AIFF2016 Documentaries In Competition Tibetan Nomads, Tuvan Throat Singers, Slanty Eyed Mamas, Thai Boxing, And Those Ruby Slippers

Here are the documentaries in competition with descriptions below.

Docs in Competition	Director	Country	Length
Best and Most Beautiful Things	Garrett Zevgetis	USA	90 min
Drokpa	Yan Chun S	China	79 min
Goodbye Darling, I’m Off to Fight	Simone Manetti	Italy,Australia, United States	73 min
SHU-DE!	Michael R Faulkner	United States	85 min
Happy Lucky Golden Tofu Panda	Carrie Preston	United States	75 min
The Slippers	Morgan White	USA	min
The Cinema Travelers	Shirley Abraham	India	min

Best and Most Beautiful Things
Garrett Zevgetis
USA
90 min

Tuesday December 6, 2016 5:30pm - 7:30pm *** Warning - one showing only!!
BearTooth 


From the film's website:

"In 2009 director Garrett Zevgetis googled the word “Beauty.”
He had been working on a number of darker-themed documentaries and was determined to find an uplifting story for a future project. The search returned a poignant Helen Keller quote that led Garrett to Perkins School for the Blind outside Boston, a renowned institution where a feature documentary had never before been made. He began volunteering at Perkins. On the last day of his scheduled term, a bubbly student introduced herself – Michelle had found him.
BEST AND MOST BEAUTIFUL THINGS is a celebration of outcasts everywhere, following a precocious young blind woman who disappears into quirky obsessions and isolation. With humor and bold curiosity, "

The Cinema Traveler
Shirley Abraham
India
96 minutes
Thursday December 8, 2016 5:30pm - 7:00pm **WARNING - Just one showing
BearTooth 

This film debuted at Cannes last May where it won a Special Jury Prize.  This seems to be one not to miss.  I did get see some films shown in rural Thailand on a sheet across a dirt road in Thailand in the 60s, it wasn't quite what this film seems to be documenting.  The annual visit by the Chinese opera troupe probably was more like this.  From the reviews, it sounds like the film captures the excitement of these events.

From a much longer article at the Guardian:

"In Shirley Abraham and Amit Madheshiya’s understated documentary, we’re given intimate access to a unique experience: two travelling cinemas that travel across rural India sharing films with people who would otherwise have limited access. It focuses on the lives of the men who put the show on the road, faced with a changing medium and a demanding audience.
Shot over five years, we follow a set of men with different key roles in the process of the two companies. There’s the easygoing manager trying to provide for his family while on the road, the 70-year-old projector mechanic whose weathered hands have helped bring the joy of cinema to thousands and the many serious-minded cineastes who work around them."

From the Hollywood Reporter:

"The traveling cinema world, mostly based around Maharashtra, the vast state whose capital is Mumbai, has been bringing the magic of the silver screen to remote villages for some 70 years. Setting up tents in rural fairs that often are several hours from anything even approaching a local multiplex, the screenings draw hundreds, who line up to see the latest Bollywood hits, old Hindi classics and even the odd dubbed Hollywood title.
But it’s a tradition that is nearing extinction. "There are very few of these cinemas left," says Shirley Abraham, who together with her co-director Amit Madheshiya, has spent eight years tracking those remaining in the industry for The Cinema Travelers, screening in the Cannes Classics sidebar on May 15. 'It has been petering out over the years. I don’t think they’re going to survive the march of time and technology.'"

The film's website's press page has lots and lots of links to articles about the film.
The video below features a discussion with the film makers talking about the film. The video isn't great. I haven't found a trailer.

Screenshot from Dropka trailer

Drokpa
Yan Chun Su
China
79 minutes

Saturday December 3, 2016 2:00pm - 3:30pm 
Anchorage Museum
Saturday December 10, 2016 12:00pm - 1:30pm 
Alaska Experience - SMALL

The site only lists three other festivals in addition to AIFF so we're some of the first people to see this film.  From their website:

"DROKPA (Nomads of Tibet) is a portrait of the lives and struggles of nomads on the Eastern Tibetan Plateau. Through intimate individual stories, the film reveals the unprecedented environmental and sociopolitical forces that are pushing the nomads to the edge of their existence. "

