Transcript Studio 360 Malcom X

http://www.studio360.org/story/95194-american-icons-the-autobiography-of-malcolm-x/transcript/

Change your Beliefs

In transmit-mode everything is lush and amazing. I wake early and turn on the radio. Music or words it's all amazing. I can't keep up with my thoughts and sensations. Today I can't wait to swim (later) after I have exhausted myself writing. "It's lonely no matter what, I tell my husband. Either you can't keep up with my misery, or you can't keep up with my joy. "The gift is FOR YOU" he reminds me. He's right. "But my mother taught me to give it all away. That it was all for her," I say. As artist Ken Maryanski said to me years ago, "Change your beliefs."

Voice Activated

I am thinking of recording my vignettes aloud possibly on sound cloud. First I have to upgrade my technology. My bio dad was in radio, and he wrote ads. So in a sense I am an apple that has fallen not far from the tree. I love radio more than movies or TV any day. Stay tuned.

Pain Management: What is the Lesson?

WebMD Home next page Pain Management Health Center

Home treatment measures can help relieve pain, swelling, and bruising and promote healing after a groin injury. These home treatment measures also may be helpful for non-injury problems. But if you think you may have a more severe injury, use first aid measures while you arrange to be checked by your doctor.

Rest. Rest and protect an injured or sore groin area for 1 to 2 weeks. Stop, change, or take a break from any activity that may be causing your pain or soreness. Do not do intense activities while you still have pain. A pulled muscle (strain) in the groin can take several weeks to heal.
Ice. Cold will reduce pain and swelling. Apply an ice or cold pack immediately to reduce swelling. Apply the ice or cold pack for 10 to 20 minutes, 3 or more times a day. A bag of frozen peas or corn may work as a cold pack. Protect your skin from frostbite by placing a cloth between the ice and your skin. After 48 to 72 hours, if the swelling is gone, apply warmth to the area that hurts.
Support. While you are recovering from a groin injury, wear underwear that supports the injured area. Females can use workout underwear or shorts with a snug fit. For males, it's best to wear jockey shorts with a snug fit rather than boxer shorts.

It may take 4 to 6 weeks or longer for a minor groin injury to heal. Stretching and strengthening exercises will help you gradually return to your normal activities.

Stretching exercises begin with range-of-motion exercises. These are controlled stretches that prevent stiffness and tendon shortening. Gently bend, straighten, and rotate your leg and hip. If you have increasing pain, slow down or stop the exercises.

You may do strengthening exercises with light weights, such as ankle weights, after the pain has decreased and your flexibility has improved.

Non-weight-bearing activities, such as swimming or cycling, may be helpful depending on the seriousness of your injury. A sports medicine health professional or trainer can advise you about fitness activities.
Medicine you can buy without a prescription Try an over-the-counter medicine to help treat your pain:

Acetaminophen, such as Tylenol
Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs):
Ibuprofen, such as Advil or Motrin
Naproxen,

America Needs Comedians

http://www.humanityinaction.org/knowledgebase/174-when-the-truth-hurts-tell-a-joke-why-america-needs-its-comedians

Rubber Sword

“Humor is a rubber sword – it allows you to make a point without drawing blood.”

-Mary Hirsch, Humorist

I Love to Feel Cozy

I love to feel cozy and when I am in transmit I feel cozy because I feel love for everyone at all times. At these times I imagine all kinds of other careers for myself. I try to 'take notes' for when the tide turns. Great but fleeting insights abound. When the tide does turn which it always does there is not a moment to spare. There is no slack. It's life or death. I do not feel the love.

We Will Not Apologize

Eight months ago, on one of my first visits to the village of Peepli Khera, India, I saw a scene that captivated me, the way a character in a novel can sometimes captivate me.

I was writing an article about a village that had bitterly split over the question of whether women should be allowed to work in factories. Seven women who refused to resign from factory jobs had been made outcasts. I had been sitting with their neighbors, who were passing on terrible rumors about the women. I was taking notes.

As this was happening, one of the outcast women, Geeta, strode into the middle of the circle with her chin up, fiercely. She raked over the neighbors with her eyes, then turned to me and said, loud enough for the whole village to hear, “We will not apologize.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/31/insider/we-will-not-apologize-encountering-the-defiant-women-of-india.html

Article

James Jennings, a professor emeritus at Tufts University who has studied education and race in the city, said persistent racial disparities in class, housing and wealth may feed the kind of racial insensitivity identified by the campaign, even at what is known as the best school in the city.

“It’s a bit ironic and inconsistent that at this particular school the issue of race in a negative way is still with us,” Mr. Jennings said. “Not as it was during the busing crisis, but we still have a lot of things to work out.”


http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/31/education/students-say-racial-hostilities-simmered-at-historic-boston-latin-school.html?_r=0

Anaesthesia Anesthetic

Examples of anesthesia

The patient was given an injection to induce anesthesia.

Origin of anesthesia

New Latin, from Greek anaisthēsia insensibility, from a- + aisthēsis perception, from aisthanesthai to perceive — more at audible

First Known Use: circa 1721

Other Medicine Terms

analgesia, angina, diabetes, hepatitis, homeopathy, logorrhea, palliate, pandemic
Rhymes with anesthesia

Austronesia, Indonesia, Melanesia, Micronesia, paramnesia, Polynesia

ANESTHESIA Defined for Kids
anesthesia
play
noun an·es·the·sia \ˌa-nəs-ˈthē-zhə\
Definition of anesthesia

: loss of feeling in all or part of the body with or without loss of consciousness

Medical Dictionary
anesthesia
noun an·es·the·sia
Medical Definition of anesthesia

1: loss of sensation especially to touch usually resulting from a lesion in the nervous system or from some other abnormality

2: loss of sensation and usually of consciousness without loss of vital functions artificially produced by the administration of one or more agents that block the passage of pain impulses along nerve pathways to the brain

Variants of anesthesia
or chiefly British an·aes·the·sia \ˌan-əs-ˈthē-zhə\play

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anesthetic

Tango with Agony

As I told my friend Teddi. This is Talk to God pain, shout to God pain. What is the lesson? Shoveling out the neighborhood for 12 hours a day for two days, and becoming hypo-manic in the process and then deciding to jog, wrecked my muscles. "You don't notice your bodies signals when you are flying high," my husband reminds me. Now I am having an intimate dance with agony. A tango with agony. The Ibuprofen 800 is working and I hope to be able to walk Lily. I also hope to swim. It's crucial to have routines, they ground me. Laundry, baking bread, making granola, dog walking, Sunday pancakes whatever. The daily weekly rituals are what I must continue even if I am at 1/8 the speed. "I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy," I told my husband. "I don't have any enemies," I laughed. At least the pain is not sinus pain. Pain away from the brain is better than pain in my head.

My dog is getting younger and I am getting older. I can't imagine life without a big dog to support me. They are suicide prevention. Yes, I admit it.

The pain was so severe I was understanding how people get hooked on pain relievers.

B.J. Miller On Being

“Let death be what takes us,” Dr. BJ Miller has written, “not a lack of imagination.” As a palliative care physician, he brings a design sensibility to the matter of living until we die. And he’s largely redesigned his sense of own physical presence after an accident at college left him without both of his legs and part of one arm. He offers a transformative reframing on our imperfect bodies, the ways we move through the world, and all that we don’t control.

B.J. Miller is executive director of the Zen Hospice Project, an assistant clinical professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, and an attending specialist for the Symptom Management Service of the Helen Diller Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of California, San Francisco.

http://www.onbeing.org/program/bj-miller-reframing-our-relationship-to-that-we-dont-control/8380

Saturday

I woke at 3:15 am after going to sleep at 7PM. As I was putting on my blue jeans I got a pain spasm shooting through my hip and thigh. No matter which way I turned it was unrelenting agony. I started wailing. I became dizzy and nauseous from the pain. I woke up my husband. He wanted to call 911. He was thinking I fractured my hip. I pictured a troop of Emergency Medical Technicians climbing up three flights of stairs, taking me down on a stretcher, and over to the hospital. "No way," I thought.

I got up and went downstairs very slowly and made coffee, and took a shower. I had to be presentable to the EMT's just in case. At 8AM I called my Dr's answering service and got an appointment for ten thirty.

After examining my leg, the doctor said that I pulled a groin muscle. I realized it was the perfect storm: shoveling running dog walking and most of all my not-swimming due to skin surgery. Oy!

She prescribed 800 milligrams of Ibuprofen three times a day for ten days and a muscle relaxant so I can sleep tonight.

She suggested physical therapy but I said I probably won't need it because the pool will straighten me out. "No frog kick!" she said.

I feel like I am 100 years old. But the Ibuprofen is just kicking in!

Thursday evening Bill and I attended a function. There was a buffet supper made up of meatballs, gnocchi and eggplant lasagna. The food was ready at 6PM but sat on sterno trays for four hours. Apparently just enough time to grow a hearty infestation of bacteria. I wonder how many people spent Friday being as sick as us.

Be healthy everyone, Count your blessings!

Groin Pull

http://www.webmd.com/fitness-exercise/groin-pull
Fitness & Exercise
Groin Pull

C.D. Wright Interview

I no sooner decide I can’t stand someone’s work than they come out with a book that floors me. I no sooner decide I am forever committed to someone’s work than I see them in the flesh in a setting I can’t erase and which forever galls my reading. On committees, when I feel that bile seeping in, I recuse myself. I’m not a reliable critic even for my own purposes.
Read

Waiting For The 8th

The Washington Post's Eli Saslow won the Pulitzer for Explanatory Reporting for his series on the prevalence of America's food stamp economy at a time of deep cuts to the federal anti-hunger program. One entry zoomed in on the city of Woonsocket, R.I., where one-third of the population received food stamp benefits. Woonsocket's economy stirred to life each month like clockwork around the time when food stamp benefits were disbursed.

