RIP

[Kobi]

Joan Rivers, Totie Fields, Phyllis Diller, pioneers who paved the path for women in comedy.

Thanks for the memories.

[cricket26]

i am weepy and dont know why...ugh

[Kobi]

(Reuters) - S. Truett Cathy, the founder of the U.S. fast food chain Chick-fil-A which drew protests two years ago when its president made public statements opposing same-sex marriage, died on Monday aged 93, the company said on its website.

Cathy, who was Chick-fil-A's chairman emeritus, died at home in the presence of loved ones, the privately held Atlanta-based company said. It did not disclose a cause of death.

In 2012 the chicken sandwich chain made headlines when its president Dan Cathy -- the founder's son -- made comments to the Baptist Press citing "prideful" supporters of same-sex marriage and defending the company's support of "the biblical definition of the family unit."

The comments ignited a cultural firestorm, triggering protests including "kiss-ins" by same-sex couples outside some stores, as well as support from social conservatives and fans of its products.

Chick-fil-A issued a statement saying its culture is "to treat every person with honor, dignity and respect - regardless of their belief, creed, race, sexual orientation or gender."

S. Truett Cathy, a native of the U.S. state of Georgia and a devout Southern Baptist, founded Chick-fil-A in 1967.

The company, which operates from 1,800 locations in 40 U.S. states, is known for its mix of religion and business as well as its fried chicken sandwiches and waffle fries.

All locations are closed on Sundays to allow employees "a day for family, worship, fellowship or rest," according to the company's website.

http://news.yahoo.com/chick-fil-foun...A5XzEEc2VjA3Nj

[Gemme]

Simone Battle

The 25 year old committed suicide. She was on X Factor and part of the singing group G.R.L.

[Kobi]

NEW YORK (AP) — Emmy-winning actress and singer Polly Bergen, who in a long career played the terrorized wife in the original "Cape Fear" and the first woman president in "Kisses for My President," died Saturday, according to her publicist. She was 84.

A brunette beauty with a warm, sultry singing voice, Bergen was a household name from her 20s onward. She made albums and played leading roles in films, stage musicals and TV dramas. She also hosted her own variety series, was a popular game show panelist, and founded a thriving beauty products company that bore her name.

In recent years, she played Felicity Huffman's mother on "Desperate Housewives" and the past mistress of Tony Soprano's late father on "The Sopranos."

Bergen won an Emmy in 1958 portraying the tragic singer Helen Morgan on the famed anthology series "Playhouse 90." She was nominated for another Emmy in 1989 for best supporting actress in a miniseries or special for "War and Remembrance."

Bergen was 20 and already an established singer when she starred with Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis in her first movie, "At War With the Army." She joined them in two more comedies, "That's My Boy" and "The Stooge."

In 1953, she made her Broadway debut with Harry Belafonte in the revue "John Murray Anderson's Almanac." In 1957-58 she starred on the musical-variety "The Polly Bergen Show" on NBC, closing every broadcast with her theme song, "The Party's Over."

Also during the 1950s, she became a regular on the popular game show "To Tell the Truth."

Bergen published the first of her three advice books, "The Polly Bergen Book of Beauty, Fashion and Charm" in 1962. That led to her own cosmetics company, which earned her millions.

Bergen became a regular in TV movies and miniseries, most importantly in the 1983 epic "The Winds of War" and the 1988 sequel, "War and Remembrance." She appeared as the troubled wife of high-ranking Navy officer Pug Henry, played by Robert Mitchum.

Mitchum also had the key role in the landmark 1962 suspense film, "Cape Fear," as the sadistic ex-convict who terrorizes a lawyer (Gregory Peck) and his wife (Bergen) and daughter because he blames Peck for sending him to prison. The film was remade in 1991 by Martin Scorsese.

In 1964's "Kisses for My President," Bergen was cast as the first female U.S. president, with Fred MacMurray as First Gentleman. (In the end, the president quits when she gets pregnant.) When Geena Davis portrayed a first woman president in the 2005 TV drama "Commander in Chief," Bergen was cast as her mother.