Goodbye Darling, I’m Off to Fight
Simone Manetti
Italy
73

Wednesday December 7, 2016 8:00pm - 9:30pm 
BearTooth
Sunday December 11, 2016 2:00pm - 3:15pm 
Alaska Experience - SMALL


The trailer of this Italian movie is in English with Italian sub-titles. The trailer has the title in English, Italian, and Thai.  It's about boxing.  And that seems to be confirmed in the English description I found at DocsMX:

"After a painful break-up with her boyfriend, Italian actress and fashion model Chantal Ughi discovered that Muay Thai was the only way to confront the violence she suffered as a child. She went to Thailand to train for four weeks, but ended up living there for five years—training and fighting, becoming stronger than a man."

Happy Lucky Golden Tofu 

Panda
Carrie Preston
USA
75 min

Saturday December 3, 2016 1:30pm - 3:00pm 
Alaska Experience - SMALL 
Saturday December 10, 2016 6:00pm - 7:30pm 
49th State Brewing Company 

Where do I start this?  There's a duo called Slanty Eyed Mamas.  I'll let their own words from their website explain:

"TWO GOOD ASIAN GIRLS GONE BADASS.
Thoroughly modern, urban, sexy sounds from the very fresh, street infused Asian-American duo that always causes a stir...You've never seen anything quite like it--part hip hop, part rock, part electroclash, from two rock n roll asian chicks. Slanty Eyed Mama sees the world through the searing electric violin and beats of virtuoso Lyris Hung and the iconoclastic rants from Kate Rigg, aka. Lady K-Sian. Kate is also a Juilliard trained actor/playwright and a well known comedian, who has been on Fox's Family Guy, 2 seasons of the Dr. Phil show where she talked about the Asian American Experience to 5 million people, and has toured extensively as a stand up comic. Electric violinist Lyris Hung is also a Juilliard graduate who also has a metal band called HUNG, tours with The Indigo Girls and has played with Jay Z, Bono, Quincy Jones, and many others."

And the movie?  On her website, Kate writes about the movie:

"In addition to keeping busy with theater and TV work, 2016 sees the release of the thoroughly original, mind bending, but gusting, comedy music and spoken word mashup film Happy Lucky Golden Tofu Panda Dragon Good Tie Fun Fun Show- The movie. Shot on location in New York and directed by Emmy Award Winning actress Carrie Preston. The movie captures the downtown New York spirit with live portions filmed in an East Village Club, with musical numbers and sketches blown up and shot on location throughout the City. It examines the "East meets west experience" ways in which we see "Asian-ness" in the West through culture, media, commodities and familiar images-- Hello Kitty, Nail Salons, Chinatown bargain shopping, Pokemon, bowl cuts. Kate's Stand up weaves the show together, with sharp observational, political and outrageous out-there jokes."

 It premiered in New York in June, but I can't find much except their own promotional stuff.  Eclipse Magazine mentions it in passing when discussing what people will find at the SOHO film festival:

"intriguing oddities like Happy Lucky Golden Tofu Panda Dragon Good Time Fun Fun Show" 

Here's the teaser.

SHU-DE!
Michael R Faulkner
USA 
85 min

Saturday, Dec 3, 2016: BearTooth 6:00 PM Sunday, Dec 11, 2016:Alaska Exp - SMALL, 
4:00 PM

I remember first seeing live Tuvan throat singing 20 or 30 years ago at the Fly-by-Night Club in Spenard.  It's other-worldly.  So this one piques  my interest.

From the Shu-De website:

"Khoomei (hoo-may) or Tuvan throat singing, is an ancient vocal tradition originating in the remote Republic of Tuva, which is located in the center of Asia in Siberia, and now, part of the Russian Federation. Considered to predate modern linguistics, Khoomei, involves a remarkable technique for singing two or more pitches simultaneously. The sounds are said to come from the land and harmonize with nature itself. The Alash Ensemble are masters of this vocal art and have been touring the world, sharing their music with other cultures, for years.
Shodekeh, a beatboxer and vocal percussionist from Baltimore, with a vision for creating an "oasis of unity through musical collaboration," has spent his life mastering new sounds and using them, while fostering seemingly unlikely collaborations. SHU-DE! is the story of what happened when these artists came together, utilizing their common instrument: the voice and body."

