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    marye
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    Here's the place to talk about our departed loved ones -- friends, family members, tour buddies, and others we've lost along the way.

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  • Oroboros
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    A good buddy passed on Saturday,
    6 months ago David was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.His battle is over. "I didn't think it would end this way." "End? No, the journey doesn't end here. Death is just another path, one that we all must take. The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all turns to silver glass, and then you see it." "What? See what?" "White shores, and beyond, a far green country under a swift sunrise." "Well, that isn't so bad." "No, No , it isn't." Excerpt from the film "Lord of the Rings: Return of the King.
  • mona
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    A Gift
    Wondered why I felt no lose with his passing then I realized I was happy.Happy someone who changed the world got to live a long meaningful life. In my generation that means a lot! Thank you God for the gift of Nelson Mandela. May he R.I.P.
  • Anna rRxia
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    RIP Nelson Mandela
    A giant luminary of nonviolence takes his peace. Lay you down, my dear brother.
  • mona
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    Grateful Doe went to the show
    It was the tix in his pocket and the red space your face 95' tour T he was wearing is why he is known as grateful fan/Doe. June 24 & 25 1995 at the Rfk stadium in Washington, D.C., The new event page on FB is trying to get as many ppl to post everywhere (not just FB) in hopes someone will recognize him. That is why it has the long name of "1995 Grateful dead fans @Rfk stadium Were you there??? Plz join". If someone here knows anything and not on FB plz contact me. Wish I could post pics here. They found the guy he got his tix from. He came with 20 tix and doesn't remember who he sold/gave them to. Some of us remember this when it happened and 18 yrs is too long. We don't want him to fade away.
  • marye
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    I don't suppose
    they were GDTS tickets. If they were, maybe they could be traced back through their numbers. Though I doubt I am the first person to think of this in 18 years. I hope they figure this out, it really is too long for this to go unresolved...
  • mona
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    Grateful Doe
    Thank you Anna rRxia. 200 people tested and excluded for him, He is one of many so I don't think finger prints are the answer. Not everyone have not walked right and been finger printed. There are young ppl with not much of a family left or more often unfortunately families do disown there own members. As freaks we all know this too well. His family is trying to find him and they are us. only deadheads can figure out how to accomplish anything with not much. ;)
  • Anna rRxia
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    Mona - What a sad story
    A noble cause you are on as well as other deadheads. I'll do what I can but this sure does look like a cold trail. If the note found in his pocket had a phone number without an area code it sounds like the authorities didn't do the basic work of calling the # with all area codes. That is very sad! One has to wonder why his family didn't make more of an effort to find him? He was ejected from a vehicle so his fingerprints were intact, therefore his fingerprints were not on file anywhere. I don't know with the consolidation of data bases if efforts are being made to recheck his fingerprint record on a regular basis. My feeling is that "the authorities" find this case long closed and aren't doing a thing other than maintaining a record locator just in case. My predilection in such cases is to think spiritually about this fella. I have to believe after 18+ years his soul should have moved on. It would be horrible to think he was a ghost hanging around that death place still, as some people might think happens to people who die suddenly and won't let go of their body... It is still possible to catch a break in this case, stranger things have happened. 1,2,3,4,5,6,7; All good deadheads go to heaven!
