(Photo by Scott Liddell) (Editor's note: We originally ran this piece in 2006, but we felt its message about the holiday was as relevant now as it was then. Please enjoy it and thank you.) In anticipation of this year's commotion, we had planned to focus our Thanksgiving edition of The Spark on ways to beat holiday stress. But as I sat down to write, I couldn't stop thinking about what's missing this holiday. This will be my 14th Thanksgiving without my mother, who died of cancer when I was 14 years old. The loss caught up with me this year, and I joined a local grief group. Today, I'm thankful for the strong strangers I met there: a homeless woman mourning the loss of her son while trying to remain together with her husband in a transitional home; a woman who lost her stepfather only three weeks before is finally beginning to grieve for the little brother she'd lost nearly a decade ago; a man who shyly admitted that he sprays his wife's perfume in the bedroom every so often after recently losing her. Most of us will experience holidays of missing at some point in our lives. While I thank my group for sharing their stories and their strength, I have some colleagues to thank as well. One editor cherishes her Yahoo! Messenger conversations with her husband in Iraq. They turn on their web cams so they can see each other. And their daughter leaves palmprints on the monitor after touching the image of her dad's face. Another editor is afraid he can't carve the turkey like his dad used to. But as he shares his father's Thanksgiving traditions with his young daughters, he is sure they will learn all the great things about Grandpa... Through our memories and the stories we share, our loved ones can live on, during the holidays and beyond them. Thank you for reading. Happy Thanksgiving. Suggested Sites... How to Remember a Loved One at the Holidays - listen to their favorite music. Light a candle. Plant a tree, or establish a scholarship. How to Cope With Grief During the Holidays - ways to cope with loss of a loved one the holiday season.

Directory categories: Bereavement, Grief Groups, Thanksgiving Graces and Blessings, Thanksgiving, Holiday Stress

Archived under: Bereavement, Death, Health, Holidays, Mental Health, Thanksgiving

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Kirk Douglas in 1956. The dimple in his chin is so deep it has its own gift shop. Don't they say that doing what you love keeps you young? If they don't, they ought to, as the lives of some of the celebrities we note this week stand as living proof of the connection between doing what you do and a long lifespan. We'll start with the "babies" of the group, Christopher Plummer and Dick Van Dyke, who turn 81 and 85 respectively on Friday. Plummer and Van Dyke have pretty much done it all in their time, from dramas to farces to musicals Plummer's classical theatre chops are a little more developed, but Van Dyke's sitcom of the 1960s is still recognized as one of the finest and most influential ever, so we'll call it a draw. Next on our list is spring chicken Eli Wallach, who turns 95 on Tuesday. Wallach began his acting career in the 1950s, with a series of performances out of the Method school of acting that so pervaded that decade. The "Method" (which has been over-hyped and misunderstood almost from the beginning) was a school of acting that emphasized personalized and naturalistic behavior on stage and screen, breaking away from the more florid or theatrical styles that had been the norm. Its foremost proponents were actors like Wallach, Marlon Brando, and James Dean, but a modified version of it is still seen in the performances of Robert De Niro, Dustin Hoffman, and Al Pacino. Getting back to our birthday boy, Wallach is still working, having acted in two movies this year, with (his health permitting) more on the way. The champ, though, is Kirk Douglas, who turns 96 on Thursday. Douglas hit the screen like a thunderbolt in the late 1940s, and for the next 50 years, turned in a series of dynamic and artful performances that have few rivals for energy and power. He's also been outspoken in his politics, breaking Hollywood's blacklist by employing writers who went unhired because of their politics. The stroke he suffered in 1996 has impaired his ability to speak, but he continues to work, and as recently as 2009 appeared in an autobiographical one-man show. Those aren’t the only events of note, of course. Why, Tuesday alone brings us the announcement of Sports Illustrated's Sportsman of the Year (it's New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees), the lighting of the U.S. Capitol's Christmas tree (the White House gets its turn on Thursday, the day after President Obama appears on "MythBusters"), the Luxury Travel Expo in Las Vegas (for those of you who have so much extra money you can't help but spend it on travel), and National Cotton Candy Day. Wednesday is chock-a-block with events, too, particularly with birthdays of artists and humorists. In the former category, we have Diego Rivera (1886), the Mexican painter whose intricate and detailed murals were loaded with historical and political commentary. In the latter, we have two men whose work spans both categories and who were born on the same day in 1894. First, we have James Thurber, whose art defined the cartooning style of "The New Yorker," and whose short stories, including "The Catbird Seat" and "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" remain as perceptive and witty as when they were written. 1894's other multi-talented contribution is Elzie Segar, the cartoonist who created Popeye the Sailor. Segar created a unique world of comic adventures and characters that has rarely been equaled. Since his death in 1938, numerous ghosts have tried to keep the wackiness of his comic strip alive, but none have succeeded in finding his balance of thrills and laughs. We close by remembering two tragedies, one markedly larger than the other. Wednesday is the 30th anniversary of the murder of John Lennon in front of New York's Dakota Apartments. Lennon was only 40 years old, and was just resuming his music career when he was struck down, forever robbing the world of his humor and songs. The larger commemoration, is the anniversary of the December 7, 1941, bombing of the Pearl Harbor naval base in Hawaii, an even which brought the United States into World War II. The sneak attack by the Japanese cost the U.S. more than a dozen ships and 2,042 lives. When President Franklin D. Roosevelt addressed Congress the next morning, he called it "a date which will live in infamy," and it remains a date whose memory still resonates today. Suggested Sites... Dick Van Dyke: Step in Time! - information about Van Dyke's "musical memoir." The Death of Method Acting - film critic David Thomson provides the post-mortem. Diego Rivera Web Museum - dedicated to the painter and muralist. Thurber House - the writer's boyhood home in Columbus, OH is now a museum. John Lennon.com - we still remember.

