Sad news: RIP James Brown

James Brown, the Godfather of Soul, died this morning at the age of 73. There is a nice obituary here.

I was a little surprised at how sad this made me this morning. Science Boy and I saw a screening of The TAMI Show a few months back. When James Brown came on, he electrified his audience and that little theater we were in. At the end of his performance, everyone in the theater burst into applause and James Brown got a standing ovation, some 41 years and many miles from that original performance.

Our local R&B station has been playing interviews, old and new, and lots of music. I will listen to his music and I think I will read Mr. Chickee's Funny Money by Christopher Paul Curtis and imagine that James Brown *is* the face on the extremely rare, government-denied quadrillion dollar bill...

In Memoriam: Philippa Pearce

Philippa Pearce, author of the perrenial favorite children's novel, Tom's Midnight Garden, has died at the age of 86.

From the obituary at the Independent Online:

Preferring to talk to children because, unlike adults when struggling to be polite, they "always yawn when they are bored", she combined a quizzical humour with a gentle but insistent honesty that won her many devoted friends at home and abroad.Preferring to talk to children because, unlike adults when struggling to be polite, they "always yawn when they are bored", she combined a quizzical humour with a gentle but insistent honesty that won her many devoted friends at home and abroad.

Tom's Midnight Garden was one of the books that has appealed to children everywhere I have worked. In one community -- a city with high crime and poverty rates -- 10-year-old Penny told me the book helped her feel better about all the "bad things" in her life. After that ringing endorsement, I read it, too. That magic that resides in very special books is there and so, as long as children love that story (which I predict will be for a very long time, indeed), a piece of Ms. Pearce shall remain with us, making lives the richer for it.