Alamanac of Story Tellers: Lyra McKee

  Every day brings a new story.  And each day contributes to the art of story telling -- in prose and poetry, in music, on the stage, on the screen, and, of course, in books. 

Today is the story of March 31st

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    It is the 90th day of the year, leaving 275 days remaining in 2022.

    On this date in 1990, the Northern Irish journalist Lyra McKee was born in Belfast.

    On April 18, 2019, McKee, honored as being one of the "30 under 30" in the media to watch, was killed by a bullet as she observed and covered unrest in the Creggan section of Derry, where she was living.

    Her murder brought an outpouring of sympathy, and leaders from around Ireland condemned the killing. Parties from across the sectarian divide in Northern Ireland -- including Sinn Fèin and the Ulster Unionist Party -- put out a joint statement calling it an "attack on all of the people of this community." The New IRA admitted it was behind the killing, said it was a mistake, and apologized. The prime ministers of England and Ireland attended her funeral.

    For her part, McKee told her stories about the impact of The Troubles on her generation with heart, with eloquence, and with passion. She knew she was entering a dying profession, but strove to make it alive, and real, and relevant to the youth of Northern Ireland.

    She wrote about high incidents of suicide among those born soon before or after the Good Friday Agreement in her report, Suicide of the Ceasefire Babies, published in 2016 in Mosaic, a health and science website. She wrote, "The tragic irony of life in Northern Ireland today is that peace seems to have claimed more lives than war ever did."

    Two years earlier, she wrote Letter to My 14-Year-Old Self, about her experiences growing up gay and Catholic in Belfast. It began: 

Kid, it's going to be OK. I know you're not feeling that way right now. You're sitting in school. The other kids are making fun of you. You told the wrong person you had a crush and soon, they all knew your secret. It's horrible. They make your life hell.

    When she died, she was planning to propose to her partner, Sara Canning, whom she had moved to Derry to live with.

    Her articles were published in the Belfast Telegraph, BuzzFeed News, The Guardian, and the Atlantic. At the times of her death, she was working on two books about The Troubles. 

    In 2018, she became a trustee of Headliners, an organization that helps teen-agers enter the field of journalism. She was one of its early successes.

    On the night she was killed, she went out to cover the unrest over a rumors of guns being brought in to Derry before the commemoration of the 1916 Easter Rising. Police raided a house, but found nothing. People congregated on the streets. Bricks and petrol bombs were thrown. McKee was there to see what was going on. Shots rang out. One hit her in the head.

    Eight men have been charged in connection with her murder.

Almanac of Story Tellers: Sean O'Casey

 Every day brings a new story.  And each day contributes to the art of story telling -- in prose and poetry, in music, on the stage, on the screen, and, of course, in books. 

Today is the story of March 30th

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    It is the 89th day of the year, leaving 276 days remaining in 2022.

   

    On this date in 1880, the playwright Sean O'Casey was born in Dublin.

    O'Casey told his stories in the theaters of Ireland and London.

    And those stories -- of the poor and working class living in the slums of his hometown during revolts and wars and strikes -- had rarely been told on the stage. O'Casey told them by mixing tragedy and comedy in a way no one had before.

     His plays are praised for their realistic dialogue, working-class language, and strong characters. But his later plays tended to reduce the realism, turning to symbolism and expressionism to make their points.

    O'Casey came to the writing life in a roundabout manner. Born into a Protestant family, he was drawn to Irish nationalism and the Irish labor movement as a young man. He wrote for The Irish Worker and joined the Irish Citizens Army. He became a member of the Gaelic League and taught himself the Irish language.

    But he became disillusioned because those groups put nationalism before socialism. He did not participate in the Easter Rising. 

    He wrote several plays, but none was staged. In 1923, the Abbey Theatre agreed to perform The Shadow of a Gunman, about the impact of revolution on the people living in the Dublin slums. His next two plays -- Juno and the Paycock, and The Plough and the Stars -- also debuted at the Abbey.

    Juno dealt with the effect of the Irish Civil War on the working class, and it turned out to be among his most popular plays. Plough had a similar theme, but was set during the Easter Rising. It was not as popular, partly because some saw it as an attack on the Men of 1916, still considered hereos in most of Ireland. It caused riots at the Abbey.

    By 1926, O'Casey had moved to London, married, and continued writing. But the Abbey rejected two plays, Expressionist in style. He continued to write with anti-war, anti-fascist, and pro-labor themes. They were performed in various locations. One, Within the Gates, was performed in New York City.

