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sparkleofthesoul · 4 years ago

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As I get older I’m starting to notice that I’m spending more time reflecting on myself and how far I’ve come and what I want in life. I’m proud that I am getting more in tune with myself and who I am as a person and what values I carry.

This week I’ve been all over the place mentally, I’ve had days where everything is perfect and I’m so satisfied with my life then I’ve had days where I’m so anxious that I can’t walk or stand up in one spot because my legs feel so heavy I feel like I’m going to fall over and my chest is so tight I can’t breathe properly, I’m worrying about small things things or something I can’t even put in finger on. I feel as though it’s because I am growing into the next level of my life and that it may be uncomfortable. I usually take these sort of things with a grain of salt but I decided to do my cards which I do only about twice a year and was surprised by how much they supported how I had been feeling and thinking recently, it kind of told me to keep pushing through and that it will worth it. Change and growth are uncomfortable, you have to learn to get comfortable with being uncomfortable.

The last 6 months I have become so nuch more intuitive to myself and realigning who I am as a person. I’m aware that I’m still effective and manipulated by society and social media so it’s always good to take a step back so you can continue to grow as a person.

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about the sort of people that are positive influences in my life and the sort of people I want to have in my life and I know thrive of being the least knowledgeable person in a room and realising that it’s a opportunity to learn and grow.

I still have so much growing to do as a person and don’t feel as though I’m ready or deservent to attract the sort of love and qualities I’m a partner that I want. To have that connection with someone that only adds value and happiness to your life and vice versa.

Since moving I’m excited to have like minded people in my life that are on there own journeys of self discovery and growth and looking deeper into themselves to ask questions like why you feel certain way in certain situations or understanding how you react to things.

I wonder a lot of souls and the connections of souls to each other whether it be in friendships, relationships or family aspects of life.

I am a lot more uncertain with aspects of myself because I know I’m capable of so much more and less concerned with other people, follow the crowd, worried to stand out with different opinions and thoughts.

We’re the first generation to be this in tune with ourselves and aware with the realisation that life is about so much more than society’s expectations of success.

I still struggle a lot with attachment to people, I hold so much value to people that have been in my life for a long time or that I have once been dear to me that I try and keep the connection going for longer than is beneficial to both parties.

I used to think that people if they care, should stick by you no matter what. However over the last few years I have started learning that you can’t hold onto people, you can make them stay and you can’t stop them from changing and you can’t stop from changing and growing.

Both people and situations comes into your life for a reason, lesson or period of time and you need to appreciate the time that they/it is in your life and when it is time for you to move on you can understand that is for a purpose.

Seizing opportunities to better myself/life have helped me out myself first and not do something or stay somewhere to keep someone in my life and disadvantage myself to become mentality and spiritually strong and free. Now I feel eventually liberated when I outgrow people or let go of toxic relationships and grateful that they have served there purpose in my life and that I was lucky to have them in my life at all.

I’m 2018 I move to another state after becoming back in my home town for 5 years, I never intended to be there for that long that I but stuck and couldn’t see outside of the bubble that was were I was living. I had a good cruisy job, lived 5 minutes from work with my best friend, I have a good fun good of friends that we used to go out and drink together regularly and I was satisfied with being short sighted for the time being. I wished I haven’t taken so long to move but maybe I needed that time there for a reason. I always knew eventually that I would have good things and a fulfilled life. I decided to leave my first relationships of 5 years because at 22 I felt as though we wanted different things in life and that our ideas of the future were so different.

When I finally moved I was in $20,000 debt, lived 30 mins away from the few people I did know there, had a crappy retail job with people I didn’t click with and was still processing some heart ache which stopped me from being open to meeting anyone new. It fucking sucked and my already exisiting anxiety and depression come out to play in full swing stopping me from going out in social situations, withdrawing as a person and lost the fun/happy side of myself.

After almost a year I got presented with a opportunity to get into a new career in a industry I was interested in and had been unable to get into previously, I decided just as I was starting to settle in to where I was to again move into state and seize the opportunity I had been presented with, which meant moving to a city I knew I was going to be thrive in and not living or regularly seeing my American staffy for a year. I knew that period of time wouldn’t be great that I thought it was a good opportunity to change the different of my life and pay off some debt quicker.

That was last year and it was tougher then what I had prepared for, I lived with 2 girls that were nice enough but different to me. Moving into a living space with people when they have already been living there for an extended period of time is never going to feel like your home. I spent a lot of time in my room watching movies because I didn’t have many friends or money to do things as I was paying off as much debt as I could while I was there. I put on weight and my skin broke out and I just wasn’t happy as much I was trying to put on a brave face. As soon as I left Sydney I started feeling like myself again and it was like a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders.

I decided when I moved to be open to opportunity and say yes to new things. I recently heard someone say that you will rarely regret seizing an opportunity but you will always wonder what if, if you don’t. If people new people invite you out you could have the best time and make lifelong friends and if not you can just go home but if you decide not to go you’ll never know what you may have missed out on.

When I was younger I was angry, I didn’t listen to other people’s opinions and would start arguments with people because I thought I knew it all at the age of 23. I knew I had a strong voice but I didn’t know how to express it or convey reasoning behind my opinions. I couldn’t express my emotions in a positive, constructive way and would either withdraw or get angry when I was upset. This is something I am still learning but have come a long way from where I used to be.

Now I thrive on having deep conversations or discussions with people and am interested to understand there point of view and why they have it. A lot of my opinions and way that I saw things were what I have been conditioned to think from different variables in life and it is only when you start to learn about other peoples experiences can you start to actually form your individual opinion about things.

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joemuggs · 5 years ago

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He’s Gone

Reposted from Facebook...

Processing this one is really difficult. Andrew Weatherall's music and cultural influence were a staple in my life from the age of 15: probably the most consistent single musical thread for the 30 years since, in fact. I was, and am, a shameless, total fanboy. All my school, Quaker and university friends know what an obsessive I was - I sat outside HMV waiting for it to open on the day of release to get my 12" of "Higher Than the Sun", and hitch hiked from South Oxfordshire to Leicester to see Primal Scream with him DJing that same year... I was unutterably envious of older kids at sixth form who managed to get to Boys Own parties. His early remixes of Galliano, Yello, Throbbing Gristle, James, The Impossibles, The Orb etc etc etc joined so many dots, but crucially he led me to incredible older music - just his remix titles ("American Spring", "Nancy & Lee") alone were a springboard for discovery. They taught us what I'm now realising that the rest of the world is only now catching up with: that you CAN be into everything, that you CAN navigate the glut of information in our culture, as long as you understand the signposts, as long as you do it with skill and finesse, but also with a devil-may-care sense of adventure and humour that punctures any over earnestness, stops it being a dry, diagrammatic exercise, and makes what you're doing part of the living culture.

