R. I. P. Dame Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor, DBE (1932-2011)

Such a tumultuous life: one of the greatest icons of the Golden Era of Hollywood has died. The Guardian has a thoughtful obituary with other links. I liked her in Giant, Butterfield 8, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? And in Taming of the Shrew, she did Shakespeare proud. (Time to check the local library's movie collection.)

"Stop, stop, stop went my heartstrings..."

Hugh Martin, who wrote the music for the 1944 film "Meet Me in St Louis," has died at aged 96. In the movie were such classics as "The Trolley Song," "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" and "The Boy Next Door." Here's his Playbill obituary.

PETER GOMES, R.I.P.

I know people have first learned about Peter Gomes from his writings, particularly The Good Book. I first heard him preach at St Stephen's, Houston many years ago. His life was proof positive that we can become the people we were meant to be. There have been struggles, but aren't we fortunate to have had Mr Gomes to help us carry on?

Photo of the Rev. Peter J. Gomes in 2007, Erik Jacobs for The New York Times.

Margaret Whiting R.I.P.

By Molly Walsh in the Burlington Free Press, Wednesday, January 12, 2011

The singer who popularized the tune “Moonlight in Vermont” and in the process helped craft the image of the state as a rustic haven illuminated by a silvery glow is dead.

Margaret Whiting died Tuesday at age 86 at the Lillian Booth Actors’ Home in Englewood, N.J., after a long career that began in the 1940s and included hits such as “Baby It’s Cold Outside,” sung with her godfather and mentor, songwriter Johnny Mercer.

Whiting was a young Hollywood singer who had never been to Vermont when she first recorded “Moonlight” in the midst of World War II. The bittersweet ballad was broadcast on Armed Forces Radio and brought images of a quietly beautiful Vermont to people around the globe.
____________

It wasn’t until Feb. 5, 1985, however, that Whiting first visited Vermont to sing to legislators and be recognized on Moonlight in Vermont Day.

The song contributed to the Vermont brand, starting with the impact it had on World War II soldiers, said Harry Orth of Shelburne, professor emeritus at the University of Vermont and co-author of the Vermont Encyclopedia.

The lyrics “presented an idealized picture of what many of the soldiers had left behind,” Orth said. “Even the ones that were from the big cities could associate with that song because after all they saw pictures, they went places.”

The song is beautiful yet reflective, said Orth, who wrote the entry about “Moonlight in Vermont” in the Vermont Encyclopedia.

“It’s a very contemplative song,” he said. “You could really see some soldier leaning back in a bunk or in a foxhole and just wishing he could be in such a wonderful place.”

The song was written by Karl Seussdorf and John Blackburn. Neither one was a Vermonter — which might explain why sycamore trees appear in the “Moonlight” lyrics but make so few appearances in the Vermont woods.

R.I.P. John Worrell, priest, chaplain and friend in Texas

The circumstances of our lives may already have given us a simple way of living. But for most of us the call to simplicity is a call to examine the way we live, the things on which we spend our resources of money and time and strength.

Simplicity is a spiritual discipline and a spiritual goal. We can in times of privation or limited resources have our sacrifices extorted from us, as we are forced backward step by step into a simpler life. Or we can embrace an opportunity to learn new ways of living sacrificially, new ways, and spiritually richer ways, of growing closer to God as we re-order and re-arrange the priorities of things and activities in our lives. We face a new encounter with the reality of God, our need of him, and the power of his grace. -- John Worrell on Simplicity

THE LEAD

Though he accomplished much in his long career as a working priest, John will likely be remembered chiefly as the force behind Nevertheless: A Texas Church Review - founder, publisher (along with wife Vivian), and head writer of a thoughtful publication that prided itself on being an independent voice crying for a little sanity in the Anglican Communion - no, not just in Texas ... and not just in the years before before 2003, but especially, and with hard vigor, in 2003 and beyond, until finally just a few years ago Nevertheless and other small occasional pubs like it were forced to run up the white flag and surrender (swearing many cautions to the rest of us) to the immediacy of the Internet.

