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Tag: Obituaries

  • Nikki Finke, sharp-tongued Hollywood columnist, dies at 68

    Nikki Finke, sharp-tongued Hollywood columnist, dies at 68

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    NEW YORK — Nikki Finke, the veteran reporter who became one of Hollywood’s top journalists as founder of the entertainment trade website Deadline.com and whose sharp-tongued tenacity made her the most-feared columnist in show business, has died. She was 68.

    Finke died Sunday in Boca Raton, Florida, after a prolonged illness, according to Deadline.

    A famously reclusive blogger, Finke began writing LA Weekly’s “Deadline Hollywood” column in 2002 and made it essential reading for gossip and trade news. Four years later, she launched Deadline Hollywood Daily as a website.

    Blogging at Deadline.com, Finke made a pugnacious media empire of scoops and gossip, renowned for her “live-snarking” award shows and story updates that blared “TOLDJA!” when one of her earlier exclusives proved accurate.

    Finke’s sharp-elbow style earned her plenty of enemies in Hollywood. But the Long Island native’s regular drumbeat of exclusives proved her considerable influence with executives, agents and publicists. In 2010, Forbes listed her among “the world’s most powerful women.” Finke was unapologetic, declining to soften her approach for the most glamorous stars or the most powerful studio executives.

    “I mean, they play rough,” Finke told The New York Times in 2015. “I have to play rough, too.”

    Finke did it all largely from the confines of her apartment in west Los Angeles, not schmoozing at red-carpet premieres or cocktail parties. But from her reclusive remove, Finke could ruthlessly skewer executives whose decision making she disapproved of. She once called Jeff Zucker, then-president of NBC Universal, “one of the most kiss-ass incompetents to run an entertainment company.”

    “I can’t help it!” Finke told The New Yorker in 2009. “It’s like meanness pours out of my fingers!”

    In 2009, Deadline Hollywood was purchased by Jay Penske, whose company, Penske Media Corporation, would later also acquire Variety and The Hollywood Reporter. Finke often quarreled with Penske, particularly after his purchase of the Deadline rivals. She departed the site in 2013 after months of public acrimony, but remained under contract as a consultant. “He tried to buy my silence,” Finke wrote at the time. “No sale.”

    “At her best, Nikki Finke embodied the spirit of journalism, and was never afraid to tell the hard truths with an incisive style and an enigmatic spark. She was brash and true,” Penske said in a statement Sunday. “It was never easy with Nikki, but she will always remain one of the most memorable people in my life.”

    After her departure, Finke played with various projects but never returned to entertainment journalism. Her deal with Penske reportedly prohibited her to report on Hollywood for 10 years, though she at one time threatened to go solo again with NikkiFinke.com. Instead, she debuted HollywoodDementia.com, with fictional showbiz tales instead of real ones.

    Before her notoriety with Deadline, Finke had spent years as a reporter for The Associated Press, Newsweek, The Los Angeles Times, the New York Post and the New York Observer. She inspired a 2011 HBO pilot that starred Diane Keaton as reporter Tilda Watski.

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  • Japanese avant-garde pioneer composer Ichiyanagi dies at 89

    Japanese avant-garde pioneer composer Ichiyanagi dies at 89

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    TOKYO — Avant-garde pianist and composer Toshi Ichiyanagi, who studied with John Cage and went on to lead Japan’s advances in experimental modern music, has died. He was 89.

    Ichiyanagi, who was married to Yoko Ono before she married John Lennon, died Friday, according to the Kanagawa Arts Foundation, where Ichiyanagi had served as general artistic director. The cause of death was not given.

    “We would like to express our sincerest gratitude to all those who loved him during his lifetime,” the foundation’s chairman, Kazumi Tamamura, said in a statement Saturday.

    Ichiyanagi studied at The Juilliard School in New York and emerged a pioneer, using free-spirited compositional techniques that left much to chance, incorporating not only traditional Japanese elements and instruments but also electronic music.

    He was known for collaborations that defied the boundaries of genres, working with Jasper Johns and Merce Cunningham, as well as innovative Japanese artists like architect Kisho Kurokawa and poet-playwright Shuji Terayama, as well as with Ono, with whom he was married for several years starting in the mid-1950s.

    “In my creation, I have been trying to let various elements, which have often been considered separately as contrast and opposite in music, coexist and penetrate each other,” Ichiyanagi once said in an artist statement.

    Japanese traditional music inspired and emboldened him, he said, because it was not preoccupied with the usual definitions of music as “temporal art,” or what he called “divisions,” such as relative and absolute, or new and old.

    Modern music was more about “substantial space, in order to restore the spiritual richness that music provides,” he said.

    Among his well-known works for orchestra is his turbulently provocative “Berlin Renshi.” Renshi is a kind of Japanese collaborative poetry that is more open-ended free verse than older forms like “renku.”

    In 1989, Ichiyanagi formed the Tokyo International Music Ensemble — The New Tradition (TIME), an orchestral group focused on traditional instruments and “shomyo,” a style of Buddhist chanting.

    His music traveled freely across influences and cultures, transitioning seamlessly from minimalist avant-garde to Western opera.

    Ichiyanagi toured around the world, premiering his compositions at Carnegie Hall in New York and the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, Paris. The National Theater of Japan also commissioned him for several works.

    He remained prolific over the years, producing Concerto for marimba and orchestra in 2013, and Piano Concerto No. 6 in 2016, which Ichiyanagi performed solo at a Tokyo festival.

    Ichiyanagi received numerous awards, including the Alexander Gretchaninov Prize from Juilliard, L’ordre des Arts et des Lettres of the French Republic and the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Rosette and the Medal of Purple Ribbon from the Japanese government.

    Born in Kobe to a musical family, Ichiyanagi showed promise as a composer at a young age. He won a major competition in Japan before moving to the U.S. as a teen, when such moves were still relatively rare in postwar Japan.

