An AI Test About Yogi

                                 

                                                         Yogi Berra in 1953.

Note—Back in 2024 all the buzz was about Artificial Intelligence (AI).  Word was that it would make most of us obsolete--especially writers.  So I experimented. This is an experiment.  The following blog post on Yogi Berra for his birthday was not written by your reliable scribe but created, including the title, by the AI program AI Article Writer 4.0 which is already obsolete.  I did not edited it in any way.  What say you?  Should the Old Man turn over his posts to this electronic gizmo, which undoubtedly contains fewer spelling errors and typos,  or should he continue to bang out stuff the old fashion way?

Lawrence Peter “Yogi” Berra was an American professional baseball catcher, coach, and manager. He was born on May 12, 1925, in St. Louis, Missouri. Yogi Berra was one of the most successful and popular baseball players of his era, playing for the New York Yankees and the New York Mets. He played in more World Series games than any other player in history.

Yogi Berra grew up in a working-class family in St. Louis, Missouri. He dropped out of school after the eighth grade to help support his family. In his teens, he played baseball for a local team, and he was eventually signed by the New York Yankees.

                           Young Yogi with aging Babe Ruth at Yankee Stadium.

Berra made his Major League Baseball debut in 1946. He quickly became known for his excellent defensive skills as a catcher and his ability to hit for power. He was a 15-time All-Star and won three American League Most Valuable Player Awards.

Yogi Berra’s impact on the game of baseball cannot be overstated. He was a key player for the New York Yankees during their dynasty years in the 1950s and 1960s, helping them win 10 World Series championships. He was also a successful manager, leading the Yankees and the Mets to the postseason.

Berra was known for his “smart” play on the field. He was an excellent defensive catcher who could read the opposing team’s hitters and pitchers. He was also a great hitter, with a career batting average of .285 and 358 home runs.

Yogi quotes are the inspiration of untold memes.

Yogi Berra was famous for his witticisms and malapropisms. Many of his quotes have become timeless classics. Some of his most famous quotes include:

    It ain’t over ‘til it’s over.

    When you come to a fork in the road, take it.

    It’s like déjà vu all over again.

   I never said most of the things I said.

While some of his quotes may seem nonsensical, they often contain hidden wisdom. For example, “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over” means that anything can happen until the game is over, and you should never give up hope.

Yogi Berra was known for his leadership and coaching style. He was a players’ manager who treated his team like family. He was tough but fair and always had his players’ backs. He was also a great motivator who knew how to get the best out of his players.

Berra’s coaching style was based on his own experience as a player. He knew what it took to win, and he passed that knowledge on to his players. He was also a great communicator who could explain complex concepts in simple terms.

Berra with Yankee's owner George Steinbrenner in has managing years.

Yogi Berra's legacy goes beyond the game of baseball. He was a beloved figure who was known for his kindness, humility, and sense of humor. He was a family man who was devoted to his wife and children.

Berra was also a philanthropist who gave back to his community. He was involved in many charitable organizations, including the Yogi Berra Museum and Learning Center, which is dedicated to promoting the values of respect, perseverance, sportsmanship, and excellence through the lens of baseball.

Yogi Berra’s impact on popular culture cannot be understated. His quotes have become part of the American lexicon, and his name is synonymous with baseball. He has appeared in movies, TV shows, and commercials, and his likeness has been used in advertising and marketing campaigns.

                                        Berra's Baseball Hall of Fame plaque.

Berra was also a cultural icon who represented the values of the American Dream. He was a self-made man who overcame adversity to achieve success. He embodied the spirit of hard work, determination, and perseverance that is so important in American culture.

Yogi Berra’s lessons go beyond the game of baseball. His quotes contain wisdom that can be applied to all areas of life. For example, “If you don’t know where you are going, you’ll end up someplace else” means that you need to have a plan if you want to succeed.

                                                Berra honored on a U.S.P.S. stamp.

Berra's leadership and coaching style also provide valuable lessons for life. He believed in treating people with respect and kindness, and he knew how to motivate and inspire his team. These are qualities that are important in all areas of life, whether you are a coach, a teacher, or a business leader.

