- 1939: Judy Collins is born
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Judith Marjorie "Judy" Collins (born May 1, 1939) is an American singer and songwriter known for her eclectic tastes in the material she records (which has included folk, show tunes, pop, rock and roll and standards) and for her social activism.
Musical career
It was the music of Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, and the traditional songs of the folk revival of the early 1960s, however, that piqued Collins' interest and awoke in her a love of lyrics. Three years after her debut as a piano prodigy, she was playing guitar. Her music became popular at the University of Connecticut, where her husband taught. She performed at parties and for the campus radio station along with David Grisman and Tom Azarian. She eventually made her way to Greenwich Village, New York City, where she busked and played in clubs like Gerdes Folk City, until she signed with Elektra Records, a record label she was associated with for 35 years. In 1961, Collins released her first album, A Maid of Constant Sorrow, at age 22.
At first she sang traditional folk songs or songs written by others — in particular the protest poets of the time, such as Tom Paxton, Phil Ochs, and Bob Dylan. She recorded her own versions of important songs from the period, such as Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man" and Pete Seeger's "Turn, Turn, Turn". Collins was also instrumental in bringing little-known musicians to a wider public. For example, she recorded songs by Canadian poet Leonard Cohen, who became a close friend over the years. She also recorded songs by singer-songwriters such as Eric Andersen, Ian Tyson, Joni Mitchell, Randy Newman, Robin Williamson and Richard Fariña long before they gained national acclaim.
While Collins' first few albums comprised straightforward guitar-based folk songs, with 1966's In My Life, she began branching out and including work from such diverse sources as The Beatles, Leonard Cohen, Jacques Brel, and Kurt Weill. Mark Abramson produced and Joshua Rifkin arranged the album, adding lush orchestration to many of the numbers. The album was regarded as a major departure for a folk artist and set the course for Collins' subsequent work over the next decade.
With her 1967 album Wildflowers, also produced by Mark Abramson and arranged by Rifkin, Collins began to record her own compositions, beginning with "Since You've Asked". The album also provided Collins with a major hit, and a Grammy award, in Mitchell's "Both Sides, Now", which reached Number 8 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Collins' 1968 album, Who Knows Where the Time Goes, was produced by David Anderle and featured back-up guitar by Stephen Stills (of Crosby, Stills & Nash), with whom she was romantically involved at the time. (She was the inspiration for Stills's CSN classic "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes"). Time Goes had a mellow country sound, and included Ian Tyson's "Someday Soon" and the title track written by the UK singer-songwriter Sandy Denny. The album also featured Collins' composition "My Father" and one of the first covers of Leonard Cohen's "Bird on the Wire".
By the 1970s Collins had a solid reputation as an art song singer and folksinger and had begun to stand out for her own compositions. She was also known for her broad range of material: her songs from this period include the traditional Christian hymn "Amazing Grace", the Stephen Sondheim Broadway ballad "Send in the Clowns" (both of which were top 20 hits as singles), a recording of Joan Baez's "A Song for David", and her own compositions, such as "Born to the Breed".
Activism
Like many other folk singers of her generation, Collins was drawn to social activism. Her political idealism also led her to compose a ballad entitled "Che" in honor of the 1960s Marxist icon Che Guevara.
Collins sympathized with the Yippie movement, and was friendly with its leaders, Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin. On March 17, 1968, she attended Hoffman's press conference at the Americana Hotel in New York to announce the party's formation. In 1969, she testified in Chicago in support of the Chicago Seven; during her testimony, she began singing Pete Seeger's "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?", and was admonished by prosecutor Tom Foran and judge Julius Hoffman.
She is currently a representative for UNICEF and campaigns on behalf of the abolition of landmines.
Personal life
Collins contracted polio at the age of eleven and spent two months in the hospital in isolation.
Collins has been married twice. Her first marriage in 1958 to Peter Taylor produced her only child, Clark C. Taylor. The marriage ended in divorce in 1965. She also had one abortion, performed in Nebraska.
