WA2K Radio is now on the air

a special goodnight lullaby for a special Lady

Oh, lullaby by birdland that's what I
Always hear, when you sigh,
never in my wordland could there be words to reveal
in a phrase how I feel

Have you ever heard two turtle doves
Bill and coo, when they love?
That's the kind of magic music we made with our lips
When we kiss

And there's a weepy old willow
He really knows how to cry
That's how I'd cry in my pillow
If you should tell me farewell and goodbye

Lullaby by birdland whisper low
Kiss me sweet, and we'll go
Flying high in birdland, high in the sky up above
All because we're in love

Lullaby, Lullaby

Have you ever heard two turtle doves
Bill and coo when they love?
That's the kind of magic music we made with our lips
When we kiss

And there's a weepy old willow
He really knows how to cry
That's how I'd cry in my pillow
If you should tell me farewell and goodbye

Lullaby by birdland whisper low
Kiss me sweet, and we'll go
Flying high in birdland, high in the sky up above
All because we're in love

Good night, Miss Letty.

The Love in Your Eyes

If I could paint a picture
Never seen before
If I could make a memory
That has never been lived
If I could know the answer
To the question never asked
Then I would know
The love in your eyes

If I could live forever
But only live a day
If I could find a treasure
In air and empty space
If I could find the moonlight
In the afternoon
Then I would know
The love in your eyes

If I could run a race
To try and catch the sun
Then I would run forever
Until the sun I'd won
Then I would bring you sunshine
To take your clouds away
Then I would know
The love in your eyes
Then I would know
The love in your eyes
Then I would know
The love in your eyes

Eric Pedersen(rexred)
Written 5/14/87
Copyright 1988

I wrote this last night... If you are all interested in the next chapters I write I will post them here so the radio station has a story teller too (providing Letty does not mind)... I need some encouragement to write this story that has been dormant in my head for about a year... I hope I can do the plot justice. You may comment on my grammar if you like...

This is completely fictional and is not derived from any known persons places or events.

The inspiration for this story came from and actual dream so I already know the ending... There are twists and heart wrenching drama but unlike a real fictional novel you will not be able to read the end until I post it. I know I could post this in the literary area of A2K but if Letty does not mind I would rather post it here so that it will (hopefully) enriched the (already rich) experience of the radio atmosphere she has so ingeniously created.

I will not be posting every day but who knows... I will also (in time) try to make a web page available on my website so that if posts are missed that you can go there to catch up I will post them here first exclusively if it seems apropos over time. I will try to keep the writing as clean as possible but it may be a bit realistic but I will try to avoid it from being vulgar or too sexually explicit.

This may end up more of a short story depending on how much stuff I can make up to fill in the actual storyline. hehe

Title: The Silver Cross

Chapter 1

Jimmy Cash was a wretched man... He was hated by most people who had had the misfortune of meeting him. Even his wife detested him more often than not. It may have been because he dressed so disheveled and aspired to be a beggar at trade. His drinking was atrocious and he made a habit of most vices known. Yet Jimmy did have to exist in a world that seemed to have stacked the deck against his favor. At heart it was questionable if there lay a single shred of decency within his ruthless mind. His Pa years ago had a farm and used to whip him on a weekly basis because Jimmy was such an apathetic student in school. The law knew him well and sat in wait for the slightest provocation to slam the door tightly shut upon his worthless soul even though they feared him for their own families sake.

Jimmy and his wife Janet lived in a dilapidated old cottage house on the outskirts of Glenville Kentucky. Janet's mother Alice lived several miles down the road on route eighty-six and Janet's father had been deceased going on ten years from emphysema. Jimmy and Janet had three children the oldest was serving time in the state pen for robbing a local convenience store and the two youngest were now wards of the state because of Jimmy's constant drinking and from slapping them around a bit too much. The youngest daughter Tammy was first taken when the school nurse noticed some bruising on her arm and it was soon discovered that there had been several beatings that had gone undetected. Then human services stepped in and ripped the children from the couple in a tear-filled ordeal that ended in a standoff where Jimmy belligerently threatened to get even if it was the last thing he did.

Now it was Janet who seemed to absorb the brunt of Jimmy's drunken rages. He would crack open a beer at first break of daylight and stay drunk all day until he passed out completely inebriated and in a stupor. His poker buddies Stan and Charlie couldn't even stand Jimmy either but they were losers too and basically had no one else that could stand them either.

