In upstate New York, John Lundemo is making a living by making high end swords. He carves each sword with a distinctive style of his own, a style he developed over the years. Inspiration for his creativity comes from different places. And as Faiza Elmasry tells us, that’s what makes him a sword master. VOA’s Faith Lapidus narrates.
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President Trump’s proposed cuts to the federal budget for the arts is creating concern that it may impact a program started by former first lady Michelle Obama that is showing signs of success. Turnaround Arts gets some funding from federal tax dollars, and it helps some of the nation’s lowest performing schools improve learning in all educational subjects. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee reports from Los Angeles.
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Pope Francis made a surprise appearance at a TED talk conference on Tuesday, urging powerful leaders “to act humbly” and said he hoped technological innovation would not leave people behind.
The 18-minute video was filmed in Vatican City and broadcast to the audience at the annual TED 2017 conference in Vancouver.
“The more powerful you are, the more your actions will have an impact on people, the more responsible you are to act humbly,” said the pontiff, while seated at a desk.
“If you don’t, your power will ruin you, and you will ruin the other.”
WATCH: Pope delivers TED Talk
The comments echoed Francis’ frequent themes to not ignore the plight of immigrants, the poor and other vulnerable people. Speaking in Italian with subtitles, Francis urged solidarity to overcome a “culture of waste” that had affected not only food but people cast aside by economic systems that rely increasingly on automation.
“How wonderful would it be if the growth of scientific and technological innovation would come along with more equality and social inclusion,” he said.
TED Talk lectures have grown in popularity, having been viewed cumulatively over 4.6 billion times since going online in 2006 (www.ted.com).
Other speakers slated to appear at the annual conference this week include tennis superstar Serena Williams and entrepreneur Elon Musk.
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The Grammy Museum is putting rare Ella Fitzgerald memorabilia on display for what would have been the singing legend’s 100th birthday.
The museum’s “Ella at 100: Celebrating the Artistry of Ella Fitzgerald” exhibition includes the first Grammy Award that Fitzgerald won — the first awarded to an African-American woman — as well as some of her gowns, sheet music and personal telegrams.
Fitzgerald died in 1996 at 79 from complications with diabetes and left few possessions beyond personal notes, but the exhibit puts a focus on what made Fitzgerald a star — her voice.
Her voice is the key
Grammy Museum curator Nwaka Onwusa says she wants visitors to be captivated by her singing, so the exhibit includes video and audio of her early performances with jazz greats Count Basie or Duke Ellington.
The exhibit is one of several celebrations of Fitzgerald’s birthday on Tuesday. New York City declared it Ella Fitzgerald Day and the Smithsonian has also opened a special exhibit, while Starbucks stores in the United States played her music.
“Ella Fitzgerald’s is probably the single most important voice in American history,” said recording artist Miles Mosley. “If you’re going to start with any song before 1970, her version is the one you start from. That’s the ground floor. That is the most representative version of what the composer themselves wished their songs would sound like.”
Performed in many styles
Over the course of her career, she sang swing, bebop, pop, jazz. Among her best-known works are a 1938 novelty smash, “A-Tisket, A-Tasket,” which she co-wrote, and a series of eight album sets, each dedicated to an American songwriter or songwriting team. In addition to being best sellers, those albums helped establish the long-play record as a platform for deeper, more serious musical exploration.
Twenty-plus years after Fitzgerald’s death, the rave reviews keep pouring in.
Celebration of Fitzgerald’s 100th actually began March 31, as Dianne Reeves held a Fitzgerald tribute concert at the Library of Congress, which serves as home to Fitzgerald’s personal library. A day later, Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, which has long hosted a Fitzgerald exhibit, opened a new display, “First Lady of Song: Ella Fitzgerald at 100,” kicking off Jazz Appreciation Month.
Onwusa said Fitzgerald’s exhibit was not an easy display to put together, noting that the relatively new Grammy Museum, which opened in 2008, could not compete with the long-established Smithsonian and Library of Congress, which have long been collecting Fitzgerald memorabilia.
Gowns are a key attraction
But the Los Angeles-based Ella Fitzgerald Charitable Foundation and Fitzgerald estate came through with enough items to make for an attraction, including gowns Fitzgerald wore in performance, rare photographs, sheet music, newspaper articles, concert programs. Securing performance footage proved more challenging, but was critical for Onwusa.
“When you come to Ella at 100, immediately we want visitors to be captivated by her voice,” she explained. “That’s what draws you to Ella.”
