R.I.P Joe

I have loved this song for a long time now.

Oh wow...
Journey well, Joe. Thanks for the music.

Anne Kirkbride
 

LONDON (AP) — Actress Anne Kirkbride, a star of British soap opera "Coronation Street" for more than 40 years, has died at the age of 60.


See more at: http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/bos....xIfrIKVR.dpuf

Colleen McCullough
 

SYDNEY (AP) - Best-selling Australian author Colleen McCullough, whose novel "The Thorn Birds" sold 30 million copies worldwide, has died at age 77 after a long illness.

McCullough wrote 25 novels throughout her career. Her final book "Bittersweet" was released in 2013.

Her first novel "Tim" was published in 1974. It became a movie starring Mel Gibson, who played a young, intellectually disabled handyman who had a romance with a middle-aged woman.

Her second novel, "The Thorn Birds," published in 1977, became a U.S. television mini-series in 1983 starring Richard Chamberlain, Rachel Ward and Christopher Plummer. The Outback melodrama about a priest's struggle between church and love won four Golden Globe awards.

During the 1980s, she wrote love stories including "An Indecent Obsession" and "The Ladies of Missalonghi."

Her historical seven-novel series "Masters of Rome" was published from 1990 to 2007.

McCullough was born in the small town of Wellington in New South Wales state on June 1, 1937. The family moved to the state capital, Sydney, where she began studying at Sydney University to become a medical doctor until she discovered that she had an allergic reaction to the antiseptic soap that surgeons use to scrub.

She switched her studies to neuroscience and spent 10 years as a researcher at Yale Medical School in the United States. She established the neurophysiology department at Sydney's Royal North Shore Hospital.

She lived as an author in the United States and London before settling on Norfolk Island, a former British penal colony in the Pacific Ocean which became home to descendants of the HMS Bounty mutineers.



- See more at: http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/bos....xoUCe9X7.dpuf

Ann Mara
 

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. (AP) — Ann Mara, the matriarch of the NFL's New York Giants for the past 60 years, has died. She was 85.

Giants co-owner John Mara announced his mother's death on Super Bowl Sunday. Ann Mara slipped in front of her home in Rye, New York, during an ice storm two weeks ago and was hospitalized with a head injury the following day. While there were initial hopes for recovery, John Mara said, complications developed and she died early Sunday surrounded by her family.

Ann Mara and her children owned 50 percent of the Giants, one of the founding families of the league, since the death of her husband, Hall of Famer Wellington Mara, in 2005. While she was not active in daily operations, her opinion was valued greatly.

Ann Mara was a prominent philanthropist who supported educational organizations. Mara also helped children with cancer through the Ronald McDonald House of New York. In November, she dedicated the opening of a new building for the San Miguel Academy for children at risk, which was built through the NFL Snowflake Foundation.

Three days before MetLife Stadium — the home of the Giants and Jets — was the site of the Super Bowl last year, Ann Mara received the Paul J. Tagliabue Award of Excellence. It is presented to a league or team executive who demonstrates the integrity and leadership that he exhibited in career development opportunities for minority candidates and advocacy for diversity on the league and club level when he was NFL commissioner.

Married to Wellington Mara in 1954 after a chance meeting in a Roman Catholic church, Ann Mara attended almost every Giants home and away game. She was a fierce defender of the team.

After the Giants beat the San Francisco 49ers in the 2011 NFC Championship game en route to their fourth Super Bowl title, she approached Fox broadcaster and Hall of Fame quarterback Terry Bradshaw, poking his arm to get his attention.

"You never pick the Giants," Ann Mara said.

Bradshaw turned toward the camera and said, "I know. I know. I'm sorry. I'm getting hammered for not picking the Giants."

Ann Mara, sometimes referred to as "The First Lady of Football," also let her sons know how she felt. Three of them work in the Giants' front office. Along with John, Chris is the senior vice president of player evaluation and Frank is the vice president of community relations.

She used to like to remind John Mara that "you're an employee.'"

When the Giants missed the playoffs for the third consecutive year this past season, John Mara, who serves as president and chief executive, was asked how his mother felt.

"She is not very happy with me right now, believe me," John Mara said. "She suffers through this probably even more so than I do. I am on notice as well."

Born Ann Mumm in New York City on June 18, 1929, Mara is survived by 11 children, 43 grandchildren and 16 great-grandchildren.