  • mona
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    Links do work
    Unfortunate here you have to copy and paste. If that doesn't work then just google Grateful Doe for pictures etc. There are many sites with the same info. Sorry my synapse is having problems with my synopsis. (This bear just wants to hibernate) and I did manage to get it mixed up. I mentioned Facebook because that is why I am here posting. A deadhead sister Lesha Johanneck has started a new campaign there with an event page to have everyone share about Grateful Doe across the globe and the internet in hopes someone will recognize him so he can rest in peace. YOU DO NOT NEED TO BE ON FACEBOOK TO HELP! Just share, share, share! IF you are on facebook look up "1995 Grateful dead fans @Rfk stadium Were you there??? Plz join". Here is full information from findagrave.com: Jason "Grateful Dead Fan" Doe Birth: unknown Death: Jun. 26, 1995 Emporia Greensville County Virginia, USA I challenge anyone who reads this to please pass this information onto a friend or even a couple of friends. If you have the time please contact media in your area and ask them to run my story. I really am tired of this long journey that I have been on and would like to go home.... If you have any information that may help identify me PLEASE contact The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner Medicolegal Death Investigator 1-800-447-1706. My agency case # is 123526 **** My alias for the last 15 years has been Jason Doe AKA Grateful Dead Fan. I was given the name Jason because of a note found in my pocket and because of the tie-dye Grateful Dead t-shirt I was wearing. It really would be nice to have my real name back again. I died in a horrible car accident in Emporia, Greensville County, Virginia on Monday, June 26, 1995 around 1:30 PM. I died along with the driver of the van. The driver, Michael Eric Hager fell asleep at the wheel, the van left the road & hit some trees. Neither the driver or I was wearing seat belts. I first hit the windshield and then hit the trees. Both the driver and I were ejected from the van. We both died instantly. Michael was identified quickly. He had his ID on him, as well as the vehicle registation. Michael's family did not recognize me, they suspected that I was hitch hiking that day and Michael picked me up to give me a ride somewhere. I had just been to a couple of Grateful Dead shows the weekend before (June 24th & June 25th)the accident at RFK Stadium in Washington, DC. I still had the 2 ticket stubs in my pockets when they found me. They also found a note in my pocket that said "Jason, Sorry we had to go, see ya around, call me #914 prefix with an arrow pointing to Caroline T.'s name. ----> Caroline T. + Caroline O. Bye!!!!" There is also a cute little drawn picture of Jerry Garcia on the note. I wonder where these girls are and if they remember me?? The only other things I had with me are 4 quarters and a yellow disposable lighter. I was wearing a red tie dye t-shirt that was from the Grateful Dead 1995 Summer Tour. I had on a pair of light blue 505 Levi jeans size 33x32, size 11 1/2 blue or black FILA athletic shoes, white athletic socks, beaded necklace, a macrame necklace. My Vital Stats: Age: 16-21 Height: 5'8" Weight: 169lbs Hair Color: Light Brown/Dark Blonde/Dyed Red Eye Color: Brown Identifying Marks: I have a small homemade 5 point star tattoo on my left arm. Piercings: My left ear is pierced. I was not wearing an earring when they found me. Here is an article about my death: http://docs.google.com/View?id=dcbh2vh8_130gbt45khd To read more about my story you can visit me at Websleuths: http://www.websleuths.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=172 My info on NamUs.gov: https://identifyus.org/cases/6095 Burial: Cremated, Other. Specifically: Unknown Created by: LoveToHelp Record added: May 28, 2010 Find A Grave Memorial# 52954852
  • Anna rRxia
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    Mona
    Links don't work. It would be good if you could put together a brief synopsis of what the scenario was for those of us who don't do Facebook.
  • mona
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    Help bring Grateful Doe home. (@);-)
    It has been almost 19 years we have been searching to bring Grateful Doe home. Possibly named Jason he was killed after a grateful dead concert in June 1995 the dates of the concert were June 24 & 25 1995 at the Rfk stadium in Washington, D.C.. If you know anyone that went to the concert add them to the group or just keep sharing his flyer someone has to know something. PLZ help your brother by joining this group or posting this anywhere you can. The bus leaves no one behind. Thank you. ^^^passing it on from Facebooks "1995 Grateful dead fans @Rfk stadium Were you there??? Plz join" Events page. More about him on the "Grateful Doe" Community page. Here is a pic of what he could look like today (He had dyed RED Hair), his tattoo, concert stubs, and note found in his pocket addressed to Jason. https://scontent-b-sea.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-frc1/1148843_52733253734037… Any info at all check out Facebook pages above or PLZ contact/message me here. Most of all PLZ post far and wide in any or all special sites or groups you are into on the internet. Together we can sing him back home! Thanx, Mona (@);-)
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Here's the place to talk about our departed loved ones -- friends, family members, tour buddies, and others we've lost along the way.
