Herman Melville
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Born August 1, 1819(1819-08-01)
New York City, New York, United States
Died September 28, 1891 (aged 72)
New York City, New York
Occupation novelist, short story writer, teacher, sailor, lecturer, poet
Nationality American
Genres travelogue, Captivity narrative, Sea story, Gothic Romanticism, Allegory, Tall tale
Literary movement Romanticism, Dark Romanticism, and Skepticism; precursor to Modernism, precursor to absurdism and existentialism
Influences
Shakespeare, Milton, The Bible, C. B. Brown, Montaigne, Camoens, Dana, Hawthorne, Thomas Browne, Emerson, Thoreau, Carlyle, Irving, Cooper, Poe
Influenced
Thomas Mann, E. M. Forster, D. H. Lawrence, Camus, Jean-Pierre Melville, Charles Olson, Thomas Pynchon, John Kessel and Cormac McCarthy
Herman Melville (August 1, 1819 - September 28, 1891) was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist and poet. His first two books gained much attention, though they were not bestsellers, and his popularity declined precipitously after only a few years. By the time of his death he had been almost completely forgotten, but his longest novel, Moby-Dick ?- largely considered a failure during his lifetime, and most responsible for Melville's fall from favor with the reading public ?- was recognized in the 20th century as one of the chief literary masterpieces of both American and world literature.
Biography
Herman Melville was born in New York City on August 1, 1819, as the third child of Allan and Maria Gansevoort Melvill. (After Allan died, Maria added an "e" to the surname.) Part of a well-established - if colorful - Boston family, Melville's father spent a good deal of time abroad doing business deals as a commission merchant and an importer of French dry goods. His paternal grandfather, Major Thomas Melville, an honored survivor of the Boston Tea Party who refused to change the style of his clothing or manners to fit the times, was depicted in Oliver Wendell Holmes's poem "The Last Leaf". Herman visited him in Boston, and his father turned to him in his frequent times of financial need. The maternal side of Melville's family was Hudson Valley Dutch. His maternal grandfather was General Peter Gansevoort, a hero of the battle of Saratoga; in his gold-laced uniform, the general sat for a portrait painted by Gilbert Stuart. The portrait appeared in Melville's later novel, Pierre, for Melville wrote out of his familial as well as his nautical background. Like the titular character in Pierre, Melville found satisfaction in his "double revolutionary descent."[1]
Herman's brother, Thomas Melville, was a governor of Sailors Snug Harbor.
Allan Melvill sent his sons to the New York Male School (Columbia Preparatory School). Overextended financially and emotionally unstable, Allan tried to recover from his setbacks by moving his family to Albany in 1830 and going into the fur business. The new venture ended in disastrous failure, and in 1832 Allan Melvill died of a sudden illness that included mental collapse, leaving his family in poverty. Although Maria had well-off kin, they were concerned with protecting their own inheritances and taking advantage of investment opportunities rather than settling their mother's estate so Maria's family would be more secure.
Herman Melville's roving disposition and a desire to support himself independently of family assistance led him to seek work as a surveyor on the Erie Canal. This effort failed, and his brother helped him get a job as a cabin boy on a New York ship bound for Liverpool. He made the voyage, and returned on the same ship. Redburn: His First Voyage (1849) is partly based on his experiences of this journey.
The succeeding three years (1837 to 1840) (voyage to Liverpool was 1839) were mostly occupied with school-teaching. Near the end of 1840 he once again decided to sign ship's articles. On January 3, 1841, he sailed from New Bedford, Massachusetts on the whaler Acushnet,[2] which was bound for the Pacific Ocean. The vessel sailed around Cape Horn and traveled to the South Pacific. Melville left very little direct information about the events of this 18 months' cruise, although his whaling romance, Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, probably gives many pictures of life onboard the Acushnet. Melville deserted the Acushnet in the Marquesas Islands in July 1842.[2] For three weeks he lived among the Typee natives, who were called cannibals by the two other tribal groups on the island though they treated Melville very well. His book Typee describes a brief love affair with a beautiful native girl, Fayaway, who generally "wore the garb of Eden" and came to epitomize the guileless noble savage in the popular imagination, but we have no evidence of Melville's actual activities among the islanders.
Melville did not seem to be concerned about repercussions from his desertion of the Acushnet. He boarded another whaler bound for Hawaii and left that ship in Honolulu. After working as a clerk for four months he joined the crew of the frigate USS United States, which reached Boston in October 1844. These experiences were described in Typee, Omoo, and White Jacket, which were published as novels mainly because few believed their veracity.
Melville completed Typee in the summer of 1845 though he had difficulty getting it published.[3] It was eventually published in 1846 in London, where it became an overnight bestseller in London. The Boston publisher subsequently accepted Omoo sight unseen. Typee and Omoo gave Melville overnight notoriety as a writer and adventurer and he often entertained by telling stories to his admirers. As writer and editor Nathaniel Parker Willis wrote, "With his cigar and his Spanish eyes, he talks Typee and Omoo, just as you find the flow of his delightful mind on paper".[3] The novels, however, did not generate enough royalties for him to live on. Omoo was not as colorful as Typee, and readers began to realize Melville was not just producing adventure stories. Redburn and White-Jacket had no problem finding publishers. Mardi was a disappointment for readers who wanted another rollicking and exotic sea yarn.
Melville married Elizabeth Shaw (daughter of noted Massachusetts jurist Lemuel Shaw) on August 4, 1847; the couple honeymooned in Canada.[4] They had four children, two sons and two daughters. In 1850 they purchased Arrowhead, a farm house in Pittsfield, Massachusetts that is today a museum. Here Melville remained for thirteen years, occupied with his writing and managing his farm. There he befriended the author Nathaniel Hawthorne, who lived in nearby Lenox. Melville, something of an intellectual loner for most of his life, was tremendously inspired and encouraged by his new relationship with Hawthorne [5] during the very period that he was writing one of the greatest works in the English language, Moby-Dick (dedicating it to Hawthorne[6]), though their friendship was on the wane only a short time later, when he wrote Pierre there. However, these works did not achieve the popular and critical success of his earlier books. Following scathing reviews of Pierre by critics, publishers became wary of Melville's work. His publisher, Harper & Brothers, rejected his next manuscript, Isle of the Cross which has been lost.
For financial reasons, Melville was persuaded while in Pittsfield to enter what was for others the lucrative field of lecturing. From 1857 to 1860, he spoke at lyceums, chiefly on the South Seas. Turning to poetry, he gathered a collection of verse that failed to interest a publisher. In 1863, he and his wife resettled, with their four children, in New York City. After the end of the American Civil War, he published Battle Pieces and Aspects of the War (1866), a collection of over seventy poems that was generally panned by critics. His professional writing career was at an end and his marriage was unhappy when in 1867 his oldest son, Malcolm, shot himself, perhaps accidentally. Pulling his life together, Melville used his influence to obtain a position as customs inspector for the City of New York (a humble but adequately-paying appointment), and held the post for 19 years. (The customs house was ironically on Gansevoort St., which was named after his mother's prosperous family.) In 1876 his uncle Peter Gansevoort, by a bequest, paid for the publication of the massive epic poem, Clarel. Two volumes of poetry followed: John Marr (1888) and Timoleon (1891).
