Ball point pen on the morning newsprint Frank McCourt passed away yesterday from complications of melanoma. He was born in Brooklyn, New York during the Great Depression and would return years later and become a New York City public school teacher. What happened in between was the horrific tale of his childhood and the basis for his Pulitzer Prize winning memoir, Angela's Ashes. He was 78. ...
Read MoreMonthly Archives: July 2009
Ball point pen on the morning newsprint The "most trusted man in America" has passed away from complications of dementia. Cronkite anchored the CBS Evening News from 1962 to 1981. His trusting delivery and presence informed America during one of the most turbulent eras in our nation's history - from the Vietnam War to the assassinations of JFK, RFK and MLK. He was 92. ...
Read MoreBall point pen on the morning newsprint While most reporting in Hollywood seems to consist of puff pieces written by those rubbing elbows with celebs on the red carpet, Nikki Finke is a tough reporter who keeps her distance from the limelight and her elbows sharpened. Her blog Deadline Hollywood Daily has made her a modern day Walter Winchell that execs fear. ...
Read MoreBall point pen on the morning newsprint Natalya was a mother, lawyer, journalist and Russian human rights activist. She worked and reported on Russian civil rights abuses in Chechnya. Yesterday she was kidnapped from her home in Grozny. Her body was found dead nine hours later, dumped by the side of the road with two gun shot wounds to the head. She was 50 year old. ...
Read MoreBall point pen on this mornings newsprint. Ron Bloom will become the Obama administration's top auto adviser. Bloom attended Harvard Business School, spent ten years at investment banks as is known for his negotiating skills.The position is being vacated by Steve Rattner, who is leaving under a cloud of suspicion for his alleged involvement in NYS pension kickbacks. ...
Read MoreBall point pen on the morning newsprint After conflicting accounts of what was or was not said during a House Intelligence Committee briefing, Leon Panetta has instructed a senior CIA officer to take a look at what happened and to explore what the CIA can do to improve it's reporting to Congress. ...
Read MoreBall point pen on the morning newsprint The Prime Minister of the Italian Republic, Silvio Berlusconi is hosting the G8 Summit. This doodle goes out to my son Andrew, who is studying abroad and today is probably baffled by all the traffic and congestion being he's in Rome, Italy along with eight of the most powerful men on the planet. Enjoy Capri this weekend Andrew! ...
Read MoreBall point pen on the morning newsprint At the age of five, both his parents were imprisoned in Soviet forced labor camps, He was taken from his grandmother and raised in an orphanage as the son of an enemy of the people. From that nightmarish beginning, he went on to earn a medical degree from Leningrad Medical University. He worked as a doctor while he pursued his interest in writing. He wrote of jazz and fashion instead of the misery of the Gulag, publishing more than twenty novels. Aksyonov was seen as a leader of young Soviets who were anti-totalitarian, pro-western and resisted the Communist Party's cultural and ideological restrictions. He was branded as Anti Soviet in 1980 after "The Burn" was published in Italy and forced into exile. Aksyonov lived in the United States for more than two decades, teaching at George Mason University. In 1990 he was reinstated as a Soviet citiz ...
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