Woodlawn Memorial Park, Colma

1973.

The owners of a Nashville mortuary chastised Johnny Carson for making jokes about the funeral industry. They purchased a full-page “open letter” in a Tennessee newspaper, calling his Tonight Show monologue “more or less offensive.”

Johnny Carson responded to the controversy on the May 16, 1973 episode of the Tonight Show:

"I don't mean this to offend anybody ... We've all gone through where we've lost relatives or close friends and I did some jokes out in California about a mausoleum that was going up ... the Woodlawn Mausoleum in Tennessee somewhere ... Eventually they hope to have twenty-story building to put dead people in ... I didn't mean anything disrespectful. I really did not because I think you can joke about certain things and we do die ... So, anyway, the Woodlawn Memorial Park and Funeral Home took out this full-page ad called Death is No Joking Matter. Open Letter to Johnny... You know, they’re going to have the last laugh anyway - eventually.”

1912-Harriet Quimby

Harriet Quimby (May 11, 1875 – July 1, 1912) was an American pioneering aviator, journalist, and film screenwriter.

In 1911, she became the first woman in the United States to receive a pilot certificate, issued to her by the Aero Club of America.[1] In 1912, she became the first woman to fly across the English Channel. Although Quimby lived only to the age of 37, she influenced the role of women in aviation.

On July 1, 1912, she flew in the Third Annual Boston Aviation Meet at Squantum, Massachusetts.[1] Although she had obtained her ACA certificate to participate in ACA events, the Boston meet was an unsanctioned contest. Quimby flew out to Boston Light in Boston Harbor at about 3,000 feet (910 m), then returned and circled the airfield.[13]

William A. P. Willard, the organizer of the event and father of the aviator Charles F. Willard, was a passenger in her brand-new two-seat Bleriot monoplane. At an altitude of 1,000 feet (300 m) the aircraft unexpectedly pitched forward for reasons still unknown. Both Willard and Quimby were ejected from their seats and fell to their deaths, while the plane "glided down and lodged itself in the mud".

Harriet Quimby was buried in the Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx, New York. The following year her remains were moved to the Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla, New York.[14] A cenotaph to Quimby, the Harriet Quimby Compass Rose Fountain, stands at Pierce Brothers/Valhalla Memorial Park Cemetery in Burbank, California. Located close to the cemetery's Portal of the Folded Wings, a shrine containing the ashes of aviation pioneers, the Quimby fountain's plaque reads:

Harriet Quimby became the first licensed female pilot in America on August 1, 1911. On April 16, 1912, she was the first woman to fly a plane across the English Channel. She pointed the direction for future women pilots including her friend, Matilde Moisant, buried at the Portal of the Folded Wings.

Ina Kay Carson Pegram, 67, passed away on Friday, October 28, 2022. The daughter of the late John and Dorothy Carson, Ina was born in Atlanta, Georgia, on January 5, 1955. Ina trusted Jesus as her personal Savior when she was 9. She graduated from Woodward Academy in Atlanta, finishing as the Salutatorian of her class. She married the late Dennis Pegram on June 5, 1976, and received a B.S. in Music Education from Bob Jones University the following year.

Dennis and Ina ministered in Virginia Beach before returning to Greenville for graduate school. Ina earned a master’s degree in Sacred Music from BJU, following which she and Dennis faithfully served together at Hampton Park Baptist Church and Christian School until the Lord called Dennis Home suddenly on July 29, 2005. For years Ina was active in the HPBC adult choir and directed the ladies’ ensemble in addition to singing solos.

Ina loved investing in her piano and voice students. She taught at home, at school, and online through Majesty Music Academy and for her favorite students-her seven grandchildren who were taking lessons. She was a member of the National Association for Music Education, the National Association of Teachers of Singing, the Music Teachers National Association, and the National Federation of Music Clubs; she dearly loved the members of her local NFMC clubs-Crescent Music Club and Greenville Woman’s Music Club.

Ina dealt with a number of health challenges over the years but always persevered, diligently doing with tremendous energy whatever God asked of her. In addition to her beloved husband and parents, Ina was preceded in death by four infant grandchildren, brother Michael Carson, father-in-law Joseph Pegram, and mother-in-law Norma Smith.

Ina’s memory will be cherished by her children Joanie Pegram of Taylors, SC; Joshua (Liz) Pegram of Charleston, SC; Audrey Beth (Daniel) Roland of Fort Sill, OK; Bryce (Chelsea) Pegram of Allen Park, MI; Alana (Isaac) Arco of Summerville, SC; Clark-Everett (Bianca) Pegram of Lyman, SC; Ethan (Caroline) Pegram of Pelzer, SC; Lorin Pegram of Greenville, SC; and Ariana (Jacob) Parker of Jacksonville, FL; and her 18 grandchildren-Gracen, Clara Jane, Joseph, Rex, Atlas, Dottie, Liliana, Maya, and Isabella Pegram; Ezra, Noah, Micah, Thaddeus, Renee, Eleanor, Luke, and Justus Roland; and Deacon Arco-as well as siblings Mark (Susan) Carson of Normandy Beach, NJ; Suellen Carson of Brookhaven, GA; Scott (Jane) Carson of Rochester, WI; sister-in-law Susan Carson of Fayetteville, GA; mother-in-law Donna Pegram of Decatur, IA; brothers-in-law Ben (Karla) Pegram of Pleasant Hill, IA; Dan (Suzanne) Pegram of Des Moines, IA; and sister-in-law Helen (Ron) Burkhart also of Des Moines, in addition to many nephews, nieces, cousins, other relatives, and friends.

A visitation will be held Monday, November 7, 2022, from 5:00 p.m. until 8:00 p.m., at Thomas McAfee Funeral Homes, Downtown Chapel, with a funeral service on Tuesday, November 8, 2022, at 12:00 p.m., in Hampton Park Baptist Church and interment to follow in Woodlawn Memorial Park.

