MetaFilter posts tagged with obituaries

The lost history of Dr. Alice E. Kober and her research on Linear B

filthy light thief — Tue, 14 May 2013 20:34:38 -0800

For more than 50 years, Linear B was an ancient language that hadn't given up its secret. Professor Bennett spent much of the 1940s hammering out a list of about 80 characters, and in 1951 he published the first definitive list of the signs of Linear B. The next year, archaeologist and Linear B enthusiast Michael Ventris finished "breaking" the code, with some hope from the research of Bennett, and another scholar named Alice Kober, but apparently she was rather hard to get on with and they went their separate ways. Except the magnitude of Doctor Kober's painstaking and self-sacrificing work is still largely unacknowledged. Margalit Fox, an obituary writer for the New York Times, tapped into the vast digital repository at the University of Texas Libraries and found the lost history of Dr. Alice E. Kober. Alice was an overworked, underpaid classics professor who wrote her notes on tens of thousands of homemade index cards, fitted neatly into “file boxes” made from empty cigarette cartons, made during World War II when resources were limited. The result Fox's six years of research was The Riddle of the Labyrinth: The Quest to Crack an Ancient Code (Google books preview). From Fox's research, she discovered a researcher dedicated to decoding an ancient language, whose prior biographies were limited, inaccurately painting a picture of a cold academic.

Robert Bork's America

Horace Rumpole — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 10:49:38 -0800

Robert Bork, the conservative jurist at the heart of two political firestorms--in 1973 he carried out the "Saturday Night Massacre" by firing Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox, and in 1987 had his nomination for the Supreme Court rejected by the Senate after a combative confirmation hearing--died yesterday. A perennially divisive figure, Bork's passing drew encomiums from the right and condemnation from the left.

The Gentlemen's Club

unliteral — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 20:17:08 -0800

Tweedland has some interesting stories and characters. Here's two to get you started:

Robert de Montesquiou - "Tall, black-haired, rouged, Kaiser-moustached, he cackled and screamed in weird attitudes, giggling in high soprano, hiding his little black teeth behind an exquisitely gloved hand – the poseur absolute. He was said to have slept with Sarah Bernhardt and vomited for a week afterwards."

Lord Berners - "As a child, having heard that if you throw a dog into water it will learn how to swim, he threw his mother's canine companion out of the window on the grounds that if one applies the same logic it should learn how to fly. (The dog was unharmed, and he was "thrashed" by his mother.)"

"Here is the map. Where you go is up to you."

Otherwise — Thu, 15 Nov 2012 19:12:36 -0800

Pete Namlook, electronic music producer and ambient pioneer, has died. Pete founded the label Fax +49-69/450464, known for its prodigious and eclectic output of electronic music. Beyond producing his own solo work, he collaborated extensively with others, including Klaus Schulze, Bill Laswell, David Moufang, Geir Jenssen (Biosphere), Jonah Sharp, and Tetsu Inoue. .

Go See the World

box — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 06:22:13 -0800

Jazz saxophonist David S. Ware passed away yesterday at age 62. Mentored by Sonny Rollins, whose 'Freedom Suite' he would later cover, Ware got his start in the loft-jazz scene of '70s NYC, playing with people like Cecil Taylor and Andrew Cyrille. In the '90s, he led an acclaimed quartet that featured William Parker, Matthew Shipp and drummers like Whit Dickey, Susie Ibarra and Guillermo Brown. In the 2000s, he recorded albums for the Thirsty Ear and Aum Fidelity labels. He spent the last two years of his life in the group Planetary Unknown with Parker, Cooper-Moore and Muhammad Ali. Ware suffered from kidney disease, and received a transplant donation after an email appeal was sent out to a thousand of his fans. He is featured in the documentary short 'A World of Sound.' This is the most recent live performance video I could find.

Shulamith Firestone, sprung from her own head

newrambler — Fri, 31 Aug 2012 14:55:58 -0800

Shulamith Firestone, RIP. The founding radical feminist was found dead in her apartment, a quiet end to a revolutionary life. She thought childbearing was the main thing that made women an oppressed class, and she had some odd ideas about how to rectify that (incubating children in artificial wombs, for instance). But she was instrumental in radical second wave feminism and wrote one of its classics. After that, according to reports, she withdrew from public life and was hospitalized off and on for schizophrenia. She features prominently in Susan Brownmiller's In Our Time: Memoir of a Revolution but is oddly largely absent from the web, except in recent remembrances.

