Ruby Bridges: The 6-Year-Old Who Needed a Federal Marshal Escort to Attend First Grade

  

The moment has been immortalized in a Norman Rockwell painting with the apt title The Problem We All Live With: a little African American girl walks to school, surrounded by a team of U.S. Marshals, with racist graffiti and thrown garbage ornamenting the wall behind her. Ruby Bridges was only 6 years old in 1960 when the first grader arrived for her first day of school at  William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans — and was met by a vicious mob. The courageous girl would spend a year alone in the classroom, since other children had been removed by their parents due to her presence. But today, the 65-year-old Bridges says that those difficult days were worth it: "I now know that experience comes to us for a purpose, and if we follow the guidance of the spirit within us, we will probably find that the purpose is a good one."

Ruby, who was born on September 8, 1954, was one of only six black children who passed the tests that determined she could attend the previously all-white school; two families opted to keep their children at their old school, while three were transferred to McDonogh No. 19, leaving Ruby as the only student desegregating William Frantz. Ruby's father was hesitant to send his daughter, but her mother believed that it was important for the family to take that step — not just for Ruby herself, but for the children who would come after her. An order by Judge J. Skelly Wright dictated that New Orleans schools be integrated by November 14, 1960, so that would be Ruby's first day at school.

"That first morning I remember Mom saying as I got dressed in my new outfit, 'Now, I want you to behave yourself today, Ruby, and don't be afraid,'" Bridges recalled. "'There might be a lot of people outside this new school, but I'll be with you.' That conversation was the full extent of preparing me for what was to come." When Ruby arrived and saw the crowd, she had no idea that they were there to protest her presence. "Living in New Orleans, I actually thought it was Mardi Gras," she reflected. "There was a large crowd of people outside of the school. They were throwing things and shouting, and that sort of goes on in New Orleans at Mardi Gras. I really didn't realize until I got into the school that something else was going on."

 "The Problem We All Live With" by Norman Rockwell

 

One of the federal marshals, Charles Burks, who served on her escort team, later recalled Bridges' courage in the face of such hatred: "For a little girl six years old going into a strange school with four strange deputy marshals, a place she had never been before, she showed a lot of courage. She never cried. She didn't whimper. She just marched along like a little soldier. We were all very proud of her."

When Ruby entered the school, now devoid of other children, only one teacher, Barbara Henry, who had recently moved from Boston, Massachusetts, agreed to teach her. Although the boycott against the school was broken the next day when a white Methodist minister Lloyd Anderson Foreman walked his 5-year-old daughter through the mob into the school, and other parents followed within a few days, Ruby still spent the first year at the school alone in one classroom with Henry "as if she were teaching a whole class." Despite daily harassment, which required the federal marshals to continue escorting her to school for months, Ruby persisted in attending school.

As the year went on, Ruby's family suffered for their decision: her father lost his job as a gas station attendant and her sharecropping grandparents were turned off their land. Even the grocery store where the family shopped turned them away. But, when Ruby returned for second grade, more African American students were there to join her. The pioneering school integration effort was a success due to Ruby's inspiring courage, perseverance, and resilience.

As an adult, Ruby Bridges still lives in New Orleans. Since 1999, she has been the chair of the Ruby Bridges Foundation, whose mission is to promote " tolerance, respect, and appreciation of all differences." She believes that the key to ending prejudice lies in fostering these values among children. "Racism is a grown-up disease and we must stop using our children to spread it," she asserts. "Each and every one of us is born with a clean heart.... We owe it to our children to help them keep their clean start."

-A Mighty Girl

Alex Trebek, Longtime ‘Jeopardy!’ Host, Dead at 80

Television’s consummate quizmaster dies “peacefully” after lengthy battle with pancreatic cancer

 Alex Trebek, circa 1984. Michael Ochs Archive/Getty Images 

 Alex Trebek, television’s consummate quizmaster and the host of Jeopardy! for 35 years, died Sunday morning at the age of 80 following a lengthy battle with cancer.

“Jeopardy! is saddened to share that Alex Trebek passed away peacefully at home early this morning, surrounded by family and friends,” the show tweeted. “Thank you, Alex.”

Trebek revealed his pancreatic cancer diagnosis in March 2019. Despite the prognosis, Trebek vowed to continue working even as he fought the disease. “Truth told, I have to,” Trebek added, with a wink of humor. “Because under the terms of my contract, I have to host Jeopardy! for three more years! So help me. Keep the faith and we’ll win. We’ll get it done.”

As the host of Jeopardy!, Trebek came to embody a wholly unique kind of intellectualism. He stood behind a lectern, sported a professorial mustache for years and projected a mix of wisdom and trustworthiness — a not-quite know-it-all who had all the answers in front of him, but could still get away with a sly quip if a contestant flubbed an easy one.

