RIP [Archive] - Page 5 - Butch Femme Planet

Orema

05-27-2020, 12:02 PM

He worked hard to shock the country into dealing with AIDS as a public-health emergency. But his confrontational approach could sometimes overshadow his achievements.

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The author and activist Larry Kramer at an AIDS conference in New York in 1987. In the early 1980s, Mr. Kramer was among the first people to foresee that what had at first caused alarm as a rare form of cancer among gay men would spread worldwide and kill millions of people. Credit...Catherine McGann/Getty Images

By Daniel Lewis
May 27, 2020

Larry Kramer, the noted writer whose raucous, antagonistic campaign for an all-out response to the AIDS crisis helped shift national health policy in the 1980s and ’90s, died on Wednesday morning in Manhattan. He was 84.

His husband, David Webster, said the cause was pneumonia. Mr. Kramer had weathered illness for much of his adult life. Among other things he had been infected with H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS, contracted liver disease and underwent a successful liver transplant.

An author, essayist and playwright — notably hailed for his autobiographical 1985 play, “The Normal Heart” — Mr. Kramer had feet in both the world of letters and the public sphere. In 1981 he was a founder of the Gay Men’s Health Crisis, the first service organization for H.I.V.-positive people, though his fellow directors effectively kicked him out a year later for his aggressive approach. (He returned the compliment by calling them “a sad organization of sissies.”)

He was then a founder of a more militant group, Act Up (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power), whose street actions demanding a speedup in AIDS drugs research and an end to discrimination against gay men and lesbians severely disrupted the operations of government offices, Wall Street and the Roman Catholic hierarchy.

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Mr. Kramer at his apartment in Manhattan in 1987. Credit...Ángel Franco/The New York Times

“One of America’s most valuable troublemakers,” Susan Sontag called him.

Even some of the officials Mr. Kramer accused of “murder” and “genocide” recognized that his outbursts were part of a strategy to shock the country into dealing with AIDS as a public-health emergency.

In the early 1980s, he was among the first activists to foresee that what had at first caused alarm as a rare form of cancer among gay men would spread worldwide, like any other sexually transmitted disease, and kill millions of people without regard to sexual orientation. Under the circumstances, he said, “If you write a calm letter and fax it to nobody, it sinks like a brick in the Hudson.”

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Demonstrators in front of the New York Stock Exchange in 1989 protesting the high cost of the AIDS drug AZT. The protest was organized by the militant group Act Up, of which Mr. Kramer was a founder. Credit ... Tim Clary/Associated Press

The infectious-disease expert Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, was one who got the message — after Mr. Kramer wrote an open letter published in The San Francisco Examiner in 1988 calling him a killer and “an incompetent idiot.”

“Once you got past the rhetoric,” Dr. Fauci said in an interview for this obituary, “you found that Larry Kramer made a lot of sense, and that he had a heart of gold.”
Mr. Kramer, he said, had helped him to see how the federal bureaucracy was indeed slowing the search for effective treatments. He credited Mr. Kramer with playing an “essential” role in the development of elaborate drug regimens that could prolong the lives of those infected with H.I.V., and in prompting the Food and Drug Administration to streamline its assessment and approval of certain new drugs.

In recent years Mr. Kramer developed a grudging friendship with Dr. Fauci, particularly after Mr. Kramer developed liver disease and underwent the transplant in 2001; Dr. Fauci helped get him into a lifesaving experimental drug trial afterward.

Their bond grew stronger this year, when Dr. Fauci became the public face of the White House task force on the coronavirus epidemic, opening him to criticism in some quarters.

“We are friends again,” Mr. Kramer said in an email to the reporter John Leland of The New York Times for an article published at the end of March. “I’m feeling sorry for how he’s being treated. I emailed him this, but his one line answer was, ‘Hunker down.’”

At his death Mr. Kramer was at work on a play centered on the epidemic. “It’s about gay people having to live through three plagues,” he told Mr. Leland — H.I.V./AIDS, Covid-19 and the decline of the human body, an inevitability brought home to him last year when he fell and broke a leg in his apartment, then lay on the floor for hours waiting for a home attendant to arrive.

Master of Provocation

Mr. Kramer enjoyed provocation for its own sake — he once introduced Mayor Edward I. Koch of New York to his pet wheaten terrier as the man who was “killing Daddy’s friends” — and this could sometimes overshadow his achievements as an author and social activist.

His breakthrough as a writer came with a screen adaptation of D.H. Lawrence’s “Women in Love,” for which he had obtained the film rights with $4,200 of his own money. He also produced the film, which was a box-office hit when it was released in 1969 and a high point of more than one career. The screenplay was nominated for an Academy Award; Glenda Jackson won an Oscar as best actress for her performance; and the director, Ken Russell, established himself as an important filmmaker.
Four years later, Mr. Kramer wrote the screenplay for the ill-fated musical remake of the classic 1937 film “Lost Horizon.”

Mr. Kramer eventually turned to gay themes, and in his first novel, “Faggots,” he did so with a vengeance. A scathing look at promiscuous sex, drug use, predation and sadomasochism among gay men, it was a lightning rod from the day of its publication in 1978.

Some reviewers simply found it beyond belief. (On the contrary, Mr. Kramer responded, it was more a documentary than a work of fiction.) Others complained that it libeled gay people generally, that it lacked literary merit, and that the narrator’s epiphany — one “must have the strength and courage to say no” — was not exactly a stroke of genius.

“Faggots” drew a line between Mr. Kramer and a significant number of gay men, who saw him as an old-fashioned moralist or even a hysteric. In various forums well into the 1990s, he found himself called on to defend his point of view, which was essentially that gay men and lesbians had a diminished chance of living fulfilling lives or producing great art so long as they defined themselves primarily in terms of their sexual orientation.
He preached not only protected sex but also the virtues of affection, commitment and stability — arguments that anticipated the values of the movement for same-sex marriage.

An Uneasy Childhood

Laurence David Kramer was born on June 25, 1935, in Bridgeport, Conn., the second son of George and Rea (Wishengrad) Kramer. George Kramer had earned undergraduate and law degrees from Yale University but was unable to make a decent living during the Depression. Rea Kramer supported the family by working in a shoe store and teaching English to immigrants. In 1941, George got a government job in Washington, and the family moved.
By his own account, Larry had a miserable childhood and hated his father. His protective older brother, Arthur, was the scholar-athlete of the family, on his way to becoming a prominent lawyer. Larry read the Hollywood gossip columns.

“From the day Larry was born until the day my father died, they were antagonists,” Arthur Kramer told Vanity Fair in 1992.
Nor were the two brothers always on the easiest terms. In “The Normal Heart,” Arthur Kramer is represented by the character Ben Weeks, a man with ambivalent feelings about his brother’s homosexuality. But they shared an abiding affection until Arthur’s death in 2008. Arthur gave $1 million to Yale in 2001 to establish the Larry Kramer Initiative for Lesbian and Gay Studies, and his law firm became active in pro bono work for causes like same-sex marriage.

Larry Kramer himself married his partner, Mr. Webster, in 2013, in a ceremony in the intensive care unit of NYU Langone Medical Center, where Mr. Kramer was recovering from surgery for a bowel obstruction.

In 1953, Mr. Kramer, like his father and brother before him, enrolled at Yale. He studied English literature, tried to commit suicide once and had a liberating affair with a male professor.

After graduating in 1957 and serving a tour in the Army, he worked in New York, first for the William Morris Agency and then for Columbia Pictures. In 1961, Columbia sent him to London, where he worked as production executive on “Dr. Strangelove” and “Lawrence of Arabia.” He returned to the United States in 1972.

He got into AIDS work in the summer of 1981 after reading an article about deadly cases of a rare cancer, Kaposi’s sarcoma, among young gay men. It had previously been associated mostly with older men. A meeting of about 80 people in his New York apartment the next week led to the formation of the Gay Men’s Health Crisis.

For the next several years, Mr. Kramer threw himself into fund-raising, lobbying and confrontation, and also into his writing. His landmark essay “1,112 and Counting,” which appeared in the March 14, 1983, issue of The New York Native, was one of many articles taking gay men to task for apathy.

‘The Normal Heart’

The urgency of his life found its way into his plays. “The Normal Heart,” which opened at the Public Theater in April 1985 and ran for nine months, was a passionate account of the early years of AIDS and his campaign to get somebody to do something about it.

“The Normal Heart” returned to the stage in 2011, to powerful effect. “By the play’s end,” Ben Brantley of The New York Times wrote in his review, “even people who think they have no patience for polemical theater may find their resistance has melted into tears. No, make that sobs.”

That production won the Tony Award for best revival of a play. An HBO adaptation, written by Mr. Kramer, won the 2014 Emmy for outstanding television movie.

Less successful was Mr. Kramer’s “Just Say No,” a sendup of official morality aimed at familiar targets, including Ronald and Nancy Reagan. Widely criticized as crude and nasty, it opened Off Broadway in October 1988 and closed a month later.

That same year, tests confirmed what Mr. Kramer had long suspected: He was carrying the virus that causes AIDS.

“A new fear has now joined my daily repertoire of emotions, and my nighttime ones, too,” he wrote in the afterword to a later edition of his 1989 book, “Reports From the Holocaust: The Making of an AIDS Activist.” “But life has also become exceptionally more precious and, ironically, I am happier.”

He turned his attention to another autobiographical play, ultimately titled “The Destiny of Me,” which opened in 1992. Recalling the development of that work in an essay for The Times, he called it “one of those ‘family’-slash-‘memory’ plays I suspect most playwrights feel compelled to try their hand at in a feeble attempt, before it’s too late, to find out what their lives have been all about.”

As the play came to life during rehearsals at the Circle Repertory Company, Mr. Kramer wrote, it was a revelation even to him: “The father I’d hated became someone sad to me; and the mother I’d adored became a little less adorable, and no less sad.”
He and Mr. Webster, an architect, began living together in 1994, and Mr. Kramer was able to devote much of his time to writing, in spite of being ill for many more years. Believing that he would die soon, he began putting his literary affairs in order. In fact, The Associated Press reported in 2001 that he had died.

The real plot twist, though, was that the H.I.V. infection had not progressed; he instead had terminal liver disease, traceable to a hepatitis B infection decades earlier. He underwent the liver transplant in Pittsburgh a few days before Christmas 2001.

At the same time, he had been working on a mammoth project, a historical novel called “The American People,” by which he meant the gay American people — a central tenet of which was that many of the country’s historically important figures, including George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, had had homosexual relationships.

A first volume, almost 800 pages long, was published in 2015. Volume 2, more than 80 pages longer, was published in 2020.

The reviews for “The American People, Volume 1: Search for My Heart” were not kind. Dwight Garner of The Times, for example, called it “a frantic novel that builds up little to no narrative momentum.”

“It wasn’t given much serious attention,” Mr. Kramer told The Times in 2017. “Most people seemed to review me, not the book: Loudmouth activist Larry Kramer has written a loudmouth book.”

“The American People, Volume 2: The Brutality of Fact,” whose protagonist was based on Mr. Kramer, took its story almost to the present and took scabrous aim at characters clearly based on Ronald Reagan, Hugh Hefner and others. The reviews were not much better.
But while Mr. Garner for one found much to dislike, his Times review was not unsympathetic.

“It’s a mess, a folly covered in mirrored tiles, but somehow it’s a beautiful and humane one,” he wrote. “I can’t say I liked it. Yet, on a certain level, I loved it.”

Looking back in 2017 on his early days as an activist, Mr. Kramer, frail but still impassioned, explained the thinking behind his approach:

“I was trying to make people united and angry. I was known as the angriest man in the world, mainly because I discovered that anger got you further than being nice. And when we started to break through in the media, I was better TV than someone who was nice.”

Daniel E. Slotnik contributed reporting.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/27/us/larry-kramer-dead.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

Orema

06-04-2020, 09:17 AM

Emma Amos, Painter Who Challenged Racism and Sexism, Dies at 83

Early in her career she created brightly colored scenes of black middle-class domestic life. Her later work was increasingly personal and experimental.

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The artist Emma Amos with her 2006 work “Head First.” Her paintings often depicted women flying or falling. Credit...Becket Logan

By Holland Cotter
May 29, 2020

Emma Amos, an acclaimed figurative artist whose high-color paintings of women flying or falling through space were charged with racial and feminist politics, died on May 21 at her home in Bedford, N.H. She was 83.

The cause was complications of Alzheimer’s disease, said the Ryan Lee Gallery in Manhattan, which represents her.

A key event in Ms. Amos’s career came in 1964. A 27-year-old graduate student in art education at New York University, she was invited to join a newly formed artists group called Spiral.

Its members, all African-American, included Charles Alston, Romare Bearden, Norman Lewis and the muralist Hale Woodruff — midcareer artists with substantial reputations. Organized in response to the 1963 March on Washington, the group was formed to discuss and debate the political role of black artists and their work.

As an emerging artist seeking exhibition and teaching opportunities, Ms. Amos had already experienced racial exclusion within the larger art world. Now, as the only woman admitted to Spiral, she learned that gender was also a liability to acceptance within the black art community.

In an article published in Art Journal in 1999, she recalled that although she felt honored to be part of Spiral, she thought it “fishy” that the group had not asked older, established women artists to join. “I probably seemed less threatening to their egos,” she said, “as I was not yet of much consequence.”

The art world, she concluded, was “a man’s scene, black or white.” And she knew that for her, art and activism would be inseparable.

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Ms. Amos’s 1966 painting “Baby.”Credit...Emma Amos/Ryan Lee Gallery, New York

Emma Veoria Amos was born on March 16, 1937, in Atlanta from a lineage that was, by her own account, “African, Cherokee, Irish, Norwegian and God knows what else.” Her parents, India DeLaine Amos and Miles Green Amos, were cousins. Her father, a graduate of Wilberforce University in Ohio, was a pharmacist; her mother, who had a degree in anthropology from Fisk University in Nashville, managed the family-owned Amos Drug Store.

Her parents traveled widely within Atlanta’s black intellectual circles. At home, Ms. Amos and her older brother, Larry, met Zora Neale Hurston and W.E.B. Du Bois. (She would later paint portraits of them standing with her father.)

At age 11, she began taking art lessons. She showed notable promise and, as a teenager, had work exhibited at Atlanta University (now part of Clark Atlanta University).

In 1954, at 17, she enrolled at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, where she majored in art and learned weaving. After graduation and further study in London, she settled in New York City. There she worked for Dorothy Liebes, the innovative textile designer; studied printmaking with the artists Robert Blackburn and Letterio Calapai; and entered graduate school at N.Y.U.

Her Spiral invitation came through Mr. Woodruff, who had taught in Atlanta and knew her family. She remained a member until the group disbanded in 1966.

By that time, she had completed her graduate degree; married Robert Levine, a writer and early computer consultant; and begun a long teaching career — first at the Newark School of Fine and Industrial Art in New Jersey, then at the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J., where she remained until retiring in 2008.

Skeptical of the overwhelmingly white feminist movement, she held back from involvement in feminist politics until 1984, when the writer Lucy R. Lippard urged her to join the Heresies Collective and contribute to its journal. Heresies was, Ms. Amos wrote in Art Journal, “the group I had always hoped existed: serious, knowledgeable, take-care-of-business feminists giving time to publish the art and writings of women.”

She soon joined other feminist groups, including Guerrilla Girls, a collective whose anonymous members appear in public wearing gorilla masks to deliver scathing critiques of art-world racism and sexism.

Ms. Amos’s paintings from the 1960s and ’70s often depicted, in bright Pop colors, scenes of black middle-class domestic life, a subject little explored in contemporary art at the time. Her work from the following decades became increasingly personal and formally experimental, combining painting, print media and photographic technology.

In the 1992 painting “Equals,” a woman — Ms. Amos herself — is seen floating in free fall against the backdrop of a giant American flag. Replacing the flag’s field of stars is a photographic image of a Southern sharecropper’s shack. The composition is framed in patches of African fabric alternating with printed portraits of Malcolm X.

In the symbolic self-portrait “Tightrope” (1994), the artist wears a black painter’s smock over a Wonder Woman costume. Balancing on a tightrope, she holds paintbrushes in one hand and, in the other, a shirt with an image of bare breasts copied from one of Paul Gauguin’s exoticizing images of the Tahitian women he used as models and sexual partners.

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Ms. Amos’s “Tightrope” (1994), a symbolic self-portrait.Credit...via the estate of the artist and Ryan Lee Gallery, New York

The startling “Worksuit,” from the same year, is a full-length nude self-portrait in which Ms. Amos depicts herself with a male body. The image of the body was lifted directly from a 1993 nude self-portrait by the artist Lucian Freud. Where Mr. Freud’s figure stands in a bare studio, Ms. Amos places herself in an environment of vertiginously tilting planes and swirling color patterns, as if to suggest that old orders of power and identity — sexual and racial — were shifting and giving way.

Although long recognized as an important figure in contemporary American art, and frequently exhibited, Ms. Amos gained mainstream museum notice only within the past few years. In 2017 she was featured in two important surveys: “Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power,” organized by the Tate Modern in London, and “We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965–85,” which originated at the Brooklyn Museum. In 2018, she appeared in “Histórias Afro-Atlânticas” at the Museu de Arte de São Paulo and the Tomie Ohtake Institute in São Paulo, Brazil.

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“Will You Forget Me” (1991).Credit...Emma Amos/Ryan Lee Gallery, New York

A career retrospective, “Emma Amos: Color Odyssey,” is scheduled to open at the Georgia Museum of Art in Athens, Ga., in 2021, and travel to the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute in Utica, N.Y. Her work is in the collections of several American museums. In 2004 she was given a lifetime achievement award by the Women’s Caucus for Art.

Ms. Amos is survived by a daughter, India Amos; a son, Nicholas Amos; two grandchildren; and her brother. Her husband, Mr. Levine, died in 2005.

The fact that Ms. Amos’s art complicates, rather than narrows, notions of identity, racial and otherwise, makes it pertinent to the present moment, when binary thinking of all kinds is under scrutiny. At the same time, her careerlong belief in art as a form of ethical resistance carries new weight when the promises of the civil rights era seem again under threat.

“It’s always been my contention,” she once said, “that for me, a black woman artist, to walk into the studio is a political act.”

Holland Cotter is the co-chief art critic. He writes on a wide range of art, old and new, and he has made extended trips to Africa and China. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 2009.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/29/arts/emma-amos-dead.html

theoddz

06-19-2020, 09:09 AM

Ian Holm, the British actor who played Bilbo Baggins in The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit film productions, has died at age 88.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/19/entertainment/ian-holm-death-scli-intl-gbr/index.html

Apparently, he died peacefully at home today, from a Parkinson's Disease related illness.

RIP, Mr. Holm. (f)

nZT41szriWQ

~Theo~ :bouquet:

Orema

07-18-2020, 04:37 AM

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theoddz

07-20-2020, 08:41 AM

On July 6, 2020, the world lost another of "the greats" in the world of music...Maestro Ennio Morricone. He was one of my absolute favorite composers and gained his years of fame from the plethora of movie soundtracks that he wrote. The world is, indeed, a lesser place without the presence of such a composer and artist. RIP, Mr. Morricone.

More about Mr. Morricone: https://www.npr.org/2020/07/06/516840947/ennio-morricone-the-sound-of-the-american-west-dies-at-91

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~Theo~ :vigil::bouquet:

C0LLETTE

07-20-2020, 12:00 PM

I absolutely agree about the great loss of Ennio Morricone.
Not only did he write the score for those wonderful, memorable Westerns but much much more.
My own favourite is the score of The Mission...hauntingly beautiful ... often soothing and threatening within one scene...I think that was his specialty...lol

GeorgiaMa'am

07-20-2020, 05:05 PM

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Congressman John Lewis will be greatly missed, especially in the Atlanta area. He was an active ally of gay people. He rode in our Pride Parades for as long as I can remember. He also helped a couple of my gay friends with their long distance relationship - one lived here, one in Mexico - and got their visa situation sorted out. This was in the 80s, when almost no one in the political arena was willing to have their name associated with gay relationships. (The boys are still happily together.) John Lewis was a good man.

Gemme

07-26-2020, 02:20 PM

Regis Francis Xavier Philbin passed away on July 24th. He was 88. Regis was a Renaissance Man. He was on TV doing talk shows and game shows since the mid-60s as well as being a signed singing artist plus writing two autobiographies.

He had hip replacement surgery on December 1, 2009 and returned to his regular hosting duties for Live with Regis and Kelly on January 4, 2010 and in December 2010, he had surgery to remove a blood clot in his leg and returned to work the next day. This guy was a trooper for sure. I always loved how sarcastic and dead pan he could be.

Gemme

08-02-2020, 09:01 AM

Wilford Brimley, who worked his way up from movie stunt rider to an indelible character actor who brought gruff charm, and sometimes menace, to a range of films that included “Cocoon,” “The Natural” and “The Firm,” has died. He was 85.

Brimley’s manager Lynda Bensky said the actor died Saturday morning in a Utah hospital. He was on dialysis and had several medical ailments, she said.

The mustached Brimley was a familiar face for a number of roles, often playing characters like his grizzled baseball manager in “The Natural” opposite Robert Redford's bad-luck phenomenon. He also worked with Redford in “Brubaker” and “The Electric Horseman.”

Brimley's best-known work was in “Cocoon,” in which he was part of a group of seniors who discover an alien pod that rejuvenates them. The 1985 Ron Howard film won two Oscars, including a supporting actor honor for Don Ameche.

Brimley also starred in “Cocoon: The Return,” a 1988 sequel.

For years he was pitchman for Quaker Oats and in recent years appeared in a series of diabetes spots that turned him at one point into a social media sensation.

“Wilford Brimley was a man you could trust,” Bensky said in a statement. “He said what he meant and he meant what he said. He had a tough exterior and a tender heart. I’m sad that I will no longer get to hear my friend’s wonderful stories. He was one of a kind.”

Barbara Hershey, who met Brimley on 1995′s “Last of the Dogmen,” called him “a wonderful man and actor. ... He always made me laugh.”

