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Associated Press
On This Day: Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Tour Plane Crashes
October 20, 2009 02:00 AM
by
Caleb March
On Oct. 20, 1977, legendary Southern rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd’s tour
plane crashed in Mississippi, killing six, including lead singer
Ronnie Van Zant, guitarist Steve Gaines and his sister, backup
singer Cassie Gaines.
Lynyrd Skynyrd was traveling by chartered plane
from Greenville, S.C., to a concert at Louisiana State University in
Baton Rouge as part of an 80-show tour for the release of their
sixth album, “Street Survivors.”
The plane, a Convair CV-200, was carrying 26 people, including rock
band members and many of their road crew and management staff.
It had had engine problems, and was due to be replaced.
“We had decided the night before that we would definitely get rid of
the plane in Baton Rouge,” survivor Billy Powell told Rolling Stone
magazine. “So we started partying to celebrate the last flight on
it.”
In mid-flight, over Mississippi, the right engine “went dead,” and
the pilot sent a radio message to McComb Airport advising of engine
trouble. Several nearby residents reported having
heard the plane’s engines sputtering in the air, and then a loud
crash. The plane crashed in a swamp just outside Gillsburg,
Miss., at 7:00 p.m.
Three survivors made their way to the nearby farmhouse of Johnny
Mote and called for help.
The swamp and thick undergrowth slowed rescue operations, and
several pickup trucks had to assist in the rescue after ambulances
became stuck. There was also a 20-foot wide creek running between
the road and the crash site.
Six crash victims died, one suffered minor injuries, and 19 were
hospitalized.
Sources in this Story
o
Tennessee Concerts: Lynyrd Skynyrd: The
Tragic Plane Crash
o
Rolling Stone: The Last Flight of Lynyrd
Skynyrd
o
Lynyrd Skynyrd History Website: Ronnie
Van Zant
o
AOL Music: Gary Rossington Biography
o
Allmusic: Lynyrd Skynyrd
o
Memorable TV Hall of Fame: Lynyrd Skynyrd
o
Lynyrd Skynyrd: Lynyrd Skynyrd Bio
The origins of Lynyrd Skynyrd can be traced back to 1965, when high
school classmates
Ronnie Van Zant,
Gary Rossington and Allen Collins started playing music together
as My Backyard in Jacksonville, Fla. The three friends soon added
bassist Leon Wilkeson, keyboardist Billy Powell and drummer Bob
Burns to the lineup and changed their name to Lynyrd Skynyrd, a
parody of their gym teacher’s name, Leonard Skinner.
After several years of writing and touring, a break came when
Lynyrd Skynyrd was signed to MCA Records; in 1973 they released
their debut album, “Pronounced Leh-nerd Skin-nerd.” The record
included their first, and perhaps most famous, hit, “Free Bird.”
Lynyrd Skynyrd used images of Southern pride to help create a
distinct musical style, mixing potent rock music with their country
roots. “Lynyrd
Skynyrd was the definitive Southern rock band, fusing the
overdriven power of blues-rock with a rebellious, Southern image and
a hard rock swagger,” says the band’s biography on Memorable TV.
The band flew a huge Confederate flag onstage, and before going on
for a show they played “Dixie” through speakers for the audience.
Along with artists like the Allman Brothers and the Charlie Daniels
Band, they helped to forge Southern rock music into a distinct
genre.
Lynyrd Skynyrd first gained attention when touring with The Who on
their 1973 “Quadrophenia” Tour. In 1974, Skynyrd released their
sophomore album, “Second Helping,” which included, “Sweet Home
Alabama.” In 1975, Artemis Pile replaced Bob Burns on drums and
Steve Gaines replaced Ed King as the third guitarist of the band.
That year the band also released their first Top Ten album, “Nuthin’
Fancy.”
At the time of the 1977 plane crash, Lynyrd Skynyrd were at the
height of their fame, having just released their sixth album,
“Street Survivors,” only three days earlier. The original album
cover featured a picture of the band surrounded by flames; it was
changed shortly after the accident.
After a 10-year hiatus, Lynyrd Skynyrd performed in 1987 for a
reunion tour, with Ronnie Van Zant’s brother, Johnny Van Zant, on
vocals. In 1991, the new lineup released the band’s first studio
album in 14 years, “Lynyrd Skynyrd 1991.”
