Our Daily Dead

Some days it is quite true - we just don’t feel like writing. But, write we do, or at least try. Coble together a variety of ODD bits to create news or at least the latest post for our weblog. Today is one such day. It isn’t the weather, nor the clime in general, nor the oft heard complaint about “interpersonal relationships”.

No, tis something else perhaps. We post about the deaths of many and several here at ODD. The famous, the brilliant, the accomplished all get their last moment. When death arrives closer to home as this past week it renders us a touch speechless. We lost this past week or so a friend and colleague’s father, our sister-in-law’s father, and a childhood friend known since the tender age of 7. Death’s had a busy week close to the ODD home turf. You’ll have to forgive the maudlin wall hangings today.

And still a peek outside informs that the world marches onward. The mid-morning news brought notice that the playwright Wendy Wasserstein lost her battle with cancer at the young age of 55. Joining Ms. Wasserstein here today are Peter Ladefoged, a noted linguist phonetician who’s 15 minutes of fame you can hear on the training record that Henry Higgans plays in “My Fair Lady” and James Fitzgerald who somehow created a career training dolphins for the Navy.

We also tripped over another interesting piece in an obituary posted Down Under. Under the curious title of “Fearless hitter of high notes” you’ll find the story of Richard Montz, trumpeter and teacher who passed away at the age of 63. Mr. Montz had quite the life as a trumpeter including working in Las Vegas with Sigfried and Roy and in Sydney in shows such as Cats. Its in the third page of the obituary that one comes across this curious statement: “When he burst his lip in a gardening accident…”. Oh my. What exact kind of gardening accident causes such an injury? For a trumpeter it was the end of certain aspects of his style. But he rose above and taught himself another instrument.

So a have a bit of caution out there as you heed Candide and tend to your garden stopping only to discourse with Dr. Pangloss about this, the best of all possible worlds.

~~The ODDones for OurDailyDead.com

Technorati tags: news, weblog, interpersonal relationships, Wendy Wasserstein, Peter Ladefoged, Henry Higgans, James Fitzgerald, Richard Montz, Dr. Pangloss

This entry was posted on Monday, January 30th, 2006 at 1:41 pm and is filed under ODD Blogs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.