Burton Leon Reynolds Jr. (February 11, 1936 – September 6, 2018) was an American actor, considered a sex symbol and icon of 1970s American popular culture.

Reynolds first rose to prominence when he starred in television series such as Gunsmoke (1962–1965), Hawk (1966) and Dan August (1970–1971). Although Reynolds had leading roles in such films as Navajo Joe (1966) and 100 Rifles (1969), his breakthrough role was as Lewis Medlock in Deliverance (1972). Reynolds played the leading role – often a lovable rogue – in a number of subsequent box office hits, such as White Lightning (1973), The Longest Yard (1974), Smokey and the Bandit (1977) (which started a six-year box office reign), Semi-Tough (1977), The End (1978), Hooper (1978), Starting Over (1979), Smokey and the Bandit II (1980), The Cannonball Run (1981), Sharky's Machine (1981), The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982), and Cannonball Run II (1984), several of which he directed himself. He was nominated twice for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy.

Reynolds was voted the world's number one box-office star for five consecutive years (1978–1982) in the annual Top Ten Money Making Stars Poll, a record he shares with Bing Crosby. After a number of box-office failures, Reynolds returned to television, starring in the sitcom Evening Shade (1990–1994), which won him a Golden Globe Award and Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series. His performance as high-minded pornographer Jack Horner in Paul Thomas Anderson's Boogie Nights (1997) brought him renewed critical attention, earning him another Golden Globe (for Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture), with nominations for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor and a BAFTA Award for Best Supporting Actor.

Early life
Burton Leon Reynolds Jr. was born on February 11, 1936, to Harriet Fernette "Fern" (née Miller) and Burton Milo Reynolds (1906–2002). His family descended from Dutch, English, Scots-Irish, and Scottish ancestry. Reynolds also claimed Cherokee and Italian roots.

During his career, Reynolds often claimed to have been born in Waycross, Georgia, although in 2015, he stated that he was actually born in Lansing, Michigan. In his autobiography, he stated that Lansing is where his family lived when his father was drafted into the United States Army.

Reynolds, his mother, and his sister joined his father at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, where they subsequently lived for two years. When his father was sent to Europe, the family moved to Lake City, Michigan, where his mother had been raised. In 1946, the family moved to Riviera Beach, Florida, where in sixth grade Reynolds began a lifelong close friendship with Dick Howser. Reynolds' father eventually became Chief of Police of Riviera Beach, which is adjacent to the north end of West Palm Beach, Florida.

Burt's nickname in Riviera Beach was "Buddy". (Ironically, the childhood nickname of Marlon Brando, the superstar actor whom Reynolds was said to resemble and with whom he feuded, was "Bud" and "Buddy.")

During 10th grade at Palm Beach High School, Reynolds was named First Team All State and All Southern as a fullback, and received multiple scholarship offers.

College
After graduating from Palm Beach High School, he attended Florida State University on a football scholarship and played halfback, starting in 1954. While at Florida State, he roomed with future college-football coach, broadcaster, and analyst Lee Corso, and also became a brother of the Phi Delta Theta fraternity.

Reynolds had an outstanding freshman year in football. However, he injured his knee in the first game of his sophomore season, and, later that year, lost his spleen and injured his other knee in a bad car accident. He did not return to the university for almost two years. To keep up with his studies, he enrolled at Palm Beach Junior College (PBJC) in neighboring Lake Park in early 1956. When Reynolds returned to Florida State in 1957, he rejoined the football team, although his leg injured in the car accident slowed him down. He was blamed, fairly or not, for the team's loss to North Carolina State on October 12, 1957. Immediately following the game he told his teammates that he was done with football.

Early acting
During his term at PBJC in early 1956, Reynolds was in an English class taught by Watson B. Duncan III. Duncan pushed him into trying out for a play he was producing, Outward Bound. He cast him in the lead role based on having heard him read Shakespeare in class, leading to his winning the 1956 Florida State Drama Award for his performance. "I read two words and they gave me a lead", he later said.

In his autobiography, he referred to Duncan as his mentor and the most influential person in his life.

Career

Theater

The Florida State Drama Award included a scholarship to the Hyde Park Playhouse, a summer stock theater, in Hyde Park, New York. Reynolds saw the opportunity as an agreeable alternative to more physically demanding summer jobs, but did not yet see acting as a possible career. While working there, Reynolds met Joanne Woodward, who helped him find an agent.

"I don't think I ever actually saw him perform", said Woodward later. "I knew him as this cute, shy, attractive boy. He had the kind of lovely personality that made you want to do something for him."

He was cast in Tea and Sympathy at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York City. After his Broadway debut in Look, We've Come Through, he received favorable reviews for his performance and went on tour with the cast, driving the bus as well as appearing on stage.

After the tour, Reynolds returned to New York and enrolled in acting classes, along with Frank Gifford, Carol Lawrence, Red Buttons and Jan Murray.

"I was a working actor for two years before I finally took my first real acting class (with Wynn Handman at the Neighborhood Playhouse)", he said. "It was a lot of technique, truth, moment-to-moment, how to listen, improv."

After a botched improvisation in acting class, Reynolds briefly considered returning to Florida, but soon gained a part in a revival of Mister Roberts, in which Charlton Heston played the starring role.

After the play closed, the director, John Forsythe, arranged a film audition with Joshua Logan for Reynolds. The film was Sayonara (1957). Reynolds was told he could not be in the film because he looked too much like Marlon Brando. Logan advised Reynolds to go to Hollywood, although Reynolds did not feel confident enough to do so. (Another source says Reynolds did a screen test after studio talent agent Lew Wasserman saw the effect Reynolds had on secretaries in his office but the test was unsuccessful.)

He worked in a variety of jobs, such as waiting tables, washing dishes, driving a delivery truck and as a bouncer at the Roseland Ballroom. Reynolds wrote that, while working as a dockworker, he was offered $150 to jump through a glass window on a live television show.

Early television and Riverboat

Reynolds began acting on television in the late 1950s, guest starring on shows like Flight, M Squad, Schlitz Playhouse, The Lawless Years and Pony Express. He signed a seven-year contract with Universal. "I don't care whether he can act or not", said Wasserman. "Anyone who has this effect on women deserves a break."

Reynolds' first big break came when he was cast alongside Darren McGavin in the lead of the TV series Riverboat (1959–61), playing Ben Frazer. According to a contemporary report, Reynolds was considered "a double for Marlon Brando". The show went for two seasons but Reynolds quit after only 20 episodes, claiming he did not get along with McGavin or the executive producer, and that he had "a stupid part."

Reynolds then said that he "couldn't get a job. I didn't have a very good reputation. You just don't walk out on a network television series."

Reynolds returned to guest starring on television shows. As he put it, "I played heavies in every series in town", appearing in episodes of Playhouse 90, Johnny Ringo, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Lock Up, The Blue Angels, Michael Shayne, Zane Grey Theater, The Aquanauts and The Brothers Brannagan. "They were depressing years", he later said.

Reynolds made his film debut in the low budget Angel Baby (1961), billed fourth. He followed it with a role in a war film, Armored Command (1961). "It was the one picture that Howard Keel didn't sing on", reminisced Reynolds later. "That was a terrible mistake."

In 1961, he returned to Broadway to appear in Look, We've Come Through, under the direction of José Quintero, but it lasted only five performances.

Reynolds continued to guest star on shows such as Naked City, Ripcord, Everglades, Route 66, Perry Mason, and The Twilight Zone ("The Bard", an hour-long send-up of Reynolds' look-alike Marlon Brando). He later said, "I learned more about my craft in these guest shots than I did standing around and looking virile on Riverboat."

Gunsmoke

In 1962, Dennis Weaver wanted to leave the cast of Gunsmoke, one of the top rated shows in the country. The producers developed a new character, "halfbreed" blacksmith Quint Asper: Reynolds was cast, beating over 300 other contenders. Reynolds announced he would stay on the show "until it ends. I think it's a terrible mistake for an actor to leave a series in the middle of it." Reynolds left Gunsmoke in 1965. He later said that being in that show was "the happiest period of my life. I hated to leave that show but I felt I had served my apprenticeship and there wasn't room for two leading men."

He was cast in his first lead role in a film, the low-budget action film, Operation C.I.A. (1965). He guest starred on Flipper, The F.B.I. and 12 O'Clock High.

Hawk and leading roles in films
Reynolds was given the title role in a TV series, Hawk (1966–67), playing Native American detective John Hawk. It ran for 17 episodes before being cancelled.

He played another Native American in the Spaghetti Western Navajo Joe (1966) shot in Spain. "It wasn't my favorite picture", ...he said later... "I had two expressions—mad and madder."

He guest starred on Gentle Ben and made a pilot for a TV series, Lassiter, where he would have played a magazine journalist. It was not picked up.

Reynolds then made a series of films in quick succession. Shark! (1969), shot in Mexico, was directed by Sam Fuller, who removed his name from it, after which its release was held up for a number of years. Reynolds described Fade In as "the best thing I've ever done", but it was not released for a number of years, and the director, Jud Taylor, took his name off. Impasse (1969) was a war movie shot in the Philippines. He played the title role in Sam Whiskey (1969), a comic Western written by William W. Norton, which Reynolds later said was "way ahead of its time. I was playing light comedy and nobody cared."

Reynolds supported Jim Brown and Raquel Welch in another Western, 100 Rifles (1969), later saying, "I spent the entire time refereeing fights between Jim Brown and Raquel Welch."

In a 1969 interview, he expressed interest in playing roles like the John Garfield part in The Postman Always Rings Twice, but no one gave him those opportunities. "Instead, the producer hands me a script and says 'I know it's not there now kid, but I know we can make it work.'"

Reynolds had been offered a lead role in MASH (1970), but turned it down after "they told me the other two leads would be Barbra Streisand's husband and that tall, skinny guy who was in The Dirty Dozen." Tom Skerritt played the role and Reynolds, instead, went into Skullduggery (1970), shot in Jamaica. Reynolds joked that after making "those wonderful, forgettable pictures... I suddenly realized I was as hot as Leo Gorcey."

