RIP Nora Ephron, You Brought Us a Great Distance Forward

 From the Atlantic: 

MARIA POPOVA - Maria Popova is the editor of Brain Pickings. She writes for Wired UKand GOOD, and is an MIT Futures of Entertainment Fellow.

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Nora Ephron on Women, Love, Happiness, Reading, Life, and Death

JUN 27 2012, 12:17 PM ET

Selections from the prolific author's essays and books

Nora Ephron in 1975 during an interview in New York (AP Images)

What a sad year it's been for literary and creative heroes, with losses as inconsolable as Maurice Sendak, Ray Bradbury, and Hillman Curtis. Tuesday night, we lost the great Nora Ephron (1941-2012)—prolific and thoughtful filmmaker, novelist, journalist, playwright, essayist, and blogger, a feminist with fierce wit, whom The New York Times describes as being "in the Dorothy Parker mold (only smarter and funnier...)."
Today, let's take a moment and celebrate Ephron with some of her most memorable insights on women, politics, happiness, love, intellectual life, and death.
On reading, in I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman (public library):

Reading is everything. Reading makes me feel like I've accomplished something, learned something, become a better person. Reading makes me smarter. Reading gives me something to talk about later on. Reading is the unbelievably healthy way my attention deficit disorder medicates itself. Reading is escape, and the opposite of escape; it's a way to make contact with reality after a day of making things up, and it's a way of making contact with someone else's imagination after a day that's all too real. Reading is grist. Reading is bliss.

On money and creative incentive, in "My Life as an Heiress":

I was extremely lucky not to have ever inherited real money, because I might not have finished writing 'When Harry Met Sally...,' which changed my life.

Addressing young women in her 1996 Wellesley commencement speech, a fine addition to some modern history's finest graduation addresses:

I want to remind you of the undertow, of the specific gravity. American society has a remarkable ability to resist change, or to take whatever change has taken place and attempt to make it go away.[...]
Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim.

On the difference between controversy and political incorrectness, in the January 1976 issue ofEsquire:

I am continually fascinated at the difficulty intelligent people have in distinguishing what is controversial from what is merely offensive.

On the evolving metrics of "happiness" for women, in Crazy Salad: Some Things About Women(public library):

We have lived through the era when happiness was a warm puppy, and the era when happiness was a dry martini, and now we have come to the era when happiness is 'knowing what your uterus looks like.'

On the joy of being awake to the world, in Heartburn (public library):

I look out the window and I see the lights and the skyline and the people on the street rushing around looking for action, love, and the world's greatest chocolate chip cookie, and my heart does a little dance.

On the politics of the public encroaching on the private, in her 1996 Wellesley commencement address—remarkably timely, despite the dated references, in light of today's ongoing debates about publicly-private issues like marriage equality and abortion:

One of the things people always say to you if you get upset is, don't take it personally, but listen hard to what's going on and, please, I beg you, take it personally. Understand: every attack on Hillary Clinton for not knowing her place is an attack on you. Underneath almost all those attacks are the words: get back, get back to where you once belonged. When Elizabeth Dole pretends that she isn't serious about her career, that is an attack on you. The acquittal of O.J. Simpson is an attack on you. Any move to limit abortion rights is an attack on you -- whether or not you believe in abortion. The fact that Clarence Thomas is sitting on the Supreme Court today is an attack on you.

On love and the capacity for romantic rebirth, in I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman:

Why hadn't I realized how much of what I thought of as love was simply my own highly developed gift for making lemonade? What failure of imagination had caused me to forget that life was full of other possibilities, including the possibility that eventually I would fall in love again?

On death, in I Remember Nothing: And Other Reflections (public library), her final book:

Everybody dies. There's nothing you can do about it. Whether or not you eat six almonds a day. Whether or not you believe in God.

This post also appears on Brain Pickings, an Atlantic partner site.

Not yet dead, but close, Nora Ephron

Nora Ephron Is Dying, According to the Internet [UPDATE]

 John Cook

Screenwriter Nora Ephron seems to have passed away, according to this uncomfortaby indeterminate column by her friend Liz Smith that just appeared on the internet. Herformer close friend Margo Howard also writes on Twitter that Ephron passed away from cancer, and that a funeral is scheduled for Thursday. According to the Observer, Ephron's representatives are not commenting on Smith's column.

