HATEWATCH: RACISTS REACT WITH SHOCK, ANGER TO FELLOW ACTIVIST’S RENUNCIATION

Racists React With Shock, Anger to Fellow Activist’s Renunciation

by  Mark Potok  on July 18, 2013

White nationalists, learning yesterday of activist Derek Black’s renouncing of the movement, reacted with disbelief, conspiracy theories and unbridled fury. But it was the fact that Black, son of the former Alabama Klan leader who now runs the largest racist Web forum in the world, made his comments to the Southern Poverty Law Center that seemed to be the single factor that most rankled the racist world.

The reaction that may have been the most noticed came from Don Black, who expressed his shock about his son’s comments on his Stormfront blog. “Derek was here all weekend, helping us build and replace old windows” at the family home in West Palm Beach, Fla., the elder Black wrote. “He’s made it annoyingly obvious over the past few months he was no longer interested in WN [white nationalist] activism, but he always said he was still WN. I knew the Jews at the Poverty Palace [SPLC] were working hard, since he would be such a big prize for them.

“But he didn’t give us a clue as to what he planned today.”

“I don’t want to talk to him, but his big sister called him, and he confirmed that he had written what the SPLC posted,” Black added. “He says he doesn’t understand why we’d feel betrayed just because he announced his ‘personal beliefs’ to our worst enemies. Oh well. Just when I thought I couldn’t lose anything else.”

On Vanguard News Network (VNN), another racist Web forum, one Leonard Rouse sounded similar. “He sent an email, meant for publication, to his worst enemy, repudiating everything he formerly stood for and that his father claimed and claims to stand for. …. I want to give people the benefit of the doubt, but Jesus.”

Others were far harsher. On the white nationalist Occidental Dissent website, “Maxfield Parrish” didn’t hold back. “He is a traitor, one without hope and one without redemption,” he said of Derek Black, 24. “Should WN’s ever seize power his name should figure prominently on the ‘Hunt Down List.’” Parrish went on to describe how the younger Black should be “softened up with brass knuckles to the face and groin, then water-boarded,” ultimately “reducing him to a quivering, gelatinous lump of obedient flesh,” before being exiled to Africa.

“He is now an open enemy of the survival of the race,” said a VNN posting from “N.B. Forrest” — a reference to Nathan Bedford Forrest, an antebellum owner of a major slaveyard, Confederate general and first national leader of the Ku Klux Klan.

Others, less furiously, were shocked by what they saw as Black’s adoption of “politically correct” language — talking about “people of color,” “structural oppression,” the need for affirmative action and so on. Some were particularly incensed that he apologized for actions that had harmed minorities and “activists striving for opportunity and fairness for all.” Doubtless, that sounded suspiciously like SPLC staffers to many of those reacting angrily to Black’s statement.

“Black has not only rejected WNism, he appears to have embraced the hardest of hardcore anti-racism in the process, and with the zeal of a convert,” a poster who gave his name only as Lew complained on the Occidental Dissent thread. “He covered the bases in regurgitating every anti-white cliché I can think of.”

Numerous posters on racist websites theorized that Derek Black had taken up with a Jewish, liberal or non-white girlfriend; that he was secretly gay; that he was acting out of anger at his father; that he was being blackmailed by the SPLC with an unspecified secret; or that he was still a believer, but wanted a normal life.

There were a few who tried to look at their own movement for answers. On Occidental Dissent, “Pro White Joe,” who is actually well-known Montana neo-Nazi April Gaede, said the problem with the white nationalist movement was its “overwhelming Negativity.” “The problem I see with WN and Nationalist websites in general, is you go to them expecting WN to be about ‘identity, preservation and self determination for Whites’ — Yet almost all of the discussion is rants about ‘niggers, jews and nazis’ and everyone is angry and paranoid.” Gaede is the mother of two daughters who once formed a racist band, Prussian Blue, but who have since renounced white nationalism like Derek Black.

And then there were those who acknowledged the most obvious conclusion — that it’s an error to indoctrinate young children and then expect them to hold to those beliefs as they become adults. “It’s a mistake to involve kids in the Movement, as we have learned the hard way,” “Kievasky” wrote on the Occidental Dissent thread. “Teach your kids right and wrong but don’t use them as spokesmen or public faces for anything. Religions do that too — they force children to publicly announce beliefs when they are too young to even have formed beliefs. You got to let kids be kids. White nationalism is like booze, guns and fast cars — for adults only.”

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“But he didn’t give us a clue as to what he planned today.”

He did not give you a clue because he knew how you and your ilk would respond—-so the less you knew of his plans, the better for him.

“I don’t want to talk to him, but his big sister called him, and he confirmed that he had written what the SPLC posted,” Black added. “He says he doesn’t understand why we’d feel betrayed just because he announced his ‘personal beliefs’ to our worst enemies. Oh well. Just when I thought I couldn’t lose anything else.”

On Vanguard News Network (VNN), another racist Web forum, one Leonard Rouse sounded similar. “He sent an email, meant for publication, to his worst enemy, repudiating everything he formerly stood for and that his father claimed and claims to stand for. ….”

Maybe, your son has realized that continuous hate consumes a person in heart, in body, in mind, in spirit. Your son obviously had enough of the poison that he was drowning in. The hate you fed him as a child. The vicious destruction you committed against him in the form of child abuse–teaching him to hate his fellow human beings.

“On the white nationalist Occidental Dissent website, “Maxfield Parrish” didn’t hold back. “He is a traitor, one without hope and one without redemption,” he said of Derek Black, 24.”

No, Mr. Parrish. You are a traitor. You are a traitor to treating all people right; you are a traitor against the Constitution of the United States of America; you are a traitor against all that is moral and right in accepting the decision that this young  man made for himself.

“Parrish went on to describe how the younger Black should be “softened up with brass knuckles to the face and groin, then water-boarded,” ultimately “reducing him to a quivering, gelatinous lump of obedient flesh,” before being exiled to Africa.”

So, terroristic threats to commit bodily injury is how you attempt to bring this young man back to the racist secesh fold? Keep in mind, any harm that befalls young Mr. Black will result in criminal charges against the attacker. Assault with intent to commit bodily injury; torture (waterboarding), and “reducing him to a quivering, gelatinous lump of obedient flesh” (“There must be obedience, or die!”), all fall under felony charges. Since young Mr. Black is an adult, he still has the right to make decisions for himself. Forcing him to continue beliefs in racist hate is stupid, and if you are able to forcibly detain him against his will, whether in his own home, or anywhere else, that constitutes kidnapping, which is still a federal offense.

As for young Mr. Black “being exiled to Africa”, all I can say is  “WTF!?”

So, that is the ultimate punishment for this young man:  send him on a vacation to Africa? And where to in Africa?

Tanzania? Kenya? Cote d’Ivoire?

I hear that Tanzania is very beautiful, the people friendly, and the flora and fauna are off the chain.

But, of course, in your twisted mind, Mr. Parrish, sending anyone to Africa is supposed to be some sort of death knell. On the contrary. Had this young man remained with the likes of his father and people like you, he most certainly would have gone through  a death of the soul, as well as the body–if he messed with the wrong person.

“On Occidental Dissent, “Pro White Joe,” who is actually well-known Montana neo-Nazi April Gaede, said the problem with the white nationalist movement was its “overwhelming Negativity.” “The problem I see with WN and Nationalist websites in general, is you go to them expecting WN to be about ‘identity, preservation and self determination for Whites’ — Yet almost all of the discussion is rants about ‘niggers, jews and nazis’ and everyone is angry and paranoid.”

Oh, wow, who’d have thunk it?

Constant harping about niggers, Jews, and  nazis (why Nazis, since so many of your ilk are just as venomous as they are) and your rampant demented paranoia, only serves to drive people away from such monsters as yourselves, Mr. Black senior and Mr. Parrish, as well you, Ms-well-known Montana neo-Nazi April Gaede.

 “White nationalism is like booze, guns and fast cars — for adults only.”

And just like booze (alchoholics), guns (excessive puerile love affairs with AK-47s), and fast cars (driving at top speeds to get away from the scenes of crimes some of you have committed), so many of you haters have pretty much destroyed yourselves by your own hands.

No need for anyone to go looking for a fight with any of you.

All of you are so very, very good at annihilating yourselves.