Reynolds then starred in two TV films: Hunters Are for Killing (1970) and Run, Simon, Run (1970). In Hunters Are for Killing, his character was originally a Native American, but Reynolds requested this element be changed, feeling he had played that role too many times already, and it was not needed for the character anyway.

Dan August and talk shows

Reynolds played the title character in the police drama Dan August (1970–71), produced by Quinn Martin. The series was given a full-season order of 26 episodes based on the reputation of Martin and Reynolds but struggled in the ratings against Hawaii Five-0 and was not renewed.

Albert R. Broccoli asked Reynolds to take over the role of James Bond from Sean Connery, but he turned that role down, saying, "An American can't play James Bond. It just can't be done."

Following the cancellation of the series, Reynolds did his first stage play in six years, a production of The Tender Trap at Arlington Park Theatre. He was offered other TV pilots but was reluctant to play a detective again.

Around this time, he had become well known as a charismatic talk-show guest, starting with an appearance on The Merv Griffin Show. He made jokes at his own expense, calling himself America's most "well-known unknown" who only made the kind of movies "they show in airplanes or prisons or anywhere else the people can't get out." He proved enormously popular and was frequently asked back by Griffin and Johnny Carson; he even guest hosted the Tonight Show. He was so popular as a guest that he was offered his own talk show but he wanted to continue as an actor.

He later said his talk show appearances were "the best thing that ever happened to me. They changed everything drastically overnight. I spent ten years looking virile, saying, 'Put up your hands.' After the Carson, Griffin, Frost, Dinah's show, suddenly I have a personality."

"I realized that people liked me, that I was enough", said Reynolds. "So if I could transfer that character—the irreverent, self-deprecating side of me, my favorite side of me—onto the screen, I could have a big career.

The Godfather and Marlon Brando feud
Reynolds was considered for the role of Sonny Corleone in The Godfather, but Francis Ford Coppola's desire to cast James Caan in the part prevailed. There was talk that Reynolds' participation was vetoed by Marlon Brando, who had a lack of respect for him. Brando denied he played a role in thwarting the casting of Reynolds, saying in a January 1979 Playboy interview that Coppola would not have cast Reynolds in the part.

Reynolds later claimed that he turned down the role of Sonny. (Godfather producer Albert S. Ruddy would produce Cannonball Run and Cannonball Run II, two Reynolds hits in the 1980s.)

The Brando-Reynolds feud became the stuff of Hollywood legend. Reynolds said he couldn't understand Brando's enmity towards him. In a 2015  interview with The Guardian, Reynolds said, "He was a strange man. He didn't like me at all." He did not consciously imitate Brando, or act like him, or try to look like him, and he even grew a mustache so that people would stop saying he looked like Brando.

When he finally was introduced to Brando, Reynolds said he told him that he was the finest actor in the world. Brando replied, "I wish I could say the same for you."

Deliverance and Cosmopolitan centerfold
He had his breakthrough role in Deliverance, directed by John Boorman, who cast him on the basis of a talk show appearance. "It's the first time I haven't had a script with Paul Newman's and Robert Redford's fingerprints all over it," Reynolds joked. "The producers actually came to me first."

"I've waited 15 years to do a really good movie," he said in 1972. "I made so many bad pictures. I was never able to turn anyone down. The greatest curse in Hollywood is to be a well-known unknown."

Reynolds also gained notoriety around this time when he began a well-publicized relationship with Dinah Shore, who was 20 years his senior, and after he posed naked in the April 1972 issue of Cosmopolitan. Reynolds said he posed for Cosmopolitan for "a kick. I have a strange sense of humor" and because he knew he had Deliverance coming out. He later expressed regret for posing for Cosmopolitan.

Deliverance was a huge commercial and critical success, which, along with talk-show appearances, helped establish Reynolds as a major movie star. "The night of the Academy Awards, I counted a half-dozen Burt Reynolds jokes", he later said. "I had become a household name, the most talked-about star at the award show."

He was then in Fuzz (1972), reuniting him with Welch, and also made a cameo in the Woody Allen film, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask) (1972).  He also returned to the stage, appearing in The Rainmaker at the Arlington.

Reynolds had the title role in Shamus (1973), playing a modern-day private eye. The film drew lackluster reviews, but nonetheless became a solid box-office success. Reynolds described it as "not a bad film, kind of cute."

He was in The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing (1973), co-starring Sarah Miles. The film was a minor hit, perhaps best remembered for the scandal of Miles' lover, an aspiring screenwriter, committing suicide during the filming.

Reynolds was meant to reunite with Boorman in Zardoz, but fell ill and was replaced by Sean Connery.

White Lightning and Southern movies
Another turning point in Reynolds' career came when he made the light-hearted car-chase film written by Norton, White Lightning (1973). Reynolds later called it "the beginning of a whole series of films made in the South, about the South and for the South... you could make back the cost of the negative just in Memphis alone. Anything outside of that was just gravy." Car-chase films would be Reynolds' most profitable genre. At the end of 1973, Reynolds was voted into the list of the ten most-popular box-office stars in the US at number four. He would stay on that list until 1984.

He made a sports comedy with Robert Aldrich, The Longest Yard (1974) which was popular. Aldrich later said "I think that on occasion, he's a much better actor than he's given credit for. Not always: sometimes he acts like a caricature of himself."

Reynolds then appeared in two big-budget fiascos: At Long Last Love (1975), a musical for Peter Bogdanovich, and Lucky Lady (1975) with Gene Hackman and Liza Minnelli.

More popular was another light-hearted car-chase film, W.W. and the Dixie Dancekings (1975), and a tough cop drama with Aldrich, Hustle (1975).  He did a cameo for Mel Brooks in Silent Movie (1976).

Towards the end of his life, Reynolds claimed he was offered the role of Han Solo in Star Wars, but turned it down. Reynolds told Business Insider in 2016, "I just didn't want to play that kind of role at the time....Now I regret it. I wish I would have done it."

Director
Reynolds made his directorial debut in 1976 with Gator, the sequel to White Lightning, written by Norton. "I waited 20 years to do it [directing] and I enjoyed it more than anything I've ever done in this business," he said after filming. "And I happen to think it's what I do best."

He was reunited with Bogdanovich for the screwball comedy, Nickelodeon (1976), which was a commercial disappointment. Aldrich later commented, "Bogdanovich can get him to do the telephone book! Anybody else has to persuade him to do something. He's fascinated by Bogdanovich. I can't understand it." He turned down the part of Clark Gable in Gable and Lombard.

Smokey and the Bandit and career peak

Reynolds had the biggest hit of his career with a car-chase film, Smokey and the Bandit (1977), directed by Hal Needham and co-starring Jackie Gleason, Jerry Reed, and Sally Field.

He followed it with a comedy about football players, Semi-Tough (1977), co-starring Jill Clayburgh and Kris Kristofferson and produced by David Merrick. He then directed his second film, The End (1978), a black comedy, playing a role originally written for Woody Allen.

More popular was a comedy he made with Needham and Field, Hooper (1978), where he played an aging  stunt man.

"My ability as an actor gets a little better every time", he said around this time. "I'm very prolific in the amount of films I make—two-and-a-half or three a year—and when I look at any picture I do now compared to Deliverance, it's miles above what I was doing then. But when you're doing films that are somewhat similar to each other, as I've been doing, people take it for granted."

He turned down the role played by Alan Alda in California Suite (1978) because he felt the part was too small.

He also said, "I'd rather direct than act. I'd rather do that than anything. It's the second-best sensation I've ever had." He added that David Merrick had offered to produce two films Reynolds would direct without having to act in them.

Reynolds tried a change of pace with Starting Over (1979), a romantic comedy, again co-starring Clayburgh and Candice Bergen; it was co-written and produced by James L. Brooks. He played a jewel thief in Rough Cut (1980) produced by Merrick, who fired and then rehired director Don Siegel during filming.

Reynolds had two huge hits with more car films directed by Needham, Smokey and the Bandit II (1980) and The Cannonball Run (1981). He starred in David Steinberg's film Paternity (1981) and directed himself in a tough action film, Sharky's Machine (1981).

Reynolds wanted to try a musical again, and agreed to do The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982). It was a box-office hit, as was Best Friends (1982) with Goldie Hawn. In 1982, Reynolds was voted the most popular star in the US for the fifth year in a row.

Around this time he reflected:
The only thing I really enjoy is this business, and I think my audience knows that. I've never been able to figure out exactly who that audience is. I know there have been a few pictures even my mother didn't go see, but there's always been an audience for them. I guess it is because they always know that I give it 100 percent, and good or bad, there's going to be quite a lot of me in that picture. That's what they're looking for. I don't have any pretensions about wanting to be Hamlet. I would just like to be the best Burt Reynolds around.

Career decline
James L. Brooks wrote the role of astronaut Garrett Breedlove in Terms of Endearment (1983) with Reynolds in mind, but he turned it down to do Stroker Ace (1983), another car-chase comedy directed by Needham. The Endearment part went to Jack Nicholson, who went on to win an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. Reynolds said in 1987 that "I felt I owed Hal more than I owed Jim" but Stroker Ace flopped.

Reynolds admitted that turning down the role was a mistake. "I regret that one most of all because it was a real acting part.... "I wish I would have done it, and thinking back now, it was really a stupid decision, but I made a lot of stupid decisions in that period. It must have been my stupid period."

In 1983, an unnamed producer had said that while Reynolds' salaries would not decline because of Stroker Aces failure, "if two or three more such pictures don't work, people will just stop putting him in that kind of movie and that's the kind of film for which he gets paid the most". Reynolds felt this was a turning point in his career from which he never recovered. "That's where I lost them", he said of his fans.

