Steve Jobs on the home page of Apple.com, Oct. 5, 2011, the day he died.

Steve Jobs died yesterday. He personified what fiscal conservatism can do to generate wealth from ideas that create new products, new industries and transform the world. How fitting his name was “Jobs” — he was the embodiment of a jobs creator. The stimulus he needed was not exacted by force from taxpayers. He raised the money to start Apple Computer by selling his VW van and grew it by selling great products at a profit and attracting investors.

My first computer was a 512K Macintosh that my father bought in November 1984 to help me with my writing career. I’d seen a Mac demo at a Washington Independent Writers conference. The beauty of its fonts took my breath away. I often tell my father this was one of the best investments of his life because my Macintosh let me be an entrepreneur as a writer, desktop publisher and computer consultant. I would not have been able to hold down a job and take care of my late life partner, who had multiple sclerosis, so the Macintosh was a godsend. I also taught my dad, brother and nephew how to use the Macintosh so we were all early adopters. My father wrote his second and third books on Macintosh computers.

For my birthday this week, with the IRS tax levy, I got some of the bitter medicine that Jobs talks about in his 2005 commencement address at Stanford after he survived a rare form of pancreatic cancer. Here are the excerpts that are the most meaningful to me now at this crossroads in my life (boldfacing mine):

I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the world’s first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple’s current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. It was awful-tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.

[snip]

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

Geraldine Ferraro died today of blood cancer. As the first female vice presidential candidate in 1984, she inspired a generation of women, including me. The moment I knew Sarah Palin has the majesty of soul to be a great leader came during her speech after John McCain announced he had selected her as his running mate, when she thanked Geraldine Ferraro and Hillary Clinton, both Democrats, for their accomplishments in clearing the way for other women to run for vice president and president. This video includes both that moment and the moment on the Greta van Susteren show when Rep. Ferraro said that Gov. Palin was the FIRST PERSON EVER TO THANK HER for her achievements as a trailblazer for women. I can’t find a clip of that interview on Fox News, but I saw it at the time, and this clip doesn’t show the mixture of emotions on Rep. Ferraro’s face as she has to admit this injustice and betrayal by the women of her own party and her own liberation movement who should have heaped her with honors, if only for their own selfish reasons of using these honors to inspire more women, raise money and advance the cause of equality for women. (The fact that they didn’t now looks to me like evidence that the women’s liberation movement I joined when I came of age in the 1970′s was hijacked by Leftists and converted to serving the interests of Leftist men and a few queen bees.)

Also: this video was made during the 2008 campaign in support of the McCain/Palin ticket to shine a bright light on extreme sexism of Barack Obama and his campaign. It ends with Obama gloating about his confidence that Hillary’s supporters would come around and vote for him. Nope. Obama blew his last chance to get my support when he chose Sen. Joe “Assassination Insurance” Biden over Sen. Hillary “I’ve held real jobs and am actually qualified to be president” Clinton. And then John McCain gave me a positive reason to vote for him: Gov. Palin. I became a conservative because I actually believed that if I researched the reasons for my choice, I could explain it to my Democratic friends and, loving diversity and tolerance as they do — stop laughing — they would understand and accept my rationale for voting Republican. Well, THAT didn’t go as well as planned. Toward the end of the campaign, Obama announced he would be purging the Democratic party of centrists and I decided not to wait. I fight with a team, so I registered as Republican in December 2008. And I started this blog on January 12, 2009. About six weeks later, at CPAC 2009, Joy McCann of Little Miss Attila became my fairy blogmother and, much to my surprise, I was welcomed into the fold by other conservative bloggers. (I had just gotten settled in the Conservativism 2.0 meeting when Andrew Klavan started talking about how conservatives ought to be doing more outreach to gays, speaking as if he could be sure none were there, and I took that as a good omen and popped to my feet to agree.) A couple of weeks later, I shared my first Instalanche with Stacy McCain — on account of he was my target — and he became my fairy blogfather. (He’s still a little iffy on the “fairy” part.)

So — thank you, Geraldine Ferraro, and God bless you. You blazed the trail for other women and made the world a better place.