IN REMEMBRANCE: 7-21-2013

HELEN THOMAS: 50 YEARS OF TOUGH QUESTIONS AND ‘THANK YOU, MR. PRESIDENT’

Frank Wolfe/LBJ Library, via Reuters

Helen Thomas, a White House correspondent, questioned President Lyndon B. Johnson in the Oval Office in 1968. More Photos »

By DAVID STOUT

Published: July 20, 2013

• WASHINGTON — Helen Thomas, whose keen curiosity, unquenchable drive and celebrated constancy made her a trailblazing White House correspondent in a press corps dominated by men and who was later regarded as the dean of the White House briefing room, died on Saturday at her home in Washington. She was 92.

Her death was announced by the Gridiron Club, one of Washington’s leading news societies. Ms. Thomas was a past president of the organization.

Ms. Thomas covered every president from John F. Kennedy to Barack Obama for United Press International and, later, Hearst Newspapers. To her colleagues, she was the unofficial but undisputed head of the press corps, her status ratified by her signature line at the end of every White House news conference: “Thank you, Mr. President.”

Her blunt questions and sharp tone made her a familiar personality not only in the parochial world inside the Washington Beltway but also to television audiences across the country.

“Helen was a true pioneer, opening doors and breaking down barriers for generations of women in journalism,” President Obama said in a statement on Saturday. “She never failed to keep presidents — myself included — on their toes.”

Presidents grew to respect, even to like, Ms. Thomas for her forthrightness and stamina, which sustained her well after the age at which most people had settled into retirement. President Bill Clinton gave her a cake on Aug. 4, 1997, her 77th birthday. Twelve years later, President Obama gave her cupcakes for her 89th. At his first news conference in February 2009, Mr. Obama called on her, saying: “Helen, I’m excited. This is my inaugural moment.”

But 16 months later, Ms. Thomas abruptly announced her retirement from Hearst amid an uproar over her assertion that Jews should “get the hell out of Palestine” and go back where they belonged, perhaps Germany or Poland. Her remarks, made almost offhandedly days earlier at a White House event, set off a storm when a videotape was posted.

In her retirement announcement, Ms. Thomas, whose parents immigrated to the United States from what is now Lebanon, said that she deeply regretted her remarks and that they did not reflect her “heartfelt belief” that peace would come to the Middle East only when all parties embraced “mutual respect and tolerance.”

“May that day come soon,” she said.

Ms. Thomas’s career bridged two eras, beginning during World War II when people got their news mostly from radio, newspapers and movie newsreels, and extending into the era of 24-hour information on cable television and the Internet. She resigned from U.P.I. on May 16, 2000, a day after it was taken over by an organization with links to the Unification Church.

Weeks later, Ms. Thomas was hired by Hearst to write a twice-weekly column on national issues. She spent the last 10 years of her working life there.

When Ms. Thomas took a job as a radio writer for United Press in 1943 (15 years before it merged with the International News Service to become U.P.I.), most female journalists wrote about social events and homemaking. The journalists who covered war, crime and politics, and congratulated one another over drinks at the press club were typically men.

She worked her way into full-time reporting and by the mid-1950s was covering federal agencies. She covered John F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign in 1960, and when he won she became the first woman assigned to the White House full time by a news service.

Ms. Thomas was also the first woman to be elected an officer of the White House Correspondents’ Association and the first to serve as its president. In 1975, she became the first woman elected to the Gridiron Club, which for 90 years had been a men-only bastion of Washington journalists.

Ms. Thomas was known for her dawn-to-dark work hours, and she won her share of exclusives and near-exclusives. She was the only female print journalist to accompany President Richard M. Nixon on his breakthrough trip to China in 1972.

“Helen was a better reporter than she was a writer — but in her prime had more than her share of scoops the rest of us would try to match,” Mark Knoller, the longtime CBS News White House reporter, wrote in a Twitter message on Saturday morning.

And, he added, “Pity the poor WH press aide who would try to tell Helen, ‘You can’t stand there.’ ”

In the Watergate era, she was a favorite late-night confidante of Martha Mitchell, the wife of John N. Mitchell, Mr. Nixon’s attorney general and campaign official. Mrs. Mitchell told Ms. Thomas that responsibility for the “third-rate burglary” at the Democratic headquarters in the Watergate complex in Washington and the cover-up that followed it had gone far above the midlevel officials who were implicated early on.

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People with a vested interest in discrediting Mrs. Mitchell hinted that she was emotionally unstable and that she drank too much. But volatile or not, she was right. Ms. Thomas called Mrs. Mitchell, who died in 1976, “one of the first victims, and perhaps the only heroine, of the Watergate tidal wave.”

On April 22, 1981, three weeks after the attempt on President Ronald Reagan’s life, Ms. Thomas and a reporter for The Associated Press interviewed the president, who told them of the “paralyzing pain” he had felt when a bullet went into his chest and of the panic that had overcome him when he could not breathe.

In 1971, Ms. Thomas married Douglas Cornell, a widower, who was about to retire as a White House reporter for The A.P. and was 14 years her senior. He died in 1982.

Ms. Thomas wrote half a dozen books. Her first, “Dateline: White House,” was published by Macmillan in 1975. Four others were published by Scribner: “Front Row at the White House: My Life and Times,” in 2000; “Thanks for the Memories, Mr. President: Wit and Wisdom From the Front Row at the White House,” in 2003; “Watchdogs of Democracy? The Waning Washington Press Corps and How It Has Failed the Public,” in 2006; and “Listen Up, Mr. President: Everything You Always Wanted Your President to Know and Do,” written with Craig Crawford, in 2009. With the illustrator Chip Bok, she also wrote a children’s book, “The Great White House Breakout,” about a little boy whose mother is president.

Helen Thomas was born in Winchester, Ky., on Aug. 4, 1920, and grew up in Detroit, one of 10 children of George and Mary Thomas. Her father, who could not read or write, encouraged his children to go to college.

In 1942, when Ms. Thomas graduated from what is now Wayne State University in Detroit with a major in English, the country was at war. She went to Washington to look for a job.

She found one, as a waitress. But she did not last long. “I didn’t smile enough,” she recalled years later.

The Washington Daily News soon hired her in a clerical job; soon after that, she began her career with the United Press news service.

“Where’d this girl come from?’” she asked of herself in an appearance before a women’s group in 1999. “I love my work, and I think that I was so lucky to pick a profession where it’s a joy to go to work every day.”

Before she left U.P.I. in May 2000, the news service had been shrinking its payroll and closing bureaus for years, a decline that led to its takeover by News World Communications, the organization founded by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, leader of the Unification Church. It also publishes The Washington Times, a favorite of conservative readers in Washington.

“I do not intend to stay,” she said on departing. “United Press International is a great news agency. It has made a remarkable mark in the annals of American journalism and has left a superb legacy for future journalists. I wish the new owners all the best, great stories and happy landings.”

Ms. Thomas bitterly opposed the war in Iraq and made no effort to appear neutral at White House news conferences, where some of her questions bordered on the prosecutorial. In “Watchdogs of Democracy?,” she wrote that most White House and Pentagon reporters had been too willing to accept the Bush administration’s rationale for going to war.

In an interview with The New York Times in May 2006, Ms. Thomas was characteristically uncompromising and unapologetic.

“How would you define the difference between a probing question and a rude one?” she was asked.

“I don’t think there are any rude questions,” she said.

Mark Landler contributed reporting.

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ASHTON SPRINGER, PRODUCER OF BROADWAY SHOWS

By MARGALIT FOX

Published: July 20, 2013

• Ashton Springer, who parlayed a professional life as an owner of a laundry into a career as the first high-profile black producer on Broadway, drawing theatergoers black and white to shows like “Bubbling Brown Sugar,” “Eubie!” and Athol Fugard’s “A Lesson From Aloes,” died on Monday in Mamaroneck, N.Y. He was 82.

Chris Sheridan

Myra and Ashton Springer at their home in 1978. His first Broadway production was “No Place to Be Somebody.”

The revue “Bubbling Brown Sugar” starred, from left, Lonnie McNeil, Carolyn Byrd, Newton Winters and Alton Lathrop.

The cause was pneumonia, his son Caz said.

A producer or co-producer of nearly a dozen Broadway shows in the 1970s and early ’80s, Mr. Springer was considered the first black producer to wield real power on the Great White Way. He is credited not only with helping to bring theater by and about African-Americans to wider public consciousness, but also with helping to bring late-20th-century African-American audiences to Broadway.

In 1979, The Washington Post called him “the hottest black producer out there.”

Mr. Springer’s first Broadway production, “No Place to Be Somebody,” centered on the lives of black denizens of a rough-and-tumble New York saloon, a milieu rarely explored by mainstream theater of the period. The play, by an unknown black writer named Charles Gordone, won the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1970.