The son of a grocer in the Dominican Republic, [Miguel] Pichardo had immigrated to the United States in the 1980s because he expected everyone to have money — "a country of customers," he had thought. He settled in Rhode Island with his brother, and together they opened a series of small supermarkets. He framed his first three $5s, his first three $20s and his first three $100s, the green bills lining a wall behind his register. But now he rarely dealt in cash, and he had built a plexiglass partition in front of the register to discourage his most desperate customers from coming after those framed bills when their EBT cards ran dry. The local unemployment rate was 12 percent. The shuttered textile mills along the river had become Section 8 housing. The median income had dropped by $10,000 in the last decade ...

Pichardo had placed a $10,000 product order to satisfy his diverse customers, half of them white, a quarter Hispanic, 15 percent African-American, plus a dozen immigrant populations drawn to Woonsocket by the promise of cheap housing. He had ordered 150 pounds of the tenderloin steak favored by the newly poor, still clinging to old habits; and 200 cases of chicken gizzards for the inter-generationally poor, savvy enough to spot a deal at less than $2 a pound. He had bought pizza pockets for the working poor and plantains for the immigrant poor. He had stocked up on East African marinades, Spanish rice, Cuban snacks and Mexican fruit juice. The boxes piled up in the aisles and the whir of an electronic butcher's knife reverberated from the back of the store.

Saslow also told the story of Raphael Robinson, a D.C. resident whose family relied on the program, even as Robinson vowed to get off of it. Her family's routine plays like the story of Woonsocket in miniature, a monthly cycle of boom and bust. "The family's refrigerator is usually dark and barren by the time the 8th arrives," he writes. "But then their food stamps come through and they head to the grocery to stock up."

So many of our conversations about poverty — and government anti-poverty programs in particular — tend to be racially coded. Saslow's explorations are a different spin on the demographics of the welfare economy than we often see, and go a long way toward humanizing that economy's many players.

Article

To say goodbye is to die a little.” ― Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye

“To say goodbye is to die a little.”
― Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye

“There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself.”
― Raymond Chandler, Long Goodbye

“Ability is what you're capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it. ”
― Raymond Chandler

“From 30 feet away she looked like a lot of class. From 10 feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from 30 feet away.”
― Raymond Chandler, The High Window

“I was as hollow and empty as the spaces between stars.”
― Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye

“Dead men are heavier than broken hearts.”
― Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep

“There is no bad whiskey. There are only some whiskeys that aren't as good as others.”
― Raymond Chandler

“Without magic, there is no art. Without art, there is no idealism. Without idealism, there is no integrity. Without integrity, there is nothing but production.”
― Raymond Chandler

“down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. He is the hero; he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor—by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world.

“He will take no man’s money dishonestly and no man’s insolence without a due and dispassionate revenge. He is a lonely man and his pride is that you will treat him as a proud man or be very sorry you ever saw him.

“The story is this man’s adventure in search of a hidden truth, and it would be no adventure if it did not happen to a man fit for adventure. If there were enough like him, the world would be a very safe place to live in, without becoming too dull to be worth living in.”
― Raymond Chandler

“A man who drinks too much on occasion is still the same man as he was sober. An alcoholic, a real alcoholic, is not the same man at all. You can't predict anything about him for sure except that he will be someone you never met before.”
― Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye

“I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun. I put them on and went out of the room.”
― Raymond Chandler, Farewell, My Lovely

“Throw up into your typewriter every morning. Clean up every noon.”
― Raymond Chandler

“It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window.”
― Raymond Chandler, Farewell, My Lovely

“I don't mind your showing me your legs. They're very swell legs and it's a pleasure to make their acquaintance. I don't mind if you don't like my manners. They're pretty bad. I grieve over them during the long winter nights.”
― Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep

“It seemed like a nice neighborhood to have bad habits in.”
― Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep

“She gave me a smile I could feel in my hip pocket.”
― Raymond Chandler, Farewell, My Lovely

“The girl gave him a look which ought to have stuck at least four inches out of his back.”
― Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye

“The streets were dark with something more then night.”
― Raymond Chandler

“You talk too damn much and too damn much of it is about you.”
― Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye

“As honest as you can expect a man to be in a world where its going out of style.”
― Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep

“There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge.”
― Raymond Chandler, Red Wind: A Collection of Short Stories

“You're broke, eh?"
I been shaking two nickels together for a month, trying to get them to mate.”
― Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep

“He looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food cake.”
― Raymond Chandler

“The French have a phrase for it. The bastards have a phrase for everything and they are always right. To say goodbye is to die a little.”
― Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye

“I merely say that all reading for pleasure is escape, whether it be Greek, mathematics, astronomy, Benedetto Croce, or The Diary of the Forgotten Man. To say otherwise is to be an intellectual snob, and a juvenile at the art of living.”
― Raymond Chandler, The Simple Art of Murder

“In everything that can be called art there is a quality of redemption. It may be pure tragedy, if it is high tragedy, and it may be pity and irony, and it may be the raucous laughter of the strong man. But down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid.

The detective in this kind of story must be such a man. He is the hero; he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor -- by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world. I do not care much about his private life; he is neither a eunuch nor a satyr; I think he might seduce a duchess and I am quite sure he would not spoil a virgin; if he is a man of honor in one thing, he is that in all things.

He is a relatively poor man, or he would not be a detective at all. He is a common man or he could not go among common people. He has a sense of character, or he would not know his job. He will take no man's money dishonestly and no man's insolence without due and dispassionate revenge. He is a lonely man and his pride is that you will treat him as a proud man or be very sorry you ever saw him. He talks as the man of his age talks -- that is, with rude wit, a lively sense of the grotesque, a disgust for sham, and a contempt for pettiness.

The story is the man's adventure in search of a hidden truth, and it would be no adventure if it did not happen to a man fit for adventure. He has a range of awareness that startles you, but it belongs to him by right, because it belongs to the world he lives in. If there were enough like him, the world would be a very safe place to live in, without becoming too dull to be worth living in. ”
― Raymond Chandler, The Simple Art of Murder

“She lowered her lashes until they almost cuddled her cheeks and slowly raised them again, like a theatre curtain. I was to get to know that trick. That was supposed to make me roll over on my back with all four paws in the air.”
― Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep

“I'm an occasional drinker, the kind of guy who goes out for a beer and wakes up in Singapore with a full beard.”
― Raymond Chandler, Philip Marlowe's Guide to Life

“I was neat, clean, shaved and sober and I didn't care who knew it.”
― Raymond Chandler

“In writing a novel, when in doubt, have two guys come through the door with guns.”
― Raymond Chandler

Raymond Chandler

Raymond Chandler
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Born Raymond Thornton Chandler
July 23, 1888
Chicago, Illinois, United States
Died March 26, 1959 (aged 70)
La Jolla, California, United States
Resting place Mount Hope Cemetery (San Diego, California)
Occupation Novelist
Nationality American (1888–1907, 1956–59)
British (1907–56)
Period 1933–59
Genre Crime fiction, suspense, hardboiled

Raymond Thornton Chandler (July 23, 1888 – March 26, 1959) was a British-American novelist and screenwriter. In 1932, at age forty-four, Chandler decided to become a detective fiction writer after losing his job as an oil company executive during the Great Depression. His first short story, "Blackmailers Don't Shoot", was published in 1933 in Black Mask, a popular pulp magazine. His first novel, The Big Sleep, was published in 1939. In addition to his short stories, Chandler published seven novels during his lifetime (an eighth, in progress at the time of his death, was completed by Robert B. Parker). All but Playback have been made into motion pictures, some several times. In the year before he died, he was elected president of the Mystery Writers of America. He died on March 26, 1959, in La Jolla, California.[1]

Chandler had an immense stylistic influence on American popular literature. He is considered by many to be a founder, along with Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain and other Black Mask writers, of the hard-boiled school of detective fiction. His protagonist, Philip Marlowe, along with Hammett's Sam Spade, is considered by some to be synonymous with "private detective," both having been played on screen by Humphrey Bogart, whom many considered to be the quintessential Marlowe.

Some of Chandler's novels are considered important literary works, and three are often considered masterpieces: Farewell, My Lovely (1940), The Little Sister (1949), and The Long Goodbye (1953). The Long Goodbye was praised in an anthology of American crime stories as "arguably the first book since Hammett's The Glass Key, published more than twenty years earlier, to qualify as a serious and significant mainstream novel that just happened to possess elements of mystery".[2]

Actors Becoming Politicians

USA
Al Franken (Democrat) (U.S. Senator, Minnesota; incumbent)
Alan Autry (Republican) (Mayor of Fresno, California)
Arnold Schwarzenegger (Republican) (Governor of California)
Ben Jones (Democrat) (U.S. Congressman, 4th District of Georgia)
Ben Stein (Republican) (Speechwriter for Presidents Richard M. Nixon and Gerald R. Ford)
Clay Aiken (Democrat) (unsuccessful nominee for U.S. House of Representatives, North Carolina's 2nd congressional district, 2014)
Clint Eastwood (Republican, but describes himself as libertarian) (Mayor of Carmel, California)
Frank Britton Wenzel (Mayor of Malverne, New York)
Fred Grandy (Republican) (U.S. Representative, Iowa)
Fred Thompson (Republican) (U.S. Senator, Tennessee and unsuccessful presidential candidate)
George Murphy (Republican) (U.S. Senator, California)
Helen Gahagan (Democrat) (U.S. Representative, 14th District of California)
Jack Kelly, mayor of Huntington Beach, Calif.
Jerry Springer (Democrat) (Mayor of Cincinnati, Ohio)
Jesse Ventura (formerly Reform; currently Independence Party of Minnesota) (Governor of Minnesota)
John Davis Lodge (Republican) (Governor of Connecticut)
John Gavin (Republican) (U.S. diplomat; Ambassador to Mexico)
Kal Penn (Democrat) (Associate Director in the White House Office of Public Engagement for the Barack Obama administration)
Melissa Gilbert (Democrat)
Nancy Kulp (Democrat) (unsuccessful nominee for U.S. House of Representatives, Pennsylvania)
Raj Bhakta (Republican) (unsuccessful candidate for U.S. House of Representatives, Pennsylvania)
Ralph Waite (Democrat) (unsuccessful nominee for U.S. House of Representatives)
Robert Montgomery (Republican)
Ronald Reagan (Republican) (Governor of California, President of the United States)
Sheila Kuehl (Democrat) (California State Senator)
Shirley Temple Black (Republican) (U.S. diplomat; Ambassador to Ghana and Czechoslovakia, Chief of Protocol of the United States)
Sonny Bono (Republican) (U.S. Representative, 44th District of California)
Stephen Peace (Democrat) (California State Senator)
Wendell Corey (City councilman of Santa Monica, California), (Republican) (unsuccessful candidate for U.S. House of Representatives, California), 1966

Cianci was saint, sinner, dictator, magician

The most compelling political figure in modern R.I. history: the chubby East Side son of an Italian doctor who from his perch as mayor of a medium-sized city became by far the state's most nationally well-known personality.

