Animal obituaries

Patriarch
(1st image) 

"Lonesome" George, well-known centenarian and confirmed bachelor, has died at his home on Santa Cruz Island in Ecuador. The cause of his death is believed to have been a heart attack. "He was in good condition....There was nothing to suggest that this would occur," said his physician Washington Tapia.With no offspring and no known relatives to survive him, George (video here) was the last of his line. He was a bit of a loner, despite several female companions over the years. He was known to have a fondness for his longtime caretaker Fausto Llerena, who called him "special" and "complex in his behavior." An international workshop on a cause important to George - management strategies for restoring tortoise populations - will be convened in his honor next month.

Matriarch
(2nd image)

Duchess, a longtime resident of Phoenix, Arizona, died at her home of lymphatic cancer. She was 52. Born in Borneo, she emigrated to the U.S. as an orphan at the early age of 2. Duchess enjoyed painting and people-watching. She lived with her daughter Bess and her 6-year-old granddaughter Kasih (photos here) and is survived by another 6 children, 5 grandchildren, and a great-grandchild. “We have been grateful for the outpouring of memories and stories about Duchess through our social media outlets over the past week. It has been a joy to see all of the lives she has touched throughout our community and beyond. She will be deeply missed,” remarked her guardian Bert Castro. Duchess will be honored at a "Celebration of Life" on Saturday (calling hours 7am to 2pm). Memories and thoughts about Duchess are being collected at www.facebook.com/phoenixzoo.

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Related posts:

A peculiar gig

Lowland gorillas and an orangutan

Ancient animals

Crittercam

Turtles in the weird news

Tortoise cold, tortoise hot

Time for tortoises!

Turtles returned

Dick Clark's rockin' cave

 

 

"America's oldest teenager" Dick Clark (1929-2012) had a really cool little hideaway on 22 acres adjacent to California's Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area and overlooking the Pacific Ocean (images above, more photos here). Shortly before his death earlier this year, the TV host and his wife Kari decided to sell the unusual home, one of at least 3 they owned in Malibu, and listed it with Coldwell Banker for $3.5 million. The retreat, which has been likened to the Flintstones' residence, was built to blend into the landscape to alleviate the park's concerns about development. "I came up with the idea that if the house looked like a rock formation, the park conservancy would let us build on top. They liked the concept," said Beverly Hills architect Phillip Jon Brown. The vaulted ceilings and expansive use of glass in the design allows 360° views that stretch out to sea as far as the Channel Islands, and inland toward the Boney Mountains, Serrano Valley, and Hollywood. The house has living and dining rooms, intimate seating areas, a wood-burning fireplace, stone floors, 2 bathrooms, 1 bedroom, and other amenities. The listing does not mention square footage - I guess it's too hard to measure!

Thanks, Sandra!

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Other properties I have blogged about:

Haunted houses for sale

Chinese nail houses

Jack Kerouac's house

The house that May (re)built

Frank Gehry

Maisenbacher House

Stone/House

Steampunk apartment for sale

Swedish house (and its secret) for sale

Lease a lighthouse

New neighbors

Home sweet silo

House sat empty

Huguette's empty homes

Goodbye, Maurice

Maurice Sendak (1928-2012) died last Tuesday (New York Times obituary here), as you probably heard. He wrote and illustrated possibly the most beloved children's book Where the Wild Things Are (HarperCollins, 1971), but was unapologetic about not writing a sequel on the wave of the book's success. You may have sailed  "in and out of weeks" with Max, but it would have been harder to float through the kitchen with Mickey, because the sight of him - sans jammies - outraged some people. Parents bypassed it and libraries banned it. Stacy Conradt writes on Mental Floss, "...it was his later book, In the Night Kitchen, that landed on the American Library Association’s frequently challenged and banned books list. It features a little boy named Mickey, who is nude throughout most of the story, likely because he’s dreaming. 'Have you never had a dream, yourself, where you were totally naked?' he said, when Stephen Colbert asked him about the nudity. (Colbert: 'No.' Sendak: 'I think you’re a man of little imagination' (see entire interview here)." The offending image can be seen here (caution - just kidding!).

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See my previous posts about children's book 

author/illustrator

 Remy Charlip

 Dr. Seuss

Yummy legacy!

Before we left the house to drive around and look at the Christmas lights last night, I had a dinner snack of Totino's Pizza Rolls, which my college roommate and I used to heat up in a toaster oven in our dorm room. My Mom picked them up, prepared them for me, and took the photo (1st image) at my request for today's post. The sad news is that the man responsible for such a happy treat died last month. Minnesota businessman Luigino "Jeno" Paulucci (1918-2011) started over 70 companies, but was best known for his frozen foods, pizza rolls and Chun King eggrolls. As I learned from reading his obituaries (New York Times, Washington Post, KARE11-Minneapolis, and Duluth News Tribune), Jeno was not only charitable, but had both a sharp wit and a sharp business sense. Here's a sampling:

• When he was selling fruit at the age of 16, a refrigerator unit malfunctioned, discoloring the skins of 18 crates of bananas. Jeno disagreed with the store owner that the fruit was ruined. He raised the price, hawked them as rare Argentine bananas, and sold out in 3 hours.
  
