Sound of the Day

Aguas de Marco 
-Antonio Carlos Jobim & Elis Regina 

Good "News"

Spike Lee's 7-Minute Rant About The 'Motherf*cking Hipsters' Gentrifying Brooklyn

At an event at Pratt last night, Spike Lee was asked about something he's been consistently passionate about: Gentrification. Specifically the gentrification of Brooklyn, where he was raised. In 2010 we asked him about this, and here's how that went:

Were you still living there when the neighborhood began transitioning into what it is now?When did you start noticing it changing? You know, you have to do your homework. You do your homework and you find out the specific year when gentrification took place.

I'm asking if you witnessed that gentrification. I can't give you an exact date.

Okay, but what was your own experience of it? [No response.]

This time around he had more to say, about seven minutes worth according to NY Mag—they transcribed the entire thing. They report back that he railed against the hipsters taking over Brooklyn—sorry, that's "motherfucking hipsters"—when asked about the "other side" of the gentrification debate ("there was some bullshit article in the New York Times saying ‘the good of gentrification'"). Here are some bullet points from his talk, as well as the audio, captured by NY Mag:

• "Why does it take an influx of white New Yorkers in the South Bronx, in Harlem, in Bed Stuy, in Crown Heights for the facilities to get better? Why did it take this great influx of white people to get the schools better? The garbage wasn’t picked up every motherfuckin’ day when I was living in 165 Washington Park... The police weren’t around... When you see white mothers pushing their babies in strollers, three o’clock in the morning on 125th Street, that must tell you something."
• "Then comes the motherfuckin’ Christopher Columbus Syndrome. You can’t discover this! We been here. You just can’t come and bogart. You can’t just come in the neighborhood and start bogarting and say, like you’re motherfuckin’ Columbus and kill off the Native Americans. Or what they do in Brazil, what they did to the indigenous people. You have to come with respect. There’s a code. There’s people. I’m for democracy and letting everybody live but you gotta have some respect. You can’t just come in when people have a culture that’s been laid down for generations and you come in and now shit gotta change because you’re here?"
• "When Michael Jackson died they wanted to have a party for him in motherfuckin’ Fort Greene Park and all of a sudden the white people in Fort Greene said, 'Wait a minute! We can’t have black people having a party for Michael Jackson to celebrate his life. Who’s coming to the neighborhood? They’re gonna leave lots of garbage.' Garbage? Have you seen Fort Greene Park in the morning? It’s like the motherfuckin’ Westminster Dog Show. There’s 20,000 dogs running around."
• [After discussing people not being able to afford Williamsburg anymore...] "These real estate motherfuckers are changing names! Stuyvestant Heights? [SpaHa] What the fuck is that? What do they call Bushwick now? How you changin’ names?"

Well, as Native New Yorker Jake Dobkin once penned, "If it's any consolation, like Autumn following Summer, degentrification ('urban decay') is the inevitable second stroke of the urban cycle. Some neighborhoods, like Fort Greene, have been gentrified, degentrified, and regentrified, and will be again at some point in the future. It may take 25 or 50 years, but wait long enough and you too may get to experience falling rents and street crime!"

-The Gothamist

Puerto Rican National Anthem

Lyrics: Manuel Fernández Juncos (1846-1928)

La Borinqueña
La tierra de Borinquén
donde he nacido yo,
es un jardín florido
de mágico fulgor.
Un cielo siempre nítido
le sirve de dosel
y dan arrullos plácidos
las olas a sus pies.
Cuando a sus playas llegó Colón;
Exclamó lleno de admiración;
"Oh!, oh!, oh!, esta es la linda
tierra que busco yo".
Es Borinquén la hija,
la hija del mar y el sol,
del mar y el sol,
del mar y el sol,
del mar y el sol,
del mar y el sol.

