe to their societies, the influence of organized religion on culture and government, and the tendency of society to repress non-conformist thought. He also examined the relationship between physical and emotional love, explored various unorthodox family structures, and speculated on the influence of space travel on human cultural practices. His iconoclastic approach to these themes led to wildly divergent perceptions of his works and attempts to place mutually contradictory labels on his work. For example, his 1959 novel Starship Troopers was regarded as advocating militarism and to some extent fascism, although many passages in the book disparage the inflexibility and stupidity of a purely militaristic mindset. By contrast, his 1961 novel Stranger in a Strange Land put him in the unexpected role of pied piper to the sexual revolution and the counterculture, and through this book he was credited with popularizing the notion of polyamory, or responsible nonmonogamy.

Heinlein won four Hugo Awards for his novels. In addition, fifty years after publication, three of his works were awarded "Retro Hugos" ?- awards given retrospectively for years in which no Hugos had been awarded. He also won the first Grand Master Award given by the Science Fiction Writers of America for lifetime achievement.

After his death, his wife Virginia Heinlein issued a compilation of Heinlein's correspondence and notes into a somewhat autobiographical examination of his career, published in 1989 under the title Grumbles from the Grave.

Heinlein's archive is housed by the Special Collections department of the University Library at the University of California, Santa Cruz. The collection includes manuscript drafts, correspondence, photographs and artifacts. A substantial portion of the archive has been digitized and is available online through the Robert A. and Virginia Heinlein Archives.

In his fiction, Heinlein coined words that have become part of the English language, including "grok", "TANSTAAFL" and "waldo".




Life

Heinlein (pronounced Hine-line)[4][5] was born on July 7, 1907, to Rex Ivar and Bam Lyle Heinlein, in Butler, Missouri. His childhood was spent in Kansas City, Missouri.[6] The outlook and values of this time and place (in his own words, "The Bible Belt") had a definite influence on his fiction, especially his later works, as experiences from his childhood were heavily drawn upon both for setting and for cultural atmosphere in Time Enough for Love and To Sail Beyond the Sunset, among others. However, he would later break with many of its values and mores ?- especially those concerning morality as it applies to issues such as religion and sexuality ?- both in his writing and in his personal life.

The military was the second great influence on Heinlein; throughout his life, he strongly believed in loyalty, leadership, and other ideals associated with the military. Heinlein graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1929, and served as an officer in the United States Navy. He served on the USS Lexington in 1931. During this time, Heinlein worked on radio communications, then in its nascent phase, with the aircraft carrier's planes. The Captain of the vessel was Ernest King who was later to serve as the Chief of Naval Operations during the Second World War. Heinlein was frequently interviewed during his later years by military historians on King and his services as the commander of the US Navy's first modern aircraft carrier. Heinlein served aboard USS Roper in 1933-1934, reaching the rank of lieutenant.

On June 21, 1929, he married the former Eleanor Curry of Kansas City in Los Angeles,[7] but this marriage lasted only about a year.[4] He married his second wife, Leslyn Macdonald, in 1932. Leslyn was a political radical, and Isaac Asimov recalled that Heinlein later told him that, during these years, he was, like her, "a flaming liberal".[8]

In 1934, Heinlein was discharged from the Navy due to pulmonary tuberculosis. During a lengthy hospitalization, he developed the idea of the waterbed, and his detailed descriptions of it in three of his books constituted sufficient prior art to prevent a US patent on water beds when they became common in the 1960s and later[9].

After his discharge, Heinlein attended a few weeks of graduate classes in mathematics and physics at the University of California, Los Angeles, but quit either because of his health or from a desire to enter politics.[10]

He supported himself at several occupations, including real estate and silver mining, but for some years found money in short supply. Heinlein was active in Upton Sinclair's socialist End Poverty in California movement in the early 1930s. When Sinclair gained the Democratic nomination for governor of California in 1934, Heinlein worked actively in the unsuccessful campaign. Heinlein himself ran for the California State Assembly in 1938, but was unsuccessful.[11] In later years, Heinlein kept his socialist past secret, writing about his political experiences coyly, and usually under the veil of fictionalization. In 1954, he wrote, "...many Americans ... were asserting loudly that McCarthy had created a 'reign of terror'. Are you terrified? I am not, and I have in my background much political activity well to the left of Senator McCarthy's position."[12]


While not destitute after the campaign ?- he had a small disability pension from the Navy ?- Heinlein turned to writing in order to pay off his mortgage (possibly on his house at 8777 Lookout Mountain Avenue, Los Angeles, referred to in "?-And He Built a Crooked House?-"[13]), and in 1939, his first published story, "Life-Line", was printed in Astounding Science-Fiction magazine. He was quickly acknowledged as a leader of the new movement toward "social" science fiction. He was the guest of honor at Denvention, the 1941 Worldcon, held in Denver. During World War II, he did aeronautical engineering for the Navy, recruiting Isaac Asimov and L. Sprague de Camp to work at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard.

As the war wound down in 1945, Heinlein began re-evaluating his career. The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, along with the outbreak of the Cold War, galvanized him to write nonfiction on political topics; in addition, he wanted to break into better-paying markets. He published four influential stories for The Saturday Evening Post, leading off, in February 1947, with "The Green Hills of Earth", which made him the first science fiction writer to break out of the "pulp ghetto". In 1950, Destination Moon ?- the documentary-like film for which he had written the story and scenario, co-written the script, and invented many of the effects ?- won an Academy Award for special effects. Most importantly, he embarked on a series of juvenile novels for Scribner's that was to last through the 1950s.


The Heinleins, both engineers, designed the house themselves with many innovative features.Heinlein divorced his second wife in 1947, and the following year married Virginia "Ginny" Gerstenfeld, to whom he would remain married until his death forty years later. Shortly thereafter the couple moved to Colorado, but in 1965 her health was affected by the altitude, so the couple moved to Bonny Doon, California. Heinlein's circular California house, which, like his Colorado house, he designed with Virginia and built himself, can be seen on Google Maps for "6000 Bonny Doon Road, Santa Cruz, California", on the east side of Bonny Doon Road just north of where Shake Mill Road dead-ends into Bonny Doon Road from the west.

Ginny undoubtedly served as a model for many of his intelligent, fiercely independent female characters. In 1953-1954, the Heinleins voyaged around the world (mostly via ocean liner and cargo liner), which Heinlein described in Tramp Royale, and which also provided background material for science fiction novels set aboard spaceships, such as Podkayne of Mars. She acted as the first reader of his manuscripts, and was reputed to be a better engineer than Heinlein himself.[14]

Isaac Asimov believed that Heinlein made a drastic swing to the right politically at the same time he married Ginny.[15] The couple formed the Patrick Henry League in 1958 and worked on the 1964 Barry Goldwater campaign, and Tramp Royale contains two lengthy apologias for the McCarthy hearings. Yet during this period Heinlein wrote Stranger in a Strange Land (1961), which is generally considered to advance very liberal themes and in fact became the unofficial "bible of the hippie movement" in the late 1960s.


The Heinlein juveniles, novels for young adults, may turn out to be his most important work. He had used topical materials throughout his series, but in 1959, his Starship Troopers was regarded by the Scribner's editorial staff as too controversial for their prestige line and was rejected. Heinlein felt himself released from the constraints of writing for children and began to write "my own stuff, my own way", and came out with a series of challenging books that redrew the boundaries of science fiction, including his best-known work, Stranger in a Strange Land (1961), and The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress (1966).

Beginning in 1970, however, Heinlein had a series of health crises, punctuated by strenuous activity in his hobby of stonemasonry. (In a private correspondence, he referred to that as his "usual and favorite occupation between books".[16]) The decade began with a life-threatening attack of peritonitis, recovery from which required more than two years, but as soon as he was well enough to write, he began work on Time Enough for Love (1973), which introduced many of the themes found in his later fiction.

In the mid-1970s, he wrote two articles for the Britannica Compton Yearbook.[17] He and Ginny crisscrossed the country helping to reorganize blood donation in the United States, and he was guest of honor at the Worldcon for the third time at MidAmeriCon Kansas City, Missouri in 1976. While vacationing in Tahiti in early 1978, he suffered a transient ischemic attack. Over the next few months, he became more and more exhausted, and his health again began to decline. The problem was determined to be a blocked carotid artery, and he had one of the earliest carotid bypass operations to correct it. Heinlein and Virginia had been smokers[18] and smoking appears often in his fiction, as well as strikable self-lighting cigarettes. Asked to appear before a Joint Committee of the U.S. House and Senate that year, he testified on his belief that spin-offs from space technology were benefiting the infirm and the elderly. His surgical treatment re-energized Heinlein, and he wrote five novels from 1980 until he died in his sleep from emphysema and congestive heart failure on May 8, 1988.

At the time, he was putting together the early notes for another World as Myth novel. Several of his works have been published posthumously.[19]



Series

Over the course of his career Heinlein wrote three somewhat overlapping series.

Future History series
Lazarus Long series
World as Myth series

Early work, 1939-1958

The first novel that Heinlein wrote, For Us, The Living: A Comedy of Customs (1939), did not see print during his lifetime, but Robert James later tracked down the manuscript and it was published in 2003. Widely regarded as a failure as a novel,[6] being little more than a disguised lecture on Heinlein's social theories, it is intriguing as a window into the development of Heinlein's radical ideas about man as a social animal, including his interest in free love. The root of many themes found in his later stories can be found in this book. It also contained much material that could be considered background for his other novels, including a detailed description of the protagonist's treatment to avoid being forced to enter Coventry.

It appears that Heinlein at least attempted to live in a manner consistent with these ideals, even in the 1930s, and had an open relationship in his marriage to his second wife, Leslyn. He was also a nudist;[4] nudism and body taboos are frequently discussed in his work. At the height of the cold war, he built a bomb shelter under his house, like the one featured in Farnham's Freehold.[4]


Red Planet, a 1949 juvenile illustrated by Clifford Geary.After For Us, The Living, Heinlein began selling (to magazines) first short stories, then novels, set in a Future History, complete with a time line of significant political, cultural, and technological changes. A chart of the future history was published in the May 1941 issue of Astounding. Over time, Heinlein wrote many novels and short stories that deviated freely from the Future History on some points, while maintaining consistency in some other areas. The Future History was also eventually overtaken by actual events. These discrepancies were explained, after a fashion, in his later World as Myth stories.

Heinlein's first novel published as a book, Rocket Ship Galileo, was initially rejected because going to the moon was considered too far out, but he soon found a publisher, Scribner's, that began publishing a Heinlein juvenile once a year for the Christmas season.[20] Eight of these books were illustrated by Clifford Geary in a distinctive white-on-black scratchboard style.[21] Some representative novels of this type are Have Space Suit?-Will Travel, Farmer in the Sky, and Starman Jones. Many of these were first published in serial form under other titles, e.g., Farmer in the Sky was published as "Satellite Scout" in the Boy Scout magazine Boys' Life. There has been speculation that Heinlein's intense obsession with his privacy[22] was due at least in part to the apparent contradiction between his unconventional private life and his career as an author of books for children, but For Us, The Living also explicitly discusses the political importance Heinlein attached to privacy as a matter of principle.

