Tesla’s plan to mass-produce batteries will jumpstart their overall production of electric vehicles, that much is certain. the $30,000 Model 3? That’ll help, too. Rounding out those ambitions, Tesla is also going to bring more charging stations to the world, and will be blanketing North America in enough chargers to get you through almost any trip. A series of pictures, … Continue reading
We’ve got this.
Thanks to the courageous and indefatigable efforts of pipeline fighters everywhere, the tide has finally turned on Keystone XL. As it becomes increasingly clear that Keystone XL’s northern leg is not going through, it is time to set our sights on ending all tar sands exploitation.
The Obama administration’s latest election year delay on Keystone North is not a victory, but the dominoes continue to fall. Earlier this year, a citizen lawsuit denied TransCanada a route through Nebraska. Last month, it lost its permit through South Dakota. Now it faces a gauntlet of “Cowboys & Indians” vowing to stop it in its tracks.
We cannot let up until Keystone North is vanquished, but all signs point to President Obama nixing TransCanada’s cross-border permit after the November elections. Don’t just take my word for it.
On April 23, Rolling Stone contributing editor Jeff Goodell wrote: “I was told recently by members of the administration that the pipeline would, in fact, be rejected.” On June 18, former Vice President Al Gore wrote in this same magazine: “[Obama] has signaled that he is likely to reject the absurdly reckless Keystone XL-pipeline proposal.”
Both pronouncements come on the heels of former President Jimmy Carter pointedly warning the president that Keystone XL “will define your legacy on one of the greatest challenges humanity has ever faced – climate change.”
For a president who has suddenly decided to stake so much of his legacy on addressing the climate crisis, approving Keystone North would destroy any shred of credibility on this issue. It would also put an administration that prides itself on outreach to Native American communities in the position of violating the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty.
(Tom Weis, David Lautenberger, Shane Red Hawk and members of his family and tiyospaye (Lakota for “extended family”) viewing the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie in the National Archives vault in Washington, DC.)
I recently had the honor of viewing the Fort Laramie Treaty with Shane Red Hawk and his family in the National Archives vault. There wasn’t time to read every word of the hand-written document, but there was time to absorb the meaning of the “bad man” clause in Article I on the faded first page:
“If bad men among the whites, or among other people subject to the authority of the United States, shall commit any wrong upon the person or property of the Indians, the United States will, upon proof made to the agent, and forwarded to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs at Washington city, proceed at once to cause the offender to be arrested and punished according to the laws of the United States.”
(Tribal leaders mounted on horseback in front of the Capitol Building en route to the “Reject and Protect” tipi encampment in Washington, DC.)
Because Keystone North would cross treaty territory, its construction would blatantly violate the “bad man” clause, an arrestable offense the Great Sioux Nation will not abide. President Obama knows this because the presidents of the Oglala Sioux and Rosebud Sioux tribes declared on national television their people are “willing to die” to stop it. He also knows this because his Senior Counselor, John Podesta, visited the “Reject and Protect” tipi encampment on the National Mall in April where this declaration of nonviolent civil resistance was made.
As fate would have it, I found myself standing next to Mr. Podesta at this historic event. I thanked him for his public opposition to Keystone, then asked him to urge the president to use his bully pulpit to speak out against all tar sands exploitation (this includes preventing the tar sands barons from gaining a foothold in Utah’s pristine red rocks country).
We should not be doing business with a misanthropic industry that knowingly poisons First Nations communities in Canada, with immoral disregard for its climate impacts on humanity. Fortunately, the U.S. is in a strong position to help starve Alberta’s landlocked tar sands beast by stopping the flow of tar sands crossing our border.
Last month, retired Navy SEAL Team 6 Commander David Cooper provided powerful ammunition for doing just that with his warning to the State Department that the Keystone pipeline is highly vulnerable to attack: “We need a serious national conversation about what we do to head off an attack. Until then, I’d offer a saying we used on the SEAL teams: ‘If you cannot defend a position, you shouldn’t take it’.”
His threat assessment described as “the most likely scenario” a spill of more than 1 million gallons of “highly toxic” Keystone tar sands oil.
