Obit watch: September 16, 2026.

September 16th, 2026

Annie Dillard, author. (Pilgrim at Tinker Creek)

With the publication of “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek” in 1974, Ms. Dillard, just 28, was recognized as a major new voice in American letters. It was only the beginning of her career: In the years to come, she would publish essays, meditations on religion, poems, a theory of literature, two novels, journalism, a best-selling autobiography and another best seller, “The Writing Life,” about what it takes to put words into a world that has more than enough of them.

…

Unlike Thoreau, Ms. Dillard didn’t build a cabin in the woods and live there through the seasons of a year. Though her writing could convey the sense of a solitary life in the wilderness, she was mostly a day-tripper. After her forays into the Roanoke Valley of the Blue Ridge Mountains — which was, after all, her neighborhood — she would return home to the suburban house she shared with Richard Dillard, a creative writing instructor she had married at the end of her sophomore year at Hollins.

…

Forty-two years later, in a sweeping appraisal of her work, the author and critic William Deresiewicz noted in The Atlantic that “Dillard, like Thoreau, is never shy about pronouncing wholesale condemnation on the way her fellows live.” He thought that the alternative she represented smacked of spiritual snobbery and hypocrisy — a mystical way of life for the few who could afford it; like, for instance, the daughter of a wealthy family who became a success before she turned 30.

I have several of her books, but haven’t really dipped into them. I feel like I need to be in the right place and right frame of mind for this kind of work. But I do find this quote (from For the Time Being) quite striking:

There were no formerly heroic times, and there was no formerly pure generation. There is no one here but us chickens, and so it has always been: A people busy and powerful, knowledgeable, ambivalent, important, fearful, and self-aware; a people who scheme, promote, deceive, and conquer; who pray for their loved ones, and long to flee misery and skip death. It is a weakening and discoloring idea, that rustic people knew God personally once upon a time– or even knew selflessness or courage or literature– but that it is too late for us. In fact, the absolute is available to everyone in every age. There never was a more holy age than ours, and never a less.

While we were driving home on Monday, Mike mentioned a headline on his phone about the death of a “legendary” designer, and asked if any designer was truly “legendary”.

Bob Mackie. Even I have heard of Bob Mackie. Among his credits: Carol Burnett’s curtain dress.

Over the show’s 11 seasons, he created an average of 60 costumes a week for Ms. Burnett, Harvey Korman, Vicki Lawrence, Tim Conway and Lyle Waggoner, as well as the show’s guest stars and supporting performers.

Jay Maisel, photographer.

Mr. Maisel’s picture of Mr. Davis reveals him in a splash of light and shows his fingers moving in a blur on his trumpet. Mr. Maisel had taken it for himself; months later, Columbia Records asked if he had any photos of Mr. Davis that could be used for “Kind of Blue,” which the music historian Ashley Kahn, writing in The New York Times in 1999, said “floats above jazz history in an ether all its own.”

…

For a dozen years, Mr. Maisel worked out of a studio at 122 Second Avenue. Then his rent went up, prompting him to buy the abandoned Germania Bank building at 190 Bowery for $102,000 in 1966. Forty-nine years later, he sold it to a developer for $55 million.

The “On Taking Pictures” podcast devoted much of an episode to Mr. Maisel. I think he was also featured prominently in the OTP drinking game, but I seem to have lost my copy of that.

Peter Max, 1960s “counterculture” artist.

His simple graphic images, brightly colored and infectiously happy, lent themselves to a long list of licensed commercial products, from sheets and glassware and shower curtains to airplanes and, on one occasion, a stamp for the Postal Service.
Incorporating Art Nouveau, Op Art and psychedelic motifs, Mr. Max’s designs offered instant visual gratification and a cheery endorsement of the generational politics of love, joy and universal consciousness. His “panopticon” images repeated visual elements in tight formation, producing a kaleidoscope effect that recalled Easter mandalas.

