Showing posts with label In Memoriam. Show all posts
Showing posts with label In Memoriam. Show all posts

Saturday, February 3, 2024

Governor Orders Wyoming State Flag be Flown at Half Staff Statewide on Saturday, February 3

CHEYENNE, Wyo. - Governor Mark Gordon has ordered the Wyoming State Flag be flown at half staff statewide from sunrise to sunset on Saturday, February 3, 2024 in honor and memory of Bobbi Barrasso, wife of U.S. Senator John Barrasso. Bobbi Barrasso passed away January 24, 2024. 

Please note that this notice is only for the Wyoming State Flag statewide. Other flags should remain at full-staff.

Thursday, January 25, 2024

In Memoriam. Melanie Safka, 1947-2024



Best remembered for Brand New Key, she was, in some ways, a slightly earlier, and somewhat less known, version of the same sort of singer than Linda Ronstadt would become, even preforming some of the same songs.

She performed at Woodstock, still so young that her mother went with her.

What Have They Done to My Song Ma is one I recall from my childhood for some reason, dimly recalling that my mother liked it.

Wednesday, January 24, 2024

I had always thought my grandfather on my mother's side died at age 58. . .

but it turns out, he died in 1958.

He was, therefore, about 67 years of age.

Still not ancient by current standards, but not 58 years of age, either.

That was, FWIW, the same year my parents married.

His wife, my grandmother, died at age 89, however, which is a little younger than I remembered.  It was in 1979, which is later than I remember, which means that my recollection didn't make mathematical sense, either.  I was in high school at the time, but I don't recall it that way.

That also means that she lived long enough to see one of her children die, which I knew, and two of them fall into severe illness accompanied by mental decline, which must have been hard in the extreme to endure.

Monday, December 4, 2023

Courthouses of the West: In Memoriam: Justice Sandra Day O'Connor

Courthouses of the West: In Memoriam: Justice Sandra Day O'Connor

In Memoriam: Justice Sandra Day O'Connor

I'm late in posting this and, frankly, so many things have been posted it would hardly be necessarily.


Justice O'Connor was the first woman appointed to the United States Supreme Court. Frankly, even though this came in relative terms, in 1981, fairly close to the pioneering appointment of an African American to the Supreme Court bench, it was later than it should have been. Having said that, like Nixon going to China, coming by way of a conservative, Ronald Reagan, perhaps it meant more in real terms than it would have had it come under an earlier President, such as Jimmy Carter.

O'Connor had been a member of the Arizona Court of Appeals at the time of her appointment. She was a Westerner by birth, having been raised on a 198,000 acre cattle ranch in that state.  She attended Stanford as an undergrad and as a law student, and oddly enough had received a proposal of marriage from William Rehnquist while still a student.

Her accomplishments cannot be denied, but frankly, like a lot that Reagan did, her appointment has a mixed record.  I frankly don't think she was as great of jurist as people now wish to recall, and like many of the "conservative" justice of her era, she was conservative only in a very reserved way.  True conservatives wouldn't really reappear on the Supreme Court for many years, none of which takes away from her personal accomplishments.

Friday, December 1, 2023

In Memoriam, Shane MacGowan

Born in England to Irish parents, Shane MacGowan, the frontman and principal songwriter for The Pogues, died of encephalitis at age 65.

The hard living MacGowan was a great, essentially creating a new type of Celtic music out of the folk music past and updating it.  He was 65 years of age.

Monday, October 9, 2023

In Memoriam. Dick Butkus

 A nice entry for the football legend, one so legendary that even I know who Butkus was. An enduring figure from my childhood.

Of note, he married his high school sweetheart  and they remained married his entire life, making Butkus all the more admirable.

Dick Butkus, 1942-2023

Wednesday, August 9, 2023

Спокій вічний дай їм, Господи, і світло вічне нехай їм світить. Нехай їхні душі та душі всіх покійних вірних, через милосердя Боже, спочивають з миром.

Амінь.

The Ukrainian combat medic Daria Filipieva has been killed in battle against the Russian Army. Rest in Peace Hero
Image

Friday, July 28, 2023

Sinéad Marie Bernadette O'Connor passes, an unfortunate icon for her times.

Sinéad O'Connor had, by the time of her death, eschewed her name and an additional one, as she traveled through a world that celebrates narcissism and which treats mental disturbance as self-expression.  

Her cause of death has not been revealed yet, but if it turns out not to be suicide, I'll be amazed.

