és tegnap megint eltévedtem egy mosdóban. :(

Arra, amikor egy ember elvállal egy munkát (fizetett vagy nem fizetett, legyen mindegy) és azt a munkát számontartja, nyomonköveti, kommunikál róla az érintettekkel, ELVÉGZI és megfelelő módon lezárja (mások számára érthetően dokumentálva).* Ez egy olyan ritka adottság/képesség amiről egyre inkább úgy gondolom, hogy valami genetikus eredetű lehet. Mert amúgy megbízható, becsületes, rendes, jószívű, felelősségteljes, hozzáértő, lendületes, okos emberek sem csinálják ezt. Nem tudom mi lehetne a neve ennek, ami aztán bekerül a köztudatba és a linkedinen külön csillagsort kap vagy nem is lesz publikus, mint a michelin csillag, csak az emberek suttogják egymás közt: baszdmeg meg vagyunk mentve, egy ez egy kibaszott xxxxxx!!!!

*Esetleg 10 év múlva is képes 5 perc alatt előszedni a munkához hozzá tartozó anyagokat – de ez már inkább szokás dolga, nem része a genetikus hajlamnak.

Vannak nekem előítéleteim, én nem tagadom. Ránézek, beszélgetek vele kicsit és úgy gondolom, hogy sok mindent meg tudok mondani. Ez független attól, hogy az illető nekem egyébként szimpatikus-e. Közeli munkatársnak nem szívesen választok olyas valakit, aki nem szimpatikus, mert amúgy elég künnyű engem triggerelni. De attól még látom mások értékeit. És képes vagyok rá, hogy elismerjem ezeket az értékeket. Egy projektnek mindig fontosabbnak kell lennie a személyes érzékenységeknél. De nyilván, ha én nem tudok dolgozni, mert a munkatársam kellemetlen ember, az nekem nem jó. Na mindegy ez már elkalandozás az adott problémától, inkább csak azért írtam így körül, mert volt egy benyomásom, egy gondolatom, és épp amikor már lágyult volna, akkor rá kellett jönnöm sajnos, hogy nem változott semmi. Aki fasz, az fasz, aki egoista az egoista, aki hazudik, az hazudik. Megbízhatóan.

Gwendolyn Elizabeth Brooks (June 7, 1917 – December 3, 2000) was an American poet, author, and teacher. She was the recipient of many awards for her work and influence; including the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry on May 1, 1950, making her the first African American woman to receive that award.

Throughout her career Brooks received many more honors. She was appointed Poet Laureate of Illinois in 1968, a position held until her death, and Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1985.

Early life

Gwendolyn Elizabeth Brooks was born on June 7, 1917, in Topeka, Kansas, and died on December 3, 2000 in Chicago, IL. She was the first child of David Anderson Brooks and Keziah (Wims) Brooks. Her father was a janitor for a music company who had hoped to pursue a career as a doctor but sacrificed that aspiration to get married and raise a family. Her mother was a school teacher as well as a concert pianist trained in classical music. Family lore held that her paternal grandfather had escaped slavery to join the Union forces during the American Civil War.

When Brooks was six weeks old, her family moved to Chicago during the Great Migration; from then on, Chicago remained her home. According to biographer Kenny Jackson Williams, Brooks first attended a prestigious integrated high school in the city with a predominantly white student body, Hyde Park High School, transferred to the all-black Wendell Phillips High School, and then moved to the integrated Englewood High School. After completing high school, she graduated in 1936 from Wilson Junior College, now known as Kennedy-King College. Due to the social dynamics of the various schools, in conjunction with time period in which she attended them, Brooks faced racial injustice that over time contributed to her understanding of the prejudice and bias in established systems and dominant institutions in her own surroundings as well as ever relevant mindset of the country.

Brooks began writing at an early age and her mother encouraged her saying, ''You are going to be the lady Paul Laurence Dunbar."

After these early educational experiences, Brooks never pursued a four-year degree because she knew she wanted to be a writer and considered it unnecessary. "I am not a scholar," she later said. "I'm just a writer who loves to write and will always write." She worked as a typist to support herself while she pursued her career.

She would closely identify with Chicago for the rest of her life. In a 1994 interview, she remarked on this,

"(L)iving in the city, I wrote differently than I would have if I had been raised in Topeka, KS...I am an organic Chicagoan. Living there has given me a multiplicity of characters to aspire for. I hope to live there the rest of my days. That's my headquarters.

Career

Writing

Brooks published her first poem, "Eventide", in a children's magazine, American Childhood, when she was 13 years old. By the age of sixteen she had already written and published approximately seventy-five poems. She received commendations on her poetic work and encouragement from James Weldon Johnson and later, Langston Hughes, both well-known writers with whom she kept communication with and whose readings she attended in Chicago. At seventeen, she started submitting her work to "Lights and Shadows," the poetry column of the Chicago Defender, an African-American newspaper. Her poems, many published while she attended Wilson Junior College, ranged in style from traditional ballads and sonnets to poems using blues rhythms in free verse.