The novels that Heinlein wrote for a young audience are commonly referred to as "the Heinlein juveniles", and they feature a mixture of adolescent and adult themes. Many of the issues that he takes on in these books have to do with the kinds of problems that adolescents experience. His protagonists are usually very intelligent teenagers who have to make their way in the adult society they see around them. On the surface, they are simple tales of adventure, achievement, and dealing with stupid teachers and jealous peers. However, Heinlein was a vocal proponent of the notion that juvenile readers were far more sophisticated and able to handle complex or difficult themes than most people realized. Thus even his juvenile stories often had a maturity to them that made them readable for adults. Red Planet, for example, portrays some very subversive themes, including a revolution in which young students are involved; his editor demanded substantial changes in this book's discussion of topics such as the use of weapons by children and the misidentified gender of the Martian character. Heinlein was always aware of the editorial limitations put in place by the editors of his novels and stories, and while he observed those restrictions on the surface, was often successful in introducing ideas not often seen in other authors' juvenile SF.

In 1957, James Blish wrote that one reason for Heinlein's success "has been the high grade of machinery which goes, today as always, into his story-telling. Heinlein seems to have known from the beginning, as if instinctively, technical lessons about fiction which other writers must learn the hard way (or often enough, never learn). He does not always operate the machinery to the best advantage, but he always seems to be aware of it."[23]


1959-1960: the seminal years

Heinlein decisively ended his juvenile novels with Starship Troopers (1959) likely the most controversial work in science fiction and his personal riposte to leftists calling for President Dwight D. Eisenhower to stop nuclear testing in 1958. "[Heinlein] called for the formation of the Patrick Henry League and spent the next several weeks writing and publishing his own polemic that lambasted 'Communist-line goals concealed in idealistic-sounding nonsense' and urged Americans not to become 'soft-headed'. ... Critics labeled Heinlein everything from a Nazi to a racist."

"'The "Patrick Henry" ad shocked 'em,' he wrote many years later. "Starship Troopers outraged 'em."

A coming-of-age story about duty, citizenship, and the role of the military in a free society, Starship Troopers resonates with modern concerns.[24] The book proposes that suffrage be given only to those who have earned it through military or other devoted social service, with no conscription. The choice for the form of the devoted service was up to the government, with military service being a strong possibility. The point was that you placed your wellbeing at the hands of the government in return for a voice in that government. Psychosocially, you were invested in the government, just as one invests in a business. Further, as long as you were actively in whatever service you found yourself in (career military, for example) your suffrage did not apply -- only after you were out of the service did you gain the franchise.


Middle period work, 1961-1973

From about 1961 (Stranger in a Strange Land) to 1973 (Time Enough for Love), Heinlein wrote some of his more libertarian novels (in terms of sexual mores). His work during this period explored his most important themes, such as individualism, libertarianism, and free expression of physical and emotional love. He did not publish Stranger in a Strange Land until some time after it was written, and the themes of free love and radical individualism are prominently featured in his long-unpublished first novel, For Us, The Living: A Comedy of Customs.[25] The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress tells of a war of independence of Lunar colonies, with significant commentary regarding the threat posed by any government ?- including a republic ?- to individual freedom.

Although Heinlein had previously written a few short stories in the fantasy genre, during this period he wrote his first fantasy novel, Glory Road, and in Stranger in a Strange Land and I Will Fear No Evil, he began to mix hard science with fantasy, mysticism, and satire of organized religion. Critics William H. Patterson, Jr., and Andrew Thornton[26] believe that this is simply an expression of Heinlein's longstanding philosophical opposition to positivism. Heinlein stated that he was influenced by James Branch Cabell in taking this new literary direction. The next-to-last novel of this period, I Will Fear No Evil, is according to critic James Gifford "almost universally regarded as a literary failure", and he attributes its shortcomings to Heinlein's near-death from peritonitis.[27]


Later work, 1980-1987

After a seven-year hiatus brought on by poor health, Heinlein produced five new novels in the period from 1980 (The Number of the Beast) to 1987 (To Sail Beyond the Sunset). These books have a thread of common characters and time and place. They most explicitly communicated Heinlein's philosophies and beliefs, and many long, didactic passages of dialog and exposition deal with government, sex, and religion. These novels are controversial among his readers, and some critics have written about them very negatively.[28] Heinlein's four Hugo awards were all for books written before this period.

Some of these books, such as The Number of the Beast and The Cat Who Walks Through Walls, start out as tightly constructed adventure stories, but transform into philosophical fantasias at the end. It is a matter of opinion whether this demonstrates a lack of attention to craftsmanship or a conscious effort to expand the boundaries of science fiction into a kind of magical realism, continuing the process of literary exploration that he had begun with Stranger in a Strange Land. Most of the novels from this period are recognized by critics as forming an offshoot from the Future History series, and referred to by the term World as Myth.[29]

The tendency toward authorial self-reference begun in Stranger in a Strange Land and Time Enough For Love becomes even more evident in novels such as The Cat Who Walks Through Walls, whose first-person protagonist is a disabled military veteran who becomes a writer, and finds love with a female character who, like all of Heinlein's strong female characters, appears to be based closely on his wife Ginny.

The 1982 novel Friday, a more conventional adventure story (borrowing a character and backstory from the earlier short story "Gulf", also containing suggestions of connection to The Puppet Masters) continued a Heinlein theme of expecting what he saw as the continued disintegration of Earth's society, to the point where the title character is strongly encouraged to seek a new life off-planet. It concludes with a traditional Heinlein note, as in "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" or "Time Enough for Love" that freedom is to be found on the frontiers.

The 1984 novel Job: A Comedy of Justice is a sharp satire of organized religion.


Posthumous publications

Several Heinlein works have been published since his death, including the aforementioned For Us, The Living as well as 1989's Grumbles from the Grave, a collection of letters between Heinlein and his editors and agent, 1992's Tramp Royale, a travelogue of a southern hemisphere tour the Heinleins took in the 1950s, Take Back Your Government, a how-to book about participatory democracy written in 1946, and a tribute volume called Requiem: Collected Works and Tributes to the Grand Master, containing some additional short works previously unpublished in book form. Off the Main Sequence, published in 2005, includes three short stories never before collected in any Heinlein book (Heinlein called them "stinkeroos".)

Spider Robinson, a colleague, friend, and admirer of Heinlein, wrote Variable Star, based on an outline and notes for a juvenile novel that Heinlein prepared in 1955. The novel was published as a collaboration, with Heinlein's name above Robinson's on the cover, in 2006.


Ideas, themes, and influence

Politics

Heinlein's writing may appear to oscillate wildly across the political spectrum. His first novel, For Us, The Living, consists largely of speeches advocating the Social Credit system, and the early story "Misfit" deals with an organization that seems to be Franklin D. Roosevelt's Civilian Conservation Corps translated into outer space. While Stranger in a Strange Land was embraced by the hippie counterculture, and Glory Road can be read as an antiwar piece, some have deemed Starship Troopers militaristic, and To Sail Beyond the Sunset, published during the Reagan administration, stridently right-wing. To contrast this, the presence of the "CCC" in Misfit does not constitute advocation, and the military of Starship Troopers does not control the government but the other way around -- Heinlein is most specific about that during the didactic pieces. Often critics take one aspect of a postulated society or commentary about some aspect of society, and ignore the full context in which it was presented.


Certain threads in Heinlein's political thought remain inarguably constant. A strong current of libertarianism runs through his work, as expressed most clearly in The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. His early juvenile novels often contain a surprisingly strong anti-authority message, as in his first published novel Rocket Ship Galileo, which has a group of boys blasting off in a rocket ship in defiance of a court order. A similar defiance of a court order to take a moon trip takes place in the short story "Requiem". In The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, the unjust Lunar Authority that controls the lunar colony is usually referred to simply as "Authority" which points to a clear interpretation of the book as a parable for the evils of authority in general, rather than the evils of one particular authority. The book's own theme echoing the American Revolution as a defiance of unrepresentational "authority-in-absentia" also highlights this.

Heinlein was opposed to any encroachment of religion into government; he pilloried organized religion in Job: A Comedy of Justice, and, with more subtlety and ambivalence, in Stranger in a Strange Land. His future history includes a period called the Interregnum, in which a backwoods revivalist becomes dictator of the United States; Revolt in 2100 depicts a revolutionary underground overthrowing that religious dictatorship. Positive descriptions of the military (Between Planets, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, Red Planet, Starship Troopers) tend to emphasize the individual actions of volunteers in the spirit of the Minutemen of colonial America. Conscription and the military as an extension of the government are portrayed in Time Enough for Love, Glory Road, and Starship Troopers as being poor substitutes for the volunteers who, ideally, should be defending a free society.

To those on the right, Heinlein's ardent anti-communism during the Cold War era might appear to contradict his earlier efforts in the socialist EPIC and Social Credit movements; however, it should be noted that both the Socialist Party and the Communist Party were very active during the 1930s, and the distinction between socialism and Soviet communism was well understood by those on the left. Heinlein spelled out his strong concerns regarding communism in a number of non-fiction pieces, including "Who Are the Heirs of Patrick Henry?", an anti-communist polemic published as a newspaper advertisement in 1958; and articles such as "Pravda Means Truth" and "Inside Intourist", in which he recounted his visit to the USSR and advised Western readers on how to evade official supervision on such a trip.

Many of Heinlein's stories explicitly spell out a view of history that could be compared to Marx's: social structures are dictated by the materialistic environment. Heinlein would perhaps have been more comfortable with a comparison with Frederick Jackson Turner's frontier thesis. In Red Planet, Doctor MacRae links attempts at gun control to the increase in population density on Mars. (This discussion was edited out of the original version of the book at the insistence of the publisher.) In Farmer in the Sky, overpopulation of Earth has led to hunger, and emigration to Ganymede provides a "life insurance policy" for the species as a whole; Heinlein puts a lecture in the mouth of one of his characters toward the end of the book in which it is explained that the mathematical logic of Malthusianism can lead only to disaster for the home planet. A subplot in Time Enough for Love involves demands by farmers upon Lazarus Long's bank, which Heinlein portrays as the inevitable tendency of a pioneer society evolving into a more dense (and, by implication, more decadent and less free) society. This episode is an interesting example of Heinlein's tendency (in opposition to Marx) to view history as cyclical rather than progressive.


Race

Heinlein grew up in the era of racial segregation in the United States and wrote some of his most influential fiction at the height of the US civil rights movement. His early juveniles were very much ahead of their time both in their explicit rejection of racism and in their inclusion of non-white protagonists ?- in the context of science fiction before the 1960s, the mere existence of dark-skinned characters was a remarkable novelty, with green occurring more often than brown. For example, his second juvenile, the 1948 Space Cadet, explicitly uses aliens as a metaphor for human racial minorities: "That's just race prejudice. A Venerian is easier to like than a man." "...that's not fair ... Matt hasn't got any race prejudice. .. Take Lieutenant Peters ?- did it make any difference to us that he's as black as the ace of spades?" In this example, as in books written throughout his career, Heinlein challenges his readers' possible racial stereotypes by introducing a strong, sympathetic character, only to reveal much later that he is of African descent. This also occurs in, e.g., The Cat Who Walks Through Walls and Tunnel in the Sky; in several cases, the covers of the books show characters as being light-skinned, when in fact the text states, or at least implies, that they are dark-skinned or of African descent.[30] The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress and Podkayne of Mars both contain incidents of racial prejudice or injustice against their protagonists.[31] Heinlein repeatedly denounced racism in his non-fiction works, including numerous examples in Expanded Universe.

