Monday, March 1, 2021

March madness

 Boy was it March-y out there today.  Gray and bone-chilling although it was in the 40s. How is that?  I want to share a great obit with you for an amazing person you've likely never heard of:  Milford Graves.  https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/05/nyregion/milford-graves-drummer.html  The obit states "he wasn't a drummer exclusively...he was also a botanist, acupuncturist, martial artist, impresario, college professor, visual artist and student of the human heartbeat." It's like George Washington Carver meets Buckaroo Banzai.  When this comparison came to me, I wanted to look into GWC a bit more and was amazed to be reminded about what a trail blazer he was.  Like Graves, he was also a musician, but is known for his ground breaking research on plant science and soil rotation.  Some fun facts from the History Channel website: 

In the last two decades of his life, Carver lived as a minor celebrity but his focus was always on helping people. He traveled the South to promote racial harmony, and he traveled to India to discuss nutrition in developing nations with Mahatma GandhiUp until the year of his death, he also released bulletins for the public (44 bulletins between 1898 and 1943). Some of the bulletins reported on research findings but many others were more practical in nature and included cultivation information for farmers, science for teachers and recipes for housewives.

And who is Buckaroo Banzai, you many ask?  He is a character in a minor cult classic "The adventures of Buckaroo Banzai"  If you have any taste for science fiction and spoofs thereon, this one's for you.  We have it at the library.  It stars Peter Weller, with amazingly riotous performances by John Lithgow and Jeff Goldblum.  From IMDB:  Adventurer, brain surgeon, rock musician Buckaroo Banzai and his crime-fighting team, the Hong Kong Cavaliers, must stop evil alien invaders from the eighth dimension who are planning to conquer Earth.  

What's not to like???  
Ok, this was an odd post, but as I noted, it's March.  

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