Yearly Archives: 2011

Check out this Lego fig coming out in 2012: Bilbo or Frodo?

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The Journal Inquirer reports  that brand new Legos are coming out in 2012: “The Lego Group has inked a deal with Warner Bros. Consumer Products to create building sets based on ‘The Lord of the Rings’ movie trilogy and two new films based on ‘The Hobbit,’ scheduled for release in 2012.”

Lord of the Rings. Hmmm. How many females were in that high grossing, Academy Award winning series? How many males?

Check out the link from the Journal Inquirer that pictures Lego’s new toy. It won’t let me copy the photo, but the Legos pictured are so much cooler than the Friends for girls and guess what– all male.

Other best-selling Lego sets are based on the Indiana Jones and Star Wars movies.

Do you see the sexism chain reaction here? When girl characters are excluded from movies, they’re left out of toys and branding on all kinds of kids clothing and products as well. Please take a look at Reel Girl’s Gallery of Girls Gone Missing from Kids’ Movies in 2011. These movies predominantly star males, feature multiple males in the cast, and have names of males in the movie titles. Whereas in 2010, Disney switched a movie title from “Rapunzel” to “Tangled” just to downplay the female. This kind of blatant sexism repeatedly teaches kids that boys are more important than girls, and that’s a horrible lesson for both genders to learn.

Of course The Hobbit was a book long before it was a movie. J.R.R. Tolkien’s classic came out in 1937. But it’s Hollywood’s appropriation of the story that makes it massively popular with a new generation, grounding it in pop culture and inciting the creation of a slew of toys timed to hit stores around the same  time the movie hits theaters.

On Dec 16 PRNewsWire reported on the new Legos and the upcoming movie’s cast:

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey will be released beginning December 14, 2012.  The second film, The Hobbit: There and Back Again, is slated for release the following year, beginning December 13, 2013.

Ian McKellen returns as Gandalf the Grey, the character he played in “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy, and Martin Freeman in the central role of Bilbo Baggins.  Also reprising their roles from “The Lord of the Rings” movies are: Cate Blanchett as Galadriel; Ian Holm as the elder Bilbo; Christopher Lee as Saruman; Hugo Weaving as Elrond; Elijah Wood as Frodo; Orlando Bloom as Legolas; and Andy Serkis as Gollum.  The ensemble cast also includes (in alphabetical order) Richard Armitage, John Bell, Jed Brophy, Adam Brown, John Callen, Luke Evans, Stephen Fry, Ryan Gage, Mark Hadlow, Peter Hambleton, Barry Humphries, Stephen Hunter, William Kircher, Evangeline Lilly, Sylvester McCoy, Bret McKenzie, Graham McTavish, Mike Mizrahi, James Nesbitt, Dean O’Gorman, Lee Pace, Mikael Persbrandt, Conan Stevens, Ken Stott, Jeffrey Thomas, and Aidan Turner.

Do you think the 2 females listed above will make it into the Lego set?

As long as Hollywood keeps girl characters out of its films, it’s going to be challenging to convince toy companies to represent heroic females in their toys. It’s asking them to use a lot more imagination. Of course, toy companies should be imaginative. Isn’t that the point of a toy? Especially a toy company like Lego that claims to be a learning toy “fostering creative play?” But instead, Lego prefers to spend its time and money “researching” the best way to copy Disney.

On its Facebook page, Lego keeps responding to hundreds of people upset about the “for girls” sets, that there are many other Legos out there to choose from. But Lego isn’t aggressively marketing those sets to girls. On its own FB welcome page, Lego has two boys pictured flying a Lego airplane. Will Lego be marketing the new “Lord of the Rings” set to girls? How?

If you go into any mega chain like Target or Walmart or Pottery Barn, all of them have “boy aisles” and “girl aisles.” The “Lord of the Rings” sets and the other  building sets mostly show boys pictured on the boxes and contain multiple male figs inside of those boxes. Where do you think the “Lord of the Rings” set will be? Where will the Kim Kardashian wannabe Friends Lego set be found? How’s a girl going to feel being dragged by her mother into the “boy aisle” where all the photos are telling her she’s in the wrong place? If a highly paid researcher was studying this girl’s behavior, what do you think he would record?