In 1962, shortly after her debut at Carnegie Hall, Collins was diagnosed with tuberculosis and spent six months recuperating in a sanatorium.
Collins later admitted having suffered from bulimia after she quit smoking in the 1970s. "I went straight from the cigarettes into an eating disorder", she told People magazine in 1992. "I started throwing up. I didn't know anything about bulimia, certainly not that it is an addiction or that it would get worse. My feelings about myself, even though I had been able to give up smoking and lose 20 lbs., were of increasing despair." She has written at length of her years of addiction to alcohol, the damage it did to her personal and musical life and how it contributed to her feelings of depression. Collins admits that although she tried other drugs in the 1960s, alcohol had always been her drug of first choice, just as it had been for her father. She entered a rehabilitation program in Pennsylvania in 1978, and has maintained her sobriety ever since, even through such traumatic events as the death of her only child, Clark, who committed suicide in 1992 at age 33, after a long bout with clinical depression and substance abuse. Since his death, she has also become an activist for suicide prevention.
(https://en.wikipedia.org)
- 1970: Hunter S. Thompson goes to the 1970 Kentucky Derby, which inspires the first gonzo journalism story
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"The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved" is a seminal sports article written by Hunter S. Thompson on the 1970 Kentucky Derby in Louisville, Kentucky, first appearing in an issue of Scanlan's Monthly in June of that year. Though not known at the time, the article marked the first appearance of gonzo journalism, the style that Thompson came to epitomize through the 1970s.
History
The genesis of the article has been described by Thompson as akin to "falling down an elevator shaft and landing in a pool of mermaids."[1] Faced with a deadline and without any coherent story for his editors, Thompson began tearing pages from his notebook, numbering them, and sending them to the magazine. Accompanied by Ralph Steadman's sketches (the first of many collaborations between Thompson and Steadman), the resulting story, and the manic, first-person subjectivity that characterized it, were the beginnings of the gonzo style of journalism.
The article is less about the actual race itself – indeed, Thompson and Steadman could not actually see the race from their standpoint – but rather focuses on the celebration and depravity that surrounds the event. Thompson's depiction includes the events in Louisville (his home town) in the days before and after the Derby, and Steadman captured the debauched atmosphere in his surreal drawings. Thompson provided up-close views of activities in the Derby infield and grandstand at Churchill Downs, and a running commentary on the drunkenness and lewdness of the crowd, which he states in the article as the only thing he was focusing on with the work. The narrative ends with a bittersweet anagnorisis, somewhat common in Thompson's work; after several days of immersing themselves in raucous partying and alcoholism to get a sense of the event, Thompson and Steadman realize that they have become exactly the type of people they originally planned to caricature.
Thompson committed suicide in 2005. Shortly thereafter, Steadman recalled their meeting at the Kentucky Derby to the British newspaper The Independent. In the article Steadman remembered his first impression of Thompson that day:
I had turned around and two fierce eyes, firmly socketed inside a bullet-shaped head, were staring at a strange growth I was nurturing on the end of my chin. "Holy shit!" he [Thompson] exclaimed. "They said I was looking for a matted-haired geek with string warts and I guess I've found him." ...This man had an impressive head chiselled from one piece of bone, and the top part was covered down to his eyes by a floppy-brimmed sun hat. His top half was draped in a loose-fitting hunting jacket of multi-coloured patchwork. He wore seersucker blue pants, and the whole torso was pivoted on a pair of huge white plimsolls [a type of shoe] with a fine red trim around the bulkheads. Damn near 6-foot-6 of solid bone and meat holding a beaten-up leather bag across his knee and a loaded cigarette holder between the arthritic fingers of his other hand.
Release
The article was first released in the June 1970 edition of Scanlan's Monthly. It was later reprinted in Tom Wolfe's anthology The New Journalism (1973) and also in one of Thompson's own books, The Great Shark Hunt of 1979, a book collecting several of his earlier works.
