Tony's Thoughts

We thank our military men and women past and present for their service to our country. We especially honor and remember those who made the ultimate sacrifice.

Dear Commons Community,

A 40-year-old man whose legs were paralyzed in a cycling accident 12 years ago can walk again thanks to implants in his brain and spinal cord (see video below).

The brain-spine interface (BSI) has remained stable for a year, allowing Gert-Jan Oskam to stand, walk, climb stairs and traverse complex terrains, according to a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature. Oskam even regains some control over his legs when the BSI is turned off.

“My wish was to walk again and I believed it was possible,” Oskam said during a news briefing.

Oskam was in the accident in China and thought he would be able to get the help he needed when he got home to the Netherlands, but the technology wasn’t advanced enough for it at the time, Oskam said.

Oskam previously participated in a trial by Grégoire Courtine, a neuroscientist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology who also worked on the new research, according to the study authors. In 2018, Courtine’s team found that technology can stimulate the lower spine and help people with spinal-cord injuries walk again. After three years, Oskam’s improvements plateaued.

For the latest study, the research team restored communication between Oskam’s brain and spinal cord with a digital bridge. Oskam participated in 40 sessions of neurorehabilitation throughout the study. He said he is now able to walk at least 100 meters (328 feet) or more at once, depending on the day.

“We’ve captured the thoughts of Gert-Jan, and translated these thoughts into a stimulation of the spinal cord to re-establish voluntary movement,” Courtine said.

Researchers said the next advancement would be to miniaturize the hardware needed to run the interface. Currently, Oskam carries it in a backpack. Researchers are also working to see if similar devices can restore arm movement.

There have been a number of advancements in spinal cord injury treatment in recent decades. A study published in Nature in February found that targeted electrical pulses delivered to the spinal cord can help improve arm and hand movement after a stroke.

The researchers who helped Oskam believe the technology they’ve employed can, in the future, restore movement in arms and hands as well. They also think that, with time and resources, they can use the advancement to help stroke patients.

Incredible medical accomplishment!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy reached a tentative agreement last night  to raise the debt ceiling, ending a three-month-long standoff that threatened to trigger a US default.

The deal, if enacted, would boost the nation’s borrowing limit for two years and take the volatile issue of America’s credit worthiness off the table until after the next presidential election, according to multiple reports.

The pact would also put in place what McCarthy described Saturday as “historic” spending limits that are also expected to be in place for the same period of time.

The announcement comes just days before the US government is expected to run out of money to pay all its bills. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said that could happen June 5.

Biden and McCarthy ironed out the final details during two phone calls Saturday. “We still have a lot of work to do but I believe this is an agreement in principle that is worthy of the American people,” said McCarthy late Saturday.

Biden, in a statement, said the “agreement represents a compromise, which means not everyone gets what they want.”

“It is an important step forward that reduces spending while protecting critical programs for working people and growing the economy for everyone,” he added.

But Wall Street can’t relax just yet. The leaders now have a difficult task of selling what are sure to be a host of controversial provisions to skeptical lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.

Deep reservations have been evident from both the left and from the right for weeks with leaders now turning to the process of selling the deal to their sides so it can be enacted into into law.

McCarthy only offered sparse details to reporters on Saturday, saying he wanted to talk with his members first.

President Biden also spoke Saturday with Senate Majority leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), two men who will be tasked with lining up Democratic votes in the days ahead.

In a statement Saturday night, Maya MacGuineas of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget noted that the deal, if it passes, “would be the first major deficit-reducing budget agreement in almost a dozen years and would signal Washington is serious about making progress in addressing our mounting national debt.”

Another issue addressed in the deal, according to McCarthy, is the controversial topic of work requirements in return for access to certain government programs.

The issue is a particularly sensitive topic for both parties and was a sticking point until the final hours. Liberal Democrats have focused intensely on the topic, arguing that any increased requirements will do little for the deficit and instead are needlessly cruel for the most vulnerable Americans.

On the other side of the aisle, conservative Republicans have demanded much deeper spending cuts in recent months than were reportedly agreed to in the final deal, leaving many McCarthy’s most conservative members unlikely to support the bipartisan proposal in the days ahead.

