RIP

[Kobi]

Tom Petty has died at the age of 66.

The Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers lead singer was removed from life support after tests revealed he had no brain function following a cardiac arrest.

Rock n Roll Hall Of Famer Petty first found fame in the 1970s with his band releasing hits including Breakdown, American Girl, The Waiting, Free Fallin', Stop Draggin' My Heart Around and Listen to Her Heart.

He had success both as part of The Heartbreakers - with whom he worked on and off for 40 years - and as a solo artist.

He also formed part of the 1980s supergroup the Traveling Wilburys alongside Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Jeff Lynne and Roy Orbison. Petty continued to work as a popular musician up until his death.

Petty's most recent album, 2014's Hypnotic Eye, was the first Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers to top the charts in the U.S.

The artist had just completed a 40th anniversary 53-date tour with The Heartbreakers, winning good reviews with his final performance at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles on September 22.

[GeorgiaMa'am]

Originally Posted by Kobi

Tom Petty has died at the age of 66.

Oh no! I loved his music. He was still so young!

[cricket26]

[Kobi]

Um, I always check more than one source before I post about a death. I checked more than a few on Tom Petty because the stories were oddly written.

As far as I can tell, at the moment, Tom Petty is still with us. He was found unconscious after a cardiac arrest and was placed on life support. The life support was supposedly removed after he was declared brain dead with a do not resuscitate order now in place. That seems to be consistent through all the current reports.

Sorry about that.

[Kobi]

Over and over, Rita Henley Jensen's friends and colleagues describe her as "a force." They call her formidable and extraordinary. Jensen used those strengths to fight her way out of poverty and into an award-winning career in journalism, working all the while to amplify women's voices and advocate for their health and welfare.

Jensen, the founder of Women's eNews and of the Jane Crow Project, died Oct. 18 of breast cancer. She was 70.

Born Jan. 1, 1947 in Columbus, Ohio, Jensen built her success from an unlikely starting point: She was a teen mother with an abusive boyfriend who later became her abusive husband. She remained in that marriage for six years before leaving on the heels of her husband's threats to kill her and their two daughters.

Alone, in her mid-20s and with children to feed, Jensen relied on welfare and a waitressing job and "tried not to eat much myself" in order to save precious pennies, as she recounted in an essay in the book "Nothing But the Truth So Help Me God: 73 Women on Life’s Transitions." Determined to rise out of poverty, she borrowed money and applied for scholarships to attend the Ohio State University, beginning her college education at 25.

Jensen received her bachelor's degree from Ohio State in 1976, then completed a Master's at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism in New York City.

Jensen's award-winning journalism career began with her first job out of graduate school, working as a general assignment reporter for the Paterson News in Paterson, New Jersey. While at the newspaper for just two years, she won eight awards for her investigative journalism. She moved on to write for the Stamford Advocate, the American Lawyer, and the National Law Journal, as well as freelancing for news outlets including the New York Times, ABA Journal and Ms. Magazine, before creating the organization that became her crowning achievement.

Women's eNews was born from Jensen's desire to fill a hole in traditional media coverage of events and issues. "I was a prize-winning investigative reporter," Jensen told Sheryl McCarthy in a 2011 interview for CUNY's One on One, "but I began to say, 'I have to focus on what's going on with women, because no one else is.'"

Founded by Jensen as a project of the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund in 1999, Women's eNews became an independent organization in 2002. Jensen described to McCarthy the Women's eNews approach to news coverage: "We will not endorse a candidate, but we will report the issues from the perspective of women's interests. We had a recent piece about the health plans: Do they really cover the issues most concerned to women? We'll cover the war as it concerns women. The thing that's going around right now about children's health coverage – that also covers pregnant women, but you haven't heard a word of it in other media. So we'll be covering that as that controversy continues."

Women's eNews has been widely honored with awards including the Casey Medal for Meritorious Reporting. It was among the 100 Best Websites for Women named by Forbes in 2013, and About.com readers named it their "Favorite Women's Rights Blog or Website" in 2012.

While serving as editor in chief at Women's eNews, Jensen began a years-long investigative project focusing on maternal mortality rates among African American women. Those rates, she found, are substantially higher than they are for white women: Across the U.S., African-American women are three to four times more likely to die due to pregnancy and childbirth-related complications than white women. In some states, they’re as much as 14 times more likely to die of those causes than women of other races. It's a statistic that has improved for women of other races in the past 100 years, but not for African American women.

Digging into the causes and repercussions of this phenomenon became a passion project for Jensen, and in 2016, she left Women's eNews, retaining editor in chief emerita status, to work full time on what became the Jane Crow Project. A book, "Jane Crow: Why the Mothers Are Dying," was in progress at the time of Jensen's death.

Of Jensen's work with the Jane Crow Project, Jensen-Vargas noted, "Her groundbreaking journalism can be indirectly attributed to the saving of African American lives by bringing the attention of the high mortality rates of African American moms and babies in the U.S. to the attention of the U.N. and the New York Task Force, which has resulted in the establishment of a department in New York City specially appointed to resolve that issue."

