Meet Freddie Mercury and His Faithful Feline Friends

in Life, Music | April 29th, 2019

Ooh, you make me so very hap­py
You give me kiss­es and I go out of my mind, ooh
Mee­ow mee­ow mee­ow
You’re irre­sistible — I love you, Delilah
Delilah, I love you.
—Fred­die Mer­cury

Next time you meet a cat called Delilah, ask her if she was named for Fred­die Mercury’s #1 Pussy­cat.

Like many child­less adults’ pets, Mercury’s cats loomed large, enjoy­ing night­ly phone check-ins when he was on the road, Christ­mas stock­ings, and spe­cial­ly pre­pared food.

Unlike most child­less adults’ pets, Mercury’s feline friends alleged­ly occu­pied their own bed­rooms in his Lon­don man­sion, and were the main ben­e­fi­cia­ries of his will, along with Mary Austin, his close friend and one-time fiancée.

(Fol­low­ing the dis­so­lu­tion of their romance, she float­ed the idea of hav­ing a child togeth­er, a pro­pos­al he reject­ed, say­ing that he would rather have anoth­er cat.)

Mer­cury must’ve tak­en com­fort in know­ing that it wasn’t his celebri­ty the cats were cozy­ing up to, even if they did take advan­tage of his gen­eros­i­ty where fresh chick­en and cat toys were con­cerned.

To them, he was just anoth­er human with a can open­er, a lap, and a capac­i­ty for rock star-sized melt­downs should one of them go miss­ing. (He chucked a hibachi through the win­dow of a guest bed­room when Goliath, his black kit­ten, went on tem­po­rary walk­a­bout.)

Short­ly before Mer­cury’s death, he paid trib­ute to his favorite, Delilah, in a song his Queen band­mates grudg­ing­ly agreed to record, gui­tarist Bri­an May even acqui­esc­ing to a talk box to achieve the nec­es­sary “meow” sounds.

Around the same time, a thought­ful friend arranged for the oth­er mem­bers of Mercury’s beloved menagerie to be immor­tal­ized on a cus­tom-paint­ed vest, which the singer can be seen sport­ing in the offi­cial music video for Queen’s “These Are The Days Of Our Lives,” as well as his final por­trait.

(I’ll have a thought for Fred­die next time I’m in my home state, where a trip to the mall reveals any num­ber of sim­i­lar sar­to­r­i­al dis­plays, most notice­ably on ladies resem­bling my grand­moth­er and her sis­ters…)

Accord­ing to Mercury’s per­son­al assis­tant, Peter “Phoebe” Free­stone, most of Mercury’s cat babies were even­tu­al­ly farmed out to oth­er homes, though his “princess”, Delilah, remained in res­i­dence with a cou­ple of oth­ers, cared for by Austin.

And because there are sure­ly those among our read­ers burn­ing to know if Fred­die Mer­cury swung both ways, we took a deep­er dive through some of Freestone’s mem­o­ries, and dis­cov­ered that:

Fred­die didn’t par­tic­u­lar­ly like or dis­like dogs. He wouldn’t go out of his way to avoid them and he had many friends who had dogs at home. He would play with them and stroke them if they came to him when he was vis­it­ing. He just loved cats. He felt that cats were much more inde­pen­dent than dogs and he was very hap­py that his felines had cho­sen him to be their mas­ter.

Find more pic­ture of Fred­die and his cats over at Dan­ger­ous Minds, Bored Pan­da and Vin­tage Every­day–most of which were tak­en by Peter Free­stone.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Fred­die Mer­cury Reimag­ined as Com­ic Book Heroes

A Stun­ning Live Con­cert Film of Queen Per­form­ing in Mon­tre­al, Dig­i­tal­ly Restored to Per­fec­tion (1981)

Watch Behind-the-Scenes Footage From Fred­die Mercury’s Final Video Per­for­mance

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in New York City May 13 for the next install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Steve Jobs Shares a Secret for Success: Don’t Be Afraid to Ask for Help

in Apple, Business, Entrepreneurship, Life | April 26th, 2019

In 1994—the year Apple co-founder Steve Jobs filmed an inter­view with The Sil­i­con Val­ley His­tor­i­cal Asso­ci­a­tion in which he encour­aged peo­ple to go for what they want by enlist­ing oth­ers’ assistance—there was no social media, no Kick­starter, no GoFundMe, no Patre­on…  email was just becom­ing a thing.