Elizabeth Taylor died of congestive heart failure today at the age of 79. Being a movie star made her famous but I believe that her movies will endure on the strength of her character, her resilience, her courage and her loyalty more than any other reason that makes an actress famous or a movie a classic. No other movie star even comes close.

Almost single-handedly, Elizabeth Taylor stopped the hatemongers who whipped up hysteria about AIDS in service of their own greed and lust for power. Then she set about raising money for AIDS research. Starting in the 1950′s when her loyalty could have jeopardized her career, she stood by her gay friends, which is a big deal beyond the ability of most straight people to imagine, because so many of us can’t get our own families to let us come home, let alone stand by us, vote for our equality or march in our parades.

The lasting effect of Elizabeth Taylor’s resilience in adversity is represented for me in the episode of “Sex in the City” entitled “One,” where Charlotte miscarries just before the first birthday party for Brady, the unplanned child of her friend, Miranda, who never wanted to be a mother. Miserable, unkempt and depressed, Charlotte stays home from the party and while she is watching TV, she happens on a biography of Elizabeth Taylor. A couple of scenes later, Charlotte has showered, put on make-up and is wearing a dress that is glamorous yet appropriate. She still looks sad and serious, but her chin is up and she looks determined and filled with purpose. At the party, Charlotte explains that watching Elizabeth Taylor overcome so many obstacles without self-pity made her determined to do the same.

Dear Dave Burge, aka Iowahawk, notes on Facebook:

Some amazing betcha-didn’t-know facts about Liz Taylor: she was a 1959 convert to Judaism, and was banned by Egypt during the filming of Cleopatra for donating to Israeli causes. She also supported Soviet Jewry during the Cold War, and in 1977 offered herself as a hostage during the Entebbe hijacking. RIP to a staunch friend of Israel.

I can’t help adding, as a public service announcement, that Ms. Taylor’s obesity and congestive heart failure both are characteristic of untreated obstructive sleep apnea, which was not discovered until the mid-1970′s when she was in her mid-40′s. A treatment was not invented until the 1980′s. OSA was discovered to be the cause of idiopathic congestive heart failure in 1996, but cardiologists still largely ignore the research on sleep medicine showing that obstructive sleep apnea causes idiopathic congestive heart failure (which stops being idiopathic once the cause is determined), intractable high blood pressure and atrial fibrillation.

Margaret Rose Ardussi, born June 1, 1941; died Dec. 7, 2004.

My friend, Alan Scherr, and his daughter, Naomi, were murdered on Nov. 26, 2008, in the Mumbai massacre. I wrote about Alan for Newsreal last year.

As my regular gentle readers know, I adore Jennifer Lawson, The Bloggess. When the video of the pug who sang, “Batman,” first came out, I was shy to link it in honor of her pug, Barnaby Jones Pickles, because I didn’t want to look like I was doing it for the traffic instead of the fact that I can’t see a pug now without smiling and thinking of him. I am doing it now because I just learned on Twitter that Barnaby Jones died a couple of hours ago of an allergic reaction. He was still a young dog and is gone much too soon. My heart goes out to Jenny and Victor and their daughter, Hailey. All dogs go to heaven, and I imagine Barnaby Jones is there now, grinning from ear-to-ear.

No other dog will be like Barnaby Jones, but there are more dogs in our animal shelters than homes to receive them, so Jenny, I hope you get another dog very soon and save its life in honor of the dear departed. Saving the life of another dog who would die without you will help you more than you may imagine.

Wolverines, Barnaby Jones! Wolverines! And, um, Batman!

P.S.

If you are unfamiliar with Jenny’s work, a good place to start is this new post in which she deftly sums up the blogging gestalt at her advice column, Ask The Bloggess. At her primary blog, The Bloggess, meet Barnaby Jones, ninja pug, and see the hidden picture of the furious rabbit in his forehead.

