Rest in Peace

[Iamwhomiam]

Sad to read about Ed King's passing. Regarding Robin Leach's passing I had intended to offer something a bit more fitting, something like this: Much to his closest friends surprise, Robin Leach, host of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, just today has moved into a tiny efficiency in a dead part of town.

[82_28]

[liminalOyster]

Peak hagiography incoming.

[seemslikeadream]

McCain's wife is probably going to be appointed to his seat in the Senate....watch out mr. bone spurs what you said about her husband will not be forgotten

Kelli Ward says the announcement that McCain stopped treatment was timed to hurt her campaign.


John McCain and Ted Kennedy both died of brain cancer on August 25 nine years apart


forgive him for this not so much?

[seemslikeadream]

0260DC52-F501-45B7-9932-B5B586A0AF1E.jpeg

stan lee


@TheRealStanLee
Nov 11

‏
Thank you to all of America's veterans for your service. Fun fact: Stan’s official US Army title during WW2 was ‘Playwright.’ #VeteransDay

https://twitter.com/TheRealStanLee

Marvel Comics Legend Stan Lee Dead at 95




Stan Lee, the man responsible for much of the Marvel Universe, has died ... Stan's daughter tells TMZ.

We're told an ambulance rushed to Lee's Hollywood Hills home early Monday morning and he was rushed to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. We're told that's where he died.

Lee had suffered several illnesses over the last year or so -- he had a bout of pneumonia and vision issues.

Stan started Marvel with Jack Kirby in 1961 with The Fantastic Four. He went on to create Spider-Man, Black Panther, The Incredible Hulk, X-Men, Iron Man and The Avengers.

Stan made cameo appearances in all of the Marvel movies.



Lee had a rocky relationship with Marvel once the company went full-tilt Hollywood. He sued the company in 2002 for royalties he said he was owed for the first "Spider-Man" movie. Three years later he settled the case for $10 million.

"Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse" is the latest installment of the film's franchise and will be released next month.

Lee is survived by his daughter, J.C. His wife of 69 years, Joan, died in 2017.

J.C. tells TMZ, "My father loved all of his fans. He was the greatest, most decent man."

Lee was 95.
http://www.tmz.com/2018/11/12/stan-lee- ... ?vtest=100

[chump]

Behind The War To Begin All Wars

Remembering the folly of the Battle of the Somme on Veteran’s Day

Adam Hochschild and Joe Sacco November 11, 2013

A stunned world had never experienced anything like this. In some countries for years afterward, on November 11th, traffic, assembly lines, even underground mining machinery came to a halt at 11 a.m. for two minutes of silence, a silence often broken, witnesses from the 1920s reported, by the sound of women sobbing.

Like most wars, the war of 1914-1918 was begun with the expectation of quick victory, created more problems than it solved, and was punctuated by moments of tragic folly. As the years have passed, one point that has come to symbolize the illusions, the destructiveness, the hubris, the needless deaths of the entire war — and of other wars since then — has been the first day of the Battle of the Somme.

The preparations for that battle went on for months: generals and their staffs drew up plans in their châteaux headquarters; horses, tractors, and sweating soldiers maneuvered thousands of big 13-ton guns into position; reconnaissance planes swooped above the German lines; endless trains of horse-drawn supply wagons carried artillery shells and machine gun ammunition up to the front; hundreds of thousands of soldiers from across the British Empire, from the Orkney Islands to the Punjab, filled frontline trenches, reserve trenches, and support bases in the rear. All was in preparation for the grand attack that seemed certain to change the course of the war. And then finally on the first day of July 1916, preceded by the most massive bombardment British artillery had ever fired, the battle began.

You can see the results of the battle’s first day in dozens of military cemeteries spread out across this corner of France, but perhaps the most striking is one of the smallest, on a hillside, screened by a grove of trees. Each gravestone has a name, rank, and serial number; 162 have crosses and one a Star of David. When known, a man’s age is engraved on the stone as well: 19, 22, 23, 26, 21, 20, 34. Ten of the graves simply say, “A Soldier of the Great War, Known unto God.”

Almost all the dead are from Britain’s Devonshire Regiment, the date on their gravestones July 1, 1916. Most were casualties of a single German machine gun several hundred yards from this spot, and were buried here in a section of the frontline trench they had climbed out of that morning. Captain Duncan Martin, 30, a company commander and an artist in civilian life, had made a clay model of the battlefield across which the British planned to attack. He predicted the exact place at which he and his men would come under fire from the machine gun as they emerged onto an exposed hillside. He, too, is here, one of some 21,000 British soldiers killed or fatally wounded on the day of greatest bloodshed in the history of their country’s military, before or since.