Members of the conservative Freedom Caucus have repeatedly blasted the provisions as they have leaked out with with Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) saying recently it “doesn’t sound like a deal that I can support.”

Many details of the bill are still forthcoming. Speaker McCarthy said some of the bill remains to be written but he promised to post the entire bill tomorrow before a likely vote in the House of Representatives on Wednesday.

Biden said “this agreement is good news for the American people, because it prevents what could have been a catastrophic default and would have led to an economic recession, retirement accounts devastated, and millions of jobs lost.”

The discussions over the next couple of days with Congressional representatives for both parties will be interesting.

Tony

Excavations at the Jebel Irhoud archaeological site in Morocco, where 300,000-year-old fossils that may be the oldest evidence of Homo sapiens were found in 2017. Credit…Shannon McPherron/UPI, via Alamy

Dear Commons Community,

Carl Zimmer, a columnist, for The New York Times, had an article yesterday reporting that a new genetic analysis of 290 people suggests that humans emerged at various times and places in Africa and not in one single locale as has long been believed.  Here is an excerpt:

“By analyzing the genomes of 290 living people, researchers concluded that modern humans descended from at least two populations that coexisted in Africa for a million years before merging in several independent events across the continent. The findings were published on Wednesday in Nature.  [The Nature article is quite interesting and provides further details on what Zimmer is reporting.]

“There is no single birthplace,” said Eleanor Scerri, an evolutionary archaeologist at the Max Planck Institute for Geoarchaeology in Jena, Germany, who was not involved in the new study. “It really puts a nail in the coffin of that idea.”

Paleoanthropologists and geneticists have found evidence pointing to Africa as the origin of our species. The oldest fossils that may belong to modern humans, dating back as far as 300,000 years, have been unearthed there. So were the oldest stone tools used by our ancestors.

Human DNA also points to Africa. Living Africans have a vast amount of genetic diversity compared with other people. That’s because humans lived and evolved in Africa for thousands of generations before small groups — with comparatively small gene pools — began expanding to other continents.

Within the vast expanse of Africa, researchers have proposed various places as the birthplace of our species. Early humanlike fossils in Ethiopia led some researchers to look to East Africa. But some living groups of people in South Africa appeared to be very distantly related to other Africans, suggesting that humans might have a deep history there instead.

Brenna Henn, a geneticist at the University of California, Davis, and her colleagues developed software to run large-scale simulations of human history. The researchers created many scenarios of different populations existing in Africa over different periods of time and then observed which ones could produce the diversity of DNA found in people alive today.

“We could ask what types of models are really plausible for the African continent,” Dr. Henn said.

The researchers analyzed DNA from a range of African groups, including the Mende, farmers who live in Sierra Leone in West Africa; the Gumuz, a group descended from hunter-gatherers in Ethiopia; the Amhara, a group of Ethiopian farmers; and the Nama, a group of hunter-gatherers in South Africa.

The researchers compared these Africans’ DNA with the genome of a person from Britain. They also looked at the genome of a 50,000-year-old Neanderthal found in Croatia. Previous research had found that modern humans and Neanderthals shared a common ancestor that lived 600,000 years ago. Neanderthals expanded across Europe and Asia, interbred with modern humans coming out of Africa, and then became extinct about 40,000 years ago.

The researchers concluded that as far back as a million years ago, the ancestors of our species existed in two distinct populations. Dr. Henn and her colleagues call them Stem1 and Stem2.

About 600,000 years ago, a small group of humans budded off from Stem1 and went on to become the Neanderthals. But Stem1 endured in Africa for hundreds of thousands of years after that, as did Stem2.

If Stem1 and Stem2 had been entirely separate from each other, they would have accumulated a large number of distinct mutations in their DNA. Instead, Dr. Henn and her colleagues found that they had remained only moderately different — about as distinct as living Europeans and West Africans are today. The scientists concluded that people had moved between Stem1 and Stem2, pairing off to have children and mixing their DNA.

