Archive for June 7th, 2024

Gun Books ‘R Us.

Friday, June 7th, 2024

Seriously, I thought by now I’d have a clever intro for this. But I don’t. My Strategic Clever Reserves are exhausted. So why don’t we jump into this one? Warning: I think this is longer than usual…

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Obit watch: June 7, 2024.

Friday, June 7th, 2024

Alan Scarfe, actor.

Other credits include “Jake and the Fatman”, “Columbo”, two spinoffs of a minor 1960s SF TV series, and “Iron Eagle II”.

Harry Roland. This is an odd obit, but an example of the kind of thing the NYT does well.

Within months of Sept. 11, Mr. Roland, a self-described former tour guide and security guard at the World Trade Center, haunted the streets surrounding the ruins. He was not a street preacher of the End Times to come, but something more unusual: an orator who insisted that passers-by reckon with a tragedy of the past.

Eventually, cleanup of the site was finished and the 9/11 Memorial & Museum opened. Mr. Roland set up shop a block away on Greenwich Street, where a long bronze plaque commemorates all 343 firefighters who died in the calamity. When Mr. Roland took breaks from speaking to passers-by, he burnished the plaque with a cloth.

Mr. Roland had always loved the Twin Towers, his daughter said; he would collect pictures of them and pose his children in front of them for photographs. She recalled him on Sept. 11 seeing the smoke and fire from his home at the time in New Jersey, getting on a boat to take him to ground zero in the hope of helping out, and encountering a horrific scene.

David Boaz, noted libertarian.

Asked in 1998 why he chose a career pushing often unpopular and derided ideas up a huge cultural and political hill, Boaz told me: “I think it’s satisfying and fun. I believe strongly in these values and at some level I believe it’s right to devote your life to fighting for these values, though particularly if you’re a libertarian you can’t say it’s morally obligatory to be fighting for these values—but it does feel right, and at some other level more than just being right, it is fun, it’s what I want to do.