    A private funeral is being held with family. A public ceremony in his honor is in the works, being arranged by his son, Japanese media reports said.

    ———

    Yuri Kageyama is on Twitter https://twitter.com/yurikageyama

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  • Loretta Lynn, coal miner’s daughter and country queen, dies

    Loretta Lynn, coal miner’s daughter and country queen, dies

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    NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Loretta Lynn, the Kentucky coal miner’s daughter whose frank songs about life and love as a woman in Appalachia pulled her out of poverty and made her a pillar of country music, has died. She was 90.

    In a statement provided to The Associated Press, Lynn’s family said she died Tuesday at her home in Hurricane Mills, Tennessee.

    “Our precious mom, Loretta Lynn, passed away peacefully this morning, October 4th, in her sleep at home in her beloved ranch in Hurricane Mills,” the family said in a statement. They asked for privacy as they grieve and said a memorial will be announced later.

    Lynn already had four children before launching her career in the early 1960s, and her songs reflected her pride in her rural Kentucky background.

    As a songwriter, she crafted a persona of a defiantly tough woman, a contrast to the stereotypical image of most female country singers. The Country Music Hall of Famer wrote fearlessly about sex and love, cheating husbands, divorce and birth control and sometimes got in trouble with radio programmers for material from which even rock performers once shied away.

    Her biggest hits came in the 1960s and ’70s, including “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” “You Ain’t Woman Enough,” “The Pill,” “Don’t Come Home a Drinkin’ (With Lovin’ on Your Mind),” “Rated X” and “You’re Looking at Country.” She was known for appearing in floor-length, wide gowns with elaborate embroidery or rhinestones, many created by her longtime personal assistant and designer Tim Cobb.

    Her honesty and unique place in country music was rewarded. She was the first woman ever named entertainer of the year at the genre’s two major awards shows, first by the Country Music Association in 1972 and then by the Academy of Country Music three years later.

    “It was what I wanted to hear and what I knew other women wanted to hear, too,” Lynn told the AP in 2016. “I didn’t write for the men; I wrote for us women. And the men loved it, too.”

    In 1969, she released her autobiographical “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” which helped her reach her widest audience yet.

    “We were poor but we had love/That’s the one thing Daddy made sure of/He shoveled coal to make a poor man’s dollar,” she sang.

    “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” also the title of her 1976 book, was made into a 1980 movie of the same name. Sissy Spacek’s portrayal of Lynn won her an Academy Award and the film was also nominated for best picture.

    Long after her commercial peak, Lynn won two Grammys in 2005 for her album “Van Lear Rose,” which featured 13 songs she wrote, including “Portland, Oregon” about a drunken one-night stand. “Van Lear Rose” was a collaboration with rocker Jack White, who produced the album and played the guitar parts.

    Reba McEntire was among the stars who reacted to Lynn’s death, posting online about how the singer reminded her of her late mother. “Strong women, who loved their children and were fiercely loyal. Now they’re both in Heaven getting to visit and talk about how they were raised, how different country music is now from what it was when they were young. Sure makes me feel good that Mama went first so she could welcome Loretta into the hollers of heaven!”

    Born Loretta Webb, the second of eight children, she claimed her birthplace was Butcher Holler, near the coal mining company town of Van Lear in the mountains of east Kentucky. There really wasn’t a Butcher Holler, however. She later told a reporter that she made up the name for the purposes of the song based on the names of the families that lived there.

    Her daddy played the banjo, her mama played the guitar and she grew up on the songs of the Carter Family. Her younger sister, Crystal Gayle, is also a Grammy-winning country singer, scoring crossover hits with songs like “Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue” and “Half the Way.” Lynn’s daughter Patsy Lynn Russell also was a songwriter and producer of some of her albums.

    “I was singing when I was born, I think,” she told the AP in 2016. “Daddy used to come out on the porch where I would be singing and rocking the babies to sleep. He’d say, ‘Loretta, shut that big mouth. People all over this holler can hear you.’ And I said, ‘Daddy, what difference does it make? They are all my cousins.’”

    She wrote in her autobiography that she was 13 when she got married to Oliver “Mooney” Lynn, but the AP later discovered state records that showed she was 15. Tommy Lee Jones played Mooney Lynn in the biopic.

    Her husband, whom she called “Doo” or “Doolittle,” urged her to sing professionally and helped promote her early career. With his help, she earned a recording contract with Decca Records, later MCA, and performed on the Grand Ole Opry stage. Lynn wrote her first hit single, “I’m a Honky Tonk Girl,” released in 1960.

    She also teamed up with singer Conway Twitty to form one of the most popular duos in country music with hits such as “Louisiana Woman, Mississippi Man” and “After the Fire is Gone,” which earned them a Grammy Award. Their duets, and her single records, were always mainstream country and not crossover or pop-tinged.

    And when she first started singing at the Grand Ole Opry, country star Patsy Cline took Lynn under her wing and mentored her during her early career.

    The Academy of Country Music chose her as the artist of the decade for the 1970s, and she was elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1988. She won four Grammy Awards, was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2008, was honored at the Kennedy Center Honors in 2003 and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2013.

    In “Fist City,” Lynn threatens a hair-pulling fistfight if another woman won’t stay away from her man: “I’m here to tell you, gal, to lay off of my man/If you don’t want to go to Fist City.” That strong-willed but traditional country woman reappears in other Lynn songs. In “The Pill,” a song about sex and birth control, Lynn sings about how she’s sick of being trapped at home to take care of babies: “The feelin’ good comes easy now/Since I’ve got the pill,” she sang.

    She moved to Hurricane Mills, Tennessee, outside of Nashville, in the 1990s, where she set up a ranch complete with a replica of her childhood home and a museum that is a popular roadside tourist stop. The dresses she was known for wearing are there, too.

