Our Daily Dead

NY Times
Jack Slipper, the retired Scotland Yard detective who pursued one of the fugitives from the Great Train Robbery across many years and two continents, died here on Wednesday. He was 81.

His death was announced by the Metropolitan Police.

Known as Slipper of the Yard, he came to public attention for his role in the Great Train Robbery of 1963, one of Britain’s largest and most audacious robberies and a crime that still fascinates the country.

An armed gang held up the Glasgow-to-London mail train, stealing 125 sacks of bank notes worth £2.6 million - $7.3 million at the time, or more than $50 million today.

The train’s driver, Jack Mills, was hit over the head during the robbery. He never returned to work and died of cancer in 1970.

A team of detectives, including Detective Slipper, arrested most of the gang soon after the robbery. But one member, Ronnie Biggs, escaped from prison after 15 months by scaling a wall with a rope ladder and jumping into a waiting furniture van. Mr. Biggs fled to Spain, had plastic surgery to change his appearance, spent several years in Australia and settled in Brazil in 1970.

In 1974, Detective Slipper traveled to Rio de Janeiro to arrest Mr. Biggs. Brazilian authorities refused to hand him over, because Mr. Biggs’s Brazilian girlfriend was pregnant and as the father of a Brazilian dependent, he could not be deported.

Mr. Biggs eventually returned to Britain in 2001, in failing health after a series of strokes, and was jailed in Belmarsh Prison.

Detective Slipper acknowledged a grudging respect for his adversary. In 1994, he called the train robber “a villain and a cunning monkey,” but added, “When it comes to the important things in life, like his son and family, he seems to be an honest man.”

The Independant
Rightly hailed as “the Pioneer of Jamaican Music”, and alternately known as “the Godfather of Ska” and the “High Priest of Reggae”, Laurel Aitken was one of the first singers to record in Jamaica. During the foundation days of the island’s music industry in the mid-1950s, Aitken recorded in a wide variety of styles, including the indigenous mento form and pan-Caribbean calypso; he was one of the first to record ska music and later scored dozens of hits in rock steady and reggae. One of the first Jamaican vocalists to produce his own material, he was also among the first to record and produce in Britain.

Aitken was born in Cuba to a Jamaican father and Cuban mother; the family moved to Kingston when he was 11 years old. In the early 1950s he won several talent contests with spirited renditions of American jazz standards, leading to a job with the Jamaican Tourist Board welcoming cruise-ship visitors to the Kingston Wharf with traditional Caribbean calypsos, as well as residencies at leading Kingston nightclubs. His first recording, the self-produced “I Met a Señorita”, was made circa 1957.

As the island’s forward-thinking entrepreneurs made concerted efforts to establish a viable music industry in Jamaica, Aitken’s first noteworthy hit took the form of the spiritual “Roll Jordan Roll”. Then came an international breakthrough with “Boogie in My Bones”, a rollicking rhythm-and-blues number produced by Chris Blackwell in 1959. The song stayed at the top of the Jamaican charts for 13 weeks; it was also highly popular in Britain. The following year, Aitken began working solidly for Duke Reid, a former policeman who rapidly became one of the island’s most important producers; the gospel-influenced “Judgement Day” was his biggest hit for Reid.

Frustrated by a lack of proper payment, Aitken travelled to London to record for Melodisc, then the largest outlet for black music in Europe: in addition to recording several singles for their famous Blue Beat label, Aitken also produced work by Beresford Ricketts, Ruddy and Sketto and Bobby Kingdom for the company, while other self-produced singles were issued by the rival Starlight label. Aitken was based in Brixton for several years but returned briefly to Jamaica in 1963, cutting ska singles such as “Zion City Wall” and “Lion of Judah” for the upcoming producer Leslie Kong, followed by singles for Prince Buster and King Edwards, including the hit “Bad Minded Woman”.

Riding on the City of New Orleans,

Illinois Central Monday morning rail

Fifteen cars and fifteen restless riders,

Three conductors and twenty-five sacks of mail. ~~Arlo Guthrie

It was the Royal Mail’s Glasgow to London traveling post office train that they were after. Tampered signals brought the train to a halt and 15 gang members swarmed aboard and subsequently got away with £2.6 million. No guns were used, but the train driver, one Jack Mills, was struck in the head with an iron bar. Mr. Mills recovered, but never did return to work.