To that end, there are viewing and listening stations, where exhibit visitors can watch and hear Fitzgerald performing in various points in her career. She was an active professional performer for some 65 years, going in semi-retirement in 1994, after having both of her legs amputated below the knee due to the effects of the diabetes.
‘100 Songs for a Centennial’
For those just being introduced to Fitzgerald, Verve/UMe has just released a career-spanning primer, the four-CD set “100 Songs for a Centennial.” For hardcore fans, there’s the lavish six-album vinyl limited-edition “Ella Fitzgerald Sings The George and Ira Gershwin Song Books,” which is newly packaged with lithographs, a book and a bonus track. Numerous other releases and events are planned throughout the year.
But once the celebration ends, it’s fairly clear that the Fitzgerald legacy will continue.
Grammy Museum executive director Scott Goldman singled out a relative newcomer such as Andra Day as a perfect example. “(Here’s) a young African-American artist who is blurring the lines between jazz and soul and R&B.” he noted. “If you listen to Andra Day, you’ll hear a little Ella Fitzgerald. And I think many artists carry that. I think that’s what makes Ella Fitzgerald so special. She lives.”
The exhibit runs through Sept. 10.
When it comes to music and visual arts, American teenagers could use some help.
The National Center for Education Statistics reported Tuesday that in 2016, American eighth graders scored an average 147 in music and 149 in visual arts on a scale of 300. Some 8,800 eighth graders from public and private schools across the country took part in the test, which was part of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, often called the Nation’s Report Card.
Acting Commissioner Peggy Carr said the test shows students have a lot to learn in art and music and that no progress has been made since the same test was administered in 2008.
“When I saw the results, clearly there is room for improvement, because clearly there is a lot of content that students weren’t able to interact with correctly,” Carr told The Associated Press.
When asked to listen to George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue,” only about half of the students were able to identify that the opening solo is played on a clarinet. Students who scored 182 were able to label all the eight notes in C major, students who got 150 were able to label one note.
While most students could point to one or two structural differences between two mother-and-child portraits, they usually struggled to explain the technical approach and meaning in an artist’s self-portrait.
“The average student does not know a lot of the content that was asked of them on this assessment,” said Carr. “It was a difficult assessment, a challenging assessment.”
On the bright side, the achievement gap has narrowed between white and Hispanic students from a difference of 32 to 23 points in an average score in music and from 26 to 19 points in arts since the previous test. Girls continued to outperform boys.
The black-white achievement gap, however, remained unchanged. While white students scored an average of 158, black students got 129 on the music test and the margin of difference was similar on the arts portion of the exam — 158 for white students and 128 for black students,
“Every student should have access to arts education to develop the creativity and problem-solving skills that lead to higher success both in and out of school,” said Ayanna Hudson, director of arts education at the National Endowment for the Arts. “Arts education can be especially valuable for our nations’ underserved students, leading to better grades, higher graduation rates and increased college enrollment.”
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The papal almsgiver has made a donation, in the name of Pope Francis, to cover the annual rent for a beach area near Rome used by disabled youths.
The Madonnina, an association that runs the beach establishment near Rome without barriers for the disabled, in a statement Tuesday announced the donation for the area just outside the town of Fiumicino. No money figure was cited.
Past charity initiatives by Pope Francis have included day-trips to the beach for homeless people.
Egypt’s tourism levels are still around a third of what they once were and, despite security concerns, Egypt’s tourism minister on Monday insisted the country’s popular Red Sea resorts and Ancient Egyptian sites are a safe choice for travelers.
“We are saying that the tourism sector is safe, the airports are secure, the hotels are secure,” Mohamed Yehia Rashed said, adding that there have not been security breaches at tourist sites.
He said Germany represents the largest visitor market, particularly to Red Sea diving spots around Hurghada and Sharm el-Sheikh, followed by travelers from Saudi Arabia.
While he declined to give tourism figures for the first quarter of 2017, the ministry says that tourism from Arab countries represented around 36 percent of total traffic to Egypt last year. More than half-a-million tourists from Saudi Arabia visited Egypt in 2016, followed by Jordan with 180,000 visitors.
Before Egypt’s 2011 uprising, Italy, the UK and Russia were Egypt’s top markets, in addition to Germany. The uprising, however, decimated Egypt’s multibillion dollar tourism industry, which is a vital pillar of the country’s economy and employs millions of people.
