Cary Grant

In anticipation of my mini-Cary Grant film festival, I thought I'd post some reading info on one of my favorite actors. (Information courtesy of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia).


Archibald Alec Leach (January 18, 1904 – November 29, 1986), better known by his stage name, Cary Grant, was an iconic English-born actor known for mostly American films. With his distinctive Mid-Atlantic accent, he was noted as perhaps the foremost exemplar of the debonair leading man, handsome, virile, charismatic and charming. He was named the second Greatest Male Star of All Time of American cinema, after Humphrey Bogart, by the American Film Institute. He was well known for starring in classic films such as The Philadelphia Story, North By Northwest, Notorious, To Catch A Thief, Bringing Up Baby and The Bishop's Wife.

Biography

Early life and career

Archibald Alec Leach was born in Horfield, Bristol, England in 1904. He attended Bishop Road Primary School. An only child, he had a confused and unhappy childhood. His mother Elsie was placed by his father in a mental institution when Archie was ten. She never overcame her depression after the death of a previous infant child. His father, who subsequently had a son with another woman, told him that his mother had gone away on a "long holiday". It was not until he was in his thirties that Leach discovered her still alive, living in an institutionalized care facility.

He was expelled from the Fairfield Grammar School in Bristol in 1918. He subsequently joined the "Bob Pender stage troupe" and traveled with the group to the United States as a stilt walker in 1920, on a two-year tour of the country. When the troupe returned to England, he decided to stay in the US and continue his stage career.

Still under his birth name, he performed on the stage at The Muny in St. Louis, Missouri, in such shows as Irene (1931); Music in May (1931); Nina Rosa (1931); Rio Rita (1931); Street Singer (1931); The Three Musketeers (1931); and Wonderful Night (1931).

Hollywood stardom

After some success in light Broadway comedies, he came to Hollywood in 1931, where he acquired the name Cary Lockwood. He chose the name Lockwood after the surname of his character in a recent play called Nikki. He signed with Paramount Pictures, but while studio bosses were impressed with him, they were less than impressed with his adopted stage name. They decided that the name Cary was OK, but Lockwood had to go due to a similarity with another actor's name. It was after browsing through a list of the studio's preferred surnames, that Cary Grant was born. Grant chose the name because the initials C and G, had already proved lucky for Clark Gable and Gary Cooper, two of Hollywood's then-biggest movie stars.

Having already appeared as leading man opposite Marlene Dietrich in Blonde Venus, his stardom was given a further boost by Mae West when she chose him for her leading man in two of her most successful films, She Done Him Wrong and I'm No Angel (both 1933). I'm No Angel was a tremendous financial success and, along with She Done Him Wrong, which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture, saved Paramount from bankruptcy.

in The Philadelphia Story (1940)

Grant starred in some of the classic screwball comedies, including Bringing Up Baby with Katharine Hepburn, His Girl Friday with Rosalind Russell, Arsenic and Old Lace with Priscilla Lane, and Monkey Business with Ginger Rogers. His role in The Awful Truth with Irene DunneThe Philadelphia Story, with Hepburn and James Stewart, showcased his best-known screen persona: the charming if sometimes unreliable man, formerly married to an intelligent and strong-willed woman who first divorced him, then realized that he was—with all his faults—irresistible. was the pivotal film in the establishment of Grant's screen persona. These performances solidified his appeal, and

Grant was one of Hollywood's top box-office attractions for several decades. He was a versatile actor, who did demanding physical comedy in movies like Gunga Din with the skills he had learned on the stage. Howard Hawks said that Grant was "so far the best that there isn't anybody to be compared to him".

Grant was a favorite actor of Alfred Hitchcock, notorious for disliking actors, who said that Grant was "the only actor I ever loved in my whole life".Grant appeared in such Hitchcock classics as Suspicion, Notorious, To Catch a Thief and North by Northwest. Biographer Patrick McGilligan wrote that, in 1965, Hitchcock asked Grant to star in Torn Curtain (1966), only to learn that Grant had decided to retire after making one more film, Walk, Don't Run (1966); Paul Newman was cast instead in Torn Curtain, opposite Julie Andrews.

In the mid-1950s, Grant formed his own production company, Grantley Productions, and produced a number of movies distributed by Universal, such as Operation Petticoat, Indiscreet, That Touch of Mink (co-starring Doris Day), and Father Goose. In 1963, he appeared opposite Audrey Hepburn in Charade.

Grant was considered a maverick by virtue of the fact that he was the first actor to "go independent," effectively bucking the old studio system, which almost completely controlled what an actor could or could not do. In this way, Grant was able to control every aspect of his career. He decided which movies he was going to appear in, he had personal choice of the directors and his co-stars and at times, even negotiated a share of the gross, something unheard of at the time, but now common among A-list stars.

Grant was nominated for two Academy Awards in the 1940s. He was denied the Oscar throughout his active career because he was one of the first actors to be independent of the major studios. Grant received a special Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1970. In 1981, he was accorded the Kennedy Center Honors.

Retirement

Although Grant had retired from the screen, he remained active in other areas. In the late 1960s, he accepted a position on the board of directors at Fabergé. By all accounts this position was not honorary as some had assumed, as Grant was regularly attending meetings and his mere appearance at a product launch would almost certainly guarantee its success.

In the last few years of his life, Grant undertook tours of the United States in a one man show. It was called "A Conversation with Cary Grant", in which he would show clips from his films and answer audience questions. Grant was preparing for a performance at the Adler Theater in Davenport, Iowa on the afternoon of November 29, 1986 when he suffered a massive stroke. He died later that night at St. Luke's Hospital at age 82.

Personal life in Hollywood

Grant's personal life was complicated, involving five marriages.

Marriages

Grant's first wife, Virginia Cherrill, divorced him on March 26, 1935 following charges that Grant had hit her. They had wed on February 10, 1934.

Grant married the ultra-wealthy socialite Barbara Hutton and became a father figure and lifelong influence on her son, Lance Reventlow, who died in a plane crash. The couple were derisively nicknamed "Cash and Cary," although in an extensive prenuptial agreement Grant refused any financial settlement in the event of a divorce. After divorcing in 1945, they remained lifelong friends. Grant always bristled at the accusation that he married for money. He said with his typical wit, "I may not have married for very sound reasons, but money was never one of them."