In lieu of flowers, the family requests memorials be given to the mission work of Bill and Glenda Davis (Heidelberg, Germany) through www.gfamissions.org or to Mike and Madelaine Dodgens (Gipuzkoa, Spain) through www.faithchristianmissions.org.

#Repost @deptvetaffairs • • • • • • October 27, 1962-60 years-ago, Major Rudolph Anderson, Jr. was killed while flying over Cuba, becoming the only casualty from enemy fire, during the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Anderson's actions defended the United States, and his death is thought to have helped prevent the planet from being drawn into World War III. Since October 14, U.S. reconnaissance flights had discovered and confirmed construction of bases for nuclear missiles that could strike much of the United States. Anderson had volunteered for this, his 6th, and the most dangerous mission during the crisis, as Soviet missile defenses were now operational. U.S. nuclear forces around the world stood on alert at DEFCON 2, 1 step short of nuclear war, and American leadership required real-time intelligence, necessitating this mission. Anderson's U-2 was shot down at the very height of the crisis, ordered by a field commander, but news of Andersons death made leadership in Washington and Moscow step back in realization that events were getting beyond their control. Secret negotiations which ended the crisis, began shortly after Anderson's death. Anderson died at age 35 and is buried at Woodlawn Memorial Park, Greenville, South Carolina. He left behind a wife and unborn daughter, and two sons. USAF Photo: Maj. Rudolf Anderson Jr. (1927-1962) was shot down and killed over Cuba during the October 1962 crisis. He was flying a U-2 from McCoy AFB, Fla., and was brought down by a Soviet SA-2 missile. Anderson was posthumously awarded the first Air Force Cross, which had been created in 1960. Anderson and other Strategic Air Command and Tactical Air Command pilots provided pictures that gave U.S. leaders crucial information and proved to the world that offensive nuclear missiles were being placed in Cuba. TopR: U-2 similar to Anderson's aircraft. USAF Map: A Department of Defense map was used for Oct 22 televised briefing to the public on the Cuban Missile Crisis. The map shows the range of medium-range (1,100 nautical miles) and intermediate-range (2,200 nautical miles) nuclear missiles based in Cuba. DOD #Veterans #HonoringVets #USAIRFORCE https://www.instagram.com/p/CkPbWvuLOVQ/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

Wedding photography Riverdale Park MD

As a wedding photographer, I've created spectacular shots for several couples. I'm a candid shooter, meaning I love to capture the little moments and details you might not think of as "the perfect picture." These small moments, the ones you might have missed if you were too busy worrying about all the other details, make up your day and your memories.

I love capturing the joy of weddings and the unguarded moments between people.

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Service areas: Riverdale Park, MD East Riverdale, MD Greenbelt, MD College Park, MD Woodlawn, MD

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In episode 5 of Creepy & Kooky Cali, host Lauren-Blair Donovan and guest Clark Canez got stopped at Holy Cross cemetery by security for filming. After a long and pleasant conversation with said security guard, he allowed us to film graves that were famous (and even showed us where said famous graves were) but said non-famous graves were off limits. Sounds fair, right? 

 Maybe, maybe not. Clark and Blair debated several nuances (all while championing for the respect of the dead). Blair randomly asked a handful of her guests after this fateful taping their thoughts on filming/photographing/showcasing non-famous graves and sharing them on the Internet (all through a respectful point of view versus punching down.) You may be surprised by the answers.

 In addition to Clark Canez, thank you to Cozi Orlen, Kristen Lucas, Kati O'Hearn, Lacy Hornick, and Nick Mayer for your thoughtful, insightful, hilarious, and critical thinking insights. Below is a full episode list/links in order of the clips appearances: 

 Holy Cross/Clark Canez https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTfVQ... 

 Mount Sinai/Cozi Orlen https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qx08c... 

 Pacific View/Kristen Lucas https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7VIH... 

 Forest Lawn Glendale/Kati O'Hearn https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYfs_... 

 Woodlawn Santa Monica/Lacy Hornick https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xq3Au... 

 Home of Peace/Nick Mayer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hO-U1...

Return to Hollywood Forever/Clark Canez https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b-yAj...

Today we remember the passing of Andrew Wood who died March 19, 1990 in Seattle, Washington

Andrew Patrick Wood (January 8, 1966 – March 19, 1990) was an American musician. He was the lead singer and lyricist for the alternative rock bands Malfunkshun and Mother Love Bone. Wood formed Malfunkshun in 1980 with his older brother Kevin Wood on guitar and Regan Hagar on drums. The band used alter ego personas onstage, with Wood using the name Landrew the Love Child. Though the band only had two songs released, "With Yo' Heart (Not Yo' Hands)" and "Stars-n-You", on the Deep Six compilation album, they are often cited as being among the "founding fathers" of the Seattle grunge movement. During his time in Malfunkshun, Wood started relying heavily on drugs, entering rehab in 1985.

By 1988, Malfunkshun had disbanded and Wood began jamming with Green River members Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament. They soon began writing original material and formed Mother Love Bone the same year, adding guitarist Bruce Fairweather (also a former member of Green River) and drummer Greg Gilmore to the lineup. The following year, the band signed a deal with PolyGram, issuing a six-song EP, Shine, before going on tour, supporting The Dogs D'Amour. Towards the end of the year, the band recorded their debut album, Apple, which was scheduled for release in 1990.

Due to his struggle with drug addiction, Wood checked himself into rehab in 1989, hoping to get clean for the release of Mother Love Bone's debut album. He died in Seattle on March 19, 1990 at the age of 24, after being found in a comatose state by his girlfriend following a heroin overdose.

Wood was born in Columbus, Mississippi, to David C. Wood and Toni Wood, and raised on Bainbridge Island, Washington. He was the youngest of three children; he had two older brothers, Kevin and Brian. Wood and his brothers were exposed to various types of music by their parents, who also supported their children when they were learning how to play instruments. Wood became a fan of acts such as Elton John, Queen, Aerosmith, and Kiss.