Among her other films was "Move Over, Darling" (1963) with Doris Day and James Garner, Susan Seidelman's 1987 "Making Mr. Right," and John Waters' 1990 "Cry-Baby," with Johnny Depp.

Bergen employed the same zeal in reviving her performing career after a series of personal setbacks of the 1990s. She played successful dates at cabarets in New York and Beverly Hills.

When she was refused an audition for the 2001 Broadway revival of "Follies," she contacted composer Stephen Sondheim. He auditioned her and gave her the role of a faded star who sings of her ups and downs in show business. The show-stopping song, "I'm Still Here," was reminiscent of Bergen's own saga. She was nominated for a Tony award for her role.

In 2002 she played a secondary role in the revival of "Cabaret" and the following year she was back on Broadway with the comedy "Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks."

Nellie Paulina Burgin was born in 1930 in Knoxville, Tennessee, into a family that at times relied on welfare to survive. They family eventually moved to California, and Polly, as she was called, began her career singing on radio in her teens.

"I was fanatically ambitious," she recalled in 2001. "All I ever wanted to be was a star. I didn't want to be a singer. I didn't want to be an actress. I wanted to be a star."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/0...n_5854996.html
___

[Kobi]

Rob Bironas, who worked his way through odd jobs and the Arena Football League before becoming one of the NFL's most accurate kickers, died in a car crash. He was 36.

The Titans released Bironas in March after nine seasons. The Tennessean reported that Bironas worked out for the Detroit Lions and for Tampa Bay during the offseason.

Bironas married Rachel Bradshaw, daughter of Pro Football Hall of Fame quarterback Terry Bradshaw, in June.

"Rob made a significant impact as a player in his nine years with the team and more importantly touched many lives in the Nashville community off the field," the team said in a statement.

Bironas was the fourth most-accurate kicker in NFL history, connecting on 85.7 percent of his kicks (239 of 279). Only David Akers made more field goals (247) between 2005 and 2013 than Bironas. For kickers with 100 or more field goals since the 1970 AFL-NFL merger, Bironas ranked third making 75.2 percent of his kicks from 40 yards or longer (94 of 125).

He finished as the Titans' second all-time leading scorer with 1,032 points, and he set a franchise record scoring triple digits in seven straight seasons. He also set an NFL record in 2011 in hitting a field goal from at least 40 yards in 10 consecutive games.

Bironas made a franchise-record 11 game-winning field goals during his career, including a 60-yarder against the Indianapolis Colts in 2006 that remains the longest field goal in Oilers or Titans history. Bironas kicked an NFL single-game record eight field goals in a 2007 victory over the Houston Texans, including a 29-yard game-winner as time expired. That helped him make his only Pro Bowl, the same year he was an Associated Press All-Pro.

http://news.yahoo.com/former-titans-...7120--spt.html

[CherylNYC]

Christopher Hogwood

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/26/ar...2RI%3A10%22%7D


Christopher Hogwood, whose Academy of Ancient Music was a key ensemble in the period-instrument movement, striving to perform early music as the composer intended and as audiences were first presumed to have heard it, died on Wednesday at his home in Cambridge, England. He was 73.

Rebecca Driver, a spokeswoman for the orchestra, said Mr. Hogwood had been ill for several months but did not specify the cause of death...

Mr. Hogwood, a conductor, harpsichordist and scholar for whom an “authentic sound” was paramount, co-founded the Early Music Consort, which focused on medieval and Renaissance music, in 1967, but the paucity of information regarding historically accurate performance styles troubled him. The Academy, which he established in 1973 as “as a sort of refugee operation for those players of period instruments who wanted to escape conductors,” initially focused on 17- and 18th-century music.

[Kobi]

LITTLE EGG HARBOR, N.J. (AP) — Lily McBeth, the teacher whose battles with school boards in conservative areas of New Jersey made her a reluctant symbol of the transgender rights movement, has died. She was 80.

McBeth died Sept. 24 near her home in Little Egg Harbor after a long illness, her daughter Maureen said.

"She was very much at peace with her life," Maureen McBeth said. "She just wanted to be who she was."