Though never nominated for an Oscar or Emmy Award, Brimley amassed an impressive list of credits. In 1993’s John Grisham adaptation “The Firm,” Brimley starred opposite Tom Cruise as a tough-nosed investigator who deployed ruthless tactics to keep his law firm’s secrets safe.

John Woo, who directed Brimley as Uncle Douvee in 1993′s “Hard Target,” told The Hollywood Reporter in 2018 that the part was “the main great thing from the film. I was overjoyed making those scenes and especially working with Wilford Brimley.”

A Utah native who grew up around horses, Brimley spent two decades traveling around the West and working at ranches and race tracks. He drifted into movie work during the 1960s, riding in such films as “True Grit,” and appearing in TV series such as “Gunsmoke."

He forged a friendship with Robert Duvall, who encouraged him to seek more prominent acting roles, according to a biography prepared by Turner Classic Movies.

Brimley, who never trained as an actor, saw his career take off after he won an important role as a nuclear power plant engineer in “The China Syndrome.”

“Training? I’ve never been to acting classes, but I’ve had 50 years of training,” he said in a 1984 Associated Press interview. “My years as an extra were good background for learning about camera techniques and so forth. I was lucky to have had that experience; a lot of newcomers don’t."

“Basically my method is to be honest,” Brimley said told AP. “The camera photographs the truth — not what I want it to see, but what it sees. The truth.”

Brimley had a recurring role as a blacksmith on “The Waltons” and the 1980s prime-time series “Our House.”

Another side of the actor was his love of jazz. As a vocalist, he made albums including “This Time the Dream’s On Me” and “Wilford Brimley with the Jeff Hamilton Trio.”

In 1998, he opposed an Arizona referendum to ban cockfighting, saying that he was "trying to protect a lifestyle of freedom and choice for my grandchildren.”

In recent years, Brimley’s pitchwork for Liberty Mutual had turned him into an internet sensation for his drawn out pronunciation of diabetes as “diabeetus.” He owned the pronunciation in a tweet that drew hundreds of thousands of likes earlier this year.

Brimley is survived by his wife Beverly and three sons.

I really liked a lot of his characters. With the exception of the cockfighting thing, he seemed like a guy I'd get along with well.

Cin

09-10-2020, 07:39 AM

https://www.blackagendareport.com/kevin-zeese-passing-warrior-peace-and-justice

Kevin Zeese, the Passing of a Warrior for Peace and Justice

The human rights community mourns veteran activist Kevin Zeese, my friend and comrade.

“He stood his ground and left an indelible mark in our memory and the landscape of the fight for human decency and liberation of the human spirit.”

“For the Anniversary of My Death”

by W.S. Merwin

Every year without knowing it I have passed the day
When the last fires will wave to me
And the silence will set out
Tireless traveler
Like the beam of a lightless star

Then I will no longer
Find myself in life as in a strange garment
Surprised at the earth
And the love of one woman
And the shamelessness of men
As today writing after three days of rain
Hearing the wren sing and the falling cease
And bowing not knowing to what

Having met Kevin Zeese during the Occupy movement in September of 2011, by Merwin’s metric we passed unknowing the day that had finally come for Kevin nine times. Nine times we, (Kevin, Margaret Flowers -his loving partner, and I) were engaged in the struggle in one way or another. Occupy DC, Occupy the EPA, Hands Up Don’t Shoot, Justice Mondays at the Department of Justice to name a few and lastly only hours before his transition -- the fight to stop the desecration of Moses African Cemetery in Bethesda, Maryland.

And there, always present, always willing, always gentle in his manner and generous with his wisdom, his strength, his courage—was Kevin. Passionate. Articulate. Good-natured.

I remember the first time I saw his T-shirt, emblazoned with his campaign slogan during his run for the US Senate: Zeese and Resist! That was Kevin. And the courtroom artist’s rendering of him when he argued before the Supreme Court, displayed among the many mementos that one with his penchant for advocacy acquires in the years, in the decades, in the long pull of history.

“Always willing, always gentle in his manner and generous with his wisdom.”

After this shock and all of the pain, what I will remember is Kevin’s voice last Friday, his patience, and the calm demeanor he carried with him in the heat of our struggle to save Moses African Cemetery, in the heat of the road in Bethesda on a hot September day when he stood and reasoned with the police who had arrayed themselves again against our non-violent protests as though we were the ones threatening violence, as though we were the ones hurling invective, curses, and threats. There, at the side of River Road, stood Kevin Zeese, nodding, listening, offering alternatives, presenting our case that resulted in no-arrests.

The Bethesda African Cemetery Coalition (BACC) “Save Moses African Cemetery” protests last Thursday and Friday would be his last stand as an activist, a warrior for liberation of the human family, while securing a promise from the police that they would not be arresting any of the hundred-plus activists that had come to stand with us on what we would all learn with sadness was Kevin’s last day as an activist.

The youth of BACC, in particular worked closely with Kevin, as he provided instruction on Thursday Night in techniques of non-violent resistance that they might need during the Friday action.

Over the years, I've worked with Kevin and Margaret on a number of political actions. We worked closely together on a project called: "Justice Monday" in the aftermath of the murder of Trayvon Martin. We organized demonstrations in front of the Department of Justice (DOJ) every Monday afternoon. The goal of "Justice Monday" was to force DOJ to release the Report of Investigation (ROI) that we were certain would exonerate George Zimmerman for violating the civil rights of Trayvon Martin. We instinctively knew that the Obama Administration's Attorney General Eric Holder was going to exonerate Zimmerman but wanted to soft pedal their decision. Through protests and demonstrations, Justice Monday succeeded in forcing the DOJ to release the ROI, that in fact, exonerated Zimmerman.

Our Friend, a Fighter for the People

Years later, Kevin and Margaret were among the first to answer the call to battle against developers and their enablers in the Montgomery County Maryland Planning Board and our local government. Their experience and moral support enabled the fledgling organization to grow and make “good trouble.” Kevin and Margaret gifted BACC with its very first banner. Kevin and Margaret have not spared time and energy in driving more than two hours time after time to support and help with our struggle. His inner strength is reflected in humility and gentleness, ever so kind and patient.

On a personal level, I came to deeply trust Kevin's advice and keen ability to deconstruct the pitfalls of fighting injustice.

Kevin was a devoted supporter of Black Agenda Report. Kevin and Margaret would attend the yearly fundraiser and provide articles to BAR. In addition, they both supported the Left Forum, a yearly gathering of progressives from around the world that meet in New York.

Kevin died the way he lived, in the midst of struggle for racial justice and the dismantling of the architecture of white supremacy. The Friday before his transition, he stood his ground and left an indelible mark in our memory and the landscape of the fight for human decency and liberation of the human spirit. He is missed and he left a light to guide us through the challenges that lay ahead. Valiant warrior Rest in Power- our Ancestor!

There will be an online tribute to Kevin on Saturday, September 19 at 3:00 pm Eastern/12:00 pm Pacific on Zoom. Click here to register . This event will also be livestreamed atFacebook.com/PopularResistanceOrg andYouTube.com/PopularResistanceOrg .

Tributes to Kevin are already being posted. Here are a few:
https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/us-activist-and-friend-to-venezuela-kevin-zeese-passes-away-20200906-0005.html

https://howiehawkins.us/hawkins-press-secretary-and-activist-kevin-zeese-has-passed-away/

https://www.coha.org/coha-expresses-its-heartfelt-solidarity-over-the-death-of-attorney-and-human-rights-activist-kevin-zeese/

https://davidswanson.org/kevin-zeese-irreplaceable/

https://taskforceamericas.org/tfa-statement-on-the-passing-of-kevin-zeese/>

https://www.wpc-in.org/statements/kevin-zeese-%E2%80%94-presente-people%E2%80%99s-movement-has-lost-one-its-most-beloved-and-treasured

https://www.antiwar.com/blog/2020/09/06/kevin-zeese-rip/

Please see below a link to the BACC demonstration discussed above.

https://popularresistance.org/flowers-for-moses-cemetery-community-fights-desecration-of-african-cemetery/

C0LLETTE

09-10-2020, 02:42 PM

RIP Diana Rigg...sexiest woman on any planet...even at 82

C0LLETTE

09-18-2020, 05:38 PM

RIP
Ruth Bader Ginsberg

girl_dee

09-18-2020, 05:41 PM

RIP
Ruth Bader Ginsberg

I just saw this, I’m just so fucking sad.

BullDog

09-18-2020, 05:46 PM

RIP
Ruth Bader Ginsberg

I just found out. We have lost a great justice and woman.

I am terrified the Repugs will try to ram a conservative justice through. This is horrible news on so many levels.

homoe

09-18-2020, 05:52 PM

RIP
Ruth Bader Ginsberg

WASHINGTON (AP) — Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died Friday at her home in Washington, the court says. She was 87.

Ginsburg died of complications from metastatic pancreatic cancer, the court says.

The Associated Press

Vincent

09-18-2020, 06:11 PM

WASHINGTON (AP) — Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died Friday at her home in Washington, the court says. She was 87.

Ginsburg died of complications from metastatic pancreatic cancer, the court says.

The Associated Press

My condolences to all for this huge loss.

A. Spectre

09-18-2020, 07:53 PM

This is frightening. Our rights as Americans will be jeopardized because yes! Mitch will fast track the absolute worst mother fucker to further take the court to the abyss.

We need to win the senate, the presidency. I need to think about expanding the court.

Please, pay attention everyone.

Orema

09-19-2020, 01:52 AM

Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Legacy

In the rearview mirror, the victories of a trailblazing feminist. On the road ahead, the threat of an entrenched and powerful minority.

By The New York Times Editorial Board
The editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values. It is separate from the newsroom.

Sept. 19, 2020

https://i.postimg.cc/52jsBZwm/18ginsburg-editorial-super-Jumbo-v8.jpg
Illustration by Nicholas Konrad/The New York Times; photograph by Diana Walker/The LIFE Images Collection/Getty Images

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died Friday at the age of 87, will forever have two legacies.

The one Americans could be focusing on right now is the one of legal trailblazer: Justice Ginsburg, the second woman ever to be appointed to the Supreme Court, paved the way for women’s equality before the law, and for women’s rights to be taken seriously by the courts and by society.

As an attorney she argued, and won, multiple cases at the Supreme Court in the 1970s, eventually persuading an all-male bench to apply the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause to sex-based discrimination. On the court, she continued to point the way toward greater equality in opinions like United States v. Virginia, which held unconstitutional the Virginia Military Institute’s policy of refusing to admit women. “Inherent differences between men and women, we have come to appreciate, remain cause for celebration,” Justice Ginsburg wrote for a 7-to-1 majority, “but not for denigration of the members of either sex or for artificial constraints on an individual’s opportunity.” It was sweet revenge for someone who had once been rejected for jobs at top New York law firms, and denied a clerkship on the Supreme Court, because she was a woman.

The other legacy of Justice Ginsburg’s that the country is now urgently forced to confront is the cold political reality that she died in the final weeks of a presidential campaign, at a moment when President Trump and Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, appear to be dead-set on replacing her with someone who would obliterate much of the progress she helped the country make.

The court now faces a serious crisis of legitimacy. Senate Republicans, who represent a minority of the nation, and a president elected by a minority of the nation, are now in a position to solidify their control of the third branch of government. The Supreme Court, with another Trump appointee, could stand as a conservative firewall against the expressed will of a majority of Americans on a range of crucial issues.

The cynicism of the political moment stands in sharp relief against Justice Ginsburg’s idealism. She faced down multiple bouts of cancer and other health emergencies during her tenure on the bench. Through it all, she never wavered in her commitment to the court as a vehicle for a more just and more equal America. She was a dogged, tireless fighter — it was easy to imagine she might live another 20 years, battling back whatever came at her. Of course, we knew better.

Defending her decision not to retire when President Barack Obama could have picked her replacement, she said, “There will be a president after this one, and I’m hopeful that that president will be a fine president.” She never anticipated President Donald Trump, whom she called a “faker” during a 2016 interview. She shouldn’t have said it, but she was right.

Everyone who cares about the integrity of the nation’s highest court has been dreading a moment like this — the death of a justice as Americans are already casting their ballots in the most contentious and consequential presidential election in living memory. The future of the court now rests in the hands of Mr. McConnell, the man who has done more damage to the court’s standing than perhaps anyone in modern American history.

With Mr. McConnell’s help, President Trump has already filled two seats on the court with hard-right ideologues. The first, Neil Gorsuch, is a justice solely because of Mr. McConnell’s obstruction, on false pretenses, of President Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland. The second, Brett Kavanaugh, was a highly contentious nominee with a long, troubling record in government that Mr. McConnell hid from the American people. And that was before Mr. Kavanaugh faced credible allegations of sexual assault.

At least there was no question about the circumstances surrounding the vacancy that Justice Kavanaugh filled. In contrast, Justice Gorsuch’s seat is forever stained by Mr. McConnell’s outrageous ploy to deny a Democratic president an appointment. At the time, the majority leader claimed that he was holding open the seat that had been held by Justice Antonin Scalia because it was an election year, and the American people should have a “voice” in choosing the next justice.

Mr. McConnell disavowed that position almost immediately, claiming that it only applies when the presidency and the Senate are controlled by different parties. On Friday night, he said, “President Trump’s nominee will receive a vote on the floor of the United States Senate” — even though the election is less than two months away. So much for the American people.

Throughout the Trump years, Republicans have shown little willingness to place principle above party, or to place the long-term interests of the nation above short-term political victories. But perhaps a few Republican senators will take the quickened pulse of the nation and consider the case to postpone resolving Justice Ginsburg’s replacement.

Justice Ginsburg, who was Jewish, died on the eve of Rosh Hashana, the Jewish new year. Fittingly, it is a day when Jews look backward and forward, reflecting on what has passed, and preparing for what is to come. Justice Ginsburg’s death marks the end of her long battle on behalf of equality for all Americans. Others must now carry that fight forward.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/19/opinion/ruth-bader-ginsburg-legacy.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

iamkeri1

09-19-2020, 03:39 AM

She tried so hard to outlive this presidency. To Protect us from the four worst people ever to occupy power in Washington . . . Trump, Pence, Barr and McConnell. She was so tiny, but she was full of fight.

Ruthie Ruthie, sister where art thou? I have been blessed for so long by your intelligence, determination and sheer chutzpah. Your passing has left a well of fear and anxiety in my life and that of millions who loved you. You will be sorely missed.

"May God comfort her family among all the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem."

"May God comfort us all among all the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem."
:rrose:Keri

tantalizingfemme

09-19-2020, 04:49 AM

I am also so sad that RBG has died. I am even sadder at the thought that she probably spent her last weeks, days, hours, minutes worried about dying before the election rather than being able to take that time to solely focus on herself and her family. She spent so much of her life championing for other and I just hope that at the end she was able to focus on and receive what she needed to pass peacefully.

C0LLETTE

09-19-2020, 05:24 PM

RIP JOHN TURNER
CANADA"S 17th PRIME MINISTER

John Turner, who became Canada’s 17th prime minister on June 30, 1984, was once “the golden boy” of the federal Liberal Party. His career, which began with great promise and propelled him to the highest office in the land, eventually became tinged with pathos as he led his party to its worst defeat in the 20th century a few weeks later.

Turner died at age 91 on Sept. 19, 2020.

Turner was a charismatic politician, conventionally handsome with piercing blue eyes. He was a feel-good, back-slapping extrovert with a bulging Rolodex. He boasted he knew more people on a first name basis than anyone else in Canada and he kept in touch.

A politician of the old school, he was unfailingly courteous, even to his political enemies, and saw public service as a duty for those who had been given much by society.

VintageFemme

09-19-2020, 07:07 PM

Text RGB to 50409 to have letters via Resistbot sent to your officials requesting they wait to confirm a new justice until after the inauguration.

Gemme

09-19-2020, 09:43 PM

Text RGB to 50409 to have letters via Resistbot sent to your officials requesting they wait to confirm a new justice until after the inauguration.

I'm signer 305,721 and letters have been sent to both of my representatives. Thanks for the head's up on this. I was so crushed to hear of RGB's passing.

~ocean

09-30-2020, 04:02 AM

RIP 1970's singer Helen Reddy died at the age of 78 ~ her most famous song was "I AM WOMAN "

Gemme

09-30-2020, 09:26 PM

My personal favorite was "Angie Baby".

Also to pass is the first person to be cured of HIV, Timothy Ray Brown, known as "the Berlin patient". He died of a recurrence of cancer. He was 54.

Bèsame*

10-06-2020, 02:02 PM

Eddie Van Halen dies at 65
L9r-NxuYszg
Eddie Van Halen, whose innovative and explosive guitar playing kept the hard rock band that bore his family name cemented to the top of the album charts for two decades, died on Tuesday morning after a long battle with cancer, a rep confirmed to Variety. He was 65.

Gráinne

10-06-2020, 11:53 PM

And Johnny Nash, of "I Can See Clearly Now", dead at 80.

MaddieRobbie

10-07-2020, 08:42 AM

Eddie Van Halen!! My older brother used to worship him! He'd spend hours trying to learn his licks and tricks. I've never been a huge Van Halen fan, but I'm a sentimental fool about those certain songs my brother spent hours trying to learn and then play with his garage band.

Rock on, Eddie.

~ocean

10-07-2020, 01:53 PM

PlatinumPearl

10-31-2020, 04:25 PM

https://st1.bollywoodlife.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Sean-Connery.jpg

Legendary James Bond actor Sean Connery has died at 90.

The Scottish Bafta-winning star played the British spy James Bond in seven films from 1962 until 1983. He died in his sleep in the Bahamas.
While the cause of death is yet to be announced, it is believed the actor had been unwell for a long period of time.

Gemme

11-01-2020, 04:43 PM

Nikki McKibbin, who came in third on the first season of American Idol, has passed from a brain aneurysm. She was 42.

theoddz

11-08-2020, 12:43 PM

Alex Trebek, longtime host of the popular game show, Jeopardy, has passed away from pancreatic cancer at age 80.

I didn't know Alex Trebek personally, of course, but I do have a rather funny story about him. My story about Alex goes back to 1984, when I worked in the field of television production for my hometown's then ABC affiliate, WSAV-TV 3, in Savannah, Georgia. This was after I got out of the Marine Corps in 1981. Savannah has always had a huge celebration on St. Patrick's Day, due to our very large Irish population and Savannah's celebration of that holiday is second only to that in New York City, so it's a pretty big occasion and draws large crowds and and an equally large parade. Bands, celebrities, public figures and large rowdy celebrants are known to descend on Savannah for this yearly event.

The folks at WSAV knew that my mother and I had moved from Savannah to Iowa/Illinois for my last year in high school, before I joined the military, and I suppose it was along this line of thinking that seemed to have them, as a group, under some kind of strange impression that I MUST know how to drive the John Deere tractor that was to pull the WSAV station parade float!! Actually, I had absolutely no idea about how to drive a tractor. I could (and did) drive a motorcycle and, of course, a car back then, but I was completely clueless as to how a tractor was operated. I wasn't even from Iowa/Illinois or any kind of "farm country". I was a city kid to the core!! Anyway, my manager politely smiled, patted me on the head and said, "No problem. We'll lash the two steering pedals together and it'll be simple for you." I was young, stupid and silly but agreed to try to do my bit and give it a try. What was going to be even better (read more stressful) to this situation was the fact that Alex Trebek, the celebrated long time host of the show, Jeopardy, was going to be riding on the station float for the parade.

The morning of the parade finally arrived and the morning was foggy, chilly and overcast. I had consumed 2 large Stanley thermos bottlefulls of hot black coffee to warm me up and carefully maneuvered that John Deere tractor into position for the guys to hitch up the WSAV float. A few minutes later, there was Alex Trebek, dressed in his suit that was covered up by an extra large plastic Hefty trash bag that had a hole cut out for Trebek's head to poke out of. One of the other production assistants was conscripted to hold an umbrella over Trebek's head to keep his hair from getting wet. He climbed up on the float and, with the throngs of screaming women fans screaming wildly, calmly took his seat atop the float. I admired his perceived confidence in my tractor driving skills, but the truth was that I was just hoping to be able to make it through the parade route without running someone over or ploughing the float into something, like the curb, or a band or some of the folks gathered on the sides of the parade route . I hadn't quite gotten the touch of the clutch down, so for me, it was a herky jerky, inch by inch movement that got us started down the street with the parade.

I was gradually getting used to the movement of everything, but it was a painfully slow process, marked by the sudden lurchings and brakings of that damned tractor. Every time we slowed, stopped or resumed our procession, I nearly knocked Alex Trebek off of the back end of that float and on to the hard asphalt of the street, in front of his adoring masses. I remember looking back over my shoulder to check on things and locking his eyes with mine. What I saw then can only be described as his complete and utter antipathy towards me.

Just when I thought that things couldn't have possibly become any worse, those 2 quarts of hot black coffee that I thought I was so smart to consume in that cold fog before the parade......hit. And it hit HARD, because I ended up having to piss so bad, I thought my eyes would cross. Of course, I'm certain that the entire desperate state I was in, physically, caused my feet to punch those steering/braking/accelerator pedals on that tractor exponentially harder, and thus, the herky jerky motion still worse!! How I managed to hold my poor bladder without completely soaking myself halfway through that parade had to be a pure and complete act of divine intercession at its best.

To this day, I look back on that St. Patrick's Day in Savannah as one of my "finer" moments. I will also forever remember, with a certain fondness, too, Alex Trebek and that "I'm gonna smack the taste right out of your mouth" look in his eyes as he scrambled to hang on to his perch on that wet slippery float while wearing that silly-ass giant Hefty bag "raincoat". :giggle:

Well, the next time someone is looking for someone to drive a frippin' tractor.....can just keep lookin'. Just don't look at me. :|

RIP Alex. I applaud your courage.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/08/entertainment/alex-trebek-jeopardy-host-death-trnd/index.html

~Theo~ :bouquet: .......still cannot drive a tractor.

PlatinumPearl

11-28-2020, 06:30 PM

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2020/11/29/multimedia/20hsieh-print1/20hsieh-image2-jumbo.jpg?quality=90&auto=webp
Tony Hsieh in 2013. He led Zappos, the online shoe retailer, for two decades.

