Obituaries

[gabrielle]

Quote:Cohen was the dark eminence among a small pantheon of extremely influential singer-songwriters to emerge in the Sixties and early Seventies. Only Bob Dylan exerted a more profound influence upon his generation, and perhaps only Paul Simon and fellow Canadian Joni Mitchell equaled him as a song poet. 

Cohen's haunting bass voice, nylon-stringed guitar patterns and Greek-chorus backing vocals shaped evocative songs that dealt with love and hate, sex and spirituality, war and peace, ecstasy and depression. He was also the rare artist of his generation to enjoy artistic success into his Eighties, releasing his final album, You Want It Darker, earlier this year.

Leonard Cohen (1934-2016)

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/l...82-w449792

"Give me a Leonard Cohen afterworld, so I can sigh eternally."  --Kurt Cobain

[Marypoza]

RlP the Man From UNCLE
Luvved that show

[Eric the Green]

What is really sad for me when people like Cohen pass on, is that they are not being replaced. When they are gone, they are gone. In a culture that is too dumbed down and lacks any clue of sensitivity or imagination, at least in the amount that existed before and in the sixties, such a loss is permanent. There will just not be any source for poets and troubadours and composers in Trumpland and what comes after Trump. Only reality TV and other trash. The political loss and the artistic loss seemed to converge this week for me. Hallelujah. Democracy is leaving the USA. Everybody knows.

[Eric the Green]

(11-12-2016, 12:54 AM)Marypoza Wrote: RlP the Man From UNCLE
Luvved that show

Me too. And a determined activist against the War in Vietnam. A dedicated "dove" at the time. And a great guest star and villain on Columbo.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Vaughn

[beechnut79]

(11-12-2016, 06:40 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: What is really sad for me when people like Cohen pass on, is that they are not being replaced. When they are gone, they are gone.  In a culture that is too dumbed down and lacks any clue of sensitivity or imagination, at least in the amount that existed before and in the sixties, such a loss is permanent. There will just not be any source for poets and troubadours and composers in Trumpland and what comes after Trump. Only reality TV and other trash. The political loss and the artistic loss seemed to converge this week for me. Hallelujah. Democracy is leaving the USA. Everybody knows.

Dylan and Jackson Browne still remain. There are no doubt others who are not household names as of yet.

[Marypoza]

Is Soros really dead?

[Eric the Green]

(11-13-2016, 03:01 PM)beechnut79 Wrote:

(11-12-2016, 06:40 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: What is really sad for me when people like Cohen pass on, is that they are not being replaced. When they are gone, they are gone.  In a culture that is too dumbed down and lacks any clue of sensitivity or imagination, at least in the amount that existed before and in the sixties, such a loss is permanent. There will just not be any source for poets and troubadours and composers in Trumpland and what comes after Trump. Only reality TV and other trash. The political loss and the artistic loss seemed to converge this week for me. Hallelujah. Democracy is leaving the USA. Everybody knows.

Dylan and Jackson Browne still remain. There are no doubt others who are not household names as of yet.

If they are not household names by now, they never will be. That's the point. The younger generations today do not produce artists like Cohen and Dylan. We have been dumbed down and our culture reduced to trash. It probably can't happen, I don't think.

[Eric the Green]

(11-14-2016, 09:43 PM)Marypoza Wrote: Is Soros really dead?

Not yet

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/de...ump-231313

We're going to need him, big time!

[Eric the Green]

We were speaking of good news outlets on another thread. One of the best journalists was added to the recent spate of tragic deaths for us. Gwen Ifill died quickly of cancer. She was the excellent co-host of the PBS Newshour. She can't be replaced right now either, I don't think.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwen_Ifill

[Eric the Green]

One of the best session musicians and arrangers of the sixties, and good 70s artist in his own right. rock n roll hall of famer Leon Russell.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Russell

[Marypoza]

(11-15-2016, 01:45 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: One of the best session musicians and arrangers of the sixties, and good 70s artist in his own right. rock n roll hall of famer Leon Russell.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Russell

--- oh bummer.