Dreams of Swift Victory

In almost every war, it seems, the next planned offensive is seen as the big breakthrough, the smashing, decisive blow that will pave the way to swift victory. Midway through the First World War, troops from both sides had been bogged down for the better part of two years in lines of trenches that ran across northern France and a corner of Belgium. Barbed wire and the machine gun had made impossible the war of dramatic advances and glorious cavalry charges that the generals on both sides had dreamed of.

To end this frustrating stalemate, the British army planned an enormous assault for a point near where the River Somme meandered its slow and weed-filled way through French wheat and sugar-beet fields. A torrent of supplies began pouring into the area to equip the half million British Empire troops involved, of whom 120,000 would attack on the first day alone. This was to be the “Big Push,” a concentration of manpower and artillery so massive and in such a small space that the German defenses would burst open as if hit by floodwaters.

After the overwhelmed Germans had been bayoneted in their trenches, it would be a matter of what General Douglas Haig, the British commander in chief, called “fighting the Enemy in the open,” and so battalions were trained intensively in maneuvering across trenchless meadows. Finally, of course, streaming through the gap in the lines would come the cavalry, three divisions’ worth. After all, hadn’t glorious charges by men on horseback been a decisive element in warfare for millennia?

Troops unrolled 70,000 miles of telephone cable. Thousands more unloaded and piled ammunition in huge dumps; stripped to the waist and sweltering in the summer heat, they dug endlessly to construct special roads to speed supplies to the front. Fifty-five miles of new standard-gauge railway line were built. With as many British soldiers crammed into the launching area as the population of a good-sized city, new wells had to be drilled and dozens of miles of water pipe laid. No detail was forgotten.

British troops, the plan went, would move forward across no-man’s-land in successive waves. Everything was precise: each wave would advance in a continuous line 100 yards in front of the next, at a steady pace of 100 yards a minute. How were they to be safe from German machine gun fire? Simple: the pre-attack artillery bombardment would destroy not just the Germans’ barbed wire but the bunkers that sheltered their machine guns. How could this not be when there was one artillery piece for every 17 yards of front line, all of which would rain a total of a million and a half shells down on the German trenches? And if that weren’t enough, once British troops climbed out of their trenches, a final “creeping barrage” of bursting shells would precede them, a moving curtain of fire riddling with shrapnel any surviving Germans who emerged from underground shelters to try to fight.

The plan for the first day’s attack on July 1, 1916, was 31 pages long and its map included the British names with which the German trenches had already been rechristened. Preparations this thorough were hard to conceal, and there were occasional unnerving signs that the German troops knew almost as much about them as the British. When one unit moved into position, it found a sign held up from the German trenches: WELCOME TO THE 29TH DIVISION.

Several weeks before the attack, 168 officers who were graduates of Eton met for an Old Etonian dinner at the Hotel Godbert in Amiens, a French city behind the lines. In Latin, they toasted their alma mater — “Floreat Etona!” — and raised their voices in the school song, “Carmen Etonense.” Enlisted men entertained themselves in other ways. A haunting piece of documentary film footage from these months, taken from a Red Cross barge moving down a canal behind the lines, shows hundreds of Allied soldiers stripped completely bare, wading, bathing, or sunning themselves on the canal bank, smiling and waving at the camera. Without helmets and uniforms, it is impossible to tell their nationality; their naked bodies mark them only as human beings.

Riding a black horse and with his usual escort of lancers, General Haig inspected his divisions as they rehearsed their attacks on practice fields where white tapes on the ground stood for the German trenches. On June 20th, the commander in chief wrote to his wife, “The situation is becoming more favourable to us.” On June 22nd he added, “I feel that every step in my plan has been taken with the Divine help.” On June 30th, as the great artillery barrage had been thundering for five days, Haig wrote in his diary, “The men are in splendid spirits…. The wire has never been so well cut, nor the Artillery preparation so thorough.” For good measure, the British released clouds of deadly chlorine gas toward the German lines.

As it grew close to zero hour, 7:30 a.m. on July 1st, men detonated 10 enormous mines planted by British miners tunneling deep beneath the German trenches. Near the village of La Boisselle, the crater from one remains, a stark, gaping indentation in the surrounding farmland; even partly filled in by a century of erosion, it is still 55 feet deep and 220 feet across.

