"It's easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism." [UPDATED]

Busy rainy day.

Biked over to UAA for the Citizens Climate Lobby meeting.  More on that later.  Really good talk by Jerry Taylor of the Libertarian Niskanen Center.  Also the Anchorage chapter got mentioned for commissioning the study of the impact on rural Alaska of a carbon fee with rebate done by ISER economist Steve Colt.  But I can only write so much in one post, so that will wait. 

Right after the meeting I got a ride to Arctic Valley for the Earth Care Jamboree.  Lots of thoughts and ideas, few of which will get into this post.

Libby Roderick kicked things off musically upstairs against the dramatic view of the fall colors on the slope behind her. 

She also led a workshop on Money.  She focused on the disconnect between what people say they believe - particularly on climate change - and how they spend and invest their money.  She frequently broke for the participants to talk in pairs about the themes.

The title quote comes from this workshop.  We

didn't spend any time on it, but for this post I looked it up and found the author to be Frederic Jameson and it pops up in reviews of post-apocalypse movies and books. lamenting the lack of imagination to develop post-capitalist worlds.  For example, in a Snowpiercer review:

"This film is great as a film. I am however tired of these premises in which humanity is deprived of some antagonistically outer threat, humans or world cause, that kills off everybody except a small population and let them return to a state of basic barbarian living. Another quote from Slavoj Zizek mirrors this appending doom: 

'this is what I fear; this is the true dilemma. When the big Other in the form of the state collapses, what we will have is a regression …to some kind of far more totalitarian … pre-state … form of the big Other. Or even to New Age consciousness. There they try to make the big Other exist, perhaps in the form of natural balance'”

There were lots of doors we peeked at in the workshop, but didn't go through as Libby raised money related questions:  people's emotional reactions to money;  the effects of their upbringing on how they think about money;  how people support or fight global warming by how they spend and invest their money;  why money, particularly one's own monetary situation, is rarely talked about with others.

[UPDATE March 21, 2019:  I notice that people get to this post frequently, but I had forgotten the details so I checked today and see that while I reference Frederic Jameson as the author, I don't really have the quote in here.  It's from an article, "Future City",  in New Left Review, 2003:  Here's the paragraph that includes this post's title:

"For it is the end of the world that is in question here; and that could be exhilarating if apocalypse were the only way of imagining that world’s disappearance (whether we have to do here with the bang or the whimper is not the interesting question). It is the old world that deserves the bile and the satire, this new one is merely its own self-effacement, and its slippage into what Dick called kipple or gubble, what LeGuin once described as the buildings ‘melting. They were getting soggy and shaky, like jello left out in the sun. The corners had already run down the sides, leaving great creamy smears.’ Someone once said that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of capitalism. We can now revise that and witness the attempt to imagine capitalism by way of imagining the end of the world." (emphasis added)]

There was an interfaith panel that included:

Rev Dr. Curtis Karns
Yukon Presbyterians for Earth Care

David Bishop Mahaffey
Orthodox Church in America

Dr. Genmyo Zeekyk
Anchorage Zen Community

Prof. Doug Causey
Friends (Quakers)
University of Alaska Anchorage











I went to an afternoon workshop on activism.  It was called "Social Movements and Peaceful

 

Carson Chavana prepping for workshop

Resistance" hosted by Carson Chavana, who's been active fighting against the Chuitna coal mine, and The Rising Tide, Alaska chapter.  This was one of the groups that had people blockading Shell's   icebreaker MSV Fennica as it left Portland, Oregon on its way to drill in the Chukchi Sea.  I tend to be on the non-violent end of the continuum, but I found the workshop stimulating.  There were distinctions made between civil disobedience and activism. (I think the second term was activism, but due to my amazing magical powers I made their flier disappear was I walked from the couch to my desk. I'm still working on the part of this trick that makes it reappear.) Civil disobedience accepts the legitimacy of the government and challenges bad laws by breaking them and getting the judge or legislature to change the law.  Activists don't accept the legitimacy of the government, arguing they have been corrupted by the corporate paid lobbyists who have twisted the laws to favor their interests.  (I'm paraphrasing here.)

