title: Alan Partridge

text: Partridge returned in 2010 in a series of YouTube shorts, "Mid Morning Matters with Alan Partridge", as the host of a digital radio show with co-presenter Sidekick Simon (Tim Key). The series was later broadcast by Sky Atlantic. Coogan wrote it with the brothers Neil and Rob Gibbons, who submitted scripts to his company Baby Cow Productions. The brothers have co-written every Partridge project since. According to Neil, Coogan "invited us in, our sensibilities chimed ... I think we were like two pairs of fresh eyes, and Steve seemed to fall in love with the character all over again." Coogan said they chose the web format because "it was a bit underground, a low-key environment in which to test the character out again. And the response was so good, we realised there was more fuel in the tank." In his 2015 autobiography, Coogan wrote that he felt "Mid Morning Matters" was "the purest, most mature and funniest incarnation of Partridge", which he credited to the Gibbons brothers.


title: Alan Partridge

text: In 2011, a spoof autobiography, "", written by Coogan, Iannucci and the Gibbons brothers, was published. An audiobook version recorded by Coogan as Partridge was released on CD and downloadable formats. In the book, Partridge recounts his childhood and career, attempts to settle scores with people he feels have wronged him, and dispenses wisdom such as his assertion that Wikipedia has made university education "all but pointless". Coogan appeared as Partridge to promote "I, Partridge" on "The Jonathan Ross Show" and BBC Radio 5 Live. It received positive reviews and became a bestseller.


title: Alan Partridge

text: On 25 June 2012, Partridge presented a one-hour Sky Atlantic special, "", taking the viewer on a tour of Partridge's home county Norfolk. The programme earned Coogan the 2013 BAFTA for Best Male Performance in a Comedy Programme. It was followed the next week by "Open Books with Martin Bryce", a mock literary programme discussing Partridge's autobiography.


title: Alan Partridge

text: On 7 August 2013, a feature film, "", was released in the UK. It was directed by Declan Lowney and co-produced by StudioCanal and Baby Cow Productions, with support from BBC Films and the BFI Film Fund. The film sees Partridge enlisted as a crisis negotiator during a siege at his radio station. Filming began with an incomplete script, and Coogan and the Gibbons brothers rewrote much of it on the set. The rushed production was difficult; Coogan and Iannucci disagreed on the script, morale was low, and there were problems with casting and funding. In his memoir, Coogan wrote that it was the hardest he had ever worked and the loneliest he had ever felt; however, he was proud of the finished film. "Alpha Papa" was critically acclaimed and opened at number one at the box office in the UK and Ireland.


title: Alan Partridge

text: In 2015, Coogan co-presented a special Christmas episode of the Channel 4 chat show "TFI Friday" as Partridge. In February 2016, Sky Atlantic broadcast a second series of "Mid Morning Matters", in which Partridge continues his relationship with divorcee Angela. "Alan Partridge's Scissored Isle", a mockumentary in which Partridge examines the British class divide, followed in May. A second Alan Partridge book, "Alan Partridge: Nomad", a travelogue in which Partridge recounts a journey across the UK, was published on 20 October.


title: Alan Partridge

text: In July 2017, Partridge appeared in an episode of the BBC Radio 4 programme "Inheritance Tracks", in which guests choose music to pass to future generations; he selected "Who Put the Bomp (in the Bomp, Bomp, Bomp)" by Barry Mann and the theme from "Grandstand". Iannucci guest-edited an October 2017 issue of "The Big Issue", featuring a debate on Brexit between Partridge and Malcolm Tucker, a character from "The Thick of It", another sitcom created by Iannucci. On 27 December, BBC Two broadcast a documentary about the history of Partridge, "Alan Partridge: Why, When, Where, How and Whom?".


title: Alan Partridge

text: Partridge returned to the BBC in February 2019 with a six-part series, "This Time with Alan Partridge", a spoof current affairs programme in the style of "The One Show". In the series, Partridge stands in after the regular host falls ill. Coogan felt it was the right time for Partridge to return, and that he might represent the views of Brexit voters. Neil Gibbons said the world of live television had changed since Partridge's creation: "If someone fluffed a line or got someone's name wrong or said something stupid, it was mortifying. But nowadays, those are the sort of people who are given jobs on TV." A second series was broadcast in 2021.


title: Alan Partridge

text: In September 2020, Partridge launched an Audible podcast, "From the Oasthouse". It was carefully scripted rather than improvised; Coogan said the format was liberating, as there was more opportunity for nuance and less need to create punchlines to unite the audience. A second series was released in September 2022.


title: Alan Partridge

text: In April 2022, Coogan began a UK Alan Partridge tour, "Stratagem", in which Partridge gave a motivational talk and addressed topics such as identity politics and culture wars. The "Guardian" critic Brian Logan gave the show four out of five, praising its "rich comedy of physical awkwardness" and writing that Partridge was now "at the centre of his own thriving multi-platform metaverse". He noted that though Coogan had once tired of Partridge, he now "clearly takes pleasure in the performance". However, the "Independent" critic Louis Chilton gave it two out of five, finding its jokes were obvious and dated and that Partridge did not work in a live format.


title: Alan Partridge

text: Alan Partridge is an incompetent and tactless television and radio presenter. He is socially inept, often offending his guests, and has an inflated sense of importance and celebrity. According to the "Telegraph", Partridge is "utterly convinced of his own superiority, and bewildered by the world's inability to recognise it". Marber described him as part of a British tradition of "sad little man" characters such as Captain Mainwaring, Basil Fawlty and David Brent. His need for public attention drives him to deceit, treachery and shameless self-promotion, and sometimes violence; for example, in the "Knowing Me, Knowing Yule" Christmas special, he assaults a BBC boss and a paralysed man. Marber said Partridge's fundamental characteristic is desperation.


title: Alan Partridge

text: Partridge holds right-wing views; he is a reader of the right-wing newspaper the "Daily Mail", and supported Brexit because the "Mail" "told him to". Coogan, who is left-wing, described Partridge as a Little Englander, with a "myopic, slightly philistine mentality". Earlier versions of Partridge were more bigoted, but the writers found there was more humour in having him attempt to be progressive; for example, in "I, Partridge", he stresses his friendship with the gay television presenter Dale Winton. Coogan said: "He's aware of political correctness but he's playing catch-up. In the same way that the "Daily Mail" is a bit PC – it wouldn't be openly homophobic now – Alan is the same. He tries to be modern." Coogan felt the humour came from Partridge's misjudgement, rather than in a celebration of bigotry: "I don't want to add to the sum total of human misery. I want to point out things where we can improve our behaviour, myself included ... I think if you've got a skill and you can make people laugh, use it to hold people who are privileged and powerful accountable."


title: Alan Partridge

text: Partridge lives in Norwich in the East of England. Iannucci said the writers chose it as it is "geographically just that little bit annoyingly too far from London, and has this weird kind of isolated feel that seemed right for Alan". According to "Forbes", Partridge has "parochial bad taste", and Coogan described him as "on the wrong side of cool". He is a fan of James Bond films and Lexus cars and his music taste includes Wings and Abba; Partridge named his son Fernando and his talk show "Knowing Me, Knowing You" after Abba songs, and his talk show catchphrase, "Aha!", also comes from Abba.


title: Alan Partridge

text: In earlier incarnations, Partridge's wardrobe included a blazer, badge and tie, driving gloves, and "too-short" shorts, styles he describes as "sports casual" and "imperial leisure". According to Iannucci, by the time of "Alpha Papa" his wardrobe had "evolved to the "Top Gear" Presenter Circa 2005 stage", with sports jackets and a foppish fringe. As Coogan aged, the ageing makeup he wore in earlier performances became unnecessary. Coogan said that the rise of postmodernism had made it difficult to find clothes for Partridge, as "everything we had once seen as square or distasteful was now being worn by hipsters … The waters of what was uncool became so muddied that it was difficult to find anything looked bad and not just ironic. It even made me question if Alan was still relevant."


title: Alan Partridge

text: According to Coogan, Partridge was originally a "one-note, sketchy character" and "freak show", but slowly became refined as a dysfunctional alter ego. He credited the Gibbons brothers for giving Partridge a "more rounded personality", and said: "The twenty-first-century Alan is a nicer man. He is more empathetic and less about mocking the fool. More Malvolio and less Frank Spencer." The Gibbons brothers felt that by the time of "Mid Morning Matters", when Partridge is working for an even smaller radio station, he is more at peace with himself and that his lack of self-awareness saves him from misery. Iannucci said that Partridge stays optimistic because he never sees himself as others see him, and that despite his failings he was "the perfect broadcaster for these times, when there are 24 hours to fill and dead time is a crime – he has a unique capacity to fill any vacuum with his own verbal vacuum".


title: Alan Partridge

text: Baynham told the "Guardian" that although Partridge was unpleasant, the writers tried to build empathy: "You're watching a man suffer but also at some level identifying with his pain." For "Alpha Papa", Coogan wanted Partridge to be "heroic" and for the audience to sympathise with him while laughing at him: "You know he's done the wrong thing, but at least he's got some humanity. It's impossible to sustain ninety minutes of good drama without investing in the character." Felicity Montagu, who plays Partridge's assistant Lynn, felt he was vulnerable and loveable, and a good person "deep down".


title: Alan Partridge

text: "Vanity Fair" described Alan Partridge as "a national treasure ... as cherished a part of British comedy heritage as John Cleese's Basil Fawlty and Rowan Atkinson's Mr. Bean". According to "Variety, "in Britain "Alan Partridge is a full-on phenomenon, a multiplatform fictional celebrity whose catchphrases, mangled metaphors and social ineptitude are the stuff of legend and good ratings". In 2022, the "Guardian" journalist Michael Hogan selected Alan Partridge as Coogan's greatest TV role, writing that Coogan had "painstakingly fleshed him out from a catchphrase-spouting caricature to a layered creation of subtle pathos ... one of our most enduring and beloved comic characters." Partridge is less well known outside the UK; however, according to Adam McKay, the director of the comedy film , "Every American comic knows who Steve is, whether it's Stiller or Ferrell or Jack Black or me ... And everyone watching those [Partridge] DVDs had the same reaction. How did I not know about this guy?" IndieWire wrote that "before there was ["Anchorman" character] Ron Burgundy for the Yanks, there was Alan Partridge for the Brits".


