Straightening out our Environment for Future Humanity, Film, Music, Classic and Pop-Culture Art, Playing Guitar and Piano, Peace, Love, My Sons, My Family and Heritage, Traveling to cool places, Old Baseball Stadiums, Model Trains, My Frisbee Dog Gibson, Diamondbacks, Dodgers, Angels, Phillies, Rangers Baseball, etc.
Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, Amelia Earhart and the original Irene O'Crowley Craigmile, my paternal Grandfather and many more, in heaven, someday.
Neil and Pegi Y., Nils, Bruce, T. Petty, U2, The Beatles, Jackson B., CSN, Gillian W., Lucinda W., Garland J., Joan A., Joni M., Sheryl C., Madonna, Cher, S. McLachlan, J. Prine, Louden W., L. Ronstadt, The Beautiful South, Steely Dan, Chrissie H., Astrid Y., Erin Hamilton, Crazy Horse, Grin, Ensphere, Cal Tjader, Carlos S., B. Dylan, too many more to name...
The fifty odd ones I've been a part of since the early 80s, also survival theme films... Alive!, Dances With Wolves, Into The Wild, Apocalypto, Casablanca, A Place In The Sun, Places in the Heart, GWTW, What Women Want, Being There, Ghost, Spin, A River Runs Through It, Out Of Africa, Schindler's List, Portrait Of Jennie, Redford films, Costner films, Gibson films, Spielberg films, Jewison films, Ford films, Hitchcock films, Eastwood films, Sean Penn films, Greendale, Human Highway, aviation films in tropical settings, Jarmusch, Oshima, ahhh... too many... Herzog, Fassbinder, Edwards, still more...
PBS, Turner Classic Movies, History Channel, Academy Awards, Super Bowl Sunday, VHI pop culture profiles... big three sports, Stewart and Colbert, Carol Burnett, Ellen Degeneres, Comedy Channel, Leno, Letterman, O'Brien...
My Pop's (Larry's) World, Doubleday, and William Morrow books on Spencer Tracy, John Garfield, Carole Lombard, Gary Cooper, Charles Boyer... Susan Ware's Still Missing: Amelia Earhart and the Search for Modern Feminism, Thomas Fleming's Duel, some Whitehead, Thoreau, Scott Young's 'Neil and Me' On The Road and Kerouac... Alive!, etc.
My Dad, Thomas Jefferson, Abe Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, Jackie Robinson, Martin Luther King, Amelia Earhart, Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Sarah McLachlan, and many more. Basically, all inherently good people who overcome adversity, then courageously stick their necks out to influence or make positive world-environment changes...
RED RIVER DAVE: Amelia EARHART's Last Flight (1937)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgJo2JnBYqU
Although it has little to do with what actually became of Amelia Earhart, above is the classic 1937 'epitaph' tribute song about her. (John Herald and the Greenbriar Boys later did a super bluegrass version.) (As for the photograph of the woman flier who appears at the 1:50 mark in the song, that is another pioneer woman pilot, not Amelia Earhart.) The lyrics describe how at night Amelia perished at sea. Yet she actually disappeared after 8:40AM on the morning of July 2nd, 1937 as opposed to "at night" as they convey. Also, there was no "a half an hour later S.O.S." featuring Amelia's "still brave voice," although said imagery is wonderfully romantic. And almost tongue-in-cheek like, because people weren't exactly certain what happened to Amelia, the song also featured the lines, "There's a beautiful, beautiful field, far away in a land that is fair. Happy landings to you Amelia Earhart, farewell... first lady of the air." Note: Public history recorded Amelia's last words to have been "We are running north and south" as she looked for her destination of Howland Island that history said she never found. She was still airborne at the time such a last message was received, in a plane with a 4,100 mile fuel range that had only flown 2,600 miles from New Guinea to the vicinity of Howland. As well, during her described state of being 'lost,' two way radio contact with her was never made, and in her publicly relayed voice messages she never mentioned she was in trouble or was having to attempt a water landing at all. (In 1983 FOIA information revealed, "She finally stated she was heading 'north,' her signals becoming fainter each time received.") Needless to say, by late 1942 the Rosalind Russell RKO film "Flight For Freedom" was hinting at a different version of AE's 1937 misadventure, and during WWII soldiers stationed in the Pacific were hearing all kinds of stories about the famous pilot's quiet survival among the Imperial mandate islands. Finally in 1966, the New York Times best selling Doubleday book "The Search For Amelia Earhart," doggedly researched and written by CBS Radio Journalist, Fred Goerner... highlighted more controversial aspects of Amelia's last flight with former Pan Am Navigator, Fred Noonan. Of course U. S. historical dictum always influenced the American public, to view anything controversially written or spoken about Amelia's person or her last flight to have been rumor based only. Amelia Earhart was always a wonderful humanitarian and a beautiful person inside and out, while no less than a truly heroic individual. Yet those who dug in and learned the most about her, also witnessed her later false-history campaign. And historical truths do not go away so easily. (In a way, Red River Dave's song might remind one of Willy Nelson's "Old Shoe" part in the film 'Wag The Dog.') By the 1990s more information had surfaced about Amelia and her flight, and much of it is available for public review. Check out WWW.IRENE-AMELIA.COM for more information...