Kirby Spangler

Kirby Spangler, who's a member of
There was also a participatory exercise on defining violence and the morality of different actions.  Is breaking a window a form of violence and would you do it or not?  Is eating meat a form of violence and would you do it or not?  What about taking some parts from a bulldozer that is going to be used to destroy some structure?  These questions made us all reconsider distinctions in types of violence.  Is violence against property the same as violence against humans?  Is physical destruction different from disabling the bulldozer?  Are there times when violence is justified?  I think there was some agreement that one can't evaluate an action without some context.  Self-defense and defending human life were two examples that a lot of people used to justify violence.  While these are old debates, it was useful for me to revisit them and to see the variety of stances people had. 


Meanwhile, it kept raining most of the day, but the landscapes outside the building were spectacular as the clouds obscured the views here and then later there.  But always there were the fall colors of the tundra.

Theodore Bikel Is Gone

When I got to Germany in 1964 for a year at the University of Göttingen, I had a number of record albums, including one with Guela Gill and Theodore Bikel.  During that year I became good friends with a married doctoral student and his wife who lived in the student housing I was assigned to.  When Jurgen heard the Bikel album he went crazy.  He loved it and we played it over and over again.  And, of course, I left the album with them when i went back home.

Years later when we visited Jurgen and Inge, Jurgen had gotten every album Bikel had ever put out and could sing all the songs - particularly those in Yiddish.

So, it is with a heavy heart that I learn about Bikel's death today.  But like my mom, he was in his 90s and has had a good life. 

Here's the only Youtube I could find of a song from my old album.  It's been forever since I heard this.  It's in Spanish, not Yiddish.



[sorry, this is another reposting because Feedburner didn't pick the original up]

July 4 Anchorage Symphony In The Park - Even Maestro Berkowitz

It was grey.  Micro-droplets were floating down.  The grass was damp, but once the music started the moisture abated and we had a great old fashioned concert in the park.  It wasn't exactly a white round wooden bandstand, but it kept the orchestra assured of having dry instruments.

Maestros Berkowitz and Fleischer

It wasn't til near the end that they introduced Maestro Berkowitz.  Based on my junior high school orchestra days, I'd say this was proof again that orchestras can do fine without a conductor.  But he had a good time with the baton.

click to enlarge and focus

I took these pictures before it got crowded. 

These traveling members of the UW marching band added a lot of enthusiasm to the afternoon.

And I don't expect there are too many 4th of July concerts that include Alaska Native* dancers.  I wonder how many others include any Native American performances. 

There were lots of dogs and kids.  The little ones  - who were awake - were having a great time moving to the music. 






















I find something disturbing about these giant blow up creatures, but can't quite put my finger on it yet. 

Anchro-Pop Closes Out Diversity Celebration In Anchorage Today

Henna painting at the Somali table.

















The Hmong table had embroidered history lessons, as well as a book on the role of Laos and the Hmong in the Vietnam War. 








The Norwegian table.

The politicians who worked with the community to set the festival up.  Elvi Gray-Jackson (black dress), Assembly member Anchorage, Geran Tarr, state representative from this district, and Ethan Berkowitz, mayor elect.  The pastor was presiding over a vigil in memory of the Charleston church shooting victims.  The recent Supreme Court decisions had also been lauded.

Yu'pik (I think) dancers. 






















And this young man got his face painted with what looks like an old Yu'pik mask design. 












And the title of this post?  Well, it's what I thought of as I listened to Gambian born Anchorage singer, Ousman Jarju (OJ), and the Rebel Clef.   It's Afro-pop with an Anchorage flavor. He transformed a mall parking lot on a gray day into the place to be.



The Rebel Clef  FB page lists the band members.

"Johnnie wright III-Keyboardist /Music director Elivis Crenshaw- Base player Kiah Ward- Drums Ousman Jarju- lead singer Benjamin Blunt- Percussionist Freddie Stokes- saxophone player Angel Wright- Manager ."

 I've posted before about Anchorage having the most diverse census tracts and high school in the nation.  Chad Farrel, the sociologist who's written about this, explains this part of Anchorage, unlike more racially segregated cities, Anchorage has districts with whites as well as a full flavor of ethnic origins.  A follow-up post covers Professor Farrel's presentation at the Alaska Press Club 2014.  I've only highlighted a few that were out this afternoon.  

