Tag archive: Lachesis

MLKJ statue

AAA Profile: Martin Luther King Jr

Martin Luther King Jr can seem a remote figure, frozen in time with his death in 1968, but had he lived, he would have been 94 on January 15th, well within range of many current lifespans.  King galvanized a movement for civil rights which continues to this day, as more and more minority groups seek inclusivity and equality in America’s quest for a more perfect union.  Threats to his legacy abound, but as King himself stated, the arc of the moral universe bends always toward justice.  The fifty-fifth anniversary of his assassination will be commemorated April 4th.

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Aster-Obit: Barbara Walters

On 30 December 2022, media icon Barbara Walters passed away at her home in Manhattan; retired since 2014, her last public appearance had been in 2016.  Walters’ journalistic career was studded with an array of impressive “firsts.”  The doyenne of television interviewers, Walters made history as the first female co-anchor of a nightly network news broadcast, and the first woman journalist to garner a $1 million salary.  She was instrumental in the success of ABC’s premiere news magazine, “20/20”, established its hit daytime current events talk show, “The View”, and in countless interviews and dozens of prime-time specials brought us up close and personal to the movers, shakers, and culture makers of our time.  From presidents and potentates to pop stars and prima donnas, if they made headlines, Walters interviewed them, and often her interviews became headlines in themselves.

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Aster-Obit: Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, born Joseph Ratzinger in Bavaria, Germany, in 1927, passed away on 31 December 2022, age 95, at his monastic apartments in Vatican City where he had been living since his retirement from the papacy almost a decade before.  Ratzinger was elected Pontiff in 2005 after the death of Pope John Paul II, whose enforcer of doctrine he was.  Uncompromisingly conservative on social and theological issues, Benedict’s tenure in the Vatican was rocked by continued sexual scandals among the priesthood, by financial irregularities, and by breaches of security.  Ratzinger’s health was the avowed reason for giving up the Ring of the Fisherman in 2013, and though he lingered for another ten years, he became increasingly feeble and made few public appearances.  His health had taken a dramatic downturn in recent weeks, culminating in his passing on New Year’s Eve.

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Aster-Obit: Pele

December 29, 2022 saw the passing of a man generally acknowledged as the greatest soccer player of all time, Pele.  The mononymous sports superstar is the only player ever to compete in three winning FIFA World Cup finals, holds the Guinness World record for most lifetime goals, and was designated Player of the Century by international soccer’s governing body, FIFA.  Raised in poverty in the Sao Paulo state of Brazil, too destitute to afford a real ball, Pele learned his sport by playing with a sock stuffed with newspaper and tied off, or a grapefruit.  He joined his first professional team at age 15 and was picked up by the Brazil national team a year later.

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club Q cover

The Colorado Springs Drag Show Shooting

Just before midnight on Saturday, 19 November 2022, a man clad in body armor with an AR-15-style long rifle entered Club Q, an LGBTQ+ watering hole in a strip mall on the outskirts of Colorado Springs, Colorado, which was hosting a drag show that evening.  He began shooting into the crowd, but was tackled two minutes later by two patrons and subdued until police arrived.  In those two minutes, he had killed five and wounded 18 others.

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Art Imitates Astrology: Buffyverse Character Tara Maclay

In a recent AAA post, I honored the 25th anniversary of the premiere of perhaps my favorite TV series of all time, “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” and opined at the article’s close about how much I missed seeing the show.  Well, the syndication gods have smiled upon me, and just months later, “Buffy” retuned from the celluloid undead to brighten the screen via Comet TV.  As faithful readers of this site will remember, October usually brings at least one horror-or-Halloween-related article, but after five years, I was running out of ideas.  There didn’t seem the ghost of a chance that I’d find a suitable topic, and then my replay of “Buffy” paid off in a snippet I could sink my teeth into:  birth data from the tombstone of a major character.

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