RIP

[lamuymuyfem]

Gabriel Garcia Marquez' book, "Amor en los tiempos de colera," always reminded me of the dynamics of a closeted gay relationship. The man and woman fell in love at a young age but were separated when she married a more 'suitable' partner.

In old age, they find each other again, and they get on a boat, when a cholera epidemic breaks out. The boat is forbidden to land, so the two reunited lovers are quarantined together for the rest of their lives, floating up and down the river.

Actor Bob Hoskins, age 71 has just died of pneumonia.
I loved The Long Good Friday
Mona Lisa
even Who Framed Roger Rabbit.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Hoskins

[Jesse]

Rest in peace to Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., who passed away today, May 2, 2014, at the age of 95 from natural causes.



Zimbalist is best known for his acting roles, such as Stuart "Stu" Bailey in 77 Sunset Strip and Inspector Lewis Erskine in The F.B.I. He is also more recently known for his voice-over work, most notably being the voice of the Dark Knight's butler, Alfred Pennyworth, in the DC Animated Universe, as well as the voice of Dr Otto Octavius, better known as Doctor Octopus in the animated Spider-Man series that ran on TV from 1995 to 1997.

[Candelion]

Farley Mowat (May 12, 1921 - May 7, 2014)

So many of his books I loved, but I think Never Cry Wolf will always be my favourite. RIP Mr. Mowat.

[Kobi]

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Jerry Vale, the beloved crooner known for his high-tenor voice and romantic songs in the 1950s and early 1960s, has died. He was 83.

Born Genaro Louis Vitaliano, Vale started performing in New York supper clubs as a teenager and went on to record more than 50 albums. His rendition of "Volare," ''Innamorata" and "Al Di La" became classic Italian-American songs. His biggest hit was "You Don't Know Me."

http://www.legacy.com/ns/obituary.as...&pid=171070198

[Kobi]

FALMOUTH, Mass. (AP) - Gordon Willis, one of Hollywood's most celebrated and influential cinematographers, nicknamed "The Prince of Darkness" for his subtle but indelible touch on such definitive 1970s releases as "The Godfather," "Annie Hall" and "All the President's Men," has died. He was 82. -

See more at: http://www.legacy.com/ns/obituary.as....D5GLSOwO.dpuf

[Teddybear]

R.I.P. Maya Angelou. You were a voice for many

[ProfPacker]

She was a gift and inspiration to many. I believe her works will be those that are past on from generation to generation.

[Aryon]

Still I Rise

Poems by Maya Angelou : 18 / 28

« Remembrance
The Detached »

Still I Rise

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may tread me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin' in my own back yard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

~ Maya Angelou

http://www.theguardian.com/books/201...author-dies-86

http://www.theguardian.com/books/201...8/maya-angelou

http://www.theguardian.com/books/201...nderful-mother

[anaisninja]

Phenomenal Woman
BY MAYA ANGELOU

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I’m not cute or built to suit a fashion model’s size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I’m telling lies.
I say,
It’s in the reach of my arms,
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.

I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please,
And to a man,
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees.
Then they swarm around me,
A hive of honey bees.
I say,
It’s the fire in my eyes,
And the flash of my teeth,
The swing in my waist,
And the joy in my feet.
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.

Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.

Men themselves have wondered
What they see in me.
They try so much
But they can’t touch
My inner mystery.
When I try to show them,
They say they still can’t see.
I say,
It’s in the arch of my back,
The sun of my smile,
The ride of my breasts,
The grace of my style.
I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.

Now you understand
Just why my head’s not bowed.
I don’t shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud.
When you see me passing,
It ought to make you proud.
I say,
It’s in the click of my heels,
The bend of my hair,
the palm of my hand,
The need for my care.
’Cause I’m a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That’s me.

[anaisninja]

Maya Angelou – Just For A Time

Oh how you used to walk
With that insouciant smile
I liked to hear you talk
And your style
Pleased me for a while.

You were my early love
New as a day breaking in Spring
You were the image of
Everything
That caused me to sing.

I don’t like reminiscing
Nostalgia is not my forte
I don’t spill tears
On yesterday’s years
But honesty makes me say,
You were a precious pearl
How I loved to see you shine,
You were the perfect girl.
And you were mine.
For a time.
For a time.
Just for a time.

[Jesse]

Such a beautiful, and inspiring woman. You touched the lives of so many... journey well, Maya Angelou!

[CherylNYC]

From the Advocate

http://www.advocate.com/arts-enterta...rverie-dies-93

Stormé DeLarverie, a longtime member of the Stonewall Veteran’s Association and pioneer LGBT activist, died Saturday morning. DeLaverie was 93 years old.

The Bronx LGBTQ Center called DeLarverie the “Rosa Parks” of the gay rights movement in a statement Tuesday.