Most of what Janet made working as a waitress went to beer and the poker games that lasted well into the night. Janet's mother had a small fortune and seemed to always be bailing them out when the bank would come knocking and demand the mortgage payments. Jimmy had mooched off of Janet for most of their married life and Janet seemed trapped in her life with Jimmy. He threatened her and said if she ever left him that the would burn down her mother's house with everything it. Janet knew Jimmy was serious and did not dare to resist him. Her best friend Brenda Martin had urged Janet to leave Jimmy on several occasions but Janet did not have the courage or the wherewithal of get far enough away from Jimmy.

One night Jim and Janet were drinking and Jimmy accused Janet of having an affair with a local car dealer nicknamed in town "Butch" who had on several occasions approached Janet. Janet made the mistake of telling Jimmy she would leave him for Butch, someone who had a real life. Jimmy beat her till she was black and blue then strangled Janet so bad then left her unconscious on the floor gasping for breath. He took the uninsured car that she had saved two years for, drove it without a license and wrapped it around and oak tree on the mill pond road. Jimmy left the scene of the accident and then told the police the car had been stolen from out of their driveway. There was of course no proof or a witness, the police launched an investigation and came up with no evidence to convict Jimmy.

Janet had lost all hope in her life. Jimmy had a gun rack and had tried to shoot himself one night then he made Jane kneel on the floor and forced her to open her mouth while he then threatened to shoot her. That was the night she ran into the kitchen and grabbed a cutting knife and stabbed Jimmy in the stomach. Jimmy then drove himself to the emergency room thirty miles away bleeding profusely. They sewed him up and he was back to his antics the very next day when he had Janet arrested and charged with attempted murder. The charges were eventually dropped with a warning and Jimmy and Janet went on with the nightmare they had come to call love and marriage.

It was a love that was ill fated from the start. Sometimes people mistake fear for love and it escalates into a lust for more fear until it can no longer be quenched. Jimmy and Janet were tied in this lovers knot and it was bound so tightly that something soon had to break...

Chapter 2

Billy McGuire was a real estate broker and had been selling houses and building condos in Glenville since it had been only a speck on the map. He had sold over a hundred properties in his rather lengthy career at being a cut throat. He had the audacity to offer his clients only half of the asking price in cash and they would throw him out on his ear and then the next day call him back and accept his offer. There was a long list of people who knew what a piece of scum he was. This tactic of his did make him a wealthy man and he now owned many of the prize lots in Glenville including the local Shopping Mart and The Bounty Inn.

Billy's life took a nose dive when he partnered up with Thom Skillings a shyster from Meadow Brooks three towns over. He and Billy decided together to buy the Thirsty Pirate Tavern and Grill located on a prime piece of land in the commercial distract of Glenville. All was well for a number of years until Thom noticed some discrepancies in the record books to the tune of twenty-five thousand dollars. His accountant Betsy Miller had brought it to his attention but she was not certain if her math had been right.

When Thom confronted Billy, Billy acted all surprised and denied any wrongdoing. Thom did not have any proof and he was a bit worried because Billy had boasted of some influential friends. Billy had been rumored in town to be in the mafia but Thom had always thought that Billy had made this up to influence people who would not sell their properties on the first offer... Thom was now worried and was unsure what Billy would do now that he knew that Thom was on to him...

Thom decided to drop the issue for the time being and to just keep and eye on Billy.

To be continued... Same channel, same station

Letty, if you would really prefer that I post any new chapters in the literary section of A2K I will move it with no hard feelings.

Donald O'Connor -- comedian, dancer


Robert W. Welkos, Los Angeles Times

Sunday, September 28, 2003


Hollywood -- Donald O'Connor, the breezy song-and-dance comedian who created movie magic with his spirited rendition of "Make 'em Laugh" in the Hollywood musical "Singin' in the Rain" and also played lovable straight man to a talking mule named Francis, died Saturday. He was 78.

Mr. O'Connor died of heart failure at the Motion Picture Country Home and Hospital in Calabasas in Los Angeles County, surrounded by his family, said his daughter, Alicia O'Connor.

In 1999, Mr. O'Connor suffered a severe bout of viral pneumonia with heart and lung complications, requiring nine months' recuperation, but eventually, he returned to limited performing.

"Even when he was in pain," his daughter said of his brief recent illness, "he was still trying to make people laugh. Only two nights ago, he told us, 'I'd just like to thank the Academy (of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences) for my lifetime achievement award that I will eventually get.'

