Auld acquaintance

I thought I’d take a page from the Academy Awards’ book and do a parade of dead people (always the highlight of the Oscars ceremony, at least when they don’t screw it up). This year we lost some real notables, such as Harry Morgan and Anne Francis. And some assholes, such as Kim Jong Il and Osama Bin Laden. And some folks who were genuinely important to the world, such as these:

Steve Jobs – This would have been a big media moment based solely on the amount of coverage it got. But we should also pause to remember the contributions made by the Willy Wonka of the Computer Industry. Sure, some of Apple’s innovations were genuine breakthroughs in computing and media. But for every wow-that’s-brilliant Everlasting Gobstopper, the company hatched at least two or three whimwormulous chocolate-churning rivers (the Lisa) or giant candy bars turned into regular-sized candy bars (releasing new products less functional than their old products). Anyone who’s ever installed the first release of a new Apple operating system has some idea what it feels like to turn into a giant blueberry. [Credit where credit is due: the term “whimwormulous” comes from a Saturday Night Live skit in which Al Gore played Willy Wonka’s accountant brother.]

Elizabeth Taylor – Normally “Hollywood royalty” wouldn’t be eligible for the list because that’s pretty much everything we’re against. But I’m making an exception for Liz Taylor for two reasons. First, she actually did a few good roles over the years. But more importantly, she left her massive jewelry collection to charity, instructing in her will that her jewels be auctioned off and the proceeds used to fight AIDS and help animals. The auction ended up bringing in five or six times more than experts predicted, a $130 million gift to some genuinely worthy folks. Hopefully everyone who mocked her for her weight gain and her divorces is at least a little sorry now.

Vann Nath – It’s a miracle that anyone caught up in the killing fields of Cambodia survived the 1970s, let alone making it all the way to 2011. Despite being targeted as an intellectual, Nath placated the Khmer Rouge by painting pictures for the government, including portraits of Pol Pot. One of only seven inmates to survive the notorious S-21 prison, he devoted the rest of his life to painting brutally frank pictures of his experiences and working as a human rights activist.

Kate Swift – One of my obsessive tics as a writer is the careful alternation between “she” and “he” (just went back and changed the order) for generic third person singular examples. It’s one of the few pause-and-think-about-it distractions I actually appreciate, because it helps make the message more inclusive. Kate Swift and her partner Casey Miller pioneered this sort of scrutiny of passive sexism in language. Though some of her suggested corrections never caught on – such as “genkind” in place of “mankind” (I find “people” works as a reasonable substitution in most cases) – she at least got us all thinking about what we say and how we say it.

Sherwood Schwartz – Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale, a story of a lovely lady. Sherwood Schwartz brought us both Gilligan’s Island and The Brady Bunch, forever cementing his spot in the Postmodern Ironic Revival Hall of Fame. Though The Bunch never did much for me, I admit to faithfully following Gilligan reruns when I was a kid. To this day I can’t hear “March of the Toreadors” without thinking of Polonius.

Don Harman – If you don’t live in the Kansas City metro area, just go ahead and skip to the next entry. Many of us within the WDAF broadcast radius managed to have at least a little affection for weatherman Don Harman. As is typical with members of his profession, on air he came across as a goof. But he was a pleasant goof, the kind of guy you’d laugh at politely rather than shoo out of your cubicle at work. Clearly there was some darkness behind the scenes, as he killed himself late this year. Turns out he was the sort of person you don’t realize you miss until he’s permanently gone.

Borders Books – Speaking of things I didn’t think I’d miss. When it was still around, Borders struck me as the Wal-Mart of bookstores. It was a huge chain that tended to run small, independent stores out of business. But then it turned out it wasn’t the biggest fish in the pond, driven to bankruptcy largely by competition from Amazon. Though I figured I wouldn’t particularly care about its demise, I found I actually missed having a big bookstore to wander around in, especially when I needed to kill some time between an afternoon event and dinner.

Russell Hoban – When I was growing up, society’s gender stupidity held that boys were supposed to like stories about boys and girls were supposed to like stories about girls. At least in my life, Frances the Badger put a stop to that. Frances is – in words intended to describe a different badger – “really pretty badass.” She deals with common childhood challenges – new sibling, finicky eating, jerk friend – with an earnest cleverness that’s impossible not to love. And as if that wasn’t enough, Russell Hoban also gave us The Little Brute Family, who were wonderfully entertaining aside from being a little more treacly than Frances. Wonderful illustrations from Garth Williams and his then-wife Lillian didn’t exactly hurt. Plus he enjoyed a separate career writing novels for adults. The world is a poorer place when such people pass.