Writing in The New York Times, Walter Kerr described Mr. Gordone, who would become the first African-American dramatist to win the Pulitzer, as “the most astonishing new American playwright to come along since Edward Albee.”

Mr. Springer went on to produce two hit musical revues, “Bubbling Brown Sugar” (1976) and “Eubie!” (1978).

“Bubbling Brown Sugar,” which ran for 766 performances, celebrated the songs of black titans like Eubie Blake, Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington and W. C. Handy.

“Eubie!” focused on Blake’s work. Featuring the spectacular tap dancing of the brothers Gregory and Maurice Hines, it played 439 performances.

Mr. Springer was the executive producer of “A Lesson From Aloes,” Mr. Fugard’s critically acclaimed drama about racial tensions in South Africa. The play, which opened on Broadway in 1980 and ran for 96 performances, starred James Earl Jones, Maria Tucci and Harris Yulin.

Ashton Springer Jr. was born in Manhattan to parents who had come from the West Indies. As a student at Evander Childs High School in the Bronx, where the family moved when he was a boy, he helped produce local concerts featuring the likes of Miles Davis.

Mr. Springer attended Ohio State University before becoming a social worker in the Bronx. In the 1950s, he and his wife, Myra, opened a coin-operated laundry in the Jackson Heights section of Queens.

Through a friend of a friend, Mr. Springer met to N. Richard Nash, a playwright known for the 1954 drama “The Rainmaker.” Seeking a nontheatrical side business, Mr. Nash became an investor in the laundry. He gave Mr. Springer a room in his office in Manhattan’s theater district.

Captivated, Mr. Springer became Mr. Nash’s assistant on the 1960 musical comedy “Wildcat,” starring Lucille Ball, for which Mr. Nash was a producer and the author of the book.

In the mid-’60s, Jeanne Warner, a college classmate of Mr. Springer’s who was married to Mr. Gordone, gave him a copy of “No Place to Be Somebody.” Mr. Springer spent years trying to raise the money to produce it but was told repeatedly that audiences would care nothing for a gritty drama about black people.

He eventually persuaded Joseph Papp to stage it at the Public Theater, where it opened to admiring notices in 1969. It went on to play briefly at the ANTA Playhouse as part of a festival of Off Broadway plays, winning the Pulitzer shortly afterward.

In 1971, Mr. Springer and Ms. Warner brought the play to the Morosco Theater on Broadway, where it ran for 39 performances.

Mr. Springer’s other Broadway credits include “Cold Storage” (1977), a play about cancer patients starring Martin Balsam and Len Cariou, and an all-black revival of “Guys and Dolls” (1976), starring Robert Guillaume and Norma Donaldson.

In 1982, after an investigation by the New York State Attorney General’s office, a State Supreme Court judge ordered Mr. Springer to “make an offer of full restitution” of more than $120,000 to 33 investors in “Eubie!” whose money had not been returned.

“The bottom line is that the show never grossed enough money to pay back anyway,” Mr. Springer told The Times that year.

In an e-mail message on Friday, Julianne Boyd, who conceived and directed “Eubie!,” said that Mr. Springer was never able to repay investors in that show.

The episode marked the end of Mr. Springer’s Broadway career. He was later a producer of Off Broadway shows, including the musical “Rollin’ on the T.O.B.A.,” about the black vaudeville circuit.

Mr. Springer’s marriage to Myra Burns ended in divorce; she died in 2005. Besides his son Caz, his survivors include another son, Mark, and a sister, Caludia Holston.

Today, although black directors, actors and playwrights are more visible on Broadway than in years past, they remain scarce among the ranks of its producers.

In an interview with The Associated Press in 1979, Mr. Springer voiced the hope that one day Broadway would be home to theater that transcended racial lines.

“Not black theater,” he explained. “Not white theater. Just theater.”

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LAURIE FRINK, TRUMPETER AND BRASS INSTRUCTOR TO MANY

By NATE CHINEN

Published: July 17, 2013

• Laurie Frink, an accomplished trumpeter who became a brass instructor of widespread influence and high regard, died on Saturday at her home in Manhattan. She was 61.

Alan Nahigian

Laurie Frink in May.

The cause was cancer of the bile duct, said the classical violist Lois Martin, her partner of 25 years.

Ms. Frink built her trumpet career as a section player, starting when few women were accepted in those ranks. She worked extensively on Broadway and with the Benny Goodman Orchestra, the Mel Lewis Orchestra and Gerry Mulligan’s Concert Jazz Band, often playing lead.

“She was one of the most accurate trumpet players I’ve ever heard,” John McNeil, who recalled playing in trumpet sections alongside Ms. Frink some 40 years ago, said in an interview.

Ms. Frink and Mr. McNeil wrote a book together, “Flexus: Trumpet Calisthenics for the Modern Improvisor,” which has become an essential resource for many trumpeters since its publication a decade ago. The book’s exercises and études came from Ms. Frink’s reservoir of strategies for addressing physical issues on the horn, especially where a player’s embouchure, or formation of lips and facial muscles, was concerned.

“She would take each player and find out what was causing the problem — and then do it to herself, so she could figure out a solution,” said the celebrated trumpeter Dave Douglas, who sought out Ms. Frink when he ran into embouchure problems in the early 1990s. Meeting with her, Mr. Douglas recalled, “was like a combination of therapy, gym instruction and music lesson.”

A warm but private person with a sharp wit, Ms. Frink earned the protective loyalty of her students. Some of the brass players she counseled — trombonists and others as well as trumpeters — were, like Mr. Douglas and Mr. McNeil, working professionals seeking to discreetly avert career-ending difficulties.

But as a faculty member at several leading jazz conservatories, she also mentored many trumpeters at a more formative stage, including Ambrose Akinmusire and Nadje Noordhuis, who have since gained prominence in jazz circles. “I always encourage my students to be the square peg,” Ms. Frink said in 2011. “Sometimes it’s difficult for them, so I try to nurture that. They call me trumpet mother.”

Laurie Ann Frink was born on Aug. 8, 1951, in Pender, Neb., a small town now claimed by the Omaha Indian Reservation, to James and Carol Frink. Her father was a candy salesman. In addition to Ms. Martin, she is survived by her brother, James.

Ms. Frink studied with Dennis Schneider, the principal trumpeter with the Lincoln Symphony Orchestra, at the University of Nebraska. After moving to New York in her early 20s, she met Carmine Caruso, a brass guru who devised an adaptable set of calisthenic exercises for trumpet.

Ms. Frink became Mr. Caruso’s protégée, and for more than a dozen years his romantic partner. He died in 1987. Her own style of instruction was an extension of the Caruso method.

Ms. Frink never stopped playing at a high level. She appears on every album by the Maria Schneider Orchestra, including two that won Grammy Awards. “When I wrote these subtle inner parts, I would always give them to her,” Ms. Schneider said. “I knew she was the person who would really spin the heart into the line.”

Ms. Frink also worked in recent years with other critically acclaimed big bands, including the John Hollenbeck Large Ensemble, Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society and Ryan Truesdell’s Gil Evans Project. Her recorded work will endure, but for many of her former students her instruction is her chief legacy. “In a way it’s a very living art form,” Mr. Douglas said. “There are people all over town, and all over the world, doing what she told them to do.”

He said he practiced a routine of hers on Sunday morning after hearing the news of her death.

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 JIM BUCK, WHO MADE WALKING DOGS A JOB

Neal Boenzi/The New York Times

Jim Buck, near Central Park in 1964, is considered the first professional dog walker in New York City. He ran a business in which he and two dozen assistants walked more than 150 dogs a day.

By MARGALIT FOX

Published: July 12, 2013

• There are eight million occupational stories in New York City, and none cries Gotham louder than that of the professional surrogate — the shrewd city dweller who spies a void that other New Yorkers are too hurried, harried or hard-pressed to fill and rushes enterprisingly in.

Over time, the city has spawned professional car-movers and professional line-standers, but its most visible — and audible — paid surrogates are indisputably its professional dog walkers.

By all accounts, Jim Buck was the first of them.

Mr. Buck, who died on July 4 at 81, is widely described as the first person to professionalize dog walking in New York City and, by extension, in the United States.

Starting in the early 1960s, Mr. Buck, the scion of a patrician Upper East Side family, rose each morning at dawn to walk passels of clients’ dogs, eventually presiding over a business in which he and two dozen assistants walked more than 150 dogs a day.

When he began that business, Jim Buck’s School for Dogs, it was the only one of its kind in New York. Today, the city has scores of professional dog walkers.

