Sal Castro, Los Angeles Chicano Activist Dies
 

Sal Castro, teacher who led '68 Chicano student walkouts, dies at 79

By Teresa Watanabe

April 15, 2013

Salvador Castro, a social studies teacher who played a leading role in the historic 1968 Chicano student walkouts protesting rampant bias and inequalities in the Los Angeles Unified School District, died Monday, the district announced. He was 79.

Castro, known as “Sal,” was a Lincoln High School teacher who guided student walkouts at five predominantly Mexican American schools on the Eastside in what came to be seen as a milestone in community activism. The students demanded bilingual education, ethnic studies and other changes at a time when the curriculum largely ignored Mexican American history and educators forbid Chicano students to speak Spanish and often steered them toward menial jobs rather than college despite strong academic abilities, according to the district.

Castro was arrested and charged with conspiracy to disrupt public schools and disturb the peace for his alleged role in guiding the “blowouts.” But the charges were eventually dropped and he came to be hailed as a courageous civil rights leader. Salvador B. Castro Middle School was named after him several years ago.

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/l...,4019352.story

Many of you know I got my K-12 education in the L.A. Unified School District. What I have highlighted above I experienced it personally. My High School counselor, Mr. Cole, flat out told me this when I told him I wanted to take some classes to prepare for college. "You are a Mexican. You are good with your hands. You should look at a vocation, not college." I share many things with all of you about discrimination I have experienced in my life. I do this not because I am competing in the "Opression Olympics" but because I hope you have found me to be credible through the years and you realize a fellow traveler, me, is sharing with you, it really did and does happen.

I am thankful for many activist that came before me and my generation and the ones that will follow us. There is crossover for many of us in the complexity of who we are and there are commonalities. We all know happiness and sorrow. I really believe most of us want to do better for our world, planet.

Pat Summerall dead at 82
 

DALLAS (AP) -- Pat Summerall, the NFL player-turned-broadcaster whose deep, resonant voice called games for more than 40 years, has died at the age of 82.

Summerall was part of network television broadcasts for 16 Super Bowls. His last championship game was for Fox on Feb. 3, 2002, also his last game with longtime partner John Madden. The popular duo worked together for 21 years, moving to Fox in 1994 after years as the lead team for CBS.

Summerall played 10 NFL seasons (1952-61) with the Chicago Cardinals and New York Giants. He started doing NFL games for CBS in 1964. He also covered the PGA Tour and tennis.

Richie Havens Passed!
 

Richie Havens has passed:praying:!

M*A*S*H Actor Allan Arbus Dies
 

Allan Arbus, best known for his dozen appearances as the sarcastic psychiatrist Maj. Sidney Freedman on the '70s series M*A*S*H, died Friday. He was 95.

Mr. Arbus appeared in films like “Coffy” and “Crossroads” and was a TV regular during the 1970s and ’80s, appearing on “Taxi,” “Starsky & Hutch,” “Matlock” and other shows.

George Jones, country superstar, has died at 81
 

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — George Jones, the peerless, hard-living country singer who recorded dozens of hits about good times and regrets and peaked with the heartbreaking classic "He Stopped Loving Her Today," has died.

Known for his clenched, precise baritone, Jones had No. 1 songs in five separate decades, 1950s to 1990s, and was idolized not just by fellow country singers, but by Frank Sinatra, Pete Townshend, Elvis Costello, James Taylor and countless others.

In a career that lasted more than 50 years, "Possum" recorded more than 150 albums and became the champion and symbol of traditional country music, a well-lined link to his hero, Hank Williams.

Former Ms. magazine editor Mary Thom, avid motorcyclist, dies in NY highway crash at age 68
 

YONKERS, N.Y. — Prominent feminist Mary Thom, a writer and former editor of Ms. magazine who also was an avid motorcyclist, crashed while riding on a highway and was killed, her nephew said Saturday. She was 68.

