The Chicago Bears

The Chicago Bears are an American football team in the NFC East division of the National Football league. The team is based in Chicago, Illinois and since 1971 have played their home games at Chicago’s Soldier Field which is located on the shore of Lake Michigan. The bears have won 9 Professional American Football league championships which include 8 NFL Championships and Super Bowl XX. Twenty-six of their players are featured in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. The Bears have recorded more regular season and overall victories than any other NFL football team. On December 7, 2008 they won their 700th game. For more than 40 years, the team logo has been the ‘wishbone’ C.

The company club was founded in 1919 in Decatur and named the Decatur Staleys for the company who established it. The team became a charter member of the NFL in 1920. The team made the move to Chicago in 1921 and became the Chicago Staleys. In 1922 George Halas purchased the rights to the club from A.E. Staley for $100.00 and renamed the team the Chicago Bears. Home games were played at Wrigley Field through the 1970 season. The Bears have an aggressive long-standing rivalry with the Green Bay Packers dating back to 1921. One of the incidents that started the feud happened in 1921. Halas somehow got the Packers expelled from the league so he could keep them from signing up a player that he wanted for his team. After successfully closing the deal with that player Halas condescendingly got them re-admitted to the league. The teams have played more than 170 games against each other.

Lovie Lee Smith is the current head coach of the Bears. He took the team to the win of Superbowl XX in 2006. Lovie earned all-state honors 3 years in high school as a defensive end and linebacker. He played college football at the University of Tulsa. He was a two time All-American at linebacker and safety. His first coaching jobs were with high school teams. By 1983 he was coaching linebackers at the college level, first at his alma mater Tulsa, followed by stints with University of Wisconsin-Madison, Arizona State University, and University of Kentucky. He moved on to defensive backs coach at the University of Tennessee and Ohio State University. His first professional job was linebacker coach for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. His next move was to the St. Louis Rams as the defensive coordinator. In 2004 the Chicago Bears hired Smith as head coach.

Some of the Bears strongest and favorite players include Kyle Orton, Robbie Gould, Matt Forte, Devin Hester, Lance Briggs, Charles Tillman, Brian Urlacher, Kevin Payne and Corey Graham. Bad news for the Bears is the loss of defensive tackle, Dusty Dvoracek, who is recovering from a torn ACL and will sit out the season.

Dallas Cowboys

The Dallas Cowboys are an American football team in the NFC East division of the National Football League. The Cowboys home games were played in the open-air Texas stadium but starting with the 2009 season they will be playing in the new Cowboy Stadium, which is a domed stadium with a retractable roof, in Arlington, Texas. The new stadium will seat between 80,000 and 100,000 fans. The Cowboys 160 sold out regular and post season games streak began in 1990. There were 79 straight sellouts at home and 81 straight sell outs while on the road.

The Dallas Cowboys are one of the most valuable sports franchises in the world. They generate close to $270 million in yearly revenue and have an estimated value over $1.6 billion. The team has been one of the most successful in the last 5 decades winning 5 Super Bowls and 8 conference championships. They hold the record for the most wins (41) on Monday Night Football. They also hold the NFL record for the most consecutive winning seasons (20). They won 32 of 56 post-season games which is a league record. They have the distinction of the most division titles (20), the most appearances in the NFC Championship Game (14), and the most appearances at the Super Bowl (8). The Cowboys success and popularity has gained them the nickname “America’s Team”.

The Cowboys joined the NFL as a 1960 expansion team. The Cowboys had played under the names of the Dallas Steers and Dallas Rangers but had changed to the Dallas Cowboys by 1960. The blue star logo associated with the team is one of the best known logos in the sport. The original blue star was a solid shape but a white line and a blue border were added in 1964.

Wade Phillips is the current head coach of the Dallas Cowboys. His experience includes time as head coach of the New Orleans Saints (record 1-3), the Denver Broncos (record 16-17), the Buffalo Bills (record 29-21) and the Atlanta Falcons (record 2-1). His career winning percentage as a head coach is .596. His son Wes is an assistant coach for the team.

A few players in this winning line up include Tony Romo, John Kitna, Keon Lattimore, Sam Hurd, Martellus Bennett, Willie Reed, Kevin Ogletree, Mike Hamlin and Courtney Brown. With all that said and done how can you talk about the Dallas Cowboys without including their cheering squad, the legendary Dallas Cowgirls. Few people understand the commitment and hard work that go into being a member of this squad. You sign up for at least 1 year. There are multiple practices per week, even before the football season begins. The girls are required to attend all practices with no monetary compensation. Their only guaranteed income is $50.00 per home game. There are opportunities for paid appearances and shows. The Dallas Cowgirls are not only beautiful, they are physically fit as well. Be sure to take advantage of the 2009 package containing their new stadium, their winning ways and the excitement and beauty of their half time show.

Ted Kennedy Dead at 77

Edward Moore Kennedy, better known as Ted, was born February 22, 1932 in Boston. He was the youngest of nine children born to Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy. He attended Harvard College and the University Of Virginia School Of Law. He served in the United States Army. He was the youngest brother of assassinated President John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Senator Robert F. Kennedy, who was also assassinated.

Ted was sworn into the Senate on November 7, 1962. He was an outspoken individual who stood up for what he believed in and he championed many progressive causes and bills. Ted was a key player in passing laws that affected all Americans. Some of these laws include the “Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965”, “National Cancer Act of 1971”, “Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986”, “Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990”, “Ryan White AIDS Care Act” in 1990, “Civil Rights Act of 1991”, “Mental Health Parity Act” in 1996 and 2008, “State Children’s Health Insurance Program” in 1997, “No Child Left Behind Act” in 2002 and the “Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act” in 2009. He believed in universal health care, which he was working toward with the Obama administration.

He was a powerful speaker and eventually became known as “The Lion of the Senate”. He was the second most senior member of the senate and the third longest serving senator in United States history. More than 300 bills written by Ted and his staff have been made into laws. Although he was a Democrat, he was able to work with the Republicans as well to find compromises that everyone could support.

Some of Ted’s most often quoted words were from the eulogy he gave at Robert’s funeral: “My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life; to be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it. Those of us who loved him and who take him to his rest today, pray that what he was to us and what he wished for others will some day come to pass for all the world. As he said many times, in many parts of this nation, to those he touched and who sought to touch him: ‘Some men see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not.’”