The model does not reveal where the Stem1 and Stem2 people lived in Africa. And it’s possible that bands of these two groups moved around a lot over the vast stretches of time during which they existed on the continent. About 120,000 years ago, the model indicates, African history changed dramatically.”

This study changes a long held belief about human evolution!

Below is the entire article.

Tony

——————————————————————

The New York Times

Study Offers Twist in How the First Humans Evolved

By Carl Zimmer

Published May 17, 2023. Updated May 24, 2023

Scientists have revealed a surprisingly complex origin of our species, rejecting the long-held argument that modern humans arose from one place in Africa during one period in time.

By analyzing the genomes of 290 living people, researchers concluded that modern humans descended from at least two populations that coexisted in Africa for a million years before merging in several independent events across the continent. The findings were published on Wednesday in Nature.

“There is no single birthplace,” said Eleanor Scerri, an evolutionary archaeologist at the Max Planck Institute for Geoarchaeology in Jena, Germany, who was not involved in the new study. “It really puts a nail in the coffin of that idea.”

Paleoanthropologists and geneticists have found evidence pointing to Africa as the origin of our species. The oldest fossils that may belong to modern humans, dating back as far as 300,000 years, have been unearthed there. So were the oldest stone tools used by our ancestors.

Human DNA also points to Africa. Living Africans have a vast amount of genetic diversity compared with other people. That’s because humans lived and evolved in Africa for thousands of generations before small groups — with comparatively small gene pools — began expanding to other continents.

Within the vast expanse of Africa, researchers have proposed various places as the birthplace of our species. Early humanlike fossils in Ethiopia led some researchers to look to East Africa. But some living groups of people in South Africa appeared to be very distantly related to other Africans, suggesting that humans might have a deep history there instead.

Brenna Henn, a geneticist at the University of California, Davis, and her colleagues developed software to run large-scale simulations of human history. The researchers created many scenarios of different populations existing in Africa over different periods of time and then observed which ones could produce the diversity of DNA found in people alive today.

“We could ask what types of models are really plausible for the African continent,” Dr. Henn said.

The researchers analyzed DNA from a range of African groups, including the Mende, farmers who live in Sierra Leone in West Africa; the Gumuz, a group descended from hunter-gatherers in Ethiopia; the Amhara, a group of Ethiopian farmers; and the Nama, a group of hunter-gatherers in South Africa.

The researchers compared these Africans’ DNA with the genome of a person from Britain. They also looked at the genome of a 50,000-year-old Neanderthal found in Croatia. Previous research had found that modern humans and Neanderthals shared a common ancestor that lived 600,000 years ago. Neanderthals expanded across Europe and Asia, interbred with modern humans coming out of Africa, and then became extinct about 40,000 years ago.

The researchers concluded that as far back as a million years ago, the ancestors of our species existed in two distinct populations. Dr. Henn and her colleagues call them Stem1 and Stem2.

About 600,000 years ago, a small group of humans budded off from Stem1 and went on to become the Neanderthals. But Stem1 endured in Africa for hundreds of thousands of years after that, as did Stem2.

If Stem1 and Stem2 had been entirely separate from each other, they would have accumulated a large number of distinct mutations in their DNA. Instead, Dr. Henn and her colleagues found that they had remained only moderately different — about as distinct as living Europeans and West Africans are today. The scientists concluded that people had moved between Stem1 and Stem2, pairing off to have children and mixing their DNA.

The model does not reveal where the Stem1 and Stem2 people lived in Africa. And it’s possible that bands of these two groups moved around a lot over the vast stretches of time during which they existed on the continent. About 120,000 years ago, the model indicates, African history changed dramatically.

In southern Africa, people from Stem1 and Stem2 merged, giving rise to a new lineage that would lead to the Nama and other living humans in that region. Elsewhere in Africa, a separate fusion of Stem1 and Stem2 groups took place. That merger produced a lineage that would give rise to living people in West Africa and East Africa, as well as the people who expanded out of Africa.

It’s possible that climate upheavals forced Stem1 and Stem2 people into the same regions, leading them to merge into single groups. Some bands of hunter-gatherers may have had to retreat from the coast as sea levels rose, for example. Some regions of Africa became arid, potentially sending people in search of new homes.