R.I.P

 Harold Ramis
Nov. 21, 1944- Feb. 24, 2014

Comedy legend Harold Ramis died early Monday (Feb. 24), the Chicago Tribune reported. He was 69.
The Chicago Sun-Times confirmed the news.
Ramis was surrounded by family when he died at 12:53 a.m. from complications of autoimmune inflammatory vasculitis, a rare disease that involves swelling of the blood vessels, his wife Erica Mann Ramis told the Chicago Tribune. Mann Ramis added that his health struggles began in May 2010, with an infection that led to complications related to the autoimmune disease. According to Laurel Ward, Vice President of Development at Ramis’ Ocean Pictures production company, Ramis suffered a relapse of the vasculitis in late 2011.
Ramis was best known for directing and writing "Caddyshack," "Groundhog Day" and "Analyze That." He also played the role of Egon Spengler in "Ghostbusters," which he co-wrote with Dan Aykroyd.
He was born and raised in Chicago, but moved to Los Angeles once his career took off.
AP story continues below:
Perhaps his greatest legacy is his influence on generations of comedians, actors and directors due to his ability to infuse comedy with a broader, sometimes spiritual message, said Andrew Alexander, president and CEO of The Second City. Ramis got his start with the Chicago-based improvisational comedy theater, along with future co-stars Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi and Murray.
"There was always a nuanced meaning to his pictures," Alexander said, including an "almost Buddhist philosophy to 'Groundhog Day'" — a movie Ramis co-wrote and directed that tells the story of a man who re-lives the same day over and over as he examines his life.
"He was a generous, nurturing, humble guy," Alexander added.
Aykroyd issued a statement Monday, saying he was "deeply saddened to hear of the passing of my brilliant, gifted, funny friend ... May he now get the answers he was always seeking."
Ramis joined The Second City in 1969, and in 1976 became head writer for the Canadian-based comedy show Second City Television, or SCTV.
He soon moved on to bigger projects — the legendary 1978 blockbuster film "National Lampoon's Animal House," which starred fellow Second City alum John Belushi.
With Murray as the comic lead, the Second City alums paired up for numerous projects: Ramis co-wrote 1979's "Meatballs" and co-wrote and directed 1980's "Caddyshack."
But the most well-known of their collaborations was "Ghostbusters," which also features Aykroyd. Ramis helped write the 1984 movie, in which he stars as Egon Spengler, the brainy, commonsense member of a group of parapsychologists who try to catch ghosts.
"The best comedy touches something that's timeless and universal in people," Ramis told The Associated Press in a 2009 story about the 50th anniversary of Second City. "When you hit it right, those things last."
More recently, he directed "Analyze This," starring Billy Crystal and Robert DeNiro.
Ramis was born Nov. 21, 1944 in Chicago. He is survived by his wife, Erica Ramis; sons Julian and Daniel; daughter Violet; and two grandchildren.


-Huff Post

Literary Pick (**)

The Insufferable Gaucho
-Roberto Bolaño

Literary Pick (****)

Women
-Charles Bukowski

All I've ever heard or read about Charles Bukowski is what a massive misogynist he is, which is why it's taken me this long to read any of his work, but judging from this novel alone I simply don't see proof of this. He's a repulsive alcoholic who wants to fuck women, and what repulsive alcoholic doesn't?



Great book. Great writer.

Literary Pick (*)

House of Leaves
-Mark Z. Danielewski 

Quote of the Day

"The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts while the stupid ones are full of confidence".

-Charles Bukowski

Honor Spotlight

The town that hanged an elephant: A chilling photo and a macabre story of murder and revenge

 

Trooping into the tatty Big Top to the accompaniment of a drunken four-piece band, the elephants in Charlie Sparks’s travelling circus did their best to entertain the audience on that cold afternoon in February 1916. 

They sat on their haunches, stood on their heads, and formed an elephantine train as they placed their forelegs on each other’s backs and trumpeted around the ring. In short, they performed every trick they had been tortured into learning, but they could not make up for the absence of the real star of the show, a five-ton Asian elephant named Mary. 
Mary’s talents included picking out 25 tunes on musical horns, which she tooted with her trunk. She was also the champion pitcher on the circus’s baseball team. But on that tragic day, she had been stripped of her red-and-gold saddle and head-dress of artificial blue feathers and stood tethered in disgrace outside the tent. 
Waiting there in the drizzling rain, it was said that she trembled fearfully, as if aware of the awful fate about to befall her. And well she might have done, for ‘Murderous Mary’, as she became known, had not only killed a man but had made the mistake of doing so near Erwin, Tennessee. 
This newly booming American railroad town had pretensions to civilisation, boasting its own post office, theatre and courthouse. It also had a jail, but the sheriff’s authority counted for little in a part of the world where mob rule still prevailed. Between 1882 and 1930, there were 214 victims of lynchings in Tennessee. 
Most were black men, summarily found guilty of such crimes as ‘fighting a white man’ and having ‘bad character’. 
But soon their tragic ranks would be joined by Mary, surely the only elephant in history ever to have been hanged. And it seems particularly pertinent to remember her in the week that Prince Charles hosted a much-heralded international conference to address the illegal trade in wildlife parts. 
 Elephants were among the species highlighted as most at risk, but the supposedly enlightened Western world has not always been so concerned about the welfare of these majestic creatures, as we are reminded by the barbarity of Mary’s death. Her fate was sealed the day before the hanging, when Charlie Sparks’s circus train arrived in the small town of Kingsport, about 40 miles from Erwin. As always, it advertised its presence with a parade along the main street, during which Mary was ridden by 38-year-old Walter Eldridge, nicknamed Red because of his rusty-coloured hair. 

