Our Daily Dead

from the Coloradoan

EMPIRE— The son of Colorado author and nature photographer John Fielder was found dead in Clear Creek County about six hours after he was reported missing on a skiing trip, authorities said today.

Searchers located the body of John Fielder III, 26, Tuesday about 8:15 p.m. near Empire, about 45 miles west of Denver, the Clear Creek County Sheriff’s Department said.

Sheriff’s Lt. Rick Albers said the younger Fielder was skiing alone. Albers declined to release any other information, saying the death was still under investigation.

The elder Fielder has published numerous guidebooks, calendars and photo books, including “John Fielder’s Best of Colorado” and “Colorado Reflections” along with “Colorado, 1870-2000” and “Colorado 1870-2000 II,” both of which pair historic photos by William Henry Jackson with images by Fielder from the same place decades later.

He also has a photo gallery in Denver, John Fielder’s Colorado.

Gallery director Maggie Whyte said Fielder had no immediate comment on his son’s death.

Technorati Tags: author, nature photographer, John Fielder

from the LA Times
Jade Snow Wong, whose memoir “Fifth Chinese Daughter” offers a rare glimpse into San Francisco’s Chinatown in the early 1900s and has often been included on school reading lists since it was published in 1950, has died. She was 84.

Wong, who was also a well-known ceramicist, died Thursday of cancer at her home in San Francisco’s Russian Hill, said her son Mark Stuart Ong. She was a longtime resident of the neighborhood where she operated Jade Snow Wong Studio, which included a studio, gift shop and travel agency.

“Fifth Chinese Daughter,” the first and better-known of two memoirs she wrote, re-creates life in the insular San Francisco community where she was born and raised. Wong was one of nine children of immigrant parents. Her father owned and operated a manufacturing business in the family’s basement-level home.

Her professional name, Jade Snow, is a translation of her given Chinese name. Many of her friends, however, knew her as Constance, her Christian name.

Wong’s first book was praised for its details about life in the ethnic enclave where she came of age. It also showed her to be skilled from childhood at “dovetailing American ways with a Chinese upbringing,” wrote a reviewer for the New Yorker magazine in 1950.

Wong wrote the book when she was in her mid-20s and still struggling to establish her identity. She was candid about some of her frustrations growing up in a household where daughters were not as prized as sons. But she was also respectful of her culture. Following Chinese tradition, she wrote her memoir in the third person, as it was considered immodest to write a story in the first person.

Her second memoir, “No Chinese Stranger,” was published in 1975. In it, she recapped her younger years in the third-person but changed to the first-person voice typical of American autobiography when she described her adult life.

Technorati Tags: Jade Snow Wong, San Francisco, Chinatown, ceramicist, Russian Hill

from the NY Times
Lumumba Carson, a hip-hop artist known as Professor X and a former member of the black nationalist rap collective X-Clan, died on Friday in Brooklyn. He was 49.

His death was confirmed by Interfaith Medical Center.

Though X-Clan never enjoyed the commercial success of its politically minded peer Public Enemy, the group’s two albums, “To the East, Blackwards” (1990) and “Xodus” (1992), earned them a loyal cult following.

Professor X was the group’s resident sage. He was known to deliver signature lines like: “Vainglorious! This is protected by the red, the black and the green with a key, sissy!,” on several X-Clan tracks.

“If you were a real X-Clan fan you could recite that phrase by heart,” said Erik Parker, music editor at Vibe magazine. “He had such a distinct and immediately recognizable voice, this raspy lisp that would just ring in your ears.”

Mr. Carson and his group mates wore African medallions and were often dressed in clothing with the black nationalist colors, red, black and green.

Professor X, son of the prominent Brooklyn black nationalist activist Sonny Carson, who died in 2002, released his first solo album in 1991. Called “Years of the 9, On the Blackhand Side,” it featured songs with black-empowerment political messages. His 1993 follow-up, “Puss ‘N Boots (The Struggle Continues…),” which included the tracks “Close the Crackhouse” and “Shalom,” was even more aggressively political.

Technorati Tags: Lumumba Carson, hip-hop, artist, Professor X, black nationalist, rap, X-Clan, Public Enemy, Vainglorious

from the DailyTimes.com
An elderly Maryville couple found dead in their home Monday died of heat strokes, according to police.

A Maryville police officer responded to Windemere Circle to check on their welfare and found Edgar C. Ross, 82, and Florence A. Ross, 81, unresponsive inside their residence, a Maryville police report said.

Maryville Police Chief Tony Crisp said it was determined that the couple died within hours of each other sometime on Sunday. It appeared the husband had died first.

Crisp said the husband and wife both suffered from several health problems and had turned the heat up in their house. The temperature was over 100 degrees in the residence, and investigators determined they both suffered from heat strokes.