[pbrower2a]

(11-14-2016, 11:16 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(11-14-2016, 09:43 PM)Marypoza Wrote: Is Soros really dead?

Not yet

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/de...ump-231313

We're going to need him, big time!

The biggest anti-totalitarian revolution ever might be on one side of the Straits of Florida. And I don't mean Cuba!

[pbrower2a]

Melvin Robert "Bom" Laird (September 1, 1922 – November 16, 2016) was an American politician and writer.[1] He was a U.S. congressman from Wisconsin from 1953 to 1969 before serving as Secretary of Defense from 1969 to 1973 under President Richard Nixon. Laird was instrumental in forming the administration's policy of withdrawing U.S. soldiers from the Vietnam War; he invented the expression "Vietnamization," referring to the process of transferring more responsibility for combat to the South Vietnamese forces. First elected in 1952, Laird was the last surviving Representative elected to the 83rd Congress at the time of his death.[2]

Much more here.

[pbrower2a]

Denton Arthur Cooley (August 22, 1920 – November 18, 2016) was an American heart surgeon famous for performing the first implantation of a total artificial heart. Cooley was also founder and surgeon in-chief of The Texas Heart Institute, chief of Cardiovascular Surgery at St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital, consultant in Cardiovascular Surgery at Texas Children's Hospital, and a clinical professor of Surgery at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston.

Cooley was born in 1920 in Houston[1] and graduated in 1941 from the University of Texas at Austin, where he was a member of the Kappa Sigma fraternity and the Texas Cowboys, played on the basketball team, and majored in zoology. He became interested in surgery through several pre-med classes he attended in college[2] and began his medical education at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. He completed his medical degree and his surgical training at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland, where he also completed his internship. At Johns Hopkins, he worked with Dr. Alfred Blalock and assisted in the first "Blue Baby" procedure to correct an infant's congenital heart defect.[3]

In 1946 Cooley was called to active duty with the Army Medical Corps. There, he served as chief of surgical services at the station hospital in Linz, Austria, and was discharged in 1948 with the rank of captain. He then returned to complete his residency at Johns Hopkins and remain as an instructor in surgery. In 1950 he went to London to work with Lord Brock.

In the 1950s Cooley returned to Houston to become associate professor of surgery at Baylor College of Medicine and to work at its affiliate institution, The Methodist Hospital.[4] During the 1950s, Cooley began working with Michael E. DeBakey. During that time he worked on developing a new method of removing aortic aneurysms, the bulging weak spots that may develop in the wall of the artery.

In 1960, Cooley moved his practice to St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital while continuing to teach at Baylor. In 1962 he founded The Texas Heart Institute with private funds and, following a dispute with DeBakey, he resigned his position at Baylor in 1969.

His skill as a surgeon was demonstrated as he successfully performed numerous bloodless open-heart surgeries on Jehovah's Witness patients beginning in the early 1960s.[5]

The 1960s saw a number of advances in Cooley's career. He and his colleagues worked on developing new artificial heart valves from 1962 to 1967; during that period, mortality for heart valve transplants fell from 70% to 8%.[6][7] In 1969, he became the first heart surgeon to implant an artificial heart designed by Domingo Liotta in a man, Haskell Karp, who lived for 65 hours.[8] The next year, in 1970, "he performed the first implantation of an artificial heart in a human when no heart replacement was immediately available."[9]


More here

[gabrielle]

Sharon Jones (1956-2016)

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/20/arts/m...-dead.html

Quote:Ms. Jones sang and shouted the kind of gospel-charged soul and funk she had grown up on. Her voice had bite, bluesiness, rhythmic savvy and a lifetime of conviction. She was backed by the Dap-Kings, the revivalist New York City R&B band that supplied her songs as she sparked their career.

She was discovered in 1996 by Gabriel Roth, a founder of the Brooklyn-based Daptone Records and the Dap-Kings’ bassist and main songwriter (under the name Bosco Mann). Ms. Jones had tried decades earlier to get a start in the music business, but was told by record labels that she didn’t have the looks to be a performer. Later, she would recall in the 2016 documentary “Miss Sharon Jones!,” the refrain became, “too short, too fat, too black and too old.”

