Fiona McCann
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Marlon, up for grabs
The Observer Behind the scenes He was the greatest film actor of all time - and the most reclusive. Now, a year after his death, the auction of his estate offers a unique insight into Marlon Brando's true character. Anthony Haden-Guest muses on an actor's lot Sunday May 1, 2005 The Observer  Marlon Brando was so uncomfortable as an icon and so reflexively private a man that rummaging through his things made me feel less a reporter than a voyeur. The things in question, namely the estate of the actor, who died at 80 on 2 July 2004, were on basement shelves in Christie's at the Rockefeller Center, New York, which was where the auction house's head of popular arts, Helen Bailey, a young Brit with a buzzcut, was researching them and sorting them into lots for a 30 June sale. Bailey flicked her hand across several lines of dangling mother-of-pearl chimes which, she said, were 'hanging there to be disentangled'. 'They look disentangled,' I pointed out. 'Well, they are disentangled now,' she said, dryly. Everything in the sale has been recovered from the property on Mulholland Drive - known as 'Bad Boys Drive' for the presence there of Warren Beatty and Brando's next-door neighbour, Jack Nicholson - into which Brando moved in 1960. The shell chimes, with their cheery suggestion of a suburban patio, were a good fit with the rest of the goods, which are half career memorabilia and half personal. A red Japanese programme was a memento from The Teahouse of the August Moon, but the Japanese paper fan and stack of kimonos seem just to have been stuff the actor liked. A couple of shelves were given over to what Bailey called 'knick-knacky things' - a potbellied Buddha in polished wood, an effigy carved from pinkish-orange soapstone, a Mayan mini-ziggurat in grey sandstone, three bare-bottomed figures in wood, a polished horn, a black and white ceramic dolphin, various lions and rams - objects which held enough meaning for Brando for him to have organised them on a recessed shelf in his bedroom into what Bailey calls 'a sort of shrine'. Also included were a couple of pieces of furniture that the actor had designed and made himself, including a bench with a polished burlwood seat that had stood outside the kitchen door. Certain items are so mundane as to be intimate, such as Brando's American Express cards and his membership cards in the Screen Actor's Guild - he was 00003839 - and one odder card recording his enrolment in a programme of tear gas training for citizens (confidence in the effectiveness of this course is undermined by the fact that the card gives Brando's weight as 5ft 9in and his height as 250lb). I had not expected to find oblong frames containing squiggly Brando cartoons with captions that suggested words that he had overheard, maybe too often. In one, an earnest youth says: 'Man I don't play rock anymore. I am rock.' In another, an elderly fellow says: 'I've been out of work quite a spell and I was wondering if ...' A game of table football was clearly a personal effect. But this folksy statue? 'That's an aboriginal-style fertility statue,' Bailey said. 'I don't think it's authentic. It was a present from Val Kilmer. I think it's fairly obvious it's a fertility statue from the appendage.' Kilmer starred with Brando in 1996's The Island of Dr Moreau. Does that make the piece movie memorabilia? All in all, Brando's possessions seem as personal, as unpretentious as those of Marilyn Monroe, which had also been sold at Christie's, six years before. Monroe was just two years Brando's junior and the look is a reminder that both came from a time when movie stars did not tend to have high-end decorators, personal shoppers and art advisers. The sale of Katharine Hepburn's effects at Sotheby's, New York, in June 2004 also gave the sense of a life lived pre-media saturation. Of that generation of sacred monsters, Marlon Brando must surely be the last. The Monroe sale, which had a pre-sale estimate of $2m, made $13m. The Brando sale is estimated at 'in excess of a million'. It includes such career elements as contact sheets for Last Tango in Paris, a stack of publicity shots, awards, such as a blue Wedgwood Bafta for Julius Caesar, and annotated scripts of The Young Lions, Mutiny on the Bounty, The Chase and The Godfather, but there are no such museum pieces as the white dress in which Monroe sang happy birthday to JFK. Lacking, for instance, are the motorbike and black leather Brando wore in The Wild One, to say nothing of the granny dress and bonnet he affected in The Missouri Breaks. Also missing, inevitably, is the Oscar he won for The Godfather, but declined, via Sacheen Littlefeather, to protest against the ill treatment of American Indians (the actual statuette intended for Brando was economically recycled and presented posthumously to Charlie Chaplin). These elements, by their very absence, draw attention both to Brando's ambivalently iconic status and the eccentricities for which he was far better known in latter times than for his unnerving talent. The poster boy for macho virility had ballooned. Three times married and spending much of his time on his Tahitian atoll, Tetiaroa, he was the father of 11 acknowledged children, one of whom, Christian, killed Dag Drollet, the lover of his half sister, Cheyenne. Who later killed herself. His latest biographer, Patricia Ruiz, created tabloid headlines by claiming that her quarry was broke, living in a one-room bungalow on social security, a Screen Actors Guild pension and residuals. In fact, post-mortem, Brando's estate was valued at $21.6m. Such was the mass of information and misinformation generated by this intensely private man that researching this story has involved searching websites with names like findadeath.com, rotten.com, crimelibrary.com and, of course, defamer.com (which predicted 'double digits of bastards'). My real project, though, was to get a sense of how this man lived his life not from the gossipy echodromes of cyberspace but from solid belongings left behind on his death. And there they were - in the catacombs beneath Christie's. One of the earliest items in the sale, touchingly, is a small cardboard box with 'Bud's medle' written on it in a childish hand. 