By Mark Patinkin
Journal Columnist

Always Running, La Vida Loca: Gang Days in LA

Raised in Los Angeles, Luis J. Rodriguez came from Mexican immigrant parents. As strangers to a new country, Rodriguez and his family encountered many hardships, such as money. It was difficult to settle in one place because many well-paid jobs did not want to hire Spanish-speaking natives or discriminated against Mexicans. Living in Watts and East Los Angeles, Rodriguez was surrounded by gang culture in his teenage years. Being part of one of the biggest gangs, Las Lomas, he experienced and witnessed numerous beatings, shootings, arrests, murders, and drug use. After years of being drawn into the ‘hood’s lifestyle, Luis found a way out through literature, leadership and education. As a result of his past, Luis continues to write and change and create peace in the lives of others in the ‘hood. In Luis J. Rodriguez’s remarkable memoir, Always Running, audiences understand the deprivation of discrimination and gang culture.
cvr9780743276917_9780743276917_hr

He begins his autobiographical tale by revealing his parents’ reason for coming to the United States. In Mexico, especially Ciudad Juarez, opportunities and security were very little compared to the States. Though Mexico wasn’t safe for the Rodriguez family, life in the U.S wasn’t so safe either. As “Aliens,” many Hispanic people were looked at as scums of the earth because they were seen as uneducated, dirty, and poor, especially in American schools, where Hispanics were placed in the back of the class because they only spoke Spanish. However, Spanish was Luis’s first language as a child and he had no other way to communicate. He explains further when he writes, “I knew I wasn’t wanted. She put me in an old creaky chair near the door” (Rodriguez, 26). Through his experience in Kindergarten, Rodriguez demonstrates that Hispanic children enter in a world of discrimination, as they are treated as useless and unimportant. Since they are treated like that at an early age, children begin to develop a belief that school is insignificant. In addition, children are told not to take pride in their ethnicity or be whom they are. One of the biggest rules in American schools was, “Don’t speak Spanish, don’t be Mexican – you don’t belong” (Rodriguez, 20). Luis indicates through sharing his experiences that many white people treated Hispanic children like they did not belong here. For example, he had teachers that were unwilling to teach him and some of his classmates because they spoke a different language. Living in a world where discouragement is in the atmosphere, leads an individual to join a gang.

Growing up in Watts and East LA was a challenge for Luis because he lived in between two of the largest gangs, which required him to choose a clica. As a male living in areas like Watts, Compton, South Central, among others, there was one expectation from the streets, which was joining a gang. If one does not enter a gang, he may even be beaten or shot to death. Not only is the individual initiated into the group, but the person also initiates their family along too. Adapting to the gangster lifestyle, Rodriguez gives the audience an insight into the dangers of the streets. “People ran in all directions. Screams pierced the night, Shouts of ‘Lomas Rifa’ and ‘Sangra Controla’ bellowed as vatos clashed in senseless fury” (Rodriguez, 93). He reveals the countless shootings, murders, suicides, homicides, beatings, and arrests one experiences growing up in the streets. He also describes other elements of gang culture such as how getting a tattoo as a preteen was considered cool or sagging your pants was displayed as toughness.

In addition, Rodriguez also includes the language gang members used to communicate with one another. For example, yesca (marijuana), clica (clique), compa (companion), and la marqueta (the market). As a former gang member, Rodriguez explains that “[Gangs] begin as a unstructured grouping, our children, who desire the same as any young person. Respect. A sense of belonging. Protection” (Rodriguez, 250). He demonstrates that gangs aren’t the corrupt ones—it’s society. It’s society’s fault that Hispanics are labeled as uneducated, dirty, and poor and excluded from the world. For these reasons, gangs came to rise so that anyone can join and find their sense of belonging.

Luis J. Rodriguez’s memoir illustrates the effects of discrimination and gang culture in his many remarkable stories. He is very detailed and includes many stories that will make one laugh, see a vivid image, cry, and acknowledge what goes on within gangs and communities like Watts, South San Gabriel, and East Los Angeles. Coming out of the ‘hood and receiving so much success through his words, Luis J. Rodriguez is now the Los Angeles Poet Laureate. Furthermore, he owns and operates a bookstore in the San Fernando Valley with his wife called Tia Chucha’s Centro Cultural. As a young writer, he inspires me to write poems about where I come from or stories about events that I witness on a daily basis too. His memoir is an inspiration to youth, in and out of the ‘hood. It’s a MUST READ book that will change the views of people and make the world a safer place.

-Monica Santiago
http://www.culturalweekly.com/always-running-la-vida-loca-gang-days-in-la/

Saint Anne's Cultural Center Sendoff for Chief Carey

An amazing night in an amazing venue for an amazing human.

Vincent A. Cianci Jr., Celebrated and Scorned Ex-Mayor of Providence, R.I., Dies at 74

By DAN BARRY JAN. 28, 2016

His nickname of “Buddy” hovered in the murky middle between friendly engagement and what’s-it-to-you aggression. Either way, it seemed to capture Vincent A. Cianci Jr., the former mayor of Providence, R.I., known for his finger-snap wit, protracted troubles with the law, and unfailing devotion to his city.

Mr. Cianci died on Thursday morning after falling ill on Wednesday night while taping a weekly television show that featured his skills as a vexing, amusing polemicist. The buddy of Providence was 74.

Although Mr. Cianci had not been mayor since his federal conviction for racketeering in 2002, the shadow he cast over the city for 40 years is difficult to overstate. Even while serving his sentence in a federal penitentiary in New Jersey, the man seemed present. If you told a stranger you were from Providence — or even from Rhode Island — one question invariably followed: What’s Buddy like?

The answer was never pat. Short, compact and faintly menacing, Mr. Cianci walked about Providence with the swagger of a man who left his imprint on the skyline and even the pavement of the city. But his strutting could never quite shake the tragic air that enveloped him: a gregarious man who seemed lonely; a supremely gifted politician whose ego and foibles had brought him low; a walking coulda-been.
Photo
Mr. Cianci during a live broadcast of “The Buddy Cianci Show” in 2010, three years after he was released from federal prison, where he served five years. Credit Steven Senne/Associated Press

“Whether you loved him or hated him, you couldn’t ignore him; endlessly fascinating and endlessly exacerbating,” said Mike Stanton, a former reporter for The Providence Journal and the author of “The Prince of Providence,” a 2003 best seller about Mr. Cianci. “He did a lot for the city and a lot to the city.”

In announcing that the flags at City Hall would be flown at half-staff in Mr. Cianci’s honor, Mayor Jorge O. Elorza said: “Mayor Cianci’s love for the City of Providence is undeniable, and his mark on the city will not be forgotten.”

Vincent Albert Cianci Jr., a grandson of Italian immigrants, was born in Providence on April 30, 1941, and was raised in Cranston, R.I. His father, Vincent Sr., was a proctologist; his mother, the former Esther Capobianco, came from a family active in Democratic politics in Providence’s North End. A grandfather of hers had been mayor of Benevento, a town in Italy.


Buddy grew up in a rambling and crowded brick house with a swimming pool that a grandfather had built. Mr. Stanton wrote, “Raised in a household of doting women — mother, sister, grandmother, aunts and cousins — he was both spoiled and pushed to excel.”

He attended the Moses Brown School, a Providence prep school across the street from Brown University, and was a member of its football and wrestling teams. His college career was spent entirely at Roman Catholic universities, starting with a semester at St. Louis University. He transferred to Fairfield University in Connecticut, where he earned a degree in political science, then received a master’s at Villanova and a law degree at Marquette.

After law school he was drafted into the Army and served most of his duty at Fort Devens, Mass. On his discharge, he opened a private law practice and became a state prosecutor on the attorney general’s anti-corruption task force.

It was as a laser-sharp prosecutor going after mob families that Mr. Cianci first gained notice in the early 1970s. He liked to flaunt his pampered upbringing as a doctor’s son by taking a chauffeured car to work every day. With his fast wit and charm ever on display, he ran for mayor as a Republican in 1974, and his defeat of the entrenched Democratic power base made him the city’s first Italian-American mayor.

Mr. Cianci became a Republican darling, Exhibit A in the party’s argument that it had relevance in the cities of the Northeast. He was invited to speak at the 1976 Republican National Convention. But the struggling city of Providence had profound problems, as did its mayor.

In 1983, Mr. Cianci diverted attention from a continuing federal investigation into municipal corruption in a manner not generally recommended by political advisers: Suspecting that a local contractor was having an affair with his wife, the mayor summoned the man to his home and — according to the contractor — assaulted him. With an ashtray, a fireplace log, and a lighted cigarette. While a city police officer stood by.