During the 40 years Mr. Buck ran his school, he was an eminently recognizable figure: an elegantly turned out, borzoi-thin man of 145 pounds, he commanded the leashes of a half-dozen or more dogs at a time — a good 500 pounds of dog in all — which fanned out before him like the spokes of a wheel.

He walked in sun; he walked in rain. In wintertime, his charges might be clad in small sweaters bearing the logos of the European resorts where their masters skied.

Jim Buck’s School for Dogs was equal parts exclusive preparatory academy, exercise class and reform school. In a 1964 profile of Mr. Buck in The New York Times, Gay Talese described him, plying his trade, as looking “like Charlton Heston in the chariot-racing scene in ‘Ben-Hur.’ ”

But with hindsight, it is more apt to liken Mr. Buck to Lee Marvin in the 1967 film “The Dirty Dozen.”

Mr. Buck’s clients were refined. Their dogs were less so.

The clients, mostly Upper East Siders, included some of the city’s most prominent names in the arts, government, finance and industry. (Continuing the tradition of walker-client confidentiality to which Mr. Buck long hewed, his family declined to name them. It did confirm Mr. Buck’s death, at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center in Manhattan, apparently of complications of emphysema and cancer.)

The dogs included the intractable, the obstinate and the profoundly pampered.

One, an otterhound known to Mr. Buck’s staff as Oliver the Awful, was used for some years to audition prospective employees.

“Oliver knows when he’s testing someone new, and he can be counted on to leap into the first phone booth along the way and slam the door and wedge himself against it,” Mr. Buck told The New Yorker in 1965. “Brute force is of no avail; the only way to get him out is to remain poised and quietly talk him out.”

James Augustine Farrell Buck was born in Manhattan on Nov. 28, 1931. His family, socially prominent, had prospered in steel and shipping. As a youth, Jim showed dogs; he also trained horses at the Connecticut country homes of his uncles.

Footloose, determined and eager to flout convention, Mr. Buck bypassed college.

But by the early ’60s he was leading the sort of gray-flannel life of which he despaired, chafing in New York as a salesman for an electronics concern.

Mr. Buck knew dogs — as a young man, he bred Great Danes. He also knew New Yorkers. Before long, a void was filled.

By 1964, The Times reported, he was making $500 a week, more than his electronics job paid.

His cobbler enjoyed a regular cut: Mr. Buck wore through the soles of his shoes every two weeks.

Mr. Buck’s marriage to Ann Sage ended in divorce. A resident of Manhattan, he is survived by three sons, Jonathan, Christopher and Graham; two sisters, Mother Debra Joseph, a Benedictine nun, and Connie Buck; and a brother, Richard.

Jim Buck’s School for Dogs is gone now, closed a decade ago when Mr. Buck retired. But its legacy endures: some of the city’s professional dog walkers are his former employees.

As the city changes, so too does their work. There are no more telephone booths for latter-day Olivers to barricade themselves in. Few cobblers remain.

And in years to come, in perhaps the keenest loss of all, there may well be no more newsprint. A 20th-century artifact increasingly deemed redundant in the electronic age, it remains, for New York’s dog walkers, a vital, and indispensable, means of upholding the law.

SOURCE

. . . .AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT: UNCLE RUCKUS (REDUX)

With the renewed interest that is being shown in my previous post on the living and breathing Uncle Ruckus himself, Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson, it got me thinking about the original Uncle Ruckus.

Hidden in this deliciously, hilariously funny cartoon character is biting satire and cutting edge commentary on blackness and whiteness. Ruckus never fails to go to the nth degree in debasing himself in the worship of whiteness and the disparagement of blackness.

So, without further ado, I now present to you my favourite king of the self-haters.

I give you Uncle Ruckus at his most despicable-self-hating-all-loving-that-is-whiteness, Uncle Ruckus.

Enjoy!

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Neptune’s Newest Moon

July 15, 2013                                                                | Using Hubble images taken in several patches over a six-year period, astronomers have spotted a tiny object circling Neptune. This find, the first in a decade, brings the planet’s moon count to 14. > read more

The Chaotic Music of Variable Stars

July 15, 2013                                                                | Space-based observations of RR Lyrae variable stars, once considered the paragon of simplicity, are revealing turmoil in their daily vibrations. > read more

A Fix for the “Faint Young Sun”

July 18, 2013                                                                | For 40 years astrobiologists have wrestled with how to make the early Earth warm enough to support life even though the young Sun was at least 30% fainter than it is now. New climate models, powered by supercomputers, are converging on a solution. > read more

Magnifying Quasars

July 17, 2013                                                                | Twinkle, twinkle, quasi-star: cosmic lenses could tell us what you are.  > read more

The Sun’s Heat Wave

July 16, 2013                                                                | Astronomers at the American Astronomical Society’s Solar Physics Division meeting discussed new evidence that magnetic waves are the reason our star’s corona is blazing hot. > read more

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Sky & Telescope

Catch a “Shooting Star”

July 19, 2013                                                                | The Delta Aquarids meteor shower ramps up in late July, and you already have everything you need to enjoy the show – your naked eye. > read more

Tour July’s Sky by Eye and Ear!

May 26, 2013                                                                  | At dusk, you’ll find Venus low in the west, Saturn well up in the south, and a celestial scorpion rising up in the east. Near the Scorpion’s stinger is a small star cluster that’s observable by eye. > read more

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NASA

Wave at Saturn — But Will Cassini See You?

July 18, 2013                                                                | Cassini is taking our picture on Friday, but how much light do we humans actually reflect? We’ve crunched the numbers, and the answer may surprise you. > read more

This Week’s Sky at a Glance

Sky & Telescope

This Week’s Sky at a Glance

July 19, 2013                                                                  | The Moon occults a star, Venus passes Regulus, and Jupiter passes Mars.  > read more

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HATEWATCH: LEAGUE OF THE SOUTH: NO LONGER POSSIBLE TO WORK WITH GOP

League of the South: No Longer Possible to Work With GOP

by  Ryan Lenz  on July 12, 2013

Michael Hill. Profile avail at SPLC Intel. Files

Michael Hill, the increasingly militant head of the neo-Confederate League of the South, has reached a conclusion following the revelation this week that Jack Hunter, an aide to U.S. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has long harbored neo-Confederate beliefs: It may no longer be possible for the radical right to work within the confines of mainstream politics, or, specifically, the Republican Party.

“[T]here’s no place in the GOP for Southerners who wish to remain … Southerners,” Hill said in a statement quoted on the white nationalist Occidental Dissent website.

“Just so there’s no chance you’ll confuse The League with the GOP or any other ‘conservative’ group, here’s what we stand for: The survival, well being, and independence of the Southern people,” Hill said. “And by ‘the Southern people,’ we mean White Southerners who are not afraid to stand for the people of their race and religion.”

Hill’s proclamation comes after several Republican operatives and a civilian military contractor were exposed for their affiliations with racist or white nationalist organizations. South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley recently dismissed Roan Garcia-Quintana, named as a member of her re-election campaign’s steering committee, after his position as a board member for the racist Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC) was disclosed. In May, John Stortstrom, a mechanical engineer who worked for the Army’s Edgewood Chemical Biological Center in Maryland, was suspended after reports that he was among 150 white nationalists who attended the American Renaissance conference last April in Tennessee.

Hunter Wallace, the blogger on Occidental Dissent, agreed with Hill’s assessment, writing that “what recently happened to Roan Garcia-Quintana and now John Stortstrom … shows that the door has closed on working within the Republican Party, Conservatism, Inc., and reforming the political system.”

Hunter continued: “A few years ago, there was still a lot of confusion on this issue. I myself wanted to believe that we could work within the Republican Party to reform the system. I was right … we can work within the system at the state and local level, in the South, up to the point where things start to really matter and the national media and the federal government slaps us down like they did with Arizona’s SB 1070, California’s Prop 8, and Alabama’s HB 56.

“If the enemy wasn’t so drunk with power, they would continue to cultivate such illusions for our time, money, and energy would continue to be squandered on the GOP, Conservatism, Inc., the Ron Paul Revolution and other such nonsense.”

For his part, Hill has in recent years become more blunt in suggesting that violence is the answer. At the League’s March 2011 meeting in Georgia, he urged his members to stock up on AK-47s, hollow-point bullets and tools to derail trains. That summer, at the League’s annual conference, the leader asked, “What would it take to get you to fight? The mantra [that] violence, or the serious threat thereof, never settles anything is patently false. History shows that it indeed does settle many things.”