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sounds a like a good friend to have; we should all be so lucky.hard to not see his face and be in his physical presence for just one more time but he is indeed with you forever. we just have to adjust our vision and and we can see him clearly from another perspective. rest in peace.
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In memory of the plane crash in Russia yesterday killing almost all members of the Lokomotiv Yaroslavl ice hockey team; 43 dead, including players from Germany Sweden & Slovakia.
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17 years 3 months
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The German player was local, from the Mannheim Adlers.********************************** I am not young enough to know everything. Oscar Wilde
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17 years 4 months
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Environmental activist, champion of the poor and landless, African superwoman, Nobel Prize Laureate died today. I once had the good fortune to hear her speak and shake her hand. It's hard to lose people like this..we need them so much. Now THAT was a life well lived. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/sep/26/wangari-maathai-nobel-winne…
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I saw that on the news tonight! Lucky Badger that you heard her live!
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David Croft; 7 September 1922 - 27 September 2011. comedy writer par excellence; grew up with his work, now deeply saddened at his loss. stupid boy...
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Scottish folk musician, master guitarist and (as I recall) one of Jerry's favourites died today. Sad.
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UnkleSleazy tells it like it is. almost a year since he left this plane. can i really not hear him anymore?
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qawwali master Maqbool Sabri died of a heart attack, 12th October, 2011. rooted in the mystical Sufism, his recordings as part of The Sabri Brothers are divine expressions of improvisational beauty. pure ecstasy.
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Pete Rugolo - Legendary jazz composer and arranger, best known for his work with Stan Kenton. Edmundo Ros - Trinidad born bandleader who popularised Latin American music in postwar Britain. The rising death toll of people affected by the terrible earthquake in Turkey.
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I've received word that longtime community member Deadhead Hawkeye, known in real life as Mitchell Beninga, passed away a few weeks ago after a long fight with diabetes. His obituary is here. We're so sorry to hear this, and offer deepest condolences to all his loved ones.
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The Inca Vegas Pandrogyne. shapeshift soon my little one; hot cider absinthe till your eyes roll onto your shins and sweat you. sadly missed.
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13 years 7 months
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R.I.P. Bam Bam (Micheal Hilgers) drummer extraordinaire, trickster provocateur and brother to many, always a ray of sunshine no matter the weather.
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You left too early, but that just means you arrived @ the next stop sooner than expected. Guess they needed your input. I feel lucky to have known you. 40 years, nothin left to do but smile, smile, smile! Miss you bro. kev. P.S. Half a mile from Tucson by the morning light.
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I made this video for the 1 year anniversary of his death, but decided to show it today, (his fave holiday Thanksgiving) instead of waiting until Dec. 5
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I did it, but vid's too big! Oh well, one step after another!
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A year has passed already since your father moved on? I hope it's been smooth for you. I can't believe it's been three years last month for my Mom. It really is remarkable how some people start marking time by the passing of a loved one. Or maybe not remarkable at all.
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the tsunamis come and go-and right now especially difficult. But smoother sailing ahead, I think-once I get past this one year mark, then Christmas. I think it is relatively normal marking time like that, very sad but very human
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your dad was one of the greats...
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yes, take care TL, we're all thinking of you.i just had a very vivid dream last night of my Dad. hope you and your family stay strong and remember that he's still there. just in different form.
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Film Director and wonderful eccentric Ken Russell, 3 July 1927 – 27 November 2011. see all of his films. please.