The year before the upheaval, nearly 15 million tourists visited Egypt. Last year, the figure was 5.3 million tourists, according to Chairman of Egypt’s Tourism Authority Hicham al-Demairi.
Both officials spoke to The Associated Press at the Arabian Travel Market convention in Dubai, where Egypt had a large booth advertising its many destinations, hotels and attractions.
Russia, however, continues to ban all flights to Egypt and Egypt’s national carrier is still barred from flying to Russia following the downing of a Russian passenger jetliner in the Sinai Peninsula in 2015 that killed all 224 aboard. A Sinai-based Islamic Stage group affiliate claimed it was behind the incident and Russia says an explosive device was the cause, though the investigation has not yet formally concluded.
Egypt’s currency has also plunged from around 5 pounds to the dollar before the uprising to 18 pounds to the dollar. This, however, has made travel to Egypt more affordable for many tourists, al-Demairi said.
He said Egypt is aiming to draw between 7 and 10 million tourists in 2017. Rather than rely on traditional Western European markets, which comprise the bulk of all tourists to Egypt, al-Demairi said the country is working on new strategies that target Latin American, Eastern European and Asian travelers.
“We don’t want to only depend on coastal and cultural tourism,” he said, referring to tourists who visit Egypt’s pristine beaches and Ancient Egyptian sites in Cairo, Luxor and Aswan.
The small wicker doll chair was a modest toy, but it meant the world to Louise Lawrence-Israels. A gift for her second birthday, it was the only toy she possessed during the approximately three years she spent hiding from the Nazis in Amsterdam, just five blocks from the house where Anne Frank wrote in her diary.
The chair is one of thousands of artifacts housed in the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s new conservation and research center, which opened Monday on the annual memorial day for the 6 million Jews killed by Nazi Germany during World War II.
“It was a big thing for me to actually give the chair, because it was a significant thing,” said Lawrence-Israels, 75, one of about two dozen Holocaust survivors who attended the center’s opening. “A lot of people can look at it and see how it was for a little child in hiding.”
The David and Fela Shapell Family Collections, Conservation and Research Center, located in the suburbs of the nation’s capital, is a state-of-the-art facility with 103,000 square feet (9,570 sq. meters) for documents and artifacts, with room for expansion.
The center houses thousands of items in eight climate-controlled vaults in a building designed to withstand tornadoes and hurricanes. Its collection includes everyday objects, from children’s toys and clothes to sewing machines used in concentration camps.
Travis Roxlau, director of collections services, said center officials have spent 25 years gathering the items.
“We collect stories, and all of the objects that go along with those stories, because as the surviving generation passes on, these are going to be the objects that are left to help us tell the history of the Holocaust,” Roxlau said.
Survivors say the center’s holdings are critical to preserving the reality of the Holocaust.
“I think the most important thing is to make sure that the memory of the Holocaust isn’t forgotten,” said Alfred Munzer, 75, who donated a silver teething ring that went with him at the age of nine months when he was put into hiding with a Dutch-Indonesian family in the Netherlands in 1942. He also donated two small photographs of him that his mother kept hidden while she was confined in concentration camps.
Munzer, of Washington, D.C., said the center and its artifacts will serve “as a lesson to the world as to where hate can lead to.”
Lawrence-Israels, of Bethesda, Maryland, noted that she and other Holocaust survivors are “not going to be here forever, and once we’re not here anymore the museum and this institution will speak for us.”
“This is the only evidence that we leave behind, and with the climate today it’s important that people see that this was real,” Lawrence-Israels said.
Scholars and researchers will have access to materials in the facility. A reading room is scheduled to open in the next year. The museum also is in the process of making documents and images available online.
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Nine years after his death at age 28, audiences are seeing a different side of Australian actor Heath Ledger through the lens of his own camera.
Documentary “I Am Heath Ledger” uses thousands of hours of self video shot by Ledger, as well as his art work and music videos, to paint a portrait of the young actor who took Hollywood by storm in roles like “Brokeback Mountain” and “The Dark Knight.”
The film also seeks to counteract the lingering perception that Ledger was severely depressed when he accidentally overdosed on painkillers, anxiety and insomnia medication.
“He was super happy and he was loving life. He struggled with some demons, but he wasn’t one to go anywhere but forward,” Ledger’s Hollywood agent Steve Alexander says in the film, which was launched at the Tribeca Film Festival this week.