Grant married his third wife, the actress Betsy Drake, on December 25, 1949. He appeared with her in two films. This would prove to be his longest marriage, ending on August 14, 1962.

His fourth marriage, to actress Dyan Cannon, who was thirty-three years his junior, took place on July 22, 1965 in Las Vegas. The marriage was followed by the premature birth of his only child, Jennifer Grant, on February 26, 1966 when Grant was sixty-two. He frequently called her his "best production", and regretted that he hadn't had children sooner. The marriage was troubled from the beginning and Cannon left him in December 1966, claiming that Grant flew into frequent rages and spanked her when she "disobeyed" him. The divorce, finalized in 1968, was bitter and public, and custody fights over their daughter went on for around ten years.

On April 11, 1981 Grant married his long-time companion, British hotel PR agent Barbara Harris, who was forty-seven years his junior. Harris was by his side when he died.

War years and US citizenship

Grant became a naturalized US citizen in 1942 in order to defuse the scandal resulting from his failure to return to Britain to serve in the military. One British movie reviewer once wrote that British actors who had remained in Hollywood should only be photographed in black and white, so the audience doesn't see the yellow streak across their spines. He had, in fact, volunteered for service in the Royal Navy as early as 1940, but at 36 was past the then-maximum enlistment age. This prompted Grant to declare that he wanted to go back to do his bit, even if it meant being a 'Fireman'. However, certain portions of the British Government thought Grant would be more use to the war effort if he remained in Hollywood. During the war years, Grant donated entire salaries of several movies to British war charities, and it is even rumored that Grant was working for British Intelligence, monitoring suspected Nazi sympathies among the Hollywood elite. This, however, has never been substantiated as records on the subject remain classified to this day. In 1946, King George VI awarded Grant with the King's Medal for his services to Britain during hostilities.

Tribute

Statue of Cary Grant in Millennium Square, Bristol, England.

In 2001 a statue of Grant was erected in Millennium Square, a regenerated area next to the harbour in his city of birth, Bristol, England.

In November 2004 Grant was named "The Greatest Movie Star of All Time" by Premiere Magazine. Richard Schickel, the film critic, said about Grant: "He's the best star actor there ever was in the movies."

Ian Fleming stated that he partially had Cary Grant in mind when he created his suave super-spy, James Bond. Sean Connery was selected for the first James Bond movie because of his likeness to Grant. Likewise, the later Bond, Roger Moore, was also selected for sharing Grant's wry sense of humor.

John Cleese's character in the film A Fish Called Wanda was named Archie Leach, a reference to Grant's legal birth name.

Further reading

• Bogdanovich, Peter. Who the Hell's in It: Portraits and Conversations. New York, New York: A.A. Knopf. 2004. ISBN 0375400109
• Eliot, Marc. Cary Grant: The Biography New York, New York: Aurum Press. 2005. ISBN 1845130731
• Higham, Charles, and Roy Moseley. Cary Grant: The Lonely Heart Thompson Learning, 1997, ISBN 0151157871
• Kael, Pauline. "The Man from Dream City - Cary Grant" - The New Yorker - July 14, 1975 - (reprinted in: Pauline Kael: For Keeps - 30 Years at the Movies. Dutton, 1994.)
• McCann, Graham. Cary Grant: A Class Apart Fourth Estate, 1997. ISBN 1857025741
• Morecambe, Gary, and Martin Sterling, Cary Grant: In Name Alone Robson Books, 2001. ISBN 1861054661
• Nelson, Nancy, and Cary Grant. Evenings With Cary Grant: Recollections In His Own Words and By Those Who Loved Him Best. Thorndike, Maine: Thorndike Press. 1992. ISBN 1560543426

Supernova Outbreak: X rays signal earliest alert

Thanks to a lucky break and an overactive galaxy, astronomers have for the first time caught a massive star in the act of exploding. An X-ray outburst recently recorded by NASA's Swift satellite suggests that researchers began viewing the violent demise of a star in the galaxy NGC 2770 just a few seconds after the first X rays arrived at Earth, and hours before the first visible-light fireworks.

BANG! Astronomers serendipitously found the supernova SN 2008d, located in the galaxy NGC 2770, through X-ray observations (labeled as XRF080109). This observation marks the first finding of signs of a stellar explosion emitted so soon after a star's demise. The two other supernovas labeled here were found in this galaxy last year and in 1999. CREDIT: A. de Ugarte Postigo/ESO et al, Dark Cosmology Centre/Univ. of Copenhagen, Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (CSIC), and Univ. of Hertfordshire

Most supernovas aren't identified until they generate an outpouring of visible light, long after key information about the size and other properties of the collapsing star has vanished. The new finding suggests that astronomers using wide-angle X-ray telescopes could routinely witness the very beginnings of hundreds of supernova explosions each year, suggest Alicia Soderberg and her colleagues in an online posting.

Astronomers have previously observed the immediate aftermath of a related class of stellar explosions, the demise of massive stars that are signaled by gamma-ray bursts, the most powerful eruptions in the universe. But in each of the four cases for which researchers have firmly established the link between a supernova and a gamma-ray burst, the bright visible-light afterglows of the bursts hide the information-rich early emissions from the supernovas, Soderberg's team notes.

Early, X-ray signs of supernovas have been predicted for 4 decades but never before been found.

On Jan. 9, Soderberg and her colleagues were using an X-ray telescope on Swift to study a supernova in NGC 2770 that had been discovered 10 days earlier. Just as Swift began observations of this supernova, it recorded a fresh spike of X rays from another region in the galaxy that lasted for about 7 minutes. On Jan. 11, using the Gemini North telescope on Hawaii's Mauna Kea, Soderberg and her colleagues identified the visible-light fingerprint of the new supernova, now dubbed SN 2008d, in NGC 2770.

Soderberg, of Princeton University and the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, and her collaborators posted their findings at xxx.lanl.gov/abs/0802.1712 on Feb. 13. They declined to comment for this story because they have submitted the article to Nature.