Here is a more recent editorially-influenced update (atypical) on Amelia Earhart's mystery. What started as an objective assignment ended like a commercial for Nauticos. Jennifer Sarranow, the young writer assigned by The Wall Street Journal to profile her take on the story, (whose voice you hear narrating) contacted me in November of 2007 for an interview. Just before the story ran she phoned me once more for last minute pertinent details. As you can see, her section that was supposed to include the decades old Irene-Amelia conveyance was all but completely omitted. Instead, in the end you hear her make mention of the so called 'spy' and 'captured by the Japanese' suggestions, (those things were never proven by the way) while reducing the Irene-Amelia story to "Others feel she came back to the U. S. as a New Jersey housewife with a different name." 'Sounds ridiculous, doesn't it? Jennifer Sarranow knew much more about Irene though, to include how Irene was no mere New Jersey housewife at all. In the 1960s and 1970s Irene was constantly traveling the world, she knew many people in high places, famous pilots and even astronauts, and after her distinguished British husband died in 1970 she took over as corporate President of Radio Luxembourg. She passed away in 1982. In 1970 after she was implicated to have formerly been known as Amelia Earhart, Irene held a press conference and described herself as "Nothing more than a New Jersey housewife." It was a great line for her to throw out for posterity. No one else had ever described her that way, yet after she herself did the never-ending joke started, "Amelia Earhart became a New Jersey housewife!" Jeniffer Sarranow coined this same old phrase the press has been repeating ever since Irene said it in 1970, as it so perfectly diminishes the true historical importance of Irene's person. In 2006 National Geographic basically did the same thing; it learned all about the Irene story and its recent updates, then treated it like nothing to its national TV audience. Also notice, no major news entity ever assigns seasoned investigative journalists to really dig into the Earhart story. I found Jeniffer to be a very nice and well meaning person, but it seems like it is always someone who hasn't been around long enough to recall the true controversy that became of the Earhart story in the 1960s and 1970s, that is always getting assigned to update it. Then whatever they write ends up being edited for correct public digestion. Thus, we hear Ms. Sarranow say, "still no smoking gun" and "a New Jersey housewife" ...where Irene's body actually was/still is the smoking gun and as mentioned, she was not just a New Jersey housewife. Notice too, how Jeniffer so heavily advertised Amelia's Sister, Muriel's old friend Elgen Long and his Nauticos team, that basically ignores the decades of preceding investigative research finds as if they never existed. Mr. Long and Muriel of course, both knew Irene, and Long's 'crashed and sank' finality has been encouraged by the press to the public ever since the early 1980s. For information on the 1997-2004 Irene-Amelia forensic study go to WWW.IRENE-AMELIA.COM ...or for a quick look at photos of Irene, check out the "My Pics" section right here.
A recently added three minute trailer from the National Geographic Society. It ends by showing brief excerpts taken from my 1997-2004 forensic study and photo survey, along with my late good friend and WWII hero, USAF Colonel Rollin C. Reineck (who sadly died last year) saying "Amelia Earhart Survived, there's no doubt about it." This is a recent surprising turnabout, as compared to the way National Geographic had traditionally viewed the Irene-Amelia conveyance.
Keep an open mind. There's a lot going on public citizenry remains unaware of. Here was a very courageous man who stood up and tried to identify a big 'national news media problem' for the better good of public interests. The problem he identified still exists today. The more the public is aware of it, the more it can fight against it.