This will go on my headstone
Vol. 3, Issue 25
“I just accomplished something that I’m 88.43% sure no one ever has before. I finished not one but TWO whole Burt’s Beeswax lip balms without losing them or putting them through the wash. Pretty sure this will go on my headstone as my greatest achievement.” —Christine Jetter Aquista
NEWS & NOTES
Declared dead in error
A toddler who was found face down in the family’s pool on Super Bowl Sunday and declared dead at the hospital was later discovered alive in the morgue.
The 18-month-old boy, whose name has not been released, was transported by ambulance to Dignity Health Mercy Gilbert Medical Center in Gilbert, Ariz., on Feb. 8. According to ABC 15 Arizona, which reviewed the police report and body camera video, the police officers on scene and at least one nurse reported seeing and hearing signs of life. However, the doctor who treated the child reportedly believed he had drowned and declared him dead at 6:20 p.m.
At that point, the toddler’s parents said their goodbyes, Arizona Family reported.
Hours later, the police were notified that the child had been found in the hospital’s “cold room” and was still alive. After the boy was air-lifted to Phoenix Children’s Hospital, the staff there ran numerous tests and learned that he had survived the near-drowning but sustained brain damage.
At this time, the doctor who initially declared the child dead is not facing any criminal charges related to the incident. The Maricopa County Attorney’s Office is also reviewing the case to determine if the parents will face charges related to the drowning.
FMI: Click here.
Drawn to cemeteries
Are you a taphophile? That is a person with a passion for epitaphs, cemeteries/graveyards and tombstones. These folks -- and yes, I am one -- will often visit cemeteries to learn more about their history, visit famous residents, take photographs, conduct ancestry research, wander amongst the stones or simply sit peacefully in a park-like setting.
Many cemeteries hold tours, both walking and by trolley, featuring knowledgeable guides who explain the history of the land and its residents.
A cemetery in Sheffield, U.K., holds a popular music series each summer.
Hollywood Forever in Los Angeles screens classic films outdoors each summer and hosts the largest Dia de Los Muertos event in the U.S. each fall.
Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn recently opened a $43 million visitor’s center and exhibition hall to showcase the many features of the 478-acre cemetery and serve as a community hub for events, research and art exhibits.
The Congressional Cemetery in Washington, D.C., has its own book club, Tombs & Tomes, which meets every other month in the historic chapel. This month’s selection is “The Sinners All Bow: Two Authors, One Murder, and the Real Hester Prynne” by Kate Winkler Dawson.
The Audubon Society even recommends birding amongst the graves. Some cemeteries, such as Green-Wood, offer specialized walking tours just for birders.
So, the next time you’re looking for something interesting to do, stop by a cemetery. You might be surprised at all of the interesting things you’ll find.
When you encounter the mortician of the Internet
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NOTABLE OBITS
* Grammy Award-winning music mogul Clive Davis, 94, who mentored, produced and promoted some of the greatest artists in modern music history, died. Born in Brooklyn, Davis graduated from New York University and Harvard Law School and entered the music business as a corporate attorney for CBS Records. In the late 1960s, Davis moved into producing, first at Columbia/CBS, then at Arista Records, which he founded after being accused of misusing corporate funds and pleading guilty to tax evasion. Over the next 50 years, he developed a stable of talent that included Christina Aguilera, Kelly Clarkson, Aretha Franklin, Whitney Houston, Jennifer Hudson, Janis Joplin, Alicia Keys, Barry Manilow, Carlos Santana, Bruce Springsteen and Rod Stewart, among others. Davis also co-founded Bad Boy Records with Sean “Diddy” Combs, which featured music by hip-hop artists such as the Notorious B.I.G. The Grammy Museum in Los Angeles named its 200-seat venue the Clive Davis Theater in his honor. (Nardine Saad, Los Angeles Times and Chris Morris, Variety)
* Alan Greenspan, a celebrity among central bankers and the head of the Federal Reserve from 1987 to 2006, died. He was 100. The native New Yorker earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in economics from New York University. In the 1950s, he founded an economic consulting firm and befriended author Ayn Rand (“The Fountainhead,” “Atlas Shrugged”), whose Objectivist school viewed capitalism as superior to all other economic systems and held that government regulation violated individual freedoms. Martin Anderson, another Rand adherent, brought Greenspan into the political realm by hiring him to work on Richard Nixon’s 1968 presidential campaign. Greenspan would continue to consult with Republican politicians until 1987, when he became Fed chair. During the nearly two decades that Greenspan steered U.S. monetary policy, the economy enjoyed relatively steady growth and low inflation. However, because of his belief that financial markets should regulate themselves rather than address risky lending, many critics blamed him for helping to create the conditions that led to the Great Recession in 2008. (Thomas S. Mulligan and Don Lee, Los Angeles Times and Scott Horsley and John Ydstie, NPR)