The team suggests that the outburst reflects the nature of the star that exploded. When stars more than about eight times the sun's mass succumb to gravity, their interiors implode, giving birth either to a neutron star or to a black hole. Tens of seconds after the collapse, a shock wave reaches the still unperturbed surface of the star and the region just beyond. It's in this relatively low-density environment that the energy locked inside the shock can finally be released as high-energy radiation, or X rays.

From the intensity and duration of the initial X-ray release, the researchers suggest that the star that exploded was compact but is surrounded by a substantial stellar wind, hurled by the star before it went supernova. The researchers suggest that the supernova belongs to a class known as Ibc, characterized by low abundances of hydrogen and silicon. Unlike the rare type of Ibc supernovas that produce gamma-ray bursts, this supernova is rich in helium.

Observing a supernova so early in the game shows "what the progenitor star [was like] just before the explosion," comments Roger Chevalier of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.

"We haven't observed any supernova as early as SN2008d," says Yizhong Fan of the University of Copenhagen's Niels Bohr Institute and the Purple Mountain Observatory in Nanjing, China. "SN 2008d provides us a unique chance to see what happens when an Ibc supernova is born and then to constrain the underlying physics." Fan and his colleagues recently posted their own interpretation of the X-ray data online (xxx.lanl.gov/abs/0801.4325). They propose that the X-ray outburst is a lower-energy analog of a gamma-ray burst.

Li-Xin Lin of the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Garching, Germany, comes to a similar conclusion in an article he posted online March 4 (xxx.lanl.gov/abs/0803.0079). The energy and duration of the X-ray outburst indicates the supernova "is an extension of the gamma-ray burst-supernova connection toward the low energy end," he says. "It also strengthens the GRB-supernova connection."

Even the early X rays recorded by Swift would arrive 10 seconds or more after other emissions—specifically, neutrinos and gravitational waves that emerge from the supernova's core, notes Andrew MacFadyen of New York University in New York City. However, an early X-ray alert would allow researchers to rapidly, if retroactively, determine exactly where and when to look for these crucial, core emissions. This ability offers the strongest promise for revealing the inner workings of supernova explosions.

An Attack on Fermat, Part 2

A Mathematical Tragedy

Sophie Germain had a bold program to prove Fermat's Last Theorem

This is part two of a two-part series. Part I: "An Attack on Fermat"

Nearly two centuries ago, Sophie Germain, the first woman known to have discovered significant mathematical theorems, developed a bold plan to prove Fermat's Last Theorem. But this entire plan was nearly lost to history, until David Pengelley of New Mexico State University in Las Cruces and Reinhard Laubenbacher of Virginia Tech in Blacksburg dug through her notes, long archived in a French library.

Fermat made his conjecture in 1630, but it took more than 350 years for mathematicians to finally come up with a proof of it. Andrew Wiles of Princeton University cracked the problem in 1995. In Germain's day, almost all mathematicians working on the problem tackled only small bits of it at a time. But Germain's approach, had it been successful, would have proven the entire conjecture at one go. Because her work was almost entirely unknown, mathematics ended up reproving some of her results 80 years later.

Before Pengelley and Laubenbacher's recent discoveries, mathematicians knew only of a small partial result of Germain's in number theory. But in her manuscripts, they found a simple, direct plan of attack on Fermat's entire theorem. She exploited techniques developed by Carl Friedrich Gauss and laid out her method in a letter to him in 1819, looking for feedback and, perhaps, collaboration.

Sophie Germain (1776–1831) was the first woman known to have discovered significant mathematical theorems.

She had initially written to the master mathematician in 1804, using her male pseudonym of Antoine-August LeBlanc. She shared with Gauss some proofs that grew from her reading of his great work Disquisitiones Arithmeticae. He had responded with enthusiasm, saying "it pleases me that arithmetic has acquired in you so able a friend." Their correspondence continued for 4 years.

Eventually, Gauss discovered her secret. In 1806, Napoleon's armies were marching into Prussia, and Germain became concerned that Gauss might be in danger. She asked a friend who was a commander in the French artillery to find Gauss and ensure his safety. Her friend followed her request—but revealed her identity in the process.

Gauss initially responded with delight, writing to Germain: "The taste for the abstract sciences in general and, above all, for the mysteries of numbers, is very rare.… But when a woman, because of her sex, our customs and prejudices, encounters infinitely more obstacles than men in familiarizing herself with their knotty problems, yet overcomes these fetters and penetrates that which is most hidden, she doubtless has the most noble courage, extraordinary talent, and superior genius."

Yet, in his next letter, Gauss closed their correspondence, saying he had a new job in astronomy and would no longer have time for her mathematical investigations. She heard from him only once more, when his assistant wrote asking for her help in selecting a clock as a gift from Gauss to his wife.

Sophie Germain corresponded for four years with Carl Friedrich Gauss, one of the greatest mathematicians of all time.

Germain seems to have accepted Gauss's closure, though it isn't known whether she helped with the clock. But she didn't stop her work on number theory. And when she developed her method to solve Fermat's Last Theorem, she wrote again.

Fermat's Last Theorem states that there are no nonzero whole numbers x, y, and z such that xⁿ + yⁿ = zⁿ for any n greater than 2. Germain's approach to proving it used Gauss's new technique of modular arithmetic, which divides different numbers by some fixed number and only considers the remainder. So, for example, 4 modulo 3 is 1, and 7 modulo 3 is also 1.

Germain's idea was that it is often easier to prove that Fermat's equation can't be true when taken modulo some "auxiliary prime" P. It was a promising approach, but one aspect of it was challenging. A step in her method was to divide both sides of the equation by x. But if it happened that P divided x evenly with no remainder, then x would be equal to 0 modulo P. And of course, in mathematics, it isn't legitimate to divide by zero. For related reasons, neither y nor z could be evenly divisible by P either.

So if she proved that Fermat's equation didn't hold modulo P, it only showed that the regular, non-modular version didn't hold for x, y, and z that aren't divisible by P. But that wasn't good enough—she needed to prove it with no restrictions.

So Germain devised a way around the problem. She noted that for any particular values of x, y, and z, only finitely many numbers could possibly divide any of them evenly. So she just had to prove that she could carry her method above through for infinitely many values of P. Then, for any values of x, y and z, she would know that for some P, she'd have proven Fermat's equation couldn't be true modulo that number. That would mean that Fermat's equation wouldn't hold for any particular choice of x, y and z, and Fermat's Last Theorem would be proven.