UPDATE: Ephron's publisher, Knopf, tellsthe New York Times that the screenwriter is still alive. We'll update with more information as we have it.

SECOND UPDATE: It seems that Liz Smith's obituary may have been premature. According to Newsweek/Daily Beast entertainment reporter Maria Elena Fernandez, Ephron is still alive but "very sick" with cancer and "not expected to make it through the night."

Source: Gawker (unreliable, but whatever)

RIP Lonesome George, May Your Turtle-Soul Travel Swiftly to Turtle-Heaven

Lonesome George Dies Alone

The world’s last Pinta Island tortoise died this past weekend at the age of 100.

By Hayley Dunning | June 25, 2012

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The subspecies of giant Galapagos tortoise that inhabited Pinta Island in the Ecuadorian Galapagos was thought to have already gone extinct when George was discovered in 1972, spurring an enthusiastic program to get him to mate with similar sub-species.

Unfortunately, George was not so enthusiastic about the program, and failed to reproduce in his 40 years at the Galapagos National Park. He lived for 15 years with two female tortoises of a related subspecies from nearby Wolf Volcano, and although he did mate with them, they produced infertile eggs. Hoping a closer relative would produce viable eggs, the park keepers introduced George to two female tortoises from Espanola Island, but he didn’t mate with either of them.

Lonesome George’s exact age was unknown, but he was believed to be around 100, making him relatively young, as the subspecies is known to live to 200. George was found dead in his corral over the weekend by his keeper of 40 years, Fausto Llerena. A post-mortem will be carried out to determine the cause of his death, after which park officials say his body will probably be embalmed.

Lonesome George was one of 11 subspecies of Galapagos giant tortoise in existence today, although as many as 15 were once believed to exist before they were hunted for meat in the late 19^th century. The unique features of the different subspecies helped Darwin formulate his theory of evolution, and to many Lonesome George was a symbol of the Galapagos Islands.

Source: The Scientist 

I'll take "Not Quite Dead" for $200, Alex.

By CARRIE GANN (@carrie_gann) , ABC News Medical Unit

June 25, 2012

"Jeopardy!" host Alex Trebek's heart attack on Sunday was a mild one, just like his previous heart attack in 2007.

The 71-year-old longtime game show host was reportedly in good spirits and undergoing tests at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, according to a statement from his representatives. In those tests, cardiologists said Trebek's doctors were likely trying to determine how much damage his heart had sustained, and whether there were any severe blockages in his blood vessels.

Dr. Cam Patterson, physician-in-chief at the University of North Carolina Heart and Vascular Center, said Trebek's doctors were likely studying whether Trebek was at risk for another heart attack and how much damage his heart endured.

"I'm sure they're having conversations with him about whether there will be a need for stents or surgery," he said.

If Trebek has a blockage, he'll likely need a stent to open his blood vessels. But even then, it's possible that he could leave the hospital within a day and recover within a week or two.

"If there's little damage to the heart muscle and his blood vessels look good, he should get back to normal very quickly," Patterson said.

Trebek's representatives said they expect Trebek to have recovered enough to tape the new season of "Jeopardy!" at the end of July.

Recurrent heart attacks are common for people who have a history of heart problems, even for those who appear healthy and take preventive measures, such as maintaining a healthy diet and exercising, and taking aspirin.

"The biggest risk factor for a heart attack is having had one already," said Dr. Christopher Cannon, a cardiologist at Brigham and Women's hospital in Boston.

As to whether Trebek can expect another heart attack, doctors said there's no good way to predict who will have a heart attack and who won't. Even those with no risk factors at all can have a heart attack. Trebek and his doctors will do what they can, but certain factors may be out of their control.

"My expectation is he has received excellent health care and has healthy habits, but has been dealt a bad hand by genetics that has predisposed him to heart damage," Patterson said. 

source: ABC News

Oh man, Mubarak...might be dying

Someone in our death pool has Mubarak! We'll keep you updated on the situation as it unveils.