"He was a jokester, so we just laughed," she said. "It really brought the whole family together."

Mr. O'Connor and his wife of 47 years, Gloria, lived in Sedona, Ariz., but had returned to the Los Angeles area after O'Connor became ill.

The quip about the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was poignant because Mr. O'Connor, who made more than 70 films during his long career and hosted the first televised Academy Awards show, had won every major honor -- Emmy, Peabody, Golden Globe and Sylvania -- except the Oscar.

With an athletic spring in his step and a charming, boy-next-door persona, Mr. O'Connor devoted his entire life to show business, from the circus and vaudeville to movies, television, nightclubs, symphony halls and the Broadway stage.

But it was his role with Gene Kelly and Debbie Reynolds in the classic 1952 MGM musical "Singin' in the Rain" -- widely considered the best musical Hollywood ever produced -- that will live as his greatest screen accomplishment.

"No one ever thought it would be this big or make this kind of splash," he said of the film last year when it celebrated its 50th anniversary and was issued on DVD.

In the film, O'Connor as Kelly's best friend Cosmo Brown, performs a remarkable self-choreographed dance routine in which he runs up a wall and does a back flip, makes crazy faces and dazzles audiences with acrobatic antics surrounding a couch and other props.

"That piece," A.C. Lyles, Paramount producer and executive for 75 years and a close friend of Mr. O'Connor, said Saturday, "is as good a piece of entertainment as ever existed."

Mr. O'Connor became a teen idol in the 1940s when, paired with such starlets as Peggy Ryan, Gloria Jean and Ann Blyth, he performed in a string of lucrative, low-budget musicals for Universal Pictures.

Then segueing into an adult career in the early 1950s, he played straight man to a talking mule named Francis in such silly but popular comedies as "Francis Goes to the Races" and "Francis Goes to West Point." In all, he made six Francis movies.

The son of circus trapeze artists turned vaudevillians, Mr. O'Connor was born on Aug. 28, 1925, in Chicago and was carried onstage for applause when he was 3 days old. By the age of 13 months, he was already participating in the family vaudeville act. He said performing was so much a part of his childhood that he thought it strange that other children didn't work.

He was 11 years old when he made his film debut with two of his brothers in "Melody for Two" in 1937 and was signed a year later by Paramount Pictures. A studio representative plucked him off the stage when he was performing in a benefit for the Motion Picture Relief Fund, prompting Mr. O'Connor to recall for the rest of his life, "Some talent scout pointed to me and said, 'Get that kid.' "

Mr. O'Connor played adolescent roles in several films, including Huckleberry Finn in "Tom Sawyer -- Detective" (1938) and Beau as a child in "Beau Geste" (1939).

In World War II, his career took off with the popularity of the Universal musicals. He was drafted toward the end of the war, and spent much of his service entertaining the troops.

"We did 14 pictures in one year," he recalled in 1997. "I was going into the service and the pictures were making so much money, they tried to get in as many as they could so they could release them once every three months while I was in the service. So, when I was in the service, my career was going up all the time. They all made a fortune for the studio."

As for "Singin' in the Rain," Mr. O'Connor recalled decades later that he hadn't been given a solo routine at the beginning until, by chance, composer- arranger Roger Edens came to him with a number called "Make 'Em Laugh."

"Kelly said, 'Why don't you take the girls' -- his assistants -- 'and a piano player and see what you can come up with,' " O'Connor recalled. "I started doing pratfalls and whatever they laughed at, I said, 'Write it down.' That's how the number came to be."

Mr. O'Connor also noted that the entire number had to be reshot because they overexposed the film.

"So, I went back and did it again," he said. "It was no sweat. I felt I did it better the second time."

In 1954-55, he starred in "The Donald O'Connor Texaco Show" on television, and in 1957 he portrayed the silent screen comedian in a film biography called "The Buster Keaton Story."

In 1956, he conducted the Los Angeles Philharmonic in the premiere performance of his first symphony, "Reflections d'un Comique." In later years, he was on the Broadway stage in 1981 in "Bring Back Birdie." Other theatrical credits included a 1982 revival of "Showboat."

Survivors include his wife, Gloria; four children, Alicia, Donna, Fred and Kevin, and four grandchildren.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/09/28/BA3444.DTL

"Make 'em Laugh"
music by Nacio Herb Brown; lyrics by Arthur Freed
Make 'em laugh. Make 'em laugh.
Don't you know everyone wants to laugh.
My dad said, "Be an actor, my son,
But be a comical one."
They'll be standin' in lines
For those old honky tonk monkeyshines.
Or you could study Shakespeare and be quite elite,
And you charm the critics and have nothin' to eat.
Just slip on a banana peel, the world's at your feet.
Make 'em laugh. Make 'em laugh. Make 'em laugh.

