A remarkable obituary

[Boston Guy]

I saw this in the NY Times. I thought the obituary was remarkable, especially for being printed in The Times.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/26/obituaries/26LEBE.html

 

BG

[HooBoy]

New York is rich with individuals, less one.

 

A classy obit from The Paper.

 

RIP Pepper.

 

Thanks BG

[Will]

Yes. PARIS IS BURNING is perhaps the masterpiece of gay-related documentaries. Certainly, I've never seen its equal anywhere else. I watch it every year or so, and I know lots of people who use it in college classes on everything from gender studies to studio art to theater to literature. It's much to the NYTimes' credit that the national newspaper of record has recorded the passing of this extraordinary human being.

[samhexum]

Matilda III, the beloved long-haired cat who ruled the lobby of Midtown’s historic Algonquin Hotel, has passed away.

 

The hotel confirmed that the 11-year-old regal ragdoll — who retired from her hotel duties this past July after seven years in residence — died of a stroke in her new home in Duluth, Minn., this weekend.

 

“She died in the lap of love,” Alice de Almeida, the Algonquin’s chief cat officer, told The Post. “[During] her last couple months, she had a huge house to hang out in with all this wildlife. She was able to be a real cat for a change.”

 

The Algonquin has had feline ambassadors stretching back to the 1920s, when a stray named Billy wandered into the lobby. Yet none was as famous, or busy, as Matilda III.

 

The hotel’s 11th kitty arrived at the Algonquin in 2010 from the North Shore Animal League and quickly acclimated herself to the high life. She feasted on chef-prepared crab cakes, had regular primping sessions and appeared on international TV.

 

Visitors, enchanted by her glamorous hauteur, would make pilgrimages to the hotel bearing Bonito flakes from Japan or fan-painted portraits, which now decorate the upstairs offices of the hotel. In October 2016, she was memorialized in hardcover in “Matilda: The Algonquin Cat,” which chronicled her fabulous life.

 

Over the past year, Matilda had been showing her age. She no longer had the patience to pose for thousands of photos, or spend hours entertaining children in the lobby. So a hotel regular who has an animal sanctuary in Duluth offered to adopt her. The Algonquin unveiled its newest cat, an adorable orange tabby named Hamlet, at its annual cat fashion show in July.

 

De Almeida said Matilda III was one of a kind: “She was our girl, our diva. She was the Algonquin Cat.”

 

 

 

AND FROM JULY:

 

Stubbs, the honorary feline mayor of the Alaska town of Talkeetna, has died at the age of 20.

 

The animal’s owners announced the cat’s death late Saturday in a statement.

 

“Stubbs lived for 20 years and 3 months,” the family wrote. “He was a trooper until the very last day of his life; meowing at us throughout the day to pet him or to come sit on the bed with him and let him snuggle and purr for hours in our lap. Thank you, Stubbs, for coming into our lives for the past 31 months; you are a remarkable cat and we will dearly miss you. We loved the time we were allowed to spend with you.”

 

According to Stubb’s family, Mayor Stubbs, as the cat was most commonly known, went to bed Thursday and died overnight, KTVA-TV reports.

 

Talkeetna, a town with a population of about 900, elected the yellow cat mayor in a write-in campaign in 1998.

 

There is no human mayor in the town.

 

Stubbs had survived an attack by a dog in 2013 and a false report of his death last year. But by late 2016, he was largely staying at home instead of being out and about at local Nagley’s General Store.

 

Although Stubbs is gone, one of his owners’ kittens might be ready to take up his mayoral mantle.

 

“Amazingly, Denali has the exact personality as Stubbs,” the family wrote of the kitten. “He loves the attention, he’s like a little puppy when he’s around people. We couldn’t have asked for a better understudy than Denali — he really has followed in Stubbs’ pawprints in just about everything.”

