The Greenpeace Save the Arctic campaign has enlisted Radiohead and Jude Law in a new video. The film reflects concerns about climate change and oil company drilling that drastically affect the arctic and its wildlife, like the displaced polar bear in the video. The video features narration by Jude Law over Radiohead’s song “Everything in Its Right Place” from Kid A (2004). Check it out.
According to Greenpeace’s website, Radiohead’s Thom Yorke explained, “An oil spill in the Arctic would devastate this region of breathtaking beauty, while burning that oil will only add to the biggest problem we all face, climate change.” If you are concerned about the environment or do not want immigrant polar bears in your back yard, check out Greenpeace’s website.
In honor of Flag Day, we take a look at a touching story from World War II. On a recent CBS Sunday Morning and CBS Evening News, Steve Hartman’s On the Road series followed a mystery of what happened to fighter pilot Billie Harris, who disappeared during World War II. On July 17, 1944, 1st Lt. Harris went on a mission over Nazi-occupied northern France and he never returned.
Harris’s widow, Peggy Harris of Vernon, Texas, never received official word about what happened to her husband. At one point, she was told he was missing, then that he was coming home, and then that he was dead and buried one place, and then that he was buried somewhere else. Peggy, who had married Billie just six weeks before he went off to war, began asking questions.
Through the decades, she continued looking for answers. Finally, Billie’s cousin found the answer in Billie’s military records. You may see part one of the story, “They Don’t Forget” below.
And here is part two of the story:
I got something in my eye near the end, around the point where we find out that there is a street in a town in France named after Billie. But it is worth watching the whole story.
What do you think of the story of Billie Harris? Leave your two cents in the comments.
On Monday, former Cincinnati Red reliever Pedro Borbon passed away from cancer in Texas at the age of 65. Borbon, who was born in the Dominican Republic, was an important part of the Big Red Machine teams that won world champions in 1975 and 1976. He pitched in more games than any other Major League Baseball pitcher during the period of 1970-1978. He holds the record for most pitching appearances in a Reds uniform and is in the Reds Hall of Fame.
Growing up in southern Ohio in the 1970s, I was a big fan of the colorful Borbon on my Cincinnati Reds. Most baseball fans discover the sport as kids, and there is nothing like discovering the sport as your team is becoming one of the all-time greats. The Reds manager Sparky Anderson earned the nickname “Captain Hook” for pulling his starting pitchers so much in those days, and one of the reasons he could do so with confidence was because he had Borbon in the bullpen. During Borbon’s Reds’ career, he played in 20 post-season games with an ERA of 2.55.
Borbon had another claim to fame in that he was mentioned in the movie Airplane! (1980). In the film, Ted Striker (played by Robert Hays) is trying to concentrate while hearing voices in his head, including a public address announcer saying “Pinch hitting for Pedro Borbon . . . Manny Mota.” From what I can tell, although Borbon had some short stints on a few other teams like the San Francisco Giants and St. Louis Cardinals, he never played on the same team as record-breaking pinch-hitter Manny Mota. The writers probably chose the Manny Mota reference because Mota was well-known as a pinch hitter, but I have not seen an explanation for why the writers chose Borbon among all the Major League pitchers. Perhaps they chose him because he was well-known, or because he was good, or maybe because he was a colorful character. Among other antics, during on-field brawls he used his teeth on a Mets hat and on Pirates player Daryl Patterson (who then had to get a tetanus shot).
Borbon’s son recently noted that his father often talked about the movie reference: “A lot of people remember him by that. He liked that.” At Borbon’s request, there is not going to be a memorial service in Texas. But I hope he does not mind that I thank him for the memories he gave me by playing the Airplane! clip that he liked. RIP.
(1) At this website, Kineticsketch, you may make a work of art from making and dropping different shapes. Cool.
(2) TheSpot the Fake Smile test from the BBC examines if you can look at videos and identify which smiles are real and which ones are fake. I did a poor job, only getting a little more than half correct, but at the end they give some tips for spotting fake smiles. Hopefully, I learned something, as the second time I got 17 out of 20. How did you do spotting the fake smiles? Leave your two cents in the comments.
Chidren’s author Maurice Sendak passed away this morning at the age of 83. Sendak wrote more than a dozen books and illustrated more than one hundred, but he is most remembered for his book, Where the Wild Things Are (1963), which is published in many languages around the world.
Like many others, I discovered the book as a kid and fell in love with it instantly. I remember it as one of the first books I picked out myself when I was attracted to the fascinating illustration on the cover. I liked that the “monsters” were both scary and cuddly at the same time. I eventually figured out that there was something unusual in the 10-sentence story too. In its simplicity and sparse use of words, it raised questions for me that I could not articulate and left me with some questions I still do not know the answer to today. At the time, I remember asking my mom, “Why was his food still hot?” and receiving an unsatisfying answer. The book somehow captures a complex aspect of childhood that adults cannot quite interpret. So I won’t do that here (although Sendak once described how he had to fight with his publisher to keep the word “hot” because his publisher wanted to change it to “warm”).
Spike Jonze understood the complexity of the book when he made his 2009 film version of Where the Wild Things Are, which on Rotten Tomatoes has a 73% rating from critics and a disappointing 59% rating from audience members. Some noted that the movie was more for adults than children, and the movie did a good job of taking a book that takes a few minutes to read and turning it into a feature length film. It is not the same as the book, but for those who grew up with the book, it made a good effort at recapturing that initial bewilderment from encountering the book as a child. As Nick Deigman explains on Fan the Fire, the movie is “a beautiful and languid testament to the importance of remembering how powerful our childhoods really were.”
That complexity in the film came directly from Sendak’s work. Today, the Washington Post explains that Sendak “transformed children’s literature from a gentle playscape into a medium to address the psychological intensity of growing up.” The dark tones of reality appeared in Sendak’s children’s books because he saw that side of life as a sickly and home-bound child who had relatives die in the Holocaust. He grew up in Brooklyn where his family kept him indoors much of the time because he suffered from bouts of measles, pneumonia and scarlet fever. He became fascinated with things like the Lindbergh baby kidnapping, which he later used as an inspiration for his book Outside Over There. Sendak based the Where the Wild Things monsters on his immigrant relatives who would visit when he was a child. They spoke a different language while engaging the children affectionately in ways that were terrifying to the children.
In an interview with Bill Moyers, Maurice Sendak explained that he originally conceived of Where the Wild Things as “Where the Wild Horses Are” until he discovered he could not draw horses. When asked why he wrote children’s books, he responds, “I don’t know.” I don’t either, but I’m glad he did. I am also glad he could not draw horses. In this interview from Tell Them Anything You Want: A Portrait of Maurice Sendak, a documentary by Spike Jonze and Lance Bangs, Sendak talks about death and looks back on his work. RIP.