For director Blake Edwards, Reynolds starred in The Man Who Loved Women (1983), a remake in English of François Truffaut's 1977 film L'Homme qui aimait les femmes, but it also flopped.  In an interview around this time, he said:
Getting to the top has turned out to be a hell of a lot more fun than staying there. I've got Tom Selleck crawling up my back. I'm in my late 40s. I realize I have four or five more years where I can play certain kinds of parts and get away with it. That's why I'm leaning more and more toward directing and producing. I don't want to be stumbling around town doing Gabby Hayes parts a few years from now. I'd like to pick and choose and maybe go work for a perfume factory like Mr. Cary Grant, and look wonderful with everybody saying, 'Gee, I wish he hadn't retired'.
Cannonball Run II (1984), directed by Needham, brought in some money but only half of the original. City Heat (1984), which teamed Reynolds and Clint Eastwood, was mildly popular but was considered a major critical and box-office disappointment. Reynolds was badly injured during filming when he was hit in the jaw with a real chair instead of a breakaway prop, causing him excruciating chronic pain as well as a sharp weight loss which resulted in rumors circulating for years that he had AIDS.

Reynolds returned to directing with Stick (1985), from an Elmore Leonard novel, but it was both a critical and commercial failure. So too were three other action films he made: Heat (1986), based on a William Goldman novel, Malone (1987), and Rent-a-Cop (1987) with Liza Minnelli. He later said that he did Heat and Malone "because there were so many rumors about me [about AIDS]. I had to get out and be seen".

In 1987, Reynolds teamed up with Bert Convy to co-produce the game show Win, Lose or Draw for their production company, Burt and Bert Productions.  The show was based on "sketch pad charades", a game he often played with his friends in his living room in Jupiter.  Vicki Lawrence hosted the daytime version on NBC while Convy hosted the syndicated version until 1989 when he left to host 3rd Degree, also created by Reynolds and Convy.

Reynolds starred in Switching Channels (1989), a remake of the comedy The Front Page, it also was a box-office disappointment. Even more poorly received was Physical Evidence (1989), directed by Michael Crichton. Reynolds received excellent reviews for the caper comedy Breaking In (1989), but the commercial reception was poor.

"When I was doing very well," he said at the time, "I wasn't conscious I was doing very well, but I became very conscious when I wasn't doing very well. The atmosphere changed."

Return to TV: BL Stryker and Evening Shade
Reynolds returned to TV with the detective series with B.L. Stryker (1989–90). It ran two seasons, during which time Reynolds played a supporting part in Modern Love (1990).

Reynolds then starred in a sitcom, Evening Shade (1990–94) as former Pittsburgh Steelers player Woodward "Wood" Newton. The program was a considerable success, with 98 episodes over four seasons. This role earned him an Emmy Award.  Reynolds credited this role for his membership in Steeler Nation.

During his tenure on Evening Shade, Reynolds was seen in other projects, starting with a cameo in The Player (1992) (playing himself complaining about people in Hollywood).

On August 23, 1993, the children's film Cop & 1/2 premiered, in which Reynolds played the lead. On August 25, the Randy Travis television special Wind in the Wire first aired; Reynolds was among the guests. On October 15, CBS first aired the television film The Man from Left Field, co-starring Reba McEntire. Reynolds starred and directed.

Character actor
When Evening Shade ended, Reynolds played the lead in a horror film, The Maddening (1995). However, he gradually moved into being more of a character actor – he had key support roles in Citizen Ruth (1996), an early work from Alexander Payne, and Striptease (1996) with Demi Moore. He had to audition for the latter. The film's producer later said, "To be honest, we were not enthusiastic at first. There was the hair and his reputation, but we were curious." Reynolds got the role and earned some strong reviews.

Reynolds was a supporting actor in Frankenstein and Me (1996), Mad Dog Time (1996), The Cherokee Kid (1996), Meet Wally Sparks (1997) with Rodney Dangerfield, and Bean (1997) with Rowan Atkinson. He had the lead in Raven (1996), a straight-to-video action film. Around this time he claimed he was broke, having gone through $13 million.

In 1996, Reynolds' agent said "Regarding Burt, there's a split between the executives in town who are under 40 and those who are over 40. The younger executives are more open to Burt because they grew up loving Deliverance. But the older executives remember how crazy he was, and they are less receptive." He also hosted segments for the Encore Action premium cable network in the late 1990s and 2000s.

Boogie Nights and career revival

Reynolds appeared as an adult film director in the hit film Boogie Nights (1997), which was considered a comeback role for him; he received 12 acting awards and three nominations for the role, including a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, Reynolds' first and only nomination for the award.

Ironically, Reynolds despised the movie and fired his agent after making it. Boogie Nights co-star William H. Macy stated in an interview that Reynolds was clueless about the movie and had become out of touch with the film industry due to his age.

Reynolds  was offered a role in Boogie Nights writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson's subsequent film, Magnolia (1999), but he declined, saying that he hated working on Boogie Nights and hated Anderson. In his second autobiography, But Enough About Me (2015), Reynolds attempted to come to terms with his difficult nature. In a 2015 GQ interview, he said that his problem with Anderson was a matter of their differing personalities:

Despite his Oscar nomination for Boogie Nights and a new appreciation of his acting talent by movie critics, Reynolds failed to return to the A list; while work was plentiful, prestige projects were lacking.

He had the lead in Big City Blues (1997) and supporting roles in Universal Soldier II: Brothers in Arms (1998) and Universal Soldier III: Unfinished Business (1998).

Reynolds returned to directing with Hard Time (1998), an action TV film starring himself. It led to two sequels, which he did not direct, Hard Time: The Premonition (1999) and Hard Time: Hostage Hotel (1999) (the latter directed by Hal Needham).

He starred in the straight-to-video The Hunter's Moon (1999), Stringer (1999), and Waterproof (2000). He played supporting roles in Pups (1999) and Mystery, Alaska (1999), and had the lead in The Crew (2000) alongside Richard Dreyfuss.

Reynolds directed The Last Producer (2000), starring himself, and was second-billed in Renny Harlin's Driven (2001), starring Sylvester Stallone. He was also in Tempted (2001), Hotel (2001) (directed by Mike Figgis), and The Hollywood Sign (2001).

He voiced Avery Carrington in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, released in 2002.

Reynolds was top-billed in Snapshots with Julie Christie, an $11 million Anglo-Dutch-American picture that failed to find a wide release. He also starred in Time of the Wolf (2002) and Hard Ground (2003), and had supporting roles in Johnson County War (2002) with Tom Berenger, and Miss Lettie and Me (2003) with Mary Tyler Moore.

He was in a series of supporting roles that referred to earlier performances: Without a Paddle (2004), a riff on his role in Deliverance, The Longest Yard (2005), a remake of his 1974 hit with  Adam Sandler playing Reynolds' old role (while Reynolds played the Michael Conrad part from the original); and The Dukes of Hazzard (2005) as Boss Hogg in a nod to his performances in 1970s car-chase films.

Reynolds continued to play lead roles in films such as Cloud 9 (2006), Forget About It (2006), Deal (2008), and A Bunch of Amateurs (2008), and supporting parts in End Game (2006), Grilled (2006), Broken Bridges (2006), In the Name of the King (2007), Not Another Not Another Movie (2011), and Reel Love (2011).

He had a guest role in an episode of Burn Notice, "Past & Future Tense" (2010).

Reynolds voiced himself as the Mayor of Steelport in Saints Row: The Third, released in 2011. Players can recruit Reynolds as a "homie", depending on their in-game choices.

Reynolds also voiced himself in the animated series Archer, in the episode "The Man from Jupiter" (2012). The character of Sterling Archer was largely inspired by Burt Reynolds.

He was top billed in Category 5 (2014) and Elbow Grease (2016) and could be seen in key roles in Pocket Listing (2016), and Hollow Creek (2015). He returned to a regular role on TV in Hitting the Breaks (2016) but it only ran for ten episodes. He was in Apple of My Eye (2016) and took the lead in The Last Movie Star (2017).

In May 2018, Reynolds joined the cast of Quentin Tarantino's film Once Upon a Time in Hollywood as George Spahn (an eighty year old blind man who rented out his ranch to Charles Manson), but he died before shooting his scenes and was replaced by Bruce Dern.

Posthumous releases
Reynolds appeared posthumously in the 2019 film An Innocent Kiss as well as in the 2020 film Defining Moments, which includes his final performance.

Author
Reynolds was credited as the author of a 1972 mass market paperback book, Hot Line: The Letters I Get...And Write! that featured semi-nude "beefcake" photos of the actor, playing up his image as a male sex symbol. He also published two autobiographies, My Life in 1994 and But Enough About Me in 2015.

Reynolds co-authored the 1997 children's book, Barkley Unleashed: A Pirate's Tail, a "whimsical tale [that] illustrates the importance of perseverance, the wonders of friendship and the power of imagination".

Music
In 1973, Reynolds released the country/easy listening album Ask Me What I Am. He also sang in two movie musicals: At Long Last Love (1975) and The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982).

Personal life

Reynolds in college "was so good-looking, I used him as bait," college roommate Lee Corso recalled. "He'd walk across campus and bring back two girls, one beautiful and one ugly; I got the ugly girl. His ugly girlfriends were better than anyone I could get on my own."

Marriages and long-term relationships
Reynolds was married to English actress Judy Carne from 1963 to 1965. He lived with actress Miko Mayama from 1968 to 1971.  He and American singer-actress Dinah Shore (20 years his senior) were in a relationship from early 1971 until 1975. In the mid-1970s, Reynolds briefly dated singer Tammy Wynette.

He had a relationship from 1976 to 1980 (then off-and-on until 1982) with American actress Sally Field, during which time they appeared together in four films. In 2016, he regarded Field as the love of his life.

Reynolds was married to American actress Loni Anderson from 1988 to 1994. They adopted a son, Quinton. He and Anderson separated after he fell in love with a cocktail waitress, Pam Seals, with whom he later traded lawsuits, which were settled out of court.

Health problems
Reynolds suffered from hypoglycemia, which he discussed publicly on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. During his numerous appearances on The Tonight Show, Reynolds also told Johnny Carson that he suffered from anxiety.

