Wednesday - April 01, 2015

at luchtime, looking back

He says it’s a song about making peace with his father, but it could apply to any romance. This is the short version. I love it, but somehow it’s always seemed like music to die gently to. Which is very sad, but it turns happy at the end.

And now I’m getting all dribbly, missing my dad, gone these 18 years now.


You were my compass star
You were my measure
You were a pirate’s map
Of buried treasure

If this was all correct
The last thing I’d expect
The prosecution rests
It’s time that I confessed
I must have loved you

I must have loved you

Posted by Drew458     on 04/01/2015 at 11:07 AM   
Filed Under: • Passing on, Death and Disaster • Music •  
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   Thursday - March 19, 2015

The Turtle Stopped 8 Days Ago

I can’t catch every piece of news. I missed this one. And I am a bit glad that I did. I am devastated, but the way I look at it is, for me he lived 8 days longer.

You’ve got your potato Sir Terry. Everything will be alright.

[ March 12, 2015 ] It is with immeasurable sadness that we announce that author Sir Terry Pratchett has died at the age of 66.

Larry Finlay, MD at Transworld Publishers:

“I was deeply saddened to learn that Sir Terry Pratchett has died. The world has lost one of its brightest, sharpest minds.

In over 70 books, Terry enriched the planet like few before him. As all who read him know, Discworld was his vehicle to satirize this world: he did so brilliantly, with great skill, enormous humour and constant invention.

Terry faced his Alzheimer’s disease (an ‘embuggerance’, as he called it) publicly and bravely. Over the last few years, it was his writing that sustained him. His legacy will endure for decades to come.

My sympathies go out to Terry’s wife Lyn, their daughter Rhianna, to his close friend Rob Wilkins, and to all closest to him.”

Terry passed away in his home, with his cat sleeping on his bed surrounded by his family on 12th March 2015. Diagnosed with PCA in 2007, he battled the progressive disease with his trademark determination and creativity, and continued to write. He completed his last book, a new Discworld novel, in the summer of 2014, before succumbing to the final stages of the disease.

PCA is Posterior cortical atrophy, a form of Alzheimer’s Disease.



I have read, and reread, and reread, just about every single book the man ever published. Pratchett is not just my favorite author, he is my very best printed friend. Waiting for the annual book to come out became something like a child’s anticipating Christmas; every turn of a page was another visit with the best of old chums.

But it’s more than that, more than my love of his insightful and playful style of writing. Pratchett changes you. He grows you from the inside. He is the best kind of soul food because you never know you’re eating ... until one day, by chance, something surprises you and you say “Well I’ll be mogadored” and you mean it! And people stare at you ... but you stare right back; what’s their problem? Don’t they know? Nanny Ogg used the expression once. Once. But that was enough. What kind of dolts are these, do they even know how to spell susurrus? Have they no extelligence?

He opens your mind. And fills it with stars and dreams. And perfect moments, and perfect endings. Pure headology. What more could you ask for? A Morris dance with bells on? Crivens laddie, if’n ah coulda, aye woulda.



So, as we did for the old Baron, we do for Sir Terry ...


It was pleasant and delightful on a midsummer’s morn
And the green fields and the meadows were all covered in corn;
And the blackbirds and thrushes sang on every green spray
And the larks they sang melodious at the dawning of the day,
And the larks they sang melodious,
And the larks they sang melodious,
And the larks they sang melodious at the dawning of the day.

Posted by Drew458     on 03/19/2015 at 11:10 PM   
Filed Under: • Passing on, Death and Disaster •  
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   Saturday - January 03, 2015

Moving To Greener Acres

Donna Douglas, who played hillbilly bombshell Elly May Clampett on the baby-boomer-beloved 1960s sitcom The Beverly Hillbillies, has died. She was 82.

Charlene Smith, her niece-in-law, confirmed Friday to USA TODAY that she died of pancreatic cancer on New Year’s Day at Baton Rouge General Hospital, near her home in Zachary, La.

The Baton Rouge paper, The Advocate and other media outlets, including local TV station WAFB, also confirmed her death, although most put her age at 81.