Melville died at his home in New York City early on the morning of September 28, 1891, age 72. The doctor listed "cardiac dilation" on the death certificate.[7] His New York Times obituary called him "Henry Melville".[7] He was interred in the Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx, New York.
From about age thirty-three, Melville ceased to be popular with a broad audience because of his increasingly philosophical, political and experimental tendencies. His novella Billy Budd, Sailor, unpublished at the time of his death, was published in 1924. Later it was turned into an opera by Benjamin Britten, a play, and a film by Peter Ustinov.
In Herman Melville's Religious Journey, Walter Donald Kring detailed his discovery of letters indicating that Melville had been a member of the Unitarian Church of All Souls in New York City. Until this revelation, little had been known of his religious affiliation. Parker in the second volume of his biography makes it clear that Melville became a nominal member only to placate his wife. He despised Unitarianism and its associated "ism", Utilitarianism. (The great English Unitarians were Utilitarians.) See the 2006 Norton Critical Edition of The Confidence-Man for more detail on Melville and religion than in Parker's 2002 volume.
Publications and contemporary reactions
Most of Melville's novels were published first in the United Kingdom and then in the U.S. Sometimes the editions contain substantial differences; at other times different printings were either bowdlerized or restored to their pre-bowdlerized state. (For specifics on different publication dates, editions, printings, etc., please see entries for individual novels.)
Moby-Dick has become Melville's most famous work and is often considered one of the greatest literary works of all time. It was dedicated to Melville's friend Nathaniel Hawthorne.[6] It did not, however, make Melville rich. The book never sold its initial printing of 3,000 copies in his lifetime, and total earnings from the American edition amounted to just $556.37 from his publisher, Harper & Brothers. Melville also wrote Billy Budd, White-Jacket, Typee, Omoo, Pierre, The Confidence-Man and many short stories and works of various genres.
Melville is less well known as a poet and did not publish poetry until late in life. After the Civil War, he published Battle Pieces and Aspects of the War, which did not sell well; of the Harper & Bros. printing of 1200 copies, only 525 had been sold ten years later.[8] But again tending to outrun the tastes of his readers, Melville's epic length verse-narrative Clarel, about a student's pilgrimage to the Holy Land, was also quite obscure, even in his own time. This may be the longest single poem in American literature. The poem, published in 1876, had an initial printing of only 350 copies. The critic Lewis Mumford found a copy of the poem in the New York Public Library in 1925 "with its pages uncut".[citation needed] In other words, it had sat there unread for 50 years.
His poetry is not as highly critically esteemed as his fiction, although some critics place him as the first modernist poet in the United States; others would assert that his work more strongly suggest what today would be a postmodern view.[citation needed] Clarel has won the admiration of no less a critic than Helen Vendler, who read it in preparation for the 1976 Pittsfield Centennial Celebration.
Critical response
After the success of travelogues based on voyages to the South Seas and stories based on misadventures in the merchant marine and navy, Melville's popularity declined dramatically. By 1876, all of his books were out of print.[9] In the later years of his life and during the years after his death he was recognized, if at all, as only a minor figure in American literature.
Melville Revival
A confluence of publishing events in the 1920s brought about a reassessment now commonly called the Melville Revival. The two books generally considered most important to the Revival[citation needed] were both brought forth by Raymond Weaver: his 1921 biography Herman Melville: Man, Mariner and Mystic and his 1924 version of Melville's last great but never quite finished or properly organized work, Billy Budd, which Melville's granddaughter gave to Weaver when he visited her for research on the biography. The other works that helped fan the Revival flames were Carl Van Doren's The American Novel (1921), D. H. Lawrence's Studies in Classic American Literature (1923), and Lewis Mumford's biography, Herman Melville: A Study of His Life and Work (1929).
Homo-erotic themes
Additionally, coinciding with the Melville Revival, over the past 50 years there has been an emerging interest concerning a perceived homo-erotic sub-text of Melville's writings.[10] Potential homoerotic overtones have been interpreted in the early seafaring novels, from extended descriptions of the male beauty of the South Sea islanders to romanticised depictions of sailor friends, and comrades on board ship.[11] In Moby Dick, male bonding has been interpreted in the "marriage bed" episode involving Ishmael and Queequeg, as well as in the metaphoric "Squeeze of the Hand" chapter describing the camaraderie of sailors extracting spermaceti from a dead whale.[12] Billy Budd, written at the very end of Melville's life, is considered both the most explicit and somber of his writings in terms of gay content. Billy, innocent and handsome, is destroyed by the evil and sexually repressed master-at-arms Claggert in a harsh and unforgiving world far removed from the simpler, idyllic paradise, described in the earlier South Sea novels.[13]
Some critics have tried to draw a link between homo-eroticism in Melville's work and his private life; despite the fact that there is little hard evidence to verify or refute this claim. The writer W. Somerset Maugham claimed Melville had an 'eye for masculine beauty', and asserted this was due to "disappointment with the married state" and a repressed homosexuality. The poet W. H. Auden believed Melville tried to express his private feelings through the character of Billy Budd. Since Melville lived and died before the word 'homosexual' came into wider use, there is something plausible about Maugham's suspicion that Melville may have been perplexedly aware - in himself as well as others - of impulses for which there was no established language, and that Pierre was his attempt to write about them.[
Jerry Garcia
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Background information
Birth name Jerome John Garcia
Born August 1, 1942
San Francisco, California, US
Died August 9, 1995 (aged 53)
Forest Knolls, California, US
Genre(s) Folk rock, jam, bluegrass, country rock, rock and roll, psychedelic rock, rhythm and blues
Occupation(s) Artist, musician, songwriter
Instrument(s) Guitar, pedal steel guitar, banjo
Years active 1960 - 1995
Label(s) Rhino, Arista, Warner Bros., Acoustic Disc, Grateful Dead
Associated acts Grateful Dead, Legion of Mary, Reconstruction, Jerry Garcia Band, Old and in the Way, Jerry Garcia Acoustic Band, New Riders of the Purple Sage
Website JerryGarcia.com
Notable instrument(s)
Gibson SGs
Guild Starfire
1957 Gibson Les Paul
Gold-top Les Paul with P-90
Fender Stratocaster "Alligator"
Doug Irwin-modified Alembic "Wolf"
Doug Irwin Custom "Tiger"
Doug Irwin Custom "Rosebud"
Stephen Cripe Custom "Lightning Bolt"
Jerome John "Jerry" Garcia (August 1, 1942 - August 9, 1995) was a musician, songwriter, artist, and lead guitarist and vocalist of the psychedelic rock band the Grateful Dead.[1][2] Though he vehemently disavowed the role, Garcia was viewed by many as the leader or "spokesman" of the group.[1][2][3][4]
One of the original founders of the Grateful Dead, Garcia performed with the Dead for its entire three-decade career (which spanned from 1965 to 1995); and also founded and participated in a variety of side projects, including the Jerry Garcia Band, Old and in the Way, the Garcia/Grisman acoustic duo, and Legion of Mary.[1] Garcia co-founded the New Riders of the Purple Sage with John Dawson and David Nelson. He also released several solo albums, and contributed to a number of albums by other artists over the years as a session musician. He was well known by many for his distinctive guitar playing and was ranked 13th in Rolling Stone's "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time" cover story.[5]
Later in life, Garcia was sometimes ill because of his unstable weight, and in 1986 went into a diabetic coma that nearly cost him his life. Although his overall health improved somewhat after that, he also struggled with heroin addiction,[3][4] and was residing in a drug rehabilitation facility when he died of a heart attack in August 1995.[2][4]
Life and career
Early years (1942 - 1959)
