Adam's First Wife

 

Tucson Weather Today


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Teach Not Preach is the title of a blog written by Jim Morrison, a World Religion teacher in a public school who willingly shares his thoughts and experiences. "For nearly eighteen years," he writes, "I have taught a world religion course in a public high school in Red Wing, Minnesota." He continues: "What I do is very rare and controversial, and people often assume that what I am doing is illegal. It is not. The Supreme Court has made it very clear that teaching about religion in public schools is not only legal but necessary for a student’s understanding of the world."

In his May 1, 2013 entry he  writes: "My students are completely surprised to learn about Lilith, Adam’s first wife."

More

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The Writer's Almanac Bookshelf has a short interview with Faith Shearin. Just a wee bit of insight into the mind of a poet.

Faith Shearin’s first collection, The Owl Question (2004), won the May Swenson Award, and her second book, The Empty House (2008), helped earn her a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Her work has appeared regularly in Ploughshares, Poetry East, and North American Review, and in several anthologies, including Sweeping Beauty: Contemporary Women Poets Do Housework and The Autumn House Anthology of Contemporary American Poets.

Interview

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TRIVIA

Leonardo da Vinci could write with one hand and draw with the other at the same time.

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HISTORICAL EVENT

On this day, May 16 in 1929, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences handed out its first awards, at a dinner party for around 250 people held in the Blossom Room of the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood, California.

At the time of the first Oscar ceremony, sound had just been introduced into film. The Warner Bros. movie The Jazz Singer--one of the first "talkies"--was not allowed to compete for Best Picture because the Academy decided it was unfair to let movies with sound compete with silent films.

The first official Best Picture winner (and the only silent film to win Best Picture) was Wings, directed by William Wellman. German actor Emil Jannings won the Best Actor honor for his roles in The Last Command and The Way of All Flesh, while 22-year-old Janet Gaynor was the only female winner. After receiving three out of the five Best Actress nods, she won for all three roles, in Seventh Heaven, Street Angel and Sunrise.

A special honorary award was presented to Charlie Chaplin.

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WORD FOR TODAY

equivocate
Verb
Use ambiguous language so as to conceal the truth or avoid committing oneself.
Synonyms
prevaricate

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CELEBRITY BIRTHDAYS

Megan Denise Fox
(born May 16, 1986)

Megan Fox is an American actress and model. She began her acting career in 2001, with several minor television and film roles, and played a regular role on the Hope & Faith television show. In 2004, she made her film debut with a role in Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen. In 2007, she co-starred as Mikaela Banes, the love interest of Shia LaBeouf's character, in the blockbuster film, Transformers, which became her breakout role. Fox reprised her role in the 2009 sequel, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Later in 2009, she starred as the eponymous lead in the film Jennifer's Body.

Fox is also considered one of the modern female sex symbols and has appeared in magazines such as Maxim, Rolling Stone and FHM.

Henry Jaynes Fonda
(May 16, 1905 - August 12, 1982)

 Henry Fonda was an American film and stage actor. He made his mark early as a Broadway actor. He also appeared in 1938 in plays performed in White Plains, New York, with Joan Tompkins.

Fonda made his Hollywood debut in 1935, and his career gained momentum after his Academy Award-nominated performance as Tom Joad in The Grapes of Wrath, a 1940 adaptation of John Steinbeck's novel about an Oklahoma family who moved west during the Dust Bowl. Throughout six decades in Hollywood, Fonda cultivated a strong, appealing screen image in such classics as The Ox-Bow Incident, Mister Roberts and 12 Angry Men. Later, Fonda moved both toward darker epics as Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West and lighter roles in family comedies like Yours, Mine and Ours with Lucille Ball.

Fonda was the patriarch of a family of famous actors, including daughter Jane Fonda, son Peter Fonda, granddaughter Bridget Fonda, and grandson Troy Garity

Janet Damita Jo Jackson
(born May 16, 1966)

 Janet Jackson is an American recording artist and actress. Known for a series of sonically innovative, socially conscious and sexually provocative records, as well as elaborate stage shows, television appearances, and film roles, she has been a prominent figure in popular culture since the early 1970s. The youngest child of the Jackson family, she began her career appearing on the variety television series The Jacksons in 1976 and went on to appear on other television shows throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, including Good Times and Fame.

Tracey Gold
(born May 16, 1969)

Tracey Gold is an American actress and former child star best known for playing Carol Seaver on the 1980s sitcom Growing Pains. In early 2009, she co-hosted with Fred Roggin on the live show GSN Live.

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"I am convinced that the only people worthy of consideration in this world are the unusual ones."
L. Frank Baum