Tuesday, April 3, 2012

James Case

Pioneering TV producer -- via the Denver Post.

Khalil Shaheed aka Tommy Hall

Trumpeter -- via the San Francisco Chronicle.

Ademilde Fonseca

Singer; the "queen of choro" -- via oglobo.com.

Nicholas T. Valkan aka Nick Noble

Singer -- via the Chicago Tribune.

Roland Bautista

Guitarist -- via soultracks.com.

Tom Wells

Composer; jingle-writer -- via the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He wrote the immortal theme for the TV sitcom "WKRP in Cincinnati."

Harry Crews

One extraordinary writer -- via the New York Times. His tattoo is my favoite e.e. cummings line: "how do you like your blueeyed boy Mr. Death?"

Bruce Kirkpatrick Hill

Organist -- via musicaltoronto.org.

Rob Bennett

Peace campaigner, human rights activist and civil servant -- via the Guardian.

Jim Duffy

Animator -- via Animation Magazine.


Thursday, March 29, 2012

Warren Stevens

Actor -- via the San Francisco Chronicle. Best remembered as Doc from "Forbidden Planet"; or, ifyou are a Trekkie, as Rojan in the original series episode "By Any Other Name."

Jerry "Boogie" McCain

Bluesman -- via the Gadsden, AL Times.





Giancarlo Cobelli

Actor, director and writer -- via ilsole24ore.com.


Wolfgang Rennert

Music director and conductor -- via Die Presse.

Larry Stevenson

Skateboard designer -- via the New York Times. He invented the kicktail!


Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Earl Scruggs

Bluegrass legend, banjo master -- via USA Today. I'm a lucky man -- I got to see him play.







Adrienne Rich

Poet -- via the Washington Post.

Wherever in this city, screens flicker
with pornography, with science-fiction vampires,
victimized hirelings bending to the lash,
we also have to walk . . . if simply as we walk
through the rainsoaked garbage, the tabloid cruelties
of our own neighborhoods.
We need to grasp our lives inseperable
from those rancid dreams, that blurt of metal, those disgraces,
and the red begonia perilously flashing
from a tenement sill six stories high,
or the long-legged young girls playing ball
in the junior highschool playground.
No one has imagined us. We want to live like trees,
sycamores blazing through the sulfuric air,
dappled with scars, still exuberantly budding,
our animal passion rooted in the city.