SOURCE

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“The survival, well being, and independence of the Southern people,” Hill said. “And by ‘the Southern people,’ we mean White Southerners who are not afraid to stand for the people of their race and religion.”

Oh, yeah, right.

The only people who have lived in the American South have been White people. No one else, eh?

Newsflash:  Native Americans before they were driven nearly to extinction were the original inhabitants of the South.

And here’s a real zinger for you:

Black Americans have lived in the South right along with Native people and Europeans since before 1619. Yeah, I said it. Since before St. Augustine became a city in Florida.

Since before August 28, 1565.

So………..

…………….what was that you said about “the Southern people”?

If you were so gung ho for the “the survival, well being, and independence of the Southern people,” you would be for the fair treatment of all citizens who reside in the South, but, being the racist that you are, you only care for those who have hatred and venom in their veins and are packing white skin.

As for the ReThuglicans not being your cup of tea, for your edification they are just as rapacious and vicious in their maltreatment of this nation as you are. Their contempt for the very being of people who come from all racial groups is an abomination to this country’s survival. So, you can no more consider yourselves as more racist than the GOP. If anything, the present-day GOP is doing everything it can in its power to destroy the United States of America, just like those of your ilk, Mr. Hill.

“At the League’s March 2011 meeting in Georgia, he urged his members to stock up on AK-47s, hollow-point bullets and tools to derail trains.”

Okay, so you plan to take down a locomotive with hollow points? With an AK-47?

I know the AK is a powerful gun, but to my knowledge, there has never been a gun so ferocious that it can stop a locomotive.

Faster than a locomotive, yes.

But, more powerful?

Hollow points and whatever “tools” you are going to use to derail trains?

Fool, listen very carefully:

You derail a train, and cause multiple deaths, be prepared to face the death penalty.

That is the death penalty for each and every death you cause.

Even if you do not cause any loss of human life, for derailing a train, especially an Amtrak train, the federal conviction is life imprisonment.

Really, the sickness that is racism results not only in insanity.

It also results in the stupidity of some people, like Hill, who have not only hatred of their fellow human beings, but also self-hatred of themselves.

“What would it take to get you to fight? The mantra [that] violence, or the serious threat thereof, never settles anything is patently false. History shows that it indeed does settle many things.”

No, history only proves that those who hate like you will always be on the losing side.

Oh, you may have a time span to cause hell and grief but, in the end you will eventually go the way of all those who set out to do wrong.

In the end, it is those like yourself, Mr. Hill, who will destroy themselves.

CARTOON OF THE DAY: EGYPT INFLUENCE

Steve Sack has been the editorial cartoonist for the Minneapolis Star Tribune since 1981 and is syndicated by Cagle Cartoons, Inc..  He is the winner of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning.

GEORGE ZIMMERMAN ACQUITTED IN KILLING OF TRAYVON MARTIN

Everyone by now knows the verdict: Not guilty.

It does not surprise me that George Zimmerman was found not guilty of second-degree murder in the shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin.

I said it here, as I knew that in his use of the Florida Stand Your Ground law, George Zimmerman would get off scot-free when the trial ended.

Doesn’t lessen the hurt that a Black human being’s life has no rights that anyone is bound to respect.

The following article from The New York Times gives  the account of the end phase of the trial concerning the principles of the case: the Martin family, Zimmerman, and the rest of the nation.

On that night, February 26, 2012, if George Zimmerman had stayed in his truck and waited for the police to arrive, Trayvon Martin would still be alive today. George Zimmerman stalked, at night, in the rain, Trayvon Martin, causing him to fear for his life. George Zimmerman was armed and with that weapon during the altercation between him and Trayvon, he shot Trayvon in the heart at point-blank range, causing immediate death.

For that alone, he should have been convicted under Florida’s state law of second-degree manslaughter. Obviously the piss-poor job done by the prosecutors, the sloppy handling of evidence of the now fired police officers, the defense lawyers of Zimmerman painting a picture of Trayvon as the aggressor (when in fact it was Zimmerman), and the deliberations of  a 5 White female with 1 female of unknown racial ancestry jury that sealed the case with a Not Guilty verdict.

But, Trayvon Martin was just another Black citizen whose life means nothing.

Black life has never meant anything in America.

Black life still means nothing in the land of the free, the home of the brave.

Next up for the family of Trayvon Martin:   a wrongful death civil lawsuit.

I still wonder if the following had happened:

-If Trayvon Martin was a young Black woman on her way back to her parent’s home, and she was in fear of her life while being stalked by Zimmerman, and she fought back to the best of her ability and she was shot to death by Zimmerman?

Would he have been able to receive a get-out-of-jail-free card as he did with this trial.

Or would he face a conviction of second-degree manslaughter?

Dollars to donuts, she would have been shot dead, her character maligned and drug through the mud, with her shooter accusing her of attempted robbery, rape, and murder.

The jury’s verdict sends a message that the Stand Your Ground Law gave America another dead body of a Black citizen and will continue to do so in the years ahead. Florida’s SYGL, and laws like it all across America, permits the use of deadly force, even when one’s life is not in danger, as Zimmerman’s life was not under attack. It was the life and body of Trayvon Martin that was threatened and destroyed. The SYGL across America basically legalize murder and vigilantism, pure and simple. Laws which have been in effect for over 100 years, after the American Revolution, during race-based slavery, during Reconstruction, during the days of the Wild, Wild West, during Jane Crow segregation, right up into the last century and into present-day America.

And justice was not served.

Zimmerman’s life punishment should be a long unending series of shunning and banishment, for as long as he lives, with the memory of that night. But in the end, shunning and banishing him in his public life will never compare to the anguish and hell he will have to live with for taking Trayvon’s life. He will be looking over his shoulder for the rest of his life.

As for Zimmerman:  He will still be able to get up the next morning and get on with his life: eating, drinking, wearing out clothes, seeing yet another sunrise, another sunset.

As for young Trayvon Martin, who was born Februay 5, 1995, the cold earth holds him in its embrace, never to see life again when he walked out of his parent’s home that fateful night on February 26, 2012.

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ZIMMERMAN IS ACQUITED IN KILLING OF TRAYVON MARTIN

By Axel Gerdau

Protests Follow Zimmerman Acquittal:  The fallout over the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin reverberated across the country on Sunday, from church pulpits to street protests.

By LIZETTE ALVAREZ and CARA BUCKLEY

Published: July 14, 2013

• SANFORD, Fla. — George Zimmerman, the neighborhood watch volunteer who fatally shot Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teenager, igniting a national debate on racial profiling and civil rights, was found not guilty late Saturday night of second-degree murder. He was also acquitted of manslaughter, a lesser charge.

Pool photo by Gary W. Green

George Zimmerman was congratulated by Don West and Lorna Truett, members of his defense team, in court late Saturday.

After three weeks of testimony, the six-woman jury rejected the prosecution’s contention that Mr. Zimmerman had deliberately pursued Mr. Martin because he assumed the hoodie-clad teenager was a criminal and instigated the fight that led to his death.

Mr. Zimmerman said he shot Mr. Martin on Feb. 26, 2012, in self-defense after the teenager knocked him to the ground, punched him and slammed his head repeatedly against the sidewalk. In finding him not guilty of murder or manslaughter, the jury agreed that Mr. Zimmerman could have been justified in shooting Mr. Martin because he feared great bodily harm or death.

The jury, which had been sequestered since June 24, deliberated 16 hours and 20 minutes over two days. The six female jurors entered the quiet, tense courtroom, several looking exhausted, their faces drawn and grim. After the verdict was read, each assented, one by one, quietly, their agreement with the verdict.

The case began in the small city of Sanford as a routine homicide but soon evolved into a civil rights cause examining racial profiling and its consequences — an issue barred from the courtroom — and setting off a broad discussion of race relations in America. Mr. Martin, with his gray hooded sweatshirt and his Skittles — the candy he was carrying — became its catalyst.

Even President Obama weighed in a month after the shooting, expressing sympathy for Mr. Martin’s family and urging a thorough investigation. “If I had a son,” Mr. Obama said, “he’d look like Trayvon.”

Saturday night when the verdict was read, Mr. Zimmerman, 29, smiled slightly. His wife, Shellie, and several of his friends wept, and his parents kissed and embraced.

Sybrina Fulton and Tracy Martin, who lost their son a few weeks after his 17th birthday, were not in the courtroom. In a statement released early Sunday, their attorney, Benjamin Crump, said the family was heartbroken, and that they thanked people around the world for their support.