Reception
The article was not widely read at the time, but Thompson did garner attention from other journalists for its unusual style. In 1970, Bill Cardoso, editor of The Boston Globe Sunday Magazine, wrote to Thompson, whom he had met on a bus full of journalists covering the 1968 New Hampshire primary. Cardoso praised the piece as a breakthrough: "This is it, this is pure Gonzo. If this is a start, keep rolling." Considered the first use of the word Gonzo to describe Thompson's work, Thompson took to the word right away, and according to Steadman said, "Okay, that's what I do. Gonzo."
(https://en.wikipedia.org)
(GONZO @ THE DERBY)
- 1971: First day of the 1971 May Day protests
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The 1971 May Day Protests were a series of large-scale civil disobedience actions in Washington, D.C., in protest against the Vietnam War. These began on May Day of that year, continued with similar intensity into the morning of May 3rd, then rapidly diminished through several following days.
Members of the Nixon administration would come to view the events as damaging, because the government's response led to mass arrests and were perceived as violating citizens' civil rights.
Planning
By the middle of 1970 many leaders of the anti war movement had come to believe that tactics of massive, non-violent political protests that had been used previously would not end the war, and that more aggressive actions were needed. Rennie Davis and Jerry Coffin of the War Resisters League began planning the actions; later in 1970 Michael Lerner joined their number. The May Day tribe was formed. It was made up of Yippies and others among the more militant members of the anti-war movement. It was decided that small groups of protesters would block major intersections and bridges in the capital.
The protests
Saturday May 1
35,000 protesters camped out in West Potomac Park near the Washington Monument park to listen to rock music and plan for the coming action. The government planned to use low flying helicopters to disrupt the protest. This tactic was stymied by the launching of large numbers of helium filled balloons - some of which were tethered by cables large enough to snarl a helicopter's rotors.
Sunday May 2
The Nixon administration canceled the protester's permit. U.S. Park Police and Washington Metropolitan Police, dressed in riot gear, raided the encampment. The police formed up in phalanxes and slowly moved through the park firing tear gas and knocking down tents, forcing out the campers. The campers scattered towards the Reflecting Pool and the Lincoln Memorial. At this point the campsite was closed down, forcing some protesters to abandon the demonstration while others were forced into the nearest car and others were ordered to leave the city by police. The remaining protesters, estimated at 10,000, or more regrouped at various churches and college campuses in the area. After the cancellation of the Sunday concert and the day's actions many protesters left the city leading to hours' long gridlock.
Monday May 3
The U.S. government put into effect Operation Garden Plot, a plan it had developed during the 1960s to combat major civil disorders. While protesters listened to music, planned their actions or slept, 10,000 federal troops were quickly moved to various locations in the Washington, D.C. area. At one point, so many soldiers and Marines were being moved into the area from bases along the East Coast that troop transports were landing at the rate of one every three minutes at Andrews Air Force Base in suburban Maryland, about 15 miles east of the White House. Among these troops were 4,000 paratroopers from the U.S. 82nd Airborne Division. Troops from the Marine Barracks lined both sides of the 14th St bridge. These troops were to back up the 5,100 officers of the D.C. Metropolitan Police, 2,000 members of the D.C. National Guard and federal agents that were already in place. Every monument, park and traffic circle in the nation's capital had troops protecting its perimeters. Paratroopers and Marines deployed via helicopter to the grounds of the Washington Monument.
Protesters announced that because the government had not stopped the Vietnam War they would stop the government and told troops, many of whom were of similar age, that their goal was to prevent the troops from being sent to Vietnam. In response troops were rotated frequently. While the troops were in place and thousands held in reserve, the police clashed with members of the May Day tribe. The Yippies engaged in hit and run tactics throughout the city, trying to disrupt traffic and cause chaos in the streets. Politicians were harassed by protesters. President Richard Nixon, who was at the Western White House in San Clemente, California, refused to give Federal workers the day off, forcing them to navigate through police lines and May Day tribe roadblocks. Most commuters who tried arrived at their jobs, despite being delayed somewhat. Federal Employees for Peace held a rally in Lafayette Park.
