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There was once a poor man who made tea everyday on a fire. He didn’t realize that his hearthstones were made of gold. So everyday, he lived in poverty with unknown riches at his fingertips. We are like that. We have a limitless mind, yet we choose to not be okay. One of the most beneficial first steps we can take is to stop hating suffering…to actually be okay with it. Over time we work with our mind and exercise our “being okay” muscle. The essential point is that our mind is very flexible and its capacity is limitless. Therefore, how we relate to whatever is appearing, is a choice. Mind and that it is limitless, is our hearthstone of gold, our treasure. We should know this. – Khentrul Rinpoche
The spiral galaxy NGC 298 basks in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. NGC 298 lies around 89 million light-years away in the constellation Cetus, and appears isolated in this image — only a handful of distant galaxies and foreground stars accompany the lonely galaxy. While NGC 298 seems peaceful, in 1986 it was host to one of astronomy’s most extreme events: a catastrophic stellar explosion known as a Type II supernova. Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys captured NGC 298 as part of an investigation into the origins of Type II supernovae. All Type II supernovae are produced by the collapse and subsequent explosion of young, massive stars, but they can produce a spectacular diversity of brightnesses and spectral features. Astronomers suspect that the diversity of this cosmic firework show might be due to gas and dust being stripped from the stars that will eventually produce Type II supernovae. Observing the region surrounding supernova explosions can reveal traces of the progenitor star’s history preserved in this lost mass, as well as revealing any companion stars that survived the supernova. Hubble used the brief periods between scheduled observations to explore the aftermath of a number of Type II supernovae, hoping to piece together the relationship between Type II supernovae and the stellar systems which give rise to them. [Image description: A spiral galaxy. It is tilted diagonally, and slightly towards the viewer, making its core and disc separately visible. Its disc is speckled by small stars, has threads of dark reddish dust and bubbles of bright, glowing gas. The core shines brightly in a warmer colour. Several tiny stars and small galaxies are included in the black background.]
Ellsworth McGranahan “Shake” Keane (30 May 1927 – 11 November 1997) was a Vincentian jazzmusician and poet. He is best known today for his role as a jazz trumpeter, principally his work as a member of the ground-breaking Joe Harriott Quintet (1959–65).
Born on the Caribbean island of St Vincent into “a humble family that loved books and music”, Keane attended Kingstown Methodist School and St Vincent Grammar School. He was taught to play the trumpet by his father, Charles (who died when Keane was 13), and gave his first public recital at the age of six. When he was 14 years old, Keane led a musical band made up of his brothers. In the 1940s, with his mother Dorcas working to raise six children, the teenager joined one of the island’s leading bands, Ted Lawrence and His Silvertone Orchestra. During his early adulthood in St Vincent, his principal interest was literature, rather than the music for which he would become better known. He had been dubbed “Shakespeare” by his school friends, on account of this love of prose and poetry. This nickname was subsequently shortened to “Shake”, which name he came to use throughout his adult life. He published two books of poetry, L’Oubili (1950) and Ixion (1952), while still in St Vincent.
more...Clora Larea Bryant (May 30, 1927 – August 25, 2019) was an American jazz trumpeter. She was the only female trumpeter to perform with Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker and was a member of the International Sweethearts of Rhythm.
Bryant was born in Denison, Texas to Charles and Eulila Bryant, the youngest of three children. Her father was a day laborer and her mother was a homemaker who died when Clora was only 3 years old. When Bryant was a young child, she learned to play piano with her brother Mel. As a child, Bryant was a member of the choir in a Baptist church. When her brother Fred joined the military, he left his trumpet, which she learned how to play. In high school she played trumpet in the marching band.
more...Armando Peraza (May 30, 1924 – April 14, 2014) was a Latin jazz percussionist and a member of the rock band Santana. Peraza played congas, bongos, and timbales.
Born in Lawton Batista, Havana, Cuba in 1924 (although the birth year is uncertain), he was orphaned by age 7 and lived on the streets. When he was twelve, he supported himself by selling vegetables, coaching boxing, playing semi-pro baseball, and becoming a loan shark. His music career began at seventeen when he heard at a baseball game that bandleader Alberto Ruiz was looking for a conga player. Ruiz’s brother was on the same baseball team as Peraza. Despite the absence of experience in music, he practiced and won the audition.