“Trayvon Martin will forever remain in the annals of history next to Medgar Evers and Emmett Till,” he said, “as symbols for the fight for equal justice for all.”

After the verdict, Judge Debra S. Nelson of Seminole County Court, told Mr. Zimmerman, who has been in hiding and wears a bulletproof vest outside, that his bond was released and his GPS monitor would be cut off. “You have no further business with the court,” she said.

Outside the courthouse, perhaps a hundred protesters who had been gathering through the night, their numbers building as the hours passed, began pumping their fists in the air, waving placards and chanting, “No justice, no peace!” Sheriff’s deputies lined up inside the courthouse, watching the crowd, who were chanting peacefully, but intently.

By 11:20, more than an hour after the verdict had been read, the crowd outside the courtroom had begun to dwindle; fists were no longer aloft, placards had come down.

Among the last of the protesters to leave the courthouse lawn was Mattie Aikens, 33, of Sanford. She had been standing outside since noon, holding a bag of Skittles and a can of Arizona watermelon drink, which Mr. Martin was carrying the night he was shot. More than an hour after the verdict, she was still shocked. “He should have went to prison,” she said. “He should have just got guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty.”

Mark O’Mara, one of Mr. Zimmerman’s lawyers, said, “George Zimmerman was never guilty of anything except firing the gun in self-defense.”

In a news conference following the verdict, Angela B. Corey, the state attorney who brought the charges, rebuffed the suggestion that her office overcharged Mr. Zimmerman.

“We charged what we had based on the facts of the case,” she said. “We truly believe the mind-set of George Zimmerman and the reason he was doing what he did fit the bill for second-degree murder.”

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Zimmerman Acquittal Is Read in Court

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Key Disputes in the Zimmerman Trial

The Zimmerman Trial, Day by Day

Calling it a “very trying time,” Mr. Crump said he had urged Mr. Martin’s parents to stay out of the courtroom for the verdict. They were home and planning to attend church on Sunday.

Mr. Crump asked the family’s supporters keep the peace and read a Twitter post by Dr. Bernice King, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s daughter.

“Whatever the Zimmerman verdict is,” Mr. Crump read, “in the words of my father, we must conduct ourselves on the higher plane of dignity and discipline.”

Sanford’s new police chief, Cecil E. Smith, was in the courtroom for the verdict, and said afterward that while many calls were coming in from worried residents, the downtown was open and neighborhoods were calm.

Still, there was anger over the verdict. “We are outraged and heartbroken over today’s verdict,” said Benjamin Todd Jealous, president of the N.A.A.C.P. “We stand with Trayvon’s family and we are called to act. We will pursue civil rights charges with the Department of Justice, we will continue to fight for the removal of Stand Your Ground laws in every state, and we will not rest until racial profiling in all its forms is outlawed.”

Mr. O’Mara disputed the notion that Mr. Zimmerman engaged in racial profiling. “His history was not as a racist,” he said.

He added that if Mr. Zimmerman was black, he likely would never have been charged. “This became a focus for a civil rights event, which is a wonderful event to have,” he said, “but they decided George Zimmerman was to blame and to use as a civil rights violation.”

And while defense lawyers were elated with the verdict, they also expressed anger that Mr. Zimmerman spent 16 months filled with fear and trauma when all he was doing was defending himself.

“The prosecution of George Zimmerman was a disgrace,” said Don West, one of Mr. Zimmerman’s lawyers. “I am thrilled that this jury kept this tragedy from become a travesty.”

The shooting brought attention to Florida’s expansive self-defense laws. The laws allow someone with a reasonable fear of great bodily harm or death to use lethal force, even if retreating from danger is an option. In court, the gunman is given the benefit of the doubt.

The public outcry began after the police initially decided not to arrest Mr. Zimmerman, who is half-Peruvian, as they investigated the shooting. Mr. Martin, 17, had no criminal record and was on a snack run, returning to the house where he was staying as a guest.

Six weeks later, Mr. Zimmerman was arrested, but only after civil rights leaders championed the case and demonstrators, many wearing hoodies, marched in Sanford, Miami and elsewhere to demand action.

“Justice for Trayvon!” they shouted.

The pressure prompted Gov. Rick Scott of Florida to remove local prosecutors from the case and appoint Ms. Corey, from Jacksonville. She ultimately charged Mr. Zimmerman with second-degree murder. The tumult also led to the firing of the Sanford police chief.

Through it all, Mr. Martin’s parents said they sought one thing: That Mr. Zimmerman have his day in court.

From the start of the trial, prosecutors faced a difficult task in proving second-degree murder. That charge required Mr. Zimmerman to have evinced a “depraved mind,” brimming with ill will, hatred, spite or evil intent, when he shot Mr. Martin.

Manslaughter, which under Florida law is typically added as a lesser charge if either side requests it, was a lower bar. Jurors needed to decide only that Mr. Zimmerman put himself in a situation that culminated in Mr. Martin’s death.

But because of Florida’s laws, prosecutors had to persuade jurors beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Zimmerman did not act in self-defense. A shortage of evidence in the case made that a high hurdle, legal experts said.

Even after three weeks of testimony, the fight between Mr. Martin and Mr. Zimmerman on that rainy night was a muddle, fodder for reasonable doubt. It remained unclear who had started it, who screamed for help, who threw the first punch and at what point Mr. Zimmerman drew his gun. There were no witnesses to the shooting.

The state presented a case that was strong on guesswork and emotion but weak on evidence and proof, Mr. O’Mara said.

“Don’t connect those dots unless they are connected for you, beyond a reasonable doubt, by the state,” he urged the jury.

In the end, prosecutors were left with Mr. Zimmerman’s version of events.

The defense also had one piece of irrefutable evidence, photographs of Mr. Zimmerman’s injuries — a bloody nose along with lumps and two cuts on his head. It indicated that there had been a fight and that Mr. Zimmerman had been harmed, and the defense showed them to the jury at every opportunity.

Prosecutors built their case around Mr. Zimmerman’s persona — a “wannabe cop” — his wrong assumptions and his words.

Mr. Zimmerman, they said, was so concerned about burglaries in his townhouse complex that when he spotted Mr. Martin, an unfamiliar face in the rain, he immediately “profiled” him as a criminal. He picked up his phone and reported him to the police.

Then he made the first in a string of bad choices, they said. He got out of the car with a gun on his waist; he disregarded a police dispatcher’s advice not to follow Mr. Martin and he chased the teenager, engaged in a fight and shot him in the heart.

To stave off an arrest, he lied to the police, prosecutors said, embellishing his story to try to flesh out his self-defense claim.

“Punks,” Mr. Zimmerman said to the police dispatcher after he spotted Mr. Martin, adding a profanity. “They always get away,” he said at another point in the conversation, a reference to would-be burglars.

On these words, prosecutors hung their case of ill will, hatred and spite toward Mr. Martin.

“This defendant was sick and tired of it,” Bernie de la Rionda, the chief prosecutor, said in his closing statement. “He was going to be what he wanted to be — a police officer.”

But no one saw the shooting; witnesses saw and heard only parts of the struggle, and provided conflicting accounts.

And there was not a “shred of evidence” that Mr. Zimmerman was not returning to his car when Mr. Martin “pounced,” defense lawyers said.

The prosecution’s witnesses did not always help their case. Rachel Jeantel, the 19-year-old who was talking with Mr. Martin on his cellphone shortly before he was shot, proved problematic. Her testimony was critical for the prosecution because she said that Mr. Martin was being followed by Mr. Zimmerman — a “creepy-ass cracker,” he called him — and that he was scared.

But Ms. Jeantel might have damaged her credibility by acknowledging she had lied about her age and why she did not attend Mr. Martin’s wake. She also testified that she softened her initial account of her chat with Mr. Martin for fear of upsetting Ms. Fulton, who sat next to her, weeping, during Ms. Jeantel’s first interview with prosecutors.

Prosecutors also were not helped by the police and crime scene technicians, who made some mistakes in the case. Mr. Martin’s sweatshirt, for example, was improperly bagged, which might have degraded DNA evidence.

Typically, police testimony boosts the state’s case. Here, the chief police investigator, Chris Serino, told jurors that he believed Mr. Zimmerman, despite contradictions in his statements.

Still, prosecutors had emotion on their side — the heart-wrenching narrative of a teenager “minding his own business” who was gunned down as he walked home with a pocketful of Skittles and a fruit drink.