And as I got more involved with music and particularly club music he was always there. He was hugely supportive of Cristian Vogel and co, when the rest of the UK techno scene wasn't giving them the props they deserved. I constantly heard stories of him supporting artists like that (and more recently he lent his keen support to to Jabru after I passed him an album)... I had the opportunity to meet him a few times - first through Emma, Cristian and co, and later when I met Elliot who was working for Rotters Golf Club, and Richie who knew him of old - but was WAY too scared and introverted to, and he did after all have a formidable reputation. I did shout "you're great!" or "this is amazing!" at him in a couple of nightclubs, mind. But I continued following his every musical move, which were always great (see the articles I've posted already). From seeing him drop the acetate of "Sugar Daddy" after the lights came up in a sweat drenched Zap club, to feeling like the entire party was underwater at a Haywire Session, so wobbly was the bass, to seeing him play The Fall and the rawest rockabilly in an Islington pub, to playing dub in a beautiful light and airy Crystal Palace studio for a Moine Dubh session, to that cosmic-ambient NTS special last month - he kept delivering. The number of references to him in Bass, Mids, Tops show clearly how his influence has echoed down the generations, and been a vital connector through the music that I'm obsessed with.

I finally met him in person about 7 years ago: I saw him standing in a sunny field at Camp Bestival in his "impressionist painter on an away day" outfit, and plucked up the courage to say hi. He was, as you'll expect from all the stories that people have posted the last 24 hours, an absolute gent. He said "oh I know who you are" - always a scary phrase - but continued it by listing off a set of my things he'd read recently in the WIRE, picking out my report from DMZ's 8th birthday that year as just the sort of thing he likes: "a bulletin from something I haven't really got a clue about but I'm glad exists," he said. Funnily enough I then bumped into him again later that day at Burger King in Winchester Services and he said hi to the kids and again chatted jovially.

After that we stayed in touch. I interviewed him a couple of times, most notably around the first Woodleigh Research Facility album, and every so often I'd stop in at the Scrutton Street studio for tea and biscuits, and to swap tunes. And even allowing for the passive weed smoke, I would always come away inspired - he always had time to talk and always had something interesting to say about whatever was in the ether: I can remember discussing poetry, pop-reggae, apocalypse cults, Ozric Tentacles, Sir Henry at Rawlinson's End, the English landscape, The Cramps' fashion sense and indeed - in very great detail - biscuits. He was always up for hearing my harebrained ideas and helped a lot with the very slow evolution of my discussion events which eventually became the Ambient Salon, which he ended up participating in (refusing even the paltry fee I could offer, insisting it go instead to "local underprivileged kids or something"). His willingness to have faith in my frankly wacky idea, just because it sounded fun, gave me the proof of concept I needed to take it further, and I'd always thought that we'd do it again on a grander scale...

And that's the real gut punch isn't it? He was going to do so many great things. I never got to Convenanza in Carcassone because I assumed it would just keep going, building into more and more of a cultural staple. I'm sure eventually Lee Brackstone would have wrung a book out of him. He could have been a radio and TV presenter up there with the best of the best. Maybe he'd have carried through his threat to become a full time painter too. There was SO much possibility there. Like I said in the Mixmag obit, not only was he not jaded, he was the OPPOSITE. He was just getting started in so many ways. And he was always, always enabling idiots like me, unsung musicians, fringe characters, and just anyone who happened to get in contact if they caught his imagination. It is really striking that everyone I met through him - Tim, Nina, Sean, Caroline, Bernie, Lizzie, Keith and the rest - have been great, great people too, who carry that same sense of generosity of spirit, constant sense of enquiry and can-do attitude. My heart is broken for all of them especially, as well of course for his old-school friends from Boys Own times Terry, Cymon and co: I can't begin to imagine what it is like. The same goes for all those who became part of the close knit community - "family" is not an exaggeration - around A Love From Outer Space and the Convenanza festival. Reading the ALFOS FB group this last week has been really, really quite something. Friendships and marriages made, lifelong passions ignited, a genuine, flesh and blood community built, all around one man's vision... And so, so, SO much incredible music and culture being shared, impossible quantities of it, in fact. It's a lot.

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#andrew weatherall

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vymicitsu1972 · 4 years ago

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secondsightcinema · 5 years ago

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Of Monocles and Mystery: Charles Douville Coburn

As Stanwyck’s shipboard cardsharp “father” in All About Eve (1942)

He’s one of the preeminent character actors of the Golden Age of Hollywood, and, like Sydney Greenstreet and Marie Dressler, among the small club of performers who started hugely successful movie careers around age 60, which at the time was not “the new 50,” it was less Golden Age than Golden Years—time to sit on your laurels and yell “Hey, kids, get off my lawn!” Instead, having only months before lost Ivah, his beloved wife and professional partner of 31 years, Coburn got on a train to Hollywood for a one-picture deal at Metro and immediately became as indispensable to the movies as he had been to the American stage for nearly four decades.

I’m as fascinated by the latecomers as I am by the Rooneys, Garlands, and Dickie Moores who started their screen careers when they were barely out of diapers. I love to watch people grow up and find their voices, see how they chart their uncertain course in the business and in their personal lives. But those who come late to the party, fully formed and with full lives already behind them, are equally intriguing. What’s the story they carry in their voices and faces, where did they come from, what did life throw at them along the way, and how did they respond? What did life make of them, and what did they make of life?

In Coburn’s case, he was prominent enough that I figured there’d be a full-length biography, or if I got luckier, even a memoir.

I didn’t get lucky.

So after the obligatory stops at his Wiki and his entry in David Thomson’s Biographical Dictionary of Film, I started nosing around for other blog posts. I read just one—Cliff Aliperti’s at his Immortal Ephemera site, mainly looking for clues and sources—and started poking around for online links.