Thom was one of Ms. magazine’s founding members and served as an editor there for about 20 years, leaving in 1992. She also was an author who wrote a book about the history of Ms. and was a co-author, with Suzanne Braun Levine, of an oral history of former congresswoman and activist Bella Abzug.

Most recently, Thom was the editor-in-chief of the Women’s Media Center’s features department, which produces reports and commentaries by national and international contributors.

Dr. Joyce Brothers
 

Joyce Brothers, a former academic psychologist who long before Drs. Ruth, Phil and Laura was counseling millions over the airwaves, died on Monday at her home in Fort Lee, N.J. She was 85.

Dr. Joyce Brothers, as she was always known professionally — a full-name hallmark of the more formal times in which she began her career — was widely described as the mother of mass-media psychology because of the firm, pragmatic and homiletic guidance she administered for decades via radio and television.

Historically, she was a bridge between advice columnists like Dear Abby and Ann Landers, who got their start in the mid-1950s, and the self-help advocates of the 1970s and afterward.

Throughout the 1960s, and long beyond, one could scarcely turn on the television or open a newspaper without encountering her. She was the host of her own nationally syndicated TV shows, starting in the late 1950s with “The Dr. Joyce Brothers Show” and over the years including “Ask Dr. Brothers,” “Consult Dr. Brothers” and “Living Easy With Dr. Joyce Brothers.”

She was also a ubiquitous guest on talk shows like “The Tonight Show” and on variety shows like “The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour.”

She was a panelist on many game shows, including “What’s My Line?” and “The Hollywood Squares.” These appearances had a fitting symmetry: It was as a game-show contestant that Dr. Brothers had received her first television exposure.

Playing herself, or a character very much like herself, she had guest roles on a blizzard of TV series, from “The Jack Benny Program” to “Happy Days,” “Taxi,” “Baywatch,” “Entourage” and “The Simpsons.”

She also lectured widely; had a call-in radio show, a syndicated newspaper column and a regular column in Good Housekeeping magazine; and wrote books.

Dr. Brothers arrived in the American consciousness (or, more precisely, the American unconscious) at a serendipitous time: the exact historical moment when cold war anxiety, a greater acceptance of talk therapy and the widespread ownership of television sets converged. Looking crisply capable yet eminently approachable in her pastel suits and pale blond pageboy, she offered gentle, nonthreatening advice on sex, relationships, parenting and all manner of decent behavior.

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One of my childhood crushes.

Crap. :vigil:

Canadian abortion rights activist Morgentaler dies
 

TORONTO (AP) -- Abortion rights activist Dr. Henry Morgentaler, who helped overturn Canada's abortion law 25 years ago, died Wednesday at age 90 at his Toronto home.

The Polish-born Morgentaler emerged in 1967 as an advocate for a woman's right to have an abortion, at a time when attempting to induce one was a crime punishable by life in prison.

Morgentaler later said his five-year stay in the Nazi concentration camps of Auschwitz and Dachau prepared him for his showdown with Canada's legal system, saying that in his mind, laws can be wrong.

Morgentaler opened the first abortion clinic in Montreal in 1970, followed by more clinics across the country, and he fought Canada's abortion law, which ultimately resulted in the Supreme Court's landmark 1988 decision declaring it unconstitutional.

Carolyn Egan, director of the Ontario Coalition of Abortion Clinics, said Wednesday that Morgentaler had a huge impact on the lives of women in Canada. Joyce Arthur, executive director of the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada, said he saved the lives of countless women.

In 2008, Morgentaler received the Order of Canada, the country's highest recognition award.

Morgentaler's work also earned him many opponents, and the national coordinator of the anti-abortion group Campaign Life Coalition, Mary Ellen Douglas, said she hopes Morgentaler repented before his death and that his death marks what she called "an end to the killing in Canada."

There are no longer crowds of protesters outside the clinics Morgentaler opened.

