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Yep, a passle of us worked together to locate Croghan's beloved Queenie and someone drove across southern Ontario from west to east to adopt her!
Oh God Im so sorry to hear this. He was a good friend and we used to exchange books thru the mail.
Rod's obituary and details about the service Tuesday
On friendship, crowdsourcing and blogospherical possibilities - Dawg's Blawg (Blog)
A lovely tribute, and testament to the power and love of an online community
Anishinabek mourn passing of Grandfather William Commanda
Rudolf Brazda, last known "Pink Triangle" survivor of Nazi camps, dies at age of 98.
Condolences on Rob's passing.
Australian Nancy Wake, who as a spy became one the Allies' most decorated servicewomen for her role in the French resistance during World War II, has died in London, officials said Monday. She was 98.
Code named "The White Mouse" by the Gestapo during the war, Wake died Sunday in a London nursing home, Prime Minister Julia Gillard said
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2011/08/08/nancy-wake-white-mouse.htm...I don't see why we women should just wave our men a proud goodbye and then knit them balaclavas.
Marcellus Richard Andrew. 19 y.o. college student beaten to death in Waterloo, Iowa.
Jerry Leiber dies at 78; lyricist in songwriting duo Leiber and Stoller
excerpt:
Jerry Leiber , who with his songwriting partner Mike Stoller , created a songbook that infused the rock 'n' roll scene of the 1950s and early '60s with energy and mischievous humor, has died. He was 78.
excerpt:
Graham in his book on the duo points out that radio was mostly regional and TV had just started coming into American living rooms when Leiber and Stoller started writing for Ray Charles, Joe Turner and other black artists. It was only when Presley covered "Hound Dog" in 1956 that their music began crossing over into the mainstream, paving the way for rock 'n' roll to dominate the youth culture.
Jerry Leiber dies at 78; lyricist in songwriting duo Leiber and Stoller
excerpt:
Jerry Leiber , who with his songwriting partner Mike Stoller , created a songbook that infused the rock 'n' roll scene of the 1950s and early '60s with energy and mischievous humor, has died. He was 78.
excerpt:
Graham in his book on the duo points out that radio was mostly regional and TV had just started coming into American living rooms when Leiber and Stoller started writing for Ray Charles, Joe Turner and other black artists. It was only when Presley covered "Hound Dog" in 1956 that their music began crossing over into the mainstream, paving the way for rock 'n' roll to dominate the youth culture.
Here's a documentary on them:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M29TEIvgjDQ
And some 1950s TV fun:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HaavKyReys
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1sQB9oYc1Y&feature=related
Nancy Riche - feminist, socialist, trade union leader, Newfoundlander. Rest in peace, Sister.
Fred Shuttlesworth, founder of the Birmingham (Alabama) Civil Rights Movement. This is the guy who got Dr. King involved. Oh yeah.
I remember a quote of his from a documentary I once saw. He had been beaten by a lynch mob with brass knuckles and was nearly dead. His doctor told him he was lucky to be alive, and he said that he was glad he was given a thick head because that is what it takes to see the job done to the very end.
Baptist Press - link on Fred Shuttlesworth
Dennis Ritchie, father of Unix and C, dies
I'm very sorry to announce that another babbler has died. Some of you, particularly Toronto- and Montreal-based activists, will know that Alexandra Artful Dodger was struck and killed by an impaired driver late last Friday night. Alex also wrote for rabble occasionally and had been a regular babble contributor under the handle pencil-skirt. For those that knew her, it is a very sad loss. My thanks to Tehanu for making me aware of her babble connection.
rabble.ca remembers Alexandra Artful Dodger
Damn. That's sickening. No one should be taken like that, or that young(age 27).
My sympathies to Alexandra's friends and family.
That is utterly ghastly.
Despite her family's wishes, I'd never give a red cent to MADD. That group is a bunch of car-addicted puritan prohibitionists who never say anything about the "driving" half (or more) of the murderous drink-driving mix. They advocate "safe, sober driving". Screw them.