This kind of research always puts me in mind of Citizen Kane, and I indulge in an entirely unearned identification with the nameless reporter character who spends the better part of a week trying to plumb the mystery of identity before wanly saying No, he hadn’t found out what Rosebud was, but in any case it wouldn’t have revealed who Kane really was—it was just a piece in a jigsaw puzzle.

Some of you know what this is like. You find contradictions and errors, or intriguing little factoids that raise way more questions than they answer.

With Coburn, this begins at the beginning, with his birth. Some bios say he was born in Savannah, Georgia, but it was actually, per Coburn himself, Macon, Georgia, in 1877, and it was a few years after that his family moved to Savannah. So Coburn was born in the heart of the Confederacy, where veterans of the war would have been everywhere and as Faulkner famously said, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” Do the place and era of his birth explain the fact that Coburn was supposedly a member of White Citizens’ Councils, white supremacist groups? He was a proud son of Georgia who left his papers to the University of Georgia. I ran across one reference to his railing against the 14th Amendment in a late-life interview. It is painful to confront things like this about a beloved actor, someone you feel as if you know. But of course, you don’t, and people are complicated.

All accounts say he began his theatrical career at the Savannah Theatre as a program boy, though he said he was 13 and other sources say 14—I’m inclined to go with his own recollection, though one can’t ever be sure the source isn’t exaggerating for effect….

But all sources including the primary one, our boy Charles, agree that having risen through all available jobs at the theater, when he was 18, he became the Savannah’s manager. This would make it 1895.

I found no references to his parents or the circumstances of his upbringing. Was he at the theater out of love, or did his family need the money? I’m thinking here of Claude Rains, who began his work in the theater at the age of 10, his childhood one of grinding poverty. But of Coburn, at least with what I found poking around online, we have to speculate or leave it alone.

Rich, pervy Uncle Stanley, In This Our Life (1942)

In 1901, he moved to New York. That leaves six years between 18 and 24 for him to practice his trade and prepare to take on the big time. He says he originally hoped to become a “light opera comedian,” but when he saw a Shakespeare play, he was lost, or maybe found. The classics would always be the foundation of his passion for theatre.

What was that New York like? Now I’m thinking of Marie Dressler in Dinner at Eight, her eyes misting with nostalgia as she recalls the New York of her greatest years, when she was the toast of the town, young, beautiful, talented, successful, and surrounded by adoring swains. She pictures snow, and carriage rides to Delmonico’s. Dressler could probably have drawn on her own memory for that moment. Coburn’s turn-of-the-century New York was probably a bit less misty, but it’s always a good idea to have one’s salad days in one’s youth, when one is strong and has a high tolerance for squalor.

But look, by 1905 he starts his own company, the Coburn Players, and meets Ivah. They marry in 1906 and until her death in 1937, they are partners in life and work. Supposedly they had six children. Supposedly one of them became an auto mechanic who married a teacher, moved to California, and fathered movie star James Coburn. Is this true? I do not know.

I found that Playbill has a terrific site with a database of old programs, and while it doesn’t list all of the 30-something Broadway shows in which Coburn was actor, director, producer, or all of the above, it did provide a bit of background for this largely ignored part of his career. Here’s Coburn’s bio from WHO’S WHO IN THE CAST of Around the Corner (1936); according to Playbill, it ran for only 16 performances:

WHO’S WHO IN THE CAST

CHARLES COBURN (Fred Perkins), one of America’s foremost actor-managers, was honored last June by Union College with the degree of Master of Letters in recognition of his services to the American theater. Having embarked to the “enchanted aisles,” that marital and professional partnership known as Mr. and Mrs. Coburn entered upon a lifelong devotion to the classics and other nobilities of the theatre, with a repertoire eventually accruing of sixteen plays of Shakespeare, one of Moliére, three from the Greek and more than a score of the Old English, early American and moderns. They have played under the auspices of a hundred colleges and universities and once��the only actors ever invited to do so—they gave an evening performance on the White House grounds. Some of Mr. Coburn’s most important New York appearances have been in “The Better ‘Ole,” “The Yellowjacket,” “The Imaginary Invalid,” “So This Is London,” “The Farmer’s Wife,” “French Leave,” “The Bronx Express,” “Old Bill, M.P.,” “Falstaff,” “The Plutocrat” and “Lysistrata.” Mr. Coburn was in the all-star casts of “Diplomacy,” “Peter Ibbetson,” “Trelawney of the Wells,” and The Players’ production of “Troilus and Cressida.” He was Father Quartermaine in “The First Legion.” Last season he was starred with William H. Gillette, and James Kirkwood in the revival of “Three Wise Fools,” and last June he played the title role in The Players’ revival of George Ade’s comedy, “The County Chairman.” Ol’ Bill, Falstaff, Macbeth, President of the Senate of Athens, Bob Acres, Rip Van Winkle, Col. Ibbetson, and Henry VIII are among the fine portraitures in his gallery of stage characters. At the invitation of President Dixon Ryan Fox of Union College, Schenectady, the Coburns have been importantly engaged during the past two summers in organizing and directing at that college The Mohawk Drama Festival and the separate but related enterprise, The Institute of the Theatre. The central feature of the Summer Session is a festival of great drama, presented by a distinguished professional company, now established as an annual event of national significance taking on a character similar to that of the Stratford and Malvern festivals in England. /

The Coburns were part of the top echelon of the New York theater scene. For the 31 years of their marriage, they moved in those circles. I found this 1942 New York Times piece on Coburn, which has some wonderful color and detail about his life, where he lived, his sense of humor.

“Piggy,” Lorelei Lee’s dishonorably intentioned diamond mine owning friend in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953)

NYT, 1/18/42, p162, by Theodore Strauss via TimesMachine

A Man and His Monocle Charles Coburn, Traditionalist, Keeps Step in a Changing (Show) World

Charles Coburn is 63, a fact which alone gives him the right to appear in public with a monocle. Happily he also has the rather special sort of face a monocle requires, a certain paternal austerity, a benign aloofness—in short, the countenance of a man well fed upon a rich tradition. If the man is also of a height ordinarily reached by other men only on stepladders, that helps greatly too. Most of all, however, it is the tradition that counts, and in Mr. Coburn’s case he has aplenty. He has been a pillar in our theatre for longer than most of us can remember, and if latterly he has made a pretty farthing by displaying his talents in the West Coast Shangri-La in such items as the forthcoming “King’s Row,” it is a tribute to his culture and attainments that Hollywood is the place where he works contentedly eight months a year. New York is where he lives. It is understandable, of course. Mr. Coburn was nurtured in a mellower climate than that which made Sammy run. Though by no means an old fogy to sit in slippered state at The Players, his mind is solidly furnished; it has the bright polish of old brasswork. It is stocked with reminiscences of those years before the theatre became prohibitively expensive and movies alarmingly cheap, and it is strewn as full of Shakespearean quotations as a brook with pebbles. Over the years his mind has obviously assumed a sort of protective coloration that blends well with the comfortably old-fashioned furnishings of the lofty-ceilinged studio salon near Gramercy Square.