DeLarverie was born in New Orleans on December 24, 1920, and is best known for having a role in the popular drag performance group, Jewel Box Revue. The group was comprised of a dozen drag queens and DeLarverie, as King Stormé, the sole drag king.

While records of the 1969 Stonewall Riots have often been described as incomplete, DeLarverie is best known for her involvement at the 1969 uprising, which followed a police raid on a New York City LGBT bar. The event is often credited as launching the modern fight for LGBT equality.

At a Stonewall Veterans event, DeLarverie recalled, “A cop said to me, ‘Move faggot’, thinking that I was a gay guy. I said, ‘I will not! And, don’t you dare touch me.’ With that, the cop shoved me and I instinctively punched him right in his face. He bled! He was then dropping to the ground — not me!” Two weeks after the rebellion, DeLarverie was a part of the official formation of the Stonewall Veteran’s Association on July 11, 1969.

DeLarverie was a vital member of the Stonewall Veteran’s Association, rising through the ranks to eventually become the organization’s vice president. The Imperial Kings and Queens of Greater New York, a sister organization to the Stonewall Veteran’s Association, also recognized DeLaverie’s work in the early drag scene.

The New York Times ran a piece on DeLarverie in 2010, detailing the activist’s years struggling with evictions, and hospitalization after being found “disoriented and dehydrated” at the Chelsea Hotel in Manhattan, DeLarverie's longtime home. Despite these hardships, DeLarverie still reminisced the days of being one of the first advocates for gay rights.

A memorial service will be held this Thursday, May 29 from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m., at the Greenwich Village Funeral Home in New York City.

[cricket26]

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/05/29....html?referrer

[Kelt]

Massimo Vignelli, Visionary Designer Who Untangled the Subway, Dies at 83

Samples of some of his classic work

[Kobi]

Emmy Award-winning actress Ann B. Davis has died at the age of 88, TMZ reports. The Brady Bunch and Bob Cummings Show alum passed away following a severe fall in her home.

She won two Emmys, in 1958 and 1959 for her role as Schultzy on The Bob Cummings Show, but Davis is best known for her portrayal of Alice, the Brady's wacky housekeeper on The Brady Bunch, which aired from 1969 to 1974.

Davis also appeared in the films A Man Called Peter, All Hands on Deck, and Lover Come Back before retiring in 1976. She also reprised her most famous role in numerous Brady Bunch reunion specials, including 1981's The Brady Brides, 1988's A Very Brady Christmas, and 1995's The Brady Bunch Movie.

https://celebrity.yahoo.com/news/ann...lkA1ZJUDM3Nl8x

[Kobi]

LAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) — The last of the 29 Navajos who developed a code that stumped the Japanese during World War II has died.

Chester Nez, of Albuquerque, New Mexico, died Wednesday morning of kidney failure, said Judy Avila, who helped Nez write his memoirs. He was 93.

Before hundreds of men from the Navajo Nation became Code Talkers, 29 Navajos were recruited to develop the code based on the then-unwritten Navajo language. Nez was in 10th grade when he enlisted, keeping his decision a secret from his family and lying about his age, as did many others.

"It's one of the greatest parts of history that we used our own native language during World War II," Nez told The Associated Press in 2009. "We're very proud of it."

Of the 250 Navajos who showed up at Fort Defiance — then a U.S. Army base — 29 were selected to join the first all-Native American unit of Marines. They were inducted in May 1942. Nez became part of the 382nd Platoon.

Using Navajo words for red soil, war chief, clan, braided hair, beads, ant and hummingbird, for example, they came up with a glossary of more than 200 terms that later was expanded and an alphabet.

Nez has said he was concerned the code wouldn't work. At the time, few non-Navajos spoke the language. Even Navajos who did couldn't understand the code. It proved impenetrable.

The Navajos trained in radio communications were walking copies of the code. Each message read aloud by a Code Talker was immediately destroyed.

"The Japanese did everything in their power to break the code but they never did," Nez said in 2010.

After World War II, Nez volunteered to serve two more years during the Korean War. He retired in 1974 after a 25-year career as a painter at the Veterans Affairs hospital in Albuquerque.

Nez was eager to tell his family about his role as a Code Talker, Avila said, but he couldn't. The mission wasn't declassified until 1968.

The accolades came much later, and the Code Talkers now are widely celebrated. The original group received Congressional Gold Medals in 2001, and a movie based on the Code Talkers was released the following year. They have appeared on television and in parades and routinely are asked to speak to veterans groups and students.

Nez threw the opening pitch at a 2004 Major League Baseball game and offered a blessing for the presidential campaign of John Kerry. In 2012, he received a bachelor's degree from the University of Kansas, where he abandoned his studies in fine arts after money from his GI Bill ran out.