    Lynn knew that her songs were trailblazing, especially for country music, but she was just writing the truth that so many rural women like her experienced.

    “I could see that other women was goin’ through the same thing, ‘cause I worked the clubs. I wasn’t the only one that was livin’ that life and I’m not the only one that’s gonna be livin’ today what I’m writin’,” she told The AP in 1995.

    Even into her later years, Lynn never seemed to stop writing, scoring a multi-album deal in 2014 with Legacy Records, a division of Sony Music Entertainment. In 2017, she suffered a stroke that forced her to stop touring, but she released her 50th solo studio album, “Still Woman Enough” in 2021.

    She and her husband were married nearly 50 years before he died in 1996. They had six children: Betty, Jack, Ernest and Clara, and then twins Patsy and Peggy. She had 17 grandchildren and four step-grandchildren.

    ——

    Online: https://lorettalynn.com/

    ——

    Follow Kristin M. Hall at https://twitter.com/kmhall

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  • Two prophets, century-old prayer duel inspire Zion mosque

    Two prophets, century-old prayer duel inspire Zion mosque

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    ZION, Illinois — A holy miracle happened in Zion 115 years ago. Or so millions of Ahmadi Muslims around the world believe.

    The Ahmadis view this small-sized city, 40 miles north of Chicago on the shores of Lake Michigan, as a place of special religious significance for their global messianic faith. Their reverence for the community began more than a century ago — with fighting words, a prayer duel and a prophecy.

    Zion was founded in 1900 as a Christian theocracy by John Alexander Dowie, an evangelical and early Pentecostal preacher who drew thousands to the city with his faith healing ministry. The Ahmadis believe their founder, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, defended the faith from Dowie’s verbal attacks against Islam, and defeated him in a sensational face-off armed only with prayers.

    Most current residents may not have an inkling of that high-stakes holy fight of a bygone era. But, for the Ahmadis, it is one that has created an eternal bond with the city of Zion.

    This weekend, thousands of Ahmadi Muslims from around the world have congregated in the city to celebrate that century-old miracle and a significant milestone in the life of Zion and of their faith: The building of the city’s first mosque.

    —-

    Dowie was born in Scotland in 1847. His family immigrated in 1860 to Australia, where he was ordained and became pastor of a Congregational church.

    Dowie left Australia in 1888 for the United States where he grew in popularity with his healing ministry. Stories of Dowie’s miracles abound, including one about Sadie Cody, a niece of Buffalo Bill Cody, a celebrity known for his Wild West Show, who said her spinal tumor was healed by Dowie’s prayers.

    With money accumulated from the faithful, Dowie bought 6,000 acres of land in Lake County, Illinois, hoping to establish a Christian utopia. Dowie’s laws forbade gambling, theaters, circuses, alcohol and tobacco. He also banned swearing, spitting, dancing, pork, oysters and tan-colored shoes. Whistling on Sunday was punishable by jail time.

    The massive 8,000-seat Shiloh Tabernacle, built in 1900, became Zion’s religious center. It was there that Dowie appeared with his flowing white beard, robed in the brightly embroidered garments of an Old Testament high priest, and declared himself “Elijah the Restorer.”

    While he welcomed Black people and immigrants into Zion, Dowie had harsh words for politicians, medical doctors and Muslims, which he expressed in his journal.

    In 1902, Dowie wrote: “This is my job to gather people from the East and West, North and South and inhabit Christians in this Zion City as well as other cities until the day comes when the Mohammedan religion is totally wiped out of this world. Oh God show us the day.”

    ———

    In his palms on a recent September day, Tahir Ahmed Soofi cradled a crumbling, yellow newspaper from the 1900s bearing Dowie’s image.

    “Dowie is a part of our history, too,” said Soofi, president of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community’s Zion chapter, as he arranged these relics in glass displays that will become part of the new mosque’s museum. The community has named this mosque Fath-e-Azeem, which means “a great victory” in Arabic.

    The $4 million building, with a large prayer hall and plush carpeting, will replace their older, retrofitted center less than two miles away, which has been the community’s home since 1983.

    As he got the new space ready for the Oct. 1 inauguration, Soofi recounted the tale passed down to generations of Ahmadis. When Ahmad, the religion’s founder who lived in Qadian, India, heard about Dowie’s angry proclamations against Muslims, he urged him to stop, Soofi said.

    Ahmadis believe that their founder, who was born in 1835, was the promised reformer the Prophet Muhammed predicted and the metaphorical second coming of Jesus Christ.

    Soofi said when Dowie ignored Ahmad’s pleas, in 1902, he challenged Zion’s founder to a “prayer duel.”

    In The New York Times and other U.S. publications at the time, this challenge was built up as a battle between two messiahs – to ascertain who was the true prophet and which was the true religion. Ahmad asserted in writing that, “whoever is the liar may perish first.”

    Dowie refused to acknowledge Ahmad’s challenge and scoffed at his statements that Jesus was human, survived the crucifixion and lived out the rest of his life in Kashmir. He shot back writing: “Do you think that I should answer such gnats and flies?”

    In the following years, Dowie’s fortunes began to fade. In 1905, one of his top lieutenants, Wilbur Voliva, took over leadership of the church after Dowie was accused of extravagance and misusing investments. Dowie’s health suffered thereafter. He died in 1907 after a paralytic stroke, at age 60.

    While Ahmad died a year after Dowie passed, at age 73, his followers saw Dowie’s downfall and death as a great victory for their founder and faith.

    For Ahmadis worldwide, the result of this prayer duel reaffirmed the truth of their messiah’s claims, said Amjad Mahmood Khan, U.S. spokesperson for the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community. It’s a story Ahmadi children grow up hearing at home and in their mosques worldwide.

