J. D. Salinger, who was thought at one time to be the most important American writer to emerge since World War II but who then turned his back on success and adulation, becoming the Garbo of letters, famous for not wanting to be famous, died Wednesday at his home in Cornish, N.H., where he had lived in seclusion for more than 50 years. He was 91.

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Next year is the bicentenary of Frédéric Chopin's birth, and major celebrations of his life are planned. But, says Jessica Duchen, while the composer's music was sublime, his personality was another matter entirely

Jessica Duchen
Tribune.ie
13 Dec 09

It's never a good idea to judge art by the artist's character, as we too often do these days, and there are few better examples of why not than Frédéric Chopin. He is set to be the romantic hero of 2010, his bicentenary year: concert halls and record companies are preparing a barrage of celebratory events and CDs. But anniversaries can be mixed blessings for the dead: look closely at any adored individual and it is likely that something less than savoury will be lurking. There's no doubting the greatness of the Polish pianist-composer's music; but that greatness came at a heavy price for those who were close to him, or tried to be.

What's more, Chopin knew it. "It is not my fault if I am like a mushroom which seems edible but which poisons you if you pick it and taste it, taking it to be something else," he wrote in 1839. "I know I have never been of any use to anyone – and indeed not much use to myself."

He was assuredly a genius; he was also complicated, cold, vain, calculating, snobbish, snide, anti-Semitic and impossibly hypersensitive. He suffered from TB most of his life – his cantankerous nature has been blamed on the disease that killed him in his 40th year. But that was only part of the picture.

Over-romanticised movies show Chopin as a delicate figure coughing blood on to the piano keys, or as a romantic revolutionary in Warsaw. Illness and exile earn him sympathy, and justifiably so. But he left Poland to escape a revolution, not to support it. Romantic hero he was not. Instead, the poet Adam Mickiewicz, whose work Chopin admired and who was, like him, a Polish exile, called him a "moral vampire" for his adoration of the aristocracy and for his somewhat two-faced attitude towards the native land he missed so much, not to mention his liaison with the older novelist George Sand, with whom he lived for nine years. ( >>Continued )

beatcrave.com



'Today, December 8, 2009 marks the 29th anniversary of John Lennon’s untimely death. As the most prominent member of the British band, The Beatles the singer-songwriter was known for his controversial antics inside and outside of music. His life was cut short when he was gunned down outside of his New York apartment building by Mark David Chapman, a deranged critic of his message.

John Lennon was 40 years old at his time of death, which was brought on by multiple gun shot wounds. Chapman was a mentally unstable individual who thought Lennon was being hypocritical with his music. He sang about free love and lack of material possessions but was a multimillionaire, a contradiction that literally drove Chapman insane. On this day at 10:49 PM, Lennon was shot by Chapman and pronounced dead shortly after at 11:07.

At this time Lennon, had become a beacon of the people, along with his wife Yoko Ono. His freethinking philosophy on life was contagious and spread beyond his fans and into the political realm. His presence was felt by everyone, which is why his death was so devastating. He’ll always be remembered as one of the founding members of The Beatles and a man who changed the face of music forever.'

Because this article came out today in the San Francisco Chronicle about 'The Night Stalker's' DNA link to yet another murder and rape victim, a wee 9 year old S.F. girl, I decided to post his story for those of you not familiar with Ramirez's reign of pure murderous terror.

Richard Ramirez - The Night Stalker

--A look into the rape and killing spree of Satanic worshipper and serial killer, Richard Ramirez, who terrorized Los Angeles in 1985

By Charles Montaldo

Ricardo Leyva a.k.a. Richard Ramirez (photo at left) was born in El Paso, Texas, on February 28, 1960, to Julian and Mercedes Ramirez. Richard was the youngest child of six, epileptic, and described by his father as being "a good boy," until his involvement with drugs. Richard admired his father, but at the age of 12, he found a new hero, his cousin, Mike, a Vietnam veteran and ex-Green Beret.

Ramirez Finds a Hero

Mike, home from Vietnam, shared gruesome pictures of rape and human torture with Richard, who became fascinated with the pictorial brutality. The two spent a lot of time together, smoking pot and talking about war. On one such day, Mike's wife began to complain about Mike's laziness. Mike's reaction was to kill her by shooting her in the face, in front of Richard. Because of Mike's war record, he was sentenced to seven years for the killing.