Amnesty, yes, but also groups working to put humans and other animals before cars. I'd add justice for Palestinians to the donation list, as so much of the aggression against peoples of the Middle East is tied to pertroleum addiction, and Alexandra was involved in the Palestinian cause.
What a horrible loss.
Bob Rosen, a friend.
Thanks Ripple. Love and sympathy for your loss.
Ken Russell, 1927-2011 - Film director lauded for gay content
Stalin's daughter. She had finally retired to the U.S.
Alan Sues, best known as "Uncle Al, the Kiddie's Pal" on ROWAN AND MARTIN'S LAUGH-IN, dead at 85:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-16029468
Dobie Gray, singer/songwriter, creator of the country-soul anthem "Drift Away"
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/dobie-gray-drift-away-death-270338
Harry Morgan, age 96.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Morgan
Tribute to Bob Rosen on rabble radio
The last colonel of Mash 4077, Henry Morgan.
Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, 65, biographer, Hannah Arendt: For Love of the World, and Anna Freud: A Biography. Leaving a tenured professorship, she continued to write, The Anatomy of Prejudices leading to her last work, Childism: Confronting Prejudice Against Children.
She had no children of her own from a brief marriage 40 years ago and had, as the Globe's Sandra Martin tells it, " made her name writing about two other childless women, became fascinated with children through writing Anna Freud's biography, her own work as a therapist and her personal life as an aunt and a stepmother.
"She came to believe that prejudice against children was intertwined with all the other prejudices she had written about, and was also embedded in the history of psychoanalysis.
"Childism" will be published by Yale Press next month."
She died on Dec. 1 from a pulmonary embolism after attending a Tafelmusik concert in Toronto with her partner in marriage, Christine Dunbar.
A feminist of the old school who fought for workplace rights, Mary Eady, 85, women's rights activist passes.
Reported today as the Globe's feature obituary: "As Manitoba's first Women's Bureau director during Ed Schreyer's NDP government, she championed women's rights on issues including pension reforms,daycare and employment equity... (and later) deputy minister of labour under Howard Pawley .." In between those appointments, she was director of the Women's Bureau for the Canadian Labour Congress.
Francis Lankin "remember(s) Mary sahying to me that women need to be able to live, to survive,and thrive, and to leadand support families... Eady led the way, but she developed a large number of us to keep that progress moving."
The volunteer treasurer of the NDP in its beginning days, she was "a pal" of Tommy Douglas.
George Whitman, owner of Paris's famous Shakespeare & Co.
You may not know his name but if you speak English and have ever visited Paris you probably know his bookshop: Shakespeare & Co.
Whitman set up the shop in 1951. He was one of a generation of Americans — mostly ex GIs on the GI bill — who went to Paris after World War II and tried to re-start the party that made the French capital the center of western culture in the ’20s and ’30s, the place where the Hemingway and Fitzgerald legends were born.
The Paris Review was started. William Styron, Norman Mailer, James Jones, George Plimpton, humorist Art Buchwald and jazz musicians too numerous to mention moved back. There were so many Americans in the city that M-G-M made a Gene Kelly musical about ex-patriot life called “An American in Paris” the year Whitman opened his shop. It won the Best Picture Oscar.
Whitman was not the owner of the original Shakespeare & Co., publisher of Ulysses and otherwise nexus of American ex-pat modernism. That was Sylvia Beach. But he was propreitor of a damn fine shop nevertheless.
This comment has been moved here.
How strangely appropriate that he died the day the U.S. officially pulled its troops out of Iraq, since his position on that was what gave him his "big break in show biz", so to speak.
That said, Hitchens was one of the few people I disagreed with on major issues whose articles and essays I still found worth reading.
The best memorial tribute President Obama could pay him would be to finally turn Henry Kissinger over to the ICC a war crimes trial. That would be MUCH more appropriate than any damn sympathy card.
I doubt I'll ever be able to fathom his reasoning for supporting George Bush and the Iraq War. He reviled Kissinger but aligned himself with the likes of Albright and Rice.