    His plays also exposed what he saw as puritanical Catholicism in Ireland.

    O'Casey died in 1964 in Devon, England.

Almanac of Story Tellers: Pearl Bailey

  Every day brings a new story.  And each day contributes to the art of story telling -- in prose and poetry, in music, on the stage, on the screen, and, of course, in books. 

Today is the story of March 29th

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    It is the 88th day of the year, leaving 277 days remaining in 2022.

    On this date in 1918, the entertainer Pearl Bailey was born.

    Bailey told her stories in songs, in dances, and on the stage.

    She was a fan of the New York Mets, and she helped spread their story by singing the national anthem before Game 5 of the 1969 World Series.

    The year before, Bailey started playing the title role in the all-Black Broadway revival of Hello, Dolly! The musical played to sold-out audiences, and Bailey won a special Tony Award for her role.

    She was known for her impish humor, sultry voice, and an easy and personable style. She  used her fame to promote civil rights and equality, and to advocate for the poor, hungry, and those suffering from AIDS. 

    She first came to attention in Vaudeville, and soon started singing and dancing in Black theaters and nightclubs in the northeast, winning competitions at the Pearl Theater in Philadelphia and the Apollo Theater in New York City. She sang solo, and sometimes with the Big Bands of Count Bassie and Cab Calloway.

    In 1946, she appeared in her first Broadway musical, St. Louis Woman, and a year later in her first film, Variety Girl.

    She continued to sing in nighclubs. appear on Broadway, and in films. When television became popular, she was a frequent guest star on numerous shows. In 1971, she was hosting her own show, logically called The Pearl Bailey Show.

    She wrote several books, and at the age of 67, graduated from Georgetown University with a degree in theology.

    She died in Philadelphia in 1990.

Almanac of Story Tellers: Robert Frost

 Every day brings a new story.  And each day contributes to the art of story telling -- in prose and poetry, in music, on the stage, on the screen, and, of course, in books. 

Today is the story of March 26th

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    It is the 85th day of the year, leaving 280 days remaining in 2022.

   

    On this date in 1874, the poet Robert Frost was born in San Francisco.

    He was one of America's best-loved poets, a four-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize, and the first poet to read his work at the inauguration of a U.S. president, which he did for John F. Kennedy in 1961.

    Even though he was born in California, Frost and his poetry became synonymous with New England rural life. When his father died shortly after Frost's 11th birthday, the family moved across the country to Lawrence, Mass. He attended Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, and lived there and in Vermont for most of his life.

    His poetry reflected his mostly rural lifestyle, written in a colloquial Amercrican voice, and putting ordinary New Englanders in ordinary situations, using them to examine a myriad of social and philosophical themes.

    Frost's writings originally were not popular, and he published few poems while farming and teaching in New Hampshire. So in 1912, he moved to England, where he found a more receptive audience. There, he published several books of poetry. The second one, North of Boston, contained some of his best early work, including Mending Wall, which soon became a topic of reference in debates about nationalism, borders, and immigration.

    Like much of Frost's work, it presents arguments on several sides. Its opening line is, "Something there is that doesn't love a wall," and then describes how nature will tear one apart. In the middle, Frost says, "Before I built a wall I'd ask to know/ What I was walling in or walling out."

    But the poem ends with the oft-quoted line, "Good fences make good neighbors."

    When North of Boston was published in the United States as Frost returned in 1915 during World War I, he found the book was a best seller. He went on to publish more poems and books, winning several awards, and began teaching at major universities.

    In 1960, President-elect Kennedy asked Frost to read one of his poems at his inauguration, Frost instead wrote a new poem for the event. But he could not read the new work in the sun and the glare, so performed another poem from memory.

    Frost died a few years later, in 1963 in Boston.  

Almanac of Story Tellers: Kate DiCamillo

Every day brings a new story.  And each day contributes to the art of story telling -- in prose and poetry, in music, on the stage, on the screen, and, of course, in books. 

Today is the story of March 25th

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    It is the 84th day of the year, leaving 281 days remaining in 2022.

    

    On this date in 1964, the award-winning children's book author, Kate DiCamillo, was born.

    She has written more than a dozen books for young children and beginning readers, along with several picture books. She set a high standards for herself with her 2000 debut novel, Because of Winn-Dixie.

    The novel tells a tale with themes that DiCamillo has often returned to -- loss and separation -- but they also convey hope, with writing that has been praised as exurberant and assured.