“That child had every right to do what he was doing, walking home,” said John Guy, a prosecutor in the case. “That child had every right to be afraid of a strange man following him, first in his car and then on foot. And did that child not have the right to defend himself from that strange man?”

Through it all, though, the defense chipped away at the prosecution’s case. The resident with the best vantage point of the fight described a “ground and pound” fight, with a person in red or a light color on the bottom. Mr. Zimmerman wore a reddish jacket.

And a prominent forensic pathologist who is an expert in gunshot wounds testified that the trajectory of the bullet was consistent with Mr. Martin leaning over Mr. Zimmerman when the gun was fired.

“Let him go back,” Mr. O’Mara said to the jury, referring to Mr. Zimmerman, “and get back to his life.”

On Saturday, the jury did just that.

SOURCE

IN REMEMBRANCE: 7-14-2013

LAYHMOND ROBINSON JR., WHO PAVED THE WAY FOR BLACK JOURNALISTS

By DANIEL E. SLOTNIK

Published: July 11, 2013

• Layhmond Robinson Jr., one of the first black reporters at The New York Times, who later became a local television news correspondent, died on June 29 in Queens. He was 88.

The New York Times

Layhmond Robinson in 1965.

The cause was complications of pneumonia, his daughter Deborah Robinson said.

Mr. Robinson became a reporter for The Times in 1950, when black faces in the newsroom were rare. He covered crime in Brooklyn, then the New York State Legislature and the contentious 1961 mayoral race between Robert F. Wagner Jr. and then state attorney general, Louis K. Lefkowitz. In 1964, he became the first black president of the Legislative Correspondents Association, a group of reporters covering New York State government.

Mr. Robinson helped to inspire the next generation of black journalists.

“There were, here and there, some black journalists with the white media,” Thomas A. Johnson, the first black reporter at Newsday and one of the first black foreign correspondents for The New York Times, wrote in an essay that appears on the Web site of the Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education. “The fact that Carl T. Rowan, Layhmond Robinson, Bob Teague, Ted Poston, Orrin Evans and some others had cleared that chasm encouraged a number of us to submit our applications to the dailies.”

In 1965, Mr. Robinson left The Times for WABC-TV in New York.

Layhmond (rhymes with “Raymond”) Mack Robinson Jr. was born on Feb. 11, 1925, in Abbeville, La. He served in the Navy as a photographer and writer from 1943 until 1946, then went to Syracuse University. He graduated in 1949 and moved to New York City, where he became a copy boy at The Times and completed a master’s program at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

Mr. Robinson married Elsie Blair in 1955. She survives him, as do three sons, Philip, David and Christopher; a second daughter, Teresa Kamara; five grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.

After leaving WABC-TV, Mr. Robinson worked in public relations for the National Urban League, the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation and the federal Department of Health, Education and Welfare.

SOURCE

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CHUCK FOLEY, CO-CREATOR OF THE GAME TWISTER

By MARGALIT FOX

Published: July 11, 2013

• Chuck Foley, a game designer who helped inaugurate a craze that rivaled the hula hoop, scandalized the puritanical and drove chiropractors wild with delight, died on July 1 in St. Louis Park, Minn. Mr. Foley, an inventor of Twister, was 82.

Buzz Magnuson/St. Paul Pioneer Press

Chuck Foley, center, and Neil Rabens, developers of the game, demonstrated it in 1966 to Charles McCarty in Minnesota.

The cause was complications of Alzheimer’s disease, his son Mark said.

Mr. Foley and a colleague, Neil Rabens, developed the game, known on the drawing board as Pretzel, for a St. Paul design concern in the mid-1960s. Originally manufactured by Milton Bradley, Twister was introduced in 1966 and has gone on to sell tens of millions of copies.

In 1969, Mr. Foley and Mr. Rabens were awarded United States Patent 3,454,279 for their invention, “Apparatus for Playing a Game Wherein the Players Constitute the Game Pieces.”

Currently made by Hasbro, Twister is inextricably knotted into late-20th-century popular culture. In a memorable sendup of the chess-playing scene in Ingmar Bergman’s “Seventh Seal,” for instance, the 1991 film “Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey” features its young heroes (Keanu Reeves and Alex Winter) playing Twister with Death. Death loses.

The game’s premise is simple, involving two or more players, sock feet, a spinner and a vinyl mat emblazoned with dots of red, blue, yellow and green. As the spinner is spun, players enact its instructions (“Right hand, yellow”; “Left foot, green”), forming a complex, suggestive architecture for which human limbs are inadequately evolved. To fall is to be eliminated.

Visually, Twister marries Alexander Calder sculpture with the hokey pokey and the Kama Sutra — the last point brought unmistakably home on “The Tonight Show” in 1966, when Johnny Carson and a low-necklined Eva Gabor played the game on camera, sending sales soaring.

Charles Fredrick Foley II was born on Sept. 6, 1930, in Lafayette, Ind. Before he was out of grade school, he invented an automatic latching mechanism for the cattle pen on his grandfather’s farm. As a young man, he worked for a research and development concern in Detroit, where he helped perfect an automatic cocktail shaker.

In the 1960s, he joined Reynolds Guyer House of Design, the St. Paul company at which he and Mr. Rabens, an artist, developed Twister. Mr. Foley received no royalties for the game, his son said, eventually accepting about $27,000 in a negotiated buyout.

In retirement a resident of Charlotte, N.C., Mr. Foley lived most recently in Minneapolis. His other inventions include toy handcuffs and Un-Du, a liquid that removes adhesives.

Mr. Foley’s first wife, the former Kathleen Maley, died in 1975; his second wife, the former Melonie Reece, died in 2007. Besides his son Mark, his survivors include two brothers, Mike and Bernard; two sisters, Veronica Lewis and Carolyn Walker; five other sons, Chuck, Kevin, Brian, Pat and Mike; three daughters, Mary Kay Foley, Kerin Logstrom and Katie Foley; 16 grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.

Mr. Rabens also survives.

When Twister made its debut, Milton Bradley’s competitors accused the company of selling “sex in a box.” But that, Mr. Foley said, was practically beside the point.

“Once you get men and women in play positions, unless you’re drinking, you forget the sex thing,” he told an interviewer in 1994. “The urge to win takes over.”

SOURCE

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LELAND MITCHELL, WHO DEFIED RACISM ON THE BASKETBALL COURT

By DOUGLAS MARTIN

Published: July 10, 2013

• In 1963, Leland Mitchell and his Mississippi State teammates had to sneak out of their state to compete in the N.C.A.A. basketball tournament. Gov. Ross Barnett and other hard-core segregationists were worried that their all-white team might compete against blacks, a step the governor said he feared “might lead to integration across the land.”

Mississippi State University

Leland Mitchell (44) in the 1963 N.C.A.A. tournament. A state judge had barred Mississippi State from playing against blacks.

In a tense if peculiar moment in the civil rights movement, a state court had enjoined Mississippi State University from going to Michigan to play Loyola University of Chicago in the Midwest Regional of the prestigious tournament. Mississippi State had won the right to advance to national play by winning the championship of the Southeastern Conference. It was the fourth time in five years that the university earned a berth but seemingly would again be unable to play.

But the team did play. The game between Mississippi State and Loyola on March 15, 1963 — contested at the height of the civil rights struggle — is widely seen as the beginning of the end of segregation in college sports.

In explaining his opposition to integrated sports in 1960, Governor Barnett had said: “If there were a half-dozen Negroes on the team, where are they going to eat? Are they going to want to go to the dance later and want to dance with our girls?”

But by the spring of 1963, pride in Mississippi State’s superb basketball team was challenging old racial attitudes, which were already starting to soften. Reacting to pressure from students and the public, the university president and the board governing state universities agreed to let the team compete. The governor and a handful of state legislators fumed but realized that they had no legal power to stop the team.

Then a chancery court judge stepped in and issued an injunction to keep the university from violating “the public policies of the state of Mississippi.”

Mitchell, a star player and team leader who died at age 72 on Saturday at his home in Starkville, Miss., had an immediate and sharp reaction.

“We need to head out tonight,” he said. “Who all else has a car?”

The actual escape was more complicated. The university president decided the officials named in the injunction should get out of town. He left for a speaking engagement in Atlanta. The coach, Babe McCarthy, along with the athletic director and his assistant, drove on back roads to Memphis and flew to Nashville. The next morning, the team’s second-stringers were sent to the local airport in Starkville.

They encountered no interference, so the rest of the team was summoned to the airport. The players all flew to Nashville, where they joined McCarthy for a chartered flight to East Lansing, Mich., the site of the regional.