While the troops secured the major intersections and bridges, the police roamed through the city making massive arrest sweeps and used tear gas. They arrested anyone who looked like a demonstrator, including construction workers who had come out to support the government. By 8 am 7,000 protesters had been arrested. The city's prisons did not have the capacity to handle that many people thus several emergency detention centers were setup including the Washington Coliseum and another one surrounded by an 8-foot-high (2.4 m) fence was set up next to RFK Stadium. No food, water, or sanitary facilities were made available by authorities but sympathetic local residents brought supplies. Skirmishes between protesters and police occurred up until about mid-day. In Georgetown, the police herded the protesters and onlookers through the streets to the Georgetown University campus. The police then engaged in a back and forth with the protesters outside the university's main gate on O Street, lobbing tear gas over the gate each time they pushed the crowd back. Other forms of gas were used including pepper based and one that induced vomiting. Police helicopters also dropped tear gas on the university's lower athletic field where protesters had camped the night before. Numerous people were severely injured and treated by volunteers on campus. By afternoon the police had suppressed the disruption efforts and the protesters had mainly dispersed.
Next several days
Smaller protests continued resulting in the arrests of several thousand more, bringing the total to 12,614 people, making this the largest mass arrest in U.S. history.
Aftermath
Conspiracy charges against May Day tribe leaders were dismissed. Out of the 12,000 demonstrators arrested most were released without charges and 79 were eventually convicted. The ACLU pursued a class action suit brought by thousands of detained protesters and ultimately the US Congress, recognizing the illegal nature of the arrests, agreed to pay a settlement to those arrested, making them some of the only citizens in US history to receive financial compensation for violation of the constitutional right of free assembly.
Richard Helms, who was Central Intelligence Agency director at the time, said "It was obviously viewed by everybody in the administration, particularly with all the arrests and the howling about civil rights and human rights and all the rest of it...as a very damaging kind of event. I don't think there was any doubt about that."
(https://en.wikipedia.org)
Quote:
Kathy Boudin (May 19, 1943 – May 1, 2022) was an American radical leftist who served 23 years in prison for felony murder based on her role in the 1981 Brink's robbery. The robbery resulted in the killing of two Nyack, New York, police officers and one security guard, and serious injury to another security guard. Boudin was a founding member of the militant Weather Underground organization, which engaged in bombings of government buildings to express opposition to U.S. foreign policy and racism. She was released on parole in 2003 and after earning a doctorate became an adjunct professor at Columbia University.
Weather Underground
In 1969, Boudin was a founding member of the Weatherman faction of Students for a Democratic Society, which in 1970 became the Weather Underground Organization (WUO). In 1970 she and Cathy Wilkerson were the only survivors of the Greenwich Village townhouse explosion, when a bomb that their comrades were constructing in the basement, intending to use it to attack U.S. Army personnel that evening, exploded prematurely, killing three of the militants and demolishing the building they were using as a hideout and bomb factory. The WUO soon after renounced actions that sought to inflict human casualties. Boudin remained a fugitive for more than a decade, engaging in multiple additional bombings (none of which resulted in injuries) and other actions.
In 1981, Boudin and several former members of the Weather Underground, with current members of the May 19th Communist Organization and the Black Liberation Army, robbed a Brink's armored car at the Nanuet Mall, in Nanuet, New York. Boudin was in the front seat of a U-Haul truck used as a switchcar getaway vehicle and also acted as a decoy. Responding police testified that when they spotted and pulled over the getaway vehicle, Boudin feigned innocence and encouraged the two responding officers put their guns down. Her accomplices leaped from the back of the truck and shot officers Edward O'Grady and Waverly Brown, killing them. In addition to the deaths of O'Grady and Brown, the robbers severely wounded guard Joseph Trombino; killed his partner, Peter Paige; and injured two other police officers.