A drifter who had been with the circus only a day, he had no experience of handling elephants, but the only qualification required was the ability to wield an ‘elephant stick’ — a rod with a sharp spear at one end. A clue as to why this held such fear for the animals comes from an account of how a baby elephant named Mademoiselle Djek was tamed for a short stint on the London stage in 1829. While critics marvelled at her docility, Charles Reade, a novelist of the time, described how her keeper first gained mastery over her by stabbing her in the trunk with a pitchfork, at which she ‘wheeled round, ran her head into a corner, stuck out her great buttocks and trembled all over like a leaf’. 
He then jabbed her with all his force for half an hour until ‘the blood poured out of every square foot of her huge body’ and he had ‘filled her as full of holes as a cloved orange’. Similar techniques would have been used to break Mary. But although the elephant-stick usually kept her in line, she was suffering from a painfully abscessed tooth that day. When she stopped during the parade to nibble on a piece of discarded watermelon rind, Red Eldridge jabbed her to keep her moving and inadvertently hit the tender spot. Her reaction was swift and deadly. Reaching up with her trunk, she dashed him to the ground then stamped on his head. ‘Blood and brains and stuff just squirted all over the street,’ recalled one witness. As the terrified spectators screamed and fled, a local blacksmith shot Mary with a pistol, unloading five rounds of ammunition into her thick hide to little effect. She stood still, suddenly calm again and seemingly oblivious both to the bullets and the commotion as the townsfolk encircled her with chants of ‘Kill the elephant, kill the elephant.’ Fearing that his dates in other towns would be cancelled if they heard that his circus was home to a homicidal pachyderm, Charlie Sparks had no choice but to give in to these demands for vengeance. 

The only question was how Mary should meet her end. Bullets had already proved ineffective and neither was poison likely to work, since elephants have some half a million sense receptors in their trunks and can easily detect noxious substances. Some people advocated crushing Mary slowly between two opposing railway engines. Others called for her head to be tied to one locomotive and her legs to another so that she would be dismembered alive as they set off in opposite directions. Another option was electrocution — there was a horrific precedent for this thanks to Thomas Edison, inventor of the first commercially viable electric light bulb. At a time when America was choosing which of the two main forms of electricity to adopt, direct current (DC) or alternating current (AC), he had patents for many devices using the former and stood to profit hugely if it was chosen over its rival. Claiming that DC was the safer of the two, he spread false stories about fatal accidents supposedly involving AC. 
  He also staged various demonstrations in which animals were publicly electrocuted with AC, the most spectacular of which came about in 1903 when a new amusement park opened on New York’s Coney Island. One of the attractions was an elephant named Topsy, but it was claimed that she had become violent and uncooperative and the owners sought publicity for their new venture by executing her with Edison’s help. A huge crowd saw Topsy place her feet obediently into specially designed wooden sandals, lined with copper wiring and linked to an AC power supply. When the switch was thrown, smoke billowed up from her feet and within a minute or two it was all over. One newspaper reported the public’s morbid delight in watching her demise, even though it caused ‘an unpleasant smell to mingle with the scent of roasted peanuts, sold at two cents a bag’. 
  Later it was said that Topsy’s ‘riding the lightning’ had briefly caused bulbs to dull all over the region, as if in commemoration of her, but her death proved in vain, because Edison’s plot failed and America eventually went with AC as its standard electricity current. This had reached rural Tennessee by 1916, but not with sufficient power to dispatch an elephant, so Charlie Sparks came up with the equally sensational idea of hanging Mary. 