Drugs, Candy and Satanism

By the age of 18, Richard was a habitual drug user and chronic candy eater, resulting in tooth decay and extreme halitosis. He also became involved in Satan worshipping and his general poor appearance enhanced his satanic persona. Already arrested on numerous drug and theft charges, Ramirez decided to move to southern California. There he advanced from simple theft to breaking and entering into homes. He became very proficient at it and eventually began to linger in the homes of his victims.

Pure Evil

On June 28, 1984, his burglaries turned into something far more evil. Ramirez entered through an opened window of Glassel Park resident, Jennie Vincow, age 79. According to Philip Carlo's book, 'The Night Stalker,' he became angry after not finding anything of value to steal, and began stabbing the sleeping Vincow, eventually slitting her throat. The act of killing aroused him sexually, and he had sex with the corpse before leaving.( >>Continue reading )

By DAVID N. GOODMAN, Associated Press Writer
San Francisco Chronicle
Friday, October 23, 2009

Soupy Sales, the rubber-faced comedian whose anything-for-a-chuckle career was built on 20,000 pies to the face and 5,000 live TV appearances across a half-century of laughs, has died. He was 83.

Sales died Thursday night at Calvary Hospice in the Bronx, New York, said his former manager and longtime friend, Dave Usher. Sales had many health problems and entered the hospice last week, Usher said.

Soupy Sales, born Milton Supman

At the peak of his fame in the 1950s and '60s, Sales was one of the best-known faces in the nation, Usher said.

"If President Eisenhower would have walked down the street, no one would have recognized him as much as Soupy," Usher said.

At the same time, Sales retained an openness to fans that turned every restaurant meal into an endless autograph-signing session, Usher said.

"He was just good to people," said Usher, a former jazz music producer who managed Sales in the 1950s and now owns Detroit-based Marine Pollution Control. ( >>Continued )

By Chris Irvine
Independent.ie
September 16, 2009

Ronnie Wood and his Russian girlfriend Ekaterina Ivanova were reportedly involved in such an argument that police were called to their home.

The Rolling Stone guitarist, 62, and his 20-year-old girlfriend allegedly began arguing after an all-night party at their £5 million (€5.6m) North London home.

Neighbours reportedly claimed that the pair were "screaming abuse at each other", with Miss Ivanova at one point heard screaming "I'm going to kill myself", according to reports.

Ronnie Wood and Ekaterina Ivanova were reportedly in an argument and the police were called to their home

One neighbour told The Daily Mirror: "The noise was just terrible. They were screaming abuse at each other and it's no surprise the cops were called, especially considering what Ekaterina was saying."

A friend of Jo Wood, Ronnie's estranged wife, who is appearing on the upcoming Strictly Come Dancing series, told the newspaper that she would be "furious".

"She doesn't want these sorts of headlines to overshadow the show", they said.

A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police said: "We were called by a member of the public who reported a domestic disturbance."

"Officers attended the address and no offences were alleged and there were no arrests."

By ANITA GATES
NY Times
September 14, 2009

*Links on site



Patrick Swayze, the balletically athletic actor who rose to stardom in the films “Dirty Dancing” and “Ghost” and whose 20-month battle with advanced pancreatic cancer drew wide attention, died Monday. He was 57.

His publicist, Annett Wolf, told The Associated Press in Los Angeles that Mr. Swayze died with family at his side.

Mr. Swayze’s cancer was diagnosed in January 2008. Six months after that, he had already outlived his prognosis and was filmed at an airport, smiling at photographers and calling himself, only half-facetiously, “a miracle dude.” He even went through with plans to star in “The Beast,” a new drama series for A&E, and filmed a complete season while undergoing treatment. Mr. Swayze insisted on continuing with the series. “How do you nurture a positive attitude when all the statistics say you’re a dead man?” he said to Bill Carter of The New York Times last October. “You go to work.”

The show, on which he plays an undercover F.B.I. agent, had its premiere in January and earned him admiring reviews.

A week before the series began, Mr. Swayze was the subject of a one-hour “Barbara Walters Special” on ABC, talking about his illness. “I keep my heart and my soul and my spirit open to miracles,” he told Ms. Walters. But he said he was not going to pursue every experimental treatment that came along. If he were to “spend so much time chasing staying alive,” he said, he wouldn’t be able to enjoy the time he had left. “I want to live,” he said.