Rather than dwell on his January 2008 death in New York, the film uses Ledger’s video archives and interviews with his family and closest friends to “celebrate Heath’s life and to tell the story of this multi-faceted artist,” director and producer Derik Murray told Reuters Television.
It portrays Ledger as a force of nature who longed for adventure, was generous with his friends, and whose passions ranged from chess to making music videos. His non-stop energy also meant he rarely slept a full night.
While Ledger’s friends including Naomi Watts and director Ang Lee were interviewed for the film, Michelle Williams’ – Ledger’s former fiance and mother of his daughter Matilda – chose not to take part, said her spokeswoman.
Murray said Williams’ support was integral to the film “but she really didn’t feel she wanted to be in front of the camera.”
Ledger was found dead a few months after the couple split up and shortly after filming his role as the manic Joker in “The Dark Knight,” for which he won a posthumous Oscar.
“There was a lot of conversation and chatter around the fact that his passing was a byproduct of his role as the Joker and that he spiraled down this path and couldn’t pull himself out of it,” said Murray.
But Murray said everyone the filmmakers spoke to said this was untrue. “He had the best time making it… The Joker was a role. He was enthralled by it. He was proud of it.”
“I Am Heath Ledger” will get a one-night showing in 300 U.S. movie theaters on May 3 and premiere on Spike TV on May 17.
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Elton John spent two nights in intensive care with a potentially deadly bacterial infection and has canceled all his concerts for the rest of April and May, his publicist said on Monday.
The British musician, 70, became “violently ill” on a flight home from his recent South American tour, spokeswoman Fran Curtis said in a statement.
The “Rocket Man” singer spent two nights in intensive care in the U.K. and is resting at home after being released on Saturday, the statement said.
The infection was not identified, but the statement said John contracted the “harmful and unusual bacterial infection” during his South American tour, which ended in Chile on April 10.
“Infections of this nature are rare and potentially deadly,” the statement said, adding that his time in intensive care was followed by an “extended stay in hospital.”
John is expected to make a full recovery but has canceled all his concerts in Las Vegas for April and May, as well as a gig in Bakersfield, California, on May 6.
John apologized to fans for disappointing them, adding in a statement: “I am extremely grateful to the medical team for their excellence in looking after me so well.”
He is due to resume performances at a concert in Twickenham, England, on June 3.
John, a Grammy, Oscar and Tony winner for his work in film and theater, is working on a score for a Broadway musical adaptation of the comedy-drama “The Devil Wears Prada.”
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For the first 20 years of Markus Rindt’s life, he knew just how far he could travel — no further west than the wall that split Germany in two.
“I grew up with walls around me —it was a weird situation, to see that the world seems to end at this wall,” remembers Rindt. “You feel that it cannot be that the world ends here.”
He’s spent the nearly 30 years since then-President Ronald Reagan called on then-Soviet Union leader Mikhail Gorbachev to “Tear down this wall” between West and East Germany making music, traveling and making the occasional political statement the best way he knows: in concert.
Now Rindt wants to take that movement to a new frontier — the barriers between the United States and Mexico —where he hopes to pull off an ambitious, border-long project in early June with the Dresden-based contemporary orchestra he leads — the Dresdner Sinfoniker just days before the June 12 anniversary of Reagan’s speech.
“Our plan,” he says, “is a very big plan.”
Rhetoric prompts series of concerts
Rindt added the open-air border show to a schedule of two planned concerts June 3 by the group in Mexico City and Puebla, inspired by U.S. President Donald Trump’s rhetoric in favor of building more walls along the border.
“This project is the most ambitious project so far. I have no idea if it [will work] in the end,” Rindt told VOA in a phone interview from Dresden, where he returned six years after fleeing to West Germany via Prague in 1989.
“I feel the project is necessary in our time. It is not only against this planned Trump wall, but against isolation[ist] tendencies around the world as well,” says Rindt. That includes Europe, where last year, Britain voted to withdraw from the European Union, and France, where a nationalist candidate is in the running for president.
#teardownthiswall
There are, of course, logistics to a cross-border concert; Rindt feels confident in Mexico’s approval for the group to perform with 15-20 musicians and a children’s choir from Tijuana on a stage along the southern side of the wall/fence. He is less sure that U.S. officials will approve of a few musicians and a children’s choir joining them through the fence in San Diego’s Friendship Park where relatives on both sides of the border are allowed to meet.