The former William McBeth had undergone sex reassignment surgery in 2005 after nine years of substitute teaching in Eagleswood Township, and she sought to continue in the job.

But vocal opposition from some parents concerned about the impact of a transgender teacher on young students led to a contentious debate that ended with her rehiring. She later substituted at the Pinelands Regional school district as well.

The schools' 2006 decisions to keep her on as a substitute were hailed around the nation as a model of tolerance and acceptance of transgender Americans. But she resigned in frustration in 2009 after getting only a handful of assignments. The schools said they had permanent substitutes and outside subs were only called when the permanent subs were unavailable.

Steven Goldstein, founder of the Garden State Equality rights group, said McBeth never wanted to become a symbol of anything, but became one nonetheless.

"It is so much easier to understand an issue with a human face, and Lily became the human face of transgender rights for many people," he said. "She did so much to increase understanding and awareness of transgender people just by being strong and being who she was."

Goldstein called McBeth one of the most important figures in New Jersey civil rights history in the last two decades.

After selling his physical therapy marketing company, William McBeth moved from Bucks County, Pennsylvania, to New Jersey, where he got a substitute teaching job in Eagleswood, a community 17 miles north of Atlantic City. After his 2005 surgery, he sought to return as a substitute, which drew vocal opposition from some parents.

But many students were unfazed, particularly those that remembered her as a competent male teacher.

McBeth was a ukulele player and an avid carver of wooden decoy ducks. She acted in local theater productions, sang in a church choir and was active in a group seeking to re-establish clam populations in Barnegat Bay.

She donated her body to a medical school for research and physician training; funeral arrangements were private, her daughter said.

In a 2009 interview with The Associated Press, McBeth said she treasured interacting with students in the classroom.

"I tried to be an example of something you might want to be when you grow up: a kind, caring person," she said.

http://news.yahoo.com/transgender-te...pUZvYAXsxXNyoA

[Kobi]

Newark native Geraldine “Jerrie” Mock, the first woman to fly solo around the globe, has died in her sleep at her home in Quincy in northern Florida. She was 88.

Mock was 38 and a full-time mother of three living in Bexley when she took off from Port Columbus on March 19, 1964. A licensed pilot for only seven years who had never flown farther than the Bahamas, Mock crossed both oceans in the Spirit of Columbus, an 11-year-old Cessna freshly painted to cover cracks and corrosions.

The last she heard from the Columbus control tower: “Well, I guess that’s the last we’ll hear from her.”

There were mechanical problems, storms and communication breakdowns. She mistakenly landed at a restricted air force base in Egypt and was detained until darkness fell.

In Saudi Arabia, the 5-foot brunette exited the plane to a silent crowd that patiently waited for the pilot to emerge. When they realized she was the pilot, the people erupted in cheers, appreciating the oddity that a woman was the flier.

“There’s no man!” they exclaimed.

Mock arrived back in Columbus 29 days later on the night of April 17, 1964, to a cheering crowd of 5,000. There were local accolades, some television appearances and a medal from President Lyndon B. Johnson.

As the 50th anniversary of Mock’s flight approached, her sister, Susan Reid, of Newark, helped raise $48,000 for a bronze statue that in September 2013 was dedicated at The Works, a museum in Newark.

A similar statue was unveiled in April at Port Columbus.

By then Mock had retired to Florida, in poor health but still modest about having “a little fun in my airplane.”

“There were dozens of women who could have done what I did,” Mock said in a recorded message played to the Columbus crowd, “All I did was have some fun. Statues are for generals, or Lincoln."

Bill Kelley was at the Port Columbus unveiling. A history buff, Kelley had pushed for 30 years for the statue, for which Mock’s sister was the model.

“He wanted her in flats (shoes),” his wife, Mary, said. But Mr. Kelley deferred to her and to Reid. who insisted that Mock be portrayed wearing the short, tapered “kitten heels” she always put on when she got out of the plane.

To Cliff Kelling, the statue looked just like the homemaker who had entrusted her safety to him and other Lane Aviation mechanics who prepared her plane for the flight.

“You kind of wonder who’s going to take a single-engine aircraft that’s got some wear on it and fly it around the world,” Kelling, a pilot and retired aviation-mechanics professor, said at the time. When told the pilot was a woman, “All I could do was admire her.”