    Winn Dixie is about Opal, a lonely 10-year-old girl who has lost her mother and moved to a new town. There, she meets a scruffy dog in a supermarket, takes him home, and finds friendship and love in her relationship with the animal and the people her attarcts.

    It was named a Newberry Honor Book, won several other awards, and was later adapted into a popular movie.

    But DiCamillo was just getting started. Critics and children praised her next two book, and her third novel, The Tale of Despereaux, did win the 2004 Newberry medal. (She won a second Newberry in 2015 for Flora & Ulysses.)

    Her protagonists were not only young children, but also a nonconformist mouse who falls in love with a princess, a conceited china rabbit who finds love and kidness after being found in a fishing net, and a cynical comic-book fan and an anthropomorphic squirrel who go on adventures together.

    Her books for older readers -- called chapter books in the trade -- include the trilogy Bink & Gollie, written with Alison McGhee, and the six-part Mercy Watson series. In addition to movies, her books have been adapted into an opera and a musical performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Almanac of Story Tellers: Early Animators

      Every day brings a new story.  And each day contributes to the art of story telling -- in prose and poetry, in music, on the stage, on the screen, and, of course, in books. 

Today is the story of March 24th

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    It is the 83rd day of the year, leaving 282 days remaining in 2022.

    On this date, a decade apart, two of the most successful and creative animators in U.S television were born.

    In 1911, Joseph Barbera was born in New York City's Little Italy. Ten years earlier, in 1901, Ub Iwerks was born in Kansas City, Mo.

    Barbera went on to create the cat and mouse duo of Tom & Jerry, and later, Huckleberry Hound, Yogi Bear, The Flinstones, The Jestons, and many others with his partner, William Hanna.

    Iwerks began his career as a teenager  working with Walt Disney. After seeing Disney's sketches of a proposed Mickey Mouse, Iwerks cleaned them up and refined them, presenting the finished drawings to Disney. Iwerks went on to animate Steamboat Willie, and other early movie shorts starring Mickey Mouse.

    He and Disney had started working togther in Kansas City, and when Disney created his own company, Iwerks came along. But after a falling out between the pair in 1930, Iwerks started his own animation and production company, where he created Flip the Frog.

    But the company wasn't as successful as Disney's, so Iwerks returned and worked there from 1940-1965. During that time, he created the process for combining live action and cel-animation. He worked to help develop the early attractions at Disney's theme parks. He won two Academy Awards.

    He died in 1971 in Burbank, Calif.

    Meanwhile, Barbera became interested in animation after viewing a screening of one of Iwerk's Mickey Mouse shorts, The Skeleton Dance. He began drawing cartoons, selling them to various magazines. He attended art school.

    He worked at Fleischer Studios, Van Beuren Studios, and Terrytoons before landing a job at MGM's cartoon studio. There, he met Hanna, and the pair soon created Tom & Jerry. They chose the cat-and-mouse theme, Hanna told an interviewer, because they needed a duo that could generate action and conflict. "A cat after a mouse seemed like a good, basic thought."

    Hanna and Barbera kept busy with the cat and mouse over the next 17 years, producing more than 200 films, winning seven Oscars, and being nominated for six more.

    In 1957, they created their own company and moved to the then new medium of television, and after a slow start, hit it big with The Huckleberry Hound Show, and The Yogi Bear Show. They followed that up with The Flintstones, the first animated show to appear in prime time.

    Hanna & Barbera soon became the largest animation company, and a slew of cartoon characters and shows followed. Among their popular characters were Quick Draw McGraw, Top Cat, Magilla Gorilla, and the Smurfs.

    Barbera died in 2006 at his home in Los Angeles.

Almanac of Story Tellers: Thakin Kodaw Hmaing

  Every day brings a new story.  And each day contributes to the art of story telling -- in prose and poetry, in music, on the stage, on the screen, and, of course, in books. 

Today is the story of March 23rd

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    It is the 82nd day of the year, leaving 283 days remaining in 2022.

   

    On this date in 1875, the poet and writer Thakin Kodaw Hmaing, who became known as the father of Burmese nationalism, was born in what was then the Kingdom of Burma.

    He was also considered an artistic virtuoso with his pen, creating a style that Burmese writers have troubles emulating to the day.

    He was a poet, playwright, and journalist who later became a peace activist. He wrote his plays and poems in a verse that included complex rhyme schemes and metaphorical language. He was known to use satire and parody to question political or religious institutions, such as his best known work that caused a national sensation when it was published.