Maybe Target should stop with the boy and girl aisles. (The London toy store Hamley’s has done just that, giving up gender segregation for sections on arts and crafts, outdoor toys, building toys, soft toys etc.) Maybe Hollywood should make more movies with multiple girl roles and put females front and center. Maybe parents should demand more of those movies and get upset when girls remain invisible.

Hollywood shows our kids animals who talk, rats who cook, toys who come to life, and singing lions who befriend warthogs. Is it too much to ask to see imaginary worlds where girls and boys are treated equally? How long do we have to wait?

Anyone see “Arthur Christmas” this year?

When Hollywood stops excluding girls, Lego sets will include more ladyfigs

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The Journal Inquirer reports  that brand  new Legos are coming out in 2012: “The Lego Group has inked a deal with Warner Bros. Consumer Products to create building sets based on ‘The Lord of the Rings’ movie trilogy and two new films based on ‘The Hobbit,’ scheduled for release in 2012.”

Lord of the Rings. Hmmm. How many females were in that high grossing, Academy Award winning series? How many males?

Check out the link from the Journal Inquirer that pictures Lego’s new toy. It won’t let me copy the photo, but the Legos pictured are so much cooler than the Friends for girls and guess what– all male.

Other best-selling Lego sets are based on the Indiana Jones and Star Wars movies.

Do you see the sexism chain reaction here? When girl characters are excluded from movies, they’re left out of toys and branding on all kinds of kids clothing and products as well. Please take a look at Reel Girl’s Gallery of Girls Gone Missing from Kids’ Movies in 2011. These movies predominantly star males, feature multiple males in the cast, and have names of males in the movie titles. Whereas in 2010, Disney switched a movie title from “Rapunzel” to “Tangled” just to downplay the female. This kind of blatant sexism repeatedly teaches kids that boys are more important than girls, and that’s a horrible lesson for both genders to learn.

Of course The Hobbit was a book long before it was a movie. J.R.R. Tolkien’s classic came out in 1937. But it’s Hollywood’s appropriation of the story that makes it massively popular with a new generation, grounding it in pop culture and inciting the creation of a slew of toys timed to hit stores around the same  time the movie hits theaters.

On Dec 16 PRNewsWire reported on the new Legos and the upcoming movie’s cast:

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey will be released beginning December 14, 2012.  The second film, The Hobbit: There and Back Again, is slated for release the following year, beginning December 13, 2013.

Ian McKellen returns as Gandalf the Grey, the character he played in “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy, and Martin Freeman in the central role of Bilbo Baggins.  Also reprising their roles from “The Lord of the Rings” movies are: Cate Blanchett as Galadriel; Ian Holm as the elder Bilbo; Christopher Lee as Saruman; Hugo Weaving as Elrond; Elijah Wood as Frodo; Orlando Bloom as Legolas; and Andy Serkis as Gollum.  The ensemble cast also includes (in alphabetical order) Richard Armitage, John Bell, Jed Brophy, Adam Brown, John Callen, Luke Evans, Stephen Fry, Ryan Gage, Mark Hadlow, Peter Hambleton, Barry Humphries, Stephen Hunter, William Kircher, Evangeline Lilly, Sylvester McCoy, Bret McKenzie, Graham McTavish, Mike Mizrahi, James Nesbitt, Dean O’Gorman, Lee Pace, Mikael Persbrandt, Conan Stevens, Ken Stott, Jeffrey Thomas, and Aidan Turner.

Do you think the 2 females listed above will make it into the Lego set?

As long as Hollywood keeps girl characters out of its films, it’s going to be challenging to convince toy companies to represent heroic females in their toys. It’s asking them to use a lot more imagination. Of course, toy companies should be imaginative. Isn’t that the point of a toy? Especially a toy company like Lego that claims to be a learning toy “fostering creative play?” But instead, Lego prefers to spend its time and money “researching” the best way to copy Disney.

On its Facebook page, Lego keeps responding to hundreds of people upset about the “for girls” sets, that there are many other Legos out there to choose from. But Lego isn’t aggressively marketing those sets to girls. On its own FB welcome page, Lego has two boys pictured flying a Lego airplane. Will Lego be marketing the new “Lord of the Rings” set to girls? How?