When Germain wrote to Gauss, she knew she had not yet completed the project. "I have never been able to arrive at the infinity, although I have pushed back the limits quite far by a method of trials too long to describe here," she wrote. "You can easily imagine, Monsieur, that I have been able to succeed at proving that this equation is not possible except with numbers whose size frightens the imagination.… But all that is still not enough; it takes the infinite and not merely the very large."

Gauss didn't respond to her letter.

Germain never managed to arrive at infinity, though she pushed her approach a long way. But the effects of her isolation show in her work. Scattered throughout are little mistakes. "We all make mistakes, and colleagues or referees catch them," Laubenbacher says. "She didn't get that."

Pengelley agrees. "I think what the mistakes show more than anything else is that she didn't have other people who read her work and gave her feedback. It's conceivable to me—unbelievably—that some of her most important manuscripts might not have been read by anybody." Pengelley and Laubenbacher presented their findings at the Joint Mathematics Meetings in San Diego in January.

Even without the mistakes, though, her program could not have succeeded. The problem was simply too hard, and nearly 200 years of mathematical development would be needed before it could be cracked. Eventually, she herself proved that her approach couldn't work.

Germain might have been able to accept the overwhelming difficulty of the problem. "I have never ceased thinking about the theory of numbers," she wrote in her letter to Gauss explaining her program. "I will give you a sense of my absorption with this area of research by admitting to you that even without any hope of success, I still prefer it to other work which might interest me while I think about it, and which is sure to yield results."

Christian Growth

When God called me to be a Christian, I become a Christian by grace, as a free gift. Christian development begins once I accepted the gift of salvation and the new relationship that Christ offers. Maybe you were a Christian as a child, but drifted away and now you’re back to take another look as an adult and recommit yourself to Christ and the Christian way. So, now you embark on the Christian path.

Is the Christian life hard? No, it’s not hard - it’s impossible! Most of what you’re asked to do isn’t natural - not to human beings as we are now. But you’re not alone in this. Jesus puts His Spirit within you and makes it possible for you to live His kind of life.

You can’t do it all immediately, but you will learn. Be mindful of the fact that salvation happens in an instant, the transformation can take a lifetime. Begin where you are. Make honest attempts day by day, living out the meaning of your baptism. And as you make healing, Godward choices, you will be transformed.

I like the old prayer used in the musical Godspell:

Day by day,

O dear Lord,

Three things I pray:

To see things more clearly;

To love Thee more dearly;

To follow Thee more nearly,

Day by day.

To energize this day-by-day transformation in you, God gives gifts.

The Gift of the Word

When the book-of-the-month club asked its members recently (and in times past) to name the book that most influenced their lives, the Bible was the book that topped the list. For Christians, the Bible is more than a good book; it is the Word of God. Through hearing it, studying it, learning it by heart, and meditating on it, we grow as Christians. The Bible is not just for our information, but our formation.

1. Choose your Bible.

The Bible was originally written in Hebrew and Greek. It has been translated into English many times, so there are many translations of Bible to choose from. Talk to your pastor or local Christian bookstore owner for advice on choosing the Bible for your needs. As far as literal translation goes, I have developed a scale that may help you choose on the basis of the closest translation aside from learning Greek or Hebrew.

Word For Word - precise word order sentence structure

New American Standard Bible

King James Version

New King James Version

New Revised Standard - (Mid scale translation: Word For Word and Thought For Thought)

New Living Translation

Contemporary English Version

The Living Bible

Thought For Thought - closest equivalent in meaning and style

2. Read the Bible.

Reading the Bible feeds our souls and shapes our thoughts and actions. Daily reading produces tremendous results.

3. Study the Bible.

While you can gain much from simply reading the Bible, you will find more treasure if you study it: you can do this alone using study guides and reference tools, but you may find even more value in studying with a group.

Some people also find that memorizing key passages of the Bible helps them make these words their own. Mark the passages that especially speak to you or a situation, and commit them to memory. Then they are available to you to meditate on and to working in your heart. This practice has been done with the Scriptures for well over 2,000 years.

4. Apply the Bible.

Bible study or reading the Bible is not just and intellectual exercise to fill our heads with more knowledge. Its deepest value is a part of an ongoing, active relationship with God through His Word.

The Gift of Prayer

Prayer is an expression of faith. People pray while sitting, kneeling, standing, walking, driving or working. Nearly 50% of the world’s population prays daily. Prayer puts us in touch and keeps us in touch with God. Prayer is God’s way of communicating with us about what He is eager, ready and willing to do for us in our lives and what we can do to serve Him. God does answer every prayer: sometimes the answer is yes, sometimes no, and sometimes wait. Remember that prayer is primarily a way we develop a relation with God and Jesus Christ.

The Gift of Faith Sharing

Receive the gift of faith and keep on growing in faith by finding and being with people who have it. We grow as Christians by being with other Christians. And that means being a part of a church. Whether you’re in a church or not, being with people of faith is the important thing.

The Gift of Witnessing

We grow as we pray together, worship together, share the Lord’s Supper, even walk in the Spirit together. A lot happens when we share our faith stories - when I tell you my experience with God and you tell me yours, I can learn from your victories and your failures and you from mine. This is usually meant by the practice of (and the term) witnessing. You witness what you experience.

The Witnessing Top Ten

1. Be Transparent.

Transparency gives credibility to Christianity. Let others see your hurts, fears, questions, doubts, as well as your happiness, delights and dreams. Anything that seems like confusing, insincere hype is quickly rejected. Claiming to be perfect, super-spiritual, or being better than others diminishes the message as well as the messenger. Heart stuff is good stuff. Let others see you as you really are - warts and all.

2. Be Honest.

It is important to be honest about your challenges, disappointments, and struggles as a Christian - just as it is essential to be honest about supernatural experiences, victories and amazing discoveries.

3. Be Brief.

You might be tempted to share everything you know with people. It is better to be brief. And remember that actions, though brief, can be better than words. Words can often be confusing, but actions are always clear.

4. Be Sensitive.

Being sensitive is sensible. Many people are afraid of Christians and churches. They may have had a bad experience in the past and need tender compassion more than religious talk. Others may need food, clothes, medicine or housing before they are ready to listen or talk. A balance between sensitive observation and sensitive talking is the key.

