RIP

[Kobi]

LITTLE EGG HARBOR, N.J. (AP) — Lily McBeth, the teacher whose battles with school boards in conservative areas of New Jersey made her a reluctant symbol of the transgender rights movement, has died. She was 80.

McBeth died Sept. 24 near her home in Little Egg Harbor after a long illness, her daughter Maureen said.

"She was very much at peace with her life," Maureen McBeth said. "She just wanted to be who she was."

The former William McBeth had undergone sex reassignment surgery in 2005 after nine years of substitute teaching in Eagleswood Township, and she sought to continue in the job.

But vocal opposition from some parents concerned about the impact of a transgender teacher on young students led to a contentious debate that ended with her rehiring. She later substituted at the Pinelands Regional school district as well.

The schools' 2006 decisions to keep her on as a substitute were hailed around the nation as a model of tolerance and acceptance of transgender Americans. But she resigned in frustration in 2009 after getting only a handful of assignments. The schools said they had permanent substitutes and outside subs were only called when the permanent subs were unavailable.

Steven Goldstein, founder of the Garden State Equality rights group, said McBeth never wanted to become a symbol of anything, but became one nonetheless.

"It is so much easier to understand an issue with a human face, and Lily became the human face of transgender rights for many people," he said. "She did so much to increase understanding and awareness of transgender people just by being strong and being who she was."

Goldstein called McBeth one of the most important figures in New Jersey civil rights history in the last two decades.

After selling his physical therapy marketing company, William McBeth moved from Bucks County, Pennsylvania, to New Jersey, where he got a substitute teaching job in Eagleswood, a community 17 miles north of Atlantic City. After his 2005 surgery, he sought to return as a substitute, which drew vocal opposition from some parents.

But many students were unfazed, particularly those that remembered her as a competent male teacher.

McBeth was a ukulele player and an avid carver of wooden decoy ducks. She acted in local theater productions, sang in a church choir and was active in a group seeking to re-establish clam populations in Barnegat Bay.

She donated her body to a medical school for research and physician training; funeral arrangements were private, her daughter said.

In a 2009 interview with The Associated Press, McBeth said she treasured interacting with students in the classroom.

"I tried to be an example of something you might want to be when you grow up: a kind, caring person," she said.

http://news.yahoo.com/transgender-te...pUZvYAXsxXNyoA

[Kobi]

Newark native Geraldine “Jerrie” Mock, the first woman to fly solo around the globe, has died in her sleep at her home in Quincy in northern Florida. She was 88.

Mock was 38 and a full-time mother of three living in Bexley when she took off from Port Columbus on March 19, 1964. A licensed pilot for only seven years who had never flown farther than the Bahamas, Mock crossed both oceans in the Spirit of Columbus, an 11-year-old Cessna freshly painted to cover cracks and corrosions.

The last she heard from the Columbus control tower: “Well, I guess that’s the last we’ll hear from her.”

There were mechanical problems, storms and communication breakdowns. She mistakenly landed at a restricted air force base in Egypt and was detained until darkness fell.

In Saudi Arabia, the 5-foot brunette exited the plane to a silent crowd that patiently waited for the pilot to emerge. When they realized she was the pilot, the people erupted in cheers, appreciating the oddity that a woman was the flier.

“There’s no man!” they exclaimed.

Mock arrived back in Columbus 29 days later on the night of April 17, 1964, to a cheering crowd of 5,000. There were local accolades, some television appearances and a medal from President Lyndon B. Johnson.

As the 50th anniversary of Mock’s flight approached, her sister, Susan Reid, of Newark, helped raise $48,000 for a bronze statue that in September 2013 was dedicated at The Works, a museum in Newark.

A similar statue was unveiled in April at Port Columbus.

By then Mock had retired to Florida, in poor health but still modest about having “a little fun in my airplane.”

“There were dozens of women who could have done what I did,” Mock said in a recorded message played to the Columbus crowd, “All I did was have some fun. Statues are for generals, or Lincoln."

Bill Kelley was at the Port Columbus unveiling. A history buff, Kelley had pushed for 30 years for the statue, for which Mock’s sister was the model.

“He wanted her in flats (shoes),” his wife, Mary, said. But Mr. Kelley deferred to her and to Reid. who insisted that Mock be portrayed wearing the short, tapered “kitten heels” she always put on when she got out of the plane.

To Cliff Kelling, the statue looked just like the homemaker who had entrusted her safety to him and other Lane Aviation mechanics who prepared her plane for the flight.

“You kind of wonder who’s going to take a single-engine aircraft that’s got some wear on it and fly it around the world,” Kelling, a pilot and retired aviation-mechanics professor, said at the time. When told the pilot was a woman, “All I could do was admire her.”