 

[samhexum]

BENSON HAS BOUGHT THE FARM

 

Robert Guillaume, who rose from squalid beginnings in St. Louis slums to become a star in stage musicals and win Emmy Awards for his portrayal of the sharp-tongued butler in the TV sitcoms “Soap” and “Benson,” has died at age 89.

 

Guillaume died at home Tuesday in Los Angeles, according to his widow, Donna Brown Guillaume. He had been battling prostate cancer, she told The Associated Press.

 

Among Guillaume’s achievements was playing Nathan Detroit in the first all-black version of “Guys and Dolls,” earning a Tony nomination in 1977. He became the first African-American to sing the title role of “Phantom of the Opera,” appearing with an all-white cast in Los Angeles.

 

While playing in “Guys and Dolls, he was asked to test for the role of an acerbic butler of a governor’s mansion in “Soap,” a primetime TV sitcom that satirized soap operas.

 

“The minute I saw the script, I knew I had a live one,” he recalled in 2001. “Every role was written against type, especially Benson, who wasn’t subservient to anyone. To me, Benson was the revenge for all those stereotyped guys who looked like Benson in the ’40s and ’50s (movies) and had to keep their mouths shut.”

 

The character became so popular that ABC was persuaded to launch a spinoff, simply called “Benson,” which lasted from 1979 to 1986. The series made Guillaume wealthy and famous, but he regretted that Benson’s wit had to be toned down to make him more appealing as the lead star.

 

The career of Robert Guillaume almost ended in January 1999 at Walt Disney Studio. He was appearing in the TV series “Sports Night” as Isaac Jaffee, executive producer of a sports highlight show. Returning to his dressing room after a meal away from the studio, he suddenly collapsed.

 

“I fell on the floor, and I couldn’t get up,” he told an interviewer in 2001. “I kept floundering about on the floor and I didn’t know why I couldn’t do it. I didn’t know it was it was caused by my left side being weaker than the other.”

 

Fortunately, St. Joseph Hospital was directly across from the studio. The 71-year-old actor was taken there and treated for a stroke— the result of a blood clot that blocked circulation of blood to the brain. They are fatal in 15 percent of the cases.

 

Guillaume’s stroke was minor, causing relatively slight damage and little effect on his speech. After six weeks in the hospital, he underwent a therapy of walks and sessions in the gym. He returned to the second season of “Sports Talk,” and it was written into the script that Isaac Jaffee was recovering from a stroke. Because of slim ratings, the second season proved to be the last for the much-praised show.

 

“I’m a bastard, a Catholic, the son of a prostitute, and a product of the poorest slums of St. Louis.”

 

This was the opening of “Guillaume: A Life,” his 2002 autobiography in which he laid bare his troubled life. He was born fatherless on Nov. 30, 1927, in St. Louis, one of four children. His mother named him Robert Peter Williams; when he became a performer he adopted Guillaume, a French version of Williams, believing the change would give him distinction.

 

His early years were spent in a back-alley apartment without plumbing or electricity; an outhouse was shared with two dozen people. His alcoholic mother hated him because of his dark skin, and his grandmother rescued him, taught him to read and enrolled him in a Catholic school.

 

Seeking but denied his mother’s love and scorned by nuns and students because of his dark skin, the boy became a rebel, and that carried into his adult life. He was expelled from school and then the Army, though he was granted an honorable discharge. He fathered a daughter and abandoned the child and her mother. He did the same to his first wife and two sons and to another woman and a daughter.

 

He worked in a department store, the post office and as St. Louis’s first black streetcar motorman. Seeking something better, he enrolled at St. Louis University, excelling in philosophy and Shakespeare, and then at Washington University (St. Louis) where a music professor trained the young man’s superb tenor singing voice.

 

After serving as an apprentice at theaters in Aspen, Colo., and Cleveland, the newly named Guillaume toured with Broadway shows “Finian’s Rainbow,” ″Golden Boy,” ″Porgy and Bess” and “Purlie,” and began appearing on sitcoms such as “The Jeffersons” and “Sanford and Son.” Then came “Soap” and “Benson.” His period of greatest success was marred by tragedy when his 33-year-old son Jacques died of AIDS.

