Three hours after I posted this, I heard five Patriots will not go to the White House to meet Trump! Blount was one of them! Hurrah!
“Defensive end Chris Long and running back LeGarette Blount of the Super Bowl champion New England Patriots said Thursday they won’t visit the White House with the team, joining three other teammates in boycotting the celebration.
“I will not be going to the White House,” Blount said on the Rich Eisen show. “I don’t feel welcome in that house. I’ll leave it at that.”
Three black brothers and I took the Boston Mafia to court in 1971 – and won our case! We stopped them from buying four properties on Beacon Hill. We were making a pilot for a PBS series ‘Religion In America’ but, walked out when someone held up a sign saying;
‘NO POLITICS’
The Watergate hearing began a month later. What a long strange trip it has been!
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The Eugene Weekly has brought up the black face worn by professor Nancy Shurtz in this article.
http://www.eugeneweekly.com/20170202/lead-story/black-unpopular-demand
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackface
Growing up in Oakland, and moving back and forth to Eugene since 1970, I missed black people. I had befriended a homeless black man who wrote a famous rock and roll song, and he stayed with me a week. When I moved to Springfield ten years ago, I thought it was going to be all white bread and mayonnaise. There were five players for the UofO football team living here. Terrell Turner and La Garrett Blount were my friends. Whenever Terrell went to an away game, he would knock on my door and ask me to keep an eye on Sarah, which was not hard to do. La Garrett helped my carry a mattress upstairs. My front door is in the photo above. All the players are gone. This place has not been the same.
Jon Presco
Terrell and Sarah
Terrell and Sarah are getting married in three days. His old friends at McKenzie Meadows wish the Turners the very best! Thanks for being part of our family.
https://www.theknot.com/us/sarah-pointer-and-terrell-turner-jun-2016
After visiting the University of Oregon, the decision had become clear. Turner would become an Oregon Duck.
“I don’t understand how anyone could turn down Oregon,” Turner told me. “It’s such a family atmosphere. Oregon is a great place to get away from a big town.”
Jon
SPRINGFIELD, Ore. — On Saturday morning, John Presco could hear the fear in his neighbor’s voice as she left a message on his answering machine.
“Hello John,” said Sandy Maricle. “This is Sandy. Are you home?”
Maricle needed someone to drive her to the hospital.
“I’m in really severe pain in my leg and back,” said Maricle.
With her sciatic nerve throbbing, Maricle barely made it to the car.
“She scooted down on her butt, all the time her face is in agony,” Presco said.
A few hours later, she was released from the hospital — but had no way to get from the car to her second-story apartment.
That all changed when her neighbor, University of Oregon defensive end Terrell Turner showed up, picked Maricle up and carried her up the stairs.
“It was a God-send,” Presco said.
“I was relieved,” Maricle said. “It was like an angel.”
“He was so kind and gentle and just the perfect good Samaritan,” Maricle said.
It’s not the first time this Duck has done a good deed. A few weeks ago, another neighbor needed help carrying a TV up three flights of stairs.
“We got it all the way up so thank God,” Turner said.
Turner said the acts of kindness are inspired by his passion for his family in California.
“I’m just making sure I can help out as if my mom was around to help,” Turner said.
Now, he’s helping his extended family here in Oregon.
“I think a lot of him,” Maricle said.
Two days after my neighbor, La Garrett Blount, knocked out that Boise player, I overheard him, and four other Ducks who lived in my complex, using the N-word. I stopped blogging and went downstairs and approached five angry black men. I was angry, too, and said;
“I grew up in Oakland, and when a bunch of guys come rushing at you, screaming at you, and they surround you, and just you, and none of your friends are by your side, you go for the biggest guy, and try to knock him out. They don’t show in the video how they rushed you, just you. That guy laid his hands on you. His coach pushed him away. What I would like to know, was there a lot of racist talk before the game?”
La Garrett looked at me, and said “Yes.”