The most literate, talented, and widely cited propagandist of neoconservative imperialism. The Joseph Goebbels of our time.
There was a time when the right had few, if any, constructive things to say about him as well. He wasn't above calling for the use of one tyranny to suppress another. But of course everything went much further beyond than just a group of bullies going at one another. To him and Albright everything was worth it...which reeks of elitist Anglo-American imperialism.
There is a good deal I disagree with him on, and I found his arrogance and intolerance particularly annoying.
But for me, that is eclipsed by the fact that he spoke his mind, practiced his craft fearlessly, and he knew how to turn a phrase like no other. And on a number of issues, he was right, certainly right enough that anything he wrote was worth reading, for me anyway, whether I always agreed or not.
No, I think speaking out the way he did in support of George Bush and the neo-con project for the Middle East and Central Asia forever tarnished his work. To my knowledge he never provided a solid enough explanation of himself in that regard, beyond a visceral dislike of Islamic fundamentalism, which couldn't very well hold up as an argument in the case of Iraq under Hussein. It really came down then to a dislike of tyrants in general, but there were so many other examples to choose from that he rendered himself inexplicable by narrowing in that regard to align with an obvious economic agenda.
@ SJ
Sorry man, I don't go in for that shame bullshit.
When he was wrong he was wrong, but when he was right he was right. And he had an incisive intellect, which was always worth paying attention to.
And believe me, I speak as one who was furious with him more often than I agreed with him. Even so, I have respect for him.
Most importantly, he did not temper his work according to what others felt he SHOULD say. In that, I think he has more of the true journalist in him than many in the profession.
Well, if it's turned out that he is standing in front of someone at the moment, he should be hanging his head in shame on that account at least. On the other hand I happen to agree with much of what I've read and heard from him.
That is funny (and I am not saying it in a pointed way at all, so please don't take it as such) . Because on the issues I strongly disagreed with him - a lot. But I really admire the way he did his job.
Anyone willing to submit to abuse to experience first hand if it was torture or not, or to write without compromise or mawkishness about his impending death gets points in my book.
And while I'm not a 100% atheist, I sure don't believe in any final judgment of that sort.
Alexander Cockburn on Hitchens' passing:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2011/12/16/farewell-to-c-h/
They had apparently been feuding for a number of years.
The discussion might be better carried on in a different thread on "the legacy of CH."
Cockburn's description is pretty accurate.
Key points that come through are:
Hitch did not: "right or wrong call'em as see's em" and played with facts and fiction as equally useful tools.
Hitchens was devoid of integrity or attempts at truth finding in his propagandizing enterprise.
His polemics were laden with calculated deception (what he boasts of as his skills in "chopping logic" in his autobiography).
He was not "a contrarian" but the servant of his latest ideological embrace with neoconservatism and like many true believers, saw nothing wrong in using deception for The Cause.
Clumsily tried to move this discussion here. Didn't quite work as planned, but we'll make it work, hey? Please continue all Hitchens-related apocrypha there.
I was sad to hear that Cesaria Evora has died.
Cape Verde's Barefoot Diva Gone
Czech playright, dissident, and president Vaclav Havel:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-16236393
That sucks.
TMZ broke the news that Joe Bodolai, producer of comedy series "Kids In the Hall", "Comics" and "Wayne's World", committed suicide on December 23rd.
Joe's last message
Did NOT know of him...Christ, I wish I had while he was living.
Too many times, the world drives good people to this choice, dammit!
Tarzan's long-time advisor, Cheetah:
http://www.cnn.com/2011/12/28/showbiz/obit-tarzan-cheetah/index.html
Astrid Brown-O'Herlihy, 28, co-chair of the Ontario New Democratic Youth from 2000 to 2001. She leaves a daughter, 7.
Those who knew Astrid are invited to contribute any memories to scrapbooks her sister is keeping for her daughter.
