Our Daily Dead

LA Times
Chuck Olin, an award-winning documentary filmmaker who achieved acclaim in the late 1990s for his film chronicling the little-known story of an all-Jewish fighting unit during World War II, has died. He was 68.

Olin died Jan. 20 in Stinson Beach, northwest of San Francisco, of complications related to a rare disease, amyloidosis.

During his nearly 40-year documentary and corporate filmmaking career, Olin won a local Emmy for “Palette of Glass,” a 1977 film documenting artist Marc Chagall’s creation of “The America Windows,” a stained glass tribute in honor of the country’s bicentennial, for the Art Institute of Chicago.

But his best-known film may be “In Our Own Hands: The Hidden Story of the Jewish Brigade in World War II,” a 1998 documentary that offered a rare look at the British army unit made up of men from what was then Palestine. It was the only all-Jewish fighting force in the war.
The Monumental Art of Marc Chagall

LA Times
Dr. Brandt F. Steele, a psychiatrist and pioneer in the treatment of child abuse victims who helped coin the term “battered child,” has died.

Steele, 97, died of natural causes Jan. 19.

In a 1962 paper, Steele and longtime associate Dr. C. Henry Kempe, a pediatrician, became the first to detail the physical and psychological symptoms of child abuse by parents, dubbing the result “battered child syndrome.”

The paper, which documented 300 cases of abuse, was pronounced one of the 20th century’s 50 most important medical contributions by the Journal of the American Medical Assn.

Steele and Kempe were the first to document that abusers themselves often were childhood victims of abuse and neglect.

NY Times
Ephraim Kishon, a Holocaust survivor who became one of Israel’s best-known humorists with his satirical books and movies popular here and in Europe, died at his home in Switzerland on Saturday, apparently of a heart attack, his family said. He was 80.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon spoke of Mr. Kishon on Sunday at the opening of his cabinet meeting, calling him “one of the cultural giants of our generation.”

Mr. Kishon was born in Hungary and survived a Nazi concentration camp during World War II before immigrating to Israel in 1949 while in his mid-20’s.

“They made a mistake; they left one satirist alive,” he later wrote.

He swiftly emerged as one of Israel’s best-known writers, producing newspaper essays, plays and novels. He established a theater company and also wrote and directed films, some of them considered classics in Israel.
Ephraim Kishon
The Big Dig
More books at Amazon.com
Ephraim Kishon memorabilia at eBay.com

NY Times
Harley Baldwin, a sociable entrepreneur based in Aspen, Colo., whose high-profile dealings in real estate, restaurants and art helped define the ski resort literally and figuratively, died on Jan. 23 at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. He was 59.

The cause was kidney cancer, said Richard Edwards, his companion.

Starting in the mid-1980’s, when Aspen was sloughing off its folksy image as a ski resort and transforming into the glitter magnet it is today, Mr. Baldwin refurbished the 1891 Brand Building in downtown. He bought it in 1971 for $170,000 and turned it into apartments and shops, including branches of Louis Vuitton and Christian Dior, and the building now has an estimated worth as high as $15 million.
Aspen on the Roaring Fork: An illustrated history of Colorado’s “Greatest Silver Camp “

The Independant
John William Duarte, composer, teacher, writer and chemist: born Sheffield 2 October 1919; married 1943 Dorothy Seddon (two sons, one daughter); died Barnet, Hertfordshire 23 December 2004.

John Duarte abandoned his career as an industrial chemist when he became fascinated by the infinite possibilities of the guitar, particularly its capacity for polyphony and harmony, and went on to become a prolific composer for the instrument.

Duarte’s background was not a musical one, nor did he ever study music formally. Contact with music began as a child, with the banjo of an acquaintance. He progressed through the ukulele to the guitar, which he studied with Terry Usher. But science was his main study, and, after gaining a BSc with honours from Manchester University, he became Chief Chemist in a Ministry of Supply factory.
John Duarte: Guitar Music

The Independant
Jesús Rafael Soto, artist: born Ciudad Bolívar, Venezuela 5 June 1923; died Paris 14 January 2005.

Jesús Soto was one of the greatest and most inventive artists that Latin America produced in the 20th century and a leader in the fine post-war generation of Venezuelan painters.

Soto was born in 1923, the eldest of five children of a poor family in Ciudad Bolívar, then a remote and backward part of eastern Venezuela, on the banks of the Orinoco. His birthplace was, he said, “the Venezuelan city most closely linked to the imaginary, the closest to the jungle”. His musical and artistic talents were the resources with which he hauled himself out of poverty and into the front rank of artists working in Europe.

His father was a violinist and ensured that his son became competent enough on the guitar to perform in public. The young Jesús helped the family budget by drawing posters for local cinemas and theatres. At 19 he won a scholarship to study at the School of Plastic Arts in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, where he met such artists as Carlos Cruz Diez, a contemporary who, like him, was drawn to kinetic forms, and Alejandro Otero.
Soto (Plastic Arts of the Twentieth Century)
Jesus Soto memorabilia at eBay.com

The Independant
George Patrick Leonard Walker, volcanologist: born London 2 March 1926; Assistant Lecturer, then Lecturer, Imperial College, London 1951-64, Reader in Geology 1964-79; FRS 1975; Captain J. Cook Research Fellow, Royal Society of New Zealand 1978-80; G.A. Macdonald Professor of Volcanology, University of Hawaii 1981-96, Professor Emeritus 1999-2005; married 1958 Hazel Smith (one son, one daughter); died Gloucester 17 January 2005.

