Gabriel Garcia Marquez dies at age 87

Colombia declares three days of mourning for Nobel Laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, author of the enormously influential 100 Years of Solitude, and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, passed away Thursday, April 17. He was 87.

Remembering Tony Benn

Tony Benn was one of the best things about the UK. He will be missed. Here is a great article about him from Portside Moderator.

In the course of my life I have developed five little democratic questions. If one meets a powerful person — Adolf Hitler, Joe Stalin or Bill Gates — ask them five questions: ‘What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you exercise it? To whom are you accountable? And how can we get rid of you?’ If you cannot get rid of the people who govern you, you do not live in a democratic system.

I just realized that there are no comments enabled on this blog any more. I think it's because, having a customized CSS template, I was using an external comment manager and they "went out of business" or something. Just went, anyway. I wanted to make a funny comment. I just realized that this post and the four preceding it are about "Four Obituaries and A Wedding". 

Doris Lessing, 22 October 1919 – 17 November 2013

Doris Lessing, author of The Golden Notebook and many other novels and a few non-fiction works, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2007, died yesterday at the age of 94. As Alexandra Schwarz noted in her wonderful New Yorker blog post ,"On Doris Lessing and Not Saying Thank You", The NYT in its obituary of her sounded "a tone of peevish, gawking reproach. (Much better to read Margaret Atwood’s wonderful tribute in the Guardian.)" It is ever thus with the boldly unconventional female.

Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap dies at 101 or 102

Bet you didn't know he was still alive. Well, I didn't; I was surprised. Reading the NYT obituary - it sure takes me back.

My brother Kevin

September 3, 2013

Richard ‘Kevin’ Keefer

Anonymous The Dalton Daily Citizen Tue Sep 03, 2013, 11:13 PM EDT

Mr. Richard “Kevin” Keefer, 52, passed away Aug. 29, 2013, after a long battle with cancer, surrounded by loved ones.

Mr. Keefer was born in Atlanta on Feb. 3, 1961, the son of Dolores and Clyde A. Keefer. He attended Dalton High School from 1975 to 1978 and was a member of Dalton First United Methodist Church. He also earned the rank of Eagle Scout and shared his love of Scouting and the Atlanta Braves with his father. Kevin loved to cook and grow his own vegetables. He was an avid hunter and enjoyed being in the outdoors with his hunting buddies. He was a loyal friend and kind-hearted and gentle man.

Mr. Keefer had a long career in emergency services in the area, mostly with the city of Chatsworth. He served as an emergency medical technician with the Dalton Ambulance and Murray County EMS, 24 years with Chatsworth Fire Department as a firefighter and as fire chief from 1987 to 2005. He was also a building inspector.

He is survived by a large, loving family consisting of his parents, Clyde and Dolores Keefer of Chatsworth; his three daughters, Kierston, Kimberly and Katlynn, all of Chatsworth; his brothers, David (Rene) Keefer of Jacksonville, Ala., and Scott Keefer of Atlanta; and his sisters, Deb Keefer (Lewis) Ramage of Minneapolis, Minn., Cynthia Keefer Patton (Denny Fitterling) of Kansas City, Mo., and Dr. Denise Keefer (Bill) Runge of Helena, Mont. He is also survived by his nephews and nieces, Aimee Whatley of Portland, Ore., Carey Hunton Carter of Atlanta, Shane Tyler (Crystal) Patton of Gulfport, Miss., Joshua and Jacob von Herrmann of Hattiesburg, Miss., and Elizabeth Keefer of Jacksonville, Ala.

A private memorial service will be held in the future when his family will gather to remember him.

Mr. Keefer will be cremated and his ashes spread at his favorite hunt camp when his friends gather and celebrate his life.

In lieu of flowers, Kevin requested donations be made to the Boy Scouts of America in his honor.

The family would also like to thank his close friends, Judy and Gifford Laney, Kevin Ballew, the wonderful people of hospice and Chatsworth Health Care Center, and so many others for all they did for Kevin during the last months of his too short life.

Condolences may be left for the family at www.GeorgiaFuneralCare.com.

Georgia Funeral Care and Cremation Services is proud to be serving this family; (678) 574-3016.

Ride, Sally Ride. We'll miss you here on earth forever now.

America's Oldest Teenager

Dick Clark, long-time host of American Bandstand, has died at the age of 82.

Marie Haff - a dear friend gone

Marie Haff, my friend since 1984 when I first moved to the Twin Cities along with her son, passed away last week. We had drifted apart geographically, especially when I moved to England, but then she started trading in antiques after her official retirement, and was making periodic trips to Lincolnshire to buy British antiques. So we were able to reconnect, and my husband and I even managed to meet up with her in Horncastle one day several years ago. I took this picture of her a little over a month ago at a family gathering in rural Minnesota. I am so sad that when I finally manage to make my move back to Minneapolis, there will be no more meetings or chats with Marie. She was a very special woman.