Various forms of the band have remained active since then, with
several lineup changes and collaborations with other famous rock
bands. In 2006, Lynyrd Skynyrd was inducted into the Rock and Roll
Hall of Fame.
Happy Birthday, Noah Webster, Educator and Dictionary Writer
October 16, 2009
by
Lindsey Chapman
To say that Noah Webster liked words would probably be an
understatement. He was a pioneering thinker devoted to books and
learning. After the American Revolution, he set out to help the
United States develop a distinctly American culture and an
educational system all its own, and gave the country some of its
most popular dictionaries.
Noah Webster was born on a farm in West Hartford, Connecticut, on
October 16, 1758. His father mortgaged his house to send young Noah
to Yale. He took a break from university to serve in the American
Revolution. After graduation,
Webster studied law part time and supported himself with a
teaching job.
As a teacher, Webster became frustrated by the absence of American
culture in available textbooks. This led him to start developing a
“distinctively American education,” according to Biography.com. One
of his first steps was to create the “American
Spelling Book,” often referred to as the “Blue-Backed Speller.”
To date, the book has never been out of print, and has sold at least
100 million copies. In fact, it was the main source of Webster’s
income throughout his life.
Sources
in this Story
o
Amherst College: Noah Webster, 1758–1843
o
Merriam-Webster Online: Noah Webster and
America's First Dictionary
o
Biography.com: Noah Webster Biography
(1758–1843)
o
The New Yorker: Life and Letters about
Noah Webster and the writing of his “American Dictionary of the
English Language”
o
The Noah Webster House & West Hartford Historical Society:
Noah Webster Speaks Out on Politicians and Special Interests
o
Worcester Telegram & Gazette News: Talk
keeps audience spellbound
o
Yale University Office of Public Affairs:
Noah Webster Fêted for 250th Birthday
Webster also felt that the new country’s language should have
its own spelling and pronunciation. He published “A Compendious
Dictionary of the English Language” in 1806, which Merriam-Webster
Online calls “the first truly American dictionary.”
Webster’s crowning achievement was “An American Dictionary of the
English Language.” He announced his plan to create the book on
June 4, 1800, by taking out an advertisement in a Connecticut
newspaper. His plans garnered national attention, and many believed
his idea was ridiculous. Some people worried that Americans were
trying to be too innovative. Members of society’s elite didn’t take
to Webster’s philosophy that “common people” helped shape a
country’s language, and others were opposed to his idea of changing
the spelling of words like “women” and “tongue” to “wimmen” and “tung.”
Defying the opposition, Webster pursued his idea. After learning 26
languages and spending 25 years writing more than 70,000 entries, he
published the work in 1828.
The Man
and his Work
o
“The Original Blue Back Speller”
o
“American Dictionary of the English Language (1828 Facsimile
Edition)”
o
“Noah Webster’s Advice to the Young and Moral Catechism”
o
“Noah Webster: The Life and Times of an American Patriot” by Harlow
Giles Unger
o
“Noah Webster and the American Dictionary” by David Micklethwait
While his
dictionaries gave Webster some of his greatest notoriety, and
earned him the title “schoolmaster to America,” he also produced
multiple political letters and essays. He wrote a series of
reflective essays in the 1830s, which were based on the “political
mayhem” he perceived when Andrew Jackson became president. Chief
among his philosophies was Webster’s belief that a person should
gain social position by merit, not by birth.
When Noah Webster died in 1843, two brothers,
Charles and George Merriam, purchased the unsold copies of Webster’s
“American Dictionary of the English Language.” The Merriams, who
owned a print shop and bookstore, realized “how ideally suited
dictionary publishing was for general demand,” according to John
Morse, president and publisher of Merriam-Webster Inc. The Merriams
obtained the rights to revise Webster’s dictionary, and made sure it
was affordable for people to buy (the $20 price of the dictionary
was also enough to buy a grandfather clock).
Webster’s legacy will likely continue for a long time, says Mr.
Morse. “Noah Webster predicted that American English would become
the world’s most important language, a prediction that today has
been borne out.”
October 16, 2008, marked Webster’s 250th birthday.
Associated Press
Tommie Smith, center, and John
Carlos,
right, extend their gloved
fists during
“The Star-Spangled Banner.”