Mr. Cianci resigned from office after pleading no contest to assault and receiving a five-year suspended sentence. But he bided his time, holding forth as a radio talk-show host until he was eligible to run again, in 1990. Using the campaign slogan of “He never stopped caring about Providence,” he won in a three-way race, by 317 votes.

Buoyed by his astounding comeback, Mr. Cianci deftly worked the Providence streets and the national airwaves — most often on the “Imus in the Morning” radio show — to promote his city as the center of a New England renaissance. Some downtown development, including the building of a glittering mall, supported the impression, but the revival did not much benefit the city’s poorer neighborhoods or dysfunctional school system.

He even started his own pasta sauce business — Mayor’s Own Marinara Sauce — promising to donate proceeds to a scholarship fund for needy children.

Then came federal investigators, again, exploring allegations of widespread corruption in the second Cianci administration. Even after being indicted on an assortment of racketeering charges — that his City Hall was effectively run as a criminal enterprise — Mr. Cianci remained cuttingly defiant in maintaining his innocence, making fun of a city official who was taped saying that the mayor had taught him how to take a bribe.

“What the hell does he think?” Mr. Cianci asked. “That I’m running a seminar? Stealing 101?”

He was found guilty of a single racketeering charge and sentenced to five years in prison. In delivering his sentence, Judge Ernest C. Torres of Federal District Court, recalled the story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in saying there appeared to be two very different Buddy Ciancis.

“The first Buddy Cianci is a skilled charismatic political figure, one of the most talented Rhode Island has ever seen,” the judge said. He added: “Then there’s the Buddy Cianci who’s been portrayed here. That’s the Buddy Cianci who was mayor of an administration that was corrupt at all levels.”


While in federal prison, Cianci read week-old copies of The Providence Journal, keeping abreast, waiting. “I took my medicine,” he once told The New York Times. “I took it like a man.”

When the Providence Preservation Society inducted him into its Hall of Fame, Mr. Cianci sent his regrets from prison, writing that he was “figuratively and literally ‘tied up.’”

He was released in 2007, a new Cianci, without the trademark toupee that he called “the squirrel.” He promptly returned to the airwaves to observe, tease, agitate — and wait for another chance. In the meantime he wrote an autobiography, “Politics and Pasta,” with David Fisher.

Last year he ran once more for mayor. No longer was he the barrel-chested force, accompanied always by jackbooted police officers. Now he was older, thinner — in part from a bout with cancer — but still demonstrating an unparalleled ability to connect with people on the street.

“All I can tell you is, I am who I am,” he explained. “What you see is what you get. I’m the most vetted candidate maybe in America.”

He lost and returned to talking for a living.

Mr. Cianci’s professional career came at considerable personal cost. His only marriage, to Sheila Bentley McKenna, ended in divorce in 1983. His only child, Nicole Cianci, died in 2012. At his death he was engaged to Tara Marie Haywood, a model and actress in her 30s, of whom he recently said, “I could marry her or adopt her.”

Besides Ms. Haywood, his survivors include his sister, Carol Turchetta, and three grandchildren.

Once, in a more serious mood, Mr. Cianci said: “Yeah, I’m lonely. I lost a family to this job. I lost a girlfriend to this job. I lost a — you know. I guess I had this work ethic and this thing about always working. And it’s too late to change now.”

Joseph R. Paolino Jr., who served as mayor between the bookends of two Cianci administrations, was once a critic of the man who preceded and succeeded him. But on Thursday he released a statement saying that Providence had lost its “greatest champion.”

“He gave his heart to Providence,” Mr. Paolino said.

A clearly frail Mr. Cianci returned to City Hall in November for the unveiling of his official portrait. In a hot and crowded room, he got off another signature line, joking that “this is not the first time I’ve been framed.”

Soon after, he lost his strength, fell back onto a padded bench, and was taken by ambulance to a hospital. Just two hours later, though, he was walking into a restaurant for one more dinner in his honor.

"The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper." -W.B. Yeats

Ram Dass: Finding Freedom in Simplicity

When you finally begin to become free, you’re not interested in having your consciousness constantly captured by the telephone, television, or radio.

I used to be so stimulated all the time. All day long there was input. You had to have input. I’d sit, eating a steak dinner, reading a book, listening to music, playing with the cat, talking to my girlfriend. All at once. And I’d be bored.

So what I notice is that there’s no rule that somebody imposes on you from outside, “Simplify.” It’s something that just starts to happen to you. It’s like, how much money do you have to earn to be happy? Well, if you’re going to support the superstructure I was supporting, you’ve got to work very hard.

So when you get down to a single little cell with a mat, and when you realize that if you eat the same food every day, you won’t be bothered wondering what you’re going to eat every day – I used to lie in bed at Harvard and I’d say, “Well, now, do I want Chinese food or Italian food?” And I’d spend about an hour fantasying each meal until I decided which one went most with my acids and juices at that moment.

But then when I came back from India, what turned me on most was that every day I had brown rice and dahl mixed together, called kidri, and I made chapattis out of whole-wheat flour, and when there was a vegetable available, I had that. And I had a cup of tea in the morning, and that at noon, and an apple at night, and that was my trip. The same thing every day. There wasn’t any surprises or any exotic seasonings. It was very simple. Well, Indian seasoning is pretty weird, but it’s reasonably good for your intestines, some parts of it.

Simplification of diet. We’ve gotten into esthetics, and the kind of super-subtle astral planes where, when we get bored with our palate, we think the best thing to do is to change the game, so we’ll keep titillating our palate more and more; while another strategy, of course, is to just give up trying to be turned on that way all the time.

The basic transformation that occurs – and this is the big one – and you can really assess where you’re at in relation to this one – is that up until a certain moment, your self-definition involves your profession, your sex, your responsibilities, and your social/cultural roles. So if anybody says “Who are you?”, you say, “I’m a lawyer; I’m a father; I’m a husband; I’m a –“ blup, blup, blup blup.

Once this process starts to evolve, you begin to realize that the only thing you are is a being evolving towards full consciousness. Or you could say coming into the spirit. You can use whatever metaphor you want. An awakening being. And all the rest of it is the supportive cast. All the rest of it is the stuff through which this is going on.

-Ram Dass, 1972/11/22 – Unitarian Church, Boulder, CO

Ram Dass: Excess Baggage

A human life is a series of experiences.

When we have little awareness of our predicament, experiences feed our attachments and condition our desire for more experiences. Our perspective changes when we begin to sense, even momentarily, the unity of all things and our identity with the Self.

We start to see each experience as a teaching to be brought into awareness and loved until we are free from being captivated by the experience. As we begin to awaken, experiences lead to reflection and contemplation. Then as we become more aware, experiences become a fire of purification, a burning ground of the ego, grist for the mill of developing consciousness, food enabling the emerging soul to break free of its bonds.

What is the nature of the mind stuff that keeps us in our egos?

Ego attachments may be habits of thought, the residue of experiences, desires we’ve developed and reinforced or that have been implanted, even unconscious urges and tendencies.

Attachments conspire to create this stuck-together bundle of changing thought forms and feelings we label a self, our ego.

This sanguine idea of self is just that, an idea, a description of how we’re doing at the moment, self-inflated or disappointed, a conglomeration of thoughts, feelings, and concepts that changes all the time. One morning I wake up thinking about enlightenment. The next morning I wake up thinking about world politics and environmental disasters. The next day I’m anxious about getting this book done. These temporal experiences that form our ego are like flickering images of a passing show. Each one seems real at the time, but they keep changing.

One of the first steps in getting free of the attachment to this ego idea is to develop a witness.

We have thousands and thousands of me’s, but there is one me that is separate and watches all the other me’s. It’s on a different level of consciousness. It’s not just another role; it’s part of the heart-mind.

The witness is your leverage in the game. The witness me isn’t trying to change any of the other me’s. It’s not an evaluator or a judge; it’s not the superego. It doesn’t care about anything. It just observes. “Hmmm, there she or he is doing that again.” That witness place inside you is your centering device, your rudder.

The witness is part of your soul. It’s witnessing your incarnation, this lifetime, from the heart-mind. It’s the beginning of discrimination between your soul and your ego, your real Self and your self in the incarnation. Once you begin to live in this witness place, you begin to shift your identification from the roles and thought forms. As you witness yourself, the process becomes more like watching a movie than being the central character in one.


-Ram Dass, Be Love Now

Magic Day!

I ran into a bunch of Beacon School students who wanted to pet Lily. Then my former Beacon student Joe stopped to say hello. I introduced him to the gaggle of girls. "This is Joe he's a success story, he went to Beacon years ago and now he has his own business, a wife and 4 kids. "Wanna see my baby girl" he asked all of us."Sure!" they said in unison. On my way home I ran into Donald from the garden and we talked about the pool, performing, writing and our families.

Family Dinner Project

http://thefamilydinnerproject.org/getting-started/community-dinners/
http://thefamilydinnerproject.org/about-us/

Food, fun and conversation
about things that matter.

About Us

The Family Dinner Project is a growing movement of food, fun and conversation about things that matter. We are a nonprofit organization currently operating from the offices of Project Zero at Harvard University.

Over the past 15 years, research has shown what parents have known for a long time: Sharing a fun family meal is good for the spirit, brain and health of all family members. Recent studies link regular family meals with the kinds of behaviors that parents want for their children: higher grade-point averages, resilience and self-esteem. Additionally, family meals are linked to lower rates of substance abuse, teen pregnancy, eating disorders and depression. We also believe in the power of family dinners to nourish ethical thinking.

