Obit watch: June 18, 2020.

June 18th, 2020

Vera Lynn, singer and rallying point for the troops in WWII.

Long after the war ended, the melodies lingered on: “We’ll Meet Again,” “(There’ll Be Bluebirds Over) The White Cliffs of Dover,” “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square.”
In those wartime years, she became known as the “Forces’ Sweetheart,” and to the end of her life the veterans were her “boys,” still misty-eyed when she sang, “We’ll meet again, don’t know where, don’t know when.”

…

At 22, in 1939, she won The Daily Express newspaper’s “Forces’ Sweetheart” poll in a landslide. In 1940, she began her own BBC radio show, “Sincerely Yours,” which was beamed to troops around the world on Sunday nights right after the news.
“Winston Churchill was my opening act,” Ms. Lynn once said.
She read letters from the girlfriends, wives and mothers the troops left behind. She sang her sentimental songs, “We’ll Meet Again” being the most popular. In the blitz that sent the Luftwaffe on nightly raids over London in 1940, she sometimes slept in the theater until the all-clear sounded, then drove home through the rubble left by the bombings.
“The shows didn’t stop if a raid started,” she said. “We just used to carry on.”
Often, it seemed, Luftwaffe bombers droned over London just as Ms. Lynn sang “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square,” which became the theme song of the blitz.

…

In 1944, Ms. Lynn toured Burma (now Myanmar) for three months, earning the enduring affection of the so-called Forgotten Army, which battled the Japanese Army in jungle combat there. She started her journey with chiffon ball gowns, and when they fell apart, she finished in shorts that wound up as an exhibit in the Imperial War Museum in London.

…

Ms. Lynn’s popularity endured well into the 21st century. In August 2009, she became the oldest living artist to reach the British Top 20 album chart when her collection “We’ll Meet Again” was reissued to coincide with the 70th anniversary of Britain’s declaration of war on Germany. A month later, the album reached No. 1.

…

Though the decades passed and she drifted out of the entertainment mainstream, she remained the Forces’ Sweetheart, evoking nostalgia with her old hits, appearing at reunions of veterans’ organizations, rallying support for soldiers’ widows and charities that helped Britain’s wartime generation. (Oddly enough, one of her greatest hits, “(There’ll Be Bluebirds Over) The White Cliffs of Dover,” was written by Americans: Walter Kent, who admitted he had never seen the cliffs, and Nat Burton.)

She was 103.

From the legal beat: Ronald Tackmann, artist. And by “artist” I mean in both the visual sense and the escape sense.

At the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse on Sept. 30, 2009, Mr. Tackmann, a neophyte artist and professional prisoner, put on a light-gray three-piece suit and covered his orange inmates’ slippers with black socks to try to pass as his own lawyer. (At the time, inmates were allowed to change into court clothes before facing a judge.) Briefly uncuffed and unchained and momentarily out of the view of guards, he fled down a back staircase, sauntered outside and vanished into the streets.
It wasn’t his first escape attempt. Twice before he had tried to hijack Correction Department vans that were transporting him and other convicts to court or to prisons upstate, using fake guns he had fashioned out of bars of soap and remnants of eyeglasses and aluminum cans.

…

His escape attempts made him an obvious security risk, and he was confined in solitary for about 20 years. There, improvising where he had to, art became his life.He substituted food coloring for paint, used his own hair to create brushes, and molded papier mâche out of white bread and toilet paper. Among his Dalí-like drawings, he depicted a child gleefully clinging to a supermarket-ride rocket, a jet outracing an eagle, and a skeletal inmate serving a 210-year sentence. A carving of a buffalo, made out of prison soap, shows an intricate touch.

There’s a picture of that buffalo carving in the obit, and I have to give the man credit: it’s well done. I wanted to post this obit so I could work this in:

During his last robbery spree, in Manhattan a little more than a decade ago, he netted $100 or so from a Dunkin’ Donuts on the Upper East Side; a similar amount, along with a cup of pistachio ice cream, from a Sedutto’s store; and a beating at a World of Nuts & Ice Cream outlet.

Delbert Africa, one of the MOVE members. He wasn’t present at the 1985 MOVE headquarters bombing: he was serving time in prison after being convicted of third-degree murder (along with eight other MOVE members) for killing police officer James Ramp in 1978.