In 1980, at the age of 14, Wood formed Malfunkshun with his brother Kevin, recording their first demo tape in April 1980. Drummer Regan Hagar joined soon after with the band, playing shows in Seattle, Washington. Each member adopted onstage alter egos, with Andrew becoming Landrew the Love Child, Kevin becoming Kevinstein, and Hagar becoming Thundarr. Unlike most grunge groups in Seattle, Malfunkshun were influenced by glam rock with Wood described as "a hippie, glammed-out rock & roll god, equal parts Marc Bolan and Jim Morrison," with his look and vocal style influenced by frontmen such as Freddie Mercury, Paul Stanley, and Marc Bolan. Wood developed a drug habit at a young age, having smoked marijuana and cigarettes at the age of around 11 or 12. By 1985, he had started to rely heavily on drugs to help with his "rock star" persona, and entered rehab the same year.

Malfunkshun recorded a number of demos in 1986, two of which, "With Yo' Heart (Not Yo' Hands)" and "Stars-n-You," were included on the "legendary"  Deep Six compilation album released by C/Z Records the same year. The band continued to play shows in Seattle, opening for Soundgarden, The U-Men, and Skin Yard. However, in 1988, Malfunkshun disbanded.

Although the band never released an album and were also turned down by Sub Pop for "not being grunge enough," Malfunkshun, along with Green River, are often cited as "founding fathers" of the Seattle's grunge movement.

Wood and Hagar began playing with Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament of Green River, which disbanded in 1988, performing, on occasion, as the cover band Lords of the Wasteland. Former Green River guitarist Bruce Fairweather was added to the lineup, while former 10 Minute Warning and Skin Yard drummer Greg Gilmore replaced Hagar, forming Mother Love Bone the same year.

The band soon signed a deal with PolyGram, and, through their own subsidiary label Stardog, issued a six-song EP, Shine, in 1989. John Book, of Allmusic, stated that the EP "contributed to the buzz about the Seattle music scene." The band spent the rest of the year touring, including shows supporting The Dogs D'Amour, and recording their debut album. With high expectations of the album, Wood checked himself into rehab due to his struggle with heroin addiction, hoping to get clean for the release of album, staying there for the remainder of the year.

In 1990, the band continued to play shows in Seattle, waiting for the release of their album, Apple. Wood died only weeks before the release of the record. Some rock critics consider them to be one of the greatest bands of the Grunge era

On March 16, 1990, Wood was found in a comatose state by his girlfriend, having overdosed on heroin. Wood was taken to Harborview Hospital and placed on life support. On March 19, physicians suggested that Wood be removed from life support and he was pronounced dead at 3:15 pm that day. The official cause of death recorded on Wood's death certificate is hypoxic encephalopathy. Wood's remains were cremated. His burial site is located at Miller-Woodlawn Memorial Park in Bremerton, Washington.

Apple was released posthumously later in the year, receiving positive reviews. David Browne of The New York Times wrote that "Apple may be one of the first great hard-rock records of the 90s" and that "Andrew Wood could have been the first of the big-league Seattle rock stars."

Shortly following Wood's death, former roommate and friend Chris Cornell of Soundgarden wrote two songs, "Reach Down" and "Say Hello 2 Heaven", as a tribute. Cornell approached Gossard and Ament about releasing the songs as singles before collaborating on an album. Adding drummer Matt Cameron, future Pearl Jam lead guitarist Mike McCready, and future Pearl Jam lead singer Eddie Vedder, they formed Temple of the Dog in 1990 to pay tribute to Wood, releasing one self-titled album in 1991.

In 1992, PolyGram reissued both Shine and Apple as the compilation album Mother Love Bone, while the song "Chloe Dancer/Crown of Thorns" was included on the soundtrack to the film Singles. The same year, Los Angeles band Faster Pussycat wrote the song "Mr. Lovedog", from the album Whipped!, in tribute to Wood. Bradley Torreano of Allmusic stated that the song "offered a sad elegy to another charismatic figure in the metal world."

Seattle rock band War Babies, which briefly featured Mother Love Bone's Jeff Ament on bass, dedicated the song "Blue Tomorrow" off their eponymous 1992 debut album to Wood. In 1993, Seattle post-grunge band Candlebox released their self-titled debut featuring the single "Far Behind", which was written in Wood's memory.

Wood's former bandmate Stone Gossard compiled Malfunkshun recordings from 1986 to 1987 and released the studio album Return to Olympus through his Loosegroove Records label in 1995. In 2005, director Scot Barbour completed production on the documentary Malfunkshun: The Andrew Wood Story. The film documents Wood's music career as well as his family background. The film premiered at the Seattle International Film Festival. In October of the same year, the film was screened at the FAIF Film Festival in Hollywood, California. The film was released in 2011 on DVD as part of a 2CD+DVD set entitled "Malfunkshun: The Andrew Wood Story" including the Return to Olympus album, a bonus CD including many interviews and demos, and the movie on the DVD disc.

In 2011, the album Melodies & Dreams was released. It featured unreleased songs and demos that Wood recorded throughout his life, including a song that he recorded with Chris Cornell, "Island of Summer", which is the only existing recording with the two of them singing together. Wood is featured in the 2011 documentary Pearl Jam Twenty, about the story of Pearl Jam. Friends including Chris Cornell, Jeff Ament and Stone Gossard talk about him in the film and home-made footage featuring Wood is shown.