Nicol Williamson, 1936-2011:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-16727853
(he died December 16th, but the death was just announced today by his family)
Nicol Williamson, 1936-2011:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-16727853
(he died December 16th, but the death was just announced today by his family)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvE-kML1kbA&feature=related
a truly great actor - RIP
Former Vancouver Mayor & hippie fighter Tom "Terrific" Campbell:
http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Former+Vancouver+mayor+Terrific+Campbell+dies/6098754/story.html
http://fathertheo.wordpress.com/2010/01/05/helmets-broomstick-men-the-police-riot-of-%E2%80%9871/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJ7sjqEODuk
http://www.straight.com/article-599491/vancouver/former-vancouver-mayor-tom-campbell-dies
Don Cornelius, the host of "Soul Train":
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-16941528
A musician friend of mine here in Juneau named Buddy Tabor(who made his living as a housepainter, until nearly the end)....who released nine albums of original music and made annual concert-visits to Folsom Prison for years(including one last visit this last November-he would sing to the inmates and let them sing back to him using his guitar).
This summer, he was diagnosed with Stage Four lung cancer. This Sunday, he died from it, at the age of 63.
here's a YouTube video featuring one of his later songs "Corporate Domination":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czz8gogf5rI
Damaged music legend Whitney Houston, aged 48
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-17001548
The only song of hers I can recall is "I will always love you" from the movie with Kevin Costner.
RIP Whitney
What a fabulous voice, and now she's gone. Sad.
Special gifts often come with special challenges. Ms Houston had extraordinary gifts.
untold thousands of Iraqis
Shirley Schmid, a pioneer in the cooperative housing movement.
http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/vancouversun/obituary.aspx?n=shirley-sc...
Michael Davis, bassist for the MC5
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/bassist-michael-davis-from-influential-60s-band-mc5-dies-at-age-68/2012/02/18/gIQAyIVeMR_story.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iM6nasmkg7A&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEi1-FSec24&feature=BFa&list=AVGxdCwVVULXcKc7Ai2bdxNa2dlxT2tzaW&lf=list_related
Vancouver DTES activist Jim Green succumbed to cancer this morning just after 6am. RIP.
Davy Jones, a member of 1960s pop sensations the Monkees, has died at age 66 after suffering a heart attack.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/story/2012/02/29/davy-jones.htmlReally sorry to hear that. Makes me feel a lot older. Enjoyed his songs (Daydream Believer, A Little Bit Me A Little Bit You) and the TV show as a kid.
OTOH:
http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2012/03/01/andrew-breitbart-well-known-conserv...
self-delete. Somebody beat me to the news.
I don't often use the phrase "Rot in hell, scumbag", but with Breitbart...it's still an understatement.
Is it too soon to add Binyamin Netanyahu and Stephen Harperyahu to this thread? Just askin'.
It is if they're still breathing...you have any inside information on that?
Hope springs eternal.
Is Ariel Sharon still in a coma?
An obituary for Breitbart:
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/andrew-breitbart-dea...
And Breitbart's final notable public appearance. Three weeks ago: Beitbart v. OWS:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4od4QQVK1o&feature=player_embedded
Laurent Desjardins, the francophone Manitoba Liberal MLA whose post-1969 provincial election decision to leave his "free enterprise" party and sit as a "Liberal-Democrat", providing parliamentary support to Ed Schreyer in a minority situation, gave Manitoba its first NDP government:
http://passages.winnipegfreepress.com/passage-details/id-188195/name-Laurent_Desjardins/office-id-26/order-publish_date|DESC,last_name|ASC,first_name|ASC/
Lanier Phillips
"Because of that tragedy, I joined up with Dr. [Martin Luther] King. I just had to join up with Dr. King and that's because of the change they did for me in St. Lawrence."
History should be ever so grateful that he didn't wash up in New Glasgow.
Jack Tramiel, Founder of Commodore International and Holocaust survivor.
A Nova Scotia man with a history of mental illness and violent attacks is due in court today in the beating death of Raymond Taavel, a gay rights activist in Halifax.
Taavel died early Tuesday outside Menz Bar, a popular gay club on Gottingen Street.