So, it seems to me, this music is something we can start calling Anchro-pop.  Enjoy the video - I decided to leave the footage as I got it, giving you a sense of being there, and getting it up today. 

Coke Studio Pakistan - Do You Know Saeen Zahoor Or Noori?

Given what we hear in the news, one might wonder about an American's reception in Pakistan these days.  But you could turn that around.  Pakistanis might wonder about their reception in the US.  Here's something I haven't seen in the news.  And just listen to the music below. From Wikipedia:

Coke Studio is a Pakistani music television series which features live studio-recorded music performances by various artists. The show was produced by Rohail Hyatt up until Season 6 and is now produced by the Pakistani duo Strings. It is sponsored by Coca Cola. Starting in 2008, Coke Studio has been popular throughout the country, receiving critical acclaim and frequently being rebroadcast on numerous television and radio stations. It is one of the most popular music programmes in South Asia and is a local brand product of Coca-Cola.
The program focuses on a fusion of the diverse musical influences in Pakistan, including eastern classical, folk, qawwali, bhangra, Sufi and contemporary hip hop, rock and pop music. The show provides a platform for renowned as well as upcoming and less mainstream artists, of various genres, regions and languages, to collaborate musically in live studio recording sessions.

For those of you who don’t about Noori, its a Rock band from Pakistan, started by two brothers – Ali Noor and Ali Hamza. The band are known for being one of the pioneers of the Pakistani rock music scene.
Listen to this great music from Noori & Saeen Zahoor.




Saeen Zahoor was a 2006 World Music award winner as reported by the BBC:  (The link has a lot more about Pakistani music.  What we have here is fusion of old and new.)

"Zahoor was born and raised in a rural peasant family and for decades he performed exclusively at dargahs and melas in his native Ojara district of Pakistan. In 1989 he was invited to the All Pakistan Music Conference to give his first ever performance on a concert stage and, by all accounts, he transported the 2000 audience members present to heights of emotion which were deemed almost dangerously intense. He now tours the world, often accompanied by harmonium and dholak drum side-players, wreaking the same blissful havoc on devotees and newcomers alike. His piercing chiselled features are a regular sight on Pakistani TV and he has been the subject of at least one documentary."

More from Wikipedia:

Noori (Urdu:نوری, literal English translation: “light”) is a rock band from Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan, formed in 1996. The group was formed by songwriter, lead vocalist and guitarist, Ali Noor, along with his younger brother Ali Hamza, who were soon joined by bassist Muhammad Ali Jafri and drummer Salman Albert as well as by DJ Junaid Shams (known for JoNi). Since the inception of the band, there had been many changes in the line-up the only consistent members being, brothers, Ali Noor and Ali Hamza. The band are considered as one of the pioneering forces behind what is dubbed at the "21st Century pop revolution of Pakistan".

Viral Khabar adds;

"Noori is a Persian word which means “light” and the concept behind the band was the light which shows you things with a different perspective."

Which is something I try to do here on this blog.

Technology of the Heart offers a translation of the music in the video, which begins:

1.
Parh parh ilm te faazil hoya
Te kaday apnay aap nu parhya ee na

(You read to become
all knowledgeable
But you never read yourself)

You can actually hear the words clearly after the ooooooooooooooooo in the beginning. 

And here are a bunch of videos from these Coke Studio concerts.

Steve Heimel, Bill Weimar, Joe McKinnon, Paul Fuhs, and Cal Williams Talk About the Old Days - Monday Evening

Photo from 2007 at Federal Court Building

Looooooong time radio news man Steve Heimel will do a public oral history collection session

Monday (April 20) at the  KAKM studio, 

6:30-8 pm.

Subject will be the Ad Hoc movement of the early 1970's in Alaska

Participants:   Bill Weimar, Paul Fuhs, Joe McKinnon, Cal Williams.

The public is welcome.