 

Guillaume’s first stable relationship came when he married TV producer Donna Brown in the mid-1980s and fathered a daughter, Rachel. At last he was able to shrug off the bitterness he had felt throughout his life.

 

“To assuage bitterness requires more than human effort,” he wrote at the end of his autobiography. “Relief comes from a source we cannot see but can only feel. I am content to call that source love.”

[LADoug1]

“Bought the Farm “? Tacky.

[samhexum]

“Bought the Farm “? Tacky.

 

You'd prefer "kicked the bucket"?

[LADoug1]

You'd prefer "kicked the bucket"?

No. Disrespectful as well.

[samhexum]

Higgins has kicked the bucket & bought the farm where's he's pushing up daisies:

 

A spokeswoman for the family of actor John Hillerman says the co-star of TV’s “Magnum, P.I.” has died. Hillerman was 84.

 

Spokeswoman Lori De Waal said Hillerman died Thursday at his home in Houston. She said the cause of death has yet to be determined.

 

Hillerman played stuffy Jonathan Higgins to Tom Selleck’s free-wheeling private detective Thomas Magnum in the hit 1980s series set in Hawaii.

 

Hillerman also was known for his 1970s roles as arrogant radio show detective Simon Brimmer on the “Ellery Queen” series, and as a difficult boss on “One Day at a Time.”

 

Hillerman appeared in a number of other series, including “Valerie,” ″The Love Boat” and “The Betty White Show.”

 

His film credits include “The Last Picture Show” and “High Plains Drifter.

[samhexum]

Former New York Post gossip columnist Liz Smith, who won her own A-list status with her witty chronicling of the glitterati, died of natural causes on Sunday, her literary agent, Joni Evans, said.

 

She was 94.

 

An affable blonde known for pealing laughter, Smith wrote a column that celebrated her famous friends, from Tom Hanks to Liza Minnelli to Madonna, and was read around the world for more than a quarter-century.

 

Despite her towering reputation, Smith held a lighthearted opinion of herself.

 

“We mustn’t take ourselves too seriously in this world of gossip,” she said in 1987. “When you look at it realistically, what I do is pretty insignificant. Still, I’m having a lot of fun.”

 

Born in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1923, Smith graduated from the University of Texas in 1949 with a degree in journalism and, a year later, moved to the Big Apple.

 

For nearly 30 years, Smith bounced from job to job — publicist for singer Kaye Ballard; assistant to Mike Wallace and “Candid Camera” creator Allen Funt; ghostwriter for Igor Cassini’s Cholly Knickerbocker gossip column.

 

Smith ultimately wrote for nine New York newspapers and dozens of magazines, but it was a stint writing for Cosmopolitan that led to her big break.

 

While establishing herself as an authority on Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton, Smith attracted the attention of the New York Daily News. She started her own column at the tabloid in 1976 — and a gossip star was born.

 

By the 1990s, she began a syndicated daily column that ran in Newsday and the New York Post.

 

The column, which was reprinted across the country and abroad, reportedly earned her more than $1 million a year.

 

Her scoops included Donald Trump’s 1990 split from first wife, Ivana. Later, in The Post, she supported her celebrity friends, including backing Billy Bob Thornton after word got out that he and Angelina Jolie had gotten married and exchanged necklaces adorned with vials of each other’s blood.

 

Smith’s 2000 memoir, “Natural Blonde,” in which she admitted she was bisexual despite having married two men, was a best seller.

 

In an interview with The New York Times this past July, Smith revealed that she was having trouble moving after suffering a minor stroke.

 

“I can’t walk. I can’t talk as well as I used to, but I’m relatively healthy otherwise,” she explained.

 

She also responded to criticism that she was a little too friendly with the celebrities she covered.