“It was cloak-and-dagger stuff,” Mitchell once said. “It was almost like cops and robbers.”

In the game, all-white Mississippi State took on a Loyola team with four black starters. The Mississippi team was named the Maroons, an old Southern term for runaway slaves, which eventually gave way to Bulldogs.

In the first five minutes the Maroons took a 7-0 lead, and could have had 11 points had they not missed four free throws.

Loyola ultimately won, 61-51, and the play was gentlemanly.

“There wasn’t one incident,” Mitchell said, “and not because we weren’t trying or trying to be nice.”

As for playing an integrated team, Mitchell saw no difference: “They just seem harder to keep up with.”

But he acknowledged that his team “didn’t know the significance of what we did.”

“It didn’t hit us until later,” he said in an interview with Newsday in 1996.

Mitchell had 14 points and 11 rebounds before fouling out with over six minutes left. The Chicago Tribune attributed Loyola’s victory to his absence, calling him “a great performer and the only Southerner who could rebound” against Loyola.

The game was played five months after James Meredith became the first black student admitted to the University of Mississippi, amid rioting in which two people were shot and killed. Two years later, Richard Holmes was peacefully admitted as the first black student at Mississippi State.

Leland Noyal Mitchell was born on Feb. 22, 1941, in Kiln, Miss., one of 10 children of a carpenter. He lied about his age to get a job at a shrimp stand as an eighth grader, and was painting radio towers by his senior year of high school. He made the all-state basketball team and was one of an outstanding group of freshman players admitted to Mississippi State in 1959.

Mitchell was 6 feet 4 inches, 210 pounds and played both guard and forward. He was chosen by the St. Louis Hawks in the second round of the 1963 N.B.A. draft, but was cut. He played for the New Orleans Buccaneers of the American Basketball Association, coached by McCarthy in the 1967-68 season.

He later worked in real estate until sustaining a severe spinal cord injury in 2001. His daughter, Melanie Sparrow, who confirmed his death, did not specify a cause.

In addition to his daughter, he is survived by his wife, Mary Carolyn Tranum; his sons, Leland Jr., David and Michael; his sister, Muriel Necaise; his brothers, Russell and Melvin; and three grandchildren.

After losing to Loyola, Mississippi State defeated Bowling Green in a consolation game. After the final buzzer, Mitchell shook hands with Nate Thurmond, Bowling Green’s star player, who later excelled in the N.B.A. — and who is black.

That interracial handshake drew considerable attention. Today such handshakes are an accepted part of the game’s mosaic.

SOURCE

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CORY MONTEITH, A STAR OF TV’S ‘GLEE’

By DAVE ITZKOFF

Published: July 14, 2013

• Cory Monteith, who played an upbeat and outgoing young student and singing coach on the hit Fox musical comedy series “Glee,” but who battled substance abuse, was found dead in a hotel room in Vancouver, British Columbia, on Saturday. He was 31.

Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images

Cory Monteith

Adam Rose/Fox

Mr. Monteith with Lea Michele on the Fox series “Glee.” He had recently undergone treatment for substance abuse.

The police said that Mr. Monteith was found dead in his 21st-floor room at the Fairmont Pacific Rim hotel in Vancouver around noon after he missed his scheduled checkout time. They said that there was no indication of foul play and that people Mr. Monteith had been with earlier were being interviewed, but that they believe he was alone when he died.

The coroner will try to establish the cause of death, a police statement said.

Mr. Monteith, a 6-foot-3 performer with a youthful countenance and a soft-spoken demeanor who described himself on his personal Twitter page as a “tall, awkward, Canadian, actor, drummer, person,” gained worldwide attention when “Glee” made its debut on the Fox network in 2009.

On that series, Mr. Monteith played Finn Hudson, an Ohio high school student and football star who initially had no interest in joining his school’s struggling glee club for fear it would cost him his popularity and social standing.

But once drawn into the singing squad, Finn became a crucial member, sharing vocal duties on its signature cover of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’,” and also sharing romantic tensions with his fellow students Rachel (Lea Michele) and Quinn (Dianna Agron). In recent episodes, Finn graduated from high school but returned to coach the glee squad of which he had once been a member.

“Glee,” which recently finished its fourth season, is one of Fox’s biggest hits of recent years, especially with younger audiences, although its ratings have been dropping for the last two seasons.

A press representative for Fox said on Sunday that production on the new season of “Glee” was not scheduled to begin until later this month or early August, and that no decision had yet been made about how the show might deal with Mr. Monteith’s death.

In March, Mr. Monteith announced that he had checked himself into a treatment center for an unspecified substance addiction. He had acknowledged in an interview in 2011 that he also sought rehabilitation when he was 19.

Cory Allan Michael Monteith was born on May 11, 1982, in Calgary, Alberta, and raised in Victoria, British Columbia, after his parents divorced. He dropped out of school at 16, having attended 16 different schools by that time, and worked at many jobs before winning his first professional acting roles in his early 20s.

Mr. Monteith appeared on television shows like “Stargate Atlantis,” “Supernatural” and “Smallville,” then landed his role on “Glee” with the help of an audition tape on which he sang REO Speedwagon’s 1985 No. 1 hit, the love ballad “Can’t Fight This Feeling.”

The news of Mr. Monteith’s death elicited an outpouring of grief and remembrances from friends and colleagues.

Dot-Marie Jones, a “Glee” co-star, wrote on her Twitter account that Mr. Monteith “was not only a hell of a friend” but an “amazing” man “that I will hold close to my heart forever.”

Mr. Monteith’s press representatives at Viewpoint Public Relations said in a brief statement: “We are so saddened to confirm that the reports on the death of Cory Monteith are accurate. We are in shock and mourning this tragic loss.”

The Fox Broadcasting Company, 20th Century Fox Television and the executive producers of “Glee” said in a statement: “We are deeply saddened by this tragic news. Cory was an exceptional talent and an even more exceptional person. He was a true joy to work with and we will all miss him tremendously. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family and loved ones.”

According to some news reports, Mr. Monteith is survived by his parents and a brother.

In an interview in 2011, Mr. Monteith had said that he hoped his struggles with addiction would offer an example to others.

“I don’t want kids to think it’s O.K. to drop out of school and get high, and they’ll be famous actors, too,” he said. “But for those people who might give up: Get real about what you want and go after it.”

SOURCE

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FROM THE ARCHIVES

Harriet Beecher Stowe, Author of ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin,’ Dies at 83

(July 1, 1896)

Anna Howard Shaw, Suffragist, Dies at 72

(July 2, 1919)

Ernest Hemingway, Author, Dies at 61

(July 2, 1961)

Andrey Gromyko, Face of Postwar Soviet Diplomacy, Dies at 79

(July 2, 1989)

James Stewart, the Hesitant Hero, Dies at 89

(July 2, 1997)

Louis Armstrong, Jazz Trumpeter, Dies at 71

(July 6, 1971)

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Creator of Sherlock Holmes, Dies at 71

(July 7, 1930)

Earl Warren, Who Led High Court, Dies at 83

(July 9, 1974)

Arthur Fiedler, Conductor of Boston Pops, Dies at 84

(July 10, 1979)

Adlai Ewing Stevenson, Politician and Diplomat, Dies at 65

(July 14, 1965)

James McNeill Whistler, Celebrated American Artist, Dies at 69

(July 17, 1903)

Billie Holiday, Jazz Singer, Dies at 44

(July 17, 1959)

Alan B. Shepard, First American in Space, Dies at 74

(July 21, 1998)

Ulysses S. Grant, Soldier and President, Dies at 63

(July 23, 1885)

Hassan II, Monarch of Morocco, Dies at 70

(July 23, 1999)

Eva Peron, First Lady of Argentina, Dies at 33

(July 26, 1952)

Gertrude Stein, Writer, Dies at 72

(July 27, 1946)

Robert Moses, Master Builder, Dies at 92

(July 29, 1981)

SKYWATCH: MOON DANCES WITH SPICA, ALIEN PALNET’S COLOR REVEALED, AND MORE

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A Glassy Blue Jupiter

July 12, 2013                                                                | For the first time, astronomers know the true color of an exoplanet — and it appears an un-Earthly shade of blue. But don’t pack your bags… > read more

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Tour July’s Sky by Eye and Ear!

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© 2013 Thierry Legault

The Ultimate New-Moon Sighting

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This Week’s Sky at a Glance

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CARTOON OF THE DAY: ZIMMERMAN TRIAL RESTS

Jeff Darcy  is the staff cartoonist for the Cleveland Plain Dealer.