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Mark Morford: 10 things you need not worry about (SF Gate)
There are plenty of things to concern yourself with. There are far too many things that wish to stress you out, slap you asunder and make you feel heavy, sad, lost. These should not be among them.
Stanley Crouch: "Remembering a civil rights hero: John Payton, dead at 65, dedicated his life to the fight for equality (New York Daily News)
He once said, "People might have fun calling white boys sissies and whatnot, but they had better realize that many of them are the same kind we saw during World War II, which was no joke. Those white guys came from little towns all over this country and took Omaha Beach; they fought like hell for the Union during the Civil War. The military can make soldiers out of whatever it has, and it will whenever necessary. I don't see them running scared from Huey Newton and the Black Panthers. Changing policy, or influencing it, is the only way to an actual revolution in this country. That's the way I'm going."
Paul Krugman's Take on 'The Hunger Games' (New York Times)
…there just weren't enough exploitees to support the number of exploiters we saw in The Capitol. Aside from that - and the question of where, in a post-apocalyptic Appalachia, Peeta found hair gel - it was actually a terrific movie.
Roger Ebert: Review of "Diary of a Lost Girl" (1929; A Great Movie)
When they were leaving the world premiere of G. W. Pabst's film "Pandora's Box" (1928), Louise Brooks could hear her name in the crowd around her, but she didn't like the tone they were using. She asked Pabst what they were saying. He translated: "She doesn't act. She does nothing." This perhaps delighted the great German director, who also chose Brooks to star in his next film, "The Diary of a Lost Girl" (1929).
Britons are ignorant of Christianity and the Classics, says Sister Wendy (Telegraph)
Sister Wendy, the nun-turned-television-presenter, has warned that modern-day ignorance about Christianity and the Classics has left people unable to appreciate much of Western art.
Elon Green: "He Was Scum" (Slate)
Longform collects the most moving, delightful, and vicious obituaries ever written.
Mark Coker: The Secrets to Ebook Publishing Success (Smashwords)
Super-affordable price of FREE.
David Bruce: "The Kindest People: Heroes and Good Samaritans (Volume 4)" (Smashwords)
Super-affordable price of FREE.
David Bruce: Wise Up! Work (Athens News)
As you would expect, controversial filmmaker John Waters, aka The Prince of Puke, has long been outspoken. When he was young, he worked for three days in a unisex clothing store. Women would try on clothing and ask him, "Do I look fat in this?" He would reply, "Yes." Perhaps unnecessarily, Mr. Waters says, "I was fired."
David Bruce has 42 Kindle books on Amazon.com with 250 anecdotes in each book. Each book is $1, so for $42 you can buy 10,500 anecdotes. Search for "Funniest People," "Coolest People, "Most Interesting People," "Kindest People," "Religious Anecdotes," "Maximum Cool," and "Resist Psychic Death."
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Michelle in AZ
From The Creator of 'Avery Ant'
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Mostly cloudy and cool.
Late-Night Talk Show
Chris Rock
FX has ordered six episodes of an untitled late-night talk show executive produced by Chris Rock and starring comedian W. Kamau Bell, the network announced Wednesday.
The weekly half-hour series, in which Bell will discuss politics, politics, pop culture, race, religion, the media and sex, joins an FX late-night lineup that also includes Russell Brand's "Strangely Uplifting." Brand's show debuts June 28, and Bell's series will premiere at an undetermined date during the summer.
The series is produced by FX Productions. Chuck Sklar and Bell are executive producing with Rock.
Bell is a founding member of the comedy group Laughter Against the Machine and has been named San Francisco's best comedian by SF Weekly and the SF Bay Guardian. He is best known for his solo show "The W. Kamau Bell Curve: Ending Racism in About an Hour," a Time Out NY critic's pick in the 2010 NY Comedy Festival.
Chris Rock
Newly Public Letters
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway shows a tenderness that wasn't part of his usual macho persona in a dozen unpublished letters that became publicly available Wednesday in a collection of the author's papers at the Kennedy presidential library.
In a letter to his friend Gianfranco Ivancich written in Cuba and dated February 1953, Hemingway wrote of euthanizing his cat "Uncle Willie" after it was hit by a car.
"Certainly missed you. Miss Uncle Willie. Have had to shoot people but never anyone I knew and loved for eleven years," the author wrote. "Nor anyone that purred with two broken legs."
The letters span from 1953 to 1960, a year before the prize-winning writer's suicide. Whether typed or written in his curly script, some of the dispatches arrived on personalized, onionskin stationery from his Cuban villa Finca Vigia.