Tony Hsieh, the technology entrepreneur and venture capitalist who built Zappos into a $1 billion internet shoes and clothing powerhouse, died on Friday. He was 46.

The cause was injuries suffered in a house fire on Nov. 18 in New London, Conn., according to Megan Fazio, a spokeswoman for the Downtown Project in Las Vegas, a revitalization effort which Mr. Hsieh oversaw.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/28/obituaries/tony-hsieh-dead.html?auth=login-facebook&fbclid=IwAR39fPAAUq-k5N14c95Dv4XvO2f49ZHtwi2GOi59zTIJlR9vvegRLy-gAf4&smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur

PlatinumPearl

11-29-2020, 11:57 AM

https://static.hollywoodreporter.com/sites/default/files/2018/11/david_prowse-darth_vader-getty-photofest-split-h_2018-928x523.jpg
David Prowse called Darth Vader "the ultimate screen villain of all time."

David Prowse, the champion English weightlifter and bodybuilder who supplied his 6-foot-7 frame — but not the voice or the deep breathing — to portray Darth Vader in the original Star Wars trilogy, died early Saturday morning following a short illness. He was 85.

Source: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/david-prowse-dead-star-wars-man-behind-darth-vader-mask-was-85-1161826?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social

PlatinumPearl

11-29-2020, 12:10 PM

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2020/11/27/obituaries/27Wolfensohn/24Wolfensohn-jumbo.jpg?quality=90&auto=webp
James D. Wolfensohn who Led the World Bank for 10 Years, Dies at 86 on November 25, 2020.

James D. Wolfensohn, who escaped a financially pinched Australian childhood to become a top Wall Street deal maker and a two-term president of the World Bank, died on Wednesday at his home in Manhattan. He was 86.

He was a force on Wall Street before taking the reins of the bank in 1995, then proceeded to shake it up. He did the same at both Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/25/business/economy/james-d-wolfensohn-dead.html

Gemme

12-06-2020, 07:25 PM

These guys used to crack me up.

Celebrity tributes are in for Laverne & Shirley star David Lander who died on Friday at age 73, including from Michael McKean who played “Lenny” to David’s “Squiggy” on the classic television show.

The actor’s wife Kathy Lander told TMZ that David died at 6:30 p.m. at Los Angeles’s Cedars-Sinai Medical Center due to complications from multiple sclerosis (MS), a disease that damages the brain and spinal cord. Kathy and David’s daughter Natalie, and her husband, were by his side at the time of his death.

David played Andrew “Squiggy” Squiggman on the sitcom that aired from 1976 to 1983, with pal Lenny Kosnowski, played by Michael McKean. The tough-talking truck drivers lived upstairs from the show’s namesake characters Laverne DeFazio (played by Penny Marshall, who later became a successful director) and Shirley Feeney (Cindy Williams), best friends and former factory workers.

On Saturday, McKean of Better Call Saul and Batman, posted a vintage photo of the pair standing back-to-back. The men created the legendary characters while attending college at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pa., and together joined the cast of Laverne & Shirley, a spin-off of Happy Days, as writers before moving into acting roles.

According to People, David, who played in Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Scary Movie, was diagnosed with MS in 1984, but only announced his illness in his 1999 book Fall Down Laughing: How Squiggy Caught Multiple Sclerosis and Didn't Tell Nobody. He was also very involved with MS advocacy.

The Twiter hashtag #RIPSquiggy took off while celebs shared memories. Comedian Kathy Griffin and Brady Bunch star Maureen McCormck left heartbreak emojis under McKean’s post while director Kevin Smith tweeted, “This funny man made my childhood happier with his work on “Laverne & Shirley” and his guest appearance on @TheSimpsons as himself still makes me laugh today (“Hello, Laverne...”). Rest In Peace David, and thank you: There’s a little Lenny & Squiggy in the DNA of Jay & Silent Bob.”

“So sorry Michael,” wrote retired NBA star Rex Chapman.

Saverio Guerra, who played “Mocha Joe” on Curb Your Enthusiasm, said he took inspiration from Lander, whose character’s enthusiastic greeting — “Hello! — was his calling card. “So sad to hear of David's passing,” he tweeted. “When I was on the show Becker, I had little tributes to the actors I spent my youth watching on sitcoms. The leather jacket I wore was my nod to [Henry Winkler’s “Fonzi” character from Happy Days] and some of my character’s entrances were my little tribute to Lenny and Squiggy.”

He added, “So thank you David. You’ll never know how much those ‘Hellos’ meant to me.”

Star Wars actor Mark Hamill, who played Luke Skywalker in the film franchise tweeted, “Awful news. He will be sorely missed. I'll never forget how I nearly injured myself laughing when I first saw you guys in The Credibility Gap. Then came Lenny & Squiggy & the laughs just kept coming. I'll always be grateful for that.”

McKean’s Better Call Saul co-star Rhea Seahorn left multiple heart emojis on his post while Rob Reiner recalled, “David and I met when we were both 19. He and Michael KcKean auditioned for Lenny and Sguiggy by just improvising in front of Garry Marshall at a party at Penny and my house. He was brilliant then and forever after. He will be missed.” “Hello!” — was a mainstay on Laverne & Shirley.

Kätzchen

12-12-2020, 04:35 PM

g3trZKhAAcI

GeorgiaMa'am

12-13-2020, 05:09 PM

British author John Le Carre has died at the age of 89. Le Carre was the author of spy thrillers such as _Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy_, _The Spy Who Came in from the Cold_, and _The Constant Gardener_. Le Carre's former career in MI-5 and MI-6, the civilian and army branches of British intelligence, contributed to his novels' realism.

PlatinumPearl

12-13-2020, 08:03 PM

Prime Minister of Eswatini Ambrose Dlamini, who was hospitalized for COVID-19, dies at 52.

https://pbs.twimg.com/semantic_core_img/1338273339970752512/8xbMRDdt?format=jpg&name=small

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EpJuPV2XEAAignV?format=jpg&name=small

Ambrose Dlamini, 52, who tested positive for COVID-19 four weeks ago, died in neighboring South Africa where he was hospitalized, the country's Deputy Prime Minister Themba Masuku announced on Sunday. Formerly known as Swaziland, the Kingdom of Eswatini, which is Africa's last absolute monarchy, has reported over 6,700 coronavirus cases and 127 deaths among its population of 1.2 million people.

C0LLETTE

12-17-2020, 01:51 PM

John Le Carré, whose real name was David Cornwell ...Dec 12/20 at age 89

British "Spy" ( Espionage ) writer .....maybe the best.

~ocean

12-25-2020, 10:17 PM

RIP ~ K.C.Jones 12x NBA Champion ~ Hall of Fame Legend ~ NBA Coach died @88 yrs. old from Alzheimers . KC was living in a assisted living facility in Conn.

Bèsame*

12-31-2020, 09:37 AM

LOS ANGELES - Dawn Wells, the actress who starred as castaway Mary Ann in the 1960s sitcom "Gilligan’s Island," died Wednesday of causes related to COVID-19. She was 82.

GeorgiaMa'am

01-08-2021, 07:26 PM

LOS ANGELES -- Tommy Lasorda, the fiery Hall of Fame manager who guided the Los Angeles Dodgers to two World Series titles and later became an ambassador for the sport he loved during his 71 years with the franchise, has died. He was 93.

ESPN Tommy Lasorda (https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/30674374/hall-fame-los-angeles-dodgers-manager-tommy-lasorda-dies-93)

Jedi

01-15-2021, 01:30 PM

https://variety.com/2021/tv/news/peter-mark-richman-dead-beverly-hills-90210-1234885944/?fbclid=IwAR1W6DG0W0UQpd9TVg9pN1nqIIeGFVOY90XZy2ia o0JAEjYZRhQ4wFyhqcI

PlatinumPearl

01-16-2021, 07:47 PM

https://twt-thumbs.washtimes.com/media/image/2021/01/16/obit_benjamin_de_rothschild_33370_c0-67-2000-1233_s885x516.jpg?c887acd575eee179cc717636024ed40a d8387c46
Benjamin de Rothschild, who oversaw the banking empire started by his father in 1953, has died. He was 57.

The Edmond de Rothschild Group, the company he was chairman of, said that de Rothschild died of a heart attack Friday afternoon at his home in Pregny, Switzerland.

Source: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/banking-heir-benjamin-de-rothschild-dies-at-57/ar-BB1cOFqD

GeorgiaMa'am

01-22-2021, 11:03 AM

Baseball legend Hank Aaron has passed away at the age of 86. He played with the Braves for over 20 years. He held the MLB home run record for 33 years, with 755 career home runs. He lived in Atlanta for many years, and was very proactive in helping his local community. You will be missed, Mr. Aaron.

Jedi

01-22-2021, 08:04 PM

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/mira-furlan-star-of-babylon-5-lost-dies-from-west-nile-virus-at-65/ar-BB1d0dSG?li=BBnbcA1&ocid=hplocalnews&fbclid=IwAR1lcXD6mlzHXcDtK1HQuPHx5tN-ex2fd6HT0HJg_0-jwHdm26px_o_iBRw

Stone-Butch

01-23-2021, 07:49 AM

RIP Larry King. Age 87 from covid-19. Hospitalized a few days ago succumed to the virus today.

Mr King kept us up to date on the world happenings and did many outstanding interviews with people in the know. RIP Larry, you will be missed.

Stone-Butch

01-24-2021, 09:30 AM

Jimmy Rodgers 87 did of kidney disease complicated by covid-19.
Jimmy sent out hits that we all enjoyed and will be fondly remembered by those who enjoyed his music. RIP Jimmy.

h1ubG2f1-to

NZx5puUsz9k

Gemme

01-27-2021, 10:28 PM

Oscar and Emmy winning actress Cloris Leachman (https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001458/) passed away today.

~ocean

01-28-2021, 01:28 AM

Oscar and Emmy winning actress Cloris Leachman (https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001458/) passed away today.

RIP Cloris , I always liked her style of acting :) I just read it and the fact she was 94 surprised me ~ I always thought she was much younger. Cloris looked good for her age ~ God Bless.

GeorgiaMa'am

01-28-2021, 06:57 PM

Actor Cicely Tyson has passed away at the age of 96. Ms. Tyson started her career as a model, but beginning in the 70s she won some starring roles. She won two Emmys for her role in "The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman". She also had an Oscar nomination and won a Tony. Ms. Tyson had a memoir published just this week - "Just As I Am". You can hear Cicely Tyson talk about her career and marriage to Miles Davis on an NPR All Things Considered segment which just aired on January 24, 2021 at this link (https://www.npr.org/2021/01/24/959608246/just-as-i-am-cicely-tyson-reflects-on-her-long-career-and-the-miles-davis-she-kn).

GeorgiaMa'am

01-30-2021, 05:12 PM

Gemme

01-30-2021, 09:09 PM

Grammy-nominated electronic artist Sophie dead at 34 after 'terrible accident'

The electronic music community was shaken Saturday morning by the news that Sophie, a trailblazing experimental pop artist and producer who’d worked with Madonna, Nicki Minaj, Camila Cabello, Charli XCX, Vince Staples, Kim Petras, and many others, had died in a “terrible accident.”

According to statements by the Sophie’s record label, Transgressive, and publicist, Ludovica Ludinatrice, Sophie was in Athens, Greece, and “climbed up to watch the full moon” and then “slipped and fell,” dying at 4 a.m. local time. A police spokesperson confirmed to the Associated Press that Sophie fell from the balcony of an apartment and that no foul play was suspected in the artist’s death. The visionary British musician — who made history as one of the three first openly transgender women to be nominated for a Grammy, and according to Pitchfork preferred not to use gendered or nonbinary pronouns — was 34 years old.

Sophie Xeon was born Sept. 17, 1986 in Glasgow, Scotland, and started in a band named Motherland before going solo in 2013, soon garnering buzz on SoundCloud and acclaim from critics for the singles “Nothing More to Say” and “Bipp”/"Elle”; the latter placed No. 17 on Pitchfork’s year-end list and No. 1 on XLR8’s list. Sophie’s major professional breakthrough came in 2015, with the placement of the track “Lemonade” in a McDonald's commercial, the launch of a fruitful artistic partnership with Charli XCX, and high-profile production work on Madonna’s Rebel Heart single “Bitch I’m Madonna.” In November of that year, Sophie also released the official debut album Product.

Sophie spent the next couple years focusing on production, writing, and remix work for other artists, but returned in 2017 with the anthem “It's Okay to Cry”; the video for that track was the first to feature the previously reclusive and largely anonymous artist’s face, and served as Sophie’s well-received coming-out statement as a member of the trans community. Sophie’s full-length sophomore effort, Oil of Every Pearl's Un-Insides, later earned a nomination for Best Dance/Electronic Album at the 61st Annual Grammy Awards.

Sophie was heralded for a signature surrealist, warp-speed sound that bridged the mainstream and the underground, incorporating elements of Japanese and Korean pop, Eurodisco, U.K. garage, ‘90s house and hip-hop, and Y2K pop. Sophie often eschewed samples, instead using Elektron Monomachine and Ableton technology to build instrumentals from waveforms that mimicked the unorthodox found sounds of metal, water, and plastic. “Sophie was a pioneer of a new sound, one of the most influential artists in the last decade. Not only for ingenious production and creativity but also for the message and visibility that was achieved. An icon of liberation,” the artist’s publicist's statement read.

Orema

02-09-2021, 04:37 AM

Mary Wilson, Motown Legend and Co-Founder of the Supremes, Dies at 76

Ms. Wilson, with the original members Diana Ross and Florence Ballard, was part of one of the biggest musical acts of the 1960s.

https://betabeatradio.files.wordpress.com/2019/04/mary-wilson.jpg

By Derrick Bryson Taylor
Feb. 9, 2021, 3:02 a.m. ET, New York Times

Mary Wilson, a founding member of the Supremes, the trailblazing group from the 1960s that spun up 12 No. 1 singles on the musical charts and was key to Motown’s legendary sound, died on Monday at her home in Henderson, Nev. She was 76.

Ms. Wilson’s death was confirmed by her publicist, Jay Schwartz. No cause of death was given.

From 1964 to 1965, the Supremes, whose original members included Florence Ballard and Diana Ross as the lead singer, released hit songs such as “Where Did Our Love Go?” “Baby Love,” “Come See About Me” and “Stop! In the Name of Love.”’

The New York Times and other publications will post a full obit sometime today.

~ocean

02-11-2021, 07:55 PM

RIP Chick Corea 79 yrs. old amazing jazz musician, died of a rare cancer today.

C0LLETTE

02-17-2021, 04:37 PM

Rest in Hell Forever.
You know who you are!

Yeayyyyyy

GeorgiaMa'am

02-17-2021, 05:24 PM

Rest in Hell Forever.
You know who you are!

Yeayyyyyy

I'll bet I know who this was. Initials R.L.?

CherylNYC

02-17-2021, 10:41 PM

I'll bet I know who this was. Initials R.L.?

May he never rest. Let's dance!

Orema

02-18-2021, 08:23 AM

Would love to do the crip walk all over his grave.

UZlroz0rzM8

Gráinne

02-18-2021, 06:44 PM

That was terrible. You know, hate the guy if you want. Hate his politics, that's fine. But he had loved ones mourning his loss. His death mattered to someone.

I thought we were better than that.

Orema

02-19-2021, 12:29 AM

That was terrible. You know, hate the guy if you want. Hate his politics, that's fine. But he had loved ones mourning his loss. His death mattered to someone.

I thought we were better than that.

What’s terrible is someone who made a fortune with his divisive style of mockery and grievance while denigrating Democrats, environmentalists, “feminazis,” lesbians, and anyone who didn't support conservative-leaning white men.

I’d have a pic-nic at his grave site with loud-ass music if I could get away with it without being arrested.

Terrible, indeed.

~ocean

02-19-2021, 07:06 AM

rush limbaugh doesn't deserve to have his name capitolized on my book. he deff, didn't deserve the medal of freedom that trump decorated him with, he spewed hatred, in all cultures, he looked down on ethenticity, his manner was not entertaining like some would like for us to believe.I hated everything he stood for. The only solice I have is that in heaven he will learn and see a life he could have stood for and his shame will be his pennance.

GeorgiaMa'am

02-19-2021, 09:21 AM

r.l. was a precursor to Trump. He primed American society for years before Trump came along with Hatred and Lies. He played down to the very lowest of the low, and he made a fortune doing it. 45 gave him the Presidential Medal of Freedom. If you really want a quick list of the vitriol he spouted, check out his Wikipedia page. I don't really want to speak ill of the dead (at least not specifically), so I won't list it all here, but the man needed to be shut up long ago, in whatever manner.

He caused a lot more pain and suffering than any of those he left behind will ever know, and it continues to carry on through the generations.

Gráinne

02-19-2021, 10:21 AM

Jedi

02-19-2021, 11:07 AM

GeorgiaMa'am

02-19-2021, 11:24 AM

GeorgiaMa'am

02-19-2021, 11:35 AM

Is a RIP thread really the place for this?

Possibly not, possibly so. The nature of appropriate posts for any thread is at least tangentially related to that thread, but you're probably right, as these kinds of posts were not the intention of the OP. But I felt like I had been called out, and so I responded. I really kind of hope it ends soon, maybe with a "let's agree to disagree", or I would think it should probably be moved to its own thread.

C0LLETTE

02-19-2021, 02:04 PM

Is a RIP thread really the place for this?

As long as he's dead and stays dead, i don't care where I celebrate.

Some deaths occasion an enormous outpouring of grief; some are cause for celebration.

Personally I don't care as long as he stays very very dead.

If you know of a better place I could cheer, please let me know.

Maybe I should have put this in the "What Made You Smile, Today" thread.

Femmewench

02-19-2021, 07:09 PM

[QUOTE=Gráinne;1281261]That was terrible. You know, hate the guy if you want. Hate his politics, that's fine. But he had loved ones mourning his loss. His death mattered to someone.

This is the same man who during the 1980s celebrated the death of people from AIDS on the air.

He is no loss to humanity. If his 4th wife mourns him, well she married him.

BullDog

02-19-2021, 07:11 PM

VintageFemme

02-19-2021, 08:01 PM

. . .I don't feel good about myself for hating r.l.; I hold grudges for a long time, even after death, and I realize they only hurt me at that point.

It’s ok—essential, even—to speak the truth about people who caused great harm.

Even after their death.

via -Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg, MSNBC Daily Columnist

Jedi

02-19-2021, 10:59 PM

Sigh...I was meaning was the RIP thread the place where all celebrate Rush Limbaugh's demise? Why not start a whole new thread for that? There was debate of things in the RIP thread. I kinda think RIP is meant to honor someone who has passed who has changed our lives for the better (or the worse).

CherylNYC

02-20-2021, 01:17 AM

I never said I agreed with him. I'm actually neutral.

Let's say someone who seems much respected on this board were to pass-Rachel Maddow, for instance, whom I happen to loathe. If I were to say I would dance on her grave or call her the devil incarnate, I would be raked over the coals.

What's the difference?

You're neutral about RL? Are you sure? This is who we're discussing:

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/rush-limbaugh-talk-radio-dies_n_5fe4e082c5b66809cb30ad57

Besides his relentless hatred of our own people who were suffering and dying of a terrible disease, here's an itty bitty sample from his decades of bigotry and hate spewing:

"A full accounting of Limbaugh’s lies and exaggerations; his racism and his misogyny; his homophobia and his Islamophobia; and his sheer cruelty could fill books — and have — but even a cursory overview of his lowlights makes his prejudice clear.

In 2003, he was forced to resign from ESPN after stating that Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb was only receiving praise because the media was “very desirous that a Black quarterback do well.” In 2004, Limbaugh said the NBA should be renamed the T.B.A. —“the Thug Basketball Association.” He then added: “Stop calling them teams. Call ’em gangs.” He similarly whined that watching the NFL was like watching “a game between the Bloods and the Crips without any weapons.”

Once, after arguing with a Black man who called into his show, he told the caller to “take that bone out of your nose and call me back.“ Another time, Limbaugh asked his audience, “Have you ever noticed how all composite pictures of wanted criminals resemble Jesse Jackson?” while discussing the Black civil rights activist and politician. Limbaugh once ludicrously asserted that “if any race of people should not have guilt about slavery, it’s Caucasians.” He invited a guest on air who sang “Barack, the Magic Negro” to the tune of “Puff, the Magic Dragon.” In 2016, he read an essay on air that had been penned by a well-known white supremacist.

Limbaugh’s radio career was also one long exercise in misogyny, perhaps best summed up by his thesis that “feminism was established so as to allow unattractive women easier access to the mainstream of society.”

In one of his most infamous episodes, he called Georgetown University law student Sandra Fluke a “slut” and a “prostitute” in 2012 after she testified in Congress about the importance of women having access to birth control. "

You're neutral about the dude that spews this crap, but you loathe Rachel Maddow. What's up with that, Grainne?

Jedi

03-02-2021, 04:34 PM

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/02/us/vernon-jordan-dead.html

C0LLETTE

03-02-2021, 05:30 PM

Oh Bless you dear Cheryl. I am so very tired of the "neutrals " who never speak up but whose eyes always go to the basement door when the Gestapo asks where the Jews are hiding.

Take a stand or get off the planet. The only place you get free rent is in Hell.

Why should everyone else have to carry the weight.

Being neutral doesn't make you a good person. It makes you an unethical bloodsucker surviving on the courage (for better or worse) of others.

BullDog

03-27-2021, 01:53 AM

Kätzchen

03-27-2021, 09:03 AM

The amazing writer Beverly Cleary has died at the age of 104. She wrote incredible children’s books, including the Henry Huggins and Ramona Quimby series. She was from Portland Oregon and I lived near Klickatat Street at one point - where Henry and Ramona lived.

My favorite book when I was very young - under the age of 5 - was The Mouse And The Motorcycle. It was about a mouse who lived in a hotel. A boy came to stay there with his family and had a toy motorcycle. The mouse would ride the motorcycle around at night on adventures. I loved that book so much. My parents read it to me so many times that I ended up memorizing it and how I got started learning how to read before I went to kindergarten.

