There are many online resources available to help you date your old family photographs — you know, the pictures with the mysterious names and notations on the back. If you have an interest in genealogy or if you simply have photos that you’d like to know more about, click here to get some useful advice.
Tune in to Experience Talks, our “Radio Magazine for the Experienced Listener.” Saturdays 8:00 a.m. Pacific Time on KPFK 90.7 FM Los Angeles, 98.7 FM Santa Barbara, 99.5 China Lake, 93.7 N. San Diego, streaming live online and now syndicated on up to 100 Pacifica Network stations! You can also hear previous shows on the Listen Page of our Experience Talks website.
This week: Host Bobbee Zeno discusses “The Tuskegee Airmen Legacy” with Ron Brewington, Historian and Vice-President of the LA Chapter of Tuskegee Airmen Inc.
Ron Brewington is a well-known radio and television broadcaster and a 2007 inductee into the Broadcasters Hall of Fame. Brewington held positions as an anchor/reporter at various stations before settling as the Los Angeles bureau chief for American Urban Radio Networks, a job he held for seventeen years. Subsequently, he became a stringer for Associated Press Radio Network and also contributed to Chatbusters News Service in the United Kingdom as the Los Angeles correspondent. He has produced a number of nationally syndicated radio programs and also hosted and wrote the R&B Superstars Series. He is a U.S. Navy veteran and has degrees in Journalism and Broadcast Journalism. Read more about him on The HistoryMakers website.
The Tuskegee Airmen were the first African American military aviators in the United States armed forces. Formally, they were the 332nd Fighter Group and the 477th Bombardment Group of the U.S. Army Air Corps. Read extensive information about their history and their significant and ongoing accomplishments on their website.
EngAGE Founder and Executive Director Tim Carpenter, Holly Rothschild and Alicia Sedwick led a Workshop on Writing/Improv/Dance for the Positive Aging Conference, December 6-9, 2011, in Los Angeles. The fifth annual internation conference was a highly interactive gathering of diverse leaders who are shaping a dynamic future for older adults throughout the world. The conference was hosted by Fielding Graduate University. Click on each of the photos below to enlarge them. Click here to see more photos on our EngAGE Flickr Photostream.
Contributed by Alicia Sedwick
From The Guardian: “Between 1955 and 1960, Cleveland DJ Tommy Edwards photographed guests who would stop by his studio at WERE-AM. The resulting trove – more than 1,700 Ektachrome slides of everyone from Elvis Presley to Doris Day in their prime – has been collected for the first time in the new book, 1950s Radio in Color.” Click here for the terrific slide show.
Lots of activity at Park Plaza! There was a dance peformance by Toti, Armenian concert pianist Harout Senekeramian played at Thanksgiving, Pauline helped residents get needed administrative help during Service Hour, Monica introduced Tai Chi for arthritis, the Crafts Class made art and gifts out of recycled goods, and the bingo group met. Click on each picture to enlarge it.
Contributed by Elizabeth Sampson
Thanks to Bhob Stewart for providing a link to this great 9-minute video about the late Rosa Rio who had a career as one of the country’s premier theater organists. Ms. Rio died in 2010, just a few weeks before her 108th birthday; she had played her final concert the previous year. From her New York Times obituary:
Miss Rio was undoubtedly among the very last to have played the silent-picture houses, accompanying the likes of Chaplin, Keaton and Pickford on the Mighty Wurlitzer amid velvet draperies, gilded rococo walls and vaulted ceilings awash in stars. She was also one of the few women to have made her way in a field dominated by men…
[Later] She provided live music for a spate of popular shows, including “The Shadow,” starring a trim Orson Welles, and “The Bob and Ray Show.” Her television credits include “As the World Turns” and the “Today” show…
In recent years, long after television dispensed with live organists, Miss Rio accompanied silent films at some of the nation’s tenderly restored movie houses. She was most closely associated with the Tampa Theater in Florida, a lavish picture palace built in 1926.
Several times a year Miss Rio would rise from beneath the stage there, seated at the organ in sequined evening gown, diamond rings and gold lamé slippers. As she wafted majestically upward, the room shook with her signature tune, “Everything’s Coming Up Roses,” or, as she much preferred to call it, “Everything’s Coming Up Rosa.”
The Gardening Project at Piedmont is a hands-on, once a week community project that teaches residents how to garden, work with the earth and grow food to eat. “That’s what I love about living in California…we can plant and grow food all year,” commented a new resident who just moved to the Piedmont from Ohio.
Piedmont residents stay active with a busy schedule that includes classes in meditation, exercise/movement/yoga, knitting, a book club and film screenings. There’s also computer/technology tutoring, an art/art history workshop, and an active intergenerational program that pairs seniors and 5th grade students from a neighborhood school to create art, history and socio-cultural community projects. Most recently, residents and students worked together to make pressed leaf art as they socialized and discussed relevant issues.
Contributed by Sidni Myles