Then Detective Chief Superintendent Jack Slipper investigated the crime and became forever after known as ‘Slipper of the Yard’. The lost money was never recovered. Apparently none of the gang talked free.

Mirror in the bathroom

please talk free

The door is locked

just you and me.

Can I take you to a restaurant

that’s got glass tables

You can watch yourself

while you are eating. ~~The English Beat

The English Beat along with Madness, the Specials, Reel Big Fish and many others owe their place in music to Laurel Aitken. Mr. Aitken is said to have founded Ska - no, not the Square Kilometer Array and not Shotokan Karate of America either. Ska, says Wikipedia, has origins in 1950s Jamaica. You should know that this music genre is up tempo so get out your dancing shoes.

Of course if you are FINALLY going on that trip to Dingle perhaps you should take along these dancing shoes so you can impress the locals. Its the toe stands we’re waiting to see out of you.

LA Times
Dennis Lynds, a prolific mystery novelist best known for injecting compassion into the hard-boiled private eye with his series featuring one-armed detective Dan Fortune, which he wrote under the pseudonym Michael Collins, has died. He was 81.

Lynds, who lived in Santa Barbara, died Friday at UC San Francisco Medical Center, where he had collapsed Thursday on his way to visit a hospitalized daughter, said Kathleen Sharp, a longtime friend and fellow writer. She said he had recently undergone several operations for gastrointestinal problems and died of complications from an undiscovered bowel infection.

Sharp said that although Lynds had been ill about a year, he was still writing and had recently completed two short stories scheduled for publication in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine.

Lynds, a former chemist and technical magazine editor, wrote more than 80 densely plotted novels and more than 200 short stories.

A master of the detective genre, he earned a lifetime achievement award from the Private Eye Writers of America in 1988 and the Marlowe Award for body of work from the Southern California chapter of the Mystery Writers of America in 2003.

Particularly in his Dan Fortune series, Lynds is credited with sensitizing his main character and with turning crime-solving exploits into vehicles for sociological observation.

“He didn’t have much patience with style without substance,” Sharp said. “He thought the mystery novel should be written to say something beyond just being a good yarn.”

The Fortune mysteries became one of the longest-running private eye series, encompassing 20 books, from the initial “Act of Fear” in 1967, which won the Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar Award, to the collection of Dan Fortune short stories, “Fortune’s World,” in 2000.

Lynds has often been compared to mystery writer Ross Macdonald who, as Kenneth Millar in real life, befriended Lynds when he moved to Santa Barbara and encouraged his work on the manuscript that became “Act of Fear.”

Tom Nolan, author of “Ross Macdonald: A Biography” and a frequent book reviewer for the Wall Street Journal, said Monday that Lynds was “in the school — or the graduate school — of Macdonald…. I think he took heart from the idea that you could use the detective novel to explore serious social and cultural themes as entertainment.”

Nolan said Lynds once explained the concept by saying, “Suspense novels are no less novels than sonnets are poems.”
Act of Fear (1980 Playboy Press)

LA Times
Milton P. Gordon, 75, who documented the cleansing effects of trees on the environment and became a pioneer of genetic engineering in plants, died July 5 at his home of Shy-Drager syndrome, a degenerative disease, said his wife, Elaine “Sunnie” Gordon.

Gordon was a University of Washington professor and associate editor of the journal Biochemistry for more than three decades. He was one of the first scientists to publish significant research on phyto-remediation, the ability of trees and other plants to absorb and neutralize ground-based contaminants.

He and a Washington colleague, microbiology professor Eugene W. Nester, later showed that agrobacterium tumefaciens, a simple bacterium, could be used to introduce a growth hormone gene into plant cells, a technique used by other scientists to make plants more nutritious and insect-resistant.

Gordon was unmoved by critics who saw the results of genetic alteration as “frankenfood”

“Genetic engineering is the basis for a new agricultural revolution,” he said. “It’s a partial answer to world hunger.”

