Japan’s cherry blossom season kicked off on Tuesday, when the Japanese Meteorological Agency confirmed the flowers were in bloom in Tokyo.      

Despite the drizzling rain, agency officials counted more than five flowers blooming on a sample tree at Tokyo’s Yasukuni Shrine, and confirmed that the cherry blossom could therefore be considered in bloom.

      

Visitors were busy taking photos of the cherry blossom flowers, but trees were still looking rather bare.

       

The beginning of the cherry blossom season in Tokyo came before anywhere else in Japan, and about five days before the average date.

       

The flower tends to first bloom in southern Japan, where the climate is warmer.

       

The flowers are expected to reach full bloom in about a week.

 
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Actor George Clooney has startled an 87-year-old fan in Britain by showing up at her assisted living facility with flowers and a card to wish her a happy birthday.

 

The 55-year-old popped in for a chat and a picture with admirer Pat Adams on Sunday at the Sunrise of Sonning Retirement and Assisted Living Facility in Reading. Linda Jones, a worker there, posted a picture of herself and the beaming pair on Facebook.

 

Jones wrote: “The lady in the picture, loves George Clooney and mentions everyday how she would love him to meet him, especially as he lives so near to where I work.”

 

A letter was sent to Clooney asking if he could make a “dream to come true.”

 

Clooney owns a home near the facility in Berkshire.

 
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A group of celebrities led by Hollywood actor Ben Stiller has joined a social media campaign to send food and water to Somalia through Turkish Airlines.

Last weekend, the group raised more than $1 million online in less than 24 hours. Stiller said in a Twitter message posted Monday that the money has been used to purchase 60 tons of food that the airline will fly to Somalia next week. 

Somali diaspora youth groups have been spearheading a similar movement online, following warnings from the U.N. that more than six million Somalis are at risk of severe malnourishment and starvation because of drought. 

Celebrities got involved at the urging of French Snapchat star Jerome Jarre, who launched a movement called Love Army for Somalia last Wednesday.

After the group began raising donations online, they convinced Turkish Airlines to help deliver one immediate aid shipment to Somalia’s most vulnerable people, prompting the airline to create a Twitter hashtag, #TurkishAirlinesHelpSomalia.

Celebrities who have made donations include American football quarterback Colin Kaepernick, NBA player Wilson Chandler, YouTube star Casey Niestat and Scottish record producer Calvin Harris.

“And Jerome wants to keep this thing going, because he believes we can raise a lot more money and do a lot more good and really make a dent in what’s going on over there,” Stiller said Monday.

Total donations had risen to more than $1.8 million as of Monday, according to the “Love Army for Somalia” site on GoFundMe, a social fundraising platform.

“For the first flight, we will buy the food in Istanbul, as a thank you to our Turkish friends that support the movement!” said a message on the page. “Later on, we are hoping to learn how to buy food directly from local businesses in Somalia. We want to support the Somalian economy.”

Turkish Airlines was the first carrier outside East Africa to establish regular service to the Somali capital, Mogadishu.

Turkey has become one of the most prominent donors in Somalia, eclipsing many traditional donors both in quantity and quality of its assistance.

Likewise, Ankara has become a major trading partner with Somalia, particularly in the construction, transportation and service sectors, according to a report by Heritage Institute for Policy Studies, a Mogadishu-based research group.
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An 18-year-old female novice singer and a 23-year old barber-turned-rapper are the unlikely finalists of a televised talent contest providing Afghans a welcome distraction from the daily bloodshed in their country.

The two are vying to become the next “Afghan Star.” This year’s season is the most tradition-breaking yet in a deeply conservative country where the Taliban once outlawed music and Western-style popular culture is widely frowned upon.

Originally due to be broadcast live, the final will instead be pre-recorded following a wave of Islamist attacks in Kabul, with the winner announced on Tuesday night.

Finalist Zulala Hashimi, from a militant-plagued province in the east, quit school and overcame resistance from relatives unhappy with her singing publicly. When Hashimi auditioned, she was one of only two women out of three hundred contestants.

“I showed people that a woman can do it. I ask every woman to make an effort to reach this point,” she told Reuters, her mother by her side between rehearsals at a television studio protected behind blast walls and Kalashnikov-wielding guards.

Wowing audiences with bright traditional outfits and jewel-encrusted tiaras, and off-stage sporting brown-rimmed Ray Bans, Hashimi’s songs in Pashto and Dari have won her thousands of fans, who vote by text message and on Facebook.