    “Whether you talk to an Ahmadi in Miami, Maine, South Dakota or Seattle, they will know this story and what a great victory it was,” Khan said, adding that it doesn’t mean they exult in Dowie’s demise. “It’s the triumph of what Islam stands for in the face of false allegations, and it’s about the victory of prayer over prejudice.”

    —-

    “Welcome to Shiloh House.”

    Kathy Goodwin, who volunteers every week at the 1902 Swiss-inspired chalet that Dowie built at 1300 Shiloh Boulevard, greets visitors with these words before she takes them around the 25-room mansion. Dowie spent $90,000 (about $3 million in today’s dollars) to build it and $50,000 more to furnish it.

    He brought fixtures from Europe, including a porcelain bath. The house had running water, electricity and phones, a rarity in that time.

    Goodwin tells visitors about her family’s connection to Dowie. Her grandfather, a master carpenter from Switzerland, and his German wife went to hear Dowie speak in Chicago. Then and there, they decided to follow the preacher to Zion. Goodwin’s grandfather was chief carpenter for Shiloh House and her father, the last of 15 children, ran around the mansion as a child while his dad helped build it.

    The house has numerous images of Dowie — painted, photographed and woven with lace. Dowie, who was 5-foot-2, had carpenters craft custom wooden step stools so he could reach the top shelves of his bookcases. The house even has on one wall, two framed pieces crafted with Dowie’s hair by his barber. One shows the Dowie’s greeting “Peace to thee” and another is a depiction of the Bible.

    Goodwin is proud of Dowie’s legacy and wants it preserved.

    “He believed in love, kindness, helping people,” she said. “I honestly believe people were healed here.”

    She also believes Dowie, in his later years, “got carried away” and “did things with money he shouldn’t have.”

    “But he paid for it,” she said. “I’m here because I want his story to stay alive.”

    Goodwin also yearns to go back to a time when she was a little girl and the city played chimes at 9 in the morning and 9 at night.

    “People stopped wherever they were and prayed,” she said. “I’m sorry it’s not like that any more.”

    Mike McDowell’s great grandparents moved to Zion in 1905 from North Dakota because his great grandmother believed Dowie cured her whooping cough. McDowell sits on the board of the Zion Historical Society, which maintains Shiloh House. He is also a city commissioner and pastor at Christ Community Church, the remnant of Dowie’s original congregation.

    McDowell says his congregation now identifies as evangelical and doesn’t adhere to Dowie’s teachings. But he credits the founder for innovative municipal planning.

    “He came up with the idea of subdividing the community and making it self-sufficient,” McDowell said. “He created the city’s park system requiring every housing subdivision to have green spaces.”

    McDowell said Dowie’s downfall began when “he started believing his own press and thought of himself more highly than he ought to have.”

    He agrees what Dowie said about Muslims and Ahmed was “inflammatory,” but doesn’t believe the founder accepted Ahmad’s prayer duel.

    “Both men had visions of grandeur about themselves,” McDowell said, “which probably weren’t appropriate.”

    McDowell is happy to see the new mosque and lauds the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community for their many service projects in town, particularly food giveaways that were valuable to many during the pandemic.

    —-

    Just as McDowell’s and Goodwin’s ancestors moved to Zion following Dowie’s healing powers, Tayyib Rashid moved with his family to the area last year from Seattle when plans for the new mosque came to fruition.

    “You can’t have a Zion mosque anywhere else,” he said, adding that he feels a deep connection to the prayer duel and prophecy. “Dowie had all the means and resources. (Ahmad) had God on his side.”

    For community member Suriyya Latif, the new mosque reflects the Ahmadi community’s motto, which is painted in giant letters on the wall of their community center: “Love for all, hatred for none.”

    “People pull up to the parking lot and take selfies with that sign,” she said.

    The prayer duel, she said, is not an archaic tale, but a current manifestation of the community’s motto. Latif, who has toured the Shiloh House, wishes Dowie could have seen what his faith had in common with Islam.

    Dowie banned pork and alcohol in Zion, which are also commands in Islam. Even Dowie’s greeting “Peace to thee” is synonymous with the Muslim greeting “Salam alaikum.”

    The Ahmadis have struggled to gain acceptance even among mainstream Muslims, adding to the significance of establishing the mosque in Zion, said national spokesperson Khan. Pakistan’s parliament declared Ahmadis non-Muslims in 1974.

    Khan said the global Ahmadiyya community’s current leader and caliph, Hazrat Mirza Masroor Ahmad, is in Zion to inaugurate the new mosque this weekend — a momentous occasion for U.S. Ahmadis. Ahmad was forced into exile from Pakistan after his election in 2003 and resides in London.

    —-

    Over the years, Zion’s Ahmadiyya community has been buttressed by women who have assumed leadership roles, as well as African Americans who have accepted the faith in large numbers. About half of the community in Zion is African American.

    Ahmadi women raised nearly half of the $4 million needed for the new mosque, said Dhiya Tahira Bakr, national president of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community’s women’s auxiliary. Bakr, who is African American, converted to Islam nearly four decades ago. Transcending culture and language barriers has not been difficult because their faith has bound Ahmadis of all backgrounds together, she said.

    “I didn’t grow up drinking chai or eating spicy food, but I enjoy it now,” Bakr said. “When you talk to one another, you forget about all that because you are bonding with the heart.”

    The prayer duel and Dowie’s demise opened up a path in Zion for the Ahmadiyya Muslims to build on that foundation by serving the community, she said.

    “We knock on doors and let people know that they don’t have to be afraid of us because we are Muslim or Black or Asian or whatever,” Bakr said. “It’s important we do this work for our children so we can dispel all these stereotypes.”

    Mayor Billy McKinney’s family moved to Zion in 1962, as the civil rights movement was gathering momentum. For Black families, racially integrated Zion was an oasis in a nation where segregation was the norm, he said. The mayor believes a community partnership has emerged from this century-old feud.