John was profoundly captured by the notion that The Episcopal Church was a place capable of having a wide, fair, giving, and intellectually honest conversation about faith and the politics of faith. (He was also less apt to confuse the two, as we sometimes are now, in our rush to keep the story going.) He was, simply, a broad churchman who did not accept the smallness one sometimes perceives in clergy - including bishops - and who never shied from pointing out both the location and remedy of faults. Upon handing over the reigns of Nevertheless to an editorial board, he noted, with a tinge of melancholy, that

... [w]e never quite succeeded in providing, as we had hoped, a place where very different views were argued out in "charitable yet rigorous" debate, at least not often. Perhaps the times had already turned to discomfort with diversity and serious exploration of important differences in a shared environment. It is also likely that our willingness, on the rare occasions when it seemed needed, to question the wisdom or fairness of our Bishops gave us a partisan reputation we had not desired ... I hope that our shared concern for the success of the Gospel and the welfare of the Church will continue and grow.

Let's remember that The Episcopal Church, like any American expression of Christian thought, was upheld by many in the last century who cared enough about her fortunes to do something to in the hope of making a lasting impact upon them. There were many who toiled with blue pencils, pica-poles, and reduction wheels to make their drafts better - who would stay up late copying, folding, applying stamps and fueling it all with cold coffee, because they loved their Church enough to sacrifice for it in ways that just made sense to them. And if today entirely web-based news-and-views organs like Episcopal Café succeed, they do well to recall their forebears in this lineage.

So farewell, John, and thanks for all the carp. We owe you.

I knew John Worrell chiefly as the celebrant of the 8 o'clock Holy Communion at my parish during my years in Houston, St Stephen's Episcopal Church on West Alabama, Houston. When the (former) rector Clax Monro retired, John was interim priest and was for a time in the running as a candidate for the rectorship of St Stephen's (it eventually fell to Helen Havens, another prophetic witness in the church). St Stephen's always attracted not renegades, but rebels who were thoughtful and challenging in their arguments for the faith. I also knew John as the chaplain for Rice University and Texas Medical Center students at Autry House. He was a good friend of the Houston chapter of Integrity.

Ken Kesselus and Robby Vickery writing a retrospective on John Worrell in the Easter 2008 issue of Nevertheless

In 1959, he came to the Diocese of Texas to serve at Beaumont's St. Matthew's Church and as Chaplain to students at Lamar State College. Shortly after arriving, a young black college student was confirmed in St. Matthew's Church. This new Episcopalian took part in sit-in demonstrations seeking desegregation of lunch counters and public facilities. A dangerous impasse threatened as city officials resisted. On the strength of their pastoral relationship, John went to a critical meeting about the crisis. Unexpectedly, he was designated as an unofficial emissary for the black protesters to business leaders and City of Beaumont officials. Along with other local clergy from both communities in the city, he aided a process that achieved a measure of justice in a peaceful manner. He came to know, practically, the reality that people with differing views could meet to reason with one another and find a good and peaceful agreement.

Similarly, after moving to Houston in 1965, he worked with an interdenominational, multi-racial group of clergy which was informally named the "Crisis Commission." They met regularly to build community and trust, strategizing how to avoid the violence and race riots that were spreading across America. Their strategies were opening conversation, learning to appreciate those on the other side, and finding the leverage to bring feuding parties together enough to at least prevent tense situations from getting out of hand.

John sought to use Autry House, which housed his ministry to students at Rice University and schools within the Texas Medical Center, as a meeting place for such gatherings. He passionately promoted processes that would put people with different perspectives at the same table, working to better understand one another. He labored to bring diversity into that holy place, seeking to sanctify it through reconciliation and understanding.

Lena Horne 1917-2010

Appreciation: Corin Redgrave, 1939-2010

John Bird, found of The Big Issue, remembers Corin Redgrave in the Guardian,

He wasn't one of those fair-weather revolutionaries who did it for a while and then said: "Sod it, I've got my four or five chapters in my autobiography. I've got a lot to talk about at dinner parties for the next 50 years." He got in and got dirty and he probably would've made a bigger mark in the theatre or the movies if he hadn't done that. But he chose a bigger stage than the West End stage and, in my opinion, a much more important one.

