Link 🌍 to Fulfillment Obi’s interview with me in September!
https://www.callin.com/episode/fulfillment-through-purposeful-living-TPBREaUqJk
The whole pod is embedded below!
From Director Bradley Cooper, Maestro is the towering and fearless love story chronicling the lifelong relationship between cultural icon Leonard Bernstein and Felicia Montealegre Cohn Bernstein.
A love letter to life and art, Maestro, at its core, is an emotionally epic portrayal of family and love.
Starring Academy Award Nominee Carey Mulligan and Academy Award Nominee Bradley Cooper, don't miss MAESTRO. MAESTRO | Written by Bradley Cooper and Josh Singer.
In Select Theaters November 22 and on Netflix December 20.
Defying Gravity by Carol De Giere
Stephen Schwartz is among the rare American composer-lyricists whose Broadway musicals have inspired passionate followings, resulting in blockbuster hits like Wicked, Godspell, and Pippin.
In the revised and updated second edition of Defying Gravity, biographer Carol de Giere reveals how Schwartz’s beloved musicals came to life, adding four new chapters that shed light on the continuing Wicked phenomenon and exciting projects that include stage adaptations of The Hunchback of Notre Dame with Alan Menken and The Prince of Egypt.
A popular feature of the first edition remains intact for the second: the story of Schwartz’s commercially unsuccessful shows, how he coped, and how he gave himself another chance. The new edition also features an acclaimed series of “Creativity Notes” with insights about the creative process. Wicked enthusiasts are treated to a revealing, in-depth account of the show’s evolution that takes readers from developmental workshops, to the pre-Broadway tryout in San Francisco, through the arguments over changes for Broadway, and finally to productions around the world.
Movie musical fans know that Disney’s pairing of Stephen Schwartz (for lyrics) with composer Alan Menken (for music) led to award-winning movie musicals “Pocahontas, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and Enchanted. Menken’s revelatory “Foreword” that introduces the second edition of Defying Gravity explores their “wonderful chemistry” and creative challenges.
The abundance of behind-the-scenes stories in this Stephen Schwartz biography came by way of the author’s unprecedented access to this legendary songwriter for interviews. She also drew from conversations with his family members, friends, and colleagues (librettists, composers, directors, producers, and actors) to render a rich portrait of this complex and gifted artist. She rounds out the book with photographs, Schwartz’s handwritten notes, and highlighted quotations.
Performers and others involved in productions of Godspell, Pippin, Children of Eden, Working, Rags, and The Hunchback of Notre Dame, will discover the intentions of the shows’ creators. Singers, writers, fans, and anyone interested in the development of stage and film musicals will enjoy multiple insights from this backstage journey, from Godspell to Wicked, and beyond.
Rose Wilder Lanes books laid the foundations of the Libertarian Party in America!
Born on the frontier, in America’s Dakota Territory, Rose Wilder’s family left the Territory for Florida after surviving diphtheria, crop failure, and even the loss of their house to fire. They soon returned, staying in a rented house for two years, during which time Rose learned to read in a matter of months at a small town schoolhouse, before leaving for Mansfield, Missouri by covered wagon. There, the Wilder family bought a plot of land dubbed Rocky Ridge by Laura, and built the home in which the “Little House” stories would later be written.
Finding the school in Mansfield insufficiently challenging, Wilder, with her mother’s consent, stayed home to educate herself. She returned to school for only a few months in 1903–04, earning her high school degree while staying with her aunt in Louisiana.
The adult Rose’s life, while less well known, is at least as exciting as the adventures related in any of her mother’s books. In an autobiographical piece for the Federal Writers Project, Lane described her varied experiences:
I have been office clerk, telegrapher, newspaper reporter, feature writer, advertising writer, farmland salesman. I have seen all the United States and something of Canada and the Caribbean; all of Europe except Spain; Turkey, Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Iraq as far east as Baghdad, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan.
She omits from the list her nine year marriage to Claire Gillette Lane, which lasted from 1909 to 1918, and during which Lane gave birth to a son who died shortly thereafter. Lane traveled the United States extensively with her husband, and worked as a reporer for the San Francisco Bulletin. Her first novel, Diverging Roads, was serialized in Sunset Magazine and then published in book form in 1919. She also authored several biographies — her first book was a life of Henry Ford — including the first ever written about Herbert Hoover, in 1920. Her work researching that book led to a friendship with Hoover which lasted for over 40 years.
The extensive travels to which she refers included stints as a reporter in San Francisco and as a Red Cross publicist in Washington, D.C., as well as several months in New York’s Greenwich Village, where she became involved in radical socialist politics. After the end of World War I, she was sent to the Balkans by the Red Cross to investigate conditions there; her reports were published in the Red Cross Bulletin. Crucially, Lane also stayed for a time in the newly formed Soviet Union, an experience that would shake and, ultimately, destroy her sympathy for communism. Finishing her work for the Red Cross in 1922, she toured Europe and the Middle East, with an interlude back at the family farm in Missouri in 1924–25 to write several stories about the Ozarks, including the successful Hill Billy. She repeatedly visited Albania, where she witnessed a revolution and refused a proposal of marriage from Ahmet Zogu, the future King Zog I.
Healthy Families Podcast Episode #53 🌎 A few thoughts on Music