Category: Obituaries

Carpe Diem!

I quoted Jim Morrison on the eve of the 40th anniversary of his death: "The future's uncertain, and the end is always near." This morning I discovered that Rob Grill, lead singer of The Grassroots, has passed on.  Their first top ten hit, "Live forToday," made the charts in the fabulous and far-off Summer of Love (1967).  The lyrics are laden with the '60s Zeitgeist and express  something true and valuable that continues to resonate with many of us who were young in those days.

Here is a delightful clip in which none other than Jimmy Durante introduces the boys — "They don't have a manager, they have a gardener" — singing (or rather lip-syncing) their signature number. 

Carpe diem.  And while you're at it, carpe noctem.

Quentin Gibson (1913 – 2001)

I first became aware of the Australian philosopher Quentin Gibson when I discovered his book The Existence Principle. It was published in 1998, when Gibson was 85 years old, in the Kluwer Philosophical Studies Series, #75. My A Paradigm Theory of Existence appeared in the same series in 2002, #89. Our approaches are radically different:  I maintain what he denies, for one thing, that there are modes of existence. I discuss some of his ideas on pp. 15-22 of my book.

I learned here that Gibson is the son of W. R. Boyce Gibson  whose translation of Edmund Husserl's Ideen I studied as an undergraduate.  Small world.

George Shearing Dead at 91

Kerouac aficionados will  recall the "Old God Shearing" passage in On the Road devoted to the late pianist George Shearing.  Here is a taste of his playing.  And another.

You will have noticed, astute reader that you are, that my opening sentence is ambiguous.  'The late pianist George Shearing' must be read de re for the sentence to be true, while my formulation suggests a de dicto reading.  Compare:

a. The late George Shearing is such that that there is a passage in OTR about him.

b. There is a passage in OTR about the late George Shearing.

(a) is plainly true and wholly unproblematic.  (b), however, is false in that there is no passage in OTR about George Shearing under the description 'late' or 'deceased.'  On the contrary, the passage in question depicts him as so exuberantly alive as to drive Dean Moriarty 'mad.'  But is (b) plainly false?

I suppose it depends on whether 'about' is ambiguous in (b).  Can a passage that depicts x as F be about x even if x is not F? Or must x be F if a passage that depicts x as F is correctly describable as about x? My tentative view is that there are both uses in ordinary English.  Consequently, (b) is not plainly false.

Is the definite description 'the man in the corner with champagne in his glass'  about a man in the corner even if he does not have champagne in his glass but sparkling water  instead?  If you say 'yes,' then you should agree that (b) is not plainly false, but ambiguous.

Jack LaLanne Dead at 96

An inspiration.  Brother Jackass will carry you over many a pons asinorum for many a year if properly fueled and disciplined.  Reform your diet and set aside two to three hours per day for vigorous exercise.  Lalanne swam an hour a day and lifted weights for two.  Right up until the end.  And he always 'went to failure'  doing his reps until he could do no more.

Tripke Joins Turnupseed

James When the young James Dean crashed his low slung silver Porsche Spyder on a lonely California highway on September 30, 1955, he catapulted a couple of unknowns into the national spotlight.  One of them was Ernie Tripke, one of two California Highway Patrol officers who arrived at the scene.  He has died at the age of 88.  But what ever happened to Donald Turnupseed, the driver who turned in front of the speeding Dean, having failed to see him coming?  His story is here. 

Is dying young a bad thing for the one who dies?  What if it makes you 'immortal' as in the case of James Dean?  More grist for the Epicurean mill.

The New York Times Kerouac Obituary

Tomorrow, October 21, is the 41st anniversary of Jack Kerouac's death.  I remember the day well, having noted Jack's passing on a piece of looseleaf I still have in a huge file full  of juvenilia from that period. 

The NYT obituary features a perceptive quotation from Allen Ginsberg: "A very unique cat — a French Canadian Hinayana Buddhist Beat Catholic savant."  For pith and accuracy, that's hard to beat.  The obituary concludes by noting that Kerouac "had no use for the radical politics that came to preoccupy many of  his friends and readers."