Ted’s malignant brain tumor was diagnosed in May of 2008. Because of his battle with cancer he was often absent from his Senate seat and his last appearance there was early spring. He died just short of midnight on August 25, 2009 at his home in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts. His final moments were spent with his family and his priest, Reverend Patrick Tarrant, surrounding his bed in tearful prayer. His body will lie in repose Thursday and Friday at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston. His funeral will be at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Basilica on Saturday followed by his burial at Arlington National Cemetery. Ted Kennedy may not have lived a life without flaws, few of us have. Hopefully, he will long be remembered for the good that he did for the people of the United States, whom he served.

New Orleans Saints

The New Orleans Saints are an American football team based in New Orleans, Louisiana. They play in the NFC South in the National Football League. The Saints home stadium has been the Louisiana Superdome since 1975. Between 1967 when the team was founded until 1974, their home base was Tulane Stadium on the Tulane University campus. After the destruction of Hurricane Katrina, the Saints 2005 home games were split between the Alamodome in San Antonio, Texas and LSU’s Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge, Louisiana except for their opening game, which was played at Giants Stadium in New York. The Louisiana Superdome was renovated and the Saints returned to the Superdome for the 2006 season.

The team was named for the world famous jazz anthem, “When the Saints Go Marching In”. The team’s colors, black and gold, symbolize strong ties to the oil (black gold) industry. Al Hirt, trumpeter and part owner of the Saints, also has the distinction of his rendition of “When the Saints Go Marching In” being the official fight song of the team.

The New Orleans Saints head coach is Sean Payton, 14th since the teams beginning. At the end of his first season, he was voted the Coach of the Year. This is the beginning of his fourth season and he is one of the most successful coaches in the team’s history. This also marks his 13th season in the NFL and his 21st year in coaching. Payton stresses responsibility, character, and accountability with the team. He has rebuilt the roster and gathered a staff of coaches who push the fundamentals. As the team prepares for the 2009 season there are only 8 players remaining from the team that Payton inherited.

In 2008, they ranked number one in the NFL in total offense. Last season they also set team records for points (463), total yards (6,571), net passing yards (4,977), touchdowns (57) and first downs (354). Among the players to keep an eye on this year are Drew Brees, Mark Brunnel, Mike Bell, Lynell Hamilton, Marques Colston, Robert Meacham, Garrett Hartley, Thomas Morstead, Jo-Lonn Dunbar and Chris Reis. Be sure to stand and cheer when the Saints go marching in!

Literary Giant - Ayn Rand

Alisa Zinov’yevna Rosenbaum, was born on February 2, 1905, in Saint Petersburg, Russia. She was the oldest of 3 daughters born to Zinovy Zacharovich Rosenbaum and Anna Borisovna Rosenbaum who were non-practicing Jews. Zinovy was a chemist and a successful pharmaceutical entrepreneur.

Rand taught herself to read at age 6. At the tender age of 9, she decided that writing fiction would be her career. Alisa, while still in Russia, decided on Rand as her professional writing surname and she chose the Finnish name Ayn as her first name. The family fled to the Crimea to escape the rise of the Bolshevik party when she was 12and it was there that she finished high school. They returned to Saint Petersburg when she was 16 and she entered the University of Petrograd, studying philosophy and history. She graduated in 1924 and was oppressed by the restrictions and standards of the communist party. Rand had long enjoyed the cinema so she studied Screenwriting at the State Institute for Cinema Arts. Her first publication was a booklet on Pola Negri, an actress (1925), and another titled “Hollywood: American Movie City” (1926).

In 1925 she obtained a visa to visit relatives in the U.S. The visit was supposed to be a short one but Rand was determined to make it a permanent move. After 6 months with her relatives, she renewed her visa and moved to Hollywood to begin a career as a screen writer. She met Frank Connor whom she married in 1929 and they spent the next 50 years together until he died. The next few years she worked at non-writing jobs. In 1932 she sold her first screenplay, "Red Prawn", to Universal Pictures. Her first stage play, Night of January 16, was produced in Hollywood and then on Broadway. We the Living was her first novel. It was based on her years under Soviet tyranny and was the most autobiographical of her novels.

In 1935 she began writing The Fountainhead. She completed the book but it was turned down by twelve publishers before Bobbs-Merrill Company published it in 1943. It became a word of mouth best seller over the next 2 years in spite of the negative remarks by some critics. It gave Rand lasting recognition as a champion of individualism.

Returning to Hollywood she started the screenplay for "The Fountainhead" but because of the war restrictions it would not be produced until 1948. Rand began writing "Atlas Shrugged" in 1946 while working part time as a screenwriter for Hal Wallis Productions. She moved back to New York in 1951 working full time on the novel. It was published in 1957 and is considered Rands magnum opus. It was also her last work of fiction. "Atlas Shrugged" dramatized her own philosophy in an intellectual mystery that covered ethics, metaphysics, epistemology, politics, economics and sex.

From then on, Rand wrote and lectured on her philosophy, "Objectivism". She explained that it was a philosophy for living on earth. She published her own periodicals until 1976 and her essays provided much of the material for 6 books on "Objectivism" and its application to the culture.

Every book by Rand that was published during her life time is still in print. Several new volumes were published after her death. Her expectation of man and her philosophy for living on earth have changed the lives of countless readers and started a philosophic movement on American culture. Ayn Rand died on March 6, 1982 in her New York apartment.

Literary Giants - Joyce Carol Oates

Joyce Carol Oates is an American author who was raised in rural New York. Her novels numbering over 50 have won many awards and prizes in the literary world. These include “Black Water”, “Them” and “What I Lived For.” Since the 1960’s Oates has been one of the leading American novelists, with a reputation for being a very prolific novelist.

Joyce Carol Oates was the first in her family to complete high school and went on to attend Syracuse University. While at college she won a college short story contest that was sponsored by “Mademoiselle” magazine, and states that she trained herself as a writer by writing novel after novel, and throwing them out when she finished them.
Joyce graduated Syracuse as valedictorian and went onto obtain her M.A. from the University of Wisconsin.

