Our Daily Dead

LA Times
K.R. Narayanan, a former president of India who brought a deeper meaning to the largely ceremonial position when he rose from the bottom of the country’s ancient caste system to become the first “untouchable” to hold the office, has died. He was 85.

Narayanan, who had been suffering from pneumonia and kidney failure, died Wednesday at an army hospital in New Delhi, a spokesman for India’s defense ministry announced. He had been on life support since Oct. 31.

His elevation to the presidency in 1997 — three weeks before India marked 50 years of independence from Britain — fulfilled the vision of Mohandas K. Gandhi, the founder of independent India, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said in a statement.

Gandhi believed the election of an untouchable as president would mark a symbolic end of the degradation of Hindus on the lowest rung of the 3,000-year-old caste system.

Commonly used a century ago, the term “untouchables” has been replaced by the more politically correct Dalits, which literally translates as “broken people.” It applies to nearly a quarter of India’s billion-plus population.

At his inaugural, Narayanan condemned “caste-ism” and said the election of “someone who has sprung from the grass-roots of our society … is symbolic of the fact that the concerns of the common man have now moved to the center stage.”

If I listen to your lies would you say
I’m a man without conviction
I’m a man who doesn’t know
How to sell a contradiction
You come and go
You come and go
Karma karma karma karma karma chameleon
~”Karma chameleon” Culture Club

The ODDfellows are having somewhat of bad karma day. The ODDmobile blew a seal (inside joke), our parrot is sick, the postman only rang once, we found Jimmy Carter on our roof hammering away and muttering under his breath about Lichtenstein elections, Paris Hilton left a 7 digit phone number on our answering machine, and Karl Rove won’t return our e-mails. Alas.

Given this, it seem appropriate that today we feature the death of K.R. Narayanan, an “Untouchable” who rose from the bottom of the Indian caste system
to become President of India. Perhaps hope remains for Howard Dean
.

Terrell Owens
appears to be working hard at becoming an untouchable in the NFL. He should read yesterday’s ODDcomment about the importance of a SINCERE apology.

This might be the day to work on our jellyfish juggling

If I listen to your lies would you say
I’m a man without conviction
I’m a man who doesn’t know
How to sell a contradiction
You come and go
You come and go
Karma karma karma karma karma chameleon
~”Karma chameleon” Culture Club

The ODDfellows are having somewhat of bad karma day. The ODDmobile blew a seal (inside joke), our parrot is sick, the postman only rang once, we found Jimmy Carter on our roof hammering away and muttering under his breath about Lichtenstein elections, Paris Hilton left a 7 digit phone number on our answering machine, and Karl Rove won’t return our e-mails. Alas.

Given this, it seem appropriate that today we feature the death of K.R. Narayanan, an “Untouchable” who rose from the bottom of the Indian caste system
to become President of India. Perhaps hope remains for Howard Dean
.

Terrell Owens
appears to be working hard at becoming an untouchable in the NFL. He should read yesterday’s ODDcomment about the importance of a SINCERE apology.

This might be the day to work on our jellyfish juggling
.

NY Times
DURHAM, N.C., Nov. 8 (AP) - C. P. Ellis, a former member of the Ku Klux Klan whose conversion to civil rights activism was documented in a book, “The Best of Enemies: Race and Redemption in the New South,” and a film, “An Unlikely Friendship,” died here last Thursday. He was 78.

His death was confirmed by Diane Bloom, producer of “An Unlikely Friendship.” He had been suffering from Alzheimer’s disease.

Mr. Ellis, a labor union official, was at one time exalted grand cyclops of a Klan group in Durham. Then, in 1971, he participated in a school desegregation forum here that also attracted Ann Atwater, a black civil rights activist.

They became the unlikeliest of friends during 10 days of talks, and Mr. Ellis came to believe that whites, especially poor whites, could prosper more from the civil rights movement than from segregation.

In a 1999 interview with The Herald-Sun of Durham, he said his experiences in the labor movement had spurred his conversion.

“I would hear black workers talking about the same problems as white workers,” he said, “and I could see the common interests we shared. It helped me overcome a lot of prejudice in my life.”

Ms. Atwater and Mr. Ellis remained friends, occasionally speaking together at public appearances through the years. They were interviewed twice by Studs Terkel for books including “Race: How Blacks and Whites Think and Feel About the American Obsession.”

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0684197596/002-8775021-2086417?v=glance&n=283155&camp=1789&link%5Fcode=xm2
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/038546889X/ourdailydeadc-20/002-8775021-2086417?%5Fencoding=UTF8&camp=1789&link%5Fcode=xm2

We’re so sorry Uncle Albert
We’re so sorry if we caused you any pain
We’re so sorry Uncle Albert
But there’s no one left at home
And I believe i’m gonna rain
We’re so sorry but we haven’t heard a thing all day
We’re so Sorry Uncle Albert
But if anything should happen we’ll be sure to give a ring
~Paul McCartney “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey”

The ODDyear elections are over, and it’s reasonable to put the Governator’s political career “On Deck.” “Hasta la vista, baby!”