Caution demands that beyond rejecting the Keystone permit, President Obama order national security assessments on all tar sands pipelines crossing our border, and an immediate shutdown of the built-to-spill southern leg of Keystone XL in Texas and Oklahoma.
We need to heed the indictment of the tar sands industry issued by Ponca Nation matriarch and grandmother Casey Camp-Horinek of Oklahoma: “We’re suffering from environmental genocide from this extractive industry.” The closing ceremony she led on the final day of the “Reject and Protect” tipi encampment was soul-searing. Gathered near the White House, we looked on as she knelt in the grass to pour some sacred water. What poured were her tears. We watched in reverent silence as she cried, and cried. The tears she shed were for all who weep for what is happening to our precious Mother Earth.
No more grandmothers must be made to cry. No more First Nations people must be made to die. The tar sand industry’s brutal assault on the human family – and all our relations – must be arrested.
Cross-posted with EcoWatch
Though she now stars on the HBO comedy “Veep,” Anna Chlumsky will forever be remembered for her role in the 1991 coming-of-age film “My Girl.” The iconic scene, in which her character clutches onto the casket of her best friend (played by Macaulay Culkin), is considered one of the saddest in movie history. Chlumsky joined HuffPost Live to look back on that role, and talked about how she drew inspiration for that dramatic scene.
“My mom was like, ‘picture me in that casket’ and you know, that’s how that happens,” she told host Caitlyn Becker. “Kids can imagine. They’re imagining every day. It’s not hard for them.”
Though she appreciated the acclaim she has received for the role, she didn’t take all the credit for her performance. Chlumsky, who was 11 when the movie was released, explained that the ability to act is there for all adolescents.
“Kids all have raw talent. They are all truthful by nature,” Chlumsky said. “They don’t have the walls yet, that we learn to put up, as adults. So when you go back to train as an adult [actress], you’re learning to be a kid again.”
Watch the full conversation on HuffPost Live.
Sign up here for Live Today, HuffPost Live’s new morning email that will let you know the newsmakers, celebrities and politicians joining us that day and give you the best clips from the day before!
A wave of new books and shows has washed into the summer of 2014, all built around the theme of the greatest secret of World War II: the making of the atomic bomb. Why do we keep returning to the scientific breakthrough that took us into the atomic age?
Sixty years after the world’s first atomic bomb was unleashed, we are in the midst of an explosion not just of books but a musical and a television series, all focused on the making of the world’s first weapon of mass destruction. And no wonder. The story has the perfect plot: a struggle between good and evil on a global scale with a cast of heroes — brilliant young scientists and the women they loved. A race against the villains from without (Hitler) and, after the race was won, within (Joe McCarthy.) Also a spectacularly cinematic setting in the high desert of New Mexico: a secret city built on a mesa surrounded by a mountain wilderness.
The action takes place in the years when World War II was far from won. Six decades later, as that war fades from living memory, we are reminded again, by new books, an Off Broadway musical titled Atomic playing in New York, as well as a new cable television series called Manhattan which debuted on July 27. (The Manhattan Project was the overall name for the effort that produced the first atomic bombs.)
The revival began last year with the non-fiction The Girls of Atomic City about the women who worked at the Oak Ridge, Tennessee site. Next up was An Atomic Love Story: The Extraordinary Women in Robert Oppenheimer’s Life, the book I co-authored with Patricia Klaus, the result of 10 years of research centering on the man known as the “father” of the a-bomb, and the women he loved. Then came The Wives of Los Alamos, a novel set at the secret New Mexico site where the bomb was actually built, where the average age of the scientists and their wives was 26.
Coming attractions: another novel titled The Atomic Weight of Love described as “the story of modern feminism through the eyes of a woman in Los Alamos.” Also underway: a non-fiction book called The General and the Genius about the excessively cranky General Leslie Groves who was in charge of the project for the Army and, of course, Robert Oppenheimer, the genius at its core. The man who was described by one friend as “brilliantly endowed intellectually” with “good wit and gaiety and high spirits.”
