Monthly Archives: February 2007

Nothing is known of him now

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While I’m on the topic of old obituaries, I have a favorite one, “Hermine Braunsteiner Ryan was a Queens homemaker in 1964 when The New York Times revealed her notorious past as a vicious Nazi death camp guard.” is how The Times obit began. She passed away in April of 1999, but the Times failed to notice this until December 2, 2005. Her belated remembrance ended with this heavily laden paragraph, a novel in short form:

…in prison, Mrs. Ryan refused to speak to other inmates and liked to sew dolls and soft toys. When she was released, she went to a nursing home in Bochum-Linden where her husband lived. A German weekly, Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin, wrote of the couple in 1996, saying he had been seen pushing her wheelchair, and asking her if she would like a bouquet of flowers. She did not respond. He looked at his watch and pushed on. Nothing is known of him now.

No known reason

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I just read an old Times obituary of Robert Volpe, a New York Police detective and expert on art thefts. Anyhow, aside from him being an interesting person, the obit carried this rather odd sentence:

He had an Armani suit to wear to auctions and a Groucho Marx disguise for no known reason.

I don’t think I have ever read such a line in an obit before. Somehow that didn’t make it into the Blog of Death entry on him.

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Came across this picture on The Times website. This actor was The Coroner of Munchkin Town in “The Wizard of Oz”. I just like the picture, makes me think that this is what Elton John will look like in a few more years.

Lordy! Please don’t let this happen to me…

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I just read this on the wires:

NEW YORK (Reuters) — Police called to a Long Island man’s house discovered the mummified remains of the resident, dead for more than a year, sitting in front of a blaring television set.

The 70-year-old Hampton Bays, New York, resident, identified as Vincenzo Ricardo, appeared to have died of natural causes. Police said on Saturday his body was discovered on Thursday when they went to the house to investigate a report of a burst water pipe.

“You could see his face. He still had hair on his head,” Newsday quoted morgue assistant Jeff Bacchus as saying. The home’s low humidity had preserved the body.

Officials could not explain why the electricity had not been turned off, considering Ricardo had not been heard from since December 2005.

Neighbors said when they had not seen Ricardo, who was diabetic and had been blind for years, they assumed he was in the hospital or a long-term care facility.

Jeez! How did Nielson account for this??

Life imitates fiction, or vice versa

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I was just reading the February 14th, 2007, edition of The Onion and came across their “Infographic” column with highlights of the Scooter Libby trial. The second item is:

Jurors show up one day all wearing the same sweater

Iterestingliy, in the February 15th edition of The New York Times was this news snippet in the midst of their coverage of the previous day’s proceedings:

Before the jurors departed on Wednesday afternoon, they filed into the courtroom, all but one wearing bright red T-shirts with a white valentine heart over their clothes, to the uncertain laughter of many in the courtroom.
But as one juror, a retired North Carolina schoolteacher, rose to speak, Judge Walton became visibly anxious that the juror might say something inappropriate that could threaten the trial. Jurors are not supposed to speak and are supposed to make any concerns known through notes to the bench.
The juror said they were wearing the shirts to express their fondness for the judge and the court staff on Valentine’s Day. He then added, to the judge’s growing discomfort, that they were unanimous in this sentiment, but they would all be independent in judging the evidence in the Libby case.
The sole juror who apparently declined to wear the shirt was a woman who had been a curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

I will note that this is not the first time The Onion has proved precient in their supposedly satirical coverage. Back in January of 2001 they ran the forward looking headline “Bush To Nation: Our long national nightmare of peace and prosperity is over.” Oh how true that turned out to be.

To the verge and back in a tired Lebanon

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One of my favorite journalists chronicaling developments in the Middle East is Robert Fisk of the Independent of England. Fisk has lived in, and reported from, Beruit for the past 30 years. He witnessed first hand the civil war which wracked the region from 1975 to 1990 and the ensuing Syrian occupation. He writes with a clear yet impassioned style, much like John Burns meets Hunter S. Thompson.
His two latest two columns show a country approaching the very edge of chaos and, ultimately, stepping back from that abyss:
Published: 14 February 2007

They were commuter buses, 10 minutes apart, carrying the poor from the mountain town of Bikfaya to the coast, targets of opportunity for someone who wanted to enrage the Christian community of Lebanon less than 24 hours before today’s mass demonstrations to mark the second anniversary of Rafik Hariri’s murder. Lebanon’s killers usually choose the country’s politicians, journalists and public figures to destroy but yesterday – in what was obviously intended to be a mass slaughter – they killed a bus driver, a Christian woman and an Egyptian worker. Two bombs packed with metal pellets, hidden under the seats of both buses, by someone who wants a civil war.
All of Lebanon asked itself the same question: was this the attack that was meant to ensure that today’s vast protests in Beirut turn violent? For if Beirut passes through the emotions and anger of today’s anniversary – the ex-prime minister Hariri was blown up in his motorcade in the city, along with 21 others – without street fighting, then Lebanon may be safe. If it turns into anarchy, then the prospect of civil war looks ever more real. Today, as they say, is the day.
…

Published: 15 February 2007

So the Lebanese survived. The civil war did not begin. The second anniversary of the murder of former prime minister Rafik Hariri was more a festival than a vow of revenge.
Even the coffee stall and crisps concessions were cheerful. Villagers from what journalists like to call the “hardy warrior race” of the Druze – mountain men from the Chouf – and their families stood shoulder to shoulder with Christian Maronite women in the centre of Beirut to honour the man whose murder provoked a UN Security Council revolution that demanded the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon (dutifully adhered to) and the disarming of the Hizbollah militia (dutifully un-adhered to).
Despite the three deaths in Tuesday’s bus bombing in the Metn hills, there were no calls for revenge, no ill will, none of the viciousness that those murders were presumably intended to provoke. Many of the young men quite literally danced in the streets to their own music and families sat in Martyrs’ Square – site of the hanging of Lebanese patriots by the Turks in 1915 and 1916 – with picnics.
…

We should all breathe a sigh of relief that once again Lebanon is back from the brink. More must be done, by the US and others, to ensure that the people of this important cross-roads country are able to return to fashioning a pluralistic society once again.

Paula gets truthy

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Seems that Paula Abdul just can’t seem to learn the lessons of Watergate, to whit “The cover-up is more damaging than the crime.” Now she claims that she has never been drunk. That may be, but I love the way she said it, telling Us Weekly magazine:

“I’ve never been drunk. I have never done recreational drugs,” she says. “Just look at my 20-year career. Tell me someone who is into partying or doing drugs that could have done that.”

Okay, hmmm. Maybe Keith Richards for starters… And what a meteoric career, from washed up Laker’s girl to Bobby Brown escort to brief flash-in-the-pan music career to humorous music video doctoring scandal (to make her seem thinner) to washed-up has-been on American Idol most notable for having an affair with a contestant!