RIP

[Martina]

Peter Matthiessen, Author and Naturalist, Is Dead at 86

Peter Matthiessen, a roving author and naturalist whose impassioned nonfiction explored the remote endangered wilds of the world and whose prizewinning fiction often placed his mysterious protagonists in the heart of them, died Saturday. He was 86 and lived in Sagaponack, N.Y.

He had been treated for acute leukemia for more than a year. His death came as he awaited publication of his final novel, “In Paradise,” on April 8.

Mr. Matthiessen was one of the last survivors of a generation of American writers who came of age after World War II and who all seemed to know one another, socializing in New York and on Long Island’s East End as a kind of movable literary salon peopled by the likes of William Styron, James Jones, Kurt Vonnegut and E.L. Doctorow.

Article about his life -- http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/06/bo...-at-86.html?hp

[Martina]

I guess it's a bad week to be someone I idolize. Jesse Winchester has passed away at 69. Great songwriter. Wonderful man.

Jesse Winchester R.I.P., Dead At 69

by VVN Music on April 7, 2014

Jesse Winchester is reported to have has passed away after a battle with cancer.

Janis Ian tweeted news of Jesse’s death just shortly after his official Facebook page prepared fans for the news.

Yesterday, Winchester’s official Facebook page held the message:

The studio has been quiet – deafeningly so – as Jesse is receiving hospice care, in home and with family. It is a difficult time, but as always and in his own special way, he has something to teach us about grace and beauty.

That was followed on Sunday evening by the following post by Janis Ian:

RIP Jesse Winchester. As underrated a singer as Chet Baker. As underrated a guitarist as Willie Nelson. A man who held the audience in the palm of his hand without moving an inch. One of the best songwriters on earth. Damn damn damn.

Winchester had been battling cancer of the esophagus since 2011.

Jesse was a scholar as a teen, graduating from Christian Brothers High School in Memphis, TN as a Merit finalist, national honor society member and class Salutatorian. Unfortunately, just after his college graduation, he received his draft notice and, instead of serving, moving to Montreal, Canada.

Although he dabbled with music in high school, he didn’t go full into the profession until he got to Montreal, joining the band Les Astronautes. Eventually, he started playing in coffeehouses around eastern Canada.

The band’s Robbie Robertson took notice of Winchester and helped him get his first record contract, issuing his self-titled debut album in 1970. While he continued to record through the decade, he was unable to tour outside of Canada and became better known for his songs then for his own performances. Artists picked up and recorded a number of his songs including Brand New Tennessee Waltz, Yankee Lady, A Showman’s Life and Biloxi.

In 1976, Jimmy Carter granted amnesty to draft evaders and allowed special amnesty for Winchester who had become a Canadian citizen, opening up the U.S. market to Winchester as a touring artist. He didn’t move back to the U.S. until 2002.

Between 1970 and 1981, Winchester released seven studio albums before taking a break from the business, living off of his song royalties. He returned in 1988 with Humour Me followed by an even longer eleven year break before 1999′s Gentleman of Leisure. Jesse released his tenth and final studio album, Love Filling Station, in 2009.

[Kobi]

OS ANGELES (AP) - Mickey Rooney's approach to life was simple: "Let's put on a show!" He spent nine decades doing it, on the big screen, on television, on stage and in his extravagant personal life.

Pint-sized, precocious, impish, irrepressible - perhaps hardy is the most-suitable adjective for Rooney, a perennial comeback artist whose early blockbuster success as the vexing but wholesome Andy Hardy and as Judy Garland's musical comrade in arms was bookended 70 years later with roles in "Night at the Museum" and "The Muppets."

Rooney died Sunday at age 93 surrounded by family at his North Hollywood home.

He was nominated for four Academy Awards over a four-decade span and received two special Oscars for film achievements, won an Emmy for his TV movie "Bill" and had a Tony nomination for his Broadway smash "Sugar Babies."

A small man physically, Rooney was prodigious in talent, scope, ambition and appetite. He sang and danced, played roles both serious and silly, wrote memoirs, a novel, movie scripts and plays and married eight times , siring 11 children.

After signing with MGM in 1934, Rooney landed his first big role playing Clark Gable's character as a boy in "Manhattan Melodrama." A year later, still only in his mid-teens, Rooney was doing Shakespeare, playing an exuberant Puck in Max Reinhardt's "A Midsummer Night's Dream," which also featured James Cagney and Olivia de Havilland.

Rooney soon was earning $300 a week with featured roles in such films as "Riff Raff," ''Little Lord Fauntleroy," ''Captains Courageous" and "The Devil Is a Sissy."

Then came Andy Hardy in the 1937 comedy "A Family Affair," a role he would reprise in 15 more feature films over the next two decades. Centered on a kindly small-town judge (Lionel Barrymore) who delivers character-building homilies to troublesome son Andy, it was pure corn, but it turned out to be golden corn for MGM, becoming a runaway success with audiences.