Yogi Berra continues to inspire and influence people today. His quotes are still quoted by sports fans and non-sports fans alike, and his legacy lives on through the Yogi Berra Museum and Learning Center. His leadership and coaching style have also inspired many coaches and managers in all areas of life.

Berra's legacy is also a reminder of the importance of hard work, determination, and perseverance. He overcame many obstacles in his life to achieve success, and his story is a testament to the power of the American Dream.

                                Berra's death was big news.

Yogi Berra was a true legend who left a lasting impact on the game of baseball and on popular culture. His famous quotes and his leadership and coaching style have inspired generations of players, coaches, and fans. His legacy is a reminder of the importance of hard work, determination, and perseverance, and his spirit lives on through the Yogi Berra Museum and Learning Center

The Songwriter of the American Century--Israel Isidore Baline Alias Irving Berlin

 

Irving Berlin--American master song smith.

There was a lot of buzz over Rolling Stones list of the “100 Greatest Songwriters of All Time.”  There is always room for entertaining debate about such lists.  But this one doesn’t come close to living up to the claim of representing “All Time.”  The earliest on the list were Woody Guthrie and Fats Domino.  Most were active from the 1970’s—the magazine’s birth decade—and were limited to rock, pop, R&B, and a smidgen of rap.  Not a single mention of any of the composers and lyricists from the Great American Song Book who were active from about 1900 to the ‘60s.  That’s a lot of enormous talent to overlook.  And the most egregious omission was this guy.

Say happy birthday to Israel Isidore Baline, born May 11, 1888 in the city of Tyumen in the Ural Mountains 1200 miles west of Moscow.  His father, a Canter, moved his family to the relative safety of the United States in 1893 after Cossacks burned the Jewish Quarter of Tyumen to the ground.  Only three years later his father was dead and the eight-year-old boy had to quit school and work as a news butcher—a street peddling paper boy—for pennies a day.

He left home at 14 so his mother would have one less mouth to feed and began to support himself singing for tips in saloons, eventually working up to being a song plugger at Tony Pastor’s seminal night club in New York City. 

                                        Berlin in costume in some sort of parade in New York City in 1911, his break-out year with Alexanders Rag Time Band.

He changed his name to Irving Berlin and began to try his hand at songwriting.  His first success was Alexander’s Rag Time Band in 1911which became a sensation after he wrote words to go with his music and got it placed in a Broadway revue.  Its fresh sound and syncopated rhythm helped set off a new national rage for Rag Time music, which had gone out of fashion a decade earlier.  

Self-taught on the piano—he never could play in any key but F—and unable to read music, he none-the-less eagerly launched himself on a career as a songwriter.  His first Broadway show, Watch You Step in 1914, starred dancing sensations Verne and Irene Castle and included several hits including Play a Simple Melody, the first of his famous “double” songs in which two different melodies and lyrics are counterpointed against one another. 

He continued to write for Broadway and films for the next 60 years producing an unrivaled string of hits that included, A Pretty Girl is Like a Melody, Always, Blue Skies, God Bless America, and There’s No Business Like Show Business to name just a few. 

                           

                                             Sheet music for one of the songs from Belin's Doughboy revue Yip Yip Yaphank

Nearly as patriotic as George M. Cohan, Berlin penned Oh, How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning for his World War I camp show with an all-doughboy cast, Yip Yip Yaphank.   God Bless America was also written for that revue but somehow failed to make the cut.  In 1938 he gave it to Kate Smith for a special 20th anniversary Armistice Day broadcast, and it became a virtual second National Anthem.   He toured for three and a half years to posts in the U.S. and Europe with a second all-GI review This Is the Army in which he sang This is the Army Mr. Jones in GI uniform.  The show became the basis of a 1945 film of the same name staring Ronald Regan and Joan Leslie in which Smith reprised God Bless America. Berlin signed over all royalties from that song to benefit the Boy Scouts of America earning them millions of dollars. 

