RIP

[Kobi]

Dawn Coe-Jones, a Canadian professional golfer, died Saturday, Nov. 12, 2016, after a battle with brain cancer. She was 56.

Dawn Coe was born Oct. 19, 1960, in Campbell River, British Columbia. As a teenager, she worked at a nearby golf course as a groundskeeper. She attended Lamar University, where she was an All-American golfer, and graduated with a degree in elementary education. She won several amateur events, including the Canadian Women’s Amateur in 1983.

She joined the LPGA tour in 1984 and would continue to tour until 2008. During that time, she won three events: the 1992 Women’s Kemper Open, the 1994 HealthSouth Palm Beach Classic, and the 1995 Chrysler-Plymouth Tournament of Champions. She amassed more than $3.3 million in winnings during her career.

Coe-Jones was inducted into the Canadian Golf Hall of Fame in 2003.

[Orema]

(Sharon Jones performing at Radio City Music Hall in 2009. Credit Nicholas Roberts for the New York Times)

Sharon Jones, the soul singer and powerful voice of the band the Dap-Kings, died on Friday of pancreatic cancer that had been in remission but returned last year. She was 60.

Ms. Jones’s death was confirmed by Judy Miller Silverman, her publicist. She said Ms. Jones was surrounded by members of the Dap-Kings and other loved ones when she died.

She continued performing throughout the summer, even while undergoing chemotherapy that she said caused neuropathy in her feet and legs and restricted her movements onstage. But Ms. Jones remained undeterred.

“Getting out on that stage, that’s my therapy,” Ms. Jones said in a New York Times interview published in July. “You have to look at life the way it is. No one knows how long I have. But I have the strength now, and I want to continue.”

The summer tour promoted “I’m Still Here,” a single with the Dap-Kings that detailed Ms. Jones’s birth in a brutally segregated South, a childhood in the burned-out Bronx, and a career hampered by record executives who considered her “too short, too fat, too black and too old.”

Ms. Jones was that rare music star who found fame in middle age, when she was in her 40s.

In addition to working as a correction officer at Rikers Island and an armed guard for Wells Fargo, Ms. Jones, who had grown up singing gospel in church choirs, initially dabbled in professional music as a session singer and the vocalist in a wedding band, Good N Plenty.

After meeting Gabriel Roth, the producer and songwriter also known as Bosco Mann, Ms. Jones made the leap from backup singer to main attraction. Desco Records released her debut 7-inch vinyl single, “Damn It’s Hot,” in 1996. She was 40.

With the encouragement and songwriting of Mr. Roth, who co-founded the Brooklyn soul and funk revival label Daptone Records and serves as the bandleader of the Dap-Kings, Ms. Jones’s full-length debut, “Dap Dippin’ with Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings,” came out in 2002. She would go on to release four more studio albums and two compilations on the small label, a point of pride for the fiercely independent Ms. Jones.

“A major label’s going to do what?” she said to Billboard last year. “I sing one or two songs, they give me a few million dollars, which they’re going to want back, and then the next thing you know, the next record don’t sell, and then they’re kicking me to the curb. With us, this is our label, this is our project.”


(Ms. Jones in 2007. She fought pancreatic cancer after a 2013 diagnosis. Chester Higgins, Jr. for the New York Times)

Sharon Lafaye Jones was born on May 4, 1956, in Augusta, Ga., though her family lived just across the border in North Augusta, S.C. In “Miss Sharon Jones!” the singer recalled that her mother had needed a cesarean section, but because of segregation in the Jim Crow south, she was not allowed in the hospital’s main unit and was instead relegated to a storage room.

After her parents separated, Ms. Jones, the youngest of six children, moved with her mother to New York and was raised in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. “But New York in 1960, no peace to be found,” she sang on “I’m Still Here.” “Segregation, drugs and violence was all around.”

She went on to attend Brooklyn College and acted in “Sister Salvation,” an Off-Broadway play, before turning her focus to music.

With her late start, Ms. Jones recorded and performed at an unrelenting pace, and in the last year and a half of her life she made two albums, opened two national tours for Hall & Oates, was featured in a television commercial for Lincoln (performing the Allman Brothers’ “Midnight Rider”) and starred in “Miss Sharon Jones!,” a documentary about her life.

The film traced her life from the diagnosis of Stage 2 pancreatic cancer in 2013 through her triumphant return to the stage in 2015. Ms. Jones is survived by four siblings, seven nieces and three nephews.

“Sharon is always up,” the film’s director, Barbara Kopple, said at the time of its release. “Even when she’s in the room where people are getting chemo, she’s the sunshine.”

During her illness, Ms. Jones and the Dap-Kings earned a Grammy nomination in 2015 for best R&B album with “Give the People What They Want.” (“Why is there not a category for soul?” Ms. Jones told Billboard at the time. “That’s my goal. Put me in the right category.”)

The singer, who also collaborated live and on tour with Lou Reed, Phish, Michael Bublé and David Byrne, publicly announced the return of her cancer in September 2015 at the film’s first showing at the Toronto International Film Festival. Doctors, she said, had found a spot on her liver. “I didn’t want people to come up and congratulate me on beating cancer when it’s back,” she said.

That recurrence was treated with radiation. But in May, while she was on tour, cancer cells were found in her stomach, lymph nodes and lungs. Chemotherapy was required, although Ms. Jones changed the regimen to give her greater freedom of movement.