    It was his first novel, Missata Maung Hmaing hmadawbon wutte (the Epistles of Mr. Maung Hmaing in the English translation). It used the name of the main character in another popular work, who was an adulterous scoundrel. And by using the title Mister, he was spoofing the use of the title by young men trying to exude an image similar to the British overlords who then ruled Burma. The name stuck with him, but the Mister usage by Anglophiles ended.

    He soon joined a nationalist Burmese association, and used his poetry and other verse to inspire pride in the Burmese language, culture, and history. His distinctive, if sometimes suggestive, style helped him avoid the censors from the colonial government.

    After Burma gained independence in 1948, a civil war began, and Kodaw Hmaing used his words to become a peace activist in his country. He also went to Russia and China to argue for peace, and attended the 1957 World Peace Conference in India.

    He died in 1964 in Yangon.    

Almanac of Story Tellers: Musicians Reign

  Every day brings a new story.  And each day contributes to the art of story telling -- in prose and poetry, in music, on the stage, on the screen, and, of course, in books. 

Today is the story of March 22nd

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    It is the 81st day of the year, leaving 284 days remaining in 2022.

    This date in history was a monumental one for story tellers, particularly for those who told their tales with music.

    

    On this date in 1963, the Beatles released their debut album, Please Please Me, in the United Kingdom. It quickly rocketed to the top of the charts, staying at No. 1 for an unprecedented 30 weeks. 

    It contained such hits as the title song, along with I Saw Her Standing There, Love Me Do, and Do You Wanna Know a Secret? Of the 14 songs on the album, eight were written by band members John Lennon and Paul McCartney, bringing into pop rock music what Rolling Stone later called "the self-contained rock band, writing their own hits and playing their own instruments."

    On this date in 1948, the British composer and producer Andrew Lloyd Weber was born. Lloyd Weber helped rejuvenate musical theater on Broadway and the West End in the mid- to late 20th Century. In the late 1960s, he started working with lyricist Tim Rice, and together they had a string of hits, from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat to Jesus Christ Superstar to Evita.

    When he and Rice parted ways, Lloyd Weber continued to compose flashy, elaborate  shows in a range of genres, including Phantom of the Opera, perhaps his biggest and longest running hit, Cats, and School of Rock.

    On this date in 1930, composer and lyricist Stephen Sondhein was born in New York. Sondhein, who composed his own music and wrote his own lyrics, is credited with reinventing the Braodway musical by producing shows that went well beyond the traditional themes of musical theater.

    His first significant work was writing the lyrics for West Side Story, which opened in 1957, with the music composed by Leonard Bernstein. Sondhein's first show when he where he wrote both the lyrics and the was A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, based on farces by the Roman playwright Plautus. His plays through the rest of his life (he died in 2021) continued to surprise, enlighten, and excite audiences.

   

    Also on this date in 1842, the Ukrainian composer and pianist, Mykola Lysenko, was born in Hrynky, which is now part of Ukraine.

    He is credited with studying, helping to develop, and teaching a Ukrainian form of music. Steeped in ancient folk music tradition, Lysenko broadened the appeal with other forms of music.

    He studied at Kharkiv and Kyiv universities. He trained in Leipzig and St. Petersburg before returning to Kyiv, where he started the Lysenko Music and Drama School.

       He wrote operas and operettas. He wrote chamber pieces, orchestral works, and a wide variety of piano songs. By promoting Ukrainian music and language -- and separating himself from Rusian culture, his work has been called the essence of Ukrainian musical culture.

Almanac of Story Tellers: Modest Mussorgsky

 Every day brings a new story.  And each day contributes to the art of story telling -- in prose and poetry, in music, on the stage, on the screen, and, of course, in books. 

Today is the story of March 21st

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    It is the 80th day of the year, leaving 285 days remaining in 2022.

    On this date in 1839, the Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky was born in Karevo, Russia.

    He was best known as one of "The Five" -- men who in the mid-19th Century worked together to create and compose music in a distinctive Russian nationalistic style. Mussorgsky sometimes would distinguish his compositions by ignoring or deliberately defying traditional Western standards of music.

    After his death, other composers would re-write and re-compose some of his best known work -- the opera Boris Godunov, and the piano concerto Pictures From an Exhibition. Still, his original compositions are sought out and played despite their sometimes difficult forms. 