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Dear Tiger Lilly,Good Morning. I watched the video you made and posted for your Dad's 1 year anniversary of passing. It was so beautiful, thank you for sharing it. I've been thinking about it over the days that have passed since I watched it. You did a great job of capturing the love you shared. Thank you for choosing to post this video, I have been touched by death so many times and I felt the celebration of his life in this video, never stop celebrating him! I lost my financee and have been ever changed by it. Sometimes I want to wish him back but I am sure he is in a better place. So I live each day knowing a better place waits for me and what could ever be wrong with that. We are surrounded by goodness and it is everywhere, if you look at right. I wanted to leave you a big hug (O) and a smile so big it hurts. One of my dearest friend's-- better known as One-armed Jane (She only had one arm-she lost the other one in a accident) well her family used to tell her they loved her so much it hurt and I could never understand it>>>til I felt it one time. Your video reminded me of her family, RIP Jane B. TL~Keep your beautiful lovelight shining, they're thousands of great days ahead. May your holidays be a complete celebration! Maybe give everyone a Yankees cap to keep him on their minds, xo! Hopefully he'll inspire thoes Yankees and help them for a great season next spring, they need it! I don't know...if I've said the right things but I felt like I wanted to say them, and so I did. Death is so permanent but love is everlasting, so love is the trump card ~everyday! Love wins, winner! Blessings Forever and Ever to You and Yours, Sherry B ----------TigerLilly------(-----@
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To ALL the Other Ones here------------------------------(-----@ Celebrate the LOVE not the Loss! @@@@@@@@ ------------(-------@ @@@@@@@@@@@@ I LOVE YOU, ALL!
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Sherbear, what you wrote meant so much to me that I copied it into a document, so I can keep it. The fact that you saw what I was trying to say means the world to me. I cried buckets full when I made that, but I simply had to do something constructive with this grief, but I also smiled, cuz he was something else!! I even put a joke in there, that my brother would get-the photo where he has food in front of him, and the caption says "that was the best meal I ever had". He ALWAYS said that after he ate in a restaurant or with friends. He's still shining, I KNOW he is, and so are all of our loved ones that we have lost. My gigantickest hug back to you!! You are obviously a beautiful person!
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that's a lovely post sherbear.you should be so proud to spread so much positivity. to shine bright light in a world like this is no small feat. you indeed look at it right.
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and um another l, xo.Love is... December 5 and June 12. Love is... 365 dusks and dawns, xo. Love is... the entire universe in one tear. Love IS. -----------------(-----@ @@@@@@@@@@@@
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I just want to apologize to those who have left me messages, and for any vines that I may have dropped in the last year or so.I had experienced a bit of unemployment, then found a temp job 200 miles away leaving only the weekends that I could be home with my sweetie. Well, she had been experiencing increasing health issues, and upon my arrival home one Friday I found that she had passed on as she was getting ready for bed the previous evening, not long after I had last spoken with her. Needless to say, my priorities have taken a profound shift, and I'm still sorting out just what to do, in what order, with myself, my home situation and everything I had been involved in up to this point. She wasn't much of a Dead fan, not liking live recordings in general, but she did have a few favorites and had no problem with my interests in the scene, and otherwise was the epitome of a deadhead earth-mother in her embracing the loving ideals the group holds so close . Needless to say, the Dead's music has helped me with surviving this loss, and, while many selections still make me break down, others can't help but lift me back up. It may still be awhile before I am more active here, and my life will still be in crisis mode for the remainder of the year at least, but I felt that I owed an apology for my total inactivity.
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Am sending you all of the compassion that I can. I know from personal experience that there are very few words to say to someone who has lost a loved one-especially so suddenly; but please know that you are in my heart. Grief can feel so very lonely, but rest assured that you are not alone.
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so sorry for your loss.
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absolutely, you're not alone at ALL.my sincere condolences TxJed; a fine measure of the person you must be that, after such a loss, you apologise for any "inactivity" or ignoring fellow forum users. that says a lot. the Dead was absolutely vital, essential and a real guide for me after my Dad died; for me too, the music reduced me to a curled up ball of hurt and a beaming outstretched smile that wanted to radiate on all others who have suffered so. sometimes throughout the same Jerry solo. take good care of yourself. if you ever want to vent a little, in rage at the injustice, or in gentle reflection of the good times shared, you know where we all are.
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Hubert Sumlin - November 16, 1931 – December 4, 2011. "wrenched, shattering bursts of notes, sudden cliff-hanger silences and daring rhythmic suspensions". will we see the like again?