- See more at: http://www.legacy.com/ns/obituary.as....RZYAKqe8.dpuf

[Kobi]

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) — Don Zimmer, a popular fixture in professional baseball for 66 years as a manager, player, coach and executive, died Wednesday. He was 83.

Zimmer was still working for the Tampa Bay Rays as a senior adviser. He had been in a rehabilitation center in Florida after having heart surgery in mid-April.

After starting as a minor league infielder in 1949, Zimmer went on to have one of the longest-lasting careers in baseball history.

Zimmer played for the only Brooklyn Dodgers team to win the World Series, played for the original New York Mets, nearly managed the Boston Red Sox to a championship in the 1970s and was Joe Torre's right-hand man with the New York Yankees' most recent dynasty.

Along the way, Zimmer played for Hall of Fame manager Casey Stengel and coached Derek Jeter — quite a span, by any major league measure.

Zimmer spent time in a lot of uniforms. He played for the Dodgers, Mets, Chicago Cubs, Cincinnati and Washington. He managed San Diego, Boston, Texas and the Cubs.


- See more at: http://www.legacy.com/ns/obituary.as....RQyN7bWZ.dpuf

[Kobi]

Karen DeCrow, who was president of the National Organization for Women during the 1970s, a turbulent period in which she helped lead campaigns for passage of the Equal Rights Amendment and against sex discrimination in education and sports, died on Friday at her home in Jamesville, N.Y., a suburb of Syracuse. She was 76.

The cause was melanoma, said her longtime friend Rowena Malamud, who is president of the Greater Syracuse chapter of NOW. Ms. DeCrow was the group’s current vice president.

Ms. DeCrow was a writer, a lawyer and a tireless campaigner for women’s rights. Her causes were national but also local. In the early 1970s, she represented a 7-year-old girl who wanted to play Little League baseball but was being denied.

“Over my dead body will girls ever play Little League baseball,” a coach told her at the time. “If one of them ever struck out a boy, he would be psychologically scarred for life.”

The girl played, but Ms. DeCrow was not done with sports. As president of NOW from 1974 to 1977, she fought off pressure from the National Collegiate Athletic Association to limit the reach of Title IX, the federal law passed in 1972 that bans sex discrimination in educational institutions that receive federal money. The law, which was strengthened in 1975 to ensure equal access to sports, has been widely credited with revolutionizing women’s athletics.

“I just hope all that playing and practicing won’t keep women out of the library, studying, learning, getting ready to take advantage of Title VII, the really important federal law, the one that prohibits job discrimination,” Ms. DeCrow told The New York Times in 1997.

Not all of her campaigns were successful. The Equal Rights Amendment, which would make discrimination against women unconstitutional, has yet to pass, but not for lack of effort by Ms. DeCrow. During the 1970s and ’80s, she crisscrossed the United States in support of it and had scores of debates with Phyllis Schlafly, one of its most prominent opponents.

Ms. DeCrow was born Karen Lipschultz on Dec. 18, 1937, in Chicago, the oldest of two daughters of a businessman and a former ballet dancer who stopped working outside the home after she married. Ms. DeCrow attended Chicago public schools. As a teenager, she sent short stories to top magazines, hoping to be published. She graduated from Northwestern University in 1959 with a degree in journalism.

She struggled to find appealing work after college, finally accepting a job as fashion editor at Golf Digest, though she had little interest in fashion or golf. She went on to work for other magazines and for publishing houses.

In 1967, after a brief first marriage, she was living in Syracuse with her second husband, Roger DeCrow, a computer scientist, and working in a small publishing house when she and some of her female colleagues realized that they were being paid less than their male counterparts. She decided to join the nascent group NOW and then formed a chapter in Syracuse and became president of it.

“I wasn’t a feminist,” she told The Times in 1975. “I just wanted more money.” By 1968, she was serving on the board of the national group.

As president she served without pay, the last NOW president to do so. “I joined NOW on an issue of pay,” she said. “Of course, now I don’t get any pay at all.”

Ms. DeCrow ran unsuccessfully for mayor of Syracuse in 1969 while attending the Syracuse University School of Law in her early 30s. She graduated in 1972, the only woman in her class, she told interviewers.

In 1988 Ms. DeCrow was a co-founder of World Women Watch, dedicated to combating sex discrimination worldwide. In 2009 she was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame.

For several years, Ms. DeCrow wrote for The Syracuse Post-Standard and its website. She published several books, including two in the early 1970s, “The Young Woman’s Guide to Liberation” and “Sexist Justice — How Legal Sexism Affects You.”

In 2008, she told The Syracuse Post-Standard that she was cautiously pleased with the progress women had made.

“I am lucky enough to have been involved in a movement that really moved,” she said. “But then, are we done? No, we’re not done.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/07/ny...t-76.html?_r=0