The Stuntmen's Association of Motion Pictures awarded the Richard "Diamond" Farnsworth Award  to Reynolds in 2015. Richard Farnsworth was a stunt man who made the transition into a successful acting career. Having performed stunts when breaking into Hollywood, the debilitating health problems of an aging stunt man was central to the storyline of his 1978 film Hooper, which is subtitled on the poster "The Greatest Stuntman Alive."

Reynolds, who claimed he was a card-carrying member of the stunt performers guild, often performed his own stunts in movies, such as the fall over the waterfall in Deliverance, where he injured his coccyx. He also had to be operated on from a hernia that resulted from a fight scene in The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing.

His worst on-set injury occurred while filming City Heat in 1984, Reynolds was struck in the face with a metal chair on the first day of filming, which resulted in temporomandibular joint dysfunction. He was restricted to a liquid diet and lost thirty pounds from not eating. The painkillers he was prescribed led to addiction, which lasted several years. He underwent back surgery in 2009 and a quintuple coronary artery bypass surgery in February 2010.

Business endeavors
Reynolds reportedly lost $20 million on bad business investments, which led to a personal bankruptcy.

Professional sports
A lifelong fan of football, he once told Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show he would  rather have played in the NFL than win an Oscar. Reynolds was a minority owner of the Tampa Bay Bandits of the USFL from 1982 to 1986. The team's name was inspired by the Smokey and the Bandit trilogy and Skoal Bandit, a primary sponsor for the team as a result of also sponsoring Reynolds' motor racing team.

Reynolds co-owned a NASCAR Winston Cup Series team, Mach 1 Racing, with Hal Needham, which ran the No. 33 Skoal Bandit car with driver Harry Gant.

Restaurants and dinner theater
In the late 1970s, Reynolds opened Burt's Place, a nightclub restaurant in the Omni International Complex in Atlanta in the Hotel District of Downtown Atlanta. The establishment closed after a year. ("Burt's Place" also was the name of a building that was part of the guest house complex at Reynolds' Tequesta, Florida estate in Palm Beach County, Florida.)

He also owned the Burt Reynolds Dinner Theatre in Jupiter, Florida, with a focus on training young performers looking to enter show business. The theater opened in 1979 and was later renamed the Burt Reynolds Jupiter Theater. Reynolds operated it until 1989 and leased it until 1996. It went through a series of ownership changes until becoming the Maltz Jupiter Theatre in 2004.

In 1984, he opened a restaurant in Fort Lauderdale, named Burt & Jacks, which he co-owned with Jack Jackson. The restaurant was defunct at the time of his death.

Partnering with Killen Music Group owner Buddy Killen, Reynolds invested in Po' Folks, a chain of country-cooking, family-style restaurants located in Florida, Louisiana, and Texas. The chain, which was named after a Bill Anderson song, along with subsequent Killen-Reynolds investment in another Southern restaurant chain, failed.

Personal bankruptcy
During the height of his movie career, Reynolds made up to $10 million a year. However, he proved to be a poor businessman.

Along with music industry executive Buddy Killen, who produced his 1973 country and western/easy listening album Ask Me What I Am, Reynolds invested in Po' Folks, a Southern regional restaurant chain named after a Bill Anderson song. As Po' Folks failed, Reynolds and Killen invested in another regional chain, Daisy's Diner, which also failed. Reynolds had invested the capital as an individual, not through a corporate investment vehicle, and was personally responsible for the liabilities when Po' Folks and the Daisy's Diner failed. In all, his investments in the restaurant industry led to losses of $20 million.

Reynolds suffered a steep decline in his career earnings after the cancellation of Evening Shade, as his popularity waned due to bad publicity from his divorce from Loni Anderson, which became tabloid fodder. His decline in earnings as an actor plus the heavy expense of his divorce settlement, child support and alimony payments to Anderson caused a cash crunch by the mid-1990s.

CBS, the network that produced Evening Shade and handled the program's syndication, sued him for failing to repay a $3.7 million loan in 1996. Subsequently, he filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, due in part to an extravagant lifestyle, a divorce from Loni Anderson and failed investments in restaurant chains.  Reynolds emerged from bankruptcy two years later.

During his bankruptcy proceedings, Reynolds listed $6.65 million in assets against debts totaling $11.2 million.

On August 16, 2011, Merrill Lynch Credit Corporation filed foreclosure papers, claiming Reynolds owed US$1.2 million on his home in Hobe Sound, Florida.

Until its sale during bankruptcy, he owned the Burt Reynolds Ranch, where scenes for Smokey and the Bandit were filmed and which once had a petting zoo. In April 2014, the 153-acre (62 ha) rural property was rezoned for residential use and the Palm Beach County school system was empowered to sell it, which it did to the residential developer K. Hovnanian Homes.

Death and tributes
Reynolds died of a heart attack at the Jupiter Medical Center in Jupiter, Florida, on September 6, 2018, at the age of 82. His ex-wife Loni Anderson and their son Quinton held a private memorial service for Reynolds at a funeral home in North Palm Beach, Florida, on September 20. Those in attendance included Sally Field, FSU coach Bobby Bowden, friend Lee Corso, and quarterback Doug Flutie. Reynolds' body was cremated and his ashes were given to his niece, Nancy Lee Brown Hess. He was subsequently interred at Hollywood Forever Cemetery on February 11, 2021. In September 2021, a bronze bust of Reynolds was placed at Hollywood Forever Cemetery.

On the day of Reynolds' death, Antenna TV, which airs The Tonight Show nightly, aired an episode of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson from February 11, 1982, featuring an interview and a This Is Your Life-style skit with Reynolds. The local media in Atlanta and elsewhere in the state noted on their television news programs that evening that he was the first to make major films in Georgia, all of which were successful, which helped make the state one of the top filming locations in the country.  His niece, Nancy Lee Hess, produced a 2020 biography and documentary about Reynolds titled I Am Burt Reynolds.

Legacy and appraisal
During the height of his career, Reynolds was considered a male sex symbol and icon of American masculinity. Stephen Dalton wrote in The Hollywood Reporter that Reynolds "always seemed to embody an uncomplicated, undiluted, effortlessly likable strain of American masculinity that was driven much more by sunny mischief than angsty machismo." Reynolds's roles were often defined by his larger-than-life physicality and masculinity, contrasted with juvenile but self-aware humor. Though he was not considered a serious dramatic actor during his heyday, his later career was defined by performances that often reflected on his own reputation, creating what Dalton called "sophisticated, soulful performances."

Awards and honors
Reynolds was nominated twice for the Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor In A Comedy Series in 1991 and 1992 for Evening Shade, winning in 1991 and losing to Craig T. Nelson in Coach the following year.

He was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar in 1998, losing out to Robin Williams in Good Will Hunting.

Reynolds won Golden Globe Awards for Best Actor In A Television Series-Musical or Comedy for Evening Shade in 1992, and as Best Supporting Actor in Boogie Nights in 1998. He also was nominated for a Golden Globe as Best Actor in a Television Series-Drama for Dan August in 1971, as Best Actor in a Motion Picture-Musical or Comedy for The Longest Yard in 1975 and as Best Actor in a Motion Picture-Musical/Comedy for Starting Over in 1980. He also received Best Actor in a TV series nominations for Evening Shade in 1991 and 1993.

Reynolds won four People's Choice Awards, as Favorite Motion Picture Actor and Favorite All-Around Male in 1983, as
Favorite Motion Picture Actor (tied with Clint Eastwood) in 1984, and as Favorite Male Performer in a New TV Series in 1991.

In 2015, the Stuntmen's Association of Motion Pictures awarded Reynolds the Richard "Diamond" Farnsworth Award, named after Richard Farnsworth, the career stunt man who made the transition into a successful acting career.

He was awarded an honorary doctorate from Florida State University in 1981 and later endorsed the construction of a new performing arts facility in Sarasota, Florida.

There is a Burt Reynolds Park in Jupiter, Florida, maintained by Palm Beach County.

List of awards and nominations

Filmography

Bibliography

Discography
 Ask Me What I Am (1973)

Singles

Works
 Reynolds, Burt. (1994) My Life. New York: Hyperion.
 Reynolds, Burt (with Bruce Chadwick). (1994) Seminole Seasons.  Dallas: Taylor Publishing Company.
 Reynolds, Burt (with Victoria Preminger and Antonia Zehler) (1997) Barkley Unleashed: A Pirate's Tail.  Dove Kids Book & Audio.   (children's book)
 Reynolds, Burt. (2015) But Enough About Me: A Memoir. G.P. Putnam's Sons.

See also
Sasha Gabor, adult film star who was a lookalike of Burt Reynolds (as well as of Sean Connery), portraying him (respectively both) in numerous pornographic parody films, including Tracey and the Bandit (1987) and Boogie Knights (1998). (Gabor's first credited acting gig was in a non-pornographic role, playing the character "Burt Reynolds" in the Harper Valley PTA episode "Svengali of the Valley" during Season 2 of the TV series in 1982.)

References

Further reading
 Anderson, Loni. (1997) My Life in High Heels. Avon Books.
 Field, Sally (2018). In Pieces. New York City: Grand Central Publishing. .
  Zeman, Ned.  "Burt Reynolds Isn't Broke, but He's Got a Few Regrets" Vanity Fair, December 2015 – interview and photographs
 "Show Business: Frog Prince". Time. August 21, 1972

External links

1936 births
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20th-century American male actors
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Best Musical or Comedy Actor Golden Globe (television) winners
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Burials at Hollywood Forever Cemetery
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Male actors from Florida
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Outstanding Performance by a Lead Actor in a Comedy Series Primetime Emmy Award winners
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Burt Reynolds


A rubber band is a stretchable band. They can be different sizes, colours and shapes. Stephen Perry patented the rubber band in England in 1845. It is useful when is need to keep two or more items together. They are made out of latex.

Tools

Rubber band


The Kong Empire (1710–1898), also known as the Wattara Empire or Ouattara Empire for its founder, was a pre-colonial African Muslim state centered in northeastern Ivory Coast that also encompassed much of present-day Burkina Faso.  It was founded by Dyula immigrants from the declining Mali Empire.  It established a largely decentralized commercial empire based upon linkages by merchant houses protecting trade routes throughout the region.  Kong rose to prominence in the 1800s as a key commercial center and center of Islamic studies.  In 1898, Samori Ture attacked the city and burnt it down.  Although the city was rebuilt, the Kong empire had dissipated and the French took control over the area.