WATCH: Report from Friendship Park in San Diego
Rindt has never been to the U.S.-Mexico border. He’s invited U.S. and Mexican musicians to join the Dresdner Sinfoniker in June, and has raised more than half the funds to get his musicians there.
It’s not the first cross-border concert; those have been happening for years; Rindt knows that. There is even an artist who used the wall itself to make music. But Rindt hopes the event will take on a life of its own; he wants musicians and artists to perform along the border, from Texas to California, and use a hashtag inspired by Reagan’s speech to link all of their performances: #teardownthiswall.
‘There must be other ways’
He’s not ignorant or ignoring transnational issues, he says. Trump has said the wall is necessary for national security.
“I’m aware of some problems — drugs of course — some people will answer me what about drugs and criminals. There must be other ways to solve such problem.”
Data shows that smugglers do indeed work around border barriers. Trump recently told the Associated Press that: “People want the border,” but an April survey from Qunnipiac University shows increasing opposition to building more of a border wall among Americans, up from 55 percent against its construction just after President Donald Trump’s election in November, to 64 percent now.
“To Trump: I would say there is no best country in the world, no best religion, no best skin color — I don’t like this America-first thought,” says Rindt. “Europe is unified … It is so great this feeling now, to be so so free, the world is much bigger than before for us. We are so far away from conflicts with each other. If you compare this with 60 years ago — we have to keep this freedom and peace.”
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Coming soon to West End and Broadway stages: Rex Tillerson, Jeff Sessions, Tom Price and Scott Pruitt
Four key players in President Donald Trump’s new administration are central characters in a “verbatim play,” boiled down from combative U.S. Senate confirmation hearings, that looks to Trump’s Cabinet picks for clues to his government’s direction.
“All the President’s Men?” – the question mark sets it apart from the famous Watergate expose – is being presented as a staged reading Monday at London’s Vaudeville Theatre. It will play New York’s Town Hall theater on May 11 with a U.S. cast reported to include some famous names.
The play is among the first trickle of what will soon be a flood of artistic responses to Trump’s election.
An HBO miniseries about the 2016 election is in the works, while British writer Howard Jacobsen turned his shock at the outcome into a just-published satirical novel. Robert Schenkkan’s play “Building the Wall,” which imagines Trump’s presidency taking a darkly authoritarian turn, is in the midst of an acclaimed run in Los Angeles and next goes to New York for an off-Broadway run in May.
Also planned for Broadway are a pair of starkly political works – a revival of Henrik Ibsen’s “An Enemy of the People,” about a well-intentioned whistleblower eventually branded a traitor, will be produced during the 2017-18 season, and a stage version of George Orwell’s nightmarish “1984” is scheduled to open in June at the Hudson Theatre.
Nicholas Kent, who has created and directed “All the President’s Men?” said he wanted to understand what Trump, the ultimate outsider politician, actually stands for.
“We’d heard all this rhetoric about “draining the swamp,’” he said. “I thought the best way of finding out about the whole philosophy behind the Trump presidency would be to look at the Senate confirmation hearings. Because the beliefs of the people involved would come out of that, and their backgrounds would come out.”
Kent, former artistic director of London’s Tricycle Theatre, has overseen fact-based plays on subjects including England’s 2011 riots (“The Riots”), the U.S.-led war on terror (“Guantanamo – Honor Bound to Defend Freedom”) and Afghanistan’s history of conflict (“The Great Game”).
For his latest project, Kent watched 50 hours of Senate hearings, and admitted that “to begin with it was a little like watching paint dry.”
But he said he gradually “saw the big issues coming out. The questioners, and the questions asked, were as revealing as the answers in many ways.”
The four candidates were little known to most Americans. There was Tillerson, the ex-oil company boss who is now at the helm of U.S. foreign policy as secretary of state; Sessions, a longtime Republican senator who is now attorney general; Obamacare critic Price, the health secretary; and climate-change skeptic Pruitt, now in charge of the Environmental Protection Agency.
“I chose particularly these four people because they represent in many ways the nub of how America will be governed for the next four years,” Kent said.
“I’m trying to look for the central essence of each of the characters. I’m not trying to do a satirical portrait in any way whatsoever. I’m trying to look at their beliefs.”
The play is backed by Britain’s National Theatre and New York’s Public Theater. In London, it is performed by a cast of West End veterans including Peter Davison, Sian Phillips, Phil Davis and Sinead Cusack. For the New York performance, Kent said “they’ve promised me a very starry cast.”