Jerry Garcia's ancestry was Galician, Irish, and Swedish.[6] He was born in San Francisco, California, on August 1, 1942, to Jose Ramon "Joe" Garcia and Ruth Marie "Bobbie" Clifford.[7][8][9] His parents named him after the famous composer Jerome Kern.[7][10][11] Garcia was their second and final child, preceded by Clifford Ramon "Tiff" Garcia, who was born in 1937.[12][13] Shortly before Clifford's birth, their father and a partner leased a building in downtown San Francisco and turned it into a bar, a move in response to Jose being blackballed from a musician's union for moonlighting.[14]
Garcia was influenced by music at an early age,[15] taking piano lessons for much of his childhood.[16] His father was a retired professional musician and his mother enjoyed playing the piano.[7] His father's extended family?-who had emigrated from Spain in 1919?-would often sing during reunions.[13]
At age four,[17][18] Garcia experienced the amputation of two-thirds of his right middle finger.[19][20] While vacationing in the Santa Cruz Mountains, Garcia was given the chore of steadying wood while his elder brother chopped, when he inadvertently put his finger in the way of the falling axe.[20] Garcia's father drove him, after his mother wrapped his hand in a towel, over thirty miles away to the nearest hospital.[19] A few weeks later, Garcia, who immediately after the accident never looked at his finger, was surprised to discover that a majority of his finger was missing when the bandage he was wearing came off during a bath.[21] Garcia later confided that he often used it to his advantage in his youth, showing it off to other children in his neighborhood.
Garcia had several traumatic or tragic events occur during his youth. Less than a year after losing a segment of his finger, his father died. While on vacation with his family near Arcata in Northern California in 1947, his father went fly-fishing in the Trinity River, part of the Six Rivers National Forest.[22] His father, not long after entering, slipped on a rock underfoot, plunging into the deep rapids of the river. The incident was witnessed by a group of boys who immediately sought help, beckoning a pair of nearby fishermen. By the time they pulled Jose from the water, he had already drowned. Garcia later claimed to have seen his father fall into the river, but Dennis McNally, author of the book A Long Strange Trip: The Inside Story of the Grateful Dead, asserts that he did not, instead forming the memory from hearing the story repeated many times.[11] Blair Jackson, who wrote the biography Garcia: An American Life, lends weight to McNally's claim, citing that the newspaper article describing Jose's death made no mention of Garcia being at the scene?-it even misidentified him as his parents' daughter.[22]
Following the accident, Garcia's mother took over their late father's bar, buying out his partner for full ownership. As a result, Ruth began working full-time and sent Garcia and his brother to live with their maternal grandparents, Tillie and William Clifford, just down the road. During the five year period in which he lived with his grandparents, Garcia enjoyed a large amount of autonomy and attended Monroe School, the local elementary school. At the school, Garcia was greatly encouraged in his artistic abilities by his third grade teacher; through her, he discovered that "being a creative person was a viable possibility in life."[23] According to Garcia, around this time, he was opened up to country music and bluegrass by his grandmother, who he recalled enjoyed listening to the Grand Ole Opry. His elder brother, Clifford, however, staunchly believed the contrary, insisting that Garcia was "fantasizing all [that] ... she'd been to Opry, but she didn't listen to it on the radio." It was at this point that Garcia started playing the banjo, his first stringed instrument.[24]
In 1953, Garcia's mother remarried to a man named Wally Matusiewicz.[25] Subsequently, Garcia and his brother moved back home with their mother and new stepfather. However, due to the roughneck reputation of their neighborhood at the time, the Excelsior District, Garcia's mother moved their family to Menlo Park.[25] During their stay in Menlo Park, Garcia became acquainted with racism and antisemitism, things he disliked intensely.[25] The same year, Garcia was also introduced to rock and roll and rhythm and blues by his brother, and enjoyed listening to the likes of Ray Charles, John Lee Hooker, B. B. King, Hank Ballard, and, in a few years, Chuck Berry.[26] Clifford often memorized the vocals for his favorite songs, and would then make Garcia learn the harmony parts, a move to which Garcia later attributed much of his early ear training.[26]
In the summer of 1957, Garcia began smoking cigarettes and was introduced to marijuana.[27][28] Garcia would later reminisce about the first time he smoked marijuana: "Me and a friend of mine went up into the hills with two joints, the San Francisco foothills, and smoked these joints and just got so high and laughed and roared and went skipping down the streets doing funny things and just having a helluva time."[15] During this time, Garcia also took up an art program at the San Francisco Art Institute in order to further his burgeoning interest in the visual arts.[17] The teacher there was Wally Hedrick, an artist who came to prominence during the 1960s. During the classes, he often encouraged Garcia in his drawing and painting skills.[29]
In June of the same year, Garcia graduated from the local Menlo Oaks school. He then moved with his family back to San Francisco, where they lived in an apartment above the newly built bar, having previously been torn down to make way for a freeway entrance.[30] Two months later, on Garcia's fifteenth birthday, his mother purchased him an accordion, greatly to his disappointment.[15] Garcia had long been captivated by many rhythm and blues artists, especially Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley; his one wish at this point was to have an electric guitar.[30] After some pleading, his mother exchanged the accordion for a Danelectro with a small amplifier at a local pawnshop.[31] Garcia's stepfather, who was somewhat proficient with instruments, helped tune his guitar to an unusual open tuning.[27]
After a short stint at Denman Junior High School, Garcia attended tenth grade at Balboa High School in 1958, where he often got into trouble for skipping classes and fighting.[32] Consequently, in 1959, Garcia's mother again moved the family in order to get Garcia to stay out of trouble, this time to Cazadero, a small town outside of San Francisco.[32] This turn of events did not sit well with Garcia. In order to get to Analy High School, the nearest school, he had to travel by bus thirty miles to Sebastopol, a move which only made him unhappier.[33] Garcia did, however, join a band at his school known as the Chords. After performing and winning a contest, the band's reward was recording a song?-they chose "Raunchy" by Bill Doggett.[34]
Relocation and band beginnings (1960 - 1964)
After stealing his mother's car in 1960, Garcia joined the United States Army and traveled to Fort Ord where he received basic training, his punishment for the theft.[15] After training, he was transferred to Fort Winfield Scott in the Presidio of San Francisco.[35] Garcia spent most of his time in the army at his leisure, missing roll call and accruing many counts of AWOL.[36] As a result, Garcia was given a general discharge on December 14, 1960.[37]
After his discharge in January of 1961, Garcia drove down to East Palo Alto to see Laird Grant, an old friend from middle school.[38] Garcia, using his final paycheck from the army, purchased some gasoline and an old Chevrolet car, which barely made it to Grant's residence before it broke down.[38] Garcia preceded to spend the next few weeks sleeping where friends would allow, eventually using his car as an apartment. Through Grant, Garcia met Dave McQueen in February, who, after hearing Garcia perform some blues, acquainted him with many people from the local area, as well as introduced him to the people at the Chateau, a rooming house located near Stanford University which was then a popular hangout.[39]
On February 20, 1961, Garcia entered a car with Paul Speegle, a 16-year-old artist and acquaintance of Garcia; Lee Adams, the house manager of the Chateau and driver of the car; and Alan Trist, an companion of theirs.[39] After speeding past the Menlo Park Veterans Hospital, the car encountered a curve and, traveling around ninety miles per hour, collided with the traffic bars, sending the car rolling turbulently.[40][41] Garcia was discharged through the front windshield of the car into a nearby field with such force he was literally thrown out of his shoes and would later be unable to the recall the ejection.[40] Lee Adams, the driver, and Alan Trist, who was seated in the back, were thrown from the car as well, suffering from abdominal injuries and a spine fracture, respectively.[40] Garcia escaped with a broken collarbone, while Speegle, still in the car, was fatally wounded.[41] Allegedly, the crash was so severe that Speegle broke every bone in his body except those of his hands.