History

Founding
The area around Kong had been settled primarily by Gur-speaking agriculturalists: primarily the Senufo people and Tyefo people.  Starting in the 16th century, Dyula speakers, an important branch of the Mandé, migrated from the declining Mali Empire into the area and founded the city of Bego.  The immigrants were largely Muslim while the Senufo and Tyefo populations were primarily animist.  Bego was destroyed at some point and the Dyula residents moved to the city of Kong.  The area became a site for expansion, raiding and warfare of a number of regional powers, mainly Gonja and Dagomba.  In this context, a set of heterogeneous populations and a set of different war houses (merchants with a large number of mercenaries and slaves dedicated largely to warfare) developed in the city of Kong.

The documented history shows that in the early 1700s, Seku Wattara (sometimes written as Sekou or Sekoue) deposed and killed an important leader in Kong, Lasiri Gbambele, by uniting the forces of a number of Dyula leaders in the area. Seku used this consolidated power to control politics in Kong and create a large sphere of influence throughout the region. But the Senofo People founded Khorhogo, the capital of the Senofo People and future capital of Kong in the 11th Century.

Oral history traditions provide additional details but vary greatly in their discussion of the founding of the Kong Empire.  A common telling claims that Seku came from the town of Tenegala, a city  and larger than Kong at the time.  By 1709, Seku was the richest person in Tenegala and used his war house to assist the leader of Gonja in an assault on Bouna, an endeavor that provided him with significantly more slaves for his war house and firearms.  Lasiri Gbambele was Seku's uncle through his father and a powerful leader in Kong.  Although they were related, there was significant discord as a result of a dispute between Lasiri and Seku's father about the woman who would become Seku's mother.  This oral tradition claims that in 1710 Lasiri used his power to suppress Islam in Kong and embrace the indigenous Nya cult.  The crisis developed when Lasiri expelled a Muslim cleric from Kong and Seku brought together his forces with those of other Dyula leaders to attack Kong.  Lasiri was defeated and executed by Seku.

Under Seku

The Kong Empire under Seku lasted from around 1710 until 1740 (with the death of his brother Famaga).  After establishing control over Kong, forces under Seku and allied leaders with their own war houses, took over towns and settlements throughout the region mainly focused on control of trade routes.  They took over the region around the Black Volta to the north early during Seku's reign and to the south to Boule.  In the south, the forces of the Kong Empire ran into the growing Ashanti Empire about control over Gyaaman leading to a significant series of battles ending in Ashanti control over Gyaaman, but recognition of the authority of the Kong Empire.  To establish stable control, Seku appointed each of his twelve sons as chiefs of crucial settlements throughout the region.

Seku died in 1735 and the empire largely fell into disarray.  His son, Kere-Mori, asserted authority but Seku's brother Famaga refused to recognize his claim and so took control over large parts of the northern settlements and operated out of Bobo-Dioulasso.  Although there was a significant internal rivalry between the force of Kere-Mori and Famaga they were allied for external purposes.  This was most crucial in the 1730 expeditions north of the Black Volta toward the Niger River. In November 1739, the combined forces took over a number of important cities including the trade post of Sofara.  The forces reached the important city of Djenné-Djenno, on the banks of the Niger River before they were pushed back by forces of Bitòn Coulibaly.

Decentralized Kong
From about 1740 until the destruction of Kong in 1898, a politically decentralized state existed with its center in the city of Kong.   The alliances that held the Empire together under Seku largely dissipated and the state was held together largely through linked settlements and outposts ruled by different members of a merchant class located in Kong.  Kong became a regional commercial center and a center for Islamic studies during this period.

Crucial to the organization of the Kong Empire was the existence of a merchant class that directed many of the political aspects.  These merchants were significant for the trade they directed but also because each merchant family established a series of key trading outposts along key routes protected by slave warriors.  These war houses thus protected the trade routes for the merchants and also allowed raiding and organized warfare to occur largely directed by the merchants.  Two of the most important houses were those linked to the lineage of Seku and Famaga.  The chieftains linking their lineage to Seku often took the name Wattara to signify this relationship.

With these crucial routes controlled, Kong became a center of trade for both gold and kola nuts.  This increased the importance of the cities and the ability for the private merchant armies to grow significantly larger.

The city became notable for a large number of Islamic clerics and scholars in the city and for regular mosque construction throughout the Empire. However, the importance to Islam did not impact the ruling aristocracy in their management of state: they derived no legitimacy from Islam, they did not implement Sharia, and were thus fundamentally different from the jihad states of West Africa. Importantly, the warrior class created in the Empire, the sonangi, were not adherents to Islam and as time grew on, largely lived in separate communities practicing animist faiths.  Augustus Henry Keane wrote in 1907 that "Nor is Kong a hotbed of Moslem fanaticism, as has also been supposed; but on the contrary, a place distinguished, one might almost say, by its religious indifference, or at all events by its tolerant spirit and wise respect for all the religious views of the surrounding indigenous populations."

Ethnic relations remained largely split between the Mandé merchants and urban citizens and the Senufo agricultural population.  There were few attempts to create an ethnically homogenous population by the leadership and thus these ethnic groups existed largely with one another, and other immigrant populations.

Although politically decentralized, the empire did continue to assert control over territory.  In 1840, the empire took limited control over the gold trade out of Lobi country.

Decline and fall
Kong power and control of trade over the territory decreased significantly in the later part of the 1800s.  Although the importance of the city in terms of commerce and Islamic study persisted, its independence and sphere of influence had decreased.

On 20 February 1888, Louis Gustave Binger entered Kong and made agreements with the leaders as part of the control of the area by France as part of French West Africa.  These agreements made Kong a key target for attacks from Samori Ture as a front in the Mandingo Wars between the Wassoulou Empire and the French.  In 1897, Samori defeated the last forces of Kong and burnt the town to the ground causing members of Seku's royal house to flee to the north.

The remaining members of Seku's royal house took refuge in the Black Volta region where they divided territory creating what the French called "Les Etats de Kong." These kingdoms lasted for a short time before losing relevance to French colonial administration in 1898. The city of Kong was rebuilt by the French, but only about 3,000 residents returned and the city decreased significantly in relevance.

References

Former monarchies of Africa
Countries in precolonial Africa
States and territories established in 1710
1895 disestablishments
History of Burkina Faso
History of Ivory Coast
1710 establishments in Africa
Former empires
Former empires in Africa

Kong Empire


Murray Bookchin (January 14, 1921 – July 30, 2006) was an American social theorist, author, orator, historian, and political philosopher. A pioneer in the environmental movement, Bookchin formulated and developed the theory of social ecology and urban planning within anarchist, libertarian socialist, and ecological thought. He was the author of two dozen books covering topics in politics, philosophy, history, urban affairs, and social ecology. Among the most important were Our Synthetic Environment (1962), Post-Scarcity Anarchism (1971), The Ecology of Freedom (1982), and Urbanization Without Cities (1987). In the late 1990s, he became disenchanted with what he saw as an increasingly apolitical "lifestylism" of the contemporary anarchist movement, stopped referring to himself as an anarchist, and founded his own libertarian socialist ideology called "communalism", which seeks to reconcile and expand Marxist, syndicalist, and anarchist thought.

Bookchin was a prominent anti-capitalist and advocate of social decentralization along ecological and democratic lines. His ideas have influenced social movements since the 1960s, including the New Left, the anti-nuclear movement, the anti-globalization movement, Occupy Wall Street, and more recently, the democratic confederalism of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria. He was a central figure in the American green movement.

Biography

Bookchin was born in New York City to Russian Jewish immigrants Nathan Bookchin and Rose (Kaluskaya) Bookchin. He grew up in the Bronx, where his grandmother, Zeitel, a Socialist Revolutionary, imbued him with Russian populist ideas. After her death in 1930, he joined the Young Pioneers of America, the Communist youth organization (for children 9 to 14) and the Young Communist League (for youths) in 1935. He attended the Workers School near Union Square, where he studied Marxism. In the late 1930s he broke with Stalinism and gravitated toward Trotskyism, joining the Socialist Workers Party (SWP). In the early 1940s, he worked in a foundry in Bayonne, New Jersey, where he was a trade union organizer and shop steward for the United Electrical Workers as well as a recruiter for the SWP. Within the SWP, he adhered to the Goldman-Morrow faction, which broke away after the war ended. He was an auto worker and UAW member at the time of the great General Motors strike of 1945–46. In 1949, while speaking to a Zionist youth organization at City College, Bookchin met a mathematics student, Beatrice Appelstein, whom he married in 1951. They were married for 12 years and lived together for 35, remaining close friends and political allies for the rest of his life. They had two children, Debbie and Joseph. On religious views, Bookchin was an atheist, but was considered to be tolerant of religious views.

From 1947, Bookchin collaborated with a fellow lapsed Trotskyist, the German expatriate Josef Weber, in New York in the Movement for a Democracy of Content, a group of 20 or so post-Trotskyists who collectively edited the periodical Contemporary Issues – A Magazine for a Democracy of Content. Contemporary Issues embraced utopianism. The periodical provided a forum for the belief that previous attempts to create utopia had foundered on the necessity of toil and drudgery; but now modern technology had obviated the need for human toil, a liberatory development. To achieve this "post-scarcity" society, Bookchin developed a theory of ecological decentralism. The magazine published Bookchin's first articles, including the pathbreaking "The Problem of Chemicals in Food" (1952). In 1958, Bookchin defined himself as an anarchist, seeing parallels between anarchism and environmentalism. His first book, Our Synthetic Environment, was published under the pseudonym Lewis Herber, in 1962, a few months before Rachel Carson's famous Silent Spring.

