Sunday, August 25, 2019

The Complete List of Friday Biographies


The Friday biographies including those of whom you've heard, those of whom you've never heard, and those who have been known only to The Coracle.

Series One:
Howlin' Wolf, blues musician and rock and roll influence
Bob Manry, small boat sailor and adventurer
Yukio Mishima, Japanese novelist, playwright, short story and film writer, and military adventurist
Jacques Cousteau
Duke Kahanamoku, the father of surfing 
William Augustus Muelenberg, unlikely innovator of the 19th century Episcopal Church
Jane Scott, rock and roll's grandmother
Paul Bigsby, guitar innovator and motorcycle mechanic
Max Perkins, mandarin of the 20th century American novel
James Harold Flye, the quintessential Episcopal priest
Samuel Isaac Joseph Schereschewsky, Bible translator
Alan Watts, Episcopal priest and Buddhist educator
Charlie Parker, jazz innovator
Thomas Merton, monk, hermit, and writer
Rell Sunn, The queen Of Makaha 
Raimundo Panikkar, priest, philosopher, and chemist 
Lou Kallie, jazz drummer and saloon keeper
Barbara Crafton, Episcopal priest and homilest
Jim Steranko, comic book artist and innovator
Art Pepper, jazz survivor
Bruce McLaren, racing car driver and builder
Cliff Young, farmer and ultra-marathoner
Sun Ra, space case
Matti Moosa, scholar, translator, deacon, and mentor
Debbie Harry, New Wave chanteuse 
The Hippie Who Sat Next to Me at Tony Mart's
James Magner, poet and mentor
Swein MacDonald, Highland seer
Waldo Peirce, artist and inspiration
John Fitch, racer and innovator
Malcolm Lowery, poet and miserable human being
Max Hardberger, modern-day pirate
Richard Race, landscaper
Hiram Bingham, historian, explorer, discoverer
John Watanabe, failed kamikaze pilot and bishop
Kathleen Kenyon, archaeologist
Captain Sir Richard Burton, fencer, explorer, translator, soldier, diplomat, and madman
James Agee, screenwriter and novelist
Madeleine L'Engle, writer and dinner guest 
Robert Crisp and Tommy MacPherson, unlikely war heroes  
Peter Scott, cat burglar
Wilfred Thesiger, the last of the explorers
Peter Marshall, preacher and chaplain to the U.S. Senate
Dingo, Mexican entrepreneur
Bruce Brown, documentarian and surfer
Joshua Slocum, solo circumnavigator
Mr. A, soul surfer
Thomas Edward Lawrence, archaeologist and adventurer
"Cool Breeze" and the Lyrical Gangster, an islander and his boat 

Series Two:
The Waterman, just some guy
Harvey Pekar, unlikely folk hero
Bernard Moitessier, Zen sailor
"Holy" Grail, old school D.I.
Ed "Big Daddy" Roth, industrial artist
Gerry Lopez, surf pioneer
Ted, Ricardo, and Curtis, three men I knew
Carol Kaye, ubiquitous bassist of pop
Ernie Anderson, Ghoulardi
Patti Smith, she does the rock, herself
Jacques Piccard, explorer of two atmospheres
B. Traven, international man of mystery
Carroll Shelby, Texas cobra
Lucien Aigner, he captured the world
Frank Miller, re-newer of myth
Kiyoshi Aki, he knew how to fall
Bob Simmons, hydrodynamisist
Igumen The Iconographer 
Anita O'Day, jazz singer
Alfred Pierce Reck, the proto-editor
D.A. Levy and the Cleveland Beats, poets
The Voices on the Radio: Freed, Franklin, and Dee
 Eugenie Clark, the shark lady
Dick Dale, king of the surf guitar
Dorothy Fields, Broadway and Hollywood's favorite lyricist
Hart Crane, the voice of new poetics
Rocky Colavito, baseball idol of nine-year-old boys
Bruce Meyers, fiberglass artist and professional dust-eater
Doc Pomus, blues mouth

Series Three:
Eric Hoffer, longshoreman and uncommon philosopher
Tom Blake, innovator and archetype
Dickey Chappelle, an actual feminist icon
Laura Boulton, quester for tones
Kurtis Walker, turntable artist
Tristan Jones, improbable sailor
Christian Lambertsen, re-breather
Wende Wagner, mermaid
Mickey Marcus, maccabee
Henri Nouwen, wounded healer
Archibald McIndoe, restorer of noses and senses of humor 
Gertrude Bell, "Florence" of Arabia and scaler of peaks
James Herriot, friend to animals great and small
Mary Printz, better than voice mail
Jack O'Neill, he made a place of endless summer
Terry Tracy and Kathy Kohner, they made it fun
John Fairfax and Sylvia Cook, they rowed not gently
Harry Crosby, the man who was in love with death
Richard Farina, Dylan's idol
Jack Good, sentinel of the British Invasion
Orangey and Frank Inn, a cat and his pet human
Chester Himes, he brought both humor and more darkness to noir
Zora Arkus-Duntov, of pure, rolling beauty
Eddie Aikau, he would go
Clarice Lispector, with much effort, she created simplicity
Carmine Infantino, rescuer of superheroes
John Wilson Murray, the only law in 400,000 square miles
Verity Lambert, friend of malevolent robots
Heinrich Harrer, the buddy of a god-king
Dawn Fraser, larrikin
Ross MacDonald, he made fiction into literature
Tatiana Proskouriakoff, she spoke for the dead
Rudy Van Gelder, he enabled the soundtrack of the century
Bruce Metzger, the translator of our faith
Maria Tallchief, tribal dancer and a defector's choice
Alfred Bester, Terry Southern, and George Clayton Johnson, they transcended common boundaries
William Francis Gibbs and Sylvia Beach, American originals
Richard Halliburton, he created an industry out of peripatetic-ism
Frederick Law Olmsted, who reversed government power
Vernon Johns, the tocsin of civil change
Harry "Sweets" Edison, "Just let him play, man."
Charles Brush, Philip Hubert Frohman, and Norman Borlaug, three who defined our modern world
Donald E. Westlake, mass producer of compelling fiction

Series Four:
Ruth Weiss
Romain Gary
Peter Fleming
Alain LeRoy Locke
Laurens Hammond
Kenneth Strickfaden
Freya Stark
Harry Price
Abhishiktananda
at