Race was a central theme in some of Heinlein's fiction. The most prominent example is Farnham's Freehold, which casts a white family into a future in which white people are the slaves of black rulers. In the 1941[32] novel Sixth Column (also known as The Day After Tomorrow), a resistance movement defends itself against an invasion by an Asian fascist state (the "Pan-Asians") using a "super-science" technology that allows ray weapons to be tuned to specific races. The idea for the story was pushed on Heinlein by editor John W. Campbell, and Heinlein wrote later that he had "had to reslant it to remove racist aspects of the original story line" and that he did not "consider it to be an artistic success";[33] the reslanting may have been another instance of Heinlein's subtle inclusion of non-white sympathetic characters.[34] Sixth Column concentrates more on the Japanese, and was first serialized in 1941, the year of the Pearl Harbor attack, although it was not published in book form until 1949, the year of the revolution in China. Tunnel in the Sky and Farmer in the Sky were both written after the revolution. The protagonist in Starship Troopers is Filipino, and "Tiger" Kondo in The Cat Who Walks Through Walls is a cameo appearance by Yoji Kondo, a NASA scientist of Heinlein's acquaintance who also edited the tribute volume Requiem. The protagonist in Between Planets is assisted by a Chinese restaurant owner, a major character in the book. In The Star Beast, a harried African bureaucrat is sympathetically portrayed as the behind-the-scenes master of the world government's foreign policy, while several other (presumably white) officials are portrayed variously as misguided, foolish, or well-meaning but parochial and prejudiced.

Some of the alien species in Heinlein's fiction can be interpreted in terms of an allegorical representation of human ethnic groups. Double Star, Red Planet, and Stranger in a Strange Land all deal with tolerance and understanding between humans and Martians. Several of his stories, such as "Jerry Was a Man", The Star Beast, and Red Planet, involve the idea of non-humans who are incorrectly judged as being less than human. Although it has been suggested that the strongly hierarchical and anti-individualistic "bugs" in Starship Troopers were meant to represent the Chinese or Japanese, Heinlein wrote the book in response to the unilateral ending of nuclear testing by the U.S., so it is more likely that they were intended to represent communism. Indeed, Heinlein suggests in the book that the bugs are a good example of communism being something that humans cannot adhere successfully to, since humans are of individual minds, whereas the bugs, being a collective, can all contribute to the whole without consideration of individual desire. The slugs in The Puppet Masters are likewise explicitly and repeatedly identified as metaphors for communism. A problem with interpreting aliens as stand-ins for races of Homo sapiens is that Heinlein's aliens generally occupy an entirely different mental world than humans. For example, an alien race depicted in Methuselah's Children, the Jockaira, are sentient domesticated animals ruled by a second, godlike species. In his early juvenile fiction, the Martians and Venerians are usually depicted as ancient, wise races who seldom deign to interfere in human affairs.


Individualism and self-determination

Many of Heinlein's novels are stories of revolts against political oppression, for example:

Residents of a lunar penal colony, aided by a self-aware computer, rebel against the Warden and Lunar Authority (and eventually Earth) in The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress.
Colonists rebel against Earth in Between Planets and Red Planet, and in the back story to Podkayne of Mars
A break?-implicitly of a revolutionary nature?-between Earth and colonial Ganymede is predicted in Farmer in the Sky. The visiting Earth official who makes the prediction announces that he will be staying with the colony.
Secularists overthrow a religious dictatorship in "If This Goes On?-".
A group of soldiers take on the mantle of power after the governments of the world break down as part of the back story in Starship Troopers.
But in keeping with his belief in individualism, his work for adults ?- and sometimes even his work for juveniles ?- often portrays both the oppressors and the oppressed with considerable ambiguity. In titles such as Double Star and Glory Road, a monarch is depicted positively, and in The Star Beast, a publicity-shy bureaucrat is sympathetically portrayed as the behind-the-scenes controller of the planetary government's foreign relations ?- while his boss, a career politician, is portrayed as a fool. In The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, prerevolutionary life under the Lunar Authority is portrayed as a kind of anarchist or libertarian utopia; projections of economic disaster are the true (and secret) justification for the revolution, which brings with it the evils of republican government. Novels such as Stranger in a Strange Land and Friday revolve around individual rebellions against oppression by society rather than by government. The common thread, then, is the struggle for self-determination of individuals, rather than of nations. However, many of Heinlein's stories revolve around the protagonist's duty (which may be to a nation or to a stray kitten), and a common theme is the character's free choice as to whether to make a self-sacrificing decision.

Heinlein believed that individualism did not go hand-in-hand with ignorance. He believed that an appropriate level of adult competence was achieved through a wide-ranging education, whether this occurred in a classroom or not (as in Citizen of the Galaxy). In his juvenile novels, more than once a character looks with disdain at a student's choice of classwork, saying "Why didn't you study something useful?" In Time Enough For Love, Lazarus Long gives a long list of capabilities that anyone should have, concluding, "Specialization is for insects."

The ability of the individual to create himself is explored deeply in stories such as I Will Fear No Evil, "All You Zombies?-", and "By His Bootstraps". We are invited to wonder, what would humanity be if we shaped customs to benefit us, and not the other way around? In Heinlein's view, as outlined in For Us, The Living, humanity would not only be happier, but perceptually, behaviorally, and morally aligned with reality.


Sexual liberation

For Heinlein, personal liberation included sexual liberation, and free love was a major subject of his writing starting from the 1939 For Us, The Living. Beyond This Horizon (1942) cleverly subverts traditional gender roles in a scene in which the protagonist demonstrates his archaic gunpowder gun for his friend and discusses how useful it would be in dueling ?- after which the discussion turns to the shade of his nail polish. "All You Zombies?-" (1959) is the story of a person who undergoes sex reassignment therapy, goes back in time, has sex with herself, and gives birth to herself.

Sexual freedom and the elimination of sexual jealousy are a major theme of Stranger in a Strange Land (1961), in which the progressive minded yet culturally canalized reporter, Ben Caxton, acts as a dramatic foil for the less parochial characters, Jubal Harshaw and Mike. Paralleling Ben's gradual philosophical awakening, the nurse Gillian Boardman learns to embrace her innate tendency toward exhibitionism and to be more accepting of other people's sexuality (e.g., Duke's fondness for pornography). Stranger's treatment of homosexuality is ambiguous. As discussed in more detail in the book's Wikipedia article, two negative references to homosexuality have been interpreted by some readers as being homophobic, but both deal with Jill's hang-ups, and one is a discussion of Jill's thoughts. It is therefore unclear if they reflect Heinlein's own point of view. In The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, homosexuality is ill-regarded, but accepted as necessary, in an overwhelmingly male society, by the book's point-of-view character. In contrast, homosexuality is regarded with approval ?- even gusto ?- in books such as 1970s I Will Fear No Evil, which posits the social recognition of six innate genders, consisting of all possible combinations of male and female, with straight, gay, and bisexual. In The Number of the Beast, a male character discusses unsuccessful homosexual experimentation as a teenager, eventually stating that, while his previous experimentation had failed, if his friend and son-in-law Zeb Carter was to display a sexual interest in him, he would do his best to enjoy the experience and make Zeb feel as if he had desired it all along.

In later books, Heinlein dealt with incest and the sexual nature of children. In Time Enough For Love, Lazarus Long uses genetic arguments to initially dissuade a brother and sister he has adopted from sexual experimentation with each other, but he later arranges for them to be married, having discovered that they (in an extremely rare but scientifically possible circumstance) are not brother and sister on a genetic level; he also consummates his strong sexual attraction to his own mother, whom he goes back in time to see again. In some of Heinlein's books, To Sail Beyond the Sunset, for instance, sexual urges between daughters and fathers are exemplified and briefly discussed on several occasions. Later in the same book, the protagonist/narrator (Maureen Johnson) discovers that her two youngest children are engaged in heterosexual incest. After failing to dissuade them from the relationship, she forcibly returns the two to their father, and never mentions them again. The protagonist of The Cat Who Walks Through Walls recalls a homosexual experience with a Boy Scouts leader, which he didn't find unpleasant. In Heinlein's treatment of the possibility of sex between adults and adolescents, some readers may feel that he dodges many of the valid reasons for the taboo by portraying the sexual attractions or actual sex as taking place only between Nietzschean supermen, who are so enlightened that they can avoid all the ethical and emotional pitfalls. Also, the individuals involved in almost all cases are fully mature (if not "overmature", as in centuries-old), with stable personalities. The question of incest at this point, in Heinlein's characterizations, is more one of genetic compatibility and progeny issues than morality.

Arguably, Heinlein's treatment of female characters provides an example of a sexually liberated attitude, working against generally accepted stereotypes. Beginning with For Us, the Living, Heinlein's female characters of all ages were generally competent, intelligent, courageous, powerful, and in control of their lives and situations to the extent circumstances permitted. Those few of his female characters who are weak or helpless are held in contempt by other characters (including other females). Yet even the strongest of these characters (Podkayne of Mars and Star in Glory Road are examples) nonetheless suggest that they are willing to submit to physical punishment or control from stronger male figures.

In other characters, Heinlein also incorporated elements of the mid-twentieth century female stereotype in certain characters. In Double Star, for example, the secretary, Penny, while smart and competent, allows her emotions to affect her work ?- and eventually fulfills the dream of many Fifties secretaries by marrying her boss. Elspeth, in Starman Jones, pretends to be less intelligent than she is and permits Max to "teach" her three-dimensional chess (of which she is a champion) in order to have a better chance to catch his romantic interest. A character in Citizen of the Galaxy similarly allows Thorby to "teach" her mathematics (despite the fact, unknown to Thorby, that she has taught advanced mathematics) for a similar purpose. However, many of the juveniles feature intelligent young women who help save the day (from The Star Beast to Between Planets) ?- and are romantically inclined towards the protagonist, though not all such relationships end in marriage. In having the females assume a submissive attitude, he generally makes it clear that this relates to an issue with an inherently male desire to appear in control during the development of a relationship, not a weakness or need of women to surrender it.


Philosophy

In To Sail Beyond the Sunset, Heinlein has the main character, Maureen, state that the purpose of metaphysics is to ask questions: Why are we here? Where are we going after we die? (and so on), and that "you are not allowed to answer the questions". Asking the questions is the point for metaphysics, but answering them is not, because once you answer them, you cross the line into religion. Maureen does not state a reason for this; she simply remarks that such questions are "beautiful" but lack answers. Maureen's son/lover Lazarus Long makes a related remark in Time Enough For Love. In order for us to answer the "big questions" about the universe, Lazarus states at one point, it would be necessary to stand outside the universe.