Dave Heath     New York City     c.1957

I

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix, angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night, who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz, who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated, who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy among the scholars of war, who were expelled from the academies for crazy & publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull, who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, burning their money in wastebaskets and listening to the Terror through the wall, who got busted in their pubic beards returning through Laredo with a belt of marijuana for New York, who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in Paradise Alley, death, or purgatoried their torsos night after night with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, alcohol and cock and endless balls, incomparable blind streets of shuddering cloud and lightning in the mind leaping toward poles of Canada & Paterson, illuminating all the motionless world of Time between, Peyote solidities of halls, backyard green tree cemetery dawns, wine drunkenness over the rooftops, storefront boroughs of teahead joyride neon blinking traffic light, sun and moon and tree vibrations in the roaring winter dusks of Brooklyn, ashcan rantings and kind king light of mind, who chained themselves to subways for the endless ride from Battery to holy Bronx on benzedrine until the noise of wheels and children brought them down shuddering mouth-wracked and battered bleak of brain all drained of brilliance in the drear light of Zoo, who sank all night in submarine light of Bickford’s floated out and sat through the stale beer afternoon in desolate Fugazzi’s, listening to the crack of doom on the hydrogen jukebox, who talked continuously seventy hours from park to pad to bar to Bellevue to museum to the Brooklyn Bridge, a lost battalion of platonic conversationalists jumping down the stoops off fire escapes off windowsills off Empire State out of the moon, yacketayakking screaming vomiting whispering facts and memories and anecdotes and eyeball kicks and shocks of hospitals and jails and wars, whole intellects disgorged in total recall for seven days and nights with brilliant eyes, meat for the Synagogue cast on the pavement, who vanished into nowhere Zen New Jersey leaving a trail of ambiguous picture postcards of Atlantic City Hall, suffering Eastern sweats and Tangerian bone-grindings and migraines of China under junk-withdrawal in Newark’s bleak furnished room,   who wandered around and around at midnight in the railroad yard wondering where to go, and went, leaving no broken hearts, who lit cigarettes in boxcars boxcars boxcars racketing through snow toward lonesome farms in grandfather night, who studied Plotinus Poe St. John of the Cross telepathy and bop kabbalah because the cosmos instinctively vibrated at their feet in Kansas,   who loned it through the streets of Idaho seeking visionary indian angels who were visionary indian angels, who thought they were only mad when Baltimore gleamed in supernatural ecstasy, who jumped in limousines with the Chinaman of Oklahoma on the impulse of winter midnight streetlight smalltown rain, who lounged hungry and lonesome through Houston seeking jazz or sex or soup, and followed the brilliant Spaniard to converse about America and Eternity, a hopeless task, and so took ship to Africa, who disappeared into the volcanoes of Mexico leaving behind nothing but the shadow of dungarees and the lava and ash of poetry scattered in fireplace Chicago, who reappeared on the West Coast investigating the FBI in beards and shorts with big pacifist eyes sexy in their dark skin passing out incomprehensible leaflets, who burned cigarette holes in their arms protesting the narcotic tobacco haze of Capitalism, who distributed Supercommunist pamphlets in Union Square weeping and undressing while the sirens of Los Alamos wailed them down, and wailed down Wall, and the Staten Island ferry also wailed, who broke down crying in white gymnasiums naked and trembling before the machinery of other skeletons, who bit detectives in the neck and shrieked with delight in policecars for committing no crime but their own wild cooking pederasty and intoxication, who howled on their knees in the subway and were dragged off the roof waving genitals and manuscripts, who let themselves be fucked in the ass by saintly motorcyclists, and screamed with joy, who blew and were blown by those human seraphim, the sailors, caresses of Atlantic and Caribbean love, who balled in the morning in the evenings in rosegardens and the grass of public parks and cemeteries scattering their semen freely to whomever come who may, who hiccuped endlessly trying to giggle but wound up with a sob behind a partition in a Turkish Bath when the blond & naked angel came to pierce them with a sword, who lost their loveboys to the three old shrews of fate the one eyed shrew of the heterosexual dollar the one eyed shrew that winks out of the womb and the one eyed shrew that does nothing but sit on her ass and snip the intellectual golden threads of the craftsman’s loom, who copulated ecstatic and insatiate with a bottle of beer a sweetheart a package of cigarettes a candle and fell off the bed, and continued along the floor and down the hall and ended fainting on the wall with a vision of ultimate cunt and come eluding the last gyzym of consciousness, who sweetened the snatches of a million girls trembling in the sunset, and were red eyed in the morning but prepared to sweeten the snatch of the sunrise, flashing buttocks under barns and naked in the lake, who went out whoring through Colorado in myriad stolen night-cars, N.C., secret hero of these poems, cocksman and Adonis of Denver—joy to the memory of his innumerable lays of girls in empty lots & diner backyards, moviehouses’ rickety rows, on mountaintops in caves or with gaunt waitresses in familiar roadside lonely petticoat upliftings & especially secret gas-station solipsisms of johns, & hometown alleys too, who faded out in vast sordid movies, were shifted in dreams, woke on a sudden Manhattan, and picked themselves up out of basements hung-over with heartless Tokay and horrors of Third Avenue iron dreams & stumbled to unemployment offices, who walked all night with their shoes full of blood on the snowbank docks waiting for a door in the East River to open to a room full of steam-heat and opium, who created great suicidal dramas on the apartment cliff-banks of the Hudson under the wartime blue floodlight of the moon & their heads shall be crowned with laurel in oblivion, who ate the lamb stew of the imagination or digested the crab at the muddy bottom of the rivers of Bowery, who wept at the romance of the streets with their pushcarts full of onions and bad music, who sat in boxes breathing in the darkness under the bridge, and rose up to build harpsichords in their lofts, who coughed on the sixth floor of Harlem crowned with flame under the tubercular sky surrounded by orange crates of theology, who scribbled all night rocking and rolling over lofty incantations which in the yellow morning were stanzas of gibberish, who cooked rotten animals lung heart feet tail borsht & tortillas dreaming of the pure vegetable kingdom, who plunged themselves under meat trucks looking for an egg, who threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot for Eternity outside of Time, & alarm clocks fell on their heads every day for the next decade, who cut their wrists three times successively unsuccessfully, gave up and were forced to open antique stores where they thought they were growing old and cried, who were burned alive in their innocent flannel suits on Madison Avenue amid blasts of leaden verse & the tanked-up clatter of the iron regiments of fashion & the nitroglycerine shrieks of the fairies of advertising & the mustard gas of sinister intelligent editors, or were run down by the drunken taxicabs of Absolute Reality, who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge this actually happened and walked away unknown and forgotten into the ghostly daze of Chinatown soup alleyways & firetrucks, not even one free beer, who sang out of their windows in despair, fell out of the subway window, jumped in the filthy Passaic, leaped on negroes, cried all over the street, danced on broken wineglasses barefoot smashed phonograph records of nostalgic European 1930s German jazz finished the whiskey and threw up groaning into the bloody toilet, moans in their ears and the blast of colossal steamwhistles, who barreled down the highways of the past journeying to each other’s hotrod-Golgotha jail-solitude watch or Birmingham jazz incarnation, who drove crosscountry seventytwo hours to find out if I had a vision or you had a vision or he had a vision to find out Eternity, who journeyed to Denver, who died in Denver, who came back to Denver & waited in vain, who watched over Denver & brooded & loned in Denver and finally went away to find out the Time, & now Denver is lonesome for her heroes, who fell on their knees in hopeless cathedrals praying for each other’s salvation and light and breasts, until the soul illuminated its hair for a second, who crashed through their minds in jail waiting for impossible criminals with golden heads and the charm of reality in their hearts who sang sweet blues to Alcatraz, who retired to Mexico to cultivate a habit, or Rocky Mount to tender Buddha or Tangiers to boys or Southern Pacific to the black locomotive or Harvard to Narcissus to Woodlawn to the daisychain or grave, who demanded sanity trials accusing the radio of hypnotism & were left with their insanity & their hands & a hung jury, who threw potato salad at CCNY lecturers on Dadaism and subsequently presented themselves on the granite steps of the madhouse with shaven heads and harlequin speech of suicide, demanding instantaneous lobotomy, and who were given instead the concrete void of insulin Metrazol electricity hydrotherapy psychotherapy occupational therapy pingpong & amnesia, who in humorless protest overturned only one symbolic pingpong table, resting briefly in catatonia, returning years later truly bald except for a wig of blood, and tears and fingers, to the visible madman doom of the wards of the madtowns of the East, Pilgrim State’s Rockland’s and Greystone’s foetid halls, bickering with the echoes of the soul, rocking and rolling in the midnight solitude-bench dolmen-realms of love, dream of life a nightmare, bodies turned to stone as heavy as the moon, with mother finally ******, and the last fantastic book flung out of the tenement window, and the last door closed at 4 A.M. and the last telephone slammed at the wall in reply and the last furnished room emptied down to the last piece of mental furniture, a yellow paper rose twisted on a wire hanger in the closet, and even that imaginary, nothing but a hopeful little bit of hallucination— ah, Carl, while you are not safe I am not safe, and now you’re really in the total animal soup of time— and who therefore ran through the icy streets obsessed with a sudden flash of the alchemy of the use of the ellipsis catalogue a variable measure and the vibrating plane, who dreamt and made incarnate gaps in Time & Space through images juxtaposed, and trapped the archangel of the soul between 2 visual images and joined the elemental verbs and set the noun and dash of consciousness together jumping with sensation of Pater Omnipotens Aeterna Deus to recreate the syntax and measure of poor human prose and stand before you speechless and intelligent and shaking with shame, rejected yet confessing out the soul to conform to the rhythm of thought in his naked and endless head, the madman bum and angel beat in Time, unknown, yet putting down here what might be left to say in time come after death, and rose reincarnate in the ghostly clothes of jazz in the goldhorn shadow of the band and blew the suffering of America’s naked mind for love into an eli eli lamma lamma sabacthani saxophone cry that shivered the cities down to the last radio with the absolute heart of the poem of life butchered out of their own bodies good to eat a thousand years.