Studio boss Louis B. Mayer saw "A Family Affair" as a template for a series of movies about a model American home. Cast changes followed, most notably with Lewis Stone replacing Barrymore in the sequels, but Rooney stayed on, his role built up until he became the focus of the films, which included "The Courtship of Andy Hardy," ''Andy Hardy's Double Life" and "Love Finds Andy Hardy," the latter featuring fellow child star Garland.

He played a delinquent humbled by Spencer Tracy as Father Flanagan in 1938's "Boys Town" and Mark Twain's timeless scamp in 1939's "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn." Rooney's peppy, all-American charm was never better matched than when he appeared opposite Garland in such films as "Babes on Broadway" and "Strike up the Band," musicals built around that "Let's put on a show" theme.

One of them, 1939's "Babes in Arms," earned Rooney a best-actor Oscar nomination, a year after he received a special Oscar shared with Deanna Durbin for "bringing to the screen the spirit and personification of youth, and as juvenile players setting a high standard of ability and achievement."

He earned another best-actor nomination for 1943's "The Human Comedy," adapted from William Saroyan's sentimental tale about small-town life during World War II. The performance was among Rooney's finest.

"The Bold and the Brave," 1956 World War II drama, brought him an Oscar nomination as best supporting actor. But mostly, he played second leads in such films as "Off Limits" with Bob Hope, "The Bridges at Toko-Ri" with William Holden, and "Requiem for a Heavyweight" with Anthony Quinn.

In the early 1960s, he had a wild turn in "Breakfast at Tiffany's" as Audrey Hepburn's bucktoothed Japanese neighbor, and he was among the fortune seekers in the all-star comedy "It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World."

Rooney's starring roles came in low-budget films such as "Drive a Crooked Road," ''The Atomic Kid," ''Platinum High School," ''The Twinkle in God's Eye" and "How to Stuff a Wild Bikini."

He earned a fourth Oscar nomination, as supporting actor, for 1979's "Black Stallion," the same year he starred with Ann Miller in the Broadway revue "Sugar Babies," which brought him a Tony nomination and millions of dollars during his years with the show.

In 1981 came his Emmy-winning performance as a disturbed man in "Bill." He found success with voice roles for animated films such as "The Fox and the Hound," ''The Care Bears Movie" and the blockbuster "Finding Nemo."

Over the years, Rooney also made hundreds of appearances on TV talk and game shows, dramas and variety programs. He starred in three short-lived series: "The Mickey Rooney Show" (1954); "Mickey" (1964); and "One of the Boys" (1982). A co-star from "One of the Boys," Dana Carvey, later parodied Rooney on "Saturday Night Live," mocking him as a hopeless egomaniac who couldn't stop boasting he once was "the number one star ... IN THE WO-O-ORLD!"

A lifelong storyteller, Rooney wrote two memoirs: "i.e., an Autobiography" published in 1965, and "Life Is Too Short," 1991. He also produced a novel about a child movie star, "The Search for Sonny Skies," in 1994.

- See more at: http://www.legacy.com/ns/obituary.as....52AMqK7M.dpuf

[Teddybear]

R.I.P. Maya Angelou. You were a voice for many

[ProfPacker]

She was a gift and inspiration to many. I believe her works will be those that are past on from generation to generation.

[Aryon]

Still I Rise

Poems by Maya Angelou : 18 / 28

« Remembrance
The Detached »

Still I Rise

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may tread me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin' in my own back yard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

~ Maya Angelou

http://www.theguardian.com/books/201...author-dies-86

http://www.theguardian.com/books/201...8/maya-angelou

http://www.theguardian.com/books/201...nderful-mother

[anaisninja]

Phenomenal Woman
BY MAYA ANGELOU

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I’m not cute or built to suit a fashion model’s size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I’m telling lies.
I say,
It’s in the reach of my arms,
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.

I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please,
And to a man,
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees.
Then they swarm around me,
A hive of honey bees.
I say,
It’s the fire in my eyes,
And the flash of my teeth,
The swing in my waist,
And the joy in my feet.
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.

Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.

Men themselves have wondered
What they see in me.
They try so much
But they can’t touch
My inner mystery.
When I try to show them,
They say they still can’t see.
I say,
It’s in the arch of my back,
The sun of my smile,
The ride of my breasts,
The grace of my style.
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.

Now you understand
Just why my head’s not bowed.
I don’t shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud.
When you see me passing,
It ought to make you proud.
I say,
It’s in the click of my heels,
The bend of my hair,
the palm of my hand,
The need for my care.
’Cause I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.

[anaisninja]

Maya Angelou – Just For A Time

Oh how you used to walk
With that insouciant smile
I liked to hear you talk
And your style
Pleased me for a while.

You were my early love
New as a day breaking in Spring
You were the image of
Everything
That caused me to sing.

I don’t like reminiscing
Nostalgia is not my forte
I don’t spill tears
On yesterday’s years
But honesty makes me say,
You were a precious pearl
How I loved to see you shine,
You were the perfect girl.
And you were mine.
For a time.
For a time.
Just for a time.