During the 1930s and 1940s, Heinlein was deeply interested in Alfred Korzybski's General Semantics and attended a number of seminars on the subject. His views on epistemology seem to have flowed from that interest, and his fictional characters continue to express Korzybskian views to the very end of his writing career. Many of his stories, such as "Gulf", "If This Goes On?-", and Stranger in a Strange Land, depend strongly on the premise, extrapolated from the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, that by using a correctly designed language, one can liberate oneself mentally, or even become a superman. He was also strongly affected by the religious philosopher P. D. Ouspensky.[6] Freudianism and psychoanalysis were at the height of their influence during the peak of Heinlein's career, and stories such as Time for the Stars indulged in psychoanalysis. However, he was skeptical about Freudianism, especially after a struggle with an editor who insisted on reading Freudian sexual symbolism into his juvenile novels. Heinlein was fascinated by the social credit movement in the 1930s. This is shown in his 1938 novel For Us, The Living: A Comedy of Customs, which was finally published in 2003, long after his death. He was strongly committed to cultural relativism, and the sociologist Margaret Mader in his novel Citizen of the Galaxy is clearly a reference to Margaret Mead. In the World War II era, cultural relativism was the only intellectual framework that offered a clearly reasoned alternative to racism, which Heinlein was ahead of his time in opposing. Many of these sociological and psychological theories have been criticized, debunked, or heavily modified in the last fifty years, and Heinlein's use of them may now appear credulous and dated to many readers. The critic Patterson says "Korzybski is now widely regarded as a crank",[35] although others disagree.





Influence

Heinlein is usually identified, along with Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke, as one of the three masters of science fiction to arise in the so-called Golden Age of science fiction, associated with John W. Campbell and his magazine Astounding. However, in the 1950s he was a leader in bringing science fiction out of the low-paying and less prestigious pulp ghetto. Most of his works, including short stories, have been continuously in print in many languages since their initial appearance and are still available as new paperbacks years after his death.

Robert Heinlein was also influenced by the American writer, philosopher and humorist Charles Fort who is credited as a major influence on most of the leading science-fiction writers of the 20th-century. "Fort's writing was to have an immense influence on the field.... His wry sense of humor and refusal to take himself as seriously as did his followers excused many of his faults. I found his eccentric -- even explosive -- style stimulating and indeed mind-expanding." said Arthur C. Clark in Astounding Days (Gollancz 1989). Heinlein was a long-time member of the International Fortean Organization also known as INFO, the successor to the original Fortean Society until his death. Heinlein's letters were often displayed on the walls of the INFO offices and his active participation in the organization is mentioned in the INFO Journal.


He was at the top of his form during, and himself helped to initiate, the trend toward social science fiction, which went along with a general maturing of the genre away from space opera to a more literary approach touching on such adult issues as politics and human sexuality. In reaction to this trend, hard science fiction began to be distinguished as a separate subgenre, but paradoxically Heinlein is also considered a seminal figure in hard science fiction, due to his extensive knowledge of engineering, and the careful scientific research demonstrated in his stories. Heinlein himself stated ?- with obvious pride ?- that in the days before pocket calculators, he and his wife Virginia once worked for several days on a mathematical equation describing an Earth-Mars rocket orbit, which was then subsumed in a single sentence of the novel Space Cadet. Part of this may be tied to Heinlein's almost uniquely effective ability to see, as he defined it, not only the primary and secondary effects of technology (the automobile leads to the disappearance of the horse, primary, and to the fact that few Americans have any real experience of horses, secondary) but to the tertiary and deeper effects of technology (for example, the effect of the automobile on loosening social mores, by allowing people to "get away" from people that might gossip about them). In this, Heinlein was a master: He foresaw Interstate Highways (The Roads Must Roll), concern over nuclear power generation (Blowups Happen), international nuclear stalemate (Solution Unsatisfactory -- i.e., the Cold War) as well as numerous other lesser examples. Rarely was the technology he described the end solution, but almost always he saw the effect that "sort" of technology would have on society. He is also credited with describing two technologies (Waldoes and Waterbeds) that later came into widespread use. Heinlein can also be credited, post-Jules Verne and H.G.Wells, with writing the first modern variations of almost every hard SF archetype.

Heinlein has had a nearly ubiquitous influence on other science fiction writers. In a 1953 poll of leading science fiction authors, he was cited more frequently as an influence than any other modern writer. [36] In 1974, he won the first Grand Master Award given by the Science Fiction Writers of America for lifetime achievement. Critic James Gifford writes that "Although many other writers have exceeded Heinlein's output, few can claim to match his broad and seminal influence. Scores of science fiction writers from the prewar Golden Age through the present day loudly and enthusiastically credit Heinlein for blazing the trails of their own careers, and shaping their styles and stories." [37]

Outside the science fiction community, several words and phrases coined or adopted by Heinlein have passed into common English usage: waldo, TANSTAAFL, moonbat,[38] and grok.

In 1962, Oberon Zell-Ravenheart (then still using his birth name, Tim Zell) founded the Church of All Worlds, a Neopagan religious organization modeled in many ways after the treatment of religion in the novel Stranger in a Strange Land. This spiritual path included several ideas from the book, including polyamory, non-mainstream family structures, social libertarianism, water-sharing rituals, an acceptance of all religious paths by a single tradition, and the use of several terms such as "grok", "Thou art God", and "Never Thirst". Though Heinlein was neither a member nor a promoter of the Church, it was done with frequent correspondence between Zell and Heinlein, and he was a paid subscriber to their magazine Green Egg. This Church still exists as a 501(C)(3) religious organization incorporated in California, with membership worldwide, and it remains an active part of the neopagan community today [39].

He was influential in making space exploration seem to the public more like a practical possibility. His stories in publications such as The Saturday Evening Post took a matter-of-fact approach to their outer-space setting, rather than the "gee whiz" tone that had previously been common. The documentary-like film Destination Moon advocated a Space Race with the Soviet Union almost a decade before such an idea became commonplace, and was promoted by an unprecedented publicity campaign in print publications. Many of the astronauts and others working in the U. S. space program grew up on a diet of the Heinlein juveniles, best evidenced by the naming of a crater on Mars after him, and a tribute interspersed by the Apollo 15 astronauts into their radio conversations while on the moon. [40]

Heinlein was also a guest commentator for Walter Cronkite during Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin's Apollo 11 moon landing.

There is an active campaign to persuade the Secretary of the Navy to name the new Zumwalt class destroyer DDG-1001 the USS Robert A. Heinlein. [8]

Main-belt Asteroid 6371 Heinlein (1985 GS), discovered on 15 April 1985 by Edward L. G. Bowell, was named after him.

Mary Ford
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Mary Ford (aka Iris Colleen Hatfield) (July 7, 1924, El Monte, California, - September 30, 1977, Arcadia, California), vocalist and guitarist, was one-half of the famed husband-wife musical team, Les Paul and Mary Ford. Between 1950 and 1954, the couple had 16 top-ten hits. In 1951 alone, the duo sold six million records.

Born Iris Colleen Summers, she came from a musical family. Her father was a Nazarene minister, and her parents left Missouri, traveling cross-country while singing gospel music and preaching at revival meetings across America, eventually settling in Southern California where they were heard over Pasadena's first Christian radio station. All of her sisters and brothers were musicians: Esther, Carol, Eva, Fletcher, jazz organist Bruce and film composer Bob Summers.

In the early 1940s. she found work as a country music performer with Gene Autry and Jimmy Wakely. She appeared with Wakely in the PRC film I'm from Arkansas (1944) as a member of the Sunshine Girls trio. In 1945, Autry introduced her to guitarist Les Paul, and the two teamed in 1946. For billing purposes, Paul selected "Mary Ford" from a telephone directory so her name would be almost as short as his. With Paul, she became one of the early practitioners of multi-tracking. Patti Page and Jane Turzy were other 1950s vocalists who used multi-tracking.




Radio and television

After their marriage on December 29, 1949, the couple appeared together on their NBC radio program, The Les Paul Show (1949-50), and they had a series of hit records for Capitol in the early 1950s, including "Tiger Rag", "Vaya con Dios" (11 weeks at #1) and "How High the Moon" (nine weeks at #1), "Bye Bye Blues" and "The World Is Waiting for the Sunrise". These songs featured Mary harmonizing with herself, giving the vocals a very novel sound. Paul and Ford also used the now-ubiquitous recording technique known as close miking, where the microphone is less than six inches from the singer's mouth. This produces a more intimate, less reverberant sound than is heard when a singer is a foot or more from the microphone. It also emphasizes low-frequency sounds in the voice. The result is a singing style which diverged strongly from earlier styles, such as vocals in musical comedies of the 1930s and 1940s.

In 1953 the couple began their television series, The Les Paul and Mary Ford at Home Show. In 1955 they gave a concert at Carnegie Hall, and the following year they performed for President Dwight Eisenhower at the White House.

They faded from the charts in the late 1950s, and in 1964, Ford and Paul had a bitter divorce, ending their professional association. Living in Monrovia, California, she married an old friend from high school, Donald Hatfield, and occasionally performed with her sisters and brother. Bassist Red Wootten, who married Mary's sister Eva Summers, wrote his memories of playing at the Crescendo in Los Angeles with Mary, her sister Carol and her brother, Bob Summers:

My brother, Buddy Wootten, also a bassist, called me from Atlanta to tell me he had just finished working the Fox Theater with Les Paul and Mary Ford. Mary also told me this later. This was while I was holding forth with Woody Herman 0rchestra. So, later when I had married her sister (Eva), we worked with her other sister and Bob Summers (her brother) on guitar (sounds like Les Paul too,) and Mary's other sister Carol. The gig was the Crescendo club right in the middle of Sunset Strip. A very hip joint!
Mary used a drummer added to Bob, Mary and myself on electric bass. We did almost all the Les Paul-Mary Ford recordings but with more heavy end on the bass. Les having used guitar on his bass tracks with Mary earlier. On all their recordings (as good as they were), I always missed that deep dark sound... Mary (bless her heart) recorded a few of my compositions (never released), but she did an excellent job as always. Mary divorced Les Paul and later married her old school friend from Monrovia, California, namely Don Hatfield, who owned a large construction company in California. He is still with us, and I see him occasionally. Doing great, but he missed Mary.
Bob Summers, my brother-in-law has come into his own over the years too. Bob and I worked a lot on MGM records with the Mike Curb scene, early 1960s. He also was chief arranger for the Mike Curb Congregation, and they recorded some of my material, great too! Also Bob and I worked at Capitol records for Ken Nelson and Cliffie Stone, passed recently. Too many country artists to even name nearly all of them: Hank Thompson, Wynn Stewart, Rose Maddox and others. Roy Lanham did one of his better albums at the Sound House, Merced, in El Monte (my old stamping grounds) and Mary Ford's home place, 9840 Kale Street. Bruce Summers is still with us, a piano man whom I played with a few times; a real swinger too. [1]

Mary Ford came from a musical family, and after leaving Les Paul, she sometimes performed with her sisters, Carol, Eva and Esther. Seen here (l to r) are Carol and Eva Summers with Millie Pace. The guitarist who recorded with the Millie Pace Trio was Bob Summers, Mary Ford's brother.In Downey, California, Mary's sister Esther Williams played the organ in The Village Restaurant. Esther's daughter, Esther Colleen "Suzee" Williams, recalled one amusing incident at the restaurant in the years after Mary Ford and Les Paul had split up:

There was one singer that came in to sing with my mom. His name was Lou Monica. Well, Mary asked him to learn the song "Donkey Serenade." It's not an easy song to sing, however, Mr. Monica agreed and after a couple of weeks, he said he was ready. As he began to sing, the doors of the club opened wide, and in came Mary, dressed in black with a black gaucho hat, on top of a donkey! Mr. Monica never skipped a beat. [2]
Mary Ford died of complications from diabetes in Arcadia, California at the age of 53. She is buried at Forest Lawn-Covina Hills in Covina, California. Although her year of birth has been variously reported (1924, 1925, 1928), the year 1924 is engraved on her tombstone.


