Category: people

Pepper didn’t pick up a camera until she was 60 – and then didn’t waste a day. “As an outsider coming to the Prairies, Pepper was moved by her subject’s stories of how families struggled in the early days on the farm and how women did so many small, little heartfelt things to hold their families and communities together. ‘She just wanted to give those women their due that she felt they had not received during the course of their lifetimes.'” – CBC

Joseph led protests in the 1960s and 1970s, telling museums they needed to include Black artists in their collections. Later, he entered the field of mental health, and taught art therapy at The Pratt Institute. He is credited for “helping to introduce concepts like racial sensitivity and cultural competency to the profession.” – The New York Times

Madgett was 17 when her first book was published. “Her elegant, exacting and lyrical poems — which invited comparisons to Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson — addressed a breadth of themes: social justice, romantic love, women’s histories, religious devotion and the craft of poetry itself. Yet she was almost as well known as a publisher and editor of poetry.” – The New York Times

“In addition to writing 11 works of fiction, Ms. Lurie was an essayist and a scholar of children’s literature who taught at Cornell University for years. But she was best known for her comedies of manners — many of them set at the fictional Corinth University — about well-educated women who have plunged into a marriage or career that fails, sometimes woefully, to live up to expectations.” – The Washington Post

Hargobind Tahilramani, a 41-year-old Indonesian man now in custody in Manchester, is believed to be the perpetrator of a years-long scam in which he impersonated major Hollywood executives such as Amy Pascal, Sherry Lansing, Kathleen Kennedy, and Wendi Deng Murdoch and swindled hopeful actors, stunt performers, makeup artists and others out of thousands of dollars each. – The Hollywood Reporter

For many of us, virtual worlds are fertile ground for growing new friendships and romance. In online role-playing platforms, gamers may feel more confident in their social interactions than in real life because they can be seen exactly as they want to be seen, says Anthony Bean, a clinical psychologist in Fort Worth, Texas, and founder of Geek Therapeutics. – Wired

Jessa Crispin: “In the past month, Dolly Parton has saved us both from the pandemic and the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade. This shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, if you’ve been paying attention. Dolly Parton has been saving us her entire career.” – The Guardian

The victim, visiting London with his family from France, was 6 when he was hurled from the museum’s viewing deck by a deranged 17-year-old (now imprisoned) in August of 2019. The boy’s family says that he can now walk with a cane and breathe well enough to speak in words rather than syllables, though he still suffers from chronic pain and memory loss. – CNN

She performed her first Mozart concert at age 7, debuted at Carnegie Hall with the New York Philharmonic at 18, and played the Sibelius concerto for the composert himself, who called her performance the best he’d heard. Her fame faded after she retired to raise five children, yet, wrote Henry Fogel in 2015, “Her technique is as close to flawless as humans get, and her intelligence and interpretive breadth are clearly those of a major artist.” – The Washington Post

Silvestre married musical icon Antonio Aguilar after she was already a star, and the two had vital careers apart – “but transformed into a supernova when they worked together in 20 films and dozens of songs that get screened and streamed to this day. More important, Silvestre and Aguilar created a traveling rodeo that toured across the United States and Mexico for decades. Part musical revue, part horse show, part comedy act, and all about a wholesome night out for the family, their espectáculo played from small towns in the Midwest to six straight sold-out performances at Madison Square Garden.” – Los Angeles Times