--Allen Ginsberg, “Howl, part 1″  1956

this was the first stop of yesterday’s Bay Area visit (at the Woodlawn Cemetery in Colma)

Richard Avedon:  Peter Orlovsky & AllenGinsberg  (1963)

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,

 dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix,

 angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night, 

who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the supernatural 

darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities contemplating jazz, 

who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs illuminated, 

who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy among the scholars of war, 

who were expelled from the academies for crazy & publishing obscene odes on the windows of the skull, 

who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, burning their money in wastebaskets and listening to the Terror through the wall, 

who got busted in their pubic beards returning through Laredo with a belt of marijuana for New York, 

who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in Paradise Alley, death, or purgatoried their torsos night after night 

with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, alcohol and cock and endless balls, 

incomparable blind streets of shuddering cloud and lightning in the mind leaping toward poles of Canada & Paterson, 

illuminating all the motionless world of Time between, 

Peyote solidities of halls, backyard green tree cemetery dawns, wine drunkenness over 

the rooftops, storefront boroughs of teahead joyride neon blinking traffic light, sun 

and moon and tree vibrations in the roaring winter dusks of Brooklyn, ashcan rantings 

and kind king light of mind, 

who chained themselves to subways for the endless ride from Battery to holy Bronx 

on benzedrine until the noise of wheels and children brought them down shuddering mouth-

wracked and battered bleak of brain all drained of brilliance in the drear light of Zoo, 

who sank all night in submarine light of Bickford’s floated out and sat through the stale 

beer afternoon in desolate Fugazzi’s, listening to the crack of doom on the hydrogen jukebox, 

who talked continuously seventy hours from park to pad to bar to Bellevue to museum to the Brooklyn Bridge,

a lost battalion of platonic conversationalists jumping down the stoops off fire escapes off windowsills off Empire State out of the moon, 

yacketayakking screaming vomiting whispering facts and memories and anecdotes and 

eyeball kicks and shocks of hospitals and jails and wars, whole intellects disgorged in total recall for seven days and nights with brilliant eyes,

 meat for the Synagogue cast on the pavement, 

who vanished into nowhere Zen New Jersey leaving a trail of ambiguous picture postcards of Atlantic City Hall, 

suffering Eastern sweats and Tangerian bone-grindings and migraines of China under junk-withdrawal in Newark’s bleak furnished room,