Make 'em... Make 'em laugh.
Don't you know everyone wants to laugh?
My grandpa said, "Go out and tell 'em a joke,
But give it plenty of hoke."
Make 'em roar. Make 'em scream.
Take a fall, butt a wall, split a seam.
You start off by pretending you're a dancer with grace.
You wiggle 'till they're gigglin' all over the place.
And then you get a great big custard pie in the face.
Make 'em laugh. Make 'em laugh. Make 'em laugh.

Make 'em laugh. Make 'em laugh.
Don't you... all the...
My dad...
They'll be standin' in lines
For those old honky tonk monkeyshines.
...
Make 'em laugh. Make 'em laugh.
Make 'em laugh.

Make 'em laugh. Make 'em laugh. Make 'em laugh.

Leo Tolstoy
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.


Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy Sound listen? (Russian: Лев Никола́евич Толсто́й; commonly referred to in English as Leo Tolstoy) (September 9, 1828 - November 20, 1910; August 28, 1828 - November 7, 1910, O.S.) was a Russian novelist, social reformer, pacifist, Christian anarchist, vegetarian, moral thinker and an influential member of the Tolstoy family.

Tolstoy is widely regarded as one of the greatest of all novelists, particularly noted for his masterpieces War and Peace and Anna Karenina; in their scope, breadth and realistic depiction of Russian life, the two books stand at the peak of realistic fiction. As a moral philosopher he was notable for his ideas on nonviolent resistance through his work The Kingdom of God is Within You, which in turn influenced such twentieth-century figures as Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King.


Early life

Tolstoy was born at Yasnaya Polyana, the family estate situated in the region of Tula, Russia. He was the fourth of five children in his family. His parents died when he was young, so he was brought up by relatives. Tolstoy studied law and Oriental languages at Kazan University in 1844, but never earned a degree. He returned in the middle of his studies to Yasnaya Polyana, and spent much of his time in Moscow and St. Petersburg. After contracting heavy gambling debts, Tolstoy accompanied his elder brother to the Caucasus in 1851 and joined the Russian Army. Tolstoy began writing literature around this time. In 1862 he married Sofia Andreevna Bers, and together they had thirteen children.

His marriage has been described by A.N.Wilson as one of the unhappiest in literary history, and was marked from the outset by Tolstoy on the eve of his marriage giving his diaries to his fiancee. These detailed Tolstoy's sexual relations with his serfs. His relationship with his wife further deteriorated as his beliefs became increasingly radical.


Novels and Fictional Works

Tolstoy was one of the giants of 19th century Russian literature. His most famous works include the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, and many shorter works, including the novellas The Death of Ivan Ilych and Hadji Murad. His contemporaries paid him lofty tributes: Dostoevsky thought him the greatest of all living novelists while Gustave Flaubert gushed: "What an artist and what a psychologist!". Later critics and novelists would concede. Virginia Woolf went on to declare him "greatest of all novelists" and Thomas Mann wrote of his seemingly guileless artistry: "Seldom did art work so much like nature", sentiments shared in part by many others, including Marcel Proust, Vladimir Nabokov and William Faulkner.

His autobiographical novels, Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth (1852-1856), his first publications, tell of a rich landowner's son and his slow realization of the differences between him and his peasant playmates. Although in later life Tolstoy rejected these books as sentimental, a great deal of his own life is revealed, and the books still have relevance for their telling of the universal story of growing up.

Tolstoy served as a second lieutenant in an artillery regiment during the Crimean War, recounted in his Sevastapol Sketches. His experiences in battle helped develop his pacifism, and gave him material for realistic depiction of the horrors of war in his later work.

His fiction consistently attempts to convey realistically the Russian society in which he lived. The Cossacks (1863) describes the Cossack life and people through a story of a Russian aristocrat in love with a Cossack girl. Anna Karenina (1867) tells parallel stories of an adulterous woman trapped by the conventions and falsities of society and of a philosophical landowner (much like Tolstoy), who works alongside his serfs in the fields and seeks to reform their lives.

Tolstoy not only drew from his experience of life but created characters in his own image, such as Pierre Bezukhov and Prince Andrei in War and Peace, Levin in Anna Karenina and to some extent, Prince Nekhlyudov in Resurrection.

