Summer of Love, English Style
Lab Girl, Great White Buffalo Brewing Co., George Harrison, Willie Hernández, Castoff Clock
Welcome to my weekly newsletter. This week’s issue features five favorite British bands from the Summer of Love, an inspiring life story, a local brewery with decent food, a favorite Beatle, one of three Tigers who won both the Cy Young and MVP, and time in flight. I hope you like the picks and pics.
Today is the birthday of several friends and family members. Happy Birthday to:
Our grandson, Julian Kahlscheuer, 4.
Our niece, Rebecca Luxenberg and our nephew, Harlan Luxenberg, both 41.
One of our June house concert performers, Dominic John Davis, 48.
Our Clayton High School Classmate, Nick Robins, 70.
Fave Five 61: Summer of Love, English Style. Moving Memoir (Lab Girl), Northville Noshing (Great White Buffalo Brewing Co.), <GH>2 (Guitar Hero George Harrison), Double Dipper (Willie Hernandez), and a Castoff Clock.
Fave Five List: Favorite British Bands from the Summer of Love
Last week’s list featured British bands from 1964 to 1966. This week I move ahead one year to 1967, also known as the Summer of Love, when I started listening regularly to rock and pop music and buying records. Here are five bands not in last week’s list, with an important song they each released in 1967.
The Bee Gees - New York Mining Disaster 1941 (They were originally from England and later moved to Australia.)
The Moody Blues - Tuesday Afternoon
Procol Harum - A Whiter Shade of Pale
Cream - Sunshine of Your Love
The Who - I Can See for Miles
Book Best Bet
I loved this book. The author infuses her love of science into the story of her personal journey, resulting in a powerful narrative. I found it both informative and moving.
From Amazon: Geobiologist Hope Jahren has spent her life studying trees, flowers, seeds, and soil. Lab Girl is her revelatory treatise on plant life—but it is also a celebration of the lifelong curiosity, humility, and passion that drive every scientist.
In these pages, Hope takes us back to her Minnesota childhood, where she spent hours in unfettered play in her father’s college laboratory. She tells us how she found a sanctuary in science, learning to perform lab work “with both the heart and the hands.” She introduces us to Bill, her brilliant, eccentric lab manager. And she extends the mantle of scientist to each one of her readers, inviting us to join her in observing and protecting our environment.
Warm, luminous, compulsively readable, Lab Girl vividly demonstrates the mountains that we can move when love and work come together.
Awards
Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography
A New York Times Notable Book
Winner of the American Association for the Advancement of Science/Subaru Science Books & Film Prize for Excellence in Science Books
Finalist for the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award
Reviews
“Lab Girl by Hope Jahren is a beautifully written memoir about the life of a woman in science, a brilliant friendship, and the profundity of trees. Terrific.” —President Barack Obama
“Engrossing. . . Thrilling. . . Does for botany what Oliver Sacks’s essays did for neurology, what Stephen Jay Gould’s writings did for paleontology.” —The New York Times
“Lab Girl made me look at trees differently. It compelled me to ponder the astonishing grace and gumption of a seed. Perhaps most importantly, it introduced me to a deeply inspiring woman—a scientist so passionate about her work I felt myself vividly with her on every page. This is a smart, enthralling, and winning debut.” —Cheryl Strayed
“Brilliant. . . Extraordinary. . . Delightfully, wickedly funny. . . Powerful and disarming.” —The Washington Post
“Clear, compelling and uncompromisingly honest . . . Hope Jahren is the voice that science has been waiting for.” —Nature
"Spirited. . . Stunning. . . Moving.” —The New York Times Book Review
“A powerful new memoir . . . Jahren is a remarkable scientist who turns out to be a remarkable writer as well. . . Think Stephen Jay Gould or Oliver Sacks. But Hope Jahren is a woman in science, who speaks plainly to just how rugged that can be. And to the incredible machinery of life around us.” —On Point/NPR