Kent says the president himself appears in the play only through “a few tweets.”
“It’s the administration that’s going to make the man, as we’ve already seen,” Kent said, noting that two of Trump’s flagship promises – to halt travel from countries deemed epicenters of terrorism and to dismantle Obamacare – have been stymied by courts and Congress.
“He can be a figurehead and he can tweet till kingdom come,” Kent said. But “it is actually the machinery of government and the people under him, who are going to carry out his policies, that are the most interesting.”
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Billionaire Elon Musk is getting close with actress Amber Heard.
The pair is shown in paparazzi photos zip-lining in Australia, where Heard is filming “Aquaman.”
Both Musk and Heard posted pictures to their Instagram accounts Monday showing Musk with lipstick on his cheek left behind from a kiss.
Musk wrote on his post that he and Heard were dining with “Aquaman” director James Wan and producer Rob Cowan on Australia’s Gold Coast.
Musk has been married three times, twice to British actress Talulah Riley. He has five sons from another previous marriage.
Heard and Johnny Depp settled a divorce last year.
Robert De Niro helped Burt Reynolds onto the red carpet for the Tribeca Film Festival premiere of his new movie “Dog Years” Saturday night in New York. It was a rare appearance for the 81-year old actor, who at times struggled to walk.
Reynolds was given a chair on the red carpet, so that he could speak to a limited number of press outlets about the film.
He was overjoyed at the turnout.
“Great to see Mr. De Niro, who I love, and … you know, all the people that I know,” Reynolds said. “It’s very sweet.”
In the film, which is still shopping for distribution, Reynolds portrays an aging movie star who realizes his best days are behind him. The actor sees similarities in the character with his own life.
Reynolds laughed at the obvious parallel with his own life, though he said, “I guess I’m doing all right. I think because it’s a hell of a turnout.”
Written and directed by Adam Rifkin, the film also stars “Modern Family’s” Ariel Winter, Chevy Chase and Nikki Blonsky.
Reynolds joked about working with younger co-stars.
“You don’t learn from young actors,” Reynolds said. “You just tell them how to behave.”
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Erin Moran, the former child star who played Joanie Cunningham in the sitcoms Happy Days and Joanie Loves Chachi, died Saturday at age 56.
A statement from the sheriff’s department in Harrison County, Indiana, said the dispatcher “received a 911 call about an unresponsive female. Upon arrival of first responders, it was determined that Erin Moran Fleischmann was deceased. An autopsy is pending.”
The dispatcher confirmed to The Associated Press that the woman was the actress, who had been married to Steven Fleischmann.
A Burbank, California, native, Moran began acting in TV and movies before she was 10 years old. She had nearly a decade’s worth of experience when she was cast in 1974 in Happy Days as Joanie Cunningham, the kid sister to high school student Richie Cunningham, played by Ron Howard.
Debuting at a time of nostalgia for the seemingly innocent 1950s, the sitcom was set in Milwaukee and soon became a hit. Howard and Henry Winkler, who played tough guy Arthur “The Fonz” Fonzarelli, were the show’s biggest stars, but Moran also became popular. In 1982, she was paired off with fellow Happy Days performer Scott Baio in the short-lived Joanie Loves Chachi.
Her more recent credits included The Love Boat and Murder, She Wrote, but she never approached the success of Happy Days and was more often in the news for her numerous personal struggles.
“OH Erin … now you will finally have the peace you wanted so badly here on earth,” Winkler tweeted. “Rest In It serenely now … too soon.”
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The gigantic black and white portraits of children started appearing on walls around a suburban neighborhood of Havana two years ago, the work of Cuban artist Maisel Lopez.
The sober, finely painted portraits contrast with Cuba’s dilapidated buildings and pot-holed streets, colorful vintage cars and peeling pink, apricot and turquoise paint on eclectic architecture.
With nearly 30 murals completed, Lopez said he is only getting started on his “Colossi” series, a striking endeavor in the Communist-run country where street art is rare.
“I want to keep expanding further afield,” said Lopez, 31, who started painting the walls of homes and shops in his home district of Playa and is now completing his first mural in neighboring Marianao.
A chubby girl with wispy blond hair wistfully rests her chin on her hands, while a black boy with angular features peers at passersby with a slight air of defiance.
The murals are unusual in a country where public spaces are tightly controlled and posters and murals mainly have political themes or depict figures like Ernesto “Che” Guevara.