    Like many Zion residents, McKinney had not heard about the prayer duel and was initially surprised to learn about Dowie’s hostility toward Muslims.

    He says now is the time to move forward in unity.

    “History is history and I could take issue with anyone from the past if I wanted to,” McKinney said. “I’m about looking forward.”

    The mayor will present Ahmad, the fifth successor to the sect’s founder who challenged Dowie, with a key to the city as a symbol of trust and friendship.

    The Ahmadis are moving forward with the construction of their minaret, which they expect will be completed next year. The minaret is a global symbol of Islam and the faith’s call to prayer five times a day.

    It would be a stark contrast from Dowie’s vision of a Christian utopia.

    “The founding fathers of Zion are probably rolling in their graves,” said David Padfield, minister of Church of Christ, a non-denominational congregation around the corner from the mosque. “They didn’t even want our church here.”

    Padfield, who supports the Ahmadiyya community, says it was the founders’ intolerance and exclusion of other faiths that “made it difficult for them to function.”

    Soon, towering 70 feet above the ground, the mosque’s minaret will be the tallest structure in the city that Dowie built.

    ———

    Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

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  • Max Baer, Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s chief justice, dies

    Max Baer, Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s chief justice, dies

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    PITTSBURGH — Max Baer, the chief justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, has died only months before he was set to retire, the court confirmed Saturday. He was 74.

    Baer died overnight at his home near Pittsburgh, the court said in a news release. The court didn’t give a reason for his death but called his “sudden passing” a “tremendous loss for the court and all of Pennsylvania.”

    The court said Justice Debra Todd now becomes chief justice “as the justice of longest and continuous service on the court.” She is the first female chief justice in the commonwealth’s history, a court spokesperson confirmed.

    “Chief Justice Baer was an influential and intellectual jurist whose unwavering focus was on administering fair and balanced justice,” Todd said in the release. “He was a tireless champion for children, devoted to protecting and providing for our youngest and most vulnerable citizens.”

    Gov. Tom Wolf ordered state flags at commonwealth facilities, public buildings and grounds lowered to half-staff, saying he was “extremely saddened” by the death of such a “respected and esteemed jurist with decades of service to our courts and our commonwealth.”

    Baer, a Duquesne Law graduate, was an Allegheny County family court judge and an administrative judge in family court before he was elected to the high court in 2003 and became its chief justice last year. Baer also served as deputy attorney general for Pennsylvania from 1975 to 1980 and was in private practice before entering the judiciary.

    Earlier this year, Baer was part of the 5-2 majority as the Pennsylvania Supreme Court upheld a wide expansion of mail-in voting in Pennsylvania.

    Baer was set to retire at the end of 2022 after reaching the mandatory retirement age of 75. The court said the seat had already been slated to be on the 2023 ballot, and “in the interim the governor may choose to make an appointment, subject to confirmation by the Senate.” Baer was elected as a Democrat and his death leaves a 4-2 Democratic majority on the high court.

    Duquesne’s president, Ken Gormley, told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that Baer believed justices shouldn’t be public figures and that he therefore shied away from the limelight, using his position to uplift others in the profession.

    “He was collegial, he worked really hard to have the court function as a family, and he led by example,” Gormley said. “He was the most caring person imaginable — always put others first and celebrated their successes. He hated pettiness. He had no time for pettiness.”

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  • For Naomi Judd’s family, tour is a chance to grieve, reflect

    For Naomi Judd’s family, tour is a chance to grieve, reflect

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    NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Fans of Naomi Judd, the late matriarch of the Grammy-winning country duo The Judds, will have a chance to say goodbye and rejoice in their hits in a final tour helmed by daughter Wynonna and all-star musical partners.

    The Judd family continues to grieve her sudden death during a year that should have been a celebration. The tour was announced only weeks before Naomi Judd, 76, took her life on April 30, the day before their induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame.

    “It’s devastatingly beautiful to go back to the past and relive some of these memories,” said Wynonna Judd this week as she sat on a tour bus after rehearsals. “Yesterday I was in rehearsal and there’s a part in the show where they sync up Mom singing with me. And I turned around and I just lost it.”

    The 11-city tour starts Friday night in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and will include stops in Green Bay, Wisconsin, Fort Worth, Texas, and Nashville before ending in their home state in Lexington, Kentucky. Special guests include Brandi Carlile, Ashley McBryde, Little Big Town, Kelsea Ballerini, Trisha Yearwood, Faith Hill and tour opener Martina McBride.

    Judd’s husband Larry Strickland, and her two daughters, Wynonna and Ashley, reflected on their mother’s legacy, not only in music, but as a caregiver and an advocate. The red-headed duo scored more than a dozen No. 1 hits, combining young Wynonna’s powerful vocals with Naomi’s family harmonies and stage charm. Reflecting their Appalachian roots with polished pop stylings, their hits included “Why Not Me,” “Mama He’s Crazy,” “Rockin’ With the Rhythm of the Rain,” and “Love Can Build a Bridge.”

    Naomi’s husband of nearly 33 years said he hopes that fans feel uplifted to hear their hit songs performed again in arenas. But he knows he will struggle when he sees his wife on the big screens or hears her voice again.

    “I’m having trouble now just seeing pictures of her. I don’t know how much I can handle,” Strickland said.

    Strickland said his wife was excited to tour again with her daughter because she loved the connection with the fans. The storyline of the single mother supporting two daughters becoming one of the biggest duos in country music history, along with Naomi’s flashy wardrobe and bubbly approachability, made fans identify with her.

    “She loved being on the stage and singing,” Strickland said. “She loved people. And she would do her twisting and twirling. She was the harmony singer. She was all about her hair and the little dresses that she would have made. And so that was her world.”

