David Attenborough is a marvel at what he does. His career spans over decades and he is a celebrated wildlife film maker. David Attenborough has received over 30 awards in his career. He has had over 15 newly discovered species and fossils named after him.

When asked about retirement in 2013 after having a pacemaker inserted into his heart, he was quoted as saying,

“If I was earning my money by hewing coal I would be very glad indeed to stop. But I’m not. I’m swanning round the world looking at the most fabulously interesting things. Such good fortune.”

source: goodthingsguy.com

The lyrics of the song:

I see trees of green, red roses too

I see them bloom for me and you

And I think to myself what a wonderful world.

I see skies of blue and clouds of white

The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night

And I think to myself what a wonderful world.

The colours of the rainbow so pretty in the sky

Are also on the faces of people going by

I see friends shaking hands saying how do you do

But they’re really saying I love you.

I hear baby’s cry, and I watch them grow

They’ll learn much more than I’ll ever know

And I think to myself what a wonderful world.

Yes, I think to myself what a wonderful world. 

Jay-Z is the king
And I’m prolly his biggest fan
But there is a feeling inside that I’m sure he’d understand
That I’m in love with B and I wanna be her man

He wears his hat down over his eyes
And he is smooching her with those lips, I just know it
And he is driving her around in his Maybach late at night

Don’t you know I want Jay-Z’s girl?
I wish I had Jay-Z’s girl
Why can’t I find a woman like that?

He’s got all the cash
All I got is a pocket full of ones
But I’m watching the game, soaking it up like a sponge
Yeah she is cute but it just won’t be the same with Solange

He wears his hat down over his eyes
And he is smooching her with those lips, I just know it
And he is driving her around in his Maybach late at night

Don’t you know I want Jay-Z’s girl?
I wish I had Jay-Z’s girl
Tell me, why can’t I find a woman like that?

I want Jay-Z’s girl
I wish I had Jay-Z’s girl
Tell me, why can’t I find a woman?
Why can’t I find a woman like that?

It’s just a dream in the middle of the night
I know that it will never be
But I need a queen in my life
And it starts with the letter B

Tell me, why can’t I find a woman like that

Don’t you know I want Jay-Z’s girl?
I wish I had Jay-Z’s girl
I wish I had Jay-Z’s girl
Why can’t I find a woman like that?
Jay-Z’s girl
I wish I had Jay-Z’s girl
I wish I had Jay-Z’s girl

Nobel Prize permanent secretary Sara Danius said:  “He is a great poet in the English tradition.”

Dylan is the first American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature since author Toni Morrison in 1993.

Speaking after the announcement, Danius compared Dylan to the Ancient Greek poets: “Homer and Sappho – they wrote poetic texts that were meant to be performed with instruments…. it’s the same with Bob Dylan,” she said.

Best known for his early hits such as Blowin’ in the Wind and Like a Rolling Stone, Dylan was a key member of the 1960s alternative folk movement, though he shocked his contemporaries by being one of the first folk musicans to “go electric” in 1965.

Sara Danius added that he was “a great sampler … and for 54 years he has been at it, reinventing himself.”

The 75-year-old American songwriter follows writers including Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter and Alice Munro in receiving the prestigious award. Dylan has previously won 11 Grammy Awards, and an Oscar for his song Things Have Changed, used in the 2000 film Wonder Boys.

Though best known for his extensive career as a singer-songwriter, and his role as a pivotal figure in 1960s counter-culture, Dylan has also written a collection of experimental prose poetry, 1971’s Tarantula.

Bob Dylan is the first musician to win the award, and his selection is perhaps the most radical choice in a history stretching back to 1901. In choosing a popular musician for the literary world’s highest honor, the Swedish Academy, which awards the prize, dramatically redefined the boundaries of literature, setting off a debate about whether song lyrics have the same artistic value as poetry or novels.

Some prominent writers celebrated Mr. Dylan’s literary achievements, including Stephen King, Joyce Carol Oates and Salman Rushdie, who called Mr. Dylan “the brilliant inheritor of the bardic tradition,” adding, “Great choice.”

But others called the academy’s decision misguided and questioned whether song writing, however brilliant, rises to the level of literature.

Bob Dylan has often sprinkled literary allusions into his music and cited the influence of poetry on his lyrics, and has referenced Arthur Rimbaud, Paul Verlaine and Ezra Pound.

Literary scholars have long debated whether Dylan’s lyrics can stand on their own as poetry, and an astonishing volume of academic work has been devoted to parsing his music. The Oxford Book of American Poetry included his song “Desolation Row,” in its 2006 edition, and Cambridge University Press released “The Cambridge Companion to Bob Dylan” in 2009, further cementing his reputation as a brilliant literary stylist.

In giving the literature prize to Bob Dylan, the Academy may also be recognizing that the gap has closed between high art and more commercial creative forms.

“It’s literature, but it’s music, it’s performance, it’s art, it’s also highly commercial,” said David Hajdu, a music critic for The Nation who has written extensively about Bob Dylan and his contemporaries. “The old categories of high and low art, they’ve been collapsing for a long time, but this is it being made official.”

It’s not the first time the Academy has stretched the definition of literature. In 1953, Winston Churchill received the prize, in part as recognition of the literary qualities of his soaring political speeches and “brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values,” according to the Academy. And many were surprised last year, when the prize went to the Belarussian journalist Svetlana Alexievich, whose deeply reported narratives draw on oral history.