Charles Coburn, Esq. Mr. Coburn first moved into the premises in 1919 when Bohemia still stood on a bearskin and daubed pigment on six-foot easels. Somberly paneled, and with a fireplace large enough to roast a fair-sized midget, the room itself is a veritable museum of carved mahogany, portrait paintings, and assorted abracadabra. Most of the furnishings, Mr. Coburn explains, are props accumulated from that long line of plays in which he and Mrs. Coburn appeared and often produced, from their marriage in 1906 until her death several years ago. “I couldn’t sell the stuff for a nickel,” he confides gently. “But it’s a kind of reminder. It reflects the lives of a couple of people who lived here for quite a long time.” Like an elder craftsman who can wear the toga with authority, Mr. Coburn is apt to become troubled over the future of the art of acting. America, he says, has not produced an outstanding actor since 1926. Personalities, yes, and glamour boys and girls, but not an actor who can play a gentleman one night and a guttersnipe the next with equal effect. The old stock companies, where a young actor could spend his apprenticeship among experienced performers, are gone, and the colleges, where acting could be taught in concert with more mature talents, have thus far failed. The result, Mr. Coburn gloomily believes, is an art dying in the hands of those who could still pass it on.

Cycles and Bicycles Mr. Coburn himself began early. At 13, he took a job as program boy in the Savannah Theatre and five years later became its manager, the youngest entrepreneur in the country. During the two years under his aegis he saw such stars as Henry Irving, Ellen Terry, Maxine Elliott, Mrs. Fiske, Modjeska, Otis Skinner, Richard Masterfield and Stuart Robson walk across his stage. Meanwhile he in turn was preparing for a career as a light opera comedian in amateur productions of “The Mikado,” or “The Little Tycoon,” and he still remembers the lingering glow of that night when Emma Abbott, a reigning favorite, snatched him from a crowd of enthusiasts and kissed him roundly. Ever since, he has been “flattered beyond words” by requests for autographs—thinking that perhaps some youngster may feel as he did. “That is as it should be,” he says, falling into quotation. “It is a world of make believe, and it is in ourselves that we are thus and so.” In later years, and before his long association with Mrs. Coburn as an actor-manager, he spent his apprenticeship as utility man, advance agent, and once, as a means of making a living while looking for work in New York, as a member of the “greatest bicycle racing team of all time.” But when that career threatened to take him from his Broadway precincts, he pawned his bicycle for $29 and hasn’t been on a wheel since. In fact, Mr. Coburn no longer cares for healthy exertion as its own reward. “Look at all those people who exercise regularly,” he exclaims. “What happens to them? They die!”

Listen to that—he sounds just like Charles Coburn!

And then in December, 1937, Ivah died, leaving Coburn bereft of his companion, his wife, his theatrical partner. But a man of such energies, an entrepreneur who had acted, directed, produced, and run his own touring company for decades, was not ready to fade away from grief at 60. Ten months later, in October, 1938, he got on a train and headed out west to begin his next act, the one we know him from.

NY Times, 10/10/37, no byline CHARLES D. COBURN TO APPEAR IN FILM Stage Actor Leaves for Coast for Role in “Benefits Forgot,” His First Motion Picture

Charles D. Coburn, stage actor, the director of the Mohawk Drama Festival at Union College, Schenectady, NY, left by train for Hollywood yesterday afternoon to appear in what was said to be his first motion picture.* He is to play in “Benefits Forgot,” a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer production, in which Walter Huston will be starred. J. Robert Rubin, vice president and general counsel for M-G-M, said that Mr. Coburn had been signed to a one-picture contract with an option on his future services. Production work on “Benefits Forgot” will start next week, he said. As director of the Mohawk Drama Festival, held every summer at Union College, Mr. Coburn has repeatedly voiced the belief that there is now a “crisis in the American theatre” because there were no stock companies to serve as a training school for young players. Mr. Coburn appeared on Broadway in March in “Sun Kissed” and in 1936 played with the late William Gillette in “Three Wise Fools.” For many years Mr. Coburn appeared on the stage with his wife, the former Ivah Wills, who died last December 27.

A few months later, he’s comfortably ensconced in his Hollywood Blvd apartment, throwing a reunion for cast members of a popular show he had been in 30 years before. I’ve boldfaced names you’ll probably recognize…

NYT, 1/3/39, “Old Bill” Holds Reunion Coburn is New Year’s Host on Coast to ‘Better ‘Ole” Actors Special to the New York Times

Hollywood, Calif., January 2—Survivors of “The Better ‘Ole’” company made New Year’s the occasion of their first reunion in twenty years as guests of Charles Coburn, the original Old Bill, at his apartment here. Stage and film celebrities turned out to greet him and the others comprising “three muskrats,” Charles McNaughton, Bert, and Collin Campbell, Alf. Others of the old troupe present were Mrs. Kenyon Bishop, the original Maggie; Lynn Starling, who played the French colonel; Eugene Borden, the French porter, and, collaterally, F.H. (Frankie) Day the Gramercy Park greeter of the dawn who played with Mr. Coburn in the sequel play, “Old Bill M.P.” The “muskrats,” the Tommies created by the wartime crayon of Captain Bruce Bairnsfather, donned white aprons in their post-war “pub” and served guests, who included several members of The Players in New York and many once associated with one of the five companies that played “The Better ‘Ole” on Broadway and on the road. Among them were Mr. and Mrs. Guy Kibbee, Mr. and Mrs. Monte Blue, Mr. and Mrs. Kenneth MacKenna, Mr. and Mrs. Patterson McNutt, Walter Connolly, Nedda Harrigan, Mr. and Mrs.Charles Judels, Pedro de Cordoba, Fritz Leiber, P.J. Kelly, Thomas Mitchell, Andre Charlot, Janet Beecher, Olive Wyndam, Marcella Burke, Georgia Caine, Emma Dunn, Marjorie Wood, Frieda Inescourt, Esther Dale and Irene Rich. Mr. Coburn is the only living Old Bill. The others were DeWolfe Hopper, James K. Hackett, Maclyn Arbuckle and Edmond Gurney. In the New York company, the late Mrs. Ivah Coburn played Victoire, the French maid.

