As you have probably already heard Nelson Mandela has passed away at the age of 95. I am not going to try and give you a full biography of his amazing life and career, I will leave that to the proper biographers. Instead, I will just give you a few thoughts from a person who is an ordinary, sometimes activist who is blessed enough to be surrounded by good people who want to make the world a better place. Continue reading
obituaries
3 posts
Val Patterson passed away on July 10th, but had the foresight to write his own obituary and he had a few things to get off his chest. His obituary is a model for how all future obituaries should be written.
We’ve all done things we regret and should have come clean about. For Val one of those things was a bit of burgling he did in 1971.
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Jim Marshall, founder of Marshall Amplification, died this morning at the age of eighty-eight.
Marshall, often called the “The Father of Loud,” was born in West London in 1923. As a small child he was diagnosed with tuberculosis of the bones and spent a large portion of his childhood in and out of London’s hospitals, his body encapsulated in plaster casts. Exempted from military service due to his sickly adolescence, Marshall became a civilian musician after developing a keen interest in drumming. Around this time, Marshall began applying his knowledge of engineering (then his day job) to developing his own personal voice amplifiers, so that his soft, crooning voice could be heard over his thunderous drumming. Continue reading