Obits
-
The Market is a Force for Human Good
All hail Jane Jacobs, who believed in market forces. Jane Jacobs, 89: Urban crusader. Her first book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, published in 1961, became a bible for neighbourhood organizers and what she termed the “foot people”. It made the case against the utopian planning culture of the times — residential…
-
The Enemy of an Idiot Must Be Cool
Over the years of my grand obsession with obituaries, I’ve learned that you can tell an awful lot about someone by the people who don’t like them. A whole lot of creeps didn’t like Jack Anderson. His obituary in the NYT is accompanied by one of the most uncomfortably weird photos I’ve ever seen of…
-
Stove Top Stuffing Inventor is Dead
Ruth M. Siems, Inventor of Stove Top Stuffing, died earlier this month. We are a weird peoples. Here’s some text from the patent: “The nature of the cell structure and overall texture of the dried bread crumbemployed in this invention is of great importance if a stuffing which will hydrate in a matter of minutes…
-
Buzzsaw
Funny how the sweep of decades can pulse through a ruined life, and be punctuated so poetically at the end. L. Patrick Gray III, Who Led the F.B.I. During Watergate, died yesterday. Just one month after the exposure of Deep Throat. Just a short time after he broke his years of quiet margin-writing. He was…
-
NYT Archive > Hellen Keller
Here’s a great obituary for Helen Keller, with excerpt: Despite the celebrity that accrued to her and the air of awesomeness with which she wassurrounded in her later years, Miss Keller retained an unaffected personality and acertainty that her optimistic attitude toward life was justified. “I believe that all through these dark and silent years,…