Planetarium
by Adrienne Rich


Thinking of Caroline Herschel (1750-1848),
astronomer, sister of William; and others.


A woman in the shape of a monster
a monster in the shape of a woman
the skies are full of them

a woman 'in the snow
among the Clocks and instruments
or measuring the ground with poles'

in her 98 years to discover
8 comets

She whom the moon ruled
like us
levitating into the night sky
riding the polished lenses

Galaxies of women, there
doing penance for impetuousness
ribs chilled

in those spaces of the mind

An eye,
'virile, precise and absolutely certain'
from the mad webs of Uranusborg
encountering the NOVA
every impulse of light exploding
from the core
as life flies out of us

Tycho whispering at last
'Let me not seem to have lived in vain'

What we see, we see
and seeing is changing

the light that shrivels a mountain
and leaves a man alive

Heartbeat of the pulsar
heart sweating through my body

The radio impulse
pouring in from Taurus

I am bombarded yet I stand
I have been standing all my life in the
direct path of a battery of signals
the most accurately transmitted most
untranslatable language in the universe
I am a galactic cloud so deep so invo-
luted that a light wave could take 15
years to travel through me And has
taken I am an instrument in the shape
of a woman trying to translate pulsations
into images for the relief of the body
and the reconstruction of the mind.

rest in peace mr. scruggs...
 

RIP Caballo Blanco. You were an incredible inspiration to so many of us. Your legacy will live on in the hearts and feet of runners everywhere. I wish you were still with us, but I take comfort knowing that your death came while you were doing what you loved the most. May we all be so blessed. Have fun running on those soft, fluffy clouds. <3

http://www.theweek.co.uk/world-news/...o-blanco-found

http://www.dailycamera.com/boulder-c...w-mexico%20%20

Yes, RIP, Adrienne Rich. Mentor, teacher of long, long, ago. Her works are among the very few I have kept over the years- all dog-eared, covers worn.

Bob Bergeron...
 

RIP Bob

http://www.advocate.com/News/Daily_N...mmits_Suicide/

I was wishing this was a April Fool's day joke...


(w)

The Painter of Light
 

Thomas Kindade has died at age 54. Known as the Painter of Light, the family says he died of natural causes. RIP Thomas
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la...,6353513.story

This is so very sad. This man was trying SO hard to convince others that it is ok to "get older", but he couldn't convince himself (it seems to me).

I would wager that the gay men's community's obsession with looking young and beautiful (i.e. young and in shape), fueled any inherent negative thinking about getting older Bergeron may have already had.

So sad.

Mike Wallace, '60 Minutes' star interviewer, dies
 

NEW YORK — A spokesman says CBS newsman Mike Wallace, famed for his tough interviews on "60 Minutes," has died. He was 93.

Wallace was on the staff of "60 Minutes" when it began in 1968, and was one of its mainstays from then on.

He retired as a regular correspondent in 2006 but continued contributing occasional reports.

Wallace was known for spending hours preparing for interviews and for his skeptical follow-up questioning.

--------

Growing up, I thought this guy was the best investigative thorn in peoples sides. I loved the way he used to question the absurdity of the things he was told or uncovered. Miss this type of journalistic integrity.

Cant believe he was 93. Geez time is flying. Thanks for finding this clay.

Easter....a good time to reflect on the time I had with my Grandmother (03), my Mom (78), my Sister (90), and my Dad (06). They seem to have been taken before their times - leaving me alone except a niece, nephew and cousins...and I miss them dearly... there is a reason and one day I will understand...
(w)

Dick Clark
 

:(
 

RIP Mr Clark.....


:musicnote:

Jonathan Frid - played Barnabas Collins on Dark Shadows
 

Jonathan Frid, the man known to fans around the world as Barnabas Collins, the suave vampire from the cult hit soap opera "Dark Shadows" has died at age 87.

The Hamilton Spectator, of Hamilton, Ontario, reports the Canadian actor died in his hometown of Hamilton at the Juravinski Hospital on Friday, April 13.

Frid's final screen role was a cameo in "Dark Shadows," the soap opera's upcoming big-screen revamp directed by Tim Burton and starring Johnny Depp as Barnabas.

The soap opera ran on ABC from 1966 to 1971. Originally conceived as a straightforward gothic soap opera by creator Dan Curtis, it languished in the ratings until Curtis began adding supernatural elements, first a ghost, and then Barnabas Collins. Frid joined the show in 1967 and it began to take off as a cult hit, especially with younger children, who rushed home from school to watch the show.

