[HN Gopher] Lawrence Ferlinghetti has died
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       Lawrence Ferlinghetti has died
        
       Author : thedday
       Score  : 36 points
       Date   : 2021-02-23 19:34 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
        
       | jdkee wrote:
       | "Pity the nation whose people are sheep, and whose shepherds
       | mislead them.
       | 
       | Pity the nation whose leaders are liars, whose sages are
       | silenced, and whose bigots haunt the airwaves.
       | 
       | Pity the nation that raises not its voice, except to praise
       | conquerors and acclaim the bully as hero and aims to rule the
       | world with force and by torture.
       | 
       | Pity the nation that knows no other language but its own and no
       | other culture but its own.
       | 
       | Pity the nation whose breath is money and sleeps the sleep of the
       | too well fed.
       | 
       | Pity the nation -- oh, pity the people who allow their rights to
       | erode and their freedoms to be washed away.
       | 
       | My country, tears of thee, sweet land of liberty."
       | --- Lawrence Ferlinghetti
        
       | abecode wrote:
       | I had a little bit of intimate but impersonal contact with
       | Lawrence Ferlinghetti: the USC special collections library has
       | the notes of his doctoral dissertation, which if I remember
       | correctly was about the theme of the city in poetry/literature. I
       | think he wrote it in Paris, but it was mostly in English. It was
       | on small note cards in pencil and I remember that I had to read
       | it in the presence of the librarian. That was way before I was
       | interested in computers but it's interesting as a contrast.
       | There's a lot of amazing writing online and the ease of putting
       | stuff online makes it possible to see rough thoughts (e.g.
       | tweets), but there's a lot of noise online too and reading
       | lovingly preserved tweets from a fancy library with lots of
       | leather and mahogany might improve the user experience.
        
       | neonate wrote:
       | https://archive.is/r8yWX
        
       | dang wrote:
       | If curious, small past threads:
       | 
       |  _Lawrence Ferlinghetti's Enduring San Francisco_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19360165 - March 2019 (19
       | comments)
       | 
       |  _Salton Sea Notes: Lawrence Ferlinghetti's California Travel
       | Journals (1961)_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10240296
       | - Sept 2015 (3 comments)
       | 
       |  _Lawrence Ferlinghetti Recounts More Than Six Decades of Life in
       | San Francisco_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9184856 -
       | March 2015 (5 comments)
       | 
       | There's also these obits from today:
       | 
       | https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/lawrence-fer...
       | 
       | https://www.npr.org/2021/02/23/375206219/lawrence-ferlinghet...
       | 
       | (via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26241243 and
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26243128, but no comments
       | there)
        
       | dluan wrote:
       | Just yesterday, I was listening to a youtube video of Ginsberg
       | doing a read of Howl. It really does seem like a chapter has
       | closed on San Francisco, and its future seems really uncertain
       | and open ended.
        
         | microtherion wrote:
         | Here's Ferlinghetti reading "Dog":
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hk8cMyCUnoo
         | 
         | It really evokes San Francisco to me.
        
       | Mediterraneo10 wrote:
       | I admit to occasionally looking at Ferlinghetti's Wikipedia
       | article to see if he was still hanging on, because I knew that
       | with his passing we would be losing one of the last men connected
       | to the whole fascinating world of the Beats. Now there is only
       | Gary Snyder left, long may he live.
        
         | 52-6F-62 wrote:
         | Bob Dylan's still around. Also Stan Bevington
         | [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stan_Bevington]
         | 
         | They may be a generation removed, but undeniably culturally
         | intwined. I used to have a few beers with Stan on occasion when
         | I was a flailing college student--you could usually find him
         | for a pint at a couple of spots around the Annex in Toronto. He
         | had stories.
         | 
         | edit: I had included "So is David McFadden
         | [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_McFadden_(poet)]" but as
         | soon as I actually looked at the page I'd discovered he's
         | passed as well. I feel fortunate for having the chance to see
         | him read at a small pub across from the AGO a decade ago or so.
        
           | zabzonk wrote:
           | Ferlinghetti and company pre-dated Dylan by at least 10
           | years. I would never consider Dylan a Beat.
        
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       (page generated 2021-02-23 23:00 UTC)