Legacy Matters
In late 1995, dying of prostate cancer -- an illness he'd long lied about and hidden from voters -- Mitterrand decided to end his life by dining like a king. In centuries past, French monarchs were privileged to one very special delicacy: a small song bird called the ortolan, which was drowned in Armagnac, then flambéed and eaten whole. Since the bird is now endangered, it's strictly illegal to eat them in modern France -- but Mitterrand didn't wish to die in the modern France he had helped to make. So on New Year's Eve, he organized a select group of his friends and enjoyed a royal menu -- complete with lavish supplies of foie gras, 30 oysters for each diner, and ortolans. Each guest was allotted one of the birds, but according to The Independent (January 11, 1997):
After grabbing the last of 12 birds, the dying president disappeared for a second time behind the large, white napkin, which is ritually placed over the head of anyone about to indulge in the horrific act of eating a charred, but entire ortolan. "Those who had already been through the ordeal once, looked at each other in astonishment," wrote Mr. Benamou [a witness]. The table listened in embarrassment as the former president masticated the little bird to a paste behind the napkin, in the approved manner, before swallowing it. Then Mitterrand lay back in his chair, his face beaming in "ecstasy."
Mitterrand refused to eat after that. He suspended all treatment for his cancer and died just eight days later. He'd had his reward.
John Zmirak in Gluttons for Power
He survived D-Day and the Battle of the Bulge, won the Silver Star and was killed raking leaves.
Jules Crittenden has more on Philias Verrette in Never Know How You'll Go.
We’re all going, one way or another. It’s how you live that matters. A parting salute to a great American, who served his country bravely in war, worked hard to provide for his family in peace, and died, at the age of 87, cleaning up his yard. That sounds like a good life, despite its tragic end at this late age.
Condolences to his family.
Elegant was the word for Irving Penn, the fashion photographer who died at 92.
"He never stopped working," said Peter MacGill, a longtime friend whose Pace-MacGill Galleries in Manhattan represented Penn's work. "He would go back to similar subjects and never see them the same way twice."
Penn, who constantly explored the photographic medium and its boundaries, typically preferred to isolate his subjects – from fashion models to Aborigine tribesmen – from their natural settings to photograph them in a studio against a stark background. He believed the studio could most closely capture their true natures.
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"A beautiful print is a thing in itself, not just a halfway house on the way to the page," he once said. Accordingly, he spent countless hours in his studio creating prints with costly platinum salts – a process that had been mostly abandoned at the turn of the 20th century, but favoured by Penn because of its glowing results. (Most photographic prints use a solution of silver on the paper rather than platinum.)
Parting Glance: Irving Penn, a slideshow. My favorite is this portrait of Colette, the French novelist.
New York Times obituary by Andy Grundberg
Irving Penn, one of the 20th century’s most prolific and influential photographers of fashion and the famous, whose signature blend of classical elegance and cool minimalism was recognizable to magazine readers and museumgoers worldwide, died on Wednesday at his home in Manhattan.
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A courtly man whose gentle demeanor masked an intense perfectionism, Mr. Penn adopted the pose of a humble craftsman while helping to shape a field known for putting on airs. Schooled in painting and design, he chose to define himself as a photographer, scraping paint off his early canvases so they could serve a more useful life as backdrops to his pictures.
He was also a refined conversationalist and a devoted husband and friend. His marriage to Lisa Fonssagrives, a leading model, an artist and his sometime collaborator, lasted 42 years, until her death at the age of 80 in 1992. Mr. Penn’s photographs of Fonssagrives captured a slim woman of sophistication and radiant good health and set the aesthetic standard for the elegant fashion photography of the 1940s and ’50s.
Penn expressed himself and his subjects best through a Shaker-style restraint.
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Two decades later he expanded on these portraits during trips to Dahomey (now Benin), to Morocco, to New Guinea and elsewhere, using a portable studio to provide a textured but seamless background. The pictures, both in color and in black and white, were featured annually in Vogue. In 1974 they were published in “Worlds in a Small Room,” which seemed to emphasize the perseverance of cultural diversity. Mr. Penn was also capable of making Western culture seem strange and fascinating. In the early 1950s he made a series of portraits of tradesmen in Paris, London and New York. Again relying on his spare studio to separate his subjects from their surroundings, he nevertheless insisted that the tradesmen wear the clothes and tools of their work: pastry chefs in white aprons and toques hold rolling pins; a fishmonger carries a fish in one hand and a rag in the other.
When I worked at a law firm on Wall Street in the mid-seventies, I began to read Bill Safire's column and never stopped. He was the only one in what is now called the mainstream media that I read who offered a different way of looking at what was happening in politics and in the country.
New York Times
William Safire, a speechwriter for President Richard M. Nixon and a Pulitzer Prize-winning political columnist for The New York Times who also wrote novels, books on politics and a Malaprop’s treasury of articles on language, died at a hospice in Rockville, Md., on Sunday. He was 79.
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He was a college dropout and proud of it, a public relations go-getter who set up the famous Nixon-Khrushchev “kitchen debate” in Moscow, and a White House wordsmith in the tumultuous era of war in Vietnam, Nixon’s visit to China and the gathering storm of the Watergate scandal, which drove the president from office.
Then, from 1973 to 2005, Mr. Safire wrote his twice-weekly “Essay” for the Op-Ed page of The Times, a forceful conservative voice in the liberal chorus. Unlike most Washington columnists who offer judgments with Olympian detachment, Mr. Safire was a pugnacious contrarian who did much of his own reporting, called people liars in print and laced his opinions with outrageous wordplay.
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And from 1979 until earlier this month, he wrote “On Language,” a New York Times Magazine column that explored written and oral trends, plumbed the origins and meanings of words and phrases, and drew a devoted following, including a stable of correspondents he called his Lexicographic Irregulars.
The columns, many collected in books, made him an unofficial arbiter of usage and one of the most widely read writers on language. It also tapped into the lighter side of the dour-looking Mr. Safire: a Pickwickian quibbler who gleefully pounced on gaffes, inexactitudes, neologisms, misnomers, solecisms and perversely peccant puns, like “the president’s populism” and “the first lady’s momulism,” written during the Carter administration
Wall Street Journal
From 1973 to 2005, Bill Safire prowled American politics in twice-weekly columns that kept the political class honest and his readers entertained and informed. Usually he was tough competition for those of us at the Journal, but we also recall that he was there as an intellectual ally most of the time, and especially on foreign policy where he was a stalwart Cold Warrior and a friend of what used to be known as the "captive nations."
Unlike many columnists, Safire did not soar at 35,000 feet bemoaning what fools these mortals be. He did his own reporting, digging up stories and anecdotes that embarrassed politicians who deserved to be embarrassed. He was a master of his craft, a student of the English language who loved the playful use of words.
Boston Globe
His new colleagues in the Washington bureau of the Times also were suspicious, even a little hostile, said Martin Tolchin, a former colleague at the Times. “They all thought that if there was to be a new column in the Times, they should be the one to write it,’’ he recalled.
The hostility disappeared at a party for the bureau when, as Tolchin recalled, the small son of reporter James Naughton fell into a swimming pool and a fully clothed William Safire dived in to rescue him. “From that moment on, Bill was fully accepted by the bureau,’’ Tolchin said.
John Podhoretz
William Safire, who died today, was a breakthrough figure—the first professional Republican ideologue of his time to become a mainstream fixture in journalism. Indeed, when he was hired by the New York Times to write a column after his tenure as a speechwriter and intimate of the president in the Nixon White House, the shock and horror with which his new position was viewed in the Times newsroom and in the journalistic corridors of Washington were unprecedented in their ferocity. Safire himself said that people would barely look him in the eye in his place of employ for years.
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It is ironic that he leaves us on the eve of Yom Kippur, because he was for a very long time the host of Washington’s most exclusive annual Jewish ticket—a catered party to break the Yom Kippur fast. Most of the people who went didn’t actually fast. But they pretended that they had. Such is life in Washington.
In his early years, Kristol saw that the Marxism which fascinated him and many others at mid-century had no future, and he embraced the ideals of the West, holding them tight for a lifetime. Later as a Democrat, he saw that many of the social welfare policies of the 1960s would fail, and so he undertook a long, unsparing critique of his own party's most cherished ideas. Later still, as a Republican, Kristol realized that his party's economic ideas were moribund, and he turned his energies to leading the pro-growth, "supply-side" revolution that culminated in the historic Reagan Presidency.
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To the extent that American politics today consists of two sides—one insisting that the state guide the country forward, the other that the private economy drive the country forward—it is in large part Irving Kristol and his thinkers who defined the order of battle
Washington Post, Godfather of Conservatism
Irving Kristol, 89, a forceful essayist, editor and university professor who became the leading architect of neoconservatism, which he called a political and intellectual movement for disaffected ex-liberals, like himself, who had been "mugged by reality," died Friday at Capital Hospice in Arlington County.....He died of complications from lung cancer, said his son, William Kristol, founder and editor of the conservative Weekly Standard magazine.
The elder Kristol founded and edited magazines such as Encounter and the Public Interest, which aimed at an elite audience of political, social and cultural tastemakers. In addition to his professorship at New York University, he advanced his ideas through monthly opinion pieces in the Wall Street Journal and a fellowship at the American Enterprise Institute think tank. He was also an editor of Basic Books, a small but distinguished publisher of social science and philosophy.
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Through editing, writing and speaking, Mr. Kristol "made it a moral imperative to rouse conservatism from mainstream Chamber of Commerce boosterism to a deep immersion in ideas,"
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Mr. Kristol and his wife, the Victorian-era historian Gertrude Himmelfarb, along with a group of sociologists, historians and academics, including Norman Podhoretz, Nathan Glazer, Richard Pipes and, for a while, Daniel P. Moynihan, emerged in the late 1960s and 1970s as prominent critics of welfare programs, racial preferences, tax policy, moral relativism and countercultural social upheavals that they thought were contributing to America's cultural and social decay.
New York Times
The Public Interest writers did not take issue with the ends of the Great Society so much as with the means, the “unintended consequences” of the Democrats’ good intentions. Welfare programs, they argued, were breeding a culture of dependency; affirmative action created social divisions and did damage to its supposed beneficiaries. They placed practicality ahead of ideals. “The legitimate question to ask about any program,” Mr. Kristol said, “is, ‘Will it work?’,” and the reforms of the 1960s and ’70s, he believed, were not working.
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Peter Wehner
Irving was a great man, a model and courageous public intellectual, and a giant in the conservative movement. He brought to it enormous intelligence and scholarship, great learning and wisdom, a jolly good sense of humor, and all the right sensibilities. He embodied a conservatism that was principled, sophisticated, and self-confident; one capacious in its spirit; one which demonstrated a deep love for our country and its founders. He was both a scholar and a shrewd political thinker. There was seemingly nothing he could not write about, always well and with wit. He was also — and not incidentally — a marvelous and generous husband, father, and friend.
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“To the man who pleases him,” the book of Ecclesiastes says, “God gives wisdom, knowledge and happiness.”
Irving Kristol must have pleased God. A lot.
When I was young and in high school, Peter, Paul and Mary were the epitome of sophistication and feeling. On long bus trips, we would sing If I Had a Hammer or Blowin' in the Wind and feel connected to everyone in the country who wanted civil rights for all.
Mary Travers, one-third of the hugely popular 1960s folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary, died yesterday at Danbury Hospital in Connecticut. She was 72 and had battled leukemia for several years.
They were early champions of Bob Dylan and performed his “Blowin’ in the Wind’’ at the August 1963 March on Washington. And they were vehement in their opposition to the Vietnam War, managing to stay true to their liberal beliefs while creating music that resonated in the American mainstream.
Mary Travers, whose ringing, earnest vocals with the folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary made songs like “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “If I Had a Hammer” and “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” enduring anthems of the 1960s protest movement, died on Wednesday at Danbury Hospital in Connecticut.
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Ms. Travers brought a powerful voice and an unfeigned urgency to music that resonated with mainstream listeners. With her straight blond hair and willowy figure and two bearded guitar players by her side, she looked exactly like what she was, a Greenwich Villager directly from the clubs and the coffeehouses that nourished the folk-music revival.
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They made folk music not just palatable but accessible to a mass audience,” David Hajdu, ... said in an interview. Ms. Travers, he added, was crucial to the group’s image, which had a lot to do with its appeal. “She had a kind of sexual confidence combined with intelligence, edginess and social consciousness — a potent combination,” he said.
On August 28, 1963, Dylan, Joan Baez, and Peter, Paul & Mary joined King’s civil rights march on Washington and performed from the Lincoln Memorial before he delivered his most famous speech. “When he got to his fourth line,” Travers recalled, “I had an epiphany. I turned to Peter and said, ‘This is history’.” Throughout her life she was immensely proud that King had asked her to hold his child on her lap while he spoke.
Ironically, as Dylan’s success grew, Peter, Paul & Mary’s style began to sound dated. Protest music was all the rage and the trio simply did not sound angry enough.
Patrick Swayze in the final scene of Ghost.
New York Times obit
Patrick Swayze, the balletically athletic actor who rose to stardom in the films “Dirty Dancing” and “Ghost” and whose 20-month battle with advanced pancreatic cancer drew wide attention, died Monday. He was 57.
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Mr. Swayze’s cancer was diagnosed in January 2008. Six months later he had already outlived his prognosis and was filmed at an airport, smiling at photographers and calling himself, only half-facetiously, “a miracle dude.”
He even went through with plans to star in “The Beast,” a drama series for A&E. He filmed a complete season while undergoing treatment. Mr. Swayze insisted on continuing with the series. “How do you nurture a positive attitude when all the statistics say you’re a dead man?” he told The New York Times last October. “You go to work.”
John Nolte at Big Hollywood
Swayze arrived on the scene in a big way in 1983, with a starring role in Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Outsiders.” Distinguishing yourself among the likes of Tom Cruise, Ralph Macchio, Rob Lowe, Emilio Estevez and Matt Dillon in that film was no small feat. And while all would go on to enjoy very successful careers, none would star in “Road House” and “Red Dawn.”
My definition of a great actor is one who convinces in the role; one who doesn’t take you out of the story with all the tics and technique. By that standard Swayze never disappointed. A trained dancer, his physical abilities sold the action, his sincerity brought heart to the romance and a complete lack of pretension made him accessible — made him something that is all but extinct today: a real-live movie star.
Time is what creates the classic film, not critics or box office, and time has made clear that Swayze made a mark on cinema few might have expected twenty years ago. “Road House,” “Point Break,” “Dirty Dancing” and “Ghost” live endlessly on cable television and DVD players everywhere. They are a immortal part of our culture and … they are Patrick Swayze movies.
We don’t know a whole lot about Swayze’s personal life, which was another big reason to like him, but he was married to the same woman, Lisa Niemi, for 34 years. In the real world what that says about the character of a man is impressive. In Hollywood, it says everything.
Andrew Klavan Patrick Swayze Dude
Patrick Swayze wasn’t a great actor and he wasn’t a great movie star, but he was something even rarer in today’s stable of Hollywood actors. He was a dude! And he made good dude films. Road House, Point Break, Red Dawn, Black Dog. Even when he made chick flicks like Ghost and Dirty Dancing, they were more or less dude friendly because they had a dude in them – as opposed to those so-called romantic comedies where some hapless wimp always has to apologize for being male in the end so he can live sheepishly ever after with the girl of his dreams.
Swayze was just a B-movie guy, I guess, but he was still a much cooler presence than most of today’s top-line stars. Plus, in Road House, he uttered the line, “Pain don’t hurt,” an immortal piece of movie dialogue if ever there was one.
Anyway, I rarely watch any movie more than once, but I’ll watch Road House and Point Break any old time. Swayze died of cancer yesterday at 57 and I was sorry to hear it. I hope and trust he’s in dude heaven.
John Burns on Britain's Oldest Warrior
He was a 19-year-old private when he was struck by the burst of a German shell over the British trenches in September 1917 and sent home to recover from his wounds. Working as a plumber in Wells until his retirement, he lived to the age of 111 before he died on July 25, when he was listed by Britain’s Defense Ministry as the last survivor among the millions of British soldiers who fought in the trenches on the Western Front. The last French and German veterans of the trenches died earlier this decade.
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In his last years, he became a national celebrity, memorialized in a poem written by Andrew Motion, then the poet laureate, and in a song fashioned from Mr. Patch’s own words about the fighting in the trenches that was recorded by the pop group Radiohead (“I’ve seen devils coming up from the ground/I’ve seen hell upon this earth.”) He met it all with the same modesty, saying that it was not he who should be honored but the men who fell at the battlefront, “the ones who didn’t come home.”
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When Mr. Patch finally broke 80 years of silence, it was in the final decade of a life that was honored by thousands of mourners who gathered at his funeral on Thursday in this quiet cathedral town set in rolling green hills 140 miles west of London. But his message was not the traditional story of valor and patriotism under fire. Rather, he took as his themes the futility of war and the common humanity of soldiers who meet as enemies on the battlefield.
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the feature that would have been likely to please Mr. Patch more than any other was the presence, as honorary pallbearers, of two German soldiers in full dress uniform, part of a six-man contingent that also included soldiers from Belgium and France. A German diplomat, Eckhard Lübkemeier, offered a New Testament reading from Corinthians that spoke of Christ’s “message of reconciliation.”
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A Belgian diplomat read an excerpt from Mr. Patch’s 2007 autobiography, “The Last Fighting Tommy,” in which he described an offensive during the battle at Passchendaele, the bloodiest chapter in the Ypres fighting, when he came across a fellow soldier “ripped from his shoulder to his waist by shrapnel” during a British assault on German lines.
The episode reinforced in Mr. Patch, a devout Christian, the belief that there is a life after death. “When we got to him, he looked at us and said, ‘Shoot me,’ ” he recalled. “He was beyond all human help, and before we could draw a revolver he was dead. And the final word he uttered was ‘Mother!’ It wasn’t a cry of despair, it was a cry of surprise and joy.”
He added, “I’m positive that when he left this world, wherever he went, his mother was there, and from that day, I’ve always remembered that cry, and that death is not the end.”
Corazon Aquino was propelled into office as President of the Philippines in an extraordinary sequence of events which began with the assassination of her husband and culminated in the unceremonious ejection of a military dictatorship.
In 1986 the country’s ruler, Ferdinand Marcos, declared himself winner of the general election, but the contest had been so obviously rigged that a wave of what was called “people power” swept him into exile. Four US Air Force helicopters spirited Marcos and his wife, Imelda, out of their impoverished country after 20 years of dictatorship during which she famously accumulated 2,700 pairs of expensive shoes.
Into office in their place came Mrs Aquino, a slight, bespectacled mother of five who had been widowed when her husband, Benigno, was shot dead in broad daylight at an airport ringed by Marcos’s troops. The killing spelt the beginning of the end for the Marcos regime. Many in Washington and elsewhere had backed him, despite his trademark brutality and corruption, because he seemed a bulwark against communism.
Into office in their place came Mrs Aquino, a slight, bespectacled mother of five who had been widowed when her husband, Benigno, was shot dead in broad daylight at an airport ringed by Marcos’s troops. The killing spelt the beginning of the end for the Marcos regime. Many in Washington and elsewhere had backed him, despite his trademark brutality and corruption, because he seemed a bulwark against communism.
But the public murder of a political rival sealed his fate. Mrs Aquino’s coming to power was greeted with huge international approval, but her term in office would turn out to be beset with difficulties, both for her country and for herself. The first woman President of the Philippines, she inherited a political and economic mess which she called the “basket case of South-East Asia”. When she left office in 1992 few of the high hopes she raised had been fulfilled. Yet she had the satisfaction of achieving a peaceful handover of power to an elected successor, no mean feat in a country which had little enough experience of democracy.
Madame President - Time magazine
And the most incredible aspect of it was that at the center of this gift was not an atom bomb, but an ordinary woman. A woman who had until then remained almost invisible within her husband’s shadow; whose deepest beliefs would laughed to scorn in any fashionable salon. Yet she was the real thing. Fearless beyond measure, honest in the way that only a person who really believes in honesty can be. Cory had the power to awe not only the simple, but the cynical: the simple because she was like them, only greater; and the cynical because she was unlike them and yet still greater.
Philippines President Arroyo said, "The nation lost a national treasure. An icon of democracy."
Time magazine People Power's Philippine Saint: Corazon Aquino
Midnight always threatened Aquino but never struck; and she was a good woman whose goodness alone, at the very end, was what proved enough, if only by an iota, to save her country.
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Benigno Aquino, returned to the Philippines after three years of exile in the U.S. only to be shot dead even before he could set foot on the tarmac of Manila's international airport. Filipinos were outraged, and suspicion immediately fell on Marcos. At Benigno's funeral, mourners transformed Corazon into a symbol.
The Martyr's Wife - Time
The devout and stoic Roman Catholic widow became the incarnation of a pious nation that had itself suffered silently through more than a decade of autocratic rule. Millions lined the funeral route and repeated her nickname as if saying the rosary: "Cory, Cory, Cory."
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But it would be nearly three years before she would learn to take advantage of her power. Instead, she concentrated on the fractious opposition, using her moral influence to help it choose a leader to oppose Marcos.
“We learn history not in order to know how to behave or how to succeed, but to know who we are.”
Leszek Kolakowski, Jefferson Lecture 1986
HIS life was learning—about history, about his times, about himself. Like some other erstwhile true believers, he became one of most cogent critics of his former faith. Having spent his youthful years as an ardent communist and atheist, Leszek Kolakowski, one of the great minds of the modern era, turned into Marxism’s most perceptive opponent, and one with a profound respect for religion.
His intellectual life started in the misery of Nazi-occupied Poland—he had to study in secret, mostly alone—and finished in one of the nicest places imaginable: Oxford’s All Souls College. In a university tailor-made for gifted misfits, Mr Kolakowski was happy: he was left alone to read, write, and, less often, talk. All Souls provided a glorious academic retreat: the only obligation is to dine there regularly. His distinctive hat, craggy features, idiosyncratic English and perspex walking stick established him as a landmark even in a city studded with oddities and treasures.
Leszek Kolakowski, the Polish-born philosopher who died on Friday aged 81, began as an orthodox Marxist but moved towards "Marxist humanism" in the 1950s and 1960s, and was closely involved in the movement towards liberation that led, in 1956, to Poland's brief "October dawn"; later dismissed from the Communist Party, in 1968 he moved to the West, where he became a trenchant critic of Communism and its western apologists.
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In an article published in 1975, he observed that the experience of Communism had shown that "the only universal medicine (Marxists) have for social evils – State ownership of the means of production – is not only perfectly compatible with all the disasters of the capitalist world – with exploitation, imperialism, pollution, misery, economic waste, national hatred and national oppression, but it adds to them a series of disasters of its own: inefficiency, lack of economic incentives and above all the unrestricted rule of the omnipresent bureaucracy, a concentration of power never before known in human history".
Leszek Kolakowski, a Polish philosopher who rejected Marxism and helped inspire the Solidarity movement in his native land while living in exile, died Friday in Oxford, England. He was 81.
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Early in his life he embraced Communism as a reaction to the destruction inflicted upon his country by Nazism, greeting the Red Army as liberators after years of German oppression. But a trip to Moscow intended as a reward for promising young Marxist intellectuals proved instead to be a turning point, exposing for him what he described as “the enormity of material and spiritual desolation caused by the Stalinist system.”
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His most influential work, the three-volume “Main Currents of Marxism: Its Rise, Growth and Dissolution,” published in the 1970s, was a history and critique that called the philosophy “the greatest fantasy of our century.” He argued that Stalinism was not a perversion of Marxist thought, but rather its natural conclusion.
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Mr. Kolakowski published more than 30 books in a career spanning more than five decades. He was awarded the Order of the White Eagle, Poland’s highest honor, and the MacArthur Foundation fellowship known widely as the genius grant.
In 2003 he became the first recipient of the United States Library of Congress’s $1 million John W. Kluge Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Humanities and Social Sciences, given in fields where there are no Nobel Prizes. In announcing the prize, James H. Billington, the librarian of Congress, noted not only Mr. Kolakowski’s scholarship but also his “demonstrable importance to major political events in his own time,” adding that “his voice was fundamental for the fate of Poland, and influential in Europe as a whole.”
George Weigel
Just as unforgettable, though, was the walk I took with Leszek the next day. A kind of tent city had been set up at one end of Red Square, full of poor people from the countryside who had come to Moscow to ask for redress of their various grievances, many of which were displayed on crudely fashioned homemade posters. The exquisite sensitivity with which the great philosophical pathologist of Marxism engaged one after another of these sad souls -- listening carefully, offering words of encouragement -- bespoke a decency and a capacity for human solidarity that was nothing short of inspiring.
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Another colleague and I decided to spend a few free hours exploring the Kremlin, and we enlisted as guide and translator a bright young Russian who had been hanging around the hotel lobby, obviously looking to practice his English. He took us to one of the newly restored cathedrals inside the Kremlin walls, where we soon found ourselves standing before a brilliant fresco of the Last Supper. There was no doubt that it was the Last Supper; it couldn't have been anything else. Yet this obviously intelligent young Russian looked at us and said, "Please tell me: who are those men and what are they doing?"
That was what 70 years of Marxism had done to a generation: it had lobotomized them culturally. Leszek Kolakowski's philosophical project was a long, rigorous, deeply humane protest against that kind of spiritual vandalism. Kolakowski knew that European civilization was built on the foundations of biblical religion, Greek philosophy, and Roman law. It was built, that is, on the conviction that life is not just one damn thing after another; a robust confidence in the human capacity to get to the truth of things; and a settled determination to order societies by means other than sheer coercion. Leszek Kolakowski's defense of the civilization of the West against the barbarism he was convinced was inherent in the Marxist enterprise was an impressive intellectual accomplishment. It was also the accomplishment of a noble soul.
I'm really looking forward to the new movie Coco Before Chanel by Anne Fontaine starring the extraordinary French actress Audrey Tautou. It won't be in the U.S. until September 25, but it's being released tomorrow in the U.K,
With it, press articles and trailers to whet our appetite and my desire to see how this movie depicts the remarkable life of an extraordinary woman .
The Woman who REALLY invented French dressing: New movie reveals a different side to Coco Chanel
Chanel lived till 1971, having spent her final years in her private suite at the Hotel Ritz in Paris.
Fontaine says: 'At the end, she felt a life without a husband and children was a disaster. She was very alone and the day she died, she went up to the concierge and told him: "In about three or four minutes, I'm going to die."
'She went up to her room and was dead five minutes later. She was so much of a control freak in her life that it was no surprise that she had that control in death, too.'
This is the most moving, lyrical and funny encomium I ever read: The Great Convivium by Father Raymond De Souza, being the homily delivered at the funeral Mass for Richard John Neuhaus.
In our first reading the prophet Isaiah has a vision of the Lord's celestial mountain. In the translation we used we hear of a "feast." We used the RSV translation, because it is never a good idea to set the deceased to spinning even before he gets to his grave, which may well have happened had we used the lectionary of the New American Bible, against which Fr. Richard regularly inveighed. There is another translation. In the Latin Vulgate, the word used is convivium. Convivium might just have been Fr. Richard's favorite word
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Convivium strictly means "to live together," but it connotes a banquet or feast, indicating that a certain supply of rich food and fine wine are, if not required, at least desired. Isaiah says nothing about cigars. But then Fr. Richard was not a sola scriptura man. Convivium is an essential part of the Christian life. We are not meant to be disciples alone. Convivium is what Fr. Richard created over his whole life, delighting in the company of others and the delightful things the Lord had made. He drew people together who might not otherwise meet -- Christians and Jews, evangelicals and Catholics, Canadians and Americans, clergy and laity, theologians and journalists, entrepreneurs and evangelists, distinguished authors and aspiring writers.
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At the conclusion of every convivium, every symposium, every meeting, Fr. Richard would look ahead to the next gathering, which he would announce with the proviso, "should the Lord delay his return in glory."
The Lord will delay no longer; there is no more waiting for Richard John Neuhaus. He wrote, in what turned out to be his valedictory at the end of the February First Things: "The entirety of our prayer is ‘Your will be done' -- not as a note of resignation but of desire beyond expression. To that end, I commend myself to your intercession, and that of all the saints and angels who accompany us each step through time toward home."
We pray that Fr. Richard is now experiencing the fulfillment of that desire, which eye has not seen, ear has not heard. We close the eyes of our dear Father. Our eyes are blurred by tears. We are afraid that when they dry, we may not see as clearly without him to show us. We close his eyes and pray that they may open upon the glory of the Lord Jesus, the eternal Son of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, at the great convivium of all the blessed. Amen.
New York Times John S. Barry, Main Force Behind WD-40, Dies at 84
John S. Barry, an executive who masterminded the spread of WD-40, the petroleum-based lubricant and protectant created for the space program, into millions of American households, died on July 3 in the La Jolla neighborhood of San Diego. He was 84.
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The company says surveys show that WD-40, the slippery stuff in the blue and yellow aerosol can, can be found in as many as 80 percent of American homes and that it has at least 2,000 uses, most discovered by users themselves. These include silencing squeaky hinges, removing road tar from automobiles and protecting tools from rust.
Mr. Barry was not part of the Rocket Chemical Company in 1953, when its staff of three set out to develop a line of rust-prevention solvents and degreasers for the aerospace industry in a small lab in San Diego. It took them 40 attempts to work out the water displacement formula. The name WD-40 stands for “water displacement, formulation successful in 40th attempt.”
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Under Mr. Barry’s leadership, annual sales increased from $2 million in 1970 to $91 million in 1990. WD-40 reported sales of $317 million in 160 countries in its most recent fiscal year.
"You only need two tools: WD-40 and duct tape. If it doesn't move and it should, use WD-40. If it moves and shouldn't, use the tape". Clint Eastwood says it best.
The oldest man in the world, Air Mechanic Henry Allingham , British Veteran of World War I died on Saturday aged 113, in his sleep.
John Burns writes the most lyrical obit in the New York Times
An iconic figure to many in Britain, Mr. Allingham did wartime service including stints on land, in the air and at sea. In 1915, he flew as an observer and gunner in the Royal Naval Air Service, hunting zeppelins over the North Sea. He was aboard one of the Royal Navy ships that fought in the Battle of Jutland in 1916, in which Britain lost 14 ships and 6,000 seamen.
He transferred to the western front in France the following year, where he was a mechanic transferred by the naval air service to the Royal Flying Corps, again flying as an observer and a gunner in sorties over the battlefields of the Somme. In later life, he recalled his time in the Somme trenches as the most searing of all his wartime memories.
He described standing in water up to his armpits, surrounded by the smell of mud and rotting flesh. “I saw too many things I would like to forget, but I will never forget them, I can never forget them,” he said.
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Snowy-haired and bowed with age, Mr. Allingham carried a wreath of poppies on his lap at the remembrance ceremonies last November. Insisting he lay the wreath himself, he was wheeled forward to the plinth of the Cenotaph, the memorial to Britain’s war dead near Britain’s Defense Ministry, and was assisted by a military aide in placing the wreath.