Up against Hashimi is Sayed Jamal Mubarez, a barber from the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif who spent several years in Iran, one of thousands from Afghanistan’s Hazara minority that sought refuge across the country’s western border.

Having ditched his shalwar kameez in early auditions for jeans, a zipped black jacket and a “Street Swagg” baseball cap, Mubarez said he discovered rap in Iran and has been writing his own lyrics ever since.

“My parents are illiterate, but when I was singing they were encouraging me, so I believed that I could win people’s support,” he said backstage. “But I never thought of being a finalist.”

Inside a compound

Afghan Star, now in its twelfth season, is produced by the private television channel Tolo. Tolo’s reporting has earned it the wrath of the Taliban, who last year killed seven Tolo employees in a suicide attack on a staff minibus.

The contest was moved to inside a compound in Kabul’s city center.

Obaid Juenda, a judge on the show who now lives in London, said the percentage of women auditioning had fallen sharply to five percent amid the deteriorating security.

Juenda hoped the show gave contestants a springboard for a career, but in a country where opportunities for public performances are limited, past winners have faded into obscurity.

“There isn’t an industry here. We have too many people here who love female singers but we can’t sell our music legally. They can’t perform in public,” he told Reuters.

Hashimi said she had received nothing but support so far.

“Right now I don’t have any problem,” she said, her eyes darting nervously to her mother.  “If in the future there are some challenges I’ll try to cope with them to fulfil my dreams.”

 
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A 59.60-carat diamond known as “The Pink Star” is returning to auction next month and could fetch a record $60 million, three years since it was sold for even more – only for the buyer to pull out of the deal.

The diamond was presented by Sotheby’s in London ahead of the auction in Hong Kong on April 4.

In November 2013, a Geneva auction of the stone fetched a world record $83 million but the buyer, New York-based diamond cutter Isaac Wolf, could not pay up and defaulted.

However, after some more successful auctions of colored diamonds in recent years, the auction house said that now was a good time to try again.

“The last few years we’ve had colored diamonds perform extremely well, many new records been created at auction for the colored diamonds, pinks and blues mainly, so we thought it was a good time to bring it to the market,” David Bennett, worldwide Chairman of Sotheby’s Jewelry Division, told Reuters.

In 2015 the “Blue Moon of Josephine” sold for $48.5 million in Geneva. At 12.03 carats, it set a price-per-carat record.

“The Pink Star” is the largest Internally Flawless Fancy Vivid Pink diamond ever graded by the Gemological Institute of America (GIA), the auction house said, yet the sparkling stone is still small enough to fit onto a ring.

Sotheby’s said that the mixed-cut diamond was initially mined by De Beers in 1999 in Botswana as a 132.5 carat rough diamond before being cut and polished.

Its refined form is now set to be the most valuable polished diamond ever offered at auction.

“The extraordinary size of this 59.60-carat diamond, paired with its richness of color, surpasses any known pink diamond record in history,” Bennett said.

Bennett said the current record for a pink diamond was held by the “Graff Pink”. At 24.78 carats it is half the size of The Pink Star and was sold in Geneva for $46.2 million in 2010.

 
…

The young Palestinian women don baseball caps on top of their Islamic headscarves and field tennis balls with fabric gloves, giving a decidedly local feel to the great American pastime.

They are trying to bring baseball to the Gaza Strip, an effort that is still in its early innings.

The players, who work out on a small soccer pitch in a southern Gaza town, admit they are still trying to understand the rules of the complicated sport. With pitches lobbed underhand, the game they play is closer to softball.

“I only know it through TV,” said Valentina Shaer, a 23-year-old English literature student.

Mahmoud Tafesh, the team’s coach, said he has dreamed of bringing baseball to Gaza since he was introduced to the game last year.

Although baseball is a fringe sport throughout the soccer-crazy Middle East, the game has grown in popularity. Iraq has a national team, and one of the country’s coaches introduced Tafesh to baseball last year while both were in Egypt, which now boasts a baseball and softball federation.

Tafesh admits he still has much to learn. He is unfamiliar with any of the teams or players in Major League Baseball and gets most of his knowledge from YouTube videos.

When he returned to Gaza, he was concerned about the lack of equipment and whether the conservative society, which is governed by the Islamic militant group Hamas, would accept the idea of girls playing the sport.