Even after these mergers 120,000 years ago, people with solely Stem1 or solely Stem2 ancestry appear to have survived. The DNA of the Mende people showed that their ancestors had interbred with Stem2 people just 25,000 years ago. “It does suggest to me that Stem2 was somewhere around West Africa,” Dr. Henn said.

She and her colleagues are now adding more genomes from people in other parts of Africa to see if they affect the models.

It’s possible they will discover other populations that endured in Africa for hundreds of thousands of years, ultimately helping produce our species as we know it today.

Dr. Scerri speculated that living in a network of mingling populations across Africa might have allowed modern humans to survive while Neanderthals became extinct. In that arrangement, our ancestors could hold onto more genetic diversity, which in turn might have helped them endure shifts in the climate, or even evolve new adaptations.

“This diversity at the root of our species may have been ultimately the key to our success,” Dr. Scerri said.

Dear Commons Community,

Elon Musk’s brain implant company Neuralink announced it has gotten permission from U.S. regulators to begin testing its device in people.

The company made the announcement on Twitter on Thursday evening but has provided no details about a potential study.  As reported in the Associated Press.

Officials with the Food and Drug Administration wouldn’t confirm or deny whether the agency granted the approval, but press officer Carly Kempler said in an email that the FDA “acknowledges and understands” that Musk’s company made the announcement.

Neuralink is one of many groups working on linking the nervous system to computers, efforts aimed at helping treat brain disorders, overcoming brain injuries and other applications.

Earlier this week, for example, researchers in Switzerland published research in the journal Nature describing an implant that restores communication between the brain and spinal cord to help a man with paralysis to stand and walk naturally. There are more than 30 brain or spine computer interface trials underway, according to clinicaltrials.gov.

Musk – who also owns Twitter and is the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX – said last December that his team was in the process of asking regulators to allow them to test the Neuralink device.

The device is about the size of a large coin and is designed to be implanted in the skull, with ultra-thin wires going directly into the brain. Musk has said the first two applications in people would be to attempt to restore vision and try to help people with little or no ability to operate their muscles rapidly use digital devices. He also said he envisions that signals from the brain could be bridged to Neuralink devices in the spinal cord for someone with a broken neck.

After Musk made a presentation late last year about the device, Rajesh Rao, co-director of the Center for Neurotechnology at the University of Washington, said he doesn’t think Neuralink is ahead of other teams in terms of brain-computer interface achievements but is “quite ahead” in terms of the hardware in the devices.

It’s unclear how well this device or similar interfaces will ultimately work, or how safe they might be. Neuralink’s interface is considered an “investigational device” at this point, and clinical trials are designed to collect data on safety and effectiveness.

In its tweet this week, Neuralink said that it’s not yet recruiting participants for the study and will provide more information soon.

This announcement reminds me of Dr. Christiaan Barnard in 1967 when he performed the first heart transplant on Louis Washansky.  Much of our technological future will be based on the integration of man-machine interfaces as described in the Neuralink announcement.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

My colleague, Bob Ubell, had a column on Thursday published in EdSurge, entitled,  “Why Colleges Should Pay Attention to Strikes by Their Most Precarious Teachers?”   He reviews the growing activism of contingent faculty (adjuncts, graduate assistants, contract teachers) in organized labor and unions.  His main point is that their demands for higher pay and employee benefits comparable to full-time faculty are justified and needed “to improve their scandalous conditions.”   

Amen!  

Below is an excerpt.

Tony

———————————————————————————————————————

“Why are so many adjuncts mobilizing now? Adjuncts’ already precarious situation has worsened in the wake of the pandemic and continuing inflation. So adjunct and other faculty unions have ramped up demands for economic justice.

Of course, not all part-time faculty are in the same fix. Some are professionals who work full-time in industry, and who teach in fulfilling side hustles, as I did several years ago at The New School.

But a recent survey of contingent faculty reveals the more uncertain situation most adjuncts find themselves in. A third of respondents earn less than $25,000 a year, falling below federal poverty guidelines for a family of four. Fewer than half receive university-provided health insurance, with nearly 20 percent on Medicaid.

