By Staff
William Styron, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist who was Dowagiac Dogwood Fine Arts Festival's visiting author in 1995, died Nov. 1 in Martha's Vineyard, Mass. He was 81.
Best known for "The Confessions of Nat Turner," which won the Pulitzer, and "Sophie's Choice," a novel about a Holocaust survivor from Poland which starred Meryl Streep on the big screen, Styron in the 1990s was among a group of authors and historians who successfully opposed plans for a Disney theme park near the Manassas National Battlefield in northern Virginia.
Although often included with Dogwood alumni Kurt Vonnegut and Norman Mailer as a leading writer of his generation, Styron published no full-length work of fiction after "Sophie's Choice" in 1979.
The son of a shipbuilder socialized with President Clinton on Martha's Vineyard and joined Arthur Miller and Gabriel Garcia Marquez on a 2000 delegation that met with Cuban leader Fidel Castro.
Miller figures in why I remember Styron as a pivotal Dogwood figure.
It was only the fledgling festival's third year after Vonnegut in 1993 and a financially risky 1994 double bill of John Updike and Joyce Carol Oates when Miller canceled.
Had Styron not graciously filled in at the last moment, Dogwood might not have lived another year to become as strong as it is today.
Paige Blair, an Episcopal priest in York Harbor, Maine, created a worship service in which U2's songs are used as hymns. Now Bono will really have a messiah complex.
More of these boobs: Loretta Nall, the Libertarian write-in candidate for Alabama governor, handed out T-shirts bearing her slogan and a picture of her cleavage. Below it are her opponents' faces and the tag line, "And less of these boobs."
The National Security Agency, our super-secret spy agency, launched its first television recruitment campaign during local airings of the fall premieres of "Lost" and "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" to reach a new pool of potential recruits in the Baltimore-Washington area, the Baltimore Sun reported.
Indiana's 11th casino just opened in French Lick, transforming Larry Bird's tiny hometown. In a photo the Indianapolis Star published, I could barely recognize where we vacation with a big riverboat beached in a puddle on the lawn. One of the poorest areas of the state eyes a return to Jazz Age glory. The Town Council is preparing to more than triple its budget.
Obits: Sandy West, 47, drummer of the seminal all-girl band the Runaways she co-founded in 1975 with Cass County Fair alumna Joan Jett, of lung cancer.
Jane Wyatt, 96, who played Margaret Anderson opposite Robert Young on TV's "Father Knows Best," for which she won three Emmys during the show's six-year 1950s run.
89: At last count, the number of separate Democratic House candidate TV commercials featuring President Bush.
Quips, quotes and qulunkers: "We have to step back and stop trying to put our American ideas onto this problem."
– Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, a Bush loyalist well ahead in her re-election bid who regrets her vote authorizing the Iraq invasion and favors partitioning the country along ethnic lines, in the Houston Chronicle.
"You're talking to Noah about the flood."
– President Bush to a conservative commentator who asked him for some good news. In a Washington Post-ABC News poll, 31 percent of those surveyed said they will use their congressional votes to register their opposition to Bush – double the margin who felt that way before the last midterm. The president's approval rating, which has sunk as low as 31 percent, is similar to Harry Truman's at this point in his second term. Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton enjoyed numbers around 60 percent.
"America's political class can be heard debating Capitol Hill sex scandals, the wisdom of the war in Iraq and which party is tougher on terrorism. Democrats and Republicans talk of cutting taxes (but) the ship of state is on a disastrous course and will founder on the reefs of economic disaster if nothing is done to correct it … Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare could increase the nation's $8.5 trillion debt more than fivefold in coming decades … Anybody who wanted to deal with it seriously would have to talk about raising taxes and cutting benefits … that might doom any candidate who prescribed them."