 who wandered around and around at midnight in the railroad yard wondering where to go, and went, leaving no broken hearts, 

who lit cigarettes in boxcars boxcars boxcars racketing through snow toward lonesome farms in grandfather night, 

who studied Plotinus Poe St. John of the Cross telepathy and bop kabbalah because the cosmos instinctively vibrated at their feet in Kansas, 

 who loned it through the streets of Idaho seeking visionary indian angels who were visionary indian angels, 

who thought they were only mad when Baltimore gleamed in supernatural ecstasy, 

who jumped in limousines with the Chinaman of Oklahoma on the impulse of winter midnight streetlight smalltown rain, 

who lounged hungry and lonesome through Houston seeking jazz or sex or soup, and 

followed the brilliant Spaniard to converse about America and Eternity, a hopeless task, and so took ship to Africa, 

who disappeared into the volcanoes of Mexico leaving behind nothing but the shadow of dungarees and 

the lava and ash of poetry scattered in fireplace Chicago, 

who reappeared on the West Coast investigating the FBI in beards and shorts with big 

pacifist eyes sexy in their dark skin passing out incomprehensible leaflets,

 who burned cigarette holes in their arms protesting the narcotic tobacco haze of Capitalism, 

who distributed Supercommunist pamphlets in Union Square weeping and undressing 

while the sirens of Los Alamos wailed them down, and wailed 

down Wall, and the Staten Island ferry also wailed, 

who broke down crying in white gymnasiums naked and trembling before the machinery of other skeletons, 

who bit detectives in the neck and shrieked with delight in policecars for committing no crime 

but their own wild cooking pederasty and intoxication, 

who howled on their knees in the subway and were dragged off the roof waving genitals and manuscripts, 

who let themselves be fucked in the ass by saintly motorcyclists, and screamed with joy, 

who blew and were blown by those human seraphim, the sailors, caresses of Atlantic and Caribbean love, 

who balled in the morning in the evenings in rosegardens and the grass of public parks and cemeteries scattering their semen freely to whomever come who may, 

who hiccuped endlessly trying to giggle but wound up with a sob behind a partition in a Turkish Bath 

when the blond & naked angel came to pierce them with a sword, 

who lost their loveboys to the three old shrews of fate 

the one eyed shrew of the heterosexual dollar the one eyed shrew that winks out of the womb

 and the one eyed shrew that does nothing but sit on her ass and snip the intellectual golden threads of the craftsman’s loom, 

who copulated ecstatic and insatiate with a bottle of beer a sweetheart a package of 

cigarettes a candle and fell off the bed, and continued along the floor and down the hall 

and ended fainting on the wall with a vision of ultimate cunt and come eluding the last gyzym of consciousness, 

who sweetened the snatches of a million girls trembling in the sunset, and were red eyed 

in the morning but prepared to sweeten the snatch of the sunrise, flashing buttocks under barns and naked in the lake, 

who went out whoring through Colorado in myriad stolen night-cars, N.C., secret hero of these poems, 

cocksman and Adonis of Denver—joy to the memory of his innumerable 

lays of girls in empty lots & diner backyards, moviehouses’ rickety rows, on mountaintops 

in caves or with gaunt waitresses in familiar roadside lonely petticoat upliftings & 

especially secret gas-station solipsisms of johns, & hometown alleys too, 

who faded out in vast sordid movies, were shifted in dreams, woke on a sudden

 Manhattan, and picked themselves up out of basements hung-over with heartless Tokay 

and horrors of Third Avenue iron dreams & stumbled to unemployment offices,

 who walked all night with their shoes full of blood on the snowbank docks waiting for a 

door in the East River to open to a room full of steam-heat and opium, 

who created great suicidal dramas on the apartment cliff-banks of the Hudson under the 

wartime blue floodlight of the moon & their heads shall be crowned with laurel in oblivion, 

who ate the lamb stew of the imagination or digested the crab at the muddy bottom of the rivers of Bowery, 

who wept at the romance of the streets with their pushcarts full of onions and bad music, 

who sat in boxes breathing in the darkness under the bridge, and rose up to build harpsichords in their lofts, 

who coughed on the sixth floor of Harlem crowned with flame under the tubercular sky surrounded by orange crates of theology, 

who scribbled all night rocking and rolling over lofty incantations which in the yellow morning were stanzas of gibberish, 

who cooked rotten animals lung heart feet tail borsht & tortillas dreaming of the pure vegetable kingdom, 

who plunged themselves under meat trucks looking for an egg, 

who threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot for Eternity outside of Time, & alarm clocks fell on their heads every day for the next decade, 

who cut their wrists three times successively unsuccessfully, gave up and were forced to 

open antique stores where they thought they were growing old and cried, 

who were burned alive in their innocent flannel suits on Madison Avenue amid blasts of leaden verse & the tanked-up clatter of the iron regiments of fashion & the nitroglycerine 

shrieks of the fairies of advertising & the mustard gas of sinister intelligent editors, or were run down by the drunken taxicabs of Absolute Reality, 

who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge this actually happened and walked away unknown 

and forgotten into the ghostly daze of Chinatown soup alleyways & firetrucks, not even one free beer, 

who sang out of their windows in despair, fell out of the subway window, jumped in the 

filthy Passaic, leaped on negroes, cried all over the street, danced on broken wineglasses 

barefoot smashed phonograph records of nostalgic European 1930s German jazz 

finished the whiskey and threw up groaning into the bloody toilet, moans in their ears and the blast of colossal steamwhistles, 

who barreled down the highways of the past journeying to each other’s hotrod-Golgotha jail-solitude watch or Birmingham jazz incarnation, 

who drove crosscountry seventytwo hours to find out if I had a vision 

or you had a vision or he had a vision to find out Eternity, 

who journeyed to Denver, who died in Denver, who came back to Denver & waited in vain, 

who watched over Denver & brooded & loned in Denver and finally went away to find out 

