Farewell, Dmitri

Dmitri Hvorostovsky has died, of brain cancer, at 55.  Here is his New York Times obituary. I had the privilege of seeing him perform at the Met several times, in Un Ballo in Maschera, Rigoletto, and Il Trovatore. He was a fine performer and a very gifted singer. He is gone too young. Below "In loving tribute to Dmitri Hvorostovsky, one of the greatest and bravest artists to ever grace the Metropolitan Opera stage. Watch excerpts from some of his most memorable performances at the Met."

Goodbye, Pat

Pat Summitt has died. She was the winningest Division 1 coach ever, male or female. She was a class act through and through. She will be greatly missed.

Here's her obit in the New York Times.

And here's a video from WBIR, a Knoxville station.

Kennedy

One year ago today. He is missed.

Happy Birthday, Thomas

Today in 1621 Thomas Willis was born - the father of modern neurology. He discovered much about the way the brain is put together - nerves and cranial anatomy, including the Circle of Willis, and the circulation of the blood into and through the brain.

Carl Zimmer has written a (typically) brilliant book, Soul Made Flesh, that tells his story - and others (did you know Christopher Wren was more famous in his lifetime for his anatomical drawings than his architecture?) - highly recommended. I happened to read it shortly before visiting London, and it made me hunt out Willis's tomb in St Paul's.

Happy Birthday, Zora

Zora Neale Hurston was born on January 7, probably 1891 and most probably in Notasulga, Alabama - though she grew up in Eatonsville, Florida, an all-black incorporated township. She attended Howard University but couldn't afford to finish her studies. Later she received a scholarship to Barnard College where she received her B.A. in anthropology in 1927. While at Barnard, she conducted ethnographic research under her advisor, the noted anthropologist Franz Boas of Columbia University. She also worked with Ruth Benedict as well as fellow anthropology student Margaret Mead. Her best work, Their Eyes Were Watching God, was written in just seven weeks and published in 1937. A novelist and anthropologist, member of the Harlem Renaissance yet conservative libertarian in her politics, disengaged from the civil rights movement and concerned with representing blacks as they were, she wrote many excellent books yet died in penniless obscurity.

Happy Belated Birthday, Bo

Born yesterday, in 1928 in McComb, Mississippi, The Originator, Bo Diddley.

He died last year, just shy of 80, and he is missed.

Claude Lévi-Strauss has died

Claude Lévi-Strauss has died. Edward Rothstein and Nadim Audi sum up a grand life. Excerpts:

A powerful thinker, Mr. Lévi-Strauss, in studying the mythologies of primitive tribes, transformed the way the 20th century came to understand civilization itself. Tribal mythologies, he argued, display remarkably subtle systems of logic, showing rational mental qualities as sophisticated as those of Western societies.

Mr. Lévi-Strauss rejected the idea that differences between societies were of no consequence, but he focused on the common aspects of humanity’s attempts to understand the world. He became the premier representative of “structuralism,” a school of thought in which universal “structures” were believed to underlie all human activity, giving shape to seemingly disparate cultures and creations.

His work was a profound influence even on his critics, of whom there were many. There has been no comparable successor to him in France. And his writing — a mixture of the pedantic and the poetic, full of daring juxtapositions, intricate argument and elaborate metaphors — resembles little that had come before in anthropology.

... But Mr. Lévi-Strauss rejected Rousseau’s idea that humankind’s problems derive from society’s distortions of nature. In his view, there is no alternative to such distortions. Each society must shape itself out of nature’s raw material, he believed, with law and reason as the essential tools. This application of reason, he argued, created universals that could be found across all cultures and times. He became known as a structuralist because of his conviction that a structural unity underlies all of humanity’s mythmaking, and he showed how those universal motifs played out in societies, even in the ways a village was laid out.

... His monumental work “Mythologiques” may even ensure his legacy, as a creator of mythologies if not their explicator.

The final volume ends by suggesting that the logic of mythology is so powerful that myths almost have a life independent from the peoples who tell them. In his view, myths speak through the medium of humanity and become, in turn, the tools with which humanity comes to terms with the world’s greatest mystery: the possibility of not being, the burden of mortality.

Happy Birthday, John

The Atlas of Independence, the Sage of Braintree, John Adams, born this day in 1735 (if you don't count the 11 days 'lost' to the Gregorian calendar in 1752; his birthday was October 19, 1735 by the Old Style, Julian calendar. I don't know what Adams thought of that, but Washington is on record as feeling as though those days had been stolen from him). (On the other hand, these were people who could handle New Year on 25 March.)