This is bullshit! I was just blogging on how right-winger are saying Obama, as our first Black President, will not defend our country as Commander in Chief. They were upset at the idea of a back man ordering the death of white men. This is racist. Obama has the right to defend all of us, and you have the right to defend yourself. I want you permission to blog on you and this incident.”
Here is that blog. It was not a sucker punch. Blount was winding up for a punch when the coach got in the way. Blount was in full Fight or Flight mode. He is trained to pump up his adrenelen in a half-second;
I lost interest in pro-football, and was not going to watch the Superbowl, until I was reminded Blount is going to play. When they ripped the bowl from him, he went into his infamous mood. Twenty-eight points behind, I turned the game off. I did not want to see Blount lose. I didn’t care about anything else.
I turned the game back on with twenty minutes to play. La Garrett – WON! I was happy as hell. He being inside my abode took on new dimensions. I like to think he is holding up those newspapers for me, his first Press Agent!
Trump’s ban has suffered a defeat in court. This ban affected Hollywood. Eric Richardson is a good friend of the Reeds. Marilyn Reed and I are good friends of Jeff Pasternak, a Hollywood Producer who gave sanctuary to many Jews in the German movie industry who fled Hitler. Nowhere in that article on covert racism against “people of color” are the Jews mentioned. Eddy Cantor and All Jolson were Jewish immigrants who performed in black face, and they did so with reverence. It was their art form. Cantor was the son of a Rabbi. It makes me wonder why he introduced black face into a Yom Kipper story where he is a rebellious, but Prodigal Son. Who owns empathy for whom -and why – is very topical.
http://www.deannadurbindevotees.com/t75-joe-pasternak
No one can take their experience away. There is no law requiring them to do so. My experiences with black people may be historic. We are in this show together. La Garrett has learned to be an entertainer, but is not going to do a shuffle for Trump. The Jews have been bullied more than most folks. I don’t get it why white people liked blackface. But, they did. Maybe this was the only safe way they could show they liked black people, and, were attracted to what they did, and the music they made. Many whites went into the clubs in Harlem.
And, that’s the way it is!
Jon Presco
http://www.patriots.com/video/2016/12/29/sound-fx-legarrette-blount
Actors, directors, producers and musicians have been snagged in the visa crackdown, sowing anxiety and confusion in an increasingly globalised business
Trump’s travel ban wreaks havoc on Hollywood: ‘People are in a panic’
Actors, directors, producers and musicians have been snagged in the visa crackdown, sowing anxiety and confusion in an increasingly globalised business.
Hollywood’s collective howl at Donald Trump is not entirely political.
Actors, directors, producers, musicians and others have been snagged in the president’s visa crackdown, sowing anxiety and confusion in an increasingly globalised business.
“Our office has been inundated,” said Josh Goldstein, a Los Angeles immigration attorney with entertainment industry clients. “People are in a panic right now. It’s created a general level of fear.”
Contradictory signals from the White House, the state department and federal judges over the past week have rattled all foreigners, not just those from the seven countries named in Trump’s executive order, Goldstein said.
“As a lawyer it’s almost impossible for me to give out advice because there are so many lawsuits and exceptions. We really don’t know how they’re going to apply the rules. So my advice is: if you’re in the country, stay here.”
Entertainment, however, is an international industry. Film sets, editing suites and corporate offices can feel like the United Nations. Especially now – pilot and award season, when actors, agents and other industry professionals flock to LA for castings, rehearsals and ceremonies.
Rabinowitz (also Rabinowicz) (רבינוביץ), is a Polish Ashkenazi Jewish surname, Slavic for “son of the rabbi“. The Russian equivalents are Rabinovich or Rabinovitch.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddie_Cantor
Cantor Rabinowitz wants his son to carry on the generations-old family tradition and become a cantor at the synagogue in the Jewish ghetto of Manhattan’s Lower East Side. But down at the beer garden, thirteen-year-old Jakie Rabinowitz is performing so-called jazz tunes. Moisha Yudelson spots the boy and tells Jakie’s father, who drags him home. Jakie clings to his mother, Sara, as his father declares, “I’ll teach him better than to debase the voice God gave him!” Jakie threatens: “If you whip me again, I’ll run away — and never come back!” After the whipping, Jakie kisses his mother goodbye and, true to his word, runs away. At the Yom Kippur service, Rabinowitz mournfully tells a fellow celebrant, “My son was to stand at my side and sing tonight – but now I have no son.” As the sacred Kol Nidre is sung, Jakie sneaks back home to retrieve a picture of his loving mother.