the Time, & now Denver is lonesome for her heroes, 

who fell on their knees in hopeless cathedrals praying for each other’s salvation and light and breasts, until the soul illuminated its hair for a second, 

who crashed through their minds in jail waiting for impossible criminals with golden heads 

and the charm of reality in their hearts who sang sweet blues to Alcatraz, 

who retired to Mexico to cultivate a habit, or Rocky Mount to tender Buddha or Tangiers 

to boys or Southern Pacific to the black locomotive or Harvard to Narcissus to Woodlawn to the daisychain or grave, 

who demanded sanity trials accusing the radio of hypnotism & were left with their insanity & their hands & a hung jury, 

who threw potato salad at CCNY lecturers on Dadaism and subsequently presented 

themselves on the granite steps of the madhouse with shaven heads and harlequin speech of suicide, demanding instantaneous lobotomy, and 

who were given instead the concrete void of insulin Metrazol electricity hydrotherapy psychotherapy occupational therapy pingpong & amnesia, 

who in humorless protest overturned only one symbolic pingpong table, resting briefly in catatonia, 

returning years later truly bald except for a wig of blood, and tears and fingers, to the 

visible madman doom of the wards of the madtowns of the East, 

Pilgrim State’s Rockland’s and Greystone’s foetid halls, bickering with the echoes 

of the soul, rocking and rolling in the midnight solitude-bench dolmen-realms of love, dream of life a nightmare, bodies turned to stone as heavy as the moon,

 with mother finally ******, and the last fantastic book flung out of the tenement window, and the last door closed at 4 A.M.

 and the last telephone slammed at the wall in reply and the last furnished room emptied down to the last piece of mental furniture, 

a yellow paper rose twisted on a wire hanger in the closet, and even that imaginary, nothing but a hopeful little bit of hallucination— 

ah, Carl, while you are not safe I am not safe, and now you’re really in the total animal soup of time— 

and who therefore ran through the icy streets obsessed with a sudden flash of the 

alchemy of the use of the ellipsis catalogue a variable measure and the vibrating plane, 

who dreamt and made incarnate gaps in Time & Space through images juxtaposed, and 

trapped the archangel of the soul between 2 visual images and joined the elemental verbs 

and set the noun and dash of consciousness together jumping with sensation of Pater 

Omnipotens Aeterna Deus 

to recreate the syntax and measure of poor human prose and stand before you 

speechless and intelligent and shaking with shame, rejected yet confessing out the soul to conform to the rhythm of thought in his naked and endless head,

 the madman bum and angel beat in Time, unknown, yet putting down here what might be left to say in time come after death, 

and rose reincarnate in the ghostly clothes of jazz in the goldhorn shadow of the band and 

blew the suffering of America’s naked mind for love into an eli eli lamma lamma 

sabacthani saxophone cry that shivered the cities down to the last radio 

with the absolute heart of the poem of life butchered out of their own bodies good to eat 

a thousand years. 

 –Allen Ginsberg, “Howl, part 1″ 1956

Otis Blackwell

Otis Blackwell (February 16, 1931 – May 6, 2002) was an American songwriter, singer, and pianist, whose work influenced rock and roll. His compositions include "Fever", recorded by Little Willie John; "Great Balls of Fire" and "Breathless", recorded by Jerry Lee Lewis; "Don't Be Cruel", "All Shook Up" and "Return to Sender" (with Winfield Scott), recorded by Elvis Presley; and "Handy Man", recorded by Jimmy Jones.

Biography

Blackwell was born in Brooklyn, New York. He learned to play the piano as a child and grew up listening to both R&B and country music.

His first success was winning a local talent contest ("Amateur Night") at the Apollo Theater, in Harlem, in 1952. This led to a recording contract with RCA and then with Jay-Dee. His first release was his own composition "Daddy Rolling Stone", which became a favorite in Jamaica, where it was recorded by Derek Martin. The song later became part of the Who's mod repertoire. Enjoying some early recording and performing success, he found his first love was songwriting and by 1955 had settled into the groove that he would ride for decades. His first successes as a songwriter came in 1956, when Little Willie John's R&B hit with the sultry "Fever" was an even bigger pop success for Peggy Lee, and "Don't Be Cruel" began a highly profitable association with Elvis Presley.

Blackwell was one of the leading African-American figures of early rock and roll, although he was not well known by the public. His own records never cracked the Top 40, yet he wrote million-selling songs for Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Dee Clark and others. He also recruited other songwriters to write for Presley, such as Winfield Scott.

In the liner notes of Elvis' Golden Records (1958), Anne Fulchino, of RCA, wrote,

While sipping coffee, Steve Sholes pulled out a demonstration record of 'Don't Be Cruel' and told Elvis it was a new song written by Otis Blackwell, whom Elvis had long admired as a rhythm and blues artist. It took just a few bars to convince Presley that it was a perfect song for him, and he decided to cut it right away. Presley learned the song within minutes—he had an inherent musical sense—and in short order a great master was put on tape.It isn't often that the title of a song will create a whole new expression in Americana. 'All Shook Up' did exactly that. Youngsters and adults alike have made the phrase a common part of everyday usage. The background to the song itself is a rather interesting one. Since the huge success of 'Don't Be Cruel', Elvis had been anxious to record another song from the pen of Otis Blackwell. Eventually, Blackwell came around with 'All Shook Up' (first recorded by David Hill on Aladdin). Presley wasn't completely satisfied with the song, and with Blackwell's consent re-wrote part of the lyrics. Thus, as co-writer as well as artist, Presley produced his ninth consecutive gold record, his first in the year 1957.

During an appearance on Late Night with David Letterman, Blackwell said he never met Presley in person. When he was having a contract dispute with his publishing company, he also wrote under the white-sounding pen name John Davenport. Blackwell composed more than a thousand songs, garnering worldwide sales of close to 200 million records. Presley's manager, Colonel Tom Parker, asked Blackwell to appear in the Presley movie Girls! Girls! Girls!, for which he had written "Return to Sender", but a superstition about meeting Presley kept him from accepting.

