RIP

[y66]

One of the things that has always amazed me about reporters during my whole life, 99 percent of them will say, ‘Gee, after talking to you I find that you’re halfway intelligent. You could have been anything you wanted to be!’ They don’t realize, I am what I want to be.

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/30/us/sonny-barger-dead-hells-angels.html

[y66]

Diana Kennedy

[Winstonm]

Paul Sorvino

[y66]

James Lovelock

[Cyberyeti]

Nichelle Nichols https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nichelle_Nichols

[Winstonm]

Bill Russell

[johnu]

Bill Russell

I actually casually met Bill Russell several times. This was long after his playing days, and many years after his last coaching job, but he played a lot of golf on public courses in my area. He always used a cart and zipped around the course playing with his friends, and you could hear his cackling laugh just like when he commentated on TV from many yards away before you could see him. He certainly seemed to be enjoying his retirement.

[Winstonm]

when

I actually casually met Bill Russell several times. This was long after his playing days, and many years after his last coaching job, but he played a lot of golf on public courses in my area. He always used a cart and zipped around the course playing with his friends, and you could hear his cackling laugh just like when he commentated on TV from many yards away before you could see him. He certainly seemed to be enjoying his retirement.

I was a huge Laker fan when he was playing. Greatest who ever played and my bad luck to have to root against him.

[y66]

The Bill Russell I Knew for 60 Years by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

[crazy4hoop]

Vin Scully

[y66]

[y66]

Olivia Newton-John

 

...

[kenberg]

Olivia Newton-John

 

 

 

I guess mine is not the first heart broken

My eyes are not the first to cry

 

As the posted obit notes, the critics were not fond of her. That's ok.

 

Meditate, in my direction.

OK, I'll do that.

[Cyberyeti]

Lamont Dozier, responsible for writing things like

[y66]

Tim Page, Photographer

[paulg]

Very sad to report that Nigel Guthrie has passed away, peacefully in a care home in Glasgow.

 

My relationship with Nigel has revolved purely around bridge since we met in the mid-1980s at Reading Bridge Club. I've never met his wife or family and we rarely discussed work, although I know he worked for DEC on their office software product. He has met my wife, but then she plays bridge.

 

He learned bridge in the 1960s at a time of great Scottish players. He was a contemporary of Victor Silverstone and, according to Nigel, he taught Liz McGowan how to play :) (I'm sure Liz will be writing a proper obituary in the near future).

 

At that time, he played in the traditional conservative Scottish style: get through the bidding as quickly as possible, it was the play that was the heart of the game. This served him well as he became a much stronger pairs player.

 

However he did change and became fascinated with system development as he got older and had more time on his hands. He was always fiddling, tweaking, and seeking victims who would play his latest ideas.

 

In terms of bridge achievements, he won the British Mixed Pairs three times, each time with a different woman: Carolyn Peploe in 1970, Liz McGowan in 1973 and Hedy Brown in 1997 (when Hedy was in her eighties); and the EBU Grand Master Pairs with long-time friend David Barnes in 2008. He represented Scotland in the Seniors Camrose in 2018, playing with Jim Forsyth.

 

His primary partner at Reading was Stuart Maurice and I played in their team for a few years. Stuart always complained that Nigel took far more time at the table than anyone else; a problem that he never overcame although falling asleep at the table didn't help!

 

Nigel loved playing bridge and, if he could not play, then discussing bridge. He was well-known on various forums for his strong, and often eclectic, views. His desire for a simpler law book was insatiable, but struggled to articulate how it could be done. He was forever disappointed that the WBF did not enforce a uniform set of rules and regulations on all the NBOs: he did not support different system and alert policies around the world, seeing them as allowing local politicians too much sway. I'm unclear if he had a view on Scottish devolution :)

 

His ability to comment on the world of bridge confused me, given that he'd hardly ever played outside the UK. Why did he care that countries had different rules? He never played in America, despite his strong views of how the ACBL should run things. But he was a avid online player, initially on OKBridge and then BBO, and we played on many online teams together. This got him some international experience.

 

In the days before double dummy solvers, if you ever played with Nigel, either as a partner or teammate, you'd always receive comments about interesting hands afterwards. There was never blame, but it was always about the beauty of a hand or position.

 

nige1 will be missed.

 

https://www.sbu.org.uk/news/ian-crorie-and-nigel-guthrie

[eagles123]

Sad news, RIP nige1

[helene_t]

Thanks, Paul.

 

Nigel is one of the few forum posters that I considered a friend, even though I never meat him. When I started working in Glasgow this February, I thought I might have a chance to meet him IRL, but he said that he was "old and useless" but maybe I would get a chance to meet his wife. Clearly he was in a lot of pain the last few years of his life. So I think it is better for him that he got rest now.

 

But impressingly, he continued playing bridge at a high level until a few months ago I think.

[PeterAlan]

Mikhail Gorbachev (Washington Post obituary).

[thepossum]

Mikhail Gorbachev (Washington Post obituary).

 

My favourite Gorbachev related memory was as a young impressionable traveller among those taken in by the changes in Russia/Soviet Union enthusiastically raising the topic in conversation with some Polish entrepreneurs. Met with a retort along the lines of "Gorbachev. He is just a mouth. The people cannot eat words"

 

I would love to give more circumstances of the conversation but wish to protect the innocent. It may also have involved Bridge, vodka and various other goodies seemingly not available to everyone. I was very impressed as you can tell :)

[barmar]

Queen Elizabeth

[kenberg]

Queen Elizabeth

 

I saw her coronation on television, sitting at the dinner table. I had just turned 13 [oops, she became queen when I was 13, I father I was 14 for the coronation ceremony. No matter.]. Television was in its infancy, I believe there was some sort of new cable to get footage from Europe to North America and then some further new technology for getting it to St. Paul. Not quite live, but sort of live in that it was not delayed or edited. The point being that this was a long lifetime ago, a different era in many ways. There just are not that many people for whom I can say "Oh yes, I remember her from when I was 13".

 

I will follow the remembrances of her with interest. Best wishes to her family and to all.

[Cyberyeti]

Queen Elizabeth

 

My favourite story about her https://www.vox.com/2015/1/23/7877243/king-abdullah-queen-drive

[Lovera]

https://www.npr.org/...i-dead-balmoral

HM Queen Elizabeth II

[blackshoe]

Seen a lot of changes in the world in my lifetime. For some strange reason, the death of Queen Elizabeth is not one that I expected. She seemed, I don't know, endless.