About 10 years later, Jakie has changed his name to the more assimilated Jack Robin. Jack is called up from his table at a cabaret to perform on stage.
Jack wows the crowd with his energized rendition. Afterward, he is introduced to the beautiful Mary Dale, a musical theater dancer. “There are lots of jazz singers, but you have a tear in your voice,” she says, offering to help with his budding career. With her help, Jack eventually gets his big break: a leading part in the new musical April Follies.
Back at the family home Jack left long ago, the elder Rabinowitz instructs a young student in the traditional cantorial art. Jack appears and tries to explain his point of view, and his love of modern music, but the appalled cantor banishes him: “I never want to see you again — you jazz singer!” As he leaves, Jack makes a prediction: “I came home with a heart full of love, but you don’t want to understand. Some day you’ll understand, the same as Mama does.”
Jack and his mother (Eugenie Besserer)
Two weeks after Jack’s expulsion from the family home and 24 hours before opening night of April Follies on Broadway, Jack’s father falls gravely ill. Jack is asked to choose between the show and duty to his family and faith: in order to sing the Kol Nidre for Yom Kippur in his father’s place, he will have to miss the big premiere.
That evening, the eve of Yom Kippur, Yudleson tells the Jewish elders, “For the first time, we have no Cantor on the Day of Atonement.” Lying in his bed, weak and gaunt, Cantor Rabinowitz tells Sara that he cannot perform on the most sacred of holy days: “My son came to me in my dreams—he sang Kol Nidre so beautifully. If he would only sing like that tonight—surely he would be forgiven.”
As Jack prepares for a dress rehearsal by applying blackface makeup, he and Mary discuss his career aspirations and the family pressures they agree he must resist. Sara and Yudleson come to Jack’s dressing room to plea for him to come to his father and sing in his stead. Jack is torn. He delivers his blackface performance (“Mother of Mine, I Still Have You”), and Sara sees her son onstage for the first time. She has a tearful revelation: “Here he belongs. If God wanted him in His house, He would have kept him there. He’s not my boy anymore—he belongs to the whole world now.”
Jack Robin on stage, in a publicity shot representing the movie’s final scene
Afterward, Jack returns to the Rabinowitz home. He kneels at his father’s bedside and the two converse fondly: “My son—I love you.” Sara suggests that it may help heal his father if Jack takes his place at the Yom Kippur service. Mary arrives with the producer, who warns Jack that he’ll never work on Broadway again if he fails to appear on opening night. Jack can’t decide. Mary challenges him: “Were you lying when you said your career came before everything?” Jack is unsure if he even can replace his father: “I haven’t sung Kol Nidre since I was a little boy.” His mother tells him, “Do what is in your heart, Jakie—if you sing and God is not in your voice — your father will know.” The producer cajoles Jack: “You’re a jazz singer at heart!”
At the theater, the opening night audience is told that there will be no performance. Jack sings the Kol Nidre in his father’s place. His father listens from his deathbed to the nearby ceremony and speaks his last, forgiving words: “Mama, we have our son again.” The spirit of Jack’s father is shown at his side in the synagogue. Mary has come to listen. She sees how Jack has reconciled the division in his soul: “a jazz singer—singing to his God.”
“The season passes—and time heals—the show goes on.” Jack, as “The Jazz Singer,” is now appearing at the Winter Garden theater, apparently as the featured performer opening for a show called Back Room. In the front row of the packed theater, his mother sits alongside Yudleson. Jack, in blackface, performs the song “My Mammy” for her and for the world.
Rosamond Press 
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