Berlin, a secularized Jew, is also known for his holiday songs including Easter Parade and White Christmas both of which were featured in the 1940 film Holiday Inn with Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire.  Easter Parade was the only song not written for the movie.  It first appeared in the 1933 revue As Thousands Cheer which presented each number as an item in a newspaper, Marilyn Miller and Clifton Webb originally sang it.  Holiday Inn essentially transformed the newspaper items for holidays throughout the year stitched together by the thinnest of plots.  Both Easter Parade and White Christmas were again featured two in enormously successful self-titled movie musicals.  Crosby’s 1948 re-recording of White Christmas remains America’s favorite secular Christmas song and is an annual seasonal hit.  For decades it held the record as the bestselling recording of all time.

The Easter Parade number with Clifton Webb and Marilyn Miller from As Thousands Cheer on Broadway in 1933.

Early Berlin Broadway revues included now embarrassing blackface minstrel numbers and some of those were carried over to the silver screen.  But Berlin was a staunch advocate of civil rights and a long-time member of the NAACP.  In As Thousands Cheer Ethel Waters sang Supper Time, a lament for the lynching of her husband of which she said “If one song can tell the whole tragic history of a race, Supper Time was that song. In singing it I was telling my comfortable, well-fed, well-dressed listeners about my people...those who had been slaves and those who were now downtrodden and oppressed.”  Not surprisingly Hollywood film makers concerned with being able to show films in the segregated South never included Supper Time in any of the several movies they built around the Berlin song book.

Show business itself was often a theme for Berlin including numbers presented as vaudeville acts like A Couple of Swells.  And of course, There’s No Business Like Show Business from his most successful book musical Annie Get Your Gun has become the enduring anthem of the entertainment industry.

Berlin and bride Dorothy depart on their ill-fated honeymoon to Cuba.

Berlin’s personal life from the days when he was singing on the streets for pennies on was reflected in his music.  His first wife, 20-year-old Dorothy Goetz was the sister of E. Ray Goetz one of his early collaborators.  She died tragically of typhoid contracted during their Cuban honeymoon in 1912.  Grief stricken, Berlin could not write for months. Then his first composition was also his first ballad, the heart felt When I Lost You.

                                    Berlin and his second wife Ellin MacKay at their New York City Hall wedding--the beginning of an enduring 63-year marriage.  

In 1924 Berlin married Ellin Mackay, and Irish-American Catholic heiress whose father bitterly opposed the marriage.  He wrote the enduring classic love song Always for her and signed over to her personally rights to the song to make up for being disinherited by her father. The rights to that one song alone would make her independently wealthy.  Their marriage remained a love affair and they were inseparable until Ellin died in July 1988 at the age of 85. They had four children during their 63 years of marriage: Irving, who died in infancy on Christmas Day 1928; Mary Ellin, Elizabeth Irving, and Linda Louise.  Blue Skies in 1926 was a jubilant celebration of his first daughter’s birth.

Berlin wrote in many styles over his long career but is perhaps best remembered for his simple, direct, and heartfelt love songs with lilting melodies and lyrics that seemed an extension of everyday speech.  A classic example was What’ll I Do? From 1924.

Berlin never gave up his love of singing his own songs.  This is from a 1930's outdoor concert and radio broadcast.

In all Berlin wrote around 15,000 songs.  Many of them are as fresh today as when first written and continue to be recorded by artists in many styles.  Berlin died in his adopted hometown of New York in 1989 a year after Ellin at the age of 101.

Mother’s Day Founder Anna Marie Jarvis Battled its Commercialization

  

 

Mother's Day founder Anna Jarvis, right, and her own mother and inspiration, left.

Note--Our annual Mother's Day post is back yet again.

The celebration of Mother’s Day as we know it now is generally credited to Anna Marie Jarvis in memory of her mother, who died on May 9, 1905.  The first commemorative service was held at the Methodist Church in Grafton, West Virginia where Jarvis’s mother had been a Sunday school teacher on May 12, 1907. 