For many years, according to family members, he buried his wartime memories, avoiding reunions and refusing even to discuss his experiences with his family.
But as he grew older, he relented, at least as far as agreeing to appear and speak in public. Even then, he continued to resist all efforts to depict him as a hero. On a visit to the Somme in 2006, he was asked how he wanted to be remembered. “I don’t,” he said. “I want to be forgotten. Remember the others.”
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London Telegraph
With a clear mind until his own death, Allingham could recall the funeral of Queen Victoria in 1901, the Wright brothers' first flight, and seeing WG Grace bat at the Oval in July 1903 – when he scored 15 and 19 in each innings.
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He would attribute his longevity to "cigarettes, whisky and wild, wild women" then add that there had only been one woman for him – his beloved wife, who died in 1970.
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His experience of the trenches came was when he was looking to salvage spares from the remains of aircraft that had been shot down. "We were moving forward at night," he would recall. "I was very apprehensive. It was dark. One of those nights you got where the night time seems to surround you. There were booby traps everywhere."
Suddenly his foothold gave way: "I fell into a shell hole. It was full of arms, legs, ears, dead rats – a lot of dead, rotten flesh. I was up to my armpits in water. I can't describe the smell of flesh and mud mixed up together. I turned to my left, and that's what saved me. It got shallower to the left, and I was able to lift myself out of the water. I lay there in the dark, not daring to move, cold and with my uniform stinking. I was frightened. I was scared. I was so relieved when it finally got light and I could move."
Despite such a gruesome experience, Allingham counted himself fortunate: "I think I had an angel hanging over my shoulders. I still do, I hope."
Frank McCourt, author of the memoir everyone loved, Anglela's Ashes, died of cancer in New York, age 78..
Lyrical, sad and laugh out loud funny, Angela's Ashes won the Pultizer Prize and stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for 117 weeks.
Matt Schudel writes in the Washington Post
Mr. McCourt, the oldest of seven children, was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., where his parents had arrived from Ireland in the 1920s. But their luck soon ran out, and they moved back across the Atlantic when he was 4. They settled in his mother's native city of Limerick in a house with no electricity or running water. It was next to a public lavatory, where the entire neighborhood dumped buckets of excrement that often flooded the McCourts' floor.
"The [school]master says it's a glorious thing to die for the Faith and Dad says it's a glorious thing to die for Ireland," Mr. McCourt wrote in a passage laced with pathos and humor, "and I wonder if there's anyone in the world who would like us to live."
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He had chronic conjunctivitis that left him without lashes on his lower eyelids. At 10, he almost died of typhoid fever and spent more than three months recovering in a hospital. It was the first time he had slept in a bed with sheets or had a full stomach. He also had his first encounter with Shakespeare, writing that it was "like having jewels in my mouth when I spoke the words."
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Mr. McCourt's brother Malachy, who teamed with his brother in a two-man revue of stories and songs in the 1980s, said: "In reality, our life was worse than Frank wrote. Insane outbreaks of laughter saved us."
In a 1966 review, With Love and Squalor, Washington Post book editor Nina King wrote,
"WHEN I look back on my childhood I wonder how I survived at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood."
It takes a tough reviewer to resist quoting this paragraph from the opening page of Angela's Ashes, and it takes a splendid writer to fulfill the promise of those lines. I am not that reviewer, but Frank McCourt is definitely that writer. This memoir is an instant classic of the genre -- all the more remarkable for being the 66-year-old McCourt's first book.
New York Times
Critics, enchanted by Mr. McCourt’s language and gripped by his story, delivered the kind of reviews that writers can only dream of. But the book was ultimately a word-of-mouth success.-
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It was “Angela’s Ashes” that loomed over all things McCourt, however, and constituted a transformative experience for its author.
Speaking to students at Bay Shore High School on Long Island in 1997, he said, “I learned the significance of my own insignificant life.”
Ah, such men. Another fascinating obituary from the London Telegraph, Major Victor Warren
Major Victor Warren, who has died aged 90, commanded an Indian mule company which journeyed by train from the foot of the Khyber Pass to Karachi, sailed to Iraq and then made a 600-mile march through northern Syria to Tripoli in Lebanon; finally, it landed in Italy to play a vital role in supplying forward infantry units with ammunition and blankets at the battle of Monte Cassino.
Movie critic A.O. Scott in an appreciation of Karl Malden, A Character Actor of Intensified Normalness
Mr. Malden’s achievement as an actor was both substantial and modest. The paradox of great character actors is that they are at once adaptable and unmistakable, irreducibly individual yet able to be typecast. And Karl Malden, especially in the 1950s, was one of the best. No other guy could ever be the other guy the way he could.
For so long, she was such an icon of glowing health with her million dollar smile and tousled hair that every girl wanted and so did every guy, that it was shocking to learn that she had cancer. Now she's dead at 52.
CNN
Farrah Fawcett, the blonde-maned actress whose best-selling poster and "Charlie's Angels" stardom made her one of the most famous faces in the world, died Thursday. She was 62....Ryan O'Neal, Fawcett's romantic partner since the mid-1980s, and her friend Alana Stewart were with Fawcett at Saint John's Hospital in Santa Monica, California, when she died.
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New York Times obituary
To an extraordinary degree, Ms. Fawcett’s cancer battle was played out in public, generating enormous interest worldwide. Her face, often showing the ravages of cancer, became a tabloid fixture, and updates on her health became staples of television entertainment news.
In May, that battle was chronicled in a prime-time NBC documentary, “Farrah’s Story,” some of it shot with her own home video recorder. An estimated nine million people viewed it. Ms. Fawcett had initiated the project with a friend, the actress Alana Stewart, after she first learned of her cancer.
Ms. Fawcett’s career was a patchwork of positives and negatives, fine dramatic performances on television and stage as well as missed opportunities.
She first became famous when a poster of her in a red bathing suit, leonine mane flying, sold more than twice as many copies as posters of Marilyn Monroe and Betty Grable combined. No poster like it has achieved anywhere near its popularity since, and, arriving before the Internet era, in which the most widely disseminated images are now digital, it may have been the last of its kind.
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The poster that ignited Ms. Fawcett’s career was shot at the Bel Air home she shared with Mr. Majors. “She was just this sweet, innocent, beautiful young girl,” said Bruce McBroom, who took the photograph. Searching for a backdrop to Ms. Fawcett in her one-piece red swimsuit (which she chose instead of a bikini because of a childhood scar on her stomach), he grabbed an old Navajo blanket from the front seat of his 1937 pickup.
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Ms. Fawcett herself described her career succinctly. “I became famous,” she said in her 1986 Times interview, “almost before I had a craft.”
The Guardian has the best obituary by far.
Fawcett herself recognised this when she commented about Charlie's Angels, the crime-busting TV series that made her a star: "When the show was number three, I figured it was our acting. When it got to be number one, I decided it could only be because none of us wears a bra."
Consequently, Fawcett was mostly given roles where her trend-setting hairstyle was the most dramatic part of the film. However, when she was later offered meatier parts, she proved herself up to the task, and was nominated for three Emmy awards and five Golden Globes, though the juries always held back from giving her the actual prize.
The Telegraph
In the 1980s Farrah Fawcett bravely tried to reassert herself as a serious actress — no easy task with her teeth still gleaming on several million bedsit walls — and took hard-edged parts in made-for-television films.
She was the doctor in Antarctica who diagnosed her own breast cancer when stationed at the Amudsen-Scott South Pole Research Center and then treated herself with chemotherapy drugs that were parachuted in by the U.S. Air Force.
While treating herself, Nielsen carried on her duties as the sole doctor for the 41-person research group. She consulted with her doctors in the United States by e-mail and teleconference. They recommended that she return as soon as possible for treatment.
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Once she returned home and was treated, Nielsen's cancer went into remission, and she wrote about her experience in a best-selling book, "Icebound." She married and became a public speaker, Diana Cahill said.
But in 2005, Nielsen's cancer returned in her bones and liver, later spreading to her brain.
"My experience at the pole had to do with accepting things that most people fear most deeply and coming to feel that they need not be feared," Nielsen told Psychology Today magazine in 2006. "It certainly had far more to do with peace and surrender than it did with courage. Being 'on the ice' was a great good fortune: It created a much greater clarity for me about what was essential in life.
"I'm not afraid of death. I've come to accept it as being part of life, and I think I've come to accept it earlier than my years because of what's happened to me."
She said that after learning her cancer had returned, "after about three weeks of going through a kind of terror, I felt the most incredible peace come over me. Now I am very happy and excited about going forward with my life. The metastatic disease is now just another part of me, another thing that has happened to me."
Doctor rescued from Antarctica in 1999 dies at 57
Neda Agha Soltan, a 27-year-old student of philosophy, became known around the world in a matter of hours through Twitter, Facebook and YouTube because a video captured her death on a street in Tehran
Neda falls in the street, shot in the heart by a Basiji sniper. She is laid down by her companions when blood begins pouring from her mouth then across her face and it becomes clear that, in a matter of moments, she is dead The very graphic YouTube video is here.
Some 19 people were killed on June 20, but Neda is the one who has come to symbolize the crisis in Iran. One university student describes the difference between the generations, How Neda Divided My Family.
Neda’s name means “voice” in Farsi. Even though she has been silenced by a Basiji bullet, her death has given new voice to our generation’s demand for reform. Our parents may not understand it yet, but soon they will have to come to terms with the fact that our voices are the future. They can no longer make decisions for their children—or for the Iranian nation yet to come.
photos from LA Times
In an interview with the BBC, her fiancee said (scroll down to 1:03 pm)
Neda was not a firm backer of either Mousavi or Ahmadinejad -- she simply "wanted freedom and freedom for all."
From the LA Times, an a obituary for the young woman as Family, friends mourn Iranian woman whose death was caught on video
Her friends say Panahi, Neda and two others were stuck in traffic on Karegar Street, east of Tehran's Azadi Square, on their way to the demonstration sometime after 6:30 p.m. After stepping out of the car to get some fresh air and crane their necks over the jumble of cars, Panahi heard a crack from the distance. Within a blink of the eye, he realized Neda had collapsed to the ground.
"We were stuck in traffic and we got out and stood to watch, and without her throwing a rock or anything they shot her," he said. "It was just one bullet."
Blood poured out of the right side of her chest and began bubbling out of her mouth and nose as her lungs filled up.
"I'm burning, I'm burning!" he recalled her saying, her final words.
Neda in an undated photo
"She was a person full of joy," said her music teacher and close friend Hamid Panahi, who was among the mourners at her family home on Sunday, awaiting word of her burial. "She was a beam of light. I'm so sorry. I was so hopeful for this woman."
Security forces urged Neda's friends and family not to hold memorial services for her at a mosque and asked them not to speak publicly about her, associates of the family said. Authorities even asked the family to take down the black mourning banners in front of their house, aware of the potent symbol she has become.
But some insisted on speaking out anyway, hoping to make sure the world would not forget her.Neda Agha-Soltan was born in Tehran, they said, to a father who worked for the government and a mother who was a housewife. They were a family of modest means, part of the country's emerging middle class who built their lives in rapidly developing neighborhoods on the eastern and western outskirts of the city.
Like many in her neighborhood, Neda was loyal to the country's Islamic roots and traditional values, friends say, but also curious about the outside world, which is easily accessed through satellite television, the Internet and occasional trips abroad.
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"All she wanted was the proper vote of the people to be counted."
When anyone dies under suspicious circumstances that look a lot like suicide, shocked family members and friends think back to see whether the deceased showed any signs of depression and whether they could have done anything.
In David Carradine's case where the actor was found deed in a luxury hotel room in Bangkok, the consensus seems to be absolutely not. Famous actors or anyone in public life do not enjoy the same privacy and lack of scrutiny that most of us have. So the question had to be asked What was in doing in a closet with a rope around his head and 'another part of his body'?
Now just what the circumstances of his death were are being speculated about all over the world, to his shame.
I remember his character as the half-Chinese, half American Shaolin monk who traveled through the American wild west, like a Chinese Gary Cooper, armed only with his skill in martial arts,in search of his lost half-brother. The 1970s television series Kung Fu may have been the first to introduce some Asian philosophy into the mainstream of American culture in the form of childhood flashbacks to the sayings and teachings of his old master. More recently his career enjoyed a resurgence with his role as Bill in Quentin Taratino's widely popular Kill Bill vol 1 and 2.
His obituaries, published around the world, will have to include some mention of the suspicious circumstances of his death. How far will they go?
I suspect we'll read more than we ever wanted to know about his five wives and his drinking and drugging.
London Telegraph David Carradine found dead in wardrobe in suspected sex game gone wrong
The London Times keeps its focus on his career and many achievements in David Carradine: The Times obituary
The New York Times skirts around the circumstances in its obituary
John Nolte at Big Hollywood is not interested in hearing the story or passing it on, instead prefers to appreciate his Carradine's skill as an actor especially his performance as Woodie Guthrie in the Harold Wexler's film, Bound for Glory.
Thanks to a real screen presence and a quiet, understated performance, Carradine carries the film all on his own thin, angular frame. He inhabits most every scene and quickly makes you forget all that “Grasshopper” stuff. His Woody Guthrie is mostly silent but always fascinating; conflicted by ambitions and a loathing for what it takes to fulfill them, he’s willing to risk death in order to rouse the working man to stand up for himself, but can’t summon the everyday decency to remain faithful to his own wife. And that’s Carradine singing the songs and playing the guitar, but not one note is impersonation, just pure performance.
It's a shame all around, the way he died, the attention that is paid to how he died, our knowledge of how he died, and the shame his widow and children must feel that can only compound their grief.
Maria A. Lopez, 97; elderly blogger attracted millions
MADRID - A Spanish great-grandmother who described herself as the world's oldest blogger - and who became a Web sensation as she mused on events current and past - has died at the age of 97.
Maria Amelia Lopez died May 20 in her hometown of Muxia in Spain's northwest Galicia region, according to her blog amis95.blogspot.com. No cause of death was given.
Mrs. Lopez started blogging in 2006 after her grandson - "who is very stingy," she wrote - created the site as a present for her 95th birthday.
The blog went on to attract a huge following, with more than 1.7 million hits, as Mrs. Lopez shared her thoughts on everything from life in Spain under the dictatorship of General Francisco Franco to the US-led invasion of Iraq, which she criticized.
She said discovering the Internet and communicating with people all over the world changed her life, and she urged elderly people everywhere to get wired. "It took 20 years off my life," she wrote. "My bloggers are the joy of my life. I did not know there was so much goodness in the world."
Matthew of the Shrine of the Holy Whapping delivers the sad news that Msgr William Kerr who baptized him in 1983, was felled by a massive stroke while in the pulpit last week at the co-cathedral of St. Thomas More.
There is a fascinating connection to Ted Bundy, the story of which you click the link to read. I want to focus on his last remarkable and unfinished homily.
Today, I want to share with you an anniversary that is important to me. I speak of the anniversary of my ordination as a deacon and of my first assignment. On my way to receiving that first assignment, I stopped by the chapel to go over my resume with God. This was in St. Louis and ten parishes and a hospital were to be assigned to deacons. I told God, "I would do well in a parish. You know I'm not good with hospitals."
After that, I stepped over to the bishop's office. I met with the bishop and received my assignment – it was the hospital.
When I arrived at the hospital, I was immediately directed to the burn unit. This particular hospital was famous for its burn unit and very gravely injured burn patients were brought here. I learned that the chaplain was out for the day and I was faced with this daunting task without any instructions. It was the doctor and me. He advised me to look in the patients' eyes and not at their disfiguring injuries.
My first patient was a young man who had been burned by an explosion. He was in critical condition. This young man, who came to have a tremendous influence on my life, worked in a factory. He had been tasked with picking up rags and spent containers. He disposed of them in an incinerator. This was a chemical factory and unfortunately the containers held chemicals that exploded, seriously burning him in the process.
His name was Michael, Michael Anderson, and he said, "'Father,'" (he called me 'Father,') I always wanted to be a priest, and now I won't get to – so I am offering my suffering to strengthen you in your ministry.
Amazed and almost at a loss for words, I said to him, "Now, Michael, we will get through this, together." But Michael, who probably had a better sense of his situation than I did, responded by insisting he would offer his suffering for me and my ministry.
Next to Michael was another patient who was well known in the area. He heard Michael's conversation with me and told him to put in a good word for him in heaven.
The doctor told me it was important for the patients to scream, to help them relieve their agonizing pain. But Michael never screamed. He held his suffering to himself until he died.
During the next few hours, I got to know Michael. The singular circumstances of our meeting led to friendship, and a special bond between us. And, over the course of my life, I have repeatedly felt that bond and that friendship. Many times I have asked Michael to pray for me to strengthen me in my ministry.
I often think about the priceless blessings I received from being assigned to that hospital and from meeting Michael. God knows us and he knows where we belong, even if we do not know ourselves. We must pray… we must pray…Michael…
R.I.P. Requiescat in pace
Whether he was visiting refugees in Rwanda or Bosnia or sharing Thanksgiving dinner each year with his longtime friend Roger Staubach , the former Dallas Cowboys and Navy star quarterback, Kerr touched lives, his friends say.
"He was as good a person as you would ever want to meet," Staubach told The Associated Press on Wednesday night. "He was always dedicated to others."
Monsignor William Kerr, a former president of La Roche College whose pursuit of peace touched presidents and prisoners, died Wednesday after suffering a stroke May 3 during Mass in a Florida cathedral. He was 68.
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When serial killer Ted Bundy murdered two women and severely injured two others in a sorority house in 1978, Monsignor Kerr was called to give last rites. Mr. Bundy sought counseling from Monsignor Kerr, who last visited him two days before his 1989 execution.
By then, Monsignor Kerr had spent five years as vice president for university relations at Catholic University. In 1992 he became president of La Roche.
"Under his leadership, La Roche College was transformed from a regional coeducational, liberal arts college into a global community of learners with a burgeoning international presence," said Sister Candace Introcaso, the current president.
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"For a man who gave his life to the church delivering the word, that's a pretty sweet way to go," he said.
Martha Mason lived more than 60 years in a iron lung and had a full and happy life, living at home, graduating from college with highest honors, taking care of her mother who fell into dementia, and writing a book.
An extraordinary woman by all accounts who made the most of the life she had.
Martha Mason, who wrote book about her decades in an iron lung, dies at 71 in her sleep.
Paralyzed from the neck down as a result of childhood polio, Ms. Mason was one of the last handful of Americans, perhaps 30 people, who live full time in iron lungs.
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From her horizontal world — a 7-foot-long, 800-pound iron cylinder that encased all but her head — Ms. Mason lived a life that was by her own account fine and full, reading voraciously, graduating with highest honors from high school and college, entertaining and eventually writing.
She chose to remain in an iron lung, she often said, for the freedom it gave her. It let her breathe without tubes in her throat, incisions or hospital stays, as newer, smaller ventilators might require. It took no professional training to operate, letting her remain mistress of her own house, with just two aides assisting her.
“I’m happy with who I am, where I am,” Ms. Mason told The Charlotte Observer in 2003. “I wouldn’t have chosen this life, certainly. But given this life, I’ve probably had the best situation anyone could ask for.”
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Ms. Mason often gave dinner parties — she ate lying down, with her guests around the table and the iron lung pushed up beside it — and savored lively conversation, good gossip and the occasional bawdy story. Amid the rhythmic whoosh ... whoosh of the iron lung, the local book club met in her home. High school graduates stopped by so she could admire them in their caps and gowns, as did just-married couples in their wedding finery. Souvenir magnets from faraway places, gifts from traveling friends, adorned the yellow exterior of Ms. Mason’s iron lung like labels on a steamer trunk.
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in the mid-1990s, when Ms. Mason acquired a voice-activated computer with e-mail capability and Internet access. The computer brought her the world. It also let her contemplate writing her memoir, which is subtitled “Life in the Rhythm of an Iron Lung.”
She began the book in tribute to her mother. In the late 1980s, after a series of strokes, Euphra Mason descended into dementia and abusiveness, occasionally slapping and cursing her daughter. Ms. Mason insisted that her mother remain at home. From her iron lung, she took over the running of the household, planning meals, paying bills and arranging for her mother’s care.
After her mother’s death in 1998, Ms. Mason began work on her book in earnest. There, in her childhood home, with a microphone at her mouth and the music of the iron lung for company, she wrote her life story sentence by sentence in her soft Southern voice, with her own breath.
David Goldman's appreciation in First Things
Former vice-presidential candidate, congressman, and Housing secretary, he was the most improbable and the most important hero of the Reagan Revolution after the Gipper himself. Without Jack’s true-believer’s passion for tax cuts as a remedy for the stagflation of the 1970s, Reagan would not have staked his presidency on an untested and controversial theory.
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It was impossible to be cynical in Jack’s vicinity. He radiated sincerity and optimism. Corny as it sounds, Jack was the real thing, an all-American true believer in this country and in the capacity of its people to overcome any obstacle once given the chance.
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Jack was a leader who loved his country and put it before personal gain. When he left office he had the equity in his house and not much else. But he had four children, including two sons who played professional football, and seventeen grandchildren. By the time I got to know him he was full time on the lecture circuit, putting his family finances in order before joining the Washington thinktank Empower America. He considered a run for president in 1996 but deferred to Steve Forbes, then running as the tax-cutting candidate. His outstanding career as a Republican leader was coming to an end, but what a glorious run it was.
A devout Christian, Jack made far more of a difference than an ex-quarterback with a physical education degree from Occidental College had a right to. He earned our gratitude not only for what he accomplished, but for what he proved about the character of the United States.
New York Times obit
Jack Kemp, the former football star turned congressman who with an evangelist’s fervor moved the Republican Party to a commitment to tax cuts as the central focus of economic policy, died Saturday evening at his home in Bethesda, Md. He was 73.
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Mr. Kemp was an unlikely leader for a political cause based on a theory of economics. He had majored in physical education while playing football at Occidental College in Los Angeles. When he entered politics, many Washington veterans dismissed him as a “dumb jock,” and as a junior House member in 1977, he did not even serve on the tax-writing Committee on Ways and Means.
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Mr. Kemp had also convinced Bill Brock, chairman of the Republican National Committee, that the issue was political gold. “He said, in effect, we need to restore the essence of our party, which is growth, which is jobs, which is creativity,” Mr. Brock said in an interview this year. “And the way to do that is to free people of the burden of excessive taxes.”
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“Jack Kemp is the indispensable political leader of the modern conservative economic revival,” Edwin J. Feulner, president of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative research institution in Washington, said recently, adding, “Jack’s role in developing and exploring the potential of supply-side economics in the late 1970s laid the groundwork for Reagan’s economic program.”
Kemp was an autodidact. He focused on sports in his early life, becoming quarterback of the Buffalo Bills in the old AFL. Yet he nourished a nascent interest in politics by reading, reading, reading — WFB, Ayn Rand, economics, history. He honored ideas with the fervor of a young lover. His second passion, equal to his devotion to tax cuts, was his concern for black advancement. This was part conviction, part experience: As his friend Newt Gingrich liked to say, Jack had showered with people that most Republicans never meet. Kemp believed that the party of Lincoln had to regain its role as the champion of black America. The welfare state had not completed the civil-rights revolution; free-enterprise programs targeted at the inner city (such as enterprise zones) would do the trick instead.
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Churchill said that being with FDR was like having a glass of champagne. Being with Jack Kemp was like chugging a can of Red Bull. How could someone so alive be gone? And yet it is so. R.I.P.
Shane McConkey, R.I.P. - Forever an Eagle via Book of Joe
Long story — and life — cut unexpectedly short: The iconic ski base jumper (above) died as he lived.
From the Financial Times obit, Daredevil ski base-jumper who flew like a bird
Shane McConkey, the man who found ways to ski off skyscrapers, was able to “slip the surly bonds of earth”, as poet John Magee put it, and enter an exhilarating and giddy world where few mortals could venture.
Having helped pioneer what came to be called ski base-jumping – leaping from mountains or cliffs using a parachute to land safely – he moved on to something even more exotic: wingsuiting. He used a special suit that shaped the body into a human aerofoil with fabric sewn between the legs and under the arms. This enabled him to become a self-powered “birdman” before finally opening a parachute – a technique one observer likened to a “flying squirrel”.
McConkey: ‘It’s so damned fun’
“Wingsuiting blows people away – it blows me away every time I do it,” McConkey said. “There’s no joystick, no bar, no steering wheel – you’re flying your own body. It’s so damned fun. You ski off a cliff, pull your skis off and you’re flying – you’re a bird. You open your wingsuit and you’re off. It’s the greatest feeling ever.”
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McConkey’s death at 39, while filming in the Italian Dolomites, exposed an unexpected danger in a sport already fraught with peril. A mid-air problem getting the bindings of both skis to release before being jettisoned meant that vital seconds were lost between the initial launch and the smooth transition into “birdman” mode. After jumping and carrying out a “routine” double back-flip from a 600-metre cliff near the ski resort of Corvara, he was still desperately grappling to release the second ski when he hit the ground, his wingsuit not yet deployed. The unreleased ski would have flipped him upside down and probably sent him into a spin. Had he tried to use his parachute in this position it would have become tangled around the remaining ski and failed to deploy.
After his death one website noted: “There are 42,500 page results for Shane McConkey. Within those pages you won’t find a bad word uttered about him.” One comment posted was: “It feels like Superman died.”
Final Edition In praise of the newspaper obituary by Stefany Anne Goldberg
The traditional obituary is an exercise in curtness. It is an art form nasty, brutish, and short, taking the scrambled up, complicated thing that is a human life and smashing it into a tidy, coherent narrative.
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The obituary seems to be experiencing a renaissance. In her 2006 book The Dead Beat, Marilyn Johnson reveals a worldwide ring of rabid obituary enthusiasts—members of the Church of Obituaries, she calls them. They flip past the Sports and Business sections eager to read the day’s death roll. They “surf the dead beat” poring over blogs and newspapers searching for fascinating facts about Antoinette K-Doe, who turned a nightclub into a public shrine to her husband, or the guy who invented sea monkeys. Obituaries aren’t dirty little secrets as much as they used to be, lurking in hidden corners and ready to terrify those who cross their path. They are public, normal, interesting, fun. There’s even a glossy online magazine with the snappy name Obit.
--But the real change is with the obituary writers. Once shamed to the backs of periodicals to deliver dour, Margie Zellner-style obituaries, many are now part of this new movement to “out” death by making it more accessible and “natural.” They are reconsidering the obituary not as the final judgment, but as a way death can be presented as a sum total of its stories. Everyone has stories, everyone dies, and in writing about death, death and life become more of a circle. The obituary is not the period on the sentence of existence, but a mere interpretation.
Great Escape gardener dies aged 97
A British World War II veteran whose efforts to help prisoners escape from a Nazi camp was immortalised in the film The Great Escape has died aged 97.
Alex Lees was a prisoner at the infamous Stalag Luft III camp in March 1944 when scores of Allied servicemen escaped through tunnels they had dug by hand.
Lees - a gardener at the camp - helped dig the tunnels, but because he was not an officer he was not given the chance to escape himself.
He used an ingenious system to dispose of the soil from the three tunnels, storing it in a bag hidden under his trousers and then dumping it on the camp's vegetable garden.
The story of Lees and his comrades was made into the 1963 film starring Steve McQueen.
Alex Kees: PoW at Stalag Luft III
Since he had been transferred to Stalag Luft III as part of a gardening detail, his raking down the soil was not immediately calculated to cause suspicion among the camp guards.
After months of work the main escape tunnel, “Tunnel Harry”, was finally ready and on the night of March 24, 1944, a moonless night the would-be escapers had selected to give them their best chance, the escape attempt began as night fell. Out of the 100 men it was thought might escape before daylight, 76 had succeeded in crawling to freedom beyond the wire when at 4.55 am on the 25th the 77th man was spotted emerging from the tunnel.
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After being repatriated from Stalag Luft III in 1945 he returned to his life in insurance in Scotland, finally retiring in 1969 as life and pensions superintendent at what was by then the Commercial Union. Latterly he had lived in a care home for ex-service personnel in Erskine, Renfrewshire.
Distinguished lives in brief.
The young J. G. Ballard, revealed in his most popular novel Empire of the Sun, was far more in awe of Japanese kamikaze pilots than he was interested in being liberated from his internment camp. Similarly the adult Ballard found the enslavement of man to his own devices — concrete, technology, cameras and crashing cars — monstrous and terrifying, yet fascinating and ceaselessly inspiring.
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His dispassionate visions of modernity and apocalyptic imagery earned him the rare honour of seeing his name adjectivised: Collins English Dictionary describes “Ballardian” as “resembling or suggestive of the conditions described in J. G. Ballard’s novels and stories, especially dystopian modernity, bleak manmade landscapes and the psychological effects of technological, social or environmental developments”.
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Although Ballard was frequently called a writer of science fiction, he abhored the term, explaining instead that his books “pictured the psychology of the future”.
It was 40 years before Ballard felt able to write about the most formative events in his life. Empire of the Sun is unusual for a Ballard novel in that its young protagonist is instantly likable, his story moving. It was his most saleable novel, made into a Hollywood epic by Steven Spielberg with the young Christian Bale as Ballard. It was not, he insists, an autobiography but a “negotiated truth” from which he excised, among other things, the parents who had shared his ordeal.
Professor Jack Good: mathematician and wartime codebreaker
The mathematician Jack Good played a key role among the codebreaking team at Bletchley Park during the Second World War. He went on to help to build one of the first computers, was the father of a branch of modern statistics and contributed to the development of artificial intelligence.
Good was born Isidore Jacob Gudak to a Polish-Jewish family in London in 1916; his father was a watchmaker and well known in Yiddish literary circles. Isidore later anglicised his name to Irving John Good but he was always known as Jack. Good was slow to learn to read, but partly as a result of being bed-bound with diphtheria at the age of 9 — when he began to discover mathematics for himself — his extraordinary intelligence became clear to his teachers.
Robert Anderson: American playwright
Robert Anderson, the American playwright, explored sexual identity, infidelity and relationship breakdown in emotional dramas which broke new ground in the 1950s and 1960s. He was also a screenwriter and novelist.
His play Tea and Sympathy, a Broadway hit in 1953, sought to expose postwar conformity and the narrow views of the time of how men were expected to act. It tells the story of a sensitive student, Tom, who is accused of being homosexual by his classmates. He seeks solace from his housemaster’s wife, Laura, who, in order to reassure him of his masculinity, ends up seducing him. Manliness, the wife tells her husband “is not all swagger and swearing and mountain-climbing”. “Manliness is also tenderness, gentleness, consideration.” Tom was played by John Kerr and Laura by Deborah Kerr in the original theatre cast, as well as in the 1956 film version.
At the end of the play, the housemaster’s wife Laura utters the now-famous line to Tom: “Years from now when you talk about this — and you will — be kind.”