During his Jeopardy! tenure, Trebek won six Daytime Emmys for Outstanding Game Show Host, while the organization also honored him with a lifetime achievement award in 2011. In 2012, he accepted a Peabody on Jeopardy!’s behalf, and in 2014, he broke the Guinness World Record for “the most game show episodes hosted by the same presenter (same program)” with a whopping 6,829 episodes. He has stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and Canada’s Walk of Fame, and in 2017 was named an Officer of the Order of Canada.

 

“Alex wasn’t just the best ever at what he did,” Ken Jennings, who won 75 games in a row and became a de facto ambassador for the show, wrote on Twitter. “He was also a lovely and deeply decent man, and I’m grateful for every minute I got to spend with him.”

Trebek’s cultural reach was vast. He appeared as himself in an array of television shows and movies, from Cheers and The X-Files to White Men Can’t Jump and RuPaul’s Drag Race. He even voiced a quiz-show host on episodes of celebrated kid’s shows Rugrats and Arthur. And of course, Will Ferrell played a famously beleaguered version of Trebek on Saturday Night Live’s “Celebrity Jeopardy!” skits, enduring years of verbal abuse from dimwitted stars like Sean Connery and Burt Reynolds.

Alex Trebek was born in Sudbury, Ontario, on July 22nd, 1940, and began working in broadcast television while still a college student in the early Sixties. For years, he was a jack-of-all-trades at the Canadian Broadcasting Corp., covering news and sports, and even hosting the music program Music Hop. In 1966, he hosted his first game show, Reach for the Top, and landed his second, Strategy, in 1969.

 

Game shows remained Trebek’s forte as he found more work in Hollywood in the early Seventies. The first program he hosted on American television was The Wizard of Odds, with subsequent gigs on High Rollers and The $128,000 Question. Later, Trebek even served as a game-show contestant: In 1976, he appeared on Celebrity Bowling, sporting a shirt that read “Alex Trebek, What the Heck!” and in 1980, he beat a crowded field of game-show hosts in a special tournament edition of Card Sharks.

Even after Jeopardy! took off, Trebek worked at a remarkable clip. For a brief period in 1991, he became the first person to host three American game shows at the same time (Jeopardy!, Classic Concentration, and To Tell the Truth). He also hosted the Pillsbury Bake-Off for several years, served as a spokesman for Colonial Penn Life Insurance and, one April Fools’ Day, even hosted Wheel of Fortune with co-hosts Pat Sajak and Vanna White as contestants. Arguably, Trebek’s least successful venture was the time he moderated a 2018 Pennsylvania governor’s debate, during which he monopolized the conversation, argued with one of the candidates, and even made an unprompted joke about sexual abuse within the Catholic Church (he later apologized).

A constant television presence for the better part of the past 40 years, Trebek remained an endearing fixture of American popular culture. Clips of him reading rap lyrics from clues or roasting unsuspecting contestants were viral manna, and the announcement of his cancer diagnosis was met with an outpouring of support from fans. But perhaps the most remarkable aspect of Trebek’s longevity is that, even after hosting countless episodes of Jeopardy! and its myriad offshoots, he never seemed to tire of the job.

“I have to work, but it’s work I enjoy and that still has challenges,” he told New York magazine in 2018. “I have at least two new players on each program and all new material that I’ve got to read properly. As I’ve gotten older I realize, as professional athletes do, that the difficult thing is not losing your physical skills. It’s losing your ability to concentrate. . . . We have a clue every 10, 12 seconds. I can’t dwell on the one I screwed up; I have to dwell on the next one.”

After his diagnosis, Trebek vowed to keep hosting Jeopardy! even as he began treatment (The show aired its 8,000th episode in October.) As he underwent chemotherapy, Trebek was always honest about his status and his state of mind. After proclaiming in May that his tumors had shrunk considerably and he was “near remission,” he revealed in September that his numbers had skyrocketed back to levels higher than his original diagnosis.

In an October interview with Canadian news network CTV, Trebek was blunt about where he stood, but also lucid and clear-eyed about the end of his life. “I’ve lived a good life, a full life, and I’m nearing the end of that life,” he said. “I know that. I’m not gonna delude myself. So if it happens, it happens. And why should I be afraid of it?”

In This Article: obit, Obituary

-Rolling Stones  

Congratulations!

 Joe Biden and Kamala Harris 2020

 

Endless Love Scene (1981 film)

 

Endless Love is a 1981 American romantic drama film directed by Franco Zeffirelli, starring Brooke Shields and Martin Hewitt. Tom Cruise makes his film debut, in a minor role.