The Baltimore Sun did a profile of the film maker, Michael Faulkner.  Here's a snippet from it:

" . . .The resulting film, "Shu-De!" – Tuvan for "Let's go!" — was one of the crowd favorites at May's 18th Maryland Film festival, where it had its East Coast premiere (its world premiere was a few weeks earlier, at the Nashville Film Festival). Its mix of local interest and exotic locales, not to mention its haunting melodies, proved a crowd-pleaser of the first order. It's since screened at several other festivals, and will be going on a seven-city tour in October
"It's amazing to see your work on a big screen — especially me being a cinephile, someone who loves movies and story in general," says Faulkner, a freelance location manager and film producer who moved from Kalamazoo, Mich., to Baltimore in 1998. 'I was really happy to notice — it's a real movie. It's there; it stands up on the big screen.'"

There's something very film-festivalish about this film, and I mean that in the best possible way.

We don't learn much about what the film is about in the trailer, but we learn a lot about what it feels like.

The Slippers

Morgan White

USA

90 minutes

Saturday December 3, 2016 4:00pm - 6:00pm 

Anchorage Museum 

Sunday December 11, 2016 12:00pm - 1:30pm 

Alaska Experience - SMALL

From Letter Box:

"THE SLIPPERS pulls back the Wizard’s curtain on the unbelievable story and cultural impact of Dorothy's Ruby Slippers from The Wizard of Oz.  Through first-hand accounts and archival interviews, THE SLIPPERS will detail the life of the Ruby Slippers after their sale at the famed 1970 MGM auction. Discovered by costumer Kent Warner, it is unclear how many pairs were found and how many pairs exist. That mystery has only helped to propel the shoes to the forefront of the Hollywood memorabilia market. They have been bought, stolen, and coveted by many. They are considered the most important piece of Hollywood memorabilia and the catalyst for the creation of Hollywood memorabilia collecting."

From an interview with director White at Hammer To Nail:

HtN: So how about access? Did you have any issues there, interview-wise, or footage-wise?
 MW: Footage-wise wasn’t so hard. I spent a lot of time trying to collect stuff. So I became very obsessed with the idea that I should collect as much of the material that’s in the film as possible, because I’m making a movie about collecting. So a lot of the things that are in there come from 16mm prints that I bought, on eBay, or on the black market of 16mm-print collecting. Or I bought magazines and newspapers and articles and…whatever I could find on eBay. So in terms of that stuff, it was just me spending time looking for it. Access-wise, for interviews, I mean, everybody was pretty great. Michael Shaw, who was one of the owners of the shoes, he was a little bit complicated to get, because he’s a little bit complicated of a person…

From the interview, it's clear this is movie is about collecting movie memorabilia, not just the Ruby Slippers.

Recycled Piano And Other Seattle Shots

Just outside the Bainbridge Island post office, there's an old piano for folks to play.  Above are some close ups.  Below is the whole piano along with the keyboard painted bench.  My granddaughter's fingers discovered many ways to make music.

Sunrise this morning.  At that point I wasn't sure if it was clear or cloudy.  It was cloudy.  After taking my son and his family to the airport for their trip home, we went for lunch at the houseboat of an old friend from Anchorage.

Seriously?

This is what I meant when I predicted that artists would get itchy to create.  It was sent to me from a good friend who has slavery in his family history.


 



From This American Life (expect all funding for public radio and television to be zeroed out by July 2017, but the good news is that it will then be free to stop being so conservative.)

"We’ve been wondering about some of the things President Obama thinks about the current election, but can’t say publicly. But since he hasn’t told us his thoughts explicitly, we asked singer/songwriter Sara Bareilles – who did the Broadway musical “Waitress” – to imagine those thoughts for us. One of the stars of Hamilton, Leslie Odom Jr., performs the song. Music direction by Nadia DiGiallonardo, strings orchestration by Alex Lacamoire."

Trump And The Arts

Prediction:  The period beginning roughly in 2017 will be known in the future for its burst of artistic creativity in music, literature, poetry, painting, graffiti, and all other forms of human creativity.