5. Be a Good Listener.

It is in understanding that we can be understood. To understand, it is essential to listen more than we talk. We need to listen with our hearts as well as our ears. The right to be heard is won by being a good listener.

6. Be gracious.

Grace - unqualified acceptance - is more powerful than criticism or judgement because this is what God showed us and what we to show one another. My mother and grandmother taught me that flies are caught with honey rather than vinegar. Being gracious is the most appropriate expression of God’s accepting, healing and transforming power.

7. Be Kind.

Harshness is offensive. Acts of kindness and gentleness make Christianity more irresistible. Christian bullies build barriers, not bridges, to faith. When you are kind, you let people know they are respected and valued. Our words and deeds can either heal or pierce the human heart. The greatest witness is a kind witness.

8. Be Informed.

This means leaning more about the Christian faith through group study, worship and reading. Also getting to know Christ personally and intimately through prayer is essential to effective witnessing. Talking about a stranger is very different from talking about a friend. It is more convincing to share from personal experience than from second-hand information.

9. Be Creative.

The creative witness is a motivating witness. Old religious clichés and tired metaphors are more easily dismissed than new and fresh ways of speaking. Tailoring our witness experience to the uniqueness of each individual produces tremendous results. Courageous creative conversation makes Christianity seem more inviting and exciting - and it is!

10. Be Positive.

Christianity is about ‘Good News” - the meaning of the Gospel or “Good Spell.” It is news of hope, peace and joy - and the love of God that never ends.

Guided by these 10 principals you can share your faith confidently with fellow seekers - inside or outside of the church. Then leave the results up to God. You are not responsible for your friend’s reaction or response. You are not even responsible for your own growth. God will provide the growth - both to you and your neighbor.

Walter

Cary Grant Movie Week starts March 17th...

"TOPPER" (1937) A classic screwball comedy with a supernatural twist, Topper stars the incomparable Cary Grant and sparkling Constance Bennett as George and Marion Kirby, a fun-loving couple who cap an evening of jazz and champagne by running their car into a tree. They return as ghosts with a mandate to liven up the straight-laced hen-pecked life of bank president Cosmo Topper (Roland Young), who's hungry for just such a shake-up. Before long he's boozing, dancing, and getting into fights, all of which gives him a rakish reputation--much to the consternation of his wife (Billie Burke, best known as Glinda the Good Witch in The Wizard of Oz). (In 10 parts)

Don't bend over in the garden Granny; those taters have eyes

Every time I play with a Mister Potatohead, I think of my childhood and of course, Lewis Grizzard - mainly because of his book "Don't Bend Over in the Garden, Granny, You Know Them Taters Got Eyes"

Saturday evening, Some friends of mine and I had some fun with Mister Potatohead after dinner; to the left are the results.

For those of you who don't know about Lewis Grizzard, Lewis McDonald Grizzard, Jr. was a popular and sometimes controversial newspaper columnist who gained fame in the 1980s and 1990s with his popular syndicated newspaper column. Throughout his career, Grizzard's wit entertained readers with a commentary that was unabashedly pro-Southern.

His love for his alma mater, the University of Georgia, his attitude toward Yankees, and his well-known marital failures all provided material for his columns, numerous books, audiocassettes, and personal and television appearances. But it was in his life-and-death struggle with heart disease that he touched the hearts of his loyal readers.

Grizzard grew up in the small town of Moreland, Georgia, where he had been born on October 20, 1947. He attended the University of Georgia in Athens, but because he accepted a job with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in his senior year, he did not graduate until years later. Despite his delayed graduation, Grizzard was awarded the distinguished alumni award from his alma mater's College of Journalism and Mass Communication.

The Georgia-born humorist and best-selling author conveyed the ambivalence of many white southerners who embraced the economic and material benefits of Sunbelt prosperity while remaining skeptical and sometimes resentful of some of the social and political changes that accompanied these gains.

Born in Fort Benning on October 20, 1946, Lewis McDonald Grizzard Jr. grew up in Moreland, where he moved with his schoolteacher mother,

Grizzard

Christine, after his father, army captain Lewis McDonald Grizzard Sr., left them. (Grizzard later memorialized his parents in his books My Daddy Was a Pistol and I'm a Son of a Gun [1986] and Don't Forget to Call Your Mama—I Wish I Could Call Mine [1991].) While a student at the University of Georgia (UGA), he served as sports editor of the Athens Daily News and went on to become the executive sports editor of the Atlanta Journal at age twenty-three. He endured an unhappy stint with the Chicago Sun Times, which he chronicled in If I Ever Get Back to Georgia, I'm Gonna Nail My Feet to the Ground (1990). In 1977 he returned to his home state and soon began to write a regional color column for the Atlanta Constitution that was eventually syndicated in about 450 newspapers. Compilations of those columns formed the basis for many of his twenty-five books on a variety of subjects, from women and religion to golf and UGA football. Many of these were best sellers, including Elvis Is Dead and I Don't Feel So Good Myself (1984), Chili Dawgs Always Bark at Night (1989), and the posthumously published Southern by the Grace of God (1996).

In the self-deprecatory tradition of southern humorists, Grizzard often called himself a redneck,

Lewis Grizzard

but as journalist Peter Applebome has observed, he was actually "the patron saint of the new suburban South, where you could have both the values of the old general store and the designer label wares of the megamalls." He lived in Atlanta's exclusive Ansley Park, his footwear of choice was Gucci loafers (worn without socks), he was partial to Geoffrey Beene cologne, and he used the gun rack behind the seat of his truck to hold his golf clubs. Although he protested that he liked pork barbecue much better, he owned up to eating caviar at Maxim's in Paris and even to visiting the Louvre Museum.

Grizzard was at his best regaling audiences with stories of "rat-killings" in Moreland or discussing the subtleties of the southern pronunciation of "nekkid," but his country-boy perspective shaped his reaction to all of his personal experiences even as he became a national and international celebrity. In a humorous story entitled "There Ain't No Toilet Paper in Russia," he described Peter the Great's palace as "fifteen times bigger than Opryland."