If you go into any mega chain like Target or Walmart or Pottery Barn, all of them have “boy aisles” and “girl aisles.” The “Lord of the Rings” sets and the other  building sets mostly show boys pictured on the boxes and contain multiple male figs inside of those boxes. Where do you think the “Lord of the Rings” set will be? Where will the Kim Kardashian wannabe Friends Lego set be found? How’s a girl going to feel being dragged by her mother into the “boy aisle” where all the photos are telling her she’s in the wrong place? If a highly paid researcher was studying this girl’s behavior, what do you think he would record?

Maybe Target should stop with the boy and girl aisles. (The London toy store Hamley’s has done just that, giving up gender segregation for sections on arts and crafts, outdoor toys, building toys, soft toys etc.) Maybe Hollywood should make more movies with multiple girl roles and put females front and center. Maybe parents should demand more of those movies and get upset when girls remain invisible.

Hollywood shows our kids animals who talk, rats who cook, toys who come to life, and singing lions who befriend warthogs. Is it too much to ask to see imaginary worlds where girls and boys are treated equally? How long do we have to wait?

Anyone see “Arthur Christmas” this year?

Warren Hellman’s last song

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At Warren Hellman’s memorial service, Heidi Clare, the fiddler for his band the Wronglers, told the crowd about the first time they played “The Big Twang Theory” just a few days earlier in Warren’s hospital room.

“The doctors gave him some hard news,” Clare said. “He was sitting in a chair, banjo in hand. He listened patiently, and waited for them to stop talking. Then he said, ‘And now I have something for you.’ And we played this song.”

The Big “Twang” Theory by Warren Hellman and Colleen Browne

We were drifting in eternal darkness

Free from joy or pain

When someone plucked a banjo

And the universe began

That single note it amplified

Then sparked and formed our sun

From which burst forth the planets

One by one by one

(Chorus)

Pickers, pluckers, plonkers born

To strum, perchance to croon

Drifting through the cosmos

Playing out of tune

The next to come, from space and dust, were

Old-time music bands

With fiddles, guitars, mandolins

Made from these cosmic sands

Then all the country music

The writers could compose

Was created in that instant

And sung through someone’s nose

(Chorus)

Great constellations formed

From the Carter Family’s works

Over there big black holes

Where old-time music lurks

Some found the sound appalling

An agony to hear

A true appreciation

Needs at least a case of beer

(Chorus)

That single plonk of the banjo

Sparked the music universe

We thought it would get better

But it’s only getting worse

A humongous group of banjos

Strumming old-time tunes

Playing on the planets

Playing on the moon

(Chorus)

One thing that’s for certain

It’s been a cosmic trip

Riding through the ether

On this old-time music ship

Going gray

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Around the time I turned forty, I started dyeing my hair. I didn’t have much gray, but the strands that suddenly appeared freaked me out. I didn’t feel like I was ready. Maybe when I was fifty I would be ready. I have really dark hair, so just a little gray showed up a lot. To me, anyway.

Remarkably, that was the first time in my life I’d dyed my hair. I got a semi permanent dye, and no one noticed the change. I was so annoyed, I started pointing it out. People squinted at my head and still didn’t notice. A couple months later, my hair developed a brassy, orangey-tint. It was subtle. Again, no one I pointed it out to noticed (or at least that’s what they claimed) but I didn’t like it. I missed the darker color. So I started dying my hair just to get rid of the orange.

What a waste of time. What a waste of money. What a bore checking my hair for signs that it was time to go back to the salon.

After two years of dyeing, I stopped. I am so happy to have my hair back. Seriously. I feel so grateful. I did not like that orange hair. I love my hair color. Maybe my mind will change. I don’t know. This whole process is a giant mystery. But I doubt it. I always thought that when people said they earned their gray it was bullshit. Maybe the joy I feel when I look in the mirror is only because I’m happy that orange hair is gone. But also, I like the gray now. I think it’s pretty. Confused at my reaction, of course, I turned to books.

Going Gray is by  Anne Kraemer. At 49, she saw a photo of herself with her dyed dark hair and thought she looked awful. She let her hair go gray and when she did she felt happier, sexier, and comfortable with herself in the world. (I’ll post her before and after photos when I have time, this is another two minute blog before I wake the kids.)