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... it is very much felt and appreciated. One of the lessons that she left me with is that the universe is so full of magic, even amongst all of the pain and suffering... all we have to do is open ourselves to the possibilities, and she showed me how to achieve such acceptance. Such simple words, such profound meaning. While I had intellectually been aware, it is one thing to be aware and another totally to experience, like so many things in each of our own little realities.I had experienced a few hard times - divorce, bankruptcy, deaths of friends and parents; nothing could have prepared me for this. It feels like someone has reached into my chest and ripped half of my heart away, leaving a numb ball to heal itself with the salve of time, and acceptance that all is actually fine. Death, after all, is the price of life, and it is much worse to die without appreciating life, than it is to die knowing that you are only continuing your journey. Unfortunately, I have another major loss approaching, and I will be posting in the Positive Vibes thread to ask for energy to be sent to my sister to ease her journey. Thanks again so much for being such a wonderful, loving community, one which is a beacon of hope and promise, acceptance and experience; I feel honored to have been shown and to be accepted among you. Namaste.
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... for my dear sister.I attempted to post this in the Positive Vibes thread and saw that it was locked, redirecting to what appears to be a music vine, so, since I've shared my pain here thus far, I thought I would post this here. Marye, please feel free to move it to a more appropriate location; I just felt a bit disrespectful of my sis to post this in a music vine. I don't know if it is better for me for what is about to happen next to happen so soon or if I should heal a little more before it occurs, but my older sister, who has claim to be among those who made the California migration of the sixties, who found deep disappointment in the Haight (long spoiled by '68 when she made the journey) and went on to Carmel to join a commune (ultimately becoming a wharf rat herself, whose only addiction now happens to be what is killing her, tobacco), who is one of the largest influence on my own views of the universe as well as introducing me to the Dead, has recently been diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer. I will be making the trek to Orlando to be by her side at x-mas. While this is very poor timing for me, for me to even entertain that thought is only selfishness coming through. I am trying to approach it as a true test of how to define the remainder of my own time here, and will be reaching deeper than I have ever before to find the strength to accept what is happening, because there is nothing I can do to change it but plea my case to the universe. I am humbling asking for those reading this to send some positive thoughts and energy her way to ease her passage. Fortunately, her life experiences have given her a very positive attitude to her situation, but she is still suffering physical pain, as well as the understandable uncertainty of just what lies ahead for her. Thank you.
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many good thoughts to you and your sister. And thanks for the heads up re the Positive Vibes topic; the old one seems to still be there but the new one seems to have vanished, so hey, I just started a new one so we won't have that problem.
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Passing of a great man. Can't listen to Jerry and Pig do Smokestack Lightning without thinking of this man. Just saw him last month at the Wellmont in NJ when he did a walk on during an Elvis Costello show. Might have been his last public performance for all I know. Some vids on You Tube if anyone is interested. Anyway, he is in a better place I am sure.
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Writer, journalist, clever guy, trouble maker and author of the brilliantly argued and higly entertaining book 'God is not Great. How Religion Poisons Everything'.
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yes, i was about to post Christopher's obituary when i suddenly saw your mention.the interview he did with Jeremy Paxman was very moving. this is his obituary in The Guardian by Peter Wilby - For most of his career, Christopher Hitchens, who has died of oesophageal cancer aged 62, was the left's biggest journalistic star, writing and broadcasting with wit, style and originality in a period when such qualities were in short supply among those of similar political persuasion. Nobody else spoke with such confidence and passion for what Americans called "liberalism" and Hitchens (regarding "liberal" as too "evasive") called "socialism". His targets were the abusers of power, particularly Henry Kissinger (whom he tried to bring to trial for his role in bombing Cambodia and overthrowing the Allende regime in Chile) and Bill Clinton. He was unrelenting in his support for the Palestinian cause and his excoriation of America's projections of power in Asia and Latin America. He was a polemicist rather than an analyst or political thinker – his headteacher at the