GA Russell

Happy Birthday kinuta!

Here in the US, Morrisey was best known as the leader of If, which many felt was the best jazz-rock band of the late 60s-early 70s. I had the pleasure of meeting him twice. Very nice guy.

The Argos are considering playing their games at the stadium the Toronto MLS soccer team uses, and are conducting a survey of their season ticket holders to determine the fans' preferences. http://www.globesports.com/servlet/story/R...tsFootball/home ***** Doug Berry has given the starting QB job back to Kevin Glenn. http://slam.canoe.ca/Slam/Football/CFL/Win...412386-sun.html

Belated Happy Birthday Mark!

Allen, the article I referred to said that he did. If you dispute that, your beef is with the author, not with me.

Thanks Chas!

Chris, I'm sure that you know far more than I about how often this occurs. A few years ago for Christmas my sister gave me a book which was a collection of the best magazine articles about music of the year. One article was about Wimeweh, The Lion Sleeps Tonight. It was about how the African composer lived a life of subsistence poverty while Pete Seeger received millions of dollars in royalties. According to the article, ASCAP or BMI (I don't rememeber which) got it straightened out after the fellow died, and sent his widow a sum which allowed her to buy a new home, but was chump change in comparison to what had already been paid out. I'm pretty sure but not positive that the article was originally published in Rolling Stone.

Shortly after he was cut and retired, Troy Westwood wrote a column saying that Doug Berry did not have the respect of the players in the locker room. Now today he has written a second column saying that Berry must go. http://www.winnipegsun.com/Sports/Columnis...10/6401181.html I don't recall a player in any sport going after a former coach like Westwood has done.

Darling's name was one which I came across fairly often, but I didn't know his history until reading his obit this morning. I have Walk Right In, and I'll have to put it on. I had no idea that it was from 1929. Here's his Washington Post obituary: http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-...0,3482738.story Erik Darling, 74; singer-songwriter helped revive American folk music Folk Era/Wind River Records Singer-songwriter-instrumentalist Erik Darling was a virtuoso on the 12-string guitar, and replaced singer Pete Seeger in the Weavers, the celebrated group at the heart of the post-World War II folk resurgence. In 1963, he arranged and recorded the pulsing pop hit “Walk Right In” with the Rooftop Singers. By Martin Weil, Washington Post August 9, 2008 Erik Darling, a singer, songwriter and instrumentalist who played a vital role in the revival of American folk music and was identified with the pulsing 1960s pop hit "Walk Right In," died Aug. 3 in Chapel Hill, N.C. He was 74 and had lymphoma. Starting in the late 1950s as the replacement for Pete Seeger, Darling spent more than four years with the Weavers, the celebrated group at the heart of the post-World War II folk resurgence. In an interview, Seeger called Darling a "tremendously talented musician with a subtle sense of poetry and musicianship. . . . He wasn't loud, he wasn't flashy, but very sensitive." A master of the banjo, a virtuoso on the 12-string guitar and the possessor of a well-received tenor voice, Darling over the years could be heard or seen in films and on television, and on records and CDs, as well as on college campuses and at other concert venues in the United States and abroad. Music reviewer Steve Leggett on allmusic.com called Darling a "behind-the-scenes innovator on the folk scene for decades." Climbing quickly to the top of the 1963 charts, "Walk Right In," as arranged and recorded by Darling and the other two members of the Rooftop Singers, exerted an irresistible up-tempo appeal with lyrics such as "Walk right in, sit right down; Daddy, let your mind roll on." Earlier, the Tarriers, another folk group in which Darling was a member, produced a highly successful version of "The Banana Boat Song," the catchy Jamaican folk number that included the cry "Day-O" and ignited a brief Calypso craze. (The Harry Belafonte version became even better known.) With the Weavers, Darling was more than just a substitute for Seeger, according to one student of the folk scene. Instead, Ron Kolesko wrote in his online "Folk Music Notebook," Darling "introduced new songs and styles to the group and really held his own." Fred Hellerman, one of the original Weavers, said this week: "Pete never swung the way Erik could swing. His banjo could take command and carry everybody along with it." Of Darling's later career, Hellerman said his friend "was constantly full of surprises. Erik would disappear for a while and all of a sudden pop up with songs or an album so completely off the wall and different, and of such high quality." Erik Darling was born Sept. 25, 1933, in Baltimore, where his mother's family lived, but grew up in Canandaigua, N.Y. Much of Darling's musical education was obtained in New York's Washington Square, which during his teenage years was a focus of the burgeoning folk movement that included Seeger, Belafonte, Bob Dylan and Mary Travers of Peter, Paul and Mary. In the mid-1950s, Darling formed the Tunetellers, which later became the Tarriers, and included future actor Alan Arkin. The group soon had a top-10 hit in 1956 with the calypso-influenced "Banana Boat Song," which Darling reportedly had heard from folk musician Bob Gibson in Washington Square. Darling left the Weavers in 1962 to form the Rooftop Singers, in which he was credited with leading a 12-string guitar revival when he hit upon the idea of using the instrument that year for his version of "Walk Right In." The song had been written and recorded in 1929 by Gus Cannon's Jug Stompers and had been regarded as an essentially forgotten classic. Darling formed the Rooftop Singers specifically to release "Walk Right In" in updated form. The song became Darling's biggest commercial hit. He was divorced from television actress and director Joan Kugell Darling. He had no immediate survivors.