Jensen received many awards and honors for her work, including being named by the New York Daily News in 2004 as one of the "100 Women Who Shape Our City." In 2016, the Women's Economic Forum included Jensen among their Women of the Decade awards as an "Iconic Thought Leader of the Decade in Media." Her other honors include the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism Alumni award, the Alicia Patterson fellowship and the Lloyd P. Burns Public Service prize.

As Jensen's career advanced, she never forgot the days when she struggled in an abusive marriage and then as a single mother. The experience led her to be an advocate for women, speaking frankly about her background – her bios always mentioned that she was a domestic abuse survivor – and pointing out injustices against women. In a 1995 article for Ms. Magazine, she said that her work only began with reporting the facts about women. It continued with fierce advocacy: "I think we have to raise hell any way we can."

Jensen's longtime friend and colleague, Susy Schultz, president of Public Narrative and founding president of the Association for Women Journalists – Chicago, spoke to Legacy.com about how Jensen's impulse to raise hell made her a powerful force for women. "At times, people thought that Rita was difficult, but she was passionate, and she wanted to change the world. Really, difficult women often change the world."

[Kobi]

Emmy Award-winning actor Robert Guillaume, best known as the title character in the TV sitcom “Benson,” died Tuesday. He was 89.

Guillaume often played acerbic, dry-witted, but ultimately lovable characters like the butler Benson Du Bois, which he created on the 1977 series “Soap,” before his character was spun off in 1979. Guillaume won Emmys both for “Soap” (as supporting actor) and “Benson” (as lead actor).

He was also known as the the voice of Rafiki in “The Lion King,” for which he also won a Grammy for a spoken word recording.

“Benson” ran on ABC for seven years until 1986. The butler slowly evolved to become a government official, deflecting early complaints by critics like the Washington Post’s Tom Shales that his character was a “male Mammy.” The show brought Guillaume an Emmy in 1985 for lead actor in a comedy.

In the late ’90s he took on the role of Isaac Jaffe, executive producer of a cable sports show on the ABC sitcom “Sports Night,” and continued to perform even after being felled by a stroke.

But Guillaume also possessed a powerful, mellifluous voice, which he used most notably to play the title role in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Phantom of the Opera” onstage.

After suffering through a period of unemployment during the ’70s, he was cast in an all-black revival of “Guys and Dolls” as Nathan Detroit, which debuted on Broadway in 1977 and secured him a Tony nomination. He also guested during this period on sitcoms such as “All in the Family,” “Good Times,” “Sanford and Son” and “The Jeffersons,” which led to the supporting role of Benson in “Soap.”

After leaving “Benson” behind, he starred in TV movie “John Grin’s Christmas,” a black retelling of “A Christmas Carol” that was Guillaume’s directorial debut. He tried another sitcom in 1989, “The Robert Guillaume Show,” playing a marriage counselor. The series lasted four months before ABC pulled the plug.

He returned to singing in 1990 in the Los Angeles production of “Phantom of the Opera” and on Broadway in the lead role of “Cyrano — The Musical” for four months beginning in November 1993. He also performed regularly in concert.

He was featured in films such as “Meteor Man,” “First Kid” and “Spy Hard.” On television he appeared in the HBO family series “Happily Ever After” and TV movies and miniseries including “Children of the Dust,” “Run for the Dream” and “Pandora’s Clock.”

Guillaume returned to series television in 1998 on “Sports Night” as the fictitious sports program’s producer. A year later he suffered a stroke and was waylaid for a few months. When he returned his illness was worked into the storyline of the series until the series ended its run on ABC the following year.

During the 2000s Guillaume made a few guest appearances on TV shows, including on “8 Simple Rules” in 2003 and “CSI” in 2008, but he focused more heavily on voicework for straight-to-video animated children’s films and videogames.

He appeared in Tim Burton’s “Big Fish” in 2003, and then made more frequent bigscreen appearances later in the decade, appearing in the Christian film “The Secrets of Jonathan Sperry” in 2008; in the thriller “Columbus Circle,” starring Selma Blair, in 2010; and in the small musical dramedy “Satin” in 2011.

Robert Peter Williams was born in St. Louis, Mo., changing his name only after he decided on a career in acting. After completing his schooling he joined the Army in 1945 and was discharged 15 months later. He took on a number of menial jobs while studying nights at St. Louis U. He originally intended to study business but became interested in singing and transferred to Washington U. to study voice and theater.

His performance at the 1957 Aspen Music Festival led to an apprenticeship at the Karamu Performing Arts Theater in Cleveland, where he appeared in operas and musical comedies.

After moving to New York, he made his Broadway debut in a 1960 revival of “Finian’s Rainbow” and found regular employment in the chorus of shows like “Fly, Blackbird,” “Golden Boy” and “Porgy and Bess.” In 1972 he took on the title role in the musical “Purlie” and also appeared in the revue “Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris.”

http://variety.com/2017/tv/news/robe...on-1202598171/

[girl_dee]

Someone in New Orleans just texted me that Fats Domino passed away. If this is true it's a huge loss