"It's because of the debate, people have changed their minds. Now they have the additional knowledge and experience that women no longer die as a result of abortions," Morgentaler said in a 2004 interview. "We've come to a situation where women accept (abortion on demand) as part of their rights."

Jean Stapleton Dies
 

Tim Samaras & Carl Young, Storm Chasers Stars, Killed in Oklahoma Storm
 

Iain Banks - author
 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013...dies-59-cancer

http://i132.photobucket.com/albums/q...ps2fb6df69.jpg

Esther Williams
 

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/07/mo...anted=all&_r=0


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/diana-...b_3413456.html

Allen Derr
 

BOISE, Idaho (AP) - Allen Derr, an Idaho lawyer who won a landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling to bolster anti-discrimination protections for women, died Monday in Boise. He was 85.

On Nov. 22, 1971, the Supreme Court justices issued their Reed vs. Reed decision, holding states cannot discriminate against people because of their gender. It marked a departure from the era when courts often excluded women from full participation in important civil affairs.

His client, Sally Reed, a woman challenging her estranged husband over which of them should be appointed to oversee their son's estate following his suicide, was fighting to overturn an Idaho courts' decision based on an 1864 Idaho law: If more than one person claimed to be equally entitled to be trustee, "males must be preferred to females."

Characteristically humble, Derr described his role in the case in 2011 as nothing extraordinary.

"I was just doing my job," he said two years ago, on the 40th anniversary of the decision when he was honored by at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., alongside the lawyer who wrote Reed's legal brief: Current Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

The decision in Reed vs. Reed has been celebrated in the 2001 book by historians Alan Brinkley and James McPherson, "Days of Destiny," as among a handful of uncelebrated events that nonetheless changed the course of history.

Derr remembered clearly Sally Reed's frustration when she came into his office in Boise, seeking help.

"When she came to me, she'd just been turned down by the probate court, in a very short, one-page decision," he said. "She was hurt and outraged."

Derr's basic argument was simple. The U.S. Constitution's 14th Amendment forbade such discrimination.

Chief Justice Warren Burger, writing the unanimous decision, agreed.

"To give a mandatory preference to members of either sex over members of the other, merely to accomplish the elimination of hearings on the merits, is to make the very kind of arbitrary legislative choice forbidden by the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment," Burger wrote.

James Gandolfini, 'The Sopranos' Star,
 

James Gandolfini, whose portrayal of a brutal, emotionally fragile mob boss in HBO's "The Sopranos" helped create one of TV's greatest drama series and turned the mobster stereotype on its head, died Wednesday in Italy. He was 51.

Gandolfini played mob boss Tony Soprano in the groundbreaking series that aired from 1999 to 2007. His performance was indelible and career-making, but he refused to be stereotyped in other roles as the bulky mobster who was a therapy patient, family man and cold-blooded killer.

After the series concluded with its breathtaking ending that left viewers guessing, Gandolfini's varied film work included "Zero Dark Thirty" and comedies such as "In the Loop," a political satire. He voiced the Wild Thing Carol in "Where the Wild Things Are."

Gandolfini also shared a Broadway stage in 2009 with Jeff Daniels, Hope Davis and Marcia Gay Harden in a celebrated production of "God of Carnage," where he earned a Tony Award nomination for best actor. He also was in "On the Waterfront" with David Morse.

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Loved this guy as Tony. Loved the Soprano's.

RIP Mr.Gandolfini...you will be missed (w)

Italian astrophysicist and activist Margherita Hack
 

ROME (AP) -- Margherita Hack, an astrophysicist who explained her research on the stars in plain language for the public and who championed civil rights in her native Italy, died on Saturday in the Adriatic Sea town of Trieste, where she had headed an astronomical observatory. She was 91.

President Giorgio Napolitano's condolence message hailed her as a "high-level personality in the world of scientific culture."

