ART NOTES - not just basketball: works by the sculptor Tara Donovan are at the Indianapolis, Indiana Museum of Art through August 1st.
MUSIC NOTES - it may be 2010, but China has refused permission (to perform shows in Bejing and Shanghai) to Bob Dylan - leading him to cancel an East Asian tour altogether - fearing that he'll mention Tibet, as other performers have done.
MONDAY's CHILDREN are Ohio shelter kittehs recuperating from spaying/neutering and will soon be ready for adoption.
BRAIN TEASER - try the Weekly World News Quiz from the BBC.
BUSINESS NOTES - three years ago, the concept of B Corporations - short for "beneficial", which formally take into account not only shareholder interests, but also stakeholders - began to take hold as a concept.
Now, the state of Maryland has given them formal legal status (giving directors some protection against shareholder lawsuits) ...
... with the Vermont Legislature working on passing their own version.
ART NOTES - an exhibit of works by Rosa Bonheur will be concluding at the National Museum of Wildlife Art in Jackson Hole, Wyoming on April 18th.
TWO YEARS after his death, some of the ashes of Sir Edmund Hillary are to be spread on the summit of Mount Everest by a Nepalese mountaineer (who has climbed that peak more than anyone else).
QUESTION for today - speaking of Everest: why is the world's second-highest mountain K2 - if it is not to have a formal name, being on the China-Pakistan border - not put-up for a corporate-naming auction each year, like stadiums are?
TUESDAY's CHILD is Kanga the cat - a New Hampshire kitteh (born with shortened front legs) up for adoption.
FOR THE FIRST TIME in its 62-year history, the rules of Scrabble are being changed to allow the use of proper nouns.
A RECENT CARTOON by Tom Tomorrow is sadly entitled "Health Care Reformageddon".
TV NOTES - the new Steven Spielberg/Tom Hanks HBO series The Pacific - about WW-II's brutal Pacific campaign - looks at its dark undertone of racism and savagery.
SEPARATED at BIRTH - reporters Vaughn Ververs ("Politico") and Mark Tapscott ("Washington Examiner").
 
AN ART CRITIC wonders if - besides being a legendary artist - whether Leonardo da Vinci was an early Dr. Strangelove: a sinister military genius whose inventions caused deaths in the wars of sixteenth century Europe?
ART NOTES - an exhibit entitled The Maya and the Mythic Sea is on display at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts through July 18th.
CITY NOTES - some residents of the Yorkshire, England city of Doncaster - beset by unemployment, crime and a high teenage pregnancy rate - are seeking a change of name to Danum (the settlement's original Roman name).
WEDNESDAY's CHILD is a feral cat at San Francisco's police crime lab - which were brought into the lab by the Police Department itself (to control rats) but which have ... well, multiplied.
FILM NOTES - in a profile of Scottish actor Gerard Butler he is described thusly: "What you see is what you get - and he is one of the few Hollywood personalities who fit that mould."
ADVERTISING NOTES - when Tourism Australia began a new advertising campaign website, they were ambushed by a spoof website and a subversive social media campaign .... by their tourism rivals, New Zealand.
MOTHER-DAUGHTER? - two models: the late Bettie Page and Bernie Dexter.
 
TRAVEL NOTES - heavy rains and landslides at the end of January cut rail access to Peru's 15th Century Inca ruins Machu Picchu - only now re-opened to the public.
ART NOTES - works by Christo and Jeanne-Claude are at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C. through September 26th.
TRAVEL NOTES - France's national rail system is to begin running its sleeper trains during the day - so that passengers can have a comfortable nap while travelling.
ART NOTES #2 - An exhibition charting the rise and fall of Villa Adriana - the 2nd-century palace built by the Emperor Hadrian - has opened in the remains of the complex east of Rome, Italy.
THURSDAY's CHILD is Griffindor the Cat - an Illinois kitteh who went missing for 15 months before being reunited due to his microchip.
STAGE NOTES - every ten years, the German town of Oberammergau stages a famous version of the Passion Play - which they pledged to do 377 years ago if God spared them from the bubonic plague then ravaging Europe.
CITY NOTES - the mayor of Denmark's second-largest city wants to use its original spelling of Aarhus rather than its 1948 changeover spelling of Århus.
FILM NOTES - fifty years after its release, an essayist describes 'How Psycho changed the world of cinema'.
MOTHER-DAUGHTER? - rock musicians Chrissie Hynde (The Pretenders) and Eleanor Friedberger (indie rock duo The Fiery Furnaces).
 