Why she was never mentioned with the likes of other aviation heroes is often attributed to the times: President John F. Kennedy had been assassinated the previous fall, the Beatles had just arrived in America, and the Vietnam conflict was heating up.

Kelling attributed it to male chauvinism and the fact that Mock made it home alive.

“Amelia Earhart was lost, and that was news,” he said. “Jerrie Mock wasn’t lost, and that wasn’t news.”

At the Port Columbus unveiling, Mock’s daughter, Valerie Armentrout, said that her mother finally “will take her rightful position with Eddie Rickenbacker and (astronaut) Sally Ride.”

Growing up in Newark, Geraldine “Jerrie” Fredritz wanted something different. “I did not conform to what girls did,” she once said, adding, “What the girls did was boring.”

After her family took a short airplane ride at the local airport, 7-year-old Jerrie announced that she wanted to be a pilot. A few years later, as she listened to after-school radio broadcasts about the adventures Earhart, her heroine, she expanded her goal from flying across Ohio.

“I wanted to see the world,” she said. “I wanted to see the oceans and the jungles and the deserts and the people.”

http://www.dispatch.com/content/stor...-obituary.html

[Happy_Go_Lucky]

Maria Fernandes died napping in her car between part-time jobs, but let's focus on how she lived





http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/0...-how-she-lived


Maria Fernandes, the woman who died while napping in her car between shifts at the three different Dunkin' Donuts stores she worked at, is a powerful symbol of the horrors of America's low-wage economy. Rachel Swarns, writing in the New York Times, profiles Fernandes, seeking to make her "more than an emblem of our nation’s rising economic inequality." She was a Michael Jackson fan, an animal lover, and more. But you can't get around that her life—not just her death—was defined by her work, and by the low wages and impossible schedule it left her with

She had an apartment, but was falling behind on the $550 rent despite those three jobs. Dunkin' Donuts said she was a "model" employee, but wouldn't say how much she was paid or how many hours she worked. Which makes sense—it probably is in Dunkin' Donuts' best interest for us not to know how they treat their model employees.
Fernandes was certainly an individual who deserves to be remembered for who she was. But in a way her death is a reminder of how many people are one accident away from becoming emblems of rising inequality. And it shouldn't take a death to make us see the rank injustice of Maria Fernandes' life. The minimum wage should be higher than New Jersey's $8.25 an hour. Fast food chains like Dunkin' Donuts should offer workers regular schedules with enough hours, so they aren't forced to spend their days going from job to job, grabbing naps in between. Someone like Fernandes should not only be able to pay $550 a month for a basement apartment, she should also be able to afford her dream of going to cosmetology school. Maria Fernandes may have died in a way that focused attention on her life, but some of the attention should go to how sadly common the details of that life are. It should not be so ferociously difficult to get by, let alone get ahead, in this country.

[ProfPacker]

Still brings to mind the study Nickel and Dimed

[Happy_Go_Lucky]

Originally Posted by ProfPacker

Still brings to mind the study Nickel and Dimed

If I still taught school, ANY Barbara Ehrenreich book would be a 'must-read' in my class room. This country has lost its way.

[Kobi]

Paul Revere, a teenage businessman who found an outlet for his entrepreneurial spirit in the form of a campy rock 'n' roll band that capitalized on his name, wore Revolutionary War-era costumes and cranked out a string of grungy hits in the mid-1960s, has died. The founder of Paul Revere and the Raiders was 76.

Revere died Saturday of cancer at his home in Garden Valley, Idaho, his longtime manager Roger Hart told the Associated Press. After a near-constant touring schedule in recent years, Revere retreated six months ago to his adopted home state because of health issues, said his tour manager, Ron Lemen.

Along with singer and saxophonist Mark Lindsay, Revere, a keyboard player, formed a band called the Downbeats in Boise in 1959. Within a few years they would become Paul Revere and the Raiders, string together top-10 pop hits including "Kicks," "Hungry" and "Good Thing" and become fixtures of Dick Clark's weekday afternoon TV show "Where the Action Is."