Posted in Art, History, Law, Music, Obits | 1 Comment »

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 79

June 17th, 2020

I’m thinking it is time for some more travel video.

From those wonderful folks at Pan Am, “Wings To Ireland”.

Oddly, my major associations with Ireland are Ken Bruen and “all the bright young things were throwing up their Guinness in the gutters…”

You don’t recognize the latter? Let’s fix that.

That wasn’t a bonus video, this is a bonus video. And it isn’t from Pan Am this time.

“Time Flies”. Yes, yes, like an arrow and fruit flies like a banana. But seriously, this is a 1960s promo film for Lufthansa.

Posted in History, Planes, Travel | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 78

June 16th, 2020

I might be the only one, but I’m interested in torpedoes and torpedo history. For example, the famous Mark 14 torpedo.

Here’s some insight into how they work: “Otto Fuel II”, a Navy technical documentary on the Navy’s torpedo mono-propellant.

Bonus: You will believe…Northrop made a rocket sled gag reel.

Posted in History | Comments Closed

I heartily endorse this event or product. (#20 and #21 in a series)

June 16th, 2020

I’ve backed the Kickstarter for Escape the City: a How-To Homesteading Guide by Travis J I Corcoran.

For those unfamiliar with Mr. Corcoran, he’s won two Prometheus awards (back to back) for his SF books, The Powers of the Earth and Causes of Separation.

Unlike those books, this is not fiction: this is a how-to/things I wish I had known/lessons learned book from someone who abandoned suburban life, moved to a farm in the country, and maintains an active coding career while raising his own food and living as close to a self-sustained lifestyle as he can get.

I have personal reasons for backing this book. But even if you don’t plan on moving to a farm, there’s almost certainly something in it that will justify the $20 you spend on the e-book: stuff about meat and meat processing, recipes, workshops and workshop tools…well, there’s a table of contents on the Kickstarter page.

Mr. Corcoran probably doesn’t need my help, though I’m happy to provide it: we’ve had friendly correspondence in the past. The Kickstarter is already at $25,000+ out of an initial $2,000 goal. But I’d like to make sure that everyone who can get any sort of benefit from it has a chance to kick in and get early access.

====

Noted: The National African American Gun Association. I didn’t know about this (though it’s been around for five years) until SayUncle mentioned it. Now that I do know about it, I’m delighted and fully support the organization, just like I support the Pink Pistols/Operation Blazing Sword.

Posted in Books, Endorsements, Guns | Comments Closed

Obit watch: June 16, 2020.

June 16th, 2020

Sushant Singh Rajput. He was a major Bollywood star:

Mr. Rajput started his acting career on television, where he was best known for his role as a car mechanic, Manav Deshmukh, in “Pavitra Rishta,” a soap opera that debuted in 2009.
After leaving the show in 2011, he made his Bollywood debut in 2013 as a gifted but troubled cricket player in “Kai Po Che,” a film based on a novel by Chetan Bhagat. For his performance he was nominated for a Filmfare Award, a coveted honor in the Hindi-language film industry of India. The critic Taran Adarsh said Mr. Rajput was “blessed with wonderful screen presence.”

He was 34 years old. The family did not specify a cause of death, but the paper of record reports that the Mumbai police were investigating it as a suicide.

The number for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-TALK (8255). If you live outside of the United States or are looking for other help, TVTropes has a surprisingly good page of additional resources. Suicide.org has a list of numbers and organizations in India.

Edén “Commander Zero” Pastora.

Mr. Pastora, in a life of danger and adventure that stretched from the jungles of the Miskito Coast to the halls of Congress in Washington, was instrumental in toppling the military dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza Debayle, the last of the line in a repressive family dynasty that had ruled their Central American country for nearly a half century.
But deprived of a major role in the revolutionary government he had helped to install, and increasingly disillusioned by its Marxist-Leninist tendencies, Mr. Pastora went into exile and for years challenged the regime, led by Daniel Ortega, first with an international campaign of political pressures and later with hit-and-run guerrilla attacks inside Nicaragua.
Along the way he courted sympathizers and bankrollers in the United States, Europe and Latin America; took money and air support secretly from the Central Intelligence Agency; attacked cities in Nicaragua; was denounced by Managua as a traitor and tried in absentia; was seriously wounded by an assassin’s bomb that killed eight people; and once ran for the presidency of Nicaragua. He lost — and two years later, in 2008, announced that he had reconciled with the Ortega government.