You can read all of Bird's appreciation here and further Guardian coverage about the life of Corin Redgrave here.

First time I saw Corin Redgrave was in A Man for All Seasons, one of the best films ever.


In 1999, living in London, I saw him in a revival of Noel Coward's A Song At Twilight co-starring his sister Vanessa Redgrave and his second wife Kika Markham. Wow, watching three of my favourite actors perform on stage!

Photo: Brother and sister performing in Song at Twilight in London. Courtesy: Haydn West/Rex Features

Bruce Graham, an architect with integrity

If I had the talent, my life would have taken another course and I would have been an architect. Bruce Graham has died at aged 83.

"Quick-witted, curious and always alert, Graham seemed to capture the spirit of the age from the mid-1970s to the 1990s. In a sense, he reinvented the role of the architect, recognising that the job is just as much about city-making and power-broking as it is about pure design talent, which Graham possessed in spades."

I love the above photo by Linda Nylind.

"... the exposed structural arches of Exchange House (1990) that effortlessly span 80 metres above the railway tracks leading to Liverpool Street station in London..."

I frequently took trains into and from the station when I lived in London 10 years ago and was always amazed by those arches. I love buildings with that kind of integrity!

From an interview in 2002:

"Let me describe the difference between my idea of architecture and a lot of other architects. Number one, architecture is not painting or sculpture. Architecture is much more like music, which has an element of lime. Architecture is about space and movement. It's four-dimensional. I learned that very early when I went to Chartres Cathedral. I walked up the hill and found the square and then the church and walked in, and this fantastic space opened up. There was a funeral, and they were playing Mozart's unfinished Requiem. I had to cry. Moving through that space with that music was unbelievable. Space is what architecture is all about. Not only interior but also exterior. And the movement of people. That's true whether you go to Greece, or to Karnak, or to any other place and see any other great architecture of the past. I believe that modern architecture should do the same. In Chicago our advantage was that we had engineers. Structure is still essential to the creation of space, just as it was in Chartres Cathedral."

[Purely subjective and personal opinion: Graham's designs stand among other buildings I admire; there are so many - Piano's Menil Collection and Centre Pompidou; Moneo's Audrey Jones Beck Building at Houston's MFA; Van der Rohe's Seagram Building; Kahn's Kimball Museum in Ft. Worth; Johnson's Glass House in New Canaan; Rietveld's Schroder House; Koolhaas's Seattle Library; Bollulo's George R. Brown Convention Center; Burgee's Pennzoil Place (now Bank of America).]

The Death of a Dutch Minister of State: H.A.F.M.O. (Hans) van Mierlo

My dad always admired this man. Dutch politician and former government minister Hans van Mierlo has died on Thursday, March 11, in an Amsterdam hospital, aged 78.

From the obituary in NRC/international

He himself has now become part of history. Henricus Antonius Franciscus Maria Oliva van Mierlo -- or Hafmo, as his party members affectionately referred to him -- was a philosopher, a bohemian, a romantic, an orator, a bon vivant, a master of paradox, an eternal doubter and yes, of course, also a politician.

Above anything else, he was the political embodiment of the Dutch cultural revolution of the 1960s. The movement that never really became a revolution, because the Netherlands was a country where so-called 'repressive tolerance' quickly made D66 and Van Mierlo himself a part of the system they so maligned. Van Mierlo, who started out a critic of the state, died an honorary Minister of State. He himself would undoubtedly have appreciated the paradox.

Martin Wisse has written an assessment, particularly of Van Mierlo's role as founder of the political party, D66.

Photo: Hans van Mierlo (red scarf) with H.D. (Herman-Diederik) Tjeenk Willink, Vice President of the Council of State, on their way to the Royal Palace, 2009; courtesy P.P.E.

Ian Carmichael, R.I.P.