title: Alan Partridge

text: Brian Logan wrote in the "Guardian" that though Alan Partridge was created as a satire of the "asinine fluency of broadcaster-speak" of the time, his development as a character study gave him a timeless quality. The "Guardian" journalist John Crace wrote: "By rights, Alan Partridge should have been dead as a character years ago, the last drops of humour long since wrung out ... but Steve Coogan keeps finding ways to make him feel fresh." The "Independent" wrote that Partridge was a "disarming creation" whom the audience root for despite his flaws. In the "Guardian", Alexis Petridis wrote that audiences find Partridge funny partly because they recognise themselves in him, and Edmund Gordon called Partridge "a magnificent comic creation: a monster of egotism and tastelessness". According to Gordon, Partridge allows progressive audiences to laugh at politically incorrect humour as "every loathsome comment is sold to us not as a gag, but as a gaffe". Writing that Partridge "channels the worst excesses of the privileged white man who considers himself nonetheless a victim", the "New Statesman" journalist Daniel Curtis saw Partridge as a precursor to "post-truth" politicians such as Nigel Farage and Donald Trump.


title: Alan Partridge

text: "Mandatory" wrote that Partridge was "a fascinatingly layered and fully realised creation of years of storytelling and a fundamentally contemptible prick – he feels like a living, breathing person, but a living, breathing person that you want to strangle". The "Telegraph" wrote: "Never has one actor so completely inhabited a sitcom character. We believe Partridge is real, from his side-parted hair down to his tasseled sports-casual loafers." In 2014, "Guardian" writer Stuart Heritage described Partridge as "one of the greatest and most beloved comic creations of the last few decades". In a 2001 poll by Channel 4, Partridge was voted seventh in their list of the 100 Greatest TV Characters. In a 2017 poll of over 100 comedians, Partridge was voted best TV comedy character and Coogan best male comedy actor, and a scene from "I'm Alan Partridge" in which Partridge goes to the home of an obsessive fan was voted best comedy scene. In 2021, "Rolling Stone" named "I'm Alan Partridge" the 52nd greatest sitcom, writing that it had taken Partridge "from a parody of celebrity-presenter smarm to one of the greatest Britcom characters ever".


title: Alan Partridge

text: The "Telegraph" credited Partridge with influencing cringe comedies such as "The Inbetweeners", "Nighty Night" and "Peep Show". According to "Den of Geek", he has so influenced British culture that "Partridgisms" have become everyday vernacular. "Monkey Tennis", one of Partridge's desperate television proposals, has become shorthand for absurd television concepts. Another, "Youth Hostelling with Chris Eubank", was used by the hostel booking site Hostelworld as the basis of a 2015 television advert with the boxer Chris Eubank. In 2020, Coogan said that many of Partridge's inane ideas had since become real programmes, making satire more difficult. Accidental Partridge, an unofficial Twitter account which collects quotes reminiscent of Partridge's speech from real media figures, had attracted 144,000 followers by May 2014.


title: Alan Partridge

text: Partridge has become associated with the city of Norwich. An art exhibition inspired by Partridge opened in Norwich in July 2015. In September 2020, an unofficial statue of Partridge created by sculptors in the film industry was temporarily erected outside the Forum in Norwich; Partridge's official Twitter account released a statement endorsing the statue. In October 2021, a fan convention took place at the Mercure Norwich Hotel and was attended by more than 250 people.


title: Itzhak Perlman

text: Itzhak Perlman (; born August 31, 1945) is an Israeli-American violinist widely considered one of the greatest violinists in the world. Perlman has performed worldwide and throughout the United States, in venues that have included a State Dinner at the White House honoring Queen Elizabeth II, and at President Barack Obama's inauguration. He has conducted the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the Westchester Philharmonic. In 2015, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Perlman has won 16 Grammy Awards, including a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, and four Emmy Awards.


title: Itzhak Perlman

text: Perlman was born in 1945 in Tel Aviv. His parents, Chaim and Shoshana Perlman, were Jewish natives of Poland and had independently emigrated to the British Mandate of Palestine (now Israel) in the mid-1930s before they met and later married. Perlman contracted polio at age four and has walked using leg braces and crutches since then and plays the violin while seated. , he uses crutches or an electric Amigo scooter for mobility.


title: Itzhak Perlman

text: Perlman first became interested in the violin after hearing a classical music performance on the radio. At the age of three, he was denied admission to the Shulamit Conservatory for being too small to hold a violin. He instead taught himself how to play the instrument using a toy fiddle until he was old enough to study with Rivka Goldgart at the Shulamit Conservatory and at the Academy of Music in Tel Aviv (now the Buchmann-Mehta School of Music), where he gave his first recital at age 10. He moved to the U.S. at age 13 to study at the Juilliard School with the violin teacher Ivan Galamian and his assistant Dorothy DeLay.


title: Itzhak Perlman

text: Perlman appeared on "The Ed Sullivan Show" twice in 1958, and again in 1964, on the same show with the Rolling Stones. He made his debut at Carnegie Hall in 1963 and won the Leventritt Competition in 1964. Soon afterward, he began to tour widely. In addition to an extensive recording and performance career, he has continued to make appearances on television shows such as "The Tonight Show" and "Sesame Street" as well as playing at a number of White House functions.


title: Itzhak Perlman

text: Although Perlman has never been billed or marketed as a singer, he sang the role of "Un carceriere" ("a jailer") on a 1981 EMI recording of Puccini's "Tosca" that featured Renata Scotto, Plácido Domingo, and Renato Bruson, with James Levine conducting. He had earlier sung the role in an excerpt from the opera on a 1980 Pension Fund Benefit Concert telecast as part of the Live from Lincoln Center series with Luciano Pavarotti as Cavaradossi and Zubin Mehta conducting the New York Philharmonic.


title: Itzhak Perlman

text: On July 5, 1986, Perlman performed at the New York Philharmonic's tribute to the 100th anniversary of the Statue of Liberty, which was televised live on ABC. The orchestra, conducted by Mehta, performed in Central Park.


title: Itzhak Perlman

text: In 1987, Perlman joined the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra (IPO) for its concerts in Warsaw and Budapest as well as other cities in Eastern bloc countries. He toured with the IPO in the spring of 1990 for its first-ever performance in the Soviet Union, with concerts in Moscow and Leningrad, and again in 1994, performing in China and India.


title: Itzhak Perlman

text: In 2015, on a classical music program titled "The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center" produced by WQXR in New York City, it was revealed that Perlman performed the uncredited violin solo on the 1989 Billy Joel song "The Downeaster Alexa".


title: Itzhak Perlman

text: While primarily a solo artist, Perlman has performed with a number of other musicians, including Yo-Yo Ma, Pinchas Zukerman, Jessye Norman, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Isaac Stern, and Yuri Temirkanov at the 150th anniversary celebration of Tchaikovsky in Leningrad in December 1990.


title: Itzhak Perlman

text: As well as playing and recording the classical music for which he is best known, Perlman has also played jazz, including an album made with jazz pianist Oscar Peterson, and klezmer. He has been a soloist in a number of film scores, such as the theme of the 1993 film "Schindler's List" by John Williams, which won an Academy Award for Best Original Score. More recently, he was the violin soloist in the 2005 film "Memoirs of a Geisha" along with cellist Yo-Yo Ma. Perlman played selections from the musical scores of the movies nominated for "Best Original Score" at the 73rd Academy Awards with Ma and at the 78th Academy Awards.


title: Itzhak Perlman

text: Perlman played at the state dinner attended by Queen Elizabeth II on May 7, 2007, in the East Room at the White House.


title: Itzhak Perlman

text: He performed John Williams's "Air and Simple Gifts" at the 2009 inauguration ceremony for Barack Obama along with Ma (cello), Gabriela Montero (piano), and Anthony McGill (clarinet). The quartet played live, but the music played simultaneously over speakers and on television was a recording made two days earlier due to concerns that the cold weather could damage the instruments. Perlman was quoted as saying: "It would have been a disaster if we had done it any other way."


title: Itzhak Perlman

text: He made an appearance in Disney's "Fantasia 2000" to introduce the segment "Pines of Rome", along with Steve Martin.


title: Itzhak Perlman

text: On November 2, 2018, Perlman reprised the 60th anniversary of his first appearance on "The Ed Sullivan Show" as a guest on "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert".


title: Itzhak Perlman

text: In 1975, Perlman accepted a faculty post at the Conservatory of Music at Brooklyn College. In 2003, he was named the Dorothy Richard Starling Foundation Chair in Violin Studies at the Juilliard School, succeeding his teacher, Dorothy DeLay. He also teaches students one-on-one at the Perlman Music Program on Long Island, NY, rarely holding master classes.


title: Itzhak Perlman

text: The Perlman Music Program, founded in 1994 by Perlman's wife, Toby Perlman, and Suki Sandler, started as a summer camp for exceptional string musicians between the ages of 12 and 18. Over time, it expanded to a yearlong program. Students have the chance to have Perlman coach them before they play at venues such as the Sutton Place Synagogue and public schools. By introducing students to each other and requiring them to practice together, the program strives to have musicians who would otherwise practice alone develop a network of friends and colleagues. Rather than remain isolated, participants in the program find an area where they belong.


title: Itzhak Perlman

text: At the beginning of the new millennium, Perlman began to conduct. He took the post of principal guest conductor at the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. He served as music advisor to the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra from 2002 to 2004. In November 2007, the Westchester Philharmonic announced his appointment as artistic director and principal conductor. His first concert in these roles was on October 11, 2008, in an all-Beethoven program featuring pianist Leon Fleisher performing the Emperor Concerto.


title: Itzhak Perlman

text: Perlman plays the "Soil Stradivarius" violin of 1714, formerly owned by Yehudi Menuhin and considered one of the finest violins made during Stradivari's "golden period." Perlman also plays the Guarneri del Gesù 1743 'Sauret' and the Carlo Bergonzi 1740 'ex-Kreisler'.


title: Itzhak Perlman

text: Perlman lives in New York City with his wife, Toby, also a classically trained violinist. They have five children, including Navah Perlman, a concert pianist and chamber musician. Perlman is a distant cousin of the Canadian comic and television personality Howie Mandel. He has synesthesia and was interviewed for "Tasting the Universe" by Maureen Seaberg, which is about the condition.


title: Tigris

text: The Tigris () is the easternmost of the two great rivers that define Mesopotamia, the other being the Euphrates. The river flows south from the mountains of the Armenian Highlands through the Syrian and Arabian Deserts, and empties into the Persian Gulf.


title: Tigris

text: The Tigris is 1,750 km (1,090 mi) long, rising in the Taurus Mountains of eastern Turkey about 25 km (16 mi) southeast of the city of Elazığ and about 30 km (20 mi) from the headwaters of the Euphrates. The river then flows for 400 km (250 mi) through Southeastern Turkey before becoming part of the Syria-Turkey border. This stretch of 44 km (27 mi) is the only part of the river that is located in Syria. Some of its affluences are Garzan, Anbarçayi, Batman, and the Great and the Little Zab.