'He used to be called Bud. That was probably one of his sisters,' Bailey says. The medals were awarded to the youth for canooing, boxing and dancing. There are school books. And here is a crate of drums. 'He always used to say that if he hadn't been an actor he would have wanted to be a drummer. He patented a way of tuning conga drums. This piano [she indicates a black Yamaha] was in his bedroom. He had instruments all over the house ... his congas, bongos, maracas, flutes. No, scrub that! No flutes - didgeridoos, harmonicas, all manner of percussion instruments.' An acting award, the Donaldson of 1945-46, for his role in the play Truckline Cafe, denotes a breakthrough. The director Elia Kazan was supposedly in the audience. It was Kazan who suggested casting him as the inarticulate Stanley Kowalski in Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire. A Streetcar playbill marks this second breakthrough, as do a pair of much-used black boxing gloves. Brando, who liked to spar during breaks, once joined Jessica Tandy on stage with a nosebleed. He got an Oscar nomination for his second movie, Kazan's screen version of Streetcar, and finally won when he was nominated a fourth time, for On the Waterfront. The nomination certificate is estimated at between $7,000 and $9,000. 'It's a bum's life,' he said in 1960. 'The principal benefit acting has afforded me is the money to pay for my psychoanalysis.' Would I find clues to this loathing for his own gift in Christie's? It was his over-the-topness as Fletcher Christian in Mutiny on the Bounty that signalled to his fan-base that his career was going off the rails. During this shoot, though, he fell in love with both Tahiti and his co-star Tarita, who he married, and who is the mother of two of his children, one of whom was Cheyenne. Which is doubtless why he kept a model of The Bounty in his television room. That's in the sale, too, estimated at $300 to $500. A letter from Mario Puzo signals the actor's comeback from his long wallow in the ditch of box-office poison. 'Dear Mr Brando,' it goes, 'I wrote a book called The Godfather which has had some success ...' The letter is estimated at $800 to $1,200. 'I got very excited when I saw this,' Bailey says, pointing at an evening suit. She had thought it was the one, Don Corleone's magisterial DJ, no less; but watching the key scenes over and over, she noticed a small seam on the collar. This was not on the Christie's dinner jacket. 'I realised it was a replica made for The Freshman,' she said. The item worn in the Mafia spoof movie is estimated to fetch between $4,000 and $6,000. Rather more is expected for the black velvet tunic from Berman's & Nathan's, the theatrical costumier in London, which Brando wore as Jor-El, Superman's father. He got $3.7m plus 11.4 per cent of gross receipts for 13 days of filming and was on screen for just 10 minutes. Brando's girth was swelling along with his pay packet and this seems to have bothered him a bit more than he usually let on. Karl Malden, a friend since both were in Streetcar on Broadway, alludes to it in a letter in the sale: 'Dear Marlin [sic], Last night I went to see A Dry White Season and I don't care if you are 500 pounds or 50 pounds. You are a fucking genius.' There are some books about healthy eating on the shelves and a Total Body Work-Out tape, and another, Integral Yoga Hatha Videos are necessarily a relatively new component in this kind of auction and Brando's both confirm expectations and confound them. It was hardly surprising to find movies about American Indians, a Discovery Channel series on psychology and a tabloidesque six-part series about purported military and political shenanigans, called Hidden Agenda: real conspiracies that affect our lives today. Nor that there was a whole batch of movies, including musicals like Singin' in the Rain and such relatively recent ones as Woody Allen's Sweet and Lowdown. But who could have guessed that the brooding and reticent - except when preachy - man would be so in love with comedy? That he would own wodges of Abbot and Costello, Richard Pryor and the Best of British Comedy, to say nothing of well over three dozen cassettes of Laurel and Hardy? It was the shelves of annotated scripts and books, though, that suddenly brought one nose to nose with Marlon Brando in person. Sometimes he will be Brando the pro, as in notes on the characters he was to play. Here is a succinct scribble on a page of a Godfather script as he built the character of Don Corleone: 'Through The Nose High Voice Nose Broken In Youth To Account For Difference'. There are five pages of notes to The Chase and he strikes a political tone in them from time to time. 