I see from a post by dear Fausta that quadriplegic cartoonist John Callahan died on Saturday of complications of quadriplegia and respiratory problems. FYI, most quads can move their arms but lack dexterity in their hands. If you are wondering what kinds of complications quadriplegia has, he could have gotten sepsis from a pressure sore or a urinary tract infection (from his bladder stoma, catheter, tubing or catheter bag). Quadriplegia can make it hard to cough, which you need to do to clear your lungs, so that could have caused respiratory problems. Or the person reporting his death thought he had respiratory problems when really he had the death rattle common at the end of life.

Years ago I read Callahan’s first autobiography, He Won’t Get Far on Foot. He was unsparing of himself in writing about his life. The passages that come to my mind the most often were about the difficulty of getting a quadriplegic person dressed in pants and getting the creases and seams where they belong — I thought of that every time I dressed my late life partner, Margaret Ardussi, who was quadriplegic the last 10 years of her life due to MS — and the foods he could afford with his food stamps — beans were a staple.

If you understand the battle of the severely depressed to live just one more day — day after day — then you will get John’s song about how even the smallest waves of joy, and ordinary beauties, nourish the soul enough to regenerate the resolve to live. It is piercingly beautiful. (If you currently have depression, do NOT listen to this song, instead immediately click the “Humor” category in this blog and get the hell out of this post. Or scroll down to “I don’t know why he swallowed the fly” — FAST! NOW! GO!)

Update, 7/28/2010: I guess it makes sense that dear, irreverent Kathy Shaidle also was a fan of John Callahan’s. Do go to her place and read what she’s got, but also check out a story she links with the great headline, “Tales from the Crip,” especially if you were wondering about who dyed his hair. It’s not the kind of thing you notice unless you’ve lived with quadriplegia, but Callahan did NOT have the most appropriate wheelchair for his mobility, so it’s no wonder the one he had hurt his back and required him to be bedridden most of the time — he should have been in a tilt-in-space/recliner chair with electric leg lifts. Then he could have changed positions for pressure relief.

Actress and singer Dixie Carter died the morning of Saturday, April 10, at the age of 70. She is survived by her husband of 26 years, Hal Holbrook, and her daughters from her first marriage to businessman Arthur Carter (no relation), Mary Dixie and Ginna.

When I checked Ms. Carter’s biography on Wikipedia, I was surprised to learn that she was a libertarian and described herself as “the only Republican in Hollywood.” Her most famous role was Julia Sugarbaker on the TV comedy series “Designing Women,” which ran from 1986 to 1993. Julia was a liberal and famous for her scathing rants. Ms. Carter made a deal with the show’s producers that for every liberal rant she had to deliver, she would get to sing in a future show.

I’m so glad that YouTube has a clip from “Designing Women” of Ms. Carter singing the inspiring old hymn, “How Great Thou Art.” As I recall the plot of that episode, Jean Smart’s character, Charlene, has a crisis of faith when she learns that her religion does not allow women to become ministers. In a scene before the clip, Charlene tells her minister that she must leave his church and her religion because their policy does not match her experience of God. When Charlene enters Julia’s church while Julia is singing “How Great Thou Art,” it symbolizes her affirmation of her faith in God as she joins Julia’s church — this is why Julia seems sad and tentative as she begins singing and her voice becomes strong and soaring when she sees Charlene:

The next clip is from a “Designing Women” reunion show and I’m including it because the actresses mention Julia’s most famous and beloved rant of the entire series, which is known as, “The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia.” They report it is a favorite monologue for drag queens to perform in gay bars. And I’m also including it for their expression of love to the gay members of their audience and pledge of support for gay marriage:

OK, now here it is, Dixie Carter’s most famous rant as Julia Sugarbaker, “The night the lights went out in Georgia”:

I will miss Ms. Carter and I send my condolences to her family and my prayers for her soul to be blessed always in every way.

“Poland Is Not Yet Lost” is the title of the Polish national anthem — and today, this sad day that Poland’s president, his wife and dozens of Poland’s foremost civilian and military leaders died in an airplane crash in Russia that killed all 132 96 people on board, we grieve with the Polish people and pray that they are consoled in their grief, filled with faith in themselves and their future, and rich with great leaders who will come forward and brilliantly take up the posts of service that are now so suddenly and tragically vacant.

