Black September at Big Brick

A Bee Business story on this week's buy-outs was long on numbers, but it didn't mention a single name of the very real people who are leaving The Bee this fall. So I'm going to drop the commentary and just list those who are leaving.

Read the names, remember the people - and the stories. These are the people who made The Bee what it is...was. And the names say it all.

Wow. What a loss. (OK, a little editorializing...)

Mike Dunne
Janet Fullwood
Pat Rubin
Dorothy Korber
Deb Kollars
Bruce Dancis
Sarah Williams
Dan Vierria
David Favrot
Lori Richardson
Bob Sylva
Greg Endicott
Kevin McKenna
Gwen Schoen
Barbara Stubbs
Art Campos
Lakiesha McGhee
Milt Whaley
Ramon Coronado
Edgar Sanchez
Lisa Elizondo
Matt Carroll
Angie Pappas
Mark Billingsley
Matt Boudourian
Gerri Boutrarye
Janice Coleman

(NB: Though the last seven are from Special Sections, a separate editorial section, this focuses on the newsroom. Many other departments - in fact, whole departments - are disappearing. Please let me know of anyone I've forgotten, and if any of these people are NOT leaving - the news is just trickling out - please let me know ASAP. Also note: Mike Dunne is taking the buyout, but will be staying on for a couple of months.)

Those people join the following, who left in (roughly) the last few years, many under duress. Again, the cumulative talent - and community knowledge - lost is just phenomenal:

Fahizah Alim
Mareva Brown
Alison ApRoberts
Ralph Montano
Lisa Heyamoto
Dan Nguyen
Cameron Jahn
Christina Jewett
Edie Lau
Jon Williams
Kevin German
Thuy-Doan Le
Todd Milbourn
Erica Chavez
Steve Terry
Jay Mather
John Hughes
Dorsey Griffith
Elizabeth Hume
Crystal Carreon
Nancy Weaver Teichert
Jocelyn Weiner
Erhardt Krause
Laura Mecoy
Dick Schmidt
Walt Wiley
Steve Gibson
Herbert Sample
Claire Cooper
Pamela Martineau
Cynthia Craft
Judy Lin
Tom Philp
Gwendolyn Crump
Pauline Haynes
Mark Kreidler
Stuart Drown
R.E. Graswich
Becky Boyd
Patricia Beach Smith
Gary Delsohn
Amy Eckert
Jewel Reilly
Alexa Bluth
Clint Swett
Rick Rodriguez
...and yours truly.

Bo Diddley, RIP

Damn! In this day and age, with rock so establishment, it's easy to forget how absolutely, transcendently primal rock and roll was in its heyday. This is just pure rhythm and showmanship - check those moves! - with very little in the way of what we've come to think of as virtuosity. And yet, so very, deeply, virtuous!

Rest in peace, big guy. One of the giants, and he stayed true all the way to 79...

From the New York Times...

"Bo Diddley, a singer and guitarist who invented his own name, his own guitars, his own beat and, with a handful of other musical pioneers, rock ’n’ roll itself, died Monday at his home in Archer, Fla. He was 79. The cause was heart failure, a spokeswoman, Susan Clary, said. Mr. Diddley had a heart attack last August, only months after suffering a stroke while touring in Iowa.In the 1950s, as a founder of rock ’n’ roll, Mr. Diddley — along with Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis and a few others — helped reshape the sound of popular music worldwide, building it on the templates of blues, Southern gospel, R&B and postwar black American vernacular culture.

His original style of rhythm and blues influenced generations of musicians. And his Bo Diddley syncopated beat — three strokes/rest/two strokes — became a stock rhythm of rock ’n’ roll.

It can be found in Buddy Holly’s “Not Fade Away,” Johnny Otis’s “Willie and the Hand Jive,” the Who’s “Magic Bus,” Bruce Springsteen’s “She’s the One” and U2’s “Desire,” among hundreds of other songs.

Yet the rhythm was only one element of his best records. In songs like “Bo Diddley,” “Who Do You Love,” “Mona,” “Crackin’ Up,” “Say, Man,” “Ride On Josephine” and “Road Runner,” his booming voice was loaded up with echo and his guitar work came with distortion and a novel bubbling tremelo. The songs were knowing, wisecracking and full of slang, mother wit and sexual cockiness. They were both playful and radical."