He left Cuba for Mexico in 1948 to tend to his sick friend, conga drummer Mongo Santamaría. They arrived in New York City in 1949. After playing in Machito‘s big band, Peraza was invited by Charlie Parker to participate in a recording session that included Buddy Rich. He recorded with Slim Gaillard in New York in November 1949 in a session that produced “Bongo City”. He toured the U.S. with Gaillard’s band until they reached San Francisco, where Gaillard owned the nightclub Bop City. After a period in Mexico, where he recorded with Perez Prado and did some soundtracks for the Mexican movie industry, he returned to the U.S. and settled in San Francisco.
more...Today I honor my Mike Labriola who served in WWII born in Italy moved to USA and served in the Army in Italy. This traumatic experience unhinged his life and became a never-ending battle of emotional turmoil. I regret that I did not have the opportunity to serve my country during the Vietnam war but could not justify enlisting during this horrific senseless conflict. I was drafted but got a student deferment. Then I almost enlisted failed the drum audition and passed the guitar audition but withdrew the possibility.
Sometimes dramatic events are needed to create something stunning. This beautiful structure of filaments and clouds in the southern constellation of Vela are all that remains of a massive star that died in a powerful explosion known as supernova. This is a small section of a larger image taken using the wide-field camera OmegaCAM at the VLT Survey Telescope (VST). Hosted at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in the Chilean desert, the VST is one of the best telescopes in the world to take large images of the sky in visible light. Even though bright stars populate this image, it’s hard to not be captivated by the pink gaseous clouds filling up the frame. Some tiny, others thicker, the filaments stretch outwards like tentacles. As they intertwine and cling together, an intricate network is formed which mixes with blurred clouds. But how did they come to be like this? Around 11 000 years ago, a massive star exploded as a supernova, ejecting its outer layers. The explosion also generated shock waves which traveled outwards, compressing the gas around the star and creating the intricate network visible in the image. The result of such explosions are called supernova remnants. At 800 light years away from Earth, the Vela supernova remnant is one of the closest known to us.
Daniel Robert Elfman (born May 29, 1953) is an American film composer, singer and songwriter. He came to prominence as the singer-songwriter for the new wave band Oingo Boingo in the early 1980s. Since scoring his first studio film in 1985, Elfman has garnered international recognition for composing over 100 feature film scores, as well as compositions for television, stage productions, and the concert hall.
Elfman has frequently worked with directors Tim Burton, Sam Raimi, and Gus Van Sant, contributing music to nearly 20 Burton projects, including Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, Batman, Edward Scissorhands, Big Fish, and Wednesday; as well as scoring Raimi’s Darkman, A Simple Plan, Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2, and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, and Van Sant’s Academy Award–winning films Good Will Hunting and Milk. He wrote music for all of the Men in Black and Fifty Shades of Grey franchise films, the songs and score for Henry Selick‘s animated musical The Nightmare Before Christmas, and the themes for the popular television series Desperate Housewives and The Simpsons.
Among his honors are four Oscar nominations, two Emmy Awards, a Grammy, seven Saturn Awardsfor Best Music, the 2002 Richard Kirk Award, the 2015 Disney Legend Award, the Max Steiner Film Music Achievement Award in 2017, and the Society of Composers & Lyricists Lifetime Achievement Award in 2022. Elfman was born on May 29, 1953 in Los Angeles, California, to a Jewish family of Polish-Jewish and Russian-Jewish descent. He is a son of Blossom Elfman (née Bernstein), a writer and teacher, and Milton Elfman, a teacher, and the brother of actor, musician, and journalist Richard Elfman. Elfman was raised in a racially mixed affluent community in Baldwin Hills, California, where he spent much of his time at the local cinema discovering classic sci-fi, fantasy and horror films and first noticed the music of such film composers as Bernard Herrmann and Franz Waxman.
more...Ron Levy (born Reuvin Zev ben Yehoshua Ha Levi, May 29, 1951) is an American electric blues musician and composer.