Father Stanley Jaki: Benedictine priest, physicist and theologian
Stanley Jaki, a Benedictine priest and a physicist, was best known for his scholarly contributions to the philosophy of science and theology. In 1987 he was awarded the Templeton Prize for his work on analysing “the importance of differences as well as similarities between science and religion, adding significant, balanced enlightenment to the field”.
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Jaki strongly believed in the conjunction between faith and reason and argued that science flourished in Europe because of the Christian understanding of creation and the Incarnation.
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Jaki was a prolific author, publishing more than 40 books, hundreds of articles, reviews, chapters and lectures. His books, many of them analysing the relationships between modern science and orthodox Christianity, reflect the extraordinary range of his interests and his exceptional abilities. Among them are: The Relevance of Physics (1966); Brain, Mind and Computers (1969); The Milky Way: an Elusive Road for Science (1973); Science and Creation: From Eternal Cycles to an Oscillating Universe (1974); Miracles and Physics (1989); God and the Cosmologists (1989); and Bible and Science (1996).
In addition, he wrotes studies of G. K. Chesterton, Pierre Duhem, the French mathematician, physicist and historian of science, and Cardinal Newman, and he translated some important works, including the first English version of a study of Copernicus (1975) and Immanuel Kant’s Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens (1775/1981).
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For all his immense recognition in scholarly circles, Jaki’s groundbreaking work on science, philosophy, ethics, religion and culture has undoubtedly had a considerable influence and relevance that have yet to be adequately recognised
Tom Braden: CIA official and political journalist
Thomas Braden was a CIA paymaster in the 1950s funding anti-communist activity all over the world. He later defended, and then criticised, the machinations of the CIA in hardhitting newspaper columns. He went on to help to launch and co-host the hugely popular and highly influential US political debate show Crossfire from 1982-1989. Away from politics, his memoir about his chaotic family life as the father of eight children, Eight is Enough, was adapted into a hit TV comedy on ABC that ran for four years from 1977.
The Last Words of Duke Ellington.
“Kisses kisses” and “More kisses” he asked of his sister Ruth.
Before she left the room, he said, “Smile kisses,” and then smiled at her and kissed a cross she had left on the chair next to his bed.
Source: A. H. Lawrence, Duke Ellington and His World: A Biography
viv Dead at Your Age
The Telegraph's wonderful obituary of Patrick Kinna
Kinna was recommended to Churchill by staff surrounding the Duke of Windsor, whose confidential clerk he had been while the Duke was serving as a member of the British military mission in Paris. From 1940 to 1945 his tiny, trim figure rarely left the Prime Minister's side, pencil and shorthand pad ever at the ready.
At Christmas 1941, while Churchill was staying at the White House, Kinna was summoned to take dictation by the prime minister, who was soaking in his bathtub, planning the speech he would make to Congress on Boxing Day. Finding the muse, Churchill stomped in and out of the tub, evading the ministrations of a valet with a bath-towel.
As the prime minister paced the room "completely starkers", Kinna recalled, there was a knock on the door and Churchill went to open it. It was Roosevelt in his wheelchair. Mortified at finding his guest with nothing on, the president prepared to make his excuses, but was prevented by Churchill. "Oh no, no, Mr President," he said. "As you can see, I have nothing to hide from you."
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Some accounts suggest that Churchill was initially charmed by Joseph Stalin, but that was not Kinna's impression. After their first encounter in Moscow, Kinna recalled Churchill storming back into the office they had been given at the Kremlin, saying he wanted to dictate a telegram to Whitehall. "I have just had a most terrible meeting with this terrible man Stalin... evil and dreadful," he began. "May I remind you, Prime Minister," interrupted the British ambassador, "that all these rooms have been wired and Stalin will hear every word you said."
Marvin "Popcorn" Sutton was told to report to federal prison tomorrow for an 18-month stint after he was busted yet again for making his famed White Lightning. On Monday, Sutton went out on his own terms.
Sutton was one of the last of his kind: an unrepentant Appalachian moonshiner with a reputation for great "likker" and a penchant for pissing off the authorities
Click here to see his tombstone.
Famed bootlegger chose death over prison, widow says
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — Famed Appalachian moonshiner Marvin "Popcorn" Sutton, whose incorrigible bootlegging ways were as out of step with modern times as his hillbilly beard and overalls, took his own life rather than go to prison for making white lightning, his widow says.
"He couldn't go to prison. His mind would just not accept it. ... So credit the federal government for my husband being dead, I really do," Pam Sutton said Wednesday from the couple's home in the Parrottsville community.
A few hours earlier she had buried Sutton, 62, in a private ceremony in the mountains around Haywood County, N.C., where he grew up.
Sutton — nicknamed "Popcorn" for smashing up a 10-cent popcorn machine in a bar with a pool cue in his 20s — looked like a living caricature of a mountain moonshiner. He wore a long gray beard, faded overalls, checkered shirt and feathered fedora. He made his home in Cocke County, where cockfighting and moonshining are legend.
Sky Sutton is a New England historian and raised in Massachusetts who discovered while researching her paternal genealogy that her biological father was Popcorn Sutton. Her blog contains excerpts from her book, Daddy Moonshine.
“It isn't surprising that Popcorn has attracted so much attention. His slippery craft and his old-timey antics appeal to something in our collective past. His overalls can be seen as the blue denim flag of old pick-up trucks and cork-plugged clay jugs. His colorless hat is the nod of a gentleman, his beard the badge of a wild man. His high reedy voice carries the echoes of banjos and fiddles. His stealth and focus speak volumes for the cunning and moxie of who he is: a Smokey Mountain moonshine master.”
You can hear his high reedy voice on his YouTube video showing how to make moonshine
Life can change in an instant .
Natasha Richardson was excited about learning to ski on the beginner's slope at Mont Tremblant ski resort in Quebec when she lost her balance and fell down. She didn't hit anyone or anything, nor did she show any signs of injury. An hour later, she complained of a headache and was taken taken to a hospital near the ski resort, then to a Montreal hospital. After she was declared brain dead, she was kept on life support and flown to New York City where her family gathered at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City to say goodbye before she was taken off life support.
A family spokesman said: 'Liam Neeson, his sons, and the entire family are shocked and devastated by the tragic death of their beloved Natasha.
'They are profoundly grateful for the support, love and prayers of everyone, and ask for privacy during this very difficult time.'
New York Times obit
She was a blond, beautiful English actress, he was her ruggedly handsome Irish co-star, and the two were thought to be courting right on stage, during a New York production.
Ms. Richardson was an intense and absorbing actress who was unafraid of taking on demanding and emotionally raw roles. Classically trained, she was admired on both sides of the Atlantic for upholding the traditions of one of the great acting families of the modern age.
Her grandfather was Sir Michael Redgrave, one of England’s finest tragedians. He passed his gifts, if not always his affection, to his daughters, Vanessa and Lynn Redgrave, and his son, Corin Redgrave. The night Vanessa was born, her father was playing Laertes to Laurence Olivier’s Hamlet.
Ms. Richardson was the daughter of Vanessa Redgrave and the film director Tony Richardson, known for “Tom Jones” and “The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner.” Married in the early 1960s, they were divorced in 1967. He died of AIDS in 1991 at the age of 63.
She seemed to be a lovely woman who survived a difficult childhood and adolescence in her famous family of actors and activists to make a successful career and marriage. What a terrible loss.
The father of our friend Sippican of Sippican's Cottage died Sunday. Our condolences to him and his family on their loss.
He posts My Father Asks for Nothing.
My father asks me for nothing, really. Every three months or so, I take him to his doctor, who pokes about him wondering what keeps him animated, and that's about it. He's grown frail, and has discovered the joys of "Not Going." It takes a lot to get him to leave the comfort and safety of his house. I was really surprised when he called me on Saturday, because he asked me to take him somewhere.
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We went along the side of the plane, creeping along at the pace my father goes, my father assiduously avoiding walking between the fuselage and the props -- a habit sixty years old and more -- and he saw his chance. He ducked down and crept into the bomb bay.
Down came the hands. No one needed to be told who that man was, or why he was there. Everyone behind paused to wait patiently and respectfully, and everyone within reach helped me pick that old, frail, brave man up to look on the nuts and bolts of that totem of his distant life. And they thanked him, and they asked him questions, and marveled at him.
It's always sad to see another of the Greatest Generation pass away as the world turns.
R.I.P.
ABC News - Radio Legend Paul Harvey Dies
The "most listened to man" in broadcasting passed away Saturday. After more than seven decades on the air, venerable radioman Paul Harvey's folksy speech and plain talk are no more.
Harvey died at the age of 90 at a hospital near his winter home in Phoenix.
His death came nine months after that of his wife, Lynne Cooper Harvey, whom he often called "Angel" on air, and who was also his business partner and the first producer ever inducted in the the Radio Hall of Fame. She died in May 2008 at age 92.
"My father and mother created from thin air what one day became radio and television news," Paul Harvey Jr. said Saturday. "So, in the past year, an industry has lost its godparents. And, today millions have lost a friend."
Harvey's career in radio spanned more than 70 years, and his shows "News & Comment" and "Rest of the Story" made him a familiar voice in Americans' homes across the country.
If you didn't know Paul Harvey, you missed out on an extraordinary storyteller. Here's an example.
CNN
"Paul Harvey was one of the most gifted and beloved broadcasters in our nation's history," ABC Radio Networks President Jim Robinson said in a written statement. "As he delivered the news each day with his own unique style and commentary, his voice became a trusted friend in American households."
Washington Post , Beloved Radio Broadcaster Paul Harvey Dies at 90
Mr. Harvey was the voice of the American heartland, offering to millions his trademark greeting: "Hello Americans! This is Paul Harvey. Stand by! For news!"
For millions, Paul Harvey in the morning or at noon was as much a part of daily routine as morning coffee.
"Paul Harvey News and Comment" was a distinctive blend of rip-and-read headline news, quirky feature stories and, usually, a quick congratulation to a couple who had been married for 75 years or so. The news stories, and Harvey's distinctive take on them -- usually, but not always, from a conservative political perspective -- flowed seamlessly into commercial messages for products Mr. Harvey endorsed.
One of radio's most effective pitchmen, he kept sponsors for decades, attracted by such features as "The Rest of the Story," mesmerizing little tales, cleverly written, that featured a surprising O Henry-style twist to stories listeners thought they already knew.
Pat McNamara, a church historian, gives us the eulogy to the first president by the first Roman Catholic bishop, John Carroll.
The last act of his supreme magistracy was to inculcate in most impressive language on his countrymen… his deliberate and solemn advice; to bear incessantly in their minds that nations and individuals are under the moral government of an infinitely wise and just Providence; that the foundations of their happiness are morality and religion; and their union among themselves their rock of safety… May these United States flourish in pure and undefiled religion, in morality, peace, union, liberty, and the enjoyment of their excellent Constitution, as long as respect, honor, and veneration shall gather around the name of Washington; that is, whilst there still shall be any surviving record of human events!
Catholic author and blogger Michael Dubriel collapsed at a gym and could not be revived. The suddenness sent shock waves throughout the Catholic blogosphere. But nothing compared to shock his widow and young children felt.
In announcing his death his wife Amy wrote simply
We are devastated and beg your prayers.
In response to an outpouring of prayers and notes, Amy wrote
Many thanks for all of the prayers and notes. It is overwhelming. Many have asked what they can do of a material or concrete nature. All I can say is to simply buy his books. Not from me, because I am in no position to fill orders, but from anywhere else. He long ago promised God that he would give all the royalties of The How To Book of the Mass to the children’s college funds, which he did faithfully. It is in good shape because of that. Buy them, read them, and give them away to others. Spread the Word. That is what he was all about.
On the night before he died he wrote his last column which deserves reading in full.
The “big lie,” Father Benedict said, (and I’m paraphrasing him at this point), is to think that if we say all the right prayers and live correctly, then nothing bad will ever happen to us. Sadly, there are many good people who have lost their faith by believing such a lie, and that makes it a big one indeed!
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What is the opposite of the “big lie”? Trust.
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None of us knows what the future holds, but hopefully we can embrace what is inscribed in our coinage, “In God we Trust.”
Imagine that, his last written words, "In God we Trust."
May he rest in peace.
Me, I'm going to order some books.
An American literary giant, John Updike died at 76, after a long bout with lung cancer.
New York Times obituary, a "prolific man of letters and erudite chronicler of sex, divorce and other adventure in the postwar prime of the American empire."
John Updike, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, prolific man of letters and erudite chronicler of sex, divorce and other adventures in the postwar prime of the American empire, died Tuesday at age 76. Updike, best known for his four ''Rabbit'' novels, died of lung cancer at a hospice near his home in Beverly Farms, Mass., according to his longtime publisher, Alfred A. Knopf.
A literary writer who frequently appeared on best-seller lists, the tall, hawk-nosed Updike wrote novels, short stories, poems, criticism, the memoir ''Self-Consciousness'' and even a famous essay about baseball great Ted Williams.
He released more than 50 books in a career that started in the 1950s, winning virtually every literary prize, including two Pulitzers, for ''Rabbit Is Rich'' and ''Rabbit at Rest,'' and two National Book Awards.
His settings ranged from the court of ''Hamlet'' to postcolonial Africa, but his literary home was the American suburb, the great new territory of mid-century fiction.
Born in 1932, Updike spoke for millions of Depression-era readers raised by ''penny-pinching parents,'' united by ''the patriotic cohesion of World War II'' and blessed by a ''disproportionate share of the world's resources,'' the postwar, suburban boom of ''idealistic careers and early marriages.''
He captured, and sometimes embodied, a generation's confusion over the civil rights and women's movements, and opposition to the Vietnam War. Updike was called a misogynist, a racist and an apologist for the establishment.
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Updike learned to write about everyday life by, in part, living it. In 1957, he left New York, with its ''cultural hassle'' and melting pot of ''agents and wisenheimers,'' and settled with his first wife and four kids in Ipswich, Mass, a ''rather out-of-the-way town'' about 30 miles north of Boston.
''The real America seemed to me 'out there,' too heterogeneous and electrified by now to pose much threat of the provinciality that people used to come to New York to escape,'' Updike later wrote.
''There were also practical attractions: free parking for my car, public education for my children, a beach to tan my skin on, a church to attend without seeming too strange.''
An appreciation by Thomas Mallon
Perhaps the keenest compliment one can pay him as a man is to say that his life will make for a lousy biography: Just about no scandal; precious little feuding; almost no phony contretemps and posturing. He was deeply interested in sex and God, but more than anything he was interested in working—steadily and prodigiously. The Rabbit books, taken together, are the great American novel of the second half of the twentieth century. Even when he was through with them, he kept writing fiction as if, culturally, it still counted—as if it could still land a writer on the cover of Time. He loved his country, avoided political faddishness, was a devoted Democrat and got both of his national medals—one in the arts and another in the humanities—from Republican presidents.
In the Boston Globe, Mark Feeney eulogizes his "jeweled prose and quicksilver intellect"
"He was obviously among the best writers in the world," said David Remnick, editor the New Yorker, Mr. Updike's literary home for more than half a century.
A master of many authorial trades, Mr. Updike was novelist, short story writer, critic, poet - and in each role as prolific as he was gifted. He aimed to produce a book a year. Easily meeting that goal, Mr. Updike published some 60 volumes.
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Mr. Updike could be brilliant even about his own diligence, writing in his memoir "Self-Consciousness" (1989) of "my ponderously growing oeuvre, dragging behind me like an ever-heavier tail." Or there was the description of Fenway Park, "a lyric little bandbox of a ballpark," in Mr. Updike's classic account of Ted Williams's final game, "Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu."
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Yet beneath the comfortableness of the affluent, suburban settings Mr. Updike most often wrote about, and the glittering surface of his prose, were profound and piercing concerns. One was an ongoing examination of his native land. "America is a vast conspiracy to make you happy," he wrote in the 1980 story collection "Problems."
A link to his fabled essay "Hub fans bid Kid Adieu"
Fenway Park, in Boston, is a lyric little bandbox of a ballpark. Everything is painted green and seems in curiously sharp focus, like the inside of an old-fashioned peeping-type Easter egg
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The affair between Boston and Ted Williams was no mere summer romance; it was a marriage composed of spats, mutual disappointments, and, toward the end, a mellowing hoard of shared memories.
An interview last fall with Mark Brown of the London Telegraph
Among the many wise observations that John Updike has made in a career spanning more than 50 years, few can compare with his remark - made in his memoirs, Self-Consciousness - that 'Celebrity is a mask that eats into the face'.
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This is how it goes with Updike. He is a ruminative man, fond of digression, whose conversation ambles through literature, politics, film, but who wears his erudition lightly - a rare combination of formidable intelligence and lightness of being, whose abiding sense is of astonishment and gratitude not only for being a successful author, but also for having the extreme good fortune to be an author at all.
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Updike once described his task as a writer 'to give the mundane its beautiful due'.
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Family, Updike seems to be saying, is the point of it all. 'The genes living on… the tussle of family life, the clumsy accommodations and forgiveness of it, the comedy of membership of a club that has to take you in at the moment of birth.'
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It is a fact of ageing, he says, that life seems to grow lighter rather than heavier.
'Nothing seems to matter quite as much. I no longer think about death in the concentrated way I once did. I don't know… you get so old and you sort of give up in some way. You've had your period of angst, your period of religious desperation, and you've arrived at a philosophical position where you don't need, or you can't bear, to look at it.
'If you've had the Biblical three score and 10, and then a bit more on top of it - and I've already outlived my father - then you certainly should be content. As you get closer, as death becomes more real, so it becomes friendlier. I say this as a man who still wakes up at three in the morning horrified at my cosmic position. But in the daytime, sitting here, I'm able to see it.'
Update: A lovely vignette by David Pryce Jones
One fine summer day, I was walking home through the park. When I sat down on a bench, I noticed that the man already on it was wearing khaki fatigues and heavy combat boots. He had a huge notebook on his knee, and was writing in it in green ink, very very very carefully, one word at a time—a long pause, pen in air—and then one more word. The whole page was entirely free from erasures. This procedure was fascinating. I squinted in order to read what he could possibly be writing. It was pure vituperation against his wife and his marriage by someone staying in a Holiday Inn. I shrank away, and looked at this man next to me on the bench. He had a nose as shaped and individual as the nose of Federico di Montefeltro, the Duke of Urbino, in Piero della Francesca's magnificent portrait. The penny dropped. The boots and fatigues were misleading. I had had the privilege of catching John Updike in the midst of his astonishing method of composition. It happened that Updike had not long before reviewed very generously a book of mine. I was just working out how to introduce myself without seeming a Peeping Tom when a beautiful woman arrived, he folded his notebook and off they sauntered arm in arm under the evening sun. Oh, the style of the man and the writer!
Sir John Mortimer, creator of Rumpole of the Bailey, dies at 85. I loved Rumpole and consider his adaption of Brideshead Revisted, one of the greatest programs ever to be shown on television.
From the National Portrait Gallery, by Mark Tillie
From the New York Times obituary
John Mortimer, barrister, author, playwright and creator of Horace Rumpole, the cunning defender of the British criminal classes...
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Mr. Mortimer is known best in this country for creating the Rumpole character, an endearing and enduring relic of the British legal system who became a television hero of the courtroom comedy.
To read Rumpole, or watch the episodes is to enter not only Rumpole’s stuffy flat or crowded legal chambers, but to feel the itch of his yellowing court wig and the flapping of his disheveled, cigar ash-dusted courtroom gown.
Rumpole spends his days quoting Keats and his nights quaffing claret at Pommeroy’s wine bar, putting off the time that he must return to his wife, Hilda, more commonly known as She Who Must Be Obeyed.
Using his wit and low-comedy distractions, Rumpole sees that justice is done, more often than not by outsmarting the ‘’old sweethearts” and “old darlings” of the bench and revealing the inner good — or at least integrity and inconsistency — of the accused, including clans like the Timsons, whose crimes have kept generations of police officers busy.
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Mr. Mortimer also adapted Evelyn Waugh’s “Brideshead Revisited” for television, years after he became enthralled with the book as a young man. Somehow, despite the demands of his chosen careers, a “schizoid business of being a writer who had barristering as a day job,” Mr. Mortimer also found time to pursue his lifelong interest in women, do some writing for newspapers and keep up the garden nurtured by his father, whose outsized shadow remained with him all his life.
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“Dying is a matter of slapstick and pratfalls,” he wrote in “The Summer of a Dormouse: A Year of Growing Old Disgracefully” (2000). “The aging process is not gradual or gentle. It rushes up, pushes you over and runs off laughing. No one should grow old who isn’t ready to appear ridiculous.”
U.K. Telegraph obituary
Sir John's agent, Anthony Jones, said: "He died at home, surrounded by his family. He had been unwell for some time."
A trained lawyer, Sir John drew on his experience to create Rumpole, the shambolic barrister who became one of the best-loved characters on British television. His extensive writing career included the acclaimed adaptation of Brideshead Revisited in 1981. He was knighted in 1998.
Sir John had four children from his two marriages, including the actress, Emily Mortimer. In 2004, it emerged that he had a another child, of whom he never knew, by the actress Wendy Craig. Their son was the product of an affair in the early 1960s. Although the discovery came as a shock, he professed himself "very happy" with the news.
Although wheelchair-bound towards the end of his life, Sir John gleefully defied health edicts and continued to enjoy fine wine and good living, beginning each day with a glass of champagne for breakfast.
In one of his last interviews, given in July 2008, he said: "I drink brandy and soda, and I don't eat a meal without drinking white wine. I've smoked all my life and, although I'd given up a bit, I now force myself to smoke because of the ban."
Obituary Boston Globe
Patrick McGoohan, an Emmy-winning actor who created and starred in the cult classic television show "The Prisoner," has died. He was 80.
Mr. McGoohan died Tuesday in Los Angeles after a short illness, his son-in-law, film producer Cleve Landsberg, said.
Mr. McGoohan won two Emmys for his work on the Peter Falk detective drama "Columbo" and more recently appeared as King Edward Longshanks in the 1995 Mel Gibson film "Braveheart."
But he was most famous as the character known only as Number Six in "The Prisoner," a 1960s British series in which a former spy is held captive in a small enclave known only as the Village, where a mysterious authority named Number One constantly prevents his escape.
Mr. McGoohan came up with the concept and wrote and directed several episodes of the show, which has kept a devoted following in the United States and Europe for four decades.
"His creation of 'The Prisoner' made an indelible mark on the sci-fi, fantasy, and political thriller genres, creating one of the most iconic characters of all time," AMC said in a statement. "AMC hopes to honor his legacy in our reimagining of 'The Prisoner.' "
"Arrows cost money, Use up the Irish" from Big Hollywood
McGoohan was married to the same woman for 57 years, and included in the contract for his first TV series, “Danger Man,” three special clauses: 1) no kissing, 2) each fight had to be different, and 3) his character must always try to use his brains before resorting to a gun.
Last text of British student who froze to death in river as she walked home from party at Val d'Isere ski resort.
A British student sent a text message reading ‘I’m lost’ seconds before plunging to her death in an Alpine river.
Rachel Ward, a 20-year-old undergraduate from Durham University, was on her way to her apartment from a party in the upmarket French ski resort of Val d’Isere when the tragedy happened late on Monday night.
She had been taking part in ‘On The Piste’ - annual celebrations filled with alcohol, parties and skiing involving hundreds of British university students.
The message sent to friends was received just after 1am, some half-an-hour after she had left the gathering of fellow students, all of whom had been drinking heavily.
Detectives fear that she slipped on ice and fell into the river, before dying of hypothermia. She had been walking in the wrong direction.
An investigating detective in Val d‘Isere said: ‘The young woman had been enjoying herself with friends when she decided to set off home alone.
‘It was dark, of course, and temperatures were extremely low.
Joseph Bottum quite movingly announced the death of Fr. Neuhaus.
Our great, good friend is gone.
Fr. Richard John Neuhaus slipped away January 8, shortly before 10 o’clock, at the age of seventy-two. He never recovered from the weakness that sent him to the hospital the day after Christmas, caused by a series of side effects from the cancer he was suffering. He lost consciousness Tuesday evening after a collapse in his heart rate, and soon after, in the company of friends, he died.
My tears are not for him—for he knew, all his life, that his Redeemer lives, and he has now been gathered by the Lord in whom he trusted.
I weep, rather, for all the rest of us. As a priest, as a writer, as a public leader in so many struggles, and as a friend, no one can take his place. The fabric of life has been torn by his death, and it will not be repaired, for those of us who knew him, until that time when everything is mended and all our tears are wiped away.
New York Times obit by Laurie Goodstein
The Rev. Richard John Neuhaus, a theologian who transformed himself from a liberal Lutheran leader of the civil rights and antiwar struggles in the 1960s to a Roman Catholic beacon of the neoconservative movement of today, died on Thursday in Manhattan. He was 72 and lived in Manhattan.
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Father Neuhaus’s best-known book, “The Naked Public Square,” argued that American democracy must not be stripped of religious morality. Published in 1984, it provoked a debate about the role of religion in affairs of state and was embraced by the growing Christian conservative movement.
In the last 20 years, Father Neuhaus helped give evangelical Protestants and Catholics a theological framework for joining forces in the nation’s culture wars.
The Associated Press
A native of Canada and the son of a Lutheran pastor, Neuhaus began his own work as a Lutheran minister at St. John the Evangelist Lutheran Church in a predominantly African-American Brooklyn neighborhood. He was active in the civil rights movement and other liberal causes. In 1964, he joined the Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel and the Rev. Daniel Berrigan as the first co-chairmen of the anti-war group Clergy Concerned About Vietnam. But he eventually broke with the left, partly over the U.S. Supreme Court's 1973 ruling Roe v. Wade that legalized abortion.
In 1990, he converted to Catholicism and a year later was ordained by New York Cardinal John O'Connor. "I was thirty years a Lutheran pastor, and after thirty years of asking myself why I was not a Roman Catholic I finally ran out of answers that were convincing either to me or to others," he wrote.
Father Raymond de Souza on Neuhaus as a Catholic intellectual.
With the death of Father Richard John Neuhaus on Jan. 8, the Catholic Church lost one of its greatest public intellectuals, a theologian who brought the light of the Gospel to the world of public life.
More than that, though, Father Neuhaus made possible a new world of intellectual engagement with the culture.
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By the 1990s, Father Neuhaus had, along with his friends George Weigel and Michael Novak, wrought a sea change in Catholic intellectual life. With the obvious favor of Pope John Paul II, Father Neuhaus and his colleagues articulated a new, confident Catholicism which sought less to adapt to the secular culture as it did to challenge it with a fresh application of the Catholic tradition
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A few months before his reception into the Catholic Church, Richard John Neuhaus launched a new journal, First Things, which became the most prominent and influential “journal of religion and public life” in America.
Read by religious leaders both Catholic, Protestant and Jewish, influential figures in theology, law and politics, and bright students in universities all over, First Things made widely available the thought of its editor in chief, but also a whole cadre of established Catholic thinkers: Avery Dulles, George Weigel, Mary Ann Glendon, Russell Hittinger, as well as new voices such as the current editor, Jody Bottum.
A generation of orthodox, engaged Christian writers was launched by First Things.
‘First Blog’
Yet, it remains true that for most readers, the first thing about First Things was Father Neuhaus himself, who pioneered in print what today might be called the first blog.
Death on a Thursday Morning by the editors of the National Review
Richard John Neuhaus, who died earlier today in New York, was the most influential Catholic and Christian theologian and writer in America during the second half of the 20th century. His influence can be compared to that of Archbishop Fulton Sheen, with one important distinction: Fulton Sheen exercised his sway over the public directly, through his radio and television sermons. Father Neuhaus did so less directly, through his books and articles, through his editorship of two important magazines devoted to religion and politics, through his friendship with Pope John Paul II, and through his impact on other theologians both in the Catholic Church and in other Christian congregations. Partly for those reasons, however, Neuhaus’s influence is likely to be the deeper, longer-lasting and more extensive one.
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Neuhaus began his adult life as a Canadian, a left-winger, and a Lutheran. He never lost his love for his country of birth — he spent six weeks of every year vacationing, reading, and reflecting in the Quebec countryside — his respect for a liberalism shaped by charity, or his admiration for the Lutheran tradition. He became nonetheless an American, a conservative, and a Catholic. And from these three conversions he forged for himself a distinctive religious identity that was conservative and generous, traditional and open, charitable and — yes — combative.
Reflections by Raymond Arroyo in the Wall St Journal
Of his work with Martin Luther King Jr., he once wrote that God "used his most unworthy servant Martin to create in our public life a luminous moment of moral truth about what Gunnar Myrdal rightly called 'the America dilemma,' racial justice. It seems a long time ago now, but there is no decline in the frequency of my thanking God for his witness and for having been touched, however briefly, by his friendship, praying that he may rest in peace, and that his cause may yet be vindicated."
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And though he enjoyed a series of presidential appointments, in the Carter, Reagan and first Bush administration, he never lost sight of his role as a priest. He would write: "Politics is chiefly a function of culture, at the heart of culture is morality, and at the heart of morality is religion."
Suffering and diminishment are not the greatest of evils..."
"... but are normal ingredients in life, especially in old age. They are to be accepted as elements of a full human existence. As I become increasingly paralyzed and unable to speak, I can identify with the many paralytics and mute persons in the Gospels, grateful for the loving and skillful care I receive and for the hope of everlasting life in Christ. If the Lord now calls me to a period of weakness, I know well that his power can be made perfect in infirmity. Blessed be the name of the Lord!”
Those words are from the last McGinley Lecture given by Avery Cardinal Dulles. He was no longer able to speak and his lecture had to be read for him.
On his trip to America, Pope Benedict visited Cardinal Dulles, then 90, at Fordham University
Benedict, the university professor, saluted America’s greatest scholarly theologian. And, suitably, the latter encounter was private, at Fordham, a place of teaching, with the two scholars speaking about their earlier theological collaborations and their books.
“Eminenza, Eminenza, I recall the work you did for the International Theological Commission in the 1990s,” said the Holy Father as he greeted Cardinal Dulles with obvious enthusiasm. Cardinal Dulles kissed the papal ring and smiled back at Benedict. Unable to speak, Cardinal Dulles had prepared a text that was read to the Holy Father by a fellow Jesuit priest.
Cardinal Dulles then presented Benedict with a copy of his most recently published book, a splendid collection of the McGinley Lectures he has been delivering at Fordham for 20 years under the title Church and Society.
Benedict immediately took it in hand, read the inscription and began to look through the pages — as happy as any scholar is to get a new book by a respected friend.
I learned about Obituarieshelp.org from Melanie Waters who wrote to tell me about her website that turns out to be a wonderful resource for grieving people who must write an obituary or a eulogy or friends who want help to write a letter of condolence.
She says "ObituraiesHelp.org is a work in progress. I'll be adding to it weekly until ObituariesHelp.org becomes the one unified source online for Funerals, Obituaries, and Sympathy and Condolence resources."