"I'm not a beatnik. I'm a Catholic," he said last month. He showed the interviewer a painting of Pope Paul VI and said, "Do you know who painted that?  Me."

Joseph Sobran

Joseph Sobran is dead at the age of 64.  Beginning as a paleocon, he ended up an anarchist, and apparently something of an anti-Semite.    His 1985 Pensees: Notes for the Reactionary of Tomorrow, however, contains a wealth of important ideas worth ruminating on.  A couple of excerpts, not necessarily the best:

"The poor" are to liberalism roughly what "the proletariat" is to Communism–a formalistic device for legitimating the assumption of power. What matters, for practical liberals, is not that (for example) the black illegitimacy rate has nearly tripled since the dawn of the Great Society; it is that a huge new class of beneficiaries has been engendered–beneficiaries who vote, and who feel entitled to money that must be taken from others. It is too seldom pointed out that a voter is a public official, and that the use of proffered entitlements to win votes amounts to bribery. For this reason John Stuart Mill pronounced it axiomatic that those who get relief from the state should be disfranchised. But such a proposal would now be called inhuman, which helps account for the gargantuan increase in the size and scope of federal spending. Corrupt politicians make headlines; but no honest politician dares to refer to the problem of corrupt voters, who use the state as an instrument of gain.

[. . .]

The enemy, for socialism, is any permanent authority, whether it is a long-standing church or a holy scripture, whose tendency is to put a brake on political power. In fact power and authority are often confused nowadays: the thoroughly politicized man who seeks power can only experience and interpret authority as a rival form of power, because it impedes his ambition for a thoroughly politicized society. But authority is more nearly the opposite of power. It offers a standard of truth or morality that is indifferent and therefore often opposed to current desires and forces, standing in judgment over them. If God has revealed Himself to man, the progressive agenda may find itself seriously inconvenienced.

For this reason, religion is a source of deep anxiety to the liberal. He harps on its historical sins: Crusades, Inquisitions, witch burnings, wars. He never notices that the crimes of atheist regimes, in less than a century, have dwarfed those of all organized religions in recorded history. He sees Christianity's sporadic persecutions as being of its essence; he regards Communism's unbroken persecution as incidental to its potential for good. He warns of the "danger" posed by American fundamentalists (one of the most gentle and law-abiding segments of the population) and is unchastened by the results of "peace" in Vietnam and Cambodia.

Famous Last Words: “Don’t Worry, It Isn’t Loaded”

Life in the fast lane often leads to a quick exit from life's freeway.  You may recall Terry Kath, guitarist for the band Chicago.  In 1978, while drunk, he shot himself in the head with a 'unloaded' gun.  At first he had been fooling with a .38 revolver.  Then he picked up a semi-automatic 9 mm pistol, removed the magazine, pointed it at his head, spoke his last words, and pulled the trigger.  Unfortunately for his head, there was a round in the chamber.  Or that is one way the story goes. 

Such inadvertent exits are easily avoided by exceptionless observation of three rules:  Never point a gun at something you do not want to destroy.  Treat every gun as if   loaded, whether loaded or not.  Never mix alcohol and gunpowder.

Antony Flew Dead at 87

Here.  ". . . it is clear that Flew’s repudiation of atheism was heartfelt and seems to have been largely rooted in his dislike of polemical atheism. His own atheism was always cautious, nuanced and respectful of Christian tradition.  [. . .] Professor Antony Flew, philosopher, was born on February 11, 1923. He died on April 8, 2010, aged 87."

The Reclusive J. D. Salinger Dies at 91

SalingerTime Here.

We who are obscure ought to be grateful for it.  It is wonderful to be able to walk down the street and be taken for an average schmuck.  A lttle recognition from a few high-quality individuals is all one needs.  Fame can be a curse.   The unhinged Mark David Chapman, animated by Holden Caulfield's animus against phoniness, decided that John Lennon was a phony, and so had to be shot.

The mad pursuit of empty celebrity by so many in our society shows their and its spiritual vacuity.

 

 

UPDATE (1/30/10):  Apparently, today's teens cannot relate to Holden Caulfield.