mick laBriola

This picture of Andromeda shows not only where stars are now, but where stars will be. The big, beautiful Andromeda Galaxy, M31, is a spiral galaxy a mere 2.5 million light-years away. Image data from space-based and ground-based observatories have been combined here to produce this intriguing composite view of Andromeda at wavelengths both inside and outside normally visible light. The visible light shows where M31’s stars are now, highlighted in white and blue hues and imaged by the Hubble, Subaru, and Mayall telescopes. The infrared light shows where M31’s future stars will soon form, highlighted in orange hues and imaged by NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope. The infrared light tracks enormous lanes of dust, warmed by stars, sweeping along Andromeda’s spiral arms. This dust is a tracer of the galaxy’s vast interstellar gas, raw material for future star formation. Of course, the new stars will likely form over the next hundred million years or so. That’s well before Andromeda merges with our Milky Way Galaxy in about 5 billion years.

 Barnard 150, also known as Seahorse Nebula, is a dark molecular cloud of dust in Cepheus constellation, so thick, that it absorbs all the light that comes from the stars behind it. This molecular cloud is part of our Milky Way galaxy, one of the 182 objects cataloged by astronomer Edward E. Barnard and it lies at about 1200 Light Years away. Cloud location on the Milky Way’s plane, makes it stand out on the background completely filled with colorful stars of any age and size.

     Due to all of the light emitted from these stars, the distinctive, serpent like shape of this molecular cloud can be observed. And with rotation of the image by 90 degrees, one can easily recognize why this cloud inherent a second name of “Seahorse Nebula”. This nebula is about 1 degree in size, width of two Moons. What is also interesting about this cloud, as it have 3 highly dense dust cores, which actually is a star formation regions. They were cataloged by Lynds and named LDN 1082 A, B and C, which are marked on annotated image.

IC 5146 (also Caldwell 19, Sh 2-125, Barnard 168, and the Cocoon Nebula) is a reflection/emissionnebula and Caldwell object in the constellation Cygnus. The NGC description refers to IC 5146 as a cluster of 9.5 mag stars involved in a bright and dark nebula. The cluster is also known as Collinder 470. It shines at magnitude +10.0/+9.3/+7.2. Its celestial coordinates are RA 21^h 53.5^m , dec +47° 16′. It is located near the naked-eye star Pi Cygni, the open cluster NGC 7209 in Lacerta, and the bright open cluster M39.The cluster is about 4,000 ly away, and the central star that lights it formed about 100,000 years ago; the nebula is about 12 arcmins across, which is equivalent to a span of 15 light years.

When viewing IC 5146, dark nebula Barnard 168 (B168) is an inseparable part of the experience, forming a dark lane that surrounds the cluster and projects westward forming the appearance of a trail behind the Cocoon.

Sandra “Puma” Jones (October 5, 1953—January 28, 1990) was an American singer, best known as a member of the Grammy Award-winning reggae group Black Uhuru.

Born in Columbia, South Carolina, Jones graduated from Columbia University in New York City with a master’s degree and served as a social worker. She studied dance with the Chuck Davis troupe where she took a particular interest in African dance. After becoming disillusioned with city life she declared a need to “discover her roots” and moved to Jamaica.

Deciding to build a singing career, Jones briefly sang with Miriam Makeba (then using the name Mama Africa), and sang with the band Sons of Negus led by Ras Michael. In 1978, she was introduced by a mutual friend to Derrick “Duckie” Simpson, the leader of reggae group Black Uhuru. That group was undergoing a significant lineup change that also included the addition of singer Michael Rose. Jones became a full member of Black Uhuru and sang on seven studio albums, starting with Showcase in 1979 and also including the critically acclaimed Red in 1981 and the Grammy Award-winning Anthem in 1983. That album won the award for Best Reggae Album in 1985, the first year of that award’s existence.

Jones was noted for adding lyrics on religious and social topics to Black Uhuru songs, during a period when reggae musicians were often accused of being trite and dismissive of women, and she was also known for her haunting voice. Her last full album with the group was Brutal in 1986, which was nominated for another Grammy Award and reached the charts in New Zealand and the Netherlands. Before sessions began for the album Positive in 1987, Jones was diagnosed with breast cancer. She had to withdraw from Black Uhuru and was replaced by singer Olafunke. Jones returned to the United States for treatment and died at age 36 on January 28, 1990. She was buried near her family home in South Carolina.