    The distinctions Mussorgsky and the others made was to incorporate into their music traditional Russian folk music sounds, but using some to an extreme, such as church bells and chants. 

    They would also mute tones, which removed the natural progression in the harmony. The music would use a whole tone scale, suggesting an evil or ominous presence. It also used a pentatonic scale,  giving a more primitive sound.

    The compositions of Mussorgsky and the five were subjected to wide criticism, and Russian composers -- including Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, a comptemporary -- would debate, be influenced by, or reject their work. Tchainkovsky was generally in the latter group.

    Mussorgsky, whose life was beset by money problems and alcoholism, died at the age of 42 in St. Petersburg.

Almanac of Story Tellers: Ovid

  Every day brings a new story.  And each day contributes to the art of story telling -- in prose and poetry, in music, on the stage, on the screen, and, of course, in books. 

Today is the story of March 20th

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    It is the 79th day of the year, leaving 286 days remaining in 2022.

   

    On this date in 43 BCE, the Latin poet Publius Ovidius Naso, known simply as Ovid, was born in the Roman Republic, in what is now known as Sulmona, Italy.

    He is regarded as one of the best poets of antiquity, writing about love and sexuality in a verse that has been described as smooth and elegant. He was popular in his own time, and wrote even after he was banished from Rome.

    His works have inspired great writers through the centuries -- from Moudin in the court of Charlemagne to  Shakespeare, from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales to Cervantes' Don Quixote, from John Milton to Bob Dylan -- who used Ovid's words and images; his themes and his  rhythms.

    But his greatest achievement, one that has kept his name on the list of history's greatest writers, is Metamorphoses. 

    The epic poem is a recitation and interpretation of dozens of ancient tales from myths and legends that revolve around changes. It begins and ends with order coming from chaos -- from the creation myths to the reign of Caesar. It includes stories of the god and humans, particularly of their love and disobedience, when the gods and humans change into other forms, the first group voluntarily and the latter not, be it legendary or astrological creatures.

    But within those changes the poem explores the range of god and human emotions that come with those interactions, showing that both are essentialy the same. Indeed, as one writer put it, "by his genius for narrative and vivid description, Ovid gave scores of Greek legends, some of them little known before, their definitive form for subsequent generations."

    In an epilogue to the epic poem, Ovid writes that everything must change -- except, perhaps, his works. As the modern writer above proclaims, he may be right.

                Now stands my task accomplished, such a work

                As not the wrath of Jove, nor fire nor sword

                Nor the devouring ages can destroy.

Almanac of Story Tellers: Heather Robertson

  Every day brings a new story.  And each day contributes to the art of story telling -- in prose and poetry, in music, on the stage, on the screen, and, of course, in books. 

Today is the story of March 19th

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    It is the 78th day of the year, leaving 287 days remaining in 2022.

   

    On this date in 1942, the Canadian author, Heather Robertson, was born in Winnipeg.

    She told her stories as a crusading journalist, a magazine writer, a novelist, and in several books of non fiction.

    Robertson has been described as a smart contrarian supported by solid reporting. An editor said she was "steely, even prickly."

    She won the Books in Canada Best First Novel Prize for her 1983 book, Willie, a Romance, based on the life of former Canadian Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King. A dozen years later, she won the Canadian National Business Book Award for Driving Force, about R.S. McLaughlin, the founder of General Motors of Canada.

    Her first book, Reservations are for Indians, was written after she recived a grant to study the people of the First Nations of Canada. It is described as a sympathetic yet detached portrait written by a person who combined  "the skills of a novelist with those of an accomplished journalist" and a "landmark study of aboriginal affairs."

    In all, Robertson wrote 17 books.

    In addition to her writing, Robertson was the instigator of a lawsuit that won additional rights for freelance writers and journalsts. The lawsuit, Robertson v. Thompson Corp. reached the Supreme Court of Canada, which ruled that such writers retained the copyrights to their work when newspapers put it into their online databases.

    She died in 2014 in King City, Ontario.

Almanac of Story Tellers: John Updike

 Every day brings a new story.  And each day contributes to the art of story telling -- in prose and poetry, in music, on the stage, on the screen, and, of course, in books. 

Today is the story of March 18th

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    It is the 77th day of the year, leaving 288 days remaining in 2022.

   

    On this date in 1932, the novelist John Updike was born.

    Updike wrote erudite novels about small-town America, focusing on the problems of its unremarkable residents. In those books, he wrote about religion, responsibility and identity, sex and sensuality, and death. 