Egypt's Mubarak moved from prison after stroke

POSTED:   06/19/2012 01:07:47 PM MDT
UPDATED:   06/19/2012 02:40:38 PM MDT

SARAH EL DEEB Associated Press

FILE - In this Saturday, June 2, 2012 file photo, Egypt's ex-President Hosni... ((AP Photo, File))

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CAIRO—An Interior Ministry spokesman says Egypt's ousted leader Hosni Mubarak has been moved from prison to a military hospital after reports he he suffered a stroke and his condition rapidly worsened.

The spokesman Alaa Mahmoud says the 84-year-old Mubarak was moved by ambulance from the hospital in Torah Prison to nearby Maadi Hospital in southern Cairo. The military facility is where Mubarak's predecessor Anwar Sadat was declared dead after being shot by Islamic extremists in 1981.

Earlier, the state news agency said Mubarak's health condition rapidly deteriorated, with his heart stopping briefly, then suffering a stroke.

Mubarak was sentenced to life in prison on June 2 for failing to stop the killing of protesters in last year's uprising that led to his ouster.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

Egypt's state news agency said Tuesday that Hosni Mubarak has suffered a stroke, and prison officials said he is likely to be moved out of his prison hospital to a military facility nearby.

State TV said the 84-year-old ousted president, who is serving a life prison sentence, was in a "critical" condition and has been placed on a respirator. The state news agency MENA said earlier Mubarak's heart stopped and a defibrillator was used to restart it.

It later reported that the prison authority has called in his doctors to treat his stroke in "a fast deterioration of his health" and that they were giving him medications to break up blood clots.

A prison official said doctors reported that Mubarak has fallen unconscious. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. He said the prison authorities are considering moving him to the military hospital nearby in Maadi, a suburb near Torah Prison where he is held.

MENA also reported he will likely be moved in the next hours if his health deteriorates. It denied Mubarak has fallen unconscious and said he has not yet been moved out of the prison hospital.

Moving Mubarak out of prison would likely anger many in the public, where there is a widespread suspicion that security and military officials sympathetic to their old boss are giving him preferential treatment. The public is already stirred up over recent decisions by the ruling military council that have stripped the incoming president from most of his powers, further enshrining the powers of the military. Tens of thousands gathered in Tahrir Square on Tuesday to protest the new decisions.

Mubarak was sentenced to a life in prison on June 2 for failing to stop the killing of protesters during last year's uprising against him. He was transferred to prison after spending months in a military facility in detention. Officials have since repeatedly reported his health was deteriorating.

Since his arrival at the prison directly after his sentencing, Mubarak has been suffering from high blood pressure and breathing difficulties and deep depression, according to prison officials. His lawyer said he didn't trust the doctors and appealed for his transfer to a better equipped hospital.

Read more:Egypt's Mubarak moved from prison after stroke - The Denver Posthttp://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_20891402/official-health-egypts-mubarak-deteriorates#ixzz1yHCfHh7T
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RIP Rodney King

NATION AND WORLD

Police brutality icon Rodney King dies in his L.A. home

POSTED:   06/18/2012 01:00:00 AM MDT
UPDATED:   06/18/2012 03:17:35 AM MDT

By Jesse Washington
The Associated Press

The video of Rodney King's 1991 beating by Los Angeles police officers led to a public outcry against police brutality. (Matt Sayles, The Associated Press)

Twenty years later, Rodney King's simple yet profound question still lingers, from the street where Trayvon Martin died all the way to the White House: "Can we all get along?"

Spoken as fires of rage and frustration wrecked Los Angeles, the quote distilled centuries of racial strife into a challenge — and a goal. Today, the answers to that question measure the lasting significance of King, who died Sunday in California, after he was found at the bottom of his swimming pool. He was 47.

"It was a critical question at a moment of crisis that forged our human bonds with one another," said Georgetown professor Michael Eric Dyson. "It grew up out of the hope and the desire, especially of people of color, to see this nation come together."