Adams defended British troops charged in the Boston Massacre in 1770 (and got most of them off and two convicted of manslaughter only) - an action he later called "one of the most gallant, generous, manly and disinterested actions of my whole life, and one of the best pieces of service I ever rendered my country." Contrary to the 'obnoxious and disliked' image fostered in the play 1776, Adams was one of the most respected advocates for Independence in the colonies; Washington's nomination as general and Jefferson's as writer of the Declaration were both his ideas, and it was Adams who stood up on July 1, 1776 and spoke in favor of independence, extemporaneously, for two hours . Unfortunately, because he spoke without notes and no one took any, we don't have a record of this speech, but Jefferson later said that Adams spoke "with a power of thought and expression that moved us from our seats."

But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.

Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.
—'Argument in Defense of the Soldiers in the Boston Massacre Trials,' December 1770

There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.

(And Writer's Almanac last year featured a pessimistic quote we must prove wrong:) Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There was never a democracy that did not commit suicide.

I highly recommend Passionate Sage by John Ellis, and then John Adams by David McCullough, for those who want to know more about this least known of the great Founders - or Ellis's Founding Brothers for an overview of that remarkable group of men.

Happy Birthday, Boswell

Today in Edinburgh was born, in 1740, the man who invented modern biography and became a noun - Boswell, author of "Boswell's Life of Johnson" (The Life of Samuel Johnson). "I will not make my tiger a cat to please anybody," wrote Boswell, and made Dr. Johnson better known to us than any man before and most since. It's not the only thing he wrote (his Account of Corsica was deservedly famous), but it's the one he'll be forever remembered for.

Happy Birthday, Liliuokalani

Liliuokalani, last reigning monarch of the Kingdom of Hawai'i, was born today in 1837 outside Honolulu. In 1893 she attempted to widen suffrage within the kingdom and at the same time abridge the current rights of American and European residents; they rose against her and, with the implicit backing of US Marines landed in Honolulu to "keep order", overthrew the monarchy. The then President of the US, Grover Cleveland, proclaimed that a "great wrong" had been done, but Congress refused to back his desire to call for the end to the Provisional Government and instead recognized the Republic of Hawaii. Five years later, under a new president, that republic was annexed by the United States.

Liliuokalani outlived her kingdom by two dozen years, but only because she bowed to force and abdicated her throne to save the lives of her advisers. Her sentence of five years hard labor was commuted to prison in the 'Iolani Palace, and it was after eight months of this that she abdicated, after which she lived in retirement in Washington Place, now the official residence of the governor of the state. She was supported by the income from a sugar plantation, all that remained of the once extensive royal holdings, and she wrote and composed until her death.

Happy Birthday, Salmon

Salmon P Chase was born today in Cornish, New Hampshire, in 1808. He was best known - in fact, only known - to me as the odd man out in American currency: Hamilton and Franklin were Founding Fathers, if not presidents, but who was this Salmon P Chase and why did he rate the $10,000 dollar bill?

Well, he was Senator from Ohio and Governor of Ohio; Treasury Secretary under President Abraham Lincoln; and Chief Justice of the United States. He was an Abolitionist, and he coined the slogan of the Free Soil Party, "Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men." The whole of his political life was dedicated to destroying slavery and its threat to the America's republican government.

Not bad.

Chase was first a Whig, then a member of the Liberty Party, then a founding member of the Free Soil Party (ah, yes; the US's multi-party days). And he founded the modern Republican Party - oh, how things have changed! - by uniting Whigs and liberal Democrats within a party dedicated to fighting slavery. He ran for President but ended up supporting Lincoln, and while Treasury Secretary he established the modern banking system - including the first federal treasury notes, which is why he's on the money.

In 1868 he wrote in a private letter:

"Congress was right in not limiting, by its reconstruction acts, the right of suffrage to whites; but wrong in the exclusion from suffrage of certain classes of citizens and all unable to take its prescribed retrospective oath, and wrong also in the establishment of despotic military governments for the States and in authorizing military commissions for the trial of civilians in time of peace. There should have been as little military government as possible; no military commissions; no classes excluded from suffrage; and no oath except one of faithful obedience and support to the Constitution and laws, and of sincere attachment to the constitutional Government of the United States."