Documentary film

Along with interviews, performance footage of the couple is featured in the musical documentary Chasing Sound: Les Paul at 90, directed by John Paulson (Johnny Mathis Live, An Evening with Chita Rivera). Distributed by Koch Entertainment, Chasing Sound premiered May 9, 2007 at the Downer Theater in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, followed by the television premiere July 11, 2007 on PBS as part of its American Masters series. [3] [4]

Doc Severinsen
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Background information

Birth name Carl Hilding Severinsen
Born July 7, 1927 (1927-07-07) (age 81)
Origin Arlington, Oregon U.S.
Genre(s) Jazz
Occupation(s) Bandleader
Trumpeter
Instrument(s) Trumpet
Associated acts Tommy Dorsey
Benny Goodman

Carl Hilding "Doc" Severinsen (born July 7, 1927) is an American pop and jazz trumpeter. He is best known for leading the NBC Orchestra on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.





Early life

Severinsen was born in Arlington, Oregon, the son of Minnie Mae and Carl Severinsen, who was a dentist.[1] He was nicknamed "Little Doc" after his father, and had originally wanted to play the trombone. But the senior Severinsen, a gifted amateur violinist, urged him to study the violin. The younger Severinsen insisted on the trombone, but had to settle for the only horn available in Arlington's small music store ?- a trumpet. A week later, with the help of his father and a manual of instructions, the seven-year-old was so good that he was invited to join the high school band. At the age of twelve, Little Doc won the Music Educator's National Contest and, while still in high school, was hired to go on the road with the Ted Fio Rito Orchestra. However, his stay with the group was cut short by the draft. He served in the Army during World War II.


The Tonight Show

In the 1950s, during Steve Allen's tenure as host of NBC-TV's Tonight, Doc Severinsen played first trumpet in the band, which was directed by Skitch Henderson. Severinsen took over as bandleader in 1967, and soon became noted for his flashy, trendy stage wardrobe.

Under Severinsen, the Tonight Show's NBC Orchestra was the most visible big band in America. Severinsen took the opportunity to update many well-known swing and jazz standards for the show's audiences, often introducing new listeners to classics by Cole Porter, Dizzy Gillespie, and others.

Severinsen would sometimes substitute for Ed McMahon as announcer and sidekick. Although adept at comic interplay, Severinsen took his role as band leader on The Tonight Show seriously. The band played both incidental music for comedy sketches and guest introductions, and intermission music during station breaks. Severinsen campaigned for the band to get featured slots during the show, but for the most part the band was seen on camera during the frequent "Stump the Band" segments, Audience members would challenge the band with obscure song titles, and Severinsen and his crew would attempt to play something appropriate to the titles. Severinsen often cried, "Key of E!", his signal for the band to strike up a western theme, and then he would enthusiastically sing a country-flavored nonsense song.

Severinsen continued as bandleader until Carson's retirement in 1992.


Recording career

During the 1950s and 1960s, Severinsen put out a number of albums of jazz standards, over which he performed very melodic solos. Severinsen certainly had a well-developed high-note range with an incredible amount of control and melodic sense. In the 1960s, Severinsen also recorded with the Clarke/Boland Big Band and the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis band. Severinsen was also the second trumpeter whose recording of the fanfare "Abblasen," composed by Gottfried Reiche, has been used as the theme for the CBS News program Sunday Morning.

During his years with the Tonight Show and afterwards, Severinsen released albums that had a pop-rock basis, some of which had electronic instrumentation components, such as Brass Roots, Good Medicine and Facets. These albums had varying degrees of acceptance by the public.

The Tonight Show Orchestra recorded several albums as a group.

Severinsen arranged the score for the nudist-themed cult film Nude on the Moon (1961).

Several recent recordings feature him playing classical trumpet repertoire.


Conducting and academic career

Severinsen was the principal pops conductor for several American orchestras during and after his tenure on the Tonight Show. His first was with the Phoenix Symphony in 1983.[2] He held similar positions with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra, the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, the Minnesota Orchestra, and the Pacific Symphony Orchestra. He retired from active conducting in 2007, and was named Pops Conductor Emeritus in Milwaukee[3] and Pops Conductor Laureate in Minnesota.[4] Severinsen was also Distinguished Visiting Professor of Music and Katherine K. Herberger Heritage Chair for Visiting Artists at Arizona State University School of Music in 2001-2002.[5] He has also conducted the New York Pops at the world-famous Carnegie Hall in New York City.


Personal life

To this day, Severinsen remains in amazing physical condition, as well as retaining his musical ability. He lives in San Miguel, Mexico with his wife, Emily. His adult children are Nancy Severinsen, Cindy Reinhard and Allen Severinsen. He has three grandchildren in New Jersey (Blaire, Gray, and Richard Reinhard), all of them musicians. Blaire Reinhard is a professional session singer and has composed for several television shows and films. Along with Gray, she formed the soul/funk/rock band known as "The Blaire Reinhard Band."

Doc owns Severinsen Custom Trumpets, manufacturer of custom-made horns, including his Destino line of trumpets (and he play-tests each one).[6] Severinsen also enjoys cooking and collecting American art.

Ringo Starr
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



Background information

Birth name Richard Starkey
Also known as Ringo
Born 7 July 1940 (1940-07-07) (age 68)
Origin Liverpool, England
Genre(s) Rock, rock and roll, pop
Occupation(s) Musician, songwriter, actor
Instrument(s) Drums, percussion, piano, vocals, harmonica
Years active 1957 - present
Label(s) Parlophone, United Artists Records, Capitol, Apple, Swan Records, Vee-Jay, Tollie Records, MGM Records, Polydor, Atlantic, RCA, Mercury, Koch Private Music, Boardwalk Records, Rykodisc
Associated acts The Beatles, Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band, The Plastic Ono Band
Website ringostarr.com
Notable instrument(s)
Ludwig Drumset

Ringo Starr, MBE, born Richard Starkey on 7 July 1940, is an English musician, singer, songwriter and actor, best known as the drummer for The Beatles. He was the last to join the "Fab Four" line up.[1]





Early years

Ringo Starr was born at 9 Madryn Street,[2] Dingle, Liverpool.[3][4] Starr's parents split up when he was three years old; his mother,[5] Elsie Starkey (née Gleave), married Harry Graves,[6] whom Starr liked and who encouraged his interest in music.[7][8][5] His childhood was filled with long hospital stays, once in Heswall Children's Hospital in Wirral, where the air was cleaner than in Liverpool ?- an appendicitis-caused coma and a cold-turned-pleurisy were among his ailments ?- consequently, he fell far behind in school. After his last extended visit to hospital, beginning at age 13, he did not return to school.[9][10] His health problems had another enduring effect: allergies and sensitivities to food. When he travelled to India in 1968 with the other Beatles, he took his own food with him.[11]

Like the other Beatles, John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison, Richard (or Richie as he was known in those days)[12] also eventually became caught up in Liverpool's Skiffle craze. In the year 1957, Starr started his own group with Eddie Miles, which was originally named the "Eddie Miles Band," but evolved into "Eddie Clayton and the Clayton Squares;" "Clayton Square" was a local landmark and "Clayton" Eddie Miles' stage surname. Starr joined the Raving Texans in 1959, a quartet that backed singer Rory Storm.[13] During this time, he got the nickname Ringo, because of the rings he wore,[14] because it sounded 'cowboyish', and because the name Starr allowed his drum solos to be billed as 'Starr Time'.[15]

Starr originally met the Beatles in Hamburg, in October 1960, while he was performing with Rory Storm and the Hurricanes.[16] He also sat in for Pete Best on several occasions.[17] When the Beatles removed Pete Best as their drummer on August 16, 1962, Starr was their choice to replace him.[18]

Although Storm had mixed feelings about losing Starr,[19][20] Best's fans were upset, holding vigils outside Best's house and fighting at the Cavern Club, shouting 'Pete forever! Ringo never!'[20] Similarly, other fans yelled the contrary: "Ringo forever! Pete never!"


Musical role in The Beatles

He filled the role he was hired for in 1962, then went on to establish a new approach to rhythm in popular music that some claim continues to grow in its significance and influence with every decade since The Beatles recorded their music.[21]

Lennon said of Starr:

" Ringo was a star in his own right in Liverpool before we even met. He was a professional drummer who sang and performed and had Ringo Starr-time and he was in one of the top groups in Britain but especially in Liverpool before we even had a drummer ... Ringo's a damn good drummer.[22] "

Drummer Steve Smith said:

" Before Ringo, drum stars were measured by their soloing ability and virtuosity. Ringo's popularity brought forth a new paradigm in how the public saw drummers. We started to see the drummer as an equal participant in the compositional aspect. One of Ringo's great qualities was that he composed unique, stylistic drum parts for the Beatles songs. His parts are so signature to the songs that you can listen to a Ringo drum part without the rest of the music and still identify the song.[23] "

Many drummers list Starr as an influence, including Dave Grohl of Nirvana/Foo Fighters, Orri Páll Dýrason of Sigur Ros,[24] Max Weinberg of the E Street Band, Danny Carey of Tool, Liberty DeVitto of Billy Joel's band, Nicko McBrain of Iron Maiden, Phil Collins, Mike Portnoy from Dream Theater and others.[25] According to Collins, "Starr is vastly underrated. The drum fills on the song "A Day in the Life" are very complex things. You could take a great drummer today and say, 'I want it like that.' He wouldn't know what to do."[26]

In his extensive survey of The Beatles' recording sessions, Mark Lewisohn confirmed that Starr was both proficient and remarkably reliable and consistent. According to Lewisohn, there were fewer than a dozen occasions in The Beatles' eight-year recording career where session 'breakdowns' were caused by Starr making a mistake, while the vast majority of takes were stopped due to mistakes by the other three members.[25]

Starr is also considered to have advanced various modern drumming techniques, such as the matched grip, placing the drums on high risers for visibility as part of the band, tuning the drums lower, and using muffling devices on tonal rings, along with his general contributions to The Beatles as a whole.[23] Specific drum parts executed by Starr in notably signature fashion include the fill that brings the drums and bass guitar into "Hey Jude", the steady rock beats in "Please Please Me" and other early Beatles recordings, the drum kit pattern through the bridge of "Hello, Goodbye", the drums and hi-hat rolls on "Come Together", and the driving bass drum notes found in "Lady Madonna", underlying the more intricate, double-tracked snare drum. His use of a 'sizzle' cymbal (a cymbal incorporated with rivets that vibrate) would bring a much fuller sound than standard 'ride' cymbals. Starr comments his best drumming is on the 1966 single B-side "Rain".