Outside of the Barnabas role, Frid had an extensive stage career, including a Broadway and national tour of "Arsenic and Old Lace" in the mid-1980s.



I remember running home from school to watch this show....until it got to be totally bizarre.

Watergate figure, ministry founder Charles Colson dies
 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Charles Colson, a Richard Nixon White House operative during the Watergate scandal who had a reputation for ruthlessness before going to jail and starting a prison ministry, died on Saturday at age 80, the ministry said.

Colson served as counsel to the president from 1969 to 1973 and a major part of his job was playing hardball politics to assure Nixon's re-election in 1972.

In 1973, Time magazine said Colson "was probably more disliked, as well as feared, than any other White House aide ... If Colson actually performed half the various acts of which he has been accused, he was easily the least principled of all Nixon's associates."

It was in that atmosphere that Colson and others at the top of the White House staff engaged in a series of misadventures and illegal acts that resulted in Nixon resigning the presidency in 1974 in the face of impeachment over the Watergate scandal, which grew out of a 1972 break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington.

Colson ended up with a sentence of one to three years in prison but it did not come from a Watergate crime. He had pleaded no contest to obstruction of justice in the break-in of the offices of the psychiatrist to Daniel Ellsberg, the man who leaked the Pentagon Papers to The New York Times.

ENEMIES' LIST

In 1971, Colson had been the chief author of a memo listing Nixon's major political critics and opponents, including businessmen, members of Congress, journalists and entertainers. When the "enemies list" became public, those included on it - among them actor Paul Newman - wore the mention like a badge of honor and cited the list as a prime example of Nixon's paranoia.

The same year, the president's re-election committee set aside $250,000 to do "intelligence gathering" on Democrats. To lead the program, Colson choose one of his assistants, former CIA agent E. Howard Hunt.

Hunt's group came to be known as "the plumbers" and they participated in a number of questionable and outright illegal events, including the Ellsberg break-in.

Colson had other capers in mind, including starting a fire at the Brookings Institution think tank and breaking into the apartment of the man who tried to assassinate Alabama Governor George Wallace. Such ideas were never carried out.

Then came the break-in that failed when "plumbers" were caught inside the Democratic headquarters in the Watergate complex.

http://news.yahoo.com/watergate-figu...210520742.html

RIP Sheila....woke up to learn that a HS friend - very talented young lady, passed away after battling cancer for a year or month...either way...I am totally shocked and speechless! Life is so short....

Junior Seau, Famed N.F.L. Linebacker, Dies at 43
 

OCEANSIDE, Calif. — Junior Seau, regarded as one of the N.F.L.’s best linebackers over a 20-year career with the San Diego Chargers, the Miami Dolphins and the New England Patriots, died of a gunshot wound to the chest Wednesday at his home in Oceanside, Calif. He was 43.

The Oceanside police said Seau’s death was being investigated as a suicide. He was found by his girlfriend in a bedroom of his beachfront house Wednesday morning, and a handgun was found near the body, the police said, adding that Seau did not appear to leave a note.

A native of Oceanside, Seau starred at the University of Southern California before being drafted fifth over all in the 1990 N.F.L. draft by the Chargers, who played 40 miles south of his hometown. A 12-time Pro Bowler, Seau played 13 seasons with the Chargers and was one of the team’s most popular players. In the 1994 season, he led the team to the Super Bowl, where they lost to the San Francisco 49ers, 49-26. The Pro Football Hall of Fame selected him for the 1990s All-Decade Team.

Seau was traded to the Dolphins in 2003, and after three injury-plagued seasons he was released. He signed a one-day contract with the Chargers in August 2006 to announce his retirement. But four days later, he signed with the New England Patriots and was a member of the 2007 team that went undefeated in the regular season, losing to the Giants in the Super Bowl.

His last season in the N.F.L was 2009. He finished his career with 1,524 tackles, 56 ½ sacks and 18 interceptions.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/03/sp...icide.html?amp

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


This man was one heck of a football player. Loved when he played for us. Didnt like it much when he was playing against us. Thanks for the memories Junior.

I can't help but wonder if his suicide was a function of losing too much of his identity when he retired in 2009. It can be intolerable for athletes who are used to the limelight and being revered. For that matter, it can be hard for anybody who identifies greatly with their career.

