Month: December 2019

Kennedy Center: EWF; Sally; Linda; Sesame St; MTT

Field, Ronstadt, Tilson Thomas

The 42nd Annual Kennedy Center Honors will air Sunday, December 15 – earlier than usual – at 8 p.m. EST. CBS has broadcast the special each year since its debut. The event will take place on December 8. Earth, Wind & Fire; Sally Field; Linda Ronstadt; Sesame Street; and Michael Tilson Thomas will be celebrated.

Michael Tilson Thomas

Michael Tilson ThomasAmerican conductor, pianist and composer Michael Tilson Thomas is a familiar name. He is currently music director of the San Francisco Symphony, though he announced in 2017 that he would step down in 2020. He’s also “artistic director of the New World Symphony, an American orchestral academy based in Miami Beach, Florida.”

He has his own YouTube channel. NPR mentions him frequently. A 2019 article in Vulture describes him a “disrupter who’s become the comfortable center.”

Michael Tilson Thomas is the only one in this group that had not appeared in this blog before now.

Sally Field

I wrote an extensive post about Sally Field in November 2016 when she turned 70. I’d seen her in everything from Gidget to Sybil to Brothers and Sisters. And she’s still working.

Earth, Wind & Fire

Their introduction on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame page says it well. Earth, Wind & Fire “took jazz, soul, gospel, pop and more and wrapped them in one psychedelic, mystical package.” The band was founded in Chicago by the late Maurice White in 1969.

Rolling Stone offered up 12 essential songs. My personal favorite is Fantasy, as I explained. I own the box set of their music.

You might recognize the name Philip Bailey, the falsetto vocalist, who sang a duet with Phil Collins on Easy Lover.

Linda Ronstadt

My admiration for Linda is huge. For her sixtieth birthday, I explained why I bought her box set when I already owned so much of her music. I advocated that she be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. She was rightly inducted in 2014.

When she turned 70, I listed about three dozen of my favorite songs by her. I touted the documentary about her, which played at a local theater for months.

Sesame Street

I’ll admit it; I watched Sesame Street when I was in college, as I noted in 2011. The beloved children’s television show was shaped by the African-American communities in Harlem and beyond. Of course, I bought the 10th anniversary music album.

Farmers Insurance has been running a series of ads featuring the Muppets. Take a look at the website and the music of Sesame Street. The USPS to release stamps in honor of show’s 50th anniversary.

Since he won’t be at the event, I suppose I can share, from Business Insider back in 2017: “‘Sesame Street’ has been mocking Trump since 1988 — here are some of the best moments.”

2019: significant anniversary for HIV/AIDS

The virus is still very much around.

what is HIVBecause some folks seem to believe that HIV/AIDS is cured, some statistics:

In 2018 (the latest data available)…
37.9 million [32.7 million–44.0 million] people globally were living with HIV.
23.3 million [20.5 million–24.3 million] people were accessing antiretroviral therapy.
1.7 million [1.4 million–2.3 million] people became newly infected with HIV.
770 000 [570 000–1.1 million] people died from AIDS-related illnesses.

In the United States, “approximately 1.1 million people… are living with HIV today. About 15 percent of them (1 in 7) are unaware they are infected. An estimated 38,700 Americans became newly infected with HIV in 2016.”

An article in US News notes that 2019 is a significant anniversary. “HIV and AIDS have been part of the world’s consciousness for 40 years now. In 1979 and 1980, doctors in Los Angeles and New York were suddenly reporting rare types of pneumonia, cancer, and other illnesses…

“Today, AIDS is fairly well controlled – in developed countries anyway. But the virus, which actually has been infecting humans since at least 1959, and perhaps since the late 1940s, according to the AIDS Institute, is still very much around.”

Why do nearly 1000 girls and young women contract HIV every day?

PrEP

A couple years back, there was a presentation at my church about Pre-exposure prophylaxis (or PrEP). It is “a way for people who do not have HIV but who are at very high risk of getting HIV to prevent HIV infection by taking a pill every day.

“The pill (brand name Truvada)” – which is advertised on American television – “contains two medicines (tenofovir and emtricitabine). [They are] used in combination with other medicines to treat the disease. When someone is exposed to HIV through sex or injection drug use, these medicines can work to keep the virus from establishing a permanent infection.”

Here’s what the US budget in fighting HIV/AIDS has looked like in the past decade or so.

I was happy to get to “know” Ruth, an HIV survivor, who is nursing others in Sierra Leone with the disease.

From April 2018 in the NYT magazine: Those we lost to the AIDS epidemic. Someone posted on Facebook recently six actors we lost prematurely. I DO remember two of the performers, Merritt Butrick and Tom Villard.

And Pedro Zamora died 25 years ago, hours after Real World San Francisco ended. Yes, I did watch that season.

The Library of Congress will house the archives of the famous AIDS quilt

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