The following year on May 10 the church, at Jarvis’s urging, expanded the service to include honoring all mothers and Jarvis’s friend, Philadelphia merchant prince John Wanamaker, conducted a public observance in the auditorium of his store. 

Jarvis tirelessly dedicated herself to spreading the observance.  She wrote articles and pamphlets, lobbied city councils, state legislatures, and Congress for proclamations establishing an official observance. West Virginia was the first to act, in 1910, followed by several other states over the next years. 

Jarvis’s efforts paid off on May 8, 1914 when Congress established the second Sunday in May as Mother’s Day and requesting the President issue a proclamation. Woodrow Wilson wasted no time, issuing his proclamation the next day, May 9, the official birthday of the Federal observance.  

  

By 1914 when Woodrow Wilson issued the first official national Mother's Day Proclamation, greeting card companies were already busy peddling sentimental cards like this one.

Wilson’s proclamation directed Americans to show the flag in honor of mothers who had lost sons in war.  That part of the declaration is an indication that Wilson was probably aware of the earlier efforts of Julia Ward Howe to establish a Mother’s Day observance to protest war. 

Ward’s moving Mother’s Day Proclamation was written in 1870 in reaction to the carnage of the Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War and called for women across the globe to unite to end war.  Although that noble effort never produced either the movement or the observation that Howe had hoped for, the effort was well known.  When Howe died only four years earlier in 1910 full of honors as the writer of the Battle Hymn of the Republic and the most famous American woman of letters, her obituaries revived interest in her effort, particularly among pacifists.  

 

The memory Howe’s Proclamation has been revived by the peace and feminist movements and by her Unitarian Universalist faith community and has been re-connected to Jarvis’s celebration.

By the mid-1920’s Jarvis and her sister became embittered at the commercialization of the holiday they worked so hard to create.  The sisters spent the rest of their lives and all of their inheritance battling that trend.  They trademarked the names Mother’s Day and Second Sunday in May to try to keep merchants from using them.  But there were too many fires to put out and not enough lawyers in the world to stamp out flagrant infringement.  At least once she was arrested for protesting.

Card companies, florists, candy companies, restaurants, and merchants still hype Mother's Day, the third most important gift-giving day of the year behind only Christmas and Valentine's Day.

Merchants, and especially the greeting card manufacturers that Jarvis particularly loathed, actually organized and launched a counterattack portraying her as demented and obsessed.  They even questioned her patriotism.   Since newspapers profited handsomely from Mother’s Day advertising, they were more than happy to abet the smear campaign.

 Anna Jarvis's gravestone.

Jarvis and her sister spent their last dime in the fight and were reduced to abject poverty.  Anna never married or had children of her own.  Mother’s Day was her child and she fought fiercely to the end to defend its honor.

She died in obscurity in West Chester, Pennsylvania in 1948 at the age of 84.

Ironically, many of the same merchants and business interests that had once vilified her later found it useful to enshrine her in legend, taking great care that her distaste for what the observance had become was carefully omitted from their new version of the founding myth—along with any mention of Julia Ward Howe’s earlier effort.

The Pill, the Sexual Revolution, the MAGA Backlash

                                                                       A Canadian bottle of Searle's Enovid contraception tablets a/k/a The Pill. 

Note--Last week a three-judge panel of the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals blocked access to Mifepristone by mail making it accessible through local pharmacies.  That essentially would have prevented women in states with abortion bans and many women in rural and underserved served areas across the county with local pharmacies from obtaining reproductive care at critical times.  The Supreme Court stayed that rulling on Monday until it can hear arguments on the appeal.  The reprieve may be temporary.  The Conservative majority may well uphold the ruling.  It is the most consequential attack on abortion since the Court overturned Roe v, Wade.  We take a look back at the introduction of another medication that kicked off the Sexual Revolution and the second-wave Feminist movement.

It’s hard to believe that only sixty-six years ago today in 1960 the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) finally approved marketing G. D. Searle Pharmaceutical Corporation’s Enovid as an oral contraceptive.  That makes May 9 sort of the birthday of The Pill. 