Posted in Art, Books, Obits, Photography, TV | No Comments »

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyenas! (#162 and #163 in a series)

September 16th, 2026

By way of Lawrence: the city of Fulshear, Texas fired their chief of police, Kenny Seymour. (Fulshear is a suburb of Houston.)

Why?

It seems like he was in a relationship with a police captain. Sleeping with your subordinates is generally what we call “bad”.

According to the investigator, sworn interrogatory responses from Seymour’s divorce case showed a prolonged sexual relationship with the subordinate. The investigator also said Seymour had a financial entanglement with the captain, including providing money for rent, plane tickets, and other expenses.

Could be worse, though. The city of Trinidad, Texas (which looks to be roughly between Corsicana and Athens) had their license to have a police department revoked.

According to the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement (TCOLE), investigators from the commission conducted a law enforcement agency inspection of the police department on Aug. 5. The findings from their inspection revealed that Trinidad PD failed to meet the minimum standards law enforcement agencies are required to follow by state law.

Everyone who has a license from TCOLE has to “separate” from the department.

I prefer to use local or semi-local sources when I can, but the NYPost has a longer article. Part of this seems to be related to the arrest of Jennifer Combs. Ms. Combs made a post on Facebook “alleging that bacteria in Trinidad’s water pipes had hospitalized residents”. She was arrested for “felony false alarm or report”.

Police defended the arrest, claiming Combs’ post had created “fear, panic, or unnecessary emergency response within a community” — despite the city itself posting a notice urging residents to boil their water to “avoid harmful bacteria” on April 21, weeks before her arrest.

The police also arrested another person:

Police also arrested a supporter of Combs, citizen journalist Winston Noles, for misdemeanor disorderly conduct after he displayed a “f–k bad cops” sign outside city hall, FOX 4 reported.

The police chief, Charles Gregory, resigned in June.

After his resignation, the judge who approved Combs’ search warrant wrote a scathing letter questioning “the accuracy, completeness, and reliability of information” two Trinidad officers had presented to him and Gregory’s leadership.
The Henderson County District Attorney’s Office announced in August it would stop taking cases from the department following the state’s investigation.
Separately, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality found issues with Trinidad’s water supply — the very concern Combs had raised — which city officials have since promised to address.

There were some other issues.

The action followed an Aug. 5 investigation in which the department was found “unable to provide evidence that the agency provides public benefit to the community” and lacked 18 required policies, including ones on use of force, vehicle pursuit, professional conduct and active shooters, the commission said.

According to another story, the department had five full-time and “several” part-time officers. The population of Trinidad was 860 in 2020.

Posted in Cops, Law, Politics, Texas | No Comments »

Your NFL loser update: week 1, 2026.

September 15th, 2026

NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-17:

Miami
New England
Cleveland
Houston
Indianapolis
Tennessee
Denver
Chargers
Washington
Dallas
Green Bay
Carolina
New Orleans
Tampa Bay
Atlanta
Rams

Remember, it is just the first week of the season. There’s still plenty of time to panic.

Posted in Loser, NFL, Sports | No Comments »

Obit watch: September 13th, 2026.

September 13th, 2026

Friend of the blog, and a close personal friend of mine before there was a blog, Andrew Wimsatt, was murdered on Labor Day. His death was the one I referenced in a post earlier this week.

I’m still on the road (Mike the Musicologist and I head home tomorrow) but that’s only part of the reason I haven’t been able to put anything up before now. The other part of the reason is that this is sad and awful and emotionally devastating. I haven’t really been able to put words to it. I’ve had people die on me – we all have – but I’ve never had someone close to me murdered.