Her characters were often drawn from the inner city life that Brooks knew well. She said, "I lived in a small second-floor apartment at the corner, and I could look first on one side and then the other. There was my material."

By 1941, Brooks was taking part in poetry workshops. A particularly influential one was organized by Inez Cunningham Stark, an affluent white woman with a strong literary background. Stark offered writing workshops to African-Americans on Chicago's South Side, which Brooks attended. It was here she gained momentum in finding her voice and a deeper knowledge of the techniques of her predecessors. Renowned poet Langston Hughes stopped by the workshop and heard Brooks read "The Ballad of Pearl May Lee." Brooks continued to work diligently at her writing and growing the community of artists and writers around her as her poetry began to be taken more seriously. She and her husband frequently threw parties at their apartment at 623 E. 63rd Street and it was in the kitchenette of that apartment that Brooks hosted a party for her friend and mentor Langston Hughes. Once he unexpectedly dropped in and famously shared a meal of mustard greens, ham hocks, and candied sweet potatoes with Brooks and her husband Henry Blakely.

Brooks' published her first book of poetry, A Street in Bronzeville (1945), with Harper and Row, after strong show of support to the publisher from author Richard Wright. He said to the editors who solicited his opinion on Brooks' work:

"There is no self-pity here, not a striving for effects. She takes hold of reality as it is and renders it faithfully.... She easily catches the pathos of petty destinies; the whimper of the wounded; the tiny accidents that plague the lives of the desperately poor, and the problem of color prejudice among Negroes."

The book earned instant critical acclaim for its authentic and textured portraits of life in Bronzeville. Brooks later said it was a glowing review by Paul Engle in the Chicago Tribune that "initiated My Reputation." Engle stated that Brooks' poems were no more "Negro poetry" than Robert Frost's work was "white poetry." Brooks received her first Guggenheim Fellowship in 1946 and was included as one of the “Ten Young Women of the Year” in Mademoiselle magazine.

In 1953, Brooks published her first and only narrative book, a novella titled Maud Martha, which in a series of thirty-four small vignettes, follows the life of a black woman named Maud Martha in detail as she moved about life from childhood to adulthood. It tells the story of "a woman with doubts about herself and where and how she fits into the world. Maud's concern is not so much that she is inferior but that she is perceived as being ugly," states author Harry B. Shaw in his book, Gwendolyn Brooks. Maud suffers prejudice and discrimination not only from white individuals but also from black individuals who have lighter skin tones than hers, something that is direct reference to Brooks' personal experience. Eventually, Maud stands up for herself by turning her back on a patronizing and racist store clerk. "The book is ... about the triumph of the lowly," Shaw comments.

In 1967, the year of Hughes' death, Brooks attended the Second Black Writers' Conference at Nashville's Fisk University. Here, according to one version of events, she met activists and artists such as Imamu Amiri Baraka, Don L. Lee and others who exposed her to new black cultural nationalism. Recent studies argue that she had been involved in leftist politics in Chicago for many years and, under the pressures of McCarthyism, adopted a black nationalist posture as a means of distancing herself from her prior political connections. Brooks' experience at the conference inspired many of her subsequent literary activities. She taught creative writing to some of Chicago's Blackstone Rangers, otherwise a violent criminal gang. In 1968 she published one of her most famous poems, In the Mecca, a long poem about a mother's search for her lost child in a Chicago apartment building. The poem was nominated for the National Book Award for poetry.

Brooks' second book of poetry, Annie Allen (1950), focused on the life and experiences of a young Black girl as she grew into womanhood in the Bronzeville neighborhood of Chicago. The book was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for poetry; she also was awarded Poetry magazine's Eunice Tietjens Prize.

Her autobiographical Report From Part One, including reminiscences, interviews, photographs and vignettes, came out in 1972, and Report From Part Two was published in 1995, when she was almost 80.

Teaching

Brooks said her first teaching experience was at the University of Chicago when she was invited by author Frank London Brown to teach a course in American literature. It was the beginning of her lifelong commitment to sharing poetry and teaching writing.

Brooks taught extensively around the country and held posts at Columbia College Chicago, Northeastern Illinois University, Chicago State University, Elmhurst College, Columbia University, City College of New York, and the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

On May 1, 1996, Brooks returned to her birthplace of Topeka, Kansas. She gave the keynote speech for the Third Annual Kaw Valley Girl Scout Council's "Women of Distinction Banquet and String of Pearls Auction."