“I need to dance onstage,” she said. “I don’t want something that makes me bedridden. I want to live my life to the fullest.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/19/ar...T.nav=top-news

[kittygrrl]

[Kätzchen]

I watched a very nice group presentation of Gwen's peers processing shock over her death, a couple days ago. Gwen was just 4 years older than I, but she died from complications associated with her spiraling case of Endometrial cancer. Gwen was 61. She was on the job, fearless in all she did, was not only well informed on most political subjects, but like her peers discussed on the TV show, Gwen always came to the table with an open mind and looked for other ways in which subject matter could be explored via other points of view or by building in-roads toward discovery of anything controversial or the mundane. Truly a very kind and caring peer in the field of communication (Journalism ). Rest in peace.

[Kobi]

Florence Henderson, who went from a Broadway star to become one of America's most beloved television moms in "The Brady Bunch, " has died. She was 82.

On the surface, "The Brady Bunch," with Ms. Henderson as its ever-cheerful matriarch Carol Brady, resembled just another TV sitcom about a family living in suburban America and getting into a different wacky situation each week.

But well after it ended its initial run, in 1974, the show resonated with audiences, and it returned to television in various forms again and again, including "The Brady Bunch Hour" in 1977, "The Brady Brides" in 1981 and "The Bradys" in 1990. It was also seen endlessly in reruns.

Premiering in 1969, it also was among the first shows to introduce to television the blended family.

Early in her career, Henderson appeared in the title role of the musical Fanny, and Rodgers and Hammerstein made her the female lead in a 1952 tour of Oklahoma!, a role she reprised for a Broadway revival in 1954, earning critical plaudits along the way. In a career spanning six decades, Henderson's many credits include playing Maria in a road production of The Sound of Music, Nellie Forbush in a revival of South Pacific, and Mary Morgan in The Girl Who Came to Supper.

A winner of two Gracie Awards, the stage and screen performer's one and only hit on the Billboard charts came in 1970 with the Decca Records release "Conversations," which reached No. 25 on the Adult Contemporary chart.

[Kobi]

Fidel Castro, Cuba’s revolutionary leader and former president, has died at 90, his brother Raul Castro announced on Friday night.

Castro was president of Cuba from 1976 to 2008, when he stepped down to allow his brother to take power. He was previously prime minister from the Communist revolution in 1959 to 1976.

[Kobi]

Ron Glass, the actor best known for his work on “Barney Miller” and “Firefly,” died Friday, November 26. He was 71.

Glass played the intellectual Det. Ron Harris on the sitcom “Barney Miller” from 1975 – 1982. The show was hailed by critics and police officers for its realistic depiction of police work while also delivering consistent laughs. Much of the humor for his character stemmed from his dapper fashion sense and dreams of becoming a writer. He was nominated for an Emmy for supporting actor in 1982.

Years later he was part of another ensemble show, the sci-fi adventure series “Firefly” (2002). Although the series lasted less than one season it developed a cult following and a film, “Serenity” was released in 2005. Glass played Shepherd Derrial Book, a spiritual leader and moral guide to the rest of the crew of the spaceship Serenity. However, there are frequent references to the character’s less wholesome past.

Glass was born July 10, 1945 in Evansville, Indiana. He studied Drama and Literature at the University of Evansville and made his stage debut at the famed Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis. He then moved to Los Angeles where he made his first television appearance in an episode of “Sanford and Son” in 1972.

After “Barney Miller” Glass was tapped in 1982 to play neat-freak Felix Unger in an updated version of “The Odd Couple” called “The New Odd Couple.” The series featured an African-American cast and often re-used scripts from earlier Tony Randall/Jack Klugman series. It lasted for one season.

Glass worked consistently in film and television and was a frequent guest star on many popular shows. He played Ross Geller’s divorce lawyer, Russell, on “Friends” and made recent appearances on “CSI” and “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.”

[girlin2une]

Originally Posted by Kobi

Florence Henderson, who went from a Broadway star to become one of America's most beloved television moms in "The Brady Bunch, " has died. She was 82.

On the surface, "The Brady Bunch," with Ms. Henderson as its ever-cheerful matriarch Carol Brady, resembled just another TV sitcom about a family living in suburban America and getting into a different wacky situation each week.

But well after it ended its initial run, in 1974, the show resonated with audiences, and it returned to television in various forms again and again, including "The Brady Bunch Hour" in 1977, "The Brady Brides" in 1981 and "The Bradys" in 1990. It was also seen endlessly in reruns.

Premiering in 1969, it also was among the first shows to introduce to television the blended family.

Early in her career, Henderson appeared in the title role of the musical Fanny, and Rodgers and Hammerstein made her the female lead in a 1952 tour of Oklahoma!, a role she reprised for a Broadway revival in 1954, earning critical plaudits along the way. In a career spanning six decades, Henderson's many credits include playing Maria in a road production of The Sound of Music, Nellie Forbush in a revival of South Pacific, and Mary Morgan in The Girl Who Came to Supper.

A winner of two Gracie Awards, the stage and screen performer's one and only hit on the Billboard charts came in 1970 with the Decca Records release "Conversations," which reached No. 25 on the Adult Contemporary chart.

This made me so sad...