The accident served as an awakening for Garcia, who later commented: "That's where my life began. Before then I was always living at less than capacity. I was idling. That was the slingshot for the rest of my life. It was like a second chance. Then I got serious."[42] It was at this time that Garcia began to realize that he needed to begin playing the guitar in earnest?-a move which meant giving up his love of drawing and painting.[43]
Garcia meet Robert Hunter in April of 1960. Hunter would go on to become a long-time lyrical collaborator with the Grateful Dead.[1][7] Living out of his car next to Robert Hunter in a lot behind 710 Ashbury, Garcia and Hunter began to participate in the local art and musical scene, sometimes playing at Kepler's Books.[7] Garcia performed his first concert with Hunter, each earning five dollars. Garcia and Hunter would also play in a band with David Nelson, a contributor to a few Grateful Dead albums, labeled the Wildwood Boys.[17]
In 1962, Garcia met Phil Lesh, the eventual bassist of the Grateful Dead, during a party on Perry Avenue. Lesh would later write in his autobiography that Garcia resembled the "composer Claude Debussy: dark, curly hair, goatee, Impressionist eyes."[17]
While attending another party at 710 Ashbury, Phil Lesh approached Garcia suggesting that they record some songs, with the intention of getting them played on the radio station KPFA.[17] Using an old Wollensak tape recorder, they recorded "Matty Groves" and "The Long Black Veil", among several other tunes. Their efforts were not in vain, later landing a spot on the show, where a ninety-minute special was done specifically on Garcia. It was broadcast under the title "'The Long Black Veil' and Other Ballads: An Evening with Jerry Garcia".[17]
Garcia soon began playing and teaching acoustic guitar and banjo during this time.[17] One of Garcia's students was Bob Matthews, who later engineered many of the Grateful Dead's albums.[44] Matthews went to high school (and was friends) with Bob Weir, and on New Year's Eve 1963, he introduced Weir and Garcia to each other.[44]
Between 1962 and 1964, Garcia sang and performed mainly bluegrass, old-time and folk music. One of the bands Garcia was known to perform with was the Sleepy Hollow Hog Stompers, a bluegrass act. The group consisted of Jerry Garcia on guitar, banjo, vocals, and harmonica, Marshall Leicester on banjo, guitar, and vocals, and Dick Arnold on fiddle and vocals.[45] Soon thereafter, Garcia joined a local bluegrass and folk band called Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions, whose membership also included Ron "Pigpen" McKernan.
Around this time, the psychedelic LSD was beginning to gain prominence. Garcia first began experimenting with LSD in 1964; later, when asked how it changed his life, he remarked: "Well, it changed everything [...] the effect was that it freed me because I suddenly realized that my little attempt at having a straight life and doing that was really a fiction and just wasn't going to work out. Luckily I wasn't far enough into it for it to be shattering or anything; it was like a realization that just made me feel immensely relieved".[15]
In 1965, Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions evolved into the Warlocks, with the addition of Phil Lesh on bass guitar and Bill Kreutzmann on percussion. However, the band quickly learned that another group was already perfoming under their newly selected name, prompting another name change. After several suggestions, Garcia came up with the name by opening either an old Oxford[15] or Britannica World Language Dictionary.[17] He was then promptly greeted with the "Grateful Dead".[15][16][17] The definition provided for "Grateful Dead" was "a dead person, or his angel, showing gratitude to someone who, as an act of charity, arranged their burial."[46] The band's immediate reaction was disapproval.[15][16] Garcia later explained the group's feelings towards the name: "I didn't like it really, I just found it to be really powerful. [Bob] Weir didn't like it, [Bill] Kreutzmann didn't like it and nobody really wanted to hear about it. [...]"[15] Despite their dislike of the name, it quickly spread by word of mouth, and soon became their official title.
Career with the Grateful Dead
Garcia served as lead guitarist, vocalist, and principal songwriter of the Grateful Dead for their entire career. Garcia composed such songs as "Dark Star",[47] "Franklin's Tower",[47] and "Scarlet Begonias",[47] among many others. Robert Hunter, an ardent collaborator with the band, contributed lyrics to all but a few of Garcia's songs.
Garcia was well-noted for his "soulful extended guitar improvisations",[2] which would frequently feature interplay between himself and his fellow band members. His fame, as well as the band's, arguably rested on their ability to never play a song the same way twice.[3] Often, Garcia would take cues from rhythm guitarist Bob Weir on when to solo, remarking that "there are some [...] kinds of ideas that would really throw me if I had to create a harmonic bridge between all the things going on rhythmically with two drums and Phil [Lesh's] innovative bass playing. Weir's ability to solve that sort of problem is extraordinary. [...] Harmonically, I take a lot of my solo cues from Bob."[48]
When asked to describe his approach to soloing, Garcia commented: "It keeps on changing. I still basically revolve around the melody and the way it's broken up into phrases as I perceive them. With most solos, I tend to play something that phrases the way the melody does; my phrases may be more dense or have different value, but they'll occur in the same places in the song. [...]"[49]
Garcia and the band toured almost constantly from their formation in 1965 until Garcia's in death in 1995, a stint which gave credit to the name "endless tour". Periodically, there were breaks due to exhaustion or health problems, often due to unstable health and drug use of Garcia. During their three decade span, the Grateful Dead played 2,314 shows.[3]
Garcia's mature guitar-playing melded elements from the various kinds of music that had enthralled him. Echoes of bluegrass playing (such as Arthur Smith and Doc Watson) could be heard. But the "roots music" behind bluegrass had its influence, too, and melodic riffs from Celtic fiddle jigs can be distinguished.[citation needed] There was also early rock (like Lonnie Mack, James Burton and Chuck Berry), contemporary blues (such as Freddie King and Lowell Fulson), country and western (such as Roy Nichols and Don Rich), and jazz (like Charlie Christian) to be heard in Jerry's style. Don Rich was the sparkling country guitar player in Buck Owens's "Buckaroos" band of the 1960s, but besides Rich's style, both Garcia's pedal steel guitar playing (on Grateful Dead records and others) and his standard electric guitar work, were influenced by another of Owens's Buckaroos of that time, pedal-steel player Tom Brumley. And as an improvisational soloist, John Coltrane was one of his greatest personal and musical influences.