Archives

The Rare Book & Manuscript Library (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) acquired Brooks' archives from her daughter Nora. In addition, the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley has a collection of her personal papers, especially from 1950 to 1989.

Family life

In 1939, Brooks married Henry Lowington Blakely, Jr. They had two children: Henry Lowington Blakely III, born on October 10, 1940; and Nora Blakely, born in 1951.

From mid-1961 to late-1964, Henry III served in the U.S. Marine Corps, first at Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego and then at Marine Corps Air Station Kaneohe Bay. During this time, Brooks mentored his fiancée, Kathleen Hardiman, today known as anthropologist Kathleen Rand Reed, in writing poetry. Upon his return, Blakely and Hardiman married in 1965. Brooks had so enjoyed the mentoring relationship that she began to engage more frequently in that role with the new generation of young black poets.

In the year 1990, her works were given a permanent home when Chicago State University established the Gwendolyn Brooks Center for Black Literature and Creative Writing on campus. On her eightieth birthday, in 1997, Brooks was honored with tributes from Chicago to Washington, D.C. Gwendolyn Brooks died of cancer at her Chicago home on December 3, 2000.

Honors and legacy

1946, Guggenheim Fellow in Poetry

1946, American Academy of Arts & Letters Award

1950, Pulitzer Prize in Poetry

1968, appointed Poet Laureate of Illinois, a position she held until her death in 2000

1976, the Shelley Memorial Award of the Poetry Society of America

1985, selected as the Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, an honorary one-year position whose title was renamed the next year to Poet Laureate

1988, inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame

1989, recipient, Life Time Achievement Award from the National Endowment for the Arts.

1989, awarded the Robert Frost Medal for lifetime achievement by the Poetry Society of America

1992, awarded the Aiken Taylor Award by the Sewanee Review

1994, chosen as the National Endowment for the Humanities' Jefferson Lecturer, one of the highest honors in American literature and the highest award in the humanities given by the federal government.

1994, Recipient of the National Book Foundations's Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters

1995, presented with the National Medal of Arts

1995, honored as the first Woman of the Year chosen by the Harvard Black Men's Forum

1995, received the Chicago History Museum "Making History Award" for Distinction in Literature

1997, awarded the Order of Lincoln award from The Lincoln Academy of Illinois, the highest honor granted by the State of Illinois

Brooks also received more than 75 honorary degrees from colleges and universities worldwide.

Legacy

1970: "For Sadie and Maud" by Eleanor Holmes Norton, included in Sisterhood is Powerful: An Anthology of Writings From The Women's Liberation Movement (1970), quotes all of Brooks' poem "Sadie and Maud"

1970: Gwendolyn Brooks Cultural Center, Western Illinois University, Macomb, Illinois

1995: Gwendolyn Brooks Elementary School, Aurora, Illinois

1990: Gwendolyn Brooks Center for Black Literature and Creative Writing, Chicago State University

2001: Gwendolyn Brooks College Preparatory Academy, Chicago, Illinois

2001: Gwendolyn Brooks Middle School, Harvey, Illinois

2002: Gwendolyn Brooks Middle School, Oak Park, Illinois

2003: Gwendolyn Brooks Illinois State Library, Springfield, Illinois

2002: 100 Greatest African Americans

2004 Gwendolyn Brooks Park named by the Chicago Park District, 4542 S. Greenwood Ave. Chicago IL 60653

2005: Gwendolyn Brooks Middle School, Bolingbrook, Illinois

2012: Honored on a United States' postage stamp.

William Grant Still (May 11, 1895 – December 3, 1978) was an American composer, who composed more than 150 works, including five symphonies and eight operas.

Often referred to as "the Dean" of African-American composers, Still was the first American composer to have an opera produced by the New York City Opera. Still is known most for his first symphony, which was until the 1950s the most widely performed symphony composed by an American.

Born in Mississippi, he grew up in Little Rock, Arkansas, attended Wilberforce University and Oberlin Conservatory of Music, and was a student of George Whitefield Chadwick and later Edgard Varèse.

Of note, Still was the first African American to conduct a major American symphony orchestra, the first to have a symphony (his 1st Symphony) performed by a leading orchestra, the first to have an opera performed by a major opera company, and the first to have an opera performed on national television.

Life

William Grant Still was born on May 11, 1895 in Woodville, Mississippi. He was the son of two teachers, Carrie Lena Fambro Still (1872–1927) and William Grant Still Sr.(1871–1895). His father was a partner in a grocery store and performed as a local bandleader. William Grant Still Sr. died when his infant son was three months old.

Still's mother moved with him to Little Rock, Arkansas, where she taught high school English for 33 years. She met and married Charles B. Shepperson, who nurtured his stepson William's musical interests by taking him to operettas and buying Red Seal recordings of classical music, which the boy greatly enjoyed. The two attended a number of performances by musicians on tour. His maternal grandmother sang African-American spirituals to him.