He was appointed to the Supreme Court by Lincoln, as Chief Justice, and one of his first acts was to appoint John Rock, the first black attorney to argue cases before the Supreme Court.

Chase dearly wished to be president, but his unflinching support for equality for black Americans meant he couldn't find a party which would back him. He even founded the Liberal Republican Party to combat Grant and the Radical Republicans, and although that party didn't last much beyond the election of 1872, most of its leaders didn't return to the Republicans but instead became Democrats, beginning the swap of positions that finds the "party of Lincoln" where it is today.

Happy Birthday, Carl

Carl Sagan was born today in 1934, in Brooklyn.

I'm sure I don't have to say anything about him, but if I did, besides Cosmos and The Demon-Haunted World and The Dragons of Eden, I'd mention his insistence on putting cameras on space probes. Imagine Cassini without cameras...

He was a national treasure, no, a global - no, a specific treasure and he's missed.

Happy Birthday to the Big Train

Walter Johnson was born today in 1887, in Humboldt, Kansas.

Ty Cobb talked about facing Johnson the first time:

The first time I faced him, I watched him take that easy windup. And then something went past me that made me flinch. The thing just hissed with danger. We couldn't touch him... every one of us knew we'd met the most powerful arm ever turned loose in a ball park.

They called it a pneumonia ball - the wind it raised was so strong it would chill you to the bone (where most fastballs are "heat", the Big Train's were cold...)

When it comes to the perennial debate, there were no speed guns. Johnson said, "Can I throw harder than Joe Wood? Listen, Mister, no man alive can throw any harder than Smokey Joe Wood." But Wood said, "Oh, I don't think there was ever anybody faster than Walter." We'll never know. But we do know this: In an era when the strikeout was not king, Johnson racked up 3,509 of them, a record that stood for 55 years (he's now 9th on the list). Batters feared facing him, and in return he feared killing them - Cobb exploited that fear by crowding the plate; he couldn't hit Johnson but he could draw walks.

He won 417 games, second to Cy Young's impossible 511, and the two of them remain the only pitchers with 400+ wins.

Happy Birthday, Walker

Let us now praise Walker Evans, portrait-maker of America, who was born today in 1903. Of his work, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art says

Evans' elegant crystal-clear photographs and articulate publications inspired artists of several generations, from Helen Levitt to William Eggleston. The progenitor of the documentary tradition in American photography, Evans had the extraordinary ability to see the present as if it were already the past and to translate that knowledge and historically inflected vision into an enduring art. His principal subject was the vernacular -- the indigenous expressions of people found in roadside stands, cheap cafés, advertisements, simple bedrooms, and small-town streets. For fifty years, from the late 1920s to the early 1970s, Evans recorded the American scene with the nuance of a poet and the precision of a surgeon, creating an encyclopedic visual catalogue of modern America in the making.

Probably his greatest work came in 1941 when he co-published, along with James Agee, the ground-breaking book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. The book chronicled the pair's journey through the rural South during the Great Depression - words by Agee, photos by Evans, presenting a stark yet deeply moving portrait of rural poverty. The pairing of the anguished dissonance of Agee's prose and the quiet, magisterial beauty of Evans' photographs of sharecroppers makes this book a powerful, wrenching experience.

Happy Birthday, John

The Atlas of Independence, the Sage of Braintree, John Adams, born this day in 1735 (if you don't count the 11 days 'lost' to the Gregorian calendar in 1752; his birthday was October 19, 1735 by the Old Style, Julian calendar. I don't know what Adams thought of that, but Washington is on record as feeling as though those days had been stolen from him). (On the other hand, these were people who could handle New Year on 25 March.)

Adams defended British troops charged in the Boston Massacre in 1770 (and got most of them off and two convicted of manslaughter only) - an action he later called "one of the most gallant, generous, manly and disinterested actions of my whole life, and one of the best pieces of service I ever rendered my country." Contrary to the 'obnoxious and disliked' image fostered in the play 1776, Adams was one of the most respected advocates for Independence in the colonies; Washington's nomination as general and Jefferson's as writer of the Declaration were both his ideas, and it was Adams who stood up on July 1, 1776 and spoke in favor of independence, extemporaneously, for two hours . Unfortunately, because he spoke without notes and no one took any, we don't have a record of this speech, but Jefferson later said that Adams spoke "with a power of thought and expression that moved us from our seats."