Now, through this movement, families will come together to share their experiences and insights to help each other realize the benefits of family dinners. Together, they’ll figure out the resources needed – like tips for setting dinnertime goals, overcoming obstacles such as conflicting schedules and engaging everyone in meaningful conversation – to improve the frequency and quality of their mealtime interaction.

M&S Automotive

Sam fixed the hole in my tire! He is going to find me a hubcap. He's the best.

M & S Automotive
840 Cumberland Hill Road
Woonsocket, RI 02895
Phone: (401) 597-5917

Buddy Cianci Memories

When I worked as a prep chef at Leo's on Chestnut Street, Buddy used to come in and ask us to heat up his chowder. He was very charismatic!

Former Providence Mayor Vincent A. 'Buddy' Cianci has died

Cianci, 74, was Providence's longest serving mayor and a twice convicted felon. Cianci, who battled colon cancer, was rushed to Miriam Hospital with “severe stomach pains” Wednesday night and died Thursday morning.
email print
Comment

By Tom Mooney
Journal Staff Writer
Follow @Mooneyprojo
Posted Jan. 28, 2016 at 10:07 am Updated at 10:45 AM

PROVIDENCE, R.I. -- Former Providence Mayor Vincent A. "Buddy" Cianci, 74, has died.

His death was confirmed by his former mayoral chief of staff, lawyer Artin H. Coloian.

Cianci, Providence's longest serving mayor, died shortly after 9:30 Thursday, Coloian said.

“It’s a shock to me… His accomplishments will live on for a long time to come," Coloian said.

Cianci's death was also confirmed by Charles R. Mansolillo, the executor of the former mayor’s will and the trustee for Cianci’s trust. Mansolillo said Cianci’s financial assistant called him this morning with the news of Cianci's death.

Cianci, a twice convicted felon, was rushed to Miriam Hospital with “severe stomach pains,” Wednesday night, according to an ABC6 News report.

Cianci was taping his weekly “On the Record with Buddy Cianci” show at the ABC6 News studio when he began to experience pain.

In November, Cianci was carried out of City Hall on a stretcher 40 minutes after his mayoral portrait was unveiled. He said it the room was warm and he was dehydrated which caused him to stumble.

Earlier this month, Cianci said he'd gotten engaged to his girlfriend, who is a model and actress.

It would have been a second marriage for Cianci and a first for Tara Marie Haywood, who is in her 30s.

“We love each other and why not get married?” Cianci said. “I’m sure we’ll be happy.”

Cianci said they had not set a date.

Cianci’s political career began in 1974, when he first became mayor of Providence. His terms in office were cut short by criminal actions: once, in 1984, when he was convicted of felony assault, and again in 2002, when a federal jury found him guilty of running City Hall as a criminal conspiracy. He spent four and a half years in federal prison and emerged to resume a radio talk show career he left in 1990.

He ran again for mayor in 2014. After losing to Democrat Jorge Elorza, Cianci returned as a talk-show host on WPRO-AM.

He has fought cancer, but in an early January interview about his engagement, Cianci said he was “cancer-free.”

“I work every day. I’m in good health,” said Cianci, a grandfather of three.

-- With reports from Journal Staff Writer Jacqueline Tempera

Retrograde Amnesia

retrograde amnesia

Also found in: Dictionary, Thesaurus, Encyclopedia, Wikipedia.
Related to retrograde amnesia: anterograde amnesia
amnesia
[am-ne´zhah]
pathologic impairment of memory. Amnesia is usually the result of physical damage to areas of the brain from injury, disease, or alcoholism. Psychologic factors may also cause amnesia; a shocking or unacceptable situation may be too painful to remember, and the situation is then retained only in the subconscious mind. The technical term for this is repression. (See also dissociative disorders.)

Rarely is the memory completely obliterated. When amnesia results from a single physical or psychologic incident, such as a concussion suffered in an accident or a severe emotional shock, the victim may forget only the incident itself; the victim may be unable to recall events occurring before or after the incident or the order of events may be confused, with recent events imputed to the past and past events to recent times. In another form, only certain isolated events are lost to memory.

Amnesia victims usually have a good chance of recovery if there is no irreparable brain damage. The recovery is often gradual, the memory slowly reclaiming isolated events while others are still missing. Psychotherapy may be necessary when the amnesia is due to a psychologic reaction.
anterograde amnesia impairment of memory for events occurring after the onset of amnesia. Unlike retrograde amnesia, it is the inability to form new memories.
circumscribed amnesia loss of memory for all events during a discrete, specific period of time. Called also localized amnesia.
continuous amnesia loss of memory for all events after a certain time, continuing up to and including the present.
dissociative amnesia the most common of the dissociative disorders; it is usually a response to some stress, such as a threat of injury, an unacceptable impulse, or an intolerable situation. The patient suddenly cannot recall important personal information and may wander about without purpose and in a confused state.

Persons with a dissociative disorder may at times forget what they are doing or where they are; when they regain self-awareness, they cannot recall what has taken place. A less severe form than amnesia is sleepwalking. Dissociative disorders are very likely an attempt by the mind to shield itself from the anxiety caused by an unresolved conflict. The patient, upon encountering a situation that may be symbolic of this inner conflict, goes into a form of trance to avoid experiencing the conflict.
generalized amnesia loss of memory encompassing the individual's entire life.
lacunar amnesia partial loss of memory; amnesia for certain isolated experiences.
localized amnesia circumscribed amnesia.
lacunar amnesia.
post-traumatic amnesia amnesia resulting from concussion or other head trauma. Called also traumatic amnesia. See also amnestic syndrome.
psychogenic amnesia dissociative amnesia.
retrograde amnesia inability to recall events that occurred prior to the episode precipitating the disorder. Unlike anterograde amnesia, it is the loss of memories of past events.
selective amnesia loss of memory for a group of related events but not for other events occurring during the same period of time.
transient global amnesia a temporary episode of short-term memory loss without other neurological impairment.
traumatic amnesia post-traumatic amnesia.
Miller-Keane Encyclopedia and Dictionary of Medicine, Nursing, and Allied Health, Seventh Edition. © 2003 by Saunders, an imprint of Elsevier, Inc. All rights reserved.
ret·ro·grade am·ne·si·a
amnesia in reference to events that occurred before the trauma or disease that caused the condition.
Farlex Partner Medical Dictionary © Farlex 2012
retrograde amnesia
n.
A condition in which events that occurred before the onset of amnesia cannot be recalled.
The American Heritage® Medical Dictionary Copyright © 2007, 2004 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
retrograde amnesia
the loss of memory for events occurring before a particular time in a person's life, usually before the event that precipitated the amnesia. The condition may result from disease, brain injury or damage, or a traumatic emotional incident. Compare anterograde amnesia.
Mosby's Medical Dictionary, 9th edition. © 2009, Elsevier.
retrograde amnesia
Neurology Amnesia that extends to before the trauma or events that caused the loss of memory. See Amnesia. Cf Anterograde amnesia.
McGraw-Hill Concise Dictionary of Modern Medicine. © 2002 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
ret·ro·grade am·ne·si·a
(ret'rō-grād am-nē'zē-ă)
Lack of memory about events that occurred before the trauma or disease (e.g., cerebral concussion) that caused the condition.
Medical Dictionary for the Health Professions and Nursing © Farlex 2012
retrograde amnesia
Loss of memory for a period before the time of a head injury. In general, the more severe the injury and the longer the period of loss of memory after the injury, the longer will be the retrograde amnesia.
Collins Dictionary of Medicine © Robert M. Youngson 2004, 2005

Kevlar

S

tephanie Kwolek, an American chemist of Polish origin, inventor of kevlar.
Kevlar
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Kevlar is the registered trademark for a para-aramid synthetic fiber, related to other aramids such as Nomex and Technora. Developed by Stephanie Kwolek at DuPont in 1965,[1][2][3] this high-strength material was first commercially used in the early 1970s as a replacement for steel in racing tires. Typically it is spun into ropes or fabric sheets that can be used as such or as an ingredient in composite material components.

Currently, Kevlar has many applications, ranging from bicycle tires and racing sails to body armor, because of its high tensile strength-to-weight ratio; by this measure it is 5 times stronger than steel.[2] It is also used to make modern drumheads that withstand high impact. When used as a woven material, it is suitable for mooring lines and other underwater applications.

A similar fiber called Twaron with roughly the same chemical structure was developed by Akzo in the 1970s; commercial production started in 1986, and Twaron is now manufactured by Teijin.[4][5]

As independent booksellers across America struggle to stay afloat, their French brethren are thriving

Indie bookstores alive and well in Paris

Modern Love: Open Adoption

Read

She regularly walked up to 9 miles a day, and liked to spend time improving her handstands. She enjoyed swimming and set an international swimming record for people over 80 years old.

Brenda Ueland
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Brenda Ueland (October 24, 1891 – March 5, 1985) was a journalist, editor, freelance writer, and teacher of writing. She is best known for her book If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit.[1]

Background

Brenda was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota to Andreas and Clara Hampson Ueland. She was the third of seven children. She attended Wells and Barnard colleges and received her baccalaureate from Barnard in 1913. She lived in and around New York City for much of her adult life before returning to Minnesota in 1930.

Brenda was raised in a relatively progressive household; her father, an immigrant from Norway, was a prominent lawyer and judge. Her mother was a suffragette and served as the first president of the Minnesota League of Women Voters. Brenda would spend her life as a staunch feminist and is said to have lived by two rules: To tell the truth, and to not do anything she didn't want to.
Career

Brenda Ueland had a varied and prolific career. She freelanced for many publications including the Saturday Evening Post, Ladies Home Journal, Golfer and Sportsman, and varied newspapers. She was a staff writer for Liberty Magazine and the Minneapolis Times, among other publications. She worked for two years (1915–1917) as an editor for Crowell Publishing in New York City.