In 1964, Bookchin joined the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), and protested racism at the 1964 World's Fair. During 1964–67, while living on Manhattan's Lower East Side, he cofounded and was the principal figure in the New York Federation of Anarchists. His groundbreaking essay "Ecology and Revolutionary Thought" introduced environmentalism and, more specifically, ecology as a concept in radical politics. In 1968, he founded another group that published the influential Anarchos magazine, which published that and other innovative essays on post-scarcity and on sustainable technologies such as solar and wind energy, and on decentralization and miniaturization. Lecturing throughout the United States, he helped popularize the concept of ecology to the counterculture. His widely republished 1969 essay "Listen, Marxist!" warned Students for a Democratic Society (in vain) against an impending takeover by a Marxist group. "Once again the dead are walking in our midst," he wrote, "ironically, draped in the name of Marx, the man who tried to bury the dead of the nineteenth century. So the revolution of our own day can do nothing better than parody, in turn, the October Revolution of 1917 and the civil war of 1918–1920, with its 'class line,' its Bolshevik Party, its 'proletarian dictatorship,' its puritanical morality, and even its slogan, 'Soviet power'".

In 1969–1970, he taught at the Alternate U, a counter-cultural radical school based on 14th Street in Manhattan. In 1971, he moved to Burlington, Vermont, with a group of friends, to put into practice his ideas of decentralization. In the fall of 1973, he was hired by Goddard College to lecture on technology; his lectures led to a teaching position and to the creation of the Social Ecology Studies program in 1974 and the Institute for Social Ecology (ISE) soon thereafter, of which he became the director. In 1974, he was hired by Ramapo College in Mahwah, New Jersey, where he quickly became a full professor. The ISE was a hub for experimentation and study of appropriate technology in the 1970s. In 1977–78 he was a member of the Spruce Mountain Affinity Group of the Clamshell Alliance. Also in 1977, he published The Spanish Anarchists, a history of the Spanish anarchist movement up to the revolution of 1936. During this period, Bookchin briefly forged some ties with the nascent libertarian movement, speaking at a Libertarian Party convention and contributing to a newsletter edited by Karl Hess. Nevertheless, Bookchin rejected the types of libertarianism that advocated unconstrained individualism.

In 1980, Bookchin co-established the New England Anarchist Conference (NEAC) to organize the anarchist movement in the United States. At its first meeting in October 1980, 175 anarchists from the northeastern US and Quebec attended. By the second conference in January 1981 in Somerville, Massachusetts, the NEAC devolved into sectarianism, which moved Bookchin to lose faith in a socialist revolution happening in the US.

Throughout the 1980s, Bookchin engaged in extensive debates critiquing Bernie Sanders' mayorship in Burlington. Sanders' mayoral victory and Burlington's history of deliberative-democratic town meetings initially reignited Bookchin's confidence in socialism in the United States, quipping that he knew "the ten anarchist votes" winning Sanders the narrow 1981 mayoral election. However, Bookchin became increasingly critical of Sanders' approach to socialism, claiming it lacked a drive to establish direct democracy, focused too much on welfare programs, followed a Marxian deprioritization of ecology, and aligned with an economic growth-oriented anti-capitalism. The Sanders administration criticized the approach offered by Bookchin as a "back-of-the-woods mentality" of "anti-development." Bookchin and his social ecologist colleagues of the Burlington Environmental Alliance and Waterfront Coalition challenged the Sanders administration to create direct democratic neighborhood assemblies, renewable electricity production instead of a woodchip power plant intended to reduce reliance on fossil fuels, and public ownership and democratic management of waterfront areas. Bookchin criticized the Sanders administration for going through with a public-private partnership on waterfront redevelopment following the city council's disapproval of a public ownership plan instead of mobilizing a campaign against Council's decision; though, the Sanders administration later pursued the public trust doctrine to successfully reclaim waterfront property into city ownership. The Sanders administration supported a partial plan for neighborhood assemblies inspired by Bookchin's ideas, though Bookchin argued that it needed more city support for it to be directly democratic with political force rather than merely consultative.

In 1988, Bookchin and Howie Hawkins founded the Left Green Network "as a radical alternative to U.S. Green liberals", based around the principles of social ecology and libertarian municipalism.

In 1995, Bookchin lamented the decline of American anarchism into primitivism, anti-technologism, neo-Situationism, individual self-expression, and "ad hoc adventurism," at the expense of forming a social movement. Arthur Verslius said, "Bookchin ... describes himself as a 'social anarchist' because he looks forward to a (gentle) societal revolution. ... Bookchin has lit out after those whom he terms 'lifestyle anarchists.

He continued to teach at the ISE until 2004. Bookchin died of congestive heart failure on July 30, 2006, at his home in Burlington, at the age of 85.

Thought
In addition to his political writings, Bookchin wrote extensively on philosophy, calling his ideas dialectical naturalism. The dialectical writings of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, which articulate a developmental philosophy of change and growth, seemed to him to lend themselves to an organic, environmentalist approach. Although Hegel "exercised a considerable influence" on Bookchin, he was not, in any sense, a Hegelian. His philosophical writings emphasize humanism, rationality, and the ideals of the Enlightenment.

Bookchin does not clearly define many of the key terms of his philosophy.

General sociological and psychological views
Bookchin was critical of class-centered analysis of Marxism and simplistic anti-state forms of libertarianism and liberalism and wished to present what he saw as a more complex view of societies. In The Ecology of Freedom: The Emergence and Dissolution of Hierarchy, he says that:

My use of the word hierarchy in the subtitle of this work is meant to be provocative. There is a strong theoretical need to contrast hierarchy with the more widespread use of the words class and State; careless use of these terms can produce a dangerous simplification of social reality. To use the words hierarchy, class, and State interchangeably, as many social theorists do, is insidious and obscurantist. This practice, in the name of a "classless" or "libertarian" society, could easily conceal the existence of hierarchical relationships and a hierarchical sensibility, both of whicheven in the absence of economic exploitation or political coercion-would serve to perpetuate unfreedom.

Bookchin also points to an accumulation of hierarchical systems throughout history that has occurred up to contemporary societies which tends to determine the human collective and individual psyche:

The objective history of the social structure becomes internalized as a subjective history of the psychic structure. Heinous as my view may be to modern Freudians, it is not the discipline of work but the discipline of rule that demands the repression of internal nature. This repression then extends outward to external nature as a mere object of rule and later of exploitation. This mentality permeates our individual psyches in a cumulative form up to the present day-not merely as capitalism but as the vast history of hierarchical society from its inception.

Humanity's environmental predicament
Murray Bookchin's book about humanity's collision course with the natural world, Our Synthetic Environment, was published six months before Rachel Carson's Silent Spring.

Bookchin rejected Barry Commoner's belief that the environmental crisis could be traced to technological choices, Paul Ehrlich's views that it could be traced to overpopulation, or the even more pessimistic view that traces this crisis to human nature. Rather, Bookchin felt that our environmental predicament is the result of the cancerous logic of capitalism, a system aimed at maximizing profit instead of enriching human lives: "By the very logic of its grow-or-die imperative, capitalism may well be producing ecological crises that gravely imperil the integrity of life on this planet."

The solution to this crisis, he said, is not a return to hunter-gatherer societies, which Bookchin characterized as xenophobic and warlike. Bookchin likewise opposed "a politics of mere protest, lacking programmatic content, a proposed alternative, and a movement to give people direction and continuity." He claims we needa constant awareness that a given society's irrationality is deep-seated, that its serious pathologies are not isolated problems that can be cured piecemeal but must be solved by sweeping changes in the often hidden sources of crisis and suffering—that awareness alone is what can hold a movement together, give it continuity, preserve its message and organization beyond a given generation, and expand its ability to deal with new issues and developments.The answer then lies in Communalism, a system encompassing a directly democratic political organization anchored in loosely confederated popular assemblies, decentralization of power, absence of domination of any kind, and replacing capitalism with human-centered forms of production.

Social ecology
Social ecology is a philosophical theory about the relationship between ecological and social issues, associated with Murray Bookchin. It is not a movement but a theory primarily associated with Bookchin and elaborated over his body of work. He presents a utopian philosophy of human evolution that combines the nature of biology and society into a third "thinking nature" beyond biochemistry and physiology, which he argues is a more complete, conscious, ethical, and rational nature. Humanity, by this line of thought, is the latest development from the long history of organic development on Earth. Bookchin's social ecology proposes ethical principles for replacing a society's propensity for hierarchy and domination with that of democracy and freedom.

It emerged from a time in the mid-1960s, under the emergence of both the global environmental and the American civil rights movements, and played a much more visible role from the upward movement against nuclear power by the late 1970s. It presents ecological problems as arising mainly from social problems, in particular from different forms of hierarchy and domination, and seeks to resolve them through the model of a society adapted to human development and the biosphere. It is a theory of radical political ecology based on communalism, which opposes the current capitalist system of production and consumption. It aims to set up a moral, decentralized, united society, guided by reason. While Bookchin distanced himself from anarchism later in his life, the philosophical theory of social ecology is often considered to be a form of eco-anarchism.

Bookchin's theory presents a vision of human evolution that combines the nature of biology and society into a third "thinking nature" beyond biochemistry and physiology, which he says is of a more complete, conscious, ethical, and rational nature. Humanity, according to this line of thought, is the latest development in the long history of organic development on Earth. Bookchin's social ecology proposes ethical principles for replacing a society's propensity for hierarchy and domination with that of democracy and freedom. He wrote about the effects of urbanization on human life in the early 1960s during his participation in the civil rights and related social movements. Bookchin then began to pursue the connection between ecological and social issues, culminating with his best-known book, The Ecology of Freedom, which he had developed over a decade. His argument, that human domination and destruction of nature follows from social domination between humans, was a breakthrough position in the growing field of ecology. He writes that life develops from self-organization and evolutionary cooperation (symbiosis). Bookchin writes of preliterate societies organized around mutual need but ultimately overrun by institutions of hierarchy and domination, such as city-states and capitalist economies, which he attributes uniquely to societies of humans and not communities of animals. He proposes confederation between communities of humans run through democracy rather than through administrative logistics.