For genealogists, obituaries are often the best way to learn about your ancestors and Melanie provides many links and resources.
A site to bookmark.
Avery Cardinal Dulles, R.I.P.
New York Times obit
Cardinal Avery Dulles, a scion of diplomats and Presbyterians who converted to Roman Catholicism, rose to pre-eminence in Catholic theology and became the only American theologian ever appointed to the College of Cardinals, died today died Friday morning at Fordham University in the Bronx. He was 90. ..
Cardinal Dulles, a professor of religion at Fordham University for the last 20 years, was a prolific author and lecturer and an elder statesman of Catholic theology in America. He was also the son of John Foster Dulles, the secretary of state under President Dwight D. Eisenhower, and the nephew of Allen Dulles, who guided European espionage during World War II and later directed the Central Intelligence Agency.
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His spiritual passage to Catholicism was like a fable. A young scholar with a searching mind, he stirred from his establishment Presbyterian family to face questions of faith and dogma. By the time he entered Harvard in 1936, he was an agnostic.
In his second book, “A Testimonial to Grace,” a 1946 account of his conversion, Cardinal Dulles said his doubts about God on entering Harvard were not diminished by his studies of medieval art, philosophy and theology. But on a gray February day in 1939, strolling along the Charles River in Cambridge, he saw a tree in bud and experienced a profound moment.
“The thought came to me suddenly, with all the strength and novelty of a revelation, that these little buds in their innocence and meekness followed a rule, a law of which I as yet knew nothing,” he wrote. “That night, for the first time in years, I prayed.”
His conversion in 1940, the year he graduated from Harvard, shocked his family and friends, he said, but he called it the best and most important decision of his life.
From a 2001 interview with Avery Cardinal Dulles by Michael Paulson in the Boston Globe. (He came to faith in my parish, St Paul's in Cambridge.)
Dulles, a brilliant student passionate about learning, found himself ravenously consuming the new works of French Catholic theologians, and one day he marched into a Catholic bookstore and asked, "How do I get into your church?"
Q. What drew you to Catholicism?
A. Perhaps it was the studies of the Reformation period. We had to read Luther and Calvin and the decrees of the Council and Trent and all those sorts of things, and I just found myself resonating with the Catholic positions in all those controversies, and also feeling that the culture of Europe was destroyed or ruptured by the Reformation in a way that was unfortunate. And then I discovered the Catholic Church as it existed in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and it was a very vital, vibrant thing. St. Paul's parish there - the liturgy was very well performed, and Sunday evening they were having benediction, they were all singing the hymns of Thomas Aquinas in Latin, and I said, `This is the church for me.'
Q. Your journey to Catholicism strikes me as having been more intellectual than spiritual.
A. I think that's probably true. I hope there was some spiritual aspect to it, but I've never had any great taste for what's called spirituality. I think it deals so much with emotions and feelings. I don't have many emotions or feelings. I tend to have ideas. I was interested in Catholicism ideally, intellectually. I was convinced that it was true. I was interested in truth.
His obituary by Joseph Bottum at First Things
By the time of death, from the after-effects of the polio that he had contracted during the war, Dulles had published more than 700 theological articles and 27 books, becoming, along the way, the most important American Catholic theologian of the twentieth century.
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“Christian tradition is marked by a deep reverence for its own content, which it strives to protect against any dilution or distortion,” he once wrote, and he saw that the purpose of theological writing is not intellectual surprise or verbal fireworks. It is, rather, “to impart a tacit, lived awareness of the God to whom the Christian Scriptures and symbols point.”
This anecodote comes from the London Timesonline
After his consecration as a cardinal in Rome on February 21, 2001, the Gregorian University hosted a meal in his honor. Over the rattle of after-dinner coffee cups, various high-ranking ecclesial figures rose to praise Dulles’s life and work. The most revealing moment, however, may have come when, unexpectedly, one of his Dulles cousins stepped to the podium. An aristocrat of that strange, old American variety — tall and puritanically thin, well but primly dressed, a daughter of stern Protestant New England — she explained that she had overheard as a child the outraged family discussions of the young Avery’s conversion. Uncle Allen, Aunt Eleanor, John Foster, all the senior family members gathered around to complain that the best and brightest of the family’s next generation seemed determined to throw his promising life away. “And, of course, they were right,” she said. “He did throw that life away. He threw it away for God.”
The Anchoress eulogizes her "birth" brother who died yesterday after A sad painful life.
I don’t blame him for not having faith. I can’t think of any example of love he ever encountered that did not - ultimately - get distorted or misrepresented or prove itself to be wholly untrustworthy, not to be counted on, not to be believed.
I loved him, but I was much younger than he, and of a completely different nature. I doubt he believed it, that I loved him. He had no tools to believe it.
How tragically sad is that?
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I say to hell with that. He was loved into being; he was baptized and sealed. The people who were supposed to teach him the way in which to go spun him madly, incessantly - then allowed him to get dizzy and lost. He lived a sad, tortured life the best way he knew how - quite imperfectly, but then his tools were also very insufficient and his trust was non-existent. I cannot claim to know anything, but I do not believe that a loving God would look upon this much-sinned against man and reject him once again, as he was rejected all his life.
For one thing, none of us know what happens in those infinitesimal moments between life and death, if mercy is offered one more time, and accepted.
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Tonight, I am believing that my brother John is finally in the presence of the all-encompassing and unconditional love in which he can finally trust, finally surrender to…or that he has glimpsed enough of it to want more, however long it takes to become fit for it.
The terror in Mumbai has been horrific, both in the numbers of people killed and the failure of the Indian police to fight back, thereby causing more deaths of innocents
Sebastian D'Souza, the Mumbai photographer who captured a photo of the "baby terrorist" caught alive and now pleading for his life, said, "I wish I'd a gun, not a camera. ...
...what angered Mr D'Souza almost as much were the masses of armed police hiding in the area who simply refused to shoot back. "There were armed policemen hiding all around the station but none of them did anything," he said. "At one point, I ran up to them and told them to use their weapons. I said, 'Shoot them, they're sitting ducks!' but they just didn't shoot back."
Just a few of the victims:
A selfless young couple, Rabbi Gavriel Holzberg and his wife Rivka left Brooklyn to open a Jewish outreach center in Mumbai as part of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement. Chabad.org says of them,
For five years, they ran a synagogue and Torah classes, and helped people dealing with drug addiction and poverty,
Their selfless love will live on with all the people they touched. We will continue the work they started.
They were sought out, tortured and killed.
Firing grenades and automatic weapons, the men took the Holtzbergs and at least six other people hostage, according to friends of the Holtzbergs. The cook, who was also a nanny, managed to escape with Moshe about 12 hours into the siege, the friends said. The boy’s pants were soaked in blood when he emerged.
Rabbi Kotlarsky said that Rabbi Holtzberg had called the Israeli Embassy from inside Nariman House and was describing the situation when the line went dead. His last words before being cut off were “Lo tov,” Rabbi Kotlarsky added, which means “not good” in Hebrew.
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“This is a tragic loss for the Lubavitch community, and for our entire city,” Mayor Bloomberg said. “That their son survived is a miracle, and our entire city is grateful for his nanny’s heroic act. During a time of terrible sadness, her courage reaffirms our faith in the capacity of good to triumph over evil.”
Yaacov Ben Moshe at Breath of the Beast writes
They were neither Missionaries nor ultra-Orthodox zealots they were, simple, devoted and loving people serving a very high purpose.
They were murdered by zealots for purely political and bloody purposes.
Zealots indeed. Doctors were shocked at the torture of the hostages
this was entirely different. It was shocking and disturbing," a doctor said....Another doctor said: "It was very strange. I have seen so many dead bodies in my life, and was yet traumatised. A bomb blast victim's body might have been torn apart and could be a very disturbing sight. But the bodies of the victims in this attack bore such signs about the kind of violence of urban warfare that I am still unable to put my thoughts to words,"
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"Of all the bodies, the Israeli victims bore the maximum torture marks. It was clear that they were killed on the 26th itself. It was obvious that they were tied up and tortured before they were killed. It was so bad that I do not want to go over the details even in my head again,"
Other victim The Fearless Brit
Andreas Liveras, a self-made businessman went out for a quiet meal with three members of his staff.
After the initial attack on the hotel, Mr Liveras, a father of four and grandfather of eight, phoned his family to say that he had survived Wednesday evening’s assault – and he had also spoken to the BBC to describe the scene in the hotel.
“We knew that he had been taken from the restaurant, through the kitchen and to the basement – and then on to another room. There were a lot of people milling about.
“Typically, my father remained calm throughout his ordeal. He was fearless man – he had flown round the world in his own plane, he had travelled around the world in his own boat. He had done things that most people would be afraid to do.
“Eventually, however, the gunmen got into the room where my father was and sprayed bullets. He was fatally injured and died from multiple wounds."
The family suspect that Mr Liveras’s courage may have contributed to his death. “He would put the safety of his staff before his own. He would not bow down, or crawl and hide, in the face of these people [the terrorists]. I think that is why he got it [the bullets] first,” said his son.
May they all rest in peace and may their memories be a blessing to all who knew them.
Condolences to David Warren on the death of his father.
He writes about another whose response in losing his father was to attend Catholic masses in the old, Latin rite.
Went to hear, and inevitably, went to think, while the words of the Mass were sung for him, from the invocation of the Kyrie, a text old as the Psalms if not older: "Lord have mercy."
From one Mass, he was drawn curiously to another, until in due course his diverse thoughts organized themselves into a single thought. And that thought was: "This is the only thing that is equal to my father's death."
I learned of this when my own father died, the Sunday before last.
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I am going to tell you what a fool I was, in hope that you will learn from my foolishness, and not do what I did. Or rather, what I failed to do.
I opened up the New York Times the other day to see that General Robert H. Barrow had died. He was 86, and formerly the commandant of the US Marine Corps. He's from my hometown, and returned there to the family plantation after his retirement. I knew that he was there, and for a long, long time, would pass his house when I'd go home to visit my folks and think, "One of these times, I need to call on Gen. Barrow. I bet he's interesting."
I never did. Here, from the Times obit, is the kind of man I never found the time to call on:
The honor guard accompanied Gen. Barrow's casket through town, the Marine Corps band played, they had a 21-gun salute, and it was all so glorious in my sister's telling. Nothing like that has ever happened in our town. A truly great man lived among us.
And see, I knew he was there all along, and never made time to go see him, and ask him about his life and times. What stories he could have told! If only I'd had enough sense to stop by and say hello. I come from a small town. People are neighborly. I bet he would have been pleased to make time for a curious visitor who wanted to find out what he knew about the world. But I never made time for him.
What I want to tell you is this: you can probably think of an old man or old woman in the periphery of your life, someone who may or may not be as illustrious or as accomplished as Gen. Barrow was, but who still has quite a story to tell. You may have thought to yourself that someday, you'd like to sit down with that person and have a long talk. But everydayness sets in, and you never do get around to it. Suddenly, you're out of days. The moment has passed. There's nothing left but regret.
I was a fool to let the opportunity to benefit from Gen. Barrow's wisdom pass me by. Whoever your Gen. Barrow is, don't you be a fool too.
He started off as a window washer and later founded a maintenance company with his brother-in-law
Hyman Golden, Co-Founder of Snapple, Dies at 85
Then, in 1972, Mr. Marsh introduced Mr. Golden to Arnold Greenberg, a childhood friend who ran a health food store in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan. The three decided to join forces and founded a company — called Unadulterated Food Products — selling juices to health-food stores.
In 1980, the company introduced a line of all-natural juices with the Snapple name, which came from one of its first products, a carbonated apple juice that had a “snappy apple taste.”
“When it first came out,” Mr. Greenberg told The New York Times in July 1994, “we sold 500 cases. The next month we sold 500 more cases and got some calls from distributors. ‘You’ve changed your formula,’ they said. ‘This Snapple’s tasting better and better.’ Then one day in our warehouse the tops of the bottles started shooting off. Bang! Pop! We found out it was fermenting. We’d made Champagne.”
The company enjoyed modest success with its natural sodas in the early 1980s, but it was when it introduced its iced tea in 1987 that sales began to skyrocket. Amid a nationwide boom in health consciousness, Snapple became perhaps the only ready-to-drink iced tea promoted as having natural ingredients and being made from real brewed tea. Consumers increasingly chose it over its carbonated competitors.
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By the time the company was purchased by Quaker Oats Company for about $1.7 billion in 1994, it had annual sales of $700 million, and its bottles of juices with their familiar blue-and-white logos could be found in delis, supermarkets, vending machines and homes across the country.
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“He accomplished the American dream,” she said. “When he and his partners would get together for events and celebrations, their favorite song to sing was ‘God Bless America,’ because they were so appreciative.”
“In their wildest dreams,” she added, “they never thought that this would be the end result.”
Scientific American on the death of Robert Furman, atom bomb spy leader, at 93
Robert Furman, a civil engineer who helped round up German scientists suspected of building the atomic bomb for the Nazis during World War II, has died. He was 93.
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As chief of foreign intelligence for the U.S. bomb project in the last two years of the war, Furman coordinated the kidnapping of German scientists, including physicist Werner Heisenberg. Eventually, Heisenberg and nine other scientists were spirited out of Soviet reach and into a detention center in France called the Dustbin, according to the Times.
Under German sniper fire, Furman and his team also seized 31 tons of uranium ore in Belgium that was eventually shipped to the U.S.
Furman worked closely with Nobel Prize-winning physicist Luis Alvarez to track down German nuclear activity. They searched for “heavy water” – water containing a heavy isotope of hydrogen used in the making of bombs – in the Upper Rhine and Lake Constance between Germany, Switzerland and Austria, Los Alamos lab historian emeritus Roger Meade told the Times.
Furman’s spy team, code-named Alsos, ultimately found that Germany’s bomb project wasn’t as advanced as the U.S. had believed. “Instead of being two years ahead, they were two years behind,” historian Robert S. Norris wrote in Racing for the Bomb, according to the Times.
New York Times obituary
Robert R. Furman, a former Army major who as chief of foreign intelligence for the American atomic bomb project in World War II coordinated and often joined harrowing espionage missions to kidnap German scientists, seize uranium ore in Europe and determine the extent of Nazi efforts to build the bomb, died Oct. 14 at his home in Adamstown, Md. He was 93.
When I was at the Department of the Interior, I was fortunate to spend some time with Tony Hillerman, a lovely man who was simply delighted to receive a special departmental award for his novel, "A Thief of Time) and the pubic awareness he created about theft of Indian relics from public land.
At that time, he was recovering from a heart attack and still a bit weak. Fortunately, he lived many more years and wrote several more books to the delight of his fans.
Boston Globe obituary
Tony Hillerman, author of the acclaimed Navajo Tribal Police mystery novels and creator of two of the unlikeliest of literary heroes, Navajo police officers Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee, died Sunday of pulmonary failure. He was 83.
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His daughter said the Navajo values of family, community, generosity, and enjoying the beauty of the world, resonated with her father's own Catholic values. He felt blessed in his life and saw the needs of the Navajo Nation and responded, she said.
"He was a storyteller at heart, and so when people started buying his books and he didn't have to struggle so hard financially, he felt it was a good way to share the blessings," she said.
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"I want Americans to stop thinking of Navajos as primitive persons, to understand that they are sophisticated and complicated," Mr. Hillerman once said.
New York Times obit
In the world of mystery fiction, Mr. Hillerman was that rare figure: a best-selling author who was adored by fans, admired by fellow authors and respected by critics. Though the themes of his books were not overtly political, he wrote with an avowed purpose: to instill in his readers a respect for Native American culture.
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“It’s always troubled me that the American people are so ignorant of these rich Indian cultures,” Mr. Hillerman once told Publishers Weekly. “I think it’s important to show that aspects of ancient Indian ways are still very much alive and are highly germane even to our ways.”
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Mr. Hillerman wrote with intimate knowledge of the Navajo, Hopi and Zuni tribes; he grew up with people very much like them. “I recognized kindred spirits” in the Navajo, he wrote in an autobiographical essay in 1986. “Country boys. Folks among whom I felt at ease.”
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For all the recognition he received, Mr. Hillerman once said, he was most gladdened by the status of Special Friend of the Dineh (the Navajo people) conferred on him in 1987 by the Navajo Nation. He was also proud that his books were taught at reservation schools and colleges.
“Good reviews delight me when I get them,” he said. “But I am far more delighted by being voted the most popular author by the students of St. Catherine Indian school, and even more by middle-aged Navajos who tell me that reading my mysteries revived their children’s interest in the Navajo Way.”
Read the whole obit to learn more about his remarkable life.
May he rest in peace surrounded by beauty.
Sister Emmanuelle, France's "Mother Teresa," dies aged 99.
Sister Emmanuelle, France's answer to Mother Teresa, who has died aged 99 was an unorthodox nun who spent 20 years helping the poor in a Cairo slum before returning to France to defend the homeless.
The diminutive Roman Catholic nun, whose real name was Madeleine Cinquin, was best known in France for her frequent appearances on television to campaign passionately for the poor and homeless.
She came to media attention with her work with some of the world's poorest people, the residents of the Ezbet El-Nakhl slum in Cairo who eke out their living by scavenging in the garbage produced in the giant city.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Sister Emmanuelle was a woman who "touched our hearts," a "woman of action for whom charity meant concrete actions of solidarity and fraternity."
The Vatican said her work, like that of Nobel peace laureate Mother Teresa, "showed how Christian charity was able to go beyond differences of nationality, race, religion."
Rocco Palmo writes about her funeral in "Life Does Not End For Those Who Know to Love"
Sent off by her expressed request from the small-town convent where she spent her last years, Paris came to a halt yesterday to commemorate Soeur Emmanuelle -- the "French Mother Teresa" who died Monday at 99.
Following her private funeral liturgy and burial at Callian in the country's southeast, the capital's Cardinal Andre Vingt-Trois celebrated a nationally-televised memorial Mass in Notre-Dame, its high-watt congregation led by President Nicolas Sarkozy, his predecessor Jacques Chirac and -- in a tribute to the two decades the self-described "rag woman with the rag pickers" spent working among the poor in Cairo -- Egyptian First Lady Suzanne Mubarak, as a crowd of thousands packed the square outside.
She left a message with her publishers.
"When you hear this message, I will no longer be there. In telling of my life -- all of my life -- I wanted to bear witness that love is more powerful than death," she said, according to the text.
"I have confessed everything, the good and the less good, and I can tell you about it. Where I am now, life does not end for those who know how to love."...
Known best today for his elegant, edgy and often erotic black and white drawings that seem the essence of a decadent age and a new style called Art Nouveau, Aubrey Beardsley began his career as a musical child prodigy only turning to drawing and illustration in the last five years of his young life.
Infected with tuberculosis since he was six, Beardsley became a famous fop, living life hard if languidly.
Beardsley was a public character as well as a private eccentric. He said, "I have one aim—the grotesque. If I am not grotesque I am nothing." Wilde said he had "a face like a silver hatchet, and grass green hair." Beardsley was meticulous about his attire: dove-grey suits, hats, ties; yellow gloves. He would appear at his publisher's in a morning coat and patent leather pumps.
He became part of the
homosexual clique that included Oscar Wilde and the English aesthetes, Beardsley was basically heterosexual--though perhaps his only female partner had been his adored elder sister, Mabel (who may also have borne his miscarried child). Some biographers suggest that Wilde's celebrated downfall and the public revulsion that followed it may have precipitated Beardsley's final illness.
He was only twenty-three when he turned to God
In March, 1897, after converting to Roman Catholicism, he and his mother traveled to Paris. Doctors advised against spending the winter in the city, so in November they went to southern France. There, ravaged by chills and weakness, Beardsley took to bed and never left his room after a bad lung hemorrhage on Jan. 26. Thoughts of religion and guilt about the frank eroticism of his past work haunted him, and he spent hours reading about the lives of Roman Catholic saints
Nine days before his death,
he scribbled a note to his London publisher with the heading "Jesus is our Lord & Judge." The note read: "I implore you to destroy all copies of Lysistrata. . . . By all that is holy--all obscene drawings." ..... Early in the morning on Mar. 16, when his mother and Mabel were out of the room, the artist apparently tried to draw, for when Ellen Beardsley returned, her son was dead and his favorite gold pen--either thrown or dropped on the floor--was standing upright like an arrow
Daniel Mitsui at The Lion and the Cardinal notes that the final request written by Beardsley "in my death agony" was ignored.
But the letter leaves an enduring testimony to the sincerity of its author's conversion. The world of arts and letters has no shortage of insincere converts; men for whom religion is simply another element in the creation of an interesting public personality. But in the dying Aubrey Beardsley is seen the will to mortification and the shame for notoriety that mark a true penitent
Via Jason Kottke comes the filmmaker Pes who came across this tombstone in Woodlawn cemetery.
Intrigued he did more research and found this article in the New York Times in 1909 about poor George Millett who was "stabbed to death in an office frolic".
The girls only tried to kiss him for this birthday but George fended the girls, reeled and fell over as he did pierced in the heart by a blade for scraping ink that was in his breast pocket.
In the time of King Henry IV who, after deposing Richard II, spent much of his reign putting down rebellions. One of them involved was Sir Thomas Blount.
Only six men, including Sir Thomas Blount, received the full traitor's death of being drawn, hanged, disembowelled, and forced to watch their own entrails burned before being beheaded and quartered. Blount's execution resulted in one of the greatest displays of wit in the face of adversity ever recorded. As he was sitting down watching his extracted entrails being burned in front of him, he was asked if he would like a drink. 'No, for I do not know where I should put it', he replied.
via Samizdata
When I heard about Paul Newman's death, I was away for the weekend for my high school reunion so I didn't have a chance to what others had written, but then I already knew he was a remarkable man. I had already written about the legacies he was creating. Paul Newman's Legacies
"If I leave a legacy, it will be the camps," Newman says.
Breitbart obit
Paul Newman, known for his piercing blue eyes, boyish good looks and stellar performances in scores of hit Hollywood movies, has died, his foundation said Saturday. He was 83.
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"Paul Newman's craft was acting. His passion was racing. His love was his family and friends. And his heart and soul were dedicated to helping make the world a better place for all," Foundation Vice-Chairman Robert Forrester said.
Newman played youthful rebels, charming rogues, golden-hearted drunks and amoral opportunists in a career that encompassed more than 50 movies. He was one of the most popular and consistently bankable Hollywood stars in the second half of the 20th century. Two of his most popular movies included "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" (1969) and "The Sting" (1973), in which he co-starred with an equally popular and handsome actor, Robert Redford.
Newman was also a philanthropist, a health food mogul -- he once quipped that his salad dressing was making more money than his movies -- a race car enthusiast and a leftist political activist.
New York Times, Paul Newman, a Magnetic Titan of Hollywood
If Marlon Brando and James Dean defined the defiant American male as a sullen rebel, Paul Newman recreated him as a likable renegade, a strikingly handsome figure of animal high spirits and blue-eyed candor whose magnetism was almost impossible to resist, whether the character was Hud, Cool Hand Luke or Butch Cassidy.
He acted in more than 65 movies over more than 50 years, drawing on a physical grace, unassuming intelligence and good humor that made it all seem effortless.
Yet he was also an ambitious, intellectual actor and a passionate student of his craft, and he achieved what most of his peers find impossible: remaining a major star into a craggy, charismatic old age even as he redefined himself as more than Hollywood star. He raced cars, opened summer camps for ailing children and became a nonprofit entrepreneur with a line of foods that put his picture on supermarket shelves around the world.
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he remained fulfilled by his charitable work, saying it was his greatest legacy, particularly in giving ailing children a camp at which to play.
“We are such spendthrifts with our lives,” Mr. Newman once told a reporter. “The trick of living is to slip on and off the planet with the least fuss you can muster. I’m not running for sainthood. I just happen to think that in life we need to be a little like the farmer, who puts back into the soil what he takes out.”
Newman's own departure was long and gentle, until cancer took hold. By choice, he faded from films gradually, taking fewer and fewer major roles - a diminuendo that was all the more striking when compared with Redford's sustained career as an actor-director.
In truth, though he had major roles in more than 50 motion pictures Newman preferred his private life to the feverish fakery of Hollywood.
The Boston Globe Blue-eyed idol put an indelible stamp on movies, philanthropy
Burial plans are unknown, although Newman expressed a desire to have his ashes strewn across the lake where he built the first Hole in the Wall Camp.
"I always admired the fish," he said.
Neoneocon didn't need to remind me of how sexy he was and how he aged awfully well. She found the YouTube videos, only one of which I borrowed
He was a Man of Natural Virtue.
Gerard Vanderleun in A Life and a Love Less Ordinary pays tribute to the Newmans' marriage
I watch this montage and I think of the old 60s poem that ends, "With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams; it is still a beautiful world." And I also think that sometimes, if you are careful and keep your vows, love can endure. All in all, it would seem that Newman's life and love and marriage were, in the end, his greatest achievement. His films were merely the means.
An appreciation in the New York Times,
Paul Newman wore his fame lightly, his beauty too.
My favorite may be Dahlia Lithwick's piece on Slate
One version of the story has the kid look from the picture of Newman on the Newman's Own lemonade carton to Newman himself, then back to the carton and back to Newman again before asking, "Are you lost?" Another version: The kid looks steadily at him and demands, "Are you really Paul Human?"
Paul Newman left a Great Legacy of how to be a great man even if a movie star. Thankfully, we'll always have his movies and by buying his salad dressings, his lemonade and his popcorn, we can support his legacy.
I think I would have liked Jim Adams a lot, but he died earlier this month in Wyoming.
His obituary from the Casper Star-Tribune
Jim, who had tired of reading obituaries noting other's courageous battles with this or that disease, wanted it known that he lost his battle. It was primarily as a result of being stubborn and not following doctor's orders or maybe for just living life a little too hard for better than five decades.
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He was sadly deprived of his final wish, which was to be run over by a beer truck on the way to the liquor store to buy booze for a date. True to his personal style, he spent his final hours joking with medical personnel, cussing and begging for narcotics and bargaining with God to look over his loving dog, Biscuit, and his family.
He would like to thank all "his ladies" for putting up with him the last 30 years.
During his life, he excelled at anything he put his mind to. He loved to hear and tell jokes and spin tales of grand adventures he may or may not have had.
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In lieu of flowers, he asks that you make a sizeable purchase at your favorite watering hole, get rip roaring drunk and tell the stories he no longer can.
From Camille Paglia comes this remarkable 1905 obituary from Toronto's Globe and Mail
Abigail Becker
Farmer and homemaker born in Frontenac County, Upper Canada, on March 14, 1830
A tall, handsome woman "who feared God greatly and the living or dead not at all," she married a widower with six children and settled in a trapper's cabin on Long Point, Lake Erie. On Nov. 23, 1854, with her husband away, she single-handedly rescued the crew of the schooner Conductor of Buffalo, which had run aground in a storm. The crew had clung to the frozen rigging all night, not daring to enter the raging surf. In the early morning, she waded chin-high into the water (she could not swim) and helped seven men reach shore. She was awarded medals for heroism and received $350 collected by the people of Buffalo, plus a handwritten letter from Queen Victoria that was accompanied by £50, all of which went toward buying a farm. She lost her husband to a storm, raised 17 children alone and died at Walsingham Centre, Ont.
We all know and will all miss Don LaFonaine: The Voice
AP Obit
- The omnipresent baritone and gravely bass undertones of Don LaFontaine's distinctive voice had the unique ability to seamlessly embellish big-screen kisses, slice through over-the-top explosions, perfectly pair with robust musical scores, glide alongside car chases and effortlessly co-star with any A-list talent in Hollywood.
''He was the originator of the modern voiceover for movie trailers,'' said voiceover artist Jim Tasker. ''He is the standard for which all other voiceovers for movie trailers are measured. For the past 30 years, his voice has been the gauge for all of us in the industry.'
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'When you die, the voice you hear in heaven is not Don's. It's God trying to sound like Don.''
Washington Post a clever appreciation by Hank Stuever, In a World of Don LaFontaine.
In a world where marketing is far more important than content . . . came one man . . . with a Voice....
In a world that believed deeply in the potency of the words Coming Soon. . .
In a world where eyewitnesses describe real things, real events as being "like, in a movie" .
In a world suddenly without Don LaFontaine, who died Monday at 68 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, of lung failure, brought on by undetermined causes . . . (Cedars-Sinai being a world where the famous newly dead go on to other coming attractions).
No news organization ever wants to do this. It was a monumental embarrassment when Reuters published the obituary of Steve Jobs who is still quite alive.
The stock obituary was published "momentarily" after a routine update by a reporter, and was "immediately deleted", Bloomberg said.
Jobs was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2003, but there is no suggestion that the news wire has recent news on his health. Most media organisations regularly update their pre-prepared obituaries of newsworthy figures.
The obituary contained blank spaces for Jobs’s age and cause of death to be inserted.
The opening sentence described Jobs as the man who “helped make personal computers as easy to use as telephones, changed the way animated films are made, persuaded consumers to tune into digital music and refashioned the mobile phone.”
As Mark Twain remarked when something similar happened to him, "The rumors of my death are greatly exaggerated.?
The homily of Fr. David O'Connell, president of Catholic University.
What is the measure of a man? This question has been asked over and again from the beginning of time, throughout history, by all of those who share our human mortality. What is the measure of a man? It is a good question; it is an important question; it is an enduring question; it is an ultimate question when we face the death of someone we know and love. Someone like Tony Snow.
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No one of us among his family or friends believes that Tony’s life was long enough. And, yet — in the face of its brevity — we respond in faith, we who are believers, that the measure of a man is not found, as the Book of Wisdom comforts us today, “in terms of years (Wisdom 4:8).” It is, indeed, our faith that reminds us: “the just man, though he die early, shall be at rest. For the age that is honorable comes not with the passing of time. He who pleased God, Wisdom writes, was loved (and) … having become perfect in a short while, he reached the fullness of a long career; for his soul was pleasing to the Lord (Wisdom 4: 7-14).” For the believer, for people of faith, the true measure of a man lies in his efforts to please God.
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The passing of anyone we love moves us to question: what is the measure of a man? And whatever your answer may be, whatever our answer may be, we can be sure that the measure of a man is not found in words or titles or length of days but, rather, in deeds done, in a life lived, in a love shared and in the beliefs that made it so. The Gospel of St. Matthew tells us today: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, the merciful, clean of heart, the peacemakers, the persecuted, the just" (Matthew 5: 1-12) … these are the measure of a Christian man. For Tony Snow, these were the ways he embraced his own advice to “live boldly” and to “live a whole life.”
When he spoke to our graduates last spring, Tony shared an especially poignant moment and profound thought about his latest battle with cancer. He reflected that “while God doesn’t promise tomorrow, he does promise eternity.”
For Tony Snow, that promise has been fulfilled.
Remarks of President Bush with special attention to his children.