'It might be of use if Calder's wife was Mex Anglo American and his daughter and wife was subjected to ... the ills of our caste system,' he proposes. Brando also annotated many volumes in his library. Some of the notes are casual, as when he has scribbled a French telephone number for Roman Polanski on the last page of George Seldes's The Great Thoughts. Other notes are self-interrogatory, or simply strange. On a page of Robert Pirsig's Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, a cult book of the Sixties, he has written in red ink: 'What are you thinking? Oh just the usual debris.' Magic Lantern, in which Ingmar Bergman dissects his parents' marriage, is fiercely scored and lined. 'Horseshit!' Brando has written above a passage in Eric Hoffer's In Our Time On the title page of another book he has copied, or remembered, one of Prospero's speeches from The Tempest. He begins: 'Our revels now are ended' and takes it all the way to 'For we are such stuff as dreams are made on and our little life is rounded with a sleep.' Brando, who once upbraided his countrymen for being unable to get Shakespeare, signed his text ANON. Most of these books and videos were found in the house on Mulholland Drive, as were the personal effects, but almost all the career memorabilia was recovered from outhouses used for storage in the grounds. 'There was only one thing in his home that related to his film career,' Helen Bailey told me. 'It was a framed picture of him with Rita Moreno taken when they were making The Night of the Following Day in 1968. A love scene. She's naked. It was hanging in the study.' The shot - it's a still so does not appear in the movie - is estimated at $600 to $800. 'It was strange,' Bailey added. 'Just looking around the house, you wouldn't have been able to guess what his career had been.' That was the way Marlon Brando wanted it, of course. Might he have guessed that the image he had tried to destroy would engulf him? Did he care? I found few clues at Christie's, except perhaps for the presence in the heap of videos of some of his own best work, such as The Wild One, Guys and Dolls and his only outing as a director, One-Eyed Jacks on tape along with DVDs of Apocalypse Redux, On The Waterfront and The Godfather. For a man who so consistently sabotaged his own career, so savagely trashed his gift, this seems - at the very least - rather curious. · The catalogue is available at www.christies.com. Bids can be left, but it isn't possible to bid live online |
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1.5.05 11:01 |
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On your marks...
I'm a little late getting this up, but I wanted to make sure you read Rambling Irishman's coverage of his participation in yesterday's bomb-infested Belfast Marathon. It's very funny! Rambling Irishman Monday, 02 May 2005 Belfast City Marathon 2005 - what a shambles! Today I ran the Belfast Marathon (as part of a relay team) for the second time. For charity (for sick children awww). Last time round, I was impressed with how well organised things were and how smoothly it all ran. Today, it was an utter farce. >>>READ ON |
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3.5.05 22:55 |
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Don't give up
Telegraph **Proving once again that doctors don't know everything Brain-damaged firefighter wakes seven years on (Filed: 04/05/2005) An American firefighter, who was brain damaged after being buried under flaming debris while on duty over seven years ago, has amazed doctors by returning to his former self. Donald Herbert, 43, woke up and suddenly asked staff at his nursing home in Buffalo, New York, where his wife Linda was. The words came after sitting silently in a wheelchair and watching television since 1995. Mr Herbert, 43, became talkative and regained clarity when his family visited him after the request. He spent more than 14 hours catching up on news about his wife, four sons, friends and former firefighting colleagues before going into a deep sleep for 30 hours. He has since maintained an improved condition but not to the extent of the first revival. Mr Herbert was buried under flaming debris, while searching an apartment building in December 1995. He went without oxygen for about six minutes before being rescued. He was in a coma for more than two months and when he came out of it, he had lost his sight, his speech was halting and slurred, and he did not recognise loved ones. Doctors said that such recoveries are "almost unheard of" and that they do not understand why they happen. |
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4.5.05 17:39 |
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Oui needs you
 Last night I was watching little Oui run on her wheel when it seemed like her leg fur was puffier than usual. I took her out to look her over, but she is so tiny and so wiggly that I didn't see anything wrong. Then after I put her back in her newly cleaned cage, she stood up on her hind legs and I saw a little marble-sized growth on her chest. I examined it, and it looks like a round cyst that is loose under the skin and not attached. It does not seem to cause her any pain. Of course, today is Sunday, so I will call the vet on Monday, but Oui is so tiny, I don't see how the vet could do any kind of surgery on her. She is eating and drinking well and alert and running around. If you believe in prayers and wouldn't mind, please say a little prayer for my wee hamster. She's a sweet thing. |