Back then, ask­ing for help meant engag­ing in a face-to-face or voice-to-voice real time inter­ac­tion, some­thing many peo­ple find intim­i­dat­ing.

Not so young Jobs, an elec­tron­ics nut who relat­ed more eas­i­ly to the adult engi­neers in his Sil­i­con Val­ley neigh­bor­hood than to kids his own age.

As he recounts above, his desire to build a fre­quen­cy counter spurred him to cold call Bill Hewlett (of Hewlett-Packard), to see if he’d give him some of the nec­es­sary parts.

(In light of the recent col­lege admis­sions scan­dal, let us rec­og­nize the 12-year-old Jobs not only had the gump­tion to make that call, he also appears to have had no parental assis­tance look­ing up Hewlett’s num­ber in the Palo Alto White Pages.)

Hewlett agreed to the young go-getter’s request for parts. Jobs’ chutz­pah also earned him a sum­mer job on a Hewlett Packard assem­bly line, putting screws into fre­quen­cy coun­ters. (“I was in heav­en,” Jobs said of this entry lev­el posi­tion.)

Per­haps the biggest les­son for those in need of help is to ask bold­ly.

Ask like it’s 1994.

No, ask like it’s 1968, and you’re a self-starter like Steve Jobs hell­bent on procur­ing those spe­cial­ty parts to build your fre­quen­cy counter.

(Let’s fur­ther pre­tend that lying around wait­ing for Mom to order you a DIY fre­quen­cy counter kit on Ama­zon is not an option…)

Need an extra push?

Psy­chol­o­gist Adam Grant’s best­selling Give and Take makes an effec­tive case for human inter­ac­tion as the path­way to suc­cess, whether you’re the kid plac­ing the call, or the big wig with the pow­er to grant the wish.

Social psy­chol­o­gist Hei­di Grant’s book, Rein­force­ments: How to Get Peo­ple to Help You, explains how to ask with­out snivel­ing, self-aggran­diz­ing, or putting the per­son on the receiv­ing end in an awk­ward posi­tion.

And that shy vio­let Aman­da Fuck­ing Palmer, author of The Art of Ask­ing and no stranger to the punk rock barter econ­o­my, details how her “nin­ja mas­ter-lev­el fan con­nec­tion” has result­ed in her every request being met—from hous­ing and meals to prac­tice pianos and a neti pot hand deliv­ered by an Aus­tralian nurse.

Just don’t for­get to say “please” and, even­tu­al­ly, “thank you.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Steve Jobs on Life: “Stay Hun­gry, Stay Fool­ish”

A Young Steve Jobs Teach­es a Class at MIT (1992)

Steve Jobs Nar­rates the First “Think Dif­fer­ent” Ad (Nev­er Aired)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in New York City this May for the next install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Fashion Designers in 1939 Predict How People Would Dress in the Year 2000

in Fashion, Life | April 15th, 2019

Some two decades before The Jet­sons brought their ani­mat­ed vision of the future to the small screen, the cin­emagazine Pathetone Week­ly ran a fea­turette in which the “most famous” fash­ion design­ers in the U.S. pre­dict­ed what the well-dressed woman would find her­self wear­ing in the year 2000.

Can­tilevered heels, mul­ti­func­tion­al gar­ments to go from office to evening wear in mere sec­onds, tech inte­gra­tions, dress­es made of alu­minum and trans­par­ent net…

As one com­menter on YouTube astute­ly observed, “Madon­na wore most of these before we even reached 2000.”

As is to be expect­ed, these futur­is­tic fash­ions exhib­it­ed the flat­ter­ing bias cut that we in 2019 asso­ciate with the peri­od in which they were envi­sioned.

Gise­le Bünd­chen, the top super­mod­el of 2000, could cer­tain­ly hold her own against her glam­orous 1939 coun­ter­parts, but the same can­not be said of the truck­er hats, low slung jeans, velour track suits and den­im every­thing that tru­ly defined the look of the mil­len­ni­um.

The biggest los­er of the year AD 2000, as envi­sioned by those famous design­ers of 1939, is the Amer­i­can male, whose drapey harem pants, Prince Valiant ‘do, and ill advised facial hair make George Jet­son look like like Clark Gable.

The poor guy does deserve some cool points for wear­ing a phone, though. (It’s like they had a crys­tal ball!)