So the years pass, with Coburn occupying himself on screen, stage, and radio, splitting his time between L.A. and New York.

Then, in 1959, the second-to-last mystery I found: his second marriage.

NY Times, 10/19/59 Charles Coburn Marries LAS VEGAS, NEV., Oct. 18 (AP)—Charles Coburn, 82-year-old actor, dropping his famed monocle only to kiss his 41-year-old bride, today married Mrs. Winifred Jean Clements Natzka, widow of a New York Opera Company basso. The ceremony took place in the chambers of acting Justice of the Peace J.L. Bowler.

…and this leads to yet more questions. Did he marry for love, or for a tax deduction? He railed about tax rates in some of his late-life interviews, using the issue as a hook to promote You Can’t Take It With You, the show he was then touring.

And the final mystery: Most sources say this second marriage produced a child, a daughter. To which I say, seriously? Is an octogenarian Coburn supposed to have been up to siring a child? On the other hand, he managed to sire six of them 50 years before, and he was obviously a man of remarkable stamina. But perhaps his bride was pregnant by the opera singer who had widowed her, and that’s one reason why she was interested in marrying a man twice her age?

So, like Rosebud, none of these things definitively answer the riddle, Who was Charles Coburn? But they fill in some important blanks, they give us the flavor of his life in the New York theater, and the life he carried around inside himself when he made all those glorious movies we’re still watching.

And also like Charles Foster Kane, on August 30, 1961, death came for human dynamo Charles Douville Coburn, then 84, following minor surgery at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. One obit said his wife and one of her two sons from her previous marriage were with him when he passed.

Not a word about the baby daughter, or, for that matter, any of the other six Coburn offspring, either in this obit as survivors, or mentioned a month later in a piece about his will and estate.

So if I ever get to have a cocktail with him in that cozy little bar in the sky, I’ll see if he can clear any of this up.

This was written for the 2019 What a Character! Blogathon, hosted by Aurora, Kellee, and Paula. Please go take a look at the other fabulous entries—you’ll be glad you did.

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political-fluffle · 5 years ago

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Brad Parscale has said he’s taking a relative pittance to run the president’s reelection operation. But as with much of what Parscale has claimed about his work and life, that’s not the full story. This is.

(...) In the speech, Parscale painted his own life story as a testament to the need for Trump. He served up a vivid account of facing crushing personal and professional setbacks (“I was down and out”) before launching a business on a shoestring, then prospering through hard work and self-reliance. He is evidence of the American dream, Parscale declared. His life, he said, shows “why we all need to go out and fight for the president. So that all of our kids can have that same possibility to have that dream happen for them.”

In fact, Parscale’s accounts of his life and his work for the president comprise a classic Trumpian tale: They’re a combination of hyperbole, half-truths and the occasional fiction. Indeed, Parscale shares more than one trait with his most important client. He has embraced political beliefs not in evidence before the 2016 campaign. Like Trump, he has adapted to opportunities as they arose. And like Trump, Parscale is largely unencumbered by the concerns for consistency and accuracy that are the hobgoblins of smaller minds. “When I give a speech, I tell it like a story,” Parscale says when asked about his biographical embellishments and errors. “My story is my story.”

(...) Parscale’s no-commissions policy did not apply when the client was the Republican National Committee, whose main mission, at least when it comes to employing Parscale’s firm, is reelecting Trump. That work represented $18 million in billings for Parscale Strategy since he was named 2020 campaign manager, dwarfing the $4.8 million his companies have received directly from Trump committees.

In an interview for this article, Parscale confirmed he was taking commissions on the portions of the $18 million that was used to buy advertising, but he declined to discuss specifics. Parscale said he saw no conflict of interest because the party was making the decisions. “That’s the RNC’s money,” he said. “If they call me tomorrow and say, ‘We’re not spending any more money on this,’ there’s nothing I can do.”

Parscale then changed his position following that interview and two articles in other publications that examined Parscale’s compensation. The RNC told ProPublica and Texas Monthly in early September that, at Parscale’s request, it would no longer purchase digital ads through his firms. “Going forward, all RNC digital buys will be made directly to the host sites,” party spokesman Mike Reed says. “This is to ensure complete transparency and to give Democrats and the press no way to mislead and wrongly accuse anyone of impropriety.” (...)

In political terms, Brad Parscale was a nobody before his association with Trump. In the span of just a few years, he has reinvented himself, transforming from an apolitical digital geek — building local websites in T-shirts and cargo shorts for a small San Antonio company — into a hyperpartisan president’s raging avatar, bestriding the national stage in Ermenegildo Zegna suits.

“He was not that guy three years ago,” says John Dickson, a principal of Denim Group, a prominent San Antonio cybersecurity firm, who met Parscale during the 14 years Parscale worked in that city. “He was not a bomb-thrower or an ideologue. He was a savvy business guy, a hustler.” (...)

Brad Parscale has spoken of a modest upbringing, describing himself as a “farm boy from Kansas.” In fact, he grew up on a suburban cul-de-sac. He attended Topeka-area public schools, where he was a good student and a basketball star. A frustrating college sports career, ended by injuries to his leg and back, took him to four schools. He graduated from Trinity University in San Antonio in 1999, majoring in international business and economics. (He regularly describes it, incorrectly, as an Ivy League school.) (...)

In his Miami speech, Parscale described the Trump Organization call as coming at a moment when he was still struggling. “At this point,” he said, “I have six employees. … I’m living in an $80,000 house, driving a Dodge Charger.” In fact, in 2012, Giles-Parscale had a staff of 30. Parscale lived in a $500,000 home with a swimming pool on a golf course and drove a Lexus.

Parscale simply “made up” his $10,000 price for the initial 2012 work, he later told The Washington Post, with the aim of hooking the Trumps as a client: “I recognized that I was a nobody in San Antonio, but working for the Trumps would be everything.”

Giles-Parscale soon became the go-to choice for other Trump work: the Trump Winery website, Melania Trump’s skin care products website; the Eric Trump Foundation website (Parscale did the latter work for free). (...)