He first approached girls at the only sports education college in Gaza. To his surprise, he found interest in baseball was stronger among girls than boys.

“We targeted this group because they had permission from their families to play sport as sports students. Through them, we started to spread, attracting girls from other fields such as journalism and accountants,” he said after finishing a two-hour training session for the girls.

The women say their families had no objection, and some parents even encouraged them. But the society overall has not been as receptive.

Shaer said people “on social media had a bad idea about us,” noting abusive comments when their pictures first appeared.

On Sunday, the team, which includes 20 to 30 members, had its weekly practice on a soccer pitch in the female section of Al-Aqsa University, built on lands that were part of Jewish settlements before Israel withdrew its troops and settlers from Gaza in 2005.

There were no males except for the coach, and some other students gathered to watch the women playing catch and taking batting practice. The batters took wild swings, often missing but occasionally making solid contact.

The players wore headscarves as well as long-sleeve running tops and loose pants, in keeping with local norms.

“While we face difficulties, we would like a specialized softball field to learn it correctly and train freely without any obstacles,” said Iman Shahin, an athlete who studies sports education.

Israel and Egypt imposed a blockade on Gaza after Hamas seized power in 2007, heavily restricting travel and trade, and making it difficult to acquire specialized sports equipment.

Tafesh said he found just one baseball glove in all of Gaza, at the Sports Ministry building, and took it to local tailors who used it to make replicas out of black fabric.

With no proper bats in the territory, the team took a piece of wood and shaped it to look like one.

While seeking funding and real equipment, the women dream of eventually competing abroad.

“All of us share the same goal: participate and represent the name of Palestine outside and show that there are sports for the girls in Gaza,” said 24-year-old Iman Mughaier.
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David Rockefeller, the philanthropist billionaire whose family name is the very definition of American capitalism, died in his sleep Monday at age 101.

The former head of Chase Manhattan Bank was the last grandson of the legendary 19th-century founder of the Standard Oil empire, John D. Rockefeller.

David Rockefeller was the youngest of six children born to John D. Rockefeller Jr.

Aspects of the Rockefeller brothers’ upbringing became famous, including the 25-cent allowance, portions of which had to be set aside for charity and savings, and the inculcation that wealth brings great responsibility.

Throughout his life, David Rockefeller carried out the family name by his strong support for American-based global capitalism, but making sure no one was left behind.

“American capitalism has brought more benefits to more people than any other system in any part of the world at any time in history,” he once said. “The problem is to see that the system is run as efficiently and as honestly as it can be.”

He was critical of fellow billionaires who sought ways to dodge taxes. Rockefeller didn’t say how much he paid in taxes and never spoke publicly about his personal worth. In 2015, Forbes magazine estimated his fortune at $3 billion.

Rockefeller also made sure the family fortune was used for philanthropic purposes, including funding for the arts and environmental causes.

To mark his 100th birthday in 2015, Rockefeller gave 1,000 acres of land next to a national park to the state of Maine.

As head of Chase Manhattan Bank, David Rockefeller opened the first offices of an American bank in Moscow and communist China. He also spurred the project that led to the World Trade Center.

But Rockefeller helped persuade then-President Jimmy Carter to allow the Shah of Iran to come to the U.S. for cancer treatment in 1979 — a move that led to the U.S. hostage crisis in Tehran.

Rockefeller’s philanthropy and other activities earned him a Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, in 1998.

 

Rockefeller and his wife, the former Margaret McGrath, married in 1940 and had six children — David Jr., Richard, Abby, Neva, Margaret and Eileen. His wife, an active conservationist, died in 1996.

Some information for this report was provided by Associated Press.
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Norway displaced Denmark as the world’s happiest country in a new report released on Monday that called on nations to build social trust and equality to improve the well-being of their citizens.

The Nordic nations are the most content, according to the World Happiness Report 2017 produced by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), a global initiative launched by the United Nations in 2012.

Countries in sub-Saharan Africa, along with Syria and Yemen, are the least happy of the 155 countries ranked in the fifth annual report released at the United Nations.

“Happy countries are the ones that have a healthy balance of prosperity, as conventionally measured, and social capital, meaning a high degree of trust in a society, low inequality and confidence in government,” Jeffrey Sachs, the director of the SDSN and a special advisor to the United Nations Secretary-General, said in an interview.