Everybody Knows Leonard Cohen Has Departed

This is the song the first brought me to Leonard Cohen.  It played repeatedly (as I remember, but I know the brain plays tricks) in the movie Pump Up The Volume about a high school kid who sets up a pirate radio station in his house that catches on with the kids in his high school, but no so much with the principal.  I checked Netflix - they have it on DVD, but not streaming.*

I think you'll find this song pretty current.










*I did find Pump Up The Volume on youtube.  And "Everybody Knows" starts during the credits,  three minutes into the film.  This isn't a great copy, it looks like heads are cut off and it's got ads embedded  in the movie.

Attending A Concert As An Act Of Defiance

[I'd suggest you first start the video below so you have appropriate background music to the post.]

Obama,  when talking about Trump's election, reminded people that the sun would still come up tomorrow morning.  I want to remind everyone that the sun came up every morning over the killing fields of Cambodia.  It came up every day over the Bosnia-Herzogovenia massacres.  And it rose when people were hacking their neighbors to death in Rwanda.   The sun rising doesn't measure normalcy of human behavior.  And while I'm not anticipating mass murder, if Trump carries out any of his key campaign promises, millions of lives are going to be severely disrupted.  Suicide hotlines have lit up since the election, particularly among the already vulnerable LGBT community.  And if protesters are are labeled as traitors.   . . . As the Gessen Rules for Surviving Autocracy tell us, we can't accept slippage of our standards of democracy as the new normal.





Thursday night we went to musical event to support the protestors at Standing Rock.  There was a series of different bands who played short sets.   Lots of dancing and good music at Anchorage Community Works near Ship Creek.

But you don't have to go to something that is specifically a protest concert or a fund raiser.  Good artists are the most consistent speakers of truth in any society.  When you create art without using words, it's harder for authorities to detect the offense.  But authoritarian governments often shut down artists because they know they are among the least obedient members of society.

That's all the more reason to go see their work - to support them morally and financially.

Friday night we went to UAA to an Anchorage Festival of Music presentation of "The People United Will Never Be Defeated!" by Frederic Rzewski.  The UAA ticketing website describes it this way*:

A Tour de Force for Solo Piano
One of the most magnificent piano works of the 20th century, this 'tour de force' is a theme and variations of epic proportions. It is frequently compared to Beethoven's Diabelli Variations or J.S. Bach's Goldberg Variations. Taking his theme from a Chilean worker's song, American composer Frederic Rzewski crafts 36 variations exploring a variety of music styles from neo-romanticism to jazz and the avant-garde. Commissioned for the celebration of America's Bicentennial.
No matter what happens in the November elections, remember that The People United Will Never Be Defeated!"

(*since the concert's over this page may disappear soon.)


This work was more than appropriate for the beginning of the Trump era.  Cedille Records writes:

"This riveting, audience-pleasing tour-de-force is a nearly hour-long set of 36 variations on a popular Chilean protest song from the era of Augusto Pinochet’s repressive right-wing military dictatorship. AllMusic.com applauds it as a work “of bewildering and amazing variety, ranging from serialism to jazz to romanticism to the further reaches of the avant-garde and back” and culminating in 'a superbly emotional climax.'” [emphasis added]

Pianist Stephen Drury is a world class pianist. Again from the ticketing page,  

"The Anchorage Festival of Music joins forces with UAA to present Stephen Drury, one of only a handful of pianists who give live performances of this piece. According to the New York Times: 'Mr. Drury’s playing is extraordinary. He plays the entire program with technical command, keen ear for color, vivid imagination and probing intelligence.'”

Stephen Drury at UAA 

Drury gave a brief introduction about the structure of the piece, then sat down and started playing - no sheet music - for nearly an hour from genre to genre united by the familiar theme.



It was almost like magic that a man could sit at the piano, stretch out his arms and make such incredible sounds come out of the piano. There were moments when I though there must be a couple more people playing that piano with him because there was such an overwhelming wall of music.   And, of course, the UAA music recital hall is a gem of space to hear live music.  It's intimate and the acoustics are incredible.

So this post's recommendation for standing up against autocracy is to patronize the arts.  Go to museums, to galleries, to concerts, to theater.  Invite artists to play when you give a big party.  Give money if you can to support artists to keep their creativity and honesty alive.  Your support allows artists to work on truth.  Smart dictators coopt artists - paying them to compose the soundtracks for tyranny and to illustrate propaganda posters.  That's much cleaner than having to detain them or kill them.