Garcia later described his playing style as having "descended from barroom rock and roll, country guitar. Just 'cause that's where all my stuff comes from. It's like that blues instrumental stuff that was happening in the late Fifties and early Sixties, like Freddie King." Garcia's style varied somewhat according to the song or instrumental to which he was contributing. His playing had a number of so-called "signatures" and, in his work through the years with the Grateful Dead, one of these was lead lines making much use of rhythmic triplets (examples include the songs "Good Morning Little School Girl", "New Speedway Boogie", "Brokedown Palace", "Deal", "Loser", "Truckin'", "That's It for the Other One", "U.S. Blues", "Sugaree", and "Don't Ease Me In").
Side projects
In addition to the Grateful Dead, Garcia had numerous side projects, the most notable being the Jerry Garcia Band. He was also involved with various acoustic projects such as Old and in the Way and other bluegrass bands, including collaborations with noted bluegrass mandolinist David Grisman (the documentary film Grateful Dawg chronicles the deep, long-term friendship between Garcia and Grisman).
Other groups of which Garcia was a member at one time or another include the Black Mountain Boys, Legion of Mary, Reconstruction, and the Jerry Garcia Acoustic Band. Jerry Garcia was also an appreciative fan of jazz artists and improvisation: he played with jazz keyboardists Merl Saunders and Howard Wales for many years in various groups and jam sessions, and he appeared on saxophonist Ornette Coleman's 1988 album, Virgin Beauty.
Garcia also spent a lot of time in the recording studio helping out fellow musician friends in session work, often adding guitar, vocals, pedal steel, sometimes banjo and piano and even producing. He played on over 50 studio albums the styles of which were eclectic and varied, including bluegrass, rock, folk, blues, country, jazz, electronic music, gospel, funk, and reggae. Artists who sought Garcia's help included the likes of Jefferson Airplane (most notably Surrealistic Pillow, Garcia being listed as their "Spiritual Advisor") ,Tom Fogerty, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, David Bromberg, Robert Hunter (Liberty, on Relix Records), the late Paul Pena, Peter Rowan, Warren Zevon, Country Joe McDonald, Ken Nordine, Ornette Coleman, Bruce Hornsby, Bob Dylan and many more. He was also one of the first musicians to really cover in depth motown music in the early-1970s and probably the most prolific coverer of Bob Dylan songs.
Throughout the early-1970s, Garcia, Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh, drummer Mickey Hart, and David Crosby collaborated intermittently with MIT-educated composer and biologist Ned Lagin on several projects in the realm of early electronica; these include the album Seastones (released by the Dead on their Round Records subsidiary) and L, an unfinished dance work.
Garcia also lent pedal-steel guitar playing to fellow-San Francisco musicians New Riders of the Purple Sage from their initial dates in 1969 to October 1971, when increased commitments with the Dead forced him to opt out of the group. He appears as a band member on their debut album New Riders of the Purple Sage, and produced Home, Home On The Road, a 1974 live album by the band. He also contributed pedal steel guitar to the enduring hit "Teach Your Children" by Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young. Jerry also played steel guitar licks on Brewer & Shipley's 1970 album Tarkio. Despite considering himself a novice on the pedal steel and having all but given up the instrument by 1973, he routinely ranked high in player polls. After a long lapse, he played it once more with Bob Dylan in 1987.
An avid reader and cinefile, Garcia was particularly fond of Kurt Vonnegut's The Sirens of Titan and owned the novel's film rights for many years, struggling to adapt it with the likes of Al Franken.
Having studied art at the San Francisco Art Institute, Garcia embarked on a second career in the visual arts. He offered for sale and auction to the public a number of illustrations, lithographs, and water colors. Some of those pieces became the basis of a line of men's neckties characterized by bright colors and abstract patterns. Even in 2005, ten years after Garcia's death, new styles and designs continue to be produced and sold.
Personal life
Garcia met his first wife, Sara Ruppenthal Garcia, in 1963.[17] She was working at the coffee house in the back of Kepler's Bookstore where Garcia, Hunter, and Nelson performed. They married on April 23 of the same year, and had their only child together, a girl, whom they named Heather, on December 8, 1963.[50]
Garcia was subjected to a handful of drug busts during his lifetime. On October 2, 1967, 710 Ashbury was raided after police were tipped off by an informant.[17] The police action resulted in most of the Grateful Dead being apprehended (sans Phil Lesh, Jerry Garcia, and Garcia's future wife Carolyn "Mountain Girl" Adams). Strangely, Garcia and Adams were led out of the residence by the very same informant shortly before it was raided.
Another seizure was experienced in January of 1970, after the Grateful Dead flew to New Orleans from Hawaii.[17] After returning from a recent performance, the band checked into their rooms, only to be quickly raided by police. Around fifteen people were arrested on the spot, including many of the road crew, management, and nearly all of the Grateful Dead (except Garcia, who arrived later, and Ron "Pigpen" McKernan, who wasn't doing substances at the time).[17] A month later on February 2, 1970, Adams gave birth to a girl named Annabelle Walker Garcia.[50]
During August of 1970, Garcia's mother Ruth was involved in a car accident near Twin Peaks in San Francisco.[17] Garcia, who was recording the album American Beauty at the time, often left the sessions to visit his mother with his brother Clifford. She later died on September 28, 1970. That same year, Garcia participated in the soundtrack for the film Zabriskie Point.
On September 21, 1974, Adams gave birth to Garcia's third daughter, Theresa Adams Garcia (aka Trixie Garcia).[50] In 1975, around the time Blues for Allah was being created, Garcia met Deborah Koons, the woman who would much later become his third wife and widow.[17] He began seeing her while he was still involved with Adams, with whom Koons had a less-than-perfect relationship. Garcia and Koons eventually went different ways.
Influenced by the stresses of creating and releasing The Grateful Dead Movie in 1977, Garcia began using cocaine, later progressing to smoking heroin. This, combined with the drug use of several other members of the Grateful Dead, produced turbulent times for the band; starting in 1981, the band's chemistry began "cracking and crumbling,"[17] resulting in poor live performances and group cohesion. The so-called "endless tour," the result of years of financial risks and mistakes, also became extremely taxing. During the same year, Garcia married Adams, making her his second wife.
Garcia's use of heroin increased heavily over the next seven years, eventually culminating in the rest of the Grateful Dead holding an intervention in 1984.[17] Given the choice between the band or the drugs, Garcia readily agreed to check into a rehabilitation center in Oakland, California. In 1985, nearing the completion of his program in Oakland, Garcia was arrested for drug possession in Golden Gate Park; Garcia subsequently attended a drug diversion program.