On This Day: Tommie Smith and John Carlos Give Black Power Salute on
Olympic Podium
October 16, 2009 02:00 AM
by findingDulcinea Staff
On Oct. 16, 1968, U.S. athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised
black-gloved fists during the national anthem to protest racial
inequality.
“In 1968, the
United States was verging on chaos,” writes the Los Angeles Times.
“As the Vietnam War raged in Asia, the civil rights movement raged in
America’s cities. Assassins’ bullets felled Martin Luther King Jr. and
Robert F. Kennedy.”
African-American college athletes like Tommie Smith and John Carlos were
keenly aware of the unprecedented change sweeping the country. While at
San Jose State University, the two young men met Harry Edwards, a
sociologist and teacher at the school, who initially urged all
African-American athletes to boycott the 1968 Mexico City Olympics to
protest the slow progress of the civil rights movement. When the boycott
failed to gain support, the decision to protest was left to individual
athletes, and Carlos and Smith took up the charge.
Smith and Carlos finished first and third, respectively, in the
200-meter Olympic final. Smith set a world record, finishing in 19.83
seconds. They decided that they would
use the medal ceremony to make a gesture on American racism.
The two removed their shoes and wore black socks to signify black
poverty; Smith wore a black scarf and Carlos wore beads to signify
lynchings. They had each planned to wear black gloves to represent black
power and unity, but Carlos forgot his pair in the Olympic Village.
Australian Peter Norman, the second place finisher,
suggested that each man wear a single glove. Norman agreed to wear a
Olympic Project for Human Rights badge, demonstrating his support for
the protest.
As “The Star-Spangled Banner” played, Smith and Carlos raised their
gloved fists. “Any
resemblance to Lady Liberty lifting her torch was ironic, for Smith
and Carlos were taking U.S. society to task for having failed to extend
liberty and justice to all,” writes Kenny Moore in Sports Illustrated.
Sources in this Story
o
Los Angeles Times: Two runners, once united
with Olympic gesture, are now divided
o
Sports Illustrated: A Courageous Stand
o
The Sporting News (AP): Black-fist display
gets varied reaction in Olympic village
o
Time: The Olympics: Black Complaint
o
The BBC: 1968: Black athletes make silent
protest
o
The Times of London: Caught in Time: Black
Power salute, Mexico, 1968
o
The New York Times: Vilified to Glorified:
Olympic Redux
The initial reaction to Smith and Carlos gesture was highly negative. “The
stadium rocked with boos and cat-calls and some of the spectators
made thumbs-down gestures as they would to a Mexican matador preparing
for the kill,” wrote The Associated Press’ Will Grimsley, who called
their gesture a “Nazi-like salute.”
Time called it a “public
display of petulance that sparked one of the most unpleasant
controversies in Olympic history and turned the high drama of the games
into theater of the absurd.”
Within hours the International Olympic Committee
had flatly condemned their political statement, with an IOC
spokesperson calling it “a deliberate and violent breach of the
fundamental principles of the Olympic spirit.” It ordered the U.S.
Olympic Committee to expel Smith and Carlos under the threat of
expelling all U.S. athletes; the USOC complied.
The black community saw Smith and Carlos as heroes. Their fellow
Olympic athletes were divided. American decathlete Bill Toomey said
the Olympics weren’t a place for political protest, but British runner
John Wetton remarked, “We all thought it was a bloody good show. It's
bully that these blokes had nerve enough to express their feelings.”
In the four decades since their gesture, Smith and Carlos
have come to be regarded as heroes by a majority of the American
population. In 2005, San Jose State honored them with a statue on
campus.
“Smith and Carlos made one of the most courageous and enduring acts of
sports demonstration in my lifetime, possibly in modern athletic
history,” writes William C. Rhoden in The New York Times. “The act was a
profound gesture against oppression.”
Life after the Olympics was difficult for Smith and Carlos, who have
become estranged. They faced death threats and racial abuse upon their
return to the U.S., and had financial difficulties as they struggled to
find careers. Carlos’ wife committed suicide in 1977, in part because of
the abuse and financial distress.