    He examined the sorrows, frustrations, and banalities of American life, but was criticized for his misogynistic description of women.

    He was praised for a rich, descriptive style, using polished yet dense language, but criticized for using that language to distance himself from the reader. 

    In his novels would often fixate on a person's thoughts and actions as he went through various phases of life. He would return again and again to different characters at different times, and sometimes would place a previously main character in a secondary role in a subsequent book.

    He is one of only four writers to have won the Pulitzer prize for fiction twice, and he won it both times for novels about an oft-examined character, Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom. He introduced the character in Rabbit Run, portraying him as a star high school basketball player so unsatisfied with his mundane, middle-class, suburban lifestyle that he runs away. 

    Updike returned to Rabbit several times, using him to comment on changes in Amercian life during the second half of the 20th Century. In all, he write four novels and one novella about Rabbit, with two of them, Rabbit is Rich and Rabbit at Rest, winning the Pulitzer.

    Overall, he wrote more than 20 novels. He also wrote short stories, poems, and books of literary and art criticism.

    Updike died in 2009.     

Almanac of Story Tellers: St. Patrick's Day

Every day brings a new story.  And each day contributes to the art of story telling -- in prose and poetry, in music, on the stage, on the screen, and, of course, in books. 

Today is the story of March 17th

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    It is the 76th day of the year, leaving 289 days remaining in 2022.

    It is said that on this date in 461 (more or less) Saint Patrick died. And that is why today is celebrated as St. Patrick's Day, or, more properly in Irish, Lá Fhéile Pádraig.

    Patrick, whose life has been documented as being sometime in the 5th Century, (or, perhaps, is the tale of two people whose life stories were combined) is the patron saint of Ireland, and is intertwined with the country and its connection with and devotion to Catholism.

    Rarely has a patron saint and its country been so tied to the telling of stories. But as Ireland has produced some of the greatest writers and story tellers (seanchai) over the centuries, Patrick is said to have used stories to convert the pagan Celtic people to Christianity. But of course, like many an Irish tale, some may have been brought forth after the fact, exaggerated a wee bit, or outright invented.

 

  For instance, shamrocks are a symbol of Ireland because, it is said, Patrick used the three-leaved clover plant to represent the trinity of God --the father, the son, and the holy spirit.

    (Spoiler alert!) Patrick is not even Irish, but was born in Britain when it was part of the Roman Empire. He was captured by Irish pirates (sure and it's true) and enslaved, but later escaped and returned to Britain. But entranced by the Irish (as are we all) he returned to teach and convert them to the word of god.

    While there the second time around, Patrick drove the snakes out of Ireland while in a trance after praying and fasting for 40 days. He stamped his feet, and the evil demons slithered off to the sea.

    Well, kind of. More likely is that snakes have never been in Ireland because it's isolated as an island, and is too cold and damp for them. Scientists (killjoys) say there are no native snakes in the country.

    Patrick may have worn green robes while preaching and converting. But it's more likely there were blue, and the color aged over the years to be more in line with the symbolic color of Ireland.

    Oh. One more things. Patrick was never canonized as a saint. But he is venerated and recognized as one by most of the Christian churches in the world.

    And his feast day is celebrated in more countries in the world than any other saint's feast day.

    Beannachtaì na Fhéile Pádraig sona ort!

Almanac of Story Tellers: Jorge Gilberto Ramos Ávalos

Every day brings a new story.  And each day contributes to the art of story telling -- in prose and poetry, in music, on the stage, on the screen, and, of course, in books. 

Today is the story of March 16th

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    It is the 75th day of the year, leaving 290 days remaining in 2022.

   

    On this date in 1958, the Mexican-American journalist and news anchor, Jorge Gilberto Ramos Ávalos, was born in Mexico City.

    He is known professionally as Jorge Ramos, and he is the respected lead anchor for Univision's national Spanish-langauge nightly news program, Noticiero Univision, and its Sunday news program, Al Punto. He is widely regarded as the best known and most trusted Spanish language broadcaster in the United States, and is often referred to as "the Walter Cronkite of Latin America."

    He has gained the trust the old-fashioned way -- for his forthright manner in presenting the news, and his aggressive, sometimes persistent questioning of world leaders throughout the United States and Latin America.

    He has interviewed every American president from Gearoge W. Bush to Barack Obama, questioning the latter on his immigration policies. Ramos was thrown out of a press conference by the then candidate Donald Trump in 2015, and after the election, Trump refused his many inquiries for a sit-down interview.

