User:GreggEdwards

Gregg Edwards - born Cimiotti in a mongrel family where the italianate passion dominated - has several grounds for contributing edits.

Music
I've written so far just one wikipedia music article in English, and corrected one in German, on the composer and violinist Pieter Hellendaal. [My article on Cran (unit) was blitzed by an editor - he was later blackballed - unfamiliar with the term's centrality for centuries in North Atlantic trade. Or how its millions of barrels as reusable stock influenced the early trade in oil products, and thus of a major modern unit - the (oil) barrel. Ah! How often zealous editors know not what they do.]

My background here is as a musician-manqué: Raised in a household of professional musicians -- great grandparents who immigrated from Italy to play for a symphony orchestra; grandmother was the church organist; aunts and uncles &c... My father owned (and bankrupted despite well-known hits and bands) a record company and later a night-club which was also a Mafia-infested hangout that I unsuccessfully tried to save. Before it died, our excesses of enthusiasm did win several front page Variety reports and allowed me to work with a series of awesome musicians. I was encouraged to start composition at 4. I studied composition at Rice U and U Md where I left suddenly as a Senior, walking out while awaiting my juried oboe exam. I unrealistically thought I would do better on my own as a computer-based composer than hacking on an antique instrument. I sang with several groups in some famous venues, scrubbed as a church organist, improv'd with friends as a jazz pianist with no distinctive sound, and finally dribbled out in overly ambitious compositions, like an opera I keep revising because it just doesn't click.

My biggest accomplishment in this shrinking stream of my life has been in organizing festivals for innovative arts involving thousands of contributors over two decades, and even that was better off when I turned it over to others. (The last fest was shut down by my political opponents in DC, later incited me to run for public office). Now my name doesn't even make a footnote ('tho there is one documentary with me playing the piano). A marquee has no room for manqués.

This common-told story did help get me some interesting gigs: One for a few years as liaison on Arts & Science projects between the NEA and the NSF. That gig just fell my way - I was already on the NSF staff, and had been friends for decades with the musician brothers Alan & John of NEA's liaison, Bess Lomax Hawes. My arts and computer background also brought me two other special projects areas at NSF: I helped recruit tremendous talents to and managed the initial development of computer graphics and research on games; both became huge industries.)

Based on this work, I got a free pass to an annual meeting of the AAAS as their conference keynoter for raising the money and putting on a multi-media concert, exposition, & seminar on the transformative fusion of Arts & Science. And I got a several day gig as the principal keynoter and speaker for the centennial celebration of RISD.

This earnest but less than mediocre arts- & music-based background helped me encourage others to accomplish what I couldn't. I did get a few gigs as an actor, and many more as a futurist in the entertainment industry. Mostly, it helped me meet some deservedly famous people whose friendship transformed my life.

Callings
Politics & policy; religion, advocacy for the down/daunted, & community organizing; computer software, electronics design, & IS; physics & engineering, appropriate tech, habitat & infrastructure; macro-history & futurist... As with music (above), a life being bounced around as inspiring friendship beckons, opportunity presents, health curtails, & challenges command.

For a few examples:

See my (draft) blurb at LinkedIn

World Catalog Listing "10 works in 11 publications in 2 languages and 96 library holdings"

Language
Long struggle to invent a useful voice in global English; lived with French, German, Italian, Spanish (more Chicano & Caliche/Escaliche than Castilian); worked with Arabic, Danish, Dutch, Russian, but in none sufficient for fluency; some intense study of occasional utility in scholarly antiques of Greek, Hebrew, Latin, Mandarin, Old English, Sanskrit; dabbling in invented languages - the usual suspects.

Languages, beside their obvious uses, harness my interests into this hobbyhorse: World cultural development (especially as encoded in language) progresses faster more by an uprising of highly diverse, delightful creatures than by the forces of nationalist pride and dour academies. However, nationalist and even small-group pride can recruit enormous energies, and dour academies can goad critical reflection, both needed for productive designs.

Above language wrote for Wikipedia
Wikipedia could fluoresce by inciting those forces to show - via articles on particular subjects - enduring insights into the world and its possibilities. Be bold!

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"Be bold, and great forces will join; be bold and good, and angels will wrestle a way."

- after King/Goethe