The officer went to the Ross residence at 11:34 a.m. on Monday because a worker for a Knoxville social services company called and asked the MPD to check on the couple, Crisp said. The worker said the company had an appointment with the couple at 9:30 a.m. and the worker was worried when no one answered the door.

Technorati Tags: Maryville, heat stroke, temperature was over 100 degrees

from the NY Times
Joseph Bova, an actor whose roles ranged from Prince Dauntless the Drab in the original production of “Once Upon a Mattress” to Shakespeare’s King Richard III, died on March 12 at the Actors’ Fund retirement home in Englewood, N.J. He was 81.

Skip to next paragraph

Joseph Bova, around 1971.
The cause was emphysema, said his wife, Dr. Lee Lawson.

Mr. Bova, known largely for his comedic abilities, was an actor who, though not a major star, had a steady career on and off Broadway, in movies and on television.

Born in Cleveland to Anthony Bova, a grocer, and Mary Bova, a homemaker, he was a child actor there. After graduating from Northwestern University, he became the program director for an NBC outlet in Cleveland and, as Uncle Joe Bova, was host of a children’s television program and brought the character to ABC’s local station in New York.

from the Seattle Post Intelligencer
SEATTLE — A University of Washington medical professor who moved to Botswana to alleviate a doctor shortage was killed when a crocodile dragged him from a canoe, his family and colleagues said.

Dr. Richard K. Root, 68, was on a wildlife tour Sunday of the Limpopo River after visiting a clinic in the area.

He was in a lead canoe with tour guides when the crocodile thrust from the water, grabbed him and pulled him under, said Steve Gluckman, medical director of the Botswana program. He was not seen again.

The tour guides were wary of hippos, but there had been no reports of crocodile attacks in the area, Gluckman said.

Root was a nationally known expert in infectious disease and the former chief of medicine at Seattle’s Harborview Medical Center.

He had moved to the southern African nation only this month to train health care workers to deal with AIDS.

Technorati Tags: University of Washington, Botswana, crocodile, Richard K. Root, Limpopo River

from the NY Times
John Wilde, an American surrealist associated with the Magic Realist school of painting, whose fantastic, darkly humorous images brought him fame far beyond his native Wisconsin, died on March 9 at his home in Cooksville. He was 86.

The cause was cancer, said his dealer, Tory Folliard of the Tory Folliard Gallery in Milwaukee.

Mr. Wilde (pronounced WILL-dee) dedicated his six-decade career to painting, with an exacting touch, narratives involving grotesque, doll-like people in otherworldly situations. He was inspired partly by Salvador Dalí and partly by Northern Renaissance masters like Bosch and Grünewald.

Mr. Wilde often painted himself into his pictures, giving himself a weirdly oversized and misshapen head. He also created intensely detailed, colorful and mysteriously glowing still lifes.

Although he lived his whole life in Wisconsin — except for a wartime stint in the Army — Mr. Wilde rejected the regionalism of artists like Grant Wood and John Steuart Curry. Instead he became part of a loose community of like-minded Midwesterners — including Marshall Glasier, his teacher at the University of Wisconsin, and the Chicago-based fantasy painter Gertrude Abercrombie — who advocated idiosyncratic and freely imaginative forms of expression. His paintings also relate to those of New York-based Magic Realists like Paul Cadmus and George Tooker. For Mr. Wilde’s solo exhibition in New York at the Edwin Hewitt Gallery in 1950, the ballet impresario Lincoln Kirstein, a friend of Cadmus and the New York Magic Realists, wrote the brochure text.

Paintings by Mr. Wilde were included in “Surrealism USA,” a major exhibition at the National Academy Museum in New York last year. Currently two shows of Mr. Wilde’s works are on view: at Spanierman Gallery in New York and at Tory Folliard Gallery in Milwaukee.

Technorati Tags: John Wilde, surrealist, Magic Realist, painting, Salvador Dalí, Bosch, Grünewald, Paul Cadmus, George Tooker

from the NY Times
Ray Meyer, a Hall of Fame basketball coach at DePaul University who began his career by tutoring an awkward George Mikan, modern basketball’s first superstar, and went on to win 724 games over 42 seasons, died yesterday at an assisted-living facility outside Chicago, said Scott Reed, the university’s sports information director. He was 92.

When Meyer arrived at DePaul in 1942, the Blue Demons played in the shadow of the Chicago elevated line at a drafty former theater known as the Old Barn. When he retired as coach in 1984, DePaul was a perennial national power showcasing its talent at the 17,500-seat Rosemont Horizon in the suburbs.

Meyer led DePaul to 20 postseason appearances, relying mostly on homegrown talent. He made his first out-of-state recruiting trip at age 69. His 1945 team won the National Invitation Tournament, and his 1943 and 1979 squads advanced to the Final Four of the National Collegiate Athletic Association tournament. When Meyer stepped down, his record of 724-354 placed him No. 5 in career victories among college coaches.