What came next is widely known: In February 2015, the Trumps asked Parscale to craft a simple landing page for the presidential exploratory committee. Parscale did it for $1,500, completing the work on his laptop at home over a weekend. He got another call in June and agreed to build the Trump presidential campaign’s website for $10,000.

Jill Giles was mortified. A lifelong Democrat, she told friends she found Trump’s candidacy “repellant,” and she didn’t want her firm to have anything to do with it. But Parscale reassured his partner: “Nothing will come of this. This isn’t going to last long.” (...)

Parscale had cultivated a crucial relationship with Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, who had taken a special interest in the campaign’s digital efforts. Kushner became his most essential ally, enlisting Parscale as his proxy. Parscale understood a fundamental rule of life of Trump’s world: The family’s favor meant everything. “He focused on the kids,” says estranged Trump adviser Omarosa Manigault Newman, who met Parscale during the campaign. “Once the kids like you, you’re in with Trump.” (...)

“I’ve always thought that was the moment when Brad realized if I play nice with these people, they’re going to play nice with me. And he’s maintained that ever since. I am convinced to this day Brad is who he is because he made peace with the RNC. At every point since then, the benefit of that arrangement has been reinforced. He’s navigated all the levers of power very effectively. Honestly, I think that’s what he’s best at.” (...)

“If you don’t know what you’re talking about, you think he’s a 21st-century Steve Jobs,” says a Republican consultant who knows Parscale. “He’s not an asshole. He’s kind of a huckster. But he’s smart enough to realize he’s a huckster.” (...)

During the 14 months before Parscale’s selection, his firms received more than $13 million. The money came from three different Trump campaign committees, the RNC, the presidential inaugural committee, a pro-Trump super PAC and a “dark money” organization. Parscale unsuccessfully sought work from at least two other GOP campaign committees.

Parscale simultaneously served as a co-founder of and senior adviser to America First Policies, a pro-Trump “dark money” group, and its sibling, the super PAC America First Action, which quickly became a paid refuge for Trump campaign veterans. The two groups are allowed to raise unlimited sums but are legally barred from coordinating with the campaign. Activist group Common Cause claims, in complaints to the FEC and the Justice Department, that the two groups have illegally coordinated with the Trump campaign. The complaints are still pending. (A spokesperson for America First declined to comment.) (...)

Parscale is part of Bannon's, Mercer's and Malofeev's laundering of rubles into the coffers of Trump's PAC and the RNC. His "strategic skills" are the work of Russian experts, the large ammount of small donations for the PAC also comes from the Kremlin (all in the dark) He's just a front for those activities, and we can also say that he was involved in the Cambridge Analytica/Facebook data mining of personal info from millions of people.

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biofunmy · 6 years ago

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“Romeo and Juliet” director Franco Zeffirelli dies at 96

Italian director Franco Zeffirelli, who delighted audiences around the world with his romantic vision and often extravagant productions, most famously captured in his cinematic “Romeo and Juliet,” has died in Rome at 96.

While Zeffirelli was most popularly known for his films, his name was also inextricably linked to the theater and opera. Showing great flexibility, he produced classics for the world’s most famous opera houses, from Milan’s venerable La Scala to the Metropolitan in New York, and plays for London and Italian stages.

Zeffirelli’s son Luciano said his father died at home on Saturday.

“He had suffered for a while, but he left in a peaceful way,” he said.

Zeffirelli made it his mission to make culture accessible to the masses, often seeking inspiration in Shakespeare and other literary greats for his films, and producing operas aimed at TV audiences.

Claiming no favorites, Zeffirelli once likened himself to a sultan with a harem of three: film, theater and opera.

“I am not a film director. I am a director who uses different instruments to express his dreams and his stories – to make people dream,” Zeffirelli told The Associated Press in a 2006 interview.

From his out-of-wedlock birth on the outskirts of Florence on Feb. 12, 1923, Zeffirelli rose to be one of Italy’s most prolific directors, working with such opera greats as Luciano Pavarotti, Placido Domingo and his beloved Maria Callas, as well Hollywood stars including Elizabeth Taylor, Mel Gibson, Cher and Judi Dench.

Throughout his career, Zeffirelli took risks — and his audacity paid off at the box office. His screen success in America was a rarity among Italian filmmakers, and he prided himself on knowing the tastes of modern moviegoers.

He was one of the few Italian directors close to the Vatican, and the church turned to Zeffirelli’s theatrical touch for live telecasts of the 1978 papal installation and the 1983 Holy Year opening ceremonies in St. Peter’s Basilica. Former Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi also tapped him to direct a few high-profile events.

But Zeffirelli was best known outside Italy for his colorful, softly-focused romantic films. His 1968 “Romeo and Juliet” brought Shakespeare”s story to a new and appreciative generation, and his “Brother Sun, Sister Moon,” told the life of St. Francis in parables involving modern and 13th-century youth.

“Romeo and Juliet” set box-office records in the United States, though it was made with two unknown actors, Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey. The film, which cost $1.5 million, grossed $52 million and became the most successful Shakespearian movie ever.

In the 1970s, Zeffirelli’s focus shifted from the romantic to the spiritual. His 1977 made-for-television “Life of Jesus” became an instant classic with its portrayal of a Christ who seemed authentic and relevant. Shown around the world, the film earned more than $300 million.

Where Zeffirelli worked, however, controversy was never far away. In 1978, he threatened to leave Italy for good because of harsh attacks against him and his art by leftist groups in his country, who saw Zeffirelli as an exponent of Hollywood.

On the other hand, piqued by American criticism of his 1981 movie “Endless Love,” starring Brooke Shields, Zeffirelli said he might never make another film in the U.S. The movie, as he predicted, was a box office success.

Zeffirelli wrote about the then-scandalous circumstances of his birth in his 2006 autobiography, recounting how his mother attended her husband’s funeral pregnant with another man’s child. Unable to give the baby either her or his father’s names, she intended to name him Zeffiretti, after an aria in Mozart’s “Cosi fan Tutti,” but a typographical error made it Zeffirelli, making him “the only person in the world with Zeffirelli as a name, thanks to my mother’s folly.”

His mother died of tuberculosis when he was 6, and Zeffirelli went to live with his father’s cousin, whom he affectionately called Zia (Aunt) Lide.