She contributed several essays to Notes from the First Year
The Marxist Archive has an excerpt from The Dialectic of Sex
Obituaries: WP, AP, Tablet Magazine, The Villager, CBC

RIP Nina Bawden, 1925 to 2012

paduasoy — Mon, 27 Aug 2012 12:59:08 -0800

Nina Bawden, writer of novels for adults and children, born in 1925, died on 22nd August 2012. “As a child, Nina said, she had felt wicked because the children in the books she read were all so good, and she was one of the first writers for children to create characters who could be jealous, selfish and bad-tempered” (Guardian obituary). Bawden alternated between writing for children and for adults year by year, describing this as “a useful and satisfyingly real way of working, making use of all my life, all memory, wasting nothing” (Telegraph obituary). A 1994 interview discusses “the bright, purposeful, gutsy children in her books [and] the more defeated characters of her adult novels”. In a 2003 profile she describes a play she wrote being put on at school: “when I heard the dialogue I realised it was dreadful – one of the wicked hunters fell into a tiger trap … and he said 'Damn it Carruthers, I have broken my confounded leg.' And when I heard this I realised it was the most terrible thing anyone had ever done so I ran away to the lavatories and hid and wept." Bawden’s best known novel for children is probably Carrie’s War (1973), about children evacuated to Wales: this review at Reading Matters gives a sense of the book and some quotations. There is also an activity pack (PDF) and teachers’ notes (Word). The 1974 television serial is on YouTube (link is to first episode). The Peppermint Pig (1975) grew from stories from her mother and grandmother of growing up in Norfolk in the nineteenth century: this review from The Book Bag gives a sense of it. Bawden was interviewed on Desert Island Discs in 1995. At 0.15 she talks about putting her foot in it over Wordsworth at her Oxford entrance interview; from 0.25 she talks about her son's illness. She was recognised by several awards, including the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize for The Peppermint Pig and the Phoenix Award for Carrie’s War. Circles of Deceit (1987) was shortlisted for the Booker and The Birds on the Trees (1970) for the Lost Booker. Both of these adult novels drew on her experiences of her son’s schizophrenia. Bawden was injured in the Potters Bar rail crash in 2002, in which her husband was killed. She wrote Dear Austen (extract, review) about the accident and its aftermath, including the unsuccessful campaign for a public enquiry.

William Thurston

escabeche — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 16:23:21 -0800

"The real satisfaction from mathematics is in learning from others and sharing with others." William Thurston, one of the greatest mathematicians of the 20th century, has died. He revolutionized topology and geometry, insisting always that geometric intuition and understanding played just as important a role in mathematical discovery as did the austere formalism championed by the school of Grothendieck. Thurston's views on the relation between mathematical understanding and formal proof are summed up in his essay "On Proof and Progress in Mathematics." In the 1970s, Thurston proposed the astonishing "geometrization conjecture," asserting that every possible 3-dimensional geometry arose by composition of elements from a short list of fundamental types (which formed the basis for a memorable Paris runway show which Thurston helped design) Geometrization formed the template for much of the progress of topology over the succeeding decades, culminating in Perelman's proof of the geometrization conjecture (and its tiny dangling corollary, the Poincare conjecture) Thurston gave an hour lecture on Perelman's proof in Paris in 2010. Thurston has won the Fields Medal, been a director of the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute, and held faculty positions at Princeton, the University of California, and Cornell. He trained many of today's leading geometers. In recent years, Thurston became a frequent contributor to the math Q-and-A site MathOverflow, answering many questions on subjects technical and philosophical. In answer to the question "how can I contribute to mathematics?" he wrote: "It's not mathematics that you need to contribute to. It's deeper than that: how might you contribute to humanity, and even deeper, to the well-being of the world, by pursuing mathematics? Such a question is not possible to answer in a purely intellectual way, because the effects of our actions go far beyond our understanding. We are deeply social and deeply instinctual animals, so much that our well-being depends on many things we do that are hard to explain in an intellectual way. That is why you do well to follow your heart and your passion. Bare reason is likely to lead you astray. None of us are smart and wise enough to figure it out intellectually. The product of mathematics is clarity and understanding. Not theorems, by themselves. Is there, for example any real reason that even such famous results as Fermat's Last Theorem, or the Poincaré conjecture, really matter? Their real importance is not in their specific statements, but their role in challenging our understanding, presenting challenges that led to mathematical developments that increased our understanding. The world does not suffer from an oversupply of clarity and understanding (to put it mildly). How and whether specific mathematics might lead to improving the world (whatever that means) is usually impossible to tease out, but mathematics collectively is extremely important. I think of mathematics as having a large component of psychology, because of its strong dependence on human minds. Dehumanized mathematics would be more like computer code, which is very different. Mathematical ideas, even simple ideas, are often hard to transplant from mind to mind... In short, mathematics only exists in a living community of mathematicians that spreads understanding and breaths life into ideas both old and new. The real satisfaction from mathematics is in learning from others and sharing with others. All of us have clear understanding of a few things and murky concepts of many more. There is no way to run out of ideas in need of clarification. The question of who is the first person to ever set foot on some square meter of land is really secondary. Revolutionary change does matter, but revolutions are few, and they are not self-sustaining --- they depend very heavily on the community of mathematicians."

