"James Earl Jones, a stuttering farm child who became a voice of rolling thunder as one of America’s most versatile actors..."

"... in a stage, film and television career that plumbed race relations, Shakespeare’s rhapsodic tragedies and the faceless menace of Darth Vader, died on Monday at his home in Dutchess County, N.Y. He was 93.... From destitute days working in a diner and living in a $19-a-month cold-water flat, Mr. Jones climbed to Broadway and Hollywood stardom with talent, drive and remarkable vocal cords. He was abandoned as a child by his parents, raised by a racist grandmother and mute for years in his stutterer’s shame, but he learned to speak again with a herculean will.... Some theatergoers, aware of Mr. Jones’s childhood affliction, discerned occasional subtle hesitations in his delivery of lines. The pauses were deliberate, he said, a technique of self-restraint learned by stutterers to control involuntary repetitions. Far from detracting from his lucidity, the pauses usually added force to an emotional moment.... 'Because of my muteness,' he said in... a 1993 memoir... 'I approached language in a different way from most actors. I came at language standing on my head, turning words inside out in search of meaning, making a mess of it sometimes, but seeing truth from a very different viewpoint.'"

From "James Earl Jones, Actor Whose Voice Could Menace or Melt, Dies at 93/He gave life to characters like Darth Vader in 'Star Wars' and Mufasa in 'The Lion King,' and went on to collect Tonys, Golden Globes, Emmys and an honorary Oscar" (NYT).

"After Ms. Holmes was convicted, Rupert Murdoch, who invested $125 million in Theranos..."

"... emailed The Wall Street Journal, a newspaper he owns, calling himself 'one of a bunch of old men taken in by a seemingly great young woman! Total embarrassment.' I am not a smarter or more astute observer of human behavior than Mr. Murdoch or George Shultz, the former secretary of state who helped end the Cold War, or James Mattis, the retired four-star Marine Corps general and former defense secretary, both of whom were Theranos board members and investors. So, how could I be sure that 'Liz' wasn’t another character that Ms. Holmes had created?"

Writes by Amy Chozick, in "Liz Holmes Wants You to Forget About Elizabeth/The black turtlenecks are gone. So is the voice. As the convicted Theranos founder awaits prison, she has adopted a new persona: devoted mother" (NYT).

"I was admittedly swept up in Liz as an authentic and sympathetic person. She’s gentle and charismatic, in a quiet way. My editor laughed at me when I shared these impressions, telling me (and I quote), 'Amy Chozick, you got rolled!' I vigorously disagreed! You don’t know her like I do! But... something... had been gnawing on me since I first met Ms. Holmes. How do you have an honest conversation with a person whose fraud trial has played out so publicly? I tried to ask Ms. Holmes this directly. How do I believe you when you’ve been convicted of (basically) lying? But how could I ask someone who was nursing her 11-day-old baby on a white sofa two feet away if she was actually conning me?"

Go to the link to read the long article and try to figure out how much of what Holmes wanted Holmes got from the NYT. 

"Some listeners will buy whatever he narrates, which might help explain why a collection of Albert Camus essays from the mid-20th century suddenly..."

"... found itself on the audiobook best-seller list last year. When the publisher Recorded Books needed someone to narrate all five volumes of Robert Alter’s new, acclaimed translation of the Hebrew Bible, Ballerini was chosen to read it.... After years spent giving voice to novelists ranging from Dean Koontz to Ha Jin, Ballerini was now also the voice of God.... At 50, Edoardo Ballerini enjoys a particular kind of stardom.... Reading and recording for hours was harder than he expected. Sound booths are small and airless; before too long, a reader’s throat grows parched, and the need to swallow becomes increasingly hard to ignore. 'I used to have to go home and pass out,' Ballerini told me, recalling his first foray. 'It’s exhausting. The best comparison I can think of is to long-distance running. It’s easy to say you just put one foot in front of the other for a long time. You actually do it, it’s difficult.'... Ballerini recognizes the responsibility involved in interpreting others’ words, so much so that he almost declined to narrate Alter’s translation of the Bible... He had made it clear to the producers that if he took on the project, he would not orate it, James Earl Jones-style; nor would character sketches drive his performance. His goal was simply to read it with the natural incantation of storytelling, as best he could, even when just listing dozens of multisyllabic biblical names. His one predetermined decision was that he would slow down when he read as God. 'I’m God,' he said. 'I’m not in any hurry — no one’s going anywhere when I speak.' He would avoid theological interpretation, and yet even a wholly neutral delivery would be a choice of consequence...."

From "The Voice of God. (And Knausgaard, Whitman, Machiavelli … )" (NYT).

I bought the Bible audiobook at Amazon — here.

"My Favorite Word."

This is a charming, engaging website where people contribute their favorite words. It's nice to read the choices people have made and to think about what it is that makes a word your favorite -- some combination of meaning or sound or some personal connection to the word (like, the way your husband laughed when you called the garden hose a "hosepipe"). And here's the Metafilter discussion, with lots of comments, including one that links to what might be the greatest Dave Letterman list: Top Ten Words That Sound Great When Spoken By James Earl Jones. Oh, I guess I should pick a favorite word. I'll go with "squeeze."