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8.5.05 09:02 |
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Firefox 'faux paws'
Times Online Firefox flaws prompt security warnings By Rhys Blakely, Times Online 10 May 2005  image from techfeed.net Mozilla, the non-profit group behind the Firefox opensource browser, issued an alert, warning users that a combination of bugs could allow criminals to access users' private information - including banking details, logins and passwords. There is broad concern that hackers may be turning their focus on Firefox, which initially won over users by promising more secure internet surfing. The exploitation of two separate flaws in Firefox means that outside hackers can return to surfers’ previously visited pages. These could contain credit card details or other personal information. The rush to patch the problems, which also affect Mozilla Suite, the all-in-one internet application, marked the fourth major security scare at Mozilla in three months. Firefox users have been urged to disable the browser's javascript option to provide a temporary fix to the problem. Mozilla has also recommended that the browser's software installation feature be disabled. This can be done by unchecking the "Allow web sites to install software" box, which can be found by selecting "Options" on the "Tools" menu and then "Web Features". Further instructions on how to do carry out these measures can be found at http://www.mozilla.org/security/announce/mfsa2005-42.html. Industry figures suggest that Firefox has built a significant user base with some websites claiming more that Firefox has overtaken Internet Explorer, Microsoft's market leading browser. |
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11.5.05 02:22 |
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Around the office
NEW WORDS FOR 2005 1. BLAMESTORMING: Sitting around in a group, discussing why a deadline was missed or a project failed, and who was responsible. 2. SEAGULL MANAGER: A manager, who flies in, makes a lot of noise, craps on everything, and then leaves. 3 ASSMOSIS: The process by which some people seem to absorb success and advancement by kissing up to the boss rather than working hard. 4. SALMON DAY: The experience of spending an entire day swimming upstream only to get screwed and die in the end 5. CUBE FARM: An office filled with cubicles. 6. PRAIRIE DOGGING: When someone yells or drops something loudly in a Cube farm, and people's heads pop up over the walls to see what's going on. 7. MOUSE POTATO: The on-line, wired generation's answer to the couch potato. 8. STRESS PUPPY:A person who seems to thrive on being stressed out and whiny. 9. SWIPEOUT: An ATM or credit card that has been rendered useless because the magnetic strip is worn away from extensive use. 10. XEROX SUBSIDY: Euphemism for swiping free photocopies from one's workplace. 11. IRRITAINMENT: Entertainment and media spectacles that are annoying but you find yourself unable to stop watching them. The J-Lo and Ben wedding (or not) was a prime example. 12. PERCUSSIVE MAINTENANCE: The fine art of whacking the crap out of an electronic device to get it to work again. 13. ADMINISPHERE: The rarefied organizational layers beginning just above the rank and file. Decisions that fall from the adminisphere are often profoundly inappropriate or irrelevant to the problems they were designed to solve. 14. 404: Someone who's clueless. From the World Wide Web error message "404 Not Found," meaning that the requested document could not be located. (For those in Toronto, it's also Hwy 404... destination can not be located.) 15. CROP DUSTING: Surreptitiously farting while passing through a Cube Farm. 16. OHNOSECOND: That minuscule fraction of time in which you realize that you've just made a BIG mistake. |
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11.5.05 04:59 |
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Oui
I thank you Cha0tic and BOF for asking after wee Oui. I took her to the veterinarian on Monday, and he thought the lump is probably a cancer tumour. He said I could just let it go until it proved too uncomfortable for Oui, or I could have a surgery done on it. I don't mind spending the money for the procedure because I seem only to be here to take care of animals anyway, but I don't want to put the little thing through a lot of pain and trauma and then have to put her to sleep in the end anyway, yet I don't want to just say well, 'adios amiga' without trying something. I made an app't for Thursday in case I decide to have the lump removed. She was also started on antibiotics and anti-imflammatory drops just in case the vet is wrong and it's something less lethal. He was not interested in doing a needle aspiration. She was so cute at the vet's, burrowing in and out of her pine litter and letting everyone hold her and examine her. I gave her the 2nd dose of medicine in the morning and again last night, and let me tell you, trying to get .01 cc into a syringe and then into Oui's mouth is a real trick. She didn't run around the first night, so I am wondering if the meds make her feel bad. I worry about her all the time, which I think most normal people would think is crazy, if they can wrap their heads around it at all. I've been through this so many times, and it never gets any easier. |
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11.5.05 05:22 |
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Adopt-a-sheep: I want one!