"Just Like Me," a 1965 hit written by Revere and Lindsay, made the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's list of Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll.

Born Paul Revere Dick on Jan. 7, 1938, in Harvard, Neb., he grew up on a farm near Boise, where he learned to play piano. While still a teenager he opened a barbershop. At 18, with three barbershops to his name, he sold them to buy a drive-in restaurant and put together the band to attract young customers.

After some local success the Downbeats moved to Portland, Ore., in 1960 and with encouragement of their new manager, radio disc jockey Hart, renamed themselves Paul Revere and the Raiders. They recorded a 1963 version of "Louie Louie" that was eclipsed by another Portland garage band, the Kingsmen, but the Raiders were on their way to Hollywood.

Joined by early core members Drake Levin on guitar, Mike Smith on drums and Phil Volk on bass, the group performed a choreographed show in elaborate outfits complete with tri-cornered hats, brightly colored frock coats, white hose and knee-high black leather boots. In 1964, they signed a contract with Columbia Records as the label's first rock act and caught Clark's eye.

"From day one, we've always been a party band that accidentally had some hit records and accidentally got on a hit television series," Revere said in a 2000 interview with the Associated Press.

"We were visual and fun and crazy and were America's answer to the British music invasion. ... We just happened to be at the right time and had the right name and had the right gimmick."

Producer Terry Melcher honed the band's hard-edged, guitar-driven sound with Lindsay, the front man, providing the vocals. The blond Revere was content to remain in the background playing organ.

Besides performing as the house band on "Where the Action Is" beginning in 1965, Paul Revere and the Raiders appeared on Clark's later "Happening" shows as well as "The Ed Sullivan Show," "The Tonight Show" and as themselves on the "Batman" TV show in 1966.

The band had 20 consecutive hits and reached its peak with John D. Loudermilk's "Indian Reservation" at No. 1 in 1971, but a revolving door of band members and changing musical tastes led to its decline. Revere maintained a busy pace of touring and appearing at state fairs, casinos and clubs.

http://www.latimes.com/local/obituar...006-story.html

[Kobi]

Actress Marian Seldes, the Tony Award-winning star of "A Delicate Balance" who was a teacher of Kevin Kline and Robin Williams, a muse to playwright Edward Albee and a Guinness Book of World Records holder for most consecutive performances, died Monday at age 86.

Marian Seldes made her Broadway debut in 1947 in a production of "Medea," starring the versatile actress Judith Anderson, and later appeared in hits such as "Equus" and "Deathtrap." Her most recent Broadway outing was in Terrence McNally's "Deuce" in 2007, starring opposite Angela Lansbury.

Seldes was nominated for a Tony five times, for her performances in "A Delicate Balance," ''Father's Day," ''Deathtrap," ''Ring Round the Moon" and "Dinner at Eight." She won in 1967 for "A Delicate Balance" and won her second Tony in 2010 for lifetime achievement.

Her collaborations with Albee included "Three Tall Women," which won the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for drama, "The Play About the Baby," ''Tiny Alice" and "Father's Day."

But she moved easily from role to role, from Chekhov's "Ivanov" to Peter Shaffer's "Equus," from Ira Levin's "Deathtrap" to Tony Kushner's "A Bright Room Called Day" and Tina Howe's "Painting Churches." Her off-Broadway credits also include "The Ginger Man" and "Painting Churches."

Seldes' reliability and professionalism sealed her place in the Guinness World Records for a time after playing every performance during the run of "Deathtrap" from 1978 to 1982 — a total of 1,809 performances. Her record as most durable actress has since been broken by Catherine Russell, who logged over 11,000 performances in the off-Broadway production of "Perfect Crime."

From 1969 to 1992, she served on the faculty of the Juilliard School, teaching the craft of acting to such pupils as Kline, Williams, Patti LuPone, Laura Linney, Mandy Patinkin and Christopher Reeve.

Seldes also acted in films, in "Mona Lisa Smile," ''Home Alone 3" and "Celebrity." On television she appeared in "Nurse Jackie" and played Candice Bergen's aunt in "Murphy Brown" and Mr. Big's mother in "Sex and the City." She also wrote two books: a memoir, "The Bright Lights: A Theater Life," and a novel, "Time Together."