I also read a book called Healthy Aging by Andrew Weil. As many of you know, he’s got a big gray beard and he’s bald. That’s OK, of course, because he’s a successful man. I was curious what he would say about gray. He wrote about his dog. He’s a dog lover and he’s lived with dogs for years, going through their life cycles with them from puppyhood to old age. At the time Weil wrote his book, he had a beautiful, strong dog with a shiny coat. He writes that while stroking the dog, he notices gray hair on the animal’s chin. That starts him worrying. He knows what’s to come. The dog will get older and more frail and eventually he’ll die. Weil starts to think about his own death. All these feelings sprout from seeing a few gray hairs on his dog’s chin.

Weil writes about how our fear of death is manifested in the physical evidence of aging that we see. That’s not rocket science obviously, but as I read on in his book about the healthy aging process, I started to think about signs of aging as signs of health instead of signs of death. Physical health and also emotional health. Weil writes, as have others, the ever growing use of botox is affecting us. Babies learn from facial expressions. They’re mimics, and that’s how they process information and how their brains develop (and that’s the problem with Lego marketing ARGH, but that’s another blog).

When babies cannot see emotions in frozen faces, they don’t learn the way they’re supposed to. Not only that. Emotions are meant to be felt. That’s why we have them. Wrinkles are signs that we feel. Wrinkles are healthy. Not for a twenty year old but for a forty year old. Gray hair is healthy as well.

I blogged a couple months ago about a book I loved called Fifty Is Not The New Thirty. I don’t know about fifty yet, but so far forties have been one of the best times of my life. When you see a wrinkle or a gray hair, try seeing it for what it is: you’re exactly where you’re supposed to be, doing exactly what you’re supposed to be doing. That relaxes me.

Update: I haven’t been able to find the before/ after photos of Kraemer on the internet that are on my book cover. If you do, send them along and I’ll try to keep looking. When I didn’t find them immediately, I started to think: why post them? She looks gorgeous, but maybe part of the gray hair phobia is that we don’t look the same way in photos (and on TV) that we do in real life. Dyed hair often doesn’t look brassy and weird on TV the way it can in reality. Altering real life looks to make them look “good” for  a TV/ photo lens is part of the problem. Maybe its better not to focus on a photo even though hers happens to look good. Speaking of gray, I just saw Emmy Lou Harris two days ago. Talk about beautiful– her voice, her hair, her presence. Wow.

Update:

OK, got the photo. Thank you Prof Prog Strumpet.

Since I caved on posting that photo, here’s one of Emmy Lou too. But remember, it’s not about the photos, it’s about LIFE.

Commenter thinks Lego Friends is perfect for girls

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I got this on SFGate. Does this guy work at Lego?

Margot, could you please answer a question for me? To what extent do you believe the following statement to be true:

Most women want more than anything to get married and have children. As little girls they dream about their wedding and the man they will marry, in that order. They also put a high value on making and maintaining friendships. This is why Lego made a set for them that focuses on relationships and in fact includes the word “friends” in its title. Little boys do not fantasize about their wedding day. They think often about their jobs and lives as adults and these fantasies often involve building things, sometimes with other people but often alone. The reason why the vast majority of your commenters are men is because men can spend hours in front of a computer interacting with people in a fairly abstract way. This is generally not something girls and women prefer to do.

I look forward to reading what you have to say.

Parents, this is about you too

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Here’s another two minute blog before I wake up my kids.

Remember, this is not just the big bad toy company. This is about us, too. I blogged earlier about how it’s hard to make small talk with a toddler so we say to a girl, “What a pretty dress!” It’s more difficult to try to think of other subjects. It can be awkward to ask the nurse at the doctor’s office not to offer your daughter a “choice” of three princess stickers. But we should all do it. Please try. I don’t mean to sound preachy and be annoying. I know we have enough people telling us what to do and feeling bad that we’re not parenting right. But it’s these little steps we make that change things. What we do in our own lives as well as the activism, it’s all the same, really.