The next day the circus visited Erwin, which had a 100-ton crane used to lift railway carriages on and off the tracks. This was strong enough to support an elephant, and the matinee-goers disappointed by not seeing Mary in the ring that afternoon were mollified by the news that they could see her being hanged shortly afterwards, at no additional charge. As she was led to the railway yard, Mary was followed by the circus’s other four elephants, each entwining their trunk in the tail of the animal in front just as they had done on countless parades. Charlie Sparks hoped that their presence would keep her compliant but, as a chain was placed around her neck at the ‘gallows’, they trumpeted mournfully to her and he feared that she might try to run away. To stop this happening, one of her legs was tethered to a rail. 
No one thought to release it as the crane whirred into action and, as she was hoisted into the air, there was an awful cracking noise, the sound of her bones and ligaments snapping under the strain. She had been raised no more than five feet when the chain around her neck broke, dropping her to the ground and breaking her hip. ‘It made a right smart little racket,’ recalled one of the crowd which was some 3,000-strong and included most of the town’s children. The onlookers panicked and ran for cover, but Mary simply sat there dazed and in terrible pain. Meanwhile, one of the circus hands ran up her back — as if climbing a small hill rather than a living creature — and attached a stronger chain. The winch was powered up again and this time Mary was raised high in the air, her thick legs thrashing and her agonised shrieks and grunts audible even over the laughter and cheers of those watching below. Finally she fell silent and hung there for half an hour before a local vet declared her dead. 

 Her gruesome end is recorded in a photograph so horrifically surreal that some have suggested it must be a fake — but, all too sadly, its authenticity has been confirmed by other photographs taken at the time. That night the circus went ahead as usual, but after the show one of the remaining elephants broke away from the herd and began running towards the railway yard. Since wild elephants are thought to return to the bones of fallen family members for many years, he perhaps went in search of Mary. But he was quickly recaptured and returned to the life of captive misery from which he had escaped. Knowing that Mary no longer had to endure this cruel and unnatural existence is perhaps the only consolation to be drawn from this awful tale. 

Today she still lies interred in a huge grave which was dug for her using a steam shovel. Some said the hole was ‘as big as a barn’, but no one knows exactly where it is, or seems much inclined to find it. Tellingly, there remains no monument to her in Erwin, the town which hanged an elephant and apparently remains ashamed of having done so to this very day.

Literary Pick (***)