Of course I remember him as Lord Peter Wimsey in the Sayers mystery dramas on BBC. And in Lucky Jim. Ian Carmichael has died at age 89 in his home in North Yorkshire.

UPDATED:Howard Zinn, Teacher R.I.P.

UPDATES I & II BELOW

Howard Zinn has died suddenly of a heart attack in California. He was 87 years old. A tragic loss to the countless lives he touched and taught, and he remains relevant even now. The Boston Globe has a good obituary and gives a quote from his autobiography:

"From the start, my teaching was infused with my own history. I would try to be fair to other points of view, but I wanted more than 'objectivity'; I wanted students to leave my classes not just better informed, but more prepared to relinquish the safety of silence, more prepared to speak up, to act against injustice wherever they saw it. This, of course, was a recipe for trouble."

Dr Zinn's last appearance on Democracy Now! was last May.

'I wish President Obama would listen carefully to Martin Luther King. I’m sure he pays verbal homage, as everyone does, to Martin Luther King, but he ought to think before he sends missiles over Pakistan, before he agrees to this bloated military budget, before he sends troops to Afghanistan, before he opposes the single-payer system, which you talked about earlier in your program. He ought to ask, “What would Martin Luther King do? And what would Martin Luther King say?” And if he only listened to King, he would be a very different president than he’s turning out to be so far. I think we ought to hold Obama to his promise to be different and bold and to make change. So far, he hasn’t come through on that promise.'

Talking about the A Young People’s History of the United States,

'...we should be honest with young people; we should not deceive them. We should be honest about the history of our country. And we should be not only taking down the traditional heroes like Andrew Jackson and Theodore Roosevelt, but we should be giving young people an alternate set of heroes.

'Instead of Theodore Roosevelt, tell them about Mark Twain. Mark Twain—well, Mark Twain, everybody learns about as the author of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, but when we go to school, we don’t learn about Mark Twain as the vice president of the Anti-Imperialist League. We aren’t told that Mark Twain denounced Theodore Roosevelt for approving this massacre in the Philippines. No.

'We want to give young people ideal figures like Helen Keller. And I remember learning about Helen Keller. Everybody learns about Helen Keller, you know, a disabled person who overcame her handicaps and became famous. But people don’t learn in school and young people don’t learn in school what we want them to learn when we do books like A Young People’s History of the United States, that Helen Keller was a socialist. She was a labor organizer. She refused to cross a picket line that was picketing a theater showing a play about her.

'And so, there are these alternate heroes in American history. There’s Fannie Lou Hamer and Bob Moses. They’re the heroes of the civil rights movement. There are a lot of people who are obscure, who are not known. We have in this Young People’s History, we have a young hero who was sitting on the bus in Montgomery, Alabama, refused to leave the front of the bus. And that was before Rosa Parks. I mean, Rosa Parks is justifiably famous for refusing to leave her seat, and she got arrested, and that was the beginning of the Montgomery Bus Boycott and really the beginning of a great movement in the South. But this fifteen-year-old girl did it first. And so, we have a lot of—we are trying to bring a lot of these obscure people back into the forefront of our attention and inspire young people to say, “This is the way to live.”'

And at the end of that program...he sure as hell wasn't neutral about war.[my emphasis]

AMY GOODMAN: I’m telling you, the great historian, you have five seconds.

HOWARD ZINN: If you want to end terrorism, you have to stop being terrorists, which is what war is.

Today, DN! pays hommage to Dr Zinn in it's program (link - the program will be up later, so check).

UPDATE I

From the comments: Was Howard Zinn ever on Bill Moyers' Journal? Yes, in December, 2009.

UPDATE II

Democracy Now!'s 'Howard Zinn (1922-2010): A Tribute to the Legendary Historian with Noam Chomsky, Alice Walker, Naomi Klein and Anthony Arnove'is here.