Left Hand Frank was a fun loving, powerfully built bluesman who liked to amuse audiences in Chicago’s South Side blues clubs with comical Donald Duck imitations and muscle-flexing tricks. But what crowds enjoyed even more was the way Frank Craig played guitar. Employing a confident, four-fingered picking style, he played his axe upside down, like several other left-handed bluesmen, with the treble strings at the top. And he played some of the strongest, most distinctive vintage blues to be heard in Chicago.

Frank worked in countless bands during his nearly 40 years in Chicago. He was probably the best musician in most of those groups. But until 1978, Frank never played guitar or sang on a record. Frank found that it was more fun to be a sideman, and he never thought much about becoming a headliner or leading a band.

“Mainly, I don’t like to be worried with it,” Frank explained. “I’ve had quite a few jobs myself, but guys don’t want to act right. It’s too much of a headache. I’d switch over and put that headache on somebody else. I hate to have a headache.”

So Frank left the band leading headaches to bluesmen like Junior Wells, Little Walter, Hound Dog Taylor, and Willie Cobbs. Frank was happy just to play guitar or bass as part of someone else’s band.

When Frank started playing in his hometown of Greenville, Mississippi, he didn’t even have to worry about bands. He could stroll the streets, playing by himself to earn tips from passersby. He got his first guitar on his fourth birthday, October 5, 1939, and quickly learned both blues and country & western from older musicians who were always at his house buying homebrewed corn whiskey from Frank’s mother. Before moving to Chicago at the age of 14, young Frank performed at the local sheriff’s parties, at the local fairgrounds, and around the countryside, carrying his guitar with him on the bus and playing wherever people would pay to see such a child prodigy.

During the early ‘50s in Chicago, Frank was still a street and house party musician, too young to be allowed in the taverns. But he lived within a block of two blues clubs, The Zanzibar and Vi’s Lounge. Frank and two teenaged friends, guitarist Eddie King and bassist Willie Black, eagerly listened at the door whenever Muddy Waters, Little Walter, Memphis Slim or Howlin’ Wolf were performing. After some intense rehearsals, the trio started playing outside The Zanzibar and Vi’s, sharing wine and whiskey with the onlookers. “We’d have a bigger crowd outside than they did inside!” Frank would laugh.

Willie Cobbs, originator of the blues standard “You Don’t Love me,” hired the young bluesmen (who had boldly named themselves the Chicago All-Stars) to work with him in the West Side clubs and on the road. Jimmy Rogers and Lee Jackson let Frank sit in on bass at The Squeeze Club, and in the mid-‘50s, Frank began a long association with his steadiest employer, guitarist James Scott, Jr., at Joe’s 1015 Club on 43rd Street. There were also gigs with Jimmy Dawkins at The Pink Poodle, with Delta bluesman Boyd Gilmore in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and with Good Rockin’ Charles at a West Side club where the crowds “barn danced” to Frank’s country breakdowns. In the ‘60s, Frank, who was working as a manual laborer during the daytime, played with Junior Wells, Junior Simpkins, Willie Williams, Carey Bell, Little Arthur Gray, Hound Dog Taylor, Little Walter and others, including Willie Cobbs and James Scott again at times. Frank recorded, as a bass player, on an Eddie King single in 1960 and on later sessions behind Morris Pejoe, Little Eddie Newell and Willie Williams.

Frank was just as active, and just as sought after by various bandleaders, in the ‘70s. He was a regular with Johnny Bernard’s group at Louise’s, Porter’s, and other South Side clubs, and continued to work on and off with James Scott. He was a familiar face at the famed Sunday afternoon jam sessions at Florence’s, where Hound Dog Taylor held forth for years. In the late ‘70s, Frank teamed up with two young white newcomers, Dimestore Fred and Pocketwatch Paul, who appeared on his recording debut on Alligator’s Living Chicago Blues series. Frank’s session proved him to be totally rooted in the raw, Delta-based Chicago style of the 1950s, bringing to mind his friends Magic Slim, Jimmy Rogers and Brewer Phillips.

In the 1980s, Frank moved to Los Angeles to live with his sister. His declining health and a series of surgeries led to his abandoning music, and he eventually died in California. An album of a live performance is still in print on a French label.