War and Peace is generally thought to be one of the greatest novels ever written, remarkable for its breadth and unity. Its vast canvas includes 580 characters, many historical, others fictional. The story moves from family life to the headquarters of Napoleon, from the court of Alexander I of Russia to the battlefields of Austerlitz and Borodino. It was written with the purpose of exploring Tolstoy's theory of history, and in particular the insignificance of individuals such as Napoleon and Alexander. Somewhat surprisingly, Tolstoy did not consider War and Peace to be a novel (nor did he consider many of the great Russian fictions written up that time to be novels). This view becomes less surprising if one considers that Tolstoy was a novelist of the realist school who considered the novel to be a framework for the examination of social and political issues in nineteenth-century life. War and Peace (which is to Tolstoy really an epic in prose) therefore did not qualify. Tolstoy thought that Anna Karenina was his first true novel, and it is indeed one of the greatest of all realist novels.

After Anna Karenina, Tolstoy concentrated on Christian themes, and his later novels such as The Death of Ivan Ilyich (1884) and What Then Must We Do? develop a radical anarcho-pacifist Christian philosophy which led to his excommunication from the Orthodox church in 1901.


Religious and political beliefs


Tolstoy's Christian beliefs were based on the Sermon on the Mount, and particularly on the comment about turning your cheek, which he saw as a justification of pacifism. These beliefs came out of a middle aged crisis that began with a depression so severe that if he saw a rope it made him think of hanging himself, and he had to hide his guns to stop himself from committing suicide.

Yet out of this depression came his radical and very original new ideas about Christianity. He believed that a Christian should look inside his or her own heart to find inner happiness rather than looking outward toward the church or state. His belief in nonviolence when facing oppression is another distinct attribute of his philosophy. By directly influencing Mahatma Gandhi with this idea through his work The Kingdom of God is Within You [1], Tolstoy has had a huge influence on the nonviolent resistance movement to this day. He believed that the aristocracy were a burden on the poor, and that the only solution to how we live together is through anarchy. He also opposed private property and the institution of marriage and valued the ideals of chastity and sexual abstinence. He was a pacifist and vegetarian.

Tolstoy had a profound influence on the development of anarchist thought. Prince Peter Kropotkin wrote of him in the article on anarchism in the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica:

Without naming himself an anarchist, Leo Tolstoy, like his predecessors in the popular religious movements of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Chojecki, Denk and many others, took the anarchist position as regards the state and property rights, deducing his conclusions from the general spirit of the teachings of Jesus and from the necessary dictates of reason. With all the might of his talent he made (especially in The Kingdom of God is Within You [2]) a powerful criticism of the church, the state and law altogether, and especially of the present property laws. He describes the state as the domination of the wicked ones, supported by brutal force. Robbers, he says, are far less dangerous than a well-organized government. He makes a searching criticism of the prejudices which are current now concerning the benefits conferred upon men by the church, the state and the existing distribution of property, and from the teachings of Jesus he deduces the rule of non-resistance and the absolute condemnation of all wars. His religious arguments are, however, so well combined with arguments borrowed from a dispassionate observation of the present evils, that the anarchist portions of his works appeal to the religious and the non-religious reader alike.

A letter Tolstoy wrote to an Indian newspaper entitled "A Letter to a Hindu" resulted in a long-running correspondence with Mohandas Gandhi, who was in South Africa at the time and was beginning to become an activist. The correspondence with Tolstoy strongly influenced Gandhi towards the concept of nonviolent resistance, a central part of Tolstoy's view of Christianity. Along with his growing idealism, he also became a major supporter of the Esperanto movement. Tolstoy was impressed by the pacifist beliefs of the Doukhobors and brought their persecution to the attention of the international community, after they burned their weapons in peaceful protest in 1895. He aided the Doukhobors in migrating to Canada.

In 1904, during the Russo-Japanese War, Tolstoy condemned the war and wrote to the Japanese Buddhist priest Soyen Shaku in a failed attempt to make a joint pacifist statement.

Tolstoy was an extremely wealthy member of the Russian nobility. He came to believe that he was undeserving of his inherited wealth, and was renowned among the peasantry for his generosity. He would frequently return to his country estate with vagrants whom he felt needed a helping hand, and would often dispense large sums of money to street beggars while on trips to the city, much to his wife's chagrin.