“Lyrical . . . illuminating . . . Offers a lively glimpse into a scientifically inclined mind.” —The Wall Street Journal
“Some people are great writers, while other people live lives of adventure and importance. Almost no one does both. Hope Jahren does both. She makes me wish I’d been a scientist.” —Ann Patchett, author of State of Wonder
“Lab Girl surprised, delighted, and moved me. I was drawn in from the start by the clarity and beauty of Jahren’s prose. . . With Lab Girl, Jahren joins those talented scientists who are able to reveal to us the miracle of this world in which we live.” —Abraham Verghese, author of Cutting for Stone
“Revelatory. . . A veritable jungle of ideas and sensations.” —Slate
“Warm, witty . . . Fascinating. . . . Jahren’s singular gift is her ability to convey the everyday wonder of her work: exploring the strange, beautiful universe of living things that endure and evolve and bloom all around us, if we bother to look.” —Entertainment Weekly
“Deeply affecting. . . A totally original work, both fierce and uplifting. . . A belletrist in the mold of Oliver Sacks, she is terrific at showing just how science is done. . . She’s an acute observer, prickly, and funny as hell.” —Elle
“Magnificent. . . [A] gorgeous book of life. . . . Jahren contains multitudes. Her book is love as life. Trees as truth.” —Chicago Tribune
“Mesmerizing. . . Deft and flecked with humor . . . a scientist’s memoir of a quirky, gritty, fascinating life. . . Like Robert Sapolsky’s A Primate’s Memoir or Helen Macdonald’s H is for Hawk, it delivers the zing of a beautiful mind in nature.” —Seattle Times
“Jahren's memoir [is] the beginning of a career along the lines of Annie Dillard or Diane Ackerman.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune
“A scientific memoir that's beautifully human.” —Popular Science
“Breathtakingly honest. . . Gorgeous. . . At its core, Lab Girl is a book about seeing—with the eyes, but also the hands and the heart.” —American Scientist
Hope Jahren
Anne Hope Jahren (born September 27, 1969 in Austin, Minnesota) is an American geochemist and geobiologist at the University of Oslo in Norway, known for her work using stable isotope analysis to analyze fossil forests dating to the Eocene. She has won many prestigious awards in the field, including the James B. Macelwane Medal of the American Geophysical Union.
Jahren is an advocate for raising public awareness of science and has been working to lift the stereotype surrounding women and girls in science. One such example included the repurposing of the Twitter hashtag #ManicureMondays. Seventeen magazine originally came up with the hashtag but focused mainly on manicured and painted fingernails. Subsequently, Jahren encouraged fellow scientists, specifically girls, to tweet pictures of their hands conducting scientific experiments. The idea behind this was to raise awareness of scientific research and to increase the profile of women working in science.
Jahren has also written compellingly about the sexual harassment of women in science. She recommends that people draw strong professional boundaries, and that they carefully document what occurs, beginning with the first occasion of harassment.
Restaurant Recommendation
Great White Buffalo Brewing Co. 101 W Main St, Northville, MI 48167
After one of our Friday Fun walks this summer, Jerry Oljace and I decided to try this new place in Northville. We sat outside and were pleasantly surprised to find such a good lunch at a brewery.
I had the PB Nashville Chixen Slider: pickle, mayo, Nashville hot sauce, served with crisp tots.
Jerry tried Chicken Tacos: 3 tacos with chicken, slaw, guacamole, and lime served with chips and salsa.
Marvelous Musician
Last week I featured The Beatles and this week, their lead guitarist. Yesterday was the 22nd anniversary of George’s passing. He was Barb's favorite Beatle, and I like his solo work better than that of the other Beatles. When All Things Must Pass came out in 1970, my friend Tim Poor and I drove to E.J. Korvette's in Cool Valley, a northern St. Louis suburb, to buy the 3-LP release. I loved it, especially "What Is Life," "Apple Scruffs," and "Awaiting On You All."