His son Joey, a former captain of the DePaul basketball team and his father’s assistant coach for 13 seasons, succeeded Meyer as head coach and remained in that post for 13 years.

Ray Meyer was present for 1,467 consecutive games over a 55-year span as DePaul’s coach and as a basketball analyst for the program’s radio broadcasts. He had coaching offers from the pros and other colleges, including his alma mater, Notre Dame, but he turned them down. His explanation, “I hate change.”

But he adapted to changing times.

In his early coaching years, Meyer was so enraged by his team’s poor play against Long Island University in a game at Madison Square Garden that he tore the coat hooks out of the locker room’s plaster wall with his bare hands.

By the time he achieved his greatest success, in his final coaching years, he had tempered his gruffness and was known to flash a grandfatherly gap-toothed smile.

Coach

Technorati Tags: Ray Meyer, Hall of Fame, basketball, coach, DePaul, George Mikan, Blue Demons, Old Barn

from the LA Times
When Louisiana musicians Edwin Duhon and Luderin Darbone founded the Hackberry Ramblers, the country was mired in the Great Depression and FDR had just moved into the White House.

More than 70 years later, Duhon and Darbone were still making the good times roll with their lively blend of Cajun, western swing and Gulf Coast dance music, and they had reached late-in-life heights undreamed of when they were playing rural dance halls in the 1930s: a Grammy-nominated album, European concerts and appearances on both “MTV Live” and the Grand Ole Opry.

Duhon, a key part of what may be America’s oldest existing band featuring founding members, died Feb. 26 of natural causes in a hospital in Westlake, La., said Ben Sandmel, the band’s drummer. He was 95.

“Edwin was a tough, tough old guy,” Sandmel, who also serves as the group’s producer and manager, told The Times last week. “He played as recently as November in Baton Rouge, even though he was playing in a wheelchair and it was difficult for him to go.”

But Duhon “had been going pretty strong for the most part” in recent years, Sandmel said.

That included flying to Paris in 2003 for a Hackberry Ramblers performance at a Cajun-zydeco festival in Burgundy, France, where the Louisiana band’s reputation had preceded it:

“The Ramblers sound as spry and spicy as they did back in ‘36.” — Rolling Stone.

“These agin’ ragin’ Cajuns are party animals” who “traffic in jubilation.” — Dallas Morning News.

“One word: hot.” — New Yorker.

Technorati Tags: Edwin Duhon, Luderin Darbone, Hackberry Ramblers, Great Depression, FDR, MTV Live, Grand Ole Opry, Cajun, zydeco

from the LA Times
Narvin Kimball, 97, the last founding member of New Orleans’ Preservation Hall Jazz Band, who was known for his vocal stylings and banjo playing, died Friday at his daughters’ home in Charleston, S.C. He and his wife, Lillian, had been staying there since shortly after Hurricane Katrina.

Kimball’s vocal renditions of “Georgia on My Mind” always brought standing ovations, said hall director Ben Jaffe, whose parents founded Preservation Hall in 1961.

“He was really our last connection to a bygone time in the history of New Orleans,” Jaffe said.

Kimball was the son of bassist Henry Kimball, and he made his first banjo with a cigar box, stick and string.

He began playing professionally in the 1920s on Mississippi riverboats and made his first recording for Columbia Records in 1928.

Kimball’s band, Narvin Kimball’s Gentlemen of Jazz, played around New Orleans for 40 years. He also worked for 37 years with the U.S. Postal Service. His last performance with the band aired on PBS in 1999. Not long afterward, he suffered a series of strokes that ended his banjo playing.

Technorati Tags: Narvin Kimball, Preservation Hall Jazz Band, banjo, New Orleans

We’ve always been a fan of madness. From Dictionary.com we get these definitions for the term:

1. The quality or condition of being insane. See Synonyms at insanity.
2. Great folly: It was sheer madness to attempt the drive during a blizzard.
3. Fury; rage.
4. Enthusiasm; excitement

For each of those we’ve dug up a (mayhaps) interesting example. For insanity, what better than One Flew Over the Cuckoo Nest or The Shining. Funny how Jack just fell into place here.

For great folly you might be tempted to place pictures of both George W. and Dick here, but if we start there we’ll end up listed most of Washington D.C. surely. Rather let us place Barbara Tuchman’s The March of Folly here to start. But the primary expression of folly is perhaps best illustrated over at the Darwin Awards web site.

Fury and rage are just so commonplace anymore that anything we illustrate would no doubt pale by comparison to your own views.

Madness as enthusiasm and excitement is a nice way to wrap up the definition. The NCAA Men’s Basketball tournament &etc have certainly made good use of this definition for madness. Gotcher brackets done buddy?