For Robbie, Kendall, and Kristi, you are in our thoughts and prayers, as well. We thank you for sharing your dad with us. He talked about you all the time. He wanted nothing more than your happiness and success. You know, I used to call Tony on the weekends to get his advice. And invariably, I found him with you on the soccer field, or at a swim meet, or helping with your homework. He loved you a lot. Today I hope you know that we loved him a lot, too.
Coming back from the weekend, I was shocked to hear that Tony Snow had died. Of course, I knew he had colon cancer, but death, especially sudden death, is always shocking. He was a good and decent man who became great by force of his character. He will be missed by many but no one will miss him more than his wife and three children. To them, the deepest condolences.
There are a score and many more personal recollections online about the force of his character.
Yuval Levin writes about his "deep and intensely cheerful curiosity."
Bill Kristol marvels at his calm courage and cheerful optimism
His deep Christian faith combined with his natural exuberance to give him an upbeat world view. Watching him, and so admiring his remarkable strength of character in the last phase of his life, I came to wonder: Could it be that a stance of faith-grounded optimism is in fact superior to one of worldly pessimism or sophisticated fatalism?
President Bush said
It was a joy to watch Tony at the podium each day,” the president said in a statement from Camp David, where he is spending the weekend. “He brought wit, grace and a great love of country to his work. His colleagues will cherish memories of his energetic personality and relentless good humor.”
Gaghdad Bob says
The essence of his soul comes through quite vividly -- his decency, his passion, his generosity, his desire to help lift mankind. ....
I don't know why there aren't more people who are able to convey the joy, excitement, creativity, expansiveness, optimism, hope, compassion, decency, humor, spirituality, and love that animate conservatism. Maybe they just don't get it the way Snow did, and connect all the dots, both horizontal and vertical.
Mark Steyn on his grace, affability and generous advice.
An NRO symposium on Tony Snow, Happy Warrior
Susan Estrich says Tony Snow was a Gem
Tony had a sweetness about him, a sweetness that, in the mean world that Washington and the media can be, sometimes led him to believe that everyone operated from the same place he did...
He was so earnest, so dear, he liked everyone and assumed the same about everyone else; he was honorable and honest, and assumed it about others.
Kurtz wrote an appreciation of Snow called As Good as His Words.
Here's a David Gregory interview with Snow talking about living and working with cancer. Kathryn Jean Lopez says it's impossible not to cry to hear Snow talk about his family and the 'depth of happiness' that cancer made possible in his life.
New York Times obituary
Mr. Snow’s death was announced by the White House. When a recurrence of the cancer interrupted his tenure there, he chose to talk about it openly, saying he wanted to offer hope to other patients. His message to them, he said, was: “Don’t think about dying. Think about living.”
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His snappy sound bites made Mr. Snow an instant hit among Republicans. “It’s like Mick Jagger at a rock concert,” Karl Rove, the president’s former political strategist, once said.
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He also had a musical flair; he grew up playing the flute, taught himself the acoustic guitar and played in an amateur rock ’n’ roll band, Beats Workin’. When they performed at the White House Congressional picnic, Mr. Bush jokingly called them “a bunch of, well, mediocre musicians.”
Washington Post obituary
In his brief tenure as Bush's public advocate, Snow became perhaps the best-known face of the administration after the president, vice president and secretary of state. Parlaying skills honed during years at Fox News, he offered a daily televised defense of the embattled president that was robust and at times even combative while repairing strained relations with a press corps frustrated by years of rote talking points.
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ABC News correspondent Ann Compton, president of the White House Correspondents Association, said yesterday that Snow was "the first press secretary who chose to use the podium as a way to argue the president's case -- not just in the president's words, but in his own."
There is a new, disturbing and completely uncivil tendency for some to make partisan remarks, often quite vile, when a person dies. Ben Johnson describes some of them in "Goebbels With Better Hair." No one is above criticism, but people who make crude and hateful remarks about someone who has just died should be shunned says Howard Kurtz. Amen to that. Fortunately, they are a tiny minority, but shunned they should be.
Better than any words about him are his own and none are better than his commencement address last year to the graduates of Catholic University. If you read nothing else, read his address, "Reason, Faith, Vocation."
"I focus on spiritual wealth now, and I'm busier, more enthusiastic, and more joyful than I have ever been."
"The question is not is there a God, but is there anything else except God? God is everyone and each of us is a little bit."
"Work at being a humble person."
The above quotes are from John Templeton who died yesterday in Nassau, the Bahamas, at 95.
Boston Globe/New York Times obit
John M. Templeton, a Tennessee-born investor and philanthropist who amassed a fortune as a pioneer in global mutual funds, then gave away hundreds of millions of dollars to foster understanding of what he called "spiritual realities,"
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In a career that spanned seven decades, Mr. Templeton dazzled Wall Street, organized some of the most successful mutual funds of his time, led investors into foreign markets, established charities that now give away $70 million a year, wrote books on finance and spirituality, and promoted a search for answers to what he called the "Big Questions" in the realms of science, faith, God, and the purpose of humanity.
Along the way, he became one of the world's richest men, gave up American citizenship, moved to the Bahamas, was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II, and bestowed much of his fortune on spiritual thinkers and innovators: Mother Teresa, Billy Graham, Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, the physicist Freeman Dyson, the philosopher Charles Taylor, and an array of prominent Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and Hindus.
Telegraph obit
Templeton boasted one of the longest and most successful track records on Wall Street. From its foundation in 1954, his Templeton Growth Fund grew at an astonishing rate of nearly 16 per cent a year until Templeton’s retirement in 1992, making it the top performing growth fund in the second half of the 20th century
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The Templeton formula was simple in theory, though not easily achieved in practice.
He looked for bargains — shares selling well below their asset values due to temporary circumstances — and would usually hold on to them for five years or more until they reached what he considered to be their true worth.
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He was one of the first to invest in post-war Japan, and one of the first to sell Japanese stocks in the mid-1980s before the bear market set in.
Templeton once described his speculative activities as a “ministry”, and saw the workings of the money market as part of God’s plan for His creation.
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In 1973 he inaugurated the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion, an annual award to remedy the Nobel Foundation’s omission of religion from its prizes.
A brilliant publicist, Templeton guaranteed that his prize would always be worth more than the Nobel, and arranged for the Duke of Edinburgh to present the award at Buckingham Palace, thus ensuring full press coverage.
She fought against those who would say her life was not worth living. Hers certainly was.
When Harriet McBryde Johnson died earlier this month at the age of 50 from a congenital neuromuscular disease, obituaries called her a "disability-rights activist." This is far too narrow a description of her life. She was less a traditional activist than an acute social conscience. Ms. Johnson forced us to look at disability in a different way -- not as something that we should seek to eradicate, but as something that is integral to the human condition, a "natural part of the human experience," as the American Association of People With Disabilities puts it.
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She was brutally direct when she talked about disabilities, including her own. "Most people don't know how to look at me," she wrote, describing her severely twisted spine and her "jumble of bones in a floppy bag of skin." But she abhorred the "veneer of beneficence" that overlay the arguments of those who said she would be "better off" without her disability. "The presence or absence of a disability doesn't predict quality of life," she argued, challenging Mr. Singer's support of what she called "disability-based infanticide."
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People with disabilities, she said, "have something the world needs."
George Carlin, 71, died of hear failure in Los Angeles shortly after being admitted for chest pains.
His comedic sensibility revolved around a central theme: humanity is a cursed, doomed species.
"I don't have any beliefs or allegiances. I don't believe in this country, I don't believe in religion, or a god, and I don't believe in all these man-made institutional ideas," he told Reuters in a 2001 interview.
Carlin told Playboy in 2005 that he looked forward to an afterlife where he could watch the decline of civilization on a "heavenly CNN."
He's the only comedian whose case, the "Seven Words" went to the Supreme Court which upheld the right of the government to sanction radio stations for broadcasting offensive words when children might be listening.
"So my name is a footnote in American legal history, which I'm perversely kind of proud of," he told The Associated Press earlier this year.
He produced 23 comedy albums, 14 HBO specials, three books, a couple of TV shows and appeared in several movies, from his own comedy specials to "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure" in 1989 - a testament to his range from cerebral satire and cultural commentary to downright silliness (and sometimes hitting all points in one stroke).
"Why do they lock gas station bathrooms?" he once mused. "Are they afraid someone will clean them?"
New York Times, George Carlin, Splenetic Comedian, Dies at 71
By the mid-’70s, like his comic predecessor Lenny Bruce and the fast-rising Richard Pryor, Mr. Carlin had emerged as a cultural renegade. In addition to his irreverent jests about religion and politics, he openly talked about the use of drugs, including acid and peyote, and said that he kicked cocaine not for moral or legal reasons but after he found “far more pain in the deal than pleasure.” But the edgier, more biting comedy he developed during this period, along with his candid admission of drug use, cemented his reputation as the “comic voice of the counterculture.”
His best loved routine was Stuff.
My favorite is baseball and football
From Newsweek, The Russert Miracles
The first "Russert miracle," as attendees called it, happened at the private funeral service held at Holy Trinity Church in Georgetown; the family of the late Meet the Press host Tim Russert had requested that Senators Obama and McCain to sit together, and the two presidential combatants obliged. CNN Washington Bureau chief David Bohrman, a former NBC producer, describes the scene to NEWSWEEK: "They sat side-by-side and spoke for twenty minutes. The body language was total friendship. They were warm and friendly and truly engaged in a conversation.... I kept thinking here we are at the funeral at the son of a sanitation worker and the presidential candidates are having their first one on one conversation here."
After the memorial service, the crowd moved to the rooftop where they saw the sky open up to a rainbow.
"After the magical experience of this service, to come out and see the rainbow and Luke at the bottom of it made the last dry eye weep," said NBC News executive Phil Griffin. The last song in the memorial service was, fittingly, "Somewhere over the Rainbow."
When asked his reaction to explain the sudden appearance of the rainbow at the exact moment, Luke Russert, his sparkly smile so reminiscent of his father's, said: "Is anyone still an atheist now?"
Howard Kurtz reports on the memorial service for Tim Russert,
From the three network anchors to a former governor to the Buffalo nun who taught him in seventh grade, Tim Russert's extended family bid farewell yesterday to "an unmade bed of a man, with an armful of newspapers and a cellphone to his ear," as Tom Brokaw described his colleague
But it was Peggy Noonan who grasped the essential point in A Life's Lesson.
When somebody dies, we tell his story and try to define and isolate what was special about it—what it was he brought to the party, how he enhanced life by showing up. In this way we educate ourselves about what really matters. Or, often, re-educate ourselves, for "man needs more to be reminded than instructed."
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The beautiful thing about the coverage was that it offered extremely important information to those age 15 or 25 or 30 who may not have been told how to operate in the world beyond "Go succeed." I'm not sure we tell the young as much as we ought, as clearly as we ought, what it is the world admires, and what it is they want to emulate.
In a way, the world is a great liar. It shows you it worships and admires money, but at the end of the day it doesn't. It says it adores fame and celebrity, but it doesn't, not really. The world admires, and wants to hold on to, and not lose, goodness. It admires virtue. At the end it gives its greatest tributes to generosity, honesty, courage, mercy, talents well used, talents that, brought into the world, make it better. That's what it really admires. That's what we talk about in eulogies, because that's what's important. We don't say, "The thing about Joe was he was rich." We say, if we can, "The thing about Joe was he took care of people."
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After Tim's death, the entire television media for four days told you the keys to a life well lived, the things you actually need to live life well, and without which it won't be good. Among them: taking care of those you love and letting them know they're loved, which involves self-sacrifice; holding firm to God, to your religious faith, no matter how high you rise or low you fall. This involves guts, and self-discipline, and active attention to developing and refining a conscience to whose promptings you can respond. Honoring your calling or profession by trying to do within it honorable work, which takes hard effort, and a willingness to master the ethics of your field. And enjoying life. This can be hard in America, where sometimes people are rather grim in their determination to get and to have. "Enjoy life, it's ungrateful not to," said Ronald Reagan.
Tim had these virtues. They were great to see. By defining them and celebrating them the past few days, the media encouraged them. This was a public service, and also what you might call Tim's parting gift.
Like everyone who was familiar with him on television, I was shocked at the sudden death of Tim Russert and then surprised at the outpouring of affection for him. But I shouldn't have been surprised, I loved him and everyone who knew him and millions who didn't loved him too. He was fair, tough, passionate and ebullient.
Tom Brokaw broke the news.
My friend and colleague collapsed and died early this afternoon while at work at NBC News...
Tim loved his family, his faith, his country, politics, the Buffalo Bills, the New York Yankees, and the Washington Nationals.
Tributes pour in from people in the media, collected at MediaBistro's TV Newser.
New York Times
Tim Russert, a fixture in American homes on Sunday mornings and election nights since becoming moderator of “Meet the Press” nearly 17 years ago, died Friday after collapsing at the Washington bureau of NBC News. He was 58 and lived in Northwest Washington.
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Mr. Russert, who was also the Washington bureau chief and a senior vice president of NBC News, had just returned in the last couple of days from a trip to Italy, where his family had celebrated the recent graduation of his son, Luke, from Boston College. When stricken, he was recording voice-overs for this Sunday’s program.
With his plain-spoken explanations and hard-hitting questions, Mr. Russert played an increasingly outsize role in the news media’s coverage of politics. The elegantly simple white memo board he used on election night in 2000 to explain the deadlock in the race between George W. Bush and Al Gore — “Florida, Florida, Florida,” he had scribbled in red marker — became an enduring image in the history of American television coverage of the road to the White House.
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Behind the scenes, Mr. Russert’s colleagues at NBC News soon learned that he had a gift for making the most complex political machinations understandable and compelling.
“He had a better political insight than anyone else in the room, period,” said Jeff Zucker, the chief executive of NBC Universal, who was then an up-and-coming producer.
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He really was the best political journalist in America, not just the best television journalist in America,” said Al Hunt, the Washington executive editor of Bloomberg News and former Washington bureau chief of The Wall Street Journal
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In the Boston Globe, Mike Barnicle said
"Tim was uniquely without a mean bone in his body," Barnicle said last night. "He had a joy about him that was nearly unmatched. At the end of the day or the end of the week, there was a part of him that would pinch himself: 'Can you believe I'm allowed to do this show?' "
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Russert was shaped by his own father, known as "Big Russ," and by his childhood in Buffalo. The city remained his emotional touchstone for his entire life. "He's better able than anybody I know to live in two worlds," Brokaw told the Globe in 1997. "He has a house in a tony neighborhood in Washington, and his heart's in Buffalo." Byron Brown, the mayor of Buffalo, yesterday ordered all flags at city buildings lowered to half-staff in Russert's honor.
Howard Kurtz in the Washington Post
Russert wore many hats -- onetime Democratic operative, Washington insider, NBC bureau chief, MSNBC commentator, sports fanatic, committed Roman Catholic, biographer of his father, dubbed "Big Russ" -- but his greatest legacy was his sustained style of interrogation. Grounded in prodigious research, Russert would press his guests on past statements and contradictions, often for a full hour, spawning legions of imitators.
Friends were stunned by the news. "I just loved him," said Bob Schieffer, host of CBS's "Face the Nation." "When I scooped old Tim, I felt like I'd hit a home run off the best pitcher in the league."
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Despite his eventual wealth and house on Nantucket, Russert never seemed to forget the summers he spent emptying pails of spoiled food into a garbage truck. His patter was filled with average-Joe lingo and constant references to his beloved the Buffalo Bills. Russert viewed himself as a translator who made politics accessible to the average voter.
Russert wrote two best-selling books, "Big Russ & Me" and "Wisdom of Our Fathers," which brought fame to his working-class dad and enshrined Russert's reputation as a man of modest western New York roots.
Joe Klein in Time
Back when he was just starting in television — and ever since but particularly back then — Tim Russert was astounded by the joys of the job. Early on, he helped arrange an interview with the Pope for the Today Show — and Tim did it up right: He brought along red NBC News baseball caps for the Cardinals and a white one for the Holy Father. "He put it on!" Tim told me when he came home. "We have pictures!" Then he said, more quietly, "But, you know, it was really something being in his presence. You felt something holy. It was almost as if the air was different." And that was Tim — exuberant, irreverent, brilliant and devout, a thrilling jolt of humanity.
He will be missed. Condolences to all his family and friends
That terrific headlne comes from an article by Alex Beam in the Boston Globe
- Grave schism on the death beat.
Seems as if there are rival organizations of newspaper obituarists with the first one, the International Association of Obituarists, the brain child of a "good ol' Texas gal"" who prefers oddball venues and oddball guests. The upstart second group wants the conferences to be a little more 'boring'.
A rival obituarists guild, the Society of Professional Obituary Writers, sprang up to supplant Gilbert's IAO. ... "The IAO isn't really representative of what we are as a profession," says Cleveland Plain Dealer obituarist Alana Baranick, an interim board member of SPOW. "We have outgrown them. We will still enjoy going to their conference because they're so much fun."
Just how fun can be seen with this report from the 2004 conference in New Mexico, Reagan's Dead and He'll Be Deader.
In the closing minutes of the 6th Great Obituary Writers' International Conference (their title), one of the events that obituarists hate the most burst in on them. Just as Tim Bullamore, a Bath city councillor who writes for Fleet Street newspapers and the British Medical Journal, began an elaborate slide show on the glories of his city, where the conference takes place next year, someone rushed in and shouted: "Reagan's died!"
Gasps of astonishment, cries of surprise, uproar and confusion. Several delegates sprinted to the hotel lobby's public call boxes or grabbed cellphones. The bringer of the news was surrounded and peppered with questions. Bullamore's presentation was ruined. Finally, he grabbed the microphone and bellowed: "Reagan's dead and he'll be deader. Let's go on with the show."
He resumed his slides, but it wasn't the same. The 40th president of the United States, Ronald Wilson Reagan, had died inconveniently and thrust obituarists into disarray. But really, they loved it. One delegate, her eyes sparkling, gushed: "Isn't this just wild?"
I bet there's not a person over 30 who doesn't know Bo Diddley, doesn't like Bo Diddley, and isn't sad that he's gone.
Bo Diddley, a singer and guitarist who invented his own name, his own guitars, his own beat and, with a handful of other musical pioneers, rock ’n’ roll itself, died Monday at his home in Archer, Fla. He was 79.
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In the 1950s, as a founder of rock ’n’ roll, Mr. Diddley — along with Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis and a few others — helped to reshape the sound of popular music worldwide, building on the templates of blues, Southern gospel, R&B and postwar black American vernacular culture.
His original style of rhythm and blues influenced generations of musicians. And his Bo Diddley syncopated beat — three strokes/rest/two strokes — became a stock rhythm of rock ’n’ roll.
Telegraph obituary
Had Diddley been able to copyright the hypnotic and highly distinctive rhumba-like beat that was his musical trademark he might have been able to retire many years ago as a very wealthy man, rather than having to eke out a living in his old age, playing night-clubs, as his health deteriorated.
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It was a mark of his standing as one of the founding fathers of pop music that he would become one of the first performers to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, in 1987.
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For all his success, Diddley always maintained that like so many artists of his generation he had never received his just desserts, receiving only a flat fee for his early recordings and no royalty payments on sales. "I am owed. I've never got paid," he said. "A dude with a pencil is worse than a cat with a machine gun."
"Bo Diddley is one of the seminal American guitarists and an architect of the rock 'n' roll sound," said Terry Stewart, president and chief executive of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland. "His unique guitar work, indelible rhythms, inventive songwriting, and larger-than-life personality make him an immortal author of the American songbook."
Singer Mick Jagger has paid tribute to singer-guitarist Bo Diddley as an "enormous force in music" and "a big influence on the Rolling Stones".
Jagger said the US rock 'n' roll pioneer, who has died at the age of 79, was "a wonderful, original musician".
Jagger, whose band recorded cover versions of Mona and Crackin' Up, said: "He was very generous to us in our early years and we learned a lot from him.
"We will never see his like again."
Looking quite sprightly at 100, Albert Hoffman, "the mystical Swiss chemist who gave the world LSD, the most powerful psychotropic substance known" died at 102.
Dr. Hofmann first synthesized the compound lysergic acid diethylamide in 1938 but did not discover its psychopharmacological effects until five years later, when he accidentally ingested the substance that became known to the 1960s counterculture as acid.
He then took LSD hundreds of times, but regarded it as a powerful and potentially dangerous psychotropic drug that demanded respect. More important to him than the pleasures of the psychedelic experience was the drug’s value as a revelatory aid for contemplating and understanding what he saw as humanity’s oneness with nature. That perception, of union, which came to Dr. Hofmann as almost a religious epiphany while still a child, directed much of his personal and professional life.
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Yet despite his involvement with psychoactive compounds, Dr. Hofmann remained moored in his Swiss chemist identity. He stayed with Sandoz as head of the research department for natural medicines until his retirement in 1971. He wrote more than 100 scientific articles and was the author or co-author of a number of books.
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But he said LSD had not affected his understanding of death. In death, he said, “I go back to where I came from, to where I was before I was born, that’s all.”
Hofmann was disappointed when his discovery was removed from commercial distribution. He remained convinced that the drug had the potential to counter the psychological problems induced by "materialism, alienation from nature through industrialisation and increasing urbanisation, lack of satisfaction in professional employment in a mechanised, lifeless working world, ennui and purposelessness in wealthy, saturated society, and lack of a religious, nurturing, and meaningful philosophical foundation of life".
Father of LSD takes final trip
R.I.P.
On Marketplace radio yesterday, reporter Curt Nickish has an interesting piece about online obituaries called Another nail in newspapers' coffin about a new site now in beta called Tributes where people can place online obituaries, "keeping the memories alive".
When Jeff Taylor who started Monster.com, he moved help wanted ads from newspapers to the web.
Now he's trying to do the same thing with obituaries after not doing so well with Eons, a website targeted to those over 50.
In browsing through the obit section on Eons, looking for someone to interview, he came across the obituary I had posted about my mother with links to the three blog posts I had done about her.
That is how I came to be interviewed and how my mother's photo is now posted on Marketplace radio. Interestingly it nothing to do with the work I'm doing or the book I'm writing.
You can hear my lovely voice, part of the interview here.
Christopher Buckley's Eulogy for My Father
One October day in 1997, I arrived from Washington in Stamford for a long-planned overnight sail. As the train pulled into the station, I looked out and saw people hanging onto lampposts at 90-degree angles, trying not to be blown away by the northeast gale that was raging. Indeed, it resembled a scene from The Wizard of Oz. When the train doors opened, I was blown back into the carriage by the 50-mile-an-hour wind. I managed to crawl out onto the platform, practically on all fours, whereupon my father greeted me with a chipper, “We’ll have a brisk sail.”
I looked up at him incredulously and said, “We’re going out in this?”
Indeed we did go out in it. We always went out in it. Some of my earliest memories are of my mother, shrieking at him as the water broke over the cockpit and the boat pitched furiously in boiling seas, “Bill — Bill! Why are you trying to kill us?”
Born with the rare disorder of tyrosinemia which prevents the body from breaking down an amino acid,
Laura Linehan received a new liver when she was only 2. Ten years later, she learned that she had hepatitis C, infected by the blood transfusion during transplant surgery. She needed another liver.
She moved from Melrose, Massachusetts to Jacksonville, Florida where she would have a better chance on the regional waiting list.
I keep telling myself I'm not going to give up," Miss Linehan wrote on her website. "This is my chance to live and that's why I am down in Florida, so that I can have a third chance at life."
A match was found Friday, but she had weakened during the wait. When doctors began operating, they found she would not survive transplant surgery, and she died that evening in the Mayo Clinic. Miss Linehan was 20.
Using the example of her own life, Miss Linehan had tried to raise awareness about the need for more organ donors, and the crucial role expediency plays in transplants. In Miss Linehan's case, her mother said, a day or two sooner might have made a difference.
"She had a job to do, and she finished it a littler earlier," Ann Linehan said. "She set her mind to it and now she's done, her time is through. I just like to think that she's in a better place, and she's no longer suffering, because she suffered terribly."
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"She was the most courageous person I've ever known, read about, or encountered. She was incredibly brave; she was resilient. It seemed as though anything that could go wrong, went wrong, and she would just come back for more. And she was never discouraged."
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"She had a lot of good years," her mother said of her daughter's childhood and youth. "I could not be more proud of her if she was a Harvard graduate than I am with her fight with liver disease. She worked so hard to overcome, she worked so hard to get awareness out there of the need for liver donors. I just want people to know that she was extremely successful. She certainly brought a community together - Melrose will never be the same."
Laura Linehan, at 20, used illness to boost organ donation.
Laura's website is provided by Caring Bridge which offers free personalized websites that support and connect loved ones during critical illness, treatment and recovery.
Terry Teachout on the William F Buckley memorial service held yesterday at St. Patrick's Cathedral, Home from the Sea
All I can tell you was that today’s service seemed as splendid as it could possibly have been. The cathedral was full of mourners, the choir loft full of singers, and the music was mostly appropriate to the occasion. Bill was a serious amateur musician who loved Bach above all things–he actually performed the F Minor Harpsichord Concerto in public on more than one occasion–so the organist played “Sheep May Safely Graze” and the slow movement of the Toccata, Adagio, and Fugue in C Major. No less suitable were the sung portions of the Mass, drawn from Victoria’s sweetly austere Missa “O magnum mysterium,” and the closing hymn, the noble tune from Gustav Holst’s The Planets to which the following words were later set: I vow to thee, my country–all earthly things above–/Entire and whole and perfect, the service of my love.
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Bill was the least weltschmerzy person imaginable. Henry Kissinger, who eulogized him this morning, alluded to that side of Bill’s personality when he remarked that Bill “was vouchsafed a little miracle: to enjoy so much what was compelled by inner necessity.” I couldn’t have put it better.
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Christopher Buckley, Bill’s son, followed Henry Kissinger, and gave just the sort of eulogy I’d expected from him, funny and light-fingered, putting much-needed smiles on our faces. Only at the end did he sound a darker note, quoting the lines from Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Requiem” that he chose as the epitaph for a man who loved sailing as much as he loved Bach: Here he lies where he long’d to be;/Home is the sailor, home from the sea,/And the hunter home from the hill.
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Somehow you never imagine outliving the people who show you through the doors that lead to the rest of your life
Killing Fields photographer, Dith Pran, dies at 65 of pancreatic cancer.
The New York Times obit
Dith Pran, a photojournalist for The New York Times whose gruesome ordeal in the killing fields of Cambodia was re-created in a 1984 movie that gave him an eminence he tenaciously used to press for his people’s rights, died in New Brunswick, N.J., on Sunday.
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Mr. Dith saw his country descend into a living hell as he scraped and scrambled to survive the barbarous revolutionary regime of the Khmer Rouge from 1975 to 1979, when as many as two million Cambodians — a third of the population — were killed, experts estimate. Mr. Dith survived through nimbleness, guile and sheer desperation.
He had been a journalistic partner of Mr. Schanberg, a Times correspondent assigned to Southeast Asia. He translated, took notes and pictures, and helped Mr. Schanberg maneuver in a fast-changing milieu. With the fall of Phnom Penh in 1975, Mr. Schanberg was forced from the country, and Mr. Dith became a prisoner of the Khmer Rouge, the Cambodian Communists.
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Over the next 4 ½ years, he worked in the fields and at menial jobs. For sustenance, people ate insects and rats and even the exhumed corpses of the recently executed, he said.
In November 1978, Vietnam, by then a unified Communist nation after the end of the Vietnam War, invaded Cambodia and overthrew the Khmer Rouge. Mr. Dith went home to Siem Reap, where he learned that 50 members of his family had been killed; wells were filled with skulls and bones.
He escaped, and was reunited with his wife and family in San Francisco. In 1980 he became a photographer at the New York Times and six years later became a U.S. citizen beside his wife.
Along with the above photographs, The Times has a wonderful 6 minute multimedia piece called The Last Word: Dith Pran combining clips from the Killing Fields, interviews with Pran and Schanberg and photographs that tells his extraordinary life story.
"I promised myself that if I survived, I wouldn't stop talking about the killing fields..My people are suffering and this is their story.
From the London Telegraph obit
"I am a one-person crusade," he once said. "I must speak for those who did not survive and for those who still suffer… Like one of my heroes, Elie Wiesel, who alerts the world to the horrors of the Jewish holocaust, I try to awaken the world to the holocaust of Cambodia, for all tragedies have universal implications."
In his journal while imprisoned, Pran wrote
The wind whispers of fear and hate. The war has killed love. And those that confess to the Angka are punished, and no one dare ask where they go. Here, only the silent survive.
He survived and his words, his actions and his photos live on.
Visionary science fiction writer Arthur Clarke has died at 90 in his home in Sri Lanka.
Associated Press obituary by Ravi Nessman
Co-author with Stanley Kubrick of Kubrick's film "2001: A Space Odyssey," Clarke was regarded as far more than a science fiction writer.
He was credited with the concept of communications satellites in 1945, decades before they became a reality. Geosynchronous orbits, which keep satellites in a fixed position relative to the ground, are called Clarke orbits.
He joined American broadcaster Walter Cronkite as commentator on the U.S. Apollo moonshots in the late 1960s.
Clarke's non-fiction volumes on space travel and his explorations of the Great Barrier Reef and Indian Ocean earned him respect in the world of science, and in 1976 he became an honorary fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
New York Times obituary by Gerald Jonas
the formative event of his childhood was his discovery, at age 13 — the year his father died — of a copy of “Astounding Stories of Super-Science,” then the leading American science fiction magazine. He found its mix of boyish adventure and far-out (sometimes bogus) science intoxicating.
While still in school, Mr. Clarke joined the newly formed British Interplanetary Society, a small band of sci-fi enthusiasts who held the controversial view that space travel was not only possible but could be achieved in the not-so-distant future
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All told, he wrote or collaborated on close to 100 books, some of which, like “Childhood’s End,” have been in print continuously. His works have been translated into some 40 languages, and worldwide sales have been estimated at more than $25 million.
In 1962 he suffered a severe attack of poliomyelitis. His apparently complete recovery was marked by a return to top form at his favorite sport, table tennis. But in 1984 he developed post-polio syndrome, a progressive condition characterized by muscle weakness and extreme fatigue. He spent the last years of his life in a wheelchair.
Among his legacies are Clarke’s Three Laws, provocative observations on science, science fiction and society that were published in his “Profiles of the Future” (1962):
¶“When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.”
¶“The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.”
¶“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
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Mr. Clarke’s reputation as a prophet of the space age rests on more than a few accurate predictions. His visions helped bring about the future he longed to see.
Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit remembers Clarke.
I nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize, but Yasser Arafat got it instead. I think it's pretty clear that Clarke would have been a better choice . . . .
Marvin Wald died a few days ago in California at the age of 90. He's not a famous writer but he gave us one of the most famous lines in American popular culture: "There are eight million stories in the naked city. This has been one of them."
Ave atque vale This has been one of them from Mark Steyn
I've written Legacy Matters for several years now and I've never seen so many encomiums following a death of a great figure as I have read following the death of William F. Buckley.