Leys school in Cambridge presciently forecast a future as a pamphleteer – and, like all the best polemicists, brought to his work outstanding skills of reporting and observation. To these, he added wide reading, not always worn lightly, an extraordinary memory – he seemed, his friend Ian McEwan observed, to enjoy "instant neurological recall" of anything he had ever read or heard – and a vigorous, if sometimes pompous writing style, heavily laden with adjectives, elegantly looping sub-clauses and archaic phrases such as "allow me to inform you". His socialism was always essentially internationalist, particularly since the British working classes responded sluggishly to literature he handed out at factory gates for the International Socialists, a Trotskyist group of which he was a member from 1966 to 1976. He had little interest in social or economic policy and, in later life, seemed somewhat bemused at questions about his three children being educated privately. Hitchens travelled widely as a young man, often at his own expense, visiting, for example, Poland, Portugal, Czechoslovakia and Argentina at crucial moments in their anti-totalitarian struggles, offering fraternal solidarity and parcels of blue jeans. Later, he rarely wrote at length about any country without visiting it, sometimes at risk of arrest or physical attack. His loathing of tyranny was consistent: unlike many of the 1960s generation, he never harboured illusions about Mao or Castro. His concerns grew about the left's selective tolerance for totalitarian regimes – as early as 1983, he ruffled "comrades" by supporting Margaret Thatcher's war against General Leopoldo Galtieri's Argentina – but they did not initially threaten a rupture in his political loyalties. After the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington in 2001, however, Hitchens announced he was no longer on the left – while denying he had become any kind of conservative – and "swore a sort of oath to remain coldly furious" until "fascism with an Islamic face" was "brought to a most strict and merciless account". To the horror of former allies, he accepted invitations to the George W Bush White House; embraced the deputy defence secretary and Iraq war hawk Paul Wolfowitz as a friend ("they were finishing each other's sentences", was one account of an early meeting); and resigned from the Nation, America's foremost leftwing weekly. In 2007, after living in the US for more than 25 years, he took out American citizenship in a ceremony presided over by Bush's head of homeland security. Long friendships with the aristocracy of the Anglo-American left – Noam Chomsky, Tariq Ali, Alexander Cockburn, Edward Said – ended in harsh exchanges. Gore Vidal once named Hitchens as his inheritor or dauphin. The relevant quotation appeared on the dustjacket of Hitch-22, Hitchens's memoir published in 2010, but was overlain by a red cross with "no, CH" inscribed beside it. Hitchens was born in Portsmouth to parents of humble origins who progressed to the fringes of what George Orwell (a Hitchens role-model) would have termed the lower-upper-middle-classes. His father was a naval commander of "flinty and adamant" Tory views who became a school bursar. Father and son were never close; Christopher and his younger brother, Peter. The first love of Hitchens's life was his mother, "the cream in the coffee, the gin in the Campari". She insisted (at least according to Hitchens) he should go to boarding school because "if there is going to be an upper class in this country, then Christopher is going to be in it". He was already a Labour supporter at school, organising the party's "campaign" in a mock election, and joining a CND march from Aldermaston. At Balliol College, Oxford, where he read philosophy, politics, and economics, he "rehearsed", as he put it, for 1968. But he led a curiously dualistic life. By day, "Chris" addressed car workers through a bullhorn on an upturned milk crate while by night "Christopher" wore a dinner jacket to address the Oxford Union or dine with the warden of All Souls. (He did not, in fact, like being called "Chris" – his mother would not, he explained, wish her firstborn to be addressed "as if he were a taxi-driver or pothole-filler" – and found "Hitch", which most friends used, more acceptable.) While not exactly a social climber, Hitchens wished to be on intimate terms with important people. Equally dualistic was his sex life. He was almost expelled from school for homosexuality and later boasted that at Oxford he slept with two future (male) Tory cabinet ministers. But also at Oxford, he lost his virginity to a girl who had pictures of him plastered over her bedroom wall and he eventually became a dedicated heterosexual because, he said, his looks deteriorated to the point where no man would have him. The "double life", as he called it, continued after he left university with a third-class degree – he was too busy with politics to bother much with studying – and found, partly through his Oxford friend James Fenton, a berth at the New Statesman. He supplemented his income by writing for several Fleet Street newspapers, but also contributed gratis to the Socialist Worker. It was while working for the Statesman that he experienced a "howling, lacerating moment in