One of her grandchildren, Chris' daughter Rooney Mara, was nominated for an Oscar for best actress for "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" in 2012.

- See more at: http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/bos....6mnXof9S.dpuf

Coast Guard Petty Officer Lisa Trubnikova
 

Armed to the teeth, Coast Guardsman Adrian Loya stormed the Massachusetts home of two lesbian colleagues and opened fire because he was obsessed with one of the women, authorities said.

Coast Guard Petty Officer Lisa Trubnikova (left) died at the scene of Thursday's bloody rampage in Cape Cod. Her wife, Anna Trubnikova, also a petty officer, remains hospitalized with severe injuries.

Relatives told the Boston Globe that Loya had been pursuing Lisa Trubnikova for years, beginning when all three were stationed in Alaska. "He became obsessed," one family member told the paper. "He was fixated on her."

Loya, who lived in Virginia, is believed to have driven to Massachusetts earlier in the week and rented a motel room near the couple's condo complex.

Loya was armed with two rifles, a 9mm handgun and a shotgun, police said. He set a car on fire to keep officers at bay, and shot at cops who responded to a home invasion call.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nati...icle-1.2106705

Lesley Gore
 

Ernie Banks
 

I know it is late but I am going to post it anyways! RIP Mr. Banks!

http://www.cnn.com/2015/01/23/us/ernie-banks-obit/

LLAP.
 

godspeed...

http://agentsofgeek.com/wp-content/u...nard-Nimoy.jpg

"of all the souls I have encountered in my travels, his was the most... human."


LLAP

One of my favorite authors
 

http://www.npr.org/2015/02/26/389282...al-avon-ladies

She changed romance and changed my world. Her boldness opened up the doors that now house erotic romance. She is on my keeper shelf as well as my Kindle. May the Universe be glad for its latest author.

Sir Terry Pratchett
 

An amazing heart has stopped beating, fantasy author and creator of the Discworld series Sir Terry Pratchett has died at home aged 66, having had Alzheimer's disease (which he called an 'embuggerance') for eight years. He is one of my favorite writers. My screen name, Miss Tick, is taken from a very minor character in a couple of his discworld books. I am saddened by his loss.

A few of the literally thousands of quotes from his writings.

"It's not worth doing something unless someone, somewhere, would much rather you weren't doing it." Terry Pratchett

“The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.” - Terry Pratchett

“Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.” - Terry Pratchett

"It is said that your life flashes before your eyes just before you die. That is true, it's called Life." - Terry Pratchett

Sidney Abbott - co author of Sappho Was A Right On Woman
 

Longtime NYC-based feminist and lesbian activist Sidney Abbott, 78, was found dead Wednesday morning after a fire in her home in Southold, Suffolk County.

Abbott was a force for gay women’s rights in New York and beyond since the ’70s, when she helped urge NOW not to ignore lesbian issues.

She had been wheelchair dependent in recent years, and had limited mobility, said Jacqueline Michot Ceballos, a friend for nearly 50 years.

“We were the earliest members of NOW, from day one in New York City, back in 1967,” said Ceballos, a former NOW-New York president and founder of the Veteran Feminists of America.

There were disagreements among the gay and straight members in those early days — famously, Betty Friedan warned about a “Lavender Menace” from the lesbian activists in their movement’s midst. But Abbott was always a mender of rifts within the larger feminist movement.

“She held no grudges and was truly a loving human being,” Ceballos said. “There was no anger whatsoever — It was very, very important to her to make sure we knew that there’s no big difference between us.”

Added VFA president Eleanor Pam, “Sydney Abbott’s contribution to modern feminism cannot be overstated. She was a brilliant, fearless trailblazer, an authentic pioneer in the women revolution and its struggle for equal rights.”

Longtime close friend and co-author Barbara Love spoke by phone with Abbott less than two hours before the fire. A home attendant had just left to do some shopping for Abbott, Love said.

“She was in good spirits,” said Love, who lived with Abbott in the ’70s and co-authored “Sappho,” which remains “a classic.”

“She’s very well known in the women’s movement,” Love said.

---------------


Rest in peace dear woman. You were an inspiration to many and will be fondly remembered for everything you did to fight for the recognition and rights of both women and lesbians.