One of these days I am going to have to learn how you guys post album covers. I recall that two Tijuana Brass album covers were from the same photo shoot. As I recall, they were called South of the Border and What Now My Love. I have also seen two Ronnie Hawkins albums which featured the same photo of him with different artwork.

Here's an article about the Riders' five broken legs, all fibulas. It doesn't mention Matt Dominguez's ACL and the team's other injuries. http://www.canada.com/reginaleaderpost/new...5a-7aba9557a6ec

British Columbia Lions 40....Edmonton Eskimos 34 http://slam.canoe.ca/Slam/Football/CFL/Gam...6393586-cp.html http://www.sportsnetwork.com/merge/tsnform...aspx?id=4170252 This was played last night with a 10:30 pm eastern start. I had to get up early this morning, so I had to turn it off and go to bed at the end of the third quarter. It was very exciting up to that point. The statistics were way out of whack. At one point the Lions had total negative yards, yet were leading with something like 20 points. Jarious Jackson was lifted in the third for Buck Pierce, so maybe Jackson's hold on the starting position is not secure. ***** I forgot to say that Thursday night the Roughriders lost another guy with a broken leg. I've never seen a team with so many leg injuries. ***** The Western teams have a bye next week. The Eastern teams will have the following week off.

I remember Play Your Hunch well. It was an NBC daily morning show hosted by Merv Griffin. Allen, Ed McMahon was Johnny Carson's sidekick on Who Do You Trust?, which was an ABC daily afternoon show starring Johnny Carson. It was a copy of Groucho Marx's You Bet Your Life, with Carson playing Groucho and McMahon playing George Fenneman.

Montreal Alouettes 39....Winnipeg Blue Bombers 11 http://www.globesports.com/servlet/story/R...tsFootball/home http://64.246.64.33/merge/tsnform.aspx?c=s...aspx?id=4170188 I heard the second half, and it wasn't interesting.

Calgary Stampeders 30....Sasktchewan Roughriders 25 http://www.globesports.com/servlet/story/R...tsFootball/home http://64.246.64.33/merge/tsnform.aspx?c=s...aspx?id=4170030 The Riders scored the first four points, and then the Stamps completely dominated the game. After three the score was 30-4. And then the Riders got all of the momentum in the fourth and scored three touchdowns. It looked like the Riders might pull it out, but the Stamps got a couple of very timely first downs in the last two minutes to hang on to win.