Precipitated by an unhealthy weight, bad eating habits, and drug use, Garcia collapsed into a diabetic coma in 1986, waking up five days later.[3][4] Garcia later spoke about this period of unconsciousness as surreal: "Well, I had some very weird experiences. My main experience was one of furious activity and tremendous struggle in a sort of futuristic, space-ship vehicle with insectoid presences. After I came out of my coma, I had this image of myself as these little hunks of protoplasm that were stuck together kind of like stamps with perforations between them that you could snap off."[16] Garcia's coma had a profound effect on him: it forced him to have to relearn how to play the guitar, as well as other, more basic skills. Within a handful of months, Garcia quickly recovered, playing with the Jerry Garcia Band and the Grateful Dead again later that year.[17] Garcia frequently saw a woman named Manasha Matheson during this period. Together they produced Garcia's fourth and final child, a girl named Keelin Noel Garcia, who was born December 20, 1987.[50] Jerry, Keelin and Manasha toured and shared a home together as a family until 1993. During the creation of Built to Last in 1989, Garcia relapsed. In 1991, Garcia was confronted by the Grateful Dead with another intervention. After a disastrous meeting, Garcia invited Phil Lesh over to his home in San Rafael, California, where he explained that after the meeting he would start attending a methadone clinic. Garcia cited that he simply wanted to clean up in his own way.[17]
After returning from the Grateful Dead's 1992 summer tour, Garcia became extremely sick, evidently a throwback to his diabetic coma in 1986.[17] Refusing to go to the hospital, he instead enlisted the aid of an acupuncturist and a licensed doctor to treat him personally at home. Garcia recovered over the next following days, despite the Grateful Dead having to cancel their fall tour to allow him time to recuperate. Following his episode, Garcia began losing weight.
In the beginning of the Grateful Dead's 1993 tour, Garcia and his girlfriend Barbara Meier separated after meeting during December of 1992. In 1994, Garcia encountered Deborah Koons, with whom he had been involved around 1975; she married Garcia on February 14, 1994, in Sausalito, California. The wedding was attended by family and friends.[17] Garcia previously divorced Adams in January of 1994.
During the beginning of 1995, Garcia's condition, both physically and mentally, began to decline. His playing ability suffered to the point where he would turn down the volume of his guitar, and he often had to be reminded of what song he was performing.[17]
In light of his drug relapse in 1989 and current condition, Garcia checked himself into the Betty Ford Center during July of 1995. His stay was limited, however, lasting only two weeks. Garcia, motivated by the experience, then checked into the Serenity Knolls treatment center in Forest Knolls, California.[4][51]
Death
On August 9, 1995, at 4:23 AM, Garcia's body was discovered in his room at the rehabilitation clinic.[4][51] The cause of death was a heart attack.[52] Garcia had long struggled with tobacco, drug addiction,[4] weight problems, and sleep apnea,[4] all of which contributed to his physical decline. Phil Lesh, upon hearing of Garcia's death, remarked in his autobiography: "I was struck numb; I had lost my oldest surviving friend, my brother."[17] Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy, a longtime Deadhead, stated that he felt as though he had been "kicked in the stomach."[51]
On the morning of August 10, Garcia was rested at a funeral home in San Rafael, California. On August 12, at St. Stephen's Episcopal Church in Belvedere, Garcia's funeral was held.[17][51] It was attended by his family, the remaining Grateful Dead and their friends, including former basketball player Bill Walton and musician Bob Dylan, and his widow Deborah Koons,[51] who unceremoniously barred Garcia's other two wives from the ceremony.[17]
On August 13, a municipally-sanctioned public memorial took place in the Polo Fields of San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, and was attended by about twenty-five thousand people.[17] The crowds produced hundreds of flowers, gifts, images, and even a bagpipe rendition of "Amazing Grace"[51] in remembrance.
On April 4, 1996, Bob Weir and Deborah Koons spread half of Garcia's cremated ashes in the Ganges River in India,[17] a sacred site to the Hindu. Then, according to Garcia's last wishes, the other half of his ashes were poured into the San Francisco Bay. Deborah Koons disallowed one of Garcia's ex-wives, Carolyn "Mountain Girl" Garcia, from attending during the spreading of the ashes.
Guitars
Garcia played many guitars during his career, which ranged from Fender Stratocasters and Gibson SGs to custom-made. During his thirty-odd years of being a musician, Garcia used about twenty-five different guitars.[53]
In 1965, when Garcia was playing with the Warlocks, he used a Guild Starfire,[53] which he also used on the debut album of the Grateful Dead. Beginning in late 1967 and ending in 1968, Garcia played various colored Gibson Les Pauls. In 1969, he picked up the Gibson SG and used it for most of that year and 1970, except for a small period in between where he used a Sunburst Fender Stratocaster.
During Garcia's "pedal steel flirtation period" (as Bob Weir referred to it in Anthem to Beauty), from approximately 1969 to 1973, he played a ZB Custom D-10 steel guitar. He also played a Fender Pedal Steel prior to the ZB Custom.[citation needed]
In 1972, Garcia used a Fender Stratocaster nicknamed Alligator for its alligator sticker on the pickguard.[53] The guitar was given to him by Graham Nash. He continued using Alligator until May of 1973, when he received his first custom-made guitar from Alembic. The guitar was nicknamed Wolf for its memorable sticker.[54]
Wolf was built for Garcia at the cost of $1,500.[54] The guitar was made with an ebony fingerboard and featured numerous embellishments like alternating grain designs in the headstock, ivory inlays, and fret marker dots made of sterling silver. The body was composed of western maple wood which had a core of purpleheart. Garcia later had luthier and former Alembic employee Doug Irwin replace the electronics inside the guitar with a system similar to a Fender Stratocaster. It included a system of two plates for configuring pickups: one was made for strictly single coils, while the other accommodated humbuckers. Quickly after receiving the modified instrument, Garcia requested another custom guitar from Irwin with the advice "don't hold back."[54]
During the Grateful Dead's European Tour, Wolf was dropped on several occasions, one of which caused a minor crack in the headstock. Garcia returned it to Irwin to fix; during its two-year absence Garcia played predominantly Travis Bean guitars. On September 28, 1977, Irwin delivered the renovated Wolf back to Garcia.[54] The wolf sticker which gave the guitar its name had now been inlaid into the instrument; it also featured a few new electronics as well as a new coat of finish; Irwin also removed the Alembic logo from the headstock, and later claimed to have built the guitar.
Nearly seven years after he first requested it,[53] Garcia received his second custom guitar from Irwin in 1979. It was named Tiger from the inlay on the preamp cover.[55] The body of Tiger was of rich quality: the top layer was cocobolo, with the preceding layers being maple stripe, vermilion, and flame maple, in that order.[55] The neck was made of western maple with an ebony fingerboard. The pickups consisted of a single coil DiMarzio SDS-1 and two humbucker DiMarzio Super IIs which were easily removable due to Garcia's preference for replacing his pickups every year or two.[55] The electronics were composed of an effects bypass loop, which allowed Garcia to control the sound of his effects through the tone controls, and an amplifier which rested behind a plate in the back of the guitar. In terms of weight, everything included made Tiger tip the scales at an impressive 13½ pounds. However, this didn't deter Garcia from using it as his principal guitar for the next eleven years.