    Her family has endless stories of Naomi Judd’s empathy and passion for helping, her love of animals, especially dogs, and her desire to learn. A nurse by trade before her music career, she was on the board of the American Humane Association and was a member of the National Alliance on Mental Illness. Her daughter Ashley recalled how she walked around with $20 and $50 bills in her bra and would hand them out to people, especially women.

    Wynonna Judd said that recently she visited the same hospital outside Nashville where her mom died. And she noticed that on one of the walls in the emergency room were pictures of volunteers who helped assist patients.

    “And there’s a picture of my mother in the cutest little wig and she has her name tag, ‘Naomi Judd,’” she said.

    Naomi Judd struggled most of her life with depression, which she shared openly in her book “River of Time: My Descent into Depression and How I Emerged With Hope.” Her family said she was also being treated for bipolar disorder and PTSD.

    “That’s the complexity of this issue, because my mother, even in her darkest hour, would put on her wig and go down to the emergency room and help other people during their emergencies,” Wynonna Judd said, her strong voice cracking. “So I find it pretty devastating that she got to a point where she was done helping herself.”

    Strickland, too, noted how mental illness affected his wife. Despite feeling incredibly excited for the tour, her mental state was deteriorating, he said. Strickland said she was seeing a psychiatrist, but her depression was resistant to treatment, and they were trying different types of medication to help her.

    “The lows that she would experience with her mental illness just seemed to get worse,” he said.

    Since The Judds debuted in the 1980s, the family has lived under the public eye, headlining awards shows and appearing on magazine covers, in books and TV shows. But Naomi’s death has only intensified scrutiny, to the point where the family is dispelling rumors that there is a dispute over the estate. Strickland, who is Ashley and Wynonna’s stepfather, was named the executor of the estate.

    Ashley Judd said it was “obviously natural, good, and proper that Mom’s estate would flow to Pop, her partner of 43 years and then upon his eventual passing, come to her daughters.”

    The actor was with her mother when she died and has advocated for the family’s legal request to keep police investigative records relating to her mother’s death from being publicly released. After an appeal, the Tennessee Supreme Court sent the case back to the lower court. Ashley Judd said that privacy should be afforded to any family dealing with suicide.

    “We are an open family,” she said. “We’re committed to raising awareness about the walk with mental illness and reducing shame and stigma, guiding people towards resources, and helping families build resistance to and resilience from the devastation. And there’s also a certain dignity and decency that’s necessary around the actual day of the death.”

    Wynonna Judd said since her mother’s death, people who have had similar experiences have reached out to her to ask that mental illness resources and information are provided to fans during the tour.

    “This is very real to me. This is not just show business. This is an opportunity to help someone out there not end their life,” she said. “We must get rid of the stigma of the words mental illness because people will not reach out for help.”

    Wynonna’s relationship with her mother was sometimes filled with drama, but it continues to this day, when she sits under a tree at her home in Tennessee and processes her grief. “I love my mother and she makes me crazy still. Your relationship with your mother never ends,” she said. “I still talk to her and it’s awesome and it’s hard.”

    The family wants the fans to remember Naomi Judd as a beautiful, talented, smart and colorfully complex woman, who had highs and lows, and was honest about her journey.

    “I want them to see that in adversity, in death, there is life,” said Wynonna Judd.

    ——

    The national suicide and crisis lifeline is available by calling or texting 988. There is also an online chat at 988lifeline.org.

    ——

    Online: https://www.thejudds.com/

    ——

    Follow Kristin M. Hall at https://Twitter.com/kmhall

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  • ‘Gangsta’s Paradise’ rapper Coolio dies at age 59

    ‘Gangsta’s Paradise’ rapper Coolio dies at age 59

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    LOS ANGELES — Coolio, the rapper who was among hip-hop’s biggest names of the 1990s with hits including “Gangsta’s Paradise” and “Fantastic Voyage,” died Wednesday at age 59, his manager said.

    Coolio died at the Los Angeles home of a friend, longtime manager Jarez Posey told The Associated Press. The cause was not immediately clear.

    Coolio won a Grammy for best solo rap performance for “Gangsta’s Paradise,” the 1995 hit from the soundtrack of the Michelle Pfeiffer film “Dangerous Minds” that sampled Stevie Wonder’s 1976 song “Pastime Paradise” and was played constantly on MTV.

    The Grammy, and the height of his popularity, came in 1996, amid a fierce feud between the hip-hop communities of the two coasts, which would take the lives of Tupac Shakur and The Notorious B.I.G. soon after.

    Coolio managed to stay mostly above the conflict.

    “I’d like to claim this Grammy on behalf of the whole hip-hop nation, West Coast, East Coast, and worldwide, united we stand, divided we fall,” he said from the stage as he accepted the award.

    Born Artis Leon Ivey Jr., in Monessen, Pennsylvania south of Pittsburgh, Coolio moved to Compton, California. He spent some time as a teen in Northern California, where his mother sent him because she felt the city was too dangerous.

    He said in interviews that he started rapping at 15 and knew by 18 it was what he wanted to do with his life, but would go to community college and work as a volunteer firefighter and in airport security before devoting himself full-time to the hip-hop scene.

    His career took off with the 1994 release of his debut album on Tommy Boy Records, “It Takes a Thief.” It’s opening track, “Fantastic Voyage,” would reach No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100.

    A year later, “Gangsta’s Paradise” would become a No. 1 single, with its dark opening lyrics:

    “As I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I take a look at my life and realize there’s not much left, ‘cause I’ve been blastin’ and laughin’ so long, that even my mama thinks that my mind is gone.”

    Social media lit up with reactions to the unexpected death.

    “This is sad news,” Ice Cube said on Twitter. “I witness first hand this man’s grind to the top of the industry. Rest In Peace, @Coolio.”

    “Weird Al” Yankovic tweeted “RIP Coolio” along with a picture of the two men hugging.