[gabrielle]

(11-19-2016, 11:49 PM)gabrielle Wrote: Sharon Jones (1956-2016)

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/20/arts/m...-dead.html

Quote:Ms. Jones sang and shouted the kind of gospel-charged soul and funk she had grown up on. Her voice had bite, bluesiness, rhythmic savvy and a lifetime of conviction. She was backed by the Dap-Kings, the revivalist New York City R&B band that supplied her songs as she sparked their career.

She was discovered in 1996 by Gabriel Roth, a founder of the Brooklyn-based Daptone Records and the Dap-Kings’ bassist and main songwriter (under the name Bosco Mann). Ms. Jones had tried decades earlier to get a start in the music business, but was told by record labels that she didn’t have the looks to be a performer. Later, she would recall in the 2016 documentary “Miss Sharon Jones!,” the refrain became, “too short, too fat, too black and too old.”

Apparently she had a stroke watching the election results.  

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/mus...story.html

[pbrower2a]

Florence Agnes Henderson (February 14, 1934 – November 24, 2016) was an American actress and singer with a career spanning six decades. She is best remembered for her starring role as matriarch Carol Brady on the ABC sitcom The Brady Bunch from 1969 to 1974. Henderson also appeared in film as well as on stage and hosted several long-running cooking and variety shows over the years. She appeared as a guest on many scripted and nonscripted (talk and reality show) television programs and as a panelist on numerous game shows. She was a contestant on Dancing with the Stars in 2010. Henderson hosted her own talk show, The Florence Henderson Show, and cooking show, Who's Cooking with Florence Henderson, on Retirement Living TV (RLTV), the years leading up to her sudden death in 2016 from heart failure.[1]




Much more here.

He was a fine pitcher, but best known for one pitch:

Ralph Theodore Joseph Branca (January 6, 1926 – November 23, 2016) was an American professional baseball pitcher who played 12 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB), from 1944 through 1956. Branca played for the Brooklyn Dodgers (1944–53, 1956), Detroit Tigers (1953–54), and New York Yankees (1954). He was a three-time All-Star. In 1951, Branca allowed a walk-off home run to Bobby Thomson, known as the "Shot Heard 'Round the World".

Much more here.

Jerry Tucker (November 1, 1925 – November 23, 2016) was an American child actor, most notable for having played the "rich kid" in the Our Gang short subjects series semi-regularly from 1931 to 1938.

Tucker was born Jerome Harold Schatz[1] in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Ruth (Keno) and Leonard Schatz.[2] His German Jewish surname was changed to "Tucker" for his acting career.[3] Tucker first appeared in the 1931 Our Gang short Shiver My Timbers. He appeared in many Our Gang episodes and left the series after the 1938 Our Gang short Three Men in a Tub.
In addition to his Our Gang appearances, Tucker appeared in the Marie Dressler film Prosperity, again as a spoiled rich kid. He also appeared as one of Mother Peep's children in the 1934 Laurel & Hardy feature film March of the Wooden Soldiers. He also appeared with Shirley Temple in Captain January in 1936, playing the "know-it-all" boy who forgets his answers on the test. On radio, Tucker played "the juvenile lead" on Jones and I, which was broadcast on CBS in the early 1940s[4] and Roy Barry on the soap opera Hilltop House.[5]
Tucker went on to serve in the United States Navy during World War II and the Korean War. He served aboard the USS Sigsbee DD-502. During the war he sustained an injury that caused him to limp, when his ship was hit by a Japanese Kamikaze. He later married his wife Myra and had a long successful career with RCA before retiring. His wife died in August 2012. Tucker died on November 23, 2016, of natural causes at Long Island State Veterans Home in Stony Brook, New York.[6] He was 91.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Tucker

[pbrower2a]

The thorn in the Eagle:

Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz (American Spanish: [fiˈðel aleˈxandɾo ˈkastɾo ˈrus]  audio (help·info); August 13, 1926 – November 25/26, 2016) was a Cuban politician, and revolutionary who governed the Republic of Cuba as Prime Minister from 1959 to 1976 and then as President from 1976 to 2008.[1] Politically a Marxist–Leninist and Cuban nationalist, he also served as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba from 1961 until 2011. Under his administration Cuba became a one-party socialist state; industry and business were nationalized, and state socialist reforms implemented throughout society.