Shortly after the interview was broadcast he was hospitalized for pneumonia, a complication of chemotherapy treatment. At least one tabloid newspaper ran photographs of him in April with reports that the cancer had metastasized and that his weight had dropped to 105 pounds. Reports earlier this year that he had stopped medical treatment were denied.

Mr. Swayze rose to stardom in 1987. He had received attention in several of his early movies and in the mini-series “North and South,” but the coming-of-age film “Dirty Dancing” established him as a romantic leading man. He starred opposite Jennifer Grey as a young working-class dance instructor at a Catskills resort who proved to have more heart, integrity and sex appeal than many of the wealthy guests with whom he was forbidden to fraternize.

He exhibited similar emotional intensity in the supernatural romance “Ghost” (1990), an enormous box-office hit. His character, a loft-living yuppie banker, is murdered early in the film and spends the rest of it as a spirit, desperately trying to communicate with his fiancée (Demi Moore) with the help of a psychic (Whoopi Goldberg). No dancing was involved, but Mr. Swayze showed off his physical grace in other ways and solidified his stardom.

Mr. Swayze was proud of “Ghost,” as he told The San Francisco Chronicle in 1990. “I needed to do something that will affect the audience in a positive way, make them feel better about their lives and appreciate what they have,” he said.

Patrick Wayne Swayze was born on Aug. 18, 1952, in Houston, the son of Jesse Wayne Swayze, an engineer and rodeo cowboy, and Patsy Swayze, a dance instructor and choreographer. He began dancing as a child and often talked about being teased while growing up in Texas because of his interests. But he was also a student athlete, and his dancing career was later hampered by a football injury.

After attending San Jacinto, a community college in Texas, Mr. Swayze moved to New York to study dance, becoming a member of Eliot Feld Ballet. He made his Broadway debut in 1975 as a dancer in “Goodtime Charley” and was soon cast in the original Broadway production of “Grease,” taking over the lead role. (He returned to Broadway almost three decades later, briefly filling in as the razzle-dazzle lawyer Billy Flynn in “Chicago” in 2003.)

He made his screen debut in “Skatetown U.S.A.” (1979), a roller-disco movie starring Scott Baio. Looking back on that film a few years later, he told the Toronto newspaper The Globe and Mail in 1984, “I saw that with not too much trouble I could become a teenybopper star, but I knew if I accepted that, it would take years to win credibility as a serious actor.”

His first notable film was “The Outsiders” (1983), a drama about teenage gangs, which starred other newcomers like Tom Cruise, Rob Lowe, Matt Dillon and Emilio Estevez. That same year he was cast in a short-lived television series, “Renegades,” a sort of updated “Mod Squad” about young gang leaders turned deputies.

Mr. Swayze’s public profile grew steadily, particularly with his appearances in “Red Dawn” (1984), a film about small-town high school students fighting the Soviets in World War III, and in “North and South” (1985), a high-profile 12-hour mini-series in which he played a conflicted Southern soldier.

“People don’t identify with victims,” he said in an interview with The Associated Press, discussing his “North and South” character, originally written as a more passive man. “They identify with people who have the world come down on their heads and who fight to survive.”

After that, along came “Dirty Dancing” and then, just three years later, “Ghost,” with a few largely forgotten movies in between, like the violent and unmistakably sexist action movie “Road House” (1989).

During the 1990s, he was a bank-robbing surfer in “Point Break” (1991) and a drag queen with the daunting name Vida Boheme in the awkwardly titled “To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar” (1995). “To Wong Foo” earned him his third Golden Globe nomination. (The others were for “Dirty Dancing” and “Ghost.”)

His portrayal of a noble doctor in Roland Joffé’s “City of Joy” (1992) was not well received. But then, critics rarely praised his acting ability. At best he was commended for his athletic presence and stalwart demeanor.

Between 1995 and 2007 he made more than a dozen feature films, including “Donnie Darko” (2001), in which he played an obnoxious motivational speaker. In 2006 he surprised many by starring in London as the streetwise gambler Nathan Detroit in the musical “Guys and Dolls.” His last film was “Powder Blue,” a drama with Lisa Kudrow that has not yet been released.

As a young unknown, Mr. Swayze met Lisa Niemi, a fellow Houstonian, in one of his mother’s dance classes. They married in 1975, and she survives him, as do his mother; two brothers, Don and Sean; and a sister, Bambi. Another sister, Vicky, died in 1994.