title: Tigris

text: Close to its confluence with the Euphrates, the Tigris splits into several channels. First, the artificial Shatt al-Hayy branches off, to join the Euphrates near Nasiriyah. Second, the Shatt al-Muminah and Majar al-Kabir branch off to feed the Central Marshes. Further downstream, two other distributary channels branch off (the Al-Musharrah and Al-Kahla), to feed the Hawizeh Marshes. The main channel continues southwards and is joined by the Al-Kassarah, which drains the Hawizeh Marshes. Finally, the Tigris joins the Euphrates near al-Qurnah to form the Shatt-al-Arab. According to Pliny and other ancient historians, the Euphrates originally had its outlet into the sea separate from that of the Tigris.


title: Tigris

text: Baghdad, the capital of Iraq, stands on the banks of the Tigris. The port city of Basra straddles the Shatt al-Arab. In ancient times, many of the great cities of Mesopotamia stood on or near the Tigris, drawing water from it to irrigate the civilization of the Sumerians. Notable Tigris-side cities included Nineveh, Ctesiphon, and Seleucia, while the city of Lagash was irrigated by the Tigris via a canal dug around 2900 B.C.


title: Tigris

text: The Tigris has long been an important transport route in a largely desert country. Shallow-draft vessels can go as far as Baghdad, but rafts are needed for transport upstream to Mosul.


title: Tigris

text: The Ancient Greek form "Tigris" () is an alternative form of "Tígrēs" (), which was adapted from Old Persian (t-i-g-r-a /Tigrā/), itself from Elamite "Tigra", itself from Sumerian ("Idigna" or "Idigina", probably derived from *"id (i)gina" "running water"). The Sumerian term, which can be interpreted as "the swift river", contrasts the Tigris to its neighbour, the Euphrates, whose leisurely pace caused it to deposit more silt and build up a higher bed than the Tigris. The Sumerian form was borrowed into Akkadian as "Idiqlat" and from there into the other Semitic languages (compare Hebrew "Ḥîddeqel", Syriac "Deqlaṯ", Arabic "Dijlah").


title: Tigris

text: Another name for the Tigris used in Middle Persian was "Arvand Rud", literally "swift river". Today, however, "Arvand Rud" (New Persian: ) refers to the confluence of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, known in Arabic as the "Shatt al-Arab". In Kurdish, it is known as "Ava Mezin", "the Great Water".


title: Tigris

text: The Tigris is heavily dammed in Iraq and Turkey to provide water for irrigating the arid and semi-desert regions bordering the river valley. Damming has also been important for averting floods in Iraq, to which the Tigris has historically been notoriously prone following April melting of snow in the Turkish mountains. Mosul Dam is the largest dam in Iraq.


title: Tigris

text: Recent Turkish damming of the river has been the subject of some controversy, for both its environmental effects within Turkey and its potential to reduce the flow of water downstream.


title: Tigris

text: In 2014 a major breakthrough in developing consensus between multiple stakeholder representatives of Iraq and Turkey on a Plan of Action for promoting exchange and calibration of data and standards pertaining to Tigris river flows was achieved. The consensus which is referred to as the "Geneva Consensus On Tigris River" was reached at a meeting organized in Geneva by the think tank Strategic Foresight Group.


title: Tigris

text: In February 2016, the United States Embassy in Iraq as well as the Prime Minister of Iraq Haider al-Abadi issued warnings that Mosul Dam could collapse. The United States warned people to evacuate the floodplain of the Tigris because between 500,000 and 1.5 million people were at risk of drowning due to flash flood if the dam collapses, and that the major Iraqi cities of Mosul, Tikrit, Samarra, and Baghdad were at risk.


title: Tigris

text: In Sumerian mythology, the Tigris was created by the god Enki, who filled the river with flowing water.


title: Tigris

text: In Hittite and Hurrian mythology, "Aranzah" (or "Aranzahas" in the Hittite nominative form) is the Hurrian name of the Tigris River, which was deified. He was the son of Kumarbi and the brother of Teshub and Tašmišu, one of the three gods spat out of Kumarbi's mouth onto Mount Kanzuras. Later he colluded with Anu and the Teshub to destroy Kumarbi (The Kumarbi Cycle).


title: Tigris

text: The Tigris appears twice in the Old Testament. First, in the Book of Genesis, it is the third of the four rivers branching off the river issuing out of the Garden of Eden. The second mention is in the Book of Daniel, wherein Daniel states he received one of his visions "when I was by that great river the Tigris".


title: Tigris

text: The Tigris River is also mentioned in Islam. The tomb of Imam Ahmad Bin Hanbal and Syed Abdul Razzaq Jilani is in Baghdad and the flow of Tigris restricts the number of visitors.


title: Tigris

text: Baháʼu'lláh, the founder of the Baháʼí Faith, also wrote "The Hidden Words" around 1858 while he walked along the banks of the Tigris river during his exile in Baghdad.


title: Sylvester (singer)

text: Sylvester James Jr. (September 6, 1947December 16, 1988), known mononymously as Sylvester, was an American singer-songwriter. Primarily active in the genres of disco, rhythm and blues, and soul, he was known for his flamboyant and androgynous appearance, falsetto singing voice, and hit disco singles in the late 1970s and 1980s.


title: Sylvester (singer)

text: Born in Watts, Los Angeles, to a middle-class African-American family, Sylvester developed a love of singing through the gospel choir of his Pentecostal church. Leaving the church after the congregation expressed disapproval of his homosexuality, he found friendship among a group of black cross-dressers and transgender women who called themselves the Disquotays. Moving to San Francisco in 1970 at the age of 22, Sylvester embraced the counterculture and joined the avant-garde drag troupe the Cockettes, producing solo segments of their shows which were heavily influenced by female blues and jazz singers such as Billie Holiday and Josephine Baker. During the Cockettes' critically panned tour of New York City, Sylvester left them to pursue his career elsewhere. He came to front Sylvester and his Hot Band, a rock act that released two commercially unsuccessful albums on Blue Thumb Records in 1973 before disbanding.


title: Sylvester (singer)

text: Focusing on a solo career, Sylvester signed a recording contract with Harvey Fuqua of Fantasy Records and obtained three new backing singers in the form of Martha Wash and Izora Rhodes – the "Two Tons O' Fun" – as well as Jeanie Tracy. His first solo album, "Sylvester" (1977), was a moderate success. This was followed with the acclaimed disco album "Step II" (1978), which spawned the singles "You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)" and "Dance (Disco Heat)", both of which were hits in the US and Europe. Distancing himself from the disco genre, he recorded four more albums – including a live album – with Fantasy Records. After leaving this label, he signed to Megatone Records, the dance-oriented company founded by friend and collaborator Patrick Cowley, where he recorded four more albums, including the Cowley penned hit Hi-NRG track "Do Ya Wanna Funk".


title: Sylvester (singer)

text: Sylvester was an activist who campaigned against the spread of HIV/AIDS. He died from complications arising from the virus in 1988, leaving all future royalties from his work to San Francisco-based HIV/AIDS charities.


title: Sylvester (singer)

text: During the late 1970s, Sylvester gained the moniker of the "Queen of Disco" and during his life he attained particular recognition in San Francisco, where he was awarded the key to the city. In 2005, he was posthumously inducted into the Dance Music Hall of Fame, while his life has been recorded in a biography and made the subject of both a documentary and a musical.


title: Sylvester (singer)

text: Sylvester James was born on September 6, 1947 in the Watts district of Los Angeles, California, into a middle-class family. His mother, Letha Weaver, had been raised near Palestine, Arkansas into a relatively wealthy African-American family who owned their own farmland. Letha's biological mother, Gertha Weaver, was unmarried and too sickly to care for her child, so Gertha's sister Julia, known to the family as JuJu, became Letha's adoptive mother. In the late 1930s, Julia and her husband took part in the Great Migration of African-Americans out of the Southern United States, relocating to Watts.


title: Sylvester (singer)

text: It was here that Letha was largely raised and where she met and married her first husband, Sylvester "Sweet" James, with the couple moving into a small cottage owned by Letha's parents. Their first child, named Sylvester after his father, was followed by the birth of John Wesley in 1948 and Larry in 1950. Sylvester and his brothers became better known in their predominantly African-American community by their nicknames, with Sylvester's being "Dooni". Sylvester considered his father to be a "lowlife" because he was an adulterer and left his wife and children when the boys were still young. Letha and her three sons moved to a downtown housing project at Aliso Village before moving back into her parental home at 114th Street in Watts.


title: Sylvester (singer)

text: Letha was a devout adherent of the Pentecostal denomination of Christianity, regularly attending the Palm Lane Church of God in Christ in South Los Angeles. Sylvester and his brothers accompanied her to the church's services, where he developed a particular interest in gospel music. Having been an avid singer since the age of three, Sylvester regularly joined in with gospel performances; he sang the song "My Buddy" at the funeral of one of the other children in the Park Lane congregation.


title: Sylvester (singer)

text: The women at his church described him as "feminine" and "as pretty as he could be, just like his mother. He wasn't rough like the other boys. He was prim and proper. We were always hugging on him and kissing on him, because he was so cute." Family members also described his as "his own kind of boy - 'born funny'" - preferring the company of girls and women like his grandmother to that of other boys. "He stayed inside a lot, reading encyclopedias, listening to music, and playing his grandmother's piano." When Sylvester would turn down the boys' invitations to play with them, they would say things like, "He act like a girl!" or "He's going to be a girl." But his mother would defend him, including his joy at dressing up in her and his grandmother's clothes, saying that he was not a girl, just a different kind of boy, and a valued part of their family.


title: Sylvester (singer)

text: At the age of eight, he was sexually molested by a man at the church—at the time rumored to be the church organist; although Sylvester would always maintain that this interaction had been consensual and not sexual molestation, Sylvester was only a child at the time of this incident while the assailant was an adult. Sylvester was taken to a doctor after receiving injuries when this man subjected the child to anal sex. It was this doctor who informed Letha that her son was gay, something that she could not accept, viewing homosexual activity as a perversion and a sin. News of Sylvester's "homosexual activity" (actually, having been raped) soon spread through the church congregation and, feeling unwelcome, he ceased his attendance at age 13.