Fred Williams Week 7 preview http://64.246.64.33/merge/tsnform.aspx?c=s...aspx?id=4169945 ***** Hamilton Tiger-Cats 45....Toronto Argonauts 21 http://www.globesports.com/servlet/story/R...tsFootball/home http://slam.canoe.ca/Slam/Football/CFL/Gam...6380276-cp.html This was interesting because it was such an upset. The Ticats are a crummy team, and their starting quarterback and running back didn't play because of injuries. The first half was even on the scoreboard. The second half was all Ticats. Ritchie Williams had a very good game. I think the fans are going to storm the Ticats' offices if Charlie Taaffe names Casey Printers the starter for next week. edit for spelling

Dave, Ted Green played for the New England Whalers their first year. My season tickets were my college graduation present.

Ron Lancaster has lung cancer. He'll step away from being the Ticats' radio analyst. http://www.globesports.com/servlet/story/R...tsFootball/home ***** Matt Dominguez tore his ACL last week. His career is probably over. http://www.globesports.com/servlet/story/R...tsFootball/home

Happy Birthday Dave! Did we ever decide that the WHL's best player was a guy for the Winnipeg Jets named something like Lou Jankowski?

Happy Birthday Shawn!

RIP. He was a good five years older than I thought. If he is spending any time in Purgatory, everyone is taking turns asking him to explain the infield fly rule!

Happy Birthday Lon!