Mercury and Me
-Jim Hutton

RIP

Shirley Temple Black 
-April 23, 1928- February 10, 2014 

Shirley Temple Black, who lifted America's spirits as a bright-eyed, dimpled child movie star during the Great Depression and later became a U.S. diplomat, died late on Monday evening at the age of 85, her family said in a statement. Temple Black, who lured millions to the movies in the 1930s, "peacefully passed away" at her Woodside, Calif., home from natural causes at 10:57 p.m. local time (0157 ET), surrounded by her family and caregivers, the statement said on Tuesday. "We salute her for a life of remarkable achievements as an actor, as a diplomat, and most importantly as our beloved mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, and adored wife of fifty-five years," the statement said. As actress Shirley Temple, she was precocious, bouncy and adorable with a head of curly hair, tap-dancing through songs like "On The Good Ship Lollipop." As Ambassador Shirley Temple Black, she was soft-spoken and earnest in postings in Czechoslovakia and Ghana, out to disprove concerns that her previous career made her a diplomatic lightweight. "I have no trouble being taken seriously as a woman and a diplomat here," Black said after her appointment as U.S. ambassador to Ghana in 1974. "My only problems have been with Americans who, in the beginning, refused to believe I had grown up since my movies." Black, born April 23, 1928, started her entertainment career in the early 1930s and was famous by age 6. She became a national institution and her raging popularity spawned look-alike dolls, dresses and dozens of other Shirley Temple novelties as she became one of the first stars to enjoy the fruits of the growing marketing mentality. Shirley was 3 when her mother put her in dance school, where a talent scout spotted her and got her in "Baby Burlesk," a series of short movies with child actors spoofing adult movies. Movie studio executives took notice. In 1934 she appeared in the film "Stand Up and Cheer!", and her song and dance number in "Baby Take a Bow" stole the show. Other movies in that year included "Little Miss Marker" and "Bright Eyes" - which featured her signature song "On the Good Ship Lollipop" - and in 1935 she received a special Oscar for her "outstanding contribution to screen entertainment." She made some 40 feature movies, including "The Little Colonel," "Poor Little Rich Girl," "Heidi" and "Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm," in 10 years, starring with big-name actors like Randolph Scott, Lionel Barrymore and Jimmy Durante. Shirley was a superstar before the term was invented. She said she was about 8 when adoring crowds shouting their love for her made her realize she was famous. "I wondered why," she recalled. "I asked my mother and she said, 'Because your films make them happy.'" She was such a money-maker that her mother - who would always tell her "Sparkle, Shirley!" before she appeared before an audience - and studio officials shaved a year off her age to maintain her child image. Her child career came to an end at age 12. She tried a few roles as a teenager - including opposite future president Ronald Reagan in "That Hagen Girl" - but retired from the screen in 1949 at age 21. The Screen Actors Guild gave her its 2005 Life Achievement Award, and in her acceptance speech posted on the group's website, she said: "I have one piece of advice for those of you who want to receive the Lifetime Achievement Award: start early!" POLITICS AND DIPLOMACY Temple was only 17 in 1945 when she married for the first time to John Agar, who would eventually appear with her in two movies. Their five-year marriage produced a daughter. In 1950 she wed Charles Black in a marriage that lasted until his death in 2005. She and Black had two children. Black's interest in politics was sparked in the early '50s when her husband was called back into the Navy to work in Washington. She did volunteer work for the Republican Party while attempting to make a comeback with two short-lived TV series, "Shirley Temple's Storybook" in 1959 and "The Shirley Temple Theater" a year later. Seven years after that she ran unsuccessfully for Congress in California but stayed in politics, helping raise more than $2 million for Richard Nixon's re-election campaign. She was later named to the United States' team to the United Nations and found that the her childhood popularity was an asset in her new career. "Having been a film star can be very helpful on an international basis," Black once said. "Many people consider me an old friend." Sometimes the public found it hard to accept her in diplomatic roles. But in 1989 she pointed out her 20 years in public service were more than the 19 she spent in Hollywood. In 1974, Ford appointed Black ambassador to Ghana and two years later made her chief of protocol. For the next decade she trained newly appointment ambassadors at the request of the State Department. In 1989, President George H.W. Bush made Black ambassador to Prague - a sensitive Eastern European post normally reserved for career diplomats. Black had been in Prague in 1968, representing a group fighting multiple sclerosis at a conference, when Soviet-bloc tanks entered to crush an era of liberalization known as the "Prague Spring." President Gustav Husak did not seem daunted by the prospect of a U.S. ambassador who had witnessed the invasion. He told her that he had been a fan of "Shirleyka." In 1972, Black was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent a mastectomy. She publicly discussed her surgery to educate women about the disease. Black is survived by her children, Susan, Charlie Jr., and Lori, her granddaughter Teresa and her great-granddaughters Lily and Emma, the family statement said. It said private funeral arrangements were pending. (Reporting by Eric M. Johnson; Editing by Bill Trott and Sonya Hepinstall) -Reuters

RIP

Philip Seymour Hoffman 

Born	July 23, 1967
Died	February 2, 2014 (aged 46)

The Oscar-winning actor Philip Seymour Hoffman was found dead on Sunday afternoon in his New York apartment, after a suspected drug overdose. He was 46.
A law enforcement source told the Guardian Hoffman was discovered by a friend in the bathroom of his apartment on Bethune Street, in the West Village neighbourhood of Manhattan, around 11.15am ET.
He was confirmed dead at the scene.
The source confirmed that the New York Police Department had opened a “DOA” (“Dead on arrival”) investigation and was investigating a possible drug overdose. The inquiry will take place alongside Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, which is determining the precise cause of death.
In media interviews, Hoffman had admitted to suffering from drug and alcohol addiction problems after graduating from theatre school in 1989. He once said that he checked himself into a rehabilitation clinic and had been clean for 23 years.
However, more recently there have been reports that Hoffman suffered a relapse. In May last year, he reportedly admitted to having checked into a detox facility on the east coast, after taking prescription pills and consuming heroin.
In a 2011 interview with the Guardian, Hoffman said his alcohol and drug problem had been "pretty bad".
"And I know, deep down, I still look at the idea of drinking with the same ferocity that I did back then. It's still pretty tangible," he said.