IrishExaminer.com ‘Parents’ flock to adopt sheep as Kerry farm opens its gates 14 May 2005 By Donal Hickey  click to view - 'Kerry sheep' from David Simpson's Photographs IT’S the Kerry version of an idea that has been working in other EU countries for some years and it could lead to the survival of at least one mountain sheep farm. For €45, you can now adopt a sheep on the 1,200-acre Kissane holding, at Moll’s Gap, on the scenic Ring of Kerry between Killarney and Kenmare. Deputy Jackie Healy-Rae, himself a farmer and sheep expert, will perform the official opening of the Kissane Sheep Farm on May 27. Behind the venture are fifth generation farmer John Kissane and his Dutch partner, Anne Nieuwenhuizen, a former Olympic, World and European hockey champion. “I’ve already seen similar projects working in Europe, where people can adopt a cow, or a chicken, and regularly visit these animals on farms. I believe this is the first project of its kind in Ireland,” said Anne. “But our plan is about continuing to survive on the land. EU grants will be gone in a few more years. The goal of Adopt a Sheep is to preserve the Irish heritage of sheep in the mountains and save the family farm for future generations.” With the help of seven hard-working sheep dogs, John Kissane and his family were able to run a profitable farm in one of the beautiful parts of the country for many years. But now, EU regulations discourage him from keeping sheep on the hills, while sheep and wool prices are also on the slide. The couple met, in April 2003, when Anne participated in a sheepdog clinic run by John as part of a Dutch management training programme. “I was fascinated by the man and the animals and decided to apply for a summer job. In July of that year I came back to help John with the gathering and shearing of the sheep. In April 2004, I moved to Ireland and I love it,” she said. Sixty-four sheep have already been adopted on the farm. Anne said the €45 annual “adoption” fee covers the yearly costs of feeding and veterinary care for one sheep. She said the money also benefited the whole flock, through spending on farm maintenance, fencing and gates. “Adoptive parents” receive a certificate with their name and the tag number of their sheep. They also get free admission to the farm and most of its activities. The 1,000-sheep farm is open for visitors until October. John Kissane gives sheepdog demonstrations and in July and August, visitors can look at sheep being sheared. They can even join in and help if they want to. They can also enjoy three marked walks through the mountain terrain of the farm. |
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14.5.05 16:56 |
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Dr Mudawi Ibrahim Adam
IrishExaminer.cm Human rights stalwart jailed 14 May 2005 By Kieran McDaid  PRESIDENT Mary McAleese paid tribute to a human rights champion at a reception in Dublin yesterday - as he languished in a Sudan prison after being arrested on his way to Ireland. Dr Mudawi Ibrahim Adam was arrested just hours before he boarded a plane bound for Ireland to pick up the inaugural Front Line Award for his work in the field of human rights. His wife, Sabah Mohamed Adam Ali, and 10-year-old daughter, Huda, were granted emergency visas and received the award on his behalf at a ceremony in City Hall, attended by 26 ambassadors, including the representatives of Britain and the US. Mrs McAleese said Dr Mudawi, the director of the Sudan Social Development Organisation (SUDO), a voluntary organisation engaged in humanitarian activities in Darfur and human rights development throughout the country, worked tirelessly for others. “Dr Mudawi has been profoundly involved in humanitarian and human rights work throughout Sudan but of course the dreadful misery that is Darfur has consumedmuch of his recent work and focus,” she said. “He has paid a high personal price for that work - harassment, imprisonment, false allegations, solitary confinement,” said Mrs McAleese. “He has protested through hunger strike and faces an uncertain future. He has earned this award the hard way. He has also earned our respect but of course what he yearns for is probably none of those things but rather the kind of national and international pressure which would render his work unnecessary.” Dr Mudawi, a 49-year-old professor of engineering, has been arrested on two previous occasions by the Sudanese authorities. Front Line, an Irish-based international organisation which provides grants, advocacy and protection for human rights defenders at risk from intimidation or violence, rewarded Dr Mudawi for his work in the war-torn country. Dr Mudawi, who is facing espionage charges which carry a potential death penalty, sent a message of thanks to the reception. “I will continue the effort in Sudan to bring democracy and rule of law so that people’s rights are respected,” he said. “I thank Front Line for exerting pressure to defend human rights defenders and for supporting them. “I appreciate it. I exhort people to support Front Line in this work. I also want to thank the Irish Government for their efforts and ask them to continue. “I am grateful for the award and honoured by the presence of the President of Ireland.” Sabah also thanked Front Line for the award. “As a wife and as a Sudanese citizen I believe that he deserves the award because he believes in what he is doing and he is ready to sacrifice himself for the human rights of others,” she said. |