He died of pneumonia at Astapovo station in 1910 after leaving home in the middle of winter at the age of 82. His death came only days after gathering the nerve to abandon his family and wealth and take up the path of a wandering ascetic -- a path that he had agonized over not pursuing for decades. Thousands of peasants turned out to line the streets at his funeral.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Tolstoy

Good morning WA2K radio fans and contributors.

Beth, that soothing song really worked, honey, 'cause I slept all night long. Thanks, gal.

Rex, your original song is beautiful. We all really loved it, and I have absolutely no problem with your reading your originals here on our station.

Bob, once again you have provided us with great information and background on notables, and we enjoy being educated.

I'll get myself together and be back later to thoroughly read and comment.

Charles Boyer
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.


Charles Boyer (August 28, 1899 - August 26, 1978) was a French actor.

Born in Figeac, Lot, Midi-Pyrénées, France, Boyer started on the stage, but he found his success in European and Hollywood movies during the 1920s and 1930s. He continued to make films over the next several decades.

Charles Boyer is best known for his role in the 1944 film "Gaslight" in which he tried to convince Ingrid Bergman's character that she was going insane. Some years earlier, it was Boyer's role in Algiers (1938) that caused many to credit him with the never-heard line "Come with me to the casbah."

In 1948 Charles Boyer was made a chevalier of the French Legion of Honor. He continued to act until a few years before his death, his last major film role being that of the High Lama in a musical version of Lost Horizon (1973).

For his contribution to the motion picture and television industries, Charles Boyer has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6300 Hollywood Blvd.

Two days after the death of his wife, British actress Pat Paterson, from cancer, Charles Boyer committed suicide with an overdose of Seconal. Notwithstanding his suicide, he was interred in Holy Cross Cemetery, Culver City, California, United States alongside with his wife and son Michael Charles Boyer (1943-1965, committed suicide with .38 revolver while playing Russian roulette after his fiancée broke off their engagement).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Boyer

Good Morning WA2K. Lovely music, a story leaving us in suspense, and great bios of great people - What a station!

Today's birthdays:

1025 - Emperor Go-Reizei of Japan (d. 1068)
1612 - Marcus Zuerius van Boxhorn, Dutch scholar (d. 1653)
1749 - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, German writer and scientist (d. 1832)
1774 - Elizabeth Ann Seton, first American-born Catholic saint (d. 1821)
1814 - Sheridan le Fanu, Irish writer (d. 1873)
1828 - Leo Tolstoy, Russian writer (d. 1910)
1849 - Benjamin Godard, French composer (d. 1895)
1867 - Umberto Giordano, Italian composer (d. 1948)
1894 - Karl Böhm, Austrian conductor (d. 1981)
1897 - Charles Boyer, French actor (d. 1978)
1903 - Bruno Bettelheim, American psychologist (d. 1990)
1904 - Secondo Campini, Italian jet engine pioneer (d. 1980)
1906 - John Betjeman, English poet (d. 1984)
1908 - Roger Tory Peterson, American ornithologist and illustrator (d. 1996)
1910 - Tjalling Koopmans, Dutch economist (d. 1985)
1911 - Joseph Luns, Dutch politician (d. 2002)
1913 - Robertson Davies, Canadian writer (d. 1995)
1913 - Richard Tucker, American tenor (d. 1975)
1917 - Jack Kirby, American comic book artist (d. 1994)
1919 - Godfrey Hounsfield, English electrical engineer and inventor, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d. 2004)
1924 - Janet Frame, New Zealand author
1924 - Peggy Ryan, American actress (d. 2004)
1925 - Donald O'Connor, American singer, dancer, and actor (d. 2003)
1929 - Istvan Kertesz, Hungarian conductor (d. 1973)
1930 - Ben Gazzara, American actor
1931 - John Shirley-Quirk, English bass-baritone
1938 - Maurizio Costanzo, Italian television journalist
1941 - Baroness Sybille de Selys Longchamps, Belgian aristocrat
1943 - David Soul, American actor
1943 - Lou Piniella, baseball manager
1947 - Liza Wang, Hong Kong actress
1957 - Daniel Stern, American actor
1957 - Rick Rossovich, American actor
1958 - Scott Hamilton, American figure skater
1960 - Emma Samms, English actress
1961 - Kim Appleby, British singer
1965 - Shania Twain, Canadian singer
1968 - Billy Boyd, Scottish actor
1969 - Jason Priestley, Canadian actor
1971 - Janet Evans, American swimmer
1979 - Robert Hoyzer, German football referee
1980 - Eric Schomburg, American author
1981 - Martin Erat, Czech hockey player
1982 - LeAnn Rimes, American singer

Raggedy, thanks for being your usual and delightful self and providing our listeners with the celeb updates.