Oates’ first novel “With Shuddering Fall was published when she was 26 years old, since then she has published an average of 2 books per year. Joyce Carol Oates often writes about rural poverty, class tensions, power, sexual abuse, female adolescence and sometimes the supernatural. Violence is a constant in all of her work, which led to Oates writing an essay to respond to the question "Why is Your Writing So Violent”. Her novel “We Were the Mulvaneys” was chosen by Oprah’s Book Club in 2001 and also turned into a Lifetime Movie. Oates has also written several mystery novels under the pen names of Rosamond Smith and Lauren Kelly.

Besides being a novelist Joyce Carol Oates has also been a wife, a widow, and a professor at Princeton University. Joyce is a devoted runner who uses the time that she is running to envision scenes for her novels. Oates actually writes all of her novels in longhand, she works from 8a.m. until 1p.m. each day, then for a few hours in the evening. The prolific work of Joyce Carol Oates has become one of her best known attributes; critics have criticized her for producing so many novels. Yet, she states that she works hard, the hours roll by and she seems to create more than she anticipates, but she has more stories to tell and more novels to write.

Literary Giants - Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski was born in Germany in 1920. He became a famous German American novelist, poet, and writer of short stories. Charles’ father was an American serviceman and his mother a German native. After the economy collapsed in Germany after World War I, the family moved to the U.S. Originally settling in Baltimore then moving to South Los Angeles in California. Growing up in L.A., Charles was bullied and mocked for his accent and the clothing he wore. As quiet and socially inept child, Charles was introduced to alcohol in his early teens. After High School, Bukowski attended a city college for 2 years, his subjects? Art, journalism and literature of course. While in college Charles found himself becoming involved in the political world that prevailed on Campus, even briefly associating with a group of Nazis.

At age 24, Bukowski’s short story entitled “Aftermath of a Lengthy Rejection Slip” was published in a magazine, a few years later another of his short stories was published in a collection. Growing disillusioned with his failure to set the literary world on fire, Bukowski quit writing and began what he referred to as a “ten year drunk”. He roamed across the United States and worked sporadically. He was married and divorced, and began writing poetry.

Charles returned to Los Angeles in the 60’s working as a post office filing clerk. As time passed, Bukowski wrote a column for a newspaper in L.A. called “Notes of a Dirty Old Man”. The column was picked up by the Los Angeles Free Press and the Nola Express of New Orleans. He also launched his own literary magazine with his friend Neeli Cherkovski, this magazine had no impact on either mans literary career.

As the 70’s moved in, Charles was signed with Black Sparrow Press and quit his post office job to write full time. Less than a month late, his first novel was finished. “Post Office” was just the beginning for Bukowski’s career as a novelist.

Charles Bukowski died in 1994 of leukemia shortly after finishing his final novel “Pulp”. Charles listed several authors as influences including D.H. Lawrence, Ernest Hemingway, and Fyodor Dostoyevsky. He also spoke of Los Angeles as always being his favorite subject due to the fact that he was raised in L.A. and knew the city.

Literary Giants - Alice Walker

American author Alice Walker is best known for her novel “The Color Purple”. That novel not only wont the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction but was also adapted into an award winning screenplay as well. However “The Color Purple” was published in 1982 and Ms. Walker had not only been writing but had been contributing to the feminist and civil rights movements for several years before that happened.

Born in Georgia in 1944, Alice Walker is youngest of the 8 Walker children. Her mother a maid and her father a sharecropper knew that children, even black children, needed an education. Alice was enrolled at age 4 in the first grade. Alice took to education and was a wonderful student; she was valedictorian of her graduating class as well as most popular girl and the Queen of the Senior Class.

After high school Alice attended Spellman College in Atlanta, and then transferred to Sarah Lawrence College near NYC. Walker became interested and involved in the civil rights movement. She returned to the south after college and was involved with welfare rights, children’s programs, and voter registration drives in Mississippi.

Alice and her husband, a Jewish civil rights lawyer named Mel Leventhal, moved to Jackson Mississippi in 1967 and were the first legally married inter-racial couple in the state. This brought a great deal of harassment and threats from the KKK.

In the midst of all this strife and fighting for civil rights, Alice continued to write. From her first book of poetry that was published while she was at Sarah Lawrence to being an editor for Ms. Magazine, and several published articles and collections of short stories and poetry, Alice Walker was a name that was well known in the literary world.

Her novels include “Meridian”, “The Temple of My Familiar” and of course “The Color Purple”. The typical focus of Alice Walker’s works is the struggle of blacks and particularly women, in the war against a racist, sexist, and violent society. Alice Walker is a respected figure in the political community for her support of the liberal ideals of unconventional and unpopular views.

Literary Giants - Alice Munro

Alice Munro is a Canadian short story writer who was born in 1931. She is well known for her collections of short stories that began when she was just a teenager. Alice’s first story was published in 1950 while she was a student at the University of Western Ontario. Alice left the University in 1951 to get married and become a mother. She gave birth to 4 daughters, one of which died 15 hours after birth.

The first collection of Alice Munro’s stories called “Dance of the Happy Shades” was published in 1968 and received high acclaim including winning Canada’s highest literary prize the Governor General’s Award. The collections have continued over the years and some of her stories have been adapted to film.

Ms. Munro has maintained a general setting for her stories; most of them are placed in Huron County, Ontario. This regional focus and all knowing narrator are features of her fiction works. Many people have compared Munro’s small town settings to the American writers from the rural South such as William Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor. But the characters of Alice Munro’s work have less intense reactions, which makes her well known as an author who captures the personality and essence of the “every” man.

Frequent themes in Alice Munro’s work are the dilemmas of coming of age and dealing with family in a small town. This of course relates to her own beginnings as a writer at a young age. Over time, Ms. Munro has moved on to focus on middle age, single women and the elderly. Alice Munro is a writer who writes what she knows, what she has experienced or witnessed and helps the reader make sense of the same issues in their own lives. Critics have claimed that while they are short stories, the works of Alice Munro have the emotional and literary depth of full length novels.

There is a new collection of Alice Munro’s short stories tentatively scheduled to be released in 2009. Over the years her work has been published not only in her collections but in many newspapers, periodicals and magazines.