 

“I needed access to people,” she said. “And you’re not supposed to seek access. You’re just supposed to be pure and you go to the person you’re writing about and you write the truth. Nobody can do it totally.”

 

“But everybody gives up something to be able to do a job, a demanding job,” she added. “And being a reporter is a demanding, dangerous job. It may be glamorous or put you in harm’s way. I gave up being considered ethical and acceptable, for a while.”

[samhexum]

The first of Dan Connor’s 2 mothers has died. (Debbie Reynolds was his second mother)

 

Ann Wedgeworth, who starred in “Three’s Company,” “Scarecrow” and “Evening Shade” died on Thursday.

 

She was 83.

 

The Tony Award-winning actress died after a lengthy stay at a New York area nursing home, her daughter confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter.

 

Wedgeworth won the Tony in 1978 for her role in Neil Simon’s “Chapter Two” directed by Herbert Ross. She also received the National Society of Film Critics Award in 1977 for best supporting actress in Jonathan Demme’s “Citizens Band.”

 

Her role on “Three’s Company” was Lana Shields, a three-time divorcee, who moves next-door to the trio, but her role was short-lived and because of a mutual decision, she left after a handful of episodes, according to THR.

 

She also had a featured role on the CBS sitcom “Evening Shade” starring Burt Reynolds for four seasons between 1990-1994.

 

Wedgeworth portrayed a loving mother to Patsy Cline (Jessica Lange) in “Sweet Dreams” in 1985, as well as Sissy Spacek’s mom in 1991’s “Hard Promises.”

 

The accomplished actress had countless other roles in Broadway and in film, including playing the wife to Robert DeNiro in “Bang the Drum Slowly.”

 

One of the largest films she was known for is “Scarecrow” in 1973, which was a co-winner of the Palme d’Or at Cannes.

 

Wedgeworth starred alongside Gene Hackman and Al Pacino.

 

She is survived by husband Ernest Martin, daughter Dianna and son, Michael.

[Bearofdistinction]

I saw this in the NY Times. I thought the obituary was remarkable, especially for being printed in The Times.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/26/obituaries/26LEBE.html

 

BG

 

Very well done and very interesting a lot of firsts in his life. BUT I just loved him in SOAP --- It was then and now a Classic Comedy --- The Chemistry between

Jessica (Catherine Hellman) and Benson was amazing - RIP Wonderful Robert

[+ Gar1eth]

BENSON HAS BOUGHT THE FARM

 

Robert Guillaume, who rose from squalid beginnings in St. Louis slums to become a star in stage musicals and win Emmy Awards for his portrayal of the sharp-tongued butler in the TV sitcoms “Soap” and “Benson,” has died at age 89.

 

Guillaume died at home Tuesday in Los Angeles, according to his widow, Donna Brown Guillaume. He had been battling prostate cancer, she told The Associated Press.

 

Among Guillaume’s achievements was playing Nathan Detroit in the first all-black version of “Guys and Dolls,” earning a Tony nomination in 1977. He became the first African-American to sing the title role of “Phantom of the Opera,” appearing with an all-white cast in Los Angeles.

 

While playing in “Guys and Dolls, he was asked to test for the role of an acerbic butler of a governor’s mansion in “Soap,” a primetime TV sitcom that satirized soap operas.

 

“The minute I saw the script, I knew I had a live one,” he recalled in 2001. “Every role was written against type, especially Benson, who wasn’t subservient to anyone. To me, Benson was the revenge for all those stereotyped guys who looked like Benson in the ’40s and ’50s (movies) and had to keep their mouths shut.”

 

The character became so popular that ABC was persuaded to launch a spinoff, simply called “Benson,” which lasted from 1979 to 1986. The series made Guillaume wealthy and famous, but he regretted that Benson’s wit had to be toned down to make him more appealing as the lead star.