If Grizzard's humor revealed the ambivalence amid affluence of the Sunbelt South, it reflected its conservative and increasingly angry politics as well. He was fond of reminding fault-finding Yankee immigrants that "Delta is ready when you are," and, tired of assaults on the Confederate flag, he suggested sarcastically that white southerners should destroy every relic and reminder of the Civil War, swear off molasses and grits, drop all references to the South, and begin instead to refer to their region as the "Lower East."

His love for his alma mater, the University of Georgia, his attitude toward Yankees, and his well-known marital failures all provided material for his columns, numerous books, audiocassettes, and personal and television appearances. But it was in his life-and-death struggle with heart disease that he touched the hearts of his loyal readers.

In the end, which came in 1994, when he was only forty-seven, the lonely, insecure, oft-divorced, hard-drinking Grizzard proved to be the archetypal comic who could make everyone laugh but himself. He chronicled this decline and his various heart surgeries in I Took a Lickin' and Kept on Tickin', and Now I Believe in Miracles (1993), published just before his final, fatal heart failure.

Ironically, Moreland now boasts museums honoring both him and native son Erskine Caldwell, whose darkly critical vision of the South helped to bring on the changes that Grizzard and his generation of white southerners both embraced and bemoaned.

We all have times we catch up on memories of our childhood and catch up on memories of the people who have passed. Tonight was one of those nights for me after playing with Mister P.

Take care Lewis. You are still missed.

Walter

'The Other Boleyn Girl'

Sexy flick tells torrid historical tale...
Sisters Anne (Natalie Portman, left) and Mary Boleyn (Scarlett Johansson, right)
are rivals for the love of King Henry VIII in "The Other Boleyn Girl."

Last Friday, I took a wonderful woman to a movie, and while the choice of movies these days can be a crap shoot (especially if you want a movie in good taste for mixed company), I'd have to say, her choice was a really good one.

Considering its lucrative love affair with English monarchs, Hollywood should start paying -- as well as filming -- royalties. If the Tudors and Windsors had a shilling for every movie about them, their exchequers would runneth over.

Instead, the big bucks and plentiful pounds are going to screenwriter Peter Morgan and novelist Philippa Gregory for "The Other Boleyn Girl," the latest, sexiest historical romance about Henry VIII and his most controversial wife -- plus her sister.

In Gregory's telling, and in fact, both beautiful Boleyn sisters competed for Henry's love and boudoir. But only one of them wanted his queen's crown.

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"The Other Boleyn Girl"

• Starring: Natalie Portman, Scarlett Johansson
• Rating: PG-13 for mature thematic elements, sexual content and violent images.
• 
  3 1/2 stars = Very good
  
• Web site: sonypictures.com

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An opening montage establishes their idyllic childhood, and director Justin Chadwick hustles us along briskly thereafter: Sir Thomas Boleyn (Mark Rylance) allows shy daughter Mary (Scarlett Johansson) to wed a local merchant's son but has higher ambitions for the feistier Anne (Natalie Portman).

"An opportunity has arisen," he says, deceptively mild and understated as always. Everyone knows that Queen Katherine (Ana Torrent) has long failed to give King Henry a male heir. Sir Thomas invites the king for a hunting visit, instructing Anne to "beguile and divert" him.

Henry comes, sees, but is beguiled and conquered by Mary instead. She, not Anne, is summoned to the court as the royal mistress -- without protest from her acquiescent husband.

The subsequent first love scene between Henry and Mary is one of the film's most exquisite moments, its gentle eroticism slowly rising to a sensual boil. Clearly, these two are lovers. Soon, they'll be parents.

Furious Anne is packed off to cool her heels (and improve her seductive skills) in France. She returns -- in costume designer Sandy Powell's dazzling green creation, clashing loudly with the muted royal color scheme -- when Henry is starting to get bored with Mary, just in time to tease, taunt and lure him away from her sister.

Talk about sibling rivalry. This is as ruthless as it gets. Mary has genuine affection for Henry but is banished, along with the king's illegitimate son. Anne has genuine ambition to be nothing less than Queen of England -- and won't sleep with Hank until he makes it happen.

An annulment is needed, but neither the Church nor Katherine of Aragon will cooperate, which leads to the cataclysmic break with Rome. Henry is facing the two most stubborn women of the 16th century, and England is torn apart by the inevitable intrigues, betrayals and beheadings to come.

Portman and Johansson are dynamic diametric opposites in their roles -- so good that it's unclear which one should be considered the "other" Boleyn girl of the title. Johansson's Mary is the reticent, restrained, emotional heart of the story, throughout which her stunningly lovely face is framed and lighted like a Vermeer.

Dazzling, high-spirited Portman, for her ill-fated part, looks and acts not unlike that other Scarlett girl -- the O'Hara one, as played by Vivien Leigh.

Rylance plays their slimy, despicable father in a nauseously low-key manner, while Kristin Scott Thomas as his disapproving wife fumes. ("When was it that ambition stopped being a sin and became a virtue?")

Torrent is tragically dignified and sympathetic as the discarded Queen Katherine.

Only Eric Bana's moody Henry struck me as wrong. No man, let alone this legendary absolute autocrat, would stay so wimpily enthralled with a gal like Anne, allowing her to withhold sex for eight years, right?

Wrong. He did. He was wildly in love. He wrote her love poems and songs, and sang them to her personally.

Morgan's script deserves credit for simplifying the tangled web of Tudor politics without dumbing it down, but he and/or novelist Gregory have taken several huge liberties with the (for the most part) historical facts. The author tells us Mary "chose to leave court and marry to suit herself." The screenwriter has her banished by Anne's conspiracy.

Worse, and more important if you care about factoids: Mary Boleyn did not bear Henry VIII's illegitimate son. His one and only other documented mistress -- Bessie Blount, by name! -- did so.

So much for pedantry. Director Justin Chadwick is more interested in pageantry, and rightly so. The film is gorgeous, though it wants to be more epic than it is. There's a bit too much bodice-ripping "Days of Our Royal Lives" material, while the great church battle gets short shrift.

Never mind. It's wonderful entertainment, if not wonderful history.

In the end, neither Popes Julius II nor Clement VII would buy Henry's annulment arguments. And when her time came, Henry's kangaroo court wouldn't buy Anne's. Her trial (for adultery and incest) gets about a minute and a half of screen time, hurried and truncated -- rather like Anne.