George Walker was one of the most creative, productive and influential British volcanologists of the 20th century.

In general, his fame rested on his ability to meld observational skills with novel conceptual models to yield fundamentally new insights into how volcanoes worked. He covered a wide range of volcano types and eruption styles, from lava flows on Hawaii and Mount Etna through to huge pumice eruptions in the Azores, Italy and New Zealand. His overall research contribution arose from his dedication to measuring, rather than simply describing, eruptions and their deposits and using his exceptionally keen intuition to generate major advances in understanding.

LA Times
Lucien Carr, who brought together, befriended and served as muse for novelists Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs and poet Allen Ginsberg, the three writers who formed the core of literature’s Beat Generation, has died. He was 79.

Carr died Friday of cancer at George Washington University Hospital in Washington, D.C.

More a facilitator than a contributor to Beat literature, Carr countered the rebellious culture’s ethics and irked his friends by forging a straight workaday career writing and editing news. He retired in 1993 as assistant managing editor for national news for United Press International after 47 years working for the wire service.
More Allan Ginsberg books at Amazon.com
More Jack Kerouac books at Amazon.com
More William Burroughs books at Amazon.com

LA Times
Janet Hargrave, one of only 1,074 female pilots who earned their wings as members of the Women Airforce Service Pilots, a group that flew noncombat missions across the United States during World War II, has died. She was 84.

Hargrave died Jan. 4 at her home in Malibu after a series of strokes, according to Pauline Greene, a longtime friend.

Starting in 1942, some 25,000 women volunteered to go through WASP training. Only 1,830 were accepted, and nearly half did not graduate.

The group’s seven-month preparation time included a physical regimen that was the same as the one for male Army Air Forces cadets. The women also took courses in pilot navigation, meteorology, mathematics and physics.

Today we see a muse for core of the The Beat Generation and a woman who beat towering odds to become one the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) of World War 2.

Certainly we have all hear and no doubt read works from the Beat group, but how many of you know the history of the WASPs? I did not know much and was delighted to find that there are a number of good books covering the subject.

NY Times
Jim Capaldi, a drummer and songwriter who played with the classic British rock band Traffic on “Feelin’ Alright,” “You Can All Join In” and other songs, died early yesterday in London. He was 60 and lived in Marlow, England.

The cause was stomach cancer, said John Taylor, Mr. Capaldi’s longtime manager.

Playing a powerful yet loose beat influenced by jazz and R&B, Mr. Capaldi contributed to songs that had plenty of wandering psychedelia but were rooted in earthy American soul.

Traffic was founded in 1967 by Mr. Capaldi, the keyboardist Steve Winwood, the guitarist Dave Mason and the saxophonist and flutist Chris Wood. The group released 11 albums, including “Traffic,” “Mr. Fantasy” and “John Barleycorn Must Die,” all of them hits in Britain and the United States.
More Traffic music at Amazon.com
More Jim Capaldi solo music at Amazon.com
Jim Capaldi memorabilia at eBay.com
Traffic memorabilia at eBay

NY Times
onald V. North, who as head of the organized crime effort of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in New York in the 1990’s helped devise and carry out strategies that led to the conviction of John J. Gotti and other organized crime leaders, died on Sunday after collapsing while driving in Manhattan. He was 62.

His friend Laura Tobocman said Mr. North died of a heart attack. He had shoveled his car out of a snowdrift and was driving it when it hit two pedestrians on First Avenue at 20th Street, neither of whom was badly hurt. He died before being taken to nearby Beth Israel Medical Center, Ms. Tobocman said.

As assistant special agent in charge of organized crime in the New York office from 1990 to 1997, Mr. North supervised a staff of 500, including 200 federal agents and 35 police detectives.

NY Times
illiam O. Bailey, an insurance executive who helped attract investors to many public projects by persuading the insurance industry to guarantee municipal bonds, died yesterday at New York-Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan. He was 78 and lived in Manhattan and Moultonborough, N.H.

The cause was pneumonia, his wife, Carole, said.

As a senior executive at the Aetna Life and Casualty Company in the 1970’s, Mr. Bailey enlisted four other firms to jointly offer state and local governments insurance that would guarantee the repayment of money lent to them by investors. Because such municipal bond issues often amounted to nearly $100 million, insuring them was too expensive for any one company.

The Independant
John Cornwell Kine, special effects artist: born London 20 September 1921; married 1949 Gladys Martin (died 2001; two daughters); died Worminghall, Buckinghamshire 14 January 2005.

Jack Kine was a true pioneer of television. As the co-founder in 1954 of the BBC Visual Effects Department, he worked on many landmark productions, inventing techniques that stood the burgeoning industry in good stead for decades to come.

Kine was born within the sound of the Bow Bells, his boyhood friendship with his neighbour, the artist Hilda Boswell, encouraging his talent for painting. He left school to become an apprentice architectural model-maker and scenic artist for four years until 1937. His interest in the new medium of television was piqued when the BBC set up shop just down the road and he got a job as a junior artist, “slapping paint on backdrops and thoroughly enjoying it for £2 a week”.
Miniature scenic modelling (MAP technical publication)

Two types of traffic today - Jim Capaldi was one half of the group Traffic and Donald North was best known at the FBI for breaking up the traffic of the Mafia.

And check into Jack Kine’s work. He truely started with twine and spit creating monsters and other wonderful effects.

As for Capaldi -”But today I just read that a man was shot dead by a gun that didn’t make any noise”. Seems to us that the gun in this instance was Jim’s cancer.

“And the tinker he can’t mend kettle nor pots without a little Barleycon”