The nation first saw King as a black man curled up on the ground by his car, being beaten by four white police officers. On parole for a robbery conviction, he had been drinking, then speeding, and had refused to pull over. Police finally pulled King from his car and struck him more than 50 times with batons and boots.

One of King's legacies is that he raised the curtain on the video age: If a man had not stepped outside of his home and videotaped the beating, King would have been lost to history.

"The biggest impact was that it was actually on tape," said Dom Giordano, a conservative talk radio host in Philadelphia. "It was so rare, except for something like Bull Connor, to have this type of footage."

King became an enduring symbol of the police brutality — proof positive, to many people, that the dogs and fire hoses that Connor loosed on civil rights marchers in 1960s Alabama had merely been updated, not eliminated.

"He represented the anti-police brutality and anti-racial- profiling movement of our time," said the Rev. Al Sharpton on Sunday.

The videotape was the central piece of evidence at the four officers' trial, which became a classic piece of modern racial drama. Did King bring the beating on himself by resisting arrest? Or was there a police culture of violence against blacks, backed by a system designed for black people to lose?

There were no blacks on the jury in the predominantly white suburb of Simi Valley, Calif. After the police were acquitted — one got a mistrial — Los Angeles was engulfed in a uprising that lasted three days, killed 55 people and injured more than 2,000.

"There was the articulation of a pent-up rage that had not been heard before," Dyson said. "A sense that we do count, a sense that you're going to pay attention to us."

Can we all get along? Giordano says yes.

"What has changed is more the meat-and-potatoes, day-to- day things," he said. "For every instance like a Trayvon Martin, I do see things routinely that indicate that we are getting along, that we are moving past racial tensions."

Los Angeles' police department certainly changed. Years of investigations revealed corruption and "a significant number of officers in the LAPD who repetitively use excessive force," according to a federal government report. The Justice Department forced the LAPD to implement reforms.

But what about the nation? Did it heed King's challenge?

"The jury is still out," Dyson said.

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Police: No foul play

Rodney King's fiancée called 911 at 5:25 a.m. Saturday to report that she found him in the pool at their home in Rialto, Calif., said police Lt. Dean Hardin.

Officers arrived to find King in the deep end of the pool and pulled him out. King was unresponsive, and officers began CPR until paramedics arrived. He was taken to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 6:11 a.m., police said.

A statement from police said the preliminary investigation indicates a drowning, with no signs of foul play. Investigators will await autopsy results to determine whether drugs or alcohol were involved, but police Capt. Randy De Anda said there were no alcoholic beverages or paraphernalia found near the pool.The Associated Press

Read more:Police brutality icon Rodney King dies in his L.A. home - The Denver Posthttp://www.denverpost.com/obituaries/ci_20879818/police-brutality-icon-rodney-king-dies-his-la#ixzz1yAjl7dvO
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RIP Henry Hill, Inspire-er or Godfather

Henry Hill, inspiration for ‘Goodfellas,’ dead at 69

By Andrew Dalton and Robert Jablon June 13, 2012 11:18AM

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FILE - In this Feb. 22, 2005 file photo, Henry Hill sits in the dining room of the Firefly restaurant in North Platte, Neb. Hill, whose life as a mobster and FBI informant was the basis for the Martin Scorcese film "Goodfellas," has died. Hill's girlfriend Lisa Caserta says he died in a Los Angeles hospital after a long illness. He was 69. (AP Photo/Nati Harnik)

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Updated: June 13, 2012 5:44PM

 

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Henry Hill, who went from small-time gangster to big-time celebrity when his life as a mobster-turned-FBI informant became the basis for the Martin Scorsese film “Goodfellas,” died Tuesday. He was 69.

Longtime girlfriend Lisa Caserta told The Associated Press on Wednesday that Hill died of complications from longtime heart problems related to smoking.

An associate in New York’s Lucchese crime family, Hill told detailed, disturbing and often hilarious tales of life in the mob that first appeared in the 1986 book “Wiseguy: Life in a Mafia Family,” by Nicholas Pileggi, a journalist Hill sought out shortly after becoming an informant.

“Henry Hill was a hood. He was a hustler. He had schemed and plotted and broken heads,” Pileggi wrote in the book. “He knew how to bribe and he knew how to con. He was a full-time working racketeer, an articulate hoodlum from organized crime.”

