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I’m a former daily newspaper journalist who worked in the Pacific Northwest and New England. Now a book reviewer, writer, editor, iMac user. I founded Rich Litho Media, which provides writing/editing and publishing services for authors and small businesses.
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Email me at kimberly@typelikethewind.com
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Category Archives: Death
Inherit the (Type Like The) Wind.
It’s a haunting question: When your time is up, and you move on to whatever comes after this life…who will cancel your Facebook page? Fortunately, the folks at Legacy Locker are on the job. This company offers a way for your designated beneficiary (and I’m using that word loosely) to access all your online services, [...]
Sad news: AP jargon gets the shove.
As a former daily-newspaper journalist (and for a short time about 100 years ago, a proud writer for The Associated Press) I am heartsick to hear of the death of some longtime terms of the trade. Who would opt for “keyword” instead of “slug” or “correct” instead of “cq” or “instead of” rather than the [...]
Also posted in The Press 2 Comments
Goodbye Senator Byrd. Be glad you missed the news today.
One of the faceless commentators talking during the solemn carrying of Senator Robert Byrd’s coffin this morning observed that the most significant thing about the late Senator’s tenure is the enormous social change on his long watch. Byrd himself exemplified that change, moving from membership in the Ku Klux Klan as a young West Virginian [...]
Also posted in Government, Ruminations, TV & Radio, The Press Leave a comment
West Virginia down to two friends.
From the Los Angles Times obituary of Senator Robert C. Byrd by Johanna Neuman: “On election night 2000, when Byrd, then 83, was reelected with his largest margin ever — a 78% majority, carrying all 55 counties and all but seven of the state’s 1,970 precincts — he remarked: ‘West Virginia has always had four [...]
Also posted in Politics Leave a comment
A comforting nugget of wisdom.
From the New York Times obit for Chris Haney, co-creator of Trivial Pursuit: “Mr. Haney fought and won a 13-year legal battle against a man who said he had given him the idea for Trivial Pursuit when Mr. Haney picked him up hitchhiking. He won another suit against an author who claimed that Mr. Haney [...]
Also posted in Ruminations Leave a comment
A century of high kicks.
The last of the Ziegfeld Girls has passed away, and the world is a lesser place. According to The New York Times, Doris Eaton Travis died at age 106, the last of the famed and comely (36-26-38) performers hired in the early 1900s for the famous Broadway troupe. She was part of a famous stage [...]
Also posted in Art Leave a comment
Food news: NY coffee-cup creator is gone; Mark Bittman launches blog
The man who created one of New York’s most visible landmarks has passed on. Raise your coffee cup to Leslie Buck. And, Food writer Mark Bittman has launched his new site. Check it out, here.
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TV as role model.
We boomers have a kind of television-show DNA that the generations before and after do not. Our parents managed to live lives free of the talking box; people born later have more technology around them than the Apollo astronauts did. The TV personalities and shows of our childhoods are a currency that spends across geographical [...]
Also posted in TV & Radio 2 Comments
Classroom heroes.
Jaime Escalante is dead, so take a moment, bow your head and thank the Great Whatever for stubborn, tireless, unrealistic teachers. Escalante is the man portrayed in the 1988 movie “Stand and Deliver,” which I happened to see last week. . (It met two of my movie requirements: It allowed me to avoid doing actual [...]
Also posted in Heroes 4 Comments
‘Stang’s daddy passes away.
The man whose car still figures in certain writer’s dreams has died. Donald N. Frey was the man behind the Ford Mustang. Read his New York Times tribute here.
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Hero with a camera.
Photographer Charles Moore did as much to move civil rights ahead in this country as almost any other individual. He died last week, at age 79. (See the obituary by Douglas Martin of The New York Times here.) Moore’s famous photos of lawman Theophilus Eugene “Bull” Connor are iconic proof of a shameful side of [...]
A gift.
Patricia Travers was a violin prodigy who disappeared in her twenties, leaving behind a distinguished recording and performance history. I’d never heard of Travers until I read her obituary in The New York Times. (Given that a month went by between Travers’ death and the Times obit, I’m apparently not the only one ignorant of [...]
Also posted in Art Leave a comment
A man for all, some, and no seasons
General Alexander Haig was a man of immense contradictions. The former Secretary of State, who kept the home fires burning while Nixon went down, was an intelligent speaker who fractured the English language; a soldier who eschewed chain-of-command behavior. He was a statesman who alarmed presidents with his Papal devotion and naked ambition to assume [...]
Also posted in Government, Politics Leave a comment
Brave men of letters
This seems to be a season of author losses. Now the reclusive J. D. Salinger is gone, as is contrarian-historian Howard Zinn. Salinger proved that a small body of literary work can still be powerful and long-lived; Zinn demonstrated that history comes in many costumes. I’d add that Salinger made it possible for young voices, [...]
Also posted in Authors 2 Comments
End of a chapter
Two writers died this week, both proof that the approval of the so-called academy has little to do with pleasing readers or selling books. Erich Segal, the Yale classicist who wrote the wildly successful “Love Story” and Robert B. Parker, whose nearly 40 lively novels delivered a memorable, wise-cracking detective named Spenser and a succession [...]
Also posted in Authors, Writing & Words 1 Comment
Sometimes it just takes time…
If you’re called to make art, you don’t wait for the ideal circumstances. You certainly do not worry about the prospect of fame. You make art. Perhaps you do it in obscurity forever. Maybe you get “hot” at age 94.
Also posted in Art Leave a comment
Fine send-off
An obituary in The New York Times today for Vietnam War chronicler C. D. B. Bryan includes this gem of a paragraph: “Mr. Bryan was a smoker, a drinker and an avid and gifted conversationalist who effortlessly commanded the attention of people around a dinner table, his son said. He will be cremated in advance [...]
Also posted in Real People Leave a comment
Proud to be an American? I am.
This respectful act is one reason.
Also posted in Ethics, Government, Heroes, White House Leave a comment
A fitting tribute
I woke up thinking about some friends, who today must put their beloved dog to sleep. It is time, they all know it, but it is so hard to say goodbye to such a faithful companion. I have a wonderful book called The Book of Eulogies: A Collection of Memorial Tributes, Poetry, Essays an Letters [...]
Also posted in Animals Leave a comment
Harvey Pekar dies. Doesn’t that just figure.