popped clogs

Hannie Michaelis (1922 -2007)

The Balko formerly known as Gort — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 21:53:00 GMT

Hannie Michaelis

Met mijn moeder die las
en breide tegelijk
en mijn vader die zes uur
per dag piano speelde
heb ik jarenlang gepraat,
gelachen en ruzie gemaakt
totdat ze werden ingelijfd
bij de legendarische 6 miljoen.
Een getal, waarover na ruim
een halve eeuw nog steeds
wordt geredetwist.

Hun gezichten beginnen te vervagen
De klank van hun stem is
al bijna ontkleurd. Straks
ben ik er ook niet meer. Dan
zal het zijn alsof wij drieën
nooit hebben bestaan.

Gerard Reve (1923 - 2006)

The Balko formerly known as Gort — Mon, 10 Apr 2006 00:59:00 GMT

Dutch author Gerard Reve has died. He was the most important writer of the Dutch post-WWII literature. His themes were Love, Religion and Death, these three, but the greatest of all is Death.

McCloud bites the dust

The Balko formerly known as Gort — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 00:22:00 GMT

Dennis Weaver (1924 - 2006)

An icon of the seventies has died. He was 81. Weaver died of complications from cancer Friday at his home in Ridgway, in southwestern Colorado. I will always remember him as McCloud, the small-town marshall from Taos, New Mexico, battling crime on the streets of New York City.

beamed up

The Balko formerly known as Gort — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 21:56:00 GMT

James Doohan, best known as Scotty, the chief engineer on the original Enterprise, died today at age 85. So it goes.

He was from Canada, originally, and the Scottish accent was just because I believed the Scot voice was the most commanding. So I told them, 'If this character is going to be an engineer, you'd better make him a Scotsman.'. Why are all movie-engineers always of Scottish descent?

Via boingboing

Rest

The Balko formerly known as Gort — Wed, 02 Feb 2005 02:15:00 GMT

Nel Benschop, self-declared queen of consoling poetry, died last monday at the age of 87 years. She was best known for her poem In memoriam voor een vriend (In memoriam for a friend), which has been undoubtedly the poem most used and abused in funeral notices in this country.

To send her on her way, a poem by Jan Slauerhoff about finally finding peace in that 'last small roadsted of wood in sand'. No translation today, sorry, that is left as an exercise for the reader.

HET EINDE

Vroeger toen ‘k woonde diep in t land,
Vrat mij onstilbaar wee;
Zooals een gier de lever, want
Ik wist: geen streek geeft mij bestand,
En 'k zocht het ver op zee.

Maar nu ik ver gevaren heb
En lag op den oceaan alleen,
Waar zelfs Da Cunha en Sint-Heleen
Niet boren door de kimmen heen,
Voel ik het trekken als een eb

Naar 't verre, vaste, bruine land...
Nu weet ik: nergens vind ik vree,
Op aarde niet en niet op zee,
Pas aan die laatste smalle ree
Van hout in zand.

Jan Slauerhoff

Marco

The Balko formerly known as Gort — Sun, 16 Jan 2005 18:06:00 GMT

Life sucks. Marco has passed away.

I did not know him personally, I only read the blog that his father kept, about their struggle after it was discovered that Marco had a brain tumor. I hope it is of some comfort for those remaining to know that a lot of people on the interweb share their grief.

The Dark Lady is dead

The Balko formerly known as Gort — Wed, 29 Dec 2004 15:25:00 GMT

Susan Sontag, the intellectual voice and conscience of political and cultural avant-garde, died at the age of 71 of complications of acute myelogenous leukemia. I must confess that I only read her critical study On Photography, for the rest her influence was through articles about her in magazines like Vrij Nederland, and even those were hard to read.

A quote from the NYT obituary (registration required - Bugmenot is your friend):

Through four decades, public response to Ms. Sontag remained irreconcilably divided. She was described, variously, as explosive, anticlimactic, original, derivative, naïve, sophisticated, approachable, aloof, condescending, populist, puritanical, sybaritic, sincere, posturing, ascetic, voluptuary, right-wing, left-wing, profound, superficial, ardent, bloodless, dogmatic, ambivalent, lucid, inscrutable, visceral, reasoned, chilly, effusive, relevant, passé, ambivalent, tenacious, ecstatic, melancholic, humorous, humorless, deadpan, rhapsodic, cantankerous and clever. No one ever called her dull.

Noeki

The Balko formerly known as Gort — Thu, 23 Dec 2004 18:16:00 GMT

For J. Her dear cat Noeki died yesterday.
And for all of you who have lost a dear one, be it animal or human.

A 14 Year-Old Convalescent Cat in the Winter

I want him to have another living summer,
to lie in the sun and enjoy the douceur de vivre –
because the sun, like golden rum in a rummer,
is what makes an idle cat un tout petit peu ivre –

I want him to lie stretched out, contented,
revelling in the heat, his fur all dry and warm,
an Old Age Pensioner, retired, resented
by no one, and happinesses in a beelike swarm

to settle on him – postponed for another season
that last fated hateful journey to the vet
from which there is no return (and age the reason),
which must soon come – as I cannot forget.

gavin ewart (1916 - 1995)

Yasser Arafat (1929-2004)

The Balko formerly known as Gort — Thu, 11 Nov 2004 16:28:00 GMT

Yasser Arafat is dead. So it goes. I really don't know what to think of his departure. He was instrumental in the formation of what is almost a Palestinian state, but he clung too long to his position of power, thereby blocking the road to peace. One thing can be agreed by all sides, though: this was a remarkable man, so the background of this blog will be dark for today.

From The London News Review:

Upon hearing the news of Arafat’s demise, the Israeli PM, Ariel Sharon admitted that he "wept openly for some minutes." In a formal statement, Sharon said that he "mourned the loss of a great statesman, a friend, and a surprisingly agile tennis player." The last time Sharon saw Arafat alive was in the spring of 2003 during a celebrity tennis match against Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones. "We won 6-1, 6-0, but Catherine was heavily pregnant at the time," he recalled. "Afterwards we had a barbecue, and Yasser had everyone in stitches with his impressions. He was relaxed. No one was talking politics. That’s the Yasser I will always remember: a natural clown."

Link

no more sessions

The Balko formerly known as Gort — Tue, 26 Oct 2004 18:57:00 GMT

Veteran BBC broadcaster John Peel has died at the age of 65, while on holiday in Peru. So it goes. He will be hugely missed.

Obituary here.