These alarming economic facts for most in adjunct life are in addition to their day-to-day struggles. Without job security, many don’t know if they will be teaching as late as a month before class starts. Most are not compensated for academic work performed outside their classroom. Few are given funds for professional development, administrative support or even an office.

In a stinging irony, many tenured faculty teach courses on equity and social justice, where students learn about oppression engendered by privilege. Yet just down the hall, someone else with the same level of education is teaching a similar course for vastly less pay and with little or no benefits.

It’s part of a growing inequality in our society, as Kim Tolley and Kristen Edwards point out in their book “Professors in the Gig Economy,” noting that “many employment sectors are divided between a large precariat and a small, highly paid elite.”

But it doesn’t have to be that way. It’s inspiring to see that adjuncts are increasingly joining picket lines to improve their scandalous conditions.”

Stewart Rhodes

Dear Commons Community,

Oath Keepers extremist group founder Stewart Rhodes was sentenced yesterday to 18 years in prison for orchestrating a plot that culminated in his followers attacking the U.S. Capitol in a bid to keep President Joe Biden out of the White House after winning the 2020 election.

Rhodes, 58, is the first person charged in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack to be sentenced for seditious conspiracy, and his sentence is the longest handed down so far in the hundreds of Capitol riot cases.

It’s another milestone for the Justice Department’s sprawling Jan. 6 investigation, which has led to seditious conspiracy convictions against the top leaders of two far-right extremist groups authorities say came to Washington prepared to fight to keep President Donald Trump in power at all costs.  As reported by the Associated Press.

In a first for an insurrection case, the judge agreed to apply enhancement penalties for “terrorism.” That decision could foreshadow lengthy sentences down the road for other far-right extremists, including former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, who have also been convicted of the rarely used charge.

Before announcing Rhodes’ sentence, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta described a defiant Rhodes as a continued threat the United States who clearly “wants democracy in this country to devolve into violence.” Mehta expressed fear that what happened on Jan. 6 could be repeated, saying Americans will “now hold our collective breaths every time an election is approaching.”

“The moment you are released, whenever that may be, you will be ready to take up arms against your government,” Mehta told Rhodes.

Rhodes did not use the chance to express remorse or appeal for leniency, but instead claimed to be a “political prisoner,” criticized prosecutors and the Biden administration and tried to play down his actions on Jan. 6.

“I’m a political prisoner and like President Trump my only crime is opposing those who are destroying our country,” Rhodes told Mehta.

It was one of the most consequential cases brought by the government, which has sought to prove that the riot by right-wing extremists such as the Oath Keepers was not a spur-of-the-moment protest but the culmination of weeks of plotting to overturn Biden’s victory.

Prosecutors had urged 25 years for Rhodes. They said he was the architect of a plot to forcibly disrupt the transfer of presidential power that included “quick reaction force” teams at a Virginia hotel to ferry weapons into the nation’s capital if they were needed. The weapons were never deployed.

The judge agreed to the department’s request for the “terrorism enhancement” under the argument that the Oath Keepers sought to influence the government through “intimidation or coercion.” Judges had previously rejected such requests in Jan. 6 cases, but Rhodes’ was unlike any others so far that have reached sentencing.

Prosecutors argued that a lengthy sentence was necessary to deter future political violence.

Another Oath Keeper convicted of seditious conspiracy alongside Rhodes — Florida chapter leader Kelly Meggs — was also sentenced yesterday to 12 years behind bars.

Meggs said he was sorry he was involved in the riot that left a “black eye on the country,” but maintained that he never planned to go into the Capitol.

The judge found Meggs doesn’t present an ongoing threat to the country the way Rhodes does, but told him “violence cannot be resorted to just because you disagree with who got elected.”

Rhodes should have received 25 years but we will take the 18!

Tony

Tina Turner performs at Madison Square Garden.  (AP Photo/Ray Stubblebine, File)

Dear Commons Community,

For those of us growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, Tina Turner was the most dynamic female performer of the rock era.  She mesmerized audiences with her singing, dancing and staging of songs like Proud Mary.  Later, hits such as What’s Love Got to Do with It and We Don’t Need Another Hero cemented her as an entertainment icon.  She died yesterday at the age of 83.  Below is an obituary, courtesy of the Associated Press. She was “Simply the Best”!