Based on the 1979 Scott Spencer novel of the same name, the screenplay was written by Judith Rascoe. The original music score was composed by Jonathan Tunick.

Critics compared the film unfavorably to the novel, which showcased the dangers of obsessive love. Despite the poor reviews, its eponymous theme song, performed by Diana Ross and Lionel Richie, became a #1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100. The song spent nine weeks at #1 and received Academy Award and Golden Globe Award nominations for "Best Original Song", along with five Grammy Award nominations. 

 

Save the Robots

 

Save the Robots was an underground after hours club in New York City's East Village neighborhood. "Robots," as the venue was popularly known, operated illegally from a nondescript storefront and basement at 25 Avenue B, between East 2nd and 3rd Streets, from 1983 until mid-1984, when the club was shut down for fire safety violations. After undergoing safety-related renovations and obtaining a social club license, the venue reopened in early January 1986.^{[citation needed]}

The club was frequented by drag performers, musicians, Club Kids, employees of other bars and clubs, skinheads and other denizens of downtown New York nightlife, including Dean Johnson and Lady Bunny.^[1] Save the Robots was known for its late hours of operation and sold only vodka, soda and fruit juice. Patrons typically arrived after 4 a.m. and partied until the 8 a.m. closing time, often with the aid of recreational drugs. At one point, talk show host Craig Ferguson worked there as a bouncer.^[2][3][4]

1993 was the last year of 'Robots'. The space was subsequently leased to other operators, who transformed it into a fully licensed dance club, to capitalize on the "Save the Robots" name, without consent from the original owners and with few vestiges of the original clientele or atmosphere.^[5]

At a later time, the venue was bought by another owner and renamed Guernica. It was closed again in 2013 after the club's bouncer, Dana Blake, was stabbed in an incident with some smokers outside the club.^[6][7]

Reopened in April 2019 as Downtime.\

 -Wiki

Literary Pick (**)

 1984

-George Orwell 

 

 

Somewhere in Time

 

 

 

In 1972, college theatre student Richard Collier celebrates the debut of his new play. During the celebration, an elderly woman places a pocket watch in his hand and pleads, "Come back to me." Richard does not recognize the woman, who returns to her own residence and dies in her sleep that same night.

Eight years later, Richard is a successful playwright living in Chicago. While struggling with writer's block, he decides to take a break from writing and travels to the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island. While exploring the hotel's hall of history, he becomes enthralled with a vintage photograph of Elise McKenna, a beautiful and famous early-20th century stage actress. Upon further research, he discovers she is the same woman who gave him the pocket watch. Richard visits Laura Roberts, Elise’s former housekeeper and companion. While there, he discovers a music box that plays the 18th variation of Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, his favorite musical piece. Among Elise's personal effects is a book on time travel written by his old college professor, Dr. Gerard Finney. Richard becomes obsessed with traveling back to 1912 and meeting Elise, with whom he has fallen in love.

Richard seeks out Professor Finney, who believes he briefly time traveled through the power of self-suggestion. Finney warns Richard that such a process would leave one very weak physically, perhaps dangerously so. Richard is determined to try. Dressed in an early 20th-century suit, he removes all modern objects from his hotel room and attempts to will himself to 1912 using tape-recorded suggestions. The attempt fails because he lacks real conviction, but after finding a hotel guest book from 1912 containing his signature, Richard realizes he will eventually succeed.

Richard hypnotizes himself again, this time allowing his absolute faith in his eventual success to serve as the engine that transports him back to 1912. Richard finds Elise walking by the lake. Upon meeting him she asks, "Is it you?" Her manager, William Fawcett Robinson, abruptly intervenes and sends Richard away. Although Elise is initially uninterested, Richard pursues her until she agrees to accompany him on a stroll the next morning. During a boat ride, Richard hums the theme from the 18th variation of opus 43, a tune Elise has never heard before as it has yet to be written. Richard asks what Elise meant by, "Is it you?" She reveals that Robinson has predicted she will meet a man who will change her life, and that she should be afraid. Richard shows Elise the pocket watch she will give him in 1972.

Richard attends Elise's play where she gives an impromptu monologue dedicated to him. During the intermission, Elise poses formally for a photograph but seeing Richard, breaks into a radiant smile. It is the same image Richard saw 68 years later. Afterward, Richard receives an urgent message from Robinson requesting a meeting. Robinson wants Richard to leave Elise, saying it is for her own good. When Richard says he loves her, Robinson has him bound and locked inside the stables. Robinson then tells Elise that Richard has left, though she does not believe him and professes her love for Richard.