A Symbol of Resistance

Miep looks like a pack mule. She goes out nearly everyday in search of vegetables, and then cycles back with her purchases in large shopping bags. She’s also the one who brings five library books with her every Saturday.
-- Anne Frank July 11, 1943

Last week we read about the death of Freya Gräfin von Moltke. Last night it was reported that Miep Gies, another symbol of resistance, has died.

From the Anne Frank Foundation

Miep Gies, the last surviving and best known helper of Anne Frank and the people who shared her hiding place in an Amsterdam canalside house, has died in Hoorn on 11 January at the age of 100. Right until the end Miep remained deeply involved with the remembrance of Anne Frank and spreading the message of her story. Every day she received letters from all over the world with questions about her relationship with Anne Frank and her role as a helper. “I’m not a hero’, she once said, “It wasn’t something I planned in advance, I simply did what I could to help.” Miep Gies leaves a son, a daughter in law and three grandchildren behind.

In her own words,

'I stand at the end of the long, long line of good Dutch people who did what I did or more - much more - during those dark and terrible times years ago, but always like yesterday in the hearts of those of us who bear witness. Never a day goes by that I do not think of what happened then.' -- Miep Gies on her website

For the BBC report, click here.
Photo copyright Anne Frank Stichting.
Cross posted at Antemedius and The Peace Tree.

UPDATED: Nazi resistance leader Freya von Moltke dies in Vermont

UPDATE BELOW

R.I.P. Freya von Moltke

BURLINGTON FREE PRESS/ASSOCIATED PRESS:

NORWICH -- Freya von Moltke, a prominent member of the Nazi resistance in World War II, has died at the age of 98, her son said.

Von Moltke, who was born in Germany but had lived in Vermont since 1960, died Friday after suffering a viral infection, her son Helmuth von Moltke told the Lebanon Valley News.

In her writings after the war, von Moltke described her life in the resistance with her husband, Helmuth James Graf von Moltke, who co-founded the anti-Nazi Kreisau Circle and was executed for his activities.

[...]

The Kreisau Circle included several dozen clergy members, economic experts and diplomats. Freya von Moltke hosted meetings in 1942 and '43 at the family estate at which the group discussed plans for the democratic Germany they hoped would follow the collapse of the Third Reich.

In 1943, the group established contact with Col. Claus von Stauffenberg, the leader of the German military resistance, and supported his failed attempt on July 20, 1944, to assassinate Hitler with a bomb.

Helmuth von Moltke was arrested in January 1944 for warning a friend that he was about to be arrested. He was executed a year later for treason.

In 1947, Freya von Moltke left Europe for South Africa, where her mother-in-law had been born. She worked as a social worker but grew troubled by the apartheid regime and returned in 1956 to Germany, where she began publicizing the activities of the Kreisau Circle.

She moved to Vermont to live with Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy, a Dartmouth College professor and social philosopher who had fled Germany after the rise of the Nazis. After Rosenstock-Huessy died in 1973, she dedicated herself to promoting his works and those of her late husband.

Her transcriptions of her husband's letters were published in German in 1988 as "Letters to Freya 1939-1945." Her memoirs, "Memories of Kreisau and the German Resistance," were first published in 1997.

After the fall of communism in 1989, the von Moltkes' former estate was chosen by the German and Polish governments as the site of a reconciliation Mass between the two nations. It is now used as a youth center and meeting place to promote European integration.

Von Moltke gave her blessing to the establishment of the Freya von Moltke Foundation for the New Kreisau to support the work being done at the estate.

A memorial service is scheduled for Friday at the Norwich Congregational Church, associate pastor the Rev. Mary R. Brownlow said Sunday.

I've always been amazed by the courage of the resisters against the Nazi regime of whatever cultural or political stripe - aristocrats or Anarchists, Communists or Social Democrats or whatever - who acted at enormous personal risk.

In 1989, the Geschwester-Scholl-Preis, a literary prize named after Sophie and Hans Scholl, was awarded posthumously (link in German) - in the presence of Freya von Moltke - to Helmuth James von Moltke for "Briefe an Freya 1939-1945 " ("Letters to Freya 1930-1945"). You can also read the New York Times review of that book here.