Literary Giants - Jack Kerouac

Born March 12, 1922 Jack Kerouac was an artistic renaissance man, as an American author, poet and painter. Along with William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, Kerouac is considered one f the pioneers of the Beat Generation.

Today, many years after his 1969 death Kerouac is thought of as an important and influential writer, however, while his work was very popular with a certain culture during his lifetime, he received very little critical acclaim.

Amazingly this great American writer didn’t even learn the English language until he was 6 years old. It has been discovered that Jack Kerouac actually began writing his novel “On the Road” in French, as well as much of his poetry.

Jack Kerouac lived an adventure filled life, from cross country road trips to disposing of murder evidence he always stood by his convictions and made the choices that appealed to his sense of fairness. After his arrest as a material witness in the murder case, Jack married Edie Parker in return for her paying his bail. One year later that marriage was annulled. So while convictions and fairness came into play in his life, Jack Kerouac was also willing to do whatever needed to be done in order to get where he wanted to be.

Jack Kerouac had many careers. He spent time as a sports reporter, construction worker, US Merchant Marine, and joined the US Navy two times. One thing that never changed, no matter what job he was working at, Jack always wrote. He carried a notebook with him everywhere he went. One can only conclude that the great American novels that he produced were due to this habitual jotting of thoughts, for while Kerouac wrote spontaneous prose and mainly lacking edits, his novels were primarily based upon events from his life and people that he encountered.

After many revisions and edits his work was deemed publishable, but in the original free thought flowing style Jack Kerouac created “The Subterraneans” and “Visions of Cody” which remain in the free flowing spontaneous style that Kerouac was known for.

Like so many great artists Jack Kerouac died at the early age of 47 due to complications of alcohol abuse.

Literary Giants ~ Dorothy Parker

Dorothy Parker was born on August 22, 1893 in West End, New York while her parents were there on vacation. The prosperous Jewish family lived in Manhattan where her father, Jacob, was a garment manufacturer. Her mother, Annie Eliza Rothschild was from the Rothschild Banking Clan. Dorothy was the youngest of 4 children. Her mother died when she was 4 and Jacob married Eleanor Francis Lewis who died just 3 years later. It was not a loss Dorothy mourned.

Dorothy’s early education was at Blessed Sacrament Convent School which was Roman Catholic. She finished her education at Miss Dana’s School in Morristown, New Jersey. She claimed the only thing she learned was that ‘if you spit on a pencil eraser it will erase in’.

When her father died in 1913 she was twenty and already knew she wanted to be a writer. Earning a living had to come first so she found a job as a dance class pianist at night and honed her writing skills during the day.

In 1914 Dorothy sold “Any Porch”, a poem, to Vanity Fair for $12.00. In 1916 she sold more of her poetry to Vogue and was given an editorial position at the magazine and her career took off from there. In 1917 she married Edwin Pond Parker II, a stockbroker, but the marriage didn’t last long as he was an alcoholic and during WWI became addicted to morphine. After the divorce in 1920 she kept his name. During the time of her marriage she worked at Vanity Fair where her managing editor, Frank Crowinshield, said she had “the quickest tongue imaginable, and I need not to say the keenest sense of mockery.” For a time she filled in for P.G. Wodehouse as a Theater Critic. It was said that she was very entertaining at it, scathing and mocking, while sparing no one. Here is where she met and became close friends with writers Robert Benchley and Robert Sherwood. The 3 formed the famous Algonquin Round Table which consisted of luncheons at the Algonquin Motel in New York. The intellectual set included writers and journalists like Franklin Pierce Adams, James Thurber, Alexander Woollcott, George S. Kaufman, Edna Ferber and other well known personalities. Conversation at these gatherings was always lively but seldom kind. The 1994 movie ‘Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle’ was based on the life and times of this famous group.

Vanity Fair fired Dorothy in 1920 and several of her friends resigned in protest. Dorothy and Robert Benchley formed a free lance writing firm called ‘Park-Bench’. In 1925 the pair joined Harold Ross’s new magazine ‘The New Yorker’ and Dorothy began writing book reviews. Her acid wit was not always popular with the writers. She stayed there until 1933 but would continue writing for the magazine off and on until 1955.

In 1934 she married Alan Campbell who was an actor and script writer. It was a rocky marriage with several separations but it was the beginning of a flourishing career with him writing such successful film scripts as ‘A Star is Born’. She worked on Hitchcock’s film ‘Sagoteur’. With the help of Lillian Hellman, Dashiell Hammett, and others Dorothy founded ‘The Screen Writers Guild”. While in Hollywood she dabbled in politics as one of the founders of the Anti-Nazi League and later veered towards Communism. She was actually investigated by the FBI. She was blacklisted and out of work in Hollywood effectively ending her script writing career. She moved back to New York as a Literary Critic for the Esquire until 1962.

In 1963 Alan died suddenly of a heart attack and she was alone and riddled with grief. Already an alcoholic, it got worse. On June 7, 1967, shortly before her 74th birthday, she too died from of a heart attack. According to her will, she left her estate to the civil rights activist, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Literary Giants ~ Jean Rhys

Jean Rhys was born Ella Gwendoline Rees Williams on August 24, 1890 in Roseau, Dominica. Her father, William Rees Williams was a Welsh doctor. Her mother, Minna Lockhart Williams was a 3rd generation Dominican Creole of Scottish descent. Rhys attended the Convent School until she turned 16 and then moved to England where she would live with her Aunt Clarice. She studied at the Perse School for girls, Cambridge and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. She had a hard time with the English language and that fact kept her an outsider. She tried working as a chorus girl in 1909 and 1910 but was unsuccessful. When her father died she was forced to leave her studies.

Rhys served as a volunteer worker in a canteen during WWI. She also worked briefly in a pension office. In 1919 she married journalist and song writer Jean Lenglet. They had a son who died at 3 weeks and a daughter. Rhys wrote short stories under the patronage of Ford Madox Ford, an English writer and had an affair with him. During this time in Paris she familiarized herself with modern art and literature. She became an alcoholic and the condition would be life long. Resentment of a patriarchal society and feeling of displacement that she felt would eventually form some of the most important themes in her work. Her first collection of stories was published in 1927. Her first novel, “Postures”, appeared in 1928. During the 1930’s she wrote “After Leaving Mr. Mackenzie”, “Voyage in the Dark” and “Good Morning, Midnight”. These 3 novels would bring her a degree of literary reputation and financial security that carried her through the next 15 years.

