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Sendak bristled at the notion that he was an author of children’s books and told People magazine in 2003 that he wrote stories “about human emotion and life.”
“They’re pigeonholed as children’s books, but the best ones aren’t — they’re just books,” he said.
Actress Anne Francis, who was the love interest in the 1950s science-fiction classic “Forbidden Planet” and later was sexy private eye in “Honey West” on TV, has died at age 80.
Honey West was my first female idol as a young girl. Hey, we didn’t have a lot of strong women role models back in the day. Besides, a gun, a pet ocelot and a black cat suit . . . what wasn’t there to love?
CNN:
While he set two endurance records in Congress, he was only proud of one in the end. The other was for his 1964 filibuster against the Civil Rights Act, when he spoke for 14 hours and 13 minutes in an effort to derail the law.
He opposed civil rights when he first ran for office, a stance he came to regret later in life. He blamed “that Southern atmosphere in which I grew up, with all of its prejudices and its feelings,” for his opposition to equal rights, which included joining the Ku Klux Klan in the 1940s.
He called the move “the greatest mistake of my life,” an “albatross” that would always shadow his career.
“It’s a lesson to the young people of today, that once a major mistake has been made in one’s life,” he said, “it will always be there, and it will be in my obituary.”
I will remember him for this:
A native of Tennessee, Carter was most famous for playing wisecracking Southerner Julia Sugarbaker for seven years on ”Designing Women,” the CBS sitcom that ran from 1986 to 1993. The series was the peak of a career in which she often played wealthy and self-important but independent Southern women.
She was nominated for an Emmy in 2007 for her seven-episode guest stint on the ABC hit ”Desperate Housewives.”
Carter’s other credits include roles on the series ”Family Law” and ”Diff’rent Strokes.”
She married Holbrook in 1984. The two had met four years earlier while making the TV movie ”The Killing of Randy Webster,” and although attracted to one another, each had suffered two failed marriages and were wary at first.
They finally wed two years before Carter landed her role on ”Designing Women.” Holbrook appeared on the show regularly in the late 1980s as her boyfriend, Reese Watson.
[...]
The middle of three children, Carter was born in 1939 in McLemoresville, Tenn.
Carter was the daughter of a grocery and department store owner who died just three years ago at 96. She said at the time of his death that he taught her to believe in people’s essential goodness.
”When I asked him how he handled shoplifting in his new store, which had a lot of goods on display, making it impossible to keep an eye on everything, he said, ‘Most people are honest, and if they weren’t, you couldn’t stay in business because a thief will find a way to steal,”’ Carter said. ”’You can’t really protect yourself, but papa and I built our business believing most people are honest and want to do right by you.”’ (New York Times)
Click on the video to watch Dixie Carter in all her Designing Women glory (embedding is disabled in the clip, so click again to watch at YouTube).
Wilma Mankiller, the once dirt-poor Oklahoma farm girl who grew up to become a women’s rights and American Indian activist, author and the first woman to hold the Cherokee Nation’s highest office, died Tuesday. She was 64.
I’m sitting here flipping through words in my head and I keep coming back to one.
Jo Ann at the Rural Democratic Leadership Academy held in Carson City in October 2007.
Fierce.
There is no other word to describe Jo Ann Orange. In the years that I worked with her in Democratic Party activities in Douglas County, in rural Nevada, and at the state party level, with Jo Ann what you saw is what you got. She never shied away from telling you exactly what she thought, and heaven knows she and I had our ups and downs. Mostly up, of course, but sometimes down is what can happen when passion drives action. She was fierce. She intense and driven and oh my god could she piss you off. But, oh baby, you wanted Jo Ann in your corner. Because you knew, if Jo Ann was with you, it would get done. Whatever “it” was. She gave it her all. Always.
Just a couple of weeks ago she was diagnosed with stage 4-b pancreatic cancer that had spread to her liver and lungs. It didn’t look good, but everyone hoped that chemo would buy her a few months at least, and maybe more. It was not to be, and yesterday she left us.
RIP – J.D. Salinger
Mr. Salinger’s literary reputation rests on a slender but enormously influential body of published work: the novel “The Catcher in the Rye,” the collection “Nine Stories” and two compilations, each with two long stories about the fictional Glass family: “Franny and Zooey” and “Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction.”
Everyone should have a love like this.
Rest In Peace
