This man changed my life with Nine Stories, Seymour: an Introduction, Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters, and Franny and Zooey.  Here’s hoping he’s got two hundred manuscripts squirelled away, and we get to read him for another hundred years.

Farewell, J.D. Salinger. You gave voice to one of the central themes of my life:

“I am a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.”

Guardian:

Barack Obama has praised Ted Kennedy as “the greatest United States senator of our time” as political friends and foes pay tribute to the veteran politician, who has died of a brain tumour

Obama lauded Kennedy for his work on civil rights, health and advancing the economic wellbeing of all Americans. He thanked Kennedy for “his wise counsel in the Senate” and his support in last year’s presidential race. As the party’s elder statesman, Kennedy helped swing the Democratic party behind Obama when he endorsed the Illinois senator rather than the more politically experienced Hillary Clinton.

As the tributes flowed, some of the warmest words came from Republicans including Nancy Reagan, the former first lady.

“Given our political differences, people are sometimes surprised by how close Ronnie and I have been to the Kennedy family. In recent years Ted and I found our common ground in stem cell research, and I considered him an ally and a dear friend. I will miss him,” said Reagan, whose husband, the former president Ronald Reagan, died after being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.

Dirge for Two Veterans

By Walt Whitman

THE last sunbeam
Lightly falls from the finish’d Sabbath,
On the pavement here, and there beyond it is looking,
Down a new-made double grave.

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{pic from here}

We’ll miss you and your shine, Popcorn.

WBIR: “An iconic East Tennessee moonshiner has been found dead in his home, shortly before he was set to report to prison.”

Lots of great Popcorn links here.

From “Daddy Moonshine“:

“It isn’t surprising that Popcorn has attracted so much attention. His slippery craft and his old-timey antics appeal to something in our collective past. His overalls can be seen as the blue denim flag of old pick-up trucks and cork-plugged clay jugs. His colorless hat is the nod of a gentleman, his beard the badge of a wild man. His high reedy voice carries the echoes of banjos and fiddles. His stealth and focus speak volumes for the cunning and moxie of who he is: a Smokey Mountain moonshine master.”

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Folk music legend Odetta passed away yesterday. She was 77.

“The first thing that turned me on to folk singing was Odetta. I heard a record of hers [Odetta Sings Ballads and Blues] in a record store, back when you could listen to records right there in the store. Right then and there, I went out and traded my electric guitar and amplifier for an acoustical guitar, a flat-top Gibson… [That album was] just something vital and personal. I learned all the songs on that record.” – Bob Dylan, from an interview in Playboy, March 1978

“Odetta was a goddess. Her passion moved me. I learned everything she sang.” – Joan Baez, from a Rolling Stone interview, 4/14/1983 (#393)

“If only one could be sure that every 50 years a voice and a soul like Odetta’s would come along, the centuries would pass so quickly and painlessly we would hardly recognize time.” – Maya Angelou