The two men met in a Venice hotel bar in 1949, bonding despite a two-decade age difference because they'd both suffered leg wounds in war.
Ernest Hemingway
Artists Donate Mural To Kent St
'Funky Winkerbean'
The men behind the "Funky Winkerbean" comic strip celebrated its 40th anniversary by donating a 96-foot mural for a new student lounge at their alma mater, Kent State University.
The Akron Beacon Journal reports the full-color border mural features strip characters and students throughout their college careers. It was unveiled Tuesday by artists Tom Batiuk of Medina and Chuck Ayers of Akron.
Batiuk's "Funky Winkerbean" debuted March 27, 1972. Ayers joined him as illustrator in 1994.
The strip at first focused on gags about teenagers at the imaginary Westview High School. Over the years, it explored sensitive topics such as dyslexia, alcoholism, teen suicide and cancer.
'Funky Winkerbean'
Hospital News
Robin Gibb
Singer Robin Gibb, who spoke last month of making a "spectacular" recovery from cancer, has had further surgery, according to a statement released to the British media on Wednesday.
The 62-year-old, a founding member of the disco-era hit machine the Bee Gees, has been forced to cancel several commitments due to the operation.
"He is currently recovering in hospital and therefore, for the time-being, all existing commitments prior to the Titanic Requiem concert, have had to be cancelled."
"The Titanic Requiem" is Gibb's first classical work written with his son Robin-John, and is being released to mark the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the luxury liner on April 15, 1912.
The world premiere of the work is due to take place at Central Hall, Westminster in London on April 10.
Robin Gibb
Rotten To The Corp
Rupert
A News Corp subsidiary providing security for pay-TV smartcards let piracy go unchecked at U.S. satellite broadcaster DirecTV less than a year before News Corp looked into buying the business, an Australian paper said.
The article in the Australian Financial Review, citing internal emails from NDS, added to questions over News Corp practices after reports that NDS promoted the piracy of rivals and after scandals at News Corp's British newspapers.
DirecTV, which depended on NDS for the security of its scrambling system, suffered major piracy problems around the turn of the century that ate into revenues as viewers using pirated cards watched it for free.
According to the article published on Wednesday, NDS found a fix for the problem but decided not to implement it for more than a year, because of what an NDS engineer described in an email as "the politics of the DirecTV situation."
Allegations against Rupert Murdoch's pay-TV operations could prove even more damaging than the hacking scandal at the British newspaper operations because television is so much more lucrative for the media conglomerate.
Rupert
In Trouble Over Child Support
Dennis Rodman
Hall of Fame basketball star Dennis Rodman, who won five NBA championships, has for now dodged possible jail time over allegations he owes unpaid child support.
Rodman appeared in court in Orange, a Southern California suburb, on Tuesday where his attorney asked that a contempt of court order against the former player be dismissed. The contempt order stems from allegations that Rodman is behind on child support.
Orange County Superior Court Commissioner Barry Michaelson has already indicated he is not inclined to send Rodman to jail over the contempt order, said the one-time basketball star's attorney Linnea Willis.
Jack Kayajanian, an attorney for Rodman's ex-wife Michelle, has said the 50-year-old Rodman owes at least $750,000 in spousal support and child support for his two children with Michelle.
Dennis Rodman
Assets Distributed
Amy Winehouse
Records show Amy Winehouse left an estate worth 2.94 million pounds ($4.66 million)) after her death last year.
The 27-year-old soul diva was found dead in bed on July 23 at her London home.
Probate documents showed Wednesday that she left behind assets totaling more than 4.25 million pounds ($6.7 million), with 2.94 million pounds ($4.66 million) remaining after debts and taxes.
Since Winehouse did not leave a will, the money will go to her parents. The documents list father Mitch Winehouse as administrator of the singer's estate. Nothing goes to her ex-husband, Blake Fielder-Civil, whom she divorced in 2009.
Amy Winehouse
Police Recover Ancient Statue
Greece
Greek police recovered an ancient statue that was illegally excavated and hidden in a goat pen near Athens, and arrested the goat herder and another man who were allegedly trying to sell the work for €500,000 ($667,000).
The marble statue of a young woman dates to about 520 B.C. and belongs to the kore type, a police statement said Wednesday. Police photos showed the 1.2-meter (4-foot) work to be largely intact, lacking the left forearm and plinth.