Rex, Chapter one seems a picture of so many unfortunate marriages, and you write quite well, my friend. Thank you, and we'll look forward to the next installment. (give it a happy ending, please. <smile>)

I never see Donald O'Connor that I don't hear "Singing in the Rain" in my head. What an entertainer, folks; and Charles Boyer and those eyes. Did he ever say, "...come with me to the Casbah..."?

Goethe caught my eye and I love the man, so I'll do some research and read something of his later.

Today is my oldest sister's birthday, so I also want to dedicate a song to her.

Thank you all for keeping our station alive and on the air.

WOW! Bob, we all have been following Panzade's hurricane watch, and I am horrified at how that woman has picked up strength with the potential of becoming a cat 5. Lord have mercy, I hope everyone is safe and supplied.

For some reason, listeners. My oldest sister loves this song, she of the classics and a PhD, but there is a little of the populace in all of us, I guess:






GIRL IN THE BLUE VELVET BAND
(written by Bill Monroe)


One night while out for a ramble
The hour was just about nine
I met a young maiden in Frisco
On the corner of Geary and Pine

On her face there was beauty of nature
And her eyes just seemed to expand
Her hair was so rich and so brilliant
Entwined in a blue velvet band

We stolled down the street together
In my pocket she placed her small hand
She planted the evidence on me
The girl in the blue velvet band

I heard the scream of the siren
And the girl in the blue velvet band
She left me to face all the trouble
With a diamond that was worth ten grand

They sent me to San Quentin for stealing
God knows I'm an innocent man
The guilty one now she lie's dying
The girl in the blue velvet band

Last night when bed-time was ringin
Standing there close to the bars
I fancied I heard a voice calling
Far out in the ocean of stars

I'll be out in a year and I'm leaving
But I'll carry the name of a man
That served ten years in prison
For the girl in the blue velvet band

And when I get out I'll endeavor
To live in some other land
And I'll bid farewell to old Frisco
And the girl in the blue velvet band

Perhaps, listeners, this will be heard in Europe:

Poems of Goethe

SONGS.

Late resounds the early strain;
Weal and woe in song remain.

SOUND, SWEET SONG.

SOUND, sweet song, from some far land,
Sighing softly close at hand,

Now of joy, and now of woe!

Stars are wont to glimmer so.

Sooner thus will good unfold;
Children young and children old
Gladly hear thy numbers flow.

1820.

You don't suppose they found the wax bust of Mozart in Walter's cache, do you.

Fixing a Hole

I'm fixing a hole where the rain gets in
And stops my mind from wandering
Where it will go.
I'm filling in the cracks that ran through the door
And kept my mind from wandering
Where it will go.
And it really doesn't matter if I'm wrong
I'm right
Where I belong I'm right
Where I belong.
See the people standing there who
Disagree and never win
And wonder why they don't get in my door.
I'm painting the room in a colorful way
And when my mind is wandering
There I will go.
And it doesn't really matter if I'm wrong I'm right
Where I belong I'm right
Where I belong.
Silly people run around they worry me
And never ask me why they don't get past my door.
I'm taking the time for a number of things
That weren't important yesterday
And I still go.
I'm fixing a hole where the rain gets in
And stops my mind from wandering
Where it will go.

Well, edgar. That was an appropriate song. Two holes come to mind, listeners. My bucket's Got A Hole in It and There's a Hole in the Bucket, dear liza. We won't EVEN talk about black holes.

For all those folks in New Orleans from Louis:

Basin Street Blues

Won't you come and go with me
Down that mississippi
We'll take a boat to the land of dreams
Come along with me on, down to new orleans

Now the band's there to greet us
Old friends will meet us
Where all them folks goin to the st. louis cemetary meet
Heaven on earth.... they call it basin street

I'm tellin' ya, basin street...... is the street
Where all them characters from the first street they meet
New orleans..... land of dreams
You'll never miss them rice and beans
Way down south in new orleans

They'll be huggin'.... and a kissin'
That's what I been missin'
And all that music....lord, if you just listen'
New orleans....i got them basin street blues

(instrumental break)

Now ain't you glad you went with me
On down that mississippi
We took a boat to the land of dreams
Heaven on earth...they call it basin street.