Brenda wrote scripts for radio shows including a program entitled Tell Me More, which featured Ueland responding to listener's personal problems, and Stories for Girl Heroes, a children's program about notable women. She also taught many local writing classes starting in 1934. In 1946, while covering the treason trials of Vidkun Quisling, she was awarded the Knight of Royal Norwegian Order of St. Olaf by the Norwegian government.
Books

Ueland published two books during her life. The first was If You Want to Write: a Book about Art, Independence and Spirit, first published in 1938. In this book, she shares her philosophies on writing and life in general. She stresses the idea that "Everyone is talented, original, and has something important to say." Drawing heavily on the work and influence of William Blake, she suggests that writers should "Try to discover your true, honest, un-theoretical self." She sums up her book with 12 points to keep in mind while writing. Carl Sandburg called If You Want to Write "the best book ever written on how to write." It was republished in 1983 by the Schubert Club of St. Paul, Minnesota, and then picked up by Graywolf Press, for which it remains their bestselling title.[2]

Her second book was an autobiography entitled Me: A Memoir, published in 1939. In it she writes about her childhood, time in college, her life in Greenwich Village, and love affairs, among other topics. She tells of her affair with Raoul Hendricson, an anarchist who eventually left her for Isadora Duncan. This book was reprinted in 1994. Libby Larsen composed a song cycle using texts from this memoir.

In 1992, a collection of Ueland's writing from her last four decades was published by Holy Cow! Press of Duluth, under the name Strength to Your Sword Arm. It included articles and essays on topics such as children, feminism, her life in Minneapolis, animals, and health and well-being.

In 1998, a chapbook was released by Kore Press with her essay Tell Me More: On the Fine Art of Listening. This was a part of a series of booklets of short essays that was designed to be sent in the mail like a greeting card, and it came with an envelope for that purpose.

Though it was not published in Brenda's lifetime, in the 1950s she began writing a biography of her mother. It was finally published under the name O Clouds, Unfold: Clara Ueland and Her Family in 2003.
Later years

Brenda was concerned with animal welfare and regularly spoke out against vivisection. She worked with Pet Haven, Inc, a no-kill animal shelter based in Minnesota that was established in 1952. Brenda was very physically active well into her old age. She regularly walked up to 9 miles a day, and liked to spend time improving her handstands. She enjoyed swimming and set an international swimming record for people over 80 years old. She died at the age of 93.
Personal life

By her own account, Ueland had many lovers. She was married three times. Her first marriage was to William Benedict in 1916. This marriage resulted in the birth of her only child, a daughter named Gabrielle in 1921. Brenda and William divorced in 1926 and she raised Gabrielle on her own. She went on to marry two more times, first to Manus McFadden, the editor of the Minneapolis Times, then to Sverre Hanssen, a Norwegian artist. Both marriages resulted in divorce.

Everybody is original, if he tells the truth, if he speaks from himself.

“I learned...that inspiration does not come like a bolt, nor is it kinetic, energetic striving, but it comes into us slowly and quietly and all the time, though we must regularly and every day give it a little chance to start flowing, prime it with a little solitude and idleness.”
― Brenda Ueland

“In fact that is why the lives of most women are so vaguely unsatisfactory. They are always doing secondary and menial things (that do not require all their gifts and ability) for others and never anything for themselves. Society and husbands praise them for it (when they get too miserable or have nervous breakdowns) though always a little perplexedly and half-heartedly and just to be consoling. The poor wives are reminded that that is just why wives are so splendid -- because they are so unselfish and self-sacrificing and that is the wonderful thing about them! But inwardly women know that something is wrong. They sense that if you are always doing something for others, like a servant or nurse, and never anything for yourself, you cannot do others any good. You make them physically more comfortable. But you cannot affect them spiritually in any way at all. For to teach, encourage, cheer up, console, amuse, stimulate or advise a husband or children or friends, you have to be something yourself. [...]"If you would shut your door against the children for an hour a day and say; 'Mother is working on her five-act tragedy in blank verse!' you would be surprised how they would respect you. They would probably all become playwrights.”
― Brenda Ueland

“The only good teachers for you are those friends who love you, who think you are interesting, or very important, or wonderfully funny; whose attitude is:
"Tell me more. Tell me all you can. I want to understand more about everything you feel and know and all the changes inside and out of you. Let more come out."

And if you have no such friend,--and you want to write,--well, then you must imagine one. ”
― Brenda Ueland, If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit

“I learned that you should feel when writing, not like Lord Byron on a mountain top, but like a child stringing beads in kindergarten - happy, absorbed and quietly putting one bead on after another. ”
― Brenda Ueland

“Everybody is original, if he tells the truth, if he speaks from himself. But it must be from his *true* self and not from the self he thinks he *should* be. ”
― Brenda Ueland, If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit

“No writing is a waste of time – no creative work where the feelings, the imagination, the intelligence must work. With every sentence you write, you have learned something. It has done you good.”
― Brenda Ueland, If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit

“Yes, I hate orthodox criticism. I don't mean great criticism, like that of Matthew Arnold and others, but the usual small niggling, fussy-mussy criticism, which thinks it can improve people by telling them where they are wrong, and results only in putting them in straitjackets of hesitancy and self-consciousness, and weazening all vision and bravery.

...I hate it because of all the potentially shining, gentle, gifted people of all ages, that it snuffs out every year. It is a murderer of talent. And because the most modest and sensitive people are the most talented, having the most imagination and sympathy, these are the very first ones to get killed off. It is the brutal egotists that survive.”
― Brenda Ueland, If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit

“Work freely and rollickingly as though you were talking to a friend who loves you. Mentally (at least three or four times a day) thumb your nose at all know-it-alls, jeerers, critics, doubters.”
― Brenda Ueland, If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit

“Don't always be appraising yourself, wondering if you are better or worse than other writers. "I will not Reason and Compare," said Blake; "my business is to Create." Besides, since you are like no other being ever created since the beginning of Time, you are incomparable. ”
― Brenda Ueland, If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit

“If I did not wear torn pants, orthopedic shoes, frantic disheveled hair, that is to say, if I did not tone down my beauty, people would go mad. Married men would run amuck.”
― Brenda Ueland

“...at last I understood that writing was this: an impulse to share with other people a feeling or truth that I myself had.”
― Brenda Ueland, If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit

“(about William Blake)

As for Blake's happiness--a man who knew him said: "If asked whether I ever knew among the intellectual, a happy man, Blake would be the only one who would immediately occur to me."

And yet this creative power in Blake did not come from ambition. ...He burned most of his own work. Because he said, "I should be sorry if I had any earthly fame, for whatever natural glory a man has is so much detracted from his spiritual glory. I wish to do nothing for profit. I wish to live for art. I want nothing whatever. I am quite happy."

...He did not mind death in the least. He said that to him it was just like going into another room. On the day of his death he composed songs to his Maker and sang them for his wife to hear. Just before he died his countenance became fair, his eyes brightened and he burst into singing of the things he saw in heaven. ”
― Brenda Ueland, If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit

“...writing is not a performance but a generosity.”
― Brenda Ueland, If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit

“But the great artists like Michelangelo and Blake and Tolstoi--like Christ whom Blake called an artist because he had one of the most creative imaginations that ever was on earth--do not want security, egoistic or materialistic. Why, it never occurs to them. "Be not anxious for the morrow," and "which of you being anxious can add one cubit to his stature?"

So they dare to be idle, i.e. not to be pressed and duty-driven all the time. They dare to love people even when they are very bad, and they dare not to try and dominate others to show them what they must do for their own good. ”
― Brenda Ueland, If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit

“We have come to think that duty should come first. I disagree. Duty should be a by-product. Writing, the creative effort, the use of the imagination, should come first – at least, for some part of every day of your life. It is a wonderful blessing if you use it. You will become happier, more enlightened, alive, impassioned, light-hearted and generous to everybody else. Even your health will improve. Colds will disappear and all the other ailments of discouragement and boredom.”
― Brenda Ueland, If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit

“Creative power flourishes only when I am living in the present.”
― Brenda Ueland, If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit

“Inspiration does not come like a bolt, nor is it kinetic energy striving, but it comes to us slowly and quietly and all the time.”
― Brenda Ueland

“Remember William Blake who said: "Improvement makes straight, straight roads, but the crooked roads without improvement are roads of genius."

The truth is, life itself, is always startling, strange, unexpected. But when the truth is told about it everybody knows at once that it is life itself and not made up.

But in ordinary fiction, movies, etc, everything is smoothed out to seem plausible--villains made bad, heroes splendid, heroines glamorous, and so on, so that no one believes a word”
― Brenda Ueland, If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit

“Everyone is talented, original and has something important to say.”
― Brenda Ueland

“(about William Blake)[Blake] said most of us mix up God and Satan. He said that what most people think is God is merely prudence, and the restrainer and inhibitor of energy, which results in fear and passivity and "imaginative death."

And what we so often call "reason" and think is so fine, is not intelligence or understanding at all, but just this: it is arguing from our *memory* and the sensations of our body and from the warnings of other people, that if we do such and such a thing we will be uncomfortable. "It won't pay." "People will think it is silly." "No one else does it." "It is immoral."

But the only way you can grow in understanding and discover whether a thing is good or bad, Blake says, is to do it. "Sooner strangle an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires."