Although dozens of examples of the kore statue and its male equivalent, the kouros, are displayed in Greek and foreign museums, the type is considered very important in the development and understanding of Greek art. New discoveries in good condition are uncommon.
Archaeologists who inspected the find estimated its market value at €12 million ($16 million), a police official said.
Still bearing traces of soil, the statue has the hint of a smile on its lips, elaborately braided hair and an ankle-length gown.
Greece
Promises In Malawi Turn Sour
Madonna
Celebrity promises have turned to disappointment, finger-pointing and lawsuits in Malawi, an impoverished and troubled southern African country where Madonna has drastically scaled back charity efforts.
Some Malawi officials say Madonna's changes in plans have taken them by surprise, but Madonna's camp says the government has been informed and involved in the new agenda.
In 2009, Education Minister George Chaponda helped Madonna break ground for a $15 million academy for girls. Earlier this year, Madonna's Raising Malawi foundation announced that instead of building the academy, it is providing $300,000 to the non-governmental organization buildOn, which has years of experience in Malawi, to develop 10 schools. They'll serve about 1,000 boys and girls in the southern African nation of 15 million that is among the poorest in the world.
Ministry of Education officials said a memorandum of understanding that Raising Malawi, founded in 2006, signed with the Malawi government for the academy project has a clause that binds either party to notify and get the other's agreement should it want to alter any aspect of the project.
Madonna
Four US Women Charged
Amish Beard-Cutting
A federal grand jury has indicted four more women over a rash of bizarre beard-cutting incidents against fellow Amish in Ohio, the US Justice Department said Wednesday.
A total of 16 people -- 10 men and six women -- have now been accused in what prosecutors called five "religiously-motivated assaults" between September and November.
The four new defendants named were Lovina Miller, Kathryn Miller, Emma Miller and Elizabeth Miller, who had not previously been charged. They are all married to nephews of Samuel Mullet, the accused ringleader of the attacks.
The 10-count superseding indictment also adds charges against some of the defendants for concealing and destroying evidence, including a disposable camera, shears and a bag of hair from victims of the attacks.
Mullet, the bishop of the Amish community in the village of Bergholz, Ohio, was also additionally charged of making false statements to federal agents during the investigation.
Amish Beard-Cutting
Photo Albums Unveiled
Monuments Men Foundation
Among the items U.S. soldiers seized from Adolf Hitler's Bavarian Alps hideaway in the closing days of World War II were albums meticulously documenting an often forgotten Nazi crime - the massive pillaging of artwork and other cultural items as German troops marched through Europe.
Two of those albums - one filled with photographs of works of art, the other with snapshots of furniture - were donated Tuesday to the U.S. National Archives, which now has custody of 43 albums in a set of what historians believe could be as high as 100.
Robert M. Edsel, founder and president of the Dallas-based Monuments Men Foundation for the Preservation of Art, which announced the discovery of the two new albums at a news conference, called them "key pieces of evidence taken from a crime scene that were prized possessions of Adolf Hitler."
Relatives of the two soldiers who took the albums contacted the foundation, which has previously donated two other albums in the series to the National Archives. They had read stories in the media about foundation's mission, which includes continuing the work of the Monuments Men, who helped Allied forces protect cultural treasures during World War II and helped return stolen items after the war.
Of the newly discovered albums, one contains photographs of 69 paintings that were taken as early as 1940. Most of those paintings appear to have been properly restituted, but an ERR database indicates four were not. The other newly found album contains photographs of 41 pieces of furniture, mostly taken from the Rothschild family.
Monuments Men Foundation
In Memory
Adrienne Rich
Poet Adrienne Rich, whose socially conscious verse influenced a generation of feminist, gay rights and anti-war activists, has died. She was 82.
Rich died Tuesday at her Santa Cruz home from complications from rheumatoid arthritis, said her son, Pablo Conrad. She had lived in Santa Cruz since the 1980s.
Rich published more than a dozen volumes of poetry and five collections of nonfiction. She won a National Book Award for her collection of poems "Diving into the Wreck" in 1974. In 2004, she won the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry for her collection "The School Among the Ruins."
She had first gained national prominence with her third poetry collection, "Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law," in 1963. Citing the title poem, University of Maryland professor Rudd Fleming wrote in The Washington Post that she "proves poetically how hard it is to be a woman - a member of the second sex."
She and her husband had three sons before she left him in 1970, just as the women's movement was exploding on the national scene. She used her experiences as a mother to write "Of Woman Born," her ground-breaking feminist critique of pregnancy, childbirth and motherhood, published in 1976.