Thank you Beverly Cleary for bringing so much happiness to me as a child.

Years ago, when my two sons were elementary aged kids, I used to take them to a neighborhood library, on Saturday's, for the kids reading hour. The librarians had a volunteer organizer for these weekend events for parents and our kids. My boys liked the stories about Henry Huggins and Ramona Quimby. The librarian's volunteer had put together a puppet theater show too, which kids loved too. One year, my elderly lady friends (they were sisters) gave my sons books by Beverly Clearly.

Good memories, indeed. :)

Jedi

04-09-2021, 03:04 PM

RIP DMX

https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/09/entertainment/dmx-rapper-dies/index.html

He was quite young.

Gemme

04-09-2021, 08:44 PM

RIP DMX

https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/09/entertainment/dmx-rapper-dies/index.html

He was quite young.

I heard he was in the hospital after a heart attack but honestly expected him to recover. He was only 50.

Kätzchen

04-25-2021, 01:13 PM

Morrocaan-Israeli fashion designer Alber Elbaz passed last night from Covid-19.
He is survived by his life-long partner, Alex Koo.

To read more about the life of Alber Elbaz, you can find a CNN article here (https://www.cnn.com/style/article/alber-elbaz-designer-dies-intl/index.html).

https://www.top-fashion-designers.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Alber-Elbaz.png

Orema

04-27-2021, 02:47 AM

Daniel Kaminsky, Internet Security Savior, Dies at 42

If you are reading this obituary online, you owe your digital safety to him.

https://i.postimg.cc/FKFLqfLP/26kaminsky-super-Jumbo.jpg
Daniel Kaminsky, at his Brooklyn office in 2010, was widely hailed after finding a serious flaw in the internet’s basic plumbing.Credit...Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times

By Nicole Perlroth
April 27, 2021

Daniel Kaminsky, a security researcher known for his discovery of a fundamental flaw in the fabric of the internet, died on Friday at his home in San Francisco. He was 42.

His aunt, Dr. Toby Maurer, said the cause was diabetes ketoacidosis, a serious diabetic condition that led to his frequent hospitalization in recent years.

In 2008, Mr. Kaminsky was widely hailed as a latter-day, digital Paul Revere after he found a serious flaw in the internet’s basic plumbing that could allow skilled coders to take over websites, siphon off bank credentials or even shut down the internet. Mr. Kaminsky alerted the Department of Homeland Security, executives at Microsoft and Cisco, and other internet security experts to the problem and helped spearhead a patch.

He was a respected practitioner of “penetration testing,” the business of compromising the security of computer systems at the behest of owners who want to harden their systems from attack. It was a profession that his mother, Trudy Maurer, said he first developed a knack for at 4 years old after his father gifted him a computer from Radio Shack. By age 5, Mrs. Maurer said, Mr. Kaminsky had taught himself to code.

His childhood paralleled the 1983 movie “War Games,” in which a young child, played by Matthew Broderick, unwittingly accesses a U.S. military supercomputer. When Mr. Kaminsky was 11, his mother said, she received an angry phone call from someone who identified himself as a network administrator for the Western United States. The administrator said someone at her residence was “monkeying around in territories where he shouldn’t be monkeying around.”

Without her knowledge, Mr. Kaminsky had been examining military websites. The administrator vowed to “punish” him by cutting off the family’s internet access. Mrs. Maurer warned the administrator that if he made good on his threat, she would take out an advertisement in The San Francisco Chronicle denouncing the Pentagon’s security.

“I will take out an ad that says, ‘Your security is so crappy, even an 11-year-old can break it,’” Mrs. Maurer recalled telling the administrator, in an interview on Monday.

They settled on a compromise punishment: three days without internet.

Nearly two decades after he lost his access to the internet, Mr. Kaminsky wound up saving it. What Mr. Kaminsky discovered in 2008 was a problem with the internet’s basic address system, known as the Domain Name System, or DNS, a dynamic phone book that converts human-friendly web addresses like NYTimes.com and Google.com into their machine-friendly numeric counterparts. He found a way that thieves or spies could covertly manipulate DNS traffic so that a person typing the website for a bank would instead be redirected to an impostor site that could steal the user’s account number and password.

Mr. Kaminsky’s first call was to Paul Vixie, a longtime steward of the internet’s DNS system. The usually unflappable Mr. Vixie recalled that his panic grew as he listened to Mr. Kaminsky’s explanation. “I realized we were looking down the gun barrel of history,” Mr. Vixie recalled. “It meant everything in the digital universe was going to have to get patched.”

Mr. Vixie asked Mr. Kaminsky if he had a fix in mind. “He said, ‘We are going to get all the makers of DNS software to coordinate a fix, implement it at the same time and keep it a secret until I present my findings at Black Hat,” Mr. Vixie said, referring to an annual hacking conference in Las Vegas.

Mr. Kaminsky, then the director of penetration testing at IOActive, a security firm based in Seattle, had developed a close working relationship with Microsoft. He and Mr. Vixie persuaded Microsoft to host a secret convention of the world’s senior cybersecurity experts.

“I remember calling people and telling them, ‘I’m not at liberty to tell you what it is, but there’s this thing and you will need to get on a plane and meet us in this room at Microsoft on such-and-such date,’” Mr. Vixie said.

Over the course of several days, they cobbled together a solution in stealth, a fix that Mr. Vixie compared to dog excrement. But given the threat of internet apocalypse, he recalled it as being the best dog excrement “we could have ever come up with.”

By the time Mr. Kaminsky took the stage at Black Hat that August, the web had been spared. Mr. Kaminsky, who typically donned a T-shirt, shorts and flip flops, appeared onstage in a suit his mother had bought for him. She had also requested that he wear closed-toed shoes. He sort of complied — twirling onto the stage in roller skates.

When his talk was complete, Mr. Kaminsky was approached by a stranger in the crowd. It was the administrator who had kicked Mr. Kaminsky off the internet years earlier. Now, he wanted to thank Mr. Kaminsky and to ask for an introduction to “the meanest mother he ever met.”

While his DNS fix was Mr. Kaminsky’s most celebrated contribution to internet security, it was hardly his only contribution. In 2005, after researchers discovered Sony BMG was covertly installing software on PCs to combat music piracy, Sony executives played down the move. Mr. Kaminsky forced the issue into public awareness after discovering Sony’s software had infected more than 568,000 computers.

“He did things because they were the right thing to do, not because they would elicit financial gain,” his mother, Mrs. Maurer, said.

(When a reporter asked Mr. Kaminsky why he did not exploit the DNS flaw to become immensely wealthy, he said that doing so would have been morally wrong, and that he did not want his mother to have to visit him in prison.)

Silicon Valley’s giants often sought Mr. Kaminsky’s expertise and recruited him with lucrative job offers to serve as their chief information security officers. He politely declined, preferring the quiet yeoman’s work of internet security.

In a community known for its biting, sometimes misogynistic discourse on Twitter, Mr. Kaminsky stood out for his consistent empathy. He disdained Twitter pile-ons and served as a generous mentor to journalists and aspiring hackers. Mr. Kaminsky would often quietly foot a hotel or travel bill to Black Hat for those who could not otherwise afford it. When a mentee broke up with her boyfriend, Mr. Kaminsky bought her a plane ticket to see him, believing they were meant to be. (They married.)

He was outspoken when privacy and security were on the line. After the F.B.I. tried to force Apple, in federal court, to weaken the encryption of its iPhones in 2015, James B. Comey, who was then the F.B.I. director, testified to Congress in 2016 that he was not asking for a backdoor, but for Apple to “take the vicious guard dog away and let us pick the lock.”

“I am that vicious guard dog, and that used to be a compliment,” Mr. Kaminsky told this reporter at the time. “The question for Mr. Comey is: What is the policy of the United States right now? Is it to make things more secure or to make them less secure?”

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a group that promotes civil liberties, said in a tweet on Saturday that Mr. Kaminsky was a “friend of freedom and embodiment of the true hacker spirit.” Jeff Moss, the founder of the DefCon and Black Hat hacking conferences, suggested that Mr. Kaminsky be inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame.

Mr. Kaminsky’s empathy extended to his many side projects. When a friend struggled with color blindness, he developed the DanKam, a mobile app that uses a phone’s camera to decipher colors otherwise indecipherable to the colorblind. When his grandmother Raia Maurer, now 97, experienced hearing loss, he refocused his efforts on hearing-aid technology. And when his aunt, a dermatologist, told him she could no longer treat under-resourced patients for AIDS-related skin diseases, some potentially fatal, in sub-Saharan Africa and Rohingya refugee camps, Mr. Kaminsky helped develop telemedicine tools for the National Institutes of Health and AMPATH, a health project led by Indiana University that he sought to bring to San Francisco during the coronavirus pandemic.

In addition to his mother and grandmother, Mr. Kaminsky is survived by his sister, Angie Roberts, and stepfather, Randy Howell.

Security was always Mr. Kaminsky’s lifework, most recently as the chief scientist at White Ops, a security company he helped found that was recently renamed HUMAN. He was not above criticizing his own industry. In a 2016 keynote address at Black Hat, he said the industry had fallen far short of expectations. “Everybody looks busy, but the house still burns,” he said, before pitching the cyber equivalent of the Manhattan Project.

“The internet was never designed to be secure,” Mr. Kaminsky recalled in a 2016 interview. “The internet was designed to move pictures of cats. We are very good at moving pictures of cats.” But, he added, “we didn’t think you’d be moving trillions of dollars onto this. What are we going to do? And here’s the answer: Some of us got to go out and fix it.”

Nicole Perlroth is a cybersecurity and digital espionage reporter. She is the bestselling author of the book, “This Is How They Tell Me The World Ends,” about the global cyber arms race.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/27/technology/daniel-kaminsky-dead.html?action=click&module=In%20Other%20News&pgtype=Homepage

Gemme

05-01-2021, 09:45 PM

GeorgiaMa'am

05-02-2021, 03:28 PM

Olympia Dukakis passed away. She was a character actress best known for her Oscar-winning supporting turn in Norman Jewison’s “Moonstruck” and for her role as the wealthy widow in “Steel Magnolias,”. She was 89.

I liked her a lot.

I liked her a lot too. She played trans woman Anna Madrigal in the 1990s BBC series of Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City. It aired on PBS in the United States. Olympia Dukakis was a big supporter of LGBT rights.

Gemme

05-08-2021, 04:36 PM

Actress Tawny Kitaen, who appeared in "Bachelor Party" and Whitesnake and other hair metal bands' 1980s rock videos, has died in California. She was 59.

Kitaen -- whose real first name was Julie -- died Friday at home in Newport Beach, according to a release from the Orange County Coroner's Office. The cause of death is not yet known.

In 1984, she co-starred in an early Tom Hanks comedy, "Bachelor Party." She then appeared in music videos for heavy metal bands Ratt and Whitesnake, including in "Back for More" and "Is This Love."

Kitaen memorably performed the splits and other moves on two Jaguar hoods in Whitesnake's "Here I Go Again" and later married the lead singer, David Coverdale.

She appeared on TV shows like "The New WKRP in Cincinnati," "Hercules: The Legendary Journeys" and reality shows such as "Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew" and "Botched."

Jedi

05-18-2021, 06:08 PM

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/charles-grodin-deliciously-droll-actor-dies-at-86-1234955192/?fbclid=IwAR1-AnnPShA_8O3eJJ0fQJDAov1mbc3vQJF2mmzA9IeKIkf8QlVn3_ gToFs

How very sad

Jedi

05-22-2021, 09:23 AM

https://www.advocate.com/music/2021/5/19/lesbian-music-legend-alix-dobkin-dies-80?fbclid=IwAR2cU81IqF-98Ce2rgb4qXPRQN1sqrhxOB2Wm-qx1qWPJn7QJ6tCoc_cd1o

Died at age 80.

Orema

05-28-2021, 09:37 AM

Kay Tobin Lahusen, Gay Rights Activist and Photographer, Dies at 91 By Daniel E. Slotnik, New York Times

She and her partner, Barbara Gittings, were on the front lines long before Stonewall, and Ms. Lahusen photographed protests during the movement’s earliest days.

https://i.postimg.cc/Bb3KhnFs/27lahusen-super-Jumbo.jpg
The photographer and activist Kay Tobin Lahusen, right, at a gay rights demonstration in front of Independence Hall in Philadelphia in 1967. She and her partner, Barbara Gittings, helped organize a number of protests in the 1960s. Credit: Associated Press

Kay Tobin Lahusen, a prominent gay rights activist whose photographs documented the movement’s earliest days and depicted lesbians who were out when they were virtually absent from popular culture, died on Wednesday in West Chester, Pa. She was 91.

Her death in a hospital was confirmed by Malcolm Lazin, a longtime friend and the executive director of the Equality Forum, an L.G.B.T.Q. civil rights group.

Ms. Lahusen and her longtime partner, Barbara Gittings, were at the forefront of the lesbian rights movement, determined to make whom they loved a source of pride rather than shame.

They were early members of the Daughters of Bilitis, the first national lesbian organization, and soon spoke out about their sexuality and their demands for equality at a time when gay rights groups were less vocal. In the 1960s, they helped organize protests at a National Council of Churches meeting, the Pentagon and the White House well before the Stonewall uprising in Greenwich Village in 1969, a pivotal event for the gay rights movement.

They helped lesbians realize that they were not alone by producing The Ladder, a newsletter published by the Daughters that was the first nationally distributed lesbian journal in the United States.

Ms. Gittings was The Ladder’s editor, and Ms. Lahusen became an important contributor, writing under the surname Tobin, which she had picked out of the phone book, she said, because it was easy to pronounce, unlike Lahusen (pronounced la-HOOZ-en). She also photographed many of the earliest gay rights protests, providing important documentation of a period when many gay people chose to remain in the closet.

https://i.postimg.cc/hjDnpFG6/27lahusen4-super-Jumbo.jpg
Ms. Lahusen persuaded women to have their pictures taken for the cover of the lesbian journal The Ladder. Among them was Ernestine Eckstein, an African American lesbian activist who picketed the White House for gay rights in 1965. Credit: Kay Tobin Lahusen, via New York Public Library

“Occasionally somebody would bring a camera to a picket, but I was the only one who went at it in a sustained way,” Ms. Lahusen said in an interview for this obituary in 2019.

Some of her protest photographs appeared in The Ladder’s inside pages; with few gay people wanting their faces to appear in a magazine, let alone on the cover, the journal’s covers were given over to illustrations. “I said, ‘What we really need are some live lesbians,’ and we couldn’t find any,” Ms. Lahusen said.

By the mid-1960s, however, Ms. Lahusen had persuaded some women to pose for cover portraits, among them Ernestine Eckstein, an African American lesbian activist who picketed the White House for gay rights in 1965, and Lilli Vincenz, who was discharged from the Women’s Army Corps after she was outed.

In a 1993 interview with Outhistory.org, Ms. Lahusen described her goal then as “taking our minority out from under wraps, and what you might call the normalization of gay.”

https://i.postimg.cc/59GcFQ8Z/merlin-17964069-1a0758b7-1790-43c9-b0fb-17669a3edd1c-super-Jumbo.jpg
One of Ms. Lahusen’s photographs captured Ms. Gittings, her partner, at a protest in 1966. Credit: Kay Tobin Lahusen

As the 1960s wore on, Ms. Lahusen and Ms. Gittings came to believe that the Daughters of Bilitis’ approach was too conciliatory, that it was more focused on signaling respectability than fighting for equal rights. “It was all aimed at reforming laggard lesbians,” she said.

They began to work outside the organization, finding common cause with gay rights activists like Franklin Kameny.

Ms. Lahusen helped Mr. Kameny and Ms. Gittings lobby the American Psychiatric Association to remove homosexuality from its list of mental illnesses, in part by persuading a practicing psychiatrist to testify about being gay at the organization’s national convention in Dallas in 1972. The psychiatrist, Dr. John E. Fryer, addressed the association under the name Dr. H. Anonymous, wearing a mask and a wig so that he would not face professional repercussions.

Ms. Lahusen photographed him, fully costumed, with Ms. Gittings and Mr. Kameny. The next year the association removed homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders.

Ms. Lahusen’s photographs offer a rare visual record of the gay rights movement’s earliest days. Many of them are now in the New York Public Library’s archive and were a major part of the 2019 exhibition “Love & Resistance: Stonewall 50,” which celebrated the 50th anniversary of the uprising.

Marcia M. Gallo, a social movement historian and the author of “Different Daughters: A History of the Daughters of Bilitis and the Rise of the Lesbian Rights Movement” (2006), described Ms. Lahusen in an interview as “one of the key foundational organizers and chroniclers of the L.G.B.T.Q. movement from the ’60s on.”

Ms. Gallo said that Ms. Lahusen had been eager to speak about the earliest days of the movement, and that she and Ms. Gittings had organized a gay lunch-table group at the care facility where they lived in Kennett Square, Pa.

“She was organizing into her 90s,” Ms. Gallo said.

https://i.postimg.cc/9fM57dNH/27-Lahusen6-super-Jumbo.jpg
Ms. Lahusen in 1971. She and Ms. Gittings were at the forefront of the lesbian rights movement in its early days. Credit: Grey Villet/The LIFE Picture Collection, via Getty Images

Katherine Lahusen was born on Jan. 5, 1930, in Cincinnati. She was adopted soon afterward by her grandparents George and Katherine (Walker) Lahusen. Her grandfather sold cable for a steel company; her grandmother was a homemaker.

Katherine first realized that she was attracted to women when she was barely a teenager, developing crushes on actresses like Katharine Hepburn. It was the 1940s, and many Americans viewed gay people as deviants. But Ms. Lahusen refused to internalize society’s prejudices.

“I decided that I was right and the world was wrong and that there couldn’t be anything wrong with this kind of love,” she was quoted as saying in “Different Daughters.”

She went to a private elementary school and graduated from Withrow High School in Cincinnati in 1948. She followed a girlfriend to Ohio State University, where she majored in English and planned to become a teacher.

Ms. Lahusen graduated in 1952 and moved in with her girlfriend. But the girlfriend soon had second thoughts about their relationship.

“She believed that we couldn’t have a good life together,” Ms. Lahusen said. “She wanted to have a white picket fence and a hubby, and she wanted to have children.”

https://i.postimg.cc/dt18gDXt/27lahusen-02-super-Jumbo.jpg
Ms. Lahusen in 2012 with a portrait of her late partner, Ms. Gittings. Credit: Matt Rourke/Associated Press

Ms. Gittings became her partner, and they lived together for decades in Philadelphia, where an apartment they shared early on was honored with a historic marker in 2016.

Ms. Gittings and Ms. Lahusen supported their activism by working different jobs, Ms. Lahusen as a waitress and in a music store. In 1972 she and Randy Wicker published “The Gay Crusaders,” one of the first collections of interviews with prominent gay rights figures.

Ms. Gittings died in 2007, before the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage in 2015.

[Read Ms. Gittings’s obituary in The Times here (https://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/15/obituaries/15gittings.html)]

No immediate family members survive.

Ms. Lahusen said she was overjoyed by how far gay rights had come, but she cautioned young activists against complacency.

“I think some of these advances, as wonderful as they are, are being taken for granted, even now,” she said. “They need to be codified into law.”

____________
Daniel E. Slotnik is a general assignment reporter on the Metro desk and a 2020 New York Times reporting fellow.

A version of this article appears in print on May 28, 2021, Section B, Page 11 of the New York edition with the headline: Kay Tobin Lahusen, 91, Lens on the Front Lines Before Stonewall, Dies.

https://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/15/obituaries/15gittings.html

Jedi

06-14-2021, 04:26 PM

https://www.cnn.com/2021/06/13/us/ned-beatty-actor-superman-dies/
Ned Beatty dead at 83.

homoe

08-28-2021, 11:55 PM

Eloise Greenfield, Who Wrote to Enlighten Black Children, Dies at 92. In nearly 50 books, written in poetry and prose, she described the lives of ordinary people and heroes like Rosa Parks and Paul Robeson. “Eloise Greenfield brought joy and enlightenment into the world,” the Ezra Jack Keats Foundation, which celebrates diversity in children’s literature, said in a message on Twitter after her death. “At the same time she broadened the path toward a more diverse American literature for children.”

Ms. Greenfield turned to children’s books after joining the D.C. Black Writers’ Workshop in 1971, receiving encouragement from the head of the workshop’s children’s book division to write a biography of Parks for young readers. That book was published in 1973, a year after she published “Bubbles” (later retitled “Good News”), about a boy learning to read. Ms. Greenfield began writing for children in her early 40s with a mission to “document our existence and depict African Americans living, as we do in real life,” she told the website Brown Bookshelf in 2008. In 48 books, she wrote about everyday subjects (the things a young girl loves, a boy rapping, a father’s death) and historical figures (biographies of Paul Robeson, Rosa Parks and Mary McLeod Bethune). For her book “The Great Migration: Journey to the North” (2010), Ms. Greenfield drew on family history — like her parents’ decision in 1929 to leave Parmele, N.C., where she was born, for Washington when she was three months old. And she plumbed Black history in the poetry collection “The Women Who Caught the Babies: A Story of African American Midwives” (2019)

Eloise was such a frequent reader of books from her local library that she got a part-time job there after graduating from high school. Early on, she wanted to teach, so she enrolled in Miner Teachers College (ultimately to be absorbed by the University of the District of Columbia), but left during her junior year because of her shyness and discomfort at being the center of students’ attention. For the next 20 years or so she held various jobs, including one as a clerk-typist at the United States Patent and Trademark Office. In the 1960s, she wrote poems and short stories, but she met with a lot of rejection. One poem, “To a Violin,” was published in 1962 in The Hartford Times in Connecticut (it closed in 1976), and some of her stories were accepted by Negro Digest (later Black World).

Her work is the most illustrative I’ve ever worked with,” Ms. Gilchrist said by phone. “I could see the pictures through her word selection, and, together with her rhythm and rhyme, the words were easy to illustrate.”