Only one other artist in Havana, Yulier Rodriguez, has an equally recognizable assortment of street art. His figures are alien, the murals colorful. Lopez’s subjects are realistic and monochrome.
Lopez said in an interview last week that political art led him to paint murals. He helped with several celebrating the Bolivarian revolution during a cultural mission in 2009 to Cuba’s socialist ally Venezuela.
“A mural is constantly in interaction with the public,” said Lopez, whose work is inspired by Cuban independence hero Jose Marti, who said “children are the hope of the world.”
“That’s why I paint the children big, to mark their importance,” he said.
Unlike many street artists, including Rodriguez, Lopez seeks permits to paint on walls. While initially hard to get, he gained trust as he developed the series, he said.
Each colossus is several meters tall and takes Lopez four days to a week to paint. Each depicts a child living in the vicinity. He does not charge to paint them.
Instead, he earns a living teaching art classes and selling canvas portraits that can fetch up to $1,500.
Locals have declared themselves fans and guardians of his work, looking after it as people stop to take photographs.
“It’s really striking and gives life to the street,” said Vivian Herrera, 47, who runs a bakery next to one of the murals.
“It’s like the girl is really there, with her big, open eyes.”
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Philosopher, humanitarian and physicist Albert Einstein is the subject of new TV series “Genius,” which delves into the drama and passion of the man who developed the theory of relativity and helped initiate the U.S. effort to build an atomic bomb.
Executive producer Ron Howard told reporters at the TV show’s launch at the Tribeca Film Festival that he had always been fascinated by Einstein.
“But I never realized how many twists and turns and, you know, there were in his life, and how much drama there was,” Howard said on Thursday.
The 10-part series for the National Geographic channel shows Einstein’s personal struggles and “how complicated, sexy, you know – kind of bohemian – a lot of his relationships were,” Howard said.
Australian Geoffrey Rush plays the older Einstein, with Britain’s Emily Watson and American actress Gwendolyn Ellis portraying older and younger versions of his second wife, Elsa.
“He wasn’t just a scientist,” Watson said of Einstein, who died in 1955. “He was a philosopher, a humanist. He was an immigrant. He was at the center of so many political events in the 20th century, or close to the center of them, and had incredibly complicated relationships in his life.”
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Fans are marking the anniversary of U.S. musician Prince’s sudden death from an accidental drug overdose with visits to his Paisley Park home, which has been turned into a museum.
The museum is hosting a four-day event that includes concert performances by Prince’s former bandmates and panel discussions.
It was a year ago Friday that the pop legend was found dead at Paisley Park, a recording complex outside Minneapolis, Minnesota, where Prince lived and created his music.
Fans come to grieve
Fans who came to the complex Friday included Mary Adams, who drove six hours from Kansas City, Missouri, with her 10-year-old daughter.
“I needed to come here. This is where it began. I needed to pay homage to the star,” she said.
Adams said Prince had a profound impact on her life.
“Prince is the person that helped me decide that is was OK to be me, because that’s who he was. And he did it his way, his music, his style,” she added.
Minneapolis landmarks in purple
Fans are also holding a street party Saturday outside First Avenue, the club Prince made famous in Purple Rain, the title track of his breakthrough 1984 album and movie.
Landmarks around Minneapolis are being lighted in purple for two nights in tribute to Prince, while the Minnesota History Center is holding a special exhibit of Prince memorabilia.
The anniversary was supposed to be celebrated by the release of new Prince music. However, a Minnesota district court this week issued a temporary injunction barring the release of the six-song EP Deliverance after Prince’s estate filed a lawsuit claiming the works were stolen by his former sound engineer.
Prince’s commercial legacy continues to be surrounded in controversy. The pop star died without a will or children, and dozens of people came forward after his death, claiming they were heirs.
Musical legacy
Prince died at 57 from an accidental overdose of powerful painkillers he was secretly using to ease the pain of hip surgery.
Prince was 19 when he released his first album, For You, in 1978. In the decades that followed, the multitalented musician released 1999, Little Red Corvette and Purple Rain.
He sold more than 100 million albums worldwide, won seven Grammys and picked up an Oscar for Best Original Song score for Purple Rain. He was also inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2004.
Rhonda Soso said Friday that she came from California to Paisley Park “just to be a part of the purple family, the purple army, just be a part of just his spirit, just his energy.”
“It’s just still so difficult accepting that he’s no longer here,” she added.