Still grew up in Little Rock, and started violin lessons at the age of 15. He taught himself to play the clarinet, saxophone, oboe, double bass, cello and viola, and showed a great interest in music. At 16 he graduated from M. W. Gibbs High School in Little Rock.

His mother wanted him to go to medical school, so Still pursued a Bachelor of Science degree program at Wilberforce University, a historically black college in Ohio. Still became a member of Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity. He conducted the university band, learned to play various instruments, and started to compose and to do orchestrations.

He was awarded scholarships to study at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music with Friedrick Lehmann and with George Whitefield Chadwick. He also studied with the modern composer Edgard Varèse.

Still was married to pianist Verna Arvey. Their granddaughter is journalist Celeste Headlee.

Career

In 1918, Still joined the United States Navy to serve in World War I. Between 1919 and 1921, he worked as an arranger for W. C. Handy's band. In 1921 he recorded with Fletcher Henderson's Dance Orchestra, and later played in the pit orchestra for Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake's musical, Shuffle Along. Later in the 1920s, Still served as the arranger of Yamekraw, a "Negro Rhapsody" composed by the noted Harlem stride pianist, James P. Johnson. His initial hiring by Paul Whiteman took place in early November 1929.

In the 1930s, Still worked as an arranger of popular music, writing for Willard Robison's Deep River Hour and Paul Whiteman's Old Gold Show, both popular NBC Radio broadcasts. In 1936, Still conducted the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra; he was the first African American to conduct a major American orchestra.

In 1934, Still received his first Guggenheim Fellowship; he started work on the first of his eight operas, Blue Steel. In 1949 his opera Troubled Island, originally completed in 1939, about Jean Jacques Dessalines and Haiti, was performed by the New York City Opera. It was the first opera by an African American to be performed by a major company.

Still moved to Los Angeles in the 1930s, where he arranged music for films. These included Pennies from Heaven (the 1936 film starring Bing Crosby and Madge Evans) and Lost Horizon (the 1937 film starring Ronald Colman, Jane Wyatt and Sam Jaffe). For Lost Horizon, he arranged the music of Dimitri Tiomkin. Still was also hired to arrange the music for the 1943 film Stormy Weather, but left the assignment after a few weeks due to artistic disagreements.

In 1955, he conducted the New Orleans Philharmonic Orchestra; he was the first African American to conduct a major orchestra in the Deep South. Still's works were performed internationally by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra, the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra, and the BBC Orchestra.

He was the first African American to have an opera performed on national United States television when A Bayou Legend, completed in 1941, premiered on PBS in June 1981. Additionally, he was the recording manager of the Black Swan Phonograph Company.

Legacy and honors

William Grant Still received two Guggenheim Fellowships.

He was awarded honorary doctorates from Oberlin College, Wilberforce University, Howard University, Bates College, the University of Arkansas, Pepperdine University, the New England Conservatory of Music, the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, and the University of Southern California.

He was posthumously awarded the 1982 Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters award for music composition for his opera A Bayou Legend.

Selected compositions

From the Land of Dreams (1924, believed lost until 1997)

Darker America (1924)

Levee Land (1925)

From the Black Belt (1926)

La Guiablese, ballet (1927)

Sahdji, ballet (1930)

Africa (1930)

Symphony No. 1 "Afro-American" (1930)

A Deserted Plantation (1933)

Blue Steel, opera (1934)

Symphony in G minor (1937)

Lenox Avenue, for radio announcer, chorus, & orchestra (1937)

Seven Traceries (1939)

And They Lynched him on a Tree (1940)

Miss Sally's Party, ballet (1940)

Can'tcha line 'em, for orchestra (1940)

Old California, for orchestra (1941)

Troubled Island, opera, produced 1949 (1937–39)

A Bayou Legend, opera (1941)

A Southern Interlude, opera (1942)

Incantation and Dance, for oboe & pf.

In Memoriam: The Colored Soldiers Who Died for Democracy (1943)

Suite for Violin & Piano, including the movement later arranged for String Orchestra as Mother and Child (1943)

Festive Overture (1944)

Poem for Orchestra (1944)

Symphony No. 5, "Western Hemisphere" (1945)

Wailing Women, for soprano and chorus (1946)

Symphony No. 4, "Autochthonous" (1947)

Grief, originally titled by Still as Weeping Angel (1953)

Danzas de Panama (Dances of Panama) (1953)

The Little Song That Wanted to Be a Symphony (1954)

Little Red Schoolhouse (1957)

The American Scene (1957)

Ennanga (1958)

Lyric Quartet (1960)

Highway 1 U.S.A., opera (1963)