Jack Roderick, former Anchorage Borough Mayor, writes about the ad hoc Democrats on page 359 in  his book Crude Dreams:

Now this is a particularly colorful group.   Bill Weimar later ran private prisons and halfway houses, and made a $30,000 loan to Frank Prewitt, who was commissioner of corrections at the time.  The FBI's stake out in the Baranof Hotel in Juneau that led to a string of convictions, started with interest in the private prisons.  Frank Prewitt decided to cooperate with the FBI and was a key witness in the trial that convicted Tom Anderson.

I remember in court when Anderson's attorney cross-examined Prewitt about that $30,000 loan from Weimar.  From my blog June 29, 2007: 

"When Stockler finally did get to start his cross examination of Prewitt at 3:45pm, he lit right into him and then he began to try to show Anderson's behavior in a more positive light. First he hit Prewitt with a series of incidents that he suggested he could have gone to prison for.

1. A $30,000 loan Prewitt, while Commissioner of Corrections, got from Allvest another firm that subcontracted with the Department of Corrections (I think that's what he said.) Prewitt said he got the loan and paid it back.

Stockler: Is there anything in writing? Isn't it true it was a bribe?

Prewitt:  No.

Stockler:  How did you pay it back?

Prewitt:  I worked for Allvest for four months - $7500 per month.

Stockler:  Did you pay taxes on the $30,000?

Prewitt:  No, it was a loan.

Stockler:  But you say you worked for it.

Prewitt:  No, I was paying him back.

Stockler:  So, all of us could avoid paying income taxes by having our employer loan us our pay before, and then we'd repay it by working and not have to pay taxes?"  [I've reformatted the Q&A to make it clearer.]

Here's Weimar's indictment from an August 11, 2008 post:

• Count 1

...William Weimar, Candidate A, Consultant A, and others known and unknown, did knowingly and unlawfully conspire . . . to deprive the the public of the honest services that Candidate A would provide as an Alaska State Legislator, through a scheme to disguise WEIMAR’s direct payment to CONSULTANT A of approximately $20,000 in expenses for CANDIDATE A’s campaign for the legislature, without reporting the payment as required by applicable Alaska law and regulations and without routing it for payment through CANDIDATE A’s campaign, and through the foreseeable use of the mails, interstate were communications, in violation of Title 18 US Code Section 1341, 1343, and 1346.

• Count 2

Weimar concealed the money through breaking the $20,000 into three payments to avoid the required reporting of transactions over $10,000.

And here's Michael Carey's  bio of pre-Alaska Bill Weimar.   [Monday, April 10, 10:30am  I've fixed this link]


I knew about Paul Fuhs as a fish guy.  He's been mayor of Dutch Harbor and commissioner of the Department of Commerce and Economic Development.  While looking for more on Fuhs I found this video on Youtube. 

"This performance by Steve Nelson (piano, vocals) and Paul Fuhs (vocals) with accompaniment by members of the Soviet Border Guard Military Band and their conductor was recorded in Vladivostok, Russia in May 1990 at the studio of the local state television station."  [The link gives a longer account of how this video came to be.]

I met attorney Joe McKinnon at the redistricting board meetings.  Actually I think I met him during the political trials - I think he was representing one of the witnesses.  This link goes to a brief video of Joe after one of the redistricting board meetings.


Finally, Cal Williams, who moved to Alaska in 1973 after working for civil rights in his home state of Louisiana.  He's been involved in Alaska politics since. 

This should be good stuff.


Tuesday, Steve's going to reading from a manuscript, "My First 50 Years in Broadcasting" at the UAA Bookstore."  4pm.

Rachel Barton Pine Does Paganini In Anchorage

I just want to at least note this.  We did go to the second concert.  I listened to a couple of the Paganini caprices online, but I wondered how I was going to appreciate all 24. caprices.  Would I count to keep track?  Yes, I'd like it, but if I knew more about them before I went it would be so much better.

That's true, of course, but I needn't have worried.  Barton Pine knows that most people are not Paganini experts.  For the first half, she stopped after every two caprices and talked about Paganini and about the caprices themselves and demonstrated different techniques that the specific caprices would highlight.

The second half there were fewer explanations, but we'd been coached enough in the beginning to be able to listen and watch for the different bowing techniques and other tricks Paganini used to expand what the violin could do.