Posted in History, Movies, Obits | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 77

June 15th, 2020

This is a little outside of my usual, but it’s short and I have a reason: “The Last Will And Testament Of Tom Smith”.

“Tom Smith, an American pilot, is shot down and captured by the Japanese. While imprisoned and awaiting execution, he recalls his life at home in the USA.”

My reason here is: look at that cast! George “Superman” Reeves, Walter Brennan, and Lionel Barrymore! They don’t make them like that any more.

And today’s bonus, from 1944: “Personal Health in the Jungle”. You never know when this might come in handy.

Posted in History | Comments Closed

Today’s bulletin from Bizarro World.

June 15th, 2020

I feel like I’m coming to this story a little late. It seems like it just broke today, but I was busy at work all day and only just found out about it.

There is a couple in Natick, Massachusetts that publishes an online e-commerce newsletter. I don’t know the name of the newsletter or where to find it, but some of their articles were critical of eBay.

eBay was not happy with their coverage.

In response, one company executive wrote to another saying the newsletter editor was “out with a hot piece on the litigation. If you are ever going to take her down … now is the time,” according to text messages included in the complaint. The other executive responded: “Let me ask you this. Do we need to shut her entire site down?”

And so, eBay employees – apparently at the direction of upper management – started harassing the couple. Some of their tactics:

  • sending fly larvae and live spiders
  • sending a box of live cockroaches
  • sending “a bloody pig mask” (picture in article)
  • sending “a book of advice on how to survive the death of a spouse”
  • sending a funeral wreath
  • sending porn to the couple’s neighbors, but making it appear to have come from the couple
  • they apparently tried to send a fetal pig, but for some reason that wasn’t delivered
  • and, of course, the ever popular “place a Craigslist ad saying they’re swingers, and folks should come over any night after 10 PM if they want sex”

The employees also sent a series of increasingly aggressive direct messages on Twitter, asking the newsletter editor what her problem was with eBay, the complaint said. The court filing said they followed up with threatening messages, culminating with publishing the couple’s home address.
As an excuse to covertly surveil the couple in the home, the complaint said, two employees also registered for a software conference in Boston in August, and, lest they were stopped by the police, went to the couple’s house carrying false documents purporting to show that they were investigating the publishers for threatening eBay executives.

Six “former” employees have been indicted on federal charges. (eBay says they were all fired in September of last year.) I won’t name them here (they are entitled to a presumption of innocence), but their titles were:

  • “director of safety and security”
  • “director of global resiliency”
  • “senior manager of global intelligence”
  • “manager of global intelligence center (GIC)”
  • a contractor “who worked as an intelligence analyst within the GIC”
  • “senior manager of special operations for eBay’s global security team”. (This individual was, according to the articles, a former police captain.)

Two unnamed executives are included in the complaint that had roles above [the “director of safety and security”].

I wasn’t following this closely at the time, but eBay’s CEO, Devin Wenig, left the company last year “weeks after the government began investigating“.

“The internal investigation found that, while Mr. Wenig’s communications were inappropriate, there was no evidence that he knew in advance about or authorized the actions that were later directed toward the blogger and her husband,” the statement said. It added: “However, as the company previously announced, there were a number of considerations leading to his departure” from eBay.

Edited to add 6/16: the main Hacker News thread on this story adds some additional details, including links to the supposed newsletter and to the FBI’s affidavit requesting charges against two of the employees. I have not had a chance to read the affidavit yet.

Also: Lawrence.

Posted in Law | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 76

June 14th, 2020

Science Sunday!

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a sucker for nukes. Not just nuclear weapons, but civilian use of nuclear energy, the whole Project Plowshare/early reactors type of thing.

“Pioneering with Power”, a promo film for the Yankee Rowe Nuclear Power Station in Massachusetts.