Directory categories: Acting, Classic Hollywood Movies, Hollywood Blacklist, Cartoonists, The Beatles

Archived under: 1910s, 1920s, 1940s, 1950s, 1980s, 19th Century, Actors, Aging, American History, Anniversaries, Artists, Arts, Assassinations, Assassins, Athletes, Authors, Awards, Barack Obama, Bereavement, Biographies, Birthdays, CIA, Canada, Candy, Cartoonists, Cartoons, Celebrations, Celebrities, Censorship, Christmas, Coincidence, Comic Strips, Crime, Criminals, Dead Celebrities, Death, Entertainment, Events, Fiction, Food and Drink, Football, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Government, History, Holidays, Hollywood, Humor, In Character, James Dean, John Lennon, Las Vegas, Magazines, Men, Mexico, Military, Movie History, Movies, Murder, Music, Music History, Musicians, NFL, New York, Nostalgia, Performing Arts, Popeye, Presidents, Sports, TV, The Beatles, The New Yorker, United States, WWII, War, Writers, Writing

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Albert Einstein's brain The world has long had an obsession with preserving the body parts of the dead. The ancient Egyptians were famous for it. During the Middle Ages, nearly every church in Europe had relics in its possession, often including the bones and organs of saints. But as perceptions of death changed, these traditions gradually went out of style -- with a few notable exceptions. Most famously, the brain of Albert Einstein was removed after his death and owned by a succession of scientists for the next forty years. Only in the 1990s was it returned to Princeton University, where researchers concluded that, yes, Einstein was smarter than the average bear. After Napoleon’s mysterious death in 1821, his overeager jailers stole many of the former French leader’s belongings -- including his "little corporal" (if you believe the rumors). It now rests in a quiet home in New Jersey. The same fate was said to befall the bodies of John Dillinger and Grigori Rasputin, but both stories just may be urban legends. Other famous body parts that remained in circulation after the deaths of their owners include Oliver Cromwell's head, Sarah Bernhardt's leg, and more recently and tragically, the bones of famed BBC and PBS personality Alistair Cooke. And poor Thomas Hardy's heart was supposedly eaten by his doctor's cat! So I suppose the moral of this story is, at least for dead celebrities, keep your friends close and your enemies far, far away. Suggested Sites... Napoleon's Privates - a recent book about the unfortunate fate of Napoleon's remains -- and other scandalous historical moments. Postcards from the Brain Museum - another book about research completed on the brains of important figures from Einstein to Lenin. Dead Celebrities' Body Parts - photo gallery of just what it sounds like. National Museum of Health and Medicine - owns pieces of Abraham Lincoln’s skull and hair, as well as the bullet that killed him.