I think of toys kind of the same way I think about eating which is what I blogged about right when I started Reel Girl. You can’t tell your kid to eat a certain way and not do it yourself. It’s hypocritical, but more importantly, it doesn’t work. If I eat sushi with my kids and get excited about it, they are likely to do the same. I’m not saying my kids will eat sushi if I do, but that they are way more likely to if I do. If it’s something we do together. If it’s fun. (Who cares if my kids eat sushi? It’s just a pain in the ass when they don’t try new foods, life is much easier– and healthier– when they don’t get stuck in a rut. And believe me, it’s hard to get my cooking, as well as my husband’s, out of a rut.)

If you get your kid gender neutral toys like blocks or puzzles or the old Legos, get excited about the toy. Sit on the floor and play with them. Do it often. What little kids want is attention from their parents. With almost any toy, you can incorporate make believe play. This can be tedious (my 5 year old loves a repetitive story with 3 creatures: one doesn’t believe, one does, and the third is the magical one. She will play this with blocks, Legos, or sticks.)

Also, show your sons and daughters movies and TV with powerful girls. Here’s Reel Girl’s recommended list. Read your sons stories that feature girls in strong roles. Here are some questions to think about when you watch a movie.

Encourage cross gender play. Make a play date with your kid and a kid of the opposite gender.

With toys, movies, books, playdates, and food challenge your kid to try new experiences. Kid learn through play. Lure her out of her comfort zone the way you would with “work.” With your attention and encouragement, she will try. If it’s too much for you to buy your son a stroller, don’t freak when he pushes another kid’s in the park.  All kids love to push things on wheels, I know for boys we like to call those objects cars or trains.

Good luck this Holiday season!

Wow, check out Lego’s Facebook page

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Starting yesterday, PBG asked people who love the 1981 Lego pic to post it on Lego’s FB page and hundreds of people, men and women, are doing it (thousands??) The posts say how much they love Lego and how much they don’t like the new Friends toy.

Here are a few comments:

“LEGO, you make such a fantastic product … when it is marketed to CHILDREN, not to specific genders. CHILDREN like all colors. CHILDREN like to be creative. CHILDREN like to build (and destroy). Not boys, not girls … just KIDS.

You have such an opportunity, right at this moment in time, to be a CHAMPION for childhood … a childhood FREE from gender stereotyping, FREE from limitation … and FULL of IMAGINATION.

Please, please, PLEASE … be a CHAMPION for CHILDHOOD!”

Thank you!

“As a man, I’m in favor of adding breasts to just about anything. However, these new LEGOs are just plain insulting. How many female engineers, programmers and scientists do you think LEGO created? Please make more; not only are their contributions to those industries invaluable, they generally smell better than the rest of us. LEGO is the universal, multi-generational bond that brings all nerds together, keep it that way and leave the BRAT dolls out of my spaceship.”

Here’s another:

Dear LEGO, you can see how much we all love you and when you love someone, you let them know when you think they’re doing the wrong thing. We’re asking you now to do the right thing and:1. Bring back your beautiful campaign;
2. Include girls in your advertising for all LEGOs sets;
3. Include more girl characters in your regular LEGO sets;”
If you want to tell Lego how you feel, go to Lego’s FB page, click like, post the 1981 pic and give your comment.
Lego posted to me “Thank you for sharing” which is a step up from being deleted, I suppose.
Mama Feminista has a great post on why Legos are loved and why the 1981 ad is so awesome.

Reel Girl’s letter to Lego

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This letter was inspired by Melissa Wardy of Pigtail Pals. You can read her letter here. Please write to Lego as well.

Here’s an ad for Legos from 1981:

Here’s a photo of the new Friends Legos created in 2011:



 
 
LEGO Systems, Inc.
555 Taylor Road
P.O. Box 1138
Enfield, CT 06083-1138

Dear Lego,

Legos were special. They were unique and creative and helped kids to build. Legos inspired kids’ imaginations. Boys and girls could play Legos together. But with your new product, Lego Friends created for girls, I can no longer tell the difference between Lego toys and the ubiquitous Disney princess products or Barbies. Is that the point? Because if it is, your copy cat strategy abandons the very qualities that made your toy great.