And his radio may well pre­fig­ure the iPod, which made its debut in 2001.

Because pock­ets were pre­sumed to be going the way of the dodo (and skirts for women), a util­i­ty belt holds his keys, change, and “can­dy for cuties.”

This last item is sure­ly an unnec­es­sary bur­den, giv­en the nar­ra­tive empha­sis on the female cloth­ing designs’ man-catch­ing prowess.

(Imag­ine the 21st-cen­tu­ry fem­i­nine dis­ap­point­ment when their elec­tric head­lights revealed what they’d reeled in.)

Per­haps the most use­ful inno­va­tion to come from this exer­cise is the “elec­tric belt to adapt the body to cli­mac­tic changes.”

Don’t tell 1939, but I think we’re gonna need a big­ger belt.

As to the iden­ti­ties of the famous design­ers and the delight­ful­ly chat­ty (“Ooh, swish!”narrator), they seem to have been lost to the ages. Read­ers, if you have any intel, please advise.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1930s Fash­ion Design­ers Pre­dict How Peo­ple Would Dress in the Year 2000

In 1964, Isaac Asi­mov Pre­dicts What the World Will Look Like Today: Self-Dri­ving Cars, Video Calls, Fake Meats & More

Watch Bauhaus World, a Free Doc­u­men­tary That Cel­e­brates the 100th Anniver­sary of Germany’s Leg­endary Art, Archi­tec­ture & Design School

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in New York City on April 15 for the next install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Here’s John Steinbeck Asking Marilyn Monroe for Her Autograph (1955)

in Film, Letters, Life, Literature | March 8th, 2019

When ask­ing a celebri­ty for a spe­cial favor, it helps to be a bit of a celebri­ty your­self.

As Kei­th Fer­rell details in his biog­ra­phy, John Stein­beck: The Voice of the Land, the Nobel lau­re­ate had lit­tle patience for auto­graph seek­ers, pushy young writ­ers seek­ing help get­ting pub­lished, and “peo­ple who nev­er read books but enjoyed meet­ing authors.”

The shoe went on the oth­er foot when Mrs. Stein­beck let slip to her nephew that Uncle John had met the boy’s movie star crush, Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe.

Sud­den­ly, an auto­graphed pho­to seemed in order.

And not just some stan­dard issue pub­lic­i­ty shot, but ide­al­ly one show­ing the star of The Sev­en Year Itch and Gen­tle­men Pre­fer Blondes in a “pen­sive girl­ish mood.”

Also, could she please inscribe it by name to nephew Jon, a young man with, his uncle con­fid­ed, “one foot in the door of puber­ty”?

The star-to-star tone Stein­beck adopts for the above let­ter seems designed to ward off sus­pi­cion that this nephew could be a con­ve­nient inven­tion on the part of some­one desir­ing such a prize for him­self.

Six­ty years after a sec­re­tary typed it up, Stein­beck­’s mes­sage fetched $3,520 at Julien’s Auc­tions, one of a wide range of items culled from hard­core Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe col­lec­tor, David Gains­bor­ough-Roberts as well as the estate of Mon­roe’s act­ing teacher, Lee Stras­berg.

In addi­tion to oth­er cor­re­spon­dence, the Mar­i­lyn auc­tion includ­ed anno­tat­ed scripts, an emp­ty pre­scrip­tion bot­tle, a bal­le­ri­na paper­weight, stock­ings and gowns, some pin­up-type mem­o­ra­bil­ia, and a pro­gram from John F Kennedy’s 1962 birth­day cel­e­bra­tion at Madi­son Square Gar­den.

One lot that is con­spic­u­ous for its absence is Steinbeck’s promised “guest key to the ladies’ entrance of Fort Knox.”

Could it be that the boy nev­er got his cus­tomized auto­graph?

We’d like to think that he did. Per­haps he’s still savor­ing it in pri­vate.

H/T Alan Gold­wass­er/Let­ters of Note/Flash­bak

Relat­ed Con­tent:

“Noth­ing Good Gets Away”: John Stein­beck Offers Love Advice in a Let­ter to His Son (1958)

The 430 Books in Mar­i­lyn Monroe’s Library: How Many Have You Read?

Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe & Elvis Pres­ley Star in an Action-Packed Pop Art Japan­ese Mon­ster Movie

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in New York City for the next install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain, this Mon­day, March 11. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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97-Year-Old Philosopher Ponders the Meaning of Life: “What Is the Point of It All?”

in Film, Life, Philosophy | March 5th, 2019

If you’ve sat by the bed­side of a dying friend or rel­a­tive, or recov­ered from a ter­mi­nal ill­ness your­self, you may know too well: the con­cerns of yesterday—career anx­i­eties, polit­i­cal high stakes, per­son­al grudges—can slip away into the rear view, becom­ing small­er and more mean­ing­less as hours pass into final days. What takes their place? Maybe a savor­ing of the moment, maybe regrets over moments not savored, maybe a grow­ing acknowl­edg­ment that grat­i­tude mat­ters more than being right. Maybe a will­ing­ness to let go of pri­or ideas—not to adopt new ones, but to open to the ques­tions again.

Some­times, this expe­ri­ence is bewil­der­ing and fright­en­ing, espe­cial­ly when cou­pled with the pains of ill­ness and old age. What­ev­er insights one might have at the thresh­old of death, they can­not eas­i­ly over­come “life­long habits,” says Her­bert Fin­garette in the can­did short film Being 97, a doc­u­men­tary made in the last months of the con­trar­i­an Amer­i­can philosopher’s life. By the time of his death,” notes Aeon, “Fin­garette (1921–2018) had lived what most would con­sid­er a full and mean­ing­ful life. His mar­riage to his wife, Leslie, was long and hap­py. His career as a pro­fes­sor of phi­los­o­phy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia was both accom­plished and con­tro­ver­sial.”

By this time, his wife of sev­en­ty years had been gone for sev­en. And at 97, phys­i­cal­ly frail and his career long over, Fin­garette was com­ing to terms with “lone­li­ness and absence” as well as with his need for help from oth­er peo­ple to do sim­ple tasks. After 42 years of teaching—and writ­ing on sub­jects like self-decep­tion, Con­fu­cian­ism, eth­i­cal respon­si­bil­i­ty, and addiction—he was also grap­pling with the fact he had been wrong about one par­tic­u­lar­ly press­ing mat­ter, at least.

Fin­garette became infa­mous when, with­out under­tak­ing any sci­en­tif­ic research him­self, he claimed in the 1988 book Heavy Drink­ing that alco­holism was a prob­lem of self con­trol, not a dis­ease. But he does not speak of the polit­i­cal furor in this minor con­tro­ver­sy. Eleven years lat­er, he took on an even heav­ier sub­ject in Death: Philo­soph­i­cal Sound­ings. “What I said was in a nut­shell,” he recalls, “is there’s no rea­son to be afraid or con­cerned or any­thing about death because when you die, there’s noth­ing. You’re not going to suf­fer, you’re not going to be unhap­py… you’re not going to be…. It’s not ratio­nal to be afraid of death.”

He admits, “I now think that is not a good state­ment, because I think it’s impor­tant to fig­ure out why it is then that peo­ple are afraid of death. Why am I con­cerned about it?” His best think­ing aside, “my sense of real­ism tells me, well, no good rea­son or not, it is some­thing that haunts me. I walk around the house and I ask myself, ‘What is the point of it all? There must be some­thing I’m miss­ing in this argu­ment.’” He asks, he says, know­ing “that there isn’t any good answer.” But that doesn’t stop him from look­ing for one. We see Fingarette’s life­long habits as a thinker push him for­ward in pur­suit of what he calls a “fool­ish ques­tion,” although he intu­its that “the answer might be… the silent answer.”

It’s a painful exis­ten­tial real­iza­tion for a man so devot­ed to log­i­cal argu­ment and pro­nounce­ments of cer­tain­ty. This film of Fin­garette in his last months is both a per­son­al­ly mov­ing por­trait and a dra­ma in minia­ture of a uni­ver­sal human dilem­ma: why is it so hard to accept the inevitable? Why do we have minds that strug­gle against it? The mul­ti­tude of pos­si­ble answers may be far less mean­ing­ful than the expe­ri­ence of the ques­tion itself, painful and tran­scen­dent as it is, whether we are griev­ing the loss of oth­ers, fac­ing our own mor­tal­i­ty, or, as in Fin­garet­te’s case, both at once.