    When Romas interviewed former Cuban president Fidel Castro, Castro's bodyguards threw him to the floor becaise of his tough questions. Bolivian President Evo Morales walked out of an interview. The current president of Venezula, Nicolás Maduro, detained Romas after an interview, confiscated his equipment and deported him. Later, Univision recovered the video and aired the entire interview. 

    Romas also has covered the civil war in El Salvador, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and the Persian Guld War.  He writes a bilingual newspaper column that is published internationally.

    He sometimes uses Facebook to livestream his footage. He has written several books, and appears as a pundit on English-language programs in the United States. He has won 10 Emmy awards, including one for Lifetime Achievement. 

    He lives in Miami. In 2008, he became an American citizen.

Almanac of Story Tellers: Sly Stone

Every day brings a new story.  And each day contributes to the art of story telling -- in prose and poetry, in music, on the stage, on the screen, and, of course, in books. 

Today is the story of March 15th

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    It is the 74th day of the year, leaving 291 days remaining in 2022.

    On this day in 1943, the funkadelic soul legend Sylvester Stone was born in Denton, Texas.

    Stone was the leader of Sly and the Family Stone, a gender diverse and mixed-race musical group that included several members of his family. Their fusion sound of pyscheldelic rock, sunshine pop, soul, gospel, and jazz with Latin beat lit up  the late 1960s with songs such as Dance to the Music and Everyday People.

    Stone, along with George Clinton and James Brown, helped create the funk sound, deveoping a complex dance beat that's slow and sexy. It inspired musicians such as Prince and Rick James, and rap artists like Public Enemy, the Beastie Boys, and LL Cool J.

 

    Stone himself was a musical prodigy, having learned to play the keyboards by age seven, and by the time he was 11, he had also mastered the guitar, drums, and bass. He played in a number of bands in high school in San Francisco, and in 1965 was a disc jockey at several local radio stations, where he promoted soul music but played a variety of musical styles.

    At the same time, he played in his own band, Sly and the Stoners, which he later combined with his brother's group, Freddie and the Stone Souls.

    Stone developed drug-use problems in the early 1970s, and his band's bookings dropped off. He later toured solo and with several groups, with varying degrees of success. He dropped out of sight in 1987, re-emerging at a Sly and the Family Stone tribute at the 2006 Grammy Awards. In 2015, he appeared at a convention honoring Sly and the Family Stone and its legacy, called Love City Connection.

Almanac of Story Tellers, Sylvia Beach

Every day brings a new story.  And each day contributes to the art of story telling -- in prose and poetry, in music, on the stage, on the screen, and, of course, in books. 

Today is the story of March 14th

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     It is the 73rd day of the year, leaving 292 days remaining in 2022.

Sylvia Beach and James Joyce in Paris

    On this date in 1887, the bookstore owner Sylvia Beach was born in Baltimore.

    Now, Beach was no ordinary owner, and her bookstore, Shakespeare and Company, located in the Left Bank area of Paris, was no ordinary bookstore.

    It more than celebrated story tellers and sold their books. Much more.

     Beach published books when no one else would -- starting with Ulysses, by her friend, James Joyce. French writers flocked to her store to read, write, and drink coffee. They were soon followed by writers from America and the United Kingdom -- the ex-pats who flooded Paris between the two world wars.

    She encouraged then to write. She goaded publishers to publish their work. She was a friend and a compatriot. Her bookstore became a lending library, a home, a workspace, and -- for some -- someone who would lend them money in a time of need.

    The books she sold were mainly fiction from France, America, Great Britain, and the new Free State of Ireland. Literature in English was gaining popularity, writers were flocking to Paris in part to avoid censorship, and Beach was there to help.

    In addition to publishing Ulysses, Beach encouraged Ernest Hemingway to finish his first book, Three Stories and Ten Poems. She published other works by Joyce and his fellow Irishman, Samuel Beckett.

    French writers André Gide, Paul Valéry, and Jules Romains frequented the bookstore. Members of the ex-pat community included writers and artists Aleister Crowley, Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, and T.S Eliot. French author André Chamson said Beach "did more to link England, the United States, Ireland, and France than four great ambassadors combined.

    The bookstore remained a literary home until 1941, when the Nazis who were occupying Paris shut it down. She was jailed by the Nazis, but upon her release, remained in Paris. Her bookstore was closed and never reopened, although one by the same name opened in 1951. It is now run by a woman whose father named her Sylvia Beach, to honor the original Sylvia Beach.