I have a blog Reel Girl where I rate kids’ media and products. Toys can get 1 – 3 Ss for stereotyping and 1 – 3 Gs for Girlpower. So recently I went to hear women architects talk about the new Architect Barbie. I have three daughters ages 2 – 8, and I asked the architects if I should buy this new Barbie for my kids. They all emphatically said no. Buy them blocks, they said. Buy them Legos. The architects loved Legos as kids. I blogged about their advice and spoke about it, I put it out it on Facebook and Twitter. I am sad and surprised to say that now Reel Girl gives Legos new Friends for girls an SSS rating.

I know Lego didn’t start all this gender stereotyping in kids’ toys. I get that you’re jumping on the bandwagon because you need to sell products. You’re worried because sales are down. But you’re making a mistake.

I know you spent a lot of money on market research. But all you’ve really researched is the effect that mass marketing has on kids. Look at your 1981 girl and your 2011 Kim Kardashian wannabe lounging in her hot tub with a drink. All that you’ve researched is how to help turn our daughters from the beautiful kid into the plastic one. Lego is better than this. That’s why we love your toy. That’s why we buy it. But now, instead of helping kids grow, you’re stunting them.

We’ve all moved beyond the nature versus nurture debate. Now we understand babies brains come into the world full of potential. The experiences they have help to determine how those brains develop. For example, babies are born able to mimic and make all kinds of sounds, but as they learn a particular language, their brains start to wire up to produce particular intonations; they lose their ability to make many other sounds. Kids who learn to speak other languages early retain that ability to make different sounds for a lifetime. Limiting kids’ early experiences limits their brain growth. That’s why gender stereotyping is so dangerous.

Pink is just one color. Girls are not born with a pink gene. Pink used to be a boy color, the pastel version of red. Blue was for girls, the color of the Virgin Mary. Alice in Wonderland and Cinderella wore blue. Sleeping Beauty was switched to pink to differentiate her from Cinderella. This kind of information is what you should be spending your market research budget on because paying experts to ‘observe’ that girls choose pink is only studying the effects of multinational companies. Or maybe that is what you want to know?

The more you split kids and adults into tiny categories, the easier it is to market and sell products. The concept of ‘toddler’ was developed by clothing manufacturers in the 1930s as a stepping stone between infants and older kids to sell clothing. ‘Tween’ was coined in the 1980s.

I know asking you not to mimic what’s out there is challenging. Some of your best selling Lego sets ‘for boys’ like Star Wars and Indiana Jones come from million dollar movies franchises that don’t exactly have many females in them. But I wish you would use your research and marketing money to figure out how to help develop kids brains, the way Lego used to do.

Please consider bringing back the 1981 ad and creating the kinds of toys that the cool kid in the picture would love.

Thank you.

Margot Magowan

Reel Girl blog

Update: People are going to Lego’s Facebook page and posting the 1981 pic asking them to bring beautiful back. If you agree and want to post it, go to Lego’s FB page, click like, and then you can post the pic.

Talking about girly Legos today on KGO Radio 8:35AM

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I have 2 minutes to write this before I wake up my kids, but I’ve just been looking at all these new girl Legos before I go on air and it’s such a bummer. It makes me so sad. They look exactly like princesses. A girl in a hot tub with a drink? Are you kidding me? A beauty salon? A curvy girl in a convertible? A rock star? These are Legos? We are going so backward. If you have not seen it yet, please look at this ad for Legos from 1981. Here is the link. Ironically, this pic was going all around the internet when the pics of the new absurd toys came out.

And the whole explanation about pink blocks draw girls in to buy the product, when are we going to stop with the the pink??? Don’t give us more pink for God’s sake, give us less! Kids brains are developing, they are growing, getting wired up. What you give your child to play with helps to make her brain grow. Blocks and Lego toys are about imagination and building. I recently went to hear some women architects talk about the new Architect Barbie. They all said, don’t get your daughter Architect Barbie, get her blocks, get her Legos. That was their favorite toy growing up. Parents, this is about you. Please think about your choices this Christmas.

Reel Girl gives Lego Friends its worst rating, a Triple S (SSS) for major stereotyping.

Warren Hellman, you will be missed

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Warren Hellman was one of the smartest, coolest people on the planet.

