Obit watch: April 8, 2020.

Damn.

John Prine.

I wouldn’t say I was a big Prine fan, but he did a fair number of songs that I’m partial to. Here’s one of my favorites:

Edited to add: Borepatch has a nice tribute up, with some of Mr. Prine’s deeper cuts.

Robert Barth. He was a pioneering Navy diver: he was the only person involved with both the Genesis dry land test and all three iterations of the Sealab underwater habitats.

The dangerous experiments Mr. Barth took part in paved the way for exploits of deepwater espionage, undersea construction and demolition projects around the world.
He never achieved conventional fame, but he was the “ultimate aquanaut,” said Leslie Leaney, the executive director of the International Scuba Diving Hall of Fame. “His contributions benefited the world of science and national security, but also the economies of all nations that explored for offshore oil.”
In 2010, the Navy named its aquatic training facility in Panama City for Mr. Barth. “Nothing that Navy divers do is one guy,” he said at the dedication. “There is always a whole bunch of people involved in it.”

By way of Lawrence, Allen Garfield. He was in a whole bunch of stuff, including “The Conversation” and “Nashville”.

Also by way of Lawrence, George Ogilvie, co-director of “Max Max: Beyond Thunderdome”.

For the 1985 “Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome,” Ogilvie focused on working with the cast on dialogue and dramatization while co-director Miller focused on the action sequences. He had previously worked with “Mad Max” star Mel Gibson in the Nimrod Theatre Company’s “Death of a Salesman.”

The paper of record finally got around to publishing an obit for Ira Einhorn.

He preached peace, love and environmentalism. Then he killed his girlfriend, stuffed her body in a steamer trunk and fled to Europe.

It was a measure of his ability to make important connections that after he was charged with murder, his lawyer was Arlen Specter, the city’s former district attorney who was then in private practice and who went on to become a United States senator.
Mr. Specter managed to get Mr. Einhorn’s bail reduced to $40,000. To be released from custody, Mr. Einhorn had to put up only 10 percent, or $4,000. It was paid by a Canadian socialite, one of several well-off people who supported him financially and who doubted he could have been involved in murder.

But his darker side and a monumental ego were emerging, most noticeably during the first Earth Day celebration in 1970, when 20 million people across the country gathered to draw attention to environmental problems.
As two environmental activists later wrote in an op-ed in The Inquirer, Mr. Einhorn had made himself unwelcome at organizational meetings in advance of Earth Day, and then, at the actual event, he “grabbed the microphone and refused to give up the podium for 30 minutes, thinking he would get some free television publicity.”
He later falsely claimed to have been a founder of Earth Day, a title generally accorded to Senator Gaylord Nelson, a Wisconsin Democrat.

As a condition for his extradition, he was granted a second trial, during which he took the stand. He said that the C.I.A. had killed Ms. Maddux and planted her body in his apartment in an attempt to frame him because he knew too much about military research into the paranormal.

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