my life": the death of his adored mother in Athens, apparently in a suicide pact with her lover, a lapsed priest. Only years later did he learn what she never told him or perhaps anyone else: that she came from a family of east European Jews. Though his brother – who first discovered their mother's origins – said this made them only one-32nd Jewish, Hitchens declared himself a Jew according to the custom of matrilineal descent. Later in the 1970s, Hitchens became a familiar Fleet Street figure, disporting himself in bars and restaurants and settling into a literary set that included Fenton, Martin Amis, Julian Barnes, Clive James and others. It specialised in long lunches and what (to others) seemed puerile and frequently obscene word games. But he was hooked on America as a 21-year-old when he visited on a student visa and tried unsuccessfully to get a work permit. In October 1981, on a half-promise of work from the Nation, he left for the US. It was the making of his career: Americans have always had a weakness for plummy voiced, somewhat raffish Englishmen who pepper their writing and conversation with literary and historical allusions. He became the Nation's Washington correspondent, contributing editor of Vanity Fair from 1982, literary essayist for Atlantic Monthly, a frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books and a talking head on innumerable cable TV shows. He authored 11 books, co-authored six more, and had five collections of essays published. The targets included Kissinger, Clinton and Mother Teresa ("a thieving fanatical Albanian dwarf"); his books on Orwell, Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine were more positive, and less widely noticed. His most successful book, which brought him international fame beyond what Susan Sontag called "the small world of those who till the field of ideas", was God Is Not Great, a mocking indictment of religion which put him alongside Richard Dawkins as a leading enemy of the devout. Hitchens was also, to his great pleasure, a liberal studies professor at the New School in New York and, for a time, visiting professor at Berkeley in California, as well as a regular on the public lecture and debate circuit. Hitchens loved what he called "disputation" – there was little difference between his public and private speaking styles – and America, a more oral culture than Britain's, offered ample opportunity. When his final break with the left came, it seemed to some as though the pope had announced he was no longer a Catholic. His support for Bush's war in Iraq – which he never retracted – and his vote for the president in 2004, were even bigger shocks, and some suspected a psychological need, as the first male Hitchens never to wear uniform, to prove his manhood. But Hitchens, in many respects a traditionalist, was never a straightforward lefty. He abstained in the UK's 1979 election, admitting he secretly favoured Thatcher and hoped for an end to "mediocrity and torpor". The Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwa, issued in 1989 against his friend Salman Rushdie, was, in Hitchens's mind, as important in exposing the left's "bad faith" as 9/11. He supported, albeit belatedly, the first Gulf war, demanded Nato intervention in Bosnia, and refused to sign petitions against sanctions on Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Hitchens, though, did not deny he had changed. He became, if truth be told, a bit of a blimp and ruefully remarked – with the quiet self-irony that often underlay his bombastic style – that he sometimes felt he should carry "some sort of rectal thermometer, with which to test the rate at which I am becoming an old fart". But, he insisted, he wasn't making a complete about-turn. Though no longer a socialist, he was still a Marxist, and an admirer of Lenin, Trotsky and Che Guevera; capitalism, the transforming powers of which Marx recognised, had proved the more revolutionary economic system and, politically, the American revolution was the only one left in town. He remained committed to civil liberties. After voluntarily undergoing waterboarding, he denounced it as torture, and he was a plaintiff in a lawsuit against Bush's domestic spying programme. He never let up in his "cold, steady hatred … as sustaining to me as any love" of all religions. Other things were unchanging. Hitchens's life was full of feuds with old friends. He broke with the Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal who, before a congressional committee, denied spreading calumnies about Monica Lewinsky. Hitchens, earning himself the sobriquet "Snitchens", signed affidavits testifying that Blumenthal had, in his hearing, indeed smeared the president's lover. His rightwing brother, Peter, also a journalist, was put on non-speakers for several years after revealing a pro-red joke that Christopher once made in private. But his friendship with Amis never wavered. "Martin … means everything to me," he once said, while "more or less" acquitting himself of carnal desire. Amis, in turn, spoke of "a love whose month is ever May" and described his friend as a rhetorician of such distinction that "in debate, no matter what the motion, I would back him against Cicero, against Demosthenes". Hitchens's love affairs with alcohol and