In the 1940’s and 1950’s Rhys went into a secluded retirement and was out of the public eye. In 1966 her masterpiece, “Wide Sargasso Sea”, was published and she emerged as a significant literary figure. The novel was written as a prequel to Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. For this novel she won the WH Smith Literary Award in 1967. Her writing often echoed her own tragic life experiences. She once declared, “I have only ever written about myself”.

Jean Rhys died on May 14, 1979, in Exeter, England. She was in the process of writing her autobiography. In 1979, after her death, the incomplete text appeared under the title “Smile Please: An Unfinished Autobiography”.

Les Paul Died Today at 94

Lester William Polsfuss, better known as Les Paul, died today from complications from pneumonia at White Plains Hospital in White Plains, New York. His family and friends were by his side at his passing.

Les was probably best known for his pioneering development of the solid body electric guitar which made the rock and roll sound possible. His interest in music started with learning how to play the harmonica at the age of 8. He moved to the banjo but quickly discarded it for the guitar. By the time he was 13 he was performing as a country music guitarist. AT 17 he dropped out of school to play with Wolverton’s Radio Band on KMOX in St. Louis. Paul’s first records were released while he was working in Chicago radio. In 1948 he was involved in a near fatal car accident that shattered his right arm and elbow. According to his instructions, the doctors set his arm at a permanent angle that would allow him to cradle and pick the guitar.

Paul is credited with making several recording innovations including overdubbing, delay effects, tape delay, phasing effects and multitrack recording. His talents were further evident in his unique playing style (including licks, trills, chording sequences and fretting techniques and timing) that was so different from other performers at the time. A lifelong tinkerer he created ‘The Log guitar’ because he was dissatisfied with the acoustic guitars that were available in the mid 30’s. Built in 1939 it was one of the first solid body electric guitars. Gibson Guitar Corp. designed a guitar following Paul’s specifications and gave it to him to try. He was impressed enough to sign a contract and the model was named the “Les Paul.” The contract was an agreement that he would never play in public or be photographed with any guitar that was not a Gibson.

The Les Paul Trio included Paul, Jim Atkins and Ernie Newton. They performed together until 1943 when he moved to Hollywood and formed a new trio with Mary Ford and Eddie Stapleton. They appeared on Bing Crosby’s radio show which resulted in Crosby sponsoring Paul’s recording experiments. The two recorded several songs including a #1 hit with “It’s Been A Long, Long Time.” Paul’s trio also recorded their own music on Decca in the late 40’s. Paul and his wife, Mary, had hits including “How High the Moon”, “The World Is Waiting for the Sunrise”, and “Vaya Con Dios”.

Paul’s need for multiple non-destructive tracks to record on led him to re-invent the Ampex 200. Ampex was inspired to develop two and three track recorders. In 1954 Paul commissioned Ampex to build the first 8 track tape recorder and paid for it himself. It took them 3 years to get it working properly and by the time it was useable, Paul’s music was not as popular so he never even recorded on it.

Paul went into semi-retirement in the 60’s, occasionally returning to the studio. His most familiar recordings from then through the mid 70’s were updated and put on an album for London Records as

Les Paul Now

. By the late 80’s Paul returned to live performances. In 2006, at the age of 90, he was awarded 2 Grammys for his album Les Paul & Friends: American Made World Played.

In 1978 Les and Mary were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. In 1983 Paul received a lifetime achievements award, Grammy Trustees Award. In 1988 he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In 1991 the Mix Foundation established an annual award named for him that honors “individuals or institutions that have set the highest standards of excellence in the creative application of audio technology”. In 2005 Paul was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame for the development of his solid body electric guitar. In 2006 he was inducted into the National Broadcasters Hall of Fame. Paul has been named as an honorary member of the Audio Engineering Society. He was also an Honorary Board Member for Little Kids Rock, a nonprofit program that provides free musical instruments and instruction to underserved schools across the country.

Literary Giant - Amy Tan

Amy Tan was born February 19, 1952 in Oakland, California to parents who were Chinese immigrants. John Tan, her father, was a Baptist minister and electrical engineer who moved to America to escape the civil war in China. Her mother, Daisy, had survived more than one tragedy before she escaped on the last boat to leave Shanghai before the communist takeover in 1949. She had divorced her abusive husband and been forced to leave her three daughters behind. These events in her mother’s life inspired Amy’s novel “The Kitchen God’s Wife”.

John and Daisy also had two boys. They lived in the San Francisco Bay area of California. Amy’s father and oldest brother both died of brain tumors within a year of each other. Daisy moved Amy and her remaining brother to Switzerland where Amy finished high school and started at a Baptist college her mother had picked out. She wanted Amy to be a doctor and a concert pianist. Amy defied her mother by following her boyfriend, Louis DeMattei, to San Jose City College where she studied English and linguistics and eventually received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in these fields.

In 1974 Amy and Louis, an attorney, were married and eventually settled in San Francisco. Amy attended the University of California at Santa Cruz and Berkeley studying for a doctorate in linguistics. She left her studies in 1976 and took a job as a language development consultant with the Alameda county Association for Retarded Citizens. She and a partner had a business writing speeches for salesmen and executives of large corporations. After a dispute she left and became a full time freelance writer. She prospered but found little satisfaction with her work. She studied jazz piano trying to build on the forced musical training of her childhood. This was when she started writing fiction. Her first story “Endgame” earned her a place in the Squaw Valley writer’s workshop taught by novelist Oakley Hall. The story was printed in FM (a literary magazine) and Seventeen. With the completion of her second story, “Waiting Between the Trees”, literary agent Sandra Dijkstra took her on as a client.