For this "Reason" as Blake calls it (which is really just caution) continually nips and punctures and shrivels the imagination and the ardor and the freedom and the passionate enthusiasm welling up in us. It is Satan, Blake said. It is the only enemy of God. "For nothing is pleasing to God except the invention of beautiful and exalted things." And when a prominent citizen of his time, a logical, opining, erudite, measured, rationalistic, Know-it-all, warned people against "mere enthusiasm," Blake wrote furiously (he was a tender-hearted, violent and fierce red-haired man): "Mere enthusiasm is the All in All!”
― Brenda Ueland, If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit

“Everybody is talented because everybody who is human has something to express.”
― Brenda Ueland

“Everyone knows how people who laugh easily create us by their laughter,--making us think of funnier and funnier things.”
― Brenda Ueland, If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit

“The only way to write well, so that people believe what we say and are interested or touched by it, is to slough off all pretentiousness and attitudinizing.”
― Brenda Ueland, If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit

“Families are great murderers of the creative impulsive, particularly husbands.”
― Brenda Ueland, If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit

“There is that American pastime known as "kidding" - with the result that everyone is ashamed and hangdog about showing the slightest enthusiasm or passion or sincere feeling about anything.”
― Brenda Ueland, If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit

“When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand. Ideas actually begin to grow within us and come to life.”
― Brenda Ueland

“Of course, in fairness, I must remind you of this: that we writers are the most lily-livered of all craftsmen. We expect more, for the most peewee efforts, than any other people.”
― Brenda Ueland, If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit

“I found that many gifted people are so afraid of writing a poor story that they cannot summon the nerve to write a single sentence for months. The thing to say to such people is: "See how *bad* a story you can write. See how dull you can be. Go ahead. That would be fun and interesting. I will give you ten dollars if you can write something thoroughly dull from beginning to end!" And of course, no one can. ”
― Brenda Ueland, If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit

Brenda Ueland is my Hero

Writing is the action of thinking, just as drawing is the action of seeing and composing music is the action of hearing.

This is what I learned: that everybody is talented, original and has something important to say.

Families are great murderers of the creative impulse, particularly husbands.

So you see, imagination needs moodling - long, inefficient, happy idling, dawdling and puttering.

Early and Alone Curmudgeon

I got a phone message that my 30 year college reunion is coming up, to be celebrated at 'alumni weekend' in October. But I graduated early and alone on Valentine's Day. I loathe reunions, weddings and parties and I don't attend them if I can help it.

Courageous Writing

“Through writing I allow myself to experience things I would not be courageous enough for in life.”
—David Grossman, Paris Review

The Interplay Between Spirituality and Psychodynamics

Can I get any sort of spiritual ascension without dealing with my psychological baggage?

From personal experiences and from guiding and listening to many, many people over time, I’ve seen the interplay between the psychological and the spiritual, such that a lot of the reasons people get into spiritual work are really psychological reasons that have to do with avoidance, that have to do with a lot of denial.

And when they try to build a house on sand that way, there’s a corruption in the whole process that ultimately ends up leaving them on the spiritual journey in a way that has a cap on it. They can only get so far, and then they feel that they can’t get any further. And at that point, a lot of them realize that they have to work on this psychological space to get themselves cleared out, to come at their work from another point of view spiritually.

And I’ve done that myself. I mean, I was in therapy, then I felt that therapy often can be a kind of a bottomless well, because you don’t necessarily solve all your problems, but you can solve some of the major obstacles or the harshest ones. Then you start to do spiritual practices, and they force to the surface other psychodynamics, which then can be skimmed therapeutically at a later time, and then with that skimming there is a way in which you can come at the spiritual journey from another place, so that there’s this kind of spiraling process between psychodynamics and spiritual work.

There’s an interesting question of how much psychological health is required for spiritual work.

And my best evidence is not a hell of a lot. If you look at the history of spiritual saints and people that have been evolved, their psychological makeup has been pretty off the wall, I mean, pretty bizarrely neurotic. So in an interesting way from a karmic point of view, the neurosis often drives the spirit to a certain point, and then it starts to get in the way, and it feels to me like there’s no simple rule of thumb that you would say the person has to have worked through certain psychodynamics before they should go into spirituality.

What is required is the person understand that there is truth in the spiritual journey so that when they realize that there is fraudulence in the way they are doing it, that they are doing it in a way that is hiding or just self-aggrandizing in a way that isn’t liberating, they can cop to it.

There’s a lot of inertia because of the values the spiritual scene has about psychotherapy, in the sense that it tends to reduce it. It’s redunctionistic. And I was a part of that, by the way, for a long time, and I’ve come out of that now, and I’ve gone back into therapy and come out, and I’ve realized the value of going back and forth, and a lot of my friends who are spiritual teachers have done the same thing.

So, now when a person feels the need to clean out some stuff psychologically, who they go to is interesting, because ideally you would go to somebody who themselves have strong spiritual perspective as well as psychological skills. And my sense is that you would go to somebody, if you could, that would be sympathetic to the deeper kinds of things you’re working on, besides psychological stuff. However you can’t always have that. And so then you go to the psychotherapist more as you would to go to somebody that would help you with a certain plane of reality in which you don’t bring that other plane of reality to bare in the therapeutic situation, because running it through that person’s consciousness isn’t gonna help your spiritual work particularly, because that person doesn’t have that kind of consciousness.


– Ram Dass, from the 1989 Listening Heart Series

Steinbeck

“I've always tried out my material on my dogs first.”
—John Steinbeck

For it's Own Sake

We must do our work for its own sake, not for fortune or attention or applause.
- Steven Pressfield

Cory Doctorow's Advice

How did you become a writer? When I was six, my dad took me to see STAR WARS. In 1977, kids weren't exposed to a lot of complex narrative. There wasn't cable, there weren't VCRs. I'd never experienced a story with nonlinear telling, multiple PoVs, etc. It set my brain a-fizz. I rushed home, stapled together some scrap paper, and trimmed it to approximately mass-market size. Then I wrote out the Star Wars story, as best as I could remember it, over and over, like a kid practicing scales. It felt *amazing*. I declared on the spot that I would be a writer.

When I was 12, I wrote a fanfic Conan novel. Again, it felt *great*.

At 16, I started sending my stories to magazines. At 17, I sold one.

At 26, I sold one to a "pro" market. At 32, my first novel came out.

At 36, I quit my day-job.

If there's one thing that made me a "writer" and not just a guy who manages to turn out some fiction now and again, it was getting into the habit of writing every day, whether I felt "inspired" or not.

People had told me that this was important all my life, but it took me about 15 years to actually take it seriously and realize how magic it was.


Write every day. Habits are things you get for free, without requiring any special work. Set a daily word target. Make it small. 75 words a day is a novel a year. Finish in the middle of a sentence, so you can type three or four words the next day without having to be "creative." Don't get in the habit of only writing when there's some ritual that's been satisfied -- the right music, a clean apartment, whatever.

Especially don't get in the habit of writing while smoking or boozing. Don't hook the thing that makes you sane and whole to something that's killing you. Write even when you feel like it's shit. You can't tell what's good and what's bad while you're writing it. Don't ever rewrite until the whole thing is done. Once you start thinking about what you're writing, you lose the ability to stop writing it.

http://www.advicetowriters.com/interviews/2012/4/5/cory-doctorow.html

What was I thinking?

Sammy-cat snuck in and peed on my studio (dog) couch, to get at Lily-dog. Then he came downstairs and nudged my piece of buttered toast (the cherished end piece) off the kitchen counter while I was washing the dishes. Lily dog chomped on it. I fished it out of her mouth. What was I thinking? It's 6:AM and I'm sure this is going to be a lousy day.

Write what you need to write

Write what you need to write, not what is currently popular or what you think will sell.
-P.D. James

Snaptic Pruning: first biological handle on schizophrenia.

Steven McCarroll, an associate professor of genetics at Harvard, and Beth Stevens, an assistant professor of neurology at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard. The results of their study have provided researchers with their first biological handle on schizophrenia.

The researchers pieced together the steps by which genes can increase a person’s risk of developing schizophrenia. That risk, they found, is tied to a natural process called synaptic pruning, in which the brain sheds weak or redundant connections between neurons as it matures. During adolescence and early adulthood, this activity takes place primarily in the section of the brain where thinking and planning skills are centered, known as the prefrontal cortex. People who carry genes that accelerate or intensify that pruning are at higher risk of developing schizophrenia than those who do not, the new study suggests.

Some researchers had suspected that the pruning must somehow go awry in people with schizophrenia, because previous studies showed that their prefrontal areas tended to have a diminished number of neural connections, compared with those of unaffected people. The new paper not only strongly supports that this is the case, but also describes how the pruning probably goes wrong and why, and identifies the genes responsible: People with schizophrenia have a gene variant that apparently facilitates aggressive “tagging” of connections for pruning, in effect accelerating the process.

Article

Mavens of Meat Texas BBQ

Article

Human Chain: It helped remind us that we are all people, and it is our responsibility to help other humans

Bystanders form a human chain to rescue man from teetering truck
By Ben Hooper | Jan. 27, 2016 at 12:58 PM

Strangers form a human chain to rescue a trucker whose vehicle was teetering on the edge of a cliff on the Pennsylvania Turnpike.

BEDFORD, Pa., Jan. 27 (UPI) -- Motorists on the Pennsylvania Turnpike banded together and formed a human chain to rescue a truck driver whose semi was about to go over an embankment.

Arlyn Satanek, a trucker who witnessed the incident Friday, said the truck in front of him was clearly having difficulty on the snow-covered road east of Bedford and it soon began smoking and shooting off debris.

"At that point I was on my brakes with everything I had and hoping I didn't lose control," Satanek told WTAE-TV. "I saw the truck out in front of me pretty much finishing his wipe out and cutting off the entire two lanes of traffic and angling down over the cliff."

Satanek said the driver appeared to be trapped in the cab of the vehicle as it teetered on the edge.

"I'm sitting there in a daze, and I realize people are running to the truck," Satanek told WPXI-TV.

Satanek said the motorists didn't appear to be concerned for their own safety.

"It was just like everyone knew in that moment we have to reach him, 'Let's lock into this and get this guy up.' It was awesome," Satanek said. "I decided I knew they had him, and I wanted to get a picture, I want to remember this."

He said the rescuers formed a human shield to reach the driver and pull him to safety.