O'Connor is going to be celebrated as a musical genius and a cultural beacon.  I've listened very little to her music, which I don't care for at all, but what she really was, was a really screwed up personality that had been crying for help in a world that instead just urges "self-expression".  In a way, although their personalities and music, etc., were very different, she's the Irish Michael Jackson, the American pop artist who went from fame to weirdness to an early death.  The public is unlikely to turn on O'Connor, however, as unlike Jackson who did a deep dive into cultural weirdness, O'Connor did a deep dive into rejecting Western Culture, and the cutting edge of Western Culture loves rejecting Western Culture, making our culture unique in that fashion.

Her name was taken from Sinéad de Valera, the wife of the Irish revolutionary leader and the mother of her attending physician.  Her parents divorced, which was unusual for Irish Catholic couples and her father, at least, remarried and moved to the United States.  That shows fairly clearly her family had fractured. She lived with her father and stepmother for a time and then returned to Ireland, by which time she'd take up shoplifting and ended up in the Magdaline Asylum, which, like most things in Ireland at the time and many things now, was run by a Catholic religious order.  She actually did very well there developing her talents, but not too surprisingly chaffed under the discipline.

A lot of O'Connor's musical career was used to turn attention on herself, which has proven in the post Madonna music world to be a good vehicle towards success.  Early on, in 1992, on Saturday Night Live, she tore up a photograph of St. Pope John Paul II ostensibly in protest of the sexual abuse scandal in the Church, but which is more symbolic of the childish Irish temper tantrums that were just then starting to really develop.  The act was so shocking at the time that even Madonna criticized it.

By that time she'd already identified as a lesbian, when that was shocking, although she later retreated from that claim. At some point in the 1990s she was ordained by the Irish Orthodox Catholic and Apostolic Church, which is not in communion with Rome, an apparent "Independent Catholic Church" which is in no way in communion with Rome.  She announced at that time that she wanted to be known as Mother Bernadette Mary.

In 2018, she converted to Islam, an ironic but perhaps predictable conversion as it is somewhat shocking for somebody who claimed earlier to be retaining Catholic beliefs.  The irony, of course, is not only that she was Irish and self-proclaimed type of Catholic, but joining a religion that is generally hostile to female equality.  Following that, she became a critic of Christian and Jewish theologians and called non Muslims "disgusting", from which she also retreated.

She was married at least once, and had four children, one of whom recently committed suicide.

The problem with being shocking and in despair is that the attention you get from being shocking is pretty temporary, and so goes the relief as well.

O'Connor stands out in the end as somebody who needed help and didn't get it.  There are a lot of people in that category.  With a strong-willed personality, and her world set upside down early on, she might not have accepted the help anyway had it really been offered.  But celebrating the public descent of a tortured soul isn't really doing her a retroactive justice, and it didn't help while she lived.

She also stands, however, for something additional.  Jackson stood for a long held American negative trait of rising people to great heights based on something superficial, and then destroying them.  O'Connor, however, stands for the destruction of Western Society following World War Two, but in a time delayed way as she was Irish, and Ireland's entry into modern Western Society was delayed by at least 40 years.  Prior to the Second World War a person's departure from the culture would not have been openly celebrated even if known, and it would have been somewhat arrested so that the individual self-destruction was less likely to be so open.  And rescue from that destruction was a real possibility, with individuals such as C. S. Lewis, Oscar Wilde and Whitaker Chambers providing diverse examples of the same.  Following 1968, however, hope for rescue started to become fleeting and open attack on the culture became a liberal virtue.

Now that she has died, she'll be celebrated and her many strange paths and failings turned into personal triumphs.  In the end, however, it's clear she was grasping for the existential and metaphysical in a world that is hostile to both and would prefer to find all expression in as self-centered.  Her conversion to Islam, which is openly hostile to those concepts, probably best expressed that desperate search, as misguided as the path she took was.

That's the modern way, however.

Eternal rest grant unto her, O Lord, 

and let perpetual light shine upon her. 

May she rest in peace. 

Sunday, May 21, 2023

James Brown


There's been a lot of news on the passing of Jim Brown, the legendary running back.

Brown was a fantastic running back, and even in old clips it's impressive to watch him.  A nice retrospective of his life appears here:

Jim Brown, 1936-2023

I'll be frank, the thing that stands out in my mind about Brown were the allegations of assault against him, and then his featuring as one of the people, like Bill Cosby, that frequented the Playboy mansion in the big party days of that depraved institution.  That's hard to get around, and the stories that were related in the Secrets of Playboy are pretty much impossible for me to get around. 

