Well, I don't think we really needed proof that 2016 has been an all-around awful year, but today we have not one but two celebrity deaths to note. (Actually, I learned of both deaths yesterday, but I didn't have the chance to write this until this morning.)
1. John Glenn, 1921-2016
When I was a kid in the 1960s, the space program had the country -- well, the world -- enthralled. John Glenn, the first American to orbit the earth (in 1962) in his space capsule, the Friendship 7, was a real hero to us all. He saw himself somewhat differently. “I figure I’m the same person who grew up in New Concord, Ohio, and went off through the years to participate in a lot of events of importance.”
Glenn also served four terms as a Democratic senator from Ohio. He even got to go back into outer space at the age of seventy-seven!
John Glenn passed away at the age of ninety-five.
* * * * *
2. Greg Lake, 1947-2016
The "Lake" in Emerson, Lake and Palmer has died from cancer at 69.
Greg Lake was a founding member of both ELP, and King Crimson before it.
King Crimson's first LP, “In the Court of the Crimson King,” is often referred to as the first progressive rock album.
To quote from The New York Times, "Mr. Lake sang lead and played bass and guitar with Emerson, Lake and Palmer. He also produced several of the group’s enormously successful albums, contributed most of the lyrics and, with Mr. Emerson, wrote the music for many of the songs."
Thanks for your time.