From Wikipedia: George Harrison MBE (born February 25, 1943 in Liverpool, England; died November 29, 2001 in Los Angeles) was an English musician, singer, songwriter, and music and film producer who achieved international fame as the lead guitarist and occasional lead vocalist of the Beatles. Sometimes called "the quiet Beatle", Harrison embraced Indian culture and helped broaden the scope of popular music through his incorporation of Indian instrumentation and Hindu-aligned spirituality in the Beatles' work. Although the majority of the band's songs were written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, most Beatles albums from 1965 onwards contained at least two Harrison compositions. His songs for the group include "Taxman", "Within You Without You", "While My Guitar Gently Weeps", "Here Comes the Sun", and "Something".
After the band's break-up in 1970, Harrison released the triple album All Things Must Pass, a critically acclaimed work that produced his most successful hit single, "My Sweet Lord", and introduced his signature sound as a solo artist, the slide guitar. He also organized the 1971 Concert for Bangladesh with Indian musician Ravi Shankar, a precursor to later benefit concerts such as Live Aid. In his role as a music and film producer, Harrison produced acts signed to the Beatles' Apple record label before founding Dark Horse Records in 1974 and co-founding HandMade Films in 1978.
Harrison released several best-selling singles and albums as a solo performer. In 1988, he co-founded the platinum-selling supergroup the Traveling Wilburys. A prolific recording artist, he was featured as a guest guitarist on tracks by Badfinger, Ronnie Wood, and Billy Preston, and collaborated on songs and music with Dylan, Eric Clapton, Ringo Starr and Tom Petty, among others. Rolling Stone magazine ranked him number 11 in their list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time". He is a two-time Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee – as a member of the Beatles in 1988, and posthumously for his solo career in 2004.
While My Guitar Gently Weeps
Here Comes The Sun and Homeward Bound (with Paul Simon)
What Is Life
Apple Scruffs
Awaiting On You All
Got My Mind Set On You
The Traveling Wilburys - Handle With Care
My Playlist
Sports Star
A Detroit sports hero passed away on November 20, 2023. Willie was one of three Tigers pitchers who won the Cy Young and MVP in the same year, along Denny McLain in 1968 and Justin Verlander in 2011. Willie did it in 1984, the last time the Tigers won the World Series. That was two years before I moved to Detroit and two years after my St. Louis Cardinals won the World Series. I would have liked to have been in Detroit for that glorious year of Bless You Boys.
From Wikipedia: Guillermo "Willie" Hernández Villanueva (born November 14, 1954 in Aguada, Puerto Rico; died November 20, 2023 in Sebring, Florida) was a Puerto Rican baseball relief pitcher in Major League Baseball. He won both the American League Cy Young Award and the American League Most Valuable Player Award in 1984 after leading the Detroit Tigers to the World Series championship.
Hernández was born and raised in Aguada, Puerto Rico. He signed with the Philadelphia Phillies in 1973 and played in their minor-league system as a starting pitcher from 1974 to 1976. He was acquired by the Chicago Cubs in the 1976 Rule 5 Draft and played for the Cubs, principally as a relief pitcher, from 1977 to 1983. His performance improved markedly after adding a screwball and cut fastball to his pitching repertoire. He was traded to the Phillies in May 1983, helped lead them to the National League pennant, and appeared in three games in the 1983 World Series, giving up zero hits and zero runs in three games.
In March 1984, he was traded to the Detroit Tigers. As the Tigers' closer in 1984, he compiled a 9–3 win–loss record with 32 saves and a 1.92 earned run average (ERA). He helped lead the Tigers to the 1984 World Series championship and became only the third player in major-league history (following Sandy Koufax and Denny McLain) to win the Cy Young Award, MVP Award, and World Series title, all in the same season.
Hernández continued to pitch for the Tigers through the 1989 season. In 13 major-league seasons, he appeared in 744 games, 733 as a relief pitcher and 11 as a starter, and compiled a win–loss record of 70–63 with a 3.38 ERA, 788 strikeouts, and 147 saves. After his playing career ended, he returned to Puerto Rico, where he operated a construction business and later owned a cattle ranch.
Willie Hernandez was linchpin for 1984 Detroit Tigers by Lynn Henning of the Detroit News
He never gave hitters a break. He pitched in a whopping 80 games in ’84 and threw an astonishing 140.1 innings. His ERA that season: 1.92. His WHIP was a stingy 0.94.