The Polish national anthem has been on my mind because I play bassoon in the Bel Air Community Band in Bel Air, Maryland, and on May 2 we will play a work by Patrick Burns entitled, “Anthem,” which is based on Poland’s national anthem. We commissioned it as a tribute to Raymond J. Dombrowski, who was the band director at Bel Air High School from 1953 to 1985 and my band director from 1967 to 1971 — I hope you will click that link to read what I wrote last year about Mr. D and the honors he received for his work on behalf of other U.S. military veterans and in the Polish-American community, which is strong and loved in Maryland because of the service of Casimir Pulaski during the American Revolution and for their devotion to the founding ideals of America.

Here is a video of one of the proudest moments in the life of Raymond J. Dombrowski, when he conducted the Susquehanna Symphony Orchestra of Harford County and the Choir of Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland, The Paderewski Festival Chorus and the St. Patrick’s Cathedral Choir in a performance of “Poland Is Not Yet Lost,” the Polish national anthem, and the “Star Spangled Banner,” America’s national anthem — which, I will remind you, also has a Maryland connection since it is based on the poem Francis Scott Key wrote after watching the bombardment of Fort McHenry in Baltimore:

Wikipedia has the lyrics and stories of “The Star-Spangled Banner” and “Poland Is Not Yet Lost” — both are inspiring and worth reading.

Hot Air has a tribute to the late president of Poland, Lech Kacynski, with an explanation of what his loss means for the United States.

Prof. William A. Jacobson at Legal Insurrection discusses the loss of Poland’s leaders and the Katyn massacre of 22,000 Polish officers by the Soviets during World War II — they were on their way to an event marking its anniversary.

Michelle Malkin, who is a woman of far more compassion and great-heartedness than she ever gets credit for, has prayers for Poland.

Gateway Pundit has a round-up of the news coverage of the crash, including photos.

The Anchoress, bless her, has a list of all the passengers on board the plane, and other useful links.

My pal, Jimmy Bise, at The Sundries Shack, explains how America has lost a great friend.

Update, 4/13/2010, Tues.: Tammy Bruce points out the crucial role the Polish people played when the fate of Western civilization hung in the balance:

The world owes a debt of gratitude to Poland. Not only have they always been a remarkable people, but in the Battle of Vienna in 1683 it was Poland’s King Sobieski who pushed back the marauding Islamic hoards who were besieging Vienna. The Polish success at Vienna stopped the Islamists who otherwise would have likely taken the whole of Europe, ending civilization as we know it.

Wikipedia has the list of the names of everyone on board the fatal flight.

Sophia, 10/27/2009

My late life partner Margaret and I were living in a high-rise condo in Silver Spring in September 2000 when Sophia and her boyfriend, Ivan, came up to me in the parking lot. “Nice lady,” Ivan said, “we have just been abandoned and do not know what to do. Will you help us?”

I promised to give them a home, but they were gone when I came back with cat carriers and food. My neighbors and I were not able to capture them and their kittens until the week after Christmas. We found a home for the kittens that had arrived by then, and I kept Sophia and Ivan because their months outside had de-tamed them so much that they were too shy to be adoptable. Since they adored each other and did not bother my other cats, I welcomed them.

On Sunday evening the day after CPAC, I saw my dear kitty, Sophia, stretched full length on the back of the sofa. Her breathing was very labored. And I knew my dear kitty was dying.

I tried for hours to catch Sophia and failed, even after she ran into my bedroom for the night. I was passing out from sleep deprivation from attending CPAC, so I stroked her and prayed she would last the night. She did and in the morning I was able to pop her into a cat carrier. Our regular veterinarian couldn’t work her in, so I took her to one of our local animal ERs. The X-ray showed advanced heart failure. Death was very near. I blessed Sophia and explained to her what was happening and that she would be going to God. I put the “Hallelujah Chorus” on my cell phone’s speakers, so she would feel like she was being sung into heaven by angels. And I held her and comforted her as she died.

For those of you who feel inspired to do so, if you are willing to express your condolences with a donation (see the coffee cup illustration or the PayPal button), it would be extremely welcome, most consoling and VERY helpful.