Having grown up in Oceanside and still living in San Diego, Junior Seau was always around. I remember him coming to our high school pep rally. He was such a sweet and giving person. It is terrible to see someone take their own life like that. RIP Junior!

He had some weird stuff going on lately. He drove his car off a cliff in Carlsbad last year, and was accused of abusing his girlfriend. I think some of this restaurants closed too. Who knows. Sad tho.

RIP Adam Yauch. My music world will never be the same. (f)

Oh ya, and FUCK CANCER!

George Lindsey, known as TV's Goober Pyle, dies
 

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — George Lindsey, who made a TV career as a grinning service station attendant named Goober on "The Andy Griffith Show" and "Hee Haw," has died. He was 83.

Lindsey was the beanie-wearing Goober on "The Andy Griffith Show" from 1964 to 1968 and its successor, "Mayberry RFD," from 1968 to 1971. He played the same jovial character on "Hee Haw" from 1971 until it went out of production in 1993.


Really bumming me out to see the folks from my childhood dying off.

Fascinating man. So much more than just an author. And, funny, they dont mention he was queer.


Sendak didn't limit his career to a safe and successful formula of conventional children's books, though it was the pictures he did for wholesome works such as Ruth Krauss' "A Hole Is To Dig" and Else Holmelund Minarik's "Little Bear" that launched his career.

"Where the Wild Things Are," about a boy named Max who goes on a journey — sometimes a rampage — through his own imagination after he is sent to bed without supper, was quite controversial when it was published, and his quirky and borderline scary illustrations for E.T.A. Hoffmann's "Nutcracker" did not have the sugar coating featured in other versions.

Sendak also created costumes for ballets and staged operas, including the Czech opera "Brundibar," which he also put on paper with collaborator Pulitzer-winning playwright Tony Kushner in 2003.

He designed the Pacific Northwest Ballet's "Nutcracker" production that later became a movie shown on television, and he served as producer of various animated TV series based on his illustrations, including "Seven Little Monsters," ''George and Martha" and "Little Bear."

But despite his varied resume, Sendak accepted — and embraced — the label "kiddie-book author."

When director Spike Jonez made the movie version of "Where the Wild Things Are," Sendak said he urged the director to remember his view that childhood isn't all sweetness and light. And he was happy with the result.

"In plain terms, a child is a complicated creature who can drive you crazy" Sendak told the AP in 2009. "There's a cruelty to childhood, there's an anger. And I did not want to reduce Max to the trite image of the good little boy that you find in too many books."

Sendak's own life was clouded by the shadow of the Holocaust. He had said that the events of World War II were the root of his raw and honest artistic style.

Born in 1928 and raised in Brooklyn, Sendak said he remembered the tears shed by his Jewish-Polish immigrant parents as they'd get news of atrocities and the deaths of relatives and friends. "My childhood was about thinking about the kids over there (in Europe). My burden is living for those who didn't," he told the AP.

"Kids don't know about best sellers," he said. "They go for what they enjoy. They aren't star chasers and they don't suck up. It's why I like them."

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

Sendak mentioned in a September 2008 article in The New York Times that he was gay and had lived with his partner, psychoanalyst Eugene Glynn, for 50 years before Dr. Glynn’s death in May 2007. Revealing that he never told his parents, he said, "all I wanted was to be straight so my parents could be happy. They never, never, never knew." Sendak's relationship with Glynn had been mentioned by other writers before (e.g., Tony Kushner in 2003). In Glynn's 2007 New York Times obituary, Sendak was listed as Dr. Glynn's "partner of fifty years".

Sendak donated $1 million to the Jewish Board of Family and Children's Services to memorialize Glynn, who had treated young people there.

Hairstyling pioneer Vidal Sassoon dies at 84
 

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Vidal Sassoon used his hairstyling shears to free women from beehives and hot rollers and give them wash-and-wear cuts that made him an international name in hair care.

When he came on the scene in the 1950s, hair was high and heavy — typically curled, teased, piled and shellacked into place. Then came the 1960s, and Sassoon's creative cuts, which required little styling and fell into place perfectly every time, fit right in with the fledgling women's liberation movement.

My idea was to cut shape into the hair, to use it like fabric and take away everything that was superfluous," Sassoon said in 1993 in the Los Angeles Times, which first reported his death Wednesday. "Women were going back to work, they were assuming their own power. They didn't have time to sit under the dryer anymore."