Steve Jobs, 1955 - 2011

Back to obituary blogging, an increasing number of the subjects of which are nowadays my own generation. Jobs, yeah, he was younger than I am. But what a massive impact he has had on the way this century looks and feels. And the way we communicate and live our lives. A ten page obituary in the NYT, you have to admit, the boy done good! Most of the articles, both recent ones on his illnes and early retirement, and corporate ones showcasing his recent accomplishments, show a contemporary Jobs with his grey hair, his black turtleneck and his visionary gaze into the future he knows he won't be here to share. I have chosen an innocent shot with his proud creations of 1984. The boy is the father of the man.

Peter Falk Obituary

Yesterday, actor Peter Falk passed away. Columbo may not have been the greatest detective show of all time, but it's amazing how Falk's brilliant character study has influenced future TV and film detectives, especially, I think, in British crime drama. And of course, I will always remember and love Peter Falk especially for his role as "Grand-dad" in The Princess Bride, one of the best cult movies of all time. He also starred in several serious films, including Husbands and A Woman Under the Influence by his friend, director John Cassavetes. And he had a great reputation as an actor on the New York stage as well.

Deborama...

This blog seems to be more and more about obituaries these days. I don't know if it's a sign of my age, or just the fact that it's so easy to post on Facebook that I only post here when I have something personal to say.

Manning Marable, 1950 - 2011

I was sad to learn of the relatively early passing of Manning Marable, a leading light of the DSA and a great historian, essayist and academic. Tragically, he died just three days before the ultimate culmination of his life's work, the publication of his eagerly awaited biography of Malcolm X. Although Marable had published several other non-academic works of history or political philosophy, the Malcolm X biography will probably establish his name with the public in a way these more obscure books could not. But to democratic socialists, students of African-American studies and the culturally aware, Marable was already in the highest ranks. He will be sorely missed.

Geraldine Ferraro

Feminist icon Geraldine Ferraro, pictured in 2007, the first female vice-presidential candidate to run on a major political ticket, died Saturday 26 March from lung cancer.

Farewell to Liz

The New York Times has this great Elizabeth Taylor timeline.

And when I heard that she was interred already, I thought that might mean that she had stayed faithful to Judaism all these decades after conversion, and so it did. I am glad. And while we're on the subject, there is something kind of grisly about our modern western "Christian" predilection for funerals days and even weeks after the death. The Muslims and the Jews are much more seemly in this respect.

RIP Harvey Pekar

In These Times and the NYT cover the death of Harvey Pekar. I loved this film, American Splendor. My British husband "didn't get it." But that happens a lot with him and not just American stuff either.

In loving memory, Shephard H. Patton, Sr.

My sister Cindy lost her husband of 31 years to cancer on Monday. I was blessed to be able to spend a few hours with them in his last week of life, and painful as it was, to say good-bye. The obituary in the Biloxi-Gulfport Sun Herald gives a hint at what an exceptional man he was.

A notable death, a death in the family

My ex-father-in-law, Lisle Carleton Carter, Jr., passed away on the 10th of September. It had been many years since I had seen him, but my son was very close to him.
Lisle was not only a person who I really loved and admired, he was just generally a remarkable man, a polymath, in that he was a leading academic administrator, a former government official and a lawyer until his retirement some years ago. And also a poet and a patron of the arts and many charities. He will be missed and mourned by many. His many achievements are featured in this editorial obituary in the Washington Post.

The passing of a great friend - Gerry Bretzke

On the 18th of July, a great friend of mine back in Minnesota passed away. It was not sudden or unexpected, and from the descriptions on the web that I have been privileged to read, it was one of the most peaceful and beautiful deaths you could hope to have, given old age and disease and an imperfect world. Gerry Bretzke was a member of my church in Minneapolis and also the small spiritual study group ironically called The Initiates. The picture above, of about half of the core members of the Initiates, is an old one, from soon after I emigrated to the UK, or maybe just before. Gerry is the guy in the middle, in the feed cap, with his arm around me. The guy on the right end is George Tofte, who passed away a few years ago.

John Mortimer, creator of Rumpole of the Bailey,1923 - 2009

Photo Credit: Associated Press Photo

Sir John Mortimer, celebrated barrister, playwright and novelist, died 17 January, 2009. He was best known as the creator of the popular crime series Rumpole of the Bailey, featuring Horace Rumpole, a figure only slightly autobiographical, as he never aspired to, let alone attained, anything like Mortimer's own achievements. He was also the author of the Paradise Postponed series, which was made into a great TV series, Voyage Round My Father and several other popular plays. As a barrister, he had a long career during which he also published books on the law and defended free speech in high-profile obscenity cases.

Andrew Wyeth, 1917 - 2009

Andrew Wyeth died yesterday at the age of 91. Revered and reviled in almost equal measures, there was a time when the controversy of Andrew Wyeth's art was the biggest thing there was in American art, and some of his paintings, particulary "Christina's World" have become icons of the American image. But I reckon that somewhere under the huckster, the hen-pecked husband rescued by a woman from a domineering father, the rock-ribbed Pennsylvania Republican, the remote and fastidious realist, what we really had was a Zen master with an inherited gift. At least that's what I think when I see a painting like this one.