title: Sylvester (singer)

text: During Sylvester's childhood, his mother gave birth to three more children by different fathers before marrying Robert "Sonny" Hurd in the early 1960s, with whom she adopted three foster children. A supervisor at aerospace manufacturer North American Rockwell, Hurd's job increased the family income and they were able to move into a more expensive, predominantly white neighborhood north of Watts. The relationship between Sylvester and both his mother and stepfather was strained; in the midst of one argument with his mother, Sylvester decided to leave their house permanently.


title: Sylvester (singer)

text: Now homeless, Sylvester spent much of the next decade staying with friends and relatives, in particular, his grandmother Julia, who expressed no disapproval of his homosexuality, having been a friend of a number of gay men in the 1930s. On occasion, he returned to his mother and step-father's house for a few days at a time, particularly to spend time with his younger sisters, Bernadette and Bernadine. Aged 15, he began frequenting local gay clubs and built up a group of friends from the local gay black community, eventually forming themselves into a group which they called the Disquotays. Sylvester's best friend among the Disquotays was a trans woman named Duchess, who earned her money as a prostitute, a job that Sylvester refused to engage in. The group held lavish house parties, sometimes (without permission) at the home of their friend, rhythm and blues singer Etta James, in which they dressed up in female clothing and wigs, constantly trying to outdo one another in appearance.


title: Sylvester (singer)

text: Sylvester's boyfriend during the latter part of the 1960s was a young man named Lonnie Prince; well-built and attractive, many of Sylvester's friends described the pair as being "the It couple". Sylvester often hitchhiked around town while in female dress; such activity carried a risk of arrest and prosecution, for cross-dressing was then illegal in California. Although avoiding imprisonment for this crime, he was arrested for shoplifting on several occasions. He found work in a variety of professions, including cooking in McDonald's—where he was fired for refusing to wear a hairnet—cashier at an airport parking garage, working in a hair salon, at a department store, and as a make-up artist at a mortuary, preparing the corpses for their funerals. In the 1960s, the Civil Rights Movement was at its peak, but Sylvester and his friends did not take an active role within it. During the Watts riots between members of the black community and the predominantly white police force, they joined in with the widespread rioting and looting, stealing wigs, hairspray, and lipstick.


title: Sylvester (singer)

text: Although he had little interest in formal education and rarely attended classes, Sylvester was enrolled at Jordan High School. He graduated in 1969 at the age of 21; in his graduation photograph, he appeared in drag wearing a blue chiffon prom dress and beehive hairstyle. By the end of the decade, the Disquotays had begun to drift apart, with a number of them abandoning cross-dressing and others recognizing that they were trans women and undergoing sex reassignment surgery. Sylvester always considered himself male and began to tone down the feminine nature of his clothing, aiming for a more androgynous look which combined male and female styles and which was influenced by the fashions of the hippie movement.


title: Sylvester (singer)

text: At Los Angeles' Whisky a Go Go bar, Sylvester met Reggie Dunnigan, who invited him to move to the city of San Francisco in Northern California to join the "Chocolate Cockettes"—black members of an "avant-garde" performance art drag troupe known as the Cockettes. Founded by drag queen Hibiscus in 1970, the Cockettes parodied popular culture, were involved in the Gay Liberation movement, and were influenced by the ethos of the hippie movement, living communally, embracing free love, and consuming mind-altering substances such as marijuana and LSD. With the Disquotays disbanded, Sylvester had tired of Los Angeles, and was attracted by San Francisco's reputation as a gay and counter-cultural haven. Arriving in the city, he stayed in the Cockettes' communal home for several days. They were impressed with his falsetto singing voice and his ability to play the piano, asking him to appear in an upcoming show, "Radio Rodeo". Sylvester agreed, and one of his first performances involved singing the theme song of "The Mickey Mouse Club" while dressed in a cowgirl skirt. Moving into the Cockettes' communal residence, he soon found the flat too crowded and had difficulty with the lack of privacy; after a year he moved into a new house on Market Street with two fellow Cockettes.


title: Sylvester (singer)

text: Although a significant member of the troupe, Sylvester remained a relatively isolated figure; not only was he one of very few African-American members, he eschewed the group's more surrealist activities for what he saw as classier, more glamorous performances onstage. In the Cockettes' performances, he was usually given an entire scene to himself, often with little relevance to the narrative and theme of the rest of the show, although through doing so, he gained his own following. With a piano player named Peter Mintun, Sylvester worked on solo scenes in which he exhibited his interest in blues and jazz by imitating several of his musical idols such as Billie Holiday and Josephine Baker. Adding to his image, Sylvester used the pseudonym "Ruby Blue" and described himself as "Billie Holiday's cousin once removed". Fascinated by black musical heritage, he read up on the subject and became a collector of "negrobilia"; in some of his Cockette performances, he played up to racial stereotypes of African-Americans to ridicule the stereotypes themselves.


title: Sylvester (singer)

text: In 1970, Sylvester entered into an open relationship with Michael Lyons, a young white man, and soon proposed marriage to him. Although same-sex marriage was not legally recognized in the US, the couple held a wedding in the Shakespeare Garden of Golden Gate Park. At the invitation of the manager of the Palace Theater, Sylvester appeared in a spoof film, "Tricia's Wedding", which parodied the marriage of Tricia Nixon Cox, daughter of President Richard Nixon. In the film, Sylvester played the role of both Coretta Scott King and the African ambassador Uma King. In 1971, Sylvester was given a one-man show, "Sylvester Sings", at the Palace Theater, for which he was accompanied by Peter Mintun. He nevertheless remained a part of the Cockette troupe during their divisive split, in which Hibiscus and his followers left to form the Angels of Light. Following Hibiscus' departure, the Cockettes began to gain increasing media attention, with celebrities such as Rex Reed, Truman Capote, and Gloria Vanderbilt enthusing about their performances. "Rolling Stone" magazine singled out Sylvester's performances for particular praise, describing him as "a beautiful black androgyne who has a gospel sound with the heat and shimmer of Aretha".


title: Sylvester (singer)

text: The success led the troupe to take their show to New York City, a city with a long history of drag culture. Arriving in November 1971, they immersed themselves in the city's "avant-garde", attending parties held by Andy Warhol and "Screw" magazine. Spending so much of their time partying, most of the Cockettes did not rehearse, the exception being Sylvester, who wanted to perfect his act. Although the Cockettes' performance at the Anderson Theater was panned by critics, Sylvester's act was widely praised as a highlight of the show. Realizing that he had far better prospects as a solo artist, on the second New York performance he opened his act by telling the audience, "I apologize for this travesty that I'm associated with", while on the seventh he announced that he would be leaving the Cockettes altogether.


title: Sylvester (singer)

text: Returning to San Francisco, Sylvester was offered the opportunity to record a demo album by "Rolling Stone" editor Jann Wenner. Financed by A&M Records, the album featured a cover of Bonnie Bramlett and Leon Russell's song "Superstar", which had been a recent hit single for the Carpenters. Nevertheless, A&M felt that the work was not commercially viable and declined to release the album. For the album, Sylvester and his manager Dennis Lopez had assembled a group of heterosexual white males—Bobby Blood on trumpet, Chris Mostert on saxophone, James Q. Smith on guitar, Travis Fullerton on drums, and Kerry Hatch on bass—whom he named the Hot Band. After A&M's initial rejection, the band provided two songs for "Lights Out San Francisco," an album compiled by San Francisco's KSAN radio and released on the Blue Thumb label. Gaining a number of local gigs, they were eventually asked to open for English glam rock star David Bowie at the Winterland Ballroom. The gig did not sell particularly well, and Bowie later commented that San Francisco did not need him, because "They've got Sylvester", referring to their shared preference for androgyny.


title: Sylvester (singer)

text: In early 1973, Sylvester and the Hot Band were signed by Bob Krasnow to Blue Thumb. On this label, they produced their first album, in which they switched their sound from blues to the more commercially viable rock, while the Pointer Sisters were employed as backing singers. Sylvester named this first album "Scratch My Flower" due to a gardenia-shaped scratch-and-sniff sticker adhered to the cover, although it was instead released under the title of "Sylvester and his Hot Band". The album consisted primarily of covers of songs by artists such as James Taylor, Ray Charles, Neil Young, and Leiber and Stoller. Described by one of Sylvester's biographers as lacking in "the fire and focus of the live shows", it sold poorly on release.


title: Sylvester (singer)

text: Sylvester and his Hot Band toured the United States, receiving threats of violence in several Southern states, where widespread conservative and racist attitudes led to antagonism between the band and locals. In late 1973, the band recorded their second album, "Bazaar", which included both cover songs and original compositions by bassist Kerry Hatch. Hatch later commented that the Hot Band found the album more satisfactory than its predecessor, but nevertheless it again sold poorly. The music journalist Peter Shapiro believed that on these Blue Thumb albums, Sylvester's "cottony falsetto was an uncomfortable match with guitars" and that they both had "an unpleasantly astringent quality".


title: Sylvester (singer)

text: Finding Sylvester difficult to work with, and frustrated by his lack of commercial success, the Hot Band left Sylvester in late 1974, after which Krasnow canceled his recording contract. At the same time, Sylvester's relationship with Lyons ended, with Lyons himself moving to Hawaii.


title: Sylvester (singer)

text: Now without the Hot Band or a recording contract, Sylvester set himself up with a new band, the Four As, and a new set of backing singers, two black drag queens named Gerry Kirby and Lady Bianca. With this new entourage, he continued to perform at a number of local venues including Jewel's Catch One, a predominantly black gay dance club on West Pico Avenue in Los Angeles, but reviewers were unimpressed with the new line-up, most of whom abandoned Sylvester in December 1974. After a brief sojourn in England, Sylvester returned to San Francisco and assembled three young drag queens to be backing singers: Arnold Elzie, Leroy Davis, and Gerry Kirby. Nevertheless, although he performed at such events as the 1975 Castro Street Fair, success continued to elude him, and he eventually fired Elzie, Davis, and Kirby.


title: Sylvester (singer)

text: Sylvester employed Brent Thomson as his new manager; she suggested that he rid himself of his androgynous image and wear more masculine clothing to gain a recording contract; as she put it, "nobody is giving out recording contracts to drag queens". Thomson opened auditions for new backing singers, with Sylvester being captivated by one of those auditioning, Martha Wash. Sylvester asked her if she had another large black friend who could sing, after which she introduced him to Izora Rhodes. Although he referred to them simply as "the girls", Wash and Rhodes named themselves the Two Tons O' Fun (and much later, when they achieved mainstream success, as the Weather Girls), and continued to work with Sylvester intermittently until his death, developing a close friendship with him. They were soon joined by bassist John Dunstan and keyboard player Dan Reich.