After Amy’s mother had recovered from an illness, she took her to China to visit with the daughter she had left behind. This trip brought mother and daughter closer together and inspired Amy to finish the book of stories as her agent had encouraged. The completed stories and an outline of the remaining stories would be turned into the best selling book, “The Joy Luck Club”. She had received a $50,000 advance from G.P. Putnam’s Sons which allowed her to stop her business writing and finish the book. It was on the NY Times best seller list for 8 months. The paperback rights went for 1.23 million. It has been translated into 17 languages. She has since written “The Kitchen God’s Wife”, “The Hundred Secret Senses” and the “Bonesetter’s Daughter” plus 2 children’s books, “The Moon Lady” and “The Chinese Siamese Cat”. She also wrote “The Opposite of Fate: A Book of Musings”. She has received numerous awards for her writing.

She is still married to Lou DeMattei, still residing in San Francisco and New York with their Yorkshire terriers Bubba and Lilli. In 1999 Amy contracted Lyme disease, probably while hiking. It was debilitating and hindered her ability to write. She has worked to bring awareness to the disease, supported research efforts and helped to found LymeAid 4 Kids.

Zora Neale Hurston

Zora Neale Hurston was born on January 7, 1891 in Notasulga, Alabama. Her father, John Hurston was a Baptist preacher, carpenter and tenant farmer practicing each as the need arose. Her mother, Lucy Ann Potts Hurston was a school teacher. When Zora was three, the family moved to Eatonville, Florida, which was the first all black town to be incorporated in the United States. Her father eventually became mayor of the town and Zora later wrote that it was a place that black Americans could live as they desired, independent of white society. In 1904 Lucy died and John soon married again. Zora was sent away to school in Jacksonville, Florida and worked part time as a maid.

In 1917, Zora began studying at the high school division of Morgan College in Baltimore, Maryland. In order to qualify for a free education Zora claimed her birth year was 1901. She graduated from high school at the age of 27. She started her undergraduate studies at Howard University that same year. She was co-founder of The Hilltop, the student newspaper. She left Howard in 1924 and was offered a scholarship to Barnard College where she would be the only black student. While here she conducted ethnographic research with Franz Boas of Columbia University. She also worked with Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead. In 1927 she received a B.A. in anthropology and spent the next 2 years as a graduate student at Columbia University.

Zora had arrived in New York City at the peak of the Harlem Renaissance in 1925. Before she entered Barnard her short story Spunk was selected for The New Negro, a landmark anthology of fiction, poetry and essays focusing on African and African American art and literature. The following year a group of young black writers (calling themselves the “Niggerati”), including Langston Hughes, Wallace Thurman and Zora, produced a literary magazine called Fire!!. Many of the young artists and writers of the Harlem Renaissance had their work featured in the magazine.

Zora continued her writing career and had several of her short stories published. Her first 3 novels, Jonah’s Gourd Vine, Their Eyes Were Watching God and Moses, Man of the Mountain were published during the mid to late 30’s. During the 40’s she had work published in the Saturday Evening Post and The American Mercury periodical. Her last published novel was Seraph on the Suwanee, printed in 1948. The novel Their Eyes Were Watching God was considered her masterwork and had been completed during her fieldwork in Haiti.

Zora’s outspoken beliefs caused her nothing but grief. When the battle of desegregation was being fought she let it be known that black children did not have to go to school with whites in order to receive an education. She had the black community supporting this movement up in arms. She also wrote an article attacking the rights of the blacks to vote in the South by stating that their votes were being bought and therefore were not their own.

Her last years were lived in poverty with no one knowing or caring where she was. She ended her working career as domestic help, the same way she started. She was working on another book, The Life of Herod the Great but died before it was finished. She suffered a severe stroke in 1959 and was committed to the Saint Lucie County Welfare Home in Fort Pierce, Florida to live out her days. She died on January 28, 1960 of hypertensive heart disease.

Virginia Woolf

Adeline Virginia Stephen was born January 25, 1882 in London. Her mother, Julia Prinsep Jackson Stephen was a famous model for Pre-Raphaelite painters. Her father, Sir Leslie Stephen was a notable scholar, author and critic. Virginia was home schooled by her parents. Her parents had each been married and widowed and had children from their previous marriages. Julia had Herbert, George and Stella. Leslie had a daughter who was mentally disabled and lived with the family until she was 21 and then institutionalized. Leslie and Julia had 4 children together (Vanessa, Thoby, Virginia and Adrian).

Their children were raised in an environment filled with Victorian literary society influences. Visitors in their home included Henry James, G. E. Moore, E. M. Forster, George Henry Lewes, Julia Margaret Cameron and James Russell Lowell who was Virginia’s honorary godfather. The girls of the family were taught the classics and English literature while the boys received a formal education.

Julia died suddenly in 1895 when Virginia was just 13 years old. She lost her half-sister Stella 2 years later. These deaths were the prelude to Virginia’s first nervous breakdown. Seven years later, in 1904, her father died and she was plunged into the depths of despair suffering a collapse so severe that she was institutionalized for a short period. Her breakdowns, mood swings and recurring depression were fueled by the sexual abuse committed against her and her sister Vanessa by their half brothers George and Gerald Duckworth. These maladies would torment her for the rest of her life.

Although Virginia’s instability often affected her social life, her writing continued with few breaks until the end of her life. She began her professional writing in 1905 for the Times Literary Supplement. She attained both critical and popular success for her writings.

In 1912 Virginia married Leonard Woolf who was a brilliant writer and critic. She often referred to as a ‘penniless Jew” but they enjoyed a close and loving bond. They often worked together professionally and opened the Hogarth Press which subsequently published Virginia’s novels. They also published works by T. S. Eliot, Laurens van der Post and others. In 1922 Virginia entered a long lasting sexual relationship with Vita Sackville-West. The women remained friends even after the affair ended.

The destruction of her London home during the Blitz at the onset of WW II worsened her already tentative condition until she was unable to work. On March 28, 1941 she put on her coat, filled the pockets with stones and walked into the River Ouse near her home and drowned. Her body was found 3 weeks later and her husband had her cremated and then buried her under a tree in the garden of their home in Rodmell, Sussex.

Virginia wrote several novels, short story collections, biographies, non-fiction books, autobiographical writings and diaries, 3 letters, 1 drama and 1 introduction preface.

Literary Giants - Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath was born October 27, 1932, during the Great Depression, in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts. Her Father, Otto Emile Plath, was an immigrant from Germany and a professor of apiology and German at Boston University. Her mother was Aurelia Schober Plath.