Don't believe they seem too worried, however. Party on, folks

Prayers for safety and shelter in the big easy... this storm does not look good.

I hope people know enough to get out of there at all costs...

If you got any money get out on a bus and go to a shelter in a neighboring city...

I hope I am wrong but the flooding possibility seems rather disconcerting...

I know, Rex. The flooding is the big problem.

On another thread, Setanta is discussing the merits of Hitler. (or lack thereof)

Question of the day?

What was Hitler's dog's name.

Where in the world is Europe. I know Francis is here, because he's saying something. <smile>

Good news for Letty et al

Java Joy: Study Touts Coffee's Benefits

By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID, AP Science Writer Sun Aug 28, 9:16 AM ET

WASHINGTON - When the Ink Spots sang "I love the java jive and it loves me" in 1940, they could not have known how right they were. Coffee not only helps clear the mind and perk up the energy, it also provides more healthful antioxidants than any other food or beverage in the American diet, according to a study released Sunday.

Of course, too much coffee can make people jittery and even raise cholesterol levels, so food experts stress moderation.

The findings by Joe A. Vinson, a chemistry professor at the University of Scranton, in Pennsylvania, give a healthy boost to the warming beverage.

"The point is, people are getting the most antioxidants from beverages, as opposed to what you might think," Vinson said in a telephone interview.

Antioxidants, which are thought to help battle cancer and provide other health benefits, are abundant in grains, tomatoes and many other fruits and vegetables.

Vinson said he was researching tea and cocoa and other foods and decided to study coffee, too.

His team analyzed the antioxidant content of more than 100 different food items, including vegetables, fruits, nuts, spices, oils and common beverages. They then used Agriculture Department data on typical food consumption patterns to calculate how much antioxidant each food contributes to a person's diet.

They concluded that the average adult consumes 1,299 milligrams of antioxidants daily from coffee. The closest competitor was tea at 294 milligrams. Rounding out the top five sources were bananas, 76 milligrams; dry beans, 72 milligrams; and corn, 48 milligrams. According to the Agriculture Department, the typical adult American drinks 1.64 cups of coffee daily.

That does not mean coffee is a substitute for fruit and vegetables.

"Unfortunately, consumers are still not eating enough fruits and vegetables, which are better for you from an overall nutritional point of view due to their higher content of vitamins, minerals and fiber," Vinson said.

Dates, cranberries and red grapes are among the leading fruit sources of antioxidants, he said.

The antioxidants in coffee are known as polyphenols. Sometimes they are bound to a sugar molecule, which covers up the antioxidant group, Vinson said.

The first step in measuring them was to break that sugar link. He noted that chemicals in the stomach do the same thing, freeing the polyphenols.

"We think that antioxidants can be good for you in a number of ways," including affecting enzymes and genes, though more research is needed, Vinson said.

"If I say more coffee is better, then I would have to tell you to spread it out to keep the levels of antioxidants up," Vinson said. "We always talk about moderation in anything."

His findings were released in conjunction with the annual convention of the American Chemical Society in Washington.

In February, a team of Japanese researchers reported in the Journal of the
National Cancer Institute that people who drank coffee daily, or nearly every day, had half the liver cancer risk of those who never drank it. The protective effect occurred in people who drank one to two cups a day and increased at three to four cups.

Last year, researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health found that drinking coffee cut the risk of developing the most common form of diabetes.

Men who drank more than six 8-ounce cups of caffeinated coffee per day lowered their risk of type 2 diabetes by about half, and women reduced their risk by nearly 30 percent, compared with people who did not drink coffee, according to the study in Annals of Internal Medicine.

Bonnie Liebman, nutrition director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, said she was not surprised by Vinson's finding, because tea has been known to contain antioxidants.

But Liebman, who was not part of Vinson's research team, cautioned that while many people have faith that antioxidants will reduce the risk of cancer, heart disease and more, the evidence has not always panned out. Most experts are looking beyond antioxidants to the combination of vitamins, minerals other nutrition in specific foods, she said.

Thanks for that good message, Bob. I imagine everything in the food and beverage industry changes from time to time.

As for me, My body usually tells me what it needs or doesn't need.

It seems to me that I read an abstract in grad school about an experiment that was conducted with small children.

The folks in charge and conducting the experiment had a buffet set up with various varieties of the food groups. No junk food, however.

The children would eat what they seem to lack without being prodded. I've noticed that I tend to eat more fish.

How about the rest of our listeners.