Richard wakes the next morning and frees himself. The acting troupe has already left for Denver, though Elise has returned to the hotel to find him. They go to her room and make love. They agree to marry and Elise promises to buy Richard a new suit, as his is about a decade out of style. Inside one of the suit pockets, Richard discovers a penny with a 1979 mint date. This modern item breaks the hypnotic suggestion, pulling Richard into the present as Elise screams in terror.

Richard awakens back in 1980. His attempts to return to 1912 are unsuccessful. After wandering the hotel grounds despondently, physically weakened by the time travel and brokenhearted, he dies in despair. His spirit is drawn into the afterlife, where he is reunited with Elise. 

 -Wiki

Sean Connery, Actor And The Original James Bond, Dies At 90

 

Sean Connery, the first actor to portray James Bond and later one of the biggest and wealthiest stars in the history of film, has died at age 90.

Eon Productions, the film studio behind the James Bond films, confirmed the death in a statement on its website.

"We are devastated by the news of the passing of Sean Connery," read the statement from producers Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli. "He was and shall always be remembered as the original James Bond whose indelible entrance into cinema history began when he announced those unforgettable words — 'The name's Bond... James Bond' — he revolutionised the world with his gritty and witty portrayal of the sexy and charismatic secret agent. He is undoubtedly largely responsible for the success of the film series and we shall be forever grateful to him."

On screen, Connery brimmed with innate sexuality, topped off by a cool, insolent sense of menace. A Scotsman who could rock a kilt, he possessed cliffhanger eyebrows over piercing eyes.

As a struggling actor in 1962, he managed to change pop culture forever in the first scene of his first lead role, when he introduced himself in Dr. No: "Bond. James Bond."

Connery's trajectory, as Bond and otherwise, took off like a bullet from a Walther PPK. For many, his performance in the Bond role has never been bettered.

It was far from his origins. Born in 1930 to a cleaning woman and truck driver in depressed Edinburgh, he dropped out of school at age 13. He joined the Royal Navy. After he got out, he competed in the Mr. Universe bodybuilding competition.

In the 1980s, he told ABC's Barbara Walters that his life changed with a trip to London.

"What happened was: When I went to London for the Mr. Universe, one of the guys, he was in South Pacific and he said, 'Do you want to do a show?'" Connery said. "I said, 'Well, I'll have a go at that,' so I went along and auditioned."

He got the part and toured England with the show. By day, he went to local libraries. He studied Shakespeare, Ibsen, Brecht.

In spite of these efforts at refinement, Connery was not the first choice of Bond's creator. Author Ian Fleming wanted the suave British actor James Mason. But after the premiere for Dr. No, Fleming was so impressed he wrote Bond as half-Scottish in future books.

Connery made six Bond films in 10 years. But he felt constrained by Bond as time went on, and he pushed back by taking other roles.

The characters got older as he did. He won an Oscar for playing an Irish cop, Malone, in 1987's The Untouchables. In 1989, he played Indiana Jones' father, professor Henry Jones.

Sean Connery waves to the audience in receiving a lifetime achievement award from AFI in 2006.

Kevin Winter/Getty Images for AFI

He made his final Bond film in 1983, Never Say Never Again (though he did reprise the part to record a voiceover for the From Russia With Love video game in 2005).

On several occasions, Connery mirrored some of the misogyny exhibited his character in the early Bond films — namely roughing up women. His first wife, Diane Cilento, said he hit her for being drunk. In a 1965 interview with Playboy magazine, he said, "I don't think there is anything particularly wrong about hitting a woman — although I don't recommend doing it in the same way that you'd hit a man. An openhanded slap is justified — if all other alternatives fail and there has been plenty of warning."

He repeated that thought to Barbara Walters in an interview on ABC in 1987. Then, in 2006, he canceled an interview in Scotland over worries he would be asked about his attitudes. Shortly after, the Scottish newspaper The Herald reported that Connery walked back his earlier remarks, saying he had told friends, "I don't believe that any level of abuse of women is ever justified under any circumstances."

Connery was Scottish to the core — he had the word Scotland tattooed on his arm. A member of the Scottish National Party, he ardently supported secession from Great Britain.

In 1999, he addressed hundreds of party activists before a vote. Despite that, the queen of England knighted him the next year.

Sir Sean Connery will be remembered many ways — as an old-fashioned male sex symbol, a financial patron of the arts and a beloved son of Edinburgh — and, of course, for his many roles.

A cult favorite comes in the film version of Rudyard Kipling's The Man Who Would Be King in which Connery stars alongside his real-life friend Michael Caine. When it all goes wrong, they're marched to the edge of a cliff.

As Connery's character prepares to meet his death, he remains defiant to the last moment. Still wearing his crown, he sings.

-NPR