In April of 1935, Warren was born into the family and they moved to Winthrop Massachusetts the following year. Otto died suddenly shortly after Sylvia turned 8. Plath’s poem Daddy would later be put on his tombstone. She was a sensitive child and greatly affected by his death. The grief, guilt and angry despair she felt stayed with her for her entire life and would ultimately show through in her writing. Plath’s first poem was published in the Boston Herald’s children’s section when she was 8 ½ years old.

In 1942 Aurelia moved with her children and parents to Wellesley, Massachusetts. Even though Plath was troubled, she excelled in school for her superior academic skills and writing abilities. Some of her poems and stories were published in Seventeen magazine. In august of 1950, her first story, And Summer Will Not Come Again was published.

That September Plath entered Smith College in Northampton, New York on a scholarship. She did extremely well there also, academically and socially. Her teachers and peers called her the golden girl. Plath was adamant about her career and filled endless notebooks with her writings. In her junior year
she won Mademoiselle’s fiction contest and was given a guest editorship for the magazine for June of 1953.

Plath went home depressed and conflicted with the All-American girl image
that she had fought so hard to achieve. She suffered a serious mental breakdown and attempted suicide. She was given shock treatments and eventually returned to Smith College. She graduated summa cum laude and went to Cambridge on a Fulbright fellowship that she had won. It was there that she met her future husband, Ted Hughes (a poet). They were married in London in June of 1956.

Plath returned to America, with a graduate degree, to teach at Smith in 1957. After one year she quit to devote all of her time to writing. Plath and Ted spent time in Saratoga Springs as writers-in-residence to Yaddo. Their first child Frieda was born and Plath completed many of the poems printed in The Colossus. Their son Nicholas was born 2 years later. Some critics considered her radio play Three Women: A Monologue for Three Voices a transitional piece of work. After that her writing style changed and became more spontaneous and less narrative and less expository.

As her poetry developed it became more autobiographical and private. Most of the poems in Ariel were written during the last months of her life and were a personal testimony to all the negative feelings she had locked inside. In her writing she found the voice that she had sought for so long. Since it was not the norm, it offended many people with its directness and use of startling metaphors. Her writing took on the darkness that she felt was her life. It talked of suicide, death, mutilation and brutality. She had found herself at last and was no longer plagued with the All-American girl image.

Her marriage had ended by 1963, she was ill and on the verge of another mental breakdown. Caring for two small children in a cramped London flat, she hit the depths of despair. On February 11, 1963, after making sure her children were safe, she stuck her head in the oven and turned on the gas. Some believe that she had not intended to kill herself but her death was ruled a suicide. Plath was an American poet, novelist, children’s author, short story author and author of the journals that she had started at age 11 and continued until her death.

Literary Giants - Robertson Davies

William Robertson Davies was born August 28, 1913 in Thamesville, Ontario. His father, Senator William Rupert Davies was also a newspaperman. His mother was Florence Sheppard McKay. Davies was the youngest of three boys. Both of his parents were avid readers and he read everything he could get his hands on. At age 3 he appeared in the opera Queen Esther which would spark a life long interest in drama.

In 1918 the family moved to Renfrew, Ontario where he lived the life of the typical country boy attending country schools. When he was 12 the family moved to Kingston and with all of the moves came the knowledge of life in urban and rural areas. He attended Upper Canada College in Toronto and was involved in music, theater and editing the school newspaper. He went on to the Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario in 1932 where he wrote for the school newspaper, The Queen’s Journal. He left Canada to attend Balliol College, Oxford and in 1938 he received a Bachelor of Literature degree. In 1939 he published his thesis, Shakespeare’s Boy Actors.

In 1940 he began an acting career near London. He met and married Brenda Mathews who worked as stage manager for the theater in Oxford. They returned to Canada and he became editor for the Saturday Night magazine. Two years later he moved to the Peterborough Examiner as editor and then publisher and stayed for more than 20 years. During his time with the Examiner Davies published 18 of his books, produced a number of his own plays and wrote articles for various journals.

Davies first love was always drama, but he became frustrated by his inability to get his plays accepted outside of Canada. From that point on he would turn more and more to his writing. In 1960 Davies started teaching literature at Trinity College at the University of Toronto. In 1963 he became Master of Massey College, the new graduate college of the University of Toronto. He continued with his writing and it was during this period of time that he finished Fifth Business, a novel that many considered his best. He eventually retired from teaching but never from writing. He was also a sought after public speaker. He won several awards and recognition for his works.

Davies wrote numerous novels (often favoring trilogies), short stories, essays, letters, criticisms, plays and opera’s. There are 2 collections of conversations with Davies and quotes attributed to him that have been turned into books.

On December 2, 1995, Davies died of a stroke. He had lived a good life and had a distinguished career as a journalist, playwright and novelist.

Literary Giants - Vladimir Nabokov

Vladimir Nabokov was born on April 22, 1899 in Saint Petersburg, Russia. He was the oldest of five children born to Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov and Elena Ivanovna Rukavishnikova. His father was a lawyer, politician and journalist. The family was wealthy and prominent and a member of the untitled nobility. Nabokov was a multilingual (Russian, French and English) novelist and short story writer. His first 9 novels were written in Russian but his international fame did not come until he became a master of the English prose style.

Nabokov considered his childhood to have been perfect. After the 1917 February Revolution, the family was forced to flee the city. They did not expect to be away for very long, but the forced exit turned out to be a permanent exile. In April, 1919, the family left on the last ship and stayed briefly in England. While there Nabokov went to Trinity College, Cambridge and studied Slavic and Romance languages. In 1922 after his studies were done he followed his family to Berlin where his father was assassinated by Russian monarchists as he fought to protect a leader of the Constitutional Democratic Party-in-exile. This mistaken, violet death would appear several times in Nabokov’s writing. He stayed working under the pen name V. Sirin. He was forced to supplement his writing income by teaching languages and giving tennis and boxing lessons.