    In 1959, Beach wrote her memoir, Shakespeare and Company.

    She died in Paris in 1962.

Almanac of Story Tellers: Al Jaffee

  Every day brings a new story.  And each day contributes to the art of story telling -- in prose and poetry, in music, on the stage, on the screen, and, of course, in books. 

Today is the story of March 13th

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    It is the 72nd day of the year, leaving 293 days remaining in 2022.

   

    On this date in 1921, the cartoonist Al Jaffee was born in Savannah, Ga.

    Jaffee spent the vast majority of his career -- from 1955 to 2020, retiring a few months past his 99th birthday -- writing and drawing for Mad Magazine.

    His longest lasting achievement, and his greatest contribution to the art of story telling, was the Mad fold-in. It always -- and I mean, always -- appeared on the inside of the back page of the satirical monthly magazine that was aimed at the adolescent mind.

    In the book, Inside Mad, fellow artist/writer Desmond Devlin called Jaffee irreplaceable, saying he epitomized the magazine. 

Smart but silly. angry but understanding, sophisticated but gross, upbeat but hopeless. ... He's uncommonly interested in figuring out how things work, and exasperated because things never work. 

    Jaffee also created the feature, Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions, which gave readers three choices in how to respond to a variety of inane, pointless questions. He published several books of compilations of his work.

    He started working in 1942, and in 2016, the Guinness Book of World Records awarded him the title of "longest career as a comic artist." He has won numerous real awards, including the 2008 Reuben Award from the National Cortoonists Soceiety. Fellow cartoonist Sergio Aragones said he can "take every branch of cartooning and make it better."

    But it was the fold-in -- Jaffee's tongue-in-cheek response to the "fold-out" in glossy men's magazines such as Playboy -- that was his signature art. He created some 450 of them, only missing two issues between 1964-2019. He drew them all by hand.

    The fold-in would show a cartoon that was elaborately drawn and verbosely captioned. The reader then would fold the two sides inward to reveal a hidden picture and succinct caption that commented on politics, culture, celebrities, the news, sports, the entertainment world, or anything in between.  

    First he would draw the gag cartoon, then cut it in half, and fill in the middle. He said he never saw the completed fold-in until it appeared in the magazine. 

    Jaffee still lives in New York City.

Almanac of Story Tellers: Edward Albee

  Every day brings a new story.  And each day contributes to the art of story telling -- in prose and poetry, in music, on the stage, on the screen, and, of course, in books. 

Today is the story of March 12th

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    It is the 71st day of the year, leaving 294 days remaining in 2022.

    On this day in 1928, the playwright Edward Albee was born. 

    Albee was one of the most honored story tellers of his generation, whose inspired tales of existential angst played out on the stage. Fittingly, his first one-act play, The Zoo Story, premiered in 1959 in Berlin, along with Samuel Beckett's  Krapp's Last Tape.

    Both playwrights were classified as practicioners of the Theater of the Absurd, which focuses on the ideas of existentialism and what happens when human existence lacks meaning and communication breaks down. They often have bare or limited sets on stage.

    The Zoo Story shows an increasingly menacing stranger questioning a man reading a newspaper in Central Park. When the play moved to New York, it helped showcase the idea of Off-Broadway theaters and productions.

    Albee's work won six Tony Awards for Best Play (include three years in a row in 1963-1965), one Tony for best author, and a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2005. He also won three Pulitzer prizes for drama. A fourth play, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolfe?, was selected by the drama panel in 1963, but the vote was overturned, and the overall committee did not award the drama prize that year.

    Still, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woole? is Albee's best known play, and it is generally recognized as his masterpiece. In addition to the stage production, which won a Tony and the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for best play, it was adapted into a 1966 film, directed by Mike Nichols and starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, which won five Ocars.

    It concerns the complex marriage of an upper middle-class couple, George and Martha. It takes place in their home, where they have invited a younger professional couple. The two couples engage in a night of heavy drinking, which is filled with malicious games, insults, humiliations, betrayals, and painful but revealing confrontations.

    The plays shows Albee's interest in the themes of reality and illusion. The title of the play is taken from the Disney tune Who's Afraid of the Big, Bad, Wolf  because, Albee said, he is asking the question, "Who is afraid of living life without false illusions?"

    Albee, who wrote or adapted 30 plays, died in 2016 at his home in Montauk, N.Y.