Chuck Colson has died at age 80.

verb — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 07:39:49 -0800

Chuck Colson has died at age 80. The former "hatchet man" for President Nixon, Colson once remarked that he would "walk over his grandmother to get the president elected to a second term." After serving eight months in prison for his role in the Watergate scandal, Colson announced that he'd become a born again Christian. In 1976, he founded Prison Fellowship International to aid and evangelize prisoners and their families. He was quickly embraced by the Evangelical world, and eventually eventually became an influential figure in conservative Christian politics.

What a brilliant man!

anewnadir — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 23:35:42 -0800

"Hilton Kramer, whose clear, incisive style and combative temperament made him one of the most influential critics of his era, both at The New York Times, where he was the chief art critic for almost a decade, and at The New Criterion, which he edited from its founding in 1982, died early Tuesday in Harpswell, Me. He was 84." The New Criterion is gathering the remembrances as they trickle in.

Hilton Kramer was born on March 25, 1928, in Gloucester, Mass. As a boy he gravitated toward the local artists’ colony and spent long hours in Boston’s art museums. After earning a bachelor’s degree in English at Syracuse University in 1950, he studied literature and philosophy at Columbia, the New School for Social Research and Harvard.

---

"There are reputations in art that soar so high that, if only for a generation or two, they scarcely seem to be reputations in the ordinary sense at all. They acquire instead the status of some eternal verity, and it hardly seems possible that a time might come when the bright light of a renown that is universal in scope will grow dim and even flicker out. The fortunes of art--everything we feel about its permanence and its destiny--seems for the moment so closely bound to the prosperity of these reputations that the very thought of their extinction is unimaginable."

"...obituaries are about the juicy stuff of life..."

zarq — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 09:10:45 -0800

“Obituaries are not about death. They are a celebration of life." The Art of the Obituary The Daily Telegraph of London is known for their thorough and in-depth obituaries of notable people from all walks of life. The section is extensive, and well categorized. (Click Obituaries in the header, then a subhead, and then in some categories, see the "Related Sections" for further breakdowns.) Event page for Death: Southbank Centre's Festival of the Living Obits linked in the article * Michel Peissel * Gevork Vartanyan * Roy Skelton * Gay Kindersley * Rob Buckman * Hugh Massingberd Some of their more memorable recent obits * Princesse Ghislaine de Polignac * Chris Dale * William Donaldson * Bill Foxley * Nicol Williamson * Steve Jobs * Colonel Albert Bachmann * Amy Winehouse * Colonel Michael Singleton * John Philby * Dick Francis They've also made a mistake or two.... * "The day I managed to 'kill off' Tex Ritter's wife"

Just call my name/ I'll be there in a hurry/ You don't have to worry

box — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 08:10:41 -0800

Songwriter Nick Ashford died yesterday. Nickolas 'Nick' Ashford, along with his songwriting and marriage partner Valerie Simpson, wrote dozens of songs performed, covered and interpreted by artists like Ray Charles, Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell, Chaka Khan, Beyonce and Justin Timberlake and Amy Winehouse. A few of my favorites (please, please, post your own): Aretha Franklin - Cry Like A Baby Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell - Your Precious Love (covered by D'Angelo & Erykah Badu) Marvin & Tammi - You're All I Need to Get By (interpreted by Method Man and Mary J. Blige) Marvin & Tammi - Ain't No Mountain High Enough (Diana Ross version) Ashford & Simpson with Teddy Pendergrass - Reach Out and Touch Somebody's Hand Marlena Shaw - California Soul (many covers, and a big, big break) Jay Smooth (previously) and DJ Matthew Africa pick a few favorites. (Ashford and Simpson are also known for their own #1 R&B hit, 'Solid (As A Rock).')