The aim of the report, he added, is to provide another tool for governments, business and civil society to help their countries find a better way to wellbeing.

 

Denmark, Iceland, Switzerland, Finland, Netherlands, Canada, New Zealand, Australia and Sweden rounded out the top ten countries.

South Sudan, Liberia, Guinea, Togo, Rwanda, Tanzania, Burundi and the Central African Republic were at the bottom.

Germany was ranked 16, followed by the United Kingdom (19) and France (31). The United States dropped one spot to 14.

 

Sachs said the United States is falling in the ranking due to inequality, distrust and corruption. Economic measures that the administration of President Donald Trump is trying to pursue, he added, will make things worse.

“They are all aimed at increasing inequality – tax cuts at the top, throwing people off the healthcare rolls, cutting Meals on Wheels in order to raise military spending. I think everything that has been proposed goes in the wrong direction,” he explained.

 

The rankings are based on six factors — per capita gross domestic product, healthy life expectancy, freedom, generosity, social support and absence of corruption in government or business.

“The lowest countries are typically marked by low values in all six variables,” said the report, produced with the support of the Ernesto Illy Foundation.

Sachs would like nations to follow United Arab Emirates and other countries that have appointed Ministers of Happiness.

“I want governments to measure this, discuss it, analyze it and understand when they have been off on the wrong direction,” he said.
…

Robots are becoming commonplace in many areas of society — from manufacturing to medicine to our homes. But now, a robot has taken to the stage, in a British play called Spillikin, where a humanoid robot plays the male companion of a woman with Alzheimer’s disease. 

The “Robothespian,” as the droid is being called, plays the lead in an unconventional play.

 

“It’s a story about a robot maker. All of his life he builds robots, and he develops degenerative illness in mid-life,” Jon Welch, the writer and director, said. “And realizes he’s not going to live to remain a companion to his wife. His wife, by now, is developing early Alzheimer’s, so he builds his final creation, his final robot be a companion to his wife.”

British actress Judy Norman plays the woman with Alzheimer’s. During the performance, she mostly talks to the robot but also shares a kiss.

“When he looks at me, I know this going to sound weird, but he is very affectionate and I like him, I really like him,” Norman said.

Welch said the concept for the play came from a real robot maker.

“The idea for the play started with the robot maker approaching us and offering us the use of one of his incredible robot creations to use in a play,” he said. “He’s seen one of our plays before, he liked us as a local theatre company, and he’s been making robots for ten years. And you find him in science museums all over the world, but he’s never really had one of his robots as a character in a play.”

Norman has found the experience interesting.

“This show has proven to me that really working with a robot is seriously not that different than working with a normal actor,” she said.

What is not so normal is the time it takes to make sure the Robothespian is in sync during the one and a half hour play. The robot is connected to a cord that goes to a control room with a laptop.

“We have pre-programmed every single thing the robot says and every single thing the robot does — all the moves,” Welch said. “There’s about nearly 400 separate queues but they are made up of other files, all stuck together so there’s probably a couple of thousand cues in reality.

“So the robot will always say the same thing and move the same way, depending on what queue is been triggered at what particular time,” he said.

Spillikin is on now tour in Britain.
…

Robots are becoming commonplace in many areas of society — from manufacturing to medicine to our homes. Now, a robot has taken to the stage, in a British play called “Spillikin.” A humanoid robot plays the male companion of a woman with Alzheimer’s disease. VOA’s Deborah Block tells us more about it.
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Folks on Sesame Street have a way of making everyone feel accepted.

That certainly goes for Julia, a Muppet youngster with blazing red hair, bright green eyes — and autism. Rather than being treated like an outsider, which too often is the plight of kids on the spectrum, Julia is one of the gang.

Look: On this friendliest of streets (actually Studio J at New York’s Kaufman Astoria Studios, where Sesame Street lives) Julia is about to play a game with Oscar, Abby and Grover. In this scene being taped for airing next season, these Muppet chums have been challenged to spot objects shaped like squares or circles or triangles.

“You’re lucky,” says Abby to Grover. “You have Julia on your team, and she is really good at finding shapes!”

Group skedaddles

With that, they skedaddle, an exit that calls for the six Muppeteers squatted out of sight below them to scramble accordingly. Joining her pals, Julia (performed by Stacey Gordon) takes off hunting.