Mr. Swayze said publicly more than once that he was determined not to be typecast. In a 1989 interview with The Chicago Sun-Times, he said, “The only plan I have is that every time people think they have me pegged, I’m going to come out of left field and do something unexpected.”

He also expressed concern about the dangers of Hollywood superficiality. “One of the reasons I bought my ranch was because I didn’t want to hear the hype,” he told The A.P. in 1985, referring to his horse ranch in the San Gabriel Mountains. He added, “Your horses don’t lie to you.”

The Boston Globe
August 29, 2009 02:58 PM



My name is Ted Kennedy Jr., a name I share with my son, a name I share with my father. Although it hasn't been easy at times to live with this name, I've never been more proud of it than I am today.

Your eminence, thank you for being here. You grace us with your presence.

To all the musicians who've come here, my father loved the arts and he would be so pleased for your performances today.

My heart is filled -- and I first want to say thank you -- my heart is filled with appreciation and gratitude. To the people of Massachusetts, my father's loyal staff -- in many ways, my dad's loss is just as great for them as it is for those of us in our family.

And to all of my father’s family and friends who have come to pay their respects, listening to people speak about how my father impacted their lives and the deep personal connection that people felt with my dad has been an overwhelming emotional experience.

My dad had the greatest friends in the world. All of you here are also my friends, and his greatest gift to me. I love you just as much as he did.

Sara Brown, the Taoiseach, President Obama, President Clinton, Secretary Clinton, President Bush, President Carter, you honor my family with your presence here today.

I remember how my dad would tell audiences years ago, "I don't mind not being President, I just mind that someone else is."

There is much to say, and much will be said, about Ted Kennedy the statesman, the master of the legislative process and bipartisan compromise, workhorse of the Senate, beacon of social justice and protector of the people.

There is also much to say and much will be said about my father the man. The storyteller, the lover of costume parties, a practical joker, the accomplished painter. He was a lover of everything French: cheese, wine, and women. He was a mountain climber, navigator, skipper, tactician, airplane pilot, rodeo rider, ski jumper, dog lover, and all around adventurer. Our family vacations left us all injured and exhausted.

He was a dinner table debater and devil's advocate. He was an Irishman and a proud member of the Democratic Party.

Here's one you may not know: Out of Harvard he was a Green Bay Packers recruit but decided to go to law school instead.

He was a devout Catholic whose faith helped him survive unbearable losses and whose teachings taught him that he had a moral obligation to help others in need.

He was not perfect, far from it. But my father believed in redemption and he never surrendered. Never stopped trying to right wrongs, be they the results of his own failings or of ours.

But today I'm simply compelled to remember Ted Kennedy as my father and my best friend. When I was 12 years old I was diagnosed with bone cancer and a few months after I lost my leg, there was a heavy snowfall over my childhood home outside of Washington D.C. My father went to the garage to get the old Flexible Flyer and asked me if I wanted to go sledding down the steep driveway. And I was trying to get used to my new artificial leg and the hill was covered with ice and snow and it wasn't easy for me to walk. And the hill was very slick and as I struggled to walk, I slipped and I fell on the ice and I started to cry and I said "I can't do this." I said, "I'll never be able to climb that hill." And he lifted me in his strong, gentle arms and said something I'll never forget. He said "I know you'll do it, there is nothing you can't do. We're going to climb that hill together, even if it takes us all day."

Sure enough, he held me around my waist and we slowly made it to the top, and, you know, at age 12 losing a leg pretty much seems like the end of the world, but as I climbed onto his back and we flew down the hill that day I knew he was right. I knew I was going to be OK. You see, my father taught me that even our most profound losses are survivable and it is what we do with that loss, our ability to transform it into a positive event, that is one of my father's greatest lessons. He taught me that nothing is impossible.

During the summer months when I was growing up, my father would arrive late in the afternoon from Washington on Fridays and as soon as he got to Cape Cod, he would want to go straight out and practice sailing maneuvers . . . in anticipation of that weekend's races.

And we'd be out late, and the sun would be setting, and family dinner would be getting cold, and we’d still be out there practicing our jibes and spinnaker sets long after everyone else had gone ashore. Well one night, not another boat in sight on the summer sea, I asked him, "Why are we always the last ones on the water?" Teddy, he said, "Well, you see, most of the other sailors we race against are smarter and more talented than we are. But the reason why we are going to win is that we are going to work harder than them and we will be better prepared."