So we need to support artists so they can survive financially making honest art.


Below is a Youtube  of The People United Will Never Be Defeated.  It is NOT from Friday night's concert, but it's to get you in the mood.  Youtube identifies this pianist as Yuji Takahashi.

Brandon Lentz

I was sitting in Terminal 9 at SEATAC last week eating my yakisoba across from a striking young individual who was working on posters with another woman.

Blogging gives me the excuse to say hello and ask what the posters were about.  (I shouldn't need an excuse, but I'm basically pretty shy.)

So meet Brandon Lentz.


Brandon's putting on a show June 3 at GRC  (Green River College.)




Here's some of Brandon's music from Sound Cloud.  I like it.

Chicago Artists

We're here to catch up with lots of friends and relatives.  It turned out Thursday was artist day.







First, a familiar Alaskan artist transformed the landscape.  These two pictures are a couple of hours apart.







Then we went to visit a first cousin of my mom's, who is also an artist of some stature - Gerda Bernstein.  We, fortunately, met her at her studio.  My mom's had a lithograph of hers hanging in her house forever and I've seen catalogues of her work.  But since most of her works are large installation pieces, there's nothing like seeing things as they were meant to be seen.  The studio is a small gallery.  Some of the installations are up, but most are represented by photographs.  I want to do more on Gerda, but were busy every day visiting folks so this is just a brief post.

On the left is view from near the entrance to the studio.

This piece is called Gaza Tunnel.  It's a reconstruction of the tunnels used to smuggle things into Gaza.  But this tunnel is reimagined to be lined with books and the idea of the transformational power of books.

Most of her works raise issues of people's suffering in the world.  As I understand it - though I'm not positive - many early works were holocaust related and the focus has taken in other oppressed peoples.

I'm afraid I was overpowered by the art in the studio.  My initial interest in Gerda is that she's the only person I know of who is still alive who knew my mother when she was a young girl in Germany.  We talked about that a little bit, but the art was too strong to resist.

Here's a break as we drove through downtown Chicago.  The snow hadn't stuck everywhere.

I've been reminded that I'm no longer on the West Coast.  Drivers don't even think about stopping for pedestrians.







Thursday evening we followed up with folks we connected with at my Peace Corps group reunion in Portland.  We went to hear Edward G. McDaniels playing the base at Buddy Guy's blues club.  It was a wonderful evening.  Ed is on the right.  Great music, food, and conversation.

There was a picture of Barack Obama and Buddy Guy with this quote:  "People sometimes ask me what the biggest perk of being president is.  Number one is the plane.  Number two is Buddy guy comes here all the time to my house with his guitar."

Updates On Old Posts - Porno Condom Use in LA, Paxson's Poster And Creole Cowboy

Life moves along and things I've blogged about evolve.

An LA Times story the other day says a settlement looks close in the lawsuit against an LA vote to require porn actors to wear condoms.  The original post was in 2012  when voters approved the measure, and there was a follow up in 2013 when the first court decision came out. Apparently the condoms will stay, but the enforcement will be weaker.





And this year's Anchorage Folk Festival poster was done by Paxson Woelber, who I interviewed in 2009 when two of his short animations were in the Anchorage International Film Festival.




And don't miss the last night of the festival - Sunday, starting at 7pm at Wendy Williamson auditorium at UAA.  Jeffrey Broussard & the Creole Cowboys will play again.  The festival is free and it's one of the events that makes Anchorage a great place to live.

Is this part an update?  Well, the poster leads to the festival and I've got posts from previous folk festivals.
2015.  
2014.
2011.
2011.  This one has Kabala Shish Kebab.
2008.  Cajun and Creole is pretty popular up here.


There's a bit of video from Friday night to give you a sense of what they're like.  And only a sense, since I recorded this with my tiny Canon Powershot.  If you go to the festival, you'll get to hear their sound for real.  They'll be a number of other acts before them, you can come when you want.  Friday the auditorium was packed.

Sun Follows Rain, Plus Anyone Remember Bank Books? Beach Boys, Nimoy

A shorty today as we realize we don't have much time left here and there's still so much to clean up.  Not that we'll finish, but at least the house won't look like someone's trashed it.