For more than a year, Julia has existed in print and digital illustrations as the centerpiece of a multifaceted initiative by Sesame Workshop called Sesame Street and Autism: See Amazing in All Children.

She has been the subject of a storybook released along with videos, e-books, an app and website. The goal is to promote a better understanding of what the Autism Speaks advocacy group describes as “a range of conditions characterized by challenges with social skills, repetitive behaviors, speech and nonverbal communication, as well as by unique strengths and differences.”

But now Julia has been brought to life in fine Muppet fettle. She makes her TV debut on Sesame Street in the Meet Julia episode airing April 10 on both PBS and HBO. Additional videos featuring Julia will be available online.

Years of consultation

Developing Julia and all the other components of this campaign has required years of consultation with organizations, experts and families within the autism community, according to Jeanette Betancourt, Sesame Workshop’s senior vice president of U.S. Social Impact.

“In the U.S., one in 68 children is diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder,” she says. “We wanted to promote a better understanding and reduce the stigma often found around these children. We’re modeling the way both children and adults can look at autism from a strength-based perspective: finding things that all children share.”

Julia is at the heart of this effort. But while she represents the full range of children on the spectrum, she isn’t meant to typify each one of them: “Just as we look at all children as being unique, we should do the same thing when we’re looking at children with autism,” Betancourt says.

It was with keen interest that Stacey Gordon first learned of Julia more than a year ago. “I said, ‘If she’s ever a puppet, I want to BE Julia!’ ”

No wonder. Gordon is a Phoenix-based puppeteer who performs, conducts classes and workshops, and creates whimsical puppets for sale to the public.

She also has a son with autism, and, before she started her family, was a therapist to youngsters on the spectrum.

Although she figured her chances of landing the dream role of Julia were nil, her contacts in the puppet world paid off: Two friends who worked as Muppeteers on Sesame Street dropped her name to the producers. After submitting tapes, then coming to New York for an audition, she was hired.

In the introductory segment, Julia is having fun with Abby and Elmo when Big Bird walks up. He wants to be her new friend, but she doesn’t speak to him. He thinks she doesn’t like him.

“She does things just a little differently, in a Julia sort of way,” Abby informs him.

Different-but-fun way

Julia, chuckling, then displays a different-but-fun way of playing tag, and everyone joins in. But when a siren wails, she covers her ears and looks stricken.

“She needs to take a break,” Big Bird’s human friend Alan calmly explains. Soon, all is well and play resumes.

“The Meet Julia episode is something that I wish my son’s friends had been able to see when they were small,” says Gordon. “I remember him having meltdowns and his classmates not understanding how to react.”

Gordon says her son, now 13, isn’t drawn to puppetry. “He’s more interested in math and science, and plays the piano brilliantly,” she says with pride.

But she’s having a blast being part of the show that helped hook her, as a child, on puppeteering.

“It is so much fun to be on set with everyone, and get to play up all the positive things I’ve seen with the kids that I’ve worked with,” Gordon says. “At the same time, I come at this with a reverence. I don’t want to let the autism community down.”
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The eastern U.S. city of Philadelphia has canceled this year’s celebration of Cinco de Mayo, an event that attracts as many as 15,000 people.

Edgar Ramirez, one of the event’s organizers, said the unanimous decision by the planners was “sad,” but it was the “responsible” thing to do because of “the severe conditions affecting the immigrant community.”

Ramirez said the organizers were afraid federal immigration officers would stage a raid on the annual festival in Philadelphia — the country’s fifth-largest city.

U.S. President Donald Trump has called for Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to step up the arrests and deportations of people living illegally in the U.S.

Cinco de Mayo — or the Fifth of May — commemorates the Mexican army’s 1862 victory over France at the Battle of Puebla during the Franco-Mexican War. In the United States, Cinco de Mayo has evolved into a celebration of Mexican culture and heritage, particularly in areas with large Mexican-American populations.

 
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There’s a bromance brewing between actors Jake Gyllenhaal and Ryan Reynolds. 

 

The Hollywood stars say they hit it off so well during the filming of their new sci-fi thriller called Life that a genuine friendship has blossomed. The movie, about a team of scientists aboard the International Space Station who find an alien life form from Mars, premiered Saturday at the South by Southwest festival in Austin. 

 

The Brokeback Mountain and Deadpool stars were mostly all jokes during rounds of press interviews before the film’s premier, answering most questions with a back-and-forth comedy shtick. But they turned serious when asked about the connection formed on set. 