McCartney took over the drums on "Back in the U.S.S.R." and "Dear Prudence", the first two tracks on the White Album (1968) after Starr had walked out, disgusted with the band's tensions and bored with waiting around to contribute. He did not return for two weeks until the other three Beatles urged him to come back. He spent the fortnight with actor Peter Sellers on his yacht Amelfis in Piraeus, where he wrote "Octopus's Garden". Lennon sent telegrams to Starr, and Harrison set up flowers all over the studio for Starr's return saying "Welcome home".[27]

McCartney sent Starr a postcard on 31 January 1969 (the day after the band's performance on the roof of Apple Studios) stating: 'You are the greatest drummer in the world. Really.' This postcard is included in Starr's book Postcards From The Boys.[28]

McCartney played the drums on "The Ballad of John and Yoko", recorded 14 April 1969, since only Lennon and McCartney were immediately available to record the song.[29] Starr commented that he was lucky in being 'surrounded by three frustrated drummers' who could only drum in one style.[30] Starr also did not play drums on The Beatles' first-ever single, "Love Me Do". Session drummer Andy White was brought in by The Beatles' producer George Martin to record in place of Pete Best, and Martin claims to not have realized prior to the session that The Beatles had hired a professional drummer. Starr played tambourine on the version of "Love Me Do" featuring Andy White and maracas on "P.S. I Love You".[31]

Starr generally sang at least one song on each studio album as part of establishing the vocal personality of all four members, a quality that is rarely seen in many other bands. In some cases, Lennon or McCartney would write the lyrics and melody especially for him, as they did for "Yellow Submarine" from Revolver (1966). Often these melodies would be tailored to Starr's baritone vocal range. Starr's backing vocals can be heard on songs such as "All Together Now", "Carry That Weight", and "The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill".

Starr is credited with "Don't Pass Me By" (on The White Album) and "Octopus's Garden" (on Abbey Road) as sole songwriter. Starr's name also appears as a co-writer. On Rubber Soul, the track "What Goes On" was co-written by Lennon, McCartney and Starr; while the songs "Flying" (on the Magical Mystery Tour album) and "Dig It" (on Let It Be) are listed as being written by Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, and Starr. In addition, Starr wrote "Taking a Trip to Carolina" (on the second CD of Let It Be... Naked), and received joint songwriting credits with the other three Beatles for "12-Bar Original", "Los Paranoias", "Christmas Time (Is Here Again)", "Suzy Parker" (heard in the Let It Be film), "Jessie's Dream" (heard in the Magical Mystery Tour film) and The Beatles' version of "Free as a Bird".

Lennon used Ringo's common original expressions, such as "A Hard Day's Night" and "Tomorrow Never Knows", and turned them into Beatles songs. Ringo occasionally contributed lyrics to unfinished Lennon and McCartney songs, such as the line "darning his socks in the night when there's nobody there" in "Eleanor Rigby".

Starr commented in The Beatles Anthology that when he presented a song to The Beatles, it would often sound to the other three Beatles like another popular song, and Starr recognised the similarities when they were pointed out.


Other contributions to The Beatles

Starr's non-musical contributions to the band were also significant, especially in their early years of fame. A natural actor, he was the central character in the plots of both of the band's live action films (A Hard Day's Night and Help!), and in the animated Yellow Submarine (although he and the other Beatles did not actually perform the voice acting in Yellow Submarine). Starr's affable nature and sad, expressive face provided a strong counterpoint and complement to the other group member personalities. This same quality was an essential element in the group's celebrated wit and collective comic persona. He was later a calming, cohesive force when group tensions and conflicts arose. Lennon stated after the Beatles' split that Starr was the under-appreciated "soul" of the group. After the split, Starr remained close to each of the other three, all of whom went through periods of angry estrangement from each other. He has also remained close to the former wives of his bandmates.


Personal life

Starr married Maureen Cox on 11 February 1965, and they had three children, Zak, Jason, and Lee; the couple divorced in 1975, and Cox died in 1994. In 1980, on the set of the film Caveman, he met actress Barbara Bach, who played the role of Major Anya Amasova (female lead and main 'Bond Girl') in The Spy Who Loved Me. They were married on 27 April 1981, just a few weeks after the release of Caveman.

His son Zak Starkey is also a highly respected and prolific drummer, who is a semi-official member and drummer in Oasis ?- one of the many bands influenced by the Beatles. Starr arranged for Zak to receive drumming instruction from Zak's idol, The Who's late drummer Keith Moon, who was a close friend of Starr's. Zak also performs with The Who live and sometimes in studio. In 1985, Starr was the first of The Beatles to become a grandfather upon the birth of Zak's daughter, Tatia Jayne Starkey.[32] Zak also has performed with his father in his All-Starr live versions.


After The Beatles (1970-1984)

After the announcement of breakup of The Beatles on 10 April 1970, Starr released two albums before the end of that year. Sentimental Journey featured Starr's renditions of many pre-rock standards and included the production talents of Quincy Jones, George Martin and McCartney, among others. His next album, Beaucoups of Blues, put Starr in a country context, and included renowned Nashville session musician Pete Drake. He scored hit singles with "It Don't Come Easy" (1971) and "Back Off Boogaloo" (1972), the latter of which was his biggest UK hit, peaking at #2. He achieved two #1 hits in the US, with "Photograph" (co-written with Harrison) and "You're Sixteen" (written by the Sherman Brothers of Mary Poppins fame).

He also participated in The Concert For Bangladesh organized by Harrison in 1971, as well as drumming on Harrison's All Things Must Pass and Living in the Material World, Lennon's John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, and Yoko Ono's early solo work. Indeed, his song "Early 1970" (the B-side of "It Don't Come Easy") voiced a hope that he could remain friendly and play music with all three of his former Beatles band mates. Starr then made his debut as a film director with the T. Rex documentary Born to Boogie. Starr became firm friends with T. Rex frontman Marc Bolan and during the period of filming the documentary, Starr released the single "Back Off Boogaloo".[33]

Starr remains the only Beatle to have failed to top the UK singles charts as a solo artist, although he did chart two number one singles in the US. He is also the only Beatle to have failed to top the UK album listings, his highest position being #7, achieved in the UK with both Sentimental Journey and Ringo; the latter reached #2 in the US charts, giving Starr his highest album position there.

In 1971, he started a furniture company with designer Robin Cruikshank. Starr's own avant-garde designs included a flower-shaped table with adjustable petal seats and a donut-shaped fireplace.[34]

The 1973 album Ringo remains his biggest-selling record. Produced by Richard Perry with participation by the other three former Beatles on different tracks, Starr became the most commercially successful ex-Beatle at that time. The album Goodnight Vienna followed the next year and was also successful. Hits and notable tracks from these two albums included "Photograph" and "You're Sixteen" both reaching number one on the US charts, and "I'm The Greatest" (written by Lennon) from Ringo, and "Only You (And You Alone)" and "No No Song" from Goodnight Vienna. In late 1975 these singles and others were collected for Starr's first greatest hits compilation, Blast from Your Past, which was also the last album to be released on Apple Records.[35] During this period, he became romantically involved with Lynsey De Paul and inspired her prophetic song "If I Don't Get You, the Next One Will". He also played tambourine on a song that De Paul wrote and produced for Vera Lynn, called "Don't You Remember When".

Starr's recording career subsequently diminished in commercial impact, although he continued to record and remained a familiar celebrity presence. Starr signed with Atlantic Records in the mid 1970s, and in 1976 the album Ringo's Rotogravure was released. While it did feature a minor hit single, the album sold only fairly well. In fact, Rotogravure turned out to be Starr's last top 40 album in the US to date peaking at #28 on Billboard and the Single turned out to be the last top 40 single in the US in the 70"s "A Dose of Rock And Roll". This caused the label to revamp Starr's formula; the results were a curious blend of disco and '70s pop. The album Ringo the 4th (1977) was a commercial disaster, and Starr soon signed with Portrait Records. His stint with Portrait began on a promising note: 1978 saw the release of Bad Boy, as well as a network TV special. Neither were very popular, and Starr did not release another album with Portrait.[36]

In 1975, Starr founded his own record label called Ring O'Records, and four albums were released on the label between 1975 and 1978 (Startling Music by David Hentschel, Graham Bonnet by Graham Bonnet, Restless by Rab Noakes and a re-release of an Apple Records album, The Whale by John Tavener) as well as 16 singles by artists such as: Bobby Keys, Carl Grossman, Colonel Doug Bogie, David Hentschel, Graham Bonnet, Suzanne, Johnny Warman, Stormer, Rab Noakes and Dirk & Stig (the last being names of characters from The Beatles pastiche band "the Rutles", created by Eric Idle and Neil Innes).[37]

In 1980, Harrison wrote "All Those Years Ago" for Starr to sing on his album Can't Fight Lightning which was later released as Stop and Smell the Roses. Starr did the track but told Harrison that he was uncomfortable with it because of the lyric content and the vocal range. Harrison sang a re-written version himself, including it on his 1981 album Somewhere in England following Lennon's murder. Starr, along with Paul and Linda McCartney, played on Harrison's version. Starr was interviewed by Rolling Stone and Musician around this time. Stop and Smell the Roses was a well regarded album, but again did not sell particularly well. Coincidentally perhaps, Lennon had also written a song for Starr to use on Roses: "Life Begins At 40". However, following the murder, Starr did not feel comfortable recording the song; it was released posthumously under Lennon's name on the album Milk and Honey.

After Lennon was murdered in 1980, Starr and his girlfriend Barbara Bach flew to New York City, to comfort Lennon's widow Yoko Ono.

Although Starr had regularly guested on Lennon's and Harrison's solo efforts, and had had all three of his ex-colleagues guest on various records of his own, it was not until 1982 that he first was asked by McCartney to participate in recording sessions (for the Tug of War album). As was also evident with Harrison's "All Those Years Ago", Lennon's death had in fact led to a public showing of reconciliation between the remaining Beatles.

In 1990, Starr recorded a version of the song "I Call Your Name" for a television special marking the 10th anniversary of John Lennon's death and the 50th anniversary of his birth. The track, produced by Jeff Lynne, features a supergroup comprised of Lynne, Tom Petty, Joe Walsh & Jim Keltner.


Recent years (1985-present)

Music (albums, concerts/tours, awards, appearances)

In 1985, he performed, with his son Zak Starkey, as part of Artists United Against Apartheid on the recording Sun City.

In 1987, Starr drummed on the George Harrison song "When We Was Fab" from his album Cloud Nine. Harrison had written the song with Jeff Lynne with the intent of making a modern song referencing the psychedelic Beatles era, ca. 1967. The song charted in the Top 30 in both the UK and the USA.

He served a short stint in a detox clinic for alcoholism[38] Later that year, Starr became a visible presence on the summer touring scene, organising a series of concert tours under the name Ringo Starr and His All-Starr Band, teaming with well-known musicians from various rock eras. The format of the concerts had Starr singing selections of his Beatles and solo songs, then each of the other musicians taking a turn to sing one of their songs with Starr behind the drums, then Starr singing a couple more, then another go around, and so on. In this way, Starr is relieved from having to carry the full burden of the show, and the audience gets to hear a variety of music. The ninth such All-Starr Band tour took place in 2006.