Rain was falling when we got up,  Got harder during the day.  But it's let up now and there's sunshine breaking through the clouds.










And as I was going through this stuff, I realized that lots of people probably have no idea about bank books.  Those little books we had to take to the bank and they'd write in the amount we deposited or withdrew.  Makes me feel like a Neanderthal.










OK, a little more.  I opened one envelope and found these pictures.

OK, that's it.  Back to work.


[Sorry for those seeing this reposted - Feedburner problems again. This seems to be getting all too common.]

Clutter Wars Report

Here's the garage yesterday.  I'm sure it looks hopeless to most of you.  But I have to tell you that since August, we've gotten probably 50-60% of the stuff in the garage (by volume) out.  To anyone who was in the garage a year ago, this is an enormous improvement.  But this is also why I feel like for every bag of stuff we take to the thrift shop, throw out, or give away, it feels like two more reappear in the garage.

Here's just one of many car fulls of stuff headed for the nearby thrift shop.

  

And here's the line up waiting for Monday trash day.  Fortunately, my mom's neighbors don't fill up their garbage cans very much and they are more than happy to let me use them.  In LA, I found out that styrofoam and shredded paper can go in the recycling bin.  The latter if it's in a plastic bag so it doesn't fly all over when they dump it all into the truck.

And then there are all the interesting things we've been finding.  Some are treasures like my brothers old record albums.  These and a bunch of others have been in a box on an upper shelf in the back in the garage for probably almost 40 years.  I'm looking forward to getting them home to the turntable.  

And this chess table was stored in a box with the legs detached.  And yes, I've done some photoshopping with a few of the images in this post.  

Or this 1930 school photo of my step-father's class in Germany.  The photo is getting a little funky, but it's really sharp - at least in the original.  If you click the photo it will get bigger and sharper, but still not as good as the original.

This one is 13 years later after he's immigrated to the US and getting ready to go back to Europe, but this time in a US military uniform.  It says on the picture, in part,  "the 8th Medical Training Regiment in Camp Grant, Illinois, August 1943."  I could even find him in the picture.  This is a small portion of the long panorama shot and the sharpness in the original is amazing.  

I found other photos of his time in the army and letters commending him for his work.  Since he spoke fluent English, German, and French, I'm sure he was useful when the US got into France and then Germany.  

And then there are the stranger things like this bathrobe I found.  At least that's what I thought it was at first, though it seemed pretty heavy for a bathrobe.  Then I looked at the label.

It says:

COVERALLS, COOLING, ROCKET
FUEL HANDLER'S 

WEAR OVER COVERALLS, ROCKET FUEL
HANDLERS, VINYL COATED, TO PREVENT
OVERHEATING OF BODY.
DO NOT SHORTEN LEGS OR SLEEVES BY CUFFING.
KEEP SOAKED WITH WATER TO GET MAXIMUM
EVAPORATION FOR COOLING
PUT ON OVER PROTECTIVE FOOTWEAR.
IF CORROSIVE AGENTS ARE SPILLED OVER
SUIT GET UNDER SHOWER IMMEDIATELY.
USE LARGE QUANTITIES OF WATER, IF SUIT
IS DAMAGED EXCHANGE FOR NEW SUIT.
AFTER USING RINSE SUIT THOROUGHLY
AND HANG UP TO DRY.

I couldn't tell you how it got into my mom's garage.  I don't know of any rocket fuel handlers in the family.

We have Anchorage friends who will stay in the house for the next three months - they have a new grandchild who lives a few miles away and will play Mary Poppins for a while.  So we'll get as much done as we can in the next few days, and then tackle it again in the spring.  

Famous People Born In 1916 - Three Still Alive

I'm going to do this one a little differently this year.  Rather than wait until it is all 'done' I thought I'd build it slowly and let you see it grow to completion.  I think I have everyone up.  There are other sites that list people born in 1916.  For instance this biography website.  Some seem like they have everyone born that year.  Other sites have fewer.  I used several loose criteria:

• Had I heard of them?
• Were they significant in the world or their culture when they lived?
• Did they make an important contribution to humanity?  
• What were my feelings about them and did I have any kind of connection to them?