‘A lucky thing’

 

“You do these films and get to work with really amazing people, really talented people and you think ‘oh I’m going to hang out with these people afterward and see them again,’” said Reynolds. “You don’t most of the time because you go on living your life. But with this guy, we’ve stayed friends. That’s a lucky thing. It doesn’t always happen.” 

 

Some of the first signs of the newly forged bond came earlier this week when Reynolds gave high praise to Gyllenhaal on Good Morning America, calling him one of the most interesting actors currently working in Hollywood. Reynolds said Saturday that his co-star is “one the greatest actors of this generation.” 

 

“I loved working with this guy,” he said. “I loved spending time with this guy. It’s not often you get this experience.” 

 

Gyllenhaal was equally complimentary, saying Reynolds’s role last year as a foul-mouthed superhero is exactly what he strives for: a performance so authentic that it would be nearly impossible for another actor to duplicate. 

 

“We sort of grew up in this business together without knowing each other until very recently,” Gyllenhaal said. “It’s hard in a business where … a lot of times we’re pretending to get closer to the truth and to find somebody who you feel is genuine. I feel that way about him, so we’re friends.” 

Parallels classic thriller

 

The movie plot draws some notable parallels to Ridley Scott’s 1979 classic Alien, tracking a team of scientists on a spaceship who encounter an alien life form that wreaks havoc. Their discovery — the first evidence of extraterrestrial life on Mars — turns out to be a threat not only to the crew but to all life on Earth. 

 

But even with the backdrop of a sci-fi heart pounder, Gyllenhaal says he and Reynolds found some levity throughout the filming. 

 

“This experience of what’s happening right now was consistent to what it felt like while we were shooting,” Gyllenhaal said in between puns served as answers to questions. “We had really scary situations in the movie and scenes that were really tense, but we were laughing constantly and it was so much fun.” 
…

One of the kings of American rock ’n’ roll, Chuck Berry, has died. He was 90.

The legendary African-American musician, a native of St. Louis, Missouri, gave his first performance in high school. Since then, he forged a life that included three years in reform school, 20 months in prison, and decades in the spotlight, pioneering a musical form that has become synonymous with American music.

Charles Edward Anderson Berry, who went by the nickname Chuck, was famous for such 1950s hits as Maybellene, Roll Over Beethoven, Sweet Little Sixteen, and Johnny B. Goode. The singles — revolutionary combinations of pop, country music and blues — were dance hits in high school gymnasiums and music clubs across the United States. His musical style helped give birth to the age of the American teenager, all hormones and energy and optimism.

Influence for many musicians

Berry’s hit Maybellene was a rock ’n’ roll treatment of a country song known as Ida Red. Berry wrote in a memoir that his music label, Chess, “couldn’t believe that a … hillbilly song could be written and sung by a black guy.”

His music influenced most of the popular musicians that came after him, including such well-known music legends as the Rolling Stones, the Beach Boys and the Grateful Dead. Referring to Berry in the mid-1980s, Rolling Stone’s Keith Richards famously quipped, “I’ve stolen every lick (guitar improvisation) he ever played.”

Born in the Midwest

Berry was born into a middle-class family in Missouri and gave his first performance at Sumner High School, historic in its own right as the first African-American high school west of the Mississippi River, a dividing line that separates the eastern third of the country from the West.

Berry is credited with originating many quirks exclusively associated with the rock ’n’ roll genre, including a rollicking, danceable beat, his famous “duck walk” and a heavy, rhythmic guitar style that he may well have been described in the song Johnny B. Goode: “just like he’s ringin’ a bell.” Legend has it that he developed his duck walk as a means of hiding the wrinkles in the one good suit he had brought on tour.

As for Johnny B. Goode — originally meant to be about a black boy, but changed to “country boy” for wider appeal — countless bands covered it, among them the Beatles, country star Buck Owens and heavy metal band Judas Priest.

Run-ins with the law

Berry’s brushes with the law came early and late. In high school, he was arrested for armed robbery and spent three years in a reformatory, between 1944 and 1947. He emerged to go to work in an automobile factory, but he was playing music publicly with the Johnnie Johnson Trio by 1953. A meeting in Chicago with famed blues musician Muddy Waters led to the release of Maybellene, national fame and a string of hits.