And another added: “His mere physical appearance, his voice, and his manners made people fall in love with him — male, female, almost everybody.” Elegant, handsome, wealthy, complex — Robert Oppenheimer was the perfect central character, the romantic leading man, around which the story of the building of the bomb could be told. And retold by an emerging phalanx of writers who cannot resist the inherent drama of a time, a place and a task that would propel the world into the dangerous new era that haunts us still. Witness North Korea and Iran. We return to the beginning, perhaps, in an attempt to divine the future.
Since the publication of our book last September, Patricia and I have been speaking to groups large and small, in bookstores, libraries, homes. Our first event was co-sponsored by a YMCA near Berkeley, where initial work on the Bomb was done. That’s when we learned what a draw Robert Oppenheimer remains. The room was packed, and included a contingent of physicists who had stories to tell, almost always about Robert.
Often they offered private glimpses of the man, passed down by a teacher who knew Robert: about his intellect, his curiosity, his concern for the human condition. A woman in her 90s remembered a story he told at a cocktail party in the 1940s. And so his legend grows.
Patricia is a historian, I am a writer. In the years when we were reading everything we could find about our subjects, our first big decision was critical: We started by assuming we would do a non-fiction book, which meant we would have to do original research, turn up new material. The problem was not Robert Oppenheimer — there were reams of material about him. But we were approaching him through the women he loved, and initially we had very little to go on.
In the case of Jean Tatlock, whom Robert had hoped to marry, we had only one memorial letter, written by a friend of the family. There was somewhat more about Ruth Tolman, because her husband had been an important physicist, and the CalTech archives had a few of her letters in its Tolman file.
And as for Robert’s wife Kitty, the major Oppenheimer bios had more information on her, almost all of it negative, and most of it provided by two women who had good reason to detest her. Their acid testimony seemed to have defined Kitty’s legacy. If we couldn’t find a lot more on these three women, we would have to call our book a “novel,” another word for fiction. Neither of us wanted to do that, so it meant we were going to have to do some prodigious digging. That’s when the fun began.
We followed the most elusive leads: Patricia found a small footnote which linked Jean Tatlock to the poet May Sarton, In the Sarton archive in the New York City library, we found a cache of letters from Jean to her best friend in high school, letters that made Robert’s first love come to life for us.
Our search led us to Ruth Tolman’s nieces in Berkeley, Jean’s nephews in New York City, Kitty’s great nephew in Germany. And we were able to track down the daughters of Kitty’s first husband, (a marriage that had been annulled) and found ourselves with an altogether different account than the one Kitty had offered. We tracked down some surprising sources for gossip, found a ship’s log that explained a suicide at sea. Pieces of the puzzle dropped into place; clearly, others are swirling around out there, in the cities of the Manhattan project, revealing the lives of the men and women who were a part of that time and its secret places.
Next month we are heading for the library in the town of Livermore, California, home to the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, built after the war by some of the men who had been at Los Alamos with Robert. We feel sure that a few scientists will be there to tell us a story we haven’t heard.
To her 200,000+ international social media followers, Alexandra Elle (as Alexandra Smith is more commonly known) is the face of pure bliss.
On any given day, her Instagram feed showcases her 6-year-old daughter Charleigh’s (pronounced Charlie) toothy smile, while a tweet proclaims a truism from her bestselling book, “Words From a Wanderer.” (“If you are unsure of who you are, you will easily get lost in others.”) Collectively her digital output encourages self-love and resilience and regularly doles out positive affirmations.
“I try my best to only spread words and images that will incite happiness, positivity, love, and peace among people,” Alexandra explains. “It’s part of my personality.”
Despite the cheer of her online persona, the self-published poet and author endured dark formative years which bear little resemblance to her current circumstances. An early high school graduate who enrolled in community college when she was 17, Alexandra grew up an old soul. But Alexandra soon found herself in the most adult of circumstances—unexpectedly pregnant.
“I was kind of [a] statistic: young, African-American woman pregnant by age 18, you know what I mean?” Alexandra says now. “I was depressed and lost a lot of weight even during my pregnancy. During what she calls “probably my worst point,” Alexandra’s mother suggested she get a late-term abortion. (“I’m pro-choice, but I said no because that is really, really not a good thing,” she says.)