Paganini was born in 1772 - four years before the signing of the Declaration of Independence.  What did news reports of the new nation mean to this child prodigy?  The loss of Britain's colony in the New World and the emergence of this new 'democracy' was something he would have known about.  There is even some speculation of his visiting America, but this interesting account of his life says it never happened.

From Paganini.com:

In early 1828 Nicolo began a six and half year tour that started in Vienna and ended in Paris in September 1834. During the two and half year period from August 1828 to February, 1831 he visited some 40 cities in Germany, Bohemia, and Poland. Performances in Vienna, Paris, and London were hailed widely, and his tour in 1832 through England and Scotland made him wealthy.

His playing of tender passages was so beautiful that his audiences often burst into tears, and yet, he could perform with such force and velocity that at Vienna one listener became half crazed and declared that for some days that he had seen the Devil helping the violinist.

Rachel Barton Pine

Also of interest, was Barton Pine's description of her violin which is on loan to her and was  made by Joseph Guarnerius del Gesu in 1742, two years before his death and 40 years before Paganini's birth!  The violin is known as ex-Soldat for one of the violinists who played it - Maria Soldat.  The story includes Brahms and Ludwig Wittgenstein, the philosopher. But that will have to be another post.  I'm sure regular readers can already anticipate the directions that post might take.

It was an incredible evening and the 800 seat Discovery Theater was pretty much full.  It's a theater, while four times the size of the location of the previous night's concert, where every seat gives you a great view and great sound.




And just to end this with a totally different note, here's a link to Rachel Barton Pine playing her version of Metallica's One.   And if you must (and you must) here's Metallica's version.

Final, final note - The picture above was taken at the end of the concert during the standing applause.  The picture below was taken in the lobby while Rachel Barton Pine talked to fans and signed autographs.

Grrr! Feedburner Problems - My Most Recent Post Isn't Showing Up On Blogrolls

Feedburner usually gets my posts to subscribers and to blogrolls on other blogs.  But frequently enough to bother me, it doesn't get them to the blogrolls.  Here's my latest post that isn't getting to blogrolls, though I posted it over 12 hours ago.  My fixes include:

1.  Going directly to Feedburner an giving it a manual update instruction.  Sometimes this works, and sometimes this doesn't.    This doesn't seem to be working today.

2.  Simply copying and reposting.  Sometimes this works.  But today there's already a comment on the post and if I do this and turn off the original post, that comment will be lost.  I could, I guess, copy the comment and repost it with an explanation. 

3.  Check the html for lots of extraneous code that might have been introduced when I cut and pasted something from another website.  If I get rid of the unnecesary code, sometimes that works.  But I'm never sure if it works because I got rid of the extra code, or because I reposted it.  Sometimes I've tried reposting without fixing the code and it doesn't work, and then after cleaning out the weeds in the html, and repost it works.

When I repost, I disable the original post so I don't have the same post up twice.

But options 2 and 3 both have the comment problem.  If I disable the original post, the comment goes away. 

So, I'm using this fourth option.  Talking about the problem and redirecting people to the post titled:

Why I Live Here:  Zuill Bailey, Rachel Barton Pine, Eduard Zilberkant Play Down The Street

For Anchorage folks, it tells them about a great musical opportunity tonight (Sunday Feb. 15).

Why I Live Here - Zuill Bailey, Rachel Barton Pine, and Eduard Zilberkant Play Down The Street

We went to the Sitka Music Festival's Winter Classics at UAA Saturday night.  Three incredible musicians, world class musicians, playing in the incredible concert hall in the UAA theater arts building.

Many readers have probably never heard of these people, though I did write about Zuill Bailey

Bailey and Zilberkant

before.  You've heard of sculptors who release the sculpture living inside a piece of marble.  My sense of Zuill Bailey is that he sets the music free from inside the cello.  He doesn't so much play the cello as help it sing.

Eduard Zilberkant was the pianist.  Let me just say he was also amazing, even though I'm partial to the strings.  Listening to the three instruments together,  trading off sounds then coming together, yet not quite, it was breath taking. Literally.  There were points where I had to remind myself to start breathing again. Go to the link, I'd be up all night if I tried to do these musicians any justice at all.