Thank you for the love that you gave to me

Morpeth — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 19:25:10 -0800

R.I.P. Bobby Hebb The artist who originally recorded Sunny died yesterday at the age of 72.

Death and the Sea

Kattullus — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 08:08:28 -0800

Obituaries editors probably belong by the sea. The cries of seagulls are their music, fading into infinity, and the light-filled sky bursts open like a gateway out of the world. The elderly gravitate there, shuffling in cheerful pairs along Marine Parade or jogging in slow motion past the Sea Gull Café, intent on some distant goal. Their skin is weathered and tanned, as if they have fossilised themselves in ozone to keep death at bay. They wear bright trainers, young clothes. But they have shifted to the shore here, or in Bexhill, or in Eastbourne, as if to the edge of life, and each flapping deck-chair reserves a waiting-place.

Ann Wroe, obituaries editor of The Economist, muses on mortality and the sea in the latest correspondent's diary, a series of articles by various Economist writers. You can read the magazine's obituaries here, including a recent one of former obituaries editor Keith Colquhoun. [Ann Wroe previously]

A People's Historian

box — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 15:40:09 -0800

The Boston Globe reports that historian Howard Zinn has died of a heart attack. The pioneering radical historian is best known for A People's History of the United States.

That Ain't The Way To Behave

Len — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 15:26:43 -0800

Oil City Confidential is a new film from director Julien Temple, previously responsible for The Filth and the Fury, about the Sex Pistols, and Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten, focusing on Strummer and The Clash. This time round, in a kind of prequel to both those films, he tackles the life and turbulent times of Dr. Feelgood. Finding fame on the same Pub rock circuit (as remembered by writer and Kursaal Flyers drummer Will Birch) that also supported Ian Dury's Kilburn and the High Roads (not to mention Eddie and the Hot Rods and Joe Strummer's pre-Clash band The 101ers), Dr. Feelgood played stripped-down, taut and aggressive R&B. Hailing from the wildlands of Essex's Canvey Island – the "Oil City" of the film's title – Dr Feelgood were punk before punk really hit, a whirlwind of raucous energy, with a fierce work ethic. In Wilko Johnson, they had a guitarist with a scorching, slash and burn technique, while their singer, Lee Brilleaux (1989 interview), who died of cancer in 1994, aged just 41, oozed cheap-suited menace, and, into the bargain, helped found Stiff Records. The band took their name from the B-side to a single by Johnny Kidd & The Pirates, whose guitarist, Mick Green, was a huge influence on Wilko Johnson, inspiring him to play both rhythm and lead guitar parts at the same time. Johnson explains how he does so, for the BBC's Rock School, and following Green's death earlier this month, talks about Green's influence, and discusses his own influence on other bands. Dr Feelgood's debut single, Roxette, and their subsequent debut album, Down By The Jetty, which was recorded in mono, were both UK hits, but it was their live performances which truly showcased the band at their best. Their 1976, overdub-free live album Stupidity hit number one in the UK charts, but during the tour to support their studio follow-up, Sneakin' Suspicion, Wilko Johnson quit. Two years later, the Feelgoods scored their bigggest hit of all, Milk & Alcohol. However, despite that, and the fact that the band, in some form, remain gigging to this day, it's the first few years of their existence which count for their, until now, pretty-much neglected legacy. She Does It Right (1975) Riot in Cell Block No. 9/I Don't Mind (cut short at the end, unfortunately). Boom, Boom All Through The City/Roxette Route 66 Back In The Night Going Back Home All Through The City You Shouldn't Call The Doctor Dr. Feelgood on the Old Grey Whistle Test: Keep It Out Of Sight / Roxette / She Does It Right

San Francisco GLBT Historical Society & B.A.R. create on-line database of HIV/AIDS obituaties