Rich believed that art and politics should not be separate and considered herself a socialist.
"For me, socialism represents moral value - the dignity and human rights of all citizens," she told the San Francisco Chronicle in 2005. "That is, the resources of a society should be shared and the wealth redistributed as widely as possible."
Rich taught at many colleges and universities, including Brandeis, Rutgers, Cornell, San Jose State and Stanford.
Rich won a MacArthur "genius" fellowship, two Guggenheim Fellowships and many top literary awards including the Bollingen Prize, Brandeis Creative Arts Medal, Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize and the Wallace Stevens Award.
But when then-President Clinton awarded the National Medal of Arts in 1997, Rich refused to accept it, citing the administration's "cynical politics."
"The radical disparities of wealth and power in America are widening at a devastating rate," she wrote to the administration. "A president cannot meaningfully honor certain token artists while the people at large are so dishonored."
In 2003, Rich and other poets refused to attend a White House symposium on poetry to protest to U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
Born in Baltimore in 1929, Rich was the elder of two daughters of a Jewish father and a Protestant mother - a mixed heritage that she recalled in her autobiographical poem "Sources." Her father, a doctor and medical professor at Johns Hopkins University, encouraged her to write poetry at an early age.
Rich graduated from Radcliffe College in 1951 and was chosen for the Yale Younger Poets Prize for her first book of poetry, "A Change of World."
In 1953, she married Harvard University economist Alfred Conrad. In 1966, her family moved to New York City when her husband accepted a teaching position at City College. Rich taught remedial English to poor students entering college before teaching writing at Swarthmore College, Columbia University School of the Art and City University of New York.
After she left her husband, he committed suicide later in 1970. She later came out as a lesbian and lived with her partner, writer and editor Michelle Cliff, since 1976.
Adrienne Rich
In Memory
Earl Scruggs
Bluegrass legend and banjo pioneer Earl Scruggs, who helped profoundly change country music with Bill Monroe in the 1940s and later with guitarist Lester Flatt, has died. He was 88.
Scruggs' son Gary said his father died of natural causes Wednesday morning at a Nashville, Tenn., hospital.
Earl Scruggs was an innovator who pioneered the modern banjo sound. His use of three fingers rather than the clawhammer style elevated the banjo from a part of the rhythm section - or a comedian's prop - to a lead instrument.
His string-bending and lead runs became known worldwide as "the Scruggs picking style" and the versatility it allowed has helped popularize the banjo in almost every genre of music.
The debut of Bill Monroe and The Blue Grass Boys during a post-World War II performance on The Grand Ole Opry is thought of as the "big bang" moment for bluegrass and later 20th century country music. Later, Flatt and Scruggs teamed as a bluegrass act after leaving Monroe from the late 1940s until breaking up in 1969 in a dispute over whether their music should experiment or stick to tradition. Flatt died in 1979.
They were best known for their 1949 recording "Foggy Mountain Breakdown," played in the 1967 movie "Bonnie and Clyde," and "The Ballad of Jed Clampett" from "The Beverly Hillbillies," the popular TV series that debuted in 1962. Jerry Scoggins did the singing.
After the breakup, Scruggs used three of his sons in The Earl Scruggs Revue. The group played on bills with rock acts like Steppenwolf and James Taylor. Sometimes they played festivals before 40,000 people.
At an 80th birthday party for Scruggs in January 2004, country great Porter Wagoner said: "I always felt like Earl was to the five-string banjo what Babe Ruth was to baseball. He is the best there ever was, and the best there ever will be."
In 2005, "Foggy Mountain Breakdown" was selected for the Library of Congress' National Recording Registry of works of unusual merit. The following year, the 1972 Nitty Gritty Dirt Band's "Will the Circle Be Unbroken," on which Scruggs was one of many famous guest performers, joined the list, too.
Scruggs, born Jan. 6, 1924, in Flint Hill, N.C., learned to play banjo at age 4. He appeared at age 11 on a radio talent scout show. By age 15, he was playing in bluegrass bands.
In the 1982 interview, Scruggs said "Bonnie and Clyde" and "The Beverly Hillbillies" broadened the scope of bluegrass and country music "more than anything I can put my finger on. Both were hits in so many countries."
In 1992, Scruggs was among 13 recipients of a National Medal of Art.
Louise Scruggs, his wife of 57 years, died in 2006. He is survived by two sons, Gary and Randy. Gary Scruggs says funeral arrangements are incomplete.
Earl Scruggs
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