Police said it appears the 49-year-old tried to break up a fight between two men after leaving the bar.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/story/2012/04/18/ns-denny-taav...
Dick Clark, 82
Dance away those blues!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFfKWfJ8Tc8&feature=related
Levon Helm
http://www.recordonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20120419/ENTERTAI...
Junior Seau
http://www.monstersandcritics.com/people/news/article_1697561.php/NFL-st...
Most likely caused by a combination of post-retirement depression and the cumulative effects of all the concussions he suffered as a player. The "Play with pain" culture of the NFL claims another victim(does this happen with CFL players?)
How horrible for his children.
The "Play with pain" culture of the NFL claims another victim(does this happen with CFL players?)
http://corbettid.blogspot.ca/2008/11/then-all-those-bright-hopes-turned-grey.html
Bill Stevenson, David Boone, York Hentschel and Dan Kepley were four “stars” from the Edmonton Eskimos’ dynasty of the late 1970s and early ‘80s.
Three of them – happy-go-lucky Stevenson, pleasant and mannerly Boone and non-talkative and introspective Hentschel – died tragic deaths while extremely aggressive Kepley barely survived alcohol and pain killers and jailed twice for impaired driving.
The San Diego cops have now said that Seau died of a gunshot would to the chest, most likely self-inflicted.
(my own theory is that it was a chest shot, rather than a head shot, because Seau hoped that they'd do a postmortem study of the injuries his football career inflicted on his brain. I hope his family sues the hell out of the Chargers and the league if it turns out he reported concussion symptoms but was ordered to play through them.)
Here's more on the overall NFL brain damage and suicide phenomenon:
www.latimes.com/health/boostershots/la-heb-junior-seau-suicide-concussio...
Seau's the 8th member of the 1994 San Diego Super Bowl team to have died, all before the age of 45:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2138703/The-curse-Chargers-8-players-San-Diegos-1994-Super-Bowl-team-died-age-45.html
Hawkins Cheezies founder James Marker:
http://www.torontosun.com/2012/05/02/hawkins-cheezies-co-founder-dies-at...
The penny.
Just heard a report that Jim Flaherty is at a ceremony to see the very last one minted in about 10 minutes from now.
Randy Kapashesit, Chief of MoCreebec, who recently passed away in Moose Factory.
The penny.
Just heard a report that Jim Flaherty is at a ceremony to see the very last one minted in about 10 minutes from now.
Apparently he's going to toast its passing with a 1600 cent glass of O.J. before being whisked back to his fishing lodge by an "R"CAF aircraft.
It would be a darn shame if he lost his footing and fell into the stamping machine.
Mind you, that would make for an interesting entry in this thread.
Beastie Boys' Adam Yauch a.k.a MCA
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/beastie-boys-co-founder-adam-yauc...
Get It Together
François Cyr, a leading member of Québec solidaire and prominent activist and theoretician of the Québec left.
Ernest Callenbach, author of the classic environmental novel Ecotopia among other works, founded and edited the internationally known journal Film Quarterly. He died at 83 on April 16th, leaving behind this document on his computer.
[excerpt]
The "ecology in one country" argument was an echo of an actual early Soviet argument, as to whether "socialism in one country" was possible. In both cases, it now seems to me, the answer must be no. We are now fatally interconnected, in climate change, ocean impoverishment, agricultural soil loss, etc., etc., etc. International consumer capitalism is a self-destroying machine, and as long as it remains the dominant social form, we are headed for catastrophe; indeed, like rafters first entering the "tongue" of a great rapid, we are already embarked on it.
Maurice Sendak
Maurice Sendak
Oh, no - "where the wild things are" - progressive, brilliant, what a loss. Here was an interview I saw a few months ago.
Peace, Maurice.
I knew François Cyr very well.
!Presente!
Vidal Sassoon, age 84.
Carlos Fuentes:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-18081034
Disco legend Donna Summer died Thursday at age 63, reportedly after a battle with breast cancer.
http://todayentertainment.today.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/05/17/11745326-...