title: Sylvester (singer)

text: Playing gay bars such as The Stud and The Endup, in September 1976 Sylvester and his band gained a regular weekend job at The Palms nightclub on Polk Street, performing two or three sets a night; most of these were covers, but some were original compositions by Sylvester and his then-guitarist Tip Wirrick. It was through this show that Sylvester came to the attention of Motown producer Harvey Fuqua, and Fuqua subsequently signed Sylvester onto a solo deal with Fantasy Records in 1977.


title: Sylvester (singer)

text: In the middle of that year, he recorded his third album, the self-titled "Sylvester", which featured a cover design depicting Sylvester in male attire. The songs included on the album were influenced by dance music, and included Sylvester's own compositions, such as "Never Too Late", as well as covers of hits such as Ashford & Simpson's "Over and Over". Many reviewers noted that Sylvester's image had been altered since his early career, moving him away from the glittery androgynous appearance to that of a more conventional rhythm-and-blues singer which would have wider commercial appeal. Released as a single, Sylvester's "Over and Over" proved a minor hit in the US, but was more successful in Mexico and Europe. Building on the album's release, Sylvester toured Louisiana and then Mexico City.


title: Sylvester (singer)

text: Sylvester's fame increased following the release of his solo album, and he was employed to perform regularly at The Elephant Walk gay bar in the Castro, an area of San Francisco known as a gay village. He became a friend of Harvey Milk—known locally as the "Mayor of Castro Street"—who was the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California, and performed at Milk's birthday party that year. In the spring of 1978, Sylvester successfully auditioned for a cameo appearance in the film "The Rose" starring gay icon Bette Midler. In the film, he plays one of the drag queens singing along to Bob Seger's "Fire Down Below", in a single scene that was filmed in a run-down bar in downtown Los Angeles.


title: Sylvester (singer)

text: Sylvester released his second solo album, "Step II", in September 1978. For this release, he was particularly influenced by the genre of dance music known as disco which was then becoming increasingly popular across the Western world. Disco was closely associated with the gay, black, and Latino communities in the US and dominated by black female artists such as Donna Summer, Gloria Gaynor, and Grace Jones, with Sylvester initially being unsure that it was a suitable genre for him to work in; he nevertheless recognized its increasing commercial potential. During production of the album, Sylvester invited the musician Patrick Cowley to join his studio band, being impressed by Cowley's innovative techniques using synthesizers. The album landed Cowley a job as a back-up musician on Sylvester's subsequent worldwide tours, and the two started a close friendship and collaboration. Once again co-produced by Harvey Fuqua and released on Fuqua's Fantasy label, "Step II" contained two disco songs that were subsequently released as singles, "You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)", written by James Wirrick, and "Dance (Disco Heat)", written by Eric Robinson.


title: Sylvester (singer)

text: Both singles proved commercial hits both domestically and abroad, topping the American dance chart and breaking into the US pop charts. The album itself was also a success, being certified gold, and was described by "Rolling Stone" magazine as being "as good as disco gets". In his history of disco, Shapiro described "You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)" as Sylvester's "greatest record", "the cornerstone of gay disco", and "an epochal record in disco history". Shapiro noted that Sylvester's work brought together elements from both of the main strands of disco; the "gospel/R&B tradition" and the "mechanical, piston-pumping beats" tradition, but that in doing so he went "way beyond either". Shapiro expressed the view that "Sylvester propelled his falsetto far above his natural range into the ether and rode machine rhythms that raced toward escape velocity, creating a new sonic lexicon powerful, camp, and otherworldly enough to articulate the exquisite bliss of disco's dance floor utopia".


title: Sylvester (singer)

text: In both August and December 1978, Sylvester visited London, England to promote his music; he proved hugely popular in the city, performing at a number of different nightclubs and being mobbed by fans. It was while in the city that he filmed the music video for "You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)". Back in the US, Sylvester began to appear on television shows to advertise his music, appearing on "Dinah Shore", "American Bandstand", "Rock Concert", and "The Merv Griffin Show". He also undertook a series of tours across the country, opening for both the Commodores and Chaka Khan, and performing alongside the O'Jays, War, and L.T.D. As a result, he earned a number of awards and performed at several award ceremonies. Through this developing public presence, Sylvester, alongside other visibly queer performers such as the Village People, helped to solidify the connection between disco and homosexuality within the public imagination; this however furthered the anti-disco sentiment among rock music fans which would emerge as the Disco Sucks movement.


title: Sylvester (singer)

text: Sylvester followed the success of "Step II" with an album entitled "Stars". Consisting of four love songs, the title track – released as a single in January 1979 – had been written by Cowley, and Sylvester would proceed to tell the press that it was his first completely disco album, but that it would also probably be his last. He premiered the album's four tracks on March 11, 1979, at a sold-out show in the San Francisco War Memorial Opera House. The performance was attended by a number of senior figures in local government, and halfway through, Mayor Dianne Feinstein sent her aide, Harry Britt, to award Sylvester with the key to the city and proclaim March 11 to be "Sylvester Day". The Opera House gig was recorded, and subsequently released as a live album, "Living Proof". Sylvester thought very highly of the album, but it did not sell well. A single released from this album, "Can't Stop Dancing", was a hit in the disco clubs but not in the pop music charts.


title: Sylvester (singer)

text: Despite increasing mainstream success, Sylvester continued to reaffirm his connection to the gay community of San Francisco, performing at the main stage at the 1979 Gay Freedom Day parade. Further, during his summer 1979 tour of the UK, he performed at the London Gay Pride Festival in Hyde Park. That same year, Sylvester met the singer Jeanie Tracy through Harvey Fuqua, and they immediately became friends. A large black woman, Sylvester felt that Tracy would work well with his Two Tons O' Fun, and invited her to join his backing singers, which she proceeded to do. Subsequently, befriending the Tons, she would work for Sylvester for the rest of his life. The Tons themselves were convinced by Fuqua to produce their own self-titled album, from which came two dance chart hits, "Earth Can Be Just Like Heaven" and "Just Us"; as a result, they began to work less and less with Sylvester, only joining him on occasion for his live shows. In some interviews he would express bitterness at their departure, while in others he stressed that he had no bad feelings toward them.


title: Sylvester (singer)

text: In 1980, Sylvester also reached tabloid headlines after he was arrested on a visit to New York City, accused of being involved in the robbery of several rare coins. After three days of incarceration, he was released on a police bail of $30,000. Sylvester was never charged, and police later admitted their mistake after it was revealed that the real culprit had posed as Sylvester by signing cheques in his name.


title: Sylvester (singer)

text: Returning to San Francisco after this event, it was here that Sylvester produced his next album for Fantasy Records, "Sell My Soul". Largely avoiding disco after the genre had become unpopular following the much publicized Disco Sucks movement, "Sell My Soul" instead represented a selection of soul-inspired dance tracks. Recorded in two weeks, Sylvester worked largely with backing singers and musicians whom he was unfamiliar with, and regular collaborators Rhodes and Cowley were entirely absent. Reviews were generally poor, describing the album as being average in quality. The only disco song on the album, "I Need You", was released as a single, but fared poorly.


title: Sylvester (singer)

text: Sylvester's fifth and final album for Fantasy Records was "Too Hot to Sleep", in which he once again eschewed disco for a series of groove soul tunes, ballads, and gospel-style tracks. Missing the Two Tons entirely, Tracy was instead accompanied by a new backing singer, Maurice "Mo" Long, and because the three of them had all grown up in the Church of God in Christ, they decided to refer to themselves as the "C.O.G.I.C. Singers". The album also featured a number of tracks in which Sylvester avoided his usual falsetto tones to sing in a baritone voice. The album sold poorly.


title: Sylvester (singer)

text: Both the Two Tons and Sylvester came to suspect that Fantasy Records had failed to pay them all of the money that they were owed from the sale of their records. Sylvester left Fantasy and in November 1982 he filed a lawsuit against them; it ultimately proved successful in establishing that the company had been withholding money from him totaling $218,112.50. Nevertheless, Fuqua proved unable to pay anything more than $20,000, meaning that Sylvester never saw the majority of the money that was legally owed to him. Sylvester grew to despise Fuqua, and forbade his friends from ever mentioning his name.


title: Sylvester (singer)

text: Closely associated with the now unpopular disco and having had no hit singles in the preceding few years, after leaving Fantasy Sylvester was not a particular draw for major record labels. Recognizing this state of affairs, in 1982 Sylvester commented that "there's nothing worse than a fallen star" who still has "illusions" of their continuing fame. Rather than chasing major chart success, Sylvester wanted to focus on retaining creative control over his music. Hiring his former tour manager and longstanding friend Tim McKenna as his new manager, Sylvester decided to produce his next album with Megatone Records, a small San Francisco company that had been founded in 1981 by Patrick Cowley and Marty Blecman and which catered largely to the gay club scene. The result was "All I Need" (1982), on which James Wirrick had written most of the songs, which were dance-orientated and influenced by the new wave music then in vogue. Sylvester insisted that he include several ballads on the album, which featured cover art by Mark Amerika depicting Sylvester in ancient Egyptian garb.


title: Sylvester (singer)

text: One of the best known Sylvester songs of this period was "Do Ya Wanna Funk", a Hi-NRG dance track co-written with Cowley which was released as a single in July 1982, topping the US dance charts and entering the pop charts in a number of countries across the world. Although he had continued working, Cowley was suffering from the recently discovered HIV/AIDS virus – at the time still referred to as "gay-related immune deficiency" (GRID) by American doctors – and was in a deteriorating physical condition. Sylvester continued touring, and it was while in London, preparing to perform at the Heaven superclub, that he learned of Cowley's death on November 12, 1982. He went onstage, informing the crowd of Cowley's passing and then sang "Do Ya Wanna Funk" in memory of him.


title: Sylvester (singer)

text: In 1983, Sylvester became a partner of Megatone Records. That year he also brought out his second album with the company, "Call Me", but it was not a commercial success. Four songs from the album were released as singles, although only "Trouble in Paradise" entered the top 20 of the US dance charts; Sylvester later related that the song was his "AIDS message to San Francisco". Sylvester was emotionally moved by the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and began helping out at the Rita Rockett Lounge for patients of the disease at the San Francisco General Hospital as well as performing at various benefit concerts to raise money and awareness to combat the spread of the disease. In February 1984 he also performed a "One Night Only" retrospective of his work at the prestigious Castro Theatre. Sylvester still toured both domestically and in Europe, although he found that demand for his performances was decreasing, and that he was now playing to smaller venues and singing to a pre-recorded tape rather than to a live band as he had in the late 1970s.


