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US author Harper Lee dies

Cephus said:
I don't think I said anything about doom and gloom, just people who are terrified of death so they spend a lot of time mourning people who they don't even know. People need to grow up and deal with reality as it is.
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I don't think spending 45 seconds posting a memorial thread to a famous author is "spending a lot of time mourning people" but that's just me. :shrug:
 
Cephus said:
I didn't care much about Robin Williams and I've met him on several occasions. He wasn't a friend, he wasn't family, just because he was on TV and in the movies and did some decent comedy sketches in the past, that isn't enough to make me actually care that he was dead. More than 56 million people die worldwide every year, I don't see anyone mourning most of them.
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You strike me as someone who would be unpleasant to hang around in real life.
 
Geoist said:
I don't think spending 45 seconds posting a memorial thread to a famous author is "spending a lot of time mourning people" but that's just me. :shrug:
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But it's not just this, every time someone who ever did something they could have been known for dies, there's a post memorializing it. Harper Lee wrote one book in 1960 and a second one in 2015. That's it. Not a single book in between. She was hardly a mover and shaker in the American literary scene. We get posts about someone who was in a band 40 years ago but hasn't played a tune since. Big deal. We get memorials about actors who were in a couple of movies in the 1950s and never since, people who died in their late 90s, like this is some unexpected tragedy. Um... no. It's not. It's life. That Harper Lee died at age 89 means no more than some no-name trash collector who died at the same age. That's life. You're born, you live, you die. Welcome to reality.
 
akrunner88 said:
You strike me as someone who would be unpleasant to hang around in real life.
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Then by all means don't. I'd be happier not hanging around with a progressive anyhow.
 
Cephus said:
Then by all means don't. I'd be happier not hanging around with a progressive anyhow.
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No, I mean something about you literally just ticks me off. The amount you've invested into this thread to explain your "position" here is quite pathetic and sad.

I have met people like you in real life and your contribution to the conversation and what you bring to the table usually makes normal, every day people want to avoid you like the plague. I feel that sort of explains why you have a 22,000+ post count.

Just an observation.
 
akrunner88 said:
No, I mean something about you literally just ticks me off. The amount you've invested into this thread to explain your "position" here is quite pathetic and sad.

I have met people like you in real life and your contribution to the conversation and what you bring to the table usually makes normal, every day people want to avoid you like the plague. I feel that sort of explains why you have a 22,000+ post count.

Just an observation.
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That's nothing compared to a lot of people around here who have been here less time than I but have a post count much, much higher. And a lot of them are liberals. Go figure. But if you don't want to read me, by all means, feel free to put me on your ignore list. It'll keep you in your crazy little progressive echo chamber.
 
Cephus said:
That's nothing compared to a lot of people around here who have been here less time than I but have a post count much, much higher. And a lot of them are liberals. Go figure. But if you don't want to read me, by all means, feel free to put me on your ignore list. It'll keep you in your crazy little progressive echo chamber.
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It's not even that. I pity you. I feel bad for you. You're an unpleasant person and it's easy to see from your posts in this thread how that translates to real life.
 
akrunner88 said:
It's not even that. I pity you. I feel bad for you. You're an unpleasant person and it's easy to see from your posts in this thread how that translates to real life.
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Don't like it, don't read it. Easy 'nuff.
 
Cephus said:
Don't like it, don't read it. Easy 'nuff.
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I want to point out the irony here and your extreme investment into this thread over an author you don't care to mourn, which was my point to begin with. Again, miserable person, here and in real life.
 
akrunner88 said:
I want to point out the irony here and your extreme investment into this thread over an author you don't care to mourn, which was my point to begin with. Again, miserable person, here and in real life.
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You're the one who keeps responding, you know. :roll:
 
lb_on_teh_cb said:
wow, you seem to be real interested in him
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Not him, persay. Just the mind set of an individual who takes the positions he's taken in this thread and the lengths he's gone to tell others why they shouldn't mourn someone's death. There's something about that, that to me strikes me as sad and little. He's a sad, little man. Someone not liked very much in real life.
 
Just in case it was lost on some, this thread is about the passing of Harper Lee.
 
CanadaJohn said:
One of my favourite books and one of the books that got me very interested in reading at a young age - the Hardy Boys serials were also a big motivator for me and reading.

Hope you enjoy it as much as I did.
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Thanks CJ. I'm sure I will - the missus has never steered me wrong.

I loved the Hardy Boys as a kid as well.

My mom was the big motivator for me. She didn't read much more than Reader's Digest and Lady's Home Journal herself but demanded I become a good and lifelong reader. And she succeeded.
 
DA60 said:
Do not recall ever hearing of him and I never read the book. So it means little to me.