....... and for a song of the week.................................................................. this past Saturday, the songwriter Ervin Drake celebrated his 91st birthday. While never a household name, he has written or co-written a few classics that have stood the test of time, and is still active. And along the way, he's written a song-or-two for the underdogs of this world that (especially) we in this forum can appreciate.
Born Ervin Druckman in New York City in 1919, he wrote his first song at age 12 before eventually graduating from CCNY. The first (but not the last) time he would do so: he added lyrics to an existing instrumental "Tico-Tico" which was his first success. More famously, two years after Duke Ellington's trombonist Juan Tizol ....
..... wrote a minor hit called Perdido - Ervin Drake wrote lyrics for it, which were made famous a decade later by Ella Fitzgerald singing them.
In 1945, he was saddened over the loss of his girlfriend Edith, after "those Wall Street types" began pursuing her (and she wound up marrying one of them). When Drake was presented a haunting melody by the composer Irene Higginbotham - the niece of the noted trombonist J.C. Higginbotham - he sensed it matched his feelings, and wrote the lyrics to Good Morning Heartache in 20 minutes.
It was famously recorded by Billie Holiday in 1946, and many performers have recorded it since (with Diana Ross's 1972 version in Lady Sings the Blues bringing the tune to a wider audience).
Between 1948 and 1962, he worked primarily in TV. One song that he wrote in 1953 was I Believe with frequent writing partner Jimmy Shirl.
This came from a request from singer Jane Froman, eager to find a positive tune during the Korean War. This was a major hit for Frankie Laine and its quasi-religious lyrics made the tune appealing enough for Elvis Presley to Mahalia Jackson to LeeAnn Rimes. Ervin Drake wrote for other TV performers such as Merv Griffin, Mel Tormé, Ethel Merman, Johnny Mathis, Yves Montand and Gene Kelly.
In 1961 he was asked by a music publisher to compose a song for Bob Shane of the Kingston Trio. Drake sat at the piano and took out his notebook where he had scribbled ideas for future material. An old theme of a man's life described in terms of vintage wine appealed to him, and the Kingston Trio did record It Was a Very Good Year - as did Chad and Jeremy, The Turtles and Lonnie Donegan and others.
But it was five years later when the Kingston Trio version was heard on the radio by Frank Sinatra while driving between Las Vegas and Palm Springs. In those pre-cell phone days, he had to wait until he saw a phone booth before he could call his producer and say "I want to record this now" - and it won a Grammy in 1966.
As mentioned, Ervin Drake always had a social conscience: he devised a plan for a song to protest racial segregation (in 1944!) that - with non-preachy lyrics and a boogie-woogie tempo - he thought could help change attitudes. But upon presenting No Restricted Signs in Heaven to one publisher, he was deemed a communist and told never to come back. It took the African-American gospel group The Golden Gate Quartet to bring the song to life.
And in recent years, his 2003 song Who Are These Strangers? - tackling homophobic discrimination - has been popularized by the Broadway singer Michael Feinstein.
From 1973 to 1982 he was president of the Songwriters Guild of America - helping to enact the US Copyright Law of 1976 affording composers/lyricists a larger share of royalties.
And he was elected to the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1983.
He has never retired; still writing songs at age 91 and has an unlikely new songwriting partner who performs his newer material: Christine Lavin the ever-delightful folksinger.
But perhaps Ervin Drake's special achievement came in 1975. Edith Bein - the girlfriend he lost in the 1940's and who he wrote the lyrics to "Good Morning Heartache" over - had married someone else (as had he, in time). But when both of their spouses died over the years, they came together in 1975 and married seven years later. And very apropos - because isn't "boy meets girl", "boy loses girl" and "boy wins girl" an integral part of songwriting?
 
I was torn between which of his famous tunes to focus on ... but the choice was made easy by one he wrote at age 85 in 2004 - at a time when many of us were in despair about our nation's future. Like the pianist Dave Frishberg, he took pen to express his thoughts, and Christine Lavin sings his tune (I'm a) Card-Carrying, Bleeding Heart Liberal regularly.
I can't find her version on-line, but did find one by the "Folk Dude" which - while I can't embed it - at this link you can listen to it.
Just take a look at history's pages
and you're gonna see:
Your greatest friend down through ages
yep, was always me
I fought for living wages
in this nation of the free
Social Security is yours
because I led the way
I'll fight that fight for you
although it takes 'til Judgment Day!
I brought a surplus to this country
not a deficit
I brought prosperity with jobs
now let's return to it
I want to keep our Constitution
every bit of it!
I fought defensive wars
the sons-of-riches rarely fight
They mostly hide way back
behind their daddies' wealthy might
I'm there with ordinary guys:
the black, the brown, the white
So if you need a hand up
sister, brother, look my way
You saw me lots of yesterdays
and now I'm here today
My leaders were the greatest
FDR and JFK
'Cause I'm a Liberal
Can't you tell?
Capital L-I-B-E-R-A-L!
Yes, Sir, a Card-Carrying
BLEEDING HEART LIBERAL! |
