Peace, Love, Meditation, and Men of The Year

I know this is a little late, but it's never too late to talk about Ringo Starr now is it?

New York based magazine, the Gentlemen's Quarterly, also known as GQ, is well known for their articles on men's style, culture, through various thoughts from food to fitness, movies to music, films to books, and much more. Amongst these articles are the annual GQ Men Of the Year Awards. Many celebrities such as Ozzy Osbourne, David Beckham, Keith Richards, even to Simon Cowell hold their place in GQ Men Of the Year Hall of Fame,  now as GQ nears their 17th annual release of the issue who better to feature on the cover along with the title of "Men of The Year" than Ringo Starr?

Starr recieving the Lifetime of Peace and Love award by Lynch

On Tuesday, 2 September, 2014, Starr along with many others gathered in London's Royal Opera House as guest by GQ, to accept their awards. During the ceremony Ringo was recognized for his effort and support towards the David Lynch Foundation, a non-profit organization to "fund the implemention of scientifically proven stress-reducing modalities" ( as stated on DavidLynchFoundation.org). The charity was started by David Lynch himself in 2005 calling it the David Lynch Foundation for Consciousness- Based Education and World Peace to help those "who suffer the living hell of post-traumatic stress disorder and women and girls who are victims of terrible violence." (-David Lynch, DavidLynchFoundation.org). The foundation reaches out to inner-city students, veterans with PTSD and their families, American Indians suffering with various diseases, the homeless who are trying to overcome various addictions, juveniles, anyone who needs help, by using a Transcendental Meditation program, said to be scientifically proven to reduce stress and have received much support from leading medical schools such as Harvard Medical School, Stanford Medical School, and Yale Medical School.  Ringo Starr, who himself had started mediation in 1967 with The Beatles (read all about it here), was awarded with the Lifetime of Peace and Love Award in L.A's El Rey Theater this past January,

"We want to generate the electricity of peace through music, and it's a thrill to know that the super-creative, enthusiastic musician of our world are with us to achieve this goal."- David Lynch, Rolling Stone Magazine, Andy Greene.

On accepting the award Ringo stated;

"I truly believe in the David Lynch Foundation. They started to bring meditation into inner-city schools and now it's a fact that those schools and neighborhoods violence has gone down. Meditation brings people back to being human again."

 Ringo is proudly displayed (thanks to John Varvatos) on the cover of GQ's autumn/winter 2014 campaign. Starr will be donating his profits to the David Lynch Foundation.

If you would like to help Ringo donate to the David Lynch Foundation, it's simple! For Ringo's 74th birthday (this past 7 July), he started a trend called "Peace Rocks" with John Varvatos, who created a Peace Rocks fall fashion collection to be featured in the autumn/winter 2014 GQ magazine. But how can you help?  Just tweet a picture via Twitter, of yourself flashing the peace symbol using the hashtag #PeaceRocks. By doing so Varvato's company will donate a dollar to every tweet sent to the Ringo Starr Peace & Love Fund supporting the David Lynch Foundation.

"It's amazing how this thing has grown from when I started seven years ago on the streets of New York, just asking people to say 'Peace and Love'."- Ringo Starr