It was during this period of his childhood, living in Zia Lide’s house with weekly visits from his father, that Zeffirelli developed passions that would shape his life. The first was for opera, after seeing Wagner’s “Walkuere” at age 8 or 9 in Florence. The second was a love of English culture and literature, after his father started him on thrice weekly English lessons with a British expatriate living in Florence.

His experiences with the British expatriate community under fascism, and their staunch disbelief that they would be victimized by Benito Mussolini’s regime, were at the heart of the semi-autobiographical 1991 film “Tea with Mussolini.”

He remained ever an Anglophile, and was particularly proud when Britain conferred on him an honorary knighthood in 2004 — the only Italian citizen to have received the honor.

As a youth, Zeffirelli served with the partisans during World War II. He later acted as an interpreter for British troops.

The lifelong bachelor turned from architecture to acting at the age of 20 when he joined an experimental troupe in his native city.

After a short-lived acting career, Zeffirelli worked with Luchino Visconti’s theatrical company in Rome, where he showed a flair for dramatic staging techniques in “A Streetcar Named Desire” and “Troilus and Cressida.” He later served as assistant director under Italian film masters Michelangelo Antonioni and Vittorio De Sica.

In 1950, he began a long and fruitful association with lyric theater, working as a director, set designer and costumist, and bringing new life to works by his personal favorites — Mozart, Rossini, Donizetti and Verdi.

Over the next decade, he staged dozens of operas, romantic melodramas and contemporary works in Italian and other European theaters, eventually earning a reputation as one of the world’s best directors of musical theater.

Both La Scala and New York’s Metropolitan Opera later played host to Zeffirelli’s classic staging of “La Boheme,” which was shown nationally on American television in 1982.

Zeffirelli returned to prose theater in 1961 with an innovative interpretation of “Romeo and Juliet” at London’s Old Vic. British critics immediately termed it “revolutionary,” and the director used it as the basis of frequent later productions and the 1968 film.

His first film effort in 1958, a comedy he wrote called “Camping,” had limited success. But eight years later, he directed Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in Shakespeare’s “The Taming of the Shrew,” and made his distinctive mark on world cinema.

When Zeffirelli decided to do “La Traviata” on film, he had already worked his stage version of the opera into a classic, performed at Milan’s La Scala with soprano Maria Callas. He had been planning the film since 1950, he said.

“In the last 30 years, I’ve done everything a lyric theater artist can do,” Zeffirelli wrote in an article for Italy’s Corriere della Sera as the film was released in 1983. “This work is the one that crowns all my hopes and gratifies all my ambitions.”

The film, with Teresa Stratas and Placido Domingo in the lead roles, found near-unanimous critical acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic — a rarity for Zeffirelli — and received Oscar nominations for costuming, scenography and artistic direction.

Zeffirelli worked on a new staging of La Traviata as his last project, which will open the 2019 Opera Festival on June 21 at the Verona Arena. “We’ll pay him a final tribute with one of his most loved operas,” said artistic director Cecilia Gasdia. “He’ll be with us.”

Zeffirelli often turned his talents toward his native city. In 1983, he wrote a historical portrait of Florence during the 15th and 16th centuries, what he called the “political utopia.” During the disastrous 1966 Florence floods, Zeffirelli produced a well-received documentary on the damage done to the city and its art.

“I feel more like a Florentine than an Italian,” Zeffirelli once said. “A citizen of a Florence that was once the capital of Western civilization.”

Accused by some of heavy-handedness in his staging techniques, Zeffirelli fought frequent verbal battles with others in Italian theater.

“Zeffirelli doesn’t realize that an empty stage can be more dramatic than a stage full of junk,” Carmelo Bene, an avant-garde Italian director and actor and frequent Zeffirelli critic, once said.

It was a criticism that some reserved for his lavish production of “Aida” to open La Scala’s 2006-7 season — his first return to the Milan opera house in a dozen years and the fifth “Aida” of his career. The production was a popular success, but may be remembered more for the turbulent exit of the lead tenor, Roberto Alagna, after being booed from the loggia.

“I’m 83 and I’ve really been working like mad since I was a kid. I’ve done everything, but I never really feel that I have said everything I have to say,” Zeffirelli told The Associated Press shortly before the opening of “Aida.”

Zeffirelli had trouble with his balance after contracting a life-threatening infection during hip surgery in 1999, but didn’t let that slow him down. “I always have to cling on this or that to walk … but the mind is absolutely intact,” he said in the AP interview.

———

Giada Zampano contributed from Rome.

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junker-town · 8 years ago

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When exactly did you become a fan of your college football team?

Here are a bunch of fun stories. Give us yours!

SB Nation has a cool series right now: each of our team sites discussing the origins of fandom. I wanted to share a few of the best from our college team blogs, though there are many other good ones. (To join in and enter a contest, find your school's blog.)

College fandom often goes deeper than the pro kind, whether due to regional history or alumni status or family ties, and a lot of these stories stand out as pretty unique.

Like becoming a Texas fan because your mom was into Russell Crowe's rock band:

Mom decided to visit Austin in 2001 to see TOFOG and re-connect with a friend from graduate school.

I was looking at at a handful of schools at that time — Montana, Montana State, CU-Boulder, a liberal arts college in Minneapolis, and Indiana as a back up. I wasn’t really sold on any of them and basically eliminated the school in Minnesota because I made the smart choice of visiting it in December.

Mom and her friend decided I should visit Austin, so I did in October of 2001.

Or finding UCLA by way of the New York Yankees:

In the late 70s, it was all about the Yanks, no matter how much you Dodger fans hated it. My guys on those Yankee teams were catcher Thurman Munson and first baseman Chris Chambliss, who kickstarted the Yankee dynasty of that era with a walk-off home run in the 1976 American League Championship Series to send the Yankees to the World Series.

It would be years later that I came to know that Chambliss had played his college baseball at UCLA.

My next step towards the Bruins probably didn’t come until the late '80s when Troy Aikman faced off against Rodney Peete.

Or finding Penn State because the Browns pulled a Browns:

On Nov. 9, 1993, the Browns made a shocking move by releasing Bernie Kosar, a hometown hero whom every kid (and many adults) in my region idolized. He was the ultimate underdog, a slow-footed quarterback with awkward mechanics. Kosar was able to use his understanding of the game to become one of the NFL’s top quarterbacks throughout the late ‘80s and into the ‘90s.