He had a lot of guts, that's for sure. A real hero. But I remember how he lost favor in the US press when he spoke out against Western decadence. Here is his AP obituary: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,396721,00.html MOSCOW — Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the Nobel Prize-winning author whose books chronicled the horrors of the Soviet gulag system, has died at age 89, his son said Monday. Stepan Solzhenitsyn told The Associated Press his father died late Sunday of heart failure, but declined further comment. Solzhenitsyn's unflinching accounts of torment and survival in the Soviet Union's slave labor camps riveted his countrymen, whose secret history he exposed. They earned him 20 years of bitter exile, but international renown. And they inspired millions, perhaps, with the knowledge that one person's courage and integrity could, in the end, defeat the totalitarian machinery of an empire. Beginning with the 1962 short novel "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich," Solzhenitsyn devoted himself to describing what he called the human "meat grinder" that had caught him along with millions of other Soviet citizens: capricious arrests, often for trifling and seemingly absurd reasons, followed by sentences to slave labor camps where cold, starvation and punishing work crushed inmates physically and spiritually. His "Gulag Archipelago" trilogy of the 1970s left readers shocked by the savagery of the Soviet state under the dictator Josef Stalin. It helped erase lingering sympathy for the Soviet Union among many leftist intellectuals, especially in Europe. /**/ But his account of that secret system of prison camps was also inspiring in its description of how one person — Solzhenitsyn himself — survived, physically and spiritually, in a penal system of soul-crushing hardship and injustice. The West offered him shelter and accolades. But Solzhenitsyn's refusal to bend despite enormous pressure, perhaps, also gave him the courage to criticize Western culture for what he considered its weakness and decadence. After a triumphant return that included a 56-day train trip across Russia to become reacquainted with his native land, Solzhenitsyn later expressed annoyance and disappointment that most Russians hadn't read his books. During the 1990s, his stalwart nationalist views, his devout Orthodoxy, his disdain for capitalism and disgust with the tycoons who bought Russian industries and resources for kopeks on the ruble following the Soviet collapse, were unfashionable. He faded from public view. But under Vladimir Putin's 2000-2008 presidency, Solzhenitsyn's vision of Russia as a bastion of Orthodox Christianity, as a place with a unique culture and destiny, gained renewed prominence. Putin now argues, as Solzhenitsyn did in a speech at Harvard University in 1978, that Russia has a separate civilization from the West, one that can't be reconciled either to Communism or western-style liberal democracy, but requires a system adapted to its history and traditions. "Any ancient deeply rooted autonomous culture, especially if it is spread on a wide part of the earth's surface, constitutes an autonomous world, full of riddles and surprises to Western thinking," Solzhenitsyn said in his speech. "For one thousand years Russia has belonged to such a category..." Born Dec. 11, 1918, in Kislovodsk, Solzhenitsyn served as a front-line artillery captain in World War II, where, in the closing weeks of the war, he was arrested for writing what he called "certain disrespectful remarks" about Stalin in a letter to a friend, referring to him as "the man with the mustache." He served seven years in a labor camp in the barren steppe of Kazakhstan and three more years in internal exile in Central Asia. That's where he began to write, memorizing much of his work so it wouldn't be lost if it were seized. His theme was the suffering and injustice of life in Stalin's gulag — a Soviet abbreviation for the slave labor camp system, which Solzhenitsyn made part of the lexicon. He continued writing while working as a mathematics teacher in the provincial Russian city of Ryazan. The first fruit of this labor was "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich," the story of a carpenter struggling to survive in a Soviet labor camp, where he had been sent, like Solzhenitsyn, after service in the war. The book was published by order of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, who was eager to discredit the abuses of Stalin, his predecessor, and created a sensation in a country where unpleasant truths were spoken in whispers, if at all. Abroad, the book — which went through numerous revisions — was lauded not only for its bravery, but for its spare, unpretentious language. After Khrushchev was ousted in 1964, Solzhenitsyn began facing KGB harassment, publication of his works was blocked and he was expelled from the Soviet Writers Union. But he was undeterred. "A great writer is, so to speak, a secret government in his country," he wrote in "The First Circle," his next novel, a book about inmates in one of Stalin's "special camps" for scientists who were deemed politically unreliable but whose skills were essential. Solzhenitsyn, a graduate from the Department of Physics and Mathematics at Rostov University, was sent to one of these camps in 1946, soon after his arrest. The novel "Cancer Ward", which appeared in 1967, was another fictional worked based on Solzhenitsyn's life: in this case, his cancer treatment in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, then part of Soviet Central Asia, during his years of internal exile from March 1953, the month of Stalin's death, until June 1956. In the book, cancer became a metaphor for the fatal sickness of the Soviet system. "A man sprouts a tumor and dies — how then can a country live that has sprouted camps and exile?" He attacked the complicity of millions of Russians in the horrors of Stalin's reign. "Suddenly all the professors and engineers turned out to be saboteurs — and they believed it? ... Or all of Lenin's old guard were vile renegades — and they believed it? Suddenly all their friends and acquaintances were enemies of the people — and they believed it?" The Stalinist era, he wrote, quoting from a poem by Alexander Pushkin, forced Soviet citizens to choose one of three roles: tyrant, traitor, prisoner. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970, an unusual move for the Swedish Academy, which generally makes awards late in an author's life after decades of work. The academy cited "the ethical force with which he has pursued the indispensable traditions of Russian literature." Soviet authorities barred the author from traveling to Stockholm to receive the award and official attacks were intensified in 1973 when the first book in the "Gulag" trilogy appeared in Paris. "During all the years until 1961," Solzhenitsyn wrote in an autobiography written for the Nobel Foundation, "not only was I convinced that I should never see a single line of mine in print in my lifetime, but, also, I scarcely dared allow any of my close acquaintances to read anything I had written because I feared that this would become known." The following year, he was arrested on a treason charge and expelled the next day to West Germany in handcuffs. His expulsion inspired worldwide condemnation of the regime of Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev. Solzhenitsyn made his homeland in America, settling in the tiny town of Cavendish, Vermont, with his wife and sons. Living at a secluded hillside compound he rarely left, he called his 18 years there the most productive of his life. There he worked on what he considered to be his life's work, a multi-volume saga of Russian history titled "The Red Wheel." Although free from repression, Solzhenitsyn longed for his native land. Neither was he enchanted by Western democracy, with its emphasis on individual freedom. To the dismay of his supporters, in his Harvard speech he rejected "Western pluralistic democracy" as the model for all other nations. It was a mistake, he warned, for Western societies to regard the failure of the rest of the world to adopt the democratic model as a product of "wicked governments or by heavy crises or by their own barbarity or incomprehension." Some critics saw "The Red Wheel" books as tedious and hectoring, rather than as sweeping and lit by moral fire. "Exile from his great theme, Stalinism and the gulag, had exposed his major weaknesses," D.M. Thomas wrote in a 1998 biography, theorizing that the intensity of the earlier works was "a projection of his own repressed violence." Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev restored Solzhenitsyn's citizenship in 1990 and the treason charge was finally dropped in 1991, less than a month after the failed Soviet coup. Following an emotional homecoming that started in the Russian Far East on May 27, 1994, and became a whistle-stop tour across the country, Solzhenitsyn settled in a tree-shaded, red brick home overlooking the Moscow River just west of the capital. While avoiding a partisan political role, Solzhenitsyn vowed to speak "the whole truth about Russia, until they shut my mouth like before." He was contemptuous of President Boris Yeltsin, blaming Yeltsin for the collapse of Russia's economy, his dependence on bailouts by the International Monetary Fund, his inability to stop the expansion of NATO to Russia's borders, his tolerance of the rising influence of a handful of Russian billionaires — who were nicknamed "oligarchs" by an American diplomat. Yeltsin's reign, Solzhenitsyn said, marked one of three "times of troubles" in Russian history — which included the 17th century crises that led to the rise of the Romanovs and the 1917 Bolshevik revolution. When Yeltsin awarded Solzhenitsyn Russia's highest honor, the Order of St. Andrew, the writer refused to accept it. When Yeltsin left office in 2000, Solzhenitsyn wanted him prosecuted. The author's last book, 2001's "Two Hundred Years Together," addressed the complex emotions of Russian-Jewish relations. Some criticized the book for alleged anti-Semitic passages, but the author denied the charge, saying he "understood the subtlety, sensitivity and kindheartedness of the Jewish character." Putin, Yeltsin's successor, at first had a rocky relationship with Solzhenitsyn, who criticized the Russian president in 2002 for not doing more to crack down on Russia's oligarchs. Putin was also a veteran of the Soviet-era KGB, the agency that, more than any other, represented the Soviet legacy of repression. But the two men, so different, gradually developed a rapport. By steps, Putin adopted Solzhenitsyn's criticisms of the West, perhaps out of a recognition that Russia really is a different civilization, perhaps because the author offered justification for the Kremlin's determination to muzzle critics, to reassert control over Russia's natural resources and to concentrate political power. Like Putin, Solzhenitsyn argued that Russia was following its own path to its own form of democratic society. In a June 2005 interview with state television he said that Russia had lost 15 years following the collapse of the Soviet Union by moving too quickly in the rush to build a more liberal society. "We need to be better, so we need to go more slowly," he said Following the death of Naguib Mahfouz in 2006, Solzhenitsyn became the oldest living Nobel laureate in literature. He is survived by his wife, Natalya, who acted as his spokesman, and his three sons, including Stepan, Ignat, a pianist and conductor, and Yermolai. All live in the United States. Despite his belief in a separate political and cultural fate for Russia, Solzhenitsyn's works continue to inspire people of all nations and cultures in the fight for human dignity and the right to hold unpopular views. His belief in the power of conscience, and of courage against all odds, speaks to readers beyond the narrow limits of ideology and politics. "It is we who shall die — art shall remain," he wrote in his 1970 Nobel lecture, which he was not allowed to deliver. "And shall we comprehend, even on the day of our destruction, all its facets and all its possibilities?"

Saskatchewan Roughriders 22....Calgary Stampeders 21 http://64.246.64.33/merge/tsnform.aspx?c=s...aspx?id=4169275 http://www.globesports.com/servlet/story/R...tsFootball/home A bit of a yawner for three quarters; very thrilling fourth quarter. This takes the Riders to 6-0, but they suffered more serious injuries. Matt Dominguez's leg was put in a cast.

Chuck, I've been out of touch with Concord for quite some time. That Tjader looks appealling to me as well.