 

The career of Robert Guillaume almost ended in January 1999 at Walt Disney Studio. He was appearing in the TV series “Sports Night” as Isaac Jaffee, executive producer of a sports highlight show. Returning to his dressing room after a meal away from the studio, he suddenly collapsed.

 

“I fell on the floor, and I couldn’t get up,” he told an interviewer in 2001. “I kept floundering about on the floor and I didn’t know why I couldn’t do it. I didn’t know it was it was caused by my left side being weaker than the other.”

 

Fortunately, St. Joseph Hospital was directly across from the studio. The 71-year-old actor was taken there and treated for a stroke— the result of a blood clot that blocked circulation of blood to the brain. They are fatal in 15 percent of the cases.

 

Guillaume’s stroke was minor, causing relatively slight damage and little effect on his speech. After six weeks in the hospital, he underwent a therapy of walks and sessions in the gym. He returned to the second season of “Sports Talk,” and it was written into the script that Isaac Jaffee was recovering from a stroke. Because of slim ratings, the second season proved to be the last for the much-praised show.

 

“I’m a bastard, a Catholic, the son of a prostitute, and a product of the poorest slums of St. Louis.”

 

This was the opening of “Guillaume: A Life,” his 2002 autobiography in which he laid bare his troubled life. He was born fatherless on Nov. 30, 1927, in St. Louis, one of four children. His mother named him Robert Peter Williams; when he became a performer he adopted Guillaume, a French version of Williams, believing the change would give him distinction.

 

His early years were spent in a back-alley apartment without plumbing or electricity; an outhouse was shared with two dozen people. His alcoholic mother hated him because of his dark skin, and his grandmother rescued him, taught him to read and enrolled him in a Catholic school.

 

Seeking but denied his mother’s love and scorned by nuns and students because of his dark skin, the boy became a rebel, and that carried into his adult life. He was expelled from school and then the Army, though he was granted an honorable discharge. He fathered a daughter and abandoned the child and her mother. He did the same to his first wife and two sons and to another woman and a daughter.

 

He worked in a department store, the post office and as St. Louis’s first black streetcar motorman. Seeking something better, he enrolled at St. Louis University, excelling in philosophy and Shakespeare, and then at Washington University (St. Louis) where a music professor trained the young man’s superb tenor singing voice.

 

After serving as an apprentice at theaters in Aspen, Colo., and Cleveland, the newly named Guillaume toured with Broadway shows “Finian’s Rainbow,” ″Golden Boy,” ″Porgy and Bess” and “Purlie,” and began appearing on sitcoms such as “The Jeffersons” and “Sanford and Son.” Then came “Soap” and “Benson.” His period of greatest success was marred by tragedy when his 33-year-old son Jacques died of AIDS.

 

Guillaume’s first stable relationship came when he married TV producer Donna Brown in the mid-1980s and fathered a daughter, Rachel. At last he was able to shrug off the bitterness he had felt throughout his life.

 

“To assuage bitterness requires more than human effort,” he wrote at the end of his autobiography. “Relief comes from a source we cannot see but can only feel. I am content to call that source love.”

 

The obituary is wrong about his role on Soap. Maybe the show changed prior to airing. But while he was a butler, the Tates weren’t in politics.

 

Gman

[gallahadesquire]

As preserved by Tom Lehrer:

 

http://www.nytimes.com/1964/12/12/alma-m-werfel-widow-of-writer.html

 

[samhexum]

Earle ‘Don’t Call Me Phyllis’ Hyman, best known to TV audiences for his role as Cliff Huxtable’s father Russell on “The Cosby Show,” has died at the age of 91.

 

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Hyman died on Friday at the Lillian Booth Actors Home in Englewood, N.J. A cause of death has not been reported.

 

Hyman appeared in 40 episodes of “The Cosby Show” over the course of its nine-season run. In 1986, he received an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Guest Performer in a Comedy Series for his work in the classic Season 2 episode “Happy Anniversary.”