And he just wasn't talking about boating. My father admired perseverance. My father believed that to do a job effectively required a tremendous amount of time and effort.

Dad instilled in me also the importance of history and biography. He loved Boston and the amazing writers, and philosophers, and politicians from Massachusetts. He took me and my cousins to the Old North Church, and to Walden Pond, and to the homes of Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne in the Berkshires. He thought that Massachusetts was the greatest place on earth. And he had letters from many of its former senators like Daniel Webster and John Quincy Adams hanging on his walls, inspired by things heroic.

He was a civil war buff. When we were growing up he would pack us all into his car or rented camper and we would travel around to all the great battlefields. I remember he would frequently meet with his friend Shelby Foot at a particular site on the anniversary of a historic battle, just so he could appreciate better what the soldiers must have experienced on that day.

He believed that in order to know what to do in the future, you had to understand the past. My father loved other old things. He loved his classic wooden schooner, the Mya, He loved lighthouses and his 1973 Pontiac convertible.

My father taught me to treat everyone I meet, no matter what station in life, with the same dignity and respect. He could be discussing arm control with the president at 3 p.m. and meeting with a union carpenter on fair wage legislation or a New Bedford fisherman on fisheries policy at 4:30.

I once told him that he accidentally left some money, I remember this when I was a little kid, on the sink in our hotel room. And he replied "Teddy, let me tell you something. Making beds all day is back breaking work. The woman who has to clean up after us today has a family to feed."

And that's just the kind of guy he was.

He answered Uncle Joe's call to patriotism, Uncle Jack's call to public service, and Bobby's determination to seek a newer world. Unlike them, he lived to be a grandfather, and knowing what my cousins have been through I feel grateful that I have had my father as long as I did.

He even taught me some of life's harder lessons, such as how to like Republicans. He once told me, he said, "Teddy, Republicans love this country just as much as I do." I think that he felt like he had something in common with his Republican counterparts: the vagaries of public opinion, the constant scrutiny of the press, the endless campaigning for the next election, but most of all, the incredible shared sacrifice that being in public life demands. He understood the hardship that politics has on a family and the hard work and commitment that it requires.

He often brought his republican colleagues home for dinner and he believed in developing personal relationships and honoring differences. And one of the wonderful experiences that I will remember today is how many of his republican colleges are sitting here, right before him. That's a true testament to the man. And he always told me that, "Always be ready to compromise but never compromise on your principles." He was an idealist and a pragmatist. He was restless but patient.

When he learned that a survey of Republican senators named him the Democratic legislator that they most wanted to work with and that John McCain called him the single most effective member of the U.S. Senate, he was so proud because he considered the combination of accolades from your supporters and respect from your sometime political adversaries as one of the ultimate goals of a successful political life.

At the end of his life, my dad returned home. He died at the place he loved more than any other, Cape Cod. The last months of my dad’s life were not sad or terrifying, but filled with profound experiences, a series of moments more precious than I could have imagined. He taught me more about humility, vulnerability, and courage than he had taught me in my whole life.

Although he lived a full and complete life by any measure, the fact was he wasn’t done. He still had work to do. He was so proud of where we had recently come as a nation, and although I do grieve for might have been, for what he might have helped us accomplish, I pray today that we can set aside this sadness and instead celebrate all that he was, and did, and stood for. I will try to live up to the high standard that my father set for all of us when he said "The work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."

I love you dad and I always will. I miss you already.


(Image: C.J. Gunther/Getty)

**I learned some history today I didna know. It's quite fascinating.

Belfast Telegraph
Wednesday, 19 August 2009

He should have been hailed a hero for his wartime codebreaking. Instead he was prosecuted for his homosexuality and took his own life. So why has Britain never said sorry? Jonathan Brown reports

He may have played a pivotal role in securing victory in the Second World War for his country six years earlier, but few outside the academic community would have recognised Alan Turing as he made his way down Manchester's Oxford Street shortly before Christmas in 1951. Someone who did notice the athletically-built scientist, however, was a young working class gay man called Arnold Murray.

Alan Turing helped crack German Enigma codes during the Second World War

Homosexuality was still illegal under the same repressive laws which had sent Oscar Wilde to jail half a century earlier. But regardless of the risk, the chance encounter was to develop into something more substantial and Murray spent a number of nights at the older man's modest home in suburban Wilmslow.