He met and married Vera Evseyevna Slonim in Berlin and they had one child, Dmitri, born in 1934. In 1937 he left Germany for France. In 1940 the family fled the advancing German troops and sailed to the U.S. aboard the Champlain. They settled in Manhattan and he worked at the American Museum of Natural History. In 1941, at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, he was a resident lecturer in comparative literature. The position was created just for him and it gave him time to pursue his writing while still supporting his family. They moved to Cambridge in 1942 and stayed until 1948. After a lecture tour through the U.S. he returned to teaching. His classes were popular due to his teaching style. He was also curator of lepidoptery at Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology. In 1948 went to Cornell University to teach Russian and European literature. In 1945 he became a naturalized citizen of the U.S.

Nabokov wrote Lolita while traveling through the western U.S. looking for butterflies. He never learned to drive so his wife acted as his chauffeur. He considered her the best humored woman he had ever known. In June of 1953 the family moved to Ashland, Oregon. While there he finished Lolita. Four months later they left for Ithaca, N.Y.

With the financial success of Lolita, Nabokov returned to Europe and spent all of his time writing. On October 1, 1961, he and Vera moved to the Montreux Palace Hotel in Switzerland and he lived there for the rest of his life. He continued to hunt butterflies on excursions to the Alps, Corsica and Sicily. In 1976 he was hospitalized with an undiagnosed fever. In Lausanne in 1977 he was again hospitalized with severe bronchial congestion. He died on July 2. He was cremated and is buried at the Clarens cemetery in Montreux.

When he died, he left an unfinished novel, The Original of Laura. Several short excerpts have been made public. In July of 2009, Playboy Magazine acquired the rights to print an excerpt that will be published in the December issue.

Nabokov wrote 19 novels (10 in Russian, 9 in English). He wrote 68 short stories (56 in Russian, 11 in English and 1 in French). He wrote 7 plays in Russian. In the non-fiction category he wrote 4 memoirs and letters and 6 criticisms. He wrote 6 miscellaneous works including the screenplay for Lolita.

Literary Giants - Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut was born November 11, 1922 in Indianapolis, Indiana. His father, Kurt Vonnegut, Sr., was a successful architect and his mother, Edith Lieber was a homemaker. On Mother’s Day in 1944, Edith took her own life. Vonnegut would himself attempt suicide in 1982.

Vonnegut attended Cornell University where he majored in chemistry and biology. While there he was a member of the fraternity Delta Upsilon, as was his father before him. He served as assistant managing editor and associate editor for the Cornell Daily Sun which was the student newspaper.

When he left Cornell he enlisted in the United States Army and went to Carnegie Institute of Technology and the University of Tennessee to study mechanical engineering. His experiences while in the army, especially his time as a prisoner of war, had a profound effect on his life and was a major influence in his later writing. Vonnegut was imprisoned in Dresden and was a witness to the fire bombing which destroyed most of the city. He was part of a group of prisoners who survived the attack because they were locked up in an underground slaughter house that the Germans had turned into a detention facility. The building was referred to as Schlachthof Funf (Slaughterhouse Five). His experience in this building was the basis for that novel.

After the war Vonnegut married his childhood sweetheart, Jane Cox. They had three children and separated in 1970. After his sister Alice died from cancer, Vonnegut adopted her three boys. He divorced Jane in 1979 and married Jill Krementz, a photographer. They adopted Lily in 1982, the seventh child in the family.

Vonnegut went to the University of Chicago as a graduate student. His novel Cat’s Cradle was accepted as his thesis and he was awarded the M.A. degree in 1971. He taught at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Cat’s Cradle had become a best seller and he began writing Slaughterhouse Five which is now considered one of the 20th Century’s best American novels.

He was known for his humanist beliefs and for a time was honorary president of the American Humanist Association. Humanism is a progressive philosophy of life that, without theism and other supernatural beliefs, affirms our ability and responsibility to lead ethical lives of personal fulfillment that aspire to the greater good of humanity.

Some of his works were a blend of satire, black comedy, and science fiction. Vonnegut wrote fourteen novels, short stories, essays, articles and a screen play. Among his best known works are Cat’s Cradle, Slaughterhouse Five, Welcome to the Monkey House, Slapstick and Breakfast of Champions. There are several famous quotes attributed to him. He continued to write for the magazine In These Times until his death. He was affectionately called the modern day Mark Twain.

Vonnegut died on April 11, 2007 from brain injuries sustained several weeks earlier in a fall at his Manhattan home.

Some Blues you Just Have to Hear Series - Mississippi Fred McDowell

Fred McDowell was born in Rossville, Tennessee to parents who farmed the land. They died when he was fairly young. It is generally believed that he was born in 1904 but there is no documentation of that and he really isn’t sure. By the age of fourteen McDowell was playing the guitar using a slide that was hollowed out of a steer bone. Prior to that he had used a pocket knife for a slide and would later switch to a glass slide for a clearer sound. He played on street corners of Memphis for tips as a teen.

He eventually got tired of wondering around and ended up in Como, Mississippi and started farming. He still played his music on the weekends, performing at house parties and fish fries. It was in this town that musicologist Alan Lomax found McDowell some 30 years after he settled there. Although Lomax was able to convince him to record for the American Folk Music series at Atlantic Records it did little to change his fortune. He continued farming and playing only on the weekends, often on street corners or in front of stores.

Lomax had found a real Delta bluesman that no one had ever heard before since he had never been recorded. McDowell was not an ambitious man, he was content to share his music locally and be a farmer. It was not until Arhoolie Records founder Chris Strachwitz went after McDowell and talked him into recording for his label. There were two volumes, Fred McDowell, Vol 1, and Vol 2 that were recorded and released during the mid 1960’s. These homespun country blues made him popular on the festival circuit throughout the 60’s.

His first use of an electric guitar was in 1969 for the recording of I Do Not Play No Rock ‘n’ Roll for Capital Records. McDowell was filmed in 1968’s The Blues Maker, his own documentary in 1969 Fred McDowell, and 1940’s Roots of American Music: Country and Urban Music.

McDowell gave a young Bonnie Raitt lessons on the slide guitar and she has since recorded several of his songs. His songs have been recorded by many others including Bob Dylan, Dan Berth, The Rolling Stones’, Watermelon Slim and the North Mississippi Allstars.

McDowell died of cancer in 1972 and is buried at Hammond Hill Baptist church near Como.