Definitely a movie worth looking into, seeing and remembering later.

Walter

New Sleep Survey

One-third of US workforce are so sleepy, they could sleep on the job - National Sleep Foundation Survey

About a third of those surveyed say they have fallen asleep or become sleepy at work in the last month. The survey of 1,000 people found participants average six hours and 40 minutes of sleep a night on weeknights, even though they estimated they'd need roughly another 40 minutes of sleep to be at their best. Roughly one-third of those surveyed said they had fallen asleep or become very sleepy at work in the past month.

Just how big a deal that is depends, of course, on your job.

Last week, the chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission acknowledged it should have done more to investigate a tip that security guards routinely took naps while on the job at a Pennsylvania nuclear plant.

It wasn't until a videotape of guards sleeping in a "ready room" at the Peach Bottom plant in south-central Pennsylvania surfaced several months after it got the tip that the NRC announced in September a special investigation.

While sleepy workers know they're not performing as well as they could during the day, work is what's keeping them up nights, according to the survey, which found workdays are getting longer and time spent working from home averages close to four-and-a-half hours each week.

It seems people are also trying to squeeze in more time for themselves and their families, even if it means less sleep.

The average wake up is at 5:35 a.m. and it's followed by about two hours and 15 minutes at home before heading out to work, according to the survey. Average bedtime is 10:53.

Source: AP.

Notable Link: National Sleep Foundation

Lucy, Ethel & lots of candy

One of my favorite Lucy episodes. Enjoy...Mmmmmmm!

Sea reptile is biggest on record

Sea reptile is biggest on record

By Paul Rincon Science reporter, BBC News

A fossilised "sea monster" unearthed on an Arctic island is the largest marine reptile known to science, Norwegian scientists have announced.

The 150 million-year-old specimen was found on Spitspergen, in the Arctic island chain of Svalbard, in 2006.

The Jurassic-era leviathan is one of 40 sea reptiles from a fossil "treasure trove" uncovered on the island.

Nicknamed "The Monster", the immense creature would have measured 15m (50ft) from nose to tail.

A large pliosaur was big enough to pick up a small car in its jaws and bite it in half Richard Forrest, plesiosaur palaeontologist

And during the last field expedition, scientists discovered the remains of another so-called pliosaur which is thought to belong to the same species as The Monster - and may have been just as colossal.

The expedition's director Dr Jorn Hurum, from the University of Oslo Natural History Museum, said the Svalbard specimen is 20% larger than the previous biggest marine reptile - another massive pliosaur from Australia called Kronosaurus.

"We have carried out a search of the literature, so we now know that we have the biggest [pliosaur]. It's not just arm-waving anymore," Dr Hurum told the BBC News website.

"The flipper is 3m long with very few parts missing. On Monday, we assembled all the bones in our basement and we amazed ourselves - we had never seen it together before."

The Monster's flipper alone measures 3m in length

Pliosaurs were a short-necked form of plesiosaur, a group of extinct reptiles that lived in the world's oceans during the age of the dinosaurs.

A pliosaur's body was tear drop-shaped with two sets of powerful flippers which it used to propel itself through the water.

"These animals were awesomely powerful predators," said plesiosaur palaeontologist Richard Forrest.

A second large pliosaur has now been found on the Arctic island Enlarge Image

"If you compare the skull of a large pliosaur to a crocodile, it is very clear it is much better built for biting... by comparison with a crocodile, you have something like three or four times the cross-sectional space for muscles. So you have much bigger, more powerful muscles and huge, robust jaws.

"A large pliosaur was big enough to pick up a small car in its jaws and bite it in half."

"There are a few isolated bones of huge pliosaurs already known but this is the first find of a significant portion of a whole skeleton of such a giant," said Angela Milner, associate keeper of palaeontology at London's Natural History Museum

"It will undoubtedly add much to our knowledge of these top marine predators. Pliosaurs were reptiles and they were almost certainly not warm-blooded so this discovery is also a good demonstration of plate tectonics and ancient climates.

'Monster' fossil find in Arctic

"One hundred and fifty million years ago, Svalbard was not so near the North Pole, there was no ice cap and the climate was much warmer than it is today."

The Monster was excavated in August 2007 and taken to the Natural History Museum in Oslo. Team members had to remove hundreds of tonnes of rock by hand in high winds, fog, rain, freezing temperatures and with the constant threat of attack by polar bears.

They recovered the animal's snout, some teeth, much of the neck and back, the shoulder girdle and a nearly complete flipper.

Unfortunately, there was a small river running through where the head lay, so much of the skull had been washed away.

A preliminary analysis of the bones suggests this beast belongs to a previously unknown species.

Unprecedented haul

The researchers plan to return to Svalbard later this year to excavate the new pliosaur.

A few skull pieces, broken teeth and vertebrae from this second large specimen are already exposed and plenty more may be waiting to be excavated.

"It's a large one, and has the same bone structure as the previous one we found," said Espen Knutsen, from Oslo's Natural History Museum, who is studying the fossils.

Excavations have also yielded long-necked plesiosaurs

Dr Hurum and his colleagues have now identified a total of 40 marine reptiles from Svalbard. The haul includes many long-necked plesiosaurs and ichthyosaurs in addition to the two pliosaurs.

Long-necked plesiosaurs are said to fit descriptions of Scotland's mythical Loch Ness monster. Ichthyosaurs bore a passing resemblance to modern dolphins, but they used an upright tail fin to propel themselves through the water.

Richard Forrest commented: "Here in Svalbard you have 40 specimens just lying around, which is like nothing we know.

The 2007 fieldwork took place in challenging conditions

"Even in classic fossil exposures such as you have in Dorset [in England], there are cliffs eroding over many years and every so often something pops up. But we haven't had 40 plesiosaurs from Dorset in 200 years."

The fossils were found in a fine-grained sedimentary rock called black shale. When the animals died, they sank to the bottom of a cold, shallow Jurassic sea and were covered over by mud. The oxygen-free, alkaline chemistry of the mud may explain the fossils' remarkable preservation, said Dr Hurum.