Why she was never mentioned with the likes of other aviation heroes is often attributed to the times: President John F. Kennedy had been assassinated the previous fall, the Beatles had just arrived in America, and the Vietnam conflict was heating up.

Kelling attributed it to male chauvinism and the fact that Mock made it home alive.

“Amelia Earhart was lost, and that was news,” he said. “Jerrie Mock wasn’t lost, and that wasn’t news.”

At the Port Columbus unveiling, Mock’s daughter, Valerie Armentrout, said that her mother finally “will take her rightful position with Eddie Rickenbacker and (astronaut) Sally Ride.”

Growing up in Newark, Geraldine “Jerrie” Fredritz wanted something different. “I did not conform to what girls did,” she once said, adding, “What the girls did was boring.”

After her family took a short airplane ride at the local airport, 7-year-old Jerrie announced that she wanted to be a pilot. A few years later, as she listened to after-school radio broadcasts about the adventures Earhart, her heroine, she expanded her goal from flying across Ohio.

“I wanted to see the world,” she said. “I wanted to see the oceans and the jungles and the deserts and the people.”

http://www.dispatch.com/content/stor...-obituary.html

[Happy_Go_Lucky]

Maria Fernandes died napping in her car between part-time jobs, but let's focus on how she lived





http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/0...-how-she-lived


Maria Fernandes, the woman who died while napping in her car between shifts at the three different Dunkin' Donuts stores she worked at, is a powerful symbol of the horrors of America's low-wage economy. Rachel Swarns, writing in the New York Times, profiles Fernandes, seeking to make her "more than an emblem of our nation’s rising economic inequality." She was a Michael Jackson fan, an animal lover, and more. But you can't get around that her life—not just her death—was defined by her work, and by the low wages and impossible schedule it left her with

She had an apartment, but was falling behind on the $550 rent despite those three jobs. Dunkin' Donuts said she was a "model" employee, but wouldn't say how much she was paid or how many hours she worked. Which makes sense—it probably is in Dunkin' Donuts' best interest for us not to know how they treat their model employees.
Fernandes was certainly an individual who deserves to be remembered for who she was. But in a way her death is a reminder of how many people are one accident away from becoming emblems of rising inequality. And it shouldn't take a death to make us see the rank injustice of Maria Fernandes' life. The minimum wage should be higher than New Jersey's $8.25 an hour. Fast food chains like Dunkin' Donuts should offer workers regular schedules with enough hours, so they aren't forced to spend their days going from job to job, grabbing naps in between. Someone like Fernandes should not only be able to pay $550 a month for a basement apartment, she should also be able to afford her dream of going to cosmetology school. Maria Fernandes may have died in a way that focused attention on her life, but some of the attention should go to how sadly common the details of that life are. It should not be so ferociously difficult to get by, let alone get ahead, in this country.

[ProfPacker]

Still brings to mind the study Nickel and Dimed

[Happy_Go_Lucky]

Originally Posted by ProfPacker

Still brings to mind the study Nickel and Dimed

If I still taught school, ANY Barbara Ehrenreich book would be a 'must-read' in my class room. This country has lost its way.

[Kobi]

Paul Revere, a teenage businessman who found an outlet for his entrepreneurial spirit in the form of a campy rock 'n' roll band that capitalized on his name, wore Revolutionary War-era costumes and cranked out a string of grungy hits in the mid-1960s, has died. The founder of Paul Revere and the Raiders was 76.

Revere died Saturday of cancer at his home in Garden Valley, Idaho, his longtime manager Roger Hart told the Associated Press. After a near-constant touring schedule in recent years, Revere retreated six months ago to his adopted home state because of health issues, said his tour manager, Ron Lemen.

Along with singer and saxophonist Mark Lindsay, Revere, a keyboard player, formed a band called the Downbeats in Boise in 1959. Within a few years they would become Paul Revere and the Raiders, string together top-10 pop hits including "Kicks," "Hungry" and "Good Thing" and become fixtures of Dick Clark's weekday afternoon TV show "Where the Action Is."


"Just Like Me," a 1965 hit written by Revere and Lindsay, made the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's list of Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll.

Born Paul Revere Dick on Jan. 7, 1938, in Harvard, Neb., he grew up on a farm near Boise, where he learned to play piano. While still a teenager he opened a barbershop. At 18, with three barbershops to his name, he sold them to buy a drive-in restaurant and put together the band to attract young customers.