title: Sylvester (singer)

text: His next album, entitled "M-1015" (1984), was more frenetic and pumping than his previous releases, having embraced the recently developed genre of Hi-NRG, but it also included elements of electro and rap. The major figures behind the album had been Kessie and Morey Goldstein, and Sylvester himself had not written any of the tracks. The album also contained increasingly sexually explicit lyrics, in particular in the songs "How Do You Like Your Love" and "Sex". That year, he also entered into a relationship with an architect named Rick Cramner, and together they moved into a new apartment in the hills, where Sylvester decorated his powder room with posters and memorabilia of Divine, the drag queen, actor and singer whom he had briefly known when they were in the Cockettes. In 1985, he fulfilled a lifelong ambition by working with the singer Aretha Franklin; he and Jeanie had been invited to provide backing vocals on Franklin's album "Who's Zoomin' Who?".


title: Sylvester (singer)

text: Sylvester's final album, "Mutual Attraction" (1986), was produced by Megatone but licensed and released by Warner Bros. On the album, Sylvester had worked with a wide number of collaborators, and included new tracks alongside covers of songs by Stevie Wonder and George Gershwin. Reviews of the album were mixed, with many claiming that it was a poor release. One of the album's singles, "Someone Like You", proved more successful, reaching number one on the "Billboard" dance charts. Warner Bros booked him to appear on the New Year's Eve edition of "The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers", during which Joan Rivers described him as a drag queen; visibly annoyed, he corrected her by stating that he was not a drag queen, proclaiming simply "I'm Sylvester!" The appearance was also notable for Sylvester publicly declaring his relationship with Rick Cranmer despite the fact that Cranmer's family were largely unaware of either the liaison or his sexuality.


title: Sylvester (singer)

text: In 1985, Sylvester's boyfriend, Rick Cranmer, became aware that he had become infected with HIV. With no known medical cure, his health deteriorated rapidly and he died September 7, 1987. Sylvester was devastated, and although recognizing that he too was probably infected, he refused to have his blood tested, only noticing the virus' first symptoms when he developed a persistent cough. Beginning work on an album that would remain unfinished, he moved into a new apartment on Collingwood Street in the Castro, and tried his best to continue performing in the Bay Area, even though he became too ill to undertake a full tour. Eventually diagnosed with AIDS, he was hospitalized for sinus surgery in late 1987, and upon returning to his apartment, he began to be cared for by his mother and Tracy, before being hospitalized again in May 1988, this time with pneumocystis pneumonia. Returning to his flat, he gave away many of his treasured possessions and wrote his will.


title: Sylvester (singer)

text: Having lost a lot of weight and unable to walk easily, he attended the Castro's 1988 Gay Freedom Parade in a wheelchair, being pushed along by Mckenna in front of the People with AIDS banner; along Market Street, assembled crowds shouted out his name as he passed. The subsequent 1988 Castro Street Fair was named "A Tribute to Sylvester", and although he was too ill to attend, crowds chanted his name to such an extent that he was able to hear them from his bedroom. He continued to give interviews to the media, being open about the fact that he was dying of AIDS, and sought in particular to highlight the impact that the disease was having in the African-American community. In an interview with the "NME", he stated, "I don't believe that AIDS is the wrath of God. People have a tendency to blame everything on God."


title: Sylvester (singer)

text: For Thanksgiving 1988, his family spent the holiday with him, although he had developed neuropathy and was increasingly bed-ridden and reliant on morphine; he died in his bed on December 16, 1988, at the age of 41. Sylvester had planned his own funeral, insisting that he be dressed in a red kimono and placed in an open-top coffin for the mourners to see, with his friend Yvette Flunder doing his corpse's makeup. He wanted Tracy to sing at his funeral, accompanied by choirs and many flowers. The whole affair took place in his church, the Love Center, with a sermon being provided by Reverend Walter Hawkins. The event was packed, with standing room only, and the coffin was subsequently taken and buried at his family's plot in Inglewood Park Cemetery. An album titled "Immortal" was posthumously released; it contained Sylvester's final studio recordings and was compiled by Marty Blecman.


title: Sylvester (singer)

text: Sylvester has been described as having a "flamboyant and colourful" public persona, wearing both male and female gendered clothes as part of his attire, with his biographer Joshua Gamson opining that for Sylvester, "gender was an everyday choice". Sylvester described his public persona as "an extension of me, the real me".


title: Sylvester (singer)

text: Sylvester's friend and publicist Sharon Davis described him as "a quiet, often thoughtful, caring guy, who put others before himself, and was generous to a fault, having little regard for money. His policy was you only live once, so enjoy!" She also noted that he could be "unpredictable", being "stubborn as a mule" and "always speak[ing] his mind".


title: Sylvester (singer)

text: Sylvester was considered to be a prima donna by members of the Hot Band and could be temperamental and difficult with those with whom he worked. He found it difficult saving the money that he earned, instead spending it as soon as he obtained it, both on himself and on his lovers, friends, and family.


title: Sylvester (singer)

text: Sylvester was openly gay, with Gamson noting that he tended to enter into relationships with men who were "white, self-doubting and effeminate". In 1978, he entered into a relationship with a young white model named John Maley; Sylvester later devoted the song "Can't Forget the Love" from his "Too Hot to Sleep" album to his young lover. Maley ended the relationship to move to Los Angeles, later recollecting that Sylvester "was a lovely man, and I owe him a lot". In 1981, Sylvester entered into a relationship with a slim brunette from Deep River, Connecticut named Michael Rayner, but unlike his predecessors, he did not move into Sylvester's house. Their partnership ended when Rayner admitted that he had not fallen completely in love with Sylvester. Sylvester's next major relationship was with Tom Daniels, a hairdresser whom he met in 1982, but their romance ended after six months when Daniels discovered that Sylvester had been having sex with other men while on tour. The singer's final partner, the architect Rick Cranmer, was a six-foot two blonde, and the duo moved into a house together in the hills. Cranmer died of AIDS-related complications in 1987, the year before Sylvester succumbed to the virus.


title: Sylvester (singer)

text: As an openly gay man throughout his career, Sylvester came to be seen as a spokesman for the gay community. He informed a journalist that "I realize that gay people have put me on a pedestal and I love it. After all, of all the oppressed minorities, they just have to be the most oppressed. They have all the hassles of finding something or someone to identify with – and they chose me. I like being around gay people and they've proven to be some of my closest friends and most loyal audiences." Elsewhere, he nevertheless remarked that he felt his career had "transcended the gay movement. I mean, my sexuality has nothing to do with my music. When I'm fucking I'm not thinking about singing and vice versa." He was openly critical of what he perceived as divisive tendencies within the gay community itself, noting that "I get this conformist shit from queens all the time. They always want to read me. They always want me to do it their way. I am not going to conform to the gay lifestyle as they see it and that's for sure". He was particularly critical of "clones" – gay men who dressed alike with boots, boot-cut jeans, checked shirts and handlebar mustaches – stating that all too often they judged those gay people who were flamboyant or extravagant.


title: Sylvester (singer)

text: Davis characterized Sylvester as an "absolute perfectionist". He was very self-conscious about his physical appearance, and when he obtained enough money from the successful "Step II" album, he spent part of it on cosmetic surgery to remove a bump on his nose, inject silicone into his cheeks, and have cosmetic work done on his teeth. He would also insist that all pictures of himself were meticulously airbrushed.


title: Sylvester (singer)

text: Sylvester was born and raised into the Pentecostal denomination of Christianity, and remained a Christian throughout his life. He often compared the ecstatic feelings that accompanied his onstage performances with the feelings experienced in a gospel choir in a Pentecostal church. When performances reached a certain level of heightened emotion, he would comment that "we had service". In later life, he joined the Love Center Church in East Oakland, a ministry founded by the preacher and former gospel singer Walter Hawkins in the 1970s. He had been introduced to the church by Jeanie Tracy in the 1980s and would soon become a regular churchgoer, enjoying the place's welcoming attitude towards societal outcasts. Sylvester requested that his funeral be undertaken by the ministry at the Love Center.


title: Sylvester (singer)

text: During the late 1970s, Sylvester gained the moniker of the "Queen of Disco", a term that continued to be given to the singer into the 21st century. The English journalist Stephen Brogan later described him as "a star who shined brightly. He only happened once. He was a radical and a visionary in terms of queerness, music and race." Reynaldo Anderson of Harris-Stowe State University described Sylvester's influence upon disco and subsequent electronic dance music as "incalculable". He added that Sylvester's songs "Dance (Disco Heat)", "You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)", and "Do You Wanna Funk" represented "anthems of disco aficionados for a generation", while also expressing the view that Sylvester himself "personified the excesses of the 1970s and the experimentation that characterized [the decade's] changing social norms" within the United States.


title: Sylvester (singer)

text: Shapiro cited Sylvester alongside other artists such as Wendy Carlos, Throbbing Gristle, and Terre Thaemlitz as an individual who used electronic music as "a vehicle to express sexual transgression", while in her study of the use of falsetto in disco, Anne-Lise François believed that Sylvester's style of singing "makes the point most obviously about falsetto as a gender-bending device". The cultural studies scholar Tim Lawrence stated that Sylvester embodied "the [disco] movement's gay roots", and in doing could be contrasted with John Travolta, who embodied "its commercialization and suburbanization". The two figures thus reflected a divide between the gay and straight interpretations and presentations of disco music. Layli Philips and Marla R. Stewart compared Sylvester to both Willi Ninja and RuPaul as pop icons who exhibited "male femininity" within the "Black male diva (or 'queen') tradition".


title: Sylvester (singer)

text: In his will, Sylvester had declared that royalties from the future sale of this music be devoted to two HIV/AIDS charities, Project Open Hand and the AIDS Emergency Fund. Although Sylvester died deeply in debt as a result of taking advances on his royalties, by the early 1990s this debt had been paid off, and a balance had begun to build up. Roger Gross, the attorney to Sylvester's manager and the openly gay lawyer who helped him draw up his will, petitioned the probate court to designate the charities as the beneficiaries of Sylvester's will. The proceeds of $140,000 in accrued royalties were split between the two groups, and they will continue to be paid the royalties in the future.


title: Sylvester (singer)

text: On September 19, 2005, Sylvester was one of three artists inducted into the Dance Music Hall of Fame, alongside Chic and Gloria Gaynor. In December 2016, "Billboard magazine" ranked him as the 59th most successful dance artist of all-time.


title: Sylvester (singer)

text: In 2019, "You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)" was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation in the National Recording Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".