And then there was Rachel Burton Pine.  (Just go to the link.)  As is painfully clear to anyone who knows about music, I'm just a casual listener.  I can't tell you really why in musical terms, I can just tell you what it did to me.  In this case, I'm going to use someone else's words to tell you who she is and what she does.

Barton and Zilberkant

Because she plays again tomorrow night and at the Discovery Theater downtown there are more seats and it's not sold out yet.   From the Daily Beast,  why you should get tickets and go:

Violinist  Rachel Barton Pine’s life is a seemingly unending list of extraordinary achievements, from her soloist debut at age 10 with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra to her recent live performances of Paganini’s ‘24 Caprices For Solo Violin’--a series of virtuosic pieces so technically challenging that very few violinists perform them in sequence. She has published a book of her own arrangements and cadenzas, recorded 24 albums, and travelled with the world’s most prestigious ensembles. 

 





She's going to play those Paganini's '24 Caprices for Solo Violin' Sunday evening (Feb. 15)  at 7:30pm.  This isn't something you can see very often.  And it's here, in Anchorage, with a premiere violinist.

The Standing Ovation

Let's go back to the title of this post.  Why I Live Here.  Most of the posts that have that label are about getting to nature quickly.  But another advantage of Anchorage is that we have world class performers who we can see in intimate settings for much less than people pay in big cities.  The University venue they were in Saturday is a 30 minute walk from my house, a five minute drive, with free parking.

If you look at the pictures you can see how intimate it was Saturday night - there were 20 overflow seats on stage!   Not a good place to sit if you're prone to fall asleep in a concert.  But if you're that close, it would probably be hard to do.

Saturday night's tickets were less than half the cheapest tickets when we went to a mediocre concert at the Disney Concert Hall in LA.  The UAA Concert Hall is a magical acoustical music box seating only 200 people.  The Disney in LA seats eleven times that many - 2,265.  The Discovery Theater, where Rachel Barton Pine plays tonight (Sunday,) seats 800, still a relatively small venue.

This is most of the audience on the main floor.  There's a smaller balcony above.  Thank you Michael Hood for fighting for this building and getting it built with such incredible performing spaces.  These people played here Saturday because Zuill Bailey loved the acoustics.







Here's a little preview of Sunday night's concert.  (Sorry, this post is getting a bit cluttered.)

Caprice # 12 - from Violin Sheet Music

And if you don't read music, here's a different sort of preview of the music (be sure to listen to the end.)




I do have to make a minor disclosure here.  I learned this week that a college friend of my son  is Rachel Barton Pine's husband.  But that's not why I'm gushing here.  This was fantastic and tomorrow night will be too.

Why I Live Here - Anchorage Folk Festival And The California Honeydrops

It's a five minute walk to the Wendy Williamson Auditorium.  The folk festival had concerts there Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.  And I'm guessing it's one of the last of the free concerts of this calibre in the US.  And the auditorium was completely full.

High Lonesome Sound

We saw several fine acts - Shirley Mae Springer-Staten's group made amazing sounds.  High Lonesome Sound also got the crowd riled up.


I was among those who came into the concerts with no awareness of who the California Honeydrops were.

California Honeydrops

But it took less than a minute to realize how good they were and what a fine voice the lead singer had and how much he was in control of it.  The MC told us that the Honeydrops don't do concerts, they do dance events (I can't remember the exact word he used) and right from the start there were people up and dancing.  It was an exhilarating concert.  I'm always hesitant to put up videos of music from my little camera because the sound is only an echo thrice removed of the original.  But it will give you a sense of the rocking scene Sunday night.   I guess it blended blues and jazz, but you can judge for yourself.  You can hear some of their music with much better audio at their website.







The festival continues through next weekend.  Check out the schedule here.

Inside The Disney

Sunday we went to a concert at the Disney Concert Hall.  I've loved this Frank Gehry building from the first time I saw it, but we'd never been to a concert there.  Here's an earlier post with more pictures of the exterior.








A Sunday afternoon concert also gave us an opportunity to try the
Expo line from Culver City to downtown for the first time too.