Plus, the guy was 89...I prey to God I am dead LONG before I am 89.

*Rant warning*

Why the 'f' anyone would want to live that long (outside of fear of death) is totally beyond me.

I congratulate the guy for dying before he reached 90.

I don't know if there is an afterlife, but surely it has got to offer more freedom and potential happiness then life at 90. And if you don't believe me, go to a retirement home and see how happy most of them are...especially the over 80's. Some are happyish. Most are not...not even close.

To me, the dumbest thing in the world (that is practised by many) is to save for retirement. Why people work their tails off during their youth/relative youth just so they can sit around in a decaying, semi-useless body past 75-80 is TOTALLY beyond me.

I get say seeing the world or whatever from 65 to about 75. But after that, I see NO REASON to continue short of fear of death.

And please save the 'my grandmother skydived when she was 245 years old' story. Big deal, she fell out of a plane...a guy in a coma an do that (with a push).

Live for today...not for tomorrow.

Anyway....now if you will excuse me, I have got some living to do...I am going to watch taped sports on my PVR while eating some tasty but fattening food.

Okay....so I am not ALWAYS living.

;)
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Why?

Assuming you are healthy - and that's becoming more common - why the hell not? Why assign an artificial expiration date.

Plenty of healthy and active people in their 70s and 80s. I've seen more than a few mid 70s guy who can bench press over 200 pounds - as an example.
 
DA60 said:
Do not recall ever hearing of him and I never read the book. So it means little to me.

Plus, the guy was 89...I prey to God I am dead LONG before I am 89.

*Rant warning*

Why the 'f' anyone would want to live that long (outside of fear of death) is totally beyond me.

I congratulate the guy for dying before he reached 90.

I don't know if there is an afterlife, but surely it has got to offer more freedom and potential happiness then life at 90. And if you don't believe me, go to a retirement home and see how happy most of them are...especially the over 80's. Some are happyish. Most are not...not even close.

To me, the dumbest thing in the world (that is practised by many) is to save for retirement. Why people work their tails off during their youth/relative youth just so they can sit around in a decaying, semi-useless body past 75-80 is TOTALLY beyond me.

I get say seeing the world or whatever from 65 to about 75. But after that, I see NO REASON to continue short of fear of death.

And please save the 'my grandmother skydived when she was 245 years old' story. Big deal, she fell out of a plane...a guy in a coma an do that (with a push).

Live for today...not for tomorrow.

Anyway....now if you will excuse me, I have got some living to do...I am going to watch taped sports on my PVR while eating some tasty but fattening food.

Okay....so I am not ALWAYS living.

;)
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Eh depends on health, so cases living til 90+ would be awful. Other cases (like one of my grandparents) it's not bad. Odds favor the first for most of us but 90s don't have to be terrible 100% of the time.
 
Gaius46 said:
Thanks CJ. I'm sure I will - the missus has never steered me wrong.

I loved the Hardy Boys as a kid as well.

My mom was the big motivator for me. She didn't read much more than Reader's Digest and Lady's Home Journal herself but demanded I become a good and lifelong reader. And she succeeded.
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My mom was the same way - she was a teacher and two of my brothers became teachers too - reading was important in my house growing up.
 
Gaius46 said:
Her. She wrote "To Kill a Mockingbird."

Interestingly, I never read the book, much to my wife's shock, so for Christmas she bought me a copy - along with several other novels. I just started reading it last week.
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To Kill a Mockingbird was one of the few books in school I actually read and liked. Iirc it was that, The Great Gatsby, Of Mice and Men, Great Expectations, and a couple others.

Of course if I was smarter then, I'd just buy the audio books and get to do HW and play games/browse the web at the same time =p.
 
OpportunityCost said:
My grandmother is 91, … but has not spent one day in an assisted living facility. She gardened every single year until the age of 86. She is still sharp. She still enjoys life. In her case I think it has a lot to do with faith.
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My mom lived to be 90, after retiring in her mid-seventies. When she stopped being paid to work, she only seemed to work harder. There was always more than one volunteer activity she was involved in, mostly teaching ESL.

My family manipulated her into staying in a nursing home after she broke her hip and rehabbed, apparently in a misguided effort to preserve her estate. (They have lots of money, but they're idiots.) She started calling me just about every morning, crying and begging me to get her out of there. I quit my full-time job, started working part-time, and looked after her for six years before she passed away. It was the most rewarding experience I've ever had, or likely ever will have. I made a real difference in someone else's life, someone who truly deserved it, and as it happens, it was the same person who sacrificed so much for me, especially in the first six years of my life.

She was a voracious reader of fairly heavy material, like a book a day until a few months before her death. She should have had a career as an acquisitions editor for a publishing house.