title: Sylvester (singer)

text: A biography of Sylvester was authored by Gamson and published in 2005. Writing for the London-based LGBT magazine "Beige: The Provocative Cultural Quarterly", Stephen Brogan expressed his opinion that while Gamson's biography was well researched, it had a fragmented structure and as such was "not a joy to read". "Entertainment Weekly" called the book "playful and furious" and awarded it a B+ rating, "The Boston Globe" suggested that it was "as engaging as the times it so energetically resurrects", and "The San Francisco Chronicle" reported that the author "carefully paints the shifting social tapestry into his subject's life story without ever taking Sylvester out of the foreground". "The Fabulous Sylvester" won the 2006 Stonewall Book Award for nonfiction. In 2015, Sylvester's publicist Sharon Davis published memoirs of the time that she spent with Sylvester, noting that she planned for it to appear in 2013 to mark the 25th anniversary of Sylvester's death.


title: Sylvester (singer)

text: In 2010, the TV series "Unsung" aired an episode on Sylvester, that was later made available through YouTube. "Sylvester: Mighty Real", an official feature-length documentary on the life and career of Sylvester, entered production; it featured interviews with members of Sylvester's family and other artists and musicians who have been inspired by, but by 2012 the film's progress had halted.


title: Sylvester (singer)

text: In August 2014, an Off-Broadway musical titled "Mighty Real: A Fabulous Sylvester Musical" opened at Theatre At St. Clement's in New York City. It was co-directed by Kendrell Bowman and Anthony Wayne, the latter of whom also performed as the titular character. Wayne stated that he discovered Sylvester's story through a television documentary, and was subsequently "inspired by his drive to be who he was regardless of what he went through", performing a concert of Sylvester's songs with friends Anastacia McCleskey and Jacqueline B. Arnold as the Two Tons o' Fun before deciding to begin work on the musical. A laudatory review of the musical from "The New York Times" noted that Wayne "certainly has the bravado, the androgynous sex appeal and the piercing voice to emulate the original convincingly". "The Huffington Post" review noted that the musical largely avoided dealing with the decline in Sylvester's musical success during the 1980s, and that although " anyone seeking an exhaustively researched play-by-play of the star's life would be better off waiting for a documentary", the musical "succeeds as a collection of infectious performances by a truly gifted cast".


title: Sylvester (singer)

text: In 2014 Sylvester was one of the inaugural honorees in the Rainbow Honor Walk, a walk of fame in San Francisco's Castro neighborhood noting LGBTQ people who have "made significant contributions in their fields".


title: Cosmopolitan (cocktail)

text: A cosmopolitan, or informally a cosmo, is a cocktail made with vodka, Cointreau, cranberry juice, and freshly squeezed or sweetened lime juice.


title: Cosmopolitan (cocktail)

text: The International Bartenders Association recipe is based on vodka citron, lemon-flavored vodka. The cosmopolitan is a relative of cranberry coolers like the Cape Codder. Though often presented far differently, the cosmopolitan also bears a likeness in composition to the kamikaze cocktail.


title: Cosmopolitan (cocktail)

text: While the cocktail is widely perceived to be a more modern creation, there is a recipe for a Cosmopolitan Daisy which appears in "Pioneers of Mixing at Elite Bars 1903–1933", published in 1934.


title: Cosmopolitan (cocktail)

text: Made with ingredients that would have been readily available during the period, this identically named cocktail aims for the same effect. If this drink is in fact the source of the modern cosmopolitan, then it would be an adaption of a Daisy rather than a Kamikaze.


title: Cosmopolitan (cocktail)

text: One version of the creation of this popular drink credits the accomplishment to the gay community in Provincetown, Massachusetts.


title: Cosmopolitan (cocktail)

text: Bartender Neal Murray says he created the cosmopolitan in 1975 at the Cork & Cleaver steak house in Minneapolis. According to Murray, he added a splash of cranberry juice to a Kamikaze and the first taster declared, "How cosmopolitan." Murray's Cosmopolitan used 1.5 oz Gordon's vodka, .75 oz Rose's Lime, .75 oz Leroux triple sec, and .5 oz cranberry juice.


title: Cosmopolitan (cocktail)

text: John Caine is the owner of several popular bars in San Francisco and a cosmopolitan expert. He partially credits the upsurge in cocktails during the 1970s to the Cosmo being served at fern bars. Caine is credited with bringing the Cosmo west from Cleveland.


title: Cosmopolitan (cocktail)

text: There are a number of other claims made as to the origin of the cosmopolitan. Cocktail historian Gary Regan credits bartender Cheryl Cook of the Strand Restaurant in South Beach, Florida with the original creation. In a letter to Regan, Cook related the story of how she created the drink in 1985 or 1986:


title: Cosmopolitan (cocktail)

text: Cook's original recipes called for "Absolut Citron, a splash of Triple sec, a drop of Rose's lime and just enough cranberry to make it oh so pretty in pink." Although Absolut Citron was not introduced anywhere officially until 1988, it was test marketed in Miami.


title: Cosmopolitan (cocktail)

text: Notable bartender Gaz Regan says that the internationally recognized version of the cocktail was created by Toby Cecchini & Melissa Huffsmith-Roth in 1989 at the Odeon restaurant in Manhattan based on a poorly described version of Cheryl Cook's creation. Huffsmith-Roth's Cosmopolitan includes 2 oz Absolut Citron vodka, 1 oz Cointreau, 1 oz lime juice, and .5 oz cranberry juice.


title: Cosmopolitan (cocktail)

text: According to Sally Ann Berk and Bob Sennett, the cosmopolitan appears in literature as early as 1993 and derives from New York City. However, a bartender named Patrick "Paddy" Mitten is also credited with bringing the drink to New York City from San Francisco in October 1987.


title: Cosmopolitan (cocktail)

text: The cosmopolitan gained popularity in the 1990s. It was further popularized among young women by its frequent mention on the television program "Sex and the City", where Sarah Jessica Parker's character, Carrie Bradshaw, commonly ordered the drink when out with her girlfriends. The film adaptation made a reference to its popularity when Miranda asks why they stopped drinking them, Carrie replies "because everyone else started."


title: Cosmopolitan (cocktail)

text: The cosmopolitan is usually served in a large cocktail glass, also called a "martini glass". For this reason, the drink is sometimes mistakenly categorized as a type of martini.


title: Cosmopolitan (cocktail)

text: The use of citrus flavored vodka as the basis for this cocktail appears to have been widely popularized in the mid 1990s by Dale DeGroff and is used in the IBA-approved recipe. However, many bartenders continue to use a standard unflavored vodka and this alternative would undoubtedly be historically consistent with any of the supposed predecessors of this drink that were popular in Ohio, Provincetown, or Minneapolis during the 1970s, or in San Francisco during the 1980s. A lemon twist is sometimes used to garnish.


title: Bill Ayers

text: William Charles Ayers (; born December 26, 1944) rose to prominence during the 1960s as a domestic terrorist.


title: Bill Ayers

text: During the 1960s, Ayers was a leader of the Weather Underground militant group, described by the FBI as a terrorist group.


title: Bill Ayers

text: In 1969, Ayers co-founded the Weather Underground, a revolutionary group modeled on the Red Guards in China active at the same time, that sought to overthrow American imperialism. The Weather Underground conducted a campaign of bombing public buildings (including police stations, the United States Capitol, and the Pentagon) during the 1960s and 1970s in response to U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. The bombings, which caused no fatalities, except for three members killed when one of the group's own devices accidentally exploded, resulted in Ayers being hunted as a fugitive for several years, until charges were dropped due to illegal actions by the FBI agents pursuing him and others.


title: Bill Ayers

text: Ayers is a retired professor in the College of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, formerly holding the titles of Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar. During the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign, a controversy arose over his contacts with then-candidate Barack Obama. He is married to lawyer and Clinical Law Professor Bernardine Dohrn, who was also a leader in the Weather Underground.


title: Bill Ayers

text: Ayers grew up in Glen Ellyn, a suburb of Chicago, Illinois. His parents were Mary (née Andrew) and Thomas G. Ayers, who was later chairman and chief executive officer of Commonwealth Edison (1973 to 1980), and for whom Northwestern's Thomas G. Ayers College of Commerce and Industry was named. He attended public schools until his second year in high school, when he transferred to Lake Forest Academy, a small prep school. Ayers earned a Bachelor of Arts in American Studies from the University of Michigan in 1968. (His father, mother and older brother had preceded him there.)


title: Bill Ayers

text: Ayers was affected at a 1965 Ann Arbor teach-in against the Vietnam War, when Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) President Paul Potter, asked his audience, "How will you live your life so that it doesn't make a mockery of your values?" Ayers later wrote in his memoir, "Fugitive Days", that his reaction was: "You could not be a moral person with the means to act, and stand still. [...] To stand still was to choose indifference. Indifference was the opposite of moral".


title: Bill Ayers

text: In 1965, Ayers joined a picket line protesting an Ann Arbor, Michigan pizzeria for refusing to seat African Americans. His first arrest came for a sit-in at a local draft board, resulting in ten days in jail. His first teaching job came shortly afterward at the Children's Community School, a preschool with a very small enrollment operating in a church basement, founded by a group of students in emulation of the Summerhill method of education.


title: Bill Ayers

text: The school was a part of the nationwide "free school movement". Schools in the movement had no grades or report cards; they aimed to encourage cooperation rather than competition, and pupils addressed teachers by their first names. Within a few months, at age 21, Ayers became director of the school. There also he met Diana Oughton, who would become his girlfriend until her death in 1970 after a bomb exploded while being prepared for Weather Underground activities.


title: Bill Ayers

text: Ayers became involved in the New Left and the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). He rose to national prominence as an SDS leader in 1968 and 1969 as head of an SDS regional group, the "Jesse James Gang".


title: Bill Ayers

text: The group Ayers headed in Detroit, Michigan, became one of the earliest gatherings of what became the Weathermen. Before the June 1969 SDS convention, Ayers became a prominent leader of the group, which arose as a result of a schism in SDS. "During that time his infatuation with street fighting grew and he developed a language of confrontational militancy that became more and more pronounced over the year [1969]", disaffected former Weathermen member Cathy Wilkerson wrote in 2001. Ayers had previously been a roommate of Terry Robbins, a fellow militant who was killed in 1970 along with Ayers's girlfriend Oughton and one other member in the Greenwich Village townhouse explosion, while constructing anti-personnel bombs (nail bombs) intended for a non-commissioned officer dance at Fort Dix, New Jersey.