One thing I didn't know about Brown was that he'd been commissioned into the Army Reserve and ultimately made Captain.  He enrolled in ROTC while in university and was inducted into the Army ROTC Hall of Fame (which I didn't know existed) some years ago.  Perhaps that military experience is why he appeared to be a natural in uniform in The Dirty Dozen.

So what to make of Brown and his life?  Well, I don't really have to make anything of it, but perhaps with such notable public figures we should.  His accomplishments were very real and cannot be denied.  He did act as a champion for civil rights, using his fame for that purpose.  He did translate a successful football career into other successful endeavors.  Like Bill Cosby, he's associated with the deprivations of the celebration of sexual exploitation brought about by the Sexual Revolution and advanced by Hugh Hefner.  Perhaps that's proof of just how corrosive the tolerance of that institution and acceptance of its perversion has been.

Sunday, January 1, 2023

In Memoriam

2022 closed out with enough departures from this life of interesting and significant people that it has that portents feeling to it.  Let's hope that's just being naturally ill at ease.

Pope Benedict XVI

The most significant death, of course, is that of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, who died on the last day of the year.  His death was not unexpected.

The German-born Joseph Ratzinger was an intellectual and a theologian.  For misguided reasons, he was regarded as the "Panzer Cardinal" by some of his supporters, a nickname that never reflected his personality but which rose out of his stout defenses of orthodoxy.

His resignation as Pope, the first that had occurred in centuries, was due to ill health and was controversial at the time.  There is, frankly, much to be lamented by it, at least by those who have a conservative religious bent (as I do), who lost, if nothing else, and there was much else, a conservative Pope who would have appointed conservative cardinals and perhaps been in a better position to take on the German Bishops.

Benedict grew up in Nazi Germany, where his father was an outspoken anti-Nazi policeman.  His family was deeply religious.  He was conscripted into a Luftwaffe anti-aircraft batter late in the war at the time in which Germany was reaching down into the early teens for that role.  He lived an exceptional life, but by some accounts, given his academic nature, wasn't ideally suited for his role as Pope.

Ian Tyson

Ian Tyson was a Western, not Country and Western but Western, musician who was a giant in that arena.

Tyson was early on a folk musician who sang with Sylvia Fricker, whom he later married, and then divorced.  Following his divorce, he moved to Alberta to train horses and when Bob Dylan recorded Four Strong Winds he used the royalties to buy his ranch. Following that, he focused on traditional "Cowboy Style" music is distinct from the Hillbilly Country Music and Country Pop so popular in the U.S.  He was a pioneer in a small revival that's spread back into the US, but which still sees its most significant members being Canadian, showing the Western nature of Western Canada.

He died on December 29, at age 89.

Pelé

Edson Arantes do Nascimento, better known as Pelé, was the greatest soccer player in the world in his era, and will go down as one of those figures who are famous in a sport, and outside of it, forever.  

I know little about him, other than his fame in soccer, but as I don't follow soccer, that says something.  He died on December 29 at age 82.

Barbara Walters

Barbara Walters was born the same year as my late father and was a major newscaster and interviewer when I was growing up.

It's perfectly fair to say that she was a female pioneer in the area, although as we've pointed out in regard to the very early history of Meet The Press there were significant women, albeit few in number, in the field prior to her.

I'll be frank that I never liked her interviewing style and found her voice ill-suited for her role, as she was somewhat hard to understand, which some people are.  She died on December 30, at age 93.

Sunday, November 27, 2022

Southern Rockies Nature Blog: Thunder without Tears: The Passing of Tom McIntyre

Southern Rockies Nature Blog: Thunder without Tears: The Passing of Tom McIntyre: 1987 was the worst year of my life. A dream job of working on an outdoor magazine was falling apart (with the publication itself), leaving M...

Tom McIntyre's death has been mentioned here twice before;

The years of our life are seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty; yet their span is but toil and trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away.



I'm struck by how this brings up the old adage that it is a small world.  At least, our circle of associates can be amazingly small.  You wouldn't think that it'd be the case that two blogs I follow are authored by people who met Mr. McIntyre, which I had not, but he had become a frequent commenter on my blog.  

I'll miss his presence here.

Truly, it is a small world.

The entries on the two blogs noted, by the way, are very much worth reading and will give you a much better idea of who Tom was than anything I've written here.

Tuesday, November 22, 2022

In Memoriam: Thomas McIntyre.

