“I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence.”

― Frederick Douglass

Dense filaments of gas in the IC5146 interstellar cloud can be seen clearly in this image taken in infrared light by the Herschel space observatory. Stars are forming along these filaments. The blue region is a stellar nursery known as the Cocoon nebula.

Herschel has revealed that clouds between stars contain networks of tangled gaseous filaments. Intriguingly, each filament is approximately the same width, hinting that they may result from interstellar sonic booms throughout our Milky Way galaxy.

The filaments are huge, stretching for tens of light years through space, and Herschel has shown that newborn stars are often found in the densest parts of them. One filament imaged by Herschel in the Aquila region contains a cluster of about 100 infant stars.

Such filaments in interstellar clouds have been glimpsed before by other infrared satellites, but they have never been seen clearly enough to have their widths measured. Now, Herschel has shown that, regardless of the length or density of a filament, the width is always roughly the same.

The team suggests that as sonic booms from exploding stars travel through the clouds, they lose energy and, where they finally dissipate, they leave these filaments of compressed material.

Sérgio Santos Mendes (Brazilian Portuguese: [ˈsɛʁʒju ˈsɐ̃tus ˈmẽdʒis]; born February 11, 1941) is a Brazilian musician. He has over 55 releases, and plays bossa nova heavily crossed with jazz and funk. He was nominated for an Oscar for Best Original Song in 2012 as co-writer of the song “Real in Rio” from the animated film Rio.

Mendes is a unique example of a Brazilian musician primarily known in the United States, where his albums were recorded and where most of his touring took place.

Mendes is married to Gracinha Leporace, who has performed with him since the early 1970s. Mendes has also collaborated with many artists through the years, including The Black Eyed Peas, with whom he re-recorded in 2006 a version of his breakthrough hit “Mas Que Nada“.

Mendes was born in Niterói, Brazil, the son of a physician. He attended the local conservatory with hopes of becoming a classical pianist. As his interest in jazz grew, he started playing in nightclubs in the late 1950s just as bossa nova, a jazz-inflected derivative of samba, was emerging. Mendes played with Antônio Carlos Jobim (regarded as a mentor) and many U.S. jazz musicians who toured Brazil.

Little Johnny Taylor (born Johnny Lamont Merrett; February 11, 1943 – May 17, 2002) was an American blues and soul singer, who made recordings throughout the 1960s and 1970s, and continued public performances through the 1980s and 1990s.

Little Johnny Taylor moved to Los Angeles in 1950, and sang with the Mighty Clouds of Joy before moving into secular music. Influenced by Little Willie John, he first recorded as an R&B artist for the Swingin’ record label.

However, he did not achieve major success until signing for San Francisco-based Fantasy Records‘ subsidiary label, Galaxy. His first hit was the mid-tempo blues “You’ll Need Another Favor,” sung in the style of Bobby Bland, with arrangement by Ray Shanklin and produced by Cliff Goldsmith.

Otis Lee Clay (February 11, 1942 – January 8, 2016) was an American R&B and soul singer, who started in gospel music. In 2013, Clay was inducted to the Blues Hall of Fame.

HAIR final show Sunday 2-10-19 2pm matinee Mixed Blood Theater-Minneapolis

Music by Stephen Houtz, JD Lee and mick laBriola

“Free expression is the base of human rights, the root of human nature and the mother of truth. To kill free speech is to insult human rights, to stifle human nature and to suppress truth.”  Liu Xiaobo

This attractive, nearly face-on barred spiral galaxy glows at magnitude 10.1 and measures 12.0′ by 7.4′. To find it, point your telescope 2° east of Gamma (γ) Trianguli. Through a small scope, NGC 925’s figure appears indistinct, but an 8-inch or larger instrument reveals the spiral arms that fold back abruptly from a long bar. At high magnification, say, above 250x, you’ll spot the stellar nucleus.

NGC 925 is a barred spiral galaxy located about 30 million light-years away in the constellation Triangulum. The morphological classification of this galaxy is SB(s)d, indicating that it has a bar structure and loosely wound spiral arms with no ring. The spiral arm to the south is stronger than the northern arm, with the latter appearing flocculent and less coherent. The bar is offset from the center of the galaxy and is the site of star formation all along its length. Both of these morphological traits—a dominant spiral arm and the offset bar—are typically characteristics of a Magellanic spiral galaxy. The galaxy is inclined at an angle of 55° to the line of sight along a position angle of 102°.

Emmanuel N’Djoké Dibango (born 12 December 1933) is a Cameroonian musician and song-writer who plays saxophone and vibraphone. He developed a musical style fusing jazz, funk, and traditional Cameroonian music. His father was a member of the Yabassi ethnic group, though his mother was a Duala. He is best known for his 1972 single “Soul Makossa“.