Bob Dylan, whose original name is Robert Allen Zimmerman, was born on May 24, 1941, in Duluth, Minn. He emerged on the New York music scene in 1961 as an artist singing protest songs and strumming an acoustic guitar in clubs and cafes in Greenwich Village. But from the start he stood out for dazzling lyrics and an oblique song writing style that made him a source of fascination for artists and critics. In 1963, the folk group Peter, Paul and Mary reached No. 2 on the Billboard pop chart with a version of “Blowin’ in the Wind,” whose ambiguous refrains evoked Ecclesiastes.

Within a few years Bob Dylan was confounding the very notion of folk music, with ever more complex songs and moves toward a more rock ’n’ roll sound.

After reports of a motorcycle accident in 1966 near his home in Woodstock, N.Y., he withdrew further from public life but remained intensely fertile as a songwriter. His voluminous archives, showing his working process through thousands of pages of song writing drafts, were acquired this year by institutions in Tulsa, Okla.

source: The Telegraph

Can you match Bob Dylan’s lyrics with the title of his songs?

Key

1. e.

2. d.

3. b.

4. c.

5. a. 

But today’s your special day,

 It was my turn instead

So I got up at 5 a.m. I’ve-been working hard since then

Some things I didn’t get quite right, next year I’ll try again

Just for you I did my best to cut my own hair

Some places came out pretty good.

And some are kind of bare

I washed all your nicest clothes, but the washer wasn’t free

So I used the dishwasher

Pretty smart of me!

CHORUS:

Remember no one’s perfect.

Every kid has faults

Remember it’s the thought that counts, more than the results

My heart was in the right place even though I did it wrong

It was all to say on Mother’s Day my love for you is strong

I vacuumed really quietly I didn’t use the power

I cleaned your dirty iPad screen, I held it in the shower

I painted all the ceilings it was easy with the mop

Now the carpet’s painted too with cool rainbow drops!

I answered all your work e-mails with “Just leave me alone“

And we gave a prince from Scamdinavia a loan

I watered all the house plants with the garden hose

I forgot to turn it off sometimes that’s how it goes

CHORUS

Your car’s shiny inside and out with lots of olive oil

Who knew that oatmeal splatters up so high and far on boil

I tried to make you orange juice but I spilled it on the floor

I tried to fry you bacon we don’t have a stove no more

Since you can’t really cook this week I called the pizza place

I emptied out the fridge and freezer so there’s enough space

They should be here any time, two dozen pizza pies

I paid with your credit card, I hope that you’re surprised

CHORUS

Remember no one’s perfect.

Every kid has faults

Remember it’s the thought that counts, more than the results

My heart was in the right place even though I did it wrong

It was all to say on Mother’s Day my love for you is strong

My heart was in the right place even though I did it wrong

It was all to say on Mother’s Day my love for you is strong

My heart was in the right place even though I did it wrong

It was all to say on Mother’s Day my love for you is strong

It was all to say on Mother’s Day my love for you is strong

Although it’s the thought that counts, but quite a lot of things went wrong here. What should and shouldn’t the kid have done? Can you fill in the gaps in the sentences?

1. She shouldn’t have cut her …….. on her own.

2. She shouldn’t have washed the clothes in the ………. but she should have used the ……… instead.

3. She shouldn’t have held her mum’s iPad in the ……… .

4. She shouldn’t have painted the ……….. with a ….. .

5. She shouldn’t have answered her mum’s ……….. with ‘Just leave me alone’.

6. She shouldn’t have used …….. to clean the car.

7. She shouldn’t have ordered ……… pizza pies.

8. She shouldn’t have emptied neither the ……… nor the ……… .

Key

1. hair

2. dishwasher, washer

3. shower

4. ceiling, mop

5. work e-mails

6. olive oil

7. two dozen

8. fridge, freezer

Warm smell of colitas, rising up through the air

Up ahead in the distance, I saw a shimmering light

My head grew heavy and my sight grew dim

I had to stop for the night

There she stood in the doorway;

I heard the mission bell

And I was thinking to myself,

“This could be Heaven or this could be Hell“

Then she lit up a candle and she showed me the way

There were voices down the corridor,

I thought I heard them say…

Welcome to the Hotel California

Such a lovely place (Such a lovely place)

Such a lovely face

Plenty of room at the Hotel California

Any time of year (Any time of year)

You can find it here

Her mind is Tiffany-twisted, she got the Mercedes bends

She got a lot of pretty, pretty boys she calls friends

How they dance in the courtyard, sweet summer sweat.

Some dance to remember, some dance to forget

So I called up the Captain,

“Please bring me my wine”

He said, “We haven’t had that spirit here since nineteen sixty nine”

And still those voices are calling from far away,

Wake you up in the middle of the night

Just to hear them say…

Welcome to the Hotel California

Such a lovely place (Such a lovely place)

Such a lovely face

They livin’ it up at the Hotel California

What a nice surprise (what a nice surprise)

Bring your alibis

Mirrors on the ceiling,

The pink champagne on ice

And she said “We are all just prisoners here, of our own device“

And in the master’s chambers,

They gathered for the feast

They stab it with their steely knives,

But they just can’t kill the beast

Last thing I remember, I was

Running for the door

I had to find the passage back

To the place I was before

“Relax, ” said the night man,

“We are programmed to receive.

You can check-out any time you like,

But you can never leave! “

Do you remember the rhymes from the lyrics? Finish the pairs.

1. hair – …..

2. light – …..

3. bell – …..

4. way – …..

5. place – …..

6. year – ……

7. bends – …..

8. sweat – ……

9. wine – …..

10. away – …..

11. surprise – …..

12. ice – …..

13. feast – …..

14. door – …..

15. receive – …..

Key:

1. air

2. night

3. Hell

4. say

5. face

6. here

7. friends

8. forget

9. nine

10. say

11. alibis

12. device

13. beast

14. before

15. leave