Ms. Greenfield’s honors include the Coretta Scott King Author Award in 1978 for “Africa Dream,” about a Black girl’s nocturnal vision of visiting her ancestral homeland, and the Education for Liberation Award in 2016 from Teaching for Change, an organization that gives parents and teachers tools to help students learn to “read, write and change the world. ”“When I write, I’m composing — combining meanings, the rhythms, the melody of language, in the hope that it can be a gift to others,” she said in 2018 when she accepted the Coretta Scott King-Virginia Hamilton Award for lifetime achievement, which the American Library Association gives to Black authors and illustrators.

Gemme

09-04-2021, 09:16 PM

Y'all, Willard Scott passed away. (w)

Willard Scott, the longtime weatherman for the “Today” show and the original Ronald McDonald, died on Saturday morning. He was 87.

“Today’s” Al Roker confirmed Scott’s passing on “Today” and in a heartfelt Instagram post. “We lost a beloved member of our @todayshow family this morning,” Roker wrote. “Willard Scott passed peacefully at the age of 87 surrounded by family, including his daughters Sally and Mary and his lovely wife, Paris. He was truly my second dad and am where I am today because of his generous spirit. Willard was a man of his times, the ultimate broadcaster. There will never be anyone quite like him.”

Scott got his start in broadcasting on WRC’s “Joy Boys” radio program alongside Ed Walker after graduating from American University. The show ran from 1955 to 1972, which was interrupted from 1956 to 1958 when Scott served in the U.S. Navy. During the ’60s, Scott also hosted several children’s television programs, playing characters like Bozo the Clown. Scott also originated the role of Ronald McDonald for McDonald’s in their TV spots, appearing as the character regular from 1963 to 1966.

In 1970, Scott began a stint at WRC-TV as a weatherman. He was then hired in 1980 by “Today,” replacing Bob Ryan. As the “Today” weatherman, Scott was known for wishing centenarians happy birthday and interviewing local characters during festivals and events. In 1996, Scott was succeeded by Roker, but continued to appear on the morning show several times a week to say happy birthday to centenarians. Scott fully retired from television in 2015, and the plaza outside of Rockefeller Center was renamed Willard Scott Way in his honor.

Katie Couric tweeted in remembrance of Scott on Saturday, writing: “I am heartbroken that the much loved Willard Scott has passed away. He played such an outsized role in my life & was as warm & loving & generous off camera as he was on. Willard, you didn’t make it to the front of the Smucker’s jar, but you changed so many lives for the better.”

Scott is survived by his wife, Paris Keena, and two daughters. He is predeceased by his first wife, Mary Dwyer Scott, who died in 2002.

Gemme

11-10-2021, 07:11 AM

Dean Stockwell, a top Hollywood child actor who gained new success in middle age in the sci-fi series "Quantum Leap" and in a string of indelible performances in film, including David Lynch's "Blue Velvet," Wim Wenders' "Paris, Texas" and Jonathan Demme's "Married to the Mob," has died. He was 85.

Agent Jay Schwartz said Stockwell died of natural causes at home Sunday.

Stockwell was Oscar-nominated for his comic mafia kingpin in "Married to the Mob" and was four times an Emmy-nominee for "Quantum Leap." But in a career that spanned seven decades, Stockwell was a supreme character actor whose performances — lip-syncing Roy Orbison in a nightmarish party scene in "Blue Velvet," a desperate agent in Robert Altman's "The Player," Howard Hughes in Francis Ford Coppola's "Tucker: The Man and His Dream" — didn't have to be lengthy to be mesmerizing.

The dark-haired Stockwell was a Hollywood veteran by the time he reached his teens. In his 20s, he starred on Broadway as a young killer in the play "Compulsion" and in prestigious films such as "Sons and Lovers." He was awarded best actor at the Cannes Film Festival twice, in 1959 for the big-screen version of "Compulsion" and in 1962 for Sidney Lumet's adaptation of Eugene O'Neill's "Long Day's Journey Into Night." While his career had some lean times, he reached his full stride in the 1980s.

"My way of working is still the same as it was in the beginning — totally intuitive and instinctive," he told The New York Times in 1987. "But as you live your life, you compile so many millions of experiences and bits of information that you become a richer vessel as a person. You draw on more experience."

His Oscar-nominated role as Tony "The Tiger" Russo, a flamboyant gangster, in the 1988 hit "Married to the Mob" led to his most notable TV role the following year, in NBC's science fiction series "Quantum Leap." Both roles had strong comic elements.

"It's the first time anyone's offered me a series and the first time I've ever wanted to do one," he said in 1989. "If people hadn't seen me in 'Married To the Mob' they wouldn't have realized I could do comedy."

Starring with Stockwell in "Quantum Leap" was Scott Bakula, playing a scientist who assumes different identities in different eras after a time-travel experiment goes awry. As his colleague, "The Observer," Stockwell lends his help but is seen only on a holographic computer image. The show lasted from 1989 to 1993.

He continued playing roles, big and small, in films and TV, into the 21st century, including a regular role in another science fiction series, "Battlestar Galactica."

Stockwell became an actor at an early age. His father, Harry Stockwell, voiced the role of Prince Charming in Disney's "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" and appeared in several Broadway musicals.

At age 7, Dean made his show business debut in the 1943 Broadway show "The Innocent Voyage," the story of orphaned children entangled with pirates. His older brother, Guy, also was in the cast.

A producer at MGM was impressed by Dean and persuaded the studio to sign him. His first significant role was as Kathryn Grayson's nephew in the 1945 musical "Anchors Away," which starred Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra.

In the next few years, Stockwell appeared in such films as the Oscar-winning anti-Semitism drama "Gentlemen's Agreement," with Gregory Peck, as well as "Song of the Thin Man," the last of the William Powell-Myrna Loy mystery series, with Stockwell playing their son.

He had the title roles in the 1948 anti-war film "The Boy With Green Hair," about a war orphan whose hair changes color, and "Kim," the 1950 version of the Rudyard Kipling tale, which starred Errol Flynn. Films in his youth also included "Down to the Sea in Ships," with Lionel Barrymore; "The Secret Garden," with Margaret O'Brien; and "Stars in My Crown" with Joel McCrea.

I was very lucky to have a loving and caring and sympathetic mother and not a stage mother," he told The Associated Press in 1989.
Still, he stressed, it wasn't always easy, and he dropped out of the business when he reached 16.

"I never really wanted to be an actor," he said. "I found acting very difficult from the beginning. I worked long hours, six days a week. It wasn't fun." It wasn't the only time he dropped out. But, he said, "I came back each time because I had no other training."

Reviving his career after five years, Stockwell returned to New York where he co-starred with Roddy McDowall on Broadway in "Compulsion," a 1957 drama based on the notorious Leopold-Loeb murder case in which two college students killed a 14-year-old boy for the thrill of it. The film version starred Orson Welles.

Stockwell had two more prestigious film roles in the early 1960s. He was the struggling son in D.H. Lawrence's "Sons and Lovers" — an Oscar nominee for best picture — and the sensitive younger brother in "Long Day's Journey Into Night" with Ralph Richardson and Katharine Hepburn.

He also tried his hand at theater directing, putting on a well-received program of Beckett and Ionesco plays in Los Angeles in 1961.

In 1960, Stockwell married Millie Perkins, best known for her starring turn as Anne in the 1959 film "The Diary of Anne Frank." The marriage ended in divorce after only two years.

In the mid-60s, Stockwell dropped out of Hollywood and became a regular presence at the hippie enclave of Topanga Canyon. After the encouragement of Dennis Hopper, Stockwell wrote a screenplay that never got produced but inspired Neil Young's 1970 album "After the Gold Rush," which took its name from Stockwell's script. Stockwell, longtime friends with Young, later co-directed and starred with Young on 1982's "Human Highway." Stockwell also designed the cover of Young's 1977 album "American Stars 'N Bars."

In 1981 he married Joy Marchenko, a textile expert. When his career hit a down period, Stockwell decided to take his family to New Mexico. As soon as he left Hollywood, filmmakers started calling again.

He was cast as Harry Dean Stanton's drifting brother in Wim Wenders' acclaimed 1984 film "Paris, Texas" and that same year as the evil Dr. Yueh in Lynch's "Dune."

He called his success from the 1980s onward his "third career." As for the Oscar nomination, he told the AP in 1989 that it was "something I've dreamed about for years. ... It's just one of the best feelings I've ever had."

Like his longtime friend Hopper, a noted photographer as well as an actor, Stockwell was active in the visual arts. He made photo collages and what he called "diceworks," sculptures made of dice. He often used his full name, Robert Dean Stockwell, in his art projects.

His brother, Guy Stockwell, also became a prolific film and television actor, even doing guest shot on "Quantum Leap." He died in 2002 at age 68.

Stockwell is survived by his wife, Joy, and their two children, Austin Stockwell and Sophie Stockwell.

He was a genius at comedy. I loved him so much in Married to the Mob and Quantum Leap was one of my favorite shows growing up.

cathexis

11-10-2021, 05:24 PM

He was great in Blue Velvet, too.

Jedi

11-28-2021, 02:33 PM

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/26/theater/stephen-sondheim-dead.html
So sad to lose such talent.

Jedi

12-12-2021, 06:17 AM

Beloved Interview with a Vampire Author has passed. https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/12/entertainment/anne-rice-obit/index.html

PlatinumPearl

12-26-2021, 08:52 PM

https://pbs.twimg.com/semantic_core_img/1475002973675671554/WNz35AHe?format=jpg&name=small
South Africa’s Archbishop Desmond Tutu dies aged 90.

Tutu, a Nobel laureate and an anti-apartheid veteran, passed away in Cape Town at the age of 90,
the country’s presidency said in a statement on Sunday. The passing of Tutu is “another chapter
of bereavement in our nation’s farewell to a generation of outstanding South Africans
who have bequeathed us a liberated South Africa,” President Cyril Ramaphosa said.

Bèsame*

12-31-2021, 01:21 PM

RIP
Betty White

INHv5q2W3OU

Stone-Butch

12-31-2021, 02:40 PM

homoe

01-01-2022, 09:27 AM

Betty White there can't be enough said by enough people how much you were loved and admired and will be missed beyond reason. A wonderful, caring, funny human being who spread so much joy and laughter to millions. RIP Ms. Betty you will be remembered by the multitude. I just heard it on our news and I am truly grieved.

In December 2021 it was announced that White's 100th birthday would be celebrated with a new documentary-style movie about her life and career. The title was revealed as Betty White: 100 Years Young - A Birthday Celebration

The announced cast includes many of White's friends: Ryan Reynolds, Tina Fey, Robert Redford, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Clint Eastwood, Morgan Freeman, Jay Leno, Carol Burnett, Craig Ferguson, Jimmy Kimmel, Valerie Bertinelli, James Corden, Wendy Malick, and Jennifer Love Hewitt.

I am so glad they still plan on airing this.

Orema

01-09-2022, 06:10 AM

Lani Guinier, Legal Scholar at the Center of Controversy, Dies at 71

President Bill Clinton pulled her nomination as assistant attorney general in 1993 after she came under criticism for her views on voting rights.

https://i.postimg.cc/T3Zstn50/07-Guinier1-super-Jumbo-v2.jpg
Lani Guinier in 1998, five years after her nomination for a top post in the Justice Department was withdrawn.Credit...Librado Romero/The New York Times

By Clay Risen
Jan. 7, 2022

Lani Guinier, a legal scholar whose work on voting rights and affirmative action led President Bill Clinton to nominate her in 1993 to be an assistant attorney general, only to withdraw her name two months later in the face of a Republican campaign against her, died on Friday at an assisted living facility in Cambridge, Mass. She was 71.

Her cousin Sherrie Russell-Brown said the cause was complications of Alzheimer’s disease.

Descended from a long line of lawyers, Ms. Guinier made her name in the 1980s as an unorthodox thinker about whether America’s legal institutions, even after the civil rights revolution of the 1960s, needed to change further to realize true democracy.

She argued, for example, that the principle of “one person, one vote” was insufficient in a system where the interests of minorities, racial or otherwise, were inevitably trampled by those of the majority, and that alternatives needed to be considered to give more weight to minority interests.

Ms. Guinier was a 43-year-old professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School when President Clinton nominated her for the post of assistant attorney general for civil rights. But she quickly came under fire from Republicans for her progressive views on voting rights and quotas.

Her work was not without its liberal critics: Some scholars questioned whether her ideas about voting were in fact democratic, as she claimed, and several Democratic senators voiced their concerns about her nomination to President Clinton.

But her Republican opponents also made clear that their campaign was a matter of opportunity. Still stinging from the Supreme Court nomination battles over Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas, they were looking for payback, and saw her liberal views as an opportunity to hit the president early in his term.

“Clinton has not had to expend any political capital on the issue of quotas,” Clint Bolick, a conservative lawyer and activist who helped lead the charge against her, told The New York Times in 1993, “and with her, we believe we could inflict a heavy political cost.”

Mr. Clinton eventually bowed to pressure and withdrew her nomination in June 1993, calling some of her positions “anti-democratic.”

https://i.postimg.cc/rwzQJ4zJ/07-Guinier2-sub-super-Jumbo.jpg
Ms. Guinier in 1993. She was nominated that year for the post of assistant attorney general for civil rights, but she quickly came under fire from Republicans for her progressive views on voting rights and quotas. Credit...Jose Lopez/The New York Times

Ms. Guinier returned to teaching. She also wrote a memoir about her nomination experience, “Lift Every Voice: Turning a Civil Rights Setback Into a New Vision of Social Justice,” published in 1998. That same year, she moved to Harvard Law School, where she became the first woman of color to receive tenure.

While the rest of the country remembered her for her failed nomination, she continued to make strides as a legal scholar and teacher. She pioneered research on implicit bias in the classroom and workplace. Later in her career she opened a wide-ranging critique of merit, especially the way it distorts institutions like her own.

Many of her positions have since moved into and informed the mainstream, especially her criticisms of voter redistricting processes.

“The ability to see so far down the line was her gift,” Heather Gerken, the dean of Yale Law School, said in a phone interview. “She had a deep understanding of the insidious ways that power corrupts institutions, even institutions acting in good faith.”

Carol Lani Guinier was born on April 19, 1950, in Manhattan and grew up in Queens. Her mother, Eugenia (Paprin) Guinier, was a civil rights activist. Her paternal grandfather and her father, Ewart Guinier, were both lawyers, and her father also served as chairman of what was then the Department of Afro-American Studies at Harvard.

Ms. Guinier recalled first wanting to become a civil rights attorney when she was 12, watching on television as Constance Baker Motley, a lawyer with the N.A.A.C.P., helped escort James Meredith in his fight to integrate the University of Mississippi in 1962.

She graduated from Radcliffe College in 1971 and Yale Law School in 1974, a year behind Mr. Clinton and in the same class as Clarence Thomas.

Ms. Guinier married Nolan Bowie, a fellow professor and legal scholar, in 1986. He survives her, as do her sisters, Clotilde Guinier Stenson, Sary Guinier and Marie Guinier; her son, Nikolas Bowie, also a law professor at Harvard; her stepdaughter, Dana Rice; and a granddaughter.

After a clerkship with a U.S. District Court judge in Michigan and a year working with juvenile offenders in Detroit, Ms. Guinier moved to Washington to work in the Department of Justice. She left in 1981, when President Ronald Reagan took office, and for most of that decade she led the Voting Rights Project of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

Ms. Guinier became an aggressive litigator, traveling, for example, in 1985 to Alabama, where, with Deval Patrick, the future governor of Massachusetts, she helped lead the defense in a voting rights case against Jeff Sessions, the future senator and attorney general who was then a U.S. attorney. Her team won an acquittal.

“She was easily one of the most innovative thinkers in the voting rights space,” Sherrilyn Ifill, the outgoing head of the Legal Defense Fund, said in a phone interview.

Ms. Guinier left the defense fund for a position at the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1989. There she began to turn her experience defending voting rights into ideas about how to reform the system.

She argued, for example, that merely having a vote was not enough for minorities, especially those from oppressed classes. She proposed a variety of alternatives, like cumulative voting, in which people get a number of votes to distribute as they wish — a process that might allow minority voters to concentrate their support on a single candidate and in that way increase their influence as a bloc.

“Her concern was that each vote count the same as the next vote, and the normal districting process does not create that,” Gerald Torres, a professor at Yale Law School and a frequent collaborator, said by phone.

Such ideas caught the attention of the Clinton administration, whose officials also liked her fiery rhetoric about the backsliding on voting rights under the Reagan and George Bush administrations.

https://i.postimg.cc/HsW-gT6Pk/merlin-200046024-ebcfd463-df0a-418a-a1f9-a8e5fc0834ae-super-Jumbo.jpg
Ms. Guinier with Mitt Romney, who was the governor of Massachusetts at the time, at a Martin Luther King Jr. Day event in Boston in 2005. Ms. Guinier was the keynote speaker. Credit...Josh Reynolds/Associated Press

It was perhaps inevitable, then, that her Justice Department nomination would become a lightning rod. She insisted that her positions had been taken out of context, and she noted that cumulative voting was already used in communities around the country. But Republicans doubled down, calling her a “quota queen” for, they said, supporting affirmative action quotas (she did not).

Still, Ms. Guinier seemed to take the president’s decision to withdraw her name in stride — especially since it had made her something of a national figure.

“When I walk through the train to the snack bar, many people seem to recognize me — and these are men, women, whites, Blacks, Republicans, Democrats,” she told The New York Times in 1993. “People come up and say, ‘I disagree with everything you have said, but I think you should have had a hearing, and I admire the way you handled the situation.’”

Above all, she said, she appreciated the perspective that the process gave her and the insights she was able to take with her back to the academy, among them an understanding of how political polarization got in the way of democratic decision making.

She also became known for her innovations in the classroom, said Susan Sturm, a professor at Columbia Law School and a frequent collaborator. Ms. Guinier would bring in drama students to help her class construct short plays around legal questions, or hand over a lesson to a group of students.

She wrote a number of books, on topics as varied as voting rights, gender equality and affirmative action, including “The Tyranny of the Majority: Fundamental Fairness in Representative Democracy” (1994); Who’s Qualified?: A New Democracy Forum on the Future of Affirmative Action” (2001), with Ms. Sturm; and “The Tyranny of the Meritocracy: Democratizing Higher Education in America” (2016).

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/07/us/politics/lani-guinier-dead.html

Jedi

01-21-2022, 11:20 PM

Another talent gone..........sad
https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/21/entertainment/meat-loaf-obit/index.html

Jedi

01-21-2022, 11:21 PM

RIP Louie!!!!
https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/21/entertainment/louie-anderson-dead/index.html

FireSignFemme

01-22-2022, 07:08 AM

Another talent gone..........sad
https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/21/entertainment/meat-loaf-obit/index.html

k5hWWe-ts2s&ab_channel=MeatLoafVEVO

Jedi

01-31-2022, 03:28 AM

RIP Dr. Johnny Fever from WKRP
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/howard-hesseman-dead-wkrp-cincinnati-1235084085/

BullDog

02-21-2022, 04:37 PM

We have lost June (T-Rex) to a senseless act of gun violence and hate. She was helping to get a BLM protest set up in Portland when a man came out of a house and started to swear at them calling them violent terrorists and then started shooting at them. June lost her life and five other people were injured and taken to the hospital.

The police released information that the killer and protestors were both armed, but I don't see any evidence of that being true. One of the survivors who was shot said she wasn't armed and no one around her was either. Neighbors have also said they saw the man go out of the house and start shooting. This wasn't an "argument" between two armed "sides" that led to a shooting the way it is being described by many in the media.

We all know what a powerful force June was. She made a big difference in this world. RIP June and thank you for fighting the good fight.

https://www.oregonlive.com/portland/2022/02/victim-of-deadly-shooting-at-normandale-park-identified-witness-said-shooter-fired-immediately-on-unarmed-group.html?fbclid=IwAR1UQf7Yn-Ep0ZVsyMUcdgT86jWVJdDm56QsJ-DOi4JXWjbFrWo8-uypOyw

dark_crystal

02-21-2022, 07:31 PM

TexasCowboi

02-22-2022, 03:54 AM

Rest In Power T-Rex!

clay

02-22-2022, 08:28 AM

Fly free & know you made a tremendous impact on many lives. YOU are T REX!! Love & rest in peace, Juney!!

kittygrrl

03-10-2022, 02:33 PM

https://www.edenbrothers.com/store/media/Bulbs-Flowers/Anemone-Blue-White-1.jpg
T-Rex

Jedi

03-10-2022, 07:20 PM

https://nypost.com/2022/03/10/emilio-delgado-luis-on-sesame-street-dead-at-81/ RIP old friend. I grew up on Sesame Street as I am one year older than it. I have such fond memories of the show.

firegal

03-25-2022, 05:57 PM

I am sad and shocked at Junes/T-Rexs passing.

The hate seems to grow.Things have been crazy here in Seattle and Portland these past few years.I just dont get it. Rest in peace June ive enjoyed your thoughts/posts/humor and knowledge for many years. Hugs to all her loved ones who are in pain.

Terry

JDeere

05-02-2022, 03:26 PM

https://people.com/country/country-legend-naomi-judd-died-by-suicide-sources/

Naomi Judd

I knew she suffered from mental health issues but I never thought, she would unalive herself!

This is speculation that she did but when Wynona and Ashley said they lost her to mental illness, I knew she committed suicide.

JDeere

05-12-2022, 07:22 PM

Ashley Judd revealed to the public before autopsy report did, Momma Judd, shot herself.

Ashley found her as well....

I also had no idea that there was treatment resitant depression, either.

I pray that Wynona, Ashley and the whole family, get therapy for all this, come together as a family, instead of bickering.

Orema

05-17-2022, 04:52 PM

Urvashi Vaid, Pioneering L.G.B.T.Q. Activist, Is Dead at 63

By Clay Risen
May 17, 2022

Over a four-decade career, she profoundly shaped a range of progressive issues, including AIDS advocacy, prison reform and gay rights.

https://i.postimg.cc/qRxGQ8nZ/00vaid-image4-super-Jumbo.jpg
Urvashi Vaid in an undated photo. She placed herself at the center of a wide array of progressive issues, centered on but not limited to the L.G.B.T.Q. rights movement. Credit...Jurek Wajdowicz

Urvashi Vaid, a lawyer and activist who was a leading figure in the fight for L.G.B.T.Q. equality for more than four decades, died on Saturday in Manhattan. She was 63.