In 1956, Blackwell gave "Don't Be Cruel" to friend Frankie Valli's group, the Four Lovers, but as they were recording it he asked to take it back and in turn gave it to the up-and-coming Presley. In exchange for this song he gave them "You're the Apple of My Eye", which became a chart hit for the Four Lovers (Billboard number 64). The song was performed on Ed Sullivan's television show that same year and was probably instrumental in at least shaping events for the group to eventually becoming the Four Seasons. A shortened version of "You're the Apple of My Eye" is also featured in the Broadway show "Jersey Boys".

As the tide of rock and roll receded, Blackwell recorded R&B songs for numerous labels, including Atlantic, MGM and Epic. In later years he was in semi-retirement, making only occasional live appearances.

In the 1980s, Blackwell toured and recorded with the Smithereens as his backing band for both live shows and studio recordings. The partnership produced two self-funded albums, "Let's Talk About Us" and "From the Beginning," which were released independently on Blackwell's ROC-CO imprint.

In 1991, Blackwell was paralyzed by a stroke. Three years later, Shanachie released the album Brace Yourself! A Tribute to Otis Blackwell, containing 15 songs written by Blackwell and recorded by the likes of Kris Kristofferson ("All Shook Up"), Blondie's Debbie Harry ("Don't Be Cruel"), the Smithereens ("Let's Talk About Us"), Graham Parker ("Paralyzed"), and Ronnie Spector ("Brace Yourself").

Blackwell died of a heart attack in 2002, in Nashville, Tennessee, and was interred in Woodlawn Memorial Park Cemetery, in that city.

Awards and recognitions

Otis Blackwell was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1986 and in 1991 into the National Academy of Popular Music's Songwriters Hall of Fame. Blackwell's crowning moment came in the late 1980s when the Black Rock Coalition, a prominent organization of black rock musicians, led by Vernon Reid, the lead guitarist of the band, Living Colour, held a tribute for him at the Prospect Park Bandshell in his native Brooklyn. Many prominent musicians and singers took part including Blackwell himself, who performed an assortment of his best songs, including "One Broken Heart for Sale," "Back Trail," "Don't Be Cruel" and "Daddy Rolling Stone."

Blackwell was named one of the 2010 recipients of Ahmet Ertegun Award in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. This category encompasses those who primarily work behind the scenes in the music industry.

Legacy

Blackwell was one of the greatest R&B songwriters of all time. His songwriting style is as uniquely identifiable as that of Leiber and Stoller, Chuck Berry, or Willie Dixon and helped redefine popular music in America in the 1950s. This is true even though he often collaborated with such partners as Winfield Scott, Eddie Cooley, and Jack Hammer. Blackwell was one of the most important innovators who helped invent the musical vocabulary of rock and roll at its very beginning. His works have been recorded by a host of major artists, including Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Ray Charles, Otis Redding, James Brown, the Who, Johnny Thunders, Billy Joel, James Taylor, Dolly Parton, Conway Twitty, the Judds, Carl Perkins and Peggy Lee, among numerous others. At other times in his career, Blackwell was also successful as a record producer, having helped turn out hits for artists as diverse as Connie Francis, Mahalia Jackson and Sal Mineo.

Songs

Songs composed by Blackwell, with the performers who made them famous, include the following:

"All Shook Up" (Elvis Presley)

"Don't Be Cruel" (Elvis Presley); inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2002

"Fever" as "John Davenport" with Eddie Cooley (Peggy Lee, inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1998; Little Willie John, Madonna, the McCoys, Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, Over the Rhine, and numerous other performers).

"Great Balls of Fire" (Jerry Lee Lewis); inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1998

"Breathless" (Jerry Lee Lewis, X)

"Let's Talk About Us" (Jerry Lee Lewis)

"Hey Little Girl" (Dee Clark)

"Handy Man" (Jimmy Jones, Del Shannon, James Taylor)

"Return to Sender" (Elvis Presley)

"One Broken Heart for Sale"(Elvis Presley)

"Nine Times Out Of Ten" with Waldense Hall (Cliff Richard, Ral Donner)

It happened again. While the news of Daniel Clark Stodala and Faith Iman Sulaiman’s deaths by suicide was sinking in, another dear and too-young life was stolen. For now, we will sit here in this intense sadness and remember him.

Jared Thomas Barker was born on February 5th, 2003 and died on January 27, 2021.

He is survived by his parents Joel Bates Barker and Loretta Grace Newcomer, and his younger siblings Ethan (16), Sophia (13) and Mahleah (6). Also surviving are his grandparents Tom & Janet Newcomer of Washington State and many aunts, uncles and cousins.

Jared was currently a student at Wade Hampton High School after completing years of schooling at Hampton Park Christian School, Lake Forest Elementary and Sevier Middle School. He also attended Trinity Bible Church in Greer, SC.

He leaves a big hole in the hearts of all who knew him and his parents thank the Lord for the nearly 18 years that they got to have Jared in their family on this earth.

In lieu of flowers please direct any donations to the teen group of Trinity Bible Church in Greer, SC.

The funeral will be at Trinity Bible Church in Greer, SC on Saturday February 6th, 2021 at 11 a.m., followed by a graveside service for the immediate family at Woodlawn Memorial Park, where he will be interred. For those unable to attend the funeral in person, it will be streamed at Trinity Bible Church YouTube channel

Condolences can be made to Jared's family at www.mackeywoodlawn.com.

To the kind woman who messaged me asking if silent screen actress Olive Thomas is interred alone at Woodlawn, the answer is sadly, yes.  Husband Jack Pickford purchased her mausoleum presumably for the two of them to rest in, but he married two more times after her death and he rests with his family members in Forest Lawn Memorial Park in California.

Olive has been on my mind recently.  I’ve been going over old Photoplay movie magazines that have been digitalized online and finding a lot of articles and photos of her, including the one above,  published after Olive’s untimely death in 1920.  The caption on this photo claims that this portrait was “her last and favorite.”