His wash-and-wear styles included the bob, the Five-Point cut and the "Greek Goddess," a short, tousled perm — inspired by the "Afro-marvelous-looking women" he said he saw in New York's Harlem.

Sassoon opened his first salon in his native London in 1954 but said he didn't perfect his cut-is-everything approach until the mid-'60s. Once the wash-and-wear concept hit, though, it hit big and many women retired their curlers for good.

His shaped cuts were an integral part of the "look" of Mary Quant, the superstar British fashion designer who popularized the miniskirt.

He also often worked in the 1960s with American designer Rudi Gernreich, who became a household name in 1964 with his much-publicized (but seldom-worn) topless bathing suit.

"While Mr. Gernreich has dressed his mannequins to look like little girls," The New York Times wrote after viewing Gernreich's collection for fall 1965, "Vidal Sassoon has cut their hair to look like little boys with eye-level bangs in front, short crop in back. For really big evenings, a pin-on curl is added at the cheek."

In 1966, he did a curly look inspired by 1920s film star Clara Bow for the designer Ungaro. He got more headlines when he was flown to Hollywood from London, at a reputed cost of $5,000, to create Mia Farrow's pixie cut for the 1968 film "Rosemary's Baby."

Sassoon opened more salons in England and expanded to the United States before also developing a line of shampoos and styling products bearing his name. His advertising slogan was "If you don't look good, we don't look good."

The hairdresser also established Vidal Sassoon Academies to teach aspiring stylists how to envision haircuts based on a client's bone structure. In 2006 there were academies in England, the United States and Canada, with additional locations planned in Germany and China.

"Whether long or short, hair should be carved to a woman's bone structure," he told the Los Angeles Times in 1967. "Actually short hair is a state of mind ... not a state of age."

Sassoon's hair-care mantra: "To sculpt a head of hair with scissors is an art form. It's in pursuit of art."

He wrote three books. The first was an autobiography, "Sorry I Kept You Waiting, Madam," published in 1968. "A Year of Beauty and Health," which he wrote with his second wife, Beverly, was published in 1979. In 1984 he released "Cutting Hair the Vidal Sassoon Way."

He sold his business interests in the early 1980s to devote himself to philanthropy. The Boys Clubs of America and the Performing Arts Council of the Music Center of Los Angeles were among the causes he supported through his Vidal Sassoon Foundation. He later became active in post-Hurricane Katrina charities in New Orleans.

He had moved to Los Angeles in the early 1970s in search of a chemist to formulate his hair-care products and had decided to make the city his home.

A veteran of Israel's 1948 War of Independence, Sassoon also had a lifelong commitment to eradicating anti-Semitism. In 1982, he established the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Growing up very poor in London, Sassoon said that when he was 14, his mother declared he was to become a hairdresser. After traveling to Palestine and serving in the Israeli war, he returned home to fulfill her dream.

"I thought I'd be a soccer player but my mother said I should be a hairdresser, and, as often happens, the mother got her way," he told the AP in 2007.

He told the Chicago Tribune in 2004 that he was proud to have entered the field.

"Hairdressers are a wonderful breed," he said. "You work one-on-one with another human being and the object is to make them feel so much better and to look at themselves with a twinkle in their eye. Work on their bone structure, the color, the cut, whatever, but when you've finished, you have an enormous sense of satisfaction."

http://news.yahoo.com/hairstyling-pi...--finance.html

Joe Ray
 

My ex's father passed this afternoon.

I loved him he was a very nice to me. He accepted me for me and NEVER once questioned my gender and our life together.

Joe you will be missed by many, you were loved and still are.

Thanks for being a beacon of acceptance to everyone.

RIP
 

Legendary Mexican Writer Carlos Fuentes dies at age 83.

Damn! :praying:

Irreplaceable

May he be resting in peace and contented with how much he made such a difference in so many lives.

d'sad grrrrl

RIP Swamp People Mitchell Guist
 

i know you will be missed, especially by your brother!




http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505245_1...ll-guist-dies/

R.I.P. Mitchell Guist!!!
 

This Man and his brother are legends in their own right. I always loved when they went Gar hunting and told stories, and built there front porch. They loved each other and the way their Daddi raised them, I will miss him!

http://wafb.images.worldnow.com/images/18439386_BG1.jpg

last dance.
 

My favorite