I was too heartbroken to cheer for the Browns for the remainder of the season. I followed Kosar to the Cowboys and cheered as he filled in to lead them to an NFC Championship victory by filling in for an injured Troy Aikman and took the field for the final play in Super Bowl XXVIII.

I was determined not to cheer for the Browns again until Art Modell had sold the team and Bill Belichick was long gone from Cleveland, and decided to pay more attention to college football and my adopted team of Penn State.

Well, let’s just say my timing couldn’t have been better. As you know, the Nittany Lions went undefeated behind one of the most electrifying offenses in the history of college football, led by the likes of Kerry Collins, Ki-Jana Carter, Kyle Brady and Bobby Engram.

Or becoming a Sooner immediately after immigrating from India:

When my family made the move from India decades ago, we first settled in the great town of Norman, Oklahoma, where my uncle’s family who’d sponsored ours for immigration had been living. My uncle, a professor and administrator at OU through the 1980s and ‘90s, gets most of the credit for teaching me about American sports, and my two older U.S.-born cousins get the rest. Truth be told, the first football game I remember was Notre Dame taking on West Virginia. My attention was fixated on the Irish’s helmets.

Forgive me, for I was only six and had never before seen the crazy game of football. (I will mention, however, I was a pretty damn good cricketer.)

My fickle infatuation didn’t last long, and the colors of the Crimson & Cream took over. I remember my cousin, Vijay, would fill me in on all things OU daily, and I’d eat up that knowledge. About a month into my indoctrination, I knew all about Coach Switzer, the wishbone, Mookie Blaylock and the Kansas Jayhawks, who had robbed the Sooners of the 1988 basketball crown and were the epitome of evil.

Or getting the full brunt of Oklahoma State pain right up front:

On October 30, 2004, I cried like the nine-year-old I was. Since the first home game I’d attended nearly a year before, I'd developed a passion for Oklahoma State. What happened on October 30, 2004?

Adrian Peterson happened.

It was another classic Bedlam. Back-and-forth, and neither team could stop the other. Peterson had 249 yards on 33 carries, and rattled off an 80-yard touchdown run that all of us remember.

A Vernand Morency touchdown with 11 minutes left cut the second-ranked OU lead to 38-35. The momentum swung toward OSU, and it felt like if the Cowboys could just score one more time, they’d steal a Bedlam win.

With ten seconds left, OSU set up Jason Ricks for a 49-yard field goal from the left hash.

Good snap. Good hold. Wide right.

From our seats, I thought it went in. I went ballistic. I then looked at my dad and saw the horror on his face.

Or becoming a Louisville fan at an even younger age:

I can't tell you when precisely when I "decided" to become a Louisville fan. All I know is there are tapes of me asking which team is "the good guys" very soon after the time I learned to talk. All I know is there are videos of me in a U of L basketball uniform performing mock starting lineups at an age where psychologists say I couldn't form conscious memories. All I know is that for as long as I can recall, Cardinal sports have been something that I've cared about far more than I care about most things.

Or being literally born into fandom:

Following a discharge as a Major, this family put in roots in South Jordan, Utah. Partially due to the chance to go to BYU sports.

Early in the 3rd quarter, Steve Young threw a dart to Mike Eddo for a 24-yard TD, and a Lee Johnson PAT put BYU up 42-7 against the Bowling Green Falcons.

It was around this moment when I pulled my best Lee Johnson imitation — in my mother’s uterus. That’s right. My mom not only went to a football game while she was 9 months pregnant, she also went into labor.

Or finding rivalry while in the middle of making your college decision:

In February of 2008, I visited the University of Oregon for the first time. By the time I completed the tour, I knew this place was special. I just felt like I was at home, especially because I am a runner, and how could I turn down a town with running at its core?

On the way back up to the airport, we stopped at Oregon State for a visit. As soon as I heard they didn't offer a journalism program, I popped the trunk and pulled out my Ducks sweatshirt I’d just acquired and tossed it on while still on campus.

I also visited Washington State and loved the campus. What crossed it off the list was when someone on the campus tour asked what people do for fun in Pullman. Well, they can't be honest and say drink heavily, so they pointed us to Moscow, Idaho, where I think there was a Walmart and maybe an IHOP.

(Our Washington State fans are over here.)

Or having one of those geographically disparate piles of fandoms that mark a person as being from a time, rather than a place:

I got into sports when I was five, and I was five in 1995, and the Gators were great at football then. I would be up early for school every morning, and started reading the sports pages of the Orlando Sentinel daily and watching SportsCenter almost as often, falling for the Gators and Atlanta Braves and Green Bay Packers and Orlando Magic because they were all prominent and potent.

I was a bandwagoner, but we who are fans all are bandwagoners at least once, whether we jump on the back of the wagon, or are placed on it by parents, or amble up onto it as children who would have no use for the word “bandwagon” in the first place.

Or the greatest fandom explanation of them all: picking a lifelong allegiance just to troll your friends:

I followed the best players and tuned into whatever the prime games on ESPN and ABC were. That is until I got sick of my friend and his borderline obsession with [Iowa State QB] Seneca Wallace. I’m not embellishing when I tell you that at the peak of this love affair, he owned three Seneca Wallace jerseys and had them in a rotation. To top that, when Wallace made it to the league, my friend would trade him to whichever team he used to play me in Madden.

So, I did what all of us would do to their friend… I started rooting for his favorite player’s rival, just to bust his huevos.

Now, I didn’t know anything about Iowa to start. I thought their jerseys were some of the cleanest in college football. But that was about it. As I started watching more intently, it didn’t take long for me to get hooked.

I was raised a fourth-generation Georgia Tech fan in Atlanta. My first sports memory is a Clemson fan roaring in my face when I was three. The first sports thing I cared about was the Yellow Jackets' 1990 national title season. I assumed things would stay good forever, so I became a Falcons and Hawks fan too. Things didn't stay good.

I went to Kennesaw State, a little north of Atlanta, but mostly rooted for Tech until KSU's 2010 announcement that we were starting an FCS team. I'd never identified with Tech's fans, because I'm not smart and because Jackets aren't used to embracing sidewalk alumni, so transferring all my emotions was easier than it sounds.

Otherwise, in my job covering college football full-time since that season, I think I just root for whatever would make the most people happy at the time. Clemson winning a good title game made people pretty happy.

Tip on over to your school’s blog to share your own story.

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