Most I've heard of.  Most had some significant role to play.  Adriana Caselotti was the voice of Snow White in the Disney movie and Ruth Handler had a significant role in creating Barbie - for better or worse, a major influence in 20th Century United States.  Iva Tigori was better known as Tokyo Rose.   I figure the Nobel Prize winners, though unknown to most of us, made an important contribution.  And I've read Herbert Simon and C. Wright Mills' work.    I've stopped worrying about whether I cover everyone I should.  It's my blog, so it's my choice.

 My goal is to get people's information up at least by their birthdays.  So I've put up Maxene Andrews - one of the Andrews Sisters - up today because her birthday is January 3, making her the oldest of this year's cohorts.

I'm also trying out grouping them by their professions.  I may or may not have a lot about any individual.  With Maxene Andrews, I've just got a link to her obituary and a video that probably tells essentials for people who don't know her.

The only other people I've got done are Ruth Handler and  John Burnside.  I didn't know who they were and so when I looked them up, I took some notes, and it seemed the best place to keep the notes was in the post.

Still Alive
There are three on the list who are still alive: Actors Olivia de Havilland and Kirk Douglas, and author Beverly Cleary.   Beverly turns 100 on April 12, Olivia on July 1, 2016, and Kirk has almost a year left until December 9, 2016

Two people on the list - Betty Grable and Harry James - were married to each other for a time.


So, enjoy, learn some history, and watch this post evolve in the next few months.

Music Harry James March 15, 1916 -July 5, 1983 67	Dinah Shore Feb 29, 1916 - Feb 24, 1994 78 A popular singer of the mid 20th century, a bit too sweet for me. Pearl Bailey helps with this rendition of Mack the Knife.
	Yehudi Menuhin April 22 - March 12, 1999 82
Maxene Andrews Jan 3, 1916 - Oct 21, 1995 79	MS Subbulakshmi Sept. 16 - Dec 11, 2004 88

from Wikipedia

Science/Academic

Francis Crick June 8 - July 28, 2004 88 Nobel Prize

Herbert Simon June 15 - Feb 9, 2001 84 Nobel Prize
Alexander Prokhorov July 11, - Jan 8 2002 85 Nobel Prize
Edward C. Banfield Nov 19 - Sept. 30, 1999 82
C. Wright Mills August 28, 1916 – March 20, 1962
Shelby Foote Nov 17 - June 27 2005 88 Historian


Politicians
Aldo Moro Sept. 23 - May 9, 1978 61
Edward Heath July 9 - July 17 2005 89
François Mitterrand Oct 26-Jan 8 1996 79
Gough Whitlam July 11 - Oct. 21, 2014 98
Harold Wilson March 11- May 23, 1995 79
Eugene McCarthy March 29 - Dec 10, 2006


Actors
Gregory Peck April 5, 1916 - June 12, 2003 87

Jackie Gleason Feb 28, 1916 - June 24, 1987 71

"His penchant for fine food, generously poured scotch and beautiful women; his ability to dominate a room, a stage or the screen; his taste for custom-made suits, monogrammed shirts and the ubiquitous red carnation; his appetite for the biggest, the best and just a dollar more than the other guy made, all became a part of the Gleason legend which began on Brooklyn’s Herkimer Street in 1916."(from his website.)

 Glenn Ford May 1- Aug 30, 2006 90
Dorothy McGuire June 14 - Sept 14, 2001 85
Betty Grable - Dec, 18, 1916 - July 2, 1973  56
Olivia deHaviland July 1, 1916 (born in Tokyo) Still Alive at  99
Sterling Hayden March 26 - May 23 1996 80
Kirk Douglas   Dec. 9, 1916 - Still Alive at 99
Adriana Caselotti May 6 - Jan 19, 1997 80

Business/Creators





Ferruccio Lamborghini April 28, 1916- Feb 20, 1993 76




Ruth Handler Nov 4, 1916 - April 27, 2002 85

Image from Mascjecashwell

From Barbiemedia:

"Ruth and Elliot Handler founded Mattel Creations in 1945, and 14 years later, Ruth Handler gave the world the Barbie doll.  When asked her relationship to Barbie, Ruth simply replied, "I'm Barbie's mom." The inspiration for Barbie came as Ruth watched her daughter Barbara playing with paper dolls.  Barbara and her friends used them to play adult or teenage make-believe, imagining roles as college students, cheerleaders and adults with careers.  Ruth immediately recognized that experimenting with the future from a safe distance through pretend play was an important part of growing up.  She also noticed a product void and was determined to fill that niche with a three-dimensional fashion doll.
Several years and many designs later, Mattel introduced Barbie, the Teen-Age Fashion Model, to skeptical toy buyers at the annual Toy Fair in New York on March 9, 1959.  Never before had they seen a doll so completely unlike the baby and toddler dolls popular at the time."