According to several sources Yankee Rowe was the first commercial PWR operating in the United States. This view discards the government-sponsored Shippingport Atomic Power Station, which was not built on a commercial basis and relied on several technologies that would not be embraced by the commercial operators. The Dresden Generating Station, a commercial boiling water reactor (BWR), slightly preceded the opening of Yankee Rowe in 1960. US government sources place the first self-sustaining nuclear reaction at Dresden-1 on 15 October 1959 and the first one at Yankee Row on 19 August 1960.[6] (These dates probably preceded the entering into commercial operation of either plant by several months.)

It operated until 1992.

Bonus: by way of “Cruise Ships Info” (really?), a tour of the NS Savannah. NS Savannah was the first nuclear powered merchant ship (hence the “NS”, for “Nuclear Ship”).

I have personal reasons for wanting to link to this, but the narration is horrible text-to-speech. You’d do better muting it and turning on captions.

Posted in History | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 75

June 13th, 2020

This seems like a good day to post some more military themed stuff, so here you go:

“Know Your Enemy: German Equipment”.

The film attempts to educate soldiers, tankers and other combatants about the material resources and equipment of the German Wehrmacht, and discusses how to defeat tanks and other weapons with small arms and anti-personnel weapons.

Bonus: I was trying to figure out if I had posted this before. It looks like I haven’t, but I did post about someone else’s link to it nine years ago. At that level of time and indirection, I think I can get away with it this time.

“Stop That Tank”, a Disney produced 1942 training film about the Boys anti-tank rifle.

Posted in Guns, History | Comments Closed

Obit watch: June 13, 2020.

June 13th, 2020

William Sessions, former FBI director.

…in a tenure crowded with troubles and stumbling responses, Mr. Sessions presided for less than six years over an agency that mounted much-criticized deadly sieges at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, and Waco, Texas; tried to enlist American librarians to catch Soviet spies; and was forced to concede that agents in the past had overzealously spied on Americans protesting government policies in Central America.

…

The first of the sieges under his watch occurred in 1992, when for 11 days the F.B.I.’s hostage rescue team surrounded a fugitive white separatist and others holed up in an isolated cabin on Ruby Ridge, near the Canadian border. After a United States marshal and the fugitive’s wife and son were killed by gunfire, a public furor arose questioning that use of deadly force. Mr. Sessions was not directly involved in the episode or accused of any wrongdoing, but the F.B.I.’s reputation was tarnished.
His agency again faced heavy criticism in 1993 over another violent standoff. This one began when four agents from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and six members of a cult called the Branch Davidians were killed in a gun battle at their compound near Waco, Texas. After a 51-day F.B.I. siege, President Bill Clinton and Attorney General Janet Reno, fearing mass suicide, authorized a tear-gas assault on April 19. The compound caught fire. At least 75 people died, including many children.
By then, F.B.I. morale was abysmal and Mr. Sessions, a Republican stranded in a Democratic limbo, was under pressure to resign. His critics said he had failed to redefine the F.B.I.’s crime-fighting and domestic counterintelligence missions after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 during the administration of President George Bush. Some associates called him disengaged, a director who relished the trappings of high office but not the grind of bureau business.
But most damaging to Mr. Sessions was an internal Justice Department report — issued late in the Bush administration but pursued by the Clinton administration — accusing him of ethical violations, including using F.B.I. planes to visit relatives and friends around the country, often taking his wife; using agents to run personal errands; and having a $10,000 fence built around his Washington home at federal expense.

Posted in FBI, Obits | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 74

June 12th, 2020

Today’s installment goes out to all the espionage fans out there. You know who you are: you read John le Carré and Ian Fleming and watch old spy movies. If you’re a book person, you might even have a small (or large) collection of spy novels, spy memoirs, and spy histories.

From 1953, “Cutout Devices”, about the various ways spies protect themselves from exposure.

And your bonus: “Espionage Target – You!”, from 1964.

Posted in History | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 73

June 11th, 2020

Today’s videos are a little longer than I usually like to post, but:

“The Hippie Temptation”, from 1967. According to the YouTube notes, this is an episode of a short-lived CBS News series, and features Harry Reasoner (who was 44 at the time).

Bonus video: Not at all related. This is just a palate cleanser. Like liver flavored sherbet.