Tony

——————————————————————————

Tina Turner, ‘Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll’ whose triumphant career made her world-famous, dies at 83

By Hillel Italie

Tina Turner, the unstoppable singer and stage performer who teamed with husband Ike Turner for a dynamic run of hit records and live shows in the 1960s and ’70s and survived her horrifying marriage to triumph in middle age with the chart-topping “What’s Love Got to Do With It,” has died at 83.

Turner died Wednesday, after a long illness in her home in Küsnacht near Zurich, according to her manager. She became a Swiss citizen a decade ago.

Few stars traveled so far — she was born Anna Mae Bullock in a segregated Tennessee hospital and spent her latter years on a 260,000 square foot estate on Lake Zurich — and overcame so much. Physically battered, emotionally devastated and financially ruined by her 20-year relationship with Ike Turner, she became a superstar on her own in her 40s, at a time when most of her peers were on their way down, and remained a top concert draw for years after.

“How do we say farewell to a woman who owned her pain and trauma and used it as a means to help change the world?” Angela Bassett, who played Turner in the 1993 biopic “What’s Love Got to Do With It,” said in a statement.

“Through her courage in telling her story, her commitment to stay the course in her life, no matter the sacrifice, and her determination to carve out a space in rock and roll for herself and for others who look like her, Tina Turner showed others who lived in fear what a beautiful future filled with love, compassion, and freedom should look like.

With admirers ranging from Mick Jagger to Beyoncé to Mariah Carey, the “Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll” was one of the world’s most popular entertainers, known for a core of pop, rock and rhythm and blues favorites: “Proud Mary,” “Nutbush City Limits,” “River Deep, Mountain High,” and the hits she had in the ’80s, among them “What’s Love Got to Do with It,” “We Don’t Need Another Hero” and a cover of Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together.”

Her trademarks included a growling contralto that might smolder or explode, her bold smile and strong cheekbones, her palette of wigs and the muscular, quick-stepping legs she did not shy from showing off. She sold more than 150 million records worldwide, won 12 Grammys, was voted along with Ike into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1991 (and on her own in 2021 ) and was honored at the Kennedy Center in 2005, with Beyoncé and Oprah Winfrey among those praising her. Her life became the basis for a film, a Broadway musical and an HBO documentary in 2021 that she called her public farewell.

Until she left her husband and revealed their back story, she was known as the voracious on-stage foil of the steady-going Ike, the leading lady of the “Ike and Tina Turner Revue.” Ike was billed first and ran the show, choosing the material, the arrangements, the backing singers. They toured constantly for years, in part because Ike was often short on money and unwilling to miss a concert. Tina Turner was forced to go on with bronchitis, with pneumonia, with a collapsed right lung.

Other times, the cause of her misfortunes was Ike himself.

As she recounted in her memoir, “I, Tina,” Ike began hitting her not long after they met, in the mid-1950s, and only grew more vicious. Provoked by anything and anyone, he would throw hot coffee in her face, choke her, or beat her until her eyes were swollen shut, then rape her. Before one show, he broke her jaw and she went on stage with her mouth full of blood.

Terrified both of being with Ike and of lasting without him, she credited her emerging Buddhist faith in the mid-1970s with giving her a sense of strength and self-worth and she finally left in early July 1976. The Ike and Tina Turner Revue was scheduled to open a tour marking the country’s bicentennial when Tina snuck out of their Dallas hotel room, with just a Mobil credit card and 36 cents, while Ike slept. She hurried across a nearby highway, narrowly avoiding a speeding truck, and found another hotel.

Tina Turner performs at New York’s Madison Square Garden on Aug. 1, 1985. (AP Photo/Ray Stubblebine, File)

“I looked at him (Ike) and thought, ‘You just beat me for the last time, you sucker,’” she recalled in her memoir.