Bookchin's work, beginning with anarchist writings on the subject in the 1960s, has continuously evolved. Towards the end of the 1990s, he increasingly integrated the principle of communalism, with aspirations more inclined towards institutionalized municipal democracy, which distanced him from certain evolutions of anarchism. Bookchin's work draws inspiration from, and expands up, anarchism (mainly Kropotkin), Syndicalism, and Marxism (including the writings of Marx and Engels). Social ecology refuses the pitfalls of a Neo-Malthusian ecology which erases social relationships by replacing them with "natural forces", but also of a technocratic ecology which considers that environmental progress must rely on technological breakthroughs and that the state will play an integral role in this technological development. According to Bookchin, these two currents depoliticize ecology and mythologize the past and the future.

In May 2016, the first "International Social Ecology Meetings" were organized in Lyon, which brought together a hundred radical environmentalists, decreasing figures and libertarians, most of whom came from France, Belgium, Spain and Switzerland, but also from the United States, Guatemala and Canada. At the center of the debates: libertarian municipalism as an alternative to the nation state and the need to rethink activism.

The second edition of the meetings takes place in Bilbao, in October 2017.

Kurdish movement
Bookchin's reflections on social ecology and libertarian municipalism also inspired Abdullah Öcalan, the historical leader of the Kurdish movement, to create the concept of democratic confederalism, which aims to bring together the peoples of the Middle East in a confederation of democratic, multicultural and ecological communes. Adopted by the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) since 2005, Öcalan's project represents a major ideological shift away from their previous goal of establishing a Marxist-Leninist state. In addition to the PKK, Öcalan's internationalist project was also well received by its Syrian counterpart, the Party of Democratic Union (PYD), which would become the first organization in the world to actually found a society based on the principles of democratic confederalism. On January 6, 2014, the cantons of Rojava, in Syrian Kurdistan, federated into autonomous municipalities, adopting a social contract which established a decentralized non-hierarchy society, based on principles of direct democracy, feminism, ecology, cultural pluralism, participatory politics and economic cooperativism.

Municipalism and communalism
Bookchin's vision of an ecological society is based on highly participatory, grassroots politics, in which municipal communities democratically plan and manage their affairs through popular assembly, a program he called Communalism. This democratic deliberation purposefully promotes autonomy and self-reliance, as opposed to centralized state politics. While this program retains elements of anarchism, it emphasizes a higher degree of organization (community planning, voting, and institutions) than general anarchism. In Bookchin's Communalism, these autonomous, municipal communities connect with each other via confederations.

Starting in the 1970s, Bookchin argued that the arena for libertarian social change should be the municipal level. In 1980 Bookchin used the term "libertarian municipalism" to describe a libertarian socialist system in which institutions of directly democratic assemblies would oppose and replace the state with a confederation of free municipalities. In "The Next Revolution", Bookchin stresses the link that libertarian municipalism has with his earlier philosophy of social ecology. He writes:

Bookchin proposes that these institutional forms must take place within differently scaled local areas. In a 2001 interview he summarized his views this way:

Libertarian municipalism intends to create a situation in which the two powers—the municipal confederations and the nation state cannot coexist.

Legacy and influence
Though Bookchin, by his own recognition, failed to win over a substantial body of supporters during his own lifetime, his ideas have nonetheless influenced movements and thinkers across the globe.

Among these are the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) and closely aligned Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in Turkey, which have fought the Turkish state since the 1980s to try to secure greater political and cultural rights for the country's Kurds. The PKK is designated as a terrorist organization by the Turkish and United States governments, while the YPG has been considered an ally of the US against ISIS. Though founded on a rigid Marxist–Leninist ideology, the PKK has seen a shift in its thought and aims since the capture and imprisonment of its leader, Abdullah Öcalan, in 1999. Öcalan began reading a variety of post-Marxist political theory while in prison, and found particular interest in Bookchin's works.

Öcalan attempted in early 2004 to arrange a meeting with Bookchin through his lawyers, describing himself as Bookchin's "student" eager to adapt his thought to Middle Eastern society. Bookchin was too ill to accept the request. In May 2004 Bookchin conveyed this message "My hope is that the Kurdish people will one day be able to establish a free, rational society that will allow their brilliance once again to flourish. They are fortunate indeed to have a leader of Mr. Öcalan's talents to guide them". When Bookchin died in 2006, the PKK hailed the American thinker as "one of the greatest social scientists of the 20th century", and vowed to put his theory into practice.

His ideas, particularly those related to social ecology and libertarian municipalism, have influenced the Zapatistas and their approach to autonomy and self-governance. The Zapatistas, who rose to prominence in 1994, developed their autonomous government structure, which includes grassroots democracy, inspired by their experiences and the communal traditions of the indigenous population. While Bookchin's influence is more directly associated with the Kurdish movement in Rojava, the principles of decentralization, direct democracy, and the rejection of hierarchical structures align with some of the core ideas he promoted.

"Democratic confederalism", the variation on Communalism developed by Öcalan in his writings and adopted by the PKK, does not outwardly seek Kurdish rights within the context of the formation of an independent state separate from Turkey. The PKK claims that this project is not envisioned as being only for Kurds, but rather for all peoples of the region, regardless of their ethnic, national, or religious background. Rather, it promulgates the formation of assemblies and organizations beginning at the grassroots level to enact its ideals in a non-state framework beginning at the local level. It also places a particular emphasis on securing and promoting women's rights. The PKK has had some success in implementing its programme, through organizations such as the Democratic Society Congress (DTK), which coordinates political and social activities within Turkey, and the Koma Civakên Kurdistan (KCK), which does so across all countries where Kurds live.

Selected works

 Post-Scarcity Anarchism (1971)
 The Spanish Anarchists: The Heroic Years (1977)
 The Ecology of Freedom: The Emergence and Dissolution of Hierarchy (1982)

See also
 Eco-socialism
 History of the Green Party of the United States
 Outline of libertarianism

References

Bibliography

Further reading

 Price, Andy, Recovering Bookchin: Social Ecology and the Crises of Our Time, New Compass (2012)
 Biehl, Janet, Ecology or Catastrophe: The Life of Murray Bookchin (Oxford University Press, 2015).
 Biehl, Janet, The Murray Bookchin Reader (Cassell, 1997) .
 Biehl, Janet, "Mumford Gutkind Bookchin: The Emergence of Eco-Decentralism" (New Compass, 2011)
 Marshall, P. (1992), "Murray Bookchin and the Ecology of Freedom", pp. 602–622 in, Demanding the Impossible. Fontana Press. .
 Selva Varengo, La rivoluzione ecologica. Il pensiero libertario di Murray Bookchin (2007) Milano: Zero in condotta. .
 E. Castano, Ecologia e potere. Un saggio su Murray Bookchin, Mimesis, Milano 2011 .
 Damian F. White 'Bookchin – A Critical Appraisal'. Pluto Press (UK/Europe), University of Michigan Press.  (HBK);  (pbk).
 Neither Washington Nor Stowe: Common Sense For The Working Vermonter, by David Van Deusen, Sean West, and the Green Mountain Anarchist Collective (NEFAC-VT), Catamount Tavern Press, 2004. This libertarian socialist manifesto took many of Bookchin's ideas and articulated them as they would manifest in a revolutionary Vermont.

External links

 Murray Bookchin entry at the Anarchy Archives
 Murray Bookchin Papers at Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Archives at New York University
 International Online Conference 2021: "100 years Murray Bookchin"
 Institute of Social Ecology (official site)

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Murray Bookchin


Bangkong is the war boat of dayak people, notably used by sea dayaks (Iban people) of Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei. They are used for riverine warfare in Borneo, but they are also capable of sailing across the sea.

Etymology

The name bangkong may have its roots from word wa, wangka, waga, wangga, and bangka of Austronesian languages. The term is associated with outrigger perahu or small perahu. This boat is also called perahu pengayau, with the pengayau means "raider" or "warrior", thus it can be translated as "war prahu".

Description
These boats are made single log that was hollowed out. Even a large warboat, 90 feet (27 m) long, is made from the trunk of one tree. Planks or gunwales are stitched on the sides, and the seams are caulked, to render the boat watertight. The planks are bound together with rattan, which makes them easy to disassemble. They are usually armed with 1 or 2 lela and a few musket. They could carry 60–80 men. They are propelled by paddle, and they could sustain 6 mi/h (9.7 km/h) for 18 hours, covering 100 miles (160,9 km) in a day, or 12 mi/h (19.3 km/h) if closing on a prize.

Role

The bangkong was used for dayak riverine warfare. The sea dayaks, as their name implies, are a maritime set of tribes, and fight chiefly in canoes and boats. One of their favorite tactics is to conceal some of their larger boats, and then to send some small and badly manned canoes forward to attack the enemy to lure them. The canoes then retreat, followed by the enemy, and as soon as they passes the spot where the larger boats are hidden, they are attacked by them in the rear, while the smaller canoes, which have acted as decoys, turn and join in the fight. The rivers arc are chosen for this kind of attack, the overhanging branches of trees and the dense foliage of the bank affording excellent hiding places for the boats.

Many of the sea dayaks were also pirates. In the 19th century there was a great deal of piracy, and it was secretly encouraged by the native rulers, who obtained a share of the spoil, and also by the Malays who knew well how to handle a boat. The Malay fleet consisted of a large number of long war boats or prahu, each about 90 feet (27 m) long or more, and carrying a brass gun in the bow, the pirates being armed with swords, spears and muskets. Each boat was paddled by from 60 to 80 men. These boats skulked about in the sheltered coves waiting for their prey, and attacked merchant vessels making the passage between China and Singapore. The Malay pirates and their Dayak allies would wreck and destroy every trading vessel they came across, murder most of the crew who offered any resistance, and the rest were made as slaves. The Dayak would cut off the heads of those who were slain, smoke them over the fire to dry them, and then take them home to treasure as valued possessions.

In March 1849, Sakarran (Skrang) and Serebas (Saribas) Dayak of Sarawak has a piratical fleet of 200 prahu bangkongs, and since January 1849 the fleet managed to capture several trading boats, devastated two rivers, burnt three villages and slaughtered 400 persons, consist of men, women, and children.