When the artillery barrage reached its crescendo, 224,221 shells in the last sixty-five minutes, the rumble could be heard as far away as Hampstead Heath in London. More shells were fired by the British this week than they had used in the entire first 12 months of the war; some gunners bled from the ears after seven days of nonstop firing. At a forest near Gommecourt, entire trees were uprooted and tossed in the air by the shelling and the forest itself set on fire.

Soldiers of the First Somerset Light Infantry sat on the parapet of their trench, cheering at the tremendous explosions. Officers issued a strong ration of rum to the men about to head into no-man’s-land. Captain W.P. Nevill of the Eighth East Surrey Battalion gave each of his four platoons a soccer ball and promised a prize to whichever one first managed to kick a ball into the German trench. One platoon painted its ball with the legend:

THE GREAT EUROPEAN CUP
THE FINAL
EAST SURREYS V. BAVARIANS


Throughout the British Isles, millions of people knew a great attack was to begin. “The hospital received orders to clear out all convalescents and prepare for a great rush of wounded,” remembered the writer Vera Brittain, working as a nurse’s aide in London. “We knew that already a tremendous bombardment had begun, for we could feel the vibration of the guns… Hour after hour, as the convalescents departed, we added to the long rows of waiting beds, so sinister in their white, expectant emptiness.”

“God, God, Where’s the Rest of the Boys?”

[…]

… continue reading Behind The War To Begin All Wars: Remembering the folly of the Battle of the Somme on Veteran’s Day

[seemslikeadream]

Nancy Wilson

go away little boy


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSm3egtmkYk


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvUZ_DlxCtk

[hanshan]

...

William Blum Died


https://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/12/william-blum-died.html#comments


December 10, 2018

William Blum Died

William Blum died yesterday at the age of 85. He has written about the
misdeeds of the U.S. government since the late 1960s.
I have read many, many of his pieces and benefited
from his knowledge. I especially liked his dry humor
or snark that he sprinkled over them.


In its obit the Covered Action Magazine notes:

Initially an anti-communist with dreams of becoming
a foreign service officer, he became disillusioned
by the Vietnam War.
m is also the author of America’s Deadliest Export: Democracy
– The Truth About U.S. Foreign Policy and Everything Else (2013),
Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower
(updated edition 2005), West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir
(2002), and Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire (2004).
His books have been translated into more than 15 languages.

In 2006 Blum's book 'Rogue State' was once recommend
by Osama bin Laden which greatly increased its sales.

More than 150 of Blum's pieces were published by
Counterpunch and are available here. On his website
Blum also published the Anti Empire Report.

In July he took part in a panel and explains (vid) why
the U.S. public is largely content with U.S. foreign policy.
They believe, falsely, that the U.S. is always well intended.
Mistakes are made, there are fuck ups, but the U.S.
always means well. It is that illusion that must be
eradicated to change U.S. foreign policy.

An hour long interview with him was
recently published here (vid).

William Blum lived a long and fruitful life. Still,
his death is a great loss for us.

May he rest in peace.

Posted by b on December 10, 2018 at 02:00 PM | Permalink


...

[seemslikeadream]

I just gotta talk to her


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LXpnNKNxJI

Alabama-born Ray Sawyer of Dr. Hook dead at 81

Anna Beahm | abeahm@al.com
Updated Dec 31, 10:39 PM; Posted Dec 31, 10:39 PM
Ray Sawyer, the Alabama-born member of Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show, died in Daytona Beach, Florida, Monday. He was 81.
The Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show member known for his eye patch and cowboy hat, Ray Sawyer, has died, pagesix.com reports. He was 81.

Sawyer’s publicist told pagesix.com he died in Daytona Beach, Florida, after suffering “a brief illness from which he didn’t recover.” However, his actual cause of death was not given.

Pagesix.com reported Sawyer stopped performing around three years ago due to his “declining health.”

Year of Alabama Music: Ray Sawyer (video)

The sometimes flamboyant member of Dr. Hook was born in Chickasaw, which is near Mobile. During the early years of his music career, he played drums at several Mobile nightclubs and performed with a band called the Chocolate Papers.

Sawyer known for singing lead vocal on “Cover of Rolling Stone.” He’s also a member of the Alabama Music Hall of Fame.