On Ms Lee and her extraordinary novel, its likely that no work of art had more influence on me growing up than the film version. It remains my favourite, and I'm a film enthusiast. If you haven't seen it, I couldn't recommend it more highly.

Back on my mom (sorry), she grew up in a wealthy household on the hill in New Haven near Yale University. She had little if any experience being around African-Americans until, after marrying at eighteen, she moved with her husband (not my father) to Alabama where he was working for the federal gubmint. She witnessed many incidents there of horrible bigotry and hatred, events she related to me and my brothers growing up. Most disturbingly to me, many were just everyday, almost mundane, in nature. I developed a hatred for racism that consumes me, not a good thing really. A volcano of bitterness and rage. I wish I could change.

Watch the film. If yer like me, it'll take you about two minutes to fall head-over-heels in love with Scout.

"What's the matter?" may be my all-time favourite line — simple, elegant, devastating.

"I sure meant no harm, Mr. Cunningham."
 
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Gaius46 said:
Why?

Assuming you are healthy - and that's becoming more common - why the hell not? Why assign an artificial expiration date.

Plenty of healthy and active people in their 70s and 80s. I've seen more than a few mid 70s guy who can bench press over 200 pounds - as an example.
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Most of my friends are over 70...most of them are in a great deal of physical discomfort. And almost all of them are clearly unhappy (most of it health/age related), yet have plenty of money.

There is almost nothing I truly enjoy that I will be able to do properly at 75+.

I am not going to waste my time debating this. Go to a retirement home (maybe volunteer), get to know the people...and then come back and tell me even 1/3 of seniors over 75-80 are remotely happy.

They sit around, largely lonely as their friends are dead/dying, as their families visit them less and less (largely because they do not relate to them any longer as much), as their bodies slowly deteriorate, as the public at large treat them more and more like second-class citizens.


You want to try and live forever, go ahead...I don't give a **** what you do.

Me? I am going to live for today, spend my last penny on my 72'nd birthday (if I live that long) and off myself on that day. ANd it will be a celebration of my life..not some misery fest that most people go through as they live in agony (even when they are terminal) as they desperately cling to every second of their increasingly useless existences. All the while making everyone who cares about them miserable as they have to watch you slowly disintegrate. There is little/nothing more depressing then slowly losing a loved one to a terminal disease. I watched my mother slowly die of cancer over 2 1/2 years. It was horrific. Every few weeks she would get sicker and sicker - literally watch her die a little every few days.

PASS. I am not putting my friends/loved ones or myself through that, thank you.

And the older I get, the more awful old age looks to me.
 
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DA60 said:
Most of my friends are over 70...most of them are in a great deal of physical discomfort. And almost all of them are clearly unhappy (most of it health/age related), yet have plenty of money.

There is almost nothing I truly enjoy that I will be able to do properly at 75+.

I am not going to waste my time debating this. Go to a retirement home (maybe volunteer), get to know the people...and then come back and tell me even 1/3 of seniors over 75-80 are remotely happy.

They sit around, largely lonely as their friends are dead/dying, as their families visit them less and less (largely because they do not relate to them any longer as much), as their bodies slowly deteriorate, as the public at large treat them more and more like second-class citizens.


You want to try and live forever, go ahead...I don't give a **** what you do.

Me? I am going to live for today, spend my last penny on my 72'nd birthday (if I live that long) and off myself on that day. ANd it will be a celebration of my life..not some misery fest that most people go through as they live in agony (even when they are terminal) as they desperately cling to every second of their increasingly useless existences. All the while making everyone who cares about them miserable as they have to watch you slowly disintegrate. There is little/nothing more depressing then slowly losing a loved one to a terminal disease. I watched my mother slowly die over 2 1/2 years. It was horrific.
And the older I get, the more awful old age looks to me.
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My mother lived to be 90 and enjoyed every moment right up to the end. You are wrong.
 
Jack Hays said:
My mother lived to be 90 and enjoyed every moment right up to the end. You are wrong.
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And what EXACT sentence did I utter that you can prove using links to unbiased sources proves that I was wrong? If you are going to make a matter-of-fact statement, then you better have statistics/facts to back it up or it means little more then your personal opinion. In which case, I suggest you do not make it in a matter-of-fact fashion.
You want to say 'you believe' I am wrong...fine. But I say there is no way (imo) you can accurately say in a matter-of-fact manner that I am wrong.

I did not say everyone should off themselves. I did not say no one is happy past 75.

I said most are not..and they are not (imo).

And why would I care that some guy online says his 90 year old grandmother was happy her whole life. It means nothing.

Just as it should mean nothing if I said I was a multi-millionaire.

Until we both prove it - who cares...it's just talk.
 
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