Turner was among the first celebrities to speak candidly about domestic abuse, becoming a heroine to battered women and a symbol of resilience to all. Ike Turner did not deny mistreating her, although he tried to blame Tina for their troubles. When he died, in 2007, a representative for his ex-wife said simply: “Tina is aware that Ike passed away.”

Ike and Tina fans knew little of this during the couple’s prime. The Turners were a hot act for much of the 1960s and into the ’70s, evolving from bluesy ballads such as “A Fool in Love” and “It’s Going to Work Out Fine” to flashy covers of “Proud Mary” and “Come Together” and other rock songs that brought them crossover success.

They opened for the Rolling Stones in 1966 and 1969, and were seen performing a lustful version of Otis Redding’s “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long” in the 1970 Stones documentary “Gimme Shelter.” Bassett and Laurence Fishburne gave Oscar-nominated performances in “What’s Love Got to Do with It,” based on “I, Tina,” but she would say that reliving her years with Ike was so painful she couldn’t bring herself to watch the movie.

Ike and Tina’s reworking of “Proud Mary,” originally a tight, mid-tempo hit for Creedence Clearwater Revival, helped define their sexual aura. Against a background of funky guitar and Ike’s crooning baritone, Tina began with a few spoken words about how some people wanted to hear songs that were “nice and easy.”

“But there’s this one thing,” she warned, “you see, we never ever do nothing nice and easy.

“We always do it nice — and rough.”

But by the end of the 1970s, Turner’s career seemed finished. She was 40 years old, her first solo album had flopped and her live shows were mostly confined to the cabaret circuit. Desperate for work, and money, she even agreed to tour in South Africa when the country was widely boycotted because of its racist apartheid regime.

Rock stars helped bring her back. Rod Stewart convinced her to sing “Hot Legs” with him on “Saturday Night Live” and Jagger, who had openly borrowed some of Turner’s on-stage moves, sang “Honky Tonk Women” with her during the Stones’ 1981-82 tour. At a listening party for his 1983 album “Let’s Dance,” David Bowie told guests that Turner was his favorite singer.

“She was inspiring, warm, funny and generous,” Jagger tweeted Wednesday. “She helped me so much when I was young and I will never forget her.”

More popular in England at the time than in the U.S., she recorded a raspy version of “Let’s Stay Together” at EMI’s Abbey Road studios in London. By the end of 1983, “Let’s Stay Together” was a hit throughout Europe and on the verge of breaking in the states. An A&R man at Capitol Records, John Carter, urged the label to sign her up and make an album. Among the material presented was a reflective pop-reggae ballad co-written by Terry Britten and Graham Lyle and initially dismissed by Tina as “wimpy.”

“I just thought it was some old pop song, and I didn’t like it,” she later said of “What’s Love Got To Do With It.”

Turner’s “Private Dancer” album came out in May 1984, sold more than eight million copies and featured several hit singles, including the title song and “Better Be Good To Me.” It won four Grammys, among them record of the year for “What’s Love Got to Do With It,” the song that came to define the clear-eyed image of her post-Ike years.

“People look at me now and think what a hot life I must have lived — ha!” she wrote in her memoir.

Even with Ike, it was hard to mistake her for a romantic. Her voice was never “pretty,” and love songs were never her specialty, in part because she had little experience to draw from. She was born in Nutbush, Tennessee in 1939 and would say she received “no love” from either her mother or father. After her parents separated, she moved often around Tennessee and Missouri, living with various relatives. She was outgoing, loved to sing and as a teenager would check out the blues clubs in St. Louis, where one of the top draws was Ike Turner and his Kings of Rhythm. Tina didn’t care much for his looks the first time she saw him, at the Club Manhattan.

“Then he got up onstage and picked up his guitar,” she wrote in her memoir. “He hit one note, and I thought, ‘Jesus, listen to this guy play.’”

Tina soon made her move. During intermission at an Ike Turner show at the nearby Club D’Lisa, Ike was alone on stage, playing a blues melody on the keyboards. Tina recognized the song, B.B. King’s “You Know I Love You,” grabbed a microphone and sang along. As Tina remembered, a stunned Ike called out “Giirrlll!!” and demanded to know what else she could perform. Over her mother’s objections, she agreed to join his group. He changed her first name to Tina, inspired by the comic book heroine Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, and changed her last name by marrying her, in 1962.