Levy was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. He primarily plays piano and organ. Levy grew up in Brookline, Massachusetts, and began playing the piano after seeing Ray Charles in concert at age 13. He later switched to playing a Hammond organ. After gaining experience playing in Bostonnightclubs, Levy was hired by Albert King in 1968. After an eighteen-month association, Levy joined B. B. King‘s backing band. Throughout the years, Levy has performed and recorded with a wide range of blues, funk, and jazz musical groups, notably including Roomful of Blues (1983 – 1987) and Ron Levy’s Wild Kingdom (1988 – 2014).
more...Freddie Redd (May 29, 1928 – March 17, 2021) was an American hard-bop pianist and composer. He is best known for writing music to accompany The Connection (1959), a play by Jack Gelber. According to Peter Watrous, writing in The New York Times: “Mr. Redd hung out at jam sessions in the 1950s and played with many of the major figures, Sonny Rollins to Art Blakey, and worked regularly with Charles Mingus. When things got tough, he just moved on, living in Guadalajara, Mexico, and in Paris and London.”
Redd was born and grew up in New York City; after losing his father at the age of one, he was raised by his mother, who moved around Harlem, Brooklyn and other neighborhoods. An autodidact, he began playing the piano at a young age and took to studying jazz seriously when he was 18, after a friend played him a record of “Shaw ‘Nuff” by Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie during his military service in Korea (1946–1949).
more...Eugene Joseph Wright (May 29, 1923 – December 30, 2020) was an American jazz bassist who was a member of the Dave Brubeck Quartet.
Wright was a cornetist at high school and led the 16-piece band Dukes of Swing in his 20s. He was largely self-taught on bass until his early 30s, when he studied privately with Paul Gregory and others. Walter Page was Wright’s idol.
He became more successful at the peak of the swing era, with bandleaders including Count Basie and Erroll Garner. Playing with Billie Holiday and Charlie Parker, after the swing era ended, he demonstrated his versatility in bebop with such musicians as Sonny Stitt as well as in Latin jazz with Cal Tjader.
more...The last day of The 5th and final weekend of The Defeat of Jesse James at the History Theater. Today Sunday May 28th 2023 at 2pm. Featuring music with Raymond Berg, Kam Markworth, Christian Wheeler and mick laBriola.
The Orion Nebula (also known as Messier 42, M42, or NGC 1976) is a diffuse nebula situated in the Milky Way, being south of Orion’s Belt in the constellation of Orion, and is known as the middle “star” in the “sword” of Orion. It is one of the brightest nebulae and is visible to the naked eye in the night sky with apparent magnitude 4.0. It is 1,344 ± 20 light-years (412.1 ± 6.1 pc) away and is the closest region of massive star formation to Earth. The M42 nebula is estimated to be 24 light-years across (so its apparent size from Earth is approximately 1 degree). It has a mass of about 2,000 times that of the Sun. Older texts frequently refer to the Orion Nebula as the Great Nebula in Orion or the Great Orion Nebula.
The Orion Nebula is one of the most scrutinized and photographed objects in the night sky and is among the most intensely studied celestial features. The nebula has revealed much about the process of how stars and planetary systems are formed from collapsing clouds of gas and dust. Astronomers have directly observed protoplanetary disks and brown dwarfs within the nebula, intense and turbulent motions of the gas, and the photo-ionizing effects of massive nearby stars in the nebula.
Leland Bruce Sklar (born May 28, 1947) is an American bassist and session musician. Sklar rose to prominence as a member of James Taylor‘s backing band, which coalesced into a group in its own right, The Section. This group of musicians so frequently supported many of the artists on Asylum Records, both on stage and in the studio, that they became known as Asylum’s de facto house band. Those artists would become the standard bearers of the singer-songwriter era in the 1970s. Since then, Sklar has recorded and toured with artists such as James Taylor, Jackson Browne, Carole King, Linda Ronstadt, Phil Collins, Toto, Lyle Lovett and many, many more. As a group member, session player, or touring musician, Sklar has lent his talents to well over 2,000 albums. In addition, he has contributed to many motion picture and television showsoundtracks. Since 2018, Sklar has been the bassist for The Immediate Family, a group reuniting lifelong friends and most of his former bandmates from The Section.
Leland Bruce Sklar was born May 28, 1947 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His mother’s family was from Duluth, Minnesota. His father’s family was from Milwaukee. Originally, the paternal side of the family came from Odesa, Ukraine. Sklar is a Ukrainian surname meaning glazier, a person whose profession is fitting glass into windows and doors.
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