We quickly rode along Exposition past USC and the Coliseum and various museums at Exposition Park and were in downtown in less than 30 minutes.  Here's the Pico stop at the Staples Center.  We got out at the 7th St. station and walked around downtown.















I just liked this address.  They're big.  And 8's are  good luck in Hong Kong.

We walked by the LA Police Department - the sign says

#BLMLA Demands:

1.  The immediate firing of the the officers who killed Ezell Ford
2.  The Immediate filing of murder charges by DA Jackie Lacy

The curb says “Trees Matter - this concrete is illegal - Let us grow."

Eventually we were inside the Disney.  I loved the hall and the acoustics were great.  I wasn't expecting too much from the concert - a New Year's Concert Salute To Vienna - which seems now to be a syndicated package of concert entertainment, piggy backing off the live concerts from Vienna.  The program lists groups of singers, dancers, and conductor going to various US cities.  One group to Philadelphia, New York, New Brunswick, Scranton, and DC.  Another to Coral Springs, West Palm Beach, and Miami.  Yet another to Florida - Clearwater, For Myers, and Sarasota.  One to San Diego and LA.  And one concert in Austin.  But the music in the hall sounded good and I was particularly taken by the voice of baritone Thomas Weinhappel.

Here's the orchestra warming up before the concert.

Then we left and took the train back to Culver City and drove home.


Can you tell I'm rushed?  I've got a bunch of posts and other tasks open but not finished.  The cold LA weather has changed to hot again.  And we're getting ready to head home.  Lots to do.

Famous People Born In 1915 - It Was A Very Good Year

[1916 list is now up]

Billie Holiday was born 8 months before Frank Sinatra who was born a week before Edith Piaf.



It's always interesting to consider at all the folks who were born in the same year.  We don't normally think about famous people in terms of their birth year cohorts.    As kids, had they been in the same school, the months they were born in would have mattered quite a bit.  And it would be interesting to know which ones would have been friends.   How many actually got to meet each other?  How many were good friends?



Three of these folks born 100 years ago in 2015 appear to still be alive - Herman Wouk the novelist who wrote the WW II novel The Caine Mutiny, Nobel Prize winning Physicist Charles Townes who was part of the team that created laser beams, and banker David Rockefeller and could have their 100th birthdays in 2015.

[UPDATE Jan. 30, 2015:  Charles Townes died January 27, 2015]



Some of the best known are singers Frank Sinatra, Edith Piaf, and Billy Holiday.  Also best known are actors Orson Welles, Ingrid Bergman, and Anthony Quinn.  There's Moshe Dayan and guitarist Les Paul.





Sargent Shriver, as the first director of the Peace Corps, has special meaning for me.  And I actually got to meet Nobel Prize winning playwright Arthur Miller in the Anchorage museum when we were both waiting for our wives.  [UPDATE See Oct 17, 2015 post, Miller's 100th Birthday, with Alaska connections in Death of a Salesman.]

We've got some heavy thinkers like philosophers Roland Barthes and Thomas Merton.

*Picture sources at bottom of post

The women, not many, are all entertainers.

I cherry picked the names from NNDB which has a much longer list.  And most of the links go to NNDB.  I've sorted this table by the age they lived to.  It's always interesting (and a little creepy) to think about why some people live short lives and others long ones.  I know Thomas Merton was electrocuted in a hotel shower in Bangkok in 1968.  I was in Thailand at that time too, but didn't know anything about him then.




And there are some who are there simply because they were big names and their roles have had some influence on American culture like Barbara Billingsley -  June Cleaver, the mother on Leave It To Beaver - and Lorne Greene, the patriarch of Bonanza.

There are several Nobel Prize winners, no US presidents (but a Supreme Court Justice, Potter Stewart),  and at least one villain - Augusto Pinochet.