Being 97 will be added to our list of Free Online Doc­u­men­taries, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

via Aeon

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Death: A Free Phi­los­o­phy Course from Yale Helps You Grap­ple with the Inescapable

Alan Watts Explains Why Death is an Art, Adven­ture and Cre­ative Act

When Aldous Hux­ley, Dying of Can­cer, Left This World Trip­ping on LSD, Expe­ri­enc­ing “the Most Serene, the Most Beau­ti­ful Death” (1963)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

 

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Jim Morrison Declares That “Fat is Beautiful” .… And Means It

in Animation, Food & Drink, Health, Life, Music | March 1st, 2019

There’s a bit of cog­ni­tive dis­so­nance in a young rock god giv­ing voice to the fat pride move­ment some four decades after his death.

Years before social media ampli­fied celebri­ty weight gain cov­er­age to the realm of nation­al news, The Doors’ lead singer, Lizard King Jim Mor­ri­son, was the sub­ject of intense bod­i­ly scruti­ny.

The musician’s drug of choice—alcohol—swiftly added some extra cush­ion­ing to the sexy, shirt­less young lion image pho­tog­ra­ph­er Joel Brod­sky man­aged to cap­ture in 1967.

That lean, leather-pant­ed ver­sion is the one the Mor­ri­son direc­tor Patrick Smith went with for the Blank on Blank ani­ma­tion above, using audio from a 1969 inter­view with the Vil­lage Voice’s Howard Smith (no rela­tion).

Occa­sion­al­ly ani­ma­tor Smith bal­loons the 2‑D Morrison’s bel­ly for humor­ous effect, but let’s be frank. By today’s stan­dards, the 5’11 Mor­ri­son, who by his own esti­mate tipped the scales at 185lb, was hard­ly “fat.”

Pleas­ing­ly plump per­haps…

Fill­ing out…

Eat­ing (and drink­ing) like some­one whose bank account did­n’t require belt tight­en­ing.

His com­pas­sion toward gen­er­ous­ly pro­por­tioned bod­ies like­ly sprang from ear­ly expe­ri­ence.

As pho­tog­ra­ph­er Lin­da McCart­ney recalled in Lin­da McCartney’s The Sixties—Portrait Of An Era:

He … told me that he’d grown up as a fat kid that no one want­ed to know and that this had caused him a lot of emo­tion­al pain.

Then he explained what had brought it all to the sur­face. Appar­ent­ly he had been walk­ing around Green­wich Vil­lage that morn­ing and a girl who he knew as a child had spot­ted him and start­ed going crazy over him. That both­ered him because he sensed the hypocrisy of it all. When he was a fat mil­i­tary brat these peo­ple had reject­ed and ignored him but now, because of his new pub­lic image, they were fawn­ing over him.

That “new pub­lic image” is the one most of us think of first when think­ing of Jim Mor­ri­son, but as a flesh and blood exem­plar, it was unsus­tain­able. Pho­tog­ra­ph­er Brod­sky reflects:

The shot on the inner sleeve of the Great­est Hits album was pret­ty near the end, I think. By that time, he was so drunk he was stum­bling into the lights and we had to stop the ses­sion. Mor­ri­son nev­er real­ly looked that way again, and those pic­tures have become a big part of The Doors’ leg­end. I think I got him at his peak.

Mor­ri­son didn’t dwell on child­hood mis­eries in his Vil­lage Voice inter­view, nor did he show any self-loathing or regret for physiques past.

Rather, he gave voice to the pos­i­tive effects of his increased size. He felt like a tank, a beast—a body of con­se­quence.

(To con­sid­er the impli­ca­tions of bod­i­ly size for a female in Morrison’s world, have a look at car­toon­ist Péné­lope Bagieu’s Cal­i­for­nia Dreamin’: Cass Elliot before the Mamas and The Papas.)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

“The Lost Paris Tapes” Pre­serves Jim Morrison’s Final Poet­ry Record­ings from 1971

The Last Known Pho­tos of Jim Mor­ri­son, Tak­en Days Before His Death in Paris (June 1971)

The Doors Play Live in Den­mark & LA in 1968: See Jim Mor­ri­son Near His Charis­mat­ic Peak

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in New York City March 11 for the next install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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18 Classic Myths Explained with Animation: Pandora’s Box, Sisyphus & More

in Animation, History, K-12, Life, Literature | February 22nd, 2019

Greek myths have an incred­i­ble shelf life.

We may not retain all the play­ers’ names or the intri­ca­cies of the var­i­ous plot lines, but the cre­ative pun­ish­ments the gods—Zeus, in particular—visited upon those who dis­pleased them have pro­vid­ed mod­ern mor­tals with an endur­ing short­hand for describ­ing our own woes.