`'At the same time, she represented a strong example of civil passion, leaving a noble fingerprint in public debate and in the dialogue with citizens," Napolitano said.

Hack headed the observatory in Trieste, the first woman to hold that post, from 1964 to 1987, and was a popular and frequent commentator in Italian media about discoveries in astronomy and physics.

The current director of the observatory, Stefano Borgani, told Sky TG24 TV that Hack was one of the first astronomers to `'have the intuition" that the future of astronomical observation lay in using space satellites.

An atheist who decried Vatican influence on Italian politicians, Hack helped fight a successful battle to legalize abortion in Italy. She unsuccessfully lobbied for the right to euthanasia and also championed gay rights. Among her victories was a campaign against construction of nuclear reactors in Italy.

A vegetarian since childhood, she also was an advocate for animal protection and lived with eight cats and a dog.

Hack, an optimist with a cheerful disposition, studied the heavens in the firm belief there was no after-life.

`'I have no fear of death," Hack once said in a TV interview. "While we are here, death isn't" with us.

`'When there is death, I won't be here," she said.

She liked to joke that the `'first and last" time she was in a church was for her marriage to fellow native Florentine Aldo De Rosa, in 1944. She agreed to a church ceremony only because the groom's parents were very religious. Hack dressed simply in life, including for her own wedding, when she wore an overcoat-turned-inside out for a bridal gown.

Hack enrolled at the University of Florence as a student of literature, but after one class, switched to physics. By the early 1950s, she was an astronomer at the Tuscan city's astronomical observatory.

She was also an athlete, excelling in track. Specializing in the long jump and high jump from 1939 to 1943, she won national university championships and placed high in national championships.

Hack was active in left-wing politics, including most recently supporting the governor of southern Puglia, Nichi Vendola, one of Italy's few openly gay politicians.

`'With Margherita Hack's passing, we lose an authoritative voice in favor of civil rights and equality," said Fabrizio Marrazzo, a spokesman for a gay advocacy group, Gay Center. `'More than once, Hack came out in favor of gay rights, civil unions and the dignity of gay families."

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TV's 'Waltons' storekeeper Joe Conley
 

Joe Conley, an actor best known as the small town storekeeper on the TV series "The Waltons," has died at age 85.

The Los Angeles Times reports Tuesday that according to wife Louise Conley, Joe Conley died at a care facility in Southern California on Sunday. She says he had suffered from dementia.

A native of Buffalo, N.Y., Conley had bit parts on 1960s series like "Green Acres" and "The Beverly Hillbillies" before he landed the role on CBS's "The Waltons" in 1972 that would last nearly a decade.

Conley played Ike Godsey, postmaster and owner of the Jefferson County general store frequented by the Walton family in Depression-era Virginia. He would appear in 172 episodes over nine seasons and in TV movie reunions that lasted into the 1990s.

Cory Monteith, star of hit show 'Glee,' found dead
 

VANCOUVER, British Columbia (AP) — Cory Monteith, the handsome young actor who shot to fame in the hit TV series "Glee" but was beset by addiction struggles so fierce that he once said he was lucky to be alive, was found dead in a hotel room, police said. He was 31.

Monteith, who played the character Finn Hudson on the Fox TV series about a high school glee club, was found dead in his room on the 21st floor of the Fairmont Pacific Rim Hotel on Vancouver's waterfront at about noon Saturday, according to police.

Deputy Police Chief Doug Lepard said there was no indication of foul play. Monteith's body was found by hotel staff after he missed his check-out time, Lepard said.

In April, Monteith admitted himself to a treatment facility for "substance addiction" and asked for privacy as he took steps toward recovery, a representative said at the time.

Monteith's TV credits included roles on the series "Kaya" and "Kyle XY" and guest appearances on "Smallville," ''Supernatural," ''Stargate," ''Flash Gordon" and "Interns." His film credits included "Final Destination 3," ''The Invisible," ''Deck the Halls" and "Whisper."