ClaudiaCenter — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 12:06:41 -0800

San Francisco's Bay Area Reporter, together with the GLBT Historical Society, are making available all of the gay newspaper's AIDS obituaries in an on-line searchable database. The database, to be unveiled on December 1, 2009, World AIDS Day, contains the obituaries for about 10,000 people. Excerpt: Starting on World AIDS Day (Tuesday, December 1), every obituary that's appeared in the B.A.R. since 1980 is expected to be available through a searchable archive at http://www.glbthistory.org/obituaries. For years, especially in the late 1980s and early 1990s, people who had died from complications related to AIDS dominated the B.A.R. 's obituary pages. Tom Burtch, a volunteer at San Francisco's GLBT Historical Society, has spent about three years scanning the obituaries from the paper's archives, which are stored at the society's Mission Street facility. The site will enable users to share memories and could eventually let them upload photos – "sort of like a Facebook page for each person," said Burtch.

Fauxbituaries

Iridic — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 10:23:41 -0800

i dream of a world without you: death notices for the nonexistent. (Via the blog of John "Scary Go Round" Allison, one of the contributors.)

Millard Kaufman, RIP

ubiquity — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 13:43:01 -0800

Newspaperman, war hero, blacklist front, distinguished screenwriter, co-creator of Mr. Magoo, novelist at age 90... Millard Kaufman is dead at 92.

Vidal Strikes Back

naoko — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 09:59:50 -0800

Gore Vidal Speaks Seriously Ill of the Dead Annoyed with the rose-tinted view of William F. Buckley displayed by some of his obituarists, Vidal slams Buckley, Newsweek, and the media in general. (MeFi Buckley obit thread here).

Lovie Yancey, Creator of Fatburger, R.I.P.

jonson — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 11:24:31 -0800

Opening a restaurant is not an easy way to get rich, but for 36 year old Lovie Yancey, an African American woman living in Southern Califoria in 1947, the gamble paid off. As founder of the Fatburger chain (warning - audio), Lovie is remembered as the creator of arguably the greatest hamburger in a nation obsessed with hamburgers. Lovie passed away Jan 26, at 96 years of age, and even if you're not a fan of her burgers, take a moment in tribute to a remarkable woman.

Last Call

IndigoJones — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 12:40:58 -0800

With the death of Louis de Cazenave, Lazare Ponticelli is the last surviving French veteran of World War One, and the country has been wondering how to mark the inevitable. By contrast, Germany's response to the recent death of Erich Kaestner has been a more muted affair, indeed, all but unnoted. Meanwhile, Britain's Henry Allingham and Harry Patch and William Stone just keep on going. (For those interested, more comprehensive international lists can be found here and here)

So long and Thanks!

about_time — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 10:43:32 -0800

Some of the inventors and creators that died in 2007 who leave behind something for us to remember them by: David H. Shepard (Optical Readers, Farrington B numeric font), J. Robert Cade (Gatorade), Herbert Saffir (The Hurricane Scale), George Rieveschl (beta-dimethylaminoethylbenzhydryl ether hydrochloride --- a.k.a. Benadryl), Arthur Jones (Nautilus machines), Jack Odell (Matchbox Cars), Raymond Douglas (Color in the NY Times), George Kovacs (The ubiquitous halogen torchiere lamp), Martin J. Weber (The Posterization technique), Edwin Traisman (Cheez Whiz and McD's French Fries), Ed Yost (Modern Hot-Air Ballooning), Theodore Maiman (The Laser), John Billings (The Rhythm Method), Paul C. Lauterbur (The M.R.I.), John W. Backus (Fortran), Florence Z. Melton (Slippers), James Hillier (The Electron Microscope), Iwao Takamoto ("Scooby-Doo"), and Momofuku Ando (Instant Ramen). So it goes.

Grace Paley, 1922 - 2007

jokeefe — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 10:33:55 -0800

A wonderful obituary in the NYT for Grace Paley, who died yesterday at her home in Thetford Hill, Vt. She was 84.

A week-long diary by The Economist's obituaries editor

Kattullus — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 04:34:37 -0800

I don't know what other people’s first thoughts may be on Monday mornings; but mine, as the jabber of my husband’s radio crawls into my dreams, is “Has anyone died today?” So began a week-long diary by The Economist's obituaries editor, Ann Wroe, which she completed today.