While her intuition and family tugged her in the opposite direction, the father of her child ultimately convinced her to go through with the pregnancy. Even with the psychological toll her pregnancy took on her, Alexandra was able to transition smoothly into her new role as a mother—Charleigh’s peaceful demeanor definitely helped, she says. Integrating her new lifestyle with her friends’, however, wasn’t as easy.
“I was a parent and a lot of the people I was friends with were single with no kids, so our priorities were different,” she recalls. “My personality was [also] changing; I was becoming more self-aware, more spiritual, more at peace with myself, and I think I was using the crowd I was with as a crutch. I had to steer into my path and purpose to prepare to be the best mother and woman I could be.”
What’s your partner’s relationship like with Charleigh?
[Ryan] just moved 3,000 miles from Los Angeles, California, to be with us. I’m really excited to see how they grow their relationship together. Even when he wasn’t here, he was FaceTiming her, sending her books, and showing her that she was just as important as mommy was. So when they met for the first time last year, she instantly just clung to him. The love they have for one another is special to me.
Do you see more children in your future?
Oh, yes. If I could have it my way, three more. But I’ll settle for two if I can only get two. Ryan wants children too and we are excited to start a family with each other. It’s going to be awesome to have a partner I can go through pregnancy [with]—doctors’ appointments together, taking Charleigh along, having them watch my belly grow… It’s just going to be amazing.
Read more of Alexandra’s story and meet these other amazing mothers at matermea.com.
All photos courtesy of Erika Salazar.
I’ve been writing an advice column in some shape or form for close to 10 years now, and I can say with confidence that at least 75 percent of the letters I receive from married people are about issues that could have been avoided if the couples had better communicated their expectations about married life before tying the knot. Letters like one I answered recently in which the husband and wife had drastically different ideas on where they’d like to raise a family are, sadly, not uncommon. But they’d be much more of a rarity if couples would discuss these 15 issues before getting married:
1. Outstanding debt.
Who has some and what is the plan for paying it off?
2. Children.
Do you want them? If so, how many? If not, are you sure enough about that decision to take permanent steps to ensure you don’t have them (like a vasectomy)? If you do want them, when do you want to have your first? Are you open to adoption or fertility treatments if you’re unable to conceive naturally? How long do you want to try to conceive naturally before trying different options?
3. Location, location, location.
Where do you want to put roots down? And if you don’t want to put roots down and would prefer to stay on the move indefinitely — my parents, for example, raised me and my sister in three different countries (none of which was the U.S., where they were raised) — make sure your partner is on board with that idea. How would you rank location in terms of importance for your well-being? If you love where you live, what would persuade you to move — a job offer, desire to be closer to family, better schools for your kids?
4. Religion.
If you practice a religion or have a particular faith, how important is it that your partner share the faith and practice it with you? How does your religion or faith affect your lifestyle? If you plan to have kids, what religion, if any, do you want to raise them in?
5. IKEA.
Marriages are broken in the aisles of IKEA every day. Do not underestimate the power of the Swedish smorgasbord of cheap, disposable home goods. If you and your partner plan to spend even a minute of your marriage in IKEA, decide whether a $40 book shelf is worth the two or three years from your life it may cost you.
6. Dream home.
Do you want a McMansion in the ‘burbs? A cozy condo in the sky? A beach bungalow? A cabin in the woods? A macked-out tree house? A ranch in Utah? You may never live in your dream home, but knowing whether you and your significant other share common long-term goals will help solidify your roles as partners in each other’s lives and confirm that you’re working toward the same thing.
7. Bank accounts and bill-sharing.
Will you share a bank account? Keep individual account? Both? And what bills will be paid by what accounts? Will you each put a certain percentage of your income toward shared bills? Do you have an emergency fund? What if one person is out of work or decides to stay home to raise the kids? What’s your plan for affording that?