In 1990, Irwin completed Rosebud, Garcia's third custom guitar.[56] It was similar to his previous guitar Tiger in many respects, but featured different inlays and electronics, tone and volume controls, and weight. Rosebud, unlike Tiger, was configured with three humbuckers; the neck and bridge pickups shared a tone control, while the middle had its own. Inside of the guitar, a Roland GK-2 synthesizer was used in junction with GR-50 rack mount, producing the MIDI effects heard during live performances of this period.[56] Sections of the guitar were hollowed out in order to bring the weight down to 11½ pounds. The inlay, a dancing skeleton holding a rose, covers a plate just below the bridge. The final cost of the instrument was a striking $11,000.[56]
In 1993, carpenter-turned-luthier Stephen Cripe tried his hand at making an instrument for Garcia.[53] After researching Tiger through pictures and films, Cripe set out on what would soon become known as Lightning Bolt, again named for its inlay.[57] The guitar used Brazilian rosewood for the fingerboard and East Indian rosewood for the body, which, with admitted irony from Cripe, was taken from a 19th century bed used by opium smokers.[57] Built purely from guesswork, Lightning Bolt was a hit with Garcia, who began using the guitar exclusively. Soon after, Garcia requested that Cripe to build a backup of the guitar. Cripe, who hadn't measured or photographed the original, was told simply to "wing it."[57]
Cripe later delivered the backup, which was known by the name Top Hat. Garcia bought it from him for the price of $6,500, making it the first guitar that Cripe had ever sold.[57] However, infatuated with Lightning Bolt, Garcia rarely used the backup.
After Garcia's death, the ownership of his Wolf and Tiger was in question. According to Garcia's will,[50] his guitars were to go to Doug Irwin, who had constructed them.[58][59] The remaining Grateful Dead members disagreed?-they considered his guitars to be property of the band, leading to a lawsuit between the two parties.[58][59] In 2001, Irwin won the case. However, due to being a victim of a hit-and-run accident in 1998,[59] Irwin was left nearly penniless. This forced him to set Garcia's guitars up for auction in hopes of being able to start another guitar workshop.[58]
On May 8, 2002, Wolf and Tiger, among other memorabilia, were placed for auction at Studio 54 in New York City.[58] Tiger was purchased for the astonishing price of $957,500, while Wolf was bought for $789,500. Together, the instruments were bought for 1.74 million dollars, setting a new world record.[59]
Legacy
In 1987, ice cream manufacturers Ben & Jerry's came out with Cherry Garcia, which is named after the guitarist and consists of "cherry ice cream with cherries and fudge flakes." It made history as the first ice cream flavor named after a musician, and it quickly became the most popular Ben & Jerry's flavor. For a month after Garcia's death, the ice cream was made with black cherries as a way of mourning.
Garcia was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Grateful Dead in 1994.
In 2003, Rolling Stone Magazine ranked Jerry Garcia 13th in their list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time.[5]
Rapper Proof released an album named after Garcia, Searching for Jerry Garcia. The album was dedicated to the Grateful Dead and released ten years to the day of Garcia's death.
According to fellow Bay Area guitar player Henry Kaiser, Garcia is "the most recorded guitarist in history. With more than 2,200 Grateful Dead concerts, and 1,000 Jerry Garcia Band concerts captured on tape ?- as well as numerous studio sessions ?- there are about 15,000 hours of his guitar work preserved for the ages."[60]
On July 21, 2005, the San Francisco Recreation and Park Commission passed a resolution to name the amphitheater in McLaren Park "The Jerry Garcia Amphitheater."[61] The amphitheater is located in the Excelsior District, where Garcia grew up. The first show to happen at the Jerry Garcia Amphitheater was Jerry Day 2005 on August 7, 2005. Tiff Garcia was the first person to welcome everybody to the "Jerry Garcia Amphitheater." Jerry Day is an annual celebration of Jerry in his childhood neighborhood. The dedication ceremony (Jerry Day 2) on October 29, 2005 was officiated by mayor Gavin Newsom.
On September 24, 2005, the Comes a Time: A Celebration of the Music & Spirit of Jerry Garcia tribute concert was held at the Hearst Greek Theatre in Berkeley, California.[62] The concert featured Bob Weir, Bill Kreutzmann, Mickey Hart, Bruce Hornsby, Trey Anastasio, Warren Haynes, Jimmy Herring, Michael Kang, Jay Lane, Jeff Chimenti, Mark Karan, Robin Sylvester, Kenny Brooks, Melvin Seals, Marty Holland, Stu Allen, Gloria Jones, and Jackie LaBranch.
About a thousand people have gathered annually since 2002 to celebrate Jerry Garcia's life on the first Sunday of August with an event known as Jerry Day.[63]
On March 4, 2008, six Grateful Dead songs were made available on the hit video game, Rock Band, from MTV Games & Harmonix Music Systems on the Microsoft Xbox 360 and Sony PlayStation 3 video game consoles. The songs released were "China Cat Sunflower," "Casey Jones," "Sugar Magnolia," "Truckin'," "Franklin's Tower," and "I Need a Miracle."
Also in 2008, Georgia-based composer Lee Johnson released an orchestral tribute to the music of The Grateful Dead, recorded with the Russian National Orchestra, entitled "Dead Symphony: Lee Johnson Symphony No. 6." Johnson was interviewed on NPR on the July 26, 2008 broadcast of "Weekend Edition," and gave much credit to the genius and craft of Garcia's tunesmithing. A live performance with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Johnson himself, will be held Friday, August 1. [64].
Terrible world history
The following is a "history" collected by teachers throughout the United States, from eighth grade through college level. Read carefully, and you will learn a lot of incorrect information.
The inhabitants of ancient Egypt were called mummies. They lived in the Sarah Dessert and traveled by Camelot. The climate of the Sarah is such that the inhabitants have to live elsewhere, so areas of the dessert are cultivated by irritation. The Egyptians built the Pyramids in the shape of a huge triangular cube. The Pyramids are a range of mountains between France and Spain.
The Bible is full of interesting caricatures. In the first book of the Bible, Guinesses, Adam and Eve were created from an apple tree. On of their children, Cain, once asked, "Am I my brother's son?" God asked Abraham to sacrifice Isaac on Mount Montezuma. Jacob, son of Isaac, stole his brother's birth mark. Jacob was a patriarch who brought up his twelve sons to be patriarchs, but they did not take it. One of Jacob's sons, Joseph, gave refuse to the Israelites.
Pharaoh forced the Hebrew slaves to make bread without straw. Moses led them to the Red Sea, where they made unleavened bread, which is bread made without any ingredients. Afterwards, Moses went up on Mount Cyanide to get the ten commandments. David was a Hebrew king skilled at playing the liar. He fought with the Philatelists, a race of people who lived in the Biblical times. Soloman, one of David's sons, had 500 wives and 500 porcupines.