They call themselves “water protectors” and describe the Dakota Access pipeline ferrying crude oil across America as “the black snake.”
In “Awake: A Dream From Standing Rock,” the Standing Rock Sioux tribe and those who flocked to windswept tribal lands in North Dakota last year to protest the pipeline, get to tell their story on their own terms.
They also hope to build on the impetus of the months-long standoff, despite the $3.8 billion project by Energy Transfer Partners LP eventually going ahead.
“The ambition of the film is really to get people to understand the issue and feel it in a way that’s emotional,” said director Josh Fox, an environmental activist and filmmaker.
The film, comprised of three parts by different directors, premieres on Saturday – Earth Day – at the Tribeca film festival. It also will be streamed online at awakethefilm.org on a pay-what-you-can basis with all proceeds going to the cause.
“It’s really about pushing the movement forward. We also want to say, you guys did something unbelievable, and this is one way of giving a debt of gratitude,” Fox said.
The 1,172-mile (1,885-km) Dakota Access line running from North Dakota to Illinois drew international attention in 2016 after the Standing Rock Native American tribe sued to block completion of the final link, saying it would desecrate a sacred burial ground.
Environmentalists also argued that potential leaks along its length would risk poisoning the water supply for some 17 million Americans.
In February, U.S. President Donald Trump gave the go-ahead to complete the project. The protest camps were demolished and oil is expected to start flowing in mid-May.
The film contrasts the water cannon, rubber bullets, helicopters and riot gear used by law enforcement officials against the protesters with idyllic scenes of sparkling water, sunsets, starry skies and communal camp life. More than 700 people were arrested during the protests.
“The film initiates as a dream, as if the last 500 years of civilization didn’t happen,” said Fox.
“It was an amazing place, and it ran on very different principles than our society – those of sharing mutual respect and non violence,” said Fox, who spent several weeks there at the suggestion of “Divergent” actress Shailene Woodley.
Although the protesters ultimately lost the battle over the pipeline, their spirits remain high.
“Our camp is gone, but our spirit is not broken,” says Sioux member Floris Bull White. “Will you wake up and join us?”
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For Prince fans, Friday’s one-year anniversary of his shocking death from an accidental drug overdose will be a time for sadness and celebration.
At his Paisley Park home and recording studio-turned-museum, a full four days of events are on tap, ranging from concert performances by his former bandmates to panel discussions.
Fans who can’t afford those high-priced tickets can head to a street party outside First Avenue, the club he made world famous in “Purple Rain.” And the Minnesota History Center is staging a special exhibit of Prince memorabilia, including his iconic “Purple Rain” suit.
Here’s a look at how Prince’s home state will honor his legacy and mourn his loss:
Paisley Park
Prince’s home base in the Minneapolis suburb of Chanhassen is marking the anniversary with a roster of shows from artists such as his old band The Revolution, Morris Day and the Time and New Power Generation. Also on the docket: panel discussions featuring such speakers as his old band mates — think Lisa (Coleman) and Wendy (Melvoin) from “Purple Rain” and The Revolution — along with many more.
Fans who could afford it spent $999 for VIP passes for the Paisley schedule, and the estate said those were sold out. A relatively cheaper option — $549 general admission passes — was still available midweek.
Prince’s siblings, who are on track to inherit an estate valued around $200 million, are hosting an all-night dance party in the Minneapolis suburb of Golden Valley with Dez Dickerson, Apollonia Kotero, Andre Cymone and others.
First Avenue
The downtown Minneapolis club where Prince filmed key parts of “Purple Rain” is hosting late-night dance parties Friday and Saturday with tracks from the late superstar.
A memorial street party outside the club is also on tap for Saturday. It will be reminiscent of the one that drew thousands of mourners on the night of Prince’s death to cry, dance and sing along.
Pieces of History
Prince’s “Purple Rain” costume — purple jacket, white ruffled shirt and studded pants — was put out for display at the Minnesota History Center in St. Paul through Sunday.
The museum is also marking the anniversary by featuring handwritten lyrics to an unreleased song, “I Hope We Work It Out,” signed by Prince in 1977. Prince performed it for record executives when he first signed with Warner Bros.
Painting the Town Purple
Several landmarks in Minneapolis will be lit up in Prince purple, including U.S. Bank Stadium, Target Field, the IDS Center, and the Interstate 35W and Lowry Avenue bridges over the Mississippi River.
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