He retired from the university as professor emeritus in 2003.
Should Trees Have Standing? And Other Essays on Law, Morals and the Environment

Wikipedia says that a mystery is a subgenre of detective fiction. Wikipedia further enlightens that the most widespread subgenre of detective fiction is the ‘Whodunit?’. This is all just a windup to introduce one of today’s ODD members - Dennis Lynds. Mr. Lynds is said to have been a prolific mystery writer, but you might consider many of his books to be in that detective fiction category. ODDly like calling Mary Chapin Carpentera “Country” singer. “Ooooo shutup and kiss me!”

Amoung other things according to Lynds’ bio he “…is credited with sensitizing his main character and with turning crime-solving exploits into vehicles for sociological observation.” That would make those main characters something like a day-old jelly donut we do suppose.

In the “A tree’s a tree. How many more do you need to look at?” category we also note our other ODD guest today - Dr. Milton P. Gordon. Dr. Gordon is credited with first documenting the cleansing effects of trees on the environment. Unlilke then Gov. Ronald Reagan (”I don’t believe a tree is a tree and if you’ve seen one you’ve seen them all”) Dr. Gordon seems to have felt quite comfy with trees thank you. A more interesting note about Dr. Gordon is that he and Dr. Eugene W. Nester were able to show that agrobacterium tumefaciens, a simple bacterium, could be used to introduce a growth hormone gene into plant cells, a technique used by other scientists to make plants more nutritious and insect-resistant.

And speaking of nutritious we suggest you avoid the roadside vendors in Malaysia. Mmm,mmm. Eatin’ good in the neighborhood.

NY Times
Brock Peters, the versatile film and stage actor, singer and producer who first rose to prominence in the 1960’s and 70’s with his powerful singing voice and poignant screen portrayals of angry, belligerent black men, died yesterday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 78.

The cause was complications of pancreatic cancer, his companion, Marilyn Darby, told The Associated Press.

Among his most striking roles were the lead in the 1972 Broadway musical “Lost in the Stars” and in the later movie, and the minor but striking part of the man wrongfully accused of rape in the film version of “To Kill a Mockingbird,” released in 1962.

Mr. Peters’s first screen appearances were in two lavish 1950’s all-black musicals directed by Otto Preminger. He was cast as Sergeant Brown, the brutal army officer who harasses Harry Belafonte in “Carmen Jones” (1954), and Crown, the equally terrifying Catfish Row villain who stalks Dorothy Dandridge in the 1959 film adaptation of George Gershwin’s classic folk opera, “Porgy and Bess.” His explosively convincing performances in the roles proved as much a burden as a blessing.

With his dark skin, searing eyes and intimidating scowl, Mr. Peters was quickly type-cast as the archetypal, menacing, black villain on screen.

“It was almost disastrous,” he later told a reporter for The New York World Telegram and Sun. “Producers didn’t want to see me. They had liked my performances but couldn’t see me as anything but a heavy.”

Brook Peters, who played the falsely accused Black man, Tom Robinson, in the movie adaptation of Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” has died of pancreatic cancer. Check out Peters’ obit. A good life in the arts, lived full.

Lee told the story of the dark and the enlightened side of human existence and interaction through the eyes of a child, Scout Finch, living in a small, mythical, southern town. Scout’s father, Atticus Finch, defended Robinson against charges of rape. Watch the movie
you should.

Harper Lee
(first name “Nellie” and relative of Robert E. Lee
“E” is for “Edward”) graduated from college, went to law school, and studied at Oxford. All this made her qualified to then work as an airline reservation clerk. We ODDfellows believe “To Kill a Mockingbird” is her only published book. But, if you do just one thing very well in life…

We leave you with a few quotes from said same book
.

What I meant was, if Atticus Finch drank until he was drunk he wouldn’t be as hard as some men are at their best. There are just some kind of men who—who’re so busy worrying about the next world they’ve never learned to live in this one, and you can look down the street and see the results. –Miss Maude

They’re certainly entitled to think that, and they’re entitled to full respect for their opinions,” said Atticus, “but before I can live with other folks I’ve got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience. –Atticus

Neighbors bring food with death, and flowers with sickness, and little things in between. Boo was our neighbor. He gave us two soap dolls, a broken watch and chain, a knife, and our lives. –Scout

In the name of God! Do your duty –Atticus to the Jury