tobacco were equally constant. He smoked heavily, even on public occasions and even on TV, long after the habit – for everyone else – became unacceptable. Despite reports in 2008 that he had given up, a reporter found him getting through two packets of cigarettes in a morning in May 2010. As for alcohol, he drank daily, on his own admission, enough "to kill or stun the average mule". Technically, he was probably an alcoholic but, he pointed out, he never missed deadlines or appointments. Regardless of condition, he wrote fast and fluently, if with erratic punctuation. Only rarely did alcohol make him a bore, blunt his wit or cloud his arguments. The journalist Lynn Barber rated him "one of the greatest conversationalists of our age". Inebriated or sober, he could charm almost anybody. He could also, with what the New Yorker's Ian Parker called "the sudden, cutthroat withdrawal of charm", wound deeply and unnecessarily. In the summer of 2010, during a promotional tour for Hitch-22, he was diagnosed with terminal oesophageal cancer, a disease that had killed his father at a much more advanced age. He inhabited "Tumourville", as he called it, with rueful wit and little self-pity. "In whatever kind of a 'race' life may be," he wrote, "I have abruptly become a finalist." In the same Vanity Fair article, he observed that "I have been taunting the Reaper into taking a free scythe in my direction and have now succumbed to something so predictable and banal that it bores even me". But he never repented of his convivial lifestyle – on the contrary, he continued to take his beloved whisky, having received no medical instructions to the contrary – and nor did he turn his rhetorical skills to persuading others to eschew his example, confining himself, in a TV interview, to the observation that "if you can hold it down on the smokes and cocktails, you may be well advised to do so". He continued, as well as giving valedictory newspaper and magazine interviews, to write, broadcast and participate in public debates with no discernible diminution of vigour or passion. He confronted the Catholic convert Tony Blair before an audience of 2,700 in Toronto and, by general consent, won with ease. He gave early notice that there would be no deathbed conversion to religion. If we ever heard of such a thing, he advised, we should attribute it to sickness, dementia or drugs. When believers prayed for him, he politely declared himself touched, but resolute in his atheism. He was as severe with the conventional cliches of terminal illness as he was, throughout his life, with any other form of convention. "To the dumb question 'Why me?'," he wrote, "the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply, 'Why not?'" All the same, his many friends and admirers, who do not, as one of them put it, "relish a world without Hitchens", will be asking "why him?" today. Hitchens was married, first, to Eleni Meleagrou, a Greek Cypriot, and then, after they divorced, to Carol Blue, an American screenwriter. Both survive him, as do one son and two daughters. • Christopher Eric Hitchens, journalist, born 13 April 1949; died 15 December 2011
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one of his best (for me anyway) "The only position that leaves me with no cognitive dissonance is atheism. It is not a creed. Death is certain, replacing both the siren-song of Paradise and the dread of Hell. Life on this earth, with all its mystery and beauty and pain, is then to be lived far more intensely: we stumble and get up, we are sad, confident, insecure, feel loneliness and joy and love. There is nothing more; but I want nothing more."
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what a bummer, but what a cool guy. We were lucky to have him.
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"When people in San Francisco speak of Warren Hellman 100 years in the future - and they will - it may very well be similar to what Churchill said of Gandhi: They will wonder if such a man ever truly did exist." Besides Hardly Strictly, there was the Free Clinic. And that was just the start. Gave rich guys a good name. Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/12/19/MNIL1MEC31…
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10 years of gradual decline with MS presenting like Alzheimer's disease. The last several immobile in a bed with little brain activity. Now she is free. "She sang a while and then flew off.. .....don't cry now, don't you cry,... dry your eyes, on the wind..."
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Her love will never cease...remember that part you get to keep. I will embrace you with all my heart, xo. Wish you were here... but alas you are, I am but human too. (((((*))))) Lovelight shining to you from NY. Peace and Comfort for the days ahead. >>>>onward love onward>>>>>> xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo
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Her love will never cease...remember that part you get to keep. I will embrace you with all my heart, xo. Wish you were here... but alas you are, I am but human too. (((((*))))) Lovelight shining to you from NY. Peace and Comfort for the days ahead. >>>>onward love onward>>>>>> xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo