Our Daily Dead

Dead is David Bright, 49, underseas explorer of the Titanic, ironclad Monitor, and the Andrea Doria. The Andrea Doria sank in 200 feet of water off the coast of Nantucket (rhymes with….er….”bucket” 50 years ago. Bright had been exploring the wreck of the Italian luxury liner. When he surfaced, he experienced a cardiac arrest and died. Bends are suspected, but autopsy is scheduled.

We ODDfellows have just finished T.R.Pearson>’s first non-fiction book, “Seaworthy: Adrift with William Willis in the Golden Age of Rafting.” Pearson, whose latest novel, “Glad News of the Natural World” we ODDones enthusiastically ODDly recommend, usually writes of the mythical North Carolina town of Neely; however, his latest book is a hard by turn into a real life character, Will Willis, who solo rafted (a dog, a parrot, and a cunningly carnivorous cat don’t count) across the Atlantic and Pacific. Willis ate strange concoctions of starches, aspirin, and the occasional unlucky fish. He drank sea water, planned poorly, made up sea ditties, treated intermittent strangulated hernias by hauling himself up the main mast of his raft by the feet, and (amazingly, we think) maintainted his sanity. In the course of one crossing, he gutted out a perforated ulcer. How did he eventually die? Read the book.

~~The ODDones for OurDailyDead.com

Technorati tags: David Bright, Titanic, Monitor, Andrea Doria, T.R.Pearson, William Willis

Mystic mushrooms spawn magic event!

“If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite.”
~~ William Blake

“But the man who comes back through the Door in the Wall will never be quite the same as the man who went out. He will be wiser but less cocksure, happier but less self-satisfied, humbler in acknowledging his ignorance yet better equipped to understand the relationship of words to things, of systematic reasoning to the unfathomable Mystery which it tries, forever vainly, to comprehend.”
~~ Aldous Huxley, “The Doors of Perception”

“Abandoning his body by the gate of dreams, the Spirit beholds in awaking his senses sleeping. Then he takes his own light and returns to his home, this Spirit of golden radiance, the wandering swan everlasting.
Leaving his nest below in charge of the breath of life, the immortals Spirit soars afar from his nest. He moves in all regions whereever he loves, this Spirit of golden radiance, the wandering swan everlasting.
And in the region of dreams, wandering above and below, the Spirit makes for himself innumerable subtle creations. Sometimes he seems to regjoice in the love of fairy beauties, sometimes he laughs or beholds awe-inspiring terrible visions.
People see his field of pleasure; but he can never be seen.
~~The Upanishads

We chased our pleasures here
Dug our treasures there
But can you still recall
The time we cried
Break on through to the other side
Break on through to the other side
~~Jim Morrison and The Doors, “Break On Through (To The Other Side)”

And perhaps fitting to all this is word that the Piper at the Gates of Dawn - Syd Barrett - has died. Diehard Pink Floyd fans still insist that the band was never the same without Syd. Now what do we do with our advance tickets for the reunion tour?

from the LA Times
Mohammad al-Maghout, 72, a Syrian poet and playwright known for his satirical depictions of authoritarian Arab regimes, died Monday of a stroke at his home in Damascus.

“Literary and cultural circles in Syria and the Arab world today lost a giant among Arab men of letters and poets,” Syria’s official SANA news agency said in reporting his death. Al-Maghout’s poems, plays and television and film scripts criticized corruption in the region’s governments and the restrictions they imposed on their citizens.

One of his better known screenplays became the 1978 movie “Al-Hudoud,” or “The Borders,” about a man who loses his passport and becomes trapped between countries.

The film, which starred Dureid Lahham, one of Syria’s better known actors, was a satire on Arab disunity.

Despite his sharp wit, Al-Maghout was allowed to continue writing by Syria’s authoritarian regimes, which granted him latitude to voice criticism as long as the Damascus regime wasn’t the target. Al-Maghout was born in the town of Salamieh, studied agriculture in college and first worked as a journalist.

Technorati Tags: Mohammad al-Maghout, Syrian poet, playwright