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14.5.05 17:22 |
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Oui update
This is for the 2 people who expressed an interest in little Oui's welfare. I took her to surgery on Thursday and left her all day at the vet. They finally got around to operating on her at the middle of the afternoon. I picked her up after work when she had recovered somewhat. The vet I never got to see, which didn't please me, but he did talk on the phone. Oui has stitches under the skin as well as some skin glue. So far she has been very good about leaving the sutures alone. She grooms herself a lot though because they got her all messy, as you might imagine, and Oui hates to be messy. She's eating and drinking well and very alert. I took her to work with me on Friday in her travel cage. She cannot run on her wheel until Sunday night, so she's not happy about that! She takes 2 meds twice a day. The vet exchanged the first antibiotic for another which agrees with her. Now Oui just needs prayers that she will stay healthy and not have a recurrence of any more tumours. She's a real little trooper! |
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14.5.05 17:33 |
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Firefox fix
As carnagevisors pointed out, you can secure yourself by downloading the latest version of Firefox, which has hopefully closed the security flaws we were hearing about. You can get it here: Firefox 1.0.4 |
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14.5.05 17:55 |
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Desecration
Interesting that people can protest and riot and kill over THIS, but true stories of actual humans being tortured and 'disappeared' don't elicit the same response. |
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16.5.05 04:51 |
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Piano Man
Guardian Do you know this man? Mystery of the silent, talented piano player who lives for his music His rendition of Swan Lake only clue to identity of stranger found soaked by the sea Steven Morris Monday May 16, 2005 The Guardian  The mystery 'piano man' who has refused to speak since he was found wandering on a windswept road on the Isle of Sheppey, and, right, his sketch that led to hospital staff finding him a piano on which he plays melancholy music. Photograph: Mike Gunnill Dripping wet and deeply disturbed, the smartly-dressed man was discovered walking along a windswept road beside the sea. Over the next few days he steadfastly refused, or was unable, to answer the most simple questions about who he was or where he had come from. It was only when someone in hospital had the bright idea of leaving him with a piece of paper and pencils that the first intriguing clue about the stranger's past emerged. He drew a detailed sketch of a grand piano. Excited, hospital staff showed him into a room with a piano and he began to skilfully perform meandering, melancholy airs. Several weeks later he has still not spoken a word, expressing himself only through his music. Some who have heard the "piano man", as he has been nicknamed, believe he may be a professional musician. One theory is that he has suffered a trauma which has caused amnesia, one of the methods the mind uses to retreat from a shock. Personal memories can be lost while the ability to communicate - or, for instance, play the piano - is not. The man's carers have become so desperate to find out who he is and what has happened to him that they have allowed his photograph to be taken in the hope that someone will solve the mystery. The "piano man" was found on the Isle of Sheppey, Kent, last month. He wore a black jacket, smart trousers and a tie, all dripping wet. Police officers tried to find out who he was and if he had fallen into the sea, been pushed or even swum ashore from a boat - but the man remained silent. They dried him off as best they could and took him to accident and emergency at the Medway Maritime hospital in Gillingham. Doctors examined the man, who appeared to be in his 20s or 30s, and found nothing wrong with him, but still he failed to respond to questions. He was difficult to assess as he appeared terrified of any new face, sometimes rolling himself into a ball and edging into a corner. After hours of trying to elicit any scrap of detail about his life, someone had the idea of leaving him with a drawing pad and pencils. When they returned an hour later they found he had produced an excellent and detailed sketch of a grand piano. Realising that music might be the key to unlock the mystery, he was taken to the hospital's chapel, which contains a piano. The man sat down at the instrument and began to play. The doctors were amazed at the transformation. For the first time since he had been found on Sheppey he appeared calm and relaxed. He was also a good player - some say exceptional. In the following weeks the "piano man" returned regularly to the chapel. He played sections from Swan Lake by Tchaikovsky but most often seemed to prefer to perform what appear to be his own compositions, which