For further reading, I recommend "Berlin Diaries 1940-1945" the posthumously published diaries of Marie Vassiltchikov, who was secretary to Adam von Trott and knew many people in the July 20th plot.

Photo: Freya von Moltke - Wikipedia Creative Commons/HopsonRoad

UPDATE

On Tuesday, January 5 the Guardian had an editorial, "In praise of... Freya von Moltke":

She dedicated much of the six and a half decades of post-war life she would enjoy to chronicling the German resistance, in lectures and books, and in her later years she supported the conversion of Kreisau into a centre for European reconciliation. A woman who lived and sacrificed through her country's darkest years, was keen to bequeath the promise of a brighter future.

't Is stil in Amsterdam - Ramses Shaffy RIP

Ramses Shaffy 1933-2009

There is no substitute for him. Never. He sang passionately, the Jacques Brel of the Netherlands. I guess I am showing my age. My cousins introduced me to his songs. Two stand out for me. Rust zacht, Ramses.

"'t Is stil in Amsterdam" -



and "We Zullen Doorgaan" --

Design Inspiration

David Mellor, a thoroughly British designer known chiefly for his cutlery, has died a few days ago.

I like this from his obituary in the Guardian:

Mellor was no mere knife and fork stylist; he understood the behaviour of metals and the physics of tools.

He was in every sense a modern industrial designer, and technologically adept, but his spiritual roots were in the arts and crafts movement and its belief, not so much in work-life balance as in work-life integration. To him, the profession of design "is concerned not just with making objects ... but just as importantly with making choices, with choosing what we use, choosing how to live". There is a special significance in the environments Mellor made for himself, his colleagues and his family (although boundaries were fluid, since life and art and work were inseparable).


When I lived in London and and would hang out in Chelsea, on exiting the Sloane Square tube station: First thing - make a bee-line to David Mellor's shop (take a right, then another right, cross the street) before I did anything else. I have a few sets of the Paris design (shown on the right). Recommended: the company website, a celebration of exquisite craftmanship, is a fine presentation indeed.

OBITUARY

Montreal Gazette

Actress Natasha Richardson, the wife of actor Liam Neeson and part of the Redgrave acting dynasty, has died after suffering a head injury while skiing this week in Quebec, a family spokesman said Wednesday.

"Liam Neeson, his sons, and the entire family are shocked and devastated by the tragic death of their beloved Natasha. They are profoundly grateful for the support, love and prayers of everyone, and ask for privacy during this very difficult time," Los Angeles-based spokesman Alan Nierob said in a statement.

Neeson was at her bedside after accompanying her on the flight from Canada Tuesday, as was her mother, legendary actress Vanessa Redgrave.

A TOUCH OF TEXAS CLASS

An Appreciation by Robert Leleux in The Texas Observer:--Eleanor Tinsley—the only person I’ve ever met who was also a park and an elementary school—died Feb. 10. For anybody who doesn’t already know, much of what’s best and most beautiful about the city of Houston was a gift of Tinsley’s imagination. As a public servant and civic leader, she was a figure of great guts and dignity. She was also a very nice lady.

Houston, my hometown, is that strange place on the map where New Orleans manners meet western wildness, and where white-gloved refinement so often collides with cowboy coarseness and bigotry. White gloves never graced finer hands than Tinsley’s. A soothing presence in cupcake colors, she gave every impression of being the well-born Baptist matron she was (her great-grandfather, Dr. Rufus Burleson, was a president of Baylor University). But she was also one of those trailblazing women of the ’60s and ’70s who helped define our state as surely as any man at the Battle of San Jacinto.

When Tinsley was elected to the Houston School Board in 1969, the city was charged with the daunting task of racial integration—a cause to which she was unwavering. The Houston Chronicle reports that, during this tumultuous process, Tinsley was approached by a man made furious by the idea that his daughter might “catch something” from a black student.