“She was 82,” Smith said firmly, adding jokingly, “She’s going to haunt me for that.”

Douglas’ death leaves only one member of the show’s original cast still alive: Max Baer Jr., who played Elly May’s cousin, Jethro. He is 77.

“She was Elly May until the day she died,” Baer told the website RumorFix. “When I saw her for autograph signings or other gatherings, she always dressed the same with pink or blue” and of course those signature pigtails.”

He said he last saw Douglas in January 2013 for an autograph signing in Los Angeles. He said she had pancreatic cancer for the last months of her life.

“But she was a very private person — nothing like me.” A friend told him Donna had a message for him: “Tell Maxie I thought I was going to get better.”

Smith described Douglas as a “very good Christian lady. We all loved her,” she said. “Whenever she gave presents, they always came with (passages) from Scripture.”

Douglas, a former Miss Baton Rouge and Miss New Orleans, was born in Pride, La., and returned to live in Zachary, after her time in Hollywood, to be near her only child, son Danny Bourgeois. She is survived by him, by three grandchildren, two great-grandchildren, one brother and other extended family members, Smith said.

...

Douglas grew up in Pride and attended a local Catholic high school, where she played softball and basketball, and was a member of the school’s first graduating class.

But she’ll always be known as Elly May — the tomboy-but-sweetly sexy blond Clampett daughter who never seemed to be aware of her effect on men, and who referred to their Beverly Hills mansion swimming pool as the “SEE-ment pond.”

...

After Hillbillies ended, Douglas worked in real estate, recorded country and gospel music albums and wrote a book for children that drew on biblical themes.

In 2010 she sued CBS and toymaker Mattel seeking some of the proceeds from sales of a Barbie doll that used Elly May’s name and likeness. The suit was settled in 2011.

Posted by Drew458     on 01/03/2015 at 03:18 AM   
Filed Under: • Passing on, Death and Disaster •  
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   Friday - January 02, 2015

Notes In Passing

I’ve had a bit of writer’s block the past couple of weeks. Well, actually, it’s been more of a time block than anything. Holidays, relatives, shopping, visiting. All kinds of time constraints. I never realize just how much time this blog consumes until other things pop up and eat that time, and my internet surfing and story research time shrinks to nearly nothing.

I just saw the news, probably 14 hours old, that former NY governor Mario Cuomo has died. He was 82. He was very much a Liberal’s Liberal.

I just saw the news that bodies are being recovered from lost AirAsia flight 8501, some of them still strapped into their seats. I don’t think the black boxes have been found yet, but if Search & Rescue is finding bodies and wreckage, perhaps it’s only a matter of time. Right now the theory is that the plane stalled trying to climb out of a thunderstorm, but with those storms you always have to remember the intense updrafts and downdrafts. We can build the most wonderful airplanes ever, but nothing can outfox Mother Nature. Say a prayer for all these poor lost souls.

After nearly a week of searching for the victims of AirAsia Flight 8501, rescue teams battling monsoon rains had their most successful day yet on Friday, more than tripling the number of bodies pulled from the Java Sea so far. An Indonesian navy official said some of the dead were still strapped to their seats.

Of the 30 corpses recovered in total, 21 were found on Friday, many of them by a U.S. Navy ship, according to officials.

The Airbus A320 carrying 162 passengers and crew went down Sunday, halfway into a flight from Surabaya, Indonesia’s second-largest city, to Singapore. Minutes before losing contact, the pilot told air-traffic control he was approaching threatening clouds, but was denied permission to climb to a higher altitude because of heavy air traffic.

It remains unclear what caused it to plunge into the sea, but CBS News’ Allen Pizzey reports that investigators are working on the principal that the pilots attempted a steep climb anyway, to avoid the weather, which could have stalled the jet’s engines.

Col. Yayan Sofiyan, commander of the warship Bung Tomo, told MetroTV five bodies pulled in by his crew were still fastened in their seats.

I’ll do what I can to update these stories, and to steal time when I can to get back to some decent posting.

Posted by Drew458     on 01/02/2015 at 09:31 AM   
Filed Under: • Passing on, Death and Disaster • planes, trains, tanks, ships, machines, automobiles •  
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