have been compared to the work of the Italian composer Ludovico Einaudi. Some hospital staff are convinced he is a professional musician and may even have been performing not long before he was found - hence his smart black clothes. Canon Alan Amos, the hospital chaplain, said: "He likes to play what I would call mood music - quite circular in nature without defined beginnings or endings." Mr Amos suggested he was using music as an anaesthetic. "Playing the piano seems to be the only way he can control his nerves and his tension and relax. When he is playing he blanks everything else out. He pays attention to nothing but the music." If allowed to he would play the piano for three or four hours at a stretch and at times has had to be physically removed from it because he refused to stop. When he is away from the piano he almost always carried a plastic folder with sheet music inside. Mr Amos said he did not believe the man was a professional musician, but someone who played well for his own pleasure. He suggested that he might have been wearing dark clothes on the day he was found because he had been to a funeral. He said: "It's a very sad case. Clearly there must have been some sort of trauma and it is important to find out what it was." The "piano man" was eventually transferred to a psychiatric unit in Dartford, where he was given access to a piano. Manager Ramanah Venkiah said: "He has been playing the piano to a very high quality and staff say it is a real pleasure to hear it. But we don't know what his position is because he is not cooperating at all." Research has suggested that exposure to familiar music can help people suffering post-traumatic amnesia. Some therapists offer music to help such patients recover lost memories and face the traumatic event which led to their state. Meanwhile social workers have issued a missing persons' bulletin on him. Until he is identified he will no doubt continue to play his sad but soothing music to the pleasure of those caring for him and his fellow patients. Anyone who has information that might help to identify the "piano man" should email steven.morris@guardian.co.uk |
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16.5.05 16:27 |
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what the hell?
juju.org I got the gouranga email...At first I thought it was about 'ganga'. Ganga I know. But no, it's gouranga. Call out Gouranga be happy!!! Gouranga Gouranga Gouranga .... That which brings the highest happiness!! "Neateye" sent it to me from London. Click on juju.org for an explanation, and then tell me what it means. I'll be busy calling out 'gouranga'!  click to view "In distributing love of Godhead, Caitanya Mahaprabhu and His associates did not consider who was a fit candidate and who was not, nor where such distribution should or should not take place. They made no conditions. Wherever they got the opportunity the members of the Panca-tattva distributed love of Godhead." (Caitanya-caritamrta, Adi-lila 7.23) www.prabhupadaconnect.com ---------- |
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17.5.05 04:04 |
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Bush's new best friend
...the leader of Uzbekistan, who BOILS PEOPLE ALIVE when he isn't shooting them down in the hundreds like rabbits. |
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18.5.05 18:42 |
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Buckets of blood
BreakingNews.ie Children handed 'buckets of blood' in KFC protest 18/05/2005 - 18:04:25 Animal rights protesters handed buckets of fake blood, bones and feathers to children outside a secondary school today in a bid to encourage them to boycott Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC). >>>READ ON ------------- |
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18.5.05 19:45 |
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Human cloned for research
Guardian Human embryo cloned  The blastocyst or early stage embryo produced by the Newcastle team. Photograph: RBM Online ------------- |
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20.5.05 12:41 |
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US TORTURE IN AFGHANISTAN
Guardian **See also AFGHANISTAN: US soldiers beat prisoners to death See also Chained, tortured and left to die in cell US abuse of Afghan prisoners 'widespread' Sarah Left and agencies Friday May 20, 2005 US soldiers carried out widespread abuse of detainees at the US-run Bagram prison camp in Afghanistan, according to a confidential US army report revealed today in the New York Times.  