Seldes, a slim and elegant woman who often wore her hair pulled back, studied with Sanford Meisner at the Neighborhood Playhouse and made her professional debut at age 17 in Robinson Jeffers' "Medea," with Anderson.

Her other Broadway credits include "Crime and Punishment," ''The Chalk Garden," ''The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore," Oliver Hailey's "Father's Day," for which she won a Drama Desk Award, Arnold Wesker's "The Merchant" and Kanin's "A Gift of Time."

In 1995, she was inducted into the Theatre Hall of Fame, marking 50 years in the profession, but she missed the ceremony because — typically — she was on tour with "Three Tall Women" in Los Angeles.

- See more at: http://www.legacy.com/ns/obituary.as....x24tCzxO.dpuf

[Linus]

Geoffrey Holder, the Tony-winning actor, dancer and choreographer known to millions as Baron Samedi in Bond movie Live and Let Die, has died at 84.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-29505646


http://www.latimes.com/local/obituar...007-story.html

[Kobi]

Former "Saturday Night Live" star Jan Hooks died on Thursday. She was 57 years old.

Hooks appeared on "SNL" from 1986-91 and most recently guest starred on "30 Rock" as Jenna Maroney's mother, Verna. She was a regular on "Designing Women" from 1991-93 and appeared on TV shows "3rd Rock From The Sun," "The Martin Short Show," "The Dana Carvey Show," "The Simpsons," "Futurama" and "Primetime Glick." While on "SNL," she was known for her recurring character Candy Sweeney of "The Sweeney Sisters." She also impersonated Bette Davis, Betty Ford, Nancy Reagan, Sinéad O'Connor, Jodie Foster and Hillary Clinton.

Originally, Hooks was considered for the 1985 "SNL" cast, but was passed over for Joan Cusack. She was hired the next season alongside Dana Carvey, Phil Hartman and Nora Dunn. In one of her most memorable sketches, she played Brenda the Waitress in "The Diner" with Alec Baldwin.

Hooks was born near Atlanta in 1957 and began her career as part of famed comedy troupe The Groundlings. Prior to joining "SNL," she landed a small but notable part in "Pee-wee's Big Adventure" as a tour guide at the Alamo.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/1...n_5961882.html

[Kobi]

Soft-spoken and clad in a subdued black robe of his monastic order, the Right Rev. M. Thomas Shaw seemed an unlikely choice in 1994 to lead one of the largest Episcopal dioceses in the nation. Yet his unswerving devotion to spirituality and his unwillingness to avoid political controversy turned him into one of the most visible and vocal religious leaders of his time.

For Bishop Shaw, once called upon to be a leader, fulfilling the will of God meant becoming a citizen of the world far beyond the doors of the serene monastery on Memorial Drive in Cambridge that was his home for nearly four decades. Though he preferred the life of a monk, he appeared in national TV interviews, lobbied State House officials, worked as an unpaid congressional intern, traveled to distant dangerous lands, and created programs to address urban violence, particularly among the young.

He also went online with “Monk in the midst: Bishop Shaw’s blog.” Still, his presence always reflected his background, and he wore his monastic garb whether riding the T to his downtown Boston office or walking through Washington’s halls of power.

Among Boston’s most powerful clergy, Bishop Shaw was an early, key advocate for gay rights and for the ordination of women, gays, and lesbians as priests in his denomination, and in a 2012 interview for a documentary, he let it be known that he was gay and celibate. Long before making his sexuality public, he guided his diocese through a stormy decade while a conflicted Episcopal Church decided whether it would consecrate a gay bishop and allow clergy to bless same-gender unions.

“The life of the church is always enhanced by including people that live on the margins of society – women, people of color, gay or lesbian people,” he told the Globe in 1997. “They have something profound to say about the Kingdom of God and they are the people Jesus specifically included among his disciples.”

At the same time, Bishop Shaw remained sensitive to conservative opponents of gay marriage at home and abroad. Even while advocating forcefully for gay rights within his denomination and beyond, he waited more than five years after Massachusetts legalized gay marriage in 2004 before giving priests permission to officiate at same-gender weddings.