For those who follow this blog somewhat, you might have noted that in recent months there were a lot of comments from "Tom" "in Sheridan".

You may also have noticed that his last comment came when I got out of the hospital recently.  His thoughtful post stated:

Three years ago, I had a surgery and four weeks n the hospital while the incision healed.

The hospital really pushed me to head to Casper to do the recuperation, but I could not understand the idea that I would want to be 140 miles from home to essentially lie in a bed. (This was pre-Covid, so patient space was not a consideration; at least I couldn't see that as a reason.) In any case I received excellent care right in the hometown. I think you know that the friends who visit you are the true ones.

Matthew 25:34-40
King James Version

34 Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:

35 For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in:

36 Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.

37 Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink?

38 When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee?

39 Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?

40 And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

Tom
Sheridan, WY

Tom from Sheridan was Thomas McIntyre, a writer and big game hunter who lived in Sheridan.  The reason for his sudden departure is his sudden departure from this life.  Tom has passed on at age 70.  He left us on November 3.

I'm indebted to the Stephen Bodio blog, linked in at the side as one of the outdoor blogs we follow, for posting the news.   Tom commented so frequently that the sudden cessation of his comments made me wonder if I'd said something to offend him somehow, or if he just realized that he'd be in the category of "my betters" and just chose to pursue more worthwhile pursuits.

Tom's entry onto our pages here was due to a recommendation from another reader, I don't know who.  He sure improved the blog with his comments, and on one occasion improved a post by correcting some of my writing.  He was an obviously highly educated and thoughtful man.  

He was also a big game hunter, and writer on the topic.  I'd been looking forward to a book he was finishing on wild cattle, which apparently he did finish before his death.  The book is entitled Thunder Without Rain.  He quoted a few snippets of it here in some of his comments. Tom and I, therefore, shared that vocation, hunter, although he is much more traveled than I ever will be.  My only experience with cattle is with the domestic kind, which are of course occasionally wild.

Tom and I were also co-religious, although in his comments here he was vague on the topic.  I had the sense, although I didn't know him personally, that something had caused him to become nonobservant in our faith, although he obviously retained a deep knowledge of the faith and its traditions.  In response to a question of mine, he'd only noted that if Mass was still being held in the catacombs, he'd be there.  I noticed on his Sheridan funeral home listing, there was a short comment from "Fr. Jim", so he was obviously in contact somehow with a man of the Catholic cloth somewhere.  Whatever his status was, and it wasn't clear, I hope and pray that he was reconciled in the end and that this cheerful man passed with the peace he clearly daily exhibited.

Monday, October 24, 2022

Tuesday, October 24, 1972. Jackie Robinson passes.

Jackie Robinson died on this day in 1972.


He was only 53 years old when he died of a heart attack, a condition brought on by diabetes and heart disease.

Silent screen actress Clair Windsor, whose career bridged into sound, died at age 80.

Egyptian President Anwar Sadat conveyed a council of war in which he announced plans to launch a limited war against Israel.

Field Marshal Sadeq, had not reported to the Supreme Council what the purpose of the meeting was to be, and even though he was ordered to prepare a plan of war by October 1, he was fired a few days later.

The Japanese crime syndicate the Yakuza divided its operations into territories, thereby ending years of inter gang strife.

Thursday, September 8, 2022

God Save the Queen

Queen Elizabeth II, Queen of the United Kingdom and Other Commonwealth Realms, April 21, 1926 to September 8, 2022.

 


My mother was born a mere five days later.



Queen Elizabeth II is the longest serving monarch in British history.  She grew up in a United Kingdom that was one of the most powerful nations in Europe and she came of age young, as many English did, due to the Second World War in which she served in the Auxiliary Territorial Services.  At the time of her birth to her parents, George and Elizabeth, the chances of her becoming monarch were remote.  The King at the time was King Edward VIII, who remained so until 1936 at which time he abdicated in order to marry Wallis Simpson.  Therefore, for the first ten years of her life, "Princess Lilybet" was on a different path in life.  Her name, therefore, was not intended to bring about a second Queen Elizabeth, recalling the controversial final Tudor monarch.

Princess Elizabeth in 1933.