Her sisters, Rachna Vaid and Jyotsna Vaid, said the cause was breast cancer.

From her days as a law student in Boston, Ms. Vaid was at the center of a wide array of progressive issues, centered on but not limited to the L.G.B.T.Q. rights movement. Long before the word “intersectionality” entered common parlance, she was practicing it, insisting that freedom for gay men and lesbians required fighting for gender, racial and economic equality as well.

“A purely single-issue organizing approach prevents us from making the connections that would advance our goals and would advance the project of building a progressive movement,” she told the magazine The Progressive in 1996.

At the height of the AIDS crisis, in the late 1980s and early ’90s, she led the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (now the National L.G.B.T.Q. Task Force). That platform made her one of the most vocal and visible figures in the push for AIDS funding and against federally enshrined anti-L.G.B.T.Q. discrimination.

She was the rare activist who was as comfortable within the confines of pragmatic electoral politics as she was marching in the streets. She was ejected in 1990 from a speech on gay rights by President George Bush for holding a sign that read, “Talk Is Cheap, AIDS Funding Is Not.” But two years later she broke with other progressive activists to support Bill Clinton for president.

https://i.postimg.cc/BZwF3YqB/00vaid-imag3-super-Jumbo.jpg
Ms. Vaid argued that the movement for L.G.B.T.Q. rights had erred by focusing on access to the mainstream, rather than on gaining power to change it. Credit...Courtesy of the National LGBTQ Task Force

“She wasn’t a zealot,” the playwright Tony Kushner, a friend of Ms. Vaid, said in a phone interview. “She understood the perfect could not be the enemy of the good, and that progress was made in steps.”

But her fondness for President Clinton was short-lived. After he backtracked on his promise to end the military’s ban on openly gay service members and, later, signed the Defense of Marriage Act, which codified marriage as being between a man and a woman, she considered not voting for his re-election.

She ended up backing him, reluctantly, but she turned her disillusionment into a teachable moment for progressives. She left the task force in 1992 to write a book, “Virtual Equality: The Mainstreaming of Gay and Lesbian Liberation” (1995).

Ms. Vaid argued, in that book and elsewhere, that the movement had erred by focusing on access to the mainstream, rather than on gaining power to change it. It wasn’t enough to be in the room with Mr. Clinton, she said; the movement had to be able to change his mind.

She also drew a distinction between L.G.B.T.Q. rights and L.G.B.T.Q. liberation. Pushing the mainstream to accept gay men and lesbians, she said, was a worthy first step, but one that risked forcing people to tailor their own identities to fit into straight society.

Liberation, on the other hand, meant altering the mainstream to accommodate a range of gender identities — a seemingly extreme position at the time, but one that accurately foreshadowed the rapid and broad changes now underway around established gender norms.

“She put the gay rights movement in a progressive context that no one else can lay claim to,” Rachel Maddow, the MSNBC anchor and a close friend of Ms. Vaid’s, said in a phone interview. “She really had a singular impact as an individual. She changed the AIDS movement, gay rights and the civil rights movement in ways directly attributable to her.”

https://i.postimg.cc/Hk1VWFFX/00vaid-image2-jumbo.jpg
Ms. Vaid was ejected for protesting at a 1990 speech on gay rights by President George Bush. Credit...National LGBTQ Task Force

Urvashi Vaid (pronounced UR-va-shee VAD) was born on Oct. 8, 1958, in New Delhi, India. When she was still a child, her father, the writer Krishna Baldev Vaid, received an appointment to teach at the State University of New York at Potsdam, and Urvashi soon followed with her sisters and her mother, Champa (Bali) Vaid, a poet and painter.

All three Vaid sisters attended Vassar College, from which Urvashi graduated in 1979 with a degree in political science and English literature.

Along with her sisters, Ms. Vaid, who lived in Manhattan and died at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, is survived by her partner, the comedian Kate Clinton. She is the aunt to Alok Vaid-Menon, a gender-nonconforming performing artist.

Though Ms. Vaid said her earliest memories of political activism were of antiwar protests in the late 1960s, it was in college that she found her voice. She was especially drawn to liberation movements in the developing world, and she joined other students in pushing Vassar to divest from South Africa.

“My understanding of liberation did not come from the feminist and gay activists with whom I worked, but rather from movements working to end colonial occupation and white supremacy,” she wrote on the website OpenDemocracy in 2014. “The African National Congress, who defined themselves as ‘a national liberation movement,’ were my heroes.”

She attended law school at Northeastern University, continuing her activism on campus and in Boston. She and an alliance of gay and lesbian students persuaded the university to add sexual identity to its nondiscrimination policy, and she worked off campus at Gay Community News, a weekly newspaper.

The paper served as a crucible for Ms. Vaid’s political worldview: Staunchly progressive, it took on a wide swath of issues, including prisoner rights, feminism, antiracism and economic inequality. And it was among the first news outlets to publicize the growing prevalence of H.I.V. in the gay community, and to highlight the homophobia that was swelling around it.

“She was a revelation to me,” said Sue Hyde, whom Ms. Vaid hired as an editor at Gay City News and who, with Ms. Vaid, founded the L.G.B.T.Q. Task Force’s annual Creating Change conference. “She was a revelation the way she thought, the way she organized, the way she envisioned a movement that really had never existed.”

After graduating from law school in 1983, Ms. Vaid moved to Washington to work as a staff lawyer for the National Prison Project, an initiative by the American Civil Liberties Union that she helped expand to include advocacy for incarcerated people with H.I.V. and AIDS.

She became a spokeswoman for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force in 1987 and its director in 1989.

She later worked at the Ford Foundation; served as executive director of the charitable Arcus Foundation; and led a research center at Columbia Law School before establishing her own nonprofit consulting firm. She also founded LPAC, a political action committee that supports political candidates who, in its words, “share our commitment to L.G.B.T.Q. and women’s equality, and social justice.”

And she continued to organize, whether it was a national political campaign or a weekend march down Commercial Street in Provincetown, Mass., where she lived part time with Ms. Clinton.

“If I ever had a question, I’d call Urvashi and she could explain it,” Billie Jean King, the tennis player and activist, said in a phone interview. “She knew every policy that was going on, on every issue.”

In one of her last public appearances, to accept the Susan J. Hyde Award for “longevity in the movement” at the Creating Change conference in March, Ms. Vaid warned that the decades of progress she had experienced were now under threat.

“We are facing an existential threat to our existence,” she said. “Our response must be strong, militant and much more aggressive than it has been thus far.”

Clay Risen is an obituaries reporter for The New York Times. Previously, he was a senior editor on the Politics desk and a deputy op-ed editor on the Opinion desk. He is the author, most recently, of "Bourbon: The Story of Kentucky Whiskey."

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/17/us/urvashi-vaid-pioneering-lgbtq-activist-is-dead-at-63.html

Gemme

05-22-2022, 05:52 PM

Ruby, the dog portrayed in Rescued by Ruby, passed away (https://turnto10.com/news/local/rhode-island-state-pd-hold-ceremony-for-ruby) from cancer.

She was a good girl. A very, very good girl.

-Pwxr307O4w

Bèsame*

08-08-2022, 03:47 PM

Rest in Peace dear Sandy. Olivia Newton John was such a soundtrack to our lives. 💝💝💝💝c46GcvdvlrI

Orema

08-20-2022, 06:59 AM

In a five-decade career that began with the coming-of-age novel “Riverfinger Women,” she was outspoken in her fiction, her poetry and her life.

https://i.postimg.cc/mhxD6WpK/12-Dykewomon4-super-Jumbo.jpg
The author Elana Dykewomon at her home in Oakland, Calif., this year. She wrote lesbian-themed novels, poems and short stories and had been the editor of a lesbian literary journal.Credit...Jane Tyska/East Bay Times via Getty Images

Elana Dykewomon, a gregarious, cerebral author, poet and activist who spent decades exploring her identity as both a lesbian and a Jew while working to foster communities of “chosen families” among her fellow lesbians at a far remove from the patriarchy, died on Aug. 7 at her home in Oakland, Calif. She was 72.

The cause was complications of esophageal cancer, her brother Daniel Nachman said.

Ms. Dykewomon never achieved widespread commercial success, but her three novels found an ardent following among lesbian readers. She also published five collections of poetry and short stories and contributed to many lesbian-themed publications.

For seven years, starting in 1987, she was the editor of Sinister Wisdom, a lesbian literary journal. As an activist, she was an organizer of the San Francisco Dyke March.

Ms. Dykewomon was in hospice at her home with friends, preparing to watch a live-streamed performance of her first play, “How to Let Your Lover Die,” when she died, 20 minutes before the performance began. The play is a rumination on love and loss that she wrote following the death in 2016 of Susan Levinkind, her wife and her partner of many decades, from Lewy body dementia.

The play capped a five-decade career that started in 1974 with Ms. Dykewomon’s “Riverfinger Women,” a ribald lesbian coming-of-age novel that in 1999 was named to an Associated Press list of 100 Greatest Gay Novels. The book, Ms. Dykewomon said in a 2004 interview, was initially “written for a straight publishing house that was putting out a new line of pornography for bored housewives” but was rejected.

When ultimately published, “Riverfinger Women” “was the first book that was advertised in The New York Times that was identified as a lesbian book,” Ms. Dykewomon added. “It was important at the time to publish things for lesbians, so lesbians would know that lesbians were out there who loved them and cared about them.”

https://i.postimg.cc/FH4qNCMv/12-Dykewomon3-super-Jumbo.jpg
“Every lesbian of a certain age has a copy of ‘Riverfinger Women’ on her bookshelf,” one scholar said of Ms. Dykewomon’s first novel, written when she was still using her birth name.

https://i.postimg.cc/zX5SBmGx/12-Dykewomon2-jumbo.jpg (https://postimages.org/)
Ms. Dykewomon’s second novel won the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction.

The book found a loyal and enthusiastic audience: “Every lesbian of a certain age has a copy of ‘Riverfinger Women’ on her bookshelf,” Jennifer Brier, a professor of gender and women’s studies at the University of Illinois, Chicago and Ms. Dykewomon’s literary executor, said in an interview.

In the early 1980s, the author — who until then had been known by her birth name, Elana Nachman — made perhaps her most pointed statement of identity yet: She adopted Dykewoman, and later Dykewomon, as a pen name, jettisoning the “man” in both her old and new names. “I chose ‘dyke’ for the power and ‘womon’ for the alliance,” she wrote in an essay published in a 2017 anthology, “Dispatches From Lesbian America.”

(“I figured if I called myself Dykewomon,” she joked in an interview with J: The Jewish News of Northern California this year, “I would never get reviewed in The New York Times. Which has been true.”)

Her 1997 novel, “Beyond the Pale,” about Russian Jewish lesbian immigrants who work in New York’s notorious Triangle shirtwaist factory and survive its deadly 1911 fire to become trade unionists, won the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction. In 2009, she published “Risk,” a novel about a struggling middle-age lesbian who turns to gambling as an escape.

Elana Michelle Nachman was born in Manhattan on Oct. 11, 1949, the oldest of three children of Harvey and Rachel (Weisberger) Nachman. Her father was a plaintiffs’ lawyer who moved the family to Puerto Rico in 1958 to open a practice. Her mother was a researcher for Life magazine and later a librarian in Puerto Rico.

It was a fiercely Zionist household. Her father, who had been a navigator in the United States Army Air Forces in World War II, volunteered as a pilot in the Arab-Israeli War of 1948, her brother, Mr. Nachman, said, and her mother helped smuggle arms to Israel.

Ms. Dykewomon maintained a strong sense of Jewish identity, even if she was not religious as an adult. Regarding her name change, she once said, “If I had to do it all over again, I might have chosen Dykestein or Dykeberg,” according to an obituary in The Times of Israel.

Even before she was a teenager, Elana “knew she was somehow ‘different,’ but was told by doctors she couldn’t possibly be homosexual,” her brother said in an interview. Living in Puerto Rico from the age of 8, he added, she also felt “sharply alienated from the Latin macho culture and the sexual role-playing by women and men there.”

At 11, she attempted suicide, an experience she explored in her 2017 essay. She spent a year recuperating in the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, and later found a degree of peace and acceptance at the Windsor Mountain School, a progressive boarding school in Lenox, Mass., Mr. Nachman said.

After studying at Reed College in Portland, Ore., she received a bachelor’s degree in creative writing from the California Institute of the Arts, then a master of fine arts degree from San Francisco State University, where she later taught composition and creative writing for nearly two decades.

In addition to her brother Daniel, she is survived by another brother, David, and several nieces and nephews.

The afternoon Ms. Dykewomon died, friends, neighbors and family members viewed her play on Zoom before calling the authorities. When mortuary workers came for her body, the others filed out silently behind them, Rhea Shapiro, a longtime friend who was present, recalled. As the body was placed in the van, those assembled broke into spontaneous applause.

“Mourning is the most difficult form of celebration,” Ms. Dykewomon wrote after Ms. Levinkind’s death. “But I am filled with the beauty of what I need to mourn.”

By Alex Williams, New York Times
Published Aug. 14, 2022, Updated Aug. 17, 2022

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/14/books/elana-dykewomon-dead.html

Gemme

09-08-2022, 11:56 AM

Queen Elizabeth II passed away on Thursday, September 8th. She was 96 years old. Buckingham Palace confirmed the news.

Stone-Butch

09-08-2022, 12:39 PM

My heart is so sick and sad over the loss of our wonderful Queen Elizabeth.

RIP Your Majesty . My prayers have gone up for days and now may you pass to the other side and know you lived for your people who love you and mourn all over the world at your loss. Your portrait will hang in my home wherever I am as it always has. We miss you already.

Gemme

09-29-2022, 08:08 AM

Sooo, Coolio died. I guess he'll find a new Gangsta's Paradise now. I always liked him and am sad to learn about his passing.

He's not much older than me. Granted, I'm a not famous rapper and I didn't do all the things that come with that position but it still hits home. Too many Gen Xers passing away too young.

FireSignFemme

09-29-2022, 08:13 PM

"Too many Gen Xers passing away too young."

Isn't that the truth.

Orema

10-03-2022, 03:56 AM

Actress and Activist Sacheen Littlefeather Dies at 75.

https://pyxis.nymag.com/v1/imgs/8a8/8a2/e14ab9835139b53621347929165a08bd14-sacheen-littlefeather.2x.rsquare.w330.jpg
Photo: Frazer Harrison/Getty Images

Sacheen Littlefeather, the actress and Native American activist who delivered Marlon Brando’s Academy Award rejection speech, has died. She was 75.

The news comes just two weeks after the the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences gave a celebration in her honor.

Earlier this year, the Academy offered a formal apology for how it treated Littlefeather after the Oscars.

Littlefeather refused to accept Brando’s award for The Godfather, “And the reasons for this being are the treatment of American Indians today by the film industry,” she said through the crowd’s boos, “and on television in movie reruns and also with recent happenings at Wounded Knee.”

Littlefeather’s speech did return national attention to the standoff at Wounded Knee, but it also resulted in death threats and Littlefeather becoming persona non grata in Hollywood. “I was blacklisted, or you could say ‘redlisted,’” Littlefeather said in a documentary about her life. “Johnny Carson, Dick Cavett and others didn’t want me on their shows. […]

The doors were closed tight, never to reopen.” Littlefeather went on to work in health activism, working in the Bay Area treating AIDS patients and teaching traditional Native American medicine.

https://www.vulture.com/2022/10/sacheen-littlefeather-dead-obituary-marlon-brando.html

Kätzchen

10-04-2022, 09:38 AM

RIP Loretta Lynn

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D7hesoHsmbs

Gemme

10-11-2022, 09:22 PM

I loved Murder, She Wrote!

Angela Lansbury, the scene-stealing British actor who kicked up her heels in the Broadway musicals “Mame” and “Gypsy” and solved endless murders as crime novelist Jessica Fletcher in the long-running TV series “Murder, She Wrote,” has died. She was 96.

Lansbury died Tuesday at her home in Los Angeles, according to a statement from her three children. She died five days shy of her 97th birthday.

Lansbury won five Tony Awards for her Broadway performances and a lifetime achievement award. She earned Academy Award nominations as supporting actress for two of her first three films, “Gaslight” (1945) and “The Picture of Dorian Gray” (1946), and was nominated again in 1962 for “The Manchurian Candidate” and her deadly portrayal of a Communist agent and the title character’s mother.

Her mature demeanor prompted producers to cast her much older than her actual age. In 1948, when she was 23, her hair was streaked with gray so she could play a fortyish newspaper publisher with a yen for Spencer Tracy in “State of the Union.”

Her stardom came in middle age when she became the hit of the New York theater, winning Tony Awards for “Mame” (1966), “Dear World” (1969), “Gypsy” (1975) and “Sweeney Todd” (1979).

She was back on Broadway and got another Tony nomination in 2007 in Terrence McNally’s “Deuce,” playing a scrappy, brash former tennis star, reflecting with another ex-star as she watches a modern-day match from the stands. In 2009 she collected her fifth Tony, for best featured actress in a revival of Noel Coward’s “Blithe Spirit” and in 2015 won an Olivier Award in the role.

Broadway royalty paid their respects. Audra McDonald tweeted: “She was an icon, a legend, a gem, and about the nicest lady you’d ever want to meet.” Leslie Uggams on Twitter wrote: “Dame Angela was so sweet to me when I made my Broadway debut. She was a key person in welcoming me to the community. She truly lived, lived, lived!”

But Lansbury’s widest fame began in 1984 when she launched “Murder, She Wrote” on CBS. Based loosely on Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple stories, the series centered on Jessica Fletcher, a middle-aged widow and former substitute school teacher living in the seaside village of Cabot Cove, Maine. She had achieved notice as a mystery novelist and amateur sleuth.

The actor found the first series season exhausting.

“I was shocked when I learned that had to work 12-15 hours a day, relentlessly, day in, day out,” she recalled. “I had to lay down the law at one point and say `Look, I can’t do these shows in seven days; it will have to be eight days.‘”

CBS and the production company, Universal Studio, agreed, especially since “Murder, She Wrote” had become a Sunday night hit. Despite the long days — she left her home at Brentwood in West Los Angeles at 6 a.m. and returned after dark — and reams of dialogue to memorize, Lansbury maintained a steady pace. She was pleased that Jessica Fletcher served as an inspiration for older women.

“Women in motion pictures have always had a difficult time being role models for other women,” she observed. “They’ve always been considered glamorous in their jobs.”

In the series’ first season, Jessica wore clothes that were almost frumpy. Then she acquired smartness, Lansbury reasoning that, as a successful woman, Jessica should dress the part.

“Murder, She Wrote” stayed high in the ratings through its 11th year. Then CBS, seeking a younger audience for Sunday night, shifted the series to a less favorable midweek slot. Lansbury protested vigorously to no avail. As expected, the ratings plummeted and the show was canceled. For consolation, CBS contracted for two-hour movies of “Murder, She Wrote” and other specials starring Lansbury.

“Murder, She Wrote” and other television work brought her 18 Emmy nominations but she never won one. She holds the record for the most Golden Globe nominations and wins for best actress in a television drama series and the most Emmy nominations for lead actress in a drama series.

In a 2008 Associated Press interview, Lansbury said she still welcomed the right script but did not want to play “old, decrepit women,” she said. “I want women my age to be represented the way they are, which is vital, productive members of society.”

“I’m astonished at the amount of stuff I managed to pack into the years that I have been in the business. And I’m still here!”

She was given the name Angela Brigid Lansbury when she was born in London on Oct. 16, 1925. Her family was distinguished: a grandfather who was the fiery head of the Labour Party; her father the owner of a veneer factory; her mother a successful actor, Moyna MacGill.

“I was terribly shy, absolutely incapable of coming out of my shell,” Lansbury remembered of her youth. “It took me years to get over that.”

The Depression forced her father’s factory into bankruptcy, and for a few years the family lived on money her mother had saved from her theater career. Angela suffered a shattering blow when her beloved father died in 1935. The tragedy forced her to become self-reliant — “almost a surrogate husband to my mother.”

When England was threatened with German bombings in 1940, Moyna Lansbury struggled through red tape and won passage to America for her family. With the help of two sponsoring families, they settled in New York and lived on $150 a month. To add to their income, Angela at 16 landed a nightclub job in Montreal doing impersonations and songs.

“The only thing I ever had confidence in is my ability to perform,” she said. “That has been the grace note in my sonata of life, the thing that has absolutely seen me through thick and thin.”

Moyna moved the family to Hollywood, hoping to find acting work. Failing that, she and Angela wrapped packages and sold clothing at a department store. An actor friend suggested Angela would be ideal for the role of Sybil Vane in “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” which was being prepared at MGM. She tested, and studio boss Louis B. Mayer ordered: “Sign that girl!”

She was just 19 when her first film, “Gaslight,” earned her an Oscar nomination, but MGM didn’t know what to do with the new contract player. She appeared as Elizabeth Taylor’s older sister in “National Velvet,” Judy Garland’s nemesis in “The Harvey Girls,” Walter Pidgeon’s spiteful wife in “If Winter Comes,” Queen Anne in “The Three Musketeers.”

Tired of playing roles twice her own age, she left MGM to freelance but the results were much the same: the mother of Warren Beatty in “All Fall Down,” of Elvis Presley in “Blue Hawaii,” of Carroll Baker in “Harlow,” and of Laurence Harvey in “The Manchurian Candidate,” in which she unforgettably manipulates her son and helps set off a killing spree.

In the mid-1940s, Lansbury had a disastrous nine-month marriage to Richard Cromwell, a soulful young star of the 1930s. In 1949, she married Peter Shaw, a Briton who had been under an acting contract to MGM, then became a studio executive and agent. He assumed the role of Lansbury’s manager. They had two children, Peter and Deirdre; he had a son David by a previous marriage.

The 1950s were a troubled time for the Shaws. Angela’s career slowed down; her mother died after a battle with cancer; Peter underwent a hip operation; the children were on drugs; the family house in Malibu burned to the ground.