In 1961, Berry got in trouble for transporting a 14-year-old girl across state lines and served 20 months in prison, a period in his life that friends said changed him forever. In 1979, he served 120 days in prison for tax evasion.

Berry’s music evolved at a time when racism was running high; blacks and whites were segregated into different schools, businesses, churches and public facilities. But his music attracted fans of all ethnicities.

Music for everyone

“I made records for people who would buy them,” he said once. “No color, no ethnic, no political — I don’t want that, never did.”

Despite his troubles with the law and the conditions of the times, Berry rose to the top of his profession.

He received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1984, became one of the first inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986, and was given a Kennedy Center Honors Award in Washington in 2000 for his lifetime of contributions to American cultural life.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame announced March 16 that Berry’s work will be featured in a new exhibit alongside that of Elvis Presley and other rock ’n’ roll greats, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the music magazine Rolling Stone.

Berry said the musical genres that inspired him were swing and big band, the music of the 1940s. In an appearance on The Tonight Show in 1987, Berry said he originally wanted to play the more traditional musical styles.

“The main guy was Louis Jordan. I wanted to sing like Nat Cole, with lyrics like Louis Jordan, with the swing of Benny Goodman, with Charlie Christian on guitar playing Carl Hogan’s riffs with the soul of Muddy Waters,” he said.

But Berry knew a good thing when he saw it. Married to his wife, Themetta Suggs, since 1948 and with four children to support, Berry embraced the musical style that made his career. In the 1957 hit Rock and Roll Music, Berry sang, “It’s gotta be rock ’n’ roll music, if you wanna dance with me.”

Berry’s final original album, titled Chuck, is expected to be released by Dualtone Music Group later this year.
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Mention New Orleans and most people will immediately associate it with jazz, a genre of music that originated among African Americans in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

And that distinctly American music can be heard everywhere throughout the famed city – and in most other areas of the state of Louisiana.

The ‘Big Easy’

National parks traveler Mikah Meyer recently visited New Orleans to soak up some of those sounds and learn about the city’s other cultural highlights.

“There’s the New Orleans Jazz National Historical Park, which basically celebrates the contribution of the culture of New Orleans, to this music that is authentically and originally American…a relatively new genre that is distinctly American,” he said.

“So it’s a bunch of little sites basically all scattered throughout the French Quarter in the older parts of the city that celebrate this heritage.”

Wild wetlands

Just south of the city is the Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve, named in honor of a French pirate who helped General Andrew Jackson defend New Orleans against the British in the final battle of the War of 1812.

Meyer spent time in the wetlands paradise that’s home to an impressive variety of plants and wildlife.

“The Preserve was a really good example of a lot of the sites I had seen throughout the whole Gulf Coast,” Meyer observed. “Everything from the Everglades, northwest up through Tampa, through Pensacola, all the way to New Orleans. It was a good example of that ecosystem that lives in between the ocean and easily habitable land.”

The National Park Service describes the six sites of Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve as representing “a treasure trove of south Louisiana’s historical and cultural riches. People from nearly every country, ethnic group, language and religion have come to the lower Mississippi River delta and left traces of their passing.”

Ancient culture

Traces of a prehistoric culture that made the lower Mississippi River Delta home are preserved at Poverty Point National Monument. The 3,400-year-old Native American settlement is now a World Heritage site. Meyer noted the unique geometric design that is considered a masterpiece of engineering.

“It has six lines of slightly raised ground, which they believe is where people lived, and then it has a bunch of different mounds – basically like man-made hills with millions of pounds of dirt.”

 

Poverty Point, once at the center of a huge trade network, is one of North America’s most important archeological sites.

Creole influence

At the Cane River Creole National Historical Park, the fourth of Louisiana’s national parks, Meyer learned that the state’s culture was not just influenced by the French.

“It’s very heavily influenced by all the people and all the countries and cultures that did trade in New Orleans, so Spanish, British, French… and so this Creole culture that developed out of that melting pot in the melting pot of America is a very unique thing,” he said.

Even though they’re part of the U.S., Meyer says the southern states he has visited so far show just how diverse America can be.

“If someone is looking to understand the unique culture and portion of American History, along with topography, whether it’s from the western edge of the Everglades all the way over to Louisiana, the Gulf Coast offers that chance,” he said.

Meyer invites you to learn more about his travels across America by visiting his website, Facebook and Instagram.
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