She became Queen in 1952, following the death of her father, and remained Queen for seventy year, serving in that role with dignity, if occasionally with criticism, as the United Kingdom ceased to be an Empire and became a junior partner of the United States, then a member of the European Community and then Union, and then a country free of it.  She also went from being a young princess whose parents basically saved the monarchy, to seeing it threatened again as the media came to focus increasingly on their private lives, exposing conduct, which she did not participate in, which royals often had, but which had remained hidden from public eye.  In her final years, she delivered a speech regarding COVID 19 which many Americans lamented that their own leaders could not, making her appear to be so much more dignified than our own, that an American public that always somewhat regarded the British throne as their own, sort of, did more so.


God save the Queen.

Wednesday, August 10, 2022

In Memoriam: Darryl Hunt

Darryl Hunt, the second bassist for the legendary Celtic folk/punk band the Pogues, has died at age 72.

The hard living Pogues' original bassist was Cait O'Roirdon.  Hunt came on board with her departure in 1986.  Perhaps ironically, O'Roirdon had been a vocalist in Hunt's jazz band Pride of the Cross.

Hunt was English and born in London, and played in a variety of genras.  He's credited with the late Pogues hit Love You Till The End.

Monday, August 8, 2022

In Memoriam

David McCullough died yesterday at age 89.


A recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which he received from President George W. Bush in 2006, McCullough was a 1955 graduate of Yale, where he received a Bachelors degree in English literature.  He went on to work for Sports Illustrated, but was fascinated with the Johnstown Flood and worked on a book on it in his spare time.  That led him on to a career as a historian.

A master storyteller, he was sometimes criticized for not being an academic historian.  Nonetheless, his works are highly regarded.  Of his thirteen books, I've read three, all of which were excellent.  Also possessed of a calm, reassuring voice, he narrated a number of documentaries and even one feature movie, the same being Seabiscuit.

Sunday, May 23, 2021

May 23, 1921. Cities on the Red River, Harding on Memorial Day, the Seeger's go camping.


Moorhead, Minnesota and Fargo, North Dakota, are a across the Red River from each other.  On this day in 1921 they were photographed. 



In Leipzig, war crimes trials commenced. Only twelve Germans would stand trial, but the concept of trying an enemy combatant was a new one which became established as a result of the Great War.  The results were mixed.

Also on this day, President Harding issued a Memorial Day address, which stated:

Our republic has been at war before, it has asked and received the supreme sacrifices of its sons and daughters, and faith in America has been justified. Many sons and daughters made the sublime offering and went to hallowed graves as the Nation’s defenders. But we never before sent so many to battle under the flag in foreign land, never before was there the impressive spectacle of thousands of dead returned to find eternal resting place in the beloved homeland…

These dead know nothing of our ceremony today. They sense nothing of the sentiment or the tenderness which brings their wasted bodies to the homeland for burial close to kin and friends and cherished associations. These poor bodies are but the clay tenements once possessed of souls which flamed in patriotic devotion, lighted new hopes on the battle grounds of civilization, and in their sacrifices sped on to accuse autocracy before the court of eternal justice.

We are not met for them, though we love and honor and speak a grateful tribute. It would be futile to speak to those who do not hear or to sorrow for those who cannot sense it or to exalt those who cannot know. But we can speak for country, we can reach those who sorrowed and sacrificed through their service, who suffered through their going, who glory with the Republic through their heroic achievements, who rejoice in the civilization, their heroism preserved. Every funeral, every memorial, every tribute is for the living–an offering in compensation of sorrow. When the light of life goes out there is a new radiance in eternity, and somehow the glow of it relieves the darkness which is left behind.
Never a death but somewhere a new life; never a sacrifice but somewhere an atonement; never a service but somewhere and somehow an achievement. These had served, which is the supreme inspiration in living. They have earned everlasting gratitude, which is the supreme solace in dying…

I would not wish a Nation for which men are not willing to fight and, if need be, to die, but I do wish for a nation where it is not necessary to ask that sacrifice. I do not pretend that millennial days have come, but I can believe in the possibility of a Nation being so righteous as never to make a war of conquest and a Nation so powerful in righteousness that none will dare invoke her wrath. I wish for us such an America. These heroes were sacrificed in the supreme conflict of all human history. They saw democracy challenged and defended it. They saw civilization threatened and rescued it. They saw America affronted and resented it. They saw our Nation’s rights imperiled and stamped those rights with a new sanctity and renewed security.

We shall not forget, no matter whether they lie amid the sweetness and the bloom of the homeland or sleep in the soil they crimsoned. Our mindfulness, our gratitude, our reverence shall be in the preserved Republic and maintained liberties and the supreme justice for which they died. 

Warren G. Harding

 The professor Charles Seeger family went camping.


The baby in the photo is Pete Seeger.