Posts Tagged ‘Heroes’
Elizabeth Gilbert: What’s not to love?
Elizabeth Gilbert writing in her new book Committed: I am sorry to confess that I possessed a scant amount of honour in my youth, if any, and behaving in a flighty and thoughtless manner was a bit of a speciality of mine. But being a person of character matters to me now, and matters only [...]
Fearless: Margaret Moth RIP
Margaret Moth was the trail-blazing, globe-trotting photojournalist and camera operator whose jaw was blown away by a sniper’s bullet as she and her CNN news crew were traveling through Sarajevo’s infamous Sniper’s Alley in the early 1990s. Terribly injured, she recovered and eventually went back to work, doing what she did best with tenacity and [...]
What new media needs to learn from old media
COURAGE . What journalism should be: Dogged and fearless Wise words from one of my former editors, Don Rood, reviewing Nothing but the Truth by Anna Politkovskaya on Radio NZ this morning. Yeah! Damn right. Dogged and fearless. To proudly call yourself ‘new media‘ and talk about freedom of speech is good. But recognise that [...]
Farewell Charlie Gillett – Mr Eclectic
We’ve lost Charlie Gillett — longtime advocate-promoter-svengali of ‘world music’ … rock ‘n’ roll historian, and the supportive champion of so many different types of music. Not so much a gatekeeper as an enthusiastic enabler, Charlie helped so many careers and helped people get ‘heard’. I loved his BBC show. You never knew what you’d [...]
A loss of moral authority
There is added moral authority when someone who hasn’t had to struggle sounds a call to help those less privileged. Beyond mere noblesse-oblige, Teddy Kennedy became a leading voice of ‘liberal’ ideology, with an emphasis on equality and innate justice best expressed in the civil rights movement of the 1960s — but applied far wider [...]
“Don’t focus on the scars, focus on the journey…”
Definitely speech of the day … Rev Al Sharpton Speech at Michael Jackson’s Funeral: “…He out-sang his cynics. He out-danced his doubters. He out-performed the pessimists. Every time he got knocked down he got back up. Every time you counted him out he came back in. Michael never stopped…” Wow. I was and am very [...]
RIP Michael Crichton
Another hero has died. Michael Crichton had the grace to answer my correspondence, and share some advice for me as a writer in the mid 1990s. I was so encouraged. He was already famous, and I had read his books Andromeda Strain, Terminal Man in college. I’ve read almost everything he published, even the non-fiction. [...]
Farewell, Doug Woodyard
Yesterday I was one of several hundred who farewelled Doug Woodyard. He died on Thursday 17 April. Doug was a true pioneer and a straight operator in his property sourcing business — honest and as straight as an arrow. He was a moral and earnest soul who was perplexed when confronted by a lack of [...]