Tempt­ed to sneak a peek inside a lover’s diary? Take a tee­ny swig from the liquor cab­i­net whilst hous­esit­ting? Go snoop­ing in your teenager’s Inter­net his­to­ry?

DON’T DO IT, PANDORA!!!

But if curios­i­ty com­pels you to explore beyond the famous punch­lines of mythology’s great­est hits, TED-Ed’s ani­mat­ed Myths from Around the World series is a rec­om­mend­ed rum­mage.

Aver­ag­ing around five min­utes per tale, each episode is packed tight as a snake in a can of mixed nuts. Pre­pare to be sur­prised by some of the tid­bits that come spring­ing out.

Take Pandora’s box, above.

(Actu­al­ly it was a jar, but why quib­ble?)

Not to unleash too many major spoil­ers, but how many of us remem­bered that the thing con­tained a bit of good along with all that evil?

Or that the ves­sel she wasn’t allowed to open was but one of many gifts the gods bestowed upon her at birth? In fact, Zeus gave her two presents, that pret­ty box, jar, what­ev­er, and—wait for it—an irre­press­ibly inquis­i­tive nature.

Or the close con­nec­tion between Pan­do­ra and Prometheus? Zeus con­ceived of Pan­do­ra as a ret­ri­bu­tion for Prometheus steal­ing fire and return­ing it to earth.

Remem­ber Prometheus?

No, not the guy who’s doomed to spend his life rolling a mas­sive rock uphill, only to have it roll back down before he reach­es the top. That’s Sisy­phus, as in Sisyphean task, like laun­dry or clean­ing the cat lit­ter.

Prometheus is the Titan who winds up chained to a rock so Zeus can send a hun­gry vulture—some say eagle—to devour his liv­er once a day.

(Which kind of puts the cat lit­ter in per­spec­tive.)

In addi­tion to ancient Greek crowd pleasers, the 18-episode Myths from Around the World playlist delves into the famil­iar stuff of Norse, Chi­nese, and ancient Egypt­ian leg­ends, as well as less wide­ly known Cam­bo­di­an and Irish tales.

Each video’s descrip­tion has a link to a full Ted-Ed les­son, with the usu­al com­ple­ment of quizzes, resources and oppor­tu­ni­ties for teacher cus­tomiza­tion.

Watch the full playlist here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Myth of Sisy­phus Won­der­ful­ly Ani­mat­ed in an Oscar-Nom­i­nat­ed Short Film (1974)

Greek Myth Comix Presents Homer’s Ili­ad & Odyssey Using Stick-Man Draw­ings

Con­cepts of the Hero in Greek Civ­i­liza­tion (A Free Har­vard Course) 

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in New York City for the next install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain, this March. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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When Fred Rogers and Francois Clemmons Broke Down Race Barriers on a Historic Episode of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood (1969)

in History, Life, Television | February 15th, 2019

Last year’s Fred Rogers doc­u­men­tary, Won’t You Be My Neigh­bor, pro­pelled François Clem­mons—bet­ter known to gen­er­a­tions of Mis­ter Rogers Neigh­bor­hood view­ers as Offi­cer Clemmons—back into the inter­na­tion­al spot­light.

One of the most strik­ing anec­dotes in the doc con­cerns a 1969 episode in which Mis­ter Rogers, who was white, invit­ed Offi­cer Clem­mons, who is black, to join him in soak­ing his bare feet in a back­yard baby pool on a hot summer’s day.

It was one of those giant leaps for mankind moments that pass­es itself off as a homey, fair­ly unre­mark­able step, though as Clem­mons told his friend Karl Lind­holm in a Sto­ryCorps inter­view, Rogers under­stood the pow­er­ful mes­sage this ges­ture would send.

Like­wise, his choice of Clem­mons to embody a friend­ly cop for his tele­vi­sion neigh­bor­hood, a part Clem­mons, who played the role for 30 years, was ini­tial­ly hes­i­tant to accept:

Fred came to me and said, “I have this idea, you could be a police offi­cer.” That kind of stopped me in my tracks. I grew up in the ghet­to. I did not have a pos­i­tive opin­ion of police offi­cers. Police­men were sick­ing police dogs and water hoses on peo­ple. And I real­ly had a hard time putting myself in that role. So I was not excit­ed about being Offi­cer Clem­mons at all.