Without the Greeks we wouldn't have history. The Greeks invented three kinds of columns - Corinthian, Doric, and Ironic. They also had myths. A myth is a female moth. One myth says that the mother of Achilles dipped him in the River Stynx until he became intollerable. Achilles appears in The Iliad, by Homer. Homer also wrote The Oddity, in which Penelope was the last hardship that Ulysses endured on his journey. Actually, Homer was not written by Homer but by another man of that name.
Socrates was a famous Greek teacher who went around giving people advice. They killed him. Socrates died from an overdose of wedlock.
In the Olympic games, Greeks ran races, jumped, hurled the biscuits, the threw the java. The reward to the victor was a coral wreath. The government of Athens was democratic because people took the law into their own hands. There were no wars in Greece, as the mountains were so high that they couldn't climb over to see what their neighbors were doing. When they fought with the Persians, the Greeks were outnumbered because the Persians had more men.
Eventually, the Ramons conquered the Greeks. History calls people Romans because they never stayed in one place for very long. At Roman banquets, the guests wore garlic in their hair. Julius Caesar extinguished himself on the battlefields of Gaul. The Ides of March murdered him because they thought he was going to be made king. Nero was a cruel tyranny who would turture his poor subjects by playing the fiddle to them.
Then came the Middle Ages. King Alfred conquered the Dames. King Arthur lived in the Age of Shivery, King Harold mustarded his troops before the Battle of Hastings, Joan of Arc was canonized by Bernard Shaw, and victims of the Black Death grew boobs on their necks. Finally, Magna Carta provided that no free man should be hanged twice for the same offense.
In medevil time most of the people were alliterate. The greatest writer of the time was Chaucer, who wrote many poems and versus and also wrote literature. Another tale tells of William Tell, who shot an arrow through an apple while standing on his son's head.
The Renaissance was an age in which more individuals felt the value of their human being. Martin Luther was nailed to the church door at Wittenberg for selling papal indulgences. He died a horrible death, being excommunicated by a bull. It was the painter Donatello's interes in the female nude that made him the father of the Renaissance. It was an age of great inventions and discoveries. Gutenberg invented the Bible. Sir Walter Raleigh is a historical figure because he invented cigarettes. Another important invention was the circulation of blood. Sir Francis Drake circumcised the world with a 100 foot clipper.
The government of England was a limited mockery. Henry VIII found walking difficult because he had an abbess on his knee. Queen Elizabeth was the "Virgin Queen." As a queen she was a success. When Elizabeth exposed herself before her troops, they all shouted, "hurrah." Then her navy went out and defeated the Spanish Armadillo.
The greatest write of the Renaissance was William Shakespear. Shakespear never made much money and is only famous because of his plays. He lived at Windsor with his merry wives, writing tragedies, comedies and errors. In one of Shakespear's famous plays, Hamlet rations out his situation by relieving himself in a long soliloquy. In another, Lady Macbeth tried to convince Macbeth to kill the Kind by attack his manhood. Romeo and Juliet are an example of a heroic couplet. Writing at the same time as Shakespear was Miguel Cervantes. He wrote Donkey Hote. The next great author was John Milton. Milton wrote Paradise Lost. Then his wife died and he wrote Paradise Regained.
During the Renaissance America began. Christopher Columbus was a great navigator who discovered America while cursing about the Atlantic. His ships were called the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Fe. Later, the Pilgrims crossed the Ocean, and this was known as Pilgrims Progress. When they landed at Plymouth Rock, they were greeted by the Indians, who came down the hill rolling their war hoops before them. The Indian squabs carried porpoises on their back. Many of the Indian heroes were killed, along with their cabooses, which proved very fatal for them. The winter of 1620 was a hard one for the settlers. Many people died and many babies were born. Captain John Smith was responsible for all this.
One of the causes of the Revolutionary Wars was the English put tacks in their tea. Also, the colonists would send their parcels through the post without stamps. During the War, the Red Coats and Paul Revere was throwing balls over stone walls. The dogs were barking and the peacocks crowing. Finally, the colonists won the War and no longer had to pay for taxis.
Delegates from the original thirteen states formed the Contented Congress. Thomas Jefferson, a Virgin, and Benjamin Franklin were two singers of the Declaration of Independence. Franklin had gone to Boston carrying all his clothes in his pocket and a loaf of bread under each arm. He invented electricity by rubbing two cats backwards and declared, "A horse devided against itself cannot stand." Franklin died in 1790 and is still dead.
George Washington married Martha Curtis and in due time became the Father of Our Country. Then the Constitution of the United States was adopted to secure domestic hostility. Under the Constitution the people enjoyed the right to keep bare arms.
Abraham Lincoln became America's greatest president. Lincoln's mother died in infancy, and he was born in a log cabin which he built with his own hands. When Lincoln was President, he wore only a tall silk hat. He said, "In onion there is strength." Abraham Lincoln wrote the Gettysburg address while traveling from Washington to Gettysburg on the back of an envelope. He also freed the slaves by signing the Emasculation Proclamation, and the Fourteenth Amendment gave the ex-Negroes citizenship. But the Clue Clux Clan would torcher and lynch the ex-Negroes and other innocent victims. It claimed it represented law and odor. On the night of April 14, 1865, Lincoln went to the theater and got shot in his seat by one of the actors in a moving picture show. The believed assinator was John Wilkes Booth, a supposingly insane actor. This ruined Booth's career.
Meanwhile in Europe, the enlightenment was a reasonable time. Voltare invented electricity and also wrote a book called Candy. Graity was invented by Isaac Walton. It is chiefly noticeable in the Autumn, when the apples are falling off trees.
Bach was the most famous composer in the world, and so was Handel. Handel was half German, half Italian, and half English. He was very large. Bach died from 1750 to the present. Beethoven wrote music even though he was deaf. He was so deaf he wrote loud music. He took long walks in the forest even when everyone was calling for him. Beethoven expired in 1827 and later died for this.
France was in a very serious state. The French Revolution was accomplished before it happened. The Marseillaise was the theme song of the French Revolution, and it catapulted into Napoleon. During the Napoleonic Wars, the crowned heads of Europe were trembling in their shoes. The the Spanish gorillas came down from the hills and nipped at Napoleon's flanks. Napoleon became ill with bladder problems and was very tense and unrestrained. He wanted an heir to inherit his power, but since Josephine was a baroness, she couldn't bear children.
The sun never set on the British Empire because the British Empire is in the East and the sun sets in the West. Queen Victoria was the longest queen. She sat on a thorn for 63 years. Her reclining years and finally the end of her life were exemplary of a great personality. Her death was the final event which ended her reign.
The nineteenth century was a time of many great inventions and thoughts. The invention of the steamboat caused a network of rivers to spring up. Cyrus McCormick invented the McCormick raper, which did the work of hundred men. Samuel Morse invented a code of telepathy. Louis Pasteur discovered a cure for rabbis. Charles Darwin was a naturalist who wrote the Organ of the Species.
Thanks for a great way to start the day.