In 1990 the book, adapted for the screen by Pileggi and Scorsese, became the instant classic “Goodfellas,” starring Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci and Ray Liotta as Hill, a young hoodlum on the make who thrives in the Mafia but is eventually forced by drugs to turn on his criminal friends and lead the life of a sad suburbanite.

The film became a constantly quoted pop cultural phenomenon that provided the template for the modern gangster story.

Unlike older Mafia tales, which focused on family and honor, “Wiseguy” and “Goodfellas” mostly dwelled on how utterly awesome it was to be in the mob — on the gangster as rock star — at least until the life caught up with you.

“As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster,” Liotta, as Hill, says in the movie. “For us to live any other way was nuts.”

Born in Brooklyn to an Irish father and an Italian mother, Hill’s life with the mob began at age 11 when he wandered into a cabstand across the street in 1955 looking for work, and soon knew the life of these silk-suited soldiers was for him.

“The men at the cabstand were not like anyone else from the neighborhood,” Pileggi wrote. “He had watched them double-park their cars and never get tickets, even when they parked smack in front of a fire hydrant.”

He began running errands for the men at the stand that soon led to small-time crimes. He was first arrested at age 16 for using a stolen credit card in an attempt to buy tires for the brother of gang leader Paul Vario, and impressed the gang leaders for refusing to squeal on them.

Far bigger crimes awaited, including the 1967 theft of $420,000 in cash from the Air France cargo terminal at JFK airport in New York, among the biggest cash heists in history at the time.

And in 1978, Hill had a key role in the theft of $5.8 million in cash from a Lufthansa Airlines vault, a heist masterminded by Jimmy Burke, the inspiration for De Niro’s character in “Goodfellas.”

“Whenever we needed money, we’d rob the airport,” Liotta says in the movie. “To us, it was better than Citibank.”

But the crew involved in the heist would soon turn on each other, and several would end up dead, leaving Hill extremely paranoid he could be next, he later told Pileggi.

He was also selling drugs behind the back of his boss Vario, and in 1980 was arrested on a narcotics-trafficking charge.

More afraid of his associates than prison, Hill decided he had no choice but to become an informant, and signed an agreement with a Department of Justice task force that would prove more fruitful than anyone imagined.

“The arrest of Henry Hill was a price beyond measure,” Pileggi wrote.” “Hill had grown up in the mob. He was only a mechanic, but he knew everything. He knew how it worked. He knew who oiled the machinery. He knew, literally, where the bodies were buried. If he talked, police knew that Henry Hill could give them the key to dozens of indictments and convictions.”

Hill’s testimony did send dozens of men to prison, many for the Lufthansa heist, and he and his wife Karen, played by Lorraine Bracco in the movie, went into hiding together, spending years fearing retribution by a gun to the back of his head from his old colleagues.

In the early 1990s, after more drug arrests, Hill was booted from the witness protection program.

His fears for his life waned as many former associates died off, and he led a more public life in later years, appearing in documentaries and becoming a popular call-in guest on Howard Stern’s radio show.

His death was first reported by the celebrity website TMZ.

His struggles with substances would continue for most of his life. In 2008 he pleaded guilty in San Bernardino, Calif. to two counts of public intoxication. In 2009, he was arrested in St. Louis on charges of disorderly conduct and resisting arrest.

“I’ve been on every drug humanly possible, and I can’t get a handle on alcohol,” he told The Associated Press in 2009. “I’ll go two, two and a half years, and I don’t know what triggers me.”

In the book and the film he talks about hard it was to lead an ordinary life after years steeped in gangster glamor.

“I had paper bags filled with jewelry stashed in the kitchen. I had a sugar bowl full of coke next to the bed. Anything I wanted was a phone call away,” Hill says in the film. “Today, everything is different. There’s no action. I have to wait around like everyone else. Can’t even get decent food. Right after I got here I ordered some spaghetti with marinara sauce, and I got egg noodles and ketchup. I’m an average nobody.”

Source: Chicago Sun-Times