But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.

Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.
—'Argument in Defense of the Soldiers in the Boston Massacre Trials,' December 1770

There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.

(And Writer's Almanac today featured a pessimistic quote we must prove wrong:) Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There was never a democracy that did not commit suicide.

I highly recommend Passionate Sage by John Ellis, and then John Adams by David McCullough, for those who want to know more about this least known of the great Founders - or Ellis's Founding Brothers for an overview of that remarkable group of men.

Farewell, Tony

Tony Hillerman has died at 83, in Albuquerque where he lived and wrote for so long.

I love his books.

He will be deeply missed.

"Everything is connected. The wing of the corn beetle affects the direction of the wind, the way the sand drifts, the way the light reflects into the eye of man beholding his reality. All is part of totality, and in this totality man finds his hozro, his way of walking in harmony, with beauty all around him." Ghostway

Happy Birthday, John

Today in 1790, John Ross, first and last elected paramount chief of the Cherokee Nation, was born near Lookout Mountain in North Carolina. John Ross's life is defined by his struggle to preserve his people, a struggle in which he used the courts not an army, and by the result - a bittersweet mix of terrible failure and stubborn success.

The Cherokee did their best to become like the white Americans who had invaded their land, devising an alphabet (a syllabary, really) and printing newspapers, intermarrying, converting to Christianity, taking up farming - even (given that they lived in Georgia at the time) the wealthier ones owning slaves - and city life, and defending the US in wars. They created a democratic form of government, which resulted in John Ross's election in 1827. But for all their efforts to be like white America, they were, after all, Indians living on valuable land, and Washington decided to take it. Ross took the country to court - all the way to the Supreme Court, in fact, which ruled that the government had no jurisdiction. In one of Andrew Jackson's worst moments, he said: "[Chief Justice] John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it." In the winter of 1838-39 some fifteen or twenty thousand Cherokee were rounded up in the night, not allowed to take their possessions with them, and marched over the Trail of Tears to Oklahoma. Eight hundred miles, in the winter... thousands died of exposure, starvation, disease, and exhaustion. The Nation was settled in Oklahoma, where most Cherokee still live today. A smaller group escaped into the mountains of North Carolina, and eventually were allowed to remain. Today the Cherokee are a relatively prosperous tribe - with three federally recognized bands - whose language and literature is thriving by comparison with many other tribes. You can even get Cherokee fonts for your computer. But the betrayal and forced removal remain like a shard of jagged stone in their history, and as late as the 1950s it was federal policy to "discourage" bilingualism and remove children from their homes and force English-only education on the Cherokee, as on other tribes.

(Sarah Vowell explores the Trail of Tears in her excellent Take the Cannoli: Tales from the New World, tracing her ancestors' trip. And here is a Cherokee survivor's memoir and one written by an American soldier who was an escort.)

Ralph Stanley (yes that Ralph Stanley) endorses Obama

Just got this from a friend this afternoon:

Ridge, have you heard the radio ad w/ Dr Ralph endorsing Obama? link to ad

Aside from some minor TPM cluelessness (I'm pretty sure that the alleged "banjo pickin'" is George Shuffler on guitar, tho Ralph has a nice backup), that did rather brighten the day around here.

It's great music and a tremendous endorsement from a genuine star. Wow.

Goodbye, Paul

Paul Newman just died...

Happy Birthday, Liliuokalani

Liliuokalani, last reigning monarch of the Kingdom of Hawai'i, was born today in 1837 outside Honolulu. In 1893 she attempted to widen suffrage within the kingdom and at the same time abridge the current rights of American and European residents; they rose against her and, with the implicit backing of US Marines landed in Honolulu to "keep order", overthrew the monarchy. The then President of the US, Grover Cleveland, proclaimed that a "great wrong" had been done, but Congress refused to back his desire to call for the end to the Provisional Government and instead recognized the Republic of Hawaii. Five years later, under a new president, that republic was annexed by the United States.

Liliuokalani outlived her kingdom by two dozen years, but only because she bowed to force and abdicated her throne to save the lives of her advisers. Her sentence of five years hard labor was commuted to prison in the 'Iolani Palace, and it was after eight months of this that she abdicated, after which she lived in retirement in Washington Place, now the official residence of the governor of the state. She was supported by the income from a sugar plantation, all that remained of the once extensive royal holdings, and she wrote and composed until her death.