“Perhaps, sir,” she replied, “she might catch tolerance.”
...
In 1979 Tinsley joined forces with Houston’s gay community to oust an outspoken homophobe from the City Council. That year, she became one of the first two women elected to the council, not to mention a champion of women’s and gay rights causes. By the time she retired in 1995, after 20 years in office, she’d played a major role in the creation of Houston Community College, Houston’s High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, Houston’s 911 emergency service, and literally hundreds of public parks. Former Councilman Jim Greenwood, quoted in the Chronicle, considers her “the most effective member of the City Council that Houston has ever seen.”

Oh, man, when I read this today, I realised that I really miss Houston. Eleanor Tinsley was truly one of the beacons of light during my 20-odd years in the Bayou City. I remember that incident with the homophobe on city council; I'd only been in Houston for three years. Tinsley cared about "quality of life" issues before doing so was popular. These were the years of Houston's unfettered growth, yet she worked on getting a 1980 sign ordinance to regulate billboards and championed green spaces and parks. R.I.P. Mrs Eleanor Tinsley.

Photo: Sharon Steinmann / Chronicle

TRIBUTE: WENDY RICHARD 20 JULY 1943 - 26 FEBRUARY 2009

Wendy Richard, who has died aged 65 of cancer, was one of the busiest television actors of recent decades. She became a household name as Pauline Fowler, the matriarch who battled on undaunted through the many upheavals of EastEnders.

Before EastEnders, she was best known as Miss Brahms, a foil to Mollie Sudgen's Mrs Slocombe on the groundbraking series, Are You Being Served?



The cast of Are You Being Served? (from left to right): Mollie Sugden as Mrs Slocombe, Wendy Richard as Miss Brahms, Trevor Bannister as Mr Lucas, Nicholas Smith as Mr Rumbold, Larry Martyn, Arthur Brough as Mr Grainger, John Inman as Mr Humphreys and Frank Thornton as Captain Peacock. (Photograph: BBC)

There are several clips featured on the Guardian.

The pilot episode of Are You Being Served. The opening scene has Miss Brahms stuck in a lift in a miniskirt. The tone had been set:



The pilot continues:



"Are you free?" The final segment:



And of course the first part of the infamous "Dear Sexy Knickers..."!

DUTCH PROVO 'HAPPENINGS' FOUNDER GROOTVELD DIES

The creative 'high' of 1960s Amsterdam - my birthplace - was certainly exciting! After my high school graduation, while visiting my relatives for the summer, I attended some of these Provo 'happenings' organised by Robert Grootveld at the statue, 't Lievertje, in Spui square. (Oh, to experience those days again!) Ironically, the statue was a gift to the city of Amsterdam by a major tobacco company.

One evening, sitting with my cousin on the outdoor café terrace of the famous Art Deco American Hotel in Leidseplein, we heard a rumour that a 'happening' would take place. Everyone sat in anticipation. You could feel it in the buzz of conversation. Suddenly, we were startled by a loud crash. Had it started !?! No, a nervous waiter serving guests on the terrace had dropped his tray of drinks!

DutchNews.nl

Robert Jasper Grootveld, one of the most emblematic figures of the 60s provo (provocation) movement, has died in a nursing home at the age of 76.

Grootveld was famous for the ‘happenings’ he organised on the Spui (photo), then Amsterdam’s ‘magic centre’. The anti-smoking guru would dance around in a cloud of his own cigarette smoke chanting ugh, ugh, ugh - which became one of his mantras.

Grootveld started out as a window cleaner, then turned to journalism and finally found his feet as an artist in the creative atmosphere of the 1960s. He came up with the famous white bicycle plan which has since been adopted by many cities around the world.

His lifelong devotion to the figure of Sinterklaas may go some way towards explaining his childlike pleasure in inventing such institutions as the Exotic Kitch Museum and the Expertological Laboratory, with fellow-artists and poets. In 2000, he made a present of the floating gardens he created to the city of Amsterdam.

‘He totally changed the Amsterdam street scene,’ friend and filmmaker Herbert Curiel told ANP.

BLOSSOM DEARIE, R.I.P.

Blossom Dearie died on Saturday at age 82.