“I loved his arsenal,” Lance Parrish said. “He threw a fastball, threw a curveball, threw a screwball, and a straight change-up. But the thing that, in my mind, made him even more effective was that he dropped down (threw nearly sidearm) on just about all those pitches, which was kind of the equalizer for him against lefties.
“He could drop down and still be as accurate as throwing from his normal arm slot. That, to me, just increased his effectiveness.”
But, ah, the screwball: Parrish agrees it was a devil against hitters. The irony, he says, is that a pitch so rarely thrown, then or now, was also tossed by Lopez (“Señor Smoke”) who was the Tigers’ set-up man and who was known, as his moniker implied, more for his fastball. “Nobody I ever caught threw a screwball, and yet we had two guys who had it,” said Parrish.
What they all shared in was a baseball season that in 1984 was as much a marvel as it was a slice of ecstasy Detroit seems yet to be celebrating almost 40 years later.
And, what Parrish also knows now, as he knew then, was how that six-month experience — a kind of Masterpiece Theater staged on baseball diamonds — so often finished with a flourish only a man as gifted as Hernández could bring to his team, and to a Tigers audience, still awed by a pitcher’s rich mix of grace and power.
Ex-Detroit Tigers star, 1984 AL MVP Willie Hernandez dies at 69 by Evan Petzold of the Detroit Free Press
Only three players have won the MVP, Cy Young and World Series in the same season: Sandy Koufax in 1963, Denny McLain in 1968, and Hernández in 1984.
In 1984, Hernández posted a 1.92 ERA and 32 saves across 140⅓ innings in 80 games out of the bullpen. Of those 80 games, 68 of them were games finished. He appeared in an additional six games during the postseason, including three games, 5⅓ innings and two saves in the World Series.
Hernández, a left-hander, pitched the final two innings of the 1984 World Series. He faced eight batters and earned the save to secure an 8-4 victory over the San Diego Padres in Game 5 at Tiger Stadium. He also picked up the save in Game 3 of the World Series.
In his 13-year MLB career, Hernández had a 3.38 ERA with 147 saves and 778 strikeouts over 1,044⅔ innings in 744 games. He tacked on a 1.32 ERA with three saves and seven strikeouts over 13⅔ innings in 10 games in the postseason.
Willie Hernández, Relief Pitcher Who Had a Banner 1984, Dies at 69 by Richard Goldstein of The New York Times
Hernández led major league pitchers in appearances (80) and games finished (68) in 1984, when he posted a 9-3 record with a 1.92 earned run average. He had 32 saves in 33 chances after tallying a total of only 27 saves in his seven previous seasons.
The 1984 Tigers finished 104-58 in the regular season, then swept the Kansas City Royals in the American League Championship Series and defeated the San Diego Padres, 4-1, in the World Series.
Hernández appeared in three games in the World Series and had saves in two of them. He yielded just one run and four hits in 5⅓ innings. He earned the final out of the clinching Game 5, getting Hall of Famer Tony Gwynn to hit a soft fly to left field.
1984 World Series Game 5: Hernández closes out the World Series
Pitchers who won both the Cy Young and MVP in the same year
National League
Don Newcombe, 1956, Brooklyn Dodgers
Sandy Koufax, 1963, Los Angeles Dodgers
Bob Gibson, 1968, St. Louis Cardinals (my all-time favorite pitcher)
Clayton Kershaw, 2014, Los Angeles Dodgers
American League
Denny McLain, 1968, Detroit Tigers
Vida Blue, 1971, Oakland Athletics
Rollie Fingers, 1981, Milwaukee Brewers
Willie Hernandez, 1984, Detroit Tigers
Roger Clemens, 1986, Boston Red Sox
Dennis Eckersley, 1992, Oakland Athletics
Justin Verlander, 2011, Detroit Tigers
Picture Pun
When I saw this being thrown out of a moving car window I thought, “My, how time flies!”
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