Guilty plea and incarceration
Boudin was arrested while attempting to flee the scene on foot. She eventually pleaded guilty to felony murder and robbery for an agreed sentence of 20 years to life in prison. While incarcerated, Boudin published articles in the Harvard Educational Review ("Participatory Literacy Education Behind Bars: AIDS Opens the Door," Summer 1993, 63, in Breaking the Rules: Women in Prison and Feminist Therapy by Judy Harden and Marcia Hill ("Lessons from a Mother's Program in Prison: A Psychosocial Approach Supports Women and Their Children," published simultaneously in Women & Therapy, 21), and in Breaking the Walls of Silence: AIDS and Women in a New York State Maximum-Security Prison. She co-authored The Foster Care Handbook for Incarcerated Parents published by Bedford Hills in 1993. She also co-edited Parenting from inside/out: Voices of mothers in prison, jointly published by correctional institutions and the Osborne Association. Boudin also co-founded AIDS Committee for Education (ACE) inside the prison in 1988 with other incarcerated women including Katrina Haslip and Judith Alice Clark to provide accurate education on living with HIV.
Boudin also wrote and published poetry while incarcerated, publishing in books and journals including the PEN Center Prize Anthology Doing Time, Concrete Garden, and Aliens at the Border. She won an International PEN prize for her poetry in 1999.
Boudin and Roslyn D. Smith contributed the piece "Alive Behind the Labels: Women in Prison" to the 2003 anthology Sisterhood Is Forever: The Women's Anthology for a New Millennium, edited by Robin Morgan.
After almost 23 years' imprisonment, Boudin was granted parole on August 20, 2003, in her third parole hearing. She was released from the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility on September 18, 2003.
Life after prison
After her release from prison, Boudin accepted a job in the HIV/AIDS Clinic at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center, meeting the work provisions of parole that required active job prospects.
In May 2004 Boudin published an essay in the Fellowship of Reconciliation's publication Fellowship, expressing remorse for her participation in the Brink's robbery, which she described as "horrific." Subsequently, she received an Ed. D. from Columbia University Teachers College. In addition to her work at St. Luke's-Roosevelt, Boudin worked as a consultant to Osborne Association in the development of a Longtermers Responsibility Project taking place in the New York State Correctional Facilities, utilizing a restorative practice approach, and co-authored the Coming to Terms curriculum used in the program. She also consulted for Vermont Corrections and the Women's Prison Association and supervised social workers.
Columbia University
Boudin was named an adjunct professor at the Columbia University School of Social Work, where she was the co-director and co-founder of the Center for Justice at Columbia University. Her appointment was controversial due to her guilty plea to a felony murder charge and her past participation in a group which carried out terrorist attacks in the United States. However, an opinion piece in the Columbia Daily Spectator noted that she took responsibility for her crimes and successfully rehabilitated herself. Columbia School of Social Work Associate Dean Marianne Yoshioka, who hired Boudin for the adjunct-professor post in 2008, was quoted as saying that Boudin has been "an excellent teacher who gets incredible evaluations from her students each year." In 2013, she was Sheinberg Scholar-in-Residence at New York University School of Law. The law school has maintained a video of her lecture.
In popular culture
Boudin was a model for the title role in David Mamet's play The Anarchist (2012). She also was a model for Willy Holtzman's Off-Broadway play Something You Did (2008). Boudin was an inspiration for the character Merry in Philip Roth's American Pastoral.
Death
On May 1, 2022, Boudin died in New York City at the age of 78, a day after returning from a visit to San Francisco. According to her son Chesa Boudin, who was serving as District Attorney of San Francisco, Boudin had been battling cancer for seven years.
(https://en.wikipedia.org)
-------------------- -------------------------------- Mp3 of the month: The Fe-Fi-Four Plus 2 - I Wanna Come Back (From the World of LSD)
Edited by Learyfan (04/30/23 09:52 AM)
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