A month later, after Turing, a veteran of the then still secret Bletchley Park code-cracking team, had been giving a talk to the BBC on his pioneering work on artificial intelligence, he returned home to find his house burgled.

The culprit was an acquaintance of Murray's, who would prey on Murray's lovers, thinking they would be so afraid of being outed that they would not report the thefts to the police.

But Turing defied this convention and went straight to the police, where he admitted his affair – a "crime" for which he was spared the normal two-year jail term in favour of a hormonal treatment designed to beef up his masculine urges and suppress his homosexuality. The resulting publicity was to prove too much to bear and in June 1954, the 41-year-old was found dead in bed by his housekeeper. He had eaten an apple he had laced with poison. ( >>Read on )

From Wikipedia:

Lozen (c. 1840-1890) was the sister of the Chihenne-Chiricahua Apache chief, Victorio (akas: Bidu-ya; Beduiat).

Born into the Chihenne band during the late 1840s, Lozen was a skilled warrior and a prophet. According to legends, she was able to use her powers (Diya) and (Inda-ce-ho-ndi = "Enemies-Against-Power") in battle to learn the movements of the enemy.

Victorio is quoted to have said that "Lozen is my right hand... strong as a man, braver than most, and cunning in strategy. Lozen is a shield to her people."

Victorio's Campaign

In the 1870s, Victorio and his band of Apaches were moved to the deplorable conditions of the San Carlos Reservation in Arizona. He and his followers left the reservation around 1877 and began marauding and raiding, all while evading capture by the military. Lozen fought beside Victorio when he and his followers rampaged against Americans who had appropriated their homeland around west New Mexico's Black Mountain.

As the band fled American forces, Lozen inspired women and children, frozen in fear, to cross the surging Rio Grande. "I saw a magnificent woman on a beautiful horse—Lozen, sister of Victorio. Lozen the woman warrior!", remembers James Kaywaykla, a child at the time, riding behind his grandmother. "High above her head she held her rifle. There was a glitter as her right foot lifted and struck the shoulder of her horse. He reared, then plunged into the torrent. She turned his head upstream, and he began swimming."

Immediately, the other women and the children followed her into the torrent. When they reached the far bank of the river, cold and wet but alive, Lozen came to Kaywaykla’s grandmother. "You take charge, now", she said. "I must return to the warriors", who stood between their women and children and the onrushing cavalry. Lozen drove her horse back across the wild river and returned to her comrades.

According to Kaywaykla, "She could ride, shoot, and fight like a man, and I think she had more ability in planning military strategy than did Victorio." He also remembers Victorio saying, "I depend upon Lozen as I do Nana" (the aging patriarch of the band).

Late in Victorio’s campaign, Lozen left the band to escort a new mother and her newborn infant across the Chihuahuan Desert from Mexico to the Mescalero Apache Reservation, away from the hardships of the trail.

Equipped with only a rifle, a cartridge belt, a knife, and a three-day supply of food, she set out with the mother and child on a perilous journey through territory occupied by Mexican and U.S. Cavalry forces. En route, afraid that a gunshot would betray their presence, she used her knife to kill a longhorn, butchering it for the meat.

She stole a Mexican cavalry horse for the new mother, escaping through a volley of gunfire. She then stole a vaquero’s horse for herself, disappearing before he could give chase. She also acquired a soldier’s saddle, rifle, ammunition, blanket and canteen, and even his shirt. Finally, she delivered her charges to the reservation.

There, she learned that Mexican and Tarahumara Indian forces under Mexican commander Joaquin Terrazas had ambushed Victorio and his band at Tres Castillos, three stony hills in northeastern Chihuahua.

According to Stephen H. Lekson in his monogram Nana's Raid: Apache Warfare in Southern New Mexico, 1881, Terrazas, on October 15, 1880, "surprised the Apaches, and in the boulders of Tres Castillos, Victorio’s warriors fought their last fight. Apache tradition holds that Victorio fell on his own knife rather than die at the hands of the Mexicans. Almost all the warriors at Tres Castillos were killed, and many women died fighting; the older people were shot, while almost one hundred young women and children were taken for slaves. Only a few escaped."

End of Apache Wars and Lozen's later years

Knowing the survivors would need her, Lozen immediately left the Mescalero Reservation and rode alone southwest across the desert, threading her way undetected through U.S. and Mexican military patrols. She rejoined the decimated band in the Sierra Madre (in northwestern Chihuahua), now led by the 74-year-old patriarch Nana.