The success of the initial All-Starr tour led to Starr releasing his first album in nine years, 1992's Time Takes Time. It received substantial exposure and the track "Weight Of The World" got considerable airplay. Critics considered Time Takes Time Ringo's best recording since 1973's Ringo. The album was produced by four of the top producers in music: Phil Ramone, Don Was, Jeff Lynne and Peter Asher, and also featured guest appearances by various stars including Brian Wilson and Harry Nilsson.

In 1997, Starr guested on drums on two songs on the Paul McCartney album Flaming Pie. McCartney had written a song about Starr's ex-wife Maureen Starkey ("Little Willow") and asked Starr if he'd play on another ("Beautiful Night"). On the day subsequent to the "Beautiful Night" session, the two recorded a jam session which developed into another song, "Really Love You", notable for being the first song ever credited to McCartney/Starkey and officially released on an album. (An earlier co-write called "Angel in Disguise" was cut from the album Time Takes Time, and a song on the Let It Be film soundtrack was also credited to the two.)

In 1998, he released two albums on the Mercury label. The studio album Vertical Man was well-received by critics and marked the beginning of a nine-year "partnership" with Mark Hudson, who produced the album and, with his band The Roundheads, formed the core of the backing group for the album. In addition, many "famous guests" joined on various tracks, including George Martin, Paul McCartney, and ― in his final appearance on a Ringo Starr album before his death ― George Harrison. Most of the songs were written by Starr and the band. The Roundheads and Joe Walsh also joined Starr for his appearance on VH1 Storytellers, which was released as an album under the same name. On the show, he performed greatest hits and new songs, and told anecdotes relating to them.

In 2001 following Harrison's death of throat cancer on November 29, he told MTV, Good Morning America, The Early Show, and The Today Show, among many others, that "We will miss George for his sense of humor."

In 2002 Starr was inducted into the Percussive Hall of Fame joining the elite group of percussive inductees, which includes Buddy Rich and William F. Ludwig, Sr. and his son.

On November 29, 2002, Starr performed "Photograph" and a cover of Carl Perkins' "Honey Don't" at the Concert For George held in the Royal Albert Hall, London, on the first anniversary of Harrison's death. According to the official website, "Ringo Starr caught everyone with a tear in their eye with a rendition of 'Photograph', a composition he wrote with George, which seemed to sum up how everyone felt." The song includes the lines, "Every time I see your face / it reminds me of the places we used to go / But all I've got is a photograph / and I realize you're not coming back anymore".[39]

Most recently, Starr featured on the Jerry Lee Lewis 2006 duet album, Last Man Standing; he performed a cover, with Lewis, of Chuck Berry's "Sweet Little Sixteen".[40]

In June 2007 the newest studio album by Ringo Starr was expected, produced by Dave Stewart, Mark Hudson and Starr himself, and titled Liverpool 8. However, the release was pushed back to the beginning of 2008; the album was officially released in Europe in the second week of January, 2008. Mark Hudson was the initial producer of the record but was replaced by Stewart after a falling out with Starr. (The album's production credits read, "Produced by Ringo Starr and Mark Hudson; Re-Produced by Ringo Starr and David Stewart." All of the songs but one were written with members of the Roundheads, although Stewart also has several co-writing credits.) Starr's attorney Bruce Grakal told journalist Peter Palmiere that the partnership between Hudson and Starr was over and they would never work together again. This happened after Hudson dropped out of the 2006 tour as musical director to do the TV show "The One: Making A Music Star". According to Palmiere, Hudson now claims that the split was over Starr's insistence on using synthesized sounds, for which Stewart is known, whereas Hudson wanted real guitars, pianos, strings etc.[41] However, about the parting with Hudson, Starr said (in response to Palmiere's report), "The separation between Mark Hudson and myself was a question of trust and friendship and had nothing to do with synthesizers."

On January 11, 2008, Ringo Starr played to a crowd of over 25,000 people on top of St George's Hall, Liverpool to start off Liverpool's European Capital of Culture year at 8 minutes past 8 (20:08). He performed a bit of drumming to start with, with some of the guitarists, and then later performed a new song from his album Liverpool 8 with Dave Stewart. The following day, Starr performed at the new Echo Arena at King's Dock, Liverpool, in the show Liverpool - The Musical.

On January 25, 2008, Starr appeared on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson. He was the only guest on the show and performed four songs ?- "Photograph", "Liverpool 8", "Boys", and "With a Little Help From My Friends".


Other news items

In September 2005, Liverpool City Council decided they would bulldoze Starr's birthplace as it had 'no historical significance',[42] despite a previous reprieve back in July.[43] The LCC later announced that the building would be taken apart brick by brick and preserved after all.[44] As of November 2007 the LCC did not yet have planning permission for their demolition plans.[45]

On August 27, 2006, Starr's wife Barbara Bach was kicked by a horse and broke her leg while they were celebrating her 59th birthday. Starr rushed her to Royal Surrey Hospital in Guildford, 35 miles southwest of London. She had surgery to repair her fractured right femur.

On June 26, 2007, Starr appeared on CNN's Larry King Live along with McCartney, Yoko Ono Lennon, Olivia Harrison, and Guy Laliberté (Founder of Cirque du Soleil). They promoted the "Revolution" Lounge at "The Mirage" in Las Vegas, Nevada. They also commemorated the one year anniversary of Cirque du Soleil's "Love". The special was live from The Mirage Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas. At one point, Larry King called Starr George, to which McCartney replied "This is Ringo, not George."

In the December 24, 2007 issue of Time (European edition), Starr was profiled in a three-page article focusing on his happiness in life and his music. The article mentioned the Liverpool 8 album, but only briefly. It also stated that Starr and Dave Stewart are collaborating on writing a musical, to be called The Hole in the Fence, and discussed Starr's then-upcoming performance in Liverpool on January 11, 2008.[46]


Films

Other than the films Starr did with The Beatles (A Hard Day's Night (1964), Help! (1965), Magical Mystery Tour (1967), Let It Be (1970)), he has acted in several films such as Candy (1968), The Magic Christian (1969) (alongside Peter Sellers), Blindman (1971), Son of Dracula (1974) and Caveman (1981). For the 1979 documentary film on the Who, The Kids Are Alright, Starr appeared in interview segments with fellow drummer Keith Moon. He starred as Larry the Dwarf in Frank Zappa's 200 Motels (1971). His voice is also featured in Harry Nilsson's animated film The Point! (1971). He costarred in the Last Waltz, the Martin Scorcese film about the 1976 farewell concert of The Band, a favorite of the Beatles. He co-starred in That'll Be the Day (1973) as a Teddy boy.[47] He also played 'The Pope' in Ken Russell's Lisztomania (1975),[48] and a fictionalized version of himself in the Paul McCartney penned Give My Regards to Broad Street in 1984.[49]

In 1985, Starr played the Mock Turtle in the film version of Alice in Wonderland.[50]


Television

In 1972, Starr appeared briefly on Monty Python's Flying Circus as a guest star on the It's man Show in Episode 28. However, Starr didn't say anything as the inner show ended when the It man said "It's...", a phrase used in many of the TV show's episodes.

Also in 1984, Ringo appeared on Saturday Night Live as a Jefferson-watching, plastic-bubble-wrapping Beatles artifact. When asked what he wanted from the kitchen his line was, "Peach Melba, please."

In 1984, Starr narrated the children's television series Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends. He was unsure about taking the role at first, having never previously read the books by Reverend Awdry, and at the time he felt that children would be more interested in "dinosaurs with lasers." Nevertheless, he had a change of heart and took the role, narrating the first two series. Starr also portrayed the character Mr. Conductor in the program's American spin-off Shining Time Station, which debuted in 1989.

In 1989, he appeared with his daughter Lee in a US television commercial for Oldsmobile, in which he narrated the first line of automaker's new jingle (to his daughter), "This is not your father's Oldsmobile!".[51]

In 1991, Starr appeared as himself in an episode of the animated comedy programme The Simpsons, titled "Brush with Greatness". He was the first Beatle ever to appear on the show. (Harrison and McCartney lent their voices to the series in later episodes.) In the same year Starr recorded the song "You'll Never Know", which was played over the end credits in the James Belushi motion picture Curly Sue.[52]

In 1993, Ringo filmed a documentary for the Disney Channel entitled "Ringo Starr: Coming Home". The 90 minute special featured Starr revisiting his hometown of Liverpool and reminiscing about the early days of The Beatles, while also featuring current concert footage of Ringo's All Starr Band. The TV special came on the heels of Ringo's first album release in 10 years, Time Takes Time, and therefore included clips of nearly all of the album's songs.

In 1995, Starr painted the design for the first card for Discover Card's Private Issue series of credit cards, and appeared in the commercials for the card until the second design came out.

In 1996, Starr appeared in a Japanese advertisement for apple juice; 'ringo' is Japanese for 'apple'. In the mid-1990s, Starr appeared in an advertisement for Pizza Hut, pronouncing that the time is ripe for 'the lads' to get back together. At the commercial's pay-off, he is joined by three members of the Monkees (Micky Dolenz, Peter Tork and Davy Jones) and quips to the camera, "Wrong lads."[53]

In 2000, he appeared in the first of the "Smart Investor" TV commercials for Charles Schwab Brokerage. In the commercial, Starr is trying to help a group of young songwriters come up with a rhyme for "elation". Starr suggests such financial investment terms as "dividend reinvestment participation", "market capitalization", "European market fluctuation" and "asset allocation", as an instrumental version of the song Money, recorded by The Beatles, plays in the background. At the commercial's pay-off, he looks at the confused songwriters and says, "What? Too many syllables?"[54] Also in 2001, Starr voiced the Duck brothers in the cartoon show Courage the Cowardly Dog.

In January 2008, Starr appeared on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross where he appeared to make disparaging comments about his hometown of Liverpool. When asked by Ross if he missed anything about the city, he laughed, eventually replying in the negative. This was greeted with disappointment by many residents, and deemed hypocritical in light of his appearance in the Capital of Culture celebrations. Following the incident, a sign in the playground of his old school was daubed in spray paint with the word "traitor" scrawled next to it[55] and a horticultural sculpture representing The Beatles at Liverpool South Parkway train station was repeatedly attacked, the Starr character being beheaded while bandmates John, Paul and George were unharmed.[56]


Possibility of knighthood

In December 2006, Times columnist Daniel Finkelstein started a campaign to get Ringo Starr knighted in a petition[57] to the Prime Minister,[58] joining fellow ex-Beatle Paul McCartney with the honour of being knighted. The petition has been met with widespread press coverage from The Sun[59] newspaper and the Canadian National Post[60] and has received 1,887 signatures.[57] Starr himself has clearly stated both that he doesn't particularly support the Royal Family ("I think it should end with this queen. I think we can have the pageant without...them. I think they should have built a hospital in the name of the Queen Mum, but they didn't, they just decided not to pay taxes and keep their money."[61]), and that he isn't personally interested in being knighted:

Interviewer: At the end of the song Elizabeth Reigns ― which is a balanced view of the queen and company ― you say, "Well, there goes me knighthood."
Starr: There goes me knighthood - yes, I think it has gone, well and truly...
Interviewer: Does that bother you at all?
Starr: No, I don't want to be a sir, I want to be a duke or a prince. So if they come through with that, I'll seriously consider it.[61]

Awards and recognition

On 12 June 1965, Starr and the three other Beatles were appointed Members of the Order of the British Empire (MBE); they received their insignia from the Queen at an investiture at Buckingham Palace on 26 October.