    Coolio had said in an interview at the time it was released that he wasn’t cool with Yankovic’s 1996 “Gangsta’s Paradise” parody, “Amish Paradise.” But the two later made peace.

    The rapper would never again have a song nearly as big as “Gangsta’s Paradise,” but had subsequent hits with 1996’s “1, 2, 3, 4 (Sumpin’ New)” (1996), and 1997’s “C U When U Get There.”

    His career album sales totaled 4.8 million, with 978 million on-demand streams of his songs, according to Luminate. He would be nominated for six Grammys overall.

    And with his distinctive persona he would become a cultural staple, acting occasionally, starring in a reality show about parenting called “Coolio’s Rules,” providing a voice for an episode of the animated show “Gravity Falls” and providing the theme music for the Nickelodeon sitcom “Kenan & Kel.”

    He had occasional legal troubles, including a 1998 conviction in Stuttgart, Germany, where an boutique shop owner said he punched her when she tried to stop him from taking merchandise without paying. He was sentenced to six months probation and fined $30,000.

    He was married to Josefa Salinas from 1996 to 2000. They had four children together.

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  • Pharoah Sanders, influential jazz saxophonist, dies at 81

    Pharoah Sanders, influential jazz saxophonist, dies at 81

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    LOS ANGELES (AP) — Pharoah Sanders, the influential tenor saxophonist revered in the jazz world for the spirituality of his work, has died, his record label announced. He was 81.

    Sanders, who launched his career playing alongside John Coltrane in the 1960s, died in Los Angeles early Saturday, said the tweet from Luaka Bop, the label that released his 2021 album, “Promises.” It did not specify a cause. A phone message to Luaka Bop in New York was not immediately returned.

    “We are devastated to share that Pharoah Sanders has passed away. He died peacefully surrounded by loving family and friends in Los Angeles earlier this morning. Always and forever the most beautiful human being, may he rest in peace,” said the label’s message on Twitter, accompanied by a heart emoji.

    Among the saxophonist’s best-known works was his two-part “The Creator Has a Master Plan,” from the “Karma” album released in 1969. The combined track is nearly 33 minutes long.

    Born in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1940, Sanders began his early musical life by playing drums, then the clarinet in church. In high school, he began renting out the school saxophone. After high school he moved to Oakland, California, where he intended to attend art school. But he soon moved to New York to join the city’s avant-garde jazz scene. He hitchhiked his way across country, he told The New Yorker magazine in 2020.

    Arriving in 1962, he could hardly afford the New York life. “I was trying to survive some kind of way,” he told the magazine. “I used to work a few jobs here and there, earn five dollars, buy some food, buy some pizza. I had no money at all.”

    In 1965, he joined Coltrane’s band. “I couldn’t figure out why he wanted me to play with him, because I didn’t feel like, at the time, that I was ready to play with John Coltrane,” Sanders said. “He always told me, ‘Play.’ That’s what I did.”

    When Coltrane died, Sanders continued playing for a time with his wife, Alice Coltrane. He also started leading his own bands. His most commercially successful work came for Impulse Records, including the renowned “Karma” album.

    After more than a decade of performing but not recording albums, Sanders released the much-admired “Promises” in 2021, with producer Floating Points and the London Symphony Orchestra. Rolling Stone called it “both startlingly minimal and arrestingly gorgeous.”

    Known for his style of so-called spiritual jazz, Sanders, still actively playing, confessed in the 2020 New Yorker interview that “a lot of (the) time I don’t know what I want to play.

    “So I just start playing, and try to make it right, and make it join to some other kind of feeling in the music,” he said. “Like, I play one note, maybe that one note might mean love. And then another note might mean something else. Keep on going like that until it develops into — maybe something beautiful.”

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  • Oscar-winning ‘Cuckoo’s Nest’ actor Louise Fletcher dies

    Oscar-winning ‘Cuckoo’s Nest’ actor Louise Fletcher dies

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    LOS ANGELES (AP) — Louise Fletcher, a late-blooming star whose riveting performance as the cruel and calculating Nurse Ratched in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” set a new standard for screen villains and won her an Academy Award, has died at age 88.

    Fletcher died in her sleep surrounded by family at her home in Montdurausse, France, her agent David Shaul told The Associated Press on Friday. No cause was given.

    After putting her career on hold for years to raise her children, Fletcher was in her early 40s and little known when chosen for the role opposite Jack Nicholson in the 1975 film by director Milos Forman, who had admired her work the year before in director Robert Altman’s “Thieves Like Us.” At the time, she didn’t know that many other prominent stars, including Anne Bancroft, Ellen Burstyn and Angela Lansbury, had turned it down.

    “I was the last person cast,” she recalled in a 2004 interview. “It wasn’t until we were halfway through shooting that I realized the part had been offered to other actresses who didn’t want to appear so horrible on the screen.”

    “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” went on to become the first film since 1934′s “It Happened One Night” to win best picture, best director, best actor, best actress and best screenplay.

    Clutching her Oscar at the 1976 ceremony, Fletcher told the audience, “It looks as though you all hated me.”

    She then addressed her deaf parents in Birmingham, Alabama, talking and using sign language: “I want to thank you for teaching me to have a dream. You are seeing my dream come true.”

    A moment of silence was followed by thunderous applause.

    Later that night, Forman made the wry comment to Fletcher and her co-star, Jack Nicholson: “Now we all will make tremendous flops.”

    In the short run, at least, he was right.

    Forman next directed “Hair,” the movie version of the hit Broadway musical that failed to capture the appeal of the stage version. Nicholson directed and starred in “Goin’ South,” generally regarded as one of his worst films. Fletcher signed on for “Exorcist II: The Heretic,” a misconceived sequel to the landmark original.

    Far more than her male peers, Fletcher was hampered by her age in finding major roles in Hollywood. Still, she worked continuously for most of the rest of her life. Her post-“Cuckoo’s Nest” films included “Mama Dracula,” “Dead Kids” and “The Boy Who Could Fly.”

