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| | | Jack Kerouac | Jack Kerouac (March 12, 1922 in Lowell, MA – October 21, 1969) was an American novelist, writer, poet, and artist. He is perhaps the best known of a group of writers and friends who came to be known as the Beat Generation. Kerouac enjoyed some degree of popular appeal but little critical acclaim during his lifetime. He is now, however, considered to be one of America’s most important and influential authors. His spontaneous, confessional prose style has inspired numerous other writers and musicians. Kerouac’s best known works are On the Road, The Dharma Bums, Big Sur and Visions of Cody. Kerouac divided most of his young adult life between roaming the vast American landscape and life at home with his mother. Faced with a changing post-war America, he sought to find his place, but came to eventually reject the values and social norms of the Fifties. His writing often reflects a desire to break free from society’s structures and to find higher meaning. This led Kerouac to experiment with drugs and to embark on trips around the world. His writings are often credited as the catalyst for the 1960s counterculture. Kerouac died in St. Petersburg, Florida, at the age of 47 from an internal hemorrhage, the result of chronic alcoholism. |
| | | James Redfield | Alabama therapist and author of the Celestine Prophecy, his first novel. | | | | James Taylor | James Vernon Taylor (born March 12, 1948) is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist, born in Belmont, Massachusetts. Taylor’s career began in the mid-1960s, but he found his audience in the early 1970s, singing sensitive and gentle acoustic songs. He was part of a wave of singer-songwriters of the time that also included Tom Rush, Carole King, Joni Mitchell, John Denver, Elton John, Jackson Browne as well as Carly Simon, whom Taylor later married. His 1976 album Greatest Hits was certified diamond and has sold more than 11 million copies. He has retained a large audience well into the 1990s and 2000s, when some of his best-selling and most-awarded albums were released. | | | | Jane Fonda | Jane Fonda (born December 21, 1937 in New York City) is a two-time Academy Award-winning American actress, writer, political activist, former fashion model, and fitness guru. Since the 1960s Fonda has appeared in several movies. She has won two Academy Awards and received several other awards and nominations. She initially announced her retirement from acting in 1991, and said for many years that she would never act again, but she returned to film in 2005 with Monster in Law. She also produced and starred in several exercise videos released between 1982 and 1995. Fonda has served as an activist for many political causes, one of the most notable of which was her opposition to the Vietnam War. She has also protested the Iraq War and violence against women. She describes herself as a liberal and a feminist. | | | | Jane Goodall | Dame Valerie Jane Goodall, DBE (born April 3, 1934) is an English primatologist, ethologist and anthropologist. She is probably best-known for conducting a forty-five year study of chimpanzee social and family life, and for founding The Jane Goodall Institute in Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania. | | | | Janis Ian | (Born April 7, 1951) is a Grammy Award-winning American songwriter, singer, multi-instrumental musician, columnist, and science fiction author. She had a successful singing career in the 1960s and 1970s, recording into the 21st century. Born Janis Eddy Fink in New York City, she was primarily raised in New Jersey and briefly attended the New York City High School of Music & Art. At thirteen years old, she legally changed her name from Janis Eddy Fink to Janis Ian, the last name coming from her brother’s middle name. At the age of 15, Ian legally emancipated herself from her parents. At age fifteen, Ian wrote and sang her first hit single, the song “Society’s Child (Baby I’ve Been Thinking)”, which tells the story of an interracial romance forbidden by the narrator’s mother and frowned upon by her peers and teachers | | | | Janis Joplin | Janis Lyn Joplin (born at St. Mary’s Hospital in Port Arthur, TX on January 19, 1943 – October 4, 1970) was an American blues-influenced rock singer and occasional songwriter with a distinctive voice. Joplin performed on four albums recorded between 1966 and 1970 – two as the lead singer of San Francisco’s Big Brother and The Holding Company, and two released as a solo artist. Joplin was inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995. | | | | Jersey Shore | 90 miles of beaches in the Garden State, usually prefaced by the phrase “down the…” | | | | JFK | John Fitzgerald Kennedy (May 29, 1917 in Brookline, MA – November 22, 1963), was the 35th President of the United States, an acknowledged transformational and inspirational leader who was beloved by boomers. He served from 1961 until his assassination in 1963. Major events during his presidency include the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the building of the Berlin Wall, the Space Race, the American Civil Rights Movement, and early events of the Vietnam War. | | | | John Gambling | John Alfred Gambling (February 5, 1930 – January 8, 2004) was a member of the Gambling family, 3 generations of whom – John B., John A. and John R. – were hosts of WOR Radio’s (New York City, 710 AM) morning show “Rambling With Gambling” over the course of 75 years (1925-2000). “Rambling With Gambling” was listed in the Guinness World Records of 2003 as the “world’s longest-running radio show.” The top-rated program offered the first on-air broadcast of school closings and helicopter traffic reports. In a smooth baritone, Gambling also interviewed celebrities, politicians and other newsworthy people. | | | | John Irving | John Winslow Irving (born March 2, 1942 as John Wallace Blunt, Jr.) is a bestselling American novelist and Academy Award-winning screenwriter. Since achieving great critical and popular acclaim after the international success of The World According to Garp in 1978, all of Irving’s novels, including well-known works The Cider House Rules and A Prayer for Owen Meany, have been bestsellers. Many of his novels have been made into movies, and Irving won the 2000 Best Adapted Screenplay Academy Award for his script for The Cider House Rules. | | | | John Lennon | MBE (Born in Liverpool, England on 9 October 1940 – 8 December 1980), was a 20th-century English songwriter, singer and instrumentalist who gained worldwide fame as one of the founders of the Beatles. Lennon and Paul McCartney formed a critically acclaimed and commercially successful partnership writing songs for the Beatles and other artists. Lennon, with his cynical edge and knack for introspection, and McCartney, with his storytelling optimism and gift for melody, complemented one another uniquely. In his solo career, Lennon wrote and recorded songs such as “Imagine” and “Give Peace a Chance”. | | | | John Lilly | A osmol-scientist famous for his work with dolphins and flotation tanks, as well as for books such as Programming & Metaprogramming in the Human Biocomputer; 1915-?. | | | | John Stuart Mill | British philosopher, 1806-1873, who wrote On Liberty and Utilitarianism, and developed the notion of qualities of pleasure. | | | | Joint | Marijuana dried and rolled in cigarette form. Also, a term used to describe the penis. | | | | Joni Mitchell | CC, (born Roberta Joan Anderson on November 7, 1943) is a noted Canadian musician, songwriter, and painter. Mitchell’s musical career began in small nightclubs and busking on the streets of Toronto and in her native Western Canada. She subsequently became associated with the burgeoning folk music scene of the mid-1960s in New York City. Mitchell achieved fame in the late 1960s and was considered a key part of the Southern California folk rock scene. Throughout the 1970s, she explored and combined the pop and jazz genres. Mitchell has amassed a body of work that is highly respected, both by critics (in 2002, Rolling Stone magazine called her “one of the greatest songwriters ever”) and by fellow musicians. Retrospective appraisals of Mitchell’s work have often labeled her the “female Bob Dylan.” | | | | Joseph Campbell | Joseph John Campbell (March 26, 1904 – October 31, 1987) was an American professor, writer, and orator best known for his work in the fields of comparative mythology and comparative religion. |
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