In 1967 Yunus studied at Vanderbilt University. He met Vera Forostenko, a student of Russian literature there. Vera is the daughter of Russian immigrants to Trenton, New Jersey in the United States. They were married in 1970. Yunus marriage with Vera ended a few months after the birth of their baby girl, Monica Yunus (b. 1979 Chittagong). Vera returned to New Jersey and said that Bangladesh was not a good place to raise a baby. After some time, Yunus married Afrozi Yunus, who was a researcher in physics at Manchester University. She was appointed as a professor of physics at Jahangirnagar University. Their daughter Deena Afroz Yunus was born in 1986.
Professor Yunus brother Muhammad Ibrahim is a professor of physics at Dhaka University and the founder of The Center for Mass Education in Science (CMES). They teach science to girls in villages. His younger brother Muhammad Jahangir is a popular television presenter. Yunus oldest daughter, Monica, is an soprano singer in New York City.
John Keats
John Keats (31 October 1795 – 23 February 1821) was an English poet. He is often ranked as one of the five most important poets of the Romantic movement in English literature; the other four are William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lord Byron, and Percy Bysshe Shelley. Though Keats was the youngest of these poets, he also died before the others: he suffered from tuberculosis and died in Rome at the age of 25.
Keats was the son of an inn-keeper Thomas Keats, who died when Keats was nine years old and Frances Keats; and his mother died of tuberculosis in 1810. The young Keats began studying to be a surgeon, though his interest in literature grew stronger than his interest in medicine. He became a friend and follower of the poet and editor James Henry Leigh Hunt, and made his first attempts to write his own poetry. Keats's active writing life lasted only about six years, from the spring of 1814 through 1819.
His short life meant that he wrote less than many other poets. His longest poems, "Endymion" and "Hyperion", tell stories from ancient Greek mythology. Many of his shorter poems are among the best known in English literature, including the ballad "La Belle Dame sans Merci" and his sonnets and odes.
Keats was an active letter-writer throughout his life, like many people of his time. Hundreds of his letters to friends and relatives have survived, and Keats is often called one of the great letter writers in the English language.
Endymion (poem)
Endymion is one of the major poems of the English Romantic poet John Keats. It is his longest poem. Keats wrote the poem in 1817, and it was printed in a book in 1818. The poem's opening line is one of the most famous lines of poetry in English literature:
Keats called the poem "A Poetical Romance." He wrote in four sections or "Books," and each section is about a thousand lines long. The poem is written in a form called rhymed couplets, which means that every two lines rhyme together. The story is based on the tale of Endymion from Greek mythology.
"Endymion" was criticized harshly when it was first published. Some of Keats's friends and admirers, like the poet Shelley, believed that the stress of this hostile reaction had a bad effect on Keats's mind, and partly caused his early death from tuberculosis at the age of 25. But most modern critics and scholars of English literature do not think this is true.
Hyperion (poem)
Hyperion is one of the major poems of the English Romantic poet John Keats. The poem is based on the tale from Greek mythology that tells how the Titan Hyperion, the first Greek sun god, was replaced by Apollo.
Keats worked on the poem mainly in August and September 1818. He finished the first two sections or "Books," each between 350 and 400 lines long, and he also wrote 135 lines of Book III. But he was not satisfied with what he had written; he re-wrote it bit by bit until April 1819, when he gave up for a while. Some critics and scholars think that Keats set out to write the kind of long poem he had already done in his "Endymion" in 1817 – but his outlook on poetry had changed, to a point where he was no longer happy writing the kind of mythological epic that many other poets of his time tried to write.
Keats tried to re-do the poem in a new form that he called "The Fall of Hyperion". He worked on this second version during the last six months of 1819, and though he wrote more than 500 lines, he gave up this second attempt too. He was never able to complete either version of the poem in a way that satisfied him.
Keats wrote the poem in blank verse, without rhyme. Though neither version was ever finished, some critics think that they contain some of Keats's best verse, as in the gloomy and powerful opening lines of the first "Hyperion":
["vale" = valley; "morn" = morning; "eve" = evening]
Arlo Guthrie
Arlo Guthrie (born 1947) is an American musician and songwriter, and is the son of folk music legend Woody Guthrie. His most famous song is Alice's Restaurant, which was also the title of his first album.
Guthrie learned music from his father, who wrote songs for him like "Goodnight Little Arlo". When the young Guthrie became thirteen years old, his father gave him a Bar Mitzvah, and invited many folk musicians. It was called "the first hootenanny bar mitzvah in history."
Guthrie met Bob Dylan when Dylan came from Minnesota to meet his father Woody. Dylan taught Guthrie a new way to play the harmonica. Guthrie started college after high school, but dropped out.
During 1965, Guthrie visited his friends Alice and Ray Brock in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, who lived in an old church, and owned a restaurant. He recorded a musical commercial for the restaurant. When Thanksgiving came that year, they invited many people, and afterwards there was a lot of garbage to be picked up and thrown away. Guthrie and another friend tried to take the garbage to a dump, but it was closed. They found a large trash pile not far away, and unwisely decided to throw their garbage onto the same pile. (Dumping trash where it does not belong is called 'littering' and is a crime in most places.)
When local police found out, they arrested Guthrie and his friend. Since the young men had long hair and looked like hippies, the police wanted to prosecute them and make an example of them to other young people. They prepared a big court case against Guthrie and his friend, with many photographs of the litter pile. It turned out the local judge was blind, could not look at the photographs, and was not interested in the case. He fined Guthrie and his friend fifty dollars, and ordered them to clean up the pile.
Not long after, Guthrie received a draft notice. The United States Army wanted him to become a soldier. Guthrie went for a physical examination by a doctor, and had to fill out a questionnaire giving information about himself. When asked if he had ever been arrested, he talked about the littering incident. He soon found himself sitting on a bench together with criminals, some of which were violent or dangerous. He could not believe the way he was treated by the Army. He began to complain and protest his treatment. The Army officers decided he would not make a good soldier, but might become a threat to the American government. They fingerprinted Guthrie, and let him go.
Guthrie decided later the two incidents would make a good protest song and he built one around the jingle he had written. He called the song "Alice's Restaurant Massacree", and recorded it in front of a live audience. He did not want other young men to be drafted, and suggested in the song that they might get out of the draft by doing like he had.
The recording became half of his first album, and the rest was filled out with other music, like "The Motorcycle Song". The album became a hit record.