“I have a longstanding reputation for supporting gay and lesbian rights, both in society and in the church, and I was surprised and delighted when the Supreme Judicial Court made its decision,” he told the Globe in 2004. “But this is one place where the state is ahead of the life of the church.”

He was a leading supporter of elevating an openly gay priest, V. Gene Robinson, to become bishop of New Hampshire. Nonetheless, to better grasp the deeply held opposition some cultures have to homosexuality, Bishop Shaw went to Africa in the late 1990s and immersed himself in the Episcopal Church’s health and education projects in Uganda and Tanzania.

A decade later, he traveled to Zimbabwe on a secret mission to express support for Anglican worshippers who were subjected to human rights abuses and to bear witness to their suffering through letters to US officials back home. “I don’t think I’ve ever been any place where the oppression has been that overt,” Bishop Shaw told the Globe upon his return.

To see close up how public policy is forged, he moved to Washington, D.C., in early 2000 and spent a month as a congressional intern working for Amory Houghton Jr., an Episcopalian and a Republican who was then a US representative from New York and now lives in Cohasset.

The following year, Bishop Shaw incurred the ire of Jewish leaders when he joined others outside the Israeli consulate in Boston to protest that country’s treatment of Palestinians. Uncharacteristically, he traded his monk’s garb for a purple cassock that announced the gravitas of a bishop. His participation surprised many Jews, and he subsequently spent years mending the rift through discussions with leaders in the Jewish community. Bishop Shaw continued to speak out for Palestinian rights.

Discussing his political activism in January 2013, when he announced plans to retire before learning he was ill, Bishop Shaw invoked the life of Jesus. “He was very out there in terms of critiquing a society that didn’t recognize the dignity of human beings,” he told the Globe. “And so I think because I’m a follower of Jesus, that’s my responsibility as well – I’m supposed to speak up on issues that diminish people’s dignity.”

Born in Battle Creek, Mich., on Aug. 28, 1945, Marvil Thomas Shaw III grew up in a devout family and believed early on that he would give his life over to God.

He graduated from Alma College in Alma, Mich., and received master’s degrees from the General Theological Seminary in New York City and Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.

After being ordained to the priesthood in 1971, he was a curate at the Church of St. Mary the Virgin in Higham Ferrers, Northamptonshire, England, and then assistant rector of St. James Church in Milwaukee.

He entered the Society of St. John the Evangelist in 1975 and seven years later was elected its superior, serving a 10-year term. While he was the order’s leader, the diocese said, Bishop Shaw “was instrumental in developing the society’s rural Emery House property as a retreat center, establishing the Cowley publishing imprint for books on prayer and spirituality, and renewing the society’s longtime commitment to at-risk children in Boston through Camp St. Augustine in Foxborough.”

When he was elected bishop in 1994, he was 48 and was the first monk in the church’s history to serve in that position. Then and until not long before his death, he lived in the order’s monastery on Memorial Drive, a short walk from Harvard Square in Cambridge. His home was a small cell in the monastery, and he managed to pray 90 minutes a day, even after taking on greater responsibilities as head of the diocese. “I wouldn’t have the perspective I have on my struggles if I didn’t pray,” he told the Globe in 1996.

Those struggles began early when he was elected bishop. Serving initially alongside his predecessor, Bishop David E. Johnson, Bishop Shaw guided the diocese through tragedy and tumult when Johnson shot himself in January 1995. At the funeral, Bishop Shaw told mourners that “we know David fell in the struggle against despair.”

Then, 11 days after announcing the suicide, Bishop Shaw was a co-signer of a statement the diocese issued explaining that Johnson “was involved in several extramarital relationships at different times throughout his years of ministry, both as a priest and bishop,” including some that “appear to have been of the character of sexual exploitation.” That Johnson had been viewed as a tough enforcer of rules against clergy sexual abuse added to the sense of betrayal many felt. “We don’t want to keep anything hidden,” Bishop Shaw told the Globe a few days after issuing the statement. “Knowing everything will help the healing begin.”