8. Division of household labor.
Dishes, laundry, yada, yada, yada. Barter, negotiate, and plead if you have to, so that you aren’t stuck doing the thing you least like doing all the time. If you hate, hate, hate washing dishes, but don’t mind cooking, suggest to your partner that you head meal preparation if he or she agrees to take on the dishes. This works best if the thing you hate with a passion isn’t also the same thing your partner hates with a passion. If it is, find a way to compromise, using your best negotiation tactics “Okay, I’ll empty the litter box and do the laundry if you please wash the dishes…”
9. Sex.
Do you want to sleep with just one person for the rest of your life? Can you and still be happy and satisfied? If not, you need to discuss either the possibility of an open marriage, strategies for keeping the spark alive, or waiting on marriage until the idea of monogamy isn’t a death sentence for you.
10. Hard or soft.
Your mattress! You will (hopefully) be sleeping in the same bed as this person for a very, very long time, and a comfortable mattress is imperative for a good night’s rest. Rack up too many sleepless nights and your relationship will suffer. So, if you and your partner have different ideas of what makes a comfortable mattress, how will you compromise?
11. Family obligations.
How much time do you spend with your family now, how much do you expect to spend with them once you’re married and potentially have children, and how much time do you expect your spouse to spend with them (and vice versa). How do you plan to spend your holidays and what’s your plan for giving both sets of families equal time with you/your children during the major holidays? Are you the type of person who likes to vacation with your family, and if so, how often?
12. Vacations.
In addition to extended family vacations, you and your partner need to discuss what other types of vacations you do or don’t enjoy. If you’re a Disneyland fan and your significant other hates Mickey Mouse with a passion, that may cause some friction. If one of you only likes camping and the other prefers staying in chic boutique hotels, there’s an issue. Likewise, if the workaholic in your relationship can’t bear to be too far away from the office while the other would like to get as far away from home as possible, you need to talk through how you’re going to compromise. You can’t expect to plan all your vacations for the rest of your life together, but discussing some solutions that you’re both OK with will help you address friction in the future.
13. The name game.
What’s your family name going to be? Will one spouse take the other spouse’s last name? And if not, what surname will you give any kids you have?
14. Career.
How committed is each of you to your careers? Do you live to work or work to live? How will your respective careers affect family life? Where are you in terms of living a “dream career”? Do you have more schooling and apprenticing to finish? If so, what’s the time frame for completing these steps toward obtaining the kind of job you hope for? What kind of personal sacrifices will you have to make to climb the career ladder of your choice?
15. TV in the bedroom: Yay! Or nay?
Think of the TV in the bedroom as a metaphor for your whole marriage. Do you want a method of escape or to protect the intimacy? Neither answer is right or wrong, but answering yourselves the question before you get married could provide a valuable insight into how you picture your married life together.
I have never met some of my best friends.
In recent years, less and less people I say this to find it weird. But 10 years ago when I was a shy high schooler discovering the wonders of online gaming, it was a lot stranger to say that I counted people living on another continent among my closest friends. My real life friends and family didn’t understand how you could develop a deep, meaningful connection without looking someone in the eye, shaking hands, hugging, sharing a meal.
I, on the other hand, didn’t understand how people related in real life. Staring at a roomful of strangers, how could you tell who liked the same things as you or had a similar personality? You could try to guess based on their looks, but when I raved to goth kids at school about a heavy metal band from Finland I received blank stares, and while I did geek out with the nerds about the newest Lord of the Rings movie, none of them had read the books first.
Online, it was easy to find people who understood me. I had stumbled across a simple text-based role-play site with no graphics, which meant it consisted of several hundred people writing stories together on a Yahoo group (anyone else remember those?). Players listed their interests in their profiles. Most of them listened to similar music to me — obscure gypsy punk and Nordic metal opera bands.
And everyone liked to write. I had never met other serious writers before. The kids in school raised their eyebrows when I retreated to a corner to scribble frantically in a notebook. In the game, though, writing was more than a solitary exercise, more than telling a story. When you write a role-play, you’re also acting. Assuming the role of your character, viewing life through the eyes of your creation.
I could be anyone I wanted to be, so I chose to write a confident, outgoing prankster woman. Pretty much the opposite of the shrinking wallflower I’d become in real life. But my character must have been believable, because other characters were drawn to her. Soon I’d accumulated a whole group of friends who referred to me as their “mama bird,” the one they went to for advice and comfort.