* British actress Dame Penelope Keith, 86, who was beloved for playing sharp-tongued upper-crust characters in TV comedies, died. Born in Sutton, Surrey, and raised in south London, Keith took to acting while still in school. Her early career began in the late 1950s, working in repertory theatre and with the Royal Shakespeare Company, yet she would continue to tread the boards at every opportunity for the rest of her life. Although she starred in her own series, “Kate,” in the early 1970s, Keith became famous for playing Margo Leadbetter in the sitcom “The Good Life” and Audrey Forbes-Hamilton in “To the Manor Born.” American audiences fell in love with Keith in the 2020s while watching her serve as a charming TV tour guide for the U.K. Her passion for the British countryside and its people made many across the pond yearn for the coronavirus pandemic to end so that they, too, could visit the places she highlighted on shows like “Penelope Keith’s Hidden Villages” and “Penelope Keith’s Coastal Villages.” For her contributions to entertainment and acts of charity, Keith was awarded BAFTAs, an Olivier, an OBE, a CBE and a damehood. Last week, London’s West End theatres dimmed their lights in her honor. (Rebecca Thomas, BBC News and Tom McArdle, The Telegraph)
* Prolific children’s author Jane Yolen died at 87. The native New Yorker was a voracious reader who penned her first poem when she was 5 years old. Yolen was just 22 when she published her first book, “Pirates in Petticoats,” a history of women swashbucklers, in 1961. (She would later revisit the topic with the 2010 update “Sea Queens: Woman Pirates Around the World.”) Yolen wrote every day and had little problem finding inspiration. She also refused to be confined by one genre, opting instead to pen stories, poems, novels and nonfiction about whatever topic caught her fancy. Although she would eventually write more than 400 books, Yolen enjoyed writing poetry the most. She was best known for the books, “Owl Moon,” which won the Caldecott Medal; “The Girl Who Cried Flowers and Other Tales,” which won a National Book Award, the “How Do Dinosaurs …” series of children’s books, which sold millions of copies, “The Devil’s Arithmetic,” which was adapted into a 1999 cable movie and the “Pit Dragon Chronicles” fantasy series. At the time of her death, she still had 10 more books in the publishing pipeline. (Clay Risen, The New York Times, Shannon Maughan, Publishers Weekly and Bryan Marquard, Boston Globe)
FAMOUS DEATHS IN HISTORY
On July 6, author William Faulkner (64), trumpeter Louis Armstrong (69) and actor James Caan (82)
On July 7, German-Swiss industrialist Henri Nestlé (75), Swiss author Johanna Spyri (74) and English singer/songwriter Syd Barrett (Pink Floyd) (60)
On July 8, English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (29), British actress Vivien Leigh (53) and former first lady Betty Ford (93)
On July 9, former President Zachary Taylor (65), businessman/politician Ross Perot (89) and actor Rip Torn (88)
On July 10, French inventor/photographer Louis-Jacques Daguerre (63), professor/author Clement Clarke Moore (83) and voice actor Mel Blanc (81)
On July 11, English actor Laurence Olivier (82), video game designer Satoru Iwata (55) and actor Charlie Robinson (75)
On July 12, former first lady Dolley Madison (81), trumpeter Benny Carter (95) and comics writer Harvey Pekar (70)
On July 13, Mexican artist Frida Kahlo (47), former Yankees owner George Steinbrenner (80) and Chinese writer/human rights activist/Nobel Peace Prize recipient Liu Xiaobo (61)
RECOMMENDED SUBSTACK
FAMOUS LAST WORDS
“Well, we fooled ‘em for a long time, didn’t we?” --Zip the Pinhead
MOMENT OF GRATITUDE
Thanks to Adam Young, Unsplash, Christine Jetter Aquista, ABC 15 Arizona, YouTube, Arizona’s Family, People Magazine, Dignity Memorial, The Green-Wood Cemetery, The New York Times, Hollywood Forever, Congressional Cemetery, Sheffield General Cemetery, Facebook, Audubon, Caitlin Doughty, Instagram, The Death Deck, The Moonlight Reader Society, Los Angeles Times, Variety, PBS NewsHour, NPR, BBC News, The Telegraph, Open Road Media, Publishers Weekly, Boston Globe, The Written Word, On This Day, Playback.FM, Britannica: This Day in History, Time and Date, Wikipedia, The Grim Historian, Academic Dictionaries and Encyclopedias, Canva and Deposit Photos for art and story suggestions. Note: Generative AI was not used during the ideation, creation or publication of this newsletter.
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Note to self: shred journals. 😄