Christine McVie, Hitmaker for Fleetwood Mac, Is Dead at 79 - The New York Times

Christine McVie, Hitmaker for Fleetwood Mac, Is Dead at 79 - The New York Times

Twelve Essential Hits

Christine McVie of Fleetwood Mac in performance at Madison Square Garden in 2014. Her commercial potency was on full display on Fleetwood Mac’s “Greatest Hits” anthology: She either wrote or co-wrote half of its 16 tracks.Credit...Charles Sykes/Invision, via Associated Press

By Jim Farber

Nov. 30, 2022Updated 7:48 p.m. ET

Christine McVie, the singer, songwriter and keyboardist who became the biggest hitmaker for Fleetwood Mac, one of music’s most popular bands, died on Wednesday. She was 79.

Her family announced her death on Facebook. The statement said she died at a hospital but did not specify its location or give the cause of death. In June, Ms. McVie told Rolling Stone that she was in “quite bad health” and that she had endured debilitating problems with her back.

Ms. McVie’s commercial potency, which hit a high point in the 1970s and ’80s, was on full display on Fleetwood Mac’s “Greatest Hits” anthology, released in 1988, which sold more than eight million copies: She either wrote or co-wrote half of its 16 tracks. Her tally doubled that of the next most prolific member of the band’s trio of singer-songwriters, Stevie Nicks. (The third, Lindsey Buckingham, scored three major Billboard chart-makers on that collection.)

The most popular songs Ms. McVie wrote favored bouncing beats and lively melodies, numbers like “Say You Love Me” (which grazed Billboard’s Top 10), “You Make Loving Fun” (which just broke it), “Hold Me” (No. 4) and “Don’t Stop” (her top smash, which crested at No. 3). But she could also connect with elegant ballads, like “Over My Head” (No. 20) and “Little Lies” (which cracked the publication’s Top Five in 1987).

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The Alaskan snow crab mystery: Why did 11 billion crustaceans suddenly disappear?

The Alaskan snow crab mystery: Why did 11 billion crustaceans suddenly disappear?

BY MOLLY OLMSTEAD

OCT 21, 2022

Earlier this month, Alaska announced that it had canceled the entire snow crab harvest for the year. The reason? Nearly 11 billion crabs had suddenly disappeared from the Bering Sea.

The news heralded a catastrophic population collapse for the animals, in which nine out of ten died out between 2018 to 2021. It’s a terrible development for those who make a living harvesting the crabs in a region of the world that’s warming unusually fast because of its proximity to the North Pole. (Alaska officials also canceled the fall Bristol Bay red king crab harvest for a second year in a row.) This isn’t a small industry; Alaska’s crab fishing is worth more than $200 million a year. The sudden shutdown has left the state, well, shell-shocked.

Jazz legend Pharoah Sanders dead at 81 | Music | The Guardian

Jazz legend Pharoah Sanders dead at 81 | Music | The Guardian

Pharoah Sanders, the revered American jazz saxophonist, has died aged 81. The news was confirmed by Sanders’ label, Luaka Bop, on Twitter.

“We are devastated to share that Pharoah Sanders has passed away,” the label’s statement read. “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.”

Born Farrell Sanders in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1940, Sanders’ career began in Oakland, California. After moving to New York in the 1960s, he started collaborating with Sun Ra, who gave him the name Pharoah, before becoming a member of John Coltrane’s band; Sanders played with Coltrane until the latter’s death in 1967.

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Some summer 2022 shots

 

Team of two restores Herreshoff sloop, readies ‘Wren’ for Rockport launch | PenBay Pilot

Team of two restores Herreshoff sloop, readies ‘Wren’ for Rockport launch | PenBay Pilot

ROCKLAND — Tucked away in a small workshop on Rockland Harbor’s North End, a scruffy part of town where the marine trades and industry intersect, and noisy ospreys nest atop rusty poles, the little wooden sloop Wren is undergoing a transformation, a Cinderella tale that will culminate this week with her relaunch into Penobscot Bay. 

For the last six months, this Herreshoff 12½ day sailor sat on a boat cradle inside Cody Smith’s workshop, surrounded by tools, ladders and an armchair covered with boatbuilding supplies. She was carried there on a cold day last February on the back of Steve Laite’s trailer, after being transported to the mainland in 2019 from a North Haven boat shed.

That’s where Wren’s owner, Lisa Morgan, first spotted her, a neglected hull with a “Herreshoff for free” sign unceremoniously hanging off her side.

“Why not,” thought Morgan. No one likes to see a Herreshoff languishing, and to Morgan, an artist who works with her hands every chance she gets, the opportunity to learn how to restore a wooden craft ignited her imagination.

While a sailor, Morgan is not a boatbuilder. She put the word out and found Cody Smith, a young master builder on the rise. (He more modestly refers to his training as hawsepiping – learning on the job).

“It was in terrible shape,” said Smith, when he first laid eyes on the boat. 

The frames were cracked and the fasteners gone. Peeling paint and varnish hung from her sides, and planks were rotting.

Morgan asked Smith to help her take on the project, and he did, tackling it with gusto. He obtained plans of another Herreshoff, tacking them up on the shop wall for reference, as he probed and calculated how to make repairs on a boat that had been built by masterful Rhode Island boatbuilders at the Herreshoff Manufacturing Company generations ago.

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Summertime - Hank Mobley - Copenhagen - 1968

 Hank Mobley tenor sax

Kenny Drew piano

Niels Henning Orsted Pedersen bass

Albert Tootie Heath  drums