Of course, its story goes back earlier.  Pioneering birth control advocate Margaret Sanger long sought a safe and reliable form of contraception that women themselves could use and control unlike condoms.  In 1953 she brought her long-time associate and supporter Katharine McCormick together with noted hormonal biology researcher Dr. Gregory Pincus who had been trying to develop a contraceptive since 1951.  McCormick, a wealthy widow, agreed to finance Pincus’s research and pay for trials of a breakthrough drug.  

Dr. Gregory Pincus--the Father or maybe step father of The Pill.

Pincus had tried to convince Searle to support his research, but the company was afraid of becoming involved in such a controversial project.  A Searle researcher, Frank Colton, however accidentally discovered a formula that had a contraceptive effect.  Pincus was allowed to use it in his research and conduct trial tests.  Two million dollars of McCormick’s money financed the tests. 

In 1957 Searle agreed to market the drug when the FDA approved it for use in treating hormonal imbalances in gynecological cases.  Doctors recognized that it also was an effective and safe contraceptive and began to prescribe it for that purpose even without official FDA approval for that use.  Searle marketed the drug but kept a low profile.  

The Pill was the fulfillment of Margaret Sanger's long cherished dream of reliable contraception that women could use and control themselves.  She swung the full strength of Planned Parenthood behind a campaign to get it legalized for all women in all states.

Sanger and her organization, Planned Parenthood, actively campaigned for FDA approval.  That approval finally came on this date in 1960.  

Timid and reluctant Searle quickly realized that they had a license to print money as women stormed their doctors’ offices to demand the Pill. 

Although the FDA approved the first oral contraceptive in 1960, contraceptives were not available to married women in all states until Supreme Court ruled in the case of Griswold v. Connecticut in 1965 and were not available to unmarried women in all states until the Eisenstadt v. Baird case in 1972.

The Pill is widely viewed as having far reaching cultural and behavioral consequences.  Just as conservatives had feared, one of the first notable affects was to liberate women sexually.  With the Pill they could and did become sexually active in the way that only men could be before.  The Sexual Revolution   of the ‘60s and early ‘70s would not have been possible without the Pill and the widespread availability of effective antibiotics for the treatment of venereal disease.

The Pill liberated women from the slavery of compulsory motherhood.  Women were able to be sexual beings, delay marriage and/or motherhood and enter the workforce in unprecedented numbers as self-supporting human beings.  

I doubt that this is a real ad--most likely a paste-up job either as satire or as part of an anti-Pill campaign.  But it does accurately suggest the sense of sexual liberation and empowerment /The Pill brought to millions of young women.

Most women did eventually elect to become mothers, but it was more on their own terms, at significantly older ages, and they tended to have small families with one or two children instead of the big, multi-children families that had earlier been standard.  The children that were born were both wanted and planned for.  The Pill both changed and enhanced the experience of motherhood.  

 

The rise of AIDS and a near pandemic of other sexually transmitted diseases took the wind out of the sails of the Sexual Revolution.

Although the Sexual Revolution was slowed by the stark realities of the AIDS  epidemic in the 1980’s, women still relied on the Pill—now available in a variety of compositions and dosages—to regulate family planning.  It became second nature and taken for granted. 

While big cultural battles were fought over abortion, however, a combination of quiet but persistent agitation by the religious right, soaring costs, and the increasing lack of insurance meant that contraception was harder for many women to find and afford.  Encouraged by the capture of several state governments by ultra conservatives who began to succeed in limiting abortion by making it as difficult and expensive as possible to obtain, religious right operatives turned to similar strategies to make it harder for women to obtain contraceptives.

Unplanned pregnancies, particularly among the young and uninsured, are once again on the rise.  Women are slowly becoming aware that gains thought secure decades ago must be fought for again.     

Religious Right zealots and right-wing activists have targeted The Pill and Planned parenthood with alarming success.

It may be hard for the American Taliban to force the genie of independent women back into the bottle.  But they are trying mighty hard.  Perhaps it’s time for women and their allies to smash the bottle itself.