Anna Walentynowicz of Poland's Solidarity movement dies at 80
 

Anna Walentynowicz, a shipyard worker whose firing made her a central figure in Poland's Solidarity movement, which broke the communist grip on the country in the 1980s, died April 10 in the airplane crash near Smolensk, Russia, that also claimed the lives of Polish President Lech Kaczynski, his wife and other top Polish officials. She was 80.

Ms. Walentynowicz became a heroic symbol of freedom in her homeland after she was dismissed from her job at the Gdansk shipyard in August 1980, just five months before she was scheduled to retire. She had been harassed for years by authorities, who considered her a troublemaker for launching an underground newspaper and helping organize the budding Solidarity movement in the 1970s.

Her firing prompted a strike at the shipyard and the spread of the Solidarity movement, which quickly attracted millions of followers across Poland. It was the first successful labor revolt in a communist country and resulted, less than a decade later, in the downfall of Poland's communist regime.

"I was the drop that caused the cup of bitterness to overflow," Ms. Walentynowicz (pronounced val-en-teen-OH-vitch) once said.

Repeatedly jailed, reinstated to her job and jailed again, Ms. Walentynowicz became known as the "mother of Solidarity."

She began her life of activism in 1970, when security forces killed 50 striking workers in Polish port cities. For years, on the anniversary of the killings, Ms. Walentynowicz was arrested for collecting money to buy memorial flowers for the slain workers.

By 1978, when she received her first substantial prison sentence, she had begun to publish an underground newspaper that exposed corruption among the shipyard's leaders and was one of the seven founders of Solidarity. Four of the founders were women, she said.

"Woman activists were in the worst situation, because they were responsible for children," she told the Christian Science Monitor in 1989. "But I could afford to sacrifice, because I was widow and my son was in the Army."


In December 1981, a little more than a year after Ms. Walentynowicz's firing sparked the Solidarity revolt, Poland's military government under Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski declared martial law and arrested many dissidents on flimsy pretenses.

Ms. Walentynowicz spent seven months in a women's prison, where she learned a "repertoire of 57 political songs, many of them very rude about the Communist authorities and Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski," she told The Washington Post in 1982. "If they maltreated us, we would sing the whole repertoire."

Anna Walentynowicz was born Aug. 13, 1929, in Rovno, a Ukrainian city that was then part of Poland. She was orphaned at a young age and began working as a maid when she was 10.

She made her way to the port city of Gdansk in 1950 and found work as a welder in the Lenin Shipyard, where her short stature (4-foot-10) enabled her to climb deep into the hulls of ships. She later became a crane operator.

Little is known about her immediate family, except that she raised a son as a single mother, later married and was widowed. She continued to work at the shipyard, often organizing labor strikes, until 1991.

For a time, she was close to Lech Walesa, the Solidarity leader who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983 and was elected Poland's president in 1990. But she broke with Walesa in the early 1980s, believing he compromised too easily with communist authorities and ran the Solidarity union in an autocratic manner. She refused three offers to work in his government.

"We have a jester for a president," she said in 1991. "The real Solidarity was born on my back, and now it is destroyed."

Often called the conscience of her country, Ms. Walentynowicz received the Truman-Reagan Medal of Freedom from the U.S. Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation at the Polish Embassy in Washington in 2005. She was the inspiration for "Strike," a 2006 film by German director Volker Schloendorff.

"We wanted better money, improved work safety, a free trade union and my job back," Ms. Walentynowicz said in 1999, reflecting on the early days of Solidarity. "Nobody wanted a revolution. And when I see what the so-called revolution has brought -- mass poverty, homelessness, self-styled capitalists selling off our plants and pocketing the money -- I think we were right."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...041304387.html

B.B. King, 89 passed away on Thursday. "His 2009 album, One Kind Favor, earned him his 15th Grammy." Journey well, B.B.

http://time.com/3857528/b-b-king-pho...-john-shearer/

Rest in Peace, John Nash 5/25/15
 

John Nash, Mathematician who inspired A Beautiful Mind, killed in car accident

Mathematician John Nash, a Nobel Prize winner who inspired the movie A Beautiful Mind, was killed in an auto accident along with his wife in New Jersey, US police have confirmed.

The couple were in a taxi cab whose driver lost control and crashed into a guard rail.

"The taxi passengers were ejected," Sergeant Gregory Williams told AFP.

The Oscar award-winning film A Beautiful Mind, starring Russell Crowe, was loosely based on Nash's longtime struggle with schizophrenia.