Lawrence has put up a series of posts rounding up the knows, the known unknowns, and a lot of tributes from Andrew’s friends, which I will send you in the direction of for now while I try to wrap my mind around this:

My Friend Was Murdered On Labor Day
Updates On The Murder Of Andrew Wimsatt
Remembering Andrew Wimsatt: “The Coolest Dude Ever”

The one thing I will add, which I have not seen anyone else mention, is: Andrew never forgot a kindness rendered to him. A few years ago, I drove him to a surgical appointment and waited for him to get out of durance vile. He reminded me of that multiple times over the years, always with gratitude. (And he drove me to appointments, too. As a matter of fact, he drove me to get 9,000 miles of hose shoved up my behinder region just a couple of weeks ago. And he didn’t want to accept lunch or dinner as payment: I had to force it on him.)

I think Andrew would have enjoyed the things I’ve picked up while I’m on the road. I wish he were still here to see them.

I will probably have more to write after I get home.

Posted in Obits | 1 Comment »

Loser update update.

September 13th, 2026

The start of the NFL season sort of snuck up on me while I was out of town.

The loser update will return sometime on Tuesday (should be back by then) to allow for the results of the Monday night games.

Posted in Loser, NFL, Sports | 1 Comment »

Obit watch.

September 8th, 2026

Still on the road, but I want to get a quick post up now.

I just found out that one of my close friends was murdered yesterday.

I don’t have a lot of details. There have some press reports, but they don’t name the victim. Law enforcement is still carrying out the notification of the family, as far as I know.

Once I have more details, I’ll post a full obit here and at the SDC blog.

Posted in Admin, Obits | 2 Comments »

Road trip!

September 7th, 2026

Traveling once again. Blogging will be intermittent until September 14th or possibly later.

Posted in Admin, Travel | 1 Comment »

TMI Bagatelle. (#148)

September 4th, 2026

Inspired by “Hey Borepatch – Nice Gleason score!” and a recent medical report, which states:

The Boston Bowel Prep Scale score total is 9.

…

A Boston Bowel Preparation Scale (BBPS) score of 9 is the highest possible score, meaning your colon was completely clean and provided an ideal view during your procedure.

Remember that test they gave you in school? “I AM THE BEST AT FOLLOWING DIRECTIONS!”.

(I brought this up with several of the nurses, right before they shot me full of Michael Jackson juice, and they all remembered it, too.)

(Also, folks: get yourself checked out. Dave Barry would approve, but I don’t think he’s sending out those certificates any longer.)

Posted in Bagatelle | 2 Comments »

Quel fromage!

September 2nd, 2026

Previously on WCD:

I’m absolutely convinced that, even if everything is true, the NBA and the Player’s Association won’t do anything about it.

Guess what? I was wrong, WRONG, wrongity-wrong!

The NBA on Wednesday announced severe punishments for the LA Clippers — including the loss of five future first-round picks and a fine of $30 million — for violating salary cap circumvention rules when they signed star Kawhi Leonard in 2022.
In a statement, the NBA said a near-yearlong investigation “found a pattern of misconduct and multiple significant rules violations by the Clippers organization, a prior offender of the salary cap circumvention rules.”

There are some other penalties, too. The one that jumps out at me:

Owner Steve Ballmer is suspended from all league and team activities for one year.

Posted in Sports | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: September 1, 2026.

September 1st, 2026

Roger Beasley, prominent Austin automotive dealer.

Wendell Berry, agrarian writer. NYT (share link, may require registration or an email address or something). I’ve never read any of his books, but he published articles in the old “Country Journal” back when my people subscribed to it. I thought he was an interesting guy, but frankly kind of a crank.

“What Wendell is talking about is a primitive agriculture,” Dr. Barnhart told The Times in 1988. “It’s a nice way of life if you have a rich father and you’re a tenured member of the faculty at a university. But I don’t see a great proportion of the American public returning to farms. And I don’t see it as an industry that would ever be capable of feeding 225 million people.”

Not quite an obit, but:

Posted in Books, Cars, Obits | 3 Comments »

Quotes of the day.

August 31st, 2026

Yes, more than one.

…the important thing to understand about the compressor section of a turbine engine is that it is an affront to god; it does its job not because it wants to work, but because engineers much smarter than me have somehow tricked it into working.