After some local success the Downbeats moved to Portland, Ore., in 1960 and with encouragement of their new manager, radio disc jockey Hart, renamed themselves Paul Revere and the Raiders. They recorded a 1963 version of "Louie Louie" that was eclipsed by another Portland garage band, the Kingsmen, but the Raiders were on their way to Hollywood.

Joined by early core members Drake Levin on guitar, Mike Smith on drums and Phil Volk on bass, the group performed a choreographed show in elaborate outfits complete with tri-cornered hats, brightly colored frock coats, white hose and knee-high black leather boots. In 1964, they signed a contract with Columbia Records as the label's first rock act and caught Clark's eye.

"From day one, we've always been a party band that accidentally had some hit records and accidentally got on a hit television series," Revere said in a 2000 interview with the Associated Press.

"We were visual and fun and crazy and were America's answer to the British music invasion. ... We just happened to be at the right time and had the right name and had the right gimmick."

Producer Terry Melcher honed the band's hard-edged, guitar-driven sound with Lindsay, the front man, providing the vocals. The blond Revere was content to remain in the background playing organ.

Besides performing as the house band on "Where the Action Is" beginning in 1965, Paul Revere and the Raiders appeared on Clark's later "Happening" shows as well as "The Ed Sullivan Show," "The Tonight Show" and as themselves on the "Batman" TV show in 1966.

The band had 20 consecutive hits and reached its peak with John D. Loudermilk's "Indian Reservation" at No. 1 in 1971, but a revolving door of band members and changing musical tastes led to its decline. Revere maintained a busy pace of touring and appearing at state fairs, casinos and clubs.

http://www.latimes.com/local/obituar...006-story.html

[Kobi]

Actress Marian Seldes, the Tony Award-winning star of "A Delicate Balance" who was a teacher of Kevin Kline and Robin Williams, a muse to playwright Edward Albee and a Guinness Book of World Records holder for most consecutive performances, died Monday at age 86.

Marian Seldes made her Broadway debut in 1947 in a production of "Medea," starring the versatile actress Judith Anderson, and later appeared in hits such as "Equus" and "Deathtrap." Her most recent Broadway outing was in Terrence McNally's "Deuce" in 2007, starring opposite Angela Lansbury.

Seldes was nominated for a Tony five times, for her performances in "A Delicate Balance," ''Father's Day," ''Deathtrap," ''Ring Round the Moon" and "Dinner at Eight." She won in 1967 for "A Delicate Balance" and won her second Tony in 2010 for lifetime achievement.

Her collaborations with Albee included "Three Tall Women," which won the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for drama, "The Play About the Baby," ''Tiny Alice" and "Father's Day."

But she moved easily from role to role, from Chekhov's "Ivanov" to Peter Shaffer's "Equus," from Ira Levin's "Deathtrap" to Tony Kushner's "A Bright Room Called Day" and Tina Howe's "Painting Churches." Her off-Broadway credits also include "The Ginger Man" and "Painting Churches."

Seldes' reliability and professionalism sealed her place in the Guinness World Records for a time after playing every performance during the run of "Deathtrap" from 1978 to 1982 — a total of 1,809 performances. Her record as most durable actress has since been broken by Catherine Russell, who logged over 11,000 performances in the off-Broadway production of "Perfect Crime."

From 1969 to 1992, she served on the faculty of the Juilliard School, teaching the craft of acting to such pupils as Kline, Williams, Patti LuPone, Laura Linney, Mandy Patinkin and Christopher Reeve.

Seldes also acted in films, in "Mona Lisa Smile," ''Home Alone 3" and "Celebrity." On television she appeared in "Nurse Jackie" and played Candice Bergen's aunt in "Murphy Brown" and Mr. Big's mother in "Sex and the City." She also wrote two books: a memoir, "The Bright Lights: A Theater Life," and a novel, "Time Together."

Seldes, a slim and elegant woman who often wore her hair pulled back, studied with Sanford Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse and made her professional debut at age 17 in Robinson Jeffers' "Medea," with Anderson.

Her other Broadway credits include "Crime and Punishment," ''The Chalk Garden," ''The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore," Oliver Hailey's "Father's Day," for which she won a Drama Desk Award, Arnold Wesker's "The Merchant" and Kanin's "A Gift of Time."

In 1995, she was inducted into the Theatre Hall of Fame, marking 50 years in the profession, but she missed the ceremony because — typically — she was on tour with "Three Tall Women" in Los Angeles.

- See more at: http://www.legacy.com/ns/obituary.as....x24tCzxO.dpuf

[Linus]

Geoffrey Holder, the Tony-winning actor, dancer and choreographer known to millions as Baron Samedi in Bond movie Live and Let Die, has died at 84.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-29505646


http://www.latimes.com/local/obituar...007-story.html