Edith Piaf	Dec 19 1915	Oct 11 1963	38	Fantastic French Singer
Thomas Merton	Jan 31 1915	Dec 10 1968	43	Catholic Thinker
Billie Holiday	Apr 7 1915	Jul 17 1959	44	Jazz Singer
Philip L. Graham	Jul 30 1915	Aug 3 1963	48	Washington Post publisher, 1947 - - 63
Billy Strayhorn	Nov 29 1915	May 31 1967	51	Composer  Take The A Train
Alan Watts	Jan 6 1915	Nov 16 1973	58	Philosopher Zen
Bobby Hackett	Jan 30 1915	Jun 7 1976	61	Jazz Musician
Zero Mostel	Feb 28 1915	Sep 8 1977	62	Actor - Fiddler on the Roof
Roland Barthes	Nov 12, 1915	Mar 23  1980	64	Philosopher
Moshe Dayan	May 20 1915	Oct 16 1981	66	Israeli military leader, politician
Muddy Waters	Apr 4 1915	Apr 30 1983	68	Amazing Blues Musician
Ingrid Bergman	Aug 29 1915	Aug 29 1982	68	Actor
Potter Stewart	Jan 23 1915	Dec 7 1985	70	US Supreme Court
Orson Welles	May 6 1915	Oct 10 1985	70	Actor Citizen Kane
Theodore H. White	May 6 1915	May 15 1986	71	Historian
Robert Hofstadter	Feb 5 1915	Nov 17 1990	75	Nobel Prize Physics
Robert Motherwell	Jan 24 1915	Jul 16 1991	76	Abstract Expressionist Painter
Lorne Greene	Feb 12 1915	Sep 11 1987	77	Ben Cartwright on Bonanza
Fred Friendly	Oct 30 1915	Mar 3 1998	82	President of CBS News, Journalist
Frank Sinatra	Dec 12 1915	May 14 1998	82	The Boss
Ring Lardner, Jr.	Aug 19 1915	Oct 31 2000	85	Playwright
Anthony Quinn	Apr 21 1915	Jun 3 2001	86	Actor Zorba the Greek
John C. Lilly	Jan 6 1915	Sep 30 2001	86	Human/dolphin communication
Abba Eban	Feb 2 1915	Nov 17 2002	87	Foreign Minister of Israel
Alan Lomax	Jan 30 1915	Jul 19 2002	87	Musicologist - Saved folksongs
Saul Bellow	Jun 10 1915	Apr 5 2005	89	Nobel Prize Literature
Arthur Miller	Oct 17 1915	Feb 2005	89	Playwright - Death of a Salesman
William Proxmire	Nov 11 1915	Dec 15 2005	90	US Senator Wisconsin
Elisabeth Schwarzkopf	Sep 1915	Aug 2006	90	Opera Soprano
Augusto Pinochet	Nov 25 1915	Dec 2006	91	Chilean Dictator
Barbara Billingsley	Dec 22 1915	Oct 16 2010	94	Leave It To Beaver’s Mother
Les Paul	Jun 9 1915	Aug 13 2009	94	Electric guitar/multitrack recording pioneer
Paul Samuelson	May 15 1915	Dec 13 2009	94	Nobel Prize Economics
Sargent Shriver	Nov 9 1915	Jan 18 2011	95	1st Peace Corps Director
Charles H. Townes	Jul 28 1915		99	Nobel Prize Phyics Laser
David Rockefeller	Jun 15 1915		99	Trilateral Commission Founder
Herman Wouk	May 27 1915		99	Novelist The Caine Mutiny

*Sources for photos in the image

Orson Welles http://becuo.com/orson-welles-war-of-the-worlds Ingrid Bergman http://www.ncm.com/photos-casablanca Moshe Dayan http://www.bitwallpaper.net/moshe-dayan.html Les Paul http://www.lespaulonline.com Thomas Merton http://mertonfellowshipireland.wordpress.com Arthur Miller https://byu425crucible.wordpress.com/2013/09/29/the-early-life-of-arthur-miller/ Alan Lomax  (with Jerome Weisner)  https://jazzinphoto.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/alan-lomax-and-jerome-weisner-transcribing-folk.jpg   Charles Townsend  (with James Gordon) http://aip.org/history/exhibits/laser/sections/themaser.html  (image enhanced) Zero Mostel http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/photocredit/achievers/pri0-005 Barbara Billingsley  http://social.dol.gov/blog/june-cleaver-meet-juana-solis/