Born in Birán as the son of a wealthy farmer, Castro adopted leftist anti-imperialist politics while studying law at the University of Havana. After participating in rebellions against right-wing governments in the Dominican Republic and Colombia, he planned the overthrow of Cuban President Fulgencio Batista, launching a failed attack on the Moncada Barracks in 1953. After a year's imprisonment, he traveled to Mexico where he formed a revolutionary group, the 26th of July Movement, with his brother Raúl Castro and Che Guevara. Returning to Cuba, Castro took a key role in the Cuban Revolution by leading the Movement in a guerrilla war against Batista's forces from the Sierra Maestra. After Batista's overthrow in 1959, Castro assumed military and political power as Cuba's Prime Minister. The United States opposed Castro's government, and unsuccessfully attempted to remove him by assassination, economic blockade, and counter-revolution, including the Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961. Countering these threats, Castro formed an alliance with the Soviets. In response to U.S. nuclear missiles in Turkey, and perceived U.S. threats against Cuba, Castro allowed the Soviet Union to placed nuclear weapons on Cuba, sparking the Cuban Missile Crisis—a defining incident of the Cold War—in 1962.

Adopting a Marxist-Leninist model of development, Castro converted Cuba into a one-party socialist state under Communist Party rule, the first in the Western Hemisphere. Reforms introducing central economic planning and expanding healthcare and education were accompanied by state control of the press and the suppression of internal dissent. Abroad, Castro supported anti-imperialist revolutionary groups, backing the establishment of Marxist governments in Chile, Nicaragua, and Grenada, and sending troops to aid allies in the Yom Kippur War, Ogaden War, and Angolan Civil War. These actions, coupled with Castro's leadership of the Non-Aligned Movement from 1979–83 and Cuba's medical internationalism, increased Cuba's profile on the world stage and earned its leader great respect in the developing world. Following the Soviet Union's dissolution in 1991, Castro led Cuba into its "Special Period" and embraced environmentalist and anti-globalization ideas. In the 2000s he forged alliances in the Latin American "pink tide"—namely with Hugo Chávez's Venezuela—and signed Cuba to the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas. In 2006 he transferred his responsibilities to Vice-President Raúl Castro, who formally assumed the presidency in 2008.

Castro was decorated with various international awards, and was lauded as a champion of socialism, anti-imperialism, and humanitarianism, whose revolutionary regime secured Cuba's independence from American imperialism. In Latin America, Castro was inspirational for leaders like Hugo Chavez[2] and Evo Morales[3] and, in Africa, he was viewed as an inspiration by leaders like Nelson Mandela.[4] He was also regarded highly in Asia; the former Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh described Castro as "one of the greatest men of our times".[5] Conversely, critics in the United States alleged that he was a dictator whose administration oversaw human-rights abuses in Cuba.[6] Through his actions and his writings, he significantly influenced the politics of various individuals and groups across the world.


Love him or hate him, he was a remarkable person.

I wonder how different he would have been had he been allowed to hold the one elective office that he won in something like a free election.

[Odin]

Wow, Castro seemed like he was immortal and was never going to die.

A bit I heard this morning on NPR I thing summed him up very well: "When he was good he was very good, when he was bad he was very bad." He did great things, giving Cuba the best educational and healthcare systems in Latin America and supporting anti-colonialist movements throughout the 3rd World. But he was also an autocrat who killed political dissidents.

[pbrower2a]

We could do as well without the militarism, the censorship, and the political prisoners. Unfortunately we could end up with the militarism, the censorship, and the political prisoners while health care becomes available only to those willing to pay the most and education deteriorates into propaganda and mere training under our incoming Batista, a/k/a Donald Trump.