Lansbury later said of the fire: “It’s like cutting off a branch, a big, luscious branch of your life and sealing it off with a sealer so it doesn’t bleed, That’s what you do. That’s how the human mind deals with those things. You have to pick up the pieces and go on.”

Weary of 20 years of typecasting, Lansbury tried her luck on Broadway. Her first two shows — “Anyone Can Whistle” and “Hotel Paradiso” (with Bert Lahr) — flopped.

Then came “Mame.” Rosalind Russell declined to repeat her classic role as Patrick Dennis’s dizzy aunt in a musical version. So did Mary Martin and Ethel Merman. Others considered: Bette Davis, Lauren Bacall, Judy Garland, Beatrice Lillie, Judy Garland. Composer Jerry Herman chose Lansbury.

The opening on May 24, 1966, was a sensation. One critic wondered that “the movies’ worn, plump old harridan with a snakepit for a mouth” could turn out to be “the liveliest dame to kick up her heels since Carol Channing in ‘Hello, Dolly.‘”

After her “Sweeney Todd” triumph, Lansbury returned to Hollywood to try television. She was offered a sitcom with Charles Durning or “Murder, She Wrote.” The producers had wanted Jean Stapleton, who declined. Lansbury accepted.

During the series’ long run, she managed to star in TV movies, to be host of Emmy and Tony shows and even to provide the voice for a Disney animated feature. She played Mrs. Potts in “Beauty and the Beast” and sang the title song. “This was really a breakthrough for me,” she said of her young following. “It acquainted me with a generation that I possibly couldn’t have contacted.”

In 2000, Lansbury withdrew from a planned Broadway musical, “The Visit,” because she needed to help her husband recover from heart surgery. “The kind of commitment required of an artist carrying a multimillion-dollar production has to be 100%,” she said in a letter to the producers.

Her husband died in 2003.

She was back on Broadway in 2012 in a revival of “The Best Man,” sharing a stage with James Earl Jones, John Larroquette, Candice Bergen, Eric McCormack, Michael McKean and Kerry Butler. She also recently co-starred in Emma Thompson’s “Nanny McPhee” and with Jim Carrey in “Mr. Popper’s Penguins.”

At the 2022 Tony Awards, Len Cariou — her “Sweeney Todd” co-star — accepted the lifetime Tony given to Lansbury. “There is no one with whom I’d rather run a cutthroat business with,” Cariou said.

In 1990, Lansbury philosophized: “I have sometimes drawn back from my career. To what? Home. Home is the counterweight to the work.”

In addition to her three children, Anthony, Deirdre and David, she is survived by three grandchildren, Peter, Katherine and Ian, plus five great grandchildren and her brother, producer Edgar Lansbury.

Blade

10-28-2022, 06:35 PM

RIP Bill Dance
RIP Vince Dooley

Kätzchen

11-30-2022, 05:58 PM

SCRln1kqUc4

miwHh9X9sCc

wlObyqRWcss

Bèsame*

12-06-2022, 06:00 PM

Rest in Peace, Kirstie Alley

https://i.insider.com/638e982d54ac0f0019510dc4?width=1000&format=jpeg&auto=webp

Gemme

12-14-2022, 10:14 PM

I am stunned. Absolutely stunned. Not only that he passed so young but that it was via suicide. I never felt that sadness in him. I never met the man, but I love dance and I have watched him mature and improve through the years. He is part of many fond memories of mine. My condolences to his family...wife...children.

Stephen ‘tWitch’ Boss, 'Ellen DeGeneres Show' DJ, dead at 40

Stephen "tWitch" Boss — best known for being the DJ on the Ellen DeGeneres Show, a judge and contestant on So You Think You Can Dance and for his fun Instagram dance videos with wife Allison Holker Boss — has died by suicide at age 40.

"It is with the heaviest of hearts that I have to share my husband Stephen has left us," Holker Boss, 34, said in a statement obtained by Yahoo Entertainment. "Stephen lit up every room he stepped into. He valued family, friends and community above all else and leading with love and light was everything to him. He was the backbone of our family, the best husband and father, and an inspiration to his fans."

It continued, "To say he left a legacy would be an understatement, and his positive impact will continue to be felt," she continued. "I am certain there won't be a day that goes by that we won't honor his memory. We ask for privacy during this difficult time for myself and especially for our three children."

Holker Boss concluded her statement with a message to her husband, saying, "Stephen, we love you, we miss you, and I will always save the last dance for you."

TMZ was first to report the news on Wednesday morning. The outlet said Holker Boss went to an unspecified LAPD station to report that Boss had left home without his car, which had her worried. Shortly after, police were called to a hotel near the couple's house where he was found deceased. The L.A. County Coroner later confirmed Boss died by suicide at a hotel. The case is closed.

DeGeneres, who brought on Boss as the talk show's resident DJ in 2014, a job he had for the remainder of the show's run, posted a tribute on social media. The "heartbroken" DeGeneres called him "pure love and light" and said she "loved him with all my heart."

Boss, who hailed from Montgomery, Ala., studied dance performance at Southern Union State Community College in his home state as well as Chapman University in California. The hip-hop dancer and choreographer first found stardom competing on So You Think You Can Dance's fourth season in 2008, being named the runner-up. One of his dances, with contestant Katee Shean and choreographed by Mia Michaels, was nominated for an Emmy for Choreography in 2009. He returned to the show for further performances and was one of the SYTYCD All-Stars in several seasons. Earlier this year, Boss joined the judging panel for Season 17.

In 2014, he was first featured as a guest DJ on DeGeneres's talk show. She introduced him by calling him her "favorite dancer." It soon became a permanent role with Boss staying on the show until it ended in May.

In 2020, he was promoted to co-executive producer of the Ellen DeGeneres Show, helping helm the ship amid the show's workplace toxicity scandal. Boss, who backed DeGeneres during the turmoil, also served as DeGeneres's co-star on the spin-off show Ellen’s Game of Games.

Boss appeared in 2015's Magic Mike XXL with Channing Tatum, playing dancer Malik. He was also an honorary judge on Jennifer Lopez's World of Dance.

He met his future wife through SYTYCD, as Holker Boss is also a dancer. She competed during Season 2 of the show and they were both later All-Stars. Talking about how they got together, she revealed that she asked for his number after they attended the 2010 Step Up 3D premiere together with a group, but ended up dancing the night away together. He said at the wrap party for SYTYCD that year, she pulled him onto the dance floor and they "danced the entire night, and we've been together ever since."

In 2013, they were married at Villa San-Juliette Winery in Paso Robles, Calif., owned by SYTYCD co-creator Nigel Lythgoe, and they welcomed a son, Maddox, in 2016 followed by daughter, Zaia, in 2019. Boss also adopted his wife's now 14-year-old daughter, Weslie, from a past relationship. In November, they appeared on the Jennifer Hudson Show and said they were considering expanding their family.

Holker Boss and Boss co-hosted Disney's Fairy Tale Weddings on Disney+ from 2018 to 2020.

The couple — and entire family, in fact — has been known for their fun, uplifting dance videos shared to social media. The last one, a holiday dance featuring Boss and Holker Boss in front of a tree, was posted two days ago.

The couple also recently celebrated their ninth wedding anniversary. On Dec. 10, Boss shared a black and white image of them dancing at their wedding, writing, "Happy anniversary my love." She shared a video with different memories from that day, writing on Instagram that marrying Boss has "been one of the best decisions I have ever made in my life!! I feel so blessed and loved!! I love you baby and I will never take you or OUR love for granted! I LOVE YOU."

They last appeared together at a public event on Dec. 5. They attended the Critics Choice Association's 5th Annual Celebration of Black Cinema & Television at Fairmont Century Plaza and posed for a series of portraits together.

GeorgiaMa'am

12-30-2022, 09:08 PM

Barbara Walters was a trailblazer in journalism and for women. I will miss her eye-opening and deep, candid interviews.

https://i.imgur.com/kNDCqz8m.jpg

theoddz

02-09-2023, 10:22 AM

Yet another one of "The Greats" has passed, this time, Mr. Burt Bacharach. He was always one of my most favorite songwriters and was well known for some of the most celebrated and long played hits of the 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's and beyond. He was 94 years old. RIP and Godspeed, Mr. Bacharach!! We'll always want to be "Close to You". :heartbeat:

https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/09/entertainment/burt-bacharach-death/index.html

88UgwiJXEw0

~Theo~ :bouquet:

Gemme

02-16-2023, 12:38 AM

Raquel Welch passed away February 15, 2023.

Jo Raquel Welch first won attention for her role in Fantastic Voyage (1966), after which she won a contract with 20th Century Fox. They lent her contract to the British studio Hammer Film Productions, for whom she made One Million Years B.C. (1966).

Although Welch had only three lines of dialogue in the film, images of her in the doe-skin bikini became bestselling posters that turned her into an international sex symbol. She later starred in Bedazzled (1967), Bandolero! (1968), 100 Rifles (1969), Myra Breckinridge (1970), and Hannie Caulder (1971). She made several television variety specials.

Through her portrayal of strong female characters, which helped in her breaking the mold of the traditional sex symbol, Welch developed a unique film persona that made her an icon of the 1960s and 1970s. Her rise to stardom in the mid-1960s was partly credited with ending Hollywood's vigorous promotion of the blonde bombshell. She won a Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture Actress in a Musical or Comedy in 1974 for her performance in The Three Musketeers. She was also nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in Television Film for her performance in the film Right to Die (1987). In 1995, Welch was chosen by Empire magazine as one of the "100 Sexiest Stars in Film History". Playboy ranked Welch No. 3 on their "100 Sexiest Stars of the Twentieth Century" list.

Welch was born as Jo Raquel Tejada on September 5, 1940, in Chicago, Illinois. She was the first child of Armando Carlos Tejada Urquizo and Josephine Sarah Hall. Her father, Armando Tejada, was an aeronautical engineer from La Paz, Bolivia, son of Agustin Tejada and Raquel Urquizo.

Gemme

04-27-2023, 06:54 PM

Jerry Springer died Thursday from pancreatic cancer. He definitely provided us with a unique view of daytime television.

theoddz

04-29-2023, 09:42 AM

I know this is a few days past, but we also lost another one of the "Greats". On April 25th, we lost Mr. Harry Belafonte. I'm particularly sad about this, though, when he passed, he was 96 years old. What a life he lead, and so loved and successful!!!

RIP, Harry, and thank you for all of the great music you left us with. Thank you, also, for your ardent activism in efforts to make this world a better place than what you found it. We'll always love and remember you. <3

Zh1ow6zKapQ

H5dpBWlRANE

kMXBJW1PuU8

~Theo~ :winky::listening::dance2::bouquet:

theoddz

05-02-2023, 04:14 PM

Well, I’m another day late again, and I’m, once again, sad to have to report another loss from the music world. We lost Gordon Lightfoot yesterday. He had numerous hits in the 70’s and early 80’s, most notably, “If You Could Read My Mind”, “The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald”, and “Sundown”. Gord was 84 years old and considered by many to be one of the very best of the singer-songwriter generation….a real icon!!!

Rest in peace, Gord, and thank you for all of the great music you gave us. :heartbeat:

~Theo~ :bouquet:

Kätzchen

05-03-2023, 01:51 PM

Kätzchen

05-25-2023, 05:36 PM

8QS8cf4RKrY

What's Love Got To Do With It? (1983)

:kissy:

Will miss her greatly.

Orema

07-14-2023, 04:53 AM

Minnie Bruce Pratt, Celebrated Poet of Lesbian Life, Dies at 76

Her collection “Crime Against Nature,” which recounts her losing custody of her children after she came out, made her a literary star — and a target of conservatives.

https://i.postimg.cc/cLQJmMQK/IMG-0246.webp
Minnie Bruce Pratt in 2008. No one was more shocked than she — a woman married almost 10 years and with two small sons — at the turn her life was taking when she came out as a lesbian. Credit...Rachel Fus

By Penelope Green
July 13, 2023

Minnie Bruce Pratt, a feminist poet and essayist whose collection “Crime Against Nature,” which mapped her despair, anger and resilience after losing custody of her children when she came out as a lesbian, earned one of poetry’s highest honors and made her a target of hard-right conservatives, died on July 2 near her home in Syracuse, N.Y. She was 76.

Her death, at a hospice facility for L.G.B.T.Q. people, was caused by glioblastoma, her son Benjamin Weaver said.

It was 1975 when Ms. Pratt walked into her first gay bar, the Other Side, in Fayetteville, N.C. Same-sex relationships were still considered a crime in that state — “a crime against nature,” as the statute was described — so patrons parked around the corner in hopes that their license plates wouldn’t be photographed by the police. They signed into the place under fake names, as it was run as a private club. (Ms. Pratt often used Susan B. Anthony as hers.)

No one was more shocked than she — a woman married almost 10 years and with two small sons — at the turn her life was taking, as she wrote in her memoir, “S/He” (1995). Like many women of her generation, Ms. Pratt was fired up by the consciousness-raising groups she joined. She campaigned for gender parity in university teaching positions where she was a doctoral student (learning to push back when male colleagues asked her to type their papers and groped her at academic conferences) and discovered that she loved women.

https://i.postimg.cc/nV4ZNcX5/IMG-0247.webp
After their father took custody, Ransom (rear) and Benjamin Weaver were able to see their mother during school breaks. When she self-published her first collection of poetry, they helped her put copies of the books together.Credit...JEB (Joan E. Biren)

“You don’t have a dog’s chance in court,” her lawyer warned her when she and her husband, a poet and an academic like herself, were divorcing. He took full custody of their sons and moved out of state. “How could that happen to someone with a Ph.D.?” a fellow teacher asked years later.

“Crime Against Nature” had been more than a decade in the making when it was published in 1990, making Ms. Pratt a literary star. The Academy of American Poets awarded her the Lamont Poetry Prize, one of the organization’s highest honors. Writing in The New York Times Book Review, the poet Carol Muske declared the book a “publishing event” — “startling in the beauty of its unadorned voice,” with each poem “a verbal emergency.”

One poem in the volume, “No Place,” begins with these lines:

One night before I left I sat halfway

down,

halfway up the stairs, as he reeled at the

bottom,

shouting Choose, choose. Man or woman,

her or him,

me or the children. There was no place

to be

simultaneous, or between. Above, the

boys slept

with nightlights as tiny consolations in

the dark,

like the flowers of starry campion, edge of

the water.

Her poetry and activism came out of the Women in Print movement, in which feminist and lesbian poets began hand-printing and binding their work, often in chapbooks: short volumes that resemble zines. It was a vibrant community that gathered at lesbian and feminist bookstores and meeting places, like the basements of Unitarian churches.

Ms. Pratt was constantly on the road, touring the South, giving readings and visiting her children as their father permitted as part of an evolving arrangement that allowed them to be with her during summer vacations and other school breaks.

The movement was an extraordinary time, said Julie Enszer, the editor and publisher of Sinister Wisdom, a nearly half-century-old lesbian literary journal. By 1985, she said, there were about 110 feminist bookstores in the country. Ms. Pratt joined Feminary, a feminist journal and collective, and with a colleague who was her girlfriend she founded the Night Heron Press.

There, she published her first book of poetry, “The Sound of One Fork,” in 1981 — a collection of sensuous pieces that evoke her childhood in Alabama. Her sons, then teenagers on their summer break, helped her put copies of the book together, as she wrote in an essay for the Poetry Foundation. Making them, she said, was her favorite memory.

https://i.postimg.cc/qRYtYBgg/IMG-0248.webp
Ms. Pratt wrote eloquently of the “in-between” space that she and her spouse, the author Leslie Feinberg, left, inhabited as a butch and femme couple. Credit...Robert Giard Papers. Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

Minnie Bruce Pratt was born on Sept. 12, 1946, in Selma, Ala. Her father, William L. Pratt Jr., worked in the lumber industry. Virginia Earl (Brown) Pratt, her mother, was a social worker and a teacher who once told her that she was disgusted by her daughter’s lesbianism but who later became an ally.

Minnie Bruce was an English major at the University of Alabama when she married Marvin Weaver in 1966. She earned her bachelor’s degree in 1968 and was also a Fulbright scholar. When her husband took the children after their divorce, she was at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill working on her Ph.D. in English, which she earned in 1979.

In addition to her son Benjamin, she is survived by her other son, Ransom, and five grandchildren.

Ms. Pratt was the recipient of many awards and grants. A 1990 fellowship given by the National Endowment for the Arts to her and two other lesbian poets — the Native American writer Chrystos and Audre Lorde — drew criticism from Jesse Helms, the ultraconservative Republican senator from North Carolina, who campaigned to have their grants rescinded. He said that because the three were lesbian writers, their work was obscene and not suitable for federal funding. The N.E.A. disagreed.

In 1991, the three women won another grant, from the Fund for Free Expression, for being “targets of right-wing forces.”

Until her retirement in 2015, Ms. Pratt was a professor in the writing program and the gender studies department at Syracuse University, where she helped develop its L.G.B.T. studies program. She was the author of eight books of poetry, and her work has been collected in many journals. Her most recent book, “Magnified” (2021), is a collection of love poems to her spouse, the queer author and activist Leslie Feinberg, who died of complications of Lyme disease in 2014 at 65.

Like Feinberg — whose 1993 novel, “Stone Butch Blues,” was lauded for its evocation of gender complexity and considered a touchstone of queer literature — Ms. Pratt wrote eloquently about the “in-between” space, as she called it, that she and Feinberg (who mostly shunned gender honorifics) inhabited as a butch and femme couple.

In “S/he,” which is both an erotic memoir and an investigation into the myriad, shifting expressions of gender, Ms. Pratt writes of a Thanksgiving dinner the couple attended at her son Benjamin and his girlfriend’s house while they were in graduate school. Ms. Pratt was intrigued when no one claimed the seat at the head of the table or stepped up to carve the turkey. Her son clearly hung back. Ms. Pratt ducked out to the bathroom, and when she returned, her spouse was seated next to the empty chair at the head, with the turkey platter in front of them and a carving knife in one hand.

“I’ve never done this before in my life,” Feinberg said, slicing. Mr. Weaver said approvingly, “It took a lot of courage to grasp that knife.” And Ms. Pratt took her place at the head of the table.

Penelope Green is a reporter on the New York Times Obituaries desk and a feature writer. She has been a reporter for the Home section, editor of Styles of The Times, an early iteration of Style, and a story editor at the Sunday magazine.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/13/books/minnie-bruce-pratt-dead.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage&section=Obituaries

Kätzchen

07-21-2023, 09:18 AM

1964 on the Ed Sullivan show singing "I left heart in San Francisco"

hT5VOnaGRSU

theoddz

07-26-2023, 12:54 PM

Sinead O'Connor, noted Irish vocalist and artist, has died at age 56. The cause of her death has not been released. (w)

https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/26/entertainment/sinead-oconnor-death/index.html

One of my most favorite songs of hers:

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RIP, Sinead, you will be missed by many. :vigil:

~Theo~ :bouquet:

theoddz

09-02-2023, 09:43 AM

I'm so sorry to have to make this post, but I have to announce that the beloved by many superstar, Jimmy Buffett, has passed away. No details have been released about the cause of his death, but it is known that he's been in and out of the hospital recently and had to cancel several upcoming concerts. He was 76 years old.

RIP, Jimmy. You will be sorely missed. Thank you for all of the great tunes and helping so many of us to aspire to the laid back life of "Margaritaville". :pirate::bowdown::rockband::smokejoint::heartbeat:

_YSigW4DzEk

8VG7EuQsHEw

:vigil:

~Theo~ :bouquet:

Kätzchen

09-03-2023, 09:12 AM

theoddz

09-03-2023, 10:58 AM

Just an update here on the death of beloved Jimmy Buffett. There is an obituary for Jimmy on his website:

https://www.jimmybuffett.com/news/jimmy-buffett-1946-2023

The obituary states that Jimmy had been fighting Merkel Cell Skin Cancer for four years.

~Theo~ :bouquet:

Kätzchen

09-29-2023, 08:17 AM

Rest in Peace, Senator Diane Feinstein (D-Cal). :candle::candle::candle:

GeorgiaMa'am

10-01-2023, 12:08 AM

Rest in Peace, Senator Diane Feinstein (D-Cal). :candle::candle::candle:

Dianne Feinstein always had LGBTQ+ rights at the heart of her politics. We have lost a fierce advocate.

Dianne Feinstein's life changed the day Harvey Milk and George Moscone were assassinated — the "darkest day" of her life
By Caitlin O'Kane
September 29, 2023 / 12:34 PM / CBS News

In 1978, San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk, the first openly gay elected official in California, and the city's Mayor George Moscone were assassinated. The person who broke the news to the world: Dianne Feinstein, then president of the city's Board of Supervisors.
"Both Mayor Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk have been shot and killed," Feinstein told a gaggle of reporters, who expressed shock at the news. "The suspect is Supervisor Dan White."

Feinstein, who died at age 90 on Friday, went on to become California's first woman U.S. senator. But directly after the assassination, she assumed the role of mayor of San Francisco.

In 2008, the 30th anniversary of the assassination, Feinstein spoke to SF Gate about discovering Milk's dead body in city hall after their colleague, White, killed him. "I went down the hall. I opened the wrong door. I opened (Milk's) door. I found Harvey on his stomach. I tried to get a pulse and put my finger through a bullet hole. He was clearly dead," she told the local newspaper.

Feinstein said she was on a three-week vacation before the murder, but she spoke to White on the phone during that time. He was upset that the mayor wasn't going to reappoint him and felt that Milk did not defend him, according to Feinstein.

During his murder trial, White employed the now-infamous "Twinkie Defense," blaming junk food – as well as stress about his job – for the murders. By blaming mental illness, White received a lesser sentence, manslaughter. Furious Milk supporters, who wanted White convicted of first-degree murder, rioted in the city in what is known as the "White Night" riots.

In her interview with SF Gate, Feinstein said White did not kill Milk because he was homophobic, but rather because he felt betrayed by Milk when the mayor decided not to reappoint him.