Norman also
had difficulties following his participation in the gesture. The
Australian Olympic Committee snubbed him for the 1972 Olympics, and he
suffered through depression, alcoholism and a painkiller addiction after
his career was over. He was one of the few Australian medal winners not
to be asked to appear at the 2000 Sydney Olympics. He died in 2006 of a
heart attack; Smith and Carlos served as pallbearers at his funeral
Happy Birthday, E. E. Cummings
October 14, 2008
by
Caleb March
Associated Press
American
poet, novelist and painter E. E. Cummings was one of the best-selling poets
of the 20th century, earning fame for his unique approach to punctuation and
syntax.
Edward Estlin Cummings was born on October 14, 1894, in Cambridge,
Massachusetts. His father was a Unitarian minister who encouraged his son to
be creative. Cummings
wrote a poem a day between the ages of eight and 22. Cummings received
his B.A. from Harvard University in 1915, and he earned his M.A. the
following year. He was introduced to the work of Ezra Pound and other
avant-garde writers while at Harvard. He began to experiment with
punctuation, syntax and page layout, publishing his first poems in “Eight
Harvard Poets” in 1917.
During World War I, Cummings volunteered to serve in a French ambulance
corps. After serving just five months, he and his friend, William Slater
Brown, were arrested in 1917 on suspicion of espionage. The pair spent the
next four months in a prison camp before being released. Cummings’s
experience in prison
formed the basis for his first novel, “The Enormous Room” (1922). Just a
few months after returning home to America, Cummings was drafted into the
Army, serving at Fort Devens, Massachusetts, until the end of the war in
1918.
Sources in this
Story
o
Poetry Foundation: E. E. Cummings (1894–1962)
o
University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign (American National Biography
Online): E. E. Cummings’ Life
o
Biography.com: E(dward) E(stlin) Cummings Biography
o
The American Academy of Poets: E. E. Cummings
o
The Washington Post: ‘E. E. Cummings: A Biography’
o
Dictionary of Unitarian and Universalist Biography: E. E. Cummings
o
The Paintings of E. E. Cummings
After the war,
Cummings divided his time between New York and Paris, writing poetry in
New York and studying art in Paris. In 1923, he published his first volume
of poetry, “Tulips and Chimneys,” followed by “&” (1925), “XLI Poems”
(1925), “ViVa” (1931), “No Thanks” (1935) and many others.
The Academy of American Poets offers several of
Cummings’s poems online, which exemplify his unusual approach toward
syntax and punctuation. Biographer Christopher Sawyer-Lauçanno
describes Cummings’s unique style: “[T]he uncapitalized 'i'; the use of
parentheses and the ampersand; the spacing for visual and aural purposes;
the punctuation for effect; the running of words together to create a
wholeness out of separateness … And yet these are not just tricks for the
sake of a unique semantic; the saying is integral to the meaning.”
Many readers believe that Cummings’s idiosyncratic punctuation extended to
the way he spelled his own name; in fact, it was his publishers who began
attributing his poems to “e.e. cummings.”
The 1920s and 30s were a traumatic period for Cummings. The sudden death of
his father in a car accident in 1926, and two failed marriages led to a
shift in the themes and mood of his writing, resulting in works that reflect
a preoccupation with the issues of life and death.
In 1932, Cummings met
Marion Morehouse, who eventually became his common-law wife, and the
couple began traveling the world. He continued to publish poetry during this
period, and also produced the 1933 novel “Eimi” about his experiences
traveling in Russia.
The Man and his
Work
o
“E.E. Cummings: Complete Poems 1904-1962”
o
“100 Selected Poems”
o
“The Enormous Room”
o
“Eimi: A Journey Through Soviet Russia”
o
“Dreams in the Mirror: A Biography of E.E. Cummings” by Richard S. Kennedy
o
“E.E. Cummings: A Biography” by Christopher Sawyer-Lauçanno
Cummings took his
painting just as seriously as his poetry; although the latter usually
overshadows the former, he did produce some critically acclaimed work. The
first half of his painting career focused on cubism and abstraction, while
the second half focused on more representational portraiture and landscapes.
At the time of his death, he left a large estate of paintings.
Cummings spent the last decade of his life in New York. He gave college
lecture tours and enjoyed his success as the second most popular poet in
America, surpassed only by Robert Frost. He received many honors during his
lifetime, including two Guggenheim Fellowships and the Bollingen Prize in
Poetry.
Cummings died on September 3, 1962, at his family’s summer retreat in New
Hampshire.
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