Directory categories: History, Death Beliefs and Practices, Collecting, Urban Legends, Dead Celebrities

Archived under: 19th Century, Actors, Anatomy, Ancient History, Authors, Bereavement, Celebrities, Collectibles, Collecting, Crime, Criminals, Dead Celebrities, Death, Grigori Rasputin, History, In Character, Medicine, Mysteries, Mythology and Folklore, Napoleon Bonaparte, Oliver Cromwell, Rumors, Secrets, Urban Legends, Weird Stuff

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(Photo by Scott Liddell) (Editor's note: We originally ran this piece in 2006, and Heather has since left Yahoo!, but we felt its message about the holiday was as relevant now as it was then. Please enjoy it and thank you.) In anticipation of this year's commotion, we had planned to focus our Thanksgiving edition of The Spark on ways to beat holiday stress. But as I sat down to write, I couldn't stop thinking about what's missing this holiday. This will be my 14th Thanksgiving without my mother, who died of cancer when I was 14 years old. The loss caught up with me this year, and I joined a local grief group. Today, I'm thankful for the strong strangers I met there: a homeless woman mourning the loss of her son while trying to remain together with her husband in a transitional home; a woman who lost her stepfather only three weeks before is finally beginning to grieve for the little brother she'd lost nearly a decade ago; a man who shyly admitted that he sprays his wife's perfume in the bedroom every so often after recently losing her. Most of us will experience holidays of missing at some point in our lives. While I thank my group for sharing their stories and their strength, I have some colleagues to thank as well. One editor cherishes her Yahoo! Messenger conversations with her husband in Iraq. They turn on their web cams so they can see each other. And their daughter leaves palmprints on the monitor after touching the image of her dad's face. Another editor is afraid he can't carve the turkey like his dad used to. But as he shares his father's Thanksgiving traditions with his young daughters, he is sure they will learn all the great things about Grandpa.... Through our memories and the stories we share, our loved ones can live on, during the holidays and beyond them. Thank you for reading. Happy Thanksgiving. Suggested Sites... How to Remember a Loved One at the Holidays - listen to their favorite music. Light a candle. Plant a tree, or establish a scholarship. Grief During the Holidays - suggests ways to cope with loss of a loved one this holiday season. With the Holidays Can Come Renewed Grieving - article from the American Cancer Society gives suggestions on how to begin or continue your process of grieving and healing.

Directory categories: Bereavement, Grief Groups, Thanksgiving Graces and Blessings, Thanksgiving, Holiday Stress

Archived under: Bereavement, Death, Health, Holidays, Mental Health, Thanksgiving

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James Dean Memorial Junction in California, off HWY 46 and 41 Fifty-three years ago today, James Dean uttered those words just moments before his fatal automobile crash near Cholame, California. Obviously, he was wrong, and the improbably named Donald Turnupseed ended one of Hollywood's most promising careers. Dean was hardly the first person to be killed in a car crash (that "honor" belongs to Henry Bliss of New York City in 1899), but given the number of celebrities who have met their ends in cars, one wonders why they ever get into automobiles in the first place. One of the earliest stars to meet her maker in a car was the "Empress of the Blues," Bessie Smith, who may have been turned away from a segregated Mississippi hospital. Cowboy superstar Tom Mix ignored warning signs at a construction site and slid his car into a gully, Ernie Kovacs was lighting a cigar when he fatally crashed into a Beverly Hills power pole, and Jayne Mansfield plowed into a truck. Athletes have also fallen victim to vehicular deaths. New York Giants stars Mel Ott, Carl Hubbell, and Frankie Frisch all succumbed in cars, as did Billy Martin and Steve Prefontaine (though alcohol figured in the last two), and NASCAR legend Dale Earnhardt died during the 2001 Daytona 500. Authors and artists are thoughtful people, but the deaths of T.E. Lawrence, Albert Camus, Margaret Mitchell, Nathanael West , Helmut Newton, and Jackson Pollack prove that accidents can happen to even the most punctilious. Nor is royalty immune, as the deaths of Princess Diana and Princess Grace can attest. While we don't mean to sound flip, good can come of such tragedies; the heart that Christian Barnard used in his first transplant came from a woman who had been killed by a car, and every year, hundreds of lives are saved by those who donate their organs. So on this somewhat morbid occasion, we urge you to sign those donor cards -- and to "watch out for the other guy." Suggested Sites... James Dean.com - official site for the actor, with information about his life and legacy. James Dean on Driving Safely - Dean's last film appearance, speaking ironically enough on auto safety. Celebrity Automobile Accidents - a surprisingly long list of celebrities involved in fatal car crashes. Snopes.com: Spyder Web - examines the legend that the car Dean died in is cursed. The Death of James Dean - contemporary newsreel of the tragedy, featuring the CHP officer who responded to the call.

Directory categories: James Dean, Driving Safety, Dale Earnhardt, Organ Donation, Roadside Attractions

Archived under: Actors, Anniversaries, Athletes, Authors, Autos, Bereavement, Dead Celebrities, Death, Driving, James Dean, Safety

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