Sawyer appeared on a string of hits in the ’70s and ’80s, including “Sylvia’s Mother,” “A Little Bit More,” “Only Sixteen,” “Walk Right In,””Sharing the Night Together,” “When You’re in Love with a Beautiful Woman,” “Better Love Next Time” and “Sexy Eyes.”
https://www.al.com/news/2019/01/alabama ... at-81.html

[Cordelia]

I remember when ‘Sylvia’s Mother’ was released in 1971; it could have come across as a schmaltzy love-lorn ballad or even satirical but they pulled it off. (Had to wish Mrs. Avery would relent and get Sylvia to talk to him. )

I didn't know it (and many others, including 'Cover of Rolling Stone') was written by that Shel Silverstein, who I only knew as writing & illustrating children's books.

Shel Silverstein introducing Dr Hook

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdLWrsBiKBU

Also this...


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFGQyYfhLsc

(Best version imo by Marianne Faithfull on her great--and aptly named--comeback album, 'Broken English')

[km artlu]

He was a many-faceted man, Cordelia. He was also the in-house cartoonist and general satirist for Playboy. He resided in the Chicago Playboy Mansion in its heyday, and the ladies there loved him. When I first arrived in Chicago at age seventeen, he drew a street map of the Near North Side for me. He took extra care to be sure I understood the orientation. A sweet and kindly man, and I was glad for him when his songwriting became successful a few years later.

[Cordelia]

^^^Thanks! He's surely deserving of a RIP, albeit almost 20 years later...

Obituary: Shel Silverstein

Spencer Leigh 25 May 1999

IN HIS books, cartoons and songs, Shel Silverstein was known for his wry, humorous slant on life; his own life was every bit as eccentric as the characters who peopled his work.

"Most of the time if you tell a true story, you beef it up to make it into a song," said Ray Sawyer, the eye-patched singer from Dr Hook, "but Shel had to bring them down." Take, for example, the sorry tale of unrequited love in "Sylvia's Mother", an international hit for Dr Hook and the Medicine Show in 1972. "The guy that ran off with Sylvia in real life was a bullfighter from Mexico, and he couldn't put that in the song."

MORE...https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-ente ... 95751.html

At least two other songs he penned are well remembered...


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovKeVb6T6yk


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4WyO6TK424

MASKS

She had blue skin.
And so did he.
He kept it hid
And so did she.
They searched for blue
Their whole life through,
Then passed right by—
And never knew.

~Shel Silverstein~



(Then passed right by—And never knew.)

[Iamwhomiam]

What a nice memory of a fine man to hold dear, km artlu. I loved his peculiar genius in its many aspects.

[JackRiddler]

.

Erik Olin Wright, on his imminent death, heartbreaking:

https://www.caringbridge.org/visit/erik ... 833c02bb13

strange state of existence
Journal entry by Erik Olin Wright — Jan 5, 2019

I have roughly three weeks left of existence. Three weeks. Let's call that January, 2019. January 2019: my month, my last month. There can be surprises -- both ways of course. My liver is the main source of leukemia's havoc. It is greatly enlarged now, filled with AML. This is why I need transfusions of platelets and red blood cells every day. The graft did not survive the return of AML so it produces no products, and the AML-clogged liver seems to be filtering out some of the transfusions so I am not getting full benefit from those. The result is that my platelets remain extremely low even after a platelet transfusion and my hemoglobin remains very low even after a hemoglobin transfusion. So, eventually these become too low to sustain life, or an opportunistic infection does me in. The doctors say "a few weeks" -- a nice surprise would be to slide into February; my birthday is February 9. We’ll see what happens.

This is all hard to take in fully. I am not in great turmoil over dying. I am sad about many things, desperately sad about those connected to my family. But I'm not afraid. I wrote about this early on; my feelings haven't changed: I am stardust that randomly ended up in this marvelous corner of the milky way where some stardust ended up in conditions where it became complexly organized in a way we term "alive." And then even more complexly— conscious stardust that is fully aware that it is conscious: amazing -- stardust, inanimate products of exploding supernova, organized in such a complex way that it is conscious of its own aliveness and consciousness -- the greatest privilege in the whole, immense universe. It may be for a limited time -- this complex organization ends and the stardust that is me will dissipate back to the more ordinary state of matter. Nothing to do about that. As creative fanciful minds, we humans are good at inventing ways for our existence as conscious beings to continue after the stardust dissipates. It would be nice. I don't believe in that sort of thing, but I'll find out by some time in February.

[seemslikeadream]

It's three years ago today that David Bowie died. Apart from all his other, many achievements, let's remember this was a man who could even look astonishingly glamorous in a police mugshot, *after a night out with Iggy Pop*.- Peter Walker

A5950471-AA00-44E4-ADE6-48BD9FB42860.jpeg