"To me, it just looked like this spontaneous, instinctive thing, that everyone just started hooking their arms together," Satanek said. "It was absolutely amazing."

He said the truck driver was back on his feet after a few minutes.

Satanek said he was amazed by what he witnessed.

"It helped remind us that we are all people, and it is our responsibility to help other humans," Satanek said.

"I don't know any of their names, what their faces looked like. I can only say they made a terrible situation a little bit better by helping someone out that was really in need," he said.

Nature's Miracle

The alarm sounds, 4:00AM. I get up and get dressed. As I am tying my sneakers I flick on the TV. It's a nature show on fiddler crabs:

Fiddler crabs are found along sea beaches and brackish inter-tidal mud flats, lagoons and swamps. Fiddler crabs are most well known for their sexually dimorphic claws; the males’ major claw is much larger than the minor claw while the females’ claws are both the same size.

Like all crabs, fiddler crabs shed their shells as they grow. If they have lost legs or claws during their present growth cycle, a new one will be present when they molt. If the large fiddle claw is lost, males will develop one on the opposite side after their next molt. Newly molted crabs are very vulnerable because of their soft shells. They are reclusive and hide until the new shell hardens.

I flick it off and start my day. On my way downstairs I flick on the light in my office. My cat sneaks into my studio without my knowing and pees on the couch where Lily sleeps. The cat and dog are in competition so this is what the monster cat does if he gets an opportunity. Luckily I have the enzyme cleaner spray. It's called Nature's Miracle.

Buttermilk is the Secret to Life + Pancakes

True!

“No amount of prayer or meditation can do what helping others can do.” ― Meher Baba

“Don't Worry Be Happy”
― Meher Baba

“No amount of prayer or meditation can do what helping others can do.”
― Meher Baba

“There are very few things in the mind which eat up as much energy as worry. It is one of the most difficult things not to worry about anything. Worry is experienced when things go wrong, but in relation to past happenings it is idle merely to wish that they might have been otherwise. The frozen past is what it is, and no amount of worrying is going to make it other than what it has been. But the limited ego-mind identifies itself with its past, gets entangled with it and keeps alive the pangs of frustrated desires. Thus worry continues to grow into the mental life of man until the ego-mind is burdened by the past. Worry is also experienced in relation to the future when this future is expected to be disagreeable in some way. In this case it seeks to justify itself as a necessary part of the attempt to prepare for coping with the anticipated situations. But, things can never be helped merely by worrying. Besides, many of the things which are anticipated never turn up, or if they do occur, they turn out to be much more acceptable than they were expected to be. Worry is the product of feverish imagination working under the stimulus of desires. It is a living through of sufferings which are mostly our own creation. Worry has never done anyone any good, and it is very much worse than mere dissipation of psychic energy, for it substantially curtails the joy and fullness of life.”
― Meher Baba, Discourses

“I love everybody. Each one plays the role they have to play...”
― Meher Baba

“The book that I shall make people read
is the book of the heart,
which holds the key
to the mystery of life”
― Meher Baba

“Love God and find him within - the only treasure worth finding.”
― Meher Baba

“Mastery in Servitude”
― Meher Baba

“...What will the present chaos lead to? How will it all end? It can only end in one way. Mankind will be sick of it all....”
― Meher Baba

“If I were to ask the famous Henry Ford to come over here and do what I tell him to do, would he do it? Never! But if I were to make a thousand-year-old corpse come alive before his eyes, he would jump at the chance to stay here and wash my clothes!”
― Meher Baba


“About the New Life Meher Baba wrote:
This New Life is endless, and even after my physical death it will be kept alive by those who live the life of complete renunciation of falsehood, lies, hatred, anger, greed and lust; and who, to accomplish all this, do no lustful actions, do no harm to anyone, do no backbiting, do not seek material possessions or power, who accept no homage, neither covet honor nor shun disgrace, and fear no one and nothing; by those who rely wholly and solely on God, and who love God purely for the sake of loving; who believe in the lovers of God and in the reality of Manifestation, and yet do not expect any spiritual or material reward; who do not let go the hand of Truth, and who, without being upset by calamities, bravely and wholeheartedly face all hardships with one hundred percent cheerfulness, and give no importance to caste, creed and religious ceremonies. This New Life will live by itself eternally, even if there is no one to live it.”
― Meher Baba

“Don't worry Be Happy !!!”
― Meher Baba, Listen, Humanity

Spaghetti Western Stake Out Music

Play this Spaghetti Western Music by Ennio Morricone. If I was a detective I'd play this in my car. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dpNQFpeo6U

Ennio Morricone - Spaghetti Western Music

Here

Ennio Morricone
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Background information
Birth name Ennio Morricone
Also known as Maestro, Dan Savio, Leo Nichols
Born November 10, 1928 (age 87)
Rome, Kingdom of Italy
Genres Film music, classical, absolute music, jazz, pop, rock, lounge, easy listening, funk
Occupation(s) Composer, orchestrator, conductor, musician, producer
Instruments Trumpet, piano
Years active 1946–present
Associated acts Gruppo di Improvvisazione di Nuova Consonanza, Orchestra Roma Sinfonietta, Bruno Nicolai, Alessandro Alessandroni, Edda Dell'Orso, Curro Savoy, Susanna Rigacci, Mina, Yo-Yo Ma, Mireille Mathieu, Joan Baez, Andrea Bocelli, Roger Waters, Sarah Brightman, Amii Stewart, Paul Anka, Milva, Gianni Morandi, Dalida, Catherine Spaak, Pet Shop Boys, Hayley Westenra, Romina Arena, and others
Website www.enniomorricone.org

Ennio Morricone, Grand Officer OMRI (Italian: [ˈɛnnjo morriˈkoːne]; born 10 November 1928) is an Italian composer, orchestrator, conductor, and former trumpet player, born in Rome. He composes a wide range of music styles, making him one of the most versatile, experimental and influential composers of all time, working in any medium.[1] Over the past seven decades, Morricone has composed over 500 scores for cinema and television, as well as over 100 classical works. His filmography includes over 70 award-winning films, including all Sergio Leone films since the Dollars Trilogy (such as Once Upon a Time in the West and Once Upon a Time in America), all Giuseppe Tornatore films (since Cinema Paradiso), The Battle of Algiers, 1900, Exorcist II, Days of Heaven, several major films in French cinema, in particular the comedy trilogy La Cage aux Folles I, II, III and Le Professionnel, The Thing, The Mission, The Untouchables, Bugsy, In the Line of Fire, Disclosure, Mission to Mars, Ripley's Game, The Best Offer, and The Hateful Eight.[2]

After having played trumpet in jazz bands in the 1950s, he became a studio arranger for RCA and started ghost writing for film and theatre. Throughout his career, he composed hundreds of songs for artists such as Paul Anka, Mina, Zucchero and Andrea Bocelli. From 1960 to 1975, Morricone gained international fame by composing the music to westerns. His score to 1966's "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" is considered as one of the most influential soundtracks in history[3] and was inducted in the Grammy Hall of Fame.[4] The album reached No. 4 on the Billboard chart.[5] With an estimated 10 million copies sold, "Once Upon a Time in the West" is one of the best-selling instrumental scores worldwide.[6] He also scored seven westerns for Sergio Corbucci, Duccio Tessari's Ringo duology and Sergio Sollima's The Big Gundown and Face to Face. Morricone worked extensively for other film genres with directors such as Mauro Bolognini, Bernardo Bertolucci, Dario Argento and Henri Verneuil. The highly acclaimed soundtrack for "The Mission" (1986)[7] was certified gold by RIAA. His album Yo-Yo Ma Plays Ennio Morricone stayed 105 weeks on the Billboard Top Classical Albums and peaked in 2004 at No.3.[8]

Morricone's best-known compositions include "The Ecstasy of Gold", "Man with a Harmonica", "Here's to You", the UK #2 single "Chi Mai", "Nella Fantasia" and "E Più Ti Penso". He functioned during the period 1966-1980 as a main member of Il Gruppo, one of the first experimental composers collectives. In 1969, he co-founded Forum Music Village, a prestigious recording studio. From the 1970s, Morricone excelled in Hollywood, composing for prolific American directors such as Don Siegel, John Carpenter, Brian De Palma, Barry Levinson, Oliver Stone and Quentin Tarantino. In 1977, he composed the official theme for the 1978 FIFA World Cup. He continued to compose music for European productions, such as Marco Polo, La Piovra, Nostromo, Fateless, Karol and En mai, fais ce qu'il te plait. Morricone's music has been reused in television series, including The Simpsons and The Sopranos, and in many films, including Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained.

As of 2013, Ennio Morricone has sold over 70 million records worldwide. In 1971, he received a "Targa d'Oro" for the worldwide sales of 22 million.[9] In 2007, he received the Academy Honorary Award "for his magnificent and multifaceted contributions to the art of film music." He has been nominated for a further six Oscars. Morricone earned his sixth Oscar nomination in 2016 for his score of Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight (2015). His other achievements include three Grammy Awards, three Golden Globes, five BAFTAs, ten David di Donatello, eleven Nastro d'Argento, three European Film Awards, the Golden Lion Honorary Award and the Polar Music Prize in 2010.

Alice Koller: Solitude is an Achievement

Alice Koller quotes (showing 1-3 of 3)
“Being solitary is being alone well: being alone luxuriously immersed in doings of your own choice, aware of the fullness of your won presence rather than of the absence of others. Because solitude is an achievement.”
― Alice Koller

“I've arrived at this outermost edge of my life by my own actions. Where I am is thoroughly unacceptable. Therefore, I must stop doing what I've been doing.”
― Alice Koller

“But there is saying, and there is doing, and almost always people do something better than they can talk about it, as though the minded body defeats every attempt to select out only the mind part as deserving sole responsibility for the success.”
― Alice Koller, An Unknown Woman