According to Kimberly Moore Buchanan's book Apache Women Warriors, Lozen fought beside Nana and his handful of warriors in his two-month long bloody campaign of vengeance across southwestern New Mexico in 1881. Just before the fighting began, Nana said of Lozen, "Though she is a woman, there is no warrior more worthy than the sister of Victorio."

Lozen also fought beside Geronimo after his breakout from the San Carlos reservation in 1885, in the last campaign of the Apache wars. With the band pursued relentlessly, she used her power to locate their enemies—the U.S. and Mexican cavalries. According to Alexander B. Adams in his book Geronimo, "she would stand with her arms outstretched, chant a prayer to Ussen, the Apaches’ supreme deity, and slowly turn around." Lozen's prayer is translated in Eve Ball's book In the Days of Victorio:

Upon this earth
On which we live
Ussen has Power
This Power is mine
For locating the enemy.
I search for that Enemy
Which only Ussen the Great
Can show to me.

"By the sensation she felt in her arms, she could tell where the enemy was and how many they numbered", Adams writes.

Taken into U. S. military custody after Geronimo’s final surrender, Lozen traveled as a prisoner of war to Mount Vernon Barracks in Alabama.

Like many other imprisoned Apache warriors, she died in confinement of tuberculosis sometime after 1887. Nevertheless, her life was noted as a validation of the respected place women held among the Apaches.

Lozen was the subject of Lucia St. Clair-Robson's 2002 novel Ghost Warrior, Lozen of the Apaches.

References

* Aleshire, Peter. Woman Warrior: The Story of Lozen, Apache Warrior and Shaman. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2001.

Last night I found out that a former online friend of mine had slipped away from this life without my knowing it. I canny begin to tell you the sadness this has settled around my shoulders. I didna even know he was gone. This is because, for me, he had left earlier, and I had had to realise that people come into our lives like shooting stars. Their brilliance and warmth stays but a short time as they make their way through the sky. But we are forever changed by them. We are never the same again. Our hearts are filled with tiny sparks from their spirits that ignite great flames of passion and love. Then it is our job to go out into the world and be the light for others as well -- just as we have been taught.

Dáithí Mac Bhurrais, thank you for imparting to the world your fenian faith, and thank you for your friendship. And my thanks to your family for sharing you with all of us. You were truly a shooting star.

By Aislinn Simpson
Independent.ie
Monday July 20, 2009

The doctor who attempted to revive legendary guitarist Jimi Hendrix on the night he died has said it is "plausible" that he was murdered.

John Bannister, the on-call registrar at the now closed St Mary Abbots Hospital in Kensington, said in an interview that the patient seemed to have "drowned" in a large amount of red wine.

The account fits with one given by James "Tappy" Wright, a 65-year-old former road manager who worked for Hendrix's manager Mike Jeffrey.

Jimi Hendrix

Wright has claimed in a new book that indebted Jeffrey had taken out a $2m (€1.4m) life-insurance policy on the star amid concerns about his increased drug-taking, and that he told him Hendrix was "worth more to him dead than alive".

He alleges that Jeffrey confessed to him that he had ordered the killing a month before his death in a plane crash.

The official version of Hendrix's death at the age of 27 is that he died from choking on vomit after a drugs overdose.

Wright's version is that Hendrix was killed on the orders of Jeffrey by a gang who broke into his hotel room and forced wine and painkillers down his throat until he drowned.

Mr Bannister, 67, said he had no idea who Hendrix was when he arrived early on the morning of September 18, 1970, but remembers being perplexed by his height.

“He was hanging over the table we had him on by about ten inches,” he told The Times newspaper.

He said he fought to resuciate him but there was no hope of survival.

"We worked very hard for about half an hour but there was no response at all. It really was an exercise in futility,” he said. “Somebody said to me ‘You know who that was? That was Jimi Hendrix,’ and, of course, I said, ‘Who’s Jimi Hendrix?’.”

He said that Wright's description, in his memoir Rock Roadster, of Hendrix's demise "sounded plausible because of the volume of wine”.

“The amount of wine that was over him was just extraordinary. Not only was it saturated right through his hair and shirt but his lungs and stomach were absolutely full of wine," he said.

"I have never seen so much wine. We had a sucker that you put down into his trachea, the entrance to his lungs and to the whole of the back of his throat.