Crowe wrote on Twitter that he was stunned by reports of the death of Nash and his wife, Alicia.

Nash, a Princeton University scholar, was awarded the Nobel Price for economics in 1994.

John Nash was 86 and his wife was 82, according to ABC News America, which reported the couple was living in Princeton, New Jersey.

Reuters/AFP

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-05-2...killed/6493530

Anne Meara
 

Anne Meara, the loopy, lovable comedian who launched a standup career with husband Jerry Stiller in the 1950s and found success as an actress in films, on TV and the stage, has died.

Born in Brooklyn on Sept. 20, 1929, she was a red-haired, Irish-Catholic girl who struck a vivid contrast to Stiller, a Jewish guy from Manhattan's Lower East Side who was two years older and four inches shorter.

As Stiller and Meara, they appeared in comedy routines that joked about married life and their respective ethnic backgrounds. They logged 36 appearances on "The Ed Sullivan Show" and were a successful team in Las Vegas, major nightclubs, on records and in commercials (scoring big for Blue Nun wine with their sketches on radio).

They were beloved New Yorkers, well known to their Upper West Side neighbors. The marriage lasted, but the act was dissolved in the 1970s as Meara resumed the acting career she had originally sought. She appeared in such films as "The Out-of-Towners," ''Fame," ''Awakenings" and, directed by her son, "Reality Bites."

Meara was twice nominated for an Emmy Award for her supporting role on "Archie Bunker's Place," along with two other Emmy nods, most recently in 1997 for her guest-starring role on "Homicide." She won a Writers Guild Award for co-writing the 1983 TV movie "The Other Woman."

She also appeared in dozens of films and TV shows, including a longtime role on "All My Children" and appearances on "Rhoda," ''Alf" and "The King of Queens." She shared the screen with her son in 2006's "Night at the Museum."

Meara also had a recurring role on CBS' "Murphy Brown" and on HBO's "Sex and the City." In 1975, she starred in CBS' "Kate McShane," which, though short-lived, had the distinction of being the first network drama to feature a woman lawyer.

She made her off-Broadway debut in 1971 in John Guare's award-winning play "The House of Blue Leaves." A quarter-century later, she made her off-Broadway bow as a playwright with her comedy-drama, "After-Play."

http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/bos...&pid=174930394

Betsy Palmer
 

Betsy Palmer, the veteran character actress who achieved lasting, though not necessarily sought-after, fame as the murderous camp cook in the cheesy horror film "Friday the 13th," has died at age 88.

Palmer had appeared in numerous TV shows dating to the early 1950s Golden Age of Television. Among them were such classic dramas as "Kraft Theatre," ''Playhouse 90" and "Studio One."

Her film credits included "Mr. Roberts" with Henry Fonda, "The Long Gray Line" with Tyrone Power and Maureen O'Hara, "Queen Bee" with Joan Crawford, and "The Tin Star" with Fonda and Anthony Perkins.

Other TV credits included "Knot's Landing," ''The Love Boat," ''Newhart," ''Just Shoot Me" and "Murder, She Wrote." She also appeared in several Broadway plays, including "Same Time, Next Year" and "Cactus Flower."

- See more at: http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/bos....1ZymirPT.dpuf

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I remember her most from the show I've Got A Secret. Another woman who spoke to my inner lesbian. Sigh.

Beau Biden
 

The death of the U.S. Vice President's son. The Vice President lost his first wife and one year old daughter in 1972. He was at his two young sons' bed sides in the hospital 18 days after the accident, when he was sworn into the Senate. Senator Biden spend 4 hours each way on a train to D.C. and back to DE everyday, so he could be home with his children at night and then, after they grew up and out, he still did it in order to be with his second wife. That would be for 36 years, for those who are counting his terms.

Beau Biden was 46 years old and died of brain cancer.

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/...forged-n367296

Thank you for posting the incredibly sad news about the untimely death of Joe Biden"s son, Beau.

Learning about this today brought to mind the experience of a dear friend of mine, in Berlin. She watched both her mother and her mother's sister, her aunt, die rather suddenly from brain cancer. And it changed her, in so many ways. Stemming the tide of unfathomable sorrow nearly always affects a person deeply, but I couldn't help but remember my friend Len.

(w) (w) (w)

Thanks for sharing, Dapper.