• As the top buyer for a grocery chain prepared to sample Chun King’s products in 1948, Jeno opened a can of Chun King Chinese vegetables and was horrified to find a dead grasshopper. He quickly popped the insect into his mouth with some vegetables and swallowed. The buyer was none the wiser and the chain became one of Chun King’s biggest customers, prompting Jeno to title his autobiography Sometimes You Have to Eat the Grasshopper.
• After paying for new bells to be installed in a church in the northern Italian village of his ancestors: “They’re the biggest damn things in the world. The people there are still mad at me. It’s impossible to sleep very late in the morning.”

Jeno sold his Pizza Rolls brand to the Pillsbury in 1985 for a whopping $135 million, but later regretted the decision, commenting, “I should’ve kept the pizza roll. It’s something that’ll damn near live forever.” So will my cravings for them...

We lost another Munchkin

Meinhardt Raabe (1915-2010) died on Friday at the age of 94. Raabe (pronounced RAH'-bee) was one of the 124 little people to appear as Munchkins in the 1939 movie "The izard of Oz." He officiated after the death of the Wicked Witch of the West: "As coroner I must aver, I thoroughly examined her, And she's not only merely dead, she's really most sincerely dead." Raabe enjoyed his claim to fame and wrote a memoir in 2005. A New York Times article describes his life in a Florida retirement community: "Sitting on his small bed, his coroner’s outfit stored in a closet, Mr. Raabe recalls a rich and varied life but makes clear that he accepts, even embraces, how his obituary will read: Munchkin City coroner, handled case of woman killed by house that fell from the sky."

It wasn't until 2007 that Raabe and 6 more of the 9 Munchkins who had speaking parts received a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame, and by the time the celebrated the 70th anniversary of "The Wizard of Oz," 2 more - Mickey Carroll and Clarence Swensen had died. Now Raabe is survived by Ruth Duccini, Jerry Maren, Margaret Pellegrini, and Karl Slover.

Trivia about "The Wizard of Oz" includes the fact that the Munchkins were paid less than Dorothy's dog Toto. But the best tidbit is this: After his role in the film, Raabe took on the role of "Little Oscar, the World's Smallest Chef," and toured with the Wienermobile for 30 years!

Jackie and Jerri

You may have heard about the death on Tuesday of Jerri Nielsen Fitzgerald (1952-2009), the physician (pictured, bottom) who spent a year at the scientific station at the South Pole, during which she discovered, biopsied, and treated a lump she found in her breast. Although she couldn't be airlifted out, the National Science Foundation airlifted supplies - anti-cancer drugs and an ultrasound machine (which unfortunately shattered) - to her when the tumor was diagnosed via computer as an aggressive form of cancer. Her extraction from Antarctica in October 1999, after she had injected her own hormone therapy and chemotherapy (and had sadly acquired a number of infections), was the earliest in the station's history. She had a mastectomy, but the cancer came out of remission in 2005 and spread to her liver, bones, and brain. Dr. Fitzgerald died in Massachusetts on Tuesday.

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But did you also know that Edith "Jackie" Ronne (1919-2009) - the first American woman to set foot in Antarctica - died in Maryland a week ago Sunday? Ronne (pictured, above) grudgingly accepted a last-minute invitation from her husband Finn to accompany him for 15 months in 1947. She insisted that Jennie Darlington, wife of the expedition's pilot also join them, and they became the first two women to overwinter in the Antarctic (although they stopped speaking to each other when the team divided into factions during their stay). Ronne assisted the seismologist, released dispatches to the New York Times, and kept a daily diary. The scientific mission was a success, proving that Antarctica was a single continent after exploring 250,000 square miles, but she vowed never to go back - only to break that vow in 1957 and again in 1971. Ronne, whose husband had passed away in 1980, died of Alzheimer's Disease and cancer.

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Jerri published an autobiographical account of her story, as did Jackie, whose book is out-of-print. A copy of Finn's autobiography, signed and inscribed by Jackie, is available. Both women also inspired films, a TV movie in Jerri's case and a documentary about Jackie. Rest in peace, ladies.

Premature obituaries

"The report of my death is an exag-
geration."
--Mark Twain

In 1897, it was mistakenly rumored that American author Mark Twain (1835-1910) had died. It was his cousin who was ill and Twain set the record straight with the famous quote above. This is often cited as the most well-known instance of a premature obituary, but no death notice was in fact published, as Wikipedia clarifies, while citing dozens of other examples.

On a personal note, my family used to drive over the Mississippi River through Twain's hometown of Hannibal, Missouri, on the way to Grandma's house in St. Joseph, and we toured Mark Twain's Cave on two occasions. And as the "Ruler Lady" and graduation coordinator here at Georgetown, I was compelled to choose the photo of Twain in doctoral regalia.