“We kept sucking him out and it kept surging and surging. He had already vomited up masses of red wine and I would have thought there was half a bottle of wine in his hair. He had really drowned in a massive amount of red wine.”

Bannister now lives in Sydney and worked as a doctor until 1992 when he was deregistered for fraudulent conduct.

By RINKER BUCK, The Hartford Courant
Baltimore Sun
July 19, 2009

Frank McCourt, the Irish-American storyteller who parlayed the miseries of a Limerick upbringing into an extraordinary late-life literary blooming, died of cancer Sunday in New York City.

McCourt, 78, had spent the past 13 years buoyantly touring the globe on reading tours and writing two sequels to his 1996 best-seller, "Angela's Ashes," which sold more than 5 million copies and was translated into more than 20 languages.

He had been undergoing treatment for skin cancer in recent years and been released in early June from New York's Memorial Sloan Kettering Center to recuperate at his Roxbury home. Two weeks ago he was diagnosed with meningitis, a frequent complication of patients whose immune systems are compromised by cancer treatment, and McCourt was moved to a New York hospice where over the past few days family and friends from around the world had gathered at his bedside.

During the past decade McCourt had become a familiar, popular figure and a kind of permanent cultural resource around Connecticut.

In 1999 he spent $1.2 million of his "Angela's Ashes" proceeds on a converted, eight-room barn on Roxbury's Tophet Road, in the heart of the Litchfield County arts community, comfortably settling in and making friends with neighbors such as Bill and Rose Styron, Arthur Miller and Candace Bushnell. At Marty's Café in nearby Washington Depot, McCourt loved to dawdle over coffee and swap tales with friends, astonishing tourists who dropped in and saw the famous writer holding court.

He considered his public speaking prowess inseparable from his role as a writer and accepted several invitations a year to appear at charitable fund-raisers and writing workshops at Connecticut's community college campuses. His name on the marquee of the Warner Theater in Torrington or Hartford's Bushnell guaranteed a sellout audience. ( >>Continue reading )

By Jeffrey Hyatt
Beat Crave
4 June 09

It’s a sad day for fans of David Carradine with the reports of his death in Bangkok.

Known primarily for his popular TV and film work, Carradine was also a celebrated artist, musician and songwriter throughout his lengthy career.

The man who would one day star as Kwai Chang Caine in the ‘70s TV series “Kung Fu” actually studied musical theory and composition at San Francisco State College. It was while writing music for the college’s drama department that Carradine discovered a desire to act.

Carradine moved to New York City and soon debuted on Broadway debut as a replacement in 1964’s The Deputy.

Flexing his songwriting talent, in 1975 Carradine wrote the score for the film “You and Me.” He also starred in the drama. Carradine would continue to merge his love of acting and music in films like “Cloud Dancer,” “American Reel,” and “Kill Bill: Vol. 2.”

A proven talent on the piano, many will be interested to know that Carradine was equally adept with guitar, flute, clarinet, saxophone, drums and the sitar.

In-between an eclectic movie career, Carradine released two albums – Grasshopper and As Is – featuring the singles “You and Me,” “Troublemaker” and “Walk The Floor.” All told, he has written more than 100 songs and toured the world, playing his special blend of fun, bluesy soul.

You can hear some of Carradine’s music at the official David Carradine website. Instant review: Not bad at all! A little country, a little folk and definitely someone you can tell had a passion for the craft of songwriting. Highly recommended.

Carradine’s artwork can also be viewed on the official website.

Aside from his solo records, Carradine also had a band: The Cosmic Rescue Team.

How cool is that? Joining Carradine in the bluesy, southern rock-style band was brother Bobby Carradine on guitar, Clynell Jackson III on bass, Leslie Daniel on drums and violinist Sharon Benson. The members of Cosmic Rescue Team also have a website and side-project called Soul Dogs, a terrific band Carradine was known to take the stage with.

As we mourn Carradine’s passing and look back over his career, it seems almost fitting that he portrayed folk singer Woody Guthrie in the 1976 film “Bound for Glory,” a musical performance remembered fondly as one talented man portraying another.

“Somebody once told me that there are no failures in Hollywood, only people who give up too soon,” Carradine said in an interview last year. “It’s not that I’m the very best at everything, but I’ve lived longer than some guys and didn’t quit like others. And I’ve always had music to make the ride that much sweeter.”

Sweeter for all of us.