The New York Times obituary by Douglas Martin, Sesquipedalian Spark of Right, tells the story of his remarkable life and achievements.
Mr. Buckley’s greatest achievement was making conservatism — not just electoral Republicanism but conservatism as a system of ideas — respectable in liberal post-World War II America. He mobilized the young enthusiasts who helped nominate Barry Goldwater in 1964 and saw his dreams fulfilled when Reagan and the Bushes captured the Oval Office.
President George W. Bush said Wednesday that Mr. Buckley “brought conservative thought into the political mainstream, and helped lay the intellectual foundation for America’s victory in the Cold War.”
In remarks at National Review’s 30th anniversary in 1985, President Reagan
You didn’t just part the Red Sea — you rolled it back, dried it up and left exposed, for all the world to see, the naked desert that is statism,” Mr. Reagan said.
“And then, as if that weren’t enough,” the president continued, “you gave the world something different, something in its weariness it desperately needed, the sound of laughter and the sight of the rich, green uplands of freedom.”
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“All great biblical stories begin with Genesis,” George Will wrote in National Review in 1980. “And before there was Ronald Reagan, there was Barry Goldwater, and before there was Barry Goldwater there was National Review, and before there was National Review there was Bill Buckley with a spark in his mind, and the spark in 1980 has become a conflagration.”
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At the age of 50, Mr. Buckley crossed the Atlantic Ocean in his sailboat and became a novelist. Eleven of his novels are spy tales starring Blackford Oakes, who fights for the American way and beds the Queen of England in the first book.
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Mr. Buckley’s spirit of fun was apparent in his 1965 campaign for mayor of New York on the ticket of the Conservative Party. When asked what he would do if he won, he answered, “Demand a recount.” He got 13.4 percent of the vote.
John Tierney on A Giant of Conservatism
Simply Superlative by George Nash focuses on his enormous productivity.
During his nearly 60 years in the public eye, William F. Buckley Jr. published 55 books (both fiction and nonfiction); dozens of book reviews; at least 56 introductions, prefaces, and forewords to other peoples’ books; more than 225 obituary essays; more than 800 editorials, articles, and remarks in National Review; several hundred articles in periodicals other than National Review; and approximately 5,600 newspaper columns. He gave hundreds of lectures around the world, hosted 1,429 separate Firing Line shows, and may well have composed more letters than any American who has ever lived.
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William F. Buckley Jr. was arguably the most important public intellectual in the United States in the past half century. For an entire generation he was the preeminent voice of American conservatism and its first great ecumenical figure. He changed minds, he changed lives, and he helped to change the direction of American politics.
But it is the personal memories that are the most telling of his incredible generosity of spirit. Nyron Magnet writes The Unbought Grace of Life
his whole being provided an answer to that ultimate question, How then should we live?
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I saw his character become ever more clearly the unmistakable, irreplaceable Buckley: witty, cultivated, playful, urbane, gracious, brave, zestful, life-affirming, tireless, and gallant—the incarnation of grace. He taught many not only how to think but also how to be.
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He did all this with singular flair and joie de vivre. Moreover, he did it with a welcoming spirit which earned the gratitude of those whose lives he touched.
While at college, David Brooks wrote a smart-aleck parody of WFB's book Overdrive and when Buckley came to the University of Chicago to deliver a lecture, he said
“David Brooks, if you’re in the audience, I’d like to offer you a job.”
That was the big break of my professional life.
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Buckley’s greatest talent was friendship. The historian George Nash once postulated that he wrote more personal letters than any other American, and that is entirely believable. He showered affection on his friends, and he had an endless stream of them, old and young.
Peggy Noonan writes May We Not Lose His Kind.
Buckley was a one-man refutation of Hollywood's idea of a conservative.... Bill Buckley's persona, as the first famous conservative of the modern media age, said no to all that. Conservatives are brilliant, capacious, full of delight at the world and full of mischief, too. That's what he was. He upended old clichés.
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With the loss of Bill Buckley we are, as a nation, losing not only a great man. When Jackie Onassis died, a friend of mine who knew her called me and said, with such woe, "Oh, we are losing her kind." He meant the elegant, the cultivated, the refined. I thought of this with Bill's passing, that we are losing his kind--people who were deeply, broadly educated in great universities when they taught deeply and broadly, who held deep views of life and the world and art and all the things that make life more delicious and more meaningful.
Larry Perelman, American born son of Russian Jewish refugees when 18 wrote to Buckley to thank him for emboldening Soviet Jews to come to this great nation and asked for the opportunity to express his gratitude by playing for him. Fourteen years later, he had The Last Supper with WFB on the last night of his life
it was just like any other Buckley dinner — i.e., it started with cocktails and ended with cognac.
He knew well that he was the most important person in my life after the two people who had actually given me life. I will cherish hundreds of memories of his boundless acts of generosity, which changed my life forever.
Christina Galbraith, daughter of Evan Galbraith, WFB's best friend, writes in Ember
He was a truly kind man, genuinely caring to anyone in his company. His kindness was not for show. It was discreet. He drove an hour every Sunday to take his house staff to Mass in Spanish; he opened his home to practicing musicians and supported innumerable young scholars.
Ed Capano, former publisher of the National Review, tells of his perfect charity
He practiced what I consider perfect charity: doing things for others that no one knew about. The Vietnam vet blinded in action who wrote to Bill asking if NR came out in Braille. NR didn't so Bill did the next best thing, he helped the vet get some of his eyesight restored by flying him to N.Y. and having a personal friend who happened to be one of the best ophthalmologists in N.Y. examine him and then successfully operate on him. Oh, and the vet married the nurse who took care of him. Or the time at a cover conference when I told him that a house I liked just came on the market and he asked me if I was going to buy it. I sheepishly told him that I couldn't afford the down payment. A few days later his secretary brought me a personal check from Bill for the down payment with a promissory note to pay him back whenever.
"The Sacred Elixir of Life" and Facing Death
Bill was philosophical — or better, religious — about death. His gleaming eyes, when I last saw him, seemed, at times, to look beyond you; it reminded me of what Robert E. Lee said of his own gaze in his last years: “My interest in Time and its concerns is daily fading away, and I am trying to keep my eyes and thoughts fixed on those eternal shores to which I am fast hastening.” Bill knew that he, too, was hastening towards those shores, as, of course, are we all. Not for him the megalomaniac egotism of Stalin, preposterously trying to bargain with the creator he had denied. Bill thought deeply about death; how else could he have achieved such a surpassing mastery of the obituary notice, that form which, in his hands, was not only a minor art, but also a means of understanding the value of life, even though it is lived in the shadow of death?
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Bill taught us much about what Auchincloss called “the sacred elixir of life.” In the last lines of his elegy of his wife, he taught us, too, something about how to die. He spoke then of the condolence he received from “a confirmed nonbeliever,” who for once would have liked to be mistaken, and hoped that, “for you, this is not goodbye, but hasta luego.” Bill said: “No alternative thought would make continuing in life, for me, tolerable.”
Charlie Rose's moving appreciation of William Buckley who talks about growing older and facing death.
A longer Rose tribute here where he realizes, "There is not always a tomorrow."
Andrew Malcolm at the LA Times gives us a private memory of WFB
And, Buckley recounted, instead of the outside scenery, he ended up that night in the dark cockpit watching instead his dying friend in admiration, still excited, still himself, exulting at the world's beauty as he came down slowly for a landing at the end of a long trip.
Then, Buckley looked at me and took a sip of his drink. "I hope at the end," he said, "I come in for my last landing the same way."
And so he did, after a last supper that started with cocktails and ended with cognac, he went to his desk to write and there he was found the next morning, that great generous spirit gone.
Five months after disappearing while flying over the Nevada desert, Steve Fossett was declared dead by a Chicago court.
Dozens of planes and helicopters spent more than a month searching 20,000 square miles of the western Nevada mountains, one of the most remote and uninhabited regions of the US.
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Throughout his life Mr Fosset had set more than 90 aviation records in balloons, fixed-wing aircraft, gliders and airships and 23 sailing records. Some 60 still stand.
On his sixth attempt, in 2002, he became the first person to fly solo around the world in a balloon - in one unsuccessful bid he plunged five miles into the sea off Australia.
Three years later made the first solo, non-stop, non-refuelled flight around the globe in the Virgin Atlantic Global Flyer.
He also swam the English Channel, completed the Ironman Triathlon and the Iditarod dog sled race and climbed the Matterhorn in Switzerland and Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. Everest, however, eluded him.
Mr Fossett, who earned his fortune as a financial trader, broke the round-the-world sailing record by six days in 2004 and even set world records for cross-country skiing.
The Telegraph obituary
Steve Fossett, who has been declared dead aged 63, made his fortune on the Chicago futures exchange and embarked on a dogged campaign to break more world records than any other sportsman in history; he set 116 records in hot air balloons, sailing boats, gliders and powered aircraft, getting into numerous scrapes and surviving several brushes with death.
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He was known in Britain for his friendship with Sir Richard Branson, an erstwhile rival balloonist who became a co-sponsor.
Branson once described Fossett as "a loner: half-Forrest Gump, half android" and suggested that he was not so much interested in sport for its own sake as in testing the limits of his own endurance: "If there's an ocean to swim, he'll choose Christmas Day and it must be snowing and, if possible, the only day in the last decade when the channel ices over," Branson observed. "That's Steve for you."
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At some point in his thirties Fossett typed out a list of his lifetime sporting goals. These included swimming the English Channel, climbing the highest mountains on six continents, establishing eight world records in sailing, and flying non-stop around the world in a balloon. Once his business was firmly established he set out to tick items off the list. He achieved them all - and more. He became a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and of the Explorers' Club, and in 2002 won the Gold Medal of the Fédération Aeronautique Internationale.
An unbelievable life indeed.
The London Telegraph Charles Fawcett
Charles Fawcett, who died in London on February 3 aged 92, was a film maker and adventurer of great and generous passions that embraced Afghan freedom fighters and the much-married film actress Hedy Lamarr.
His unlikely - some would say unbelievable - life was informed by an impulse to stand up for the underdog mixed with a thirst for glamour and adventure. Fawcett charmed everyone he met with tales of swashbuckling intrigue and good deeds.
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In Paris Fawcett also took part in the rescue of a group of British prisoners-of-war who had been placed under French guard in a hospital ward by the Germans. By impersonating a German ambulance crew, Fawcett and a comrade marched in at 4am and ordered the French nurses to usher the PoWs out into the yard. "Gentlemen," he announced as he drove them away, "consider yourself liberated."
"You're a Yank," said a British voice.
"Never," came Fawcett's lilting southern burr, "confuse a Virginian with a Yankee."
Roy Scheider conveyed "an accelerated metabolism" in Jaws, Klute, The French Connection and All That Jazz.
Who knew he was a history major that planned on going to law school and served three years in the United States Air Force before he turned to acting?
For several years he suffered from multiple myeloma and died of complications from a staph infection at 75.
At the time of his death, Mr. Scheider was involved in a project to build a film studio in Florence, Italy, for a series about the history of the Renaissance.
Ann Althouse found the video Bye, bye my life good-bye where Scheider plays Joe Gideon in All That Jazz.
How surpassingly strange for his widow and family to have this video so widely available.
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, guru to the Beatles, dead at 91.
From the Telegraph obituary
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who died on Tuesday, probably aged 91, had a profound influence on the Beatles' late career and repackaged ancient Hindu methods of transcendental meditation; TM, as it was known, was aimed at enabling western disciples to achieve a blissful oneness with the infinite in the still depths of the self - at the cost of minimum inconvenience.
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The Maharishi pursued his mission in India until 1958, when he conceived "the idea of the regeneration of the whole world through meditation". If one per cent of the world's community practised it, he reasoned, the flow of good vibrations would overwhelm mankind's natural urge to violence.
His claim that it was not necessary to pursue a life of monastic asceticism to attain enlightenment, and that, through TM, practitioners could enjoy "the positive experience of Heavenly Bliss" during their lifetimes, proved immediately attractive to westerners. In 1959 the Maharishi established a base in Hollywood, where he founded the Spiritual Regeneration Movement and set about marketing TM worldwide as the "Science of Creative Intelligence"
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Early on in his mission the Maharishi began to show messianic tendencies, dismissing as obsolete virtually every other means of developing self-awareness and claiming that all the wisdom of the ages was distilled in TM. During the 1970s he came up with yogic flying, the ultimate transcendental bliss that causes men and women to levitate.
Every so often, we get a glimpse of someone who shows us how great and good a human being can be. Sir Edmund Hillary, the beekeeper and the first man to reach the summit of Mt Everest along with his Sherpa guide Norgay Tenzing was such a man. His life is a model of inspiration for accomplishment and humility.
Sir Edmund Hillary, who died late yesterday aged 88, made his name as the first conqueror (with Norgay Tenzing) of Everest; just as impressive, though, was the use he made of his renown over the remainder of his life.
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Hillary developed a deep admiration for the Sherpa people, and through the Himalayan Trust which he established in the 1960s oversaw the building of 25 schools, two hospitals and a dozen medical clinics, as well as bridges and airfields.
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James (now Jan) Morris, who covered the expedition for The Times, wrote of Hillary working in the half-light, "huge and cheerful, his movement not so much graceful as unshakably assured, his energy almost demonic. He had a tremendous, bursting, elemental, infectious, glorious vitality about him, like some bright, burly diesel express pounding across America."
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Hillary remained determinedly low-key. "Having paid my respects to the highest mountain in the world," he recalled 46 years later in his autobiography View from the Summit (1999), "I had no choice but to urinate on it." Though he took Tenzing's photograph he did not bother to organise one of himself. And when he met Lowe at Camp VIII on the way down, he delivered the great news in a laconic fashion deemed too shocking for publication at that epoch: "Well, George, we knocked the bastard off."
New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark announced Hillary's death at 88 calling it a "profound loss to New Zealand."
Sir Ed described himself as an average New Zealander with modest abilities. In reality, he was a colossus. He was an heroic figure who not only 'knocked off' Everest but lived a life of determination, humility, and generosity.
The legendary mountaineer, adventurer, and philanthropist is the best-known New Zealander ever to have lived. But most of all he was a quintessential Kiwi. He was ours - from his craggy appearance and laconic style to his directness and honesty. All New Zealanders will deeply mourn his passing.
"Sir Ed's 1953 ascent of Mt Everest brought him world-wide fame. Thereafter he set out to support development for the Sherpa people of the Himalayas. His lifetime's humanitarian work there is of huge significance and lasting benefit.
New York Times
Standing atop that pinnacle in 1953 was an experience Sir Hillary would recollect many times in lectures and quiet conversations.
“The whole world around us lay spread out like a giant relief map,” he told one interviewer. “I am a lucky man. I have had a dream and it has come true, and that is not a thing that happens often to men.”
"We drew closer together as Tenzing brought in the slack on the rope. I continued cutting a line of steps upwards. Next moment I had moved onto a flattish exposed area of snow with nothing by space in every direction," Hillary wrote.
"Tenzing quickly joined me and we looked round in wonder. To our immense satisfaction we realized with had reached the top of the world."
Before Norgay's death in 1986, Hillary consistently refused to confirm he was first, saying he and the Sherpa had climbed as a team to the top. It was a measure of his personal modesty, and of his commitment to his colleagues.
London Times
From this moment of glory, Hillary’s career opened out into a lifetime of adventure and of widening interest. His own laconic summary of his active life as merely a “constant battle against boredom" gave part of the picture and was typical of his innate modesty and of his dislike of cant.
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Hillary’s achievement was crowned not only by a knighthood and by much public acclaim, by an exceptionally happy marriage to Louise Mary Rose of Auckland. They had a son and two daughters. Lady Hillary was an accomplished violinist and a woman of great vitality and goodness. Her death in 1975 in an aeroplane accident with their younger daughter was a tragedy that hit her husband very hard.
He is survived by his second wife, June Mulgrew, whom he married in 1990, the widow of his close friend Peter Mulgrew, a fellow adventurer who died in a passenger plane crash over Antartica.
New Zealand news We will not see his kind again
He died peacefully when his heart gave out.
"He retained his sense of humour right to the end. He was cheerful and joking...I suspect he knew his time was coming to an end," his friend Tom Scott says.
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A practical man, he knew only too well that death was not too far away.
In 2002 he said: "I don't think it particularly frightens me. I have had a long haul...I have had a marvellous life...I have had two wonderful wives...you can't do better than that...I have a very good life, an exciting one, many good adventures."
When a former CIA spy died Monday in Havana where he fled after exposing the names of U.S. intelligence operatives, one obituary writer is calling him what he was.
The London Telegraph has more on the man who died of peritonitis.
Former colleagues at the CIA claimed that Agee had been forced to resign from the agency in 1969 after complaints about his heavy drinking, poor financial management and attempts to proposition wives of American diplomats. They further alleged that Agee had become a KGB spy after being seduced by a Russian agent, and that he had effectively defected because he did not know how to extricate himself from his personal problems.
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In 1992 a high-ranking Cuban defector accused Agee of receiving up to $1 million in payments from the Cuban intelligence service; and in 1999 Vasili Mitrokhin, a former KGB librarian who had secretly copied thousands of files and then donated them to British intelligence, gave further details of his relationship with Communist agents
Army Major Andrew Olmstead, a veteran blogger, was a soldier his entire life, so when ordered to Iraq to teach members of the Iraqi Army, he went; but not before entrusting a just in case post to a friend.
I am leaving this message for you because it appears I must leave sooner than I intended. I would have preferred to say this in person, but since I cannot, let me say it here."
"Only the dead have seen the end of war."
Plato*
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Believe it or not, one of the things I will miss most is not being able to blog any longer. The ability to put my thoughts on (virtual) paper and put them where people can read and respond to them has been marvelous, even if most people who have read my writings haven't agreed with them.
Olmstead was killed in an ambush by insurgents.
Godspeed to a brave man who walked the walk and blogged about it.
Many bloggers weigh in with their appreciation for his character and his writings and condolences to his family here.
R.I.P.
George MacDonald Fraser, author of the Flashman, Flashman being the gloriously politically incorrect rogue hero who delighted millions, died last week.
London Telegraph obituary
Although some critics saw the series as a satire on Victorian morality, its continued popular success was due to Fraser’s ability to make learning history enjoyable.
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In 1943 he joined the Border Regiment and served as an infantryman in North Africa and with the "Forgotten" Fourteenth Army in Burma. He was eventually commissioned in the Gordon Highlanders. Some of his finest writing is contained in his graphic recollections of his Burma service, Quartered Safe Out Here (1992), in which the affectionate portrait of his Cumbrian comrades demonstrated his keen eye for character and acute ear for dialogue.
John Keegan, in The Sunday Telegraph, justly called it "one of the great personal memoirs of World War II".
The Daily Mail published his "last testament" - How Britain has destroyed itself.
Political correctness is about denial, usually in the weasel circumlocutory jargon which distorts and evades and seldom stands up to honest analysis.
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That PC should have become acceptable in Britain is a glaring symptom of the country's decline.
No generation has seen their country so altered, so turned upside down, as children like me born in the 20 years between the two world wars. In our adult lives Britain's entire national spirit, its philosophy, values and standards, have changed beyond belief.
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I know that some things are wonderfully better than they used to be: the new miracles of surgery, public attitudes to the disabled, the health and well-being of children, intelligent concern for the environment, the massive strides in science and technology.
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But much has deteriorated. The United Kingdom has begun to look more like a Third World country, shabby, littered, ugly, run down, without purpose or direction, misruled by a typical Third World government, corrupt, incompetent and undemocratic.
My generation has seen the decay of ordinary morality, standards of decency, sportsmanship, politeness, respect for the law, family values, politics and education and religion, the very character of the British.
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I had not realised how offensive the plain truth can be to the politically correct, how enraged they can be by its mere expression, and how deeply they detest the values and standards respected 50 years ago and which dinosaurs like me still believe in, God help us.
But the readers' reactions to the book were the exact opposite of critical opinion. I have never received such wholehearted and generous support.
I have not posted about Benazir Bhutto because I did not want to speak ill of the dead, especially as she was killed in such an awful fashion.
David Warren who knew her writes what I think is the best summation of the Bhutto legacy.
About not speaking ill of the dead, Flemming Rose says the Chechan historian Avtorkhanov would have none of it when Stalin died.
This is the obituary he penned in 1953.
Stalin has finally died. His wolfish heart has stopped beating, his diabolical mind has stopped operating. A man has passed away who had nothing human about him what so ever, no soul, no love, no compassion. A professionel tormentor’s cold hearted brutality and a bestial instinct for survival put him closer to the species of beasts than to mankind.
A man has passed away who immortalized himself through the killing of millions of human beings in the basements of the secret police, in the Siberian woods, the coalmines of Kolyma, the sands of Central Asia and the mountains of the Caucasus.
A man has passed away who created, consolidated and expanded the most reactionary and unprecedented system of state slavery.
A man has passed away who in his own image raised legions of greedy tormentors, that grabbed the fatherless throne.
A man has passed away who created and raised a first class army of international experts on rebellion, revolution and war who were ready to pull mankind into a new disaster for the ideas behind the system created by the dead demigod.
A man has passed away who for thirty years withou any punishment had been swimming in a sea of blood from our fathers and brothers, and rivers of tears from our mothers and sisters.
The most damned of all damned people who ever sat foot on this earth has passed away.
He doesn’t deserve a grave!
May his memory be damned forever!
A war of destruction on his legacy! That’s the verdict of our people. And that verdict will live on with future generations.”
One of the better end-of-the-year wrap-up stories is the New York Times and its The Lives They Lived that offers small obituaries for some lesser-known lives.
From Liz Claiborne who brought "separates" to the fashion world and the retail stores where women clamored to buy them, grateful for all the individual pieces, bright colors died in the same dye lot.
To Gloria Connors who while pregnant with her to-become-famous son Jimmy, built a tennis court behind her house and went on to become his coach.
“She dealt with the guys, and, you know, my mom was 5-foot-1, but damn right she was tough. Nobody was used to the best guy out there being taught by a lady. ...It was me and her against the world.”
And Joybubbles who was a small blind boy who loved the telephone and with his perfectly pitched ears, spoke to it in its own language, becoming the first phone freak.
When he discovered that the University of Pittsburgh had the complete run of “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” on tape, he went on a pilgrimage: he rented an apartment nearby and spent hours in the library listening to every episode, sometimes hugging a stuffed globe, huddled under a blanket.
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“Take care of each other, stay strong, find some time to play,” he says at the end of most recordings. “Don’t let God laugh alone.”
The era of the old-time Boston pol has ended with the death of Dapper O'Neil.
Tip O'Neill was famous for saying, All politics is local. Dapper would say All politics is personal. What you said in public was for show, what you did in private was for real. If you could make people mad or make them laugh by something you said, you got extra points. He was both crass and hilarious.
Dapper went everywhere. As Whitey says, he would attend the opening of an envelope. Being no friends with the Bulgers neither the Senate President, Billy Bulger or his gangster brother Whitey who's still on the lam and the FBI's Most Wanted list, Dapper for years never went to Billy Bulger's Saint Patrick's day breakfast in Southie, "Who wants to go someplace where you can't piss for four hours." Whitey has videos from one time when he did attend.
Howie Carr wrote O'Neil was principal of the old school
Dapper O’Neil never made a dime in politics. Name me another modern pol in Boston you can say that about.
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Talk about a throwback - Dapper didn’t have a checking account. He paid cash for everything except his car (with the “Liberals: An American Cancer” bumper sticker).
Boston Globe, obit an era in Boston politics ends
Often the top vote-getter in City Council races, Mr. O'Neil became one of the more revered politicians in the city's history with his attentiveness to the smallest needs of constituents, even as his caustic statements about minorities, women, gays, and lesbians made him one of the most reviled.
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"The great irony of Dapper was his kindness and generosity to so many people," said Councilor Stephen J. Murphy, a longtime friend of Mr. O'Neil's. "At the same time, he fearlessly and deliberately violated the rules of political correctness. He'd say, 'Watch me get them going.' "
Dapper learned from a master, James Michael Curley whose life and career were fictionalized in Edwin O' Connor's book, The Last Hurrah and later made into a movie by John Ford in 1958, starring Spencer Tracy, but I'm not saying Dapper was "Ditto" in the movie.
(Long before there were Dittoheads, there was Ditto who aped every move and attitude of his beloved mayor.)
"The Last Hurrah" (Edwin O'Connor)
As former mayor Ray Flynn said,
That's what politics is supposed to be about, helping people. He learned it from Curley, and I learned it from them.
He'd go to four or five wakes a night," Flynn said. "When he'd come back from the wakes, I'd see him the next morning with little pieces of paper in his pocket. We'd go to breakfast at Amrhein's, and he'd pull out a little note with a name and phone number on it, and you could hardly read it."
Mr. O'Neil would often walk into Flynn's mayoral office without an appointment. "He was looking for a turkey or a ham for a poor family who had been burned out by a fire or to help some veteran friend of his who got laid off from work,"
A lot of politics was done at wakes because that's where you learned who was hurting. If you could help them, you'd have their vote and the votes of their family members for life. So maybe you cut some deals, crossed the line in a few places, to do a favor for a pal, politics was a game and a lot of fun.
For Dapper it was always about politics
He will be remembered as a throwback, a bigot, a larger-than-life character, a sexist, a champion of the little guy. He was all those things. But mostly he was a politician caught between two eras.
Boston Herald Love him or hate him, Dapper cared about Boston
Boston Maggie says
A lot of politicians come to the table with an agenda and for most that agenda is masked or hidden or worse......compromised. Dapper was never compromised. If he was helping you, he was grand. If he was on the other side of your issue.......well, he was your enemy. Anyone who is talking smack about Dapper, well that's just sour grapes.
Always a character
In 1992, O’Neil named himself “acting mayor” when then-Mayor Ray Flynn was trapped for 30 minutes in a Mattapan hospital elevator with two priests, city officials and his son.
“I am prepared to settle a lot of old scores,” O’Neil declared at the time.
In my earlier life, I grew up among Boston pols. My father and my grandfather were campaign workers for the Democrat Yankee, Endicott "Chub" Peabody, after whom it was said, three Massachusetts towns were named, Peabody, Marblehead and Athol. In junior high school, I had a crush on the Massachusetts senator, Jack Kennedy and as a freshman in high school, I handed out campaign literature when he ran for President which of course was totally unnecessary in Massachusetts. Later, I married Jack Flannery who had been Chief Secretary to another Massachusetts governor, Frank Sargent who was far more beloved even if he was a Yankee Republican. Jack was a wonderful writer whether it was speeches, op eds or his column, The Pols which ran three times a week for several years in the Boston Herald. The Pols was a political soap opera, a combination of fictional character and real politicians, that became an excuse to tell a lot of great stories about Boston pols, most of them true but you couldn't use their real names because the statute of limitations was still running.
That's what I miss about politics these days, the fun and the stories.
Mayor Thomas M. Menino said Wednesday.
It's the end of an era in Boston politics with the passing of Dapper O'Neil. He was the greatest storyteller there ever was. The real question is whether all those stories are true.
Nobody had more fun or had better stories than the old Boston pols and those days are over, that time is past.
When the wrong Maine woman was declared dead in an obituary in the Bangor Daily News, Anne E. Hathaway, 92, said
It's wonderful to find out how many friends you have. I just laughed and laughed and laughed."
I went to the pearly gates and opened the door and they didn’t have any strawberry shortcake and they didn’t like the way my hair looked."
She joked that she was looking better after having her hair styled Friday.
"I look better than I did when they printed the obituary," Hathaway said. "It’s okay and I’m still here."
Growing up, every one knew who the handsome, dare-devil Evel Knievel was, so fearless was he.
"Who do you think you are -- Evel Knievel?" asked thousands of mothers around the country.
But like all of us will sooner or later, he grew older and died yesterday of pulmonary fibrosis.
A last interview in USA Today
His ravaged, 155-pound body isn't composed of original parts. He has a new liver and a replacement hip, and most recently doctors inserted a drug pump in his abdomen. It gives little reprieve from the excruciating pain in a fused spine mangled by hundreds of perilous, cringe-inducing motorcycle jumps from the 1960s and '70s.
For years he cheated death, sometimes spectacularly so. Numerous crashes cemented his legend and all but guaranteed premature infirmity. These days, in what might be his last great gamble, Evel flies down the cosmic ramp of his final jump — the leap of faith.
While he has avoided the inevitable countless times, he no longer feels invincible. In fact, the bank robber-turned-international icon sounds apprehensive. After decades of hard jumps and harder living, including bouts with alcoholism, Evel tries to bridge the psychological chasm between mortality and eternity.
At the end, his son said, Evel realized that love is everything .
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The quest to uncover value and meaning from his earthly existence has greater urgency these days. Evel takes a notepad off a chair-side table and begins to read something that sounds like a eulogy, which friends say he has written.
"I hope I have lived a life that matters … I am ready to leave my loved ones …
"My wealth, my fame will amount to naught … My grudges, frustrations, resentments and jealousies will finally disappear."
A few months later, he converted to Christianity.
Knievel told how he had refused for 68 years to convert to Christianity because he didn’t want to surrender his lifestyle of "the gold and the gambling and the booze and the women." He explained his conversion experience by saying, "All of a sudden, I just believed in Jesus Christ."
Evel Knievel, the American motorcycle stunt rider who has died aged 69, combined a considerable talent for self-promotion with a hazardous capacity for bravery; among the several world records he held was that for the most bones broken by one person, 433
Tall, blonde and nearly handsome, in the 1970s Knievel appealed to America's love of excess, and to her need to be convinced that she had not gone soft, that the pioneer spirit still thrived.
Last ride for Evel Knievel, man of steel and scars
At 27, he became co-owner of a motorcycle shop. To attract customers, he announced he would jump 12 metres over parked cars and a box of rattlesnakes and continue on past a mountain lion tethered at the other end. Before a thousand people, he did the stunt but failed to fly far enough; his bike came down on the rattlesnakes. The audience was in awe.
"Right then," he said, "I knew I could draw a big crowd by jumping over weird stuff."
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He underwent as many as 15 major operations to relieve severe trauma and repair broken bones — skull, pelvis, ribs, collarbone, shoulders and hips. "I created the character called Evel Knievel, and he sort of got away from me," he said.
Fake obituary posted on YouTube to intimidate Councillor Alan Craig who has opposed the building of Europe's largest mosque in London near the 2012 Olympic site.
Opponent of 'mega-mosque' receives chilling death threat on YouTube.
What can you say except this is appalling?
About the death, I have long hesitated, I was long before I could tell my mind; and now I know it, and can but say that I am glad. If we could have had my father, that would have been a different thing. But to keep that changeling - suffering changeling - any longer, could better none and nothing. Now he rests; it is more significant, it is more like himself. He will begin to return to us in the course of time, as he was and as we loved him.
My favourite words in literature, my favourite scene - 'O let him pass,' Kent and Lear - was played for me here in the first moment of my return.