We’ve another madness flavor to toss in here the basis for which is Ska (and no, not the Square Kilometer Array). This of course is the band Madness, one of our favs.

And a bit of madness just in from ODD fan DB, Infospigot, and SFGate.com: Original “Roller Derby Queen” Ann Calvello dies. The article says that Ann was well “…known for intimidating rivals and even teammates while skating well into her 60s…”!! Ann was 76 and died of liver cancer but a few days after being diagnosed.

Thus it is that we find our ODDselves stuck betwixt the Ides and St. Paddy’s. Roll us out a barrel will you?

~~The ODDones for OurDailyDead.com

Technorati tags: madness, insane, folly, Barbara Tuchman, Darwin Awards, NCAA Men’s Basketball tournament, brackets, Ann Calvello

from the Independent Online

Anthony Farrar-Hockley was a fearless warrior on the battlefield - and he knew many battlefields - and a robust and outspoken soldier. He cared little for the petty-thinking or time-serving soldier or politician, irrespective of rank. He was an officer who led from the front, cared for his men and as a tactician had few equals. An excellent military historian, he marshalled his material well after long research.

His courage was evident in Korea in 1950 as adjutant to the 1st Battalion Gloucestershire Regiment. He had already seen extensive action with the Parachute Regiment during the Second World War. In their tenacious stand on Hill 235 during the Battle of Imjin River in April 1951, the Glosters, who were part of the United Nations forces, were surrounded and greatly outnumbered, but fought like lions against the overwhelming number of Chinese troops who were fighting with Communist-backed North Korea.

Farrar-Hockley’s first book, The Edge of the Sword (1954) was a moving record of the Glosters’ battle and his brutal interrogation. Nearly 40 years later, he published The British Part in the Korean War, in two fine volumes, British Part in the Korean War (1990) and An Honourable Discharge (British Part in the Korean War , Vol 2)(1995).

Tony Farrar-Hockley wrote of war because he understood war at close quarters. But he was also able to stand aside to see not only the tactical but the psychological insights of those who wage war and those who fight them.

The Somme (British Battles Series)

Goughie: The life of General Sir Hubert Gough

Technorati Tags: Anthony Farrar-Hockley, warrior, battlefield, military historian

from the NY Times
Robert C. Baker, an agricultural scientist who looked at chickens and envisioned chicken nuggets, not to mention chicken hotdogs, helping transform what is now a $29 billion poultry industry, died on Monday at his home in North Lansing, N.Y. He was 84. The cause was a heart attack, said his son Dale.

Cornell University hired Dr. Baker in 1957 as a professor and as a liaison to growers and marketers. His mission was to find ways to persuade people to eat more poultry, rather than viewing chickens as just egg-laying machines or Sunday luxuries. He took them to places no bird had been before, including the sausage department.

It was part of a fundamental transformation of the poultry business. It was after World War II that plucked chickens became generally available in supermarkets, and prepackaged chicken parts arrived only in the late 1960’s. Now more than 40 percent of chicken sales involve processed meat, like patties and nuggets.

Among the more than 50 chicken products that Dr. Baker and his team of technicians and graduate students developed were chicken baloney, chicken steak, chicken salami, chicken chili, chicken hash, chicken pastrami and chicken ham. He performed similar magic for turkeys and eggs, doing some of the earliest work on frozen omelets.

“Robert Baker is something of a chicken Edison,” The New York Times reported in 1984 in discussing the transformation of the industry.

Technorati Tags: Robert C. Baker, scientist, chicken nuggets

from the LA Times
John Reynolds Gardiner, who wrote only three children’s books in his career as an author but saw his first one, “Stone Fox,” sell more than 3 million copies and be made into a television movie, died March 4. He was 61.

Gardiner died of complications from pancreatitis at Kaiser Permanente Anaheim Medical Center, his wife, Gloria, said this week. He was a longtime resident of Huntington Beach.

“Children’s publishing has lost one of its touchstones,” Kate Jackson, editor in chief of HarperCollins Children’s Books, said in a statement Monday. “Stone Fox,” published in 1980, is “a true modern classic,” Jackson said.

For many years, Gardiner traveled the country speaking to schoolchildren about his favorite topic, creative writing. He sometimes invited them to stand before the class and finish a sentence he gave them. “If only I could … ” Gardiner began. Overcoming obstacles can make for a good story, he said.

His books were geared to readers in fourth through six grades but he met with students of all ages. To encourage those who struggled with grammar and spelling, he described his own halting beginnings as a writer. He didn’t like to read when he was young. His mother tried reading to him at night but he pretended to be asleep.

Technorati Tags: John Reynolds Gardiner, children’s books, author, Stone Fox, television movie