'Bagram near Kabul serves as the main US base in Afghanistan' - See article from Aljazeera.Net Seven soldiers have been charged in connection with abuse at Bagram, where the paper reports that harsh treatment by some interrogators was routine, prisoners were shackled in painful fixed positions, and guards could strike shackled detainees with virtual impunity. The army document highlights the deaths in detention of Dilawar, a 22-year-old taxi driver who most interrogators had believed to be innocent, and another inmate, Habibullah. The two men died within six days of each other in December 2002. The New York Times carries a graphic account of Dilawar's torture and death. His legs were beaten so badly that he could not bend them to kneel, and he was chained for days by his wrists to the roof of his cell. When he asked for a drink of water during his final interrogation, one US interrogator punched a hole in a water bottle, handed it to Dilawar and tormented him as the water poured away before he could drink, according to an interpreter present at the time. After the interrogation, guards chained Dilawar again to the roof of his cell, where he was found dead by a doctor several hours later, the paper reported. The details of prisoner abuse at Bagram follow the notorious photographs of torture at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and reports that the US has routinely handed some terrorism suspects over to third countries with far harsher reputations for torture, a practice known as 'renditions'. The New York Times said it had obtained the army report from someone involved in the investigation who was critical of the methods used at Bagram and the military's response to the deaths. The paper reported that the investigation revealed young, poorly trained soldiers in repeated incidents of abuse. "What we have learned though the course of all these investigations is that there were people who clearly violated anyone's standard for humane treatment. We're finding some cases that were not close calls," the Pentagon's spokesman, Larry Di Rita, told the paper. In sworn statements to army investigators, soldiers described mistreatment ranging from a female interrogator stepping on a detainee's neck and kicking another in the genitals to a shackled prisoner being made to kiss the boots of interrogators as he rolled back and forth on the floor of a cell, according to the newspaper. Another prisoner was made to pick plastic bottle caps out of a drum filled with a mixture of excrement and water to soften him up for interrogation, the report said. The New York Times said that in October the army's criminal investigation command concluded that there was probable cause to charge 27 officers and enlisted personnel with criminal offences in Dilawar's case, while fifteen of the same soldiers were also cited for probable criminal responsibility in Habibullah's case. No one has been convicted in connection with either death. Pentagon spokesman Lieutenant Colonel John Skinner said the army document detailed by the New York Times demonstrated how seriously the US military considered allegations of abuse. "Any incident is unacceptable, and when there are allegations we investigate them," he said, adding that 28 people had been implicated in the report and seven charged. "The wheels of justice are turning, as they should be." Lt Col Skinner said that today there were more than 10 major lines of inquiry looking into all aspects of detention, alongside increased oversight, improved training and improved facilities. Notwithstanding those improvements, the policy from the beginning had been the humane treatment of detainees, he added. "99.99% of our military members are upholding our standards every single day in a difficult and dangerous situation," he said. Where they don't, he added, there will be consequences. |
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21.5.05 18:40 |
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The face of war
village voice Not a Pretty Picture Looking this war in the face proves difficult when the press itself won't even put in an appearance by Sydney H. Schanberg May 17th, 2005 2:22 PM "History," Hegel said, "is a slaughterhouse." And war is how the slaughter is carried out. VIEW ARTICLE AND PHOTOS ---------------------------- |
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23.5.05 18:59 |
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Unlikely love
Daily Kos **I was sent this story in my email today, so I went looking for it on the web. The link above also has other stories about the animal survivors of this terrible tragedy. Sometimes people forget about the toll of animal life that natural disasters take. This one will make you happy, though. There is another pic on the News.com.au link at the end. Tsunami Survivor  A BABY hippopotamus, swept into the Indian Ocean [OFF KENYA] by the tsunami, is finally coming out of his shell thanks to the love of a 120-year-old tortoise. Owen, a 300kg, one-year-old hippo, was swept down the Sabaki River, into the ocean and then back to shore when the giant waves struck the Kenyan coast. The dehydrated hippo was found by wildlife rangers and taken to the Haller Park animal facility in the port city of Mombasa. Pining for his lost mother, Owen quickly befriended a giant male Aldabran tortoise named Mzee - Swahili for "old man". Haller Park ecologist Paula Kahumbu said the pair were now inseparable. "It is incredible. A hippo has adopted a male tortoise, about a century old, and the tortoise seems to be very happy with being a mother... The hippo follows the tortoise the way it follows its mother. "The hippo was left at a very tender age. Hippos are social animals that like to stay with their mothers for four years." Officials are hopeful Owen will befriend a female hippo called Cleo, also a resident at the park. News.com.au , Jan. 8, 2005 |
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23.5.05 22:26 |
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