We doubt there is going to be much kissing and making up in Kal-e-for-ne-a, but today’s departed soul, C.P. Ellis, learned the power of reconciliation and overcoming prejudice. Ellis moved from Grand Cyclops of the Klu Klux Klan to civil rights activist. On a timely note, a recent medical study has shown the health benefits of a sincere apology
. So get out there and say you’re sorry. We ODDones are sorry we aren’t better looking, don’t have more money, and can’t do a full-cartwheel, catch it off the floor, punk it behind the back basketball dunk . Yep we’re so sorry, we should live to be 113 years old
.

Oui, la fortune est là-bas!
\ Prends garde de faire un faux pas!
~Carmen

”I’ll be back”

NY Times
LOS ANGELES, Nov. 7 (AP) - Sheree North, a platinum blond bombshell in the 1950’s who later became a prominent character actress in television series including “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and “Seinfeld,” died here on Friday. She was 72.

The cause was complications of surgery, said her daughter Dawn Bessire.

Ms. North initially was groomed as a glamour girl who could substitute for the often unreliable Marilyn Monroe, and in fact replaced Monroe in the 1955 film “How to Be Very, Very Popular.”

Her breakout role, which she got after an agent saw her dancing at a Santa Monica nightclub, was in the 1953 Broadway musical “Hazel Flagg,” for which she won a Theatre World Award. She repeated that performance in “Living It Up,” the 1954 film version, with Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis.

She achieved leading lady status after getting rave reviews in the first episode of “The Bing Crosby Show,” and she appeared in popular stage musicals including “Can-Can” and “Bye Bye Birdie.” Her film career included performances in “The Outfit” (1973), “The Shootist” (1976) and “Defenseless” (1991).

But she may have been best known for her prolific television work, earning Emmy nominations for appearances on “Marcus Welby, M.D.” and “Archie Bunker’s Place.”

In 1974, in the 100th episode of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” Ed Asner’s character, Lou Grant, memorably fell for her as a saloon singer with a past.

More recently, she had a recurring role in “Seinfeld” as Kramer’s mother, Babs.

NY Times
John Fowles, the British writer whose teasing, multilayered fiction explored the tensions between free will and the constraints of society, even as it played with traditional novelistic conventions and challenged readers to find their own interpretations, died on Saturday at his home in Lyme Regis, England. He was 79.

His death was announced by his publisher, Random House UK. No cause was given, but Random House said Mr. Fowles, who suffered a stroke in the late 1980’s and had heart problems, had been ill for some time.
Mr. Fowles’s originality, versatility and skill were nowhere more evident than in his most celebrated novels, among them “The Collector,” “The Magus” and “The French Lieutenant’s Woman.” In “The French Lieutenant’s Woman,” for example, he combined the melodrama of a 19th-century Victorian novel with the sensibility of a 20th-century postmodern narrator, offering his readers two alternative endings from which to choose and at one point boldly inserting himself into the book as a character who accompanies the hero on a train to London.
In “The Collector,” Mr. Fowles painted an eerily plausible portrait of a psychopath who kidnaps a young woman out of what he imagines is love, telling the story from the two characters’ opposing points of view until, at the end, the narratives converge with a shocking immediacy. And in “The Magus,” the story of a young Englishman who gets caught up in the frightening dramatic fantasies of a strangely powerful man on an Aegean island, he again wrote an ending of self-conscious ambiguity, leaving the hero’s future an open puzzle that readers are challenged to solve for themselves.
“Fowles’s success in the marketplace derives from his great skill as a storyteller,” wrote Ellen Pifer in the “Dictionary of Literary Biography.” “Remarkably, he manages to sustain such effects at the same time that, as an experimental writer testing conventional assumptions about reality, he examines and parodies the traditional devices of storytelling.”

No great challenge finding today’s ODDassociation. It’s meaninglessness.

Read on

Continuing on yesterday’s subtopic of writing, we bring word the death of John Fowles, author of “The French Lieutenant’s Woman,” a little postmodern
ditty that made him a meaningful amount of money. Also departed is Sheree North, a beautiful and versatile actress, who, among many things, played Kramer’s mother, “Babs,” On oh-so postmodern Seinfeld
. Shed a tear Cosmo
, the “Show about nothing” is no more, and so is mom. What’s a bubble boy?

They never can admit it, but death is a postmodernist’s anathema. Our end is non-ambiguous and not open to interpretation—some may question incidentals, such as associated methods or motives, but never the result.

”I know I have a reputation as a cantankerous man of letters and I don’t try to play it down. A writer more-or-less living on his own, will be persecuted by his readers. They want to see you and talk to you. And they don’t realize that very often that gets on one’s nerves.”
~John Fowles as quoted in “The Guardian.”

You, dear reader, never get on the ODDfellows nerves. We’re all in this together until tedium doth us part.