title: Bill Ayers

text: In June 1969, the Weathermen took control of the SDS at its national convention, where Ayers was elected Education Secretary. Later in 1969, Ayers participated in planting a bomb at a statue dedicated to police casualties in the 1886 Haymarket affair confrontation between labor supporters and the Chicago police. The blast broke almost 100 windows and blew pieces of the statue onto the nearby Kennedy Expressway. (The statue was rebuilt and unveiled on May 4, 1970, and blown up again by other Weathermen on October 6, 1970. Rebuilding it yet again, the city posted a 24-hour police guard to prevent another blast, and in January 1972 it was moved to Chicago police headquarters).


title: Bill Ayers

text: Ayers participated in the Days of Rage riot in Chicago in October 1969, and in December was at the "War Council" meeting in Flint, Michigan. Two major decisions came out of the "War Council". The first was to immediately begin a violent, armed struggle (e.g., bombings and armed robberies) against the state without attempting to organize or mobilize a broad swath of the public. The second was to create underground collectives in major cities throughout the country. Larry Grathwohl, a Federal Bureau of Investigation informant in the Weathermen group from the fall of 1969 to the spring of 1970, stated that "Ayers, along with Bernardine Dohrn, probably had the most authority within the Weathermen".


title: Bill Ayers

text: After the Greenwich Village townhouse explosion in 1970, in which Weatherman member Ted Gold, Ayers's close friend Terry Robbins, and Ayers's girlfriend, Diana Oughton, were killed when a nail bomb being assembled in the house exploded, Ayers and several associates evaded pursuit by law enforcement officials. Kathy Boudin and Cathy Wilkerson survived the blast. Ayers was not facing criminal charges at the time, but the federal government later filed charges against him.


title: Bill Ayers

text: Ayers participated in the bombings of New York City Police Department headquarters in 1970, the United States Capitol building in 1971, and the Pentagon in 1972, as he noted in his 2001 book, "Fugitive Days". Ayers writes: Although the bomb that rocked the Pentagon was itsy-bitsy—weighing close to two pounds—it caused 'tens of thousands of dollars' of damage. The operation cost under $500, and no one was killed or even hurt.


title: Bill Ayers

text: After the bombing, Ayers became a fugitive. During this time, Ayers and fellow member Bernardine Dohrn married and remained fugitives together, changing identities, jobs and locations.


title: Bill Ayers

text: In 1973, Ayers co-authored the book "Prairie Fire" with other members of the Weather Underground. The book was dedicated to close to 200 people, including Harriet Tubman, John Brown, "All Who Continue to Fight", and "All Political Prisoners in the U.S." The book dedication includes Sirhan Sirhan, the convicted assassin of Robert F. Kennedy.


title: Bill Ayers

text: In 1973, new information came to light about FBI operations targeted against Weather Underground and the New Left, all part of a series of covert and often illegal FBI projects called COINTEL. Due to the illegal tactics of FBI agents involved with the program, including conducting wiretaps and property searches without warrants, government attorneys requested all weapons-related and bomb-related charges be dropped against the Weather Underground, including charges against Ayers.


title: Bill Ayers

text: However, state charges against Dohrn remained. Dohrn was still reluctant to turn herself in to authorities. "He was sweet and patient, as he always is, to let me come to my senses on my own," she later said of Ayers. She turned herself in to authorities in 1980. She was fined $1,500 and given three years probation.


title: Bill Ayers

text: In 2001, Ayers published "Fugitive Days: A Memoir", which he explained in part as an attempt to answer the questions of Kathy Boudin's son, and his speculation that Diana Oughton died trying to stop the Greenwich Village bomb-makers. Some have questioned the truth, accuracy, and tone of the book. Brent Staples wrote for "The New York Times Book Review" that "Ayers reminds us often that he can't tell everything without endangering people involved in the story." Historian Jesse Lemisch (himself a former member of SDS) contrasted Ayers's recollections with those of other former members of the Weathermen, and claimed that the book had many errors. Ayers, in the foreword to his book, stated that it was written as his personal memories and impressions over time, not a scholarly research project. Reviewing Ayers's memoir in "Slate Magazine", Timothy Noah said that he could not recall reading "a memoir quite so self-indulgent and morally clueless as "Fugitive Days"". Studs Terkel called Ayers's memoir "a deeply moving elegy to all those young dreamers who tried to live decently in an indecent world".


title: Bill Ayers

text: "Chicago Magazine" reported that "just before the September 11th attacks", Richard Elrod, a city lawyer injured in the Weathermen's Chicago "Days of Rage", received an apology from Ayers and Dohrn for their part in the violence. "[T]hey were remorseful," Elrod says. "They said, 'We're sorry that things turned out this way.' "


title: Bill Ayers

text: Much of the controversy about Ayers during the decade since 2000 stems from an interview he gave to Dinitia Smith for "The New York Times" on the occasion of the memoir's publication on September 11, 2001. The reporter quoted him as saying "I don't regret setting bombs" and "I feel we didn't do enough", and, when asked if he would "do it all again", as responding "I don't want to discount the possibility."


title: Bill Ayers

text: Four days later, Ayers protested the interviewer's characterizations in a Letter to the Editor published September 15, 2001: "This is not a question of being misunderstood or 'taken out of context', but of deliberate distortion." In the ensuing years, Ayers has repeatedly avowed that, when he said he had "no regrets" and that "we didn't do enough", he was speaking only in reference to his efforts to stop the United States from waging the Vietnam War, efforts which he has described as "...inadequate [as] the war dragged on for a decade". Ayers has maintained that the two statements were not intended to imply a wish they had set more bombs. In a November 2008 interview with "The New Yorker", Ayers said that he had not meant to imply that he wished he and the Weathermen had committed further violence. Instead, he said, "I wish I had done more, but it doesn't mean I wish we'd bombed more shit." Ayers said that he had never been responsible for violence against other people and was acting to end a war in Vietnam in which "thousands of people were being killed every week". He also stated, "While we did claim several extreme acts, they were acts of extreme radicalism against property," and "We killed no one and hurt no one. Three of our people killed themselves."


title: Bill Ayers

text: He responded saying that he didn't recall saying that, but that "it's been quoted so many times I'm beginning to think I did. It was a joke about the distribution of wealth.'"


title: Bill Ayers

text: The interviewer also quoted some of Ayers's own criticisms of the Weathermen in the foreword to the memoir, whereby Ayers reacts to having watched Emile de Antonio's 1976 documentary film about the Weathermen, "Underground": "[Ayers] was 'embarrassed by the arrogance, the solipsism, the absolute certainty that we and we alone knew the way. The rigidity and the narcissism.' " "We weren't terrorists," Ayers told an interviewer for the "Chicago Tribune" in 2001. "The reason we weren't terrorists is because we did not commit random acts of terror against people. Terrorism was what was being practiced in the countryside of Vietnam by the United States."


title: Bill Ayers

text: In a letter to the editor in the "Chicago Tribune", Ayers wrote, "I condemn all forms of terrorism—individual, group and official". He also condemned the September 11 terrorist attacks in that letter.


title: Bill Ayers

text: Ayers was asked in a January 2004 interview, "How do you feel about what you did? Would you do it again under similar circumstances?" He replied: "I've thought about this a lot. Being almost 60, it's impossible to not have lots and lots of regrets about lots and lots of things, but the question of did we do something that was horrendous, awful? [...] I don't think so. I think what we did was to respond to a situation that was unconscionable."


title: Bill Ayers

text: On September 9, 2008, journalist Jake Tapper copied to his ABC News "Political Punch" blog and opined on a four-panel comic strip by Ryan Alexander-Tanner from Bill Ayers's blog site. In the comic strip, the Ayers cartoon character says: "The one thing I don't regret is opposing the war in Vietnam with every ounce of my being... When I say, 'We didn't do enough,' a lot of people rush to think, 'That must mean, "We didn't bomb enough shit." ' But that's not the point at all. It's not a tactical statement, it's an obvious political and ethical statement. In this context, 'we' means 'everyone.' "


title: Bill Ayers

text: After the 2008 presidential election, Ayers published an op-ed piece in "The New York Times" giving his assessment of his activism. Feminist critic Katha Pollitt criticized Ayers's opinion piece as a "sentimentalized, self-justifying whitewash of his role in the weirdo violent fringe of the 1960s–1970s antiwar left". She says Ayers and his Weathermen cohorts made "the antiwar movement look like the enemy of ordinary people" during the Vietnam War era. Ayers gave this assessment of his actions:


title: Bill Ayers

text: The Weather Underground crossed lines of legality, of propriety and perhaps even of common sense. Our effectiveness can be—and still is being—debated.


title: Bill Ayers

text: He also reiterated his rebuttal to the description of his actions as terrorism despite the use of shrapnel devices:


title: Bill Ayers

text: The Weather Underground went on to take responsibility for placing several small bombs in empty offices... We did carry out symbolic acts of extreme vandalism directed at monuments to war and racism, and the attacks on property, never on people, were meant to respect human life and convey outrage and determination to end the Vietnam war. Peaceful protests had failed to stop the war. So we issued a screaming response. But it was not terrorism; we were not engaged in a campaign to kill and injure people indiscriminately, spreading fear and suffering for political ends.


title: Bill Ayers

text: Ayers is a retired professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, College of Education. His interests include teaching for social justice, urban educational reform, narrative and interpretive research, children in trouble with the law, and related issues.


title: Bill Ayers

text: He began his career in primary education while an undergraduate, teaching at the Children's Community School (CCS), a project founded by a group of students and based on the Summerhill method of education. After leaving the underground, he earned an M.Ed from Bank Street College in Early Childhood Education (1984), an M.Ed from Teachers College, Columbia University in Early Childhood Education (1987) and an Ed.D from Teachers College, Columbia University in Curriculum and Instruction (1987).


title: Bill Ayers

text: Ayers was elected vice president for curriculum studies by the American Educational Research Association in 2008. William H. Schubert, a fellow professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, wrote that his election was "a testimony of [Ayers's] stature and [the] high esteem he holds in the field of education locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally". Writer Sol Stern, a conservative opponent of progressive education policies, has criticized Ayers as having a virulent "hatred of America", and said, "Calling Bill Ayers a school reformer is a bit like calling Joseph Stalin an agricultural reformer."


title: Bill Ayers

text: Ayers has edited and written many books and articles on education theory, policy and practice, and has received several honors for his work. His book "To Teach: The Journey of A Teacher" was named the Kappa Delta Pi Book of the Year in 1993 and subsequently won the Witten award for Distinguished Work in Biography and Autobiography in 1995. On August 5, 2010, Ayers announced his intent to retire from the University of Illinois at Chicago.