Thursday, March 27, 2014

Observation — 1976, The Year Facing Both Forward And Back



Israelis invaded the Entebbe Airport in Uganda.  Civil war ended in Lebanon.  Pol Pot took over in Cambodia.  U.S. celebrated its 200th birthday.  The Supreme Court upheld the death penalty.  Jimmy Carter was elected president. Viking landed on Mars.  Cosmic String Theory was first discussed.  Richard Leakey discovered 1.5 million-year-old homo erectus. Saul Bellow received both the Nobel Prize for Literature and the Pulitzer (for Humboldt’s Gift). Other literary lights had book successes that year: Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? by Raymond Carver, Ordinary People by Judith Guest, Roots, by Alex Haley, Woman Warrior, by Maxine Hong Kingston, and Autumn of The Patriarch, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Favored movies of the year include Rocky, Taxi Driver, Network, All The President’s Men and Carrie.  In the music department, we were listening to Elton JohnsDon’t Go Breaking My Heart, Johnnie Taylor’s Disco Lady, as well as Oh, What A Night, by the Four Seasons and Play That Funky Music by Wild Cherry.  Benedict Cumberbatch, Peyton Manning and Reese Witherspoon took their first breaths. A number of notables took their last:  Andre Malraux, Agatha Christie, Howard Hughes, Rosalind Russell, Fritz Lang, Busby Berkeley, and James Wong Howe. Sadly, this was also the year that Sal Mineo was murdered. If you were around, what were you doing during the year of the fire dragon



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