Not everyone is enthusiastic about the influence of Barbie on girls.



News
Walter Cronkite Nov. 4, 1916 - July 17, 2009 92
Daniel Schorr Aug 31 - July 23, 2010 93

Writers

Irving Wallace March 19 0 June 20 1980 74
Harold Robbins May 21 - October 14, 1997 81

Roald Dahl Sept 13, 1916- Nov 23, 1990 74

Beverly Cleary April 12, 1916 - Still Alive at 99








Other
Iva Toguri July 4, 1916 - Sept 26, 2006 90

Inventor/Activist From LA Times: John Burnside November 2, 1916 – September 14, 2008 From LA Times: "A onetime staff scientist at Lockheed, Burnside had an interest in optical engineering that led to his inventing the teleidoscope, a variation on the kaleidoscope that works without the use of colored glass chips and instead uses a lens to transform whatever is in front of it into a colorful design. In 1958, he launched California Kalidoscopes, which became a successful Los Angeles design and manufacturing plant. In the 1970s, Burnside created the Symetricon, a large mechanical kaleidoscopic device that projects colorful patterns; it was used in a number of movies, including the 1976 science fiction film 'Logan's Run.'"

From The Wild Hunt: "After meeting in the mid-sixties, Burnside and Hay blazed a trail for the still nascent Gay rights movement. They were protesting the exclusion of Gays from the military back in 1966, and appeared on television together two years before the Stonewall riots. Unlike some Gay rights advocates, Burnside was not an assimilationist, preferring that Gays develop their own unique culture and spirituality. This impulse lead to the creation of the Radical Faerie movement in 1979."

Obsession Records - Lake Otis and Tudor

Verna at Obsession Records

[Note:  my previous post ""Planned Parenthood Exposed: Examining the Horrific Abortion Practices at the Nation's Largest Abortion Provider"  never connected with feedburner, but you might want to check it out. ]





I had some errands yesterday and took the long way back along the Campbell Creek trail to Lake Otis and passed the mall at the corner.  I'd heard that the Russian grocery there had real rye bread, so I cruised the parking lot.

I found Obsession Records - a place I'd heard about, but had never been open when I looked.  Now it was open (it's open 5-8pm for now while the people there work elsewhere during the day.)  I poked my head in and looked around.

 I like the idea that the turntable is back.  There's a different sound quality - not necessarily better - to the records.

Part of what's called the jazz section.  Artists are arranged in alphabetical order by first name.  I found Nancy Wilson under N.   Records seemed to range between $10 and $24 per album. 

Click to read better

As an old fogie I'm not too current on new stuff and was only fuzzily aware that new music is being released on vinyl, but here's a list of coming attractions.

Here it is from the outside.  It's the mall with Golden Donuts at the corner.  This unit is way in the back.






















And when I got home I got out an old Kingston Trio album. "They're rioting in Africa" seemed very contemporary.   From Oldy Lyrics: 

"They're rioting in Africa. They're starving in Spain. There's hurricanes in Florida and Texas needs rain.
The whole world is festering with unhappy souls. The French hate the Germans. The Germans hate the Poles.
Italians hate Yugoslavs. South Africans hate the Dutch and I don't like anybody very much!
But we can be tranquil and thankful and proud for man's been endowed with a mushroom shaped cloud.
And we know for certain that some lovely day someone will set the spark off and we will all be blown away.
They're rioting in Africa. There's strife in Iran. What nature doesn't do to us will be done by our fellow man."

Oh, and it turns out the Russian grocery is gone.  The sign's still up, but but the shop was bare rooms.  So when I got home I finished the bread I've been working on for days.  But that's another post.