MARCH’S MOONLIGHT + MADNESS
“We can make our minds so like still water
that beings gather about us that they may see,
it may be, their own images,
and so live for a moment
with a clearer, perhaps even with a fiercer life
because of our quiet.”
(William Butler Yeats)
MARY SHELLEY’S FRANKENSTEIN
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is 200 years old. Mary was born in London in 1797, the daughter of pioneering feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, and was married to the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley when she was 16. Without a formal education, but for her father’s extensive library, she found an outlet in writing stories. Spending the summer at a country house on Lake Geneva in 1816, she and her husband were joined by poet Lord Byron and Dr. John Polidori. Stormy weather forcing them indoors, they held a competition to see who could invent the best ghost story. Conceived from a feverish dream, Mary’s story became the iconic tale of Dr. Frankenstein’s monster created from the spare parts of corpses. In 1818 it was published as Frankenstein: A Modern Prometheus. Barely a teenager, Mary Shelley has influenced our imaginations with her enduring creation. Frankenstein is very much alive. “It’s alive. It’s alive… It’s alive, it’s moving, it’s alive, it’s alive, it’s alive, it’s alive, IT’S ALIVE!”
THE DOORS
Would you like to take a piece of the Hotel Chelsea home? The doors of some of the hotel’s famous residents are being put up for auction. Opened in 1885, the hotel has been closed since 2011 for renovations. It was home to actors, writers, artists, and musicians, lots of musicians. Jimi Hendrix, Bob Marley, Janis Joplin, and Bob Dylan. Jack Kerouac, Thomas Wolfe, Tennessee Williams, and Mark Twain. Jackson Pollock and Andy Warhol. Liam Neeson and Humphrey Bogart. There are 55 original white-washed wooden doors of their rooms which were salvaged during the hotel’s refurbishment … The auction, managed by Guernsey’s auction house, is on April 12 at the Ricco/Maresca Gallery, 529 West 20th St. and on display starting April 5. If you would like one, bids begin at $5,000. Part of the proceeds from the auction will go to City Harvest, which delivers food to New York’s hungry.
In 1966 the Hotel Chelsea was declared a NYC landmark, “one of the few remaining of the great Victorian Gothic apartment houses which once adorned the City.” The 12-story hotel is particularly notable for its ornate iron balconies. Sci-fi writer Arthur C. Clarke wrote the screenplay for 2001: A Space Odyssey in his room at the Hotel Chelsea in the 1960s. It is also here that Bob Zimmerman changed his name to Bob Dylan after hotel guest Dylan Thomas; and where he wrote the album Blonde on Blonde.
BEATLES PARK
Here’s a little known Beatles story. Catching a glimpse of the Beatles as they walked out of an airport was the single most exciting event in the history of a small town in Arkansas. And Walnut Ridge is determined to keep the memory alive. In September of 1964 the Beatles landed at the Walnut Ridge airport for a quick stopover. Word leaked out and the entire town turned up at the airport to see them. In remembrance of that event, Walnut Ridge created Beatles Park, with cutouts, sculptures, and murals of the band including a yellow submarine. The town celebrates by gathering in the park every September for a Beatles Fest, featuring a concert from their own town’s band, the “Liverpool Legends.”
ADA’S ALGORITHM
The world’s first computer programmer lived in the first half of the 19th century and was a woman. Ada Lovelace was born in London in 1815, the daughter of Lord Byron. Lady Byron left her husband, taking the newborn. From the age of 4, Ada was tutored in math and science, rare for a woman in Victorian England. And at 12 she thought up the design for a flying machine! As a teenager, she was the protégé of Charles Babbage who created a mathematical calculating machine. Ada took it a step further, programming a code that was the first algorithm by a machine: it gave it instructions in a language it could understand, the first computer program … Ada foresaw that music, words, pictures, and sounds could be made digital by a machine. Wow, right? Her ideas of computing were far ahead of their time, technology catching up a century later. In the 1970s, the U.S. Department of Defense named a sophisticated computer programming language “Ada” in her honor. It’s still being used today in aviation, health care, transportation, finance, and space … October 15 is Ada Lovelace Day, dedicated to promoting women in STEM: science, technology, engineering, and math.
DOG NEWS
Dog bites man makes the front page of the New York Times March 15, 1939: A legal battle over a dog’s right to be “entitled to at least one bite before his master is held liable for damages.” And the New York State Senate upheld it 25-18, declaring it a time honored tradition that came down to us from the Middle Ages.
ENDNOTE: NEIL deGRASSE TYSON
On Stephen Hawking (1942-2018)
“His passing has left an intellectual vacuum in his wake. But it’s not empty.
Think of it as a kind of vacuum energy permeating
the fabric of spacetime that defies measure.”
WE CAN HELP
The northern white rhino is the most endangered animal on Earth. Their population was largely wiped out during the poaching crisis of the 1970s and 1980s. Sudan, the world’s last male, died after months of poor health. His death leaves only two females, his daughter and granddaughter, alive in the world. Hope for preserving the northern white rhino lies in developing in vitro fertilization (IVF) techniques. So Sudan’s genetic material was collected to be used for this radically new procedure which can cost $10m! Our donation helps San Diego Zoo Global fund new reproductive research at the Nikita Kahn Rhino Rescue Center, relocate rhinos into safer habitats, and provide anti-poaching patrols.
Soundtrack to this Issue
The Animals
Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood
Eric Burdon says he fell in love with this song because that’s how he always felt. “I’ve really been misunderstood. By my mom, my dad, school teachers, a couple of the women that I married. I’ve been misunderstood all of my life.” Wow, think about how Frankenstein’s Monster must’ve felt.
C’mon, sing along, you know the words:
Baby, do you understand me now?
Sometimes I feel a little mad
But don’t you know that no one alive can always be an angel
When things go wrong I feel real bad.
I’m just a soul whose intentions are good
Oh Lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood
Baby, sometimes I’m so carefree
With a joy that’s hard to hide
And sometimes it seems that, all I have to do is worry
And then you’re bound to see my other side
I’m just a soul whose intentions are good
Oh Lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood
If I seem edgy, I want you to know,
That I never mean to take it out on you
Life has its problems, and I get my share,
And that’s one thing I never mean to do
Cause I love you, Oh,
Oh, oh, oh, baby – don’t you know I’m human
I have thoughts like any other one
Sometimes I find myself, Lord, regretting
Some foolish thing, some little simple thing I’ve done
I’m just a soul whose intentions are good
Oh Lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood
Who rescued whom?
So grateful for Barkley coming into my life.
Thanks to Westie Rescue of New England.
Buddha, stay. Good dog. z”l
“…live in the present moment wisely and earnestly.”
(Buddha)
Sources:
W.B. Yeats poem: from “Earth, Fire and Water” (1893)
Frankenstein quote: Frankenstein, Universal Pictures (1931)
Chelsea Hotel quote: New York City Landmark Commission
Ada Lovelace pic: Portrait of Ada Lovelace by Alfred Chalon, 1838
Soundtrack lyrics: Bennie Benjamin, Gloria Caldwell, Sol Marcus ©Warner/Chappell Music, Inc., Chris-N-Jen Music
Eric Burdon quote: Dan MacIntosh interview, September 13, 2010
March 28, 2018
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