He was a member of the seminal Congolese rumba group, African Jazz, and has collaborated with many other musicians, including Fania All Stars, Fela Kuti, Herbie Hancock, Bill Laswell, Bernie Worrell, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, King Sunny Adé, Don Cherry, and Sly and Robbie. He achieved a considerable following in the UK with a disco hit called “Big Blow”, originally released in 1976 and re-mixed as a 12″ single in 1978 on Island Records. In 1998, he recorded the album CubAfrica with Cuban artist Eliades Ochoa.

The song “Soul Makossa” on the record of the same name contains the lyrics “makossa”, which means “(I) dance” in his native tongue, the Cameroonian language Duala. It has influenced several popular music hits, including Michael Jackson‘s “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’“, as well as his re-recording of that song with Akon, the Fugees‘ “Cowboys”, and Rihanna‘s “Don’t Stop the Music”

Walter “Baby Sweets” Perkins (February 10, 1932 in Chicago, Illinois – February 14, 2004 in Queens, New York) was an American jazz drummer.

Starting out in Chicago, Perkins began his professional career with Ahmad Jamal in 1956–57. He recorded for Argo Records in 1957 as a leader under the name MJT+3 with Paul Serrano [de] on trumpet, Nicky Hill on tenor sax, Muhal Richard Abrams on piano, and Bob Cranshaw on bass. In 1959, he regrouped under the same name with Willie Thomas on trumpet, Frank Strozier on alto sax, Harold Mabern on piano, and Cranshaw on bass; they recorded for Vee-Jay in 1959 and 1960 and played in Chicago until 1962, when he moved to New York City.

Perkins played with Sonny Rollins in 1962 and accompanied Carmen McRae in 1962–63. In 1964 he played with Art Farmer and Teddy Wilson. Following this he recorded with many musicians, including Rahsaan Roland Kirk, George Shearing, Gene Ammons, Charles Mingus, Billy Taylor, Booker Ervin, Jaki Byard, Lucky Thompson, Pat Martino, Sonny Stitt, Sonny Criss, and Charles Earland.

William Henry “Chick” Webb (February 10, 1905 – June 16, 1939) was an American jazz and swing music drummer as well as a band leader.

Webb was born in Baltimore, Maryland, to William H. and Marie Webb. From childhood, he suffered from tuberculosis of the spine, leaving him with short stature and a badly deformed spine; which caused him to appear hunchbacked. The idea of playing an instrument was suggested by his doctor to “loosen up” his bones. He supported himself as a newspaper boy to save enough money to buy drums, and first played professionally at age 11. Webb had three sisters: Bessie, Mabel and Ethel. Mabel married Wilbur Porter around 1928.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/07/theater/hair-theater-55-minneapolis.html

2pm & 730pm at the Mixed Blood Theater-Minneapolis

Music by Stephen Houtz, JD Lee and mick laBriola

“People willing to trade their freedom for temporary security deserve neither and will lose both” Benjamin Franklin

IC 5146 (also Caldwell 19, Sh 2-125, and the Cocoon Nebula) is a reflection/emission nebula 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.

Carole King (born Carol Joan Klein, February 9, 1942) is an American composer and singer-songwriter. She is the most successful female songwriter of the latter half of the 20th century in the US, having written or co-written 118 pop hits on the Billboard Hot 100 between 1955 and 1999. King also wrote 61 hits that charted in the UK, making her the most successful female songwriter on the UK singles charts between 1952 and 2005.

King’s career began in the 1960s when she and her first husband, Gerry Goffin, wrote more than two dozen chart hits, many of which have become standards, for numerous artists. She has continued writing for other artists since then. King’s success as a performer in her own right did not come until the 1970s, when she sang her own songs, accompanying herself on the piano, in a series of albums and concerts. After experiencing commercial disappointment with her debut album Writer, King scored her breakthrough with the album Tapestry, which topped the U.S. album chart for 15 weeks in 1971 and remained on the charts for more than six years.

King has made 25 solo albums, the most successful being Tapestry, which held the record for most weeks at No. 1 by a female artist for more than 20 years. Her most recent non-compilation album was Tapestry: Live in Hyde Park in 2017. Her record sales were estimated at more than 75 million copies worldwide.

She has won four Grammy Awards and was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for her songwriting. She is the recipient of the 2013 Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song, the first woman to be so honored. She is also a 2015 Kennedy Center Honoree. King was born Carol Joan Klein in February 1942 in Manhattan to a Jewish family.