The discovery of another large pliosaur was announced in 2002. Known as the "Monster of Aramberri" after the site in north-eastern Mexico where it was dug up, the creature could be just as big as the Svalbard specimen, according to the team that found it.

But palaeontologists told the BBC a much more detailed analysis of these fossils was required before a true picture of its size could be obtained.

Cherry Blossom Festival

There are close to a dozen Cherry Blossom festivals in the U.S. and I've been to several of them, especially the big ones in Washington D.C. and New York. If you get the chance, check out this year's festival in Macon, Georgia. This particular festival takes place March 28-April 6, so I suggest you set some time aside to see this beautiful annual event. During the week of the Festival, I'll be uploading some spectacular pictures of the trees and the events, so bookmark this blog, if you like.

Apologize for Slavery? Huh?

RICHMOND, Va. - Meeting on the grounds of the former Confederate Capitol, the Virginia General Assembly voted unanimously Saturday to express “profound regret” for the state’s role in slavery.

Sponsors of the resolution say they know of no other state that has apologized for slavery, although Missouri lawmakers are considering such a measure. The resolution does not carry the weight of law but sends an important symbolic message, supporters said.

“This session will be remembered for a lot of things, but 20 years hence I suspect one of those things will be the fact that we came together and passed this resolution,” said Delegate A. Donald McEachin, a Democrat who sponsored it in the House of Delegates.

The resolution passed the House 96-0 and cleared the 40-member Senate on a unanimous voice vote. It does not require Gov. Timothy M. Kaine’s approval.

The measure also expressed regret for “the exploitation of Native Americans.”

The resolution was introduced as Virginia begins its celebration of the 400th anniversary of Jamestown, where the first Africans arrived in 1619. Richmond, home to a popular boulevard lined with statues of Confederate heroes, later became another point of arrival for Africans and a slave-trade hub.

‘Insidious institutions and practices’
The resolution says government-sanctioned slavery “ranks as the most horrendous of all depredations of human rights and violations of our founding ideals in our nation’s history, and the abolition of slavery was followed by systematic discrimination, enforced segregation, and other insidious institutions and practices toward Americans of African descent that were rooted in racism, racial bias, and racial misunderstanding.”

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The Case Against Reparations

David Horowitz’s widely debated “10 reasons why reparations for blacks is a bad idea for blacks--and racist, too.” is an interesting line of thinking. The most persuasive points include:

• No one racial group is responsible for the crime of slavery. Slavery predated the arrival of white Europeans in Africa; blacks in Africa and even in the U.S. participated in the slave trade.

• Only a tiny minority of antebellum white Americans--about 5 percent of Southern whites--ever owned slaves.

• Most Americans today arrived in the U.S. after 1860 or are descended from immigrants who arrived after 1860, and so have no connection, direct or indirect, to slavery.

• Reparations paid to other oppressed groups are not valid precedents for making reparations for slavery, because in those cases the survivors or their immediate families were still living, or there were treaties involved.

• Not all black American descendants of slaves suffer from slavery’s consequences; most are now solidly middle income or higher.

• Reparations is another case of blaming whites for the problems afflicting the black community, which fuels a “victim” mentality.

• Reparations to black Americans already have been paid through trillions of dollars spent on social welfare and racial preference programs.

At the same time, there are flaws and gaps. First, if reparations for slavery are owed by anyone, they are owed by governments and not individuals or businesses, since slavery was legal at the time. The number of whites who actually owned slaves is irrelevant.

Second, reparations from governments probably were legally owed and due when slavery ended in 1865. Had racism not prevented justice from being done, real victims could have been named, and “forty acres and a mule” or some other measure of restitution would have been awarded.

Third, the moral weight of the case for reparations stands regardless of the race or color of its perpetrators and victims. We talk in shorthand about “what America owes blacks” because virtually all slaves in America were black and nearly all slaveowners were white. Saying the award cannot be fairly divided is not the same as saying an award isn’t merited.

Fourth, to claim reparations would fuel the victim mentality is cheap rhetoric that overlooks how favoritism is widespread in American society. We don’t think twice before extending a helping hand to people in our social networks. The impact of such special treatment on the psyche of its beneficiaries isn’t different just because the beneficiary is black.

Finally, the notion that reparations already have been paid to African-Americans is insulting to the large majority of African-Americans who rely on welfare programs no more than white Americans do, or not at all. They suffered from the legacy of slavery and still face discrimination today. They have not been paid.

No Reparations

Reparations are not the solution. Saying today’s white Americans owe a specific monetary debt to today’s black Americans ignores the heterogeneity of class and race that existed during slavery and today. Who is entitled and who should pay are, in principle, unsolvable puzzles because of the passage of time and countless individual choices made by whites and blacks since the end of slavery.

Suing governments rather than individuals solves some parts of the problem but not others. Governments do not create wealth, they redistribute it. Asking today’s taxpayers to pay for government acts that occurred more than 150 years ago just puts the pea under a different shell. What is immoral for individuals to do is also immoral for governments to do.

The U.S. government has been trying to make amends for slavery, Jim Crow, and institutional discrimination for 40 years, since passage of civil rights legislation and the Great Society programs. Horowitz is right to say the trillions in taxpayer dollars spent trying to help the disadvantaged--black as well as white--climb the ladder of social and economic success is exculpatory.

Demand for an Apology

The first point made was that most knowledgeable advocates of reparations do not believe legal action, even against governments, will be successful. The goal is to get white Americans to admit reparations for slavery were owed in 1865, and perhaps again in 1965 for Jim Crow laws in the South and other forms of institutional discrimination in the North.

I believe it is skepticism similar to my own that leads many whites to view demands for an apology for slavery as merely a tactic used by black advocates who really seek a taxpayer-financed settlement of racial grievances. Apologizing amounts to little more than appeasement, we believe, and it would legitimize more militant demands for cash reparations.

Sure, some blacks use it as a platform from which to blame whites for their problems, and some whites find in it new evidence that blacks seek entitlement rather than equality and opportunity. But with effective public education and less-heated rhetoric from both sides, most people would understand the real goal is a better understanding of history and a new step toward improving race relations.

Financial reparations for slavery is neither good law nor good public policy, and a formal apology for slavery will not satisfy the most vocal advocates of reparations. Nor would everything done by governments or corporations out of guilt or shame help advance race relations.