Letter from Robert Louis Stevenson to Sidney Colvin, June 1887.
HT The Sheila Variation, "O Let Him Pass".
A new blog for me, Postman's Horn posts a letter every day by authors, writers, poets and painters because
A letter can provide that sense of everyday life, a glimpse of the the trials and tribulations of another human soul; and they can underscore the humanity of writers who have become so very famous.
My condolences to Yaacov Ben Moshe on the death of his father whose remarkable In Honor of a Great Dead White Man pays tribute to his greatest hero who
even though he always knew that life can be hard and even cruel, he never lost sight of the fact that it is always wonderful and miraculous at the same time
Especially in this month of All Saints and All Souls, we pay attention to the best of those who have passed before us because
The consequence is that human solidarity, to use that term, must belong much less to the crowd of our predecessors, than to the persons of the past who have realized, in a great way, the fine natural traits of man. Those who pass up the opportunity to serve their great memory, pass up an undoubted opportunity to help themselves, to correct themselves, and to improve themselves.
Charles Murras on All Souls Day
"I viewed my mission as one to save lives. I didn't bomb Pearl Harbor.
I didn't start the war. But I was going to finish it."
Paul Tibbets Jr, pilot of Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the bomb at Hiroshima, died at his home in Columbus, Ohio at 92.
Gen. Tibbets became a national hero with the Aug. 6, 1945, atomic bombing of Hiroshima, a historical turning point of the last century. He said he had no regrets over the more than 100,000 Japanese killed and wounded at Hiroshima, and made a point of saying he slept easily at night.
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In a public television documentary, "The Men Who Brought the Dawn," that aired on the 50th anniversary of the bombings, Gen. Tibbets said the bomb "saved more lives than we took" because an alternative would have been an invasion of mainland Japan.
"It would have been morally wrong if we'd have had that weapon and not used it and let a million more people die," he said.
If you think that the bombing of Hiroshima was a mistake I urge you to read Charles McCarry, Hiroshima and the Firebombing of Tokyo.
The man who funded the Pequot Indians in Connecticut when they wanted to build a casino died yesterday. The Pequots had gone to 35 banks and investment houses and were turned down when they turned overseas to Malay-Chinese entrepreneur who became a billionaire by developing Genting Highlands, a casino in the highlands of the Muslim country of Malaysia.
Genting Highlands, the mountaintop casino and resort complex close to Kuala Lumpur, illustrates Malaysia's grudging relationship with gambling and, some have argued, with its entire Chinese community of 7.3 million. Lim Goh Tong, its creator, was granted permission to build a casino “on a 1,700m mountain, out of sight and out of mind”, as one journalist put it, in return for helping to build a tourist infrastructure in the newly independent federation. As his gambling retreat grew and grew — becoming “the Las Vegas of Malaysia” — it became an ever-greater affront to the Muslim majority but ever-more indispensable to a government in need of money.
His bet on Indian gaming in the United States was prescient. The rest is history. Foxwoods, now the world's largest casino, takes in an estimated $1 billion in revenue each year.
Lim Goh Tong's obituary in the London Telegraph has no mention of the role he played in the United States though the London Times obit does.
"An artist of impeccable grace and beauty" read the citation for Deborah Kerr's honorary Oscar in 1994 awarded after she was nominated six times as Best Actress, never winning one.
She died at 86 after suffering many years with Parkinson's disease.
Heaven Knows Mr. Allison with Robert Mitchum
London Telegraph obituary
Kerr was the unfadingly ladylike and prototypical English rose whose red-haired, angular beauty and self-possessed femininity distinguished more than 50 films in four decades of cinema.
She made serenity dramatic; and though her poise might be ruffled at critical moments in scenes of passion (most famously exemplified by her encounter on the beach with Burt Lancaster in From Here to Eternity in 1953), her well-bred airs and social graces made her a model of British womanhood in Hollywood.
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......her type of refined sensuality proved refreshingly attractive, since it hinted at hidden desires and forbidden feelings, giving her acting an extra edge and interest.
You can see a clip of the famous kiss on the beach on YouTube.
Ann Althouse quotes from a New York Times piece that has since disappeared in the best summary of all.
She could be virginal, ethereal, gossamer and fragile, or earthy, spicy and suggestive, and sometimes she managed to display all her skills at the same time.
What an amazing, remarkable woman, Countess Andree de Jongh obituary in the London Telegraph.
She founded and organised the Comet Escape Line, the route from Belgium through France to Spain used by hundreds of Allied airmen to escape from Nazi-occupied Europe.
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Dédée de Jongh made more than 30 double crossings and escorted 116 evaders, including more than 80 aircrew. But on the night of January 15 1943 she was sheltering at Urrugne with three RAF evaders when she was betrayed. The house was stormed and she was captured. When interrogated under torture by the Gestapo, in order to save others she admitted being the leader of Le Reseau Comète.
The Gestapo, however, refused to believe that such a young and innocent girl could be in charge of an underground movement whose compass stretched from from Belgium to Spain.
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Dédée de Jongh was sent to Mauthausen and Ravensbruck concentration camps. For two years she lived on a diet of dirty potato and turnip soup, practising her nursing skills and trying to avoid being singled out. Although she survived, she had become gravely ill and undernourished by the time she was released by the advancing Allied armies in April 1945.
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After recovering her health Dédée de Jongh went to Buckingham Palace, in 1946, to receive the George Medal — the highest civilian award for bravery available to a foreigner. After the ceremony the RAF Escaping Society gave a dinner in her honour hosted by Air Chief Marshal Sir Basil Embry. The Americans awarded her the Medal of Freedom and the French appointed her a Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur. The Belgians appointed her a Chevalier of the Order of Leopold and awarded her the Croix de Guerre with palm. In 1985 she was created a countess by King Baudouin.
Then she went to the Belgian Congo to work in a leper colony and from there to Ethiopia.
Her philosophy was simple.
In 2000 she recalled: "When war was declared I knew what needed to be done. There was no hesitation. We could not stop what we had to do although we knew the cost. Even if it was at the expense of our lives, we had to fight until the last breath."
David Muffett, London obit in the Telegraph
David Muffett, who has died aged 88, applied the skills he had honed when dealing with cannibals in colonial Africa to battling education ministers and teaching unions in his role as chairman of Hereford and Worcester County Council education committee.
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In 1960 he apprehended the Tigwe of Vwuip, a northern Nigerian tribal chief who had eaten the local tax collector. The Tigwe had apparently been so impressed by the man's ability to acquire money on demand that he had — understandably — decided to try to assimilate his powers.
It was not so much this particular misdemeanour that bothered Muffett; what really worried him was the fact that a UN delegation was due to visit the area, and "I wasn't about to have one of them eaten. I considered that it would be a highly retrogressive step."
via Mark Steyn
Christopher Hitchens writes a moving piece about a young boy killed in Iraq by an IED who was in part persuaded to enlist by Hitchens' own pro-war articles.
I don't exaggerate by much when I say that I froze. I certainly felt a very deep pang of cold dismay. I had just returned from a visit to Iraq with my own son (who is 23, as was young Mr. Daily) and had found myself in a deeply pessimistic frame of mind about the war. Was it possible that I had helped persuade someone I had never met to place himself in the path of an I.E.D.?
Overwhelmed to be invited to the scattering of ashes of the man he never knew, Hitchens quotes Shakespeare from MacBeth
Your son, my lord, has paid a soldier's debt;
He only lived but till he was a man;
The which no sooner had his prowess confirm'd
In the unshrinking station where he fought,
But like a man he died.
This being Shakespeare, the truly emotional and understated moment follows a beat or two later, when Ross adds:
Your cause of sorrow
Must not be measured by his worth, for then
It hath no end.
The man who would never say die, did.
Major Sir Hamish Forbes tried some ten times over five years to escape from prisoner of war camps, every attempt an ingenious one, until he finally succeeded in April, 1945.
A moment of silence
Mime Legend Marcel Marceau Dies at 84
Offstage, he was famously chatty. "Never get a mime talking. He won't stop," he once said.
A French Jew, Marceau escaped deportation to a Nazi death camp during World War II, unlike his father who died in Auschwitz. Marceau worked with the French Resistance to protect Jewish children, and later used the memories of his own life to feed his art.
He gave life to a wide spectrum of characters, from a peevish waiter to a lion tamer to an old woman knitting, and to the best-known Bip.
His biggest inspiration was Charlie Chaplin. In turn, Marceau inspired countless young performers — Michael Jackson borrowed his famous "moonwalk" from a Marceau sketch, "Walking Against the Wind."
Lady Jeanne Campbell - the Telegraph obit.
Lady Jeanne Campbell , who has died aged 78, was a journalist who reported for the Evening Standard from New York for many years; she was also the former wife of Norman Mailer, the daughter of the reprobate 11th Duke of Argyll and the favourite granddaughter of Lord Beaverbrook.
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Lady Jeanne was wild. So numerous were her love affairs that James C Humes (a speechwriter for many American presidents) claimed in his memoirs, Confessions of a White House Ghostwriter, that she was the only woman to have known "Biblically" Presidents Khrushchev, Kennedy and Castro — and all, he claimed, within the space of a year. Humes suggested that Kennedy went through his paces at her Georgetown house in October 1963; Khruschev at his dacha in April 1964; and Castro in Havana the following May.
From the New York Times obituary by Douglas Martin.
Madeleine L'Engle, who in writing more than 60 books, including childhood fables, religious meditations and science fiction, weaved emotional tapestries transcending genre and generation, died Thursday in Connecticut. She was 88.
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“Why does anybody tell a story?” she once asked, even though she knew the answer.
“It does indeed have something to do with faith,” she said, “faith that the universe has meaning, that our little human lives are not irrelevant, that what we choose or say or do matters, matters cosmically.”
Terry Mattingly has a lovely tribute to Madeleine L'Engle, entitled Tesser well
The goal, said L’Engle, was to create fiction that was unmistakably Christian, while writing to an audience that included all kinds of believers and unbelievers.
“I have been brought up to believe that the Gospel is to be spread, it is to be shared — not kept for those who already have it,” she said. “Well, ‘Christian novels’ reach Christians. They don’t reach out. . . . I am not a ‘Christian writer.’ I am a writer who is a Christian. I think that you have to be the best writer that you can be. Now, if I am truly a Christian, then that will show in my work.”
I never read her, but so many people love her work like John Podhoretz who writes another lovely appreciation of the woman who lived in the same New York building whom he got to know because the elevator kept breaking down, that I must read at least one of them. Wrinkle in Time I think.
Excerpted from the Wikipedia entry
A shy, clumsy child, she was branded as stupid by some of her teachers. Unable to please them, she retreated into her own world of books and writing. Her parents often disagreed about how to raise her and as a result she went to a number of boarding schools and had many governesses....
She was best known for her Young Adult fiction, particularly the Newbery Medal-winning A Wrinkle in Time and its sequels A Wind in the Door, A Swiftly Tilting Planet and Many Waters. Her works reflect her strong interest in modern science: tesseracts, for example, are featured prominently in A Wrinkle in Time, mitochondrial DNA in A Wind in the Door, organ regeneration in The Arm of the Starfish, and so forth.
In addition to the numerous awards, medals and prizes won by individual books L'Engle wrote, she personally received many honors over the years and received over a dozen honorary degrees from as many colleges and universities, such as Haverford College. Many of these name her as a Doctor of Humane Letters, but she was also made a Doctor of Literature and a Doctor of Sacred Theology, the latter at Berkeley Divinity School in 1984. ...In 2004 she received the National Humanities Medal, but could not attend the ceremony due to poor health.
Jules Crittenden eulogizes OldManTyme, a frequent commenter on his blog
OldManTyme, wielding razor-sharp rapier, did righteous battle at this site with the local trolls, skewering and slicing his way through some of the more rotten, mushier aspects of today’s conventional wisdom. Some examples here, here, here, here, here, and here. A great American, in the best traditions of service to nation, community and family.
The commenter's son Joe adds more
He was a Massachusetts Republican, a rare bird, and usually kept his own counsel about politics publicly and especially around my aunts and uncles who are anything but conservative. He wasn’t one to take any prisoners when he got his Irish up over someone not using their head privately but generally gave the impression publicly of an immensely competent but quiet and reserved guy.
One growing trend that I approve is that of paid obits where families or the deceased ahead of time can write what they want without the filter of a copy editor.
Occasionally, there's something amazing as Sam Pollak found out when Jeffrey Dun wrote an obit in the Indianapolis Star about his son Nicholas who committed suicide.
"Yesterday my son took his own life. He did not intend to. He did something thousands of people have and are doing, using drugs. Drugs they know nothing about. Drugs recommended and provided by friends or strangers that are not chemists that know what’s in them or doctors that knew how much his body could take.
"My son Nick has devastated us," it continued before listing survivors "who have also been left behind in pain."
This was an extraordinary obituary that no reporter would dare write as the last written remembrance of a person’s life.
The young man’s father, Jeffrey Dunn, however, wanted to spare others the pain he and his family were feeling.
"Realize you have no more idea of what or how much you’re putting in your body than those selling it to you," continued the obit. "Those drugs do not discriminate by race, income, the status of you or of your family. These are those that care about you and those you care about. Consider them please! The pleasure is not worth the risks!
"Goodbye Nick, we love you and will miss you."
If you read the AP obituary on Leona Helmsley, it seems she truly earned her title, the Queen of Mean
Now this is a new twist to obituaries. The London Telegraph not only produces the liveliest obits in the world, they now provide audio clips so you can hear a famous jazz singer like George Melly
George Melly, the jazz singer, author and raconteur who died yesterday aged 80, leched, drank and blasphemed his way around the clubs and pubs of the British Isles and provided pleasure to the public for five decades.
I'm telling you, the Telegraph obits are the best I've ever read.
Count Gottfried von Bismarck, who was found dead on Monday aged 44, was a louche German aristocrat with a multi-faceted history as a pleasure-seeking heroin addict, hell-raising alcoholic, flamboyant waster and a reckless and extravagant host of homosexual orgies.
Yes, a must-read obit.
Brooklyn-born, America's diva, Beverly Sills died in Manhattan at 78 of lung cancer.
Her final performance on YouTube
New York Times obituary
Ms. Sills was America’s idea of a prima donna. Her plain-spoken manner and telegenic vitality made her a genuine celebrity and an invaluable advocate for the fine arts. Her life embodied an archetypal American story of humble origins, years of struggle, family tragedy and artistic triumph.
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During her performing career, with her combination of brilliant singing, ebullience and self-deprecating humor, Ms. Sills demystified opera — and the fine arts in general — in a way that a general public audience responded to. Asked about the ecstatic reception she received when she made a belated debut at La Scala in Milan in 1969, Ms. Sills told the press, “It’s probably because Italians like big women, big bosoms and big backsides.”
Her husband Greenough died last year after a long illness. The first of their children was born deaf, the second so severely retarded he had to be placed in an institution.
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In a conversation with a Times reporter in 2005, reflecting on her challenging life and triumphant career, Ms. Sills said, “Man plans and God laughs.” She added: “I have often said I’ve never considered myself a happy woman. How could I, with all that’s happened to me. But I’m a cheerful woman. Work kept me going.”
VIa RIP Lucky Fluckey by Jules Crittenden, I learned about Rear Admiral Eugene Fluckey, one of the greatest naval heroes of World War II whose daring submarine attacks completely disrupted the entire Japanese shipping system .
It's a terrific story of courage and derring-do that would serve as far better plot for a Hollywood action movie than we usually get, in the words of his Medal of Honor citation "an exceptional feat of brilliant deduction and bold tracking."
The Galloping Ghost of the China Coast
In addition to the Medal of Honor and Navy Crosses (second only to the Medal of Honor), Adm. Fluckey received the Distinguished Service Medal, the Legion of Merit and a host of lesser decorations. His greatest achievement, he often said, was that no one under his command ever received another well-known medal: the Purple Heart.
Rear Adm. Eugene B. Fluckey, who was awarded the Medal of Honor and four Navy Crosses, was among the most highly decorated of any military veterans. (Navy Department)
"He was absolutely confident and absolutely fearless, but fearless with good judgment," McNitt said. "He brought his ship and his people home."
An extraordinary life, an extraordinary man, the sort you want young boys to read all about.
Father Laurence Mancuso, the founding abbot of The Monks of New Skete, who won fame for their sane and loving way of training dogs, died at 72.
New Skete is a contemplative monastic community of men and women living their Easter Orthodox Christian faith while breeding German shepherds, smoking hams and making cheesecakes to support themselves.
The Deacon's Bench has more at Man's best friend loses a friend.
New York Times obit.
I liked this image, imagining the love bond created
At New Skete, when the monks and nuns go about their daily chores, sit for meals or wander through the woods in silent meditation, they usually have their dogs leashed to their belts. So, too, did Father Laurence.
I wrote at the beginning of June on Business of Life that My Mother was Dying and now I can report that it was A Beautiful Death.
The funeral was lovely, all the women from the oldest to the youngest dressed in white. White might seem strange for a funeral but when my father died, my mother asked all of us to wear white to represent the promise of the Resurrection and so we did it for her.
(She hated black anyway and never wore it again after her mother's funeral in the 60s.)
Her grandchildren were pall bearers. We sang the hymns she wanted, Tell Me Why, a lullaby she sang to us when we were little, Gentle Woman, and A Closer Walk with Thee.
After her Mass of Christian Burial, we gathered outside on a beautiful June day in front of the church in a little garden where Army Air Force Nurse Ruth Fallon received final military honors and the family was presented with an American flag "on behalf of grateful nation." A bagpiper played Amazing Grace and Taps.
This is the eulogy I gave for my mother, Ruth E. Fallon,
Someone once wrote that “The fundamental pattern for any community is a congregation at a funeral” The pattern of all of us gathered here this morning is the pattern of the community of Ruth Fallon, everyone of us connected to her in some way. It’s a beautiful pattern. Thank you all for coming today. It means a lot to her family.
Cormac McCarthy said “The closest bonds we will ever know are the bonds of grief. The deepest community is one of sorrow.” We are sad, yes indeed. But even in this time of sorrow, we sons and daughters of Ruth Fallon are grateful. And gratitude is a higher tribute than grief. We’re so proud of her being our mother.
We ask ourselves - How did we get so lucky?
Well, there were the roots in the heartland, the Mid West, 1921. The Great War was over, the country was booming, and a sweet and nutty candy bar appeared, the Baby Ruth, the same year Baby Ruth Mundell was born in Detroit, Michigan to John Mundell, a Presbyterian minister and Ellen Paterson, a nurse. Ruth grew up with her younger brother Jackie and her younger sister Marilyn in the small town of Blissfield, Michigan, where her father had his first church. She didn’t much like all the church activities she had to attend on her ‘best behavior” or being called "P.K", the preacher’s kid. Heaven then was summers on “The Farm” in Ontario with their Paterson cousins. When she was nine or ten, the family moved back to Royal Oak, a leafy Detroit suburb with a zoo and an exemplary farmer’s market stocked with the best eggs, Canadian cheddar and spy apples, the best ones, she told us, for apple pies along with “An apple pie without cheese is like a kiss without a squeeze.”
Her father discouraged from becoming a doctor, one of the few regrets of her life, so she went to Deaconess School of Nursing in Detroit. Then came Pearl Harbor and Ruth heard the call to service. On graduation Ruth applied for a commission in the Army Air Force Nurses Corps and soon she was a Second Lieutenant assigned to Buckley Air Force Base in Denver, Colorado. A recovering patient, Flight Officer William James Fallon from Fitchburg, Mass caught her eye as he sat alone reading Time magazine at a dance. Three months later they were married.. A first baby – that’s me – was born just as the war ended. Ruth and Bill grew up fast and headed East where, with the GI Bill, they could begin college. They ended up in Vermont at St. Michael’s, one of the few colleges that offered housing for married veterans with children. Soon both were attending classes and Ruth took a fling at acting in a summer stock production at the Playhouse. Soon after Kevin was born, Dad graduated and we moved to Arlington so he could start law school. Then Debby came, soon Billy, Colleen, Robby and Julie Ann.
So what do you do as the mother of seven, after you’ve made the school lunches, gone food shopping, sewed the clothes, broke up the fights, wiped away the tears, fixed the dinner, gave the baths and oversaw our nightly prayers. If you were Ruth Fallon, you’d hightail it down to work at the Operating Room at Mt Auburn Hospital where you would finally relax among adults with ‘no kids’ around.
We thought she was beautiful with the most delicious smell of White Linen, glamorous when she dressed up, her jewels on for some special occasion with Dad. Ruth was there for our First Communions, confirmations, high school and college graduations, our boyfriends and girlfriends and our marriages. She was there for her friends. We all remember her going off –in the early days in nurse’s cap and cape - to attend a neighbor in the hospital or a sick friend.. She knew what to do, what had to be done and she did it. And we watched her.
She wanted us to be good. She wanted us to be happy. And she wanted us to have a good education. She said once that her proudest achievement along with our Dad was sending all seven children to college and graduate school. When I left for college, Ruth went back to get her degree from Boston College in psychology. Maybe that helped because I can only guess how she made it through the sixties and seventies with seven teen-agers. Of course, there were some things she never knew about. But not as much as we think... As we grew beards and donned hippy clothes, she roamed Filene’s Basement to find Brooks Brothers suits and Ferragamo shoes. We called her the world’s oldest Preppy.
She traveled to Europe, visiting me in Paris and Geneva, Kevin in Pisa, Colly and Robby in Italy, and Billy in Thailand and Switzerland. She loved Italy the best, especially since she could smoke in any bar or restaurant. That and Italian leather. She would buy scores of gloves for presents and a red leather jacket for herself that she wore as she tooled around in her blue sports car with Vinny, her Jack Russell terrier at her side.
She was completely herself all of her life, doing things the way she wanted. Unless you knew Ruth, you wouldn’t know that under that quiet, mild exterior, she was a corker, a pistol, feisty, funny and independent as all get out. Always original, a real character that Ruth.
Most of all she was an original giver with a generosity that was striking. Her brownies, oatmeal cookies and peanut brittle are renowned throughout the community of Ruth. No one left Ruth’s house without passing the bags she set aside for the prison ministry, the food pantry and the Salvation Army and without something she had given them - cookies, coupons, lipsticks, Christopher calendars, wallets, stickers, books, beef stew or a box of chocolates. So much so that it became a family joke. “What ja get”
But we watched her and knew that those little gifts were proofs of her love. Self-giving - Ruth’s concern for others - was the predominant pattern of her life.
Such self-giving would not have been possible had she not her faith, solid as a rock. She converted to Catholicism as a young woman and in her faith found strength, solace and peace. She went to daily Mass at the Grey Nuns, Sundays here at Sacred Heart, and many times in Rome and Assisi with fellow parishioners.
We’ll celebrate her life later at a party at Ruth’s house to which you are all invited. Right now, we give thanks. Thanks to God for giving us Ruth who gave us life and lit up our lives. She set the bar high, Ruth did.
Never was it more evident than in the manner of her dying. Only two months ago we learned her cancer had come back. She choose not to have chemotherapy. We sons and daughters of Ruth knew what to do. After all, we had watched her all our lives. We came back home to care for her and be with her and each other in our childhood home. With the help of hospice who kept her pain-free and the skilled care of her daughter Colleen, a nurse, Ruth was completely herself to the end, much to our delight. She enjoyed us, her grandchildren, especially the little ones– she always a weakness for babies - and many visitors in the past few weeks downstairs in her own home.
She was completely unafraid, often radiant with happiness, beaming at all the people she loved. With her strong heart, she used every last bit of her substance so we could be together and with her just a bit longer. On her last day, we gathered round her bed to toast her with her favorite wine - Santa Margarita Pinot Grigio - and put a tiny drop on her lips.
After she passed through the doors of death, her mouth relaxed into a smile that reached the corners of her eyes.
Thank you God for that grace and privilege of being with Ruth in her last days.
She was a great being. She is a great soul alive and well in the kingdom and the glory of our Lord, Jesus Christ. We can be sure that all is well. All will be well.
For we sons and daughters of Ruth, she will always be our light at the top of the stairs that now reach all the way to heaven.
May the memory of Ruth always be a blessing to those here gathered in body or in spirit.
And perpetual Light shine upon her.
Henry Russell was trapped in a West Virginia coal mine with more than 100 others when he began writing loving last messages to his family with pieces of coal on scraps of paper torn from bags of cement before shutting the scraps in his lunch box before he lay to die.
Diana Jones, the American country singer who recorded her song about Henry Russell to raise money for a permanent memorial at the site of the mine disaster in Everertville paid him credit,
I didn't add much," she said. "A lot of it is verbatim... I just feel so honoured to give his words a form that will live on."
Henry Russell's last words
Still alive but air is getting bad. Oh how I love you, Mary.
Dear father, I will be going soon. We are just cold and when the air comes it will be bad as we are on the return side. Will meet you all in heaven. We are going to heaven. We have plenty of time to make peace with the Lord. H Russell
I will soon be going to leave this world. Stay in America and give kids a home and marry again if you have a notion but God bless you and the kids. HR
Dear Mary, tell father I was saved. Also the Erskines. We don't feel any pain. Try and stay in the USA. Love to the kids. H Russell.
You can listen to the song here.
Jack Valenti died at 85, an unforgettable man.
From an Appreciation by Paul Farhi in the Washington Post.
Hollywood would never have cast Jack Valenti in the role he played in real life, which was as the film industry's man in Washington. Valenti was too florid in speech, too grandiose in manner, too much of a wit to fit the cinematic archetype of the conniving Washington fixer and shadowy string-puller.
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Hollywood will sorely miss Valenti's battlefield smarts and insider skills. His most famous creation was the industry's movie-rating system -- a marketing masterstroke that substituted "self-regulation" for the threatened legislative kind
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But Valenti's single greatest professional coup was an obscure one.
It's worth reading the entire thing to appreciate how wired Valenti was and how cleverly he used his juice.
His obituary, A Hollywood Promoter on Both Coasts by Adam Bernstein
With an instinctive showman's flair -- notably his grandiloquent speaking style and access to movie stars -- Valenti became the dominant power broker connecting Capitol Hill and the film colony. Besides his work on the ratings system in the late 1960s, he helped open up world markets for American-made films and secured passage of copyright legislation to protect movies into the digital age, which led to the proliferation of DVDs.
I knew he worked for President Johnson, but I never knew he married Johnson's personal secretary. His grandiloquent prose was often over the top, as when he declaimed before a congressional panel in 1982, "I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone."
But I'm charmed by his description of a movie audience as "unknown but enthusiastic companions of a single night."
Pat Buckley died this week in Stamford, Connecticut, of an infection, after a long illness.
Her death marks the end of a certain era in New York society, the New York Times calls "Nouvelle Society" of which Pat was Present at the Creation and the End.
It is not just that, as Oscar de la Renta said on Tuesday, Pat Buckley “had a big life.” It is not, as the Vogue contributor William Norwich remarked, that Mrs. Buckley belonged to a particular group of prominent women reared to “know food, know how to run a house, know how to garden, know how to decorate,” and also raise millions for charitable causes. And it is not just that she represented a time when wealthy women actually paid for their own clothes and were not generally available as props to be hired along with the cocktail glasses to dress up the openings of designer boutiques.
It is that Mrs. Buckley, her friends said, understood the difference between merely having wealth and putting it to interesting use. This is probably not an insignificant distinction in a city like our own.
The staff and contributors to National Review pay tribute to the boss's wife and her wicked sense of humor at an online symposium
...the mayor of New York, sat next to her at the dinner table, giving his short billionaire know-it-all opinions of everything, in this case the effects of second hand smoke. She blew a puff in his face, and drawled, “Mr. Mayor, may I smoke in my own house?” - Richard Brookhiser
If the press insists on calling her a “socialite,” those who knew her will add that her socializing changed society. She combined the kitchen of St. Martha and the salon of Madame Recamier and great events in our generation were shaped by that...Father George Rutler
What is relevant is that Pat let — and helped — her equally larger-than-life husband undertake the monumental task of launching a massive political/ideological movement that played a central role in bringing freedom to millions of tyrannized people. Now that’s not a bad accomplishment to have on your record as you meet Saint Peter...Jack Fowler
NRO Obituary here
Washington Post obituary
With her famously tall and slender figure, Mrs. Buckley had a regal presence at social gatherings. Women's Wear Daily called her "chic and stunning," and she moved easily among world leaders, royalty, politicians, artists and philanthropists
New York Times obituary
“Life is very difficult and everything kills you,” she once said. “The only thing you can do nowadays is sit fully clothed in the woods and eat fruit.
Despite her own highly visible profile, she generally identified herself as “Bill’s wife and Chris’s mother.”
“I’m a lot of other things too, but those come first,” she said. Christopher Buckley, the satirical author and editor, was her only child.
Condolences to her family R.I. P.
Since I only read an occasional cartoon, I missed the passing of Johnny Hart.
Hart's "B.C." strip was launched in 1958 and eventually appeared in more than 1,300 newspapers with an audience of 100 million, according to Creators Syndicate Inc., which distributes it.
"He was generally regarded as one of the best cartoonists we've ever had," Hart's friend Mell Lazarus, creator of the "Momma" and "Miss Peach" comic strips, said from his California home. "He was totally original. 'B.C' broke ground and led the way for a number of imitators, none of which ever came close."
Then I read A 'fundamental' problem in 'B.C.' obits in the GetReligion blog. An unapologetic Christian, Hart incorporated Christian messages into his cartoons at Easter and Christmas, which ticked some people off and pleased many more. Several newspapers dropped the strip
A reminder to the New York Times and the Washington Post — Many American Christians consider the terms “fundamentalist” and “fundamentalism” to be pejorative. In the 1910s and 1920s, the term referred to a Christian who believed in the “fundamentals” of the faith — the Virgin Birth of Christ, his sinless life, his atoning death, his bodily resurrection and his second coming in the clouds of glory.
Since then, however, the term “fundamentalist” has been hijacked. Today, it is an insult, a slur, a code word the Manhattan media and others use to marginalize people. It’s not nice to call someone a fundamentalist when they’re alive. It’s even worse to use the term in an obituary.
I guessed they missed the memo NYT editor Bill Keller sent to his staff in 2005 which Terry Mattingly excerpts.
In this new media world of ours, we have to deal with cyber-squatters and bootleg videos of funerals and those without any moral compass who have no respect for the dead.
Cathy Seipp's friend Sandra Tsing Toh writes about it in
It's a blogged world, we just live in it
On the one hand, it would be hard to confuse cathyseipp.com with her actual site. On the other hand, when the cyber-squatter last week reverted to his earlier ways, posting a "last blog entry" signed "Cathy Seipp" in which Cathy supposedly begged final forgiveness for her politics, her friends and her parenting … this seemed to cross a new line.