“Ferret people, we are a lot,” said Michele Paulhus, who drove her ferrets from Massachusetts to the show in Columbus, Ohio. “You kind of have to be because they are freakish little animals.”
“But I don’t think we’re as bad as the reptile people,” said her friend Skyla Fay.

“Raising a ferret is like raising a 2-year-old or a teenager,” said Scarlett Gray-Saling, who owns 85 of them. “The only difference is it’s legal to lock ferrets in a cage.”

Wait, wait. It’s not legal to lock a 2-year-old or a teenager in a cage? Was that wrong? Should I not have done that?

Posted in Bagatelle, Mammals, Planes | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: August 30, 2026.

August 30th, 2026

Borepatch put up an excellent obit for Dolly Parton, much better than anything I’ve written or could write. I strongly, strongly encourage you to go over and read it.

(I’d never heard the “my aunt had a sofa just like it” story before. And it made me laugh. Hard.)

The NYT has a nice obit for Azriel Blackman (may require registration or an email address or something).

Mr. Blackman is another one of those people who wasn’t necessarily famous, but who the paper of record does a good job of covering.

He was an airline mechanic for American Airlines. He worked for them for 80 years.

No, that’s not a typo. Eighty years. Eight. Zero.

The first aircraft he worked on was the amphibious Sikorsky flying boat. He serviced more than a dozen kinds of planes over the next eight decades, including the Douglas DC-3, the Convair CV-240, the Lockheed Constellation, the Boeing 377 and the McDonnell Douglas MD-80.
After enlisting in the Army, he served in the Korean War, repairing helicopters for Mobile Army Surgical Hospitals. Following his discharge in 1952, he returned to American at LaGuardia, then moved as a crew chief to New York International Airport, better known as Idlewild Airport, in 1960, three years before it was renamed for President Kennedy.

…

Mr. Blackman’s love of airplanes continued in volunteer work on his days off, like helping to restore aircraft for an ongoing project at Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn and a Sikorsky flying boat at the New England Air Museum in Windsor Locks, Conn., near Hartford.

…

“He represents a valuable institutional memory that says, ‘This is how we do it at American,’” Robert L. Crandall, the president of American from 1980 to 1998, said at Mr. Blackman’s 75th anniversary ceremony. “He’s the guy who sits with the new kids at lunch and passes it on.”

…

In 2012, American honored Mr. Blackman’s tenure by flying him around New York City in a restored, propeller-driven DC-3, part of the airline’s fleet that carried passengers between the mid-1930s and the late 1940s. He sat in the cockpit as it flew along the Hudson River, over Central Park and past the former site of Aviation High.
“He was taken aback by all of that,” his son said. “He didn’t really know how to accept praise of that magnitude. In his mind, he didn’t feel he had done anything extraordinary. He loved going to work. He considered the people he worked with family, and it was enjoyment to him. That was his real reward.”

He was 100 when he passed.

Posted in Music, Obits, Planes | 1 Comment »

Random crankery.

August 29th, 2026

First off, a matter of somewhat pecuniary interest, since I’d like to keep good relations with Jacob and the Widener’s blog folks.

Jacob was kind enough to send over a link to a recent post: “1986 VS 2026: Guns And Ammo Pricing“.

Jacob goes through and compares prices between 1986 and 2026, and does some historical and cultural analysis of the changes during that period (the rise of the Internet, regulatory factors, panic buying after certain events, etc.)

In 1986, a box of 9mm cost $22.50, or about $0.45 per round.
In 2026, it averages $10.00 per box, or $0.20 per round.
Even without adjusting for inflation, that’s a dramatic decrease. When adjusted for inflation, 9mm is significantly cheaper today than it was in the 1980s.

My main quibble with Jacob here is: that’s really the only place where he mentions “adjusted for inflation”. Though he does say:

Firearms: Moderately more expensive, but roughly in line with inflation

I would have liked to see more of a breakdown of this.