We began to talk about our real lives too. I was careful about it (this was before online dating took off, back when the only stories you heard about meeting people from the Internet involved kidnap and murder). I never revealed my address or surname. But unlike on TV, the adults in the game were honest about their age.
I had conversations that would’ve been surreal in any other situation — like the couple in their 50s I talked to throughout their separation and reunion, or the 40-something woman I considered a role model, who tragically lost her son a few years into our acquaintance. I met kids younger than me out in the Midwest who were stockpiling every spare penny for college; a guy from China who couldn’t access half of our websites because of the Chinese Internet security laws. I talked to a sixty-something West Coast woman battling cancer — a battle she eventually lost, much to our sorrow. I bonded with a UK player struggling with her identity after she accidentally fell in love with another girl in the game. I met a girl from Malaysia who was studying for her doctorate in the Ukraine. I’m invited to her wedding next year, which will be the first time we’ll meet in person.
I dated a boy living in Glasgow; then fell head over heels for a British guy in Newcastle, who I very nearly married years later. I took a road trip to an older couple’s campsite in Missouri to party with 30 of our game friends from all corners of the globe (including an Icelandic guy who professionally reenacted Viking battles).
Every time I’ve met one of those online friends (close to a hundred by now), they’ve been exactly how I’d imagined them.
Computer screens can let you remain anonymous, yes. There are creeps online, just as there are creeps hiding in plain sight in the real world too. But much in the same way that the divider in a confessional allows you to open up, or masquerade balls give you the confidence to dance with the person you’d be afraid to ask otherwise, the anonymity of the Internet was freeing for shy high school me.
10 years ago, I invented an outgoing, life-of-the-party character through whom I lived vicariously. Today, living in New York City with a huge network of friends (both here and around the globe), I have become that character.
The shy wallflower inside still rears her head when I show up alone at a party or attend an awkward networking event. But if the Internet has taught me anything, it’s that if you inhabit a character long enough you will become it. Write who you want to be, embody that person, and you’ll find true friends, both online and off.
It’s been more than 30 years since the death of Thelonious Monk, but the pioneering bebop pianist continues to inspire a new generation of musicians through the Thelonious Monk Institute for Jazz.
Established in 1986 by Monk’s son and daughter, Thelonious Sphere (T.S.) Monk III and Barbara Monk, the institute, based in Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles, cultivates emerging talent from the international jazz scene through various educational initiatives and its annual International Jazz Competition.
As the musical heir to his father’s legacy, T.S. has spent decades touring the world as a musician and a music and arts educator. In recent years, he’s also assisted in establishing International Jazz Day on April 30 alongside jazz icon Herbie Hancock.
During a recent interview with The Huffington Post, the internationally acclaimed drummer, composer and vocalist opened up on his efforts to keep the Monk name relevant, as well as his thoughts on Denzel Washington’s interest in portraying his legendary father on film.
Currently you’re performing at select jazz festivals across the country. And I’m hearing that you have something special in store for fans at the Somerville Jazz Festival.
That gig is going to be a lot of fun, because I’m going down there with my sextet, and I’m also going down there with my tentet, which is the big-band configuration that my father used. That’s called the “Monk on Monk Ensemble,” and we do all of the things that Thelonious did with big bands. It’s a funny thing, because he did two timeless performances that were recorded with big bands, but he never had a chance to have a big band […] so for the past 10 years or so I’ve been running around and letting people listen to his big-band arrangements. So that’s what makes this gig down in Somerville, N.J. so special for me. I play a lot of gigs with my sextet and I play a lot of gigs with my tentet, but it’s not often that I get a chance to do both ensembles on the same evening. So I’m really looking forward to that.
2017 will mark the 100th birthday of Thelonious Monk. I can only imagine a major event taking place to commemorate the celebration. Are there any set plans as of yet?
We’re beginning the preplanning on a lot of different levels, not only with the [Monk] Institute but with myself just representing my father, because it’s going to be an international event … This year we’ve streamed the third annual International Jazz Day to 2.5 billion people. So I know when Thelonious’ 100th birthday comes up in three years, the whole entire world is going to be celebrating him the whole year and the International Jazz Day will be bigger than ever. We’re planning it now. So I have a lot of stuff on my plate.
As a partner of International Jazz Day, where would you like to see the event evolve into in years to come?
On the grand scale, I would suspect that we would enjoy the kind of welcome that the World Cup has. Whatever we do, the whole world goes there. Jazz is the only genre that is played in every country in the world. There’s a lot of indigenous music that you and I would never hear on the radio here in America, but jazz is absolutely everywhere. And that’s amazing to me. Herbie Hancock is the chairman [of the Thelonious Monk Institute], and he was able to get together [with] Susan Rice when she was still the ambassador [to] the United Nations and put this International Jazz Day together, between the Monk Institute, the United Nations and UNESCO [the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization]. Because we’re about education. And it’s turned out to be a wonderful thing where we say “We like to do it here, or we like to do it there.” But it’s even more wonderful when you have countries requesting it in places you wouldn’t expect, like Monaco, with the check in their hand … So I just hope that we get the same kind of welcome around the world, and from all indications I think we will. And we’re just going to keep it moving.
You’ve had the chance to grow up among an array of jazz legends, including Miles Davis. What are your thoughts on Don Cheadle’s forthcoming biopic on Miles?
I’m delighted that they’re making a movie on Miles, because Miles deserves that. And I think it’s an important story that needs to be told, because Miles got inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. There’s a reason for something like that to happen. That’s a major story. Just the fact that this guy who never spent 30 seconds on the rock ‘n’ roll stage gets inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame — I mean, that’s a hell of a thing. I don’t think that’s really sunk in with people. They’re not inducting Mick Jagger into the Jazz Hall of Fame. But they inducted Miles into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and that’s a heck of a statement.
I’m delighted for the project and I was delighted to raise the money, and I know that Don’s got the money now, and I’m glad that he wanted to do it in a fashion to keep that creative control, because once the studios get involved they have a whole ‘nother agenda. So I think it’s going to be just fine, and [I’m] delighted to say that I knew the man personally.
In recent years, Denzel Washington expressed interest in portraying your father in a full-length biopic. Have you received any other inquires for the role?
Yes — Denzel Washington, Bill Duke and even Don Cheadle. It’s something that’s going to happen. I’ve also had several people, in fact two people currently, working on Broadway musicals for Thelonious. Thelonious is a very enigmatic character and to sort of bottle him is sort of [more] difficult than to do with Miles. And if you notice with Don Cheadle’s Miles project, it’s a period piece, not really “the life of Miles Davis,” because that’s a hassle. So it’s the same thing with Thelonious … There’s a lot of ways [of] talking about Thelonious. And then with Thelonious, he had profoundly close mentoring relationships with not only Miles, but also with John Coltrane and Bud Powell. And when you look at those three individuals, they’re probably the three most influential individuals in the last 50 years in jazz. Often people think about Thelonious and Miles in the same generation, but they’re not peers. So you could do something just about those three influences and how that impacted the rest of jazz.
So I think that Thelonious is just a very deep subject, and there’s been enough inquiries, and there’s seven or eight books out on him right now. People will get around to a major film on Thelonious, either dealing with his life in general or a particular phase of his life. And the reason why I don’t worry about it is because everything that has happened with Thelonious has happened at the right time, and it’s been absolutely first-class. So I’m not in any type of rush to rush around and say, “Ah man, I need to make some money. Write me a screenplay for Thelonious.” No. Someone’s going to pop up with a screenplay. It’s going to be fabulous and then we’ll do it.
WATCH: International Jazz Day All-Star Global Concert from Osaka, Japan
A couple months ago, Matt Daniels wowed wordsmiths and hip-hop enthusiasts alike with his hip-hop flow chart. It ranked 85 rappers by the size of the vocabulary in their songs.
Now, Daniels has upped the ante by expanding his repertoire to 100 artists. The hard data is brilliantly illustrated in the above print from Pop Chart Lab, which is available for purchase.