Referring to his younger days, he added: "I had no interest in drinking in moderation. And I still don't. Just because all that time's passed doesn't mean maybe it was just a phase."
Around 1.30pm ET on Sunday, an NYPD car was photographed on the road outside the apartment – an officer was stood by the apartment-block door. By 2pm, satellite TV trucks had arrived outside the property.
Hoffman, who was from Fairport, New York, was one of America’s most loved actors. In 2005, he won the Academy Award for best actor for his leading role in Capote, based on the life of the novelist Truman Capote.
Renowned for his work as a supporting actor, Hoffman, had three children with Mimi O’Donnell, a costume designer with whom he had been in a long-term relationship. He came to prominence as an actor working on television series in the early 1990s. He received his third Academy Award nomination in the best supporting actor category in 2012, in recognition of his performance in The Master.
His death was first reported in the Wall Street Journal, shortly after 1pm ET.

-The Guardian

RIP

Pete Seeger
May, 1919-Jan. 28, 2014

Peter Seeger was born in May, 1919, in New York City, into one of the most influential folk music families of the 20th Century. His father, Charles Seeger, was a musicologist, and both of his siblings, Mike and Peggy Seeger, also became musicians. (Mike Seeger was a founding member of the traditionalist folk music revival combo New Lost City Ramblers.) He was also heavily influenced by his stepmother Ruth Crawford Seeger, who was a champion of folk music for children and an innovative composer in her own right.
After high school, Seeger spent two years studying Journalism at Harvard University before dropping out to perform music and explore the arts. He briefly explored painting, dabbling in water colors, before shifting his focus entirely to the banjo and folk music. During a trip to lower Appalachia with his father, Seeger was handed a five-string banjo, frequently considered the "lesser" banjo. Nonetheless, the instrument's high drone string captured Seeger's imagination and became his signature tool.
During the late 1930s, at a migrant union benefit in New York City, he met Woody Guthrie. Seeger immediately recognized Guthrie's incredible talent, and Woody quickly realized Seeger was able to follow along as an accompanist very simply. The two found they had plenty in common both musically and ideologically, and they soon formed a group that came to be known famously as the Almanac Singers.
The Almanacs had a few good years' run before the US entered World War II and several of them were drafted into the war effort. Seeger spent much of his enlistment time down South and out West, entertaining his fellow enlistees on the banjo.
After the War ended, Seeger rejoined his young wife Toshi in New York and started a new group featuring fellow Almanac Lee Hays, called the Weavers. This traditional folk revivalist quartet enjoyed extensive success until being blacklisted for suspected Communist activity during the McCarthy Era. Seeger himself refused to testify in the McCarthy hearings, citing that it would violate his first amendment rights.
Fresh from the stress and frustration of blacklisting, Seeger was not swayed away from music. In fact, he came out of the debacle even more convinced that music was one of the surest ways toward a better world. So, in the late 1950s, Pete Seeger began his solo career. He became well-known as a topical songwriter and activist folksinger. He began performing "We Shall Overcome" - a song he'd learned in the mid-1940s from Zilphia Horton at the Highlander Folk School. It was one of Zilphia's favorite songs and she had been teaching it to labor activists for some time. Seeger adapted her version of the song - which had a looser rhythm structure and repeated the phrase "We Will Overcome". He moved the rhythm to a marching triplet and changed the "will" to "shall", saying the latter allowed your mouth to open up a little wider, to sing more strongly.
Together with his friend Lee Hays, he wrote "If I Had a Hammer" and also penned "Turn, Turn, Turn" based on a Bible verse at a time when he was being accused of being a godless Communist. All these songs have long since become anthems for peace movements and civil rights.
Seeger has released dozens of records during the course of his extensive and inspiring career, and has received the Kennedy Center Honor Award, National Medal of Arts, and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996. He continued to perform with his grandson Tao Rodriguez-Seeger and children's groups across the country until he was 94 years old. In early 2014, it was announced that Seeger would be awarded the first ever Woody Guthrie Prize for his contributions to the world of citizenship and music. Seeger died in New York City at the age of 94 on Jan. 28, 2014.

Quote of the Day

"Don't talk unless you can improve the silence". 
-Jorge Luis Borges