See also

 Salisipan, a rowing boat from the Philippines
 Kakap
 Penjajap
 Kelulus
 Lancaran (ship)
 Kora-kora
 Bangkong sarawak

References

Ships of Indonesia
Indonesian inventions
Ship types
Indigenous boats
Boats of Indonesia
Human-powered watercraft
Military boats

Bangkong


Answer Lively (1996–2003) was an American Champion Thoroughbred racehorse owned and bred by John Franks, a Louisiana oilman and winner of a record four Eclipse Awards for Outstanding Owner.

Trained by Bobby Barnett, at age two Answer Lively made seven starts, winning four and finishing second once. He won the Sport of Kings Futurity at Louisiana Downs and was second in the Breeders' Futurity Stakes at Keeneland Race Course before capturing the most important win of his career. The colt gave owner John Franks his first ever Breeders' Cup winner when jockey Jerry Bailey rode him to victory in the Breeders' Cup Juvenile. His 1998 performances earned Answer Lively the Eclipse Award as the American Champion Two-Year-Old Colt.

At age three, Answer Lively raced seven more times, earning three seconds but without a win. In that year's Kentucky Derby he finished tenth then started two more times before being injured. After an eight-month layoff, in June 2000 his owner announced the colt was being retired from racing due to a hairline fracture to a sesamoid in his left front leg. Under a partnership agreement with the Hill 'n' Dale Farms Lexington, Kentucky breeding farm, he was to stand there at stud in 2001. However, fertility problems led to Answer Lively being treated at John Franks Southland Division near Ocala, Florida. Unsuccessful, he was pensioned without ever siring any offspring and sent to live at Twin Oaks Farm near Murchison, Texas.

In October 2003, Answer Lively's owner announced that the seven-year-old horse had died of a heart attack nearly six months earlier on April 28, 2003 and was buried at Twin Oaks.

References
 Answer Lively's pedigree and partial racing stats
 October 20, 2003 Bloodhorse article titled Champion Answer Lively dead (retrieved October 5, 2007)

1996 racehorse births
2003 racehorse deaths
Thoroughbred family A24
Racehorses bred in Kentucky
Racehorses trained in the United States
Breeders' Cup Juvenile winners
Eclipse Award winners

Answer Lively


Bublik (also booblik or bublyk; , plural: bubliki; ) is a traditional Eastern European bread roll. Like a bagel, it is a ring of yeast-leavened wheat dough, that has been boiled in water for a short time before baking.

Etymology

Bublik stems from Old East Slavic бубьлъ (bubl), ultimately from Proto-Slavic *bǫbьlь, from which Polish bąbel, Czech boubel and Slovak bublina also originated. All these words mean "bubble".

Russian baranka or baranok is a contraction of the word obvaranok (обваранок), "scalded" / "parboiled". Belarusian abaranak, Ukrainian ob[v]arinok and Polish obwarzanek share the same etymology. The Russian spelling suggests that the word was adopted into Russian from Belarusian.

Common names and types

A class of such ring-shaped rolls is common for Eastern European cuisines. Ukrainian bublik is similar to an Ashkenazi Jewish bagel, but is somewhat bigger and has a larger hole. Bubliks usually have a drier, denser and "chewier" texture than bagels. Russian baranka (; pl. baranki) is a dough ring somewhat smaller than a bublik, but also thinner and drier. Sushka (; pl. sushki) is an even smaller and drier type, generally about 5 cm in size, and has the consistency of a hard cracker.

In Russian and Ukrainian, bublik is often used as a generic designation for any ring-shaped product of this type. In Russian, baranka is also used as a similar generic term, whereas ""  () is a formal designation of the product class. A cognate term, obarinok (обарінок) or obvarinok (обварінок), is sometimes used as a synonym for bublik or baranka in Ukrainian. Bublik or baranka is known as abaranak () in Belarusian and  or  in Lithuanian.

Polish obwarzanek is done with the same technology as bublik or baranka, but its most common form, obwarzanek krakowski, has a braided ring shape.

History

The first known written mention of the bagel is found in the Community Regulations of the city of Kraków in 1610. The bagel spread through Poland across all areas with significant Jewish population, reaching Ukraine, where it got its current form. The word bublik was adopted from Ukrainian to Russian in which it is first documented in the 18th century. It is mentioned as "wheat bublik" (бублик пшеничнои) in the Lexicon or Alphabetic Collection of Speeches from Russian to Dutch by Jacob Bruce published in 1717 in Saint Petersburg.

The baranka is first mentioned in Russian sources in a 17th-century text. An entry for the year 1665 in the account ledger of Valday Iversky Monastery reads: "Baranki and eggs purchased for the brothers in Bogoroditsino village for ten altyn." In the 19th century, the town of Valday was famous for its baranki. Valday baranki were mentioned by Alexander Pushkin, Alexander Radishchev and others.

William Pokhlyobkin traces the origin of Russian baranka to what is now Belarus, in particular to the town of Smarhon' (the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania). Until they were murdered in the Holocaust, most of the population of Smarhon' was Jewish. Baranki were supposedly used to feed bears in the local school of bear training (the so-called "Bear Academy"). Written accounts of Smarhon' baranki appeared in the 19th century. Adam Kirkor wrote in the encyclopedia Picturesque Russia: "In Smorgon', Oshmyany district, Vilna province, almost all the petty bourgeois population is busy baking small bubliki, or kringles, which are widely known as Smorgon' obvaranki. Each traveller would definitely buy several bundles of these bubliki; besides, they are transported to Vilna and other cities." Władysław Syrokomla mentioned Smarhon' as "the capital of obwarzanki famous in all Lithuania". Smarhon' obwarzanki were a traditional treat at Saint Casimir's Fair in Vilnius.

Preparation

Bubliks are made from yeast-leavened wheat dough that commonly contains milk, butter, and egg whites and is rather sweet. Poppy seeds are a popular addition to the dough, as well as several other fillings. For savory bubliks, sugar is omitted and instead grated cheese and a few drops of onion juice can be added.
Bubliks are featured by professional bakers in their shops and at country fairs and regional markets. They are usually strung on a string by the dozen.

In Belarus, Russia and Ukraine bubliks and barankas are usually treated not like bread, but like a type of pastry, eaten as a complement to tea or coffee. Therefore, bublik dough is generally sweeter and denser than that of bagel dough, and they are usually glazed with egg yolk. By far the most popular variety of bublik has a liberal amount of poppy seeds added to it.

Consumption

Bubliks are usually eaten as is, but it is not uncommon to dip them into tea, a practice that came from eating sushki and baranki, which were very similar in taste, but rather dry and hard and not easily palatable unless moistened.

Another common way of eating bubliks is to break them into several fragments and to eat them with jam (varenye), sour cream (smetana), or other similar dips. While they often accompany tea, bubliks, again unlike modern bagels, are rarely considered a breakfast food.

Cultural references

A short poem called Protoptala stezhku cherez yar ("I beat a path through the ravine") in Kobzar book by Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko refers to a young woman who sells bubliki at the market to the Cossacks.

Bublichki, a diminutive of bubliki, is a title of a famous Yiddish-Ukrainian-Russian song written in Odessa in the 1920s. Leonid Utyosov popularised the song in the USSR. The Barry Sisters together with the Ziggy Elman Orchestra made it popular in the US in 1939. Today it belongs to the repertoire of klezmer, jazz and pop musicians.

A common Russian and Ukrainian phrase is "a hole from a bublik" (, ) - which means "absolutely nothing" or "worthless". Examples:
 I worked so hard, and what did I get for it? A hole from a bublik,
 He is not worth a hole from a bublik.
This expression in literature is found in Mystery-Bouffe, a socialist dramatic play written by Vladimir Mayakovsky in 1918–1921:

 Someone got a bublik and another one got the hole of the bublik.
 So that is to be a democratic republic.

See also

 List of bread rolls

References

External links
 Ukrainian Tea Cookies (Bublyky)
 Bublik recipes

Sweet breads
Yeast breads
Poppy seeds
Snack foods
Street food
Belarusian cuisine
Lithuanian cuisine
Russian cuisine
Ukrainian cuisine

Bublik


Francisco Maschio was a horse race trainer, born in Argentina in the 1890s knowned as Brujo de Olleros. Maschio  began his career working at a Hipodromo de Maronas, Montevideo, Uruguay as thoroughbred  trainer. Lately he went to  Buenos Aires, Argentina by invitation of the famous tango singer Carlos Gardel. His  stables ( named Stud Yeruá ) was localized at Olleros Street, Palermo, Buenos Aires, near the actual Olleros (Buenos Aires Metro Station) He was the  trainer of the horses of Carlos Gardel, including the legendary Lunático. He won many statistics in Hipodromo de Palermo.

Horse racing
People from Buenos Aires
1890s births
20th-century deaths
Year of death missing

Francisco Maschio


Edward Burke (January 13, 1909 – April 19, 1988) was an American jazz musician.

Career
Burke was adept at both violin and trombone, and played both professionally in jazz bands. He worked with Walter Barnes late in the 1920s, then with Cassino Simpson and Ed Carry in the early-1930s. He worked with Kenneth Anderson in 1934 before joining Erskine Tate's band through the end of 1935. Following a stint with Horace Henderson, he joined Earl Hines's band in 1938.

In the 1940s he played with Walter Fuller and Coleman Hawkins, and later in the decade with Duke Ellington and Cootie Williams. In the early 1950s, he joined Cab Calloway's band, then worked with Buddy Johnson a few years later.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Burke played less frequently, though he occasionally performed with musicians such as Lem Johnson and Wally Edwards.

References

1909 births
1988 deaths
American jazz trombonists
Male trombonists
American jazz violinists
American male violinists
20th-century American violinists
20th-century trombonists
Jazz musicians from Ohio
20th-century American male musicians
American male jazz musicians
People from Morrow County, Ohio
People from Elmhurst, Queens

Ed Burke (musician)