In version 2.0, Daniels decided to make a concerted effort to include rappers known for their extensive vocabularies. And, as he predicted, many of them — for example, Jedi Mind Tricks, Action Bronson, Jean Grae, Del, Sage Francis and Immortal Technique — shot straight to the top of the list.
Plus, who wouldn’t want these amazing illustrations of 100 rappers on their wall? Sign us up.
Nobody in their 20’s purposefully gets up at 5:00 a.m. to have breakfast with a 90-year old retired music educator on a Wednesday morning. But that’s exactly what I did. In 2007, when most 24-year olds were sleeping, I was meeting with my mentor, the legendary Dr. Carroll Rinehart, and I thank him for continuing to enrich my life today.
My high school band teacher told me straight out, “You will never make it.” When I applied to the University of Arizona School of Music, I could only play the drums by ear, and could barely read music. “Music school is where I would learn these things!” I argued with the admissions counselor, and my passion to learn persuaded them to give me a shot.
I was the ‘worst’ in almost all my classes. Music school made me hate music. At least the way it was taught at the time. They taught the structure outside of an artistic context. I wanted to be a complete artist and I felt disconnected from the artist within me.
After graduating, I worked as a music teacher in public schools until the budget crisis and PTA pulled all the funds. The crazy thing is music education moves kids to learn! Circumstances forced schools to make hard choices and often they were cutting the one thing that could have transformed every other class.
In 1992, a young composer was introduced to the same Dr. Rinehart. Enrique “Hank” Feldman, Grammy-nominated composer, former music professor and Founder of the F.A.M.E Foundation was inspired by Dr. Rinehart’s commitment to “engage the learner in authentic ways.”
Eventually, I met Enrique and both our passions merged. Long story short, MyTown Music was born. Imagine an organization that empowers the artist in everyone! MyTown Music took off… for a while, but then the funds dried up. Even though students were hungry for an avenue to create, schools had no budget.
In 2013, I moved MyTown Music to Long Beach, California and started all over, while the educational component continued to build momentum throughout the U.S.. I posted an ad on Craigslist and landed a whopping one student, Rylee Gibson, age 9, who explains, “I never wanted to take music lessons because I wanted to be a performer. My dad looked for singing lessons and music lessons, but I didn’t like any of the teachers because they made me learn about stuff instead of creating things.”
I’ve heard it said, “Corey Ferrugia is a rare dude.” Collaborating with Enrique and under the guidance of Dr. Carroll Rinehart, the team managed to create a duplicatable artist development system that includes songwriting, lyric development, performance training, recording studio time and collaboration with some of the brightest upcoming artists in the music industry. In addition, the MyTown Music model is committed to individual sustainability and ownership of artistry and label!
In 2006, Sir Ken Robinson gave the most watched TED talk ever. Over 27 million people listened as he discussed how education kills creativity. Essentially, he called for a focus on Arts as an integral part of the educational experience. According to research by the National Education Association, by 2013, arts funding had been reduced to 1997 levels at the local, state and national levels. In other words, opportunities for creative development in education have declined and/or stagnated for 16 consecutive years.
Artist development builds creative and critical thinking. Critical thinking has been the buzzword in education for a while, but it’s not critical or creative thinking. It’s critical AND creative thinking.
MyTown Music has taken a model of artist development, simultaneously created a model for personal development and is capitalizing on a huge need to empower individuals and organizations so they can create their own artistic and educational frameworks. It has generated a new pathway for young artists to learn the craft of music making, songwriting, metaphorical thinking, empowerment and how to monetize their own work. It is also creating a sustainable framework for artistic thinking for individuals and schools nationwide, both in this country and others.
Along with my colleague and friend Enrique, we have assembled a team of world class artists and educational professionals in numerous domains of the visual, audio, graphic, education and development sectors to take students and adults from dreaming to living at their highest potential.
I share my passion openly in music, education and entertainment. Social change is all about empowering others to empower themselves. I know that we have a massive mission. Currently, I am taking the first four students through the entire process. We are going from concept to product to social change.
I think about what happens when people feel free to engage at their highest potential. What happens when there is a system and mechanism for this? What else is possible? What would the world look like if every individual was maximizing their potential?
What would it look like for you?
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
