Word: iras
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...this amiable study of a man and his epoch, Musicologist Edward Jablonski shows why the queries persist on the 50th anniversary of Gershwin's death. George's father, Leatherworker Morris Gershovitz, thought Ira, the oldest of his four children, was the most talented -- until George, nearly two years younger, appropriated the keyboard with an amalgam of brashness and genius. The boy abandoned school at 15 and quickly rose from Manhattan streets to the clamorous offices of song publishers. Sometimes his talent outstripped his ambition. When he auditioned for a job with Irving Berlin, the composer turned him down with some...
...took it to heart. Gershwin's music reflected an emotional ebullience, but he rarely gave all of himself in private life. He was exceptionally close to his brother; they shared a house even after Ira's marriage. But George remained a bachelor whose most valued female friend was the married composer Kay Swift...
...that score he seldom failed. With Ira as lyricist, George composed the up tunes that seemed the antidote to depression, financial or psychological. Composer Alec Wilder remarked, "Since Gershwin was rarely given to sad songs, what could have been a more welcome palliative for the natural gloom of the times than the insistently cheery sound of his music?" The sound never fades. This year there have been TV specials, new recordings and productions like the Glyndebourne Opera Festival's sellout Porgy. Next season a musical will be fashioned from the old melodies, with a new book by Neil Simon...
Drugs, however, are not a substitute for diet and exercise, warns Ira Goldberg, an endocrinologist at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in New York City. He has already uncovered backsliders among his lovastatin patients. "We saw a couple of people whose cholesterol levels had gone down 30% to 40% but then started creeping back up." Doctors are concerned that lifelong use of lovastatin, which could cost $1,000 or more a year, may cause some people to develop cataracts or liver problems. "The real test will be the next few years, when a lot of people are taking the drug," says...
...public schools to teach "creation science." With last week's two new losses, the Fundamentalist strategy of using constitutional cases to restore religion to the school curriculum looks to be in tatters. "These two are the last of the coordinated and systematic attacks by a politicized Fundamentalist movement," said Ira Glasser of the American Civil Liberties Union, which helped win the Alabama case. "There aren't a large number of avenues open to them," agreed Law Professor Carl Esbeck of the University of Missouri at Columbia...