During the trial, Feinstein testified about White and their friendship, which brought the defendant to tears. But she told SF Gate that when White was released from prison in 1984, she had San Francisco Police Chief Con Murphy tell White not to come back to the city, because "his chances of survival were not good." White committed suicide in 1987. Feinstein told SF Gate if she could undo the moment of the assassination, she would do "it in a second, in a nanosecond."

When the Oscar-nominated film "Milk" was released in 2008, she said she didn't want to see it. "I think in my face you saw the pain of the day 30 years ago," she told SF Gate. "I still have a hard time returning to it, and I'm not a masochist. I know what happened. I lived those times, and I've tried to learn from them in terms of the kind of public servant I am, and that's really enough for me."

Feinstein has since called the day of the assassinations "the darkest day of my life." In the summer of 2016, after several instances of gun violence across the country – including the killings of two Black men by police officers – Feinstein put out a statement and referenced the killings that affected her life.

She said after White's trial, the city was "filled with grief and torn apart by hate and a lack of trust" and as mayor, she formed a task force of gay and religious community leaders as well as police officers to help heal the city.
Decades after the tragic event, Feinstein continued to remember Milk, regularly posting about him on his birthday or on the anniversary of the assassinations. And in 2022, she marked the acceptance of USNS Harvey Milk – a Naval shipped named after the gay rights icon – into the Navy.

She was on the San Francisco board when it passed Milk's gay rights ordinance, which banned discrimination against members of the LGBTQ community in housing, employment and public accommodations. The only person who voted against the ordinance was White, according to a New York Times report from 1978.

During her time as a senator, Feinstein continued to stand up for LGBTQ rights, introducing the Respect for Marriage Act in 2011. The law, passed in 2022, guarantees legal protections for same-sex marriages and repealed the Defense of Marriage Act, which prevented the recognition of same-sex marriage by the federal government. Feinstein was one of the few senators who opposed DOMA in 1996.

She also advocated for equality in the military and supported the Equality Act, which would expand civil rights for the LGBTQ community at the federal level.

kittygrrl

10-01-2023, 06:18 AM

Dumbledore is gone
https://i.pinimg.com/236x/da/b3/d1/dab3d1f464ee0488f6b765af61d3c65f--albus-perkamentus-harry-potter-albus-dumbledore.jpg

the world grows dimmer ..

nhplowboi

10-07-2023, 07:02 AM

Prayers for the innocents, going about their day, who were horrifically murdered in Israel today.

nhplowboi

10-07-2023, 07:53 AM

AND the people of Gaza!

Stone-Butch

10-08-2023, 09:01 PM

Alan Jackson one of country musics greatest entertainers has passed away due to a stroke. The complete story is in youtube.

GeorgiaMa'am

10-10-2023, 07:38 PM

Alan Jackson one of country musics greatest entertainers has passed away due to a stroke. The complete story is in youtube.

Luckily, this seems to be a hoax. It's been going around the internet since December 2022. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/alan-jackson-death-hoax/

Gráinne

10-14-2023, 07:59 PM

Piper Laurie, so good as Carrie's mother in that movie:

https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/14/us/piper-laurie-actress-dead-obituary/index.html

Gemme

10-15-2023, 03:40 PM

Suzanne Somers, “Three's Company” and “Step by Step” Actress, Dead at 76.

Suzanne fought an aggressive form of breast cancer for 23 years and passed this morning, one day before her 77th birthday. I have many fond memories of watching Three's Company. I think she's the first blonde ditzy character that I really enjoyed.

Soft*Silver

10-28-2023, 07:01 PM

Matthew Perry, star of the tv show Friends, drowned tonight
From TMZ:
Perry is most famous for his role as Chandler Bing on the hit '90s sitcom, which ran for 10 seasons ... and with him in all 234 episodes. His character was a fan fave, as was performance -- mannerisms and lines of which have gone on to be recreated and spoofed by fans all over the world. One comes to mind, in particular ... "Could (blank) BE more .."

While 'Friends' was his biggest claim to fame ... MP had starred/guest starred in countless other TV shows over the years -- such as 'Boys Will Be Boys,' 'Growing Pains,' 'Silver Spoons,' 'Charles in Charge,' 'Sydney,' 'Beverly Hills, 90210,' 'Home Free,' 'Ally McBeal,' 'The West Wing,' 'Scrubs,' 'Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip,' 'Go On,' 'The Odd Couple' and more.

Gemme

10-28-2023, 10:00 PM

Matthew Perry uttered my favorite movie line of all time in Fools Rush In: "You are everything I never knew I always wanted."

Kätzchen

11-05-2023, 09:30 AM

Matthew Perry uttered my favorite movie line of all time in Fools Rush In: "You are everything I never knew I always wanted."

That is a favorite memory from a favorite movie, Gemme. Thanks for sharing!

I read a very well written article today over on MSNBC concerning Matthew Perry and his life long addiction to heroin. Apparently he wrote a memoir detailing his humiliating experiences as a drug addict and how he yearned for people to truly understand his process dealing with his addiction.

I hope you and others will have a chance to read the news article I found today. It totally helps a person to wrap their intelligence around a very profound problem that is never really addressed in our American society.

LINK: https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/matthew-perry-cause-death-buzz-reveals-addiction-blind-spot-rcna123585

Blade

11-19-2023, 04:44 PM

Rest peacefully Ms Rosalyn Carter. Wonderful example of a lady a woman a mother and wife. A life well lived

theoddz

11-30-2023, 11:43 AM

Well, I have a couple of deaths that I know of, today, I am sad to say.

1. Shane MacGowan, lead singer of one of my most favorite Irish bands, The Pogues (thank you, J, for introducing me to them, back in the day), has died at age 65. He penned one of my most favorite Christmas songs, "Fairytale of New York", then performed it with the wonderful Kirsty McColl (RIP) in 1987. (w):heartbeat:

oN3W3Yt_3U8

2. Henry Kissinger, former Secretary of State (1973 - 1977), Diplomat and most probably one of the most reviled public figures of his age, has died at age 100.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/henry-kissinger-world-shaping-diplomat-dies-100-rcna127314

~Theo~ :bouquet:

Soft*Silver

12-01-2023, 02:57 PM

Sandra Day O’Connor, the first female, Supreme Court Justice passed away today

cinnamongrrl

12-14-2023, 05:05 PM

Andre Braugher

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/12/arts/television/andre-braugher-dead.html

One of my very favorite actors. I was mesmerized by him in Homicide:Life on the Streets. Terrible to lose someone too soon.

theoddz

01-05-2024, 02:08 PM

One of the 70's most favorite television personalities and star of the hit series, "Starsky and Hutch", David Soul, has passed away at age 80.

He also had a hit with the song, "Don't Give Up On Us Baby", along with a few others, in the mid 70's.

RIP, David. :candle::praying:(w)

YY8APrYU2Gs

~Theo~ :bouquet:

Bèsame*

02-12-2024, 02:02 PM

Country Star Toby Keith, Rest in Peace

yc5AWImplfE?si=iFn9_LCuCNs0ixrP

nhplowboi

02-16-2024, 07:17 AM

RIP and Godspeed to a true warrior. Alexi Navalny has died. On Feb. 16, 2024, in penal colony number 3, convict Alexei Navalny felt unwell after a walk, almost immediately losing consciousness. Really???!!! Putin's #1 nemesis is allowed out on walks? Rot in hell Putin and oh yea.....go take a walk!

Kätzchen

04-11-2024, 09:39 AM

Rest in Peace, OJ

https://www.cnn.com/us/live-news/oj-simpson-death-news-reaction-04-11-24/index.html

theoddz

05-05-2024, 05:36 PM

British actor Bernard Hill, known for his many roles in such box office hits as "The Lord of the Rings Trilogy" (he played King Theoden of Rohan) and "Titanic", where he played Capt. E.J. Smith, died early this morning at age 79.

RIP, Sir. You will be missed.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/05/entertainment/bernard-hill-theoden-king-death-intl/index.html

~Theo~ :bouquet:

theoddz

07-11-2024, 02:03 PM

I'm very sad to have to report today that we have lost Ms. Shelley Duvall. She was 75 years old and passed away due to complications of Diabetes.

Ms. Duvall gave some superb performances in such box office hits as "The Shining" and "Popeye", among many others.

May she rest in peace. She will definitely be missed!!

https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/11/entertainment/shelley-duvall-death/index.html

~Theo~ :bouquet:

Gemme

07-11-2024, 05:25 PM

Allison Parliament of Orillia, Ontario, Canada, started the "Duck Duck Jeep" trend in 2020 by placing a rubber duck on a stranger's Jeep during a road trip from Alabama to Canada. Parliament originally intended to scatter the ducks around a friend's apartment, but instead decided to give one to the Jeep owner with a note that said, "Have a Great Day".

The trend involves Jeep owners placing rubber ducks on other Jeep owners' vehicles as a random act of kindness and a way to show respect for their cars. Some say that Jeep owners display the ducks in their cars permanently.

Some rules for "Duck Duck Jeeping" include:
Keep notes and ducks clean and friendly.
Avoid placing the duck in a way that might feel like an invasion of privacy, such as through an open window.

Parliament was known for her enthusiasm, generosity, and dedication to making the world a better place. She died unexpectedly on June 22, 2024.

Greco

07-15-2024, 12:03 PM

Ms. Bofill left us on June 13, 2024...RIP Great Artist and Gorgeous PuertoRican/Cuban crush.

Siempre, Greco

https://youtu.be/7r0RVAaPedU?feature=shared

Greco

07-15-2024, 01:45 PM

https://youtu.be/TKvG-DvT7VY?feature=shared

(f)

Greco

07-15-2024, 02:03 PM

T62b3ARCUvk

RIP Bella :candle:

Greco

Greco

07-15-2024, 02:22 PM

Ms. Bofill left us on June 13, 2024...RIP Great Artist and Gorgeous PuertoRican/Cuban crush.

Siempre, Greco

7r0RVAaPedU

Kätzchen

07-28-2024, 09:33 AM

Rest in peace, Sonya Massey. May justice be swiftly applied and may your family’s legacy be enshrined in history.

Sonja is a direct descendant of a shoe maker and train conductor for the Underground Railroad: both of their lives were taken by bad actors (racial based hate).

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/sonya-massey-william-donnegan-lynched-rcna163511

jools66

08-01-2024, 07:36 AM

To my dear friend Candelion.
May you rest in the most beautiful place
I'll miss you laughter and the goofy person you were.
Love you forever

Kätzchen

09-27-2024, 02:33 PM

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/maggie-smith-dies-89-downton-abbey-rcna173025

https://i.insider.com/62b987fc9f5e550019aab7ce?width=1136&format=jpeg

iamkeri1

09-29-2024, 03:10 AM

Dear Maggie Smith,
i can't believe that your magnificent, magical, merry self has passed from this earth. You have given me laughter and tears for so many years. I can't imagine a world without you. May your journey be a sweet one.

Fare thee well. noble Dame.

Keri

GeorgiaMa'am

09-30-2024, 12:30 AM

As a proponent of "Outlaw" country music, Kris Kristofferson was most famous for songs he wrote and performed with others, including Waylon Jennings and Johnny Cash. He wrote many songs outside of this genre as well for other musicians, including "Me and Bobby McGee" which he wrote for his girlfriend at the time Janis Joplin. He also wrote songs for Gladys Knight and the Pips, Bobby Bare, Jimmy Buffett, Al Green and many others.

Kristofferson was also a famous actor, winning a Golden Globe for Best Actor for his performance in A Star is Born with Barbra Streisand. He worked in film until as recently as 2018. He and his wife Rita Cooledge performed on The Muppet Show, where Kristofferson performed a duet with Miss Piggy.

Few people are familiar with Kristofferson's early life. He was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University. He also attended West Point; he eventually became a captain and flew helicopters. After he left the military, he supported himself by flying helicopters for an oil company while he worked to get his songwriting career off the ground.

RIP Kris. The world has one star less shining on it.

Kätzchen

11-04-2024, 09:24 AM

Rest in peace, Quincy Jones (f)(f)(f)(f)

Mr Jones passed away last night at the age of 91.
I hope he got to vote for Kamala.

https://www.msnbc.com/morning-joe/watch/-one-of-the-most-talented-people-to-ever-walk-the-planet-quincy-jones-dies-at-91-223480389606

Soft*Silver

12-06-2024, 11:55 PM

JoSchmooze passed away nov 15 after a long battle w cancer… my heart aches from just learning this. I coined him “doorway daddy” and loved him immensely. We spent hours and hours on the phone sharing our lives. While we flirted w the idea of romance, we were at the stage of our lives where we had reached a wisdom that only comes from having survived past mistakes and knew that neither of us was willing to relocate. Such a shame we never tried. I have no regrets ever trying with any of my exes even though they did not work out. It’s a shame I will always regret never trying w Jo.

Finally at peace with no more pain nor discomfort. I am a better woman for having known you.

Orema

12-10-2024, 06:16 AM

Nikki Giovanni, Poet Who Wrote of Black Joy, Dies at 81
As a writer, she tackled race, gender, sex, politics and love. She was also a public intellectual who appeared on television and toured the country.

https://i.postimg.cc/BQyqHTk5/09giovanni-hher-jumbo.jpg
The poet Nikki Giovanni at her home in Christiansburg, Va., in 2020.Credit...Shaban Athuman for The New York Times

By Penelope Green

Nikki Giovanni, the charismatic and iconoclastic poet, activist, children’s book author and professor who wrote, irresistibly and sensuously, about race, politics, gender, sex and love, died on Monday in Blacksburg, Va. She was 81.

Her death, in a hospital, was caused by complications of lung cancer, said Virginia C. Fowler, her wife.

Ms. Giovanni was a prolific star of the Black Arts Movement, the wave of Black nationalism that erupted during the civil rights era and included the novelist John Oliver Killens, the playwright and poet LeRoi Jones, later known as Amiri Baraka, and the poets Audre Lorde, Ntozake Shange and Sonia Sanchez, among others. Like many women in the movement, Ms. Giovanni was confounded by the machismo that dominated it.

Yet Ms. Giovanni was also a star independent of the movement, a celebrity poet and public intellectual who appeared on television and toured the country. She was a riveting performer, diminutive at just 105 pounds — as reporters never failed to point out — her cadence inflected by the jazz and blues music she loved, with the timing of a comedian or a Baptist preacher who drew crowds wherever she appeared throughout her life. She said her best audiences were college students and prison inmates.

In 1972, when she was 29, she sold out the 1,000-plus seats at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, reading her poems alongside gospel music performed by the New York Community Choir. Soon after, for her 30th birthday, she sold out the Philharmonic theater, all 3,000 seats, where she was joined by Melba Moore and Wilson Pickett, who sang gospel numbers with the same choir that attended her earlier show. The audience joined in, too, with gusto, The New York Times reported, especially when she read one of her hits, the stirring paeon to Black female agency called “Ego-Tripping,” which generations of Black girls have performed at school. It begins:

I was born in the congo

I walked to the fertile crescent and built

the sphinx

I designed a pyramid so tough that a star

that only glows every one hundred years falls

into the center giving divine perfect light

I am bad

And it concludes, triumphantly:

I am so perfect so divine so ethereal so surreal/I cannot be comprehended/except by my permission/I mean … I … can fly/Like a bird in the sky …

By 1971, she had already published a memoir, “Gemini: An Extended Autobiographical Statement on My First Twenty-Five Years of Being a Black Poet.” Fiercely intelligent, Ms. Giovanni never lacked confidence, never suffered fools and was, in her youth, an Ayn Rand fan. In her book, she wrote about the contradictions and false pieties of the Black power movement, her scrappiness as a child and her ambivalence about gender relations. She was not convinced that men and women were meant to live together.

https://i.postimg.cc/ZnNhLg1r/09giovanni-jumbo.jpg
Poet Nikki Giovanni, left, Kay Mazzo, ballet dancer with the New York City Ballet, and fashion designer Betsey Johnson receive the first Sun Shower Award in 1971.Credit...Associated Press

“Maybe they have a different thing going,” she wrote, “where they come together during mating season and produce beautiful, useless animals who then go on to love, you hope, each of you.”

Her poem, “Housecleaning,” made the point succinctly:

i always liked housecleaning

even as a child

i dug straightening

the cabinets

putting new paper on

the shelves

washing the refrigerator

inside out

and unfortunately this habit has

carried over and I find

i must remove you

from my life

In her early years, much of her poetry was boldly militant, as she addressed the horrors that galvanized the civil rights movement: the murder of Emmett Till, of the four Black girls in the Birmingham church bombing and of Martin Luther King Jr. “No one was much interested in a Black girl writing what was called ‘militant’ poetry,” she wrote in “Gemini,” so “I formed a company and published myself.”

To mollify the church ladies she had grown up with, particularly her beloved grandmother, who might be put off by her incendiary work, she recorded an album, “Truth is on its Way” (1971), with the New York Community Choir.

“I wanted something my grandmother could listen to,” she told Ebony magazine in 1972, “and I knew if gospel music was included, she would listen.”

Along with “Ego Tripping,” the album included another enduring hit, “Nikki-Rosa,” which ended with:

and I really hope no white person ever has cause

to write about me

because they never understand

Black love is Black wealth and they’ll

probably talk about my hard childhood

and never understand that

all the while I was quite happy

Yolande Cornelia Giovanni Jr. was born on June 7, 1943, in Knoxville, Tenn., to Yolande (Watson) Giovanni and Jones Giovanni, known as Gus. Her older sister, Gary Ann, nicknamed her Nikki, and the name stuck. Soon after her birth, the family moved to Cincinnati, where Yolande and Gus began working as house parents in a school for Black boys, earning only one salary between them. Later, they would each teach grade school.

Nikki’s father was abusive toward her mother. It enraged her, as did her mother’s acceptance of it.

By 15, “I was either going to kill him, or leave,” she said later, so she moved to Knoxville to live with her grandparents. She graduated early from Austin High School (now Austin-East Magnet High School), where her grandfather taught Latin, to attend Fisk University, the historically Black college in Nashville, where, after a hiatus of a few years, she earned a bachelor’s degree in history, with honors, in 1967.

She had been thrown out for leaving campus without permission, and for protesting other campus rules. Becoming a debutante was not among her aspirations (she later wrote a poem about it) which made her an odd fit among Fisk’s sorority sisters.

But when she returned after a few years, the climate had changed; she studied with Mr. Killens, a founder of the Harlem Writers Guild; helped restart a chapter of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee; and began to write.

She attended the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Social Work on a Ford Fellowship, but dropped out. She was not cut out for social work. The dean arranged for Ms. Giovanni to receive a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship to attend Columbia University’s School of Fine Arts, but she soon left to write full time.

She self-published her first two books, “Black Feeling Black Talk” and “Black Judgment” (1968). Her son, Thomas, was born in 1969: “I had a baby at 25 because I wanted to have a baby and I could afford to have a baby,” she told Ebony magazine with vehemence. “I didn’t get married because I didn’t want to get married and I could afford to not get married.”

But she did need to hustle. She hit the lecture circuit, and began appearing regularly on “Soul!,” the influential Black culture program that aired on public television from 1967 to 1972.

For one segment, she conducted a captivating two-hour interview with her hero, James Baldwin, which was filmed in London and ran as a two-part special in 1971. She was 28 and Mr. Baldwin, 47. It was astonishing, as The New Yorker put it: “Two of the most important artist-intellectuals of the twentieth century were engaged in intimate communion on national television.”

Wreathed in plumes of cigarette smoke (it was the 70s), she asked Mr. Baldwin about her father, who was, in her estimation, emblematic of so many Black men: What to do about a man who is mistreated in the world and comes home and brutalizes his wife? Where did that leave his daughter?

“I’m afraid of Black men,” she said, adding, “It’s a cycle and it’s unfortunate because I need love.”

Later in their conversation, she said, “There has to be a way to do what we do and survive, which is what seems to me to be missing.”

“Sweetheart,” Mr. Baldwin answered. “Sweetheart. Our ancestors taught us how to do that.”

Ms. Giovanni held teaching positions at Rutgers and Queens College before being recruited in 1987 by Ms. Fowler, who was then the associate head of the English department at Virginia Tech, to be a visiting professor. She earned tenure a few years later. She and Ms. Fowler have been a couple ever since, and along the way Ms. Fowler became a scholar of her work, editing her collections and writing her biography, “Nikki Giovanni” (2013). They married in 2016, and retired in 2022.

Ms. Giovanni called Ms. Fowler her bench, as she explained to Elizabeth Harris of The New York Times in 2020.

“Everybody needs a bench, and in order to get a bench, you have to be one,” Ms. Giovanni said. “I could say love, but you get tired of hearing about love.”

That said, she wrote many enticing love poems, including one that read:

I wrote a good omelet … and ate a hot poem …

after loving you

Hilton Als, the cultural critic and New Yorker writer, said in a phone interview that when he first heard Ms. Giovanni perform in the early ’70s, he was struck by her presence and the story she was telling, about a strong Black woman and the home that sustained her, epitomized in her poem, “My House.”

i mean it’s my house

and i want to fry pork chops

and bake sweet potatoes

and call them yams

cause i run the kitchen

and i can stand the heat

“It was a voice you didn’t hear a lot then, this desire for home,” he said. “Later, as she ditched the Black nationalist rhetoric, she became more herself. She was saying something really profound to me, a member of the gay community and the Black world and whatever. She was the first warrior in terms of talking about queer love, not specifically, but it was there.”

Among many honors, she received seven N.A.A.C.P. awards and 31 honorary doctorates. And a scientist who was a fan, Robert James Baker, named a species of bat after her, the Micronycteris giovanniae. She was the author of more than 30 books — many for children — three of which were best sellers. Her newest book, “The New Book: Poems, Letters, Blurbs, and Things,” is expected to be published next year.

In addition to Ms. Fowler, Ms. Giovanni is survived by her son, Thomas, and a granddaughter.

“I really like what the young people are doing,” Ms. Giovanni told The Times in 2020, reflecting on the Black Lives Matter movement, and the work of her students, “and I think my job is to be sure to get out of their way, but also let them know, if it means anything to them, that I’m proud of them.”

“I recommend old age,” she added. “There’s just nothing as wonderful as knowing you have done your job.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/09/obituaries/nikki-giovanni-dead.html