 

In addition to his work on “The Cosby Show,” Hyman was the voice of Panthro on the 1980s cartoon “Thundercats.” Additional TV credits included “All My Children” and “The Defenders.”

 

Hyman was also known for his stage work. In 1980, he won the Tony award for Best Featured Actor in a Play for the role of Oscar in Edward Albee’s “The Lady From Dubuque.”

[samhexum]

Rose Marie, best known for her role as Sally Rogers on “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” who had a nine-decade career in show business, died Thursday in Van Nuys, Calif. She was 94.

 

Publicist Harlan Boll confirmed her death.

 

Rose Marie was Emmy nominated three times for her work on “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” in which she played part of the writing team, led by Van Dyke’s Rob Petrie, for the fictional “Alan Brady Show.” The actress began a five-season stint as Sally Rogers in 1960.

 

The recent documentary “Wait For Your Laugh” by director Jason Wise chronicled her long career. Late in life she enjoyed communicating with her fans on social media. Her official account tweeted just a few hours before her death about playing the Flamingo in Las Vegas.

 

Decades earlier, she had been a child singing star under the name Baby Rose Marie. She began her career at 3, starring in her own show on NBC radio by the age of 5, cutting records and appearing in vaudeville, in shorts including 1929’s “Baby Rose Marie the Child Wonder” and in Paramount’s 1933 feature “International House” with W.C. Fields.

 

Variety founder Sime Silverman himself mentioned Rose Marie in its pages for “The Child Wonder,” writing, “Though but a kidlet, she seemed to have an idea of her own.”

 

Later, as a teenager, she became a nightclub singer before returning to radio as a comedienne.

 

Rose Marie made a steady stream of TV appearances from the early 1970s until the early 2000s, appearing, for example, on “Adam-12” and “Kojak”; recurring as Hilda the sandwich delivery lady on “S.W.A.T.”; appearing repeatedly in different roles on “The Love Boat”; guesting on “Cagney and Lacey” and “Murphy Brown”; appearing as a series regular on the brief 1994 sports comedy “Hardball”; and guesting on “Caroline in the City” (with Amsterdam), “Wings” and “Suddenly, Susan.” She was also a semi-regular on “Hollywood Squares” in the 1980s and ’90s.

 

Onstage, she starred with Rosemary Clooney, Helen O’Connell and Margaret Whiting in the musical revue “4 Girls 4,” which toured the U.S. and made television appearances for several years beginning in 1977.

 

In the 2000s she appeared in another comedienne’s HBO special, “Tracey Ullman in the Trailer Tales,” and returned to the “Van Dyke” fold for Carl Reiner’s animated “The Alan Brady Show” and for 2004’s “The Dick Van Dyke Show Revisited.”

 

Rose Marie Mazetta was born in New York City. She was married to trumpeter Bobby Guy from 1946 until his death in 1964.

 

[LADoug1]

Higgins has kicked the bucket & bought the farm where's he's pushing up daisies:

 

A spokeswoman for the family of actor John Hillerman says the co-star of TV’s “Magnum, P.I.” has died. Hillerman was 84.

 

Spokeswoman Lori De Waal said Hillerman died Thursday at his home in Houston. She said the cause of death has yet to be determined.

 

Hillerman played stuffy Jonathan Higgins to Tom Selleck’s free-wheeling private detective Thomas Magnum in the hit 1980s series set in Hawaii.

 

Hillerman also was known for his 1970s roles as arrogant radio show detective Simon Brimmer on the “Ellery Queen” series, and as a difficult boss on “One Day at a Time.”

 

Hillerman appeared in a number of other series, including “Valerie,” ″The Love Boat” and “The Betty White Show.”

 

His film credits include “The Last Picture Show” and “High Plains Drifter.

 

He was also great in Paper Moon.

[samhexum]

Beloved NYPD police cat killed by car

 

 

Sad mews.