    She was nominated for Emmys for her guest roles on the TV series “Joan of Arcadia” and “Picket Fences,” and had a recurring role as Bajoran religious leader Kai Winn Adami in “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.” She played the mother of musical duo Carpenters in 1989′s “The Karen Carpenter Story.”

    Fletcher’s career was also hampered by her height. At 5-feet-10, she would often be dismissed from an audition immediately because she was taller than her leading man.

    Fletcher had moved to Los Angeles to launch her acting career soon after graduating from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

    Working as a doctor’s receptionist by day and studying at night with noted actor and teacher Jeff Corey, she began getting one-day jobs on such TV series as “Wagon Train,” “77 Sunset Strip” and “The Untouchables.”

    Fletcher married producer Jerry Bick in the early 1960s and gave birth to two sons in quick succession. She decided to put her career on hold to be a stay-at-home mother and didn’t work for 11 years.

    “I made the choice to stop working, but I didn’t see it as a choice,” she said in the 2004 interview. “I felt compelled to stay at home.”

    She divorced Bick in 1977 and he died in 2004.

    In “Cuckoo’s Nest,” based on the novel Ken Kesey wrote while taking part in an experimental LSD program, Nicholson’s character, R.P. McMurphy, is a swaggering, small-time criminal who feigns insanity to get transferred from prison to a mental institution where he won’t have to work so hard.

    Once institutionalized, McMurphy discovers his mental ward is run by Fletcher’s cold, imposing Nurse Mildred Ratched, who keeps her patients tightly under her thumb. As the two clash, McMurphy all but takes over the ward with his bravado, leading to stiff punishment from Ratched and the institution, where she restores order.

    The character was so memorable she would become the basis for a Netflix series, “Ratched,” 45 years later.

    Estelle Louise Fletcher was born the second of four children on July 22, 1934, in Birmingham. Her mother was born deaf and her father was a traveling Episcopal minister who lost his hearing when struck by lightning at age 4.

    “It was like having parents who are immigrants who don’t speak your language,” she said in 1982.

    The Fletcher children were helped by their aunt, with whom they lived in Bryant, Texas, for a year. She taught them reading, writing and speaking, as well as how to sing and dance.

    It was those latter studies that convinced Fletcher she wanted to act. She was further inspired, she once said, when she saw the movie “Lady in the Dark” with Ginger Rogers.

    That and other films, Fletcher said, taught her “your dream could become real life if you wanted it bad enough.”

    “I knew from the movies,” she would say, “that I wouldn’t have to stay in Birmingham and be like everyone else.”

    Fletcher’s death was first reported by Deadline.

    She is survived by her two sons, John and Andrew Bick.

    ___

    This story has been updated to correct that Fletcher graduated from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, not North Carolina State University.

    ___

    The late AP Entertainment Writer Bob Thomas contributed biographical material to this report.

    ___

    Follow AP Entertainment Writer Andrew Dalton on Twitter: https://twitter.com/andyjamesdalton

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  • Legendary computer hacker Kevin Mitnick dies at 59 | CNN Business

    Legendary computer hacker Kevin Mitnick dies at 59 | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Kevin Mitnick, one of the most famous hackers in the history of cybersecurity, died over the weekend at age 59 after a more than year-long battle with pancreatic cancer, his family said in a published obituary.

    Before his death on July 16, Mitnick’s hacking sprees were legendary, and multiple films were inspired by him.

    The first, “WarGames” starring Matthew Broderick, was partially based on allegations that Mitnick successfully hacked the computer systems at North American Aerospace Defense Command as a teenager. He denied ever having done so.

    Mitnick’s restless curiosity caught up with him when he was arrested for stealing $1 million in proprietary software from Digital Equipment Corporation in 1988. Mitnick was sentenced to a year in prison and three years of probation, but a new arrest warrant was issued in 1995 for violating that probation. Mitnick went on the run, breaking into the computer systems of multiple corporations, cell phone companies, and educational institutions, according to the federal indictment against him.

    Through it all, Mitnick and his defenders insisted he was harmless, not actually trying to hurt anyone or pursue financial gain.

    “I was an old-school hacker, doing it for intellectual curiosity,” Mitnick told Wired magazine in a 2008 interview. But federal authorities were so concerned about his capabilities that when he was incarcerated again in 1995, Mitnick told CNN he was held in solitary confinement for a time out of concern that even proximity to a telephone could allow him to continue hacking.

    Mitnick and federal prosecutors agreed to a plea deal in 1999 to seven criminal counts, including wire fraud and causing damage to computers. The deal included a 46-month prison sentence and a ban on being “employed in any capacity wherein he has access to computers or computer-related equipment or software” during a period of probation, but he was released in 2000 due to credit for time already served.

    Mitnick published a memoir on his hacking career, “Ghost in the Wires: My Adventures as the World’s Most Wanted Hacker,” in 2011.

    Following his prison term, Mitnick became a white-hat hacker, using his expertise to legally help businesses track people trying to break into their systems. For the past decade, he was the chief hacking officer and partial owner of the tech security firm KnowBe4, founded by his close friend and business partner, Stu Sjouwerman.

    “I made some really stupid mistakes in the past as a younger man that I regret,” Mitnick told CNN in a 2005 interview. “I’m lucky that I’ve been given a second chance and that I could use these skills to help the community.”

    “Kevin was a dear friend to me and many of us here at KnowBe4,” Sjouwerman said in a statement. “He is truly a luminary in the development of the cybersecurity industry, but mostly, Kevin was just a wonderful human being and he will be dearly missed.”

    A memorial for Mitnick is scheduled for August 1 in Las Vegas, his company said. He is survived by his wife Kimberley, who is pregnant with their first child, the family said.

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