By week's end, Cathy's family and friends were debating whether to take legal action. Everyone was offended, exhausted and still staggered with grief. The public expression of which — Cathy's funeral — was, of course, recorded without our knowledge and posted by another blogger. Yep, it's all out there on the Web, just start Googling — you'll see snot pouring out of my nose as I wail helplessly through my eulogy, which, along with everything else involving the ceremony, has all already been critiqued online.
"It's like Cathy was the only thing that kept these people civilized!" was the horrified comment of friend Andrew Breitbart who, one should note, edits the Drudge Report. Even he!
Elliott Stein, a journalist advisor, was upset about the way Maia, Cathy's daughter, complained to her school about something the Elliott said or did. What he did was buy the domain name cathyseipp.com and write disparaging things about Cathy, her daughter and her friends up to the day of her funeral.
The unfortunate lesson, learned or not, as her friend Luke Ford, a strange and bizarre character himself, writes
If you are old enough to blog, then you are old enough to learn that whenever you blog something negative about somebody, that person may devote the rest of his life trying to make you miserable. Even when you are right in hurting someone (exposing their bad behavior to protect the innocent) through your speech, you are usually going to be hurt in return.
She did get a New York Times obit with this delicious quote
“In Medialand,...people often look at you uncomprehendingly if you explain that not everyone in America agrees with the received media wisdom. She added, “People with different ideas are not necessarily evil bigots, even if some of them do go to church.”
Cathy Seipp, a non-smoker, a complete original with an unorthodox sensibility and take on the world, died yesterday after a five year battle with lung cancer, at the age of 49.
As a blogger, she would have been delighted that she was number 1at Technorati in the list of top searches. The sendoff she's received from bloggers is quite extraordinary with hundreds writing posts.
Susan Estrich remembers her special friend in a lovely column and quotes what Cathy herself wrote about lung cancer.
Amy Alkon, the Advice Goddess, a close friend who was with Cathy at the end, writes how Cathy's kindness and generosity and enormous capacity for friendship through the years was returned by a great outpouring by all her friends, part of team Cathy, who made sure she was never alone, that there was plenty of food and always company for her chemo sessions.
Kathryn Jean Lopez calls her Fearlessly Independent. As editor of the National Review, she put together a symposium of friends and fans for a fond farewell. Some selections:
Charlotte Hays: "lovely in person and wicked in print."
Mickey Kaus: "I liked her for another reason: She was so grouchy! She just wouldn’t take any s**t at all."
Mark Steyn "loved the great brio of her writing...she also communicated a great joy and relish in writing, and you’d be surprised how few writers do that. I also liked the way you never quite knew where the next paragraph would lead."
John O'Sullivan calls her An Unorthodox Talent
If Raymond Chandler had been reincarnated in 1990s L.A. as a girl with a can-do attitude, the result would have been someone like Cathy Seipp
Rob Long, a longtime friend, writes that last Friday at the hospital, he watched Cathy
Cathy methodically rip out the ads from Vogue and Vanity Fair. “I’m not going to be lugging these huge things around,” she said. “Seriously. They make these magazines so heavy. Life is too short.”
Too short doesn’t begin to describe it. I go to her website. I look at her picture. I hit refresh.
These things take a while, I’m told, to sink in.
Cathy, a single mom, devoted to her 17-year-old daughter Maia, was able to see her off to college, and living an independent life. Maia, by all accounts, a precociously mature girl who takes after her mother, must be tremendously heartened by the river of tributes to Cathy, even buoyed by the outpouring of affection and love.
Still, sorrow will mark her in the months and years to come. It was Oscar Wilde of all people who wrote, "Where there is sorrow, there is holy ground,"
On that holy ground, she will learn what Cormac McCarthy wrote
The closest bonds we will ever know are the bonds of grief. The deepest community is one of sorrow.
Technorati Tags: Cathy Seipp
Via Tom McMahon
When filled with the Irish spirit, I am able to accept my losses and failures with greater grace. Which reminds of the time Paddy died.
His wife went to the newspaper to place his obituary. The newsman said the cost was $1 a word. "I only have $2," said Mrs. Paddy. "Just print 'Paddy died.'" The newsman decided that old Paddy deserved more. He gave her three extra words at no charge. "A kind man you are," said Mrs. Paddy. "Print me husband's obituary this way: 'Paddy died. Boat for sale.'"
Regarded by some as the most important French philosopher of the past 50 years, Jean Baudrillard, who argued
that modern man can no longer tell what reality is because he has become lost in a world of "simulacra", images and signs created and presented as "real" by the mass media
died this week at 77, but not I think at his flat in Montparnasse which
was adorned with 50 television sets and photographic images of the United States.
I say again, no one does better obituaries than the London Telegraph.
In the 1980s Baudrillard began to travel to see the world about which he had theorised. In America (1986) he argued that the country's "resort-style civilisation", with its microwaves, waste disposal units and the "orgasmic elasticity" of its carpets, "irresistibly evokes the end of the world".
He argued in his 1991 book that The Gulf War Did Not Happen, but still more controversial was
his contention, in an essay entitled The Spirit of Terrorism: Requiem for the Twin Towers (2002), that the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers in New York were largely a "dark fantasy" manufactured by the media. While terrorists had committed the atrocity, he wrote, they were only putting the finishing touches to "the orgy of power, liberation, flows and calculation which the twin towers embodied". The horror of the victims in the towers, he wrote, "was inseparable from the horror of living in them".
The article provoked a predictable outcry. "It takes a real demonic genius," wrote one critic, "to brush off the slaughter of thousands on the grounds that they were suffering from severe ennui brought on by boring modern architecture."
Such is the state of philosophy these days and, considering he is one of the five or six most cited figures in academia, its state as well. His greatest influence seems to be in the world of the post-modernist art which found in his theories a jargon to explain what the hell they were doing.
When Baudrillard appeared at the Whitney Museum in New York in 1987, a journalist reported that "collectors, dealers and artists turned out in droves, as for the Messiah".
The London Times
As his intellectual career developed he disassociated himself from the academic world, particularly the social sciences. He also became a critic of the main forms of western politics and culture, stigmatising the doctrines of democracy and human rights as alibis for increased western penetration, globalisation, and elimination of other cultures (paradoxically after having virtualised its own).
When a loved one dies, the family is usually in too much emotional anguish and too busy planning the funeral and burial to think about what the obituary should say.
Afterwords is a new service that will write a unique obituary, a life story, for a loved one
and weave together the personal fabric of a person’s life to create memorable words for printed programs, Web sites or eulogies.
After 25 years working as a specialist in corporate communications, Gloria Ross has weaved together elements from her personal and professional life to become a professional life story/obituary writer bring comfort to grieving families.
Remember them, remember her.
A husband thanks God for the privilege of knowing and loving his wife.
Liz was in a category of one. One of the unique things about Liz, however, was the fact that she neither particularly admired uniqueness nor ever aspired to it. If she aspired to anything, it was social invisibility. To be the object of social attention was one of her greatest fears. No, Liz acquired her uniqueness the hard way: though the experience of sadness and suffering and the intimacy with God that sadness and suffering can make possible.
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When I first met Liz at a retreat I was giving in Connecticut, in addition to sensing that she knew suffering, another thing that struck me was her love for the Church. I move in circles where one occasionally bumps into people who love the Church, but Liz’s love for the Church had a special quality about it. It was not so much that she loved the Church – in the perfunctory way we often love old familiar things – rather her love for the Church was spontaneous, unaffected and, most remarkable of all, entirely unproblematic. She loved the Church with the kind of love that has been all but eradicated by the spirit of our age, a spirit which is so antithetical to the Catholic sensibilities which were so alive in Liz.
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It was not until I met Liz that I realized how extraordinarily rare it is to find someone who actually does what Jesus commands, who actually loves God. Liz loved God. The more I realized this, the more astonishing it was to behold.
Requiescat in pace
Joyce Hatto was a little known pianist in London when she fell ill and moved to New Zealand.
Her recordings, CDs made when she was in her late 60s and 70s, are staggering, showing a masterful technique, a preternatural ability to adapt to different styles and a depth of musical insight hardly seen elsewhere.
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Little wonder that when she at last succumbed to her cancer last year at age 77 — recording Beethoven’s Sonata No. 26, “Les Adieux,” from a wheelchair in her last days — The Guardian called her “one of the greatest pianists Britain has ever produced.” Nice touch, that, playing Beethoven’s farewell sonata from a wheelchair. It went along with her image in the press as an indomitable spirit with a charming personality
In her obituary, the Guardian called her "one of the greatest pianists Britain has ever produced...Her legacy is a discography that in quantity, musical range and consistent quality has been equalled by few pianists in history.
But it was all a fraud that fooled many music critics that only came to light after her death last year - exposed by iTunes.
You have to read Shoot the Piano Player to find out how.
Now it appears her widower William Barrington Coupe passed off other people's recordings as his wife's to give her the illusion of a great end to an unfairly overlooked career. Or at least that's what he said in a letter to Gramophone Magazine
Now he deeply regrets what has happened. He feels that he has acted stupidly, dishonestly and unlawfully. However, he maintains that his wife knew nothing of the deception
Will Boomers Give New Life to Obituaries?
Will people pay just to read obituaries? We are going to find out. Following up on a mini-boom in newspaper obits -- both the New York Sun and the Wall Street Journal have added them -- a husband-and-wife team from Princeton, N.J., plans to start publishing a glossy magazine, Obit. "We truly believe that we are starting a 'movement,' " co founder Barbara Hillier said in a prepared statement.
On its website, Obit calls itself "the hottest thing in periodicals since the golden years of Esquire and Playboy, that will leave an indelible mark on American society." Should the magazine fail after it hits newsstands next year, that line will doubtless appear in its obituary.
"The Italians are very unmusical. If I go to a Protestant church in London or Amsterdam or listen to a black choir, I hear four-part harmony. Italians could never do that. In Italy we all have to sing the melody because we cannot harmonise."
That is a remark of Gian Carlo Menotti who died yesterday in Monaco at 97.
His next opera, Amahl and the Night Visitors, was the first to be written specifically for television in America.
It was shown by NBC on Christmas Eve 1951 — the Night Visitors are the Magi —and became an annual seasonal favourite. He wrote it with the stage always in mind. "On television you're lucky if they ever repeat anything. Writing an opera is a big effort and to give it away for one performance is stupid."
Amahl, he boasted: "introduced so many people to music. I get hundreds of letters about it to this day."
According the International Herald Tribune, Menotti died peacefully, in his son's arms.
Even though I often disagreed with her politics, no one was a funnier political writer than Molly Ivins. I had the good fortune of living in the same house at Smith as Molly and many were the late nights when I and many other girls gathered in a single bedroom arguing, talking and laughing with Molly.
Molly Ivins dies of breast cancer at 62
More than 400 newspapers subscribed to her nationally syndicated column, which combined strong liberal views and populist-toned humor. Ivins' illness did not seem to hurt her ability to deliver biting one-liners.
"I'm sorry to say (cancer) can kill you but it doesn't make you a better person," she said in an interview.
--
Born Mary Tyler Ivins, the California native grew up in Houston. She graduated from Smith College in 1966 and attended Columbia University's journalism school. She also studied for a year at the Institute of Political Sciences in Paris.
Boston Globe
She described herself as "a left-wing, aging-Bohemian journalist, who never made a shrewd career move, never dressed for success, never got married, and isn't even a lesbian, which at least would be interesting.
New York Times
“There are two kinds of humor,” she told People magazine. One was the kind “that makes us chuckle about our foibles and our shared humanity,” she said. “The other kind holds people up to public contempt and ridicule. That’s what I do.”
--
Her subject was Texas. To her, the Great State, as she called it, was “reactionary, cantankerous and hilarious,” and its Legislature was “reporter heaven.” When the Legislature is set to convene, she warned her readers, “every village is about to lose its idiot.”
--
While she drew important writing assignments, like covering the Son of Sam killings and Elvis Presley’s death, she sensed she did not fit in and complained that Times editors drained the life from her prose. “Naturally, I was miserable, at five times my previous salary,” she later wrote. “The New York Times is a great newspaper: it is also No Fun.”
--
Ms. Ivins learned she had breast cancer in 1999 and was typically unvarnished in describing her treatments. “First they mutilate you; then they poison you; then they burn you,” she wrote. “I have been on blind dates better than that.”
From a tribute by Anthony Zurcher
For me, Molly's greatest words of wisdom came with three children's books she gave my son when he was born. In her inimitable way, she captured the spirit of each in one-sentence inscriptions. In "Alice in Wonderland," she offered, "Here's to six impossible things before breakfast." For "The Wind in the Willows," it was, "May you have Toad's zest for life." And in "The Little Prince," she wrote, "May your heart always see clearly."
Father Robert Drinan was a pioneer and he died a good death.
From SFGate
The Rev. Robert Drinan, a Jesuit who — over the objections of his superiors — was the only Roman Catholic priest elected as a voting member of Congress, died Sunday.
Drinan, 86, had suffered from pneumonia and congestive heart failure during the previous 10 days, ----
"His death was peaceful, and he was surrounded by his family," said the Rev. John Langan, rector of the Georgetown University Jesuit Community where Drinan lived.
He was the first Congressman to call for the impeachment of President Richard Nixon for the secret bombing of Cambodia.
The sight of Father Drinan in the halls of Congress in his Roman collar was startling. Some even questioned the propriety of his wearing a cleric's collar and black suit on the floor of the House. Father Drinan had a standard response. "It's the only suit I own," he'd quip.
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In 1980, Pope John Paul II ordered Father Drinan to either forgo re election or leave the priesthood. With "regret and pain," Father Drinan announced he would not seek re election.
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Father Drinan's unexpected announcement set off a scramble among prospective successors. The winner was US Representative Barney Frank , then a state representative from Beacon Hill.
I would love to talk to the Telegraph's obituary writers if only to learn what Americans, not the famous ones, the unusual ones, about whom they have already written an obituary. Like this one
Liz Renay, who died on Monday aged 80, was by turns a Las Vegas showgirl, gangster's moll, convicted felon, cult actress, stripper, streaker and charm school instructor.
Convicted of perjury in 1959 when her boyfriend, the racketeer Micky Cohen, was tried for tax evasion, she spent 27 months in prison, a sentence she always regarded as fatal to her career prospects as a budding film star.
An unhappy life.
Here's Mark Steyn's Farewell, 2006.
It's not a comprehensive list: just a good cocktail-party mix of presidents, mass murderers, and a few odd figures I ran into over the years. But, one way or the other, we won't see their like again:
The Washington Post calls Mark Steyn, "maybe the world's wittiest obit writer."
He pens obits for the Atlantic and elsewhere and has just published
Mark Steyn's Passing Parade - a "collection of Mark's obituaries and appreciations - from Ronald Reagan and the Queen Mother to Ray Charles and the guy who invented Cool Whip."
As you know, epitaphs are the inscriptions on headstones. Wikiquotes has a fine collection from which I chosen a few.
Unless you write your own epitaph, someone unknown will write it for you.
Ezekial Aikle (unknown)
"Here Lies
Ezekial Aikle
Aged 102
The Good
Die Young"
from East Dalhousie, Nova Scotia, Canada
Gracie Allen and George Burns (themselves)
"Together again."
Hilaire Belloc (unknown) - 1870-1953
"When I am dead, I hope it may be said: His sins were scarlet, but his books were read."
Mel Blanc (by himself)
"That's all, folks!"
Trademark line of cartoon character Porky Pig, whose voice was provided by Blanc for many years.
John Brown (unknown)
"Stranger! Approach this spot with gravity!
John Brown is filling his last cavity."
Andrew Carnegie (unknown)
"Here lies a man who knew how to enlist the service of better men than himself."
Winston Churchill (unknown)
I am ready to meet my Maker.
Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.
Emily Dickinson (herself)
"Called back"
John Donne (Himself)
"John Donne
Undone."
Benjamin Franklin (himself)
"The Body of
B. Franklin, Printer
Like the Cover of an old Book
Its Contents turn out
And Stript of its Lettering & Guilding
Lies here. Food for Worms
For, it will as he believed
appear once more
In a new and more elegant Edition
corrected and improved
By the Author
Jackie Gleason (himself)
"And away we go!"
Trademark catchphrase from his television shows.
David Warren pays tribute to his friend Larry Wills Henderson.
----
He never wanted to be an outsider. He loved moving and shaking, he longed to be an insider, but there was no room for him "inside" the Canada that emerged in the 1950s and ’60s. He was an outsider by assignment, not choice. For he had the gift of prophecy: which is not that of a prognosticator, but rather of a teller of disregarded truths. Nobody could want to be a prophet.
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A Catholic and a Crusader; a Canadian; a knight.
.......I am honoured to be a British citizen.
I would like to thank the British public for their messages of support and for the interest they have shown in my plight.
I thank my wife, Marina, who has stood by me. My love for her and our son knows no bounds
But as I lie here I can distinctly hear the beating of wings of the angel of death. I may be able to give him the slip but I have to say my legs do not run as fast as I would like. I think, therefore, that this may be the time to say one or two things to the person responsible for my present condition.
You may succeed in silencing me but that silence comes at a price. You have shown yourself to be as barbaric and ruthless as your most hostile critics have claimed. You have shown yourself to have no respect for life, liberty or any civilised value.
You have shown yourself to be unworthy of your office, to be unworthy of the trust of civilised men and women.
You may succeed in silencing one man but the howl of protest from around the world will reverberate, Mr Putin, in your ears for the rest of your life. May God forgive you for what you have done, not only to me but to beloved Russia and its people.
The reverberating last words of Alexander Litvinenko, former KGB colonel who defected to London, to be poisoned with polonium 210 after lunching on sushi with another former KGB official.
Litvinenko had been investigating the assassination of Anna Politkovskaya, a Russian journalist in Moscow and searing critic of Russia's policies in Chechnya.
His father said his 43-year-old son was "killed by a little, tiny nuclear bomb."
Polonium 210, a byproduct of the nuclear industry requires high grade technical skills and probably a nuclear lab to make.
London Riddle: A Russian Spy, a Lethal Dose
This is not the first time the Russians have used poison.
Georgi Markov, a Bulgarian dissident, was also murdered in London in 1978, with a jab from a poison-tipped umbrella.
Viktor Yushchenko, leader of the Orange Revolution, now the President of the Ukraine, was poisoned with dioxin while campaigning to move his country closer to the West. The poisoning left him badly disfigured.
Jim Geraghty writes, Assassination: So Cool, It's the New Black.
Many years ago I heard a speech by Isaac Asimov when he spoke about the Manhattan Project, the highly classified, highly secret work to build the first atomic bomb. The Germans, Asimov said, knew that some big project was underway, but they didn't know where.
If they had only thought to ask themselves what were all the best scientists reading, they would have answered, science fiction.
Science fiction, according to science-fiction writer Robert Heinlein, is "realistic speculation about possible future events, based solidly on adequate knowledge of the real world, past and present, and on a thorough understanding of the nature and significance of the scientific method."
If the Germans then had taken themselves to New York and looked at the subscriber lists of the most popular science fiction pulp magazines like "Astounding", and "Amazing Stories " and "Super Science Stories", they would have found the majority of subscribers coming from two American towns that nobody had ever heard of, Oak Ridge in Tennessee and Los Alamos in New Mexico.
Jack Williamson, born in Arizona Territory before it was admitted as a state, died in New Mexico last week at 98. He was one of the earliest sci fi writers, beginning before the term science fiction was coined and lived to be the "longest-serving" science fiction writer in America.
The London Telegraph has a terrific obituary.
Ed Bradley was one of those people I liked that I thought would always be there until he wasn't. He died Thursday from leukemia that I didn't know he had. I will miss him.
Twenty five years with 60 minutes made him a familiar figure in millions of homes across America.
Some tributes to the trailblazer from CBS News.
President Bush and Laura Bush remembered him for producing "distinctive investigative reports that inspired action and cemented his reputation as one of the most accomplished journalists of our time."
Mike Wallace
Bradley was "a kind, gentle, strong man. A first-rate reporter and a first-rate human being. When he laughed, he laughed whole-heartedly from down deep. He was just an absolutely delightful man."
CBS News chief Washington correspondent Bob Schieffer
Bradley "was simply the coolest person I have ever known. He was a great observer of the American scene with a shrewd eye and a terrific sense of humor. And let me tell you, no one ever put one over on Ed Bradley."
The New York Times obituary
Even many close colleagues had not known that his health had been deteriorating precipitously for several weeks. On the day that last segment was broadcast, he was admitted to Mt. Sinai. He remained there until his death. “This has been a long battle which he fought silently and courageously,” said Charlayne Hunter-Gault of the “News Hour with Jim Lehrer,” who was one of several close friends at Mr. Bradley’s side when he died this morning. “He didn’t want people to know that this was a part of his struggle. He didn’t want people feeling sorry for him. And for a good part of his life, he managed it.”
To generations of television viewers, Mr. Bradley was a sober presence — albeit one who occasionally wore a stud in one ear — whose reporting across four decades ranged from the Vietnam War and Cambodian refugee crisis to the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church and the Oklahoma City bombing (his was the only television interview with Timothy McVeigh). He won 19 Emmy awards, including one for “lifetime achievement” in 2003.
Who knew he was such a good friend to Jimmy Buffett.
“I made the mistake once of letting him get onstage with my band, and he never stopped doing it,” the singer Jimmy Buffett, a friend of Mr. Bradley’s for 30 years who was also with him when he died, said in a telephone interview today.
The Washington Post obituary
Ed Bradley had cool like a vault has money.
R.I.P. Edward Rudolph Bradley, Jr. 1941-2006
The New York Times is having some problems with its obituaries, William McGowan collects some stunning mistakes.
In an obituary that ran in November of 2003, the Times’s Douglas Martin, a longtime metro-beat vet, reported that a prominent Harlem photographer had a twin brother to whom he was so close that when the brother died of testicular cancer in 1993, the photographer had his own testicles removed in solidarity with his sibling. An ensuring correction acknowledged, however, that the first brother had died of prostrate cancer and, in fact, the photographer had not had his testicles removed in response. The Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz called it the “Correction of the Month.” Erroneous facts in response to the deceased — or not yet deceased, as the case may be — were reported just a few weeks later when the Times ran an obituary on the singer, actress, and dancer Katherine Sergava, who had appeared in the original production of Oklahoma!. The Times reported that the she had died November 11 in Palm Springs, California, “where she had settled in the mid-1960s.” As the New York Post reported, Katherine Sergava was not dead at all, but living in an Upper Westside nursing home.
Well, here's something you may never read again, a real life Hannibal Lechter, a "Dining Partner of Cannibals".
Tobias Scheebaum, Chronicler and Dining Partner of Cannibals, Dies.
Mr. Schneebaum came to prominence in 1969 with the publication of his memoir, also titled "Keep the River on Your Right" (Grove Press). The book, which became a cult classic, described how a mild-mannered gay New York artist wound up living, and ardently loving, for several months among the Arakmbut, an indigenous cannibalistic people in the rainforest of Peru.
Patrick Belton pens a beautiful eulogy to his mother who died too young at 62.
"Let my tell you about my mother...."
Let me tell you about my mother, who was zealous that those whom she loved rest. Mum, I am your son, sprung of your loins, and today I am zealous that you rest. That your heart, so loving, rest now from its strenuous exertions of a lifetime. That your body, so wearied from unstinting quiet, quiet service to others, and your final illness, rest in the embrace of a loving earth which spawned you. Requiem, rest. Requiem aeternam dona matrem meam, Domine. Eternal rest, o God, to whom all flesh comes. Et lux perpetua luceat ei.
What do you say when you read your own obituary and people insist you are dead?
Mark Twain wrote "the report of my death was an exaggeration.'"
Paul Vance pulled out his royalty statements.
Seems as if the earlier reports of his death were the result of another Paul Vance who died after claiming all his life that he was the author of the 1960s famous hit, It was a Itsy Bitsy, Teenie, Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini"
Real "Itsy Bitsy' songwriter still alive.
Do you know what it's like to have grandchildren calling you and say, `Grandpa, you're still alive?'" he said in a telephone interview from Coral Springs, Fla. "This is not a game. I am who I am and I'm proud of who I am. But these phones don't stop with people calling thinking I'm dead."
Rose Leroux, the widow of the man who died, said she was surprised by the disclosure, and "kind of devastated." She said she had no reason to doubt that her Paul Vance — who apparently had some sort of music career when he was younger — was the writer of the famous tune.
She said her husband told her that he never got any royalties because he sold the rights when he was young, around 19. She said that by the time they met almost 40 years ago, he was making his living as a salesman. He later became a painting contractor.
----
The living Paul Vance estimated he has made several million dollars from the song, which was recorded by 16-year-old teen idol Brian Hyland, surged to No. 1 on the Billboard charts in August 1960 and has been pop culture staple ever since...."It's a money machine," Vance said.
All that chicken chili, chicken sausage, chicken hotdogs, yes, even chicken nuggets ever eaten were all due to the work of one man, Robert C. Baker, food scientist , who died at 84.
I missed the New York Times obit here when it first came out. Fortunately, the Obituaries Editor of the Times, Robert McDonald, answered readers' questions here and drew my attention to Mr. Baker and his singular contribution to American dining with this quote.
"Robert C. Baker, an agricultural scientist who looked at chickens and envisioned chicken nuggets, not to mention chicken hotdogs, helping transform what is now a $29 billion poultry industry, died on Monday at his home in North Lansing, N.Y. He was 84.
Funny, feisty and tart, Ann Richards, former governor of Texas, died at her home in Austin of esohageal cancer, age 73.
What most non-Texans remember about her is the keynote speech she gave at the 1988 Democratic convention, "Poor George," she said of Bush 41, "He can't help it. He was born with a silver foot in his mouth."
Washington Post obituary
Said Anna Quindlen after the speech,
"She was nobody's fool, She made them listen and she made them listen good, with precisely those qualities that we often try to iron out of politicians in general and female politicians in particular: a sense of fun, irreverence and general cussedness."
---
Smart and sassy, with a homespun charm that often disarmed her political foes, she was making a name for herself across Texas, but her personal life was in shambles. Her political involvement put a strain on her marriage, which ended in divorce, and she began drinking heavily. Her friends eventually forced her into rehabilitation, and she credited their intervention with saving her life and her political career.
--
In 1982, in a Democratic sweep of top offices, she was elected state treasurer. Receiving the most votes of any statewide candidate, she became the first woman elected to statewide office in Texas in 50 years.
Joshua Micah Marshall remembers his father who died suddenly of a heart attack in a touching tribute to the qualities of his father's being.
In the two weeks since my dad died I’ve struggled to know how to describe him to those who didn’t know him. I can see him in my mind’s eye. I can feel who he was. I remember the texture of his skin and all his unique gestures. I felt his hand on my shoulder the day after he died. But like a fish who can’t describe the sea, because he was so central to my experience, I find it difficult to know how to explain who he was, how to decide which details to pick out of the panorama of my life with him. The qualities I remember are his curiosity and his integrity, his gentleness of spirit. The sounds and memories are of his laughter and wit, his lack of cant or pretense, the way he called me "my boy". But these recollections each stemmed from those first three qualities.
----
His modesty was the root of his gentleness and empathy and, in a way I’m not sure I realized before he died, his curiosity. But it could also break my heart because sometimes I would look at it from another angle and see his insecurities and doubts.
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He never had any real wealth and never held a position of power. But at every stage of his life he was surrounded by this web of devoted friends who gravitated to him, like something that grew up around him wherever he went.
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In all the years I knew my father I don’t think there was any time I knew him happier or more content than in the final years of his life. Two days after he died I wrote him a long letter that was with him when he was cremated. I told him how much I missed him and how much I loved him. I asked him to tell my mother I love her. And I told him I’d see them both again
Uri simply had the courage to be himself, always, in all situations. To find his precise voice in everything he said and did. That is what protected him from pollution, corruption and the constriction of his soul.
Uri Grossman, serving on the front lines in Lebanon, was killed two days before the cease-fire and two weeks before his 21st birthday.
His father David, a leading novelist and peace activist in Israel delivered these remarks at Uri's funeral.
If you've ever drunk Australian wine and enjoyed it, you have Len Evans to thank.
When asked what his greatest achievement was, Evans replied, "To make people want to drink wine for the sheer fun of it. To show the enjoyment in wine. You know, wine's a bloody drink. It's just a lovely drink."
Steve Waterson pens a wonderful tribute to his father-in-law, Len Evans in A Man in Full.
One summer evening 15 years ago Len Evans grabbed a good bottle of burgundy and led me out to his veranda for the would-be son-in-law conversation. As the sun fell behind the Hunter Valley's Brokenback range, we got to the part where he gauged my prospects. I was struggling with some banal career decision: one path boring but financially secure, the other much more interesting but relatively poorly paid. Seeking approval, I ventured that the sensible thing might be to go dull and safe. Len thought for a moment, turned to me and asked: "How many lives are you planning to have?"
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Most of the time, the expression "living life to the full" is a platitude. Len turned it into a masterclass, and we were his students. His professional face was that of the wine man, and according to those equipped to judge, he had few rivals in the world for depth of knowledge. Fewer still could match his palate; none could equal his contribution to Australia's wine industry. But to celebrate that expertise alone is to limit him. To my eye, his greatest love was people. His adored wife Trish, his children and grandchildren came first, without question, but I know of no one who took more energetic pleasure in friends and strangers, entertaining them with wine, song, fine food and, above all, laughter.
Via Tim Blair, Len Remembered.
The obituary for the man who put Australian wine on the map
From the London Telegraph, the story of a remarkable life.
Princess Tatiana Von Metternich, who died at Schloss Johannisberg, her home in Germany, on July 26 aged 91, was the widow of Prince Paul Alfons, last Prince von Metternich-Winneburg; she was one of the most beautiful women of her day, highly cultivated and well known in international society.
Living in Berlin, Bohemia and later on the Rhine during the Second World War, she witnessed the effect of Nazism on Germany, was close to those involved in the unsuccessful plot to kill Hitler in 1944, and was forced to make a 600-kilometre trek across Germany to escape the Russian advance. This she described in her memoirs, Tatiana - Five Passports in a Shifting Europe, and the story of those times was later re-told in the memorable Berlin Diaries 1940-1945 by her sister, Princess Marie Wassiltchikov.
She was born Princess Tatiana Wassiltchikov in St Petersburg on January 1 1915, the second daughter of Prince Illarion Wassiltchikov, a member of the Russian Imperial Parliament, and his wife, Princess Lydia Wiazemsky.
Her childhood was overshadowed by the deaths of many of her parents' friends and relations, victims of the Revolution. She owed her departure from Russia to King George V, who sent a British warship to rescue his aunt, the Dowager Empress of Russia, from the Crimea. The Empress refused to leave unless those who wished to escape accompanied her, and the British fleet obliged by sending as many ships as possible.
Before sailing, the young Tatiana waited with other Russian children and their English nannies at Alubka, the grand folly of the Vorontzovs near Yalta, and sat patiently on a stone lion on the terrace. (The lion was still there when she returned with a group from Serenissima in 1982.)