Rogers, who had met Clem­mons in a Pitts­burgh area church where the trained opera singer was per­form­ing, pre­vailed, stress­ing the impact such a pos­i­tive por­tray­al of a black author­i­ty fig­ure could have on the com­mu­ni­ty.

Offi­cer Clem­mons, the first recur­ring black char­ac­ter on a children’s series, paved the way for the mul­tira­cial casts of Sesame Street and The Elec­tric Com­pa­ny, also on PBS.

If a pic­ture is worth a thou­sand words, a song can also pack quite a wal­lop. It’s hard not to get choked up hear­ing Clem­mons sing “There Are Many Ways to Say I Love You,” above, a tune he reprised in 1993, for his final appear­ance on the show.

Such sen­ti­ments are a nat­ur­al fit in pro­grams aimed at the preschool crowd, whose love of their fam­i­lies is rein­forced at every turn, but it’s still unusu­al to see these feel­ings artic­u­lat­ed so pure­ly when the only peo­ple in sight are grown men.

Clem­mons learned not to doubt Roger’s sin­cer­i­ty when he said, “I like you just the way you are.”

And Rogers grew to accept his friend’s sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion, though this embrace came a bit less nat­u­ral­ly. In an inter­view with Van­i­ty Fair’s Chris Azzopar­di, Clem­mons was philo­soph­i­cal, recall­ing his “sur­ro­gate father’s” request to steer clear of gay clubs so as not to endan­ger the show’s whole­some image:

Sac­ri­fice was a part of my des­tiny. In oth­er words, I did not want to be a shame to my race. I didn’t want to be a scan­dal to the show. I didn’t want to hurt the man who was giv­ing me so much, and I also knew the val­ue as a black per­former of hav­ing this show, this plat­form. Black actors and actresses—SAG and Equity—90 per­cent of them are not work­ing. If you know that and here you are, on a nation­al plat­form you’re gonna sab­o­tage your­self?

I weighed this thing, the pros and the cons. And I thought, I not only have a nation­al plat­form, I’m get­ting paid. I was also get­ting a pro­mo­tion that I sim­ply could not have afford­ed to pay for. Every time I did the show, and every time Fred took us across the coun­try to do three, four, five per­son­al appear­ances, my name was being writ­ten into somebody’s heart—some lit­tle kid who would grow up and say, “Oh, I remem­ber him, I remem­ber that he could sing, I remem­ber that he was on Mis­ter Rogers’ Neigh­bor­hood.” I didn’t have the mon­ey to pay for that, but I was get­ting it free. There were so many things that I got back for that sac­ri­fice that I kept my big mouth shut, kept my head down, kept my shoul­der to the plough.

Stu­dents at Mid­dle­bury Col­lege, where Clem­mons was a long time fac­ul­ty pres­ence, were well acquaint­ed with the self-pro­claimed “Divaman’s”’ flam­boy­ant side:

Clem­mons has added col­or and soul to the Mid­dle­bury Col­lege scene for near­ly 25 years. As Alexan­der Twi­light Artist in Res­i­dence and direc­tor of the Mar­tin Luther King Spir­i­tu­al Choir, he is known by many names: the divo, the mae­stro, the rev­erend, doc­tor-madam-hon­ey-man, sportin’ life, and even black mag­ic. He has played the role of pro­fes­sor, choir­mas­ter, res­i­dent vocal soloist, advi­sor, con­fi­dant, and com­mu­ni­ty cheer­leader. Yet his pur­pose is sin­gu­lar: to share hope through song.

Lis­ten to Sto­ryCorps pod­cast episode #462 about Mis­ter Rogers’ and Fran­cois Clem­mons’ famous foot bath, as well as an inci­dent that took place five years pri­or where pro­test­ers staged a “wade in” at the “Whites Only” pool at St. Augus­tine, Florida’s Mon­son Motor Lodge.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Col­ors of Mis­ter Rogers’ Hand-Knit Sweaters from 1979 to 2001: A Visu­al Graph Cre­at­ed with Data Sci­ence

Mis­ter Rogers Turns Kids On to Jazz with Help of a Young Wyn­ton Marsalis and Oth­er Jazz Leg­ends (1986)

Mr. Rogers Takes Break­danc­ing Lessons from a 12-Year-Old (1985)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  See her onstage in New York City on March 11 as host of  The­ater of the Apes book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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