Extensive obituaries for the Bay Area investment banker and musician are all over the internet (locally at SFGate and the Bay Citizen which he helped found) with headlines like “The Billionaire Who Loved Bluegrass” and “Renaissance Man in a Cowboy shirt.” Posts and articles detail his many contributions to the Bay Area go on and on and are still incomplete. They include contributions like helping to reform the city’s pension, funding the San Francisco Free Clinic, heading the board of Mills college and trying to take it co-ed  (being met with signs that read: “Warren, go to hell man) creating an underground lot in Golden Gate Park, setting up an endowment for aquatic sports at UC Berkeley (he played water polo), and creating the Hellman Fellows Program to support tenure track faculty at UC campuses.

Most of all, Warren Hellman is now known for founding and completely funding the wildly successful, fun and free (for all of us) annual Hardly Strictly Bluegrass music festival in Golden Gate Park.

Why was Warren Hellman so generous? It made him happy. He wasn’t interested in collecting art or buying fancy cars. He enjoyed spending his time, money, and brain cells creating projects, solving problems, and helping communities thrive. He often said Hardly Strictly Bluegrass was his definition of heaven on earth. When asked about the festival by Forbes Magazine in 2006, he said: “How could you have more fun than that? What the hell is money for if it isn’t for something like that?”

His band is called the Wronglers. He spent much of the last year of his life recording and touring with legend Jimmie Dale Gilmore. You can get their CD “Heirloom Music” here.

One of my favorite memories of Warren is being in his office, listening to a song and laughing and laughing. The song is called “The Ballad of Sarah Palin and it’s by Cup O’ Joes. I am posting the lyrics below and the song on youtube. You can listen to it here.

Good-bye Warren. THANK YOU. I miss you.


Ballad of Sarah Palin (Just be an Alaskan)

Sarah, Sarah, oh my Sarah Palin,

You’re a mother, a leader, and Alaska’s fair maiden,

I know you hear people calling your name,

But you abandoned Alaska,

I think that’s a shame.

Sarah Palin,

You were the Governor of Alaska,

Rove knew you were up there,

And told McCain he should tap ya,

So you burst on the scene with your stunning good looks,

But red lights started flashing when you tried to take away our books,

If you’d opened one and read it,

Well, then you could seeee,

That Africa’s a continent and not a countryyy.

They mocked you and called you Caribou Barbie,

Now you’re the lovely new face of the Republican Party,

With your suits, your shoes, your Tina Fey glasses,

Your folksy ‘You Betchas’ sure play to the masses.

Right from the start, you had people attack you,

Said you didn’t know nothing about the questions they asked you,

They said in Alaska, you didn’t play by the rules,

That your daughter was pregnant and still in high school,

Some hinted you didn’t know Bagdhad from Zurich,

And you were mishandled by both Gibson and Couric,

(Chorus)

Sarah, Sarah, oh my Sarah Palin,

You’re a mother, a leader, and Alaska’s fair maiden,

I know you hear people calling your name,

But you abandoned Alaska,

I think that’s a shame.

Supporters were nervous for your first debate,

Afraid you’d think NAFTA meant New York and LA,

Then you lost the election,

We thought you were done,

Secretly hoped you’d turn tail and run,

And you did, you went home, back to Alaska

We breathed a sigh of relief, thought we’d seen the last of ya,

I know it must’ve made you irate,

When it was alleged that Todd ran your state,

Now Levi’s in Playgirl and all over the place,

Sarah, forgive him, set out a Thanksgiving plate

You quit on Alaska and wrote a new book,

Going Rogue sold millions, got you a new look

There you were talking and talking on my box,

With the help of that clever old Fox,

You told the people that we’re in big trouble,

And some of them begged, “Lead us out of the rubble,”

But with you at the helm, our trouble will double,

So please, go back to Wasilia and live in your bubble!

(Chorus)

Sarah, we’ll  miss you but not very much,

Please do us a favor and don’t stay in touch,

Commune with the grizzlies, gun clubs and such,

Go back to Wasilia and live in your Hutch.


So sit back, relax, enjoy your fame

Sarah, Sarah, please don’t come again,

Sarah, Sarah, don’t come back again

Oh please, Sarah Palin,

Just be an Alaskan,

Just be an Alaskan.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made to the San Francisco Free Clinic, the Bay Citizen and the San Francisco School Alliance. The family also requests a donation of blood or platelets to a local blood bank.