The Beatles won the Academy Award for Best Original Song Score for 1970 for the film Let It Be. Each Beatle received an Oscar.

The minor planet (4150) Starr, discovered on 31 August 1984 by BA Skiff at the Anderson Mesa Station of the Lowell Observatory, was named in his honour.[62]

All four of The Beatles were elected to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame when the group was inducted in 1988.[63] Since then, Lennon (1994), McCartney (1999), and Harrison (2004) have been inducted for their solo careers as well. Starr remains the only Beatle not to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for his solo career.

However, it was announced on September 5, 2007 that Ringo Starr will be on the ballot for membership in the Rock and Roll Hall of fame as a solo artist.[64]

During the 50th Grammy Awards, Starr, George Martin and Giles Martin accepted the Best Compilation Soundtrack award for Love.

Shelley Duvall
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



Born Shelley Alexis Duvall
July 7, 1949 (1949-07-07) (age 59)
Houston, Texas, U.S.
Spouse(s) Bernard Sampson (1973-1977)

Shelley Alexis Duvall (born July 7, 1949) is an award-winning American film and television actress. She began her career in the 1970s, playing quirky and waif-like characters in the movies of Robert Altman, and eventually starred in movies by Woody Allen, Stanley Kubrick, Terry Gilliam and Tim Burton.





Biography

Early life

Duvall was born in Houston, Texas, the daughter of Bobbie Ruth Crawford (née Massengale), a real estate broker, and Robert Richardson Duvall, a defense attorney. She has three brothers, Scott, Shane, and Stuart. Duvall graduated from Waltrip High School. Duvall was working as a cosmetics saleswoman at a Houston Foley's when she was discovered at a party by production scouts for Altman's Brewster McCloud (1970).


Career

After a tough interview with Altman, she won the lead role of Suzanne, the free-spirited love interest to Bud Cort's reclusive Brewster in Brewster McCloud. Altman was so impressed with Duvall's work that he cast the young actress in his next films, including McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971), Thieves Like Us (1974), and Nashville (1975). In 1977, Duvall was awarded a Best Actress by the Cannes Film Festival and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association for her portrayal of the delusional Millie Lammoreaux in Altman's 3 Women.

That same year, Duvall appeared in Annie Hall as Woody Allen's one-night stand and hosted an episode of Saturday Night Live. Her next role would be Wendy opposite Jack Nicholson in Kubrick's The Shining (1980). Jack Nicholson states in the documentary Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures that Kubrick was great to work with, but that he was "a different director" with Duvall. In 1980, when Duvall played Olive Oyl in Popeye, critics called her "perfect" for the role and said that "she was born to play" the character. Though she has appeared in many movies since, she never again reached the heights she did with The Shining or Popeye.

From 1982 onwards, Duvall focused mainly on producing and acting in childrens entertainment, particularly children's television. Her most notable credits in this area include the Showtime TV series' Faerie Tale Theatre (1982-1987) and Tall Tales and Legends (1985-1988) (both inspired by the children's series Shirley Temple's Storybook), as well as Shelley Duvall's Bedtime Stories (1992).


Current Whereabouts

After playing a small role in the 2002 independent film Manna from Heaven, Duvall disappeared from the public eye. She is currently believed to be living near Austin, TX, where she has been spotted by several fans. It is not known why she stopped acting or if she has any future plans to resume her career.

Single Woman's Prayer

Now I lay me down to sleep.
Please don't send me no more creeps.
Please just send me one good man.
One without a wedding band.

One good man who's sweet as pie.
Who brushed his teeth and doesn't lie.
Who dresses neat and doesn't smell.
And is sexy like my man Denzel.
Is super-rich like Michael J.
On second thought, that's okay.

Man, if I should die before I wake,
that would truly take the cake;
No matrimony or honeymoon.
No fancy reception planned for June.
No throwing of the wedding bouquet.
Please, God, don't let me go out that way.
If I die before I meet Mr. Right
I won't go out without a fight.
But then again with my luck,
He'd probably be just some schmuck.

The single life is not that bad
I know it's just a passing fad.
I won't be blue. I will not frown.
Besides, I like my toilet seat down.
No more makeup, won't comb my hair.
So never mind this stupid prayer.

The single life will do just fine.
So what's up, girlfriend?
IT'S PARTY TIME!!!!

Hey, Bob. Thanks again for the great bio's, and the prayer at the end was something to think on. It really gave all us ladies a smile.

I was amazed, y'all, at the symbolism in Marc Chagall's paintings.


Use of symbolism

Cow: life par excellence: milk, meat, leather, horn, power.
Tree: another life symbol.
Cock (rooster): fertility, often painted together with lovers.
Bosom (often naked): eroticism and fertility of life (Chagall loved and respected women).
Fiddler: in Chagall's town Vitebsk the fiddler made music at crosspoints of life (birth, wedding, death).
Herring (often also painted as a flying fish): commemorates Chagall's father working in a fish factory.
Pendulum Clock: time, and modest life (in the time of prosecution at the Loire River the pendulum seems being driven with force into the wooden box of the pendulum clock).
Candlestick: two candles symbolize the Shabbat or the Menorah (candlestick with seven candles) or the Hanukkah-candlestick, and therefore the life of pious Jews (Chassidim).
Windows: Chagall's Love of Freedom, and Paris through the window.
Houses of Vitebsk (often in paintings of his time in Paris): feelings for his homeland.
Scenes of the Circus: Harmony of Man and Animal, which induces Creativity in Man.
Crucifixion of Jesus: an unusual subject for a Jewish painter, and likely a response to the rise of anti-Semitism in Germany in the late 1930s.[2]
Horses: Freedom.
The Eiffel Tower: Up in the sky, freedom.

Never read Stranger in a Strange Land, but I believe Charles Manson referred to it in the counterculture movement. Groc, is a familiar word as well.

Let's hear one from Doc. I know this is Spanish, but I'm not certain what the name of the piece is.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAQ_fMiygwY&feature=related

I read Stranger in a Strange Land. The first few chapters were very promising, but the body of the work didn't measure up, at least to me. It concerns a man raised on a different planet. He comes here, we are given to understand, using the thought processes of an alien being, since he grew up in an alien culture, without parents. He quickly becomes a human with a very ordinary mind, but one with a following. He leads them into a religion of love and tolerance. Realizing that his religion will wither with no martyr, he steps into a situation in which he is killed. Grok is the only thing out of the ordinary about the religion.
Wickipedia -To grok (pronounced /ˈgrɒk/) is to share the same reality or line of thinking with another physical or conceptual entity. In Heinlein's view of quantum theory, grokking is the intermingling of intelligence that necessarily affects both the observer and the observed.

As first used in the Heinlein novel Stranger in a Strange Land:

" Grok means to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the observed?-to merge, blend, intermarry, lose identity in group experience. It means almost everything that we mean by religion, philosophy, and science?-and it means as little to us (because of our Earthly assumptions) as color means to a blind man. "

The Oxford English Dictionary defines grok as "to understand intuitively or by empathy; to establish rapport with" and "to empathize or communicate sympathetically (with); also, to experience enjoyment." Other forms of the word include "groks" (present third person singular), "grokked" (past participle) and "grokking" (present participle).

In an ideological context, a grokked concept becomes part of the person who contributes to its evolution by improving the doctrine, perpetuating the myth, espousing the belief, adding detail to the social plan, refining

Thank you, edgar. We appreciate your information. Now it becomes clearer.

Also, "let me make this perfectly clear". That piece by Doc was Melaguena. I love that song, too.

Speaking of Spain, today is the first day of the running of the bulls, and already people have been hurt. Just realized also that Tyrone Power was in the movie Blood and Sand.

How about another classical piece, folks.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlfhPViN0j0

Good Afternoon WA2K.

Picture time

Gustav Mahler; Marc Chagall; Robert A Heinlein; Mary Ford; Doc Severinsen; Ringo Starr and Shelly Duvall





http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_8l7FfrNoM

Google has decided to honor Marc Chagall today by changing their official logo to a GoogleDoodle (special logo) made up from some of his more famous works.

http://www.google.com/

Well, folks, there's our Raggedy with another great collage of famous faces. Thanks, PA. and the tribute to Les and Mary was perfect as is your timing.

Hey, JPB, now you know why I knew it was Marc's birthday.

None but The Lonely Heart was the first classical piece that I played on your thread concering the classics. Welcome back, gal.

Let's hear one from another star, Ringo. A great tribute to the Fab Four.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=o60QWYUBL6c&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdeHYlfnd_g&feature=related
Another by Ringo - his composition. He may also have written Photograph.

Thanks, edgar, for The Yellow submarine. Not certain which one of the four wrote that.

Something about the running of the bulls and the dove as a peace symbol, made me think of this one, folks. I discovered that this song is vastly popular in many countries and has been for a long time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBHkn8_ApJw&feature=related

And maybe these are the English lyrics.

The Dove

A song reminds me
of yesterday,
when she left in silence
at dusk.
She went away, somewhere else,
with her sad song.
She left behind
my solitude
as companion.

A white dove sings to me
at dawn.
Old melancholies, things
of the soul,
arrive with the morning's silence
and when I go outside to see it,
it flies back home.

Where does it go, that my voice
doesn't wish to listen anymore?
Where does it go, that my life
is extinguished
if she's not beside me?

If only she'd want to come back
I'd go wait for her.
every day, every sunrise
to love her even more

Shelly Duvall can be seen in the audience in this film clip from "Nashville", listening to Keith Carradine singing, "I'm Easy", a song which he also wrote.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_DTE8sdEzY

And, while Les Paul and Mary Ford were well known for their hit, "How High the Moon", I also like this version by another lady. And she follows it with a just sensational, "Some of These Days". But, as far as I'm concerned, she's just the greatest.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRNY8Nmt0PU&feature=related

That last song was beautiful, Letty. I really enjoyed it.


Also celebrating her birthday today is Michelle Kwan--one of my all time favorite ice skaters. I have gotten such pleasure from watching her over her long career.
She has remained competitive for over a decade and is the most decorated figure skater in U.S. history. She has won nine U.S. championships, five World Championships, and two Olympic medals. Known for her consistency and expressive artistry on ice, she is widely considered to be one of the greatest figure skaters of all time

This clip highlights her grace and beauty on the ice, as well as her athleticism. The vocal, by Kelly Sweet, fits it perfectly.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSqahTVUkGs

firefly, was that the kung fu Keith? If so, that's another side of him that I have never seen nor heard. Great song and "easy listening".

Frankly, folks, I have never heard Ella sing better than she did on How High the Moon. She is sooooo much more moving without the scat vocalizing. Some of These Days was a swinger as well. Thanks, O fly of fire.

ah, Kwan the swan and Kelly the sweet singer. What a combo. Thanks again, firefly, for the music and the skating and the acknowledgement.

Well, we'll take a brief station break and be back later.

This is cyber space, WA2K radio

No, Letty, Keith's not the Kung Fu man. That's his half brother, David Carradine.

BTW, Keith won the 1976 Oscar and a Golden Globe award for Best Original Song for that song from "Nashville".