The pilot episode of “Space: 1999”.

Posted in History, TV | Comments Closed

Quote of the day.

June 11th, 2020

I’ve mentioned Melville Davisson Post and the “Uncle Abner” stories before, and alluded to this passage from “Naboth’s Vineyard”.

Seems like a good time to actually post it, though.

“You threaten me,” he said, “but God Almighty threatens you.” And he turned about to the audience. “The authority of the law,” he said, “is in the hands of the electors of this county. Will they stand up?”
I shall never forget what happened then, for I have never in my life seen anything so deliberate and impressive. Slowly, in silence, and without passion, as though they were in a church of God, men began to get up in the courtroom.
Randolph was the first. He was a justice of the peace, vain and pompous, proud of the abilities of an ancestry that he did not inherit. And his superficialities were the annoyance of my Uncle Abner’s life. But whatever I may have to say of him hereafter I want to say this thing of him here, that his bigotry and his vanities were builded on the foundations of a man. He stood up as though he stood alone, with no glance about him to see what other men would do, and he faced the Judge calmly above his great black stock. And I learned then that a man may be a blusterer and a lion.
Hiram Arnold got up, and Rockford, and Armstrong, and Alkire, and Coopman, and Monroe, and Elnathan Stone, and my father, Lewis, and Dayton and Ward, and Madison from beyond the mountains. And it seemed to me that the very hills and valleys were standing up.
It was a strange and instructive thing to see. The loudmouthed and the reckless were in that courtroom, men who would have shouted in a political convention, or run howling with a mob, but they were not the persons who stood up when Abner called upon the authority of the people to appear. Men rose whom one would not have looked to see-the blacksmith, the saddler, and old Asa Divers. And I saw that law and order and all the structure that civilization had builded up, rested on the sense of justice that certain men carried in their breasts, and that those who possessed it not, in the crisis of necessity, did not count.
Father Donovan stood up; he had a little flock beyond the valley river, and he was as poor, and almost as humble as his Master, but he was not afraid; and Bronson, who preached Calvin, and Adam Rider, who traveled a Methodist circuit.
No one of them believed in what the other taught; but they all believed in justice, and when the line was drawn, there was but one side for them all.
The last man up was Nathaniel Davisson, but the reason was that he was very old, and he had to wait for his sons to help him. He had been time and again in the Assembly of Virginia, at a time when only a gentleman and landowner could sit there. He was a just man, and honorable and unafraid.

Posted in Books | Comments Closed

Obit watch: June 11, 2020.

June 11th, 2020

Following up to yesterday’s obit watch, “Live PD” is now cancelled.

According to the Deadline article thoughtfully sent to us by Mike the Musicologist, there were discussions about bringing the show back in some form:

But A&E and the show’s production company pulled the plug yesterday.

Airing Friday and Saturday nights from 9 PM-12 AM, Live P.D. was ad-supported cable’s #1 show on Fridays and Saturdays in 2019 and has helped A&E become a leading cable network. The series had risen to the top spots in all cable during the pandemic when live sports were suspended, drawing a total of about 3 million viewers per weekend.

Bonnie Pointer, co-founder of the Pointer Sisters.

She left the group in the late 1970s and signed with Motown; she also married Jeffrey Bowen, a producer there. Her two albums for that label were heavy with disco remakes of 1960s Motown singles, like the Four Tops’ “I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch),” with Ms. Pointer recording most of the vocal parts herself. The most successful in this formula was “Heaven Must Have Sent You,” which went to No. 11 in 1979.

Mary Pat Gleason, working actress. 174 credits on IMDB.

Pierre Nkurunziza, president of Burundi. He was 55, and apparently died of a heart attack.

Posted in Cops, Law, Music, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 72

June 10th, 2020

I thought I’d put this up today.

“Don’t Be a Sucker”, a War Department film from 1947. Don’t judge it based on the first few minutes: it isn’t about rigged card games or other cons.

Bonus: “I Am Not Alone”. From 1956, and I believe this is an episode of the “Telephone Time” series.

This film documents the personal experiences of a former Moscow prison inmate, who described the psychological torture methods used to try to extract a confession.

Posted in History | Comments Closed

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