During Bishop Shaw’s tenure, among his proudest accomplishments were programs he created to serve youth and to help reduce urban violence. A diocesan camp and retreat center opened in Greenfield, N.H., in 2003, while in the South End, St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church initiated the Bishop’s Summer Academic and Fun Enrichment program, or B-SAFE, for hundreds of inner city youth. A graduate of the program, Jorge Fuentes, became a respected counselor and mentor, and his death by a stray bullet, across the street from his Dorchester home in 2012 was devastating for the diocese and Bishop Shaw, who presided over the 19-year-old’s funeral.

Bishop Shaw’s final blog post included a video of him speaking at the Mother’s Day Walk for Peace in 2013, when he was part of a contingent of more than 600 Episcopalians who walked in memory of Fuentes.

When Bishop Shaw thought the time had arrived to address his sexuality publicly, he took an understated approach, doing so in an interview while being filmed for “Love Free or Die,” a 2012 documentary about Robinson, who became the first openly gay bishop in the Episcopal Church when he led the New Hampshire diocese.

Bishop Shaw told the Globe he didn’t want his choice to be a celibate monk to be held up as an example that lesbians and gays in the clergy should also choose celibacy.

“My hope has always been … that we can move along this discussion about human sexuality in the best possible way, and I thought for myself the best possible way I could move it along as a celibate bishop was not by hiding it, but by not making myself the center of the discussion,” he said then.

In January 2013, he announced he would retire by year’s end. A few months later, he said that he had brain cancer, and he began radiation and chemotherapy soon after. Hr died Friday at the age of 69.



http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/201...brJ/story.html

Jack Bruce

http://www.theguardian.com/music/201...n-dies-aged-71

[Kobi]

Actress Marcia Strassman has died at the age of 66 after a long battle with breast cancer. Though Marcia Strassman acted in a wide range of TV shows and feature films, she was best known for her lead roles in the TV show Welcome Back Kotter and the comedy feature Honey I Shrunk the Kids and its sequel, Honey I Blew Up the Kids. Strassman also served on the national board of the Screen Actors Guild.

Strassman was born Apri 28, 1948 in New York City, and grew up in New Jersey.

She came to Los Angeles when she was just 18. She was initially a singer in the late 1960s with some modest local success, most notably with The Groovy World of Jack and Jill and The Flower Children. She also had a few TV roles, including three episodes of The Patty Duke Show. She left show business for a time before returning as an actress in a recurring role as nurse Margie Cutler in M.A.S.H.

In 1975, Strassman had a breakout role in the TV hit Welcome Back Kotter, opposite comedian Gabe Kaplan, playing his frequently exasperated wife Julie. That show, about a teacher returning to the tough high school and neighborhood where he grew up, ran through 1979.

Strassman worked steadily thereafter, most notably in major roles on several mostly short-lived TV shows, including Booker, Tremors, Third Watch, Providence, and Noah Knows Best and as a voice-over artist on the children’s animated show Aaahh!!! Real Monsters and elsewhere.

Her biggest film success came playing the wife and mother opposite Rick Moranis in Disney’s hit comedy Honey I Shrunk The Kids and its equally successful sequel, Honey I Blew Up The Kids. She also appeared in 1985’s The Aviator with Christopher Reeve and Roseanna Arquette.

http://deadline.com/2014/10/marcia-s...e-kids-861946/

[Kobi]

Elizabeth Norment, the seasoned TV actress who most recently starred as an unflappable Beltway secretary on Season 2 of House of Cards, has died at the age of 61.

On the hit Netflix series, Norment played steely, steadfast Nancy Kaufberger, who worked for ruthless soon-to-be president Frank Underwood (Kevin Spacey) and remained firmly by his side amid his conniving and devious political machinations.

Throughout a career that spanned both stage and screen – the Yale School of Drama grad was a founding member of the American Repertory Theatre, THR reports – Norment appeared on a slew of TV shows, including L.A. Law, E.R. and Party of Five.

She also had recurring role as a judge on Law & Order from 2002 to 2008.

http://www.people.com/article/elizab...p+Headlines%29