In rare moments of leniency from Ike, Tina did enjoy success on her own. She added a roaring lead vocal to Phil Spector’s titanic production of “River Deep, Mountain High,” a flop in the U.S. when released in 1966, but a hit overseas and eventually a standard. She was also featured as the Acid Queen in the 1975 film version of the Who’s rock opera “Tommy.” More recent film work included “Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome” and a cameo in “What’s Love Got to Do with It.”

Turner had two sons: Craig, with saxophonist Raymond Hill; and Ronald, with Ike Turner. (Craig Turner was found dead in 2018 of an apparent suicide). In a memoir published later in 2018, “Tina Turner: My Love Story,” she revealed that she had received a kidney transplant from her second husband, former EMI record executive Erwin Bach.

Turner’s life seemed an argument against marriage, but her life with Bach was a love story the younger Tina would not have believed possible. They met in the mid-1980s, when she flew to Germany for record promotion and he picked her up at the airport. He was more than a decade younger than her — “the prettiest face,” she said of him in the HBO documentary — and the attraction was mutual. She wed Bach in 2013, exchanging vows at a civil ceremony in Switzerland.

“It’s that happiness that people talk about,” Turner told the press at the time, “when you wish for nothing, when you can finally take a deep breath and say, ‘Everything is good.’”

Dear Commons Community,

The AAUP issued a preliminary report reviewing recent political attacks on the colleges and universities in the state of Florida.  It concluded that academic freedom, tenure, and shared governance in Florida’s public colleges and universities currently face an assault unparalleled in US history. Below is a brief summary and access to the report as shared by Afshan Jafar and Hank Reichman, Cochairs of the AAUP Special Report Committee.

Tony

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Dear Anthony,

Earlier this year, the AAUP invited us to chair a special committee established to review the apparent pattern of politically, racially, and ideologically motivated attacks on public higher education in Florida. Today, after interviewing dozens of faculty members at multiple public colleges and universities in the state, the committee has released a preliminary report concluding that academic freedom, tenure, and shared governance in Florida’s public colleges and universities currently face a politically and ideologically driven assault unparalleled in US history. If sustained, this onslaught threatens the very survival of meaningful higher education in the state, with dire implications for the entire country.

See the full report.

The report includes four main findings:

• The Florida governor and state legislature are using their swift, aggressive, and ongoing “hostile takeover” of New College of Florida as a test case for future encroachments on public colleges and universities across the country. This “takeover” has proceeded through Governor DeSantis’s appointment of a slate of six highly partisan trustees, five of whom live outside the state and are publicly known as right-wing activists, to New College’s board of trustees. Their goals are to transform New College into a flagship right-wing institution by restructuring the administration and academic departments, developing a “new core curriculum,” and eliminating all diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.
• Academic administrators throughout Florida’s public university and college systems, from the highest to the lowest levels not only have failed to contest these attacks but have too frequently been complicit in and, in some cases, explicitly supported them. While some individuals are leaving as a matter of conscience, those who remain face the prospect of serving as pawns in DeSantis’s corrupt patronage system.
• The Florida legislature has passed a series of bills that, taken collectively, constitute a systematic effort to dictate and enforce conformity with a narrow and reactionary political and ideological agenda throughout the state’s higher education system. These efforts grievously undermine basic and long-standing principles of academic freedom, tenure, and shared governance. A key component of this agenda has been an effort to destroy college and university programs that serve minority communities and to banish from classrooms ideas and information about race, gender, and sexual identity that fail to conform to the prejudices of politicians.
• Although several pieces of legislation proposed by the DeSantis administration have been stalled by legal challenges, the resulting self-censorship and fear are damaging the quality of public higher education in the state and are now spilling over into private institutions in Florida.

The committee is continuing its work, interviewing faculty members and others, as events in Florida continue to unfold. This preliminary report will be followed by a more comprehensive final report, expected by fall.

Afshan Jafar and Hank Reichman
Cochairs, AAUP Special Committee