What is Remembered, Lives.
In Memoriam
Ursula K. Le Guin
21 Oct 1929-22 Jan 2018
Ursula K. Le Guin, poet, writer, philosopher. A woman of courage and power. A loss beyond words.
“ … was at the same time both a miraculous rarity and the kind of person—and writer—we desperately need more of. Her body of work encompasses novels, including the famous and beloved Earthsea novels, novellas, short stories, poetry, criticism and more (including speculative anthropology). She published her first short story at thirty-two, and while perhaps the chief characteristic of her early work was, as she says, an ‘open romanticism,’ Le Guin’s work gradually became, again in her own words, ‘something harder, stronger, and more complex.’ It also became the site of radical emancipatory visions, courageous and profound reimaginings of the way life is, and a beautiful yet clear-eyed utopianism. It became, in other words, extraordinary.” – Strange Horizons, ELI LEE JANUARY 31, 2018
“All of us have to learn how to invent our lives, make them up, imagine them. We need to be taught these skills; we need guides to show us how. If we don’t, our lives get made up for us by other people.”
Donations may be made in Ursula’s name to:
Please specify that the donation is for Malheur National Wildlife Refuge and Harney County
Friends of Malheur National Wildlife Refuge
Neil Simon
4 Jul 1927-26 Aug 2018
“When an audience laughed, I felt fulfilled,” Mr. Simon wrote in “Rewrites.” “It was a sign of approval, of being accepted. Coming as I did from a childhood where laughter in the house meant security, but was seldom heard as often as a door slamming every time my father took another year’s absence from us, the laughter that came my way in the theater was nourishment.”
Simon towers like a Colossus over the American Theater. When Neil Simon’s time comes to be judged among successful playwrights of the twentieth century, he will definitely be first among equals. No other playwright in history has had the run he has: fifteen “Best Plays” of their season.
Lawrence Grobel (Endangered Species: Writers Talk About Their Craft, Their Visions, Their Lives)
Because Americans have always tended to underrate writers who make them laugh, Neil Simon’s accomplishment have not gained as much serious critical praise as they deserve. His best comedies contain not only a host of funny lines, but numerous memorable characters and an incisively dramatized set of beliefs that are not without merit. Simon is, in fact, one of the finest writers of comedy in American literary history.
Walter Kerr
Tribute: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/26/obituaries/neil-simon-dead.html
Aretha Franklin
25 Mar 1942-16 Aug 2018
The Queen of Soul. Civil rights activist, actress, and pianist. http://www.arethafranklin.net/
Her life in pictures: https://ew.com/music/aretha-franklin-life-in-pictures/
Be your own artist, and always be confident in what you’re doing. If you’re not going to be confident, you might as well not be doing it. Aretha Franklin
We will let Ms. Franklin speak for herself:
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