 

The adorable orphaned tabby cat that served as mascot and morale booster for cops at Coney Island’s 60th Precinct was struck by a car and killed, cops said Monday. He was 2 years old.

 

“Sad to announce our Precinct cat Martin has passed away. He was hit by a car and later died due to his injuries. He will truly be missed by all in the command. RIP Marty,” Deputy Inspector Joseph Hayward wrote on Twitter.

 

The lovable feline was dropped off by a woman off at the station house on West Eighth Street and Surf Avenue in late 2016.

 

Cops lobbied for the cat to become a permanent resident. He soon softened the hearts of even the toughest officers — snuggling with them and munching on scraps of turkey.

 

It wasn’t immediately clear how the cat got out of the station or how he got hit.

Edited August 28, 2018 by samhexum

[gallahadesquire]

My mother's obit, written by my grief stricken sister. I let her have her 15 minutes.

 

... Loving grandmother of 10 and great-grandmother of two. Beloved by all who met her, *** was a noble and gracious person. For many years she taught French in the **** school district. She attended almost every season of the *** Opera for almost 30 years and was an accomplished pianist turning to Beethovan Sonatas in later years. She loved to swim and became a member of the ''50 Mile Club'' at the ***. Her demise was heralded by an eclipse of the moon, planet of Goddess Diane the Huntress, whose bravery and beauty she shared.

It was also the 75th anniversary of the Great Crash of 1929.

Edited August 27, 2018 by gallahadesquire

[rvwnsd]

...Her demise was heralded by an eclipse of the moon, planet of Goddess Diane the Huntress, whose bravery and beauty she shared....

I was about to ask whether your sister lived in California until remembering that one of my most "woo-woo" friends was born, grew up, and has lived her entire life within the Chicago city limits.

[samhexum]

The Village Voice is no more

 

 

The storied New York tabloid the Village Voice — already down to just over a dozen employees — is now officially dead, its owner announced Friday, according to Gothamist.com.

 

Half of the staff will be fired, with the other half hanging on briefly to work on an online archive, owner Peter Barbey told them Friday. The publication has stopped publishing new material.

 

“I bought The Village Voice to save it,” Barbey told staffers, relaying the bad news by telephone.

 

“This isn’t how I thought it was going to end up,” he said, blaming “basically, business realities,” according to an audio of the call obtained by Gothamist.

[+ Avalon]

The Village Voice is no more

 

 

The storied New York tabloid the Village Voice — already down to just over a dozen employees — is now officially dead, its owner announced Friday, according to Gothamist.com.

 

Half of the staff will be fired, with the other half hanging on briefly to work on an online archive, owner Peter Barbey told them Friday. The publication has stopped publishing new material.

 

“I bought The Village Voice to save it,” Barbey told staffers, relaying the bad news by telephone.

 

“This isn’t how I thought it was going to end up,” he said, blaming “basically, business realities,” according to an audio of the call obtained by Gothamist.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Village_Voice

[samhexum]

My toaster oven died approximately 4AM EST 11/1/18.

 

In lieu of flowers, please send cash.

[gallahadesquire]

I was about to ask whether your sister lived in California until remembering that one of my most "woo-woo" friends was born, grew up, and has lived her entire life within the Chicago city limits.

Close, but not quite.

[samhexum]

The last of a Hawaiian land snail species has died.

 

The Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources says the last known Achatinella apexfulva died on New Year’s Day. It was about 14 years old and named George.

 

In 1997, the last 10 known of its kind were brought into a laboratory at the University of Hawaii to be raised in captivity.

 

Some offspring were produced but the snails all eventually died — except for George.

 

A 2-millimeter snippet of George’s foot was collected in 2017 for research. It remains in deep freeze in San Diego.

 

The snails were once common in Oahu’s Koolau mountains and were used to make lei.

 

The department says other remaining snails native to Hawaii face extinction from threats including invasive species and climate change.