The two inflation calculators I use are: the US Inflation Calculator and the CPI Inflation Calculator from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

If we plug some of Jacob’s numbers into those calculators and compare 1986 to 2026 dollars:

  • The $249 in 1986 Glock 17 would be $758.63 in 2026. A veritable bargain, since Jacob has it for $649!
  • The $79 Ruger 10/22 would be $240.69 today. MSRP on the cheapest 10/22 I could find on Ruger’s site is $339, Jacob has it for $349 (which is also correct: Ruger has various models with various prices, of course.)
  • The Colt AR-15 Carbine that was $499 would go for $1,520.30 adjusted for inflation today. I find it hard to do a direct comparison, because so much depends on configuration, but MidwayUSA lists a Colt AR15A4 for $1136.41. Another bargain! (Jacob has it for $1,099.)
  • Your $5.49 .22 LR ammo would come out to $16.73 in 2026 dollars.

That’s probably enough examples. I’ll leave additional analysis as an exercise for the reader. I’ll note that both of the calculators I use gave exactly the same numbers for the 1986-2026 comparisons: I suspect they draw from the same source. Generally, $1 in 1986 is equal to $3.05 today, so you can use that as a factor when doing your math.

I like Jacob’s post. I just think it would be worthwhile to do a direct 1986-2026 dollar value comparison as part of the analysis. Jacob (or anyone else, for that matter) is welcome to flame me in comments if they think I’m wrong.

After the jump, a couple of books, mostly because I’m done with them and would like to move them from the downstairs stack to the upstairs shelves.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Books, Food, Guns, Holsters, Hoplobibilophilia | 3 Comments »

Obit watch: August 28, 2026.

August 28th, 2026

I am reliably informed by a reliable source who sent me a private message (that I don’t have permission to share here) that “Rocky Horror Picture Show” is actually still a thing, in Austin and in Washington, DC. (“The wash dc monthly showings still draw hundreds of people.”)

It is nice to leave a legacy behind you.

NYT obit for Jaye P. Morgan, for the record. (May require registration or an email address or something.)

King Harald V of Norway (NYT share link, yadda yadda.)

This is an interesting obit. The king’s daughter-in-law was close to Jeffrey Epstein. Her son is serving time for rape. And his daughter married “a self-proclaimed shaman who counted Gwyneth Paltrow among his celebrity clients and friends.”

Their relationship brought hostile attention to some of Mr. Verrett’s past utterances, including his claim that he had used an amulet — which he sold for $222 on his website — to combat Covid-19, and his assertion that cancer is a choice. The princess had also been criticized for many years for claiming to be clairvoyant and for urging others to contact “the angels and the divine universe.”

Several people sent me obits for voice actor Peter Cullen: NYT (you know the drill). The Internet Movie Voice Actor Database.

And a burning in Hell watch: Ratko Mladic, the “Butcher of Bosnia”.

On the eve of the Srebrenica massacre, he promised to avenge the conquest of Serbia centuries before by the Ottoman Muslim Turks. Over 10 days, his soldiers hunted down, captured and summarily executed thousands of Bosnian Muslims, lining them up with hands tied behind their backs and shooting them. Women were raped. International pleas for restraint were ignored.
Serb forces buried the remains, dug them up again and scattered them in distant mass graves in an organized effort to hide damning evidence of war crimes.

Posted in 1970s, Horses, Movies, Obits, TV | No Comments »

Obit watch: August 27, 2026.

August 27th, 2026

Tim Curry. NYT share link (may require registration or an email address or something).

Oddly, I have never seen “The Rocky Horror Picture Show”. I didn’t move in the right circles when I was in school, and now it seems like that particular moment has passed.

Other credits include “Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties”, the 2000 “Charlie’s Angels”, “The Blues Brothers Animated Series“, and “Pinky, Elmyra & the Brain”.

The NFL Pro Bowl. Awful Announcing. Enough said.

Posted in Movies, NFL, Obits, Sports | No Comments »

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